christianity and interracial justice the catholic hour christianity and interracial justice iug 2 the seventh in a series of addresses by prominent catholic laymen entitled “the road ahead,” delivered in the catholic hour, broadcast by the national broadcasting company in cooperation with the national council of catholic men on july 21, 1946, by g. howland shaw, former assistant secretary of state. after the series has been concluded on the radio, it will be made available in one pamphlet. national council of catholic men washington, d. c. k\ christianity and interracial justice in his first encyclical after his election pope pius xii declared : “those who enter the church, whatever be their origin or their speech, must know that they have equal rights as children in the house of the lord, where the law of christ and the peace of christ prevail.” and again in a magnificent passage of that most magnificent of recent encyclicals, “the mystical body of christ,” the same pope says: “men may be separated by nationality and race, but our savior poured out his blood to reconcile all men to god through the cross and to bid them all unite in one body. he has taught us not only to have love for those of a different nation and a different race, but to love even our enemies. we chant the length, the width, the height, the depth of the charity of christ which neither diversity of race or culture, neither the wasteless tracts of ocean, nor wars, be their cause just or unjust, can ever weaken or destroy.” we read or hear such words. we admire them. we say to ourselves: yes, that is what i believe* and then we forget them. rather should these words make us hang our heads in shame so great is the distance between that in which we claim to believe and a state of things radically at variance with those beliefs for which we cannot escape responsibility. it is a convenient alibi to say that individuals guilty of acts contrary to interracial justice and charity have blundered or were tactless, but they would not have blundered or been tactless if you and i translated our christian beliefs into practice. and it is easy too to say that these things are very unfortunate, but that there must be a long process of education before they can be changed. that puts our consciences effectively to rest and relieves us of any compulsion for immediate action. what are we christians to do? there are three important things we must do as individuals. let us at least know just what christianity teaches with respect to race relations. that is basic. and then let us get some clear picture of what the interracial problem is in this country at the present time. there are countless excellent books, pamphlets and magazine articles on the subject and they are readily available. they can be supplemented by first hand observation. but we should go further than study and observation. we should make every effort to get beyond such facts as high infant mortality, poor schooling and worse housing and discrimination of all sorts and in the measure that such is possible feel with the victim of discrimination as he or she faces the conditions of living. there must be at least some real emotional identification. there is a final stage in this preparation of the individual christian. the human mind is curiously liable to function in water tight compartments and there are undoubtedly many christians who keep their theology in one compartment and such knowledge of the interracial problems as they possess in a quite different and very much separated compartment. christian teaching and the realities of that problem must be consciously compared and the incompatibility between them vividly understood. that is the conclusion at which we must individually arrive before we can effectively participate in any useful program of action in the interracial field. there are many such programs. there is the interracial council organized on a religious basis. today there are catholic interracial councils in new york, detroit, los angeles, washington, brooklyn and chicago. they bring together negro and white catholics to know each other, to pray and to work together and to study the implications of their faith with respect to race relations. the members of the washington council, for instance, pledge themselves : “1. to act with equal justice, courtesy and consideration towards white and colored, jew and christian. 2. to condemn any discriminatory practice. 3. to fight any interior bitterness that may have resulted from past and present experiences or racial prejudices. 4. to do all in my power to obtain the acceptance of these principles by others.” to implement this pledge the members of the washington council have prepared and use a very specific examination of conscience. young children are naturally tolerant and unaware of racial and national differences through adult influence the; grow into intolerance and become aware of these differences and they are led into the unchristian interpretation which many adults place upon them. the role of the school therefore in correcting racial and national tensions is of paramount importance and has received wide recognition. however, a greater stress must be placed on intercultural relations in our school systems, for american and catholic principles demand a marked emphasis on interracial justice in the curricula of those schools such, for example, as is found in the archdiocese of new york, where a very complete syllabus of inter-cultural education was prepared well over a year ago by the office of the superintendent of schools and fordham university. during the past scholastic year it has been in use in one third of the parish schools of the archdiocese. the results have been highly satisfactory and at the opening of the school year next autumn the syllabus, revised and made more concrete as a result of teaching experience, will be in use in all of the parish elementary schools of the archdiocese. in the field of higher education there are also significant moves to record, fordham university, for instance, at its school of social service has offered during the past year a course in “community organization and cultural relations” and st. john's university in brooklyn has given its students the opportunity to enroll in a course in “interracial problems and the principles of the encyclicals." the school of social studies founded in chicago by bishop sheil has likewise made a notable contribution along similar lines. two weeks ago, under the ausupices of the social action department of the national catholic welfare conference, and with the ardent support and personal interest of the apostolic delegate, a seminar on the negro problem was held in washington. for four days a group of leaders, clerical and lay, negro and white, discussed all aspects of the problem and arrived at a series of recommendations to stimulate as well as to guide catholic action in this field. it is notorious that racial tension thrives upon rumors. dealing with such rumors is, of course, a negative approach but it has its value and importance. as an example may be cited a practice followed by the back of the yards neighborhood council in chicago. the council has taken a particularly serious view of the danger of irresponsible rumors. on one occasion not so long ago a rumor to the effect that negroes were causing disturbances on street cars was gaining wide local credence. three priests, after careful investigation, as a result of riding the street cars, discovered that the rumor was unfounded and so reported from the pulpits of their respective churches on the following sunday. these are samples of christian programs in the interracial field, but there is one more aspect of the problem which must not be forgotten. events of the past few years have shown that the time has passed when the world of color could be pushed aside and classified as inferior, colonial or uncivilized. that world is in process of taking its rightful place in contemporary life. the process may be long, but it is well advanced. from a christian and a catholic point of view it shouldpresent no difficulties, religious or intellectual. catholics do not always realize how catholic the catholic church really is. they are those who are astonished when they are told that the church, besides latin, recognizes greek, armenian, syriac, slavonic and coptic as liturgical languages and that the rites in these languages are protected to the point of decreeing excommunication for everybody who encourages a person of an eastern rite to pass to the latin rite. they have also perhaps failed to grasp fully the meaning of certain important acts of the present pope : his consecration of twelve bishops of different races and nationalities in st. peter's as one of the first acts of his pontificate, the creation of thirty-two cardinals representing nineteen different nationalities, including the chinese, and most recently the change of status of the catholic church in china from the missionary category to one of equality with the church in the united states and europe. when we are considering what we as christians should do in efforts to solve the interracial problem, let us never forget that we shall not be judged by the prudence we display nor by the skill with which we compromise, but by that part of our convictions which we translate into action and with which we challenge the world. i the catholic hour 1930—seventeenth year—1946 the nationwide catholic hour was inaugurated on march 2, 1930, by the national council of catholic men in cooperation with the national broadcasting company and its associated stations. radio facilities are provided by nbc and the stations associated with it; the program is arranged and produced by nccm. the catholic hour was begun on a network of 22 stations, and now carries its message of catholic truth on each sunday of the year through a number of stations varying from 90 to 110, situated in 40 states, the district of columbia, and hawaii. consisting usually of an address, mainly expository, by one or another of america's leading catholic preachers—though sometimes of talks by laymen, sometimes of dramatizations —and of sacred music provided by a volunteer choir, the catholic hour has distinguished itself as one of the most popular and extensive religious broadcasts in the world. an average of 100,000 audience letters a year, about twenty per cent of which come from listeners of other faiths, gives some indication of its popularity and influence. our sunday visitor press huntington, indiana journal of urban mathematics education december 2014, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 1–5 ©jume. http://education.gsu.edu/jume david w. stinson is an associate professor of mathematics education in the department of middle and secondary education in the college of education, at georgia state university, p.o. box 3978, atlanta, ga, 30303; e-mail: dstinson@gsu.edu. his research interests include exploring socio-cultural, -historical, and -political aspects of mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning from a critical postmodern theoretical (and methodological) perspective. he is a cofounder and current editor-in-chief of the journal of urban mathematics education. editorial teaching mathematics for social justice: an ethical and moral imperative? david w. stinson georgia state university fear and stress in the police department (the new york times, march 5) – the acquittal last week of officer william l. walker by an all-white jury in brooklyn on charges that he murder a young black man named john brabham would be troubling in any event. unfortunately, in context the walker case is even more disturbing. over the past four years, three other blacks—clifford glover, claude reese jr. and randolph evans—have been shot and killed by white police officers in new york in circumstance that have frightened and enraged residents of black communities and have troubled thoughtful citizens everywhere. (editorial board, ¶ 1, emphasis added) rapes at hunter spark student protest (the new york times, september 30) – more than 100 student demonstrators, angered over the rape of three students at hunter college in the last two months, invaded the office of the school president yesterday to demand more guards and tighter security, which was cut over the summer as a result of the city’s fiscal crisis. … afterward, the dean announced several limited security measures. but she emphasized that students [i.e., the female students] should take greater personal precautions and noted that no funds were available to hire more guards to patrol the 16story main building, which has 15 exits, hundreds of classrooms, offices and laboratories and thousands of students. (mcfadden, ¶ 1 & 3; emphasis added) mexicans protest an intensification of inspections at border in el paso (the new york times, march 12) – mayor ray salazar castigated the immigration and naturalization service yesterday for having created “a potentially dangerous international situation” along the united states–mexico border here by stepping up its inspections. (crewdson, ¶ 1; emphasis added) he often-quoted epigram the more things change, the more they stay the same is attributed to the 19th century french journalist and satirist jeanbaptiste alphonse karr. those who often find themselves on the non-privileged side of discursive identity binaries (cf. derrida, 1974/1997) can certainly attest to the paradoxical truth found in the nearly two centuries old saying (e.g., white/non-white, man/non-man, wealthy/non-wealthy, able/non-able, christian/non-christian, citizen/non-citizen, english speaking/non-english speaking, t http://education.gsu.edu/jume mailto:dstinson@gsu.edu stinson editorial journal of urban mathematics education vol. 7, no. 2 2 heterosexual/non-heterosexual, etc.). the above headlines with accompanying introductory text, pulled from the new york times, clearly illustrate this change–same cycle, if you will. in that, these headlines, which can readily be mapped onto recent national events, are neither from last week, last month, or last year, nor even from the last decade, but rather from the mid-to-late 1970s (specifically, 1977, 1975, and 1979, respectively). why headlines from the mid-to-late 1970s? these years were my teenage years (i graduated from high school in 1979). i have been thinking a lot about my teenage years recently with the ongoing realization that many present injustices are, unfortunately and eerily, too often repeats of the past. nevertheless, in many ways, both as a child and as a teenager, i was oblivious to most national (and global) injustices that occurred during the 1960s and 70s. back then, it was as if children, even teenagers, were somehow protected or shielded from being aware of the injustices of the day; that is, unless the injustices were directed toward them and/or their community. or, more aptly, i should say, being shielded from the injustices of the day was true for most of the children in the racially (white) and religiously (protestant) segregated, blueand white-collar, lower middle class community in which i grew up. in making such a statement, i clearly recognize the danger in both romanticizing the past and generalizing my childhood. i wish to do neither. but, suffice it to say, most communities (those with privilege and those without) in the 1960s and 70s had some means of shaping messages about injustices for their children (even if that shaping meant not mentioning injustices at all). today, however, it is practically impossible for children and teenagers to escape from being aware (some more so than others) of present and past injustices. it matters not, for example, if the injustice happens in ferguson, missouri; charlottesville, virginia; or austin, texas; awareness of injustices is no longer isolated to particular individuals or groups and/or communities. with access to facebook; twitter; google; and tens of dozens of blogs, print and online magazines and newspapers, and radio and television stations (many specifically targeted to children and teenagers), children of all ages, from all communities, are aware (some more so than others) of local, national, and global injustices.1 and although children in the united 1 access to information is a change that will never be the same and will be forever changing. borgman (2000), however, provides some important caveats to this statement: in view of the undisputed magnitude of some of these developments [increased access to information through technology], it is reasonable to speak of a new world emerging. it is not reasonable, however, to conclude that these changes are absolute, that they will affect all people equally, or that no prior practices or institutions will carry over to a new world. nor is it reasonable to assume that any individual institutions, whether libraries, archives, museums, universities, schools, governments, or businesses, will survive unscathed and unchanged into the next millennium. strong claims in either direction are dangerous and misleading, as well as lacking in intellectual rigor. (p. 3) stinson editorial journal of urban mathematics education vol. 7, no. 2 3 states hail from literally tens of thousands of different communities, 50 million or so share a common experience: they attend one of the nearly 100,000 u.s. pre-k–12 public schools. furthermore, given the privileged status (justified or not) of the discipline of mathematics in u.s. public school curricula, these nearly 50 million children also share the common experience of mathematics instruction throughout the school year (if not every day, nearly every day). as i have been comparing my teenage years (or my childhood more broadly) with teenagers today, i have been reflecting on my current profession as a mathematics teacher educator as well as my previous profession as a public high school mathematics teacher. in doing so, i have been asking several questions in light of certain recent national events. given children and teenagers’ increased awareness of social injustices, what are the ethical and moral obligations of mathematics teacher educators and classroom teachers in using injustices as a catalyst for mathematics teaching and learning? does such an ethical and moral imperative exist? is a mathematics teacher educator or classroom teacher being ethical if she or he chooses to close the door (i.e., close off the world) to her or his mathematics methods course or algebra ii course to teach “best practices” or “families of function” without engaging in discussions about present (and past) injustices? as the most privilege discipline of study in schools, do mathematics teacher educators and classroom teachers have a unique civic responsibility in leading efforts of teaching and learning for social justice in our u.s. public schools? do mathematics teacher educators and classroom teachers have a unique pedagogical responsibility in demonstrating to stakeholders (i.e., students, teachers, administrators, school board members, communities members, etc.) that teaching for social justice is not either–or but rather both–and: both social justice pedagogical goals and mathematics (or any other specific discipline) pedagogical goals (see gutstein, 2006, p. 23). there appears to be an abundance of questions to ask around the increasingly unfiltered awareness about injustices that children wrestle with daily, and the ethical, moral, civic, and pedagogical responsibilities of teachers and those who teach teachers. additional questions include: how might a teacher assist a child in making sense of that which is senseless? how might a teacher assist a child in moving beyond awareness of injustices toward analyses of injustices? how might a teacher assist a child in moving beyond analyses of injustices toward selfempowering actions against injustices? as mathematics teacher educators and classroom teachers, we clearly understand that mere awareness is not enough in problem solving: awareness is a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition. problem solving requires doing science and taking action (and here, the phrase doing science is left open to its multiplicitous possibilities). furthermore, as mathematics teacher educators and classroom teachers, we clearly understand that within the context of schools there is no better place to do science on problem stinson editorial journal of urban mathematics education vol. 7, no. 2 4 solving than the mathematics classroom. it just seems natural, then, that the mathematics classroom would be one of the first places that the problem of injustice (in all its forms) would be used as a catalyst for teaching and learning rigorous science—in this case, the mathematical sciences (see, e.g., gutstein & peterson, 2013). given the profusion of injustices and children’s increasing awareness of those injustices, why has there not been a collective effort to integrate teaching mathematics for social justice throughout mathematics curricula (e.g., similar to integrating technology throughout mathematics curricula)? after more than three decades of research and scholarship on social justice (or critical) mathematics (see, e.g., d’ambrosio, 2012; frankenstein, 2012; gutstein, 2012; powell, 2012; skovsmose, 2012), is it not time for social justice mathematics to become not only an integral component of the “canon” of mathematics teacher education but also strategically integrated throughout the eight standards for mathematical practice? in the end, as mathematics teacher educators and classroom teachers, if we choose not to engage in the “empowering uncertainties” (stinson & wager, 2012, p. 3) of teaching and learning mathematics for social justice, are we failing to uphold our ethical, moral, civic, and pedagogical responsibilities? references borgman, c. l. (2000). the premise and the promise of global information infrastructure, in from gutenberg to the global information infrastructure: access to information in the networked world (1–32). cambridge, ma: mit press. crewdson, j. m. (1979, march 12). mexicans protest an intensification at border in el paso. the new york times, p. a14. d’ambrosio, u. (2012). a broad concept of social justice. in a. a. wager & d. w. stinson (eds.), teaching mathematics for social justice: conversations with educators (pp. 201– 213). reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. derrida, j. (1997). of grammatology (g. c. spivak, trans., corrected ed.). baltimore, md: johns hopkins university press. (original work published 1974) editorial board. (1977, march 5). fear and stress in the police department [editorial]. the new york times, p. a18. frankenstein, m. (2012). beyond math content and process: proposals for underlying aspects for social justice education. in a. a. wager & d. w. stinson (eds.), teaching mathematics for social justice: conversations with educators (pp. 49–62). reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. gutstein, e. (2006). reading and writing the world with mathematics: toward a pedagogy for social justice. new york, ny: routledge. gutstein, e. (2012). reflections on teaching and learning mathematics for social justice in urban schools. in a. a. wager & d. w. stinson (eds.), teaching mathematics for social justice: conversations with educators (pp. 63–78). reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. gutstein, e., & peterson, b. (eds.). (2013). rethinking mathematics: teaching social justice by the numbers (2nd ed.). milwaukee, wi: rethinking schools. stinson editorial journal of urban mathematics education vol. 7, no. 2 5 mcfadden, r. d. (1975, september 30). rapes at hunter spark student protest. the new york times, p. a34. powell, a. p. (2012). the historical development of criticalmathematics education. in a. a. wager & d. w. stinson (eds.), teaching mathematics for social justice: conversations with educators (pp. 21–34). reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. skovsmose, o. (2012). critical mathematics education: a dialogical journey. in a. a. wager & d. w. stinson (eds.), teaching mathematics for social justice: conversations with educators (pp. 35–47). reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. stinson, d., & wager, a. (2012). a sojourn into the empowering uncertainties of teaching and learning mathematics for social change. in a. a. wager & d. w. stinson (eds.), teaching mathematics for social justice: conversations with educators (pp. 3–18). reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. journal of urban mathematics education july 2011, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 15–22 ©jume. http://education.gsu.edu/jume joan kwako is an assistant professor of mathematics education in the education department in the college of education and human service professions, at the university of minnesota duluth, 125 bohannon hall, duluth, mn 55812; email: jkwako@d.umn.edu. her research interests include alternative assessment, in particular, collaborative testing and teaching mathematics with and for social justice. public stories of mathematics educators changing the balance in an unjust world: learning to teach mathematics for social justice joan kwako university of minnesota duluth n 2007, the first creating balance in an unjust world conference on mathematics education and social justice convened in brooklyn, new york (see http://creatingbalanceconference.org/). the conference was a forum for sharing ideas of social justice mathematics education. the organizers never intended it to be an annual event but due to the enormous amount of interest, they planned a second conference. the second conference was also held in brooklyn with nearly 400 attendees, including researchers, teachers, and students spanning all educational levels from 26 states and 3 countries. two preservice elementary teachers (maria and claire [pseudonyms]) and i, a mathematics methods teacher, traveled from minnesota to present at the conference. maria summarizes how attending the creating balance conference affected both her view of teaching and of life: the exposure to so many people, along with my presence at the creating balance in an unjust world conference, has given me a new perspective on people, education, and most importantly life. the visit has allowed me to see the importance and fragility of life. it has allowed me to see the importance of teaching the truth as well as teaching the gift of love, life, friendship, respect, and uniqueness. i was given the inspiration to teach these educational lessons whether they are life lessons, social lessons, or emotional lessons with passion, dignity, and genuineness. the conference was a deeply moving experience for all of us, one i wanted to capture by documenting the effect it had on maria and claire both initially and when they started teaching in their own classrooms. i contacted maria and claire 2 years after the conference to compare their expectations about teaching mathematics for social justice with their current teaching experiences. in this public story, i describe how teaching mathematics for social justice is expressed in the literature, explain how i engage students in teaching mathematics for social justice in my elementary mathematics methods class, and recount our experience of attending and presenting at the creating balance conference. i end i http://creatingbalanceconference.org/ kwako public stories journal of urban mathematics education vol. 4, no. 1 16 with stories of maria and claire’s experiences teaching mathematics for social justice (or not) in their current classrooms, 2 years later. teaching mathematics for social justice although it is not a new idea (see, e.g., freire, 1970/1993), teaching for social justice has become a growing focus in education (ayers, quinn, & stovall, 2009; darling-hammond, french, & garcia-lopez, 2002; mccoy, 2008; zajda, 2010) and, more specifically, in mathematics education (frankenstein, 1990, 1997; gau, 2005; gutstein, 2003, 2007; gutstein & peterson, 2005; murrey, 2008; peterson, 2005; stocker, 2008).definitions of social justice vary among teachers and researchers; the underlying ideas, however, are most often comparable. according to gau (2005), ―social justice in education [is] a process of analyzing oppression and critiquing inequities while helping students identify how those issues connect to their lives, and engaging them in purposeful action to challenge those inequitable structures‖ (p. 7). as an educator, one of my core beliefs is that education can achieve positive social change; i urge my students to see not only mathematics but also every subject as pathways to that influence. as i have researched the relationship between social justice and mathematics education, i have developed a pedagogical philosophy in which i first work to develop awareness among preservice teachers of the many factors that contribute to the inequities in society. this process begins with observation and acknowledgement and continues when preservice teachers incorporate social justice issues in their classrooms. when i began discussing social inequities with my students (future elementary teachers), i learned that many believe their students are unaware of the injustices of both their world and the world. the following statements exemplify many of my students’ initial reactions to discussing social justice issues with elementary students: we can’t tell them that! they’re too young! we need to take care of them, shelter them from the harsh realities, scary inequities and violence imposed on people—and children—in society. children are innocent and incapable of understanding big problems. my response to these students is, ―is that a child’s perspective, or your perspective? do you think that a child does not know that she or he is impoverished or homeless? is it better to ignore the discrimination due to economic standing, the color of their skin, or living conditions that to many children experience daily? or is it better to acknowledge the realities in which our children live, with the goal of changing those realities and expanding their possibilities?‖ when conventional mathematics curricula grow sterile and detached from the lives of students, stu kwako public stories journal of urban mathematics education vol. 4, no. 1 17 dents lose interest. mathematics lessons drawn from today’s headlines may not always be pleasant, but the savvy teacher can integrate them into lesson planning in age-appropriate ways. most of my students (preservice teachers) have not experienced homelessness, abuse, or poverty but, at some point in their careers, all will surely teach children who have. by raising my students’ awareness of the different realities and inequities that exist, they can create an environment in which their students are able to use the mathematics they learn through social justice contexts i provide to achieve social justice goals. my focus on social justice provides a context through which my students examine themselves and their roles as teachers and as members of our society. finally, i work to help my students understand that not only will they teach children who are victims of injustice but also that it is essential they recognize that these issues of injustice are not defining characteristics or qualities of the children, their families, or their culture. instead, the issues are the result of social, political, and economic forces in society that shape their lives. it is through these discussions and the design of mathematics lessons using a social justice context that i work to bring my students to a level of maturity and pedagogical awareness of social, political, and economic injustice. there is an obvious connection between social justice and social studies, between social justice and history, and even between social justice and literature. but mathematics? yes, mathematics! it is possible to teach mathematics using contexts that illustrate societal imbalances. in this way, mathematics teachers can serve as advocates for positive social change. introduction to social justice lessons i initiate discussions about social justice with my preservice teachers by modeling lessons that focus on various inequities in our society. the first lesson, ―unequal distribution of wealth in the united states‖ from eric (rico) gutstein and bob peterson’s (2005) edited volume rethinking mathematics: teaching social justice by the numbers, requires students to analyze data and create a threedimensional graph representing population and wealth distribution in the united states. groups of students use a 10 square cm sheet of grid paper and 100 centimeter unit cubes to graph the following data: 1% of u.s. households owns 39% of the wealth, 19% of u.s. households own 46% of the wealth, and 80% of u.s. households own 15% of the wealth (langyel, 2005). generally, groups create one very tall tower (39 cubes high) on one square, 46 cubes spread out among 19 of the squares, and 15 cubes spread out over 80 of the squares. as the tower on one square grows to 39 cubes, it becomes a very powerful and startling image of the imbalance of wealth in the united states. not all of the groups display the data the kwako public stories journal of urban mathematics education vol. 4, no. 1 18 same way; some assign different colored cubes a different value or use differentsized cubes to represent different amounts. any debate about which graph more accurately reflects the data only adds to a conversation about representation of wealth distribution. it also deepens the mathematical understanding of how the way data are represented can significantly change the message that data might convey. my students engage in and create lessons surrounding some disturbing topics, but i do not force any set doctrine; the numbers provide their own testimony. some lesson topics include the cost of wars in iraq and afghanistan, discrepancy between salaries of ceos of major u.s. retailers and salaries of those who actually make the products, racial profiling in arrests and the death penalty, and comparative wages of women and men in the same field. engaging students in relevant mathematics helps students to use classroom mathematics to critically analyze numbers in their lives outside of the classroom. creating balance in an unjust world conference for mathematics education and social justice the social justice lesson plans notwithstanding; it was the experience of presenting at the creating balance conference that had the most profound impact on the two students who presented with me. we organized our presentation into an interview format. i had a list of open-ended questions for claire and maria intended to elicit the challenges and successes of designing elementary mathematics lessons using a social justice context. although i gave them general questions ahead of time, we did not rehearse their answers; i wanted the presentation to be as authentic as possible. as such, conference attendees were encouraged to ask follow-up or clarifying questions; thus, the presentation became a live interview involving everyone in the room. immediately upon returning to minnesota, both claire and maria wrote about their experiences at the conference. below are their thoughts at that time, in 2008: claire: our visit to the site where the world trade centers once stood was very shocking and emotional. it is impossible to explain the feelings of sadness and anger i experienced when visiting the memorial museum and site. i was sixteen years old when the events occurred on september 11, 2001, and i know what i did learn about the event was taught by my parents, not through any formal education. this was the moment that i confirmed my belief that the truth about the world’s issues is not being taught enough in our schools today. claire realized that her only knowledge from one of the most devastating events in the last 10 years came from media, not from her teachers. had her parents not kwako public stories journal of urban mathematics education vol. 4, no. 1 19 shared with her what happened, her knowledge about the event would have been superficial at best. maria: teachers have to be very aware of the students, community, etc. when designing lessons using a social justice context. this is not always easy. as teachers, we do not want to single out someone or disrespect anyone. social justice topics can really take a toll on students’ emotions if it applies too directly to their lifestyle. we need to be respectful. all learners must be considered and incorporated into the design of the lesson. maria highlighted the care teachers must exercise when designing lessons that use delicate, unpredictable, and potentially controversial topics. for example, it would be a mistake to start discussing racial profiling in a multiracial classroom without significant conscious thought towards the impact the discussions will have on the children in the classroom, the school staff, and the parents. designing such lessons is difficult, and is more challenging without institutional support: maria: it can be difficult to find support from colleagues as you present social justice topics. not everyone wants to be involved because of the risk of getting fired or getting into trouble with administration. sometimes colleagues will frown upon your willingness to question society and support what is right. i struggled with this. i had a cooperating teacher who was concerned about my lesson on overcrowded classrooms. i thought it was a great way for students to understand the importance of building safety and to question places in their community that may or may not be safe, all the while teaching about area (italics added). by questioning dangerous places, my students learned that they can make a difference and help to create a safer, more just society. this is what is important. maria, and later claire, recognized the importance of having support from colleagues and administration when incorporating, in this case, an issue as seemingly uncontroversial as overcrowded classrooms: claire: through the entirety of the conference and our presentation, my views were dramatically altered about educating students on our world issues of social justice. as teachers, we need to be leaders in the classroom and empower students to become future leaders through education about the truth of the real world. we also need to teach and encourage other educators to research and use their knowledge of real life political, social, and economic issues in their everyday classroom lessons. each person at the conference shared their challenges in designing and implementing these lessons in the classroom, but it is the success of the students that is the most amazing. when social justice education is taught with another subject such as math, student interest and understanding rises. the lesson i learned is that as a teacher, i can provide my future students with the truth about today’s world issues while still providing an education in core subjects such as math. teaching students about social justice is crucial to the future of our world. kwako public stories journal of urban mathematics education vol. 4, no. 1 20 her enthusiasm for teaching for social justice was apparent in 2008. would it wane? 2 years later: 2010 our world changed significantly in 2 years. i contacted claire and maria to see if the experiences with teaching mathematics for social justice both in my class and at the conference really affected how they now taught. the following are their 2010 responses to one of the question originally asked in the presentation at the creating balance conference. joan kwako: i have come to realize that you can use mathematics to teach and learn about issues of social justice, and conversely, that such social issues can be the context to learn mathematics. did the fact that we focused on social, political, and economic issues in my class have an impact on your teaching? maria: if there is a current local state, national, or world topic that can relate to a math topic we are learning or have learned, i utilize it. students love to apply what they are learning to something that is meaningful. aside from teaching what is going on in our world, i am also consistently faced with relating the lives of my students to what we learn. i have students who are living in poverty, families with children who are first generation americans, and students with diverse backgrounds and life experiences…[which] allow my students to develop understanding, as many of them are english language learners. therefore, their own experiences allow them to make connections and learn. i am fortunate in my school to have flexibility in what i teach. (yet at times i am feeling the pressure of teaching to the test rather than relating topics to real life.) many of my students have a deep understanding of the social issues that arise in conversation. it allows them to make a connection between the issue and the content that is being taught. it is amazing to see the connections being made. this fall i gave my students information on haiti and the problems they have been facing to create a deeper understanding of the word community. we viewed pictures of what a community looks like as well as haiti and its community before, during, and after its disaster. we talked about what people have had to live without and how communities come together to help those when are in need. it has allowed many of my students to reflect on our learning community and what we stand for in our classroom. i have enjoyed seeing the change in some of my students’ behaviors. information on the past and current haiti community and our own learning community have proven to be not only effective, but meaningful. when students find meaning in what they learn, it is the best feeling in the world. claire: even though i have not taught math with social justice, i have had many students ask about social, political, and economic issues during my teaching. i find a resource and teach the answer using the resource, not using my opinion. oftentimes, i have had the students find the answer to their question on their own or by working with another student. students can often teach each other if they have experience in the social issue topic. i believe the focus on social, political, and economic issues has impacted my teaching, whether or not i have taught using social justice in my kwako public stories journal of urban mathematics education vol. 4, no. 1 21 curriculum or had the opportunity to design and teach my own lessons. social justice is always on my mind and i am constantly thinking about how it relates to my everyday life. i was reminded that diversity and social justice are two issues that are in our classrooms everyday and cannot be ignored. we should also remember that by incorporating social justice into our teaching that our students may be able to better relate, learn more about our world, and reach their full potential as learners. i’m teaching in [minnesota] as a long-term sub in second grade. i haven’t had the opportunity to really create my own curriculum or really teach anything using social justice yet. i don’t think there is a social justice component in either our math or literacy program. also, i’m in the midst of trying to secure a full-time job, and am obviously not tenured. i am working in a district where parents and administrators track me all of the time, and i can only teach what i’m assigned to teach. in claire’s last statement, she made it clear to me that she did not want her name, her school, or even her district mentioned, for fear of retribution. she clearly wants to incorporate issues of social justice in her classroom but does not feel she has the support to do so. maria had a similar concern in the earlier interview. how do we, as teacher educators, help them? we can model teaching as a means for positive social change, which will equip them with the knowledge necessary to change the status quo, especially when that status quo is so inequitable. however, having the knowledge to change the status quo does not imply that beginning teachers can always stand up to administrative forces that come against them. even so, as gau (2005) states, ―an important component in the literature on teaching mathematics for social justice…is that teaching mathematics for social justice is fundamentally about students learning mathematics‖ (p. 75). and isn’t our entire purpose of teaching mathematics for students to learn mathematics? although it would be nice to take credit for the change in my students’ perspectives, i know i was only a guide. i do believe that the focus on social justice in class and the opportunity to attend and present at the creating balance conference allowed my two students to recognize that real issues can provide rich contexts for learning mathematics. these contexts can serve to not only motivate students to learn and enjoy mathematics but also to expose them to—and thus work to change—the real social justice issues that exist in our country. it strikes me as counterproductive to separate mathematics from reality. if we choose to do so, we deserve the taunt that ―math doesn’t matter in their lives.‖ they are wrong; mathematics surrounds us. it is the invisible web that became the internet; it is the underpinnings of every economic transaction. numbers chart the heights of human achievement and illustrate the depths of human despair. we cannot ignore things in an effort to wish them away; to change inequities, we must first acknowledge them. lessons we choose for our students should reflect these intricate links to the real world. if we are to build enthusiasm, and at the same time, avoid aversion to mathematics, we need to connect it to what is real and important. as kwako public stories journal of urban mathematics education vol. 4, no. 1 22 teacher educators, it is our responsibility to prepare future mathematics teachers to teach for social justice and thus work to change the balance. references ayers, w., quinn, t., & stovall, d. (2009). handbook of social justice in education. new york: routledge. darling-hammond, l., french, j., & garcia-lopez, s. p. (2002). learning to teach for social justice. new york: teachers college press. frankenstein, m. (1990). incorporating race, gender, and class issues in a critical mathematical literacy curriculum. journal of negro education, 59, 336–347. frankenstein, m. (1997). in addition to the mathematics: including equity issues in the curriculum. in a. trentacosta & m. kenny (eds.), multicultural and gender equity in the mathematics classroom. reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. freire, p. (1993). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum. (original work published 1970) gau, t. r. (2005). learning to teach math for social justice (unpublished doctoral dissertation). university of wisconsin-madison, madison, wi. gutstein, e. (2003). teaching and learning mathematics for social justice in an urban, latino school. journal for research in mathematics education, 34, 37–73. gutstein, e. (2007). ―and that’s just how it starts‖: teaching mathematics and developing student agency. teachers college record, 109, 420–448. gutstein, e., & peterson, b. (eds.). (2005). rethinking mathematics: teaching social justice by the numbers. milwaukee, wi: rethinking schools. langyel, m. (2005). unequal distribution of wealth in the united states. in e. gutstein & b. peterson (eds.), rethinking mathematics: teaching social justice by the numbers (pp. 68–69). milwaukee, wi: rethinking schools. mccoy, l. p. (2008). poverty: teaching mathematics and social justice. mathematics teacher, 101, 456–461. murrey, d. (2008). making numbers count. teaching tolerance, 33, 50–55. peterson, b. (2005). teaching math across the curriculum. in e. gutstein & b. peterson (eds.), rethinking mathematics; teaching social justice by the numbers (pp. 9–15). milwaukee, wi: rethinking schools. stocker, d. (2008). maththatmatters: a teacher resource linking math and social justice. ottawa, canada: ccpa education project. zajda, j. (ed.). (2010). globalization, education and social justice. dordrecht, the netherlands: springer. feminism, social justice, and artificial intelligence feminist philosophy quarterly volume 8 | issue 3/4 introduction recommended citation fehr, carla. 2022. “feminism, social justice, and artificial intelligence.” feminist philosophy quarterly 8 (3/4). introduction. 2022 feminism, social justice, and artificial intelligence carla fehr https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4533-1589 university of waterloo carla.fehr@uwaterloo.ca https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4533-1589 fehr – feminism, social justice, and artificial intelligence published by scholarship@western, 2022 1 feminism, social justice, and artificial intelligence1 carla fehr artificial intelligence (ai) profoundly affects issues of justice and well-being in individual, social, and global contexts. from social media to search engines, and in domains ranging from policing and judicial decision making, to the assessment of insurance, university, and job applications, to the creation of visual arts and beyond, algorithms are embedded in many of our lives. some of these algorithms promise incredible contributions to human welfare. for example, some ai-powered systems can detect very early stages of medical conditions, and others are being developed and used to combat human trafficking. also, consider social media's role in liberatory social movements such as arab spring, black lives matter, and #metoo. however, many developments in ai have significant adverse impacts, including job loss, privacy violations, political polarization, and the spread of disinformation. scholars such as safiya noble, cathy o’neil, and ruha benjamin have demonstrated the pervasive, real-world negative consequences of algorithmic bias and discrimination against racialized people, women, and members of other marginalized groups. noble (2018) recounts the insult of using “black girls” as a keyword in a google search for activities for her stepdaughter and nieces and being primarily directed to pornography sites. noble documents the phenomenon of algorithmic oppression, the “masking and deepening of social inequality” resulting from discrimination against racialized people and women that is “embedded in computer code, and increasingly, in artificial intelligence technologies that we are reliant on, by choice or not” (noble 2018, 1). she argues that “algorithmic oppression is not just a glitch in the system but, rather, is fundamental to the operating system of the web” (noble 2018, 10). benjamin (2019) refers to the near-ubiquitous technologies that amplify racial hierarchies as the new jim code. o’neil (2016) coins the term “weapons of math destruction” (wmd) to describe algorithms that do harm (for example, encoding racism), impact many people, and function as a black box 1 many thanks to laura foster, katy fulfer, jesse hoey, catherine hundleby, trystan goetze, leah govia, aimée morrison, kem-laurin lubin, lynne sargent, jamie sewell, and twenty-seven anonymous reviewers. your labour and expertise were vital to the production of this special issue. i would also like to thank the feminism, social justice and ai workshop participants and the authors of the papers in this volume. it is comforting and inspiring to be part of a community of scholars who generously supported each other's work and conduct a kind of philosophy that makes the world a better place. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4533-1589 feminist philosophy quarterly, 2022, vol. 8, iss. 3/4, introduction published by scholarship@western, 2022 2 blocking the inner workings of the algorithm from evaluation. o’neil provides a host of examples of wmds that, under a thin veneer of objectivity, reify and recreate cultural biases that systematically harm members of marginalized groups. one example describes recidivism models that overpredict future criminal acts of black defendants and underpredict future criminal acts of white defendants. given these justice-focused benefits and harms of ai, ai continues to be an apt and urgent topic of feminist philosophical engagement. this special issue is the culmination of a collaborative effort that began with the 2021 feminism, social justice, and ai workshop. workshop participants were solicited through a public call for proposals. selected participants submitted full papers, which we discussed and developed. participants were then invited to revise papers and submit them for consideration for this issue. the papers in this issue were drawn from that pool of submissions after a double-anonymous review. understanding and addressing algorithmic bias and discrimination one group of papers in this volume focuses on understanding and addressing algorithmic bias and discrimination. within this group are papers focusing on the barriers or challenges to debiasing algorithms. oisín deery and katherine bailey characterize a dilemma inherent in debiasing some algorithms. they point out that when assessing algorithms, there is a trade-off between normative correctness and descriptive correctness. they use the example of a google search for images of ceos. only about 5 percent of fortune 500 companies have women ceos. so, should the output of google search results reflect this number or a number representing a more equitable situation? deery and bailey write that in cases like this, two options present themselves. either prioritize descriptive accuracy over normative correctness, which has the potential cost of perpetuating or amplifying bias, or instead prioritize normative correctness, with the potential cost of withholding ethically useful information, even if we thereby avoid perpetuating or amplifying bias. (19) deery and bailey argue that we will likely need to make these choices on a case-bycase basis. in many situations, the preferred solution will be to control for the adverse effects of bias rather than debiasing the models themselves. linus ta-lun huang, hsiang-yun chen, ying-tung lin, tsung-ren huang, and tzu-wei hung focus on the challenges of debiasing explainable ai (xai). xai models have more transparent decision-making processes and are more likely to expose their biases than other ai systems. huang, chen, lin, huang, and hung explain that technical xai, the view that technical experts can handle debiasing xai, is mistaken. instead, they advance and fehr – feminism, social justice, and artificial intelligence published by scholarship@western, 2022 3 advocate for integrated xai, which draws on diverse and marginalized perspectives in developing and assessing xai. the second subgroup of papers on algorithmic bias and discrimination focuses on bias and fairness in terms of structural injustice. using health care as a case study, ting-an lin and po-hsuan cameron chen frame ai bias as a structural injustice. lin and chen argue that fairness cannot be achieved by computational means alone because there is a need to address social structure and power imbalances in ai development and use. deploying iris marion young's social connection model, lin and chen argue for distributing the responsibility for ai-mediated injustices among those who participate in the injustice, and they provide a set of practical recommendations for the pursuit of ai fairness. alysha kassam and patricia marino confront the problem of proxy discrimination, which arises when an algorithm does not consider sensitive characteristics (such as race) but does consider putatively neutral characteristics (such as zip code) that turn out to be correlated with a sensitive characteristic. proxy discrimination is a source of anti-black racism. kassam and marino argue that fairnessas-parity, which aims at creating “equal rates of accurate and inaccurate predictions” between groups and is a common response to proxy discrimination, fails to address structural racism (2). starting from a structural view of racism kassam and marino argue that “algorithms should be evaluated with respect to their broader social impact and whether their use exacerbates or mitigates racial stratification” (2). harms perpetuated by ai several papers in this volume focus on understanding and addressing concrete harms created by ai. emma mcclure and benjamin wald use the example of google searches to demonstrate that machine learning algorithms can communicate hostility and exclusion and so inflict environmental microaggressions on members of marginalized populations. they argue that tech companies such as google should be proactive by retraining their algorithms on less biased datasets—for example, on black lives matter archives—and should restrain their algorithms from doing harm by hiring people with lived experience to curate liberatory autocomplete responses for common racialized queries. michael randall barnes explores the role of ai in online radicalization leading to real-world violence and argues that “better ai” is not a solution to this problem. he is concerned that in favouring a technical fix, “big tech reveals an overall ideology in which technological ‘progress’ is valued over human flourishing” (3). barnes argues that these ai-centric solutions are a form of propaganda because a focus on the future potential of algorithmic solutions dehumanize [content moderators], obfuscate the harms they face, and complicate the feminist philosophy quarterly, 2022, vol. 8, iss. 3/4, introduction published by scholarship@western, 2022 4 debate about the distribution of responsibility in actually addressing these challenges. (3) barnes argues that regular users should pressure big tech to address this problem and that content moderators should be supported and included in the development and implementation of strategies for reducing online radicalization. epistemic oppression and injustice, and algorithmic oppression some papers in this volume demonstrate how algorithmic oppression contributes to epistemic oppression and injustice. a common expectation that racialized people explain the racism they experience or defend their assessments of experiences as racist can result in uncompensated and onerous labour that nora berenstain (2016) calls epistemic exploitation. tempest m. henning evaluates one strategy for resisting this epistemic exploitation: to suggest that one's interlocutors “just google it.” henning considers how theories of argumentation would reject this response as evading the burden of proof and failing to engage in a collaborative argumentation project. she argues that these rejections of the “just google it” strategy are unacceptable because they fail to consider the heavy cost inflicted on racialized people by requiring a defence of their experiences of racism. however, henning rejects the “just google it” strategy because of racism baked into google search results. not only is it unlikely that antiracist information would be suggested by a privileged or racist person's search, but they would also likely receive information that would make the problem worse. given that epistemic exploitation is harmful and turning to google is not viable, henning considers alternative strategies, ranging from asking for compensation for the pedagogical labour to declining to engage in conversations about racism, for avoiding epistemic exploitation. henning shows that racism built into ai blocks its use as an antiracist educational and political tool. heather stewart, emily cichocki, and carolyn mcleod argue that social media algorithms support and develop algorithmic sorting and targeting. algorithmic sorting refers to grouping social media users into separate, closed-off, and biased informational communities (9), which can decrease exposure to people who hold different perspectives. algorithmic targeting occurs when information is presented to a user based on predictions about what they want to see (9). algorithmic targeting can decrease people's engagement with perspectives and information that challenge their assumptions and beliefs. stewart, cichocki, and mcleod argue that algorithmic sorting and targeting lead to social distrust and undermine cooperation, which is associated with members of marginalized communities being denied full status as knowers. arianna falbo and travis lacroix argue the importance of investigating cultural code-switching in emerging ai technologies. cultural code-switching refers to a fehr – feminism, social justice, and artificial intelligence published by scholarship@western, 2022 5 person changing how they present and construct themselves in response to changes in their social environment. while cultural code-switching can signal group membership, it can also lead to cultural smothering, a form of self-censoring in which “one alters aspects of their cultural identity in response to an unwelcoming or hostile social atmosphere” (3). cultural smothering can harm members of marginalized groups. falbo and lacroix point out that we exist in relationship with ai systems that encode conventions of dominant cultures. as a result, cultural smothering can be mediated by ai systems. falbo and lacroix warn that a failure to implement codeswitching capacities in ai risks entrenching and widening social inequalities. friction and discomfort with feminine and colonial ai papers by alexis elder and shelley m. park demonstrate that it can be ok to feel uncomfortable in the face of ai that trades on misogyny and colonialism. alexis elder uses the confucian moral concept li (禮) to understand and address the gendered abuse of feminized ai, such as siri and alexa, used as home assistants. elder uses li in a way that refers to ritual or etiquette and “as a tool for resisting inherited habits and maladaptive patterns” (18). she writes, “these devices fail, not because they introduce or cause sexism but because they make it harder to resist the sexism that is already the water we swim in . . . . we need more friction when it comes to our assumptions and ‘instinctive’ actions around gender” (18). in her analysis of social robots who do care work, shelley park offers a reinterpretation of the uncanny valley, which refers to human discomfort with human replicas that look almost but not quite human. the uncanniness portrayed in cultural depictions of social robots has become both an engineering and a marketing problem for robot engineers. park recasts uncanniness in a psychoanalytic frame, arguing that social robots doing care work echo gendered and colonial labour and, as such, are a moral rather than a technological challenge. park argues that our discomfort with uncanniness is an apt response to gendered colonial violence. she writes that “social justice may depend—in part—on designing robots that heighten rather than reduce our sense of the uncanny, leaving us less ‘at home’ with our intimate relationship to ai” (23). looking forward what would it mean to create feminist ai? while it remains vital that feminist scholars respond to harms perpetuated by extant ai systems, os keyes and kathleen a. creel demonstrate that opportunities remain for feminist scholarship on the development of new algorithmic systems. keyes and creel take inspiration from feminist philosopher alison adam’s 1998 book, artificial knowing: gender and the thinking machine, and revive her arguments in the context of current technology. echoing adam, keyes and creel imagine a feminist ai and “thinking through the ways feminist philosophy quarterly, 2022, vol. 8, iss. 3/4, introduction published by scholarship@western, 2022 6 in which ai research could be informed by feminist theory” (adam 1998, 156; quoted in keyes and creel, 3). for example, both the texts by adam and by keyes and creel attend to whose knowledge and interests are represented in ai systems. adam raised concerns about the unacknowledged situatedness of the data included in early ai systems, cyc and soar. keyes and creel point out current problems of the partiality and situatedness of the data being used to train current ai. even though current systems are based on different technology, keyes and creel point out that the problem of ai being trained on biased data sets remains urgent. finally, keyes and creel explore strategies for increasing the “representationality and plurality of machine learning systems’ underlying ‘knowers’” (3). cross-cutting themes there are additional themes that cut across these groups of papers. first, several papers in this volume take a structural approach to feminism and ai and, in doing so, draw on the work of iris marion young. in addition to the papers by lin and chen and by kassam and marino, young’s structural approach to oppression, as well as her social connection model of political responsibility, surfaces in the papers by barnes; falbo and lacroix; and stewart, cichocki and mcleod. second, papers by lin and chen; barnes; henning; and mcclure and wald, in addition to developing theoretical, philosophical positions, also support feminist praxis by providing concrete suggestions for addressing the problems they document. a third theme involves the importance of moving beyond technological solutions to problems of algorithmic bias and injustice in ai. this theme arises in the work of barnes; mcclure and wald; lin and chen; falbo and lacroix; and huang, chen, lin, huang, and hung. even though this issue focuses on feminism, social justice, and ai, these papers also engage a wide range of additional philosophical fields, including ethical and social theory, philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of language, psychoanalytic theory, and confucian philosophy, demonstrating that feminism, social justice, and ai is a topic of broad philosophical interest. references adam, alison. 1998. artificial knowing: gender and the thinking machine. new york: routledge. benjamin, ruha. 2019. race after technology: abolitionist tools for the new jim code. cambridge: polity. berenstain, nora. 2016. “epistemic exploitation.” ergo 3 (22) 569–90. https://doi.org /10.3998/ergo.12405314.0003.022. fehr – feminism, social justice, and artificial intelligence published by scholarship@western, 2022 7 o’neil, cathy. 2016. weapons of math destruction: how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy. new york: crown. noble, safiya umoja. 2018. algorithms of oppression: how search engines reinforce racism. new york: new york university press. carla fehr is the wolfe chair in scientific and technological literacy in the department of philosophy at the university of waterloo, where she works in socially responsible philosophy of science, feminist philosophy of science, feminist philosophy of biology, and feminist epistemology. fehr is associate director of the apa-csw site visit program. she is a coeditor of feminist philosophy quarterly and the editor of this “feminism, social justice, and artificial intelligence” special issue. intro fehr title page intro fehr final format current commentary indonesian journal of advocacy and legal services, vol. 1 no. 2 (2020) 163 current commentary social injustice in the industrial revolution 4.0 aprila niravita faculty of law, universitas negeri semarang, indonesia managing editor, indonesian journal of advocacy and legal services ijals@mail.unnes.ac.id, aprilaniravita@mail.unnes.ac.id social justice issues can occur in relation to practically any aspect of society where inequality can arise as a result of unjust prejudices or policies.1 social justice issues can be delineated into two categories, although they are often co-dependent: inter-social treatment and unequal government regulation.2 unequal government regulation involves laws and regulations that purposefully or otherwise create conditions that obstruct, limit, or deny a group(s) access to the same opportunities and resources, relative to the rest of society. these laws can intentionally (explicitly) or unintentionally (implicitly) create the conditions for social injustice. areas in which government policy often gives rise to social inequality and injustice include:3 1. voting laws (i.e. redistricting and voter id) 2. policing laws (i.e. traffic, search and seizure, and drug scheduling) 3. environmental laws (i.e. clean water and air, industrial waste disposal) 4. health care laws (i.e. insurance mandates and coverage eligibility) 5. education laws (i.e. public school segregation and integration) 6. labor laws (i.e. worker’s rights, occupational health and safety) social justice is a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society. this is measured by the explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity, and social privileges. in western as well as in older asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals 1 https://www.pachamama.org/social-justice/social-justice-issues 2 ibid. 3 ibid. indonesian journal of advocacy and legal services issn: 2686-2085 (print) issn: 2686-2611(online) vol. 1 no. 2 (2020): 163-168 doi: 10.15294/ijals.v1i2.36509 submitted: 1 january 2020 revised: 3 january 2020 accepted: 5 january 2020 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/justice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/individual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/society https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/distribution_of_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/equal_opportunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/privilege_(social_inequality) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/privilege_(social_inequality) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/western_civilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/culture_of_asia https://www.pachamama.org/social-justice/social-justice-issues aprila niravita 164 indonesian journal of advocacy and legal services, vol. 1 no. 2 (2020) fulfill their societal roles and receive what was their due from society.4 in the current global grassroots movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets and economic justice.5 social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. the relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labor law and regulation of markets, to ensure fair distribution of wealth, and equal opportunity.6 in the further context, social injustice can be described as a situation in which dominant population is made known of the inequity that leads for others due to their relative position in the structure of power. social injustice is also the way unjust actions are done in the society. social injustice occurs in a situation where the equals are treated unequally and the unequal is treated equally. three common examples of social injustice include: discrimination, ageism, and homophobia.7 one of social injustice is discrimination, and discrimination itself is found in education, housing, employment, voting, lending and credit, land use, health care services, transportation, public accommodations, and government benefits and services. discrimination is described as unequal treatment of persons, for a reason which has nothing to do with legal rights or ability. discrimination is considered illegal by the federal and state laws of the united states of america. these laws prohibit discrimination in employment, availability of housing, rates of pay, right to promotion, educational opportunity, civil rights, and use of facilities based on race, nationality, creed, color, age, sex, or sexual orientation. discrimination 4 aristotle, the politics (ca 350 bc); clark, mary t. (2015). "augustine on justice," a chapter in augustine and social justice. lexington books. pp. 3–10. isbn 978-1-49850918-3; banai, ayelet; ronzoni, miriam; schemmel, christian (2011). social justice, global dynamics: theoretical and empirical perspectives. florence: taylor and francis. isbn 978-0-203-81929-6. 5 kitching, g. n. (2001). seeking social justice through globalization escaping a nationalist perspective. university park, pa: pennsylvania state university press. pp. 3–10. isbn 978-0-271-02377-9. hillman, arye l. (2008). “globalization and social justice”. the singapore economic review. 53 (2): 173-189. doi: 10.1142/s0217590808002896; agartan, kaan (2014). “globalization and the question of social justice”. sociology compass. 8 (6): 903–915. doi: 10.1111/soc4.12162; el khoury, ann (2015). globalization development and social justice : a propositional political approach. florence: taylor and francis. pp. 1–20. isbn 978-1-317-50480-1; lawrence, cecile & natalie churn (2012). movements in time revolution, social justice, and times of change. newcastle upon tyne, uk: cambridge scholars pub. pp. xi– xv. isbn 978-1-4438-4552-6. 6 john rawls, a theory of justice (1971) 4, “the principles of social justice: they provide a way of assigning rights and duties in the basic institutions of society and they define the appropriate distribution of benefits and burdens of social co-operation.” 7 chinemerem isioma, social injustice: discrimination, elevate the honor society magazine, april 14, 2016, https://www.honorsociety.org/articles/social-injusticediscrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/role_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/grassroots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/social_safety_net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/social_safety_net https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/economic_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/institution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/taxation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/social_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/social_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/public_health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/state_school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/public_services https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/labor_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/regulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/market_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fairness_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/distribution_of_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/equal_opportunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/equal_opportunity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/aristotle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/the_politics https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8djvcrfoyqtzys0k https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8djvcrfoyqtzys0k https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8djvcrfoyqtzys0k https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/international_standard_book_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:booksources/978-1-4985-0918-3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:booksources/978-1-4985-0918-3 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8exzmwhu3ckpqvuk https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8exzmwhu3ckpqvuk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/international_standard_book_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:booksources/978-0-203-81929-6 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8v3hpa0v1ekfqzms https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8v3hpa0v1ekfqzms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/international_standard_book_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:booksources/978-0-271-02377-9 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8r2twbxfmelhzvda https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8r2twbxfmelhzvda https://doi.org/10.1142%2fs0217590808002896 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8qm8zchrrq0xfn2c https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8qm8zchrrq0xfn2c https://doi.org/10.1111%2fsoc4.12162 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8mtk1qkp2b0zandg https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8mtk1qkp2b0zandg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/international_standard_book_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:booksources/978-1-317-50480-1 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8mwpssgrwullxtee https://drive.google.com/open?id=0b5cqduwg9kd8mwpssgrwullxtee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/international_standard_book_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/special:booksources/978-1-4438-4552-6 https://www.honorsociety.org/members/chinemerem-isioma https://www.honorsociety.org/articles/social-injustice-discrimination https://www.honorsociety.org/articles/social-injustice-discrimination current commentary indonesian journal of advocacy and legal services, vol. 1 no. 2 (2020) 165 always promotes or reveals unfair treatment of a person or a particular group of people on the basis of prejudice and partiality which could lead to emotions such as frustration and anger. discrimination seen or considered as a mild or serious form of suffering, with anger sometimes, in particular, if applicable, anger at the person or persons who caused it. this is why discrimination is considered or seen as a social injustice issue in our society today.8 in the other hands—the industrial revolution 4.0 era—brings it own challenges, especially for social justice and law protection for people. beth r. holland emphasized that technology has always instigated revolution— whether the development of tools to progress from the stone age to an agricultural society, advancements in steam and electricity to propel the industrial revolution, or the introduction of computers into the labor market to activate the knowledge economy. in 2016, at the world economic forum, scholars, entrepreneurs, and thought-leaders announced the arrival of a new, 4th industrial revolution. one marked not by a single technology but by the fusion of digital, physical, and biological systems that could fundamentally change the nature of what it means to be human.9 the 4th industrial revolution requires us to be human and humane, knowledgeable and adept at seeking out new knowledge, capable of building connections as well as seeing them within a complex network of digital sources. education will require more than just the acquisition of basic skills and will need to include the ability to forge connections with others—both in person and online, to promote the shared values of society, and to recognize the role of technology in fostering a global community. in this new era, technology brings the promise of equity in access to information and the possibility for advancement in society. however, for this revolution to occur, we—as educators—need to stop talking about technology as boxes, wires, and tools. instead, we need to recognize it as an opportunity to prepare all students for success in a global community. failure to do so would be nothing short of social injustice.10 in the same context, christophe degryse, stated that 4th industrial revolution also contains its share of new risks in the world of labour, including the ‘remake’ of existing jobs, the destruction of many of them, the relocation of countless others. for society as a whole, it is a prospect accompanied by the threat of increased polarisation between the ‘winners’ and the ‘losers’ of the digital economy.11 8 ibid. 9 beth r. holland, technology: the social justice issue of the 4th industrial revolution, 2017, https://brholland.com/technology-the-social-justice-issue-of-the-4th-industrialrevolution-2/ 10 ibid. 11 christophe degryse, here are the new social risks of the fourth industrial revolution, social europe, february 29, 2016, https://www.socialeurope.eu/here-arethe-new-social-risks-of-the-fourth-industrial-revolution https://www.socialeurope.eu/author/christophe-degryse https://brholland.com/technology-the-social-justice-issue-of-the-4th-industrial-revolution-2/ https://brholland.com/technology-the-social-justice-issue-of-the-4th-industrial-revolution-2/ https://www.socialeurope.eu/author/christophe-degryse https://www.socialeurope.eu/here-are-the-new-social-risks-of-the-fourth-industrial-revolution https://www.socialeurope.eu/here-are-the-new-social-risks-of-the-fourth-industrial-revolution aprila niravita 166 indonesian journal of advocacy and legal services, vol. 1 no. 2 (2020) even, it is also stated that industrial revolution 4.0, set to trigger fundamental socio-economic transformations across the globe. the complexity, scale and depth of this industrial revolution are expected to transcend those of its predecessors, as the bulk of imminent technological breakthroughs are likely to have an impact on the organization of our daily lives.12 the 4th industrial revolution also gives the potential for extensive social challenges, tensions and erosion of certain values is also colossal as we approach a new industrial revolution. to start with, increased automation and widespread use of robotic technology might substantially disrupt the existing structure of labor markets and escalate unemployment and could yield to greater economic inequalities over time. the gap between highly skilled, highly paid white collar employees and low skilled, low paid blue collar labor is set to increase at a greater pace with the added importance of technological integration and emphasis on innovation, which might, in turn, gradually weaken the middle classes and stimulate democratic apathy.13 but more importantly, intense exposure to mass communications, integrated knowledge systems and digital marketing is likely to eradicate the sense of personal and communal privacy. both employees involved in the production and distribution stages of the economic cycle, and individual consumers will be closely monitored through artificial intelligence and digitization, which will leave very limited space for personal privacy. furthermore, increased automation and digitization is bound to accelerate the isolation of individuals as economic units and weaken existing bonds of family and kinship. traditional social relations that start from the family and expand through neighborhood groupings, religious affiliations and hometown associations could weaken, producing a vacuum of belongingness over the course of the paradigmatic transition. common values transferred from one generation to the next, such as faith, ethics, decency, respect, tolerance, justice and compassion might be increasingly difficult to disseminate as humanity is surrounded by an integrated network of machines, robots and computers.14 social challenges are mainly the immense risk of cybercrime due to increased connectivity, and job losses due to the automation of large segments of operations in many industries as part of industry 4.0. although new opportunities may appear for high-skill categories, as argued by drucker15, but will the volume of these new jobs meet the supply of labour? 12 “industrial revolution 4.0 and social values: industrial revolution 4.0, set to trigger fundamental socio-economic transformations across the globe”, daily sabah, february 25, 2017, https://www.setav.org/en/industrial-revolution-4-0-and-social-values/ 13 ibid. 14 ibid. 15 p drucker, 2014. innovation and entrepreneurship. new york: routledge; rabeh morrar, husam arman, saeed mousa, the fourth industrial revolution (industry 4.0): a social innovation perspective, technology innovation management review, november 2017, volume 7, issue 11, pp. 12-20. http://doi.org/10.22215/timreview/1117 https://www.setav.org/en/industrial-revolution-4-0-and-social-values/ https://timreview.ca/article?f%5bauthor%5d=1086 https://timreview.ca/article?f%5bauthor%5d=1086 https://timreview.ca/article?f%5bauthor%5d=1460 https://timreview.ca/article?f%5bauthor%5d=1461 file:///e:/data%20ridwan/jurnal/8%20ijals/vol%201(2)%202020/the%20fourth%20industrial%20revolution%20(industry%204.0):%20a%20social%20innovation%20perspective,%20technology%20innovation%20management%20review,%20november%202017,%20volume%207,%20issue%2011,%20pp.%2012-20.%20http:/doi.org/10.22215/timreview/1117 file:///e:/data%20ridwan/jurnal/8%20ijals/vol%201(2)%202020/the%20fourth%20industrial%20revolution%20(industry%204.0):%20a%20social%20innovation%20perspective,%20technology%20innovation%20management%20review,%20november%202017,%20volume%207,%20issue%2011,%20pp.%2012-20.%20http:/doi.org/10.22215/timreview/1117 file:///e:/data%20ridwan/jurnal/8%20ijals/vol%201(2)%202020/the%20fourth%20industrial%20revolution%20(industry%204.0):%20a%20social%20innovation%20perspective,%20technology%20innovation%20management%20review,%20november%202017,%20volume%207,%20issue%2011,%20pp.%2012-20.%20http:/doi.org/10.22215/timreview/1117 current commentary indonesian journal of advocacy and legal services, vol. 1 no. 2 (2020) 167 in addition to automation, the rapid development and recent successes of artificial intelligence in business domains have raised the bar. ibm has already made leaf frog development of system solutions in different obvious fields, and watson of ibm is a striking example16. finally, as emphasized by some previous research, that the 4th industrial revolution has it own challenges and opportunities for society, as well as for empowering society in various sectors, such as education, culture, social, economic, and law with its protection.17 references aristotle, the politics (ca 350 bc) 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(2020) 169 journal of urban mathematics education july 2015, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 24–30 ©jume. http://education.gsu.edu/jume gareth bond is an undergraduate student in the college of education at the university of saskatchewan, canada; email: gjb492@mail.usask.ca. he is looking forward to beginning his teaching career and furthering his studies. egan j. chernoff is an associate professor in the college of education at the university of saskatchewan – 28 campus drive saskatoon sk s7n0x1 canada; email: egan.chernoff@usask.ca. he is an ardent user of social media for mathematics education; follow him @matthewmaddux. commentary mathematics and social justice: a symbiotic pedagogy gareth bond university of saskatchewan egan j. chernoff university of saskatchewan athematics can be defined as “the science of pattern and order” (van de walle, folk, karp, & bay-williams, 2009, p. 10). but because there is often a perceived spectrum of approachability to mathematics (based on common misconceptions that envision the subject as a sort of elitist wizardry) it is important to bear in mind different definitions of mathematics when exploring applications of mathematics in the classroom. this is especially true when considering the instruction of mathematics for social justice. traditional stigmas have led many to view mathematics and social justice as being positioned on opposing ends of a spectrum describing quantitative and qualitative reasoning and, thus, unsuitable for integration. garii and appova (2013) noted that many new teachers struggle with the idea of integrating mathematics and science with social justice issues because their own limited understandings of mathematics (and science) cannot accommodate the notion. it is this fundamental comprehension of mathematics as an approachable and understandable science that can shatter the illusion of academic segregation and begin the integration of mathematical understanding into a realistic and holistic field of academic study. the study of social justice is increasingly in need of empirical methods to describe, defend, and advise the critical analysis of the systems of domination and subjugation that permeate human power structures. the study of mathematics, which often needs a meaningful context in which abstraction and anxiety can be nullified, is the ideal symbiotic partner for the study of social justice in the greater pursuit of equipping students with the effective tools needed to thrive in the 21st century. without a literacy of mathematics and social justice, students will be at the mercy of sociopolitical and economic systems of oppression. to make the science of mathematics available to every student, teachers should first create a classroom environment in which the learning of mathematics is accessible to all students. van de walle and colleagues (2009) explored the issue of unequal accessibility (in the context of gender) and posit that such problems are “largely a function of the educational environment” (p. 101). indeed, the “traditionm http://education.gsu.edu/jume mailto:gjb492@mail.usask.ca mailto:egan.chernoff@usask.ca bond & chernoff commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 8, no. 1 25 al” classroom environment in which north american school children learn mathematics has produced a dominance of white men in mathematical arenas (steele, james, & barnett, 2002). as curricula mandate an approach of equal opportunity (e.g., saskatchewan ministry of education, 2010), it is vital that all students be given inclusive and engaging mathematical instruction. van de walle and colleagues (2009) affirmed this mandate by their assertion that the inclusivity of mathematics education must be addressed by changes in the classroom environment. teachers must shift the traditional environment of the classroom significantly to facilitate an equitable accessibility for all students. the need for an alternative approach is clear. the national council of teachers of mathematics’ (nctm) recommendations for mathematics education outlined in the principles and standards for school mathematics (2000) suggest that teachers focus on five process standards in their classrooms: problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connections, and representations (bossé, lee, swinson, & faulconer, 2010, p. 263). this approach decentralizes the teacher’s authoritative role and places much of the learning in the hands of the students as they communicate and critique their reasons and representations among each other. this decentralizing increases the chances for students to make meaningful connections with the material and reduces the risk of instructional bias, on a personal or institutional scale, from excluding historical marginalized groups in classrooms. it is not difficult to understand how these process standards can be a step toward teaching mathematics in an equitable manner. however, mathematical skills learned in this way are still at risk of being abstracted, devoid of authentic context, and isolated from applications to social justice. taking into consideration particular nctm goals, set, arguably, as a “first step” toward weaving the studies of mathematics and social justice, teachers should ensure that the mathematical problems and concepts presented can provide insights into authentic social justice issues within the context of the learners’ communities. there are surely skeptics who doubt that this can be done effectively. fortunately, the radical math website (see http://www.radicalmath.org) provides a wealth of free lesson plans, which effectively integrates the interests of mathematics and social justice within the fabric of community (see also gutstein & peterson, 2013). one such lesson, “community voices heard: statistics – survey project,” examines age, gender, sex, and economics in the community with the statistically informed critical lens of social justice (osler, 2007). the study begins with an exploration of the statistical processes through some engaging problem solving and discussion. ultimately, the students are responsible for surveying people in their own community or school on critically relevant topics. a result of this approach, according to one of the project’s rubrics, is to provide students with the ability to “compare relevant sets of data” with a variety of tables and graphs created with the very data they collected; in order to, as stated by the authors, “determine key findings http://www.radicalmath.org/ bond & chernoff commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 8, no. 1 26 from [the] data” (p. 32). the mathematical demands of the rubric are ambitious and the focus of the activities gives the students significant and empirical insights into the authentic and pertinent social justice issues within their communities. when mathematics is taught in this way, it may move beyond a passively equitable implementation toward an active one, that is, an instructional method in which the dynamic, authentic, and critical approaches potentially reflect the subjects of study. embracing an actively progressive approach toward teaching mathematics for social justice also has the potential to arm students with the authentic tasks and tools needed to develop their mathematical and critical abilities. this type of learning may also perpetuate itself, as both students and teachers become active in creating increasingly interrelated “real-world” connections with mathematics and social justice in their communities. having witnessed a successful demonstration of mathematics and social justice working in conjunction, some skeptics may still question the need to integrate these two fields of study. in addition to the strong case that can be made regarding the powerful intrinsic motivations that can arise within learners through such a partnering of subjects, a critical understanding of economics must also be considered a primary reason for integration. a survey of financial literacy across 28 nations by jump$tart coalition for personal financial literacy (2013) showed that the vast majority of teenaged students are worried about the impact of the economic recession and would like to learn about finances in school before entering into the possibility of losing money in the real world. the study also showed that in the united states the average credit card debt is $15,266.00, the average mortgage debt is $149,667.00, and the average student loan debt is $32,559.00. clearly, an understanding of the mathematics involved in debt and other financial operations is required. a thoughtfully crafted lesson could utilize a variety of local financial actions and entities in a comprehensive and critical study. such a lesson could provide a window of understanding, in advance, of the pitfalls and responsibilities of adult expectations within the sphere of modern economics. it could also address the need for the basic skill set required to function within the current financial parameters of a given community. however, the critical aspect of such a lesson might not be sufficient. social justice is, ultimately, about understanding and correcting the macrosystemic power dynamics that perpetuate the conditions in which we live. by conducting a critical study of one’s community, students can reach a partial understanding of such global power systems. to fully embrace an integrated approach of mathematics and social justice, teachers could contextualize the functions and limitations of their students’ communities with these broad global power systems—and they could do so with the empirical science of mathematics. this integration presents a unique challenge, as the size and scope of such massive power structures exist at a near abstract level of complexity and size. cox (2003) described how this bond & chernoff commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 8, no. 1 27 void of understanding exists in american tax systems: “big statements like, ‘the benefits … go mainly to households in the top 1 percent tax bracket,’ tend not to tell the whole story” (¶ 4). the numbers are so large, and the distribution so skewed, that simple sentences fail to deliver accurate meaning. cox suggested that a reconciliation of understanding could be achieved by constructing “a scale model of household income in america” (¶ 5). this could be an excellent project for a classroom struggling to conceptualize debt, wages, unemployment, and industry in their own community. gutstein (2006), in his observations of mathematics and social justice in a classroom environment, noted that mathematics evolved into a “necessary and powerful analytical tool that students used to study their sociopolitical existence” (p. 70). this critical approach, contextualizing authentic social justice issues with mathematical representation, enhances student understandings of local authentic entities and systems. but, more importantly, it solidifies or creates knowledge of hitherto abstract global entities and systems. by integrating, through inquiry-driven projects, an understanding of power systems and community within a mathematical context, students continually expand their mathematical abilities; they gain increasingly more powerful insights into the power systems that permeate the world and define the contexts in which their local communities exist (garii & appova, 2013). this deep understanding of the contexts that governs an individual within a community, within a nation, within global organizations of power, can provide students with distinct advantages. in addition to mathematical prowess, such students can be equipped with an awareness and understanding that might help them utilize the forces that shape events within their local sociopolitical and economic communities. it is important to keep the goals of social justice education firmly in mind. although social justice may seem like a secondary goal to a teacher who wishes their students to know their “basic math facts,” it is of primary importance and should not be isolated, in any way, from other goals in the mathematics classroom. bartell (2013) described education as being “intricately linked to economic, political, and social power structures in society that serve to perpetuate inequality in both schools and society” (p. 129). because the classroom itself is one of the primary sources of the socialization that shapes social inequality, an uncritical pedagogy serves only to enforce existing systems of dominance and inequity. if, as the saskatchewan curriculum (2010) broad areas of learning suggest, teachers should aim to inspire “engaged citizens” with a “passion for lifelong learning” who will contribute to the “environmental, social, and economic sustainability of local and global communities” (p. 22), students, then, should understand, at the very least, and not be marginalized by the systemic dominance associated with race, age, religion, gender, sex, and all other aspects of society. ideally, mathematics and social justice should be used to arm all students with the tools to not only succeed in so bond & chernoff commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 8, no. 1 28 ciety but also to critique social systems, disrupt inequalities, and be engaged in social transformation. bartell (2013) asserted that for effective integration of social justice in classrooms to occur, oppression must be fought “with, not for” (p. 131) the oppressed. furthermore, adair (2008) insisted that when integrating social justice into the curriculum, pedagogy “should depend on the community context in which we are teaching and with the individual experiences of our students” (pp. 413–414). in other words, mathematics and social justice must be studied in authentic contexts (e.g., community-based projects). social justice must also be taught with authentic empathy in the classroom. this means diversifying instructional methods to provide multiple entry points for personal connections with the mathematical content being presented. these entry points should be student centered; therefore, a considerable effort is required to facilitate an understanding of each student’s sociocultural and sociohistorical lived experiences. the monitoring of student progress with consistent and dynamic feedback is also necessary. this approach aims to selfempower marginalized “voices” in the classroom and provides a starting point for teaching social justice with (not for) the oppressed. honoring and valuing student voice through input, feedback, and authenticity is a pedagogical practice that embodies social justice and decentralizes teacher-centric authority. it is democratic. too often the great fault of social justice is that as a stand-alone qualitative social science it often widens the divide between practitioners and deniers; practitioners are often aggressive in their pursuit of justice to the point where deniers feel vilified and become aggressively defensive. because socialized dominance is a controversial and dissonant subject, much of the discussion surrounding it degrades to an intersection of opposing opinions. skovsmose (1994) claimed that mathematics provides a system for analyzing and understanding injustices in society. because mathematics, as a science, has a practical foundation in observation and representation, these characteristics can establish a dialogue that circumvents, or at least deemphasizes, emotional connections to socially critical arguments. for example, by employing the empirical facilities of mathematics in data collection, statistical interpretation, and graphical representation, one might make an argument that can only be rebutted with an equally well-researched presentation. the lengthy time involved in the formulation of such presentations also helps to reduce the chances of emotionally charged and reactionary responses. nolan (2009) described the same mathematical niche from a different perspective. she claimed that students are at a disadvantage when striving to understand, communicate, and argue social justice issues without literacy in the scientific methods of mathematics. nolan’s argument described the need for a unity in social justice and mathematics with greater strength because she recognizes that mathematics is beyond simply useful—it is necessary for constructive participation in social justice dialogues. bond & chernoff commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 8, no. 1 29 mathematics can be the light that illuminates the writing on the wall. increasingly, academics, government and civic organizations, and the media are presenting mathematically derived findings that describe dangerous power inequities in north american society. fischer, colton, kleiman, and schimke (2004) produced a report on the economic hardships of the middle and lower classes in new york that called for regulations and accountability in the economic sector well before the crash of 2008. killewald (2013) published a study which, contrary to a widespread misconception that racism has ended or is declining, documented the greatest disparity in 25 years between median household wealth values among white and black families in 2009: a ratio of 20:1. while compelling arguments exist for the integration of mathematics and social justice in pedagogy and content, it is ultimately each individual teacher’s decision. this ultimate decision presents a problem because many new teachers struggle to see mathematics as anything beyond “a tool to find a correct answer to a problem, rather than a way to characterize community decision making or understanding” (garii & appova, p. 206). a further complication that darling-hammond, french, and garcia-lopez (2002) explained is the “lifelong” commitment of “effort, perseverance, and reflection” that is required of social justice teachers (p. 4). learning how to teach for social justice is neither quick nor easy; learning to reinvent the traditional conceptualizations and applications of mathematics is difficult, bordering on anathematic to many. this difficulty presents a formidable barrier to the establishment of socially critical mathematics. in spite of traditional misconceptions to the contrary, mathematics and social justice are two fields of study that can exist in a truly symbiotic pedagogy. mathematics is a uniquely well-suited partner with social justice because it can model, through replicable and empirical demonstrations, the nature and intersections of global and local power systems in a way that students can comprehend. social justice provides engaging, empowering, and authentic contexts for projects in which mathematics skill sets can come alive and transcend the traditional limited and abstract operations that have isolated and discouraged too many students for too long. mathematics can be employed to argue social justice issues without the succumbing to the pitfalls of emotional backlash. social justice can elicit intrinsic motivation in students, which inspires growth far beyond the basic traditionally requisite mathematical skill set. the two strands are best contextualized authentically within the local community. social justice presents unique challenges for teachers because it is a lifelong and dynamic process. it requires the maintenance of extensive and constantly evolving understandings of every student in a given classroom. teachers of social justice must also be dedicated to applying socially critical pedagogies within the classroom environment. mathematics has been so heavily conditioned into many teachers’ minds as an abstract calculation tool that many will blindly defend it as such while others, alienated by the traditional approach, will openly declare their hatred of the subject. the problems that suppress the integration of mathemat bond & chernoff commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 8, no. 1 30 ics and social justice pedagogy and content are eclipsed only by the ever-increasing need for such pedagogy and content to be unilaterally implemented in schools. students need socially critical mathematics and local, national, and global communities need students (i.e., citizens) who can interpret, articulate, and act upon social justice issues with the science of mathematics at their command. references adair, j. k. (2008). everywhere in life there are numbers: questions for social justice educators in mathematics and everywhere else. journal of teacher education, 59(5), 408–415. bartell, t. g. (2013). learning to teach mathematics for social justice: negotiating social justice and mathematical goals. journal for research in mathematics education, 44(1), 129–163. bossé, m. j., lee, t. d., swinson, m., & faulconer, j. (2010). the nctm process standards and the five es of science: connecting math and science. school science and mathematics, 110(5), 262–276. cox, s. (2003). astronomical incomes. independent media institute. retrieved from: http://www.radicalmath.org/docs/astronomicalincomes.doc darling-hammond, l., french, j., & garcia-lopez, s. (2002). learning to teach for social justice. new york, ny: teachers college press. fischer, d. j., colton, t., kleiman, n. s., & schimke, k. (2004). between hope and hard times: new york’s working families in economic distress. new york, ny: center for an urban future. garii, b., & appova, a. (2013). crossing the great divide: teacher candidates, mathematics, and social justice. teaching and teacher education, 34, 198–213. gutstein, e. (2006). reading and writing the world with mathematics: toward a pedagogy for social justice. new york, ny: routledge. gutstein, e., & peterson, b. (2013). rethinking mathematics: teaching social justice by the numbers (2nd ed.). milwaukee, wi: rethinking schools. jump$tart coalition for personal financial literacy. (2013). making the case for financial literacy. retrieved from: http://jumpstart.org/assets/state-sites/la/files/downloads/making-the-case2013.pdf killewald, a. (2013). return to being black, living in the red: a race gap in wealth that goes beyond social origins. demography, 50(4), 1177–1195. national council of teachers of mathematics. (2000). principles and standards for school mathematics. reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. nolan, k. (2009). mathematics in and through social justice: another misunderstood marriage? journal of mathematics teacher education, 12(3), 205–216. osler, j. (july, 2007). lesson plan: community voices heard. retrieved from: http://www.radicalmath.org/docs/communityvoicesheard_teacher.doc saskatchewan ministry of education. (2010). saskatchewan curriculum. regina, sk: saskatchewan ministry of education. skovsmose, o. (1994). towards a philosophy of critical mathematics education. dordrecht, the netherlands: kluwer. steele j., james, j. b., & barnett, r. c. (2002). learning in a man’s world: examining the perceptions of undergraduate women in male-dominated academic areas. psychology of women quarterly, 26(1), 46–50. van de walle, j. a., folk, s., karp, k. s., & bay-williams, j. m. (2009). elementary and middle school mathematics: teaching developmentally (3rd canadian ed.). toronto, canada: pearson allyn & bacon. http://www.radicalmath.org/docs/astronomicalincomes.doc http://jumpstart.org/assets/state-sites/la/files/downloads/making-the-case-2013.pdf http://jumpstart.org/assets/state-sites/la/files/downloads/making-the-case-2013.pdf http://www.radicalmath.org/docs/communityvoicesheard_teacher.doc journal of urban mathematics education december 2012, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 18–27 ©jume. http://education.gsu.edu/jume jacqueline leonard is the director of the science and mathematics teaching center at the university of wyoming and professor of mathematics education, 1000 e. university avenue, dept. 3992, laramie, wy 82071; email: jleona12@uwyo.edu. her research interests include access and opportunity in mathematics education and critical pedagogy, such as teaching for cultural relevance and social justice in mathematics classrooms. commentary er’body talkin’ ‘bout social justice ain’t goin’ there jacqueline leonard university of wyoming he title of this commentary 1 is inspired by the negro spiritual everybody talkin’ ‘bout heaven. the song is most often sung a cappella; the lyrics are as follows: everybody talkin’ ‘bout heaven ain’t goin’ there everybody talkin’ ‘bout heaven ain’t goin’ everybody talkin’ ‘bout heaven ain’t goin’ there oh my lord well i read about the streets of gold and i read about the throne not everybody callin’ “lord, lord” is gonna see that heavenly home everybody talkin’ ‘bout heaven ain’t goin’ there everybody talkin’ ‘bout heaven ain’t goin’ everybody talkin’ ‘bout heaven ain’t goin’ there oh my lord the spirituals were born out of an oppressive condition, which we know as chattel slavery. thus, the songs are often referred to as the sorrow songs. yet as w. e. b. dubois (1903/1995) reminds us, “through all the sorrow of the sorrow songs there breathes a hope—a faith in the ultimate justice of things” (p. 274). here, i replace the word heaven with the words social justice as i focus on the black experience in america and the experiences of black children in our nation’s schools. while linking social justice with religion is not new, the use of the term has become prevalent in education, in general, and mathematics education, 1 a revised talk delivered at the research wednesdays speakers series, college of education, georgia state university, on october 17, 2012. t leonard commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 5, no. 2 19 specifically. while there are several definitions of teaching for social justice (wager & stinson, 2012), i define teaching mathematics for social justice as the following: holding specific social-justice-related perspectives and actions that provide all students with opportunities to learn rigorous mathematics in culturally specific and meaningful ways that seek to improve the economic and social conditions of marginalized individuals and groups, and that work toward the reduction (if not the complete elimination) of deficit-oriented beliefs and dispositions. (leonard & evans, 2012, p. 100) ideally, “the bottom line is…enhancing students’ learning and their life chances by challenging inequities of school and society” in order to “redistribute educational opportunity” (enterline, cochran-smith, ludlow & mitescu, 2008, p. 270). the operationalization of this definition implies a k–16 commitment that results in a long-term investment which has the potential to redistribute economic wealth for poor students and students of color. thus, teaching for social justice is teaching for empowerment and liberation. if not, then it’s merely talk. in other words, er’body talkin’ ‘bout social justice ain’t goin’ there. through the spirituals, blacks indicted the hypocrisy of the day. likewise, i intend to highlight the educational dilemma for black children in this decade. what educational policies intend to do and what they actually do are in conflict. teacher education programs that claim to have a social justice mission and to focus on teacher dispositions need to do more than list their mission and goals on the program website. to further illustrate this principle, i share an experience that i had in the western united states about a week ago. i was invited to attend a luncheon and a ribbon-cutting ceremony. my mother was visiting me at the time, and we were the only african americans attending the luncheon. as we mingled, something happened that reinforced for me what it is like to be black in america. before the luncheon, i was introduced as the director of the science and mathematics teaching center at the university of wyoming to a retired u.s. senator. in response to the introduction, the beloved ex-senator responded: “you people have come a long way since you were 3/5ths of a person.” needless to say, i was speechless. intentional or unintentional, these words invoked prejudice, bigotry, and racism. how can a former u.s. senator who took an oath to uphold the constitution make such a statement? “you people” implies that blacks are alien and outside of what is considered normal. despite changing demographics in the united states, whiteness remains the norm. “you... have come a long way” gives some credit to effort. blacks have come a long way, and there is a growing black middle class. however, this part of the statement seemed to have an element of sur leonard commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 5, no. 2 20 prise in terms of expectations. in other words, i did not expect you to get this far. finally, the crux of the statement, “since you were 3/5ths of a person,” employed mathematical terms to remind me of slavery and to place me in a category that was less than human. in this case, mathematics was used to disempower me, rob me of my satisfaction, and minimize my accomplishments—that is, if i let it. that experience did not have to overshadow the occasion or detract from the good will of others who greeted me warmly. the reoccurrence of daily situations such as this one in the lives of black folks was the purpose of the spirituals. they were written to uplift the souls of black folk who understood that what someone called you did not define you. benjamin banneker, renowned mathematician and scientist, illustrated this point in his letter to secretary of state thomas jefferson: one universal father hath given being to us all, and that he hath not only made us all of one flesh, but that he hath also, without partiality, afforded us all the same sensations, and endued us all with the same faculties; and that, however variable we may be in society and religion, however diversified in situation and color, we are all of the same family, and stand in the same relation to him. 2 therefore, i choose to use my experience to “flip the script” and use the encounter with the senator as a springboard to talk about social justice from a mathematical perspective that empowers rather than disempowers and liberates rather than demoralizes black children and other children of color. to do this, i use the 3/5ths rule as a metaphor to discuss black students’ mathematics experiences in american schools. i conclude with a second experience that reveals the power of one and how the unit of one in both mathematical and social justice terms can empower and liberate black americans to reach their full potential. the 3/5ths rule to understand the black experience in america, it is important to understand the context of the ex-senator’s statement about the 3/5ths rule, and how this law has impacted educational policy in relation to black children. the articles and provisions in the constitution as it relates to the 3/5ths rule states: article i, section 2 [slaves count as 3/5 persons] representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including 2 as quoted in benjamin banneker’s pennsylvania, delaware, maryland and virginia almanack and ephemeris for the year of our lord 1792. baltimore: william goddard and james angel, 1792. leonard commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 5, no. 2 21 those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons [i.e., slaves]. article i, section 9 – clause 1 [no power to ban slavery until 1808 and tax levied on the import of slaves] the migration or importation of such persons as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the congress prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a tax or duty may be imposed on such importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person. article iv, section 2 [free states cannot protect slaves] no person held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due. article v [no constitutional amendment to ban slavery until 1808] …no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth section of the first article. while some believe the constitution is the greatest document ever written, these articles reveal that the founding fathers actually “wrote both the institution and the benefits of slavery into [the] constitution” (harding, 1981, p. 46). but before the revolutionary war (1775–1783), political leaders met in philadelphia in 1774 for the first continental congress. there, they proclaimed: we will neither import nor purchase any slave imported after the first day in december next, after which time we will wholly discontinue the slave trade and will neither be concerned in it ourselves nor will we hire our vessels nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it. (harding, 1981, p. 45) nonetheless, what they proclaimed and what they did were very different. as shown in the articles, the founding fathers crafted laws in 1787 that prohibited the ban of slavery until 1808 and levied taxes on the import of slaves. such laws not only instituted slavery into american life but also provided revenue for the federal government. ten dollars per slave is a great deal of income when millions of slaves are being auctioned on the block. historians estimate that 10 to 12 million slaves were sold by europeans during the antebellum period (johnson, smith, & wgbh team, 1998). furthermore, counting blacks as 3/5ths of a person for the benefit of having more southern votes exploited oppressed people to skew the results to ensure that slavery continued. in other words, a candidate running for president of the united states would receive more votes from the south. to add insult to injury, if a slave were to escape to a free state, federal laws were in place (see article iv, section 2) that guaranteed the slave would be returned thus pro leonard commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 5, no. 2 22 tecting the right to own slaves in perpetuity. this guarantee was a grave contradiction in terms of social justice given that liberty and justice was not for all. er’body taking ‘bout social justice ain’t going there. in such a system of oppression and institutionalized racism, public education was born. the plessey vs. ferguson case in 1896 established an educational policy of separate and (un)equal that would remain constitutional for the next 58 years. exactly another 58 years has passed after the brown vs. board of education ruling in 1954, but schools are still segregated by race and class thus maintaining a two-tiered system of education (leonard, 2008, 2009). sometimes this twotiered system is manifested as a school-within-a-school—one for blacks and one for whites. this two-tiered system is often operated under the guise of a magnet school. blacks and other students of color are in the “regular” school while most of the white students are in the magnet school. on paper, this type of school looks diverse, but often white students in the magnet school never interact with black students in the regular school. in some cases, they do not even have lunch or physical education at the same time. tracking operates in the same manner, except in this system, whites, in many cases regardless of ability, are tracked into honors and advanced courses while poor students and students of color are tracked in remedial and special education courses (blanchett, 2006). these kinds of schools are not models of social justice. rather they fail to level the playing field and operate to limit the educational opportunity of black and other underrepresented minority children. beyond 3/5ths education while the quality of life for blacks in america has improved, blacks continue to experience higher school dropout rates and higher unemployment rates compared to white americans (lang, 2011). while there are many factors that lead to these results, none is more evident than low teacher expectations, deficitoriented pedagogy, and a two-tiered system of education. to illustrate the fact that low expectations continue despite social justice mission statements in colleges and schools of education, consider the following statement made by a white female who was enrolled in a mathematics methods course that i taught a few years ago: the reason children in urban schools need to learn basic skills and children in suburban schools need to learn problem solving is because inner-city children will grow up to work in the fast food industry or in factories and children living in the suburbs will grow up to be managers and business leaders. needless to say, i could have heard a pin drop in the classroom after this statement was made. however, this white student, who was embarking upon a career leonard commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 5, no. 2 23 in the teaching profession, verbalized what is reality in terms of black education and black employment. black children, for the most part, are still receiving a sharecropper, skill-based mathematics education (moses & cobb, 2001). results of standardized tests such as the national assessment of educational progress (naep, 2011) continue to show performance disparities by race. while everyone continues to be lifted, comparisons by race reveal blacks are underperforming. however, when data are examined differently by type of school (lubienski & lubienski, 2006), one finds public schools significantly out-perform catholic schools. when charters and non-charters are compared, charter schools score significantly lower than non-charter schools. among private schools, lutheran schools have the highest scores, and conservative christian schools have the lowest scores (lubienski & lubienski, 2006). these data suggest there is more than one way to slice the data to determine how well our children are doing in mathematics. thus, economic variables and race may not be the most salient factors when comparing mathematics achievement. to create additional learning opportunities, i advocate for culturally relevant and social justice pedagogy. there should be less stress on computation where underrepresented minorities continue to score high on assessments like naep and more emphasis on number theory, data and statistics, measurement, algebra and geometry (leonard, 2008). for example, one of the more difficult questions that appeared on the eighth-grade version of the mathematics naep test in 2011 was as follows: which of the following is an equation of a line that passes through the point (0, 5) and has a negative slope? a. y = 5x b. y = 5x – 5 c. y = 5x + 5 d. y = -5x – 5 e. y = -5x + 5 to solve this problem in a culturally relevant way, the teacher could use geographic information systems (gis) and overlay a coordinate grid on a map of the students’ neighborhood to help them understand the concept of slope. for example, take my old neighborhood in the st. louis area. the location of my former home is labeled a, which can serve as the origin (see figure 1); tables can be created to obtain the coordinates and then plot the points (see table 1). leonard commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 5, no. 2 24 table 1 coordinate values c. y = 5x + 5 x y 0 5 1 10 2 15 3 20 e. y = -5x + 5 x y 0 5 1 0 2 -5 3 -10 in two instances, the first condition of the line passing through (0, 5) is met (c & e); and in two instances, the second condition for a negative slope (y = mx + b), where m is the slope (-5), is met (d & e). e is the only equation that meets both conditions so by process of elimination and direct proof the answer must be e. a negative slope goes (tilts to the left) toward goodfellow, and a positive slope (tilts to the right) toward hodiamont. contextualizing the problem with the students’ neighborhood is culturally relevant and will anchor the instruction so students might not so easily forget the mathematics. figure 1 google map of st. louis, mo 63112. (0, 5) e c leonard commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 5, no. 2 25 this example suggests the context in which students live imbue culture and can provide examples for teaching mathematics. moreover, cultural relevance has been linked to stem (science, technology, mathematics, and engineering) fields through robotics clubs and computer programming classes (bracey, in press). providing opportunities for underrepresented minority students to link culture to stem fields has led to greater retention of mathematics concepts (bracey, in press; leonard & hill, 2008). in bracey’s study (in press), the use of mentors and role models from diverse backgrounds were important in terms of motivation and retention in mathematics. while teachers of any background and gender can develop dispositions that relate to social justice (villegas, 2007), it is important that black students experience the tutelage of black teachers, especially black males, who can serve as role models. according to barr, sadovnik, and visconti (2006), black children had higher performance in mathematics when they had black teachers. gloria ladson-billings (2005), in her book beyond the big house reported that black teachers held 40% of black professional jobs from 1890 to 1910. however, according to the schools and staffing survey (national center for education statistics [nces], 2004), black teachers were only 7.9% of the public teacher workforce in 2003–2004. similarly, fewer blacks are employed as professors and teacher educators. in 2009, 6% of all faculty in higher education in the united states were black (nces, 2011). how do we restore teaching as an honorable professional among black college students? how do we ensure that blacks are significantly represented among the 100,000 mathematics and science teachers that president obama is calling for? we have to go out and get them. i am pleased to learn that institutions like georgia state university (gsu) surpass the national norm in terms of diverse student enrollment. latest enrollment figures show the student body is 33% black, 15% asian, and 8% hispanic. in addition to undergraduate education, graduate programs have made tremendous strides at gsu, particularly in mathematics education. currently, there are 46 phd students in mathematics education, and 32 (nearly 70%) of these students are black/african american. i know of no other graduate program in mathematics education that has such a record. institutions like gsu are making a difference in the state of georgia and the nation. however, once we recruit diverse students, we must be serious about our social justice stance in order to retain them. furthermore, additional effort is needed to support blacks and other underrepresented students if they are to fill the ranks of the professoriate. such aspirations begin in our nation’s classrooms with our youngest students, including my grandson, christopher, who began kindergarten at a magnet school in september. will he experience the regular school or the magnet school? his leonard commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 5, no. 2 26 cousin, terrance, who also began kindergarten this fall, attends a private religious school. will he be tracked in the redbird, bluebird, or the blackbird reading group? these young african american boys represent the class of 2025. as my progeny, will they grow up in an america that looks backward and perpetuates a 3/5ths mentality or one that looks forward to 100% participation in terms of equal educational access? closing remarks in closing, the same weekend that i was rendered speechless by a former u.s. senator who referenced the 3/5ths rule in terms of my success, i also had the awesome privilege of meeting and shaking the hand of congressman john lewis (u.s. representative for georgia’s 5th congressional district). congressman lewis was visiting the city of denver to encourage people to vote. he reminded the black church of the power of one. every person is considered a whole person and is entitled to one vote. however, rules and laws that have the potential to suppress the right to vote have been instituted in 2012. with less than 20 days to go before the november 6th election, the intent of voter-approved ids is to limit the number of votes cast by the poor and people of color. while wisconsin and texas have taken such laws off the books and judges have blocked the law in pennsylvania and south carolina, voter id laws remain in effect in kansas, indiana, new hampshire, tennessee, and georgia (bronner, 2012). present day voter-approved id laws perpetuate a 3/5ths mentality. yet congressman lewis came to challenge that mentality insisting that “regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or gender, everyone has one vote.” he reduced it down to the least common denominator of one. if everyone has the right to cast one vote without discrimination, then we can all participate equally in the democratic process. repressing the vote and demanding identification to vote, are attempts to undo that equality. nevertheless, i was so encouraged by this giant of civil rights. i was reminded of how he suffered on bloody sunday. how many blacks died trying to get the right to vote? i remembered freedom rides and how the bus he rode was bombed. congressman lewis is only one person, but he left a lifelong impression upon me. while the struggle is not over, i refuse to give up hope that as a nation we will truly experience the power of one: one vote, one hundred percent access to high-quality schools, one nation under god with liberty and justice for all. social justice is a verb and not a noun. er’body talkin’ ‘bout social justice ain’t going there. what are you prepared to do? leonard commentary journal of urban mathematics education vol. 5, no. 2 27 references barr, j. m., sadovnik, a. r., & visconti, l. (2006). charter schools and urban education improvement: a comparison of newark’s district and charter schools. the urban review, 38, 291–311. blanchett, w. (2006). disproportionate representation of african american students in special education: acknowledging the role of white privilege and racism. educational researcher, 35, 24– 28. bracey, j. (in press). black student engagement and cognition in math. in j. leonard & d. b. martin (eds.) the brilliance of black children in mathematics: beyond the numbers and toward new discourse. charlotte, nc: information age. bronner, e. (2012, october 3). voter id rules fail court tests across county: pennsylvania is latest. the new york times, 162(55,913), p. a1, a17. dubois, w. e. b. (1995). the souls of black folk (intro. r. kenan). new york, ny: penguin books. (original work published 1903) enterline, s., cochran-smith, m., ludlow, l. h., & mitescu, e. (2008). learning to teach for social justice: measuring change in the beliefs of teacher candidates. the new educator, 4, 267–290. harding, v. (1981). there is a river: the black struggle for freedom in america. new york, ny: harcourt brace. johnson, c., smith, p., & wgbh series research team. (1998). africans in america: america’s journey through slavery. new york, ny: harcourt brace. ladson-billings, g. (2005). beyond the big house: african american educators and teacher education. new york, ny: teachers college press. lang, c. (2011, august 28). race, class, and obama. the chronicle review. retrieved from http://chronicle.com/article/race-classobama/128787/. leonard, j. (2008). culturally specific pedagogy in the mathematics classroom: strategies for teachers and students. new york, ny: routledge. leonard, j. (2009). “still not saved”: the power of mathematics to liberate the oppressed. in d. b. martin (ed.), mathematics teaching, learning, and liberation in the lives of black children, (pp. 304– 330). new york, ny: routledge. leonard, j., & evans, b. (2012). challenging beliefs and dispositions: learning to teach mathematics for social justice. in a. wager & d. stinson (eds.), teaching mathematics for social justice: conversations with mathematics educators (pp. 99–111). reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. leonard, j., & hill, m. l. (2008). using multimedia to engage african-american children in classroom discourse. journal of black studies, 39(1), 22–42. lubienski, c., & lubienski, s. t. (2006). charter, private, public schools and academic achievement: new evidence from naep data. new york, ny: national center for the study of privatization of education. moses, r. p., & cobb, c. e., jr. (2001). radical equations: math literacy and civil rights. boston, ma: beacon press. national assessment of educational progress. (2011). the nation’s report card. retrieved from http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2011/gr8_national.asp. national center for education statistics. (2004). schools and staffing survey, public school teacher data file, table 18. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/state_2004_18.asp. national center for education statistics. (2011). digest of education statistics, 2010 (nces 2011015), table 256. retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=61. villegas, a. m. (2007). dispositions in teacher education: a look at social justice, journal of teacher education, 58, 370–380 wager, a. a., & stinson, d. w. (2012). (eds.). teaching mathematics for social justice: conversations with educators. reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. http://chronicle.com/article/race-classobama/128787/ http://nationsreportcard.gov/math_2011/gr8_national.asp http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/state_2004_18.asp http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_256.asp http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=61 111 social justice and rural education in south africa dipane hlalele university of free state social justice is undeniably grounded in efforts at circumventing provisions that seek to uphold ostracism and exclusionary practices which have permeated south africa and many other societies worldwide for extensive periods of time. vast incongruities and/or inequalities between better resourced urban communities and neglected rural areas impinge on the provision of and access to education. this paper, grounded in a distributive paradigm that views social justice as a proper distribution of social benefits and burdens among members of society, traverses the positive and negative features of rural education related to social justice. it concedes that difference is an inherent, inevitable and indispensable feature of social existence and education, arguing that rural education needs to embrace difference, shape demands and model social benefits in accordance with the realities of a particular rural setting. this implies that social justice should be perceived as a humanising process – a response to human diversity in terms of ability, socio-economic circumstances, choice and rights. keywords: rural education, social justice, distributive paradigm, difference. introduction according to frattura and tropinka (2006), critical theory integrates the value of social justice into the practice of research for reform. how injustice and subjugation shape people’s experiences and understanding of the world constitutes the focus of critical theory. a critical theory perspective concerns itself with issues of power and justice and the ways in which the economy, matters of race, class and gender, ideologies, discourse, education, religion, and other social institutions interact to construct a social system. inquiry that is critical should be connected to an attempt to confront the injustices of society. kellner (2003, cited in frattura & tropinka, 2006) comments that what makes critical theory critical is not only the study and understanding of society, but also critiquing and changing it. no social arrangements are viewed as neutral, but rather as artificial constructs structured to benefit one segment of society over another. it is within this discourse that the article interrogates social justice and rural education. conventions, constitutional obligations, and requisite rights around education rights often permit individuals and groups to hold governments accountable for the progressive realisation of rights (spreen & vally, 2006). keet (2005, cited in spreen & vally, 2006) examines the contradictions in the human rights discourse of education rights as public good. focusing on south africa, he shows how ‘educationas-a-human-right’ remains elusive and why it has failed to prevent the increasing commodification of education and the attainment of social, economic and environmental justice. the failure of education policies and laws to ensure the attainment of education rights for the majority of south africans, including the rural inhabitants, is an immediate challenge. bryant (2010) asserts that one of the primary obstacles of rural education is wilful ignorance, particularly on the part of governments, of the conditions in rural areas and schools. wide disparities in access to quality education continue to plague rural areas (mcquaide, 2009). malhoit (2005) posits that society’s obligation to educate learners should not depend on a child’s demographic good or bad fortune; nor should geography dictate a child’s educational destiny. the obligation to educate learners in rural areas spawned several strategies to address the issue. however, despite all efforts deployed by countries around the world and the vigorous mobilisation of international communities, rural people still lag far behind in education and are particularly hard hit by poverty and hunger (sauvageot & da graća, 2007). in developing countries, the slow progress towards universal education is largely due to sluggish school enrolment and attendance among rural people, and 112 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 the persistence of very low enrolment rates in rural areas. poverty, hunger and underdevelopment are holding back educational development (sauvageot & da graća, 2007). social justice conceptualised as is the case with many other social concepts, social justice has varied and complex definitions. among these, there exist common threads that hold the concept together, and give it shape and identity. an early explanation by tsanoff (1956:12) suggests that justice derives from the phrase suum cuique or “one receiving their just due”. in addition, coates (2007) puts forward an alternative form of distributive justice wherein one receives fairness in social, political, and economic outcomes. kose (2009:630) opines that some scholars argue against a definitive and universal conceptualisation of social justice, while many argue that social justice has to do with “recultivating individual and institutionalised practices rooted in low expectations, deficit thinking, marginalisation and cultural imperialism”. it can therefore be accepted that a general definition of social justice is hard to arrive at and even harder to implement. in essence, social justice is concerned with equal justice, not merely in the courts, but in all aspects of society. this concept demands that all people have equal rights and opportunities; everyone, from the poorest person on the margins of society to the wealthiest. according to gerwitz, ball and bowe (1995), theories of social justice advocate mechanisms used to regulate social arrangements in the fairest way for the benefit of all. for the purpose of this article, conceptualisation of social justice hinges on nancy fraser’s definition, of justice as “parity of participation” (tikly, 2010:6). fraser (2008:16) elucidates that “overcoming injustice means dismantling institutionalised obstacles that prevent some people from participating on par with others as full partners in social interaction”. gerwitz (1998) maintains that social justice is premised on the discourse of disrupting and subverting arrangements that promote marginalisation and exclusionary processes. social justice supports a process built on respect, care, recognition and empathy. the presence of words such as ‘demands, mechanisms, disrupting, subverting’ in the definitions above suggest concerted action and seem to elicit revolutionary overtones. similarly, calderwood (2003) adopts a revolutionary approach to social justice. she posits that it works to undo socially created and maintained differences in material conditions of living, so as to reduce and ultimately eliminate the perpetuation of the privileging of some at the expense of others. frey, pearce, pollock, artz and murphy (1996) raise concern about sensibility toward social justice. they claim that sensibility should forego ethical concerns, commit to structural analyses of ethical concerns, adopt an activist orientation and seek identification with others. regarding the promotion of social justice, calderwood (2003) is of the view that people need to act to reduce and eradicate oppression, however distant they may feel from the personal culpability of its enactment. the view is further emphasised by former british prime minister, gordon brown who, quoting an unknown greek philosopher, said: “when will there be justice in athens? it will be when those that do not suffer are as angry as those that do” (lesedi, 2009). undoubtedly, there seems to be an agreement that injustice is not only an issue that concerns those at its receiving end, but also those members of society that do not seem to be affected. the situation seems to further call for alertness, or what we may call thinking beyond the visible and the ordinary. an unfortunate reality about social justice is that the mechanisms of injustice are to a large extent invisible, even to those who strive to live their lives and carry out their work ethically (calderwood 2003; solomon & murphy, 2000). the question that may arise from the debate above is whether or not, and to what extent, providers (policymakers and administrators) are aware of the practices, processes, rules and regulations that perpetuate acts of social injustice and thus consider themselves as culpable. in summary, social justice can be understood as: the exercise of altering institutional and organisational arrangements by actively engaging in reclaiming, appropriating, sustaining, and advancing inherent human rights of equity, and fairness in social, economic, educational, and personal dimensions (goldfarb & grinberg, 2002:162). questions relating to the proper distribution of benefits and burdens among sites have always posed a challenge for education institutions. fraser’s perspectival dualist framework troubles the disparate 113hlalele — social justice and rural education in south africa distribution of goods and services and/or social structures that enable material inequality (north, 2006). fraser (1997) also asserts that the increasing stress on sectoral politics undermines redistributive efforts that seek to improve the well-being of marginalised citizens. her perspectival dualist framework views recognition and redistribution as the co-fundamental and mutually irreducible dimensions of justice. social justice works to undo socially created and maintained differences in material conditions of living, so as to reduce and eventually eliminate the perpetuation of the privileging of some at the expense of others (calderwood, 2003). in order to promote social justice, we must act to reduce and eradicate oppression, however distant we may feel from personal culpability for its enactment. sabbagh (2003) indicates that distributive justice includes at least three major components: the normative patterns that regulate resource distribution (i.e., justice principles and their derivative rules); the classes of social resources that are being allocated, and the valence-positive or -negative of the expected distribution outcomes. arguments in this paper adopt a moral community perspective, viewing responsibility and care among members as central to social justice. social activists advocate the need for social change in rural areas which is linked to social justice, using a process that is consultative, collective, participative and empowering. connectedness and responsibility enrich the notions of fairness, and equality, thus extending the baseline of ethical practice (lloyd, 2000). rural education the definition of ‘rural’ still eludes us due to ambiguous connotations and the obvious and somewhat fallible comparison with ‘urban’ contexts. according to sauvageot and da graća (2007), rurality may be defined in various ways and no universal definition has been adopted in the history of human endeavour. most rural dwellers work in agriculture, often for meagre rates of compensation. from a learner diversity perspective, public schools in rural areas do not have a good track record in meeting the needs of diverse learner populations. a great deal of diversity among rural learners indicates both a challenge and an opportunity for the state to contribute to closing the many national achievement gaps (ludlow & brannan, 2010). rural students in urban areas are out of sight and out of mind. in the united states of america, the states where rural education is most notably underperforming (that is, performance ranks worse than socioeconomic challenges would suggest it should) are predominantly non-rural states, located on the east or west coast of america where the rural population is ‘out of sight, out of mind’. rural parts of china, australia and south africa are no exception. poverty, fiscal incapacity, low levels of adult education, and low levels of learner achievement run in the same mutually reinforcing circles in rural areas. as expected, regions where the educational outcomes in rural schools require the most urgent attention are those with most impoverished minority and rural learners, where schools receive the fewest resources and where rural students attend the largest schools in the largest districts. while declining enrolment remains a significant factor in some rural school districts, rural enrolment on the whole is growing while non-rural enrolment is declining. most rural areas already face tremendous barriers to learners’ high achievement and operate in less than favourable policy environments (johnson & strange, 2007). rural communities have unique and relative attributes. according to malhoit (2005), the school is the most important public institution in a rural community and also represents the economic lifeblood of the economy. a few other relative attributes are discussed below. community capital in rural areas rural people tend to live in their communities by choice, and their decision to live in a rural place should not affect the quality of their children’s education. while rural places frequently face substantial economic and social challenges, they also possess a number of assets that are often ignored or overlooked. the community capital present in many rural communities makes them attractive places in which to live and raise a family. there is a strong bond that exists among rural community members which fosters a firm commitment to protect and support children. with their sparse populations, lower crime rates, beautiful 114 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 open spaces and sense of community, many rural places offer a welcome break from the problems of urban and suburban living such as traffic congestion, crime and the high cost of living (malhoit, 2005). rural people are strong supporters of public education and communitybased schools they view a quality education as essential to an effective rural economic development strategy, because good schools produce a quality local workforce that, in turn, builds upon already present community capital. the school is the most important public institution in a rural community, a rallying point for services to poor families and children, a polling place, a library, and a community centre (doe, 2005; ludlow & brannan, 2010; malhoit, 2005). poverty in many countries the term ‘rural’ is synonymous with ‘poor’. on average, the rate of child poverty in rural communities is higher than in urban areas. poor children lack adequate housing, access to quality health care, proper nutrition, and adequate child care. there is a general agreement that these factors contribute to limited access to quality education for rural children (malhoit, 2005). ageing population with the loss of younger people to urban areas, rural places tend to have an ageing population. while there are advantages to an ageing population, especially where seniors have a substantial retirement income, in low-income rural places this trend can reduce purchasing power and increase the cost of social services that compete against education for funding (malhoit, 2005). smaller schools rural schools are frequently smaller than urban schools, either because of a community’s sparse population or by choice. rural people tend to choose smaller schools because their common sense confirms what research shows, that they are better places to educate children. overwhelmingly, education research (little, 2008; malhoit, 2005) has found many advantages of smaller schools over larger schools including better achievement, higher throughput rates, fewer discipline problems, and higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities). the rural (and somewhat relative) attributes discussed above indicate at least two issues. first, rural areas possess assets/attributes/benefits other communities may not have. secondly, rural areas need special attention, assistance and support; rural communities are more likely to be a ubiquitous phenomenon as people exercise their right to choose. malhoit (2005) posits that rural areas need the provision of high-quality education which will not only correct the policies that may have unjustly denied learners by providing them with ‘just funding,’ but also offer learners opportunities to obtain a meaningful education that prepares them for jobs that pay a living wage, participation in higher education, as well as being actively responsible citizens. the next section provides a critique on the provision of and access to rural education in south africa. reflections on rural education in south africa south africa’s rural communities, like those in many developing and some developed countries, remain disadvantaged compared to their counterparts in urban areas (doe, 2005). evidently, underlying the gains of our young democracy are the challenges that are experienced by rural communities. the ministry of education (2005) notes that the problems experienced in rural areas of south africa, though to some extent unique to rural education, are in fact widespread to varying degrees in the previously disadvantaged communities. in order to enhance impact, the programmes and policies geared towards redress, access, equity and equality clearly need further intervention in the rural areas. the ministerial committee on 115hlalele — social justice and rural education in south africa rural education (mcre) (doe, 2005) suggests that in addressing the complexities of rural development and education, in particular, the intervention strategies should aim at ensuring consistency in government’s rural development strategy, wherein access to economic activities is expanded in order to reduce poverty, invest in human rights and social justice, and improve living conditions. the observation by the ministry indicates a tacit acknowledgement of the lack, as well as the inevitable obligation to address rural education as a social justice issue. according to spreen and vally (2006), the quality of education, particularly in rural and historically disadvantaged communities, should be regarded as a human rights issue. many schools in south africa are situated in rural areas which put learners at a disadvantage. the rural environment is notably less rich not only in terms of human resources, but also in learning as well as livelihood resources (lindeque & vandeyar, 2004). kallaway (2001:16) laments: the tendency to dismiss educational initiatives that seek to make direct interventions into issues of development as attempts to control and subordinate rural people to the colonial order or dismiss them as an aspect of failed socialist experiments, or even see in them only the machinations of apartheid social engineering, as throwing out the baby with bathwater. rural occupation in south africa is directly linked to apartheid and the colonial policies of dispossession, resettlement and a systematic exclusion from opportunities (doe, 2005) and is characterised by diverse rural areas. this means that each rural area possesses a different make-up in terms of needs and resources. key features of a rural profile in south africa include long distances to towns; the poor conditions of roads and bridges to schools; a lack of or limited access to information communications technologies (icts); a lack of services such as running water, electricity, sanitation, health and educational facilities; low economic status, and little access to lifelong learning opportunities. one of the most pervasive features of rural communities is poverty (doe, 2005). food security and the cost of education are also major problems. furthermore, rural communities are characterised by high illiteracy levels. the problems of rurality are further compounded by continued under-resourcing of schools relative to need. the government’s commitment to equal and fair treatment has unfortunately yielded meagre change for rural schools (doe, 2005). in relation to education, lack of basic services (water, sanitation) affects access to and the quality of education, such as inadequate infrastructure in schools (buildings, icts) and the long distances learners must travel to schools. the attributes of rurality that adversely affect the quality of education include a lack of qualified teachers, multigrade teaching, unreasonable teacher-learner ratios, irrelevant curricula, and competing priorities between accessing education and domestic chores, while the teaching staff seem to be imbued with poor morale and motivation (mollenkopf, 2009). furthermore, teachers may be unwilling to move to rural areas where social and cultural opportunities are limited and salaries may not contain an enticement peg. even when teachers are willing to work in rural areas, working conditions are likely to make them reluctant to stay for the long term (mollenkopf, 2009). reflections on some approaches to rural education the issue of literacy has nearly always been associated with freedom from oppression (adair, 2008). there seems to be a general consensus that there is a need for greater collaboration with an integrated approach to finding solutions to address poverty and underdevelopment in rural areas. williams and nierengarten (2010) state that in addressing rural realities mandates, there is a need to consolidate, collaborate and cooperate. this implies that rural imperatives need a community aligned with and willing to draw from various sources. for example, efforts to provide cooperative and collaborative staff development for teachers in rural areas may be negatively affected due to distances and therefore, transportation costs. however, promoting a positive view of education in rural areas, encouraging innovation and initiative in the provision of rural education services, and providing a framework for the sharing of concerns, issues and experiences relating to education and training in rural areas may go some way to addressing the injustices affecting rural inhabitants. amelioration in respect of social injustices should be regarded as a responsibility of all concerned. nearly three decades ago helge (1985) noted that the enhancement of rural education should be an inter-agency effort with significant involvement from the department of 116 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 education. the realisation that rural education involves all disciplines and that efforts in the past have been fragmented has become a present reality. helge (1985) further suggests the implementation of a holistic approach, which implies collaboration among relevant agencies such as the ministries of rural development and land reform, basic education, social development, and roads and transport. various agencies, depending on the unique and relevant attributes of a particular rural community, need to form a consortium or partnership to address rural education issues. the absence of a coherent policy framework (wallace, 2007) evidence from the community survey 2007, indicates that rural inhabitants continue to face the perennial challenge of access to education (fleisch, shindler & perry, 2010). according to johnson and strange (2007), rural schools have unique needs that impact on their education. rural schools have also experienced recent problems due to increased costs for healthcare, transportation, special education services, and other expenses (thorson & maxwell, 2002; williams and nierengarten, 2010). one-size-fits-all solutions do not meet the needs of the ignored and misunderstood rural schools (bryant, 2010). the ministry of education concedes that a special focus on rural education for unique, dedicated intervention without providing fundamentally different education may ghetto-rise education for rural communities (doe, 2005). bryant (2010) further states that rural life has been wrapped in a snug cocoon of fantasy. thus, one of the obstacles of rural education, perhaps the primary obstacle, is a wilful ignorance, on the part of governments, of the conditions in rural areas and schools. for example, most teachers in various fields of specialisation face professional isolation because they are, in most cases, the only teachers in their specialisations. mcquaide (2009) states that the lack of qualified teachers is one of the most crucial factors hindering the development of basic education in rural areas. within the confines of the suggested whole-systems perspective should be the realisation that rural contexts are diverse. it can therefore be accepted that, in most cases, no two rural contexts are exactly the same. sabbagh (2003) aptly notes that the very idea of a just distribution calls for a local examination (in a specific context), and a distribution of resources should define specific boundaries when it establishes the unit of potential resource beneficiaries. fraser’s (1997, 2008) notion of difference seems inescapable in the provision of and access to education in rural schools. the consolidation of rural schools has been one of the strategies used to deal with problem of dwindling learner numbers. conclusion in this article i discuss critically rural education from a social justice perspective. arguments indicate that, even though rural communities possess assets not found elsewhere and can offer certain benefits, they need specialised support. what may be regarded as a reasonable and desirable intervention in one rural community may not necessarily be relevant to another rural community. mcquaide (2009) posits that options of universal access to, and the equity and quality of basic education in rural settings need to be thoroughly considered. this suggests a realisation and understanding of as well as a commitment to the need for an integrated approach to rural education as a social justice issue. rural inhabitants face the challenge of being conscious of their uncritical acceptance of the status quo. therefore, delivery of rural education should be shaped around and be responsive to rural social justice issues pertinent to the unique and diverse rural context (alston, 2007). agarwal, epstein, oppenheim, oyler and sonu (2010) suggest that, when seeking to transform inequities inherent in society and expressed so sharply in schools, classroom teachers can be understood as the most essential element, as they have the ultimate responsibility of navigating the curriculum and instruction with their students. agarwal et al’s. (2007) suggestion presupposes emancipatory pedagogical endeavours. according to baldwin, buchanan and rudisill (2007), this adds a dimension of social justice that requires teachers to critically analyse the perceived realities of social and environmental injustices that affect teaching, learning, and the curriculum. teachers therefore need to understand their broader role as agents of change and development; as agents in addressing rural education as a human right and a social justice issue. there needs to be an understanding that rural contexts are diverse and that context-specific solutions will be needed. in conclusion, the author agrees with wallace (2007) who states that “what matters most for economic development is the capability of rural people to be efficient producers given their natural resource base. there is little doubt that economic 117hlalele — social justice and rural education in south africa and social development, and the benefits that accrue, such as improved nutrition and health, requires an educated populace”. lastly, all endeavours to address social injustices with regard to rural education should be characterised by difference, attributable to diversity in rurality. this means that the resource base, needs, approaches and solutions for each rural context may not necessarily be the same for all rural areas. context-specific approaches are therefore recommended in the provision and promotion of access to education. references adair jk 2008. everywhere in life there are numbers: questions for social justice educators in mathematics and everywhere else. journal of teacher education, 59:408-415. agarwal r, epstein s, oppenheim r, oyler c & sonu d 2010. from ideal to practice and back again: beginning teachers training for social justice. journal of teacher education, 61:237-247. alston m 2007. rural and regional developments in social work and higher education. australian social work, 60:107-121. baldwin sc, buchanan am & rudisill me 2007. what teacher candidates learned about diversity, social justice, and themselves from service-learning experiences. journal of teacher education, 58:315327. bryant ja 2010. dismantling rural stereotypes. educational leadership, 68:54-58. calderwood pe 2003. toward a professional community for social justice. journal of transformative education, 1:301-320. coates rd 2007. social justice and pedagogy. american behavioural scientist, 71:571-591. department of education (doe) 2005. reflections on rural education in south africa. pretoria: government printers. fleisch b, shindler j & perry h 2010. who is out of school? evidence from the community survey 2007, south africa. johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. fraser n 1997. justice interruptus: critical reflections on the ‘postsocialist’ condition. new york: routledge. fraser n 2008. scales of justice: reimagining political space in a globalising world. cambridge: polity press. frattura em & tropinka c 2006. theoretical 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programs preparing personnel for rural areas: current practices, emerging trends, and future directions. rural special education quarterly, 29:4-15. malhoit gc 2005. providing rural students with a high quality education: the rural perspective on the concept of educational adequacy. arlington: rural education and community trust. mcquaide s 2009. making education equitable in rural china through distance learning. international review research in open and distance learning, 10:1-21. ministry of education 2005. see department of education. mollenkopf dl 2009. creating highly qualified teachers. maximising university resources to provide professional development in rural areas. the rural educator, 30:34-39. north ce 2006. more than words? delving into substantive meaning(s) of ‘social justice’ in education. review of educational research, 76:507-535. sabbagh c 2003. the dimension of social solidarity in distributive justice. social science information, 42:255-276. sauvageot c & da graća 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strengthening the human resource base for food security and sustainable livelihoods. international journal of educational development, 27:581-590. williams j & nierengarten g 2010. rural education issues: rural administrators speak out. paper presented at the american educational research association (aera), april 30may 4, 2010: denver, colorado. acta theologica 2016 36(1): 70‑84 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/actat.v36i1.5 issn 2309‑9089 © uv/ufs <http://www.ufs.ac.za/actatheologica> produced by sun media bloemfontein m. kotzé human genetic engineering and social justice in south africa: moltmann and human dignity1 abstract the realities of social injustice in the present south african context, with its great and growing gap between rich and poor and unequal distribution of wealth and resources, are also acutely visible in the health-care sector. genetic engineering would lead to some children having the cards stacked overwhelmingly in their favour, raising the concern for the justice or fairness of this type of biotechnology. in this contribution, i argue that the notion of justice as fairness, put forward by rawls, and the focus on human dignity in moltmann’s theology can help address the bioethical challenges of genetic engineering in the context of inequality, specifically in south africa. 1. introduction reflecting on a bioethical matter as sophisticated as human genetic engineering (ge)2 from a south african perspective might not, initially, seem like an obvious stance to take. after all, being a developing country, biotechnology in south africa is not at the forefront of biomedical technology.3 one might also ask, rightfully, whether there are not much 1 paper presented at the humboldt summer school on imperial religions, theology and indigenous knowledge, 10-14 june 2014, berlin, germany. 2 in this contribution, genetic engineering is understood as the deliberate genetic alteration of a human embryo by modifying its genetic make-up. 3 in 2001, the national biotechnology strategy was published. in 2007, a tenyear innovation plan was drawn up, which delineated an ambitious strategy dr. m. kotzé, dept. religion and theology, university of the western cape, private bag x12, belville, 7535, e‑mail: manitza@gmail.com kotzé human genetic engineering and social justice in sa 71 more pressing ethical matters to consider in a country wrought with social inequality. in this regard, ryan (2012:974-975) indicates that, in many regions, access to basic health care, clean water, satisfactory nourishment, maternal and child care, as well as the treatment and prevention of hiv/aids are far more serious crises than the availability of genetic treatments. there are a few reasons, however, why i view this as an extremely relevant and prolific origin for a theological reflection on the aspect of social justice as introduced by the ge of human beings. one reason is the prevalence of so-called genetic tourism, where couples from developed countries travel to countries in the developing world to undergo in vitro fertilisation (ivf) treatment as a result of the much lower costs of this treatment and the much higher availability of egg donors because of financial incentives. this, of course, also raises a variety of ethical dilemmas. there are numerous other questions and challenges raised by the utilisation of biotechnology such as genetically engineering human beings, for example, the perspectives of human beings and personhood that are upheld; the impact it could have on gender relations, people with disabilities and children born after genetic intervention; the desirability or not of creating what scholars such as fukuyama (2002) term “posthuman”, and young (2006) “transhuman”; eugenics, and a number of doctrinal concerns. in this paper, however, i shall only examine the aspect of social justice and offer a theological reflection thereupon. the realities of social injustice in the present south african context, with its great and growing gap between rich and poor and unequal distribution of wealth and resources, are also acutely visible in the health-care sector. in my opinion, this makes it a productive starting point for entering into the christian bioethical discourse. of course, it also has extensive and farreaching implications for the larger discussion on ge and what impact it would have on the current south african context; in other words, between those who would be able to afford ge, and those who would not have access, were this type of biotechnology to become commercially available. to turn south africa into one of the top ten nations in the world in terms of the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, flavour, fragrance and biopesticide industries by 2018. [online.] retrieved from: http://www.aatf-africa.org/userfiles/africabio_ engels.pdf [2016, 18 march]. this, however, has not happened. while genetic engineering does take place at present in south africa, modifying the genetic make-up of human embryos is prohibited. [online.] retrieved from: http://www. geneticsandsociety.org/article.php?id=304 [2016, 18 march]. 72 acta theologica 2016 36(1) ryan (2012:977) indicates that high-demand genetic therapies such as ge are likely to be both very costly and (as in vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies) available only to those who are willing and able to pay for them. gavaghan (2007:172) also sums up the issue at hand; the fear is that unequal access to this kind of technology could cause or exacerbate preexisting divisions. in the next section, i shall examine the possibility and ways in which biotechnology such as ge could conceivably be utilised to divide the human race. 2. the possibility of human genetic engineering dividing the human race the first argument levelled against the use of ge is that, if the wealthy were to use ge to prevent certain diseases in their children, the possibility exists that empathy and concern for these diseases could disappear and that they could later become “low-class” diseases. furthermore, if illness is thought of as something avoidable, social provision and care for the sick might also be reduced (gavaghan 2007:172-175). fukuyama (2002:16) further notes: if wealthy parents suddenly have open to them the opportunity to increase the intelligence of their children as well as that of all their subsequent descendants, then we have the markings not just of a moral dilemma but of a full-scale class war. this possibility, of course, also raises significant questions for theo logical ethics. it should, however, also be borne in mind that the wealthy already have more access to expensive medical procedures and better health care and that those who can afford to go to private clinics and hospitals are already in a much better position than those who are forced to wait in line in state clinics and government-sponsored hospitals. obviously, this also raises questions of social justice, but it serves to indicate that it would be improper and incorrect to accord these problems only to the use of ge in the future. it is also true that genetic make-up is inherently unfair, even when only viewed in natural processes. two world-renowned athletes (naturally, without making use of ge) having a baby together are very likely to pass on genes that would equip their future child for athletics and sport in ways that surpass that of the child of a couple where only one of the kotzé human genetic engineering and social justice in sa 73 parents are slightly athletic. can we term this unfair? perhaps. can we do something about it? unlikely. genetic make-up, in every instance, is a lottery. in addition, there is no guarantee that even parents, using every type of technology available to have a particular type of child, will get that particular child. even if they do, it would still be incumbent on that child to develop and practise the traits that s/he was given. sandel (2007:12) also reacts to the argument of unfairness used in cases of, for example, genetically improved athletes: it has always been the case that some athletes are better endowed, genetically, than others. and yet we do not consider the natural inequalities of genetic endowments to undermine the fairness of competitive sport. sandel (2007:3) further refers to critique against choosing the attributes of children and asks why some component of unpredictability or randomness seems to make a moral difference. he also indicates that, while the often-levelled criticism that it violates the child’s autonomy to be able to choose his/her life plan for him-/herself, wrongly implies that children born naturally are free to choose their own aptitudes and traits (sandel 2007:6-7). the ethical question to be asked is, therefore, rather one of the autonomy of future children born after intervention by ge, whether it is ethically permissible to decide the characteristics of children before they are born, as opposed to letting it randomly be up to the genetic lottery. what is true, however, is that ge would lead to some having the cards stacked in their favour, or as gavaghan (2007:179) quite eloquently puts it, some children could be born “not only with ‘silver spoons’ in their mouths, but with ‘golden genes’ in their chromosomes”. he summarises the issue at hand: what would be unfair about a genetic supermarket is not that some people would emerge from it with unearned advantages – that, of course, happens anyway – but rather that some people had the odds stacked overwhelmingly in their favour from the beginning (gavaghan 2007:182). it is undeniable that those who are able to afford it and have better access to health care and other facilities are already in a superior position to those who do not, and the aspect of a divided human race is no longer something that science fiction warns us of, but reality. daniels (2001:323) does not view this to be particularly problematic: 74 acta theologica 2016 36(1) the rich can buy special security systems for their homes. they can buy safer cars. they can buy private schooling for their children. why not allow them to buy supplementary health care for their families?. verhey (2002) also adds that genetic options may one day be socially enforced. it should also be noted that a truly pro-choice position recognises the decision to not use pre-implantation diagnoses as a valid choice and is not a promoter of this technology (gavaghan 2007:2-3). often, those who argue the freedom of choice4 in favour of biotechnologies such as ge becoming commercially available, are of the opinion that this would imply that everyone should make use of it. gavaghan reminds one that when one makes a case for the freedom of choice, opting not to make use of available biotechnology is also a legitimate and valid choice that should be respected. however, as callahan (1987:228) postulates, specified choices usually make options mandatory, whether by law, economic force or simply by social custom. in the same way that keeping someone in a coma on life support where the likelihood of recovery is slim was, at some point in time, available only in extreme cases and have now become the norm, ge could walk the same road. for this reason, gavaghan (2007:5) indicates that a genuine concern for justice or fairness cannot be addressed by restricting access to gcts, [germinal choice technologies] which are at worst just one manifestation of unfairness. it is then quite clear that, when examining social justice and ge from a theological-ethical perspective, it should be borne in mind that what we are, in fact, examining is the exacerbating of existing social divides, segregation and inequalities. the divided human race, as conceived in science fiction, finds just one manifestation in disparities and discrimination in the utilisation of biotechnology. in addition, biotechnology such as ge can also be viewed as power. deane-drummond (1997:82) refers to the power wielded by biotechnology in agricultural practice as “becoming a means of oppressing third world economies and [it] seems to drive a wedge between rich and poor nations”. the same can also said to be true of biotechnology where human beings are concerned. as a result, the long-term social consequences have to be considered, also confirming that the issue under discussion is much wider and more extensive than science fiction would have us believe. the realisation that inequalities and a lack of social justice through the utilisation of ge is simply one symptom of a larger social concern also 4 cf. also peters 1998:15-20. kotzé human genetic engineering and social justice in sa 75 serves to include the contribution of christian theology to this debate. if one would simply argue that the disparities that would be exacerbated through ge exist in any instance and are also, at present, part of our societies and that it, therefore, does not raise a new matter of concern, the discourse is closed. christian theology, however, does not only address the possible matters of social injustice that could arise in the future, but also speaks out against injustice in the here and now. 3. human genetic engineering and social justice although there are numerous theories of justice and of social justice, i have chosen to engage with the theory devised by rawls, given that this theory is thoroughly social from its very inception to its implementation. “justice” is a very loaded term that can mean different things to different people. one of the most significant works in the entire field of social and political philosophy in the english-speaking world after ww ii is rawls’ a theory of justice (1971). rawls’ theory is presented as a modern alternative to utilitarianism and he hopes that it is congruent to “the belief that justice must be associated with fairness and the moral equality of persons” (shaw 2005:95). justice is not simply a matter of social service, but it is thoroughly social. society, in rawls’ view, is a cooperative undertaking among its members. rawls’ hypothetical-contract approach and the principles of justice that he develops from this approach are particularly important. he asks: what would we choose as the fundamental principles to govern society if, hypothetically, we were to meet in the “original position”? rawls suspects that it would be the principles of justice. in the first instance, a guarantee of certain individual liberties, and in the second instance, social and economic inequalities are only justified if they benefit the least advantaged members of society. if people were in this “original position”, what principles would they choose? what would the basis be for deciding on principles? rawls believes that we would select principles that we find just. people disagree on what is just and unjust and, accordingly, would make decisions based on their own preconceived ideas on what justice is. rawls suggests that people in the “original position” should be viewed as choosing on the basis of self-interest. choosing on the basis of mutual self-interest, the principles of justice will most likely be chosen, because people agreed to them under conditions of equality and free choice. there is no agreement if people are choosing principles based on self-interest, given the reality that 76 acta theologica 2016 36(1) some rules would benefit some people and not others. regardless of who they are, rawls indicates that people want more “primary social goods” (income, but also rights, liberties, opportunities, status, self-respect, and so on). he, therefore, suspects that people in the “original position” will choose the principles that should govern society conservatively, because they are determining their own fate and that of their children. they will not choose a utilitarian standard, because the happiness of some might be sacrificed to maximise the total happiness of society. they will follow the maximum rule in making decisions, in order to maximise the minimum they could receive. ultimately, people in the “original position” will approve two principles, after which they will design their basic social and political institutions in more detail, when they have more information. these principles are, first, that each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all and, secondly, that social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions, namely they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity and they are to be to the greatest expected benefit of the least advantaged members of society (rawls 1985:227). the first principle takes priority over the second. at the very centre of rawls’ theory is what he calls the difference principle. this states that inequalities are only justified when they work to the advantage of those members of society who are least well off. if people lack incentive to undertake some of the more difficult work in society, one could allow for certain inequalities that work to everyone’s benefit, for example paying people more for more productive work. this would benefit the entire society, also those who earn less (rawls 1971). utilitarianism, in rawls’ view, treats the pain and pleasure experienced by people as interchangeable. it can also lead to the unfair distribution of burdens and benefits in maximising the total well-being of a society. in response to nozick’s entitlement theory (libertarianism), he also states that the primary subject of justice should be the basic structure and arranging it into one scheme with the fundamental social institutions. the subject of justice should be the basic structure of society, because this shapes the wants, desires, hopes, and ambitions of individuals. rawls indicates that there will always be natural differences between people, but the weight given to these distinctions is not natural. one’s characteristics are simply a genetic lottery. one can, therefore, not claim credit for one’s attributes, not even for one’s virtues. consequently, one cannot claim credit on the economic rewards of one’s characteristics (shaw 2005:100-105). kotzé human genetic engineering and social justice in sa 77 rawls (1985:223) himself calls his theory “justice as fairness”. he further indicates that what he set out in a theory of justice is a political conception of justice, which is “a moral conception worked out for a specific kind of subject, namely, for political, social, and economic institutions” (rawls 1985:224). the notion of fairness should, therefore, be built into the most basic structures of society, although rawls (1985:225) is also quick to point out that this does not mean that a general moral conception should be applied to all structures. viewing justice as fairness tries to arbitrate between the opposing traditions of locke5 and rousseau6 in two ways, namely by stressing the values of freedom and equality and by specifying a point of view from which these principles can be seen as more appropriate than other familiar principles of justice to the nature of democratic citizens viewed as free and equal persons (rawls 1985:227). rawls then states that the aims of justice as fairness are practical rather than epistemological or metaphysical. it presents itself as a notion that can serve as the basis of an “informed and willing political agreement between citizens” (rawls 1985:230). naturally, this has extensive implications for the discussion of social justice in terms of ge. blackford (2014:34) refers to allhof’s statement that ge is in itself morally acceptable if and only if it enhances, whether directly or indirectly, rawlsian primary good, the kinds of things one should rationally want to have, including talents and aptitudes. in terms of justice as fairness, one could say that, from an ethical perspective, the utilisation of ge would need to be implemented according to the principle of fairness in order to be, according to rawls’ theory, just. the most problematic issue raised in the discourse on social justice, in my opinion, is the number of scholars who seem to find some kind of inequality not only desirable, but ideal. using ge to enhance the rawlsian primary goods of our children is considered redundant, if everyone is able to do so. in this line of thinking, buchanan et al. (2000:185) refer to this as an advantageous, but collectively self-defeating intervention. singer (2009:282-283) and fukuyama (2002:95) employ the same argument; the latter uses intelligence as an example. 5 locke gives “greater weight to what constant called ‘the liberties of the moderns’, freedom of thought and conscience, certain basic rights of the person and of property, and the rule of law” (rawls 1985:227). 6 rousseau “gives greater weight to what constant called ‘the liberties of the ancients’, equal political liberties and the values of public life” (rawls 1985:227). 78 acta theologica 2016 36(1) if everyone has children that are more intelligent, there is no gain, except a possible rise in economic productivity. in other words, without inequality also on this level and the large gap between the rich and the poor, those who are able to afford and access biotechnology and those who remain on the margins, these scholars do not perceive the benefit of this technology at all. this notion contradicts rawls’ concepts of justice as fairness, however, as the desired inequality, for which these scholars argue, is at its very core about unfairness and injustice. this, however, does not yet answer the question as to how theology can contribute in a unique and valuable manner to the ethical discussion and, in particular, to the notion of inequality and social justice this raises. in the following section, i shall discuss german theologian moltmann’s viewpoint on humanity dignity as one possible theological contribution. 4. a theological response to genetic engineering and social justice: moltmann and human dignity de villiers (1993:101) indicates that, for over one and a half centuries, mainstream churches and christian theology were completely opposed to the notion of fundamental human rights. he further states, however, that fundamental human rights are theologically justified, “particularly health care as a human right”, given that a wide spectrum of christian beliefs, such as, for example, imago dei, played a role in the historical development of human rights. these beliefs also suggest that christians should propagate the recognition of human rights. that health is one of the basic needs of human beings as image bearers of god and that fellow human beings have the obligation to provide adequate health care to those who fall ill, is something about which the bible leaves us in no doubt (de villiers 1993:103). the conviction that all human beings have inherent value and dignity, simply on the basis that they are human, is in christian theology grounded in the confession that human beings are created imago dei, in the image of god. this also features very prominently in the work of moltmann, quite extensively already in the first chapter of his publication on human dignity (moltmann 1984:11-17). bauckham (1995:115) points out that moltmann grounds the human dignity of all of humanity in their creation by god. this precedes all forms of society and government, leaving no doubt as to the common humanity of all people and the god-given dignity of every person. it also makes the fulfilment of this dignity a task to which every human kotzé human genetic engineering and social justice in sa 79 being is called. although not the focus of this contribution, all human beings being made in the image of god also implies equality, a notion that can also be tied closely to rawls’ concept of fairness. if all people are equal, it follows that they should be treated as such. moltmann (1999:120; 2011:611) further clarifies that human dignity is not the elevation of human beings above other living things, and he continually emphasises that it cannot be upheld at the expense of nature (bauckham 1995:17). he explains it as follows: the fact that all human beings are made in the image of god is the foundation of human dignity. human beings are intended to live in this relation to god. that gives their existence its inalienable, transcendent depth dimension. in their relationship to the transcendent god, human beings become persons whose dignity must not be infringed (moltmann 1999:122). moltmann (1984:169) further describes human beings as made in the image of god as pertaining to all of the human being’s “lebensbezügen”, in other words, the economic, social, political and personal dimensions are all meant to reflect the confession that we are created in god’s image (kotzé 2015:210). human beings are intended to live in this relation to god, and it is this factor that gives human existence its “inalienable, transcendent depth dimension” (moltmann 1999:122). it is in their relationship to the triune god that human beings become beings whose dignity must not be violated. human dignity, moltmann (2012:87) states, is already defined in the old testament: the abrahamic religions – judaism, christianity and islam – are responsible for the religious background of western civilizations, and they have always seen this dignity as belonging to the human being as the image of god. this dignity was regarded as something that exists in the human soul, not in the body, for a long time. as a result of this view, the body came to be viewed as something that does not form part of the likeness to god and that the soul could simply make use of. later still, the image to god came to be viewed as “the conscious subjectivity of will and perception” (moltmann 2012:87). moltmann (2012:87) indicates, however, that the whole of the human being is the image of god, his/her body included. for the discussion of human dignity as relating to the examination of social 80 acta theologica 2016 36(1) justice and inequality in the larger christian bioethical debate on ge, the repercussions for this assertion are that human dignity and human rights also refer to bodily dignity. moltmann (1993:49) also indicates that the crucified christ has always been the christ of the poor: they find in him the brother who put off his divine form and took on the form of a slave (phil. 2), to be with them and to love them. they [see] in him a god who does not torture them, as their masters do, but becomes their brother and companion. where their own lives have been deprived of freedom, dignity and humanity, they find in fellowship with him respect, recognition, human dignity and hope. christian theology, therefore, cannot but take seriously the plight of the poor and the suffering. within the context of the right to health and health care, christ’s “preferential option for the poor”, as confessed in the confession of belhar, adds another very important notion to the discussion, one that will also be of note for exploring ge in terms of human rights and human dignity. in the context of ge, the preferential option for the poor should also be respected in health care and the utilisation of biotechnology. this means that one cannot argue, like buchanan et al. (2000), singer (2009) and fukuyama (2002), and advocate in favour of inequality and social injustice, purely on the basis that, in order to have some primary goods, it infers that others must do without. this is also directly opposed to the theory of justice, as developed by rawls, where the benefits of his model are clearly stated to be for the least well-off in society: the poor, the suffering, and the marginalised. although another ethical question would, of course, be whether these enhancements of human qualities are desirable and something that should be supported and aspired to, addressing these questions is beyond the scope of this paper. suffice it to say that one should also take note of the issue of social justice in discussing the genetic enhancement of human beings. the right to lead a life of dignity is also an inherent part of human dignity. therefore, the bigger issue of economic injustice should also be addressed as a closely related aspect to the wider view of social justice in terms of health care. for this reason, i raise the larger issue of socioeconomic justice and not simply the issues with which the conversation on social justice directly confronts ge, such as the inequality that would exist in access and affordability. given the large discrepancies that exist in the health-care sector at present, these concerns can very easily be argued away as subsisting with or without biotechnology. in this regard, kotzé human genetic engineering and social justice in sa 81 as indicated earlier, one can simply state that the social injustices to which they refer are present in any case and that it does not, in a unique way, contribute to the christian bioethical discussion on ge. arguing in this way, without taking the broader socio-economic context into account, could lead one to make the case that, because the inequalities and these forms of biotechnologies could exacerbate what already exists, it does not add something original to the bioethical discourse. consequently, this should be regarded as less important than other ethical issues that emerge in the utilisation of biotechnology. 5. conclusion in moltmann’s theology, god is a god of promises, promises that open up a future into which the people may enter in obedience ... something which yet is not and thus opens the future (rasmussen 1995:62). rasmussen (1995:62) also states that “the promises of god have their ground not in history itself, but in god and in god’s faithfulness”. this means that the future that is promised cannot be deduced from the present reality; god’s promise is something that is not yet; therefore, it stands in contradiction with the present. it is not a rigid scheme; there is room for surprises, promises that transcend historical fulfilment and point to fulfilment in the future, creating a history of promise. in moltmann’s words: “discipleship, which concerns life here and now, exists in the horizon of the coming kingdom. it criticizes what is in terms of what is promised” (rasmussen 1995:64). in light of this perspective, this contribution explores the present south african reality as part of the life that exists here and now, standing in contradiction to the eagerly awaited promised future. taking its cue from moltmann’s view on christian discipleship, this article serves to criticise the present reality, with its inequalities, especially in this context, relating to health and health-care services as part of the greater debate surrounding ge. the ethos of learning to live with brokenness, imperfection and vulnerability that moltmann propagates, also be referring to the suffering of and vulnerability of god, is of immense value to the discourse of ge (kotzé 2015:213). moltmann particularly referred to the reality that god is perceived most clearly in god’s broken and vulnerable humanity. in understanding the whole of creation through the event of the cross, this notion also becomes 82 acta theologica 2016 36(1) especially applicable. moltmann’s trinitarian doctrine of creation helps the christian bioethical discussion on ge in explicitly campaigning for the utilisation of available biotechnologies to heal and cure, thereby enhancing human dignity, justice and fairness as part of the bioethical discourse. furthermore, moltmann’s theology also helps christian bioethical dialogue by resisting a culture or ethos that cannot live with vulnerability. moltmann examines creation and human beings through the lens of god who suffers in and through jesus christ. although i derive a theological mandate in favour of ge from his theology (moltmann 2012:79, 80, 110, 127), i by no means infer from him a flight from vulnerability, brokenness and suffering that aims to become “transhuman”. i do not gather from his position an idealisation and even idolisation of medical technology. his theological perspectives do indeed encourage one to support medical, scientific and technological progress. it not only supports the quest for health and health care, but also acknowledges the limitations in the best that one can achieve as human beings. the focus on human dignity in moltmann’s theology and the notion of justice as fairness put forward by rawls can help one address bioethical challenges in the context of inequality, specifically in a country such as south africa. furthermore, it can help us build a life of dignity for the socially excluded ones in society and, therefore, work for socio-economic conditions that speak of justice, fairness and dignity and that make this technology accessible to all. bibliography bauckham, r. 1995. the theology of jürgen moltmann. london: t. & t. clark. blackford, r. 2014. humanity enhanced: genetic choice and the challenge for liberal demo‑ cracies. cambridge, ma: the mit press. buchanan, a., brock, d.w., daniels, n. & wikler, d. 2000. from chance to choice: genetics and justice, cambridge: cambridge university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511806940 callahan, d. 1987. science: limits and prohibitions. in: s.e. lammers & a.d. verhey (eds), on moral medicine: theological perspectives in medical ethics (grand rapids, mi: w.b. eerdmans), pp. . daniels, n. 2001. is there a right to health care and, if so, what does it encompass? in: h. kuhse & p. singer (eds), a companion to bioethics (oxford: blackwell), pp. 46-52. kotzé human genetic engineering and social justice in sa 83 dean-drummond, c. 1997. theology and biotechnology: implications for a new science. london: geoffrey chapman. de villiers, e. 1993. appropriate health care as human right: a theological perspective. in: a.a. van niekerk (ed.), health care as human right (stellenbosch: university of stellenbosch), pp. 100-115. fukuyama, f. 2002. our posthuman future: consequences of the biotechnology revolution. new york: farrar, straus & giroux. gavaghan, c. 2007. defending the genetic supermarket: the law and ethics of selecting the next generation. abingdon: routledge-cavendish. kotzé, m. 2015. liberal democracy and the genetic supermarket: autonomy and freedom in jürgen moltmann’s political theology and biotechnology. stellenbosch theology journal 1(1):201-215. moltmann, j. 1984. on human dignity. philadelphia, pa: fortress press. 1993. the crucified god. minneapolis, mn: fortress press. 1999. god for a secular society: the public relevance of theology. minneapolis, mn: fortress press. 2011. on a culture of life in the dangers of this time. in: l. hansen, n. koopman & r. vosloo (eds), living theology: essays presented to dirk j. smit on his sixtieth birthday (wellington: bybelmedia), pp. 607-613. 2012. ethics of hope. minneapolis, mn: fortress press. peters, t. 1998. genes, theology, and social ethics: are we playing god? cleveland, oh: the pilgrim press. rasmussen, a. 1995. the church as polis: from political theology to theological politics as exem‑ plified by jürgen moltmann and stanley hauerwas. notre dame, in: university of notre dame press. rawls, j. 1985. justice as fairness: political not metaphysical. philosophy and public affairs 14(3):223-251. ryan, m. 2012. justice and genetics: whose holy grail? in: m.t. lysaught, j.j. kotva jr, s.e. lammers & a.d. verhey (eds), on moral medicine: theological perspectives in medical ethics (grand rapids, mi: w.b. eerdmans), pp. . 84 acta theologica 2016 36(1) sandel, m.j. 2007. the case against perfection: ethics in the age of genetic engineering. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. shaw, w.h. 2005. business ethics. belmont, ca: thompson/wadsworth. singer, p. 2009. parental choice and human improvement. in: j. savulescu & n. bostrom (eds), human enhancement (oxford: oxford university press), pp. 277-289. verhey, a.d. 2003. reading the bible in the strange world of medicine. grand rapids, mi: w.b. eerdmans. young, s. 2006. designer evolution: a transhumanist manifesto. amhert, ny: prometheus books. keywords trefwoorde genetic engineering genetiese manipulasie human dignity geregtigheid justice menswaardigheid moltmann moltmann teaching collegiate-level mathematics courses for social justice: considering the mathematical journey of secondary mathematics preservice teachers journal of urban mathematics education july 2013, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 71–80 ©jume. http://education.gsu.edu/jume laura mcleman is an assistant professor in the department of mathematics at the university of michigan flint, 303 e. kearsley street, flint, mi, 48502; email: lauramcl@umflint.edu. her research interests include preparing mathematics preservice teachers to work with underserved and underrepresented populations, and the preparation of mathematics teachers and mathematics teacher educators to integrate issues of equity and social justice in their instruction. joyce piert is a lecturer in the department of mathematics at the university of michigan flint, 303 e. kearsley street, flint, mi 48502; email: piertjoy@umflint.edu. her research interests are urban education, mathematics and identity, and social justice. considering the social justice mathematical journey of secondary mathematics preservice teachers laura mcleman university of michigan-flint joyce piert university of michigan-flint in this essay, the authors share some of their journey as they seek to make sense of what it might mean to prepare secondary mathematics preservice teachers to teach mathematics for social justice. the focus on how to prepare mathematics teachers to critically consider the world around them and to further develop the dispositions to become agents of change has been discussed in the research literature. what it might “look like” to enact this type of programmatic-level teaching at a college or university, however, has rarely been examined. through the sharing of their thoughts and reflections, the authors hope others might draw inspiration to reconsider the teaching of mathematics courses for social justice at the program level. keywords: mathematics, mathematics teaching, preservice teachers, social justice even of us sat around the room in a circle formation. we had gathered for the first meeting of our teaching circle that was funded by the university’s center for teaching and learning as a venue for professional development. all the members of the teaching circle were instructors within the mathematics department in some capacity: four mathematicians, two mathematics educators, and one retired high school teacher. during this meeting, we brainstormed which qualities we wanted our secondary mathematics preservice teachers (psts) to possess upon graduation from our program. “we want teachers who can teach to a diverse population of students,” was one professor’s response. as participants in that teaching circle, we held the philosophy (and still do) that effective teaching of mathematics to a diverse population of students must allow students to use mathematics to “examine one’s own lives and other’s lives in relationship to sociopolitical and cultural-historical contexts” (gutstein, 2006, p. 5). the focus on how to prepare mathematics teachers to critically consider the s mcleman & piert social justice mathematical journey stinson, d. w., & spencer, j. a. (eds.). (2013). privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators [special issue]. journal of urban mathematics education, 6(1). 72 world around them and to further develop their dispositions to become agents of change is one that has been discussed in research (e.g., de freitas & zolkower, 2009), this is what we refer to as teaching mathematics for social justice. yet, until these teaching circle meetings, neither of us (laura and joyce) had really considered what it might “look like” to enact this type of programmatic-level teaching at the university level. as the conversations within the teaching circle continued, we wondered such questions as: what would it look like to teach collegiatelevel mathematics content courses through a lens of social justice? do we as mathematics instructors possess the necessary knowledge to teach mathematics in this manner? the purpose of this essay is to share some of our journey as we seek to make sense of what it might mean to prepare secondary mathematics psts to teach mathematics for social justice within our institution. our hope is that through the sharing of our honest thoughts and reflections, other individuals can begin to clarify their own thinking or draw inspiration to reconsider the teaching of mathematics courses within their own teacher preparation programs. our journeys it is important to situate our backgrounds within our work. as foote and bartell (2011) argue, our life experiences shape what we attend to in our work, including the questions we ask and the interpretations we draw. laura: growing up, i didn’t know that i led a privileged life, as i realize that i wore blinders towards the consideration of inequities that existed within society. i lived in a middle class, white community where racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity were practically non-existent. while both my mom and dad worked to support us, my family never went without. i grew up in a nice home, and we always had food on the table. from my viewpoint, people looked like me and shared the same values and norms as my family. joyce: i grew up during the turbulent 60s, a period when the issues of social injustice and inequalities were constantly in the news and on the forefront of many people’s mind. these events shaped my young mind while living with my family in a working class urban community. early in school, i discovered that i had a love for mathematics, and i often found myself in classes where using arithmetic and algorithms were expected. i was one of the first girls to be permitted in a drafting class, and i honed my skills with fractions in home economics. as an african american, i was intimately aware of the disparities of high unemployment, low quality schools, and high crime that existed within my community. this con mcleman & piert social justice mathematical journey stinson, d. w., & spencer, j. a. (eds.). (2013). privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators [special issue]. journal of urban mathematics education, 6(1). 73 sistent awareness facilitated my evolution as a teacher and my drive to promote equality within society for all people. laura and joyce: we both excelled as mathematics students, at the k–12 and collegiate levels alike, having learned how to navigate the school environment. through past experiences, we learned how to create a teacher-centered environment within a “banking concept of education” (freire, 1970/2000, p. 72): lecture, require students to take notes, maintain a limited amount of engagement, and assess learning. these experiences, however, were challenged for each of us as we took high school teaching positions in low-income urban areas with students whose lived realities were very different from our own. we saw that our teachercentered lectures, even coupled with some cooperative learning activities, did not help our students succeed in a traditional sense. we realized that the problem lay not with the students, but with how we were approaching mathematics teaching, yet were unsure of how to change. with a need to know, we each moved on from teaching secondary school mathematics to pursuing doctoral degrees in education. laura: i was fortunate to be a fellow in the center for the mathematics education of latinos/as (cemela 1 ) throughout my doctoral program. it was through cemela that i was exposed to theories and frameworks surrounding issues of social justice, specifically from a freirian paradigm of critical pedagogy (cf. freire, 1970/2000). initially, i was resistant, as i felt overwhelmed considering this new paradigm, as well as defensive about the subject at which i had so excelled in school. over time, however, i began to connect what i was learning with the experiences i had had as a high school mathematics teacher and the quest i had to help all students be successful in mathematics. after completing my doctoral program and taking a tenure-track position at a university, i was invited to participate in the privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators (prompte 2 ) conference. throughout the conference, i explored and grappled with issues of privilege and oppression within my own life. further, i reflected upon these constructs within my own teaching and how i work with future secondary mathematics teachers. 1 cemela is a center for learning and teaching supported by the national science foundation, grant number esi-0424983. any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the national science foundation. 2 privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators (prompte) conference (funded by create for stem institute through the lappan-phillips-fitzgerald cmp 2 innovation grant program), michigan state university, battle creek, mi, october 2012. any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the funding agency. mcleman & piert social justice mathematical journey stinson, d. w., & spencer, j. a. (eds.). (2013). privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators [special issue]. journal of urban mathematics education, 6(1). 74 joyce: in my graduate experience, i continued to cultivate and nurture the “mission” for social justice that was already growing inside of me. i was a child and adolescent during the civil rights era. it was during these years that i was exposed to the philosophies of such activists as septima clark, ella baker, and kwame toure (stokely carmichael). the voices of these activists influenced my viewpoint and convinced me that it is within the power of the grassroots (common people) to make the world a more humane place for all people. while in graduate school, i was able to merge the philosophies of the activists of my youth with the philosophies of such critical pedagogues and scholars as paulo freire, henry giroux, peter mclaren, and bell hooks. it is this marriage of philosophies that shape my current thoughts and pedagogy around mathematics education. moving forward each of our journeys has led us to our current location: flint, michigan. flint is a community that has attracted the nation’s attention for various reasons over the last few decades. the city is struggling with emergency financial takeover by the state, high unemployment rates, high crime rates, and closing schools. it is a city that is ripe for community transformation, and this transformation could be facilitated through the vehicle of education. it is in this place where we engage university students as faculty members of a mathematics department (laura, a tenure-track assistant professor; joyce, a lecturer). here, we wish to prepare secondary mathematics psts to integrate issues of equity and social justice throughout their instruction. through our ongoing efforts in our one-semester mathematics methods course, we are making strides to challenge perceptions of what it means to teach and learn mathematics. we realize that our efforts will most likely be the first opportunity for most, if not all, of our psts to question their own views regarding mathematics and its potential as a vehicle to critically challenge the world. ideally, we would like our course to be a space in which psts see themselves as agents of change within the educational system and as such develop and acquire strategies that they can put into action in their own mathematics instruction. in order to achieve this ideal, though, we posit that psts need to experience social justice as a cornerstone of mathematics teaching throughout their mathematical career. with this in mind, logistical questions arise. some of these questions include:  should all college-level mathematics courses be taught through a lens of social justice? if not, which ones should be?  what would a curriculum that uses social justice as its basis look like in a college-level mathematics course? what would a program of study that mcleman & piert social justice mathematical journey stinson, d. w., & spencer, j. a. (eds.). (2013). privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators [special issue]. journal of urban mathematics education, 6(1). 75 uses social justice as a basis look like (i.e., sequencing, textbooks, course goals, assessments, etc.)?  what knowledge would be necessary for mathematics teacher educators in order to instruct in this manner? do we possess this knowledge, and if not, how do we obtain it?  how do we prepare both students and colleagues for this paradigm shift in teaching and learning? how do we address resistance from colleagues and/or teachers?  do we have the courage to teach these courses outside the scripted norm? are we secure enough in our own constitution (and positions) to undertake this journey? a dialogue in this section, we recount some portions of our ongoing conversation 3 in an effort to grapple with one of these big questions, namely, should all college-level mathematics courses be taught through a lens of social justice? if not, which ones should be? through our dialogue, it is possible to see how our thinking diverged, but ultimately converged when we began to focus on a specific entry point for our psts to begin a mathematical journey focused on social justice. laura: should all mathematics classes that our psts take be taught through a lens of social justice? that’s a difficult question. for one, i’m not sure i have the necessary knowledge to teach, for example, an abstract algebra course in this manner, as my schooling experience had me focus on acquiring a classical knowledge of mathematics (gutstein, 2006). specifically, i would have a hard time relating the content to issues of social justice. for example, how would i teach concepts such as unique factorization domains through a lens of social justice? and more importantly, should we? we need to consider what the goals are of such a course: why are psts taking this course? what purpose does it serve for their preparation? then we need to see how those goals align with the goals of a course that has social justice as its focus. perhaps it doesn’t make sense for our psts to have all of their mathematics courses be taught through a lens of social justice, especially if the goals of the class are mutually exclusive from the goals of a class with social justice as a focus? joyce: if students experience the foundations of mathematics (such as functions) through a social justice lens throughout their mathematics career, then they would 3 the dialogue presented does not represent a transcribed conversation as grammatical edits have been made since the conversation took place. mcleman & piert social justice mathematical journey stinson, d. w., & spencer, j. a. (eds.). (2013). privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators [special issue]. journal of urban mathematics education, 6(1). 76 infuse these “higher-level” mathematics courses with the social justice perspectives themselves. the proverb “if you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day, but if you teach him how to fish, he will eat for a lifetime” comes to mind. if i can expose students to social justice perspectives of mathematics early in their mathematical careers, then i believe that they will have the tools to shape mathematics for themselves into instruments of social justice whenever they encounter mathematics. laura: it seems that you might be saying that the students will integrate issues of social justice regardless of how we teach college mathematics courses, as long as we teach earlier mathematics courses through a social justice lens. if so, i’m not sure i agree. some of the mathematics courses at the college level (e.g., abstract algebra, complex analysis) are very different than the ones they experience earlier on in their mathematical careers (e.g., algebra i, geometry) in their direct application to phenomena within the world. so, while psts can know how to view certain ideas in mathematics through the lens of social justice (such as factoring real numbers), they might not be able to transfer it to more abstract mathematical concepts (such as factoring over fields other than the real numbers). but i do agree that early exposure is an important and essential component in students’ mathematical lives. with this exposure, psts may think to question how the higher-level abstract mathematical concepts in their later mathematics courses can be used to see, read, and write the world (gutstein, 2006), and thus, hopefully be able to guide their future secondary students to do the same. i still question what the goals are of some of the collegiate mathematics courses. in conversations with some mathematicians, they seem to be of the mindset that mathematical concepts do not always have to be directly applicable to context—that there is value in studying mathematics for the inherent beauty of the discipline. if these are the goals of some of the mathematics courses that psts are taking and if teaching mathematics through a lens of social justice means that social justice is an integral and authentic part of the mathematics course, perhaps we will do more harm than good if we try to “force” issues of social justice into a mathematics course when the issues are less authentic to the nature of the subject. let me be clear… i am not saying that there is no place for issues of social justice in higher-level mathematics courses. we just need to integrate the issues in such a way that is authentic to the content of the course. joyce: let me back up… i need to revisit this big question: should all mathematics courses be taught through a social justice lens? let me use art as an analogy. there are aspects of art that i learn because i am interested in learning to improve my creativity. but then there are aspects of art that are beautiful and i would like to learn simply for the appreciation of art. so, speaking of mathematics now, the mcleman & piert social justice mathematical journey stinson, d. w., & spencer, j. a. (eds.). (2013). privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators [special issue]. journal of urban mathematics education, 6(1). 77 question for me becomes whether all mathematics is utilitarian? or are there parts of mathematics that are for pure beauty and appreciation? i think each question has its own answer. we know that there are mathematics courses that we teach for utility, in other words, to enhance students’ abilities to solve problems. we refer to those courses as applied mathematics, while the courses that we teach for appreciation and beauty, of course, we refer to as pure mathematics. with these definitions in mind, shaping a course around the issues of social justice in a collegiate-level mathematics curriculum definitely creates a conundrum. as we think about issues of social justice, we may find it easier to pose problems of inequity or societal challenges that could easily align with the applied aspects of collegiate mathematics. it’s only when we attempt to imagine a framework to hang issues of social justice on from the pure aspects of mathematics that we begin to feel like we are bumping our heads against the wall. for me, issues of social justice are issues of the heart. it can reasonably be assumed that it is not simply the act of “examining” their lives and the lives of others that we want our students to experience, but rather an attempt to facilitate a raising of the consciousness of their life experiences in relationship to others. so if it is essentially affecting the heart that we are looking to achieve, then it would seem that pure science and social justice have much in common given that both attempt to provide an experience of the heart—one in appreciation and the other in valuing others. laura: i would argue that mathematics is historically taught free from context, and that because of this lack of contextualization, mathematics tends to attract a type of student who has a particular disposition towards not considering mathematics as a venue for issues of social justice. i agree, then, that we are affecting the heart, where we want our students to develop a disposition towards the world to view mathematics in light of issues of social justice. i believe that integration of social justice issues into the curriculum is key, as it may seem, upon first glance, that only certain courses can be taught through a lens of social justice. with that said, one could argue that a more natural fit of teaching through a lens of social justice would be the earlier level courses (earlier in the psts’ mathematics journey i mean), that is, the calculus sequence and linear algebra. i say this because these courses seem to have content that directly aligns with scenarios which individuals can encounter in their lives (e.g., rates of change in calculus; engineering concepts in linear algebra). this content also directly aligns to what the psts may teach in secondary schools. joyce: well, i believe that we must wrestle with the question of where to begin our psts’ experience of mathematics from a social justice lens. as a lecturer, my experience has been teaching mathematics to students who are novices in their mathematical journey. in fact, these courses are similar to the level of mathematics that the majority of psts will teach in schools. i feel that it is at this level of mcleman & piert social justice mathematical journey stinson, d. w., & spencer, j. a. (eds.). (2013). privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators [special issue]. journal of urban mathematics education, 6(1). 78 mathematics education (intermediate algebra, college algebra, pre-calculus, and, perhaps, calculus i) that students need to have the experience of learning mathematics from a social justice lens. for the psts who start their mathematical careers in these earlier classes, they would have as a point of reference those experiences in the mathematics courses that are taught from a social justice lens. these earlier experiences could have a positive impact on mathematics methods courses, in that less time would need to be spent on the introduction of this ideology and more time could be devoted to the methodology of creating lessons for social justice prior to a student teaching field experience. yet, thinking about how to instruct abstract algebra from a social justice lens leaves me perplexed. however, i do feel that drawing from the tenets of ethnomathematics (d’ambrosio, 1985) and showing how mathematics of this caliber was/has been discovered and used in non-western societies and that elements of these mathematical concepts had their genesis with these diverse groups would benefit psts greatly. laura: i agree that we need to teach the courses you mention through a lens of social justice, but we still need to consider what mathematics courses our psts would take. i’m not sure that a lot of our psts would start at the levels you mentioned … well, maybe calculus i. so perhaps we could just focus on what curriculum would look like for a calculus i course. and then maybe, as you said earlier, if we provide our psts social justice mathematics opportunities early in their program, they could begin to develop the disposition to question and challenge how social justice fits within their the mathematics classes later in their mathematical journey. joyce: reminiscing on my experience as a preservice teacher taking mathematics courses, i actually began my coursework with pre-calculus; that is why i suggested beginning with those specific earlier courses. however, i think that precalculus and/or calculus i could be a good place to start our work. another option might be to undertake a mission of sorts, to have the students of higher-level mathematics courses (as part of course requirements) create their own projects for social justice that utilizes mathematical concepts. at the very least, we could create an upper-level mathematics course that could be offered as an elective, in which the primary focus would consist of developing mathematical models for social justice. doing so would “kill two birds with one stone:” students could discover for themselves how to link social justice to the mathematical concepts taught, and we could collect a repertoire of instructional materials to incorporate in future courses or even refine for other courses. i am all in favor of developing a social justice curriculum for calculus i. another thought: what about creating an interdisciplinary course, partnering with colleagues in the sociology department for example, that would be eligible for mcleman & piert social justice mathematical journey stinson, d. w., & spencer, j. a. (eds.). (2013). privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators [special issue]. journal of urban mathematics education, 6(1). 79 general education credit? the purpose of this course could be to look at critical social problems and current challenges (be it, political, social, economic…national and global) and to create mathematical models and develop sociological paths towards solutions to these problems from a grassroots perspective. reflection as professionals who believe that our job is to change the paradigm of teaching and learning mathematics, it is clear throughout our conversation that we are grappling with what courses should be included in our psts’ mathematical journey to help them become agents of change, and further where to begin this journey. we started the conversation from different perspectives, each taking into account the level of mathematics that we teach. upon reflection, though, this difference is not surprising given that the merging of a variety of viewpoints is, at its core, a communication one. however, we find numerous strengths in our communication. first, we were not afraid to start a dialogue around a difficult question, although we didn’t know where it would lead. second, all the thoughts and contributions put forth were not only valued but also respectfully challenged. finally, the conversation continued to evolve and develop until both of us were standing on (or somewhere close to) mutual ground. while our conversation regarding the instruction of all college-level mathematics courses is still ongoing, the process of sharing our thoughts helped us identify a starting point for how we could begin to integrate social justice into the mathematical journey of our psts. more importantly, our dialogue served as a springboard to move us forward from theory to reality. using others’ work as a starting point (e.g., staples, 2005), we are now working on the design of a calculus i course that focuses primarily on issues of social justice. this beginning is an important implication as this is new territory for us; one we have not travelled before and do not have a prescribed template from which to work. however, we now understand that we cannot have answers to all our questions before we jump in to this uncertain domain. although the fear of not possessing the “right” knowledge is very much a reality for us, in order to help our psts rethink mathematics—and in order for us to rethink mathematics ourselves—we realize that we must take a leap. we hope that others who are also considering challenging the purpose of collegiate mathematics teaching and learning will take the leap with us, and that we can learn from each other. references d’ambrosio, u. (1985). ethnomathematics and its place in the history and pedagogy of mathematics. for the learning of mathematics, 5, 44–48. mcleman & piert social justice mathematical journey stinson, d. w., & spencer, j. a. (eds.). (2013). privilege and oppression in the mathematics preparation of teacher educators [special issue]. journal of urban mathematics education, 6(1). 80 de freitas, e., & zolkower, b. (2009). using social semiotics to prepare mathematics teachers to teach for social justice. journal of mathematics teacher education, 12, 187–203. foote, m. q., & bartell, t. g. (2011). pathways to equity in mathematics education: how life experiences impact researcher positionality. educational studies in mathematics, 78, 45–68. freire, p. (2000). pedagogy of the oppressed (m. b. ramos, trans.; 30th anniv. ed.). new york, ny: continuum. (original work published 1970). gutstein, e. (2006). reading and writing the world with mathematics: toward a pedagogy for social justice. new york, ny: routledge. staples, m. (2005). integrals and equity. in e. gutstein & b. peterson (eds.), rethinking mathematics: teaching social justice by the numbers (pp. 103–106). milwaukee, wi: rethinking schools. 78 difficult conversations: lessons learnt from a diversity programme for pre-service teachers adré le roux university of the free state percy mdunge university of the free state premised on the notion that any educational programme for pre-service teachers pursues excellence in both academics and social justice, teacher educators must capacitate student teachers to work in areas of social justice. pre-service teachers must subsequently be assisted to become professionally qualified teachers who are prepared to move outside their contingent practices and assumptions to recognise and counteract oppressive practices, especially their own. however, to get pre-service teachers to challenge their own assumptions, to question what they know and to seek new understandings involves entering a field that contains complex, incongruous and even conflicting perspectives. in this reflective article we draw on our reflective notes, our observation and student journals to reflect on the lessons we have learnt from a diversity programme offered to final-year pre-service teachers. this article not only foregrounds how teaching for social justice is partial, but also makes room for considering some implications for teacher education. keywords: pre-service teachers, diversity programme, difficult conversations, social justice education, anti-oppressive education, oppression, teacher education introduction framed within the context of a progressive constitution (1996), social justice is regarded as a worthy national goal to bring about a south african society in which individuals are able to develop their full capacity and to interact democratically with others. the centrality of social justice in theorising about education and schooling is underscored by the department of education’s commitment to [n]ew education and training policies to address the legacies of under-development and inequitable development and provide learning opportunities for all [that] will be based principally on the constitutional guarantees of equal educational rights for all persons and non-discrimination (department of education, 1995: chapter 3, section 16). south african teachers are subsequently called upon to focus on classroom pedagogies and practices that seek to deal with and combat different forms of oppression such as racism, sexism and heterosexism (bell, 2007; francis & hemson, 2007). however, a recent report on south african education indicates that the system not only “generally produces outcomes that reinforce current patterns of poverty and privilege”, but there also seems to be little evidence of education challenging and transforming the apartheid socialera structure (van der berg, burger c, burger r, de vos, du rand, gustafsson, moses, shepherd, spaull, taylor, van broekhuizen & von fintel 2011:3). whilst it can be assumed that various forms of oppression still play out in south african classrooms, the role of teacher education institutions in capacitating preservice teachers to work in areas of social justice is foregrounded. as national policy requires all teachers to be socially just teachers, teacher education institutions must assist pre-service teachers to conceptualise and understand the dynamics of oppression, and to think and articulate how they will counteract oppression (kumashiro, 2002). the onus on teacher education to perceive schooling as a social project aimed at bringing about a more just society foregrounds the aim of this article, in which we, as two teacher educators, reflect on the lessons we have learnt from a diversity 79le roux & mdunge — difficult conversations programme introduced to final year b.ed. foundation phase pre-service teachers. it is our contention that a reflection on our missteps and triumphs of our teaching for social justice will strengthen our ongoing attempt to create a space for pre-service teachers to develop an awareness of oppression, to question their own motives and assumptions, and to trouble the many approaches to challenge oppression in and beyond their future classrooms. in addition to the lessons we have learnt from our experience with the programme, we also indicate what should be considered when we think about teacher education. the programme background and rationale as with other institutions of higher education in south africa, the university of the free state was also compelled to reconsider its undergraduate programmes within the context of the newly enacted national policy on the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (department of higher education and training, 2011). opting for an in-depth reconsideration of its programmes, the ufs faculty of education worked with the assumption that pre-service teachers must ultimately engage in schooling as both an academic and a social project (nieto & bode, 2008:10; kumashiro, 2002:13). the re-curriculation process was the opportune time to consider a module based on the premise that for pre-service teachers to enter the individual maturity process of professional identity construction, they first need to understand and challenge their own multiple identities (bell & griffin, 2007). it is assumed that, by starting to challenge their own multiple identities, pre-service teachers will gradually become professionally qualified teachers who are prepared to move outside their contingent practices and assumptions to recognise and counteract oppressive practices, especially their own (kumashiro, 2002:1). we realised that the cohort of current students have had limited opportunity to engage with their own multiple identities and to reflect on how their own stereotypical beliefs can contribute to the marginalisation of learners. a request to work on issues of diversity with the final-year pre-service teachers resulted in a 7-week programme (1 period of 50 minutes per week) for the foundation phase students. this article is based on our reflection of this particular programme, and insights gained will be used to inform the presentation of the same programme for intermediate phase and further education and training phase students. in addition to creating the space for students to engage in issues of diversity, the programme also afforded us the opportunity to pilot some of the ideas conceptualised for inclusion in our new undergraduate teacher education programme. themes and conceptual lenses during the conceptualisation of the programme and having to decide what frameworks to introduce, we drew on adams, bell and griffin’s (2007) editorial work, teaching for diversity and social justice. although we gained valuable ideas from this source, it was important to frame our programme within the south african context. we wanted our students not to work with issues related to sexism, heterosexism and racism divorced from their own diverse contexts and real-life experiences; rather, we wanted them to start to question their own assumptions about what they regard as ‘normal’ and how their sense of ‘normalcy’ can be complicit with the marginalisation of those learners who are regarded as ‘other’ than the norm. the decision to work with sexism, heterosexism and racism was due to time constraints and is not meant to centralise these issues within the broader context of various forms of oppression. we also acknowledge that marginalisation involves, inter alia, learners from underor unemployed families, learners with disabilities and learners with non-christian religious backgrounds. in addition to working with three themes only, we also realised that we had little time and space to endlessly engage in students learning about and inventing strategies to counter oppression across the foundation phase grade levels and the content areas in which they will be required to work. we had to be realistic and settled on two broad programme outcomes, namely to get the students to start to engage with their own multiple identities and to develop an awareness of oppression and the myriad ways in which it can play out in classrooms. we 80 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 wanted to create the space for our pre-service teachers to scrutinise their own stance to and assumptions about diversity issues (kumashiro & ngo, 2007:x). in order for students to engage with and make sense of the three themes, especially in terms of where their own perceptions and prejudices come from, harro’s cycle of socialisation (harro, 2010) was introduced as a conceptual framework. since the programme was structured in terms of several conceptual organisers and for the students to become familiar with this basic conceptual vocabulary, we drew on hardiman and jackson’s (2007:35-48) theory of oppression. we wanted our students to become conversant with concepts such as agents, targets, privilege, disadvantage, internalised domination, internalised subordination and various forms of horizontal and vertical oppression. assumptions and identities although we agree with kumashiro and ngo (2007) that any approach and practice to work with issues of diversity is partial as it has both strengths and weaknesses, we premised the programme on the assumption that any programme makes some learning and change possible. hence, the position from which we approached our engagement with issues of diversity in our conversations with our students is also the standpoint from which we write this article to reflect on the partiality of our programme; thus to reflect on the lessons we learnt from entering a field that contains complex and conflicting perspectives (kumashiro & ngo, 2007:xix). we knew from the outset that with a diversity programme we were about to enter an uncertain space to which our students bring their own experiences, understandings and socialisations. although we, as facilitators, share the same basic values and commitment to teach about power and privilege in relation to the intersections of, inter alia, gender, sexuality and race, we also enter the programme with our own multiple identities and personal experiences. it is subsequently important to introduce our identities: adré is a middle-aged white female who was raised in a middle-class family during apartheid, buttressed in the comfort of white innocence. working in higher education, she came to the project of teaching for social justice with the realisation that if we want teachers to disrupt the cycle of oppression, pre-service teachers must be assisted to understand oppression and to explore the possibilities that exist for social responsiveness and change within the school context. percy is a 25-year old african male who was raised in a working-class family. during the first year of his training as an undergraduate student he enrolled for an elective module on diversity, and since then his own learning has been dedicated towards teaching for social justice. despite our different identities, we share the same optimism that we could make a difference and, like north (2009:3), we regard our inadvertent biases as inescapable part of the human experience which could, through our interactions with our students, also be exposed to enable us to work through them. our approach, student composition and ethical considerations in our teaching approach we adopted a collaborative facilitation style characterised by informal dialogue and reflexivity, and centred on the notions of care and compassion. whilst explicitly attempting to connect class conversation to our everyday life experience and that of our students, we constantly tried to get them to challenge their own assumptions, to question what they know and to seek new understandings (landis, 2008). due to the institution’s language policy, all lectures are offered on a parallel-medium basis in both afrikaans and english (cf. www.ufs.ac.za). by implication, the 7 periods resulted into 7 sessions for afrikaans-speaking and 7 sessions for english-speaking students. as we collaboratively facilitated all sessions, we constantly engaged in code-switching. although percy only conversed with the students in english, afrikaans-speaking students were encouraged to present their views in afrikaans, with adré translating into english. although we were initially concerned that this approach might inhibit some students to express their views, it was well received: although communication took place in afrikaans and english, it never bothered me. i never felt that i didn’t want to participate in the discussions because of the english. [s24] 81le roux & mdunge — difficult conversations the student composition itself posed certain challenges: all of the 91 final-year b.ed. foundation phase students are females. the lack of diverse voices was further exacerbated by the fact that 86 of the students are white, 3 coloured and 1 african. of the students, 77 are afrikaans-speaking, while 14 are englishspeaking. as percy was the only black male voice in class, we had to ensure that his contributions and narratives were not perceived as representative of all black males. although class attendance is compulsory, not all students attended the sessions on a regular basis, presumably because the sessions did not involve formal assessment. another contributing factor to nonattendance might be a growing feeling of discomfort with new forms of knowledge. kumashiro (2002:6) notices that, although students desire to learn, their belief for normalcy and the affirmation that they do not oppress others often lead to a desire for the repetition of silence regarding difficult issues such as racism, sexism and heterosexism. students were required to keep a journal in which they reflected on their feelings and learning gains from each session. as this article is, in addition to our own experiences of and reflective notes on the sessions, also based on data drawn from students’ journals, we sought and gained permission from the students whose journal entries we report. to protect their identity, no pseudonyms are used; rather, we opted for a reference system whereby students were randomly assigned numbers. lessons learnt: missteps and triumphs our reflection is premised on the belief that we can learn from our students, but also from one another as we bring different experiences and knowledge to our collaborative attempt to work towards social justice. in the next section we reflect on our missteps and indicate how they make room for doing things differently. we also highlight some students’ new realisations and unlearning. this reflection highlights two important aspects of teaching for social justice, namely the partiality of any programme and the partiality of our own teaching and learning. they wanted classroom strategies; we expected them to challenge their prejudices our intention with the programme was for our students to develop a basic understanding of how oppression works and to start to challenge their own assumptions and prejudices. although we realised that due to time constraints it would not be possible to explore strategies to interrupt various forms of oppression, we hoped that the students would develop a commitment to become teachers who will actively and audaciously seek and come up with their own strategies to counter oppression. however, it soon became evident that many students were less interested in challenging their own assumptions and prejudices; rather, they wanted us to give them strategies for classroom practice: i feel the classes could have been better used for techniques about how to teach. [s21] some students were also of the opinion that the topics themselves are problematic in that they are not suitable for discussion in the foundation phase: today we spoke about homosexuality. i think this topic must not be shared with foundations phase learners. these learners are still too small and they will get confused. [s19] although we conceptualised the outcomes for the programme beforehand, we failed to clearly communicate the outcomes for the programme, in general, and for each session, in particular. we soon realised that the students entered the programme expecting to be taught certain strategies to become better teachers. this expectation could also have been fed by the fact that the allocated periods were part of a year module that primarily focuses on teaching practice, including various teaching strategies. as we realised that some students thought that we expected them to actually teach topics such as sexism, heterosexism and racism in their foundation phase classes, we were under no illusion that the outcomes were not going to be reached by many of the students. in an attempt to help our students notice how they themselves were socialised by powerful forces to take up particular roles and to find connection with real-life experiences, 82 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 we continuously referred them to the cycle of socialisation. we hoped that they would realise how they, as future foundation phase teachers, will not only contribute to the socialisation of their learners, but that they can make a conscious decision to interrupt the cycle of oppression and stand up for change (harro, 2010:51). however, some persisted: i feel the classes were an absolute waste of time. i didn’t learn anything. i feel that our time could have been used in better ways. for e.g., they could have offered classes to teach us techniques. [s16] although we will in future set out the outcomes for the programme from the outset and continuously remind our students thereof, we also have to accept that we cannot prepare our students to respond in certain ways. outcomes may serve as guidelines and reminders, but we will have to consciously remind ourselves that our students will respond differently since they use different lenses to make sense and react to what they learn (kumashiro, 2004:112). but, as with all approaches to counteract the many forms of oppression, our programme also opened new spaces for some students: i learnt a lot about myself and my eyes were opened regarding prejudice and stereotyping on my behalf that i never knew was there. now that i am nearing the time to get my degree and become a teacher, i realise the big responsibility i have to teach these young impressionable minds. [s3] the diverse reactions of our students underscore the partial nature of the knowledge they bring to class and how our own views regarding issues of diversity have strengths and weaknesses. however, we soon realised what obear (2007) meant by her comment that “facilitating dialogues about issues of diversity, inclusion and equity can be challenging and stressful work”. racism as a major trigger literature on teaching for social justice is interspersed with reflections on how the introduction of issues of race, class and gender and concomitant oppression “often generates powerful emotional responses in students that range from guilt and shame to anger and despair” (tatum, 1992:1-2; north, 2009). when conceptualising the programme, we discussed the possibility of racism as a trigger event that might evoke strong emotional responses from our students. given the legacy of our racialised past and the emotional reaction often evoked when referring to racism, we decided to first deal with sexism and heterosexism before tackling racism. thus, while we expected race and racism to be a trigger event later in the programme, we were not entirely prepared for our students’ resistance after two periods into the programme. apparently, the lodging of a formal complaint was triggered by the introduction of the theory of oppression; more specifically, reference to white people as agents and black people as targets triggered an almost instantaneous emotional response from some students. unlike our teaching and learning manager who was concerned with a grievance procedure that was set into motion, we were cautiously excited about the new space the students opened. we did not prepare the students for feelings of discomfort we realised that the complaint came from a position of white privilege, but also stemmed from a feeling of guilt. most students equate racism with apartheid, and by claiming that they were not part of apartheid, they work with the assumption that racism ended with the abolishment of apartheid itself. they subsequently find it difficult to recognise their own privilege and to reflect on the possibility that they might unconsciously discriminate in their classes on the basis of race: racism is not something we like to talk about because it is made such a big thing, but we didn’t really live in that time … it is no longer a problem. [s13] the students’ response to the issues of race and racism reminded us of kumashiro’s (2002:4) statement that 83le roux & mdunge — difficult conversations the desire to learn only what is comforting goes hand in hand with a resistance to learning what is discomforting and this resistance often proves to be a formidable barrier to movements towards social justice. whilst the latter was reflected in some journals where students indicated that they have learnt nothing from the programme, we realised that we did not prepare our students for the discomfort they might experience during the programme nor for the possibility of being pushed from their comfort zones, and how to make sense of their discomfort when this happens. to make use of this new space our students created, the programme was put on hold and the concepts of comfort zones, learning edges and triggers were discussed (hardiman & jackson, 2007). the students were encouraged to reflect on discussions in the programme that made them feel uncomfortable. the aim of this session was to help them understand how one is often pushed from a comfort zone when new information is discussed. words and phrases may serve as triggers to stimulate emotional responses. finding oneself on the edge of one’s comfort zone, there is a choice: one may choose to resist the new information, or one could seize the opportunity to expand one’s understanding. we realised that, if this conversation took place during the first session, concepts such as comfort zones, learning edges and triggers could have served as guides for our students. although we will in future prepare our students from the outset for discomfort and unexpected emotional reactions they may encounter during the programme, having this conversation at a ‘late’ stage of the programme was not ‘too’ late: i was also first upset with some of the things we discussed, but when the lecturers explain it in such a way [comfort zones, learning edges and triggers], i had a better understanding ... we can only benefit from it and it will not only enrich you as a person, but as a teacher. [s36] we were too focused on introducing basic conceptual vocabulary once we identified the theory of oppression as the major triggering event, we realised that we were so focused on introducing the basic conceptual vocabulary that we never engaged in a critical discussion of the theory itself. as with all theories, this theory also has its strengths and weaknesses and it was not our intention to present it as a ‘grand theory’. rather, we wanted the theory to provide our students with a lens through which to examine and better understand how oppression operates as a system that maintains advantage and disadvantage based on social group memberships (hardiman & jackson, 2007:58). however, given the defensiveness with which some students responded to the theory, we realised that they perceived the theory as our perception of an ‘absolute truth’: i was very uncomfortable in this class and felt like they want to force a certain feeling and way of being onto us. i do not think their information is very accurate. [s16] in future we will explain the role of theories, in general, and then enter into a critical discussion about the theory of oppression, in particular. it is important for the students to understand that a theory can serve as a helpful conceptual framework to make sense and meaning of new information and awareness. no theory should, however, be uncritically accepted, and a critical discussion of the theory can help students work through their own perceptions of new historical conditions in post-apartheid south africa. navigating and managing our own triggers in our attempt to make sense of our students’ response, we first reflected on our reaction and feelings to the complaint. as facilitators, we also bring to the learning environment our own fears, stereotypes, memories of past traumas and current experiences, and we were unexpectedly triggered by the students’ defensiveness. obear (2007:23) argues that triggering events can be effectively navigated, providing that facilitators are prepared to “effectively manage themselves when they are triggered so that they both model the skills and attitudes they are teaching in the session”. it was subsequently imperative for us to reflect on our own emotions before we continued to work with our students. 84 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 unlike percy who immediately connected the complaint to the possibility of him being black, adré did not even consider her whiteness as a reason for the complaint. whilst the timing of the complaint was unexpected, she was not surprised at the complaint itself, nor at the reasons offered for the complaint. working with issues of whiteness in her own research, she understood and expected that part of the privilege of being white is that one could choose not to hear and not to know (steyn, 2001:9). however, she discovered within herself a hint of impatience with some students’ commitment to not critically interrogate how their own prejudices can feed into contemporary reification and replication of injustices. in this regard, she realised that she has to intentionally navigate her impatience so as not to compromise the upholding of the principle ‘not to harm’. percy’s lived experiences regarding issues of race and racism influenced the manner in which he reacted. having experienced and witnessed racist situations in the past, it was an immediate trigger to see students shying away from discussing racism based on their claim that we are now all equal. the students’ complaint subsequently led to a feeling of guilt as he reflected on questions such as: “had i made the students feel guilty for the continued existence of racism?”; “was my identity as a black person in any way evoking discomfort among the students when it comes to discussing issues of race?”. this led to the realisation that it is important to constantly affirm that they cannot take responsibility for the existence of oppression (harro, 2010), but that at the same time they need to be motivated to work towards challenging its continued existence. not all was always civil landis (2008:i) argues that the art to respectfully argue, including the effort to find mutual solutions, seems to be in trouble. when working with challenging content, we knew that care should be taken that students are not marginalised for their conflicting perspectives. in order to create a space in which students could feel safe to express their opinions, they were asked to collaboratively identify guidelines for class discussions (hardiman & jackson, 2007:54). although the aim of these discussion guidelines was to help with the development of trust and safety, we made the mistake in assuming that the mere identification of such guidelines was sufficient. we did not engage the students in a discussion of each guideline, nor were they asked to identify indicators for each guideline. although the conversations during the sessions evoked conflicting responses, we never experienced any emotional outbursts that spiralled into destructive class discussions. we thought all was well and only reminded the students of the discussion guidelines when they were asked to talk about their own feelings of discomfort. it was only during the final session and while working through the journals that we realised things were not as civil as we thought: unpleasant things that came to the fore during the sessions were that some opinions in class caused friction amongst the students ... some lectures have caused the group to be torn into two. [s39] journal entries reflecting the difficulty some students experienced when they were criticised and labelled after class for their opinions made us realise that we did not provide sufficient support for them to move into the contradiction phase. bell and griffin (2007:76) explain the contradiction phase as the phase in which activities encourage students to not only take risks, but also resist the tendency to relieve uncomfortable moments in class. so what will we need to do different? we will spend more time on the discussion guidelines, ensuring that students really understand the meaning of each guideline. we will visually display the guidelines during each session and remind the students thereof. we hope that the combination of these guidelines with the preparation of the students for feelings of discomfort might make it easier for them to express their own confusion and to reflect on their own struggle with complicated issues as they arise. despite some students feeling judged by fellow students for their opinions, most students expressed an appreciation for the informal approach: i enjoyed being actively involved during each session. it was nice to engage in discussions, to argue at times, to share opinions ... the facilitators treated us as equals and they respected our opinions. [s28] 85le roux & mdunge — difficult conversations however, not all students enjoyed hearing different opinions and some perceived conflicting opinions in a negative light. we were somewhat surprised by this, especially as we thought we succeeded in effectively dealing with controversy: about every time that the class took part in discussions it turned into a negative discussion because students disagree about things and then it made the class very unpleasant. [s17] as we accept that part of our task is to “show students how to transcend the boundaries of their own perceptions, and engage respectfully with new ideas” (landis, 2008:i), we realised that we need to make sense of these negative experiences. from the journal entries it was evident that the students are more used to classes where the lecturing style requires them to be mostly passive recipients. it was noticeable how most students expressed their appreciation for a space in which they felt their opinions were respected and they were treated as equals. however, students who feel safer in what is perceived to be a ‘pleasant’ space where all are in agreement may feel threatened when different perspectives challenge the frameworks they use to affirm their own identities and knowledge. it is this desire for certainty that often compels students to resist learning something that disrupts their common-sense view of the world (kumashiro, 2004). in reflection, we realised that, although our programme will necessarily disrupt what our students perceive as certain, we need to constantly think of different and innovative ways in which we can make our programme inclusive for all voices to be heard. implications for teacher education this article affirms our understanding that, as teaching for social justice is always partial, we as teacher educators are required to be continuously reflexive about how our own teaching and learning are partial. in addition, the lessons we have learnt also highlight some implications for the inclusion of social justice education in initial teacher education (ite). any programme for ite should foremost be informed by the link between the constitutionally protected right to education and the development imperative whereby teachers, among others, are required to “free the potential of each person” (rsa, 1996: preamble). within the context of teacher education, pre-service teachers must be capacitated to advance the “acquisition, integration and application of different types of knowledge practices or learning” (dhet, 2011: section 3), and to confront inequalities and stratification in schools that hamper the freeing of all learners’ potential. the imperative for teacher education to include social justice education is underscored by kollapen’s (2006) argument that the realisation of the right to education, thus the freeing of everybody’s potential, is a precondition to creating “the conditions for the attainment of substantive equality and social justice”. the dual purpose of schooling, namely the pursuit of excellence in academic and social justice (kumashiro, 2004), subsequently highlights the challenge for teacher education programmes to not only find a balance between the two goals, but also strengthen their interconnection. our pre-service teachers’ expectation to be taught strategies to be ‘good teachers’ and their desire for pleasant spaces where all are in agreement highlight the tendency of teacher education programmes to focus on producing “technicists who may be able to replicate performance in similar contexts, but who are severely challenged when the context changes” (dhet, 2011: section 3). as south african education is still producing unequal learning outcomes that reinforce patterns of poverty and privilege (van den berg et al., 2011), teacher education should adopt a systematic approach to critically consider how pedagogy and curriculum are infused with values of social justice. as teacher educators, we should remain reflexive about the way in which the curriculum prepares pre-service teachers to become professional teachers who offer rigorous education of high quality, whilst simultaneously being responsive to the economic, social and political conditions in schools and society that inexorably affect the lives of our learners (nieto & bode, 2008). as such, modules on social justice should not be treated as merely in addition to or as addons in the pursuit of competence in teaching subjects. rather, we argue for the inclusion of modules in teacher education programmes that not only address education for social justice as deeply inscribed habits of feeling and thinking shaped by discursive habits (petrovic & rosiek, 2003), but also infuse pedagogy and curriculum across the board with values of fairness, respect, dignity and generosity. teaching for 86 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 social justice should therefore not be confined to so-called social justice modules and programmes; rather, it is important that all teacher educators become allies in the quest to deliver socially just teachers “who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others, their society, and the broader society in which we live” (bell, 2007:1-2). the disjunction experienced by some of our pre-service teachers between their perceived non-sense and the relevance of our diversity programme stresses the need for teacher education to strengthen the interface between professional identity construction and the development of agency for change. as a dynamic process that begins during teacher education, teacher professional identity construction involves and evolves the way in which pre-service teachers start to imagine themselves as future professionals (beijaard, verloop & vermunt, 2000:750). whilst teacher education sets this individual maturity process into motion, a teacher education programme informed by a meaningful balance between teaching for academic excellence and teaching for social justice has the potential to affect pre-service teachers’ ability to start to imagine themselves as agents of change. it is assumed that, when the process of professional identity construction remains informed by pedagogy of reasoning and action for academic achievement and for social justice, pre-service teachers will become action-oriented professional teachers who are prepared to use power and influence to make decisions that affect positive social change (moore, 2007:592). references bell la 2007. theoretical foundations for social justice education. in m adams, la bell & p griffin (eds), teaching for diversity and social justice. new york: routledge, 1-14. bell la & griffin p 2007. designing social justice education courses. in m adams, la bell & p griffin (eds), teaching for diversity and social justice. new york: routledge, 67-87. beijaard d, meijer pc & verloop n. 2004. reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. teacher and teaching education, 20:107-128. department of education 1995. white paper on education and training. pretoria: government printers. department of higher education and training 2011. the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications. pretoria: government printers. francis d & hemson c 2007. rainbow’s end: consciousness and enactment in social justice education. perspectives in education, 25(1):99-112. hardiman r & jackson b 2007. conceptual foundations for social justice education. in m adams, la bell & p griffin (eds), teaching for diversity and social justice. new york: routledge, 35-48. harro b 2010. the cycle of socialization. in m adams, wj blumenfield, c castaňeda, hw hackman, ml peters & x zύňiga (eds), readings for diversity and social justice. new york: routledge, 45-51. kollapen j 2006. school violence. opening address at a public hearing (transcription), 28 september. kumashiro kk 2002. troubling education: queer activism and anti-oppressive pedagogy. new york: routledgefalmer. kumashiro kk 2004. uncertain beginnings: learning to teach paradoxically. theory into practice, 43(20):112-115. kumashiro kk & ngo b (eds) 2007. six lenses for anti-oppressive education. new york: peter lang. landis k (ed) 2008. start talking. a handbook for engaging difficult dialogues in higher education. anchorage: university of alaska anchorage and alaska pacific university. moore f 2007. agency, identity and social justice education: pre-service teachers’ thoughts on becoming agents of change in urban elementary science classrooms. research in science education, 38:589610. nieto s & bode p 2008. affirming diversity. the socio-political context of multicultural education. 5th edition. boston, ma: pearson. north ce 2009. teaching for social justice? voices from the front lines. london: paradigm publishers. obear k 2007. navigating triggering events: critical skills for facilitating difficult dialogues. generational diversity, 15(30):23-29. 87le roux & mdunge — difficult conversations petrovic j & rosiek j 2003. heteronormative subjectivities of christian pre-service teachers. equity and excellence in education, 36:161-169. republic of south africa 1996. the constitution of the republic of south africa. pretoria: government printer. steyn m 2001. whiteness just isn’t what it used to be. new york: state university of new york press. tatum bd 1992. talking about racism, learning about racism: the application of racial identity development theory in the classroom. harvard educational review, 62(1):1-24. van den berg s, burger c, burger r, de vos m, du rand g, gustafsson m, moses e, shepherd d, spaull n, taylor s, van broekhuizen h & von fintel d 2011. low quality education as a poverty trap. stellenbosch: university of stellenbosch. 10 doing justice to social justice in south african higher education masebala tjabane vaal university of technology venitha pillay university of pretoria “if you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come to help me because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together” lila watson, aboriginal australian. this paper attempts to develop a conceptualisation of social justice in higher education based on a close reading of the current literature in the field. an important assumption we make is that higher education is a valuable mechanism for social justice. we set the literature against policy documents that detail south african aspirations with regard to the achievement of social justice goals. our aim is to stimulate debate on and engagement with issues of social justice in the local and global context that continues to manifest increasing socio-economic injustices. we argue that human liberation from global social injustice is intertwined at the individual and collective level and that it requires a collective human agency inherent in the radical tradition of social justice, which exhibits impressive credentials for facilitating the achievement of social justice. introduction this paper attempts to develop a conceptualisation of social justice in higher education based on a close reading of the current literature in the field. we argue that social justice is an important mandate of higher education in south africa (sa) as a developing democracy (waghid, 2008: 20). furthermore, higher education is particularly positioned in this context to produce higher knowledge that is responsive to its milieu (morrow, 2009: 113). finally we show that the quest for social justice is intertwined with the academic tradition of critique and the purpose of seeking just futures for the common good, and that the urgency for this is increasing in the context of the current economic recession and a general socioeconomic environment that appears to be hostile to radically informed strategies. methodology this paper emerged from a doctoral study on social justice, entitled higher education policy and social justice: a south african case study (tjabane 2010). the research questions that guided the study sought to address the marginalisation of the social justice agenda in higher education and focused specifically on three aspects of social justice, namely access into higher education, gender and hiv/aids. the focus of this paper is not on the findings of the study, but the central analytic point of the thesis that there is need for the revival of a social justice agenda in higher education institutions. the paper offers a brief overview of current debates on social justice and proceeds to examine efforts in sa to achieve the goals of social justice through education, largely through an examination of south african education policy documents and current literature that seeks to address issues of social justice in a post apartheid sa. literature overview social justice is a contested concept in theory and practice, with various definitions. in this article, we adopt the position of gerwitz (2002) who advances a plural conception of social justice. hence social 11tjabane & pillay— doing justice to social justice in south africa higher education 11 justice is viewed as possessing a variety of facets that entail the equal redistribution of socio-economic amenities, as well as the recognition and promotion of difference and cultural diversity (gerwitz & gribb, 2002: 499; taylor, 1997: 128). plural conceptions of social justice enlarge the agenda of such justice, the complexity and multiplicity of which has been an issue of concern throughout modern civilisation. its ancestry lies in the enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality of all humankind. in modern times, the literature refers to three traditions of social justice: the conservative, the liberal and the radical. the conservative tradition of social justice the conservative tradition of social justice originated among classical economists and advocates of enlightenment projects, such as adam smith (1723–1790) (1776) and hayek (1899-1992) (1848), whose common belief was that government should follow a laissez-faire economic policy (hill, 2003: 3). for its upholders the driving force for a socially just society is individual self-interest and the motivation for profit, operating under a laissez-faire economic policy (rizvi, 1998; starr, 1999). robert nozick (1929 2002) can be regarded as an embodiment of the conservative tradition in the field of political and moral philosophy during the latter half of the 20th century (feser, 2005; otsuka, 2005). nozick’s theory regarding political and economic ethics is based on libertarian ideals and he is renowned for the “entitlement theory of justice” in which he vindicates right-wing libertarianism and the advancement of individual rights of control over one’s own mind, body, and life: a right to self-ownership (feser, 2005: 20; otsuka, 2005: 15). the centrality of self as the means to social justice, and the progress of the self as the goal of social justice are embedded in the views of both adam smith and nozick . the conservative tradition and its ideals, particularly libertarianism, would not be palatable to socialist-minded thinkers,. the position of the conservative tradition on social justice is a direct opposite of collective effort portrayed in the aboriginal statement reproduced above. despite its support of inequality, however, this tradition continues to exist alongside the liberal and radical traditions of social justice in a context of tension between individual competition and communal cooperation. the liberal tradition of social justice the liberal tradition is associated with the egalitarian position of ‘justice as fairness’ and the liberal principles of equality and freedom. the liberal tradition’s point of convergence with the conservative tradition lies in the belief that social justice can be attained within the existing capitalist socio-economic framework. it differs, however, from the conservative tradition with regard to its position vis-âvis the role of the state. the liberal tradition favours the role of the state as a protector of society and regulator of markets for the promotion of egalitarian principles, while the conservative tradition favours a weak, aloof state (rizvi, 1998; starr, 1999). in this liberal tradition, social justice would require redistribution to those who lack the basic socio-economic amenities, while emphasising the role of the state in ensuring this redistribution (gale, 2000: 268). the roots of the liberal tradition of social justice are found in the moral and political philosophy of 17th century theorists and the ideals of the enlightenment. john locke (1632-1704) is one of the seminal thinkers of the liberal tradition(schwartz, 2007: 2; tuckness, 2005: 1). locke also exerted an influence on other enlightenment philosophers, such as kant (1724 – 1804) who was a central figure in the philosophy of the enlightenment, and who defines enlightenment as the maxim of always thinking for oneself and finding just solutions. (uzgalis, 2007: 21). during the 20th century john rawls (1921-2002) emerged as yet another liberal social scientist and philosopher who championed freedom and equality equally in advancing the position of justice as fairness, with almost similar tones to kant. (rawls, 1971: 302-303). the premise of rawls’ “justice as fairness” is the creation of a more open society based on egalitarian social justice. rawls has been hailed as one of the most influential and enduring moral philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries (nussbaum, 2001: 1). commentators on the conservative and liberal traditions, rizvi (1998) and starr (1999), classify them under the modernisation paradigm and neo-liberal philosophy. the education reform policies informed by the said paradigm advance the human capital position on education, where education is viewed as 12 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201112 an investment, and maintain that justice can be attained and individuals can be enabled to utilise their education in an open market society, by distributing the same amount of social good (education) to people of all classes (whitty, 2000: 93). human capital investments generate monetary and social returns and perceive education as a great equaliser. another common description of the proponents of the first and second social justice traditions is the term the new right, or the conservative alliance. according to apple (1993: 11) this social movement consists of three sectors: the neo-liberal, the neo-conservative and religious fundamentalism. in principle, the ideology of the conservative alliance appears to embody social justice, because it appears to preach the message of equality and distribution informed by human rights, which appeals to the marginalised and poor. in practice, however, owing to the unequal nature of capitalism, the distributive element of liberal social justice has come to be translated into the distribution of unequal socio-economic relations, characteristic of capitalism. the radical tradition of social justice continuities exist between the first two, the conservative and the liberal traditions of social justice, and the third (radical) tradition, in their calls for democracy and equal participation in the socio-economic and political activities of the state. the third tradition, which is socialist in its outlook, has been identified by most social scientists as possessing the greatest potential to promote social justice (starr, 1991: 22). it is couched in the language of transformation associated with leftist politics and is critical of conservatism and liberalism. according to this tradition, everyone is supposed to benefit equally from participating in the socio-economic activities and social institutions of a society (starr, 1991: 23), hence the move towards the redistribution of social wealth, other social amenities and a more equitable socio-economic system. the language of a transformation of the capitalist socio-economic order associated with the third tradition emphasises its strong affinity to critical theory and the frankfurt school of thought (kellner 2005: 2). while numerous social theorists are associated with leftist politics and critical theory, of particular relevance to this project are habermas (1984) and freire (2004), because of their clear position on democracy and collective human agency as an element of radical social justice. habermas’ position on social justice is heavily influenced by his belief that justice exists, and that reason or rationality can benefit society through communicative action leading to human emancipation . (habermas, 1984: 86). in this regard, his project could be interpreted as transforming human oppression into an expression of more humane and democratic values through communicative action. the concern of habermas, to open up communication, resonates with paulo freire’s (1927 – 1997) concern with democratic dialogue as a tool to emancipate the oppressed from the debilitating effects of capitalism. freire was critical of capitalism and the resulting crises such as abject oppression and injustices and advanced that it would take critical education to achieve a socialist utopian vision (glass, 2001: 15; morrow & torres, 2002: 11; (gibbon, 2006: 4; mclaren & faramandpur, 2005: 53). according to freire, education for critical consciousness is closely related to the quest for transformation as found in radical social justice. in a third world context, closely similar to that of south africa, freire contends that education could help men and women assume an increasingly critical attitude towards the world in order to transform it (freire, 1974: 30). the pursuit of transformation is crucial to this study. equally important is the concept of mutuality, because for social justice to be a lived reality for all humanity, there has to be mutual human agency. the agenda of the third tradition is much broader, in that it advances social justice beyond redistribution to recognition and absolute freedom. this is embodied in young’s (2000) theory of justice as freedom from the five faces of oppression, namely exploitation, marginalisation, violence, powerlessness and cultural imperialism (young, 1997, as cited in gerwitz, 1998; young, 2000: 35). each of the five faces of oppression represents a form of injustice that a member of society might experience. justice as freedom from the five faces of oppression envisages a society in which socio-economic justice is achieved through the equal redistribution of the resources of society, humane treatment of all, equal recognition of the worth of all members of society, empowerment and celebration of diversity (gerwitz, 1998: 477; young, 13tjabane & pillay— doing justice to social justice in south africa higher education 13 2000: 48). young’s (2000) broad conceptualisation of social justice is constructive, because it improves on a more restrictive liberal and conventional conceptualisation of social justice. in addition to its broad agenda it also encompasses the notion of collective human agency, indicating that human emancipation is closely intertwined with individual liberation, as embodied in the aboriginal maxim cited earlier. social justice and south african policy initiatives in south africa concerns with social justice, in line with the liberal and radical tradition, have always been high on the agenda of the anti-apartheid movement. the dawn of political independence in the 1990s led to a re-emphasis on the social justice agenda in the government’s attempts at nation-building, reconciliation and addressing the injustices of the past. the foundation of the social justice discourse can be traced to the anti-apartheid movements, culminating in the formation of the national education policy investigation (nepi) in the 1990s, a policy initiative informed by a progressive philosophy of education and reform, evident in principles of democracy, non-sexism, non-racism and a unitary system. the nepi-framework could be seen as an attempt to democratise education policy formulation, because its researchers comprised a wide range of people, including political leaders and academic practitioners (chetty, chisholm, mkwanazi, motala & tickly, 1993), who participated in a collective, inclusive process to formulate policy options, taking into account the diversity and multicultural stakeholders of the education enterprise. a plethora of policy documents focusing on transforming and reconstructing higher education has been published since 2000, including the “size and shape”-document: towards a new higher education landscape – meeting the equity, quality and social imperatives of south africa in the 21st century (june 2000), the national plan for higher education (nphe) (february 2001) and the new academic plan for programmes and qualifications in higher education (january 2002). common recurring themes raised in these documents are framed in the language of democracy, transformation, human rights and progressive critical academic culture (white paper, 1995: 11-12, “size and shape”-document, 2000: 24-28). the nphe, for instance, recognises the important role higher education plays in consolidating democracy and social justice, while contributing to socio-economic development (nphe 2001: 6-5). the enhancement of the culture of democracy is closely linked to the promotion of social justice, particularly as the country is an emerging democracy. the founding principles of the south african constitution, particularly the advancement of the culture of human rights and democracy (the south african constitution 1996: 3), are contained in the nphe . in terms of the three traditions of social justice discussed above, the language and tone of the social democratic view appear to dominate in sa policy documents. this is evident in the emphasis on open participation in the economic and social spheres, of previously disadvantaged people. the above policy documents, because they are informed by an inclusive and democratic discourse, may also be regarded as reflecting the concept that human emancipation is a collective effort, similar to that in the aboriginal proverb at the beginning of the article. social justice versus globalisation the above section has indicated that the south african government, in an attempt to break the mould of apartheid education, embraced social justice, which is evident in the commitment to the adoption of democratic principles, the human rights culture and transformation in general, while at the same time attempting to meet the demands of the global and knowledge economy. these concerns show that sa has not been immune to globalisation. in sa, like in other countries, concerns with global competitiveness and the knowledge economy have been translated in terms of the corporatisation and commodification of higher education, a trend that is eroding social justice concerns in higher education. progressive social researchers advance the view that the south african reality and the illiberal elements of neo-liberalism are obscured by the language of human rights freedom and equality: according to vally (2002: 6) “acting as if certain rights exist or all, inhibits people’s ability to recognise when they are in fact illusory, and why society does not act to protect these rights”. 14 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201114 proponents of the radical social justice agenda, the progressive intellectual forces in the country (chisholm & fuller, 1996; muller, 1998; vally, 2002) lament the manner in which social justice is downplayed in policy due to the macro-economic regime under which the government has placed itself. the developments in question are the replacement of the rdp by the growth, economic and redistribution strategy (gear). gear has been regarded as a policy option with a rightist agenda, which has thus succumbed to the agenda of the washington consensus that is neo-liberal to the core (bond 2007: 128). at the macro-level, progressive social scientists call for the re-insertion of the transformation agenda of the rdp in addressing the impact of globalisation. (kallaway, kruss, donn & fatar, 1997: 1) writing in the mid 1990s, chisholm and fuller (1996: 713) critique south african policy formulation and implementation, indicating that the broad transformative agenda of the pre-1990 period was being narrowed down to promote the concerns of a market economy associated with globalisation. although the macro policy development points in a direction opposed to the progressive social justice agenda, social researchers in the south african context continue to argue for the promotion of an atmosphere conducive to transformation and the promotion of the elements of radical social justice that entail the fostering of higher education for the public good, accompanied by a courageous critical scholarship informed by a human rights culture, e.g. badat (2001: 1), ntshoe (2002; 9) and singh (2001). public intellectuals responding to the social justice agenda in order to illustrate the complexity and multiplicity of social justice, this section will look at some of the ways in which intellectuals and academics have responded to or interpreted the call for greater equality and social justice in education. in other words, this section attempts to answer the question as to what constitutes social justice in a transformed higher education system in south africa, as conceptualised by intellectuals with the moral responsibility of promoting the common good. it also attempts to identify themes from the higher education environment that illustrate the aboriginal proverb that holds the view that human emancipation requires for collective human agency. one of the emerging interpretations of social justice in the south african context is its association with inclusive education. in this regard, a socially just education system entails the celebration and valuing of diversity, accommodation and tolerance of all learners, creation of equal opportunities and the promotion of the capabilities of all learners (pendlebury & enslin 2004: 50). inclusive education also encompasses other mechanism of social justice, viz. increased and broadened participation of previously excluded and disadvantaged people. in the south african context, recognition of prior learning (rpl) has been used for this purpose (motaung 2009: 78). rpl opens up the educational boundaries and thus contributes to greater inclusivity. in this context, social justice agenda is advanced through optimal social and educational inclusion. the agenda of inclusivity is also portrayed the call for intellectuals to engage with indigenous knowledge systems (iks) and thus contribute to socially just knowledge systems (adora-hoppers 2001: 84). in a context where there is great concern with breaking the mould of the injustices of the past and ever-increasing global injustices and suffering, it stands to reason that progressive educators would advance and dream of ideal situations. at the classroom level, in the context of the enactment of social justice, researchers advance the position that transformed university teaching and learning entails reflexive praxis. waghid (2001: 77) suggests that this entails rationalising, acting and asking different questions with the aim of transforming current unjust realities. the quest for the ideal in alleviating injustices has its roots in critical pedagogy which has as its central object the transformation of society for the mutual benefit of all who live in it (keet, zinn & porteus 2009: 109). the importance of adopting collective responsibility to address global injustice is emphasised in maintaining that nurturing possibilities for communitarian liberalism could contribute towards deepening democracy and social justice at higher education institutions (waghid, 2002: 106). the specific elements of communitarian liberalism likely to promote democracy are identified as conversational justice and shared rational deliberation (waghid 2002:112), in almost the same vein as habermas’s communicative action. 15tjabane & pillay— doing justice to social justice in south africa higher education 15 implicit in this suggestion is an atmosphere fertile for the germination of the ideal of social justice. thus it needs to be explored further, but with caution, lest attempts at promoting it relapse into neo-liberalism. related to the notion of communitarian liberalism is the cultivation of democratic and compassionate citizenship education as an element of social justice and transformation (waghid 2003: 159). the point regarding compassionate citizenship resonates with one advanced by kissack and enslin (2003: 47), who argue that citizenship education is a crucial element and goal of tertiary education, particularly for fostering transformation and social justice. nieuwenhuis (2004: 63) expresses a similar view: “equality of treatment should promote the core human values of respect, compassion, just treatment, fairness, peace, truthfulness and freedom” ( 2004:63) in this regard mutual compassion is important in the realisation of social justice. at the micro-level, the agenda for the promotion of social justice lies in the call for more participatory and democratic policy formulation and implementation involving all social agents. de clerq (1996: 144) promotes this position, saying that policy documents separate policy formulation from implementation. similarly, unterhalter (1998: 232) contends that for policy to be more inclusive and gender sensitive, a different and more socially just form of analysis is needed, i.e. an analysis informed by a more inclusive and open discourse of social justice. the above elements of inclusive education, reflexive praxis, critical pedagogy, communitarian liberalism, democratic and compassionate citizenship and collective agency, fit the agenda of transformation and popular democratic discourse informed by socialism. this re-emphasis of the agenda of reconstruction and development in dealing with issues of equity and redress echoes the position of one south african radical social justice scholar, viz. that in the context of increasing global injustices and intolerance to radical social justice, there is an urgent need for the renewal of radical social justice in the tradition of marx, even in a global context that is vehemently opposed to marxism and has declared the end of its history (muller 1997: 196). radical social justice, referred to earlier as the third tradition, possesses a broader agenda in the south african context because of the historical legacy of the country and its specificity. for instance the consideration of the forms of ‘mode two’knowledge as social justice issues. the breadth and scope of the agenda further illustrate the inclusive and accommodative stance of the radical conception of social justice. radical social justice, however, has been criticised for being overly utopian (starr, 1991: 24). with reference to its position on education, radical social justice has also been criticised for adopting an inclusive emancipatory and political stance that would produce a cadre of social activists without adequate skills for the marketplace. its proposal of full inclusion has also been criticised for lowering educational standards by burdening educators with students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds another criticism of the radical position of social justice comes from postmodernist scholars who accuse it of being a totalising meta-narrative that excludes other ways of knowing, particularly those of feminism (burbules & berk, 1999:57). despite this criticism, this radical tradition stands a better chance than the other two of achieving a socially just education and training system because of its socialist and redistributive agenda, as opposed to the restrictive and neo-liberal agenda of the other two traditions. the tenets of the radical position on social justice, such as participation parity in all societal institutions, far outweigh the issues of marketable skills, the lowering of standards and a totalising meta-narrative. also neutralising this criticism are the broad and inclusive agenda of radical social justice and the language of possibility to which giroux (1998) alludes. therefore, the challenge is to revitalise social belief in the alternatives to neo-liberal social justice, such as found in the radical social justice agenda. 16 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201116 some concluding thoughts there are no sources in the current document . in the context of the narrowing of the policy agenda, the shifting of policy alliances and ambiguities, this study contends that the pursuit of social justice is critical. our argument after reviewing research concerned with social justice issues in south africa is that the national policy documents appear to serve and legitimate the current socio-economic context that is informed by neo-liberalism. in principle, the social justice agenda is expressed by the recurring focus on equity, redress and social responsiveness, as well as democratic and inclusive education. this scenario tends to leave existing and traditional institutional practices intact. the question arises as to how institutional practices can be directed to support the social justice agenda. this study therefore sought to extend the scope of existing literature on social justice education by providing a reconstructed, revitalised and relevant version. furthermore, while evidence gleaned from the literature appears to indicate that history and the broader macro-economic framework of neo-liberalism stifle the concerns and practices of radical social justice, and that the essential structure of neo-liberalism remains integrated, new hope is to be found in the establishment or creation of the progressive voice and practices of dissent. these beacons of possibility provide significant potential for the restructuring of the social justice agenda along progressive and democratic lines. this is an important consideration for the 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cord-0059051-grmtppiy authors: boyadjieva, pepka; ilieva-trichkova, petya title: equity for whom, to what and where: the multi-dimensional character of social justice in adult education date: 2020-12-12 journal: adult education as empowerment doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-67136-5_8 sha: eb8ae02f2a7aa1fa1fbc7be38c8179e94e4d593b doc_id: 59051 cord_uid: grmtppiy this chapter provides theoretical and evidence-based insights into the understanding of social justice in adult education. it conceptualises social equity as an important public good and focuses on the contribution of adult education to it. we define five dimensions of social justice in adult education—inclusion, fairness, social justice for whom, social justice where, and social justice to what. the chapter provides empirical evidence of inclusion and fairness in adult education in relation to individuals’ employment status, as well as of access to higher education professional fields which differ in their prestige. london communiqué in 2007, sets the very ambitious aim that the student body entering, participating in, and completing higher education at all levels should reflect the diversity of our populations. the renewed european agenda for higher education also emphasises its social dimension and calls for "building inclusive and connected higher education systems" for the purpose of "ensuring that higher education is inclusive, open to talent from all backgrounds" (european commission 2017, p. 6). the social justice perspective has also emerged as an important research trend in studies on education, higher education included (gewirtz 1998 (gewirtz , 2006 brighouse 2003; walker 2003; north 2006; zajda et al. 2006; walker and unterhalter 2007; brennan and naidoo 2008; furlong and cartmel 2009; bask and bask 2015) . however, despite some valuable studies (e.g. williams 2011; devos 2011; waller et al. 2011; riddell et al. 2012; francois 2014; unterhalter 2014; tuckett 2015; ilieva-trichkova 2017, 2020) , the social justice implications related to adult education have still not been systematically or thoroughly discussed. that is why, albeit acknowledging the growing interest towards social justice in higher and adult education, some authors point out that "yet the depth and contours of the term [social justice] are not easily untangled", and there is continuing uncertainty about the implications of social justice in the field of adult education (johnson-bailey et al. 2010, p. 346 ). in addition, by discussing a wide range of principles and practices of social justice, francois (2014) emphasises that the majority of philosophies on adult education have neither a specific nor a reformist perspective about the notion of social justice, which makes the question of measuring justice in adult education quite challenging. as unterhalter (2014, p. 184) argues, an "indicator on participation, lifelong learning, equity, and empowerment" is "necessary for more comprehensively addressing education in a post-2015 agenda". the serious drawbacks and challenges in the way the problem of social justice in adult education has been studied are quite obvious. at the theoretical level, there is a need for deepening and refining the conceptualisation of social justice regarding participation in adult and higher education. at the methodological and empirical levels, there is a need for going beyond the narrow focus on single measurements at country level or inequalities at the individual level. other challenges which have to be addressed are the predominant research being focused on singular dimensions of social inequality (e.g. social background measured with parents' education) which do not allow for the multi-faceted nature of social justice (related to inequalities, based on occupational status, gender, age, etc.) to be taken into account. the present chapter aims at providing new theoretical and evidencebased insights into our understanding of the complex character of social justice as it relates to participation in adult and higher education. more concretely, based on our previous study (boyadjieva and ilieva-trichkova 2017) , we will: (1) conceptualise social equity as an important pubic good; (2) deepen the understanding of the multi-dimensional character of social justice regarding participation in adult education; (3) further develop and enrich the understanding of the inclusion and fairness aspects of equity in adult education by measuring them in relation to individuals' employment status; and (4) empirically demonstrate the 'access to what' aspect of social justice in higher education. to a great extent, differences in understanding social justice in adult and higher education reflect a variety of views on the very essence of social justice and how it is conceptualised. that is why, before focusing on social justice and adult education, it is worth having a glimpse at the emerging main trends in theoretical approaches to social justice. it has been acknowledged that: [t]he notion of social justice is relatively new. none of history's great philosophers-not plato or aristotle, or confucius or averroes, or even rousseau or kant-saw the need to consider justice or the redress of injustices from a social perspective. the concept first surfaced in western thought and political language in the wake of the industrial revolution and the parallel development of the socialist doctrine […] it was born as a revolutionary slogan embodying the ideals of progress and fraternity. (united nations 2006, pp. 11-12) in the second half of the twentieth century, some leading liberal and conservative thinkers, for example, friedrich von hayek, criticised the concept by stating that it did not mean anything, or it meant too many things (hayek 1976) . recently, others have pointed out that "like 'equality of opportunity' or 'choice', 'social justice' is one of those politically malleable and essentially contested phrases which can mean all things to all people", and it tends to suffer from "vagueness and oversimplification" (thrupp and tomlinson 2005, p. 549) . the concept is also criticised as "often utilised as a catch-all phrase for aspects of injustice", "as a weak and unfocussed term" (waller et al. 2011, p. 511) , which remains "highly political, fluid and slippery" (griffiths 2003, p. 41) , and as "taken as an unconditional good" with few attempts to define its meaning (jackson 2011, p. 431) . one of the most influential approaches to how justice may be achieved was developed by john rawls (1999 rawls ( [1971 ) in his theory of 'justice as fairness'. it is based on the idea of establishing a hypothetical social contract which aims at contributing to the achievement of justice in society. this approach is focused on identifying perfectly just institutions and implies the identification of the right behaviour or right institutions. the metrics of justice in this rawlsian theory are that of primary goods, which may be rights, liberties, opportunities, income, or wealth. their distribution should be regulated by the principles of equal basic liberties, of fair equality of opportunity, and the difference principle (ibid.). however, as robeyns (2008, p. 410) points out, the "[i]deal theory sharpens our thinking on justice and serves as a guide that is indispensable in many cases, but it does not tell us how to reach that ideal of justice". rawlsian theory of justice is highly criticised by feminist theory for the claimed universalism of the social contract theory and its conception of the self as a disembedded, disembodied, abstract bearer of rights and duties. okin (1989) asks the question 'justice for whom?', and argues that the rawlsian approach neglects gender. another serious criticism towards rawlsian theory of justice and especially its utopian character is expressed by amartya sen (2006 sen ( , 2009 within his capability approach. sen, enormously intellectually indebted to rawls, adheres to the idea that justice may be achieved on the basis of making comparisons between the different ways in which people's lives may be led, thereby ascertaining which are more or less just. in its nature, this implies making realisation-focused comparisons. according to sen (2009, p. 401) , justice is a "momentous concept" and comparative questions are inescapable for any theory of justice that intends to give some kind of guidance for public policy or personal behaviour. this 'comparative' approach focuses on ranking alternative social arrangements, instead of concentrating exclusively on the identification of a fully-just society. it is also concerned with human behaviour rather than assuming that, once institutions are perfectly arranged and perfect behaviour has been identified, people will simply follow it accordingly. thus, sen has a more realistic vision of how justice can be enhanced. he acknowledges that there is a possibility, even with just institutions, for injustices at the individual level and in people's everyday lives. sen's comparative approach to justice could contribute to identifying spaces of injustice and engaging in their removal. the informational basis of sen's theory of justice is human capability. as explained in chap. 3, this capability should be understood as a special kind of freedom which refers to the alternative combinations that are feasible for a person to achieve. in this sense, capability is determined by the space of possibilities open to an individual-not in terms of some prior end, such as utility or initial conditions such as equality of primary goods, or resources. the capability is also constrained by so-called conversion factors which influence the capacity of people to convert the resources they have into a good way of living. by taking these conversion factors into account, the capability approach allows us when evaluating inequalities to consider both the individual-level characteristics and the institutional and macro-level features of the contexts. scholars have explored the potential of the capability approach to address feminist concerns and questions aimed at the social contract theory of justice, for example, robeyns (2003) referring to gender inequality. another approach to social justice has been developed by nancy fraser (2003) . in chap. 6, we presented her understanding of recognition as a matter of justice. for the present analysis, it is enough to recall that fraser (2009) proposes a three-dimensional scale of justice which refers to redistribution, recognition, and representation. she argues that to conceive recognition as a matter of justice means to view it as an issue of social status. such an understanding requires examination of the institutionalised patterns of cultural value and whether they constitute actors as peerswho participate on par with one another in social life-or as inferior, invisible, excluded others. fraser's conceptualisation of recognition as a matter of justice draws attention to the obstacles that impede people from fully participating in social life. it is important to emphasise that she points not only to economic factors but to cultural ones, as well (fraser 2005) . social justice affirms the need for protecting human dignity and promoting equal opportunities for everybody and everyone. it provides a framework for assessing inequalities in societies. that is why social justice could be regarded as one of the most important public goods in contemporary societies. in his seminal book capital in the twenty-first century, piketty argues against the belief that wealth inequality will gradually decrease with industrialisation and economic growth. he admires both the intrinsic value of education and its role as a decisive factor of progress. piketty insists that: the best way to reduce inequalities with respect to labor as well as to increase the average productivity of the labor force and the overall growth of the economy is surely to invest in education. (piketty 2014, p. 265) piketty's arguments about the role of education in reducing social inequalities have been met with criticism (e.g. robertson 2016; moeller and tarlau 2016; klees 2017) . nevertheless, his analysis has been enthusiastically welcomed by researchers on education as "an opportunity to revisit the question of education's role in producing a more equal society in the twenty-first century" (moeller and tarlau 2016, p. 805) . education can contribute to promoting social justice to the extent that it is organised and functions based on the principle of equality of educational opportunities. according to the oecd (2014, p. 193 ): [e]quity in education means providing all students, regardless of their socio-economic status, with opportunities to benefit from education. defined in this way, equity does not imply that everyone will have the same outcomes from education. it does mean, however, that students' socioeconomic status has little or no impact on their performance, and that all students, regardless of their background, are offered access to quality educational resources and opportunities to learn. referring to higher education, marginson (2016, p. 95) states that the equity focus of policy "indicates the continuing importance of the democratic political notion of a common 'public interest' in which all are seen to have a stake". that is why social equity in higher education "is a keystone collective benefit that underpins the production and distribution of many other public and private goods" (marginson and yang 2020, p. 42) . we argue that all three approaches presented in the previous section of this chapter-rawlsian theory of justice as fairness, the capability approach, and fraser's understanding of recognition as a matter of justice-offer valuable ideas that are mutually enriching and provide a reliable basis for developing a thorough social justice perspective towards (adult) education. thus, in her review of key theories of social justice and their implications for higher education, wilson-strydom (2015) outlines some aspects of rawlsian theory that are useful for understanding social justice in higher education. among them are "rawls' critique of unfair advantage and the related concept of meritocracy, as well as the idea that policy decisions should be made so that the worst-off benefit most" (ibid., p. 146). fraser's recognition theory is important too, as it goes beyond redistribution and allows for the significant role of the cultural and political dimensions of social justice in (adult) education to be highlighted. in turn, the capability approach brings to the fore the opportunities which different students have to achieve educational outcomes, as well as individuals' agency and how it is enabled or constrained by different conversion factors. the question of the contribution of adult education to promoting social justice as a public good is much more important than that of initial education because of the latter's compulsory character. social justice in adult education and the role of adult education for increasing justice in society are complex, multi-dimensional phenomena. they reflect the entire organisation of adult educational systems-especially in terms of their social inclusiveness (at both entry and completion of education) and levels of stratification. below we systematise the most important in our view dimensions of social justice in adult education. inclusion and fairness. applying sen's approach to justice, simon marginson (2011) identifies two perspectives in which social equity in higher education has been recently conceptualised: inclusion and fairness. the inclusion perspective refers "to the significance of improvement in participation of any particular group, irrespective of how other groups have fared" (clancy and goastellec 2007, p. 146) . the fairness perspective "implies ensuring that personal and social circumstances-for example gender, socio-economic status or ethnic origin-should not be an obstacle to achieving educational potential" and thus "access to, participation in and outcomes of tertiary education are based only on individuals' innate ability and study effort" (santiago et al. 2008, pp. 13-14) . thus, whereas the first approach "focuses on growth in the absolute number of people from hitherto under-represented socio-economic groups, as defined in terms of income measures or social or occupational status", the second one concentrates on the proportional distribution of student places (or graduations) among different social groups (marginson 2011, pp. 23-24) . we claim that both aspects-inclusion and fairness-are important, as they capture different dimensions of social justice regarding participation in higher and adult education. moreover, they are irreducible, and that is why neither of them should be neglected. the inclusion aspect provides a general view of the increase in proportions of people from different social groups involved in adult education while fairness refers to the relative chance of representatives of different social groups of entering different types and programmes of adult education. when inclusion is pursued as a goal, each advance in the participation of persons from underrepresented groups represents a move forward. at the same time, achieving better fairness is more difficult and less visible: it requires structural improvement of representation in adult education from different social groups, that is, changes in the composition of the student body so that it better represents the diversity of the general population. social justice-for whom? the complexity of social justice when it comes to participation in higher and adult education is further reflected in the different ways both its aspects (inclusion and fairness) are revealed with regard to different social groups-that is, to groups differentiated on the basis of social background, completed initial education, occupational status, place of residence, age, or gender. social justice-where? higher education and adult education are processes, sometimes long ones. people's successful access to them does not always result in their successful completion. this is why we differentiate between social justice in access to higher and adult education and social justice in graduation. it is worth studying which factors influence social justice at these two points of higher and adult education and whether a degree of sustainability is involved. social justice-in relation to what? diversity of students in higher and adult education cannot by itself be taken as an indicator of greater equity in participation because "the unevenness persists as regards to who studies what and where" (archer 2007, p. 637). special attention needs to be paid to the qualitative side of educational inequalities, that is, we should ask not only the question 'does this individual/group have access to adult education?' but also 'access to what?', that is, 'to what kind of institution/programme of adult education does this individual/group have access?' more concretely, this means focusing on the chances of students belonging to different social groups (differentiated on the basis of their social background, completed initial education, occupational status, place of residence, age, or gender) to participate in higher educational institutions, fields of study, degree types, or educational programmesall of which differ with regard to the quality of education they offer and their prestige. this dimension of social justice is especially evident with regard to participation in higher education due to the stratified nature of contemporary higher education systems. taking into account the differences in prestige and quality of education offered at different higher educational institutions, marginson (2016, p. 77) argues that too many countries' higher education systems "are so stratified as to reduce sharply-sometimes empty out-the value of participation for the majority of students". in the following two sections of this chapter, we will provide some empirical manifestations of the multi-dimensional character of social justice regarding participation in adult and higher education. more concretely, on the basis of secondary data, we will analyse: (1) the inclusion and fairness aspects of social justice for employed and unemployed people; and (2) the 'access to what' aspect of social justice, that is, the involvement of students from low and high social backgrounds in higher educational fields which differ in their social prestige. in a previous study (boyadjieva and ilieva-trichkova 2017) , we investigated inclusion and fairness in adult education for two social groupspeople with low and high levels of education. the analysis in this chapter refers to two other social groups differentiated on the basis of their labour status-employed and unemployed-and their participation in one specific type of adult education-non-formal education. we used data 1 from the 2011 and 2016 waves of the adult education survey (aes). 2 the number of countries which participated in both the aes 2011 and the aes 2016 was 30. 3 however, for ireland, luxembourg, serbia, sweden and the united kingdom there were breaks in series regarding participation in non-formal education in the aes 2016 (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database data code: trng_aes_100. [extracted on: 10.8.2020]). this is why we have excluded the five of them from the following analysis. the levels of employment and unemployment of the population aged 25-64 of a given country in 2011 and 2016 were measured using eurostat data that corresponded to these two groups for all 25 countries except denmark due to break in series in 2016 for both employment and unemployment (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/ data/database data codes: lfsa_ergaed and lfsa_urgaed. [extracted on: 11.8.2020]). we calculated two indexes to capture social justice regarding participation in non-formal adult education at country level: an index of inclusion in participation in non-formal education (iinclunfe) and an index of fairness regarding participation in non-formal education (ifairnfe) for two social groups differentiated on the basis of their labour statusemployed or unemployed. for the calculation of iinclunfe, we estimated binomial logistic regression models for non-formal adult education separately for all 25 countries, distinguishing whether people participated in non-formal education and training in the previous 12 months (1 = participated) or not (0 = not participated) as a dependent variable. the main independent variable was current main labour status, measured by three categories: employed (1), unemployed (2), and inactive (3). we included gender, age, and educational attainment level in the models as control variables. we used one of the measures derived from the multivariate models: predicted probabilities for being either employed or unemployed. the iinclunfe is calculated as the ratio between predicted probabilities of a given social group in two temporal points-in our case, 2016 and 2011. an index above 1 indicates the increase of inclusion for a given social group within one and the same country for the above-described period of time, whereas an index below 1 shows a tendency towards excluding this group over time. an index value of 1 indicates that no advancement of inclusion was made by this group. the ifairnfe measures how the representation 4 of a given social group in adult education within a given country has changed over time. the ifairnfe was calculated as the ratio between the representation of a given social group at two temporal points-2016 and 2011. an ifairnfe index above 1 for the unemployed indicates a decrease in that group's underrepresentation in adult education and, thus, more fairness in participation, whereas an index below 1 shows an increase in the underrepresentation of this group in adult education, that is, a tendency towards deteriorating fairness of participation among this group over time. for the employed group, an ifairnfe below 1 would mean that this group's overrepresentation has decreased-thus, that the fairness of participation among this group has increased. an index of 1 indicates that no change in fairness was made by this group, whereas an index above 1 would mean an increase in overrepresentation, that is, a decrease in fairness of participation among this group in adult education. both aspects of social justice could also be assessed from a crossnational perspective; this means comparing the indexes of inclusion and fairness in adult education for different countries. it was possible to calculate the indexes for the employed and the unemployed within nonformal education for 24 countries. we measured non-formal education as the proportion of adults who participated in at least one non-formal educational or training activity (such as courses, workshops and seminars, guided on-the-job training, or private lessons) during the previous 12 months. data from the aes 2011 show that the majority of adults participating in non-formal education are employed; the share of those who are unemployed is considerably lower. in some countries such as bulgaria, the netherlands, norway, slovakia, and switzerland, less than 3% of adults who were participating in non-formal education were unemployed. the highest proportions of unemployed participants in adult non-formal education were in spain and greece, but even these countries' percentage of unemployed participants in non-formal education was about 10. figure 8 .1 presents the values of representation among employed and unemployed adults as of 2011 in non-formal adult education. the results indicate that in all countries, apart from italy and malta, unemployed adults are underrepresented in non-formal education, whereas the employed are overrepresented in all 25 countries. despite this, there are country differences in the extent to which these two groups are represented in this type of adult education. in some countries, like germany, and switzerland, the representation of the employed is closest to their proportion in the general population. at the other extreme are bulgaria, hungary, romania, and slovakia. with regard to unemployed adults, their underrepresentation is relatively low in norway and spain, whereas bulgaria and slovakia feature their very high underrepresentation. the analysis of the iinclunfe for adults aged 25 to 64 years reveals that countries differ in terms of the inclusion advancement among various labour status groups (see fig. 8.2) . thus, we observed non-formal education becoming more inclusive with regard to employed adults in the period between 2011 and 2016 in 16 countries, whereas in the case of the unemployed it became more inclusive in 10 countries. the figure also shows that non-formal education has achieved better inclusion with regard to unemployed adults as opposed to the employed only in four countries (belgium, cyprus, hungary, and switzerland). the analysis of ifairnfe (fig. 8.3 ) reveals that there is a decrease in the overrepresentation of employed adults, and their representation has become fairer in all countries, excepting cyprus, greece, italy, portugal, slovenia, and spain-where this overrepresentation increased, though only to a relatively small extent. concerning fairness with regard to the representation of unemployed adults, the analysis shows that it increased in 11 countries, with the highest increases achieved in the netherlands and the lowest in austria, estonia, and latvia. in order to more systematically describe the relationship between inclusion and fairness, we also conducted a correlation test. its analysis reveals that there is no correlation between the advancement of inclusion among the unemployed in non-formal education and the advancement of fairness achieved by this group. with regard to employed adults, we found a moderate positive association between this group's advancement in inclusion within non-formal education and changes in representation (pearson's r = 0.418), which was significant (at p < 0.05). these results show that more inclusion regarding participation in non-formal education among the employed is associated with achieving better representation for the employed within this type of education. however, this is not the case for the unemployed. in this section, we will move on to another aspect of the multi-dimensional character of social justice as it relates to participation in adult education. more concretely, we will provide an empirically based analysis of low and high-social-background students' access to higher education fields of study which differ in their prestige. we will measure social background with father's educational level. in the context of expanding and diversifying higher education, this cannot be treated as a homogenous good (kogan et al. 2011) . although there are differences among countries, higher education systems remain stratified everywhere. this undoubtedly has implications on social justice in higher education. in order to account for this, we have used data from the bulgarian university ranking system. the ranking contains information on 51 higher education institutions offering hundreds of majors, which are classified into 52 professional fields. in the present chapter, we have used one of the sources for this ranking-a nationally representative survey of students. the survey was conducted in 2018 via a self-administered questionnaire among 18,631 students. 5 the students were selected in a two-stage sampling procedure, with the professional fields and higher education institutions as clusters. we selected five professional fields: (1) pedagogy, (2) economics, (3) management and administration, (4) general engineering, and (5) medicine, dentistry and pharmacology as one combined field. we applied two selection criteria. firstly, we selected professional fields which differ in their social prestige, measured with graduates' levels of unemployment and monthly income. thus, according to data from the ranking system, 6 the unemployment rate among graduates of pedagogy was higher compared to that of those who had graduated from medicine, dentistry and pharmacology or economics; graduates in pedagogy also had the lowest monthly income in comparison to graduates from the other four fields. secondly, we selected professional fields in which there was a high enough number of students from low educational backgrounds in order to be able to make a robust statistical analysis. thus, for example, while law is among the most prestigious professional fields, there are very few law students who come from low educational backgrounds. to analyse these data, we applied one of the measures of social equity in higher education-usher and medow's equity index (2010) for different professional fields in a given country. this was calculated as a ratio between the percentage of males aged 45-64 in the general population of a country with a higher education degree and the percentage of the student body whose fathers have a higher education degree. this index ranges between 0 and 1. a high score on this index indicates that the student body is very similar in socio-demographic characteristics to the overall population, whereas a low equity index score indicates less equity. however, the equity index only takes into account the representation of one social group-made up of those holding a higher education degreethus neglecting disadvantaged groups with lower levels of education. that is why we have calculated it additionally for students whose fathers have a low level of education. more specifically, we calculated these indexes for a low level of father's education (basic education or lower) 7 or a high level of father's education (higher education). 8 we selected these two extreme categories in order to more clearly account for educational inequalities. for the levels of education in a given country's general population, we used data from eurostat for males aged 45-64 with low (isced 2011 0-2) 9 and respectively high levels of education (isced 2011 5-8) 10 as of 2018 (https://ec.europa. eu/eurostat/data/database data code: edat_lfse_03 [extracted on: 16.5.2020]). bulgarian higher education studying five professional fields. it shows that the group of people with higher education was overrepresented in all five fields studied (i.e. the share of students whose fathers had high levels of education/high social backgrounds within the student population was much higher than the share of men from the corresponding age group [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] in the national population from the same [high] level of education/social background). by contrast, the group of people with low levels of education was underrepresented (i.e. the share of students whose fathers had low levels of education/low social background within the student population was much lower than the share of men from the corresponding age group [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] [52] [53] [54] [55] [56] [57] [58] [59] [60] [61] [62] [63] [64] in the national population with the same [low] levels of education/social background) in all five fields. despite that, we observe considerable differences across the professions. pedagogy could be considered as the fairest field, both in terms of the representation of students from low and high educational backgrounds, whereas medicine, dentistry, and pharmacology could be considered as the least fair professional fields-regarding both people from low and high educational backgrounds. this chapter draws attention to the crucial importance of the social justice perspective for understanding participation in adult education and its potential to influence individuals and societies. we regard social justice as one of the most important public goods in contemporary societies and argue that the development of a comprehensive social justice perspective towards adult education would benefit from being complemented and mutually enriched by ideas from rawlsian theory of justice as fairness, the capability approach, and fraser's understanding of recognition as a matter of justice. it conceptualises social justice in adult education and the role of adult education for increasing justice in a given society as complex phenomena which are context and time-specific, depending mainly on the social inclusiveness and stratification level of the adult education system. we argue that social justice regarding participation in adult education has a multi-dimensional character, and we define the most prominent of these dimensions to be the inclusion and fairness aspects, social justice for whom, social justice where, and social justice to what. these theoretical conceptualisations are accompanied by empirical evidence for two of the dimensions of social justice regarding participation in adult education-'inclusion and fairness for whom' and 'social justice in relation to what'. this chapter further enriches our understanding of the inclusion and fairness aspects of equity in adult education by measuring them in relation to individuals' employment status. we investigated inclusion and fairness of participation in non-formal adult education for employed and unemployed people. our analysis started from the well-documented situation in all countries wherein the majority of participants in non-formal education are employed adults, while unemployed adults are underrepresented (i.e. the proportion of unemployed persons among the entire national population aged 25-64 is higher than the proportion of unemployed people among those participating in non-formal education). we calculated iinclunfe and ifairnfe in order to understand the trends in participation of employed and unemployed adults in non-formal education over time (in the period 2011-2016) from a social justice perspective. the results show that countries differ in terms of the inclusiveness and fairness of non-formal education for employed and unemployed adults. more concretely, we found that the number of countries in which non-formal education has become more inclusive for employed adults is higher compared to the number of countries in which it has become more inclusive for unemployed adults. this means that the likelihood of employed adults to participate in non-formal education has increased in more countries, while the same likelihood regarding unemployed people has increased in fewer countries. there are very few nations in which non-formal education has achieved better inclusion with regard to unemployed adults over employed adults. in relation to fairness, we observe a decrease in the overrepresentation of employed adults in most countries, which means that the proportion of employed adults among those participating in non-formal education there has grown closer to the proportion of employed people within the entire national population aged 25-64. concerning the fairness aspect of unemployed adults' representation, our analysis revealed that this has increased in almost half of the countries studied. it is important to emphasise that the most inclusive countries are not always the fairest, and vice versa. according to our results, increased participation in non-formal education among employed is associated with reaching better representation for this group within this type of education. however, for the unemployed, there is no such relationship. this empirical finding confirms our thesis that inclusion and fairness are two connected yet different aspects of social justice in adult education which may not always go hand in hand. it also draws the attention of policy makers to unemployed adults as a special and very important group for targeted policy measures. the present chapter also empirically demonstrates the multidimensional character of social justice in adult education by studying the involvement of students from low and high educational backgrounds in different higher education professional fields-with bulgaria as its case study. by asking the question 'access to what?' we tried to take into account the differences in status and prestige among different higher education institutions and professional fields. thereby, we showed the existence of inequalities caused by the internal differentiation and stratification of higher education systems. this question seems to be underestimated in discussions on equity, but it becomes very relevant given that the expansion of higher education has been accompanied by its increased differentiation and stratification. the result of our analysis is that people with higher education were overrepresented in all five professional fields studied, whereas those with low education levels were underrepresented. the latter finding is in line with many other studies suggesting the stable and persistent effect of socioeconomic background on access to higher education (blossfeld and shavit 1993; lucas 2001; pfeffer 2008; ilieva-trichkova and boyadjieva 2014) . besides this, however, we have found considerable differences across various professional fields. medicine, dentistry, and pharmacology, among the most prestigious professional fields in bulgaria, are the least fair. these are the fields in which students from high educational backgrounds are the most overrepresented; those from low social backgrounds are the most underrepresented in them. pedagogy is the least prestigious among the five professional fields studied. it is also the fairest field in terms of representation among students from both low and high educational backgrounds. this finding corresponds to reimer and pollak's analysis (2010) which reveals a robust social background effect on choice of field of study, thus providing evidence which corroborates the hypothesis of effectively maintained inequality in higher education. the chapter has followed some of the directions for further research outlined in a previous study (boyadjieva and ilieva-trichkova 2017, p. 113) . more concretely, we have deepened the theoretical reflection on social justice in adult education, investigated social justice in adult education for social groups differentiated on the basis of their professional status, and empirically demonstrated the importance of the 'access to what' aspect of social justice in adult education. all these directions are open for new future research. one question of crucial importance remains: which are those factors, at both macro and micro levels, which could explain the observed-and, in some cases, considerably so-differences among countries with regard to different aspects of social justice in adult education. it is also worth continuing the efforts to reveal and apply the heuristic potential of different theoretical approaches to social justice for conceptualising equity in adult education. special attention needs to be paid to the explanation of the results obtained. in this regard, a thorough analysis of the adult education system in each one of the countries studied is necessary. the essence of recent trends and studies in higher and adult education can be summarised with marginson's (2016, p. 69) words in the following way: although "there is a worldwide tendency to high-participation systems" in higher education and a steady increase in the involvement of adults in learning activities, "[e]quality of opportunity in the full sense is unrealisable, because of the persistence of irreducible differences between families in economic, social and cultural resources". the recent coronavirus pandemic "has bought pre-existing inequalities into sharper relief " and has highlighted the significance of "social and economic inequalities arising in part from the application of technology" (waller et al. 2020, pp. 243-244) . thus a specific type of inequality regarding access to all forms of education-digital inequality-acquires crucial importance. as boeren et al. (2020, p. 201) suggest "[t]he global pandemic will likely exacerbate and compound learning barriers" for the groups who are least likely to participate in adult learning, such as adults with lower levels of education and lack of or insufficient employment. we think that the authors rightly insist, "[a]dult education should be at the forefront of providing everyone with a fair chance to develop their abilities and to put them to valuable use" (ibid., p. 203). that is why the social justice perspective is indispensable if we want to fully grasp the processes of participation in adult education and its actual potential role for promoting equity. highlighting the importance of the social justice perspective towards adult education does not mean undermining other important perspectives. unterhalter and carpentier (2010) argue that we are facing a node of problems which may be better seen as a 'tertralemma'. this 'tetralemma' pulls higher and adult education in different directions-economic growth, equity, democracy, and sustainability-which are often associated with conflicting agendas. it is important to keep this view in mind. it suggests that, while we are searching for and aiming at social justice (or economic growth or democracy) in and through adult education, we should always try to find the harmony across these different agendas. notes social group (in our case-employed or unemployed) by the proportion of people from the same group in the entire national population aged 25 to 64 years. a value of representation above 1 indicates overrepresentation of the given social group among participants in adult education, whereas, a value below 1 shows that this group is underrepresented. a value of 1 means that a given social group is perfectly represented within a given form of adult education in the respective country. 5. this survey was carried out by the open society institute, sofia, within the project "maintaining and improving the developed rating system of higher education" (phase 1), funded by the operational programme "science and education for smart growth", co-financed by the european union through the european structural and investment funds. the survey data were provided by the ministry of education and science of the republic of bulgaria with decision no. 94-1375/14.05.2020. 6. see https://rsvu.mon.bg/rsvu4/#/. 7. equivalent to isced 1997 1-2. 8. equivalent to isced 1997 5-6. 9. isced 2011 0-2 corresponds to primary and lower secondary education (unesco 2012). 10. isced 2011 5-8 corresponds to short-cycle tertiary education, bachelor's or equivalent level, master's, and doctoral degrees or their equivalent levels (unesco 2012). 2016' obtained for the needs of research project proposal 196/2019-lfs-aes-cvts. the responsibility for all conclusions drawn from the data lies entirely with the authors for a description of the survey, see methodological note this representation is calculated by dividing the proportion of participants in adult education, aged 25 to 64 years, who belong to a certain references archer, l cumulative (dis)advantage and the matthew effect in life-course analysis persistent inequality. changes in educational opportunities in thirteen countries covid-19 and the future of adult education: an editorial between inclusion and fairness: social justice perspective to participation in adult education universities as political institutions -higher education institutions in the middle of academic, economic, and social pressures higher education and the achievement (and/ or prevention) of equity and social justice school choice and social justice exploring access and equity in higher education: policy and performance in a comparative perspective learning to labour in regional australia: gender, identity and place in lifelong learning communication from the commission to the european parliament, the council, the european economic and social committee and the committee of the regions on renewed eu agenda for 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eastern europe effectively maintained inequality: education transitions, track mobility, and social background effects equity, status and freedom: a note on higher education higher education and the common good the role of higher education in generating 'public' and 'common' goods: a comparison of sinic and anglo-american political cultures. centre for global higher education, working paper no. 52. university of oxford thomas piketty's relevance for the study of education: reflections on the political economy of education more than words? delving into the substantive meaning(s) of "social justice" in education education at a glance justice, gender, and the family persistent inequality in educational attainment and its institutional context capital in the twenty-first century a theory of justice educational expansion and its consequences for vertical and horizontal inequalities in access to higher education in west germany lifelong learning in europe: equity and efficiency in the balance piketty, capital and education: a solution to, or problem in, rising social inequalities? sen's capability approach and gender inequality: selecting relevant capabilities arguments for a better world: essays in honor of amartya sen: volume i: ethics, welfare, and measurement tertiary education for the knowledge society (special features: equity, innovation, labour market, internalisation what do we want from a theory of justice the idea of justice introduction: education policy, social justice and 'complex hope adult education, social transformation and the pursuit of social justice transforming our world. the 2030 agenda for sustainable development international standard classification of education isced education 2030 -incheon declaration and framework for action for the implementation of sustainable development goal 4 measuring education for the millennium development goals: reflections on targets, indicators, and a post-2015 framework global inequalities and higher education. whose interests are we serving global higher education rankings 2010: affordability and accessibility in comparative perspective framing social justice in education: what does the 'capabilities' approach offer? amartya sen's capability approach and social justice in education parents, partners and peers: bearing the hidden costs of lifelong learning lifelong education, social inequality and the covid-19 health pandemic raising expectations or constructing victims? problems with promoting social inclusion through lifelong learning university access and theories of social justice: contributions of the capabilities approach education and social justice: issues of liberty and equality in the global culture journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 196 educating for social justice: perspectives from library and information science and collaboration with k-12 social studies educators jamie campbell naidoo and miriam e. sweeney university of alabama, school of library & information studies, tuscaloosa, al library and information science (lis) as a discipline is guided by core values that emphasize equal access to information, freedom of expression, democracy, and education. importantly, diversity and social responsibility are specifically called out as foundations of the profession (american library association, 2004). following from this, there has been a focus in lis on educating librarians from a social justice perspective. in this essay we will discuss some of the strategies we use for training librarians to practice librarianship using a social justice framework as a way to help social studies teachers and other educators critically think through their role in educating for social justice in their classrooms. some areas of particular transference from lis to k-12 educators that we focus on include locating classroom technologies as sites of power and privilege, prioritizing print and digital materials representative of culturally diverse populations and relevant contexts, and expanding the notion of literacy to include multiple literacies. these strategies lay a foundation for a critically-oriented classroom as a step towards teaching for social justice, and provide opportunities for collaboration between social studies educators and librarians. social justice perspectives in lis education in “public libraries and social justice” (2010) pateman and vincent locate social justice as a response to social exclusion, or the structural disenfranchisement of groups of people from social, economic, and cultural resources, creating patterns of disadvantage that can be reproduced generationally. they cite the library as an institution that has historically been implicated in the reproduction of social exclusion by reflecting the needs and interests of dominant culture. as an intervention to this structure, they suggest that librarians focus on targeted, needs-based services that are co-produced with the communities they serve. to do this, they recommend that librarians embrace diversity as they strive for equality, tailoring, rather than homogenizing, services and approaches. in this vein, we identify cultural competency, diversity, multiculturalism, and equality as foundational concepts for social justice work that can be extended through targeted, justice-oriented curricular collaborations between social studies educators and librarians (school media specialists and/or public librarians). montiel-overall (2009) suggests a model for fostering cultural competence among librarians that examines the intersection of interpersonal communication, environmental factors, and cognitive understanding. we believe this model lays the foundation for librarians being open to social justice learning collaborations and is equally pertinent for social studies teachers and other educators. cultural competence is understood to be the awareness of one’s own culture and the contributions of other cultures, the ability to interact with other individuals from diverse cultures, and an understanding of how cultures are integrated together within our larger society (montiel-overall, 2009). for social justice work to occur, both librarians and social studies teachers must develop their own cultural competence, or be on the road to doing so, before they can plan collaborative lessons that promote cultural competence among students. since environmental factors, lived experiences, and individualized perspectives shape our understanding and acceptance of the world, the journey to full cultural competence is a unique experience. it is positively influenced by opportunities to interact with diverse mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 197 cultures through hands-on activities, print and digital media, and educational programs that facilitate intercultural connections. cultural competency must be embedded in critiques of structural power in order to connect individual experiences and identity formation to systems of oppression and domination. critical pedagogy (friere, 2001; hooks, 1994) perspectives offer intersectional frameworks for interrogating classroom/libraries as hegemonic sites of power. these frameworks require educators and librarians to “unlearn” and question the assumptions of their training, including the ways in which diversity initiatives are constructed and employed. ahmed (2012) argues that institutionalized diversity projects may actually further entrench whiteness by placing efforts on the symbolic commitment to diversity without addressing necessary structural changes. similarly, scholars like pawley (2006) and honma (2005) point out that within lis, “multiculturalism” and “diversity” often take on celebratory tones of difference, without specifically calling out racism and white supremacy as the structural system of oppression. the same can occur when k-12 educators attempt to include cultural diversity in the curriculum, through a “tourist approach” which highlights the foods, fashion, festivals, folklore, and famous people from a culture rather than exploring the lived experiences of individuals from a particular cultural group. it is necessary for librarians as well as social studies teachers to locate white supremacy and features of whiteness (as well as other forms of primary cultural dominance) as a guiding benchmark of the status quo that guides formal structures as well as informal norms, practices, and customs. disrupting this requires active engagement with subjectivity, positionality, and a constant interrogation about the hidden assumptions of pedagogical paradigms. classroom technologies as sites and structures of power just as freire’s (2001) critical pedagogy demands that both social studies teachers and students become aware of the politics that structure their education as a way to understand their oppression and its relationship to the institution, so do critical technology perspectives demand an awareness of the politics that structure, and are structured by, technological assemblages. education for social justice must include an analysis of technological artifacts and associated practices as ideological processes that prioritize particular political interests and social arrangements. social studies educators and librarians can collaboratively teach critical technology perspectives along with technology skills, applications, and literacies as key components for a justice-oriented curriculum. situating the design, use, and meaning of common classroom technologies and practices within broader systems of power sets the stage for cultivating what selfe and selfe (1994) term “technology critics,” in addition to technology users. library and classroom technologies are commonly treated as “neutral” tools in normative frameworks that emphasize applications for learning or disseminating information. this is reflected in skills-based learning and literacy programs as well as access-based interventions for achieving digital parity. while skills and access are certainly important dimensions of technology, they often elide deeper explorations of technology as both sites and structures of power. for example, the common rhetoric of the digital divide relies on deficit-based language of information “haves” and “have nots,” a framing that eubanks (2007) identifies as falling within the “distributive paradigm” of social justice. young (2011) defines the distributive paradigm of social justice as the “morally proper distribution of social benefits and burdens among society’s members (p. 16).” according to eubanks, distributive paradigms of the digital divide are narrow in their over-reliance on market-based logics, and assume digital incorporation to be beneficial, and therefore unproblematic, to homogenous users. in fact, the redistribution of resources, and skilling up of users does not, de facto, guarantee digital or social inclusion. in their study of public libraries, schools, and the digital divide among diverse mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 198 socioeconomic communities in philadelphia, neuman and celano (2012) observe how affluence and poverty contribute to disparities in information capital. the authors note that without proper guidance and instruction, technology manages to further divide social classes rather than bring them together. similarly, warschauer (2000) examined how technology initiatives were enacted in both an affluent and low-income school, concluding that “one school was producing scholars and the other school was producing workers. and the introduction of computers did absolutely nothing to change this dynamic; in fact, it reinforced it (p. 5).” to echo forst (2007), distributive paradigms of the digital divide shift questions about justice into pragmatic accounts of the distribution of goods in society without addressing the underlying questions of structural power and oppression that produce and employ said goods in the global information economy. it is precisely these unaddressed questions that social studies educators and librarians are ideally positioned to help students learn to ask as part and parcel of their technology practices: how (and where) are our technologies made? who is involved with designing our technologies? whose knowledge and culture is encoded into the hardware, software, and interface design? what counts as technological skill? who decides? how are identities interpolated through technological engagement? these are examples of questions that, alongside skills acquisition, can help educators and students explore classroom technologies as sites and structures of power, connecting local experiences to global phenomena. lastly, a social justice framework requires acknowledging that classroom technologies are embedded with values that privilege particular users and experiences. selfe and selfe describe the computer interface as a “political and ideological boundary land (1994, p. 481)” that may contribute to a larger cultural system of differentiation and domination in much the same way that geopolitical borders do. using pratt’s (1991) concept of the “contact zone,” they point out that the design of computer interfaces can have exclusionary functions based on asymmetrical power relationships that reflect systems of oppression and domination. iconography reflecting white-collar, middle class workspace (e.g. the “desktop”), english-as-default language, autocorrect tools that discipline the user according to the standardized spellings and grammar of dominant groups, and ascii encoding systems that privilege western characters—these are but a few examples of common features of information and communication technologies that encode hegemonic values, leaving non-privileged users at a disadvantage. learning to recognize these features as designed and ideological, rather than natural and neutral, can help students become comfortable questioning how these technologies structure their education and broader opportunities in the world—a necessary foundation for imagining justiceoriented interventions. integrating critical technology perspectives into the social studies curriculum allows students to connect their own experiences with technology to broader systems of oppression. focusing on technology as an extension of various systems of exclusion provided a powerful tool for demonstrating the immediacy of oppression on a local level. this might be beneficial to students who have difficulty identifying localized systems of oppression, and could serve to validate the lived experiences of socially marginalized students. by exploring technologies as sites and structures of power, social studies educators and librarians can help students identify structural mechanisms of technological exclusion, move away from deficit-based models of technological ability and distributive paradigms of justice, re-define notions of expertise, and become more critical users/designers of technology. mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 199 culturally authentic literature and digital media in the curriculum another opportunity in educating for social justice includes the incorporation of culturally authentic children’s and young adult literature and digital media (such as digital apps, streaming educational videos, online games, and digital picture books) into learning activities. multiple theoretical lenses have been used to explore the myriad factors influencing the cultural identity and lived experiences of children and young adults (hallowell, 1955; vygotsky, 1978; bronfenbrenner,1979; cummins, 1996). these theories suggest that the print and digital media that students consume, as well as their daily encounters at home or school, within the community, or in larger society, can augment their thoughts and feelings not only towards their cultural group but diverse cultural groups around the world. myers (2014), bishop (1997), fox & short (2003), naidoo (2014b), park dahlen (2013), and others also describe the importance of culturally authentic literature and digital media in the promotion of positive identity development among children and young adults and the fostering of global awareness. collectively, this research as well as the theoretical underpinnings advocate that culturally diverse children’s print and digital materials can be used to first foster cultural competence in students and then motivate them to engagement in social justice activities. print and digital materials presenting diverse cultures serve as mirrors, windows, and road maps to a child’s sociocultural world. they are mirrors reflecting the daily cultural experiences of a student or windows offering cross-cultural insight (bishop, 1997). moreover, these materials can also serve as a road map showcasing the accomplishment of a particular cultural group and predicting potential futures for students from that cultural group (myers, 2014). simply reading a story about a diverse culture or engaging with a digital app about another country does not empower students to become advocates of social justice. librarians and social studies educators should work together to design learning opportunities that include the use of well-chosen books and/or digital media that present an injustice relatable to students and then provide space for dialogue about how the students can realistically effect change that will make a step towards righting the injustice. librarians have knowledge of quality children’s and young adult books as well as impactful digital media to spark a conversation and empower action, while social studies teachers know how best to structure learning activities that meet learning outcomes in their subject area. the key for success is relevancy in materials and learning activities. if students cannot make a connection between an injustice in their own lives or broader social contexts, then it will be difficult to inspire action. some educators may find it useful to have a list of recommended materials that embody relevancy and have proven potential for promoting social justice with students. these lists can be shared with librarians who can then select complimentary print and digital resources to scaffold student learning. the following resources, culled by library and information science educators, present selected print and digital social justice-themed materials and curricula that can be used in k-12 classrooms. ● the international literacy association’s notable books for a global society (http://clrsig.org/nbgs.php), jane addams peace association’s jane addams children’s book award (http://www.janeaddamspeace.org/jacba/), and the citizen kid imprint of kids can press in canada (http://www.kidscanpress.com/series/citizenkid) are wonderful sources for recommended english-language children’s and young adult books with social justice themes. the two book awards highlight print materials that were specifically created to help students think about social issues around the world. titles receiving the awards represent diverse global cultures and myriad opportunities for social engagement. the citizen kid resource provides several children’s picture books with lesson plans that address global human rights topics and can inspire children to action. the publisher also includes video clips and short trailers that social studies educators can use in the curriculum to extend the topic. mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu http://clrsig.org/nbgs.php http://www.janeaddamspeace.org/jacba/ http://www.kidscanpress.com/series/citizenkid journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 200 ● the u.s. peace corp world wise schools program (http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/) provides lesson plans, streaming video, recommended speakers, and teaching ideas for social studies educators interested in fostering the development of cultural competence and encouraging service learning among their k-12 students. the website also includes the interactive peace corp challenge (http://www.peacecorps.gov/kids/). this online game designed for upper elementary children fosters students’ critical thinking skills about global health and social problems and encourages them to find solutions to specific issues faced by fictional african villagers. ● the professional book, diversity programming for digital youth: promoting cultural competence in the children’s library (naidoo, 2014a), suggests how librarians can plan educational programs that promote cultural competency by way of culturally diverse books and digital media for children. numerous multicultural digital apps are recommended, including ones with specific appeal for librarians working collaboratively with social studies teachers to explore social justice themes. for instance, the digital gaming app get water! by decode global is designed to help upper elementary children and tweens understand the scarcity of clean drinking water in countries around the world. the app can be used in conjunction with a long walk to water (park, 2010) or one well: the story of water on earth (strauss & woods, 2007) in social studies lessons about basic human rights. ● developed by teaching tolerance, perspectives for a diverse america (http://perspectives.tolerance.org/) is a literacy-based, social justice curriculum aligned to the u.s. common core state standards and infused with an anti-bias education framework. this free curriculum is intended to teach students about diversity, build cultural competence, present social justice issues, and motivate students to action. librarians and social studies teachers can work together to tailor the curriculum to meet the needs of their local school population. the teaching tolerance website (http://www.tolerance.org/) also provides a rich resource of lesson plans, readings lists, think pieces, and anecdotal stories to encourage and inspire educators interested in social justice lessons. ● approved in 1989, the united nations convention on the rights of the child is an international treaty describing the various social, cultural, political, and health rights of all children. the treaty provides a rich resource for social studies teachers and librarians to explore and foster engagement in social justice activities. topics for exploration can include education rights, gender equality, health disparities, child trafficking, child soldiers, homelessness, etc. fernekes and baxter (2015) align some of these topics to various national curriculum standards for social studies and further emphasize the potential of the treaty for educating for social justice. the convention on the rights of the child is available in child-friendly language (http://www.unicef.org/rightsite/files/uncrcchilldfriendlylanguage.pdf) and is the subject of multiple children’s books that could be used to introduce the treaty such as this child, every child: a book about the world’s children (smith & armstrong 2011) and i have the right to be a child (serres, fronty, & mixter, 2012). older students in high school can be introduced to the treaty after reading books such as mccormick’s (2008) sold, which describes child trafficking in india or sullivan’s (2013) gold boy which tackles albino harvesting in africa. after students have read the books, explored the convention, and discussed which rights are being violated (in the case of the novels for the high school students), they can then examine ways that they can make a difference and bring about change. books such as pay it forward kids: small acts, big change (runstedler, 2013) provide prime examples of real children and teens engaged in social activism. they can be used by educators, to help students make the connection between what they have read and social engagement. mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/ http://www.peacecorps.gov/kids/ http://perspectives.tolerance.org/ http://www.tolerance.org/ http://www.unicef.org/rightsite/files/uncrcchilldfriendlylanguage.pdf journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 201 while not exhaustive in nature, these sources suggest materials and approaches for educating for social justice with a significant focus on traditional reading literacy. the subsequent section describes the potential for incorporating multiple literacies into the social studies curriculum to foster an even richer sense of social engagement. using multiple literacies to educate for social justice librarians, particularly school media specialists, are trained to foster lifelong learning not only through traditional reading literacy but also through multiple literacies including information literacy, digital literacy, cultural literacy, visual literacy, and media literacy. the use of multiple literacies in a collaborative lesson or series of lessons with social studies teachers engages divergent learning styles of students and offers multiple opportunities for relevancy. information literacy as well as cultural and media literacy skills can be used to promote social justice and highlight propaganda or hate websites such as those created by white supremacists. daniels’ (2009) study of adolescents evaluating “cloaked websites” (websites that appear to be legitimate civil-rights sites but actually are fronts for white supremacist sites,) found that traditional approaches to media literacy (e.g. looking for bias in authorship, evaluating domain names) failed the students in being able to differentiate legitimate civil rights information from white supremacist rhetoric. she argues that critical understandings of race and racism are needed in addition to instrumental skills for evaluating online content as a way to appropriately contextualize and parse political content. through a purposeful collaborative lesson created by the social studies teacher and librarian, high school students can explore these topics to learn not only how to evaluate the authenticity of information but to also explore embedded rhetoric. to participate in a true multiple literacies lesson, students can also read children’s books such as my parents open carry (jeffs, nephew, & bergman, 2014) or god made dad and mom (parker & segura, 2013) and explore the various mediated social messages these books carry. visual literacy can be employed as students analyze the visual cues and loaded symbols in the illustrations used in both books. as a call to action, students can strategize ways to help younger children identify propaganda in children’s books and other media. they can also identify and share empowering, socially conscious children’s books to foster cultural competence. librarians and social studies educators can help students discuss the motives of the authors of books and websites, interrogating subjectivity and positionality alongside claims of “bias” and “impartiality.” an example of a lesson promoting social justice for upper elementary students can include discussion of the education rights of children. swadener et al. (2013) examine how schools around the world address the educational rights of children and conclude that many countries have considerable work to do before all children equally receive these basic human rights. the topic of educational rights is one that can easily be taught to students using multiple literacies. see figure 1 (appendix) for an outline of suggested topics for collaborative lessons between a librarian and social studies teacher for students in grades 5-8. a variety of print and digital materials are suggested to meet the varying developmental and reading levels of students. these lessons incorporate multimodal learning with culturally diverse children’s literature to facilitate cultural competence while utilizing multiple literacies to educate for social justice. students are engaged in visual, auditory, and hands-on activities and require competency in multiple literacies such as information, media, digital, visual, and cultural literacy. they are locating, evaluating, and synthesizing mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 202 information in order to communicate with peers and create new media. at the same time, these students are reaching beyond the scope of their cultural experiences to learn about current and historical events from the united states, tanzania, and pakistan. these books, along with digital media, provide a rich learning environment for examining the intersections of race, class, and culture in three diverse countries. the historical and current narratives provide a context for understanding the relevancy of education rights to contemporary students and augment experiences from their sociocultural worlds. opportunities for social justice action and engagement are presented as well as modeled by students around the world. the interplay between the various print and digital media, as well multiple literacies, extends the lesson to attract students with multiple learning modalities. conclusion the various strategies described in this article lay a foundation for justice work and empower social studies teachers, librarians, and students in the process. when social studies educators collaborate with librarians, there is a tremendous opportunity to develop enriching discussions, meaningful activities, and relevant projects that motivate students to action. integrating critical technology perspectives along with culturally diverse print and digital resources creates opportunities in curricula to simultaneously build multiple literacies in service of social justice-oriented education. by working together to create learning opportunities that allow students to actively identify societal injustices resulting from racism, sexism, heterocentrism, ableism, classism, and so on, librarians and social studies teachers can set the foundation for active engagement in service learning projects or global activities, allowing students to “pay it forward.” properly structured lessons can scaffold learning about injustices experienced around the world and call children and teens to action. mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 203 references abouraya, k. l., & wheatley, l. c. (2014). malala yousafzai: warrior with words. great neck, ny: starwalk kids media. ahmed, s. (2012). on being included: racism and diversity in institutional life. durham, nc: duke university press. american library association. (2004). core values of librarianship. retrieved from http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/statementspols/corevalues. bishop, r. s. (1997). selecting literature for a multicultural curriculum. in v. harris (ed.), using multiethnic literature in the k-8 classroom (pp. 1-20). norwood, ma: christopher-gordon. bronfenbrenner, u. (1979). the ecology of human development: experiments by nature and design. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. brown, d., & thomson, a. (2015). who is malala yousafzai? new york: grosset & dunlap. cummins, j. (1996). negotiating identities: education for empowerment in a diverse society. ontario: california association for bilingual education. eubanks, v. e. (2007). trapped in the digital divide: the distributive paradigm in community informatics. the journal of community informatics, 3(2). retrieved from http://cijournal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/293 fernekes, w. r., & baxter, n. (2015). background and introduction: lesson plans on children’s rights. social education, 79(3), 130–131. forst, r. (2007). radical justice: on iris marion young’s critique of the “distributive paradigm.” constellations, 14(2), 260–265. retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1111/j.14678675.2007.00437.x fox, d., & short, k. (2003). stories matter: the complexity of cultural authenticity in children's literature. urbana, il: national council of teachers of english. freire, p. (2001). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum. hallowell, a. i. (1955). culture and experience. philadelphia, pa: university of pennsylvania press. honma, t. (2005). trippin’ over the color line: the invisibility of race in library and information studies. interactions: ucla journal of education and information studies, 1(2). hooks, b. (1994). teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. new york: routledge. jeffs, b., nephew, n., & bergman, l. (2014). my parents open carry. hamilton, mi: white feather press. mccall, l. (2001). complex inequality: gender, class, and race in the new economy. new york: routledge. mccormick, p. (2008). sold. new york: hyperion books for children. montiel-overall, p. (2009). cultural competence: a conceptual framework for library and information science professionals. library quarterly, 79(2), 175-204. myers, c. (2014). the apartheid of children’s literature. new york times (march 15). retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/the-apartheid-of-childrensliterature.html. naidoo, j. c. (2014a). diversity programming for digital youth: promoting cultural competence in the children’s library. santa barbara, ca: libraries unlimited. naidoo, j. c. (2014b). the importance of diversity in library programs and material collections for children. whitepaper. chicago: association for library service to children. retrieved from http://www.ala.org/alsc/importance-diversity. neuman, s., & celano, d. (2012). giving our children a fighting chance: poverty, literacy, and the development of information capital. new york: teachers college press. mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/statementspols/corevalues http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/the-apartheid-of-childrens-literature.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/opinion/sunday/the-apartheid-of-childrens-literature.html http://www.ala.org/alsc/importance-diversity journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 204 park dahlen, s. (2013). windows and mirrors: reading diverse children’s literature. land of gazillion voices magazine. minneapolis: gazillion voices. retrieved from http://gazillionvoices.com/cover-story-windows-and-mirrors-reading-diverse-childrensliterature-by-dr-sarah-park-dahlen/#.vz2ffab8_1q. park, l. s. (2010). a long walk to water. new york: clarion books. parker, a. d., & segura, h. (2013). god made dad and mom. alachua, fl: bridge logos. pateman, j., & vincent, j. (2010). public libraries and social justice. farnham, surrey, england ; burlington, vt: ashgate. pawley, c. (2006). unequal legacies: race and multiculturalism in the lis curriculum. library quarterly, 76(2), 149–168. pratt, m. l. (1991). arts of the contact zone. profession, 33–40. retrieved from http://doi.org/10.2307/25595469 runstedler, n. (2013). pay it forward kids: small acts, big change. markham, ontario: fitzhenry & whiteside. selfe, c. l., & selfe, r. j. (1994). the politics of the interface: power and its exercise in electronic contact zones. college composition and communication, 45(4), 480–504. retrieved from http://doi.org/10.2307/358761 strauss, r., & woods, r. (2007). one well: the story of water on earth. toronto: kids can press. sullivan, t. (2013). golden boy. new york: g. p. putnam’s sons. swadener, b., lundy, l., habashi, j., & blanchet-cohen, n. (eds.). (2013). children's rights and education: international perspectives. new york: peter lang publishing. tonatiuh, d. (2014). separate is never equal: sylvia mendez and her family’s fight for desegregation. new york: abrams books for young readers. vygotsky, l. (1978). mind in society. cambridge: harvard university press. warschauer, m. (2000). technology and school reform: a view from both sides of the track. educational policy analysis archives, 8(4), retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/395 winner, l. (1980). do artifacts have politics? daedalus, 109(1), 121–136. winter, j. (2014). malala, a brave girl from pakistan/iqbal, a brave boy from pakistan: two stories of bravery. new york: beach lane books. young, i. m. (2011). justice and the politics of difference. princeton, n.j: princeton university press. yousafazi, m., & mccormick, p. (2014). i am malala: how one girl stood up for education and changed the world. young readers edition. new york: little, brown books for young readers. mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu http://gazillionvoices.com/cover-story-windows-and-mirrors-reading-diverse-childrens-literature-by-dr-sarah-park-dahlen/%23.vz2ffab8_1q http://gazillionvoices.com/cover-story-windows-and-mirrors-reading-diverse-childrens-literature-by-dr-sarah-park-dahlen/%23.vz2ffab8_1q http://doi.org/10.2307/358761 http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/395 journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 205 appendix (figure 1: social justice topics for collaborative lessons on the education rights of children) education rights of children grades 5-8 topic 1: education discrimination based on race: have students read separate is never equal: sylvia mendez & her family’s fight for desegregation (tonatiuh, 2014) and listen to the clip of sylvia mendez and sandra mendez duran on the storycorp website (http://storycorps.org/listen/sylvia-mendez-and-sandra-mendez-duran/). encourage students to discuss how the education rights of latino children were being ignored. ask them to describe how they would feel if they were told they could not go to school with other children because they were presumed to be dirty and uneducated. if social studies educators choose, they can focus on this topic for several class periods using the suggested lesson plans below. some of these lessons will provide an opportunity to use the school library computers to examine online primary source materials related to the mendez v. westminster case. an in-depth lesson tying into common core standards for english language arts in grades 6-8 is available on the vamos a leer: teaching latin america through literacy blog. (https://teachinglatinamericathroughliterature.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/cox-lesson-plan-unit315.pdf). to extend this lesson to a younger audience, social studies teachers and librarians can consult the lesson plan created by the anti-defamation league (adl) for grades 1-5. (http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/education-outreach/book-of-the-month-separate-is-neverequal.pdf). topic 2: education discrimination based on immigration status: have students listen to teenager estafania’s personal story related to the u.s. dream act on the community-supported, educational kqed youth radio (http://www.kqed.org/a/perspectives/r201011040735). ask them to consider how her current story is similar and different from the historical story of sylvia mendez. should estafania and other students like her be denied the opportunity to attend college? organize the class to participate in a debate about undocumented immigrants and education rights in the united states. divide the class into two groups and let them use the school library computers and materials to research information about undocumented immigrants and education. social studies teachers can work with school librarians to preselect websites as well as books and other materials that the students can use for research. one group will find information to support the argument that undocumented immigrants should have an opportunity to go to college and another group will find information to support the counter argument. engage the students in the class debate. topic 3: education discrimination based on language barriers: have students watch present tense (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m_bpt85mno), a short film created by three high school students in zanzibar. the film describes how the english-only language policy in public mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu http://storycorps.org/listen/sylvia-mendez-and-sandra-mendez-duran/ https://teachinglatinamericathroughliterature.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/cox-lesson-plan-unit-315.pdf https://teachinglatinamericathroughliterature.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/cox-lesson-plan-unit-315.pdf https://teachinglatinamericathroughliterature.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/cox-lesson-plan-unit-315.pdf https://teachinglatinamericathroughliterature.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/cox-lesson-plan-unit-315.pdf http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/education-outreach/book-of-the-month-separate-is-never-equal.pdf http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/education-outreach/book-of-the-month-separate-is-never-equal.pdf http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/education-outreach/book-of-the-month-separate-is-never-equal.pdf http://www.adl.org/assets/pdf/education-outreach/book-of-the-month-separate-is-never-equal.pdf http://www.kqed.org/a/perspectives/r201011040735 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m_bpt85mno journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 206 schools, which was meant to equalize the education between government and private schools, creates access barriers to education and produces students who can speak little english and will mostly likely not graduate from high school. how is this type of education discrimination the same and different from the other types discussed? the film was created by high school students to call attention to a problem in their country. have students identify a problem in their local community, state, or province and ask them to brainstorm a solution to the problem. give students the opportunity to create a storyboard for their own digital story or digital movie that highlights the particular problem. working with the school librarian, the social studies teacher will work with students to create their digital stories/movies. students can work in small groups. examples of other digital stories and points to consider when creating digital stories with students are available at edtech teacher’s digital storytelling in the classroom (http://edtechteacher.org/tools/multimedia/digital-storytelling/). topic 4: education discrimination based on gender: have students watch one of the stories from the film girl rising (http://girlrising.com/) which profiles nine girls around the world and their struggle for an equal education. using the girl rising curriculum (http://girlrising.com/curriculum/), social studies teacher and librarians can work together to scaffold learning about education discrimination of girls. have students choose one of the following short books to read about malala yousafzai: who is malala yousafzai?(brown and thomson, 2015), malala, a brave girl from pakistan/iqbal, a brave boy from pakistan: two stories of bravery (winter, 2014), or malala yousafzai: warrior with words (abouraya & wheatley, 2014). after reading the books to gain background information about malala, have students listen to portions of one of her online speeches such as the books not bullets speech at education summit in oslo, norway (july 2015) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxoftqyjy9o). have students create a booktrailer for their book that captures malala’s passion and would get younger students interested in reading her story. booktrailers will be shared in the school library with students in grades 2-3. educators could alternatively extend this lesson and have students read and discuss i am malala: how one girl stood up for education and changed the world, young readers edition (yousafzai & mccormick, 2014). using the malala fund website (http://www.malala.org/), encourage students to participate in the #booksnotbullets campaign, posting photos of themselves with their favorite books. ask students to brainstorm how they can make a difference in the world to end education discrimination. they might raise money for the because i am a girl fund (http://planinternational.org/girls/) to sponsor the education of a girl in another country; connect with students in other countries via epals (www.epals.com) to brainstorm collaborative action with other students; participate in international literacy day activities organizing book drives or a little free library; or connect with libraries around the world via theinternational federation of library associations (ifla)’ sister libraries program (https://sisterlibraries.wordpress.com/) to work with other children and teens to strategize ways to help children in the communities served by the libraries. mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu http://edtechteacher.org/tools/multimedia/digital-storytelling/ http://girlrising.com/ http://girlrising.com/curriculum/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxoftqyjy9o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxoftqyjy9o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxoftqyjy9o http://www.malala.org/ http://www.malala.org/ http://plan-international.org/girls/ http://plan-international.org/girls/ http://www.epals.com/ https://sisterlibraries.wordpress.com/ journal of international social studies, vol. 5, no. 1, 2015, 196-207. corresponding author email: jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu ©2012/2018 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org issn 2327-3585 page 207 authors jamie campbell naidoo, ph.d. is an associate professor at the university of alabama school of library and information studies where he teaches and researches in the areas of cultural diversity and social justice in children’s literature and library services. miriam e. sweeney, ph.d. is an assistant professor at the university of alabama school of library and information studies. she employs critical cultural frameworks to research intersections of race, gender, and digital media. her other research interests include social justice education and interventions for library and information professionals. note from editor: although articles in this section of the journal are usually not double blind peer reviewed, in this instance (naidoo & sweeney, 2015) this was undertaken, in addition to a peer review from the section editor. we thank naidoo & sweeney for their perseverance with the onerous process. mailto:jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu pie33(1).indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 87 social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin jabulani ngcobo it has become public knowledge that teachers have gradually been called to teach learners to world-class standards in order to enable them to participate actively in the global economy. this has fuelled a debate on how teachers should be prepared to fulfil this new role. in-service programmes on social justice and education have often been critiqued for failing to build teachers’ subject knowledge and pedagogical skills which are essential for facilitating learners’ access to the curriculum. this paper takes a position that teaching is an inescapably political act that often (if not always) involves ideas, power and access to learning and life opportunities. the study presented in this paper was designed to explore how teachers used social justice pedagogy as a conduit for making the curriculum accessible to all their learners. data for this study were generated from self-reflexive action research reports from a sample of 20 teachers submitted as part of the assessment requirements for the advanced certificate in education (ace) programme. the data were used to understand 1) how teachers conceptualised and understood social justice, and 2) how teachers utilised these understandings in broadening curriculum access for their learners. the study found that participants conceptualised and understood social justice on a basis of a philosophy of education as transformation, which often called on them to traverse political borders. for these teachers, teaching for social justice meant that education was construed as a means to break the cycle of social ills, victimhood and hegemony. the study presented some emerging thoughts on how knowledge about social justice in education could be deployed by teachers to broaden access to and in the curriculum. keywoords: social justice, curriculum access, in-service education melanie martin university of kwazulu natal, school of education e-mail: martinm@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 033 260 6456 (w) jabulani ngcobo department of basic education e-mail: ngcoboj32@gmail.com perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 88 introduction the field of social justice has grown immensely. however, this growth has evolved with challenges in deepening and broadening understanding of social justice. in most instances, conceptualisation of social justice has been framed within binary, ‘either or’ understandings of identity. that is, identity construction positions people either as oppressors or oppressed depending on the social identity group that one belongs to. such binary understandings have resulted in many individuals’ being positioned or actively positioning themselves as working for or against social justice, while being oblivious of the complexities involved in working for social justice. this often makes it difficult for identity to be conceptualised and understood within frameworks that allow for intersectionality, simultaneity and saliency (crenshaw, 1993; jones & mcewen, 2000). the notion of ‘social justice’ is used quite prolifically, with almost all teachers branding themselves as a social justice teacher. in a sense, the notion of social justice has become a catchphrase for political correctness and is in itself incapable of assisting teachers to interrogate and explore patterns of their internalised dominance in their attempt to broaden access to and in the curriculum for all learners. since the advent of democracy in south africa, with its formulation of the new constitutional promise of social justice, equity and equality, the concept of social justice has generally been used as a politically correct term to express one’s allegiance to the new constitutional promise – far removed from the ideals of the new constitutional framework (ramphele, 2012). the conceptualisation of social justice in this paper is that social justice denotes something more than a label such as being a social justice teacher – social justice is a political commitment that requires action and activism. social justice is less about declaring oneself as being ‘saved,’ and more about the activism to live and work towards fairness, equity, peace and equality. in our work in in-service education for social justice, we have recognised that our students come with a complex matrix of social identities. these identities often texture the way in which our students view the world, others and their teaching spaces. the contested nature of schooling often seduces teachers to participate in struggles that invite them to meddle in identity construction politics. as a foundation for living and working for social justice, it is vital for teachers to engage critically with issues of social justice in relation to how they position themselves in these struggles. as teachers working to teach for social justice, we often hear stories from our students of being confronted with situations that require them to traverse borders of dominant discourses. our reading of their stories is that this is often preceded by an awareness of a particular way in which society is constructed – that is, an awareness of the existence of oppressive practices and attitudes. as authors of this paper, we acknowledge that the extent to which their social identities are shaped, constructed social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin & jabulani ngcobo 89 and reconstructed by their experiences as students in the ace: values and human rights in education is a matter of further investigation. we know from our experience of working with the students that when they begin participating in this specialisation, they are usually unaware of what it means to teach for social justice. it is only in the journey that they begin to develop alternative lenses for viewing the world, which often carries a promise about the way in which they might eventually think and act in the world. from our experience as lecturers, we have learned that students often join the ace: values and human rights in education specialisation with a generally uncritical understanding of their roles as teachers working in schooling contexts that are affected by a complex matrix of social, political, historical and economic factors. in a sense, they are unaware of the hegemonic ideologies underpinning the act of educating and the role that ideologies play in constructing and positioning learners and teachers. for instance, our students are initially unaware of the complex realities that their learners have to contend with daily. more often than not, students tend to cast their lenses outside of their own practice and focus on learners whom they believe are the source of the problems that make curriculum access difficult and sometimes impossible. it is our view that this thought process of students fails to acknowledge the extent to which their beliefs and actions prevent learners from accessing the curriculum. this is compounded by systemic barriers that reinforce the marginalisation of already disempowered learners. teachers need to understand that all learners must have access to the curriculum. therefore, access to and in the curriculum is not just for the chosen few, but for all learners, even those who are not the norm. our argument should be clear from the above, namely that social justice could be deployed as a useful conduit to ensure access to and in the curriculum for all learners. we refute the argument that social justice is devoid of an academic foundation and, hence, weak in its usefulness as a means to achieve academic ends. embedded in the substance of our argument is the understanding that teaching is an inescapably political act. we believe that social justice education should serve the function of empowering teachers’ pedagogy. it should also open up space for them to reflect on their own pedagogical practices and hold them responsible for ensuring access to and in the curriculum for all their learners. the notion of social justice the lens used to frame and understand this study is located within the notion of social justice. as referred to earlier in this paper, social justice is a shifting, elusive and dynamic concept. in the context of this paper, social justice is defined as both a process and a goal. adams, bell and griffins (1997:4) describe the ultimate goal of social justice education as ‘full and equal participation of all groups in society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs’. for instance, in this study, the intention is to broaden curriculum access to ensure that learners not only have access to the perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 90 curriculum, but that conditions are such that they are able to participate in the curriculum in ways that meet their individual needs. so, the vision of social justice education is to ensure equitable distribution of resources and opportunities to all learners. with regard to the process towards realising this goal, processes and mechanisms should be ‘democratic and participatory, inclusive and affirming of human agency and human capacities’ (adams et al., 1997:4). for example, access to and in the curriculum must make it possible for learners to use their current capacities to develop their full potential. that is, they must not only be present, but also be active players in the curriculum, and accrue maximum benefits irrespective of their individual differences. therefore, the notion of social justice is an ethical frame in which equity and the achievement of a primary social trajectory are elevated above all else. according to rawls (1972), two principles define social justice. the first principle is based on individuals’ having an equal right to basic liberties in a society. for instance, all learners have equal right to education – education is not a preserve for the few; it is what every learner has to enjoy. the second principle involves giving the greatest social and economic benefits to those least advantaged. social justice is not about making things equal; it is about equity, and equity, in turn, is about the fair distribution of resources and opportunities. therefore, it is about recognising that, for instance, learners do not begin from the same starting point; and about ensuring that there are supportive structures which would allow learners who are more disadvantaged to participate actively. the emerging social justice discourse calls for teachers working for social justice to interrogate the assumptions and structural dynamics which drive practices that could pose insurmountable barriers and invisible ceilings for learners who are aspiring to achieve their potential by means of education. in this sense, social justice is about levelling the ground so that all learners have access to and in the curriculum. this could mean differentiation of the curriculum to ensure that all learners do not only feel welcome, but are indeed regarded as legitimate players whose experiences are used to advance their participation. in essence, social justice education aims to broaden access to and in the social, political and economic goods available in a particular society. the study context, research methodology and design the purpose of the ace programme at the university of kwazulu-natal is to provide professional and academic advancement for practising teachers. this means that the programme aims to develop and enrich teachers’ praxis in their situated contexts. the ace: values and human rights in education, in particular, aims to develop social justice educators who, through their participation in the specialisation, become more and more empowered, and begin to work in more anti-oppressive ways with social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin & jabulani ngcobo 91 their learners. the modules provide activities, texts and theories for development in their field of specialisation as teachers for a more just and equitable society. the study presented in this paper is located within the qualitative tradition. we read teachers’ texts using a critical paradigm. the critical paradigm problematises the notion that individuals such as teachers operate free of the political influence and regards the various ways in which people view the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge, and the concept of truth as highly contestable subjective acts. the study sought to understand how teachers conceptualised social justice education and how these understandings were deployed as a conduit to broaden access to and in the curriculum. selection of participants this paper uses data from a sample of 20 teachers completing their final year of their ace: values and human rights in education. purposive sampling was applied to select participants from a group of 150 students. selected participants were students who had obtained a result of more than 60% in the module social equity in professional practice, which is a final-year second-semester module that introduces students to self-reflexive action research. purposive sampling is in keeping with cohen, manion and morrison’s (2000) understanding that participants are selected because they meet particular criteria as determined by the researcher. for our purposes, the motive for using purposeful sampling was to be able to access participants whom we believed had demonstrated sufficient, critical and in-depth knowledge of reflexivity which could have influenced their practice positively. all participants were primary school teachers who had completed their national professional diploma in education (npde) and did not possess a university degree. participants taught in a range of schools in the province of kwazulu-natal; 16 out of the 20 participants taught in rural contexts. three out of the 20 participants were male. it is important to indicate that only six students in the whole class were male. so, three constituted 50% of the male students. this is normal for our specialisation, because the number of male students has always been significantly lower than that of female students. in order to ensure that students were not telling us what they thought we wanted to hear, we built in five sessions for students to meet with their respective tutors in their tutorial group to interrogate each student’s report with regard to processes followed and emerging understandings. the sessions were meant to assist students to progressively develop their papers based on the input that they were receiving from the group. students were required to keep a journal of their reflections and learnings. in addition, it was made clear to students that they had to frame their work around the curriculum challenges that they were currently experiencing with the learners whom they were teaching at the time. the intention was to reduce the perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 92 influence of the focus on marks, although we know that it could not be completely eliminated because it all eventually boiled down to a mark. there are many complexities involved in the use of reports intended for assessment for a study such as this one. thus, we acknowledge the possibility of a bias that could have been present in the reports and that students might have presented reports in keeping with their beliefs of what their tutors wanted, as well as the need to position themselves as teachers working for social justice. thus, there might be a presentation of an ideal teacher as opposed to what actually occurred in their practice. data generation data were generated from self-reflexive action reports that students had submitted as part of their programme assessment requirements. the purpose of the selfreflexive action research projects was for students to use theoretical and conceptual knowledge gained over the three semesters to inform their practice in a meaningful, more socially just way. students had to identify a curriculum issue affecting learning and teaching in their contexts, and design and carry out an intervention programme using critical self-reflexive action research. central to the action research was the imperative for students to be self-reflexive, that is, to engage in an ‘inquiry by the self for the self’ (mcniff, 2002:4). participants were required to develop a self-reflexive kind of consciousness of their own practice. they had to challenge and question their particular value systems that might have had a negative impact on learners’ progress in their classroom and then work towards a more just, democratic praxis in broadening access to and in the curriculum. in so doing, they had to acknowledge the need to own the problem and become responsible and accountable for changing oppressive practices that presented as barriers to maximum access to and in the curriculum (noffke & somekh, 2011; creswell, 2008). excerpts used in this paper were taken directly from students’ self-reflexive action reports and form the basis for our argument on the deployment of social justice as a conduit for broadening access to and in the curriculum. data analysis the reports were analysed using a thematic approach. initial coding involved broad categories of issues that emerged from the data that were divided into meaningful units for analysis purposes. coding was done both inductively and deductively in that particular understandings emerged from the data which were coded in particular ways. this is also referred to as emic coding which is a representation of the participants’ actions, explanations, conceptualisations that are distinct to their contexts. etic or priori categories or codes represented our researchers’ worldviews and understandings based on the literature and experiences (nieuwenhuis, 2007). we used theoretical constructs to identify emerging themes that would address our research questions. social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin & jabulani ngcobo 93 ethical considerations all participants were requested to provide and sign consent forms for the use of their reports for this particular research study. confidentiality was ensured through the use of pseudonyms for participants and any other potentially identifying information in the reports. presentation of findings the meaning of social justice and education the data revealed that participants had constructed particular conceptualisations of social justice and education. for them, education was more than an academic endeavour. it involved the understanding that education and teaching was a political act, and that whatever they did or felt in the classroom had far-reaching implications for the future endeavours of their learners. understanding the lives of, firstly, themselves as teachers, then the lives of their learners, the curriculum and the school as an institution itself, played a vital role in assisting them to frame and adapt their teaching and learning processes in order to make it relevant to the contexts in which they taught. for instance, one of the participants, nomusa, made this synoptic comment with regard to the essence of the act of educating: i do not focus only on my learners academic performance i also strive to give them affection and understanding. this ensures that they are emotionally prepared to handle subject related issues such as knowing their multiplication tables in mathematics, their spelling in english. a better understanding of the process of teaching and learning required that participants first engage in an intense process of self-reflection, which was, for some, emotionally engaging and personally challenging (o’connor, 2008). all the participants recognised teaching and learning as more than the mere teaching of academic content. part of the self-reflexive process that teachers engaged with entailed their valuing all those involved in the educative process. this, in turn, enabled them to negotiate and sometimes challenge what they believed negated this valuing of learners and their ability. it formed part of their identification of what ‘a good and supportive teacher did’ and enabled them to regain the necessary energy in order for schools to do what they are supposed to do, namely to ‘teach and not tolerate issues like laziness, drunkenness’. it meant ‘challenging the things that the teachers in my school do and even what the school practices are’(pearl). findings from the project are reminiscent of findings by other researchers, such as maclure, (1993) and kelchtermans and ballet (2002), who indicated that teachers will use their political belief systems as a motivation and justification for their particular ways of engaging with their professional work. this understanding of access to and in the curriculum ensured that participants worked hard to ensure that learners were learning their academics, for if they failed to do this, it would mean that: perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 94 …(the) lives of our children would be lost and destroyed ... as at the end learners have to pass mathematics, natural sciences, isizulu, english and so on … it is ultimately about symbols and marks (sizwe). contrary to dominant understanding of teaching and learning, participants viewed education as education for transformation, which was underpinned by the value of action. however, their understanding of the purpose of education was varied, a mixture of neoliberalism and human rights. the participants often vacillated between two understandings, namely the need for structural change and a devolution of power (human rights discourse), but they still recognised that one had to be realistic when dealing with contexts (neoliberalism). questions need to be answered … these include what the purpose of the system is, what are the affected people’s beliefs about education, what does learning and teaching mean, why should we teach in a particular way ... communities send children to schools because they want to improve their situation. they want learners to become engineers, teachers, and accountants and so on. this means that teachers have to teach well in order to meet these needs (jane). for these participants, education has far-reaching consequences and many beneficiaries, namely the teachers themselves, learners, learners’ families, teachers’ families and the community at large. thus, for most participants, education was about survival and, therefore, skilling learners to be able to actively take part in the economy: education is not a luxury it is what breaks the cycle of poverty, victimhood and hegemony. so, it must be good and of high quality. the system must perform well (busisiwe) we must teach them now so that tomorrow we will find them ready and well prepared to face life. they must do well in school so that they would be able to have good jobs that pay well (zama). it is my belief that everybody should be able to read and write and count … is it not the function of the school to provide quality education for all? (nokwanda) from this perspective, we are able to conclude that participants were very aware of what, for them, were real purposes of education, and they were aware of the problems facing the majority of south africans. it was clear that participants had found a necessary balance between understanding the reality of the south african context and the dominant understandings of the purpose of education. constructing alternative philosophies of education academic views of teaching should highlight and problematise intersections of education and power. participants in this study argued that, where there were inequities in their schooling context, mostly as a result of dominant practices and beliefs about learners from a particular class, there would be a need for teachers to step in and provide both academic access and pastoral care. participants further struggled to decide how to provide both access to learning and access to social and social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin & jabulani ngcobo 95 economic support. for instance, one of the participants, noluthando, painted the dilemma as follows: when i finished studying from college, i was eager to use all the good things that i had learned there. however, on my first month of teaching, the reaction of my colleagues to simple things such as using teaching aids, taught me that what i had learned from college had no place here. i knew it was the right thing but, being new, i did not have the courage to push this agenda …it is only now that i have the courage to experiment with various ways of ensuring that learners do well in the subjects that i teach … nancy frazer’s (1997, cited in rizvi, (2009) conceptual framework of social justice as recognition was important in this regard. it showed teachers’ responsive practices following an understanding of what learners required of them as their teachers. kathy, for example, understood ‘her personal beliefs, attitudes and behaviour conformed to that of a traditional teacher,’ which she felt discriminated against her english second language learners. this is not to say that teachers were not aware of their context, but rather that the context was used as an exclusionary tool to continue their practices of inequality and oppression. the exclusionary practices of the institution where zethu taught, for example, promoted the idea of ‘you need to be the boss in your classroom,’ reinforcing these practices of alienation and marginalisation. key to their transformative thinking was being critically aware of the social injustice that the vast majority of learners are exposed to daily (tickly & dachi, 2009). teachers explained in their action research self-reflexive projects that learners in their classroom displayed poor language and maths ability, discipline problems, drug and substance abuse, learning difficulties, or poor vocabulary. because this project called on them to change their own practice, they needed to focus inwardly and assess the extent to which they were contributors to the difficulties that learners faced but, more importantly, focus on how to change their practice to help learners. this kind of transformative thinking was based on a critical awareness of political and cultural assumptions and understandings that have an impact on how participants viewed themselves and their relationships with learners. this, in turn, led to a more inclusive understanding of the impact that their practice and experience had on the choices they made on how to deal with the challenge of broadening curriculum access. these were multiple, varied and contradictory at times, reflecting their attempts to construct and reconstruct an identity that they felt was in keeping with social justice thinking and activism (mezirow, 1981). for instance, participants were conscious of the unequal power dynamics that featured in their relationship with their learners, and that teaching for social justice called for something more than a mere rhetoric. zodwa’s reflection reveals her realisation that incompetent teachers could make it difficult for learners to gain maximum benefit from teaching and learning situations: perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 96 i have learned that sometimes it is me as an educator that is blocking a child to learn. as teachers, we often do this when we do not prepare our lessons well, assess in ways that do not take account of the diversity of our learners, have adequate subject knowledge, or do not cover the required amount of work … sithobile’s concerns are even greater because here she presents a dilemma about what she believes teaching has been reduced to. for her it is no longer about ‘(caring) much about other people,’ but more about ‘working to get an income, not for change and development. i am therefore concerned with what i see because it violates principles of social justice, as learners’ time has been and is being wasted ...’ foremost in her mind is that learners’ time has been ‘wasted’ and this means that learners have not had access to opportunities that develop their full academic capabilities. her concern is also an expression of understanding that teachers are socially responsible for learners and broader society (bell, 1997) constructing alternative philosophies of education often called upon participants to be critically aware of their practice in ensuring the provision of empowering opportunities to learn. thus, constructing an alternative philosophy of education constituted a political act that wrestled with issues of power. for these participants, construction was a messy, disconcerting process that involved navigating contradictions and controversies. this meant reconstructing their sense of identity or subjectivity with its historical roots steeped in inequality. for these participants the responsibility of challenging inequality and injustice lies with them as they acknowledge themselves as critical educators working for social justice. for precious, this starts with the recognition that she ‘cannot ride the blaming horse’. part of being a critical educator is taking responsibility for own practices and being accountable for the results of learners. this implied not shifting the blame for poor results on previous teachers, large numbers, own lack of disciplinary knowledge, a lack of departmental support or learners’ demotivation. instead, it was about their reflection on their own practices and then acting in new and alternative ways. however, it is important to acknowledge that some of these issues are indeed structural deficiencies which require the intervention of the department of education. for participants, constructing alternative philosophies of education called upon teachers to be transformative and future oriented despite the fact that conscientisation is arduous and painful. the challenges that exist in education for many of their learners must be taken seriously and acted upon. this means holding up the ideal that education can and should be geared towards helping every single individual to enjoy their full capabilities (ayers, quinn & stovall, 2009). the importance of providing quality education the understanding that education has an impact on people in various ways provided participants with a reason to continue working towards quality education for all social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin & jabulani ngcobo 97 learners. working for quality education meant that they had to question what they were doing, and why they were doing things in those particular ways. here, the renewed understandings of their roles as teachers, with regard to providing access to and in quality education, instilled in participants the will to question their previously held assumptions. this allowed them space to begin a process of facilitating teaching and learning in ways that are more inclusive, non-discriminating and self-reflective (mezirow, 1997). one of the participants, khumbulani, reflects on the above as follows: i have to bring hope to the hopeless, justice and treat learners with passion and love. i have to restore their dignity so that they can gain self-esteem and confidence. restoring their dignity means ensuring that i present the curriculum in ways that make it possible for them to succeed. the low levels of performance in schools has been a major national concern for the past decade (e.g., african national congress, 2011, 2012; department of basic education, 2011; gustafsson & patel, 2008; jansen, 2012; motshekga, 2011; university of kwazulu-natal, 2010). as educators in south africa, participants were also concerned about the fact that south african education continued to present as a major source of socio-cultural advantage and disadvantage (lam, 2007). this is how one of the participants, langelihle, put forth their concern with regard to the imperative of quality education: is it not the function of the school to provide quality education for all? if it is, then i have a responsibility to make sure that my learners do not only enjoy being at school, but that they also do well in literacy, numeracy and life skills … [e]ducation is about going back home with good results, that can take you to the next level of life. the above reveals, among other things, that the work of these educators was about addressing specific curriculum issues in order to ensure quality education for their learners. improving learner performance was viewed as a way to ensure quality education. a concluding note a few cautious conclusions can be drawn from the findings of this study. first, it would seem that participation in a social justice education specialisation, and doing this kind of project, opened a space for participants to develop a new frame of reference from which to view the world and their teaching. participants understood that teaching for social justice was about meeting both the academic and social and emotional needs of learners. this came after intense self-reflection and a realisation that teaching is not a neutral act, but a political act endowed with the potential to both exclude and include. the crucial role that teachers play in this process was highlighted. secondly, findings revealed that becoming a social justice teacher is both a process and a goal (adams et al., 1997). that is, it is not a once-off event that can be achieved overnight. instead, it involves developing a personal philosophy of education that is in line with the process and goal of social justice in meeting the needs of learners in context. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 98 lastly, social justice could be deployed as a conduit to broaden access to and in the curriculum. that is, social justice teachers are obliged to teach in ways that broaden curriculum access for all learners. references adams, m., bell, l., & griffin, p. (eds) 1997. teaching for diversity and social justice. new york: routledge. african national congress. 2011. anc statement on annual national assessments results. johannesburg: african national congress. african national congress. 2012. umrabulo special edition: let’s talk politics: policy discussion documents – 2012. johannesburg: african national congress. ayers, w., quinn, t. & stovall, d. 2009. handbook of social justice in education. new york/london: routledge. bell, l. 1997. theoretical foundations for social justice education. in: m adams, l bell & p griffin (eds). teaching for diversity and social justice: a sourcebook. new york/london: routledge. cohen, l., manion, l. & morrison, k. 2000. research methods in education, 5th edn. london: routledge falmer. crenshaw, k. 1993. demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. in: dk weisberg (ed.), feminist legal theory: foundations. 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statement on the release of the annual national assessments results for 2011 by mrs angie motshekga, minister of basic education, union building. pretoria: department of basic education. nieuwenhuis, j. 2007. analysing qualitative data. in: k maree (ed.), first steps in research. pretoria: van schaik publishers. noffke, s. & somekh, b. 2011. action research. in: c lewin & b somekh (eds), theory and methods in social research, 2nd edn. london: sage. o’connor, k.e. 2008. “you choose to care”: teachers, emotions and professional identity. teaching and teacher education, 24:117-126. olivier, b. 2012. foucault and individual autonomy. paper presented at the university of kwazulu-natal. ramphele, m. 2012. conversations with my sons and daughters. parktown: penguin group. rawls, j. 1972. a theory of justice. oxford: clarendon press. rizvi, f. 2009. international perspective on social justice and education. in: w ayers, t quinn & d stovall (eds). handbook of social justice in education. new york/ london: routledge. tikly, l. & dachi, h. 2009. social justice in african education in the age of globalisation. in: w ayers, t quinn & d stovall (eds). handbook of social justice in education. new york/london: routledge university of kwazulu-natal. 2010. the state of education in kwazulu-natal: a report for kzn treasury. pietermaritzburg. 9 the potential of critical feminist citizenship frameworks for citizenship and social justice in higher education vivienne bozalek university of western cape ronelle carolissen stellenbosch university there is a paucity of south african literature that uses feminist critical approaches as a conceptual tool to examine intersections of social justice and citizenship. this article aims to address this gap by examining the potential of critical feminist approaches to transform conceptions of citizenship in higher education. it outlines how traditional normative frameworks of citizenship can be contested by drawing on feminist approaches. more specifically, the article focuses on feminist contributions regarding ontological constructions of human beings as citizens, the public-private binary, the politics of needs interpretation, participatory parity and belonging, illuminating these concepts with illustrative examples from the higher education context. the article concludes by suggesting recommendations based on the identified feminist conceptions. keywords: social justice, citizenship, feminism, south africa, higher education introduction while some work exists on both social justice and citizenship in educational contexts in south africa (see badat, 2010; enslin, 2003; hill, baxen, craig & namakula, 2012; soudien, 2006; walker & unterhalter, 2007; vally, 2007), there is a paucity of literature which uses feminist frameworks to integrate social justice and citizenship. we propose that one of the ways in which we can consider an integration of social justice and citizenship is by using feminist critical approaches as a conceptual tool to interface these two concepts. we regard this as a useful analysis since, with some exceptions (see enslin, 2006; pendlebury & enslin, 2004; walker & unterhalter, 2007), feminist critical approaches have been used infrequently in educational analyses on citizenship and social justice in south africa and more widely, too (tormey & gleeson, 2012). in this article, we posit that traditional normative frameworks are, for several reasons, limited and that it is necessary to find alternative ways of thinking about citizenship in higher education (he). the reason for this is that normative frameworks produce hegemonic discourses by conferring power on certain speaking positions and vocabularies, and thus include and exclude certain modes of speaking and thinking about citizenship (sevenhuijsen, 1998, 2003). feminist approaches are particularly helpful for deconstructing hegemonic discourses implicit in ideas of citizenship, difference and social justice in south african he. these critical political feminist approaches have the potential to create alternative discursive or rhetorical spaces (code, 1995) that can move ideas and practices residing at the margins of debates to the centre of political discourse (hooks, 2000). insights gleaned from this process can then be used to consider possible ways in which critical citizens may be developed in and through he, as suggested in the national plan for higher education white paper (department of education, 1997). citizenship has been foregrounded in south african he policy documents. for example, the education white paper 3: a framework for transformation of higher education (department of education, 1997:1.3) argues that one of the roles of he is to contribute to socialising students who are the “enlightened, responsible and constructively critical citizens”. the higher education south africa (hes) statement to the higher education summit (2010) also quotes saleem badat, the vice chancellor of rhodes, as saying that one of the key roles of he is to contribute to “forging a critical and democratic citizenship” and 10 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 “developing students who are sensitive intellectuals and critical citizens” (retrieved from http://www. cepd.org.za/?q=summit_document_submissions, june 2012). in order to examine these issues in south african he, we make use of feminist theorists such as fraser (2008, 2009), nussbaum (2010), tronto (1993, in press); sevenhuijsen (1998, 2003), yuval-davis (2011) and young (2011) who have all made alternative contributions to debates on citizenship, belonging, social justice and inclusion. what is core to all their contributions are the alternatives that these theories provide to traditional normative frameworks through their incorporation of difference into social justice and citizenship, which we believe to be of central importance for he. in this article, we first elaborate on how traditional normative frameworks envisage citizenship and then outline the contributions which feminist approaches make in contesting these traditional views of citizenship. in perusing the literature, we identified common themes central to difference, citizenship and social justice across the major theorists mentioned earlier. the following themes were central: ontological constructions of human beings as citizens; the public-private binary; the politics of needs interpretation; participatory parity, and belonging. throughout the article, we provide examples of how these feminist contributions to citizenship can be used to analyse and inform he practices. finally, we provide some recommendations for he regarding these identified themes. traditional normative frameworks at its most basic level, citizenship is viewed as a legal status or membership of a nation state (lister, williams, anttonen, bussemaker, gerhard, heinen, johansson, leira, siim & tobio, 2007). most scholars of citizenship use th marshall (1950) as a starting point for debates on citizenship (lister, 2003; tronto, in press; yuval-davis, 2011). marshall (1950) argued that all who have citizenship status are equal with respect to rights and duties. he classified these rights as civil, political and social or welfare rights. at the time of his writing, he was a pioneer in terms of his progressive attitude to and emphasis on social class inequalities in terms of citizenship. he advocated for the provision of public goods for meeting educational, health and other needs which are not provided for by the market. however, his views on social inclusion were premised on the notion of the breadwinner husband and a stay-at-home wife with a few children. he believed that citizenship rights are conferred only on those who take up the duty to work in public spaces in order to contribute to the public good (lister, 2003). his view of citizenship assumed a traditional patriarchal view of citizenship that valorises men’s contribution to society. this assumption was formulated in a context in which men had greater access to paid work during the 1950s when marshall was writing. he valued women’s unpaid work, mainly in private spaces of the family and home, in their roles as caregivers for dependents, but did not associate this with citizenship. ontologically, he therefore viewed human beings as workers and the work ethic (defined as those engaged in paid labour) as making human beings worthy of citizenship. the work ethic excludes unpaid labour as valuable work and maintains that hard work will be rewarded. this is also based on methodological individualism where the worth of human beings is dependent on how hard they can work for themselves in the public sphere. it, therefore, excludes interdependency, collaboration and social sharing as valid and desirable practices in society. this view may be regarded as decontextualised and ahistorical, as it obscures the systematic privileging and oppression of citizens such as that observed in racism or gender discrimination (tronto, in press). feminist authors have critiqued this view, not only because women and dependents (such as infants, children, the elderly and those living with disabilities) have been excluded as citizens (kittay 2001, 2002; nussbaum, 2006), but also as a result of the moral assumptions guiding marshall’s views. we will now consider ways in which critical feminists have defined citizenship and the alternative perspectives they have offered. the themes central to feminist writing, in this instance, are the constructions of human beings as citizens; the politics of needs interpretation; the public-private binary; participatory parity, and belonging. we consider the implications that these themes have for citizenship and social justice in south african he. it is important to recognise that real-life examples from he contexts do not necessarily neatly 11bozalek & carolissen — the potential of critical feminist citizenship frameworks fit into these categories as mutually exclusive entities. there is considerable overlap between various thematic categories. constructions of human beings as citizens critical feminists believe that autonomy can be possible only through social relations with others. relational ontology rejects ideas of a rational, independent and self-sufficient self (rawls, 1971), but rather views human beings as interdependent, vulnerable and temporal beings (benhabib, 1992; cockburn, 2005; o’brien, 2005; nussbaum, 2012; sevenhuijsen, 1998; tronto, 1993). universalist discourses’ constructions of autonomous human beings obscure alternative feminist normative constructions which regard the moral agent as “an ‘encumbered self’, who is always already embedded in relations with flesh-and-blood others and is partly constituted by these relations” (keller, 1997:152). these feminist views of human beings incorporate difference, particularity, concreteness and situatedness (dahlberg & moss, 2005), rather than a rawlsian universal or ‘generalised other’ devoid of specific characteristics and separated from day-to-day relationships with others (benhabib, 1992; cockburn, 2005). a useful theory of citizenship should not explain away difference and situatedness in its emphasis on the homogeneity of citizens, but should provide theoretical tools to incorporate the possibility that all human beings in their differential positioning’s and in the contexts of concrete relationships should be able to lead flourishing lives (benhabib, 1992; nussbaum, 2012). models of citizenship generally ascribed to in he are chiefly informed by rights-based models such as those proposed by th marshall (1950) and male enlightenment theorists such as rawls (1971). inherent in these he discourses is the assumption that we are all equally positioned and that differential access to social, economic and cultural resources are not taken into account. since he policies and practices generally operate from implicit assumptions that individuals are the same, higher education institutions (heis) are not geared towards accommodating difference. feminists such as iris young would insist that social, economic and cultural inequalities advantage some in he over others, thus democratic equity in he would need to recognise this and provide compensation for this unfairness to citizens in order for them to flourish in this sector (young, 2004). ultimately, these institutions expect individuals and ranges of difference to accommodate them rather than institutions adjusting to individuals (young, 1992). heis would, for example, position a student from a rural eastern cape school in the same way as a middle-class child from an urban privileged school in the city. similarly, the student who has to perform multiple caring duties after work is placed on an equal footing with a student who has access to multiple supports such as supportive partners, parents and/or domestic workers. differential positionalities in relation to he also apply to staff. many women academic staff have repeatedly raised the issue of the double shift, central to women’s work, as impacting on their abilities to keep abreast with the current demands to publish or perish in the academy (raddon, 2002; mills & berg, 2010). however, if individuals do not succeed in he, their underperformance is construed as individual deficit. the pathologising of individuals arises because traits such as hard work, individual success, selfdiscipline and personal responsibility contribute to the discourse of autonomy in which people are held personally responsible for their own educational success, irrespective of their differential circumstances. the academy is structured to be an institution that privileges white, male, middle-class normativity and all who are positioned differently in terms of location/positionalities have to make numerous accommodations to fit into the established normative structure and institutional discourses. this is particularly evident in discourses of neoliberalism which currently underpin he policies and practices (dahlberg & moss, 2005; lister, 2003; tronto, in press). students are constructed as consumers and universities as corporate structures. this gives rise to technical-instrumental orientation in which the state plays a diminished role, but maintains control through an audit culture. in this audit culture, control can be situated from a distance, because the expectations are discursively interiorised and performed by individuals such as students and lecturers within the heis (foucault, 1977). in this way, academic subjectivities are constructed through internalisation and performance of hegemonic practices. the dynamics inherent in the audit culture have a number of implications for he. when students are thought of as consumers, the potential exists that the 12 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 teaching and learning project can be negatively affected (vally, 2007). for example, student evaluations of modules and lecturers may be skewed when students engage in limited self-reflexivity and have a reduced capacity to engage with difference, particularly when the lecturer is constructed as different by the students. the public-private binary as noted earlier, a denial of difference disguises ways in which relationships are politically skewed and unequal in society (o’brien, 2005; young, 2004). assumptions implicit in marshall’s (1950) view of citizenship construct men as autonomous breadwinners, women as carers, and as living in nuclear families. women and children are constructed as being dependent on men and as obtaining their status through men’s position in society. these assumptions still tend to dominate traditional discourses on citizenship (tronto, in press). young (1992:9-10) identifies the origins of citizenship in this conceptualisation: in this image of the republican citizen is a self-sufficient head of household, who supports himself and his dependents by means of his own property and labour. on this burger model, women, children, servants and others without independent means of producing a living, all those unable to work, are essentially dependent, either not citizens at all, or not full citizens. the work ethic and separation between public and private life prevailed in the late nineteenth century, where only men and women slaves were engaged in work, leaving the responsibility of care to women in the home. the work ethic reinforces the idea that if we work hard, we are deserving and will succeed (tronto, in press). from this perspective, a citizen in he is one who can present himself as being ready and available to work at all times, unencumbered by household responsibilities, and whose needs are fully taken care of by a woman in the private sphere. in the public world, teaching in he can be regarded as a form of care. race, rank, gender and class impact on how academics often engage differently with teaching and learning (omolade, 1994). in the context of marketization, casualization of academic labour has become ubiquitous (dahlberg & moss, 2005) and is regarded as a cheaper way of getting more work done for less pay (mills & berg, 2010). teaching is often outsourced, while more senior white men are able to concentrate on research activities, which are more valued than the hands-on work of teaching. these categories of people are also generally better placed, because they are inclined to take on researcher positions focused on individual accomplishments and success, minimising teaching rather than adopting a teaching and supportive presence for students. this is in sharp contrast to the caring roles of women and, more particularly, black women in academia (see omolade, 1994 regarding the “mummification” of black women in the public and private life). such models of citizenship informed by the boundaries between public and private life depend on the citizen worker and support staff (tronto, 2001). this model of citizenship has been reinforced by neoliberalism which concentrates only on economic contributions by citizens, obfuscating care as a valuable and essential activity in human life. tronto (2001) develops a convincing argument for including care as a necessary criterion or even precondition of citizenship. this would have the effect of making private considerations of care into public ones, and transcending the false dichotomy of the public/private spheres in views of citizenship. the politics of needs interpretation as mentioned earlier, following the ideas of th marshall (1950), most contemporary views of citizenship highlight the importance of rights and obligations. feminists adopt a broader view of citizenship which incorporates the politics of needs interpretation as an area of contestation (fraser, 1989). in an interview with bozalek (2012), nancy fraser asserts that needs are not objective or absolute, but are constructed by discourses in society. these discourses are informed by neoliberal markets, experts and social movements. contestations arise about where needs should be located – in the public or private sphere. feminists would argue that needs are political and should be located publicly. neoliberal 13bozalek & carolissen — the potential of critical feminist citizenship frameworks discourses would view needs as located in the individual where the responsibility for meeting needs is then located in private spaces of homes with individuals and families, absolving states from the responsibility for meeting needs. the process of needs interpretation is political and should be democratically decided by both caregivers and receivers – in other words, taking he as an example by policymakers, academics and students. these debates would be considered central to discursive political struggles about citizenship. an example of the politicisation of needs in he is particularly evident in how community engagement is construed in he. all south african heis are now required to include community engagement as part of their core function (department of education, 1997). over the past few years, community engagement in south africa has been regarded as important for attracting symbolic legitimacy for social responsibility in institutions. the idea of community engagement is generally that a well-meaning institution engages with communities outside of the university to provide services (research, intervention). yet community is seldom constructed as work within the university and, at times, curricula including community issues themselves are stigmatised (carolissen, rohleder, swartz, leibowitz & bozalek, 2010). all universityrelated actors are viewed as independent, resourced individuals and those outside as the antithetical poor, less resourced and marginal. this view constructs others outside the university as having needs and those within the institution as not having needs. when all are constructed as independent and resourced, the effect is that differential needs within the university are silenced. this, in turn, maintains the status quo of the university being constructed as a space of white, middle-class, male belonging. it is thus important for citizenship in he to ask questions regarding who is involved in setting the agenda for what people’s needs are. it is problematic if these needs are entirely driven by market-related or professional discourses without recourse to the recipients of care – students and on the ground providers of care in he. participatory parity we regard participatory parity as a crucial concept for citizenship and social justice. nancy fraser (2005, 2008, 2009) equates social justice with the ability to participate as equals and full partners in social interaction. social arrangements that promote participatory parity are a prerequisite to enable people to interact on an equal footing. fraser foregrounds three different dimensions which affect participatory parity – the economic, cultural and political spheres, all of which require social arrangements to be in place for participatory parity. table 1 visually represents fraser’s view of participatory parity, which will be explained systematically in the following paragraphs. the political sphere that is of direct relevance to this article will be emphasised. table 1: fraser’s contribution to citizenship participatory parity economic cultural political mal-/distribution mis-/recognition mis-/representation misframing fraser regards these three dimensions as distinct species or genres of social justice, all of which necessarily affect people’s abilities to interact as equals. since our article focuses specifically on citizenship, we regard her third dimension of the political sphere as the most important to concentrate on. however, as north (2006) points out, the economic and the cultural are also both important. the picture will be incomplete if one considers only the economic or material aspects of justice in he (the way resources or social goods are distributed) – how heis are resourced or under-resourced, without the cultural aspect. similarly, if only the cultural aspect is considered, this view will also be diminished, as it will only focus on middleclass interests and the normalising of values through hegemonic discourses and not on needed resources for participatory parity. it is important to note, however, that north (2006) identified these aspects before fraser (2008, 2009) added a third dimension belonging, which we will discuss in more detail when 14 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 considering its importance for citizenship. in the following section, we briefly discuss the economic and cultural spheres and then pay more attention to the political sphere which includes belonging. the economic or class-based sphere alluded to by fraser pertains to the distribution of material resources and how this affects citizenship in he. participatory parity would be influenced by issues such as maldistribution of resources, disparities in income, leisure time and labour. the cultural sphere referred to by fraser denotes the ways in which people’s attributes are either valued or devalued – as fraser (2005, 2008, 2009) explains it – how these attributes are either recognised or misrecognised. being either recognised or misrecognised and one’s differential access to material resources would have dire consequences for being able to participate as peers in the he context. firferey and carolissen (2010) show how the dynamics of poverty in he impact on poor students’ ability to hand in assignments timeously and how shame about poverty, constructed as the individual’s fault, perpetuates silences about the existence of poverty among he students. these micro dynamics of poverty remain invisible and impact on throughput rates, but are minimally addressed because of their invisibility. fraser’s (2008, 2009) third political dimension, which she has recently developed, is directly pertinent to citizenship, as it has to do with participatory parity in relation to representation and voice. this dimension was developed as a response to the need to move to a post-westphalian view which transcends an obsession with the nation-state as a frame, and one which acknowledges globalisation. this dimension allows us, from a citizenship perspective, to incorporate an analysis of how injustices are perpetrated by transnational powers and how predator states affect citizens across geographical locations. to view these injustices from a nation-state perspective only would be an instance of what fraser refers to as “misframing”. the political sphere of society should enable all people involved in he to have a voice and influence in decisions which affect them – this has to do with representation. in addition to being able to vote and participate in social movements such as students’ representative councils (srcs) on campuses, fraser introduces a second level of representation which pertains to the aspect of boundarysetting. this arises when he establishes boundaries which exclude some groups or institutions and include others – what she calls “misframing” them. the notion of political framing and misframing thus allows us to also examine who is included and excluded from justice claims in he. if one is excluded from he, or from making claims, for example, if one is a cleaner in an hei, one is not eligible to be counted as a citizen and would be excluded from justice claims. it could, therefore, be argued that this third dimension of social justice is more severe than either the economic or the cultural, as one may be wrongly excluded from consideration for distribution, recognition and representation. in the contemporary he landscape, historically disadvantaged institutions (hdis) are judged against the same criteria as historically advantaged institutions (hais). these equal but not necessarily equitable positioning’s in relation to ‘standards’ or quality assurance processes allow hdis to become excluded from resources, from obtaining recognition as institutions, and from petitioning with strong voices for a recognised place in the he landscape. fraser refers to the exclusion from consideration for first-order claims against maldistribution and misrecognition as a form of “misframing”. those who are excluded could only be supplicants for the benevolence of others in that it serves to prevent those who may be poor (economic dimension) or despised (cultural dimension) from challenging injustices against them. for these reasons, fraser regards misframing as the defining form of injustice in the globalised era. bozalek and boughey (2012) point out how exclusion takes place at institutional and systemic levels, and how either individual students or lecturers are held responsible for success or failure, even though systemic factors deeply affect success. the universalization of low participation and throughput rates in south africa, for example, blurs inequities within the he sector, as political issues are presented in apolitical and ahistorical contexts, obfuscating how historically black universities (hbus) have fewer resources and more poorly prepared students that are enrolled. another instance of misframing occurs when the default student is hegemonically constructed as a white, middle-class male and excludes the fact that students are differently positioned with regard to epistemological access to engage with curricula. all three dimensions – economic, cultural and political – must be present for participatory parity to occur. although they may be complexly intertwined, none of them alone is sufficient for participatory parity and 15bozalek & carolissen — the potential of critical feminist citizenship frameworks one cannot be reduced to the other dimension. for each dimension of social justice, fraser has distinguished between affirmative and transformative approaches for dealing with injustices. she views affirmative approaches as only ameliorative. while they may correct inequities created by social arrangements, they do not disturb the underlying social structures that generate these inequities. transformative approaches, on the other hand, do address underlying root causes or the underlying generative framework. in the economic dimension, transformative approaches make entitlements universal so that vulnerable groups of people are not regarded as citizens who are a burden to society, supplicants, or as benefiting from special treatment. in the cultural dimension, transformative approaches acknowledge complexity, deconstructing and destabilising binary categories, rather than entrenching identity politics or multiculturalism. in the political dimension, affirmative politics of framing accepts that westphalian state boundaries are appropriate and attempts to redraw these state-territorial boundaries or create new ones. in the transformative approach, injustices are not only regarded as residing in state-territorial boundaries, but also beyond territorial boundaries, in the global economy, information and communication networks (the digital divide), environmental sustainability issues, and other non-territorial powers. these spaces are increasingly important for citizenship debates, as the digitalisation of knowledge and the new impact of social networks and media have potentially powerful impacts on participatory parity (see, for example, boler, 2008). in addition to contesting the boundaries of the frame and invoking a post-westphalian principle, the transformative politics of framing also proposes to change the way in which the boundaries are drawn. fellow subjects of justice would not be constituted in geographical locations, but with regard to particular structural issues which promote advantage or disadvantage – appealing to an “all-affected principle” (fraser, 2009:24-25). this “all affected principle” means that everyone who is affected by a particular social structure or institution could be claimants of social justice. people’s collective justice claims are thus not dependent on geographical location, but on common claims against structures that affect them. according to fraser (2009:24), they come together through “their co-imbrication in a common structural or institutional framework, which sets the ground rules that govern their social interaction, thereby shaping their respective life possibilities of advantage and disadvantage”. examples of groups of claimants of social justice against structures that harm them who have applied this “all affected principle” across state-territorial boundaries or higher educational contexts could be indigenous peoples, firstgeneration students, feminists and critical race-theorists. rather than people in a particular geographical location, people who work together on an issue such as racism in he, or the digital divide, will join forces across essentialist boundaries of differences and act on structures that affect them. social movements such as anti-racism network in higher education (arnhe) and open educational resources (oer) are examples of such cross-hei movements, instigated by the “all-affected principle”. belonging yuval davis’s (2011) transversal politics of belonging are similar to fraser’s (2008, 2009) “all-affected principle”, as they both argue for working across differential positions or locations to address structural issues.1 this means that a focus on common values and political symbolism, rather than identification on the basis of similar socially constructed (and unitary identity) features such as gender and race only, is important. for both these theorists, collective action is, therefore, constructed from the perspective of common epistemologies and understandings rather than from identity politics. the notion of dialogical engagement is central to belonging for yuval-davis (2011) and fraser (2009) as well as for the political ethics of care (tronto, 1993). however, yuval-davis (2011) alerts us to the important consideration that dialogue alone will not contribute to effecting transformation. dialogue needs to be part of a component of engagements that have reflexive self-problematisation (reflexive justice) as a central goal. this may mean that academics and students should reflect not only on their own histories of marginalisation, but also on histories of current and on-going privilege within and outside the frame of he contexts (pease, 2010). 16 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 conclusion in this article, we have argued for a set of themes inherent in critical feminist approaches that may be useful for contesting traditional views of citizenship in he. the themes are ontological constructions of human beings such as citizens, the public-private binary, the politics of needs interpretation, participatory parity, and belonging. these critical feminist perspectives signal the limitations of human rights discourses within citizenship (for example, th marshall’s views) and are not sufficiently nuanced to address citizenship issues in he; they should, therefore, not be accepted uncritically. countries with democratic constitutions, such as south africa and india, are still locations in which the majority of the population experience enormous inequities in he and live with structural injustices. in this conclusion, we reconsider the themes developed to make some recommendations that pertain to he. human beings as citizens he needs to incorporate and embrace the realisation that all involved (for example, both academics and students) are interdependent and vulnerable. heis need to be able to accommodate difference, rather than participants having to adapt to rigid institutional cultures. nussbaum (2010) observes that vulnerability should not be feared or shamefully regarded as a weakness, but as a central part of being human. transcending the public-private binary social arrangements in he need to be more inclusive of people’s lives from a holistic perspective. for example, university calendars could be set up to cohere with school terms and timetables, and to accommodate caring activities, without it being assumed that staff and students have access to alternative caring facilities. in order to promote this view of citizenship, nussbaum (2006) argues that public education should cultivate and incorporate the importance of care for both men and women to break down the reluctance that many men feel to do caring work. such teaching should facilitate the shift in engaging men to take responsibility for care. the politics of needs interpretation it is important for he to recognise that needs are constructed and that multiple discourses about needs exist and can be contested. this recognition may create opportunities to disrupt dominant and singular hegemonic discourses about needs in he such as the neoliberal view of students as consumers. it is thus important to involve all participants in democratic dialogue about how these needs should be prioritised and met. participatory parity and belonging to create opportunities for people to participate on an equal footing in he, we should consider imaginative ways to achieve transformative approaches to citizenship, including redistribution, recognition and belonging. for example, we need to consider ways in which to achieve transdisciplinarity, collaboration across professions, differently placed institutions, and geographical locations. in addition, we need to be able to question authority and tradition and perceive ourselves in a complex web of relationships at local and global levels. this article has aimed to incorporate critical feminist ideas into south african he debates on citizenship and social justice by highlighting five themes central to a critical feminist framework. we have made recommendations regarding citizenship and provided examples from the south african he 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secara tradisional atau sekedar ditujukan membantu kaum miskin. melainkan, melalui budaya filantropi inilah kemiskinan dapat dientaskan, dan program-program berjangka panjang bisa dibuat. dalam faktanya, upaya mewujudkan keadilan sosial ini tidaklah mudah, karena banyak faktor, baik sosial, ekonomi maupun politik yang menjadi tantangannya. untuk itu, upaya yang lebih sistematis dari negara maupun masyrakat sipil masih sangat dibutuhkan untuk mempromosikan keadilan sosial. kata kunci: filantropi, islam, keadilan sosial. introduction this study explores the discourse of islamic philanthropy for social justice in indonesia. it will examine the concept of social justice philanthropy as a basic foundation to the development of islamic philanthropy in indonesia. in this regard, the challenges to implement the concept of islamic philanthropy for social justice in indonesia are very significant to examine. in so doing, it will also explore the ways of people to the practice of towards the discourse of islamic philanthropy for social justice in indonesia ariza fuadi leiden university, the netherlands. rapenburg 70, 2311, ez. email: rheiza_smart@yahoo.com abstract the rapid development of islamic philanthropic activism in indonesia has drawn much attention among scholars, practitioners, and policy makers. it appears that efforts to promote islamic philanthropic activism as a means of fostering social justice have been done by civil society organizations and the state’s agencies. it can be seen partly in the motives and objectives of islamic philanthropic associations, as well as regulations enacted by the state regarding the practice of islamic philanthropy since independent era until nowadays. it suggests that the philanthropic culture in muslim societies is no longer governed in a traditional way, or simply to relieve the poor. instead, it is expected that through the culture of giving, poverty can be alleviated, and islamic associations can provide long-term development projects. however, in reality, these efforts to promote social justice have been constrained by several factors, including social, economic and political factors, and therefore enduring and systematic efforts from the state’s actors and civil society, to promote social justice are, still needed. keywords: philanthropy, islam, social justice. doi 10.18196/aiijis.2012. 0008. 92-102 93vol. 8 no. 2 juli desember 2012 islamic philanthropy in indonesia from the basic concept of personal and communal giving patterns. moreover, like other religions, islam is against poverty and inequality in society. it is emphasized to the distributive justice towards the social class that islam addressed. it stated in the qur’ân that “wealth may not become fortune used by the rich among you” (qur’ân 59:7).1 this command of distributive justice actually has been done by many muslims in indonesia, either personally or communally, to erase the poverty within the muslims. however, this struggle has not showed positively that poverty in indonesia has not been a major problem within the society. i do believe that the unresolved poverty in indonesia has been caused by the discrepancy between the core concepts and the ways they are commonly practiced. traditional philanthropy is generally practiced on the grounds of direct giving services to fulfill the immediate and basic needs of the recipients by giving food, clothes and building shelter for the poor. traditional philanthropy only focuses on service programs and avoids in the involvement of political issues. it is assumed that this practice of traditional philanthropy only helps the recipients for short term goals. unlike traditional philanthropy, social justice philanthropy focuses on removing social injustice which is assumed to be the root of poverty and injustice. it observes the bridge due to associate the gap between the rich and the poor by mobilizing the resources of philanthropy in the society. to pursue its purposes, social justice philanthropy is organized by the collective action of social movement organizations. it can be said that there is a gap between traditional philanthropy and social justice philanthropy for all segments of the society. therefore, it will analyze the challenges toward the practice of islamic philanthropy for social justice in indonesia. also, how the islamic philanthropy in indonesia should be practiced due to the achievement of social prosperity and justice for the society will be examined. all these issues will be described comprehensively taking into consideration of historical, socio-political and the process of the islamic philanthropy practice in indonesia. through these approaches, this study will be seen obviously how the development of islamic philanthropy in the past and the role of the government to resolved social justice on the grounds of muslim philanthropy. subsequently, the process of islamic philanthropy in indonesia will explain the ways of social justice philanthropy towards its challenges. islamic philanthropy in indonesia and its progress historically, the practice of islamic philanthropy has been implemented since the arrival of islam in indonesia. it was primarily practiced through the two institutions of the mosques and islamic boarding schools (pesantrens) for the muslim communities. these institutions were established in the 15th century by muslim communities in java and sumatra to develop the society on the grounds of education and religious teaching. subsequently, the practice of islamic philanthropy has significantly developed in the 19th century with the raise of islamic boarding schools and mosques in the archipelago due to support to the effort against dutch occupation.2 at that time, the development of philanthropy was caused by the responses of the muslim society in indonesia to alienate doi 10.18196/aiijis.2012. 0008. 92-102 94 j u r n a l i l m u i l m u k e i s l a m a n afkaruna from the dutch government. therefore, islamic philanthropy had grown as a financial resource to the development of muslim communities. during dutch colonial rule, the awareness of dutch government to the used of islamic philanthropy for political purpose made the practice of islamic philanthropy had been regulated. on august 4, 1883, the dutch government issued the bijblad no. 1892 to control zakât al-firi donations. in this bijblad, zakât was mobilized by penghulu (religious figures) or the naib (deputy of local religious affairs in the mosque). moreover, to weaken the resistance of the society that financed by zakât, the government prohibited the civil servant and local nobles to assist the management of zakât. this prohibition was stated in the bijblad no 6200, dated february 28, 1905.3 it was similar to the rule of waqf that between 1905 and 1935, the dutch government issued four circulars by the secretary to the government (circulaires van de gouverments secretaris). these four circular letters were in the bijblad 1905 no. 6196, dated january 31, 1905 no. 435; bijblad no. 125/3 year 1931, dated june 4, 1931 no. 1361/a; bijblad no. 13390 year 1934, dated december 24, 1934 no. 3088/a; and bijblad no. 13480, dated mei 27, 1935 no. 1273/a.4 the issuance of these circulars was due to the purpose of dutch government to control over waqf activities by obliged the registration of waqf through the bupatis (regent) permission. therefore, these circulars asked the bupatis to manage the waqf pertaining to the origins, the status as religious services whether through waqf or not. yet, the bupatis were also requested to give a report about the use of the places of worship. the policies regarding islam in the japanese occupation were still implemented as in the dutch government. however, in this era, the implementation of islamic law was relatively flexible and did not have much impact to the development of islam in indonesia. 5 in the early period of independent indonesia, office for indigenous affairs of the dutch government (het kantoor voor inlandsche zaken) was replaced by the ministry of religious affairs (mora) in january 1946. the task of this ministry was to ensure the freedom of the people to implement of their religious duties. the regulations concerning on waqf after that were remained in force as the regulation prior to the independence era until the issuance of the government regulation (pp, peraturan pemerintah). it was stated in the agrarian bill no. 5, 1960 article 49/3 that waqf is protected and regulated by government regulation. therefore, the government issued a pp no. 28 year 1977 concerning the regulation on the implementation of waqf in indonesia. moreover, in 2004, the government issued an enactment (undang-undang) no 41 year 2004 to control the development of potential waqf in indonesia regarding to the tasks of the government upgrade the social prosperity within the society. with regard to zakât practice, mora issued a circular letter surat edaran no. a/ vvii/17367, dated december 8, 1951 concerning the role of the government on zakât.6 it was stated in this letter that the ministry would not interfere in zakât administration. mora only had a responsibility to encourage people to pay zakât and assure the distribution of the zakât was carried out properly according to islamic law. however, this responsibility of mora was not pursued by doi 10.18196/aiijis.2012. 0008. 92-102 95vol. 8 no. 2 juli desember 2012 the government to ensure that zakât was being paid or distributed properly. hence, it shows that the government did not intend to establish the formal institution to manage zakât in indonesia. the government more clearly left that zakât should be practice at an individual level. however, on july 1967, saifuddin zuhri, a minister of religious affairs, proposed a draft of zakât law to the parliament or dpr-gr (dewan perwakilan rakyat gotong royong, mutual assistance people’s council). the draft was also sent to the ministry of finance and the ministry of social affairs for response. the ministry of finance suggested that the zakât management would be better regulated by the ministerial regulation rather than by a statute. due to this suggestion, therefore, the parliament (dpr-gr) decided to not follow up this draft that was proposed by mora.7 a year later, on july 1968, muhammad dachlan, the later minister of religious affairs, issued a ministerial decree (peraturan menteri agama, pma no. 4/ 1968, dated july 15, 1968) on the foundation of the official zakât agency (baz, badan amil zakat). this decree stated that zakât would be operated by the governmental zakât committee at all villages and sub-districts all over the country. three months later, however, presiden suharto annulled this ministerial regulation in his speech at isrâ’ mi’râj (prophet’s ascension) on october 26, 1968. president suharto imposed the institution of zakât by taking responsibility for the collection and distribution of zakât on a personal basis as a private citizen.8 this offer of president suharto was indicated that he only wanted to reject the changes of the ministry of religious affairs on the zakât law. additionally, he took personally to the collection and distribution of zakât since he was aware with the impression of the society that his regime was opposing islam as religion as a result of the annulment of the regulation. president suharto then issued a circular letter to all public offices and local governments to establish zakât agency in their workplace. the operation of the zakât agency in the national level ruled by the president suharto was operated only few years. it was due to the low response of the society that paid the zakât much lower than the number of muslims in indonesia. unexpectedly, the number of zakât agencies gradually increased after the issuance of circular letter by suharto. the emergence of the provincial zakât agency in indonesia began in 1968 when the province of jakarta founded a new institution responsible for collecting zakât. several years later, other provinces followed suit, including the provinces of east kalimantan (1972), west sumatra (1973), west java (1974), south kalimantan (1974), south sumatra (1975), lampung (1975), irian jaya (1978), north sulawesi (1985), and south sulawesi (1985). furthermore, in the early of 1990s, the new types of zakât agencies created by muslim communities were established such as dompet dhuafa republika, pos keadilan peduli umat.9 after the downfall of president suharto, mora found its momentum to propose a zakât law in indonesia. the enactment no. 38 concerning on zakât was approved under the habibie administration. however, in this enactment, there was a contest between badan ‘âmil zakât (baz, the government sponsored zakât agency) and lembaga âmil zakât (laz, the privat zakât agency). the baz was provided fully arrangements, doi 10.18196/aiijis.2012. 0008. 92-102 96 j u r n a l i l m u i l m u k e i s l a m a n afkaruna whereas the laz was not arranged at all in this enactment. it can be said that the government wanted to centralize the zakât formal administration into a single institution/ baz. therefore, this zakât law is considered to be incomprehensive. also, this law was only focused on the establishment of zakât agencies in the governmental level, rather focused on the nature of the zakât itself. the efforts concerning the regulation of islamic philanthropy in indonesia have been struggled for many years. however, these efforts do not show the positive results on the regulation. even though the regulations have been regulated, the regulations have not yet showed the fundamental orientation of an islamic philanthropy which is directed towards social justice. subsequently, the contradiction in the separation of the state and religion to accommodate islamic aspirations was the other problem to the legislation of islamic philanthropy. hence, the development of islamic philanthropy for social justice has faced the long-term challenges to its goals. social justice philanthropy: a critic towards traditional philanthropy the term philanthropy derives from the greek words phileo and anthropos. phileo means love or the particular aspect of love. on the other hand, anthropos is defined as “humankind” in the widest sense of the word without discriminating every single human.10 the definition of philanthropy, therefore, can be defined as a desire of human to help others which is indicated by gives or acts of charity as a form of love to the mankind or public good. considering its characteristic, philanthropy can be divided into two distinct classifications; traditional philanthropy and social justice philanthropy. traditional philanthropy is based on the charity of generosity. it is practiced, commonly, by providing direct social services such as giving food, clothes and building shelter for the poor. the concept of traditional philanthropy is generally on the grounds of direct giving services to fulfill the immediate and basic needs of the recipients. it means that traditional philanthropy only focuses on service programs and does not involve in political issues. also, the practice of traditional philanthropy is considered to individual since this type of charity will be empowering and improving the status and prestige of the benefactor in the eyes of the public. different from traditional philanthropy, social justice philanthropy focuses on removing social injustice which is assumed to be the root of poverty and injustice. it observes the bridge due to associate the gap between the rich and the poor by mobilizing the resources of philanthropy in the society. to pursue its purposes, social justice philanthropy is organized by the collective action of social movement organizations. in islam, the social movement organizations of philanthropy may be best represented by the position of ‘âmil (caretakers of zakât). the ‘âmil as intermediary between the poor and the rich can mobilize properly the resource of philanthropy in the society with the motives to maintain and develop the future of the society. social justice and traditional philanthropy is often articulated as “advocacy versus services” discourse. social justice strengthens on the organizations which are effecting policy doi 10.18196/aiijis.2012. 0008. 92-102 97vol. 8 no. 2 juli desember 2012 changes in the political issues including human rights, democracy, and justice to solve social programs.11 this kind of philanthropy emphasizes on accommodating people to resolve their own problem. the social justice philanthropic institutions focused on the empowerment of financial donation, either individual or collective, to the long-term goals of productive activities instead of consumptive purposes only. to achieve this goal, the activists of social justice philanthropy seriously assist the receivers to improve their quality of life. therefore, the receivers in the future are expected to be independent from the helps of the other. while traditional philanthropy on the other hand takes the form of direct giving to the service programs or providing service activities for short-terms purposes. related to this concept, sami hasan stated in his research paper by quoting caliph umar bin alkhattab that “if you give zakât, enrich the recipients”. many faqihs thus suggest that it would be better to give enough zakât by pulling the person out of poverty instead of giving zakât that does not bring a long term economic benefit for the recipient.12 it is similar to the axiomatic “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” in this context, traditional philanthropy only helps poor people on the immediate needs rather than bring them out from the poverty. it means that it is better to implement the practice of philanthropy on the grounds of social justice instead of traditional. the activists of social justice philanthropy argue that traditional philanthropy is not effective to eliminate the poverty and develop the society. traditional philanthropy even is considered creating dependency of the poor people with this activity. social justice philanthropy is orienting its aims through institutional and systematic change in which the resources are collected and distributed towards the activities that will support social movement. the principals of social justice philanthropy engage the way to improve rights and duties in the basic institutions of society and appropriately distribute the benefits and problems through the social organization, advocacy and public education.13 social justice philanthropy tries to solve social problems by attacking the roots of poverty problem in the society. therefore, the fundamental expression of social justice philanthropy is addressing issues of social justice with the broader goals and managed by institutions. it is quite relevant today to promote the idea of social justice philanthropy in indonesia. the reasons are; first, the practice of social justice philanthropy should be in order to empower the people and community. this aim will be possible if the practitioners of the philanthropy are able to increase their competence and professionalism to manage the huge financial potential. second, the traditional philanthropy providing social service for a short-term is inclined no longer sufficient to resolve the complex problem of muslim community. and the last, qur’ânic verses strongly encourage people to initiate social justice in the society that is given in the concept of ‘adl, qis, and mîzân.14 the challenges of islamic philanthropy for social justice in indonesia the concept of social justice philanthropy is not a new term in indonesia. it has actually been practiced by many indonesia’s philandoi 10.18196/aiijis.2012. 0008. 92-102 98 j u r n a l i l m u i l m u k e i s l a m a n afkaruna thropic institution. they usually implement this concept through many programmes such as anti-corruption, funding research, publishing journals and academic conferences, advocating for healthy food, working on environmental and the likes. through this concept, it is expected that poverty in indonesia can be resolved as the purposes of philanthropy. also, the implementation of traditional philanthropy is believed cannot resolve the problem of poverty in the society since it only helps the poor for a short-term goal. the activists of social justice philanthropy argue that poverty is happened since there is an injustice in the society. hence, the concept of social justice philanthropy concerns to promote social justice to resolve the problem of poverty in the society. the social justice philanthropic institutions focused on the empowerment of financial donation, either individual or collective, to the long-term goals of productive activities instead of consumptive purposes only. to achieve this goal, the activists of social justice philanthropy seriously assist the receivers to improve their quality of life. therefore, the receivers in the future are expected to be independent from the helps of the other. however, it should be noticed that social justice philanthropy with its efficient, purpose, professional organization, not necessarily remains social justice philanthropy. in its practice, social justice philanthropy generally has not totally directed towards social justice in the context of social change. it may sometimes remain traditional philanthropy since it rather addresses injustice. in much of the muslim world traditional philanthropy is most practiced instead of social justice philanthropy. this condition is made worse by the fact that the financial allocation for the philanthropy in indonesia is generally still used very little to support social change in the society. a research done by csrc (center for the study of religion and culture) uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta showed that the indonesian muslim mostly donates islamic philanthropy to the religious activities in the mosque. the motive to practice islamic philanthropy for social justice has not been seen as an important aspect due the understanding of the society to practice islamic philanthropy as a religious purpose merely.15 the realization for islamic philanthropy for social justice has faced some challenges in indonesia. methodologically the outcome from the implementation of philanthropy for social justice is still difficult to measure in the context of advocacy or policy research.16 it indicates that philanthropic institutions in indonesia have a poor management to create social justice philanthropy. a well management, whereas, is a primary resource to the practice of islamic philanthropy to create social justice in the society. generally, the managers of philanthropic institutions only work for half-time instead of full-time working on the basis of voluntary working. with this basis, the activists of islamic philanthropic institutions will be inclined to be unprofessional to increase productivity within philanthropic organizations. islamic philanthropic institutions will only have functioned for the central of consumption rather than production.17 the condition of islamic philanthropic institutions makes the purpose of social justice philanthropy difficult to achieve. furthermore, being involved in the political practice will bring the islamic philanthropic institutions to the complicated problem. it is due to the effect of the political doi 10.18196/aiijis.2012. 0008. 92-102 99vol. 8 no. 2 juli desember 2012 practice that sometimes will cause to a conflict in political issues for the public policy. even, the conflict in the political issues will sometimes threat the existence of philanthropic institutions itself. therefore, the islamic philanthropic institutions in indonesia usually prefer to keep away from political issues and avoid the controversy within the society. the other reason is that economically to promote social justice philanthropy is needed much costs for the activities such as advocacy, research and the likes. also, in the developing countries, when the poverty increases, generally the philanthropic institutions focus on the direct service to help the poor for their basic needs. 18 in this condition, the activists of islamic philanthropic institutions should have the creativeness to implement philanthropy. it is similar to what helmut k. anheier and diana leat that propose creative philanthropy, as quoted by hilman latief, to establish and implement philanthropy on the grounds of philanthropic activities. according to them, creative philanthropy can resolve the problem of poverty in the society through philanthropic activities that elaborated with the other concept of philanthropy.19 hence, the concept of social justice philanthropy should be understood not only to advocating the public policy for social change, but also as a service for the poor. in the context of social change, principally philanthropy donation either individual or collective should be able to resolve the problem of poverty for short term and long term needs. in order to reach the goal of social justice philanthropy that empowering the people for short term and long term goals, revitalization of islamic philanthropic institutions is a matter of natural and should be directed towards a transformation from traditional into social justice philanthropy. however, this transformation should not leave the concept of traditional philanthropy in order to fulfill the social service immediately for the poor people. this means that islamic philanthropic institutions have to focus on social service for the poor and consider to the causes of social injustice in the society as a kind of advocating to the social change. in the muslim societies, moreover, the practices of social justice philanthropy are very much related to their understanding of religious doctrine. this doctrine will be legitimated by the believers based on their view in the context of their way to live.20 although in the qur’ân has clearly explained the basic religious texts on the social justice, however, it only provides the basic guidelines of social relationships and advice for different human actions, social responsibilities, and solutions to social problems.21 therefore, the attitude towards philanthropic doctrine must be reinterpreted in order to make the message of the qur’ânic texts relevant in the modern context. this effort should consider on the fundamental ideas and purposes of philanthropy in islam for the principals of social justice that clearly explained in the qur’ân. reinterpretation of the qur’ânic texts in the field for social justice should be addressed a number of issues. first, the division between religious orientation and social responsibility should be avoided in islam. it is to promote the concept of social justice in islam that not only focuses on religious but also social orientation. second, the culture of islamic philanthropy that being unorganized and individually should be stimulate to being organized to maintain the philanthropic doi 10.18196/aiijis.2012. 0008. 92-102 100 j u r n a l i l m u i l m u k e i s l a m a n afkaruna mobilization of funds appropriately. another issue, the ‘âmil needs to become more active, professional and visionary in carrying out the tasks. the next issue, the definition of the eight asnâf should be re-examined by means of analogy (qiyâs) or by other legal means. the last issue, revisit the kinds of wealth that should be subjected to zakât donations.22 through these theological criteria of issues, the development of islamic philanthropy for social justice in indonesia will become more effective towards social change on the grounds of social service and advocacy. conclusion the development of islamic philanthropy has indicated that muslims in indonesia give a great attention to this practice. it can be seen from the motivations, purposes, and the regulations related to the implementation of islamic philanthropy that rapidly grew within the society. at first, islamic philanthropy that primarily practiced through two institutions of mosques and islamic boarding schools was only used to upgrade the religious teaching and education of muslims in indonesia. in its development, when the era of dutch occupation to indonesia, islamic philanthropy was also oriented to support the efforts against dutch occupation. moreover, after the independence era, the regulations of islamic philanthropy in indonesia have always been improved appropriately with the indonesian culture in order to achieve its goals to resolve the primarily problem of poverty. therefore, it is not exaggerating to say that islamic philanthropy have a significant role within the society. islamic philanthropy in the recent era has not only been functioned traditionally to resolve the problem of poverty for short-term goals. it has also been focused on the resolving problem of poverty for long-term goals on the grounds of social justice philanthropy. many activists of social justice philanthropy even argue that traditional philanthropy cannot resolve the problem of poverty. however, to practice of social justice philanthropy is not a simple matter that needs a great attention and long effort. moreover, the concept and practice of islamic philanthropy for social justice has its own shortages. it is difficult in indonesia to implement social justice philanthropy without consider to traditional philanthropy as a service for the poor. indonesia as a developing country, the practice of islamic philanthropy cannot focus on the one concept of traditional or social justice philanthropy merely. it should be recognized that between two concepts will complement one and another on its practice of islamic philanthropy. the concept of traditional philanthropy will employ the social service for shortterm goals as a fulfillment to the basic need of the poor. the existence of orphanage, nursing home and the likes as a kind of social service is also still very important to be implemented in indonesia. it will help and protect those who are powerless. while the concept of social justice philanthropy will work on the advocating programs that directed to the more autonomous future of the poor people as a kind of advocating to the social change within the society. endnotes 1 muhammad muhsin khan and muhammad taqi-ud-din al-hilali, interpretation of the meanings of the noble qur’an (riyadh: darussalam, 2001), p. 1089. 2 azyumardi azra, “diskursus filantropi islam dan civil society” in idris thaha (ed.), berderma untuk semua: wacana dan praktik filantropi islam, (jakarta: penerbit teraju, 2003), p. xxvi. doi 10.18196/aiijis.2012. 0008. 92-102 101vol. 8 no. 2 juli desember 2012 3 uswatun hasanah, “potret filantropi islam di indonesia” in idris thaha (ed.), berderma untuk semua: wacana dan praktik filantropi islam, (jakarta: penerbit teraju, 2003), p. 211. 4 suparman usman, hukum perwakafan di indonesia, (kudus: darul ulum pres, 1994), pp. 50-51. 5 chaidar s. bamualim, “islamic philanthropy in indonesia: trends and challenges towards social justice” in kultur: the indonesian journal for muslim cultures, vol 4. no. 1 (jakarta: csrc, 2009), p. 77. 6 arskal salim, the shift in zakat practice in indonesia: from piety to an islamic socio-political-economic system, (thailand: silkworm books, 2008), p. 28. 7 arskal salim, “the influential legacy of dutch islamic policy on the formation of zakat (alms) law in modern indonesia” in the pacific rim law and policy journal, vol. 15 no. 3 (washington: the university of washington school of law, 2006), pp. 694-695. 8 arskal salim, “the influential legacy of dutch islamic policy,” p. 695. 9 arskal salim, challenging the secular state: the islamization of law in modern indonesia, (honolulu: university of hawai press, 2008), p. 125. 10 sulek marty, ”on the classical meaning of philanthropia”, nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, vol. 39, no. 3 (sage publications, june 2010), p. 386. 1 1 andy agung prihatna, “philanthropy and social justice in indonesia”, in chaider s, bamualim, cheyne scout, dick van der miej, irfan abubakar (eds), islamic philanthropy and social development in contemporary indonesia, (jakarta: the ford foundation and center for the study of religion and culture (csrc), 2006) p. 6. 1 2 sami hasan, muslim philanthropy and social security: prospects, practices, and pitfalls, a paper presented at the 6th istr biennial conference held in bangkok, 9-12 july 2006, p. 4. 1 3 sami hasan, “islamic concept of social justice: its possible contribution to ensuring harmony and peaceful coexistence in a globalised world”, in macquarie law journal, vol 7, (sydney: macquarie university, 2007), p. 168. 1 4 chaidar s. bamualim, “islamic philanthropy in indonesia”, p. 81. 1 5 irvan abu bakar and chaider s. bamualim (eds.), filantropi islam dan keadilan sosial (jakarta: csrc, 2006), p. 188-191. 1 6 irvan abu bakar and chaider s. bamualim (eds.), filantropi islam, p. 34. 1 7 chaidar s. bamualim, “islamic philanthropy in indonesia”, p. 85. 1 8 irvan abu bakar and chaider s. bamualim (eds.), filantropi islam, p. 34. 1 9 hilman latief, melayani umat: filantropi islam dan ideologi kesejahteraan kaum modernis, (jakarta: gramedia, 2010), p. 22. 2 0 chaidar s. bamualim, “islamic philanthropy in indonesia”, p. 86. 2 1 samiul hasan, philanthropy and social justice in islam: principle, prospect, and practices, (kuala lumpur: a.s. noordeen, 2007), p. 69. 2 2 chaidar s. bamualim, “islamic philanthropy in indonesia”, p. 86-87. bibliography abu bakar, irvan and bamualim, chaider s, (eds.). 2006. filantropi islam dan keadilan sosial, jakarta: csrc. ahmed an-na’im, abdullahi and mohamed abdel halim, asma, “rights-based approach to philanthropy for social justice in islamic societies” in kultur: the indonesian journal for muslim 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badan amil zakat badan 'âmil zakât baheula bapak rohmat baptis behaviour bengkulu bid'ah blending bmt buah gadang buddha c canduang koto laweh center for the study of religion and culture chaidar s. bamualim children's jurai churafat citizenship clifford geertz contemporary csrc cultus publicus d damami darul ulum datuak sangguno di rajo dediknas departemen pendidikan dan kebudayaan republik indonesia diachronic diana leat dinamisme dogmatism dpr-gr dr. sutomo duffy durkheim dutch dutch occupation e eklektivisme eksistensi eksistensi ekslusivisme, eksperiensial ekspresi-ekspresi emile durkheim erni budiwanti evers f farâidh fi al-asyya' al-ibahah filantrofi islam filantropi filantropi islam flexibility franz von benda-beckmann franz von benda-bergmann freedom fried fundamental furnivall furuiyyah fusion g geertz geo-politik global ethics global theology. glock gluckman gong zhui gordon w. allport gulliver gus dur h h. dawam h. kusrin h. nasih h. roziq h. salim haji dawam haji dawam roji hak hanna djumhana bastaman harato pusako harmonisasi harmonisasi helmut k. anheier hendrik hibah hilman latief hindu hizbut tahrir indonesia hj. khotijah hoebel horikoshi horizonta hudaniah i idealisme ideologis ijmaiyyah ilmu jiwa agama imran manan briefly individualistis indonesia indonesische drukkerij infak ingsun ilahi inklusif inklusivisme intelektual intellectuals intension ir. henry suwarto irvan abu bakar islam islamic activism islamic law islamic law. islamic philanthropy isrâ' mi'râj istimbath j jackson jambi jamil wahid java jehova jim schiller john hick k k.h. ar. fachrudin kaafur kamanakan kapital-modern kartopuran surakarta katolik kaum kedermawanan khas-an khazanah khurafat kiyai slamet klenteng klenteng sie hien kyong koentjaraningrat kohesivitas komaruddin hidayat konsekuensial kristen kulonprogo kulonrpogo yogyakarta kyai kyai haji ahmad dahlan l lazis lili zakiyah munir lirboyo llyod m m. dawam rahardjo m. ng. harjawijaya madrasah mualimin muhammadiyah maharaja rufus shinra majelis mujahidin indonesia majelis tafsir al-qur'an malawi malinowski mamak manfred ziemek mangkubumi mangkunegara mansoer faqih mas ng. harjawijaya mas ng. mangunwijaya masdar f. mas'udi masif max planck institute for social anthropology mazdhabiyyah memberdayakan merle c. ricklefs milik minangkabau minister of religious affairs mitologi mmi modernisasi moh. hari siti jenar moh. hari soewarno mohammad sobary monograph monograph. moore mora moralitas mta muhaimin muhammad dachlan muhammad muhsin khan muhammad taqi-ud-din al-hilali muhammad wildan, muhammadiyah 'multifungsi musyawarah muthohharun jinan n nagari nagari nahdhatul ulama nahdlatul ulama (nu) nico syukur dister niels mulder non-partisan nu ny. rorokidul nyai rara kidul o ohan hendrik caspar kern optimisme ota ownership-deed p pangeran cloud panglima sephiroth panjinatarata pantekosta partai amanat nasional (pan) partai kebangkitan bangsa (pkb) partai persatuan pembangunan (ppp) peacock penghulu permodalan nasional madani persatuan islam pesantren philanthropy pilkades pku pluralism pluralisme pluralisme pluralitas pluralitas pns politisasi tradisi pondok pesantren gontor prabu satmata president suharto priyayi protestan purifikasi purwoko q qadariyah qiyâs quran qurasih shihab r raden panji natara radio persada fm raditional society ranz von benda-beckmann rasionalisasi regulations riau rigidity ritualistik robert c. monk rusbult s saifuddin zuhri sami hasan samiul hasan scholars scientific sekolah guru agama semi-autonomous serat bayan budiman sewugalur shadaqah sholawatan sinkretisme sintetis social justice socio-political sosial-ekonomi sosial-politiknya spiritual stark state strategic-group subsidi silang suku sultan abdul hamid ii sultan agung sumatra sunan bonang sunan giri kedhaton suparman usman susilo bambang yudhoyono sustainabilitas syekh siti jenar t tahlilan takhayul takhayul takhayul, bid'ah, dan churafat teologis terorisme tersantuni timur tengah tionghoa tipologi tradisionalis tradition tri dayakisni trikotomi truth claim u uin syarif hidayatullah jakarta 'ulama ulayat universalisme universalisme university of leiden university of zurich urbanisasi uswatun hasanah v vanderlinden vinogradoff, w w. allport wahhabi wakaf wali songo waqf warih wasiyat widya pustaka woodman word trade center y yasinan yesus kristus z zakat zakât zamachsyari dhofier zambia zis ziswaf islamic philanthropy in indonesia: modernization, islamization, and social justice aseas 10(2) | 223 islamic philanthropy in indonesia: modernization, islamization, and social justice amelia fauzia ► fauzia, a. (2017). islamic philanthropy in indonesia: modernization, islamization, and social justice. austrian journal of south-east asian studies, 10(2), 223-236. this article discusses the potentials and constraints of social justice philanthropy in indonesia in the context of two trends – of growing islamization and modernization. it employs interviews and recent observations together with survey data. although the challenges facing social justice philanthropy remain immense, the pathways to development have been created; pathways through which the gap that exists between faith-based philanthropy and its secular counterparts may become smaller. looking at growing philanthropization in the last 15 years and the pre-existing popularity of the concept of social justice among the population, could social justice and developmentalism may become the future of islamic philanthropy in the country? the author argues that modernization and islamization encourage the practice of philanthropy, but that they do not necessarily contribute to the development of a philanthropy that focuses on social justice. the modernization of the philanthropy sector has shown scattered pictures of development into a form of social justice philanthropy, which remains small but nevertheless encouraging. keywords: development; indonesia; islamic philanthropy; islamization; social justice  introduction at the turn of the 21st century the situation in indonesia showed a kind of fever of islamic philanthropy, which added to the existing local and western private foundations. after two decades, the growing enthusiasm toward islamic philanthropy in the country is unlikely to fade in the near future. it is a development that rose steadily out of the economic crisis of 1997 that preceded the fall of the new order and that was later supported by the movement for political reformation and democratization (reformasi). various islamic philanthropy organizations were established in the course of this process. it obtained another endorsement from the islamization movement, via laws and other forms of legislation. the enthusiasm was further encouraged by the general islamization that has been taking place in the country (ricklefs, 2008, 2012). it received an unintended and painful ‘blessing’ from a series of large-scale disasters, from the 2004 aceh tsunami through to earthquakes in 2007. and then finally, it earned high attention from the indonesian government, although, whether this could be interpreted as positive or negative remains an open question. the government has recently been trying to embody zakat (almsgiving) into its development agenda, aktuelle südostasienforschung  current research on southeast asia w w w .s ea s. at d o i 10 .1 47 64 /1 0. a se a s20 17 .2 -6 224 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia something that the suharto government had tried but failed since the end of 1960s in their efforts to incorporate muslim charity with modernization and development. additionally, western private foundations and international development agencies have put in efforts to endorse and support the field. since 2002, the ford foundation has supported the development of philanthropy with a social justice approach and purpose, for both secular and islamic foundations and organizations.1 since 2004, the australian organization ausaid has entrusted the two largest muslim organizations, nahdlatul ulama and muhammadiyah, with the tsunami disaster relief in aceh. later, these organizations strengthened their humanitarian and philanthropic divisions. in the last two years, international development agencies from the islamic development bank (idb), the world bank, and the united nations development programme (undp) have tried to assist in encouraging the direction of the islamic philanthropy sector into development, including recent schemes for poverty reduction and sustainable development goals (sdgs) (noor & pickup, 2017; pickup, 2017). muslim philanthropy to benefit the public good has attracted many sectors and actors, from muslim organizations and the state, to corporations and development agencies, each according to their own purposes (fauzia, 2013; latief, 2010, 2014). the potential amount of zakat, sedekah (donation), waqf (endowment), and other charitable forms have been mentioned in many research papers, conferences and reports (abubakar & bamualim, 2006; kurniawati, 2004). the national development planning agency and the national zakat board (baznas) calculated the recent annual potential of zakat collection in indonesia ranging from idr 100 billion (usd 7.6 million) to idr 286 trillion (usd 22 billion) (the national zakat board center of strategic studies, 2016; firdaus, beik, irawan, & juanda, 2012). these do not include non-zakat donations and waqf assets. however, the de facto zakat collection by registered organizations is small and accounts for idr 3.7 trillion in 2015 (the national zakat board center of strategic studies, 2016, p. 9). the concept of social justice has always been of interest to indonesian scholars, starting with hamka’s keadilan sosial dalam islam (social justice in islam), published in 1966 and reprinted many times in almost every decade until recently in 2015. the concept was usually linked to the economy (mubyarto, 1995) and to the movements of islam (madjid, 1987/2008), including to practices of islamic philanthropy (mas’udi, 1993). sayyid qutb’s book, al-‘adalah al-ijtimaiyah fi al-islam (social justice in islam), first published in 1949 and later translated into indonesian language, has been the strongest inspiration for indonesian scholars and activists on the idea of social justice. apart from scholarly and activist discourse, the concept of social justice is rooted in the popularity of the state ideology pancasila, especially its last principle.2 pancasila has been taught at schools and read out loud by students at their weekly school assemblies. in addition, it seems that experiences of injustices since the 19th century have encouraged the idea of social justice. 1 the author was team leader of a research project on philanthropy for social justice in muslim societies (including indonesia), led by syarif hidayatullah islamic university jakarta from 2002 to 2004, funded by the ford foundation. 2 the five principles of pancasila are: 1) the belief in one god, 2) a just and civilized humanity, 3) the unity of indonesia, 4) democracy under the wise guidance of representative consultations, and 5) social justice for all the peoples of indonesia. aseas 10(2) | 225 amelia fauzia research on islamic philanthropy for social justice by syarif hidayatullah state islamic university conducted in 2003 (later referred to as the ‘2003 survey’) finds that philanthropy has been practiced in a traditional way, but has certain potential for a social justice approach and aim (abubakar & bamualim, 2006). following this study, a conceptual study on social justice philanthropy supports its potential practice in muslim societies (hasan, 2007). a possible transformation of the charity approach to social justice has been discussed by fernandez (2009) and by the author (fauzia, 2010a, 2010b). looking at growing philanthropization in the last 15 years and the pre-existing popularity of the concept of social justice among the population, social justice and development may become the future of islamic philanthropy in the country. but is one decade-and-a-half sufficient to show a convincing picture of the growth of social justice philanthropy? and what may contribute to or hinder its development? this article discusses the potentials and constraints of social justice philanthropy in the context of those twin forces of growing islamization and modernization in indonesia, focusing on the dynamics in the period from 2000 to 2017. the article defines islamic philanthropy organizations as nonprofit entities which aim to provide public good and assistance for poor communities, either through organizations or directly to individuals, and which are based on islamic values or having islamic aims. the analysis for this article deliberately excludes mass organizations, except for sections within the organizations that clearly do fundraising, charitable management, and the redistribution of assistance. both nahdlatul ulama and muhammadiyah have smaller organizations, called lazisnu and lazismu respectively, that collect and redistribute zakat, and also organizations that work on relief assistance. furthermore, this article does not include waqf because they have a different character in terms of managing charitable resources, although theoretically waqf is regarded as having strong potential for social justice philanthropy. in indonesia, the practice of philanthropy has transformed over time and the term has different nuances. this article acknowledges the conceptual difference between charity and philanthropy. whereas charity is understood as a service delivery for a short-term assistance, philanthropy is more of a long-term project that targets the root problems creating inequality and poverty (casey, 2016). since the difference between the terms is not seen clearly in practice in indonesia, the term philanthropy is used here. philanthropic organizations receive their main resources from donors (either from family donation, corporations, institutions, or individuals). they manage these resources and then (re)distribute them to beneficiaries, either directly or through other organizations. this article uses observations of organizations as well as interviews.3 to account for the limitations of these observations, it refers to data from a 2003 survey on understanding, opinion, and practices of islamic philanthropy at the national level (abubakar & bamualim, 2006). the author finds that the modernization of the philanthropy sector has shown scattered pictures of development into a form of social justice philanthropy, which remains small but nevertheless encouraging. the author argues that modernization and islamization encourage the practice of philanthropy 3 the author has been researching islamic charitable organizations since 2002. interviews used for this article have been conducted since january 2016 as part of a research project on islamic philanthropy networks in southeast asia at the asia research institute, national university of singapore (nus). 226 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia but that they do not necessarily contribute to the development of a philanthropy that focuses on social justice. in discussing this, the article is divided into four main sections: 1) islamization, modernization, and social justice in philanthropy, 2) modernization of the organization and programs, 3) examples of social justice practices, and 4) potentials and constraints of social justice philanthropy, and 5) some concluding remarks. islamization, modernization, and social justice in philanthropy the history of philanthropy in the post-reformasi period reveals a picture of modernization and islamization. islamization can be found in the deepening use of islamic sources, the involvement of a greater number of islamic organizations, the efforts toward more revivalist or conservative interpretations of certain practices, and the efforts to implement of zakat as an individual tax obligation to the state. islamization is “a process of deepening commitment to standards of normative islamic belief, practice and religious identity. those standards are subject to contestation among groups and individuals” (ricklefs, 2012, p. 516). the influence of islamization has also increased charitable activities within salafi networks from the middle east to indonesia. however, those activities are not as large as it has been assumed, and are exceeded by donations from local muslims (jahroni, 2015). modernization in the practice of philanthropy manifests itself in the use of modern forms of organization, modern technologies, and a modern model of ‘rational thinking’ in the collection, organization, and distribution of various forms of charitable giving. both islamization and modernization have become imbedded in the recent, growing development of islamic philanthropy in indonesia. among islamic organizations, the term philanthropy was new and was introduced through advocacy and the research program philanthropy for social justice in 2002. acceptance of this term and concept was not easy as it was regarded as secular and western. however, to date, the term has been widely used, including by islamic newspapers (such as republika) and by zakat organizations. the adjective ‘social’ when applied to justice endorses the acceptance of the term philanthropy. however, as this article later shows, the common understanding of the term among philanthropy organizations varies and there have been varied local adaptations. the practice of social justice philanthropy developed in the us as a continuation of the move from charity to philanthropy, and the move toward effective giving that endorses social change through intervention in the root causes of social problems (anheier & leat, 2006; hunsaker & hanzi, 2003; rabinowitz, 1990). the national committee for responsive philanthropy (ncrp) defines social justice philanthropy as “the practice of making contributions to nonprofit organizations that work for structural change and increase the opportunity of those who are less well-off politically, economically and socially” (hunsaker & hanzi, 2003, p. 6). this article follows the ncrps definition but adjusts it to indonesian and islamic contexts. islamic philanthropy for social justice works in terms of long-term grantmaking, social change, and inclusive giving. the 2003 survey, led by the author, did not only endorse giving for structural change and increase the opportunity of the weak, minority, and discriminated groups among society, but also highlighted the impartiality of giving without aseas 10(2) | 227 amelia fauzia discrimination with regard to groups, gender, ethnicity, and religion. these values were taken from the progressive understanding of islamic teachings. the growing trend of modernization and islamization in the last two decades needs an assessment of how the seeds of social justice philanthropy grew and to which direction these trends in islamization and modernization stir the practice of philanthropy. modernization of organizations and programs philanthropy organizations have modernized since reformasi in three important ways: 1) legal reform, 2) reform in management, and 3) reform in programs. the reformation period endorsed a legal reform related to philanthropy with the issuance of the zakat management law no 38 in 1999 – later amended with law no 23 in 2011, the foundation law no 16 2001 (amended in 2004), and the waqf law no 41 in 2004. muslim philanthropic organizations crystallized into three main types. first, zakat organizations, these are organizations that focus on the collection and distribution of zakat and that are supposed to register under the ministry of religious affairs and the national zakat board (baznas). there are state-based zakat foundations (like baznas) and community-based zakat foundations (like lembaga amil zakat or laz).4 these comply with the zakat law, even though they also manage non-zakat donations. second, there are charitable and humanitarian organizations. these focus on the collection of non-zakat donations, they report to the ministry of social welfare and are registered under the foundation law. the third type includes waqf foundations and bodies. they comply with the waqf law and they mainly manage waqf assets. these three types may also be legally registered as foundations or mass organizations, therefore complying with the foundation law or the mass organization law. additionally, there are zakat committees, or temporary committees working to collect zakat in mosques, islamic schools, and neighborhood associations.5 the three types of organizations have been endorsed to become modern in nature through laws and other government regulations, with expectations that they could work in a more effective and accountable way – not necessarily aiming for social justice. the move has been relatively successful for the non-zakat and zakat organizations, which as a result have more potential for social justice philanthropy. the second reform is on the level of management. the adoption of modern management leads islamic philanthropy organizations to use banking systems, hire full-time professional staff, improve organizational capacities, implement transparency and accountability principles, and have fundraising divisions. there has been a positive environment to do financial audits and publish reports, to provide an equal access for men and women, to do public fundraising, and offer the best service and programs to obtain public trust. the organizations also adjust to modern management by referring to contextual interpretation of islamic teachings, for example, on the acceptance of banking systems that were previously regarded as unlawful 4 the total number of baznas – from national, provincial, to districts – is 549 (decree director general for guidance of islamic community no 499/2016). the approximate number of community zakat organizations – according to the general secretary of zakat forum – is 231 (amin sudarsono, 28 august 2017). 5 the zakat committees at mosques approximately equal the number of mosques in the country, namely 731,095 (langkah strategis meningkatkan kualitas masjid, 2017). 228 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia (haram) by some ulama (islamic scholars) and organizations. the more modern the organization, the more it is open to women and to modern interpretations of islamic teachings on philanthropy. the third reform concerns programs. most islamic philanthropy organizations have expanded their activities into educational, health, disaster relief, economy, and socio-religious programs. some leading organizations, such as dompet dhuafa, have created divisions for advocacy, provide grants for research and the publication of journals and books, and run research and training institutes on zakat management. dompet dhuafa also supports anti-corruption programs, advocacy for victims of evictions, and campaigns for environmental conservation. following problems related to migrant workers, dompet dhuafa established a migrant institute and a branch in hong kong to provide assistance for female migrant workers (abilawa, 3 february 2016) (see also latief, 2014; also see this issue). these programs lead to the enhancement of practices of social justice philanthropy. this programmatic reform has broken the strong tradition of zakat giving, which is usually only for purposes related to religion and restricted to muslims. modern philanthropy organizations provide important means for the gradual inclusion of social justice in philanthropy practices. traditional charity may also have a social justice value, for example, giving without discrimination and giving to underprivileged groups. the non-organized character of traditional giving, however, tends to keep social justice values low so that it could not change into effective and strategic social change. while modernization, especially programmatic expansion, has developed well, islamic philanthropy organizations still keep traditional charitable activities in their programs, such as giving food and money to orphans, providing food for fast-breaking during ramadan, and providing cash for islamic preachers. in this respect, how organizations define social justice differs from one to another, as can be seen below. examples of social justice philanthropy this section discusses examples of social justice philanthropy developed by islamic philanthropy organizations and looks at the contexts from which these ideas and practices come. the first example discusses the establishment of non-zakat organizations, while the second and third show efforts for social justice philanthropy based on the indonesia humanitarian alliance for myanmar and the world zakat forum. establishment of non-zakat organizations as mentioned previously, there are charitable and humanitarian organizations which do not focus on zakat. this type of organization has flexibility in dealing with fundraising and managing donations that follow general regulations and not strict islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) on zakat. such organizations offer greater potential for social justice philanthropy. one example is the yasmin foundation which was founded by the intellectual chaidar bagir, an expert on muslim philosophy and sufism. yasmin was an abbreviation for yayasan imdad mustad’afin, focusing on empowering the poor. in 2016, it changed its brand name into amal khair yasmin and became a corporate social responsibility (csr) program of another of bagir's institutions, namely mizan aseas 10(2) | 229 amelia fauzia publisher, which is known as a progressive islamic publisher. yasmin has a school resource centre, an autis therapy centre, a health advocacy program, a second hand store, and many other activities. in early 2017, it advocated against hate speech and provided advice for polite communication, which seems to respond to social media hate speech against a christian chinese governor of jakarta (belajar bicara sopan santun, 2017). for yasmin, social justice means to give – not only to muslims – and to appreciate minorities. philanthropy organizations that are similar to yasmin are few in number. they are mostly founded by progressive muslim intellectuals. another example is the social trust fund (stf).6 established in 2012, stf is founded and supported by academics of the syarif hidayatullah state islamic university in jakarta. learning from the ford foundation and philanthropy in other countries, stf’s advocates for ‘philanthropy for social justice and peace’ that promotes equality and diversity, but adapted to an indonesian muslim context (philanthropy for social justice and peace, 2013). it aims to provide opportunities for the less advantaged, regardless of their religious or ethnic background, in order that they can have better access to education and welfare. its grants and activities include scholarships for schools in remote areas (in the ‘outer islands’) and peace scholarship grants for muslim and christian children in conflict zones (social trust fund uin jkt, 2014). it offers advocacy programs for empowering civil society and the philanthropy movement, such as supporting judicial reviews of the zakat law. stf’s views reflect progressive islam, as it has been influenced by muslim scholars from syarif hidayatullah university. as seen from the above activities, stf advocates for giving without discrimination as well as for the support of minority groups, peace and religious harmony, and long-term development programs. although having the same islamic values, these two examples represent a different cultural tradition than zakat organizations. they follow a more humanistic form of islam, which avoids ‘political islam’. this position differs from many zakat organizations that approach their beneficiaries solely as muslims and are therefore relatively close to political islam and dakwah (islamic propagation) movements. indonesian humanitarian alliance for myanmar the indonesian humanitarian alliance for myanmar (akim –  aliansi kemanusiaan indonesia untuk myanmar) was created in response to the humanitarian crisis concerning ethnic rohingyas in rakhine state, myanmar. the escalation of the conflict in october 2016 and in august/september 2017 resulted in more than 500,000 rohingyas fleeing as refugees to bangladesh.7 developed in early 2017 as a collaboration of islamic philanthropy organizations and supported by the ministry of foreign affairs, the alliance has accepted the minister’s policy on ‘soft diplomacy’, which is based on mutual respect and does not interfere in another country’s domestic affairs (tomy hendrajati, 30 november 2016). akim’s approach is to “give to the people in need for 6 the author is one of the founders of this organization. 7 the crisis arose from a complexity of ethno-religious conflict between rohingya-muslims and rakhinebuddhists, and a conflict between the military junta and militant islam, based on long-term discrimination and the negligence of the myanmar government to recognize the rohingya minority as citizens of myanmar. 230 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia both societies, without any discrimination” – a policy that was endorsed by minister marsudi (22 january 2017) and articulated by a limited number of organizations. this ‘soft diplomacy’ succeeded in making this alliance the only organization welcome to carry out humanitarian aid in rakhine state. in january 2017, akim inaugurated two schools (renovated by one member of the alliance) (kemenlu, 2017), and delivered aid given by the government (ten container trucks of food packages and sarongs). the alliance plans to help both muslim and buddhist refugees in rakhine state in four areas: education (such as through schools and libraries), health (through medical training), economy and livelihood, and relief for two years at the cost of more than usd 2 million. the long-term development and inclusive approach made by this alliance could be part of a social justice approach. akim is worth mentioning for two reasons: first, it could persuade a number of islamic philanthropy organizations –  some from conservative backgrounds –  to bring assistance not only to muslim-rohingya’s but also to rakhine-buddhist refugees. in fact, some of the money contributed for this project is zakat money (see the next section on zakat to non-muslims), which means that they accept a more progressive interpretation and an inclusive approach to distribute zakat money also to non-muslim beneficiaries. second, it marks an acceptance of a long-term development program focusing on building peace rather than a short-term ‘hit and run’ approach that most organizations tend to engage in (see the low percentage of giving to long-term purposes in the next section). the alliance has survived in the face of high politicization, from provocations of fundraising without clear objectives by individuals and unregistered organizations, as well as against reactions of hatred (such as those from radical organizations of the islamic defender front (fpi) who launched a war, declared as a jihad, against the rakhine buddhists) (hodge & rayda, 2017; kami, 2017). despite strong conservative and non-inclusive harassment, the alliance maintained its position. between march and august 2017, its membership decreased from 14 to 11 organizations but increased to 25 organizations later in september. today, there is increased public support for the alliance, including from the zakat forum.8 it remains premature to claim success for this alliance as an example of an inclusive and social justice practice of philanthropy, as we need to wait for a few years to confirm this. however, the project displays an early effort in a social justice approach toward giving that commentators need to take into account. world zakat forum the world zakat forum (wzf) is a network that consists of organizations, individual practitioners, and academics that together aim to enhance the practice of zakat worldwide. it was established in 2010, initiated by the dompet dhuafa and 8 the 11 organizations that signed the commitment are muhammadiyah disaster management centre, lembaga penanggulangan bencana dan perubahan iklim – nahdlatul ulama, pkpu human initiative, dompet dhuafa, rumah zakat, dompet peduli ummat – daarut tauhiid, lazis wahdah, laznas lembaga manajemen infaq (lmi), aksi cepat tanggap, lazis dewan da’wah islamiyah indonesia, and social trust fund – uin jakarta. more new members include four from social and humanitarian organizations, and ten zakat organizations. aseas 10(2) | 231 amelia fauzia supported by the national zakat board or baznas (purwakananta, 1 march 2017). the forum later received support from leading zakat organizations, including from organizations in malaysia. it aims to be an institutional platform to support the further movement of zakat for the welfare of the ummah and “the glorification of islam” (world zakat forum, 2017). it has held regular meetings to promote and enhance collaboration in zakat for poverty reduction. previous conferences and meetings aimed at the engagement of practitioners, individuals, and zakat organizations from many parts of the world, and tried to endorse progressive interpretations of zakat, which still remains a big challenge. between 14 and 16 march 2017, the wzf held its fourth general assembly conference in jakarta entitled “strengthening the role of zakat as a global instrument to eradicate poverty” (world zakat forum international conference, 2017) which was attended by about 300 participants (mainly from the national board of zakat) and representatives from 19 countries. its local host was the national board of zakat. it held a plenary session on zakat and sdgs, and it signed a cooperation agreement with the undp and the national development planning agency on zakat for development. although the forum remains exclusive for muslims and those who want to use zakat as a weapon against unbridled capitalism, liberalism, and for reinforcing solidarity among muslim nations, its platform is quite open for collaboration with international development agencies, such as the undp. it somehow follows the schemes of international agencies in the question of how zakat could be used effectively for development – specifically for poverty eradication – and fits with goals for sustainable development. the move toward zakat for development is made possible through the leadership of baznas and dompet dhuafa. this move is in accordance with the value of social justice philanthropy. for zakat organizations, agreement on the tools of sdgs and the development agenda indicates a big leap that may advance the agenda of social justice. although it is not clear how this forum could further endorse zakat organizations toward a social justice agenda, it shows a path toward the transformation of zakat for development aims. potentials and constraints for social justice philanthropy the examples above reveal the potential for the further development of philanthropy of social justice. this, to some extent, echoes several findings of the 2003 survey. first, looking at social capital and the principle of social justice, the survey finds that muslims in indonesia have the potential to develop social justice philanthropy. it finds that more than 65% of muslim respondents agree on certain principles of social justice, such as the importance of obtaining and securing rights, income equality, women’s rights, minority rights, and freedom of expression (abubakar & bamualim, 2006). almost all muslim respondents agree on the need to support equality and to have freedom of expression. it is clear that muslims are quite rational in responding to values of income justice, such as the agreement that income should be based on skill and talent, and that income equality may reduce or prevent social conflicts. the concern of muslims in this survey over women’s rights and the rights of minority groups are also moderately high, with over 70% expressing such concerns. however, these concerns and levels of support do not necessarily achieve congruence with the target 232 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia of giving. as mentioned in the previous section, a strong religious motivation and a traditional pattern and practice of giving have not brought the generosity of muslims to match the purposes of long-term social justice. second, the tendency toward social justice can also be seen from the motives for giving. a total of 11% of respondents stated that they give for 1) discharging ‘the rights of the poor’, 2) reducing poverty, and 3) helping the government to increase community wellbeing. these motives show evidence of concerns over other people’s rights and welfare, which is itself an indicator of the potential of social justice philanthropy. third, the target of giving to social justice purposes is low, even marginal. muslims give their sedekah directly to recipient organizations, ranging from schools to islamic associations and organizations working on human rights. however, while 94% of muslims donate to religious organizations, only 3% of them donate to human rights organizations, 11% donate to women’s organizations, and 11% to environmental organizations. giving to organizations is determined by religious affiliation and neighborhood attachments. this shows the domination of a traditional pattern of giving. what is clear is that issues related to the empowerment of human rights, or to women and labor rights, do not attract much attention from muslim donors. advocacy activities are somehow too abstract, so they are not popular targets of giving among muslim donors. in the same way, giving for ‘long-term purposes’, which has the character of social justice philanthropy, is also not popular. indeed, persuading and fundraising for social justice projects is a challenging task. the crucial question – fourth – is whether religion becomes a constraint for the development of social justice philanthropy. the 2003 survey shows that religion is an important cause for giving, and that muslims who donate to religious causes also tend to donate to social causes. analyzing the pattern of donors for neighborhood associations, i find that two thirds of the muslims surveyed donate to both religious and secular causes, whilst only about one third donate solely to religious organizations (fauzia, 2010b, p. 61). this finding shows a similar picture to that in the us, where religious people are most likely to give, and that the person gives not only for religious causes but also to secular causes (wuthnow & hodkinson, 1990). in the indonesian context, data is similar to that of mujani’s (2004) thesis, which finds that muslims who participate in religious activities will also participate in secular and community activities. this implies that muslims also donate to non-zakat and humanitarian organizations (such as discussed in the previous section) as well as to secular ngos. for example, in the aftermath of the tsunami in aceh, the sctv (tv news) foundation attracted a huge amount of donations for the victims of the tsunami (kehati, 2005). as one important element of social justice is the principle of non-discrimination, a further question is whether muslims agree with the notion of giving to others without considering their religion. survey results show that 77% of the respondents find no problem with this (fauzia, 2010b, p. 61). however, when the survey asked a more detailed question related to the possibility of zakat money being given to non-muslims, half of the muslim respondents (51%) voiced their objections, while 45% of the respondents agreed that money could be given to non-muslims, and 4% did not answer. six percent of the respondents stated that they had already given zakat to non-muslims (abubakar & bamualim, aseas 10(2) | 233 amelia fauzia 2006, p. 186). a possible hindrance to non-discriminative giving is related to interpretations of zakat (almsgiving), which is generally regarded as being given strictly to muslim beneficiaries, following conservative practices – although contextual and progressive interpretation, such as that by an-naim & halim (2006), has permitted zakat to be used for anyone who is in need. there are also many other forms of charitable donations that are not subject to such strict and detailed regulations such as sedekah. the 2003 survey data confirm that non-zakat organizations have greater potential for social justice philanthropy. this hindrance caused by interpretation does not diminish or detract from the humanitarian values of muslim donors. the survey found that 73% of muslim respondents shared a concern to improve their attitude toward minority groups. when they were asked the challenging question on their agreement as to whether or not to give to causes outside the traditional mainstream, their answers remained positive. 38% of muslim respondents wanted to give to non-muslims, 83% wanted to give to refugees, 56% agreed on the need to save sexual workers who were forced to work by giving them support, and 37% were even willing to give to victims of hiv/aids (abubakar & bamualim, 2006, p. 186). the willingness to give to and work on hiv-related projects was not typically supported, however, nahdlatul ulama and muhammadiyah had proved it was possible. both organizations collaborated with the global fund to fight hiv, tb, and malaria (rae, 2017), and this example, together with the survey findings and case studies discussed, build a picture of the potential for social justice philanthropy, especially in larger organizations. many organizations remain very strict or too careful in their interpretation and tend to follow the mainstream understanding, but a number of organizations have stepped up their work for the social justice practices of philanthropy. concluding remarks while a majority of indonesian muslims preserve a traditional way of giving, the innovation and reform pioneered by modern islamic philanthropy organizations contribute to the transformation of the sector. recent developments in the practice of islamic philanthropy discussed in this article have shown encouraging features from both recent case studies and the 2003 survey data. the contribution of modernization to legal reform, management, and to the program innovation of philanthropy organizations has increased the possibility of philanthropy for development and social justice, but remains very premature. islamization encourages the practice of islamic philanthropy, but it also impedes it due to the dominance of strict, traditional interpretations of jurisprudence (fiqh), and to the politicization of islam. the trend toward modernization has not necessarily led to thoughts that are inclusive. both modernization and islamization bring a notion of social justice philanthropy. progressive thoughts may arise from any religious tradition and a social justice perspective does not necessarily imbed itself in either modernization or islamization, but in the progressive thoughts inherent within the religion. this is similar to the argument that modern philanthropy is not necessarily socially just. even though modern philanthropy has potential in the addressing of social justice, in reality some of these thoughts are only modern in terms of aspects of their outlook; their concern is far from addressing injustices. 234 | aseas 10(2) islamic philanthropy in indonesia in indonesia, traditional – and strict – religious behaviors have complicated modern program management, and have hindered long-term structural programs as organizations face difficulties in adapting fiqh regulations established in the eighth and ninth century cultures of the middle east to the modern situation of indonesia. however, efforts toward reinterpretation have been on the way, not only in indonesia (abidin, 2004), but also in international islamic agencies (shirazi, 2014). practices of islamic philanthropy with an inclusive approach, non-discrimination, and long-term structural programs have been seen here and there, including in the establishment and support given to non-zakat philanthropic organizations and forums/associations. the transformation toward social justice philanthropy has benefited from dialogs and exchanges between islamic philanthropy organizations and secular ones, as well as with other faith-based organizations that are concerned with the agenda of social justice. indeed, there are many charitable foundations, such as media-based, csr, and family foundations that come from different spheres than zakat organizations but whose work is similar or complementary in intention and character. from the exchange initiated between 2002 and 2004, islamic philanthropy organizations learned from the development of the philanthropy sector in indonesia, asia, and the us, and about various issues such as environment and advocacy. it is likely that this dialog contributed to the discreet acceptance of the term ‘philanthropy’. zakat organizations continue to engage with secular ngos and work on public policies, on anti-corruption, on consumer affairs, on the empowerment of women, and on issues of social justice. overall, while not rapid, the continuance of the development toward social justice philanthropy has been clear. the account that asserts that religious charities have more interest in promoting their own confessions (benthall & bellion-jourdan, 2014) may continue to be challenged step by step by a more vibrant, inclusive philanthropy. the future of social justice philanthropy remains possible but will depend on a stable political and economic situation, support from the state, and the existence of a strong civil society.  references 2003 survey data. 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(2016). 2017 outlook zakat indonesia. retrieved from https://www.puskasbaznas.com/images/outlook/indonesia%20zakat%20outlook2017en_ puskasbaznas.pdf world zakat forum international conference. (2017). world zakat forum. retrieved from https:// worldzakatforum.org/events/wzf-conference-2017/84-world-zakat-forum-conference-2017 world zakat forum. (2017). vision. retrieved from https://worldzakatforum.org/home/vision wuthnow, r. & hodgkinson v. (1990). faith and philanthropy in america: exploring the role of religion in america’s voluntary sector. san francisco: jossey. about the author amelia fauzia is a visiting senior research fellow at the asia research institute, national university of singapore, working on islamic philanthropy networks in southeast asia. she is a lecturer at syarif hidayatullah state islamic university. ► contact: ameliafauzia@uinjkt.ac.id acknowledgements this article benefits from data from my current research on islam, ngos, & humanitarianism at the asia research institute, national university of singapore (funded by the asia research institute), and data from previous research on philanthropy for social justice in muslim societies (funded by the ford foundation, 2002-2004). two godly and frvitful treatises of the fowl and gross sin of oppression. the one taken out of the exposition upon the fist chapter of nehemiah, written by that worthy bishop and faithful pastor of the church of durham, master james pilkinton. the other published of late by robert some doctor of divinity. ecclesi. 7.9. oppression maketh a wise man mad. imprinted by thomas thomas printer to the university fo cambridge. 1585. the former treatise against the gross sin of oppression taken out of the exposition of m. james pilkington upon the 5. chapter of nehemiah. 1. and there was a great cry of the people made and their wives against their brethren the jews. while that nehemiah had travailed himself weary in keeping watch and ward, and setting the people to building the walls again, and thought all was quiet, both within the city, and safe against the utter enemy, behold, now bursteth out a new sore, worse than the former. the people and their wives come with open mouth and make an outcry against the rich and rulers among them, which unmercifully had spoiled and oppressed them, in so much as they were not able to live. such is the state of god's people here in the earth, hn. that as our master christ saith, he came to overthrow the works of the devil: so the devil ceaseth not by all means possible to overthrow, or at the least, so much as in him is, to hinder by his partakers, the building of god's house, and the setting forth of his glory. and to declare the vehemency of the cry, the holy ghost noteth it by such a word in the hebrew, as signifieth those uproars and outcries which are made in rebellious or seditious riots, or else of such as cry out for great grief and anguish of heart. the parties that make their cry, are the common people and women, of which it is hard to tell, whether of them is often more importune in outcrying, and many times without just cause. the people if they smart a little, & have not their own wills fulfilled, are ready to exclaim, and women can weep and howl when they list, & the basest sort are the worst. the parties against whom they cry, be the jews their countrymen, brethren in kindred, and professing one religion. if this oppression and cruel dealing had been by strangers, where no mercy is commonly showed nor looked for, it would have been less marveled at, & less it would have grieved them: but to be entreated cruelly by their countrymen, kinsmen, and those that served the same god, and professed the same religion that they did, and at whose hands they looked for aid and comfort: this was thought so strange, that it would make any astonished to hear tell of it. with these circumstances the holy ghost setteth out the greatness of the cry, to make it more horrible in men's sight, & so the more easily to bring them to repentance, and make them ashamed of their cruel dealings. when the devil prevailed not by sanballat and his fellows, to overthrow the building, he setteth now on the poor common sort and women, to cry out against their rulers, thinking by these means to overthrow all, rather than to procure any remedy or relief for them: though god of his accustomed goodness (turning oft our wicked doings to the setting forth of his glory) by this means wrought their deliverance and liberty. such is the wisdom of our god, that by our foolishness he declareth his mighty power, wisdom, & majesty: and our ill dealing showeth forth his justice and mercy, and that against our will & meaning. 2. and there were that said, our sonnss and our daughters and we are many, therefore we must take corn that we may eat and live. 2. and there were that said. the cause of their cry is set forth in these 4. verses following: hunger, need, oppression, pinching poverty, and pining penury, made them so to cry out. and this is to common a fault in our days, in the preaching of the gospel. some of the poorer sort, though they had not lands & goods, yet god, as he useth commonly, had blessed them more than the richer sort with children so many, that they could not tell how to get bread for them, except they should sell them as slaves: and where they were free borne, they should now become bond, and be used as beasts. what a grief it is to a good father, that loveth his child dearly, in the fear of god, to be driven by the unmerciful dealing of the rich to sell his own children for bondmen, i leave it to the consideration of those that be natural and loving parents. for none can express the greatness of that grief, but he that hath been pinched with it, and felt the smart of it. when jacob should send little benjamin into egypt with his brethren for corn, it was long ere he could be brought to it, and he almost had rather died for hunger, then let him go from him. what a love had david to ward his wicked son absalon, even in the midst of his rebellion, and what charge gave he to his captains, that they should not kill him? 2. sam. 2. such is the love of natural parents towards their children, that they will love them, and cannot cast them of, even in their ill doings, though many times the children be most unthankful. liberty is a thing that every man naturally desireth and by all means seeketh for, therefore bondage must needs be such a thing as every man doth abhor & fly from: yet hunger is such a thing, that it will break stony walls, and rather than a man will bear it continually, he will sell lands, goods, wife, children, yea himself, to be slaves for ever. nay hunger is so pinching a pain, that a woman will eat her own child, as in the siege of jerusalem, in samaria, and saguntine; yea a man his own flesh, rather than he will die for hunger. hunger of all things may not be abidden, what in convenience soever fall out after. consider then what miserable case these poor men were in, that had so many children, and could get no bread to put in their mouths: & wicked men, the richer sort, were they, that had brought them to this poverty, and now would not relieve them in this their extremity. we read of a bishop of mentz in germany called hatto, who had great store of corn & would not relieve the poor with it in time of great dearth, but let the rats eat it: in revenge of which, god raised so many rats about him, that they drove him from house to house to save his life: and where he had a strong tower in the midst of the great river of rhine, which yet standeth there to be seen in the midst of the river, he thought himself sure if he could fly thither: notwithstanding the rats, swum after him thither, and there devoured him: and it is called the rat's tower at this day. ●ou. 11. solomon saith, he that hideth up his corn, shallbe cursed among the people, but blessing shallbe on them that sell it. god grant the richer sort pitiful hearts to open their barns and purse to the relief of the poor, that they may escape god's plague and man's curse. 3. and there were some that said, our fields, and our vineyards, and our houses we have laid to pledge, that we might have corn in this hunger. 4. and there were some that said: we have boromwed any of the king's tribute upon our lands and vineyards 5. and now as the flesh of our brethren is, so is our flesh: and as their children be, so are our children: and mark, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters as servants: and there bosom of our daughters in bondage already: and there is no power in our hands: our lands & our vineyards are in other men's hands. 3. and there were some that said. thus far goeth the cry of the poorest sort: now followeth another company, that cry as fast, but they are not altogether so poor. they were pinched with hunger, but they had some lands, vineyards, and houses to lay to pledge, that they might have some corn to fill their bellies withal. these men were hungerbitten also: for though they had land, yet they were not able to store it, nor husband it, as husbandry required: and therefore had no profit by it. and like enough they were such as aggeus the prophet com-plained on, saying: that every man buildeth for himself fair houses, and god's house lay unbuilt, and therefore god plagued them. they had sown much, and reaped little, their corn wasted in their barns, and their grapes consumed away in the winepress. these days were like the time of micheas the prophet, who crieth out against the rulers for their oppressing of the poor so extremely, saying, they pluck of their skins from them, mich and their flesh from their bones. and they eat also the flesh of my people, and flay of their skin from them, and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces, as for the pot, and as flesh within the cauldron. 4. and there were some that said. yet cometh another sort, but they were in some better case, for they had some corn, and no money, and they cry out as fast as the rest. the kings of persia, although they had given the jews licence to go home to build their temple and city, yet they laid a great task on them, which they should pay, in token of their subjection, and recompense for their liberties sake. the rulers & chief of the jews had engrossed up in their hands unmercifully all the corn and money, that could be come by, so that little or nothing could be gotten to fill their bellies, and to pay the king's tribute withal: therefore these men must pledge their lands and vineyards to get some money for this purpose. o miserable wretches, that had thus miserably oppressed their poor brethren and countrymen, who had taken as much pains as they or more for the defence of their country, building of their temple and city: and now in their great need could find no comfort nor relief at their hands. but these be no new things in the world: for amos the prophet complaineth likewise of the oppression, 〈◊〉 8. that the richer sort used toward the poor in his time. when will this moon pass away, say they, that hath so much plenty: and the time come, that we may make the measure less, and buy the poor for silver, and the needy for shoes, and sell the out cast of the wheat. 5. and now as the flesh of our brethren is. but now come they all howling and crying together, and say, what better case are we in, that be come home to our country, than our brethren, which live in captivity under the chaldees, assyrians, babylonians, medes, & persians, or any other country, wheresoever they be scattered on the face of the earth. they live in penury & hunger, & so do we. they be oppressed with their rulers, & so be we. their flesh is parched with toiling in the heat, and frozen up with cold, and so is ours. their bellies cleave to the very back for hunger, and so do ours. there is no strength nor courage left in them, no more is there in us. they be weary of their lives, and so be we. they have not where with to fill their belly, and cover their back, & no more have we. they pine away for sorrow, and so do we. they have nothing left but skin & bones, and those will scarce cleave together for sorrow, and in the same case be we. if they get a penny with great labour, one or other is ready to snatch it from them, and so it is with us. as their children live in as great slavery and misery as their fathers, so do our children live as miserably as we do. there is no respect of age nor youth neither there nor here, but all kinds of sorrow are laid uppons us without mercy. if this sorrow were laid on us alone we could better bear it, but when we see our children, young infants that cannot help themselves, to be wrapped in the same misery that we be, and can help neither them nor ourselves, it doubleth and tripleth our sorrow, and yet both is remediless, endless, and comfortless. these be strange things which were laid to their charge for their ungentle dealing: but lo, mark and consider farther, and these dealings that follow are much worse monsters in nature, and things intolerable, both afore god and man. this word lo, mark or behold, ecce, ever betokeneth throughout the scripture some notable thing either very good or very ill, that is spoken of immediately afterward, and such a one as commonly falleth not out among men: and the holy ghost of purpose useth to mark such notable things with this word lo, ecce, mark or behold to put men in remembrance, and a wake them to the consideration of the weighty matter that followeth, that they should not lightly pass over it, but deeply mark & consider it. mark the greatness of this oppression and unmerciful dealing of the richer sort toward us their poor brethren and countrymen, of the same religion, and serving the same god that they do, & have taken as much pains in building the temple, city, and defending our country as they have done, or more: and yet can find no mercy at their hands, but are made their slaves. for behold in strange countries, where our brethren dwell, strangers take their sons and daughters by force and make them bondmen and slaves: but we are brought into such misery, that we ourselves are driven by necessity through the oppression of our rulers, against our will, and willingly to bring & offer our sons and daughters to them to be their bondservants, slaves, & used as beasts at their commandment, that we & they may live, though it be in great misery, rather than perish for hunger or penury. and, that ye may see the thing to be true, and not feigned, some of our daughters are in bondage to them already. it is a great grief to parents, to see their own children taken by strangers & made slaves in their own sight: but it is a greater grief for fathers to be so cruelly dealt with in their own country, at their friends hands and countrymen, that they shall be compelled willingly, though against their wills, to sell their children for slaves, or else die for hunger. at strangers hands, and specially if they be of another religion, no man looketh for any favour, and if any do come, it is more than looked for, and so much the more welcome, when it cometh: but at a friend and countryman's hand, where all courtesy is to be looked for, and to find none but all extremity, it is a grief above all griefs, and man's heart can never digest it. it is against god, against nature, and common reason which teacheth all gentleness to such: nay it is worse than beastliness: for one beast will not deal so cruelly with another of his own kind: and one thief will not rob another: therefore to be spoiled and rob by them of whom they should be defended & relieved, it is a grief that passeth all sorrow. but if these sorrows could have an end, or there were any hope to have release of them in time we could take it the better, & have some comfort: but all hope is taken away, for we have no power left, we have nothing to help ourselves withal, we have wrestled as long as we might and made shift as long as it would be, but now we are able to bear it no more, we have nothing left, all is spent and gone, and we cannot devise where to get any more: our houses, our lands and vineyeardes other men have cruelly gotten from us, and unmercifully do keep them, & have no regard to help us in this our great and extreme necessity. we can do nothing, but cry out on heaven & earth, but they have hardened their hearts and stopped their ears that they will not hear nor pity us. mercy is gone, cruelty, oppression, and greediness carry them away, that both forget god & themselves. this was the miserable state of that time: a man would have thought that the misery, slavery, and bondage, that they themselves were in of late, under heathen princes, in strange countries, and so late being restored through gods free and undeserved goodness to their own country, with liberty, great gifts and liberality, to build their temple & city, should not have been so soon forgotten, but as they th●● would have been glad of some relief, succour & courtesy to be showed unto them at strangers hands, so they should now show the like unto their brethren & countrymen: but such is the wickedness of man's heart that the more mercies we receive at god's hand, the more unthankful we be: and such is the malice of satan against god, his church, and people, that when the lord of his own free will and undeserved goodness bestoweth his mercy upon his servants, the devil by his members and all devices possible, goeth about to overthrow and withdraw all sorts of men, so much as in him is, to a forgetfulness of such merciful goodness bestowed upon them, and maketh them unmerciful to their brethren, which have received so great mercy at the lords hand. religion is the chiefest help that god hath given us to know him by, to bridle our ill affections and desires withal, to make us love one another, and set forth his glory: and yet if we look into ourselves in these days, we shall find that there was never greater cruelty, oppression of the poor, hypocrisy, and dissembling in god's cause, and unmercifulness amongst men, in this land, then hath been since the beginning of the reforming of religion amongst us: yea, and that is more wonderful, of such as would pretend to be favourers of religion. hypocrites, as they use nothing well, so they misuse religion, for a cloak to work their own will and pleasure by, to the defacing of all good religion. things be fresh in memory, and cannot be forgotten of them that will not willingly be blind: but they that list to reed, may see in that worthy father master latimer his sermons many such things opened, that then were preached, & would to god they were now reform, or not fallen to worse and more shameful dealings, without hope of amendment. as for begging or buying good things at the king's hand, then selling the woods, surveying the land, to the uttermost acre or roods of land, enhancing of rents to the highest, from twenty pounds to an hundredth, racking the tenants by intolerable fines and incomes, sine fine, every 5. or 7. year commonly, laying load on them, to carry and recarie what soever is to be done, paying never a penny for their labour, ride and run when he is commanded, etc. then turn it into the prince's hand again, get as much, and use it as ill or worse, this practice hath been so common, and declared by divers, that few can be ignorant of it, and many cry out on it at this day, but remediless. yet this is not the worst: if there be any broken title of the land, that may make question in the law, or if there be any danger of waters or extraordinary charges, reparations, etc. then it is meet for the prince by exchange. when it is racked to the highest, and a good thing gotten in steed of it, yet that the prince shall not be thought to have an ill bargain, he will desire to be farmer of it himself after the same rate, to stop men's mouths for a time. as it is reason, honourable, and godly, that the prince should liberally reward and encourage the good servitor: so is it reason again, that the prince's goodness, nor the subject be misused. master latimer did freely speak of these things, not without blame, as peradventure this will be to: but would to god this had been used only in the prince's state. but he that will look and see, shall find the like to common in mean men's doings. as for pulling down of towns, turning tillage to pasture, and turning out the tenants, as achab did to naboth for his vineyard, that they may have elbowroume, make them large demeans, or set a shepherd and his dog, where so many have dwelled, and that a poor man may not dwell so near a man of worship: these be so common among the meanest sort of purchasers, that men need not to study where to find them. raising of rents, & taking unreasonable fines and gressans, is thought no fault, it is so common: but some are waxed so cunning, that it is strange to think of. a landlord is hungry, and needs must have fines even of the poorest sort: and because he will be thought to deal mercifully, this way is devised. the poor man hath no money, and yet he must pay: his goods, and specially his sheep, though they be few, shall be praised, and according to the rate, out of those goods the fineshalbe raised. and that some pity shallbe thought to be showed, the poor man shall have his goods again by the price, to pay his fine withal, and for occupying of those his own goods, he shall pay a yearly rent or interest, as it were an usury: and this dealing is thought great courtesy. solon, when he was asked, why, among the other good laws that he made, he made not one for him that killed his father? he answered, because he would not put men in remembrance, that there was any such a mischief, that could come into men's heads: so i fear the opening of these things shall give occasion to some ill men, but not to the good, to learn the like devices. so ready we be to learn that that is ill. the law in deed openeth sin what it is, that a man should fly from it, & not be condemned for ignorance. saint paul sayeth, rom. 7.7 i had not known lust and desire of ill things to be sin, except the law had said, thou shalt not lust nor desire them. the law is not to blame in declaring what sin is, that by knowing of it we may fly from it: no more than the physician is to blame in opening the disease to his patient, and teaching him what things to avoid, that he may recover halth. but as an ill stomach, what good meat soever it eateth, turneth it into ill humours: and the spider gathereth poison on the same flowers that the bee gathereth honey: so on the holy word of god & his blessed laws, which he made for our health and salvation, ill men gather death and damnation, through their own wickedness, and no fault in the law nor lawmaker. as the israelites cried out in this time justly on their rulers for this great oppression, so it is to be feared that in our days there is no less cause to cry aloud, that god may hear, when man will not. there be four things that cry for vengeance out of heaven unto the lord, and the scripture useth the same word of crying with them, which for memory's sake are contained in these two verses: clamitat in coelum vox sanguinis, vox sodomorum, vox oppressorum, mercesque, retenta laborum. for murder and bloodshed god said to cain, when he had killed his brother abel, the voice of thy brother's blood crieth out from the earth to me in heaven. 〈◊〉 4. for the filthy incest, fornication, pride, gluttony, wealth, and idleness of sodom, the prophet ezechiel and genesis testify saying; 〈◊〉 19 〈◊〉 16. 〈◊〉. 2.3. the cry of sodom is come up to me. the israelites oppressed in egypt with making of brick, etc. god delivered them when they cried unto him, 〈◊〉 5. and drowned the oppressors. s. james sayeth, the wages withholden from those that reaped their fields, cry out unto the lord of hosts. these be good lessons for such as oppress the poor, or deal straightly with their tenants, thinking they may use them like slaves or beasts at their pleasure. though they be servants here, yet they be children of the same god, and bought by the same price that their masters be: & therefore ought of duty to be used with christian and brotherly charity, as thou wouldst be, if thou were so. there be other sorts of cruel oppressors, but not so common as these: as cozening, by cunning dealing to creep into men's bosoms, to be feoffies of trust, executors of will, guardians of infants, and these play best be trust, but they trust themselves best and go away with all. carriers of corn, victuals, and other commodities out of the realm, to make a dearth within the realm, yea, and oft to feed our enemies, and enrich themselves, by procuring licenses to carry them out, are to well known how hurtful they be through all countries. as for engrossers, forestallers, regraters, lease-mongers, they are thought honest men. the lawyers of both sorts by feeding their clients with fair words, and the questmongers with sluttish shifts, making them believe their matter to be good, & with long delays▪ impoverish the suitors: and if he come to be judge in the same matter afterward, wherein he was a counsellor afore, he saith, i spoke then as a counsellor, and now i must speak as a judge, and thinketh that he hath spoken good reason, as though god had made it lawful at any time, or in any case to bear false witness or speak untruths. the physician and the apothecary deal so cunningly that no man espieth them, and yet be as ill. the clergy that will take the profit and refuse the pains, lie at his ease from his charge and let his sheep hunger, are not better than the rest. pen-clearks, sheriffs, bailiffs, & summoners are not worthy to come to this company, for they can return non est inventus, when they stand and talk with him: and make cunning delays, until they make men pay double fees for expedition. worst of all cometh the common cutpurse the usurer and his broker, he standeth on his reputation, he sitteth highest on the bench, and looketh big; nay he is crept unto mean men's dealings, he speaketh courteously, and dealeth cruelly: he defendeth his doings to be charitable, when it eateth up house, lands, and goods, turneth infants a begging, and overthroweth the whole kindred: captains convey as cunningly as jugglers with legerdemain. merchants and artificers are so honest, that they may not be touched: they have so few faults, that they cannot be told, and yet there could never be laws enough made to bridle them, but they will creep out. when receivers are become deceivers, controllers be pollers, auditors searchers, and customers look through their fingers and keep their old custom: and generally, every man is a thief in his occupation, as the common proverb saith, there is craft even in daubing: it is to be feared, that as the course of a stream being stopped, it gathereth a great dam, and being let suddenly go, it overthroweth all in his way; so god's anger being stayed a time, the windows in heaven being opened, it will power down on our heads plentifully. how should god's plague be far from us, when these cry vengeance daily? the thief by the high way is not so ill as any of those, that deal not uprightly in their vocation. for against a thief a man may fight for his purse wittingly, and say, master thief gramercy. if a man consider in how little tents, shops, offices, and houses these men dwell, and how great gains they get, he shall easily see where the proficablest ground lieth in the realm. if this people had such cause to cry out then on their rulers, what cause have we now here among us, where not only the richer & mightier sort overload the poorer, but every one in his degree useth craft, subtlety, & deceit, to oppress, undermine, and scratch from other, without respect of friend or foe, what he can, not regarding how he cometh by it, by hook or by crook, by right or wrong, be it short or long. here is nothing spoken particularly against any man's vocation or occupation, nor any man that dealeth honestly in them, but generally to note the general faults of the offenders, that every man may look into his own bosom, consider his doings and amend one. if every one would amend one, all should be well straight: but every one would amend another, see other men's faults, but not his own, and therefore all lie still as they did, nothing amended, and every one maketh courtesy who shall begin first. sophony the prophet complaineth of his time, & saith, thy rulers are roaring lions, thy judges are ravening wolves, and will not leave the bones until morning: by prophets are lewd and unconstant, thy priests have defiled the holy place, and broken thy law. micheas crieth out and saith: there is not a good man left on the earth, and not a righteous man among men, all lie in wait for blood, every man hunteth his brother unto death, etc. god grant our times were not like. among us it is merrily said of some, that there be some courts where law is executed without conscience: another, where conscience is without law: the third where neither law nor conscience; the fourth, where both law and conscience shall rule, i can rather pray for, then look for, until the last day come, when the righteous judge shall judge both with law & conscience. in the mean time we may mourn, and turn unto the lord, that he may forgive us, and receive us in his many and great mercies, for we are full of many and great miseries. the pride of women is through the fault of men, therefore they be blameless: god amend us all. it is written that joseph in egypt used the people almost of like sort that they do here, 47. and yet is he praised & and these justly reproved: which possibly some marvel at, not understanding the diversity of their doings. joseph laid up corn in the time of plenty, when every man had enough: these men did it at all times, without respect, in plenty and scarcity. joseph brought the money into the king's coffers, to serve the common wealth: these men laid it up in their own coffers, to their own private use. joseph bought their cattle for such price as they were worth: these men pay not the just price for any thing they take. joseph buyeth their land and maketh the people bond unto the king, restoring them again the land, the king finding the seed to sow, the people only labouring to till the ground. and where we think we deal courteously if we let them to halves, the egyptians have the fourth part for their labour, and pay the king the fift part of the increase, for the land and seed, but these men kept all in their own hands. joseph bought not the priests lands, but gave them allowance of such things as they wanted out of the kings store: and these men like unto our days, if they can scrape any thing from the church, that is a pastime among all other to laugh at, and thought best gotten. so much more is a minister of god's gospel thought meeter to be spoiled by these cutpursses, than joseph thought meet to do to those idolatrous priests. joseph opened his barns in time of dearth, and sold liberally to the needy: these men the greater that the need was, the faster they locked it up, until they had their desire of the poor. joseph restored their land and took but the fift part of the increase: these men restore nothing, and yet take interest. as this cruel dealing toward their brethren and countrymen, was thought strange to be found amongst this people, in the time that god had showed to them such great mercies, in restoring them again to their country, giving them the liberty to build their temple and city, with great gifts, liberality, and favour of the kings, under whom they were bondmen and slaves: so it is much more marvel, that among christians, in the time of the gospel, so mercifully restored unto us, & so freely taught, greater cruelty should be found & exercised, then among the hard hearted jews or infidel pagans. but this is the common practice of satan, that in no age, people, nor country, he can be quiet to see god's kingdom set up and flourish, and his power fall: but he will rage's, storm, bestir him, and by all devices that may be, and by all power that he can overthrow it. and seeing this is no new thing but hath fallen out divers times afore, let us not now be astonished nor dismayed at it, nor murmur and grudge against the doctrine of our salvation, so mercifully offered unto us, as though it were not the true word of god, because men live so far contrary to that which is taught, and they openly profess. the devil is content, when he cannot overthrow the truth of the doctrine, to deface it so much as he can, with the ill life of those that profess it. but the gospel teacheth us what to do in this case, 〈◊〉. 23.3. saying; do as they say, but do not as they do: the doctrine is good, though they be ill. the truth and worthiness of god's word hangeth not on our life and doings, but our life and doings should be reform by god's word: for that is a lantern to our feet, psa▪ 〈◊〉. and a light to our steps, that we may know when we be in the right way and how to come into it. we must be judged by god's word, & not it by us: we must be ruled by it, and not overrule it, according to our fantasies: we must hang on god's true saying, and not on man's evil living. a table of such points as are contained in the second treatise 1. what oppression is. 2. it is not lawful for any man to oppress another. 3. they which have done wrong unto, or oppressed any, must make actual restitution. 4. it is the duty of the magistrate, to deliver the oppressed out of the hands of the oppressor. 5. the magistrate looseth nothing by delivering the oppressed. 6. oppressors shall be grievously punished. 7. oppressors have no religion in them. to the reader. it hath pleased an english papist, to give out in print, that the church of room doth both teach, and require actual restitution, and that our church doth neither. his speech of us is very slanderous, and my treatise against oppression, is argument enough to confute him. if they of rome teach and require actual restitution, it is no work of supererogation: they do no more but their duties. if we should fail in this clear point, we deserve great condemnation at almighty god's hands. i confess that a man is good (& therefore justified in god's fight) before he doth good works: but withal i set down this, that good works do follow him that is truly justified, and that such as have oppressed, or injured any man, shall not be pardoned at god's hand, unless they make actually restitution, if they be able to do it. if any require proof of this, i refer him to this treatise of mine against oppression. the second treatise against the fowl and gross sin of oppression. question. what is oppression? answer. it is unjust dealing, used of the mightier, either by violence, colour of law, or any other cunning dealing, against such as are not able to withstand them. the ground of this definition is contained in these places of scripture. micheas. chap. 2. verse. 1.2.1. thes. chap. 4. verse. 6. 2. it is not lawful for any man to oppress another. give us this day our daily bread. mat. cham 6. verse. 11. every christian desireth god to give daily bread, (that is, all things necessary for this life) both to himself, and to others: therefore no christian is privileged to spoil another of his necessary food. if one of us must pray for the good of another, one of us may not pray upon another. he that taketh his neighbours living, eccl. ch▪ 34. v. 2 is a murderer. thou shalt not desire thy neighbour's house, his field, etc. deut. 5.21. if we may not desire his house, or land, than we may not spoil him of his house, or land, or in close that ground, whereby the poor either by right are, or by right aught to be relieved. if thou meet thin enemy's ox, or his ass going astray, thou shalt bring him to him again. if thou see thy enemy's ass lying under his burden, wilt thou cease to help him? thou shalt help him up with it again. exod. 23.4.5. almighty god commandeth us to deal well with our enemy's ass, therefore we may not by undoing our neighbour or spoiling him of any part of his land or goods, make him an ass and send him a begging. he that oppresseth the poor, reproveth him that made him, etc. prou. 14.31. it is a gross sin to reprove the majesty of god: therefore it is a gross sin to oppress the poor. it was one of the sins of sodom, not to reach out the hand to the poor. ezech. 16.49. if it be a great sin, not to relieve the poor, it is a very gross sin to spoil the poor. the bread of the needful is the life of the poor: eccl. 34. ●. he that defraudeth him thereof, is a murderer. there is a writ in england, which beareth this name, ne iniustè vexes, that is to say, vex not any man unjustly: this is a godly law, and is derived from the law of god, which forbiddeth and condemneth oppression. there are certain beggars, which of purpose keep their legs sore, to get money by it: if they are justly misliked which gain by their own sore legs, what deserve they to be thought of, which gain by other men's sore legs? when thou sellest aught to thy neighbour, or buyest at thy neighbour's hand, ye shall not oppress one another. levit. 25. ver. 14. this is the will of god, that no man oppress or defraud his brother in any matter. 1. thes. 4.6. therefore men of trade may not gain by little measures, false weights, and false speeches, and oaths, nor any mighty men may gain by cunning dealing, by colour of law, or by using any violence whatsoever. 3. they which have done wrong unto, or oppressed any, must make actual restitution. god saith thus unto moses: speak unto the children of israel, when a man or woman shall commit any sin, that men commit, and transgress against the lord, when that person shall trespass than they shall confess their sin, which they have done, & shall restore the damage thereof with his principal, and put the fift part of it more thereto, and shall give it unto him, against whom he hath trespassed. but if the man have no kinsman, to whom he should restore the damage, the damage shallbe restored to the lord, for the priests use, etc. num. 5. ver. 6.7.8. we are taught in this place, to whom this actual restitution must be made, even to him, whom we have injured: if he be dead, we must restore it to his kinsman: if he have no kinsman alive, actual restitution must be made to almighty god, for the priests use, and in our time for the poors use. michah rob his mother of 11. hundred shekels of silver: jud. 17.2 his mother did not know that he had it, but he had remorse of that sin, and made actual restitution. samuel saith thus of himself: whose ox have i taken? whose ass have i taken? 1. sam. 1 or whom have i done wrong to? or whom have i hurt? or of whose hands have i received any bribe, to blind my eyes therewith? and i will restore it you, etc. it is certain that samuel did not deal either corruptly or unjustly in his office: if he had, he would have made actual restitution. zacheus was some times very disordered in his life: it pleased our saviour christ to be a good god unto him, and to lodge in his house: zacheus having feeling of his former wants uttered these words, if i have taken from any man by forged cavillation, i restore him, four fold. if zacheus of jericho, after his conversion, was content to restore four fold, it is a good consequent, that they have little sense of religion, which will not restore the principal. question. if a man have deceived, rob or oppressed other men, shall he be pardoned at god's hand, if he make not actual restitution. answer. god will not pardon him, unless he make actual restitution, if he be able to do it: my reasons are these. if the wicked restore the pledge, and give again that he had rob, ip. 18. v. 13. he shall surely live, & not die, saith the lord. eze. 33.15. therefore, it is a sure consequent, that he shall not live eternally, which being in case to make actual restitution, doth it not accordingly. is not this the fasting that i have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness to take of the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke, etc. then shalt thou call, and the lord shall answer, thou shalt cry, and he shall say, here i am, etc. esa. 58.6.9. if the oppressor must let the oppressed go free, he must make actual restitution. if almighty god will not hear the prayer of the oppressor (until he let the oppressed go free) it is a necessary consequent, that god will not pardom him. augustine, epist. 54. is very flat for this point: if men be able to make actual restitution and do it not, poenitentiae non agitur, sed fingitur: that is to say, their repentance is no repentance, and their sin shall not be pardoned, until actual restitution be made. question. if a man have secretly either rob or deceived another, and is very willing to make restitution, but cannot do it without some worldly danger, and disgrace to himself, what must he do in this case? answer. let him send that which he hath taken unjustly, by some trusty messenger to him whom he hath wronged, and let his name be concealed. question. if he that hath taken unjustly from others, hath wasted all, and is not able to make restitution, what shall he do? answer. such a one, must desire pardon very humbly at god's hand, and water the earth with his tears. 4. it is the duty of the magistrate to deliver the oppressed out of the hand of the oppressor. execute judgement in the morning (that is, 〈◊〉 21.12. ●●y. 1.17. carefully and without delay) and deliver the oppressed out of the hand of the oppressor, saith the lord, etc. seek judgement, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, & defend the widow. almighty god commandeth the magistrates to execute judgement in the morning: therefore they must use no delays in doing justice. god commandeth the magistrates to seek judgement, therefore in cases of oppression, they must not stay till they be called for. god commendeth unto the magistrates all that are oppressed, but specially the fatherless and widow, because they want the defence of their parents, and husbands, and every man goeth over, 〈◊〉. 22. where the hedge is lowest. josias executed judgement & justice, he judged the cause of the afflicted & poor (saith the lord of josias). job saith thus of himself: i delivered the poor that cried, 〈◊〉. 29 and the fatherless, & him that had none to help him, etc. i put on justice, & it covered me: my judgement was the eye to the blind, and i was a father unto the poor, and when i knew not the cause, i sought it out diligently, i broke also the chaws of the unrighteous man, and plucked the pray out of his teeth, etc. it appeareth by this, that job was a worthy magistrate: god send us many such as job was. the sunamite (whose son elizeus raised to life) so iourn in the time of famine seven years in the land of the philistines: in her absence, her lands and goods were unjustly entered upon: at her return, she complained of the injury to jehoram the king of israel: jehoram without delay commanded an eunuch to restore her goods and lands unto her: restore thou (saith jehoram) all that are hers, 2. kings & all the fruits of her lands, since the day she left the land, even until this time. the jews in nehemiahs' time were greatly oppressed: nehemiah was very angry with the princes and rulers which oppressed them, neh. 5. and said unto them: you lay burdens every one upon his brethren etc. restore unto them this day their lands, their vineyards, their olives, and their houses. if it be the magistrates duty to deliver the oppressed, they must take great heed, that themselves be neither principals nor accessaries in the sin of oppression. if they be guilty, judgement shallbe turned into wormwood, amos. & 2.6. and the righteous shallbe sold for silver, and the poor for shoes: that is to say, filthy bribes shall be more accounted than men's lives, which are most precious. 5. the magistrate looseth nothing by delivering the oppressed. if he do it with a single heart (beside the testimony of a good conscience which is a continual feast) he may assure himself of god's favour and blessing, and of the singular liking of all god's people. josias did eat and drink and prosper, 〈◊〉 22. when he executed judgement and justice, when he judged the cause of the afflicted, and the poor. job delivered the poor that cried, 〈◊〉 6. & the fatherless, & him that had none to help him, and the blessing of him that was ready to perish, came upon him. our sovereign lady queen elizabeth hath dealt graciously with many poor suitors at the court, she hath spoken comfortably to them, and procured restitution accordingly. if it be no disgrace to this noble lady which sitteth under the cloth of estate, to deliver the oppressed, it is no blot to inferior magistrates if they do the like. if the prince pleaseth god highly, and winneth the hearts of her subjects soundly, for relieving the oppressed, it is very certain, that those cormorants, which grind the faces of the poor are accursed of god, and lose the hearts of his people. if the prince sitteth fast in the seat of her kingdom for tendering the case of the oppressed, can they assure themselves of sitting quietly under their vines and fig-trees, which eat bread, baked with the tears of men? it is certain, they cannot. for (besides the manifold curses of god and his people) their own consciences do mightily sting them, and are enemies enough to torment them. 6. oppressors shall be grievously punished. cursed be he, deu. 22.17. that removeth his neighbour's mark: and all the people shall say, amen. if they are accursed by god, and his people, which remove the mark of the land, they are more accursed, which take away house and lend. oppression maketh a wise man mad. eccle. 7. madness is a grievous punishment: god punisheth oppression by madness, one gross sin, by another. ye have builded houses of hewn stone, amos. 5 but ye shall not dwell in them: ye have planted pleasant vineyards, but ye shall not drink wine of them: the reason of this is set down by almighty god in the same verse, in these words: your tread are upon the poor: & you take from him burdens of wheat, (that is to say, the necessary relief of him and his famility.) if the taking away of burdens of wheat from the poor was so great a sin, the taking way of arable ground (which by tillage and god's blessing bringeth relief to a man and his family) is no little sin. they shall not mourn for him (saith god of joachim the king of juda, which was a great oppressor) he shall be buried as an ass is buried, jere. 22 and cast forth (as a carrion above the ground) even without the gates of jerusalem. joachim had closed himself in cedar, but that was not able to keep god's judgements from him. the stone shall cry out of the wall, ●ac. 2.11. and the beam out of the timber shall answer it, etc. as if almighty god should say, rather than the vile dealings of oppressors should not come to light, the stone shall cry out of the wall, i am built of blood and iniquity, & the beam out of the timber shall answer, i am built likewise of blood and iniquity. if the stones and beams of oppressors houses, give in their evidence (like honest jurates) against such houses, the oppressors must prepare themselves to hear this fearful sentence pronounced, by the lord chief justice of heaven and earth against them: woe unto him that buildeth a town with blood, ●ac. 2.12. and erecteth a city by iniquity. they which oppress others, ●g. epist. 〈◊〉. 2. do more hurt themselves, than those whom they oppress: the smart of the oppressed hath an end, the smart of the oppressor is everlasting: for he heapeth unto himself wrath against the day of wrath, and of the declaration of the just judgement of god. there were never any oppressors so many and mighty, but at the length they were met with. god's judgements have feet of wool, but they have arms of brass: it is long god begin, but when he striketh, he payeth home. esay. chap. 30. ver. 14. woe unto them that imagine iniquity, & work wickedness upon their beds: jere. 5. when the morning is light, they practise it, because their hand hath power, and they covet fields, and take them by violence, and houses, and take them away: so they oppress a man and his heritage: therefore, thus saith the lord: behold, against the family have i devised a plague, whereout ye shall not pluck your necks. mich. 2. ver. 1.2.3. god be merciful unto us and make us afraid of his judgements. 7. oppressors have no religion in them. god looked for judgement, esay. 5.7 but behold oppression, for righteousness but behold a crying. etc. judgement & righteousness are the true fruits of god's religion, therefore oppression is no branch of god's religion, and consequently, the oppressor is void of all religion. do not all the workers of iniquity know that they eat up my people as they eat bread? they call not upon the lord: psal. 14. ver. 4. opperssours call not upon the lord, therefore they are void of religion: for invocation is a principal and necessary fruit of religion. if the oppressors say, that they stretch out their hands and make many prayers, i grant they do so, but almighty god giveth them this answer: i will hide mine eyes from you, i will not hear: esay. 1.1 for your hands are full of blood. i will be a swift witness against those, that wrongfully keep back the hirelings wages, and vex the widow, 〈◊〉. 3.4. and fatherless, and oppress the stranger, and fear not me, saith the lord of hosts, etc. they which oppress others fear not god, 〈◊〉. 3.5. therefore they are void of religion. if they say they fear god, they deserve no credit, because their doings confute their speech. a good tree bringeth forth good fruits, and a justifying faith appreereth by good works. the former governors did burden the people, 〈◊〉 5.15. but so did not i (saith nehemiah) because of the fear of god. if nehemiah did neither oppress nor deal hardly, because he feared god, it is manifest that oppressors fear not god, and therefore are void of religion. when he (that is josias) judged the cause of the afflicted, and the poor, he prospered: was not this, because he knew me? saith the lord: but thine eyes and thine heart (he speaketh to joachim the king of juda) are but only for thy covetousness and for to shed innocent blood, and for oppression etc. josias was a singular defence to the oppressed, because he did know and fear god: joachim was a notable oppressor, because he did neither know, nor fear god, that is to say, because he was void of god's religion. this which i have set down against oppression, may serve for oppressors to look upon, & to reform themselves by. if it work their good, it is happy for them: if it do not, let them remember that die they must, and that after death they shall have a fearful judgement. the best advise that i can give to them which are oppressed, is that they desire the magistrate, to be their defence. if by this ordinary means, they cannot compass their own, they must patiently bear injuries, and commit their cause to almighty god, psal. 56. who hath their flittings in his register, and their tears in his bottle, and will be surely, but yet justly, revenged of their oppressors. veritas & dulcis est, & amara. quando dulcis est, parcit: quando amara, curate. aug. epist. 211. ad romulum. clinical social workers and social justice: advocacy clinical social workers: advocates for social justice anne marie mclaughlin abstract: advocacy activities provide an avenue for all social workers to connect their practice with the profession’s aim of social justice. in fact, it is this social justice connection to the advocacy role that may distinguish social work from other professions. yet advocacy remains a controversial practice for many clinical social workers. this study reports on one aspect of a larger study (mclaughlin, 2006), which examined how clinical social workers in mental health conceptualized social justice as part of their work. the data revealed a strong relationship exists between clinical social work practice, social justice and advocacy. the concept of advocacy that emerged from the data was multi-dimensional and included strategies that were instrumental, educational, and practical. keywords: advocacy, social justice, mental health introduction although in the past clinical social workers have been maligned by their own profession in terms of their commitment to social justice (andrews & reisch, 2002; hawkins, fook & ryan, 2001; specht & courtney, 1994), current practice models tackle social justice issues head on. such frameworks as anti-oppressive practice, feminist practice, and narrative and constructionist models consider contextual issues such as culture and gender, as well as social, economic and political imbalances (morley, 2003; parker, 2003; swenson, 1998; vodde & gallant, 2002). yet suspicions regarding clinical workers’ commitment to social justice persist. for many, practice models and frameworks are insufficient and students and practitioners alike wonder exactly what the link between their practice and social justice might be. results of a recent qualitative inquiry into clinical work and social justice (mclaughlin, 2006) revealed that participating mental health social workers overwhelmingly identified advocacy efforts—with and on behalf of clients—as strategies for social justice. that inquiry posed three questions: 1) how do mental health social workers conceive of social justice; 2) how do they incorporate social justice in their work, and; 3) what barriers do they encounter. this paper reports on one aspect of the larger study, specifically, the predominant way in which participants incorporate social justice into their work. the data revealed a strong relationship exists between clinical social work practice, social justice and advocacy. the concept of advocacy, as described by practitioners, was multi-dimensional and included strategies that were instrumental, educational, and practical. _________________ anne marie mclaughlin, ph.d., is an assistant professor of social work at the university of calgary. copyright © 2009 advances in social work vol. 10 no. 1 (spring 2009), 51-68 mclaughlin/clinical social workers: advocates 52 social justice and advocacy advocacy is a well-established strategy for achieving social justice (gehart & lucas, 2007; hoefer, 2006; kiselica & robinson, 2001; miley, o’melia & dubois, 2007). moreover, advocacy is considered a professional obligation (hepworth, rooney & larson, 2002). national and international professional social work bodies entrench professional social work practice, advocacy and social justice through their codes of ethics (british association of social workers, 2002; international federation of social workers, 2004; national association of social workers, 2008). the canadian association of social workers (2005) explicates the link between advocacy and social justice: social workers advocate for fair and equitable access to public services and benefits. social workers advocate for equal treatment and protection under the law and challenge injustices, especially injustices that affect the vulnerable and disadvantaged. (casw, 2005) many studies have explored the connection between social justice and advocacy (bowes & sim, 2006; kiselica & robinson, 2001; miley et al., 2007; mitchell & lynch, 2003; van voorhis & hostetter, 2006), and agree that advocacy strategies provide powerful “tool[s] for challenging social injustice” (dalrymple, 2004, p. 188; kiselica & robinson, 2001). while the connection between advocacy and social justice is sometimes indirect (johnson, 1999), advocacy activities provide an avenue for all social workers to connect their practice with the profession’s aim of social justice (wakefield, 1988a, 1988b). in fact, it is this social justice connection to the advocacy role that may distinguish social work from other professions (butler & webster, 2003; ezell, 1994; hoefer, 2006, reamer, 1998). advocacy is often represented in the literature as a strategy more closely aligned with macro or policy practice (wolfer & gray, 2007). however, social workers in direct practice are intimately involved in many aspects of individual client lives, including financial, cultural, medical, legal and spiritual issues, and are therefore able to assess and intervene in many areas in which injustice may occur. the advocacy role appears to be a hand-in-glove fit with generalist practice (hoefer, 2006; kirst-ashman & hull, 2006; walker, 2004). yet, most current generalist practice text books make scant reference to the role of advocacy in social work practice (compton, galaway & cournoyer, 2005; heinonen & spearman, 2006; miley et al., 2007; poulin, 2005; segal, gerdes & steiner, 2007; sheafor & horejsi, 2008). further, little attention to advocacy or social action can be found in undergraduate curricula. when evidence of advocacy instruction emerges it falls primarily in community development courses, which frequently are optional for students (radian, 2000). this has led some to wonder if social work’s “tradition of advocacy for social and economic justice has fallen prey to benign neglect” (mitchell & lynch, 2003, p. 14). advances in social work, spring 2009, 10(1) 53 advocacy: form and function the concept of advocacy varies both in form and function. in form, advocates can be paid professionals, as in the case of patient advocates in mental health or child welfare systems (herbert & mould, 1992). the citizen advocate is another form of advocacy where non-professionals volunteer time to help another (hunter & tyne, 2001; rapaport, manthorpe, hussein, moriarty & collins, 2006). self-advocacy is an important contribution to the advocacy movement with deep roots in the disability field. empowerment forms the cornerstone of self-advocacy where individuals build skills and gain strength to advocate for themselves (buchanan & walmsley, 2006; walker, 2004). within generalist practice advocacy is considered a technique or skill, typically a subset of case management (compton, galaway & cournoyer, 2005; hepworth, rooney & larson, 2002; hoefer, 2006; miley et al., 2007). historically, advocacy has been divided into case and cause (carlisle, 2000; compton, galaway & cournoyer, 2005; miley et al., 2007; sheafor & horejsi, 2008). cause advocacy addresses systemic issues and involves lobbying efforts aimed at policy or institutional restructuring. cause (sometimes referred to as class) advocacy has as its goal “to advance the cause of a group in order to establish a right or entitlement to a resource or opportunity” (sheafor & horejsi, 2008, p. 425). this form of advocacy has been closely allied with policy practice and other forms of macro social work. in case advocacy, the aim is to redress power imbalances and promote the rights of individuals who are marginalized or vulnerable (carlisle, 2000). narrowly defined case advocacy “assure[s] that the services or resources to which an individual client is entitled are, in fact, received” (sheafor & horejsi, 2008, p. 55). this definition appears weak and does not distinguish itself from case management or other types of service delivery (herbert & levin, 1996). social workers advocating for resources may find clients require more than they are entitled to, depending on who has established the entitlement. a more robust definition rejects entitlement and emphasizes need. for instance case advocacy implies intervention when available services are not relevant to needs or when an organization is not responsive to those needs (herbert & levin, 1996). advocacy can be directly related to clinical work through a common goal, that is, “helping clients become independent and exercise influence and control over their own lives” (lens & gibelman, 2002, p. 614). contemporary social work practice models have moved beyond individualistic problem-focused perspectives and attend to issues of power, culture, social and economic injustices (finn & jacobson, 2003). in the current global climate of job and financial insecurity where individuals and groups have shrinking access to resources and opportunities, advocacy takes on greater urgency not only within macro approaches to social work but also within direct practice (walker, 2004) although advocacy appears to be a central role for social workers, many authors are extremely cautious and somewhat ambivalent in supporting its implementation. for instance, forbat and atkinson (2005) doubt social workers’ ability to separate client needs from organizational demands and to speak against colleagues. shearfor and horejsi mclaughlin/clinical social workers: advocates 54 (2008) caution that class advocacy is not for everyone, especially those who feel uncomfortable with confrontation. compton, galaway and cournoyer (2005) are even more cautious and raise flags for those contemplating class advocacy saying that practitioners “risk infringing upon the self-determination of those for whom [they] claim to speak. who is the client? who decides the purpose and objectives of your actions?” (p. 128). they also ask social workers to reflect on who suffers if they are successful in achieving their ends. the warning to social workers is to think through ethical obligations to individual clients before pursuing structural and systemic change (compton, galaway & cournoyer, 2005). controversy continues around the relationship between clinical work and advocacy for social justice (egan, 2007). this controversy impacts practice. despite the relevance of advocacy in theory, in practice advocacy is not as common as it would seem (davis, baldry, milosevic & walsh, 2004; ezell, 1994; herbert & levin, 1996; lens & gibelman, 2000; nelson, 1999). for instance nelson (1999) found that frontline workers in her study ranked advocacy last out of five commonly performed functions. in a similar study, social workers in an australian hospital ranked advocacy ninth out of eleven identified functions (davis et al., 2004; davis, milosevic, baldry & walsh 2005). similarly ezell (1994) evaluated time spent in advocacy activities and discovered that 90% of responding social workers (n=353) indicated some advocacy activities within their regular employment. however, the actual number of hours involved in advocacy was low (less than five hours per week for the majority). social justice as well as advocacy are both considered professional and ethical obligations, yet few studies have explored with practitioners how these may be linked in practice. clinical social workers and those in direct practice carry the same professional and ethical obligations to work for social justice but may feel limited in their opportunities. this study explores how participants expressed social justice in their work. method in this qualitative research study 18 social workers from a western province in canada were sampled. purposeful sampling was used for the first five participants. these participants were considered to be information-rich sources (patton, 2002). they were selected for their practice experience in mental health and their interest in social justice, as demonstrated through their participation in their professional association. snowball sampling, with participants providing the names of potential additional participants, provided the remainder of the sample. participants identified themselves as clinical social workers (considered the standard for practioners working in mental health in this province), had earned an msw degree and were employed in various aspects of a provincially funded mental health system. nine participants worked on in-patient wards or programs including geriatric psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, mental health administration, and a brain injury unit. two participants worked as outreach psychiatric emergency/crisis workers, six participants worked in community clinics, and one worked in a day program. advances in social work, spring 2009, 10(1) 55 participant interviews lasted between 1 and 1.5 hours and were conducted at the convenience and discretion of each interviewee either at their place of work (n=13) or at an agreed upon location. interviews were transcribed and coded using familiar qualitative processes (strauss & corbin, 1998). computer assisted qualitative data management software (qsr international, nvivo 7) was utilized for data management and retrieval. the results reported in this paper comprise one element of a larger research project which explored the meaning participants brought to the term social justice and how that meaning was translated into practice (mclaughlin, 2006). grounded theory methodology was utilized and the concept of advocacy emerged early as an in vivo category representing participants expression of social justice in their work. the author initially resisted this concept in part, because of received ideas, preconceived notions, assumptions and conceptualizations already surrounding advocacy. eventually, the author began to think of advocacy as a sensitizing concept (bowen, 2006; charmaz, 2006; glaser, 1978). rather than resist the term, advocacy was used to explore participants’ meaning in depth. data analysis proceeded according to the constant comparison method in which each slice of data is compared to each other slice (glaser & strauss, 1967). analysis and data collection proceed together and the researcher is guided by what emerges. as mentioned, the theme of advocacy emerged early in the data analysis and each incident and each sentence were compared against each other. throughout the interview process, as well as the analysis, the researcher stayed open to variations, interpretations and applications. in later interviews the author became sensitized to discussion concerning advocacy and used more probes when this discussion arose. the author also returned to earlier interviews, once advocacy was identified as a sensitizing concept, to reexamine the texts with fresh awareness. to ensure the trustworthiness of the findings the author employed several techniques (cohan & crabtree, 2008; creswell, 1998). the author attempted to maintain a reflexive stance toward the data by way of memo writing and peer debriefing. memos were written following individual interviews as well as throughout the data analysis process. the author met with a peer team throughout the research and writing process to share themes as they emerged and to discuss possible research bias and assumptions as well as to review possible connections between concepts and categories. the analyst also sought negative cases as a way of exploring and accounting for all the data. eventually, a conceptual framework for advocacy emerged representative of the participants’ experience. while generalization to the larger population is not a goal of qualitative research, identifying and describing patterns of behavior in a specific context is. this tentative conceptualization expands and enlarges on previous iterations of the concept of advocacy and relates particularly to clinical social workers in mental health. mclaughlin/clinical social workers: advocates 56 findings advocacy the concept of advocacy captures significant variation in the ways in which participating social workers worked for social justice. at times advocacy appeared to be a proxy for social justice, as one worker expressed, “i think [advocacy] would be the closest thing to embodying social justice at a practice level in clinical social work”. advocacy also served as a direct example of social justice: “when i am advocating, i am aiming for a target that i think everybody deserves… in a sense i am seeking justice for this person.” the goal of advocacy, as the next participant explains, is the realization of social justice, “anytime i go to an appeal [with my client], the person that is appealing feels (and i would not appeal it if i did not believe) that they were achieving some sort of social justice.” regardless of the meaning of social justice for participants, the most frequent manifestation of social justice appeared through advocacy activities. advocacy goals and strategies, according to participants, are both broad and varied, encompassing micro (aimed at a particular individual), mezzo (aimed at a particular group of people, such as the mentally ill, or those living in poverty), and macro levels (activities aimed at betterment of all society such as a fair minimum wage, clean water, or access to health care). a number of strategies were identified at each level. these strategies and dimensions are listed in part in table 1. three types of advocacy are embedded in the data: instrumental advocacy, educational advocacy, and practical advocacy. instrumental advocacy concerns particular actions taken by the study participants on behalf of clients. educational advocacy involves heightening awareness of social justice issues, rights, needs, and opportunities, not just for clients but also for colleagues or the public at large. practical advocacy involves working with clients directly to access resources, such as in accompanying them to appeals or even filling out documentation that is posing a barrier to the access of resources. these three types of advocacy are listed below. instrumental advocacy. in some situations requiring advocacy activities, clients may be unable to take direct action themselves, either as a result of their marginalized status, or because of particular challenges they face. for instance, in the following scenario, the social worker working on a geriatric psychiatric ward describes her advocacy work for seniors who resist institutionalization: when anyone at that age isn’t functioning the way they should, everyone wants them placed somewhere that is secure so that nobody has to worry about them. that’s the big thing. i have been a very strong advocate of risk, and allowing people to live in risk if they are competent to understand the risk. advances in social work, spring 2009, 10(1) 57 table 1: advocacy strategies and dimensions individual marginalized groups just society instrumental holding systems accountable  lobby on behalf of  ensuring accountability  liaison between services  letter writing  demonstrations  marches  program development  campaign for social issues e.g. living wage  professional association work educational educating individuals, families, colleagues, society  educating individuals about rights, options or choices, the system  educating others about needs/rights, stigma  committee work  anti-poverty groups  school systems  multidisciplinary teams  public education initiatives  public health awareness strategies, aids, mental health practical engaged in action  assist by filling out forms  accompany to appeals or interviews  locating housing  volunteer work for food bank, hiv network  volunteer on crisis line  run for political office in the next example, a community mental health social worker advocates for children he is counseling who are drifting in the foster care system. instrumental advocacy on the part of this social worker involves contacting a client’s child welfare worker in an effort to see service improve and hold systems accountable: [it was a] child welfare case and children who were taken from the home and placed with another family member, hadn’t had contact with their parents, i think it was for four weeks. i know that … the child welfare worker had every intention to have the children return to live with their family, but for whatever reason the children hadn’t met with their parents in perhaps four weeks. to me that was just ludicrous from the point of view of the child’s perspective, strictly. …i get upset about it, i can’t believe that. …the children have rights, the children weren’t informed of anything, they had no idea what was going on. and so i [got] in touch with [the worker]. mclaughlin/clinical social workers: advocates 58 working on behalf of others occurs frequently, in particular with vulnerable populations. instrumental advocacy involves engaging with other systems to secure rights and resources. in the next example a mental health social worker describes institutional constraints that adversely affect her client: often the challenge in these facilities is lack of staff, and there was a client who was in the later stages of multiple sclerosis, and she had depression which is why we were involved. through doing the assessment i had a chance to speak with her husband, and he had informed me that his wife wasn’t getting fed enough and he had some concern around that. when i approached the care manager of the facility, she expressed that there are a certain amount of hours per resident per a 24 hour time period that residents were entitled to. when someone is in the later stage of ms, everything is time consuming because they are extremely heavy care. and so the reality was, from the perspective of this care manager, that there simply wasn’t enough time for her to be fed completely, and so the staff would do what they could and then they had to move on. the worker, on behalf of the client and her family, advocated for a humane response from an unyielding bureaucracy. respondents frequently indicated that they are firsthand witnesses to bureaucratic injustice that place unnecessary constraints on individuals. respondents know these systems and often challenge the injustices they meet. the next participant, a mental health worker for inner city residents, explains: i have to fight with social services financial benefits workers for little things. for example, a fellow who has a decent work history, but has a horrific past that has kind of caught up with him, so he has gotten depressed and suicidal…. he needs life skills and how to deal with stress and anger and conflict and managers and so on. he had good potential for that, and so the occupational therapist set him up in a sheltered workplace out of [a local] hospital, a very good wood working shop. he has not enough money to get there by bus, and so we have had to fight for the last three months for them to fulfill their own regulations about giving him enough money for bus fare to get to this. this participant recognizes the injustice facing the client and advocates vigorously on his behalf. educational advocacy. educational advocacy concerns efforts social workers engage in on behalf of a particular client or client group, with the goal of influencing others in the direction of social justice. as one respondent noted, “you keep trying to educate the system about the population.” in institutional settings clinical social workers use sensitivity and skill to influence other members of the multi-disciplinary team around issues of social justice, without alienating others, as this respondent illustrates: our team [has] a good reputation and i think a lot of that is because we really try to work collaboratively with staff. we don’t come in there and try to tell them what to do, because they have enough of that. we are there to listen to their concerns and try and do a little bit of negotiation between the needs of the advances in social work, spring 2009, 10(1) 59 residents and resources of staff, and trying to get them to look at things at a different slant. this worker emphasizes that the goal of her advocacy is to influence. she is attempting to shift institutional attitudes. respondents recognize that environmental conditions and a problem focus within institutions negatively impact staff’s ability to view each client as unique and valued. advocacy, in this instance, means directing the attention of others away from the problem focus of classification and toward a more human understanding of the individual and their particular needs. other strategies employed by respondents include: attempting to encourage more client input in decisions affecting them, or finding a more equitable allocation of resources based on needs rather than protocol. education advocacy attempts to influence those within the system, as one respondent pointed out: “it’s some of the people working in the system that need to be educated and taught an attitude change.” education advocacy includes educating others about issues that oppress or stigmatize: when i am spending extra hours every year doing [awareness] activities—going on tv, radio, newspaper articles—why i am doing that is because my clients say that they feel stigmatized in the community and they want people to understand more about brain injuries so they can feel more a part of society. i am being motivated by social justice values in doing that, not because i like to be on tv. bringing issues of social justice to the awareness of colleagues is part of advocacy work. social workers in this study are familiar with how attitudes and judgments can negatively impact access to resources: we need to bring it to people’s awareness, that this is a social justice issue— awareness among other health care providers. now a days, we deal a lot with judgment—we can’t get away from the fact that a lot of health care providers come from a privileged position, so they get attitudes and judgments around what is the right way to do something and whether or not somebody should be allowed to do thus or so. [for example] ‘you can’t let them go back home to live such and such a life’. educational advocacy also includes educating clients about their own rights within the system so they “can access systems and situations in better ways that they might not have come up with by themselves,” as one participant explains. this advocacy strategy views knowledge as power and empowerment as informed decision-making. educating clients to the system is part of empowerment: clinically, if you are not writing policy and you are not doing any of that stuff, so you’re not doing social justice, i think that’s false. i think on an individual level, knowledge is power, by providing somebody with all the information of the mental health act, all the help available to them, the good and bad parts of medication, the good and bad parts of accepting this diagnosis…. the fact that you do not have to accept this label, and i will say that to people that they don’t. mclaughlin/clinical social workers: advocates 60 practical advocacy. practical advocacy is typified by clinical social workers assisting individual clients in various ways: assisting with an application for funding, accompanying clients to appeals or interviews and, on some occasions, much more. for some individuals with chronic mental illness it may mean that the worker must take an active role in assisting as the following worker describes: … accompanying … patients to interviews to ensure that they are properly heard and understood when they are in an interview. it’s a vulnerable population, and they often get overwhelmed by so many questions or questions they can’t answer, and we’re able to be there to rephrase questions for them, to ensure that they are heard. a lot of them don’t have the confidence and skill to present themselves well during an interview. the next participant describes his practical efforts with a client who was turned down for financial benefits: i helped him when the time was right to apply for [assistance]. he was turned down partly, or mostly, based on his history being a drug user and all that. it was not based on the fact that he had become quite disabled, physically and cognitively, and needed the support that he was supposed to have a right to. i did the appeal for him, went to the appeal with him, and made the case that he have equal access to [assistance] as anybody else. i brought his mother in to help make the case, we won the appeal, and he got his [money] and was able to live a reasonable quality of life. by giving practical and often hands-on assistance the workers in conjunction with clients achieve justice for their clients. barriers advocacy as a strategy for social justice is not without challenges. advocacy for social justice may be blocked within organizations and not viewed as “part of the job” that social workers were hired for: “i don’t think i have ever been at a table where social justice or social action has been the primary objective.” social workers who embrace the advocacy role may find themselves marginalized or discounted as others tire of the message: you’re sort of going against the stream when all around you people seem to say, “we’re not listening”. …so what happens is, after a while, you have to sort of back off, because it becomes, “well, that’s [the social worker] and that’s the way that she sees things.” social workers fear being stereotyped. one respondent, adept at accessing scarce resources for clients, expresses resentment at being seen only as “the resource girl.” she also expresses concern for social workers who advocate for resources: “we’re the resource people… i have had to spend the last two years proving that i have some value, that i have some knowledge base, first of all. i am very conscious of the fact that i am not just the resource girl.” in this instance participants also find themselves advocating for their professional identity. advances in social work, spring 2009, 10(1) 61 advocacy efforts may also be seen as misguided due to a lack of appreciation of the larger issues. not all participants valued individual advocacy efforts: “the advocacy that i’ve seen done… consisted of lower level case by case stuff when the problems were up here.” beyond this, social workers are also faced with philosophical questions regarding whether or not to engage those they work for in a political battle for social justice. the mental health population is vulnerable and frequently is already shouldering additional burdens such as poverty and stigma. some participants question the ethics of politicizing clients in their own quest for social justice, and are concerned about the implications of advocacy when and if workers start to drive the agenda. a related dilemma is the concern that by making social justice the priority, the real mental health treatment issues may be eclipsed. focusing on societal change could compromise issues for the individual. advocating for wholesale change may seem misguided: to me that advocacy role would be more about changing society, and that’s what i think the danger is, that idealistically and philosophically buying into an idea about how things should be, and then going out and trying to do it. i think it’s really dangerous because you are not looking at the individual situations, and it could overstep what really needs to take place. for this participant, the focus in clinical work has to be on the individual. advocating for group issues may jeopardize the needs of the individual, “i think that everybody has to be treated individually around these issues, not as a group, ‘cause that sort of supersedes everything. when you group people together, you don’t see the diversity.” discussion this study extends the discussion of advocacy to better reflect and capture advocacy strategies employed by participating mental health social workers pursuing social justice. the case/cause dichotomy does not adequately do justice to the breadth of activities employed by participants in this study. the proposed typology sees advocacy as having three functions: instrumental, education and practical. each of these functions can be practiced at the level of the individual, group, community or societal level. advocacy strategies described here comprise an integral component of direct social work practice and need not be seen as a separate skill set (hoefer, 2006). hoefer (2006) defines social work advocacy as, “that part of social work practice where the social worker takes action in a systematic and purposeful way to defend, represent, or otherwise advance the cause of one or more clients at the individual, group, organizational or community level, in order to promote social justice” (p. 8). this definition fits well with what participants in this study have described. yet, many research studies report that advocacy in practice is lagging behind other social work functions such as assessment, counseling, resourcing, and consulting (ezell, 1994; nelson, 1999). considering the close association between advocacy and pursuit of social mclaughlin/clinical social workers: advocates 62 justice, and, considering the desire on the part of the profession to strengthen efforts to affect social justice, greater emphasis on advocacy seems timely. based on the findings from this study it is possible to propose a framework for advocacy by clinical social workers and to more clearly delineate the connection these practices have with the pursuit of social justice. making the connection between advocacy and social justice explicit could increase commitment and provide impetus for practitioners to enhance and hone their advocacy skills. van voorhis and hostetter (2006) argue that increased self-confidence and competence with advocacy increases an individual’s commitment to the process. social workers who feel empowered are better equipped to advocate with and on behalf of clients. like participants in this study it is possible that not all social workers are clear about the connection between social justice and advocacy. advocacy’s connection to social justice in order to connect advocacy as described here with the social justice mission of the social work profession, we must first consider the meaning of social justice. this is no easy task as the meaning of social justice not only changes with the times but may change depending on the context (reisch, 1998; 2002). two prominent interpretations of social justice familiar to social workers are distributive justice as articulated by rawls (1971) and the politics of identity as expressed by young (1990). from the distributive paradigm, issues of access to resources and the fair and equitable distribution of scarce resources are central. in addition, social justice is concerned with fair and just procedures and treating individuals with dignity and respect. social workers pursue fair and just procedures for distribution of social goods and hold governments and agencies accountable for this. distributive social justice stipulates that each individual is entitled to a minimum of basic social goods: liberty, wealth, opportunity, and also, self-respect (rawls, 1971). we can see that participants in this study are, in fact, conscious of and concerned with distributive issues of social justice. participants pursed fair and equitable access to resources with and on behalf of their clients. they worked hard to hold systems accountable and ensure needs were met. they encountered unjust procedures and advocated with and on behalf of those they worked with. they pursued care for individuals that respected the dignity and worth of those they served. within the mental health system as with many bureaucracies dehumanizing and unjust practices persist. a social worker’s ability to advocate with and on behalf of clients, individually or collectively, is important work that confronts injustice and seeks change. the politics of identity conceives of social justice differently. here social justice is not limited to the distribution of social goods. rather the central concern is with how individuals and groups are valued or devalued in society and how existing social structures: values, attitudes, behaviors and beliefs, support and perpetuate these positions (young, 1990). the result of these valued and devalued positions is domination and oppression; one group is privileged while another is suppressed-male over female, able bodied over disabled, rich over poor. marginalization, exploitation, and powerlessness advances in social work, spring 2009, 10(1) 63 occur as individuals are shut out from decision-making (young, 1990). tackling injustice from this perspective requires challenging the domination of ideas, values, beliefs and behaviors of one group over another. those accessing services within the mental health system may find themselves marginalized and powerless, cut out of decision-making, unable to advocate on their own because of stigma, a debilitating illness or temporary incapacitation, overwhelmed by the many social and institutional injustices they face. clinical social workers can use advocacy strategies to change attitudes, secure resources, reduce stigma, defend cultural identities, remove barriers, and ensure discounted voices are heard. healing and health require more than counseling and support, they require attention to attitudes, values, and practices that oppress and constrain individuals from fully participating in society (gomez & yassen, 2007; pearlmutter, 2002). advocacy strategies with the aim of social justice include educating individuals about their rights: rights to service, rights to resources, rights to respect, rights to appeal, and rights to refuse treatment. instrumental, educational and practical components of advocacy may challenge the way some social workers have viewed direct practice. the obligation to be an advocate pushes workers to get involved. advocacy requires the acknowledgment that many constraints and limitations that individuals experience are not the result of personal or mental deficits but are real limits imposed by unjust environments. social workers are adept at understanding the interplay between the person and their environment and it is this perspective that motivates workers and facilitates a social justice perspective. concerns some participants expressed reservations about the social justice agenda and its impact on clients. others noted that a focus on social justice may overshadow the real concerns of mental health clients. still others maintain that while they value the role of advocate and feel obligated to speak out with and on behalf of clients, they sense that this role may not be valued by others such as colleagues and employers. this can lead to the marginalization of some workers as well as resistance and push-back from organizations (greene & latting, 2004). these are real ethical and practical issues that cannot be ignored. however, workers in this study have found ways and means to be both an advocate and maintain employment. in part, as one participant noted, workers must make judgments about what strategies to pursue, and when. more discussion among practitioners and students, regarding the challenges and opportunities for incorporating advocacy for social justice into direct practice is required. practitioners and students alike report an interest in bettering their skills (gomez & yassen, 2007). conclusion participants in this study clearly identified advocacy strategies as their best efforts to link clinical practice with social justice; advocacy with and on behalf of clients to access resources, increase opportunities and reduce barriers and stigma. on one hand, advocacy in clinical practice is obviously part of how social workers, those in direct practice and mclaughlin/clinical social workers: advocates 64 others, view good social work practice (herbert & levin, 1996). on the other hand, reports from the practice literature indicate that as a component of practice it is underutilized. the challenge for clinical social workers and those in direct practice is to find ways to work for social justice and to respect the individual needs of clients. integrating advocacy into practice poses specific challenges. these challenges are practical as well as ethical and deserve further exploration. within the social work curriculum advocacy has not received the attention it requires in order to become a more effective and relevant component of practice. advocacy needs to come out of the macro and policy classes and be fully integrated into clinical and direct practice course work. social justice and the code of ethics require that all social workers develop the skills and knowledge to recognize and overcome injustice. yet, social workers appear to face resistance to advocacy activities. on a practical level we need to know more about how to support advocacy practice in the field. do employers view advocacy activities by clinical social workers in a positive light? is advocacy even valued as a practice strategy in any mental health job description? practice research indicates that although not a top priority for social workers in terms of job functions, advocacy is a relevant and legitimate component of most mental health practice. the need for highly developed advocacy skills and knowledge is well recognized as vulnerable individuals increasingly find themselves overwhelmed and underserved by complex social systems (bronstein, kovacs & vega, 2007; levy & payne, 2006). finally, this paper has delineated three crucial components of advocacy activities: educational, practical, and instrumental. by identifying these specific components of advocacy, educators and practitioners may be able to increase awareness and skills related to advocacy in social work and thereby better meet their social justice aims. references andrews, j., & reisch, m. 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(1990). justice and the politics of difference. princeton, nj: princeton university press. author’s note: address correspondence to: anne marie mclaughlin, ph.d., assistant professor, central and northern region, university of calgary, faculty of social work. #444, 11044-82 avenue, edmonton, alberta, t6g 0t2. email: am7@ualberta.ca. mailto:am7@ualberta.ca advocacy 1462022 40(3): 146-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design in open, distance and e-learning abstract pedagogical contingency policy planning in open distance and e-learning plays a critical role in achieving the united nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the 17 sustainable development goals, with the aim to stem poverty, protect the planet, foster gender equality, defend and promote cultures and cultural understanding, and ensure prosperity for all. the purpose of this conceptual paper is to describe criticalities of flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning designs in open, distance and e-learning in developing states like south africa. furthermore, it examines epistemologies of diverse students’ pedagogic inclusion in line with social justice and equal rights during strategic planning and management. the legal rational paradigm is underpinned by a qualitative narrative research design to analyse available theories and epistemologies of flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning theories in open distance and e-learning. using the theory of justice by rawls, the paper recommends that flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning in open, distance and e-learning ecosystems must ensure that students from diverse backgrounds are catered for in line with social justice and equal rights values and principles. this is critical for a country like south africa to achieve the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the 17 sustainable development goals. keywords: high flexibility and agility; pedagogical contingency planning (pcp); covid-19; policy paradigms; teaching and learning; open distance and e-learning (odel) 1. introduction globally, around 131 million schoolchildren in 11 countries have missed three quarters of their in-person learning from march 2020 to september 2021 (unesco, 2021). among them, 59% – or nearly 77 million – have missed almost all in-person instruction time. these 77 million students come from six countries. among these countries, bangladesh and the philippines represent 62 million of the 77 million learners impacted. around 27% of countries worldwide continue to have schools fully or partially closed. additionally, according author: prof jabulani nyoni1 affiliation: 1university of south africa, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.10 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 146-162 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 16 may 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9711-2150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1472022 40(3): 147-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design to unesco’s latest data, more than 870 million students at all levels are currently facing disruptions to their education (unesco, 2021). to respond to the covid-19 pandemic, teaching and learning in open distance and e-learning (odel) and other institutions of higher learning modified students’ approaches to teaching and learning. odel planners, lecturers or facilitators generally acknowledge that ‘equal rights’ and ‘social justice’ are commonly used to depict the requirement for society to treat people fairly comprehensively. during pedagogical contingency planning (pcp) design for change, institutional leadership needs to accommodate students’ circumstances equitably, in other words fairness, social justice and equal rights values and principles must be adhered to. social justice implies redefining what it means to have access to quality instruction and learning. equal rights and social justice in education require careful inclusion of a diverse group of hybrid members of any given society, thus diversity and equity are guiding beacons. equal rights and social justice take into cognisance diverse personal experiences, values and philosophical views that emanate from race, ethnicity, gender and gender identity, religious and spiritual beliefs, class, age, colour, sexual orientation, disability, living in the diaspora and nationality to enhance creativity and learning potential. 2. purpose statement the conceptual paper discusses criticalities of flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning (pcp) designs as applied by open, distance and e-learning (odel) institutions in developing states like south africa. i furthermore examined epistemologies of diverse students’ pedagogic inclusion in line with social justice and equal rights principles, pre-, during and post-strategic planning models and frameworks. 3. flexibility and agility in odel policy contingency planning theories the single most significant agile step that institutions that offer odel mode of education delivery can take to continue facilitating teaching and learning is to increase access to those in need of education by adapting to different technological platforms. once they have done so, to deal with the complex challenges of contact facilitation, they should follow a thorough consultative preparatory process and adopt a flexible and agile pcp for online and virtual teaching and learning. an undeniable human right, education is the bedrock of just, equal and inclusive societies and a key driver of sustainable development. therefore, institutional pcp policy regimes accommodate a diverse range of students’ educational needs and accessibility. strengthening the resilience of odel systems enables institutions to respond to the immediate challenges of safely reopening centres of learning and positions them to cope better with future crises. the pcp theory is not only for disasters but involves planning and preparing for specific events such as the loss of teaching and learning time, modification of instructional modes and platforms, adapting instructional tools in open, distance and e-learning (odel) and other relevant factors undermining education reform in general. because of this, any existing institution of teaching and learning must have a contingency plan in place to ensure smooth workflow and it becomes easier to address issues and threats that way. flexibility and agility theories in pcp are the results of preparedness actions. it refers to the outcome of planning, resource allocation, training, exercise and organisation to build, maintain and improve operational capabilities based on risk assessments. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1482022 40(3): 148-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) in this concept paper, agility is the natural evolution of flexibility. up until the 1990s, the term ‘flexibility’ was used for agility, but due to pcp design changes, competitiveness and the need for speed, the term ‘agility’ was coined. while flexibility is viewed as an operational capability, agility is a strategic capability that enables an organisation to develop a strategic long-term vision. in fact, flexibility is an agility skill alongside other skills like responsiveness or speed (abdelilah, el korchi, & balambo, 2018). 4. theoretical perspective van der westhuizen (1991: 80) views contingency as an approach that requires a different management style and therefore no general way of managing is applicable to all situations. hoy and miskel (1982: 235) have the following to say: “... the contingency theories maintain that leadership effectiveness rests on the fit between personality properties of the leader and the situational variables such as task structure, position power, and subordinate skills and altitudes”. marks, stoops and king-stoops (in van der westhuizen, 1991: 137) define planning as “the management task which is concerned with deliberately reflecting on the objectives of the organisation, the resources, as well as the activities involved, and drawing up the most suitable plan for effectively achieving these objectives”. however, very little, if any, is said about flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning (pcp) designs. pcp design should never be reserved for calamities only but should be part of day-to-day leadership and management activities. the current concept paper uses the theory of justice by rawls (1971) that provides a contract theory of the principles of social justice in terms of the “basic structure of society, or [in other words] the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties [to] determine the division of advantages from social cooperation” (rawls, 1971: 6). the distributive justice proposed by rawls is underpinned by two fundamental principles. the first principle, which is prioritised over the second, is the idea that people’s liberties should be preserved in distribution. the second principle is the idea that any inequality that is permitted should only be permitted on the basis that it benefits the least favoured in society. many odel institutions around the world are now reopening fully, partially or in a hybrid format, leaving millions of students, particularly in developing states, to face a radically transformed educational experience in the form of open distance and e-learning. one will argue that as covid-19 pandemic cases rise and fall during the months ahead, the chaos will likely continue, with odel institutions shutting down and reopening as needed to balance educational needs while protecting the health of students, lecturers, support staff and families. invariably, agility in university leadership practices must ascertain that odel policy accommodates pro-poor students virtually, or education will remain the preserve of the elite. rawls’ (1971) theory of justice and the universal declaration of human rights affirm that education is a fundamental human right for everyone and this was further detailed in the convention against discrimination in education (united nations human rights council, 2011). after having completed a thorough situation analysis and getting an understanding about what is currently being done under covid-19 pandemic lockdown to identify the gaps, odel institutional policy planners must review their business model to accommodate the educational rights of a diversity of students. educational philosophers have also drawn on several classical philosophical discussions of justice and applied them to contemporary educational situations. for example, they have http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1492022 40(3): 149-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design considered how kant’s (1883) categorical imperative, mill’s (2000) utilitarianism, or rawls’ (1971) original position may help planners to provide criteria for making assessments or judgments about whether educational policies and practices are fair. in this vein, rizvi (1998: 48) identifies three broad philosophical traditions for thinking about social justice: liberal individualism, market individualism and social democracy. the liberal individualist view, drawn heavily from rawls (1971), elevates fairness as the central feature of justice. two principles of rawls (1971) come into play in the liberal individualist perspective. firstly, each person is entitled to as much freedom as possible if others share the same freedom. secondly, social goods should be distributed as equally as possible, with inequities being allocated in a way that benefits the least privileged members of society. almost diametrically opposed to rawls, the market individualist view of justice emphasises that people are entitled in relationship to their efforts. rizvi cites nozick’s (1976) work to support this perspective on social justice, which advocates that justice is measured by fair starting conditions. rizvi (1998: 49) writes that in this perspective, it is “the justice of the competition – that is, the way competition was carried out and not its outcome – that counts”. the social democratic perspective, largely drawn from marx, considers justice in relationship to the needs of various individuals, emphasizing a more collectivist or cooperative vision of society (miller, 1999; nozick, 1973). 5. related literature review 5.1 educational contingency planning pedagogical contingency planning (pcp) design is contextually defined in this paper as a planning technique (including prototyping and modelling) that determines actions to be taken by individual planners and groups at specific places and times if abnormal threats or opportunities arise. mcfarland (1977) defines contingency planning (cp) as, “a concept of executive action that embodies the skills of anticipating, influencing and controlling the nature and direction of changes”. features of a plan (mcfarland, 1977) are the following: 1. planning is a process rather than behaviour at a given point in time. the process determines the future course of action. 2. planning is primarily concerned with looking into the future, which requires forecasting of the future situation. 3. planning involves the selection of a suitable course of action. 4. planning is undertaken at all levels of management and is concerned with the future course of action. 5. planning is flexible and agile as commitment is based on future conditions which are always dynamic. 6. planning is a continuous managerial function involving the process of perception, analysis, conceptual thought, sequencing, communication, decision and action. therefore, pedagogical contingency planning (pcp) design refers to an organisational planning process of developing the thinking behind an entire odel landscape in virtual and online teaching and learning activities. pcp design is concerned with pedagogical practices that influence learning of all students, are part of the lecturer’s pedagogical thinking when they are planning their teaching and learning (nyoni, 2013). a good plan should aim at the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1502022 40(3): 150-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) improvement of physical facilities, lecturer skills and competence library services, curricular, co-curricular activities, participation in community programmes and the like. 5.2 the covid-19 pandemic as a crisis impacting on odel teaching and learning even if a second wave of covid-19 pandemic infections is avoided, global economic activity was expected to fall by 6% in 2020, with average unemployment in oecd countries climbing to 9.2%, from 5.4% in 2019. in the event of a second large-scale outbreak triggering a return to lockdown, the situation would be worse (oecd, 2020). all this has implications for equitable accessibility of education, which depends on tax money, but which is also the key to tomorrow’s tax income. decisions concerning budget allocations to various sectors (including education, healthcare, social security and defence) depend on countries’ priorities and the prevalence of private provision of these services. education is not only a fundamental human right, but also an enabling right with a direct impact on the realisation of all other human rights. it is a global common good and a primary driver of progress across all 17 sustainable development goals as a bedrock of just, equal, inclusive and peaceful societies. when education systems collapse, peace, prosperous and productive societies cannot be sustained. the massive efforts made in a short time to respond to the shocks to education systems remind us that change is possible (un, 2020). odel contingency planners should seize the opportunity to find new ways to address the learning crisis and bring about a set of solutions previously considered difficult or impossible to implement. 5.3 the impact of covid-19 as a crisis in education contingency planning the current covid-19 crisis may affect education budgets more quickly as public revenues decline sharply and governments review the prioritisation of education in national budgets (hallak, 1969; un, 2020; unesco, 2020; 2021). forecasts predict that the pandemic will lead to slower growth in government spending in the coming years and that, if the share of government spending devoted to education were to remain unchanged, education spending would continue to grow, but at significantly lower rates than before the pandemic (al-samarrai, gangwar & gala, 2020). the covid-19 crisis has brought to the fore the need to focus on pcp designs for learning equity and inclusion. the most challenging issue in education under the current crisis is to ensure that equity in access and learning are not set back. given the nature of the crisis, all countries need to lend support to the most vulnerable children to keep them from being further marginalised and ensure they remain engaged in learning. equity and inclusion in learning needs to continue being a key objective in crisis management. in any odel institution, educational pcp design is necessitated by varied reasons which include, among others, the desire for the organisation to meet the yearnings, needs and aspirations of the students and national interests, the demand for education and equitable access to education, to provide quality education to the students, to respond to innovative technological development, to ensure global competitiveness and, more importantly, to actualise education philosophy. 5.4 an exacerbation of disparities in learning opportunities an estimated 40% of the poorest countries failed to support learners at risk during the covid-19 crisis and past experiences show that both education and student inequalities tend http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1512022 40(3): 151-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design to be neglected in responses to quality and equitable education provisioning. the digital divide has especially far-reaching consequences when it comes to education. for students in lowincome rural districts, inadequate access to technology can hinder them from learning the technological skills that are crucial to success in today’s economy (un, 2020). technology now allows lecturers to differentiate instruction, providing extra support and developmentally appropriate material to students who require constant constructive feedback and feedforward. the latest ‘intelligent’ facilitating systems can not only assess a student’s current weaknesses, but also diagnose why students are making specific errors. these technologies could enable lecturers to reach students who are further from their lecture halls better, potentially benefiting students with weaker academic preparation. if pcp design does not cater for poorly resourced students, the process of teaching and learning violates their rights. pcp must accommodate the disparities that exist among the resourced and those that are without rights as enshrined in a bill of rights. 5.5 a wide range of distance learning tools ensuring learning continuity during the time of odel closures became a priority for them the world over, many of which turned to ict, requiring lecturers to move to virtual classrooms and other blended delivery modes. racheva (2018) defines the virtual classroom as an online learning environment that enables live teaching and interaction between lecturers and students. the most common tools in virtual lectures include videoconferencing, online whiteboards, instant messaging tools and breakout rooms. countries report that some modalities have been used more than others, depending on the education level, with variability across regions. in areas with limited connectivity, governments have used more traditional distance learning modalities, often a mix of educational television and radio programming, and the distribution of print materials. relatively few countries are monitoring the effective reach and use of distance learning modalities. estimates indicate variable coverage: distance learning in high income countries covers about 80–85%, while this drops to less than 50 per cent in low-income countries (un, 2020). this shortfall can largely be attributed to the digital divide, with the disadvantaged having limited access to basic household services such as electricity, a lack of technology infrastructure, and low levels of digital literacy among students, parents, and lecturers (anderson & dron, 2011; bates, 2012; nyoni, 2014). 5.6 digital transformation and reform in odel the emergence of internet-based distance learning is attributed to the information revolution. in addition to print materials, course materials are now available in digital format. today, students can even conduct virtual experiments and simulations with educational software applications. odel pedagogies are mapped into three specific generations; firstly, the cognitive-behaviourist pedagogy that focuses on the way in which learning was predominately prescribed, practised and researched among learners in the latter half of the 20th century. secondly, the social-constructivist pedagogy of distance education (de) focuses on a tradition of cognitive constructivist thinking that hinges on personal construction of knowledge. the roots of the constructivist model most commonly applied today emanate from the works of vygotsky and dewey and are generally lumped together in the broad category of social constructivism. lastly, the connectivist pedagogy of de emerged recently and is known as connectivism. connectivism views learning as the process of building networks of information contacts and resources that are applied to real problems. since the three generations arose in different eras and in chronological order, none of the three pedagogical generations has http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1522022 40(3): 152-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) disappeared and one will argue that they can still be used effectively to address the full spectrum of learning needs. aside from these differences, the third-generation distance learning is unlike the first two in a fundamental way. the main objective of the first and second generations was to produce and distribute teaching and learning materials to learners. the learning activities were predominantly one-way, and interactivity was supported marginally. internet-based learning, however, enables interaction between instructors and students (bates, 2012; nyoni, 2014). internet-based distance learning can be categorised into two models: recorded online courses (asynchronous) and online interactive sessions (synchronous) (anderson & dron, 2011; nyoni, 2014). the covid-19 crisis has shed light on the key enabling factors for effective digital education: connectivity and suitable digital equipment for students and lecturers. online and virtual teaching and learning require confident and skilled lecturers in using digital technology to support their teaching and adapted pedagogy, leadership, collaboration and the sharing of good practice and innovative teaching methods. experiences from this period show that education and training systems and institutions that previously invested in their digital capacity are better prepared to adapt teaching approaches, keep learners engaged, and continue the education and training process (anderson & dron, 2011; un, 2020; unesco, 2020; 2021). internet connectivity is now a public utility that can be used to improve learning capacity. to comply with human rights tenets, it is critical that odel policy planners equitably provide accessibility and connectivity to the poorest students. the internet and broadband connectivity plays a critical role in solving many of the world’s most pressing challenges. the internet offers important avenues for countries to transform themselves into hubs of knowledge, innovation and progress; broadband technologies are a means to access the internet, and they are also widely recognised to make a significant contribution to productivity and employability. hence, it is critical for education institutional policy planners to make certain that those poor students have access (un, 2020). 5.7 odel exercise of educational contingency planning ecosystem pcp is fundamental to the achievement of set goals in any organisation. pcp design is a deliberate effort to determine the future course of action for accomplishing predetermined goals and objectives. akpan (2000) conceptualises pcp design as the process of examining the future and drawing up or mapping out a course of action for achieving specified goals and objectives. it involves working out, in broad outline, the informal and procedures for doing them to accomplish set purpose. similarly, unesco (2003) describes pcp design as a process that makes it possible to work out a systematic outline of activities to be undertaken to meet the developmental objectives of a country within that country’s possibilities and aspirations. these definitions depict that pcp design is both futuristic and goal oriented. it is intelligent preparation for actions that will lead to the achievement of predetermined goals and objectives (akpan, 2000). it involves a conscious, careful and systematic process of arranging a future course of action directed at goal accomplishment. comb (cited in akpan, 2011) describes educational pcp design as the application of rational systematic analysis to the process of educational development with the aim of making education more effective and efficient in responding to the needs and goals of the learners http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1532022 40(3): 153-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design and the society. this means that educational pcp design should consider the needs of the pupils/students in terms of learning facilities and equipment, textbooks, classroom spaces and qualified educational personnel. educational pcp strives to research, develop, implement and advance policies, programmes and reforms within odel institutions. educational planners might work at the local, national or international level to advance or improve education. leadership doing the right things management doing the right things right planning strives to research, develop, implement and advance policies, programmes and reforms figure 1: overlapping relationships of leadership, management, and the pcp design ecosystem. the three basic skills depict the following: (a) leadership is the ability to inspire a team to achieve a certain goal. (b) management is a problem-solving process of effectively achieving organizational objectives through the efficient use of scarce resources in a changing environment. (c) pcp design strives to research, develop, implement and advance policies, programmes and reforms within educational institutions (adapted from drucker, 2003) 5.8 diversity and equity contingency planning in context the scope of diversity, equity and inclusion work includes a wide range of social identities (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation), focal groups (e.g., students, faculty and staff) and core areas applicable across focal groups and social identities (e.g., recruitment and retention, campus climate, curriculum and instruction) (worthington, 2012). for the purposes of this chapter, diversity can be defined as students from various backgrounds. as a nation and a country, the world is becoming more diverse and multi-ethnic. inclusion is the act of bringing diverse students, lecturers and ancillary staff together in a manner that celebrates and values their backgrounds. equity is the process of ensuring that each student has the access and opportunity needed to realise their full educational potential. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1542022 40(3): 154-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) morales, knowles and bourg (2014) distinguish diversity from social justice in the literature by stating that diversity encompasses fundamental efforts to improve services, handling of intercultural differences and staffing challenges, while social justice addresses power and privilege at both structural levels the level of mere representation. 5.9 contingency planning for digital transformation a digital transformation plan is a strategic, long-term plan focusing on integrated digital media channels, the implementation of new technologies, and smart, digital ways of working. the purpose of a digital transformation plan is to define how to compete more effectively with digital marketing. the scope of a digital marketing plan is typically annual, but a digital transformation plan will typically be longer since this involves creating long-term digital roadmaps. since creating awareness and achieving conversion still commonly involve offline channels such as a call-centre, digital marketing plans need to define the integration between channels using techniques like customer journey mapping. comprehensive odel pcp design requires a collaborative leadership approach that starts with developing a shared vision on how digital learning tools and resources support learning; seeking input from a variety of internal and external stakeholders; communicating with all stakeholders to encourage buy-in and using and understanding research and data to support plan goals and objectives. other key areas to consider in the pcp design include operational considerations, incorporating budget, procurement, interoperability; student data privacy; infrastructure needs, including devices and connectivity; as well as professional development (coladrci & getzels, 1955). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1552022 40(3): 155-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design figure 2: flexibility and agility matrix of pedagogical contingency planning design for pedagogy (adapted from coladarci & getzels, 1955) according to coladarci and getzels (1955), planners must cast their eye to the everyday functioning of educational institution to construct a realistic pcp design model. it is important, they maintain, to make explicit the problems that give rise to the pcp design and decisionmaking process so that a pcp model is chosen that is appropriate to the problems of a given area, academic or institutional development. a clear, well thought-out pcp theory provides odel not only with effective practices, but also with a frame of reference that establishes the criteria by which such practices can eventually be evaluated. as can be seen from the model (figure 2), pcp design is a systematic process that involves stating the goals of the system, determining the degree to which these goals are met and using these comparisons as a basis for establishing priorities. pcp design includes assessing the resources needed and available to attain the goals. one way of conceptualising pcp design is a series of meetings between executives who are trying to arrive at a mutually agreed set of decisions about actions to be taken in the future. in all these meetings the basic question being addressed is the same: what should we do? to develop a detailed answer to this question, it is advisable to break it into a series of more specific questions, such as those mentioned in the introduction. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1562022 40(3): 156-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) according to ruzicka and miklos (1982) this type of pcp design involves: • the identification and refinement of alternative aims; • the development of alternative means of achieving them; • the identification of the most promising means; • monitoring the extent to which aims have been achieved and; • based on the information gained, the means are revised, and aims are altered. this model implies that there is regular evaluation and alteration, not only of the way policy is operationalised, but also of policy aspects which prove unrealisable. 5.10 leadership vs management vs pedagogical contingency planning design people often mistakenly equate leadership with management, but there are fundamental differences between the two; they are based on separate and distinct competences and skillsets. management involves a focus on executing of functions in an organisation, whereas leadership is about motivating people and doing the right things right. leaders will have a vision of what can be achieved and then communicate this to others and involve strategies for realising the vision. they motivate people and can negotiate for resources and other support to achieve their goals. there is a continuing controversy about the difference between leaders and managers. some scholars argue that although management and leadership overlap, the two activities are not synonymous (bass, 2010). furthermore, the degree of overlap is a point of disagreement (yukl, 2013). in fact, some individuals see them as extreme opposites and believe that a good leader cannot be a good manager and vice versa (ricketts, 2009). katz (1955) defines management as exercising direction of a group or organisation through executive, administrative and supervisory positions. leadership is a complex, multidimensional phenomena (depree, 1989). it has been defined as a behaviour, style, skill, process, responsibility, experience, function of management, position of authority, influencing relationship, characteristic and ability (northouse, 2007). leadership is very different. it is about aligning people with a vision, which means agreement and communication, motivation and inspiration. management is a set of processes that keep an organisation running. planning processes include pcp, budgeting, staffing, task clarification, performance measurement and problem-solving when results do not go according to plan (hallak, 1969). 5.11 understanding equal rights and social justice article 1 of the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization’s (unesco) convention against discrimination in education (1960) guarantees equal access to education of all types and levels to everyone and similarly prohibits the limitation of any person or group of persons to education of inferior standards. persons with disabilities must, therefore, be granted equal access to education-by-education authorities, which is of comprehensively comparable standards to that which is available to non-disabled persons. this shows that there is a requirement of “reasonable accommodation” of able and disabled students in the same school in the unesco convention. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1572022 40(3): 157-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design according to unesco (2021), more than 1.5 billion students in 188 countries were out of school due to covid-19 on april 8, 2021, representing over 91 per cent of the world’s student population. the crisis has exposed vast disparities in countries’ emergency preparedness, internet access for children and the availability of learning materials. for many students, the covid-19 crisis will mean limited or no education or falling further behind their peers. students affected by university closures also miss the sense of stability and normalcy in quality education provisioning. university closures may disproportionately affect students who already experience barriers accessing education or who are at higher risk of being excluded for a variety of reasons. these include students with disabilities, students in remote locations, asylum seekers and refugees, and those whose families have lost their income because of job cuts or precarious employment or are otherwise in a difficult situation. 5.12 quality education receiving quality education is the foundation to improving people’s lives and sustainable development. major progress has been made towards increasing access to education at all levels and increasing enrolment rates in schools, particularly for women and girls. basic literacy skills have improved tremendously, yet bolder efforts are needed to make even greater strides for achieving universal education goals. for example, the world has achieved equality in primary education between girls and boys, but few countries have achieved that target at all levels of education. education enables upward socioeconomic mobility and is a key to escaping poverty. over the past decade, major progress was made towards increasing access to education and school enrolment rates at all levels, particularly for girls. nevertheless, about 260 million children were still out of school in 2018 – nearly one fifth of the global population in that age group. furthermore, more than half of all children and adolescents worldwide are not meeting minimum proficiency standards in reading and mathematics and nearly 369 million children who rely on school meals need to look other sources for daily nutrition. never have so many children been out of school at the same time, disrupting learning and upending lives, especially for the most vulnerable and marginalised. the global pandemic has far-reaching consequences that may jeopardise hard-won gains made in improving global education. to protect the well-being of children and ensure they have access to continued learning, in march 2020, unesco launched the covid-19 global education coalition, a multi-sector partnership between the united nations (un) family, civil society organisations, media and information technology (it) partners to design and deploy innovative solutions. together they help countries tackle content and connectivity gaps and facilitate inclusive learning opportunities for students during this period of sudden and unprecedented educational disruption. specifically, the global education coalition aims to: • help countries in mobilising resources and implementing innovative and contextappropriate solutions to provide education remotely, leveraging hi-tech, low-tech and notech approaches. • seek equitable solutions and universal access. • ensure coordinated responses and avoid overlapping efforts. • facilitate the return of students to school when they reopen to avoid an upsurge in dropout rates. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1582022 40(3): 158-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) unicef also scaled up its work in 145 lowand middle-income countries to support governments and education partners in developing plans for a rapid, system-wide response including alternative learning programmes and mental health support. 5.13 the right to education to include connectivity entitlement considerable attention has been given to the use of technology to ensure learning continuity. those digital solutions to improve teaching and learning that have been institutionalised in the aftermath of the pandemic need to put equity and inclusion at their centre to ensure all learners may benefit from them. lecturers and learners need free and open-source technologies for teaching and learning. quality education cannot be provided through content built outside of the pedagogical space and outside of human relationships between teachers and students. education cannot be dependent on digital platforms controlled by private companies. governments should support open educational resources and open digital access. the right to education includes making a concerted and conscious effort to equitably vary teaching and learning methodologies. the effort must include the use of blended studentcentred teaching, monitor and assess methodologies to ensure effectiveness of distance learning: guide teachers to design appropriate methodologies for the provision of online teaching, or for the organisation and facilitation of learning based on television or radio programmes or print based materials. design the duration of the distance learning units based on students’ self-regulation and metacognitive abilities, especially for screen-based learning – the unit for primary school learners should preferably not be more than 25 minutes, and no longer than 40 minutes for secondary school learners. improve learners’ engagement through pedagogical approaches that are appropriate for their interests and cognitive abilities, including utilising possible group discussion, peer assistances, and peer assessment. design formative questions, tests, or exercises to monitor students’ learning processes closely. there will be a transition period back to more school-based learning settings during which some elements of distance teaching and learning practices will revert to face-to-face provision quickly. therefore, it is advisable to plan strategies that progress from the provision of rapid responses to a transitional period, to a long-term goal of improved education provision systems. looking to the future, actions now being taken to ensure the effectiveness of distance learning will lay a solid foundation for more technology-enhanced pedagogical innovations, more open and flexible learning environments, and a more vibrant education system. the long-term goal should be to integrate key principles and key constituent elements for more inclusive, more open and resilient systems when education stabilises to a new normal. key elements of this new normal include enhanced accessibility for the most vulnerable groups, upgraded learning platforms, distance learning courses covering all grade levels and all subjects, and teachers with improved capacities in designing remote teaching and facilitating distance learning as countries rebuild and reinvent themselves in response to covid-19, there is an opportunity to accelerate the thinking on how to best support quality education for all. in the months and years ahead, coalitions of evidence-to-policy organisations, implementation partners, researchers, donors and governments should build on their experiences to develop education-for-all strategies that use expansive research from jameel poverty action lab (j-pal) and similar organisations. in the long term, evidence-informed decisions and programmes that account for country-specific conditions have the potential to improve pedagogy, support teachers, motivate students, improve school governance, and address many other aspects of the learning experience. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1592022 40(3): 159-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design 5.14 diversity social justice contingency planning in education diversity is a contentious term and is generally associated with the politics of recognition around issues of race and ethnicity (sweet & etienne, 2011). it often excludes other dimensions of difference such as age, gender, class, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture, religion, family background, and cognitive style (forsyth, 1995; sandercock, 2000; doan, 2015). social justice is traditionally related with the distribution of public and private resources as well as externalities to the urban poor and working class (agyeman & erickson, 2012). critics have argued that defining social justice as socio-economic redistribution may not remedy the injustice of cultural non-recognition. since ills of our cities stem from both socio-economic inequities and cultural non-recognition and domination of ethnic minorities, there is a need to address both aspects of justice (goonewardena, rankin & weinstock, 2004). for the purposes of this paper, i use the terms ‘diversity’ and ‘social justice’ to encompass the broadest definitions possible, including those that integrate various dimensions and intersectionalities of difference (e.g. race, gender, class, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, physical disability, culture, religion, age), as well as more comprehensive definitions of justice that include issues of cultural recognition in addition to socioeconomic redistribution (agyeman & erickson, 2012; sandercock, 2000). pcp design education and practice in the united states have only come to embrace concepts and topics related to diversity and social justice relatively recently. until the mid-1960s, ‘monocultural’ or ‘monistic’ pcp design was the bulwark of pcp design education, reflecting the notion of a unitary nation and national culture in which minority groups were expected to assimilate to the norms, belief systems, language and identity of the majority (tiryakian, 2003; kymlicka, 2003). the dominant monocultural pcp design paradigm consisted of adhering to a value-free singular public interest that contingency planners believed they could promote as technicians through rational or comprehensive pcp design rooted in positivist epistemology. one argument that remains relevant today is that issues of diversity and social justice must be integrated into all parts of the pcp design curriculum and not reserved for separate programmes that often remain on the margins of the core curriculum. there is, however, no evidence that pcp-designed schools are following such a path. 5.15 education planning institutional policy the plan, being a policy statement, is a process that determines the future course of action and is undertaken at all levels of management to drive the pcp design. it is continuous and includes the process of perception, analysis and conceptual issue. this implies that the odel pcp design provides the tool for coordinating and controlling the direction of the different components of an educational enterprise so that educational objectives can be achieved. in any country, educational pcp design is necessitated by varied reasons, which include, among others, the desire of government to meet the yearnings, needs and aspirations of the citizenry. it also includes the demand for education and access to education, provision of quality education to the people, to respond to technological development, and lastly, to ensure global competitiveness and, more importantly, to actualise government political philosophy. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1602022 40(3): 160-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 6. conclusion covid-19 pandemic disruptions on the scale the globe witnessed are not limited to simple calamities, but may also result from natural, education, health, political, economic and environmental disaster. their impact on odel institutions’ capacity to plan effectively and efficiently hinges on foresight, agility, flexibility, readiness and preparedness to provide policy guidelines to students, institutional leadership and management, lecturers and body stakeholders. the flexible and agile pedagogical contingency planners’ (pcps) role includes developing policies and processes that guide odel pedagogy planning, leadership and management ecosystems. odel is but one teaching and learning methodology of higher education whose pcp design team is called upon pre-, during and post-pandemics such as covid-19 to rethink how quality online and virtual delivery modes should evolve to guard against adversity, and defining the skills, education and training required to support institutions that offer odel flexible and agile pcp design ecosystem, requires meticulous rejigging of policies, processes and procedures to accommodate open equitable distribution of resources pre-, during and post-crisis periods, to avail resources to students and lecturers equitably while observing diversity and inclusion principles. in line with rawls’ theory of justice, pcp design processes must ensure that students from diverse backgrounds are catered for in line with social justice and equal rights objectives, particularly during crisis periods. this is critical for a country like south africa to achieve the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the 17 sustainable development goals. ethics statement before compiling this conceptual paper, i sought approval from the institutional ethics review committee. the request was approved. the privacy of the participants was of no consequence for the paper dealt with pedagogical contingency planning concepts and theories. this is in accordance with the private policies of the research as no human subject’s privacy was violated. references abdelilah, b., el korchi, a. & balambo, m.a. 2018. 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(ed). 1991. effective educational management, pretoria: haum. worthington, r.l. 2012. advancing scholarship for the diversity imperative in higher education: an editorial. journal of diversity in higher education, 5(1): 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1037/ a0027184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=%20132_132718-fdwmrqsgmy&title=vet-in-a-time-ofcrisis-building-foundations-for-resilient-vocational-education-and-training-systems https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=%20132_132718-fdwmrqsgmy&title=vet-in-a-time-ofcrisis-building-foundations-for-resilient-vocational-education-and-training-systems https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/view/?ref=%20132_132718-fdwmrqsgmy&title=vet-in-a-time-ofcrisis-building-foundations-for-resilient-vocational-education-and-training-systems https://www.vedamo.com/knowledge/what-is-virtual-classroom/ https://www.vedamo.com/knowledge/what-is-virtual-classroom/ https://openlibrary.org/publishers/belknap_press_of_harvard_university_press https://openlibrary.org/publishers/belknap_press_of_harvard_university_press https://doi.org/10.1080/14649350050135176 https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456x11414715 https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456x11414715 https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/solutions https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/solutions https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027184 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027184 _hlk95718449 _hlk95718204 _hlk90469568 _hlk90468398 _hlk95724330 _hlk95718618 _hlk92093515 _hlk88663366 _hlk95724776 _hlk90717783 _hlk89266872 _hlk90548256 _hlk90563147 txt4 _hlk90718416 _hlk90922971 _hlk90664204 _hlk90718172 _hlk95827393 _hlk109290777 _hlk90567829 _hlk90626442 _hlk89074955 _hlk95751832 _hlk95817245 _hlk109292559 563 the relationship between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria ibijoke patricia byron paper presented at the 11th international journal of clinical legal education conference; 11 – 13 july 2012, radisson blu hotel, durham entering the mainstream: clinic for all short biographical statement i am the clinic administrator of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria. i ensure the effective running of the clinic on a daily basis. i supervise law students and ensure that the clinicians and students are working as a team. i have a special interest for women and children issues. i received both my bachelor of laws (with honors) and masters of laws from the university of ibadan, nigeria. i am a member of the nigerian bar association and the international federation of women lawyers (fida). 564 international journal of clinical legal education issue 20 i introduction there is a vital connection between legal education, public interest and social justice because lawyers use their education for the benefit of the society. they render their services to those who are unable to afford legal services and in addition, challenge injustice under the justice system. law students are trained by utilizing the techniques of clinical legal education and they are imbued with a social and professional responsibility to pursue social justice in society. much of the literature which propounds clinical methodologies in legal education implicitly understands that exposure to a social justice mission within a guided practice setting provides students not only with a key linkage between their legal education and their practice competence, but also with the intellectual foundation for a long-term engagement with the advancement of social justice.1 the proponents of a social justice dimension and clinical legal education often refer to the “dual goals of hands-on-training in lawyering skills and provision of access to justice for traditionally unrepresented clients”.2 this paper seeks to explore the relationship between clinical legal education and social justice using the women’s law clinic in the university of ibadan, nigeria as an illustration. ii background on clinical legal education in nigeria the network of university legal aid institutions (nulai) is a nonprofit, non-political and nongovernmental organization promoting clinical legal education, reform of legal education, access to justice and legal aid in nigeria. nulai nigeria was established on 16th october 2003. it pioneered the introduction and development of clinical legal education in nigeria and currently coordinates all existing law clinics.3 clinical legal education is the strategic approach adopted by nulai through legal empowerment and public legal education to bridge the gap of gross human rights neglect and violations resulting from ineffective legal aid systems and criminal justice administration; lack of pro-bono culture amongst lawyers; exclusion of the rural population from access to justice and social justice; poverty; and challenges of geographical location of communities. 4 prior to clinical legal education, law was taught to students via lectures and lecture notes without applying much of practical skills as they lacked the ability to analyse, interpret and apply theoretical knowledge to practical cases. this was reiterated by justice warren burger when he stated that “the shortcomings of today’s law graduate lies not in a decent knowledge of law but that he has 1 voyvodic, r. and medcalf, m. “advancing social justice through an interdisciplinary approach to clinical legal education: the case of legal assistance of windsor” washington university journal of law and policy. [vol. 14:101] retrieved through http://www.papers.ssrn.com/sol3/delivery.cfm%3... on june 2012 2 barry, m., dubin, j.c. and joy, p.a. (2000) clinical education for this millennium: the third wave, (reprint from) 7 clinical law review, volume 1, 69-70. the dual goals of clinical legal education are two-fold. students are taught professional and ethical values while at the same time learn professional responsibilities and the need to pursue justice and fairness in resolving client problems. 3 nulai nigeria 2010 activities report & strategy paper. retrieved through http://www.nulai.org/index. php%3foption%3dcom... on may 2012 4 nulai nigeria 2010 activities report & strategy paper. retrieved through http://www.nulai.org/index. php%3foption%3dcom... on may 2012 565 little, if any, training in dealing with facts or peoplethe stuff of which cases are really made.5 the law faculties had functioned strictly on the traditional way of teaching6 and they continued to function with a strict and conservative attitude towards the training program7 and were seen as institutions where theories of law were taught without imparting practical skills through the five year ll.b program.8 the absence of these practical skills was reflected in the quality of lawyers produced by law faculties. the only semblance of practical training to which the nigeria law student was exposed was at the nigerian law school. in the nigerian law school, a lot of skills subjects were taught in theory only without exposing the students to practical training. nulai therefore devised that cle should not only be taught in the nigerian law school but the training should start from the universities.9 these nigerian faculties of law, university based law clinics are non-profit organizations that allow law students under the supervision of qualified lawyers to provide free legal services and access to justice for the under privileged, deprived and neglected members in the different communities.10 a law clinic can be said to be an educative center where students are exposed to the socio-economic injustices in a society which should be viewed as a learning environment where students identify, research and apply knowledge; where they take on cases and conduct them as they would be conducted by actual lawyers.11 law clinics promote social justice and thereby, foster systematic change.12 it can also be defined as offices staffed by law students under the supervision of qualified lawyers who provide free legal services to indigent members of the community ( that is, they deal with live clients with real life problems).13 law clinics in nigeria serve as a medium for students to appreciate the social perspective of legal practice. however, with the addition to the establishment of university-based law clinics, the current nigerian law school curriculum has changed significantly and introduced clinicial legal education into its syllabus.14 exposure to live cases and practical situations through law clinics and the one year program at the nigerian law school give students opportunities to experience the realities 5 burger, w. (1973) the special skills of advocacy: are specialized training and certification of advocates essential to our system of justice 42 ford. l. rev. 227, 232 . law students should be trained while in the university so that they will start acquiring practical skills before they go to law school. 6 this meant that there was no form of interaction between the teacher and the students. the teacher would come to the class; dictate notes without educating the students on practical skills. 7 network of university legal aid institutions (nulai), training manual on clinical legal education teacher training workshop for law teachers, university of ibadan. 26th-27th february, 2010. pg.5 8 clinical legal education curriculum for nigerian universities’ law faculties/clinics retrieved through http://www.nulai.org/index.php%3foption%3dcom on june 2012 9 clinical legal education curriculum for nigerian universities. retrieved through http://www.nulai.org/index.php%3foption%3dcom on may 2012 10 this will depend on the location of the clinics 11 richard l., “clinical legal education revisited” professor of law, cardiff university, wales, united kingdom, pg.5 available at http://www.law.cf.ac.uk/research/pubs/repository/21 last visited on may, 2012 a law clinic best defines this situation where students learn when they come into contact with clients especially indigent people. they will then be able to put into practice what they learn from the classrooms in the clinic. 12 voyvodic, r. & medcalf, m. (2004) advancing social justice through an interdisciplinary approach to clinical legal education: the case of legal assistance in windsor, 14 wash. u. j.l. & pol`y 101, 103 13 mcquoid, dj. (1986) the organization, administration and funding of legal aid clinics in south africa, 1 nui 189-193 14 ibid. the relationship between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria 566 international journal of clinical legal education issue 20 of legal practice and understand the context in which laws develop and how the legal system can improve. there are presently, fourteen established law clinics in nigeria.15 clinical legal education is in the midst of an exciting period of growth and development, prompting clinicians around the world to reflect on what clinical legal education’s remarkable successes over the past 40 years mean for the future.16 it is an emerging trend in nigeria which has been embraced by law teachers and students. it has impacted significantly on the knowledge of law and the acquisition of practical skills by law students.17 the final year students of the faculty of law women’s law clinic learn most effectively by participating in their own education when they come into contact with clients.18 legal education in nigeria operates under curriculum and regulations set by the council of legal education and the national universities commission. the students admitted after secondary school education go through a five-year program in the university. the candidates with bachelor’s degrees in other disciplines and with g.c.e. advanced level or equivalent are admitted to a four year degree program in law. iii conceptual clarification clinical legal education clinical legal education can be defined as an educational program grounded in an interactive and reflective teaching methodology with the main aim of providing law students with practical knowledge, skills, and values… clinical legal education is a dynamic style of learning also described as “experiential learning” or “learning by doing.”if done within a law school, a clinical program may be based on real or hypothetical cases.there are also “simulation” clinics – focused on role-playing and simulating real life situations.19 cle is essentially a multi-discipline, multipurpose education which can develop human resources and idealism needed to strengthen the legal system… a lawyer, a product of such education, would be able to contribute to national development and social change in a much more constructive manner.20 clinical legal education can also be the use of any kind of practical or active training for legal 15 ibid. for more information, see www.nulai.org 16 wizner, s. (2002), “the law school clinic: legal education in the interests of justice, faculty scholarship series. paper 1843. retrieved through http://www.digitalcomms.law.yale.edu/cgi/vie on june 2012 17 clinical legal education curriculum for nigerian universities’ law faculties/clinics retrieved through http://www.nulai.org/index.php%3foption%3dcom on june 2012 18 quigley, w.p. (1995) introduction to clinical teaching for the new clinical law professor: a view from the first floor, 28 akron l. rev. 463, 475 19 ateneo human rights center and open justice initiative, training manual of first southeast asian clinical legal education teachers’ training january 30 – february 3, 2007 manila, philippines, p. 23 20 kaur, k. “legal education and social transformation” available at http://alsonline.amity.edu/docs/alwjlegkk. pdf on june 2010 567 professionals to impart such skills as the ability to solve legal problems through the use of various dispute resolution mechanisms providing legal representation, the recognition and resolution of ethical dilemmas, promoting justice, fairness and morality.21 from the above definitions, clinical legal education has essential characteristics which are included in many clinical programs: firstly, they are linked to a law school; secondly, there are real facts involving real people and thirdly, students are exposed to practical aspects of the legal profession while working in a law clinic under the supervision of clinic supervisors. social justice social justice as it is would depend on a variety of factors, be it social, economic or political. it can be defined as the fair distribution of health, housing, welfare, education and legal resources on an affirmative action basis to disadvantaged members of the community.22 it conforms is to the natural law that all persons, irrespective of ethnic origin, gender, race or religion are to be treated equally and without prejudice.23 social justice through access to justice is aimed at educating the neglected members of a community while addressing their legal problems. the social justice dimension is used by clinical law teachers to teach students on how to educate clients on their rights. the focus on social justice is important “not only because of its effect upon clients but also because of its effect upon students.”24 what clinical legal education does is to take students out of their comfort zone and put them in a place where they are not familiar and which inevitably, enables them to interact with indigenous people. it emphasizes that everyone deserves equal opportunities; economically, politically and socially and it works on the universal principles that guide people in knowing what is right and what is wrong.25. iv relationship between social justice and clinical legal education the central goal of clinical legal education has been to provide professional education in the interest of justice. its objective has been to teach students to employ legal knowledge, legal theory, and legal skills to meet individual and social needs. the end result is that it instills in students a professional obligation to perform public service; and to challenge tendencies in the students toward opportunism and social irresponsibility.26 it therefore teaches students how to learn from 21 wilson, r.j. (1996) “clinical legal education as a means to improve access to justice in developing and newly democratic countries; (a paper presented at the human rights seminar of the human rights institute international bar association, berlin) 22 cf am honore “social justice” in r summers(ed) essays in legal philosophy (1968) 68; pn bhagwati “human rights as evolved by the jurisprudence of the supreme court of india” 1987 commonwealth legal bulletin 236. 23 what is social justice? retrieved through www.businessdictionary.com/definition on june 2012 24 guggenheim, m. (1995), fee generating clinics: can we bear the costs? 1 clin. l. rev. 677, 683 25 social justice definition: retrieved through www.socialjusticedefinition.com on june 2012 26 duncan, k. (1970) how the law school fails: a polemic, 1 yale rev. l & soc. action 71, 80. the relationship between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria 568 international journal of clinical legal education issue 20 experience,27 enabling them to combine the theoretical and practical aspects of law and expose them to social justice issues. social justice and clinical legal education exposes students not only to lawyering skills but also to the essential values of the legal profession and the provision of competent representation; promotion of justice, fairness, and morality; continuing improvement of the profession; and professional self-development.28 clinical programmes have social justice as their objective. through social justice, students experience first-hand how people outside of their community live. it emphasizes societal concerns, including issues of equity, self determination, interdependence, and social responsibility.29 clinical law teachers have a responsibility to teach students about their social and professional responsibilities, the lack of access to justice and the perpetuation of social inequality.30 clinicians must therefore maintain their professional responsibility to clients once representation commences.31 clinical law teachers have the moral responsibility of making these students commit to social justice. they should engage with students on a deeper level by teaching beyond skills training.32 apart from the acquisition of practical skills, law teachers should not only expose students to the inequality of resources in a society, but should also inculcate in them a sense of their own ability and responsibility for using law to challenge injustice by assisting the poor and the powerless.33 clinics are client-centered and are all about building and sustaining relationships within these communities. they foster in students community lawyering. clinical legal education gives a window of opportunity to students by getting them out of the classroom into the real world of law, from which they return to a deeper understanding of how legal doctrine and legal theory actually works -or does not work34 and therefore, instilling in them the value and duty of public service.35 in other words, it empowers students and thereby empowers clients because the knowledge and experience gained by the students are put into practical use from their undergraduate days through to their years in actual practice after call to bar. 27 kreiling,k.r. (1981) clinical education and lawyer competency: the process of learning to learn from experience through properly structured clinical supervision, 40 md. l. rev. 284 28 the american bar association section on legal education and admissions to the bar, legal education and professional development-an educational continuum, report of the task force on law schools and the profession: narrowing the gap 207-21 (1992). this aba report is known as the maccrate report in recognition of robert maccrate, chair of the task force that produced the report. see also what is social justice? retrieved through www.wisegeek.com/what-is-social-justice.html on june 2012 29 bell, l. a. (1997). theoretical foundations for social justice education. in m. adams, l. a. bell,& p. griffin (eds.), teaching for diversity and social justice: a sourcebook (pp. 3-15). new york: routledge. 30 wizner, s. (2002), “the law school clinic: legal education in the interests of justice”. faculty scholarship series paper 1843. retrieved through http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1843 on april 2012 31 chavkin d.f. (1998) “am i my client’s lawyer?: role and definition and the clinical supervisor, 51 smu l. rev. 1507, 1513 32 wizner, s. ibid. 33 aiken, j.h. (1997), striving to teach “justice, fairness and morality”, 4 clin. l. rev. 1, 6 n. 10 34 pincus,w. (2001) concepts of justice and of legal education today, in clinical education for law students 125, 131 (1980). 35 see wizner, s.(2001) beyond skills training, 7 clinical l. rev. 327,329 569 stephen wizner, stated that, “it was not enough to simply provide students the opportunity to experience the real world through the representation of low-income clients but to also sensitize the students as to what they were seeing, to guide them to a deeper understanding of their client’s lives…, and to help students develop a critical consciousness imbued with a concern for social justice”.36 through clinical legal education programmes, students develop a personal commitment to supporting the rule of law, human rights, and social justice.37 they realize how important legal representation is to the resolution of the client’s problems, thereby making the student conscious of her responsibility not only to the client38 but also to the surrounding communities. the most important aspect of their exposure is that they learn to develop and apply legal theory through the actual representation of clients.39 clinical programs therefore, offer students “a practical vision of law as an instrument of social justice,” and provide students an opportunity “to have social impact and create new and better laws”40 and enabling students understand how effective the legal system is.41 this is achieved by helping students develop the skill of self-reflection. a process described by donald schon as ‘reflective practice’ or ‘reflection in action’.42 these skills allow lawyers and law students to solve problems when faced with real life problems.43 according to buckley,44 the process of encouraging students to embrace a commitment to social justice in their future professional work is by maintaining that education infused with social justice and humanitarianism should produce a student who is characterized by three qualities. the first quality is an affective dimension of social justice: the student should have sensitivity to injustice and innocent suffering in the world. typically, an examination of injustice is what yields this sensitivity. this awareness, however, is not sufficient to ensure the transformation process. many students are aware of injustice and only pity those who suffer as a result. the second quality is an intellectual dimension of justice: the student should know the causes/conditions that cause and perpetuate human suffering by understanding theories of oppression and liberation. this is by having direct contact with live clients. this understanding is critical to motivating the student 36 wizner, s. (2001), beyond skills training, 7 clin. l. rev. 327, 338-39 37 a handbook of the open society justice initiative, legal clinics: serving people, improving justice 38 wizner, s. (2002), “the law school clinic: legal education in the interests of justice”. faculty scholarship series. paper 1843. retrieved through http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1843 39 40 wizner, s. (2002), “the law school clinic: legal education in the interests of justice”. faculty scholarship series. paper 1843. retrieved through http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/fss_papers/1843 40 askin, f.(1999) a law school where students don’t just learn the law: they help make the law, 51 rutgers l. rev. 855 41 the law clinics help the students to gain a good knowledge of law. clinical legal education enables the students on how the law works in action. see clinical legal educationan overview, available at www.lawyersclubindia.com on 05/06/2012 42 schon, d.a. (1987) educating the reflective practitioner 31-36 43 for more, see menkel-meadow,c. (1994). narrowing the gap by narrowing the field: what’s missing from the maccrate report-of skills, legal science and being a human being, 69 wash. l. rev. 593, 600 44 buckley, m. j. (1998). the catholic university as promise and project: reflections in a jesuit idiom. washington, dc: georgetown university press. the relationship between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria 570 international journal of clinical legal education issue 20 to engage in work that tries to change these conditions.45 the third quality is the pragmatic or volitional dimension of justice: the student must learn tools and skills that will allow him or her to effectively intervene and, in doing so, contribute to a vision of social justice. v benefits of clinical legal education the benefits of clinical legal education are numerous. students learn by doing or experiential learning46 it gives students the opportunity to explain why they are taking certain steps, this enables them to discuss and reconsider their actions.47 clinical programs are meant to teach lawyering skills, ethical and professional values, and to introduce students to the legal profession under the guidance and supervision of clinical law teachers.48 it can promote involvement with the indigenous community: the greatest contribution of clinical legal education is to ensuring access to justice for those who would otherwise have none.49 this the students achieve by their exposure to and interaction with the indigenous people in that particular community. the clinical method enables students to confront challenges, solve legal problems of clients and change their perspective or outlook on the rule of law. involving law students in legal services projects would give the students a deep appreciation of the importance of law clinics. clinics provide students with the opportunity to integrate, in an actual practice setting, all of the fundamental lawyering skills. students sharpen their understanding of professional responsibility and deepen their appreciation for their own values as well as those of the profession as a whole.50 whether actual or suppositional, real life or by simulations or/and by placement, the features of clinical legal education have been summarized by various researchers51 to include: a transition from theoretical teaching to practice; changing students’ mode of thinking; interactive teaching method that allow students and teachers to discuss freely; diversity of teaching places; unique evaluation method based on teaching objectives52; opportunity to apply knowledge; calls for reflection and self examination; embracing a skill based approach, allowing more issues to be 45 for more information, see goodman, d. (2001). promoting diversity and social justice: educating people from privileged groups. thousand oaks, ca: sage. 46 madhava menon,n.r.( 1998), “clinical legal education”, chapter 2, pg.25, eastern book company lucknow 47 see richard l., “clinical legal education revisited” professor of law, cardiff university, wales, united kingdom, pg.5 available at http://www.law.cf.ac.uk/research/pubs/repository/21 last visited on may 2012 48 see richard a. p., (1995) overcoming law 82 not sure what this number refers to? retrieved from http:// scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/v... on february 2012 49 see charn, j. (2003) service and learning: reflections on three decades of the lawyering process at harvard law school, 10 clinical l. rev. 75, 77–78 (2003); howard,j. (1995) learning to “think like a lawyer” through experience, 2 clinical l. rev. 167, 176 50 a.b.a. task force on law schools and the profession, supra note 33, at 238. 51 see richard l., footnote 11 above and shuyun s.,“on the teaching objectives and special features of clinical legal education” in advanced educational technologies; p.167-169. retrieved through http://www. wseas.us/../edute-30.pdf 52 shuyun s., “on the teaching objectives and special features of clinical legal education” in advanced educational technologies; p.167-169. retrieved through http://www.wseas.us/../edute-30.pdf 571 debated openly; promoting students’ motivation and experience; actual practice of lawyering skills such as interviewing, negotiating, and analyzing, drafting, listening advising and confronting ethical issues that arise in real cases.53 clinical legal education is not only beneficial to students but also to clinical law teachers. it therefore encourages: strong interaction between teachers and students; development of theoretical knowledge in practice; significant amounts of feedback by both students and teachers which shows the level of knowledge gained by students from teachers.54 vi law clinics in nigerian universities one of the failings in contemporary legal education is that all too many students graduate with a vast doctrinal base of knowledge sealed within a context that cannot be translated into practice.55 the driving force behind the establishment of law clinics in nigeria was as a result of the review committee set up by the council of legal education56 which recommended that: “the adoption of knowledge and skills based curricula and teaching process that enhanced the competence of lawyers in practice irrespective of area or place of practice…there were recommendations on the teaching methods advising the adoption of active, student centered techniques as against the traditional lecture type which is most inappropriate for a vocational school.”57 it stated that more interactive methods in teaching should be incorporated into the curricula of students.58 vii the women’s law clinic, university of ibadan the women’s law clinic was established on the 18th july, 2007. it is a specialized clinic for women and women-related issues. the establishment of the women’s law clinic (wlc) at the university of ibadan was aimed at serving poor women with a focus on access to justice in ibadan community and its environs. it provides (free legal aid) pro bono services for the community; its main focus being less advantaged women (who are financially indigent) and in addition, sees to the protection of women’s rights. it encourages alternative dispute resolution mechanisms (besides litigation), that remedy wrongs and at the same time maintain the integrity and harmony of the community. this creates a win-win situation as students obtain practical legal skills and legal services are provided for the poor clients. 53 moscato,s. (2007) “teaching foundational clinical lawyering skills to first-year students” the journal of the legal writing institute ,vol. 13, 11/26/2007 54 a handbook on the practical forms of education at the faculty of law of the palacky university, olomouc. a project financially supported by the european social fund and the state budget of the czech republic. 55 mitchell, j.b.; hollingsworth, betsy r, clark, p & lidman, r. (1995) “and then suddenly seattle university was on its way to a parallel, integrative curriculum, 2 clin. l. rev. 1,21 56 the council of legal education is the body that governs legal education in nigeria 57 maman, t. (2009) globalization of legal practice: the challenges for legal education in nigeria, paper delivered at the 2nd annual business luncheon of s.p.a. ajibade and colegal practitioners, 19th november, 2009 pg.15. retrieved from http://www.spaajibade.com/admintoolnew/upl... on june 2012 58 the nigerian law school has done this by changing the one year curricula the relationship between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria 572 international journal of clinical legal education issue 20 the clinic provides a legal platform for women, especially the poor, who have little or no access to justice as a result of social and cultural factors. the objectives of the wlc are: to provide free legal services to less privileged (indigent) women in ibadan and its environs; to train law students using the wlc in the practice of law by utilizing techniques of clinical legal education; to research and document the basic problems on women’s access to justice; and to carry out intervention programmes in order to facilitate women’s access to justice. clinical legal education in the faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria, is not taught as an independent course but it is integrated in criminology, public & international law at the undergraduate level; and comparative family law at the postgraduate level. students who work in the clinic are given a window into the real world of practice.59 this is achieved by the students’ involvement and interaction with clients on a daily basis. the wlc teaches and guides students, helping them look at issues from diverse points of view by ensuring that they understand the legal process in the context of social policies and processes. students are given a deeper and more meaningful understanding of the law, the legal profession and the process of becoming a lawyer. the students’ participation in the clinic is a graded component for which they earn credit points under the supervision of staff clinicians/supervisors. they are involved in clinical activities from monday to friday. they work on rotational shifts from 10am till 12.30 pm. the second shift starts from 12.30 pm to 3pm. as part of their active involvement in the clinic, students are divided into groups comprising of four to five students in a group and each group comes up with a typed proposal to visit any community within ibadan metropolis which they may want to visit. they go to these communities wearing their native attire so as to identify with the community members and they represent the wlc through short drama presentations, role-plays and jingles in market places or other places that has vast majority of indigent women. in their presentation, the students communicate by speaking in three different languages so that the women will understand the message they are trying to pass across.60 the aim of these outreaches is to create awareness about the clinic and state ways in which clinic activities can be tailored to meet the needs of these communities in ibadan and to make legal rights available to all members of the community, both men and women, even as it focuses on educating women in particular.61 the skills acquired in the clinic by the students include client counseling, interviewing skills, drafting of legal letters, etc. the postgraduate students are also graded for their involvement in the clinic. in their training, the wlc prompts students to recognize the role they must play in combatting the perpetuation of injustice. this is done when they come into contact with clients 59 mcquoid mason, dj (1985) “legal aid clinics in social service” in d.j. mcquoid mason (ed) legal aid and law clinics in south africa 64 60 the languages are english, the native yoruba language and pidgin english. the reasons for the different languages are as a result of diverse cultural background of individuals. the wlc therefore, tries to identify with the women they come in contact with. 61 each group educate the womenfolk on different areas of law pertaining to women. these issues are domestic violence, violations of human rights, widow hood relating to inheritance, tenancy/landlord issues, marital challenges. 573 who cannot get access to justice or do not know where to go to access justice. other clinic activities include community, market, hospital, church and secondary school based outreaches in which students visit on a regular basis. in their interaction with clients, difficulties can arise when students are faced with complicated issues. in such a case, the staff clinician on duty is called in. for example, each student is assigned case files they work with in a semester and they interact with the clients on a time agreed by both the client and the student. however, there are instances when the client gets too hot to handle for the student or the student might need an input from the staff supervisor; in such cases, there is an urgent call for the staff supervisor.62 as part of the educational training processes of students, seminars and workshops are organized in the first or second semesters. the training is led by staff clinicians in the wlc. the wlc, in training students also seeks to inculcate in students ethical lawyering. there is strong emphasis on the ethics of the legal profession and the clinic. as an illustration, when students come in contact with live clients, they are in the position where they take accountability for another fellow citizen. the clinic focuses on the use of interactive teaching methodology whilst at the same time, developing practice and practical skills such as interviewing, counseling and oral advocacy and placing emphasis on the ethical dimensions of legal practice.63 in settling disputes in the wlc, mediation and reconciliation techniques are used. the students are taught to use non-legal traditional methods to solve legal problems in the communities. the past sets of law students, 2010/2011 session, who took part in clinical work at the wlc and have attended law school have reflected the advantageous effect of clinical legal education.64 it changed their perceptions, attitudes, skills and sense of responsibilities that lawyers are expected to assume when they complete their professional education.65 as a result of the wlc sensitization drives, many cases have been referred to the clinic for legal counseling. for instance, the juvenile court66 in oyo state referred many rape cases involving minors to the wlc. the clinic was able to assist through counseling and legal assistance.67 the women who come to the clinic are from different ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. cases that have come to the clinic include: rape, marital issues, sexual assault, domestic violence, trespass of land, etc. the wlc deals with cases such as: family law, land law, landlord/ tenancy, or any other matter that relates to women. the majority of the issues that come for 62 such cases include marital issues or spousal differences that needs the intervention of an adult 63 at the beginning of each session, each student is given a case file. the counseling sessions in the clinic are very interactive. the students are very free in answering questions; the clients are interviewed by the students under the supervision of the staff supervisors. 64 the class representative for the above mentioned session was interviewed whilst in law school. she was called on the phone and she stated that she benefitted immensely from the clinic especially in the area of client counseling. in addition, other students stated that they were able to come into contact with clients which they tremendously benefitted from. 65 clinical legal education: retrieved through www.vmslaw.edu/uploadpages/clinical last visited on june 2012 66 the juvenile court is a magistrate that deals with young offenders in oyo state. 67 the clinic is a walk-in basis for clients. there are over one hundred cases in the clinic. from 2011 to 2012, several cases involving minors were referred to the clinic. the clinic through its expertise was able to resolve these matters amicably. the relationship between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria 574 international journal of clinical legal education issue 20 determination in the wlc are marital cases. the following are selected cases handled by the women’s law clinic. review of selected cases handled by the wlc wlc/cas/145 this case is about a woman who breeds pigs in her house. she requested legal assistance with regard to disturbance from her community members who had given her a notice to quit her private quarters due to the rearing of the pigs. the clinic intervened and invited the community members and they all came. the community members were very particular about the pigs because it was polluting their environment. the community members requested a visit from the clinic to the pig farm. the clinic acquiesed, an undergraduate student and post graduate student visited the location in question but did not perceive the pollution complained about. a report was given to the clinic by the students on their visit to the pig farm. the clinic referred the case to fida (international federation of women lawyers). the community members and our client were able to come to an agreement on the breeding of pigs. wlc/cas/041 this was a case of domestic violence. the client came to the clinic and informed the clinic that she had been cohabiting with her partner. the client received a court summons and she was accompanied by a postgraduate student. the presence of the student gave the client emotional support. the client and her partner have two children. the clinic intervened and settled the matter amicably between the parties. the postgraduate student was actively involved in this case. wlc/cas/167 the client b requested the assistance of the clinic with regard to her husband who had deserted her after the birth of their child. she came to the clinic for legal assistance in securing her child’s maintenance. the student clinician wrote a letter inviting the client’s husband to the clinic. he honored the invitation and he was interviewed and he stated his own side of the story. the student involved, upon her investigation, was able to get a real picture of the case. she was able to interpret and analyze the parties’ relationship. the matter is still on-going. wlc/cas/154 the client lodged a complaint against her husband’s brother who came to her house and asaulted her in the presence of her husband. her husband’s brother had threatened her on several occasions to leave his brother’s house. the clinic sent letters of invitation to the client’s husband and her brother-in-law. the parties were counseled by staff clinicians, undergraduate and postgraduate students. the clinic was able to resolve the matter amicably between the two parties. 575 wlc/cas/110 the client, b came to the clinic to report a case of trespass on her land. b is an old woman. some people had buried three corpses on her land without her consent. the trespassers had humiliated b in various ways and threatened to take over the property. b wanted the corpses evacuated from the land. the clinic intervened by sending letters of invitation to the trespassers. they honored the invitation. the trespassers agreed to the request. a letter of agreement was drafted for all the parties concerned and was signed. the matter was settled amicably between the parties. wlc/cas/144 q gave her car to a car dealer to sell for her. the car dealer had paid her the first half of the total sum but did not remit the balance to her. the third party, the person who bought the car, took the car but did remit the balance to the car dealer. letters of invitation were given to the car dealer and the third party. they all honored the letters of invitation. the matter was settled amicably between the parties. the third party agreed to pay the remaining balance to the car dealer, who would then pay the client. after the meeting in the clinic, a student called q and asked whether the money had been paid. q stated that the money had been fully paid by the third party. wlc/cas/106 the client had been married to her husband for six years. her husband abandoned her and moved out of the house. he left her alone with the children. the client came to implore the clinic to assist by getting maintenance for the upkeep and general welfare of the children. a letter of invitation was given to the client’s husband. he was counseled by the staff clinician, students and the clinic administrator. there was an agreement drafted where the husband to our client promised that he would pay the money monthly. he has since been paying for the monthly upkeep of the children to the clinic. wlc/cas/118 the client came to the clinic to lodge complaints of constant beating by her husband and the refusal of her husband to allow her to engage herself in any work. she sought the assistance of the clinic to enable her to have access to the children of the marriage who are with the husband. the clinic intervened by sending letters of invitation. her husband came to the clinic and stated his own side of the story. the clinic was able to settle the matter amicably between the parties. wlc/cas/126 the client, d is the landlady of her house. she rented the apartment to a tenant on a yearly basis. the client was to pay at the beginning of every year. the tenant had been living in the house for a year and five months. the tenant however, did not pay the remaining balance for the previous year. she came to the clinic for legal assistance in evicting the tenants from her house. a letter of invitation was sent to the tenant which was honored. the tenants were counseled by the staff clinicians and the students. the students led the interview session. the tenant agreed to pay up the balance of the previous year’s rent and to also, pay for the new year. the matter was settled amicably between the parties. the relationship between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria 576 international journal of clinical legal education issue 20 wlc/cas/033 the client came to the clinic for legal assistance for the maintenance of three children born during her marriage with her husband. the client’s husband was invited. he was counseled by staff clinicians and students. the matter was settled amicably by the clinic. every month, the husband of the client pays for the upkeep of the children through the clinic. vii conclusion this paper has examined the relationship between social justice and clinical legal education and how law students acquire practical training in their involvement in law clinic with the illustration of the wlc. it should be emphasized here that in trying to access justice through law clinics, the social justice dimension should be brought to light and should not be relegated to the background. clinical legal education through the wlc trains law students dedicated to upholding the rule of law and it inculcates in society the idea that disputes can be resolved peacefully by using the rule of law without resort to a court of law. the law students get a firsthand look at how the rule of law functions. law students are trained in the university law clinics and acquire practical skills before they go to the nigerian law schools. they are comfortable with the benefits of clinical legal educationand how it has helped to shape their way of thinking. clinical legal education programmes focus on legal education and effective legal aid services and access to justice in developing countries. as mentioned in this paper, clinical law teachers have a role to play in molding their students into what they want them to become. there is the satisfaction law teachers experience when they have done their part in training students on the different techniques of clinical legal education. clinical legal education inculcates in students a sense of professionalism, a spirit of community lawyering and social justice. lawyers should see themselves as trustees of justice. on them lies the fiduciary responsibility to see to it that the legal system provides, as far as practically possible, justice for all citizens, not only for the rich and powerful.68 on the other hand, law teachers should realize that the students they teach will be advocates, judges, political persons and so they have a responsibility through their teaching to ensure their students commit to social justice. there are thirty-six states including the fct69 in nigeria and thirty five universities. there are only fourteen law clinics in nigeria. there is therefore a disparity in the number of students who benefit from clinical legal education. what about the other percentage of students who do not benefit at all from clinical legal education? it should be reiterated that the purpose of legal education is to prepare students for the practice of law. this process should therefore shape the legal profession in nigeria. there should be establishment of more law clinics in nigeria. education is a requirement for every aspect of human development without which human beings cannot appreciate the value of life’s entitlements. there is therefore the need for the existing law clinics under the umbrella of nulai to create forums for other universities in nigeria to inculcate clinical legal education in to their curriculum. clinical legal educationshould be seen as a social good in nigeria which has numerous benefits. the quality and introduction of practical teaching has deepened the perspective of the students. they are more confident in their interaction 68 winzer, s. op.cit. 69 fct is the federal capital territory which is abuja. abuja is the capital of nigeria. 577 with community members. this confidence they acquire will inevitably help when they enter into the world of practice and prepare them for the intricacies for the practical use of law. the clinic enables students to acquire lawyering skills before leaving the walls of the university. the skills they acquire are part and parcel of them for life. clinical law teachers therefore after all that has been said have the responsibility of creating opportunities for law students to recognize the injustices in society and in the legal system, to appreciate the role they play in challenging social injustice and in reforming the legal system.70 70 aiken, j.h. & wizner, s. (2004), teaching and doing: “the role of law school clinics in enhancing access to justice” 73 fordham l. rev. 997-1011 georgetown university law center retrieved through http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/303 on april 2012 the relationship between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria 578 international journal of clinical legal education issue 20 project1 the principles of ubuntu: using the legal clinical model to train agents of social change professor nekima levy-pounds esq and artika tyner esq1 for the past few decades, the legal clinical model has been used as a tool to teach law students the art of practising law.2 typically, this model focuses on providing law students with an opportunity to work with clients and to handle legal cases in a safe environment, and often in slow motion.3 although the legal clinical model has a number of advantages in assisting students to safely transition from law students to lawyers, it falls short in stressing the importance of using the law as a tool to achieve social justice within our society. the purpose of this paper is to propose that the legal clinical model be revamped to train law students to become not just lawyers, but agents the principles of ubuntu: using the legal clinical model to train agents of social change 7 1 professor nekima levy-pounds is the director of the community justice project (cjp) and artika tyner is a clinical law fellow at the university of st. thomas, school of law, minneapolis, minnesota. through the cjp, students can integrate the university of st. thomas’ mission into their clinic experience as they work for justice and reconciliation. following the sub-saharan african ideology of ubuntu, clinical students focus on creating systemic changes that will further humanitarian goals. the cjp strives to build bridges with community stakeholders and to work collaboratively to address problems in distressed communities. students conduct research and propose practical solutions to longstanding injustices, such as police brutality and racial disparities in the criminal justice, educational and juvenile justice systems. 2 see clinical anthology: readings for live client clinics (susan l. kay et al. eds., anderson pub. co., 2003) (clinic programs were introduced during the late 1960s as an alternative to case-book law teaching). 3 clinic models offer the skills based training necessary for the practise of law. many clinics provide an opportunity for students to engage with real clients in role as legal representatives. “under the supervision of an attorney, students enrolled in clinics have actual clients with real problems. many clinics provide legal assistance to those who cannot otherwise afford an attorney, helping to solve landlord-tenant disputes, settle domestic conflicts or defend against criminal charges. in these cases, the students often represent their client’s interests in a courtroom or at an administrative hearing. other clinics are non-litigation in nature. in these clinics, student may work in areas such as community economic development, small business representation, appellate advocacy and legislative advocacy.” how to get real world experience while in law school, newsweek, http://ejwguide.newsweek. com/chapters/hands-on.htm (last visited may 30, 2008). of social change.4 although we hope this article will be of relevance to a broad international audience, the critique focuses mainly on legal education in the united states. in order to more effectively train the next generation of leaders and advocates for social justice, law schools and other academic institutions must be willing to implement innovative teaching strategies that offer hands-on learning experiences and opportunities to more fully develop problem solving skills.5 a recent report entitled, “educating lawyers: preparation for the profession of law,”6 published by the carnegie foundation (“carnegie report”), highlighted the need for a more integrated approach to law teaching that draws upon innovative teaching techniques: the premise being that “legal education should seek to unite the two sides of legal knowledge: formal knowledge and experience of practice.” while the legal clinical model has been utilized in many law school programs to teach law students practical skills, this model could be taken to the next level by implementing an overt focus on social justice lawyering. clinic professors may prepare law students to address the needs of under-served communities by incorporating the sub-saharan african philosophy of ubuntu into the course curriculum. ubuntu draws upon a relational worldview by recognizing the universal bonds and sense of interrelatedness of humanity7 by challenging lawyers to use their legal skills to promote social good and further humanitarian goals. archbishop tutu characterizes a person with ubuntu as “available for others and to know that you are bound up with them in the bundle of life, for a person is only a person through other persons. and so we search for this ultimate attribute and reject ethnicity and other such qualities as irrelevancies.”8 by applying the principles of ubuntu, law students will be prepared to serve as agents of social change in their local communities and society at large. part i of this article will outline the pressing need to empower law students to lead and persevere in the face of societal injustice. it will also provide a framework for promoting social justice by 8 journal of clinical legal education december 2008 4 the philosophy of training students to be agents of social change is based upon the instructional pedagogy of dean charles houston. dean houston trained his students to use the law as an instrument to further social justice. he taught that “a lawyer's either a social engineer or he's a parasite on society.” a social engineer was a highly skilled, perceptive, sensitive lawyer who understood the constitution of the united states and knew how to explore its uses in the solving of "problems of … local communities" and in "bettering conditions of the underprivileged citizens." charles hamilton houston institute, http://www.charleshamilton houston.org (last visited feb. 5 2008). 5 the clinical curriculum should challenge students to think critically and ethically while promoting social good. professor gerald lopez characterizes the traditional legal curriculum as unchallenging. “unchallenged by a place that had no idea about, and apparently little interest in, how to draw on interdisciplinary knowledge that bears on both understanding and doing something to fight social, political, economic, and legal marginalization.” gerald p. lópez, rebellious lawyering: one chicano’s vision of progressive law practice, 5 (westview press 1992). 6 educating lawyers: preparation for the profession of law, the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching, (jossey-bass, 2007) http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/files/elibrary/e ducatinglawyers_summary.pdf (last visited june 9, 2008). 7 former president nelson mandela recognized the inevitability of "mutual interdependence" in the human condition that "the common ground is greater and more enduring than the differences that divide." anders hallengen, nelson mandela and the rainbow of culture, http://nobelprize.org/ nobel_prizes/peace/articles/mandela/index.html (last visited june 12, 2008). 8 desmond tutu, the rainbow people of god: the making of a peaceful revolution, 125 (doubleday 1994). integrating principles of servant leadership and ubuntu into the legal clinical model curriculum.9 part ii will offer a model curriculum and practical methods for using the legal clinical model to empower law students to lead and serve in under-served communities. part iii will provide examples of student-led initiatives that have promoted social justice in under-served communities. part iv concludes the findings of this article that the legal clinical model may be further developed to train future leaders and promote the furtherance of social justice. part i. the call to servant leadership and application of principles of ubuntu in order to take the legal clinical model to the next level, law schools must be willing to go in a new direction. the current structure of legal education, at least in the united states, is woefully inadequate in developing lawyers whose focus is on achieving social justice and who are passionate about using the law as a tool to address the needs of the poor and the disenfranchised. this notion of servant leadership is markedly absent from the law school curriculum, even though it helps to form the basis of the ideal attorney/client relationship. based upon robert k. greenleaf ’s essay entitled servant as leader, a servant leader is one who places the needs of others above his own needs.10 he describes the process of servant leadership that “begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.”11 the key priority is serving first and then leading. the lawyer as servant leader acts with humility and respect by simply asking the questions: how can i be of service? how can i, as an attorney, utilize my gifts and talents to serve communities and further the legal profession’s commitment to service? notable examples of lawyers as servant leaders include, former president of south africa nelson mandela12 and justice thurgood marshall.13 both men exemplified the moral courage, strength and passion for social justice14 that members of our profession should aspire to cultivate. these the principles of ubuntu: using the legal clinical model to train agents of social change 9 9 principles of servant leadership and ubuntu create a framework for developing a relational worldview. this worldview provides law students with the tools to promote “social solidarity.” “achieving social solidarity means that members of the society once again begin to recognize each other as fellow human beings and begin to share a concern in the common welfare and well-being of each other. social solidarity makes sense because only by ensuring the security, safety and well-being of other people can we hope to secure our own security, safety, and wellbeing.” tim murithi, african approaches to building peace and social solidarity, 6(2) african j. on conflict res. 9, 14 (2006). 10 robert k. greenleaf, the servant as leader, 7 (greenleaf center, 1991). 11 robert greenleaf, robert k. greenleaf center for servant-leadership at http://www.greenleaf.org (last visited mar. 12, 2008). 12 nelson mandela studied law at the university of the witwatersrand and obtained his law degree from the university of south africa in 1942. mandela spent 27 years in prison due to his efforts to dismantle the south african apartheid. nelson mandela, one nation, one country, xi (phelpsstokes institute for african, african-american, and american indian affairs, 1990). 13 thurgood marshall was instrumental in the drafting of the constitutions of ghana and tanzania. he was also counsel for the landmark case of brown v. board of education, which led to the desegregation of u.s. schools. in 1967, thurgood marshall was appointed to the u.s. supreme court. thurgood marshall supreme court justice, biography, http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/122/hill/ marshall.htm (last visited mar. 12, 2007). 14 establishing a working definition of social justice is an integral part of examining the role of attorneys and evaluating teaching methods. social justice has been characterized as the process of remedying oppression, which includes “exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.” pamela edwards & sheila vance, practice and procedure: teaching social justice through legal writing, 7 berkeley women’s l.j. 63 (2001). servant leaders fought relentlessly in the trenches for justice, peace, and the furtherance of humanitarian goals by waging combat through the use of their legal skills. this idea of servant leadership is in stark contrast to the implicit and sometimes explicit message that is often given in a law school environment, where one’s own need to pay off student loans and to live a comfortable lifestyle is placed above the importance of using one’s legal talents to benefit those who face oppression and disenfranchisement. because of the failure of law schools to explicitly articulate the responsibility to use the law as a tool to help those less fortunate, law students, generally speaking, abandon this responsibility when it conflicts with their desire for worldly comfort. even when law students are passionate about social justice, they are encouraged to work within the parameters that have already been defined within the profession, such as serving as a public defender or legal aid lawyer, even though opportunities to correct wide-scale legal injustices are often diminished within these positions, primarily due to limited resources and time constraints. such wide-scale legal issues may include racial disparities within the adult and juvenile criminal justice systems, the prevalence of police misconduct and brutality in poor communities of color, and the reintegration challenges facing people with criminal histories. although poor communities of color are disparately impacted by these issues, they are least likely to receive adequate assistance in addressing such problems. the severity of the problems facing poor communities, coupled with the funding and resource issues faced by public service organizations, means that law schools are in a prime position to use legal talent and resources to resolve some of our nation’s most challenging problems. law schools in general, and law school clinical programs in particular, have the ability to help shape legal minds and to prepare law students to serve the community in a more holistic manner. in addition to strengthening the leadership capabilities of law students, there is also a dire need to foster a more meaningful commitment to public service. through the study of ubuntu, law students are encouraged to focus on ministering to the needs of others through the utilization of their legal skills which reinforces the concept of servant leadership by focusing on “serving first.” the study and application of principles of ubuntu requires a shift in cultural perspectives related to the concept of community from the western ideas of individual autonomy15 to the focus on the collectivist and communal nature of african culture.16 in relation to the practice of law, ubuntu focuses on the “interrelatedness” of the human experience that requires each person to use his/her gifts and talents to better society. the concept of ubuntu was also encompassed in rev. martin luther king, jr.’s vision of “interrelatedness.” king characterized life as follows: “in a real sense all life is inter-related. all men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”17 10 journal of clinical legal education december 2008 15 professor dirk louw characterizes western society as competitive and individualistic. “individual interest rules supreme and society or others are regarded as nothing but a means to individual ends. this is in stark contrast to the african preference for co-operation, group work or shosholoza (“work as one,” i.e. team work).” dirk louw, ubuntu and the challenges of multiculturalism in post-apartheid south africa, http://www.phys.uu.nl/~unitwin/ ubuntu.doc (last visited sept. 1, 2008). 16 according to human rights advocate ahmed sirleaf ii, “ubuntu focuses on the essence of commonality that binds all together.” sirleaf suggests that cultures began to globalize; hence by applying ubuntu to clinical education african philosophical theories will be transported across national borders and cultural groups to promote social justice. telephone interview with ahmed sirleaf ii, the advocates for human rights program associate, liberian truth and reconciliation commission (june 4, 2008). 17 martin luther king, the american dream, http://www.indiana.edu/~ivieweb/mlkad.html (last visited sept, 1, 2008). the principles of ubuntu encompass the sense of “interrelatedness” that addresses the societal need for love, peace, and justice. by embracing principles of ubuntu, law students are trained to recognize the power that a law degree provides in creating access to justice, protecting the rights of those marginalized, and shaping public policy. according to archbishop desmond tutu: …a person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.18 the clinic course curriculum can provide law students with the tools to become an agent of social change and cognizant of their responsibility to work towards the greater good of society. this responsibility requires being an advocate for justice, fairness, and equity. the 1997 south african governmental white paper for social welfare asserts: the principles of caring for each other’s well-being…and a spirit of mutual support…each individual’s humanity is ideally expressed through his or her relationship with others and theirs in turn through a recognition of the individual’s humanity. ubuntu means that people are people through other people. it also acknowledges both the rights and responsibilities of every citizen in promoting individual and societal well-being.19 by incorporating the principles of ubuntu into the clinic curriculum, law students are reminded that they can be the change they hope to see in the world.20 historically, lawyers have been pioneers in leading social change in various arenas: namely, political, social, and economic. experience has shown us that, “the law can be an incredible vehicle for social change and lawyers are at the wheel.”21 our law degrees provide us with the ability to create social change through our power to build, restore, and transform communities. legal educators play an integral role in giving more focused attention “to the actual and potential effects of the law school experience on formation of future legal professionals.”22 clinic professors have the opportunity to guide law students in the process of becoming agents of social change. with these ideals in mind, we created the community justice project (“cjp”) at the university of st. thomas school of law in minneapolis, minnesota. throughout this paper, we will provide a brief description of the cjp, the curriculum that we created, along with a synopsis of some of the current initiatives that we have implemented through the cjp. we believe that the cjp serves as an ideal model which can be replicated by other clinic programs and community outreach organizations to develop lawyers into servant leaders and effective agents of social change. the principles of ubuntu: using the legal clinical model to train agents of social change 11 18 tutu, supra note 10 at 125. 19 department of welfare, private bag x901, republic south africa, august 1997, http://www.welfare. gov.za/documents/1997/wp.htm (last visited june 19, 2008). 20 “we need to be the change we wish to see in the world.” mohandas gandhi as quoted in "arun gandhi shares the mahatma's message" by michel w. potts, in india – west [san leandro, california] vol. xxvii, no. 13 (feb. 1, 2002) p.a34. 21 “hillary clinton on a law career in public service,” newsweek, http://www.msnbc.com/id/ 14269839/site/newsweek/print/1/displaymode/1098/ (last visited june 7, 2007). 22 carnegie report at 10. part ii. instructional practices: cjp class readings, group discussion, observation an integral step in preparing law students to become agents of social change is to deliberately and strategically incorporate principles of social justice into the legal clinical curriculum and programming. recently, the carnegie report highlighted this need by identifying that the key challenge of legal education is “linking the interests of legal educators with needs of legal practitioners and with the public the profession is pledged to serve.”23 clinic professors can aid in this training by engaging law students in ongoing dialogue about social justice issues, exposing students to the diverse life experiences of community members, and encouraging them to use the law as a tool to promote justice and social change. with these goals in mind, the curriculum of the cjp was designed to be thought-provoking, challenging, and enlightening. the training materials are used to transform the students into agents of social change during their clinical experience and beyond. a. cjp approach to community lawyering the cjp curriculum is based upon a model of community lawyering that focuses on working collaboratively within an interprofessional setting, empowering marginalized populations, and providing leadership training for aspiring attorneys. the community lawyering model focuses on holistic advocacy. further, the community lawyer addresses the root cause of the social problems in under-served communities; instead of focusing merely on resolving a legal issue. the model is a client-centered approach that answers questions such as: what support is needed to remedy the legal issue and promote community-building? how can similar circumstances be prevented in the future? how can the community benefit from an interprofessional model of partnership with counseling services provided by social work and psychology professionals? these principles are taught through a variety of course materials, which include historical texts, local media sources, and philosophical readings. the diverse array of readings provides students with the tools to effectively advocate at a grassroots level, one community at a time. at its core, the cjp encourages students to reappraise what it means to be a lawyer. the process of community lawyering used by the cjp begins with an invitation from the community. the community should welcome the community lawyer into the community. cjp received its invitation from the st. paul national association for the advancement of colored people (naacp) to address quality of life issues of the african american community. the next step is the immersion process which uses the principles of ethnography. during this process, the community lawyer becomes a participant observer. the community lawyer must become immersed in the community so gaining a deeper understanding of the root causes of the legal and social issues. for instance in our clinic, cjp students gain hands-on experience by reading a community newspaper, court observations, organizing community town hall forums, and spending time at a local coffee shop meeting with community members. through these experiences, our students gain cross-cultural competence skills and establish a positive rapport with the community. the next step takes place during the problem solving phase. in this phase, the community lawyer works with the community in planning steps to achieve the community’s goals. the key focus is on 12 journal of clinical legal education december 2008 23 carnegie report at 4. collaboration. the community lawyer uses a variety of skills at this stage such as fact investigation, writing as advocacy, critical thinking, reflective listening, negotiation, and mediation. the final stage is implementation. this is the process of empowering the community. the community lawyer works with the community to help it realize its power and protect its legal rights. although the community lawyer performs a key galvanizing role, overall, this is a community-led initiative. i. utilization of an interprofessional approach traditionally, lawyers work independently to resolve legal challenges that clients face. however, each client may also have a myriad of extra-legal issues ranging from psychological to social issues. the interprofessional model can offer a paradigm shift by focusing on holistic lawyering. “holistic lawyering is analogous to holistic medicine. just as a holistic medical provider treats all aspects of a patient suffering from a particular medical illness, a holistic lawyer addresses the whole person and not just a client’s particular legal issue.”24 the practice of holistic lawyering requires collaboration with other problem-solvers in various professional roles rather than overlooking the benefits of an interprofessional approach.25 this is the case especially when working with under-served communities in high-need areas since a legal problem may also be coupled with a need for case management26 due to the absence of economic development and revitalization efforts in the community. psychological services27 may also be needed based upon traumatic life experiences suffered from living life in the margins of society. cjp students work collaboratively with psychology and social work students as they strive to meet the needs of underserved communities while gaining practical real-world experience and cultural competency skills.28 one such example is the joint efforts of social work and cjp students in addressing the achievement gap in the local public school system. students served on an advisory board that brainstormed methods to improve the quality of education received by african-american students in saint paul, minnesota and methods to bridge the achievement gap. ii. empowerment of communities agents of social change must also empower the communities served by aiding in the fight against injustice. community members should play a fundamental role in addressing the community’s needs. this goal is obtainable when attorneys become sensitive to the needs of the community and overcome the tendency of taking over the community’s problems. cjp students are encouraged to the principles of ubuntu: using the legal clinical model to train agents of social change 13 24 innovations in the delivery of legal services: alternative and emerging models for practicing lawyer, american bar association (2002). 25 lópez, supra note 5 at 37. 26 social work services provides comprehensive client case management. case managers develop extensive knowledge on a variety of issues affecting clients, such as housing, transportation, food support, linkages to english language classes, job training and other education programs. case managers provide much needed emotional support to clients embroiled in difficult legal issues. university of saint thomas interprofessional center available at http://www.stthomas.edu/ ipc/about/ipc_collaboration.html. (last visited july 1, 2008). 27 psychological assessments are a frequent request from both external referral sources and the center’s legal professionals. request range from a simple screening to a comprehensive psychological report to be used for treatment plan development, educational, and vocational planning or for informing a legal process. id. 28 the community justice project is a part of the interprofessional center for counseling and legal services. this is a joint effort by the school of law, the graduate school of professional psychology (a division of the college of applied professional studies), and the university of st. thomas/college of st. catherine school of social work. id. prevail over this inclination by being responsive to the needs of the community. the role of the community lawyer and common lessons and pitfalls are discussed and examined through the study of lucie white’s to learn and teach: lessons from driefontein on lawyering and power.29 the process of community empowerment through social justice lawyering is exemplified in professor white’s case study of the driefontein community.30 the study focused on the process of a south african community that successfully organized to combat subordination with the aid of a lawyer and community organizer who followed a model of change-oriented lawyering.31 within a change-oriented lawyering model, a lawyer engages in a mutual learning process while helping a community to appreciate the full measure of its own power.32 the learning process began when the lawyer received an invitation from the village to aid in resisting government mandated removal from its community to designated homelands.33 the lawyer and organizer utilized an interprofessional approach in addressing the community’s needs. their goal was to empower the community to overcome both the current and even future challenges. “the villagers did not hand their problems over to the lawyer, who then acted for them. rather the lawyer and organizer worked with the villagers to help them gain power.”34 one such example is when the organizer assisted the community in creating social services. this included the creation of legal and health clinics to improve the accessibility of social services. the community also used performance arts as a form of cultural expression and political resistance. the village women performed a play about the proposed removal through african movement and dance. this example illustrates how the lawyer and organizer helped the community members identify and cultivate their strengths.35 as illustrated in the case of driefontein, lawyers in partnership with other professionals can play an integral role in empowering communities. once a community has realized the full potential of its power, community members are likely to be prepared to address future social, political, or legal matters more effectively. iii. leadership and problem solving skills development the foundations of leadership principles are developed through the reading of the servant as leader, related lecture, and classroom discussions. during this lecture, students are challenged to identify the characteristics of the servant leader and discover ways to incorporate the principles of servant leadership into their professional identities.36 students also complete a servant leadership inventory which aids them in identifying their leadership capabilities and then working to develop those qualities.37 leadership principles that are outlined in paulo friere’s pedagogy of the oppressed are also discussed during class and incorporated into the legal training. for example, cjp students draw upon the lessons learned by freire as he fought to increase access to education for oppressed 14 journal of clinical legal education december 2008 29 1988 wis. l. rev. 699 (1988). 30 id. 31 id. 32 id. at 767. 33 id. at 706. 34 id. at 737. 35 id. at 725. 36 sample discussion questions include, but are not limited to: who is the servant leader? how can the leadership crisis be characterized? what are practical ways to be a servant leader? does legal education foster leadership growth and potential? 37 university of nebraska, becoming a servant leader: do you have what it takes?, http://www.ianrpubs.unl.edu/epublic/live/g1481/bui ld/g1481.pdf (last visited feb. 5, 2008). groups in brazil.38 one key lesson that cjp students learn is that they must engage in a mutual learning process39 in order to effectively serve the needs of the community. according to freire, “revolutionary leaders cannot think without the people, nor for the people, but only with the people.”40 this mutual learning process can be enhanced by building trust within the community and respecting its members. “the people must find themselves in the emerging leader, and the latter must find themselves in the people.”41 freire also highlights the importance of engaging in dialogue with community members in order for lawyers serving as agents of social change to develop a shared vision for the future. “dialogue is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world.”42 through the dialogue process, relationships can be formed between community members and lawyers. the foundation of these relationships is recognizing the interrelatedness of the human experience and understanding that “common ground is greater and more enduring than the differences that divide.”43 integral to the training of agents of social change is the development of creative problem solving techniques.44 professor levy-pounds’ motto is “think outside the box and reshape it.” in essence, students must dare to be bold in the face of injustice and show commitment to creating equal access to justice. one such example is the exploration and practical application of restorative justice principles. cjp students are required to read howard zehr’s the little book of restorative justice as a foundational text on the theory of restorative justice.45 this text challenges students to contrast the punitive nature of the traditional american criminal court system with the transformative power manifested through various restorative justice models.46 after reading the text, cjp students are able to identify the benefit of restorative justice practices of “putting things right” by focusing on the harm to and needs of all participants (victims, offenders, and community the principles of ubuntu: using the legal clinical model to train agents of social change 15 38 “freire was a pioneer in promoting the universal right to education and literacy as part of a commitment to people’s struggle against oppression.” paulo freire, cultural action for freedom, 1 (harvard educational pub. group; 2000 ed. edition, penguin, 2006). freire sought to empower those who were illiterate by enabling them to become oriented with the world around them through civic engagement. this orientation process recognized their humanity through the integration into the very fabric of society and gave them the freedom to change the future. id. at 14. 39 “they must understand how to educate those with whom they work, particularly about law and professional lawyering, and, at the same time, they must open themselves up to being educated by all those with whom they come in contact, particularly about the traditions and experiences of life on the bottom and at the margins.” lopez, supra note 5, at 37. 40 paulo freire, pedagogy of the oppressed, 112 (new york, 1970). 41 id. at 144. 42 id. at 69. 43 anders hallengren, nelson mandela and the rainbow culture, http://nobelproze.org/cgi-bin (last visited june 25, 2008). 44 an integral element of problem solving is creating a strategic plan of action. when reflecting upon his prior chairmanship of the washington state bar association, bill gates sr. highlights the need for lawyers to develop problem solving skills. “the essence of civil work is problem-solving: the city needs a zoo, our schools need to pass a levy, foster children deserve a better shake. there are thousands of problems, virtually none of which are going to be rectified without organized citizen involvement.” “bill gates sr. on public-service law, newsweek, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15385956/site/news week/ (last visited june 5, 2007). 45 cjp students are also required to read kay pranis, face to face: spaces for reflective community dialog to gain a deeper understanding of the healing power of restorative justice, specifically sentencing circles, http://www.corr.state.mn.us/rj/publications/facetofa ce.htm (last visited feb. 5, 2008). 46 restorative justice takes a holistic approach by addressing the needs of victims, encouraging offenders to take responsibility, and involving those affected by an offense in the process. howard zehr, the little book of restorative justice (good books, 2002). members), addressing obligations of each, using an inclusive and collaborative process, and involving all stakeholders.47 cjp students also receive hands-on experience in applying these principles. through the restorative justice project,48 cjp students are able to help create a sense of community, bring all participants together and extend an invitation for dialogue and healing. cjp students also participate in restorative justice circles as community members. in this role, cjp students serve as community participants by expressing the concerns of the community related to promoting social welfare, upholding civil rights and liberties, and ending police brutality. the benefit of students’ involvement in circle processes are numerous and far-reaching. b. community news – insight news in order to become more culturally competent and to gain a deeper understanding of the needs of the community being served, cjp students are required to read the weekly edition of insight news and discuss the current events in class. insight news is a local journal for community news, business, and the arts. the mission of insight news is “to inform, instruct and inspire.”49 insight news lives its mission by offering a wide array of articles that identify and address the diverse needs of the african american community in the twin cities. the weekly edition includes articles ranging from historical perspectives on race to emerging civil rights issues that impact the local african american community.50 during weekly class discussions, students share the stories in insight news that caught their attention. one such example was insight news’ coverage of the national mortgage crisis.51 insight news covered this story from the onset of the crisis by offering firsthand accounts of the impact of foreclosure on the community, interviewing legislators, and tracking the related predatory lending bill.52 these stories enabled students to gain a deeper understanding of the mortgage crisis phenomenon. it also inspired students to initiate their own efforts in the community. cjp students, along with student representatives of the lawyers’ council for social justice53 canvassed communities in north minneapolis (which has a high concentration of poor african-americans) and provided information on protection against predatory lending and foreclosure.54 cjp students also played an active role in hosting and participating in a law school-sponsored forum on mortgage fraud.55 16 journal of clinical legal education december 2008 47 id. at 19. 48 cjp students have played an integral role in the formation of a restorative justice project. in collaboration with the saint paul city attorney’s office and saint paul police department, a restorative justice project has been created that will address the racial disparities in the charging of obstructing of legal process (olp). this project created an opportunity for a dialogue related to community/police tension and offers the possibility of aiding in the healing of these relationships. 49 insight news, (minneapolis) available at http://www.insightnews.com/ (last visited feb. 5, 2008). 50 examples include: public hearing on the enforcement of human rights and civil rights and two powerful images that can free your african mind. 51 acorn calls for freeze on foreclosure, insight news (minneapolis), aug. 31, 2007. 52 bush proposals to help those at risk of home loans foreclosure needs a dose of scrutiny, insight news (minneapolis), sept. 17, 2007. 53 this group was started in 2006 by a first year law student, sonia laird, at the university of st. thomas school of law. 54 insight news also published articles that focused on the needs of the north minneapolis community. conversations on managing the mortgage crisis in north minneapolis, insight news (minneapolis), feb. 8, 2008. 55 see mortgage fraud forum, university of saint thomas school of law, http://www.stthomas.edu/ethicalleadership/research /conferences/mortgage%20fraud%20forum1.html c. small group discussions and setting ground rules the cjp course curriculum is designed to be discussion-based and interactive. in order to reach this goal, students must feel free to express themselves in a safe and respectful learning environment. this sense of safety is created by setting ground rules for discussion. the first rule is being respectful by acknowledging that each member of the group has a different “life lens,” which is shaped by personal life experiences, faith journey, culture, heritage, upbringing, and/or socioeconomic status. in addition, everyone must trust that the ideas and opinions expressed in class are meant to create a deeper understanding, promote development, and foster transformation and growth. all members of the class must also agree that the class discussion will be kept confidential in order to build trust and strengthen interpersonal relationships. it is also paramount that students express a willingness to grow and explore. for instance in the marginalized populations class series,56 students examine the social construction of race in america and the history of the civil rights movement. these class discussions are typically very intense since students are addressing issues like institutionalized racism, poverty, and human rights violations. this leads to the next rule that students must also be open to being challenged and stretched in their ways of thinking. collectively, cjp students embark on a learning journey together and must be willing to explore differing views. personal attacks are not allowed, but ideas are challenged and questioned. through this dialogue process, cjp students grow immensely and their worldview evolves as they become agents of social change. d. court observations we have found that nothing is more invaluable than gaining firsthand experience in the community being served. cjp students are required to complete five hours of court observation, which includes three hours of adult criminal court and two hours of juvenile court. they observe court room dynamics, examine procedural fairness, and collect demographical information. after their visit, students draft and submit a memorandum related to their experiences. students are also encouraged to perform a police ride-along, which consists of accompanying police officers as they perform routine duties in the local community. in addition, students are required to attend and observe a community conferencing session. this allows students to gain a deeper understanding of restorative justice practices.57 the principles of ubuntu: using the legal clinical model to train agents of social change 17 56 the marginalized populations lecture is a two-part class series. marginalized populations part one focuses on cultural competence in the practice of law. this includes the examination of gender, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic classifications. the class reading consists of in god’s image, pastoral letter on racism authored by archbishop harry j. flynn, http://www.osjspm.org/racism.htm, racial disparity initiativecouncil on crime and justice, h t t p : / / w w w. c r i m e a n d j u s t i c e . o r g / p a g e s / publications/articles/increasing%20diversi ty_commentary_06_10_02.pdf and the viewing of poverty usa video clip, http://www.nccbuscc.org/cchd/povertyusa/tour2.htm marginalized populations part two focuses on the needs of juveniles in distressed communities. the class readings consist of building blocks for youth, http://www.buildingblocksforyouth.org/advocacygu ide.html. 57 the community conferences are facilitated by restorative justice community action, inc., online at http://www.rjca-inc.org (last visited jun. 19, 2008). e. reflective essays educational theory supports the notion that the formula for learning begins with experience plus reflection. the process of learning is about “action, reflecting, adjusting and acting again.”58 cjp students are encouraged to become reflective learners. throughout the semester, students complete reflective exercises, which include drafting essays, journaling, and participating in small group discussions. this process of reflection allows students to discover methods for merging their personal identity and professional identity without the need to compartmentalize views and perspectives. “using alternative approaches in legal writing teaches the value of both the legal voice and the personal voice, especially the voice of ‘outsiders’.”59 as both the legal and personal voices emerge, students are encouraged to write reflective essays or journal entries that explore their worldview as it evolves throughout their educational and professional development. this approach enables students to identify how their life experiences have shaped the way that they view the concept of social justice. additionally, students are encouraged to evaluate whether this view has changed based upon class discussions, volunteer experience, and participation in clinical programming. part iii. description of current cjp initiatives through the cjp, we have implemented a number of community-based initiatives that seek to address some of the underlying issues that impact poor communities of color. some of our current initiatives include the development of a reintegration and prevention program for africanamerican boys and men in saint paul, an evaluation of the civilian review complaint process for alleged victims of police misconduct and brutality, and a community awareness program to educate youth and their parents about the impacts of involvement in the juvenile justice system. each program is unique and requires the cooperation of local city government, the police department, the city attorney, the public school system, and the community in order to be successful. there follows a brief description of the scope of each project and its expected outcome. a. reintegration initiative: brotherhood inc. our goal is to create a reintegration program that will assist young people from poor communities in becoming upwardly mobile. we have had several meetings with the saint paul city attorney’s office, the saint paul mayor’s office, a representative from the saint paul police department, and the saint paul naacp regarding the disparate rate of involvement of poor african-american youth within the juvenile justice system. the decision was made to go beyond discussing these issues and to actually do something that will benefit the youth in question, and society at large. the cjp agreed to take the lead in preparing a proposal for consideration by stakeholders. the first step was to identify an appropriate program model. we chose homeboys industries out of los angeles as the model because of the high quality and effectiveness of the program. in order to gather accurate information, two students from the cjp flew to los angeles, california to visit 18 journal of clinical legal education december 2008 58 nelson mandela institute, available at http://www.mandelainstitute.org.za/liberation.aspx (last visited june 25, 2008). 59 mahoney, calmore, wildman, teachers’ manual to accompany social justice: professionals, commuities and law cases and materials 4 (west publishing company, 2003), citing edwards and vance. homeboy industries and to interview members of their staff.60 following their visit, the students prepared an extensive report examining the feasibility of implementing a similar program in saint paul. in february, 2008, the proposal was submitted to the mayor of saint paul, along with representatives from various foundations within the state of minnesota. this was the birth of brotherhood inc., a comprehensive reintegration and prevention program that will offer a social enterprise and integrated social services for young african-american boys and men who have had contact with the criminal justice system. most recently, the cjp has formed a partnership with a local neighborhood development corporation to bring the vision of brotherhood, inc. to fruition. b. evaluation of civilian review process based upon concerns raised by the saint paul naacp and members of the african-american community in saint paul, the cjp decided to examine the complaint process that is used to evaluate grievances by alleged victims of police brutality and misconduct. the goal of the project is to uncover hidden biases and gaps in the process that need to be addressed in order to ensure that justice occurs for those filing complaints. cjp students interviewed members of the police civilian review commission and examined the appropriateness of the forms that are used to report grievances for clarity and readability, as well as the means by which the public may obtain complaint forms. the results of the students’ inquiry, research and investigation was a written report that includes recommendations for improving the process and increasing access to justice. cjp students also prepared sample forms for adoption by the police civilian review commission to both simplify and clarify the process. c. community awareness program (cap) recent reports indicate that children of color are substantially over-represented in the juvenile justice system.61 once children become involved in the juvenile justice system, there are a number of collateral consequences in place which prevent both their successful reintegration into society and, for those living in under-served communities, their opportunities for upward mobility. in response to this growing issue, the cjp set out to create awareness amongst youth and their families in the twin cities by developing the curriculum for the community awareness program (cap). through cap, cjp students go out to local public schools with a high concentration of poor children of color and into the community to conduct presentations related to children and the law. the scope of the presentations includes the impacts of truancy violations, petty theft, school fights, and loitering on one’s ability to find future employment, housing, and to gain college admission. children and their parents are also advised on current trends in the law, such as: how a youth in possession of a bb gun may be charged with a felony; and an explanation of the lifetime bar on obtaining certain types of employment licenses through the minnesota department of the principles of ubuntu: using the legal clinical model to train agents of social change 19 60 cjp students, dan olson and luis verdeja, visited homeboy industries on nov. 1, 2007. they conducted interviews of staff members, peer navigators and homeys. they also toured the homeboy industries and homegirl café. 61 the 2007 america’s cradle to prison pipeline report highlights the following statistics: a black boy born in 2001 has a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime; a latino boy a 1 in 6 chance; and a white boy a 1 in 17 chance. black youth are about four times as likely as their white peers to be incarcerated. black youth are almost five times as likely to be incarcerated as white youth for drug offenses. children’s defense fund, available at http://www.childrensdefense.org/site/docserver/cp p_report_2007_foreword.pdf ?docid=5062 (last visited jun. 19, 2008). human services for commission of certain types of crimes. the goal of the project is to create awareness amongst children and families who, statistically speaking, are more likely to come into contact with law enforcement. our hope is that preventative education, such as is offered through cap,62 will result in fewer children becoming involved in the juvenile justice system. as illustrated above, our goal is to use the law as a tool to effectuate change on behalf of underserved communities. many of the residents of these communities are over-represented within the criminal justice system, yet are under-served and often receive inadequate legal assistance.63 through the cjp, we strive to find gaps within the system that are detrimental to the community and to offer recommendations for improvement. law students benefit immensely from their involvement in cjp initiatives as they are encouraged to “think outside of the box,” engage in problem-solving, collaborate with various stakeholders in local government and the community, participate in meetings of grassroots and civil rights organizations, and use their legal skills to benefit those from disadvantaged backgrounds. working on cjp projects has the added advantage of empowering law students to understand the importance of giving back to the community and the great responsibility that comes with having an advanced degree – a responsibility that is often under-emphasized throughout the law school experience. finally, by meeting with, collaborating with, and speaking on behalf of the community, law students become more culturally competent and able to interact with people from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds and socio-economic levels. part iv. conclusion due to the pervasive presence of societal injustices and the threat to human and civil rights, the time has come for the legal clinical model to do more than just teach students to become lawyers, and begin training them to become agents of social change. this requires innovative teaching strategies that focus specifically on the furtherance of social justice initiatives. a curriculum that focuses on principles of ubuntu should be used as the foundation for developing each student’s leadership capabilities and reinforcing a more meaningful commitment to service. ubuntu “affirms a higher notion of what it means to be human. it suggests that all people, and communities of people, are a source of power and creativity. it is an affirmation of the possibilities of the human spirit, and the power of authentic human-to-human engagement.”64 this higher notion is the ideal commitment of the legal profession to create access to justice, promote fairness, and ensure equity for the poorest members of our society. clinical professors play an indispensable role in training the next generation of agents of social change and thus should be willing to place a much-needed emphasis on social justice issues in the clinical curriculum. 20 journal of clinical legal education december 2008 62 cap utilizes a leadership model to train students. the student participants are encouraged to be leaders in the community by becoming informed citizens and advocating for justice. 63 presently, there is a need to increase access to justice. “[…] our justice system is predicated on the assumption that when there is a dispute, all parties will be represented by lawyers who will protect their clients’ interests and help their clients navigate the complex legal system. in this sense, lawyers are the gatekeepers to justice. unfortunately, the most vulnerable members of our society are the least able to afford legal services and are unable to access justice. law schools have an important role to play in solving the access to justice problem.” how to identify the professors and administrators who will support and inspire, newsweek, http://ejwguide.newsweek.com/chapters/faculty.htm (last visited may 30, 2008). 64 nelson mandela institute, available at http://www.mandelainstitute.org.za/ubuntu.aspx (last visited july 1, 2008). jürgen habermas and bush’s neoconservatives: studies in social justice volume 5, issue 2, 167-182, 2011   correspondence address: vivienne matthies-boon, department of international relations and international organisation, university of groningen, oude kijk in 't jatstraat 26, 9712 ek groningen, the netherlands. tel.: +31 (0) 50 363 7254; email: e.a.v.matthies-boon@rug.nl issn: 1911-4788 jürgen habermas and bush’s neoconservatives: too close for comfort? vivienne matthies-boon department of international relations and international organisation, university of groningen, the netherlands abstract in his recent political writings, habermas has opposed his cosmopolitan project to that of the bushite neoconservatives. however, this article argues that in some respects habermas's works come closer to the neoconservative agenda than he realises and that this poses a potential danger of its being appropriated by precisely the camp he opposes. these problems particularly come to the fore in his analysis of islamic fundamentalism, democracy and the middle east, but also in his recommendations concerning un-based internationalism and his appeals to woodrow wilson. by tracking these problematic areas in habermas's work, this article argues that habermas needs to engage in a more carefully articulated, concrete and empirical analysis if he is to avoid these problems. introduction1 in his recent political writings, habermas has fervently opposed the neoliberal and neoconservative policies of the bush administration. in opposition to this unilateral hegemon, which hides its power interests behind the ethical façade of spreading democracy and human rights abroad, habermas argues, that we should instead embrace a cosmopolitan political order. such a cosmopolitan order would be characterized by a multi-levelled system of governance and a further institutionalization of international law, as well as by the promotion of procedural opinionand will-formation (habermas, 2001, 2003, 2006a, 2006b). in advancing such a model, habermas hopes to follow in the footsteps of immanuel kant, with a view to implementing a truly cosmopolitan world order devoid of illegal war (habermas, 1997). on first sight, this project seems admirable. after all, the invasion of iraq by the “coalition of the willing,” the institutionalization of torture and human rights abuses, the bending of international and national law, as well as the ideological rhetoric of the western “us” versus the terrorist “them” is surely only to be deplored. yet, as i shall argue, the relation between habermas's work and the neoconservative outlook is more complex than his political utterances suggest. the 168 vivienne matthies-boon   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   problem is that on closer inspection there appears to be a hitherto unremarked affinity between habermas's proposals and those of the neoconservatives. this raises the question of whether habermas's work might not run the risk of being appropriated by the those he opposes—namely, by bushite neoconservatives such as paul wolfowitz, dick cheney, william kristol, david frum and daniel pipes (among others)—in order to support their own ideological agenda rather than habermas's cosmopolitan project2. indeed, john yoo and robert delahunty (2010) have already done just this. for the irony is that, despite the fact that habermas clearly opposes his approach to that of the neoconservatives, he in the end affirms at least some of the core ideological values and perceptions of the bush administration. three central instances are these. first, like the neoconservatives, habermas (2003) espouses a belief in the universal value of democracy; like them (and of course like many others) he believes that a spread of democracy to the middle east will lead to a peaceful and prosperous future, as well as the demise of islamic fundamentalism. second, just like the neoconservatives and their allies, whether explicit or implicit, habermas fails to look into the important influence of colonialism and postcolonialism in the region and believes that the mere imposition of proper formal democratic processes would lead to a resolution of political violence. like the neoconservatives, he fails to analyse the historical, political, social, cultural and economic role of the west and other occupying forces have placed in the middle east. rather, he sees the region and the problems of fundamentalism that emanate from it through the lens of his largely western-based theory of modernity, with all the problems that brings. third, in his opposition to the neoconservatives, habermas (2008) frequently appeals to the internationalist stance of woodrow wilson and posits this as an alternative approach to the bush administration (p. 94, pp. 155-158). yet, what is interesting here is that the bush administration itself frequently referred to the wilsonian legacy in order to legitimate its own imperialist projects (p. 94, pp. 155-158). moreover, in his appeals to wilsonianism, habermas overlooks the extent to which wilson himself was engaged in the imperialist spread of democracy to latin america and other parts of the world (encarnación, 2005). while this does not necessarily imply that habermas's own project has imperialist tendencies, it does indicate that habermas has failed sufficiently to reflect on the affinity between some aspects of his own work and the core imperialist ideological beliefs of neoconservatism. my worry is hence that habermas might all too easily be coming close to what he criticizes— and thus might run the danger of being systematically appropriated by neoconservative ideologues. of course, habermas differs from the neoconservatives in his analysis of the free market and its putative benefits, arguing that, against the neoconservatives, the market needs to be brought under control by democratic institutions on a global level. the difficulty here, however, is that, practically at least, habermas's accounts rely on a rather naïve analysis of the concrete workings of international institutions such as the un. he argues that these kinds of institution will be able to open up the way for a truly cosmopolitan future, but fails to see the extent to which these institutions have themselves become informed, even dominated, by neoliberal values. this oversight is, i believe, due not only to the abstract nature of habermas and bush’s neoconservatives 169 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   habermas's account but also his own implicit endorsement—and however much that goes against his explicit position—of the apparent benefits of the free market. the intention of this article is thus neither to repudiate cosmopolitan political philosophy nor to strengthen the visions of the neoconservative camp. rather, my aim is much more modest than that: i seek merely to put out a warning sign, to point out that habermas—and habermasians—need to reflect more carefully and closely on the possible affinity between his work and the positions and commitments of the neoconservatives. not least because, as i have said, neoconservatives have already incorporated insights from the progressive left in order to advance their own program, such a task is as politically urgent as it is intellectually salutary. in order to relay this warning sign, i shall first outline habermas’s proposals for a cosmopolitan world order, in the course of which he opposes his own work to that of the neoconservatives. i shall then proceed to his political commentary on islamic fundamentalism where some affinities between his approach and that of the neoconservatives come to light particularly sharply. following this, i shall analyze the extent to which his proposed cosmopolitan resolution to the problems of the middle east offers a viable alternative to the imperialist project of the neoconservatives, questioning especially the extent to which international institutions such as the un offer a practical alternative to the neoliberal ideology of the neoconservatives. finally, i shall go on to point out the oddity of habermas's appeals to the internationalist wilsonian legacy, a legacy explicitly exploited by the bush administration in the development of its “freedom agenda.” habermas's multilateral cosmopolitan governance vs. neoconservative unilateral imperialism in his recent political writings3 habermas (2009) argues against the neoliberal and neoconservative actions and outlook of the bush administration, and while he endorses the obama administration (p. 185) the latter hardly signals anything very different (khan, 2011, p. 21). the trigger for habermas was the invasion of iraq, where the coalition of the willing commenced the “shock and awe” strategy without a resolution from the security council. what angered him was not only the illegitimacy of the war itself, but also that the united states plainly ignored, sidelined and even sought to modify international law as it pressed its own interests upon the international community (habermas, 2006a, p. 182). this, he insists, is a dangerous precedent: one that could potentially lead to a crumbling of the cosmopolitan order. for habermas (2006a) believes that, with the formation of the un, the establishment of international courts, and the enforcement of human rights, the international community has slowly but surely moved beyond classical international law—which merely governed inter-state relations—towards a cosmopolitan legal order. hence, by bypassing the un, the bush administration went directly against the evolving cosmopolitan world order that habermas advocates. since 2003, habermas has thus been more active in his condemnation of the neoconservative outlook and also stepped up his own campaign for a normative cosmopolitan alternative. in this campaign, he posits an alternative cosmopolitan 170 vivienne matthies-boon   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   project that would be free of any despotic or imperialist traits, owing to the fact that it would bring democracy into being across the globe, ensuring that “no one could unilaterally determine the boundaries of what is tolerated” (habermas, 2003, p. 40). there is, hence, no one agent who can impose their will on others. rather, the world is offered a rational model where opinions and will-formations are discursively created and multilateral, rather than unilateral, actions are undertaken. central to this cosmopolitan framework are international organizations such as the united nations. by this model, it would function as a global police force, regulating and inspecting the behaviour of nation states so as to ensure that they adhere to human rights and to international law (habermas, 2004). in order to ensure that such a global order led by the un would not begin to take on the characteristics of a despotic world state, habermas proposes a multileveled model of governance. in such a model of governance, supranational institutions spanning the entire globe would be supported, informed and influenced by the discursive features of a broad range of actors: from social movements to nation states to regional blocks. within this order, transnational regional institutions such as the eu would play an important role as they would be able to bring the interests of an entire region to the attention of the un and solve many of their problems transnationally. here, habermas clearly builds further on his earlier proposals for a stronger integrated european union based on the idea of a constitutional patriotism,4 which he posited as another necessary tool to counter american neoconservativism (habermas, 2001). a stronger, integrated europe was necessary, he argued, both to counter american imperialism on a world stage, as well as to deal with problems caused by global economic forces that could no longer be contained at the level of individual nation states.5 europe would be the prime actor fighting the corner of cosmopolitanism against the unilateralist neoconservative policies of the bush administration and its followers as it pushes for international multilateralism and the further institutionalization of democracy. moreover, referring to historical instances such as the second world war and postcolonialism, habermas insists that europeans are particularly well suited to play this civilizing role. for, in contrast to the united states of america, europe has a stricter division between church and state, a greater sensitivity towards human rights as a result of decolonization and, most of all, europe has been on a cosmopolitan learning curve as a result of the painful experiences of the second world war (habermas, 2005, p. 11; see also boon, 2007, p. 297; 2009, pp. 31-34). in these works, he argued passionately against any actors, such as the heads of state in central and eastern europe, as well as the united kingdom, who favoured a weaker rather than a stronger european union (boon, 2007, p. 293; habermas, 2005, p. 5). for him, the threats posed by american neoconservativism are so serious that there is no other choice: either europe takes on this civilizing role or cosmopolitanism will fail and the usa’s imperialist unilateralism will triumph (habermas, 2006a, p. 52). it is imperative to note here that, for habermas, this cosmopolitan struggle against the imperialist tendencies of the united states is not a fight against the idea of the west as such: rather, he positions his work firmly within the western political tradition (habermas, 2006a, p. 50). moreover, he fears that any general arguments habermas and bush’s neoconservatives 171 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   against the idea of the west could end up throwing out the baby with the bathwater, that is to say, they could lead to an outright rejection of the communicative rationality which for him clearly developed on the western side of the berlin wall (habermas, 2005, p. 9). instead, by positioning communicative rationality (that of the social realm, the lifeworld) in direct opposition to instrumental rationality (that of the economic system) he argues that the tragedy of modernity is a one-sided development of reason (habermas, 1984, 1985, 1987b). this one-sided development of reason means that instrumental rationality (which is focused merely on achieving strategic ends) has encroached on the lifeworld (characterized by reaching understanding) (habermas, 1987a, 1987b). thus what needs to happen is an opening up of communicative channels so that the system can be brought under the control of the lifeworld once again. habermas on islamic fundamentalism: the desired end of western democracy it is also on the basis of this perspective of his western-based theory of a one-sided rationality that habermas interprets the phenomenon of islamic fundamentalism.6 in his interview with borradori, habermas perceives islamic global terrorism as a thoroughly modern phenomenon bound up with modernizing processes and the alienation caused by economic misery. he explains that the same globalizing and modernizing processes that swept through europe are now sweeping through the middle east.7 yet, in europe these modernizing processes were at least compensated for by significant benefits, whilst the middle east has only seen a widening gap between the economic winners and losers (habermas, 2003, p. 32). the upshot is that in the middle east “a process of productive destruction does not hold the same promise of compensation for the pain of the disintegration of customary ways of life” (p. 32). hence, rather than perceiving islamic fundamentalism in light of huntington’s thesis of the clash of civilizations, habermas (2003) points towards its economic causes. given these economic origins, he does not deem it surprising that the terrorists chose to strike at the heart of the capital enterprise of the usa, the country regarded in the arab world as the driving force of capitalist modernization. he remarks that “the west in its entirety serves as a scapegoat for the arab world’s own, very real experience of loss suffered by populations torn out of their cultural traditions during processes of accelerated modernization.” nevertheless, “with its unapproachable lead in development and with its overwhelming technological and economic, political and military superiority, the usa appears as an insult to their self-confidence whilst simultaneously providing a secretly admired model” (p. 32). it is this level of frustration caused by economic deprivation, he argues, that has led religious fundamentalists to have recourse to pre-modern beliefs and traditional notions of identity. for the alienation caused by the uprooting of a way of life makes people yearn for a return to a shared, pre-modern, meaning-endowing identity (rosenfeld, 2007, p. 159). this yearning is unrealistic, however, in that in modern complex societies an exclusive claim to truth by one faith can no longer be maintained. so, if middle eastern societies want to renounce such dogmatic attitudes, they would need to embark upon a path of self-reflexivity akin to the one 172 vivienne matthies-boon   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   undertaken in europe. for “in europe, the confessional schism and the secularization of society have compelled religious belief to reflect on its nonexclusive place within a universal discourse shared with other religions and limited by scientifically generated secular knowledge” (habermas, 2003, p. 31). as long as “fundamentalists—and states like iran—strive for the reestablishment of an islamic form of theocracy, they repress any cognitive dissonances and thus remain tied within a fundamentalist framework” (pp. 31-32). in order to embark on this journey of enlightenment and be able to grapple with cognitive dissonances, what needs to be improved is—rather unsurprisingly—communication. for, while it is economic problems that underlie islamic fundamentalism, the issue can be solved by rectifying patterns of distorted communication. after all, these conflicts primarily “arise from distorted communication, from misunderstanding and incomprehension, from insincerity and deception.” (habermas, 2003:35) it is here that the spiral of distorted communication begins, which then leads to mutual mistrust, eventually resulting in a complete breakdown of communication. this spiral of distorted communication is further strengthened by the fact that both the islamists and the bush administration are geared towards strategic action rather than communicative action, in that they both seek to achieve their particular ends rather than reach understanding. yet habermas (2003) does not lose his optimism for “if violence . . . begins with a distortion in communication, after it has erupted it is possible to know what has gone wrong and what needs to be repaired” (p. 35); namely, communication. however, in terms of repairing communication, his proposals remain rather abstract and vague. first, he puts forward a general argument for a stronger legal international order and a particular reinforcement of the un. at the moment, the un is reduced to the proverbial paper tiger, but with some further encouragement the cosmopolitan seeds within the un can grow and can begin to flourish on a world stage (p. 39). second, he argues that a model of democratic constitutionalism can be seen as a solution to the problems pestering the middle east: for he insists that only such a deliberative political order would enhance reflexivity so as to be capable of incorporating civil disobedience, even beyond its own boundaries of tolerance (p. 41). a constitutional democracy is reliant on an active civil society, and will be able to incorporate islamic resistance. as he explains, “the democratic project of the realization of equal rights actually feeds off the resistance of minorities, which, although appearing as enemies of democracy to the majority today, could actually turn out to be their authentic friends tomorrow.” not only that, but a constitutional order would also ensure that a universalistic liberal legal order is established, characterized by an “egalitarian individualism of a morality that demands mutual recognition, in the sense of equal respect and reciprocal consideration for everybody” (p. 42). as michel rosenfeld (2007) nicely points out, the gist of habermas's story thus seems to be that from the standpoint of muslim societies . . . communicative action would lead to the abandonment of authoritarianism, and the use of islam to inflame masses. muslim politics could willingly embrace the material gains of a globalization fine-tuned to promote equal opportunities and social justice. moreover, muslim societies would adjust their own lifeworld and legal and political institutions in order to reconcile islam, modernism and fair and responsible globalisation. the resulting islam would habermas and bush’s neoconservatives 173 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   not be fundamentalist but accepting of pluralism, like other great religions that have adjusted to the conditions of modern multiculturalism. (p. 168) however, such a conception is highly problematic. the first notable difficulty is that habermas nowhere directly engages with islamicist political thought or even with middle eastern politics. as a result of this, habermas, like the bushite neoconservatives, directly equates the problem of islamic fundamentalism with the turbulence of middle eastern politics and society. and as middle east expert olivier roy (2008) explains, this is a mistake commonly made by western commentators, and serves to allow them to project familiar problems that exist in europe (caused by migration) onto the quite different area of the middle east. yet that this projection is ambiguous comes to the fore when one realizes that al qaeda’s recruitment map [does not necessarily] mirror conflicts in the middle east, since there is a predominance of young second generation european muslims and converts, but there are no palestinians or afghans and very few recruits from the middle east. the islamists, like the arab muslim brotherhood, are not involved in international terrorism. nor do neofundamentalists [within the middle east] recruit in traditional milieus, but instead among migrants, refugees, the second generation, the new social classes, or among tribes undergoing change. (p. 52) hence the move from the problem of islamic fundamentalism directly to middle eastern politics is rather too quick in habermas's account, just as it is too quick in the neoconservative’s worldview, where “9/11” was the directly invoked reason to invade iraq in 2003. of course, i am not claiming here that habermas's model would lead to, or even directly encourage, such direct invasions, but rather i am making the more modest claim that both strands of thought are engaged in the same mistake of projection and that a more careful, sensitive and differentiated empirical analysis is needed. worse even than this, however, is the fact that habermas’s perception of islamic fundamentalism and the middle east is not only inaccurate, but also extremely offensive. it is offensive in that he completely ignores the complex colonial history of the middle east and merely interprets these issues in light of his western theory of modernity (habermas, 1979a, 1987a). this theory of modernity is anyway problematic, in that it is based on his account of social evolution which (despite his own assertions) leads him to interpret historical events in an evolutionary line that culminates in a cosmopolitan post-conventional order. this evolutionary line is modelled explicitly on western developments (boon, 2009, chapter 2). the upshot of this is that when he looks at middle eastern affairs, it becomes a case of these “middle easterners” needing to become more like “us.” they are simply lagging behind on the evolutionary scale, and need to become more reflexive, as well as to implement a constitutional democracy. only when they discover the fruits of liberal democracy will they find peace and security. the complexity of islamic fundamentalism as well as middle eastern politics is reduced and their alterity changed into familiar western concepts which, of course, ensures that the west gets off extremely lightly. for example, while at one point he remarks that disappointment with an autocratic regime might boost islamic fundamentalism, he nowhere reflects on the active role of the west in keeping these regimes in power. at no point does habermas refer to the legacy of colonialism or to the unfair 174 vivienne matthies-boon   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   policies inflicted upon the middle east by the western powers both in the present and in the past. he does not even mention western meddling, interference and cheating in middle eastern affairs—let alone the three biggest traumas inflicted upon the middle east in recent history, namely the sykes picot agreement in 1916, the establishment of the state of israel in 1948 and the overthrow of the sunni political primacy in the middle east as a result of the 2003 iraq invasion (e.g. roy, 2008, pp. 76-79). but given this colonial history, it is simply outrageous to argue that the very same processes of rationalization that occurred in europe are now taking place in the middle east. for a start, we might point out that europe has not been recently colonized.8 hence, rather than seeing the middle east’s alterity, he insists that it is simply the economy that is to blame, rather than western political order itself having any role. but this is simply untenable. his blindness to the colonial past also stops him from questioning the values of a liberal constitutional democratic order, values which are not automatically shared by many actors in the middle east. in fact, much of the islamist ideology that habermas criticizes developed in direct response to western developments and western concepts of individualism, liberty and freedom. he completely overlooks this relation between islamicism and western ideologies, such as nationalism, liberalism and socialism, none of which were seen by the islamists as viable and authentic alternatives to the autocratic regimes in the middle east. the reason why these strands of thought were deemed unsuitable by the islamists was precisely because they were tainted by western (conceptions of) reason and thus lacked the requisite authenticity when transferred to a different context (roy, 1998, passim). this kind of objection can be properly acknowledged only if one takes into account the impact of colonialism and post-colonialism which habermas simply ignores. to offer liberal democracy as a response to problems arising at least in part out of that democracy and from responses to it is neither realistic nor respectful of those formerly colonized. in this matter in particular, the issue is that habermas comes closer to the neoconservatives than he realizes. for they too looked for the root causes of islamic terrorism and they too ruled out any direct western responsibility for radical islamic violence (roy, 2008, p. 29). rather, in their view, the source of this violence is the arab societies’ institutional structures which are hindering human, political and economic development. . . . for the neoconservative lobby, the structural explanation of terrorism argues that it is spawned by poor “governance” of the muslim countries in general, and of arab ones in particular. (p. 29) it is the lack of such governmental structures that keeps “them” from becoming like “us.” hence, like, habermas, they “are diametrically opposed to huntington’s ‘clash of civilisations’ theory” (roy, 2008, p. 30) and, again like habermas, they seek to resolve the problem of islamic fundamentalism through the development and export of formal democratic political institutions. hence, like habermas, they are in favour of the development of active civil societies, which for them too are positioned in-between the state and the individual and can hold a potentially authoritarian state to account (roy, 2008, p. 34). they too believe that encouraging a vibrant civil society will resolve and incorporate the difficulties of islamic terror. habermas and bush’s neoconservatives 175 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   hence, both habermas and the neoconservatives take the ends of democracy, individualism and an active civil society for granted and see the creation and strengthening of democratic political institutions as a viable—indeed as the only— response to the problems of the middle east. but neither habermas nor the neoconservatives engage with concrete processes on the ground. their theoretical and/or ideological preferences leads them both to posit as desirable the goal of formal democratic processes based on the western democratic model, without any empirical analysis, without allowing the people on the ground any voice. international institutionalism vs. neoliberalism? however, where the neoconservatives and habermas differ is in their respective analyses of the benefits of the free market.9 the former’s neoliberalism demands that the primary role of the state or international institutions is not to counter the negative effects of the market, but rather to encourage its growth. or rather, as roy puts it, “for the neoconservatives democracy implies the full acceptance of the market economy, and therefore of privatization” (roy, 2008, p. 31). hence, in contrast to habermas, the neoconservatives have a very limited conception of politics, namely as one the primary aim of which is not to interfere with market forces (e.g. hassan, 2009, p. 25). in contrast, for habermas the market should not be entirely “free,” on account of its negative effects on processes of rationalization and its unequal distribution of wealth and resources. rather, he insists, the market needs to be brought under the control of international regulation and deliberation through multilateral organizations such as the un. yet there is a practical difficulty here: namely, that the un, given in habermas’s work the task of bringing the market under control, has in fact become one of the prime agents for the promotion of market values across the world. so how exactly can this institution further his cosmopolitan approach? without a more detailed, empirically informed and concrete analysis, habermas's appeals to the un as the harbinger of cosmopolitanism are at best empty and at worst stand to lend legitimacy to the very neoliberal order that he opposes. for since the former secretary-general kofi annan reformed its institutions and redesigned the rationale and conduct of many of its programs at the end of the 1990s, the un has embraced the free market and sought to spread “democracy” and “good governance” across the world. the perceived benefits of the market were notably lauded in a speech given by kofi annan to the world economic forum in davos in 1997, where he stated that the un should from now on promote “economic and political liberalization and the development of dynamic private sectors as the best strategy for effective peace-keeping across the world” (cammack, 2006, p. 6). he even went so far as to argue that first, there is a universal understanding that market forces are essential for sustainable development. second, the role of the state is changing in most of the developing world, from one that seeks to dominate economic life to one which creates the conditions through which sustainable development is possible. third, there is growing and compelling evidence that the poor can solve their own problems if they only are given fair access to business and development services. (annan, 1997) 176 vivienne matthies-boon   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   this announcement set the tone for the transformation of the un’s developmental policies, which held that a growth in global trade was advantageous and mostly that the poor should by no means be excluded from the benefits unleashed by the global market. not only that, but private market forces were perceived as the primary and lasting solution to instability and insecurity. hence, annan even insisted that in today's world the private sector is the dominant engine of growth; the principal creator of value and wealth; the source of the largest financial, technological, and managerial resources. if the private sector does not deliver economic [sic] and economic opportunity—equitably and sustainably—around the world, then peace will remain fragile and social justice a distant dream. (annan, 1997) this view, naïve in its analysis of market forces as it may be, has since continued to set the tone for the un’s institutional structure and content of its development programs. basically, the un now merely ensures that the right infrastructures for the flow of capitalism are put in place, after which it leaves it up to the people in a particular country or area to grab their opportunity and buy into market logic in order to help themselves. in other words, rather than providing structural development money for the state or state-sponsored institutions, the un has now cultivated a kind of do-it-yourself model of development entirely in line with the neoliberal agenda (berger, 2001). the role of the state is thus reduced to that of facilitating capitalist market forces, and is actually held accountable by the international institution if insufficient progress has been made on this front. this progress has been further developed and monitored by a competitive model of peer review since the brussels declaration and program of action in 2001. here, “model” apprentices10 are accorded the honour of reviewing their less performing peers, i.e. ones that had not made as much progress in economic liberalization in order to help spread “good practice” (cammack, 2006, p. 16). this belief in competition and the logic of free market has been further entrenched in the united nations through its institutional reforms, for example the closer collaboration between the economic and social council, the un commission on trade and development the bretton woods organisations (the imf and world bank) and the world trade organisation11 (cammack, 2006, p. 11). it is clear that the secretary-general believed in the poverty reduction programs led by the bretton woods institutions and carved out a special role for the un in further facilitating these neoliberal programs. an active link in this closer cooperation and the further development of the neoliberal agenda within the un was mark malloch brown, a “completely self-confessed free-trader,” who had previously served as the world bank’s “chief propagandist (vice-president and director of external relations)” before becoming the united nations development program administrator (cammack, 2006, p. 11; see also un, 2011). he pushed forward an interventionist agenda where the un institutions, in close collaboration with the imf, would act to open up markets in developing countries. it is for instance this kind of vision that is at the heart of the millennium development goals, adopted in september 2000, which sought to eradicate poverty, enhance rights and protect the environment through the standard panacea of so-called transparency and good governance. habermas and bush’s neoconservatives 177 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   the point of this brief discussion of the united nations reforms and its embracing of neoliberalism is to show how hard it is to regard the un as one of the leading agents in a cosmopolitan model such as that proposed by habermas. for in habermas’s account, the international institution would not only counter the neoconservative unilateralist point of view, but also correct market forces communicatively. in practice, however, it seems that the un is doing precisely the opposite: it is opening up markets under the banners of democracy, good governance and human rights. so when the un states that “good governance at the national and international level; the rule of law, respect for all internationally, human rights […and] the promotion of democracy […] are all essential in order to realize the vast and untapped human and economic potential in ldcs [least developed countries] [emphasis mine]”(un general assembly, in cammack, 2006, p. 14) what might be habermas’s response? after all, this kind of reasoning is precisely what he opposes, when he argues, against the bush administration, that “the west presents itself in a form deprived of any normative kernel so long as its concern for human rights only concerns the attempt at opening up new free markets” (habermas, 2003, p. 33). this in turn leads one to wonder how habermas could possibly have just overlooked the neoliberal ideology underpinning these international institutions. admittedly, his is a highly abstract and idealized account, and one which perhaps inevitably leads him to cherry-pick those instances that suit his own theoretical framework and to see actual developments through social evolutionary-tainted lenses.12 nevertheless, the oversight is in the circumstances remarkable. how might it be explained? might the explanation lie simply in habermas's own implicit belief in and endorsement of capitalist market forces? while he of course criticizes the one-sided rationality of market forces, his very distinction between the communicative realm and the realm of the system seems to posit the capitalist system as a necessary ingredient for modernization (boon, 2010, p. 159). for the structural problems caused by the economic system lead to developments in the social realm as it seeks new solutions: in other words, the market is a necessary condition of evolutionary development. but even if that were too harsh a reading of habermas, it would make no difference to the present problem. for habermas agrees with kofi annan that “today, market capitalism has no major ideological rival.” (annan, 1997) when he claims that “since 1989-1990 it has become impossible to break out of the universe of capitalism; the only option is to civilise and tame the capitalist dynamic from within” (habermas, 2009, p. 187) through communicative processes. but given his “realism” about capitalism, one might have expected habermas at least to offer an explanation of how the facts of “actually existing capitalism” do not render his communicative idealism redundant just as they render redundant other ideals; and to show how his own approach is compatible with capitalist realities, in particular, how the un can serve in the way he envisages to ensure that capitalism “promote(s) both prosperity and justice” as annan hopes it might (annan, 1997). but he does not. nowhere in his work does habermas offer even a minimal account of how capitalism might be open to “communicative adjustment.” 178 vivienne matthies-boon   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   wilsonian internationalism vs neoconservativism? the final element of affinity between habermas and bush’s neoconservative project is their common appeal to the internationalist legacy of woodrow wilson. when countering bush’s unilateralism, habermas appeals to the american wilsonian legacy in order to remind the neoconservatives of what he perceives as america’s multilateral and cosmopolitan traditions (habermas, 2006a, p. 156), hoping in so doing that the neoconservatives will see the light and embrace a more cosmopolitan future: for he firmly believes that wilsonian internationalism will lead to a spread of liberal democracy and the international rule of law across the globe. yet, as i will show, this appeal to wilsonian internationalism in fact again indicates a somewhat uncomfortable closeness between habermas and the neoconservatives. after all, the neoconservatives could not themselves agree more with habermas's appeal to wilson. they remember wilson very well. wilson believed: (1) that the spread of democracy across the world would bring peace and prosperity (a thesis now known as democratic peace theory13); (2) that democracy was a universal value; (3) and that no one was incapable of self-government (including those people in latin america deemed by many as unsuited for self-governance at the time); and (4) that, most importantly, the united states was the bearer of the moral project of spreading democracy across the world (encarnación, 2005). on the basis of these beliefs, wilson himself had actively and unilaterally intervened in latin america, where he sought to install democracy with the aim of leading people to democratic enlightenment under america’s specific patronage. now, in the bush administration such a wilsonian streak became most pronounced after “9/11,” when the ideologically loaded freedom agenda was explicitly developed by the white house to spread both democracy and the benefits of the free market to the middle east, starting with iraq (see hassan, 2009, p. 194). thus, wilson’s interventionist and internationalist philosophy was at the heart of bush’s intervention in iraq (dueck, 2003; hassan, 2009).14 crucial for this idealist agenda was the wilson-inspired interventionist belief that democracy should be spread across the middle east, that everyone (including arab islamic believers) was capable of engaging in democratic processes and that the usa had a special duty to fulfill in this respect (see hassan, 2009). the white house thereby broke with american policy that had been fearful the spread of democracy would result in the election of an anti-american islamist government (encarnación, 2005, p. 4715) and instead insisted that only the imposition of a democratic order in iraq would install peace and security in the region. as bush stated at the time, the world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic values, because stable and free nations do not breed the ideologies of murder. they encourage the peaceful pursuit of a better life. and there are hopeful signs of a desire for freedom in the middle east. arab intellectuals have called on arab governments to address the "freedom gap" so their peoples can fully share in the progress of our times. leaders in the region speak of a new arab charter that champions internal reform, greater politics participation, economic openness, and free trade. and from morocco to bahrain and beyond, nations are taking genuine steps toward politics reform. a new regime in iraq would serve as a dramatic and inspiring example of freedom for other nations in the region. (bush, 2003) habermas and bush’s neoconservatives 179 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   bush clearly believed that, in terms of middle eastern politics, “democracies would not fight each other, they would all recognise israel, whose security would be guaranteed by the democratization of the arab countries. terrorism would no longer be an option. the domino theory would operate for the benefit of the west” (roy, 2008, p. 40). and so the neoconservatives carved out a special role for the united states of america, just as wilson had believed that “as the definite example of democracy, the united states had a special obligation to extend its benefits and to instruct backward peoples in its uses” (wilson cited in encarnación, 2005, p. 49). the difficulties that arise from the above is that habermas's own appeals to the wilsonian legacy are insufficiently informed by a critical analysis of what this wilsonian legacy might entail. had he undertaken a critical, historical and more empirical analysis of wilson’s thoughts and actions, he might have realized that wilson was a dubious basis for an internationalist cosmopolitan project. indeed, given this rather ambiguous legacy it is questionable as to what extent reference to wilson would do anything but affirm a belief in spreading democracy abroad. of course habermas insists on a multilateral variant of the institutionalization of global democracy through international multi-levelled governance: but the point remains that wilson undertook an active policy in exporting and imposing democracy abroad. by appealing to this legacy habermas all too easily positions himself closer to this agenda. my point is not that habermas himself favours the forceful imposition of democracy from above by a third party, but rather that he has to be far more careful in his choice of historical ally if he is to avoid seeming to propose something all too easily compatible with, and even uncomfortably close to, the neoconservative agenda. for his close association with the wilsonian legacy leaves him vulnerable to being appropriated by those he seeks to oppose. habermas opens the way for the neoconservatives to employ his own citation of wilson to advance their own agenda, particularly in respect of habermas’s arguments that a constitutional democracy would solve problems of islamic fundamentalism. of course, every theorist and every philosopher could be appropriated, twisted and used for ends they oppose. but this risk of appropriation needs surely to be anticipated, especially in an instance such as this, where the neoconservatives incorporate insights originating in the political left: principled interventionism, an insistence on human rights and freedom, the advancement of civil society and the promotion of democracy. is habermas really unaware that, as roy has it, the neoconservatives “are closer to a left-wing progressivism that rejects cultural relativism of any kind rather than to a colonialism anxious above all to maintain the prevailing order” (roy, 2008, p. 4)? conclusion habermas’s commitment to cosmopolitanism stands in danger of being appropriated by a very different form of cosmopolitanism than his own: a neoconservative cosmopolitanism. for what else is the project for the new american century (1997) if not one sort of cosmopolitanism, however partial, self180 vivienne matthies-boon   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   interested and ruthless? to avoid such misappropriation, habermas needs explicitly to differentiate his cosmopolitanism from theirs and to anticipate the contours of how such misappropriation might occur. otherwise not only can his own arguments come inadvertently to be invoked to buttress a neoliberal agenda, just as have other arguments from the left over the last twenty or more years, but the very idea of a left-wing cosmopolitanism might all too easily be lost in consequence. though the responsibility is an onerous one, it cannot be shirked. notes   1 this paper has significantly benefitted from conversations with andrej zwitter, jaap de wilde and my husband tim matthies. thanks also to bob brecher for his patience. 2 neoconservativism of course has a longer history of thought development as well as political action than the bush administration and is by no means limited to the united states of america. however, since i am preoccupied here with a perceived problem in habermas, i am restricting the term neoconservative to that of the bushite ideologues, the primary target of habermas's own recent political critiques. for more information on neoconservativism prior to bush, please see gerson, 1996. 3 some commentators on habermas would make a distinction between his political and theoretical works: however, as i have shown (see boon, 2009) habermas himself muddles these two distinct analytical categories in his work. for this reason i will not pose an analytical distinction between these two modes of writing and instead take them as a whole. 4 “constitutional patriotism” was originally a term developed by dolf sternberger for a particularly german situation (namely unification). habermas adopted it to suit his european project, and argued that this would open the possibility for a model of european integration not based on thicker cultural notions of identity, but on thin legal principles (habermas, 1996). the irony is that habermas nevertheless searches for thicker notions of european identity to counter american imperialism and as a means of endorsing his european project of constitutional patriotism (boon, 2009, chapter 1; müller, 2000, p. 94). 5 as i shall note in more detail in section 3, habermas's analysis of the benefits of the free market is hence somewhat different from that of the neoconservatives, who regard the advancement of the market as one of their primary aims on account of its being, for them, a primary good. 6 for an earlier critical reading of habermas's comments on islamic fundamentalism, see boon, 2010. 7 habermas' comments on islamic fundamentalism occur prior to the arab spring in 2011—for a critical analysis of the relation between habermas' comments on islamic fundamentalism and the arab spring. see matthies-boon, forthcoming 2012. 8 apart from the eastern and central european states which were of course part of the soviet empire for several decades: but habermas has an ambiguous relation to the central and eastern european legacy and does not count these states as genuinely european. “europe” for habermas is definitely on the western side of the wall. 9 it is in fact also on this point that habermas launched a public campaign against the neoconservative outlook in the 1980s (habermas, 1989). apart from their dubious relation to german history, one of his main criticisms was the neoconservatives’ return to heavily freighted notions such as tradition, while upholding a blind belief in the free market. in habermas’s eyes, while they sought to compensate for the one-sided instrumental rationality of the market in their stated reliance on, for example, tradition, instrumental rationality can be compensated for only by communicative processes. he thus insisted that we should not revert to pre-modern notions of tradition or to irrational concepts of culture, but rather move forward and look to establish a deliberative social order (see habermas, 1985, 1987a). 10 states that have in place the necessary governmental support for the growth of free enterprise. 11 they have held annual meetings since 1998 and have provided a forum for this increasingly close cooperation behind the scenes (cammack, 2006, p. 11). 12 see boon (2009) for a more detailed analysis of this problem in habermas’s work. also see honneth and joas (1988). habermas and bush’s neoconservatives 181 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011     13 democratic peace theory ,while popular not only among politicians but also among international relations scholars, is problematic in that it looks primarily at the conflict between states rather than between states and non-state actors, which is one of the most common forms of conflict in our time. it also fails to account for the amount of violence that occurs once a state makes a transition towards democracy and thus only takes the end result, a fully-fledged established democracy, as its unit of analysis. when imposed by force, of course, it entangles itself in contradiction. 14 within american political science the debate on the wilsonian legacy and the bush administration is too extensive to do justice to here: see, among others, ambrosius, 2006; fleming, 2003a, 2003b; hoff, 2007; kennedy, 2005; levine, 2006. 15 this fear is also largely based on the algerian case in the 1990s where a military coup supported by western forces took aim to prevent the election into government of the islamic salvation front. since the 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(2008). the politics of chaos in the middle east. new york, ny: columbia university press. un senior management group. (2011). mark malloch brown. retrieved from http://www.un.org/news/ossg/sg/stories/dsgbio.asp yoo, j. c., & delahunty, r. j. (2010). kant, habermas and democratic peace. chicago journal of international law, 11, pp.1-37. retrieved from http://works.bepress.com/johnyoo/51 construction and validation of the marital justice scale research reports construction and validation of the marital justice scale adaptation of social justice theory in marriage majid ghaffari*a, maryam fatehizadea, seyed ahmad ahmadia, vahid ghasemia, iran baghbana [a] university of isfahan, isfahan, iran. abstract the main purpose of this study was to construct and validate a scale for measuring marital justice. a sample of three hundred and four voluntary and unpaid married participants (194 females, 110 males), aged between 20 and 35 years old (29.01 ± 4.44 years), were selected randomly through multi-stage sampling in isfahan, iran; the participants included in this sample had preschool child/children, were all in the first decade of marriage, and had at least eight grades of education. all participants were asked to complete the marital justice scale (mjs), the revised dyadic adjustment scale (r-das; busby, christensen, crane, & larson, 1995), and the marital conflict questionnaire (mcq; sanai zaker, 2000). the exploratory factor analysis extracted two factors labelled ‘procedural/interactional justice’ (twelve items) and ‘distributive justice’ (eight items) which accounted for 66.70% of the total variance. the convergent and discriminant validity of the 20-item mjs were supported by an expected pattern of correlations between the scale and the measures of marital quality and marital conflict. all correlation coefficients between the mean scores of the mjs and the scores of the rdas and the mcq were statistically significant. the obtained internal consistency was markedly high (cronbach’s α = .97). the test-retest reliability of the mjs was .87. the results suggest that the mjs is a reliable and valid measure; however, further studies should be carried out in other countries, based on different age groups and socio-economic levels, various developmental stages of family life cycles, diverse cultures and sub-cultures, and according to gender difference so as to validate the mjs. keywords: marital justice scale (mjs), validity, reliability europe's journal of psychology, 2013, vol. 9(4), 731–743, doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i4.632 received: 2013-05-25. accepted: 2013-09-20. published (vor): 2013-11-29. handling editor: izabela lebuda, academy of special education, warsaw, poland. *corresponding author at: faculty of psychology and educational sciences, university of isfahan, hezar jarib street, isfahan, iran. e-mail: psymgh@gmail.com this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. relationships consist of interpersonal interactions and exchanges. as used in the field of family studies, a basic premise of the behavioral theory framework is that positive marital behaviors enhance spouses’ global feelings toward the marriage whereas negative behaviors diminish positive feelings and cause harm to perceptions of the relationship (markman, 1981). since the concept of justice is related to humanitarian and ethical standards that describe how we should act and treat others (e.g., miller, 2001), and considered as an important positive social behavior (greenberg & colquitt, 2005), it may probably enhance spouses’ global feelings toward the marriage. the lack of application of psychologically-based notions of social justice to marriage and family studies is remarkable in light of the positive usage of such notions in other research arenas. the issue of social justice is a dominating theme in our daily lives as it reflects a fundamental concern in most of our interactions with others. concerns about the value of justice in our social lives go back to ancient moral philosophers such as plato and socrates (rawls, 1971). europe's journal of psychology ejop.psychopen.eu | 1841-0413 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 http://ejop.psychopen.eu/ http://ejop.psychopen.eu/ http://www.psychopen.eu/ justice has clear implications for people’s identity (de cremer & tyler, 2005). this may not come as a surprise as the nature of people’s identity is fundamentally relational (leary, 2002). as sedikides and gregg (2003, p. 110) note “the self operates predominantly within the social world”. furthermore, it is well accepted that the social self of people is developed and constructed by information that they receive through social interaction with others (leary, 2002; sedikides & gregg, 2003). in turn, this relational information defines one’s level of identity and goals, and ultimately regulates one’s social actions (carver & scheier, 1998). as social interactions are the medium through which important others shape the opinion persons have of themselves (hoelter, 1984) and the way they evaluate or feel about themselves (leary, 2006), justice thus clearly shapes people’s identity, motivation and behavior. de cremer and van dijke (2009) have noted that justice reflects important social feedback that people attune to and consequently shapes their identity and motivations. sedikides and brewer (2001) have reported that justice can have an impact on the self and identity at the individual (personal goals, and self-enhancement), relational (reliance on interactional goals, role-expectations, and dyadic connections), and collective (reliance on collective goals, and group norms) levels. justice also affects and activates particular goals, beliefs and values (lord, brown, & freiberg, 1999). by activating goals, the motives of people will energise and consequently direct behavior (carver, 2001). justice has the potential to influence people’s actions and thus guide the process of selfregulation (kunda, 1999). de cremer and van dijke (2009) noted that justice has a strong motivational component and has considerable impact on people’s behavioral responses. to study this important social aspect of our interactions with others, the psychological literature has distinguished between different types of justice. specifically, contemporary justice research distinguishes between distributive justice which denotes justice in effort and rewards (i.e., the fairness of the outcome of and rewards received as a result of one’s efforts and also fairness in the assignment of responsibilities and the carrying of burdens), procedural justice (i.e., the fairness of the decision-making procedure) and interactional justice (the attention, dignity, honesty and respect and also the correctness and transparency of the information and explanations one receives during the treatment) (greenberg & colquitt, 2005). the importance assigned to these different types of justice clearly emphasizes that information about justice has social consequences. for example, receiving fair or unfair outcomes signals our position towards others and the employment of fair procedures signals that we are valued by the decision-maker. as a result, it follows that justice is an important social regulation tool because it helps shape (a) how our interactions with others evolve and are coordinated, (b) how we can evaluate ourselves in the social world in a meaningful way (i.e., selfesteem), and (c) how our motives and identity are regulated (de cremer & van dijke, 2009). recent research on justice has revealed many insights regarding the social regulation potential of justice. de cremer and van dijke (2009) reported that according to the new results, receiving outcomes by means of fair distributions, procedures, and respectful treatments (distributive, procedural and interactional justice) does not only lead to fair or even favorable outcomes (shapiro & brett, 2005), but also has consequences that directly implicate one’s self-definition and social behavior. the social justice theory was adapted for organizations (colquitt, 2001; niehoff & moorman, 1993). roch and shanock (2006) noted that organizational justice received much attention in the organizational study literature because many important organizational attitudes and behaviors can be directly linked to employees’ perceptions of justice. researchers have found that employee justice perceptions have implications for employee attitudes, such as their perceived organizational support (rhoades & eisenberger, 2002), commitment to the organization (mcfarlin & sweeney, 1992), and pay satisfaction (sweeney & mcfarlin, 1993). justice perceptions have also been found to have implications for employee behaviors such as job performance (adams, 1965). in the field of organizational studies, distributive justice has been defined as feelings of fairness surrounding the allocation of europe's journal of psychology 2013, vol. 9(4), 731–743 doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i4.632 marital justice scale (mjs) 732 http://www.psychopen.eu/ organizational resources including pay, bonuses, terminations, or any other resources that an organization can provide to employees (deutsch, 1975). procedural justice has been defined as feelings of fairness regarding the procedures used in an organization (thibaut & walker, 1975). interactional justice has been described in terms of feelings of fairness regarding how one is treated in an organization, typically by one’s supervisor, when procedures are enacted (bies & moag, 1986). de cremer (2005) has reported that when employees perceive procedural justice in the decision-making process of their organization, they show increased commitment and cooperation. nadi and golparvar (2011) found significant correlations between distributive justice with procedural justice, procedural justice with organizational identification—the perception of oneness with or belongingness to an organization (mael & ashforth, 1992)—and cooperative behaviors with organizational identification. also, rankin and tyler (2009) found that when employees perceive their supervisors as procedurally fair in their decision-making, they show increased compliance with norms and expectations and when they perceive their supervisors’ respectful treatment they show more voluntary effort to help the organization. due to the following reasons, it could be expected that the social and organizational consequences of justice in the family would be similar to those resulting in organizations. first, the family is defined as an important social organization (wood, 1996) with interactional subsystems and a hierarchical power structure (haley, 1971; minuchin, 1974). thus, the family can be considered as a kind of organization. second, such consequences have been reported as characteristic of strong families in the family-strength literature. family strength is defined as social and psychological characteristics which create a sense of positive family identity, promoting satisfying interaction among family members, and encouraging the development of the individual potential of family members (otto, 1962). previous research in the field of family strength reported positive family identity (stinnett, 1979), motivation, cooperation and goal-orientation (trivette, dunst, deal, hamer, & propst, 1990), personal worth for the self and others, positive, clarified and respectful interactions and commitment between the spouses (schumm, bollman, jurich, & hatch, 2001) as the components that characterize the strength of families. hence, considering the similarity between the social and organizational consequences of justice and the characteristics of family-strength, justice can be an important element in the family context. third, there are a number of indirect evidences regarding the impact of justice on marriage. for example, heaton and albrecht (1991) found that the fair division of household labour and assets influence marriage preservation. schwartz’ (1994) research included couples who had a mix of equity (fairness) and equality from six large cities in the united states. in his study, having a successful marriage usually meant that spouses shared decision making, responsibility, household labour and financial equity where neither person felt economically dependent on the other. skogrand, johnson, horrocks, and defrain (2011), in a qualitative study on self-selected couples who believed they had good marriages, reported that the important elements of financial management in their marriages were trust and communication. wallerstein and blakeslee (1995) also found that couples with good marriages felt respected, cherished and loved being together. as noted earlier, the lack of the application of psychologically-based notions of social justice to marriage and family studies is remarkable in light of the positive usage of such notions in other research arenas. this study aimed at constructing and validating ‘the marital justice scale’ (mjs) as a measure of a person’s perception of the level of justice in his/her spouse’s behavior and dyadic life. europe's journal of psychology 2013, vol. 9(4), 731–743 doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i4.632 ghaffari, fatehizade, ahmadi et al. 733 http://www.psychopen.eu/ method participants according to kline (1994), analyses such as the factor analysis and item analysis must be taken into consideration in determining the sample size in pie-applications; the number of sample participants must preferably be ten times greater than the number of the items. kline (1994) pointed out that a 200-person sample would be enough to come up with reliable factors. a sample of three hundred and four people (194 females, 110 males), aged between 20 and 35 years old (29.01 ± 4.44 years) with preschool child/children and in the first decade of marriage (6.05 ± 3.46 years) with at least eight grades of education, were selected randomly through multi-stage sampling from the seven zones of the whole fourteen geographic zones of isfahan, iran. the mean age for men was 32.88 (sd = 4.38) and for women was 30.06 (sd = 3.95). because of the more convenient availability of married subjects with preschool child/children by means of kindergartens, one kindergarten from each zone of the city was selected. subsequently, one class of each kindergarten was randomly selected and the instruments were filled by one parent of each child. all participants were volunteers, anonymous and unpaid. before the administration of the instruments, the participants received a brief introduction about the nature of the research, ethical requirements for confidentiality and voluntary participation. in order not to be influenced by their spouse, the participants were asked to fill out the scales alone. only the subjects that completed the instruments were included in the analysis. similarly, another sample with one hundred participants (50 females, 50 males), aged between 25 and 32 years old (29.17 ± 4.46 years), selected randomly through multi-stage sampling was considered in order to examine the convergent and discriminant validity of the scale. measures marital justice scale (mjs) — first, based on the social and organizational justice literature (cropanzano, prehar, & chen, 2002; de cremer, 2005; de cremer & van dijke, 2009; greenberg & colquitt, 2005; rankin & tyler, 2009; sedikides & brewer, 2001) and some justice assessment questionnaires and scales such as the 20item organizational justice questionnaire (colquitt, 2001) and the 18-item organizational justice scale (niehoff & moorman, 1993) serving as the indicators of employees’ point of view about various types of justice (distributive, procedural and interactional justice) in their organization, the preparatory 50-item version of the mjs was developed and included items about the person’s perception of distributive, procedural and interactional justice in his/her spouse’s behavior and in his/her dyadic life. most of the items were written from one spouse’s point of view about the justice demonstrated by the other spouse or within the marital relationship. a 5-point likert scale was used: 1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = often and 5 = always. after primary investigations, inappropriate items were removed or revised within three stages: 1the content validity of the mjs was confirmed by four faculty members specializing in psychology who were knowledgeable about social and organizational justice. 2before data collection from the study sample, a group of 30 individuals participated in a pilot study to give feedback on the time requirements, wording, and item content of the measure. participants were asked whether they encountered any difficulty in understanding any of the items. based on the pilot study feedback and expert feedback, 32 items were selected and item revisions were made before the administration of the scale to the study sample. 3an exploratory factor analysis was conducted on the remaining items. the factor loadings considered meaningful were ≥ .35 (hair, anderson, tantham, & black, 1998). ultimately, these three stages resulted in a 20-item persian version mjs (with a total score range of 20-100). higher scores europe's journal of psychology 2013, vol. 9(4), 731–743 doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i4.632 marital justice scale (mjs) 734 http://www.psychopen.eu/ in this scale represented higher levels of the individual’s perception of justice in his/her spouse’s behavior and dyadic life. the revised dyadic adjustment scale (rdas; busby, christensen, crane, & larson, 1995) — busby et al. (1995) developed the 14-item rdas from the original 32-item dyadic adjustment scale (das, spanier, 1976). the rdas was developed to serve as a measure of marital quality in a close relationship and yields total adjustment score and three subscales: dyadic consensus, dyadic satisfaction, and dyadic cohesion (busby et al., 1995). dyadic consensus measures the amount of marital agreement between partners. each item of the dyadic consensus subscale is followed by a likert-type response scale ranging from 0 (always disagree) to 5 (always agree). an example of an item from the 6-item dyadic consensus subscale is “making major decisions”. dyadic satisfaction measures the tension or discord between partners. each item of the dyadic satisfaction subscale is followed by a likert-type response scale ranging from 0 (all the time) to 5 (never). an example of an item from the 4-item dyadic satisfaction subscale is “how often do you and your partner quarrel?”. dyadic cohesion measures the sharing of pleasant activities (busby et al., 1995). the 4-item dyadic cohesion subscale is followed by two different likert-type response scales. participants use a 5-point likert scale (0 = never, 4 = every day) for one item of the four items (“do you and your mate engage in outside interests together?”), and a 6-point likert scale (0 = never, 5 = more often) for the other three items such as (“have a stimulating exchange of ideas”). the psychometric properties of the rdas (reasonable construct validity and cronbach’s α from .80 to .90) were confirmed by previous research (hollist & miller, 2005). isanezhad, ahmadi, bahrami, baghban, farajzadegan, and etemadi (2012) examined the psychometric properties of the persian translation of the rdsa in an iranian population and showed that it had reasonable construct validity and internal consistency (cronbach’s α = .86). the internal consistency coefficients (cronbach’s α) of the rdas and its subscales namely dyadic consensus, dyadic satisfaction and dyadic cohesion in this study were found to be .90, .83, .88 and .76 respectively. the marital conflict questionnaire (mcq; sanai zaker, 2000) — the 42-item marital conflict questionnaire (mcq) was used in this study. the mcq yields a total conflict score and seven subscales: partnership reduction (e.g., “when my spouse has a request from me, i pretend to be too busy with other stuff”), sexual relationship reduction (e.g., “when there is a resentment between my spouse and me, niether of us is inclined to initiate sexual intercourse”), increased emotional reaction (e.g., “when i have a quarrel with my spouse, i shout and insult him/her”), increased support seeking from child/children (e.g., “to gain their consent and support in my favour, i satisfy and give in to my child’s/children's irrational demands”), increased individual relationship with family and relatives (e.g., “i am alone in the relationship with my family and my spouse has no relationship with them”), reduction of relationship with wife/husband‘s family and friends (e.g., “in case of dispute with my spouse, i break off my relationship with his/her family and friends”), and separating of finances from each other (e.g., “without informing my spouse, i have/open a new saving account”) (sanai zaker, 2000). each item is followed by a five likert-type response scale ranging from 1 (always) to 5 (never). a higher score in this scale represents a higher level of marital conflict. the psychometric properties of the mcq (reasonable construct validity and cronbach’s α from .65 to .81) were confirmed by previous research (afkhami, bahrami, & fatehizade, 2007). the internal consistency coefficients (cronbach’s α) of the mcq and its subscales namely partnership reduction, sexual relationship reduction, increased emotional reaction, increased support seeking from child/children, increased individual relationship with family and relatives, reduction of relationship with wife/husband‘s family and friends, and separating of finances from each other in this study were found to be .83, .69, .71, .71, .78, .73, .70, .69 respectively. europe's journal of psychology 2013, vol. 9(4), 731–743 doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i4.632 ghaffari, fatehizade, ahmadi et al. 735 http://www.psychopen.eu/ results the total score of the mjs and the scores of its subscales are expressed by mean and standard deviation. the reliability of the scale was estimated using the cronbach’s α coefficient (cronbach, 1970) and test-retest reliability. the construct validity of the mjs was investigated through the exploratory factor analysis. the principal components analysis, the scree test (cattell, 1966) and eigenvalues ≥ 1 were used. the pearson product moment correlation between the mjs, the mcq and the rdas was used to evaluate concurrent validity. an exploratory factorial analysis was carried out to identify the underlying factors. this analysis showed two factors (kaiser-meyer-olkin = .971), and an oblique rotation method was employed to facilitate the interpretation. data analysis was performed using the spss/pc+ statistics package (version 16.0). validity of the marital justice scale the scree plot of the exploratory factor analysis of the mjs using the extraction method principal components indicated that two factors with an eigenvalue ≥ 1.5 should be retained, accounting for 66.70% of the total variance (f1 = 60.50% and f2 = 6.20%). examination of the zero-order correlations among items (not shown here) showed that all items were moderately to highly intercorrelated (average range of correlations = .60-.80). also, the exploratory factor analysis supported the two-factor structure model of the mjs both for female and male samples accounting for 69.25% of the total variance for females (f1 = 62.83% and f2 = 6.42%) and 61.90% of the total variance for males (f1 = 55.46% and f2 = 6.44%). table 1 shows the mean and standard deviation of the mjs and its subscales for females, males and the sample as a whole. table 1 means and standard deviations for the mjs and its subscales totalmalefemale variable sdmsdmsdm procedural/interactive justice .0110.3748.726.1051.9710.1647 distributive justice .577.7535.735.3037.178.0635 marital justice .5812.8063.988.8566.7013.4262 the oblique rotation final solution is presented in table 2 where all the items are grouped in the two factors. as shown in table 2, the items that evaluated procedural and interactional justice are synthesized under the same factor (f1). this factor, which we labelled ‘procedural/interactional justice’, was constituted by twelve items and the second factor, labelled ‘distributive justice’, by eight items. for procedural/interactional justice, the item values loaded ranged from .59 to .96 and for distributive justice, the item values loaded ranged from .58 to .86. the first factor grouped the items about the fairness of the decision-making procedure (3, 5 and 11) and the attention, dignity, honesty, respect and also correct and transparent information and explanations one receives during the treatment (1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 12). the second factor was constituted by factors about the fairness of the outcome and the rewards received congruent with one’s efforts and also fairness in the assignment of responsibilities and the carrying of burdens (13 to 20). all the items had significant correlations with the total score of the mjs, ranging from .64 to .83 (p < .001 in all cases). tucker’s congruence coefficient (cc; lorenzo-seva, & ten berge, 2006) supported the similarity of a factor in the female group with a factor in the male group (ccf1 = .98 i.e., the similarity of f1 between female and male samples; ccf2 = .87 i.e., the similarity of f2 between female and male samples). lorenzo-seva and ten berge (2006) suggested a value in the range .85–.94 corresponds to europe's journal of psychology 2013, vol. 9(4), 731–743 doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i4.632 marital justice scale (mjs) 736 http://www.psychopen.eu/ a fair similarity, while a value higher than .95 implies that the two factors or components compared can be considered equal. table 2 principal components analysis: oblique rotated solution totalmalefemale item a f2f1f2f1f2f1 my spouse gives sufficient reasons for his/her plans and decisions in marital life.1. .59.45.66 my spouse has an open, transparent, and honest relationship with me.2. .82.81.79 my spouse makes his/her decisions clear for me and, if i ask, s/he offers me more information. 3. .91.84.97 my spouse honestly keeps me informed about his/her decisions.4. .92.85.93 before making decisions, my spouse assures that all my concerns and opinions are heard. 5. .75.54.79 my spouse treats me with attention and kindness.6. .74.52.78 any action s/he takes or any desicion s/he makes, my spouse explains it clearly for me. 7. .96.84.97 in relation to any action s/he takes or any decision s/he makes, my spouse gives me enough information, fairly and honestly. 8. .91.83.93 my spouse treats me with respect and dignity.9. .65.60.66 in making decisions, my spouse favors my rights.10. .60.52.60 my spouse lets me criticize, challenge, or revise his/her decisions.11. .76.59.79 on topics related to marital life, my spouse consults me fairly.12. .64.51.64 the pressure and burden on me is fair in marital life.13. .84.79.85 through various ways, congruent with my efforts in marital life, my spouse rewards me. 14. .77.72.76 in general, my share in marital life (in all aspects) is congruent with my efforts.15. .82.70.87 restrictions people must comply with after marriage are evenly and fairly distributed between me and my spouse. 16. .78.70.81 my spouse’s emotional support is congruent with my efforts in marital life.17. .66.51.72 my responsibilities are fair in marital life.18. .86.74.91 congruent with my efforts in marital life, my spouse appreciates me.19. .72.60.75 my spouse’s financial support of me (through making a budget, providing facilities, or being economical and fair) is congruent with my efforts in marital life. 20. .58.41.59 note. f1 = procedural/interactional justice; f2 = distributive justice. aby using a standard “forward-backward” translation procedure, each item was translated into english. the construct validity of the mjs was also examined through calculating the correlation coefficients between the subscales and the total score of the mjs (table 3). as shown in table 3, all correlations are significant. europe's journal of psychology 2013, vol. 9(4), 731–743 doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i4.632 ghaffari, fatehizade, ahmadi et al. 737 http://www.psychopen.eu/ table 3 pearson’s correlation coefficients between subscales of marital justice scale (mjs) with each other, and with total score of mjs 321variable female 11) distributive justice .88**.60** 12) procedural/interactional justice .93**.60** 13) marital justice .93**.88** male 11) distributive justice .83**.54** 12) procedural/interactional justice .90**.54** 13) marital justice .90**.83** total 11) distributive justice .85**.59** 12) procedural/interactional justice .91**.59** 13) marital justice .91**.85** note. n = 304. **p < .01. a separate group of one hundred participants (50 females, 50 males) was recruited in order to examine the convergent and discriminant validity of the mjs. table 4 presents the correlations between the mjs, the mcq and the rdas. as shown in table 4, all correlations are significant. these results confirm the convergent and discriminant validity of the mjs. table 4 pearson’s correlation coefficients between subscales of the marital justice scale (mjs) with revised dyadic adjustment scale (rdas) and marital conflict questionnaire (mcq) 21variable female distributive justice .37**-.78** procedural/interactional justice .44**-.71** marital justice .46**-.81** male distributive justice .28**-.69** procedural/interactional justice .36**-.63** marital justice .39**-.72** total distributive justice .33**-.76** procedural/interactional justice .42**-.68** marital justice .43**-.79** note. n = 100. 1 = revised dyadic adjustment scale; 2 = marital conflict questionnaire. **p < .01. the reliability of the mjs was evaluated in terms of internal consistency reliability and test-retest reliability. cronbach’s α coefficient was used to determine the internal consistency of the mjs. the internal consistency (cronbach’s α) of the overall mjs and its subscales namely procedural/interactional justice and distributive justice were found to be .97, .96 and .93 respectively (n = 304). test-retest reliability of the mjs was assessed in a subeurope's journal of psychology 2013, vol. 9(4), 731–743 doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i4.632 marital justice scale (mjs) 738 http://www.psychopen.eu/ sample of 60 participants (30 females, 30 males) of the total sample who completed the mjs on two separate occasions with a 2 week interval between the surveys. the coefficients for procedural/interactional justice, distributive justice and the overall scale were found to be .84, .81and .87 respectively (p < .001). discussion this study aimed at constructing and validating ‘the marital justice scale’ (mjs) as a measure of the individual’s perception of the level of justice in his/her spouse’s behaviors and dyadic life. the psychometric properties obtained for the mjs suggest that this instrument is effective and reliable. the 20 items that compose the scale are grouped into two factors, and the percentage of variance explained by the factors is high (66.70%). the items of the distributive factor are adapted to, and consistent with, colquitt’s (2001) distributive justice (four items) and niehoff and moorman’s (1993) distributive justice (five items) subscales. the items of procedural/interactional justice are adapted to, and consistent with, niehoff and moorman’s (1993) procedural (five items) and interactional (eight items) justice subscales. the high and positive significant correlations of the mjs subscales with each other, the total score of the mjs and the rdas, and also the negative significant correlations of the subscales with the mcq show the reasonable construct validity of the scale. the internal consistency coefficients for the mjs (cronbach’s α = .97), distributive justice (cronbach’s α = .93) and procedural/interactional justice (cronbach’s α = .96) and the test-retest coefficients for the distributive justice (r = .81), procedural/interactional justice (r = .78) and total score of the mjs (r = .84) confirm the acceptable reliability of the scale. as discussed, since the family is defined as an important social organization (wood, 1996) with interactional subsystems and a hierarchical power structure (haley, 1971; minuchin, 1974), the social and organizational consequences of justice could be transferred to the family system. the similarity of the identified characteristics of strong families (schumm et al., 2001; stinnett, 1979; trivette et al., 1990) with the consequences of social (de cremer & van dijke, 2009; greenberg & colquitt, 2005; sedikides & brewer, 2001; shapiro & brett, 2005) and organizational (de cremer, 2005; nadi & golparvar, 2011; rankin & tyler, 2009) justice and also the confirmation of the psychometric properties of the mjs in this study show that justice can be a possible foundamation for family strength. the results of this study can, in a way, confirm the research carried out by heaton & albrecht (1991), schwartz (1994), skogrand et al. (2011) and wallerstein and blakeslee (1995). through the results of this study, it can be fairly expected that justice in marriage will lead to consequences similar to those in organizations. it seems in a satisfactory marriage, spouses improve their relationship, communication, feeling of worth, commitment, goal-orientation, cooperation and positive individual, relational and collective identity through behavior based on justice in various aspects of their dyadic life. in the field of organizational studies, researchers have found that employee justice perceptions have implications for a wide variety of employee attitudes, such as the perceived organizational support (rhoades & eisenberger, 2002), commitment to the organization (mcfarlin & sweeney, 1992), pay satisfaction (sweeney & mcfarlin, 1993), and behavior such as job performance (adams, 1965). the results of this study provide initial evidence for the probable manifestation of the implications of justice simiar to that seen in organizations, for spouses‘ attitudes and behavior. more research is needed to provide a comprehensive theoretical explanation for the adaptation of the social justice theory in marriage and family context. as shown in table 2, in this study the items that evaluated procedural justice and interactional justice are synthesized under the same factor. the results of this study are in need of extension and replication. organizational europe's journal of psychology 2013, vol. 9(4), 731–743 doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i4.632 ghaffari, fatehizade, ahmadi et al. 739 http://www.psychopen.eu/ justice researchers had long debated the distinction between procedural and interactional justice. in the field of organizational studies, several researches have proposed that procedural and interactional justice can be distinguished from one another using social exchange theory (cropanzano et al., 2002). in particular, procedural justice applies more to the exchange between the individual and the employing organization, whereas interactional justice generally refers to the exchange between the individual and his or her supervisor. in an organization, procedural justice is more closely associated with reactions toward upper management and organizational policies, whereas interactional justice is more closely associated with reactions toward one’s supervisor and job performance (cropanzano et al., 2002). thus, an explanation for the synthesis of procedural justice and interactional justice in this study could be the difference between the nature of hierarchical structure in dyadic life and in an organization. the population and size of the sample are the limitations of this study which should be mentioned here. of course, our work should be considered as an initial approach, and further studies should be carried out in other countries, based on different age groups and socio-economic levels, various developmental stages of family life cycles, diverse cultures and sub-cultures, and also according to gender difference. references adams, j. s. 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(1996). a developmental biopsychosocial approach to the treatment of chronic illness in children and adolescents. in r. h. mikesell, d. d. iusterman, & s. h. mcdaniel (eds.), integrating family therapy: hand book of family psychology and systems theory. washington, dc: american psychology association. about the authors majid ghaffari is a phd student of counseling in the department of counseling, faculty of psychology and education science at university of isfahan, iran. his research is in family counseling with a special interest in application of social justice theory in the field of marriage and family studies. also he is a couple and family therapist, and clinical psychologist (ma) with a special interest in application of cognitive hypnotherapy. maryam fatehizade is an associate professor of counseling, faculty of psychology and education science in the department of counseling at university of isfahan, iran. seyed ahmad ahmadi is a professor of counseling in the department of counseling, faculty of psychology and education science at university of isfahan, iran. vahid ghasemi is an associate professor of social sciences in the department of social sciences, literature faculty at university of isfahan, iran, with special interest in application of structural equation modeling and fuzzy set theory. iran baghban is an associate professor of counseling in the department of counseling, faculty of psychology and education science at university of isfahan, iran. psychopen is a publishing service by leibniz institute for psychology information (zpid), trier, germany. www.zpid.de/en europe's journal of psychology 2013, vol. 9(4), 731–743 doi:10.5964/ejop.v9i4.632 ghaffari, fatehizade, ahmadi et al. 743 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/350547 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/s0749597883710228 http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1993.1022 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/027112149001000103 http://www.psychopen.eu/ http://www.zpid.de/en marital justice scale (mjs) (introduction) method participants measures results validity of the marital justice scale discussion references about the authors journal of medical ethics and history of medicine original article analyzing the politico-moral foundations of the iran’s health system based on theories of justice forouzan akrami 1 , mahmoud abbasi 2 , abbas karimi 3 , akbar shahrivari 4 , reza majdzadeh 5 , alireza zali 6 * 1 phd by research candidate, medical ethics and law research center, shahid beheshti university of medical sciences, tehran, iran. 2 associate professor, medical ethics and law research center, shahid beheshti university of medical sciences, tehran, iran. 3 professor, faculty of law and political science, university of tehran, tehran, iran. 4 pharm d, medical ethics and law research center, shahid beheshti university of medical sciences, tehran, iran. 5 professor, community based participatory research center and knowledge utilization research center, tehran university of medical sciences, tehran, iran. 6 professor, functional neurosurgery research center, shohada tajrish neurosurgical center of excellence, shahid beheshti university of medical sciences, tehran, iran. corresponding author: alireza zali address: tajrish, functional neurosurgery research center, shohada tajrish neurosurgical center of excellence, shahid beheshti university of medical sciences, tehran, iran. email: dr_alirezazali@yahoo.com tel/ fax: + 98 21 22724214 received: 09 sep 2016 accepted: 12 mar 2017 published: 08 apr 2017 j med ethics hist med, 2017, 10:4 © 2017 medical ethics and history of medicine research center, tehran university of medical sciences. all rights reserved. abstract public health ethics is a field that covers both factual and ethical issues in health policy and science, and has positive obligations to improve the well-being of populations and reduce social inequalities. it is obvious that various philosophies and moral theories can differently shape the framework of public health ethics. for this reason, the present study reviewed theories of justice in order to analyze and criticize iran’s general health policies document, served in 14 articles in 2014. furthermore, it explored egalitarianism as the dominant theory in the political philosophy of the country’s health care system. according to recent theories of justice, however, health policies must address well-being and its basic dimensions such as health, reasoning, autonomy, and the role of the involved agencies and social institutions in order to achieve social justice beyond distributive justice. moreover, policy-making in the field of health and biomedical sciences based on islamic culture necessitates a theory of social justice in the light of theological ethics. educating people about their rights and duties, increasing their knowledge on individual agency, autonomy, and the role of the government, and empowering them will help achieve social justice. it is recommended to design and implement a strategic plan following each of these policies, based on the above-mentioned values and in collaboration with other sectors, to clarify the procedures in every case. keywords: politics, moral philosophy, public health, justice, iran mailto:dr_alirezazali@yahoo.com j med ethics hist med 10: 4, april, 2017 jmehm.tums.ac.ir forouzan akrami et al. page 2 of 10 introduction public health ethics (phe) is a relatively new field of applied ethics, and is linked to the ethical implications of activities aimed at maintaining and improving health among the population. phe covers both factual and ethical issues in health policy and health sciences (1). article 25 of the universal declaration of human rights explicitly recognizes the right to health. article 12 of the international covenant on civil and political rights emphasizes that governments should recognize everyone’s right to the highest degree of physical and mental health that is possible within each society. therefore, protecting public health (ph) should be the most important goal of governments. in most countries, the health care system is organized at the national level, which indicates the responsibility of the state. however, these systems suffer from various pathologies that affect their performance (2 , 3). ph has affirmative obligations to improve public well-being and reduce evident social inequalities. therefore, a phe framework should not only protect the citizens’ negative rights for not intervening, but also emphasize their positive rights (4, 5). several functional frameworks have been provided by ph professionals to facilitate policyand decisionmaking (6 8). any ethical framework has a background of moral theories or at least an ethical approach to justify the selected moral norms, and various moral philosophies and theories can differently shape these structures. for example in consequentialist theories, the policy or action that delivers the best outcome is considered morally right. in utilitarianism, which is one of the most popular frameworks and is widely used in health policy, the only value is to do the greatest good for the greatest number. on the contrary, in deontological theories, the agent’s acts must only comply with moral duties. phe is connected to overlapping spheres of political, social and moral philosophy. however, the health care system mainly requires a “public philosophy”, which would provide a moral foundation and set limits on ph laws, policies and practices, as well as on social institutions and organizations involved in ph activities (9). the primary moral justification in ph as an institution is social justice, and the focal points of moral necessities are the oppressed and subordinate groups. these include people whose well-being expectations including health are so limited that their life choices differ from those of others; or children whose prospects of welfare are so poor that they are permanently locked in the systematic deprivations of their early years (10). will kymilicka states: “political philosophy is a matter of moral argument, and moral argument is a matter of appeal to our considered convictions. in saying this, i am drawing on what i take to be the everyday view of moral and political argument, that is, we all have moral beliefs; these beliefs can be right or wrong, we have reasons for thinking they are either right or wrong, and these reasons and beliefs can be organized into systematic moral principles and theories of justice. a central aim of political philosophy, therefore, is to evaluate competing theories of justice to assess the strength and coherence of their arguments for the rightness of their views” (11). rajabi et al. in their study aimed to explain the principles and values of the health system to be utilized in iran’s health system reform plan of 2025. while emphasizing respect for human dignity and protection of human prosperity, they concluded that addressing phe challenges necessitates new perspectives on both individuals and the society and the relationship between them (12). designing an ethical framework for health policymaking first requires an analysis of the political philosophy of the country's health care system, since the approach to ph depends on the political philosophy of each country (13). therefore, this study aimed to explain the political philosophy of the health care system based on theories of justice. in this study, after an overview of these theories, we analyzed the general health policies (ghps), which have been codified by the leader of the islamic republic of iran in implementing paragraph i of article 110 of the constitution after consultation with the expediency council. method document analysis is a systematic approach for reviewing or evaluating texts. like other analytical methods in qualitative research, document analysis requires that data be examined and interpreted in order to extract meaning and insight, and develop empirical knowledge (14). in this document analysis, the ghps document was examined to explain the politico-moral foundations of the health care system based on theories of justice and to explore how the moral values were enfolded. additionally, for critical discussion, web of science (isi), pubmed, embase, and scopus databases were purposefully searched using the following keywords: “public health/ethics” [mesh terms] or “public policy/ethics” [mesh terms] not “research” [mesh terms] and “philosophy/ethics” [mesh terms]. theories of justice the libertarian justice theory influenced by philosophers like john locke and robert nozick, a libertarian theory of justice focuses on individual freedom, and thus on our duty to respect the freedom of others, and the duty of governments to protect the freedom of citizens – as their right – when they are at risk. this often means a “minimal state” to prevent or punish breaches of personal boundaries, including individual property j med ethics hist med 10: 4, april, 2017 jmehm.tums.ac.ir forouzan akrami et al. page 3 of 10 rights. in this view, health care is not a right, but people can voluntarily choose the charitable act and contribute in some way to distribute health care in a community. ph can be legitimate, especially if it focuses on protecting people against infectious diseases; a type of boundary violation, preferably to broader concepts of health promotion that is characteristic of contemporary public health (15). libertarians do not oppose to utilitarian and egalitarian distributive patterns, provided that they are chosen freely. any fair distribution can be justified in health care coverage, if and only if people have freely chosen it in the relevant groups. as a result, libertarians generally support those health care systems in which health care insurance is private and purchased voluntarily. in such systems, the investors have the property right in the health care of the insured, doctors have the freedom right and the society is not morally obligated to provide health care. the libertarian interpretation of justice is not based on addressing the citizens’ health needs or the general benefit, but rather on carrying out unrestricted fair activities (16). the utilitarian justice theory utilitarian theories of justice were formed by prominent figures such as jeremy bentham and john stuart mill. the ground conceptions of justice in the principle of utility require policies, actions or rules that produce the maximum benefit. justice, which involves the correlation of rights and duties, is not an independent decision, but rather a derivation of interest. within this framework, the duties and rights in fair health care are the presupposition of net profit foundation. health care and ph can be valuable at least to the extent that they produce net social benefit (15). most of the utilitarian social programs support ph and distribute basic health care among all citizens. nevertheless, rights such as health care – when based on maximizing the ultimate good – will find a fragile basis, because the benefits may change at any time. for example, it seems unfair that a society itself maximizes the ultimate good by eliminating the access of the weakest and the sickest population. therefore, utilitarian principles of justice seem to have very serious problems, but if their inclusion scope is strictly limited, they can play a major role in health policy-making (16). the communitarian justice theory the communitarian justice theory arises from several philosophical views similar to utilitarian theories and do not assign an independent importance to individual rights such as freedom. thus, the perception of health care and a just health system depends on the community perception of health in relation to other primary goods (15). communitarians have a pluralistic view on the principle of justice, believing that they are as varied as the diverse perceptions of good in different societies. the duty of people with respect to justice depends on the criteria in each community. communitarians emphasize both the duties of the society towards individuals and the duties of the individuals towards the community. some communitarians avoid using the language of justice and use one of unity and integrity that includes both the values related to individual obligations and the principles of social ethics based on the common beliefs of a group. justice concepts do not rise from the rational or natural principles outside the community, but from criteria that are shaped internally along with the political development of the society. communitarians believe that emphasis on the community and the common good in health care allocation policies is also evident (16). in this regard, daniel callahan says that “we need to ask what can best guide us towards a good society, rather than whether it is harmful or whether it violates the autonomy of the people” (17). the egalitarian justice theory egalitarian theories draw on old religious perspectives that believe all human beings should be treated as equals in certain respects because they are created equal (16), and this makes the foundations of human rights (18). no prevailing egalitarian theory has been exclusive of a distributive principle based on equal sharing of all primary goods by everyone. it is characteristic of the dominant egalitarian theories to identify basic equalities that allow for some inequalities (16), and many of them recognize the possible legitimacy of a two-layered system, with the minimum decent layer of health care (set by the deliberative democracy). john rawls’ theory of justice is the mildest, most important egalitarian theory that has challenged liberalism, utilitarianism and communitarianism. among those who have been influenced by john rawls, norman daniels argues that justice requires the elimination or reduction of obstacles that prevent fair equality of individuals’ opportunities, including health as a moral importance, to allow people to pursue a variety of objectives and programs of life depending on their talents and skills. this includes programs to compensate for the shortcomings of people such as health deprivation. daniels looks for a comprehensive plan for fair health care and investigates the role of social determinants of health such as education, environmental and behavioral factors, and the socioeconomic status of communities (16, 19). with the start of the 21 st century, some innovative ideas raised debates about justice in the field of biomedical ethics. although this article has been formed in response to rawls’s egalitarian theory, it is not entirely the same in fundamental terms. it is mainly influenced by the ethical theory of aristotle, especially the role and importance of human flourishing states that rely mostly on fulfillment and moral virtue. in the following section, some recent theories of justice will be discussed. j med ethics hist med 10: 4, april, 2017 jmehm.tums.ac.ir forouzan akrami et al. page 4 of 10 the capabilities theory this theory is based on the assumption that the opportunity to reach states of proper functioning and well-being is an object of value and moral importance, and thus capability reflects an individual’s autonomy in selecting one of several alternative lives. people’s quality of life is conditioned by what they are able to do, and a life well lived is one in which people perform and maintain their basic capabilities. this theory was first proposed by amartya sen, and developed in many ways related to biomedical ethics by martha nussbaum. the latter explored the philosophical concept of “frontiers of justice” to address equitable inclusion for persons with disabilities, the poor, and animals. the central idea is that the minimum level of social justice entails the availability of 10 core capabilities for all citizens (16), which means everyone should be able to: 1) lead a normal life without encountering premature death or a deteriorated state unworthy of living 2) have the benefit of physical health 3) enjoy bodily integrity, that is, the ability to live in freedom and have security against violence, sexual satisfaction and fertility choice 4) use the capacity of senses, imagination and thought 5) enjoy emotional attachment to people and other entities and experience a feeling of gratitude 6) apply practical reasoning and participate in serious reflections bearing on one’s life arrangements 7) feel organizational affiliation as the capability to lead a meaningful life in cooperation with a company or others 8) be free to exhibit concern or care for other species 9) play and enjoy creative activities 10) have control over one’s environment as an active citizen the well-being theory the capabilities theory focuses on abilities and opportunities as prerequisites for well-being, but more recent theories have focused on well-being itself. in other words, freedom of action, capabilities, the associated empowerment trainings and resources are considered the well-being equipment (16). powers and faden have formulated a framework for bioethics in ph and health policy by providing a non-distributive theory of justice that complements distributive justice and goes beyond it. they believe that questions about important inequalities can only be answered by examining all the social determinants that increasingly and mutually impact human well-being. according to powers and faden, justice is more than the principles of distribution (10, 16) and beyond the distributive share of each person, and is identically connected to the nature of the relationships between individuals. some topics of discussion in the area of justice both for individuals and for groups include: concerns about social stigma, disrespect, lack of organization and social functions for adequate protection of existing capacities to maintain social independence or autonomy (20). from this perspective, the aim of justice is to ensure an acceptable level of the six basic dimensions of well-being, including health, reasoning, selfdetermination, attachment, personal security and respect for all (16, 21). citizens of countries that lack a comprehensive and coherent system of health care finance and delivery are unfortunately deprived of health services in spite of spending high costs. it is the obligation of governments to promote both utility and justice in the society (16). for this reason, we will analyze the general health policies (ghps) of iran served at the national level based on the aforementioned theories. analysis and criticism of general health policies in iran as the first item of the iranian ghp, “beneficence and service delivery based on islamic human values, spirituality and moral virtues and their promotion in the community” have been emphasized. these issues are clearly linked to social justice, and whenever people are in the position to do good things or impose costs, they will need justice criteria (16). in the context of public health, justice is a core ethical consideration, but unfortunately a theory of islamic justice is presently lacking. in recent decades, significant advances have been made in the field of primary health care, academic education and research in iran. progress in biomedical research has been accompanied by significant activities in legislation, education and research in the field of bioethics (22). however, the first paragraph of the first policy highlights “evolution” in academic environments in accordance with islamic values, medical ethics and professional practice. this implies the poor desirability of the current situation in service provision and the need to reform the health care system based on islamic moral values. moreover, the second paragraph of this policy emphasizes the importance of educating people about their rights and social responsibilities, and utilization of the full capacity of health care environments for the promotion of islamic ethics and spirituality in the society. the second, fifth, and sixth policies of the ghps directly point to egalitarianism, equitable access and fair distribution of health care services based on people’s needs. these sections highlight access to health as a social right, the responsibility of the state to make it happen, and egalitarianism as the dominant theory in the political philosophy of the national health care system. for the purposes of accountability, realization of justice, and provision of desirable medical services, the seventh and eighth policies specify that health resources be managed through the health insurance system, and that services be delivered by both public and private sector service providers in accordance with the legal j med ethics hist med 10: 4, april, 2017 jmehm.tums.ac.ir forouzan akrami et al. page 5 of 10 provisions. the eighth policy further emphasizes the significance of the principle of justice and the importance of accountability, transparent informing, effectiveness, efficiency and productivity in the health care system in keeping with evidence-based ranking and the referral system. the third paragraph of the eighth policy concerns the protection and care of veterans and the disabled community as vulnerable members of the society, and concentrates on empowerment and the promotion of health among them. the third policy focuses on the importance of a healthy lifestyle, and the twelfth policy pertains to healthy nutrition based on traditional iranian medicine, while the fourth policy is dedicated exclusively to the quality and efficiency of services. the eleventh policy is related to “raising awareness, responsibility, empowerment, and active and structured participation of the individual, family and community to provide, maintain and improve health by using the capacity of institutions and cultural, educational and media organizations under the supervision of the ministry of health and medical education”. it is obvious that this is a move aimed at achieving social justice, and therefore cannot be placed under the supervision of the ministry of health and medical education alone. the ninth policy discusses measures including: fair distribution through qualitative and quantitative development of health insurance and its delivery to the public; complete coverage of the basic treatment needs of the people by providing insurance to the whole of the society and reducing the share of the insured in medical costs; and providing services beyond basic insurance through complementary private coverage within the framework of legal and transparent stipulations with an emphasis on high quality basic health services. moreover, paragraph 7 of the ninth policy proposes a number of supplemental mechanisms to ensure public health, for instance reforming the performance-based payment system, raising efficiency, creating fair income and positive motives for service providers, and special attention to health promotion and preventive activities in deprived areas. one problem associated with health related goods and services concerns determination of the precise limits of the right to health. an approach in this respect is equal access to health resources. from a minimalistic standpoint, this means public access to health care, which is in accordance with the idea of some libertarians regarding the right to public resources, although this view is untenable by the justice theories previously mentioned. for this reason, current prominent liberal societies have created significant progress in solving the challenges facing their health care system in connection with the access, affordability and quality of care. as an instance, the united states approved the act of affordable care (aca), and since its adoption, the total rate of the uninsured has decreased by 43%, from 16% in 2010 to 9.1% in 2015 (23). therefore, the aim of moderate egalitarianism may be defined as the right to minimum, decent health care, that is, public access to basic health care and related resources. the standard concept, however, requires a two-layered system as follows (16): 1. compulsory social coverage for basic health needs and common mishaps 2. voluntary private coverage for other health needs and demands the first layer addresses health needs through public access to basic services. this model of a pure protection to all indicates that social requirements can be limited, which necessitates the definition of basic and secondary health needs based on the social norms in each society (19). the tenth policy pertains to “sustainable financing in the health sector” and indicates the prioritization of public health by the state. the third paragraph of this policy discusses “imposing taxes on products and materials, as well as punishments on harmful health services”, which refers to the important role of ph law in its implementation and continuation. moreover, the fourth paragraph covers “paying subsidies to the health sector, targeting health subsidies and treatments aiming at justice and the promotion of health particularly in deprived areas, and providing dedicated help to poor people and lower income groups”. this latter point clearly emphasizes the fairness of needs-based distribution and fair financial contribution. the thirteenth and fourteenth policies imply the importance of the educational aspect of medical sciences in providing efficient local and national human resources in order to improve the overall health of the population (24). these policies also stress the strategic development of medical research with an innovation and planning system approach to achieve excellence in science, technology, and provision of medical services in the region and throughout the islamic world, in accordance with the country’s 20-year vision document and to complement the previous policies. discussion to a large extent, the principles of egalitarian justice, respect for everyone and treating all people as equals comply with the fair procedures doctrine in the distribution of primary goods and not only health care. in the second policy, reference to “realization of a comprehensive approach to health and a healthy society in all legislation and executive policies” is consistent with the approach to health in all polices. the implementation of this approach enables the state to establish an integrated act in response to the health needs and well-being of the people. this, together with the ultimate goal of reducing health inequalities, considers the effects of other policies and laws on health through the social determinants j med ethics hist med 10: 4, april, 2017 jmehm.tums.ac.ir forouzan akrami et al. page 6 of 10 of health (25), and will be realized when healthbased laws and policies are designed, planned and implemented in all areas (26). no dominant egalitarian theory that consists of a distributive principle has been based on equal sharing of all primary goods by everyone. according to daniels, allocation of health care resources should provide justice through fair equality of opportunities. this inspiring theory of rawls has broad implications in national policies of health care. based on this theory, each member of the society should have enough access – not necessarily maximum access – to a level of health care regardless of their assets and positions. the exact level of access depends on the available social resources and public processes for decision-making. daniels believes that the social institutions influencing the distribution of health care should be coordinated so as to allow each person to receive a fair share of the normal range of the opportunities available in the community to pursue the objectives and plans of his or her life (16, 19). according to the theories of “moral desert”, people get what they deserve: good people are rewarded and bad people are penalized (27). from the perspective of defenders of luck egalitarianism, paying higher premiums or taxes by people who have healthier choices is not fair when others may have had morally irresponsible behaviors (28, 29). they believe that discussions on social factors affecting health are untenable. such reasoning is applied to health services in relation to crimes or bans on the access of individuals or groups who choose unhealthy lifestyles. nevertheless, there are reasons for unhealthy behavior that are not mere choices (30). differences in choices and lifestyles can be caused by social conditions and inequalities (31). some characteristics are the consequence of the natural and social lottery, and many people do not have a fair chance to obtain or change them; hence, they cannot be a morally acceptable basis for discrimination in allocation of social resources. accordingly, people with disabilities should receive a higher level of health care to have a fair chance in life. they may not be entitled to health care services if they are responsible for their disability, but if they are not, the principle of fair opportunity requires that they receive services that help them to compensate for the negative effects of lotteries (16). in proposing such an approach, sen has presented an explicit critique of rawls’ “fair equality of opportunity”, arguing that such opportunities are brutal stories, since many options are the outcome of poverty, low literacy, racism, and other similar events that are determined at birth. he argues that the primary and main concern of justice must be something that people are really able to achieve, a situation that amartya sen calls “substantive freedom”. in the view of sen, this includes “the ability of a person to do good actions and reach valuable states of being” (32). if people’s abilities are restricted by the circumstances or a range of limited conditions, the society cannot be considered a just one (33). in this view, injustice can be evaluated by the current practices and policies of major social institutions within the community. such practices enable certain social groups to develop capabilities necessary to obtain a decent and reasonable life, find work or other living arrangements to support their family, and be employed in projects, activities and valuable social relationships. there are occasional conflicts between public interests and autonomy in policy debates of public health that can be resolved by concentrating on the difference between freedom and autonomy. the debates on the potential violation of the principle of autonomy need to refocus on the issue of whether people can make meaningful choices about what they can do in their lives. people may be free to buy a large bottle of carbonated drink, but we cannot be dragged into talking about this deviated way of respecting autonomy, nor should we think that making the purchase of extra-large harmful products difficult is an important step in improving the lives of people and creating a just society (34). although there is not a single theory of justice that is unanimously accepted, “social justice” is a common term in the field of public health these days (35). the recent theories of justice state that having freedom to choose healthy behavior is not enough, and the ability of individuals to reason and their autonomy to make healthy choices must be developed (16, 21). david r. buchanan argues that improving public health is better achievable by expanding people’s autonomy through promoting the concept of justice, which is the definition of human progress. according to recent theories of justice, the most important issue in ph is not limiting the autonomy of individuals, for example by restricting the access of minorities and the poor to fast food or sugary, carbonated drinks in the hope of their weight loss, but rather the promotion of autonomy among community members. in other words, autonomy is a core value in a just society in which conditions for fostering the abilities of reasoning and decisionmaking are provided (34). schröder-bäck et al. analyzed the health strategy of european union (eu) via its ethical scope and considered implications for future health policy-making. their study showed that the health strategy of european union is barely documented and discussed in scientific literature, and that no specific attention has been given to its value base. their analysis showed that the mentioned values are particularly focused on health care in general rather than on ph in particular. they also concluded a theory of well-being is needed on a more general level for effective policy-making. therefore, a moral theory is required to explain this and the place of health values in a comprehensive j med ethics hist med 10: 4, april, 2017 jmehm.tums.ac.ir forouzan akrami et al. page 7 of 10 and coherent policy approach (36). although the capabilities theory highlights the important considerations in the analysis of the relationship between agency and structure, according to the theory of well-being, the aim of justice should be to ensure an adequate level of basic welfare, including health, reasoning and autonomy for every person, and not only the capabilities and means to achieve it. in this doctrine the origin of value or obligation is not merely individual choices or exercising one’s intellectual capacity for choosing, but the process of “creativity through choosing” which is integrated in autonomy is considered a part of well-being. ph professionals need to pay attention to much stronger fields, both moral and practical, in advocating for health policies and programs rather than creating bans (34). a healthy lifestyle is influenced by both individual agency and social determinants of health, including structural factors and living conditions (31). recently, personalism has been proposed firstly in regard to human dignity and secondly because of the agency of individuals as social beings who construct the collective good through solidarity, and as the philosophical core of the health care system (2). the concept of lifestyle-related diseases and individual responsibilities for/toward health plays an important role in discussions about fair allocation of scarce health resources. looking into this issue from the perspective of solidarity emerged as a value in the context of a solidarity project in bioethics by nuffield council in 2011. barbara prainsack has analyzed the most important arguments in favor of using lifestyle choices as a benchmark in solidaritybased health policy-making to prioritize and classify access to health care services (30, 37, 38). still, arguments about crimes or prohibitions on the access of individuals or groups that choose unhealthy lifestyles are provided in treatment services. nevertheless, there are different unhealthy behaviors that might not be restricted to “mere choice”, so access to ph based on lifestyle choices is not an exclusively moral issue, and despite the arguments presented to this effect, unhealthy behavior is not a breach of solidarity in itself (30). recent studies have explained the role of moral virtues in ph (39 41). they demonstrate that for the past several decades, the concept of “structure” in moral theology has almost exclusively focused on the structure of the society with regard to the need to change. the structures that have continued unfair positions and created systematic barriers for human development are classified as “structures of sin” and have therefore been the object of social and theological criticism. ph professionals and health policy-makers are attempting to create new structures (i.e. law, policy and environment) that have a positive impact on the lives of individuals and communities. such social structures are formed by individual characteristics and virtues as units of fundamental value that form each person’s habits and behaviors. according to michael d. rozier, “structure is only one part of a larger system of our behavior” (40). we have the disposition rooted in our personality and we want to cultivate it. we identify the habitual behaviors that are transformative, and adopt social norms that encourage the behavior. therefore, we build the social structures that promote social norms and virtues. in this manner, the internalized virtues of moral agents continue to spread across the community and finally to structures that shape the society and agents (40). the constitution determines the special powers of the federal government and limits its authority to protect freedom (42). in other words, the constitution of a country provides a framework for the localization of global treaties including the international declaration of human rights. although the state has the authority to act for the common good, it should also apply the internal power of the limits imposed by the constitution (21). the charter of fundamental rights of the european union has been developed in accordance with the common commitments between international and national laws of the european union in line with the citizen’s rights of member states, including the right to health care (43). in iran, the constitution, the 20-year vision document, and the comprehensive scientific map of health are among the reference documents that have presented the guidelines for involved institutions. the first step towards awareness of a law that can change people’s lives is legal literacy. legal literacy programs educate community members, patients and health care providers about their national and local laws and their rights, and this knowledge enables them to utilize these rights and seek support for specific health needs. some objectives of such programs include: increasing awareness and capacity building, training educators, education and community empowerment, and encouraging law students to work for social justice and solidarity (44). these goals are all considered as moral norms in ph and health policy-making (45). conclusion given the centrality of the principle of justice in public health, in this study we analyzed ghps issued at the national level in terms of the theory of justice. the findings point to egalitarianism as the dominant theory in political philosophy in the country’s health care system. the first policy on the list focuses on beneficence and providing health services based on humanistic/islamic culture and values and their institutionalization in the community without mentioning the fair procedures. although decision and policy-making in the field of bioethics has no justification in muslim societies without paying attention to the islamic culture, justice principles are j med ethics hist med 10: 4, april, 2017 jmehm.tums.ac.ir forouzan akrami et al. page 8 of 10 required in providing goods. the second, fifth, and sixth policies of the 14-item list of ghps directly point to egalitarianism, equitable access of people and fair distribution of health care services based on need. nevertheless, since “social justice” adequately supplies well-being dimensions including health beyond distributive justice, the distinct areas of justice are rejected. it is possible, however, to talk about justice in the ph and health policy-making without referring to the construction of other public policies and social structures. these policies must therefore address something beyond well-being and its basic dimensions such as health, reasoning and autonomy, or the role of agencies and involved social institutions in order to achieve social justice. making people aware about their rights and responsibilities, as well as increasing their knowledge and empowerment, implies the role of individuals’ agency and autonomy in choosing their lifestyle, in addition to the role of governments in achieving social justice. finally, for the institutionalization of humanistic/islamic values in the community, public health structures should aim to promote healthy behaviors. moreover, for the 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(accessed on: 2012) 45. den exter a. international health law: solidarity and justice in health care. netherlands: maklu pub; 2008. microsoft word c74 full issue 17dec.docx journal of education, 2018 issue 74, http://journals.ukzn.ac.za/index.php/joe doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i74a06 working toward a socially just curriculum in south africa: a collaborative autobiographical narrative inquiry marguerite müller school of education studies, faculty of education, university of the free state, bloemfontein, south africa mullerm@ufs.ac.za collins motai lecturer, national certificate vocational (ncv) programme, higher education & training, motheo tvet college, bloemfontein, south africa motaid@motheotvet.co.za matshepo nkopane lecturer, national certificate vocational (ncv) programme, higher education & training, motheo tvet college, bloemfontein, south africa nkopanee@motheotvet.co.za tiisetso mofokeng english and sesotho teacher, jimmie roos school, dewetsdorp, south africa tiisetsomofokeng32@gmail.com nthatuoa lephatsoe english language and literature teacher, st. stephens high school, mohale’s hoek, lesotho nthalephatsoe@gmail.com ryno mouton deputy principal, north primary school, sasolburg, south africa rynom@ymail.com (received: 14 may 2018; accepted: 25 october 2018) abstract in this article, we foreground the lived experiences of a group of post-graduate education students at the university of the free state who explored issues of social justice in the curriculum. our contextual and local experiences are situated as part of a call for the decolonisation of the curriculum. in this context, we view 86 journal of education, no. 74, 2018 curriculum as an autobiographical, lived, and storied practice (pinar, 2012). through our creative collaborative narrative, we focus on teacher identity and experience since this has been shown to have a major impact on the curriculum (clandinin & connelly, 2000). furthermore, we use kumashiro’s (2002) conceptualisation of antioppressive education to highlight the messiness and discomfort of our experiences as we relearn, unlearn, and trouble oppressive knowledge in order to imagine alternatives. we posit anti-oppressive education as part of the social justice project as a useful theoretical stance in thinking around the decolonisation of the curriculum. in this article, we use a critical qualitative inquiry (denzin, 2017) to explore what a process of decolonisation might look like; we offer an entangled view of how a collaborative narrative research methodology, identity, experience, and theory form part of the process of working towards a socially just and decolonised curriculum. our article contributes to an existing body of work that uses collaborative and narrative methods to research issues of social justice. however, since much of the international literature on social justice education and curriculum is written in contexts far removed from our everyday experiences, we wish to make a unique contribution that is rooted in our local context and that highlights the unique experiences of south african teachers in relation to issues of social justice and the decolonisation of the curriculum. keywords: collaborative research; autobiographical narrative; decolonisation; social-justice; anti-oppressive education. a call for change the call for decolonised higher education has intensified in recent years. this is evident from the student protest movements that, as jansen (2017) noted, placed great emphasis on a decolonised university curriculum. as south african educators, we need to think about how we can respond to the call for a decolonised curriculum. furthermore, we need to think about how our research practices can inform and be informed by this response so our thinking, about curriculum change, transformation, and decolonisation should be informed by research practices that make such change possible. our engagement with decolonisation must thus be twofold—first, in our experimentation with a different way of doing research, and second, in the theoretical sphere of anti-oppressive education where we locate our experiences of change and social justice. in this article, we use a critical qualitative inquiry (denzin, 2017) to explore what a process of decolonisation might look like. we are interested in how our identity and experiences can guide our understanding of curriculum as entangled with transformation, decolonisation, and social justice. in this exploration we use anti-oppressive education as a theoretical stance to help us think through issues of social justice, decolonisation and curriculum. furthermore, our critical inquiry is located in a collaborative, autobiographical, and narrative methodology that enables us to address issues of power relationships with research contexts as well as foreground the contextual and local experiences of south african educators. we offer an entangled view of how a collaborative narrative research methodology, experience, and literature all form part of the process of working towards a socially just and decolonised curriculum. in the next section, we discuss some of the literature and theories on decolonisation and social justice. we highlight specifically the theory of anti-oppressive education to explore the ways in which it might help us move towards a decolonised curriculum. following that, we discuss our method of collaborative narrative research as it becomes entangled with our theoretical understanding of decolonisation and social justice. müller et al.: working toward a socially just curriculum in south africa . . . 87 a discussion of some literature and theories on decolonisation and social justice here we unpack some of the literature and theories on decolonisation and social justice as it relates to our understanding and context. mackinlay and barney (2014) have pointed out that “[d]ecolonisation is a concept that takes on different meanings across different contexts” (p. 55. nonetheless, it can be understood roughly to encompass a project that resists eurocentrism, works to address the harm caused by colonial domination, and moves towards more socially just practices in the field of education. it should be noted, however, that there are many contradictions and controversies surrounding the issue of decolonisation in education. scholars like jansen (2017) and keet, sattarzadeh, and munene (2017) have warned that it might be part of a new academic fad that might just disappear with time as it goes out of fashion, without having had any real or transformative impact on our curriculum or practices. they argue that educators should not simply get caught up in this latest buzz word but should, rather, work with students to “contribute to the self-clarification of the struggles within our universities” (p. 5). in this article, we hope to contribute to this selfclarification by using collaborative, autobiographical narratives to create a reflexive and honest engagement with ourselves and our experiences as we move towards a socially just, decolonised, and transformed curriculum. jansen (2017) has stated that “[t]eachers interpret the curriculum to students on the basis of their own experiences, backgrounds, politics, and preferences” (p. 169). from this, we understand that the experiences of educators—our own experiences—should play a pivotal role in working towards a decolonised curriculum. the manner in which we engage with these experiences is also significant in the context of decolonisation. mbembe (2016) has reminded us that western epistemic traditions are traditions that claim detachment of the known from the knower. they rest on a division between mind and world, or between reason and nature as an ontological a priori. they are traditions in which the knowing subject is enclosed in itself and peeks out at a world of objects and produces supposedly objective knowledge of those objects. the knowing subject is thus able to know the world without being part of that world and he or she is by all accounts able to produce knowledge that is supposed to be universal and independent of context. (pp. 32–33). by calling attention to the problematics of western traditions of knowledge as something that resides outside of the subject, and as something that can be objectively investigated and found, mbembe (2016) has helped us to trouble existing and prevailing research traditions in which researchers are often positioned as knowers who make knowledge claims about the known. he went on to say that “there is a consensus that our institutions must undergo a process of decolonization both of knowledge and of the university as an institution” (p. 33). in this article, we look specifically at how we can create an alternative approach to what counts as knowledge in terms of social justice and decolonisation of the curriculum. we do this by foregrounding the voice, identity, and knowledge of educators who engage with 88 journal of education, no. 74, 2018 curricula in terms of what aoki (1993, 2005) described as a lived experience and what le grange has thought of as an autobiographical one in their everyday world. in moving towards a decolonised approach to research practice and methodology, we need, therefore, to come to a new understanding of subjectivity, one in which the knower and the known become conflated. in moving towards this new understanding, we need to think of new ways of knowing because, as mbembe (2016) has pointed out, “[w]e might be fighting battles of the present and the future with outdated tools [and] [w]e need more profound understanding of the situation we find ourselves in today if we are to better rethink the university of tomorrow” (p. 37). we try to come to a more profound understanding of the situation in which we find ourselves today by looking at the shared experiences that brought us to this point of collaboration. we, as the educators who participated in this study, form an assemblage of histories and experiences in coming from different places but ones that move us in the same direction towards what zembylas (2017) referred to as a shared responsibility. the way we understand and use decolonisation in our work is as a compelling and productive force that necessitates our working towards new ways of being, researching, and teaching in the southern african context. linking decolonisation to social justice in this section, we extend the discussion of how our work relates to decolonisation to issues of social justice and we zoom in specifically on the theory of anti-oppressive education. the critical theorist paulo freire (1985) stressed the importance of recognising the educator and the student as historical beings. as south african educators, we do not come into the classroom with clean slates. in fact, most of us come from a divided and unequal society in which we function inside oppressive structures and systems. yet, we have an official commitment to a socially just curriculum as is enshrined in almost all the curriculum assessment policy statements (caps) (2012), documents that currently serve as curriculum and policy guidelines for south african educators. with this in mind, we set out to understand how our identities and experiences can influence curriculum transformation for a more socially just and decolonised educational system. in our research, our teacher identities and experiences are foregrounded in line with our view of curriculum as an autobiographical, lived, and storied practice (pinar, 2012). in this project, we approach social justice as more than just a theoretical concept that we need to embrace in our teaching. rather, it is an active process in which our identities and experiences shape and influence what we teach and how we teach it. bell (2007) described social justice as both a process and a goal. the process for attaining the goal of social justice, we believe, should be democratic and participatory, inclusive and affirming of human agency and human capacities for working collaboratively to create change . . . the goal for social justice education is to enable people to develop the critical analytical tools necessary to understand oppression and their own socialization within oppressive systems, and to develop a müller et al.: working toward a socially just curriculum in south africa . . . 89 sense of agency and capacity to interrupt and change oppressive patterns and behaviours in themselves and in the institutions and communities of which they are part. (p. 2) our research project embraces both the process and the goal of social justice. our process is highlighted through our methodological approach, which, because it is participatory, inclusive, and affirming of human agency, makes it possible for us to work collaboratively to create change. furthermore, our project has the goal of helping us locate and recognise our experiences with oppression and oppressive systems through an engagement with our autobiographical narratives. this is in line with bell and desai’s (2011) view that “[s]ocial justice practices at their best should also awaken our senses and the ability to imagine alternatives that can sustain the collective work necessary to challenge entrenched patterns and institutions and build a different world” (p. 287). we approach this imagining of alternatives collaboratively as we explore how to interrupt and change our own behaviour and, by extension, the educational institutions and communities of which we are part. teaching for social justice is a pedagogical method that enables teachers to implement and deliver a curriculum that is fair and equal and does not discriminate against learners because of their differences. our study maintains that for social justice to be possible, teachers need to collaborate with other teachers to become activists of social transformation. however, this might be easier said than done. francis and hemson (2007) explored the actions of m.ed. students in a course on pedagogy in social justice education and how these clashed with an anti-oppressive approach. they show how problematic it is to think that educators can simply change from practising oppression to offering liberation, since, in reality, the move towards social justice in education is difficult, imperfect, and challenging. keeping this in mind, our study highlights the need to engage collaboratively with our experiences as we critically reflect and seek new knowledge for building relations and developing a culture of integrity, respect, and care for others. the collaborative aspect of our study is thus an important expression of our understanding of social justice. it links to our view of decolonisation as necessitating a new way of doing research in order to foreground the local realities and experiences of educators. these experiences are framed within a larger project of social justice and transformation. a theory of anti-oppressive education here we discuss the theory of anti-oppressive education and how we used it to make sense of our past and present experiences in south african education. we locate our study in the antioppressive theory of kevin kumashiro (2002), who emphasized the importance of troubling our existing knowledge in a process of unlearning, relearning, and looking beyond what we know. he described four ways to conceptualise anti-oppressive education. the first way is “education for the other” (p. 28), in which the educators strive to improve the experience of students who are othered. this approach views the school essentially as a harmful space in which othered students are treated in harmful ways. the goal for educators working towards anti-oppressive practice should then be to teach to all and embrace the diversity of students as 90 journal of education, no. 74, 2018 raced, gendered, sexually diverse, and classed individuals. the second approach is “education about the other” (p. 33). the aim here is to create awareness and knowledge about the other. such knowledge often relies on normative values—the so-called right and authentic truth— but this can be misleading and distorted, and based on stereotypes, and is therefore partial and biased knowledge. kumashiro’s third approach to conceptualising anti-oppressive education is “education that is critical of privileging and othering” (p. 37). here, the focus is shifted from otherness and emphasises how some groups are favoured, normalised, and privileged. schools are seen to be spaces that transmit ruling ideologies and reproduce existing social orders; we have to recognise, critique, and understand such social inequality. this involves unlearning what was previously learned as normal and normative as kumashiro has made clear. the fourth and final approach is “education that changes the self and society” (p. 39). this implies that we must constantly look beyond what is being said for the silences and contradictions in our knowledge. following this framework means that we have to revisit our desire to ignore certain things in our narratives. kumashiro (2002) argued that anti-oppressive theory is influenced by poststructuralism and therefore allows us to deconstruct the self/other binary that can be viewed as rooted in colonial discourse, so a move towards decolonisation must also be a move beyond the self/other distinction. anti-oppressive theory helps us to trouble the self/other binary through our theoretical understanding and to extend it to our methodological approach as we try to move beyond binaries like knower/known, researcher/participant, subject/object, and so on. furthermore, anti-oppressive theory is rooted in critical theory, which helps us examine the connection between social identity, unequal power relationships, and oppression. critical theory has been influential in helping education researchers develop a reflexive stance towards their teaching. in exposing the limitations of critical theory in a post-conflict society, jansen (2009) has called for a post-conflict pedagogy. he has argued that although critical theory shows us the systematic and institutionalised character of oppression, it is limited in “making sense of troubled knowledge and for transforming those who carry the burden of such knowledge . . . critical theory receives and constructs the world as divided between black and white, working and privileged classes, citizens and illegal immigrants, men and women, straight and queer, oppressors and oppressed; its dialogical pretences notwithstanding, the world is torn among rival groups” (p. 256). we find the anti-oppressive theory of kumashiro (2002) useful because it enables us to acknowledge the limits of what we know and encourages us to move beyond our current knowledge. given this understanding of anti-oppressive education, we are able to peruse a plurality of knowledge rooted in local and small micro-narratives that honour the past and present experiences of south african teachers. the multiplicity of understanding that comes from collaborative work of this nature serves to trouble the colonial ideals of universal knowledge and grand overarching narratives. we hope that our study can contribute to the plurality of knowledge through contextual and local responses as we work towards an understanding of a decolonised curriculum. müller et al.: working toward a socially just curriculum in south africa . . . 91 a research methodology that responds to the call for change in this section, we discuss our methodological approach and link it to our theoretical understanding of decolonisation, social justice, and anti-oppressive education. in line with our view of knowledge as a plurality, we used a collaborative narrative method to engage critically with our experiential knowledge of social justice in the curriculum. we chose a narrative method for our project because “narrative researchers continue to be compelled by the relationship between their work and possibilities for change and social justice” (chase, 2011, p. 427). a narrative approach is well suited to address issues of complexity and cultural and human centeredness because of its capacity to record and retell events that have had the most influence on us. we locate narrative in the broader area of critical qualitative methodologies that are well suited to research using critical perspectives and theories. ulmer (2017) stated that critical qualitative methodology has transformative aims by attending to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, culture, spirituality, ability, language, and other aspects of identity. critical methodologies welcome all of humanity to contribute knowledge. because critical inquiry strives to be inclusive, anyone can offer insights based on their own socio-cultural experiences. as a result, robust bodies of literature have developed around critical race theory, as well as feminist, lgbtq, indigenous, and dis/ability studies. these methodologies have been applied most often within interpretivist frames that underscore the importance of honouring marginalized people’s experiences, perspectives, voices, and participation in research. (p. 834) the autobiographical aspect of the research is thus necessary since it offers all participants the chance to contribute insights into their own socio-cultural experiences in relation to education and social justice. denzin (2017) emphasised the role of the researcher in an historical present where the need for social justice is becoming more and more evident. he stated that “[t]he pursuit of social justice within a transformative paradigm challenges prevailing forms of inequality, poverty, human oppression, and injustice. this paradigm is firmly rooted in a human rights agenda” (p. 8). the local lives of the researcher and participant are thus important since “[t]he focus will be on human beings as universal singulars, individuals, and groups universalizing in their singularity the transformative life experiences of their historical moment” (p. 9). denzin (2008) described interpretative biography or autoethnography as a method of inquiry in which we re-tell or re-perform our lived experiences. this method does not necessarily concern itself with giving what might be called a true or accurate representation of what was or is, but, rather, with the possibilities of knowing what our biographies make possible. as leavy (2009) pointed out, “[a]utobiographic work is suited to identity research that seeks to confront stereotypes that keep some groups disenfranchised while other groups are limited by their own biased ‘common-sense’ ideas” (p. 24). in seeking for a local and contextual understanding of how educator identity responds to and shapes ideas of social justice and 92 journal of education, no. 74, 2018 decolonisation, we embarked on a form of collaborative narrative inquiry that is autobiographical in nature. furthermore, the collective biographical (see davies & gannon, 2012) aspect of our project is important because of its “potentially radical, political, disruptive, and creative approach to inquiry, one that offers multiple possibilities and openings for researchers” (wyatt, gale, gannon, & davies, 2018, p. 738). by abandoning the idea of an individualised author, we seek to open up the multiplicity of the assembled subjectivities that stand in contrast to the colonial desire of categorisation and order and the subsequent neoliberal demand for competitive individualism (see wyatt et al., 2018). as critical qualitative researchers, we used a collaborative autobiographical narrative methodology to explore the entanglement of our day-to-day experiences and our identities in relation to issues of social justice in the curriculum. collaborative writing responds to the aims of an inquiry that seeks to explore the not yet known, or the space beyond what we know. by doing this, we hope to respond to the call for change in our context by disrupting overarching and dominant understandings of social justice in the curriculum and by highlighting the nuances of our local and contextual experiences. our collaborative autobiographical narrative to sum up briefly, in the previous two sections we explained how our theoretical understandings and methodological approach underscore a research project in which we explore issues of educator identity, social justice and decolonisation through a collaborative autobiographical method. in this section, we explain the project in more detail and present the combined narrative in which we explore some of our diverse experiences in preand postapartheid south africa. through this, we hope to explore our understanding of bias, equity, diversity, access, and power in the curriculum. generating the narratives this article is the culmination of a collaborative study on social justice in the curriculum that we conducted as a group during a pgdip (postgraduate diploma) module at the university of the free state in 2017. as part of the pgdip course students are required to submit a research project (capstone project) in which they complete a mini dissertation based on a theme that relates to the coursework they have done. students typically work on similar themes in groups of five to eight under the supervision of a lecturer who leads the project. our group consisted of five students doing their capstone research project and one principal investigator. the students on the project worked in diverse educational settings, ranging from primary school and high school to technical and vocational education and training (tvet) colleges. our group consisted of people who identify with different and diverse categories of gender, race, sexuality, language, class, ability, and other social categories. coming from diverse educational and social backgrounds and working for various educational institutions, we were in the privileged position of being able to take a broad view of our experiences with social justice in a variety of educational settings. müller et al.: working toward a socially just curriculum in south africa . . . 93 in this project, we used our own autobiographical narratives of experience and memory of social justice in relation to the curriculum to generate data. we created a written data set by writing our autobiographical narratives in response to a set of question prompts adapted from cochran-smith et al. (1999) that served to shape our research protocol. the following questions were used by all of us to write our initial autobiographical narrative. • what does social justice mean to you? • narrate your life-story (brief but focus on key areas of growth/change/awareness you have undergone in terms of social justice). • what are your experiences as educators in relation to the cycles of oppression (race, gender, culture, language, ability, sexuality, etc.) that operate in our society and schooling institutions? • describe a critical event in your own schooling during which you perceived an absence of social justice. • describe a critical event in your teaching experience during which you perceived an absence of social justice. • if our classrooms were socially just, what would they look like? • what are the implications of social-justice issues in our curriculum? • how do our own experiences and identities influence the experiences and identities of our students? • how do our own experiences and identities help/hinder us in working towards social justice? after we generated the individual written narratives, we shared them with each other and then got together as a group to discuss our narrative responses and collaboratively interpret our various stories. the combined collaborative narrative was created from five individual narratives. each participant chose a pseudonym for her or his individual character. the different narratives are brought together in a conversation about past and present experiences with oppression and social justice in educational contexts. the language used in the narrative is purposefully presented in informal conversational south african english, with no language editing having been done so as to honour the authentic contributions of the authors (all of whom use english as their second or third language). in the next section we will offer a brief explanation of how the narratives were interpreted and, thereafter, an exploration of the narratives. interpreting the narratives our aim in this research project was to shape a collaborative autobiographical narrative about issues of social justice in education. chase (2011) stated that narrative researchers “turn the analytic lens fully and specifically on themselves as they write, interpret, or perform narratives about their own culturally significant experiences” (pp. 422–423). our interpretation or analysis of our narrative responses is thus informed by a narrative tradition in which interpretation happens throughout the research process, and in which the researcher uses “themes either within or across an individual’s experience and in the social setting” 94 journal of education, no. 74, 2018 (clandinin & connelly, 2000, p. 123) in order to create stories in a process of “storying and restorying” (polkinghorne, 1995, p.11). furthermore, our interpretation is guided by a collaborative approach to analysis. collaborative analysis becomes useful when the interest of a research project seems not to be served by a single perspective but requires the engagement of multiple perspectives (cornish, gillespie, & zittoun, 2013). in our interpretation, we thus collaboratively re-storied our individual autobiographical narratives in order to formulate a combined narrative that responds to the theory of antioppressive education (kumashiro, 2000) as outlined above. from this theory, we were able to identify certain themes that helped us engage with our narrative experiences in order to foreground issues of social justice. some of the themes that we identified were messiness, discomfort, harmful spaces, othering and being othered, relearning and unlearning, and change of the self and society. in the following section, we show how our collaborative narratives helped us locate some of the themes of social justice and anti-oppressive education as identified in our experiences. we acknowledge that our narrative is partial and incomplete. it is not meant to be a comprehensive or generalisable narrative of experiences of social justice in education; it is meant to be an intimate engagement with some of the issues that arose from our micro-social milieus in order to make connections to other educators who work in similar contexts. we aimed to highlight the connections, similarities, and differences in our experiences as we collectively aim to understand the significance of our current moment and envision a way forward in which we do not replicate and repeat the oppression or injustices of the past. drawing understanding from each other’s narratives after we had each written our own individual narrative, 1 we shared these with each other to see how we could collaboratively identify themes of social justice and anti-oppressive education. using our written narrative responses to the questions mentioned earlier we traced how our memories and histories from early childhood and our socialisation might have influenced our current understandings. we found that many of the narratives we shared keep the us/them understanding intact. in camilla’s narrative, she locates her early understanding of the binaries of gender, race, and class: my dad was a police man and my mom worked as a potter in the local hospital. they went on a strike, stayed in jail for a night and they lost their jobs. mom became a domestic worker; come christmas i would always get a present from the white lady my mom worked for – an envelope with cash in it. later, as a learner in an afrikaans/english school, there was a lot of race division as i still see today. we had these boys in our school that would not sing the national anthem in the parts that was not in their language, but when getting to their language they would sing it out very loudly. 1 all names used here are pseudonyms. müller et al.: working toward a socially just curriculum in south africa . . . 95 craven also speaks of his experience with racial binaries and racial geographies when he started teaching as a white teacher in a school where the majority of the learners were black. i started my education career in a (ex) model c school where 90% of our children came out of the townships 2 of the town. the children came with taxis to school and we had little to no parent involvement. i was like a father to a lot of the children, especially next to the sports field – parents seldom to never come to support their children. i really saw a different picture about life in my five years teaching at this school and also saw how independent grade 1 children could be, as i did not experience it like that growing up. mary also highlights her experiences with racial binaries at her institution. in the staffroom there were two big tables with chairs. as you enter the staffroom, the first table you will find only white people members of the staff seated there and then on the second table only black people members of the staff. on my first day, i arrived early and sat on nearest seat available to avoid unnecessary interruptions or to show some good manners. there was a white educator who was seated on the very same table and he kept on giving a strange look. it was only later when all members arrived i realized that i am seated on the wrong table. even today, if you visit our staffrooms in the morning meeting you find the similar set up; it is like there is silent agreement between the both racial groups (black and white educators) not to cross over the other race’s territory. paterson focused on his experiences with binaries of gender. when i was in primary, i was not comfortable with the agricultural session where we had to go to the garden. girls will just put in seed in a hole and the boys had to dig the holes. i always felt isolated because all the other learners, mostly boys, will mock me for being a ‘sissy'. the teacher also labelled me as ‘a special child who does not want to do anything.’ from the narratives we shared, it became evident that we have all experienced racial, gender, cultural, language, and sexual inequality in educational spaces in some form or another and to some extent. not surprisingly, there is a particular focus on racial binaries, racial geographies, and racial territorialisation in educational spaces. kumashiro (2000) stated that the school can be a harmful place where learners are othered based on their sexuality, gender, race, language, socio-economic background, abilities and/or disabilities. educators also function in these harmful spaces and are not immune to the kinds 2 under apartheid legislation all south africans were classified in racial categories as white, black, coloured or indian. different racial groups were designated to occupy different living spaces by law. townships or locations were the spaces designated as being for ‘black, coloured or indian’ south africans. townships or locations were commonly found on the outskirts of towns or cities. suburban spaces that were closer to the city center were designated as ‘white’ spaces. after the fall of apartheid these segregated living arrangements, although no longer legally enforced, continue to categorize the south african landscape and many south africans still use the terms township and location. 96 journal of education, no. 74, 2018 of inequalities they produce. from the narratives we shared, it became clear that many of us focused on negative experiences and memories of being othered in educational contexts. camilla speaks of her experience of feeling othered. in grade 6, i was taken to a multiracial school. here i am, a girl from kasi 3 , in a school where it was white dominated. adapting was a bit difficult. i went from being an a student to an underachiever. when i was in primary, where a white teacher . . . called all the black learners stupid because we couldn’t swim and we would make our parents write us letters that we won’t swim. but the most racism or discrimination i got was from my own kind. in most instances, i was told i think i’m better because i can speak afrikaans – and that actually made me hate speaking it. in camilla’s narrative, we see the intersections of race, class, culture, and language in educational contexts. mary also speaks of how other learners at school called her names because of her socio-economic background. most of us resided in mud houses, did not have any running water or electricity. i was at the age of six years when i went to school, where i realised that there was something wrong with my family. i saw my family through the eyes of my classmates, who will regularly scold me about my dysfunctional family. those who lived in brick houses with electricity and a telephone line called the likes of me by names. paterson speaks of how teachers made him feel othered based on his stutter and sexual orientation. when i was in primary, i used to prefer wearing the grey school short pants, unlike the long pants that all boys used to wear. one of my primary school teachers made a remark about how i wear trousers like girls and i am always around girls as if i want to be a girl: ‘ke hore ke qala ho bona moshemane a aparang borikgwe bo motisang chena, ebile a dula a le ka hara banana, kapa ke tharasi’ (i have never seen a boy who wears tied pants like this and he is always around girls. is he gay?). she used the words ‘is he gay?’ as a rhetorical question. i felt unsafe and shameful by what she said, especially when all the other learners started laughing and labelling me as gay. in high school, most of my teachers would not allow me to express myself because i was a stutterer. this was a barrier for me as a learner, especially when i had to do an oral presentation using a language that is not my mother tongue because i would become nervous yet trying to avoid any english errors. agnes points further to the gender and sexual roles to which learners are expected to subscribe by pointing to her current experience as a teacher. my school offers subjects like fashion and textiles and woodwork, but learners seem to believe that certain subjects like woodwork should only be taken by boys, and 3 the term ‘kasi’ as used here is derived from the word lokasie, an afrikaans word meaning location or township. müller et al.: working toward a socially just curriculum in south africa . . . 97 fashion and textiles be taken by girls. this has led to some learners discriminating and harassing others for the choice of subjects. boys would be referred to as ladies for they study subjects ‘supposedly meant’ for girls, and vice versa. they would also be pushed out of the toilets to be told to join ‘other girls.’ the negative experiences we share are from our memories of schooling as well as from our current experiences as educators. some of us went on to extend our negative experiences into our current understanding to show how reflection on this connection helped us undergo a process of unlearning and relearning. for example, agnes describes her experiences of discrimination by indian classmates when she was in school and how she developed hatred towards them. the school i went to was a private school with more indian learners than basotho. the problem there was when our fellow indian students spoke a harassing and hurtful language which we basotho could not understand. i say ‘hurtful’ because we later learned what those words they would say meant. what was most hurtful was that we did not receive any help from the principal because the matter would disappear just like that. we then decided to retaliate by using our own language against our harassers, but to our surprise, we would be punished and promised suspension. ‘who is better than whom in this school?’ we always wondered. however, she goes on to describe how her growing understanding of social justice has helped her to appreciate her current indian learners and to love them as their teacher. i must say, all these scarred me for a very long time. since then, i lost trust in myself. i never thought i could excel in anything. i could not voice my opinion for fear of how people would receive it. i developed hatred for indians: strong hatred that led me into taking it out on my indian students at my current school. this had always been my plan of avenging for my past experiences with indians as a scholar back then. i had now found what i had long awaited. but through my current studying, i have learned about social justice and have realised it is really wrong of me to inflict injustice to anybody. i should be an example. furthermore, craven says that his experiences in an under-resourced school helped him to see how students from poor backgrounds could think critically and solve problems without having all the facilities he had growing up. he realised that learners with far fewer resources could achieve good results if they had support. the children had lots of potential and were very clever, but going home they did not get support on homework or assignments to be done, so it was only the learners with a lot of self-discipline that achieved good marks. i picked up here while teaching technology that the children are very good problem solvers and can make, literally make something out of nothing; these learners could think for themselves as there was no one to go home to and help them. 98 journal of education, no. 74, 2018 paterson was also able to see how his negative experiences in education help him in his teaching now. i believe that as teachers sharing our life experiences will empower our students to pursue their dreams as much as we did. moreover, as i have students from lgbti community in my class, most of them identify with me and they feel empowered because someone who is like ‘them’ is able to become something. in addition, i also cover curriculum content that address homosexuality and as a lecturer who is homosexual i feel very confident when teaching that part, which allows my students to engage more on the issues and express their feelings, which is social justice. it becomes clear therefore that an engagement with the lived experiences of the past, whether hurtful or negative, has helped these educators think about how they currently act in their various settings. discussion and conclusion in this project, we set out to engage with decolonisation in two ways. first, we decided to experiment with a different way of doing research that addresses issues of power and privilege in traditional approaches to research and also foregrounds the local experiences of south african teachers. first, in the methodology we chose we found that the autobiographical aspect helped us to engage honestly with our own understandings and that the collaborative aspect helped us to relate that understanding to others. some of the readings and understandings could have emerged only from our collaborative work and would never have been possible had we done this as individual narratives. second, we wanted to explore how a theory of anti-oppressive education could be useful when we were making meaning of our narratives in relation to decolonisation and social justice. the theory helped us identify the ways in which our narratives kept an us/them understanding intact to a large extent. in thinking of a way forward, we recognised that as educators we needed to move beyond these binaries into a new understanding of ourselves as assembled subjectivities so that we do not stay stuck in narrow and essentialised definitions of who we are. the theory also helped us to recognise the influence of othering and how our focus on negative experiences underscores the idea that educational spaces can be harmful to learners and educators alike. it became evident that we felt a need to share the harm we had suffered and that in working towards social justice we need to engage with each other’s negative memories and experiences of the past in order to reflect on our current moment and move towards a shared responsibility. we conclude that it is valuable to teachers to reflect on their past experiences in terms of social injustices in order to break the cycle of learners experiencing school as harmful. the importance of foregrounding our micro-social experiences in relation to issues of social justice might work towards change and transformation in the curriculum. educator identity and experience have been shown to have a major impact on the curriculum (clandinin, 2000; clandinin & connelly, 2000; jansen, 2017; pinar, 2012). it is necessary for the experiential narratives of south african educators to emerge in relation to issues of social justice and müller et al.: working toward a socially just curriculum in south africa . . . 99 decolonisation of the curriculum. with this in mind, we find the theory of anti-oppressive education useful to help us share our narratives and at the same time acknowledge the limits of what we know. it makes our everyday actions and interactions relevant in terms of curriculum change and transformation. this became evident in the way in which we were able to recognise how our past experiences with othering, oppression, and hurt could become the core around which we started to think of new ways to be, teach, and learn. in our project, we worked collaboratively to find the connections between teacher identity, experience, decolonisation, social justice, and anti-oppressive education. our narratives highlight the messiness and discomfort of our experiences as we relearn, unlearn, and trouble oppressive knowledge in order to imagine alternatives. in the challenging space in which we work, we found the theory of anti-oppressive education useful in our thinking about decolonisation of the curriculum. our work shows how theory and method can become entangled in working towards a decolonised curriculum. in this article we highlight the unique experiences of five south african teachers in relation to issues of social justice at a time when the call for decolonisation is intensifying. in closing, we would like to frame our contribution as incomplete and partial. its value does not lie in giving definite answers of what a decolonised curriculum should be, but, rather, in highlighting the everyday experiences and emotions of those who are working towards transformation and change. a move towards a decolonised curriculum cannot focus on curriculum content alone. our past experiences shape our present responses to curriculum. therefore, educator experiences need to be foregrounded as a crucial and important curriculum resource. troubling the binary thinking and easy categorisation that colonial patterns of thought has entrenched in schooling systems will require us to interrogate our own identities that are still very much shaped by the systems we aim to dismantle. the collaborative theorising of our experiences serves to explore the nuanced complexity of identity and also to highlight the complexity of specific local realities. therefore, the recognition of the educator as an embodied being with complex emotional responses is crucial in moving towards a decolonised curriculum. our concluding thought is that a transformed and decolonised curriculum cannot come from outside and be imposed on us as educators in a hierarchical fashion; it should emerge from within us and be with us as we move towards a shared future. references aoki, t. (2005). signs of vitality in curriculum scholarship. in w. pinar & r. irwin (eds.), curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted aoki (pp. 229–234). hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. repr. from aoki, t. (ed.), 1991. inspiriting curriculum and pedagogy: talks to teachers (pp. 23–28). edmonton, ca: university of alberta. aoki, t. (1993). legitimating a lived curriculum: towards a curricular landscape of multiplicity. journal of curriculum and supervision, 8(3), 255–268. 100 journal of education, no. 74, 2018 bell, l. a. (2007). theoretical foundations for social justice in education. in m. adams, l. a. bell, & p. griffen (eds.), teaching for diversity and social justice (2nd ed., pp. 1–16). london, uk: routledge. bell, l. a. & desai, d. (2011). imagining otherwise: connecting the arts and social justice to envision and act for change: special issue introduction. equity & excellence in education, 44(3), 287–295. chase, s. e. 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(2017). encouraging shared responsibility without invoking collective guilt: exploring pedagogical responses to portrayals of suffering and injustice in the classroom. pedagogy, culture & society. doi: 10.1080/14681366.2018.1502206 microsoft word craig.doc studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 93 social justice in a multicultural society: experience from the uk gary craig1, university of hull abstract social justice is a contested concept. for example, some on the left argue for equality of outcomes, those on the right for equality of opportunities, and there are differing emphases on the roles of state, market and individual in achieving a socially just society. these differences in emphasis are critical when it comes to examining the impact that public policy has on minority ethnic groups. social justice should not be cultureblind any more than it can be gender-blind yet the overwhelming burden of evidence from the uk shows that public policy, despite the political rhetoric of fifty years of governments since large-scale immigration started, has failed to deliver social justice to britain’s minorities. in terms of outcomes, in respect for and recognition of diversity and difference, in their treatment, and in the failure of governments to offer an effective voice to minorities, the latter continue to be marginalised in british social, economic and political life. this is not an argument for abandoning the project of multiculturalism, however, but for ensuring that it is framed within the values of social justice. social justice in the uk: current political discourse social justice is a concept that has been debated--in different guises--for thousands of years. it is only since the 1970s, however, and particularly in the past fifteen years, that it has re-emerged into political discourse, most notably amongst governments which have characterized themselves as social democratic or “third way.” as miller argues (2001), in the context of the development of liberal democratic societies, “the quest for social justice is a natural consequence of the spread of enlightenment” (p. 4). in this article, we examine the meaning of the term “social justice,” particularly in a uk context, deriving a wide-ranging definition which draws on literature, policy and practice. we then apply its principles to the position of minority ethnic groups within the uk, to see the extent to which the policy framework of government and the outcomes of that policy framework for minorities can be said to be socially just. the concept itself remains a contested one, adopted from a variety of political positions, and linking to wider arguments about the roles of the state, the market, and the individual. although contemporary social democratic governments appear to “own” the approach of social justice, it has also been espoused from the political right in the uk and in australia, where, for example, the government argues that social justice is achieved best through an approach which privileges individualism when individuals are able to 1 professor of social justice, centre for social inclusion and social justice, university of hull, hull, hu6 7rx uk tel 00 44 (0)1482 465780 email g.craig@hull.ac.uk studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 94 compete in the market place, unconstrained by the action of the state. current arguments about social justice also expose the tensions with other overarching political goals of economic competitiveness and environmental sustainability (jrf, 2004). the concept of social justice received prominence within the united kingdom with the work of the commission for social justice established by the, then leader, of the labour party (csj 1994). in a context of deepening inequality and poverty--the uk was then, in income terms, amongst the most unequal countries in the developed world--the commission suggested that the elements of social justice would include: ♦ the equal worth of all citizens ♦ the equal right to be able to meet their basic needs ♦ the need to spread opportunities and life chances as widely as possible ♦ the requirement that we reduce and, where possible, eliminate unjustified inequalities. this list begged important political questions. the policy programme of uk new labour governments, and similarly disposed governments elsewhere--continue to beg some of them; for example, questions of what basic needs are. social democratic governments provide systems of social assistance of varying levels of generosity, but have not effectively defined the adequacy of that assistance to meet “basic needs” (as defined by a range of participatory research studies, see ex. in gordon et al., 2000). the uk government’s programmes to address social exclusion and reduce poverty are titled opportunity for all (e.g. dwp, 2005); however, most such governments do not go beyond goals related to equality of opportunity to promote equality of outcome, which many would argue is a more robust indicator of a socially just society. critics of social democratic governments argue that the state has to intervene more strongly to promote social justice, both in terms of the process by which it is achieved and by constructing redistributive policies. the market – covering all the institutions of society which operate to deliver goods and services – distributes those goods and services, as well as opportunities (or life chances) unfairly. therefore the state should have a key role in correcting those deficiencies. governments focusing only on the poor and disadvantaged are also failing one key test of social justice, which is to ensure the fair distribution of the good and bad things across the whole of society and not just amongst the poor. redistribution between different groups of poor people is not socially just redistribution and a socially just agenda would need to confront the huge disparities in income and wealth which remain within the uk and in many other countries. in the uk, the adoption of the goal of social justice--with a stated commitment to an agenda of equalities--has been used to mark off the policy agenda of the scottish executive as being more radical and redistributive than that of the uk parliament (scottish executive, 2003). however, the scottish executive, again, goes only some way towards a position of fairness to all: its 2003 spending manifesto argued that “scotland must be a society of strong inclusive communities where everyone can live with dignity … every policy we introduce … will be measured against success in closing the gap between the most disadvantaged and the average.” recent commentary suggests however that scotland too, despite its rhetoric, has some way to go to grasp the thistle of social justice (goodlad, 2005). studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 95 ideas of social justice a key modern protagonist for the concept of social justice was john rawls (rawls, 1971). drawing on aristotle, hume, hegel, kant and other moral philosophers, he argued that (social) justice meant “fairness ... the principle subject of justice is the basic structure of society … the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation...,” (p. 6) -that is, he was not concerned with the benefits to be derived for individuals from private association. a “well-ordered society” was one in which “everyone is presumed to act justly ...” (p. 8), where vested interests are put to one side. rawls’ assertion of the idea of social justice as incompatible with a society oriented towards individual gain is echoed in donnison (1998) who argues that “standards and values cannot be developed privately” (p. 186), i.e. within one institution, or in relation to one practice. what, donnison suggested, “we apply to others we must apply to ourselves.” these approaches are grounded in the traditions of a redistributive modern welfare state. rawls then derived two basic principles: 1. “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive scheme of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar scheme of liberties for others … 2. social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and (b) attached to positions and offices open to all” (p. 53). social justice thus has a clear inter-relationship with the concept of inequality. these principles were specific formulations of a more general position, that “all social values liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the social bases of self-respect are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any or all of these values is to everyone’s advantage” (p. 59). the obverse concept, injustice, thus becomes in rawls' view, “simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all” (ibid). much inequality is unacceptable but some areas of inequality are acceptable where they are of wider benefit. for example, one might consider people who have undergone long periods of training, such as doctors, teachers or lawyers--or who are placed in more risky situations--such as firefighters, deep sea fishers or train drivers--to undertake key roles in society. it is reasonable that they should be rewarded but, at the same time, important also to recognize that the obscene disparities in income and wealth which characterize most societies are not socially just, particularly as much of that income and wealth is earned at the expense of others’ poorly-paid labour. this approach also highlights distinctions between equality of opportunity or access, equality of outcome, and equality of status. as noted above, most contemporary uk politicians promoting the concept of equality tend to argue for equality of opportunity; however, those on the political right emphasize simply equality of rules and processes, the state’s role being merely to ensure free market exchanges for all (equally). those broadly on the left, argue for equality of outcome – or at least sufficient equality of outcome to prevent injustice. technically, all full citizens in the uk have equality of status; however, equality of opportunity and access, and of outcome, say, for black and minority ethnic groups or for women or disabled people, are clearly not present, as we will demonstrate. it is clear from educational statistics, that equality of opportunity – in the sense that everyone starts studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 96 school more or less at the same point – is not itself enough to achieve social justice. for example, the impact of racism in educational systems means that many minority ethnic children fall far behind the average in attainment by the time they leave school (gillborn and mirza, 2000; craig, 2003; craig, 2006). this is but one example of lister’s critique that “what is not yet acknowledged is that genuine equality of opportunity and recognition of the equal worth of all our citizens is incompatible with the savagely unequal society we now live in. equality of opportunity in the context of economic and social structures that remain profoundly unequal is likely to remain a mirage” (quoted in nicf, 2001). this perspective is echoed in a recent analysis of the performance of new labour since it came to power in 1997, which argues that the uk still has a poor record for reducing levels of child poverty and that, despite new labour’s rhetoric on combating inequality, the gap between rich and poor has grown in the past few years (paxton and dixon, 2004). rawls then observed that if there were to be inequalities, they could only be justified on the basis that everyone had equality of opportunity to compete for the most desirable positions, regardless of their class or status. of course, most posts in society are not open equally to all because of the cumulative impact of disadvantages such as “race,” gender and social class. rawls’ famous test of social justice was through what he called the “veil of ignorance,” through which “no-one knows his place in society, class position or social status … they know that their society is subject to the circumstances of justice and whatever this implies” (op. cit., pp. 118-119). people, thus, would act without any sense of personal advantage. miller argues that social justice—which he regards as interchangeable with the concept of distributive justice—provides the political and philosophical basis for deciding “how the good and bad things in life should be distributed among the members of a human society” (2001, p. 1). these things incorporate, in his view, the familiar material dimensions of a “good life” – income, wealth, education, housing, health and so on. miller identifies three key principles which connect strongly to the concept of social justice: desert (i.e. what we deserve; need; and equality). in relation to desert, a just society is one “whose institutions are arranged so that people get the benefits they deserve.” (ibid. 155) this principle must not however become a rigid formulation contingent simply on institutional arrangements within a society, but allow concepts of need to come into play (i.e. resources cannot be committed solely on the basis of desert but also of need). we may imprison people because of their crimes but that does not mean that we may starve them at the same time. the concept of need is “not merely idiosyncratic or confined to those who hold a particular view of the good life … it must be capable of being validated on terms that all relevant parties can agree to” (ibid. 205). this validation is a political process, but one from which many parties have hitherto been excluded because of their lack of power, both in a formal and informal sense. in particular, as we will again argue, black and minority ethnic groups in the uk have hitherto been excluded from decision-making and most significantly from determining their own conceptions of need. indeed, black and minority ethnic groups are increasingly becoming resistant in the uk to research done “on” them without either their involvement in determining what the questions are which are to be asked or some sense that the research leads to demonstrable policy change (butt and o’neil, 2004). studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 97 miller also argues that the notion of equality relevant to social justice is distributive in its nature: “it specifies that benefits of a certain kind – rights, for instance – should be distributed equally because justice requires this” (op. cit. pp. 232). to achieve social justice, we must have “a political community in which citizens are treated in an equal across-the-board way, in which public policy is geared toward meeting the intrinsic needs of every member, and in which the economy is framed and constrained in such a way that the income and other work-related benefits people receive correspond to their respective deserts” (ibid. 250). the concept of social justice is thus linked closely to other key concepts such as need, citizenship, and rights. marshall’s historic exposition of citizenship and social class (marshall, 1950) advanced taxonomy of rights by which one could identify the characteristics of citizenship. these incorporated: ♦ civil rights: property rights, legal guarantees and freedoms; ♦ political rights: right to vote, rights of association, constitutional participation; and ♦ social rights: entitlements to basic standards of education, health and social care, housing and income maintenance. many contemporary commentators on citizenship, such as lister (2003) and dean and melrose (1999) do not regard these rights as of equal weight. dean and melrose for example, argue that “civil rights underwrite the operation of the market economy and are entirely consistent with class inequality” whereas “political rights and social rights tend to challenge such inequality” (p. 180). thus citizenship and class, to a large extent, can embody opposing principles. from this perspective, there, again, remains a major political question about the degree to which social justice is compatible at all with the operation of a market economy; the model of economic relations strongly promoted by new labour and other social democratic governments. doyal and gough (1991) argue that social justice “stands against fanatics of the free market economy ... but also demands and promotes economic success” or, conversely, that “social justice is an ideal in its own right but economic success also demands a greater measure of social justice” (130). plant (2000), however, a key theoretician for the new labour project, argues that social justice requires governments to work with the grain of the market. for many commentators, however, the market is increasingly seen to be the fundamental cause of much injustice, both social and economic, and the goal of social justice as fairness demands that governments confront the inequities of market systems. most contemporary liberal conceptions of social justice generally place social and political rights far ahead of civil rights in the sense in which marshall used them. confusingly, civil rights have come in the past forty years, most of all through the political activism of blacks in the southern united states of america, more to mean social and political rights such as freedom to attend racially mixed (‘integrated’) schools than the more narrow meaning ascribed them by marshall. earlier analyses of social justice are also limited in their understanding of the way in which the dimensions of gender and culture need to be built into a framework of values; to marshall’s typology we would need to add, following castles (2000), lister (2003) and others, the categories of cultural rights and gender rights. for minority ethnic groups, this means the right to be studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 98 culturally different within a society--within certain parameters2--which provides the same social, civil and political rights to all. social justice in multicultural societies this raises the important theoretical and political agenda of exploring the nature of social justice within multicultural societies and particularly those characterized by institutional and individual racism. multicultural societies have increasingly been struggling with the difficulties of incorporating respect and recognition for cultural diversity and difference within a framework of universal rights: respect and recognition for minorities might be seen as ways in which equality of status, of common citizenship, are put into operation. at present, within the uk, arguments about cultural and ethnic diversity have moved away from the notion of multiculturalism and are increasingly couched in terms of debates about social integration, assimilation and cohesion rather than about social justice. social injustice might however be said to emerge not just from the unconstrained workings of institutions, groups and organisations through the mechanisms of the market, which lead to significant differences in income, wealth and the opportunities and outcomes these bring, but also because of cultural and socially-constructed differences based on, for example, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and disability (fraser, 2001). we will return to the question of multiculturalism below. social justice is also about the non-material aspects of life. these incorporate critical dimensions of respect and recognition between different groups and individuals (and not just the poor). for miller, the distributive notion of social justice is not to be confused with “the ideal of a society in which people regard and treat one another as equals … [which] … is not a distributive ideal in itself but does have distributive implications” (op. cit., pp. 232, 241). for example, such a conception can influence our attempts at distributive justice. this latter concept he terms social equality, which “is a matter of how people regard one another and how they conduct their social relations’. (op. cit. 239). this complementary “recognition” or “relations of respect” aspect of social justice has been strongly argued in recent years by e.g. young (1990). for her, social justice as a distributive issue has to be set within a relational and cultural context, in particular “the elimination of institutionalized domination and oppression” (p.30). individuals, as well as the state and the market, have a key role to play in supporting the goals of social justice and answering the sorts of deceptively simple question posed by miller in relation to social justice between the genders: “is it fair that women should perform more domestic labour than men?” (2001, p. 5) or, to link more closely to the theme of this article, is it fair that certain minorities should end up in particularly exploited sections of the labour market? miller argues that the major challenge posed by multiculturalism is that it widens the notion of the closed political community within which concepts such as need, rights, and desert are usually contested. however, this is not an argument for “the elimination of cultural differences but the opening up of national identities so that they become accessible to the members of many (ideally all) cultural groups within existing 2 in most multicultural societies, there are lively political debates now about what these parameters should be (see parekh, 2002); increasingly, they are being more tightly drawn at present. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 99 democratic states” (2001, p. 263). the political task, then, is to ensure that all cultural groups are, first, recognized and secondly, fully engaged in the process of determining the principles of social justice and acting on those principles. it is clear, as miller argues, that there is little empirical evidence which supports the view that cultural differences translate into differing conceptions or principles of social justice, although the way those principles are reflected in differing practices may vary. the important point is that social justice cannot be blind to issues of culture but this is, in any case, an area which has yet to be explored in any depth. we do know that the achievement of equally socially just outcomes, in terms of meeting need and so on, is markedly variable from one so-called multicultural country to another. to some degree this variability is a reflection of the structural constraints under which governments operate; in terms, for example, of the historical development of formal political constitutions or informal political settlements. government’s preparedness to tolerate--or reject—structural racism, however, plays an equally important part. in france, for example, ethnicity is not regarded as a legitimate factor in the determination of citizenship because of the republican constitution of 1789. minorities are thus effectively “written out” of the policy process to a large degree3 and, for example, from research which describes the level and type of disadvantage that they face. in germany, jus sanguinis, basing citizenship on the rights of blood ties rather than on jus solis, of residence, has meant that the aussiedler returning to germany from poland and russia have greater rights to citizenship than, say, migrants of turkish origin who have lived and worked in germany for thirty years and have children born in germany.4 in malaysia, whose population is very roughly divided equally between people of malay, chinese and indian origin, economically successful chinese people and academically successful indian people find their advancement through many avenues blocked because the malay constitution enhances the rights of malays and discriminates in their favour. in new zealand, despite the provisions of the treaty of waitangi which provided legal protection for the maori, at least in terms of land rights, they are still to be found most strongly amongst those who are unemployed, in the prison population and in areas marked by social and economic deprivation. and in australia, the treatment of the aboriginal kuri people has been even more shameful as their relatively weak land rights are now under threat; indeed, social and economic policy towards them might be regarded as a legacy of the ethnic cleansing of the nineteenth century, carried on by other means. in canada, the federal government has at least publicly apologized to the inuit for its oppressive treatment of them over the past two hundred years although, more generally, there is strong evidence that poverty, ill-health and poor social and economic conditions are strongly racialized (galabuzi, 2006). 3 the “hidden” nature of poverty and poor housing conditions experienced by many migrants living in paris, and their exclusion from much social policy, has been used to explain the disturbances which took place in the autumn of 2005. 4 belatedly, this injustice is being recognized with the children of long-settled migrants being offered german citizenship: for further discussion, see craig, 2003. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 100 other dimensions of social justice most major conceptions of social justice fail to consider the role of those most disadvantaged by social injustice, as actors rather than simply victims in the search for social justice. the united nations (see e.g. undp, 1997) points to the many ways, including organizational, informational, developmental, constitutional and legal, political and economic ways, in which participation by the disadvantaged themselves may promote social justice. many governments have now also acknowledged the importance of processes which empower the disadvantaged to act and speak on their own behalves. an additional dimension to social justice might thus be the role of community development as the means by which the excluded and the marginalized can act in the search for social justice. this action incorporates the dimension of “voice,” of being able to articulate one’s own needs and desires through participation at all levels in the policy process. to put it another way, social justice is not simply about achieving forms of human welfare--of whatever kind--but the means by which that welfare is obtained. process is as important as outcome. this has been one of the major contributions which community development and the activities of social movements--for recognition of rights in relation to disability, sexuality and so on--have made to the search for social justice. voice is also, as lister argues, a way in which those who are materially poor can challenge the way in which much of the rest of society exploits the poverty of those on low income to imply an inferior status--their “othering”--as human beings (lister, 2004). it has also been argued (see e.g. jrf, 2004) that geography has an important influence on the achievement of social justice. differential equality of opportunity, poverty, access to rights and so on, may be accentuated, for example, for those in rural areas as compared with their urban counterparts, (e.g. the costs of accessing goods and services and their frequently poorer quality), or those living in deteriorating neighbourhoods compared with those in well-resourced communities. social justice has a spatial dimension and, in thinking about this, we need to think carefully about different conceptions of poverty and need in different contexts--and for different groups--in the population. the position of many medical consultants of indian origin working in rural areas in the uk is a good example of the need for careful analysis. whilst rural areas are often portrayed as comfortable, higher income areas, the reason why many indian doctors end up working in rural areas is because they have faced racial discrimination and barriers in accessing the higher profile and status posts in teaching hospitals in urban areas, and are thus directed towards posts of lower status, including in rural areas. their higher profile in rural areas – where the proportion of minorities in relatively small – exposes them to further racism (see e.g. henderson and kaur, 1999). drawing on these analyses, one wide-ranging definition of social justice might thus be as follows: a framework of political objectives, pursued through social, economic, environmental and political policies, based on an acceptance of difference and diversity, and informed by values concerned with ♦ achieving fairness, equality of outcomes and treatment; ♦ recognizing the dignity and equal worth and encouraging the self-esteem of all; ♦ the meeting of basic needs; ♦ reducing inequalities in wealth, income and life chances; and studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 101 ♦ the participation of all, including the most disadvantaged. finally, of course, in thinking about social justice conceptually, we have to acknowledge that we can no longer think about it in the context of one country. it is increasingly necessary to consider how the process of globalization--that is, the impact of economic groupings which have no allegiance to particular political entities--affects this approach. in miller’s and earlier writers’ analyses, it was possible to define social justice within the context of a closed political community in which all relevant actors could be identified and encouraged to engage politically with the debates about social justice. globalization, according to many commentators, has generated increasing divisions, in terms of income and wealth, both between and within all nation states (see e.g. hirst and thompson, 1999; venters, 2002) and we have to respond to this analysis by thinking about how social justice can be understood at a transnational level. this idea is largely beyond the scope of this article but two more limited political scenarios might be advanced to protect the claims of social justice in this context: one is that each nation state can continue to argue the merits of social justice, the other that a transnational community and its institutions might emerge (which the european union, for example, might represent within the context of europe) which can constitute the new closed political community. alternatively, those concerned with issues of social justice between states and regions could choose not to retreat within such a closed community but use it as a base for advancing political, economic, social and environmental arguments for global (social) justice. this is a major political project for the future. social justice and britain’s minorities we can now review whether these principles of social justice operate to the practical benefit of black and minority ethnic groups in the uk, which has been regarded as a multicultural society for many years, particularly since the large-scale immigration of the 1950s-1970s. there is not space within this article to review the fairly extensive research evidence in detail but some pointers to the key literature will be provided. first of all, let us look at the issue of equality of status, and the particular dimensions of respect and recognition. technically, as noted earlier, all citizens of the uk, of whatever ethnicity, have an equal status as citizens. the minority ethnic population in the uk is now 8% as a whole5 but this population is not equally distributed: there are two london boroughs which have a minority population which is now actually in a majority and many urban areas have minority populations of more than 15% of the total population. migration to the uk over the past 60 years, largely from former colonies, has been and continues to be predominantly driven by the labour market needs of the british economy, together with consequent family reunion. the minority population has grown more recently partly through natural population growth (about half of the current minority population was actually born in the uk) and partly in recent years through the growth of refugees (although their numbers are much smaller than is claimed by government or by rightwing media commentaries which provoke occasional panics over immigration).6 britain 5 as of the 2001 census but the figure is probably now nearer 10% 6 for example, recent press coverage in the uk claimed that between 600,000 and 1 million migrant workers per annum from east and central europe had arrived in the uk since the accession of former studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 102 now has a very diverse population – it is not unusual, for example, for cities with relatively small minority populations to accommodate more than fifty different languages and there are settled minorities in every local authority area in the uk. individual and institutional racism – that is abuse and assault by individuals or the maintenance of structures, mechanisms and processes which disadvantage people because of their ethnic origins – however, are continuing and, according to official statistics7, growing problems. in the last five years, the uk has seen a number of high level enquiries into aspects of the welfare state which have pointed to systematic racism; for example, the enquiry into the death of steven lawrence, a black teenager, and the failings of the police to respond effectively was just one of about thirty racially-motivated murders in the past ten years (mcpherson, 1999); the enquiry into the death of michael bennett, a black man killed whilst being restrained in a psychiatric hospital (blofeld, 2004); the enquiry into the racist murder of zahid mubarek, whilst in a prison cell, which is shortly to report but has attested to widespread racism in the prison service; the knifing and murder of firsat dag, a turkish refugee, in a deprived housing estate in glasgow; and a total of 69 racialized murders in the past ten years. immigrants detained in government reception centres are now widely known to have been subject to systematic abuse and assault; police at a training centre have been recorded by an undercover tv reporter engaging in widespread racist abuse; and other enquiries into structural racism are ongoing. despite the fact that far-reaching legislation was introduced in 2000 to confront racism in public institutions, progress has been very slow and the uk home secretary has now called (again) for all public bodies to address racial discrimination within their services, backed by firm action, ethnic monitoring, public service agreements and inspection. meanwhile, the police service records tens of thousands of incidents of racist abuse and attacks each year (a number which is recognized to be an underestimate of the real extent of the problem, the british crime survey reporting three times as many such incidents annually); the number of anti-semitic attacks has reached a peak in recent years; and the fascist british national political party, whose political platform has been based in part on repatriating immigrants, fielded a record number of candidates in the 2005 general election. a mori poll for the british council revealed in 2000 that young people in other countries perceived britons to be “arrogant, xenophobic ... racially intolerant ... and frequently drunk” (cited in craig, 2003). a second poll found that roughly one-third of the uk population admitted that they had racist attitudes and that figure has apparently grown substantially in the past few years, in part because of the hostile government and media treatment of asylum-seekers and refugees, in part because of the growing islamophobia generated by the so-called global “war on terror’. one consequence of the 9/11 attacks in new york has been the introduction of legislation which has allowed suspected terrorists to be imprisoned for years without trial, and stopping and searching of suspects which, the home office admits, will disproportionately disadvantage people “of muslim appearance” (whatever that might be). more recently, in the wake of bombings and attempted bombings in london, people soviet bloc states to the european union in 2004. the true figure, over two years, was 447,000, i.e. roughly 200,000 per year. 7 see for example home office statistics www.homewoffice.gov.uk/rds/stats and the outcomes of the uk british crime survey. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 103 of “unusual” dress and appearance have been apprehended on buses, trains and airplanes leading one senior police officer of asian origin to say that a new offence, of “travelling whilst asian,” had been introduced by the police. none of this can be regarded as an approach which privileges respect to those who happen to dress or look differently. at a more modest level, there are a number of struggles being carried forward by minorities over aspects of their culture which, they argue, should be recognized and accepted within a multicultural society in which they also are, in theory at least, full citizens. examples of this are the right for young women and girls to wear particular forms of clothing – the hijab and the jilbab – at school and at work, for respect for traditional forms of food preparation (there is currently a discussion about humane ways to kill animals in keeping with the principles of halal food preparation), and the right to open faith schools (the uk has had christian schools for hundreds of years but government has recently argued that single faith schools when maintained by muslims undermine community cohesion). in this context, it would be difficult, therefore, to argue that social justice – in a relational sense – is available to members of minority ethnic groups in the uk. equality of status is clearly, beyond the rhetoric of citizenship, unequally offered within the uk. the struggles by minority groups to assert their cultural rights have occasionally taken a violent form. in 1989, salman rushdie’s book the satanic verses led to a fatwah, or implied sentence of death, being placed on him by orthodox islamic clerics and he had to go into hiding for many years. more recently, tensions between what is described as the british culture of free speech and respect for other religions and cultures has been tested when performances of a play, behtzi, which portrayed murder and abuse within a sikh temple, were abandoned as a result of a vigorous street protest by members of the sikh community, a community which is incidentally in many ways one of the highest achieving minority groups within the uk. to date, however, no acts of violence have led to the deaths of those testing the boundaries between different cultures – as happened in the netherlands when the filmmaker theo van gogh was killed allegedly by a member of an islamic radical group because he satirized the treatment of women by muslims. the converse – racist deaths of black and minority people – however, is, as noted, a frequent occurrence. this is not to argue that there are not tensions in determining the parameters of acceptable behaviour or speech within the uk – indeed the events since 9/11 have brought these tensions into sharper focus. the point here is that minorities feel that their ability to assert their cultural rights are not being formally recognized, particularly in the current climate and that resorting to more strident or even violent protest is the only way in which they can have their viewpoint acknowledged.8 in terms of equality of opportunity, for example in terms of opportunity of access to goods, services, and, in particular, welfare provision the situation is no better. it is this situation which, as noted earlier, provides the basis for the state to compensate for the failure of the market to deliver goods and services on an equitable and socially just basis. reviews of the entire provision of welfare and specific aspects of it (modood et al., 1997; craig, 1999; craig, 2001; parekh, 2002: craig, 2003; platt, 2003) within the uk suggests that access to welfare provision is unequally available. indeed, racism in state welfare has a long pedigree, going back to the sixteenth century when the first queen elizabeth, at a time of economic depression within the uk, ordered all “negroes and blackamoors” to 8 martin luther king argued that “riots are the language of the unheard.” studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 104 leave the country rather than allow them to receive poor law welfare support. these reviews show that opportunity to access the various aspects of welfare – housing, education, the labour market, social services, the health service – is shaped strongly by the dimension of ethnicity. although this is not an iron law in the sense that some minority groups are now beginning to achieve well despite the obstacles placed in their way, certain minority groups – particularly those of african caribbean, bangladeshi and pakistani origin and those from the more recently arriving groups – continue to be concentrated in the most deprived housing neighbourhoods and thus have access only to the schools with the worst conditions, poorest staffing provision and least good records of attainment (gillborn and mirza, 2000). they have greatest difficulty in accessing appropriate health provision (often because of the failure of health services to respond to specific cultural needs such as for interpretation, by ethnically-matched provision, or by providing female doctors for women patients), they are obstructed in terms of advancement in the labour market and their careers and often end up in the workplaces with the poorest working conditions, poorest pay and least security (craig, 2003; cabinet office, 2003) and they are concentrated amongst those with the lowest incomes (craig, 1999; platt, 2003) . the failure of the state welfare system to respond to the needs of minority groups is, in part, also a reflection of their failure to offer them the opportunity to participate adequately in important decision-making mechanisms – another aspect of the definition of social justice given above. black and minority ethnic people have rarely had a formal voice in a wide range of policy initiatives such as neighbourhood renewal or voluntary sector development and funding streams to autonomous black and minority ethnic organizations remain marginal to most large-scale mainstream policy initiatives. where government does consult minorities, there is an increasing sense that it tends to deal with what younger minorities now regard as the generation of older “community leaders” who are no longer regarded by many minorities as representing them (jan-khan, 2003). for example, at a recent muslim summit called by prime minister blair, no one under the age of 40 was present. the definition of social justice drawn together earlier in this paper is also concerned, most crucially, with equality of outcomes. if one looks again across the whole range of welfare provision, outcomes for black and minority people – with a very few notable exceptions – are disproportionately poor compared with the population at large. for example, if we look at the pinnacle of political decision-making, the house of commons, there are currently only 19 black and asian mps out of a chamber of 630 mps--that is barely 3% compared with a black and minority ethnic population of 8%--and there has never been an asian female mp although asian women have been settled in the uk for more than two hundred years. educational attainment--in terms of school qualifications, entry to higher education, achievement at the highest level of higher education--is, with some exceptions, far lower than the national average for most minority groups (for example there are very few black or asian professors in uk universities – about 2% in all – and there are no black or asian vice-chancellors or principals in the 110 uk universities). even in those areas where some minorities do well – such as medicine – there is a glass ceiling which stops them achieving the highest honours. thus, as noted earlier, black and asian hospital consultants often find themselves working in the poorest or most isolated hospitals because they are unable to studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 105 secure posts in the more prestigious teaching hospitals. in the police force, barely 2% of the uk force nationally is from black and ethnic minorities and there is only one black chief constable. there are no black directors of social services in the more than 150 local authority social services departments. whilst about 5% of social services staff are from minorities, that figure drops to less than 2% in social services management posts. in education, the area where advantage and attainment might best be promoted, disadvantage and discrimination are built into the education system from a very early age. despite the fact that each of the main ethnic groups has achieved higher standards than ever before, a report commissioned by ofsted, the government’s inspection body, found a few years ago that black and ethnic minority pupils are disadvantaged systematically by the education system (gillborn and mirza, 2000). most strikingly, the researchers concluded that one ethnic group (black young people) actually entered school 20 percentage points in advance of the average but left it 21 points behind the average, a deeply disturbing reflection on racism within the formal educational system. ironically, for one outcome, young black people scored highly – but this was for the number of permanent exclusions from school. these were the result, it appears, of a complex range of factors but included racist responses from schools which disproportionately label and exclude black school pupils (cooper, 2004). in the field of health, a recent survey of pay awards in the nhs found them riddled with racism. in terms of mental health, black service users are more likely to be (mis)-diagnosed as schizophrenic, contained in psychiatric institutions and treated with electroconvulsive therapy (rai-atkins, 2002). this--and a much wider range of evidence--demonstrates that in terms of equality of outcomes, black and minority groups do not achieve anything like social justice. this is not an argument that every person, every structure, or every policy in the uk concerned with the provision of welfare is racist, far from it, but institutional and individual racism remain prevalent to a large degree and, for most minorities, have a determining effect on their life chances. faced with this lack of equality of status, of opportunity, of outcome, and of respect and recognition, what should be the political strategy pursued by the uk’s minorities – and those in other countries for that matter, to achieve social justice? the gradualist strategy of parliamentary and political representation--at every level, from central government to local government, the voluntary sector and so on--has clearly not succeeded in helping minorities get more effective control of the conditions under which they live. some minority groups have pursued a separatist strategy through the creation of autonomous organizations, faith schools and separate welfare agencies such as black housing associations. these might have given a degree of control to such groups but are often situated in a broader context of a lack of resources and a struggle to survive. ironically, in some areas, minorities have been accused of pursuing a policy of segregation in relation to housing; a classic example of blaming the victim since for many minorities, there is no question of choice. because of limited access to social housing, to mortgage finance and so on, it is only in the poorest quality housing areas that they have been able to access accommodation at all. as susan smith (1989), puts it, this concentration in certain areas does not explain why minorities “should pursue this [choice] in the more run-down segments of the housing stock [with poor quality housing, dangerous neighbourhoods and inadequate health and education provision], rather than in studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 106 areas where they could secure the symbolic and economic benefits associated with suburban life” (p. 130). over the past forty years, there have been increasing outbreaks of interracial violence in some cities, most recently in northern cities three years ago. whilst some of these disturbances – or riots, as the media like to call them – have been prompted by single events, such as the arrest or death of a black individual, increasingly some minority commentators are viewing them as a political response to the cumulative disadvantage faced by britain’s minorities over the past sixty years or more (jan-khan, 2003). in many parts of britain, particularly rural areas and areas where there is only a relatively small population of black and ethnic minorities, there is still a significant level of denial that racism is a problem (darr et al., 2005). this suggests that these disturbances will continue to erupt until the uk government, and the population as a whole, recognize the claims of social justice for its entire people. it also suggests that the process of negotiation over the way in which social justice can be achieved for britain’s minorities has hardly started. at present, the language of the government – of integration and assimilation – often tends towards the language of the 1950s, where minorities were expected to surrender most aspects of their culture (perhaps being left with “just drumming and dancing” to assert their heritage) as a condition of achieving the status of full citizens. as we have seen, becoming legal citizens does not guarantee equality of status, opportunity or outcomes because of the impact of racism and this is a wider struggle which needs to be engaged with in order to promote social justice for all. social justice, as defined in the first part of this article, then is not a reality for britain’s minorities. in the current political climate, the tendency is increasingly to deny minorities effective expression of their cultural and religious rights. the wider agenda of ensuring equality as citizens – in terms of status, opportunity and access – has, despite legislation and political rhetoric – hardly begun to be addressed. new labour’s political project has barely scratched the surface of social justice for britain’s minorities and indeed, for that matter, despite gains in a few areas, the poorest and most marginalized in the uk as a whole. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 107 references blofeld, sir j. (2004). report into inquiry into the death of michael bennett. london: department of health. butt, j. and o’neil, a. (2004). let’s move on: black and minority ethnic older people’s views on research findings. york: joseph rowntree foundation. cabinet office (2003). ethnic minorities in the labour market. london: cabinet office. castles, s. (2000). ethnicity and globalisation. london: sage. cooper, c. (2004). understanding school exclusion. nottingham: education now. craig, g. (1999). ‘race’, poverty and social security in j. ditch (ed.). an introduction to social security. london: routledge. craig, g. (2001). ‘race’ and welfare. inaugural lecture as professor of social justice, hull: university of hull. craig, g. (2003). ‘ethnicity, racism and the labour market: a european perspective’ in j-g. andersen and p. jensen, (eds.). citizenship, welfare and the labour market, bristol: policy press. craig, g. 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(2003). citizenship: feminist perspectives (2nd edition). basingstoke: palgrave. lister, r. (2004). poverty, cambridge: polity press. marshall, t.h. (1950). citizenship and social class, in t.h. marshall and t. bottomore, (1992) citizenship and social class, london: pluto press. mcpherson, sir w. (1999). inquiry into the death of steven lawrence. london: hmso. miller, d. (2001). principles of social justice. cambridge, mass and london: harvard university press. modood, t., berthoud, r. et al. (1997). ethnic minorities in britain. london: policy studies institute. nicf (2001). annual report. belfast: community foundation for northern ireland. parekh, b. (2002). commission of enquiry into the future of a multi-ethnic britain. london: runnymede trust. paxton, w. and dixon, m. (2004). the state of the nation: an audit of injustice in the uk. london: institute of public policy research. plant, r. (2000). social justice in r. walker (ed.) ending child poverty. bristol: policy press. platt, l. (2003). parallel lives? london: child poverty action group. rai-atkins, a. (2002). best practice in mental health advocacy for black, caribbean and south asian users. york: joseph rowntree foundation. rawls, j. (1971). a theory of justice. oxford university press, oxford. scottish executive (2003). social justice: a scotland where everyone matters. edinburgh: scottish executive. smith, susan j. (1989) the politics of race and residence. cambridge: polity press. undp (1997). human development report: 1993. oxford: oxford university press. venters, g. (2002). globalisation: contested meanings and alternative futures. concept, 12(1): 5-10. young, i.m. (1990). justice and the politics of difference. princeton: princeton university press. 203profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.47807 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development programs in colombia contribuciones de una perspectiva de justicia social para la formación de docentes de lenguas a los programas de desarrollo profesional en colombia ana maría sierra piedrahita1* universidad de antioquia, medellín, colombia in this article, the author discusses the social justice language teacher education perspective and how it can help language teachers to develop a political view of their work and effect change inside and outside their particular school contexts. to do this, she briefly analyzes various professional development programs for teachers of english in public schools in one city in colombia to determine how these have or have not contributed to the development of a political perspective in teachers. finally, she discusses what the implementation of such perspective requires, provides some examples to illustrate how it may look in practice, and discusses some implications for different stakeholders. key words: language teacher education, professional development, social justice, teacher learning. en este artículo la autora discute la perspectiva de formación de docentes para la justicia social y cómo esta puede ayudar a los profesores de lenguas a desarrollar una visión política de su trabajo y realizar cambios dentro y fuera de sus contextos escolares. para lograrlo, ella hace un breve análisis de varios programas de desarrollo profesional para profesores de inglés de instituciones educativas públicas y determinar cómo estos han contribuido o no al desarrollo de una perspectiva política en los profesores. finalmente, la autora discute lo que requiere la implementación de esta perspectiva, da algunos ejemplos para ilustrar cómo esta puede verse en la práctica y discute algunas implicaciones para los diferentes actores educativos. palabras clave: aprendizaje del profesor, desarrollo profesional, formación de docentes de lenguas, justicia social. * e-mail: ana.sierra@gmail.udea.edu.co how to cite this article (apa, 6th ed.): sierra piedrahita, a. m. (2016). contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development programs in colombia. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 18(1), 203-217. http:// dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile.v18n1.47807. this article was received on december 11, 2014, and accepted on july 10, 2015. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons license attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. consultation is possible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras204 sierra piedrahita introduction colombia is in the midst of educational reforms in which teachers are pressured to focus on specific knowledge and skills intended to enable students to be competitive in the world market. this focus on economic competitiveness challenges professional development programs to include a social justice perspective to provide in-service teachers with the tools to construct better futures for themselves and their students. unfortunately, for years a technical view of teachers’ learning and development has charac ter ize d language te achers’ professiona l development programs in colombia, closing off possibilities for in-service teachers to develop a political view of their work to effect change both within and outside the classroom. although there have been programs at the school and university level in which teachers have been offered a different type of professional development (e.g., cadavid múnera, quinchía ortiz, & díaz mosquera, 2009; sierra piedrahita, 2007a, 2007b; usma & frodden, 2003), most teachers have been treated as technicians (sugrue, 2004) who should be trained to implement the reform initiatives determined by the government. a clear example of this is the former national plan of bilingualism (2006-2010), which eventually became programa de fortalecimiento al desarrollo de competencias en lenguas extranjeras (2010-2014) and known today as programa nacional de inglés [national program for english], colombia very well! (2015-2025) that conceptualizes teachers as unskilled and lacking the necessary knowledge that others consider important to implement such reform. consequently, teachers are not considered as professionals who can make their own decisions based on their personal needs, interests, and working contexts. besides, this reform has resulted in high stakes testing and fewer opportunities for teachers to make independent decisions in their classrooms since they are normally told what to teach and how to teach it (robertson; samoff; sleeter; tatto; torres as cited in zeichner, 2011). therefore, language teachers in colombian professional development programs have been trained in the content and methodologies specified by policy makers. given this situation, language teachers should learn to incorporate more appropriate teaching practices into their teaching repertoire to be able to educate the kind of critical and active citizens our society demands. although this is also the job of teacher education programs, professional d e v e l o p m e nt p ro g r a m s n e e d t o i n c l u d e t h e knowledge, skills, and dispositions related to social justice that may allow teachers to challenge the injustices and inequalities present on a daily basis in different spheres of society. if teaching is a political act, then a social justice perspective can contribute to the kind of preparation teachers require to move to more equal and just teaching practices, which, at the same time, will set an example for students to follow inside and outside their schools. in this paper, i first provide a characterization of various professional development programs that have been offered to teachers of english in public schools in a major city in colombia, and connect that characterization with the current discourses governing the professional development of teachers in many places around the world. next, i introduce the idea of a social justice language perspective for the professional development of language teachers and discuss the importance and implications of such a perspective for the professional development of in-service language teachers. following this, i discuss what the implementation of this perspective requires; provide some examples to illustrate how it can translate into teaching practices; and detail a specific example of learning to teach under this perspective taken from a study that i conducted. finally, based on what scholars in the field have discussed and my own insights, i present some implications of this perspective for different stakeholders. 205profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... a characterization of professional development programs for language teachers professional development programs ( pdps hereafter) designed by professors in public and private universities or other private institutions in the country are in charge of instructing teachers on how the current reform works, and how it should be implemented. as a result, teachers are still offered the one-shot workshops, lectures, or courses, that is, the same old models that do not contribute much to their learning (fullan, 2001; mccotter, 2001; randi & zeichner, 2004). thus, their teaching practices and beliefs about teaching do not change, and even less, their visions as regards the role of teachers to effect change inside and outside their schools. i analyzed various pdps that have been sponsored and funded by the government in a major city in colombia. i wanted to examine their design and organization, the theoretical foundations underpinning them, and how they were possibly working towards helping in-ser vice teachers to develop a more political view of their work. the analysis indicates that: • most programs focus on language issues and do not include sociocultural, critical, and social justice approaches to language teaching. • most programs focus on providing teachers with the knowledge and skills determined by the government and the idea that they need to teach their students to be competitive in the world market upon graduation. • most programs do not include the development of attitudes and values in teachers that could help them use different teaching approaches with their students. • the theoretical foundations of most programs include theories of language learning, communicative competence, multiple intelligences and the like; however, sociocultural, critical, and social justice theories are not included as foundations for these programs. • most programs focus on courses and workshops, with the exception of one program that incorporated a peer coaching strategy to support teachers in their schools. • all programs are short-term and lack continuity as they depend on political contracts and alliances or availability of economic resources in the local government. therefore, these programs have focused on preparing language teachers with the knowledge and skills to be able to achieve the standards set by the government while lacking a commitment to prepare teachers in sociocultural, critical, and social justice approaches. consequently, language teachers should be offered pdps that include a combination of aspects or principles that are an integral part of working from a social justice perspective so that they are able to provide students with the kind of education that will lead them to become agents of social transformation inside and outside the schools. moreover, these programs should prepare language teachers to be critical thinkers and activists who, when dealing with issues of professional development, are able to establish a balance between the interest of the government and their own interests and needs as professionals so that their individual learning is not ignored (day & sachs, 2004). with the above-mentioned reform and what the colombian government has established in terms of teacher professional development, teachers are witnessing the prevalence of one of the two discourses that currently influence educational policies in relation to teacher professionalism (day & sachs, 2004). this discourse, known as “managerial professionalism . . . gains its legitimacy through the promulgation of policies and the allocation of funds associated with those policies” (day & sachs, 2004, p. 6). it aims at universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras206 sierra piedrahita redefining what teacher professionalism means and how teachers should practice it whether individually or collectively (day & sachs, 2004). according to day and sachs (2004), this discourse is system driven, has external regulations, drives reform agendas, has political ends, is competitive and market driven, and exerts control and compliancy on teachers. in contrast, the other dominant discourse, “democratic professionalism” (day & sachs, 2004, p. 5), is a preferable option for the professional development of teachers and attempts to transform teacher professionalism so that they have greater agency in their teaching (day & sachs, 2004). not surprisingly, a shift to greater teacher agency as professionals has not been popular among policy makers in colombia given that it is profession driven, has professional regulation, complements and moves beyond reform agendas, has professional development ends, is collegial, and points at teachers’ activism (day & sachs, 2004). although these two discourses of teacher professionalism have the intention of improving school teachers’ performance and skills and, consequently, improving student learning results, what differentiates one discourse from the other is how the improvement process is done and who controls it (day & sachs, 2004). clearly, the professional development of language teachers in colombia has been designed under the discourse of managerial professionalism described by day and sachs. because professional development is political, it then serves some people’s interests better than others (day & sachs, 2004); therefore, teachers should be attentive and make sure that the professional development they receive also serves their interests and needs. the field of teacher learning and professional development in colombia will not advance unless we move to other forms of professional development that are planned according to teachers’ needs, interests, working contexts and conditions, and with an emphasis on democratic professionalism. pdps planned that take these elements into consideration and with a focus on a social justice perspective will give teachers the preparation they need to provide students with the kind of education that will lead them to become agents of social transformation inside and outside the schools. a social justice language perspective for the professional development of language teachers the literature about social justice teacher education (sjte hereafter) indicates that there are at least three conceptions of the term social justice in teacher education (cochran-smith et al., 2009; zeichner, 2009, 2011). one conception is about distributive theories focusing on a just or equitable distribution of material resources and services in society. another conception is related to recognition theories focusing on social relations among individuals; that is, caring and respectful social relations where people are treated with dignity. the third conception focuses on both distributive and relational justice theories (cochran-smith et al., 2009; mcdonald as cited in zeichner, 2011; zeichner, 2009). zeichner (2011) states that sjte aims to respond to preparing teachers to teach in ways that contribute to a lessening of the inequalities that exist in school systems throughout the world between children of the poor and children of the middle and wealthy classes, and the injustices that exist in societies beyond systems of schooling, in access to shelter, food, healthcare, transportation, access to meaningful work that pays a living wage and so on. (p. 7) moreover, he observes that social justice in volves “the forming of linkages inside and outside education aimed at working for broad social change” (p. 18). thus, preparing teachers to work under this perspective, although challenging, is worth the effort to reduce the inequalities and injustices existing in 207profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... schools and society; however, it requires different stakeholders to learn to work together and with other actors in society to effect the desired social change. accordingly, the goals of sjte are to recruit and prepare a diversity of teachers to teach all kinds of students; to prepare teachers capable of working inside and outside their classrooms to change inequities in schools and in society, more than focusing on diversity (mcdonald & zeichner as cited in zeichner, 2011; zeichner, 2009); to acknowledge the social and political aspects of teaching and recognize the contribution of teachers to students’ life possibilities or opportunities; to prepare teachers to become leaders in reconstructing society through equity in opportunities and outcomes among the various groups existing in society; and to prepare teachers to teach in contexts where they are forced to accept forms of accountability that are narrow and punitive and that do not match the views of what they want to achieve with their students (hamel & merz; johnson et al.; sirotnik as cited in zeichner, 2011). s o ci a l just ice l angu age te acher e duc at ion (sjlte hereafter) is about moving beyond issues of language such as grammar, the four skills of language learning and so on, as well as sociocultural and critical approaches to language teaching to directly concentrate on teachers’ agency and responsibility to effect local and larger social change as they understand how societal structures affect educational and life chances for their students and their families (hawkins, 2011). scholars situated in both sjte and sjlte perspectives agree on a vision of advocating for social justice in education and teachers’ responsibility in being agents of change in their classrooms, schools, and in society at large. therefore, there is a need for committed teachers to educate and advocate for democracy and contribute to reduce existing inequities not only in schools but also in society by redistributing educational opportunities for students (cochran-smith et al., 2009). such work requires preparation of teachers who possess a combination of “knowledge; interpretive frameworks; teaching strategies, methods, and skills; and advocacy with and for students, parents, colleagues, and communities” (cochran-smith et al., 2009, p. 350). moreover, it requires teachers who are able to critique the larger structures, arrangements, and policies of schooling and consider the role they might play to challenge the system that promotes inequities (cochran-smith et al., 2009). in other words, teachers need to be activists and advocates for students (cochran-smith et al., 2009). to count on this kind of teachers, and more specifically language teachers, pdps should focus on helping in-service teachers develop a more political perspective about their profession. a social justice language perspective can offer in-service teachers a different view about their work and provide them with a focus for learning different from the knowledge and skills determined by reform initiatives promoted by the government. such initiatives normally embody a managerialist vision of teacher learning and development that is concerned with efficiency and productivity and excludes social and human benefits (mcinerney, 2007). hawkins (2011) observes that language teacher preparation and professional development programs often take into account competencies dealing with issues of language; that is, grammar, function, structure, and usage. to a lesser degree they take into account issues that align with sociocultural perspectives; that is, linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogies. however, they almost never provide teachers the opportunity to explore critical issues and approaches and even less a social justice approach to language teaching. accordingly, a sjlte approach not only emphasizes changing understandings of language learning, teaching, and usage; accepts the existence of inequities in education and imagines just social futures for people but emphasizes the responsibility of teachers in being agents of social change (hawkins, 2011). universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras208 sierra piedrahita nevertheless, teachers’ work in colombia is increasingly constructed around narrow, instrumental, and apolitical ways. these issues are reinforced through scripted and prescribed curriculum and standardized testing and other accountability measures that seem to be created to control teachers and not to promote their creativity or talent (mcinerney, 2007), and their potential to be critical thinkers and agents of change that can work to improve the life chances of their students. for language teachers to become the kind of critical thinkers and activists our profession requires, pdps should be geared to include a combination of aspects or principles that are an integral part of working from a social justice perspective. furthermore, they should be designed and structured taking into account many of the main characteristics of effective professional developments that the literature suggests and which come from a broad consensus among researchers, scholars, policymakers, and professional development specialists (elmore, 2002; hawley & valli, 1999). towards the development of a social justice language perspective in pdps pdps working from a social justice perspective should include a series of aspects, and these are not limited to the ones i present here. these pro grams should: • provide teachers with opportunities for collaboration, dialogue, reflection, and work to empower/legitimize teachers (hawkins, 2011). • provide teachers with many opportunities to consider and understand concepts, issues, and ideas related to teaching for social justice (enterline, cochran-smith, ludlow, & mitescu, 2008), concepts related to social theory can contribute to teachers’ understandings in this sense (brennan & noffke, 2009). • provide teachers with assignments that help them develop social justice principles and practices as well as assignments that address broader institutional inequities that impact students’ experiences (mcdonald, 2008). • plan activities in which teachers spend time interacting with community activists and people from neighborhoods who experience inequalities and injustices (zeichner, 2011) which will allow them to see and live things first hand. • help teachers become aware of the importance of enhancing students’ learning and their life chances (cochran-smith et al., 2009). • invite guest speakers to talk about their experiences as people who normally deal with social problems in their own neighborhoods. • provide teachers with the possibility to not only develop knowledge and skills for good teaching but also dispositions toward social justice. • emphasize the development of teachers’ behaviors, attitudes, and values that will help them to teach those to their students so that they can live as good citizens. once teachers learn the principles and practices of a sjlte perspective and the possible strategies to apply it in their classes, they can start to transform their teaching practices. nevertheless, given that teacher learning for social justice is not an easy job and teachers might be resistant to work from this perspective or might not want to assume this role of leaders of social change (zeichner, 2011), programs should start by promoting teachers’ awareness of the importance of teaching from this perspective, therefore, they can move from awareness to action in the work place (hawkins, 2011). since working from a social justice perspective may require many teachers to change their world views to understand the structural aspects of schools and then analyze and criticize the macro level structures, it is not realistic to expect teachers to work as activists (cochran-smith et al., 2009) in the early stages of their professional development process. cochran-smith et al. (2009) argue that dealing with 209profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... social justice issues at the individual level, that is, in teachers’ own classrooms, is an important starting point. once they accomplish this first step, they can be prepared to deal with social justice at the structural level, i.e., in the school and society. working this way might provide a bridge for them to move to criticize the larger structures that create schooling inequities (cochran-smith et al., 2009). nonetheless, for an appropriate implementation of pdps of this kind, designers and facilitators of programs should possess a number of qualities that would allow them to reach teachers and accomplish programs goals. designers and facilitators should see teachers as professionals, that is, as people who possess a broad body of knowledge about their area (noffke, 2009; zepeda, 2008) and a degree of autonomy to make decisions about their teaching (cochransmith & lytle, 1999; hoban, 2002); as people who are able to work collaboratively with others to reflect on and discuss their work (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; hoban, 2002; noffke, 2009); as generators of knowledge (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; hoban, 2002; noffke, 2009); as people who have the capacity to think critically about their work and promote changes; as people who can become critical and activists and aware of the consequences of their work in society; and as people who can develop moral and ethical values that guide their work. understanding these issues is paramount for designers and facilitators of pdps and as such they may require their own professional development in all the aspects, principles, practices, and qualities described above. a social justice perspective translated into teaching practices very often teachers wonder about the ways in which they can translate a social justice perspective into teaching practices. cochran-smith et al. (2009) provide examples of some of the practices that teachers who work from this perspective carry out with their students. it is important to acknowledge, however, that such practices are related to the different conceptions of social justice in teacher education presented above and it is also important that teachers understand which of them they ascribe to and want to promote through their teaching. teachers working from a social justice perspective: • pay a lot of attention to the knowledge and skills proposed in the curriculum and critique them in order to improve them. • redesign or design curricula including social justice issues. • connect curriculum to issues of oppression and racial and economic inequities. • challenge and alter the standard curriculum. • encourage students to question traditional ideas and expand their worldviews by exposing them to different points of view. • build on students’ cultural and linguistic resources, and attempt to reach every student. • accommodate and differentiate instruction. • promote critical thinking and deep questioning in students. • have and hold high expectations about all students and push them to meet those goals. • build good relationships with students and their families and respect student’s parents and work with them. • develop a culture of respect among students and between students and teacher. • know their students and care for them. • advocate for all students. • engage in community work and get students engaged in these kinds of activities for any sort of work that would contribute to the improvement of that community. • participate and build collaborations/coalitions to support students and improve schools. • participate in activism. universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras210 sierra piedrahita • break down racial or class barriers for students. • teach their students about democracy and civic engagement. • affirm and build on students’ differences. • create learning opportunities for their students being aware of how these would influence their life chances and live a successful future. • build on their students’ knowledge and skills. • make curriculum relevant and applicable to students. • know and understand students’ social and cultural contexts. • are fair to all students in the classroom without showing favorites. • challenge students’ stereotypes or biases related to race, class, gender, or sexual orientation. • value students’ diversity and establish a caring and inclusive environment (cochran-smith et al., 2009). clearly, these and other practices apply to language education and all subjects and areas of knowledge in schools, and thus, it is up to teachers to decide which practices they want and can carry out with their students because they believe they can contribute to their education. the following example illustrates how two english teachers in two public schools decided to incorporate a social justice perspective into their teaching practice and what they were able to achieve with their students. learning to teach for social justice within a pdp between january 2009 and december 2010, i conducted a case study with two public high school english teachers who participated in a pdp that a colleague and i created. this program consisted of a teacher community which included a study group, peer coaching, and workshops for a group of nine english teachers from two different public high schools that were located in a very poor and violent neighborhood. the study had as one of its purposes to understand the knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to social justice that both teachers developed as they were involved in this community. i include in this paper some examples of what was found in this sense to illustrate how a pdp that included a social justice perspective contributed to teachers’ learning and how what they learned helped them to change their teaching practices at the classroom and the school level.1 data collection sources were interviews, class observations, documents, and tape-recorded meetings of the study group and planning and feedback sessions with the teachers. data analysis included a combination of a deductive and an inductive approach. for the inductive approach i followed burnaford, fischer, and hobson (2001) and anderson, herr, and nihlen (1994) data analysis procedures. i read all sources of data several times and highlighted the passages that i considered relevant to my research questions. then, i coded passages using themes and categories relevant to these questions. for the deductive approach, i used concepts related to teacher learning and development and the theoretical framework that guided the study which provided some of the themes that emerged from the analysis. i compared and contrasted categories looking for relationships among them, wrote analytical memos to make sense of the data, and drew some preliminary interpretations. to ensure the validity or trustworthiness of my interpretations, i triangulated the different sources of data and did member checking by sharing the findings with the teachers (stake, 2006). data indicated that the two teachers developed a more critical perspective about their work which allowed them to change certain teaching behaviors that favored their teaching practices and, as a consequence, their students’ education. such teaching behaviors are in accord with the practices that teachers 1 it is not my intention to present the findings of the study in this paper. my intention is just to provide an example to show how teachers can learn to teach for social justice within a pdp. 211profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... who, according to cochran-smith et al. (2009), work from a sjlte perspective carry out with their students. this is, having and holding high expectations about all students, building good relationships with students, knowing students and caring for them, participating and building collaborations to support students and improve schools, making curriculum relevant and applicable to students, and knowing and understanding students’ social and cultural contexts. knowing students, caring for them, and building good relationships with them one of the teachers did not have a good relationship with her students. she did not treat them well since she became very impatient when they did not pay attention in class or did not want to participate. however, during her involvement in the pdp, she was able to consider the many social problems that affected the lives of her students and the difficult situations they have to face such as coming to class without having breakfast or being worried about the violence in their neighborhoods. being able to consider student’s social problems and their difficult economic situation gave this teacher the capacity to understand students’ behavior in class and thus she started to build better relationships with them by treating them well, dialoguing with them, and caring for them as illustrated by the following quote: before i was very indifferent or i told them off all the time and it didn’t help at all. i got very angry when i saw that they were not doing things the way they should. but now, i try to be more patient, to dialogue with them, to see that if they are not paying attention or working it is because something is happening and i have to find out what is happening. thus, i think that i have improved in that aspect; in the way i treat the students . . . i try to get along well with them, to dialogue with them, to be more patient. (interview, marcela, 06/15/09) the social justice component of the pdp offered this teacher the possibility to analyze and understand students’ personal and social issues that she was not able or open to understand before and helped her to reassess the way she related to them. making curriculum/lessons relevant and applicable to students and knowing and understanding their social and cultural contexts both teachers understood the importance of presenting topics related to students’ social and cultural contexts so that the lessons were relevant and applicable to their real lives. one of the teachers, for instance, incorporated activities with materials which were more related to the everyday life and experiences of her students. another thing is that you have to give students examples related to their experiences, the context where they are involved, as when we worked with [the topic of ] my family . . . students looked interested in that. [for instance] the names . . . they felt identified with those names [because] those were names from here [colombia]. then, all those details help you. (interview, cristina, 11/25/09) t h i s te a ch e r w a s abl e to u n d e rs t an d t h e importance of including in her classes materials with examples from students’ social and cultural contexts which allowed her to make her lessons more relevant and motivating for her students. having and holding high expectations about all students one of the teachers did not care much about students’ learning and how her lessons could contribute to their learning and the responsibility she had in that process, which, in turn, translated into not having high expectations of students. it was common to hear her complaining about the students and about their futures. along the process in the pdp, she realized she needed to change her attitude towards her students and her role as a teacher: universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras212 sierra piedrahita [i see] a change in my attitude concerning my role as a teacher, with my students. before i went to the classroom and taught. [i didn’t care if students] learned or not. [now] i see the responsibility that i have in their learning. . . . what was important [for me] before was to teach some topics even if the students didn’t learn about them. i realize now that what is important is that students learn something from a topic. (interview, marcela, /06/15/09) this change in attitude helped her realize the importance of having high expectations of the students so that they could learn more and, for instance, be more prepared to pass the entrance exam to a university, which would mean a chance for them to succeed in life and not to end up being part of the armed insurgent groups or gangs in their neighborhoods. participating and building collaborations to support students and improve schools finally, one of the teachers was able to promote, with my support, school change by challenging the system. the principal and coordinators changed some conditions to support the teaching of english due to our constant requests. they separated the english and spanish subjects which were organized as one area of study for which students needed to pass either one of them in order to pass the area. for example, students could fail the english class and still pass the area, a situation which was interfering with teachers’ efforts to change their teaching methodology. they also provided better teaching conditions to teachers by moving the english classrooms to the quietest rooms in the school for teachers to better implement the new teaching methodology, which included listening activities that were not working well due to the constant outside noise. this particular teacher started to voice her concerns in the school meetings. she also set an appointment with the principal to tell him about how the integration of english and spanish was not contributing much to her change of methodology. in this way, she was able to voice her concern in relation to this regulation and how it was affecting her teaching and her students’ learning. in this study, teachers’ work as agents of change remained at the classroom and the school level and did not cover the community outside the school because of time issues. with more time to work together, we might have been able to continue working in this direction and accomplish the kind of teaching for social justice that zeichner (2011) proposes. this example suggests that learning to teach for social justice is feasible and possible to achieve, and that language teachers when challenged or given the opportunity, are able to explore and align with a sjlte approach that not only emphasizes changing understandings of language learning, teaching and usage, accepts the existence of inequities in education, and imagines fair social futures for people but also emphasizes the responsibility of teachers in being agents of social change (hawkins, 2011). it is important to acknowledge that this pdp missed many of the features stated above that should characterize teacher learning for social justice and that could have provided both teachers with other important learning to improve their practice even more. most of what these teachers learned to do with their students was promoted through dialogue and collaborative work between them and me and their subsequent reflection on their practice. implications of a social justice language teacher education perspective implement ing a s o cia l just ice p ersp e c t ive in language education requires the support and commitment of different educational stakeholders. the suggestions below are based on discussions that scholars in the field have had in relation to sjte and sjlte and my own insights as regards how this support and commitment could be built. 213profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... teacher educators to prepare language teachers to work for social justice, we need to prepare teacher educators first. as zeichner (2011) states: “a major limitation in the social justice agenda, is the lack of capacity among teacher educators to do the job that needs to be done” (p. 16). he argues that many teacher educators have not had successful experiences working in the poor, diverse, and segregated schools systems that we currently have (zeichner as cited in zeichner, 2011). teacher educators need to model the same teaching practices and activism as well as the same caring, compassionate, and responsive relationships that they hope teachers promote with their own students in schools (conklin as cited in zeichner, 2011). moreover, they should be able to help teachers to deeply examine their attitudes and assumptions about education and their roles as teachers that may not allow them to work towards social justice in their own classrooms and schools. however, since teachers’ learning for social justice is not an easy job and teachers might show resistance to work from this perspective because they have to achieve what reform initiatives demand or because they do not want to assume this role of leaders of social change (zeichner, 2011), teacher education programs should start by raising teachers’ awareness of the importance of teaching from this perspective so that they can move from awareness to individual action and then to the structural for a broader social impact. additionally, language teacher educators should construct partnerships with schools to work on the design and implementation of curriculums and pedagogical strategies that are based on a social justice perspective. professional development program coordinators and policy makers give n t h at p ol i c y m a ke rs and m any pdp coordinators in the country work hand in hand to provide in-service teachers with programs to attain the goals set by the government in terms of language teaching and learning in schools, they should also work to include in those programs objectives that reflect a social justice perspective and that prepare teachers to become agents of change, not only in their schools but also outside them. preparing teachers in the knowledge and skills the government has established to help students to be competent in a globalized world, which normally offers possibilities for some students but not for all, is not enough if we really want to provide them with the kind of education they deserve and that can offer them better life chances. moreover, these stakeholders should move from pdps that focus on issues of language, that is, grammar, function, structure, and usage to include content and activities that focus on linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogies, that critically explore a social justice approach to language teaching, and that emphasize the responsibility of teachers in being agents of social change (hawkins, 2011). policy makers and pdp coordinators who really care about students’ learning and their possibilities to succeed in life should design pdps that combine the characteristics of effective professional development and the kinds of goals, principles, contents, and activities suggested above with the purpose of preparing in-service teachers to be able to work from a social justice perspective with their own students. researchers several issues should be considered by researchers in our language teacher education field. researchers should analyze and monitor pdps that attempt to infuse a social justice language perspective to really understand how teachers are learning to teach. moreover, keeping in mind that previous research has concentrated on teachers’ attitudes and ignored their actions (cochran-smith et al., 2009), researchers should study the impact of pdps in teachers’ actions inside and outside the schools. furthermore, they universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras214 sierra piedrahita should conduct studies of pdps in which the learning of in-service teachers in terms of social justice is followed and analyzed across time in order to see its evolution and the impact of such learning in their teaching practices. this last item leads us to a very complex but essential research issue which is to study the relationship between teacher learning and student learning. we need to understand how what teachers learn in pdps structures to promote a social justice language perspective can contribute to students’ learning. finally, researchers should conduct studies to determine the time it takes for teachers to move from awareness raising about social justice to individual action and then from individual action to action inside and outside the school as well as what it requires for teachers to move from awareness raising to action inside and outside the school. understanding all these issues will provide researchers with insights to theorize about teacher learning and professional development and stakeholders with ideas to plan pdps for in-service teachers accordingly. teachers in-service teachers themselves should commit to the work that a social justice perspective implies if they really want to provide their students with better life chances. given that teaching is a political act, teachers are called to learn to work from a political perspective such as this one and become the change agents our education system needs. in this sense, we need teachers who are committed to their students’ education and who do not give up the possibility to change the oppressive structures and practices we are experiencing in these neoliberal times (mcinerney, 2007). furthermore, in times of reform and accountability such as the ones we are living, educators should accept the need for change and work to design curricula and pedagogies that respond to the needs of their students and provide them with better life chances. administrators administrators should encourage and support language teachers to work from a social justice perspective by providing them with the necessary time and resources to participate in the pdps they are offered. they should welcome in their schools pdps that are designed to promote a social justice perspective in language teachers for the benefit of students. moreover, they should support teachers in building relationships with families and the community so that they can move from individual action to social action outside the schools. last, but not least, they should support teachers when challenging language regulations or policies that promote inequalities and injustices in schools and consider teachers’ perspectives and voices when deciding whether these should be implemented or not. because policies are enacted in schools, teachers can resist them, modify them, and appropriate them at the school level (mcinerney, 2007) after considering the benefits or drawbacks for students. final remarks teaching from a social justice perspective requires teachers’ understanding that they themselves are responsible for challenging inequities in society (c ochran-smith et al., 2009). they should be advocates for students and their efforts should support larger efforts for social change (cochransmith et al., 2009) as they understand that both inequities in education and low quality education are closely related to the lack of access to decent jobs, which affects people’s access to housing, healthcare, food, and so on (hawkins, 2011; zeichner, 2011) and, at the same time, the lack of all these basic needs might hinder students’ school attendance (hawkins, 2011). therefore, teachers are called to accept the responsibility they have in the construction of better futures for their students and as consequence a better society. however, constructing a better society is not 215profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... only the responsibility of teachers. although teachers can play a fundamental role in dealing with issues of inequities and injustices in schools, they are only part of the solution given that changing societies requires a broader political work at different levels (berliner as cited in zeichner, 2011). although for many stakeholders working from a social justice perspective may sound very idealistic, it is possible to accomplish. the example of the two teachers provided in this paper is precisely a proof of what teachers can achieve when they are willing to change their attitude and accept the challenge. language teacher educators, teachers, and in-service and pre-service language teachers are thus called to begin that change that our country needs and demands from us. we have all heard that teaching is a political endeavor; however, many of us do not fully understand what this implies. sjlte provides us with the opportunity to understand what it means to be political, make our job more meaningful, and contribute to a more equal and just society as we provide our students with access to learning and better life chances (cochran-smith et al., 2009). designing and implementing professional development programs that offer possibilities to teachers other than just preparing them to teach the knowledge and skills policy makers determine as important to be competitive in the world economy, is paramount in language education. therefore, pdps should be structured in a way that they will provide in-service teachers with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that allow them to change their teaching practices and carry out more effective work with their students as they help them make important connections between language and the world around them and in a way that is meaningful for them. in other words, pdps should be designed in a way that can help teachers to separate or detach from language issues such as grammar, function, structure, and usage and move to provide teachers with the opportunity to understand their role in society and their responsibility as agents of social change. a sjlte perspective can offer this possibility to language teachers. exploring a different way of working with teachers that could help them construct better futures for their students is paramount in times of reforms such as the ones we are living. experiences for students in schools can be different, but we need to prepare in-service and pre-service teachers to be open to work from a social justice perspective that will allow them to understand the political purposes of education. there is still the hope that despite the many oppressive neoliberal reforms, teachers in our country can exercise their autonomy to achieve alternative, progressive, and emancipatory practices and promote socially just schools (mcinerney, 2007). references anderson, g. l., herr, k., & nihlen, s. a. (1994). studying your own school: an educator’s guide for qualitative practitioner research. thousand oaks, ca: corwin press. brennan, m., & noffke, s. e. (2009). social-political theory in working with teachers for social justice schooling. in b. somekh & s. e. noffke (eds.), the sage handbook of educational action research (pp. 432-441). london, uk: sage. burnaford, g., fischer, j., & hobson, d. (2001). teachers doing research: the power of action through inquiry. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. cadavid múnera, i. c., quinchía ortiz, d. i., & díaz mosquera, c. p. (2009). una propuesta holística de desarrollo profesional para maestros de inglés de la básica primaria [a holistic professional development approach for elementary school english teachers]. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 14(21), 135-158. cochran-smith, m., & lytle, s. l. (1999). relationships of knowledge and practice: teacher learning in communities. review of research in education, 24, 249-305. cochran-smith, m., shakman, k., jong, c., terrell, d. g., barnatt, j., & mcquillan, p. (2009). good and just universidad nacional de colombia, facultad de ciencias humanas, departamento de lenguas extranjeras216 sierra piedrahita teaching: the case for social justice in teacher education. american journal of education, 115(3), 347-377. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/597493. day, c., & sachs, j. (2004). professionalism, performativity and empowerment: discourses in the politics, policies and purposes of continuing professional development. in c. day & j. sachs (eds.), international handbook on the continuing professional development of teachers (pp. 3-32). glasgow, uk: open university press. elmore, r. f. (2002). bridging the gap between standards and achievement: the imperative for professional development in education. washington, dc: albert shanker institute. enterline, s., cochran-smith, m., ludlow, l. h., & mitescu, e. (2008). learning to teach for social justice: measuring change in the beliefs of teacher candidates. the new educator, 4(4), 267-290. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/15476880802430361. fullan, m. (2001). the new meaning of educational change (3rd ed.). new york, ny: teachers college press. hawkins, m. r. (2011). dialogic determination: constructing a social justice discourse in language teacher education. in m. r. hawkins (ed.), social justice language teacher education (pp. 120-123). bristol, uk: multilingual matters. hawley, w. d., & valli, l. (1999). the essentials of effective professional development: a new consensus. in l. darling-hammond & g. sykes (eds.), teaching as the learning profession: handbook of policy and practice (pp. 127-150). san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. hoban, g. f. (2002). teacher learning for educational change: a systems thinking approach. buckingham, uk: open university press. mccotter, s. s. (2001). collaborative groups as professional development. teacher and teacher education, 17(6), 685704. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0742-051x(01)00024-5. mcdonald, m. a. (2008). the pedagogy of assignments in social justice teacher education. equity and excellence in education, 41(2), 151-167. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/10665680801943949. mcinerney, p. (2007). from naive optimism to robust hope: sustaining a commitment to social justice in schools and teacher education in neoliberal times. asia-pacific journal of teacher education, 35(3), 257-272. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/13598660701447213. noffke, s. e. (2009). revisiting the professional, personal, and political dimensions of action research. in b. somekh & s. e. noffke (eds.), the sage handbook of educational action research (pp. 6-23). london, uk: sage. http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9780857021021.n2. randi, j., & zeichner, k. m. (2004). new visions of teacher professional development. in m. a. smylie & d. miretzky (eds.), developing the teacher workforce (pp. 180-221). chicago, il: chicago university press. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-7984.2004.tb00034.x. sierra piedrahita, a. m. (2007a). developing knowledge, skills and attitudes through a study group: a study on teachers’ professional development. íkala, revista de lenguaje y cultura, 12(18), 279-305. sierra piedrahita, a. m. (2007b). the professional development of a facilitator through a study group. profile issues in teachers’ professional development, 8(1), 91-101. stake, r. e. (2006). multiple case study analysis. new york, ny: the guildford press. sugrue, c. (2004). rhetorics and realities of cpd across europe: from cacophony towards coherence? in c. day & j. sachs (eds.), international handbook on the continuing professional development of teachers (pp. 67-93). glasgow, uk: open university press. usma, j., & frodden, c. (2003). promoting teacher autonomy through educational innovation. íkala, revista de lenguage y cultura, 8(14), 101-132. zeichner, k. m. (2009). teacher education and the struggle for social justice. new york, ny: routledge. zeichner, k. m. (2011). teacher education for social justice. in m. r. hawkins (ed.), social justice language teacher education (pp. 7-22). bristol, uk: multilingual matters. zepeda, s. j. (2008). professional development: what works. larchmont, ny: eye on education and the national staff development council. 217profile vol. 18, no.1, january-june 2016. issn 1657-0790 (printed) 2256-5760 (online). bogotá, colombia. pages 203-217 contributions of a social justice language teacher education perspective to professional development... about the author ana maria sierra piedrahita is an assistant professor at the school of languages, universidad de antioquia (colombia). she holds a phd in education—curriculum and instruction, from the university of wisconsin, madison, usa. her teaching and research interests include teacher professional development and learning, social justice education and curriculum in language teaching. 05_(41-63) economic justice and market.pmd economic justice and market economy: a remark on hayek’s position on social justice andre ata ujan atma jaya catholic university, indonesia abstract is social justice or economic justice a utopia? this would be one of the questions that anyone might immediately raise as he/ she reads friedrich august von hayek’s position on the idea of social or economic justice. as a classic liberal thinker, hayek believed that free market is the ideal economic system for it in nature promotes freedom and equality in free and open societies. is hayek’s defense of free market economy sufficiently convincing to eliminate any room for social or economic justice to take place? in this essay i want to argue that there is actually no free market in a pure sense. market is in fact not entirely free from selfish interests potentially developed by market players themselves in doing business. it is therefore not entirely reasonable to see market as purely spontaneous and independent entity. since it is in fact open for selfish interest, its outcomes can be just or unjust. free competition prompted systematically by free market system, therefore, could risk human life prospect. for this reason, state’s intervention to a certain extent is necessary to prevent market competition from endangering citizens’ basic right to enjoy a decent life. state’s intervention is, therefore, important for it is necessary to secure social or economic justice. social or economic justice is of course an ideal but not necessarily a utopia in a radical sense. taking the unfortunates’ quality of life as the benchmark in designing and enacting economic policies, social or economic justice might be, at least partially, realized. john rawls’ idea of maximin rule or maximin strategy can pave the way for the realization of such ideal that every civilized person or society is essentially ever craving to. prajna vihara, volume 14, number 1-2, january-december 2013, 41-63 2000 by assumption university pressc -~ 41 introduction from an ethical perspective, a central issue in economics is that of economic justice, which is popularly termed social justice. this issue has become important since it is threatened by the pragmatism connected to the promotion of free market economy. there is a shared conviction among its proponents that a free market economy is the most viable economic system for everyone to pursue his/her economic interests. it however, at the same time, tends to enlarge the socio-economic chasm between the rich and the poor. while we must acknowledge that the free market has contributed to our modern societies, it must also be acknowledged that it has brought with it negative externalities. it has often burdened the less fortunate, particularly among developing countries.1 supported by the ideology of neo-liberalism, the inequalities of the free market will increase. this continues until all aspects of human life are under the control of economic hegemony. freedom in free market economy is, therefore, paradoxical in nature. on one hand, it has become a precondition necessary to promote human development, particularly, in terms of economic prosperity. however, on the other hand, it creates a continuous expansion of social disparity. hence, promoting social or economic justice is a task that every civilized society has a moral responsibility to address. friedrich august von hayek (1899-1992), however, stands in opposition to this common concern. hayek believes that the struggle for economic or social justice leads to state intervention, and ultimately to authoritarianism, which in turn would diminish individual freedom. social justice, according to hayek, is an illusion. the market is a spontaneous, independent, and impersonal order. it is therefore unreasonable to take social justice to be the standard to evaluate the market. but this position, regardless of how sound it might seem, must not be taken-for-granted. i would argue in this essay, instead, that the free market is not as spontaneous and independent as hayek has in his mind. the free market is not entirely free from selfish interests and, hence, its results can lead to grave injustice. i would like to show that government’s regulation on markets, which, to a certain extent, functions to confine economic freedom, must not be understood and viewed simply as the reflection of freedom in42 prajna vihara-~ fringement. an intelligent and prudent regulation is necessary to ensure everyone’s right to economic gain, in particular, and human well-being, in general. to such an end, this paper begins with a short elaboration of hayek’s view of social justice and his idea of the nature of free market economy. to be fair to hayek, a careful assessment of his contributions to the theory of the free market and social justice will be necessary. this might help us see both the insights and the blind spots of hayek’s conception about free market and social justice. at the end of this essay, an alternative position will be offered to demonstrate that creating and promoting social or economic justice is still possible and this can be done without necessarily violating individual freedom. social justice in market economy 1. freedom, general welfare, and abstract rules among social philosophers, hayek has been extensively recognized the prominent defendant of the system of laissez faire economics. he has been known for his strong criticisms of the state’s interventions on markets. his observation of political practices leads him to emphasize that the state’s intervention is commonly applied in the form of enforcing models of distribution, which is deliberately designed to create redistribution of wealth and ownership. the state’s intervention according to hayek is likely to generate negative impacts on human civilization since it is by nature a violation of personal freedom; it even promotes and creates authoritarian politics.2 the politics of centralized policy taken to control market, hayek believes, would prompt unfair wealth redistribution for it simply gives advantages to those who avoid assuming real responsibility for the society and, at the same time, disadvantages those who in fact contribute to society. wealth redistribution simply gives a free ride to those who do not deserve it, which is certainly contradictory to the principle of justice as fairness.3 to put it in another way, only those who contribute to society can have the legitimate right to benefit from it. a critical question that follows is: should we neglect those who are objectively unfortunate? is it fair to ignore the life prospect of the unfortunate andre ata ujan 43 ones simply because of their objective inability to contribute? this is a very reasonable question to pose to hayek. it is worth noting that hayek himself actually rejects the idea that individual wealth and income is the end of economic policy, because the so-called general welfare is not the accumulation of individual welfare. general welfare is concerned with the question of how to create conditions that might help facilitate the satisfaction of pluralistic and unknown individual ends. in short, the state’s policy has nothing to do with direct individual income. individual interests are pluralistic in form and they may compete with one another. therefore, the real responsibility that the state is supposed to assume is not to ensure everyone a certain amount of income or wealth, but rather to create conditions that can pave the way for every individual to pursue his/her own interests. there are two factors supporting hayek’s position. first, ensuring individual satisfaction requires full or complete information or knowledge about individual satisfaction. this however, is hard, if not impossible, to meet even by government whose main duty is to make sure that all citizens have equal and fair opportunity to live a decent life. hence, it is unreasonable to consider individual wealth the standard of market evaluation. following adam smith, the market is subject to the invisible hand, i.e., market mechanism in the form of free supply and demand. the power of supply and demand determines market transactions; and nobody can exactly predict and fully know in advance the results. in other word, the market by nature operates within the condition of uncertainty. in such condition, what is necessary to work out is creating the conditions that promote favorable opportunity for everyone to satisfy his/her needs.4 second, and more important, promoting individual or group interests as the target of public policy, instead of promoting social harmony, leads to conflicts resulting from competing interests. such conflicts have become a common phenomenon in pluralistic societies since every party tends to insist upon special treatment. justice and peace as an ultimate end disappears due to the domination of individual or group interests. hence, to avoid potential conflict, what is important to agree on, hayek argues, is not the end but rather the instrument by which everyone is able to pursue his/her own goals or ends. in other words, it is important to strive for creating favorable conditions that provide fair and 44 prajna vihara-~ equal access to reduce and to reconcile various (conflicting) interests. civilized societies, hayek emphasizes, have developed due to the realization that human beings can live peaceful lives and be a benefit to one another without necessarily agreeing on final goals.5 hayek promotes a means-end approach, which has become common in mainstream economics. by stressing the means-end approach as the basic character of mainstream economy, hayek, at the same time, is inclined to see economics, borrowing from amartya sen, as a kind of engineering science or calculative science rather than a normative science. in karl polanyi’s words, mainstream economy prefers to see economy primarily as formal science and, hence, ignores the genuine characteristic of economy as substantive science.6 hayek does realize the impossibility of successfully reconciling various (conflicting) interests. but by giving special emphasis to a meansend approach, hayek eliminates individual ends from the framework of socio-economic concern and encourages openness to develop social cooperation among members of society. in this way, hayek, on the one hand, promotes individual freedom, because freedom is the foundation of human civilization. by anticipating potential conflicts triggered by various and pluralistic self-interests, hayek, however, on the other hand, tries to remind us that self-interest is prone to falling into economic egoism. at this point, self-interest can put free and civilized society in a risky situation.7 we see here that the moral sentiments taken by adam smith to be the moral shield and a product of human self-control, and which prevent human beings from slipping into economic egoism, simply have no place in hayek’s idea of economic rationality. a great society, hayek insists, must not design its rules for the sake of a projected individual end but rather as the instrument that functions to serve various and pluralistic interests.8 to play that role effectively, a rule, according to hayek, must be general and abstract in nature, and only then can a rule or law be adapted to uncertainties. to have adaptive and anticipative rules, it is important to learn from the past. this would be highly important because experience can become viable basis to predict possible future conditions and at the same time help remind us of the importance of observing the rule of law as we deal with uncertainty. a rule therefore serves as general norm in pursuing various and pluralistic andre ata ujan 45 individual interests.9 hayek puts special stress on and even prefers rule utilitarianism to act utilitarianism. a rule in essence functions as the guidance of individual or group behavior. it does not directly determine the type and the form of an action that human being has to do. it provides the agent with insight of how he/she should act as he/she is encountering particular problem in a real situation. act utilitarianism is not as effective because it presumes knowledge of the agent’s concrete situation and the effect of the action for both the agent him/herself and many other people. such an approach neglects the phenomenon of ignorance, which is a condition that always exists in every decision-making process. since a rule is, basically, a normative guidance, it is impossible to have perfect or complete knowledge about the effect it may bring about. it can lead us to a certain action, but it does not necessarily follow that we have sufficient reason to claim with certainty in advance that a rule-based action can lead us to a definitive result. having perfect knowledge would guarantee particular effect of particular action. unfortunately, such situation never exists. under the condition of uncertainty, the results of an action depend not only upon a guiding rule. it is also determined by subject’s ability to adapt him/herself in a way that the prospect of the success he/she is striving for becomes more feasible to achieve. hence, again, an appropriate rule must be in essence general and long term (rule utilitarianism) rather than particular and short term oriented (act utilitarianism).10 2. the mirage of social justice hayek raises these arguments to question the techniques of wealth distribution that governments pursue.11 taking social justice to be the basis for wealth redistribution, hayek asserts, is a primitive way of thinking. hayek argues that whatever the benefits or threats that anybody could acquire through market mechanism are in nature coming out as the unintended result of the market mechanism itself. hence, the so-called social justice is simply the direct consequence of artificial “anthropomorphism” or “personification” taken to rationalize a process and an order, which is in itself self-ordering, that is, market. hence, demand for the satisfaction 46 prajna vihara-~ of social justice is unreasonable. it is even an immature way of thinking because the so-called market is in essence an impersonal entity. in other words, since market is actually under nobody’s control, then its resulting effects cannot be considered fair or unfair. that is also the reason why hayek is likely to question political movements that take social justice to be central. adherents of liberalism and that of socialism commonly take social justice to be the justification for their political struggles. however, since market mechanism and its results are practically uncontrollable, hayek believes, such motive must be open to critical questions. by questioning the motives of such movements, hayek is also likely to unmask political veils, and encourage the public to be aware of the hidden motives. hayek doubts the possiblity of engineering social justice, for our experience teaches us that the more the idea becomes public, the more impossible it is to take place. efforts to create social justice, promoted by both liberalism and socialism, according to hayek, would risk the very human basic values, especially the value of freedom that plays a very central role in supporting human civilization.12 we see here that hayek is likely to confuse social justice as an ideal with its manifestation in political and economic reality. realizing the imperfect manifestation of the idea of social justice, hayek comes to reject it and see it as an illusion. hayek is so intent on defending the free market, he overly diminishes the idea of social justice. taking such position, however, actually leads hayek to fall into a natural fallacy, condemning a particular ideal due to its imperfect manifestation in real life. hayek, however, ignores such an objection since he holds consistently that a discussion about the tension between social justice as an ideal and its manifestation in human real life does not make sense; such discussion, therefore, has no place in free and open societies. many efforts have been made to pursue ideal values, especially social justice, and yet, hayek observes, those efforts always tend to fail. such efforts, according to hayek, even threaten free and open societies. socialism is the most problemtic ideology with regard to its defense of social justice. the adoption of socialism, hayek argues, simply uproots traditional values that everyone needs to develop and maintain moral values, especially personal freedom. hence, the idea of social justice, hayek holds, must be at odds with the culture of free market since andre ata ujan 47 market in essence takes personal freedom to be the foundation upon which it grows and flourishes. but this point, it is necessary to raise the question: is there sufficient reason to hold that market order, in the name of social justice, has the authority to set up remuneration models based on performance evaluation and needs, which are actually different from one person to another?13 hayek’s response is “no”. hayek recognizes people’s shared conviction of the validity of social justice. but he also knows that such a conviction has, supported by government’s intervention, encouraged and motivated people to strive for its realization in their real life. however he emphasizes that the more people are dependent on the government for the realization of social justice, the more the people put themselves under the control of the government. this political environment leads ultimately to totalitarianism. if market and its results, hayek argues, are entirely controllable, then we have sufficient reason to identify certain people to be responsible for the increasingly widening gap between the rich and the poor. this interpretation, however, according to hayek, is entirely wrong. since the market is a spontaneous process, hayek holds, it is absurd to say that there is injustice in market order. blaming market as the source of social injustice, hayek emphasizes, is unreasonable since we actually have no sufficient knowledge that justifies us to assign blame to individuals for social problems. this is only the case in a centrally planned economic system. only in such a system can anyone assume responsibility for market negative externalities. in the system of planned economy, the market operates upon particular planned goals and therefore, the results it carries out can be said to be just or unjust. such a planned system however is at odds with the basic ethos of free society. planned economy potentially negates peoples’ initiatives and creativity, which is the sine qua non condition for economic development. to put it in hayek’s words, command economy, the other label for planned economy, is a real threat to human freedom. 3. market: a game/catallaxy following the above argument, the market cannot be just or un48 prajna vihara-~ just because only human-created situation can be just or unjust.14 justice and injustice are attributes applicable only to human intentionality basedactions and hence cannot be true for unintended actions. justice requires particular game rules. however, since the entire process of the distribution of goods and services is entirely under the control of impersonal market, the existence of such rules is not relevant. although human market behavior can be just or unjust, the consequences of his/her actions that may affect other people’s quality of life cannot be just or unjust because the consequences a market can bring about are unpredictable. hayek viewed the market simply as a game. just like a game that needs the rule of game to take place, so does the market. rules are settled and agreed on the basis that they are needed to increase every party’s opportunity to win the game. it must, however, be noted that the existence of the game rules at the same time indicates that the game itself cannot be entirely controlled by individuals or groups of individuals who participate and involve in the game. the result of the game, therefore, is not exactly predictable even by the players themselves. besides, in any game, the rules are not the only factor of success. players must have good knowledge of how to play, skills to increase opportunities, and even good fortune. since the quality of knowledge and level of skills of players are different, mere knowledge of the game rules provides no guarantee for winning. the competition, at most, is considered to be fair. however, it is unreasonable, hayek argues, to insist that the end result of the competition be equal for every participant of the competition. the same thing, hayek holds, is true in economy. for the above reason hayek prefers to call free market economy a catallaxy,15 that is, the phenomenon of a spontaneous order created by market agents who, on the one hand, are subjected to the same rules of game, but, on other hand, continuously try to create mutual adaptation for the sake of each own interest. a catallaxy become special to adopt for it accommodates various knowledge and interests, which are different from one another. in a catallaxy, everyone has equal opportunity to pursue his/her own interest without negating the same opportunity for others to pursue their own. this argument reveals how hayek is so confident of taking self-interest to be the basic motive of economy. he appears to believe that free market systematically supported by self-interest as its andre ata ujan 49 internal self-regulating power would not turn out to be an arena for economic egoism to flourish. it is worth noting that hayek actually realizes the potency of conflict, which is commonly incorporated in economybased self-interest. hayek, however, seems to believe that there is enlightened self-interest in economic competition that serves to maintain fair economic opportunity for all. this brings him to the conclusion that market, in terms of cattalaxy, is the most efficient system because it opens the door for everyone to benefit from it. in calculative economic language, it is necessary to support free market since it is the only system in which pareto optimality principle could obtain.16 viewing it from the perspective of economic advantage, it must be emphasized that the principle of pareto optimality can be fulfilled only if, and only if, the economic advantage of some people can be increased without at the same time decreasing the equal opportunity for others to benefit. the critical question to be raised is: should we conclusively come to the position to state that the fulfillment of pareto optimality principle inherently brings with it the fulfillment of everyone’s right to benefit from the market? in other words, does justice immediately take place once pareto optimality has been fully satisfied? hayek, however, rejects such question since he holds that the market order is never justified on the basis of its power to create social justice. the market follows its own mechanisms. it is only the market agents’ fair behavior __ that is, market competition, not the market itself, which is free from fraud, monopoly, and violence __ that allows for the principle of justice to flourish. even the liberal conception of justice promoted by john locke, according to hayek, is based on the same conception of free competition, that is, only the way of competition can be fair or unfair; not the result of the competition itself. hence, general rules settled to regulate market procedure can never guarantee that anyone can benefit from the market. critical remarks some elements are worth noting. first, is there sufficient reason to believe that the social free space created by general and abstract rules 50 prajna vihara-~ for everyone to pursue their own interests can never be misused by market agents to selfishly pursue their own interest? should we believe that market is entirely free from economic malpractice, such as dumping, cartels, and monopolies? if there is room for market agents to misuse market opportunities, then why should the market be exempted from measures insuring justice? hayek, it seems, fails to realize that a general rule, no matter how large the scope it may have, cannot effectively anticipate the entire possible problems that can happen in the future. rules are limited by substance and are therefore, not fully anticipative.17 at this point moral considerations come to be forefront. moreover, once a rule is too general in its characteristic, including the ones that regulate market, it opens the door for multi-interpretations. this would in turn give more room for abuse. if that is the case, then there is no sufficient reason for hayek to stubbornly view the market as an independent and spontaneous entity and, therefore, cannot be just or unjust. it is worth noting as well that rule of law is naturally paradox. it is the substance of a rule that, on one hand, it is by character confining, but, on the other hand, opening a space for the things outside the framework of regulation to happen. to such extent, a rule serves to put certain limitation on human actions but at the same time opens opportunities. in a very positivistic legal culture, everything is permitted insofar as it is notillegal. as a result, loophole seeking mentality is very common. it is, therefore, not surprising that on behalf of the rule of law, every market player will try to do whatever they can to win his/her own interest insofar as formal legal norms are observed. things get worse as people come to hold: “what is legally alright must be morally alright too”. in this framework of thinking, we should say that whatever happens in the market must not be spontaneous for it cannot escape from market players’ intentional plan. to put it in another way, whatever the result market can bring about, it is, at least partially, under the intentional control of market players and hence market players must be responsible for market results, especially for the unjust ones. it is not entirely true to see market simply as a social order, which is absolutely spontaneous and independent in such a way that there is no room at all to question its process and results from the perspective of justice or injustice. exempting the market from moral evaluation would pave the way andre ata ujan 51 for illegitimate claims of right. following robert nozick, in his work anarchy, state and utopia, (1974), a claim of an ownership is legitimate if it results from a voluntary transaction; and the person who puts his things under the transaction must be the legitimate owner of the things he is offering. otherwise, the transaction would be illegitimate and so the ownership acquired through the transaction is illegitimate too. voluntary transaction is, of course, possible in a free market system, but since the free market and its general rules are prone to abuse, the claim of ownership can be illegitimate. nozick’s entitlement theory stated that any claim of ownership must not be in force as it is acquired from illegitimate ownership.18 second, it is not entirely true to see the state’s intervention simply as an infringement of freedom. there must be a distinction between the idea of limitation as regulation and limitation as infringement of freedom. hayek is right insofar as he understands freedom to be the foundation of human civilization. the very basic values, such as self-expression, innovation, and creativity are factors that lead to the development of civilization, such values require a free environment. limitation of freedom in terms of regulation is necessary and must be put in the framework of the development of human civilization. thus legal confinement of freedom is necessary for the sake of freedom itself. the glorification of unlimited freedom would ultimately undermine a civilization. it is the above argument that leads prominent thinkers such as thomas hobbes (1588-1679), jean-jacques rousseau (1712-1778), and immanuel kant (1724-1804) to develop the idea of a “social contract”. without being blind to its possible negative externality or its unintended negative effects on the citizens’ basic rights, hobbes’ insistence on the citizens to put their rights entirely under the regulation and control of the king, is initially based on the good will to protect the very citizens’ basic rights. with different way out but under the same logic of thinking, immanuel kant later on came to emphasize the importance of the idea of social contract. instead of giving absolute power to the king, as suggested by hobbes, kant in his work the metaphysical elements of justice underscored the primacy of the rule of law as the political instrument to protect the citizens’ basic rights. to protect everyone’s rights, kant believes, under the guidance of “practical reason”, members of society 52 prajna vihara-~ eventually agree to leave behind the natural state of pre-juridical society and move to juridical society.19 legal protection of the citizens’ basic rights is so important that society is legally justified in forcing every citizen to move from pre-juridical society to juridical society. a claim of a lawful state, therefore, requires true recognition of the state’s essential position to enforce the rule of law as the only political instrument to ensure the citizens’ basic rights. it is, therefore, reasonable, to a certain extent, to confine legally the citizens’ freedom for only in this way can everyone’s basic rights, including the right to social wellbeing, be effectively protected. at this point, the issue of just and unjust law is crucial. third, hayek’s defense on the idea of free market to fullfill the pareto optimality principle, is actually a reflection of his over-optimism concerning the capacity of the market for self-ordering. such optimism, however, is reasonable only if the market itself is perfect. a perfect market is the one that operates under the full support of true and broadly available information. this condition is indeed impossible to fulfill. market information is always asymetric in nature. it is not surprising since competition in itself presumes competitiveness. this requires carefulness in sharing and diseminating information in market. for this reason, every involved party would keep its information in such a way that prevents other parties from having complete or full information they need to increase their own competitive advantage. unfortunately, information about market is always asymmetrical. every concerned party would prefer to maintain such a condition as it serves their self interest. it is, therefore, not entirely true to see market as entirely free from anybody’s control. this further weakens hayek’s insistence on excluding concepts of justice in considerations of the market. besides, the principle of efficiency or pareto optimality principle is acceptable insofar as it promotes the principle of utility. it is, however, worth noting that putting too much stress on the principle of utility is prone to abnegate the principle of fair equality. fair equality of the distribution of goods and services would be at risk once the principle of utility dominates.20 over-emphasizing the principle of utility simply reveals that economy has been taken to be the end in itself. it is not surprising, then, that economy is operating free from any non-economic motive. economy has become the only motive of every economic activity. however, this andre ata ujan 53 way of seeing economy would lead hayek to encounter two serious problems. first, hayek seems to hold that the actual economic behavior is determined solely by economic motive, which is nothing but the selfinterest; and second, hayek falls into neglect of the general formal equilibrium theory in economy. self-interest is important to boost economic development. yet, it is not the sole driving motive of every economic gain. karl polanyi in his masterpiece the great transformation, (2001), shows this clearly. through his careful anthropological and historical study on economic development, he shows that in many cases non-economic motives has played a very central role for economic development. they are a more determining factor in economic development than the economic motives themselves. many economic achievements are generated from an obsession that goes beyond economic interest. in a very micro level, economic prosperity is not the entire motive that encourages a father to be so involved in his work. hard working might be the way for him to maintain and sustain his self-dignity before both his family and the society, at large. his dedication is therefore encouraged ultimately by motives that goes beyond economic motives.21 the same thing is true in a wider perceptive. bill gates, the owner of microsoft, in his speech in global economic forum, taking place in davos, switzerland, (january, 2008), encouraged his audience to take seriously the importance of non-economic incentives in doing business. self-interest, gate asserts, is a very important motive in capitalism. however, realizing the negative externality that the market could bring about, it is the time to look for alternative incentives, which is also based on the market itself. gates comes to believe that this alternative incentive is recognition.22 through the market, every businessman or woman is able to create his/her positive self-image. they should be able to put the value of life beyond mere economic value. positive self-image is an intangible value that may bring a long-term profit (tangible value) to the business; but it is also a very fundamental value for it reflects the very value of human selfquality. at this point self-interest must evolve and grow up to be enlightened self-interest in which economic achievements must be put within the framework of human social responsibility. it is, therefore, not impossible for a human being to take religious 54 prajna vihara-~ values or any other non-economic motives to be the driving motive of his/her economic activity. an economic gain must be treated, then, as an instrumental end for a nobler end once the work and economic achievement a person could harvest is viewed as the form of human responsibility for all the talents the god has endowed him/her. the history of economic practices has confirmed this non-economic central position in economic development. the so-called mercantilism, for example, is an economic system, which has developed and aimed at maintaining and sustaining the state’s sovereignty. its main motive is political, not economic. the economic domination through trade becomes the sine qua non condition for a state to demonstrate its political superiority and sovereignty over other countries in the world. thus, it is nationalism, not economy, that has become the driving force for the growth of mercantilism.23 the overemphasis on economy has led hayek to neglect what is called, following amartya sen, the formal general balance theory.24 to make it simple, the theory in essence emphasizes that to be successful, the economy must be understood within a broadened perspective. according to sen, in order to be able to handle successfully economic problems, economy must open itself and take seriously all non-economic considerations. daily experiences tell us that people can suffer from severe starvation even in a state with the abundance of economic resources or bountiful harvest. if this is the case then it must be clear that the problem to solve is not solely economic in nature. it is the problem of fair distribution of economic resources, which is by nature moral, not economic, problem. in other words, non-economic factors actually have direct or indirect effect on economics performance. amartya sen even believes that economy can become more productive once people take seriously moral considerations in their economic decision-making. fourth, the overemphasis on free market and free competition has disembedded the economy from its original characteristic as an embedded entity. economy, polanyi emphasizes, is but a part of the system of social relationships (embedded economy).25 his anthropological and historical studies on economics reveals that economy can never become the end in itself. originally, economy is always taken to be a part of social relationship and put within a broaden framework of human value system. it even becomes the instrument of social cohesion. that is the reason why andre ata ujan 55 social values such as reciprocity and redistribution, according to polanyi, have played a very central role in economic development. in other words, economic development is determined not primarily by economic growth but rather by its substantial contribution to human social welfare or human common good. hence, fair equality of economic benefit is more important to seek for than the fulfillment of the principle of utility itself. the above critical remarks, however, must not prevent us from giving fair appreciation to hayek’s socio-political and socio-economic contribution in the context of free market economy. hayek has made a very special contribution in reminding us of the potential totalitarianism and authoritarianism that the state might apply in defending social justice. therefore, it is unfair to neglect some of hayek’s critical remarks concerning economic justice. first, hayek’s rejection to the state’s intervention, to a certain extent, is true. while wealth redistribution, is the manifestation of the state’s responsibility for its citizens’ social welfare, hayek’s concerns about free riders in economy is important to note and to be aware of. free riders are morally unjustifiable. justice essentially requires everyone to share benefits and burdens fairly. hence, it is unfair to enjoy any social benefit without, at the same time, being ready to bear certain burden for the society. the rule of exchange requires everyone to produce in order to enjoy particular benefits offered by others in the market. market agents should produce to satisfy what the others need. to put it in rawls’ terms, it is unfair to insist particular right without doing one’s due. different treatment, however, must apply to those who are lacking in the abilities necessary to contribute. yet hayek is not entirely blind to the unfortunate. in his work the road to serfdom26, hayek attracts our attention to totalitarianism that the state could apply in its defense to social justice. he, however, at the same time requires the state to create a safety net for the unfortunate citizens. in a society in which all members of society, to a certain extent, have reached a level of welfare, the most important thing the state has to do is to ensure everyone’s general freedom, that is, a guarantee that every citizen has the real opportunity to satisfy each basic needs necessary to live a decent life. the state, hayek argues, has inherent responsibility to encourage and create a social system that protects its citizens from various threats. in this sense, hayek is exactly right and so deserves real support. 56 prajna vihara-~ second, the state’s intervention must not be taken-for-granted. besides its potential to depress citizens’ creativity, initiatives, and innovations, which are but the preconditions for creating competitive advantage, the common good it adopts to be the legitimate justification of the public policies could become an ideology to support the structural violence it applies to the citizens. it is common in every corrupt government that the so-called common good is adopted simply as the political mask to cover the interest of the dominant parties. this is also the reason for free societies to be aware and critical of the ideology of the general will. lack of criticism would pave the way for totalitarianism, a condition that must be at odds with the basic values of democracy. third, in a very close relation to the second point, it is necessary to emphasize that if we take seriously social justice to be the basic value for every free society, then the initiative for fighting social injustice must come, ultimately, from the oppressed ones. the oppressed parties know better the unfortunate condition to which they have borne. it is likely impossible to expect genuine generosity coming from a corrupt society. hence, there must be initiatives of the oppressed society to fight social injustice. free and civilized societies can learn a lot from social revolutions in the middle east in the last ten years. the social revolution initiated and organized by the oppressed citizens has proven itself the most effective political instrument for citizens to release themselves from political authoritarianism. it has proven itself that even the most authoritarian governments are powerless in sustaining their authority once the enlightened citizens are ready to pay the price for the sustainability of their basic rights. hayek’s stubborn position in rejecting the state’s intervention is therefore, to a certain extent, reasonable enough to support. promoting social justice in the pursuit of a competitive environment, the free market often loses sight of its original purpose. that is, the economy exists to support human welfare. but it has been separated from the social system and its role in strengthening social cohesion. the economy, therefore, must be brought back to its original position in which it serves as a part of a social andre ata ujan 57 infrastructure to support social welfare. to put it in polanyi’s words, economy by nature is but an embedded economy.27 this position, however, requires a communitarian spirit widely shared by society as a whole, for only in this environment, can economy turn out to be the effective means for creating human social welfare. in such environment, every member of society sees him/herself naturally as a part of the society who share fair burden and so fairly contribute to the common good. that is the basic nature of the so-called household for it is in a household that all of its members live together, share meals, and voluntarily take responsibility for the happiness of every member of the household.28 yet, the glorification of individualism and freedom has made polanyi’s and aristotle’s romanticism of mutual self-help and social responsibility seem outdated. it is important to note that hayek rejects social justice to be the standard of a successful market due to the idea that the market is a spontaneous and impersonal ordo that operates under the condition of uncertainty. it operates under its own rules of game and is free from anyone’s ability to control it. the state should intervene only when the market is considered harmful to the society as a whole, particularly, to the disadvantaged ones. so, the question which emerges is: how could social justice be enforced without at the same time infringing individual freedom or without doing harm to, using hayek’s terminology, general freedom? john rawls offers a way out. his idea of maximin rule (latin: maximum mnimorum rule) which is in essence an operational principle generated from his first principles of justice as fairness, that is, (1) the great principle of liberty for all; and (2a) the principle of fair equality of opportunity; and (2b) the difference principle. the first principle of justice as fairness, i.e. the great principle of liberty is political; whereas, the second principle of justice as fairness, i.e. the principle of fair equality of opportunity and the difference principle, is economic rather than political.29 hayek and rawls actually have something in common. both of them take uncertainty to be the basis for emphasizing the importance of freedom (in hayek) or liberty (in rawls).30 freedom (and abstract rules) according to hayek, is important because market is full of uncertainty. rawls takes the same way to justify everyone’s option for the first principle of justice. to him, in uncertainty, it is reasonable for rational people 58 prajna vihara-~ to choose the first principles of justice because only within the framework of such principles can everyone guarantee each own rights and freedom to enjoy social benefit provided by and available in society. freedom is even so important that it must not be traded off even for the sake of economic interest. the first principles of justice, therefore, must be treated lexically. it means that the second principle (i.e. the principle of fair equality of opportunity) can come to force only, if and only if, the first principle of justice (the great principle of liberty) has been satisfied. the same way of thinking is true for the difference principle. this principle may come to apply only, if and only if, the principle of fair equality of opportunity has been fully satisfied. that way of regulation is important because every principle in nature incorporates in itself human basic rights; to be more precise, human basic needs. in other words, it is morally unjustified to pursue one’s own interest at the price of others’ interest. that is exactly the essence of the maximin rule or the maximin strategy. the maximin strategy requires the fate of the unfortunate ones be taken seriously to be the benchmark in setting up and enforcing public policies. it means, only if everyone has satisfied his/her basic needs (this is the basic requirement of the principle of fair equality of opportunity), can the better off be allowed to claim the right to enjoy a better life prospect (the basic requirement of the difference principle). it is, therefore, very clear that rawls really takes into account the fate of the disadvantaged to be the benchmark of public policies. only if the disadvantaged has the real opportunity to enjoy a decent life, can the rest has the legitimate claim to enjoy a better life prospect. to put it in a stronger way, the better off must not enjoy a better life at the price of the worse off. this helps ensure everyone’s basic rights, on the one hand, and sustain freedom of the better off to pursue his/her interest, on the other. closing remarks hayek has shown us the importance of freedom in supporting human civilization, particularly, in the system of free market economy. to such extent, we must be very careful of any public policy enforced in the andre ata ujan 59 name of social justice. however, hayek’s conclusive position to eliminate social justice from the system of free market economy for the reason that such ideal would endanger human freedom and civilization, is overly extreme. the spontaneous, independent, and impersonal characteristic of the free market economy, which he takes to support his position, is an exaggeration. there is no sufficient reason to see market as an entity, which is entirely free from any party’s intervention. market is always, potentially, distorted by the market agents’ selfish-interests. hence, free market economy can become a serious threat to social justice. the state’s intervention is, therefore, important to support everyone’s right to enjoy a decent life in terms of human basic needs. it is indeed not easy to reach a situation fully colored by social justice. yet social justice is not a utopia in a radical sense. through restless efforts, social justice could, at least partially, be realized, when the unfortunate become a benchmark in planning and enforcing public policies. a civilized society must not allow any market system to widen the chasm between the rich and the poor. it is highly unreasonable to let an economic system to take precedence that reasonable people recognize as harmful to social justice. at this point, the state has the legal and moral responsibility for creating conditions for the existence and the sustainability of social justice. endnotes 1bill gates, “a new approcah to capitalism”, in michael kinsley, (ed.), creative capitalism (new york: simon & schuster, 2008), pp.7-16. in his speech, bill gates, among others, emphasized the urgency of the developed countries’ openness to help reduce socio-economic chasm that has grown up between developed and developing countries. gates tried to invite and encourage developed countries to create their domestic market for the developing countries’ products. 2friedrich von hayek, law, legislation and liberty: the mirage of social justice (chicago, london: the university of chicago, 1978), pp.67-70. 3see john rawls. a theory of justice, revised edition (harvard: harvard university press, 1999); justice is fairness: a restatement, 2001). taking liberalism to be the political back-ground of his theory of justice, john rawls emphasized the importance of fair distribution of benefit and burden. claim of rights to enjoy any social benefit without doing one’s own part as the reflection of his/her responsibility to society, according to rawls, is a blatant violation of the principle of justice as 60 prajna vihara-~ fairness. 4hayek, op.cit., pp.1-5. see also john rawls, a theory of justice, revised edition (harvard: harvard univerity press, 1999), pp.52-77. 5hayek, op.cit., p.109. 6amartya sen, on ethics and economics (malden, usa: blackwell publishing, 1988), pp.1-9; compare it with karl polanyi, “aristotle discovers the economy”, in karl polanyi et al., (eds)., trade and the market in the early empires, economies in history and theory (new york: the free press; london: colliermacmillan limited, 1957), pp.243-270. polanyi’s main position is that economy must be an embedded economy; and in such position, economy becomes an integral part of a broader human relationship or human value system. unfortunately, economy in fact is disembedded and eradicated from such system. polanyi rejected every notion that considers economic interest the only motive of all economic activities. he defended embedded-economy and rejected disembedded-economy. 7sen, op.cit., pp.10-21. 8hayek, op.cit., pp.4-5. 9hayek, op.cit., pp.11-14; 126. 10hayek, op.cit., pp.20-23. 11hayek, op.cit., pp.62-102. 12hayek, op.cit., pp.65-66. 13hayek, op.cit., pp.67-70. 14hayek, op.cit., p.33. 15hayek. op.cit., p.108. 16sen, op.cit., hlm. 27.s 17r. boatright, ethics and the conduct of business. fourth edition. (new jersey: pearson education, inc., 2003), pp.16-18. according to boatright, good economy requires a balanced consideration on economic, moral, and legal aspects in running economy. an overemphasis on economic aspect would provoke moral problems, which in turn, at least in the long run, inflict negative impact on economy itself. 18robert nozick, anarchy, state, and utopia (oxford: basic book, inc., 1974), pp.150-155. 19immanuel kant, the metaphysical elements of justice. translated with an introduction by john ladd, (indianapolis, new york: the bobs-merrill company inc., 1965), p.80. 20sen, op.cit., pp.31-37. 21karl polanyi, the great transformation. the political and economic origins of our time (boston: beacon press, 2001), pp. 48 etc. see also gregory clark, “the lesson of history”, in michel kinsley, (ed.), op.cit., pp.183-85. 22gates, op.cit., p.10. 23ian bremmer, the end of free market. who wins the war between states and corporation? (new york: penguin group (usa) inc., 2010), pp.32.42. 24sen, op.cit., pp.2-7. sen holds that economy originally has two dimenandre ata ujan 61 sions: (1) ethics; and (2) engineering. each of them in different way has close relationship with politics. quoting aristotle, sen asserts that economy has a close relationship with ethics because economy in essence is dealing not only with the question of “how to live”, but rather “how human beings should live their life”. in raising this moral question sen is going to emphasize the importance of moral motive in economy. due to its close relationship with ethics, economy becomes normative economy. meanwhile, the second dimension primarily emphasizes the calculative character of the economy; this is mainstream economy. 25polanyi, the great transformation, pp.48-58. 26hayek, road to serfdom (chicago: the university of chicago press, 2007). hayek’s explanations, on the one hand, emphasize the importance of releasing market from the state’s authoritarianism (the principle of non-intervention). however, on the other hand, to prevent the fate of the unfortunate ones from getting worse and worse, he emphasizes as well the importance of the state’s intervention to ensure everyone’s basic rights, including right to enjoy a better life in terms of economic prosperity. hence, to a certain extent, hayek is on the side of social justice. 27polanyi, the great transformation, p.48; “aristotle discovers the economy”, pp.243-270. 28aristoteles, politics, translated by c.d.c. reeve (usa: hacket publishing company inc., 1988), p.3. 29rawls, a theory of justice, pp.47-102; 130-138. hayek applies “freedom” in all his analysis of the market economy because his approach to economy is ethical in nature; whereas, rawls takes “liberty” to be the terminology in presenting his idea of justice as fairness because his approach to the issue is by nature political rather than moral. 30“freedom” is a moral terminology, whereas “liberty” is a political terminology. hayek applies “freedom” in all his analysis of the market economy because his approach to economy is ethical in nature; meanwhile, rawls takes “liberty” to be the terminology in presenting his idea of justice as fairness because he claims that his approach to the issue is by nature political rather than moral. references aristotle. (1998). politics. translated by c.d.c. reeve. united states: hacket publishing company, inc. boatright, r. (2003). ethics and the conduct of business. fourth edition. new jersey: pearson education, inc. bremmer, ian. (2010). the end of the free market. who wins the war between states and corporation?. new york: penguin group (usa) inc. 62 prajna vihara-~ gates, bill. a new approach to capitalism. in kinsley, michael, (ed). (2008). creative capitalism. new york: simon & schuster. hayek, friedrich august. (1978). law, legislation and liberty: the mirage of social justice. chicago, london: the university of chicago press. ----------------. (2004; 2007). the road to serfdom. chicago: the university of chicago press. kant, immanuel. (1965). the metaphysical elements of justice. translated with an introduction by john ladd. indianapolis, new york: the bobs-merrill company inc. nozick, robert. (1974). anarchy, state, and utopia. oxford: basic book, inc. polanyi, karl. (2001). the great transformation. the political and economic origins of our time. foreward by joseph e. stiglitz. introduction by fred block. boston: beacon press. ----------------. “aristotle discovers the economy”. in polanyi, karl, et al., eds.. (1957). trade and market in the early empires, economies in history and theory. new york: the free press. ----------------. “the economy as the instituted process”. in polanyi, karl, et al., (eds.). trade and the market in early empires, economies in the history and theory. (1957). new york: the free press. rawls, john. (1999). a theory of justice. revised edition. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. ----------------. (2001). justice as fairness: a restatement. edited by erin kelly. cambridge, masscusetts, london: belknap press of harvard university press. sen, amartya. (1988). on ethics and economics. the royal lectures. series editor: john m. letiche, university of california, berkeley. malden, usa: blackwell publishing. andre ata ujan 63 focus on elt journal special issue, 4(1), 2022 issn: 2687-5381 🖂corresponding author: akayoglu_s@ibu.edu.tr copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to focus on elt journal. supporting teachers’ engagement in pedagogies of social justice (steps): a collaborative project between five universities in turkey and the usa asedat akayoğlu bbabürhan üzüm and cbedrettin yazan aassoc. prof. dr., bolu abant i̇zzet baysal university, turkey, akayoglu_s@ibu.edu.tr bassoc. prof. dr., sam houston state university, usa, uzum@shsu.edu cassoc. prof. dr., the university of texas at san antonio, usa, bedrettin.yazan@utsa.edu apa citation: akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. (2022). supporting teachers’ engagement in pedagogies of social justice (steps): a collaborative project between five universities in turkey and the usa. focus on elt journal, 4(1), 7-27. https://doi.org/10.14744/felt.2022.4.1.2 abstract this paper reports on the findings of a research project titled supporting teachers’ engagement in pedagogies of social justice (steps), in which pre-service and inservice teachers from five universities in turkey and the usa participated in a sixweek-long virtual exchange. the main objective of the study was to promote social justice-informed pedagogies in k-12 schools through professional development and intercultural discussions between pre-service and in-service teachers from two countries. the study addressed the following research question: how does a sixweek virtual exchange project influence in-service and pre-service teachers’ social justice orientation? for this purpose, we collected quantitative data through a questionnaire based on social justice standards developed by a group of researchers called “learning for justice”. participants completed this questionnaire before and after their participation in the project. additionally, we asked the participants to write a reflection post at the end of the project regarding its impact, and we treated their posts as qualitative data. the findings indicated that the mean scores of the post-test results were significantly higher than those of the pre-test results, which indicated that participants’ engagement in the project changed their perspectives in a positive way. furthermore, analyzing the qualitative data, we found four recurring themes: a) learning through sharing and working in collaboration, b) noticing common concerns with other educators, c) self-awareness and self-evaluation, and d) promise for taking action. keywords teaching diverse learners of english, social justice pedagogy, virtual intercultural exchange, teacher education. article history received : 15.02.2022 revised : 19.03.2022 accepted : 21.03.2022 published : 04.04.2022 type research article introduction our world changes every day linguistically, culturally, politically, and economically as a result of local events that may have global impacts. the demographic changes due to global movement of people inevitably affect how we educate students and prepare teachers for an everchanging world. in recent years, we have witnessed the immigration of people with the hope of finding safer and better places to live, often escaping war-torn countries or looking for better economic opportunities. for example, at the time of writing this paper, many ukrainian citizens were leaving their countries as a result of the russian invasion in ukraine that started in mailto:akayoglu_s@ibu.edu.tr mailto:uzum@shsu.edu mailto:bedrettin.yazan@utsa.edu https://doi.org/10.14744/felt.2022.4.1.2 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9865-2546 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4511-7985 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1888-1120 8 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com february 2022. wars are not a problem of the past, and we will continue to live in a world in which people are forced to leave their homes. while there is surely room for improvement, the usa has traditionally been a country which receives immigrants and has plans and policies in place to address the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse populations. in comparison, turkey has received exponentially more immigrants in the last decade compared to its history since its establishment. therefore, the plans and policies to better serve diverse populations are still developing. according to the unhcr (the un refugee agency) global report in 2019, turkey hosted the highest number of refugees worldwide and the number of registered syrian refugees in turkey was over 3.6 million, only 1.7% of whom are living in temporary refugee camps. this means that 98.3% of the refugees are living in urban and rural areas of provinces all around the country. among these people, 674,199 syrian children were registered to receive education in public schools in the 2019-2020 academic year (mone, 2020), which has transformed the ethnolinguistic make-up of the children in schools. these are among the crucial factors that changed the dynamics of today’s classrooms: more access and need for technology in education and increased diversity of student populations across the world in general and turkey in particular. although there are many challenges that educators have encountered because of these changes, one of the most important ones can be named as promoting social justice in the classroom in order to better serve the linguistically and culturally diverse student populations. the uneven power relations minoritize and marginalize students based on their language, race, ethnicity, culture, and nation of origin. therefore, teachers are expected to play a pivotal role in promoting more equitable education services and outcomes for all students with diverse backgrounds with such contextual parameters. social justice in language classrooms with globalization and recent waves of forced and voluntary migration throughout the world, classrooms are more diverse than ever before. also, individuals, with access to required technologies, could communicate with the rest of the world regardless of their regions, and they could follow the recent news from anywhere they like. these changes brought some challenges into the classrooms, not only for teachers but also for students, administrators, and parents. one of the most crucial points in classrooms is about maintaining social justice among students. therefore, attention to social justice issues has become an important component in the language classroom (boylan, 2009; carson, 2005; cochran-smith, 2009; grant & agosto, 2008; kapustka et al., 2009; mills, 2012; mills & ballantyne, 2010) and has received attention in virtual intercultural exchange projects (akayoğlu et al., 2020; üzüm et al., 2019, 2020, 2022; yazan et al., 2021). however, social justice is not a new topic; it has always been an important issue in language classrooms (lojacono, 2013). defining the concept of “social justice” is not an easy task (cochran-smith, 2009). zajda et al. (2006) defined social justice as an “egalitarian society that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognises the dignity of every human being” (p. 10). however, they also highlighted that this definition “may vary according to different definitions, perspectives, and social theories” (zajda et al., 2006, p. 9). nieto (2010) defined social justice as “a philosophy, an approach, and actions that embody treating all people with fairness, respect, dignity, and generosity” (p. 46). despite the changing 9 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com definitions, equality, liberty, and fraternity, agency for social change are expressed as common issues in social justice. according to nieto (2010), social justice is not just being kind and nice to others. she listed four components of social justice which she used as guidelines for language teachers who would like to create a learning environment to support agency for social justice. first of all, language teachers should examine their thoughts and attitudes towards those different from them. then, they should encourage students to make comparisons between their own cultures and target cultures and question the ideas taken for granted. to achieve this, language teachers should challenge untruths and stereotypes because these lead to inequality and discrimination among people. secondly, all students should be provided with the necessary resources. language teachers should know the backgrounds, families, communities, and living conditions of their students and their abilities and provide authentic materials to develop them according to these. thirdly, students’ talents and strengths should be used to enrich classrooms. teachers should provide students with the understanding that cultural and social differences between individuals are a source of wealth and guide them on how to evaluate these differences. in this sense, language courses have the potential to provide vast and rich opportunities for teachers in terms of both subject and activity richness in gaining this understanding. finally, a learning environment should be created to support critical thinking and agency for social change. learners should be encouraged to take actions and be the voice of marginalized individuals. in teacher education, it could also be associated with some phrases like “teaching for diversity” (boylan & woolsey, 2015). in the literature, the need for including social justice issues in teacher education has been widely discussed (aronson et al., 2020; cochran-smith et al., 2009; cochran-smith & fries, 2005; milner, 2017; pugach et al., 2019; reyes et al., 2021; zeichner, 2009). for example, reyes et al. (2021) explained this need as “teacher educators work to prepare teachers for an array of contexts and demographic shifts” (p. 353). moreover, teacher educators are often unaware of the contexts in which pre-service teachers will work. milner (2017) also reported that early career and pre-service teachers felt unprepared for social justice work at schools. the importance of training pre-service teachers for their future teaching career is argued by pugach et al. (2019, p. 206) as the world shifts towards “increasingly global societies facing persistent inequities”. it is quite obvious that there is an increasing need for integrating social justice issues in educational settings; however, it is not an effortless task for teachers. in previous studies, many researchers (aronson et al., 2020; ploof & hochtritt, 2018; pugach et al., 2019; reyes et al., 2021) made suggestions on how to foster social justice for pre-service teachers and how to integrate these critical issues in teacher education curriculum. aronson et al. (2020, p. 35) acknowledged that social justice should be “embedded across all courses within teacher preparation programs” rather than offering a single course aiming to foster social justice. during the implementation, they believed that teacher educators should be willing to reimagine the way they prepare pre-service teachers. ploof and hochtritt (2018) also highlighted the importance of introducing pre-service teachers to curriculum that fosters respect for human rights. pugach et al. (2019) argued that the learning and growth process should start with understanding the identities of the students and suggested that teachers understand how they view and respond to their students regardless of their complexity. last but not the least, reyes et al. (2021) recommended co-teaching and collaboration, which they argued as one of the missing points in 10 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com higher education. they stated that if we could build connections among the teacher educators, we could “better prepare to engage with our students in meaningful and transformative ways” (p. 363). this collective view of teaching and learning for teacher education was touched upon by villegas and lucas (2002). aronson et al. (2020) worked on the curriculum in collaboration, and they stated that their study yielded positive results in terms of students’ social growth. these kinds of collaboration studies help teacher educators to critically examine the curriculum and revise it for diversity. in light of these studies, we also attempted to bring teachers and preservice teachers from different contexts in an online platform and we expected the participants to critically examine their educational settings. a small team of educators and writers working in montgomery, alabama, usa founded a group called learning for justice (https://www.learningforjustice.org) and are working with active teachers with “a deep belief that education is the best chance we have to build a better world, and a firm commitment to making sure that every student has the opportunity to learn and thrive.” they also worked on standards of social justice and proposed four pillars of social justice as identity, diversity, justice, and action. the first component, identity, is related to understanding one’s own identity. individuals could develop positive identities, recognize traits of the dominant culture, their home culture, and other cultures, and understand how they negotiate their own identity in multiple spaces. first of all, individuals should have knowledge of identities. second, diversity becomes an important concept. individuals should be aware of the fact they are living in heterogeneous communities, and they should be aware of the similarities and differences among people, and as a result, they should be able to build empathy, respect, understanding, and connection with others. the third component, justice, is about being fair at the individual level, and individuals should be able to analyze the harmful impact of bias and injustice on the world, historically and today. the final component, action, emphasizes that individuals should take action in order to maintain social justice in all settings. they should be able to recognize their own responsibility to stand up to exclusion, prejudice, and injustice; they should be able to speak up with courage and respect when they or someone else has been hurt or wronged by bias. these are the four standards of social justice declared by this group of educators. in this study, the participants completed various tasks based on these components, and we attempted to determine whether our participants developed knowledge and skills on these standards at the end of the project. the tasks were designed to be parallel with these four components. the participants wrote about their own identities and their students’ identities at first. then, we implemented another task in which they could notice the diversity in their classrooms; the participants were provided with some cases, and they were expected to empathize with a refugee student and, finally, they designed course materials and poster presentations as the culmination of the project, displaying the knowledge and skills they had developed throughout the collaboration. using technology to connect people while promoting social justice in classrooms, teachers have some concerns in addition to academic achievement, such as learning about other cultures, finding similarities and differences among different cultures, creating cultural awareness, and developing mutual understanding. these can only be achieved through communication. when it comes to communication, we could easily notice that most of the communication today is on internet 11 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com platforms and teachers are integrating information and communication tools (ict) in their teaching contexts. the roles of students and teachers have changed dramatically from passive individuals to active agents in education. teachers are expected to design and create materials using different web 2.0 tools and learners have more chances to learn by doing and completing tasks. in other words, both teachers and learners are producers in this era. however, ict integration is not limited to using technological tools to enrich classroom materials; these technologies are also used to facilitate communication and interaction between learners living in different regions of the world. as mentioned by chun et al. (2016), “educators are increasingly under pressure to use technology to prepare students to live in a technologically interconnected, globalized world” (p. 65). with the increased interaction, teachers and learners can create digital spaces in which learners are able to interact and educate themselves. unlike the past, it has become much easier and cheaper to gather people on internet platforms and as such, one of the opportunities in today’s world is virtual exchange projects. these tools can be integrated for the purpose of promoting social justice for participants in international projects. as mentioned in the literature, “intercultural projects have the potential to enhance learners’ communication skills and to enrich their knowledge of another culture, as well as to provide a context for viewing one’s own culture from another group’s perspective” (kern, 2006, p. 198). as educators, we could be involved in this kind of virtual exchange projects to focus on some critical issues, like social justice, from an intercultural perspective. the steps project in the steps project, we designed and implemented a virtual intercultural exchange (a.k.a. telecollaboration) program for pre-service and in-service teachers to develop their intercultural communicative competence and prepare them to work with culturally and linguistically diverse student populations, especially from refugee backgrounds. since this project was granted by the regional english language office (relo) of the us embassy in turkey, one of the goals was expected to foster turkish and us ties and bring the individuals from both countries together in intercultural collaboration projects. thus, this project involved teachers from turkey and the usa and engaged them in collaborative intercultural learning through synchronous and asynchronous online participation to promote social justice. the project lasted for six weeks and was based on weekly tasks on the edmodo platform, a learning management system (www.edmodo.com). while we were designing the project as a research team, we tried to focus on four pillars of social justice identity, diversity, justice, and actionwhich were proposed by learning for justice group (https://www.learningforjustice.org). for example, in terms of identity, we asked participants to introduce themselves so that they could write and think about their own identities. next, participants wrote posts about their students and the main goal was to create awareness about the diversity in the classroom. in another task, participants wrote a daily routine from the perspective of a refugee student and they discussed the injustices these students might encounter in their daily life. after the tasks were completed, they were shared with the relo of the us embassy. the relo office also made some suggestions and recommendations and we finalized the tasks at least one month before the project implementation. http://www.edmodo.com/ https://www.learningforjustice.org/ 12 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com participants throughout the study, 120 pre-service and in-service teachers participated in weekly activities. there were 45 pre-service teachers from three different english language teaching departments in turkey; 45 in-service teachers working in different regions of turkey; and 30 undergraduate and masters’ program students, some of which were working as teachers in the us. the survey was administered on a voluntary basis, and although there were 120 participants in the study, only 58 of them responded to the pre-test and post-test surveys. of these 58 participants, 12 were pre-service teachers in the us, 29 were pre-service teachers in turkey, and 17 were in-service teachers in turkey. the pre-service teachers in this study were all senior students and were taking a “teaching practice” course. they were visiting state schools for observation and practice teaching during the project, and they were planning to start their teaching career the following year. weekly tasks participants engaged in online discussion board conversations over six weeks. for the first week, the goal was to introduce participants to the project by sharing its main goals, timeline, tasks, and technological requirements/tools and to start a conversation on the relationship between self and culture and reflect on the ways in which cultures concomitantly include and exclude individuals through representation. then, they were divided into 15 small groups and asked to write a post replying to the following prompt: introduce yourself. please introduce your daily routines (work, school), culture, and context? how could you describe the majority cultures in your context, and do you feel that you belong to those cultures? discuss why or why not. how could you describe the experiences of people in your context who are marginalized or minoritized in a community or broader society? in the second week, the goal of the tasks was to reflect on the intricate relationship between personal and professional identities, understand how their identities inform their teaching practices and create awareness of their teaching contexts. they responded to the following questions: who are your students? do you have any background information about your students’ parents, culture? do you think your values are similar to those of your students? are all students/parents equal in your context? do you or your school administrator do something in order to maintain equality among the students? do minority students have access to resources equitably? if not, what can you do as a teacher to achieve equitable outcomes for student learning? the third and fourth weeks included two scenarios from two different contexts, the us and turkey. the main objective of the tasks assigned to the participants in these two weeks was to encourage empathy with the marginalized students. therefore, the participants were asked to write a daily routine from the perspectives of two immigrant students. although the scenarios 13 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com were fictitious, they were possible to witness in language classes. the scenarios were as follows: scenario 1: abdulaziz is a syrian student who immigrated to a small town in turkey. he is accepted to a state school, and he is the only syrian student in his class. his native language is arabic, and he does not know turkish or english. neither his language teacher, mustafa, nor his classmates know arabic, and there is no common language between them. mustafa tried to communicate with abdulaziz several times, but the student was not willing to take part in classroom activities. for example, whenever the teacher gives worksheets to the students, abdulaziz takes them and understands nothing. since the teacher had other students, he could not focus on only one student all the time. in time, the teacher gave up trying to communicate, and he behaved as if he was not in the classroom. scenario 2: nancy is a 4th-grade teacher. her student eduardo is an el from el salvador. eduardo has a beginning english level proficiency but is a rising star in math. eduardo takes standardized tests in english. nancy wanted to give him spanish versions, but her principal didn’t allow it. when students were taking the test, eduardo opened his dictionary and looked for a definition for a word. nancy saw this and told him dictionaries weren’t allowed and took the dictionary away since they are not allowed during exams. what do you think about her actions? what would you do if you were eduardo’s teacher? as for the fifth week, the participants were asked to work collaboratively in their small groups (n=7-8) to design course material that could be used in their current or future classrooms. the main objective of the material was to improve the language skills of their learners while creating awareness about social justice. finally, in the sixth week, they all designed posters individually, answering the question: “who am i as the teacher or future teacher of minorities?”; and wrote reflection posts on what they learned at the end of the project. methodology the purpose of this study is to identify whether/how a six-week intercultural collaboration project affected the pre-service and in-service teachers’ views of social justice. the data were collected in a project (steps project) funded by the relo of the us embassy in ankara, turkey. the implementation of the project and the weekly tasks are presented in appendix a. in this study, a one group pre-test/post-test research design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of this project, and the following research question was posed: how does a sixweek virtual exchange project influence in-service and pre-service teachers’ social justice orientation? data collection and analysis social justice standards, which were claimed to “provide a road map for anti-bias education at every grade level” (https://www.learningforjustice.org/frameworks), composed of 20 statements. there were four factors in the survey: identity, diversity, justice, and action. first, the founders of the “learning for justice” community were contacted and required permission 14 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com was granted. then, these statements were used as the survey items in a 5 scale likert type format and administered as the pre-test survey before the project and as the post-test survey after the project (appendix b). as mentioned before, 58 participants responded to both surveys on a voluntary basis. as a result of the reliability analysis, the cronbach’s alpha was calculated as 0.859 which means that the reliability of the survey was rated as excellent. in addition to the quantitative data, we used participants’ responses to the reflection questions at the end of the project: “what have you learned in this project?”. we used these responses as qualitative data to complement the analysis of the quantitative survey data. in order to find out the difference between the mean scores of pre-test and post-test surveys, the normality of the difference test was administered. since there was no normal distribution between the difference of the two tests, the wilcoxon signed rank test was used to determine whether the difference was statistically significant or not. as for the qualitative data, the reflection posts submitted by the participants were collected and analyzed through content analysis (schreier, 2012). after coding the qualitative data, the codes were organized to create recurring themes. representative excerpts from these recurring themes are presented in the findings. findings in this study, we explored whether the steps project had any statistically significant effect on the social justice perceptions of the participants, so a one group pre-test/post-test research design was adopted. for this purpose, the scores of the participants at the beginning of the study had to be compared to those obtained at the end of the project. when comparing the mean scores of pre-test and post-test surveys, the normality test was used to determine which statistical analysis needed to be conducted. at the end of the normality test, it was found that the significance level was 0.000, and this indicated that there was no normal distribution, as seen in table 1. table 1. test of normality kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. difference 0.227 58 0.000 0.644 58 0.000 since there was no normal distribution, the wilcoxon signed ranks test was used to determine whether the difference between the pre-test and post-test survey mean scores were statistically significant or not. a wilcoxon signed ranks test revealed that the mean scores of the post-test survey were significantly higher after the implementation of the project (m=4.51, n=58) compared to before (m=4.31, n=58), z = -4.468, p= 0.000, with a large effect size, r= 0.59. more than 0.50 effect size is considered a large effect size (cohen, 1988). 15 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com table 2. wilcoxon signed ranks tests test statisticsa totalpost totalpre z -4.468b asymp. sig. (2-tailed) 0.000 according to the quantitative analysis, the project significantly influenced the perceptions of the participants on social justice in a positive manner. in other words, the project was found to be effective in the views of the participants in terms of social justice standards. in order to better understand the analysis of the quantitative data, the reflection posts of the participants were analyzed as the qualitative data. as a result of the qualitative analysis, four themes emerged from the data: a) learning through sharing and working in collaboration, b) noticing common concerns with other educators, c) self-awareness and self-evaluation, and d) promise for taking action. the first theme that emerged in the data was learning through sharing and working in collaboration. while designing the project, the activities were designed mostly based on sharing ideas, taking part in discussions, and producing materials in collaboration and individually. as a result, it is not surprising that almost all participants acknowledged that they learned through listening to other participants’ experiences, ideas, and suggestions. as a sample to this theme, one of the participants, who was an in-service teacher from the us, remarked: figure 1. an excerpt from the edmodo post in this quotation, the participant showed awareness of ongoing professional development, and she stated that she made use of the other participants’ responses to realize some of her biases and provide solutions to the problems she encountered in her classroom. this shows that in addition to pre-service teachers benefitting from the project, in-service teachers also learned from it. the second theme was noticing common concerns with other educators. before the project, some of the participants believed that they were the only ones who had difficulties in coping with the problems related to social justice in their classrooms. while sharing their 16 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com experiences, ideas, and suggestions for the scenarios, they noticed that they were not alone, and these were common concerns of other educators in the project. they found some similarities in terms of social justice issues in their classrooms. for example, in-service teachers had some difficulties in using a common language with refugee students. the teachers did not know arabic and the refugee students did not know turkish or english, so they had some language difficulties during the communication. another example was that the refugee students did not want to engage in the tasks in the classroom and teachers could not find a way to involve them in the activities. there were these kinds of problems for the in-service teachers in our study. they shared their experiences and recommendations with each other and noticed that this was not specific only for their classrooms. at the end of the project, one of the pre-service teachers wrote: figure 2. an excerpt from the edmodo post if educators do not share their experiences with their colleagues, they might encounter the same problems without knowing that they have the same concerns. in the project, they discussed the problems and social justice issues in their classrooms together and noticed that they were not alone. the third theme was self-awareness and self-evaluation. this is one of the most important themes we found in this study. the pre-service and in-service teachers in the project found an opportunity to question their attitudes, biases, and opinions for the refugee students in their classrooms and refugees in the society. it was seen that the activities and weekly tasks created awareness for the participants, and they evaluated their perspectives with the help of other participants’ responses. one of the pre-service teachers acknowledged that: figure 3. an excerpt from the edmodo post 17 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com this participant had a chance to rethink her behaviors, and in the end, she decided to change her perspectives towards injustice and discrimination in her future classroom and her daily life. we argue that these small steps might help reshape other people’s perspectives in the future. as for the final theme, promise for taking action, it was found that the participants were determined to change their behaviors in the future. this was one of the main purposes of the project, which is to encourage teachers and future teachers to take action in their classrooms. once again, most participants promised that they would take action for a better world. in the following quotations from two different participants in the project, we observe that the project had some meaningful impact on our participants’ perspectives of and engagement on social justice issues. figure 4. an excerpt from the edmodo post figure 5. an excerpt from the edmodo post when compared with the social justice standards indicated by the learning for justice group, the qualitative analysis of the data showed that the participants in the project developed knowledge and skills in terms of identity, diversity, and action. they made self-evaluations and accomplished self-awareness. they found some similarities and differences among different individuals, and as the most important point, they decided to take action for maintaining social justice. as we can see in the quotations above, the participants completed the tasks, and gained an awareness that they could take action as teachers; they were the agents who could change the world. discussion and conclusion this study was based on the reports of a project granted by the regional english language office of the us embassy in turkey. the title of the project was supporting teachers’ engagement in pedagogies of social justice (steps). in this project, pre-service teachers from 18 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com five different universities in turkey and in-service teachers from turkey and the us participated in activities on the edmodo platform, which is a learning management system that allows participants to follow tasks asynchronously. the main objectives of the project were to increase intercultural, collaborative, professional learning activities between teachers from the usa and turkey, to develop pre-service and in-service teachers’ intercultural communicative competence, to promote social justice informed pedagogies in k-12 schools through professional development and conversations between teachers from two countries, and to develop teachers as change agents and informed educators who attend to the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse students in their contexts. at the end of the study, we found that the project impacted the perspectives of the participants in a positive way. furthermore, based on the qualitative analysis, four themes emerged from the data: a) learning through sharing and working in collaboration, b) noticing common concerns with other educators, c) self-awareness and self-evaluation, and d) promise for taking action. considering the roles of teachers in a globalized world, teachers are not only responsible for the academic achievement of their learners but also for preparing them as responsible individuals in society (pantić & florian, 2015). therefore, social justice is among the issues that teachers should focus on, and teachers are the ones who could make a difference for their students. in the literature, nieto (2010) stated that teachers should examine their thoughts and attitudes towards others; and in this study, we found that the participants acknowledged that they evaluated themselves, and the project created an awareness for social justice issues. this issue is also related to the standards of the learning for justice research group. one of the social justice standards was identity, and we found the participants could find an opportunity to reflect on their attitudes and opinions on social justice. the most important component of the social justice standards and nieto’s (2010) guidelines was taking action against discrimination, inequalities, prejudices, and stereotypes. knowing the differences, being aware of the inequalities, and being kind to people are not enough for individuals (nieto, 2010). individuals are expected to take action for maintaining social justice. in this study, a theme related to this point emerged promise for taking action. the participants stated that they would be more sensitive to social justice issues in their classrooms and future classrooms, which was the main goal of this project. considering the studies in the literature, it was clear that there is a need for critical pedagogy in teacher education and social justice is among the most important issues that should be touched upon in the curriculum. milner (2017) reported that pre-service teachers were not prepared enough for social justice work. this was parallel with the pre-test results of the survey in this study. before the implementation, the perceived social justice levels of pre-service teachers were lower than after the implementation. it was found that the weekly tasks used in this study contributed to the social justice perceptions of the pre-service teachers. moreover, pugach et al. (2019) mentioned that the inequities are increasing in this global world and one of the reasons for these inequalities is based on the wars that have resulted in increased immigration. in the context of our study, we noticed that pre-service teachers were aware of the fact that there were some students from other nations and this diversity made teaching more 19 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com challenging and demanding. aronson et al. (2020) highlighted the importance of a whole integration of this topic into the curriculum and they suggested reimagining the ways of preparing pre-service teachers. in our study, we integrated social justice related tasks as a project rather than using them as coursework for a single course. teacher educators should understand that a single culture-related course might not be enough to promote social justice for pre-service teachers and that these issues need to be integrated into the whole teacher education curriculum. additionally, pugach et al. (2019) reported that pre-service teachers’ being aware of their own identities and teachers’ understanding of their students’ identities should be the starting point for learning and growth. in this study, we started the tasks with selfintroductions of the participants. then, we continued the tasks with a question “who are your students?” which aimed at creating an awareness for the participants about their students and future students so that they could be prompted to look for the diversity in their classrooms. finally, lucas (2002) and reyes et al. (2021) proposed co-teaching and collaboration to address the question: “how can we promote social justice?”. this was the main framework for our study. we, as the researchers, met from five different universities and designed a virtual exchange project and we invited participants from different regions of turkey and the us. the participants worked in collaboration; they discussed critical topics; designed language teaching materials and shared their posters with other participants. as stated in the literature, these kinds of tasks are important and crucial for understanding each other. conclusion and implications in conclusion, we argue that the intercultural virtual exchange project had positively impacted the participants’ perceptions of and engagement on social justice issues in the classroom as evidenced in the statistically significant survey test results and participants’ selfreported/perceived growth throughout the project. in terms of implications, we argue that the number of virtual exchange projects can be increased so that teachers can find opportunities to meet their colleagues from any region of the world and find some similarities and differences between their contexts and the other teachers’ contexts. teachers should also understand their potential to change the world. the stakeholders of teacher education, such as policy makers, teacher educators, in-service teachers and pre-service teachers should be involved in these projects in the future. we are aware that these critical issues in education can be negotiated through increased communication and the online platforms provide us many opportunities to meet and share our experiences, problems, and solutions to these problems. this kind of virtual intercultural collaborations will positively influence the pre-service and in-service teachers’ perspectives of social justice, who may otherwise not have the chance to meet like-minded colleagues across the world. 20 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com acknowledgements we are thankful to the teachers and teacher candidates who took part in this telecollaboration project in fall 2021 and heather baker for proofreading the manuscript before it was published. we are also grateful to the relo of the us embassy in ankara, turkey, for their generous support of the steps project (# s-tu-150-19-gr-009): supporting teachers’ engagement in pedagogies of social-justice: collaborative project between five universities in turkey and the usa. disclosure statement no potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. references akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b. & yazan, b. 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(2020). using telecollaboration to promote intercultural competence in teacher training classrooms in turkey and the usa. recall, 32(2), 162-177. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0958344019000235 üzüm, b., yazan, b., akayoğlu, s. & mary, l. (2022). pre-service teachers’ translingual negotiation strategies at work: telecollaboration between france, turkey, and the usa. language and intercultural communication, 22(1), 50-67. https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2021.1981360 üzüm b., yazan, b., avineri, n., akayoğlu, s. (2019). preservice teachers’ discursive constructions of cultural practices in a multicultural telecollaboration. international journal of multicultural education, 21(1), 82104. http://dx.doi.org/10.18251/ijme.v21i1.1777 villegas, a. m., & lucas, t. (2002). preparing culturally responsive teachers: rethinking the curriculum. journal of teacher education, 53(1), 20–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487102053001003 yazan, b., üzüm, b., akayoğlu, s. & mary, l. (2021). telecollaboration as translingual contact zone: teacher candidates' translingual negotiation strategies. in o. barnawi &s. anwaruddin (eds.), tesol teacher education in a transnational world: turning challenges into innovative prospects (pp. 139-157). routledge. zajda, j., majhanovich, s., & rust, v. (2006). introduction: education and social justice. international review of education, 52(1-2), 9-22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-005-5614-2 zeichner, k. m. (2009). teacher education and the struggle for social justice. routledge. https://hbogm.meb.gov.tr/meb_iys_dosyalar/2020_01/27110237_ocak_2020internet_bultenisunu.pdf https://oygm.meb.gov.tr/www/kapsayici-egitim-projesi-inclusive-education/icerik/679 https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledge_detail/why-they-keep-risking-their-lives-syrians-under-temporary-protection-in-turkey/ https://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledge_detail/why-they-keep-risking-their-lives-syrians-under-temporary-protection-in-turkey/ https://doi.org/10.3402/edui.v6.27311 https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2018.1389592 https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2018.1389592 https://doi.org/10.1080/01626620.2021.1883149 https://www.unhcr.org/flagship-reports/globaltrends/globaltrends2019/ https://www.unhcr.org/flagship-reports/globaltrends/globaltrends2019/ https://doi.org/10.1017/s0958344019000235 https://doi.org/10.1080/14708477.2021.1981360 http://dx.doi.org/10.18251/ijme.v21i1.1777 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487102053001003 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-005-5614-2 22 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com appendices appendix a: weekly tasks weeks activity details week 1 welcome meeting goal: to introduce participants to the project by sharing its main goals, timeline, tasks, and technological requirements/tools. pre-survey goal: to gather data about participating teachers’ initial perspectives on social justice via a short survey instrument on google forms. small groups meeting once groups are formed, participants will be asked to meet online in their small groups. goal: to ensure that participants have some “face” time to get to know each other individually before they are expected to work on the tasks collaboratively. edmodo post goal: to start a conversation on the relationship between self and culture and reflect on the ways in which cultures concomitantly include and exclude individuals. prompt: introduce yourself. please introduce your daily routines (work, school), your culture, your context? how could you describe the majority cultures in your context and do you feel that you belong to those cultures? discuss why or why not. how could you describe the experiences of people in your context who are marginalized or minoritized in a community or broader society? week 2 guest speaker #1 title: “professional identity development in language teaching”. edmodo post goal: to understand the relationship between teacher identity and student identities and explain its significance for their teaching practice. prompt: who are your students? do you have any background information about your students’ parents, culture? do you think your values are similar to those of your students? are all students/parents equal in your context? do you or your school administrator do something in order to maintain equality among 23 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com the students? do minority students have access to resources equitably? if not, what can you do as a teacher to achieve equitable outcomes for student learning? week 3 guest speaker #2 title: "teaching: servitude or transformation?" sample case for discussion prompt: in the following scenario, how would you react if you were the teacher in the classroom? assuming that you were abdulaziz, could you write a short paragraph about a day of abdulaziz from his point of view (e.g., using i, me, my pronouns)? abdulaziz is a syrian student who immigrated to a small town in turkey. he is accepted to a state school and he is the only syrian student in his class. his native language is arabic and he does not know turkish or english. neither his language teacher, mustafa, nor his classmates know arabic and there is no common language between them. mustafa tried to communicate with abdulaziz several times but the student was not willing to take part in classroom activities. for example, whenever the teacher gives worksheets to the students, abdulaziz takes it and understands nothing. since the teacher had other students, he could not focus on only one student all the time. in time, the teacher gave up trying to communicate and he behaved as if he was not in the classroom. poem the poem “home” written by warsan shire will be shared at the beginning of the week with the participants https://therightsangle.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/home-bywarsan-shire/ edmodo post prompt: do you have any immigrant students in your classroom? do you have any neighbours coming from other countries? has immigration affected you/your life personally? if so, how? have you ever felt marginalized in any context because of your ideas, religion, ethnicity, your behaviors? https://therightsangle.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/home-by-warsan-shire/ https://therightsangle.wordpress.com/2018/02/06/home-by-warsan-shire/ 24 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com week 4 guest speaker #3 title: "trauma informed teaching to promote social justice" sample case for discussion prompt: if you were the teacher in the following scenario, how would you react? what do you think about eduardo’s, nancy’s, and principal’s actions in this situation? nancy is a 4th grade teacher. her student eduardo is an el from el salvador. eduardo has a beginning english level proficiency but is a rising star in math. eduardo takes standardized tests in english. nancy wanted to give him spanish versions, but her principal didn’t allow it. when students were taking the test, eduardo opened his dictionary and looked for a definition for a word. nancy saw this and told him dictionaries weren’t allowed and took the dictionary away since they are not allowed during exams. what do you think about her actions? what would you do if you were eduardo’s teacher? week 5 guest speaker #4 title: 'crossing the ‘border’: what kind of zones can we create for the ‘incomers'? course materials in this week, the participants will be asked to design a course material that could be used in their classrooms/future classrooms as a group work activity. the main objective for the material will be to improve language skills of their learners while creating an awareness about social justice. these course materials (worksheet, reading passage, listening material, short video clips, games, etc.) will be uploaded to a google drive folder and shared with all participants for future use. week 6 one-hour training on how to use canva for designing visual materials before the week starts, a one-hour zoom session on how to use canva will be organized for all participants. one of the coordinators will host this session. the participants will be able to create a poster at the end of this one-hour session. note: this session will be recorded so that some participants who could not join the session for some personal reasons or time zone difference will have the chance to watch it again as needed. moreover, the participants will have to rewatch if they have some technical difficulties while completing the task. 25 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com poster design task this poster design activity will be an individual task. the participants will be asked to design a poster which will be a response to the following prompt. prompt: who am i as the teacher or future teacher of minorities? after the participants create their posters, they will be asked to add a 5-minute voice over on their posters so that each participant will have the chance to present their poster. finally, they will upload them to a google drive folder. edmodo post as for the final edmodo post, the participants will be asked to write a post on the following question. it will also be an evaluation of the project. prompt: what have you learned in the past six weeks? are you planning to change anything for your teaching practices? post-survey the survey on social justice will be administered as the post-survey at the end of the project. closing ceremony this closing ceremony will be organized for all participants. a convenient time will be found and the reflections of the participants on the project will be asked. this activity will be the final task for all participants. this meeting will be recorded and shared with the participants and the us embassy. 26 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com appendix b: social justice survey s tr o n g ly d is a g re e d is a g re e n e u tr a l a g re e s tr o n g ly a g re e id e n t it y 1. i have a positive view of myself, including an awareness of and comfort with my membership in multiple groups in society. 2. i know my family history and cultural background and can describe how my own identity is informed and shaped by my membership in multiple identity groups. 3. i know that all my group identities and the intersection of those identities create unique aspects of who i am and that this is true for other people too. 4. i express pride and confidence in my identity without perceiving or treating anyone else as inferior. 5. i recognize traits of the dominant culture, my home culture and other cultures, and i am conscious of how i express my identity as i move between those spaces. d iv e r s it y 6. i interact comfortably and respectfully with all people, whether they are similar to or different from me. 7. i have the language and knowledge to accurately and respectfully describe how people (including myself ) are both similar to and different from each other and others in their identity groups. 8. i respectfully express curiosity about the history and lived experiences of others and exchange ideas and beliefs in an open-minded way. 9. i relate to and build connections with other people by showing them empathy, respect and understanding, regardless of our similarities or differences. 10. i understand that diversity includes the impact of unequal power relations on the development of group identities and cultures. ju s t ic e 11. i relate to all people as individuals rather than representatives of groups and can identify stereotypes when i see or hear them. 12. i can recognize, describe and distinguish unfairness and injustice at different levels of society. 27 akayoğlu, s., üzüm, b., & yazan, b. / focus on elt journal, 2022, (4)1, special issue focus on elt www.focusonelt.com 13. i can explain the short and long-term impact of biased words and behaviors and unjust practices, laws and institutions that limit the rights and freedoms of people based on their identity groups. 14. i am aware of the advantages and disadvantages i have in society because of my membership in different identity groups, and i know how this has affected my life. 15. i can identify figures, groups, events and a variety of strategies and philosophies relevant to the history of social justice around the world. a c t io n 16. i express empathy when people are excluded or mistreated because of their identities and concern when i personally experience bias. 17. i take responsibility for standing up to exclusion, prejudice and injustice. 18. i have the courage to speak up to people when their words, actions or views are biased and hurtful, and i will communicate with respect even when we disagree. 19. i stand up to exclusion, prejudice and discrimination, even when it’s not popular or easy or when no one else does. 20. i will join with diverse people to plan and carry out collective action against exclusion, prejudice and discrimination, and we will be thoughtful and creative in our actions in order to achieve our goals. copyrights copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal. this is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the creative commons attribution license (cc by-nc-nd) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). www.jsser.org journal of social studies education research sosyal bilgiler eğitimi araştırmaları dergisi 2019:10 (1), 193-218 193 raising students’ awareness of social justice through civic literacy adil bentahar1 & jason l. o’brien2 abstract this research study measured the impact of project citizen on moroccan students’ civic literacy. project citizen (pc) is a community problem-solving curriculum which has been implemented in more than 80 countries worldwide. using mixed methodology, the authors examined the extent to which students’ participation in pc had an impact on developing their civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions, and whether it fostered a commitment to social justice in them. results indicated that participation in pc increased perceptions of efficacy regarding students’ impact on policy as well as their ability to think critically about important local issues. students also reported a heightened sense of responsibility to address societal problems as well as a need to respect divergent opinions. in regards to issues of social justice, participants indicated that participation increased their commitment to addressing issues of injustice as well as contributing to positive societal change. key words: social justice, civic literacy, citizenship education, project citizen introduction across the united states social studies teachers are responsible for curriculum that “provides students the content knowledge, intellectual skills, and civic values necessary for fulfilling the duties of citizenship in a participatory democracy” (national council for the social studies, 2005, p. 1). with these important goals in mind, many social studies teachers teach civic education/civic literacy to equip students with knowledge and skills related to participation in democratic processes. civic literacy is the ability to effectively participate in civic life through knowing how to stay informed and understanding governmental processes as well as “the local and global implications of civic decisions” (partnership for 21st century skills, n.d., para. 1). researchers have reported on the positive impact of civic education for students in grades k-12 because it provides them with opportunities to participate and engage actively in civic and civil life (schulz, ainley, fraillon, kerr, & losito, 2010; tovmasyan & thoma, 2008). one of the goals of civic education is to inform students about the importance of sustaining self 1 assistant professor, university of delaware, badil@udel.edu 2 associate professor, university of alabama in huntsville, jlo0005@uah.edu journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 government in a democratic society in an informed, reflective manner (quigley, 1995). in addition, civic education is meant to help students create a better future for their society through informed contributions to their communities (landsman & gorski, 2007). soule (2000) posited that effective civic literacy might favorably affect students’ political knowledge, participatory skills, and dispositions even in areas which have experienced fractured political systems and civil strife. one successful civic literacy program was created in 1995 and is called project citizen. project citizen (pc) is an educational program that began in the united states and has spread to more than eighty countries, including eleven countries in the middle east/north africa (mena) region (glaser consulting group, 2004). participating in project citizen can help equip students with a number of key life skills such as citizenship, problem-solving, research, and oral and written communication (medina-jerez, bryant, & green, 2010). this study was conducted in morocco, where pc has been implemented since 2004 to more than 30,000 students in grades seven through eleven, as well as teachers in training (e. imad, personal communication, july 21, 2017). studying moroccan students’ experiences was chosen because other than middle school, moroccan public school curriculum contains almost no formal civic education components. as a result, the researchers were better able to directly attribute changes in student behavior or knowledge to specific experiences within pc. given the dearth of opportunities for learning about democratic practices in morocco, the present study was then uniquely appropriate for assessing the impact of this curriculum on students’ civic literacy and measuring their commitment to social justice issues. civic literacy and civic education have, at their core, the concept of citizenship to include what citizens should know and be able to do. however, the concept of effective citizenship is subjective and oftentimes implies a wide variety of beliefs and components. to create an operational definition of the concept, westheimer and kahne (2004) identified three distinct citizenship types: personally-responsible citizenship, which focuses on following rules and laws and helping others; participatory citizenship, which requires people to become involved with the democratic process via political events and participation (e.g., voting and campaigning); and finally, the social justice paradigm, which necessitates citizens critically assessing societal problems to identify which aspects need to be improved. one of the goals of the current research is to see the extent to which participation in pc impacts students’ civic bentahar & o’brien behaviors and beliefs beyond the classroom, especially in regards to any adaptation of the social justice orientation toward citizenship. literature review king mohammed vi assumed the throne of the kingdom of morocco in 1999. after events of the arab spring in 2011, the king agreed to allow the moroccan constitution to be amended in response to the international community and moroccans’ calls for “greater transparency and accountability in governance” (madani, maghraoui, & zerhouni, 2012, p. iii). these constitutional changes garnered support from the moroccan populace as well as leaders in the international community (silverstein, 2011). key provisions of these changes included a codification of the judicial branch’s independence from the legislative and executive branch, limits on the king’s power to appoint officials, and the incorporation of input from opposition parties within the government (mfac, 2011). despite the reforms in political power, however, all important educational initiatives and programs are controlled by the ministry of education (llorent-bedmar, 2014). to understand the current state of morocco’s educational system, the impact of colonial rule and policies cannot be understated. until independence in 1956, moroccan society and the educational system had spent more than four decades under french colonial rule. as a result, the current educational system in morocco still contains vestiges of colonial practices implemented by france. most notably is the elevated status granted to the use of the french language in moroccan classrooms. by privileging french over arabic, moroccan graduates are linked to both the culture of france and its language, thus perpetuating class distinctions (kharbouch, 2009); it also means that elite positions were reserved for graduates from francophone schools (hamdaoui, 2013), whether in morocco or france. the imposition of the french language and culture over moroccan culture and moroccan arabic produced several negative consequences in moroccan society, including a distrust of state-provided education available to moroccan students. in the years since independence, morocco has implemented a variety of initiatives to distance itself from french influence while improving both the quality and content of instruction in moroccan schools. one such initiative was called the guide to school life, a document which sets forth the foundation and expectations about what life should look like in school (sahifat al-ustad [teacher’s paper], 2012). important aspects of this reform include the promotion of civic journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 education and respect for learner and citizen rights, and a reaffirmed commitment to the concept of the rule of law, an important goal in any democratic society. despite efforts to improve the educational system, researchers have noted that parents are opting to pay for private lessons and are sending their children to private schools in greater numbers than at any time in moroccan history (boum, 2008; kharbouch, 2009). the potential benefits of civic education cannot be understated in countries such as morocco so that students are well-prepared to partake in the responsibilities of active and engaged citizenship. chapin (2015) posited that civic education is not only beneficial for students, schools, and communities, but it is also “helpful for new immigrants, and necessary for democracy” (p. 228). however, educational policy always exists within particular sociopolitical contexts, and in the case of many mena countries, reaction to educational and civic initiatives has not always been positive. afettat (2012) explained that several governments in north africa view public education as a medium for maintaining the status quo, especially in regards to replicating hegemonic relationships which exist politically, culturally, and economically. others have criticized initiatives in civic education, describing them as tools of the west (specifically, the united states) to maintain economic and political superiority over countries which have less access to resources and power on the international stage (craddock, 2007). it was within this socio-political context that the researchers undertook the current study to measure the impact of pc on moroccan students’ civic literacy and their commitment to social justice. pc was chosen because of its international recognition as a means to improve civic literacy for students who participate. pc is a community problem-solving curriculum that utilizes chapin’s (2015) preferred method of teaching students through outcomeand project-oriented work. this curriculum engages students in identifying and researching a given problem in their local community, and requires them to work in groups to examine solutions, create an action plan, and use primary sources while conducting research (fry & bentahar, 2013; medina-jerez, et al., 2010; vontz, metcalf, & patrick, 2000). in addition, all pc students present their solutions to community members that often include leaders and decision-makers, thus providing them with valuable experience in speaking publicly and advocating for a particular cause. bentahar & o’brien method the purpose of this study was to examine whether engagement with project citizen affected moroccan students’ civic literacy (civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions), and whether the experience fostered a commitment to social justice in them. this study followed a mixed methods design utilizing a survey completed by pc participants, as well as semistructured interviews for teachers, program directors, and one student. by utilizing surveys and interview data, the researchers hoped to gain a more robust understanding of the impacts of pc on moroccan students’ civic development. the two guiding research questions were: 1) does engagement with project citizen affect moroccan students’ civic literacy? if so, how? if not, why not? 2) how does project citizen foster in students a commitment to social justice? to answer these research questions, mixed methodological procedures were employed. in mixed methods, researchers collect, analyze, and mix quantitative and qualitative data in one study or a series of studies (creswell & plano clark, 2007; johnson, onwuegbuzie, & turner, 2007). the researchers chose a mixed methods approach for several reasons. first, the strengths of each method exceed the limitations of the other strand (quantitative and qualitative or vice versa). second, using either quantitative or qualitative method alone may provide insufficient data, hence the benefit of the mixed methods approach. third, mixed methods research can provide a more complete understanding of any phenomenon by using multiple lenses to view it. by utilizing survey data, the researchers were able to gain general information from all participants (including demographic information); the structured interviews allowed the participants to clarify and expand on responses to the research questions. it is noteworthy that in the current study, priority was given to the qualitative data, specifically the open-ended responses provided by the participating students and the responses to the semi-structured interviews. it was hoped that by examining the responses written by students, as well as their views of civic literacy reported in interviews, a much clearer understanding of participants’ views on civic literacy and social justice would be gained. while the survey instrument allowed a larger sample of responses, the main analysis came from comments made by interviewees. these semi-structured interviews provided an opportunity for journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 shareholders to explain their beliefs and experiences more clearly, rather than simply report agreement on a list of pre-determined questions containing likert-type response choices. the theoretical framework employed by the researchers as they interpreted the data is based on the social reconstruction paradigm. social reconstructionists are conscious of the problems existing in any society; they maintain that the primary purpose of education is to “facilitate the construction of a new more just society which offers maximum satisfaction to all of its members” (schiro, 2008, p. 6). this framework was chosen because it aligns with the goals of both citizenship education as well as the tenets of social justice. by viewing the results through this lens, the researchers hoped to discover palpable impacts on students’ civic literacy, as well as their views on the idea of social justice. research design the purpose of this study was to examine whether engagement with project citizen affected moroccan students’ civic literacy (civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions), and whether the experience fostered a commitment to social justice in them. this study followed a mixed methods design utilizing a survey completed by pc participants, as well as semistructured interviews for teachers, program directors, and one student. by utilizing surveys and interview data, the researchers hoped to gain a more robust understanding of the impacts of pc on moroccan students’ civic development. the two guiding research questions were: 1) does engagement with project citizen affect moroccan students’ civic literacy? if so, how? if not, why not? 2) how does project citizen foster in students a commitment to social justice? to answer these research questions, mixed methodological procedures were employed. in mixed methods, researchers collect, analyze, and mix quantitative and qualitative data in one study or a series of studies (creswell & plano clark, 2007; johnson, onwuegbuzie, & turner, 2007). the researchers chose a mixed methods approach for several reasons. first, the strengths of each method exceed the limitations of the other strand (quantitative and qualitative or vice versa). second, using either quantitative or qualitative method alone may provide insufficient data, hence the benefit of the mixed methods approach. third, mixed methods research can provide a more complete understanding of any phenomenon by using multiple lenses to view it. by utilizing survey data, the researchers were able to gain general information from all participants (including demographic information); the structured bentahar & o’brien interviews allowed the participants to clarify and expand on responses to the research questions. it is noteworthy that in the current study, priority was given to the qualitative data, specifically the open-ended responses provided by the participating students and the responses to the semi-structured interviews. it was hoped that by examining the responses written by students, as well as their views of civic literacy reported in interviews, a much clearer understanding of participants’ views on civic literacy and social justice would be gained. while the survey instrument allowed a larger sample of responses, the main analysis came from comments made by interviewees. these semi-structured interviews provided an opportunity for shareholders to explain their beliefs and experiences more clearly, rather than simply report agreement on a list of pre-determined questions containing likert-type response choices. the theoretical framework employed by the researchers as they interpreted the data is based on the social reconstruction paradigm. social reconstructionists are conscious of the problems existing in any society; they maintain that the primary purpose of education is to “facilitate the construction of a new more just society which offers maximum satisfaction to all of its members” (schiro, 2008, p. 6). this framework was chosen because it aligns with the goals of both citizenship education as well as the tenets of social justice. by viewing the results through this lens, the researchers hoped to discover palpable impacts on students’ civic literacy, as well as their views on the idea of social justice. participants after gaining irb approval, invitations to participants in morocco were extended by the moroccan center for civic education (mcce) and the friends for civic education association in morocco. the researchers were unable to employ random sampling procedures; rather, participants consisted of former moroccan project citizen students, teachers, and program directors who were willing and able to participate in the study. the resulting sample size was seventy students and seven stakeholders. the study utilized a survey (appendix a) and interview questions (appendix b) addressing the same topic, namely whether engagement with project citizen affected the development of students’ civic literacy and their commitment to social justice. the parallel questions (i.e., use of different instruments addressing the same topic) helped merge the results of both the quantitative and qualitative data types in the interpretation phase in order to make journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 the comparison of responses more meaningful (see creswell & plano clark, 2011) and examine areas of data convergence and corroboration (bowen, 2009). demographics survey participants in total, 77 people participated in the current study. former pc students (n=70) completed a survey, either online or on paper. additionally, four teachers (n=4), two program directors (n=2), and a student (n=1) participated in interviews. of the 70 students who completed surveys, fifty percent (n=35) were male, and fifty percent were female (n=35). table 1 contains demographic information collected from participants. table 1. demographics for interviewees respondent gender age field teaching position level (pseudonym) (content area) experience _________________________________________________________________________ mounir male 55 teacher ed. 32 pc pd higher ed. mohamed male 54 social studies 26 pc pd m.s. adam male 38 social studies 15 pc t m.s. ahmed male 45 islamic ed. 20 pc t m.s. amal female 56 social studies 30 pc t m.s. ashraf male 53 social studies 27 pc t h.s. sami male 22 web and media n/a pc student college development note: pc = project citizen; pd = program director; t = teacher; m.s. = middle school; h.s. = high school; na = not applicable regarding the disproportionate number of males versus female interviewees in the current study, this is representative neither of the moroccan teaching force in general nor of the stakeholders involved with project citizen in particular. the interviews were conducted during the summer, and only one female teacher was both available and willing to participate. however, her comments were helpful in understanding a teacher’s perspective as we interpreted the results. data collection tools survey the survey portion of the study contained seventeen statements with likert scale responses as well as two open-ended questions. the researchers adapted some items from fry and bentahar’s (2013) survey that compared pc to senior projects in the united states. the bentahar & o’brien seventeen likertscale survey statements were categorized into four target areas: civic knowledge, civic skills, civic dispositions, and social justice. the survey also contained a section asking the students two open-ended questions, which will be explained subsequently. interview the interviews conducted with the seven stakeholders examined the perceived impact of the pc experience on students’ development of civic literacy and a commitment to social justice. the semi-structured interviews contained a corpus of predetermined questions, but follow-up queries were solicited to clarify and elucidate details for various responses, new prompt questions, as well as explanations and elaborations. each interview lasted between 25 and 45 minutes. data collection the researchers utilized a 17 question survey with likert scales that measured students’ views on participation in and results of their experiences with project citizen. participants were asked to answer three questions which gathered demographic data (gender, age range, and highest level of educational attainment). students were also asked two open-ended questions; the first asked what all moroccans need to be responsible citizens, and the second asked participants to report any changes in their commitment to social justice as a direct result of their participation in pc. in all, 70 students responded to the questionnaire, 35 of whom answered question on paper and pencil assessments, while the other 35 provided responses using an online survey. due to the anonymous nature of data collection, it is impossible to know if any systematic bias occurred during data collection utilizing electronic means. participants were given the option to write their short responses in arabic, french, or english, and most chose to write in arabic. the responses were translated with the assistance of a moroccan english language teacher who has a graduate degree in arabic/english translation. data analysis for quantitative studies, analysis procedure(s) and the statistical methods used and their justification for appropriateness for each research question or hypothesis should be explained in detail in this section. data analysis procedures in qualitative studies should also be discussed comprehensively. journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 findings the seventeen survey questions began with the statement “because of my experience in project citizen,” and then students chose from a likert scale provided. for this section, quantitative data regarding research question one will be presented first followed by qualitative findings, then findings related to research question two will be presented using qualitative data. the students’ survey responses about civic literacy revealed a high level of agreement about the development of civic literacy as a learning outcome of their participation in pc. regarding civic knowledge, responses from participants indicated that participation in pc increased perceptions of efficacy regarding their impact on policy and their ability to think critically. table 2 contains means and standard deviations for the four questions related to this concept. table 2. moroccan students’ means and standard deviations on civic knowledge item n m sd because of my experience in project citizen, #1: i learned to support a social cause that i believe in #2: i became aware that elected officials need to be concerned about citizens’ problems #7: i learned that young citizens can also influence policy #10: i can recognize the importance of thinking critically 70 70 70 70 3.50 3.23 3.50 3.54 0.61 0.59 0.56 0.70 note. n=70. the items were measured on the following scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 = strongly agree. the four statements indicate that students learned to support a particular cause, and felt more efficacious at both identifying societal problems as well as influencing policy over them. the highest score in this theme (mean=3.54) indicates that students became better at recognizing the need for critical thinking as they grappled with complex problems affecting their community. three questions on the survey related directly to student perceptions regarding civic dispositions, which in this case involved feeling a sense of responsibility to bentahar & o’brien ameliorate societal ills and to respect divergent beliefs. results in table 3 indicate that the students learned to feel a sense of responsibility toward their communities, as well as the importance of respecting divergent viewpoints. table 3. moroccan students’ means and standard deviations on civic dispositions item n m sd because of my experience in project citizen, #6: i feel the need to fulfill my responsibilities to my community 70 3.34 0.56 #8: i did not learn to be tolerant of difference in opinions 70 1.56 0.86 #11: i learned how to treat other people with respect regardless 70 3.27 0.51 of any differences note. n=70. the items were measured on the following scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 = strongly agree. respecting others’ viewpoints is important in an ethnically diverse society such as morocco. although islam acts as a unifying force in morocco, the existence of distinct ethnic groups (e.g., arab, amazigh, sahrawis) makes the respect for differences extremely important, especially in light of ethnic uprisings in neighboring countries (e.g., algeria and libya). therefore, pc has the potential to help students learn to be more tolerant and respectful of others’ divergent opinions and cultures within and beyond morocco. according to several students, their citizenship and presentation skills also improved as a direct result of their successful efforts in conducting a community improvement project more effectively. table 4 presents findings related to perceived changes in participants’ civic skills. journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 table 4. moroccan students’ means and standard deviations on civic skills item n m sd because of my experience in project citizen, #9: i developed research skills that i can use as an adult 70 3.50 0.61 #12: i did not learn how to present confidently before an audience 70 1.39 0.64 #14: i learned basic skills of conducting a community project 70 3.46 0.67 #16: my social skills did not change at all 70 1.44 0.71 note. n=70 the items were measured on the following scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 = strongly agree. qualitative data research question one asked, “does engagement with project citizen affect moroccan students’ civic literacy? if so, how?” to answer this question, the researchers conducted semistructured interviews with participants to discover their perceptions. initially, all interviewees were asked to define the term “civic education.” the responses from all groups (i.e., directors, teachers, and students) did not vary considerably. mounir (a teacher educator) defined the goals of civic education as knowing one’s “roles and responsibilities” regarding citizenship but added that it should include “an openness to one’s own and other cultures.” he added that the concept embodies heavy involvement “in political participation and community issues.” mohamed (social studies teacher) mentioned the importance of learning about other cultures because, to him, understanding civic education is also related to the ongoing challenges that social justice efforts face, namely the clash of differing values and ideologies, barriers to full citizenship, and the increasing minority oppression and anti-cultural difference movements. responses such as these perhaps indicate that participants are aware of the cultural divisions in moroccan society and also indicate that pc offers one possible solution to bring cohesion to society through the amelioration of suffering and inequality by all groups. for sami (pc student), civic literacy refers to citizens’ awareness of the roles they play in society. he viewed civic education as the knowledge citizens have about their rights and responsibilities, which necessitates educating others about effective citizenship in society. adam (social studies teacher) summarized civic education as all behaviors citizens manifest inside and outside school settings. in contrast, amal, another social studies teacher, thought of it as a host of dispositions and values that citizens practice daily, such as justice, democracy, bentahar & o’brien and civic participation in school and beyond. while participants focused on slightly different aspects of civic literacy, all responses demonstrated that participants understood the importance of civic literacy on students’ behavior as citizens. responses from participants also showed that project citizen offers opportunities for experiencing active citizenship, which the teachers and program directors hope to achieve as a by-product of individual experiences in pc. amal (social studies teacher) noted that her primary goal while implementing the pc curriculum was to help students build strong character and become effective citizens able to access and attain knowledge and overcome community problems. mohammed echoed these beliefs by explaining that, to him, the importance of pc lies in its ability to help build a strong character in students and prepare them as the citizens of tomorrow. these comments indicate that pc has the potential to help students become more civic-minded by strengthening character traits related to citizenship. civic literacy may also embody an understanding of the civic knowledge and dispositions that can be manifested in individuals’ daily lives in areas such as security, education, safety, health, and employment (branson & quigley, 1998). according to mohamed, the experiences gained from participating in pc “made students learn many competences at the level of knowledge and dispositions, which also helped them in their daily lives and academic and professional future.” when examining the goals of civic literacy, it is important to help create a class of citizens who feel both aware of and empowered to exercise influence over the creation of local, regional, or state policies which directly impact their lives. project citizen supported this goal by helping students better understand and practice engagement with public policy. in that regard, ashraf added that educating students about public policies as they are carried out requires “raising [students’] awareness of public policy making and the management of local affairs with respect to everyday life in their community.” mohamed maintained that one of the goals that moroccan center for civic education (mcce) had is to help students reach an understanding of engagement in public policy. he gave an example of his former pc students who “learned how citizens could have the power to identify the making of public policy in society and influence it,” a statement that correlates quantitatively with a mean score of m = 3.50 on a 4-scale point. mounir expressed a similar statement in that project citizen helped create “a dialogue about public policy between [moroccan] citizens [including students] and journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 the government and between the citizens and parliament.” overall, interview results indicated areas of civic literacy where project citizen likely helped students develop a strong character, demonstrate active involvement in the community, and develop an understanding of public policy. project citizen and social justice: quantitative findings survey questions also asked participants four questions related directly to social justice issues. the questions focused on taking action to fight injustice, to work toward helping others to improve society, as well as question fifteen, which asked about the egalitarian nature of changes brought about by addressing issues of social justice. table 5 provides the survey findings from these questions. table 5. moroccan students’ means and standard deviations on social justice ________________________________________________________ item n m sd because of my experience in project citizen, #3: i became more determined in speaking up against wrong doing 70 3.50 0.61 #5: i reinforced my belief in helping anyone in need 70 3.24 0.55 #13: i feel the need to contribute to positive social change in my community 70 3.24 0.62 #15: i believe social services should reach all social classes 70 3.33 0.50 n=70. note. the items were measured on the following scale: 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = agree, and 4 = strongly agree. considering the 4-point scale, these scores reflected positive support for the claim that project citizen helped participants develop a commitment to social justice. responses in table 5 indicate that students acknowledged a responsibility to their respective communities as well as the need to treat others with respect, regardless of their divergent opinions or diverse backgrounds. at a time in history when many countries (most notably the united states) are experiencing an increase in nationalistic and isolationist sentiment, curricula such as pc can be one part a larger attempt to find common ground between diverse populations within nations and across the globe. many issues of social justice affect disparate groups of people, so a shared commitment to social justice can act as a unifying force to combat divisions in individual societies and can also help foster a commitment to social justice worldwide. bentahar & o’brien project citizen and social justice—qualitative findings students were asked to respond to the question “how did your experience with project citizen affect your commitment to social justice?” of the 70 students who participated, 51 provided written responses to this question. forty-nine of the 51 students who provided responses to the open-ended prompt emphasized the positive effect of the experience on their views toward social justice. twelve students mentioned the notion of a “responsibility” to work toward social justice in the moroccan society, and another four made similar statements. the other consistent theme that emerged in response to this question was that students experienced a palpable change in skills they learned through pc. specifically, four students mentioned that their social and presentational skills had improved. students must present their solutions to local community leaders as part of the pc experience, and comments related to this experience were overwhelmingly positive. response nine stated, “i benefited greatly from the teachers who helped my self-confidence to be able to present my work before an audience.” concerning his ability to utilize critical thinking as a result of pc, respondent 37 stated, “it was a rich experience. i learned how to use critical thinking skills in dealing with the problems of society.” another wrote, “…[pc] enabled me to acquire many skills through conducting fieldwork, meet[ing] officials, and speak[ing] with them about a community problem.” while not the central focus of this paper, improving students’ critical thinking and presentation skills are nevertheless important outcomes of pc which are closely linked to both civics and social justice. next, the interviewees were asked to examine the possible connections between project citizen and social justice. responses to this question provided information with practical examples of how pc might have contributed to students growing as advocates for social justice. mounir stated, “[t]he good thing about project citizen is that it has contributed to social justice” in morocco. emphasizing the inclusive nature of pc, sami noted that promoting social justice in schools should be “done from a social perspective that does not exclude any party or member of the community and society at large.” according to ahmed, social justice matters help increase students’ awareness of their civic and civil rights and ways for obtaining them, an outcome that should not be achieved through violence, but “through peaceful, civic ways.” when asked whether civic education might have an impact on students’ growth as social justice advocates, mohamed responded that the two concepts cannot be separated when journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 it comes to implementation of pc. he added, “the project citizen curriculum was designed to help students understand and apply principles and basic considerations of dealing with social justice-related problems. it also enables students to decide and choose a just solution... in a sensible, efficient manner.” he went on explaining, “this curriculum helped [our] students develop increasing awareness of the importance of social justice in their lives and its status in modern society.” amal described how she used civic education to help spread awareness of many social injustices. for her, increasing civic awareness was a starting point for her students to better understand social justice, “because these students have rights and responsibilities that they need to strive for and maintain.” she added, “i also seek to convey the idea of equality by helping them reject divisions between the rich and the poor, and among the hardworking and the lazy.” in addition to the positive impact of project citizen on her students’ academic performance, “it also helped them build a strong character [to] ably defend their opinion and advocate for rights.” she said that given the nature of this program as a medium for solving community issues, students had the opportunity to understand social justice in practical ways. sami’s response to the question, “during or after completing project citizen, did you have the chance to be part of initiatives or activities that foster a sense of social justice?” revealed real-life experiences that the student shared. he explained that the issues his school tackled included lack of cleanliness and decent infrastructure. thanks to pc, sami and his peers succeeded in completing projects geared toward clean-up and beautification. for him, this was a way of ensuring all students enjoyed an acceptable condition of public schooling as one of the students’ rights. by seeing the immediate results of their efforts, after the experience, students were more aware of problems, and as importantly, saw that their efforts could result in palpable improvements to their daily experiences. after fixing broken locks and doors to increase student safety, sami remarked that he and his fellow students felt a stronger connection to their community as they looked for solutions to problems all students faced. discussion and implications social justice at stake in morocco project citizen students’ experience resulted in a realization of the perceived reality of social justice in morocco. it was reported in a number of responses how through engagement bentahar & o’brien with project citizen and direct contact with the community, some participants concluded social justice barely existed in morocco. adam, a social studies teacher, made it clear that schools cannot discuss social justice because the concept is not widely understood and rarely debated in the country. one student shared this view, saying: the project citizen experience made me believe that our society is unfair and taught me to start change through myself and try to be a responsible and just citizen as much as i can, and not consider the surfaces of things, but their essence. one student deemed pc an eye-opening experience, yet believed that it was probably too early to talk about social justice in morocco. two students thought pc helped them realize the hidden reality that social justice was still lacking in morocco, a statement shared by another student who “felt that there is social inequity and social justice is hard to achieve in reality.” while these responses indicate a heightened awareness of the difficulties the students faced when trying to achieve a small measure of social justice in morocco, these comments also indicate a heightened awareness of promoting positive change. discussion one of the important requirements of pc is the creation of individual portfolios showcasing the students’ work and proposed solutions. portfolios can be used by teachers to “demonstrate the student’s educational growth over a given time for set learning targets” (brookhart & nitko, 2008, p. 180). by creating these portfolios, students demonstrate how they actively engaged in the public policy process, and they share their proposal with local, regional, and national officials, which is another form of civic engagement (vontz et al., 2000). findings from this investigation indicate that moroccan students and stakeholders believed that participation in pc had a positive impact on both civic skills and knowledge, as well as on beliefs toward social justice. mohamed (teacher) wrote that participation in pc “made students learn many competences at the level of civic knowledge and dispositions, which helped them in their daily lives and academic and professional future.” responses from all interview participants, and from written comments by most students, indicated a strengthened commitment to improving the lives of others in their respective communities. for instance, the students who focused on the problem of high dropout rates in their community, discovered that the statistics are “so appalling that they are hidden by authorities.” by raising awareness of the problem, the students forced local government officials journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 to acknowledge the issue so it could be addressed. anecdotes such as these appear to be an indication of the importance of including community-based problems and solutions in the implementation of curricula of this type, specifically so that students can feel empowered to work for change. results from this study support the claim that young citizens, through experiences with pc, can gain efficacy at impacting policy decisions. this viewpoint is vitally important for social reconstructionists who believe that educational project-based curricula might help connect students with their community in ways that address societal inequality. the authors believe that schools and teachers have the responsibility of helping students understand societal needs and then engage in efforts towards this end. one of the desired learning outcomes of pc is that students learn what is needed in order to influence policy and provide suggestions peacefully and constitutionally. that is, the student group’s proposed solution to a community problem should be one that the law and the constitution support, according to pc guidebooks and center for civic education (cce, 2007). working within legal and constitutional guidelines is important in countries such as morocco, which many consider an “emerging democracy.” after evaluating the effect of pc on more than 1,400 students in three countries, vontz et al. (2000) concluded pc helps promote civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions in many countries around the world and creates opportunities for students to influence existing public policies. the experiences students have gained from participating in pc might potentially contribute to a much needed, well-informed citizenry in moroccan schools. pc’s core components include informed, active, and engaged citizenship and community service learning. the components also reflect the pedagogical best practices and theoretical underpinnings outlined in the civic education research, which makes pc one medium of rendering classrooms “laboratories for democracy” (scheiner-fisher & fine, 2013, p. 7). based on both quantitative and qualitative findings of this study, implementation of the pc curriculum was successful at both improving civic literacy, as well as fostering a commitment to social justice among all who participated. conclusion the results of this study indicate that pc can have a positive impact on students’ civic literacy and citizenship skills; it can also help students develop a commitment to social justice. bentahar & o’brien globally, 12.9% of the world’s population suffers from chronic malnourishment (world hunger education service, 2016), and 844 million lack a stable source of clean drinking water (world health organization, 2016). due to free trade agreements, the international monetary fund (imf), the world trade organization (wto), and neo-colonial economic policies, global economic inequality is growing worse (hickel, 2016). rather than perpetuating the status quo, the authors argue that schools should be places where students are taught to work toward creating a better environment for themselves and others. by asking students to identify and address problems in their local communities, students can begin to become active agents of change with an appreciation of social justice for all. journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 references afettat, n. 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(2016). drinking water: key facts. retrieved from http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs391/en/. world hunger education, (2016). 2016 world hunger and poverty facts and statistics. retrieved from https://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/. http://iccs.acer.edu.au/uploads/file/reports/iccs_10_initial_findings.pdf http://www.merip.org/author/paul-silverstein http://www.merip.org/mero/mero070511 http://www.civiced.org/papers/eval_bih.pdf http://www.crrc.am/hosting/file/_static_content/fellows/%20fellowship07/t%20tovmasyan/tigran%20tovmasyan%20_report_draft.pdf http://www.crrc.am/hosting/file/_static_content/fellows/%20fellowship07/t%20tovmasyan/tigran%20tovmasyan%20_report_draft.pdf bentahar & o’brien appendix a survey administered to students (n=70) directions: please indicate your level of agreement with each of the following statements by circling your response. circle only one answer; do not circle between numbers. strongly disagree disagree agree strongly agree (sd) (d) (a) (sa) because of my experiences with project citizen,… 1. i learned how to support a social cause i believe in sd d a sa 2. i became aware that elected officials need to be concerned about sd d a sa citizens’ problems. 3. i became more determined to speak up against wrongdoing. sd d a sa 4. i did not learn anything about being a responsible citizen. sd d a sa 5. i reinforced my belief about helping anyone in need. sd d a sa 6. i feel the need to fulfill my responsibilities to my community. sd d a sa 7. i learned that young citizens can influence policy. sd d a sa 8. i did not learn to be tolerant of different opinions. sd d a sa 9. i developed research skills that i can use as an adult. sd d a sa 10. i can recognize the importance of critical thinking. sd d a sa 11. i learned how to treat people with respect regardless of any sd d a sa differences. 12. i did not learn how to present confidently before an audience. sd d a sa journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 13. i feel the need to contribute to positive societal change in my sd d a sa community. 14. i learned basic skills of conducting a community project. sd d a sa 15. i believe social services should reach all social classes. sd d a sa 16. my social skills did not change at all. sd d a sa 17. my experience with project citizen was a waste of time. sd d a sa bentahar & o’brien please tell me about yourself by circling the appropriate answer below: 18) gender a. male b. female 19) what is your age group? a. 18-21 b. 22-25 c. 26-28 20) what is the highest level of education you have completed? a. high school b. undergraduate c. graduate please respond to the following questions: 21) what do moroccan students need to be responsible citizens? ______________________________________________________________________________ _______ ______________________________________________________________________________ _______ ______________________________________________________________________________ _______ ______________________________________________________________________________ _______ 22). how did your experience with project citizen affect your commitment to social justice? ______________________________________________________________________________ _______ ______________________________________________________________________________ _______ ______________________________________________________________________________ _______ ______________________________________________________________________________ _______ thank you for your participation journal of social studies education research 2018: 10 (1), 193-218 appendix b semi-structured interview questions administered to stakeholders teachers (n=4), program directors (n=2), and student (n=1) ● what is civic education/civic literacy? how would you define it? ● why did you participate in project citizen? did you have specific goals for your students? ● what impact did project citizen have on your students? ● tell me more about how you felt after completing project citizen? how do you think the experience was valuable or a waste of time for you? ● how would you define social justice? ● how does project citizen promote social justice? ● were there any challenges for you /and the project citizen students? what were the causes for those challenges? ● how did project citizen help you develop social justice issues? how do you feel about it? any examples? ● do you remember any personal studies or experience of project citizen with your friends/peers where you felt you wanted to or managed to bring about change in the community? ● project citizen works on a community problem. what was the problem that you and your group worked on? and how well did you to solve it? ● overall, how do you think the students did with their projects? why/ why not? ● overall, what do you think went well and why did those things go well? why/ why not? ● any comment? something that you wanted me to ask and i didn’t? please share. microsoft word naidoo.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: naidoo, loshini (2007). teaching for social justice: reflections from a core unit in a teacher education program. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> teaching for social justice: reflections from a core unit in a teacher education program loshini naidoo university of western sydney introduction teachers cannot restrict their attention to the classroom alone, leaving the larger setting and the purposes of schooling to be determined by others. they must take active responsibility for the goals to which they are committed and for the social setting in which these goals may prosper. if they are not to be mere agents of others, of the state, of the military, of the media, of the experts and bureaucrats, they need to determine their own agency through a critical context of their calling (scheffler, 1968, p. 11). the school of education at the penrith campus of the university of western sydney has adopted a conceptual framework for pre-service teachers that includes a commitment to teaching for social justice to prepare teachers to work with students from diverse racial, ethnic, social class and language backgrounds. this initiative is an indication that there are sites of social injustices that need to be challenged if we are to have a society ‘in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure’ (bell, 1997, p. 1). it is to face this challenge that ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ was set-up as a core coursework unit of the bachelor of teaching (secondary) degree. developing a learning climate that encourages awareness and appreciation for those with various cultural backgrounds -racial/ethnic, language, socio-economic, gender, sexual orientation is an important role of this unit in the teacher education program. with a population of over 1.4 million, western sydney is the third largest regional economy in australia, after sydney and melbourne, and its population is larger than that of south australia. it is the most culturally and linguistically diverse region in new south wales, and also home to 60 percent of australia’s largest urban indigenous population (abs, 1998). greater western sydney is an area of both diversity and resilience. not only the diversity of the physical and social geography of the region, but also the enormous diversity of issues, constraints and also opportunities that face each of the thirteen local government areas that comprise greater western sydney. the region is far from homogeneous. variations between one part of the region and another are important indicators of deprivation. lack of housing amenity, households without access to a car, high unemployment rates particularly for males, poor english proficiency, are greater problems in some areas of western sydney than others. parts of greater western sydney have tended to house those citizens least able to exercise choice in terms of their jobs, homes and personal consumption. it is evident that greater western sydney and the university of western sydney have a unique set of communities with higher proportions of relative social disadvantage and ultimately lower access to resources. the university of western sydney is coming to terms with these differences and is widening its activities in order to help these diverse communities help themselves. naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 within these environments, identities are challenged; relationships between different cultural groups are both eroded and reshaped. this process of rupture leads in the first instance to confusions and rejections around different ‘world-views’. often, the complexities that emerge are marginalised and silenced. if social cohesion is to be maintained, then the complexities of identities in ‘new times’ must be openly dealt with. these tensions are now being played out in the schools of the greater western sydney region. it is crucial that these schools provide young people with the opportunities to openly discuss their concerns and fears; to acknowledge the differing viewpoints that exist; and to critically deconstruct the social, political and economic complexities of the issues that have contributed to current world events. to inform my own practice to understand better the students with whom i work, i decided to embark on a study to evaluate the students’ perceptions and understandings of social justice and its role to teaching based on their experience of the social justice unit coursework and school practicum. students’ perceptions are vital for working on social justice in the classroom and for working towards a better education. social justice education is not only a reality but it is also a part of the socio-cultural context of schooling that teacher’s encounter. in view of this fact, social justice education has become a major concern for educational scholars and practitioners in recent times since it is seen as an attempt to redress educational inequities rising from the increasing pluralism of westernised industrialised societies. such pluralism has led to increasingly diverse school populations (goldring & greenfield, 2002) economic inequalities between mainstream and minoritised children (coleman, 1990) discourses about the marginalized ‘other’ with little examination of the ‘self’ at the centre of the dominant culture (asher, 2003) and challenges to institutionalised racism (sleeter, 1996). conceptualising social justice defining social justice is difficult and the vagueness surrounding the term is indispensable and likely to create intellectual debates. however, in attempting to conceptualise social justice the following emerged; that it (social justice) was a ‘condensation symbol’ (edelman, 1987) defying ‘stipulative definition’ (troyna & vincent, 1995, p. 149). macintyre (1985) identified various ‘historical renditions’ of social justice within australian politics and rizvi & lingard (1996) within political theory more generally. more recently, these have been challenged by post-modern, post-structural and postcolonial criticisms of their formerly universal character and ahistorical treatment (foucault, 1984; hall, 1996) as well as their failure to account for difference (fuss, 1989; young 1990). in this paper, social justice is defined as equal participation in a democratic society, which allows for equal distribution of resources to all its members, who have a degree of selfdetermination and interdependence (bell, 1997). in the context of education, social justice means examining why and how schools are unjust for some students. nieto (2000) asserts ‘it [a concern for social justice] means analysing school policies and practises… that devalue the identities of some students while overvaluing others’ (p.183). in conceptualising the role of social justice for teacher preparation, the focus in the paper is on assisting educators to critique the larger socio-cultural, political dimensions of teaching and schooling. this is in keeping with the assertion by cochran–smith (1999) that ‘part of teaching for social justice, is deliberately claiming the role of educator as well as activist based on political consciousness and on the ideological commitment to diminishing the inequities of american life’ (p.116). theoretical framework as a university teacher educator, i have aspired to prepare student teachers to be active agents in their own professional development, and hence in determining the direction of naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 schools. this means, not merely translating theories into classroom practise, but recognising the fact that theories are produced through practises and that practises reflect particular theoretical commitments. the relation between social justice education and pedagogical practise is a core and often rarely addressed aspect. freire’s (1985) argument of the necessity of reading both the word and the world is crucial here. it is not enough to teach about social justice. educators must both orient and organise teaching in such a way as to practise social justice. an important discourse and one relevant to teaching social justice is critical theory. beyer (2001, p.154) assets that ‘it is precisely in understanding the normative dimensions in education and how they are all intertwined with social, structural and ideological processes and realities that critical theory plays a key role’. not only does critical theory examine the educational perspectives and politics that serve the interests of the dominant groups and silence and marginalise students of colour (aronowitz & giroux, 1980; giroux & mclaren, 1986; shor, 1980) but critical pedagogy argues for an anti-oppression and emancipatory approach to education (nieto, 1995). this implies that it is possible to critique schooling practises in terms of social class and capitalism in a national and globalised context (mclaren, 1999). unfortunately, critical theory does not go far enough to deal with issues of race and ethnicity and hence, anti-racist education emerged as a discourse to place racism at the centre of the debate of equity and social justice. anti-racist education aims to link race, ethnicity and power in the context of colonialism and power (mclaren & mayo, 1999). the above-mentioned discourses indicate that teaching for social justice is more than instilling new knowledge. while the content should focus on the dominant – subordinate relationships in society (sleeter, 1996) pedagogy should engage students as critical thinkers, participatory and active learners. to understand the impact of critical content and critical pedagogy, two other inter-related aspects dialogic education and active learning need to be considered. freire (1971) believed that dialogic education, in which the knowledge, perspectives and experiences of students and teachers are honoured, are central to the education process. in this process, students and teachers can become active citizens, challenging injustices from within and amongst themselves and in the social world around them. reflection alone is insufficient. active learning can help deepen students understanding. kolb (1984) emphasised students bringing their lived experiences into the classrooms and subjecting them to reflection and experimentation. asking students to reflect on and debrief such classroom experiences through discussion can have positive effects. coupled with knowledge content – lectures, readings and other conceptual input, students can develop a more abstract understanding of social life and that understanding can be tested outside the classrooms and in new situations. thinking, talking and applying class concepts and acting upon these, all reflect engaged learning (nagda, gurin & lopez, 2003, p.169) and may be brought back to class as content for further exploration and meaning making. important too are the works of goffman (1964) and helms (1990). the former explains how a social attribute may be used for discrediting an individual or a group, thereby promoting differential treatment by others. goffman (1964, p. 3) defines stigma as ‘an attribute that makes [one] different from others in the category of persons available for him to be, and of a less desirable kind…he is thus reduced in our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one’. one often elaborately works to manage her/his identity away from a discreditable standing. hence, careful attendance to how others treat us, or how we imagine being treated, provides information required for the work of managing our identities away from a stigmatised role. the latter (helms, 1990) in his work on racial identity suggested that in any society where some form of identity is stigmatised, members of the dominant and subordinate groups naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 26 will react to each other based on the relative status of their identity. helms (1990) suggested that african americans' feelings of self-worth may be associated with their assessment of racial status as a minority group member. thus, racial identity development can be a crucial aspect of personality development for african americans. as noted by helms (1990), intrinsic to racial identity is the belief that individuals need an appreciation of group identification in order to maintain a healthy sense of personal identity. research process my research study focuses on the unit ‘social justice issues in secondary education’. the unit, drawing on many of the theories reviewed above was designed: a) to introduce students to the historical, social, political and conceptual roots of social differences and social inequalities, b) to provide opportunities for engagement with students from differing sociocultural-economic backgrounds, c) to foster engagement through critical pedagogy, d) to help students gain a critical understanding of the role of schooling in broader social contexts, including the relevance of sociological perspectives to this awareness, e) to assist students in critically analysing the multiple contexts of power operating in schools and their relationships to concepts of discourse, subjectivity and identity as well as exploring the ‘politics of difference’ associated with identity, and f) to help students develop an understanding of the construction of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class and the intersections between these concepts and to show how they are related to inequality in and outside schooling. the ‘unit content’ based on cultural diversity, difference, social justice and change, covered structural and historical basis of various forms of oppression (sleeter, 1996). it also includes content on schooling in socio-cultural contexts, the role of education in social justice, multiple contexts of power relations in school, curriculum/ knowledge and discipline. the unit content, using social justice education as a basis combined a structural critique of inequality with possibilities of change. it is hoped that in the process of deconstruction, future educators are able to reconstruct social reality (caputo, 1997; gay, 1997). the unit pedagogy, which involved reflexivity as a form of social justice, operated in different ways. students, in groups of thirty, met in tutorial groups for two hours to discuss and debrief lectures and readings, and to participate with others in the group to deconstruct and thereby provide students with an ‘apprenticeship for the possibility of participation in democracy’ (nieto, 1995, p. 207). reflection was also encouraged through assessments, two per semester, in which students articulated their understanding of issues covered in the unit in relation to their own perspectives and experiences. the criteria for writing the assessment was provided and included amongst others the critical and analytical argument of the issues studied. nieto (2000, p. 180) asserts that we ‘place equity front and centre of the teacher preparation process if we are to transform teacher education.’ she put forth five ways in which teacher educators can situate equity at the centre of the teacher education program. firstly, teacher educators should be encouraged to take a stand on social justice and diversity issues. secondly, social justice should be made ubiquitous in teacher education. thirdly, teaching should be promoted as an ongoing process of transformation, fourthly, teacher educators need to learn to challenge racism and bias and finally, teacher educators need to develop a community of critical friends (nieto, 2000, pp. 182-183). the unit ‘social justice issues in secondary education’, in content and pedagogy, was able to take a stand on social justice and diversity issues because it asserted the critical values, attitudes and skills necessary for just an equitable teaching. in this way, the unit addressed diversity in value added ways (nieto, 2000) and gave students from diverse backgrounds a greater opportunity to interact. furthermore, by taking a stand on social justice issues, the unit constantly reinforced and re-assessed issues relating to diversity and social naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 justice in lectures, tutorials and assessments. by constantly re-affirming that teaching was an ongoing act of transformation (nieto, 2000), teacher educators studying the unit became aware of the socio-cultural, political context for their teaching and were able to reflect upon their own identities in relation the identities of their students especially as it related to issues of difference, diversity, power and oppression. supporting teachers to fundamentally reconceptualise the relationship between teacher and student into a dynamic, bi-directional, mutually reflexive relationship is intimately tied to concepts of social justice and equity (ball, 2000; haberman, 1995). in examining issues related to gender, class, sexuality, racism and indigenous australia, teacher educators studying the unit were able to build a knowledge base that allowed them to challenge injustices that occurred in teaching and learning. finally, to sustain a process of critical reflection and ongoing teacher transformation, students studying the ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ unit, completed a four week school practicum that allowed them to make connections between theory and practice, and hence allowed them to understand the context in which they teach and the students that they teach. to establish whether the ‘social justice in secondary education’ unit acts as a catalyst to innovative teaching about social justice issues in the classroom, a study was undertaken to ask the ‘questions that really matter’ (cochrane–smith, 2000a, p.18). this meant that the questions that mattered had to be grounded in teachers’ work that is ‘interpretive, political, theoretical as well as practical, strategic and local’ (cochrane–smith, 2000a, p.18). this paper presents a critical analysis of the unit as reflected in the responses of my preservice teachers to an open-ended question i posed to the student cohort during the beginning of the autumn (february 2004) semester, to assess student knowledge and understanding of social justice. content analysis of their short essay responses will show how their thinking reflects internalised ideologies that justify the status quo and devalue diversity and difference. following the analysis of their responses and discussion of the findings, it will be seen how the unit content and structure was used to counteract the cognitively limited thinking so much so that the twelve students who volunteered to be interviewed at the end of that semester were able to demonstrate through their transformative emotional growth experiences in that semester, a commitment to social justice and equity in their teaching. the concluding discussion will hence show that the ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ unit does impact on teacher educators’ understanding of social justice and equity issues. of the group of twelve students who volunteered to participate and who were not identified within the research results, eight were females and four were males. they differed in terms of cultural backgrounds, one was pakistani born, others were anglo-celtic and yet others were of european descent. their sexuality differed in that while most of them were heterosexual, one student during the interview declared that she was a lesbian. the students were mostly from working class backgrounds and resided in western sydney. of the twelve students, two were mature age students with young families. the first research question ‘what social justice means to me’ was given to the entire student cohort (68) at the beginning of the semester in the hope of determining what ideologies circulate in relation to social justice. this was conducted as a written response to isolate ideological discourses. the interview later in the semester, which focused on the group of twelve volunteer students, gave these students an opportunity to comment and recount their experiences in the unit and in the classroom. this part of the study occurred after the students’ practicum in the field and towards the end of semester so as to serve as a comparative tool to participants’ responses earlier in the semester. changes relating to participants’ empathy, meaning and definition of social justice were noted for further analysis. naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 28 the literature search had revealed that while students’ school practicum experience had been adequately researched, there are almost no studies that focus on students’ experiences with social justice issues. as such the central aim of the study was to 1) document accounts detailing the experiences of pre-service teachers in social justice education. it was hoped that by having these social justice conversations that it would be possible to investigate students’ understandings of the meaning of social justice so that they may be able to teach for social justice in the increasingly diverse school population. in our global world where the rift between these accesses is getting larger and there is an increasing divergence of the privileged and non-privileged, education in social justice issues for upcoming teachers can prepare them consciously by bringing theses issues to the surface. this may be able to advance their understanding on societal interactions and develop a commitment to teach students in an egalitarian environment (lewis, 2001). it was proposed that the purpose of the study was also to 2) identify the critical discourses that emerge in the contested environment of schools and classrooms. by focusing on social justice issues, it is hoped the study will also provide insights on socio-cultural issues that arise in schools and classrooms. as such, information obtained from the study will lead to 3) an awareness of and respect for those from diverse cultural backgrounds as well as an understanding of the policies and practices of school systems within which teachers work. it was hoped that the research will make 4) a valuable contribution to knowledge about social justice issues in teacher education at uws, penrith campus by understanding the discourses influencing secondary pre-service teachers’ perspectives about the extent to which social justice issues is incorporated into their school practicum program. not only did the research try to understand and document the participants’ theoretical and pedagogical approaches to social justice education, it also demonstrated an increasing awareness 5) of pre-service teachers’ experiences of social and cultural diversity issues in schools and classrooms. furthermore the focus on the development of social theory around the contradictory relationship between education as the simultaneous challenger of social inequities and the maintenance of the social order, particularly around social justice issues reinforced the conceptual framework of the school of education. this research fills a vacuum in understanding social justice issues in teacher education programs at uws, penrith. it is a fact that racism, gender, ethnicity, sexuality to name a few are social justice issues relevant to schooling. consequently, teachers have a professional, moral and legal obligation in intervening and addressing issues related to social justice and with providing their students with a safe and supportive environment free from discrimination. amid generalised feelings of global unrest ensuing from september 11, it is more likely that individuals from certain ethnic sectors will experience elevated risks of subjection to racist comments and behaviour. hence during school practicum, pre-service teachers are likely to encounter instances of social injustice experienced by school students from a non –dominant culture. it is absolutely essential therefore to engage pre-service teachers in social justice education. method and techniques of research the methodological approach was ethnographic and included discourse analysis, in-depth interviews and collation, description and analysis of pedagogical frameworks. this approach also included an analysis of materials and approaches used in the subject. in-depth interview the key to this research study was the way in which definitions of social justice and social justice education was shaped by participants’ experience of the social justice education coursework and school practicum. this study aimed to explore the dynamics of this process naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 using in-depth interviews of participants who were students in the ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ unit. in-depth interviews were carried out towards the end of semester to serve as a comparative tool to participants’ responses earlier in the semester. in-depth interview is a qualitative research technique that allows person-to-person discussion. it can lead to increased insight into people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviour on important issues. this type of interview is often unstructured and therefore permits the interviewer to encourage an informant (respondent) to talk at length about the topic of interest. it is a flexible approach that aims to ask questions to explain the reasons underlying a problem or practice. you can use the technique to gather ideas, to gather information, and to develop materials for social justice education. this allowed the researcher an opportunity to gain an insight into the various meanings, perceptions and understandings identified in the written responses and to note changes relating to participants’ definitions of social justice. discourse analysis to delve more deeply into the values and ideas that circulate in relation to social justice, the student cohort (68) engaged in a written response entitled: ‘what social justice means to me’. in teaching and learning about social justice, there is emphasis on a range of genres mainly in written responses and class discussions. discourse analysis involves seeing talk and text as social practice (bryman and burgess, 1994). discourse analysis is a deconstructive reading and interpretation of a issue or text and will, thus, not provide absolute answers to a specific problem or issue, but enable us to understand the conditions behind a specific ‘problem’ and make us realize that the essence of that ‘problem’, and its resolution, lie in its assumptions; the very assumptions that enable the existence of that problem or issue. the written response from participants which was conducted at the beginning of the autumn semester 2004 focused on content-meanings; form, genre and field since these demonstrate action; and argumentation showing how texts are organised (bryman and burgess, 1994). it was hoped that the analysis of the discourse would provide a rich source of data for comparison with participants’ views once the coursework and school practicum had been completed. qualitative case study the qualitative case study method (merriam, 1998) was selected because it allows the researcher to gain an insider’s view of questions being studied (patton, 1990; seidman, 1998). in qualitative research, the investigator tells each participant’s story by using the voice of the participant to tell the participants’ experiences. a triangulation approach was adopted involving the review of a written response by participants, an in-depth interview and document analysis. the triangulation approach is a mixed-method analysis approach. the core premise of triangulation is that all methods have inherent biases and limitations, so use of only one method to assess a given phenomenon will inevitably yield biased and limited results. it is important to process as well as analyse the data. thus a triangulation approach, one that uses multiple layers of analysis through systematic procedures, is used to identify essential features and relationships. a combination of the above three (3) research methods would adequately address the questions of the study and provide a rich source of data. findings at the beginning of the autumn (february 2004) semester, students in the ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ unit were asked to write a short essay (250 words) entitled ‘what social justice means to me.’ of the sixty-eight students that made up the cohort, eighty six percent believed social justice to be related to fairness and equality with intolerance of discrimination. the responses highlighted an appreciation of inequality rather naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 than an acknowledgement of inequality as a result of hierarchical and systemic differences of domination and subordination. the following selected responses from students are indicative of the limited thought processes. when i heard the term social justice, for the first time last week, i did not know what to think… but i suppose it means to be fair in the classroom. social justice means equity and fairness and it promotes fairness and personal rights. social justice means equality, equity and the distribution of fairness. i am not really sure; perhaps justice refers to the treatment being fair. social justice encompasses areas of anti-discrimination. to truly understand social justice, it is important that the responses reflect an understanding of the historical, political, economic and social forces that shape relations of power in schools, classrooms and communities. thus, the majority of students explained social justice in a limited way… as fairness and equality without recognising the structural inequality built into the social order. only seven percent of the respondents made a link between social justice and the structures of society. social justice is a concept of rights and privileges of the citizens living in a social set up. social justice means that anyone can participate in learning irrespective of gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality and disability. social justice is the idea that all members of society are given equal rights including education availability, health care and adequate housing. social justice means equality for all regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or social class. while the majority of students failed to link social justice to other forms of societal oppression and exploitation, there were still others (about seven percent) who had very different ideas of what social justice meant to them. social justice starts with the individual and if the individual were to place the needs of him/her before others, this will be an excellent start. social justice is to be able to ride a bike legally on the road and not be abused by oil burning car drivers who entomb themselves within their own metal world in which they play god. social justice is about evaluating the disparity among school students. i have no idea. it sounds pretty airy-fairy. it is a term that does not involve government or political bodies to intervene. it relies on people enforcing what they deem is right. naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 31 these students studying this unit have limited knowledge and understanding of social justice issues. not only are they unaware of their own ideological perspectives, but they are also unaware of how their subjective identities reflect an uncritical identification with the existing social order. for those who made the link between social justice and law or politics, the link was more one of ‘legal/law’ rather than equal access to say education and healthcare as examples. to achieve social justice, the existing structural inequality has to be recognised and struggled against. the equality and fairness that most of the students write of is not the one reflected in this explanation. thus their responses reflect uncritical limited ways of thinking about social justice. one of my outcomes in this unit is to encourage students to think critically about education in general and about schooling in particular and more particularly in relation to social justice and their own identities as teachers. the unit is so organised that students have an opportunity through lectures, tutorials, readings and online discussions to critically analyse the social purposes of schooling. students are also made aware of the fact that education is not neutral; that it can serve various political, economic and cultural interests (cagan, 1978; freire, 1971; o’neill, 1981). not only do students learn about macro social (societal) issues but they also examine micro social (classroom) issues. in an analysis of the social construction of childhood, students examine the concept of childhood within a historical perspective. they learn that the creation of the concept of childhood is ‘grounded in enlightenment/ modernist, cultural bias that places limitations on younger human beings, constructs privilege and power for those who are older and lessens the connections we make with children and each other’ (sloan, 1997, p. 158). this construction of the child silences a group of human beings, removing all possibilities for social justice. our constructions for social justice therefore embrace the struggle for liberations avoiding constructions of the ‘other’ and aiming for just and caring communities (giroux & simon, 1989). the power relations constructed within such patriarchal value systems such as education would be acknowledged and evaluated. students also encountered the scholarship of apple (1993) which demonstrates that it is possible to engage in educational practises that are meaningful, critical and grounded in a sense of critical literacy. from him they also learn that education is inherently political, an arena in which groups attempt to institutionalise their cultures, histories and visions of social justice issues. similarly, meadmore (1999) is examined for her views in social class and the ways in which it works in and through education to produce advantage and disadvantage. in the same way, we look at how bourdieu’s (webb, shirato, & danaher, 2002) concept of ‘habitus’ provides the core of his understanding of how schools work to reproduce social inequalities. the unit further examines modernism, post-modernism and feminism as three of the most important discourses for developing a cultural politics and pedagogical practise capable of extending and theoretically advancing a radical politics of democracy. afshar and maynard (1994) are studied for their concerns with theorising the relationships between ‘race’ and ‘gender’ oppression and the extent to which it is furthered by using the concept of ‘difference’. students also examine ways in which schools support and reinforce binaries or heterosexuality/ homosexuality in terms of normality and abnormality and ways in which aboriginal australians and other minority groups are portrayed as objects of paternalistic concern. during lectures, tutorials and online discussions, students discussed their thoughts and feelings about the abovementioned authors/ ideas and reflected upon the soundness of such arguments. in so doing, students struggled with the ideas, values and social interests at the heart of the different educational and social visions which they as future teachers must either naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 accept, reject or resists. the ‘social justice issues for secondary education’ unit thus provides a forum for students to debate and reflect upon their own views in relation to the views of others. freire’s (1971) strategy of ‘problem posing’ is often used as a strategy for students to detect bias and prejudice in school texts. sometimes, an alternative view of history is presented and often reflects aspects of the ‘hidden curriculum’, unmasking the political and cultural role of schooling of which many students are unaware. such intellectual and emotional growth opportunities allow students to reflect on the nature of their own socially constructed knowledge and identities. this will lead to a transformation in thinking which was clearly reflected in the responses to the interview questions conducted at the end of autumn (july 2004) semester in which twelve volunteers were interviewed. their responses reflect a transformation in students’ values, beliefs and ideologies regarding social justice. an analysis of the data obtained from student interviews indicated that consciousness was raised about social justice issues during the unit. clearly the ideas expressed during the interview indicated that the unit increased awareness of social justice issues, allowed students to be self-reflective about their teaching practices, while on professional experience, permitted students to identify issues relating to social justice in the school environment and to offer possible solutions which could make a positive change to the school environment. through unit readings and lectures, followed by practicum in schools, students reported that their awareness of social justice issues had increased and changed the way that they viewed the world. one student reported that the unit taught him about: equality for all people, having opportunities, caring for others, making a better world, understanding why inequities exist and looking at practical solutions to power, privilege and wealth, such as the underprivileged in terms of resources, education and social capital, etc. being more in tune with human relationships. students also spoke about the fact that the unit content allowed them to be more critical of issues and understand the importance of access to resources. another student commented that: an awareness of social justice issues means giving everyone the opportunity to reach their potential. so it doesn’t mean giving everyone the same money or the same job or whatever. it means that everyone has the same access to their own potential. i think that’s basically it, irregardless of gender, sex, race, ethnicity … there was certainly consciousness raised in the unit and this was further supported by the impact the unit content had on school practicum. as a result of the unit, students were able to reflect upon their own roles as teachers in the classroom setting. a student summarised his self-reflection by saying that: it’s given me the opportunity to reflect on some of the social justice issues in school, such as gender and racism. in terms of change i’ve always been fair and non discriminatory. through self-examination i become more aware of my experiences, and analytical of my constructed prejudice. interestingly the unit made an impact on students from both the dominant and minority cultures. one student reported that: naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 what we’ve learned challenged our assumptions of morality and opinions. i don’t always agree with people’s views. they can be overly critical and personally sensitive. being from the dominant culture, myself, i have gained more respect for ‘others’ while i was out at schools. for example, i took on feminism more seriously when we were talking about a mothers place in society. those things affected me. i’m more aware now about differing perspectives. overall, students believed that by studying the unit they were able to bring about not only a change in themselves but also a change in the school environment. a student reflected that: social justice is broader not simply about equality. school practicum taught me that it is also about not being discriminated, teased, or abused and having a school as a safe place to learn. another student believed that the unit and school practicum encouraged him/her to reflect upon their privileged upbringing. i’m from a privileged middle class background. we had money, and education was valued. i thought that everybody had equal opportunities, and access to further their education. now i realize that other prejudicial factors, such as race and sexual also affect access to the privileges that education provides. acknowledging recognition that teachers are predominantly envisaged as white, middle to upper middle class heterosexuals (smulyan, 2004) because a majority of the teachers are from a privileged background, gives rise to the need for social justice to be taught to the privileged (smith, 1999). this will bring forward a realization that the institutions that are responsible for maintaining social inequalities can also be used as a catalyst towards social change (mcmahon, 2003). yet another student saw the unit and professional experience as providing an opportunity to closely examine and assess issues relating especially to racism and aboriginality. this pursuance of knowledge and further research was reflected in the comment made that the unit and school teaching experience encouraged: research into issues of aboriginality. looking at what different types of socializations that there are, and how differences in socialization, at home, changes what’s considered normal behaviour in the classroom. now i’m better prepared to approach an aboriginal student and deal with their responses and interpret them more accurately. it would appear from the above as though students’ understanding of social justice issues particularly in the secondary school deepened as a result of the unit. not only were their beliefs and assumptions challenged but the unit and its content also allowed students to challenge many of the unjust practices that became evident in the classroom and school playground. still the analysis of the transcripts indicated that there was room for improvement in the unit more particularly in regards to providing actual examples or strategies for dealing with social justice issues in the classroom to some degree i was familiar with racial, sexual, and gender issues, but not in terms of why they’re there, and being able to identify where they are coming from, and who the powers are causing factions or inequalities to occur. nevertheless is important to be naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 aware that people are different, and that they figure in hierarchal power struggles over resources, knowledge, etc. treating people equally will resolve many issues. in general, students wanted real strategies for real classrooms. as one student stated: i haven’t strongly defined strategies for teaching, yet. i think i will develop strategies on the job. theories are nice, but i know what i’m going to do. i’d be deluding myself if i walked into a class expecting things to be perfect. i want to know and study the students in terms of their personality, cultural background and expectations, their issues, english, literacy skills, and economic circumstances. i’m more motivated and determined according to the curriculum in knowing students better so i can focus my lessons more appropriately. in terms of power relationships i can move from being the leader and them being the submissive students if i knew more about the students. i can also empower them to succeed in the school environment without making them conform slavishly to the current system. conclusion this has led me to conclude that the ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ unit has provided the opportunity for students to recognise and evaluate the ideological influences that shape their thinking about schooling, society, themselves and diverse others. as a pre-service teacher is progressively made aware of the current struggle that is occurring everyday within the educational institutions, students, through the unit, came to the realization of the enormity of the obscured political forces that dominate the curriculum. not only had this unit given these students the motivation to teach students under any challenging circumstances, but also it had created an appetite to learn about other cultures and the continual study of social justices issues. a teacher needs to act as a mediator between two cultures, both the dominant and the disadvantaged. this is achievable by facilitating the less dominant to understand, acclimatise and hence thrive academically in pursuit of conquering the dominant culture without loss of identity, therefore bridging the cultural gap and levelling the societal inequality, resulting in the empowerment of students in succeeding academically and socially (chisholm 1994). a teacher may be successful in a school that is predominantly white and middle-class, but when placed in a school that is disadvantaged and underprivileged, may find it difficult to cope and, in turn may devalue their self worth as a teacher. a study of social justice could contribute to their success as a teacher by making them aware of their position within the school environment and by allowing them to adopt critical teaching strategies to challenge the status quo. social justice education therefore needs to be continually taught and monitored as it is not a natural or permanent structure (merrett, 2004). as one student stated: if you want to stay being a teacher and make it meaningful, you’ve got to look at social justice with your heart… since this research study was undertaken to provide a greater link between theory and practice, the unit has been improved to include an integrated task between the social justice issues unit and the students’ teaching methods, so that students will develop an original teaching unit of work relevant to their teaching methods, which can be used in the classroom. the unit will need to address the following: • a rationale (750 words) justifying why this unit of work should be taught. the justification should briefly indicate how the unit meets syllabus requirements but naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 more substantially how it meets the directions set by the broader school curriculum in terms of equity and social justice. the rationale should be linked to relevant sociological theories with evidence from relevant weekly readings covered in lectures and tutorials, specifically social justice issues in schooling. the rationale needs to argue a position on the equity of social justice concerns associated with an issue in schooling and the broader community. • the unit outline must include all the necessary components as outlined in method lectures and tutorials. these will include outcomes, content, assessment, resources, timeline and anything else relevant to a unit of work in your method area. • in-depth lesson plans for 4 lessons will also be included. each lesson will need to show connections in terms of outcomes and content as well as an explanation of the relevance of the particular lesson to equity and social justice issues, strategies and resources addressed and used by each lesson. i have also extended the unit content to include an examination of the globalized community in which students live in order to move students’ thinking from the local to the global. further examination of the effects of globalisation on local communities is inherent to a pedagogy of social justice. globalisation forces seem to be introducing a mix of homogenising tendencies, but they are also opening space for new identities and contestation of established values and norms, many detrimental to the achievement of true social justice (stromquist & monkman, 2000). the development of identities, friendly to market economies will press educational systems and programs towards greater uniformity… consequently creating tension between the global and the local in the educational arena. references adams, m., bell, l.a. & griffin, p. 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(1990). justice and the politics of difference. princeton, nj: princeton university press. author loshini naidoo is a lecturer in the school of education at the university of western sydney, australia. email: l.naidoo@uws.edu.au ______________ katie richards-schuster, am, phd is an assistant professor in the school of social work at the university of michigan. mary c. ruffolo, lmsw, phd is a professor in the school of social work at the university of michigan. kerri leyda nicoll, mdiv, msw, phd, is an assistant professor of social work in the department of sociology, anthropology & social work at the massachusetts college of liberal arts in north adams, ma. catherine distelrath, msw, is a research assistant in the school of social work at the university of michigan. joseph galura, lmsw is a lecturer and advisor in the school of social work at the university of michigan, alice mishin, llmsw, is a lecturer and program manager in the school of social work at the university of michigan. copyright © 2015 advances in social work vol. 16 no. 2 (fall 2015), 372-389, doi: 10.18060/18526 exploring challenges faced by students as they transition to social justice work in the “real world”: implications for social work katie richards-schuster mary c. ruffolo kerri leyda nicoll catherine distelrath joseph galura alice mishkin abstract: for students who are actively engaged in social justice efforts on their college/university campuses, the transition from a relatively easy platform for engagement to the “real world” can pose significant challenges and create new realities for negotiation. little is known, however, about the nature of these transitions into post-graduate social justice experiences. drawing on an open-ended survey of recent graduates (92 respondents, 50% response rate) from a social justice minor in a school of social work, we explore the ways in which respondents described their transitions into social justice work, focusing on a set of key challenges that emerged from our analysis and reflecting on the implications of these challenges for social work practice and future research. understanding some of the challenges in making this transition will help social work and non-profit administrators to better support this population’s future volunteer, service, and employment needs. keywords: social justice, higher education administration, social work, community organization, social action while social work has a particular and unique commitment to educating students with a social justice orientation, the field is not alone in producing such students, as more and more colleges and universities establish active social-justiceand community-oriented majors and minors apart from bsw and msw programs (glass, 2013; harkavy, 2006; hoy, johnson, & hackett, 2012). in keeping with this trend, many social work schools have engaged in curricular innovations that promote engaged learning and active involvement in communities (burke, 2011; glass, 2012; rome & hoechstetter, 2010). some schools of social work are developing social work minors or related social justice minors as an alternative to the bsw program. although only a few social work schools offer undergraduate non-bsw programs, these innovations offer the potential for a social work footprint on undergraduate campuses and create the possibility of pipelines from undergraduate to master’s or doctoral level education in social work (richards-schuster, ruffolo, & nicoll, 2015). for highly motivated students who are actively engaged in these minors, majors, and other social justice efforts, the transition from a relatively easy platform for engagement to the “real world” can challenge individuals’ understanding of social justice and their own identities as social change agents and can create new realities for negotiation. the reality richards-schuster et al./exploring challenges 373 of these transitions and the challenges that emerge have implications for the social work and non-profit settings that become the first employers for many of these students. yet little is known about these transitions and the immediate issues both positive and negative that students face as they enter this new realm of engagement. in this article, we offer a first step toward such understanding by examining the immediate issues and challenges that new graduates have faced in staying involved in social justice work and service in the first three years after graduating from a social justiceoriented minor. drawing on an open-ended survey of new graduates who had recently completed a social justice-focused minor within a school of social work, we explore the ways in which respondents described their transitions into the “real world.” we examine trends in their descriptions, focusing on a set of key challenges that emerged from our analysis and reflecting on the implications of these challenges for non-profit settings, social work education and practice, and future research. background literature over the last several years, higher education in the united states has experienced an increased sense of responsibility for educating young adults not just academically, but civically as well (bringle, clayton, steinberg, & studer, 2011). as students have expressed a desire to perform more community work and become more engaged in social justice activities both on and off campus, institutes of higher education have begun working to fulfill that desire, offering an increasing number of service learning courses, civic engagement minors and majors, and co-curricular service and civic engagement activities (bringle et al., 2011; colby, ehrlich, beaumont, & stephens, 2003; steinberg, hatcher, & bringle, 2011). as these programs grow and expand, there is a strong desire by social work and other allied fields to support students as they transition out of the college/university environment and adapt to the various ways that social justice activism takes shape in their lives (flanagan & levine, 2010; wendlandt & rochlen, 2008). little is known, however, about how these undergraduate initiatives impact students as they transition from higher education to work in the “real world.” this is especially true for the millennial generation, which is the primary cohort of students in many of today’s undergraduate colleges and universities, including our own. recent research demonstrates an overall optimism among young adults about their lives and the world in general that is somewhat unique to the millennial generation (murphy, blustein, bohlig, & platt, 2010). researchers have described this as a tendency to possess “world-conquering ambition” and a much greater emphasis than previous generations on personal identity and civic engagement in the workplace (alsop, 2008; arnett, 2004; murphy et al., 2010). this ambitious, civic-minded outlook often leads to disappointment, however, when these young adults transition to their first jobs, finding themselves in mundane positions and wondering whether they are actually contributing anything to their organizations or, more importantly for them, to society (alsop, 2008; arnett, 2004; murphy et al., 2010). many students entering college today have a richer background in civic engagement and social justice than ever before, primarily in the area of volunteering. among other things, they bring to campus a variety of experiences with community-based work, along advances in social work, fall 2015, 16(2) 374 with a disposition of unfailing confidence in their abilities. it then becomes the role of colleges and universities to foster the identities that have been formed through adolescence and continue to challenge the depth of civic engagement within each student. this is being done, more and more, through an intersection of educationand community-based programs (bringle et al., 2011; colby et al., 2003; steinberg et al., 2011). murphy et al. (2010) found that, regardless of their feelings about the ease of their transition during the gap years, many young adults share a common sense of the value of community and social support in their lives. after leaving the comfort of the college community, many students elicit support and encouragement from their family and friends that keeps them motivated through their transition. this sense of value placed on community support likely develops most for students during their college years, particularly if they have spent time learning through community-based programs and instruction. there is limited research, however, that focuses specifically on the postgraduate outcomes of those who participate in serviceand community-based programs, and very little attention is given to how these programs impact this growing population of alums in different and presumably heightened ways compared to other graduates (keen & hall, 2008). while attention to alumni transitions and the particular challenges faced by this generation of social justice-minded young adults is growing (polach, 2004; roksa & arum, 2012), little research has focused on the nature of immediate (first, second, or third year post-graduation) transitions from undergraduate to alumni status for social work and other social justice-oriented students. mitchell, battistoni, keene, and reiff (2013), for example, discuss the importance of building an “enhanced civic identity” that sustains the transition from undergraduate to alumni, outlining fundamental skills such as collaboration, voice, reflective practice, and engaged scholarship. these skills are developed during college and become necessary for civic leadership over time, but the majority of studies have focused on alumni five or more years after graduation. other studies finding significant correlations between collegiate engagement and post-college civic involvement have also used longer time frames (besser, 2012; bringle et al., 2011; goldsberry, 2007). knowledge about the specific challenges facing students in the initial post-graduation years could prove to be particularly important given the fact that these years are often indicative of long-term trajectories (roksa & arum, 2012). while it is true that many college graduates face a transition shock, we are particularly interested in those students embarking on social justice careers because of the potential impact on their long-term engagement in social work-related fields. if schools of social work – whether they offer bsw programs or social justice minors are to continue to build a robust cohort of lifelong social justice practitioners, we must advance discussions about how best to support our graduates in making successful post-graduate transitions. this paper contributes to such discussions by examining the immediate issues and challenges that students encounter as they leave social work and social justice-oriented programs and the implications of those challenges for education, research, and practice in social work and allied fields. richards-schuster et al./exploring challenges 375 methods in fall 2013, our team of researchers conducted a pilot survey of alumni from an interdisciplinary social justice-focused minor program offered by a school of social work. until 2010, this school of social work, housed in a large public university, provided graduate education for more than 600 msw and phd students each year but had no undergraduate programs. the minor discussed in this paper, which began in 2010, is the first and only undergraduate program that the school of social work offers and was created as a multidisciplinary program aimed to support students interested in social justice, community action, and social change (see richards-schuster et al., 2015; richardsschuster et al., 2014, for more details about the minor’s development and curriculum). there is no bsw or social work major program offered at this university. the goals of the minor, which is explicitly not intended to be a bsw program, are to enable students to: (a) examine community action and social change concepts using a multidisciplinary framework, (b) address community action and social change efforts in multilingual and multicultural communities, (c) integrate social justice values into the community action and social change processes, and (d) engage in service learning opportunities to promote community change initiatives. the courses included in the 16-credit minor are intended to provide students with theoretical frameworks for understanding social change, skills for self-identity development and facilitation in diverse settings, experiences in service-learning or community-engagement courses, practical skills for community change work, and opportunities for integrative reflection. in addition, the minor offers co-curricular activities to complement course-based learning. these include social justice fairs, speakers and panels, community-based experiences, community-building activities, and opportunities to hear about and learn from the experiences of program alumni. drawing on systems and community action frameworks, the many components of the minor were designed to prepare students to engage in social justice/change work throughout their lives, whether they pursue traditional social work careers or enter fields as diverse as sports management, biomechanics, or music. research design our pilot survey of the alumni of the minor was initially designed to gather information about the experiences of alums post-graduation, both in order to help in developing better supports for future cohorts as they transitioned to the “real world” and to assess the implications of these experiences for social work and social justice education more broadly. our specific questions were: (1) what are the challenges that highly motivated, socialjustice-focused students face as they graduate from college and enter the “real world”? (2) what are the perceptions of these new graduates as they move into social work and related non-profit settings? to gather this information we created an online, open-ended survey. in the survey, we asked alumni to share about their post-undergraduate work (paid, unpaid, continuing education), discuss accomplishments they had achieved since graduating from the minor, identify challenges they had faced, and reflect on what they had learned (and not learned) advances in social work, fall 2015, 16(2) 376 from the minor (e.g., what has been useful, what has mattered most to them in their postgraduation work, what they wish they had learned, and what advice they would give to current students). because this was a pilot survey and we were looking to generate themes rather than test particular hypotheses, we intentionally kept the survey open-ended (creswell, 2014). using qualtrics, an online survey tool, we administered the survey to alumni from the first three cohorts of the minor from 2011 to 2013 (n=187). we reached out to alumni using email addresses that they had provided at graduation or updated contact information they had sent of their own accord. after sending three follow-up emails as reminders to encourage alumni to complete the survey, our final response rate was approximately 50% (n=92). alumni from each of the three classes provided answers. the sample of survey respondents consisted of 71 women and 21 men. of the 92 respondents, 75% identified as white, 6.5% identified as black, 6.5% identified as hispanic, 5.5% identified as asian or pacific islander, and 6.5% chose not to respond. although over half (56.5%) of the respondents had been social science majors, respondents also reported a variety of undergraduate majors, including art and design, science, business, and cultural studies. the overwhelming majority of the students in this sample completed college within four years and were in their early 20s at the time of graduation. at the time of response, participants were in a range of post-college opportunities, most of which were in the nonprofit or public sectors, social work, or social justice fields (see table 1). table 1. post-graduate involvement of study participants (n= 92) post-graduation involvement # of alums extended service program (americorps, teach for america, peace corps, etc.) 23 (25%) msw or joint master's program 22 (24%) non-profit or government employment 23 (25%) other post-bacc. degree at u of m or other school 14 (15%) for-profit or freelance work 3 (3%) unemployed/ no response 7 (8%) analysis as our survey questions were largely open-ended and we were interested in exploring responses without particular predefined hypotheses, we approached our data using thematic analysis (boyatzis, 1998; creswell, 2014; denzin & lincoln, 2011). multiple research team members reviewed the survey responses, resulting in the identification of several potential thematic codes. once these codes had been identified, the data was reviewed again in an effort to locate all instances of the identified themes/codes in each individual’s survey responses. the reviewers then compared their codes and sorted them into three major categories: (a) current experiences, (b) challenges, and (c) the translation of learning from the university to the “real world.” using these categories, the data was reviewed yet again to uncover related sub-themes and ensure conceptual saturation (corbin & strauss, 2008; glaser & strauss, 1967). the team also used qsr international’s nvivo 10 software, a qualitative data analysis program that assists with pattern-based coding and theme tracking, to explore richards-schuster et al./exploring challenges 377 word frequencies and response trends (qsr international, 2012). in this article, we focus specifically on the themes that emerged related to challenges graduates faced as they transitioned from undergraduate education to post-graduate experiences. emergent themes: critical challenges in transitions while there were many successes that graduates faced during their transitions from undergraduate education to post-graduate life and work, these successes were most often accompanied by challenges. approximately two-thirds of our respondents noted specific challenges they had faced during their post-graduation transition. the remaining third did not explicitly acknowledge challenges, which could mean that they transitioned without challenges or that they failed to mention them in their survey responses. we acknowledge that transitions are complex and involve both ups and downs, but we chose to pay particular attention to challenges in this paper in order to highlight the ways in which schools of social work might more fully support social justice-focused graduates. challenges with adjustment to new communities more than a third of the students who responded to this survey described challenges related to their adjustment to new community environments. this is not terribly surprising, as one would expect that students who have spent years in one location might have difficulty relocating and starting anew outside of their familiar surroundings. building relationships, learning new jobs, and negotiating the requirements of living in new cities are challenges likely faced by many recent college graduates. for many, this was their first experience in moving to a new community without the structures and supports of a university environment, and for those beginning social-justice-focused positions, it often entails adjustments not only to new locations but also to the economic and social realities facing the communities they are entering and with whom they hope to work. as one respondent in his first year post-graduation reported: my biggest challenge by far has been adjusting to my community outside of work. it is a low-income black community centered around the church in a town ravaged by the collapse of industry. i can relate in some ways, but i’m not religious at all and it’s not a great place for 20-somethings. that being said, i feel it’s important to be involved in the community as much as you can, so it has been tricky to navigate being present with practicing self-care and not compromising myself. for this respondent, moving to a new community was challenging, not only because he did not know people and did not feel like he fit in with the culture around him but also because he wanted to become a part of this community, sharing in its struggles and accomplishments, while still maintaining his own identity. he was deeply committed to living in this community, not just physically but also socially, wanting to build relationships with his neighbors and other community members, but adjusting to life there was still a challenge. “i’m not sure (the minor) really prepares you for the full experience,” he said, “since it's gonna be different no matter who you are, but it does emphasize the importance of knowing your community and i realize now how important that is to take that to heart.” advances in social work, fall 2015, 16(2) 378 other respondents made similar comments about the challenges to adjusting to new communities and new environments: there have been a lot of challenges, from moving away from everything i’ve known, to adjusting to a new culture, language, and career…i am constantly reflecting on my role and what i hope to accomplish here. it has been overall a challenge to move to a new city and a new community to work in the social work field…it is a challenge to network and start ‘fresh’ when you are young and continuing to move to new environments. frustration with “social justice” ideology another theme that emerged was the challenge of ideological frustration around what social justice looked like in reality. despite feeling that their experiences in college and in the minor had given them the skills to engage with others and to work collaboratively, many of our respondents still expressed a stark realization that, as one student put it, “no one wants to talk about social identities and social justice as much as college students do.” in some ways the respondents described the difference between the theoretical frameworks around social justice and the practical implications of working for change on the ground, especially as it related to awareness around social identity. despite having taken service learning courses or participated in internships, students expressed feeling unprepared for moving into organizational environments that differed from their experiences surrounded by other social-justice-minded students in college. it has been very difficult working with (an) organization as a whole who, at times, do not carry the same sort of communal and cultural values as (the minor)…i am feeling a bit frustrated by all of this, to be honest. some of my biggest challenges are working with people who have been in the criminal justice/juvenile justice field for years. they seem to be more skeptical and pessimistic. they also doubt me because of my identity as a young white woman who is passionate about challenging our prison system. working with people who do not share my interest/passion/knowledge around social justice and community work has been a challenge. even among others who seemed to care about similar issues and share a commitment to social justice, it was sometimes difficult to not speak a common language. some respondents noted that they often used jargon that identified them as educational elites, which created additional challenges: “[school] helped me by giving me knowledge, but educational privilege has been a tough thing for me to manage.” another respondent added, “leaving [college], i sort of assumed that everyone would have this knowledge [of how experiences and identities play into people’s lives].” interestingly, we found that this was particularly acute for students who transitioned from college into graduate programs. our sense is that graduates who entered the workforce, although frustrated in many cases, were more positive about their experiences and their ability to apply the values they learned through the minor to their work, whereas richards-schuster et al./exploring challenges 379 those in msw programs expressed more frustration about their fellow students not possessing the same level of insight into social issues. i find that my colleagues [in the msw program] don’t have the in-depth understanding of social inequalities/issues that i… have, and this can be quite frustrating. i’ve been struggling with being frustrated with my peers because of their lack of inclusivity or multicultural awareness….my classmates often come to me with questions in these areas because of my experiences in [the minor]. stress of working in non-profit organizations a third emergent theme in the findings was the level of stress and frustration faced by respondents as they transitioned from the university to work in non-profit and communitybased environments. like many millennial students, the transition from college to the workforce was the first time that these young adults had held full-time positions in the nonprofit sector, although some had worked in part-time or volunteer positions while in school. their exposure to non-profit and community-based organizations, through service learning courses, internships, field experiences, and other volunteer activities, tended to be bounded, time-limited, and in some cases engineered specifically for student learning and thus did not accurately expose students to the realities of working full-time in the field. non-profits, particularly smaller, service-oriented organizations, face unique challenges and limitations that are not often discussed in the college classroom, leading some students to have unrealistic expectations of what work in this environment would entail. though they were committed to and excited about working in organizations devoted to social change, our respondents did not always have a sense of what this work would be like on a day-to-day basis. as one respondent noted, “working for a non-profit can be extremely frustrating due to lack of funding and organization.” this was echoed by another who said, “understanding agency limitations has been the most challenging.” several also expressed feelings of disillusionment with their job duties, which were not always as explicitly related to community change as they would have hoped. one respondent commented: the biggest challenge for me is just the days when i go into work and i’m doing the most seemingly unrelated, random task. and i should say it’s not the type of task like getting coffee, but more like writing a random report for something that doesn’t really change the way programs are going to run. [social justice work] is easier to be passionate about when you’re talking about [it] in class, but much harder when it’s your 40+ hours a week job. it’s filled with mundane tasks that seem totally unrelated to the mission…you have to have something that ignites that spark. while these respondents were not about to give up on community change work, they did wish that they had been more prepared for the day-to-day work of non-profit employees, advances in social work, fall 2015, 16(2) 380 particularly in the first few years after graduation when their jobs are likely to be entrylevel positions that lack major decision-making responsibility. these basic challenges of operating in a non-profit organizational culture were compounded for some by the stress of trying to balance their passion for social-justiceoriented work with a reasonable level of self-care. one recent graduate noted, “i think the biggest challenge so far is money...i am making barely enough to live on.” others focused less on financial concerns than on fears of losing their passion for change work as a result of financial, physical, or emotional stress. one respondent described her biggest challenge as “being treated like just because i have a heart and care about the issues, i will do anything and everything to get it done, including getting pushed to the point of physical and mental exhaustion.” “one of my main challenges,” another respondent said, “is separating my career from my personal life. i want so much for my clients to succeed in their goals but i have to realize that at the end of the day, i can only do what i can do.” overwhelming sense of “real world” injustices a fourth emergent theme from the survey involved efforts to grapple with the overwhelming nature of social injustices and oppression in the “real world.” while some students come to college with a strong understanding of the realities of injustice, other students-especially those from more privileged backgrounds–lack a realistic picture of the challenges faced by many individuals and communities. while short-term projects, service learning courses, and internship experiences in and with communities can open students’ eyes to issues they did not know existed, they cannot fully prepare them for what it is like to live these experiences on a regular basis. this is especially true for students in nonsocial-work degree-granting programs who do not have the same expectations for sustained field placements as most bsw and msw programs. one respondent noted, for example, that her biggest challenge is “just dealing with the personal stories from clients,” while another said that she has been surprised by how challenging “working with clients from different backgrounds can be.” for both of these respondents, as well as many others, learning about the very different – and often unjust – life experiences of clients has been enlightening but also disheartening. while some described finding ways to cope with issues of injustice, others mentioned the “immensity” of social problems and of the work they saw before them: i have faced burn-out and a type of exhaustion from the utter “brokenness” of the world…but i also get to see the other side of it. i have been able to rally with a team doing extraordinary work and focus on that rather than the things that we aren’t/can’t be doing. [i have been] overwhelmed by the immensity of social issues that still exist in the world, let alone our society. it is difficult to grasp the fact that i cannot positively impact every issue i come across. recognizing “real world” injustices has also challenged alumni to draw on the relationship-building skills they developed in courses and service experiences while in school. as they described it in response to our survey questions, this has involved not only richards-schuster et al./exploring challenges 381 becoming aware of the very real problems and injustices communities face but also of the uniqueness of each community’s experiences and therefore of the steps it will take to bring about change. acknowledging diversity and building relationships across difference were things the students learned about in the classroom but still struggled with as they entered work in the field. as one respondent said, “i learned in [classes] that you must always come into a community understanding that it is different but what i was not ready for was how different.” overall, while our respondents repeatedly described the ways that their social justice courses and other activities had helped them to deal with the challenges they faced as they moved into social-justice-oriented jobs post-graduation, they still encountered some challenges for which they felt unprepared. implications for social work practice and research the findings from our research suggest that there are many challenges that students face as they transition into post-college civic engagement and social justice work experiences. given that many students first work in non-profit settings and that these first post-college jobs often set the course for students’ desire to remain in social work or other social justice-oriented careers, it is critical that social work as a field pays particular attention to understanding transitions. similarly, it is important that social work agencies and community-based organizations be able to understand the mindset and transitional issues facing the graduates that become their newest employees or serve as long-term interns through programs like americorps or city year. understanding these challenges could potentially lead to easier transitions and higher job satisfaction by recent graduates and less turnover and workplace frustration by non-profit and social work agencies. while it is no surprise that students face challenges when they leave the university setting and enter the “real world,” there have been very few studies that attempt to capture the perspectives of recent graduates and to name and understand the nuances of these challenges. one of our respondents described this transition as moving beyond the “social justice bubble” that exists in many campus-based settings. while we may recognize that this bubble exists, as educators and researchers we often have not put much effort into understanding or preparing students for what leaving it will entail. in this next section we explore potential strategies for supporting transitions and discuss suggestions for future research. strategies for social work schools to support transitions because of the investment of social work schools in supporting social justice and social work agencies, social work educators play a special role in helping to develop strategies for successful transitions. while some social work schools already offer social justice minors as a form of connection to undergraduates, others schools, especially those without bsw programs, may look to opportunities to offer course work for undergraduates in order to provide more realistic understanding of work in social justice organizations. for example, social work schools might strengthen opportunities to connect undergraduate students to the daily realities of work in the social justice realm while they are still in school. while msw and bsw programs are required to provide field advances in social work, fall 2015, 16(2) 382 experiences that enable longer exposure to community organizations, social justice minors or programs are not; therefore, exposure to the actual day-to-day realities of work may not occur. such exposure might be accomplished, however, by developing a capstone or seminar to explicitly discuss the transition from student to graduate and/or by providing opportunities for students to learn about the day-to-day workload of non-profit employees, graduate students, and social justice advocates, particularly those in their first one to three years out of college. another strategy would be to include more opportunities for students to engage in conversations with recent graduates about their daily work life. courses could be developed that focus on the reality of social change work to expose students to an understanding of what is expected of them (i.e., to provide a realistic picture of what such work is like), what the tensions and issues are in the daily tasks of social justice work, the logistics of working in a non-profit, such as sample schedules, work pacing, and need for flexibility-and the impact of the work on the employees, including accomplishments and growth. in addition to providing more concrete examples of what social justice work is like in the “real world,” courses and co-curricular programs in social work and other related fields also need to help students to develop the specific skills they are likely to need for their post-graduation lives and work. based on the challenges described by our survey respondents, we argue that the following types of skills should be prioritized: relationship building, critical reflection and perspective-taking, cultural and educational humility, and self-care. the types of relationship building we have in mind include not only establishing relationships with people in one’s new community in order to learn from their perspective but also intentionally seeking out relationships with those who can inspire and support one in the face of challenges. both require similar skills in networking and communication with diverse community members, but the former involves using these skills to meet and interact with like-minded and non-like-minded people with an eye toward building coalitions across difference, while the latter entails maintaining contacts with people outside of one’s new community as well as developing relationships within that community with people who share one’s commitment to social justice. our respondents’ comments about “educational privilege” and the isolation they experienced as a result of this tie directly to the recent call in social work education for the development of “cultural humility” (ortega & faller, 2011). this is a practice that deemphasizes the role of the practitioner as an expert in cultural and diversity frameworks and focuses on being open to learning about people through their own perspectives and lived experiences as a core component of practice (ortega & faller, 2011), as well as on the need for frank discussions about the role of privilege and social identity within social change work. critically important to student transitions is the ability for students to be aware of and cognizant about their own privilege. in this minor, for example, with a population that is largely white, possesses an upper socioeconomic status (ses), and comes from an elite public university, privilege emerges from student’s educational perspectives, racial and ethnic identity, and ses, among other social identities. open and honest discussions about how to recognize one’s own privilege and the implications for practice richards-schuster et al./exploring challenges 383 are very important. these discussions occur in the classroom on a regular basis, covering topics such as “privilege,” “entering communities,” “fighting white savior complexes,” and “critiquing the concept of ‘help’” among others. they also happen outside of the classroom in minor-sponsored workshops, retreats, and network discussion activities. most recently, the minor developed a social justice retreat aimed at grappling with critical questions around privilege and social change. as students are able to be more open and humble in their engagement, they may be able to engage more deeply with others, even those of differing perspectives and persuasions and find a common humanity to listen and learn, even if they disagree. strategies for administrators of social justice and civic engagement organizations while social work schools have the potential for the biggest influence on students before they graduate and take entry-level social justice positions, the non-profits and social work agencies that hire the students as employees or volunteers can also incorporate strategies to support this transition. based on our respondents’ descriptions of the struggles they experienced during their transition out of college, non-profits especially those that recruit new employees from a wide geographic region may need to do more to equip new employees to build relationships in new and different settings. non-profit agencies like those that participate in multi-year service programs such as americorps and city year should consider orientations as opportunities for relationship and network building among students and for connecting students to the broader community. while orientations often occur, organizations should reflect on the ways their orientations can be more intentional in helping new graduates enter the community and build the connections that may ease some of the initial tensions. additionally, administrators of social justice organizations may want to seek opportunities to help new social-justice-focused graduates get involved in their work. while many of our respondents were involved in a social-justice-focused experience after graduation, we know that some are seeking additional opportunities to get involved or are seeking meaningful volunteer experiences to enhance their day-to-day work. one suggestion is for non-profit organizations to create more partnerships with local companies and agencies to encourage service days. in this way, organizations can make connections to those graduates who are social-justice-focused but engaged in other occupations or are seeking additional opportunities to be involved in social justice work. given the challenges our respondents expressed of finding others who are social-justice-oriented in their new communities, administrators may also seek alternative forms of service days or voluntary service groups that promote engagement and help build networks of social-justice-minded young professionals. although critical reflection is often a regular part of student experiences during college, it is less often practiced in busy non-profits. our alumni survey reminded us that students need to not only participate in facilitated reflection during their time in school but also to develop their own tools for continuing this type of reflection as they move into the world of social justice work. some of this may be individual work, such as encouraging new graduates to create interactive blogs to support self-reflection and shared learning or to participate in online forums to enable graduates to reflect on and share their experiences advances in social work, fall 2015, 16(2) 384 related to common issues. some might also be organizational work, such as encouraging new employees to create portfolios to capture their experiences, providing weekly learning and reflection opportunities, and creating settings in which to share reflections and learning in broader organizational contexts like newsletters, websites, and conferences. one place for critical reflection to occur is within supervision sessions. rethinking what supervision looks like and how supervision is provided may be necessary. depending on an organization’s structure, supervision may need to happen more often or may need to focus on reflection of skills and experiences gained in the process. supervision may occur one-on-one, in small groups, or even through ongoing communication using social media. regardless of process, it is important to remember that supervision and points of connection between new employees and senior leadership help shape expectations, process experiences, and also help new employees see the long-term horizon of working in social justice organizations. in other words, supervision can be not only a space to deal with immediate issues but also an opportunity for learning context and history and for putting the immediate issues into perspective. self-care also emerged as an important theme in our survey. understanding what selfcare is and why it is valuable on an intellectual level, however, does not mean that one knows how to practice it, particularly during a time of transition as one adjusts to the demands of a new job or living situation. social justice non-profits and agencies are perfectly positioned for helping students learn about and begin to practice such strategies. for example, non-profits might partner with social work schools to offer mini-courses, workshops, and co-curricular activities focused on realistic stressors and self-care strategies practiced in the field. the college years represent a significant time for students to prepare themselves for the stresses they may face after graduation; if they have begun these habits in a more secure and comfortable setting, it will be easier to carry them over to a new setting rather than attempting to develop new strategies in the midst of the transition. strategies for supporting alumni while all of the strategies mentioned here have the potential to significantly impact students’ transitions, it is also critically important, based on our respondents’ comments, that social work and other social-justice-oriented programs consider strategies for longerterm, continuous support of their alums, and, in particular, a focus on keeping alumni connected after graduation. while many schools of social work and academic programs try to maintain connections with alumni, we would push efforts to move beyond calling on alumni as donors and rather re-think alumni efforts to provide ongoing support for graduates in their work worlds and in furthering their commitments to social justice. this concept of moving from alumni as donors to a more active recognition of alumni engagement is being modeled nationally through programs like citizen alum, a national initiative of multiple colleges and universities aimed at moving from “donors to do-ers” and to “building multigenerational communities of active citizenship and active learning” (citizen alum as cited in ellison, 2013, p. 3). richards-schuster et al./exploring challenges 385 other practical ideas for alumni engagement include creating alumni networks focused on social justice, linking alumni by geographic location or issue of interest to support collaborations and reduce isolation, providing resources and training to support ongoing reflection and strategies for self-care, and linking recent alumni to others with longer-term positions and engagement in social justice work through a post-graduate mentorship program. in our own program, we are experimenting with a variety of ways to engage alumni in additional training through on-site sessions and web-based seminars on topics and strategies related to social justice work in the “real world.” we are also working to develop hubs of graduates across geographic areas (e.g., major metropolitan hubs and regional areas) as well as linking students across shared experiences (e.g., graduate students, teach for america, americorps, city year, community organizers, program developers, etc.) for reflection, connection, and support. lastly, we are actively working on opportunities to link alumni to graduating seniors to share and reflect on their experiences as an additional way of preparing those seniors for their transition into the world of social justice work. an additional recommendation would be to explore the potential for addressing the economic realities of social justice work and the barriers that these create for recent graduates. schools of social work should work with alumni and agencies to develop innovative solutions such as loan forgiveness, education scholarships, professional development/continuing education credits, high quality benefits, and work-life balance programs to explore additional venues for supporting and sustaining new employees in their efforts to engage in social justice work over the long haul. limitations and future research as with any research, our study faced limitations that need to be acknowledged and accounted for in future efforts. while only a pilot, we recognize that our sample does not include the experiences of students that have returned to school as non-traditional students and therefore have had work or family experiences that will shape their transitions to postcollege life. similarly, this research did not look at the link between prior work experience and transitions, which also would potentially impact how students experience challenges. last, using emails as a tool for outreach was a limitation because of the number of former students who did not respond in a timely manner. we learned that our outreach emails were sometimes sent to old university emails that frequently went unchecked. although we had a decent response rate, many other alums emailed us after the survey closed realizing that they had wanted to participate but had missed the deadline. in the future we will plan to use additional measures to ensure we have the most accurate email lists for outreach while also using other platforms such as social media to contact potential respondents. despite these limitations, we see this pilot as a base from which to develop future research on pathways and trajectories of students in social justice programs. in particular, longer-term follow-up of graduates is needed to learn about ways to facilitate civic engagement and social justice activities post-graduation. for example, what is the trajectory for most of these graduates at various intervals (e.g., one, three, or five years) post-graduation related to civic engagement and social justice work? what are challenges advances in social work, fall 2015, 16(2) 386 that continue to emerge at various intervals? how do experiences, both during school and post-graduation, shape perspectives over time? in our research it was difficult to tease apart the experiences between those in graduate school and those in employment, but future research should look specifically at differences between transitions to graduate programs (social work or otherwise), short-term volunteer employment experiences, and longer-term employment opportunities. more research is also needed to explore the “valued added” impact of participation in social-justiceintensive programs as compared to more traditional academic programs. is there a difference, for example, between the civic engagement and social justice trajectories of graduates from these programs and those of other graduates from their university? additionally, it will be important for future research to explore the impact of work settings and context on alumni experiences. what are the various experiences of graduates in different types of workplace settings? in what ways do those settings differentially impact civic engagement and social justice values and trajectories, and what remains common across all settings? finally, further research and discussion needs to focus more closely on the infrastructure needed to truly connect schools of social work and employers around issues in the field. too often there is a disconnect between a school’s curricular preparation and the needs of employers (polach, 2004). with rare exceptions (such as the iv-e child welfare programs), there is almost no infrastructure or research to support ongoing engagement between schools of social work, administrators of agencies and non-profits, and supporting alumni. lacking these discussions, and research to document their findings, the social work field risks creating a mismatch for the field moving forward. conclusion as a field committed to preparing future generations of social justice advocates and change agents, social work – together with allied fields – must continue to seek out practices that support the transition from undergraduate education to next steps in social justice engagement, helping graduates to cope, develop, and thrive rather than to burn out in the face of initial challenges. it is therefore critical that leaders in social work and other social-justice-oriented academic programs understand the challenges and issues students face as they graduate and move into the “real world.” only by hearing from recent graduates themselves can we gain a sense of not only the knowledge and skills our students need to develop while in school but also the support they need from their academic institutions and programs once they graduate. this study offers a first look at what very recent graduates of a social-justice-oriented program in a school of social work have encountered upon leaving undergraduate education and moving into the world of work, service, and graduate school and, by doing so, points educators, practitioners, and researchers in social work and social-justiceoriented fields toward new strategies that will enable us to produce graduates who become life-long change agents. richards-schuster et al./exploring challenges 387 references alsop, r. 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(2011). a north star: civic-minded graduates. michigan journal of community service learning, 18(1), 19-33. wendlandt, n., & rochlen, a. (2008). addressing the college-to-work transition: implications for university career counselors. journal of career development, 35(2), 151-165. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0894845308325646 author note address correspondence: katie richards-schuster, phd, assistant professor, school of social work, university of michigan, 3850 sswb, 1080 s. university, ann arbor, mi 48109. email: kers@umich.edu http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0894845308325646 mailto:kers@umich.edu abstract: for students who are actively engaged in social justice efforts on their college/university campuses, the transition from a relatively easy platform for engagement to the “real world” can pose significant challenges and create new realities ... background literature methods research design analysis emergent themes: critical challenges in transitions challenges with adjustment to new communities frustration with “social justice” ideology stress of working in non-profit organizations overwhelming sense of “real world” injustices implications for social work practice and research strategies for social work schools to support transitions strategies for administrators of social justice and civic engagement organizations self-care also emerged as an important theme in our survey. understanding what self-care is and why it is valuable on an intellectual level, however, does not mean that one knows how to practice it, particularly during a time of transition as one adju... strategies for supporting alumni limitations and future research references journal of curriculum studies research https://curriculumstudies.org e-issn: 2690-2788 december 2020 volume: 2 issue: 2 pp. 21-39 the social justice teaching collaborative: a collective turn towards critical teacher education brittany aronson* 1, racheal banda 1, ashley, johnson 1, molly kelly 1, raquel radina 1, ganiva reyes 1, scott sander 1, meredith wronowski 2 * corresponding author e-mail: aronsoba@miamioh.edu 1. miami university, oxford, ohio, usa 2. university of dayton, dayton, ohio, usa article info received: june 11, 2020 revised: september 21, 2020 accepted: september 25, 2020 this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the cc by 4.0 international license. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) how to cite aronson, b., banda, r., johnson, a., kelly, m. radina, r., reyes, g., sander, s., & wronowski, m. (2020). the social justice teaching collaborative: a critical turn towards critical teacher education. journal of curriculum studies research, 2(2), 21-39. https://doi.org/10.46303/jcsr.2020.8 abstract in this article, we share the collaborative curricular work of an interdisciplinary social justice teaching collaborative (sjtc) from a pwi university. members of the sjtc worked strategically to center social justice across required courses pre-service teachers are required to take: introduction to education, sociocultural studies in education, and inclusive education. we share our conceptualization of social justice and guiding theoretical frameworks that have shaped our pedagogy and curriculum. these frameworks include democratic education, critical pedagogy, critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, critical disability studies, and feminist and intersectionality theory. we then detail changes made across courses including examples of readings and assignments. finally, we conclude by offering reflections, challenges, and lessons learned for collaborative work within teacher education and educational leadership. keywords social justice teacher education, collaboration, critical theory 10.46303/jcsr.2020.8 https://curriculumstudies.org/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.46303/jcsr.2020.8 22 introduction in 2000, sonia nieto argued that in order to put equity at the center of teacher education, schools and universities must “radically transform their policies and practices if they are to become places where teachers and prospective teachers learn to become effective with students of all backgrounds in u.s. schools” (p. 180). since then, other critical scholars have argued the need for social justice to be a focus in teacher education (cochran-smith et al., 2009; zeichner, 2009). despite these calls to action, there are still few teacher preparation programs centering social justice across coursework (liu & ball, 2019), and even fewer programs that require courses in race and ethnicity (cook, 2015), gender and sexuality (gorski et al., 2013), or disability studies (annamma, 2015). in general, race, ethnicity, and whiteness continue to be undertheorized in teacher education (harris et al., 2019). these gaps in social justice teacher education (sjte) are problematic given the “demographic divide” between a predominately white, heterosexual, female, monolingual, able-bodied teaching force who are charged with teaching an increasingly diverse student population (enterline et al., 2008). early career and pre-service teachers (psts) also report that they are underprepared to have conversations about race in their classrooms; only 31% of 386 surveyed teachers reported their teacher education programs prepared them for this type of social justice work (milner, 2017). in agreement with these scholars, we argue that social justice is a crucial part of effective teaching and should be the core of teacher education. in this piece we examine what it looks like when we, interdisciplinary faculty, collaborate to center social justice across multiple required courses in a teacher education program, located at a mid-sized predominantly white institution (pwi) in the midwest. we also discuss how critical theories in education can be used to construct transformative curricula and pedagogy for psts. representing teacher education, educational leadership, and educational psychology, we came together to form the social justice teaching collaborative (sjtc) within our college. in response to the tradition of minimal cross-departmental communication about curriculum and pedagogy at our institution, we formed this collective to un-silo our individual efforts in centering social justice in our courses required for psts. the formation of this group is a manifestation of our commitment to prepare culturally proficient and justice-oriented teachers. with the support of the college of education, health and society, we worked on an interdisciplinary teaching grant which encouraged collaboration across departments. our unique collaboration consisted of faculty from across departments with differences in power dynamics. at our initial inception, we were all either pre-tenured or contingent faculty (i.e. in a clinical role or a visiting assistant professor which is not a permanent position and holds heavier teaching loads). this meant that the charge to lead change within our college was initiated all by junior faculty in precarious roles. the position we held was actually pointed out to us by some of our senior colleagues who noted that doing social justice work is sometimes viewed as “risky,” especially for junior faculty. however, with the grant support from our college, our dean’s and department chairs’ support, and the support we provided each other, we pushed forward to do this work despite some of the resistance we faced from some faculty. 23 through the sjtc, we revised our curriculum and engaged in critical introspection of our teaching. instead of adding a single course on social justice, our interdisciplinary work redefines the content and pedagogy across a sequence of required courses (i.e. introduction to education, sociocultural foundations, and inclusive education) to map a curricular trajectory for psts to learn about justice in education and practice the use of critical perspectives. in this manuscript, we highlight particular critical theories that inform our curriculum and pedagogy with psts. we then connect these theories into practice by re-imagining teacher education courses through a social justice lens. in providing a rich exploration of our practice in preparing “psts to engage with student diversity in socially just ways” (mills & ballantyne, 2016, p. 263), we address a gap in literature about what justice-orientated teacher education looks like in practice, particularly from a collaborative standpoint. collective foundation guiding the sjtc in our collective work, we align ourselves within the larger framework of critical social justice teacher education (csjte). sensoy and diangelo (2017) point out that the concept of social justice moves beyond a notion of fairness and equality for all people, explaining a critical social justice (csj), “recognizes society is stratified (i.e., divided and unequal) in significant and farreaching ways along social group lines that include race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. critical social justice recognizes inequality as deeply embedded in the fabric of society (i.e. structural), and actively seeks to change this” (p. xx). from the beginning of our collaboration, we realized that as csj educators, we must have a collective vision of teaching and learning (villegas & lucas, 2002). since 2017, we met regularly to discuss central frameworks and goals that currently guide our work. one of the tasks accomplished was to develop our own definition of social justice to operationalize through our curricular revisions and teaching. for us, social justice teaching is: a mindset, orientation, a way of thinking, and teacher identity that encourages dialogue among learners. it is a method that explores the emotional and moral dimensions of learning, facilitates problem solving, and interrupts normative narratives. it promotes social awareness and an ongoing process of critical consciousness toward self in relation to others. the implementation and practice of this definition is guided by what we call the “north star,” or linchpin, that rests on critical theories that question power dynamics in education. below are the main critical theories that shape our teaching. these lenses also foster the development of critical thinking and agency for our psts to work towards socially just and transformative teaching practices. critical pedagogy while there is no unified definition of critical pedagogy, several tenets help explain its usefulness in classrooms. proponents of critical pedagogy disrupt and challenge the status quo 24 through a “variety of tools to expose... oppressive power politics” (kincheloe, 2004, p. 50). a key component of critical pedagogy is emancipation through uncovering sociopolitical forces shaping schools. critical pedagogues understand there are multiple forms of power along the lines of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and other social identities. these forces are legitimized as natural and inevitable through day-to-day routines and social structures, such as schools. additionally, critical pedagogues recognize the discursive power of language “defined as a set of tacit rules that regulate what can and cannot be said, who can speak with the blessings of authority and who must listen, whose social constructions are valid and whose are erroneous and unimportant” (kincheloe, 2004, pp. 55-56). in school, this is normalized through required texts, accepted belief systems, definitions of success (i.e. standardized testing), and approved instructional methods (kincheloe, 2004). bell hooks, a critical pedagogue, weaves feminism with frierian (1970) thought to create an engaged pedagogy. hooks (1994) encourages educators to be aware of how knowledge is produced and transmitted in the classroom. teachers should teach to develop critical consciousness and work toward emancipatory education. a teacher’s work is not just about sharing information, but also holistically healing and nurturing the intellect and spiritual growth of students. this contrasts with the “banking system” of education in which teachers deposit knowledge into students (freire, 1970). through critical thinking, hooks re-imagines the possibilities of teaching and learning. hooks’ (1994) concept of engaged pedagogy also stresses that “excitement could co-exist with and even stimulate serious intellectual and/or academic engagement” (p. 7). classrooms do not need to be ruled by rote learning in order to be considered rigorous. teachers can help students tap into a passion for thinking, learning and creating new knowledge in ways that are both collaborative and engaging. these strategies are not a “blueprint” for teaching, rather they must constantly adapt to meet the needs of students. finally, hooks explains that engaged pedagogy emphasizes well-being and a commitment towards reflection, and self-actualization of the teacher. democratic education within our courses we touch upon theories related to progressivism, commonly referred to as democratic education, which emphasizes how schooling incorporates civic aspects of selfgovernance, community engagement, and experiential learning (dewey, 1938). to understand how democracy and education are inextricably linked, we need a clear understanding of democracy beyond political mechanics such as voting, constitutions, courts, etc. (quantz, 2016). hytten (2017) explains, “democracy is more than a political system or process, it is also a way of life that requires certain habits and dispositions of citizens, including the need to balance individual rights with commitments and responsibilities toward others” (np). spring (1985) challenges some key political purposes of schooling like meritocracy and americanization as contradictory and problematic. hooks (2010) contends that schools do not teach students what democracy actually is or how to engage in it, leaving “most students simply assume that living in a democratic society is their birthright” (p. 14) and not something that must be reworked and 25 reimagined. additionally, marginalized students may be excluded from this “birthright” altogether. unlike critical pedagogy, democratic education does not always share an explicit social justice agenda (dover, 2013). collins (2009) argues that democracy is not a finished product and questions what counts as legitimate knowledge in the u.s.; specifically, “do the ideas of some people count more than others?” (p. 5). the answer “yes” is shown throughout history. john dewey is often credited as the “father of progressivism” and promoting the idea that an american democracy requires an educated citizenry. however, black and marginalized theorists like anna julia cooper, w.e.b. dubois, and jane addams also acknowledge that social justice is central to democracy. critical race theory and critical whiteness studies critical race theory (crt) is a theory and movement that stems from critical legal studies to examine the role of race, racism, and whiteness in society. crt aims to “[transform] the relationship among race, racism, and power” (delgado & stefancic, 2012, p. 3) to address social inequities. while there are no definitive core tenets to crt, there are seven commonly cited tenets: 1) racism is permanent and an endemic part of u.s. society (bell, 1992); 2) people of color’s interests are met when whites’ interests are also served (i.e. ‘interest convergence’ (bell, 1980)); 3) counter-narratives (bell, 1992) expose and challenge dominant “master narratives'' in society ; 4) race is socially constructed; 5) whiteness functions ‘as property’ (harris, 1993); 6) while racism is a primary tool of analysis, it intersects with other forms of oppression, e.g. sexism and classism--what crenshaw (1991) terms ‘intersectionality’; and, 7) social justice must be a commitment. additionally, critical whiteness studies (cws) stems from the broader work of “whiteness studies” by scholars like peggy mcintosh or david roediger, however, black literary scholars such as james baldwin or toni morrison were writing about whiteness long before it was “academized” (leonardo, 2013). in regards to teaching, cws shifts the question from “what does it mean to be a person of color?” to, “what does it mean to be white?” this is an important framework when helping white teachers understand their culture, themselves as racialized, and how privilege and power function in u.s. schools. matias and mackey (2016) explain, “[cws] uses a transdisciplinary approach to investigate the phenomenon of whiteness, how it is manifested, exerted, defined, recycled, transmitted, and maintained, and how it ultimately impacts the state of race relations” (p. 34). therefore, we use crt and cws in tandem to 26 understand how racism is systemic and institutionalized in society and how whiteness impacts teaching. critical disability studies in education and discrit critical special educators annamma, connor, and ferri (2013) contribute the theoretical framework of discrit to analyze race and disability status. this framework also informs scholarship and praxis in social justice for disabled students of color. discrit extends the work of the theoretical frameworks of crt and disability studies in education to illuminate how disability and race shapes injustices in schooling, such as the disproportionate representation of students of color receiving special education services and the school-to-prison pipeline that disproportionately impacts disabled youth of color. annamma et al. (2013) point out that while “ability and racial categories are socially constructed, they continue to have real material outcomes in terms of lived experiences” (p. 9). within crt/discrt, it is understood that race and disability are social constructions fraught with bias that continue to perpetuate inequality in society and thus schools. nevertheless, these categorizations have real implications for those whose bodies are racialized (i.e. black or brown) and/or disabled. the experiences faced by students of color and/or with disabilities are important to acknowledge given we live in a society that emphasizes their labels and, more importantly, their oppression. to be clear, when talking about disabled students, we are not suggesting that they are not students who have impairments (i.e. cerebral palsy) that might require different types of support to navigate schools. however what discrit scholars emphasize is it is not the student who is disabled, but rather society that is disabling the student (i.e. not having access to an elevator). building from the tenets of crt, discrit examines the interlacing of racism and ableism and also values the examination of intersectional identities. like crt, discrit recognizes “gains” in the disability community have largely been a case of interest convergence of white, middleclass citizens. additionally, discrit advocates for allyship, activism, and resistance. discrit considers legal and historical aspects of disability and race, legitimizing the lived experiences of people of color and people with disabilities. finally, discrit aims to amplify voices of marginalized populations. in these ways discrit creates a meaningful consciousness for teachers, teacher educators, and teacher candidates in their work towards disrupting the social injustices for students of color with disabilities (annamma et al., 2013). feminist theories feminist theorizing from the experiences of people/women of color also offers pedagogical and curricular possibilities for all educators to consider in their teaching. feminist scholars draw from the situated experiences of individuals to generate theories that explain social reality and what it takes to create social change (harding, 1987; collins, 1990). it is through everyday experiences in personal interactions, within institutions, and across society at large that feminists understand how structural, interpersonal, and cultural dimensions of power are constructed and perpetuated (collins & bilge, 2016). intersectionality is an analytical lens that has a long history within the experiences, history, and theorizing of ordinary women of color, 27 women of color activists, and feminist of color scholars (crenshaw, 1991; moraga & anzaldúa, 1983). this lens has played an integral role in education to unravel how students across contexts differentially experience privilege and oppression due to multiple intersecting hierarchies of power across race, class, citizenship, gender, sexuality, ability, and language (elenes, 2001). feminist educators have also integrated intersectionality as a pedagogical orientation to critically reflect upon their teaching and curricular decisions (naples, 2009) to create a more inclusive learning environment. feminist perspectives have also led to the development of care theories in education. noddings (2013) emphasizes the relational practices that women typically embody as they develop morality, ethics, and selfhood. within this framework, morality is crafted through intimate interactions between the one who cares and the one who receives care. everyday interactions and relationship building between the teachers and students are key in developing care (i.e. a teacher checking in with a student who is struggling emotionally). that said, theories of care have been further expanded by women of color to include a critical analysis of power. thompson (1998) points out that educational caring cannot be color-evasive (annamma, jackson, & morrison, 2017) or powerblind. intersectional caring is necessary in order to attend to relational power dynamics. for example, the concepts of politicized love and care (darder, 2002) have pointed out communal forms of care in which educators are not only attuned to the personalized needs of students, but also take on a justice-oriented stance in their teaching to fight against systems of oppression alongside students. these critical conceptions of care offer educators a pedagogical approach that can foster a sense of community and belonging among students. connecting frameworks by implementing these critical theories, we have identified four streams that unite our curricular and pedagogical efforts: (1) engage in self-reflection/praxis to promote ongoing contemplation and self-checking of personal biases and limited understandings based on our positionalities; (2) teach common theory vocabulary, language, and concepts throughout our courses so that students are scaffolded into higher learning; (3) engage theory and language into practice through assignments, projects, and outside classroom experiences; (4) emphasize how stereotyping and lack of critical understandings about the educational experiences of students of color can perpetuate structural inequalities in society. in the next section, we break down how our collective work shaped the curricular changes for each of our courses. these revisions were not individualized treatments, but rather we integrated this work to invite ongoing critical conversations and learning for our students. 28 the course revisions social justice courses in teacher preparation are essential to help psts meet the educational demands of diverse students. unfortunately, over the past two decades such courses have been “phased” out of teacher preparation through the removal of social justice from teacher accreditation standards and the addition of methods or assessment courses (aronson & anderson, 2013; butin, 2007). research shows that one single course is not enough to impact psts beliefs and pedagogy toward teaching students across race, class, gender, sexuality, or ability (mills & ballantyne, 2010). thus, through our interdisciplinary sjte, we worked through these constraints by centering social justice within required foundational courses for psts. below we share how these “typical” courses in teacher education programs changed through our collective work. while our narrative focuses largely on the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of the course revisions, we provide specific examples of content, pedagogical, and cultural shifts within the courses in figure 1. figure 1. social justice teaching collaborative curriculum changes 29 edt 190 introduction to education introductory courses within teacher education programs play a vital role as they must both interrupt existing dominant narratives that psts bring with them from previous schooling and (re)frame the narrative of the entire program (feiman-nemser & featherstone, 1992). during initial planning meetings we worked to leverage the critical frameworks outlined above to deliberate around two questions: “what initial experiences should psts have?” and “what initial ideas should psts be exposed to?” in an introductory class to begin conversations about socially just curriculum and pedagogy. we did this in order to interrupt a rigid focus on technical aspects of teaching and instead create awareness of the sociocultural aspects of schooling. we developed this introductory course to raise awareness about the unquestioned, common sense notions of traditional schooling (kumashiro, 2015), knowing that psts will explore these concepts in greater depths in other courses. out of our critical theoretical orientation and conversations, we developed guiding questions and re-envisioned the state’s mandated themes and our department’s curriculum goal for the course to “challenge candidates to become critically conscious curriculum makers for social justice, in solidarity with communities, within diverse contexts.” readings, activities, assignments and class conversations prompt students to critically reflect on their common sense answers to these seemingly simplistic, yet complex questions: (1) what does it mean to teach?, (2) what is the purpose of school?, and (3) how do college students become transformative teachers? four course themes take up these questions. the first theme focuses on the aims of education and the role of schools in a democratic society. for this theme, psts begin to grapple with the historical purposes of schooling and the evolution of the current functions of schools. psts are positioned to ask critical questions like “who was included” and “who benefits” in order to uncover the power structures of schools used for discipline and control. this allows students to reevaluate their own past educational experiences in relation to what they learned in school and what they were allowed to ignore. explicit attention is given to the notion of critical thinking, and learning through discomfort (hooks, 2009; wheatley, 2002). this is an intellectual practice we ask psts to engage in. for example, they get an introduction to “othering” (brown, 2005) and how it occurs across diversity markers to position certain students as “normal” and allows students to critically question these existing social norms that impact classrooms and society. critical thinking asks psts to confront their own privilege (mcintosh, 1990) as unearned benefits not equally afforded to all individuals. here psts begin thinking about the role of teachers in democratic education… past, present, and into the future; what it means to get an education in a democratic society; how democratic is u.s. schooling; who gets included and excluded; and what are some contradictions (hooks 2010; collins, 2007) in the u.s. system of education. this knowledge sets the stage for the second theme in which we dig deeper into the current context of u.s. schooling and explore these contexts through the lived experiences of teachers and students in classrooms. 30 the second theme delves into the economic, legal and political context of schools. here, psts are exposed to 1) the historical, social, political, and economic development of the u.s education system, and 2) basic critical reading skills. this theme provides an introduction to the sociocultural foundations of schooling in which we highlight the context of schooling from the point of view of psts who have been “othered” due to race, gender, class, sexuality, language, immigration status, ability, etc. psts consider how learning about multiple experiences and perspectives gives them a much more comprehensive view of the world and how teachers can serve their students in ways that validate students’ diverse backgrounds. psts begin to understand that schooling experiences differ because of varying social identities, and this becomes part of the third theme, the practice of becoming a culturally competent and caring teacher. the third theme highlights the importance of culturally responsive and inclusive education. this is the pedagogical and curricular framework that we utilize as a response to the injustices that targeted students are facing both inside and outside of the classroom. this theme becomes important after grappling with themes 1 and 2 which delve into historical and present contexts. theme 3 focuses on praxis as a way to address social inequalities rather than engage in token lip service to celebrating diversity. this is perhaps the most uncomfortable work for psts whose dominant identity markers (male, white, cisgender, able-bodied, etc) position them to view current systems as ‘normal’ and ‘just’. in this course psts are required to unpack the concept of socialization and to deeply interrogate their existing opinions, where they came from, and how experiences in places like schools can be different based on intersectional identities. we ask psts to confront the notion that there is a difference between personally held opinions (which everyone has based on personal experiences) and developing informed knowledge (that comes from the diverse course texts where the experiences others should expand and deepen psts’ perspectives and can liberate them) (sensoy & diangelo, 2017). some questions we ask psts to consider: will they rely solely on their own positionality and experience to teach, or will they take on the intellectual challenge to allow the experiences and perspectives of their students to imbue their practice? will they teach to simply bank information into their students to meet technocratic standards, or will they value the local community assets knowledge students bring into the classroom? will they be open to considering pathways for creating inclusive learning environments that simultaneously challenge school norms that privilege certain students at the cost of others? in this sense, we define what we mean by transformative teacher. it is important for psts to understand that social justice is not a special interest agenda that gets in the way of learning, but rather, social justice teaching is the foundation for what enables students and teachers to become engaged in school and find meaning, purpose, and belonging in the classroom. the fourth theme, ethics and professionalization, helps psts understand and grapple with the complexities of the teaching profession. through this theme we challenge psts to think more critically about what it means to be a “professional” within the field of teaching as we position teachers as intellectuals. to “intellectualize” teaching and learning is to confront the 31 current nature of schools and then theorize/ reconceptualize the way schools operate today. this is part of an ongoing, de-normalizing process required to consider alternatives to traditional ways of teaching and learning. throughout the semester, students should be acquiring a scholarly language of social inequality and how it works in order to 1) discuss it in an academic context; and 2) eventually take action against it. by continuing to use the critical lens introduced early in the semester, psts can challenge limited, deficit notions of “being professional” and “disobedience” in order to see themselves as powerful advocates for students. edl 204 sociocultural studies in education courses in history, philosophy, sociology, and psychology of education have been included in teacher preparation in the u.s. as early as the 1930s. in 1929, william kirkpatrick, a philosopher of education at teachers college, recruited a group of interdisciplinary scholars to build upon the ideas of john dewey and discuss how the commonalities amongst their disciplines could aid future teachers to be more effective with students in a changing world (butts, 1993). tozer (1993) explains that the interdisciplinary field called “social foundations of education” (sfe) emerged with a commitment to prepare psts to contribute to the political and social welfare of diverse groups of students. what has commonly become known as sfe draws on multiple disciplines and includes topics ranging from the history and purposes of schooling as well as “moral, civic, and social dimensions of education” (beadie, 1996, p. 77). ultimately, sfe courses rely on interdisciplinary perspectives that seek to investigate education through a philosophical, historical, sociological and political lens. our sfe course, “sociocultural studies in education,” is taught using a cultural studies approach. sfe courses across teacher education programs in the u.s. vary greatly in both content and pedagogy and do not always explicitly align with social justice aims. at our campus, edl 204 is a required class for all psts, but also fulfills a university liberal arts requirement, so it brings in many majors across campus. in 2016, aronson was hired for a new role in which she was charged with revising the sfe curriculum taught across 17 sections. over the course of a year she conducted informal interviews with colleagues and former instructors, studied syllabi at other institutions, and spoke with experts in the field to truly grasp the needs of the course and to gain many perspectives. soon after her hire, she met with the sjtc to discuss possibilities for edl 204. while considering the changes that had been made for edt 190, the sjtc members brainstormed objectives for what we wanted our students to get out of edl 204 and how this would differ from 190 and other teacher education courses. we plotted major concepts, theories, and possible readings to include in edl 204. we also discussed possible major assignments across these courses and how we could build them to foster psts pedagogical growth throughout their teacher preparation. aronson then took all this feedback and constructed a “master curriculum” that would be used by all the instructors of the course. sjtc members also reviewed and offered feedback on the final curriculum. after dialogue with all the sjtc members, the final course question devised for edl 204 asks: what does it mean to educate children to live in a pluralistic democratic society? we also 32 ask several sub-questions: (1) how do social norms and political climates impact individual choices, access, or opportunities in school?; (2) how does an historical understanding of schooling create tensions for moral aspects of schooling today?; and (3) how can we a) develop cultural competence (raise awareness) about the oppressive aspects of schooling while b) learning to navigate anti-oppressive education? we organized the course around three units each with their own objective(s). unit 1 is focused on the “foundations of education '' with an objective to focus on the role of being a community member in a pluralistic democracy centered on social justice. within this first unit we build off of edt 190 to distinguish between “education and schooling” (quantz, 2016) and introduce psts to the complexity of “democracy” (collins, 2007). sfe is also presented as a discipline with philosophical concepts such as pluralism, epistemology, theory, paradigm, ontology, ethics and morals. during this unit, we also introduce students to critical pedagogy. in aronson’s design of edl 204, she situates the class “unapologetically” through a critical pedagogy lens. thus, psts are introduced to critical pedagogy and concepts such as cultural capital, hegemony, discourse, and hidden curriculum, with an understanding that this course is taught from that perspective. although many of the voices in sfe historically are white men, our curriculum centers these voices of women and people of color in the curriculum; psts are expected to place white, male educational philosophers like john dewey in conversation with w.e.b. dubois, carter g. woodson, and anna julia cooper. unit 2, the bulk of the semester-long course, again builds from the work started edt 190 by 1) focusing on how schools’ perpetuate inequality 2) making connections between the historical and the contemporary in relation to issues of social inequalities and the construction of identities such as sexuality, race, gender, and social class and 3) understanding how issues and actions in broader society impact what happens inside of schools. throughout this unit, psts are introduced to both theory and history. we begin with an introduction to intersectionality, intentionally connecting to its roots in the experiences of black women, (crenshaw, 2016; sensoy & diangelo, 2017) as a starting point for psts to understand all the systems of oppression we investigate should be done through an intersecting lens. students are also introduced to concepts such as identity, positionality, power, privilege, and oppression. with this foundation set, we study various histories of social groups/identities across class, indigenous, african americans, latinx and asian communities, whiteness, disability, gender and sexuality. over the course of unit 2, psts are introduced to feminism, capitalist critiques (brief introduction to marxism), decolonialism, critical race theory, discrit, critical whiteness studies, and queer theory. finally, in unit 3 we focus on “action, community, and praxis” which carries over the last objective of unit 2 and also charges psts to become community members engaged in social action and to seek imagination for change. in this final unit, psts are introduced to critical educational policy through the works of jean anyon (2014), ayers, kumashiro, meiners, quinn, and stovall (2016), and bettina love (2019). they also begin to unpack political ideology and how this influences policy decisions. finally, as a means to encourage action, we do an in-depth 33 analysis of culturally sustaining pedagogy (irizarry, 2017) and a case study of the raza studies ethnic studies ban and court case win. edp 256 inclusive classrooms teacher preparation in special education draws from the medical/psychological model of disability in which disability is perceived as a deficit within the student. this makes it difficult or impossible for the student to be successful in a “typical” education classroom without specialized support. connor et al. (2015) describe this approach as “predicated upon scientific, medical and psychological understanding of human difference” (pp. xiii). this perspective of disability results in the development of a separate education track that carries stigma, separates children from the general curriculum and their peers, lowers standards, and limits opportunity. it is rooted in “long-held cultural beliefs about children with disabilities being qualitatively different from children without disabilities” (connor & valle, 2011, p.11) thereby designating special education for students with disabilities. despite recent efforts at inclusion, high stakes testing has prompted the segregation of students with disabilities to minimize the liability of students’ test scores on teacher evaluations. this trend perpetuates racist practices that overidentify and segregate students of color (ferri, 2016; connor, ferri & annamma, 2016). while “inclusion” has been mainstreamed in schools, few teachers are prepared to rigorously implement inclusive teaching practices. teacher preparation has failed to “…imagine the possibilities beyond the parameters of inherited institutional practice” (ware, 2005, as cited in gabel, 2009, p.105). moreover, efforts at merging general education and special education teacher preparation at an institutional level are minimal due to demands on time, curriculum protectiveness, and lack of knowledge about the educational experiences of students with disabilities (llasidou, 2011; harry & klingner, 2014). disability has long played a fourth fiddle to justice issues like race, class and gender in education. through our sjtc work, we have developed a systematic approach to infusing critical studies in all aspects of social justice for psts. using disability studies in education we have centered the voices of the disabled to redesign the edp 256 inclusive classroom introductory course. this course was previously rooted in the medical model, but has now changed to a course focusing on how to develop inclusive classrooms that meet the learning needs of a wide range of students. through a disability studies in education (dse) framework, we situate disability within social, cultural, and political contexts to understand how and why it is constructed as an individualized deficit. this approach reveals how special education practices are discriminatory and places the onus of accessibility on individualized accommodations, rather than a communal responsibility of general curriculum and schooling to fundamentally change to become more accessible (gabel, 2009). harmful practices in special education includes the disproportionate representation of children of color, especially males, in special education feeding into the cradle/school-to-prison pipeline (annamma, 2015; connor et al., 2015; connor et al., 2016). 34 dse provides an opportunity to “…critique and change oppressive practices currently taking place in schools…” (cosier & ashby, 2016, p. 7). universal design for learning (udl), in particular, shifts the mindset and attitude of teachers to develop actual inclusive classrooms. edp 256 begins with an exploration of how students understand disability and how social norms perpetuate stereotypes and stigma about disability. psts then learn about the medical/psychological model and social model of disability to understand the difference between treating individuals as deficient (former) versus examining how social structures disable people (latter). students use the social model lens to examine how special education policy and social attitudes institutionalize discriminatory and disabling practices into schools. psts are also asked to understand disability as a marker of human diversity rather than a deficiency. we have adopted new texts for this course (see figure 1) that critique traditional special education practices and provide approaches that change classroom practice rather than children. these texts are supplemented by discussions about current research regarding the disproportionate representation of certain students in special education. films such as dan habib’s intelligent lives and including samuel are used to highlight disability as a marker of diversity rather than a deficit that requires remediation. this work builds on the systematic readings strategically included in earlier required coursework (i.e. edt 190 and edl 204) to address other aspects of social justice in education. these revisions have been underway for years and are now fully implemented in 2019. not only are we observing psts understanding disability through a critical lens, but the sjtc work and course revisions as a whole has also shifted psts’ thinking about privilege, racism, and classism. psts have built up the skills in critiquing policy and social attitudes that work from a deficit lens. observing the change in our psts renews our hope in promoting meaningful change in classrooms resulting in greater equity for all students. inciting such change in teacher preparation from the grassroots level promises more expedient impact in the classroom, rather than trying to prompt reform from top down policy changes. we feel encouraged that children will experience greater educational equity under the instruction of teachers prepared through social justice. discussion and implications we have shared our process and efforts in creating courses centered in social justice. however, this is not a “how to” guide in implementing social justice in teacher education. we recognize that our geographic context, our students, and who we are as professors shapes the pedagogical and curricular choices we make. that said, our collaborative work does offer examples of how faculty can organize around sjte to advocate for curriculum changes at their own respective institutions. while we consider these beginnings to be successful at our institution and have yielded positive results in terms of students’ social justice growth (wrononski et al., under review), we recognize that more work must be done, and data collected to support sjte. data supporting 35 the positive results of our curricular changes will add to the literature on the need for critical teacher education, as well as continue to garner support for this approach within our departments and division. with a growing mass of critical educators, psts will experience a more coherent and cohesive message in their preparation, increasing the likelihood they will enter their classrooms with the efficacy to take on social issues. while many teacher educators are fine with the “one and done approach” (one course that “covers” all social justice topics), we argue that the tenets of social justice should be embedded across all courses within teacher preparation programs. if we truly want equity and justice in educational settings, we must be willing to reimagine the way we prepare psts. we started this process through our sjtc with the long-term goal of implementing this approach across the curriculum. to accomplish this goal, we must continue fostering relationships with other faculty members and welcome more colleagues into the fold of our collaborative work. this also requires professional development for us and our colleagues. while we have seen success building a foundation for social justice with the psts we work with, we also face challenges once students leave our courses. many of our students have informally shared that their block courses, which are courses that are taken together during a certain times of their program, and often connected to a field experience, are heavily comprised of methods classes where the emphasis on social justice seems to fade away. this by no means suggests that all our “methods” professors are not interested in social justice, in fact there are a few who continue to think about ways to incorporate more social justice material in their courses. however, it does shed light on this divide that continues to exist in many teacher education programs between what students see as “theory” and “practice” classes, and that we often perpetuate as teacher educators. in order for us to advance the work of the sjtc, we must continue to advocate for social justice to be integrated throughout our entire teacher preparation program in intentional and meaningful ways. this is often easier said than done of course, especially given the fact that many of us leading this change are junior or contingent faculty at our university with less power than those who are already tenured (at the time of this writing one member of the sjtc is tenured and another is going up for tenure currently). we still face challenges of getting buy-in from all faculty members, but we remain hopeful with the support from our college administrators that we have been able to take these small steps to break these barriers. nevertheless, we aim to continue this work and continue to build sjte. we, as higher education faculty, and our teacher education students face numerous sociopolitical and organizational challenges on our journeys in sjte. however, our psts are likely to confront similar systemic challenges to their social justice work once they enter the teaching profession, and it has been widely recognized that educational leaders are critical mediators of social justice praxis in schools (theoharis, 2007; theoharis & o’toole, 2011). while principals and other educational leaders have the potential to assist in addressing systemic social justice challenges, the educational leadership field recognizes that this type of critical social justice leadership is not the norm. educational leaders, like teachers, face a myriad of demands from multiple stakeholders who frequently have competing interests, and this creates leadership 36 tensions that, if not confronted with an explicit social justice lens, tend to favor the bureaucratic and accountability-driven status quo that all too often runs counter to social justice aims (capper & young, 2014). although the need for social justice educational leadership has been well described, we see the field of teacher education advancing in terms of a commitment to social justice, while this same commitment is lagging in educational leadership preparation programs (horsford, scott, & anderson, 2018). teachers and administrators alike need to be prepared for social justice teaching and leadership so that communities of solidarity can be built within school spaces (furman, 2012; theoharis & causton, 2014). we cannot send teachers into schools without the support of social justice-minded leaders. this is something we aim to work on in future research as we build partnerships with our educational leadership program. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank their college for internal funding and support while navigating these curricular changes. references annamma, s. a., jackson, d. d., & morrison, d. 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(2009). teacher education and the struggle for social justice. routledge. ______ jessica donohue-dioh, phd-lcsw, university of houston-downtown, houston, tx. jacqueline wilson, mba shrmscp, director field hr, business partnerships, and founder, open door culture, houston, tx. stephani-nicole leota, msw, political social worker, houston, tx. copyright © 2021 authors, vol. 21 no. 2/3 (summer 2021), 1045-1063, doi: 10.18060/24164 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. the woke disrupter: a call to action jessica donohue-dioh jacqueline wilson stephani-nicole leota abstract: this article examines one of the most dangerous personifications of white supremacy, the woke vigilante the “liberal do-gooder” and the social work profession’s role in their creation. white supremacy is frequently named to identify overt racism and discrimination by hate groups, ultra conservatives and increasingly throughout the government. there is another breed of white supremacy which lies beneath the surface and believes itself to be an ally, this is the woke vigilante. unexamined social work education provides the right ingredients with the moral authority to turn white social workers into woke vigilantes. this conceptual article highlights the ways in which social work education currently addresses competencies of diversity and difference, as well as social justice. the authors then present a persuasive argument for white academic social workers to alter course and promote teaching and practice skills which incorporate social justice skills at all levels of practice, in other words social justice meta-practice skills. the danger of white supremacy when it is disguised as the woke vigilante may be best captured by malcolm x when he spoke of the white liberals who disguise themselves as friends to the black man only as a means to benefit their own self-interest without genuinely asking or listening to that which the black community actually wants (x, 1963). social work is all too familiar with the white liberal and must consider this a call to action, as well as a forewarning against further perpetuation of white hegemonic societal structures giving license to white do-gooders eager to go into black communities and effect change. authors present a resolve for white social workers to adopt the role of the woke disrupter. keywords: dismantling racism, anti-racism, white supremacy, institutional racism the term white social worker will be used regularly throughout this manuscript. the reader should recognize that statements of generalization regarding white social workers do not indicate there are no exceptions. however, particularly relevant to the nature of this manuscript, the authors chose not to make an ongoing statement of exception for those white social workers to which this conceptual piece might not apply. the perspective of the authors is that making any acknowledgement beyond this note continues to center whiteness as the sacrifice of all those who are marginalized. as the authors of this conceptual paper, we intend to offer transparency from our first sentence through to our final words. as a manuscript selected for inclusion in a special issue called “dismantling white supremacy in social work education,” we believe it is not only beneficial, but crucial for us to share aspects of our identities which have shaped our lives, as well as our perspectives of the future, both personal and professional. we are cisgender female, gender non-conforming, queer, and heterosexual. we are a white mother of biracial and multiethnic children, a black single mother of a black boy, and a biracial about:blank advances in social work, summer 2021, 21(2/3) 1046 black and samoan wife and mother. professionally, we have an mba focused in leadership and organizational behavior, a phd, msw, bsw, and a ba in political science while also seeking completion of an msw at the time of writing this piece. there are intentionally coded examples and language used throughout our narrative. if you find yourself thinking “that sounds awfully white” you might be right and it is likely intentional that we want you thinking and feeling that way. in addition to situating ourselves as authors, there are societal and professional contexts relevant to the writing of this manuscript. white supremacy, racism and anti-blackness have plagued our united states of america (u.s.) since its birth under the exploitative, barbaric, and inhuman enforcement of colonists. lastly, as the authors of this manuscript we have included firsthand narrative examples which we have experienced throughout our careers. we have intentionally referenced these narratives as “author’s experience.” recently, the u.s. has experienced a resurgence of civil rights activism and protest after yet another killing of a black man by police: george floyd (nuyen & slotkin, 2020). not only did the world bear witness to myriad protests, the world participated at levels unseen since the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s (cave et al., 2020). as sherrilyn ifill (president and director-counsel of the legal defense fund national association for the advancement of colored people [naacp]) stated in a 60 minutes interview, mr. floyd’s death provoked a different and more powerful response, likely in part due to the length of the video captured by witnesses (whitaker, 2020). in the following weeks and months protests stood strong, occupying city streets throughout the country and throughout the world, all echoing one central message: black lives matter (#blm). and yet, in the midst of worldwide protests, white supremacy took no pause, demonstrating its insidious and relentless nature, making way for a white man to openly murder two men, and walk freely, maybe to one day face consequences (mihalopoulos, 2020) while breonna taylor, a black woman, was gunned down and killed by police officers in her own home (bbc, 2020). not surprisingly, this global attention to #blm has spurred new and renewed interest in race relations from nearly every corner of u.s. society, including from within the social work profession. as such, the social work profession, in efforts to reconcile its own history and role in upholding white supremacy and anti-black racism, has created additional space for conversations (singer, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c; swcares, 2020) such as the one presented here. it must be acknowledged, as a predominantly white female profession (salsberg et al., 2017, pp. 15-18), social work struggles with interconnected issues of patriarchy and misogyny. however, it is white supremacy that garners our attention at this time. please understand this manuscript is intended to ignite critical thought by offering perspectives on social work education and proffering the enormous responsibility to prevent woke vigilantes being sent out into society proudly displaying their credentials as professionally trained social workers. this. is. a. call. to. action. and a forewarning. while history cannot be changed, we are obligated to purposefully and thoroughly extract the stronghold white supremacy has maintained, in part, through our professional education. social workers must review and revisit the pedagogy, texts, policies, licensing, practice arenas, and importantly our values and ethics; turning them inside out and unearthing the white supremacist roots. in no uncertain terms do the authors advocate for donohue-dioh et al./woke disrupter 1047 an erasure of the white supremacist historical knowledge foundations of social work. in fact, it is the commitment of current social work educators to hold these racist roots out in the light of day that will lead to long term erasure of the influence and corruption inhibiting meaningful realization of the full potential for social work social justice values. any profession which does not examine its oppressive and racist tendencies is indeed creating harm to society; this is not negotiable. social work is a practice profession with immense responsibility to actively engage social justice at all levels. advocacy and activism are explicitly identified as central to the profession and as necessary skills to become a social worker (council on social work education [cswe], 2015). recognizing the power which lies in the invisibility of white hegemony, this manuscript aims to bring clarity to the subtle and powerful ways social work education can go awry by creating the woke vigilante. and how it can reclaim its professional value of integrity and embrace a position as a woke disrupter, utilizing social justice meta-practice skills for anti-racist professional practice. a final note of introduction: racism, tribalism, ethnocentrism, and colorism exist and perpetually marginalize individuals who identify or who are perceived as being black, indigenous or a person of color (bipoc). while all of the methods, forms and systems in which white supremacy are upheld require dismantling, as stated previously, it is antiblackness which has awakened protests throughout the world. colorism, of which antiblackness is the ultimate embodiment, underscores the negative consequences and privileges of passing as one moves in proximity to blackness and whiteness respectively (telles, 2014). this does not invalidate or discount racism experienced by persons who are lighter skinned. rather, this is to acknowledge the universality of anti-blackness. additionally, region and history strongly influence the multitude of ways in which antiblackness takes shape. it is for this reason that our manuscript remains focused on a u.s. context. background the u.s. has a long and sordid history of race relations. one need not look very far to find confirmation that the u.s. was founded upon genocide (miller & garran, 2017), enslavement of africans (jones, 2019), white supremacy and anti-black racism (patterson, 1998), systematic oppression of black/african americans, and discrimination (alexander, 2012; miller & garran, 2017). it should not then be surprising that the institutions established to uphold and maintain american society and culture are also rooted in these same principles of white supremacy and oppression (bell, 2018; miller & garran, 2017). scholars provide clear evidence of these social institutions that perpetuate historical and ongoing discrimination, abuse and violence against black people in america: education (morris, 2016), criminal justice (alexander, 2012), health care (roberts, 1997), mental health care (walker, 2020), finance/banking (baradaran, 2017), and housing (rothstein, 2018) to name a few. it is also very clearly established that these social institutions are operating as a collective to uphold white supremacy. the web of institutional racism is brilliant in design in that it is self-sustaining, invisible to enemies, and just like a web it is strong and advances in social work, summer 2021, 21(2/3) 1048 withstanding (bell, 2018; miller & garran, 2017). this is the function of a web, and as such, the web of institutional racism is performing and carrying out its full intended functions. social work is present throughout all of these institutions, be it politics, child welfare, criminal justice, education, health care, mental health, environmental stewardship, and countless others. and so, the question becomes: if social work is not an institution yet maintains a professional presence in all institutions, where do we start? although still bound by institutional structures, there is one space in which social work can assert its influence and shape its future: social work education. uprooting, uncovering, and dismantling social work’s role in maintaining white supremacy culture and, therefore, anti-blackness is urgent and crucial. however, it must be made explicit that there have always been anti-racist social workers, all along, fighting this fight; for example, dominelli (1998), jaggers (2003), and lasch-quinn (1993). while these few are acknowledged and published, it is important to recognize that the same circumstances by which this manuscript is made necessary have simultaneously created spaces in which many voices of resistance have gone ignored and unacknowledged. after all, this is the nature of the beast of white supremacy in education. the professional embrace of addressing white supremacy and anti-black racism need not pat itself on the back for finally getting the message. becoming social workers in the field, as well as those in academia, can all too readily identify the most common reason a student states for having entered the profession… “to help people.” this statement is spoken hundreds, if not thousands, of times each year by new majors and echoed throughout careers by seasoned professionals. this initial discovery and draw to social work is not the seed, but rather the sprout of a seed sewn by a white hegemonic societal structure. that seed is the toxic messaging that to be white is to be better (hooks, 2000, p. 116). this messaging, in its most noble form, encourages a humble acceptance of superiority in which one must “help” and “do good” for those less fortunate; the less fortunate being those who are black, immigrant, and poor and living in the margins. never mind the fact that they were forced into the margins as a result of the racialization of early american society in an effort to protect the wealth and assets (buck, 2013) of the already well-established white anglo-saxon protestant (wasp) (stalvery, 1970). make no mistake; there are poor whites; however, their position is somewhat less dire because, after all, there is hope, for at least their skin color opens the door of opportunity. “race privilege has consistently offered poor whites the chance of living a better life in the midst of poverty than their black counterparts” (hooks, 2000, p. 116). this is where it begins. before new social work majors sign up, society has already filtered through, sending those “helpers” on their rightful path as future social workers. let us be clear, it is not that all white social workers come from well-to-do families without difficulties—and truly, we as authors struggle with even feeling the need to explicate this. nevertheless our goal is to reach a broad audience. it is to say that even when class, education, gender identity, and sexual orientation are marginalized, whiteness will still place white social workers ahead of their black peers and better off than their black clients. donohue-dioh et al./woke disrupter 1049 and when the degree is done and a college education is added to that whiteness, the privilege is compounded and then upheld by the web of institutional racism (miller & garran, 2017). not unlike other professions, there is bias and privilege in the very people who find their way to a certain career or field. the difference for social work is that because the profession holds itself up as a beacon for diversity and social justice, we must do better. in discussing the danger of the woke vigilante, please know the authors maintain the position that social work education has consistently failed to maintain the professional value of integrity by excluding its white supremacist and anti-black racist foundation; the actions and attitudes of earlier social work pioneers; as well as, the subsequent centering of whiteness throughout the profession’s development. similarly, there has been a failure to uphold social justice by sustaining practices of centering whiteness and thus maintaining white supremacy. day one so here they are; a new class of social workers, all of them on day one! changing in demographics, yet still a statistical majority of white cisgender females (salsberg et al., 2017). academic social workers’ responsibility to educate students in what it means to be a social worker begins here. curricula are required to “engage diversity and difference in practice” according to the cswe educational policy and accreditation standards (epas, cswe, 2015, p. 7). however, all too often diversity becomes a problematic lecture, riddled with language such as cultural competence only to be followed up with multiple slides on native americans, african americans, latinx americans, asian americans and maybe white ethnic groups. and then done. to be clear there is rarely malicious intent. cultural competence and diversity when carried out in this manner fall into a broad range and focus on appreciating difference across and within various groups of a pluralistic society (adams & zúñiga, 2018). often, this display of “difference” is followed with unsettling lectures on “human rights, social, economic, and environmental justice” (cswe, 2015, p. 8). educators address and share the realities of modern society as it relates to disproportionate wealth, structural racism, gender gaps, marginalization of immigrant communities, and many more important and relevant social issues demonstrating inequity and injustices throughout our societies. commonly, all of this is to be presented and understood within a systems or ecosystems theoretical perspective. these theoretical approaches, while explanatory in nature do little to provide direction or action for change (rogers, 2019). and so, the unexamined message is to accept the system and learn to adapt and work within the system (finn & jacobson, 2003). this approach at best maintains a system of white supremacy and oppression. at worst, for now, it promotes an erroneous self-assurance that one has achieved competence in diversity. advances in social work, summer 2021, 21(2/3) 1050 now do it is not new to social workers that practice courses heavily lean into micro and maybe mezzo level skills. building upon the introduction of diversity and difference and social justice, students are taught a variety of engagement, assessment, intervention, and termination skills. at every step, students are reminded to be cognizant of diversity and engage their awareness of cultural competence. consider this author’s experience: i sense a shift in my social work program compared to just one year ago. the conversations around systemic change are becoming more explicit and action oriented. this may be due to the ever-evolving political climate and upcoming presidential election or the fact that i am now in macro classes with other macro students. when i was in foundation classes, i felt a resistance from other students to fully question the systems that we will one day work within. the overwhelming majority of my classmates in the first year of the program were clinical students which is the norm for most social work programs. i fully appreciate the need for clinical/micro social work, but i wish the conversations around systemic change and social justice had gone deeper in those foundation courses. if we don’t delve too deeply into those conversations in the classroom, what will we do in the real world? the conversations are uncomfortable, to be sure, but they feel necessary when we call ourselves “agents of change.” my assumption, from a student’s perspective, is that teaching social justice tools is more abstract than clinical skills. it may be easier to teach objective facts about the history and theories of clinical social work skills. the difficulty notwithstanding, new and experienced social workers suffer from not knowing exactly what to do when presented with the overwhelming knowledge of systemic oppression in every institution. the majority of social work students will go on to be clinicians and the curriculum reflects that. the tools that most students are given to deal with systemic problems are micro-level tools. of course, helping individuals through acute difficulties is important and life-saving for some, but if the social work education ends at that then what happens to the institutions that employ us? if we are solely focused on helping the individual in front of us, what do we do when we look up and see how agencies who employ us continuously oppress us and our clients? i understand my viewpoint is limited in this regard. i am a career changer with minimal experience in social service organizations and i am only in my second year of an msw program. however, i have jumped headfirst into my commitment to racial equity and justice and the resistance from experienced social workers is disappointing. i have read comments from white social workers on social media who espouse “all lives matter” or “blue lives matter” in response to posts about black lives matter. in a few months, those same white social workers will be my colleagues, or even my superiors. social work curriculum does an amazing job of making students aware of social injustice and oppression. it does not do a great job of giving us tools and donohue-dioh et al./woke disrupter 1051 opportunities to dismantle that injustice. the constraints of a two-year professional program are acutely felt as i sit at the beginning of my second year. i understand that not everything can be touched on or taught in this limited time frame. i argue that social justice advocacy and activism should be a part of the foundational curriculum for all social work students. the dump of knowledge on social work students about social injustices leaves us feeling overwhelmed and powerless. our foundational education should prepare us to affect systemic change and dismantle systemic injustice at all levels. this student experience is not an isolated incident, nor is this program a terrible program. however, the process of introducing such powerful stories of social justice without any real examination, ongoing dialogue or interrogation abandons students of color, especially black students. without calling attention to anti-blackness, white academic social workers leave a void that gets filled with a sense of neutrality, permitting the perpetuation of a “not-racist” pedagogy (kendi, 2019, p. 9). the invisibility of whiteness fills all voids with a normalization of white supremacist culture. the power of nothingness, avoidance, and omission has been known throughout time as evidenced in the words of desmund tutu, “in a situation of injustice and oppression such as we have in south africa, not to choose to oppose, is in fact to have chosen to side with the powerful, with the exploiters, with the…oppressor” (as cited in leonard, 2013, p.1581). skills such as cultural humility (gallardo, 2014) are insufficient to meet social workers’ mandate to be the social justice worker (finn & jacobson, 2003) they had envisioned upon pursuing a social work degree. additionally, the challenges presented by this student capture a related and ongoing hurdle of social work education which is bridging macro concepts such as social justice to micro course work and consequently incorporating social justice work for the macro student into the foundational micro focused courses. androff and mcpherson (2014) wrote of utilizing a human rights framework to bridge this gap and particularly as it relates to maintaining the mission of social justice in social work education. recall, social work demographics continue to reflect predominately white women who enter into the profession to “help” people. white women who have now come to recognize diversity, cultural “competence” and oppression of all people, including themselves, marginalized by patriarchy. while on the surface this may appear “nice” and “good,” beneath this sentiment remains the corrosiveness of whiteness, including complexities of othering, saviorism, classism, and racism. captured so simply, yet so profoundly by professor chey davis, who states “you came to sw [social work] to ‘help people,’ i came to free myself and my people. we are not the same” (davis, 2020). the “you” davis refers to are white social workers, whereas “myself and my people” refer to chey davis as a member of the black and african american community. white social workers must be made to understand the difference and accept the role anti-blackness plays in conceptualizing shared privileges and disadvantages. terms such as social justice warriors have been used to describe the passion driven white women who have crusaded through history shouting chants of social justice, feminism, and equality. the result: decades and generations of social workers who believed advances in social work, summer 2021, 21(2/3) 1052 and felt themselves allied with their colleagues, clients, and communities of color but who have not done the hard work of true introspection. home grown professional social work set the target and the arrow has landed precisely in the bullseye. generations of white social workers giving quite literally everything they have to a profession they love; the attachment to their social work identity so salient that discussions of serious concerns within the profession feels like a threat to their personhood. this brings up the question of responsibility: is the white student responsible for asking about the social work history they were not educated about? how does one begin to know? arguments can be made for social workers’ responsibility to continue their education and think critically about the structures in which they engage daily. there is hypocrisy hidden within though. social workers recognize that clients are shaped, nurtured and grown with context, environment, values, beliefs, etc. (rogers, 2019). and so, the same is true for white women who become social workers. why and how white people come to social work is a larger socialization discussion, referenced earlier, but outside of the scope of this paper. this is where it begins and ends though: the professional education and experiences shape, inform, and nurture professional beliefs and values. these values and norms are too similar to the larger white hegemonic structure and as such social work maintains and perpetuates white supremacy in house, but with a special twist. the white supremacy maintained in social work is tied to “cultural competency” and “social justice” education and training. not to mention a white-washing of all oppression, giving white women license to embrace their gendered oppression in sameness with the anti-blackness experienced by the black community. recall, this is not a comparison of oppressions (lourde, 1983), and even without hierarchical comparison anti-blackness can still be recognized with the severity, persistence, and inescapability which is profoundly distinct from gender oppression experienced by white women. when luck is in the favor of professional social work, things are “fine” and no new harm is committed, similarly no new progress towards a truly anti-racist and just society. let’s call this your standard social worker unintentionally and possibly unknowingly perpetuating systemic racism. when that luck runs out, social work is responsible for birthing woke vigilantes. merriam-webster broadly defines a vigilante as “a self-appointed doer of justice” (n.d.-a, definition 2). likewise, woke is defined in the context of u.s. slang as “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)” (merriamwebster, n.d.-b, definition 1). a woke vigilante in social work is someone who has done the baseline work of becoming a social worker, and either due to the comfort in such a safe space or due to lack of awareness, has moved forward without interrogating the basis of that education and the subsequent implications for themselves, their colleagues and their future clients. the potential for a social worker, from this all too familiar educational path, to practice in the world and be “harmless” is a possibility and is not what the authors identify as the woke vigilante. however, it is clear that being harmless is not sufficient in a society and world that requires active seekers of justice. donohue-dioh et al./woke disrupter 1053 woke vigilante somewhere in between non-racist and an antiracist modern society a new docile breed of woke vigilantes has found a home. these are the social workers who retweet the hashtag #alllivesmatter, because after all, the social work profession values every human being as having dignity and worth. after all, the profession urges a respect of all diversity and human rights, social justice for everyone. consider this author’s experience: in the summer of 2020, i and other social work graduate students formed a group to demand racial equity and police reform on our campus in response to the murder of george floyd and subsequent protests. an article about our efforts was shared on a social workers’ social media page to raise awareness and to highlight our work. the backlash to that article was unexpected. many commenters respectfully disagreed with our position, but nevertheless showed support for our activism. however, others were more vitriolic in their disagreement and they unfortunately drowned out the rest. the two most vocal opponents were two white women. one explained that if we didn’t agree with the police, we were free to join the local police department. the other expressed the same idea while also offering that she and members of her family were members of law enforcement implying a certain authority on the matter. these women commented “all lives matter” on other posts because they had experience working with all kinds of people and they could never exclude anyone by saying “black lives matter.” (it is possible that these women were not actually social workers as this group is open to anyone. however, previous and subsequent posts from them lead me to believe that they are practicing social workers.) as a social worker-in-training, i was taken aback by their negativity and crudeness. to see this sentiment on a page for professional social workers was a wakeup call. i went into my social work program with high hopes of being surrounded by like-minded people who recognize inequality and inequity and stamp it out at every opportunity. my hope is that the current crises will force the cswe, social work academic programs and social work organizations to review their standards and eradicate any semblance of racism or prejudice within our profession. speaking frankly about race in relatively safe classroom settings should be standard for all social work programs across the country. beyond the perspective of students, social work occurs in many places and spaces. social workers have a professional responsibility not only to their clients, but also their colleagues (national association of social workers [nasw], 2020). consider this author’s unchecked behaviors as a woke vigilante: remembering my attendance at a social work conference. excited and eager to meet new colleagues and network, a group of social workers met out at café, after sessions had ended for the day. i was one of two individuals who would be perceived as white (i don’t actually think the other individual identified as white). as we wrapped up we called an uber to take us back to the hotel, we needed an xl to accommodate all of us. our driver, a non-black man of color, arrived and brought us to the hotel safely. upon pulling up to the hotel a police car was advances in social work, summer 2021, 21(2/3) 1054 blocking the curbside drop-off, so our driver pulled around and over safely in front of the police car. as we exited the vehicle the police officer came over and started to give our driver a hard time, that he shouldn’t have pulled over there, blah blah blah-truly because it was bs. we had all exited and the driver could have easily pulled away if the officer felt it was an issue (which i guarantee it would not have been if i had been driving). the driver apologized and was happy to move on his way, but the officer kept on lecturing. i, the white woman, feeling frustrated by what i clearly saw as a racist encounter, felt empowered to step in. i verbally went after the officer. the officer warned me to stop talking, and as i physically moved closer he warned me to step back and stay on the curb. still, i didn’t back down, i thought i was doing the right thing, defending this helpless (insert saviorism) uber driver being targeted by a racist cop. after some additional back and forth, and some words from my colleagues of color i snapped into awareness. i stopped. i realized that the uber driver appeared concerned with my engagement with the officer, as did some of my colleagues of color. the officer ticketed the uber driver and thankfully that is where the police encounter ended. it is possible that i pushed that officer to give a ticket and that without my woke vigilantism the driver may have gotten away with a warning. my anger, frustration and sloppy display of privilege clearly escalated the police officer. had i not snapped to, only by the continued efforts of my colleagues of color standing by my sides, would i have caused a more harmful situation to occur, it is absolutely possible. i am grateful i did not contribute to a more dangerous police encounter and embarrassed by not having recognized the danger of my provocation prior to this encounter. i did the only thing i could do at that moment; i left a hefty tip for the uber driver to hopefully cover the ticket and i committed to continuing to examine the space i occupy as a white woman and my presumptive actions as an “ally.” the true fear, and yes fear, is the fully engaged and willing to fly woke vigilante. recall, this social worker is white, is culturally competent, has skills to engage and practice with the most vulnerable communities (due to their forced marginalization), and has a sense of morality to back them up: professional values and ethics. this is the child protective services social worker we see reporting a mother’s use of marijuana, traumatizing and disrupting an entire family unit, to only then go home and unwind with a bottle or two of wine while caring for her own children. imagine the white social worker, now the woke vigilante, working in black neighborhoods. one night they find themselves feeling uneasy (read as there is an adult black man walking his dog at night), feeling confident in their diversity cultural competency, they do not pause and evaluate, and instead believe firmly to be acting out of safety, calling the police on a black man at night for scaring a white person. this is not a far-fetched story. the white people who call the police repeatedly on black people are not all racist and in-fact it appears that some of them were those very liberal do-gooders. social work cannot be complacent, forgetting the forewarnings of malcolm x, martin luther king, jr., and many others as to the danger of the liberal white (wo)man. social work must be explicit to distinguish themselves beyond the basicness of (white) liberal and good. donohue-dioh et al./woke disrupter 1055 in the same way that scholars throughout race relations and diversity studies recognize that white people are harmed by racism, this acknowledgement of the woke vigilante is a recognition that white social workers are similarly harmed by white supremacist structures being upheld in their professional education and training. white social workers do not want or consciously desire to maintain oppressive and racist structures. white social workers, particularly upon entering the profession, are idealist and hopeful of a different world where equity exists and justice is accessible to everyone; they may not yet know the language of “anti-racist.” these hopeful white social workers are subsequently harmed by trusting a professional education system that hasn’t done its homework. getting it right social work diversity education need not stop with friendly lectures of “diversity and difference.” competency 3: advance human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice completes a curricular focus on diversity and difference (cswe, 2015). it is precisely the active and dynamic combination of these two competencies in social work education that cracks open the earth, exposing the roots of white supremacy and racism. to be clear, social justice is the game changer. as conceptualized by adams and zúñiga, social justice is separate and different from diversity and difference in education (2018, p. 41). social justice draws attention to “unequal social structures, supremacist ideologies, and oppressive politics and practices” and teaches us that it is through these mechanisms that “dominant social groups” perpetuate privilege and maintain the subordination and disadvantage of marginalized social groups (adams & zúñiga, 2018, p. 41). without the anchoring of diversity and difference to social justice, social work takes a chance in graduating the woke vigilante. to borrow ashley ford’s (2020) tweet, “empowered incompetence is so dangerous.” day one do-over from the beginning academic social workers are modeling social work relationships and engaging in mutually symbiotic relationships with students, whether they intend to or not. intentional, informed, and purposeful engagement with students is the first step for white academic social workers committed to uprooting white supremacy and racism within the profession. with this in mind, it is pertinent that white academic social workers consider their approach to the classroom, plan, and establish a means of reaching and engaging with students. if white academic social workers are to truly model a collaborative relationship, with foresight for students and clients, their approach to teaching needs to reflect as much. adopting a teaching-learning philosophy provides the platform on which white academic social workers can acknowledge their position and simultaneously acknowledge the centering of the student experience (grise-owens et al., 2018). drawing upon basic tenets of symbolic interaction theory, this can be viewed as demonstrative of the social worker and client relationship in recognizing that we each bring certain skills, resources, and expertise to the relationship (rogers, 2019). without one the other does not exist: without students there is no teacher. at this juncture it would be remiss to not acknowledge the discussions and concerns within social work regarding a need to advances in social work, summer 2021, 21(2/3) 1056 dismantle social work as we know it, so that the profession can be built anew. as a part of this reference discussion there is healthy critique and concern regarding how the oppressive systems in the u.s. maintain and produce a constant source of clients for social workers. this manuscript is not situated to address this larger discussion and recognizes the limitations of not doing so. similarly, educators are situated within a larger social institution and must confront the challenges or limitations presented in fully engaging an anti-racist pedagogy for social work curricula. the day one conversations must include a reckoning of the terminology and socialization behind “helping” and encouragement to question and critique identification of values such as service defined as helping (nasw, 2020). programs must incorporate an unaltered and full spectrum display of history, founding figures, skills development and practice implications, theoretical approaches, acceptance, and understanding and application of research. upholding the values, namely integrity, of the profession, students must be entrusted to know the full story without rose-colored glasses. students must know from day one the complexity in which this profession was born. there must be a foundation laid beginning with comprehensive history: actively identifying, naming, and decentralizing whiteness, thus modeling and flexing the social work values of integrity in combination with social justice. white educators need to be comfortable in acknowledging their identity and positionality of privilege as well as disadvantage in setting the stage to recognize and make visible whiteness, among other identities. shame, embarrassment, or concern of being recognized as white and privileged is an exercise in futility; regardless of acknowledgement black students, as well as others forced into the margins, see whiteness. recognition and awareness instead can serve to model and teach meaningful actions from a position of privilege, specifically that of becoming a social worker and committing to decentralizing privilege, in exchange for a move to the margins, expanding them in comparison to a center stage (rogers, 2019). just practice framework remember, this is not new. some 17 years ago finn and jacobson (2003) identified the need for a new social work paradigm, shifting away from previous theoretical perspectives and recognizing the need for a just practice framework in which the authors identified the need for engaging and evaluating social work practice through five key themes: meaning, context, power, history, and possibility (finn & jacobson, 2003, pp. 6973). utilizing the just practice themes, social work practice moves away from an acceptance of the systems (oppressive) as they exist to an acknowledgment of the historical developments, exclusions, and influences that have shaped social work practice. in addition, the practice moves toward acknowledging the importance of shaping what social work can and will look like in each collaboration with a client system (finn & jacobson, 2003, pp. 69-73), be it to dismantle the child welfare system (dettlaff et al. 2020), or to reinvent the role, responsibility, and engagement of social workers with police (miller, 2020a). donohue-dioh et al./woke disrupter 1057 as mentioned previously, authors androff and mcpherson (2014) offer a human rights framework as an approach to bringing together micro and macro practice arenas. the authors accurately recognize and acknowledge human rights are individual and universal, protecting the rights of every person and nations carrying out this responsibility (androff & mcpherson, 2014). this framework is complementary to the implementation of a just practice framework. even with two monumental concepts, just practice and human rights, there must still be action, and social workers need specific skills to take action. social work practice skills are often micro focused and like the narrative above illustrates, students are left feeling unsure of how those skills translate into social justice action. now do better so how is it done? first, social work must recognize the uniqueness of our work and the implications of accepting a person-in-environment (pie) perspective supported by ecological systems theories (kirst-ashman & hull, 2018) – implications which require a shift in understanding practice arenas. if social work is to truly operate at the nexus of individuals, their environment, concentric and overlapping systems, then social work must teach skills which resonate in similar application. social work must teach social justice meta-practice skills. social workers cannot back down from their commitment to integrity and that requires an uncomfortable look at the allegiances, actions, and attitudes of white social workers. using a just practice framework, white social workers must re-envision the doing of social work (finn & jacobson, 2003). social work is unique in that practice skills include those applicable to micro, mezzo and macro level practice. however, as stated in the aforementioned discussion, this approach is problematic in that all too often social work education is overly focused on micro level skills, without an explicit connection to social justice, leading to social work practice which perpetuates and maintains oppressive systems. within a just practice framework, we posit a reconceptualization of social justice as more than a value, perspective, concept, or macro level skill of advocacy. social justice is a meta-level practice skill. central to social work is empowerment, and critical to social justice is recognition of power structures and oppression. meta-practice “emphasizes collaboration, connection and (w)holism, proposing an exposition of ‘power’ as primarily an exponential process (power with/within) rather than a linear/hierarchical” (grise-owens et al., 2014, p. 51). meta-practice is beyond the micro, mezzo and macro delineations of practice and yet is an “inter-locking whole” all of these practice arenas. meta-practice is so uniquely captured with the original words of the authors, “relevant practice requires that social workers not merely understand micro-, macroand mezzo-practice….the profession of social work can engage the ‘and’ that both connects and overarches our traditional understandings of practice” (grise-owens et al. 2014, p. 51). accepting social justice as a meta-practice skill that requires teaching, role playing, recording, critique, development, and enhancement over time positions all students advances in social work, summer 2021, 21(2/3) 1058 interested in all levels of social work to engage social justice in a purposeful and intentional practice. in this way, social work curricula reinforce skill development in a meaningful way, particularly related to competencies of diversity and difference and social justice (cswe, 2015). it is of particular importance to recognize that while social justice is taught in accredited programs throughout the country, most often social justice equates to the activity of advocacy or activism on the macro level, an important and necessary role. it can be argued that those are the skills of social justice. this manuscript need not negate that position to affirm the position taken here of identifying social justice as a meta-practice skill. anti-racist social justice skills in education recognize that no, not all students need the same lessons, and yet all graduates must be capable of the same skills. social justice skills uphold the identities of all people, while simultaneously moving privilege into the margins by decentralizing whiteness. social justice skills include restructuring an intake form to remove boxes of race and ethnicity, encouraging clients to self-identify. application of social justice skills is recognizing and saying out loud the privilege and power that you hold in a client collaboration, creating space for the client (system) to also speak freely to power and privilege in their journey with you. social justice skills are advocating for the removal of “competence” in discussions of culture and diversity. social justice skills are critiquing interventions and research with intention to move away from a binary lens of good and bad which inherently centralizes whiteness. social justice skills create space for clients to recognize their freedom and work towards claiming their freedom. social justice skills are liberatory in meta-practice. beyond careful social work has known for a long time that we need to do better; social work has known for decades the harm and the potential for harm that exists in the current structures of social systems of all sorts. it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel. in the aforementioned writings the social work value of integrity has been mentioned more than once. again, this value of integrity is of the utmost importance for engaging social justice work. this will likely be difficult for many white social workers. white social workers cannot collapse into the state of white fragility feeling victimized, overwhelmed, and embarrassed for their history and role in maintaining anti-black racism and oppressive systems (diangelo, 2018). social workers know their uniqueness in being able to engage the most difficult work this world has to offer. let us not stop with the work being our client collaborations and partnerships. as a white social worker, the most difficult work you have to engage in is also your work to confront social injustice and move forward in ownership of your role, complacency and/or ignorance. now, today, when you read this, you know better. the desire to do good is no longer enough, nor should it have ever been. with social work projected to be one of the fastest growing professions, now is the time (u.s. bureau of labor statistics, 2019). social workers must implement change and accept change! yes, social work needs the radicals, the non-conformists, and those who simply want to reposition their privilege. whether these are new students or the practitioners and academics with knowledge and wisdom of many years past, come out and show up to disrupt the trajectory of the social work woke vigilante. donohue-dioh et al./woke disrupter 1059 woke disrupter there is no shortage of terminology when identifying the role of white social workers in anti-racism work; ally, co-conspirator, saboteur, race traitor, accomplice and many more (anderson & hill, 2020). social work will be faced with an absolute soul-shaking encounter and the subsequent ripping out of toxic anti-black racist and white supremacist roots. it will be and must be uncomfortable. it is only through being pushed to the “learning edge” that comfort of the known can no longer protect us from learning that which is necessary (miller & garran, 2017, p. 8). social workers have never shied away from a difficult job, the work has always been heavy. in a time when black communities engaging with social workers have been so unjustly, unlawfully, and inhumanely traumatized, social workers have an obligation to commit to the hard work of removing themselves as contributors and maintainers of white supremacy. social work must disrupt the profession from the inside out and from the outside back in. social work must show a willingness to own and acknowledge the depth of harm and destruction social work has committed against black clients, communities and colleagues, by a dismissal of the whiteness within the profession. this. is. integrity. social workers must commit to the development of meta-level social justice practice skills and stop relegating social justice to the confines of macro practice. social justice skills are meta-practice skills and must show up in all places where social work happens. skills can be taught, practiced, learned, and expanded upon. social justice is an ideal and it is achievable when we reconceptualize it as an action. after all, “[social] justice is a verb” (miller, 2020b, 2020c). in embracing social justice meta-practice skills, white social workers must also embrace their necessary role as woke disrupters. white social workers cannot stand on the backs of their black colleagues, black clients, and black communities allowing them to carry the weight. woke disrupters must be willing to step forward and dismantle the profession, taking responsibility for the role and benefit white supremacy has afforded them. and in establishing a new paradigm for social justice work (finn & jacobson, 2003), woke disrupters must remain committed to hearing, supporting, and following the direction of black social workers, students, clients, and communities. conclusion social workers have power – it is a collective power to transform the profession. white social workers must embrace the role of a woke disrupter. white social workers must own and sit in the discomfort, acknowledging their role in perpetuating white supremacy and anti-black racism. social workers must embrace social justice meta-practice skills outside of the macro arena, recognizing the arbitrary eurocentric confines that have neatly organized boxes and delineated levels of practice. the time has come for the tables to turn. black people have lived and died in discomfort and trepidation. no, every white social worker does not commit racist acts, and yet every white person is part of a racist system protecting their very skin. white social workers have a responsibility to examine and change those 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(1963). malcolm x speech. digital history id 3619. digital history 2021. https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3619 author note: address correspondence to jessica donohue-dioh, phd, lcsw at the university of houston-downtown, jdonohuedioh@gmail.com acknowledgement: thank you to chey davis for agreeing to read this manuscript prior to submitting for peer review. https://www.cswe.org/centers-initiatives/initiatives/national-workforce-initiative/sw-workforce-book-final-11-08-2017.aspx https://www.cswe.org/centers-initiatives/initiatives/national-workforce-initiative/sw-workforce-book-final-11-08-2017.aspx https://www.cswe.org/centers-initiatives/initiatives/national-workforce-initiative/sw-workforce-book-final-11-08-2017.aspx https://www.socialworkpodcast.com/2020/07/socialworkpolicing.html https://www.facebook.com/swpodcast/videos/605407770084865 https://www.facebook.com/swpodcast/videos/682858909246575 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa5zwkfhlca https://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/social-workers.htm https://www.cbsnews.com/news/naacp-sherrilyn-ifill-george-floyd-donald-trump-response-60-minutes-2020-06-07/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/naacp-sherrilyn-ifill-george-floyd-donald-trump-response-60-minutes-2020-06-07/ https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=3&psid=3619 mailto:jdonohuedioh@gmail.com microsoft word lambert.docx issn: 2311-1550 vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 225-244 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution sharealike 4.0 international license. changing our (dis)course: a distinctive social justice aligned definition of open education sarah r. lambert deakin university, australia abstract: this paper investigates the degree to which recent digital open education literature is aligned to social justice principles, starting with the first unesco definition of open educational resources (oer). a critical analysis of 19 texts was undertaken to track dominant and alternative ideas shaping the development of open education since 2002 as it broadened and developed from oer to open educational practices (oep). the paper begins by outlining the method of texts selection, including defining the three principles of social justice (redistributive, recognitive and representational justice) used as an analytical lens. next the paper sets out findings which show where and how the principles of social justice became lost within the details of texts, or in other digital agendas and technological determinist debates. finally, a new social justice aligned definition for open education is offered. the aim of the new definition is to provide new language and a strong theoretical framework for equitable education, as well as to clearly distinguish the field of open education from mainstream constructivist elearning. keywords: social justice, open education, open educational resources, open educational practices, oep, critical theory, definition introduction ten years have passed since the cape town open education declaration (the cape town open education declaration, 2007), so it is timely to review the progress towards the objectives laid out for open education. however, this is made difficult by the fact that the declaration describes multiple possibilities, and open education continues to mean many different things to many different people. the cape town declaration avoided setting out a definition for open education, suggesting that this would leave what it termed an “emerging” movement free to develop and take advantage of technologies and innovations as yet unknown. in fact, open education has a long history of providing education to non-privileged learners via open universities. however, the rise of digital and internet-based learning made open education seem new – it brought many new people, ideas and institutions to the field with different backgrounds. scholars of the modern open education movement worked almost without reference to the early corpus of open education literature (weller, jordan, devries, & rolfe, 2018). therefore, this paper starts from the position that the literature from the 2002 unesco declaration (unesco, 2002) can be considered a new chapter of open education literature for the digital era. since 2002, open education research and practice has expanded outwards from open educational resources (oer) to an interest in a broader set of open educational practices (oep). researchers have debated the definition of “openness” common to both areas of practice (peter & deimann, 2013). 226 definitions of openness are variable, but tend to highlight a sharing of effort and/or resources with all teachers and all learners, often positioned against closed practices as negative or lacking innovation (wiley, bliss, & mcewan, 2014). yet, while conference keynotes, panels and debates have discussed open education initiatives with regard to their alignment with social justice aspirations, it was surprisingly difficult to find and therefore cite published open education literature focused on social justice and the enablement of excluded or disadvantaged learners. the 2002 unesco declaration certainly is clear about its intended benefit for excluded learners in developing countries (unesco, 2002). however, the recently published statement on the 10th anniversary of the cape town open education declaration talks about collaboration, innovation and quality more than ideas of redistributing educational resources and opportunities to those who need them the most (cape town open education declaration 10th anniversary: ten directions to move open education forward, 2017). meanwhile, a consensus on a definition or purpose for open education remains elusive. this brings us to critical questions which lie at the heart of current unresolved definitional debates and which are the motivation for this research: where is social justice in the contemporary open education literature? and similarly, is open education an innovation for everybody, or is it primarily about removing barriers to the marginalised and excluded? the problem that this paper addresses is two-fold. firstly, a lack of definitional clarity is a problem for those that consider open education as a valid field of endeavour. when there are easily shifting goalposts, we never really know if we have contributed or made substantive progress. as influential practitioner and commentator wiley notes, “without clarity about our foundational commitments, it can be easy to wander” (wiley, 2017b). secondly, for those open education practitioners and researchers who consider social justice important aims, particularly in times of increasing not decreasing inequality, the problem is more than definitional. it means that the field’s efforts towards reducing educational and societal inequalities are dispersed, inefficient and ineffective. without a critical mass of social justice orientated views of what open education is capable of, we are unlikely to direct our energies where it is most needed, and, as a result, achieve less equitable educational outcomes. this purpose of this research, therefore, is to investigate the degree to which the discourse of contemporary open education literature is concerned with social justice principles and the ideal of fairness or equality of educational provision. the method of investigation is a critical analysis of a sample of contemporary open education texts. this paper begins by outlining the method of choosing and analysing the key texts including the definition of social justice used as a critical analytical lens. next, findings are outlined showing where and how the principles of social justice became lost within the details of texts, or in other digital agendas and technological determinist debates. the paper concludes by offering a new definition for open education which is aligned to the principles of social justice, and some observations about how it may be applied. gaps in the existing literature open education papers discussing social justice issues are hard to find. a search of the irrodl journal found only two that had “social justice” in either the title or abstract, and the australian journal of educational technology (ajet) had none. while there is some work focussed on social inclusion and the digital divides (dimaggio & hargittai, 2001; lane, 2013; warschauer, 2003; willems & bossu, 2012) 227 these are similar but somewhat narrower constructs than social justice. similarly, related works about widening participation of formal education continues to emerge from the open and distance education institutions, including some scoped to bridge informal and formal learning (farrow, arcos, pitt, & weller, 2015; lane, 2016). however, as recent citation analysis has shown, the connection between the field of widening participation in formal education and the oer and oep literature is extremely tenuous (weller et al., 2018). while open education researchers have used textual analysis methods to critically appraise the social-justice alignment of open education policy documents in different global contexts (cox & trotter, 2016; mukama, 2018) or institutional mission statements (tait, 2013), however, to date no research exists which interrogates texts and definitions in an attempt to shed light on how assumptions might have constrained progress towards social justice. therefore, this research contributes a new understanding or explanation for a perceived lack of open education progress, an alternative account beyond the dominant discourse that if we could only improve awareness and uptake of open education policy or practice, we would be able to make it both “more accessible and more effective” (cape town open education declaration 10th anniversary: ten directions to move open education forward, 2017)." instead it argues that social justice outcomes for open education do not flow from the affordances of our technologies, nor any view of our “openness”, but flow from our commitment to design explicitly for it via the application of one, two or three of the principles of social justice. theoretical lens for the research: social justice definition making a judgement on the degree to which open education key texts align with social justice relies on a good working definition of social justice. for this research, the following definition of social justice was developed from the work of keddie (2012), fraser (1995), and young (1997) as: a process and also a goal to achieve a fairer society which involves actions guided by the principles of redistributive justice, recognitive justice or representational justice. redistributive justice is the most long-standing principle of social justice and involves allocation of material or human resources towards those who by circumstance have less (rawls, 1971). recognitive justice involves recognition and respect for cultural and gender difference, and representational justice involves equitable representation and political voice (fraser, 1995; keddie, 2012; young, 1997). the example of an open textbook can be used to show how these principles can be applied to open education. providing a free textbook to learners of colour in the american two-year college system, is redistributive justice in action. it reduces the costs and increases the chances of success for learners who “by circumstance have less” – they are marginalised in education, workplaces and more broadly in society. but how “open” is the textbook for marginalised learners if indigenous, hispanic and learners of colour are invisible inside the textbook and perhaps invisible in the whole curriculum? the editing of such a textbook to include images and cases featuring more diverse communities, businesses and people will be an act of recognitive justice. but what if the textbook features people of colour, but does not value their perspectives, knowledges or histories? what if the textbook takes a white colonial view of black lives, if black stories are told solely by white voices? the development or selection of a new version of a textbook (or perhaps a new resource altogether) written by people of colour where they are free to represent their own views, histories and knowledges would be an act of representational 228 justice, to give voice to those who are often not heard. table 1 summarises the three principles and provides some examples as applied to open education. table 1: three principles of social justice applied to open education social justice principle open education example redistributive justice free educational resources, textbooks or courses to learners who by circumstance of socio-cultural position cannot afford them, particularly learners who could be excluded from education or be more likely to fail due to lack of access to learning materials. recognitive justice socio-cultural diversity in the open curriculum. inclusion of images, case studies, and knowledges of women, first nations people and whomever is marginalised in any particular national, regional or learning context. recognition of diverse views and experiences as legitimate within open assignments and feedback. representational justice self-determination of marginalised people and groups to speak for themselves, and not have their stories told by others. co-construction of oer texts and resources about learners of colour by learners of colour, about women’s experiences by women, about gay experiences by gay identifying people. facilitation to ensure quiet and minority views have equal air-time in open online discussions. from these examples, we can see that an open course or textbook might meet the principles of social justice, in three quite different ways. for the most socially just outcome, it would ideally meet all three principles. most importantly, the example also shows that providing an open textbook to all learners, particularly if they are predominantly already educationally privileged, may not be social justice at all. depending on the cohort and their needs, it may enable a range of outcomes for a range of learners. for elite cohorts, it may in fact give a further leg-up to those whom by circumstance typically have more. research method selection of texts nineteen key texts were selected for analysis on the basis of the author’s focussed searching and reading to locate social justice influences during a concurrent process of phd research in open education. the aim was to locate a sample of influential texts which shaped the modern open education period, and could then be analysed for their major interests, social justice or otherwise. selection of texts started with the highly cited “declarations” and authors such as wiley and weller who are associated with social-justice aligned organisations or projects in the open university or american college sector. selection then shifted to texts discussing what open education was, or was not — that influenced definitional debates in the literature and at international conferences. couros was selected for completeness with regard to tracking the development and values of “the open movement”. additional texts were selected relating to definitions and representational/graphic models of oep, which were often used in lieu of definitions. another set were chosen as responses to moocs, where the definitional debates about what open education was and wasn’t intensified again. 229 these texts, when arranged chronologically, roughly fit into three somewhat overlapping time periods with common concerns: 1. foundational digital texts 2002-2012 2. broadening phase texts 2009 – 2017 3. appropriation phase texts 2012-2015 five to eight sample texts in each phase suggest a reasonably similar sample size to adequately represent the periods. the first published literature review of oer — while published in 2014 is included in the foundational digital texts phase as it covers literature from 2002-2013 and acts as a consolidation of the definitional issues of that period. table 2 lists the sample texts in each phase. while any sample of texts cannot be exhaustive, and invariably omits more than it includes, nevertheless they have been chosen because of their influence on the definitional debates about what is distinctive or valuable about the field of open education. it is important to acknowledge that none of the texts set out to write specifically about social justice as currently defined, nor may the authors have awareness of the three principles used in the social justice definition of the term. while each of the authors had their own purposes for their work, nevertheless these texts were picked up and discussed by others, and in the absence of a definition, often used as de facto definitions or discourse to shape, explain and justify the work and the purposes for the work that followed. therefore, the extent to which these texts align with social justice ideas is indicative of the extent to which recent, digitally enabled open education aligns with social justice ideals. “openness determinism” and the iterative analysis and development of themes the analysis involved multiple readings and note-taking alongside excerpts from each text. the early re-readings identified relevant segment/s of the longer texts where social-justice ideas were addressed, partially addressed or implied. where social justice ideas were found to be absent, notes were made on the alternative interests or themes. early emerging themes included benefits to it workers, potential/barriers, educational innovation and quality improvement. the “openness as good” theme emerged as a major alternative (non-social justice) theme in which the idea of what “openness” could achieve was fetishized as if it had some kind of inherent power, reminiscent of the technical determinist literature. technological determinism is a problematic and ultimately ineffective approach to technology implementations, which assumes that the particular capabilities of new technologies will always improve the situations into which they are brought. such over optimism tends to understate the influence of people and the social context for the success – and also the failure — of particular technologies. the technological determinist literature was consulted for a definition, and the “affordance account” was a match for the theme emerging in the analysis. the “affordance” account of technological determinism is the overemphasising or attributing of the power for improvements in education (or society) to the general decontextualized properties or “affordance” of technology, particularly to promote the uptake by others (oliver, 2011; selwyn, 2011). therefore, within the subsequent analysis, the theme was labelled “openness determinism” and a final reading was made consolidating and finalising themes. the findings of the analysis are outlined then discussed in the sections following table 2. 230 table 2: nineteen key texts included in the research short title of text (reference) foundational digital texts 2002-2012 1. 2002 unesco oer announcement and definition (unesco, 2002) 2. alec couros’ thesis on open source communities clarifying beliefs of ‘the open movement’ (couros, 2006) 3. david wiley’s 4rs definition of open content -later to become 5rs (wiley, 2007) 4. the cape town open education declaration (the cape town open education declaration, 2007) 5. 2012 paris oer declaration (unesco, 2012) 6. first literature review of oer (wiley et al., 2014) broadening phase texts 2009 – 2017 7. first continuum of openness hodgkinson-williams, c., & gray, e. (hodgkinson-williams & gray, 2009) 8. ehlers’ oep definition, an outcome of the opal report beyond oer: shifting focus from resources to practices (ehlers, 2011) 9. open practices jisc briefing paper (beetham, falconer, mcgill, & littlejohn, 2012) 10. siemens’ chapter contribution in the book moocs and open education around the world (siemens, 2015) 11. butcher’s report for the commonwealth of learning a basic guide to open educational resources (oer) (butcher, 2015) 12. 10 dimensions of open education (part of eu science project report) (dos santos, punie, & muñoz, 2016) 13. wiley adopts new term ‘oer-enabled pedagogy’(wiley, 2017a) 14. cronin’s “interpretations of open” continuum and revised oep definition (cronin, 2017) appropriation phase texts 2012-2015 15. wiley’s blog post on commercial appropriation (wiley, 2012) 16. lamb’s blog post bold innovations in openwashing (lamb, 2013) 17. weller’s book the battle for open: how openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory (weller, 2014) 18. watters’ blog post from “open” to justice (watters, 2014) 19. rohs and ganz’ paper moocs and the claim of education for all: a disillusion by empirical data (rohs & ganz, 2015) 231 findings and discussion foundational digital phase findings the 2002 and 2012 unesco oer declarations stand out for their clear social justice alignment, whereas social justice principles are absent or only weakly implied in the other key texts of this period. the 2002 unesco proposal to pursue oer is framed as an action of redistributive justice from those with greater resources to those with fewer, i.e., developing countries. the addition of the phrase with the “full participation” of those countries – is an action of representational justice. other sections imply a degree of recognitive justice. the 2012 version acknowledges the limits of progress and is a renewed call to ten oer-based social justice actions. however, similar to the problem of the 2002 declaration and also wiley’s “4/5rs” specification text, the social justice intentions are lost if only the headings are cited as a de facto summary of the whole text. we are left with the purposeless and deterministic “foster awareness and use of oer” — as if it is an end to itself — which assumes that justice or equality will naturally follow from access to oer. the shorter versions or summaries as well as the more technical key texts from this phase, tend to read as technologically deterministic “affordance” accounts. within this deterministic account, access to resources for all is paramount – oer adoption potential is promoted in terms of free resources online, highlighting new technology as a key enabler. as table 3 below summarises, the key texts from the foundational digital period 2002-2012 either do not address social justice principles as currently defined, imply them weakly or are present in the context or purposes for the work but absent from the often-cited shorter texts and definitions. the dominant discourses in these texts are not social justice ideas but rather that openness and oer is good, access is good, and that re-using oer have potential to change education for the better. a later variation on this dominant discourse continues to assert the potential value of increasing access and re-using oer, if only barriers to adoption (i.e., challenges related to people) could be overcome. the sample texts often frame openness, oer, open-software community and/or the open movement as good because they are based on collaboration, sharing, and democratisation of knowledge. however, none of these are necessarily good in terms of social justice if the sharing and collaboration is primarily between relatively highly privileged global north it workers. because of this, the term democratisation of knowledge (or of education) raised in these texts (and in many other subsequent papers) cannot be conflated with social justice even though the term may sound like a synonym for social justice. similarly, while for some readers the term “access” may imply ideas of social justice, however, as currently defined, access is not a synonym for social justice. the wiley et all literature review (2014) reports there is more oer traction for speeding up mainstream course development: benefits of oer are primarily institutional, relating to reputation and efficiency — prescient views that would be echoed and amplified in the mooc or appropriation phase. 232 table 3: data summary of social justice alignment of six foundational digital texts 2002-2012 reference findings (data summary) with themes in bold 1. 2002 unesco oer announcement and definition (2002) social justice hidden in context. alternative theme – access to free materials online for everybody: while the whole text is strongly aligned with redistributive and representational justice, with a lesser emphasis on recognitive justice, the often-cited shorter definition sentence contains none of the context and social justice principles for improving educational access in developing countries, but are about putting free materials online for everybody. 2. couros’ thesis on open source communities clarifying beliefs of ‘the open movement’ (2006) social justice principles absent: principles of redistributive, recognitive or representational justice for learners are not discussed. alternative themes empowerment/choice for educators/technicians; access to free materials online for everybody: the text discusses empowering technical workers to choose open-source as an action against commercial control of work and tools. such tools then could enable access to free materials for everybody. 3. wiley’s “4rs” definition of open content later to become “5rs” (2007) social justice hidden in context: at this level of granularity regarding legal and technical features of a digital resource, the “4/5rs framework” or definition lacks any of the keywords or principles of social justice. social justice is not present as either a goal or a process/action in the texts, even though redistributive justice regarding text-book costs for marginalised learners was a significant part of wiley’s application of the work in the american college sector. alternative theme – openness determinism (affordance); access to free materials online for everybody: the text discusses overcoming technical and legal hurdles; three of the “4rs” (rework, remix, redistribute) are relevant only if you have technical skills and infrastructure; the text can be read as a conversation between it workers promoting re-use affordance. increasing educator re-use of openly licenced materials is assumed to lead to improved/changed educational access. 4. the cape town open education declaration. (2007) social justice principles weakly implied: the principles of redistributive, recognitive and representational justice are only implied, are extremely watered down. alternative themes – openness determinism (affordance); access to free materials online for everybody: the text discusses the potential of open education in terms of innovation and quality improvement in education for all; asserts that “we are on the cusp of a revolution”, i.e., change afforded by improved access to materials and various forms of openness. this text is representative of many others like it, and by this stage it represents a dominant account around potential, re-use, access and education for all. 5. paris oer declaration (2012) social justice present but hidden in context: taken in its entirety, this declaration is not a definition, but a call to action, and in particular a call to social justice actions. the text shows influence of the widening participation field in higher education (itself a social justice/inclusion process). the full texts of the first, second and seventh actions taken together call for oer as distributive, recognitive and representational justice actions. these details are easily lost when citing only the ten actions heading texts. 6. first literature review of oer (wiley, bliss and mcewan, 2014). social justice principles absent: oer as social justice actions for students are not discussed, and where the three types of social justice are mentioned or implied, they are framed as unrealised potential of oer. alternative themes – openness determinism (affordance); institutional benefits: the potential of open education dominant discourse is re-stated even while noting the reported reality that 12 years after oer was launched, using free digital materials for global north education is still the majority practice. re-use via technical editing and open licencing has not gained traction. oer noted as providing institutional reputational benefit. more equitable forms of education are framed as a “potential” or unrealised benefit of re-purposing oer — if barriers to adoption could be overcome. 233 broadening phase findings in these texts, open education is re-framed by some authors as broader than the dominant oer or “4/5rs” account from the previous phase. for example, the hodgkin-williams et al first “continuum” of open education indicates that more than legal and technical solutions are required, re-asserting the complex people and social side of both learning and academic development around oer. an alternative view was developed of oep as a set of innovative collaborative teaching and learning practices available to all and for all. however, in this account the notion of “all” still does not distinguish between those who by circumstance have more, or less. the benefit of a broadened oep view is that researcher/practitioners in the field excluded by a narrow “4/5rs” definition of openness were invited “into the tent”. with more participants shaping the field, a dominant conversation developed around what kind of openness (resources/oer vs practices/oep) would expedite a path towards a common good — without defining how such a “good” could be measured or whom the resources/practices actually enable. what is not questioned in these broadening phase key texts is the idea that openness can effect change for the better. this variation of determinism is known in the technological literature as the “normative” account, which is problematic as it constrains other alternative views (oliver, 2011; selwyn, 2011). dominant discourse leaves alternative ideas – such as those relating to social justice — at the periphery of a field. a common alternative idea left marginalised was the utility of free materials (but not openly licenced so not “open”) for direct benefit of learners – marginalised or otherwise. despite their redistributive justice potential free resources were criticised for not being open to modification by other educators, seen as more efficient and hence costeffective. further, the analysis identifies the problem of “reification” where normative accounts are further promoted by the use of shared visualisations, which tend to calcify a dominant understanding during a process of simplification to aid sharing and uptake by others (wenger, 1998). such reification may be an unfortunate unintended consequence of some of the “continuums” visual diagrams published during this period. the oep literature also introduce another term, “empowerment”, that may have been read as a synonym or idea related to social justice. the use of the term may have created an impression that social justice was still being discussed and pursued. however, the term “empowerment” in the sample texts align with only half of the concept of recognitive justice where they are described as an innovation for everyone, because they leave open the very real possibility of further empowering the already privileged (who continue to dominate most universities) so they may take their place as future leaders, thus further propping up current societal inequality. 234 table 4: data summary of findings from eight broadening phase texts 2009 – 2017 reference findings (data summary) with themes in bold 7. first continuum of openness hodgkinson-williams, c., & gray, e. (2009). social justice assumed not stated. this continuum puts the social context on the map as impacting outcomes as much as the technical and legal domains. however, the social justice aims underpinning why such work is undertaken – particularly in south africa is somewhat assumed and hidden from view. alternative theme – teaching and learning as a social practice: works against more technological determinist approaches to the oer work. 8. ehlers’ oep definition (2011), an outcome of the opal report beyond oer: shifting focus from resources to practices. social justice is absent: social justice is largely absent in any form, and where it is – it is with regard to a broad policy agenda. alternative theme – elearning innovation for everyone: this report and particularly the oep definition sentence (perhaps inadvertently) promotes the broadening education innovation and quality agenda. 9. beetham et al (2012) open practices jisc briefing paper. social justice is absent: social justice principles are not mentioned in this paper. alternative theme – elearning innovation for everyone; staff and institutional benefits: definition shows the broadening of the field towards mainstream higher education, benefits are noted as towards institutions first, higher education staff second, with student benefits noted third. 10. siemens’ chapter contribution in book moocs and open education around the world (2015) social justice is absent: social justice principles are not mentioned in this paper. alternative theme – elearning innovation for everyone: reflects the ideas in oep regarding digital literacy and lifelong learning are the alpha trend in digital learning and the more important phenomena than moocs. can be read as blurring the boundaries between openeducation and elearning or online learning. 11. butcher’s report for the commonwealth of learning (2015) a basic guide to open educational resources (oer). limited, partial redistributive justice approach. provides a new definition for open education, which is about removing barriers to learning and addressing assessment and accreditation — these can be viewed as parts of redistributive justice. alternative theme – widening participation: access, supported progress, and success of disadvantaged learners. works against the discourse that “access” alone will produce fairer education. 12. 10 dimensions of open education in eu science project report from dos santos, a. i., punie, y., & muñoz, j. c. (2016). social justice limited and hidden: there is a very limited version of social justice via the principle of redistributive justice in the report. also, social justice principles are absent from the simpler and easierto-reference definition and infographic which reads like a checklist for any elearning innovation. alternative theme – elearning innovation for everyone. part of a broadening agenda that blurs boundaries with mainstream education. 13. wiley’s adoption of the new term ‘oerenabled pedagogy’ (2017). social justice is absent or hidden. alternative theme – openness determinism (normative view): wiley adopts a new term as a response to the way oep had broadened the field towards constructivist online learning. “oep enabled pedagogy” reifies the technologically deterministic account of technical re-use as central to change. an alternate view would be that organisational culture and investment in people wrapped around oer technical systems are the cause of the change. such “people power” seems to be present in the actual collaborative work wiley and his projects engage in but is absent from the cited and discussed blog posting texts. 235 14. cronin’s ‘interpretations of open’ continuum and oep definition (2017) social justice partially implied (empowerment synonym). alternative theme – elearning innovation for everyone: oep definition: starts to imply the possibility of some form of recognitive justice through the use of the term empowerment – but like definitions of oep that came before – does not discuss the importance of doing so to remediate differential opportunity between learner groups. the benefits of collaborative co-construction are framed as educational innovations for everyone. standing somewhat apart from the technological determinist discourses discussed, the butcher (2015) and the dos santos et al (2016) texts go beyond notions of access (dominant theme from foundational texts) to discuss the supported progress and success of learners. access, progress, and success are three key terms from the field of widening participation in higher education. the use of these terms denotes an attempt to change the demographics of higher education learners and graduates to resemble the multi-cultural, gender, dis/ability, indigenous, and socio-economic mix that occur in wider society. such definitions suggest different approaches to future research — beyond measuring self-reported learner satisfaction, to investigating the progress and graduation rates of more advantaged as compared to less advantaged learners in any particular context. however, the most common themes in this set of literature is not social justice but oep becoming an elearning innovation for everyone. this broadening agenda blurred boundaries with mainstream education and its concerns of digitising curriculum, technology innovation and improving the quality of educational provision. these ideas were already being discussed in the earlier phase, and the cape town declaration spoke in terms of the innovation and quality of education agenda (the cape town open education declaration, 2007). however, in this broadening phase, the notion of oer/oep as an elearning innovation applicable to everyone becomes the dominant discourse. recently, the genesis and assumptions of oep are tracked back to recent trends in the broader educational literature, namely social constructivist, student-centred learning (cronin & maclaren, 2018). i would suggest that oep can alternatively be considered a contemporary online iteration of social constructivist learning, positioned against oer as a more positivist resource and teacherfocussed paradigm. the risk then, at this point in time, is open education broadening so far as to lose its distinctiveness and point of differentiation between mainstream elearning or higher education. in other words, open education could wither as a separate field and become subsumed into the field of elearning and/or social constructivist learning. appropriation phase texts the analysis of the appropriation phase texts (see table 5 below) revealed a crisis point in the field where the term “openness” was overlaid with commercial meanings such that any sense of “open as common good” was lost and authors moved between wanting to abandon the term, to redefining and re-claiming what was “truly open.” however, as previously discussed, the fetishization of openness is a problematic form of determinism, which reduces the effectiveness of open education by not attending to the complex socio-cultural context of learning and technology use. table 5 summarises the findings and themes. 236 table 5: data summary of findings from 6 appropriation phase texts 2012-2015 reference findings (data summary) with themes in bold 15. wiley’s blog post (2012) on commercial appropriation social justice is absent or weakly implied: the use of oer for social justice is not discussed – perhaps not considered, or is it just assumed that oer are social justice actions and commercial resources are not? alternative theme – commercial threat to practitioners and field: the threat from commercial appropriation is discussed in terms of the superior appeal of the multimedia-based educational resources used. the threat/crisis of oer being dead by 2017 is raised, if the movement cannot respond. 16. lamb’s blog post (2013) bold innovations in openwashing social justice principles absent. alternative theme – commercial threat to practitioners and field: this post describes a crisis point of appropriation or “openwashing” by commmercial textbook and mooc providers such that practitioners question if they can continue to use the term open education. professional identity as open educators are questioned. 17. weller’s book (2014) the battle for open: how openness won and why it doesn’t feel like victory social justice principles absent. alternative theme – commercial threat to practitioners and field: the “battle”, in the context of commercialism of openness, is the battle for control of higher education and the fight between the idea of education as a greater good vs education as a saleable commodity. it’s not the battle for reducing inequality in education and society, however, there may be an assumed view that student benefit flows from staff control over learning. 18. watters’s blog post (2014) from “open” to justice clear social justice aim: watters returns us to a social justice aspiration for open education and uses the term social justice explicitly. 19. rohs and ganz (2015) moocs and the claim of education for all: a disillusion by empirical data redistributive justice aims: this paper is one of the many emerging empirical and demographic studies showing the failure of online “access” to provide for fairer education. blog posts and comments from this period demonstrate anger towards commercial appropriation of open education as practitioners are seen to be “systematically forced out of the movement they started by their new slick corporate overlords." there is also recognition of “the damage…done” to the field by limiting the work of the field to only that which is profitable (lamb, 2013). the kinds of justice called for in these texts relate to practitioners/educators and their ability to make ethical choices. there is a possible implication or assumption that such ethical choices on behalf of educators would benefit all learners but this connection is not made explicit in the texts analysed. the 2014-15 texts from watters and rohs and ganz signal a major shift in discourse as more empirical studies came to light identifying a lack of improvement in educational inequality from open education initiatives. both texts signal a growing discomfort with dominant “access and openness as good” discourses, and identify a widening digital divide as likely outcomes should similar approaches continue. watters’ text provides a powerful rejoinder to the determinist discourse that had been building over previous phases and which assumes “openness” can and will do the work of social justice. while 237 rohs and ganz’s texts frame their argument within the digital divide debate, watters uses the term social justice explicitly. she draws attention to the relationship between normative openness determinist views of open education – “all the right nods from all the right powerful players within ‘open’” and the failure of open education to enact or provide for more equitable education. what watters describes is the outcome of openness determinism: what happens when something is “open" in all the ways that open education and open source and open data advocates would approve. all the right open licenses... all the right nods from all the right powerful players within “open.” and yet, the project is still not equitable. what if, in fact, it’s making it worse? what are we going to do when we recognize that “open" is not enough? i hope, that we recognize that what we need is social justice. we need politics, not simply a license. we need politics, not simply technology solutions. we need an ethics of care, of justice, not simply assume that “open” does the work of those for us (watters, 2014). summary of themes across the three phases social justice principles were present in 2002 at the start of the digital foundation phase but eroded over time as numerous alternative ideas and discourses developed. while the principles were sometimes implied or hidden in the detail of the digital foundation phase, in the broadening phase they were mostly absent. throughout the 2002-2017 period multiple major alternative discourses were present and in flux, and some rose to dominate the literature and conversations, notably openness determinism, elearning innovation and commercial threats to institutions and practitioners. synonyms for social justice such as “access”, “democratisation of education” and “empowerment” seemed to appear as red-herrings, potentially providing an impression that social justice ideas were being pursued. as a theme in the literature, social justice faded, particularly as the field broadened and came to more closely resemble mainstream elearning. however, it was subsequently re-asserted by influential authors – unesco and watters, the latter in the light of the failure of dominant discourses to provide for more equitable learning. towards the end of the period of analysis it was too late to be still claiming “potential” of oer, a number of more critical views had coalesced in the light of published evidence of learner outcomes, notably demographic inequality of mooc access. comparison with recent published views recently, prominent researchers working with a long-term viewpoint from within regional distance or open universities have also begun to note the way the advances in digital openness coincided with a move away from a more inclusive and widening participation stance (tait, 2018; weller et al., 2018). while weller and colleague’s 2018 citation analysis does not discuss the technical deterministic bent of current literature, it does, however, note the way that recent research occurred without recourse to the rich body of earlier research that emerged from open and distance learning. for example, they note with regard to emerging shortcomings of moocs, that the literature on “supporting students at a distance (e.g., tait, 2004), e-learning costs (e.g., bates, 1995; weller, 2004), or student retention (e.g., tinto, 1975) may well have provided useful contributions to this development, but was largely ignored.” rolfe’s work also showed the tendency for positive, uncritical bias in recent work and very limited drawing on foundational theorising from the open education research of the 1970s (rolfe, 2016). the present data and analysis backs-up and extends these observations to suggest that the 238 dominant themes of contemporary literature not only missed out on the earlier insights but also took the discourse down a technological determinist pathway that requires a concerted changing of course to avoid a recurring lack of impact for diverse learners. of the 20 papers used to seed weller et al’s citation analysis, there are eight papers that fall within the “broadening” and “appropriation” phases of the current analysis, i.e., 2009-2017 (weller et al., 2018). a brief review of the themes of these papers was conducted as a comparison with the current findings and found to align to the dominant/alternative types of literature identified here. in the weller et al sample, two of the three thematic clusters within those eight papers covered similar terrain (broadening towards elearning, and focus on educator rather than student freedom or justice) while the third theme presents a somewhat different but sympathetic type of alternative narrative. for example, three of the eight papers that cover similar ground argue for a broadening to reconsider the definition of openness within the context of “web 2.0” (friesen & murray, 2013), the rise of informal learning in “a connected world” (mcandrew, 2010) alternatively described as learning “beyond the course” (dalsgaard & thestrup, 2015). two texts also look at the freedoms of educators and the value of higher education (weller, 2014) alternatively expressed as the impact of openness on “positive liberty in the enactment of academic practices” (oliver, 2015). while the present analysis has made the point that such broadening accounts tend to unintentionally downplay social justice for diverse learners while focussing on other important commercial and institutional moves in the field, there were also four alternative historical overviews which sought to bring learner-centred approaches to open and distance learning back to the fore. these can be read as offering longer view historical accounts of open education as reduction of barriers for disadvantaged learners (friesen & murray, 2013; longstaff, 2014; peter & deimann, 2013; weller, 2014). longstaff’s (2014) account has an interesting “take” on the fluxes and flows noted in this paper between dominant and alternative narratives. through investigating the development of universities over time, including throughout the first few years of moocs, she finds, “a cyclical model of change, one in which waves of inclusivity alternate with bouts of exclusivity” in line with complex influences within education and society. perhaps the 2002-2017 more technically influenced open education literature will be viewed with the further passing of time as a more commercially-focussed period in between more learner and socialjustice focussed educational phases. the social-justice focussed new definition for open education offered in the next section aims to provide practitioner-researchers with a clearer research pathway towards a more social-justice-oriented future. certainly the field of open and distance education continues to develop and currently research is pursuing both humanist and post-humanist approaches to the integration of “bots” and innovative semantic technologies to increase support for students without sacrificing quality of experience (bozkurt, kilgore, & crosslin, 2017; knox, 2015; santamaría lancho, hernández, sánchez-elvira paniagua, luzón encabo, & de jorge-botana, 2018). interestingly, in the last few years issues of recognitive justice and representational justice have also been debated publically with regard to who has a right to be included and to speak at open education conferences. there has been criticism and rejection of “manels” (male only panels) and the underrepresentation of experts of colour as keynote speakers, particularly those from the global south who 239 are highly active open education participants. it seems timely, then, to also apply these social justice principles to the experience of our students and their learning environments. recentering a social-justice purpose and definition of open education to enable interested practitioner/researchers of open education to work more effectively towards more equitable forms of education, adoption of a definition of open education that is centred on social-justice principles is proposed. a more narrowly focussed and distinctive definition would also guard against further broadening, to ensure open education remains distinctive from elearning. a social-justice oriented definition would be useful then to shift the debate from what openness might look like, to whom we want our openness to ultimately serve and how our openness might achieve greater educational and societal equality. as edwards notes, "an important question therefore becomes not simply whether education is more or less open, but what forms of openness are worthwhile and for whom; openness alone is not an educational virtue” (edwards, 2015, p. 253). following this, there needs to be intention for reducing inequality – both in program design and research. successful designs are more likely to be founded on an understanding of which communities and cohorts in our contexts are more and less privileged, and of ensuring that access, support and services are provided to them and that their progress as compared to their more privileged peers is always tracked. such work could take an affirmative action approach, where organisations put in place additional resources to help minority groups overcome historical injustice and reach their full potential as learners. considering the success of affirmative action policies in both the labour market and for university admissions (the effect on the latter being more for the more elite schools,) (holzer & neumark, 2006) this seems fruitful areas for future research and practice. proposed definition the following definition of open education is proposed as primarily about social justice, while still allowing space for secondary benefits by other learners: open education is the development of free digitally enabled learning materials and experiences primarily by and for the benefit and empowerment of non-privileged learners who may be under-represented in education systems or marginalised in their global context. success of social justice aligned programs can be measured not by any particular technical feature or format, but instead by the extent to which they enact redistributive justice, recognitive justice and/or representational justice. the inclusion of the phrase “by and for… non-privileged learners” maintains the original intention of the 2002 oer definition regarding active participation by developing countries and the marginalised — rather than neo-colonial practices of the global north doing things to and for those they consider disadvantaged. with such a definition in place, other related definitions such as oer may remain unchanged to denote different foci within the field. for example, the definition of oep could remain more broadly about the processes of collaboration and sharing in a wide range of educational practices to improve pedagogy for all learners. the term “critical open pedagogy” could continue to be used to identify the 240 set of intentionally empowering oep which seek to shift the power balance between learner and teacher as a particular strategy to reduce inequality (derosa & robinson, 2017). conclusion this paper has tracked a sample of texts which shaped the definitions and practice of open education since 2002 through a series of broadening moves from oer to oep and through various “continuums” and “dimensions.” it has shown the points at which claims for the importance of social justice purposes became hidden in the larger documents but were absent from the most regularly used definitions. it has shown how a broadening of scope overlapped with more mainstream educational, elearning/and distance education debates about quality and pedagogy, at the expense of discourse on social justice purpose. a major discourse in the debates about the power of openness has been labelled “openness determinism” for the way it has inadvertently reinforced technological determinist ideas – that somehow openness will democratise education, as technology itself was expected to do previously. this paper has argued for a viable alternative account of how open education can begin to shift educational inequality by focussing on one or more of the three principles of social justice — redistributive, recognitive and representational — which, via the 2002 unesco oer declaration, launched the modern, digital oer movement in the first place. the social-justice aligned definition of open education proposed here offers new opportunities for designs to be shaped as explicit social justice actions aligned to one or more of the three principles. it also offers the opportunity for new empirical research to measure the social justice impact of initiatives in terms of the way that learners who, by circumstance, have less are able to be provided with more resources, recognition or representation. it also suggests empirical research approaches attuned to demographics of privilege, so that access, progress and success rates can be investigated in both the more and less privileged cohorts in our educational systems. acknowledgement i wish to thank my phd supervisory team for their continued interest in my work as well as their enthusiasm and honest feedback: prof. david boud; assoc. prof. phillip dawson; and dr. joanna tai all from deakin university’s centre for research in assessment and digital learning (cradle) as well as dr. nadine zacharias from the national centre for student equity in higher education. i would also like to thank peers and facilitators of the graduate oer global network (auspiced by the open university, uk) for providing detailed feedback on early drafts and encouraging me to continue taking risks and asking critical questions of our open education practice. references beetham, h., falconer, i., mcgill, l., & littlejohn, a. 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(2014). open educational resources: a review of the literature. in m. j. spector, j.m., merrill, m.d., elen, j., bishop (ed.), handbook of research on educational communications and technology (4th ed., pp. 583–590). springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3185-5 willems, j., & bossu, c. (2012). equity considerations for open educational resources in the glocalization of education. distance education, 33(2), 185–199. https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2012.692051 young, i. m. (1997). unruly categories: a critique of nancy fraser’s dual systems theory. new left review, 1(222), 147–160. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470756119.ch54 244 author sarah r. lambert is a phd candidate and researcher, centre for research in assessment and digital learning, deakin university. email: slamb@deakin.edu.au cite this paper as: lambert, s. r. (2018). changing our (dis)course: a distinctive social justice aligned definition of open education. journal of learning for development, 5(3), 225-244. microsoft word 23515-finaldraft.docx lentera hukum, volume 8 issue 2 (2021), pp. 211-240 issn 2355-4673 (print) 2621-3710 (online) https://doi.org/10.19184/ejlh.v8i2.23515 published by the university of jember, indonesia available online 28 july 2021 __________________________ * corresponding author’s e-mail: muhammad.rafliansah@ui.ac.id covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis muhammad rafliansah aziz* university of indonesia, indonesia muhammad alfitras tavares university of indonesia, indonesia chalisa jasmine azhima university of indonesia, indonesia abstract: while the covid-19 pandemic is far from the end, vaccinations have become an inevitable alternative in combating this pandemic. according to the who, covid-19 vaccines are considered public goods. consequently, they should be distributed equally to the citizens as the fulfillment of the right to health. this study aimed to analyze how covid-19 vaccinations in indonesia have been practiced. also, it examined the government’s responsibility to ensure that covid-19 vaccines are distributed equally in reflecting distributive justice by enquiring to what extent the government’s policy on independent vaccination relates to the fulfillment of human rights. this study used a legal research method based on a literature review. this study showed that some aspects of the vaccination are under distributive justice and welfare state. however, the gotong royong vaccination policy does not refer to distributive justice and the welfare state, resulting in injustice, discrimination, and economic inequality because it only provides certain privileged citizens access to vaccines. therefore, the government needs to reconsider the gotong royong vaccination, focusing on accelerating the vaccination system for vulnerable individuals and groups. keywords: covid-19, right to health, social justice, vulnerable groups. copyright © 2021 by author(s) this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-sharealike 4.0 international license. all writings published in this journal are personal views of the authors and do not represent the views of this journal and the author's affiliated institutions. submitted: 10/03/2021 reviewed: 05/04/2021 revised: 01/07/2021 accepted: 07/07/2021 how to cite: aziz, muhammad rafliansah, et al., “covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis” (2021) 8:2 lentera hukum 211-240. doi: <https://doi.org/ 10.19184/ejlh. v8i2.23515>. 212 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis i. introduction the covid-19 pandemic has been a crucial problem in indonesia ever since it started. since the beginning of 2020, the world has been handling the covid-19 pandemic.1 indonesia confirmed the first covid-19 case back in march of 2020,2 before it has dramatically infected citizens with the amount of up to millions of cases in march 2021.3 as the world experienced the devastating effect of a significant outbreak, a race for covid-19 vaccines began. in january of 2021, the first wave of vaccines arrived in indonesia and was ready to be distributed.4 by june 30, 2021, the total number of reported covid-19 cases in indonesia was 2,178,272.5 even though the government has started the vaccination program in january 2021, new cases are still surging, with an additional dramatic increase to 21,807 reported daily cases on june 30, 2021.6 previous studies indicated that developing countries are facing numerous challenges in rolling out their covid-19 vaccination plans, such as the limited global supply of vaccines to be procured, barriers to the vaccination 1 the covid-19 pandemic was caused by a strain of coronavirus (the sars-cov2). the world health organisation (who) declared covid-19 outbreaks as a global pandemic on march 11, 2020. riyanti djalante, et al., “review and analysis of current responses to covid-19 in indonesia: period of january to march 2020” (2020) 6:4 progress in disaster science 1–9. 2 dewi nur aisyah, et al., “a spatial-temporal description of the sars-cov-2 infections in indonesia during the first six months of the outbreak” (2020) 15:12 plos one 1–14. 3 as of march 4, 2021, the total number of covid-19 cases in indonesia is as high as 1,361,098 confirmed cases. komite penanganan covid-19 dan pemulihan ekonomi nasional, “data vaksinasi covid-19 (update 4 maret 2021)”, (2021), online: <https://covid19.go.id/p/berita/data-vaksinasi-covid-19-update-4-maret2021>. 4 sebastian strangio, “jokowi receives first shot as indonesia begins coronavac rollout," (2021), online: the diplomat <https://thediplomat.com/2021/01/jokowireceives-first-shot-as-indonesia-begins-coronavac-roll-out/>. 5 haryanti puspa sari, “update: tambah 21.807 orang, kasus covid-19 indonesia capai 2.178.272”, (2021), online: kompas.com <https://nasional.kompas.com/read/ 2021/06/30/16203191/update-tambah-21807-orang-kasus-covid-19-indonesiacapai-2178272>. 6 ibid. 213 | lentera hukum distribution, and limited resources to administer the vaccination.7 the indonesian government has guaranteed the availability of vaccines, by june of 2021, but it has counted 14,3 doses per 100 citizens, much lower than the world average of 37,5 doses per 100 citizens.8 moreover, indonesia is facing the challenge of distributing vaccines to many remote areas all around the archipelago.9 in indonesia, the covid-19 vaccination is mainly under the government’s control. the control includes regulating the terms and conditions of vaccination, procuring vaccines, and acting as the primary actor of vaccination. however, existing regulations provide private institutions with independent vaccination. therefore, it has stimulated discourses on the ethical matter against the private sector. also, it relates to human rights and social justice issues, mainly vaccines as public goods and indonesia’s adherence to the welfare state. to some extent, indonesia is deemed as a welfare state with a minimal model, where social security and welfare programs are provided sporadically, partially, and minimally.10 indonesia's welfare programs are not as widely implemented as those in scandinavian countries; welfare programs are universal with a substantial role in providing an extensive social safety net for citizens comprehensively. however, the 1945 constitution remains to have values called the welfare state with a feature of the government's responsibility to provide basic needs and services for citizens.11 therefore, the indonesian government should implement laws 7 abu baker sheikh, et al., “covid-19 vaccination in developing nations: challenges and opportunities for innovation” (2021) 13:2 infectious disease reports 429–436. 8 bbc news, “covid: vaccines running out in poorer nations, who says," online: <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-57558401>. 9 ratna puspita, “kemenkes: kondisi geografis tantangan distribusi vaksin”, (2021), online: republika.co.id <https://www.republika.co.id/berita/qrut99428/ kemenkeskondisi-geografis-tantangan-distribusi-vaksin>. 10 this is because social security is generally only given to civil servants, members of the armed forces, and private employees who can afford premiums. edi suharto, “peta dan dinamika welfare state di beberapa negara: pelajaran apa yang bisa dipetik untuk membangun indonesia?” (2006) 1–15. 11 stein kuhnle & sven hort, “the developmental welfare state in scandinavia lessons for the developing world” (2004) 17 social policy and development. 214 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis that adhere to distributive justice, with covid-19 vaccinations as no exception.12 as per the constitution, the government is responsible for fulfilling human rights, including the right to health.13 in particular, the 1945 constitution requires the government to provide basic health services and social security systems for all citizens and empower vulnerable and poor members of society.14 consequently, covid-19 vaccines, which essentially are public goods, have to be distributed justly to ensure human rights and social justice.15 the government’s responsibility to justly distribute covid-19 vaccines is the consequence of indonesia’s adherence to the welfare state. however, the indonesian government's independent vaccination has raised concern on how the policy could potentially lead to an unequal distribution of covid-19 vaccines. the independent vaccination allows a citizen to get vaccinated early, even though they are not part of the priority groups of vaccine recipients. those members of the society have the privilege to get early vaccinates because they are employees of financially-able corporations that can afford to independently finance a private vaccination service for their employees outside of the government-financed vaccination services. the policy allows paying corporations to vaccinate their employees earlier than other members of society, even priority groups. it has the potential to create a condition where the poor and those that are not part of the corporations involved in the independent vaccination program cannot get the same access to covid-19 vaccines. previous studies lacked the regulatory and philosophical perspective to discuss a vaccination rather than focused more on intellectual property 12 noah lewin-epstein, amit kaplan & asaf levanon, “distributive justice and attitudes towards the welfare state” (2003) 16:1 social justice research 1–44. 13 fheriyal sri isriawaty, “tanggung jawab negara dalam pemenuhan hak atas kesehatan masyarakat berdasarkan undang undang dasar negara republik indonesia” (2015) 3:2 jurnal ilmu hukum legal opinion 1–10. 14 article 34 of the 1945 constitution. 15 harald schmidt, “vaccine rationing and the urgency of social justice in the covid19 response” (2020) 50:3 hastings center report 46–49. 215 | lentera hukum rights.16 while the comparison is inevitable, the experience of other countries such as israel, norway, and india in covid-19 vaccinations17 becomes the rationale to improve indonesia’s covid-19 vaccination agenda. amidst this discussion, it encourages the debate over the specific scope regarding independent vaccination in the light of human rights, distributive justice, and the welfare state. then, this study adds an increasing insight into the indonesian experience on covid-19 vaccinations that represents other developing countries facing the same issue. this study aimed to discuss the status quo of covid-19 vaccinations in indonesia based on existing regulations, following their practices. it elaborated aspects of covid-19 vaccination under the government’s control despite those open for private sector. also, it examined the government’s responsibility to ensure that covid-19 vaccines are distributed equally in reflecting distributive justice by enquiring to what extent the government’s policy on independent vaccination relates to the fulfillment of human rights. finally, this study evaluated the current covid-19 vaccination to reference indonesia's handling of covid-19 vaccines, which are essentially public goods. ii. methods this study used a legal research method, which analyzed primary and secondary literature sources. this method examined rules, principles, and doctrines to address legal issues.18 the primary sources mainly consisted of laws and government regulations on covid-19 vaccinations. the secondary sources consisted of legal doctrines and research from books, articles, news, research papers, and other relevant sources. 16 muh ali masnun, eny sulistyowati & irfa ronaboyd, “pelindungan hukum atas vaksin covid-19 dan tanggung jawab negara pemenuhan vaksin dalam mewujudukan negara kesejahteraan” (2021) 17:1 dih: jurnal ilmu hukum 35–47. 17 bruce rosen, ruth waitzberg & avi israeli, “israel’s rapid rollout of vaccinations for covid-19” (2021) 10:1 israel journal of health policy research 1–14. 18 theresia anita christiani, “normative and empirical research methods: their usefulness and relevance in the study of law as an object” (2015) 219:1 procedia social and behavioral sciences 201–207. 216 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis iii. responsibility on vaccination: social justice and welfare state perspectives a. an overview of distributive justice and welfare state according to aristotle, distributive justice is a mechanism to distribute benefits and burdens among the members of a relevant group in proportion to some criterion for distribution, such as merit, needs, equality, and status.19 rawls defines justice as fairness, which refers to the social contract coined by locke, rousseau, and kant.20 rawls also presents an idea called original position and veil of ignorance that corresponds to the idea of the state of nature in social contract theory.21 the main idea of the original position and the veil of ignorance is that the people do not know what they will become. they would not know where their place in society would become. they would not know their class position or social status, nor does anyone know their fortune in distributing natural assets and abilities, intelligence, strength, and the like.22 thus, no one is advantaged or disadvantaged by natural chances. no one can impose the principles of justice just to favor a particular condition or act partially; the principles of justice result from a fair agreement.23 through these two theories, rawls tries to lead the community to obtain fair equality. in the social contract theory based on the original position and the veil of ignorance, the subject (people) will use rawls' two principles of justice or a so-called difference principle.24 the first principle is equal rights to get basic freedoms, including the freedom to do politics, freedom of expression, freedom from psychological oppression, and physical violence.25 the second principle is that forms of economic, social, and political differences and inequalities must be arranged to benefit the least disadvantaged of the society, and attached positions and offices open to all under conditions of 19 tsachi keren-paz, torts, egalitarianism and distributive justice (london: routledge, 2007). 20 john rawls, a theory of justice (massachusetts: harvard university press, 1971). 21 ibid. 22 ibid. 23 ibid. 24 ibid. 25 ibid. 217 | lentera hukum fair equality of opportunity.26 this principle requires citizens’ same opportunity by providing facilities and opportunities to avoid inequality from the beginning, such as being born from a rich or poor class and other conditions. while there is a conflict between the first principle and the second principle, the first principle must be prioritized over the second. thus, freedom of basic rights must be positioned as the highest value followed by equal opportunities for everyone.27 nevertheless, indonesia is claimed to adopt the welfare state by referring to the fifth principle stated in pancasila—the basic guidelines of the indonesian government. this principle states social justice for all indonesian people,28 despite the preamble and articles of the 1945 constitution to reiterate and specifically extend this principle.29 the basic formulation of the welfare state's ideology earlier—advancing the general welfare and the fifth principle of the pancasila—was then manifested in the body of the indonesian constitution as a guideline for national life and state administration.30 rawls puts social justice forward. he related matters where both of them want an economic system and justice into a balanced point between the role of the state and individuals, rights and obligations, and the fulfillment of civil, political, and economic socio-cultural rights.31 thus, indonesia must fully fulfill the rights of its citizens under social justice in pancasila. 26 ibid. 27 ibid. 28 social justice is economic justice or economic welfare or equality in the economic field that can only be achieved through the indonesian socialism system. indonesian socialism upholds the principles of equality and individual freedom, but individuals are always cooperative with an altruist attitude that promotes social solidarity. yudi latif, negara paripurna: historisitas, rasionalitas, dan aktualitas pancasila (jakarta: gramedia, 2005). 29 preamble of the 1945 constitution provides the basis that indonesia is a welfare state. another basis in recognizing human rights is in chapter xa of the 1945 constitution. oman sukmana, “konsep dan desain negara kesejahteraan (welfare state)” (2016) 2:1 jurnal sospol 103–122. 30 a alfitri, “ideologi welfare state dalam dasar negara indonesia: analisis putusan mahkamah konstitusi terkait sistem jaminan sosial nasional” (2012) 9:3 jurnal konstitusi 449–472. 31 yudi latif, supra note 28. 218 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis the purpose of welfare is to fulfill civil rights, including social services, to ensure that every citizen gets a minimum income.32 thus, the welfare state is associated with the fulfillment of basic needs. it is considered as a mechanism of equalization of inequality caused by the market economy. according to andersen, as quoted by yohanes, the welfare state demands the state to have an active and responsible role in ensuring basic welfare services at a certain level for its citizens.33 there are four main pillars in a welfare state. they are social citizenship, full democracy, modern industrial relation system, rights to education, and the expansion of modern mass education systems.34 these pillars constitute the social rights of citizens, cannot be violated and given on the basis of citizenship, not performance or class.35 thus, the indonesian government must fulfill citizen rights by providing social services and ensuring a minimum income. various aspects ranging from social security, health, housing, and education are the main work areas of government policies that adhere to the welfare state.36 the forms of social security include health insurance, health services, employment insurance, retirement funds, fulfillment of basic needs, and others. consequently, these fulfillments assert the right to get special facilities and treatment to get the same opportunities and benefits to achieve equality and justice as outlined under articles 34 and 28h of the 1945 constitution. thus, it reflects indonesia to adherence to the welfare state with a minimal model.37 in addition, the state is also expected to manage 32 jørgen goul andersen, welfare states and welfare state theory (aalborg: centre for comparative welfare studies, department of political science, aalborg university, 2012). 33 yohanes suhardin, “peranan negara dan hukum dalam memberantas kemiskinan dengan mewujudkan kesejahteraan umum” (2012) 42:3 jurnal hukum & pembangunan 302–317. 34 ibid. 35 ibid. 36 alfitri, supra note 30. 37 the minimal model is a model characterized by small government spending in the social development sector. social security and welfare programs are provided sporadically, partially, and minimally. social security is provided to civil servants and private employees who can pay. suharto, supra note 10. 219 | lentera hukum natural resources wealth and use it for the citizen welfare and put it in a sustainable welfare framework under article 33 of the 1945 constitution.38 in essence, as a welfare state, indonesia must make citizens prosperous by fulfilling citizens’ basic needs as human rights. the legal frameworks that support the realization of the welfare state are social welfare law 11/2009 and national social security system law 40/2004. b. independent vaccines and vulnerable groups: a quest for social justice and welfare state the national solidarity to eradicate covid-19 proves that the right to health is embedded in the idea of universal health coverage under public interest globally. indeed, indonesia is a welfare state, so that every citizen has the right to health. indonesia's government must provide access to health and health services for its citizens affected by covid-19. in this case, covid-19 vaccines must be provided to all citizens due to fulfilling the right to health. otherwise, the vaccine therapeutics and diagnostics must be made available on the general knowledge of equality and affordable accessibility for everyone, particularly at-risk groups.39 the 74th session of the un general assembly concluded that covid-19 vaccines should be promoted.40 it ensured fair, transparent, equitable, efficient, and timely access distribution, alongside medical tools and drugs. it is needed to fight the pandemic as equitable access to health products is a global concern, and the highest attainable standard of health is the right of every human being.41 it is relevant to minister of health regulation 28/2020 on the implementation of vaccine procurement in the context of covid-19 38 yudi latif, supra note 28. 39 world health organization, “who director-general’s speech at the paris peace forum panel: act-a: covid-19 vaccines, tests and therapies, the global public good solution november 12, 2020”, (2020), online: <https://www.who.int/directorgeneral/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-speech-at-the-paris-peace-forumpanel-act-a-covid-19-vaccines-tests-and-therapies-the-global-public-good-solution--12-november-2020>. 40 united nations general assembly on international cooperation ensures global access to medicines, vaccines, and medical equipment to face covid-19 (april 20, 2020). 41 ibid. 220 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis pandemic response.42 it enumerates that the procurement of the covid19 vaccines aims to meet the vaccine availability to handle the pandemic.43 vaccination as a countermeasure against the pandemic is rooted in article 28h(1) of the 1945 constitution. this article states that everyone has the right to live in physical and spiritual prosperity, to have a place to live and to have a good and healthy living environment, and the right to obtain health services. it becomes the basis of the right to vaccines as part of the right to health. in the meantime, article 28h(2) emphasizes that everyone has the right to get special facilities and treatment to get the same opportunities and benefits to achieve equality and justice. it indicates that the fulfillment of the right to health must be carried out fairly and equitably to get benefits, as the implementation of the vaccination. finally, article 34(3) accounts for the state's responsibility to provide adequate health service facilities. as the provisions are prepared to meet the availability of the vaccines in responding to the pandemic,44 the acceleration of vaccination should be made once the indonesian government had already excessed vaccine availability.45 in other words, the vaccination should be given to those who are more vulnerable to the virus or priority groups. under the difference principle as coined by rawls,46 those vulnerable and unable to access vaccines should have an equal position by being given access to the vaccine first. therefore, those who are vulnerable and do not have access to vaccines should be assisted by the government to access these vaccines. in addition, given social justice and the welfare state, vaccines understood as the right to health should be provided free of charge by the government to fulfill the right to health. it considers indonesia must actively provide and fulfill the basic needs of citizens, which in this case are covid-19 vaccines,47 to reflect the welfare state. to be sure, commercializing vaccines violates the right to health, and it negates the welfare state. 42 it was then amended to minister of health regulation 79/2020. 43 article 3 of the minister of health regulation 28/2020. 44 article 3(1) of the minister of health regulation 28/2020. 45 article 8(1) of the minister of health regulation 10/2021. 46 rawls, supra note 20. 47 andersen, supra note 32. 221 | lentera hukum a policy that does not prioritize vulnerable groups is also not consistent with article 28h(3) of the 1945 constitution. this article outlines that everyone has the right to get special facilities and treatment to get the same opportunities and benefits to achieve equality and justice. the measure that discriminates the vulnerable groups results in discrimination and economic inequality. it should not be a condition where only some citizens with a certain class of economy and those who have the privilege can get vaccinated. vulnerable citizens and those with low economic capacity should obtain access to a fair and just vaccination. therefore, the vaccination should be implemented based on the principles of justice, non-discrimination, equality, free of charge, and under the vaccination phases for those who are vulnerable. c. vaccines as global public goods for herd immunity in indonesia a welfare state must prove that citizens' rights of basic needs are in the hands of the state's responsibility. it is considered an equalization mechanism against the inequality created by the free market in the economy.48 while the right to health is part of public service, it urges vaccines to be considered global public goods, not private commodities.49 it is different from private goods. public goods rely on the perspective of the degree to which they generate spillover effects—the effect of possible interaction of the nontarget group that could be affected by the treatment of the specific target group interaction through social and economic treatment50—or externalities when consumed.51 public goods have to fulfill the requirement of non-rivalrous and non-exclusive, where the marginal cost of the service to an additional user is zero, and the benefits from the goods are available to everyone as 48 suhardin, supra note 33. 49 world health organization, supra note 39. 50 manuela angelucci & vincenzo di maro, “program evaluation and spillover effects: impact-evaluation guidelines” (2010) may inter-american development bank: technical notes 1–38. 51 who commission on macroeconomics and health working group 2 & world health organization, “global public goods for health: the report of working group 2 of the commission on macroeconomics and health” (2002) world health organization. 222 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis nobody can be excluded from consumption once the goods are given.52 thus, the government must interfere by providing goods and services marked by mutual gains. as vaccines become an indispensable commodity in the face of the pandemic, the lack of market efficiency would not become a problem with how the citizens must rely on the government to provide the vaccine. while vaccines are deemed global public goods, to be sure, an urgency for government control on their distribution becomes inevitable. vaccines as public goods answer questions about equity and the importance of the society and its impact on the agenda for health,53 especially under the right to health as a basic right that the government must provide. this agenda is vital as vaccines play a pivotal role in eradicating the current pandemic. regardless of economic, social, and political differences, vaccines are accessible to all under fair equality of opportunity. the mass distribution of vaccines as public goods, consistent with distributive justice, can achieve herd immunity to counter covid-19. iv. covid-19 vaccinations in indonesia the indonesian legislation obliges the government to countermeasure plagues under plague law 05/1984. it can be accomplished through prevention and immunization.54 with regard to covid-19, providing vaccines is indispensable. by definition, a vaccine is an organic agent that evokes a response of the immune system to a particular antigen acquired from an infectious pathogen.55 it is commonly agreed that the only way to end this pandemic is to fulfill the need for a global universal vaccination in the scientific community.56 given that covid-19 is a plague of infectious disease, the government must carry out a vaccination. then, the government 52 laura razzolini, “public goods” (2003) the encyclopedia of public choice 782–784. 53 who commission on macroeconomics and health. working group 2 & world health organization, supra note 51. 54 article 4 of the plague law 05/1984. 55 jennifer czochor & audrey turchick, “focus: vaccine introduction” (2014) 87:4 yale journal of biology and medicine 401–402. 56 muhammad yunus, cam donaldson & jean luc perron, “covid-19 vaccines a global common good” (2020) 1:1 the lancet healthy longevity 6–8. 223 | lentera hukum controls vaccines’ procurement and implementation. in existing regulations, the procurement of vaccines is under the government's control, and the implementation of vaccination is divided into two schemes. the first is the vaccination program entirely under government control, following minister of health regulation 10/2021. the second is the gotong royong vaccination accessible for corporations, including private institutions, to administer independently. a. the vaccination program in planning and procurement one of the aspects of the vaccination program under government control is the procurement of vaccines. the procurement of vaccines consists of providing vaccines, ancillary equipment, and all necessary logistics and the downstream distribution of vaccines.57 through the minister of health, the government can determine the types and amount of vaccines needed in the procurement.58 the purpose of the procurement of vaccines is to fulfill the national need following the national vaccine requirement plan that the minister of health also determines.59 the government’s control is manifested through the assignment of state-owned enterprises.60 the assignment of state-owned enterprises is because of enterprises' function to carry out public benefits. the minister authorizes bio farma company as one of the state-owned enterprises obliged to carry out public benefits.61 the procurement is executed through collaboration with international institutions.62 this collaboration comprises the research and development of vaccines, excluding the ancillary equipment needed.63 by referring to the 57 article 3 of the presidential regulation 99/2020 on the procurement of vaccines and execution of vaccination for covid-19 pandemic response as amended with presidential regulation 14/2021. 58 ibid, article 2. 59 article 6 of the minister of health regulation 10/2021 on the execution of vaccination for covid-19 pandemic response. 60 article 4 of the presidential regulation 99/2020. 61 muhammad insa ansari, “penugasan pemerintah pada badan usaha milik negara sektor ketenagalistrikan dalam perspektif hukum korporasi” (2018) 4:3 padjadjaran jurnal ilmu hukum (journal of law) 551–568. 62 article 4 of presidential regulation 99/2020. 63 ibid. 224 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis welfare state, the government is wholly responsible for procuring the vaccines as a commodity that is needed for the right to the public's health. another aspect of the vaccination under government control is the execution of vaccination. minister of health regulation 10/2021 stipulates that the central government has the main power for executing vaccination.64 general aspects of executing vaccination under the government's full control include planning needs and targets of vaccination, distributing vaccines, ancillary pieces of equipment, logistics, collaborating on the execution of vaccination, and the registration and report of vaccination.65 the government's planning of vaccines is essential to proceed effectively and reach 67% of the population.66 this target is under the scientific consensus that recommends covid-19 vaccinations to target 55% – 82% of the population to develop herd immunity.67 there is no detailed description that herd immunity is a particular threshold proportion of immune individuals that should lead to a decline in the incidence of infection, or others refer to it as a pattern of immunity that should protect a population from an invasion of a new infection.68 it emphasizes the increase of individual immunity to affect pathogen transmission dynamics and the success of vaccination campaigns for entire host populations for the population-scale immunity.69 herd immunity threshold is determined by mathematical models that can differentiate from varieties of infectious agents and the geography of the places. in general, herd 64 article 3 of the minister of health regulation 10/2021. 65 ibid, article 5. 66 office of assistant to deputy cabinet secretary for state documents & translation, “data of covid-19 vaccine recipients collected through integrated information system”, (2020), online: <https://setkab.go.id/en/data-of-covid-19-vaccinerecipients-collected-through-integrated-information-system>. 67 sarah schaffer deroo, natalie j pudalov & linda y fu, “planning for a covid-19 vaccination program” (2020) 323:24 jama journal of the american medical association 2458–2459. 68 paul fine, ken eames & david l heymann, “herd immunity: a rough guide” (2011) 52:7 clinical infectious diseases 911–916. 69 michael ab naafs, “herd immunity: a realistic target?” (2018) 9:2 biomedical journal of scientific & technical research 1–5. 225 | lentera hukum immunity can only be achieved if it covers 55-82% of the population.70 therefore, this population-based effort for herd immunity refers to the principle of equality that reflects the welfare state. vaccines that will be distributed as public goods will be accomplished through a balance by the state's role for the rights of the individuals under the right to health. given a possible risk of short-term immunity with the newly emerging covid-19 virus, the extent of reinfection and its consequences for human and population immunity is not yet understood. these observations are consistent with the general image of incomplete or temporary immunity to the newer virus. certain newer virus variants will also restrict the potency and length of immunity conferred by a primary emerging virus infection, limiting the level of defense in individuals and populations.71 the eradication of covid-19 would only be feasible if vaccines, with high effectiveness and protection and large distribution, will keep populations above the herd immunity threshold. herd immunity influences the infection in the population to protect each person immunized. it also prevents the transmission of infection to others. there is a necessity for the vaccination to be done on the vulnerable group first. it is essential to map them out to prioritize the vaccination upon them first. though there is no set criterion for developing the disease, it can be calculated which groups are at greater risk. it includes those in older age groups, minorities by racial and social category, including ethnic minorities, low-income groups, or those with underlying health problems, such as diabetes, obesity, or other medical therapies.72 therefore, the government is responsible for ensuring basic human rights and welfare services to the more susceptible persons to get the same opportunity for being facilitated first. accordingly, minister of health regulation 10/2021 has set priority groups for the covid-19 vaccine recipients. covid-19 vaccines are prioritized for workers at the forefront of covid-19 pandemic response, elderly 70 steven sanche, et al., “high contagiousness and rapid spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2” (2020) 26:7 emerging infectious diseases 1470–1477. 71 ibid. 72 public health england, disparities in the risk and outcomes of covid-19 (2020). 226 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis citizens, public officers, and vulnerable groups in geospatial, social, and economy, and other members of the society.73 those within the priority groups are set to receive covid-19 vaccines consecutively. this policy is in line with the consideration that vaccines have to be distributed under social justice.74 the setting of priority groups aims to maximize the benefits of vaccination. although the priority groups of early vaccination are already stipulated in the law, the minister can amend the criteria for the priority group of recipients of covid-19 vaccines. it is made after observing the recommendation from the indonesian technical advisory group on immunization and the considerations of the committee for handling covid-19 and national economic recovery. 75 therefore, there is vagueness, and no certainty of the priority groups getting the vaccine as the minister can change it at any time. b. the gotong royong vaccination scheme: proposals and challenges whereas most aspects of the covid-19 vaccination are in the government’s full control, current regulations provide private sector opportunities for administering the vaccination. in the context of health service, private sector engagement (pse) is a purposeful, systematic collaboration between the government and private sector to develop national health services forward beyond independent policies and programs.76 private sector engagement aims to upgrade the quality of health services and broaden the reach of health accesses.77 in the context of covid-19 vaccinations, private sector engagement may also be applied. minister of health regulation 10/2021 offers the opportunity for the private sector to administer vaccination through the independent scheme called the gotong royong vaccination. it is the scheme for employees and their 73 article 8 of the minister of health regulation 10/2021. 74 harald-schmidt, supra note 11. 75 article 8 of the minister of health regulation 10/2021. 76 who, engagement of private/nongovernmental health providers in immunization service delivery (geneva: world health organization, 2017). 77 ibid. 227 | lentera hukum families, including individuals financed by corporations.78 the independent vaccination aims to accelerate the completion of the national vaccination program. it is open for corporations that are financially capable of executing the vaccination at their own expense, including the purchase of vaccines from the government.79 nevertheless, the individual recipients of vaccination are not charged with any fee.80 there are a few conditions in the administration of the gotong royong vaccination. the types of vaccines administered for said vaccination services have to be different from those used for the vaccination.81 gotong royong vaccination services can only be administered in private health facilities apart from the ones used for the vaccination program.82 in contrast, it does not conform with the welfare state. the gotong royong vaccination stipulated in the ministry of health regulation widens the chance of private indonesian or foreign companies to fulfill the supply,83 given the number of targets both for the vaccination program and gotong royong vaccination.84 the payment is imposed on the legal entity that buys the vaccine and uses it for employees.85 at a glance, it looks fine. however, it can result in systemic discrimination for other legal entities incapable of paying for their employees' vaccination. also, it can result in disparities that imply that the poor cannot help themselves. there is no further information on the mechanism to deal with that problem. the regulation itself does not specify many details on the system, which will be the factor for the recipients of the gotong royong vaccine, as mentioned in the previous parts. to address covid-19, the government applies vaccines and avoiding transmission between infectious and vulnerable individuals by non 78 ibid. 79 ratih waseso, “jubir vaksinasi covid-19 sebut vaksinasi gotong royong tak dapat subsidi”, (2021), online: kontan.co.id <https://nasional.kontan.co.id/news/jubirvaksinasi-covid-19-sebut-vaksinasi-gotong-royong-tak-dapat-subsidi>. 80 article 1 of the minister of health regulation 10/2021. 81 ibid, article 7. 82 ibid, article 22. 83 ibid, article 1. 84 ibid, article 6. 85 ibid. 228 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis pharmaceutical treatments.86 when infected and vulnerable individuals are not homogeneously blended, the herd immunity threshold for the entire population is smaller than under homogeneous mixing. one illustrative analysis of variable interaction rates within and between citizens in various age groups shows how a herd immunity threshold of 60 percent could be lowered to 44 percent.87 in epidemiology, the more significant fraction of immune individuals results in the smaller the risk of the infection outbreak. citizens acquiring immunity to infection are covered directly and are also prohibited from spreading the infection to others.88 the independent vaccination policy lacks the guarantee of citizens’ rights under the welfare state. to have effective herd immunity, a proper pharmaceutical approach includes a vaccine becomes essential. therefore, the proper and just distribution of the vaccine is indispensable to avoid the exponent spread and infection against the healthcare system.89 so too, public communication regarding covid-19 is also vital to urge a better system to implement the vaccination. v. covid-19 vaccinations in other countries covid-19 vaccinations are not only carried out in indonesia but also worldwide. some countries use a public vaccination scheme. some also use a public vaccination scheme in collaboration with the private sector.90 countries that use the full public vaccination scheme are israel, bhutan, sweden, norway, denmark, and other scandinavian countries. meanwhile, countries that use public-private vaccination schemes are indonesia and india. this section will compare how public vaccination and public-private 86 the royal society, “herd immunity in the epidemiology and control of covid-19”. 87 tom britton, frank ball & pieter trapman, “a mathematical model reveals the influence of population heterogeneity on herd immunity to sars-cov-2” (2020) 369:6505 science 846–849. 88 the royal society, supra note 86. 89 sanche, et al, supra note 70. 90 this scheme means that the covid-19 vaccination program collaborates with private parties such as companies to provide vaccines to citizens. this can be seen from the cooperation vaccination scheme in indonesia, but not all vaccines are free of charge to citizens. 229 | lentera hukum vaccination are carried out in other countries relevant to the indonesian context. then, it will describe and analyze which system is better and should be implemented in carrying out covid-19 vaccinations. as previously reported, israel, bhutan, sweden, norway, denmark, and other scandinavian countries use a public vaccination system. this study considers israel and norway that are success in implementing public vaccination system. also, it exemplifies india that has good system in applying the division of covid-19 private sectors. a. israeli vaccination policy israel is a country that adheres to the welfare state.91 it refers to the israeli policies that provide subsidies to education, health, and social welfare— social security.92 this israeli welfare state is a universal model mainly consisting of social insurance programs. the primary source of insurance comes from countries managed by the national insurance institution,93 and israel defines welfare states through the vaccination program. israel has signed contracts with many pharmaceutical companies to produce covid19 vaccines.94 israel started covid-19 vaccinations on december 20, 2020.95 as of may 2020, there had been 5 million citizens fully vaccinated.96 about 62.8 percent of citizens received the first dose of covid-19 vaccines.97 meanwhile, 58.9 percent or more than half of citizens had been fully vaccinated in the second dose of vaccine.98 israel has undergone the fastest in vaccinating, placing it as the successful country to implement covid-19 vaccinations. 91 john gal, “immigration and the categorical welfare state in israel” (2008) 82:4 social service review 639–661. 92 john gal & shavit madhala, john gal and shavit madhala, israel’s social welfare system: an overview (jerusalem: taub center, 2018). 93 john gal, supra note 107 at 646. 94 rosen, waitzberg & israeli, supra note 17. 95 ibid. 96 our world in data, “coronavirus (covid-19) vaccinations”, (2021), online: <https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=~isr>. 97 ibid. 98 ibid. 230 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis initial targets for vaccine recipients are citizens aged 60 years and older, residents of nursing homes, health workers, and citizens with severe medical conditions—especially respiratory diseases.99 the main objective of this priority scheme is to reduce the death and severe illness associated with covid-19, particularly for vulnerable groups. the other goal is that the vulnerable community has been vaccinated to open up economic activities without risking health risks to the community.100 in addition, vaccinating vulnerable groups and health workers will not burden the health system. this success can be achieved due to several factors ranging from the centralized government system, organizational system, technology, and logistics of the four large-scale and national israeli health institutions to the simple, broad, and clear criteria in determining the priority of vaccine recipients.101 the first factor is that israel is a centralized country. the regions in israel do not have the authority to deal with public health. there is no need for excessive coordination to take policies related to public health despite providing assurance and clarity in implementing vaccination.102 the next factor concerns the implementation of covid-19 vaccinations by the four israeli health institutions. vaccination in israel is carried out in full by the government with the help of four israeli health agencies103 that provide free national health insurance.104 all citizens have the right to get free national health insurance as the government’s obligations under national health insurance act.105 this act states that health insurance must be based on the principles of justice, equality, and mutual assistance. the four 99 ibid, at 9. 100 ibid. 101 ibid, at 3-4. 102 ibid, at 5. 103 the four israeli health institutions are kupat holim clalit, kupat holim maccabi, kupat holim leumit, and kupat holim meuhedet. besides that, every israeli citizen who registers with one of these health institutions must be registered. ruth waitzberg & bruce rosen, “international health care system profiles: israel," (2020), online: the commonwealth fund <https://www.commonwealthfund.org/ international-health-policy-center/countries/israel>. 104 all residents of israel have the freedom to choose between the four major health institutions, but what is interesting is that the health institute itself is non-profit. lihat: bruce rosen, ruth waitzberg, and avi israeli, supra note 17 at 6. 105 ibid. 231 | lentera hukum institutions have been highly trained in administering vaccinations because they hold influenza vaccinations every year. moreover, they also have medical records or patient data for epidemiological policymaking.106 b. norwegian vaccination policy norway is another country that also applies a public vaccination system under the welfare state. the welfare state in norway is universal,107 so that the vaccination is accomplished through the norwegian vaccination system. the central government has the primary role before it hands down to the local governments. the local governments carry out vaccinations to residents in their areas.108 in determining who should receive the vaccine, the norwegian health institute determines that only vulnerable groups get priority vaccination first, including the elderly, vulnerable groups, and health workers.109 the vulnerable community is prioritized first due to limited vaccines.110 also, this vaccination is entirely free.111 it is different from the scheme in indonesia, where someone through a company can get the vaccine in advance by paying for the vaccine. in addition, norwegian citizens also have the right to determine what vaccine they want. insofar, under the public vaccination scheme, norway has given its first dose of vaccine to 1,5 million citizens. meanwhile, the residents who received the second dose were 600 thousand citizens.112 given that norway's vaccination system prioritizes 106 bruce rosen, ruth waitzberg, and avi israeli, supra note 17 at 6. 107 christiani, supra note 18. 108 norwegian institute of public health, “coronavirus vaccine information for the public," (2020), online: <https://www.fhi.no/en/id/vaccines/coronavirusimmunisation-programme/coronavirus-vaccine/>. 109 the priority for vaccine recipients starts from citizens aged over 85 years, aged 75-84 years, and aged 65-74 years. some citizens have certain severe medical conditions such as diabetes, chronic lung disease, and down syndrome. health workers are in the last rank, and vaccinations for the health workers are carried out in parallel with vulnerable groups. norwegian institute of public health, “who will get the coronavirus vaccine?”, (2021), online: <https://www.fhi.no/en/id/vaccines/ coronavirusimmunisation-programme/who-will-get-coronavirus-vaccine-first/>. 110 ibid. 111 ibid. 112 ibid. 232 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis vulnerable groups, distributive justice becomes the main feature in supporting successful vaccination. c. indian vaccination policy in comparison to indonesia's policy on vaccination plans, india is one of the few countries that apply the division of covid-19 private sectors. india's central government established the indian national covid-19 vaccination campaign. august 2020, under the chairmanship of vk paul, member (health) of niti aayog, a task force called the national expert group on vaccine administration for covid-19 was established to decide different aspects ranging from conceptualization to last-mile distribution.113 in january 2021, the indian government began vaccinating healthcare and frontline workers.114 on march 1, 2021, vaccinations were extended to those above 60 years and those above 45 years with comorbidities, which then changes starting april 1, 2021.115 all above 45 years were eligible to be vaccinated. however, on may 1, 2021, the eligibility was lowered to aged 18, and that all citizens aged 18-44 in india have to register on the government's cowin platform to get vaccinated.116 the central government has the sole authority to purchase and administer vaccines before the new regulation's implementation in may 2021. the central government was paying inr 150 per dosage, exclusive of gst, for serum institute and bharat biotech vaccines.117 in government hospitals, the vaccines were free, while private hospitals charged inr 250 per dosage. the hospital kept inr 100 towards its costs of that fee, and the central government was given inr 150. however, after may 2021, private hospitals and other private entities can also purchase vaccines in the open market and 113 bloomberg, “the who, what, when of vaccination in india: bq explains," (2021), online: <https://www.bloombergquint.com/coronavirus-outbreak/indias-covidvaccine-policy-all-you-need-to-know>. 114 cowin, “cowin, online <https://www.cowin.gov.in>”, online: cowin <https:// www.cowin.gov.in>. 115 ibid. 116 ibid. 117 bloomberg, supra note 113. 233 | lentera hukum provide vaccinations. the new vaccine policy allows states and private entities also to procure and distribute vaccines. from them, serum institute and bharat biotech are charging a higher price.118 india's covid vaccination center (cvc) released the liberalized pricing and accelerated national covid-19 vaccination. the center said that every month 50 percent of the total central drugs laboratory (cdl)cleared vaccine doses would be procured by the government of india, which will be made available to the states free of cost, as was being done earlier.119 out of the 50% non-government of india quota, half will go to the state governments and the other half to the private sector.120 as stated in the health ministry's affidavit filed in the supreme court, the reasoning is that 25 percent of vaccination through the private sector will encourage improved access and minimize the operational burden on government vaccination facilities.121 as a result, a veritable free market for vaccines has been developed and manufactured with public and private funding. at private hospitals, a single dose can now cost up to inr 1,500. some opposition parties have said the federal government had abdicated its responsibility, opening up debilitating competition among states. states would spend twice as much for a dosage of covishield—usd 4—as the federal government does, and four times as much for covaxin—usd 8. this came after the two corporations made a philanthropic effort by lowering premiums for governments. states are now vying for limited supplies with private clinics and will push the prices on to their patients.122 consequently, the number of vaccinated citizens compared to the number of citizens who should be vaccinated is wide in the margin. as of may 18, 2021, the number of india's citizens vaccinated according to 118 ibid. 119 rema nagarajan & shankar raghuraman, “covid-19: very little of 25% vaccination quota for private hospitals flowing to rural india”, (2021), online: the times of india <https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/very-little-of-25-vaccination-quota-forprivate-hospitals-flowing-to-rural-india/articleshow/82722965.cms>. 120 ibid. 121 ibid. 122 nikhil inamdar & aparna alluri, “how india’s vaccine drive went horribly wrong," (2021), online: bbc news <https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-57007004>. 234 | covid-19 vaccinations and the right to health in indonesia: social justice analysis our world in data is only 10,45 percent.123 only about 145 million citizens have been vaccinated bound to receive the service.124 it proves how the market prices concerning the indian policy open up to the private sectors for vaccine procurement. from this comparison, the public vaccination scheme is very much under the welfare state and distributive justice. it fulfills the right to public health by providing full and free vaccines to its citizens, and the country prioritizes vaccination for vulnerable citizens. this is different from the private scheme, which does not provide free vaccines and does not prioritize vaccinations for vulnerable citizens. vi. conclusion the gotong royong vaccination scheme is incompatible with distributive justice and the welfare state. gotong royong vaccination results in injustice, discrimination, and economic inequality because it only provides certain privileged citizens access to vaccines. the government should provide vaccines free of charge to fulfill access and rights to public health, particularly for vulnerable groups. meanwhile, gotong royong vaccination does not have priority, ignoring vulnerable groups from the virus. it contradicts the welfare state and distributive justice because the welfare state is measured from whether the state has fulfilled the rights to the health of citizens by providing vaccines in full and for free. also, the indicator for the fulfillment of distributive justice is whether the state prioritizes vulnerable groups to get vaccines rather than giving vaccines to citizens who are not at significant risk. compared to other countries such as israel, norway, and india, the public vaccination scheme in indonesia remains under the welfare state and distributive justice. however, it is different from the private scheme, which does not provide free vaccines and does not prioritize vaccinations for vulnerable groups. therefore, the indonesian government should amend the vaccination policy to focus more on the public vaccination scheme. 123 our world in data, “coronavirus (covid-19) vaccinations”, (2021), online: <https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=~ind>. 124 ibid. 235 | lentera hukum acknowledgments none. competing interest the authors declared that they have no competing interests. references aisyah, dewi nur, et al., "a spatial-temporal description of the sarscov-2 infections in indonesia during the first six months of the outbreak" 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the history of legal education in india, when the legal aid movement and various legal aid committees’ reports started to draw attention to the importance of experiential learning, or learning on the job, in legal education� the main aim of involving law students in the national legal aid movement was to make them feel more responsible for the considerable part of the indian population who, because of their socio-economic status, couldn’t access justice� the history of how india’s clinical programs were introduced has a lot in common with the history of clinical programs in other parts of the world� there was a desire to create a pool of lawyers, who would serve as soldiers in the fight for social justice for underprivileged groups in the country� while some prestigious universities started their clinical programs in the 1970s, most of the regulators of legal education took a long time to include clinical papers in the curriculum� in 1997 the bar council of india introduced four practical papers in the curriculum� the spirit of public service, and the widespread poverty in a country, has always been central to the push for clinical programs everywhere� but in india, the legal aid committees’ and other statutory bodies’ reports calling for clinical programs to support social justice, were always ignored� the national knowledge commission’s working group on legal education specifically mentioned the need to * this article is based on the author’s ll�m dissertation submitted to the west bengal national university of juridical sciences, india in 2012� author is thankful to prof� manoj kumar sinha, prof� jane schukoske, prof� m� r� k� prasad, prof� ajay pandey and prof� anirban chakraborty for their guidance, and the anonymous reviewers of ijcle for their comments on the earlier draft� author is indebted to his friend, ms lois kapila, for copy editing� 322 international journal of clinical legal education issue 19 introduce students to issues relating to poverty, social change and social exclusion, through clinical legal education�1 after the introductory section, the second section discusses the introduction of clinical programs with their roots in the search for social justice in the united states and india� the third section discusses the continuous deliberation by various bodies, commissions and committees about the need to introduce clinical programs with a social justice perspective in india� the fourth section discusses the social justice-based clinical programs in china and south africa� this section tries to highlight some of the clinical models focused on serving underprivileged groups, that have been introduced and implemented in these two countries and which ~ after local modifications ~ could serve as a template for programs in indian law schools� the fifth section tries to search for clinical models best suited to india with reference to clinical programs in china and south africa� several examples of clinical activities in a few indian law schools have been highlighted in this chapter to explain these models’ effectiveness and suitability for indian circumstances� the sixth section sets out some suggestions for law schools and stakeholders of legal education in india as to how to further the country’s social justice mission of clinical legal education� ii. justice mission of clinical legal education and india a. introduction “what do generations signify? growth in self reflection and wisdom and capacity to serve the underprivileged.” prof� upendra baxi 2 in an interview about legal education reform, prof� upendra baxi expressed his concern that there is no new generation of lawyers coming up in india who will work to help the underprivileged access justice� the reason behind this fear might be the failure of the law school curriculum to put the values of public service and social justice at the centre of young law student’s education, instead encouraging the growth of a corporate culture�3 there should be a teaching method within the law school framework that will inculcate a spirit of public service, and help young law ‘students to confront the uncertainties and challenges of problem solving for clients in fora that often challenge precepts regarding the rule of law and justice’.4 clinical legal education aims at exactly this sort of teaching method and spirit of public service� prof� n� r� madhava menon refers to ‘clinical legal education as a pedagogic technique is its focus on the learner and the process of learning’5 not to create future lawyers who are ‘mere craftsman manipulating 1 national knowledge commission, report of the working group on legal education, ¶ 3�3�2 (2007), available at http://www�knowledgecommission�gov�in/downloads/documents/wg_legal�pdf (last visited on jun� 04, 2013)� 2 interview with mylaw�net, youtube, http://www�youtube�com/watch?v=0y2at-rk6-e (last visited on jun� 04, 2013)� 3 id. 4 margaret martin barry et al�, clinical education for this millennium: the third wave, 7 clinical l� rev� 1, 38 (2000)� 5 n� r� madhava menon, foreword, in a handbook on clinical legal education (n� r� madhava menon ed�, 1998)� 323 advocacy skills in the traditional role of conflict resolution in court’�6 avrom sheer emphasizes that understanding, imagination and the ethics of justice are central to clinical legal education�7 accordingly, clinical legal education plays an important role in making access to justice a reality for many low-income people� it does so not only by exposing law students to the legal problems that the poor face but also by allowing students to experience an obligation to find substantive and creative ways to respond to unmet legal needs�8 this chapter analyzes the social justice orientation of clinical legal education in the united states of america and how the legal realism movement influenced the social justice mission� it concludes with its impact on the indian clinical legal education� b. the ‘social justice’ 9 orientation in the u.s. advocates of clinical legal education lacked any specific, detailed vision during the first fifty years of its existence in the u�s�10 they campaigned for skills training of the students and providing access to justice for the underprivileged and were supported by the legal realism movement�11 the neo-realists’ idea of developing future lawyers as policy-makers led to the addition of new courses like professional ethics into the law school curriculum�12 but the movement for social relevance in the law school curriculum in the unites states of america in the 1960s developed clinical legal education’s primary objective ‘to use law as an instrument for social justice and change’� 13 the idea was to represent indigent clients as there is a different market of legal professionals to represent paying clients� clinical legal education, therefore, should be strictly focused on social justice concerns, which would not only be helpful for indigent clients but also for students given exposure to real world incidents�14 this movement of social justice education is considered a return to the roots of clinical legal education�15 thus ‘clinics play a critical role, both in terms of educating students to their professional 6 n� r� madhava menon, clinical legal education: concept and concerns, in id� 7 avrom sherr, clinical legal education at warwick and the skills movement: was clinic a creature of its time? in frontiers of legal scholarship 108, 119 (geoffrey wilson ed�, 1995)� 8 margaret martin barry, supra note 4, at 15� 9 justice has no absolute meaning because it, too, like all knowledge, is grounded in context� at a minimum, however, those of us who dedicate ourselves to social justice must ask ourselves if our proposed action as a lawyer will support and increase human dignity� see jane h� aiken, provocateurs for justice, 7 clinical l� rev� 287, 296 (2000-2001) (i believe that teaching law students to be socially conscious practitioners is at the heart of clinical education and should be at the heart of a good legal education� equal access to justice cannot be achieved if legal services are not made available to the poor and subordinated and if the barriers they face are not challenged� for many schools, community service and social justice are very much an aspect of the mission of clinical legal education); see antoinette sedillo lopez, learning through service in a clinical setting: the effect of specialization on social justice and skills training, 7 clinical l� rev� 307, 310 (2000-2001)� 10 margaret martin barry supra note 4, at 9� 11 margaret martin barry supra note 4, at 12� 12 harold d� lasswell and myres s� mcdougal, legal education and public policy: professional training in the public interest, 52 yale l� j� 203, 206 (1942-1943)� 13 margaret martin barry supra note 4, at 13� 14 martin guggenheim, fee generating clinics: can we bear the costs?, 1 clinical l� rev� 677,679 (1994-1995)� 15 see generally nina tarr, current issues in clinical legal education, 37 how� l� j� 31 (1993); see generally jane harris aiken, striving to teach “justice, fairness and morality”, 4 clinical l� rev� 1 (1997)� empowering the underprivileged: the social justice mission for clinical legal education in india 324 international journal of clinical legal education issue 19 obligations and sensitizing them to the needs of people’�16 therefore, the goal of social justice education is to ensure equal participation for all visualizing the equitable distribution of wealth�17 clinical legal education promotes social justice in three ways18� firstly, it promotes access to justice for the underprivileged by representing them in various forums� secondly, it introduces law students to ideas of public service responsibility or pro-bono work� finally, it creates an understanding of the relationship between law and social justice among the law students� all three ways have some effect on the law student’s education about social justice values, because the unusual experience gained is different from, and complements, the student’s prior understanding of law and legal procedure�19 the 1992 report of the committee on the future of in-house clinics of the american association of law schools urges clinicians to assist the students in pro-bono works�20 the benefits of instructions on social justice responsibility of legal profession by involving students to legal aid activities will help them to self identify themselves�21 c. legal aid and social justice orientation for clinical legal education in india teaching students that they are responsible for their actions and society has always been at the heart of clinical legal education�22 in india, recognition of the difficulties that the majority of the population faced when they tried to access justice through legal institutions kick started the free legal aid movement� the ministry of law and justice formed three committees in the 1970s to come up with solutions to help deal with the struggle that many faced trying to access justice� all three committees recommended involving law schools in the country’s legal aid mission, but clinical work was only introduced in the curriculum later� in 1973, the expert committee on legal aid23 proposed involving law teachers and students in legal aid programmes� they characterized legal aid services as ‘every step or action by which legal institutions are sensitised to respond to the socio-economic realities’ of india�24 the expert committee’s ‘idea of linking legal aid and law schools had a practical element; given the extent of the need for legal services for the poor and the limited resources available, this made perfect sense’.25 the juridicare committee on legal aid26 submitted its report in 1977 echoing the ideas of the 16 martin guggenheim, supra note 14, at 683; see also jane h� aiken, provocateurs for justice, 7 clinical l� rev� 287, 296 (2000-2001)� 17 jane h� aiken, id� 18 see jon c� dubin, clinical design for social justice imperatives, 51 s�m�u� l� rev� 1461,1475-76 (1997-1998)� 19 id�, at 1478� 20 report of the committee on the future of the in-house clinic, 42 j� legal educ� 508,515 (1992)� 21 frank s� bloch and iqbal s� ishar, legal aid, public service and clinical legal education: future directions from india and the united states, 12 mich� j� int’l l� 92, 108 (1990-1991)� 22 redlich, the moral value of clinical legal education: a reply, 33 j� legal educ� 613,616 (1983)� 23 see generally govt� of india, ministry of law, justice and company affairs, processual justice to the people: report of the expert committee on legal aid (1973)� (on file with the author)� 24 id. at 180� 25 frank s� bloch and m� r� k� prasad, institutionalizing a social justice mission for clinical legal education: crossnational currents from india and the united states, 13 clinical l� rev� 165,169 (2006-2007)� 26 see generally generally govt� of india, ministry of law, justice and company affairs, equal justice-social justice: report of the juridicare committee (1977)� 325 previous expert committee and formulated more focused recommendations relating to legal aid schemes� these were more focused on reaching the most helpless members of society and identifying the broadest possible types of assistance that could be made available to them under the law, including education, community development and community organizing�27 along the same lines, in 1981, the committee for implementing legal aid schemes insisted that court-oriented legal aid programs alone cannot provide social justice in india� the committee concentrated more on the promotion of legal literacy, the organization of legal aid camps to carry legal services to people’s doorsteps, training paralegals to support legal aid programs, establishing legal aid clinics in law schools and universities, and bringing class actions through public interest litigations�28 d. conclusion an important part of the clinical methodology is its emphasis on experimental learning and other interactive teaching techniques that give students a sense of participating in the process as adults and draw them into the role of a lawyer�29 thus legal educators in india had a responsibility to improve the quality of legal education through the legal services clinical method of law teaching, which will help to encourage a sense of justice, equity and public service responsibility among young law students� they have failed to do so� iii. clinical legal education in india a. introduction the idea of involving law schools in legal aid can be seen as the first attempt to introduce some kind of clinical legal education framework in india� the legal aid movement of the 1960s in india ‘assumed that law schools would have a significant role in dispensing legal services’�30 this idea has been reflected in various reports relating to legal aid and judicial reform dating back to the 1970s� reform was considered necessary to foster the country’s nascent democracy and help achieve the goals of good governance, expressed in the constitution of india, by developing competent legal minds�31 in india, after long deliberations, the bar council of india introduced four clinical papers in 1997� the papers introduced are far from comprehensive and do not place much emphasis on the need for young lawyers to struggle for social justice, one of the original aims of clinical legal education� this chapter examines the legal aid orientation of clinical legal education in india and various other reports on legal education reform� it concludes with the need to use law school clinics to further the cause of social justice in india� 27 id., at 52-65� 28 frank s� bloch, supra note 25, at 175� 29 see frank s� bloch, the andragogical basis of clinical legal education, 35 vand� l� rev� 321, 322-23 (1982); see generally bradway, some distinctive features of a legal aid clinic course, 1 u� chi� l� rev� 469, 469-73 (1934); gorman, clinical legal education: a prospectus, 44 s� cal� l� rev� 537, 551-55 (1971); meltsner & schrag, report from a clepr colony, 76 colum� l� rev� 581, 584-87 (1976)� 30 frank s� bloch, supra note 21, at 96 31 see generally a�s� anand, legal education in india past, present and future, 3 s�c�c� (jour�) 1 (1998) (india)� empowering the underprivileged: the social justice mission for clinical legal education in india 326 international journal of clinical legal education issue 19 b. the bay of good hope in 1994, a three-member committee made up of justice a� m� ahmadi, justice b�n� kirpal and justice m� jaganaddha rao dealt in detail with law school teaching methods�32 the committee made important suggestions relating to pedagogy and the more practical side of legal education� the committee’s suggestions marked the starting point for the introduction of a clinical teaching curriculum into the modern indian legal education system� it was after this committee’s report that the bar council of india introduced four practical papers into the curriculum, which was viewed at the time as a ‘big step toward introducing clinical legal education formally into the curriculum and law schools have been required to introduce the four papers since academic year 1998-99’.33 these papers concentrated on specific issues of legal skill training: paper i addresses instruction in litigation skills, including pre-trial preparation and trial practice; paper ii focuses on legal drafting skills and pleading; paper iii covers professional ethics and bar-bench relations; and paper iv introduces legal aid work and public interest litigations� however, most legal educators see the papers as providing only limited support for including instruction in social justice lawyering in the new curriculum or for providing social justice to indigent clients�34 finally, the bar council of india’s mandatory directive to introduce the four practical papers into the curriculum was welcomed only half-heartedly by law school authorities as their staff lacked the skills and experience necessary to teach the course properly or ‘simply put, law faculty neither had a vision for, nor properly understood, the value of these papers.’ 35 nevertheless, the law commission report of 2002 emphasized further the professional skills and values future lawyers need to develop at law school�36 though their central focus on the mac-crate report 37 to be introduced into the curriculum safely by modifying it as per the india circumstances, but some of the legal educators find it unacceptable to start teaching of skills training into the law schools as india need more on to concentrate into the social justice movement elaborated by the legal aid committees in 1970s�38 the bar council of india adopted a resolution, based on the recommendations of the supreme court’s three member committee, to set up legal aid clinics in every law school to provide inexpensive and speedy service to underprivileged groups in society�39 this was a mandatory 32 frank s� bloch, supra note 25, at 179; see also bar council of india, 3 member committee report on reform of legal education (2009), available at http://www�barcouncilofindia�org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/3-membercommittee-report-on-legal-education�pdf (last visited on jun� 04, 2013)� 33 bar council of india resolution no 04/1997; see also frank s� bloch, supra note 57, at 180� 34 frank s� bloch, supra note 25, at 180� 35 id. 36 the law commission of india, 184th report on the legal education and professional training and proposal for amendments to the advocates act, 1961 and the university grants commission act, 1956 (2002), available at http:// lawcommissionofindia�nic�in/ (last visited on jun� 04, 2013)� 37 american bar association, 1992 38 see frank s� bloch, supra note 25, at 187-195� 39 see 3 member committee report, supra note 32, at 4� 327 requirement, reflected in the bar council of india’s inspection manual 2010�40 it serves as a starting point for a formal system, giving law schools a very good opportunity to build their legal aid programs in line with the requirements of the local community� it affirmed the need for a multi-client-based legal aid program for every community�41 the vision statement of the then law minister on legal education reform played an important role in encouraging the bar council of india to take this initiative�42 another important authority which bears responsibility for regulating legal aid services nationally, the national legal services authority (nalsa), has come up with an important set of rules in line with the bar council of india’s mandatory clinic resolution in 2011� nalsa issued the national legal services (legal aid clinics) regulation on 10th august, 2011�43 this regulation in reality serves as the implementation mechanism for legal aid clinics in cooperation with the local authorities� another planning commission sub-committee, which focused on how to get higher learning institutions involved in community development, came up with effective recommendations for planning and funding�44 the sub-committee came up with several ways to boost academic institutions’ community engagement through networking, funding and policy change� first, it proposed an alliance for community engagement, an active membership-based network to promote ideas and practices of community engagement throughout india, and a funding and policy committee, the autonomous empowered committee on community engagement, to review funding proposals, design schemes to encourage community engagement, and set policy at the level of planning commission and university grants commission� next, it recommended that higher education institutions be given more curricular flexibility in offering programs, courses and initiatives that are more relevant to the needs of society, and that due recognition for public intellectual engagement be given to faculty, students and institutions� lastly, it recommended that a few educational institutions are 40 bar council of india, inspection manual 2010: guideline for inspection of bar council of india of university/ institution, available at http://www�barcouncilofindia�org/about/legal-education/inspection-manual-2010 (last visited on jun� 04, 2013)� 41 bar council of india, inspection manual 2010: guideline for inspection of bar council of india of university/ institution 36, available at http://www�barcouncilofindia�org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/inspection-manual�pdf� (g. legal aid clinic 24. legal aid clinic: each institution shall have at least one community-based legal aid clinic which shall function under a faculty, preferably who is or was practicing law. 25. link up with district legal aid center: each district has a legal aid program under the chairman of the district judge. guidance would be required to establish links with the program and also with lok adalat organized under the scheme. inspection has to be used as a means of participatory development especially of those institutions away from professional facilities so that professional skills can develop at every level.) 42 the bar council of india, the law minister announces vision for legal educational reform, see http://www� barcouncilofindia�org/law-ministers-vision-statement-for-second-generation-reforms-in-legal-education/ (last visited on jun� 04, 2013)� 43 national legal services authority, national legal services authority (legal aid clinics) regulations 2011, available at http://nalsa�gov�in/schemes�html (last visited on jun� 04, 2013)� 44 rajesh tandon, re-affirming civil engagement of education (2011), see blog at http://priaeducation�org/ rajeshtandon-blog/� empowering the underprivileged: the social justice mission for clinical legal education in india 328 international journal of clinical legal education issue 19 set up to focus on community-based and common knowledge traditions�45 c. conclusion the regulatory authorities overseeing legal education, and other administrative bodies, have taken many initiatives to increase access to justice for the underprivileged� but bureaucratic hassles, and the indifference of almost all of the 950 legal institutions in india, have prevented these initiatives from being properly implemented� the report of the law school based legal aid clinics, 2011 has very effectively pointed to all of the reasons why the legal aid programs at law school clinics have not been running well�46 the next chapter looks at clinical legal education programs focused on community development in other countries around the world, as a way of finding a model useful in india� iv. the ‘global clinical movement’47 a. introduction by the 1970s and early 1980s, clinical legal education had taken root in a number of countries around the world, focused on local problems and on the need to reform legal education to include ideas of social justice� by looking at local developments in various countries, clinicians elsewhere have developed a clear understanding about each other’s work in equally challenging circumstances� within a region, many countries share social, economic, and cultural characteristics and the obstacles preventing accessing to justice for the underprivileged are often the same� clinical educators must look to learn from the experiences of others in similar situations when developing their own models of clinical teaching� this chapter discusses some of these models in china and south africa� china had developed a system or clinical law teaching by the 1990s� however, weak rule of law in the country because of the supremacy of the communist party’s word meant the judiciary has only a small role to play in securing justice for the majority of the population� despite this difficulty, chinese clinical educators are trying to deal with the situation by using clinical techniques to serve the population at large� how they are doing this is instructive� south african clinical legal education is very community-oriented and the history of south africa has much in common with india’s� in south africa, clinical legal education was born about the same time as in india� india is one of the largest democracies in the world with a diverse mix of communities with different languages and cultures� finding a way to help all of these people, and to make sure they can lead a life with liberty and equality is a very difficult task in india� the south african community clinical movement could be a good model for india to use to develop community clinical programs to ensure social justice� 45 id. 46 report of the law school based legal aid clinic (2011), available at http://www�undp�org/content/dam/india/ docs/a_study_of_law_school_based_legal_services_clinics�pdf (last visited on jun� 04, 2013)� 47 prof� frank s� bloch and prof� n� r� madhave menon are the key writers and thinkers behind the ‘global clinical movement’� in late 1990s, the global alliance for justice education (gaje) has been formed by their preliminary initiative� prof� bloch has also edited a book titled ‘global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice’ published by the oxford university press in 2010� 329 b. let a hundred flowers bloom48: the chinese model the present legal education system in china has followed a long, tortuous path on the way to becoming a professional legal education system�49 the present day legal education aims to ‘resolve all complicated disputes and safeguard justice in order to meet the needs of social, economic, political, and cultural development in china’� 50 there are four factors which hinder efforts to develop strong rule of law in china: an unprofessional judiciary with corruption and political interference; poorly trained lawyers with no commitment to pro bono work; poor quality of instruction in law schools; and a lack of participation from the civil society�51 the system has been in need of improvement� to a certain extent, the introduction of the clinical legal education program in china resulted from a strong demand for higher legal education reform, and especially for exploring new legal teaching methods�52 seven law school clinics were established in 2000, funded by the ford foundation and some u�s� law schools�53 the establishment of the committee of chinese clinical legal educators (cccle) in 2002 was a major step towards expanding clinical legal education in china� the mission of cccle is ‘to bring all clinical legal educators, administrators and others together to perform theoretical and practical research of foreign and chinese clinical legal education programs, cooperate and carry out exchange of clinical legal education activities with counterparts abroad and at home, and promote the growth of clinical legal education in china’.54 by 2009, cccle had 115 institutional members and 76 out of 115 had formally introduced clinical programs into their curricula�55 the cccle network, along with the clinical faculties at different law schools, has brought significant changes to chinese clinical legal education and there is a lot to learn from how the group has managed to do this in challenging circumstances� northwest university of politics and law’s legislation clinic is the most innovative of all the clinics in chinese universities�56 members of the legislation clinic work with local governmental agencies and civic groups to analyze local problems and then propose legislative solutions to help disadvantaged social groups, such as the elderly or migrant workers� teams of students gather information from a variety of public and individual sources and bring this knowledge into the policy-making process� one of their projects resulted in provincial-level legislation against 48 cai yanmin and j� l� pottenger, jr, the “chinese characteristics” of clinical legal education, in global clinical movement 87, 93 (frank s� bloch ed�, 2010)� 49 see wang weiguo, a brief introduction to the legal education in china, presented at the conference of legal educators, association of american law schools, (may 24-24, 2000) 50 mao ling, clinical legal education and the reform of the higher legal education system in china, 30 fordham int’l l� j� 421,425 (2006-2007)� 51 brian k� landsber, promoting social justice values and reflective legal practice in chinese law schools, 24 pac� mcgeorge global� bus� & dev� l� j� 107,108 (2011)� 52 mao ling, supra note 50, at 432� 53 peking university, tsinghua university, renmin university of china, wuhan university, zhongnan university of economics and law, east china university of political science and law, and fudan university� see mao ling, supra note 81, at 433� 54 id. 55 cai yanmin, supra note 48 56 id., at 94� empowering the underprivileged: the social justice mission for clinical legal education in india 330 international journal of clinical legal education issue 19 domestic violence, another enhanced wage protection for rural migrant workers� others yielded local legislation designed to benefit the urban elderly� hundreds of students took part in these projects, as did a wide array of faculty members, lawyers and judges� the legislation clinic has several elements to it, and it fulfills all the requirements of clinical legal education and helps to further social justice� it is also a model for countries where clinical legal education is short of funding� the legislation clinic is a place where students from diverse backgrounds develop a more mature attitude towards law and their responsibility to society, at very little cost�57 clinical legal education in china has made great strides in a single decade, growing from only one or two ngo-style clinics at leading universities to more than hundred programs integrated into the curricula at law schools and departments throughout the country�58 in the process, distinctive adaptations have emerged to address china’s access to justice issues at a level beyond the individual case� c. education and community service: south african clinical network over the past three decades south african university law clinics ‘have evolved from being ad-hoc student initiatives with limited capacity into mature institutions with a definite presence on the south african legal landscape.’59 law clinics were introduced at south african universities in the early 1970s� after the ford foundation conference on legal aid at university of natal in 1973, the speed at which they were set up increased�60 the earlier clinics have faced various obstacles like a lack of educational values which should be present in clinical programs, a lack of resources, voluntary student participation with no rule of credit, and lack of faculty involvement� but these early efforts highlighted that the aim of south african clinics was to promote equal justice and social justice for the poor people in the country� since the first democratic elections in 1994, law clinics have expanded rapidly with a view ‘to make the law school experience more educational and relevant for students and to promote equal justice and the rule of law, scholars have devoted considerable attention and resources to creating or expanding clinical legal education.’ 61 clinical programs in south africa are more community-based than individual client clinics and the ‘basic guiding principle remains firmly entrenched in the fundamental role that education must play in developing a culture of democracy and respect for human rights as an integral part of the common values and universal heritage of humanity.’ 62 57 adopting and adapting: clinical legal education and access to justice in china, 120 harv� l� rev� 2134, 2152 (2007)� 58 id� at 2155� 59 willem de klerk, university law clinics in south africa, 122 s� african l�j� 929,929 (2005)� 60 id�, at 930; see also peggy maisel, expanding and sustaining clinical legal education in developing countries: what we can learn from south africa, 30 fordham int’l l�j� 374,381 (2006-2007)� 61 peggy maisel, id., at 374; see also kenneth s� broun, black lawyers, white courts: the soul of south african law 235-243 (2000)� 62 philip f� iya, legal education for democracy and human rights in the new south africa with lessons from the american legal aid movement,12 j� prof� legal educ� 211,211 (1994)� 331 the clinical programs try to achieve five different objectives63: the inclusion of poverty and development issues into the curriculum to reflect the realities of the economically disadvantaged citizens to all the students, white or black64; to promote the values to provide equal justice to the disadvantaged; to confront ethical issues by dealing with real cases and to gain basic lawyering skills; to increase access to the legal profession among disadvantaged people; to expand the resources for legal representation for the disadvantaged� in 1987, the association of university legal aid institutions (aulai) was set up, a major step in the clinical legal education movement in south africa� this organization has played a very important role in improving the performance and resources of university-based legal aid clinics� south african law clinics have two different working techniques� first is the palm tree justice65 when paralegals in rural areas, who can speak the local community language, work for poor people who can’t afford a lawyer or where there is no lawyer� up to the year 2000, south africa had only 1,000 black lawyers who would represent the 70 percent black population of the country�66 these community-based paralegals have provided often the only access to justice for poor people in rural areas� secondly, prof� david mcquoid-mason set up south african street law programs, another type of clinical program which introduced students to the idea of preventive legal education practice� street law students learned how to teach lay people about legal rights and responsibilities, and then went to high schools and jails to teach ordinary citizens about their rights in criminal, juvenile, consumer, housing, welfare law, and human rights matters� the teaching methods which the students used included holding mock trials and other interactive learning experiences� they also wrote and distributed pamphlets dealing with common legal problems such as arrest, and housing and credit issues�67 in 2000, a survey of the twenty-one university-based law clinics in south africa was conducted to assess the state of clinical legal education there�68 the survey pointed out four kinds of obstacles to the current development of clinical programs in south africa: a lack of funding; a lack of acceptance of clinical legal education by the faculty members; a lack of skilled clinical teaching; and huge case load� these four problems are similar to those in other developing countries� but some prominent clinical legal educators in south africa have tried and are still trying to overcome these problems in clinical legal education� the formation of aulai and the aulai trust have gone some way to solving problems of funding and training opportunities for clinical teachers with the help of national and international funding agencies and universities from the west� the ford foundation, the international commission of jurists, undp, and gaje have all helped the aulai and universities in various ways to accelerate the funding, organize conferences and workshops on clinical legal education, faculty training, and exchange program for staff members� 63 peggy maisel , supra note 60, at 375� 64 see kenneth s� broun, supra note 61 at 237� 65 see legal aid and law clinics in south africa vii (david j� mcquoid-mason ed�, 1985) 66 kenneth s� broun, supra note 61 at 236� 67 peggy maisel, supra note 91, at 384� 68 the survey was conducted by peggy maisel, associate professor and founding director of the clinical program, florida international university college of law� empowering the underprivileged: the social justice mission for clinical legal education in india 332 international journal of clinical legal education issue 19 since the era of apartheid, social divisions have been a serious problem for south africa� because of this historical inequality, the justice system was struggling to support the underprivileged sections of the society� the university law clinics in south africa have therefore tried to reach a large number of people through their community clinics� clinical legal education should be adapted to different social circumstances� there might be some misbalance on the teaching ethics and the ethics of a clinic� but eventually, the south african model could become a best practice model for all the countries with a large unrepresented and underprivileged population� d. conclusion on the basis of the findings of this chapter on clinical legal education in china and south africa, the next section will begin to establish some best practice models for clinical legal education in india� in the next chapter, some model clinics will be proposed taking into account what indian society needs� v. the indian model a. introduction legal education of india has been described as a ‘sea of institutionalized mediocrity with a few islands of excellence’�69 there are often calls for reform of legal education, for a system which is of excellent quality and can spread its scope to be more sensitive to the underprivileged sections of the indian society� it must be kept in mind that law grows when it engages with society and interacts with other branches of knowledge� engagement with social problems and movements make legal education relevant and contextual� for this to happen, a liberal, holistic and decentralized approach to curriculum planning and development of clinical teaching is necessary, for which each university teaching law should have the primary responsibility� law schools should take up the clinical legal education syllabi to implement it in line with local needs through some clinic-based activity� to implement this sort of activity, a meaningful coordination with the local bar and bench, non-government organizations, and legal services authority is required� this combined effort to set up social justice-based clinical activity will make legal education more socially relevant and meaningful� this chapter deals with creating a model for law schools’ clinical activity which will not only supplement the curricular requirements of clinical legal education but also complement social justice-based clinical legal education and secure the rights of underprivileged groups in india� b. rural access to justice ‘the soul of india lives in its villages’ mohandas karamchand gandhi in the beginning of the 20th century, mohandas karamchand gandhi, father of the indian nation, 69 n� r� madhava menon, to go from mediocrity to excellence, the hindu, june 18, 2010, available at http://www� thehindu�com/opinion/lead/article470073�ece?homepage=true� 333 expressed this thought-provoking statement� even today, the same could be said� data from the census of india, 2011 shows us how many people live in rural india: 833,087,662 persons live in rural india, amongst them 427,917,052 are men and 405,170,610 are women�70 most rural indians do not have in-depth or accurate knowledge about the administration of justice or administration and governance procedures� this lack of knowledge makes it difficult for rural indians to access the system of justice delivery, administration and governance� not only that, the problem of a lack of transparency and accountability in the administration and governance system is, in part, result of that ignorance� the focus of this clinic model is on the reform of legal education to accelerate the empowerment71 of marginalized rural communities in india� this model is primarily inspired by the community lawyering movement of south african clinical legal education� the idea of community lawyering in india as a way to ensure access to justice and legal empowerment for the underprivileged is gaining importance as ‘advocacy on behalf of a group is seen as more efficient and cost effective, particularly when the group as a whole is at odds with the social, economic, cultural, and political situation’ 72� if we look at jindal global law school (jgls) and the institute of rural research and development (irrad), we can broadly determine the nature and duties of a clinic for the empowerment of rural indians� using clinical legal education methodology, irrad and jgls train rural villagers in their locality about government programs enacted to help them� the training explains the right to information act and the proper channels for following up on applications that become stuck in the system� armed with the knowledge acquired over the course of the year-long training, villagers monitor the functioning of local government and share their findings at periodic feedback sessions� residents of over 200 villages have been trained as of december 2011� to conduct the training, irrad staff partner with law students and their teachers at jgls� jgls established a good governance and citizen participation clinic� for the training, irrad has published brochures in the local language, hindi, drafted by law students on government schemes and the right to information� the clinic supports the efforts of villagers in several ways in addition to the governance training, including through panel discussions with government officials, policy advocacy based on problems identified in the field, legal aid camps in villages, and responses to bribe-seeking and other forms of corruption that villagers encounter� irrad and jgls seek to replicate the ngo-law school-community model through conferences, publications and research on its impact� they host an annual conference on good rural governance and citizen participation and in 2011-12 held regional conferences across india�73 to support good governance now partnerships, irrad and jgls offer training to interested ngos and academic institutions to deliver training and support to rural communities� irrad’s rural research center and jgls’ 70 census of india (2011), available at http://censusindia�gov�in/2011census/censusinfodashboard/index�html (last visited jun� 04, 2013)� 71 access to justice for the rural poor includes not only access to courts and legal redress mechanisms, but also good governance including transparency and accountability in the making of laws and process of their implementation and administration� 72 sopriyo routh, experiential learning through community lawyering: a proposal for indian legal education, 24 pac� mcgeorge global bus� & dev� l�j� 1,116 (2011)� 73 in 2011, regional good governance and citizen participation conferences have been held at assam university, silchar; j�s�s� law college, mysore, karnataka and chanakya national law university, patna, bihar� empowering the underprivileged: the social justice mission for clinical legal education in india 334 international journal of clinical legal education issue 19 clinical program also host fellowship recipients and other visitors engaged in research or teaching on rural development and governance� this sort of experiential clinical model can be an inspiration for all law schools in india� the collaboration between a law school clinic and a ngo while working in the rural development sector can bring significant change in that particular area, when it comes to citizen participation in democracy, governance and administrative procedure� the students who were involved in this program were required to prepare legal literacy materials in local languages that explain in easy-to-understand terms government schemes, programs and acts like the public distribution system, the anganwadi system, the right of children to free and compulsory education act, the national rural employment guarantee scheme, the midday meal program, and the right to information act which rural community members should know about�74 they also assist community peers to prepare right to information applications and write letters to government officials� students have also undertaken advocacy on behalf of the rural community to various commissions and statutory bodies�75 the students who work for this sort of clinic have the opportunity to develop skills in interviewing, client representation, fact investigation, report writing and documentation, and emphatic lawyering�76 it could be said that this model cannot be followed or implemented by other law school clinics because of a lack of financial resources� but this lack of financial resources can be overcome through collaboration between that particular law school, a local ngo working in the area of that particular law school and the district or taluka legal services authority� the district or taluka legal services authority can create the platform and take some financial initiative for the combined work with the law schools and ngos with the help of the national legal services authority (free and competent legal services) regulations, 2010, national legal services authority (legal aid clinics) scheme, 2010 and para legal volunteer scheme, 2010� it is now up to law schools to decide whether they are ready to undertake this sort of clinical activity� it will also be up to the law schools to find their local ngo partner and enlist the help of the district or taluka legal services authority� c. human rights litigation and law reform strategic human rights litigation seeks to use the authority of the law to advocate for social change on behalf of individuals whose voices are otherwise not heard�77 in india, the use of public interest litigation has the same meaning� human rights litigation can be a helpful tool to provide relief to a large number of people and to create a policy that state must follow� it can provide ‘broad access to justice and judicial redress to all persons or class of persons that are in a position of poverty, 74 see promoting clinical legal education in india: a case study of the citizen participation clinic 18-22 (2012) (a joint report prepared by cornell international human rights clinic and jindal good rural governance and citizen participation clinic)� 75 id. 76 id., at 9-12� 77 litigation report: global human rights litigation, open society justice initiative (feb� 2012), available at http:// www�soros�org/sites/default/files/litigation-report-20120228�pdf (last visited jun� 04, 2013)� 335 vulnerability, disability and exclusion in general’78 � noble laureate amartya sen refers to poverty as not only the lack of resources but also the concept of capability�79 so it is necessary to provide essential tools to the underprivileged to use their assets to move out of poverty and to change the rule of power in society� human rights litigation is an essential tool to make government policy more comprehensive and functional to alleviate poverty and other social exclusions� it is through both human rights litigation and law reform clinics, that social or economic issue that need to be dealt with can be found�80 china’s legislation clinic, where law students work with civic bodies and grassroot organizations to find specific issues in legislations for amendment, is the inspiration behind this human rights litigation and law reform clinic� in india, there are some examples of public interest litigation by law students81 and also zeal towards law reform activities� the legal aid society of the west bengal national university of juridical sciences (nujs), kolkata has been involved in seeking justice for scheduled castes population in puri district, odisha since 2010�82 they have filed specific complaints with the odisha state human rights commission regarding right to water, right to enter into the temple for the scheduled caste population and free and compulsory education for the scheduled caste children� because of the intervention of the nujs legal aid society, the district legal services authority has been proactive in engaging legal aid lawyers for the scheduled caste population of puri� the change in the lives of the scheduled caste population of puri because of the intervention of the nujs legal aid society has been discussed in the seminar on civil rights of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes�83 in that seminar, leaders of scheduled caste community and various human 78 discrimination on the grounds of poverty often prevents access to the very tools needed to fight this condition� it is important to fight against recognized forms of discrimination which include race, ethnicity, religion, gender and others� poor people are also often discriminated against on the basis of their socio-economic condition� the challenge is to overcome this major obstacle to their empowerment; otherwise, those trapped in poverty may fall into a vicious circle from which it is hard to break out� see maritza formisano prada, empowering the poor through human rights litigation 28 (2011)� 79 drawn up and expanded in the work of amartya sen� see generally amartya sen, development as freedom (1999); inequality re-examined (1995); commodities and capabilities (1987); poverty and famines: an essay on entitlements and deprivation (1982)� 80 law school based, credit bearing course or program that combine clinical methodology around skills and values training with live case-project work, all or most of which takes place in the human rights context� see arturo j� carrillo, bringing international law home: the innovative role of human rights clinics in the transnational legal process, 35 colum� hum� rts� l� rev� 527, 533-34 (2004) (here, ‘human rights context’ refers to ‘a dynamic ecosystem comprised of the formal and informal rules, procedures, mechanisms, and actors that continuously interact at myriad levels to apply, promote, defend or develop human rights principles’)� 81 students of the v� m� salgaokar college of law, goa have successfully filed 14 public interest litigations before the mumbai high court (panaji bench) on various issues ranging from the use of helmets to violations of coastal regulation zones� see v� m� salgaocar college of law, http://www�vmslaw�edu/� 82 author was a part of the team consisting of prof� anirban chakraborty, soumyajit das (ll�m student), sabyasachi chatterjee (ll�m student), s� jyotiranjan (ll�m student), amarendra gogoi (ll�m student), niteesh kumar upadhyay (ll�m student), lokenath chatterjee (ll�b student), puneet rathsharma (ll�b student) and rajesh kumar singh (nujs staff)� 83 the seminar was organized in puri district, odisha jointly by the legal aid society, the west bengal national university of juridical sciences and district legal services authority, puri on september 01, 2012� empowering the underprivileged: the social justice mission for clinical legal education in india 336 international journal of clinical legal education issue 19 rights ngos presented their views and voiced their appreciation for the work done by nujs legal aid society� the activities of the students in this sort of human rights litigation and law reform activity will help them to develop interviewing skills, counseling, drafting capability of the students� as one scholar has put it, ‘…human rights lawyering involve litigation, advocacy, monitoring and reporting, policy and legislative drafting, organizing and lobbying. human rights clinics aim to acquaint law students with this variety of practice, and to engage them critically and practically in developing one or more of these skills.’ 84 it is important that if this sort of clinic is to work, it must be a long-term project� that is the only way to gain people’s confidence� the goals of clinical legal education have to be developed in this sort of clinic and these goals may include advancing human rights and social justice�85 this human rights litigation and law reform clinic can operate alongside the rural access to justice clinic to ensure community engagement� for law schools, community engagement for human rights litigation and law reform should occur in three spheres: teaching and learning; community service; and research� engaging with the community is an important way of making students aware of society around them, teaching them to apply academic learning to real life, providing material for curriculum and research that is relevant to society, preserving traditional knowledge and culture, and promoting social justice� proper collaboration and division of work between the two clinics could bring significant change for the underprivileged and fulfill the goals and values of clinical legal education� d. conclusion these proposed models of clinical activities for indian law schools focus on fulfilling the curricular objectives of clinical legal education at large and also to put some stake on indian socio-economic structure to fulfill the millennium development goals� though it is argued by the western world that clinical legal education is primarily concerned with skills training for law students, in a world full of poverty and discrimination in distribution of wealth, we can set an agenda to serve the underprivileged and develop lawyering skills� the issue of financial resources to run clinical program is important in india as most indian law schools are privately managed� this is also a point where we can learn from clinical programs in china and south africa� china manages its clinical programs using money from donors through the organized efforts of cccle� a developing country like south africa has also formed a national forum of university-based legal aid institutions, named aulai, which can then take a more organized approach towards getting funding� in india, many lacunas can be addressed by forming a national legal aid advocacy institution for law schools, to help them set up their clinical programs and get funds from various governmental, non-governmental and international organizations� it is promising that there is a new generation of legal academics and students who have risen in india with a mission to inspire others to action, particularly in the pursuit of justice� the government 84 deena hurwitz, engaging law school students through human rights clinics. a perspective from the united states, 11 austl� j� hum� rts� 37, 38-39 (2006)� 85 jocelyn getgen kestenbaum, esteban ho yos ceballos & melissa c� del aguila talvadkar, catalysts for change: a proposed framework for human rights clinical teaching and advocacy, 18 clinical l� rev� 459, 482 (2011-2012)� 337 is also expanding its vision of legal education, working towards systematic reform and listening to ideas about how to make legal education more meaningful and relevant for indian society� now, it is only a matter of time until we see law students, under the supervision of their teachers, working closely with underprivileged communities throughout india to make the preamble of the indian constitution a reality for all� vi. suggestions and conclusion having looked closely at the nature and status of clinical legal education in india, and in three other countries, it is clear that indian clinical legal education’s primary objective is to secure social justice mission and work for the empowerment of underprivileged groups in indian society� the two models put forwarded in this paper could be of great value, not only helping to empower the underprivileged but also to ensure the goals and values of clinical legal education� now all the stakeholders of legal education have to take up certain points, to create a platform for the law schools to introduce these models of clinical teaching, get funds to continue with these models, and train faculty members in clinical teaching� these suggestions can be divided into the following headings: a. for law schools/ colleges/ universities: it has been made mandatory by the bar council of india for every law school or college to have a functional clinic which should work with the community to provide basic legal services� it is now suggested that each law school or college should establish their clinic in rural or semi-urban areas� this kind of clinic may be established in association with any local ngo or municipality or panchayat authority� the office must be easily accessible by the community members� it would be helpful if those behind the institution liaise with the district or taluka legal services authority, telling them about the clinic� these government bodies could provide some funding� the community clinic should be open at the weekends like saturday evening or sunday morning because the prospective client must be free to attend� the ideal student group for a clinic should not exceed 25 for each saturday evening or sunday morning� the forth year and fifth year (in case of 5 year ll�b course) students or second year and third year (in case of 3 year ll�b course) students should be divided into several groups to run the clinic each saturday evening or sunday morning and these groups should rotate as is convenient� one faculty member experienced in clinical teaching must supervise the students� in other cases, lawyers appointed by the district or taluka legal services authority may also supervise the students in their clinical activities� if there is continuous clinical activity in a village, villagers will be more confident that they are not going to be left alone, and are more likely to come to the clinic for advice� the cases may range from domestic violence, maintenance, land related dispute, rti matters, to atrocities towards sc/st population� first of all it will be the students who will take care of these cases, interviewing and counseling the client, prepare necessary drafts and instructing the client to approach the appropriate authority for consideration� for example, if the client is in need of a legal aid lawyer to defend his or her case in a court of law then the clinic can act as a bridge between the legal services authority and the client� empowering the underprivileged: the social justice mission for clinical legal education in india 338 international journal of clinical legal education issue 19 b. for bar council of india/ state bar councils/ bar associations: the bar council of india (bci) under the advocates act, 1961 has the authority to regulate legal education� bci has framed several rules, curriculum development committees to bring excellence to legal education� despite these efforts there are areas where gaps exists, like in clinical legal education� as establishing a clinic is now mandatory under the bci rules, so clinical activity of the students in those clinics must be credit-based� it is now urgently required by the bci to take clinical activity under the credit based/ marks based system� it is also important to establish a sub-committee on clinical legal education under the legal education committee of bci, where trained indian clinicians will be members� the sub-committee should work to standardize clinical programs and make it a uniform activity, inspecting and monitoring clinical programs of various law schools, liaise with various authorities to get fund for clinical programs, arrange workshops and seminars for clinical law teachers or designated clinical faculties once in a year� state bar councils and bar associations should play an active role in implementing the clinical programs in each state� state bar councils with the help of local bar association may provide some mentor lawyers for the students in a particular clinic� the mentor lawyers, in-cooperation with the designated clinical faculty, may supervise the works of the clinic students in saturday evening or sunday morning� this would not only build a working relationship between the senior lawyers and the future lawyers but also bring a idea of professional ethics and etiquette� c. for national legal services authority (nalsa): the potential of a law school to reach the community has historically been ignored by the national legal services authority� but recently, some of nalsa’s activities have created a light in the middle of the sea� the nalsa clinic regulation rules, 2010 have shown the direction towards collaboration between the legal services authorities and the law schools� now, nalsa should come up with a resolution for all the district legal services authorities to take appropriate steps to collaborate with law schools in that district to provide legal services at the door steps of the people� the model of starting clinic at rural or semi-urban areas can be effectively implemented with the help of the district legal services authority or taluka legal services authority� one legal aid lawyer may be present there to collaborate on behalf of the legal services authority and if any litigation comes he may take the matter to the appropriate court of law� the clinic students can work under the legal aid lawyer to prepare the necessary documents� it is also important for nalsa to come with some funds for these collaboration activities with the law schools� nalsa should allocate a separate fund for every district legal services authority depending upon the number of law schools in that district� there must be an equal amount of fund for every law school in each district and the district legal services authority may distribute the funds to the law schools for running the clinic activities and at the end of each financial year they may ask for an audited report of the expenditure of funds by the clinic� 339 d. for university grants commission (ugc): finally, the ugc must take some steps to develop the faculty standard for clinical teaching in law� it should start a faculty development course on clinical legal education for staff of law schools in charge of teaching practical papers� first, ugc should look at some model institutions which have exceptionally good clinical activities and have trained clinical faculty members and use these models as a basis to develop a curriculum for a faculty development course in clinical legal education� the duration of this sort of course may range from two to four weeks� the model institutions, after preparing the curriculum, will conduct the course in association with ugc� there should be at least four to six model institutions throughout the country to conduct the course� ugc must provide funds for this course and encourage experienced law teachers who have prior experience in conducting large scale clinical programs in their own university or college to teach this course� another faculty improvement activity which can be undertaken by ugc is to start some fellowships for clinical law teachers to undergo special training in clinical legal education in foreign law schools� previously the united states india education foundation (usief), new delhi in association with govt� of india had the neheru-vanderbilt fulbright scholarship for indian clinical law teachers to study one year specialized ll�m in clinical legal education from vanderbilt university, usa� but this program has been discontinued� now, there is no opportunity for indian clinical law teachers to take such courses, mainly due to a lack of funds� however, the ugc may start similar programs with some foreign universities who offer an ll�m in clinical legal education, pg diploma in clinical legal education, or a diploma in clinical legal education� bringing back the fellowships for law teachers in clinical legal education will also encourage them to work hard for their respective law school clinics and the rigorous training will make them equipped with the art of clinical working and supervising� on a final note, the author is of opinion that indian clinical legal education’s primary objective is to ensure social justice and empower the underprivileged groups in indian society� this mission cannot be achieved unless there is a combined effort from the law schools, bci, ugc and nalsa� the models which have been formulated in this paper and the formality of starting clinical programs like that will be the primary responsibility of the law schools� it is the stakeholders of legal education which must act positively to carry forward with these models� empowering the underprivileged: the social justice mission for clinical legal education in india krishnakumar, j., & nogales, r. (2015). public policies for wellbeing with justice: a theoretical discussion based on capabilities and opportunities. international journal of wellbeing, 5(3), 44-62. doi:10.5502/ijw.v5i3.3 jaya krishnakumar university of geneva copyright belongs to the author(s) www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 44 article public policies for wellbeing with justice: a theoretical discussion based on capabilities and opportunities jaya krishnakumar · ricardo nogales abstract: this article presents a theoretical framework that combines virtues and strengths of the capability approach (ca) and equality of opportunity (eop) approach for analyzing public policies that aim to improve individual wellbeing and social justice. we show that neither approach is sufficient on its own for this goal. it is particularly useful to combine the two approaches because the ca offers a positive way of thinking about what wellbeing is, while the eop approach provides more formal insights on how to configure public policies to achieve social justice and increase individual wellbeing from a normative perspective. we make the case that eop in its original (ex-post) conception is too heavily centered on lifestyle outcomes and oblivious to individual heterogeneity. however, we argue that it contains elements that are compatible with the ca rationale from an ex-ante point of view. individual efforts play a crucial conceptual role in our proposed combination because they influence and are influenced by individual capabilities. our optimal policy for improving wellbeing with eop is one that aims to equalize expected capabilities across different groups, characterized by circumstances, through a maximin algorithm. we provide a technical analysis of our optimal policy taking into account the influence of circumstances and policies on efforts and capabilities. keywords: capability approach, equality of opportunity, individual wellbeing, public policies. 1. introduction "if one is to intervene, then the significant life chances that people have constitute a key variable on which the state should focus” (anand et al., 2005; p4 including emphasis). today, the increase of collective wellbeing combined with justice is perceived as an essential ingredient of any development paradigm and it is not an exaggeration to say that its importance is steadily increasing. perhaps an interesting reflection of the consensus that this paradigm enjoys in the international arena is the un’s set of millennium development goals (mdg; kabeer, 2010), which not only advanced the idea that wellbeing is multidimensional in nature but also included some aspects of equality and fairness among its goals. all current dialogues on the post2015 agenda, such as the 2013 rio+20 summit, the 2014 beyond 2015 meeting of cso’s in south africa and the un’s high level panel on post-2015 development agenda, are converging towards the need for emphasizing even further in future agendas the sustainability and social justice dimensions of development. even in countries that currently articulate public policies around some seemingly alternative conceptions of development, such as bolivia with its vivir bien (ministerio de planificación del desarrollo, 2006), ecuador with its buen vivir (senplades, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 45 2009) or bhutan with its gross national happiness (ura, alkire, zangmo & wangdi, 2012), the improvement of collective wellbeing and its just distribution remains the common goal. the goal may be a common one, but of course the means prescribed by governments and international organizations are different because needs, priorities, contexts and concerns are also different. tax regime changes, conditional transfers, offers of public health services and goods, better nutrition, improvements in education and social security regulations are among the various recipes utilized to allow people to achieve better states of wellbeing and social justice. the natural heterogeneity of societies has always forced discussions around appropriate ways to foster wellbeing through public policies to be quite controversial (see for example ravallion, 2010, 2012). there are, however, some international theoretical agreements upon such issues of a normative nature. many modern internationally accepted frameworks for the assessment of wellbeing are grounded on the capability approach (sen, 1985, 1999, abbreviated ca), which is deeply influential amongst development scholars and in political spheres. well-known initiatives such as undp’s human development index (anand & sen, 1993; haq, 1999; sen, 1999), ophi’s multidimensional poverty index (alkire & foster, 2011) and the mdgs have been theoretically linked to the ca. the ca has also been the theoretical stepping-stone for research on novel methodologies for its operationalisation in recent years (see e.g. anand, krishnakumar & tran, 2010; anand, santos & smith, 2007; anand et al., 2009 ; kuklys, 2005; krishnakumar, 2007; krishnakumar & ballón, 2008; simon et al., 2013). this approach is rightfully praised for its positive way of thinking about what individual wellbeing is (sen 1985, 1999, 2009); its contribution to policies for improving wellbeing is much more humble. on this matter, robeyns (2003) states, “… the ca is an approach to interpersonal comparisons which argues for functionings and capabilities as the relevant evaluative space, where each application (be it theoretical or empirical) can, and probably has to, be supplemented with other theories. these other theories are normative theories (for example a normative theory of choice or a theory on the normative relevance of class, gender or race), which are in turn based on positive theories of human behavior and agency and societal process.” (pp. 45-46, emphasis own). although powerful, the theoretical approach that is the core foundation of modern wellbeing analyses was not conceived to give insights about ways to improve wellbeing with justice through policymaking. the ca does not explicitly advocate for any specific public intervention or algorithm in the quest for increased social justice and hence it is not a normative theory in that sense. in fact it strongly recommends a context and time-dependent assessment of the relevant wellbeing dimensions and their relative importance (anand, hunter & smith, 2005; arneson, 1989; robeyns, 2006). however, when thinking of public policies, supplementing the ca is an issue that should not be left lingering. inspired by fleurbaey (2007), we make the case that when aiming at fostering wellbeing with justice, policymakers inevitably face two fundamental questions: 1) while pursuing increases in collective wellbeing with justice, what is it that needs to be less unequal? 2) amongst a very broad set of feasible situations, which social states are better/more just and should be promoted by public action? answers to both questions are needed for effective policymaking. however, these answers are never straightforward, because the very concepts of wellbeing and social justice are intrinsically normative and tightly linked to ethical reasoning. it is such a complex matter that, as we have established, one single theory, even as sound as the ca, has proven incapable of giving precise public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 46 answers to both questions. following the above quotation from robeyns, the ca goes as far as bringing about an answer to the first question that we have raised, in the way of clearly stating that reduction (even elimination) of capability deprivation is required for a less unequal state of affairs. there is, however, another influential theoretical framework for policymaking, namely the equality of opportunity approach (roemer 1998, abbreviated eop), that has rapidly gained recognition over recent years and that has the potential of bringing a sound answer to the second question that we have raised. the eop offers well established formal insights on what should be done in order to achieve social justice from a normative perspective, saying that one needs to eliminate the influence of circumstances beyond one’s control in the process of achieving a desired outcome. this approach, however, has always been rather nuanced around what individual wellbeing is (vellentyne, 2005), so it seems to have the potential of bringing about an answer to the second question only. for an operationalisation of eop in the context of optimal taxation see roemer et al. (2003); for evaluations of public policies for children´s health see jacquet and van de gaer (2011) and van de gaer, vandenbossche & figueroa (2013); for an identification of fair and unfair income inequalities in latin america see bourguignon, ferreira and menéndez (2007) and ferreira and gignoux (2008). thus we see powerful complementarities between the two approaches, as one excels where the other one comes short. there are still few attempts to build a framework combining ca and eop for analyzing policies for wellbeing at the empirical level: two recent attempts are krishnakumar and wendelspeiss (2011) and wendelspeiss (2013). one has to acknowledge that there are notable similarities between the two approaches (vallentyne, 2005; igersheim, 2006), which have often led scholars to perceive that they provide similar elements of analysis regarding wellbeing and social justice and do not advance a theoretical combination. however, as stated by chiappero martinetti1 (2009), there are also substantial conceptual and practical differences between the two approaches, as the mechanisms that lead to personal lifestyle outcomes and wellbeing, and their possible links to public policies, are quite different from one theory to the other. in this paper, we defend the idea that combining these theories sheds new and useful light to understand wellbeing and its relation to public policies because of the way they complement positive and normative reasoning, giving answers to both our questions. throughout this document, we make the case that neither ca nor eop, on its own, presents a combination of wellbeing and justice that can provide formal policy guidelines for improving wellbeing with justice through an appropriate optimality principle. we present arguments in search of clear answers to both our questions and show that an ordered integration of elements from both approaches leads to a plausible solution. the paper is structured as follows: in section 2 we present some basic statements of sen’s and roemer’s theories, briefly recalling their essentials. in sections 3 and 4 we analyze plausible responses to the two questions raised in these introductory paragraphs, respectively, around the ca and the eop approach. in section 5 we propose a theoretical combination as well as a technical derivation of our optimal policy and illustrate its usefulness. section 6 concludes. 1 chiappero martinetti analyzes differences and similarities between the two theories but never attempts a combination. public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 47 2. brief review of basic statements of sen and roemer in modern development economics literature, sen’s and roemer’s theories are often categorized within the same framework of wellbeing and social justice contributions (vallentyne, 2005). indeed, there are clear similarities between them. they both have origins in criticism of utilitarianism and a monetary approach to wellbeing, i.e. only consideration of personal satisfaction or wealth as measures of personal wellbeing, and coincide in advocating that attention be paid to other aspects that make up an individual’s life, such as the nature of her occupation, living conditions, health status, education, the social and institutional setup, etc. both theories have philosophical origins in rawls’ principles for social justice (rawls 1971; 1999): everyone is entitled to an adequate set of liberties, so long as they are compatible with the same liberties for others; and everyone is entitled to a fair equality of opportunities. they also coincide in acknowledging that one should go beyond outcome indicators and rather look at the underlying choice sets and circumstances. however, the ca’s strength relies in helping to understand better what individual wellbeing is, i.e. it is a positive theory of wellbeing, whereas the eop contributes greatly to the ways for improving individual wellbeing with justice, i.e. it is a normative theory of policymaking. let us briefly recall the fundamentals of each theory to support this idea and bring out the different elements of an answer to our guiding questions. 2.1 essentials of the capability approach sen’s ca has become a very important theory in modern economic studies, defining what we currently understand as human development (see for example, anand et al., 2005). in this approach, human development and wellbeing are related to the sets of doings and beings from which a person has the ability to choose; the notions of liberty and freedom are of paramount importance within sen’s theory. in order to understand the richness and the broad way of thinking offered by the ca, it is key to briefly recall the distinctions among the different key concepts of resources/means, functionings and capabilities. functionings are life states and activities, objective and subjective (vallentyne, 2005; alkire, 2013), that are willingly and freely chosen, given a set of means and resources as well as social, political, family and cultural conditions. capabilities are the set of all potential (feasible) functionings from which a person can freely chose. thus, capabilities determine achieved functionings by a process of free choice by the individual in a particular setting. capabilities are essentially unobservable, since they regroup possible non-materialized functionings with the effectively realized ones. within this approach, an individual’s wellbeing is increased when her capabilities are increased, as the latter have an intrinsic value in terms of the freedom to choose a valued life. capabilities are personal and individually formed by ‘converting’ the means and resources a person has, which include social and cultural characteristics, public/private endowments, commodities, services, norms, etc. (comim, 2001). the conversion process for the internalization of these resources and means is personal and heterogeneous (chiappero martinetti & salardi, 2008). thus, the approach is essentially ethically individualistic (robeyns, 2006) in the sense that it puts the human being’s freedom to choose at the heart of any wellbeing assessment, over and above considerations at a group level or governmental actions. figure 1 below presents a diagram that summarizes the above statements regarding the process of construction of an individual’s wellbeing within the ca. the capability set for a generic individual i is formally expressed as follows (sen, 1985): public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 48 𝑄𝑖 = {𝑏𝑖 | 𝑏𝑖 = 𝑓𝑖 (𝑐𝑖 (𝑥𝑖 , 𝑧𝑖 )) } (1) with the notations being defined in the diagram below. figure 1: capability approach in a diagram we denote as b*i the vector of achieved functionings, which is a particular vector-element of 𝑄𝑖 chosen by the individual. the approach’s concentration on individual heterogeneity is evident and marks one of its most celebrated contributions to social justice literature. nevertheless, the approach does not fail to recognize the importance of social constructions and relations for the whole process leading to the determination of these freedoms, such as legal rights, family history, culture and religion. public policies are a part of these pertinent surrounding conditions that shape an individual’s wellbeing, yet, as we have shown, the ca is almost silent concerning what kind of public actions are better for increasing individual wellbeing, while fostering social justice at the same time. 2.2 essentials of the equality of opportunity approach roemer’s eop approach has become a recognized pillar of normative public policymaking and assessment. it has introduced a way of thinking about public policy that is coherent with economic development ‘with justice’, promoting the equalization of life chances amongst individuals, arguing that an individual’s lifestyle should be a function of her effort and choices, but not of characteristics she cannot or could not control. indeed, the eop approach builds on the differentiation of aspects that are beyond an individual’s control but influence her lifestyle outcomes or advantages, called circumstances, from aspects that have their origin in autonomous and willingly taken decisions that also exert such an influence, which roemer proposes to call efforts. in the eop approach, people sharing the same circumstances are grouped within a type. the lifestyle outcomes observed in a type constitute the achievable advantages for any member of the type and constitute their – common – opportunities set. within a type, differences in outcomes can be attributed only to differences in efforts and constitute ethically acceptable differences between personal lifestyles. although not originally proposed by roemer (1998), many groundbreaking empirical operationalizations of the eop approach have successfully proven that one needs to take into account the fact that individual effort is significantly influenced by circumstances (bourguignon et al., 2007; ferreira & gignoux, 2008). building on bourguignon et al. (2007), we propose the schematic representation of the eop approach given in figure 2 below for a generic individual i. capability set: qi vector of achieved functionings: b*i means/resources: xi pertinent surrounding conditions: zi personal choice: fi conversion process: ci public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 49 figure 2: equality of opportunity approach in a diagram the diagram in figure 2 can be translated into the following system of equations: 𝑦𝑖 = 𝑓(𝑥𝑖 , 𝑒𝑖 , 𝑝) (2) 𝑒𝑖 = 𝑔(𝑥𝑖 ) (3) within a given type 𝑡 = 1 … 𝑇 , characterized by some particular circumstance variables say, gender or ethnicity, advantages yi,t are a function of the degree or amount of effort exerted ei,t and public policies pt, which could be thought to be type specific (roemer, 1998) i.e. 𝑦𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑦𝑡 (𝑒𝑖,𝑡 , 𝑝𝑡 ). as effort is hard to observe directly, one can consider a distribution of efforts within each type t and divide it into centiles, identifying the level of effort, or relative effort, exerted by each individual in this type compared to all the other individuals within the same type. since, within a type, differences in outcomes are attributable only to difference in degree of effort exerted, the effort distribution is conceptually merged to that of the outcomes of the type. because of this perfect correspondence, it is possible to represent the outcomes of type t as 𝑦𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝑡 ), where 𝜋 is a centile of the effort distribution. the eop advocates for the recognition of the ethical fact that an individual should not be held responsible for what is beyond her control and/or choice; thus individual responsibility and absence of impact of circumstances beyond control are put upfront in the assessment of a person´s lifestyle (igersheim, 2006). it is around this recommendation that the eop approach has managed to develop a practical and logical formalization for policymaking yielding several empirical studies on optimal public interventions for social justice (cogneau & gignoux, 2008; jacquet & van de gaer, 2011; van de gaer et al. 2013; roemer et al., 2003). however, we have established that, while concentrating on normative aspects, this approach does not present an enriched positive concept of individual wellbeing. 3. while pursuing increased collective wellbeing with justice, what is it that needs to be less unequal? evidently, this question is far from being novel, but different answers are still in debate (cf. e.g. ruggeri-laderchi, saith & stewart, 2003). amongst others, in 1980, sen had famously analyzed it in one of his most influential academic pieces, “equality of what?” and within his remarkable series of academic contributions a path-setting answer was given: capabilities. from the beginning, sen’s concern was linked to his disagreement with a somewhat tacit public consensus around the articulation of public policies seeking to equalize perceptions of outcomes / advantages: yi effort: ei circumstances: xi public policies: p public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 50 individual satisfaction, as mandates utilitarianism and/or the equalization of basic goods (which include individual liberties and material resources), as suggested by rawlsian prescription. according to sen, the concept of equality of resources fails to take into account differences amongst individuals in terms of needs, desires and abilities, which, as we have stressed before, he considers to be fundamental for understanding individual wellbeing and, ultimately, social justice. indeed, for sen, the concept of individual wellbeing is far too complex and rich to be merged solely with the concepts of wealth or utility (satisfaction) and, above all, to be considered one-dimensional. among development scholars and policymakers, sen’s ideas have greatly overpowered other approaches to wellbeing, such as the monetary approach that sees consumption capacities as a synonym of wellbeing (ruggeri-laderchi et al., 2003) and the neoclassical welfarist point of view that focuses on the concept of utility, synonym of individual perception of satisfaction, thus as wellbeing (blackorby & bossert, 2008; schokkaert, 2007). although consumption capacities are an important part of wellbeing and the concept of utility, being the basic pillar of neoclassical microeconomics, constitutes one of the most useful constructions in welfare economics, it is clear that they have important limitations for wellbeing and social justice analyses (alkire & foster, 2011). neither concept pays attention to the underlying factors from which those rational choices emerge because they are essentially one-dimensional (robeyns, 2006), thus, offering a ‘thin informational basis’ (anand et al., 2009) for wellbeing assessment. sen has contributed greatly to today’s consensus that wellbeing is essentially multidimensional (alkire & foster, 2011; ravallion, 2010, 2012; ura et al., 2012). by virtue of the ca, it is now accepted that personal capability sets should be the measure of individual wellbeing; but the latter is difficult to directly observe given its counterfactual nature. in general, studies on the measurement of capabilities fall under two categories: a) studies that directly measure capability sets through questionnaires on people’s choices and functionings (e.g. anand et al., 2005, 2009; anand & van hees, 2006), and b) studies that consider the observed functionings as partial manifestations of the capability set and resort to latent variable methodology for making inferences on capability sets using the observed indicators as well as other exogenous determinants of capabilities (e.g. anand et al., 2010; di tommaso, 2007; krishnakumar, 2007; krishnakumar & ballón, 2008). the same richness in perspective regarding individual wellbeing is not explicit in roemer’s work, nor is there an explicit recognition of lifestyle heterogeneity. thus the search for equality of opportunity in the original sense of roemer (1998) does not provide suitable elements for answering the question at hand in this section. let us present the following arguments supporting this affirmation. first, even if the eop is as critical as the ca of utilitarianism as a theoretical basis for appraising social justice , it has mainly tended to consider one-dimensional outcomes such as education, health or wealth, except for a very few recent empirical operationalizations with multidimensional observable outcomes. perhaps some of the most prominent amongst the latter are yalonetzky’s (2012) efforts to create a dissimilarity index for inequality assessment, wendelspeiss’ (2013) multidimensional latent variable approach and brunori, ferreira & peragine’s (2013) international comparisons of inequality of opportunity. these exceptions aside, the vast majority of empirical applications of eop follow the traditional romerian flow by proposing one specific outcome for equalization in the quest for social justice and only one at a time (igersheim, 2006). second, we perceive a clear distinction between the concepts of opportunity and capability. on the one hand, as suggested by the eop, an opportunity is a situation that presents itself to an public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 51 individual making use of which, and depending on her own efforts and skills, she will be able to achieve a certain outcome or lifestyle. thus opportunities are not individual but common to a group of individuals that share the same circumstances (i.e. to each type in roemer’s terminology). on the other hand, the ca stresses that the concept of capability is unequivocally individual and personal. the concepts of opportunity and capability, therefore, operate at different levels of measurement and only the latter tend to take into account individual heterogeneity. third, according to the eop, every member of a certain type can seize opportunities without distinction between each other. in effect, the only difference in terms of outcome between individuals of the same type is their effort and therefore, their own responsibility (roemer, 1998). however, building on the ca, we stress that each individual always seizes opportunities differently from another, and that each individual personally (although, also influenced by factors other than personal) forms her own set of capabilities. let us close this section illustrating the superiority of the ca to answer our first question by virtue of its multidimensional and individually heterogeneous conception of wellbeing. in practice, it is usual to target a specific aspect of wellbeing when designing and implementing a public policy. however, spillovers around the target are undeniable and should never be left aside, for to do so would imply a drastic underestimation of the impact and blur possible ways of improving or correcting the policy. take for instance a public policy aiming to improve nutrition of children aged 0-6, such as a complementary nutrition program. the impacts of such a policy go far beyond the children’s nutrition status as measured, for instance, by ratios combining variables such as height, weight and age; it enhances learning possibilities, recreational capacities and opportunities to develop talents in sports, music and so on, all of which are unobservable aspects of the children’s wellbeing and all of which will always be imperfectly captured, even when resorting to multidimensional observable outcomes assessment. furthermore, the children’s wellbeing is undeniably influenced by the characteristics, values, culture and habits of their households and few would agree these important characteristics can be taken as homogeneous within a certain type, say, female indigenous children living in rural areas. therefore, in view of the fact that we adopt the ca in defining wellbeing as the freedom to achieve, which is in turn represented by the capability set, we would like to posit the idea that capability sets (i.e. potential functionings) and not achieved functionings or outcomes should be the object of equalization in the quest for social justice. we stand by this argument, even if capability sets are heterogeneous and may not be directly observed due to their ‘potential’ nature, thus posing a formidable challenge for practical purposes. policy assessment and design based only on eop leaves important theoretical gaps concerning suitable answers to our first question. 4. which social states are better/more just and should be promoted by public action? once one establishes that the appropriate concept of wellbeing is the capability set, it is clear that an expansion and, ideally, an equalization of individuals’ capability sets should be the ultimate social objective for development. turning to the second question that guides us through this paper, the ca, by itself, falls short; it does not go further to elaborate on actual ways of achieving these goals. sen (2009) himself has stated: “the capability perspective does point to the central relevance of the inequality of capabilities in the assessment of social disparities, but it does not, on its own, propose any specific formula for public decisions” (p. 232). public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 52 the ca’s major strengths, namely the broadness and the context-based character of the framework that it offers, might just be its weakness in terms of its lack of possible suggestions on what can or should be done to increase social justice. the ca limits itself to advocating for the equalization of capabilities as a normative rule for social justice, implying that a fair distribution of potential functionings amongst members of a society ought to be the public goal (fleurbaey, 2007). the need for further elements other than those depicted in the ca is evident for giving a plausible answer to our second question. we stress that these elements cannot come from traditional normative prescriptions inspired from neoclassical welfare economics. although they are deeply influential for choosing the ‘right’ social states, these prescriptions rely heavily on the extrapolation of the notion of individual utility to that of social utility. general equilibrium modeling fits well as a widely known example of such practice (devarajan & robinson, 2002). this arrovian view on social choice has also been criticized for having a thin informational basis, focusing exclusively on individuals’ satisfaction or happiness for the maximization of some aggregation of the latter, prior to the search for the best allocations of lifestyle outcomes. because of these facts, we argue that traditional normative and theoretical schemes from neoclassical welfare economics are clearly unsuitable supplements to the ca in the sense described in the introductory paragraphs by robeyns (see the quotation in section 1, with own emphasis). according to pignataro (2012), the last 15 years have witnessed a notable revolution in terms of thinking about social justice and what should be perceived as a fair social state and how to promote it. roemer’s eop (roemer, 1998) stands out in this evolution of thinking and in our opinion provides a suitable supplement to the ca. in the remainder of this section, let us present ordered arguments supporting this idea and formally identify the elements of the eop that are compatible with the ca’s rationale. the principal ideal of eop is to achieve a social state in which circumstances do not bear any influence on people’s outcomes, either directly or indirectly through influences over the efforts people make to achieve them. this irrelevance of circumstances is a condition for a romerian leveling of the playing field conception of social justice. this just society may be utopic, but this way of thinking has undeniably shed a clear light on plausible governmental interventions to promote this ideal. for instance, roemer et al. (2003) have assessed the extent to which reigning fiscal regimes in eleven countries contribute to equalizing opportunities for income acquisition based on the eop approach. also based on this approach, but within a different empirical framework and operational model, betts and roemer (2005) have analyzed the contribution of an educational finance reform in the usa to the equalization of opportunities for education. indeed, in the eop there exists a notion of optimal public policy for social justice, and it is one entailing equality of opportunities to achieve a certain outcome. today, the discussion on the selection of such socially optimal public policies is of great importance in academic circles (pignataro, 2012). according to ramos and van de gaer (2012), there are two conflicting practical programs for identifying eop optimal public policies. the first was proposed by roemer himself in 1998 and aims to eliminate inequality of outcomes for individuals exerting the same effort, regardless of their type. this program is called ex-post equality of opportunity. mathematically, the operationalization of ex-post equality of opportunity builds directly on rawls’ prescription of focusing on the least advantaged people. according to the ex-post eop, the optimal public policy is formed by a set of specific public actions 𝑝𝜋 , where 𝜋 is a centile of the effort distributions of all types, so that every 𝑝𝜋 maximizes the outcome of the least public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 53 advantaged individuals having exerted the same degree of effort 𝜋 in all types. using the notation introduced before, this is formalized by: max 𝑝𝜋 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝜋 ) (4) evidently, as it is impractical to find an optimal public policy for every centile, roemer invokes outcome-based tools to define a single optimal public policy compatible with social justice, p, as the one that helps achieving maximization of the average advantage of the least favored across every degree of effort. formally, this policy solves the following optimization program: max 𝑝 ∑𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦 𝜋 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝜋 ) or max 𝑝 𝐸[min𝑡 𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝜋 )] (5) the arguments that we have presented make it clear that this program is too heavily centered on outcomes, leading to clear theoretical incompatibilities with the ca. as the ex-post program is the original program proposed by roemer, this is perhaps one of the reasons economic and human development scholars have neither insistently pushed forward to build a mix of sen’s and roemer’s theories, nor searched for empirical endeavors founded on such a possible mix. in effect, this program compares outcomes across individuals and explicitly seeks to pull the least advantaged individuals upwards, identifying these people based on their outcomes. the ex-post framework follows the compensation principle, suggesting public policies that contribute to the equalization of outcomes for individuals exerting the same level of effort under different circumstances (pignataro, 2012). there is, however, a second program for achieving equality of opportunity, whose advancement is generally attributed in the literature to van de gaer (see e.g. van de gaer (1993); ramos & van de gaer (2012)) and which is concerned with the equalization of prospects of outcomes for every individual, regardless of their type. this program is called ex-ante equality of opportunity and it advocates in favor of a policy allowing the maximization of the prospects of outcomes (potential outcome) of the least advantaged type in a society, as measured by the average of the outcomes over all the members of that type: max 𝑝 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 ∑𝜋 𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝜋 ) or max 𝑝 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝐸𝜋 [𝑦𝑡 (𝜋, 𝑝𝜋 )] (6) even if the formalization of this program differs only on the inversion of the sum and min operators, the implications for a conceptual compatibility between the eop approach and the ca are of paramount importance. in the ex-ante approach, the degree or level of effort are to be left unobserved, as was proposed in the original romerian eop conception, but remains what ultimately determines the differences of outcomes within a type; it respects individual heterogeneity. the ex-ante program builds on the reward principle of analyzing differences in outcomes for individuals under the same circumstances (pignataro, 2012). implicitly, there should not be any kind of public intervention attempting to equalize outcomes that originate from each individual’s responsibility. therefore the answer to our second question is that public policies should foster equality of opportunity, conceived as a situation where sets of possible outcomes are the same for every type within a society. furthermore, policy priority is given to pulling up the least-advantaged type distribution of outcomes and for that, it is a rawlsian conception of equality of opportunity. 5. combination based on the preceding discussion, we propose to deepen the consideration of individual capability sets as the multidimensional unobserved outcome of an eop-based theoretical framework in the quest for policymaking for wellbeing with justice. we believe that this constitutes another step forward in the operationalization of the ca for policymaking. public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 54 we propose the conceptual scheme in figure 3 below to represent the theoretical linkages that will be highlighted in this section. figure 3: scheme of a capability approach-based equality of opportunity framework let us start our reasoning and the explanation of the scheme recalling that wellbeing, measured by the capability set, is multidimensional and intrinsically unobservable due to its counterfactual nature and, according to eop, it is determined by individual efforts, which are also unobservable and reflect an individual sense of responsibility. thus efforts are essential for understanding wellbeing, as is emphasized by roemer throughout his work (roemer, 1998; roemer et al., 2003; see also betts & roemer, 2005). nevertheless, in most empirical eop-based work the amount of effort exerted by a person has been treated as a residual error term, with no further consideration for its estimation (see for example bourguignon et al., 2007; cogneau & gignoux, 2008; roemer et al., 2003). therefore the combination that we propose introduces a causal relationship between unobservable or latent variables that remains empirically understudied in public policy and economic development literature and we make the case that it can deliver important results for understanding and assessing the role of public policies for wellbeing. we postulate the existence of a two-way relationship between capabilities and efforts, which together lead to multiple achieved outcomes or functionings, thus capturing the ca’s multidimensional essence. we argue that efforts are shaped by capabilities by virtue of the individual nature of the decision-making process on efforts. we reason that potential feasible lifestyle outcomes of a person configure the practical choices and actions she makes in order to achieve the outcomes that suit her best, according to her needs, tastes and desires. efforts, in turn, can affect capabilities by bringing in more potential outcomes within the capability set, expanding lifestyle possibilities for people to choose from. both efforts and capabilities are in turn influenced by individual characteristics and surrounding features, called circumstances. these include: i) individual characteristics such as gender, ethnicity and age; ii) other multilevel aspects concerning a) family and household, such as the composition, living conditions, religion and culture and b) community, such as the environment, the language spoken, or the level of local economic development. in our combination, public policies are also a part of the environment as the ca mandates, and according to the ex-ante framework of the eop such policies should aim at equalizing opportunities by reducing the role played by circumstances beyond one’s control in the determination of capabilities and efforts. thus public policies may not explicitly shape public policies individual characteristics achieved functionings or outcomes /advantages capabilitiesi effortsi family and community factors (social circumstances) public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 55 circumstances such as gender, household composition or language spoken in the community, but they do shape the extent to which these circumstances affect an individual’s capabilities and efforts. thus, building on rawlsian maximin rationale, which states that a society would achieve justice and equality when prospects of life for the least fortunate are as great as they can be (rawls, 1971, 1999), an optimal policy for equalization of capability sets across types 𝑡 = 1 … 𝑇 would be given by: max 𝑝 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 ∑ 𝑄𝑖,𝑡 𝑖∈𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒 𝑡 or max 𝑝 𝐸𝑄𝑚𝑖𝑛 (7) where 𝑄𝑖,𝑡 is the capability set of the i-th individual belonging to type 𝑡 and 𝐸𝑄𝑚𝑖𝑛 is the average capability set of the least advantaged type. here we would like to recall some key equations introduced by sen (1985) for defining capabilities so that we are clear as to what is being maximized. let 𝑥𝑖 be the commodity vector possessed by an individual 𝑖. the individual makes use of the characteristics of the commodities in order to 'convert' the resources into a functioning, i.e a 'being' or a 'doing'. we take the term 'commodity' in a large sense, including personal resources as well as social and institutional infra-structural support or circumstances, i.e all that enters the conversion process. the conversion function is written as: bi = 𝑓𝑖 (𝑐(𝑥𝑖 )) (8) note that given the same 𝑥𝑖 achieved functioning can be different from one individual to another due to the dependence of f on i as personal characteristics such as age, gender, health status, tastes, and the effort put in by the individual, all of which play an important role in the conversion process. the set of all functionings that can be potentially achieved using the commodity vector is called the capability set: 𝑄𝑖 = {𝑏𝑖 |𝑏𝑖 = 𝑓𝑖 (𝑐(𝑥𝑖 )), for some 𝑓𝑖 and for some 𝑥𝑖 } (9) thus we are not maximizing utility in (7), neither are we maximizing resources or outcomes (achieved functionings). it is indeed the set of feasible functionings of an individual, in other words her freedom to achieve valued things in life, which we seek to maximize in our approach. in our setting, each individual i belongs to a type t and hence every individual will have a double index i,t from now on. as expressed in equation (7), our optimal policy for wellbeing with justice is one which maximizes the capability sets (feasible outcomes) for the least favored. in our model, the capability set depends on personal circumstances and efforts, and the efforts themselves can in turn be influenced by circumstances. thus 𝑄𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑄𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 , 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 )) (10) where circumstances are included in 𝑥𝑖,𝑡 and 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 denotes the effort. in roemer's reasoning, the most disadvantaged type identifies the least favored and hence it represents a group rather than a single individual. thus we take the expected feasible outcome (or the expected capability set) of the least favored type as our objective function in order to be consistent with the ex-ante eop approach. then the optimization program can be written as: max 𝑝 min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝐸 [𝑄𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 , 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 )) |𝑥𝑖,𝑡 ] (11) for simplicity of notation, let us denote the expectation as: 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 ≡ 𝐸 [𝑄𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 , 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 )) |𝑥𝑖,𝑡 ] and the minimum as: public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 56 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ≡ min 𝑎𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡𝑦𝑝𝑒𝑠 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 (12) in a very general setting, 𝐸 [𝑄𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 , 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 (𝑥𝑖,𝑡 )) |𝑥𝑖,𝑡 ] can be different from one individual to another and hence we keep the index i in the expectation. thus the ‘optimal’ policy will be given by 𝑝∗ 𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 such that 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 is maximum 2, i.e. we should have 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑝 = 0 at 𝑝 = 𝑝∗ 𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 . note that the solution could also vary from one type to another. thus, 𝑝∗ 𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 denotes the optimal policy applied to an individual i belonging to the least favored type3. now, rather than deriving the optimal policy, if we want to see how effective a policy is in promoting eop (or reducing inequality of opportunity) following roemer's idea, we can evaluate to what extent the policy is able to change the impact of a generic circumstance variable 𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 of an individual i belonging to the least favored type on her expected capability set 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛. the effect of circumstance for the least favored type can be computed as: 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 + 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (13) where the derivatives are to be calculated using equation (10). let us denote: 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛) ≡ 𝑔𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛(𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) (14) 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛) ≡ ℎ𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) (15) the first function above depicts the direct impact of circumstances on expected capability sets and the second depicts their indirect impact through effort. thus the total effect of circumstances as a function of public policies is given by: 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 = 𝑔𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) + 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑚𝑖𝑛 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ℎ𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛(𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) ≡ 𝑘𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛(𝑝𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) (16) therefore, the condition that a public policy must fulfill in order to be eop-optimal, i.e. to nullify the effect of circumstances on expected capability sets for the least favored type, is given by: 𝑘𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 (𝑝 ∗ 𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 ) = 0 (17) denoting this optimal policy as 𝑝∗ 𝑖,𝑚𝑖𝑛 . now, if we would like to derive the optimal policy for any type t in general and not necessarily the least favored one, we would just need to replace 'min' by 't' in the above derivation and the optimal policy would then be given by 𝑝∗ 𝑖,𝑡 such that: 𝑘𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝 ∗ 𝑖,𝑡 ) = 0 (18) with 𝑘𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑖,𝑡 ) ≡ 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑔𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑖,𝑡 ) + 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑡 ℎ𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑖,𝑡 ) (19) as an illustration we present a case in which the above relations take a linear form, the policy value is common to all individuals belonging to a given type, and the coefficients are also invariant within a given type. let 𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑥′𝑖,𝑡 (𝐴𝑡 + 𝐵𝑡 𝑝𝑡 ) + 𝑒′𝑖,𝑡 (𝐶𝑡 + 𝐷𝑡 𝑝𝑡 ) + 𝑧′𝑖 𝐹𝑡 (20) 2 a policy p has an impact on wellbeing through its influence on the effect of circumstance variables on capabilities or efforts (see later). 3 in practice, the policy variable will probably take the same value for all individuals belonging to the same type. however, here we present a very general theoretical setting in which it can vary from one individual to another. public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 57 𝑒𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑥′𝑖,𝑡 𝐺𝑡 + 𝑧′𝑖 𝐻𝑡 (21) (where 𝑧′𝑖 represents a vector of personal characteristics) then, 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 𝜕𝑥𝑖,𝑡 = 𝑔𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑡 ) + 𝜕𝐸𝑄𝑖,𝑡 𝜕𝑒𝑖,𝑡 ℎ𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑡 ) ≡ 𝑘𝑖,𝑡 (𝑝𝑡 ) = 𝐴𝑡 + 𝐵𝑡 𝑝𝑡 + 𝐺𝑡 (𝐶𝑡 + 𝐷𝑡 𝑝𝑡 ) (22) and the optimal policy is 𝑝𝑡 ∗ such that: 𝐴𝑡 + 𝐵𝑡 𝑝𝑡 ∗ + 𝐺(𝐶𝑡 + 𝐷𝑡 𝑝𝑡 ∗) = 0 (23) let us stress that the observable aspects of a person's lifestyle, call them either outcomes or functionings, are not the essence of the optimization program. the reason is two-fold. first, they are not a person's wellbeing according to the ca but only partial manifestations of her wellbeing. second, a person's actual lifestyle is ultimately a personal choice. in other words, we advocate for a theoretical framework in which public policies do not directly aim at influencing a person's lifestyle but act in an indirect way by promoting the enabling factors of capabilities and efforts (potential lifestyles), leaving the actual choice to the individual, thus respecting her freedom. in order to clarify the difference between the proposed theoretical framework and separate eop and ca-based theoretical frameworks, let us consider the following example. there are important public policies, more precisely social policies, built around conditional cash transfers for students, that aim to diminish rates of school abandonment, increase their academic performance and ultimately, their wellbeing and promote justice within society (bolivia’s bono juancito pinto is an example of such a policy, see yañez, 2012). in this concrete case, the two questions that have guided our discussion could take the following form: 1) what are we making less unequal through this conditional transfer? 2) what is the adequate amount for the cash transfer to promote equality? a plausible answer to the first question from a ‘pure’ eop perspective would state that one needs to identify one observable outcome or advantage enjoyed by the beneficiaries that has a link to the cash transfer, say the schooling gap, defined as the difference between the years of schooling a person should have given her age and her actual years of schooling. this variable would constitute the proxy of opportunities for education and ultimately wellbeing, which is what the cash transfer aims at equalizing. a traditional eop-based theoretical framework adopting an ex-ante program for equality of opportunity would bring about an answer to the second question stressing that the cash transfer has a direct impact on the expected schooling gap. it would go on to advocate for seeking an amount of the transfer so that expected schooling gap is minimized (i.e. opportunities for education are maximized) for the least favored type of people, say indigenous females. within this type, schooling gap differences, i.e. wellbeing differences, would then be the absolute responsibility of the beneficiaries or fruit of their efforts, as they all are supposed to share the same circumstances. a traditional ca-based framework would stress that schooling gap is a rather oversimplified proxy of the beneficiaries’ wellbeing and that the latter should be measured, for instance, as their capability to be educated (not to be confused with individuals’ inherent abilities like intelligence). a single observed outcome for gauging such a broad concept is clearly insufficient and unnecessary; the policy might also influence other aspects of wellbeing that can be observed, such as the ability to read and to understand abstract logic reasoning (by increasing the possibility of buying more books using the extra cash and/or hiring a tutor) or the ability to read foreign languages (by increasing the possibility of entering a language institute). the ca would go on to stress that the actual schooling gap is, to some extent, a choice among other feasible public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 58 options of the beneficiaries. thus it would suggest only an indirect impact of the cash transfer on the schooling gap, through the expansion of the beneficiaries’ capability to be educated. however, due to the absence of any prescriptions regarding how to go about achieving equality of opportunity in these multidimensional aspects, the ca does not give a plausible answer for the second question apart from the statement: the greater the capability to be educated for all beneficiaries, the better. the combination that we propose would in fact lead to a precise and operational answer to both the questions combining remarkable elements of both approaches. to answer the first question, the combined approach would advocate for the multiplicity of outcomes for gauging wellbeing, inheriting the logic of the ca that we just presented. not only would our approach take into account the multidimensional aspect of wellbeing, but it would also respect the beneficiaries’ freedom to choose, suggesting only an indirect influence of the transfer over all outcomes. to answer the second question, our combination would inherit the rationale of the eop, arguing in favor of the equalization of capability to be educated by searching for an amount of the transfer that maximizes this capability for the ‘least capable’ across different types and ideally annuls the effect of circumstances on the capability of being educated. the combination would not suggest an equalization of any outcome, in respect of individual’s freedom to choose. furthermore, the search of this adequate amount of transfer would not let effort be considered as a residual variable; it is an important determinant of actual outcomes. effort would be, at least, partially gauged by some observable indicators, such as daily hours of study and frequency of visits to the school library. thus effort would not be considered as an absolute personal responsibility; each of the effort indicators that we mention is surely influenced by the beneficiaries’ capability to be educated and the converse is also true. 6. concluding remarks the quest for improved collective wellbeing with justice has always been a priority for most of the economic and political constructs that we know of. in this paper, we have attempted to show that there exist powerful philosophical and theoretical frameworks that contain important elements, which can and should be combined to come up with operational answers to this question. in particular, we rely on two theories that have recently gained an overwhelmingly increasing visibility in academic and policy circles, namely the capability approach and the equality of opportunity approach. one of the main contributions we want to make in this paper is to put on the table some ordered arguments for the fact that neither of these leading theories alone possesses sufficient theoretical elements to guide policymaking for wellbeing with justice. thus we advocate for a theoretical construction that builds on these two approaches to provide insight on how to design and evaluate policies for improvement of wellbeing with social justice. we show how the similarities and differences between the two approaches are complementary to each other and how they can help to set a solid theoretical basis for the assessment and design of public policies that seek to improve social justice. consequently, there are ways to explore the issue without having to build an entirely new approach. the particular manner in which we propose to combine the two theories has, to our knowledge, not been explored in the related literature. we show that the ex-post framework of the equality of opportunity approach, which is its original conception, is too heavily centered on people’s lifestyle outcomes, with too little theoretical consideration for individual heterogeneity and choice. however, the ex-ante framework of the equality of opportunity approach depicts elements that are compatible with public policies for wellbeing with justice krishnakumar & nogales www.internationaljournalofwellbeing.org 59 the logic of the capability approach, in the sense that both respect individual heterogeneity and freedom, and do not aim at equalization of results as a social justice paradigm. in the combination that is proposed, we argue for the need to explicitly consider the role of efforts while analyzing public policies and their link to wellbeing and justice. indeed, the line of reasoning that we present makes the case that individual efforts influence and are influenced by individual capabilities, but to our knowledge, there are no theoretical attempts in the existing literature to relate these two key variables in the understanding of wellbeing. efforts have often been treated as a residual variable in most empirical applications of the equality of opportunity approach, due to its unobservable nature. we stress that this is not an insurmountable obstacle as, even if potential achievements cannot be observed due to their counterfactual nature, there are empirical endeavors that have successfully taken account of this feature in their operationalization methodology. a similar approach can also be followed for operationalizing ‘effort’. in other words, technical difficulties for gauging bidirectional causal relations between unobservable variables should not hinder theoretical developments that can shed important light for understanding wellbeing and its relation to public policies. therefore, while designing and assessing public policies, one needs to target and equalize capability sets of individuals, rather than their outcomes. this is done through a maximin algorithm that maximizes the capability set of the group that is the least favored in terms of circumstances while taking into account the influence of circumstances and policies on capabilities and efforts, and explicitly incorporating interdependencies between the latter two variables. we define this ‘well-being with justice’ problem in a technical way and discuss the solution from an optimal public policy angle. we are aware that the main challenges for the empirical application of our theoretical framework 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(2012). el impacto del bono juancito pinto: un análisis a partir de microsimulaciones. revista latinoamericana de desarrollo económico, 17, 75-112. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.09.019 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2005.00227.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-6345 http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19452829.2014.907247 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10888-010-9162-z _________ carmela fusciello smith, edd, lcsw, associate professor, department of social work, southern connecticut state university, new haven, ct. jemel p. aguilar, phd, mph, lcsw, associate professor, school of social services, fordham university, new york, ny. shuei kozu, phd, mha, licsw, assistant professor, karen a. d’angelo, phd, msw, assistant professor, elizabeth king keenan, phd, lcsw, professor, and stephen monroe tomczak, phd, lmsw, associate professor, department of social work at southern connecticut state university, new haven, ct. copyright © 2022 authors, vol. 22 no. 2 (summer 2022), 758-778, doi: 10.18060/24646 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. if anti-racism is the goal, then anti-oppression is how we get there carmela fusciello smith jemel p. aguilar shuei kozu karen a. d'angelo elizabeth king keenan stephen monroe tomczak abstract: many schools of social work around the united states of america wrote antiracism statements because of the recent murders of black and brown people. in this contribution, the authors describe a challenging and tense discussion of racism and antiracism leading to a group process about oppression and anti-oppression in the social work profession. for some, the urgency to address racism led to tactics and strategies that got in the way of social workers engaging in anti-oppressive practices. while the structure of higher education often reinforces traditional hierarchies of power, the profession of social work calls us to promote our core values of social justice, integrity, and the importance of human relationships as we strive for an anti-oppressive future. consequently, social work faculty may experience role conflict as we navigate these tensions. we believe it is important to harness and process such discomfort as we critically examine the power dynamics within our own department, and our own profession. this voluntary, ad hoc group, composed of a diverse group of faculty members, provides space for ongoing mutual aid, consciousness raising, appropriate discomfort, and accountability. if anti-racism is the goal, then anti-oppression is how we get there. keywords: anti-oppression practice, oppression, higher education, white supremacy, restorative justice despite the history of police and other mostly white american citizens shooting and lynching black individuals, some multi-ethnic segments of american society clamored loudly after watching derek chauvin kneel on george floyd’s neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds. derek chauvin, however, was aided by thomas lane, another white man, as well as tou thao, a hmong american, and j. alexander kueng, a mixed ethnicity black identified man. essentially a multi-racial team of men black, hmong, and white, aided in the murder of george floyd, and its attempted cover up. the murder of george floyd sparked anti-racism statements among some businesses, academic institutions, and professional groups as well as calls to recognize that “black lives matter.” while the murder of george floyd certainly enacts racist beliefs about black men, a larger system of oppressive beliefs about many populations have guided actions in the united states of america in which one group leveraged their power to massacre, imprison, restrain, or lessen the value of other populations. examples in american history include the trail of tears, boarding schools for native americans, enfranchisement laws that were about:blank smith et al./if anti-racism is the goal 759 differentially applied to white women and women of color, the eugenics movement in america, military conscription during the vietnam war, prohibition against gay and lesbian’s marriage equality, “bathroom bills” targeting transgender men and women as well as sundown towns across the united states. many populations have been subject to oppressive political actions and legally sanctioned discrimination (ferber et al., 2009). the aim of this paper is to draw upon our insights and experiences within our voluntary, ad hoc anti-oppression committee, in order to name and discuss the contradictions within social work and higher education regarding values and practices; in doing so, we apply a theoretical framework of social dominance and oppression, discuss structures that reinforce oppression within higher education as well as common emotional and intellectual responses to oppression, and make recommendations for meaningful action. in this first section, we briefly explore concepts used to examine or explain oppression in american society including how and why some people adopt anti-oppressive language yet act in ways that subordinate groups. to that end, we draw on our experiences forming and participating in a voluntary, ad hoc anti-oppressive committee, as well as the tensions and missteps that did and did not fuel new understandings of social dominance, hierarchies, intersectionality, multiple social categorizations, socialization processes, and consequently oppression to further illustrate how oppression trickles down from structural systems to interpersonal interactions. while structural systems permit discriminatory interpersonal interactions, these systems also create modes of being described as privilege that shape how dominant groups judge their actions and the actions of subordinate groups. added to the complication of conceptualizing oppression is the dynamic nature of oppression in that interactions are shaped by the social context and identities of social groups interacting in the social context. to elucidate oppression, we start by explaining social dominance theory and applying that to oppression and then the creation of hierarchies of oppression. social dominance theory social dominance is an arbitrary system in which one social group dominates other social groups (pratto et al., 2006). social domination occurs on the group-level while also permitting interpersonal dominance at the interpersonal level and cognitive aspects of dominance at the individual level. thus, social dominance is a multi-level framework that includes several terms, such as privilege and discrimination, used to describe aspects of social domination. social domination is explained through myths about the appropriateness of domination like, for example, that a management committee made up of all white people can write a letter about the murder of george floyd without including the voices and perspectives of the black or indigenous people of color. this incident occurred in our department, sparking arguments about oppression laid against many marginalized identities in the department coupled with complicity with oppressive actions by people that identify as social justice advocates. during these arguments, questions arose about one’s positionality in relation to social justice as well as people who are marginalized because of their identities and/or social locations. these arguments revealed that the social hierarchies advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 760 that stack different populations into more-oppressed or less-oppressed groups are not as uniform or linear (amosa & gorski, 2008; clark, 2010; marshall, 2009). to broaden the identities and complexity that exist among social groups, some diversity scholars employ intersectionality to address multiple identities (carbado, 2013; crenshaw, 1989; ghavami & peplau, 2013). intersectionality proposes that multiple grouplevel identities interconnect or converge and contribute to unique forms of oppression and represent multiple positions in a social hierarchy. while intersectionality is subject to critiques based on interpretation and application, the concept is widely used, and empirical evidence supports portions of the concept with different marginalized populations (ghavami & peplau, 2013). in contrast, social psychologists apply multiple social categorizations to group-level multiple identities to explain how cognitive, affective, and motivational factors influence group-level social interactions (curtin et al., 2016; riggio, 2013; pratto et al., 2006). additionally, multiple social categorizations include aspects of oppression that are not accounted for by intersectionality alone, such as colorism. thus, even when people are committed to anti-oppressive work, they may still contribute to oppressive behaviors. examining the multiple social categorizations of members of our group lends itself to understanding how the dominant and subordinate social groups dynamically interact to create hierarchies that maintain and reshape social hierarchies and social dominance (remedios & snyder, 2018). as we are born into multiple social categories, we are then socialized into an inequitable social system, which is pervasive, consistent, circular, self-perpetuating, and invisible (harro, 2013). unless something occurs that disturbs the cycle, the cultural, social, and institutional socialization processes continue, making it difficult for individuals to reflect, question, and challenge what is the “norm” to them. this leads to the creation of a culture within an institution to perpetuate the white norm/white supremacy. in the instance of white management committee members writing a letter in response to george floyd’s death without inviting faculty of color to share their perspectives, multiple faculty members of color challenged the appropriateness of the situation. white tenured faculty is not a monolith, either, and their actions differed greatly. many remained silent, both verbally and through non-action, while others exhibited behaviors that diangelo (2018) termed “white fragility.” while some tenured and non-tenured white faculty engaged in activism, working for and with faculty of color to reflect everyone’s voices. oppression oppression is “a set of policies, practices, traditions, norms, definitions, and explanations, which function to systematically exploit one group to the benefit of another group” (sensoy & diangelo, 2017, p. 84). despite the clarity of sensoy and diangelo’s definition, oppression is a confusing concept because many times scholars, practitioners, and laypeople equate oppression with the systemic oppression laid against groups in society, namely racism, sexism, heterosexism, ableism, and other “isms.” mcdonald and coleman (1999), in contrast to sensoy and diangelo, include a more expansive conceptualization of power in their definition when they state, “oppression is also discrimination systematically enforced through use of social/economic/political power, in smith et al./if anti-racism is the goal 761 such a way that the status quo is maintained, and inequity is legitimized in domination” (p. 20). while racism, sexism, ableism, and heterosexism describe oppressive relations between dominant and subordinated social groups based on a social identity such as ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity, the overarching concept of oppression foregrounds examination of power relations, including subordinate and dominate, center/margin, and invisible and visible. oppression, thus, is backed by social power that dynamically creates ingroups and outgroups in social contexts. for example, faculty groups on some u.s. college campuses are divided into professor, associate professor, and assistant professor social groups. the system of higher education endows each of these social groups with a level of power based on their position within the social and educational hierarchy. therefore, in faculty meetings the power relations between the faculty members operates “in the background” as professors, associate professors, and assistant professors interact. at times, power relations are made overt through tenure in that assistant professors – typically untenured – might be reminded of their place in the academic hierarchy and tenure process (dews & law, 1995). faculty members in professor or associate professor social groups might espouse values associated with egalitarianism, particularly in professions such as social work, while relationships between professor groups enact social hierarchies prevalent in american society that rank people with different ethnic identities, sexual orientations, abilities, and gender identities among many other identities (dessel et al., 2012; di palma, 2005; harris & nicolazzo, 2020; wong & jones, 2018). while professor social group and tenure status play roles in social hierarchies, other social groupings also come into to play and create additional groupings and subgroupings that add to complex social hierarchies within academic settings. staff and adjunct faculty are often ignored and not invited when decisions are made for the department, as these additional social groups are often overlooked and under-appreciated. additionally, in the social work profession, the division between direct practice social workers such as clinical, case management, or direct client care positions and community practice social workers such as community organizers and policy advocates is an additional facet of social groups that can further group social workers in academic settings (feldman et al., 2021; liddel & lass, 2019; robinson et al., 2020). thus, dominant social groups in an oppressive regime will differ based on social context and are more dynamic and complex than simple ranking of faculty from assistant to full professor. while this example has focused on our social work department that is located within academia, the ideas and assertions laid out in this section are transferable to other social contexts and social groupings, explaining how hierarchies of oppression are structured and maintained. hierarchies of oppression as unpacked in the previous section, oppression is a multi-faceted and interconnected social process. hence to practice an anti-oppressive approach effectively, the multiple facets of social grouping across social contexts should be addressed. this will be a conceptual leap for some and for all, a non-linear and dynamic process. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 762 the united states of america, for example, was established by 56 white, affluent males. many of these men owned slaves, subjugated women, and disenfranchised poor people all while writing, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. (national archives, 1776/2022, para. 2) the social structures that followed the establishment of u.s. society afforded subsequent white, wealthy men unearned privileges by virtue of their status in the u.s. over time, voting was established for white men, slaves were freed, attempts to decimate native americans occurred, men of other ethnicities were permitted to vote, other forms of subjugation were established to maintain divisions between black and white people, laws punishing the sexual assault of women, mostly white, were enacted and years later protected black women, quota systems for immigration were enacted limiting nonnorthwestern europeans entrance to the united states, gay and lesbians advocated for equal civil rights, women advocated for equal rights as part of an equal rights movement, people with disabilities were afforded protections under the individuals with disabilities act, and many other events by subjugated social groups have challenged the dominant status of social groups in american society. while cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, white men have historically maintained a high social status in american society (kimmel & ferber, 2017), other groups maintain a subordinate status. however, to this day, cisgender, heterosexual, able bodied, white men’s status in american society is the pinnacle of the hierarchy of oppression. as stated earlier, the dynamic and contextual nature of oppression inhibits the static ranking of subordinated groups because the context changes the ranking of subordinate groupings. the dynamic and contextual nature of the hierarchy of oppression, thus can create tactics and strategies used by both dominant and subordinate social groups during interpersonal interactions and social actions striving to be anti-oppressive. while tactics and strategies will be discussed later in this paper, features of the hierarchy of oppression will be discussed further in this section. privileged or dominant social groups within a hierarchy hold power and social status as well as the maximum access to necessary commodities. subordinate groups, in contrast, must either conform to the rules and desires of those at the highest levels or resist conformity (mcdonald & coleman, 1999). in most academic departments, necessary commodities include tenure status, the ability to assert one’s position without risk of retaliation that might results in job loss, priority selection of courses including dates and times, on campus and professional social capital, and differential access to sabbaticals and other workload resources. subordinate social groups must decide whether to engage in a constant struggle with those in privileged or dominant groups status as well as others within subordinate groups (mcdonald & coleman, 1999; pratto et al., 2006). resistance and conformity have both positive and negative implications for subordinate social group members. for some subordinate group members, conformity is participating in their own smith et al./if anti-racism is the goal 763 oppression in exchange for shadow privilege, a privilege that is extended to another because of their relationship with a privileged person. conformity might ebb and flow in that digression in response to direct experiences of oppression might lessen conformity, while witnessing oppression towards other subordinate social group members might increase conformity. conformity can also occur through status maneuvering which involves subordinated social groups creating similarities between those with privileged status to align themselves with dominant social groups (oselin & barber, 2019). this might explain, to some extent, why non-white police officers do not intervene when black citizens are brutalized by white police officers. non-white police officers might be benefiting from shadow privileges due to their close relationships with white officers, or they might be finding being police officers or being male as their similarities. in the case of derek chauvin and three other officers who are responsible of george floyd’s death, derek chauvin is the oldest of the four, and likely the most senior officer amongst them. by challenging officer chauvin, the rest might have feared retaliation or loss of privilege they have benefited. both shadow privilege and status maneuvering can create conflicts among subordinated social groups as those subordinate social group members resisting oppression conflict with subordinate social group members that conform with the oppression by dominant group members. when conflict disrupts subordinate social group relationships, as mcdonald and coleman (1999) point out, groups further up the social hierarchy benefit, especially as subordinate social group members fight amongst themselves rather than pull together to challenge the social hierarchy. freire (1965/1973, 1968/2014) suggests that dominant groups stimulate conflict among subordinate groups as a way of maintaining an oppressor and oppressed relationship. manipulating social groups, inciting conflict among subordinated social groups, and presenting a mirage of helpfulness and solidarity while simultaneously inhibiting oppressed groups from rising up – essentially reaching out with their hand to help them up while putting their foot on them to keep them down – redirects attention from social hierarchies towards other social groups and the struggle for limited resources. therefore, it is crucial to address all forms of oppression in order to practice anti-racism. if we allow the culture where we remain silent when a marginalized group is targeted, other forms of oppression will persist. structures that support oppression an example of a structure that supports oppression is silence particularly related to white supremacy. on its face, the term “white supremacy” sparks memories of enslavement, lynching, and violent control of africans and african americans. at one time, this was the primary mode of maintaining white supremacy but since the civil rights movement the strategies for maintaining white supremacy have changed. white supremacy during the covid-19 pandemic, for example, has permitted many people in the united states of america to authoritatively rename covid-19, the “china virus” and then viciously attack asian americans and asians in response to perceived infringement on their rights (jeung et al., 2021), and the hate crimes against many other social groups such as gay men and lesbians, transgender men and women, non-binary people, as well as advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 764 people with various abilities and disabilities. thus, white supremacy has evolved to account for more than overt acts of murder of african americans to include subversive acts of subjugation of perceived subordinate social groups (mccoy, 2020). in the social work profession, prominent social work reference texts do not define white supremacy (barker, 2014; harris & white, 2013; mizrahi & davis, 2020; rowe & rapp-paglicci, 2008; thyer, 2008; timms & timms, 2016; white, 2008), which is a form of silence by a profession that espouses social justice values. the merriam-webster dictionary (2011), however, defines white supremacy as “the belief that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races and the social, economic, and political systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power over people of other races” (p. 1429). white supremacy, however, is not limited to subjugating one color or ethnic group into slavery but includes a dynamic assimilation of groups into a “white” category, the establishment and domination of subordinate groups, and a reshaping of overt violence and enslavement of marginalized populations towards whitewashing of the domination, as well as insidious infiltration into judicial, political, economic, cultural, cognitive, somatic, metaphysical spheres of society and human development (gillborn, 2006; hooks, 2004; kendi, 2019). white supremacy, therefore, is a multi-dimensional social construct that is embedded in overt and covert aspects of society in ways that emphasize power dynamics between dominant and dynamically situated subordinate social groups. white supremacy gives birth to and rears hierarchies of oppression. white supremacy is best understood as a system of power and control that uses systems of oppression such as capitalism, patriarchy, ethnocentrism, and heterosexism to dominate and exploit marginalized populations in the interest of maintaining privilege for whites, and most particularly whites who control most of the income and wealth in society. social groups can also support white supremacy through policies or plans that bolster whiteness as superior, also known as strategies, as well as tactics or ways of enacting strategies that uphold whiteness as superior over other groupings. strategies can include rewriting memory or history or cultural appropriation as well as tactics like stimulating conflicts among subordinate groups and tone policing, meaning one focuses on the tone and not the content of what is being said (biddle & hufnagel, 2019; curtin et al., 2016; nuru & arendt, 2019; quinones, 2017), white tears (hikido & murray, 2016; patton & jordan, 2017; phipps, 2021; tate & page, 2018), and status maneuvering (oselin & barber, 2019). several scholars have written about many of the strategies and tactics used in oppressive contexts (pewewardy, 2003; smith et al., 2021). among our department and committee conversations, for example, some white faculty members subjugated subordinate groups through tone policing of black indigenous people of color (bipoc), interrupting women, and speaking for all members of the faculty when discussing oppression. simultaneously, some bipoc engaged in status maneuvering by steering conversations exclusively towards race and racism despite the multiple social categories among the people that are marginalized in social work, academia, and society. thus, strategies and tactics operate within a power structure that emphasizes overt and covert mechanisms for a system of social control. covert strategies are more insidious and have included the use of what herman and chomsky (1988) call the manufacture of smith et al./if anti-racism is the goal 765 consent, which employs techniques of advertising and other methods of manipulation to normalize white supremacy, and its assumptions about bipoc people. tactics are employed to subordinate populations through interpersonal interactions such as those described above but also through media and educational institutions. these interpersonal tactics contrast with overtly violent structural intimidation and terrorism tactics that are typified by groups such as ku klux klan and more recently by “alt right” groups such as the proud boys, promise keepers, and qanon (kendi, 2019). these interpersonal and structural tactics are important – individually and combined – facets of maintaining white supremacy, normalizing whiteness, instilling conformity to whiteness, promoting conflict within marginalized groups because of status maneuvering, and adhering to a dominant and subordinate social order. moreover, reactions to these interpersonal and structural tactics produce further reactions among those with social identities matching dominant social groups or subordinated social groups. during the spring of 2020, a faculty member analyzed the distribution of student advising among all full-time faculty in our department. as part of this analysis, they submitted their report that compared faculty demographics with participation in undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral student advising and reported that 100% of cisgender, heterosexual, white men were tenured. in contrast, 42% of white women and 20% people of color (including one female) were tenured. additionally, 88% of men compared to 40% of women were tenured and no queer faculty were tenured. highlighting the demographic differences among the tenured faculty does not reflect other differences that play a role in the social relationships among faculty members. social work is a professional field consisting mostly of cisgender women with the aim of promoting justice, yet these statistics reflect a set of advantages based upon gender, race, and sexual orientation. additionally, 71% of the white male tenured faculty refused to advise undergraduate students leaving advising to faculty comprised primarily of groups of faculty members that are marginalized because of their identities and social locations. hence, like many structures in u.s. society, our social structure benefits cisgender heterosexual white men. when confronted with this data, many white male faculty members defended and denied these inequities and positioned themselves as victims to the resistance of faculty members that are marginalized because of their identities and social locations who spoke up during an anti-oppression committee meeting. to address the situation, many faculty members, both tenured and non-tenured, voted for all faculty to advise undergraduate students. even those who voted against the matter participated in the training sessions. this is not indicative of their acceptance of the change in the department for an anti-oppressive approach. it is our hope, however, that through the process of training, advising, coaching and consultations, non-tenured and tenured faculty will share the common goal of an improved student education, and bring us closer to achieving the goal. emotionality and resistance: the oppression continuum emotionality is an important facet of both tactics and strategies used by dominant and subordinate social groups. as discussed, white tears, tone policing, conformity, and resistance are emotional ways that both dominant and subordinate social groups contend with oppression. to explore and explain emotionality in the context of oppression, we advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 766 employ and adapt carr’s (2003) theory of empowerment through a feminist lens and then illustrate aspects our conceptualization by applying our experiences in the department and with each other. carr (2003) draws on feminist thought on positionality, interpretation, identity building, and mobilization for change to examine the process of empowerment. our individual and communal responses to oppressive experiences range from intellectualization or emotional detachment to emotionalization or intense personal feelings. should we respond emotionally as the oppressor, then we might exhibit a sentimental attachment to a worldview that protects our self-image, social status, and power (ahmed, 2004; diangelo, 2018). such emotionality shifts attention away from those who are oppressed towards the oppressors and allows oppressors to avoid accountability for the harm this social group causes. should we respond emotionally as the oppressed, we may grieve for lost opportunities, the possibility of hope, and the imposed limitations on one’s value and success in society (gitterman & knight, 2019). we all participate in oppression, moving fluidly on a continuum from oppressor to oppressed. we contribute to oppression as individuals, as communities, and as the social work profession (jones, 2020). therefore, we need to be mindful of tactics used to oppress others, such as deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender (darvo) in order to deflect the blame (second city works, 2020), but to take responsibility of our own words and actions. while we cannot escape from the oppression continuum, we can become aware of our positionality, reflect on our emotionalization, and support one another in effecting social transformation (carr, 2003), thus, eliminating bystanders and creating amplifiers. figure 1. oppression continuum oppression, like trauma, is timeless in that it is both historical and vicariously situated. all forms of oppression must end. mullaly & west (2017) suggests that an anti-oppressive approach requires a shift in thinking regarding who must change, a move away from blaming those who are oppressed for their reactions to oppression they might have smith et al./if anti-racism is the goal 767 experienced since birth, and a stop to the demand that victims change by assimilation or being told to speak in a way that is comforting to the oppressor. we believe in the notion that an attack on one oppressed group is an attack on all oppressed groups. while there are hierarchies of oppression within our society, most people identify with multiple privileged and marginalized groups simultaneously, and their experiences differ even though they may belong to the same social categories. this leads to oppressive practice within a group toward each other (david & derthick, 2013). systemic and structural oppression also reinforce each marginalized group pitting against each other to maintain the power of the privileged groups. wherever we find ourselves on the oppression continuum, we might respond to oppression with anger, fear, loneliness, and grief, or numbness (laub & allard, 1998; sortero, 2006). some anti-oppressive advocates argue that social groups should reflect on our response to oppressive experiences to locate and regulate our emotions (hooks, 1993), integrate thoughts and feelings, and empathize with the feelings of others (gerdes & segal, 2009). alternatively, some anti-oppression advocates argue that anger, rage, and frustration are useful tools that should not be diminished in favor of the emotional and cognitive needs of dominant groups (falck, 1988; gonzalez, 2017; hamad, 2019). the authors of this paper can be placed along the continuum of regulating emotions to emotions as tools, which is common among the social groups with different relationships to oppressive structures. figure 2. action to social transformation white persons and others who are positioned as oppressors can reach beyond their emotional discomfort “into the prolonged emotional investment in humanity, so necessary to undoing racism” and oppression (matias, 2016, p. 61). emotional investment, however, requires dominant groups to forgo the tactics and strategies used to resist displacing ownership for the groups’ oppressive tactics and strategies while facing the emotionality of oppressed groups and their own reactions. when called to confront dominant social groups’ participation in oppression, dominant social groups might react by resisting change known as negative resistance or may act by resisting oppression known as positive resistance. social group members might feel empowered to move from negative to positive resistance to build a sense of social belonging, hopeful thinking, and commitment to common purpose (freire, 1968/2014; rowe, 2015; synder, 2002), but this takes significant advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 768 personal and social effort to undue considerable socialization, intellectualization, and emotionalization training over one’s lifetime. the effort to change a lifetime of socialization into an oppressive power structure illuminates the challenge when social groups neglect deep rooted and identity-challenging self-reflection to participate in the power dynamic within the social structure and continue the process of multiple marginalized groups continuing to hurt other subordinated groups instead of uniting. in response to the discussions of oppression and oppressive structures within our department, different dominant and subordinate social group members attempts at intellectualization and emotionalization, and the legacy of oppression rooted in our social structure of the department, one of the authors used his social capital to invite a restorative justice expert to identify how this intervention might bring interpersonal and social change. restorative justice practices are targeted as means to balance social transformation, action, resistance to change, and resistance to oppressions (armour & umbreit, 2018). the process of incorporating restorative justice practices into our response to oppression will be discussed in the implications section, but for now we will explain how the restorative justice practices we are incorporating strive to balance all forms of oppression embedded within our social structure and relationship while attending to the harms that subordinate populations have encountered in our department. for example, faculty in our social work department identified inequities in the distribution of faculty work. untenured faculty of color had heavier responsibilities for academic advising than tenured white men. when the disparate impact of advising assignments was framed as a matter of social justice, some faculty members reacted with surprise and denial. in meeting conversations and emails, some cisgender heterosexual, white male tenured faculty demonstrated emotionalization through angry outrage, intellectualization through efforts to reframe the issue as academic elitism, reversing victim and offender by focusing on the amount of labor put in with students, and silence. in contrast, many faculty members from marginalized groups felt emotionally assaulted by these egregious actions, and some white faculty experienced anger, outrage and disappointment. while some tenured white faculty continued to engage in oppressive behaviors such as stimulating conflict and victim identity, other tenured white faculty engaged in antioppressive approaches. these activities included calling in, to provide education and space for their colleagues to reflect on their own actions. they also powered with marginalized groups: this is a use of interpersonal power, privilege, and relationship, yet differs from addressing the social structure that enabled the cisgender heterosexual white male tenured professors from considering the harm that subordinate populations would experience that adds to the harms brought into the social interactions from living in a society that maintains a hierarchy of oppression. at the same time, in anti-oppression meetings, we reflected on our own actions where we remained silent when we could have spoken out, to remind each other that we can all engage in oppressive actions while being oppressed. although the department voted to revise the policy on advising, some faculty were left exhausted by the effort of effecting change because the policy might not change the factors that lead to disproportionate numbers of advisees. smith et al./if anti-racism is the goal 769 understanding and altering oppression is not an easy process. based on our experiences, in the next section we attempt to answer the question: how do we assure that anti-oppressive work leads to constructive and hopeful action rather than destructive alienation and despair? intentional action in order to address oppressive practices in our department, which were strongly undergirded by white supremacy, patriarchy, and the antiquated, hierarchal power structure of academia, faculty sought out to work collaboratively in order to determine how we may meaningfully work towards creating a truly anti-oppressive departmental culture. the aim was to avoid tokenizing and symbolic demonstrations of solidarity or social justice, and instead to promote an active, anti-oppressive culture, in which all members of our team feel heard and valued. this process began with a voluntary meeting, where the group identified aims and initially agreed to meet weekly. this group then hosted regular meetings in which a group of about ten faculty met virtually over the summer of 2020, to discuss strategies for change; meetings were always open to all department staff. this group included tenured faculty, non-tenured faculty, and one adjunct faculty member; it was facilitated by two non-tenured faculty of color. the aim for this group was to provide mutual aid, raise critical consciousness, provoke appropriate discomfort, and promote shared accountability. space was intentionally created to allow for a participatory group process; participants were encouraged to be honest and vulnerable in sharing their perspectives and experiences, as well as to actively listen, with humility, and personally reflect on what was shared. through this process, faculty identified both policies and processes that reinforce traditional and oppressive power structures within our department and discussed strategies for change. faculty of color and faculty from other marginalized groups shared painful, personal experiences of feeling marginalized and/or exploited by others in the department, and at times this process helped other colleagues gain awareness of the complex nuances to their privileged experiences and reflect about personal behavior that essentially led colleagues to experience oppression. however, these difficult conversations did not always feel productive. at times, despite our collective best efforts, the group dynamic replicated oppression as dissenting voices dominated the discussion which inhibited further growth or reconciliation. the group also grappled with the fact that, though it was open to all, fewer than half of our departmental faculty and staff participated in the process. these contradictions were hard to understand, given that this is a department of social work, and that we are all trained and aligned with a profession that overtly is committed to social justice, integrity, and the importance of human relationships (national association of social workers [nasw], 2017). after meeting for about 12 weeks, and in the face of escalating tensions and growing concerns about the potential implications of this discord on students and the broader community, the group explored external supports to help our department better facilitate this work. struggling with how to effectively instill anti-oppressive practices within the cooperative processes of our department, and foster a culture of shared accountability, our advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 770 anti-oppression group chose to proceed with a restorative justice approach. with the support of our department chair and dean, we sought the assistance of external consultants that are experts in restorative justice interventions, and familiar with both social work and academia. we chose a restorative justice approach because it ultimately aligned best with our group’s aims and embraced our humanistic values as social workers. according to the university of san diego (usd) center for restorative justice (2021), restorative justice is “a philosophical approach that embraces the reparation of harm, healing of trauma, reconciliation of interpersonal conflict, reduction of social inequality, and reintegration of people who have been marginalized and outcast” (para. 1). stemming from indigenous culture and practice, restorative justice practices facilitate transformative change through community empowerment, engaged participation, active accountability, and social support. the methodology intentionally brings community stakeholders together to build trust, acknowledge harm and accept responsibility for wrongdoing, and repair relationships (usd center for restorative justice, 2021). although peripheral in the professional literature, restorative justice has been used in social work practice for decades to address different types of injustices (gumz & grant, 2009; van wormer, 2006); these most often have included victim offender mediation (choi et al., 2010; umbreit, 1994), and therapeutic family interventions (van wormer, 2003). restorative justice has also been suggested as a way for social work to actualize a restorative process towards social justice (gumz & grant, 2009), and reconcile its dual functions as agents of social change and social control (burford & adams, 2004). while restorative justice has been widely applied to school settings, we are not familiar with it being applied to a social work department within a university setting. the pivot or shift from demeaning and subjugating power dynamics towards the social work ethical principle of social justice in which social workers pursue “social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people” requires attention to individual, interpersonal, organizational, and professional changes (nasw, 2017, p. 2). these multilevel and multidimensional changes can lead towards centering the humanness of all peoples as social workers come into their fullness as a human being and accessing one’s full capacity in an embodied manner. pivoting encompasses conflict, social stress, strategies and tactics to maintain white supremacy and oppression, as well as attempts to realign the power structures through stimulating conflict among people with identities and social locations that are marginalized in the department, academia, and society. not all group members were or are comfortable walking through the coppice of thorny conflicts, however, some argue that pivoting requires a deep anchor that acknowledges and values the vibrancy of all living creatures as social beings, who desire and need each other to become our best selves. eventually, a collective antioppressive mindset believes that individuals thrive when social groups and organizations thrive because no one group dominates at the expense of other groups. we have a long way to go, but we have just entered the coppice of thorny conflicts. smith et al./if anti-racism is the goal 771 creating a process intrapersonal. social workers develop awareness of the ways they have internalized privilege from their specific positionality – internalized dominance, internalized oppression, or a combination of dominance and oppression. exploration of how one has been socialized into their privilege and biases, the beliefs and assumptions one has of self and others, and the costs to self and others are examined. specific reflection on moments where harm has occurred can potentially spark intense emotions and reactions. this work optimally occurs in tandem with practices that build muscle for sitting with intense emotions, ground one within one’s body, and utilize body practices that heal and nurture one’s affirming relationship with self. social workers cultivate awareness of how they engage in centering and distancing behaviors in relationship to their positionality, and practice how to assess and respond to psychological harm in various settings. intrapersonal requires the following: awareness of centering and distancing behaviors (menakem, 2017); develop muscle to acknowledge harm done (saad, 2020); and develop muscle to speak up in the moment (haga, 2020). interpersonal. social workers intentionally use a humanizing interdependent mindset when interacting with others to identify which groups are being centered, marginalized, or devalued. intrapersonal practices support social workers’ ability to speak in ways that disrupt complacency when others are indifferent or are fostering a “negative peace,” and create spaces for restorative practices when harm occurs. providing opportunities, in a safe space, with a trained outside professional/consultant with restorative practice experience, to respond to conflicts and harm. affording opportunities for everyone to share their thoughts and/or experiences and to listen. interpersonal requires the following: accountability and disrupting complacency (menakem, 2017; saad, 2020); restorative practices for harm done and decentering whiteness (haga, 2020). organization. a humanizing, interdependent mindset helps social workers plan activities that build relationships within and across multiple groups within an organization. existing structures and ways of working are examined for the degree to which people impacted by decisions are meaningfully included in deliberations and decisions. an equity mindedness framework is also utilized with policies, programs, and procedures to identify and intentionally address inequities. to do this, some of the tasks would include providing a space to build up faculty and staff relationships, building a community of trust and respect, establishing a space to develop policy and procedures, addressing conflicts to change and prevent an oppressive culture, and developing a method to track progress and accountability. ultimately, organizations require an equity mindedness lens for policies and procedures, relational activities, and accountability (university of southern california center for urban education, n.d.). professional and institutional level change requires examination of underlying beliefs and assumptions to uncover biases and a culture of oppression. the non-profit industrial complex has promoted white saviorism without significantly redistributing resources or improving the well-being of low-income, distressed communities where many bipoc live. social work’s investment in licensure and the delivery of clinical social work services keeps the profession dependent on an individually based fee for service reimbursement advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 772 funding stream by for-profit health insurance companies. while clinical social work services are necessary for individual and family healing, an over-reliance on this only perpetuates a culture of oppression since most social workers are dependent on that for their financial security. student loan debt further perpetuates social workers’ reluctance to challenge existing funding streams. institutions must question beliefs and assumptions, such as white/male saviorism and non-profit industrial complex. implications there is no escape from the oppression continuum. fighting for social justice is a continuous process of raising awareness of oppression, reflecting on our responses, and working together towards a common goal. by calling in, eliminating bystanders, and powering with others, we can transform the oppression continuum into a virtuous cycle of change. figure 3. common goal how do we assure that the pain of anti-oppressive work leads to constructive and hopeful action rather than destructive alienation and despair? our department’s experience exemplified the importance of group work for anti-oppressive social work education and practice. social justice group work (garvin & ortega, 2016; ortega, 2017) and restorative practice are effective means for building community, fighting against institutional and interpersonal oppression, and promoting individual and communal healing. however, the challenges of building trust, setting norms, and facilitating mutual aid call for specialized group work knowledge and skills. by restoring the prominence of group work in social work education (simon & kilbaine, 2014), we can build our profession’s capacity to resist oppression and contribute to a socially just world. summary this article describes the process that portions of our department of social work went through in responding to the exposure of oppressive practices in our program. in response to the murder of george floyd, our all-white management committee sought to write a letter as did many other organizations in the u.s. the department realized we were unable to write a meaningful letter directed toward external stakeholders until we first grappled smith et al./if anti-racism is the goal 773 with issues of racism and other inequities within our own department. initially, some came to address anti-racism and racial justice while others redirected our efforts towards oppression and anti-oppressive practices that included dismantling white supremacy and racial injustice. framing our purpose as anti-oppression challenges the social work profession to strive for social justice for each and every oppressed group, instead of repeating the legacies of a hierarchical oppression, which focuses on one group while allowing others to languish. to that end, we had to challenge our own terminology, concepts, fears, and interpersonal differences to upend our roles in the department, our roles with each other, and our perspectives of the goals and purpose of the social work profession. this article has attempted to describe a group process in response to instances of racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression in our organization. the shift from a focus on anti-racism to antioppression allowed us to create processes to address oppression through anti-oppressive practices. this central insight reveals that if anti-racism is the goal, then anti-oppression is how we get there. references ahmed, s. 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(2018). students’ experiences of microaggressions in an urban msw program. journal of social work education, 54(4), 679-695. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2018.1486253 author note: address correspondence to carmela fusciello smith, department of social work, southern connecticut state university, new haven, ct, 06515. email: smithc57@southernct.edu https://reflectionsnarrativesofprofessionalhelping.org/index.php/reflections/article/view/1858 https://reflectionsnarrativesofprofessionalhelping.org/index.php/reflections/article/view/1858 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli1304_01 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1350062 https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2018.1428718 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315625904 https://www.sandiego.edu/soles/leadership-studies/restorative-justice-facilitation-and-leadership-certificate/ https://www.sandiego.edu/soles/leadership-studies/restorative-justice-facilitation-and-leadership-certificate/ https://cue.usc.edu/about/equity/ https://doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.127 https://doi.org/10.1300/j067v26n03_04 https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2018.1486253 mailto:smithc57@southernct.edu microsoft word ms 406 (proof 1).docx journal of urban mathematics education december 2022, vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 41–63 ©jume. https://journals.tdl.org/jume roland g. pourdavood, is a professor of mathematics education at cleveland state university, 2121 euclid ave., julka hall room 325, cleveland, oh 44115; email: r.pourdavood@csuohio.edu. his research interests include mathematics teachers’ dialogues and reflections for transformation and school reform, cultural diversity, socio-cultural aspects of education, and emancipatory action research for personal and social praxis. meng yan is a ph.d. candidate of learning and development in urban education at cleveland state university, 2121 euclid ave., julka hall, cleveland, oh 44115; email: m.yan@vikes.csuohio.edu. her research interests include curriculum development and instruction, parenting style and student well-being, student motivation, second language acquisition, language and thought, quantitative methods, and statistics. teaching mathematics and science through a social justice lens roland g. pourdavood cleveland state university meng yan cleveland state university teaching mathematics and science embedded in social justice is not a familiar concept for many teachers, especially pre-service teachers. this qualitative, descriptive, and interpretative study examines the experiences and reflections of 26 middle grade and secondary pre-service mathematics and science teachers on teaching and learning mathematics and science through the social justice lens as they took a semester-long course concurrently with their student-teaching. the primary research question was, “how may a semester-long course focusing on teaching and learning mathematics and science with social justice awareness provide pre-service teachers with opportunities to reflect on and change their teaching practices?” data included researchers’ field notes and participating pre-service teachers’ verbal discussions, written reflections, and classroom presentations. the findings suggest that teaching mathematics and science in the context of social justice enhanced the participating pre-services teachers’ awareness of educational opportunity and equity. the findings also indicate teaching mathematics and science from the social justice perspective requires a paradigm shift in teaching and learning. furthermore, the study exposes the limitations of the current school structure and culture for meaningful learning, the limitations of existing curricula and state-mandated texts, and the lack of adequate resources in teaching mathematics and science in social justice contexts. keywords: mathematics and science, social justice, teaching and learning pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 42 s the demographics of the united states become more diverse than ever, concerns remain about the growing number of racially and ethnically diverse populations. with most of the curricula, textbooks, and teaching materials focusing on the values and beliefs of the mainstream culture, the diverse groups receive little attention (banks, 2013; nieto, 2000, sleeter & grant, 1999). students from racially and ethnically diverse communities cannot see their lived experiences in the school curricula and establish personal connections with the content being taught. this makes them feel the school does not belong to them, and they seem to always ask, “why do i need to learn this?” historically, mathematics and science curricula have been presented from an ethnocentric perspective in the united states. students growing up in urban communities with low socioeconomic status, female students, immigrants, and lgbtqi+ students are too often overlooked within the classroom setting. understanding mathematics and science from a social justice perspective is not the way students across the country experience these subjects. as many scholars argue, teaching a traditional, western-minded mathematics or science course in a classroom with diverse learners is neither beneficial nor engaging; it not only hinders the utilization of students’ unique characteristics and funds of knowledge (gonzález et al., 2006) but also deprives students of the opportunity to use mathematics to expose and confront obstacles to their success (gutiérrez, 2002; gutstein, 2003; martin, 2003; tate, 1995). educating young citizens to become more engaged and critical of the environments they are living in and experiencing is a step toward social justice and equity in education. according to garii and appova, (2013), social justice is grounded in the daily realities of people as they experience and witness inequality and injustice. students can engage with social justice when the teaching of mathematics and science is done in an integrated way that promotes thinking in terms of relationships, connectedness, and context, which helps students form integrated knowledge and experience meaningful learning relevant to real life (drake, 2000). according to larnell et al. (2016), teaching and learning mathematics and science for social justice “represents an ideological commitment to using mathematics as a means of encouraging young students to leverage their own content learning toward redressing sociopolitical injustices in our society” (p. 20). in this sense, preparing pre-service teachers for teaching young citizens from a social justice perspective is a moral obligation of higher education institutions. based on the argument of felton-koestler (2017), pre-service teachers must experience mathematics for social justice as a learner, see examples of what this could look like in practice, and reflect on their own beliefs about mathematics. literature around teaching mathematics and science for social justice draws attention to the fact that if pre-service teachers do not experience explicit exposure to examples of these lessons and opportunities to plan lessons for themselves, they are unlikely to investigate social justice lessons in their own classrooms (myers, 2019). a pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 43 learning mathematics and science through a social justice lens provides students opportunities to analyze their world critically and ultimately promote a democratic society in which everyone can get an opportunity to participate fully (frankenstein, 1995; skovsmose, 1994). mathematics and science can be used as meaningful tools to teach and learn about issues of social injustice and to support arguments and actions aimed at promoting equitable change (bartell, 2013). the first step to remedy the archaic form of instruction is to understand students and the different sociocultural backgrounds they come from. teaching mathematics and science embedded in social justice contexts provides an alternative pedagogy to present content related to students’ backgrounds (bartell, 2013; wager & stinson, 2012). however, many teachers, rather than educating students in sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts, often teach mathematics and science in the way they were taught, such as covering the required curriculum handed to them by their school district, administering an exam, and promptly continuing to the next unit of study. although this approach is considered to be effective for state testing purposes, it lacks a serious reflection of whether instructors are teaching for testing or teaching for learning. the key to solving this issue is through introducing activities related to students’ lives that are meaningful and can provide students with a sense of purpose. therefore, teaching mathematics and science in a social justice context must engage learners in critical thinking, multiple representations, argumentations, discussions, and debates. this is an act of love for teaching and learning within a caring and belonging learning community. it is further important to note that the experiences and practices of middle grade and secondary mathematics and science teachers cannot be understood in isolation. these experiences and practices must be studied within the sociocultural contexts the instructors live in and interact with (frankenstein, 2012, 2013; gutierrez, 2013, gutstein & peterson, 2013; tate, 2013). to this end, this study explored 26 middle grade and secondary pre-service mathematics and science teachers’ engagement in a semester-long course through their participation in classroom discussions, critical reflections, and presentations. the research question was, “how may a semester-long course focusing on teaching and learning mathematics and science with social justice awareness provide pre-service teachers with opportunities to reflect on and change their teaching practices?” review of literature just as apple (1995) designated social justice as “sliding signifiers,” there exist multiple interpretations or definitions of teaching through the perspective of social justice. according to apple (1995), “what social justice teaching actually means is struggled over, in the same way that concepts such as democracy are subject to different senses by different groups with sometimes radically different ideological and educational agendas” (p. 335). freire (1968/1970) termed the pedagogy of the oppressed as a pedagogy which “must be forged with, not for, the oppressed (whether pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 44 individuals or peoples) in the incessant struggle to regain their humanity” (p. 30). our conception of teaching through a social justice lens in the current study is mainly guided by freirian epistemology (freire, 1968/1970), which refers to such pedagogy that aims to establish a society where people actively engage in the transformation of it to achieve a better one. as bartell (2013) stated, “the purpose of education is not to integrate those who are marginalized into the existing society but rather to change society so that all are included” (p. 131). the shift to social justice may be part of an evolving and perhaps more recent sociopolitical shift in the area (gutierrez, 2013; stinson & bullock, 2012). there has been a large amount of research addressing teachers learning to teach from a social justice perspective in teacher preparation programs and disciplines other than mathematics and science (see, for example, adams et al., 1997; ayers et al., 1998; barton, 2003; cochran-smith, 1999, 2000; darling-hammond et al., 2002). de freitas (2008), however, argued that “addressing social justice issues should be a primary goal of all education, including mathematics [and science] education” (p. 43). with social justice receiving more and more attention in mathematics and science education, and with many of the perspectives having been adopted in mainstream mathematics education discourse, martin (2003) noted that the formulation of these projects is narrowly based on “modifying curricula, classroom environments, and school cultures absent any consideration of the social and structural realities faced by marginalized students outside of school and the ways that mathematical opportunities are situated in those larger realities” (p. 7). although extant research documenting teaching mathematics and science in a social justice context is sparse, an increasing number of scholars believe that this pedagogy can provide support for the ongoing struggle for equity in mathematics and science education (e.g., frankenstein, 1995; gutstein, 2003; skovsmose & valero, 2002; tate, 1995). sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts embody pedagogical and organizational forms and methods that inform mathematicians and scientists how concepts and ideas were conceived and evolved from distant antecedents (gutierrez, 2013; kokka, 2019; swetz, 1995). the evolution of mathematics and science pedagogy and practices cannot be attributed to a single group; they are primarily of babylonian and chinese descent and have influenced modern education (kelly & lesh, 2012). culturally relevant teaching supports academic success, cultural competence, and the development of critical consciousness; it also facilitates reflection, participatory engagement, and transformative knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes (mcdonald 2005, 2008; nolan, 2009). further, its practice can offer opportunities to learn “in ways that are deeply meaningful and influential to the development of a positive mathematics [and science] identity” (leonard et al., 2010, p. 261). developing a strong mathematics and science identity through culturally responsive teaching and social justice pedagogy is critical for students’ academic success and understanding of their world (bartell, 2013; gay, 2010; ladson-billings, 2014; leonard et al., 2010; tate, 2013). pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 45 there are multiple contemporary empirical studies that provide examples of this work in different contexts. brown et al.’s (2019) study reported on teachers’ understandings of cultural relevance and practices learned in professional development, moving culturally responsive teaching and cognitive apprenticeship from theory to application. the findings of this study indicated that, ideologically, teachers were well aware of culturally responsive teaching as an educational construct but struggled to explain how it existed pedagogically and in translation from theory to practice (brown et al., 2019). teachers need to connect theory and practice with the principles of culturally responsive teaching—providing support in the form of collaboration to promote success in planning, creating opportunities to adopt languages that elicit the role of educators to engage students in knowledge, as well as finding personal relevance and developing critical awareness to deepen students’ understanding (gay, 2010; ladson-billings, 2014; mensah, 2011; tate, 2013). combining culturally relevant instruction and teaching mathematics for social justice, leonard et al. (2010) conceptualized ways to offer opportunities for marginalized students to learn mathematics and develop a positive mathematics identity. to determine the nuances and complexity of coupling teaching mathematics for social justice and culturally relevant pedagogy, these researchers investigated four case studies across racial dynamics, grade levels, class backgrounds, and school contexts. they concluded that when teacher educators model teaching mathematics for social justice and culturally relevant pedagogy in their methods courses and professional development sessions, mathematics teachers can envision how to implement this pedagogy in their daily classroom instruction. in contrast, upadhyay (2010) conducted a study documenting the perceptions articulated by two middle school science teachers on social justice and how they implemented it in their instruction. schools are built on mainstream structures and values, and that complies with the cultural norms and expectations of the majority population in society. consequently, those students “from low-income and ethnic minority communities who do not fit these norms are either excluded or marginalized in science classes” (upadhyay, 2010, p. 67). this makes it difficult to teach science for social justice in urban schools that consist of mostly poor, immigrant, and minority students. upadhyay determined that the concepts of social justice frameworks were enacted in three forms—attending to individual students’ needs, valuing and recognizing individuals’ experiences, and working against institutional oppression and inequities. the study concluded that teachers must understand the greater social structures of inequality that impact students’ lives in order to teach mathematics and science for social justice (see also gutstein & peterson, 2013; kokka, 2019). a similar study was conducted by gonzalez (2009), who explored the developing identities of seven new york city public high school teachers as both teachers of mathematics and agents of change. the researcher met with the teachers weekly for 10 weeks and prepared them to act as agents of change through their practice of pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 46 teaching mathematics for social justice. they developed a unit of study connecting high school mathematics standards to a range of social justice issues that affected the lives of urban students. gonzalez (2009) found that the teachers’ awareness of the importance of infusing social justice into their teaching increased as the study continued, and the data analysis indicated that the teachers became keenly aware of the injustices their students face, the living conditions of students’ family, inadequate academic preparation, and lack of opportunities for students and their families. gonzalez (2009) recommended future research on the development of teachers' understandings of teaching mathematics in social justice contexts and the ways to provide support for teachers to move from simply understanding teaching mathematics for social justice to implementing it in their classrooms. other studies have indicated that such implementation can be a difficult process and often falls short of an instructor’s intended goals. for example, garii and rule (2009) conducted a content analysis of integrated mathematics and science lessons incorporating social justice to determine the efficacy of such lessons, stressing that social justice pedagogy contextualizes mathematics and science into the lives of students and the communities they live in. four pedagogical approaches—data analysis, discussion, modeling, and library/internet research—were addressed in this study. garii and rule (2009) ultimately found the integration of social justice and academic content was not yet complete in the analyzed lessons, which tended to focus on one or the other. importantly, the lessons were seriously compromised because the teachers failed to recognize the importance of including social justice education into the curriculum. recommendations of this study call for practical opportunities for preservice teachers to understand how social justice can enhance classroom practices. science education for social justice is premised on three broad assumptions: “having the opportunity to learn science as content knowledge, discourse, and practice is a civil right, teaching and learning science involve critical activism and citizenship, and the goals of science literacy involve personal, social, and economic empowerment” (barton & upadhyay, 2010, p. 5). it provides students with access to traditional knowledge and practices as well as the opportunity to question, challenge, and reconstruct existing theoretical structures. social justice pedagogy further offers the possibility for transformation, not only in the lives of the learners but in the social, political, and historical contexts in which it takes place as well. it gives the learner a sense of identity and power for changing their living conditions (barton & upadhyay, 2010; frankenstein, 2013; gutierrez, 2013; gutstein, 2007; kokka, 2019; nolan, 2009). thus, teaching and learning science for social justice must uphold sociopolitical contexts to contribute to a socially just society at both the individual and community levels. the history of social justice research in fact indicates that we, as a society, have the potential to lay the foundation for equitable mathematics and science education (barton & upadhyay, 2010; kokka, 2019; mcdonald, 2005, 2008). pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 47 theoretical assumption the theoretical assumption of this study is grounded in sociocultural and sociopolitical perspectives. according to the sociocultural perspective, all learning is related to our social and cultural activities (gutierrez, 2013; radford et al., 2018; rogoff, 1990; roth & walshaw, 2015; rowlands, 2010; saxe, 1991; schmittau, 2003; vygotsky, 1978). there are four main assumptions in sociocultural theory. the first is regarding the active construction of the knowing and understanding of individuals through social interaction with their environments and others. in this sense, learning involves creating a mental representation of the information provided by experiences. the second assumption argues that learning could lead to higher mental development. this is what vygotsky (1978) called the zone of proximal development (zpd), which is the distance between individuals’ actual knowledge development without assistance and their potential knowledge development with the assistance of their more capable peers or teachers. the concept of zpd has important implications in teaching because it impacts the way educators plan for activities, assess students’ performance with and without assistance, and apply developmentally and culturally appropriate practices. the third assumption states that knowledge development cannot be separated from its social and cultural contexts. for vygotsky (1978), a child is embedded in their cultural context and society, which has a significant impact on how they think and learn. therefore, the child’s mind is in both their own head and their society. although people differ from culture to culture, vygotsky (1978) believed that there is a similar mind structure in all humans. the fourth assumption relates to the importance of language in mental development. vygotsky (1978) believed language is an essential part of individuals’ thinking processes. it allows people to make sense of their world. language acts as a mediator that allows people to carry their cultural and social experiences for self-regulation and self-actualization. in this regard, social interaction and critical reflection play an important role in knowing and understanding (radford, 2015; stemn, 2010). consistent with the sociocultural perspective, the sociopolitical perspective focuses on the notions of identity and power. gutierrez (2013) framed identity as something that a person does rather than something that a person is. she argued that all learning and knowing is inherently situated in social interaction. in this sense, identity is a reflexive relationship between the individual’s lived experiences and the sociocultural and sociopolitical milieu the person interacts with. for example, one of the researchers of the current study is male, a political refugee, and a mathematics educator, and he does research relative to transforming mathematics teaching and learning, teachers’ critical reflection, and emancipatory action research. it is these actions that define this researcher’s identity. another important idea related to the sociopolitical perspective is the idea of power. gutierrez (2013) defined power as active participation in and reconstruction of our everyday activities. pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 48 the sociopolitical turn signals the shift in theoretical perspectives that see knowledge, power, and identity as interwoven and arising from (and constituted within) social discourses. adopting such a stance means uncovering the taken-for-granted rules and ways of operating that privilege some individuals and exclude others. those who have taken the sociopolitical turn seek not just to better understand mathematics education in all of its social forms but to transform mathematics education in ways that privilege more socially just practices. (gutierrez, 2013, p. 4) the sociocultural and sociopolitical perspectives provide a basis for understanding, describing, and interpreting pre-service teachers’ experiences, discussions, and reflections on the teaching of middle grade and secondary mathematics and science through a social justice lens in urban settings. context of the study this study was conducted in a state-supported urban university in the midwestern united states. the course titled perspectives in mathematics and science was developed for middle and secondary school pre-service mathematics and science teachers to take concurrently with their student teaching requirements during the spring semester each year. the three-credit-hour course took place once a week for three hours. there were 26 pre-service teachers in the class during the spring semester of 2020 (13 with mathematics backgrounds, nine with science backgrounds, and four with middle school mathematics and science specialization backgrounds). nineteen of the pre-service teachers were female and seven were male. participants self-identified with the following ethnic backgrounds: african american (3), latinx (4), asian (1), middle eastern (1), native american (2), eastern european (4), and western european (11). eighteen participants were undergraduates and eight were post-baccalaureates. their age varied from 22 years to 39 years. all the pre-service teachers were placed in urban middle and secondary school settings for their student-teaching practice. the perspectives in mathematics and science course has four broad, interlocking goals: 1) provide an overview of the history of mathematics and science, 2) enable future teachers to enact these historical perspectives and contexts throughout their pedagogy, 3) promote intellectual curiosity and sharpen critical thinking skills, and 4) improve verbal and written communication. throughout the semester, the pre-service teachers completed the following required assignments and activities: a) reading, reflecting, and discussing issues regarding their reading assignments from two required textbooks; b) participating in and contributing to the classroom activities; c) choosing, preparing, writing, and presenting a project that contains two interconnected pieces—historical development of a mathematics or science topic and a lesson plan and presentation connecting part 1 to part 2; d) selecting and communicating with another pair from the classroom and providing critiques of their peers’ lesson pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 49 plans; and e) writing a final reflective paper related to their experiences throughout the semester. the critiques of their peers’ lesson plans were more constructive and suggestive than evaluative, and this portion of the course activity intended to promote a caring learning community in which risk-taking, trust and belonging, common interests, and meaning-making were encouraged and celebrated. the first required textbook was rethinking mathematics: teaching social justice by the numbers by gutstein and peterson (2013), which proposes an alternative perspective from which mathematics is taught in a way that helps students understand concepts in connection with their own life and as an approach to solving social injustices. the book also shows the importance of equity in mathematics teaching, emphasizes the significance of teacher-student relationships, and tries to enable teaching and learning to be contextualized around students’ lived experiences in their communities. furthermore, this book illustrates the viability of critical thinking, allowing students to recognize mathematical power as an analytical tool that connects their cultural and community histories and equips them for playing a more active role in society. the second required textbook was the story of science by hakim (2007), which explains the evolution of science beginning in the 1500s through the present. one underlying theme of this book is that progress in one area of science directly or indirectly leads to progress or discovery in another, and they are interrelated. the book celebrates the contributions of many scientists around the world, arguing that the evolution of science cannot be attributed to a single person or group. it also emphasizes the relationship between the history of science and the evolution of science, which has been vastly shaped and influenced by the sociocultural activities of people around the world. the book goes beyond providing a basic understanding of the content; it explains science as a study of patterns and relationships. methodology this qualitative, descriptive, and interpretative study is guided by constructivist inquiry (guba & lincoln, 1994). therefore, the study is context specific. one measure of trustworthiness is the acceptance of the findings by the participants. the primary researcher of the current study acted as both participant-observer and facilitator of the classroom activities and discussions. at each stage of the semester, he communicated with the participating pre-service teachers concerning his understanding and interpretations of their stated beliefs and actions (i.e., triangulation of data processing). another measure of trustworthiness is the provision of thick description. in this study, the participating pre-service teachers’ voices and concerns are the focal points. to accommodate all the participants and make the assignments and activities meaningful and doable within the time constraints of a semester, the primary researcher paired them so that one pre-service science teacher and one pre-service pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 50 mathematics teacher worked together collaboratively to fulfill their common goal of a semester-long project. furthermore, each pair would select another pair in the classroom to critique their project. the reciprocal peer critiques provided the participants with an opportunity to reflect, modify, and re-plan their projects and presentations. a third way of triangulation occurred between the two researchers. they met every other week to exchange ideas and share their ongoing understanding and interpretations of the data. data sources included the researchers’ classroom observations and field notes as well as participating pre-service teachers’ verbal and written responses to class discussions, reading assignments, and course activities. data analysis occurred alongside data collection, which began with coding, a process charmaz (2001) described as the critical link between data collection and meaning interpretation. open coding, which was referred to as descriptive codes by saldaña (2016), was assigned to identify primary themes of the data. this allowed us to explore the understanding of the participating pre-service mathematics and science teachers through a social justice lens. once open coding was concluded, we moved on to the inductive sorting of codes, identifying recurrent codes, metaphors, and contradictions. the data were then integrated and sorted into categories according to links between the codes, with the focus on the participants’ experiences and realizations as well as the challenges, problems, and possibilities of teaching and learning mathematics and science embedded in social justice contexts. we iteratively moved between data and the coding framework and refined codes into consistent and discrete categories. along with the coding process, reflexive and analytical memos were written to “document and reflect on the coding process and code choices” (saldaña, 2016, p. 41), which helped us achieve reflexivity on the data corpus and at the same time provide documentation and transparency about our methodology. once coding was completed, important factors were identified as considerations in promoting the integration of mathematics and science content into social justice contexts. researchers’ role as dollard (1949) stressed, the researcher “must pay the price of intense awareness of self and others and must constantly attempt to define relationships which are ordinarily taken for granted” (p. 20). researchers with different backgrounds might push or support participants differently. coming from different ethnic backgrounds, the two researchers of the current study were acutely aware that their roles could influence the participants. as such, they both managed their roles cautiously due to their various social identities throughout the research. the primary researcher, who was also the instructor of the course at the center of the current study and has teaching the course for over 10 years, came to the united states as a political refugee from iran years ago and has been teaching at his current pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 51 institution for 25 years. his mediating role as facilitator in the participating pre-service teachers’ conversations and his position as a researcher in the classroom called his attention to the importance of maintaining a reflexive lens on his relationship with the participants. being an immigrant professor, he kept cautious not to let his unique race and social class influence his role as facilitator in the participants’ conversations. as a veteran educator of this course, he was sufficiently capable of fully eliciting the participants’ self-reflections, but he also regularly reflected on himself, trying not to shape participants’ discussions with possible pre-assumptions or stereotypes. in this sense, he was an observer of himself. he shared his understanding and interpretations of the findings with the participating pre-service teachers and the other researcher on a regular basis (every two weeks) to ensure transparency and trustworthiness. the other researcher, a third-year doctoral student of urban education, came from china. she had taught in high school settings for nearly 20 years in china before coming to the united states. as a former teacher in china where historical background and student demographics are very different from those in the united states, she was a complete “outsider.” she was clear that her subjectivity might constrain her ability to see phenomena in the field and hear participants’ conversations, so she constantly probed to gain a more precise understanding of any concepts whose meanings she did not feel fully certain of. as a qualitative researcher, she reflected constantly on her positionality and subjectivity, communicating her understanding and discussing her uncertainty with the primary researcher each time they met. being both the documenter of events and co-constructor of the meanings, it was easy to slip from the role of documenter to the role of co-constructor; she balanced her roles and goals through timely and constant reflexive memos. findings as the participating pre-service teachers engaged in classroom discussions, critical reflections on teaching and learning, as well as lesson plan presentations, several themes emerged. these included the importance of teaching mathematics and science through a social justice lens, the participants’ realizations and conscious awareness, and the challenges, problems, and possibilities of teaching and learning embedded in social justice contexts. importance of teaching mathematics and science through the social justice lens the data analysis revealed a consensus that teaching mathematics and science embedded in social justice contexts would make learning purposeful, interesting, and engaging. the participating pre-service teachers stated it is important to challenge the false eurocentric viewpoint that has dominated mathematics and science education in the united states for a long time. pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 52 traditionally mathematics and science have been taught from a eurocentric or western perspective. this is not fair for every student and especially unfair to underrepresented and minority students. this narrative does not tell the truth and can lead those students to believe that mathematics and science are not part of their own cultural background or their own selves. this is quite untrue. mathematics and science are a part of every culture and part of all humankind. teaching from a eurocentric perspective limits the student’s opportunities to learn about diversity, mathematics, and science from a different perspective. i believe that teaching content from a multicultural perspective embedded in social justice contexts will engage all students and create a classroom where all students can thrive. (cory,1 an african american male teacher) the pre-service teachers mentioned the importance of teachers’ awareness of their own bias and prejudice, which they thought would create a more inclusive classroom for their students belonging to underrepresented cultures. they concluded that this cultural awareness would allow students to find their own identities in the classroom. while i had a decent understanding of multicultural education, i was not expecting to find out that so much stuff had been taken from other cultures and written off as a european discovery. the incredible achievements that the babylonians and the egyptians made many years before any european would begin thinking about such things were something that i had never realized before. despite my awareness, i too fell into the eurocentric trap. i just accepted what i heard, never really caring about where the theories came from. it was not until i came into this class and read more about how long this eurocentric takeover has been going on that i realized just how strong this cultural impact is. it is important to make the classroom a beacon for cultural and historical education so that every student will know how important their cultures are to the development of the modern world, which helps them find their identities in the classroom. (sophia, an eastern european female teacher) the participants also stressed how vital it is to teach from the social justice perspective. they indicated that this approach to teaching would allow students to better understand the world around them. they discussed that making mathematics and science relevant and personal to students would enable them to learn how to apply the learned content to the real world, which is much more important and meaningful than rote memorization of facts. social justice in the curriculum is not just a suggestion; it is a must for students and teachers alike. the important point is that social justice will enrich lessons, making them more influential and extend beyond the classroom. students who feel empowered through lesson plans will have the confidence necessary to apply their knowledge to social issues. without teaching mathematics and science in a way that highlights these issues, students lose out on a critical part of their education and teachers lose possibly the most important aspect of education: to empower their students. (emma, a native american female teacher) 1 all names are pseudonyms. pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 53 data analysis further suggested that the participating pre-service teachers had repeatedly proposed access and equity in mathematics and science learning in their classroom discussions, presentations, and writings. we as educators should not be the gate closers in education. we should be the gate openers for our students instead. this allows our students to play a part in the world around them. understanding the meaning behind numbers helps students spot injustices in their own communities. a deeper understanding of mathematics and science also enables students to defend their reasoning behind their points of view and beliefs. this skill can improve the confidence of the students, help find their voices, and show them that they can change the world around them. this makes mathematics and science alive and gives real meaning to the subjects. (benjamin, a middle eastern male teacher) as the participants gradually became aware of and tried to avoid their own biases, they became more convinced that teaching mathematics and science through a social justice lens would result in more engaging, meaningful, and democratic classrooms. by empowering themselves with social justice awareness for teaching, they became more prepared to design lessons geared toward their students’ empowerment. below are three examples of lesson plans developed by pre-service teachers that relate to social justice goals and objectives. these three lessons were selected to show various aspects of teaching mathematics and science through a social justice lens, including health care justice, environmental justice, and pandemic-related justice. the first lesson relates to social justice through its focus on the health care issues that arose during the aids epidemic: this lesson is designed for a mathematics classroom when students are learning to graph and solve different forms of equations or when students are learning about using exponential equations. the lesson would follow students’ ability to graph and solve exponential equations. since the aids epidemic can follow the logistic style of equations, the lesson is meant to include a focus on an important social issue that impacts so many and that so many have no idea about it. the video engagement activity helps to start discussions on the topic of hiv, with 3 true or false statements that are commonly misconstrued. this fuels the fire of curiosity of what students really know, what misconceptions they have, and what they might be interested in knowing or learning. the personalized approach allows students to focus on researching what is interesting to them while filling out a worksheet to gain the knowledge of basic hiv facts as supported by the [state] science standards as well as the mathematics they have been learning. the follow-up lesson for tomorrow will include modeling various exponential equations and solving different components of the equation. we will look at different epidemics that occur in our society and have student teams to choose one scenario to model in the classroom, ending with a short research paper assignment to discuss the cultural and social effects of what would happen if the epidemic scenario were to occur in our state. (noah, a western european male teacher) pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 54 the second example focuses on environmental justice and requires critical analysis of climate change, its impact on our living conditions, and what can be done to change this situation. it is presented as follows: the goal of this lesson is for students to understand the issue of climate change: what causes climate change, what impacts it has on our environment, and what we can do to help reverse the effects of climate change. the objective of the lesson is for students to investigate the issue of climate change through a powerpoint presentation and a wholeclass discussion. students will also be able to identify the effects of climate change. they will also use a kwl chart to document what they already know about climate change prior to the lesson, what they want to know about it, and what they have learned after the lesson is complete. at the end of this lesson, students will brainstorm ideas and move toward a team-based project of their choice to apply their knowledge. the significance of this lesson is the students’ awareness of how global warming is affecting people of every part of the world (i.e., of diverse backgrounds). more locally, the factors contributing to global warming are being manifested (e.g., pollution of cuyahoga river, unsustainable private and public practices, etc.). it is also important for students to learn this lesson to meet the [state] learning standards and pass the state test. (mary, an asian female teacher) the third lesson plan example concerns the current covid-19 pandemic, which is impacting the lives of people almost all over the world, particularly the lives of minorities, people of color, and low-socioeconomic status populations. as a response to this current social issue, one pair of the pre-service teachers initially selected a topic concerning the ongoing pandemic. however, due to many unknowns regarding the nature of the virus and the lack of a viable vaccine for controlling the spread of the disease at the time of the study, they decided to change their topic to a similar but very well-known disease, as their lesson plan aimed at involving their students in critical thinking about health care justice. below is how they presented it: this lesson is the start of a new mathematics unit and also a review of the concepts taught in this school year and previous years. students have learned various mathematics graphs, but this lesson will go into more detail and cover some new graphs. the preassessment will be used to see how much they remember what they have learned and what they have not yet learned. during the lesson, students will be given data concerning the chickenpox virus to learn about the scientific process for data processing and presentation. they will work in groups to find a way to represent the data and then present their graphs to the class. each group will have different data representing a different aspect of chickenpox. they will need to tell the class their group’s original hypotheses about a unique issue, what they think the given data means as depicted in their graphs, and their opinions about social concerns and future issues regarding chickenpox based on the data. students will work cooperatively and respect different perspectives. the follow-up activity after this 40-minute class will occur on the following day. during the next class, students will continue working on their graphs and their worksheets and will also prepare to speak in front of the class. presentations should have smooth transitions and each group member should have a chance to present a different aspect of the information. once all the presentations are complete, one class period will be dedicated to a test that pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 55 includes scientific inquiry, statistics, and graphs. additionally, each student will fill out a “peer evaluation” for each member of their group. this evaluation will show how well the group worked together. (lucas, a latino male teacher) social consciousness through critical reflections provided the pre-service teachers with opportunities to carry out their situated instructions in their own classrooms during their student-teaching. these above praxes (i.e., dialectical relationships between actions and reflections) are clear examples and testaments of the importance of teaching mathematics and science embedded in social justice contexts. participating pre-service teachers’ realizations and conscious awareness throughout the semester, the participating pre-service teachers realized several issues concerning teaching and learning mathematics and science, such as racial justice, gender equity, the importance of teacher-student relationships, and the notion of caring and belonging in education. a major realization that has come about from observing patterns in mathematics and science education is the marginalization of female contributions in those fields. female students need to see themselves reflected in those fields when learning. but because the history of female contribution is omitted or because females are underrepresented in teaching the historical contexts of mathematics and science, there is a gender disparity within the stem fields. i further realized that science and mathematics do not lack female contributors; rather, typical k-12 science and mathematics education simply failed to acknowledge these contributors. (william, a western european male teacher) the female pre-service teachers in the classroom came to the realization that women are underrepresented in mathematics and science education and that there is a large gender gap in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) fields for several reasons. their reflections also revealed these trends in their own educational life. another important realization mentioned by several pre-service teachers was the importance of teacher-student relationships and the sense of belonging. as one of them put it: the degree of students’ engagement in the classroom is related to their sense of belonging at the school. students with a low sense of belonging, often marginalized students, are at risk of disengaging and falling behind their peers. if the school system does not attempt to remedy the cause behind this sense of belonging, it could have lifelong impacts on the students. research shows harmonious teacher-student relationships can increase students' sense of belonging. the sense of belonging is crucial for the development of adolescents as they go through many changes socially and intellectually. the needs of students of these marginalized groups must be met for their overall improvement in content areas and furthermore, in their professional life. (isabella, an african american female teacher) pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 56 the participating pre-service teachers also asserted the significance of caring communities for equitable education. some of the teachers shared their classroom interactions with their high school students. for example, a teacher shared her classroom teaching activities that were based on a community project and meant to help students understand the concept of percentage in mathematics: from this class, i learned to check my biases at the door before going into my own classroom, which helped me view students equally without discrimination. as a teacher, this is a very important quality, helping me build my classroom into a caring learning community. once my students were doing a project based on their communities’ needs. at first, i asked them about their concerns in their communities, and then each student chose a concern and wrote down their thoughts about it. the students then looked up the percentages of different concerns and compared them with their peers’. this helped them understand the meaning of percentage and the method of calculating it. (mia, a latina female teacher) project-based learning was very common for these participating pre-service teachers to use as a teaching strategy to help their students. for example, they would focus on topics initiated by students and try to guide and facilitate their completion of the projects. as the students were engaged in project-based activities, they were learning significant integrated mathematics and science content within the contexts of their communities. challenges and possibilities of teaching mathematics and science embedded in social justice contexts data analysis revealed that the current school structure and culture, the existing curriculum, state-mandated tests, limited resources, and the lack of meaningful teaching experience were all challenges the pre-service teachers stated that they faced or might face in the future as they attempt to teach mathematics and science in social justice contexts. for example, one major obstacle is called the culture of silence, which occurs when a teacher is not fully committed to overcoming the structural systems of inequality in education. it is critical that teachers strive to achieve full awareness of the five social factors—race, social class, gender, culture, and disability status. it is also important that teachers reflect on cultural and linguistic diversity to gather necessary information to develop culturally responsive instruction. teaching mathematics and science for social justice should instill students with new knowledge that encourages them to become social change agents. some of our participating preservice teachers were not comfortable confronting the challenges of injustice and inequality in urban settings. for example, one of them presented this: while i think it is beneficial to connect the content to student life, i feel like that discussing these topics, especially in urban areas where there are typically high concentrations of poverty, might be too personal for some students and may result in them feeling pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 57 ashamed, embarrassed and even angry. i am uncertain as to if it will work in a middle school classroom where some students already feel self-conscious. (katie, a native american female teacher) these feelings of uncertainty and being passive in the face of the “hot topics” surrounding the educational community were expressed by several participating teachers. however, this perspective was challenged by most of the pre-service teachers during classroom discussions. as one of them put it: something i have realized over the semester is the difficulty in actually teaching mathematics in a way that integrates history and social justice into the classroom. this is because it is not the way i was taught growing up and is new to me and many of my colleagues. but i have also realized the importance of teaching in this way because it will open a door for the low-status adolescents in urban settings to become both aware of the historical background of the learning materials and actively engaged in communitybased activities that are of interest or importance within their daily life. (charlotte, a western european female teacher) another teacher supported the above statement by saying that sometimes being uncomfortable confronting challenging issues is positive rather than negative. he stated this: i enjoy this course because it opened my eyes and changed my thoughts about education. i believe that mathematics and science are best taught from a multicultural perspective. i do not think it is easy to implement this approach into a classroom, but i believe those uncomfortable feelings would motivate and help us to overcome all the difficulties. i also believe our efforts are worthwhile for the better education of our students. (liam, an african american male teacher) despite all these challenges, obstacles, and problems, most of the participating pre-service teachers were convinced that it is worth fighting to teach mathematics and science in the context of social justice. discussion this study examined 26 pre-service middle and secondary school teachers’ experiences and reflections on teaching and learning mathematics and science from a social justice perspective as they took a semester-long course concurrently with their student-teaching. the findings of the study suggest that a semester-long discussion, critical reflection, and lesson plan development provided the participating pre-service teachers with opportunities to question their own learning experiences in mathematics and science classrooms and to become active members of transforming learning communities. moving away from traditional ways of teaching mathematics and science toward developing engaging mathematical and scientific content embedded in pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 58 social justice contexts requires the transformation of consciousness, which is consistent with the findings of previous research (bartell, 2013; felton-koestler, 2017; myers, 2019). this transformation is more than changing teaching strategies; it is a change in ways of knowing and reading the world through critical lenses to become change agents. teaching mathematics and science from an integrated perspective embedded in social justice contexts served the pre-service teachers a sense of purpose. it allowed them to present academic content in meaningful ways by making connections between students’ interests and state standards. by developing, preparing, and delivering activities grounded in project-based pedagogical contexts, the pre-service teachers were able to better understand the contributions of underrepresented groups and diverse cultures in the development and evolution of mathematics and science. moreover, classroom discussions and critical reflections regarding culturally responsive teaching were essential for them to address the unique learning needs of students in diverse classrooms. this is how university courses help prepare pre-service teachers for their future teaching. collaboration and support, critical reflection, and personal relevance are important elements for pre-service teachers to adopt in preparation for mathematics and science instruction embedded in social justice in their classrooms. marginalized students have already fallen behind historically and will continue to do so unless major changes are made in the way stem courses are taught. sociocultural and sociopolitical perspectives must be introduced into the classroom to encourage students who have been hindered from engaging in mathematics and science that they too have a voice about. without the effort of teachers to learn their students’ needs, students will be further alienated to the point where they feel they have no discourse in their study. these pre-service teachers, although convinced regarding the vitality of culturally responsive pedagogies, may face significant challenges, problems, and obstacles as they start teaching their own classrooms within the existing school structure and culture. however, as many of the participating teachers stated, it is worth fighting, and perseverance will help them achieve the integration of social justice into their classroom activities. as one of the participating teachers expressed: we must not make our students feel as though they have no voice in the classroom; we must give them that voice. we must give them the voice they need so as to instill changes they want within their communities. the only way that voice can be found is through the integration of cultural-historical perspectives in the classroom. without this crucial element in instruction, the problem of marginalized students falling behind in stem education will only become even worse. (john, a latino male teacher) with classrooms becoming increasingly diverse, it is the duty of educators to make sure students from all backgrounds feel included both in the physical classroom and in the content being taught. there are deep sociocultural, sociopolitical, and pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 59 sociohistorical contexts surrounding mathematics and science content that need to be integrated. although traditional lectures may be easier to accomplish, the job of teachers is not to look for easy ways to conduct classes but to ensure educational standards are met and that students establish the conceptual knowledge being taught as well as critical thinking skills necessary to tackle issues they will face in their lives. there might be some degree of pushback, but this work can be highly rewarding and entirely achievable as pre-service teachers tend to be more involved in real-world problem contexts and new mathematical and scientific methods (aguirre, 2009; ensign, 2005; mistele & spielman, 2009; rodriguez, 2005). conclusion the problem of systemic injustice in our society is deeply rooted in the notion of identity and power. this problem cannot be solved from the same mindset where it originated. in the context of education, there ought to be a shift of mindset from considering preparing students to live in the existing world to considering preparing them to reconstruct those current social systems and to remove obstacles experienced by minorities, women, and others (secada, 1989). the implication of this transformation is significant. it denotes that school reform cannot be actualized without active participation in and reconstruction of school systems by teachers and students. they are the beacons of hope and the beacons of change. due to the intricate connections between education and economic, political, and social power structures in society, which contribute to inequity in both schools and society (apple, 1992; kozol, 2005), achieving social justice in mathematics and science education remains a huge challenge for educators. however, if mathematics and science teaching and learning are situated within sociocultural and sociopolitical contexts combined with viable organizational support, there is hope. teaching through a social justice lens is not a methodological issue but a process that requires teachers to adapt to the particular contexts they and their students belong to (cochran-smith, 1999). learning to teach mathematics and science from a social justice lens is a “lifelong undertaking” and a complex process that requires effort, perseverance, and reflection (darling-hammond, 2002, p. 201). it also requires teachers to see it as such (gutiérrez, 2009). although a one-semester university course cannot make learning to teach for social justice “happen,” such efforts increase our understanding of the broader goals of mathematics and science education. this study contributes to the process of educating pre-service teachers for the implementation of social justice into their mathematics and science instruction and the development of their new conscious awareness. more importantly, this study is a story of hope. we hope the study encourages future professional development programs and future studies on both pre-service and in-service mathematics and science teachers’ engagement in social justice issues. pourdavood & yan teaching through a social justice lens journal of urban mathematics education vol. 15, no. 2 60 references adams, m., bell, l. a., & griffin, p. 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(2012). teaching mathematics for social justice: conversations with educators. national council of teachers of mathematics. copyright: © 2022 pourdavood & yan. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-sharealike 4.0 international license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. www.jsser.org journal of social studies education research sosyal bilgiler eğitimi araştırmaları dergisi 2019:10 (4), 26-57 26 preservice teachers’ perceptions and preparedness to teach for global mindedness and social justice using collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and communication (4cs) lydiah nganga1 abstract the present study examined preservice teachers’ (n=47) perceptions and preparedness to teach for global mindedness and social justice. a phenomenological approach helped the researcher to gain deeper understanding of participants’ perceptions of the effectiveness of instructional practices used in a social studies methods course. of particular interest were instructional practices that preservice teachers perceived as promoting 4cs. data collected from discussions, in-class written reflections and feedback from open-ended questions showed that although learners were initially uncomfortable exploring global and social justice issues, they eventually gained essential multiple perspectives. consequently, this study affirms the importance of using 4cs in teacher education programs to teach essential knowledge and skills in global mindedness and social justice. key words: global mindedness, preservice teachers, teacher education, social studies, social justice, 4cs. introduction globalization or the world interconnectedness in economic, political, cultural and social systems is an old phenomenon. what is unique in contemporary globalization, however, is the use of modern technologies that have transformed the world into a "village" (nganga & kambutu, 2015). because advances in technology have virtually eliminated the physical and cultural barriers that previously hindered global interactions, people of different cultural backgrounds are now interacting physically and virtually at rates and speeds never imagined, thus turning the world into a place of increased interactions, interdependence and interconnection (wiarda, 2007). faced with this reality, people need to master skills in intercultural communications. regrettably, colleges in the u.s. are typically ill prepared to teach for cultural pluralism and complexities such as racial, ethnic, and linguistic differences (bittman & russell, 2016; landorf, rocco & nevin, 2007). as a result, it is necessary to explore not only the knowledge and skills 1 prof dr. university of wyoming, laramie wyoming, usa, email: lnganga@uwyo.edu mailto:lnganga@uwyo.edu journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 needed to effectively navigate global issues, but to also examine best ways to teach for global mindedness and social justice. teaching for global mindedness and social justice has multiple dimensions. for example, while learning about global competencies such as information, skills, and cultural attitudes (mccabe,1997) is essential, an education for social justice is necessary because it examines, disrupts and replaces existing unjust and oppressive societal structures (sleeter & grant, 2009). essentially, an education for social justice is learning that supports and promotes basic human rights and dignity (banks, 2001). thus, it embraces multiple perspectives. bleicher and kirkwood-tucker (2004) were especially in favor of an education for social justice because it helps learners to understand and appreciate multiple perspectives especially in the context of diversity appreciation. combined, education for global mindedness and social justice promotes intellectual curiosity that transcends national and cultural borders (merryfield, 1997; nganga, 2016). such an education can be implemented while using a variety of instructional practices. an array of instructional practices, both teacher and learner-centered can promote the acquisition of knowledge and skills essential to global mindedness and social justice. learnercentered instruction focuses on “learner's needs” as well as “conditions for learner development” (kolman, roegman, & goodwin, 2017, p. 94). in a learner-centered environment, the teacher draws on students’ experiences in order to develop curricula that foster individual growth (dewey, 1938; 1956; schiro, 2013; vygotsky, 1978). notwithstanding the benefits inherent in curricula for growth, teacher education programs in the u.s. rarely implement learning for multiple perspectives in areas of global mindedness and social justice (yeung, 2015). equally problematic is the current lack of data that examine pre-service teachers’ perceptions about the need to acquire knowledge and skills essential to global mindedness and social justice in social studies classrooms. therefore, i (researcher) designed this study to address this problem. specifically, i was interested in examining preservice teachers’ level of preparedness to teach for global mindedness and social justice using collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and communication (4cs) skills as recommended by the national council social studies framework (ncss, 2013). literature review and theoretical framework modern globalization is affecting human interactions in multiple ways. as a result, institutions of learning have a responsibility to teach knowledge and skills essential to global mindedness and nganga social justice. and while there is a whole breadth of such knowledge and skills, i argue in support of an education that helps learners to understand and appreciate current global cultural interconnectedness and interdependence because what happens in one community is affecting distant groups. therefore, an education for global mindedness and social justice should focus on helping learners to develop understandings of the existing interdependence among nations (banks, 2001). as a result, i argue that such an education could be implemented through the use of critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration (4cs). using the 4cs as a framework in social studies the national council for social studies (ncss) framework for 21st century learning describes the 4cs as “essential skills for success in today’s world,” (partnership for 21st century skills, 2009, np.). consequently, the national education association (nea, n.d) recommended that educators complement all content areas with “the “four cs” in order to prepare young people for citizenship and the global workforce.” ncss framework is especially supportive of teaching and learning based on the 4cs because it helps students to develop deeper understanding and appreciation of pertinent knowledge and skills. a brief description of each of the 4cs is provided below. creativity is an essential skill to develop because it eases the process of managing the complexities of globalization and social justice. while there are different views about creativity, beghetto (2006) described it as “the ability to offer new perspectives, generate novel and meaningful ideas, raise new questions, and come up with solutions to ill-defined problems” (p. 1). when using creativity as an instructional practice, an educator could encourage discourse that permits students to speculate, say for example, about “a connection made between a historical event and a theme of a highly popular futuristic video game” (beghetto, 2006, p. 1). to beghetto, creativity is not necessarily about accuracy and relevancy. rather, it entails allowing learners the freedom to make mistakes while thinking freely and divergently. in essence, then, creativity is a preferred teaching and learning approach because it supports learning that permits students to make their own meaning, and in doing so, new knowledge is constructed (urbani,et al., 2017). notwithstanding the importance of creativity, it is seldom implemented because of the current emphasis on standardized and test-based education (kampylis, berki & saariluoma, 2009). journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 similar to creativity, critical thinking is understood in multiple ways. for example, paul (1988) viewed it as the ability to reach sound conclusions based on observed information. but to other scholars, critical thinking is simply the ability to assess the authenticity, accuracy and worth of knowledge claims in order to make informed decisions (beyer, 1983; iskandar, 2009; lafer, 2014; walters, 1989). ennis (1987) and norris (1985a) pointed to the need for reflective thought as a way to foster deeper observation, examination and judgment of situations. in doing so, learners are able to develop informed alternatives. hager and kaye (1992) favored critical thinking because it equips learners with essential problem-solving skills; an essential disposition relative to addressing global and social justice issues. therefore, an education that promotes critical thinking helps learners to achieve deeper understanding. consequently, hager and kaye (1992) recommended critical thinking education to be used in every classroom, along with communicative and collaborative learning activities. having effective collaborative and communication skills is essential in the current reality of cultural interconnection and interdependence. mastery of effective communication and collaborative skills enables people to explain their thinking, beliefs, and expectations clearly. to that end, lawley, moore and smajic (2014) highlighted the important roles that communication and collaboration plays in the process of building an ideal work place. so, in the current age of globalization that is characterized by constant mixing and interactions of people of different cultures, all educators should help their students develop essential communication and collaborative skills by creating space and opportunities for their students to practice interpersonal communication and collaboration skills (liliane & colette, 2009). generally, student-centered instructional practices such as discussions, problem/project-based learning and a myriad of cooperative teaching strategies such as think-pair share, jigsaw, student team’s achievement divisions, mix-pair-share and all-write-consensus (arends, 2015) are known to enhance communication and collaboration skills. because acquiring these essential skills is important for global mindedness and social justice, pertinent learning outcomes should be incorporated in social studies courses in teacher education programs. further, instruction based on 4cs would be most beneficial especially when it creates space to model for preservice teachers how to teach pertinent knowledge and skills. nganga context of study using purposive sampling (bernard & ryan, 2010), the researcher invited three cohorts (n= 47) of preservice teachers to participate in this study that was situated in a rural university in the rocky mountain region of the u.s. the researcher was professor-on-record for all three cohorts taught during three different semesters. all participants except one learner were female, and were all enrolled in a social studies methods course that ranged in class sizes from 12 to 20 students. among other goals, the course examined instructional methods and materials used to teach social studies education. also, it focused on developing social studies units that were original, meaningful, and engaging to both teachers and their students. to teach to these instructional goals, the researcher used inquiry process (dewey, 1933; zarrillo, 2004), classroom discussions (duplass, 2008), role-play and mock trials (bloom, 1997), and threaded discussions. the following is a brief analysis of the value of each of these instructional strategies: inquiry processin considering the benefits of inquiry process, zarrillo (2004) identified its focus on a problem/s that is/are identified either by students or teachers as critical to informative learning. to develop solutions, zarrillo recommended formulation of hypotheses, followed by gathering and analyzing data. dewey (1933) had a similar approach in his recommendation for reflective thought. adhering to zarillo’s (2004) recommendations, the researcher developed and used during instruction a graphic organizer (see figure 1) that focused on the intersection between columbus and native people in the u.s. hypothesis: ___________________________ problem/s causes effect/s solution a. b. c. ____________________________________________________________ overall solution____________________________ figure 1: christopher columbus versus indigenous people classroom discussionsi structured small and large group classroom discussions around cooperative learning activities. first, i randomly divided preservice teachers into groups of four. but to allow the participants an opportunity to collaborate with different students during the journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 semester, i regularly changed group membership. additionally, i ensured positive interdependence through assigned roles, and promoted individual accountability (duplass, 2008). in terms of social skills, i expected effective communication during all group learning activities (ncss, 2016). then, i circulated among different groups during discussions to assess learning, take notes and ask questions that clarified learners’ thinking and assertions (duplass, 2008). among many learning activities, one of the assigned small group project required preservice teachers to develop a collaborative unit on a randomly selected foreign nation. the first step in this unit required a research study of a randomly selected foreign nation before writing a comparative paper that addressed the similarities and differences between the studied nation and the u.s. in areas of culture, education and global resources (see appendix 1). the study of a foreign nation unit was grounded on ncss (2010, p, 68) standards that required the integration of topics that “focus on specific cultures or nations … as a means of introducing students to the geography, history, economic relationships, and cultures of other countries”. instructional topics with a global focus are especially relevant to social studies curriculum because they help learners to gain knowledge of world cultures, and understand the historical, geographic, economic, political, cultural, and environment relationships among world regions and peoples (ncss, 2010, p. 58-59). to culminate this learning activity, preservice teachers prepared informative presentations, and selected and evaluated children’s books related to their unit of study for different types of bias (see appendix 3). role-plays and mock trialsrole-play is a popular instructional approach in elementary education social studies courses because it utilizes both cognitive and affective domains (duplass, 2008). duplass postulated that learners are likely to develop objective solutions to a problem when they possess deeper cognitive understanding of it (problem), while also identifying with the problem and solution on personal levels (affective process). in addition, role-plays and mock trials give learners opportunities to dialogue in order to develop objective solutions to identified problems (bloom, 1997; schwartz, 2010). given the aforementioned benefits, i developed and used two role-plays and mock trial units that included a trial of christopher columbus by indigenous peoples (appropriate for 4th and 5th grades) and a role-play that enacted the montgomery bus boycott promoted by rosa parks’ refusal to give up her seat in a bus during segregated times in the u.s. (appropriate for 1st through 5th grade). to prepare students for role-plays, i used duplass (2008, p. 339) recommendations as follows: a) start with nganga an introduction explaining the task and goals of the lesson, b) prepare role-plays by explaining roles and responsibilities, c) keep all students focused while role-playing is taking place, and d) allow students to share ideas and relate the reenactment to their own lives. as a result, i required preservice teachers to prepare for mock trials and role-plays by conducting comprehensive reviews of pertinent literature using primary sources. for columbus trial, i divided the participants into two sidesone side supported columbus’ actions while the other defended the plights of indigenous people (during trial, learners served either as judges, prosecutors, defense lawyers, witnesses for prosecution, witnesses for defendant, bailiffs and/or jury (bloom, 1997). as a result of this learning activity, participants expressed shock after learning for the first time the atrocities committed against native people by columbus and his men. the second role-play involved an enactment of the montgomery bus boycott that was sparked by rosa parks’ refusal to give up a seat in a bus for a white person at a time in history when buses were segregated in the u.s. this role-play is appropriate for 1st through 5rd grades (but content and children’s books should be assessed for appropriateness). before commencing the role-play, preservice teachers read the book; “walking for freedom: the montgomery bus boycott” by richard kelso (2001). additionally, they watched the following two videos: a) rosa parks and the montgomery bus boycott by (n.d), and b.) the montgomery bus boycott by (n.d). then, using shapiro and leopold (2012) recommendations, i designed the following rubric that helped participants organize their ideas: a) topic of the role-play should be intellectually rigorous and relevant to participants, b) role-play activity should invoke higher order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation, and c) role-play should invite divergent perspectives. after accessing essential background information, participants organized a town-hall meeting as part of role-play. while some students acted as supporters of the bus boycott, others played opposition roles. during role-play, i expected all my preservice teachers to use essential critical thinking skills, collaboration, communication and creativity (4cs). in addition, i invited observers from the african american community because of their lived experiences with unequal and unjust treatment in u.s. based on race. as a result of this role-play, participants developed strategies to fight for justice for all people. additionally, this learning activity enabled participants to understand the events leading to the bus boycott, thus allowing them to see that journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 rosa parks did not act alone. rather, other unrecognized heroes of the civil rights movement in the u.s. participated. finally, this role-play provided ideal learning space for learners to explore multiple perspectives, and in doing so, they developed informed autonomous choices and solutions to a potentially controversial social justice issue. threaded discussions-weekly online threaded discussions extended classroom discussions on various selected key topics. after posting discussion questions/prompts/topics (see appendix 2), i expected all preservice teachers to respond to my prompts within a week, and to also respond to a minimum of two responses from their peers. threaded discussions created a “safe” place for learners to share thoughts that they could not contribute freely during face-to-face classroom discussions. therefore, as i read my students’ responses, i clarified misconceptions, assumptions, questions and viewpoints. additionally, i intentionally scrutinized learner acquisition of knowledge and skills essential to global mindedness and social justice from a 4cs framework. methods data collection this study used a phenomenological-interpretative framework to explore the perceptions of preservice teachers relative to teaching for global mindedness and social justice in social studies. phenomenological studies require total researcher participation in the studied phenomenon. therefore, the researcher served as a participant and observer (moustakas, 1994). also, because phenomenological studies are interested in how people perceive and talk about objects and events (moustakas,1994; taylor,1985), the researcher used open-ended questions/prompts to encourage participants to share details regarding their learning experiences and perceptions of applied instructional approaches (giorgi, 2012). specifically, the researcher explored the effectiveness of the instructional practices used in a social studies method course that the participants were enrolled in. in particular, the researcher examined the effectiveness of using collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and communication (4cs) in helping preservice teachers develop knowledge and skills critical to understanding and appreciating global mindedness and social justice (ncss, 2016). finally, the researcher applied ryan, heineke & steindam’s (2014) recommendation for teacher educators to document their instructional approaches in order to support other teacher educators. as a result, the researcher designed this nganga study to enrich the existing literature by illuminating the perspectives of preservice teachers relative to teaching for global social justice using the 4cs framework. the researcher collected data from small and large group classroom discussions, written reflections, online discussions and role-play activities. a pre and post assessment for a unit on the study of a foreign nation (see appendix 2) provided additional essential data regarding participants’ misconceptions (see appendix 1). the following two research questions guided the study: a) what instructional practices do preservice teachers perceive as important while developing global mindedness and social justice perspectives? and b) what instructional practices promote the use of 4cs in teacher education? to help document the effectiveness of the instructional strategies used, participants responded to the following prompts at the end of the semester. 1. at the beginning of semester, how comfortable were you teaching issues of global mindedness and social justice? 2. as the semester progressed, what changes did you experience in your level of comfort? 3. at the end of semester:  describe your experiences with instructional strategies used in this course in relation to teaching for global mindedness and social justice issues  what instructional strategies were most helpful to you and why?  what were your experiences with collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and communication (4cs) in relation to teaching global and social justice issues?  explain which of the 4cs you might use in your future classroom to teach global mindedness and social justice issues. analysis data were analyzed qualitatively (bogdan & bilken, 1982). also, i applied interpretative phenomenological approach to identify patterns and themes within data (moustakas, 1994). to braun and clarke (2006) a thematic analysis is critical because it helps to organize and describe data in a detailed manner. after coding and studying data carefully, several minor themes immerged that i then juxtaposed and melded into the following five themes: a) importance of teaching about other cultures, b) studying a foreign nation, c) exploring multiple perspectives, d) instructional strategies that promote 4cs, and e) teaching global citizenship from a social justice perspective. a detailed analysis of each of these themes is discussed in the results section. journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 validity and reliability to decrease the chance of participants responding in ways that they thought were desirable to me, i informed them that i was interested in personal perspectives based on their experiences and understandings as preservice teachers. using patton’s (2002) guidance for studies involving purposeful sampling, i established clear study boundaries, explained the purpose and nature of the study, promised confidentiality, and assured the participants that their participation or lack thereof would not affect their academic grades in the course whatsoever. additionally, i assured participants that they were fully entitled to their opinions. thus, i encouraged them to be open-minded and receptive during classroom and online threaded discussions. to barak and levenberg (2016) an open-minded student learns from other students, is fully involved during teamwork, is receptive to multiple perspectives, and is able to handle conflict proactively. all participant conducted member check to ascertain valid representation of their perspectives. results importance of teaching about other cultures: studying a foreign nation data showed that the participants in this study developed an appreciation for comparative cultural studies. specifically, they favored studying a foreign nation and comparing what they learned with what they already knew about the united states. because of this learning activity, learners reported a deeper understanding of the commonalities between nations as well as differences. additionally, after completing a unit on a foreign nation and presenting it to peers, participants reported that the new knowledge helped to clarify existing misconceptions about other nations as is evident in the following feedback from one participant: “during presentations, i was surprised to learn that even though the u.s is a developed nation, we are behind in education and healthcare when compared to other developed nations, let alone some developing nations.” perhaps because of this new knowledge, the participants showed an interest in learning more about global and social justice matters. data showed that at the start of semester, participants were generally uninterested in global and social justice issues. instead, a majority of participants not only expressed limited knowledge of global education and social justice issues, but they also were less interested in engaging in pertinent topics, and when they did, they did so from limited and simplistic knowledge levels. nganga for example, when discussing issues of nations from which immigrant came from, participants tended to blame the affected groups. the following quote shares this viewpoint: i think we should not let syrian refugees into the usa because we have not seen positive things from them. when you do not see positive things it is kind of hard to trust them. also, i think most of people who want to come from such places are moving away from poverty and therefore are poor and will depend on our (us) government if they come over here taking from taxpayers. most governments where these immigrants come from are to blame for chaos and poor conditions. what was evident in the simplistic responses was a lack of critical understanding of the dynamics involved that lead to poverty and “chaos” such as the link between poverty and experiences with colonization/neocolonialism, natural calamities, and marginalization in political, economic, and military activities (sleeter, 2003). what were equally baffling were participants’ ideas about possible solutions to issues of poverty. equally evident is a leaning towards ethnocentrism (bennett, 2004). by the end of the semester, however, summative data gathered from the unit on a foreign nation suggested that most of the participants had developed a better understanding and appreciation of global issues, especially in terms of the existing disparities in global resources as well as contributing factors (see appendix 1 and 2). consequently, participants were able to see the existing global interconnections and interdependencies relative to problems of social justice. the following scripts from an online discussion demonstrate a change in thinking: students need to understand that their actions and those of people in their community or country impact the lives of people on a global scale and vice versa. one way that students can gain a better understanding of the concept of interdependence is by learning about students can learn how our economy is affected by the global economy and how our economy affects the global economy. while learning about global economies, students would also need to learn about geography so that they could connect the information about various economies with their corresponding global locations. i liked the activity we did in class on global resources. it made me think about how some nations have so much, yet others have so little. yet, we compare these nations as if they were the same. journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 well, i knew the us has many resources compared to other parts of the world, but i was not sure to what extent. i mean there is so much we need to learn as teachers. i like how you spoke about using the classroom as a base to teach about global citizenship. i think it is easy for students to overlook a connection to an individual from outside the us, but by using something they know and modeling good relationships with one another we are learning to become better global citizens. i liked the treaty writing simulation. my group took a current global issue, discussed it and then developed a treaty/solution to the issue. other reflections showed that studying a nation that was culturally different than the united states helped participants to get a better understanding of other cultures as well as remove misconceptions that they previously held as is evident in the following quote. doing my research and learning about china was intriguing. although i knew they have a large population, i did not know by how much1.4 billion people compared to us 320 million is a big difference. i also learned how china is committed to education and has more university students than the us and europe combined. china is also one of the largest world economies. a misconception i had was that being a communist nation, they do not practice a market economy. when we hear of communist china in the news, we are not told the us has many companies in china. at least i did not know they did. i also learned that china has many ethnic minorities. that was an interesting fact. shocking though was learning about social injustice for migrant workers. in one website they stated that “migrant workers endure long working days, work seven days a week, many without an employment contract and face constant discrimination.” this made me think about migrant workers in the us and those labeled as illegal migrants and long hours that they work. i think we need to teach student some of the things we never see on text books as they are important for them to become well informed. in our state we get migrant workers in the farming communities. the above findings suggested that preservice teachers perceived the study of topics that infused learning about other nations as critical to developing better understanding of global issues, as well as helping leaners to see connections in global problems such as those related to immigrants and their treatment. to participants, then, teaching about such topics is helpful because they might not be included in textbooks. consequently, data showed that after experiencing learning nganga for global and social justice perspective, the preservice teachers in this study were ready to explore global topics, and develop and implement-teaching units that could help their students understand and appreciate other cultures. to capture this apparent transformation, a participant responded: i came into this course without any knowledge of what global education meant or any idea of how similar nations are. i have now learned how interconnected and interdependent all nations are. to help students understand that they are global citizens they first need to experience a caring environment. students need to be cared about in order to show that care to others. they also need a chance to make decisions and be part of an active pro-social behavior that is they need to know what it means to be giving, helping and sharing for harmonious group relations. students can become global citizens by becoming knowledgeable about other parts of the world. they can research problems to better understand other countries and they can also pen-pal other students from different walks of life. students need to "see" others' ways of living and know what it means to have empathy so that they are globally connected to one another. in conclusion, the study of a foreign nation (see appendix 1) enabled preservice teachers to gain knowledge and skills that are critical to teaching for global and social justice issues. as a result, participants deemed topics that explored similarities and differences between nations as important in that endeavor. exploring multiple perspectives data showed that the use of role-play, as well as discussions and reflections around role-playing helped the participants to explore, analyze and evaluate evidence in different scenarios that were presented during the study of global and social justice issues. for example, in the study of christopher columbus, a role-play that considered both the explorers and native americans’ perspectives enabled participants to learn and think critically about how likely it is for information sources to shape purpose and meaning. when addressing role-play learning activities, all participants argued that these activities helped them link ideas as well as structure argument and counter-arguments; all skills that helped them to recognize incongruences in topics that they explored. the following selected reflections address this important finding: the most important information i gained from this discussion was the truth about christopher columbus. in elementary school, i learned about columbus from a positive journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 view. i didn’t learn about the malicious crimes he committed, but rather that he was an explorer who found “new land” for the spanish. truthfully, columbus arrived at this “new land” and tortured the natives, or those he called “indians”. he was ignorant towards the many people who lived here first, and claimed the land as his own, giving him wealth and power. the mock trial was very helpful. i think having the instructor assign random roles was good because we had to think of how to act like that role/character and come up with supportive ideas, arguments and counter arguments. being one of columbus men, i had to research his journals and those of his men and then put myself in that role. supporting columbus was difficult after hearing what the other side – native americans had to say about his atrocities against them. i was amazed to learn that native americans for the most part took care of people who then turned around and persecuted them. evident in the above reflections is the potential benefit of using critical thinking education and collaborative discussions as teaching practices. as these participants responded to the online discussions, for example, they not only thought critically about the knowledge gained about columbus, but they also benefited from the multiple perspectives that each student shared regarding different topics. in the presence of multiple perspectives, learners are able to develop a fuller and more comprehensive view of history. learners are then likely to personalize the knowledge gained and apply it in the process of constructing new meanings (brookfield, 1986; okukawa, 2008). addressing the significance of accessing multiple perspectives in order to make learning personal and meaningful, two participants in this study stated that: everyone has a different background and different experiences, and even when presented with the same stimuli, will think about different things. people will come up with an idea you've never thought of, or help add on to an idea that you bring up. people with more or less experience can give advice and ask questions. additionally, if the way you see something is confusing, someone else might be able to explain it to you in a better way for your understanding. i think students should be given the opportunity to learn different things and to share ideas freely. by giving us time to discuss our perspectives on different topics i learned ways in which i could implement similar topics in my future nganga classes. i liked the roleplay activity a lot. it is something that students would really get to enjoy doing in such a constructive environment. healthy argument is good for students and will provide them with practice on their critical thinking skills. it is important to have students know that global citizenship is not global allegiance as we need to have our own set of moral laws and values first, guiding us to follow the laws in place by government. global citizenship is about being aware of local and global issues and how they are interconnected. for example, we could look at real world problems such as poverty and how that connects with the u.s. the u.s. has so much wealth and sometimes a lot goes to waste. looking at how much wasted food we have and how we have millions going without food around the nation and the world can help students see why we need to be less wasteful as global citizens. in summary, the above findings point to the need of providing learning opportunities that support using multiple perspectives in teacher education programs. a majority of the preservice teachers in this study reported that instruction that promotes multiple perspectives nurtures healthy discussions, and promotes understanding of views that may contradict one’s own viewpoints. according to unesco (2012), “multiple-perspective analysis helps students to understand the points of view of others who live in their community or across the world” (p. 6). this findings support these views. instructional strategies that promote the 4cs when asked to identify the instructional practices that helped the participants the most in practicing the 4cs, they indicated that role-playing, writing reflections (online and in-classroom), small group collaborative activities, and in-classroom discussions were most helpful. on role playing, one student reported that it was a: challenge because it required us to develop, implement and communicate our ideas to others. we also had to make sure each group member had a part in the roleplay. we needed to collaborate and be creative. other findings showed that role-playing helped participants think about activities that they might do in their future classroom. this finding is evident in the following script. journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 i think a good lesson for a fifth grade class could involve a mock debate, similar to what we did in class. a question for debate could relate to current events, global event, past events in the united states, or even issues occurring in the classroom. this lesson would require objectivity, open-mindedness, flexibility, intellectual honesty, and respect for other viewpoints. students could investigate open ended questions or questions that have a valid answer that they are unaware of. this would be good for this grade level because students are old enough to discuss topics, as well as research what they are unknowledgeable about. the teacher can assign roles in the debate. group learning activities were equally identified as helpful in promoting collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking (4cs). data showed that role-play and discussions assisted participants in developing all 4cs. reflecting on the benefits of discussions, two pre-service teachers provided the following illustrations: in-class discussions in small groups were very helpful, in terms of understanding children’s literature. it was great to see so many perspectives – especially ones we may not have considered initially. it was also good to talk with peers about future classroom plans and ways of integrating diverse pieces as it really widens our own personal idea capacity and sparks even more ideas of things we can do with our future classes in terms of teaching diversity. as a white, female preservice teacher in the us, i am in the majority. therefore, i don’t come from the same background(s) in which s some of my students might come from. however, i want to really reach out to each and every student and provide equal learning opportunity in the classroom. knowing how to review books will help me select anti-biased materials in my class. that is why i found discussions with peers on this topic to be very helpful. online discussions were great because they encouraged us to communicate in more details than we would in class discussions. we also responded to other people’s post. it was a great way to share our thoughts. another thing was how these posts helped us to reflect on our individual ideas on topics that we worked in collaboration. it was interesting for example to see when we did the study of a foreign nation in small groups, but did individualized reflections on how we could use the information, people had different ideas. this greatly helped to learn about new ideas and thoughts. nganga equally helpful in the process of developing 4cs were creative projects such as critical viewing of class videos and selection of class materials. reflecting on the benefits of critical viewing of class videos and selection of class materials, participants reported lack of prior knowledge on how to critically view and select materials using a social justice lens (see appendix 3 for criteria used to assess children’s books). for example, when asked what considerations they would make when selecting children’s movies, the number one consideration was “the movie should be fun.” none of the participants indicated that one should look for bias. after taking part in discussions and activities on selecting anti-bias learning materials, participants reported noting bias in books and videos that previously looked appropriate to use. as a result, one participant responded thusly: the use of video/movies and providing a critical analysis as to why certain movies/video were helpful or not helpful to teaching about a certain issue was helpful. i never thought about evaluating a movie. when i watched mulan, for example before this class, i did not think about gender issues. it was just a fun movie. but when we were taught how to look at information using a critical lens, i watched the movie. i started noticing little things that i had not seen before. why was mulan seen as not fit to go to fight to represent her family? why was bringing a man home important? these were things that were showing that females might not be as good as men in war or their place was to get married. after acquiring essential evaluative skills, a different participant took the risk to evaluate “freedom writers,” a movie in which a teacher inspires her student in planning their future. reflecting on her position relative to using this movie, this participant reported that: this is one of my favorite movies. students would be able to see that not all students are treated the same or have the same opportunities as others. students will learn about different environments in which there is shortage of supplies and resources in schools. along with this, students can see that if you believe in something, you need to fight for what you think is right; like the teacher did in the movie. i would use this in a 4th or 5th grade classroom. reflecting on the value of creative activities such as role-playing and reviewing teaching movies and videos, a participant reported that role-playing was “new to me. it was such fun and i learned a lot. it showed me how to be creative and how i can help my students learn though such a fun activity.” for other participants, the use of town hall meetings and mock trials were creative journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 learning activities that they planned to use in their future classrooms to teach about global and social justice issues. commenting on the value of mock trails, one participant responded thusly after experiencing a mock trial of christopher columbus: as a native american, i am frustrated that there is a holiday to celebrate a man that was so cruel to my people. he came to my land and took it away from my ancestors. he kidnapped them and did horrible things to them. he committed horrendous crimes towards my people and it seems this holiday is a celebration of that. it is time to let people know who columbus really was. other findings from participants showed that activities that involved creating global education units during the social studies methods course (study of a foreign nation) promoted development of critical thinking. the following are scripts from pre-service teachers when asked how they would help their learners develop critical thinking for different grade levels: in order to teach intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness, flexibility and respect for other viewpoints i would allow my students to trade papers/presentations/ideas, etc. and have a partner assess them upon a checklist. i believe this could take students out of their comfort zones to take in others’ ideas critically by providing one another with feedback. i think this type of activity could be done in the intermediate grades. i think it is important for students to reflect upon one another and i cannot think of a better idea to take in new ideas by being flexible and open-minded than by reviewing others work and providing feedback to support their ideas. if i were to teach 5th graders a lesson on human rights, i could focus on south africa and the united states. there are a lot of parallels in what happened to blacks in south africa and blacks in the us. in south africa, i would focus on apartheid. the considerations that i would have to make when teaching this is how to make it culturally relevant and relatable to my students. this could be done by comparing apartheid in south africa to the segregation and the civil rights movement within the united states. as students will already have a general understanding of the civil rights movement within the u.s., i could conduct a lesson comparing and contrasting the similar topic of apartheid within south africa. after reading books about each issue from the two countries, each student can then write two journal entries from the point of view of a black person experiencing nganga segregation in the u.s. during the 1950's-1960's and also of a black person experiencing apartheid in south africa during the 1940's-1990's in south africa. a children's book i could read on apartheid would be the soccer fence and a children's book we could read on segregation would be one crazy summer. these books are about young children and the hardships of growing up during apartheid and segregation. in summary, the above findings suggested that the participants in this study perceived instructional strategies that promoted communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity as relevant to teaching for global mindedness and social justice knowledge. additionally, data showed that different learning activities modeled for participants’ ways to develop and enact learning activities that support 4cs. as a result, participants are likely to implement similar instructional practices in their future classrooms. teaching global citizenship from a social justice perspective in terms of teaching practices that helped participants develop essential global and social justice knowledge and skills, data showed that the participants found in-classroom small and large discussions were most helpful. additionally, critically analysis children’s books and learning materials was very helpful. as a result, they were able to not only discover hidden messages in movies and children’s books that they discussed, but they also developed possible teaching and learning activities. the following selected written reflections address this important finding: our small group discussion of the movie “freedom writers” was helpful. it is a great movie to use to teach global/moral concepts; i wonder if this would be better suited for middle or high school levels students with the emotionally heavy topics? after watching the video “starting small”, our group discussed how the video showed that it is never too early to discuss social justice and global issues with children. watching how one teacher used a “peace corner” for children to go and resolve simple conflicts was amazing. i like how the teacher tied this with resolving national and international conflicts. we discussed some lesson ideas and came up with an activity that we could do with young children that would look at holidays from anti-bias perspective. this would be a good topic for december and january when there are many holidays around the world. we thought identifying common themes in the holidays and discussing why people celebrate or not celebrate holidays would be a good idea. this is something i have never thought about. journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 during discussions, i liked how the instructor defined common humanness. it was very simple and to the point; students would have an easy time understanding how it was explained (referring to cultural universals). i also really appreciate that the instructor explained that global citizenship is not global allegiance as having our own set of moral laws and values first, guiding us to follow the laws in place by government. from the above excerpts, it is evident that in-class discussions have value especially when teaching about global mindedness and social justice issues. discussions and conclusions the current study examined preservice teachers’ perceptions regarding teaching for global mindedness and social justice. additionally, the researcher explored the instructional strategies that preservice teachers perceived as helpful in promoting the 4cs (collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity). a theoretical framework of the 4cs has not been previously used with preservice teachers, thus this study could be useful to other educators in teacher education programs while investigating instructional strategies that promote global mindedness and social justice. as noted elsewhere in his study, modern globalization and increased world interconnectedness and interdependence in economic, political, cultural and social systems present diverse opportunities and challenges. therefore, educational institutions have a responsibility to help students’ master knowledge and skills critical to functioning effectively in contexts of modern globalization. mastering knowledge and skills for global mindedness and social justice is especially important, but before educators are able to teach pertinent knowledge and skills, they should first be introduced to such knowledge and skills. educators thus prepared are likely to teach using a global conscious lens, and to implement instruction for social justice in social studies (merryfield, 1993; 1997; merryfield & subedi, 2001). to that end, findings from this study suggest that teacher educators should include multiple instructional strategies while preparing preservice to teach for global and social justice issues. in addition, data from this study revealed that preservice teachers found incorporation of social studies themes that exposed them to other nations critical to development of multiple perspectives. equally helpful to participants were instructional strategies that aligned well with competencies and skills essential to development of skills collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity (4cs). after nganga developing skills in 4cs, data showed that participants were generally receptive to teaching for multiple perspectives. the ability to accept other people’s views is consistent with grant and secada’s (1990) recommendations for an education that promotes understanding and appreciation of societal issues in order to build a more socially just world. this in itself reflects critical thinking skills which according to kennedy (1991) help learners to be open-minded and considerate of other people. an education for social justice is especially important because it intentionally grapples with questions about causes of societal inequalities (local and global) and solutions to such problems (cochransmith, 2010). an effective education for social justice is grounded on collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity (4cs). data in this study showed that before the participants experienced learning for social justice that was informed by 4cs, they blamed the poor for their conditions. however, after experiencing social justice education, they developed a better understanding and appreciation of the problematic nature of systems of inequalities. thus, they were willing to confront issues of poverty and other social justice problems using objective information. similarly, other data showed that learning based on 4cs challenged many misconceptions and preconceived notions about global and social justice issues that the participants held. thus, they were willing to confront, using a social justice lens, similar issues that their future students could hold. the participants’ readiness to teach for social justice was consistent with norris (1985b) views that once a learner experiences critical thinking, he/she is likely to “apply everything they already know and feel, to evaluate their own thinking, and especially to change their behavior” (p. 40). it should not be surprising, therefore, that the participants in this study showed evidence that after experiencing the 4cs, they not only started to examine their thinking about their prior knowledge and positions on global mindedness and social justice issues, but they also were open to developing new perspectives on how to teach such content in their future classrooms. this was an important finding because as misco and shiveley (2016) argued, teaching for global mindedness and social justice calls for educators to be open minded, appreciate diversity, and commit fully to critical thinking and social justice. role-play activities in which students were expected to think creatively and critically were also found to be very helpful during the implementations of the 4cs. role-play and problem solving teaching strategies indirectly promote critical thinking dispositions like open mindedness, fairjournal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 mindedness, perseverance and empathy among students” (rashid & qaisar, 2017, p. 198). the role-play activities used in this study were developed by participants. as a result, data showed that participants found them relevant and meaningful in helping them understand how to develop role-play activities that they could use in their future classrooms. as a result, data from this study confirm the importance of using instructional strategies and activities that model best instructional practices for pre-service teachers. in summary, data from this study indicate that effective teaching for global mindedness and social justice is likely when collaboration, critical thinking, creativity and communication (4cs) skills are utilized. further, data showed that discussions, mock trials, role-plays, and written reflections supported learners’ use of 4cs. as a result, this study recommends the use of these important teaching strategies especially when instructing for global mindedness and social justice. nevertheless, the researcher encourages further examination of instructional strategies that advance knowledge and skills for global mindedness and social justice in teacher education programs because after all, educators have the all-important responsibility of preparing learners for full and productive lives. an education that helps future educators to master knowledge and skills essential for global mindedness and social justice is a necessity because it situates them well to prepare their future students for dreams and possibilities in a globalized world. limitation and future research this study was conducted in a teacher education program situated in a rural setting. therefore, it is highly likely that findings could only apply to similar teacher education programs. as a result, the researcher recommends a more robust study that could be easily generalizable. a second limitation delves into the possibility of response bias. although the researcher requested participants to provide unbiased responses, it is highly probable that student/teacher power dynamics motivated participants, perhaps unconsciously, to respond in ways that affirmed instructor’s research goals. to mitigate this limitation, a study involving neutral investigators, preferably in collaborative teaching settings is warranted. finally, this study does not document whether participants implemented in their future classrooms the knowledge and skills they reportedly gained. therefore, the researcher recommends a longitudinal study that follows preservice teachers into their classroom in order to investigate and document transferability of the 4cs skills learned in teacher education programs. such documentation would be helpful in nganga 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(2007). globalization in its one and many forms. in h. j. wiarda (ed.), globalization: universal trends, regional implications (pp. 264-276). lebanon, nh: university press of new england/ northeastern university press. yeung, s. s. (2015). conception of teaching higher order thinking: perspectives of chinese teachers in hong kong. the curriculum journal, 26 (4), 553-578, doi: 10.1080/09585176.2015.1053818 zarrillo, j.j. (2004). teaching elementary social studies. new jersey, pearson. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhfph79iaoo http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002154/215431e.pdf journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 appendix 1 unit: study a foreign country develop a unit about a foreign nation that is randomly selected. pre-assessment 1. what do you know about your nation? 2. would you visit that nation? explain why or why not. 3. what is your understanding of global education and why is it relevant in social studies? unit guidelines part 1 a. you are expected to research your country outside of class time and develop a unit. b. write a 6 pages (double spaced) paper that summarizes your country’s education system, geography, history, culture & economic activities. c. how your country does compares to u.s.a (similarities and differences)? d. develop two abbreviated lessons/activities that could be taught to 3rd grade and up based on this unit. e. develop a scoring guide that is appropriate evaluating your activities. consider the national council for the social studies (ncss) themes; culture, individuals, groups, an institutions and global connections (ncss, 2010). f. present your activities to your peers and share what similarities and differences you found in your nation of study and the u.s. g. during presentations bring two children’s books (about your country or another country) that you might use when teaching about foreign cultures in your future class for discussions & reflections. threaded discussion questions: 1. in two paragraphs summarize most important learning from your study of a foreign nation. explain why these learning were important to you? 2. what are the benefits of including of global cultures and histories in social studies? 3. respond to two posts with reflective thoughts. nganga appendix 2: postassessment threaded discussion 1. what misconceptions did you have at the beginning of the semester about the nation you studied? 2. what views changed after researching and developing a unit on your “nation”? why? 3. based on the study of a foreign nation, how did your views change regarding your understanding of global education and its relevance in the social studies? 4. what similarities and differences did you find between the nation you studied and the united states? journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57 appendix 3 assessing materials analyze a children’s or young adults’ book of your choice that has a diversity or global theme. title of book and author/s: illustrators if any: grade level for which your book is appropriate: a short summary of the themes covered in the book: if the book has pictures/illustrations do they include representation of diverse populations? yes no contain diversity represented within cultural groups? yes no include characters depicted realistically and genuinely? yes no avoid reinforcing societal stereotypes? yes no story, characters and theme criteria yes or no explain story accurately reflects the values inherent to the culture being depicted the book avoids offensive expressions, negative attitudes, or stereotypical representations events, situations and objects depicted are historically accurate book avoids any suggestion that there is a single cause or simple answer to the socio-historical dilemmas nganga of the culture being represented promote an understanding of all aspects of our diverse society represent cultural settings realistically story acknowledges the diversity of experiences within a particular cultural group characters are depicted realistically and without stereotypes include females as well as males in leadership and/or non-traditional roles represent people from a variety of cultural groups, age ranges and sizes, including some with disabilities does the book reflect a variety of settings realistically? journal of social studies education research 2019: 10 (4), 26-57  urban, suburban and rural a. would you use this book in your social studies teaching? explain. b. how would you rate this book on a scale of 1 to 5? where 1 implies that the book is not appropriate for teaching global and social justice themes, 3 = could use it but it is limited in scope of covering these themes, and 5 = book is very appropriate and addresses several global and social justice themes. explain your rating: c. on a scale of 1 to 5rate yourself in regard to how well you feel prepared to teach for global and social justices topics in your future classroom. where 1 = not at all prepared, 3 = kind of prepared but requires additional preparation and 5= feels well prepared. explain your rating: baltic journal of economic studies 145 vol. 5, no. 3, 2019 corresponding author: 1 institute of industrial economics of the national academy of sciences of ukraine, ukraine. e-mail: novikovaof9@gmail.com orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8263-1054 2 institute of industrial economics of the national academy of sciences of ukraine, ukraine. e-mail: ost_ya@ukr.net orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2495-4100 3 institute of industrial economics of the national academy of sciences of ukraine, ukraine. e-mail: alkhandiy@ukr.net orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7926-9007 doi: https://doi.org/10.30525/2256-0742/2019-5-3-145-151 social justice and economic efficiency of the modern labour market olga novikova1, yaroslav ostafiichuk2, olena khandii3 abstract. the purpose of the paper is to identify contradictions in the social and economic field in the process of achieving social justice and economic efficiency. methodology. methods of induction and deduction are used to determine the causal relationships; a systematic approach is applied to study research objects; abstract and logical methods of analysis, comparison and generalization allowed us to characterize the existing level of social injustice peculiar to the ukrainian labour market. the results of the study are identified: manifestations of social injustice in ukraine related to gender inequality in wages and different employment opportunities, income disparities in various sectors and regions, an increase in the gap between the income of rich and poor people, inconsistency between compensations for adverse working conditions and necessary expenses for labour rehabilitation, legal insecurity in informal, incomplete, and flexible forms of employment. conclusions are made about their influence on the general situation on the labour market. practical implications. to eliminate social inequality and injustice, ensure observance of labour rights and privileges, and create high social standards it is recommended to develop youth entrepreneurship programs; to provide free legal and informational support at the stage of opening own businesses and preferential lending and taxation in order to minimize youth unemployment; to develop a social unified agreement binding upon the execution of any work or provision of services to protect all participants in the social dialogue of the flexible and informal labour markets; to develop gender-sensitive personnel policies at all enterprises and organizations, to eliminate pay disparities, to develop state programs of promoting gender equality among legislators and senior officials to achieve gender equality; to attract the unemployed and economically inactive population for the growth of the labour potential of the country, which requires providing decent living conditions and remuneration to internally displaced persons, necessary working space for people with disabilities, creating a system of quality social care services for the elderly, sick and children with decent conditions and affordable services to people who receive social benefits in order to release the able-bodied population engaged in caring for relatives. value/originality. the value of the research is the established facts of violations of human dignity and social injustice on the modern labour market and suggested recommendations for the elimination or minimization of them. key words: social justice, economic efficiency, labour market, informal employment, income differentiation, gender inequality. jel classification: d31, d61, d63, e24, j16 1. introduction the model of social policy of any country is the embodiment of ideas of authorities and civil society about the possibility of combining the principles of social justice and economic efficiency in achieving sustainable development of the country. economic efficiency and social justice are simultaneously synergetic and in constant conflict. ensuring social justice in society requires the intervention of a state in market pricing mechanisms, determining the value of labour, competition on the labour market, forming labour supply and demand. the functioning of market mechanisms depends on social factors, and the economic efficiency is based on the qualitative and quantitative baltic journal of economic studies 146 vol. 5, no. 3, 2019 characteristics of labour potential, consumers’ solvency, and the level of development of social infrastructure. most researchers find the achievement of social justice in “fair” redistribution of income. the pursuit of social justice through income equalization will inevitably lead to a reduction in economic efficiency since the incomes of more productive market participants will be redistributed in favour of less productive market participants, the motivation to increase labour productivity and economic efficiency of business entities will decrease, and the number of economically inactive people will grow. the pursuit of economic efficiency with a focus on maximizing incomes and ignoring the principle of social justice in decision-making at all levels of public administration will result in an increase in inequality, further stratification of society by income, growing poverty of the country’s population, weakening of the middle class positions, and increasing social instability. to find a balance of priorities is a difficult task for each country, especially in a long-term financialeconomic and socio-demographic crisis. the purpose of this article is to study social justice and injustice as a result of achieving economic efficiency peculiar to the social and economic area in ukraine. the tasks of the article include considering existing theories of justice, the role of the state in ensuring social justice, identifying the manifestations of social injustice of the ukrainian labour market. the paper uses general scientific methods, in particular methods of abstract and logical analysis, systematic approach, methods of comparison and generalization to assess income disproportions, gender inequality, informal employment, and poverty level in ukraine. the methodological and informational basis of the work is scientific works, materials of periodicals, internet resources, laws, and regulations. 2. social justice from the standpoint of different justice theories social justice is a fundamental principle of social policy, which consists in observing equal rights, freedoms and opportunities, ensuring social guarantees and preventing discrimination based on the place of residence, nationality, sex, age, religion. the problem of the achievement of justice in society has been solved by philosophers, sociologists, economists, lawyers since ancient times, but there is still no single definition of social justice. in most of the proposed explanations, the definition of social justice is closer to that of social equality – equal rights and freedoms of individuals belonging to different social groups and strata, their equality before the law, and formally equal opportunities to succeed according to the principle “to everyone to the extent of his/her personal socially useful work”. agreeing with the author of ( jaremenko, 2016), it should be noted that not every equality is fair and not every inequality is unfair. the complexity and structuredness of social systems require a certain level of inequality of their elements by different criteria, which do not necessarily contradict the conditions of justice. the paper (ghrynenko, 2009) studies the scientific views on the category “social justice” and defines it as “both a generalized moral assessment of social relations, and one of the basic universal human social ideals, the specific understanding and meaning of which has been changed throughout history...” in this interpretation, social justice requires taking into account national peculiarities of the formation of social norms, traditions, existing social standards and principles to characterize the conditions and criteria and their permissible level in determining the justice/injustice ratio. in studies on social justice, the focus is on the redistribution of surplus wealth. in egalitarian theory, the distribution of benefits among people who equally deserve this should be equal. according to the utilitarian theory, a fair distribution is proportional and maximizes the total utility of all members of society. the founder of utilitarianism d. bentham understood the meaning of ethical norms and principles in “the greatest happiness” for “the largest number of people”, and people’s actions should be judged according to their usefulness. these principles of distribution, due to the complexity of determining the usefulness of goods for everyone, have all the disadvantages of egalitarian theories, which include low incentives for productive work, entrepreneurship, innovations, and efficient use of productive resources, insufficient motivation to develop labour potential. in rawls’s theory of justice, the principle of income distribution is the maximization of the usefulness of the poorest members of society. the theory suggests that people, being in their natural state, are equal: they do not know their place in society, social status, class position. in this situation, nobody can change anything for themselves for the better, which determines the initial situation as honest (rawls, 1995). according to the author of this theory, j. rawls, “the differences in the distribution of income and power among organizations are expected, but it is necessary to use these revenues and power to gain benefits for the whole society; in addition, posts should be available to everyone. in other words, inequality can be permissible only if it is beneficial to all” (maffettone, 2010). rawls’s theory of justice is criticized for the limited use and similarity to the ideas of egalitarian theory in the distribution process (kheffe, malakhova & filatova, 2009). under the market concept, the distribution of benefits occurs in accordance with the economic usefulness and productivity of the production factors, depending on the degree of their participation in production. owners of production factors receive different incomes, which depend on the cost of resources and their quantity. the cost of production resources is determined by market baltic journal of economic studies 147 vol. 5, no. 3, 2019 pricing mechanisms depending on demand and supply, their marginal productivity. in a highly competitive environment, incentives for effective work, innovation and efficient use of resources are growing. the distribution of income by wealth, the privileged distribution of income along with the market approach, which are prevalent in the modern economy of many countries, increase social inequality and give an opportunity to receive additional income to those who accumulate assets and inherit them, enjoy privileges in power. these approaches create strong economic incentives for personal wealth accumulation and are characterized by an increase in the proportion of the population classified as poor. 3. state intervention in ensuring social justice when the state implements social and economic functions, including creation of equal opportunities for achieving welfare, ensuring decent living conditions, social protection of disadvantaged population, development of the education system, health care, environmental protection through the growth of social expenditures, introduction of progressive taxation and other market tools, a possibility of achieving social justice increases. state intervention in market processes weakens incentives for entrepreneurship and affects pricing mechanisms, including using tax instruments to regulate the economy. and a question arises: is a non-market mechanism of redistribution of wealth fair and who is responsible for observing the principle of social justice: market, state, or civil society? what is the balance between state and market instruments for decent living conditions and wages to ensure an increase in the efficiency of using and reproducing labour potential and minimizing social tension and instability? the stronger social support of the population from the state, the more opportunities for the development of labour and social potential of the country. ensuring decent social protection and population support is possible under conditions of a stable and efficient economy. on the other hand, with the excessive state intervention in the redistribution of material wealth, a risk of an increase in the proportion of the economically inactive population with growing transfer payments rises. the optimal level of social norms and guarantees should contribute to the growth of labour productivity, the share of the economically active population by attracting economically inactive population and keeping retirement age people and persons with disabilities in the labour force. for an effective social inclusion of economically inactive people, there must be necessary social infrastructure, namely education system, healthcare system, transport and environment convenient for persons with disabilities and retirement age people. public opinion should positively perceive these changes and get prepared for further changes and transformations that social inclusion requires in society. the fulfilment of the foreign investors’ requirements to attract financing from international funds in order to maintain macroeconomic stability requires a continuous reduction of social costs, which “painfully affects the poorest groups of the population. there is an additional endogenous failure of demand, which almost automatically worsens the budget” ( jaremenko, 2016). however, experts from the world bank state that in ukraine “social security is not only expensive for the budget (it accounts for almost 5% of gdp in 2017) but also insufficiently targeted: only 30% of the aid falls to 20% of the disadvantaged population. solving this problem requires improving the targeting of one of the largest programs, the housing and communal subsidy” (press release, 2018). the imf expects optimization of budget expenditures with structural reforms in the main budget spheres (education, healthcare, pension system, public administration). optimization of expenditures is achieved by reducing the number of employed and reorganizing, combining budget organizations and institutions. achieving a decent remuneration rate in the budget sphere is accompanied by increasing the qualified staff while reducing the low-skilled representatives of this sphere, and the main direction within the framework of decentralization is optimization (reduction) of the network of schools and hospitals. the achievement of the economic effect in the budgetary sphere corresponds to the negative social effect expressed in the increase in the number of unemployed. the growth of social injustice with increasing the differentiation of people’s incomes and the number of people under the poverty line affects the strengthening of social potential with a negative vector characterized by reduced trust in employers and authorities, decreased labour productivity, a tendency toward open and hidden forms of conflicts in defending equal rights and opportunities. according to the studies (monitoring of various…, 2016), about 70% of the population of ukraine classifies themselves as poor, and 38.1% of the population is unable to meet their basic needs in full and the need for food, 68.6% at least by one criterion belongs to the category of poor. comparing the actual and official subsistence level, the number of poor in ukraine is 58.3%, indicating a crossing of the critical threshold of 50% (protesty nachinaiutsia…, n.d.). only 30% of ukrainian population receives income that provides the minimum standards of living. according to the research done by financial analysts of the american business edition bloomberg, ukraine ranks seventh among the poorest countries (saraiva, jamrisko, 2017) by bloomberg’s misery index. the eradication of poverty is the number one goal among the sustainable development goals, approved by the un general assembly at the end of september 2015. 193 un member states have committed themselves to end extreme poverty, to reduce inequality and injustice, baltic journal of economic studies 148 vol. 5, no. 3, 2019 to fight with the challenges of climate change in the next 15 years. in 2006, the verkhovna rada of ukraine ratified the european social charter (revised), where one of the main directions is poverty reduction. to achieve the goal number “one”, ukraine adopted the poverty reduction strategy. this strategy identifies poverty prevention mechanisms and main tasks for solving this problem until 2020, updates the integrated poverty assessment methodology (ministry of social policy…, 2017), and implements the action plan for 2018 for implementation of the strategy to overcome poverty. according to the poverty reduction strategy, the absolute poverty rate (costs below the actual subsistence level) in 2018 should decrease to 23% (according to the data of nine months of 2015, this indicator was 23.8% of the population), and the level of unemployment rate of the population aged 15-70 by the ilo methodology should fall to 9.2%. according to the official statistics, in 2017 the unemployment rate of the population by the ilo methodology at the age of 15-70 was 9.5% with an employment rate of 56.1%, and the unemployment rate of the working age population was 9.9%, with the employment rate of 64.5%. according to the world bank’s national methodology for ukraine (ukraina ekonomichnyi ohliad…, 2018), the level of poverty still remains above pre-crisis level, although in 2017 it declined slightly due to the economic recovery and growth of wages and pensions. the poverty level (up to $ 5.5 per day at purchasing power parity in 2011) is estimated at 5.7% in 2017. the level of moderate poverty dropped to 24.5% in 2017 from 26.7% in 2016 (compared to 14.1% in 2013) due to higher minimum wages, growth of wages in the public sector and pensions. 4. manifestations of social injustice in the labour market the high percentage of the population below the poverty line is the result of social injustice in the labour market. the ukrainian labour market is characterized by the following manifestations of social injustice: gender inequality in wages and different employment opportunities, income disparities in various sectors and regions, increased gap between the income of rich and poor, age discrimination in employment, inconsistency between compensation for adverse working conditions and necessary expenses for labour rehabilitation, disproportions in labour demand and supply by age, qualifications in different sectors and regions, legal insecurity in informal, incomplete, and flexible forms of employment. the painful issue for elderly is disproportions in the level of pensions in different years. the growth of social injustice in wages affects the growth of mobility of labour resources both within the country and beyond its borders. by the level of payment, the national labour market is currently uncompetitive compared to the labour markets of european countries. the transformation of labour markets from excess labour markets to tight labour ones leads to an increase in their transaction costs. according to the studies of the social integration and reconciliation index, in donetsk and luhansk oblasts, the level of inclination to migrate among adolescents is 6.8 on a scale from 0 to 10, where 0 means that nobody thinks of migration and 10 means that everyone wants to leave the region (indeks sotsialnoi zghurtovanosti…, n.d.). teens are the greatest value of every community, they realize its future plans, share the values, attitudes, and social norms of the parents. adolescents have a higher inclination to migrate than adults, compare that the inclination to migration according to the results of the general population survey of donetsk and luhansk regions is 4.1 and 4.4, respectively. in turn, girls are more inclined to think of migration than boys. based on the results of the survey, the main reasons for the desire to leave the region are the impact of negative psychosocial factors, individualistic values, quality of life, and entrepreneurial aspirations. low wages, youth unemployment, and lack of widespread choice of employment in rural areas push young people to find better living conditions and work in other cities, further reducing the opportunities for the social and economic development of their communities. for the modern labour market, typical are situations where a high percentage of people’s unemployment in certain regions is accompanied by a high demand for labour by employers. this situation is the result of the mismatch of vocational education with the actual needs of the regional labour market. the outdated material and technical base, the so-called “old school” in the methods of work of the teaching staff, the discrepancy between the expectations of young people of “generation z” (“digital generation”) and traditional approaches to teaching and learning in the system of higher and vocational education, high youth unemployment, which reduces the motivation of young people to study, have a negative impact on the quality of training of young experts and professionals. the development of the material and technical base of educational institutions, the introduction of innovative forms of training, new modern interactive technologies, the formation of competencies demanded in the labour market, will accelerate the transformation of the sectoral structure and balance the needs of the quality workforce and its supply, timely take into account the changes of needs on the labour market and reduce youth unemployment. gender inequality in the world in 2017 according to the gender gap index 2017 increased the first time in the history of the calculation of this index since 2006. however, ukraine improved its position in the world ranking, moving from 69th place in 2016 to 61st place in the ranking of 144 countries in 2017. the level of female and male wages for similar work improved significantly, baltic journal of economic studies 149 vol. 5, no. 3, 2019 rising from 59th to 37th in the ranking (index of equality is 70.5%), the ratio of female to male among lawmakers, officials and managers decreased from 23 to 24 positions (index of equality is 65.5%) (economic discussion club, 2017). according to the official statistics of ukraine, in the 1st quarter of 2018, the gap between male and female wages amounted to 27.5% (in 2017 for the same period the gap was 27.5%), the largest gap was 69.8% in postal and courier activities, 58.1% – in financial and insurance activities. in turn, women received higher wages than men by 1.7% in the sphere of water transport and by 0.7% in the area of administrative and support services. compared to the previous year, the gap in female and male wages for similar work decreases, in 2016 it was 34%. overcoming gender inequality positively affects the country’s economy. according to the researchers, achieving a gender parity allows a country to increase its gdp, for example, gdp of great britain would increase by $250 billion, the united states by $1750 billion, japan by $550 billion, france by $320 billion, germany by $310 billion (for ukraine, such studies were not conducted) (economic discussion club, 2017). income disproportions in various industries in 2017 is 8 times (in postal and courier activities, the average monthly salary was 3 851 uah, which was almost half the average monthly wage in the country, against 31 088 uah in aviation transport and 12 018 uah in the field of information and telecommunications) and in different regions is 1.4 times (in 2017 the average monthly salary in ternopil oblast was 5 554 uah against 7 764 uah in donetsk oblast). these imbalances in the labour market affect the crosssectoral and territorial mobility of skilled personnel and the growing popularity of specialties in the market for educational services that train specialists for industries with high wage levels. the regional differentiation of wages depends on the specialization of regions and the level of social and economic development of the territory, which is determined by a large number of factors, including investment attractiveness, developed transport infrastructure, quality of implementation of regional development programs, and support of small and medium-sized businesses to create new jobs and promote self-employment of the population. special attention should be paid to the phenomenon of informal employment, which in 2017 amounted to 22.9% (3 695.6 thousand people vs. 16 156.4 thousand people aged 15-70) of official employment in ukraine. compared to 2016 and 2015, where the level of informal employment was 24% and 26.1% respectively, there is a gradual decrease, which should be considered positively. the reasons for informal employment are various, firstly, in order to improve the financial situation and reduce the poverty rate, the population looks for an extra job and is not interested in formalizing labour relations since it reduces earnings or such conditions are not beneficial to the employer; secondly, under the influence of globalization and informatization of the economies of many countries, the number of freelancers who agree to work without formalizing labour relations is increasing, often being guided by the choice of employer by its reputational characteristics and their own capabilities and work needs; thirdly, the participants in the informal market are those representatives of the workforce who cannot find official work or it is very difficult to do it (convicted persons, people fired for violations of labour discipline, retirement-age people, people without experience, illegal migrants) and they are ready to perform work under any conditions and for a minimum wage. failure to settle labour relations, absence of legal employment contracts lead to a violation of employees’ labour rights, nonfulfillment of obligations by the employer, the performance of work in improper working conditions, frequent cases of non-payment for performed work because of its noncompliance with employer’s expectations. worldwide growth in informal employment is negatively assessed by international experts due to the high risk of violation of labour rights, tax evasion of employers and loss of social and labour guarantees and insurance job seniority by hired workers, on the one hand, and on the other hand, for certain categories of population, this is the only opportunity for poverty alleviation. protection of labour rights and social protection contribute to the development of labour potential, minimize the risks in the process of using labour resources and provide equal opportunities and labour standards, in the conditions of informal employment this protection is absent. the increased gap between the income of rich and poor is characterized by the following indicators: the quintile ratio (ratio of the average income of the richest 20% of the population to the average income of the poorest 20% of the population), which according to the human development report 2016 in ukraine was 3.3; the palma ratio (the ratio of the richest 10% of the population’s share of gross national income (gni) divided by the poorest 40% share) is 0.8; gini coefficient (characterizes the deviation of the actual distribution of incomes of individuals or households in a particular country from absolute equality. it ranges between 0 in the case of perfect equality and 100% in the case of perfect inequality) is 24.1%; coefficient of human inequality equals 7.2 (average index of inequality by three main dimensions of human development); income inequality is 9.2 (based on household survey data, inequality in income distribution, estimated by using the atkinson inequality index) (human development report, 2016). with such characteristics of human development, ukraine ranks 84th in the ranking of 188 countries, having lost 3 positions for the year. according to the world bank, ukraine leads among the most equal nations in the world, along with slovenia and norway. in 2016, ukraine had the smallest gap between poor and rich among 140 countries. however, baltic journal of economic studies 150 vol. 5, no. 3, 2019 the methodology of calculating inequality indices in society has its drawbacks; it does not take into account shadow revenues. according to the studies of m.v. ptukha institute for demography and social studies, incomes of 10% of the richest and 10% of the poorest ukrainians, considering the shadow, differ by 40 times (pozhivanov, 2018). polarization of society by income does not contribute to strengthening the position of the middle class, increases social instability, inequality in the labour market, and the inclination for migration of the population. labour law and collective and contractual regulations should protect labour rights and ensure safe working conditions and decent compensation for work in harmful working conditions. in 2017, 838.6 thousand people in ukraine (11% of the average number of full-time employees or 28.4% of the number of registered staff as of december 31st) were employed at work with harmful labour conditions, amounting to 93.3% of the indicator of 2015. the number of employees who are eligible for at least one of the types of benefits and compensations for work with harmful working conditions in 2017 is by 7.7% less than in 2015. employment in areas with harmful working conditions decreases annually, partly due to a decrease in production volumes and a reduction in jobs in the industry with harmful working conditions. the state of working conditions indirectly characterizes the number of days of disability as a result of accidents at work, which in recent years is steadily increasing from 201 thousand in 2014 to 244 thousand in 2017, with the annual reduction in the number of employed population (statistics are given according to the official website of state statistics service of ukraine http://www.ukrstat.gov.ua/). low wages and insufficient level of preventive measures to combat occupational diseases reduce the labour potential of the relevant industries. 5. conclusions 1. the international experience shows the existence of a relationship between the level of a country’s labour and social capital development and its social and economic development. social policy, which should be aimed at social protection, eliminating social inequality and injustice, ensuring labour rights and benefits, and creating high social standards play an important role in this process. 2. the growth of labour potential by attracting unemployed and economically inactive population requires creation of the necessary working space for people with disabilities from the employers’ side and creation of a system of high-quality social services for the care of the elderly, sick and children, with decent conditions and affordable services to people receiving social benefits from the state’s side. psychological support for the inclusion of people with disabilities should be introduced starting from pre-school education and cover all segments of the population in order to change the perception and prevention of the influence of social exclusion factors. 3. activation of the economically active population needs the stimulation of self-employment and creation of new jobs, improvement of the system of professional development and retraining throughout the working life. internally displaced people should be perceived as the most valuable resource of any territory. involvement of the internally displaced people in the labour potential of the territory requires appropriate public goods at the regional and local level, effective regional programs for housing and work, and enhancing their vocational qualification. the investment climate of the regions depends on a large number of factors, but for ukraine political support of the authorities is the most important factor. foreign and domestic investors are interested in even social and economic dangerous areas of luhansk and donetsk oblasts, but the political interests of regional and local authorities do not contribute to the emergence of new investors and new jobs. 4. the support of young people at the stage of vocational education, employment, development of youth entrepreneurship programs, provision of free legal and informational support at the stage of establishing their own businesses and concessional lending and taxation will reduce youth unemployment. 5. the processes of globalization affect the growth of the individual, flexible, informal forms of employment that require protection of labour rights and support of new forms of collective association of workers, such as associations, unions, associations of youth, women, internally displaced people, migrants, workers with flexible working hours, that is, all those groups of people who are most often faced with social injustice. national and regional programs should solve issues of preventing social injustice and ensuring social guarantees and legal support to vulnerable categories of the workforce. a social unified agreement is a new type of collective and contractual regulation, which should arise through the efforts of all parties in social and labour relations. this agreement must be concluded when performing any work or service (including one-time) to protect all participants in the social dialogue of a flexible and informal labour market. 6. achievement of gender equality in ukraine requires developing a gender-sensitive personnel policy at all enterprises and organizations, eliminating wage disparities, and working out state programs promoting gender equality among lawmakers and highlevel officials. the highest level of gender inequality in ukraine concerns political rights and opportunities, which can be eliminated through the creation of schools, clubs, associations, and other forms of associations to educate, support, and promote women in politics. 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10.1007/978-3-030-49104-8_3 sha: 1af962d3d74df9b90b07d2edb5aa3237c5cc33de doc_id: 60747 cord_uid: s00kk8fa this chapter explores connections between discussions of nursing ethics in north america and the feminist materialist philosophy (fmp) of nancy fraser. the analysis first reviews key points of fraser’s philosophical critique of capitalism. these points include explanations of the ethics of recognition, redistribution, and representation in the context of capitalism. also considered are contradictions that fraser identifies in “post-socialist feminist” perspectives, as these are relevant for nursing ethics. finally discussed are fraser’s latest fmp explanations of financialized transnational corporate capitalism, including its social, political, and economic effects. the chapter next uses fraser’s critical theoretical explanation of capitalism to piece together some implications for nursing ethics. this critical exploration first focuses on discourses of caring in u.s. nursing, also exploring parallel developments in feminist care ethics. this analysis suggests that the ethics of care in nursing and beyond can be deepened and strengthened by greater consideration of fraser’s fmp, explicitly in considering capitalism. next, the discussion examines the discourse of social justice in nursing, acknowledging connections between care and social justice ethics in nursing literature. definitions of social justice are discussed as are recent analyses of social justice ethics in canadian and u.s. codes of ethics. selected examples of social justice scholarship in canadian and the u.s. nursing literature are next reviewed, pointing to similar theoretical and practice-oriented concerns. this review of social justice scholarship argues again that greater consideration of fraser’s fmp can strengthen accounts of social justice in nursing ethics by explicating contextual effects of capitalism. the chapter concludes in arguing that fraser’s work presents a puzzle for nursing ethics, a question about what form of professionalism nurses believe they are enacting under capitalism. in providing that critical approach to nursing ethics, fraser’s fmp ultimately invites nurses to define pragmatically what forms their professional moral agency will take under capitalism. in her 2011 article, piecing together a genealogical puzzle: intersectionality and american pragmatism, patricia hill collins (2011) presents a very helpful analysis of discourses in intersectionality and pragmatism. her work, including the metaphor and method of "piecing together a genealogical puzzle"-has been an inspiration and i appreciatively borrow that metaphor of "piecing together" here. i have chosen to organize the experience of assembling this analysis as a process of working out/on a puzzle. in that approach, i'm explicitly remembering the imagery and process of feminist literary methods (anderson 2017) , i.e., "piecing together" or assembling work that is part of a greater whole. here i hope to move toward something still not clear (to me) about nursing ethics, a hope for pattern recognition in a larger field of understanding that addresses moral agency and praxis in nursing. to circle a feminist pragmatist/critical theory of nursing ethics, i move within and between some selected fields of work. at the outset and perimeter of this analysis, i review in broad stitch the work of feminist materialist philosopher nancy fraser. i privilege fraser's analysis to create an opening, a discursive space. within that opening, i explore key elements and implications of her critical pragmatist, materialist feminist philosophy, relating these to nursing ethics. i view fraser's work as inviting a productive epistemic shift (not a rupture) in knowledge development for nursing ethics. that shift requires nurses to reconsider and engage/act on political-economic contexts of practice that are directly relevant to nursing ethics, taking into account the context of transnational corporate capitalism. fraser's work helps with this by providing analysis of political-economic contexts that influence moral agency. i argue that her work has important relevance for nursing ethics. after reviewing fraser's work-i move to reflect on the complexity involved in engaging fraser's analysis in nursing. i consider some reasons for why it may be both helpful and difficult to use fraser's work in nursing ethics. this reflective bracketing includes some discussion of anti-socialist feminist ambivalence, tendencies fraser identifies, that make it complicated for some nurse scholars to speak about nursing ethics using fraser's analysis. i counter this with reflections on the history of a critical social ethic in nursing, also identifying the presence of contemporary discourses in nursing ethics that could point toward more alignment with fraser's critical theory. that reflection considers how and why it may be productive at this moment to examine and use feminist materialist philosophy, as one approach (among others) that can support a critical nursing ethics. finally, i move on to piece together some connections between fraser's work and different discourses of moral agency in nursing ethics. i first consider some connections between her philosophy and the ethics of care. i take up selected pieces of work from theorists of care in nursing along with selected examples of work from feminist care ethicists. the analysis suggests that a feminist ethics of care may be coherently consistent for some feminist commitments in nursing, yielding reflective equilibrium in some cases. as fraser suggests, however, a feminist ethic of caring risks continuing a trend of mostly "post-socialist feminist" moral reasoning, evading the critique of capitalism. to address this, i suggest that a feminist ethics of care in nursing is productively deepened/strengthened by addressing intersections with fraser's feminist materialist philosophy. the discussion next similarly considers discourses of the ethics of social justice in nursing. this analysis includes a brief discussion of some contemporary theoretical approaches for the ethics of social justice in nursing in canada and the united states. while these approaches can be understood as consistent with a legacy ethics of social justice in nursing, they also are largely silent about capitalism, continuing a "post-socialist feminist" imaginary for moral agency around social justice. these discourses in nursing are viewed as being productively deepened and strengthened by addressing feminist materialist philosophy, as this is demonstrated in fraser's work. given these opportunities for connections between nursing ethics and fraser's critical theory, i conclude by commenting on some implications for a critical nursing ethics. i find the absence of a critique of capitalism in nursing ethics puzzling. to address this, i invite more dialogue about the emancipatory potential of using feminist materialist philosophy as one theoretical tool (among others) with relevance for a critical nursing ethics. u.s. critical theorist nancy fraser has worked carefully over three decades to articulate a complex and hopeful feminist ethics. in her moral and political philosophy, fraser insists that gender matters in the struggles and wishes of our times-and that an adequate understanding of gender must be located historically and accurately within political-economic contexts of capitalism (fraser 1985 (fraser , 1989 (fraser , 1990 (fraser , 1995a (fraser , b, 1997 (fraser , 2005 (fraser , 2009 (fraser , 2017 fraser and honneth 2003; fraser and jaeggi 2018; fraser and sunkara 2019; arruzza et al. 2019) . feminist materialist leanings in her work insist that intersections of social, political, and economic relations under capitalism are deeply organizing, i.e., that capitalism contextually shapes phronesis/or ethical conceptions of what is right and what is good in our current age. this sensitivity to capitalism acknowledges that power relations (like sexism, racism, classism, heteronormativity, ableism, ageism) do intersect to produce institutionalized social practices in democracies. she argues that the intersections of class, race, and gender are best explained by locating them in the political-economic context of capitalism-with an adequate understanding of how capitalism operates. unlike theories of intersectionality, which tend to be descriptive, focused on ways in which extant subject positions crosscut one another, my account is explanatory. looking beyond those subject positions, to the social order that generates them, i identify the institutional mechanisms through which capitalist society produces gender, race and class as transecting axes of domination. (fraser and jaeggi 2018, p. 109) fraser's political philosophy is a critical theoretical approach, a strand of moral and political philosophy that focuses on how power is constituted and reproduced in capitalist democracies. while not agreeing fully with marxist materialist philosophy, her work nevertheless does draw on materialist influences in critical theory. she emphasizes the effects of capitalism, focusing on relations that exist in capitalist modes of production and their influence. she also insists that gender matters deeply in how power relations are constituted under capitalism-thus providing a feminist materialist perspective. in this, she has challenged masculinist assumptions in critical theory (fraser 1985 (fraser , 1989 while also disagreeing with assumptions in the liberal feminist analysis (fraser 1990 (fraser , 1995a . in the last decades of the twentieth century, fraser (along with other feminist thinkers) was focused on political and moral questions about how best to correct gender injustice. an ally of women's liberation, she nevertheless challenged several assumptions present within second wave and radical feminist activism (fraser 1995b) . this included questioning the presumption of a unified, single, and common group-based identity among all women. fraser argued that under capitalism, important differences exist between women, based on political-economic group identity as well as sociocultural group identities. she argued that gender injustices based in sociocultural group or political-economic group identity could not be effectively addressed in activism that superficially celebrates the common gender identity for all women. in her articulation of a feminist materialist alternative analysis, fraser proposed the need to address gender injustices by tending to capitalism and the differentiated ways in which it operates. she specifically emphasized the need to consider sociocultural group-based identities among women, simultaneously accounting for their political-economic group-based identities. she emphasized that these two types of identity are associated with interests that do not synchronously align (fraser 1995b) . to address gender justice, fraser proposed three interrelated "scales" or components of social justice. she named these elements "moral recognition," "redistribution," and "representation" (fraser 1995a (fraser , b, 1997 (fraser , 2005 (fraser , 2009 (fraser , 2017 fraser and honneth 2003) . the scale of moral recognition addresses institutionalized relations of status subordination. this element of justice corrects for status inequality. moral recognition includes social practices of "empowerment" and related approaches that cultivate shared moral respect of persons as social, political, and cultural peers. fraser also emphasizes that moral recognition focuses on institutionalized power relations, and as such, it contributes to full and equal political and social participation in democracies (i.e., what she terms participatory parity) (fraser and honneth 2003, p. 101 note 39) . the scale of redistribution addresses economic inequality. by focusing on institutionalized class relations in the political economy of capitalism, fraser addresses injustices that reproduce economic disadvantage. in this element of her materialist feminist perspective, she describes economic redistribution as an important and necessary counterpart to moral recognition. redistribution is described as a transformative practice, rather than an affirmative one. fraser is especially concerned that under capitalism, the affirmative outcomes of moral recognition are not in themselves capable of correcting economic disadvantage. she argues that economic redistribution must be considered for how it aligns with or synergizes political efforts to achieve moral respect; also that redistribution must be considered for how it competes with, challenges or impedes prospects for moral recognition. her analysis presents a more complex and differentiated understanding of how simultaneous remedies of moral recognition and redistribution are both needed (fraser 1995a, b; fraser and honneth 2003) . finally, concerning a third scale of justice, fraser addressed the element of representation. representation includes institutionalized symbolic practices that legitimate political participation among subordinated groups. these institutionalized practices include symbolic strategies of deconstruction needed to undo stereotypes, encourage political participation among members of subordinated groups, and achieving full parity in political representation (fraser 1995b, p. 180; fraser and honneth 2003, pp. 73-88; fraser 2005, p. 305) . in considering representation, fraser emphasizes that parity in political representation is complicated by an increasingly globalized world. the relevance of fraser's complex analysis of gender justice becomes clear in nursing practice when considering contemporary challenges related to women's health in global contexts, refugee health, population health related to forced migration/immigration, human trafficking, and other transnational phenomena. health equity in these contexts would require consideration of the dynamic reinforcing effects of moral respect, correcting for maldistribution, and parity in political representation. this more complex transnational understanding of twenty-first-century capitalism is taken up in fraser's later work, reflected for example in scales of justice (fraser 2009 ) and capitalism: a conversation (fraser and jaeggi 2018) . in these publications, fraser traces a decline in the twentieth century of a westphalian economic paradigm where autonomous corporations were regulated by individual sovereign nation-states. she also discusses the related decline and loss of the international breton woods agreement which had temporarily stabilized post-wwii economies in europe and the united states. in the second half of the twentieth century, those agreements were replaced with entities like the international monetary fund (imf), the world bank, central banks, and trade-related intellectual property regimes (trips), created to "govern" or regulate international/global trade. fraser explains that given the support of these entities, financialized global capitalist economic expansion has produced starkly different outcomes in the twentyfirst century. she refers to this twenty-first-century reality as a new phase of capitalism, "financialized transnational corporate capitalism" (fraser and jaeggi 2018, pp. 75-77) . fraser insists that this new phase of capitalism has been accompanied by radical change in scales of justice. she points to growing challenges among many nation-states. these are defined by increasing popular unrest, also growing populist movements linking social and economic justice to transformative tasks of correcting economic maldistribution. fraser cautions about diminishing capabilities among individual nation-states to adequately address these challenges within their own borders-given transnational financialized corporate arrangements. she also identifies steadily growing gaps in wealth, precarious economic conditions, predatory debt, and increasing political complexity as influencing the international emergence of conservative populist movements. most recently, fraser coauthored three texts with analyses of current political and economic challenges relevant to this chapter (fraser and jaeggi 2018; fraser and sunkara 2019; arruzza et al. 2019) . in these texts, fraser carries forward earlier analyses of social justice, but her work demonstrates an important and noticeable epistemic shift (fraser and jaeggi 2018, pp. 29-31) . this shift depicts capitalism by metaphorically describing it, in part, as a "front story" of political-economic activity that is related to other necessary noneconomic backstories (fraser and jaeggi 2018, pp. 48-50) . she analyzes how the front story of capitalism influences and is influenced by "backstories" that operate in interconnected ways to perpetuate the social relations and practices of capitalist political economies. specifically, fraser describes storied struggles as occurring in four spheres: between (1) production and social reproduction; (2) between polity and economy; (3) between human and nonhuman nature; and (4) between exploitation and expropriation. her critical theory suggests that capitalism is characterized at a system level by "inter-realm struggles" within, among, and between these four spheres of activity (fraser and jaeggi 2018, pp. 143-144) . her theory also suggests that understanding these struggles or "backstories" produces better explanations of the structural or root causes of capitalism's oppressions. in relation to struggles occurring between production versus social reproduction, fraser explains that commodity production (wage labor) is not a stand-alone sphere of institutionalized economic relations. rather, commodity production under capitalism emerged historically as institutionalized activity in social practices that were stereotypically gendered and male. also historically, the sphere of activity involving social reproduction emerged under capitalism as an institutionalized realm of activity conforming to practices that were stereotypically gendered and female. fraser describes the sphere of social reproduction as including all "forms of provisioning, care giving and interacting that produce and maintain social bonds. variously called "care," affective labor," or subjectivation, this activity forms capitalism's human subjects, sustaining them as embodied, natural beings while also constituting them as social beings, forming their habitus and the socio-ethical substance in which they move. central here is the work of socializing the young, building communities and producing reproducing the shared meanings, affective dispositions, and horizons of value that underpin social cooperation, including the forms of cooperation-cum-domination that characterize commodity production." (fraser and jaeggi 2018, p. 31) like other feminists, fraser critiques the dominant/subordinate gendered assumptions and essentialized stereotypes historically tied to activities of production and social reproduction. her critical theory is more than gender-sensitive; she is explicitly critical of institutionalized power relations demonstrated in these stereotypes and her work is animated by a strong justice critique of that institutionalized array of power. she argues that far from being subordinate to production, social reproduction is essential and necessary, i.e., production could not exist without the paid and unpaid activities of social reproduction. sharing analytic ground with socialist and marxist feminists, she explains social reproduction as a necessary backstory in capitalism. the activity of social reproduction ensures that human beings are fed, protected, nurtured, sustained in health, and returned to health from illness. but beyond this embodied care activity, social reproduction also forms human beings as human subjects; it ensures that individuals are socialized as "human," that they internalize common social norms, e.g., norms of cooperation, mutual aid, justice, and freedom from oppression. the effects of social reproduction are crucial then not only to the sustained activity of commodity production. they are a necessary backstory contributing to species being, ensuring that for a period of history, there is sustained normative agreement about enduring political, economic, and environmental relations. from one angle of vision, social reproduction could be understood to ensure the replenishment of a sustained workforce. but fraser's conceptualization of social reproduction is not functionalist in this way. she argues that social reproduction creates and sustains capitalism's common shared ethical sphere: i am deliberately casting a broad net here. my aim is to develop an expanded conception of capitalism that can incorporate the insights of (several) paradigms…i would argue that insights of (philosophers) who focus on "ethical life" only receive their full meaning and importance when they are situated in relation to capitalism as a historically elaborated social totality. i think a full account of social reproduction must integrate the concerns of marxist-feminists and socialist-feminists with those of theorists of subjectivation, habitus, culture, lifeworld and "ethical life." (fraser and jaeggi 2018, p. 33) fraser deploys this wider conception of capitalism and social reproduction to explain how socioethical dimensions of capitalism are challenged and how capitalism changes at a system level. she suggests that socioethical crises and transitions for capitalism emerge at intersections where front story and backstories meet. those intersections include "boundary struggles" at sites were production meets reproduction, where polity meets economy, where struggles of exploitation and expropriation meet, and where human society meets nonhuman nature (fraser and jaeggi 2018, p. 167) . a recurring example of boundary struggles between production and social reproduction is presented in fraser's analysis of current times. she describes changes that have occurred under financialized corporate capitalism resulting in the now widespread requirement for two incomes in most households. for those who are working poor, working class or middle class, the post-wwii norm of a single income household is no longer common. when added to this, intersecting influences of race and gender find women and minorities disproportionately employed in service sector jobs, experiencing wage stagnation and the erosion of benefits such as private or public health care insurance and other sources of public support. in this context, the norm has shifted to widespread prevalence of multiple individuals in a household working multiple jobs (mcjobs) without social benefits. as fraser explains, time constraints involved in this economic arrangement produce "crises" around care for children, care for elders or parents, or care for disabled or ill family members living in the household. among two income households, these "care" responsibilities grow increasingly difficult or unsustainable. in contrast, for those individuals in upper middle-class or wealthy households, "care" activities can be commodified by employing others (usually women who are economically or socially disadvantaged) to provide housework, provisioning, food preparation, child/elder care, etc.). while fraser's analysis preceded the context of the covid19 pandemic, her explanation of boundary struggles between commodity production and social reproduction has profound relevance for the present moment. one example of that relevance is found in the challenges experienced among personal care workers employed in home care or congregate elderly care settings. these settings would be home for senior residents and patients from many income categories, including those whose investments have provided resources to pay for residential care outside of their families' homes as well as those who rely on their families or public funding. in the united states, elder care has become increasingly marketized and in that context, personal care assistants (still largely women) frequently carry the challenges of two income households that fraser discusses. among them, the norm may involve juggling multiple jobs or multiple shifts at more than one setting to make ends meet, while ironically and tragically not being able to afford health care insurance themselves. the time constraints of this arrangement for caregivers produce ubiquitous challenges for managing their own childcare requirements, provisioning their own homes, or caring for their own aging parents. the struggles involved in these backstories are extraordinarily challenging. most recently, the related pattern among elder care providers giving close personal care to vulnerable elders during the covid-19 pandemic has produced profoundly complex "boundary struggles" with devastating unanticipated effects. those effects in the united states have included early unintended asymptomatic transmission of the sars-cov-2 virus both by visitors and caregivers in elder congregate care settings. these effects have been due at least in part to consequences of insufficient production, planning, and implementation of pandemic-related testing-another example of how crises in spheres of production and social reproduction are related. given a corporatized model of staffing with personal care assistants necessarily moving between more than one employment context, and the asymptomatic transmission risks of this arrangement, a "storied struggle" in the sphere of caring can be understood as tied tragically to the institutionalized practices of capitalism. this backstory illustrates how a corporatized model of commodified "care" among personal care providers can intersect with stagnated wage arrangements and the realities of two+ income households under this phase of capitalism. corporatized arrangements produce crises in more than one sphere of activity, i.e., production, social reproduction, and as the pandemic continues, in the sphere where polity-economy meet. emerging news confirms growing disparities in covid 19-related infections and deaths among racialized minorities in the united states (african americans, latinyx, native americans). these data provide catalytic evidence of how the exploitation of structural racism yields health inequity under capitalism. finally relevant are the geopolitical contexts of many elements of this as a pandemic story, e.g., involving globalized production chains for vaccines, personal protective equipment, testing and treatments, patterns of international transmission via leisure or business-related travel, the fate of international caregivers, and finally the financialized transnational corporate capitalist economic landscape and framework for addressing global economic stability. (referenced in "health care workers risk spreading covid-19," eleanor laise, (barrons) april 9, 2020, retrieved 4/9/2020 at https://apple.news/apw_.) moving next to fraser's discussion of intersections between polity and economy, she notes that capitalism relies on the polity (public political powers) to establish and enforce its norms. she explains that a market economy is inconceivable in the absence of a legal framework that enforces private enterprise and market exchange. these arrangements include guaranteed property rights, enforced contracts, adjudication of contractual disputes, managing or preventing labor unrest, and other politically institutionalized practices focused on maintaining the financial arrangements that constitute capitalism's existence (fraser and jaeggi 2018, p. 38 ). fraser explains that struggles at the interface of polity and economy have been essential in transitions from feudal capitalism to mercantile, liberal-market capitalism, and to financialized transnational corporate capitalism. addressing the "backstory" of struggles at this interface, she emphasizes growing contradictions between an increasingly globalized, transnational capitalist economy, organized as a "world system," and a political world order still organized as an international system of sovereign, territorial nation-states. fraser names a third sphere or backstory of struggle as capitalism's "annexation of nature." she discusses this as a sphere of activity based on socially, politically, and economically constituted divisions between human and nonhuman nature. in describing this sphere, she emphasizes the necessity of normative understandings that constitute nature as "nonhuman." activity in this sphere is metaphorically described by invoking the image of faucet and sink-with nature operating both in the form of a "tap providing inputs to production" and as a sink "to absorb the waste" of production. nature here is made into a resource for capital, one whose value is both presupposed and disavowed. capitalists expropriate it without compensation or replenishment and treat it as costless in their accounts. so they implicitly assume it to be infinite. in fact, nature's capacity to support life and renew itself constitutes yet another necessary background condition for commodity production and capital accumulation …. after three centuries of capital's predation, capped by neoliberalism's current assault on what remains of the ecological commons, the natural conditions of accumulation have now become a central node of capitalist crisis. (fraser and jaeggi 2018, pp. 35-36) finally, in relation to a fourth backstory necessary for capitalism's existence, fraser focuses on struggles occurring in the sphere where exploitation intersects with expropriation. she describes these struggles as "racialized regimes of capitalist accumulation." occurring in different geographies (geopolitical core and periphery) simultaneously, both regimes have operated in early historical stages of capitalism and today. expropriation involves confiscation, enclosure, and plunder of land along with confiscation of human beings (e.g., racialized slavery, war, and genocide). exploitation involves abusive practices of replenishing labor at wages unacceptably less than those necessary to sustain life. economic predation and political subjugation show up structurally in both regimes (fraser and jaeggi 2018, pp. 104-108) . fraser asserts that these regimes of accumulation and their remnants continue today. the storied struggles of colonization, exploitation, and expropriation under capitalism reflect root causes of racist oppression. those oppressions show up in contemporary injustices centuries later, e.g., in ongoing struggles for decolonization among indigenous people, in persistent health inequities linked to structural racism and income inequality, in innumerable acts of racialized hatred, structural and individual racism. this structural explanation of expropriation and exploitation produces an understanding of racism that differs from an intersectional description of racist domination or oppression. it brings into focus an additional explanation of why intersectional aspects of racialized domination persist. that foregrounding of capitalism also draws attention to ongoing exploitation-now arranged in a fully transnational corporate context. given that context, contemporary features of human trafficking, complex waves of refugee migration, global health crises, deepening health inequity, human rights violations of migrant workers, and other transnational phenomena come into view differently. and their resolution is better understood as requiring something more and different than neoliberal political engagement by individuals in sovereign nation-states. taken together, fraser's analysis of "backstories" in polity/economy, production/ reproduction, human/nonhuman nature, and exploitation/expropriation does more than describe the intersection of gender, race, and class. her theory explains how and why those institutionalized relations are tied to a "front story" that is fully transnational. while affirming the descriptive insights of intersectionality, and its insistence on the articulating axes of class, race, and gender, fraser calls for more: i am proposing s unified theory in which all three modes of oppression (gender 'race' class) are structurally grounded in a single social formation-capitalism broadly conceived, as an institutionalized social order. and unlike theories of intersectionality which tend to be descriptive, focused on the ways in which extant subject positions crosscut one another, my account is explanatory. looking behind those subject positions, to the social order that generates them, i identify the institutional mechanism through which capitalist society produces gender, race and class as transecting axes of domination. (fraser and jaeggi 2018, p. 109) fraser's philosophy finally offers a complex oppositional or liberatory discourse, a way of understanding what would be at stake in the process of achieving widescale transformation and liberation. her work looks to the four spheres or "backstories" to identify specific sites where potential exists to transform the present constellation of capitalism. she argues that emancipatory social movements do still have the potential to intervene at these points of crisis, creating momentum at locations where these spheres of struggle meet. in her latest work, she insists that in liberatory projects, progressive populist movements can act at these sites, having determined that the life being led presently under capitalism is a life requiring transformation. in those movements, she suggests that a feminist materialist explanation of capitalism holds the potential to produce deep, democratic, and ethically mediated structural transformation. her proposed criteria for engaging these transformational, emancipatory struggles are "non-domination, functional sustainability, and democracy" (fraser and jaeggi 2018, p. 178) . these criteria of fraser's critical theory bring her work into alignment with feminist materialist and critical pragmatist commitments. while her work provides socioethical critique of capitalism and while she integrates neo-marxist analysis of class divisions in capitalism, her work is not accurately characterized as classically marxist. what she provides is coherent critical and feminist understanding of ethical challenges that reside in capitalism, refusing to evade these. her work includes an explicit critique of failed attempts at state-managed socialism. and she provides a framework to reconsider what a progressive populist, anti-imperialist, democratic, ecofeminist, and anti-racist political-economic reality would entail. i argue here that her philosophy is relevant as one component of a critical approach to nursing ethics. i see her approach as decisive in addressing the transformation of root causes of oppression in capitalism, including the exploitation of care activities. and i view that approach, not as disorienting, but rather as helpful in strengthening and deepening already existing approaches in nursing ethics. later sections of this chapter return to discuss how these contributions of fraser's critical theory have relevance for nursing ethics. finally, fraser's most recent coauthored texts from 2019 point more explicitly to current transnational contexts (fraser and sunkara 2019; arruzza et al. 2019 ). commenting on current political-economic consequences of transnational capitalism, fraser and colleagues comment on the effects of neoliberalism. these include: the removal of barriers to the 'free movement of capital,' deregulating banking, encouraging ballooning and predatory debt, weakening unions, deindustrializing, and spreading precarious, badly paid work… these policies have hollowed out working class and middle class living standards while transferring wealth and value upward, chiefly to the 1 percent … but also to the upper reaches of the professional managerial classes. (fraser and sunkara 2019, p. 12) fraser and colleagues argue that in tandem with neoliberalism, this shift in the distribution of wealth has been accompanied by the international rise of conservative right populist movements. responding to precariousness, and specifically opposing progressive liberal politics, reactionary conservative populism holds explicitly nationalist assumptions and commitments. it protests against immigration and insists on more rigid national borders, opposes left-liberal economic and social priorities, valorizes right conservative views as the views of ordinary people, opposes "elite" identity politics of multicultural difference, and takes up the rhetoric of white supremacist, heteronormative, and racist antagonism or hatred (fraser and jaeggi 2018; fraser and sunkara 2019; arruzza et al. 2019 ). fraser and colleagues insist that the international rise of this reactionary conservative populism is directly tied to economic and political effects resulting from transnational expansions in corporate capitalism. they also argue that the symbolic and political tenor of the times is currently defined by growing tensions between this political-economic divide: between "conservative right reactionary populism" and "progressive coalition-based neoliberalism." they argue that progressive, "diversity" oriented neoliberal politics will continue to be challenged by the appeal of conservative right populist movements, calling instead for an explicitly progressive populist movement, an example of which is their discussion of feminism for the 99% (arruzza et al. 2019 ). this feminist materialist alternative is presented as a complex and necessary response to capitalism's current crises, relying on anti-racist, anti-imperialist, queer, and material feminist analyses to transform the backstories of capitalism. this vision rests on achieving a more egalitarian economic order and democratic effects, including moral recognition, redistribution, and parity in representation. these latest examples from fraser's long line of work again demonstrate her concern to transform political-economic factors that persistently and structurally influence moral life under capitalism. toward a critical theory of nursing ethics why should this matter to nursing? the easy answer would be to say that, without understanding these structural-ethical analyses of "context or background," nurses, nursing scholars, and nursing leaders underestimate or miss a frame of reference that matters. if we are to base nursing practice and nursing ethics firmly in antioppressive, anti-racist, anti-imperialist, egalitarian, democratically just, environmentally respectful, and caring values, it is important to continue to study deeply and to reach out to work with others whose practice and analysis strengthens our understanding, even if that may trouble prevailing assumptions. in that spirit, this section provides some reflection about how/why feminist materialist analysis might be relevant for nursing ethics. taking up fraser's work in this way is complex, invoking contradictory thoughts and feelings for many nurses in the way it invites a closer look at capitalism. for nurse ethicists and scholars, this invitation to use feminist materialist philosophy also raises important genealogical questions about what can be asked, spoken, represented, or discursively engaged in nursing. asking a critical discourse analytic question, why is it that capitalism is largely unnamed as a meta-economic context that matters for nursing ethics? taking up fraser's critical theory of capitalism especially at this point in history may be challenging, in that it will be perceived by some as too political, too radical, not moving in professionally respectable directions, not supportive of nursing scholarship, and not aligned with the professional or disciplinary mandate of nursing. these reactions speak to "ambivalence" among some (not all) nurses about the focus and content of fraser's critical theory. when the subject of the "economic context" is taken up in discussions relevant to nursing ethics, an analysis of capitalism is usually not present. where there are anecdotal references to macroeconomic context, that analysis frequently is represented by using terms such as "the market economy" or by describing the "corporate" bureaucratic contexts of health care/hospitals (watson 2006; ray 1989a; turkel and ray 2000; ray and turkel 2012) . while these analyses of "market forces" invite and sometimes engage an analysis of corporate bureaucratic effects on nurses, they do not address or explain, as fraser does, these bureaucratic effects as tied to the commodification of caring. nor do they take up an analysis of how the "corporatization" of care is linked to the backstories of capitalism. in noticing this silence, i ask reflectively about the extent to which "ambivalence" in nursing, even and perhaps most importantly among second-wave liberal feminists, prevents us from critically considering the ethical contradictions of capitalism. an important task then in taking up fraser's work is to ask why a feminist materialist approach may produce ambivalence in nursing. it may be that use of the term "capitalism" is perceived as an "unspeakable" (georges 2011), for a ubiquitous silence or refusal to use the term "capitalism" suggests that the term cannot be said. the thesis of this chapter is that silence about capitalism is not helpful for nursing, having discursive and practical consequences that leave important contextual influences unaddressed. whether capitalism can be named depends on the availability and use of academically and professionally sanctioned discourses, in this instance, one that is capable of bringing attention to capitalism's influence in ways deemed productive for the discipline and the profession. as foucauldian scholars would clarify, the extent to which capitalism can be named, spoken about, considered, engaged, or thought of using fraser's feminist materialist philosophy depends on the "credibility" or "respectability" of a discourse that makes capitalism visible/recognizable. the academic status/power of that discourse also points to its discursive and practical consequences, what it brings into view and what it obscures among its professionalized members in nation-states where nurses practice. there are reasons that nurses may have ambivalence about examining capitalism. fraser's work (fraser 1989 (fraser , 1990 (fraser , 1995a (fraser , 1997 (fraser , 2005 (fraser , 2009 (fraser , 2017 jaeggi 2018) clarifies that we have inherited and live in a "post-socialist" discursive era. in that world, the term "capitalism" is semiotically (post-structurally) associated in opposition to its "failed" historical challenge, "socialism." and so, in this discursive space, among privileged persons, the critique of capitalism is understood to be an act of positing socialist solutions. for more than a generation, the historical failures of oppressive state-managed socialist economic regimes have been rightfully remembered, critiqued, and spoken of disparagingly. that discursive era has produced what fraser terms a "post-socialist" political imaginary-a world where among "ordinary people" "there is no alternative" to capitalism. living in a "post-socialist" era means that liberatory movements do not speak as strongly as they once did in discourses that address capitalism's contradictions of economic maldistribution through actions among organized labor (for example). as fraser explains, progressive liberatory movements have turned instead to an agenda that celebrates/affirms diversity in cultural-based group identities and neoliberal affirmations of identity politics. while acknowledging that a politics affirming positive cultural identity is an important element of moral recognition, fraser insists that the "ethos" of many of these liberatory movements also has evaded widespread transformation of structural economic disadvantage, leaving in place maldistribution that supports classist, white supremacist, and sexist social, political, and economic arrangements. in short, fraser's argument is that a "post-socialist" era and its neoliberal approach to moral respect and recognition fails to account for maldistribution in ways that could democratically transform capitalism. the conceptions of social justice circulating in this "post-socialist" context all too easily speak in terms that celebrate problematic group-based identity (e.g., "lean-in-feminism" and white supremacy). these are discursive and practical landscapes that matter, influenced by losing site of and not having language ready to hand, that would clarify interlocking requirements for recognition-redistribution-representation. in this context, the very notion of considering democratic socialist commitments is unthinkable, for some. similarly, the process of envisioning a more democratically constituted and regulated "moral capitalism" (cohen 2020) may address questions today that were engaged with populist support two generations ago. progressive populist economic struggles that previously did engage capitalism (e.g., during the great depression) have been less common during an era of "post-socialist" neoliberal progressive social movements, animated as they have been by a primary concern with communitarian ethics of recognition in cultural-based diversity. given this "post-socialist imaginary" context, ambivalence about what is perceived as "socialist" leanings in critical theory is real. perhaps a small introductory step may be helpful-beginning with a critical pragmatist approach to truth provides some invitation to dialogical engagement. from that democratic pragmatist standpoint, it is theory that determines what can be observed. and it is those observations and their interpretations that influence what is practically worked out in engagement in a field of practice or study (sherwin 2011) . these insights are perhaps more useful for some nurses in circling a critical nursing ethics. probing which discourses can be spoken, which theories are most productive for nursing, what questions cannot be asked, and which questions will be engaged to advance moral agency in nursing ethics is an important task for a critical nursing ethics. i am arguing that obscuring or not addressing the context of capitalism is unhelpful for nursing. if part of being silent about capitalism comes from a post-socialist (largely white, middle-class professionalized, heteronormative) liberal feminist imaginary about the ethics of care and social justice, an important project for nursing ethics is to engage a reflective dialogue about that professionalized standpoint and its contradictory amalgam of privilege. more helpful to that project would be a dialogical examination of fraser's socio-ethical critique and political philosophy, using it to examine the world we inhabit and to understand how the practices we engage could be transformative in contributing to caring and social justice. an invitation to seriously engage feminist materialist analysis in nursing in this way is also consistent with some elements of a legacy history of nursing ethics. that legacy demonstrates a history of social ethics, engaged with socio-ethical critique and animated by a wider understanding of social justice. fowler's (2015) studies of legacy nursing ethics "challenge the notion that nursing's ethics is simply bioethics or biomedical ethics (in part or at all) when its history would instead place it within the broader sphere of social ethics" (p. 14). in responding to fowler's invitation that nursing "stands in need of a thicker account of its ethics," this analysis argues that fraser's critical theory contributes productively to such an account. her socioethical critique of capitalism provides an important corrective, helpful among other approaches, in addressing the root causes of ethical dilemmas, moral crises, social injustice, suffering, and their effects on moral agency in nursing. in reading the work of nurse historians (christy 1969 (christy , 1970 burnam 1998) , it is instructive to recognize that nurse leaders like lavinia dock and lillian wald who worked in the early twentieth century u.s. settlement house tradition, possessed something other than a "post-socialist" feminist imaginary. they shared a kind of ethical literacy concerned simultaneously with democratic justice and caring. their work included practices of seeing, naming, and engaging the oppressive effects of industrialization, supporting immigrants and their inclusion in organized labor movements, activism in reforming hospital practice, addressing workers' health-related challenges, leading the establishment of community-based models of nursing and health care, and actively working for women's suffrage. they shared a wider vision of the social ethics needed in that early twentieth-century urban, industrialized, pre-suffrage context of capitalism. that capacity included the ability to see and engage with others in democratic struggles addressing what fraser would name moral recognition, redistribution, and representation. it seems clear that dock and wald-working as they did in the settlement house contexts of new york-were acutely aware of capitalism and how it operated in their time. their contexts and communities provided them with access to and use of democratizing languages of resistance, care, and social justice and they used those languages/theories in their practices of clinical care and advocacy. in considering the democratically transformative practices of these historical leaders, it again becomes clear that discourses of a wider social ethic of care and social justice are not new in nursing. second-wave feminist commitments continued to evolve in nursing in north america during the twentieth century. a generation of scholars in nursing then was influenced by transitions in feminist analysis, including intersections between liberal, socialist, cultural, black feminist, then postmodern, post-structuralist, lgbtq+ queer theoretical, and postcolonial feminist analysis. it is important to recall that these discourses included early critiques pointing toward the influences of capitalism, patriarchy, and paternalism. examples of that early work in the united states in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s include analysis by jo ann ashley (1975 ashley ( , 1976 ashley ( , 1980 , susan jo roberts (1983) , peggy chinn and charlene wheeler (1985) , denise connors (1980) , nancy greenleaf (1980 ), kathlyn macpherson (1983 , theresa chopoorian (1986) , susan reverby (1987) , and judith wuest (1994) . in more contemporary times, a critical theoretical "emancipatory" paradigm for nursing ethics (research and practice) has been demonstrated in north america, in both canada and the united states, with an ongoing commitment to an ethic of social justice (kagan et al. 2009 (kagan et al. , 2014 chinn and kramer 2011; georges 2013; ray and turkel 2014; walter 2017; wesp et al. 2018) . the extent to which these examples of critical theoretical approaches in nursing ethics reflect and support the use of fraser's feminist materialist philosophy is a compelling question. having established in this discussion interest in engaging that question, the following section of this chapter moves on to piece together some analysis about how the ethics of caring and social justice in nursing, can be strengthened by using fraser's work. examining the ethics of care and social justice in nursing in the last 50 years, as nursing scholars have focused on articulating "authentic" knowledge, they have worked steadily to explicate knowledge that defines the discipline and the profession. this has included an important period of theorizing about what defines key elements of nursing ethics, including the ethics of care in nursing. in these efforts, several nurse ethicists and scholars have maintained that an ethics of care and its evolution in nursing are significant influences for the discipline and the profession. these scholars of care ethics include barbara carper (1979) , delores gaut (1983) , sally gadow (1985) , jane brody (1988) , sara fry (1989) , anne bishop and john scudder (1991) , chris gastmans (1999) , and peggy chinn (2018) . others in nursing have also argued that care is central to the discipline, focusing more closely on the generation of nursing's scientific knowledge base. in this "paradigm" view, care has been understood as a humanistic, transcendent, metaphysical, or transcultural ethos-a way of "being-doing-knowing" that shapes nursing knowledge development, nursing science, research, and theory generation as well as professional values and ethics. theorists and philosophers in nursing in the united states who have articulated this view of the centrality of care in the discipline have included jean watson (1979 watson ( , 1985 watson ( , 2012 , madeline leininger (1988a, b) , dorothea orem (1980) , margaret newman et al. (1991) , marilyn ray (1989b) , jane sumner (2001) , and many others. a comprehensive taxonomy of care theory in nursing is found in the work of zane wolf and nancy france (2017) . within this discourse of care in nursing, others have addressed the ethics of care by focusing on nursing as a practice discipline. in this perspective, the sociology of practice is emphasized, with attention to the way in which professional and social practices shape ethics and disciplinary knowledge. for example, nursing scholars patricia benner (1984 benner ( , 1997 and benner and judith wrubel (1989) provide phenomenological analysis of the "primacy of caring" in nursing through their descriptions of expert practice. their philosophical treatment of care ethics in nursing is oriented by several theoretical influences, including pierre bourdieu's (1977) practice philosophy, the virtue ethics philosophy of alasdair macintyre (1981) , and integrations of care ethics (benner and gordon 1996) including the work of carol gilligan (1982) and joan tronto (1993) . in benner's approach to caring, one's "practice" is understood to develop over time and with experience, integrating knowledge, skill, and ethical comportment in a professional field of social practices (habitus). in theorizing care as a practice, benner endorsed the capacity of virtue ethics as one ethical tradition that can more adequately and coherently account for practice/nursing ethics. she drew on virtue ethics to explain how "the good" is ethically constituted in the particularities of practicing well. finally, her understanding of care ethics also influenced her understanding of the primacy of care. she relied on the groundbreaking feminist work of carol gilligan (1982) who disclosed the centrality of relational ethics in women's ways of knowing. though not emphasizing an alignment of her work with feminist care ethics, benner did propose that virtue ethics should be combined with care ethics to adequately account for a virtue ethic of caring in nursing. [m]edicine and nursing are good candidates for the restoration of virtue ethics, because notions of the good are essential to clinical and ethical comportment and reasoning, and because it is impossible to separate clinical and ethical reasoning in a practice. when my colleagues and i study the practice of nurses, we find that they are working out their notions of good practice in their daily encounters with patients. […] we need to articulate and attend to the moral art of attentiveness and caring relationships that protect patients in their vulnerability while fostering growth and limiting vulnerability. this calls for bringing caring practices in from the margins of our thinking about practice and combining care and virtue ethics. (benner 1997, p. 59) while benner's work was not primarily grounded in the then-current discourses of feminist care ethics, she clearly intended to integrate an ethics of care, along with virtue ethics, in her philosophy of nursing practice. her analysis of the primacy of care, however, was taken up in a way that positions her work in an important feminist debate. benner's approach to care as a moral practice can be understood as a gender-sensitive understanding of nursing ethics, though she never emphasizes that point explicitly. using practice philosophy, virtue ethics, and gender-neutral references to relational care, benner provided an empowerment approach, valorizing nurses' institutionalized practices, animated by a concern that nurses themselves may misunderstand the significance and complexity of their clinical practice as a moral practice (benner 2001, pp. 207-209) . while those intentions are laudable, she did this in ways that can unintentionally obscure gendered relations of power, and as feminists have cautioned, inadvertently contribute to the ongoing subordination of nurses' practice. commenting on this, feminist ethicists rosemary tong (1989) , joan liaschenko (1993) , and peta bowden (2000a) have argued that a valorization of caring in the absence of explicit gender justice critiques risks romanticizing "feminine" stereotypes. they critique a depoliticized "feminine" ethics of care, refusing to equate caring with prevailing stereotypical notions of "feminine" etiquette. they call instead for a feminist care ethics, one that explicitly critiques power relations, identifies gender-based domination and subordination, and critiques oppressive institutionalized social relations that subordinate care. in contrast to a gender-neutral embrace of care and virtue ethics, and explicitly deploying this kind of feminist critique, maureen sander-staudt (2006) considers risks of combining virtue ethics and care ethics and recommends against their wholesale combination. similarly, patricia rodney et al. (2013) provide a comparable critique of foregrounding an ethics of care in nursing. they argue that care, with its gendered connotation in western culture, is all too easily, in our view, reduced to feminine character and virtue and evaluation of what it means to be a "good nurse." attention is neither paid to the sociopolitical context of that work nor to the apparent unreasonableness of being overworked. for these reasons, care and the related social practices it entails become problematic as the moral foundation for nursing when issues of power, social justice and domination remain obscured and unaccounted for. (p. 167) the extent to which care ethics approaches have been capable of transforming contexts in ways that support nurses' moral practice is an important question. the emphasis on care and caring in nursing may be considered as occurring in a period when nurse scholars of care were increasingly concerned about the institutional settings of clinical practice, organized as they are within "bureaucratic contexts of managed care." drawing attention to the effects of "managerialism" in the united states-some care theory rightly focused on the bureaucratizing effects of diagnostic-related categories (drgs) and the meso-economic managerial strategies that have changed clinical environments. watson (2006) and marilyn ray and marian turkel (ray 1989a; turkel and ray 2000; ray and turkel 2012) have drawn attention to the ways in which economic contexts can erode an ethic of care. consistent with a post-socialist feminist, liberal feminist or postmodern feminist paradigm, these analyses focus on meso-level economic influences, locating those in the context of organizational culture and bureaucracy. in not engaging metaanalytic analysis of corporate capitalism, this approach misses an angle of vision that could theorize the corporatization of care differently. it also has the effect (perhaps unintended) of reinforcing a post-socialist feminist vision of caring. an important question is the extent to which that perspective about care could be engaged differently using fraser's philosophy. also consistent with prevailing notions of care in nursing, benner's research program took what appears to be a comparable post-socialist feminist approach to an ethic of care. her work addressed cultural recognition among nurses themselves, helping nurses to appreciate caring as a complex moral practice (benner 2001, pp. 207-220) . but the extent to which this "practice-centric," "virtue ethic of care" provides the profession and the discipline with a "radically" transformative blueprint for practice (sullivan and benner 2005) is again a compelling question. in the spirit of probing that question, it is worth asking how a feminist "virtue ethics of care" understanding of professional nursing is capable of calling attention to political-economic contexts that corporatize and commodify caring. in interesting ways, benner's practice-centric work did indirectly name or "call out" distorting influences of corporatized contexts, pointing to their negative effects on caring. she specifically referred to "market forces" and "commodity production"-as institutionalized practices that obscure, erase, or erode nurses' moral practices. bureaucratized market models of production achieve their efficiency by separating means and ends and substituting means for ends. this approach overlooks the craft, judgment, and relationship required for health care. (they) assume that attentiveness and excellent comportment require no more than commercial relationships based upon simple exchanges. but caring for vulnerable and ill persons requires more than a profit motive. compassion and caring practices are required. […] health care does not act like a commodity, in that the people most needing health care services are often least able to pay, or even request those services. the ethos of the buyer-seller relationship does not adequately capture the moral demands of caring for the disenfranchised, the vulnerable, and the suffering (benner 1997, pp. 51, 58) . just here, a surprising coherence with fraser's feminist materialist analysis is or could have been possible. fraser's analysis would suggest that the problem with "market" models of commodified caring is not that they are insufficient, but rather that they are structurally inconsistent with an ethos suited to the moral demands of caring. benner's ethics of care may have come closer to approximating a critical ethics of care, had it been strengthened by the use of feminist materialist philosophy. that integration would directly point to the predominance of gendered, classed, racialized, and heteronormative power relations in the backstories of social reproduction and "caring" work and the replication of that institutionalized array of power in nursing. consequences of this explanatory aspect of fraser's work point to the salience of using feminist materialist philosophy to recognize the effects of the macroeconomic context of capitalism. this suggests a need to be informed and to cue into sites of struggle where the political-economic contexts of capitalism can be transformed. obscuring or not accounting for those sites of transformation in capitalism is unhelpful. in the long view, evading an analysis of capitalism may not contribute as we imagine to a "respectable" image of the profession. instead, evading the analysis of macroeconomic context diminishes opportunities for nursing to contribute productively to democratic, progressive populist movements, advocating for transformations that are linked to the moral practice of caring and social justice. far from being irrelevant to the social and civic mandate of nursing, this specific critical theory provides a socio-ethical critique that is directly relevant to understanding nursing's moral practice. and in providing that socio-ethical critique, fraser's work makes an important contribution to helping nurses achieve the civic mandate of social justice in the profession, supporting democratic professionalism in nursing. contemporaneously and in parallel with the theorization of "care" in nursing, related work in a feminist relational ethics of care emerged elsewhere during the 1980s, 1990s, and early twenty-first century. in psychology and philosophy, women's moral agency was the subject of early research by gilligan (1982) , sarah ruddick (1989) , nel noddings (1984) (among others). these early scholars explicated gendered differences between men's and women's moral agency, a prelude to "founding" (klaver et al. 2014 ) a feminist relational ethics of care. proposing complimentary comparisons between a more logocentric, principled moral paradigm of justice among men and a relational ethic of care among women, this early feminist "ethics of care" work has continued through important critiques and elaborations, leading to what is now recognized as a formalized branch of feminist (care) ethics. feminist care ethicists have emphasized the moral status of relational caring as a normative ethic. recognized scholars in this field include peta bowden (1995 bowden ( , 1997 bowden ( , 2000a , eva kittay (2020; ethics of care 2013), virginia held (2006) , joan tronto (1993 tronto ( , 2013 fisher and tronto 1990) , and ann gallagher (2017) among others. they have provided important feminist analysis, theorizing the centrality of relational care practices in society (including in citizenship), in everyday life (mothering, friendship), and also in professional caring practices, including among nurses. feminist care ethicists have offered important analyses that situate care in social, political, economic, and global contexts. what is striking about this history of care ethics in feminist philosophy is that it has progressed well beyond a separation of care and justice, rejecting a "gender-sensitive ethics" based on stereotypically "feminine" images of caring. feminist ethicists of care have insisted on placing care within contexts that include institutionalized power relations, including gender, and also have emphasized the importance of critiquing the injustice of those power relations. in this work, feminist ethicists have steadfastly rejected a binary separation between the ethics of justice and the ethics of caring, as well as any gendered and essentialist assumptions about the way in which women and men care. they understand care as comprised of practices, relations, and values that are based in and that contribute to moral respect and moral recognition. they locate caring as central to democratic arrangements in civic society. and they insist that wider contexts of social, political, and economic injustice matter for caring. in her recent work, tronto (2013) extends her previous discussion of caring. while having consistently located caring in social and political contexts (tronto 1993) , her book, caring democracy: markets, equality, and justice, moves into more explicit feminist critique of intersecting contexts where polity-economy are relevant. the direction of tronto's analysis has emphasized the importance of different types of caring, their attributes, and the contexts of these. those types of caring identified in 1993 included: "caring about" (attentiveness), "caring for" (responsibility), "care giving" (competence), "care receiving" (responsiveness). her analysis clarifies that these types of care are not restricted to processes between individuals (whether in public or private realms); they involve relational caring with/in communities and are influenced by and have consequences for social, economic, and political arrangements. the direction of this feminist care ethic takes guidance from earlier work having conceptualized care in ways that resemble philosophical anthropology, viewing caring as a species activity, a requirement for species survival (tronto 1993, p. 103 ). tronto, however, argues more explicitly that the ethics of care has important consequences for the organization of the polis/public sphere, for conceptions of democracies and democratic life, and for the focus of political philosophy. she holds that caring (more than production) has or should have moral prominence in the political organization of democracies and that a central task of democracies is the political assignment of responsibility for caring writ large. the fifth element or type of caring emerging from this philosophy of care is democratic caring ("caring with"). in theorizing this form of caring, tronto's work does more than "add social justice and stir" for the ethics of care. in theorizing caring democracies, she defines democratic caring as a shared ethical commitment, but more forcefully, she holds that democratic caring should be the constitutive steering mechanism of the polity. emphasizing the shared political commitment to equality and care in caring democracies, she argues that [i] n democracies [...] democratic politics should center on assigning responsibilities for care, and for ensuring that democratic citizens are as capable as possible of participating in this assignment of responsibilities. [...] caring democracies thus require a commitment to equality of voice and of reducing power differentials [...] to create the conditions for a meaningful democratic discussion of the nature of responsibility (for care) in society. [...] politically, the feminist democratic ethic of care seeks to expose how social and political institutions permit some to bear the burdens (and joys) of care and allow others to escape them. (tronto, 2013, pp. 30, 32-33) tronto's understanding of the commodification of care in market economies clarifies that a feminist explanation of "the economy" has relevance for democratic caring. for tronto, caring about and with others in addressing structural sources of oppression is or should be a responsibility in caring democracies. this view of social and political structures and their influence on caring has much in common with recent feminist and communitarian commitments in critical paradigms for nursing ethics (kagan et al. 2009; chinn and kramer 2011) . here i argue that between tronto and fraser, an important dialogue about structural influences on democratic caring is needed. that conversation would have relevance for a critical theory of nursing ethics by addressing structures of oppression under capitalism and how these may be addressed among nurses. fraser's work adds explanatory depth by clarifying how those struggles are located at the intersections of polity and economy, including private, marketized, corporatized, and state-managed caring activity. her work further explains how those global "care" struggles are being influenced by exploitation, expropriation, and the annexation of nature under capitalism. her work clarifies the need for simultaneous scales of justice that address recognition, redistribution, and representation. and finally, fraser raises awareness about the rise of reactionary conservative populist movements and the prospects of progressive populist movements to engage "democratic caring" under capitalism. while tronto's latest work on caring democracies addresses several of these details, she does so in a different field of analysis, by focusing her political philosophy on the ethos of the polis. for nurses, these treatments of the significance of "the economy" versus "democracy" do matter in forming our vision of and understanding of care and social justice. a dialogue or deliberative conversation engaging the respective work of fraser and tronto would contribute to a deeper understanding of those visions in nursing ethics. in considering prospects for that kind of transdisciplinary dialogue, e.g., a conversation between tronto and fraser, an important point of clarification is needed. that point concerns the extent to which a "post-socialist feminist imaginary" is still present in feminist care ethics. when the subject of a feminist ethic of democratic care is considered in nursing, it is fair to ask specifically what "caring democracies" look like in the context of "financialized transnational corporate capitalism." that feminist materialist problematique speaks differently to nursing, challenging some unspoken assumption about the imbrication of care and social justice in nursing under capitalism. and if that work is to be taken up in nursing, it is important to ask whether and how a post-socialist feminist imaginary can be examined, challenged, or transformed in our deliberations. a final section of this analysis takes up the ethics of social justice in nursing and how that ethical discourse contributes to a critical theory of nursing ethics. as fowler (2015 fowler ( , 2016 fowler ( , 2017 has argued, nursing ethics is best understood as having demonstrated a legacy of social ethics, including a rich history of concerns for social justice. in agreement with that legacy ethic, there has been recent acknowledgment (woods 2012; peter 2011; liaschenko 1999; watson 2008; doane 2014) that nursing ethics encompasses an imbricated connection between relational ethics/the ethics of care and the ethics of social justice. how the ethics of care and the ethics of social justice "go together" in nursing is an important and compelling question, perhaps a puzzle, addressed differently by different scholars in nursing and by their use of different feminist, moral, and political perspectives. for example, the work of feminist moral and political philosopher iris marion young (1990 young ( , 2011 has been used heavily in nursing to examine the ethics of social justice. that approach, now common in nursing, foregrounds the ethics of moral recognition, emphasizing mutual respect across different "intersectional" social identities. yet in discussions of social justice in nursing, fraser's insight about simultaneously addressing the ethics of redistribution under capitalism is largely missing. i suggest that fraser's feminist materialist philosophy deserves more specific consideration in nursing ethics, contributing to better understanding how social justice is achieved under capitalism. that relevance is derived from her insistence that three scales of justice (recognition, redistribution, and representation) are relevant in capitalist democracies. a review of codes of ethics in nursing in canada and the united states supports the assertion that the discipline and the profession understand the ethics of care and the ethics of social justice to be connected in nursing. both codes identify commitments to relational caring and social justice. in the united states (in 2015), the american nurses association followed the canadian nurses association (in 2006 and 2010) in revising its code and social policy statement to reclaim and emphasize the ethics of social justice (fowler 2016) . a relevant detail includes the observation that while the canadian nurses association has insisted on the importance of emphasizing the ethics of social justice, regulators in canada expressed more ambivalence about that invocation of social justice in the code (peter 2011) . using fraser's work, it is helpful to consider how these codes rely on a paradigm of social justice based strongly on moral respect and moral recognition, speaking less directly about correcting for maldistribution (economic disadvantage) and infrequently about the ethics of representation (parity in political participation). whether and the extent to which codes of ethics in nursing conceptualize social justice as addressing redistribution in capitalist contexts is an important question. fraser's work speaks productively to these questions. her explanations focus directly on growing inequality in income distribution, predatory debt, precarious employment, and growing health inequity under capitalism. given this, she also cautions about the prevalence of a "post-socialist" feminist imaginary, a feminist vision that retains the "there is no alternative" to capitalism standpoint. these contradictions present compelling questions about what type of feminist moral philosophy resonates most comfortably for nursing ethics. in the last 10 years in north america, two concept analyses have produced different working definitions of the concept of social justice in nursing. first appearing in 2012 from u.s. scholars kelly buettner-schmidt and marie lobo (2012), social justice was defined as: full participation in society and the balancing of benefits and burdens by all citizens, resulting in equitable living and a just ordering of society. […]the attributes of social justice are: (1) fairness; (2) equity in the distribution of power, resources and processes that affect the sufficiency of the social determinants of health; (3) just institutions, systems, structures, policies and processes; (4) equity in human development, rights and sustainability; and (5) sufficiency of well-being. (p. 954) this definition foregrounds fairness, equity and a balance of burdens and benefits among citizens, echoing what some may view as aspects of rawlsian distributive justice. however, influenced perhaps by more contemporary movements for social justice, this definition also moves on to attributes that break away from a "veil" of detached impartiality. it acknowledges wider democratic commitments to fairness in the distribution of power, resources and processes that affect "sufficiency" of the social determinants of health and "sufficiency" of well-being. while stated in somewhat detached language, those attributes speak to understanding the structural nature of oppression, and if interpreted using a materialist feminist perspective, would account for social injustices under capitalism. a more explicit use of feminist materialist philosophy would strengthen the capacity of this definition to adequately address the ethics of recognition, redistribution and representation. next appearing in 2017 from canadian scholars angela matwick and roberta woodgate (2017) , social justice in nursing was defined as: a state of health equity characterized by both the equitable distribution of services affecting health and helping relationships. social justice is achieved through the recognition and acknowledgment of social oppression and inequity and nurses' caring actions toward social reform. (p. 182) this definition more clearly demonstrates language consistent with democratic caring. it points directly and indirectly to the importance of moral recognition and respect in overcoming oppression and inequity, also to acts of democratic caring to achieve social reform. mostly missing from this definition are explications of how social justice in nursing addresses structural sources of maldistribution or misrepresentation. these concerns can be clarified by engaging feminist materialist philosophy. these recent definitions of social justice in north american nursing illustrate how democratic caring and social justice may be related in nursing ethics. that understanding is also helped by considering some recent examples of scholarship that address the ethics of social justice in nursing. literature addressing the scholarship of social justice in nursing has been very productive during the last 30 years in north america. in the face of provocative challenges about the justification of social justice discourse in nursing (lipscomb 2012) , the nursing literature continues to include compelling work on the ethics of social justice. some (but not all) of this work would be located in what paula kagan, marlaine smith, peggy chinn, and maeona kramer have referred to as an "emancipatory" paradigm for nursing (chinn and kramer 2011; kagan et al. 2014) . while a robust integrative review of this and related social justice discourse in nursing is beyond the focus of this chapter, a brief review of some recent examples of social justice scholarship in nursing in north america is relevant. in canada, social justice discourse has been prominent in nursing scholarship. canadian work demonstrates several theoretical influences relevant to social justice including: intersectionality (van herk et al. 2011; smye et al. 2011) ; intersectionality/ feminist post-colonial philosophy (varcoe et al. 2014) ; critical theory (reimer kirkham and browne 2006) ; feminist moral and political philosophy (peter 2011) ; feminist post-colonial philosophy (anderson 2000; racine 2003 racine , 2009 racine and petrucka 2011; denison et al. 2013) ; feminist anti-racist pedagogy (garneau et al. 2018) ; cultural safety/anti-racist pedagogy (browne et al. 2009; gregory et al. 2010 (these "categories" are not meant to denote discreet thematic areas of emphasis since they frequently overlap/intersect.) finally, canadian authors annette browne and sheryl reimer-kirkham (2014) respectfully problematize some aspects of social justice discourse in nursing. these authors recommend continued examination of tensions in the ethics of social justice in nursing, also inviting a disciplinary "refocusing" in ways that are relevant for nursing (p. 35). in the united states, another diverse theoretical landscape has informed discussions of the ethics of social justice in nursing. this work includes years of scholarship leading up to and following the 2015 updated emphasis on social justice in the ana code of ethics (fowler 2016) . some theoretical influences in social justice literature in the united states include: upstream action and activism on sdh/structural inequity (bekemeier and butterfield 2005; butterfield 2017; thurman and pfitzinger-lippe 2017) ; philosophies and ethics of social justice in nursing (liaschenko 1999; boutain 2005 boutain , 2020 drevdahl 2013 drevdahl , 2018 ; critical research methodologies (dexheimer pharris & pavlish 2014; boutain 2014; evans-agnew et al. 2014 ; pedagogy: critical race theory and cultural safety; (puzan 2003; fahrenwald 2003; fahrenwald et al. 2007; hassouneh 2006; allen 2006; campesino 2008; canales and drevdahl 2014) ; feminist intersectionality (rogers and kelly 2011); postcolonial feminist praxis (mkandawire-valhmu et al. 2014 ); anti-racist, post-colonial, intersectional populist activism: (walter 2017; weitzell et al. 2020) . lastly, relevant is a recent critical discourse analysis by u.s. author, claire valderama-wallace (2017) addressing social justice ethics as demonstrated in the revised ana code of ethics and related documents. this discussion focuses on revisions to the 2015 code that make more visible the ana social mandate for social justice in nursing. given this important revision, valderama-wallace locates continuing sites of contradiction concerning poverty and racism in the ana documents. she also identifies ongoing ambivalence in the documents about how the social mandate for social justice aligns with prevailing conceptions of professionalism. the extent to which practicing nurses "at the bedside" see professional practice as including an internalized professional responsibility to address social justice continues to be a crucial point of conversation. the analysis suggests that ambivalence is expressed in response to emphasis on social justice, in calls for political advocacy-where individual nurses are called to support policy-level work among nursing's professional organizations and also to address for themselves their individual responsibilities in engaging social justice. taken together, these analyses demonstrate conversations in nursing in canada and the united states over the last 20 years, grappling with the moral terrain of social justice in practice, research, and education. increasingly, the literature reflects contradictions being recognized-across what fraser calls axes of moral respect, redistribution, and representation. these contradictions reflect growing awareness of the structural nature of social injustice, including micro-level interpersonal consequences, meso-level organizational effects, and macro-level structural persistence. it is noticeable that fraser's work is mostly not considered in these analyses. this lacuna is an important area of work for a critical theory of nursing ethics and addressing it will provide justifications (lipscomb 2012) for how and why nurses have important social justice contributions to make. in arguing that fraser's critical theory has relevance for nursing ethics, i have suggested that her work provides productive analysis for nursing, explaining as she does why capitalism presents persistent structural challenges for caring and social justice in nursing. i am not suggesting that feminist materialist philosophy is a panacea or that it can in-itself adequately account for all the moral challenges nurses' experience. but i am insisting that without this critical theory, the profession and the discipline miss an opportunity to reengage an important analytic tool-one that is ultimately consistent with the history of legacy ethics in nursing. this paper has reviewed fraser's philosophy, piecing together points of analysis that are relevant for nursing ethics. the discussion examines (a) the ethics of recognition, redistribution, and representation explicated in fraser's work; (b) her critique of a post-socialist feminist imaginary and its relevance for nursing ethics; and (c) her explanation of contemporary financialized transnational corporate capitalism and the relevance of that explanation for democratic transformation of the economics and politics of care and social justice. next, the paper probes the extent to which feminist commitments to caring and care ethics in nursing can be strengthened by taking fraser's explanation of capitalism and three scales of justice into account. in examining feminist care ethics, the paper also invites a closer comparison of tronto's philosophy of democratic caring in market economies and fraser's feminist materialist philosophy of capitalism. overlap and points of connection in this section of analysis invite a more focused conversation between the feminist philosophies of joan tronto and nancy fraser for nursing ethics. finally, the discussion takes up a review of recent scholarship in north america related to the ethics of social justice in nursing. that analysis demonstrates some common themes in recent research in canada and the u.s. responding to mandates for social justice found in both professional codes of ethics, researchers in both nations have addressed common theoretical approaches to understanding social justice. these include intersectional, feminist post-colonial, feminist anti-racist theory, and calls for social justice activism, present in the scholarship of nurses in both nations. even given crucial differences in their public versus privatized health care systems, this analysis nevertheless suggests that the mandate for social justice in nursing codes of ethics continues to produce compelling questions among nurse scholars, educators, and leaders. those questions emerge from grappling with the structural origins of injustices, their micro-personal and interpersonal expression, and ethical reflection on what forms of professional practice are necessary to adequately respond to these. in reviewing this scholarship, a compelling conversation about nursing codes of ethics, the ethics of social justice, and professional practices seems nascent: for scholars-what kinds of knowledge projects are needed and for what kind of professionalism? the analysis in this chapter finally suggests that these conversations can be helpfully informed by a deeper consideration of fraser's feminist materialist philosophy. in its insistence on the need to examine capitalism as a context that shapes the ways we live and the ways we practice, fraser's work provides something other than a "rupture" or disorientation for nursing ethics. her critical theory instead supports the ability to recall a legacy of social ethics in nursing. echoes of that ethic have been part of nursing's professionalization, despite increasingly undemocratic influences of privilege in a "democratically racist," heteronormative, corporatized, biomedically oriented, and environmentally unmindful health care industry-whether in a public welfare state or liberal and partially privatized arrangement. especially relevant are fraser's analyses of how the present times will compel political advocacy, invoking new awareness, convergence with allies, and activism in/among progressive populist movements. fraser and her colleagues point to the need for a new emerging kind of progressive populist response to the social injustices that are consequences of financialized transnational corporatized capitalism. there is evidence in reviews of recent social justice literature in nursing that this kind of understanding of nursing's social justice mandate is emerging. how nurses will reengage with this progressive form of professional advocacy and how that is understood to be consistent with democratic professionalism in nursing is an important question. it may help to keep reminding ourselves that this is not new and that other generations of nurses have led the way before us. ambivalence in nursing about progressive activism linked with caring social justice movements may be a function of uncertainty, disputes, or hostility (among some) about what kind of professionalism nurses understand themselves to be enacting. it is the thesis of this chapter that the kind of democratic caring and democratic professionalism demonstrated in nursing's legacy ethics are a preferred paradigm for professionalism for nursing under twenty-first-century capitalism. understanding that form of professionalism requires a robust respect for the knowledge and wisdom of those we serve, recognizing and respecting their experiences as peers, also engaging as allies in non-elite relations of advocacy, social justice activism, and caring with them, their communities, and others to address the structural injustices of our world. as i have suggested (thompson, 2014) , this form of "civic" professionalism requires a more radical awareness of how power operates in democracies under capitalism and how we are positioned in it to be the moral agents we want to be. whiteness and difference in nursing gender, 'race', poverty, health 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gender justice nancy fraser,1 new school for social research abstract in the course of the last thirty years, feminist theories of gender have shifted from quasi-marxist, labor-centered conceptions to putatively “post-marxist”cultureand identity-based conceptions. reflecting a broader political move from redistribution to recognition, this shift has been double-edged. on the one hand, it has broadened feminist politics to encompass legitimate issues of representation, identity, and difference. yet, in the context of an ascendant neoliberalism, feminist struggles for recognition may be serving to less to enrich struggles for redistribution than to displace the latter. i aim to resist that trend. in this essay, i propose an analysis of gender that is broad enough to house the full range of feminist concerns, those central to the old socialist-feminism as well as those rooted in the cultural turn. i also propose a correspondingly broad conception of justice, capable of encompassing both distribution and recognition, and a non-identitarian account of recognition, capable of synergizing with redistribution. i conclude by examining some practical problems that arise when we try to envision institutional reforms that could redress gender maldistribution and gender misrecognition simultaneously. feminist theory tends to follow the zeitgeist. in the 1970s, when second-wave feminism emerged out of the new left, its most influential theories of gender reflected the stillpotent influence of marxism. whether sympathetic or antagonistic to class analysis, these theories located gender relations on the terrain of political economy, even as they also sought to expand that terrain to encompass housework, reproduction, and sexuality. soon thereafter, chafing under the limits of labour-centred paradigms, additional currents of feminist theorizing emerged in dialogue with psychoanalysis. in the anglophone world, object-relations theorists began to conceptualize gender as an “identity.” on the european continent, meanwhile, lacanians rejected the term “gender relations” as too sociological and replaced it with “sexual difference,” which they conceptualized in relation to subjectivity and the symbolic order. in neither case was the initial intention to supplant marxism per se; rather, both currents saw themselves as enriching and deepening materialist paradigms that too often lapsed into vulgar economism. by the 1990s, however, the new left was only a memory, and marxism seemed to many a dead letter. in that context, lines of thought that had begun by presuming marxism’s relevance took 1 nancy fraser, henry a. and louise loeb professor of political and social science at the graduate faculty of new school university, frasern@earthlink.net studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 24 on another valence. joining the larger exodus of intellectuals from marxism, most feminist theorists took “the cultural turn.” with the exception of a few holdouts, even those who rejected psychoanalysis came to understand gender as an identity or a “cultural construction.” today, accordingly, gender theory is largely a branch of cultural studies. as such, it has further attenuated, if not wholly lost, its historic links to marxism and to social theory and political economy more generally. as always, the vicissitudes of theory follow those of politics. the shift, over the last thirty years, from quasi-marxist, labour-centred understandings of gender to culture and identity-based conceptions coincides with a parallel shift in feminist politics. whereas the sixty-eight generation hoped, among other things, to restructure the political economy so as to abolish the gender division of labour, subsequent feminists formulated other, less material aims. some, for example, sought recognition of sexual difference, while others preferred to deconstruct the categorial opposition between masculine and feminine. the result was a shift in the center of gravity of feminist politics. once centred on labour and violence, gender struggles have focused increasingly on identity and representation in recent years. the effect has been the subordination of social struggles to cultural struggles, the politics of redistribution to the politics of recognition – this was not, once again, the original intention. cultural feminists and deconstructionists alike assumed that feminist cultural politics would synergize with struggles for social equality. but that assumption, too, has fallen prey to the larger zeitgeist. in “the network society,” the feminist turn to recognition has dovetailed all too neatly with a hegemonic neoliberalism that wants nothing more than to repress socialist memory. feminism is hardly alone in this trajectory. on the contrary, the recent history of gender theory reflects a wider shift in the grammar of political claims-making. on the one hand, struggles for recognition have exploded everywhere–witness battles over multiculturalism, human rights, and national autonomy. on the other hand, struggles for egalitarian redistribution are in relative decline–witness the weakening of trade unions and the co-optation of labour and socialist parties in “the third way.” the result is a tragic historical irony; the shift from redistribution to recognition has occurred just as an aggressively globalizing u.s.-led capitalism is exacerbating economic inequality.2 for feminism, accordingly, this shift has been double-edged. on the one hand, the turn to recognition represents a broadening of gender struggle and a new understanding of gender justice. no longer restricted to questions of distribution, gender justice now encompasses issues of representation, identity, and difference. the result is a major advance over reductive economistic paradigms that had difficulty conceptualizing harms rooted, not in the division of labour, but in androcentric patterns of cultural value. on the other hand, it is no longer clear that feminist struggles for recognition are serving to deepen and enrich struggles for egalitarian redistribution. rather, in the context of an ascendant neoliberalism, they may be serving to displace the latter. in that case, the recent gains in gender theory would be entwined with a tragic loss. instead of arriving at a 2for a fuller discussion, see nancy fraser (1995). "from redistribution to recognition? dilemmas of justice in a 'postsocialist' age," new left review 212 pp. 68 93; reprinted in fraser, (1997) justice interruptus: critical reflections on the "postsocialist" condition. new york: routledge. see also fraser, "social justice in the age of identity politics: redistribution, recognition, and participation," in nancy fraser and axel honneth, redistribution or recognition? a political-philosophical exchange. (london: verso and frankfurt: suhrkamp, 2003). studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 25 broader, richer paradigm that could encompass both redistribution and recognition, we would have traded one truncated paradigm for another–a truncated economism for a truncated culturalism. the result would be a classic case of combined and uneven development; the remarkable recent feminist gains on the axis of recognition would coincide with stalled progress if not outright losses on the axis of distribution. that is my reading of present trends. in what follows, i shall outline an approach to gender theory and feminist politics that responds to this diagnosis and aims to forestall its full realization. what i have to say divides into four parts. first, i shall propose an analysis of gender that is broad enough to house the full range of feminist concerns, those central to the old socialist-feminism as well as those rooted in the cultural turn. to complement this analysis, i shall propose, second, a correspondingly broad conception of justice, capable of encompassing both distribution and recognition, and third, a nonidentitarian account of recognition, capable of synergizing with redistribution. fourth and finally, i shall examine some practical problems that arise when we try to envision institutional reforms that could redress maldistribution and misrecognition simultaneously. in all four sections, i shall break with those feminist approaches that focus exclusively on gender. rather, i shall situate gender struggles as one strand among others in a broader political project aimed at institutionalizing democratic justice across multiple axes of social differentiation. revisiting gender theory: a two-dimensional analysis to avoid truncating the feminist problematic, and unwittingly colluding with neoliberalism, feminists today need to revisit the concept of gender. what is needed is a broad and capacious conception, which can accommodate at least two sets of concerns. on the one hand, such a conception must incorporate the labour-centred problematic associated with socialist-feminism; on the other hand, it must also make room for the culture-centred problematic associated with putatively “postmarxian” strands of feminist theorizing. rejecting sectarian formulations that cast those two problematics as mutually antithetical, feminists need to develop an account of gender that encompasses the concerns of both. as we shall see, this requires theorizing both the gendered character of the political economy and the androcentrism of the cultural order, without reducing either one of them to the other. at the same time, it also requires theorizing two analytically distinct dimensions of sexism, one centred on distribution, the other centred on recognition. the result will be a two-dimensional conception of gender. only such a conception can support a viable feminist politics in the present era. let me explain. the approach i propose requires viewing gender bifocally, simultaneously through two different lenses. viewed through one lens, gender has affinities with class; viewed through the other, it is more akin to status. each lens brings into focus an important aspect of women’s subordination, but neither alone is sufficient. a full understanding becomes available only when the two lenses are superimposed. at that point, gender appears as a categorial axis that spans two dimensions of social ordering, the dimension of distribution and the dimension of recognition. from the distributive perspective, gender appears as a class-like differentiation, rooted in the economic structure of society. a basic organizing principle of the division studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 26 of labour, it underlies the fundamental division between paid "productive" labour and unpaid "reproductive" and domestic labour, assigning women primary responsibility for the latter. gender also structures the division within paid labour between higher-paid, male-dominated, manufacturing and professional occupations and lower-paid, femaledominated "pink collar" and domestic service occupations. the result is an economic structure that generates gender-specific forms of distributive injustice. from the recognition perspective, in contrast, gender appears as a status differentiation, rooted in the status order of society. gender codes pervasive cultural patterns of interpretation and evaluation, which are central to the status order as a whole. thus, a major feature of gender injustice is androcentrism: an institutionalized pattern of cultural value that privileges traits associated with masculinity, while devaluing everything coded as "feminine," paradigmatically—but not only—women. pervasively institutionalized, androcentric value patterns structure broad swaths of social interaction. expressly codified in many areas of law (including family law and criminal law), they inform legal constructions of privacy, autonomy, self-defense, and equality. they are also entrenched in many areas of government policy (including reproductive, immigration, and asylum policy) and in standard professional practices (including medicine and psychotherapy). androcentric value patterns also pervade popular culture and everyday interaction. as a result, women suffer gender-specific forms of status subordination, including sexual harassment, sexual assault, and domestic violence; trivializing, objectifying, and demeaning stereotypical depictions in the media; disparagement in everyday life; exclusion or marginalization in public spheres and deliberative bodies; and denial of the full rights and equal protections of citizenship. these harms are injustices of misrecognition. they are relatively independent of political economy and are not merely "superstructural." thus, they cannot be overcome by redistribution alone but require additional, independent remedies of recognition. when the two perspectives are combined, gender emerges as a two-dimensional category. it contains both a political-economic face that brings it within the ambit of redistribution and also a cultural-discursive face that brings it simultaneously within the ambit of recognition. moreover, neither dimension is merely an indirect effect of the other. to be sure, the distributive and recognition dimensions interact with one another. but gender maldistribution is not simply a by-product of status hierarchy; nor is gender misrecognition wholly a by-product of economic structure. rather, each dimension has some relative independence from the other. neither can be redressed entirely indirectly, therefore, through remedies addressed exclusively to the other. it is an open question whether the two dimensions are of equal weight. but redressing gender injustice, in any case, requires changing both the economic structure and the status order of contemporary society. neither, alone, will suffice. the two-dimensional character of gender wreaks havoc on the idea of an either/or choice between the politics of redistribution and the politics of recognition. that construction assumes that women are either a class or a status group, but not both; that the injustice they suffer is either maldistribution or misrecognition, but not both; that the remedy is either redistribution or recognition, but not both. gender, we can now see, explodes this whole series of false antitheses. here we have a category that is a compound of both status and class. not only is gender “difference” constructed simultaneously from both economic differentials and institutionalized patterns of cultural studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 27 value, but both maldistribution and misrecognition are fundamental to sexism. the implication for feminist politics is clear. to combat the subordination of women requires an approach that combines a politics of redistribution with a politics of recognition.3 rethinking gender parity: a two-dimensional conception of justice to develop such an approach requires a conception of justice as broad and capacious as the preceding view of gender. such a conception must also accommodate at least two sets of concerns. on the one hand, it must encompass the traditional concerns of theories of distributive justice, especially poverty, exploitation, inequality, and class differentials. at the same time, it must also encompass concerns recently highlighted in philosophies of recognition, especially disrespect, cultural imperialism, and status hierarchy. rejecting sectarian formulations that cast distribution and recognition as mutually incompatible understandings of justice, such a conception must accommodate both. as we shall see, this means theorizing maldistribution and misrecognition by reference to a common normative standard, without reducing either one to the other. the result, once again, will be a two-dimensional conception of justice. only such a conception can comprehend the full magnitude of sexist injustice. the conception of justice i propose centres on the principle of parity of participation. according to this principle, justice requires social arrangements that permit all (adult) members of society to interact with one another as peers. for participatory parity to be possible, at least two conditions must be satisfied. first, the distribution of material resources must be such as to ensure participants’ independence and “voice.” this “objective” condition precludes forms and levels of economic dependence and inequality that impede parity of participation. precluded, therefore, are social arrangements that institutionalize deprivation, exploitation, and gross disparities in wealth, income, and leisure time, thereby denying some people the means and opportunities to interact with others as peers. in contrast, the second condition for participatory parity is “intersubjective.” it requires that institutionalized patterns of cultural value express equal respect for all participants and ensure equal opportunity for achieving social esteem. this condition precludes institutionalized value patterns that systematically depreciate some categories of people and the qualities associated with them. precluded, therefore, are institutionalized value patterns that deny some people the status of full partners in interaction—whether by burdening them with excessive ascribed “difference” or by failing to acknowledge their distinctiveness. both conditions are necessary for participatory parity. neither, alone, is sufficient. the first brings into focus concerns traditionally associated with the theory of distributive 3gender, moreover, is not unusual in this regard. "race," too, is a two-dimensional category, a compound of status and class. class, also, may well best be understood two-dimensionally, contra orthodox economistic theories. and even sexuality, which looks at first sight like the paradigm case of pure recognition, has an undeniable economic dimension. thus, it may well turn out that virtually all real-world axes of injustice are two-dimensional. virtually all perpetrate both maldistribution and misrecognition in forms where neither of those injustices can be redressed entirely indirectly but where each requires some practical attention. as a practical matter, therefore, overcoming injustice in virtually every case requires both redistribution and recognition. for a fuller discussion, see fraser, "social justice in the age of identity politics,” op. cit. studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 28 justice, especially concerns pertaining to the economic structure of society and to economically defined class differentials. the second brings into focus concerns recently highlighted in the philosophy of recognition, especially concerns pertaining to the status order of society and to culturally defined hierarchies of status. yet neither condition is merely an epiphenomenal effect of the other. rather, each has some relative independence. thus, neither can be achieved wholly indirectly via reforms addressed exclusively to the other. the result is a two-dimensional conception of justice that encompasses both redistribution and recognition, without reducing either one to the other.4 this approach suits the conception of gender proposed earlier. by construing redistribution and recognition as two mutually irreducible dimensions of justice, it broadens the usual understanding of justice to encompass both the class and status aspects of gender subordination. by submitting both dimensions to the overarching norm of participatory parity, moreover, it supplies a single normative standard for assessing the justice of the gender order. insofar as the economic structure of society denies women the resources they need for full participation in social life, it institutionalizes sexist maldistribution. insofar, likewise, as the status order of society constitutes women as lessthan-full partners in interaction, it institutionalizes sexist misrecognition. in either case, the result is a morally indefensible gender order. thus, the norm of participatory parity serves to identify, and condemn, gender injustice along two dimensions. but the standard also applies to other axes of social differentiation, including class, “race,” sexuality, ethnicity, nationality, and religion. insofar as social arrangements impede parity of participation along any of these axes, whether via maldistribution or misrecognition, they violate the requirements of justice. the result, as we shall see shortly, is a normative standard that is capable of adjudicating some of the hardest political dilemmas feminists face today. these dilemmas arise at the intersection of multiple axes of subordination, when, for example, efforts to remedy the unjust treatment of a religious minority seem to conflict head-on with efforts to remedy sexism. in the following section of the present essay, i shall show how the principle of participatory parity serves to resolve such dilemmas. first, however, let me clarify my use of the term “parity,” as it differs from recent french uses of that term. four points of divergence are especially worth noting. first, in france parité designates a law mandating that women occupy half of all slots on electoral lists in campaigns for seats in legislative assemblies. there, accordingly, it means strict numerical equality in gender representation in electoral contests. for me, in contrast, parity is not a matter of numbers. rather, it is a qualitative condition, the condition of being a peer, of being on a par with others, of interacting with them on an equal footing. that condition is not guaranteed by mere numbers, as we know from former communist countries, some of which came close to achieving parity in the french sense while remaining very far from achieving it in mine. to be sure, the severe under-representation of women in legislative assemblies and other formal political institutions usually signifies qualitative disparities of participation in social life. but numerical quotas are not necessarily, or always, the best solution. thus, my conception deliberately leaves open 4for a fuller argument, see fraser, "social justice in the age of identity politics,” op. cit. studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 29 (for democratic deliberation) the question of exactly what degree of representation or level of equality is necessary to ensure participatory parity. the reason has to do with the second difference between my view of parity and the french one, a difference concerning scope. in france, the requirement of parité concerns one dimension of justice only, namely, the dimension of recognition. there, accordingly, it is apparently assumed that the chief obstacle to women’s full participation in political life is an androcentric value hierarchy in the party structure and that the principal remedy is the constitutional requirement that women occupy half the slots on electoral lists. for me, in contrast, the requirement of participatory parity applies to both dimensions of social justice, hence to distribution as well as recognition. and i assume that the obstacle to parity can be (and often is) maldistribution as well as misrecognition. in the case of gender disparity in political representation, then, i assume that what is required is not only the deinstitutionalization of androcentric value hierarchies, but also the restructuring of the division of labour to eliminate women’s “double shift,” which constitutes a formidable distributive obstacle to their full participation in political life. the third key difference is also a matter of scope, but in a different sense. in france, parité applies to one arena of interaction only: electoral campaigns for seats in legislative assemblies. for me, in contrast, parity applies throughout the whole of social life. thus, justice requires parity of participation in a multiplicity of interaction arenas, including labour markets, sexual relations, family life, public spheres, and voluntary associations in civil society. in each arena, however, participation means something different. for example, participation in the labour market means something qualitatively different from participation in sexual relations or in civil society. in each arena, therefore, the meaning of parity must be tailored to the kind of participation at issue. no single formula, quantitative or otherwise, can suffice for every case. what, precisely is, required to achieve participatory parity depends, in part, on the nature of the social interaction in question. the fourth key difference concerns scope in yet another sense. in france, parité applies to one axis of social differentiation only, namely, the axis of gender. thus, the law does not mandate proportional representation of other categories of subordinated people, such as racial/ethnic or religious minorities. nor, apparently, are its supporters concerned about its impact on such representation. for me, in contrast, justice requires participatory parity across all major axes of social differentiation; not only gender, but, also, “race,” ethnicity, sexuality, religion, and nationality.5 as i shall explain in the following section, this entails that proposed reforms be evaluated from multiple perspectives, and hence that proponents must consider whether measures aimed at redressing one sort of disparity are likely to end up exacerbating another.6 5thus, i reject the essentialist accounts of sexual difference, invoked by some french feminist philosophers to justify parité. 6there is also a fifth difference, which concerns modality. the french law mandates parité of actual participation. for me, in contrast, the moral requirement is that members of society be ensured the possibility of parity, if and when they choose to participate in a given activity or interaction. there is no requirement that everyone actually participate in any such activity. to take an example from the united states: separatist groups such as the amish are perfectly entitled to withdraw from participation in the larger society. what they cannot do, however, is deprive their children of the chance to acquire the social competences they would need to participate as peers in case they should later choose to exit the amish community and join the social mainstream. studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 30 in general, then, my notion of justice as participatory parity is far broader than the french parité. unlike the latter, it provides a normative standard for assessing the justice of all social arrangements along two dimensions and across multiple axes of social differentiation. as such, it represents a fitting counterpart to a conception of gender that encompasses not only the status-oriented dimension of recognition, but, also, the classlike dimension of distribution. rethinking recognition: a non-identitarian feminist politics now, let’s consider the implications of these conceptions for feminist politics, beginning first with the politics of recognition. usually, this is viewed as identity politics. from the standard perspective, what requires recognition is feminine gender identity. misrecognition consists in the depreciation of such identity by a patriarchal culture and the consequent damage to women’s sense of self. redressing this harm requires engaging in a feminist politics of recognition. such a politics aims to repair internal self-dislocation by contesting demeaning androcentric pictures of femininity. women must reject such pictures in favour of new self-representations of their own making. having refashioned their collective identity, moreover, they must display it publicly in order to gain the respect and esteem of the society-at-large. the result, when successful, is "recognition," a positive relation to oneself. on the identity model, then, a feminist politics of recognition means identity politics. without doubt, this identity model contains some genuine insights concerning the psychological effects of sexism. yet, as i have argued elsewhere, it is deficient on at least two major counts. first, it tends to reify femininity and to obscure cross-cutting axes of subordination. as a result, it often recycles dominant gender stereotypes, while promoting separatism and political correctness. second, the identity model treats sexist misrecognition as a free-standing cultural harm. as a result, it obscures the latter’s links to sexist maldistribution, thereby impeding efforts to combat both aspects of sexism simultaneously.7 for these reasons, feminists need an alternative approach. the concepts of gender and justice proposed here imply an alternative feminist politics of recognition. from this perspective, recognition is a question of social status. what requires recognition is not feminine identity but the status of women as full partners in social interaction. misrecognition, accordingly, does not mean the depreciation and deformation of femininity. rather, it means social subordination in the sense of being prevented from participating as a peer in social life. to redress the injustice requires a feminist politics of recognition, to be sure, but this does not mean identity politics. on the status model, rather, it means a politics aimed at overcoming subordination by establishing women as full members of society, capable of participating on a par with men. let me explain. the status approach requires examining institutionalized patterns of cultural value for their effects on the relative standing of women. if and when such patterns constitute women as peers, capable of participating on par with men in social 7for a fuller critique of the identity model, see nancy fraser, “rethinking recognition: overcoming displacement and reification in cultural politics,” new left review 3 (may/june 2000): 107-120. studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 31 life, then we can speak of reciprocal recognition and status equality. when, in contrast, institutionalized patterns of cultural value constitute women as inferior, excluded, wholly other, or simply invisible--hence as less than full partners in social interaction--then we must speak of sexist misrecognition and status subordination. on the status model, therefore, sexist misrecognition is a social relation of subordination relayed through institutionalized patterns of cultural value. it occurs when social institutions regulate interaction according to androcentric, parity-impeding norms. examples include criminal laws that ignore marital rape, social-welfare programs that stigmatize single mothers as sexually irresponsible scroungers, and asylum policies that regard genital mutilation as a “cultural practice” like any other. in each of these cases, interaction is regulated by an androcentric pattern of cultural value. in each case, the result is to deny women the status of full partners in interaction, capable of participating on par with men. viewed in terms of status, therefore, misrecognition constitutes a serious violation of justice. wherever and however it occurs, a claim for recognition is in order. but note precisely what this means. aimed not at valorizing femininity, but rather at overcoming subordination, claims for recognition seek to establish women as full partners in social life, able to interact with male peers. they aim, that is, to deinstitutionalize androcentric patterns of value that impede gender parity and to replace them with patterns that foster it.8 in general, then, the status model makes possible a non-identitarian politics of recognition. such a politics applies to gender, to be sure. but it also applies to other axes of subordination, including “race,” sexuality, ethnicity, nationality and religion. as a result, it enables feminists to adjudicate cases in which claims for recognition posed along one axis of subordination run up against claims posed along another. of special interest to feminists are cases in which claims for the recognition of minority cultural practices seem to conflict with gender justice. in such cases, the principle of participatory parity must be applied twice. it must be applied, first, at the intergroup level, to assess the effects of institutionalized patterns of cultural value on the relative standing of minorities vis-à-vis majorities. then, it must be applied, second, at the intragroup level, to assess the internal effects of the minority practices for which recognition is being claimed. taken together, these two levels constitute a double requirement. claimants must show, first, that the institutionalization of majority cultural norms denies them participatory parity and, second, that the practices whose recognition they seek do not themselves deny participatory parity to others, as well as to some of their own members. consider the french controversy over the foulard. here, the issue is whether policies forbidding muslim girls to wear headscarves in state schools constitute unjust treatment of a religious minority. in this case, those claiming recognition of the foulard must establish two points: they must show, first, that the ban on the scarf constitutes an unjust majority communitarianism, which denies educational parity to muslim girls; and second, that an alternative policy permitting the foulard would not exacerbate female subordination—in muslim communities or in society-at-large. the first point, concerning french majority communitarianism, can be established without difficulty, it seems, as no analogous prohibition bars the wearing of christian crosses in state schools; thus, the 8for a fuller account of the status model, see fraser, "social justice in the age of identity politics,” op. cit. studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 32 current policy denies equal standing to muslim citizens. the second point, concerning the non-exacerbation of female subordination, has proved controversial, in contrast, as some republicans have argued that the foulard is a marker of women’s subordination and must therefore be denied state recognition. disputing this interpretation, however, some multiculturalists have rejoined that the scarf’s meaning is highly contested in french muslim communities today, as are gender relations more generally. thus, instead of construing it as univocally patriarchal, which effectively accords male supremacists sole authority to interpret islam, the state should treat the foulard as a symbol of muslim identity in transition; one whose meaning is contested, as is french identity itself, as a result of transcultural interactions in a multicultural society. from this perspective, permitting the foulard in state schools could be a step toward, not away, from gender parity. in my view, the multiculturalists have the stronger argument here. (this is not the case, incidentally, for those seeking recognition for what they call “female circumcision”— genital mutilation clearly denies parity in sexual pleasure and in health to women and girls.) but that is not the point i wish to stress here. the point, rather, is that the multiculturalists’ argument is rightly cast in terms of parity of participation. this is precisely where the controversy should be joined. participatory parity is the proper standard for warranting claims for recognition (and redistribution). it enables a nonidentitarian feminist politics that can adjudicate conflicts between claims centred on gender and those focused on other, cross-cutting axes of subordination.9 integrating redistribution and recognition in feminist politics now, let’s consider the broader implications for feminist politics. as we saw, a feminist politics for today must be two-dimensional, combining a politics of recognition with a politics of redistribution. only such a politics can avoid truncating the feminist agenda and colluding with neoliberalism. yet devising such a feminist politics is no easy matter. it is not sufficient to proceed additively, as if one could simply add a politics of redistribution to a politics of recognition. proceeding in that manner would be to treat the two dimensions as if they occupied two separate spheres. in fact, however, distribution and recognition are thoroughly imbricated with one another. claims for redistribution and claims for recognition cannot be insulated from each other. on the contrary, they impinge on one another in ways that can give rise to unintended–and unwanted–effects. consider, first, that feminist claims for redistribution impinge on recognition. redistributive policies aimed at mitigating women’s poverty, for example, have status implications which can harm the intended beneficiaries. for example, public assistance 9this standard cannot be applied monologically, however, in the manner of a decision procedure. it must be applied dialogically, rather, through democratic processes of public debate. in such debates, participants argue about whether existing institutionalized patterns of cultural value impede parity of participation and about whether proposed alternatives would foster it. thus, participatory parity serves as an idiom of public contestation and deliberation about questions of justice. more strongly, it represents the principal idiom of public reason, the preferred language for conducting democratic political argumentation on issues of both distribution and recognition. this issue is discussed in fraser, "social justice in the age of identity politics,” op. cit. studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 33 programs aimed specifically at “female-headed families” often insinuate the lesser value of “childrearing” vis-à-vis “wage-earning” and of “welfare mothers” vis-à-vis “tax payers.”10 at their worst, they mark single mothers as sexually irresponsible scroungers, thereby adding the insult of misrecognition to the injury of deprivation. in general, redistributive policies affect women’s status and identities, as well as their economic position. these effects must be thematized and scrutinized, lest one end up fuelling sexist misrecognition in the course of trying to remedy sexist maldistribution. redistributive policies have sexist misrecognition effects when a culturally pervasive androcentric devaluation of caregiving inflects support for single-mother families as “getting something for nothing.”11 in this context, feminist struggles for redistribution cannot succeed unless they are joined with struggles for cultural change aimed at revaluing caregiving and the feminine associations that code it. in short, no redistribution without recognition. the converse is equally true, however, as feminist claims for recognition impinge on distribution. proposals to redress androcentric evaluative patterns have economic implications, which can work to the detriment of some women. for example, top-down campaigns to suppress female genital mutilation may have negative effects on the economic position of the affected women, rendering them "unmarriageable" while failing to ensure alternative means of support. likewise, campaigns to suppress prostitution and pornography may have negative effects on the economic position of sex workers. finally, no-fault divorce reforms in the united states have hurt some divorced women economically, even while enhancing women’s legal status.12 in such cases, reforms aimed at remedying sexist misrecognition have ended up fueling sexist maldistribution. recognition claims, moreover, are liable to the charge of being “merely symbolic.” when pursued in contexts marked by gross disparities in economic position, reforms aimed at affirming distinctiveness tend to devolve into empty gestures; like the sort of recognition that would put women on a pedestal, they mock, rather than redress, serious harms. in such contexts, recognition reforms cannot succeed unless they are joined with struggles for redistribution. in short, no recognition without redistribution. the moral here, is the need for bifocal vision in feminist politics. this means looking simultaneously through the two analytically distinct lenses of distribution and recognition. failure to keep either one of those lenses in view can end up distorting what one sees through the other. only a perspective that superimposes the two can avoid exacerbating one dimension of sexism in the course of trying to remedy another. the need, in all cases, is to think integratively, as in campaigns for "comparable worth." here a claim to redistribute income between men and women was expressly integrated with a claim to change gender-coded patterns of cultural value. the underlying 10see nancy fraser, "clintonism, welfare, and the antisocial wage: the emergence of a neoliberal political imaginary," rethinking marxism vol. 6, no. 1 (1993) pp. 9-23. 11this was the case with aid to families with dependent children (afdc), the major means-tested welfare program in the united states. claimed overwhelmingly by solo-mother families living below the poverty line, afdc became a lightening rod for racist and sexist anti-welfare sentiments in the 1990s. in 1997, it was “reformed” in such a way as to eliminate the federal entitlement that had guaranteed (some, inadequate) income support to the poor. 12lenore weitzman, the divorce revolution: the unexpected social consequences for women and children in america (new york: the free press, 1985). the extent of the income losses claimed by weitzman has been disputed. but there is little doubt that some losses have resulted. studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 34 premise was that gender injustices of distribution and recognition are so complexly intertwined that neither can be redressed entirely independently of the other. thus, efforts to reduce the gender wage gap cannot fully succeed if, remaining wholly “economic,” they fail to challenge the gender meanings that code low-paying service occupations as “women’s work,” largely devoid of intelligence and skill. likewise, efforts to revalue female-coded traits such as interpersonal sensitivity and nurturance cannot succeed if, remaining wholly “cultural,” they fail to challenge the structural economic conditions that connect those traits with dependency and powerlessness. only an approach that redresses the cultural devaluation of the “feminine” precisely within the economy (and elsewhere) can deliver serious redistribution and genuine recognition. conclusion elsewhere i have discussed other strategies for integrating a politics of redistribution with a politics of recognition.13 here i shall conclude by recapping my overall argument. i have argued that gender justice today requires both redistribution and recognition, as neither, alone, is sufficient. thus, i have rebutted arguments that cast the concerns of socialist-feminism as incompatible with those of newer paradigms centred on discourse and culture. putting aside the usual sectarian blinders, i have proposed conceptions of gender, justice, and recognition that are broad enough to encompass the concerns of both camps. these conceptions are two-dimensional. spanning both distribution and recognition, they are able to comprehend both the class-like aspects and status aspects of women’s subordination. the concepts proposed here are also informed by a broader diagnosis of the present juncture. on the one hand, i have assumed that gender intersects other axes of subordination in ways that complicate the feminist project. and i have suggested ways of resolving some of the resulting dilemmas–especially for cases in which claims to redress cultural and religious misrecognition seem to threaten to exacerbate sexism. on the other hand, i have situated my approach to feminist politics in relation to the larger shift in the grammar of claims-making “from redistribution to recognition.” where that shift threatens to abet neoliberalism by repressing the problematic of distributive justice, i have proposed a two-dimensional political orientation. this approach keeps alive the insights of marxism, while also learning from the cultural turn. in general, then, the approach proposed here provides some conceptual resources for answering what i take to be the key political question of our day: how can feminists develop a coherent programmatic perspective that integrates redistribution and recognition? how can we develop a framework that integrates what remains cogent and unsurpassable in the socialist vision with what is defensible and compelling in the apparently “postsocialist” vision of multiculturalism? if we fail to ask this question, if we cling instead to false antitheses and misleading either/or dichotomies, we will miss the chance to envision social arrangements that can redress both the class-like and status aspects of women’s subordination. only by looking to integrative approaches that unite redistribution and recognition can we meet the requirements of justice for all. 13 see especially fraser, "social justice in the age of identity politics,” op. cit. studies in social justice, volume 1, number 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 35 references fraser, n. (1993) clintonism, welfare, and the antisocial wage: the emergence of a neoliberal political imaginary," rethinking marxism 6(1), 9-23. fraser, n. (1997). from redistribution to recognition? dilemmas of justice in a 'postsocialist' age. in fraser, n, justice interruptus: critical reflections on the "postsocialist" condition. new york: routledge. (reprinted from new left review 212, 1995, 68 – 93) fraser, n. (2000). rethinking recognition: overcoming displacement and reification in cultural politics. new left review 3 (may/june 2000), 107-120. fraser, n. (2003). social justice in the age of identity politics: redistribution, recognition, and participation. in n. fraser and a. honneth, redistribution or recognition? a politicalphilosophical exchange. london: verso and frankfurt: suhrkamp. weitzman, l. (1985). the divorce revolution: the unexpected social consequences for women and children in america. new york: the free press. microsoft word social justice perspectives galleys.docx journal of international social studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2012, 100-105 corresponding author email: galter9@comcast.net ©2012/2013 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org page 100 social justice perspectives from the social justice perspectives editor this issue of jiss initiates a new column on social justice. the column addresses concepts, principles, and perspectives of social justice as they relate to the purposes of social studies. the contexts may be global or national, and may focus on particular social groups, and/or discuss substantive issues and current events. the column explores reasons why social justice is vital to social education, and draws implications for educators as they take on the mission of social justice education in the world. it will include theory and research with implications for practice. this initial essay introduces the topic of social justice and suggests some ideas for the integration of social justice into the social studies curriculum. prospective authors should contact gloria alter (galter9@comcast.net), depaul university-lincoln park. challenging ourselves to take social justice education seriously social justice education can be the vehicle to transform the existing curriculum into a dynamic, meaningful, and substantive study, and global citizens who willingly take on the work of justice in the world show us how to translate that learning into our lives. stories of the extraordinary lives of ordinary citizens, their greatness and humility, can inspire us to live for a higher purpose. during the civil rights movement in the u.s. for example, many otherwise ordinary citizens became heroes—the freedom riders, the little rock nine, the greensboro eight, and others. this non-violent movement, inspired by the principles of mahatma gandhi, forever changed the lives of americans. its heroes give citizenship new meaning, and their sacrifices call us to a greater involvement in struggles for national and global human and civil rights. the history of social movements and the views and experiences of the diverse population of the u.s. are either excluded or not fully developed in u.s. social studies textbooks and typically, the social studies curriculum (alter, in press; journal of international social studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2012, 100-105 corresponding author email: galter9@comcast.net ©2012/2013 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org page 101 southern poverty law center/teaching tolerance, 2011; zimmerman, 2011). thus, teachers and leaders in social education concerned with social justice should integrate the study of social movements, critical historical events, and diverse perspectives, and encourage students to become engaged in the ongoing struggles for equality in the u.s. and around the world. the work of howard zinn provides a people’s history that addresses social movements and calls attention to what is left out of traditional american history (zinn, 1995) (see also http://zinnedproject.org/). a people’s history reveals that stories of traditional heroes often reflect nationalistic and militaristic perspectives and a limited and often distorted (stereotyped) sense of diverse social groups and their role in history. zinn’s work challenges educators to fill in the blanks, to find what is missing in our histories and why, and to teach the much more complicated stories of our past. historical narratives of primarily stock stories (traditional history supporting the white racial status quo) can be expanded to include concealed stories (alternative stories about racism known by marginalized groups and white antiracists), resistance stories (acknowledgement of and explanations for continued resistance to the ongoing racist policies and practices of dominant groups/institutions/nations), and transformative stories (those which oppose stock stories and combine concealed and resistance stories into new narratives for social justice education) (bell, 2010). this content raises questions about historical facts, multiple perspectives, underlying motivations/causes and effects of events, and the hierarchies we have been socialized to accept. while these narrative types have been used by bell to address racism, they are applicable to other –isms as well. in addition to expanding the curriculum by developing a more accurate and complex history, key concepts and principles of social justice (e.g., socialization/social control, critical thinking, privilege, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, -isms, denial/resistance to social justice education, etc.) can be taught using current events, media/popular culture, and the students’ life contexts and concerns. sensoy and diangelo (2012), bringing u.s. and canadian perspectives to their work, explicate these foundational concepts of social justice with engaging real world examples. they enable the reader to critique and question their own socialized knowledge, as they challenge the thinking of privileged groups. adams, bell, and griffin (2007) provide a strong theoretical foundation for social justice as well, and along with adams, blumenfeld, castaneda, and others (2010), they discuss various forms of oppression (e.g., racism, sexism, journal of international social studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2012, 100-105 corresponding author email: galter9@comcast.net ©2012/2013 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org page 102 heterosexism, classism, religious bigotry, ageism, ableism, etc.). adams, bell, and griffin (2007, p. 1) state, “the goal of social justice is full and equal participation of all groups in a society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs. social justice includes a vision of society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure.” bickmore (2008) identifies “dimensions of democratic social interaction . . . [that] facilitate (or impede) social justice.” they include a) communication and deliberation-related processes such as, advocacy, dissent, and consensusbuilding, b) institutional governance frameworks that provide “civil, legal, and political protections” and mechanisms to ensure “appropriate and consistent treatment of persons and problems,” and c) “substantive equity,” such as fairness, non-discrimination, and so on. in addition, the author shares insights regarding the integration of social studies and social justice. to address the global stage we also need to look at relationships between nations and another set of concepts about the use and abuse of power that impacts those relationships. (e.g., nationalism/super-patriotism, political mythology in comparison with the actual values of the political system and democratic practices, the nature of political institutions and the legitimacy of its leaders, commitments to international human rights including economic rights, war/war crimes, foreign policy and practice/values for decision-making, imperialism, colonialism, cultural dominance, fair and moral treatment of other nations/peoples, transnational effects of government and business collusion, distribution of wealth, etc.). numerous global issues and conflict zones of the world should be identified. global perspectives inform social action that can be taken in solidarity with marginalized groups worldwide, and they encourage us to reconsider our educational assumptions and commitments. an increasing number of curricula for human rights and global issues are now available online to support goals for global social justice. instruction can include exposing students to “the other,” to controversial issues, and to service-learning for social justice on a local and/or global level. these approaches engage students’ attitudes, values, and commitments, and direct their growth in the understanding of social justice. students develop a more critical consciousness for social change as they increase their self-awareness, awareness of others, awareness of social issues, and ethic of service/ involvement as change agents (cipolle, 2010). journal of international social studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2012, 100-105 corresponding author email: galter9@comcast.net ©2012/2013 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org page 103 tensions between individual and community/group rights, freedom and responsibility, caring for others and ourselves, economic equity and individual achievement, and national and world views are encountered as students become more concerned about others, take responsibility as citizens, and come to see beyond their own experiences. speaking the truth to power and teaching about human rights and social justice issues can be challenging and even life-threatening depending upon where you are located. those who have lost their lives for telling the truth and supporting human rights should be included among our heroes. resistance to teaching social justice is to be expected, but we cannot let that deter us from responding to the needs of humanity in our communities, nations, and the world. consider that: poverty is “unacceptably high” in the united states, affecting 15% of all residents (46 million) and 20% of children under 18 (coalition on human needs, 2012; u. s. census, 2012). half of the world’s population is living in poverty with the greatest population growth concentrated in the poorest countries (c-span, 2011; population reference bureau, 2011). child labor affects 246 million of the world’s children (15%) and one million in the u.s. (of 12 million). over 10 million are involved in “drug-trafficking, sex work, and other hazardous labor.” (p.a.p. – blog, 2012). hundreds of thousands of children are soldiers. the numbers vary with continually changing armed conflicts. (ibid.). every 3.6 seconds someone dies a hunger-related death. over 800 million (1/3 of them are children) “go to bed hungry every day.” six million children under 5 years old die every year from hunger (16/day). (ibid.). in the u.s. 750,000 people are homeless on any particular day. those who are homeless at some time during the year number 1.5 million (325,000 being children). one-fifth are chronically homeless. more of these people are black, male, middle aged, veterans or disabled. (ibid.). others have no country. refugees numbered 33 million in 2006 and 15 million in 2011 with 800,000 of them new refugees, the highest number in the 21st century (ibid.). hate groups have increased to over 1,000 in the u. s. according to the southern poverty law center, and they are increasingly targeting lgbt youth and adults. across the world at least 10 countries support same sex marriage and in about the same number of countries, it is illegal to be gay and, it is punishable by death. casualties and deaths from war, violence against women, unemployment, illnesses, loss of property and lives from natural disasters, and many other concerns can be added to the list of human needs. journal of international social studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2012, 100-105 corresponding author email: galter9@comcast.net ©2012/2013 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org page 104 when we respond with compassion and civic action, we see that social justice is the soul of social studies. references adams, m., bell l. a., & griffin, p. (2007). teaching for diversity and social justice, 2nd ed. new york: routledge. adams, m., blumenfeld, w. j., castaneda, c., et al. (2010). readings for diversity and social justice, 2nd ed. new york: routledge. alter, g. (in press). portraying ourselves and others in united states elementary social studies textbooks, k-6, implications for caring, understanding, and action. in j. h. williams (ed.). (re)building memory: school textbooks, identity, and the pedagogies and politics of imagining community, vol. 2. rotterdam, the netherlands: sense publishers. bell, l. a. (2010). storytelling for social justice, connecting narrative and the arts in antiracist teaching. new york: routledge. bickmore, k. (2008). social justice and the social studies. in l. s. levstik, & c. a. tyson, (eds.). handbook of research in social studies education (pp. 155171). new york: routledge. coalition on human needs (2012). as poverty remains unacceptably high, coalition on human needs calls on congress to preserve programs proven to lift families out of poverty. washington, dc: author. cipolle, s. b. (2010). service-learning and social justice, engaging students in social change. landam, md: rowman & littlefield. c-span (2011, october). washington journal: poverty in america. washington, dc: author. p.a.p. – blog. (2012). human rights statistics. retrieved october 1, 2012 from http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/stats-on-human-rights. population reference bureau (2011). 2011 world population data sheet. retrieved october 8, 2011 from http://www.prb.org/publications/datasheets/2011/world-population-datasheet/data-sheet.aspx. journal of international social studies, vol. 2, no. 2, 2012, 100-105 corresponding author email: galter9@comcast.net ©2012/2013 international assembly journal of international social studies website: http://www.iajiss.org page 105 sensoy, o., & diangelo, r. (2012). is everyone really equal? an introduction to key concepts in social justice education. new york: teachers college press. southern poverty law center/teaching tolerance (2011). teaching the movement, the state of civil rights education in the united states 2011. montgomery, al: author. u.s. census (2012). income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the united states: 2011. washington, dc: author. zimmerman, j. (2011). brown-ing the american textbook, history, psychology, and the origins of modern multiculturalism. in e. f. provenzo, jr., a. n. shaver, & m. bello (eds). the textbook as discourse (pp. 216-239). new york: routledge. (first published in the history of education quarterly, vol. 44, no. 1, spring 2004, pp. 46-69.) zinn, h. (1995). a people’s history of the united states, rev. ed. new york: harper perennial. about the social justice editor dr gloria alter is visiting associate professor at depaul university chicago. her research interests include elementary social studies curriculum design and reform, textbook analysis, social studies and social justice, and social studies in local and global perspective. she teaches courses in elementary social studies methods. dr. alter was the editor of social studies and the young learner, president of the international assembly of the national council for the social studies, and president of the illinois council for the social studies. journal of urban mathematics education december 2016, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 122–152 ©jume. http://education.gsu.edu/jume mary candace raygoza is a ph.d. candidate in urban schooling and collegium of university teaching fellow at the university of california, los angeles, 1320 moore hall, los angeles, ca 90095, usa; email: mary.candace.raygoza@ucla.edu. her research interests include mathematics learning, teaching, and teacher education; equity and social justice in mathematics education; critical and culturally relevant/sustaining mathematics pedagogy; and transformative school change. striving toward transformational resistance: youth participatory action research in the mathematics classroom mary candace raygoza university of california, los angeles in this article, the author contributes to the growing body of scholarship on critical mathematics pedagogy. in particular, the author advances this scholarship by outlining how critical pedagogy in the mathematics classroom can support students to engage in transformational resistance. using a critical practitioner research approach, the author retells (some of) her experiences as a high school mathematics teacher of ninth-grade latin@ students in an algebra i classroom. beginning the course with activities to build a beloved community and connecting mathematics with social justice issues, the author strived to facilitate a learning space that supported transformational resistance. through a culminating youth participatory action research project, students developed a critique of societal oppression, a motivation for social justice, and critical mathematical literacy. keywords: critical pedagogy, teaching mathematics for social justice, transformational resistance, youth participatory action research he sun beamed through our east los angeles classroom windows as my 23 algebra i students excitedly entered data from a school-wide student survey on school food (in)justice issues which they had designed and conducted the weeks prior. students were still learning how to use data software on the classroom laptops, when one student noticed that a column for data entry was missing. i showed her how to insert a new column. she titled it, paused, and then said, “this column is a variable, right? yeah, yeah, that’s a variable.” her tone was as if something spinning around in her mind for a while, or perhaps since she first took algebra i the year prior as an eighth grader (and “failed”), just settled into place. this moment encouraged me to conclude class that day with a discussion of the meaning of a variable, something that the students, instead of only saying “a letter that represents a number,” now attached real-world significance to as they were defining, measuring, representing, and making claims about variables related to a social justice issue in their lives. as a teacher, i sought to develop a critical pedagogy to support students to understand and transform the world (freire, 1970/2007). witnessing students’ t http://education.gsu.edu/jume mailto:mary.candace.raygoza@ucla.edu raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 123 excitement as they came to understand the meaning of a foundational component of mathematical knowledge in the context of conducting their own research and activism related to school food (in)justice, affirmed for me the promise of teaching mathematics for social justice (see, e.g., gutstein, 2003) and integrating mathematical investigation in youth participatory action research (terry, 2011; yang, 2009). my aim with this article is to contribute to the growing body of scholarship on critical mathematics pedagogy (see, e.g., bacon, 2012; bartell, 2013; brantlinger, 2013; gonzález, 2009; gregson, 2013; gutstein, 2003, 2006; gutstein & peterson, 2013; terry, 2011; wager & stinson, 2012; yang, 2009). in particular, i advance this body of work by outlining how critical pedagogy in the mathematics classroom can support students to engage in transformational resistance (cf., solórzano & delgado bernal, 2001). using a critical practitioner research approach, i retell (some of) my experiences as a high school mathematics teacher of ninth-grade latin@ students’ in our algebra i classroom in east los angeles. beginning the course with activities to build a beloved community (king, 2010) and facilitating lessons throughout the course that connected mathematics with social justice issues (gutstein & peterson, 2013), i strived to foster the classroom as a space where developing transformational resistance was possible. through a culminating course youth participatory action research (ypar) project, students conducted a quantitative study on school food (in)justice. students developed a critique of societal oppression, a motivation for social justice (solórzano & delgado bernal, 2001), and critical mathematical literacy (gutstein, 2006). i argue that ypar involving quantitative investigation can support students to develop positive mathematical and researcher identities and contribute to change for social justice. conceptual framework teaching mathematics for social justice striving to teach mathematics for social justice involves engaging students in critical quantitative thinking around issues of social (in)justice that are relevant to their lives and daily experiences (see, e.g., frankenstein, 1983; gutstein, 2006; skovsmose, 1994). freire (1970/2007) argues, “the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed” is “to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well” (p. 44). students of color and economically marginalized students bring valuable life expertise from their own experiences and backgrounds into the classroom, and can develop critical literacies to examine the unjust world around them so that they may both understand it and change it. freire posits that a problem-posing pedagogy in which students pose problems and develop solutions as they co-create knowledge is necessary for the liberation of all peoples. both teachers and students engage in cy raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 124 cles of praxis, or the continuous process of “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (freire, 1970/2007, p. 51). powell (2012) outlines the historical development of critical perspectives on mathematics education. teaching mathematics for social justice, also referred to as critical mathematics or criticalmathematics education in different regions and time periods—and also deeply intertwined with ethnomathematics—has origins from long ago, as national and global struggles for social justice and struggles for mathematics education have always been intertwined. conferences convened by organizations such as the african mathematical union and talks such as d’ambrosio’s 1986 plenary address introducing ethnomathematics were turning points in the mathematics education field. a number of conferences beginning in the late 1980s called for a sociopolitical look at mathematics and the teaching of mathematics, including the mathematics and society special programme of the international congress on mathematical education in 1998, the political dimensions of mathematics education: action and critique conference in 1990, and the critical mathematics education: toward a plan for cultural power and social change conference in 1990, which gave rise to the criticalmathematics educators group (cmeg). in a 1990 cmeg newsletter, frankenstein, volmink, and powell offer a definition of a criticalmathematics educator, offering insight into how those who strive to be a criticalmathematics educator may think about commitments as a mathematician, as a teacher, and as a concerned active citizen. criticalmathematics educators, as re-printed by powell (2012)— view the discipline as one way of understanding and learning about the world … as knowledge constructed by humans … as one vehicle to eradicate the alienating, eurocentric model of knowledge … listen well (as opposed to telling) and recognize and respect the intellectual activity of students … and have a relatively coherent set of commitments and assumptions from which they teach, including an awareness of the effects of, and interconnections among racism, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, monopoly capitalism, imperialism, and other alienating totalitarian institutional structures and attitudes. (pp. 26–27) drawing on frankenstein’s (1983) argument about the importance of mathematical literacy for gaining power in society over economic, political, and social structures and tate’s (1995) argument for culturally relevant pedagogy in mathematics, which includes the study of issues relevant to students’ lives, as well as other mathematics education scholars committed to education and change, gutstein (2006) argues that social justice mathematics prepares students “to investigate and critique injustice, and to challenge in words and actions, oppressive structures and acts” (p. 4). merging mathematics and social issues is not primarily for the purpose of understanding mathematical concepts but for using mathematics to create a more just world (frankenstein, 2010). raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 125 stinson and wager (2012) define teaching mathematics for social justice as “the underlying belief that mathematics can and should be taught in a way that supports students in using mathematics to challenge injustices of the status quo as they learn to read and rewrite their world” (p. 6). they also define teaching with social justice as implementing equitable pedagogical practices, and teaching mathematics about social justice as teaching lessons with critical (and often controversial) social issue contexts. examples of social issue contexts that connect with mathematics detailed in rethinking mathematics: teaching social justice by the numbers (gutstein & peterson, 2013) include: racial profiling, how the unemployment rate is determined, global poverty, school evaluation, and media and body image. scholars argue that students may benefit from teaching mathematics about, with, and for social justice in the following ways:  developing a positive mathematics identity – students overcome fears in mathematics by building a positive mathematical disposition rooted in their culture and community (gutiérrez, 2012). gutiérrez contends: black and latino/a adolescents, like all young people, reap the benefits of programs that attend to their academic
 and their social/emotional needs. learners show more confidence and are better able to find an answer—and they can reflect on how reasonable that answer may be when they have opportunities to…use mathematics to analyze social injustices. (p. 35)  reading and writing the world with mathematics – students consume and produce texts from a critical standpoint, making sense of data and the social context behind numbers, and developing social agency (gutstein, 2006; yang, 2009). gutstein describes students’ critical questioning as he quotes one student, marisol, reflecting on a racial profiling unit: “i think i am better able to understand the world now using math…as soon as i finished the reading i already knew there was a problem there” (p. 67). yang describes how students produced their own version of a school accountability report card with measures that the students themselves felt best evaluated their school.  building mathematical power – students understand mathematical concepts, engage in complex mathematical tasks, and communicate ideas in ways that allow students to access spaces in which “dominant mathematics” is used, such as high school and university courses as well as in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics professions (gutiérrez, 2012; gutstein, 2006). raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 126 while critical mathematics education scholars emphasize the possibilities and promise of teaching and investigating connections between mathematics and social change, there are also “limitations of the knowledge we gain from mathematical analyses of our world” (frankenstein, 1994, p. 56). brelias (2015) found that as high school students who were engaged in social justice mathematics lessons reflected back on mathematics as a tool for social inquiry, while they argued for its transformative power, they also argued mathematics can be “reductive and impersonal,” “irrelevant for moral arguments,” “inaccessible to the general public,” and can provide “inadequate explanations for problems” (p. 7). the students demonstrate a “reflective knowing,” as skovsmose (1994) describes, evaluating the use of mathematics. scholars have laid the groundwork in theorizing teaching mathematics for social justice and translating critical theory to practice mathematics in schools, but this body of work must be further informed by more accounts of the affordances and challenges of integrating critical social justice issues in the mathematics classroom (gutstein, 2006). duncan-andrade and morrell (2008) note: very little empirical work has been done that theorizes the possible translation of principles of critical pedagogy into practices, and even less work has been done that evaluates the outcomes of these practices in pushing forward the development of grounded theories of practice. (p. 105) youth participatory action research and transformational resistance as with critical pedagogy, conceptualizations of participatory action research (par) are influenced by critical theory developed in the frankfurt school. mctaggart (1991), drawing on carr and kemmis (1986/2004), asserts that par is “motivated by a quest to improve and understand the world by changing it and learning how to improve it from the effects of the changes made”; it “treats people as autonomous, responsible agents who participate actively in making their own histories and conditions of life” (p. 181). freire (1973) writes, “critical understanding leads to critical action” (p. 44). par can be understood as a cyclical process: those in oppressed conditions are engaged in research to understand a critical issue that they themselves identify as key to their freedom; they develop a plan for social action to challenge the inequity presented in that issue; and finally, they implement a plan for social change that they themselves developed. par methodology recognizes people as experts of their own knowledge and lived experiences. those experiencing oppression, therefore, must be leaders of the research-action to understand and challenge it. educators throughout the nation are bringing par into schools or doing par with youth outside of schools, adding a “y” in front, to explore how this actionresearch can be done specifically with youth (cammarota & fine, 2008). ypar raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 127 engages youth as researchers on societal or school (in)justice and supports youth to take action connected to their findings. ypar is a problem-posing approach to education that challenges inequity by viewing youth as experts of their lived experiences and places power in their hands. cammarota and fine (2008) argue, “ypar teaches young people that conditions of injustice are produced, not natural; are designed to privilege and oppress; but are ultimately challengeable and thus changeable” (p. 2). they define ypar as a process in which “young people resist the normalization of systemic oppression by undertaking their own engaged praxis— critical and collective inquiry, reflection and action focused on ‘reading’ and speaking back to the reality of the world, their world” (p. 2). duncan-andrade and morrell (2008) put forth the argument that students in urban schools are the ones best equipped to be agents of change for equity and justice in urban education: as educators and as advocates for educational justice, we must understand that youth are much-needed collaborators with valuable experiences and energy to add to our movements. we firmly believe that youth participatory action research can ultimately develop the academic capabilities of students and, equally important, that youthinitiated research can help adult researchers and advocates to better confront the seemingly intractable problems of urban education. (p. 106) in this way, ypar challenges the notion of research as an objective endeavor and challenges traditional conceptions of who can become a researcher. additionally, ypar offers opportunities for young people to think about and partake in the ways in which research can be connected to resistance against oppression. ypar fosters students to resist injustice in a transformative way (cammarota & fine, 2008). transformational resistance, as defined by solórzano and delgado bernal (2001), encompasses a motivation for social justice and a critique of societal oppression. solórzano and delgado bernal provide the 1968 east los angeles student walkouts and the 1993 university of california, los angeles student strike for chicana/o studies as examples of transformational resistance, as secondary students and college students alike in each of these historic periods held critiques of oppressive societal conditions and were motivated to make change for greater social justice. cammarota and fine call for further documentation of how young people engage in transformational resistance—in and out of classrooms and related to various social injustices—and how educational processes can foster resistance. supporting students to bring a social justice motivation to their mathematical coursework and to critique societal oppression through mathematics is undertheorized and further examples of such praxis are needed. terry (2011) and yang (2009) each present theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to assert that young people can foster critical mathematical literacy and move that literacy to action as they engage in ypar. terry (2011) argues that ypar in mathematics can support students to engage in mathematical counterstory-telling, as he shares the raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 128 ways in which black male youth identified and contradicted a dominant narrative and framed access to freedom, in the context of an after-school program in south los angeles. constructing mathematical counterstories can support students to selfidentify as doers of mathematics and ultimately involve “more transformative forms of resistance” (p. 43). yang (2009) addresses the quantitative aspect of a multiyear ypar study in which he and collaborators supported 30 high school youth to create their own school accountability report card. instead of accepting measures the state selected for school accountability, the youth decided what should be measured, including attributes like culturally relevant teaching. they conducted survey and interview research to discover if the school was meeting students’ needs and then reported that work to the student body and school leaders. students “critically consumed” and “critically produced” texts, thus engaging in the process of reading and writing the world with mathematics. however, “math education has not realized its full potential in developing youth researchers capable of producing critical texts at the level of public intellectuals” (p. 102). the study presented here further explores the possibility of quantitative action-research projects, examining the implementation of ypar within the context of an algebra i classroom. overall, i sought to provide students with the opportunity to engage in ypar in our mathematics course, after we had laid a foundation for transformational resistance by building community and completing units connected to social (in)justice issues. i wondered: how can teaching students to be critical quantitative scholar-activists be included as a meaningful part of teaching a mathematics course? methods the voices of teachers in national conversation and research are essential for advancing change for educational equity and justice (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; oakes & rogers, 2006). practitioner research is a “promising way to conceptualize the critical role of teachers’ knowledge and actions in student learning, school change, and educational reform” (cochran-smith & lytle, 2009, p. 5). critical, qualitative methodologies (kincheloe & mclaren, 2002; steinberg & cannella, 2012) shaped the design of this practitioner research investigation. in particular, this study is informed by practitioner research that emphasizes “equity, engagement, and agency,” as cochran-smith and lytle (2009) identify as a more recent turn in practitioner research, pointing to books on ypar and critical pedagogy such as duncan-andrade and morrell’s the art of critical pedagogy (2008) and cammarota and fine’s revolutionizing education: youth participatory action research in motion (2008). they argue that such critical practitioner research has potential to question the goals of schooling, raise questions about power and whose voices are raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 129 heard, bring meaning to equity in local contexts, and link teacher and student inquiry as interconnected. research questions the research questions that guided this investigation were: 1. how can a mathematics classroom develop as a beloved community lay a foundation for transformational resistance? 2. how can ypar in a mathematics classroom support students to engage in transformational resistance as they build critical mathematical literacy? these questions serve as the focus of this article because integrating ypar in the teaching of mathematics for social justice within mathematics courses is understudied. teachers’ stories that shed light on possibility and challenges of teaching mathematics for social justice are necessary to advance understandings of how social justice may come to fruition in a multitude of ways in the mathematics classroom (bullock, 2014). i do not assert that the questions i pose can be fully addressed within this practitioner research examination, but i hope that striving to share an indepth, critical practitioner research study can join in dialogue with other accounts of mathematics teaching (such as bacon, 2012; brantlinger, 2013; gutstein, 2003; terry, 2011; yang, 2009) and offer implications for future work. teacher and researcher positionality like all educational research, mathematics education research is political and non-neutral (d’ambrosio et al., 2013; gutstein, 2003). my experiences reflect the political nature of mathematics education research in my choice to be a part of social justice mathematics communities of educators, my belief that educational research can and should contribute to a more socially just world, and my choice to follow in the footsteps of scholars who examine their own positionality as researchers. i entered teaching with an understanding that being a continual learner is an essential aspect of critical pedagogy and teaching mathematics for social justice. i believe it important for teachers—and for myself as a white female teacher and a teacher of stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)—to constantly work to become more aware and knowledgeable about the historical and present day intersections of oppression based on race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, age, special need, legal status, language, and so on. as a mathematics teacher, i strive to understand the ways in which stem education perpetuates yet can intervene to challenge oppression. i also believe it important to raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 130 build with other educators, both new and veteran, to learn from and alongside each other. as a white woman, i came into this research with the same consciousness that i attempted to bring into my classroom teaching: an understanding that white women are the most represented demographic group in the teaching profession. voices from this group, therefore, are often centered and privileged in (and out of) schools. moreover, the teaching profession is looked down on as “women’s work”; a devaluating i often felt as a teacher and experienced the seeds of growing up as a young woman. interrogating my own positionality and pedagogy is a complex, lifelong process that can never be completed. amidon’s (2013) argument on teaching mathematics with agape (a koine greek word, often translated to “unconditional love”), pushes me to think about the following questions, which i adapted from his work: what can i do from a position of power and privilege to interrupt oppression and be a part of supporting students to have the opportunity and expectation of success in mathematics and life? how can i learn from and alongside teachers from similar and different backgrounds who are working to support students to succeed in mathematics (according to traditional and critical ways of thinking about success)? in my teaching of mathematics to latin@ students in an economically marginalized community, i sought to interrupt power, privilege, and oppression (amidon, 2013); develop a “critical care praxis,” challenging a colorblind approach of caring for students (rolón-dow, 2005); and express to students a political and radicalized love (darder, 2002). below i detail the ways in which i attempted to bring these ideas to life in my pedagogy, while acknowledging my continuous need for critical self-reflection. classroom and study context the public school in which i taught was one fought for and created by community teachers and organizations in east los angeles, including the organization innercity struggle (see http://innercitystruggle.org). it was one of the first public high schools built in the larger community in 80 years, after community organizing pushed for new schools due to over-crowding. this activism was by no means new in east los angeles. home of the 1968 east los angeles school walkouts (solórzano & delgado bernal, 2001), the community’s historical and present-day struggles for educational justice laid a significant and meaningful historical and cultural foundation for the new school. i had hoped to teach in a public school at a time when few jobs were available in public schools, so i felt fortunate for the opportunity to teach in this school, fought for by latin@ students, families, and community organizations. i believed that our mathematics classroom community could attempt to learn from and draw on the historical legacy of social justice efforts by and for the community. the algebra i class i chose to study for this investigation consisted of students who took and had previously “failed” (or were failed by) the course the prior http://innercitystruggle.org/ raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 131 year as eighth graders in middle school, and mostly students who were not tracked into algebra in eighth grade at all—the highest track in the feeder middle schools being geometry for eighth graders. because of this “low” placement, the students in this class were positioned as the least knowledgeable/capable students in the school. the textbooks in the feeder middle schools as well as the textbooks at the high school where i taught, like many traditional texts from large textbook publishing companies, marched through mathematics procedures and included a long list of problems for which students were expected to apply procedures, with a couple “critical thinking” word problems at the end of each section. the textbooks did not arrange the mathematics from an integrated mathematics perspective but rather as separated subjects: algebra i, geometry, algebra ii, trigonometry/pre-calculus, and calculus. the books did not include relevant, real-world, current or historicized issues. the content area covered in the algebra i textbook, the same as the content covered on the high-stakes state exams, amounted to: properties of real numbers; solving, graphing, and writing linear equations and linear inequalities; systems of equations and inequalities; exponents and exponential functions; quadratics; polynomials; and rational equations and functions. i believed this class was a good fit to practice ypar because i hoped to provide the space for students to get excited about mathematics, which, for most students, had already become a despised school subject. for most students, this course was the first time they had access to algebra i, which tends to be a gate-keeping course. while i hoped to integrate ypar into multiple class periods in the same school, i recognized as i began to plan the introduction of the unit that i did not feel prepared to facilitate multiple different action-research projects at once, so i chose one class period of algebra i. data collection and analysis data sources included:  my teaching journals, in which i reflected on my pedagogical choices and took note of student leadership, participation, presentations, and specific contributions students made in the class (i put student statements i remembered verbatim in quotation marks);  preand post-questionnaire (see figure 1) with students on their beliefs about what it means to do research;  math autobiographies students wrote at the beginning of the course as well as an end-of-course reflection on mathematics; and  student artifacts, including a final paper the class collectively wrote on their ypar study and a video based on their quantitative data analysis and a collection of photos of the school food. raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 132 to analyze the data, i developed (and triangulated) a coding schema across the data sources. i took note of reoccurring themes as i taught throughout the school year, using the constant comparative method for data analysis (bogdan & biklen, 1982). in this article, i discuss my pedagogical decisions and reflections on those decisions, incorporating some of the ways in which students engaged in the course and in the culminating ypar project. figure 1. preand post-questionnaire about research. developing foundations for transformational resistance beginning the algebra i course joining other mathematics educators across the nation, i attempted to create a social justice mathematics class to provide the space for students to feel empowered to read and write the world with mathematics (freire, 1970/2007; gutstein, 2006). from the first day of school, i sought to lay the foundations to critique societal oppression and explore possibilities for social justice within my classroom. the social issue-related units and ultimately the ypar project i facilitated in the classroom did not occur in a vacuum, but rather surfaced out of practices i had used and activities students had engaged in at the beginning of the school year. just prior to asking students to share more detailed information about themselves to me in a student information sheet (see appendix a), i briefly introduced myself and my history, opening up to students as a person. first, i told them about my name, mary candace. mary is my grandmother’s name and candace was her name: date: period:______________ research questionnaire – explain all your answers 1. what is research? give your own definition! 2. give an example of research. 3. what are the different steps of research? (make a guess if you’re not sure! come up with at least four steps.) 4. who does research in our society? 5. what skills do you think a researcher needs? do you have any of those skills? 6. do you think research is important for society? why or why not? raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 133 sister’s, or my great aunt’s name. i go by “ms. candace” with students because of the kind of person my great aunt was. she suffered a heart condition and passed at a young age. throughout her life, she devoted herself to the happiness of others and to supporting people with what they needed. for example, she always remembered everyone’s birthdays and made elaborate cakes. after being diagnosed with her heart condition, she started a chapter of an organization in buffalo, new york called mended hearts (see http://mendedhearts.org), which brought together patients who had previously undergone heart surgery and patients who were about to go through it. the goal was to have conversations that may ease fear before experiencing the surgery. i told students that i hoped to bring my great aunt’s spirit with me to guide me in my teaching, and that i will always remember and celebrate each of their birthdays in honor of her. i told students a story of taking algebra i at a title i middle school in eighth grade and getting as, but when my parents transferred me to a high school out of our neighborhood, i got an 11% on the “how much of algebra do you remember?” test on the first day of school. i remained in geometry and did well, ultimately making it to calculus, but doubted myself and had always felt inferior to the other students at school because of that initial test. i told another story of intending to major in statistics in college but barely passing the first upper-division course because i was intimidated by what i perceived as the cut-throat, competitive nature of the class. i also felt i was at a disadvantage because i was one of only a few women enrolled in the course. i shared with the students that my experiences do not mean that i understand their experiences—acknowledging that the students have a wide variety of experiences with mathematics. i also recognized that although i, as a white person from a middle class background, have benefited from many privileges, i could, to certain extents, relate to feeling disempowered in mathematics as well as empowered. i asserted that to push back on disempowerment in mathematics, we must co-create a space in which we collaborate to build a beloved community. in “letter from a birmingham jail,” dr. martin luther king, jr. (1963) wrote: “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly” (p. 2). i first learned of dr. king’s concept of the beloved community as applied to the classroom when i was an undergraduate at the university of california, berkeley and took a course entitled “june jordan’s poetry for the people” in which we read and wrote poetry on systemic oppression, resistance, humanization, and liberation. i understood building a beloved community in the classroom to mean developing a space in which both the students and the teacher see the humanity in one another as they work toward a more socially just world. i told my students that each of them is each other’s greatest asset for learning, for making it to graduation and beyond, and for changing the world—that they are connected to and dependent on each other. http://mendedhearts.org/ raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 134 during the first week of class, i facilitated class dialogues in which students declared their rights in the mathematics classroom, the demands they have of themselves and each other, and the demands they have of me as their teacher (see appendix b). i told students that i am a teacher because i believe they will be the ones to change the world. i also told students that i would try to make the class center around their own self-improvement and building confidence in mathematics as we use mathematics to understand and change the world. i then provided the syllabus to the class—the title of the course matched what i told students it would be about: “viewing and changing the world through mathematics.” underneath the title, i placed a picture of a mural in the housing projects of east los angeles,1 as gutstein (2006) writes about teaching about after he read an article of marilyn frankenstein’s (1997) that included a photo of the mural. some of the students in our classroom lived in this housing project, so i felt it was especially relevant. alongside che guevara is the message: “we are not a minority!!” i then facilitated a scaffolded class discussion, where students shared how they, as people of color, are not minorities—according to the mathematical definition and because they are not “less than” other people. i also began with a math autobiography writing assignment (cf., peterson, 2013), asking students to write me a letter telling me their stories (see appendix c). i structured the assignment with many questions about their past experiences with school in general and mathematics specifically, and why they feel mathematics is important to learn. the most common response to the latter question: “we need math to count change at the grocery store.” their responses motivated me to want to expose the students to how powerful a tool mathematics can be for understanding racial, social, and economic injustice in education, health, incarceration, and so on, and for constructing arguments to fight for justice through mathematics. i explained that certainly mathematics is important and essential for everyday calculations, but that i firmly believe students have the power to use mathematics in ways that connect more deeply to their lives. my role was to provide them the support and context for this learning. one of the first activities i implemented with students was an “icebreaker” similar to one from my teacher education program. students wrote down on an index card three “variables” about themselves: i = an interest they have, c = a characteristic or personality trait about themselves, and e = a unique event or story from their past. the whole class stood up as i began to read aloud a card. students remained standing until i read all three statements, and they guessed, from the group who was left standing, the person to whom the card belonged. students were excited to learn about each other’s “variables.” this activity built community by getting to know each other. 1 see http://www.muralconservancy.org/murals/we-are-not-minority. http://www.muralconservancy.org/murals/we-are-not-minority raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 135 as a pre-service teacher, i dreamed of creating an algebra i course that consisted only of social issue-related and other real-world units. as i entered the classroom, i began to more fully understand the pressures on teachers to teach all of the content standards that bacon (2012) and gregson (2013) detail in case studies of social justice mathematics teaching. for algebra i, this includes a long list of many fundamental concepts necessary to accessing the “rest” of mathematics. these pressures come from a multitude of directions and, in my case, included:  “value-added” measures imposed by the school district that rate teachers based on student test score improvement,  standardized tests such as the high school exit exam, and  administrators that put pressure on teachers for students to perform “or else” (see gutiérrez, 2013 for many other examples). i realized that, while i would not compromise my plan to teach social-issue related units, i would have to create them in a way that was strategic, so that the activities i designed addressed a variety of content standards in a rigorous enough way to address these demands. i believed that covering content standards and teaching social justice mathematics did not have to be mutually exclusive; however, i had not yet conceived how i could tie much of the mathematical content to real-world contexts. across all mathematics lessons, i sought to draw on culturally relevant approaches, which i knew would require me to change the culture of my classroom to be different than how mathematics classes looked like for me as a student. a daily pattern of whole class instruction where students follow along passively, copying problems the teacher solves, and then working on a set of similar problems alone following the lecture does not call on students to communicate almost at all orally or build on each other’s ideas (tate, 1995). in my classroom, i worked toward supporting students to discover concepts in mathematics (as opposed to teaching procedures) and having students work in groups collaboratively to validate and build on the knowledge of one another (including seating the students in small circle groups). this classroom set up assisted me in providing the space to meaningfully connect mathematics and social justice issues whenever possible. teaching mathematics about, with, and for social justice one of the first tasks in algebra i is to review computation and the order of operations. students are expected to have mastered fractions prior to taking the course, and this often can be students’ least favorite element of a mathematics problem. i thought about how i could re-introduce fractions and start off my class with real-world connections that would show students how important fractions can be. i raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 136 designed a lesson using the video if the world were 100 people2 (see appendix d), which students and i viewed together. in the video, statistics report that if the world was shrunk down to 100 people, for example, 12 people would have a computer and 21 would live on less than $1.25 per day. before watching the video, i asked the students to guess what they thought the numbers would be for all of the statistics, and, while watching the video, they then recorded the data. some students were shocked at the differences between their guesses and the actually reported statistical data. following this activity, i asked students to write the data as fractions out of 100 (e.g., 12/100), then reduce the fraction, if possible, write it as a decimal, and write it as a percent. we discussed the importance of being able to do so when making arguments in different contexts; that it can be powerful to express parts of a whole in different ways.3 for homework that night, i gave students a chart entitled “if east l.a. were 100 people,” with data i had taken from the census (we acknowledged and problematized that it often does not include people who are undocumented), and their task was to find the fraction, decimal, and percent equivalents and then write concluding observation sentences about what they noticed. my goal was for students to gain confidence in mathematics as they read the mathematical world around them. some students, accustomed to more traditional courses and skeptical of change, wondered out loud, “why are we talking about community in math class?” early in the algebra i course, it is typical to study inequalities, and i seized the opportunity to plan a unit that connected the way we discuss inequalities in mathematics with inequalities (or inequities) in society (see appendix e). to get a stronger sense of what issues students were feeling particularly interested in, i presented them with several graphs relating to topics such as race and incarceration, incomes of people with and without disabilities, child poverty before and after economic recessions, and health vs. wealth. in teams, students chose a graph to study as the starting point in their inequality project. they answered several questions about the graph (e.g., questions designed to invite a range of participation from all group members, such as what stands out to them the most) and wrote out mathematical statements of inequality, using less than, greater than, less than or equal to, and greater than or equal to—using variables and numbers—in ways that were meaningful to them. following this activity, students did additional background research on that inequality, created a poster, and presented findings to the class, in 2 see http://www.miniature-earth.com; the video is based on the book if the world were a village: a book about the world’s people (smith, 2011). 3 this was a brief moment in the lesson that i could have elaborated on more, by, for example, calling on students to identify instances of how parts of a whole have been communicated in the media and speculating together why they were communicated in such a manner. http://www.miniature-earth.com/ raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 137 cluding questions that arose as they explored the topic. one of the students, roberto, who was having challenges in most classes because of issues outside of school, spoke during this presentation. at the moment that he began to break down the importance of looking at percent difference as opposed to numerical difference in the context of racial underrepresentation and racial overrepresentation in prisons, the principal walked in to our classroom. she asked him a question, then another, and another. this ninth grader, whom she had only seen in her office for misbehavior, confidently addressed all her questions related to this inequality and why it was an important one to understand. following his presentation, he expressed that he felt validated as an intellectual; that he had something to say about social issues and mathematics. my last example of a social justice mathematics lesson is on the topic of slope. often, textbooks and traditional curricular materials introduce slope as being equal to (y2 – y1) / (x2 – x1). this formula can be challenging for students to understand, especially if not introduced to the conceptual meaning of slope. i do not argue that students should never be introduced to such a formula. but rather, when they are, it should come after interacting with slope in more meaningful and conceptual ways so that students can understand that slope captures how much one variable changes with respect to another. without mentioning the word “slope” in class, i presented two graphs to students of data with almost linear relationships, the first being a graph of asthma rates over time in a california city and the other family income vs. student sat math scores. we discussed the first graph together as a class and the students studied the second graph together in groups. i asked students to share everything they noticed about the graphs. then, i asked students to focus on the x-variable (horizontal axis) and then on the y-variable (vertical axis), for each identifying how much that variable changes from one point to another point. next, i asked students to write this ratio out as a sentence (e.g., for every $20,000 more a family makes, the average student’s sat math score is higher by 14 points). after students identified this relationship, i said that we call this relationship “slope.” for many students who had already taken algebra i in eighth grade and “failed” (or were failed) they responded with statements, such as: “oh! why didn’t they just tell us that before?!” or “that’s it!? man i just couldn’t remember those formulas!” after students saw real-world context examples of slope, in subsequent exercises the majority of students excelled at finding and interpreting δy/δx as they discussed the meaning of a graph’s slope. i saw ways in which i believed students were striving to “read the world” with mathematics in my classroom. in addition to sharing their (our) learning on social issues, how could i support them to further “write the world” with mathematics? raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 138 developing transformational resistance and critical mathematical literacy through youth participatory action research thinking of how to introduce the ypar unit, i returned to an article i had introduced to students earlier that year: solórzano and delgado bernal’s 2001 germinal article on transformational resistance. i had used the article earlier to introduce the cartesian coordinate plane (see figure 2). students are often introduced to the coordinate plane as an abstraction, and plotting points becomes a mechanical procedure without meaning (e.g., 5 over and 2 down). i had remembered that solórzano and delgado bernal’s article contained a quadrant showing four types of resistance, each quadrant representing the presence or absence of a variable, x – motivation by social justice, and y – critique of societal oppression. i put blue painters’ tape on the floor of the classroom to make a coordinate plane, asking students to move about it representing the presence or absence of two variables (first starting with variables such as their preferences on two different sports rivalries, and then moving to examples of high school student resistance that students could relate to, mapping them out on the coordinate plane according to solórzano and delgado bernal’s conceptualization of resistance). figure 2. defining the concept of resistance. from “examining transformational resistance through a critical race and latcrit theory framework: chicana and chicano students in an urban context,” by d. solórzano and d. delgado bernal, urban education, 36(3), p. 318. copyright © 2001 by corwin press, inc. reprinted by permission of sage publications, inc. to kick off the ypar project, i invited professor solórzano to come to my classroom and speak to the students about transformational resistance (my contact raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 139 with him and his class visit are recounted in solórzano, 2013). professor solórzano shared with the class examples of transformational resistance and specifically spoke about the ethnic studies ban in arizona and upcoming film precious knowledge (mcginnis & palos, 2011). the students were energized following his presentation and excited to engage in action-research themselves. the students chose to study school food injustice, as health injustice related to race and class. they were passionate about this topic following the inequalities project. before we dove into designing the study, we watched the film unnatural causes (adelman, 2008), which weaves together biology, public health, sociology—and even mathematics, with data and graphs throughout—to understand how wealth disparities lead to poorer health. students chose to look at school food because: (a) it affects them every day, and the district had recently changed the food in such a that they were unpleased; and (b) after intense class debates about how to make change and what it means to be a leader, students felt that they had a realistic chance of making some concrete changes on this issue. as we embarked on the study design, students piloted survey questions with peers in other classes before refining a survey protocol, asking their peers to talk through how they understood each question and what should be modified for clarity or added. additionally, during lunchtime in the first couple weeks of the project, students talked with their peers and took pictures of school food to deepen their understandings of the student body’s greatest concerns. they also shared stories in class of their own experiences with school food. while i guided students toward a school-wide survey so that we might analyze large-scale quantitative data, we discussed strengths and weaknesses of quantitative and qualitative research. the informal conversations students led with their peers and the photo element of the investigation gave them a sense of various research methods (e.g. interviews, photo voice) and how the stories behind numbers are necessary to uncover what they want to know. that said, i acknowledge that in the spirit of ypar it is problematic to point youth in particular directions, but i chose to make the exception of guiding them toward quantitative investigation, while still highlighting the limits of doing so, because of my desire to integrate ypar in the mathematics class. the class then designed and implemented a school-wide survey with closedended and open-ended questions on the school food as well as demographic information, which they administered to over 400 of their peers. students analyzed the survey data and created graphs using microsoft excel, which they had not used before, and presented their findings to school food officials. in each phase of the action research, different student facilitators led the class (after i had a planning meeting with them on facilitating for that particular class segment). in summary, the class had five findings: (a) students overwhelmingly gave the school food the lowest rating; (b) the predominant reason students reported eating the school food was because they were hungry and did not have other options; (c) raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 140 students had a desire for all components of the school lunch to be tastier, healthier, and in larger portions; (d) students wanted to exercise more choice in their meal options; (e) and all but eight students surveyed said they received “lunch tickets,” meaning they qualified for free lunch. one of the biggest shifts with respect to mathematics i observed was students’ use of mathematical discourse as they communicated with one another (and me) while entering, analyzing, and displaying their data. for example, students were regularly using the terms such as variables (as described in the anecdote in the introduction of this article), relationship, correlation, x-axis, y-axis, coordinate, data point, pattern, outliers, respondents, bar graphs, pie graphs, frequency, intervals, best-fit line, mode, mean, range. prior to the ypar unit, we covered linear equations beginning with the investigation of slope (as previously discussed). i had hoped that more students would apply the algebraic concepts behind linear equations as they engaged in this research, but few did, due to, i believe, a lack of support on my behalf. i would have liked to have done more, and at the same time i made the choice not to push certain aspects of the mathematics, assessing that students were gaining non-algebraic, statistical skills and ways of thinking and confidence in their participation as students in mathematics class. following analysis and writing a summary research report as a class, the students called for a meeting with the cafeteria manager to share their research findings and ask about the school lunch program. they concluded with recommendations to have daily comment cards available for all students so as to quickly give feedback on the food (and for these comments to make their way to those who prepare the food); to “change our menu into food that helps us be healthy—food that does not have an exaggerated amount of grease, fat, sugar, etc. so we can adapt to the habitat [sic] of being able to eat healthy”; to offer larger portions; to include more fruit and vegetable options; to offer water and fewer sugary drinks; to distribute a monthly menu; and to eliminate the lunch tickets given that almost the entire student body qualified for them. as other practitioner researchers striving to teach mathematics for social justice have observed, i believed that students were demonstrating more positive mathematical identities as they began to engage in the process of reading and writing the world with mathematics, solving rigorous problems, and building mathematical literacy. in their math autobiographies at the end of the year, students’ views on the importance of mathematics and why we must learn it shifted from being important in specific situations and because it will be useful in the future to an understanding of mathematics being an important tool for viewing and changing the world around them. most students wrote that they began to feel this way about mathematics as they came to believe they have the capacity to study and change their school, using mathematics. raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 141 returning to the story at the beginning of this article, students often made meaning with mathematics that they previously had not experienced. as students were creating representations of their data, another student, recognizing how data representations could help tell a powerful story, said: “once they see our data, they will have to listen.” this statement demonstrates her perception of the power of critical mathematical literacy. reflecting on her statement and similar statements by other students, i am glad that the students held firm beliefs in the power of their work to tell a story and demand attention and action. but i wish i had done more to create space to address the complexity of speaking their truth to systems of power, the struggle of working toward social justice for the long haul, and community organizing tactics for making change. exploring such topics in the mathematics classroom, highlighting the role of mathematics, statistics, and numeracy in organizing for change, would have been powerful. students did begin to uncover the challenges behind making change toward greater social justice after meeting with the school’s cafeteria manager and learning that decisions about school food were not local school decisions but rather large district-wide ones, and after meeting with the healthy school food coalition4 and learning of persistent efforts by that organization over time, in solidarity with students, to win actionable issues. students also demonstrated a significant shift in their interpretation of the meaning of research. before they engaged in ypar, most students defined research as looking up a topic of choice online and did not view research as a process they could conduct by posing original questions and collecting data on a topic about which they were passionate. (figure 3 provides students’ statements after the ypar project.) prior to the ypar project, i hoped to lay a foundation in the classroom where our work would be motivated by social justice issues and to critique societal oppression. i do not believe working toward these goals in the ypar project would have been possible had we not taken time to build community and participate in social justice lessons throughout the course. i observed that a motivation for social justice and a critique of societal oppression were built over time, especially when fostered within a subject like mathematics where the connections are not often made. relating to the other forms of resistance solórzano and delgado bernal (2001) discuss, too often students in mathematics class express “reactionary behavior,” acting out against teachers and classmates without a critique of social, historical, or political factors influencing their behavior; or they engage in “self-defeating resistance,” understandably questioning the relevance of mathematics to their lives; or in “conformist resistance,” doing their work knowing that it will help them access college but not challenging the abstract, procedural, or context-void teachings of mathematics. critical pedagogy in mathematics can support more students to re 4 see http://www.oxy.edu/urban-environmental-policy-institute/programs/food/healthy-school-foodcoalition. http://www.oxy.edu/urban-environmental-policy-institute/programs/food/healthy-school-food-coalition http://www.oxy.edu/urban-environmental-policy-institute/programs/food/healthy-school-food-coalition raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 142 sist in mathematics in transformative ways. during the ypar project, students resisted with both a motivation for social justice—to get tastier and healthier food for all at their school—and with a critique of societal oppression—that people of color and people living in poverty are often denied access to healthy food and many other benefits to overall health, and that school food should not exacerbate that inequity but rather fight against it. figure 3. student statements on the meaning of research after the ypar project. after representations from the healthy school food coalition visited our class, students wrote thank you notes to them. one student included the phrase “victory will be ours!” on the cover of his note. earlier in the project, this same student had been skeptical, questioning how students could really be school leaders who fight for change. another student’s note read: i am so glad and i feel so supported by a group of adults that actually care about what we care about, which is the school food. i feel motivated to want to learn more about this and make a change knowing that no one else would do it, but the ones that care. i feel like we can really make a change as long as we keep on trying.  thank you so much for hearing us out and listening to our thoughts and opinions. i really hope our work pays off in the end. i hope to stay in touch so that together we can also make a difference once we’ve done it at our school with the cafeteria manager first!  i have learned about research that when we do research it’s not only “copy, paste, and print,” we have to read it and understand it and do it. research is to find the information you want on your own.  research is to take time to look for information about something that you’re looking to uncover, to find facts and explanations about it. anyone can do it as long as you know what you’re looking for. i learned that creating and giving surveys you can really collect a lot of information and different opinions of many students. you get to learn what they think and feel on what you’re asking them.  there are explanations and steps to do research. research means to find out something but more detailed, like getting to the bottom of it.  it is very hard to come up with a simple survey. it takes a lot of patience. first we came into teams to construct each category. anyone can make a survey, just takes patience and research about the topic of the survey. what i learned is that you could get a lot of info in a couple simple questions, and we worked days on a survey and people finish it in minutes.  we can use research to find out patterns of info for the surveys.  to find out all of the information and put the information together and analyze and understand it. raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 143 discussion in this article, i aimed to contribute to scholarship that imagines, builds, and investigates spaces where critical mathematical literacy and social action are intertwined from the perspective that the work of engaging in critical praxis is a lifelong process. as sleeter (2015) and ladson-billings (2015) contend, scholar-activism not only conceptualizes possibilities of teaching for social justice within inequitable schooling contexts but also works to alter such contexts. questions that arose for me in reflecting on this ypar practitioner research are: how can schools and teacher education be altered to foster social justice mathematics? how can social justice mathematics itself be a part of pushing for change to challenge structural inequities that persist within and outside of mathematics education? what role does or can critical mathematical literacy have in developing “justice-oriented citizens” (westheimer & kahne, 2004) who engage in transformational resistance as they envision and lead social movement? this investigation sheds light on the promise of ypar in the mathematics classroom to open up spaces for students to develop as subjects of transformation as one avenue of teaching mathematics about, with, and for social justice (cf. stinson & wager, 2012). school change efforts and research can further explore the expansion of ypar as a normalized part of students’ learning experience at school and the multiple critical literacies students can build as they engage in research and create change. westheimer and kahne (2004) argue that one way schools can teach for democracy is to develop students as community activists who analyze root causes of societal inequities and explore how human rights and social justice can be achieved as a result of collective action. critical pedagogy can be supplemented with “strategies used by community and education organizers” (anyon, 2005, p. 179). critical mathematics teachers and their students who engage in ypar can be positioned as mentors to pre-service teachers and, in teacher education, teachers can learn how to form educational justice-oriented groups with other teachers, such as critical inquiry groups (nieto, gordon, & yearwood, 2010) and nepantla circles (gutiérrez, 2012). while ypar in the mathematics classroom has the potential to open up space for students to write the world (the action in action-research can be thought of as writing the world), there are a multitude of ways in which young people can write the world with mathematics that can occur within or outside the context of ypar (e.g., [re]defining what it means to do mathematics such as bringing in cultural practice to mathematics, creating texts and media, sharing work with family and peers), and ypar itself does not demand particular actions. future research can capture a variety of ways in which young people can develop transformative resistance through or drawing on mathematics and continue to question the possibilities for and extent to which ypar and transformational resistance can be fostered raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 144 within the classroom walls—within school, district, and larger social-political constrains that often run counter to the spirit of ypar. because i guided students toward quantitative investigation, placed a time limit on the project, and did not cover some of the “dominant mathematics” concepts i was supposed to address according to the content standards (polynomials and rational equations and functions), i need to complicate my own claims about ypar and transformational resistance in the mathematics classroom. these are all areas i would strive to improve on, think harder about, and talk with others about before future implementations. as studies by terry (2011) and yang (2009) do, future research can also include in-depth examinations of how students demonstrate their learning of mathematics in the context of ypar and following their engagement with ypar, as well as the connection between students’ mathematics learning and mathematical identities. i do not link students’ mathematical identities to their mathematical performance in terms of performance on tests or success with future mathematics access. in one sense, i believe this is a limitation of the study. at the same time, i argue that placing high value on and focusing in on how students perceive mathematics and how students perceive research in the context of participating in ypar are just as important areas of focus for research as other conceptions of what it means for students to “perform” mathematically in the context of ypar or social issue-related learning. pushing for change in schools and teacher education can foster environments where social justice mathematics can grow and, in turn, ypar connected to quantitative inquiry can work toward creating change itself. as stinson (2014) asserts, in times of great societal injustices and large-scale organizing against such injustices (e.g., the black lives matter and occupy wall street movements), we can call on mathematics education to contribute in greater ways to understanding and changing our society. references adelman, l. 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(2009, fall). mathematics, critical literacy, and youth participatory action research. new directions for youth development, 123, 99–118. http://ed-osprey.gsu.edu/ojs/index.php/jume/article/view/98/87 raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 148 appendix a student information sheet student information sheet my full name is: i prefer to be called / nickname: my birthday is (month date, year): gender pronouns: do you need to sit near the front of the room to hear or see better? my home phone number is: family member’s name and their relationship to you (mom, tío, etc.): the music i like to listen to is: the foods i like to eat are: the language(s) i speak at home is/are: i am talented at: i am from: i am: i would like to get better at: i come to school because: in the future, i would like to: in the past, i have had good experiences in school when: i have had bad experiences in school when: something that gets on my nerves is: something i would like ms. candace to know about me is: i would like to change the world by: the questions i have about this class are: thank you for filling this out! i look forward to getting to know more about you! raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 149 appendix b declared students’ rights raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 150 appendix c mathematics autobiography use the following guidelines to write a six-paragraph letter to me explaining your her/history and experience with mathematics. this letter is an opportunity for you to explore your identity as a math student (and growing mathematician!). please neatly write or type your final letter. stick to the letter format as shown below, and indent for every paragraph. august , dear ms. candace: paragraph 1: my name is . i am years-old, and i am a th grader at [our school name]. add a few more sentences about yourself here! paragraph 2: what are your strengths and weaknesses as a student? for example, strengths are things you’re good at, part of your personality that you are proud of, things people compliment you on, and so on. weaknesses are areas where you want to learn more, get stronger, places where you struggle as a student, and so on. paragraph 3: what do you think about math? do you like/love/enjoy math? why or why not? explain. paragraph 4: what have your math classes been like in the past? how did the last school year of math go for you? do not only write about your grades but your experiences learning and with your teacher. paragraph 5: why do you think math is important for you to learn? think of all the reasons you can. do you believe that math can be used to understand and change the world? why or why not? paragraph 6: what are your goals for math class this school year? list all of them and explain why you are reaching for those goals. explain who will help you to reach your goals. include anything else at the end of the letter that you would like to include. sincerely / peace / your student (pick one!), (your signature) raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 151 appendix d work sheet – if the world were 100 people name: date: period: if we could turn the population of the earth into a small community of 100 people, keeping the same proportions we have today, the village would look something like this … # of people who … your guess the data fraction (out of 100) reduce fraction (if you can) decimal percent are asian 61 61/100 61/100 0.61 61% are european 12 12/100 3/25 0.12 12% are north american 8 are south american/caribbean 5 are african 13 are oceanian 1 are women 50 are men 50 live in urban areas 47 are disabled 12 are christians 33 are muslims 21 are hindus 13 are buddhists 6 are sikhs 1 are jews 1 are non-religious 11 practice other religions 11 are atheists 3 live without basic sanitation 43 live without an improved water source 18 own 75% of the entire world income 20 are hungry or malnourished 14 can’t read 12 have a computer 12 have an internet connection 8 lives with hiv/aids 1 live on less than $1.25 per day 21 raygoza transformational resistance in mathematics journal of urban mathematics education vol. 9, no. 2 152 appendix e inequalities in society microsoft word bissue72 final.docx journal of education, 2018 issue 72, http://journals.ukzn.ac.za/index.php/joe doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i72a06 a critical arts-based narrative of five educators working in higher education during an era of transformation in south africa marguerite müller university of the free state mullerm@ufs.ac.za (received: 12 may 2018; accepted: 20 september 2018) abstract in this paper i explore creative ways to engage critically with educator identity and experience during an era of transformation and decolonisation. i have written it as an illustrated arts-based narrative that revolves around the experiences of five educators working at the university of the free state between 2014 and 2016. the narrative was created as part of a collaborative research project in which participants shared their experiential knowledge of anti-oppressive practice. in working with these portraits of five south african educators, i explore the connections between educator identity and social justice in the broader south african higher educational landscape as the call for transformation and decolonisation intensifies. the narrative is intended to trouble the identities and experiences of educators as they make their way through this messy terrain in an attempt to learn from uncertainty and crisis. keywords: social justice, arts-based research, performative text, educator identity, anti-oppressive education sketching the background in recent years south african universities have come under the spotlight during student protest movements, such as #rhodesmustfall and #feesmustfall. the fallist movements highlighted an intensifying call for transformation and decolonisation in south african institutions of higher education (jansen, 2017). the call for transformation is not new; in the post-apartheid context there has been a strong focus on transforming the curriculum to make it more socially just. this focus is underpinned by the 1996 bill of rights that promotes equity and protects all citizens against discrimination based on “race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.” 1 it can thus be argued that all south african educators have a constitutional commitment to teach in anti-oppressive ways and to work towards socially just practices. however, a 2008 ministerial report on transformation in 1 section 9 (3) of the constitution of the republic of south africa, 1996. available from: http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/saconstitution-web-eng.pdf 90 journal of education, no. 72, 2018 higher education found racism and sexism to be pervasive, not in the institutional policies, but, rather, in the lived experiences of students and staff (soudien et al., 2008). their experiences therefore become an important area of investigation in relation to social justice. furthermore, jansen (2017) reminds us that “[t]eachers interpret the curriculum to students on the basis of their own experiences, backgrounds, politics, and preferences” (p. 169), so both the identity and experience of south african educators emerge as key factors to consider in relation to curriculum transformation and decolonisation. in this paper i use portraiture to explore the lived experiences of five educators working towards transformation at the university of the free state. the portraits are used to highlight the complexity and multiplicity of educator identity through a collaborative narrative exploration of social justice in this context. through a creative engagement with the entanglement of identity, experience, curriculum, and pedagogy, i hope to move away from theoretical discussions on why we need change, to a more action-oriented emphasis on how we need to change. davies (2010) posits that agency, rather than being the product of individual will, resides in “the conditions of possibility that provoke new thought” (p. 55). through the visual/textual narratives i hope to create conditions of possibility that provoke new thought as we work towards transformed, socially just, and decolonised educational research and practice. setting the stage as educators currently working in the south african higher education context, as outlined above, we are caught up in the demand for socially just, transformed, and decolonised approaches to education. however, the contextual realities and lived experiences of educators are sometimes left out or lost in discussions that focus on grand narratives of social change, transformation, and decolonisation. keet, sattarzadeh, and munene (2017), point out that we need to move beyond the theoretical knowledge of what social justice and decolonisation mean to more collaborative, active, and creative approaches. here, i purposefully extend the theoretical research on anti-oppressive education into a narrative that stretches beyond the classroom space into the lives, childhood memories, personal anxieties, spiritual beliefs, and embodied experiences of five educators at the university of the free state. in other words, it is not simply about how we teach or what we teach but about who we are inside and outside the classroom, and about how our being is entangled with those around us to form multiple and assembled subjectivities (deleuze & guattari, 1988). if we think of identity as fluid and not fixed, it becomes possible for us to engage with antioppressive theories that allow us to work towards different ways of being and understanding. anti-oppressive theories are not prescriptive about how we should be, but, rather, encourage exploration of who we are and how we can become different. this notion is based on the work of kumashiro (2002) who has argued for an anti-oppressive pedagogy. in this framework oppression is seen as “a situation or dynamic in which certain ways of being (e.g., having certain identities) are privileged in society while others are marginalized.” furthermore, oppression is viewed as intersectional, multiple, and situational. while critical theory is useful for naming oppression and becoming critically conscious, kumashiro has argued that we “need to make more use of poststructural perspectives in order to address the müller: a critical arts-based narrative of five educators . . . 91 multiplicity and situatedness of oppression and the complexities of teaching and learning” (p. 25). through the portraits referred to in this article, i aim to create a collaborative way of engaging with the multiplicity and situated nature of oppression. the participants and i used the visual/textual work to engage with some of our complex, messy, and uncomfortable experiences as educators at the university of the free state. in this multiplicity, experience is foregrounded not as a form of narcissism or inwardness, but as a way of situating experiences as micro expressions of narratives of change, transformation, social justice, and decolonisation in higher education. hooks (2003) reminds me that “whenever we love justice and stand on the side of justice we refuse simplistic binaries. we refuse to allow either/or thinking to cloud our judgement. we embrace the logic of both/and. we acknowledge the limits of what we know” (p. 10). by using a theory that foregrounds subjectivity as complex, multiple, and assembled, i hope to make a contribution to how transformation, social justice, and decolonisation can be understood as a micro-project that (partially) emerges and unfolds in the lives, experiences, identities, memories, interactions, and becoming of educators working in higher education. by focusing on the becoming of educators though engagement with creative self-reflexive practices i hope to centre the change-of-self as part of the decolonisation process as a way to move beyond fixed and essentialised identities as we explore the entanglements with others and search for new ways of being. creating the portraits in creating these visual/textual portraits i use a multi-method approach with its roots in critical forms of inquiry such as narrative, collaborative, arts-based research. the use of the ontology of multiplicity seems to fit well with a multi-method approach. it is critical, but also aims to move beyond the critical into an affective analysis where meaning is sought in action and interaction, rather than in representation (zembylas, 2017). the subject is thus viewed through a critical lens so that we can see, as it were, the intersections of various social identities, such as race, sex, gender, class, and sexuality, but she or he is also read as an emerging subjectivity, not fixed, but always in a state of flux and change—becoming. the narrative component is used to sketch the identity as complex and multiple because in the storied world. . . things do not exist, they occur. where things meet, occurrences intertwine, as each becomes bound up in the other’s story. each such binding is in a place or a topic. it is in this binding that knowledge is generated. to know someone or something is to know their story, and to be able to join that to one’s own. yet, of course people grow in knowledge not only through direct encounters with others, but also through hearing their stories told. (ingold, 2011, pp. 160–161) using these portraits i engaged in a visually driven process of storying in which the aim was to make the “mundane, taken-for-granted, everyday world visible” and to “seek performative interventions and representations that heighten crucial reflective awareness leading to concrete forms of praxis” (denzin, 2013, p. 2). the text functions in the storied world and the characters occur and intertwine to generate new knowledge and heighten crucial reflective awareness. the visual/textual portraits are creative expressions rather than factual 92 journal of education, no. 72, 2018 representations of stories and occurrences. working in a postmodern paradigm i cannot possibly claim any objective truth, but, rather, i purposefully fictionalise, narrate, and sketch (see leavy, 2009). in so doing i also rely on visual methods of expression (drawing and collage) that function with the text to create visual/textual portraits. the arts-based approach i followed was useful for creating what finley (2011) has referred to as “new visions” that might lead to concrete forms of praxis. from within the liminal openings that are created by the performance/practice of artsbased inquiry, ordinary people, researchers as participants and as audiences can imagine new visions of dignity, care, democracy and other decolonizing ways of being in the world. once it has been imagined, it can be acted upon, or performed. (p. 443) through these visual/textual portraits i hope to create academic work that is “socially responsible, locally useful, engaged in public criticism, and resistant to neoconservative discourses that threaten social justice and close down efforts toward a performative research ethics that facilitates critical race, indigenous, queer, feminist and border studies” (finley, 2011, p. 437). the portraits were created as part of my phd research project for which i invited participants, working as educators at the university of the free state, to share some of their personal narratives and experiences of working and being in this space. the research project received ethical clearance from the university of the free state and the participants chose their own pseudonyms. i hoped that a collaborative method of creating and sharing narratives would help me to understand some of the complexities that i felt in my own attempts to work towards anti-oppressive practice. at the start of the project, i asked each of the participants to create a character and make a visual/textual portrait of their character as a fictional self. the participants were supplied with some basic art materials which they could use (or not), but how they created or presented the character visual/textual portraits was entirely up to them. the only guideline was that the character they created had to be an educator working in higher education and had to be inspired by their own experiences. in the second round of individual conversations (which were recorded), we discussed the participants’ artwork and they each introduced the character-self into the emerging story. using the recordings of these conversations i produced written sketches of each character, which i then shared with the participants via email. following this i arranged another round of individual conversations (also recorded) during which we reflected on the portraits and the way in which they could help us engage with some questions that stem from kumashiroʼs (2002) theory of anti-oppressive education. during the second interview, the participants were also asked to share a photograph to help me build their visual character portrait. after these conversations, i re-created the portrait collages by incorporating the initial artwork alongside the newly emerging stories, and the photographs. the portraits i created were then shared with the participants. finally, i invited the participants to help me interpret, read, and facilitate meanings that emerged from this layered process. müller: a critical arts-based narrative of five educators . . . 93 art and narrative help us communicate that which is unquantifiable (often deemed unscientific), but which is at the foundation of our human experience. it offers “knowledge as a process, a temporary state, [which] is scary to many” (eisner, 1997, p. 7). the implication is that, as educators, we cannot learn or be told how to work towards anti-oppressive practice but have to build such knowledge through our experiences, and the process of creative engagement with those experiences. this is important in the context of social justice, transformation, and decolonisation since changing the curriculum or policies will not be effective if the teachers who implement curriculum and pedagogy are left out of the conversation. through an engagement with creative self-reflexive practices i hope to focus on the change-of-self as part of the process of becoming. creative engagement with our experiences and memories becomes a way to move beyond fixed and essentialised identities as we explore our entanglements with others and search for new ways of being. five portraits of educators at ufs daisy figure 1: daisy, 2014, drawing, marguerite müller she is playing with a red balloon in a lush green suburban garden. the air smells of jasmine, sunshine, watermelon, birthday cake, washing powder, ironed clothes, mowed lawns . . . she goes to a good afrikaans school and gets a good education. she is part of a close-knit community in which similar views on religion, politics, history, and a shared language serve as the glue that binds them as white afrikaners. the only people of colour she knows work as cleaners or gardeners. she listens to them speak languages she cannot understand. although they are grown-ups she does not call them oom or tannie, 2 as she would call white grown-ups, but addresses them by their names. she knows that they have children, because unused toys or outgrown clothes are often sent home with them, but she never sees their families or their homes. they seem to exist only in her world, with their own world somewhere beyond hers, 2 the honorary terms oom [uncle] and tannie [aunt] are used as a respectful way to address adults in traditional afrikaans speaking communities in which children would rarely address an adult by name. 94 journal of education, no. 72, 2018 out of her sight. she goes to high school in 1996 and for the first time she sits in classrooms with people who had been classified as coloured 3 under apartheid. her coloured classmates do not live in the white neighbourhoods, but in the township that was designated for coloured people under apartheid legislation, and which is far away from school. these classmates arrive in buses in the morning and leave in buses in the afternoon. in class she gets to converse with some of the coloured students and exchange ideas on topics from music to religion. when the bell has rung for break the coloured learners sit in one group and she sits with the other white learners. the teachers are all white and the cleaners are all black. the principal is male and the secretaries are female. daisy is made to sit silently through countless ceremonies to celebrate the school’s mediocre rugby team and watch boys with inflated muscles parade across the stage while she applauds in what is thought of as a civilised manner. no whistling or shouting! on early winter mornings she is secretly envious of the boys who get to wear pants to school when she must wear short skirts (five fingers above the knee) with stockings. even if pants were allowed she wouldn’t wear them anyway; that would make her seem unfeminine and therefore unpopular. she would love to take woodwork and metalwork as a subject because of her interest in sculpting, but she doesn’t dare do such a thing. one girl in the school did have the guts to take the boy subject once and everyone talked about it saying she must be a lesbian… at this point in the narrative i have to point out that daisy’s memories as recounted above are probably not very different from the memories of many other white middle-class south african females who grew up in the 1980s. her memories are a part of me, of my memory and childhood, but it is also part of something more collective. i see it as a micro-expression of a larger social narrative that weaves in and out of my identity. what does remembering make possible? when i stand in front of diverse classes and teach social-justice lessons i have to allow myself to be there, present and fully present, with all the history, memory, and experience that comes with being me. but i do not exist in isolation; i belong to a bigger assemblage into which my experiences are woven. thus, i leave daisy’s partial and incomplete story here on this page and i go on to speak to alice. “tell me about what it was like growing up and going to school?” i ask her. 3 under apartheid legislation all south africans were classified into a racially demarcated group. the groups were white, coloured, black, and indian. many south africans still use these racially demarcated categories to refer to their racial identity. müller: a critical arts-based narrative of five educators . . . 95 alice figure 2: alice, 2014, watercolour and pencil, marguerite müller i remember when i was in grade 7, i had such curly hair! i didn’t look typical . . . like a typical indian you know? and i had this kind of accent that was not indian, and i felt different and i was made to feel different, because i came from this different kind of school . . . because before that i had been in a catholic school; it was a private school so we were all mixed—white, black, coloured, and indian. i remember it as a strict and rigid kind of schooling with rote learning and questioning, and obedience, discipline, and respect for elders. there was this distance between the teachers and us and the majority of the teachers were catholic nuns, so anyway there was this otherworldly kind of [discipline], you know, so they always threatened you with jesus and god when you did anything wrong, and they were a bit abusive, yes they were physically abusive . . . they used to give us [what we called] german knocks, like knuckles on the forehead . . . but i learnt discipline there, and to work hard . . . and i learnt to be independent . . . but anyway, then that school closed down and on my first day at this new school, this indian school, in the afternoon the principal wanted to see me and she asked, “what are you? what is your race?” and i was not sure . . . so she said, “are you coloured?” and i was like so uncertain about what i was. and so she called my mother that day and she asked for my birth certificate. on the birth certificate it said indian and i, uhm, you know then she told my mother, that you know she said she’s coloured. uhm, but schooling ja, was . . . after a while . . . you know, apartheid was so deeply entrenched that we never really questioned its effects on us. so like i feel all this sense of uncertainty and i’m like looking at myself and i’m wondering, am i doing the right thing, even in my teaching? . . . you know like . . . even you know like, like i constantly feel like i’m in this space where i’m like asking . . . if this works. why didn’t it work, or did it work? so there is this constant state of flux that i’m in. so like i’m constantly feeling like i’m . . . i don’t know . . . like i’m not doing the right thing? 96 journal of education, no. 72, 2018 celine figure 3: celine, 2014, drawing and collage, marguerite müller i grew up in the dusty streets, in that small little house you know, it was just, myself, my mother, and my sister, just three ladies in the house, so that was . . . i think it had pros and cons, for me as a child you know, because uh, in my house we never used to wear towels when you come out of the bath . . . we didn’t even have a bathtub, we used those small basins, plastic basins, you know. i remember just bits and pieces of my parents staying together, and [they were] not good memories where my father was abus . . . physically abusive, also cheating and then just that’s when my mother decided to leave, and you know when she left we’ve never seen a male in our house, you know. that also affected how i take my decisions now—it’s ok to have kids; it’s also ok not to have a husband. i think that’s just how it shaped me as a person. i think one of the other things which she has also said . . . not out in so many words, but she would articulate that you become your own person; you don’t need to . . . you don’t need a man to get to where you want to go. so that’s how i started becoming this miss independent. and you know coming to think of it back then, if you didn’t have father, you were stereotyped in some way . . . like they would want to know, why don’t you have a father . . . and i just felt like they would look at you differently, even though some of the teachers were being abused themselves. we would see one coming with a black eye on a monday, you understand? and for me that would say . . . because i remember my own mother being abused and she walked out of the marriage. if a marriage does not work just walk out . . . but the biggest lesson i learnt was [that] money will not even get you where you want to go, your brains will, you know, so it sort of motivated me to see all those students that were from the very well-off backgrounds, repeating the same modules with me and some of them i was even passing more than they were, you know, and i just set my deadline that you know in three years’ time i’m getting my degree, which i worked very hard for, you know. there [were] a lot of sleepless nights, and what motivated me was always seeing my mother when i sent the results home that i did well, the pride that she would have and my sister as well. müller: a critical arts-based narrative of five educators . . . 97 now when i see this student sitting in front of me in my office, i see myself at that time and you know, knowing very well that this is a once-in-a-life-time-opportunity, that’s why i preach it to them that it’s your one chance and you cannot afford to mess it up. chubby figure 4: chubby, 2014, collage and drawing, marguerite müller we moved around quite a lot; i think i went to seven different schools. my father worked for the municipality, but he was always looking for a better life for us, and better work often meant moving . . . i remember as a small child of around five, i wondered why there were separate entrances at the shop and the post office. we went through one entrance and black people through another. i was small, but i remember wondering about that. my father worked on the roads and i think it was a rough life . . . a guy didn’t do his work they would punish him . . . so i think there was sort of racism in the background of my youth, but i think in our home it was different. racism wasn’t an issue there. but i remember wondering about the separate entrances . . . i never became an activist or anything; i suppose we were comfortable in our own lives. i grew up in a very protected environment; i had a happy childhood. but you know i cannot be perfect; i make so many mistakes, we all do . . . on friday there was a group of students who had to write an exam and when they got to the venue the question paper was only in english, and some of the afrikaans students walked out . . . and that is their right, but when the secretary phoned them to make arrangements for another 98 journal of education, no. 72, 2018 opportunity, i asked her to request that they do not make a language political issue out of this . . . it was just an administrative mistake—one of the lecturers made an error when getting the paper copied, that’s all . . . i think it’s all about awareness . . . there are things i don’t know about and i might be stepping on people’s toes, but then i do i think there should be a space to talk about those things. we are all on a journey in this new south africa . . . i make mistakes, or say naïve things, but don’t run to the rector . . . come talk to me and make me aware. uhm, one has so many things you want to do perfectly, but you cannot do everything perfectly. you really . . . one really makes mistakes and sometimes you say something and feel yourself go cold . . . i am a calm person, uhm, i do not lose my head easily; in a crisis i can actually keep my head above water and rise above the challenge. so losing my head is not part of who i am. mick figure 5: mick, 2014, drawing, marguerite müller i am busy with a juggling act. i am trying to make the world better, but i have to juggle all these things: relationships, friendships, work, studies . . . trying to make people happy. . . where students are comfortable, everything is normal and they know everything and nobody is rocking the boat and i think when we started to talk about the issue of race and we didn’t move away from it, it was like now i made them to be in that space, that dangerous space müller: a critical arts-based narrative of five educators . . . 99 where there is nothing and i actually pushed them to a foreign place . . . my work being about moving the students, to that, to the other side, but actually a lot of this work is about moving myself onto that cliff, so it’s like i’m moving with my students. i think it is both ways, the cliff, and not just students but constantly also me, of always having to be on that side all the time, so it’s like going to another planet and someone just drops you off there. i always want the students to make that leap to the other side of the cliff, to the foreign space. but i think in this picture it represents me also, constantly having to make that leap, because this for me, it was also a foreign space where i was othered, and i had to force myself to stay in that space in order for my own learning to occur . . . emphasis on my students, my work being about moving the students to that other side, but actually a lot of this work is about moving myself over that cliff, so it’s like i’m moving with my students. an affective reading as explained above, the portraits were created in response to narrative interviews and were collaboratively discussed and interpreted by me, the researcher, and the participants. the analysis or interpretation happened throughout, as we sketched, talked, and created. it should therefore be seen as a continual and collaborative process, as well as an affective one. our responses were often more about how the portraits and narratives made us feel and react, than about what they meant. i consciously distance myself from the terms data and analysis because of their associations with a positivist and empirical paradigm. by contrast, the artsbased approach is used to help us move beyond the theoretical knowledge of what social justice and decolonisation mean to more collaborative, active, and affective approaches. st. pierre (2013) criticises the logical positivist empirical unconsciousness that also heavily influences qualitative studies for what counts as scientifically based or evidence-based research in the social sciences. “once the empirical is transformed into real, visible words on a page—brute, sense data—these researchers strip the words from context, manipulate them, order them in binaries and hierarchies and categories, label some words with other words (code data), and even count the words. words become quasi-numbers” (p. 224). st pierre has advocated for a post-qualitative kind of research in which the aim is to explore different research practices. this kind of creative and affective collaborative interpretation is a move away from what traditionally counts as empirical data and analysis to interrogate the traditional power hierarchies that exist in research. a move towards decolonised ways of doing research is also a move towards research practices that do not rely on binaries, hierarchies, categories, and labels to make sense of experiences. for example, in daisy’s story it is easy to list all the social and essentialised categories that constitute her memories of childhood—categories of race, sex, gender, class, and sexuality. her story is one that is located in the world of binaries, but her story is not one that can exist in isolation. i know that because her story is also mine. when i commenced research on antioppressive education i realised that before i could move forward i had to go back, as far back as childhood, in order to make sense of my present self. as i started this process i realised the limits of my experiences and it became evident that i had to go beyond my story, to look for 100 journal of education, no. 72, 2018 the stories of those around me. listening to the participants tell stories that are different from mine became a valuable way of reaching beyond my story into other stories. i think that this process of understanding and venturing beyond the known is an important part of recognising the self as entangled with others. the self is thus seen not essentialised, but, rather, as multiple and assembled. alice also speaks of how the category of race emerged so strongly during her childhood. she makes the statement, “you know apartheid was so deeply entrenched that we never really questioned its effects on us.” by bringing her past experience into the present she made me aware that we cannot move towards anti-oppressive education if we do not reflect on the effects of the past. most of us, as south african educators, come from a past in which we were affected by apartheid significantly in ways that have shaped who we are now, and we need to look at the ways in which we stay stuck, but also recognise how those experiences can help us to become different through this crucial reflective awareness. creating the portraits is a way to interpret and re-tell stories that make the “mundane, taken-for-granted, everyday world visible” and to “seek performative interventions and representations that heighten crucial reflective awareness leading to concrete forms of praxis” (denzin, 2013, p. 2). furthermore, the portraits function to make the educator’s experiences in relation to social justice visible in local and contextual realities. after reading her portrait celine responded, when i read the story it just connected very well and i was actually surprised—wow! my story is part of this! and you know when you talk you just don’t realise how somebody is listening to what you are saying. and to be actually . . . because you know we are so used to reading other people’s stories, but when you are part of the story you just . . . ok, ok that’s interesting. celine expressed her surprise at seeing that her story “is part of this.” so often we fail to recognise ourselves in academic discourses on social justice that are written in contexts far removed from where we are. thus, the process of collaborative narrative creation makes it possible to situate ourselves in the research story where we understand oppression to be “the citing of harmful discourses and the repetition of harmful histories” (kumashiro, 2000, p. 40). the visual/textual portraits highlight the fact that anti-oppressive education is not simply about how we teach or what we teach, but about who we are in terms of being, becoming, and belonging. if we bring our bodies, emotions, and histories into the research space we move towards a more vulnerable and honest engagement with issues of social justice. for example, mick mentioned how he was fuelled by a desire to make society a better place and to heal, and also spoke about how this type of work could be emotionally draining. and my work is social justice; my work is to work towards a society which is equal, fair and . . . uhm, so transformation is part of that huge agenda. so the clown makes people happy. i’m trying to make society a place where people . . . there’s equality and there’s less pain and there’s less hurt and there’s less discrimination. but i think possibly, ja . . . so it is a mask . . . because in this process of trying to make people happy, it’s heavily taxing, taxing on me the individual who is doing this. there is a lot of uhm [pause] hurt and um [pause] it’s emotionally draining . . . müller: a critical arts-based narrative of five educators . . . 101 later, he talks about a specific episode in the classroom. so i walked out of that classroom feeling extremely confused, frustrated and i was questioning: did i do hurt more than i tried to do anything about healing in that classroom? according to zembylas, charalambous, and charalambous (2012) the value of discomforting emotions is that these might lead educators to examine their constructed self-images critically, as well as how they have learnt to perceive others. when we grapple with issues of oppression we often feel disorientated, like aliens in a foreign place, because we are different, and because we have allowed ourselves to lose control partially and to move away from doing things correctly and perfectly to asking, “am i doing the right thing? what just happened here? am i causing more hurt than healing?” this means we will need to embrace uncertainty, imperfection, confusion, and discomfort. we also need to acknowledge our limitations in terms of anti-oppressive and social justice work. kumashiro’s (2000) antioppression theory oscillates between critical theory and post-structuralism because he uses critical theory to explore unequal power relationships and oppression while at the same time uses a post-structuralist approach to highlight the fluidity and situated nature of identity. in doing so, he highlights the necessity to understand always that all theoretical approaches are limited and incomplete. it is necessary to acknowledge the limits of what we know and not attempt to sell grand narratives and complete packages of what social justice might look like in different contexts to various people. partiality, as expressed in the visual/textual portraits, is purposeful and necessary. chubby makes the connection between theological work and education in that they both involve caring. yet he backgrounds his own feelings of vulnerability and emotional involvement by saying that he is someone who does not “lose [his] head” easily in a crisis and that he can “handle” difficult situations. when i commenced my postgraduate studies i encountered a similar approach to what researchers are expected to do. they are supposed to stay rational and not allow their emotions to cloud their vision. it was only as an artist that i felt encouraged to be in touch continually with my emotions and to bring these into my work. using arts-based methodologies is useful for bridging the rational/emotional binary. in order to move beyond the binaries of self/other we need to engage other binaries as well. a decolonised form of research needs to probe binaries that have kept categories and classifications in place. for example, the distinction between theory and methodology could also come under scrutiny in research practices in which we seek to engage with the entanglement and embodiment of theoretical perspectives. through our artworks, memories, and narratives we begin to embody the theory, but also trouble it, which then brings about an understanding of social justice as both a process and a goal (adams, blumenfeld, castaneda, hackman, & peters, 2000). francis and hemson (2007) found that teacher education in social justice should be seen “less as a triumphant charge from oppression to liberation, and more as a scaffolding of a difficult entry into a new and still imperfect discourse” (p. 100). in this article i argue that the portraits function as an entry point into an imperfect discourse in which educators emerge as complex individuals in an uncertain and messy space. 102 journal of education, no. 72, 2018 conclusion this article is my exploration of creative ways to engage critically with educator identity and experience during an era of transformation and decolonisation in higher education. the aim of this exploration is to find new ways to think about who educators are, and about how the complexity, multiplicity, and assembled expression of identities can help us think differently about the context of higher education. in this way educator identity emerges as an integral part of our thinking about anti-oppressive education, social justice, and decolonisation. in a south african context the goals of anti-oppressive education and social justice overlap and are woven into the decolonisation and transformation project. in an attempt to move beyond the theoretical knowledge of the need for change, the portraits are examples of how, through our practices, we can work with self-reflexive expressions to engage in micro transformation. the use of visual/textual portraits shows how educators can explore the self as a critical site of micro transformation. furthermore, the visual/textual portraits of five educators at the university of the free state are used to foreground the emotional and experiential knowledge that underscores work on transformation and decolonisation. the connections between educator identity and transformation are made visible within a messy, uncertain, and volatile space since they highlight the disconnect between what we want, who we want to be, and what really happens inside and outside our classrooms. at the same time, they serve to turn our lens, as researchers, away from grand narratives of transformation and decolonisation and focus on the micro narratives that play out in the everyday lives, memories, and experiences of educators in higher education. as educators working towards social justice in the higher education space we need constantly to relearn and unlearn prior knowledge. this is an ongoing process in which we trouble existing knowledge and so-called normal ways of being. we need continually to look beyond the limits of what we know and who we are, in order to become different. in addition, we need to move beyond binary ways of thinking about ourselves, the world and our research practices. in the creation of the visual/textual portraits of educators, i do not attempt to paint a complete or comprehensive picture of educators working in the higher education space in south africa because our stories are always partial. i hope to foreground an affective engagement with new possibilities, rather than a descriptive or representational analysis of what they might mean. this account of a creative exploration of the action and interaction of a group of educators working in the higher education landscape in south africa foregrounds the complexities and contradictions in our lived experiences as we make our way through an uncertain and messy terrain to trouble and unlearn oppressive knowledge as we look for new ways of being, becoming, and belonging. müller: a critical arts-based narrative of five educators . . . 103 references adams, m., blumenfeld, w. j., castaneda, c., hackman, h. w., & peters, m. l. 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(2012). manifestations of greekcypriot teachers’ discomfort toward a peace education initiative: engaging with discomfort pedagogically. teaching and teacher education, 28, 1071–1082. 1 https://www.designforsocialchange.org/journal/index.php/discern-j issn 2184-6995 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-non commercial-no derivatives 4.0 international license. book review: design justice community-led practices to build the worlds we need dhriti dhaundiyal published online: october 2021 to cite this article: dhaundiyal, d. (2021). book review: design justice community-led practices to build the worlds we need. discern: international journal of design for social change, sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, 2(2), 1-6. 2 book review: design justice community-led practices to build the worlds we need dhriti dhaundiyala aschool of design, doon university, dehradun, india. dhritidhaundiyal@doonuniversity.ac.in design justice community-led practices to build the worlds we need, by sasha costanza-chock. isbn: 9780262043458, 360 pp. | the mit press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12255.001.0001 (open access) ‘design justice community-led practices to build the worlds we need’ is an essential read for those involved with social design and social justice. defining design justice as “an exploration of how design might be led by marginalized communities, dismantle structural inequality, and advance collective liberation and ecological survival”, constanza-chock position it as a function of power in design processes, hypothesising that design justice is a result of who has power while researching and while designing, the decisions they make and how these decisions affect marginalised groups. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12255.001.0001 3 background the author, sasha costanza-chock, is a communications scholar, participatory designer and activist, using the pronouns she/her and they/theirs. currently working as associate professor of civic media at massachusetts institute of technology (mit), usa, they have published many other defining works on the links between information and communication technologies and social movements, such as ‘out of the shadows and into the streets! transmedia organizing and the immigrant rights movement’. their approach is to take the established paradigms of the design process and reassess the fundamental tenets with the lens of social justice. they use the storytelling approach of critical feminism to give examples of lived experiences that illustrate the norms, values and assumptions encoded in the socio-technical systems in our society. they write against the production and reproduction of systemic oppression, with the confessed idealistic aims of building a better, more inclusive world. constanza-chock laud langdon winner’s thesis ‘do artifacts have politics?’ (1980) as a driving force for their work. they criticise the standardisation of products and services to the exclusion of the minority, which was first highlighted by simone browne in her book ‘dark matters’ (2015). they first gave the ‘resisting reduction’ manifesto in their essay in the journal of design & science (2018), writing from their standpoint of knowledge from embodied experiences as a non-binary trans-feminine person. their competency is based on lived experience and empirically grounded in participatory action research and codesign, specifically from their association with research action design lab, tech for social justice and the civic media: collaborative design studio course at mit. the book presents a manifesto based on principles put first put forward by the design justice network (2015) to transform design for good to design for liberation. the manifesto posits that people who are most harmed by generic design decisions usually have the least influence on those decisions, and proposes a rethink and reframe of design processes. in particular, the author questions the values, practices, narratives, sites and pedagogies embodied in design processes. book structure constanza-chock begin by tracing the roots of design justice in value-sensitive design, universal design and inclusive design. these shifts in design theory have brought in threads of feminism and anti-racism from science and technology studies (sts), in particular the ‘matrix of domination’ (collins, 2002). the author theorises that design justice stems from a core concept of design, ‘affordances’, originating in the 1970s in cognitive psychology. chapter one relates stories of design affordances, products being used in ways that were not originally designed or intended, such as the use of facebook as a site of mobilisation for social protests. the author constructs the implicit injustice perpetuated by disaffordances and dysaffordances (wittkower, 2018): one constrains function while the other makes users misidentify their own identity to access functions. ‘dysaffordance’ is driven by gender dysphoria where standardisation becomes discriminatory design. the average excludes those who don’t meet the definition of ‘average’. the next chapter moves the argument from equity to accountability and community control, in the context of participatory processes, user-led innovation and feminist human-computer interaction. constanza-chock note that although all humans design, only some earn a living out of it: generally privileged professionals, high in the matrix of domination. these professional networks concentrate agency and power within groups of others like themselves, perpetuating discriminatory social structures in technologies. chapter three gives examples of the design of design technologies with a case study of twitter, where the counternarratives of its origins have been forgotten. constanza-chock decry the popular and prominent narratives of innovation and design as ‘well-resourced corporate mythologies’ (p. 116) that concentrate and celebrate the individual genius inventors, discounting and ignoring other contributions like social movements. 4 another example is the microsoft ‘reinvent the toilet challenge’, where designers and inventors around the world raced to innovate the ideal toilet. the definition of the project’s aims and scope weas controlled by the novelty narrative, and the values of social good embedded into the designed objects were sadly ignored. chapter four covers the changing landscapes of design processes with the newly emerging subaltern sites like hacklabs, maker spaces, fab labs and hackathons, community gathering spaces that often reproduce social inequalities at the expense of marginalised communities. the author demands a reorganisation that challenges the tacit matrix of domination. the following chapter reflects on critical pedagogies and builds upon the theories of critical pedagogy, popular education and praxis, practical knowledge for action, constructionist design theories, community technology pedagogy and feminist pedagogies of data science. it lays a framework for democratising design education, not as a neutral process that maintains the status quo or challenges it, but about issues that people care about, teaching people to identify the correct problems, identifying root causes to generate correct solutions. critique the book outlines a manifesto for enabling all citizens to be equal decision-makers in the design process. this thought has been around in the design discipline for some time, but this book creates a formal manifesto for both design education and design practice. the book builds on the feminist sts approach that the world around us is socio-technical, and the infrastructure of constraints and affordances that determines how we design and use designed products is led by the codes that have been socially ingrained in us. the book is an examination of current design values, practices, narratives, sites and pedagogies to incorporate the tenets of design and social justice at the individual, community and institutional levels. figure 1 condenses the progress of the design process in participatory ventures across the spectrum from strong control to more consultative control. the aim is to help design for people who have been excluded due to omission. figure 1: analysis of community participation throughout the design process (constanza-chock, 2020, p. 91). 5 one of the book’s main strengths is that it abounds in examples of where design has inadvertently disenfranchised marginalised groups due to disaffordances and dysaffordances. this myopia in design affects not just tangible objects, images and the built environment, but also intangible socio-technical systems. the author leads with the example of the inadvertent prejudice of millimetre wave scanners at security check zones of airports against non-binary citizens, which resonates with the theatre of security one experiences in airports. costanza-chock echo foucault’s approach to knowledge as a form of the perpetuation of social violence if a conscious balance of power is not actualised in participatory design and acts of co-creation that jeopardise design justice. the onus is on the designer to reflect and realise equilibrium in design methods and design politics. costanza-chock criticise design for its ‘band-aid’ approach that ignores rather than examines root cause problem-solving. commercial design processes have been berated as ‘design by committee’, ineffective, inelegant and neglecting core concerns. design justice demands an intentional decision to frame the benefits as well as the harms of designed products and systems in a contextual manner. in recent literature, escobar’s ‘designs for the pluriverse: radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds’ (2018) and holmes’ ‘mismatch: how inclusion shapes design’ (2020) also expound on similar concerns of social injustice through omission. although the good intentions of design justice are undeniable, questions about its practicality have been raised by critics. design justice activists exhort the higher moral goals of creating the world we want to live in, but challenges of limited resources and time in the real world lead to trade-offs. there is a legitimate fear that no just outcomes may ever come out of the process, a fear that processes of design justice may slow real-world design processes down beyond viability, but design justice activists say that is a small cost to pay for a more just world, where design is a tool for liberation. summation though written before the global covid-19 pandemic, this book comes at an opportune time. the pandemic has exacerbated social disparities the world over, and the time is now ripe for community-led change that can help marginalised communities. exigent times like these can be catalysts for creating the right environment for transformational change that can be sustained. power structures are often bypassed, and change can be initiated from individuals across the socio-political spectrum. designers, developers and technologists hold immense sway in the current political economy, and, unknowingly, the infrastructure they build perpetuates larger systemic inequalities. positive action on their part can initiate change that has far-reaching consequences. the manifesto of design justice defined in this book can help designers reach that distant future in a fairer, more equitable way. references browne, s. (2015). dark matters: on the surveillance of blackness. duke university press. collins, p. h. (2002). black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. routledge. costanza-chock, s. (2018). design justice: towards an intersectional feminist framework for design theory and practice. proceedings of the design research society. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3189696 costanza-chock, s. (2020). design justice: community-led practices to build the worlds we need. the mit press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/12255.001.0001 6 escobar, a. (2018). designs for the pluriverse: radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. duke university press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822371816 holmes, k. (2020). mismatch: how inclusion shapes design. mit press lee, u., mutiti, n., garcias, c., & taylor, w. (2015) (eds.). principles for design justice. design justice zine, 1. https://designjustice.org/zines winner, l. (1980). do artifacts have politics? daedalus 109, 1 (winter), 121–136. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i20024643 wittkower, d. e. (2016). principles of anti-discriminatory design. philosophy faculty publications, no.28. https://digitalcommons.odo.edu/philosophy-fac-pubs/28 guided knowledge search during mathematical problem solving (re) imagining a shared future through abdi & shultz education for global social justice 128 (re) imagining a shared future through education for global social justice ali a. abdi professor, university of alberta canada lynette shultz assistant professor, university of alberta canada introduction the positioning of the main discourses of our time as a “clash of civilizations” has had a profound impact on local, national and global relations through processes of legitimization. we have seen this positioning reproduce many traditional logics of supremacy, including cultural, racial, geopolitical, and patriarchal. by engaging in the problematic and ontologically eurocentric clash logics, we enter into the process whereby particular groups are transformed into signs whose production and management are intentionally obfuscated to the point where projects of terrorism and counter-terrorism, and supremacy through essentialized centre-periphery hierarchies, are fabricated and eventually dangerously naturalized. as those groups who are relegated to the periphery try to de-centre dominant forces and reposition themselves as equal members of a global society, this repositioning is seen as a threat to a “natural” order. contrary to this perennially confrontational global perspective, what humanity needs and can achieve through constructive agency and deliberative dialogue are active and engaged civic and institutional platforms that reduce inter-group and international misunderstandings and conflicts thereby enabling the co-creation of new and more just social realities. international journal of curriculum and instruction vol. vii, no. 1, july 2010 to achieve the much needed counter-clash and open intercivilizational dialogue and cooperation, we must also understand and be willing to deal with the devastating injustices of, for example, deep poverty, irreversible environmental destruction, and the myriad of globalization-driven structural violences that are affecting the lives of people all over the world. as was highlighted in the un year of dialogue among civilizations, there is an urgent need for engagement within, across, and among groups that challenges the ‘separatist’ logics and builds a praxis of respect and multicentric appreciation for the vast diversity and difference that strengthens our world. this engagement must also work to build bridges of understanding that support peaceful interactions that go beyond the rhetoric of coexistence, and aims to achieve respectful and reciprocal relations of recognition among individuals, groups, nations and hemispheres, recognition at both the historical and subjective levels (see taylor, 1995; honneth, 1995), should be more than just the objective categories of actual relationships, but must be seen as a cultural and existential need that should not be denied to any people. by advancing a line of analysis that disavows the clash logics, one could add so much to the recognition as well as the well-being of especially those communities whose lives have been destructively re-arranged by colonialism and globalization (said, 1993; wa thiongo, 1993). while all the noble, counterclash possibilities mentioned here are important and urgently needed, they will not be achieved without enlisting the critical functions of new educational programs that effectively create such civic and continental engagements. to establish such programs of education, therefore, both the concept as well as the indispensable practices of social justice must be taken into account, with the newly inclusive spaces of learning being designed for, and achieving the social justice project. and that will not be possible without making the contents of the education program inclusive of the histories, cultures and the aspirations of all. as should be known to many educational researchers, schooling, in all its facets, and along with its sister contexts of informal and non-formal learning, has been instrumental in promoting and cementing the clash thesis (achebe, 2000; wa 129 (re) imagining a shared future through abdi & shultz education for global social justice thiongo, 1986). hence, the need to reconstruct dominant educational programs that are actually representative of one worldview, but have been masquerading as genuinely universal for too long. to do so, the radical equalization of all life perspectives (stam and shohat, 1994) and we would add, life needs, should be highlighted and sought on behalf of all humanity. relocating the meanings and intentions of social justice in the general intersections of liberal democracies and their attached discourses, social justice may be neutralized to the extent the rationalist notions of the enlightenment could reign supreme. here, with life chances generally seen as fitting the now sociologically mute constructions of the functionaliststructuralist system, the assumption that social justice is there to be had by anyone who needs it, becomes problematic. perhaps more than anything else, it is so de-historicized that it ignores, not only past injustices that have realized the current explosively unequal realities of life, it also deliberately forgets the continuities of highly uneven power relations that are sustaining the weaknesses we see in the overall project of social justice. it is also the case that with the proliferation of the projects of globalization, the weaknesses in global justice are expanding across the world (abdi, 2007), and as in the liberal democracy belief systems, the presumed ‘survival of the fittest’ has derailed the lives of people who have been on the wrong side of the historical outcomes (mann, 2006; memmi, 1991). it is in the context of this prescription, and with equitable intercontinental dialogue and understanding not on the agenda, that liberal democracy is supposedly curing everyone’s ills (see fukuyama, 1993) that people whose historical and actual trajectories are different from those of the european metropolis, would be asked, in fact expected to fit this model of social justice definitions and dispensations. here, nyerere’s points many years ago should still resonate with much validity when he spoke about the counter-individualistic saliency of african life vis-à-vis the systems of colonialism that have distorted both the cosmologies 130 international journal of curriculum and instruction vol. vii, no. 1, july 2010 and earth-bound locations of africans themselves (nyerere, 1968). indeed, with the communal and selectively geriocratic life management ways of the east (not only africa, but also asia and pre-colonial oceania), and the pre-columbus americas, now replaced by the exclusively detached rule of the western educated elite (this is sometimes called democracy, which should be a misnomer), social justice has now become, not what you have a right to, but what the system prescribes for you in the realm of the world system. amazingly, now with the project of the global injustice a fait accompli, the victors do not seem to be interested in engaging in some dialogue to lessen these pervasive conceptual and cultural disjunctures. in most cases, in the so-called developing world, the stunting of the counter-clash dialogue platforms, lead to mass deprivations that are firstly created by the world systems, then labeled by the same systems as backwardness and underdevelopment. here, an interesting point is that the meanings of deprivations, why it is happening, what it means and why these people are in a worse shape than, say, those in canada, are also almost exclusively constructed by those who, in the first place, were responsible for the problems. in attaching our analysis for the need to understand social justice in a common historical and descriptive platforms, i.e., all of us coming together to figure the issue out, we cannot discount the ideas and theories of development. here again, though, the needed discussions on the situation have also been betrayed by the lack of inter-civilizational dialogue. needless to add that development is itself an imposed ideology for many (rahnema & bowtree, 1997; ake, 1996), that never fulfilled its promise, and interestingly here again, the space for dialogue and discussion is not open. it is now almost 20 years since there was a widespread consensus that development as a program that makes people’s better is no longer inclusive and therefore, selectively invalid (de rivero, 2001; leys, 1996; schuurman, 1993). yet, the problematic promise of development was neither redefined nor re-analyzed. majid rahnema’s pointers in this regard are instructive and are directly related to the lack of global dialogue on social justice. he writes: 131 (re) imagining a shared future through abdi & shultz education for global social justice in the postcolonial era, through] the banner of development and progress, a tiny minority of local profiteers, supported by their foreign patrons set out to devastate the very foundations of social life. [in the process], a merciless war was waged against the age-old traditions of communal solidarity. the virtues of simplicity and conviviality, of noble forms of poverty, of the wisdom of relying on each other, and of the arts of suffering were derided as forms of underdevelopment (rahnema, 1997, p. x). here, rahnema’s points present a starkly clear case of what happens when new meanings and categories of life are constructed for people without asking the concerned people what they thought about the situation. more problematically, this is happening when the previous categories of life are no longer there. here, therefore, the processes of de-ontologizing are extensive, and without creating a new common forum for dialogue and understanding, the project of global social justice may be farther away than ever. interestingly, even the late john rawls (1971), undoubtedly the justice theorist par excellence in the west, and by extension (we now understand), around the world, analyzed and critiqued the rationalities of justice, but never disavowed the need to see beyond the orthogonal structures of the case, and look for everyday reasonableness of the applications of social justice, i.e., the changing contexts and possible malleability of the case, and how that should persuade us to be more open about our intentions and applications. for rawls (2001), therefore, justice was not to be detached from the overall project of fairness, an idea that will probably not appeal to the new apostles of the neoliberal paradigm. conceptualizing education for global social justice many educational efforts are couched in the language of social justice, but as happens with so many other popular terms, much of the exhortation may actually be superficial. for example, the lack of any real conceptualization of what justice entails, particularly global social justice is at best weak, if not entirely alien to the overall analysis. in many cases, this lack serves to 132 international journal of curriculum and instruction vol. vii, no. 1, july 2010 keep justice efforts marginalized at best, and more often, anemically ineffective. more than that, the lip service that is paid to global social justice does not only betray the promise, it may also falsely convince us that things are fine, and the building of just multicultural relations is on course. we suggest that, while justice must always be historically and contextually based, there is a need to critically examine issues of distribution, recognition, engagement and violence in order to turn social justice education into more effective directions and toward global justice. how do we bring global social justice and related educational practices into the space now dominated by messages of a hopelessly divided world? dryzek (2006) argues we are seeing a clash among discourses rather than among civilizations. discourses, in this sense are, as milliken (1999) presents, a shared set of concepts, categories, and ideas that become embedded in practice through enactment. the subsequent conflicts between and among discourses is, what dryzek (2006) suggests, where we need to focus our educational efforts. the dominant discourses reflect longstanding race, class, and gendered hierarchies that continue to be reproduced through new events and responses. for example, the discourses of globalization, anti-globalization, and de-globalization reflect many of the patterns of distribution established through colonial systems and resistance to these systems held in place by an ideological foundation of scarcity, individualism, and selfinterest that normalizes privileging of a few at the expense of the many. a global social justice education must then engage learners as well as educators in deliberative engagement to address this macro-level discourse and the subsequent institutional structures that so severely impact life in locales throughout the world. dryzek (2006) also identifies the conflicting discourses of human rights and citizenship, where universal basic rights are contrasted against counter-terror discourses which would subordinate human rights and citizenship engagements to issues of security. similar tensions exist in cases where national, religious, or ethnic identities are set up as oppositional. in response to these conflicting discourses, dryzek (2006), green (2006), and benhabib (1996) describe how an important 133 (re) imagining a shared future through abdi & shultz education for global social justice deliberative turn in both understandings and practices of democracy is emerging in response to current conflicts and geopolitical, social, and economic trends of globalization. with this turn, we see democratic legitimacy currently being framed in terms of engagement or participation without the effective deliberation by those who are subjected within current systems and conflicts (abdi, 2008), as well as more generally, those who are subject to collective decisions. the needed deliberative dialogic engagements may be the critical element in creating any shared future that extends beyond essentialized identity borders, beyond logics of supremacy, toward an authentic engagement with multiple worldviews based on reciprocity and respect. if deliberation is a key to re-imagining a shared future including global justice, we need to understand what forms the basis for such deliberation if it is to move us toward new possibilities. adam kahane (2007) draws on his extensive work in post conflict negotiation and processes of change in africa, europe, latin america, and north america, to adamantly claim that no change will happen without engagement and deliberative dialogue that addresses both love and power. as honneth (1995) describes, love, rights, and solidarity are key processes of reciprocity that can enable an expanded path of relationships of recognition (p. 170). counter-clash dialogic platforms founded on human rights and citizenship provide access as well as creative and transformational possibilities in relation to normalized exclusions of the majority of worldviews. human rights and inclusive citizenship becomes the pathway for finding shared language to make experiences of disrespect and exclusion both visible and audible. this appeal to co-created projects of resistance and re-imaging reveals the normalized clash logics as elite-serving constructions rather than necessities of a modern age. kahane highlights the need to engage deeply respectful relationship building, or love, to move us beyond established fatalistic logics. as martin luther king jr. declared in a speech shortly before his assassination, … what we need to realize is that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental 134 international journal of curriculum and instruction vol. vii, no. 1, july 2010 and anemic. it is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times. (martin luther king, jr., 1967) to negate the existence of, and in fact need for power relations in social contexts, is surely a real threat to global peace. here, violence and injustice become unrecognized and hidden behind the silent face of obedience and false appeals to rational liberal thought. it has been the denial of both influences of love and power and a claimed neutrality that allow discourses of hegemony to persist in reproducing hierarchal social relations and massive inequalities in the distribution of both material and social benefits. mansbridge (2006) defines power as “the actual or potential causal relation between the interests of an actor or set of actors and an outcome in which cause operates specifically through the use of force or the threat of sanction” (p. 47). if power is the ability to achieve a particular purpose for oneself or one’s group, then education for social justice must help students connect with their deepest purpose rather than uncritically subscribing to an externally determined purpose imposed through obfuscation of normalized relations of inequity, exclusion and injustice. if love is about connection with people, then we need to help students connect deeply with others to positively influence patterns of social development and social justice. deliberative dialogue as educational process engages teachers and learners in the struggle for the establishment of relations of mutual recognition and reciprocity. the interconnectedness of conditions for practical relations between self and others must be based on universal respect for human dignity and creating a social and cultural climate of extensive human solidarity, even as this means deliberating about and through the conflict and struggle related to these shifting relations (shultz, 2008). in this, education becomes as much about unlearning as it is about learning. there is a need for students to engage in unlearning and relearning through understanding how they have been positioned in relation to dominant discourses. deliberative dialogue provides a way for learning the limits of our own knowledge as participants are engaged in re-imagining, reconstructing and therefore, repositioning toward more just relations. 135 (re) imagining a shared future through abdi & shultz education for global social justice teaching and learning through dialogue engages both educators and students in processes of critical thinking and enactment of citizenship rights and responsibilities. this is not to suggest the path is an easy one. much of the education system as it currently exists, reflects the very same normative structures and logics existing in the wider system. the predominance of instrumental and technical educational contexts means there are few spaces for such generative dialogue or deep listening within formal educational institutions. this lack of space, coupled with a fear of engaging in identifying how power operates or in social justice processes that inevitably involve conflict if they are to be authentic, means that educators must be very committed to generative dialogic processes if they are to challenge the structural impediments to such education. however, each educator who does begin to engage in the project of global social justice stands to add to the wide transformation of creating a more just social reality. conclusion in this short article, we have analytically examined the possibilities of achieving globally inclusive social platforms that can bring together people’s intentions and livelihood practices so as to attain more constructive and dialogically enriching spaces that are intended for the betterment of the overall human agenda. in many instances, though, those who continually profit from the status quo would prefer the so-called ‘business-as-usual’ line that thrives on the logics of separation, historical essentialism, intercivilizational conflict, and the marginalization of such noble projects as human rights and social justice. a telling point here is how even such primary contexts of life as the rights claim to the basics of life are portrayed as untenable socialist projects that want to equalize all. apparently, social equality is, for the powerful at least, a common pathology that should be avoided as much as possible. undoubtedly, it is on the problematic exhortations of such ideologies that conflict is created in the first place. as interestingly and by extension, those who are seeking their rights by fair, peaceful means are created as the enemy that 136 international journal of curriculum and instruction vol. vii, no. 1, july 2010 must be fought against, and the bogey man of clash theses is deliberately constructed and maintained. to deal with these now selfishly globalized programs, we cannot and should not give up on the possible social justice project that may only be achieved through open dialogues and mutual understanding among peoples, states, and indeed, globally. to achieve this at a level that can have a widely diffused impact, the role of educators and educational programs cannot be underestimated. it is through learning that the all too important counter-clash possibilities may be realized. it is through the new education that we can re-launch new multicultural spaces that value all histories, achievements and aspirations. in other words, to achieve effective cases of intercivilizational dialogue involves yearning for and harnessing new capacities to learn together and learn from each other, for despite all the short-sighted desires of the current global power elite, our destiny is bound together more than ever. references abdi, a.a. 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(1993). moving the centre: the struggle for cultural freedom. london: heinemann. 139 brady et al (intro) final correspondence address: miranda j. brady, school of journalism and communication, carleton university, ottawa on k1s 5b6; email: miranda.brady@carleton.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 16, issue 2, 300-307, 2022 editors’ introduction autism_media_social justice miranda j. brady1 carleton university, canada kelly fritsch carleton university, canada margaret janse van rensburg carleton university, canada kennedy l. ryan carleton university, canada autism_media_social justice in recent years, there has been a growing fascination with autistic characters in popular media. from hollywood action thrillers like the accountant to sia’s bizarre, misguided musical drama music (luterman, 2021), to netflix dramadies such as atypical and amazon’s as we see it, there are now more overt and implied depictions of autism than ever before. many of these depictions have little to do with the actual lived experiences of autistic people. rather, they have more to do with ableist imaginaries and are primarily driven by and for allistic (meaning non-autistic) people. at the same time, autistic advocates themselves harness a plethora of communication forms in the active construction of their own identities and communities, building their worlds on their own terms. alongside growth in hollywood fascination, much of which infantilizes or treats autism as spectacle (luterman, 2021; milton, 2012; murray, 2008; smith, 2021) neurodivergent communities challenge stereotypical and ableist representations (kapp, 2020; davidson & orsini, 2013). this special issue offers a window into the powerful work done by autistic advocates, scholars, artists, and creative thinkers. the contributors turn a critical eye on damaging 1 co-editors are listed alphabetically; each co-editor contributed equally. autism_media_social justice studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 300-307, 2022 301 and misguided media constructs while noting the capacities of media in creating collective autistic worlds. this is where autism, media, and social justice meet. autistic advocates and scholars have highlighted how autism discourses frequently serve to reinscribe and naturalize medicalization and violence against autistic people (asan, 2018; mcguire, 2016; yergeau, 2018). such discourses target autistic people as objects to rehabilitate without considering the ways in which social shifts might enable autistic people to thrive. pushing back against biomedical and deficit-based discourses, autistic advocates instead challenge the media production norms that rarely include autistic people or consider them as audiences, and tokenize them when they do (luterman, 2021). centering autistic lives can help to “re-story” autism as a welcome difference that does not require cure or assimilation (douglas et al., 2019, p. 2; gillespie-lynch et al., 2017). it instead requires participatory autistic-produced and co-produced knowledge (waltz, 2014; woods et al., 2018). this special issue was created in part out of our understanding that there is insufficient critical scholarship addressing autistic creative expressions and in response to representations of autism in popular culture and discourse. collective action by autistic advocates and allies can point out the most problematic and ableist attitudes toward autistic people, while drawing attention to the pleasure, catharsis, and escapism of media creation and consumption which resonate with autistic lives. while there is a lot to be concerned about in popular culture, media can also bring great joy, connect autistic communities, and inspire a stim or intense interest. the creativity of these endeavors is limitless. as such, this special issue is dedicated to autism_media_social justice. we use underscores as we aim to illustrate the interconnectivity of these concepts and the utility of employing media for social justice, especially where autistic voices lead the way and are meaningfully included. this special issue seriously engages questions around how media and the process of making it can both disallow social justice imperatives for autistics and act as a vital catalyst for social change. it traces the relationships of power that construct autism in particular ways, challenges ableist approaches, and builds emancipatory autistic and disability culture toward more socially just futures. themes emerging from contributions the contributions included in this special issue were created by autistic advocates, allies, and academics, and the issue’s call for proposals particularly welcomed contributions from autistic authors. importantly, contributions by autistic thinkers continued behind the scenes in the editorial process, helping the collection take shape and offering insightful guidance to add depth and nuance to each piece. miranda j. brady, kelly fritsch, margaret janse van rensburg & kennedy l. ryan studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 300-307, 2022 302 while scholarly in nature, we encouraged various forms of expression from creative interventions like drawings, poetry, fanfiction, and performances to long-form academic articles. the response to the call for contributors was overwhelmingly positive and assumed a variety of methodological, theoretical, analytical, and activist frameworks, making unique contributions to the existing literature and creative terrain. authors and media makers both reflected on their process and the ways in which their collective social and individual identities informed their works yielding the collection offered here. the views of each contributor are distinctly their own and may or may not reflect those of other contributors and the editorial team. however, one common working assumption from the start required that contributors assume affirmative rather than deficit models of autism, and by extension autistic people. the special issue took shape over much of 2020 and 2021 and ultimately includes eight academic articles, one dispatch, one interview, and four creative interventions. various media forms are explored from fan fiction to television shows, live performance, government press releases and podcasts. several contributors also illustrated how the reach and accessibility of social media such as twitter, blogs, and youtube have made them important spaces where autistic advocates can build community and assert their perspectives. others provide responses to autistic experiences of marginalization as well as how to neuroqueer media and communication technologies toward better autistic futures. autistic othering and inclusion authors in this special issue work toward the goals of unravelling stigma and abuse by posing questions around autistic othering in the media and beyond. for example, sobey’s fanfiction rewrite (this issue) about the dr. seuss character, the grinch provides an apt metaphor for the profound alienation and cruelty imposed on those deemed other to or outside of normative society. ultimately, while sobey’s short story helps us reimagine the world through the perspective of the grinch (and explains why he became so jaded), it invites us to turn a critical lens on the saccharine, and indeed compulsory, homogeneity of the whos. whose voice counts is also of central concern in the promotion of political economic initiatives surrounding autism. janse van rensburg (this issue) questions how press releases by provincial governments reflect and impact societal perceptions and priorities. as janse van rensburg points out, particular framings of autism shape policy discourse, which can have real, material consequences for autistic people and contribute to ongoing power imbalances and social injustice. finally, christie-white (this issue) and keto (this issue) touch on the ways in which autistic voices may technically be folded into, but still othered in autism_media_social justice studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 300-307, 2022 303 institutional processes. christie-white describes this as acceptance versus inclusion. in their creative intervention, christie-white notes that true inclusion means providing the proper supports rather than expecting autistic people to manage in neurotypical and ableist institutions on their own once they are finally invited. similarly, keto notes the tokenism and co-optation they experienced while being consulted but marginalized on issues related to autism, and recommends congruence in words, thoughts, and actions as necessary in order for autistic social justice to take place; in other terms, true inclusion. questioning media, production, and conventions similarly, the omission of autistic people from various stages of media production reflects broader social exclusions. media forms like television shows hold promising avenues for better representations of autism. moreover, some autistic audiences relate to shows that overtly include autism as a theme (aspler et al., this issue) or read autistic codes onto their favourite characters and enjoy them immensely (gaeke-franz, this issue). however, autistic exclusion in production can also mean that shows inadvertently reproduce stereotypes and problematic ideological conventions (brady & cardin, 2021). as dodman’s creative intervention (this issue) notes of the tv series, the good doctor, their experiences differ drastically from the autistic character depicted by an allistic actor. at the same time, allistic expectations beyond the screen are shaped by such dramatic enactments. as dodman (this issue, p. 476) states: autistic people do not get to tell their stories or shape their truth be it on tv, or in politics, or on committees. the truth we wear – the truth we are made to shoulder – is shaped by parents, by service providers, by people with letters after their names – and sometimes a non-autistic man on tv who gets paid very well to wear my skin without ever having to live a day in it. similarly, gaeke-franz (this issue) examines the sitcoms the big bang theory and community, identifying the need for writers to understand how audiences read characters as autistic in order to enable representative, nonstereotypical, and socially just depictions of autism. pushing further, aspler et al. (this issue) ask writers and media-makers to engage with intersectionality and diverse representations of autistic, disabled, and neurodivergent characters, paying particular attention to the assumptions of class that emerge with different representations of neurological difference. for example, they compare the relatively affluent depiction of autism in atypical with that of fetal alcohol spectrum disorder in the show shameless. questioning the ways in which television shows use quick stereotypical associations for rapid character development helps to point out miranda j. brady, kelly fritsch, margaret janse van rensburg & kennedy l. ryan studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 300-307, 2022 304 longer cultural patterns that are of concern to many neurodivergent people. in order to avoid this, autistic voices must be central in autism-content creation rather than being an optional participant in autism stories. as dodman argues, going beyond convenience, autistic-created and co-created content holds potential for nuanced and strengths-focused constructions of autism. while often excluded in larger productions, one avenue where autistic people can be found thriving is in live performance, as evidenced by the comics not otherwise specified (cnos) stand-up comedy troupe, who in addition to performing onstage also produce their own podcast. cnos uses various media to platform issues of autistic experience as well as labour rights issues for comics in canada more broadly, utilizing their sharp, humourous approach (see interview with cnos, this issue). similarly, through the hoops for hope campaign, christie-white (this issue) has become a leader who bridges the art of dance with a passion for indigenous and autistic communities. finally, brady (this issue) demonstrates how young autistic performers use their work onstage and behind the scenes to challenge deficit-narratives of autism and showcase their talents in every aspect of performance and media production. whereas autism has often been treated as spectacle in performance, the stage is now an important site of social-justice advocacy. autistic inclusion and parenting allistics have shaped narratives about autistics for far too long, leading to cultural deficit-focused constructions of autism rife with misunderstandings. liang (this issue) explores such discourses in the context of parenting autistic children. by comparing blogs of autistic parents of colour to non-autistic white parents, they identify the discrepancies in experiences shared, and the lack of intersectional perspective in publicized priorities surrounding autism. similarly, questions around what parents should share about their autistic children online is explored in ryan’s (this issue) dispatch, which provides commentary on the youtube family vlogging channel fathering autism and the ecosystem of fame related to family influencers. they question whether it is ethical for parents to create content that centres heavily on the participation of a non-speaking autistic child, discussing surveillance, the capacity to consent, education, and entertainment. fletcher-randle (this issue), by contrast, forefronts the lived experiences of autistic parents through a review of online parenting content. they challenge professional perceptions of autistic caregivers as unable to parent by highlighting stories of capacity and capability, bringing awareness to the strengths of autistic parenting. autism_media_social justice studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 300-307, 2022 305 envisioning multimodal autistic advocacy and futures autistic advocates have established their space online, and over the last decade, there have been many digital communities developed for and by autistics. egner (this issue) explores the virtual learning communities on twitter created by autistics through the hashtags #actuallyautistic and #askingautistics. they find that twitter is a site of advocacy for autistics, which provides an avenue for new ways of understanding autism, autistic expertise, and autistic experiences. finally, while envisioning a more accessible and supportive future, rauchberg (this issue) identifies that there are limits to media and communication technologies so long as these are designed without the benefits of autistic expertise. rauchberg argues for a neuroqueer technoscience, underscoring the need for neurodivergent users and design teams to determine the future of assistive information and communication technologies. in calling for “ways of knowing, doing, and making that do not rely on allistic, harmful technologies to stylize neuroqueer communication supports,” rauchberg “positions neurodivergent communication styles as valid and worthy in mediated spaces, regardless of individual access needs” (this issue, p. 381). this special issue offers only one small window into the rich, creative, and intellectual landscape of autistic social justice as it intersects with media. we hope it will crack open some of the underlying assumptions and stereotypes that currently populate the ableist cultural imaginary about autism. moreover, as a model of truly collaborative co-creation, we hope it will build a future where meaningful autistic inclusion is the place from which we start. acknowledgements there are many people who helped make this special issue possible. first, we would like to thank each of the contributors for their energy, passion, and thoughtfulness in their submissions. behind each, there was a team of peer reviewers, and we would like to acknowledge their helpful guidance and insights; peer reviewing can sometimes be thankless and invisible work, but we could not have done it without you. we extend our gratitude to studies in social justice editor-in-chief david butz, who was exceedingly generous in time and patience. creative interventions editor caleb johnston and dispatch editor vanessa farr were also helpful throughout the process. thank you to christine jenkins and to doug mccreary and michael mccreary who lent their guidance and good humour to the project. finally, we would like to thank the autistic advocates who continue to advance strength-based perspectives and on whose shoulders we now stand. miranda j. brady, kelly fritsch, margaret janse van rensburg & kennedy l. ryan studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 300-307, 2022 306 references asan (autism self advocacy network). (2018). before you donate to autism speaks, consider the facts. retrieved july 17, 2018, from https://autisticadvocacy.org/wpcontent/uploads/2021/04/autismspeaksflyer2021.pdf aspler, j., harding, k. d., & casco m. a. (2022). representation matters: race, gender, class, and intersectional representations of autistic and disabled characters on television. studies in social justice, 16(2), 323-348. brady, m. j. (2022). onstage and behind the scenes: autistic performance and advocacy. studies in social justice, 16(2), 429-446. brady, m. j., & cardin, m. (2021). your typical atypical family: streaming apolitical autism on netflix. topia: canadian journal of cultural studies, 42, 91-116. brady, m. j., ryan, k. l., janse van rensburg, m. g., fritsch, k., mccreary, m., tiffin, p., dobbs, c., & schwartz, a. (2022). a conversation with comics not otherwise specified. studies in social justice, 16(2), 498-517. christie-white, r. (2022). acceptance v. inclusion: reframing the approach to helping individuals with disabilities in social settings. studies in social justice, 16(2), 496-497. davidson, j., & orsini, m. (eds.) (2013). worlds of autism: across the spectrum of neurological difference. university of minnesota press. dodman, e. (2022). an autistic letter to a neurotypical friend. studies in social justice, 16(2), 474-477. douglas, p., rice, c., runswick-cole, k., easton, a., gibson, m. f., gruson-wood, j., klar, e., & shields, r. (2019). re-storying autism: a body becoming disability studies in education approach. international journal of inclusive education, 25(5), 605-622. egner, j. (2022). #actuallyautistic: using twitter to construct individual and collective identity narratives. studies in social justice, 16(2), 349-369. fletcher-randle, j. e. (2022). where are all the autistic parents? a thematic analysis of autistic parenting discourse within the narrative of parenting and autism in online media. studies in social justice, 16(2), 389-406. gaeke-franz, b. (2022). rejection or celebration? autistic representation in sitcom television. studies in social justice, 16(2), 307-321. gillespie-lynch, k., kapp, s. k., brooks, p. j., pickens, j., & schwartzman, b. (2017). whose expertise is it? evidence for autistic adults as critical autism experts. frontiers in psychology, 8, 438. janse van rensburg, m. g. (2022). representations of autism in ontario newsroom: a critical content analysis of online government press releases, media advisories, and bulletins. studies in social justice, 16(2), 407-428. kapp, s. k. (2020). autistic community and the neurodiversity movement: stories from the frontline. palgrave macmillan. keto, k. (2022). words, thoughts, actions, and congruence in autistic social justice. studies in social justice, 16(2), 478-485. liang, b. (2022). divided communities and absent voices: the search for autistic bipoc parent blogs. studies in social justice, 16(2), 447-469. luterman, s. (2021, february 12). sia asked critics to watch her controversial new movie before judging it, so i did. slate. https://slate.com/culture/2021/02/sia-movie-music-autismgolden-globes-review.html mcguire, a. (2016). war on autism: on the cultural logic of normalized violence. university of michigan press. milton, d. e. m. (2012). on the ontological status of autism: the ‘double empathy problem.’ disability and society, 27(6), 883-887. murray, s. (2008). representing autism: culture, narrative, fascination. liverpool university press. rauchberg, j. s. (2022). imagining a neuroqueer technoscience. studies in social justice, 16(2), 370-388. ryan, k. l. (2022). stim, like, and subscribe: autistic children and family youtube channels. studies in social justice, 16(2), 470-473. autism_media_social justice studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 300-307, 2022 307 smith, i. (2021). conversations with ivanova: mental age theory [video]. youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8owhx_q70f8 sobey, s. (2022). the grinch 2. studies in social justice, 16(2), 486-495. waltz, m. (2014). worlds of autism: across the spectrum of neurological difference. disability & society 29(8), 1337-1338. woods, r., milton, d., arnold, l., & graby, s. (2018). redefining critical autism studies: a more inclusive interpretation. disability and society. 33(6), 974-979. yergeau, m. (2018). authoring autism: on rhetoric and neurological queerness. duke university press. journal of curriculum studies research https://curriculumstudies.org e-issn: 2690-2788 month year volume: 2 issue: 2 pp. 122-143 think outside the book: transformative justice using children’s literature in educational settings divya anand1 & laura m. hsu2 1. corresponding author cambridge college, department of early education and care, ma, boston, usa e-mail: divya.anand@go.cambridgecollege.edu 2. merrimack college, department of education and community studies, north andover, ma, usa article info received: april 1, 2020 revised: september 21, 2020 accepted: september 25, 2020 this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the cc by 4.0 international license. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) how to cite anand, d. & hsu, l. m. (2020). think outside the book: transformative justice using children’s literature in educational settings. journal of curriculum studies research, 2(2), 122-143. https://doi.org/10.46303/jcsr.2020.13 abstract using alexis jemal’s conceptualization of transformative potential, founded on paulo freire’s idea of critical consciousness, a guiding transformative justice approach and accompanying questionnaire are provided here that can be adapted into any existing early childhood or elementary curriculum for children. the approach provides teachers with a methodology to search for new books and resources and use existing ones to foster their own and their students’ critical social consciousness. the transformative justice approach has two objectives: one, to enable teachers to help understand, guide, and mediate differences in the context of equity and social justice; and two, to equip children with social awareness and critical consciousness to identify stereotypes and biases, and to build solidarities between and among themselves. the transformative justice approach does not actively avoid books or resources with stereotypes or biases, but seeks to build skill sets in children and teachers to recognize and counter biases and stereotypes using texts as learning tools. it synthesizes and builds on anti-bias and culturallysensitive pedagogies to intentionally center structural and systemic inequities, as well as fosters social awareness and critical thinking in both teachers and students by reimagining the classroom as a collaborative learning space. keywords transformative justice; critical social consciousness; children’s literature; anti-bias; equity; social justice 10.46303/jcsr.2020.13 https://curriculumstudies.org/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.46303/jcsr.2020.13 123 introduction “i have never encountered any children in any group who are not geniuses. there is no mystery on how to teach them. the first thing you do is treat them like human beings and the second thing you do is love them.” –dr. asa hilliard children develop consciousness of differences, including that of race and skin tones, between six to 10 months, and begin showing racial preferences as early as four years of age (baron & banaji, 2006; dunham et al., 2013; raabe & beelmann, 2011; williams & steele, 2019). the meanings, associations, and judgments that children correlate with people are drawn from their environment, which encompasses families, media, school, and community. children and adults learn from the contexts they are embedded in, which inform each other, and show explicit and implicit biases that are learned from the environment (over & mccall, 2018). research shows how implicit bias impacts children who are african american, black, indigenous, people of color (abipoc)1 starting in preschool classrooms (gilliam et al., 2016; skiba, 2015; skiba et al., 2011). this finding also aligns with school disciplinary data that indicate abipoc students are disproportionately disciplined in comparison to their white counterparts (mcneal, 2016; us house of representatives, 2019; welsh & little, 2018). the preschool to prison pipeline is one of the tangible manifestations of bias that speaks to the gap between the promise of education and its disparate outcomes (anand, 2020; gilliam et al., 2016). the idea of what constitutes as an infraction in the classroom is chiefly dependent on the beliefs, implicit and explicit biases, and stereotypes held by the teacher, and plays a key role in the preschool to prison pipeline (carter et al., 2017; gullo, 2017; mcneal, 2016; staats, 2014). it is also pertinent to note that according to the national center for education statistics for 20152016, 81 percent of all public elementary and secondary school students in the u.s. were nonwhite. in contrast, teachers who identified as abipoc make up only 20 percent of the teaching workforce in public schools (national center for education statistics, 2017). as disciplinary measures are initiated based on teacher judgment, and given the gap between the demographic composition of public school teachers and students, the association among race, implicit bias, and school discipline need to be considered. in fact, several studies have pointed to the connections between racial stereotypes and biases, and cultural dissonance between students and teachers contributing to disproportionate discipline outcomes (fabelo et al., 2011; golann, 2015; gregory & mosely, 2004; gregory & thompson, 2010; howard, 2001; okonofua & eberhardt, 2015; skiba, 2015; skiba et al., 2011; staats, 2014). conversely, it becomes crucial to examine the relationship between school discipline and academic performance to interrogate the current us public school system’s capacities to nurture and support the holistic development of abipoc students. 1 we add african american to the beginning of black indigenous people of color (abipoc) to acknowledge people who are americans of african origin whose ancestors were enslaved, as opposed to black, which includes people from african countries who have immigrated to the us. one “a” instead of two are used at the beginning of the acronym for sake of brevity. 124 within this education system, disproportionate disciplinary outcomes, leading to students missing instruction in the classroom, directly contribute to the achievement gap, or the disparity in the academic outcomes of abipoc students and low-income students in comparison to their counterparts (gregory et al., 2010; morris & perry, 2017). discrimination based on race and ethnicity toward abipoc students triggers psychological and biological responses to these stressors, which has manifold impacts on learning. these stressors negatively impact motivation levels and cognitive processes such as attention, memory, and executive functioning, all of which are associated with academic achievement (heissel et al., 2017; levy et al., 2016). the correspondence between school discipline and racial differences in achievement point to multiple, intersecting factors operating inside and outside of the school system. for children belonging to the global majority, contextualizing differences based on social equities or inequities help them to not internalize discrimination as an experience they deserve or due to a deficit in them. it creates a sense of identity, consciousness, and agency that enable them to speak and act for themselves, and be who they are. for others, exposure to differences steers them clear from a false sense of ethnocentric pride and also “normalizes” differences in others, to identify inequities and use their platforms to amplify the voices of historically disenfranchised communities. in this context, it is important to create narratives and curricula that depict the full humanity of people, for both children who belong or do not belong to disenfranchised communities, as we aim for structural and systemic change in our education system. a consequent factor to examine is how observing and imbibing teacher behavior influences children’s self-perception and their perception of other children in early childhood and elementary classrooms. as bettina love (2014) reiterates for children of color2 in schools, it leads to spirit murdering, a term coined by legal scholar patricia williams (1991), which is “the personal, psychological, and spiritual injuries to people of color through the fixed, yet fluid and moldable, structures of racism, privilege, and power” (p. 302). instilling a positive social and racial identity in abipoc children, and bolstering their ability to withstand and counter the social, emotional, psychological, and cognitive effects of racism, becomes imperative. as stated earlier, the onset of the school to prison pipeline is identified in early childhood classrooms (edelman, 2006; goff et al., 2014). countering and re-imagining the gaps in both discipline and achievement in early childhood and elementary classrooms then needs to take a multidimensional and proactive approach. the approach needs to be multidimensional because for teachers to foster academic, social, and emotional development of children, awareness of the systemic and structural barriers that inhibit the learning and well-being of all students is key, as much as individual micro-level factors within the classroom. 2 we wish to preserve the original reference that love (2014) uses for “children of color” and thus do not reference abipoc here. 125 critical social consciousness and transformative justice founded on paulo freire’s (2000) idea of critical consciousness, alexis jemal (2017) puts forth the notion of transformative potential in urban educational spaces to transform oppressive, discriminatory spaces into equitable, just, and liberating spaces for all students. jemal offers three goals of transformative potential: (1) to objectify and address issues of systemic inequity, (2) to produce an informed and civically engaged student body with the capacity to transform individuals, families, communities, institutions, and sociopolitical systems, and (3) to raise the critical consciousness of educators who are responsible for producing the leaders of the future. (p. 18) transformative change and action for teachers start with creating awareness of explicit and implicit biases at the individual level. at the systemic level, understanding the disparate educational outcomes for children due to structural inequities, and being mindful of the intersecting nature of power and privilege that underpin social hierarchies is also vital. developing critical consciousness and incorporating practices rooted in social justice within the classroom, to critically reflect, question, challenge, and transform, is the next step. it involves both critical consciousness and critical reflection to engage in dialogue that causes discomfort, to understand and recognize inequities, and to take action. in this sense, critical consciousness leading to transformative potential also breaks free from the oppressed/oppressor binary as it recognizes people with different permutations and combinations of privilege and disempowerment at the same time. this understanding frees the onus of transformative potential as the sole responsibility of those who are identified as the oppressor or the oppressed. freire (2000) calls for solidarity, asking the oppressor to “enter into the situation of those with whom one is in solidarity” (p. 49). jemal (2017) identifies this as the “radical posture of empathy” (p.15), whereby the oppressed and oppressor must collaborate to transform the structures that beget oppression. taking into account the overrepresentation of white individuals who identify as female in the teaching workforce, this conceptualization opens up greater possibilities for solidarity in bringing transformative change by rejecting onedimensional bracketing of individuals based on singular identity markers, be it on the basis of oppression or privilege. in this context, the concept of intersectionality—often used to denote the presence of multiple dimensions of oppression based on an individual’s multiple identities—is pertinent. kimberlé crenshaw’s (1990) original conceptualization of intersectionality, used to frame the multiple dispossessions of african-american women based on race and gender, focused on transformative and counter-hegemonic knowledge production. however, as sirma bilge (2013) cautions, the “superficial deployment of intersectionality undermines intersectionality’s credibility and potentials for addressing interlocking power structures and developing an ethics of non-oppressive coalition-building and claims-making” (p. 408). while using intersectionality 126 helps circumvent defining individuals based on singular in-group identities, it is critical to use this term without depoliticizing it and by factoring in historical and structural inequities that mark the experiences of individuals as intersectional. it is with this understanding that we use the term “intersectionality,” to be bound by radical transformative action that develops critical consciousness of structural, systemic, and historical inequities in education and to move towards transformative change. this rationale is not to blame or stereotype white teachers, but to underscore the fact that they are the most likely to teach abipoc children, and the least likely to share common ground with them. they have the potential to create significant and affirmative cross-social interactions, while serving as role models for white children, and influencing the perception of all children about themselves and each other (allen & whitesmith, 2015). it, again, follows freire’s (2000) interpretation of the teacher-student relationship as one of co-learning, where teachers are facilitators who engage in a non-hierarchical relationship with their students, model how to challenge the dominant social status quo leading to transformation, and engage in a process of co-creating knowledge through multiple methods and dialogical practices (freire, 2000; jemal, 2017; smith-maddox & solórzano, 2002). in the classroom, teachers become the primary and active participants in developing critical consciousness and transformative potential for themselves, as much as they facilitate and develop the same for their students. the transformative justice approach is about consciously mediating meanings for children that are socially and historically grounded to help them understand differences in ways that counter stereotypes and negative biases, be it about themselves or others different from them. regardless of the curriculum, book, or medium where students are exposed to a stereotype or stereotyped narrative, students are able to identify and question the stereotype, moving towards transformative action. while culturally aware pedagogies are incorporated in classrooms, it is crucial to not consider such pedagogies as a substitute for equity-oriented transformation (gorski, 2019; gorski & pothini, 2018). at the same time, the ability to constantly question and rethink the teacher's own understanding in light of new information is necessary to build on this foundation of transformative potential— one that is rooted in the knowledge of bias, prejudice, human rights, and ideas of fairness and justice. this critical thinking ability grounded in social awareness is crucial as transformation is a constant process, since messages embedded in books, television, media, and the external environment continuously contribute to the ways in which stereotypes and biases, both implicit and explicit, get embedded in students’ consciousness (over & mccall, 2018). this approach allows both teachers and children to explore the ways in which stereotypes are created and the arbitrary ways in which they get embedded in the collective social psyche. abipoc remain underrepresented in children’s literature, including school curricula and, even if represented, they are often portrayed in stereotypical and unidimensional ways (cooperative children’s book center, 2019). children’s books are used as tools to build a transformative justice lens while revisiting and revising existing curriculum. in using this approach, teachers learn how to use books to foster critical social consciousness by centering 127 differences—to critically engage students on the different aspects of power and privilege made both visible and invisible within them. the transformative justice approach scaffolds critical thinking prompts that allow for intersectional understandings, untangling deficit and stereotyped subtexts, and a metacognitive understanding of social contexts, including racism and privilege. building on critical selfreflection, this approach uses a diffractive method and practice. diffraction involves reading insights through one another “in ways that help illuminate differences as they emerge: how differences get made, what gets excluded, and how these exclusions matter" (barad, 2007, p. 30). by placing the teacher at the center of the educational experience via self-reflection, diffractive practices allow for transformative shifts in pedagogy. as cher hill (2017) notes, teachers can be anchored as “nomadic” entities in order “to embrace a fluid and emergent sense of self, embrace difference and interference, while setting up pedagogical camps from time to time, and returning to familiar routes on a regular basis” (p. 9). this allows for the binaries of student-teacher to be disrupted and position them both with equal agency as “intra-acting bodies” (p. 8) that foster co-learning. transformative justice questionnaire building upon the research of equity literacy and anti-bias educators, such as derman-sparks (2013), gorski and pothini (2018), reese (2006), and york (2016), the authors created the following questionnaire, intended for educators and caretakers, to apply the transformative justice approach. the questionnaire serves as a guide for selecting books and facilitating discussions about books with children. one major distinction between prior approaches and the transformative justice approach is to address stereotypes in books as critical learning moments for both teacher and students, rather than shielding students from books with any stereotypes. the transformative justice questionnaire supports teachers in foregrounding conversations around diversity, equity, and social justice on a variety of identity markers, including race, poverty and socioeconomic status, religion, ethnicity and culture, hair diversity, immigrant status, language diversity, disabilities, sex and gender, sexual orientation, and family composition. although questions specific to distinct identity markers are included in the questionnaire, there may be multiple identities that are salient or not salient in any given context. characters have multidimensional identities, and often what is left unsaid and outside the text speaks as much to the story as what is within the story. thus, a combination of the following questions can be used while reading, and to discuss how various aspects of identity can impact a person’s experience differently. context is an equally important character in every story, as it situates a character within a particular time period, region, and cultural milieu, and within specific institutional structures. it is, then, impossible to ignore the transactional relationship between the environment and oneself on identity development and the reactions of others. 128 finally, it is important to note that this questionnaire will continue to evolve with new insights and socio-historical contexts. as with many aspects of equity and social justice, the process of asking critical questions and gaining insights is open-ended and timeand contextdependent. nevertheless, the authors hope this questionnaire can be a starting point for developing a transformative justice approach. general questions  who seems to be the intended audience for this book?  how would this book look different to varied audiences?  are the author and the illustrator able to speak to the experience depicted in the story, or does the story seem to be written by an outsider looking in?  if the author’s lived experiences speak to the major parts of the story (#ownvoices story), are there parts of the story that are not representative of the author’s lived experiences? if so, how do we address cultural misrepresentation in this context?  is one character from a particular socio-cultural background depicted as the spokesperson for that experience or socio-cultural background?  does the book use an “us” vs. “them” dichotomy, either overtly or covertly (those who belong versus those who don’t, as something “special” and hence “different”)?  is the book’s message essentially “we are all different but the same,” without acknowledging or addressing how these differences may mean inequitable and disparate experiences for “different” people, and that the conditions that create those “inequities” still persist?  does the book, in any way, depict inclusion as going out of the way to make “changes/accommodations” for a particular character(s)?  do the illustrations in the book contain stereotypical images or caricatures (e.g., exaggerated features of characters)?  how do the illustrations in the story impact the message of the story?  are characters depicted as “different” put in the spotlight in a way that forces them to overtly or covertly efface their identity markers? subsequently, do characters feel compelled to change their behavior or hide parts of their identity to belong in the story? poverty and socio-economic status  are the characters from lower socio-economic statuses depicted as african american black indigenous people of color (abipoc), and does the book overtly or covertly imply that lower income families or children can overcome poverty by hard work (or conversely, that it is their lack of hard work that is the cause of their poverty)?  how does the book depict the ways in which families can “rise out” of lower socio economic statuses? does it pathologize families or communities experiencing poverty? 129  are abipoc characters or other characters presented as “trouble-makers” for speaking up or advocating for themselves or others?  does it allow a conversation on systemic and structural barriers? religion  what religion is depicted as “normal” and “accepted” in the story?  are there assumptions made in the story about religions or religious practices? if yes, how true or nuanced are those depictions?  how would the book occur to children/families who do not follow any religion? ethnicity and culture  are particular cultural celebrations depicted without addressing the sociohistorical reality of the community depicted and the inequities they may continue to face?  are cultural markers depicted as “costumes,” “mascots,” or conflated with general “stereotypes,” including those of food, celebrations, dressing, etc.?  when pointing to “multicultural” celebratory plotlines, does the book speak of ethnic heritage that is easily traceable/identifiable for everyone? for example, there may be african american, transracial adoptee, or multi-racial children who may not be able to trace their ethnic lineage. race  in what ways are “whiteness” normalized as the status quo in the book? or, conversely, how does the story break “whiteness” as the status quo?  are black or shades of brown, for both people and the color, equated with negative traits or values, such as dirty, evil, or lazy?  is white, both people and the color, associated with beauty, cleanliness, goodness, etc.? hair diversity  what kind of hair is portrayed as “the” beauty standard?  does the book “normalize” different types of hair?  are different kinds of hair, depicted as needing different kinds of care, accurately represented without one being portrayed as preferable over another?  does the book overtly or covertly reference the ways in which african american/black hair continues to be policed and demonized in society?  is there a value judgement placed on natural hair versus coiffed/treated hair? 130 immigrant status  how are differences framed (e.g., immigrants as “foreign” or “illegal” based on human-made, arbitrary borders with immigration policies often stemming from racism)?  are all the immigrant characters’ experiences deemed the same? is there a value attached or a glorification of “non-immigrant” characters who accept differences?  is the immigrant or refugee experience portrayed in a deficit manner, such that the immigrant or refugee arrives to only “gain” opportunity and, in turn, prevents looking at their culture and presence as an asset? language diversity  what language is presented as the standard or the preferred language?  are people speaking languages other than english portrayed as “lacking” without fluency in english?  are words in other languages depicted as “unusual” or “exotic,” or are they integrated within the context of the book?  is speaking more than one language depicted as an asset or a deficit?  is speaking certain languages, such as french, seen more favorably than speaking other languages, such as arabic, spanish, or hindi?  how are different registers or dialects of english depicted? for example, does a book centering african-american experiences use african-american vernacular english (aave) with pejorative connotations?  does the story or the narrative involve tone policing, where the use of dialectical or colloquial variations are depicted negatively?  are stories about a particular community written in standard english? are the words/text used, reflective of the cultural-linguistic variations associated with a community? disabilities  what is the standard or basis from which acceptance is measured?  does the plot celebrate overcoming the adversity of having a disability as inspirational for people without disabilities? who seems to be the intended audience?  is “inspiration” drawn from a person with disabilities who is striving to be like an “able-bodied” person, which re-establishes able-bodiedness as an asset and disability as a deficit?  is the aim of the story to invoke guilt in people without disabilities to try harder— for example, “if x (who is on a wheelchair) can do it, so can you”? here, the onus is 131 for people without disabilities to either get inspired, or to feel compelled to strive more, using people with disabilities as examples. gender  does the book serve to neutralize the pressure to conform to particular gender identities aligning with accepted gender expressions?  what genders are “normalized” in the book and accepted?  how would the book impact a child who does not identify along the traditional gender binary or the gender depicted in the book?  do the characters depicted in the book conform to or break off from traditional “gender” roles? sexual orientation  in what ways does the book characterize heterosexuality as normative (for example, that all families consist of a mother and father only)?  what other social identities intersect with each character’s sexual orientation, and how does that affect their lived realities? family composition  does the book depict family structures as something that can change over time (e.g., new sibling(s), divorce, loss, blended families)?  how far does the plot allow the reader to think about family compositions other than dual-parent households and heteronormative couples as parents?  apart from heteronormative, cisgender characters, does the book feature diverse representation in terms of race, disabilities, gender expressions/identities, etc.? allyship  is it clear from the plot, who is oppressed and why?  do the ally character/s stand in solidarity with the oppressed character, despite a risk to themselves?  is the onus placed on the “oppressed” character to change themselves to be more “likeable” and to not be bullied/harassed?  is the reason (often it's the “difference” from the rest of the group) for being harassed/bullied presented as a character flaw or a physical disability? is this addressed in the book?  what is the role, if any, of the adults in the book? do any adults witness or, worse, take part in the oppression? are they merely observant, or do they intervene when they observe an oppressive act?  are the bully/harasser characters in the book held accountable at some point? does the corrective action seem adequate for what happened? 132 to illustrate how the transformative justice questionnaire can be used for diffractive reading, and to critically reflect on children’s literature, some examples are provided here. the colors of us by karen katz (1999) a widely used children’s book in anti-bias curricula is the colors of us, written and illustrated by karen katz (1999). the book is about a seven-year-old child named lena, who first introduces herself and says she is the color of cinnamon. she next describes her mother’s skin color, also analogous to a food, as french toast, and narrates that her mother is teaching her how to mix colors. her mother explains that if the colors are mixed in the right combination, it will result in lena’s skin color. lena replies that she thinks she simply has brown skin, which her mother refutes by saying there are a lot of shades of brown. lena’s mother then suggests they go for a walk so she can illustrate her point. on their walk, lena’s mother points out the various shades of skin colors they observe and makes a comparison to food for each person. the intention to normalize a spectrum of skin colors, and to celebrate the uniqueness of one’s skin color with a seemingly lighthearted and accessible comparison, are some of the reasons this book appeals to many. however, the book inadvertently reinforces stereotypes in its depiction of some of the characters associated with food. for example, mr. pellegrino, who works in a local pizza parlor-which is stereotypical in and of itself--is described as having skin the color of “pizza crust, a golden brown”. thereafter, mr. kashmir, who sells spices in lena’s mother’s favorite store, is the color of “ginger and chili powder”. this is especially fraught given the colonial stereotyping of the word curry, which is used to refer to the many gravy-like dishes made with a mix of spices, including ginger and chili powder, in different proportions. there is no one dish called curry, and the term was coined by the british to give a homogenized name for a variety of south asian dishes (maroney, 2011). the “curry smelling” indian immigrant or the stindian, a conflation of the stinky indian immigrant, is a common racist stereotype and, as madhavi mallapragada (2016) notes, “curry marks the outsider status of the [south asian] immigrant not just within the ‘national’ framework (‘indian not american’) but also within the racial hierarchies of american culture (‘not white’ and not a desirable ‘ethnic’ group within multicultural united states)” (p. 265). therefore, mr. kashmir, named after the disputed territory of kashmir in the indian subcontinent, looking like “ginger and chili powder” in the story, becomes problematic. essentializing skin color to stereotypical foods is a double affront--not only does it caricature certain skin colors and nationalities, but by comparing black and brown skin color to food, it implies it is something to be consumed, and thus also feeds into the oversexualization and fetishization of black and brown women and children (benard, 2016). without looking at the colors of us with a critical eye, it is tempting to accept the book at face value, so to speak, and see only the superficial merits of the diverse array of colors of people’s skin. however, a transformative justice approach reveals entrenched stereotypes and a trivialization of describing one’s skin color. addressing the following questions in the transformative justice questionnaire reveals such misrepresentations: “how would this book 133 look different to varied audiences?”; “does the book use an “us” vs. “them” dichotomy, either overtly or covertly (those who belong versus those who don’t, as something “special” and hence “different”)?”; “is the book’s message essentially ‘we are all different but the same,’ without acknowledging or addressing how these differences may mean inequitable and disparate experiences for ‘different’ people, and that the conditions that create those ‘inequities’ still persist?”; “do the illustrations in the book contain stereotypical images or caricatures (e.g., exaggerated features of characters)?”; and “how do the illustrations in the story impact the message of the story?” parker looks up: an extraordinary moment by jessica curry (2019) the much-awaited parker looks up: an extraordinary moment, written by jessica curry (2019) and illustrated by brittany jackson, is another book that lends itself to a diffractive analysis with the transformative justice approach. parker looks up was inspired by real life events in 2018, when 2-year-old parker curry visited the national portrait gallery in washington, d.c., with her mother, sister, and best friend. amy sherald's portrait of former first lady michelle obama led to the viral photograph, a visit with michelle obama, and, eventually, jessica curry’s book. the snapshot of a young, black girl looking up in awe at an african american woman whose portrait was as large as her stature and influence, captivated many, and the book quickly rose to best seller lists. there was one overlooked depiction, however, that caught the eye of debbie reese (2019) of nambé pueblo and founder of american indians in children's literature (aicl) blogspot. reese points out a page spread in parker looks up of a portrait of american indians3 at the national portrait gallery. the portrait titled, “young omahaw, war eagle, little missouri, and pawnees,” was painted by charles bird king in 1821. the actual size of the portrait at the national portrait gallery is 28 inches by 31 1/8 inches, whereas michelle obama’s portrait is 72.1 inches by 60.1 inches. in parker looks up, relative to how michelle obama’s portrait is illustrated, reese estimates king’s portrait in the book is approximately 72 inches by 36 inches. although there is a note in the back of the book that the paintings in the book are "reimagined as parker curry experienced them during her unforgettable and memorable visit to the national portrait gallery and smithsonian art museum," parker curry was 2-years-old when she visited the gallery. to have increased the size of king’s portrait relative to michelle obama’s portrait, in some ways minimizes what impact king’s portrait may have had in the context of the story. size aside, the most glaring misrepresentation of the portrait in curry’s book was the addition of more feathers on the american indian men in king’s portrait, which were not in the original painting, and which clearly reinforce the stereotype of all american indians wearing feathers. feathers carry significant meaning among american indian communities. feathers 3 we use “american indian” to be consistent with the title of reese’s blogspot, american indians in children's literature (aicl), in which she discusses american indian imagery and portrayals in children’s literature. we recognize others may alternatively prefer native, native american, or indigenous american, and, when possible, the particular tribal name with which one is affiliated (native knowledge 360° faq, 2020; reese, 2019). https://www.npr.org/2018/02/13/585299081/obama-portraits-unveiled-at-national-portrait-gallery 134 were bestowed to members who were particularly valiant in battle or exhibited great sacrifice to defend one’s community (kotrous, 2017). feathers were also used for ceremonial purposes, such as healing and spiritual rites (levine, 1991). the number of objects in american indian rituals have significance, as well (danchevskaya, 2016). for example, according to the pawnee nation of oklahoma (pawneenation.org), the four prime eagle feathers bear significance, which are attached at the top of the flag to represent the four pawnee bands: chaui, pitahawirata, skidi and kitkehahki. finally, the source of those feathers are important. according to the american indian heritage foundation, feathers from golden or bald eagles signify one of the highest honors that could be received, as american indians believe eagles have a special connection with the heavens because they fly at very high altitudes (“feathers,” 2018). in the original portrait by king, the men are wearing eagle feathers on their heads (smithsonian american art museum, 2006). however, curry (2019) clearly added additional feathers to the men, and feathers that may have come from birds other than eagles. while other bird feathers were used in american indian ceremonies, they had distinct meanings and were used in deliberately different ways (levine, 1991). thus, the addition of the feathers, of arbitrary number and kind, distorts the original portrait, not just in terms of accuracy, but the meaning of what the american indian men wore. as reese (2019) asserts, “there is absolutely no reason to lift one marginalized group and misrepresent another.” the book unquestionably lifted the image of black people, and black women in particular—so much so that it earned a nomination for the naacp outstanding literary work-children award in 2020. however, as reese (2019) exclaims, even the publisher, simon and schuster, did not catch the misrepresentation of american indians. book award nominees and winners are highly sought after additions to any library collection; nevertheless, it is important to consider the book’s explicit and implicit messages on every page, from its words to its illustrations. for example, caldecott medal awardee arrow to the sun by gerald mcdermott (1975) (see horning’s (2013) and reese’s (2006, 2009) critiques) and new york times book review best illustrated children’s book awardee, a fine dessert, written by emily jenkins (2015) and illustrated by sophie blackall (see thomas, reese, and horning’s (2016) critique), are other examples of books that garnered awards and later received criticism for gross misrepresentations and culturally insensitive depictions. the transformative justice questionnaire identifies these gaps with the following questions: “how would this book look different to varied audiences?”; “who seems to be the intended audience for this book?”; “are the author and the illustrator able to speak to the experience depicted in the story, or does the story seem to be written by an outsider looking in?”; “if the author’s lived experiences speak to the major parts of the story (#ownvoices story), are there parts of the story that are not representative of the author’s lived experiences? if so, how do we address cultural misrepresentation in this context?”; “do the illustrations in the book contain stereotypical images or caricatures (e.g., exaggerated features of characters)?”; and “how do the illustrations in the story impact the message of the story?” by reflecting on these questions, educators can 135 evaluate the authenticity and accuracy of the story and its illustrations to point out inaccuracies and misrepresentations, whenever possible. for older children, it can also lead to a meaningful conversation about why there may be a disjunct between reality and what is shown in books, television, and other media. i am jazz by jessica herthel and jazz jennings (2014) an example of diffractive reading concerning gender identity is the autobiographical children’s picture book i am jazz, written by jessica herthel and jazz jennings (2014) and illustrated by shelagh mcnicholas. while i am jazz positively models the transition of jazz with the support of family and friends, it inadvertently stereotypes gender roles and expressions along a binary, unless there is a critical conversation about how the story is particular to jazz’s experience as a transgender child. as michael lovelock (2017) notes, the visibility of trangender people in the media is largely due to the more specific fact that they are celebrities as much as they identify as transgender, which includes jazz jennings, laverne cox, janet mock, and caitlyn jenner. the book, while speaking of the transgender experience, reaffirms gendered binaries with lines such as jazz “having a boy body in a girl brain,” and liking pink, singing, make-up, dress-up, and mermaids. given that the story centers a transgender child and can lead to conversations about being gender-creative, “the unlearning of gender norms, is even more critical than the learning of anti-bias concepts” (sullivan, 2016, p. 79, emphasis in original). the questions from the transformative justice questionnaire, “what genders are ‘normalized’ in the book and accepted?”; “how would the book impact a child who does not identify along the traditional gender binary or the gender depicted in the book?”; and “do the characters depicted in the book conform to or break off from traditional ‘gender’ roles?” allow children to “diffract” from the book to develop a more nuanced understanding of transgender people. gender color-coded messages are shown to have a strong impact on children’s brain development, including the career paths they choose (anand, 2019). books such as julian is a mermaid, written and illustrated by jessica love (2018), and when aidan became a brother, written by kyle lukoff (2019) and illustrated by kaylani juanita, feature multiple aspects of identity. these books that provide a more intersectional analytic lens are, however, few and far between. the ugly dumpling by stephanie campisi (2016) a final example of diffractive reading using the transformative justice approach is an analysis of the ugly dumpling, written by stephanie campisi (2016) and illustrated by shahar kober. the ugly dumpling is critiqued for its racist depiction of a chinese restaurant with the main character being a cockroach (ray, 2020). the book depicts all dumplings as ugly, and the restaurant to be unhygienic with cockroaches and bugs, where the chef and the waiters are asian, while all the patrons are white. campisi identifies as white, and the story has multiple instances of stereotyping that are racist. the original ugly duckling is, itself, a deeply problematic story in 136 which the “duckling” is teased and ostracized on account of being different and only finds acceptance when it transforms into a swan that is recognizable by others. these examples evince how critically acclaimed books can still fall short, with hidden stereotypes that are easy to overlook, if not read with a transformative justice lens. implicit bias and social conditioning to stereotypes mean that unless conscious vigilance, critical thinking, and social awareness are developed, it is easy to overlook misrepresentations, inadvertently reinforce stereotypes, and thus perpetuate systemic inequities. books written by authors with lived experiences of the characters seem to address some of the challenges with misrepresentation. the rise of the #ownvoices movement in 2015, started by corinne duyvis in response to the lack of books written by authors belonging to non-white groups (https://www.corinneduyvis.net/ownvoices/), has provided much needed attention to bridge the “diversity gap” in children’s literature. according to the cooperative children’s book center (ccbc) 2017 multicultural statistics (2018), black, latinx, and american indian authors combined wrote just 7% of new children’s books published. furthermore, only 29% of books about african/african american people were written by black authors or illustrators; 34% of books about latinx folks were written or illustrated by latinx people; and 53% of books with american indian content/characters were written or illustrated by american indian creators. this “diversity gap” in publishing leaves out children who are abipoc to find adequate representations of themselves in literature (wenjen, 2018). however, #ownvoices has also led to some controversy, about the extent to which the entire book must be written from the lived experience of the author. the withdrawal of kosoko jackson’s young adult (ya) novel a place for wolves (2019) and amélie wen zhao’s blood heir (2019) are a couple instances where parts of the story were critiqued for not reflecting the author’s own lived experiences (waldman, 2019). the book parker looks up, as illustrated above, qualifies as a much-needed #ownvoices book, but at the same time misrepresents american indian people (reese, 2019). clarifying questions raised about #ownvoices include, do #ownvoices inadvertently consign authors to write only stories of marginalization, based on their identities? or when it comes to disability in children’s literature, should disclosing disabilities by authors be a prerequisite, or would a story written by caregivers about a non-verbal child qualify as #ownvoices? regardless of these questions and controversies, the significance of #ownvoices cannot be re-emphasized enough. conclusion the transformative justice approach requires an intentional centering of historically disenfranchised identities and a conscious dismantling of unconscious biases that people develop as a result of being exposed to systematic stereotyping of particular people and communities, which are often depicted in media, books, messaging by socializing agents, and other influences. the hope is that this way of thinking will become automatic with more repetition, so that the student and the teacher will become accustomed to inquiring about 137 structures of power and privilege that may or may not apply to them. inviting students’ lived experiences as part of the learning process means that abipoc students and their cultures are valued, not as tools to teach trauma, but as narratives that celebrate strength, resilience, and resistance. this balance has to be central in the classroom so that the humanity of all children are recognized and respected. teacher and student, in this sense, do not operate from a hierarchical binary, but as co-learners, bringing in experience and expertise to the common space of the classroom and beyond. rudine sims bishop (2007) notes that in books written by african american authors, the story “nurtures the souls of black children by reflecting back to them, both visually and verbally, the beauty and competencies that we as adults see in them” (p. 273). as shown with the book analyses above, despite the increase in the numbers of “diverse” books (school library journal, 2019), there are distortions and misrepresentations that are inadvertently incorporated. again, the question, “who is the intended reader?” becomes important here. based on bishop’s (1990) distinction of books as “windows, mirrors and sliding doors” for children, debbie reese points to “funhouse mirrors” when misrepresentation of american indian images trivialize, caricature and disrespect when children from those communities read them (school library journal, 2019, para. 3). ebony elizabeth thomas goes further to call them “distorted funhouse mirrors of the self” (school library journal, 2019, para. 3). moreover, books that represent one aspect of diversity are often consumed without question and read to children without any critical thinking prompts. the transformative justice approach is open-ended, in that it factors in systemic barriers that exist in the present to invoke systemic change, while standing within the structures of the us education system and simultaneously dismantling it. this includes the overrepresentation of white teachers in the teaching workforce as the number of abipoc students increase (national center for education statistics, 2017), the lack of diversity in the book publishing industry (leeandlowbooks, 2020), and the lack of representation within children’s books (cooperative children’s book center, 2019). with schools being increasingly underfunded (us house of representatives, 2019), access to books and other resources are further stymied. our hope is that the transformative justice approach would robustly complicate binaries and foster critical thinking to front and center people’s lived experiences, with classrooms becoming co-learning spaces that would lead towards systemic change and from equity to equality. acknowledgements we are immensely grateful to the staff and students of the former medford boys and girls club, in massachusetts, where we were able to conduct children’s book readings using the transformative justice questionnaire and whose wisdom and guidance has informed this paper. we also wish to thank gabrielle womack for providing invaluable feedback on the manuscript. 138 references allen, q., & white-smith, k. 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(2016). roots and wings: affirming culture and preventing bias in early childhood. redleaf press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12991 journal of urban mathematics education july 2009, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 22–51 ©jume. http://education.gsu.edu/jume lidia gonzalez is an assistant professor of mathematics at york college of the city university of new york (cuny), 94-20 guy r. brewer blvd, jamaica, ny, nyc 11451; e-mail: lgonzalez@york.cuny.edu. her primary research interest is in the teaching of mathematics for social justice. additionally, she is working on a study of alternatively certified mathematics teachers in nyc and interested, more broadly, in efforts at improving the educational experiences of urban youth. teaching mathematics for social justice: reflections on a community of practice for urban high school mathematics teachers lidia gonzalez york college of the city university of new york in this article, the author reports on a study that explored, in part, the developing identities of seven new york city public high school mathematics teachers as teachers of mathematics and agents of change. meeting regularly as a community of practice, the teachers and author/researcher discussed issues of teaching mathematics for social justice; explored activities and lessons around social justice; and created a unit of study that attempted to meet high school level mathematics standards, while addressing a social justice issue affecting the lives of urban students. the author reports on the mathematics teachers’ growing awareness of and concerns about infusing issues of social justice into their teaching as well as the teachers’ evolving conceptions of what it might mean to teach mathematics in an urban school, of the nature of mathematics itself, and of what their roles as educators might include. keywords: mathematics education, teacher development, teacher identity, teaching mathematics for social justice approaching mathematics through a social justice context has been proposed and used by some, including mathematics educators, as a way to address issues that confront urban youth from historically marginalized communities, while engaging them in the study of meaningful mathematics (see, e.g., frankenstein, 1983; gutstein, 2006, 2008). although the idea of education as a vehicle for social justice has been around for decades (see, e.g., freire, 1970/1993), it is only fairly recently that the idea has been applied to mathematics education: until recently, embedding mathematics pedagogy within social and political contexts was not a serious consideration in mathematics education. the act of counting was viewed as a neutral exercise, unconnected to politics or society. yet when do we ever count just for the sake of counting? only in school do we count without a social purpose of some kind. outside of school, mathematics is used to advance or block a particular agenda. (tate, 2005, p. 37) gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 23 within recent years, there does appear to be a growing interest with respect to teaching mathematics for social justice, as evident by the recent published edited volumes that focus on mathematics and social justice (see burton, 2003; gutstein & peterson, 2005). how mathematics teachers might be prepared to teach mathematics for social justice, however, is an area still in need of exploration. gau (2005) argued: despite the potential teaching math for social justice has in addressing issues of equity in mathematics education, little research exists that examines mathematics teachers learning to teach for social justice, a necessary step in beginning to understand the entailments of teaching mathematics for social justice. (p. 3) it also has been argued that most of the existing examples of social justice units appear to rely on elementary mathematics rather than upper-level mathematics (brantlinger, 2007; brantlinger, gutstein, buenrostro, & turner, 2007), though this reliance is somewhat changing as more lessons and materials become available (see, e.g., gutstein & peterson, 2005; mukhopadhyay, powell, & frankenstein, 2009). thus, with these arguments in mind, i undertook a study with the explicit goals of illustrating how mathematics teachers might learn to teach mathematics for social justice and how teaching mathematics for social justice might be done within the context of the high school mathematics curriculum (see gonzalez, 2008). in my study, i reported on the formation of a community of practice consisting of seven new york city (nyc) public high school mathematics teachers and me, the researcher and a former nyc public high school teacher. as a community of practice, the teachers and i shared and developed ideas on the intersection between mathematics, mathematics education, and issues of social justice. together, we explored and generated knowledge around the idea of mathematics teachers as agents of social change and on the use of mathematics as a critical tool for understanding and working to improve social life, primarily those aspects most affecting the students served by the school at which the teachers of the study had taught. additionally, we developed a high school level curriculum unit around a social justice issue that the teachers saw as relevant in the lives of their urban students, while also attempting to successfully attend to the standards-based content of high school mathematics without compromising the nature of the mathematics learned. in this article, i report only a portion of my study, with an emphasis on teachers‘ developing identities as mathematics teachers and agents of change. in so doing, i focus on the teachers‘ beliefs about the teaching and learning of mathematics and their own roles as teachers of mathematics. because identity and awareness mediate both action and pedagogy (holland, lachiotte, skinner, & cain, 2003), the article focuses on the teachers developing identities, exploring gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 24 shifts in their thinking and beliefs. in reporting partial findings, i draw heavily from the interviews and written reflections of the teachers who participated in the community of practice. through using the teachers‘ own words, it is my hope that their beliefs about their roles as both mathematics teachers and agents of change might become transparent. conceptual framework many education scholars, among them critical pedagogues, argue that mathematics (particularly algebra) stands as a gatekeeper to future success (apple, 1992; burton, 2003; gutstein, 2006; martin, 2000, 2003; moses & cobb, 2001). this gatekeeping status is especially evident for low-income students of color that, for the purposes of this article, will be referred to as students from marginalized communities. the inequities that exist between students of marginalized communities (such as those taught by the teachers in my study) and their ―mainstream‖ peers in terms of mathematics achievement, course-taking patterns, and enrollment in mathematics-related majors, are well documented (burton, 2003; gutstein, 2006; tate, 1995, 2005). addressing these inequities through the teaching of mathematics for social justice is viable and worthwhile to me, both as a mathematics education researcher and teacher of mathematics, especially given the extensive research highlighting the role that mathematics plays as a gatekeeper to future success (burton, 2003; moses & cobb, 2001; tate, 1995, 2005). defining teaching mathematics for social justice the phrase teaching mathematics for social justice is not uniformly defined within the research literature. there are numerous definitions ranging from equal access to upper-level mathematics courses to social reconfiguration spurred by the use of mathematics as an analytical tool to understand social life and the inequities that exist therein. the definition of mathematics for social justice that i rely on, and that guided my work with the teachers, draws from the work of several researchers and is comprised of four components. the first of these components is access to high quality mathematics instruction for all students. moses and cobb (2001) argued that mathematics is needed to be a full participant in society, and likened the struggle for access to high quality mathematics instruction for marginalized students to the civil rights movement and access to voting rights for african americans. another way to talk about this component is to say that all students deserve a strong grounding in what is usually referred to in the literature as dominant mathematics. gutiérrez (2007) defined dominant mathematics as that which ―reflects the status quo in society, that gets valued in high-stakes testing and credentialing, that privileges a static formalism in mathematics, and that is gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 25 involved in making sense of a world that favors the views of a relatively elite group‖ (p. 39). a second component of the definition that i rely on is a re-centering of the curriculum around the experiences of students from marginalized communities. that is, teaching mathematics for social justice involves building upon the experiences of students from marginalized communities, while exploring issues of social justice through mathematics (gutstein, 2006). this component is supported by research that advocates for instruction to be centered on students‘ experiences in order for it to be meaningful to them (darling-hammond, french, & garcialopez, 2002; villegas & lucas, 2002). the third component is the use of mathematics as a critical tool for understanding social life; one‘s position in society; and issues of power, agency, and oppression. this component is often referred to as critical mathematics and often set in contrast to dominant mathematics. for instance, gutiérrez (2007) defined critical mathematics as ―mathematics that squarely acknowledges the positioning of students as members of a society rife with issues of power and domination…[and] takes students‘ cultural identities and builds mathematics around them in ways that address social and political issues, especially highlighting the perspectives of marginalized groups‖ (p. 40). in this way, mathematics becomes a tool used to examine social environments, increase awareness of social injustice, and serves as a valued language that can be used to further an agenda of social change towards a more just society. while increasing awareness is important, without a component that addresses change, the injustices that exist in society will continue to persist. in order to bring about social change, action and agency need to shape the perspectives with which we view mathematics for social justice. thus, the fourth component of teaching mathematics for social justice is the use of mathematics to radically reconfigure society so that it might be more just. mathematics for social justice units and lessons, according to gutstein (2006), should serve the purpose of ―liberation from oppression‖ (p. 22); he argued that schooling should be a vehicle for empowerment and social change. this component is consistent with the position of many educational scholars who argue that citizenship should not involve blindly following the rules of an inherently unjust society, but instead should involve being a critical observer taught to understand the world and work toward making it more just (aronowitz, 2004; burton, 2003; michelli & keiser, 2005). gutstein (2006) furthered this position specific to mathematics education, arguing ―a crucial aspect of mathematics for social justice is what students do with the mathematics‖ (p. 14). when mathematics for social justice is understood as a tool to further social change and the emancipation of oppressed communities, it is being viewed as an extension of paulo freire‘s scholarship (see, e.g., 1970/1993) and his pedagogy of liberation. frankenstein (1983) claimed, ―freire‘s theory compels mathematics gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 26 teachers to probe the nonpositivist meaning of mathematical knowledge, the importance of quantitative reasoning in the development of critical consciousness…and the connections between our specific curriculum and the development of critical consciousness‖ (p. 318). understanding mathematics as a means to develop a critical consciousness makes clear that the end product is not confined to equal academic performance or to equal access, but to a complete rethinking and restructuring of the current society. defining socially just society given that the creation of a more socially just society is seen as a goal of teaching mathematics for social justice, it seems necessary to discuss and attempt to define what is meant by social justice and what a socially just society might look like. the work of zollers, albert, and cochran-smith (2000) looked specifically at the concept of social justice and its definition for a group of teacher educators. their study aimed to ―investigate individual understandings of the meaning of social justice and find the commonality necessary to ‗teach for social justice‘‖ (p. 1). the teacher educators in their study linked social justice to issues of fairness and equity, personal and institutional responsibility, and individual and collective action. michelli and keiser (2005) described a socially just society as one in which each individual can realize their potential and access all life‘s chances. furthermore, it is a society characterized by nonrepression and nondiscrimination in which no one individual or group oppresses another. a related way of understanding social justice is the principle of distributive justice; characterized by an equitable distribution of society‘s resources, including all that is both good and bad (rorty, 1979). this idea is to distribute both the benefits and burdens of society among its members, though issues arise when one attempts to define how such benefits and burdens can and/or should be distributed and is o ften accompanied by a discussion of wealth and access to opportunities. the scholarship noted above leads to a definition of social justice that includes access to opportunities and resources distributed in such a way as to not repress or discriminate against any one individual or group, whether for the good of another or not. a socially just society can therefore be characterized by equal opportunities, equal access, and the ability of all to reach their potential through access to all of life‘s opportunities (michelli & keiser, 2005). in addition to the scholarships noted, i rely on gutiérrez‘s (2007) benchmark for achieving equity in education. she argued that equity in education is ―being unable to predict student patterns (e.g., achievement, participation, ability to critically analyze data/society) based solely upon characteristics such as race, class, ethnicity, gender, beliefs, and proficiency in the dominant language‖ (p. 41). we can expand upon this idea from gutiérrez in order to define a socially just gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 27 society. in so doing, i argue that a socially just society is one in which we are unable to predict success in life based upon characteristics including—but not limited to—race, ethnicity, gender, beliefs, citizenship status, and proficiency in the dominant language. proponents of teaching mathematics for social justice argue that a more socially just society is possible through the teaching of mathematics for social justice (see, e.g., gau, 2005; gutstein, 2006; gutstein & peterson, 2005). in order for teachers to teach mathematics for social justice, however, they must be prepared to do so. preparing teachers as agents of change professional development programs for inservice teachers as well as teacher education programs for preservice teachers are now beginning to address issues of social justice (darling-hammond, french, & garcía-lopez, 2002). sleeter (1997), in discussing a professional development opportunity for teachers to learn to teach in multicultural ways (a possible precursor to teaching for social justice), explained that the most common result of the training was that teachers became ―more aware of the differences among their students, student learning styles, racism in society, cooperative learning, curriculum, and school problems‖ (p. 688). gau (2005) also noted that the biggest change in the preservice mathematics teachers she worked with in her mathematics for social justice project was an increased awareness of differences. it is this awareness that teacher preparation programs should, i believe, strive for. by becoming aware of their students‘ backgrounds and of their own position in social life, both sleeter and gau argued that teachers often become ready to act on this knowledge for the betterment of students. teaching for social justice involves teachers and students becoming increasingly aware of their social realities and of one another‘s respective histories, cultures, and understandings. the development of teachers‘ identities as agents of change and discussion about the role of teachers as political agents is also necessary (villegas & lucas, 2002). as our behavior is mediated by our identities, changes in our behavior require changes in how we see ourselves (holland et al., 2003). identities affect agency and action, making identity development an essential element of teacher preparation. in defining identity, holland et al. stated: people tell others who they are, but even more important, they tell themselves and they try to act as though they are who they say they are. these self-understandings, especially those with strong emotional resonance for the teller, are what we refer to as identities. (p. 3) gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 28 our identities therefore are ―something that arises from a transaction rather than being an inherent feature of a material body‖ (roth, 2005, p. 326). consequentially, teachers‘ identities, as those of all of us, are developed through social interactions. it is through interaction with others that we grow and develop in terms of how we see ourselves, forming and shifting our identities as we are pushed to entertain new ways of being (holland et al., 2003). entertaining these new ways of being often drives us to act in previously unexplored ways as we redefine who we are. considering new ways of being is the first step in changing one‘s pedagogy (florio-ruane, 2001). therefore, in order to affect changes in teachers‘ practice, preparing them to teach mathematics for social justice, we must, i believe, begin by affecting change in their identities. teachers need to come to see themselves as agents of social change if they are to implement mathematics for social justice in their teaching (gutstein, 2006). using communities of practice the idea that learning is a social process has led many teacher educators to use communities of practice as vehicles through which to prepare teachers (see, e.g., choi, 2006; florio-ruane, 2001). a community of practice, as defined by choi (2006), is a ―community that shares and creates real knowledge‖ (p. 143). it refers to groups of people; in this case, the participants and me, who are ―bound by their shared competence and mutual interest in a given practice‖ (p. 143)—the teaching of mathematics for social justice. according to wenger (1998), communities of practice contain the following three dimensions: mutual engagement, a joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire. when talking about mutual responsibility, however, it is important to note that wenger (1998) neither specified that the responsibility for the group be shared equally among its members, nor did he infer that equal sharing was possible. members have different knowledge, experiences, and positions within the group that they bring to the experience, allowing for collective work—with different contributions—on a joint enterprise. wenger (1998) also described communities of practice as communities in which there is prolonged engagement by the members as they work toward a joint enterprise. through using communities of practice as vehicles for professional development in the teaching of mathematics for social justice, the teachers work over prolonged periods of time (not the more common workshop model) to arrive at understandings about what it might mean to teach mathematics for social justice as well as how to prepare to do so. although it is not a necessary condition of a community of practice, the idea that power in the group should be shared, is supported by advocates of teaching mathematics for social justice, who argue that students and teachers together should be jointly responsible for what occurs within the classroom, including gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 29 what is taught (gutstein, 2006; gutstein & peterson, 2005). while wenger (1998) argued that there are power dynamics at play in any community, the idea of sharing power with the teachers in a community of practice aimed at professional development is aligned with the goals of critical theorists who attempt to disrupt the power dynamics that presently exist in society, including those in situations such as the professional development of teachers (mclaren, 2000). given the social conception of learning and the characteristics of communities of practice as outlined, these characteristics become powerful ways through which teachers can develop as educators. communities of practice are touted by choi (2006) as ―the most suitable learning method not only for achievements of tacit knowledge based on participation and practice in real world contexts, but also for implicit knowledge, which is passed easily through represented and systematic forms by practice at a group level, not at a personal level‖ (p. 143). methods although the larger study aimed to answer four broad questions, this article focuses specifically on those questions pertaining to teachers‘ views and beliefs about the role of teachers and the nature of mathematics and mathematics teaching and learning. or, more broadly, the teachers‘ developing identities. as a result, the focus of the analysis presented here will be teachers‘ changing views of whom they are and what their practice does and should entail. to this end, i focus on two of they study‘s research questions: (1) how do these teachers view and understand the teaching of mathematics for social justice? (2) how, if at all, does exposure to ideas about social justice and mathematics affect teachers‘ beliefs about teaching mathematics, the nature of mathematics, and their roles as teachers and agents of change? recruitment of participants while working in an unrelated study, i assisted in the collection of data at several schools, one of which i will refer to as urban high school. this school is a large, comprehensive public high school in nyc that relies on a reform curriculum very unlike the ―traditional‖ mandated nyc curriculum. it was suggested to me that as a result of teachers‘ familiarity with a reform-based curriculum, the school might be a good fit for my study. this suggestion was based on the assumption that the teachers at urban high would be more open to trying activities around the teaching of mathematics for social justice as compared with teachers at other schools whose curriculum was more traditional and whose ideas about what constitutes mathematics and the teaching of mathematics might be more narrowly defined. gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 30 i first approached the assistant principal of mathematics at urban high and later the principal to obtain support for the study to be conducted with urban high‘s mathematics teachers. after the appropriate permissions were obtained, the assistant principal of mathematics provided me with a list of email addresses for the teachers in the mathematics department. i forwarded a description of the research project to the teachers along with information about what participation in the study would include. participation included: attending group sessions, participating in three interviews, and writing reflections after each group session. potential participants were also told that in exchange for their participation, they would receive a copy of the edited volume rethinking mathematics: teaching social justice by the numbers (gutstein & peterson, 2005), copies of all of the articles and materials used during the study, and would be paid a monetary sum comparable to that which they would receive for participating in similar professional development opportunities through the nyc department of education. eight of the nearly 30 mathematics teachers at the school expressed interest in the study. of these, only one was declined due to scheduling issues, which is perhaps unfortunate as he would have been the only male participant. the participants, therefore, were seven female mathematics teachers who all worked in the same nyc public high school, urban high, during the 2006–2007 academic year, though by the time that the data were collected (during the 2007–2008 academic year) two of the teachers had moved to other schools; they elected to be a part of the study nonetheless. the school this section serves to describe the school and relies on statistics obtained from the nyc department of education‘s web site. in order to keep the name of the school confidential, the school‘s web site from which the data was obtained does not appear in the list of references, although the homepage of the nyc department of education does. urban high is a large, comprehensive, public high school in nyc, serving over 3,000 students in grades nine through twelve. the physical building is very large with wide, ample hallways. one particular floor contains multiple classrooms, many of which are devoted to mathematics. the rooms are wide, with dry-erase boards and trapezoidal tables arranged in groups of two forming hexagons. the school administration places emphasis on the use of group work; the tables facilitate this pedagogical approach. the vast majority of students at urban high (as of december 2007) were classified by the nyc department of education as black (55%) or hispanic (41%). furthermore, a commonly used—though often misleading—measure of a school‘s overall socioeconomic status (ses) is the percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch. at urban high, for example, in the gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 31 2005–2006 academic year 38% of the students qualified for free or reducedpriced lunch. the percentage presented is the ratio of the ―number of approved lunch applicants‖ to the number of full-time students at the school (new york state school report card accountability and overview report, 2006). the participants in my study, however, explained that due to the large number of students at the school, that some of the cafeterias (there were more than one) were converted into classrooms and so as to not overcrowd the remaining cafeteria, students were encouraged to take their lunch period (a required part of students‘ education programs in nyc) at the end of the day. students who had lunch during the last period of the day usually elected to leave the school and eat lunch elsewhere. as such, the number of applicants for free or reduced-priced lunch was quite low because of the high number of students who do not eat lunch at the school. several members of the school‘s administration, when asked directly about this school policy, indicated that students may elect to take their lunch period last and that the overwhelming majority of those who do, leave the building at that time, as such they do not submit lunch applications. i asked several members of the administration, as well as all of the participants in my study, and several other teachers that i met on one of my visits, to estimate the percentage of students who might qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch (including those who might not apply), the various estimates i received hovered around 75%. this much higher percentage was representative of similar public schools in the city, as defined by the nyc department of education using data on its web site. that urban high is a large, comprehensive school in an urban area serving students who are primarily from historically marginalized communities made the school an attractive one for me to conduct my research study. furthermore, after a long struggle, urban high was able to select its own mathematics curriculum. the struggle to use a ―non-traditional‖ mathematics curriculum was challenging, as explained by the school‘s assistant principal of mathematics, but something that she felt was necessary. the teachers often made reference to the fact that the assistant principal of mathematics put her job ―on the line‖ to be able to use a non-traditional mathematics program. this non-traditional mathematics program is characterized by the use of exploration and discovery activities that highlight mathematics concepts which students discover as they work through the activities. the program places heavy emphasis on problem solving; problems are contextualized in units that revolve around certain themes. as with most teachers, the participants seemed to believe that the curriculum was strong in some areas, especially in getting students to break down problems, but that it was lacking in others. the teachers believed that the curriculum did not expose students to the types of questions they are likely to see on the standardized examinations and that it used imprecise language. while the curriculum encouraged students to engage in and struggle with non-traditional gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 32 problems while learning to deconstruct the material, the teachers believed that students could not always relate to the contexts provided, and that supplementation was needed. in general, because the teachers worked with a non-traditional and contextualized mathematics curriculum, urban high was appealing to me. i imagined that the teachers might be more open to using mathematics for social justice lessons and activities, compared to those who worked at a school using a more traditional mathematics program. the participants the participants were seven female mathematics teachers who worked at urban high during the 2006–2007 academic year. each teacher had between 1 and 4 years of experience at the beginning of the study, and at least 1 year of experience using the school‘s non-traditional curriculum for mathematics. the familiarity with the school setting and curriculum assisted the teachers in ascertaining the supports and limitations of implementing different activities in the mathematics classroom. as a result of the self-selective nature of the group, the teachers were, in some ways, not representative of those in the school‘s mathematics department or the school in general, based on data obtained from the school‘s assistant principal of mathematics and from the participants themselves. in that, all of the participants were women, despite roughly one third of the mathematics department being comprised of men. additionally, as compared to others in their department and the school, the participants were more likely to be from racial and ethnic backgrounds similar to urban high‘s students. six of the seven teachers, approximately 86%, identified as black or hispanic, while in both the mathematics department and the school as a whole less than 33% of the teachers did so. according to data obtained by the national center for educational statistics (n.d.) 25.5% of public school teachers in urban areas such as nyc identify themselves as black or hispanic, significantly less than when considering the participants, approximately 86% of who identified themselves as black or hispanic (i.e., all but one, vanessa). moreover, this group of seven teachers tended to be less experienced than those in the school as a whole. while approximately 55% of the teachers at urban high had taught in the nyc public school system for over 3 years, only 43% of the teachers in my study had done so. additionally, while 25% of the teachers at urban high had been in the nyc public school system for over 5 years, no one in my study had been. the participants ranged from having 1.5 to 4.5 years of teaching experience, with the mean being 3.2 years. research highlights that teachers in urban settings tend to differ from their students with respect to characteristics such as race and ethnicity, family background, and socioeconomic status, making gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 33 it difficult for them to relate to their students (darling-hammond, french, & garcía-lopez, 2002). yet, the teachers in this study were predominantly from the same racial backgrounds as their students. and all but two reported growing up in families of low-socioeconomic status, with four reporting that their family had been on public assistance when they were growing up. (table 1 provides background information about each teacher.) the mathematics for social justice group the mathematics for social justice group was a professional development opportunity for the teachers designed as a community of practice. it was not a college course, nor a course for which the teachers received credit or a certificate of any kind. it was not affiliated with any school or professional program. as the researcher, i was both a participant in the group and its facilitator. i did not ―grade‖ the teachers, nor report their ―progress‖ to anyone at the school or elsewhere. the group was a professional development opportunity for the teachers and formed part of my dissertation research (gonzalez, 2008). the group that the teachers participated in met weekly for a total of 10, 2hour sessions. meetings were held at urban high during the academic year. specifically, we met in vanessa‘s classroom on friday afternoons after classes had ended for the day and enough time had passed for those no longer at the school to arrive. our first meeting began with a discussion of what social justice is and how we might recognize a socially just society if we saw it. the idea was to allow an intellectual space for us to explore our own conceptions of social justice and, in later sessions, explore how our work as teachers of mathematics might serve as a vehicle for social change. our first five sessions involved reading texts related to the teaching of mathematics for social justice. articles, chapters from books, and other relevant materials from such authors as gutstein (2006), gutstein & peterson (2005), martin (2003), and tate (2005) were read and discussed with the aim of understanding how teaching mathematics for social justice is defined in the literature and how it might play out in the classroom. critical discussions about these readings and previous work that has been done formed the basis of our first few meetings. in addition, the participants and i engaged in activities and lessons that are currently available in the mathematics for social justice literature, allowing us an opportunity to explore some of the resources that exist and to discuss their perceived strengths and limitations. in the final sessions, the group developed a unit that linked high school mathematics (for first-year high school mathematics) with issues of social justice. gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 34 table 1 summary of participants name (pseudonyms) age race/ ethnicity exp. (years) years at urban high college major teaching license articulated connections to school and students ellen mid 30s mixed (african american/white) 3.5 3; left to work at the suburban hs she had attended finance middle school math none, beyond her race and working at urban high jenna low 30s hispanic 3.5 3.5 information systems middle school math lives in neighborhood; similar in experiences and background (i.e., ses) mellissa mid 30s african american 3.5 3; left to work at small charter school economics/ accounting high school math none, beyond her race and working at urban high monica 29 african american 3.5 3.5 engineering high school math attended urban high; lives in neighborhood; similar in experiences (i.e., ses) nyo upper 30s african (nigerian) 4.5 4.5 engineering high school math attended urban high reina low 30s hispanic 2.5 .5; taught 2 years at a middle school engineering middle school math lives in neighborhood; similar in experiences and background (i.e., ses) vanessa mid 20s white 1.5 1.5 chemistry/ mathematics high school math similar in experiences and background (i.e., ses) it was my intention at the start of my study that the teachers take more responsibility with respect to how the group should run and what we would do as time went on. on several occasions, i told the teachers that if they had anything gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 35 interesting for us to read and discuss that we could substitute their suggested readings for the readings i had originally planned; however, none of the teachers ever approached me with readings they wished to use. on other occasions, i set out some options in terms of how to proceed with the session at its start. despite these attempts to make the sessions more participant centered, for the first six sessions the teachers deferred to me in terms of how the session should proceed and none brought in a text to read or an activity that they wanted to share with the group. the shift in power and responsibility about how the group would run, and that i had longed for, did eventually become reality, however. in sessions 6 through 9, the teachers were the ones who determined what topic our unit would address, how to proceed with the development of the lessons, and who would be responsible for what. the last session again featured the teachers determining how we would proceed. in this session, each was an expert on work they put forth as they created it. if someone had walked in on this last session (any time after the first few minutes), it would have been virtually impossible to tell who the participants were and who the researcher was because each of us was taking turns as the presenter, as the leader of the group for the few minutes that we each took to speak about our part. everyone had something to offer and, at the same time, something to learn. our mathematics for social justice unit in their initial interviews (discussed later in the article), each of the teachers expressed a passion for education and many commented that the educational opportunities afforded to the students at urban high often leave them ill prepared for the future. this perspective, coupled with the desire that our unit be relevant to students and something they could all be ―on the same side of,‖ led the teachers to create a unit aimed at answering the question: how well does urban high school prepare its students for the future? the teachers saw this question as an issue of importance to their students and one that the students might have interest in. the teachers also felt that improving their school was an attainable goal their students might work toward. whereas, tackling a bigger social issue, such as how the unemployment rate or poverty levels are calculated, might lead to both good discussions and applications of mathematics, it might not result in any change or resolution. reina noted, ―i loved the unit we decided upon because it is something practical, that [students] would need immediately and could do something about‖ (session 9 reflection). it was important for the teachers that the students be able to instill change in meaningful ways. they wanted the students to feel aware and motivated, to be able to describe the situation using mathematics, and to take action at improving the situation they were to explore. additionally, keeping in mind the fact that they might not be able to use the unit as a whole giv gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 36 en the scope, sequence, and pacing guide that drove their curriculum, the teachers hoped to create a collection of lessons that together could form a cohesive unit, but that could be used independent of one another so as to facilitate implementation. the overarching question of the unit was explored using two approaches. the first of these focused on how urban high was preparing their students as compared to other public high schools in nyc. vanessa, reina, and i worked on this part of the unit. relying on statistical datasets available on the nyc department of education web site, we developed lessons and problem sets that compared statistical data on urban high to two similar, large, open-admission schools and one specialized high school. the statistical data used for comparison included: graduation rates, standardized test scores, incidences of violence, number of advanced placement classes, and so forth. the focus of this part of the unit was the use of mathematics to understand the way in which urban high prepares its students as compared to other nyc public high schools and, from this analysis, to determine what changes might be needed to improve the school‘s ability to prepare its students for the future. exploring what might be extrapolated from these datasets involved mathematical analyses of why some of the statistics might be misleading, what can and cannot be answered by the statistics, and the implications of the statistics on student learning and preparation. this part of the unit was in line with the work of freire, as described by frankenstein (1983), who wrote, ―freire‘s concept of critical knowledge further directs us to explore not merely how statistics are non-neutral, but why, and in whose interest‖ (p. 324). the second approach used to determine how urban high prepared students was accomplished by comparing the opportunities students have at the school with the entrance requirements at various types of colleges and for various majors. by looking at how an urban high graduate might fare when applying to various colleges and analyzing how prepared they would be to pursue various courses of study (e.g., mathematics/science-related majors, liberal arts-related majors, performance majors), this part of the unit aimed to address the overarching question of the unit. ―my hopes are to get students thinking about the best fit for a college in terms of what they wish to study and how their grades help them fit into an appropriate area of study‖ (nyo, session 7 reflection). nyo and monica worked on this part of the unit, which also included lessons on understanding one‘s transcript and on the graduation standards. the teachers believed that despite having to meet these standards in order to graduate, many students were often unaware of them. following these two parts of the unit, the students would then prepare presentations to share their results with members of the school community, such as administrators, parents, teachers, and others. in so doing, they would not only demonstrate where the school was in terms of preparing students, but also they gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 37 would advocate for changes that they saw as necessary for urban high‘s graduates to be prepared adequately for the futures they wish to pursue. the third part of the unit dealt with financial preparation. melissa and jenna undertook development of a sub-unit on financial mathematics with the belief that the school was not teaching students the skills required to be successful financially in the future. aimed at addressing this deficiency, this part of the unit included lessons on how to balance a checkbook and how interest is calculated on credit cards and other types of loans. as an element of this part of the unit, students would create a budget based on data obtained through the department of education web site about what the typical urban high student was planning to do after graduation. finally, ellen, who worked alone, explored ways in which the information students learned from the unit might be shared with others. she wanted to develop a forum for change where students could share their knowledge with incoming students so that new students could take full advantage of the opportunities available at the school. she also envisioned creating opportunities to inform parents and others about the school, the opportunities it provides, and also what students and parents need to do in conjunction with teachers and the school administration to ensure student success. her idea took the form of a ―success day‖ event that would have older students welcoming new students and their parents to the school in order to foster a culture of success at the school. she created an outline for the day‘s events that she proposed to the administration of her new school for use at the start of the 2009 school year. the teachers‘ engagement in the unit transcended our friday meetings. that is, their work on the unit was not confined to the 2 hours we met on fridays, but rather something that they did all throughout the week. for example, in her session 6 reflection, jenna noted, with respect to her group, ―we plan to spend this week doing a bit of research and bringing it into the next session.‖ similarly, others spent the time between sessions looking up information and reworking their parts of the unit. the teachers‘ work on the unit and the fact that they were spending much out-of-session time on it led us to postpone the last session. instead of meeting 1 week after session 9, we let 2 weeks go by before meeting in order that we would have more out-of-session time to work on the unit. the teachers responded positively to the unit they created and saw it as both relevant to and useful for students. vanessa explained, ―yeah, oh yeah, i think the kids would really be interested in it…this is stuff that‘s directly related to their life‖ (exit interview). others noted that students often complain about what they learn in mathematics, seeing no use for it in their daily lives. jenna wrote in her session 7 reflection: ―students have the habit of complaining that they aren't going to use most of what they learn in high school.‖ she added, however, that with respect to our unit, ―they're definitely going to need all of this.‖ gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 38 interestingly, the teachers criticized the level of mathematics in some of the social justice activities we explored as part of the group sessions, but they did not raise this same concern with respect to the level of mathematics in our unit; even though some parts of it were informational, but devoid of any ―rigorous‖ mathematics. when asked about the lack of mathematical rigor in the finance and budgeting sections of the unit, melissa and jenna, the creators, both agreed that the mathematics in this part did lack rigor. on the other hand, they pointed to the fact that understanding the content of the lessons in this part is necessary for students as they move beyond high school and that, as it is not covered elsewhere in the curriculum, it is important that students be exposed to it. the most rigorous mathematics part of the unit was aligned with grade nine mathematics standards in nyc, addressing topics such as ratios, percents, and the use of graphs and tables to display data and probability. these are the same topics that are most often covered in the mathematics for social justice lessons which currently exist and those that the participants and i explored as members of the group. i think that the first part of the unit, the statistical comparison of the schools, was much more aligned with the ideals of teaching mathematics for social justice than the other parts. it used data that were readily obtainable to explore and compare various schools, thus exposing the differences in quality and scope of preparation offered to students. it highlighted the deficiencies that exist in some nyc public schools, specifically those that serve students in marginalized communities as compared to more ―successful‖ schools serving mainstream students. it prepared students to understand these inequities statistically with the hope that by so doing students will be motivated to advocate for changes within their school to assist in mitigate them. this advocacy was further supported by the framework of success day as well as by providing avenues for students to share their concerns and ideas for improving the school with other stakeholders such as school administrators, community leaders, and parent groups. data collection each teacher participated in two semi-structured interviews that i conducted with the goal of ascertaining the participants‘ initial and developing beliefs about their identities as mathematics teachers and agents of change. the initial interview was held prior to the start of the group sessions; it included in-depth questions that addressed the participants‘ views about their own activism, the teaching and learning of mathematics, and their identity as mathematics teachers and agents of change. also explored in the initial interview were the participants‘ beliefs about the role of teachers, their views of the students whom they taught, and their reasons for joining the study. to note developments in the teachers‘ thinking, the exit gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 39 interview, also a semi-structured, in-depth interview, contained many questions similar in nature and content to those in the initial interview, allowing me to discern changes in the teachers‘ thinking about various issues. other topics driving the questions in the exit interview were teachers‘ views of their developing identities, their opinions about the community of practice, and their thoughts about the teaching of mathematics for social justice. (there were additional, ongoing interviews conducted; they are discussed later in the article.) researcher interview. i was interviewed by members of my dissertation committee at the start of my study as well as at its end. the interviews followed the protocol used for the initial and exit interviews of the participants, allowing me to ascertain my initial identity and beliefs and how these (might) have changed throughout the course of the study. this procedure also served as a way of somewhat gauging my beliefs and perceptions against those of the participants. teacher reflections. the teachers were asked to write a reflection at the conclusion of each group session, addressing the activities or discussion of that session. at times, open-ended questions were provided to the participants to guide their reflections. in all cases, however, teachers were reminded that they need not be bound by these questions and were encouraged to also address other issues or concerns that they might have. as the researcher, i, too, answered these guiding questions, when provided, in my own reflections. in addition to the teachers‘ reflections, i interviewed one teacher informally at the end of most group sessions in order to catch ―fresh‖ reactions, suggestions, and thoughts (these are the ongoing interviews previously mentioned). the teacher interviewed rotated so that each had a chance to be interviewed in this manner. this interview, an oral reflection, was done with the hope that i could probe teachers‘ reflections a bit more than was possible when they reflected on their own in writing in order to gather rich data about the participants‘ developing beliefs and identities. video data. while each of the group sessions was videotaped in its entirety, a thorough analysis of the video data has not been undertaken at this time. the analysis for this article is drawn from the interviews and reflections (as previously noted). nonetheless, an analysis of the video data, i believe, will provide further insights into the participants‘ developing identities, their beliefs and understandings of mathematics for social justice, and the use of communities of practice as vehicles for professional development. it is the focus of my future work. researcher journal. in attempting to understand my role in the group along with my identities as a researcher, mathematics teacher, and agent of change, i kept a researcher journal in which i reflected upon these topics after group sessions. these reflections involved formal reflections similar to those the participants completed at the end of each session, as well as informal writing about ideas and issues as they emerged. the journal served several purposes, one of which gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 40 was to see how my own thinking and identity developed through time. a second purpose of the journal was to monitor my own subjectivity, attempting to understand and document how my own history and beliefs affected both data collection and analysis. finally, the journal served as the place where i reflected after group meetings, forming an initial, perhaps informal, way of understanding and analyzing the data. entries in the journal served the function of analytical, methodological, and personal memos (strauss & corbin, 1990). that is, in part they played an analytic role providing a place to make initial inferences about the data, raise quest ions, and note emerging themes. the entries also in part allowed me to consider how to approach the next session or phase of the research project; therefore, they served an important methodological role. data analysis data analysis was an open-ended process involving constant, continual reflection. in keeping with the recommendation of qualitative researchers, data analysis took place throughout the data collection process and not entirely at the end of the study (creswell 2005; strauss & corbin, 1990). this procedure enabled the refining of methods and future data collection. one example of this refinement was the addition of a written reflection by the teachers and me at the start of each session that was not part of the original data collection methods. these reflections were added later on in the study, both as a way of discerning participants‘ individual thoughts about warm-up activities and as a way of focusing the group at the start of each session. before my initial round of coding the data, i read through the text-based data several times in order to get an understanding of the whole of the transcribed discourse and, at that time, wrote some initial findings based on these readings that i then looked to for support when the data were later more systematically analyzed. given the nature of this work, my belief in the validity of teaching mathematics for social justice, and the goal of preparing teachers to teach in this manner, i came to my study with a fairly well-articulated (preconceived) agenda, complete with research questions, analytic categories (e.g., teacher identity, teacher understandings of mathematics for social justice), and the goal of preparing teachers to teach mathematics for social justice. although i was open to themes that might ―emerge‖ from the data, the fact that i had research questions i wished to address made it impossible to go into the coding process without any preconceived ideas. my interest in the teachers‘ developing identities and in their understandings of teaching mathematics for social justice necessitated the development of codes that addressed these issues. working definitions of the codes were constructed and refined as the coding scheme was applied to the data. these codes represented themes that were derived from my interaction with the data and gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 41 included the teachers‘ developing understandings of teaching mathematics for social justice, their awareness of the literature, and changes in their ―style of talk‖ that i had not foreseen. the analysis of data was done in two ways. one was to look at the coded statements across time for each participant, allowing me to ―see‖ changes across time for each participant. a teacher‘s understandings of mathematics for social justice, for instance, could be traced using this method across time. a second method was to compare the coded statements across teachers by topic, noting agreement and disagreement between their beliefs and understandings. reliability of findings in an effort to present reliable findings, various procedures were undertaken. these included the use of multiple methods of data collection and multiple data sources, an essential component of trustworthy research (creswell, 2005; strauss & corbin, 1990). findings were triangulated by data source (participants and researcher) and data collection method (interviews and reflections). incongruous or conflicting information that surfaced was noted with the belief that negative cases strengthen research by contextualizing findings. ongoing interviews with the participants as well as their written reflections allowed me to learn about how they viewed their participation in the group, the nature of our meetings, and their understanding of various constructs, as well as their own developing ident ities. my own views and the patterns were checked against the views and patterns that the participants perceived and related back to me. additionally, the participants were presented with various preliminary findings through phone conversations and email exchanges and provided feedback with respect to these (i.e., member checking). findings my analysis of the data demonstrated that the teachers were acutely aware of the injustices that their students face; they were acutely aware of students‘ home lives, inadequate academic preparedness, and the lack of opportunity available to them and their families. as previously mentioned, five of the seven teachers are from similar backgrounds as their students and feel they share the experiences of these urban youth. those with similar backgrounds saw themselves as being able to succeed in society despite the lack of opportunity because of their reliance upon education. they saw education as the way to future success, although they were cynical about the education their students receive. in her initial interview, melissa, noted: gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 42 i believe that sometimes the curriculum is set up towards the government. obviously, if they‘re picking the curriculum, they‘re picking what they want you to learn. they want to shape you in the way they want to shape you. the old school that i used to work with is just that—we just want to produce servants. we just want to produce someone who will be the serving class. it was not geared toward producing these high-level, educated, intelligent individuals. the teachers, as melissa‘s quote exemplifies, saw the public school at which they had taught, as well as similar schools, as producers of servants and not leaders. they feared that their students are being done a disservice and struggle with the fact that they are a part of the very system that is keeping these students from succeeding. melissa was one of two participants (the other being ellen) who have young sons of color and who vehemently opposed sending their sons to urban high or similar schools, as they believe that these schools are not adequately serving students—most notably, young men of color. they both talked about toying with the idea of starting a school specifically for this population of students. neither melissa nor ellen has their son enrolled in a nyc public school, nor do they have plans to do so. melissa explained: and i refuse—i told my husband, i will quit my job and be a home-school teacher instead of putting my child in this little zoo, any zoo that they got going here. i do not trust the system. i don‘t trust them, not with my black, male child. i know it sounds crazy, but i just don‘t because if you look at the, you know, what they have been producing, they haven‘t been producing much. (initial interview) her sentiments were echoed by ellen, who has her son enrolled in a suburban school, and by some of the other teachers who have labeled these schools as ―pipelines to prison,‖ especially for male students from marginalized communities. it is interesting to note that neither ellen nor melissa still work at the school, choosing instead to work in schools serving more mainstream students. the teachers‘ initial ideas about social injustice was that it is prevalent— something both they and their students deal with constantly—and that it could be addressed through school better than in school, as mathematics for social justice proponents aim to do. their love of mathematics and interest in social justice issues drove them to participate. it was their awareness of such issues and their eagerness to address them that led them to the group. although all but three of the teachers noted a lack of familiarity with the phrase teaching mathematics for social justice in the initial interviews, this lack of familiarity referred mainly to a lack of awareness of how the term is defined in the research literature. the teachers, as evidenced by their initial interviews and our first group discussions, did indeed have their own construction of what teaching mathematics for social justice might mean. this construct, to them, consisted of some aspects of the four components of the definition of mathematics for social gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 43 justice previously discussed, as well as a view of how they, as teachers, might be agents of change. for example, two of the teachers, nyo and vanessa, admitted that they had not heard of the expression teaching mathematics for social justice, but explained their understanding of the topic. nyo‘s definition involved bringing real-life situations and contexts into the classroom. instead of relying on problems devoid of context, teaching mathematics for social justice for her, initially meant, ―incorporating social issues in sort of a word problem‖ (initial interview). nyo‘s initial understanding of teaching mathematics for social justice addressed the need to bring social issues and real-life contexts into mathematics education consistent with the re-centering component of the definition previously presented as well as with the use of mathematics as a way of examining and understanding issues in society. initially, vanessa described mathematics for social justice as, ―maybe like integrating certain things that students would relate…for them to have a better understanding about mathematical context using context, but something that‘s more familiar‖ (initial interview). vanessa also believed from the start that education should be a means for raising class consciousness and, though these are not her terms, teaching for liberation in the freirian sense: ―i wanna be able to raise some of these issues to my kids and be able to address them and discuss them and maybe to open up their eyes to what exists‖ (exit interview). melissa noted that she brings social issues into her teaching. mostly, this effort involved bringing up individuals of color who were noted mathematicians and scientists and asking the students to find examples of such individuals as well: i used to bring articles, and i used to—during black history month, i used to tell them that, ―you have to find a mathematician that was either african-caribbean, african-american, african-latino that you know, and read about it, and you get extra credit if you come up, and you present, and you talk about it.‖ and i would also, before the test, extra credit would be, ―i‘m gonna read you a passage of a person that created all these things, and they were black.‖ and i would read about it, and the kids would take notes, and they can use their notes for extra credit. (initial interview) while there is an element of critique or conscious raising that is consistent with teaching for social justice, melissa‘s comments are what many researchers call the ―heroes and holidays‖ approach to multiculturalism in education; this limiting approach was also common to the initial conceptions of teaching mathematics for social justice that some of gau‘s (2005) preservice teachers had at the start of her study. the definitions initially put forth by nyo, vanessa, and melissa include bringing the ―real world‖ into their classrooms, but are vague as to how to do so; again, similar to what gau found of her participants‘ initial views of teaching mathematics for social justice. gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 44 as they were introduced to activities and lessons created around the idea of teaching mathematics for social justice, the teachers began to see the political nature of mathematics teaching and realized how mathematics might be used to highlight social injustice. the teachers quickly realized the power of mathematics for social justice activities to raise student awareness of the injustices prevalent in society. vanessa spoke of these lessons as a way of raising ―class consciousness‖ (exit interview), which is parallel to freire‘s (1970/1993) ―massified consciousness‖ (p. 17) and forms a key component of teaching for liberation (nasir, hand, & taylor, 2008). reina noted that mathematics for social justice lessons are ―a way to get the kids to be aware of what‘s happening around them‖ (exit interview). while the teachers disagreed as to how aware their students are of various social and political issues, they all commented that engaging students in mathematics for social justice lessons would result in increased awareness. when asked in their exit interviews about their roles as agents of change, all of the teachers pointed to the changes that they affect in their students within their own classrooms as evidence that they are agents of change. this response was consistent with the experiences of coti (2002) as he reflected upon a similar professional development opportunity he engaged in. vanessa, on the other hand, stressed her desire to raise class consciousness as a means of affecting broader change in society, noting that she needed to further consider how to best do so within her classroom. many of the teachers noted that they did not initially realize the power they had as teachers to affect change in the broader society and that this power was something they were now beginning to consider: so this group kind of made me more like, ―well, i have this intelligence. i need to use it for good.‖ yes. with much power comes much responsibility, so it just, it made me more aware that i need to be more socially active, that, you know, i need to be part of affecting change, because no one‘s gonna do it for me kind of thing, and it also made me feel like i have more of a sense of like the same thing i was saying about the kids, like ownership, like i have control over what could happen, you know, but i‘m choosing not to exert that control and that power. so these sessions kind of made me like, ―no, i have to. i have to, because i have that responsibility as someone who knows.‖ (reina, exit interview) the power to affect change in society through their students was also a new idea that many of the teachers were beginning to understand. ―i learned new ways students could change their environment while involving math,‖ wrote monica in her session 9 reflection, adding that she was excited at the possibility of helping students to do just that. the teachers realized that mathematics for social justice activities could lead to student empowerment and larger societal change: ―it would give [students] a voice if you realized that there was actually something that they could do or say about an issue‖ (ellen, exit interview), and ―definitely would make [students] gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 45 more empowered‖ (reina, exit interview). empowerment, the teachers argued, could lead to change: ―you could change the community,‖ monica noted in her exit interview. similarly, in her exit interview, reina explained that through mathematics for social justice students would ―feel like they can affect change.‖ at some point or another, each of the teachers suggested that students often feel disempowered because of their situation/life experiences, noting their students ―see how hard the world can be‖ and ―feel like there‘s no hope‖ (monica, exit interview). having students realize their agency by working towards social change was seen as a way of combating this learned helplessness. the teachers saw this positive change in their students as a possible outcome of teaching mathematics for social justice, a belief consistent with that of mathematics for social justice advocates (gutstein, 2006; gutstein & peterson, 2005). as turner and font strawhun (2005) noted, ―we found that creating space for students to pose their own problems and to inject their interests and concerns into the curriculum was a powerful way of supporting student activism‖ (p. 87). the teachers began to consider ways that their teaching could be informed by the ideas and activities that we were discussing and using in our group. reina‘s written reflections are an indication of this awareness. she began to shift her writing toward ways she could incorporate the ideas and activities she was learning about in the group. she stated in her written reflection after the fourth session, ―i feel [my teaching] would look more like a way to use the math to make arguments about our point of view…possibly at the end of a math unit as a project where the students can now use the math topics we've learned to hold roundtable discussions on a specific social issue.‖ in another reflection, she noted, ―i would really love to work in a school where i could tie this into their social studies classes, where we do the investigations in mathematics and they talk about the social impacts in their social studies classes.‖ this second quote hints at the struggle that all but one (nyo) of the teachers expressed facing. these teachers dealt with their belief that engaging students in examining social injustices is a worthwhile endeavor while feeling simultaneously tied by a school culture that focuses on standardized exams the students are required to take as well as a curriculum implemented through an often rigid pacing guide. reina was so affected by the group and the identities of being a mathematics teacher and agent of change that she struggled with her role as a high school mathematics teacher at urban high. by her session 9 reflection, reina spoke of the frustration she was feeling as she noted that participation in the group ―made me very angry about how mathematics is currently taught.‖ as she did not feel she could teach mathematics in a relevant, meaningful way, reina explained in her exit interview that she was considering leaving the school or teaching in general. she explained why in her session 9 reflection: gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 46 to make math relevant, to create students who are socially active in what occurs in their lives feels like a huge responsibility. i have always done what was required because it was required. to create for my students something i never needed for myself seems like too much of a stretch on top of everything else that is expected of a teacher. the thought is very overwhelming. by the time her exit interview was scheduled, reina had decided to continue teaching but to do so at the middle school level as she had done prior to her work at urban high. she felt that the middle school curriculum allowed her more freedom to address issues that her students were facing through mathematics. at the start of the study, the teachers feared that examining social issues would serve not to empower students but to paralyze them into inaction as they considered the many injustices that they must face. ellen noted in her reflection after the eighth session, ―as a participant in a research group on social justice, i often worried that making students aware of the injustices they are faced with would cause them to throw in the towel or take on an attitude of self-defeat.‖ throughout the course of our sessions, the teachers‘ concerns about this issue began to lessen. in that same reflection, ellen continued to say that now she realized, ―students are fully aware of the injustices they face each day, and all they need is some empowerment, backing, and the means to have their issues addressed.‖ many teachers echoed ellen‘s sentiment, noting that increasing awareness alone was not helpful to students and that opportunity for action, where students could exercise their agency, must accompany such work. the participants‘ desire for student empowerment and action as part of teaching mathematics for social justice is consistent with research that posits that activities around mathematics for social justice should include opportunities for action (gutstein, 2006; gutstein & peterson, 2005). as a result, many were drawn to an article by turner and font strawhun (2005), which described a project where students used mathematics to explore the space allotted to them as a small school housed in a larger building with other schools. the students in turner and font strawhun‘s study compared their space with that of the other schools and used their findings to support their argument that they were not given a fair amount of space in the building. what the teachers in the study were most drawn to in this project was that it ended with students presenting their findings to the school board in an attempt to change the situation and rectify the injustice being committed against them. although the teachers began to consider how to incorporate social issues and the activities we did into their classes, they were highly discriminating about what they would and would not be comfortable bringing into their classes. some, most notably nyo and vanessa, felt that students will be engaged in mathematics because of the draw of these social issues and that this is a way of hooking students. nyo wrote in reference to some of the activities we did, noting, ―i loved the gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 47 use of the cartoons that illustrated political issues and how it tied into the data that were later handed out. [it was a] great introduction to the hardcore math topics.‖ she claimed that connecting mathematics to social issues might make the mathematics more meaningful and exciting to students. she added, in a reflection written after the ninth session, ―oddly enough i never liked social studies in school, but i feel if it were presented and related to math in a similar fashion i might have enjoyed it.‖ the findings discussed here highlight the fact that exposure to ways of incorporating social justice issues in mathematics can lead to teachers valuing such work and reconsidering the ways in which they teach their students, as well as the way in which they define what it means to be a teacher of mathematics. mathematics for social justice activities were met with interest, though not always with full support. specifically, the teachers worried if raising awareness about social issues would serve to paralyze rather than motivate students, highlighting the need to provide avenues for action along with such lessons as argued by the research literature (gutstein, 2006; gutstein & peterson, 2005). the teachers raised numerous other concerns as well, including the fact that teaching mathematics for social justice might not be supported by the school‘s administration or by parents. these concerns mirrored those described by the teachers in the study conducted by gau (2005). thus, in order that teachers are able to implement mathematics for social justice lessons into their teaching in a meaningful way, they must be supported and taught ways in which they could provide avenues for action to follow mathematics for social justice lessons if these lessons are to be used as a catalyst for social change and not merely a way to raise awareness that on its own might not be as beneficial to students. participation in the group also led to changes in how the participants (and me) saw themselves (and myself). consistent with the work of gau (2005), the teachers‘ conceptions of their roles as mathematics teachers expanded as a result of their exposure to the teaching of mathematics for social justice. they began to reconsider what it meant to teach mathematics and what counts as mathematics in the classroom. the study found that providing a forum to learn about the teaching of mathematics for social justice led to the teachers‘ growing understanding of teaching as a political act, as well as the power of mathematics to be used as a critical tool for analyzing social life. finally, as i considered issue of power and responsibility among the teachers and me in the group sessions, i noticed that the sessions during which we worked on the unit, unlike the others, were not planned out ahead of time. in the outline of group sessions that the teachers received at our first meeting, these sessions simply listed ―work on project‖ for the main activity to be done and i did not consciously think through or plan out how this work would be done. this omission might account for why the teachers were able to take responsibility for these latter sessions. taking responsibility for one of the earlier sessions would gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 48 have meant disrupting the plan i had conceived and laid out for us in the session overview. that is much more challenging than taking responsibility for the working session because these were not planned prior and taking ownership of them would not necessitate a rejection of the plans i had already developed. these realities with respect to the level of participation in our group sessions highlight to me a need for professional development to be carefully structured to include avenues for participants to take both ownership of the work and responsibility for the development of the professional development experience. ownership is defined as, ―our ability to take responsibility for negotiating meaning‖ (wenger, 1998, p. 201). that is, opportunities are created for teachers to come to an understanding of the materials or methods, to bring in their points of view and experiences, and to impact what occurs as part of the professional development. given opportunities to truly engage in the material, teachers are more likely to value the professional development and more likely to use what they learn than if they are treated as mere receivers of information. implications, unanswered questions, and issues for further research this study was informed by, and hopefully adds to, the research literature in the teaching of mathematics for social justice and teacher development through communities of practice. the conclusions reached can inform future professional development programs, hopefully leading to improved experiences for teachers, and through them, for students as well. lessons learned about the developing identities of the participants can serve to inform future studies and also programs aimed at preand in-service teacher development. although my study added to the research in the areas specified above, it left unanswered questions that can serve to guide further research. answering such questions might provide valuable insight into a number of topics, including the teaching of mathematics for social justice, professional development through a community of practice, and teacher pedagogy. the focus here is on teachers‘ developing understandings of teaching mathematics for social justice and the effects of participation in the group on teachers‘ identities as agents of change. both of these are pre-cursors, or necessary conditions, for changes in teacher action leading to pedagogical shifts. following these teachers into their classrooms to determine how these changes in understandings and identity impact teacher‘s actual practice is a logical next step that might lead us to answer questions such as:  does participation in a community of practice centered on teaching mathematics for social justice change teachers‘ pedagogical practices? if so, in what ways? gonzalez mathematics for social justice journal of urban mathematics education vol. 2, no. 1 49 another area for further research involves studying the ways that teachers could be supported so that they move from understanding mathematics for social justice to implementing it in their classrooms. examining ways that teachers could be supported as they move from awareness to implementation seems an invaluable endeavor. any reform, in order to be successful, requires support from the school, and so while we see work on preparing teachers to teach mathematics for social justice, an example of which is this very study, i continue to wonder:  what resources does a school and/or administration staff need to provide in order that teachers might fully implement mathematics for social justice lessons into their teaching? another factor to further explore would be how the findings might have differed if the professional development group and the study as a whole were undertaken with teachers who were not necessarily all aligned with the goals of teaching mathematics for social justice from the start or with teachers whose political and social understandings were less congruous than those of the participants in this study.  how would the group and the experience in general for teachers have been different if their opinions on various social issues were not so closely aligned? these are very rich questions that i believe are valuable ways of focusing future research—my own included. before concluding, i would like to share a quote from a reflection written by nyo after the fourth session that i think speaks to the excitement that i, the teacher participants, and hopefully some of you reading this article feel about teaching mathematics for social justice: ―i absolutely liked the idea of mathematizing everything around us.‖ acknowledgments this article is based upon work partially supported by the national science foundation (nsf) 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(2000). in pursuit of social justice: collaborative research and practice in teacher education. action in teacher education, 22(2) 1–14. http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass http://schools.nyc.gov/ https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb/home.do?year=2007 journal of curriculum studies research https://curriculumstudies.org e-issn: 2690-2788 june 2020 volume: 2 issue: 1 pp. 39-54 “he’s on fire for justice!”: using critical conversations to explore sociopolitical topics in elementary classrooms laura darolia* * university of kentucky, lexington, kentucky, usa. e-mail: laura.darolia@uky.edu article info received: april 17, 2020 revised: may 13, 2020 accepted: may 16, 2020 this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the cc by-nc-nd 4.0 international license. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-nd/4.0) how to cite darolia, l. (2020). “he’s on fire for justice!”: using critical conversations to explore sociopolitical topics in elementary classrooms. journal of curriculum studies research, 2(1), 39-54. https://doi.org/10.46303/jcsr.02.01.3 abstract despite the dominant discourse that childhood is a time of innocence, elementary students (kindergarten through fifth grade) notice the world around them, witness and experience injustice and deserve to explore “controversial issues” in their classrooms. this article introduces readers to olivia and her second grade students. olivia wanted to create what she called a “social justice classroom” and made intentional curricular moves in order to bring this vision to life. primarily, she implemented “social justice read aloud time” and read and discussed thoughtfully chosen trade books on “controversial issues” every friday afternoon. students were highly engaged in these read alouds and developed understandings and insights well beyond academic content standards. olivia’s approach to teaching aligned with critical literacy, a pedagogical framework that values multiple perspectives, brings sociopolitical topics into the classroom, disrupts the status quo, and moves toward social action and the inquiry design model of social studies education. using this interdisciplinary lens, empirical examples of the purposeful exploration of “controversial issues” in a second grade classroom are discussed. through olivia’s voice, along with the voices of her students, description of the learning that happened in this social justice classroom is offered as evidence that teaching controversial issues in elementary classrooms has repercussions far beyond school walls. implications for both practicing teachers and teacher educators are discussed. keywords education; curriculum studies; social justice; controversial issues. 10.46303/jcsr.02.01.3 https://curriculumstudies.org/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0 https://doi.org/10.46303/jcsr.02.01.3 40 introduction we are in the midst of a global pandemic. coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) has grabbed the world by the throat, holding hostage the simple motions of going to a place (e.g., office, campus, restaurant, concert, hotel, school, a family member’s house) to do a thing (e.g., learn, socialize, eat, make a living, enjoy, embrace). we are in the early days of this crisis and, while much remains unknown, it is clear the effects will be devastating to the global economy, the health care industry, local businesses, and tens of thousands of families who will lose their livelihoods and their loved ones. while there is admittedly very little we can control, in times like these, when much of what we know is rattled and fear is ever-present, we do have choices in how we confront the situation, what we bring to it, and what we make of it. if the initial wave of the covid-19 pandemic has revealed anything, it’s that the world is small, we are all connected, and we all have a responsibility to care for each other. this is evident through the imperative to socially distance, to check in on elderly neighbors, to patronize local businesses, and to simply be kind and gracious to all as we navigate this new normal together. beyond altruistic gestures, however, this moment in history provides unequivocal evidence of the inequities that plague our society. for example, covid-19 is impacting minority and low-income communities, including native americans at alarming rates (mineo, 2020). structural inequities that have held black people in working class jobs while denying them adequate healthcare are exacerbating the effects of covid-19 on black communities (ray, 2020). we look around and realize we are all just trying to survive this pandemic, but is clear the systems we have in place grossly disadvantage certain groups. this provides an opportunity to sharpen our collective focus and efforts around equity and justice. when schools open again and elementary students gather in their classrooms, teachers and children will need to process what just happened, how we responded, and how we will all move forward in building a more just society. this creates authentic pedagogical space for critical conversations. critical conversations critical conversations can happen when a classroom environment is built around a culture of meaningful talk. in such settings, students learn to listen to and consider multiple perspectives; they feel comfortable trying out new ideas and even changing their minds (pierce & gilles, 2008) students care about each other, and as a result, they want to hear their friends’ thoughts and then feel confident challenging them. during critical conversations, students grapple with big ideas. they critique the world around them, build on each other’s thinking, and imagine new possibilities (pierce & gilles, 2008). through critical conversations, students are able to question why society is organized in the ways it is and engage others in joining them to make change (pierce & gilles, 2008). ultimately, students make meaning together though discussion. 41 engaging in the meaningful talk of a critical conversation is a crucial skill for children to begin to develop at young ages. while the dominant discourse about childhood is that it is a time of innocence (macnaughton, 2000), elementary students (kindergarten through fifth grade) notice the world around them, witness and experience injustice, and deserve to explore “controversial issues.” these issues can be topics like race and sexuality that elicit strong feelings and ideological stances and often lead to disagreement (kuby, 2013; vasquez, 2015). these kinds of issues are laced with unequal power relations and historical oppression and ignite debate about how we should all live together. if there is ever a time to dig into the idea of how we, on the global, national, state, and local levels should get along, it is once we reunite after a pandemic-driven quarantine. there are many compelling questions to ask, such as:  what does it mean to be a good citizen?  why is it wrong to call covid-19 the chinese virus?  who wins/loses during a pandemic?  what does the covid-19 response say about america? (c3 teachers, 2020, pp. 1-4) these questions can be used to stimulate discussion and help students make sense of this moment in history. these particular conversations are yet to be had, as we are living in unprecedented times, but young children deserve to be engaged in critical conversations around issues that impact them. children and “controversial” issues race and sexuality, power-laden and important sociopolitical topics and often costly aspects of identity, have been explored with young children in elementary schools. despite the fact that teachers tend to be uncomfortable bringing such topics into the classroom (bolgatz, 2006), elementary students live with experiences of both, whether explicitly discussed or not. children as young as three years old are already crafting understandings of race (lee, ramsey, & sweeney, 2008). creating space in the classroom to intentionally talk about race strengthens students’ critical thinking skills and expands their intellectual capacities (bolgatz, 2006). while many teachers choose to adopt the “colorblind stance” in a well-intended effort to prioritize equality, children notice who is different from them, what the differences are, and what those differences mean (boutte, robertson, & powers-costello, 2011). when families also adopt this stance, students are left to create their own assumptions and understandings (darolia, 2019). outside of classroom and family dynamics, society remains divided over how to live together within and among our differences. notably, up until 2019, there had been a steady rise in the number of hate groups in the united states identified by the southern poverty law center, an organization dedicated to monitoring extremist groups and organizing against hate and bigotry. 42 table 1: hate groups in the united states hate groups in the united states monitored by the splc year number of hate groups change over time 2015 892 2016 917 +25 2017 954 +37 2018 1020 +66 2019 940 -80 note: this chart was created with data from the southern poverty law center at https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map 2018 was a particularly poignant year, as the number of monitored hate groups rose by 66. in the same year, the federal bureau of investigation (fbi) noted an increase in violent hate crimes (triesman, 2019). while admittedly imperfect data, due to different reporting practices across states, the take away is that people felt empowered within the political climate to use violence against marginalized communities. according to the fbi report, in 2018 hate crimes against latinx, gay, asian, disabled, transgender, and sikh communities increased, while african americans remained the most frequent targets of racially motivated hate crime. it does not help that president donald trump has voiced little to no opposition to racial hate, notably calling white supremacists at a rally in charleston, south carolina “very fine people” (gray, 2017) and referring to covid-19 as a “chinese virus” (riechmann & tang, 2020). this rhetoric stokes xenophobia within our own country, as evidenced by an increase in attacks on asian americans (tavernise & oppel jr., 2020). students come from families with varying ideologies. they hear messages at home and absorb messages from different forms of media. further, young children witness, experience, and think about injustice (kuby, 2013). without a space to unpack and make sense of inequity, they are left to manufacture their own understandings. children need to learn how to analyze sources, use facts and science to make informed decisions and then logically reason them. they need the space to trouble what they know, to listen to different perspectives and to learn to exercise empathy. one way to start them on this journey is to facilitate critical conversations in elementary school classrooms. critical conversations in elementary classrooms one use of critical conversations in elementary schools is as an avenue for exploring the experiences of marginalized communities. take for example, using lgtbq-inclusive curricula to invite elementary students into conversation. hartman (2018) and van horn (2015) engaged in critical conversations with second graders around gender and sexual identity, using children’s literature as an entry point. as a result, students came to new understandings about who can 43 get married. blackmon, darolia, and oliva (2014) detail how when a first grade class chose to advocate for their male classmate who liked to wear dresses, some parents were proud, while others angrily protested. the school community was rattled, but adults and children bravely engaged in critical conversations about inclusivity. in doing so, many were challenged to consider the often marginalized perspective of a person who does not conform to gender norms. after engaging in this work, the parental complaints quieted and the student continued to proudly wear pink and sparkles. parental resistance to engaging young children in critical conversations about sociopolitical topics like gender identity and sexuality is a tangible fear of many teachers (surette, 2019). hermann-wilmarth and ryan (2019) argue that being confident in the academic reasoning for all curricular decisions and never allowing the resistance of one family to impact the whole class are ways to negotiate parental concerns. students tend to be interested in sociopolitical issues despite parents’ opposition (darolia, 2019). critical conversations can also be spaces for unpacking contentious current events. after the 2016 presidential election in the united states, instead of ignoring the tension in the room, a fifth grade teacher facilitated class discussion around it. based on observations over time in this justice-oriented teacher’s classroom, payne and journell (2019) identified three moves elementary teachers can make to effectively guide students through controversial political discussions: 1) maintaining strong and personally affirming relationships; 2) allowing students’ the freedom to bring up topics, while using structure to guide discussions; and 3) including current events as valid curricular material. in a similar effort to structure critical conversations, boutte and muller (2018) use the dimensions of oppression to gain an understanding of social and political power. in doing so, students can better identify and discuss the themes of 1) conquest; 2) divide and rule; 3) manipulation; and 4) cultural invasion found in purposefully chosen read aloud books (boutte & muller, 2018). what follows is a snapshot of a second grade classroom where students engaged in critical conversations. the teacher, olivia (all names are pseudonyms) declared she wanted to have a “social justice classroom.” wanting to create a pedagogical space guided by equity and justice, she implemented “social justice read aloud time” where she used purposefully chosen children’s literature as entry points to discussion on sociopolitical issues like race and identity. wanting her curricular materials to be both windows into different perspectives and ways of being and mirrors where students see themselves reflected (bishop, 1990), olivia selected high quality picture books to engage her students. olivia understood the moral and ethical imperative of engaging students in critical conversations around issues that matter to them. i describe how the tenets of critical literacy and the inquiry design model from the college, career, and civic life (c3) framework for social studies (swan, lee, & grant, 2015) supported her work. 44 theoretical foundation this work draws on critical frameworks (freire, 1970; vazquez, janks & comber, 2019) that illuminate the social inequities. as olivia and her students discussed read aloud texts centered on social justice, a critical lens provided insight into students’ understandings of power relations and ways to take informed action for the common good. critical literacy critical literacy is a pedagogical framework that considers multiple perspectives, interrupts the status quo, brings sociopolitical topics into the classroom, and moves toward social action (lewison, flint, & van sluys, 2002). critical literacy focuses on how texts of all kinds position readers and demands that we consider our sources of information asking questions such as, what is the author’s purpose? why is it like this? is this fair? whose voice is missing? this lens is influenced by freire, who looked specifically to education as a perpetuator of the status quo. freire (1970/2000) describes the “banking” model of education as teachers treating students as receptacles into which they deposit knowledge. this classroom approach creates wide boundaries between teacher and student. freire (1970/2000) believes that when students are confronted with issues that relate to themselves and their worlds, they will be motivated to respond. as such, students must certainly be taught to decode words and images, but must also learn to interpret the social contexts around them (freire, 1970/2000). bringing a critical perspective to teaching means that pedagogical decisions are made in large part based on the resources, passions, and cognitive dissonance of the students in an effort to expose inequities; to examine the relationship between language and power; to understand that texts of all kinds position readers; and to work toward social justice (vasquez, janks, & comber, 2019). as such, critical literacy is not scripted teaching. literacy can be understood as a critical social practice, which implies that it is defined by power relations that are unequal and ideological (luke & freebody, 1999). people hold a multitude of literate identities that are shaped by life experiences. luke and freebody (1999) outline the range of practices readers use in their four resources model. the practices are: 1) code breaker (decoding), 2) text participant (comprehension), 3) text user (communication), and 4) text analyst. when analyzing texts, readers consider how those texts are designed to position them in particular ways. this fourth practice aligns with critical literacy. janks (2010), in her intersecting model of power, access, diversity, and design (2010) discusses the importance of textual redesign. it is not enough to critique texts of all kinds (i.e., books, advertisements, images, social media), students must take the next step to redesign them to be more equitable. in doing so, they resist the pull of apathy and become active agents of change. 45 inquiry design model these literacy-forward theories work in concert with social studies curricular pathways. the college, career, and civic life (c3) framework for social studies state standards is rooted in the idea that high quality social studies education is centered on inquiry and prepares students to be informed, critical, and productive members of society (ncss, 2013). this resource supports states in enriching their social studies standards and is organized into four dimensions: 1) developing questions and planning inquiries; 2) applying disciplinary tools and concepts; 3) evaluating sources and using evidence; and 4) communicating conclusions and taking informed action. to bring this framework to life in k-12 classrooms, the inquiry design model (idm) is a blueprint teacher can use to create social studies inquiries (swan, lee & grant, 2015). creating compelling and supporting questions, assigning tasks based on analyzing a variety of sources, and ultimately taking informed action based on what is learned align with critical literacy practices (janks, 2010; lewison, flint, & van sluys, 2002; vasquez, 2004). using the idm (swan, lee, & grant, 2015) and critical literacy as the foundation of this study, these pedagogical frameworks illuminate how to enact the moral and ethical imperative of critical conversations. see table 2 for a comparison of critical literacy and the idm. table 2: a comparison of critical literacy and the idm tenets of critical literacy (lewison, flint, & van sluys, 2002) inquiry design model (idm) (swan, lee, & grant, 2015) welcome sociopolitical issues in the classroom  “can i change it; can i take a different position on these things; can i look at the world differently?” (comber & nixon, 1999, p. 340) compelling & supporting questions  intellectually demanding and personally meaningful drivers of inquiry value multiple perspectives  open-ended inquiries  create counter narratives  consider contradictory perspectives sources  provide content  ignite interest  expand knowledge  offer evidence for arguments interrupt the status quo  analyze how people are positioned by texts of all kinds (janks, 2010; vazquez, 2004) summative and formative tasks  engage with content and skills to draft an evidence-based argument taking action to promote social justice  use language to question, critique, and redesign oppressive practices  engage in praxis –reflection and action – to change the world (freire, 1970/2000) taking informed action  knowledge-based civic engagement 46 methodology olivia is in the midst of her third year of teaching in a title 1 school in a midsized, midwestern u.s. college town. as a black woman, she remembers being a child who did not see herself reflected in the curricular materials her elementary school teachers used. she is committed to ensuring all of her students—black, latinx, mixed race, and white from varying socioeconomic backgrounds—can connect to the stories she reads and the content she teaches. olivia and i were grade level teammates for one year. when i stepped out of the elementary school classroom and into academia, she welcomed me into her classroom to support her and learn from her teaching. the data come from a larger case study designed to answer the following research questions: how does a teacher negotiate teaching for social justice within an early childhood classroom? in the midst of this negotiation, what becomes of the teacher’s pedagogy? i sought to understand how olivia moved through or around any challenges that threatened her social justice curricular agenda (i.e., “fitting it in” with the mandated curricula, parent opposition) and also to observe how she brought her social justice classroom to life. my primary form of involvement with olivia and her students was to observe and help her think through social justice oriented lessons. from march to mid-june of 2016, i spent one morning and one afternoon in her classroom observing each week. i was a helpful observer (dyson & genishi, 2005) and offered students assistance when needed, but generally stayed quiet and off to the side. data sources include transcriptions of informal conversations and formal interviews with olivia, video recordings of social justice read alouds, my field notes, and reflective memos. during data analysis, i focused on transcripts of social justice read alouds and conversations and interviews i had with olivia. i coded for moments when talk critiqued social norms. in some instances, this was among students during a read aloud, in others it was olivia recounting discussions in the classroom to me and reflecting on them. i used nvivo coding to maintain fidelity to participants’ words. findings the engagement of students in the content and discussion around social justice issues demonstrates how young children hold onto ideas and questions about equity and apply them to their own worlds through critical conversations. below, you meet sam, willow, andre, and maya, who did just that. while the excerpts unpacked below are not extended exchanges, they demonstrate meaningful talk: moments when students shared their insights about sociopolitical topics and demonstrated the kind of learning elementary-aged children can do when given the space. 47 sam: “he’s on fire for justice!” after reading books about different races, olivia chose texts about segregation, including, separate is never equal (tonatiuh, 2014) and freedom on the menu (weatherford, 2005). these stories introduced the historical context of the civil rights movement to students. sam, a white child, took issue with the legal separation of races. olivia explains: the good thing: if you listen to my sam… he is so opinionated. he’s on fire for justice! the way he says it, ‘who would think that way? i don’t understand who decided black people and white people can’t work together. that’s just the dumbest thing i’ve ever heard!’ and we read freedom on the menu, and at the very end they talked about how black people weren’t allowed to be at the restaurant, but they were cooks. and he said, ‘how stupid is that? they can’t serve black people but they can eat the food that they cook?’ and i’m thinking, ‘well, yeah! it’s just absurd!’ and he’s like, ‘i don’t understand it.’ sam, a white student, experienced strong instances of cognitive dissonance when engaging with texts around race relations. he simply could not make sense of the prejudice and bias that led to the harsh tactics of discrimination. he often raised his hand to vocalize his stance with emphasis and energy. interacting with the characters and plots of these books produced in him a staunch sense of right and wrong, of what was fair and unfair. in this instance, sam is doing the work of both social studies and critical literacy. he’s using a source, the read aloud, to build an argument, using language to critique a social norm by responding to the compelling question, “why is it like this?” sam spends time and effort in his classroom developing his understandings of equity and justice through reading and discussion. in doing so, he is critically thinking and analyzing social situations – why is it okay to eat food black people made, but not serve them? he is also building empathy for people treated unjustly. andre and willow, who we meet next, transfer their learning to life outside of the classroom. andre and willow: “they asked questions every single day” aside from the initial impact of hearing a story, looking at the illustrations, and engaging in discussion, the books about issues of equity olivia read left a lasting impression on two students in particular. they connected the topics in books to their own lives. at the end of the school year, olivia reflected on social justice read aloud time and its impact on these two children: andre and willow kind of stick out. it [the lens of equity] just didn’t stay with the social justice lesson on friday… they asked questions every single day. if they were on the playground or they watched something on tv, they would come in and want to talk more about it with the class. i just thought bringing those topics and issues [identity and race] to second graders was so powerful. i think it will be something they will carry with them and continue to wonder about throughout their educational career. 48 andre and willow internalized plots, characters, and discussions around issues of social justice and developed new lenses through which to view their worlds. ideas around equity were no longer reserved for social justice lessons, these students honed radars to detect instances of privilege and oppression in their daily lives. noticing and deliberately bringing social issues into the classroom for discussion prompted them to lead lives that question and critique the way things are. as olivia said, this was more than a discrete skill, this was a stance, a framework for understanding the world; a way of being that would likely be strengthened and utilized by these students well beyond their second grade year. when olivia described exploring sociopolitical issues with her second graders as “powerful,” she admitted that creating the space for topics, such as race, to interact with her students and their worldviews had effects. for sam, the impact came as a resolute sense of right and wrong; for willow and andre, it was a heightened awareness. during read aloud discussions, these students considered how they understood and responded to their worlds. this is what olivia wanted – for her students to internalize a sense of justice, to begin to create a social justice atmosphere where they initiated discussions about equity based on their own experiences. sam’s desire to strongly question the logic of segregation revealed his developing understanding of race relations. calling practices of segregation “stupid,” he placed judgement upon the sanctioned oppression of black people. his thinking was equity-oriented as he tried to make sense of how races could be separated at restaurants. his expression of cognitive dissonance was not lost on olivia. she referred to sam as “on fire for justice,” and admitted she agreed with his thinking. similarly, olivia’s observation that andre and willow questioned social realties every day was evidence that their understandings were also evolving. both at home and at school, andre and willow noticed instances of inequity and they talked about them. sam, andre, and willow were in the midst of creating the “social justice atmosphere” olivia sought. watching them revise and recreate their understandings of their worlds with a lens toward equity produced in olivia an excitement for social justice read aloud time and strengthened her commitment to keep it going. she reflected: i think they [social justice read alouds] are going really well. as far as just our regular conversations, i think they’re [her students] starting to understand that there’s a culture of justice, and they may not know how to express it well, but, if things are unfair or things are wrong, they can kind of point it out. i think the conversations we have are helping to give them a deeper understanding of the books that we read. i’m enjoying it. i enjoy the things they have to say. as olivia saw glimpses of a “social justice atmosphere” coming to life through critical conversations, she admitted she was having fun. she liked listening to her students’ insights and questions and she enjoyed watching that “culture of justice” emerge. this sense of enjoyment 49 often accompanies meaningful work. there was one more child in her class, for whom social justice read aloud time was especially significant. maya: “…it helps kids identify who they are” while sam, andre, and willow expanded their understandings of the world, for one student in particular, the read alouds and discussions around race had a momentous personal impact. maya is a biracial child. her biological father is black and her mother is white. at the time of this study, maya had never met or seen her biological father and only knew her white step-father as her dad. she had white siblings and her family never explicitly discussed or identified her racial background with her. as a result, maya was confused about her appearance. before attending this school, she was in a more rural part of the state and as the only person of color in her class, was subjected to ridicule. moving to a new school and into olivia’s classroom with white, mixed race, and black students was an initial step for maya coming to understand her racial identity. olivia’s curricular decisions to include read alouds and critical conversations gave maya permission to acknowledge her confusion. happy to be nappy (hooks, 1999) was particularly influential, as a classmate referred back to this read aloud to help build maya’s confidence about her appearance. at the end of the school year, olivia reflected on teaching for social justice and the impact critical conversations had on maya: laura: what do you think they [the students] are leaving with after this year where you did all these kinds of [social justice] lessons? olivia: i think the more impactful ones … [were] conversations about poverty and race. and i think they were able to look at each other differently. the incident that happened with maya and just having her coming to her own consciousness about who she is and what she looks like and the students helping her identify with, ‘your hair is this type of way so it’s a strong possibility that you’re black or biracial.’ they did it so respectfully. laura: you had that conversation? olivia: yeah. and then…jordan [a student] said, ‘you can be proud of your hair just like in our story [happy to be nappy].’ and so they’re kids, they’ll talk about each other, but they know now that certain things are not okay and how to advocate for one another, and so hopefully they don’t forget those things. laura: so did they help maya identify with her race? olivia: i think so. at the end of the school year i think she still had her issues. but i feel like she was a totally different kid from the beginning of the year, just not knowing who she was, now knowing she was biracial. i think it even helped her mom. she was able to go home and have a conversation with her mom about it. her mom felt it was powerful. she felt pretty good at the end of the school year… i think that just goes to show you how 50 important those conversations [about race] are because it helps kids identify who they are. for maya, reading books aloud about race and identity provided an entry point to explore her own. because olivia cultivated an environment of meaningful talk where it was okay to share insights and questions about such things openly and honestly, maya’s classmates were able to help her think through the uncertainty she had about her hair and her skin color. as olivia mentioned, this not only positively impacted maya, but also maya’s family who admittedly struggled with how to address maya’s racial identity with her. the books olivia read provided an entry point to discussion; maya and her mom were able to talk about her racial identity for the first time. discussion olivia used social justice read aloud time to engage in critical conversations about race and identity, asking compelling questions such as, “why is it like this?” olivia purposefully welcomed controversial topics into her classroom and facilitated discussions that led students to challenge the commonplace and make meaning together. students’ learning was personally relevant as they actively developed lenses for equity and came to new realizations about themselves and the world around them. both in-service teachers and teacher educators can learn from olivia and her students. implications for in-service teachers and teacher educators olivia’s experiences, including her childhood memories, influenced her teaching. her personal interest in current events, specifically around race relations, guided her lesson planning. through the read alouds she chose, she welcomed topics like segregation and identity into the classroom, making them worthy of discussion. she asked questions that elicited silenced perspectives and imagined more equitable social spaces. her pedagogy transcended a scripted teacher guide. olivia was resolute that the purpose of school is to provide the space for her students to explore the topics that matter to them, to question how things are, and to consider multiple perspectives. she believed that this, more than following a guide, was truly teaching. teaching is necessarily political. the decisions we make, the topics we choose to prioritize, the books we choose to read position students in particular ways and that must be acknowledged (kelly & brookes, 2009). we teach who we are and that matters. first and foremost, in order to facilitate critical conversations, teachers of any age group must scrutinize their own beliefs and biases and reflect on how they either covertly or overtly appear during instruction and interactions with students and families. like olivia, teachers must also confidently identify their purpose as educators. what kinds of experiences should students have? what academic, social, and emotional priorities should guide the work completed during school year? what role do critical conversations have in an 51 elementary school classroom? this will influence a teacher’s ability to better support the investigation of sociopolitical topics with students. this intensely personal work requires time, commitment, and a willingness to lean into discomfort. meaningful talk creating a classroom environment where talk is meaningful is key. olivia did this by building relationships with students, respecting their identities, and validating students’ experiences, insights, and questions. she also explicitly taught her students how to participate in group discussions. teaching the skills of engagement, how to listen to learn and how to respectfully disagree with or challenge a classmate’s stance are crucial skills for both children and adults to hone. practicing how to enact these moves or observing and debriefing on high quality discussions are ways to introduce students to meaningful talk. further, teachers and students can co-create a list of “talk norms” that everyone signs to solidify their commitments. once this culture of talk is created, the classroom space is better suited for critical conversations. both elementary and teacher preparation spaces should be built around the tenets of critical literacy (lewison, flint, & van sluys, 2002) and the idm (swan, grant, & lee, 2015). engage students in topics that matter to them, including those deemed “controversial.” use current events as valid curricular material and ask compelling questions. provide sources for students to analyze and teach them how to build reasoned arguments. prioritize justice and have students work to take action by redesigning texts in more equitable ways. when teacher educators structure methods classes accordingly, pre-service teachers get to experience what it feels like to learn in this way, potentially leading them to replicate the experience with their future students. we need our students to be justice-oriented combining the tenets of critical literacy (lewison, flint, & van sluys, 2002) with the idm (swan, grant, & lee, 2015) creates opportunities for teachers to use their own expertise to create standards-based, engaging, relevant, and rigorous inquiries. inquiries that will invite students – even in elementary school – to critique, analyze, and question the ways things are. students will scrutinize primary and secondary sources in order to create new understandings, take action and redesign their worlds in ways that prioritize the common good. like sam, who is “on fire for justice” or andre and willow who have new lenses through which they see the world, we need the next generation to be able to consider multiple perspectives, to understand inequity, and to reason logically and strategically to make things better. critical conversations around topics that matter allow them to learn these skills. looking around our world in the spring of 2020, covid-19 is disproportionately ravaging minority communities (hate groups are active, democrats and republicans are sharply divided 52 (newport, 2019), and civil discourse is a rarity. we need a generation of people who can actively work to understand multiple perspectives and then take informed action to redesign the inequity and strife in which we are currently seeped. olivia reminds us that school is the place to do this work. she reflects: […] you have the issues [of equity] outside of the classroom that are never addressed in the classroom and i think the classroom is the most important place to talk about these things because you go home and families have opinions and students don’t get to discuss it. there is no dialogue. no dissecting of what’s happening. it’s just what you see in the news. what do you do with that information? i imagine for some kids it so frustrating to want to talk about these things and not have a space to learn about them. let’s commit to engaging in personal reflection so we can effectively facilitate critical conversations in our educational spaces. when can be together in the same rooms again, let’s not forget what it felt like to be forced apart. we can now narrow our focus on our shared humanity. our collective efforts can combine to create a new normal that prioritizes critical thinking, multiple perspectives, analysis, and informed action. these efforts should include children and they can begin in kindergarten classrooms with critical conversations. references blackmon, l., darolia, l. h., & oliva, j. 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(2013). the college, career, and civic life (c3) framework for social studies state standards: guidance for enhancing the rigor of k-12 civics, economics, geography, and history. silver spring, md: ncss. newport, f. (2019, december 5). the impact of increased political polarization. gallup. https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/268982/impact-increased-politicalpolarization.aspx 54 payne, k. a. & journell, w. (2019). “we have those kinds of conversations here…”: addressing contentious politics with elementary students. teaching and teacher education, 79, 7382. pierce, k. m. & gilles, c. (2008). from exploratory talk to critical conversations (37-53). in mercer, n. and hodgkinson, s. (eds.) exploring talk in school: inspired by the work of douglas barnes. thousand oaks, ca: sage. ray, r. 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(2005). freedom on the menu: the greensboro sit-ins. new york, ny: penguin group reviewed article 5 preparing students for 21st century practice: enhancing social justice teaching in clinical legal education dr jacqueline weinberg, monash university, australia * abstract social justice has always played an important role in clinical legal education (cle).1 clinicians are aware that students need to acquire the necessary legal skills and strategies related to client-centred lawyering, process choice and procedural justice. this paper shows that increasingly, despite clinicians’ recognition of the value of teaching social justice in cle, those who promote it face various challenges in instilling in students the notion that social justice is important. this paper discusses some of these challenges, including, that as experiential education expands, students are being offered clinical placements in the private sector where clients do not face the barriers in accessing justice similar to those in community settings. it therefore becomes imperative to encourage students to retain the notion that social justice is an important value. this paper makes suggestions for how these challenges can be * dr jacqueline weinberg is a lecturer in the faculty of law, monash university. 1 refer to adrian evans et al, best practices: australian clinical legal education (report for office of teaching and learning, 2013). see also weinberg, jacqueline, ‘keeping up with change: no alternative to teaching adr in clinic. an australian perspective’ (2018) international journal of clinical legal education 1. reviewed article 6 overcome to enhance students’ awareness of the importance of social justice and ensure that it remains a value they retain as 21st century practitioners. introduction students undertake cle to learn what lawyers do in practice.2 students engage with real-life clients and manage their matters, learning practical legal skills under the supervision of qualified legal practitioners (‘clinical supervisors’).3 students learn about the various technical, ethical and procedural obligations with which lawyers must comply. notably, the value of law clinics extends well beyond their pedagogical function; these clinics play a vital role in the advancement of access to justice, as they serve disadvantaged and marginalised members of the community who could not otherwise afford a lawyer. during their placements at law clinics, students are encouraged to reflect critically on the nature and meaning of access to justice, including how and why it is constrained and how it might be fostered. students are guided to develop the skills and strategies that are fundamental to their ability to manage clients and establish trusting lawyer–client relationships, all of which are essential to their future careers as legal practitioners with a ‘justice’ focus. 2 adrian evans et al (n 1). 3 adrian evans et al (n 1). see also jeff giddings, promoting justice through clinical legal education (justice press, 2013). reviewed article 7 this paper argues that retaining a social justice mission in cle has become challenging for clinicians today. these challenges arise for various reasons, including that experiential learning in law schools has expanded into the private sector, where clients do not face barriers to accessing justice similar to community contexts. as such, it becomes more difficult to instil in students the notion that social justice is an important value to retain. also, students’ interests in employability has lead them to focus on seeking work in the private sector with the risk that they develop the notion that social justice is no longer a value they need to aspire to. this paper argues that despite these challenges, social justice teaching remains an important component of cle. as such, clinicians need to focus consciously on this teaching. this paper discusses some of the best-practice protocols and methods that can be used to enhance social justice teaching in cle so that students develop a deep understanding of social justice, which in turn will strengthen their ability to manage client matters and enhance their lawyer–client relationships in their future legal practice. this paper begins by providing context for social justice teaching in cle. it then goes on to define the concept of social justice, which is essential to better teach students the notion of ‘justice readiness’. reviewed article 8 social justice teaching in cle a longstanding relationship exists between cle and social justice, both nationally and internationally.4 as mckeown and hall state, ‘cle has a long and persistent tradition of seeing the formation of “social justice” clinicians as a principal educational goal’.5 since its inception, cle has established the dual foci of providing access to justice to disenfranchised members of the community and teaching law students practical legal skills.6 the primary aim of cle is for students to engage in clinical work while being educated about the practical function of the law.7 cle enables students to experience the practice of law and thus gain an appreciation of how it functions in a real-world setting.8 students’ involvement in the legal process is intended to help them develop practical legal skills, including critical and analytical thinking, ethical conduct, social values and responsibility.9 these skills encompass several aspects that are captured under the umbrella term ‘social justice’.10 4 paul mckeown and elaine hall, ‘if we could instil social justice values through cl, should we?’ (2018) 5(1) journal of international and comparative law 143. see also frank bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011). 5 paul mckeown and elaine hall, ‘if we could instil social justice values through cl, should we?’ (2018) 5(1) journal of international and comparative law 143. see also frank bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011). 6 mckeown and hall (n 4). see also frank bloch and mrk prasad, ‘institutionalising a social justice mission for clinical legal education: cross-national currents from india and the united states’ (2006) 13 clinical law review 165. 7 ibid. 8 refer to evans et al (n 1). 9 ibid. 10 ibid. see also deborah rhode, ‘pro bono in principle and in practice’ (2003) 53(3) journal of legal education 413; david singo, ‘clinical legal education and social justice—a perspective from the wits law clinic’ (2018) 2 stellenbosch law review 295; chris ashford and paul mckeown (eds), social justice and legal education (cambridge scholars, 2018). reviewed article 9 south african clinical academic, david singo, suggests that clinical aims and learning outcomes should be designed to accommodate this approach.11 however, singo warns that although clinicians often argue that social justice, as a concept, cannot be divorced from the clinical teaching methodology and is an inherent by-product of cle programs, it is not enough to make vague averments that clinics and cle play a role in social justice.12 rather, social justice must be specifically and overtly incorporated into and made a learning outcome of cle programs.13 byron supports this notion, suggesting that clinics perpetuate a learning environment in which law students either acquire or fail to acquire essential social justice teaching.14 to prevent the latter circumstance, clinicians need to ensure that the cle program involves social justice teaching.15 this must be done ‘at curriculum planning level together with the formulation of educational objectives and learning outcomes of both the law school or faculty and the cle program’.16 before social justice teaching can be included in the clinic curriculum, it is important to ensure that clinicians have a clear understanding of what social justice means. 11 david singo, ‘clinical legal education and social justice—a perspective from the wits law clinic’ (2018) 2 stellenbosch law review 295 12 singo (n 11). 13 ibid. see also spencer rand, ‘teaching law students to practice social justice: an interdisciplinary search for help through social work’s empowerment approach’ (2006) 13 clinical law review 463. 14 ip byron, ‘the relationship between social justice and clinical legal education: a case study of the women’s law clinic, faculty of law, university of ibadan, nigeria’ (2014) 20 international journal of clinical legal education 568. see also ya vawda, ‘learning from experience: the art and science of clinical law’ (2004) 29(1) journal of juridical science 131. 15 ibid. see also stephen wizner, ‘is social justice still relevant’ (2012) 32(2) boston college journal of law & social justice 345. 16 ibid 568. reviewed article 10 definitions of social justice given that the central aim of cle is to instil social justice awareness in students, there is a need for clarity as to what social justice means.17 however, defining the term ‘justice’ and clarifying the concept ‘social justice’ with absolute authority may be an impossible task.18 singo argues that ‘it is equally impossible for a clinician to teach law students meaningful lessons regarding social justice without clear understanding of what the term and concept entail’.19 it is thus necessary to identify distinguishable elements of social justice with as much clarity as possible to formulate a definition.20 when reviewing definitions of social justice, it is clear that this term is a debated concept that is applied differently in different contexts.21 there are many perspectives of social justice. in the south african context, macquoid-mason defines social justice as ‘the fair distribution of health, housing, wealth, education, and legal resources on an affirmative action basis to disadvantaged members of the community’.22 byron further suggests that social justice adheres to ‘the natural law that all persons, irrespective of ethnic origin, race or religion are to be treated equally and without 17 singo (n 11) at 304. 18 ibid. 19 ibid 309. 20 ibid. 21 ibid. also refer to evans et al (n 1) 98. 22 david mcquoid-mason, ‘teaching social justice to law students through clinical legal education and community service: a south african experience’ in mutaz qafisheh and stephen rosenbaum (eds), experimental legal education in a globalised world: the middle east and beyond (cambridge scholars, 2016). reviewed article 11 prejudice’.23 singo describes social justice as a ‘system of values and conscientiousness, predicated on an innate sense of justice, which enjoins every socially responsible person to take positive action for the betterment of fellow human beings and society at large’.24 singo stresses that the ultimate aim is ‘to attain a basic set of entitlements for all people, which at the very least must include human dignity, freedom, equality, and justice for all members of society’.25 in the us, lawton posits that social justice is often viewed as a ‘code for socialism and as antithetical to classical liberal ideas of individual liberty’.26 social justice is viewed as ‘normative’, which suggests that ‘laws and policies should be designed so as to create a just and equitable society’.27 bellow and kettleson hold the view that a public interest lawyer as ‘an attorney who provides subsidised legal services, on a full-or almost full-time basis, to those who would otherwise be underor unrepresented’.28 similarly, solorzano and yosso believe that advocating for social justice means 23 byron (n 14) 567. 24 singo (n 11) 302. 25 ibid. 26 julia lawton, ‘the imposition of social justice morality in legal education’ (2016) 4 indiana journal of law and social equality 57. 27 ibid 58. 28 gary bellow and jeanne kettleson, ‘from ethics to politics: confronting scarcity and fairness in public interest practice in lawyer’s ethics and the pursuit of social justice’ in susan d carle (ed), lawyers ethics and the pursuit of social justice (new york university press, 2005). see also michelle s jacobs, ‘pro bono work and access to justice for the poor: real change or imagined change’? 48 florida law review 509. reviewed article 12 ‘transforming the system by changing the structures of the system, which disempower underrepresented minority groups’.29 according to evans et al., in australia, the idea of social justice is ‘comfortably accepted as a legitimate progressive social policy position’. there is a general, contemporary idea of social justice as: the provision to all people of basic human needs including income, housing, education and health care; equal enjoyment of human rights, including nondiscrimination, freedom of expression and movement, the right to liberty and the right to live free from violence; and some redistribution of resources to maximise the position of the worst-off.30 whatever definition of social justice one adopts, certain distinguishable elements are evident: equality, human dignity, freedom, basic education, healthcare and justice. the notion that society should redistribute wealth and accept some responsibility for the wellbeing of disadvantaged members of society is also fundamental to any such definition.31 further, social justice means that able members of society should challenge political, economic, societal, legal and other structures that oppress the less 29 daniel solorzano and tara yosso, ‘maintaining social justice hopes within academic realities: a freirean approach to critical race/latcrit pedagogy’ (2000) 78(4) denver university law review 595. 30 evans et al (n 1) 98. 31 ibid. reviewed article 13 advantaged.32 as singo states, ‘any definition of social justice would therefore need to incorporate at least the aforementioned elemental factors’.33 cle and community legal centres the longstanding association between cle and community legal centres (clcs) has contributed to the notion that social justice has its origins in the fight against poverty, injustice and the underrepresentation of minority interests in the legal process. 34 clinics fit well within clcs, as clcs are ‘committed to striving for equitable access to the legal system and justice, and the equal protection of human rights’.35 three essential aspects of clc work are the provision of legal advice and the conduct of casework for disadvantaged clients and communities, the provision of community legal education, and the promotion of law and policy reform. 36 clcs mostly provide legal assistance with tenancy, credit and debt, administrative law, social security, criminal law, family law and domestic violence matters.37 students practising in legal clinics associated with clcs are exposed to the law as it affects disadvantaged clients. these clinics take a holistic and interdisciplinary approach to understanding clients’ 32 ibid. 33 singo (n 11) 300. 34 see jeremy cooper and louise trubek, ‘social values from law school to practice: an introductory essay’ in jeremy cooper and louise trubek (eds), educating for justice: social values and legal education (ashgate, 1997) 5. see also alicia alvarez, ‘community development clinics: what does poverty have to do with them?’ (2007) 34 fordham urban law journal 1269. 35 ibid. 36 ibid. 37 ibid. see also national association of community legal centres australia, annual report 2012/13 (web page, 2016) <perma.cc/9w9h-76kl>. reviewed article 14 legal problems, whereby several professionals (from social workers to business advisors) help clients to achieve their goals. 38 teaching students within the community context encourages them to think critically about the role of law in society and how it can be used to further social justice.39 walsh adopts the view that cle programs are one of the primary forums in which social awareness among students can be promoted. 40 walsh notes that cle exposes students to people facing challenges, and students come to learn of the ‘multiple layers of disadvantage faced by these people, including non-legal ones’. 41 by working with and taking responsibility for disadvantaged clients in cle programs, students may begin to feel socially responsible for disadvantaged people in general.42 walsh further notes that cle introduces students to ‘role model public interest lawyers and provides students with proof that they are able to use their knowledge to promote social justice, and to assist those in need’. 43 38 see anna cody and barbara schatz, ‘community law clinics: teaching students, working with disadvantaged communities’ in frank bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011) 167. 39 ibid 168. 40 tamara walsh, ‘putting justice back into legal education’ (2007) 17(1–2) legal education review 119. 41 ibid 121. see also irene styles and archie zariski, ‘law clinics and the promotion of public interest lawyering’ (2001) 19 law in context 65. 42 walsh (n 40). see also stephen wizner, ‘beyond skills training’ (2001) 7 clinical law review 327. 43 walsh (n 40). see also irene styles and archie zariski, ‘law clinics and the promotion of public interest lawyering’ (2001) 19 law in context 65. reviewed article 15 although the nature of the relationship between cle and community settings has meant that social justice has commonly been viewed within the context of the economically disadvantaged members of society; it has become apparent this context might need to be broadened. some students may practice in private settings, where clients do not face the obstacles to accessing legal service that are prevalent in community settings. it becomes a challenge then to ensure that such students are still aware of the value of applying a social justice approach to their practice. challenges of social justice teaching historically, both in australia and worldwide, cle has required students to engage in live-client experiential learning by providing pro bono legal services to low-income clients.44 in the us, law schools have invested heavily in instilling a ‘social justice morality’ in their students.45 lawton notes that they have done so in their ‘pro bono requirements’,46 ‘experiential learning opportunities’47 and by providing more funding to students working in the public interest than to those working in business 44 refer to richard grimes, ‘legal literacy, community empowerment and law schools—some lessons from a working model in the uk’ (2003) 37 law teacher 273; paul bergman, ‘reflections on us clinical education’ (2003) 10(1) international journal of the legal profession 109; peggy maisel, ‘expanding and sustaining clinical legal education in developing countries: what we can learn from south africa’ (2007) 30(2) fordham international law journal 374; frank bloch and mary-anne noone, ‘legal aid origins of clinical legal education’ in frank bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011); jeff giddings, promoting justice through clinical legal education (justice press, 2013). 45 refer to peter joy, ‘political interference in clinical programs: lessons from the us experience’ (2005) 8 international journal of clinical legal education 83; lawton (n 26) 67. 46 lawton (n 26) 67. 47 ibid. reviewed article 16 disciplines.48 such investments appear to reflect law schools’ attempts ‘to convince law students of the validity of working in the public interest for social justice’.49 more recently, us law schools have recognised that they may need to revise the focus of their education mission from developing ‘legal thinkers’ to producing ‘job-ready’ graduates.50 similarly, in australia, a major review of higher education in 2008 and the government’s response to this review acknowledged the need for universities to prepare graduates for the world of work.51 experiential education in australia has traditionally involved students engaging in live-client clinics with a poverty law focus; however, more recently, there has been a growth in offerings such as externship clinical placement programs52 and work-integrated learning (wil),53 mostly in the private sector. in both externship placements and wil, students work in host 48 ibid. 49 ibid. 50 refer to david rigg, ‘embedding employability in assessment: searching for the balance between academic learning and skills development in law: a case study’ (2013) 47 the law teacher 404. 51 refer to denise bradley et al, review of australian higher education: final report (canberra, 2008); giddings, j. & weinberg, j. (2020). experiential legal education: stepping back to see the future. in c. denvir (ed.), modernising legal education (pp. 38–56). cambridge university press. 52 refer to evans et al (n 1) ch 2. evans et al refer to the term ‘externships’ to describe ‘the form of clinical legal education where individual students are placed in an independent legal practice, community legal centre, government agency or not-for-profit organisation’: at 56. 53 evans et al (n 1) refer to ‘work-integrated learning’ as ‘a curriculum design, which combines formal learning with student exposure to real professional, work or other practice settings’: at 43. for a broader discussion on the program risks of wil, refer to craig cameron et al, ‘the program risks of work-integrated learning: a study of australian university lawyers’ (2018) 40(1) journal of higher education policy and management 67. see also janice orrell, good practice report: work-integrated learning (australian learning and teaching council, 2011); stephen billett, integrating practice-based experiences into higher education (springer, 2015). reviewed article 17 organisations to gain the knowledge, understanding and skills considered essential to workplace practices.54 due to the expansion of experiential learning in law schools and new clinical externship opportunities both nationally and internationally, students are being offered a variety of clinical placements in community contexts and the private sector. students can choose to participate in clinics at which they will perform pro bono legal services with a social justice focus or in the private sector. notably, clients in the private sector do not generally face the same barriers to accessing justice as those in community settings. students may choose externship placements in private settings for several reasons, including that they simply are not interested in engaging in social justice.55 after all, students have their own legitimate interests for attending law school;56 for example, they may wish to help the vulnerable and impoverished or to pursue careers in corporate law, providing legal services to the privileged.57 according to lawton, american law schools often accentuate this notion by creating a competitive environment in which the ‘best’ students are those who receive the ‘best’ grades and are offered the most coveted jobs in large private law firms.58 as lawton posits, ‘students cannot accept sole responsibility for these choices as law schools are 54 refer to evans et al (n 1). 55 refer to lawton (n 26) 70. 56 ibid. 57 ibid. 58 ibid. reviewed article 18 subtly perpetuating this preference for working in the private industry by focusing courses on individual needs rather than the public good’.59 it therefore appears that although clinical educators have long held the belief that the value of clinical experience for students is in the exposure they gain by interacting and engaging with social justice issues, the expansion of experiential education into the private setting has caused some academics to question whether a new perspective is needed. is a new perspective needed? lawton contends that clinicians should guard against ‘indoctrinating students’ or ‘imposing [their] social justice moralities on law students’.60 she cautions legal educators against ‘pushing students into a particular practice area based on the educators’ moralities’61 and notes that they should expand students’ ideas and train them to see context and recognise the need for perspective.62 similarly, mckeown and hall warn clinicians ‘not to impose [their] own moral perspective on [their] students but to provide students with the framework to critique the world in which they live and strive to develop their own moral position’.63 students should be offered opportunities for exposure to different areas of law ‘to determine for themselves their 59 ibid 71. 60 lawton (n 26) 73. 61 ibid. 62 ibid. 63 mckeown and hall (n 4) 179. reviewed article 19 morality and what role they want this morality to play in their professional lives’.64 this is arguably even more crucial with respect to courses on private law and the expansion of experiential learning in the private sector. kosuri argues that if increased experiential learning opportunities for students are a real objective of law schools, and clinics are viewed as ‘the pinnacle of those opportunities, then broadening the portfolio of clinical offerings to include those that are not focused on social justice should be a valid proposition’.65 kosuri stresses that law school clinics can no longer presume that a social justice mission (to represent the indigent and underrepresented about poverty law issues) is the only legitimate goal for clinic clients and matters;66 rather, leaders of clinical programs should accommodate different models of clinics, thereby expanding clinical education to more students and ‘unleashing the next phase of innovation and creativity in law school education’.67 clinical opportunities should be provided to every interested law student, and the notion that clinics are only for ‘public interest’ students or special factions of students should be abandoned.68 kosuri views the greatest contribution of cle as not merely ‘creating a haven for public interest-oriented law students or in promoting social justice causes, but rather in a methodology that teaches students how 64 ibid. 65 praveen kosuri, ‘losing my religion: the place of social justice in clinical legal education’ (2012) boston college journal of law and social justice 338. 66 ibid. 67 ibid 337. 68 ibid 338. reviewed article 20 to learn from experience, whatever that experience may be’.69 for example, in a ‘finance clinic’, students may represent businesses seeking to acquire early-stage investment from financial sponsors.70 kosuri acknowledges that this type of clinic is ‘devoid of traditional social justice issues’,71 but suggests that it could still be viewed as a ‘legitimate clinical offering providing students with a rich experience learning what motivates people and how to align interests to achieve a desired outcome’.72 kosuri is not advocating that social justice be removed from all clinics, but that there should be a more ‘expansive and inclusive view of what clinics can do for law students’.73 finally, kosuri adds that ‘clinicians should strive to provide a portfolio of opportunities that appeal to a wide array of students as more students are driven to clinics looking for competitive advantages when they enter the workforce’.74 not all scholars agree with kosuri’s view that certain clinical settings (e.g., externships and those with a more corporate focus) are ‘devoid’ of social justice considerations. clinical educators, like cole, have suggested that these clinics can still support a social justice mission for the following three reasons: 69 ibid. see also jeanne charn, ‘service and learning: reflections on three decades of the lawyering process at harvard law school’ (2003) 75 clinical law review 77–8; quintanilla et al, ‘experiential education and access-to-justice within u.s. law schools: designing and evaluating an access-tojustice-service learning program within the first-year curriculum’ (2019) 7(1) indiana journal of law and social equality 1. 70 kosuri (n 65) 338. 71 ibid. 72 ibid. 73 ibid. 74 ibid. reviewed article 21 first, many people experience the need for social justice on a daily basis. second, most law students enter law school open to the idea that part of being a lawyer is serving the public good. third, is the view held by most lawyers, law teachers, and law schools that a lawyer’s role is defined, at least in part, by his or her obligation to serve the public and work towards social justice.75 according to cole, it is the role of the supervising lawyer to commit to social justice and persuade students of the value and practicality of social justice work.76 horrigan takes this point further, suggesting not only that social justice considerations are central to corporate work, but also that lawyers have an obligation to consider the relationship between big business and poverty; they may even have an obligation to fight poverty.77 as horrigan states: 75 liz ryan cole, ‘a special focus to help understand and advance social justice’ in frank bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011) 327. see also jp ogilvy, leah wortham and lisa lerman (eds), learning from practice: a professional development text for legal externs (thomson/ west, 2007) 76 cole (n 88). 77 bryan horrigan, ‘the role of lawyers in steering corporate governance and responsibility towards addressing social injustice and inequality’ in pd maynard and n gold (eds), poverty, justice and the rule of law: report of the second phase of the iba presidential task force on the financial crisis (international bar association, 2013) 139. see also bryan horrigan, corporate social responsibility in the 21st-century: debates, models and practices across government, law and business (edward elgar, 2012). reviewed article 22 it is the role of the global legal profession to embrace action on poverty abroad and at home as an integral part of the profession’s own socio-ethical, professional and even legal responsibilities.78 horrigan views it as the responsibility of lawyers ‘to connect the threads between what lawyers and business enterprises do (or not do) and the endgame of alleviating and even eliminating poverty’.79 according to horrigan, there is no reason for private lawyers and other businesses not to care about ‘what happens to people afflicted by poverty’;80 rather, their focus should provide a ‘new lens’ that allows lawyers and others to ‘see some conventional aspects of their work in an unconventional perspective’.81 horrigan encourages lawyers to reframe their lawyerly roles and responsibilities in fighting poverty and use their roles in the public, private and community sectors to make a difference to poverty.82 this may include connecting their work as lawyers in areas of corporate governance and finance to make a difference to poverty alleviation.83 arguably, horrigan’s focus on fighting poverty aligns with the social justice ethos of cle. it follows that if lawyers in corporate and private legal settings adopt horrigan’s suggestions and reframe their roles, then students placed in these settings will benefit from exposure to the social justice 78 horrigan (n 77) 143. 79 ibid. 80 ibid. 81 ibid. 82 ibid. 83 ibid 144. reviewed article 23 mission. in such circumstances, clinicians with views similar to kosuri will have to reconsider whether a ‘finance clinic’ should (or actually can) be completely ‘devoid of traditional social justice issues’.84 having regard to these arguments and the challenges clinicians may face to the education of students about social justice, there are ways these obstacles can be overcome. while it may not be possible to expect all students to engage in clinical placements that are focused entirely on social justice nor that the lawyers with whom they engage will be attending to such issues, nonetheless, instilling in students the message that social justice is a system of values and a consciousness that is predicated on an innate sense of justice remains important. 85 social justice teaching remains important if social justice is to remain one of the central missions of cle, students should be encouraged to be value-driven or possess a sense of social justice regardless of where they receive their clinical teaching.86 the risk of not doing so is that students will fail to appreciate that social justice is important and assume that a social justice ethos is 84 kosuri (n 65) 331. 85 refer to singo (n 11) 302. see also bryan horrigan, ‘designing and implementing an enhanced clinical program in the age of disruption. part one: the environment for clinic’ (2019) 26(2) international journal of clinical legal education 75; bryan horrigan, ‘designing and implementing an enhanced clinical program in the age of disruption. part two: the environment for clinic’ (2020) international journal of clinical legal education 204. 86 singo (n 11). see also supporting social justice through student supervision practices’ in chris ashford & paul mckeown (eds), social justice and legal education, 2018, cambridge scholars publishing, 43-64. reviewed article 24 essentially an optional attribute. in law schools in which the curriculum focuses on corporate units (and other units lacking in social justice orientation), singo warns that there is a ‘tacit institutional discouragement for law students to pursue social justice ambitions’.87 this ultimately leads students to believe that a successful law graduate is someone who gains a position in a corporate and/or commercial private law firm rather than a law firm focusing on social justice issues.88 it follows that if social justice is to retain its prominence in clinical teaching, no matter whether students engage in poverty-focused live-client clinics or private law firms, they should be made aware that the values that underlie social justice are values that any legal practitioner (and responsible member of society) should possess.89 these are values that are essential for every socially responsible person to hold for the betterment of fellow human beings and society at large.90 students engaging in clinical programs need to be provided with opportunities to develop a sense of social responsibility and to recognise injustice in society and the legal system. byron supports this notion, suggesting: cle inculcates in students a sense of professionalism, a spirit of community lawyering and social justice. lawyers should see themselves as trustees of 87 ibid 310. 88 ibid. see also lawton (n 26). 89 singo (n 11). 90 ibid 302. reviewed article 25 justice. on them lies the fiduciary responsibility to see to it that the legal system provides, as far as is practically possible, justice for all citizens, not only for the rich and powerful. on the other hand, law teachers should realise that the students they teach will be advocates, judges, political persons and so they have a responsibility through their teaching to ensure their students commit to social justice.91 in this way students become justice ready (i.e., able to provide options for their clients to access justice).92 social justice teaching is aligned with preparing students for justice readiness. as aiken explains: everything a lawyer does has to do with justice or injustice, sometimes on the surface and sometimes in the background. justice is about doing, and clinicians are among the only faculty in law schools who teach students how to ‘do’ law. therefore, clinical faculty ought to pull back the curtain and reveal the injustice; they ought to teach within a context of justice, showing the effect that all lawyers have on society.93 91 byron (n 14) 567. 92 refer to jeremy cooper and louise trubek (eds), educating for justice: social values and legal education (ashgate 1997); stephen wizner and jane aiken, ‘teaching and doing: the role of law school clinics in enhancing access to justice’ (2004) 73 fordham law review 997; evans et al (n 3) 98. 93 jane aiken, ‘the clinical mission of justice readiness’ (2012) 32 boston college journal of law & social justice 233. reviewed article 26 aiken suggests that law schools need to do more than strive to teach students to be ‘practice ready’;94 but rather students need to be ‘justice ready’—to be aware of injustice and committed to fighting it in their legal careers.95 justice-ready graduates can recognise injustice and appropriately evaluate the consequences of their actions in a way that mere practice readiness does not teach.96 clinics must move students beyond being just practice ready and prepare them ‘to identify injustice when they see it and develop the skills and strategic thinking to remedy it’.97 clinicians must determine which skills and knowledge will improve students’ ability to identify injustice.98 further, they must develop and implement teaching interventions to ensure that students acquire these skills.99 as aiken concludes, ‘clinicians can help their students make a commitment to justice in their lives as lawyers. the tools just need to be refined’.100 within the clinical context, structured methods and models can be implemented to develop and maintain a more uniform approach to focus on issues of social justice. as supervision plays a crucial role in clinical teaching, an effective way to implement these methods and models is to support supervisors to focus on issues relating to access to justice and social justice. 94 ibid. 95 ibid 234. see also jane aiken, ‘provocateurs for justice’ (2001) 7 clinical law review 294. 96 aiken (n 93). 97 ibid 235. 98 ibid. 99 ibid. 100 ibid 236. reviewed article 27 the role of supervision in social justice teaching supervision is viewed as the cornerstone of best practice in cle.101 giddings posits that effective supervision is ‘integral to harnessing the rich learning potential of clinic experiences and as such plays a valuable role in providing students with a deeper understanding of social justice concepts and the complex nature of public policy debates’.102 clinics are particularly well suited to generating discussions relating to concepts such as fairness, justice, due process and ethical awareness.103 supervisors have a critical role in guiding students to understand the implications of the “disorienting moments” they encounter where a social justice-oriented clinical experience challenges student understandings, particularly the impact of laws on marginalised people.104 davys and beddoe identify the need to focus on supervision as a ‘reflective learning process rather than one of direction and audit’.105 according to these writers, supervision should involve a process of ‘teaching a way of thinking rather than teaching a set of techniques’.106 supervisors can use frameworks that 101 refer to jeff giddings, promoting justice through clinical legal education (justice press, 2013). see also jeff giddings, ‘the assumption of responsibility: supervision practices in experimental legal education’ in mutaz qafisheh and stephen rosenbaum (eds), global legal education approaches: special reference to the middle east (cambridge scholars, 2012). 102 jeff giddings, ‘it’s more than a site: supporting social justice through student supervision practices’ in chris ashford and paul mckeown (eds), social justice and legal education (cambridge scholars, 2018). 103 ibid. 104 ibid. see also quigley, fran, ‘seizing the disorienting moment: adult learning theory and the teaching of social justice in law clinics’ (1995) 2 clinical law review 37, susan brooks, ‘using a communication perspective to teach relational lawyering’ (2015) 15 nevada law journal 477. 105 allyson davys and liz beddoe, ‘the context of professional supervision’ in allyson davys and liz beddoe (eds), best practice in professional supervision: a guide for the helping professions (jessica kingsley, 2010) 18. 106 ibid 20. reviewed article 28 recognise and address the social justice dimensions of both their supervision role and the legal work in which they engage.107 within the clinical setting, students are given opportunities to learn legal skills to promote access to justice; however, if they are to explore larger issues of systemic injustice, deep exploration and learning is required.108 students need to engage in critical reflection and introspection to develop greater insight into, make a long-term commitment to and take responsibility for justice.109 reflection is a critical step in the transformative learning process.110 aiken stresses that clinicians must teach ‘reflective skepticism’ in which students learn ‘to understand that knowledge is constructed, and to gain the ability to challenge assumptions and explore alternatives’.111 to provoke reflective thinking, clinicians identify cases that are likely to stimulate transformative learning and create opportunities for students to reflect on their experiences.112 by 107 ibid. 108 refer to liz curran, judith dickson and mary-anne noone, ‘pushing the boundaries or preserving the status quo? designing clinical programs to teach law students a deep understanding of ethical practice’ (2005) 8 international journal of clinical legal education 104; barry, margaret martin, jon c dubin and peter joy, ‘clinical education for this millennium: the third wave’ (2000) 7 clinical law review 1. 109 aiken (n 93). 110 ibid. 111 ibid 288. see also kevin kerrigan, ‘how do you feel about this client?’ a commentary on the clinical model as a vehicle for teaching ethics to law students’ (2007) international journal of clinical legal education 37; anna cody, ‘what does legal ethics teaching gain, if anything, from including a clinical component?’ (2015) 22(1) international journal of clinical legal education 1. 112 aiken (n 93). reviewed article 29 reflecting, students can critically analyse their current assumptions to determine if their world view is accurate.113 a structured approach to supervision ensures that clinical teaching focuses on social justice learning.114 without clear guidance and support, students will struggle to appreciate the complexities and practicalities of the environment in which they are working.115 this may be accentuated when students are dealing with particularly challenging matters and adopt unsuitable practices as a result.116 clients may suffer if students fail to gather key information and address all of the legal issues.117 further, without clear and supportive supervision, students may receive insufficient feedback and are unlikely to develop reflective practices.118 as evans et al. observe, ‘the confidence that builds from being effectively supported and appropriately challenged is critical to clinic students’.119 113 ibid, citing michael christie et al, ‘putting transformative learning theory into practice’ (2015) 55(1) australian journal of adult learning 11. 114 ibid 1255. see also allyson davys and liz beddoe, best practice in professional supervision: a guide for the helping professions (jessica kingsley, 2010). 115 giddings, jeff and michael mcnamara, ‘preparing future generations of lawyers for legal practice: what’s supervision got to do with it?’ (2014) 37(3) university of new south wales law journal 1226 see also ross hyams, susan campbell and adrian evans, practical legal skills (oxford university press, 4th ed, 2014). 116 giddings and mcnamara (n 115). 117 ibid. see also barry, margaret martin, jon c dubin and peter joy, ‘clinical education for this millennium: the third wave’ (2000) 7 clinical law review 138. 118 giddings and mcnamara (n 115). 119 evans et al (n 1). reviewed article 30 evans et al. stress that for supervisors to provide students with clear guidance, they need to be aware of the best methods for teaching those skills and strategies.120 clinical pedagogy encourages clinical educators to focus on promoting those learning opportunities that are particularly well suited to clinic contexts, including ethics and values, skills development and legal problem-solving.121 to promote structured learning, the clinical learning framework emphasises the importance of program design, particularly the articulation of clear objectives and assessment criteria and the effective provision of feedback.122 strategies for social justice teaching when interacting with students in the clinical setting, it is essential for supervisors to actively engage with students about social justice in order to ensure students are made aware of their clients’ needs and interests and, in this way, understand their clients’ circumstances more deeply.123 supervisors should discuss with their students social justice issues that could impact on clients’ options for dispute resolution such as societal concerns, equity, self-determination and social responsibility.124 these discussions might include the clients’ socio-economic circumstances, whether the 120 ibid 124. 121 ibid. 122 ibid. 123 refer to cooper, jeremy, ‘social values from law school to practice: an introductory essay’ in jeremy cooper and louise trubek (eds), educating for justice: social values and legal education (ashgate, 1997) 5. 124 douglas, susan, ‘humanising legal education: lessons from adr’ (2012) 23(3) australasian dispute resolution journal 216. reviewed article 31 clients are literate, can speak english as a first language or require special communication methods, all developing the students’ awareness of the clients’ lack of access to justice and social inequality. supervisors engage with students on a level beyond skills training to involve them in discussions regarding inequality of resources, and encouraging a sense of responsibility for using the law to challenge injustice and to provide options for their clients to access justice.125 for the purposes of providing an example of how social justice teaching can be enhanced within the clinical context, we can look at a common matter encountered in law clinics, where a client seeks advice regarding a traffic infringement. traffic infringement case study factual scenario: a woman visits the clc for advice about a parking infringement she has received. the client is a single mother with four children, all under 18. the client had received a fine of $480 when she had collected her two youngest children (aged five and seven) from school and exceeded the 40km/hr speed limit outside the school (she was recorded travelling at 60km/hr). the client cannot afford to pay the fine and is seeking assistance in having the fine waived. the client is distressed during the interview and seeks advice on how to deal with this matter. 125 douglas, kathy, ‘shaping the future: the discourses of adr and legal education’ (2008) 8(1) law and justice journal 118. reviewed article 32 in this instance, the supervisor guides the student to apply critical and analytical thinking, by encouraging the student to look closely at the client’s needs and adopt a client-centred approach. the supervisor engages with the student about the client’s social and financial circumstances that may have contributed to the infringement, and her consequent ability to pay the fine. other factors to be considered include, her ability to understand the legislation and the legal process and her inability to speak fluent english, which impacts on her ability to write a letter to get a review of the fine and waiver. the supervisor encourages the student to consider whether the client requires any support from a financial counsellor, social worker or external agency during the process. additionally, the supervisor might provide the student with strategies for communicating the advice to the client. this includes addressing any language-related constraints and whether the client might require an interpreter to better comprehend the advice.126 the supervisor addresses the barriers to access to justice, such as the client’s socioeconomic circumstances, communication difficulties, and general inability to understand and navigate the legal system.127 in this way, the supervisor engenders in the student an understanding of the hardships the client faces due to her 126 refer to giddings, jeff, ‘the assumption of responsibility: supervision practices in experimental legal education’ in mutaz qafisheh and stephen rosenbaum (eds), global legal education approaches: special reference to the middle east (cambridge scholars, 2012). 127 giddings, jeff, ‘it’s more than a site: supporting social justice through student supervision practices’ in chris ashford and paul mckeown (eds), social justice and legal education (cambridge scholars, 2018) reviewed article 33 circumstances and focuses on the client’s interests or needs, in order to explore alternative options to litigation for resolving the client’s matter. stephen wizner cautions: it [is] not enough to simply provide students with the opportunity to experience the real world through the representation of low-income clients [it is important] to also sensitise the students as to what they were seeing, to guide them to a deeper understanding of their client’s lives and to help students develop a critical consciousness imbued with a concern for social justice.128 to improve supervisors’ fostering of students’ awareness of social justice, supervisors must first appreciate the central role they play in helping students learn in a clinic or placement environment129 and in explaining the limitations of the law and legal processes.130 giddings suggests that training workshops ‘that aim to place effective supervision at the forefront of experiential learning for supervisors are a valuable opportunity for building relationships between law schools and the supervisors involved in their clinical and placement programs’.131 such workshops challenge 128 stephen wizner, ‘beyond skills training’ (2001) 7 clinical law review 327. see also stephen wizner, ‘the law school clinic: legal education in the interests of justice’ (2001–2002) 70 fordham law review 1929. 129 wizner (n 128). 130 ibid 63. 131 giddings (n 102) 64. reviewed article 34 assumptions around the quality of supervision and emphasise the importance of effective preparation of students for the supervision relationship.132 it follows that if supervisors in clinical settings are going to be responsible for students’ social justice learning, they may require more understanding of appropriate supervision techniques. skills workshops have been held at various cle conferences, focusing on training to support supervisors.133 these workshops provide a guided and structured approach for supervisors to integrate social justice teaching into their practices. 134 clinical educators are encouraged to adopt an integrative framework to support students to incrementally develop knowledge, values, skills and the capacity to learn from experience. integration of methods the best practices report endorses an integrated approach, referring to the value of seeing experiential education ‘as part of a connected whole’.135 when the objective is 132 ibid. see also supporting social justice through student supervision practices’ in chris ashford & paul mckeown (eds), social justice and legal education, 2018, cambridge scholars publishing, 43-64. 133 ibid. skills workshops have been held at national and international clinical legal education conferences. refer to <https://www.monash.edu/law/home/cle/clinical-legal-education-conference>. 134 giddings (n 102) 60. see also jennifer lyman, ‘getting personal in supervision: looking for that fine line’ (1995) 2 clinical law review 211; jenifer gundlach, ‘this is a courtroom, not a classroom: so what is the role of the clinical supervisor?’ (2006) 13 clinical law review 279; carolyn grose, ‘flies on the wall or in the ointment—some thoughts on the role of clinic supervisors at initial client interviews’ (2008) 14 clinical law review 415. see also liz ryan cole and leah wortham, ‘learning from practice’ in jp ogilvy et al, learning from practice: a professional development text for legal externs (thomson/west, 2007). 135 refer to evans et al (n 1) 97. see also kenneth kreiling, ‘clinical education and lawyer competency: the process of learning to learn from experience through properly structured clinical reviewed article 35 for students to develop proficiency in the application of professional skills, students should have ‘repeated opportunities to perform the tasks to be learned or improved upon until they reach the desired level of proficiency’.136 before taking on substantial professional responsibility, students need to be prepared via supervision that directly emphasises the significant duties lawyers owe both to clients and the administration of justice.137 as students develop their skills and become more confident, they can be allowed to take greater control over their future learning as they determine for themselves the best ways to approach issues and problems.138 role play is one method that can be effectively integrated into the clinical framework to prepare and support students’ social justice learning. 139 role play as a learning and teaching strategy can be described as the ‘signature pedagogy’ of cle as it provides the opportunity for deep learning through active, authentic experiences that simulate real-world contexts.140 supervision’ (1981) 40 maryland law review; malcolm m combe, ‘selling intra-curricular clinical legal education’ (2014) 48(3) the law teacher 281. 136 evans et al (n 1) 142. see also jennifer lyman, ‘getting personal in supervision: looking for that fine line’ (1995) 2 clinical law review 211. 137 evans et al (n 1). 138 evans et al (n 1). 139 lee shulman, ‘signature pedagogies in the professions’ (2005) 134 daedalus 52; deborah maranville et al, ‘re-vision quest: a law school guide to designing experiential courses involving real lawyering’ (2012) 56(2) new york law school law review 517. 140 refer to douglas (n 1); hyams, campbell and evans (n 186); paul s ferber, ‘adult learning theory and simulations—designing simulations to educate lawyers’ (2002) 9 clinical law review 417. reviewed article 36 role play and clinical pedagogy the best practices report describes cle as ‘a pedagogy that places students in reallife environments. it is a form of experiential learning where students learn by doing and then reflecting’.141 similarly, simulation-based activities help students to understand and consolidate their learning experiences. when designed and implemented in a coherent and structured way, simulation can be used to complement and support other learning and teaching methodologies. 142 as grimes states, ‘[simulation] is not a “one-off act” that is then followed by problem solving learning and/or clinical activity, instead, it can be seen as a strategic part of an educational plan in which the student is required to assume part-responsibility for how he or she learns’.143 in cle, simulation can be used to develop learning opportunities for students and implemented in a pedagogic model that uses ‘problem’ analysis (and to an extent problem-solving) as the baseline for the delivery of clinical programs.144 while ‘clinic’ is a generic term to describe the context in which students learn through 141 refer to evans et al (n 1). see also hugh brayne et al, clinical legal education: active learning in your law school (blackstone press, 1998) 2; ra bush, ‘using process observation to teach alternative dispute resolution: alternatives to simulation’ (1987) 37 journal of legal education 46; elliot milstein, ‘clinical legal education in the united states: in-house clinics, externships, and simulations’ (2001) 51(3) journal of legal education 375. 142 richard grimes, ‘faking it and making it? using simulation with problem-based learning’ in legal education: simulation in theory and practice, edited by caroline stevens, et al., taylor & francis group, 2014 proquest ebook central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/monash/detail.action?docid=1825708. see also barry, margaret martin, ‘clinical supervision: walking that fine line’ (1995) 2(1) clinical law review 137; beddoe, liz and allyson davys, ‘the context of professional supervision’ in allyson davys and liz beddoe (eds), best practice in professional supervision: a guide for the helping profession (jessica kingsley, 2010). 143 grimes (n 142). 144 ibid 182. reviewed article 37 exposure to real or realistic casework, simulation can be considered a form of a clinic. as grimes states: the learning comes from direct experience of working with clients (actual or fictional), but is used here in the specific context of real (or, as it is often described, ‘live’) clients. what renders the whole ‘clinical’ is the opportunity provided to the student to deconstruct that experience and to actively reflect, as an individual and as a team, on what has happened (or not) and why. clinic is therefore learning by doing and learning through reflecting on that ‘doing’.145 similarly, mccoid-mason states that simulation is a ‘flexible tool that can enhance learning and teaching by engaging and motivating students through hands-on exercises that draw on real or realistic case studies’.146 simulation can be viewed as a strategic part of an educational plan in which a student assumes active responsibility for how they learn.147 role play might be used to give students a feel for the nature of an adversarial system, the complex nature of client/lawyer relations, the extent of police powers or the contractual and statutory responsibilities of landlords and their tenants.148 145 ibid 172. 146 ibid 175. 147 ibid. 148 ibid 172. reviewed article 38 employment case study for the purposes of providing an example of how role play can be used to enhance social justice teaching, we can look at a role play scenario of an employment matter. students are able to assume the roles of any of the parties in the dispute: the employee (client), the employer, or the lawyers advising the employee and employer. factual scenario: a client visits the clinic seeking advice about a workplace incident. he was employed to clean an office building after working hours (usually from 12am). he was required to meet three other cleaners at the building at 11:45pm to be allocated floors to clean each night. on the night in question, the client reported to work late, arriving at 1:00am. the client informed the student that this was because he was responsible for his children until his wife returned from her job, and she had arrived late. the client explained his lateness to his manager the next morning. when he reported to work the following evening, the manager informed him that he would only receive pay for the hours he had worked and at a reduced rate. when the client asked why, he was told ‘as you were late, you have no right to ask questions’ and ‘you will lose your job if you utter another word’. the client is distressed during the interview. specifically, he wishes to know if he was able to claim full pay for the shift, how this could be done and whether he could lose his job. the rationale for providing students with this type of scenario is to get students to work through the dispute, which involves a multitude of issues, both legal and nonreviewed article 39 legal. the aim is not for students to attempt to resolve the problem, but rather to identify the issues, research the relevant law and endeavour to explain how the legal process might impact on the given scenario.149 through this analysis, students will assess outcomes and critically consider the law in relation to the dispute from the perspectives of all parties.150 the student playing the role of the client is invited to consider how the client’s circumstances may impact on the resolution of the dispute.151 this includes addressing any language-related constraints on the client’s understanding of the advice.152 the client’s ability to understand and speak english and whether a telephone interpreter is needed to convey advice to the client.153 also, whether the client requires any 149 refer to evans (n 1). see also hyams, ross, ‘on teaching students to ‘act like a lawyer’: what sort of lawyer?’ (2008) 13 international journal clinical legal education 25; hyams, ross, susan campbell and adrian evans, practical legal skills developing your clinical technique (oxford university press, 4th ed, 2014). 150 refer to james, colin, ‘seeing things as we are. emotional intelligence and clinical legal education’ (2005) 8 international journal of clinical legal education 123. see also hyams, ross and fay gertner, ‘multidisciplinary clinics: broadening the outlook of clinical learning’ (2012) 17 international journal of clinical legal education 25. 151 refer to field, rachael and roy alpana, ‘a compulsory dispute resolution capstone subject: an important inclusion in a 21st century australian law curriculum’ (2017) 27 legal education review 73. see also fisher, tom, judy gutman and erika martens, ‘why teach alternative dispute resolution to law students? part 2: an empirical survey’ (2007) 17(1–2) legal education review 67; gutman, judy and matthew riddle, ‘adr in legal education: learning by doing’ (2012) 23(3) australasian dispute resolution journal 189. 152 refer to ojelabi, lola akin, ‘communication and culture: implications for conflict resolution practitioners’ (2008) 19(3) australasian dispute resolution journal 189. see also rand, spencer, ‘teaching law students to practice social justice: an interdisciplinary search for help through social work’s empowerment approach’ (2006) 13 clinical law review 459; stevenson-graf, lindsey, ‘clinical programs, social justice and transformation through student learning’ (2019) 44(3) alternative law journal 232. 153 refer to styles, irene and archie zariski, ‘law clinics and the promotion of public interest lawyering’ (2001) 19 law in context 65. reviewed article 40 support from social workers or external agencies during the process. focusing on the parties’ respective interests will focus the students’ minds on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the matter from all perspectives and assist students to contemplate realistic outcomes for their clients.154 students are encouraged to reflect and consider external influencing factors such as the suitability of dispute resolution processes, the ability of clients to self-represent at these forums and therefore engage with wider issues, such as public policy concerns and access to justice.155 one of the principal advantages of using simulation as a clinical teaching method is that it provides a safe environment in which students can learn.156 no client confidentiality concerns need to be safeguarded; the use of simulated situations makes it easier to provide students with scaffolds to support them as they begin to engage with the issues and interests raised by particular legal situations; and students can be prepared for their later contact with real clients, particularly in relation to skills such as interviewing.157 simulation, therefore has the capacity to expose students to the 154 refer to sullivan, william m et al, educating lawyers: preparation for the profession of law (report, 2007). see also sylvester et al, ‘problem-based learning and clinical legal education: what can clinical educators learn from pbl?’ (2004) 4/6 international journal of clinical legal education 39. 155 refer to frank bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011) 253. see also tokarz, karen and v nagaraj, ‘advancing social justice through adr and clinical legal education in india, south africa and the united states’ in frank bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011) 253; liz ryan cole, ‘a special focus to help understand and advance social justice’ in frank bloch (ed), the global clinical movement: educating lawyers for social justice (oxford university press, 2011) 324. 156 giddings (n 102) 85. 157 ibid. see also paul s ferber, ‘adult learning theory and simulations—designing simulations to educate lawyers’ (2002) 9 clinical law review 417; gregory baker, ‘do you hear the knocking at the door? a “therapeutic approach to enriching clinical legal education comes calling”’ (2006) 28 reviewed article 41 complex intergroup and interpersonal dynamics of lawyering.158 as giddings further states: [simulation exercises] can assist students to better understand their own feelings: why they are likely to over-identify with their client’s perspective, come into conflict with the representatives of the other party, forget ethical precepts and have their judgement clouded by strong feelings.159 overall, role play engages students in social justice learning, enhancing their understanding of it and increasing their appreciation of its importance.160 by integrating methods such as role play into social justice teaching, students are encouraged to engage with their learning.161 not only do clinics provide a rich source of potential material for simulation, they also provide opportunities for clinic students to observe real outcomes and reflect on what happened and why.162 role play enables whittier law review 379; d maranville, ‘passion, context, and lawyering skills: choosing among simulated and real client experiences’ (2007) 7 clinical law review 123. 158 giddings (n 102). see also schrag and meltsner (n 8). 159 giddings (n 102) 36–7. 160 singo (n 11) 299. 161 singo (n 11) 300. see also ference marton and roger saljo, ‘on qualitative differences in learning—2: outcomes as a function of the learner’s conception of the risk’ (1976) 46 british journal of educational psychology 115; deborah maranville, ‘passion, context, and lawyering skills: choosing among simulated and real client experiences’ (2000) 7(1) clinical law review 123; ferber (n 218). 162 for further reading in this area refer to evans et al (n 1) ch 7; c maughan and j webb, ‘taking reflection seriously: how was it for us? in c maughan and j webb (eds), teaching lawyers’ skills (butterworths, 1996); ross hyams, ‘assessing insight: grading reflective journals in clinical legal education’ (2007) 17 james cook university law review 25; rachel spencer, ‘holding up the mirror: a theoretical and practical analysis of the role of reflection in clinical legal education’ (2012) 17 international journal of clinical legal education 181; michele leering, ‘encouraging reflective practice: conceptualising reflective practice for legal professionals’ (2014) 23 journal of law and social policy 83. reviewed article 42 students to understand and perform important lawyering tasks, such as questioning, listening, consolidating issues and problems and engaging in creative legal analyses.163 in this way, students develop the essential legal practice skills to enable them to problem solve and think critically about their approach to advising clients. a classroom component the classroom component of clinics can further support student learning.164 according to the best practices report, each clinic should include classes that enable students as a group to examine the broader context of law and the legal system.165 the goal of the classroom component is inextricably linked to the overall goals of the program.166 in line with best practice, clinical programs often include seminars to support students’ learning in practice areas, reflective practice and legal ethics. in designing a clinical curriculum that includes seminars focusing on social justice teaching, students are provided with seminars that are devoted to particular skills or processes (interviewing) with simulation and/or real case experience.167 163 refer to lee shulman, ‘signature pedagogies in the professions’ (2005) 134 daedalus 52; deborah maranville et al, ‘re-vision quest: a law school guide to designing experiential courses involving real lawyering’ (2012) 56(2) new york law school law review 517. 164 evans et al (n 1). 165 evans et al (n 1). 166 ibid, citing mary jo ester, ‘designing and teaching the large externship clinic’ (1998–1999) 3 clinical law review 347, 348. see also roy stuckey, ‘ensuring basic quality in clinical courses’ (2000) 1 international journal of clinical legal education 49; roy stuckey et al, best practices for legal education: a vision and a road map (us best practices) (clinical legal education association, 2007); sally kift, ‘21st century climate for change: curriculum design for quality learning engagement in law’ (2008) 18(1–2) legal education review 1; jonny hall and kevin kerrigan, ‘clinic and the wider law curriculum’ (2011) 16 international journal of clinical legal education 37. 167 for further reading in this area refer to refer to liz curran, judith dickson and mary-anne noone, ‘pushing the boundaries or preserving the status quo? designing clinical programs to teach law reviewed article 43 by example, seminars on intercultural competency are important to enhance students’ understanding and awareness of being a culturally competent lawyer.168 this seminar can cover strategies that enable students to understand, communicate, collaborate and work effectively with clients and other stakeholders (court, social workers, health professionals) irrespective of the ethnicity of person, their religious beliefs, sexual orientation, disability, class and education. this seminar can include discussion and training on how to work with interpreters when providing legal assistance to clients, including strategies for students when working with interpreters.169 additionally, a seminar on legal ethics, encourage students to focus on ethical issues that may impact on their interaction with clients, such as confidentiality and conflict of interest.170 during this seminar, students can be provided with scenarios containing ethical dilemmas, which through discussion, they can consider alternative means to students a deep understanding of ethical practice’ (2005) 8 international journal of clinical legal education 104; barry, dubin and joy (n 9); c menkel-meadow and b moulton, beyond the adversarial model: materials on negotiation and mediation (west publishing, 2007); kevin kerrigan, ‘how do you feel about this client?’ a commentary on the clinical model as a vehicle for teaching ethics to law students’ (2007) international journal of clinical legal education 37; anna cody, ‘what does legal ethics teaching gain, if anything, from including a clinical component?’ (2015) 22(1) international journal of clinical legal education 1. 168 olejabi (above n 152). see also carrie menkel-meadow, ‘pursuing settlement in an adversary culture: a tale of innovation co-opted or “the law of adr”’ (1991) 19(1) florida state university law review 3. 169 refer to gregory baker, ‘do you hear the knocking at the door? a “therapeutic approach to enriching clinical legal education comes calling”’ (2006) 28 whittier law review 379; d maranville, ‘passion, context, and lawyering skills: choosing among simulated and real client experiences’ (2007) 7 clinical law review 123. 170 liz curran, judith dickson and mary-anne noone, ‘pushing the boundaries or preserving the status quo? designing clinical programs to teach law students a deep understanding of ethical practice’ (2005) 8 international journal of clinical legal education 104. reviewed article 44 resolve.171 students are encouraged to respond and they should not be fearful that their answers will be ‘correct’ or ‘wrong’, rather they are provided with supportive ethical frameworks within which they can work in future practice. 172 similarly, a seminar on dispute resolution processes enhances students’ understanding of the importance of seeking alternative options for resolving clients’ disputes.173 these seminars may include videos to enhance social justice teaching.174 douglas et al. suggest that an effective way to incorporate technology into teaching is to combine videos with an online discussion of practice skills and then ask the students to demonstrate these skills in role plays. 175 students are provided with readings prior to the seminars to engage in advance preparation to ensure greater participation and cooperation in the seminars. their feedback is encouraged, ensuring 171 ibid. 172 ibid. 173 refer broadly to beryl blaustone, ‘training the modern lawyer: incorporating the study of mediation into required law school courses’ (1992) 21 southwestern university law review 1317; pauline collins, ‘student reflections on the benefits of studying adr to provide experience of nonadversarial practice’ (2012) 23 australian dispute resolution journal 209. see also james nikolas, ‘logical, critical and creative: teaching “thinking skills” to law students’ (2012) 12(1) qut law & justice journal 66. 174 refer to judy gutman and m riddle, ‘adr in legal education: learning by doing’ (2012) 23 australasian dispute resolution journal 194; kathy douglas, josephine lang and meg colasante, ‘the challenges of blended learning using a media annotation tool’ (2014) 11(2) journal of university teaching and learning practice 3–4. 175 kathy douglas, tina popa and christina platz, ‘teaching mediation using video and peer discussion: an engaged video learning model’ (2019) 29(3) australasian dispute resolution journal 182. also refer to kathy douglas and belinda johnson, ‘legal education and e-learning: online fishbowl role-play as a learning and teaching strategy in legal skills development’ (2010) 17(1) elaw: murdoch university electronic journal of law 28; michele ruyters, kathy douglas and siew fang law, ‘blender learning using role-plays, wikis and clogs’ (2011) 4(4) journal of learning and design 45. reviewed article 45 they gain a deeper understanding of the topics. this enhances students’ social justice learning, as they ‘become active rather than passive learners’.176 conclusion although cle has long focused on preparing law students to enter practice with a deeper understanding of social justice issues and the skills necessary to assist persons in accessing justice, this well-established mission has been increasingly challenged. with the expansion of cle and the growth of externships, clinical students are increasingly placed in corporate settings or private law firms in which social justice may not be the central ethos. clinicians have differing views in this regard. kosuri argues that while clinics offer a rich experience that cannot be replicated by other forms of experiential learning, not all clinical law programs need to include social justice teaching to be recognised as cle.177 cole challenges these views and argues that these clinics can still support a social justice mission and reinforce lessons about social justice that will carry on into the rest of the students’ professional life.178 clinical pedagogy incorporates a social justice mission that enables students to explore and reflect on the issues that affect access to justice. in doing so, these programs teach students skills in communication, problem-solving, critical thinking and conflict management. 176 douglas et al (n 176) 46. 177 kosuri (n 65). 178 cole (n 75). reviewed article 46 despite the challenges that exist, this paper has explored ways in which social justice can be retained as a key focus of cle developing students’ understanding of social justice and conflict management. this paper has highlighted the effective ways that social justice teaching can be included in the clinical curriculum. notably, supervisors play a critical role in this teaching with methods including role play, simulation-based exercises, seminars and skills teaching, all intended to introduce students to the knowledge and skills needed to become critical thinking client–centred practitioners. 179 the suitability of these methods will depend on the clinic type, the model of cle and the resources available. to ensure a standardised approach to social justice teaching, clinicians need to be trained in the aspects and theories of social justice and its connection to clinics. a focus on client-centred lawyering and access to justice will enhance students’ ability to manage conflict and establish trusting lawyer–client relationships in whichever context they practice. in this way, cle can ensure that law students continue to develop a deep understanding of the importance of retaining social justice as a focus for their future as 21st-century legal practitioners. 179 refer to julie macfarlane, ‘the evolution of the new lawyer: how 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<http;//www.bc.edu/schools/law/newsevents/events/conferences/carnegie_symp_tw lj/carnegie_video.html> wizner, stephen, ‘is social justice still relevant’ (2012) 32(2) boston college journal of law & social justice 345 social justice teaching in cle definitions of social justice challenges of social justice teaching social justice teaching remains important the role of supervision in social justice teaching role play and clinical pedagogy a classroom component conclusion bibliography microsoft word brodie.docx studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 93 issn: 1911-4788 reforming social justice in neoliberal times janine brodie, university of alberta1 abstract this article unfolds in three stages. first, it locates the emergence of modern conceptions of social justice in industrializing europe, and especially in the discovery of the “social,” which provided a particular idiom for the liberal democratic politics for most of the twentieth century. second, the article links this particular conception of the social to the political rationalities of the postwar welfare state and the identity of the social citizen. finally, the article discusses the myriad ways in which this legacy of the social and social justice has been disrupted, although not yet fully displaced, by the economic orthodoxies and individualization that inform the contemporary neoliberal governing project in canada. the result, the article concludes, has been the institutionalization of insecurity, which demands the renewal of a social way of seeing and a politics of social justice on local and global scales. silenced and deflected for many years, rallying calls for social justice are growing everlouder in the politics of the early-twenty-first century. the critical necessity of reviving an ethics of fairness and just distribution in the popular imagination and in governing practices, on local, national, and global scales, could hardly be more pressing. after more than two decades of experience, it has become abundantly clear that, while the neoliberal project has stimulated economic growth and flows of trade, finance, and peoples across borders, it also has rapidly deepened the gulf between the rich and the poor both within countries and across the north-south divide. the neoliberal project has taken on many different configurations across national settings, ranging from european third wayism to the primitive capitalism of emerging economies. everywhere, however, this mode of governance has concentrated incomes and wealth among a few, squeezed the middle income strata, and fuelled unparalleled inequalities in income wealth, and life chances. if there is one consistent indicator of neoliberal governance, it is stalled, if not declining human development and well-being amidst unprecedented economic growth and wealth creation. it is a governing formula that is ripe with all manner of social injustices. if we paint the history of capitalist development with very broad strokes, it is apparent that the 19th century was marked by the creation of wealth, the 20th century by its redistribution, and the early 21st century by its concentration and polarization. canada has not been immune to this progressive polarization of the social fabric, although social and fiscal policies did cushion this process somewhat until recently. in fact, in the late 1990s, after more than a decade of cutbacks, canada’s federal government began to reinvest in social policy and to explore new conceptual and policy frameworks, especially the new social-isms of social in/exclusion, social capital, and social economy (brodie, 1 this research was supported by the canada research chair program in which i hold a tier 1 chair in political economy and social governance. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 94 issn: 1911-4788 2007). since the election of the harper government, however, this exercise in rethinking canada’s social architecture has simply grounded to a halt. key federal policy units, which were immersed in research on social inclusion and social capital such as the policy research initiative (pri), have been redeployed to other projects, while social policy making has been either further fiscalized or devolved to the provinces. all of this is very much in keeping with prime minister harper’s long held conviction that the federal government should get out of the social policy field altogether – this despite the fact that the national council of welfare, the federal government’s own reporting body, has recently described social welfare policy in canada as “an utter disaster” (quoted in calderhead 2006, p. 7). this inaction is especially puzzling given the mounting weight of evidence demonstrating that the life conditions and chances of canadians are increasingly polarized into haves and have-nots. statistics canada data, for example, indicate that, in 2004, the average earnings of the richest 10% of families with children was 82 times that of the poorest 10% of families with children: in 1976, the ratio was 31:1 (yalnizyan 2007, p. 3). moreover, statistics canada reports that household wealth is also rapidly evaporating for the vast majority of canadian families. in 2005, the poorest 20% of canadian families owed more than they owned and the net worth of the bottom 40% of families was negligible, while the top 10% of canadian families accounted for 58% of the total household wealth in canada (kolkman 2007, p. a15).2 one half of canadians now indicate that they are one or two pay checks away from being poor (hennessy 2006, p. 6). yet, despite growing inequalities and insecurity, in the last decade alone, canadian governments have collectively reduced program spending from 41% to 31% of the gdp and transfers to individuals from 11.5% to 7.8% of gdp (scott, et al., 2006, p. 58). these trends contrast markedly with what canadians think that their governments should be doing. an environics poll, conducted for the canadian centre for policy alternatives in the fall of 2005, for example, showed that 76% of canadians thought that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, 67% believed that the majority are not benefiting from economic growth, and 86% wanted the government to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor (yalnizyan, 2007, pp. 1-2; hennessey, 2006). similarly, a strategic council poll, conducted for the globe and mail and ctv prior to the release of the 2007 federal budget, indicated 50% of canadians thought increased spending on social programs was the most important priority for the government, in contrast to 19% that endorsed tax cuts and 13% that favoured debt reduction (globe and mail 2007, p. a4).3 in another poll, conducted in 2004, 74% of canadians agreed that it was possible to fight social inequalities, with 28% indicating that income inequalities were the most serious (leger 2004, p. 3). these data obviously raise disturbing questions about the relationship between citizenship and social justice in these neoliberal times. and, indeed, there have been revived philosophical debates about how we might rethink and recover the emancipatory 2 revisiting wealth inequality was released in december 2006. 3 strategic council poll of 1000 canadians conducted for the globe and mail and ctv. according to pollster allan gregg, “normally [a strong economy] creates a sense of optimism and very buoyant mood, but that’s not there ... people believe wealth is being shared unequally plus we’ve allowed our social safety net, our health care, educational system, the quality of our cities to unravel.” studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 95 issn: 1911-4788 and ethical promise of citizenship equality and social justice in the contemporary era (see for example isin, 2008; fraser and honneth, 2003). this article follows a different track, examining the ways in which our ideas about citizenship and social justice have been historically configured by previous governing orders and by ongoing transformations in dominant political rationalities. political rationalities, most simply, are shifting and always contested “procedures for representing and intervening” (miller and rose, 1990, p. 7) particular ways of seeing that privilege specific vocabularies, styles of truth telling and truth tellers (foucault, 2003, rose, 1999; dean, 1999). the following explores three themes. first, the idea of social justice is traced back to industrializing europe and the discovery of the “social,” which, i argue, has provided a particular idiom for liberal democratic politics for more than a century. next, this particular idea of the social is linked to the rationalities embedded in the postwar welfare state and the identity of the social citizen. and, finally, the article outlines how this legacy of the social is disrupted, although not submerged, by economic orthodoxy and individualization, both of which are at the heart of the neoliberal governing project. the social way of seeing the concept of social justice is frequently deployed, if not as a universally intelligible and applicable term, then, at least, as an imperative of social organization that can trace its lineage back to aristotle’s ideas about distributive justice or the moral teachings of thomas aquinas (jackson, 2005, pp. 356-359). the term “social justice,” however, entered our collective vocabulary far more recently, emerging out of the social and political landscapes of laissez-faire capitalism (barry, 2005; jackson, 2005). indeed, the first book bearing the title “social justice” did not appear until 1900 (miller, 1999, p. 5). the general consensus is that our modern understanding of social justice emerged in the late 18th century “as a child of the industrial and french revolutions” (jackson, 2005, p. 367), was popularized in the 19th century as western thinkers and societies became increasingly animated about the ethical foundations of modern societies and the role of the state in advancing social goals, and entered into mainstream politics in the midtwentieth century, when advanced liberal democracies, variously informed by social liberalism and social democratic politics, embraced some form of the welfare state. it is probably safe to say that the preponderance of writing about social justice focuses on the principles of justice rather than the origins and content of the social. we tend to take this term as a given. social historians, however, tell us that our contemporary understanding of the social, as being synonymous with society and the collective, was shaped during the multiple transformations associated with the emergence of industrial capitalism. although in early modernity, the social conveyed the ideas of sociability and fashionable living, the term was subsequently and progressively used as “a vital descriptor” of human uniqueness, community, and agency, and attached to the decidedly modernist projects of progress and the perfection of the human condition (schwartz, 1997, p. 277). as karl polanyi described in the great transformation, the idea of the social grew in complexity in response to laissez-faire governance and its inherent incapacity to comprehend, let alone ameliorate the human costs exacted by early industrial capitalism. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 96 issn: 1911-4788 according to polanyi, laissez-faire liberalism, similar to contemporary neoliberalism, promoted an “uncritical reliance on the alleged self-healing virtues of unconscious growth” (1957, p. 33). but, this strategy of enabling “the market mechanism to be the sole director of human beings and their natural environment” invited “the demolition of society” (1957, p. 73). market driven governance, according to polanyi, was a unique political construct, never before encountered in the productive or reproductive organization of human societies (1957, p. 69), and its consequences forced people, in effect, to “discover” society “behind the veil” of the market economy. in particular, pauperism and the rampant poverty associated with early industrialization “fixed attention on the incomprehensible fact that poverty seemed to go with plenty” – a revelation, polanyi argued, was “as powerful as that of the most spectacular events of history” (1957, pp. 84-85). these newly realized juxtapositions between economy and society and wealth and poverty informed a particular form of politics that would animate western democracies for the next century, leading polanyi to conclude that “social not technical invention was the intellectual mainspring of the industrial revolution” (1957, p. 119). by the mid-nineteenth century, radical thinkers had fused the adjective “social” with the noun “problem”. in early nineteenth century europe, the social problem was unequivocally cast in the singular and attributed to the unconstrained and unequal distribution of wealth and power of early industrial capitalism (schwartz, 1997, p. 279). indeed, the idea of le probleme social quickly spread across europe, animating the 1848 revolution in france, the essays of such leading thinkers as british liberal john stuart mill, and the policy platforms of continental social democratic parties (rose, 1999, p. 117; schwartz, 1997). also deeply invested in the political struggles of the time, marx was adamant that le probleme social was and should remain exclusively understood as the exploitive relationship between capital and labour. marx worried that the phrase would be pluralized as a raft of social problems and co-opted by the middle class, indeed, by “any man who has a sympathetic heart for the misery of his brothers” (quoted in schwartz, 1997, p. 279). for marx, the political mutation of the social problem into social problems promised only to conceal the fundamental realities of class exploitation, and, thus, erode its revolutionary potential. despite marx’s anxieties, the social problem was soon redefined and pluralized, both as competing interpretations of the social, and as a proliferating field of social problems. during these years, modern society developed, as conservative social historian gertrude himmelfarb explains, its “moral imagination” (1984). a plethora of voluntary organizations sprung up in civil society, offering hope and help to those deemed to have a problem, and were worthy of help, among them, the addicted, poor, abandoned, prostituted, insane, delinquent, and morally and spiritually impaired. quite independently from the state or the rule of law, this movement for social reform created its own discourses, apparatuses of knowledge, modes of intervention, and fields of expertise. social reform was understood as the mark of a civilized society because, as was often repeated, only modern societies were sufficiently advanced morally and technologically – the only ones “modern enough” – to care about the marginalized and to devise strategies for intervention to change their condition (schwartz, 1997, pp. 282, 288). in the process, studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 97 issn: 1911-4788 the social way of thinking, representing, and intervening was embedded as a “distinctive idiom” in western politics (rose, 1999, pp. 26-27). the idea of social justice provided the critical moral and philosophical underpinnings for this new language of politics. by the end of the 19th century, social justice had become the rallying call for social democratic parties across europe (barry, 2005, p. 5), which had gained political force as civil and democratic rights were progressively extended to the working classes and their organizations. the social justice project revolved around several key assumptions, beginning with the liberal promise of citizen equality. more fundamentally, however, the idea of social justice rested on the premise that justice was a virtue that could be applied both to the collective and the individual and, moreover, that social institutions and social positions could and should be assessed as being just or unjust (jackson, 2005, p. 358). as barry puts it, “the justice of unequal relations between employers and employees could be called into question, as could the distribution of income and wealth arising from capitalist institutions” (2005, p. 5). in contrast to liberalism’s promise of individual dignity, autonomy, and rights, the economic inequalities generated by unregulated market forces were deemed as being unjust, the product of structural flaws that modern “just” societies could ameliorate through redistribution (barry, 2005, p. 5). social justice thus had a “substantial political content,” which recommended the alleviation of poverty and the reduction of inequalities “as a matter of justice rather than charity” (jackson, 2005, p. 360). this critical distinction between justice and charity rested on the identification of structural or systemic inequalities, which, in turn, demanded redistribution of collective resources by society as a whole, and most obviously through the state (raphael, 2001, pp. 233-236). various principles of justice might be evoked to justify this commitment – for example, social need, the assertion of collective over individual interests, compensation for structural changes, or the pursuit of citizen equality (jackson, 2005, p. 360; williams, 1989, p. 32). the point to be underlined here is that dominant constructions of social justice required that the state rather than individuals or charitable organizations “had the responsibility for shaping and enforcing the chosen distribution of social resources” (fleischacker, 2004, p. 7). the social citizen in the early decades of the 20th century, these principles were embraced by ever-wider segments of the political spectrum, and, following the great depression of the 1930s, embedded in the ethos and ambitions of social liberalism, the technologies the welfare state, and constructions of the iconic social citizen. while postwar welfare states differed widely in the ways that they implemented the prescriptions of social liberalism, all embraced three foundational principles that marked a radical departure from the political rationalities of laissez-faire liberalism, which, by the 1940s, was widely condemned as a failed experiment in governance. first, social liberalism redefined the relationship between the state and the market. postwar welfare states operationalized the idea that the state was responsible for the just distribution of social resources and that the market could and should be regulated in order to maximize economic and political stability and the collective wellbeing of all citizens. moreover, the ideals of social justice and citizen studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 98 issn: 1911-4788 equality prescribed that certain goods – for example, education and health care – should not be entrusted to the capitalist market because it was incapable of ensuring fair distribution. second, and importantly, social liberalism prescribed that all citizens could make claim to a measure of equality, social security, and collective provision as a right of citizenship, independent of their status in the market or their personal character. social citizenship required positive obligations from the collective to provide resources for the welfare of individuals. finally, social liberalism demanded that public administration be infused with a new ethos of planning, impersonal procedures, and new technologies of governance, among them progressive taxation and the pooling of resources and risk through social insurance (young, 1990, p. 67; plant, 1998, p. 58; brodie, 1997) – what lord beveridge described a “new type of human institution” (quoted in lund 2002, 110). the social citizen was an historical icon, the product of over a century of discursive and political struggles around the inherent gap between liberalism’s promise of citizen equality and the structural inequalities of capitalism. for citizenship theorists, t. h. marshall foremost among them, social citizenship rights enhanced the practical worth of liberal political and civil rights, which could only be hollow promises if citizens were hobbled by the indignities and insecurities of poverty. the extension and protection of the full range of citizenship rights, in turn, nourished “a direct sense of community membership based on loyalty to a civilization which is a common possession” (marshall, 1964, pp. 40-41) – in other words, social rights provided the foundations for national solidarity and cohesion. in canada, in particular, social citizenship discourses were interwoven with an emerging narrative of pan-canadian nationalism: postwar social programs were represented as the glue of commonality among canadians, which distinguished them, at least according to the nationalist myth, from their less caring and less sharing american neighbours (brodie, 2002). of course, the practices of liberal welfare regimes such as canada’s fell far short of the moral and substantive aspirations of social liberalism. if there is one universal in politics, it is precisely that “reality always escapes the theories that inform programs and the ambitions that underpin them” (miller and rose, 1990, pp. 10-11). critics of the welfare state have generated a long list of fault lines, among them: the promise of universal social citizenship rights eluded most citizens, except perhaps the white male breadwinner (esping-anderson, 1990); an almost singular focus on economic redistribution veiled other systemic barriers to citizen equality such as racism, sexism, heterosexism, and able-ism (williams, 1989); little discursive space was available for equality claims-making grounded in recognition of cultural difference (young, 1990); the radical potential of social justice was diffused by alternative formulations such as equality of opportunity (armstrong, 2006); process was prioritized over outcome, leaving structures of inequality unchallenged; and, perhaps most critically, the ethos of social justice was displaced by the bureaucratic technical performances of keynesian economics (dean, 1999). paradoxically, these performances would later give legitimacy to professional economists to colonize the policy making process (fine, 2001). yet, as accurate as these and other critiques undoubtedly are, they underestimate or miss entirely what is perhaps the most critical innovation and legacy of social liberalism and a century of popular struggles around the idea of social justice – notably the myriad ways in which the social way of seeing and the social idiom was embedded in identity formation, including the social citizen, the framing of political legitimacy and studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 99 issn: 1911-4788 claims-making, and the practice of advanced liberal democratic politics. social liberalism’s promise of citizen equality, its promotion of collective intervention to mediate structural inequalities, and its commitment to social planning and social justice informed a particular performance of liberal-democratic politics – one which was “dependent upon the identification of a group with a shared identity,” which could be shown to have been “denied their full and proper legal and/or human rights.” this kind of politics, moreover, presumed the existence of a welfare state because it assumed immutable linkages between social rights, social equality, and social progress (smart 1995, p. 107). despite, its omissions and exclusions, then, the universal and moral framing of the social and, especially the construction of social citizenship opened discursive space and granted legitimacy to the practice of immanent critique, constituting a moral and political “lever that was later used by a variety of the social movements of the excluded” (yuval davis 1999, p. 121). social liberalism, in other words, provided language for the systemically disadvantaged to talk back to the state, to make claims as citizens who had been actively denied its promise of social justice, and to mandate the state to regulate and ameliorate structural assaults on individual and collective wellbeing. as the next section describes, neoliberal governing practices, and especially neoliberal social policy reforms target precisely this social way of representing and intervening. the neoliberal social imaginary contemporary political life in canada, and, indeed, across advanced liberal democracies, is riddled with gaps, disconnects and ruptures. there are gaps between what canadians want government to do and what it actually does, between policy prescriptions and social needs, and between our national narratives and our lived experience. citizens are treading water in a sea of uncertainty, which is agitated by a collision of world views and a struggle over the very meaning of such politically grounding concepts as the public, citizenship, equality, and justice. this is an era of conjunctural politics in which one political rationality, one way of seeing, representing, and intervening, is attempting to submerge and exceed another. this is a prolonged politics, where change is neither complete nor achieved without contestation, and often yields only partial victories or unsustainable ambiguities. over the course of a generation, the ascendancy of the neoliberal governing project in canada and elsewhere has systemically eroded the foundational assumptions of social liberalism and overhauled the governing technologies of the postwar welfare state. one canadian government after another has abandoned the vision of social citizenship, social security, and social justice, offering in their place a new social imaginary that pinpoints the market, one buoyed by the logics of neo-classical economics, as the primary, if not “natural” source of both individual wellbeing and freedom, and political legitimacy. although neoliberalism is often likened to laissez-faire liberalism, it is in many ways far more radical and invidious than its predecessor (so much so that one wonders whether the “liberal” part of this label is warranted). two arguments inform this claim. first, laissez faire rested on the early liberal construction of separate spheres – a societal pluralism that understood the public, the market, and the private sphere of domestic studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 100 issn: 1911-4788 relations and individuation as having distinct functions, hierarchies, rules and value structures (walzer, 1984; bowles and gintis, 1986). laissez-faire understood that the state, however minimalist, had a different mandate than the other two pieces of the liberal puzzle. the liberal state was uniquely challenged to intervene in economic and domestic life, and to provide public goods that either did not conform to market logics, or could not be entrusted to market mechanisms, including market failure. in contrast to laissez-faire, neoliberal fundamentalists envision a state that both elevates the market over all else and adopts market logics to guide its own conduct. the state, in other words, is expected to ask what is efficient, itself a contestable term, instead of what is right, fair, or possible. in theory and practice, the neoliberal state is implored to engage in a continuous process of auto-critique “centred on the question of whether it is possible to govern less or more economically” (armstrong 2006, p. 57). this utopian conceit demands that government, in effect, repeals itself by constructing and disciplining self-governing and self-sufficient individuals who live in the mythical econometric space where all other things are equal. second, the neoliberal social imaginary strives to embed market logics into the everyday calculations of who we are and how we should live our lives. as brown argues, “neoliberal rationality, while foregrounding the market, is not only or even primarily focused on the economy.” it extends and disseminates market values to all institutions and social action, and rewards individuals and institutions for enacting this vision (2005, pp. 39-40). this too is a radical departure from laissez-faire. adam smith and the enlightenment theorists “could never have conceived of a society in which the sphere of individual economic calculation has expanded into the whole domain of social relationships” (jordan, 2005, p. 164). as jordan further explains, they would all have taken for granted that the context of social life would remain a set of institutions (families, communities, nations) with a collective logic of independence and sharing. they would not have expected individual autonomy and choice to construct or sustain that order…. (ibid.) the transformations envisioned by neoliberalism are mirrored in, among other things, the new public management, risk assessment, outcome-based policy, fiscalized social policy, active welfarism and so on, but their reflection in these and other policies is only partial. it is invariably impeded, challenged and distorted by the residuals of the descending governing order. previously cultivated identities, political consensus, and cultural ideals, which are deeply embedded in social life, and tell us who we are and what we stand for, constitute obstacles to the promotion of a new governing order, and its particular way of representing and intervening (clarke, 2007). raymond williams further explains: the residual, by definition, has been effectively formed in the past, but it is still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as an element of the past, but as an effective element of the present. thus certain experiences, meanings and values, which cannot be expressed or substantially verified in terms of the dominant culture, are nevertheless lived studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 101 issn: 1911-4788 and practiced on the basis of the residue … of some previous social and cultural institution or formation (1977, 122; quoted in clarke, 2007). in addition to residues, an ascendant political rationality is also challenged by emergent risks, frictions, and ruptures that neither it nor its predecessor projected or imagined. as john clarke explains, the dominant, residual and emergent “exist in a dynamic interrelationship with each other … the dominant is always engaged in processes of trying to sustain and extend its dominance through diverse strategies – demobilizing, marginalizing, incorporating, and reworking alternative possibilities” (2007). clarke enumerates several ways in which contemporary neoliberal governance subordinates the previous performances of the social. among them, erasing involves the simple elimination of many postwar social programs while privatizing and subjugating consists of assigning formerly public goods and services to private market providers and imposing the market logics of private profit and supply and demand on previously decommodified public goods. other strategies of subordination include: narrowing or downsizing and targeting social programs to specific groups that are identified as being at risk; functionalizing or redesigning social programs so that they primarily address the needs of neoliberal labour markets rather than personal wellbeing; and fiscalizing or transforming social policies that required program planning and service providers into tax credits and deductions, which purportedly allows citizens “choice” in meeting their social needs. the latter strategy of subordinating the social is closely linked to both reinventing the ethos of public management to better reflect the alleged efficiencies of markets, and economizing, or encouraging citizens to identify as consumers of public services, and to embrace market logics in their everyday calculations with the goal of becoming selfsufficient (clarke, 2007; brodie, 2008). there are numerous examples of the diverse and mutually reinforcing strategies of subordinating the social in neoliberal times, many of which have met widespread public condemnation and resistance. there are, however, two neoliberal ways of representing and intervening, neoclassical economic doxa and individualization, which are pivotal. the rest of this article examines how these governing strategies systematically disarticulate the historical and political interface between citizenship, social provision, and social justice. (ong, 2006, p. 161). neoclassical economic doxa as already noted, political rationalities embody particular styles of truth-telling, which harness identities to specific social imaginaries, legitimize certain truth tellers, and delegitimize others. indeed, the ascendancy of any political project hinges on whether or not its foundational assumptions its way of seeing achieve the status of doxa – “an unexamined frame for all further cognition” (bauman, 2000, p. 30). political identities, styles of politics, and governing aspirations are formed and re-formed, that is given new shape and meaning, through doxa. the neoliberal project is grounded in the doxa of classical economic theory, which is commonly understood as being antagonistic to the social broadly defined, not the least because of its unwavering commitment to methodological individualism, which reduces humanity, in all its diversity, historicity, studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 102 issn: 1911-4788 and complexity to a singular and abstract formulation of individual utility maximization. this style of truth telling is “based on an initial act of abstraction” that “dissociates a particular category of practices, or a particular dimension of all practice, from the social order in which all human practice is immersed” (bourdieu, 2005, p. 1). it requires, as an article of faith, that we accept “all other things as being equal” when our lived experiences tell us precisely the opposite (rose, 1999, p. 30). this chasm between economic orthodoxy and the social is not new. it has propelled movements for social reform and social justice as well as the politics of redistribution for the past two centuries. what is distinct to this era is the extent to which economy orthodoxy has spilled over its academic and disciplinary boundaries, progressively enlarging “the territory of economic theory by a series of redefinitions of its object” (gordon, 1991, p. 43). until quite recently, economics, both in theory and application, has tended to live a life quite apart from the other social sciences which, in turn, were content to leave it alone to talk to its world of hypotheticals and formal models. increasingly, however, orthodox economics has itself taken a social turn, progressively colonizing the social sciences, especially at the point where they intersect with public policy. while it is widely recognized that neoliberal economists conquered finance ministries and central agencies some time ago, social policy making also has progressively fallen under economics’ seductive claims to “scientific” certainty, neutrality, and universalism (clarke, 2004, p. 89). economic orthodoxy now informs the very conceptualization of social problems and the generation of public policy solutions (fine, 2001). as a result, economic orthodoxy is no longer positioned in opposition to the social but, instead, presents itself as the preferred intellectual apparatus to frame our thinking about the social and government. in particular, we are increasingly implored to assess governmental institutions and policies in terms of their costs and benefits to individuals (jordan 2005, p. 158) and to eschew previous formulations of social justice or citizenship equality as being ideologically driven or economically inefficient. economic orthodoxy invests its pedlars with the legitimacy of scientific neutrality, simultaneously positioning its challengers as being as spurious, self-interested, and partial. as social policy advocates can readily attest, one can either accept the terms of economics’ narrow conceptual framework (and thereby confirm its legitimacy and reinforce its hegemony) or be relegated to the sidelines of the debate. this doxa, however, is a performance of a particular way of seeing – it is not so much a description of how the world is, as an image in which the world is being made (massey, 1999, p. 40). economic orthodoxy demands allegiance to a series of profoundly political corollaries that have been progressively embedded in the ethos of contemporary policymaking. these include, but are not limited to the ideas that policy should be oriented toward: the withdrawal or abstention of the state, especially in economic regulation; a shift into the private sector of public services (e.g. contracting out); the conversion of public goods into commercial goods and citizens into consumers or clients; a renunciation of the power of the state to reduce inequalities; a glorification of individual self-help and responsibility; and undermining representations of the state as a collective authority and an agent of social solidarity (bourdieu, 2005, p. 11). these prescriptions for governance are profoundly political and thus comprise the fault lines for resistance and revisionings of the social from the perspectives and studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 103 issn: 1911-4788 commitments of the residuals and the emergent. this counter-politics, however, often fails to appreciate that the neoliberal project gains its force, not only from the performances of powerful economic and political actors and the demoralization of popular forces, but also from its promise of individual freedom and empowerment, which has proven seductive even to those most abused by this conceit. neoliberalism, in a sense, promotes its own vision of social justice – one which, following from economic doxa, brackets out the influence of structure and systemic barriers to citizen equality and social justice, revolving, instead, around the primacy of individual choices and open systems that empower people to make their own choices about how they will live their own lives. justice, within this context, demands that economic rewards and societal resources are linked to ambition, effort, and the prudent exercise of individual choice, rather than, for example, to citizenship status (armstrong, 2006, p. 71). this model also assigns personal, rather than collective, responsibility to those who, through their own imprudent choices, have forfeited their claims to individual choice and freedom. in sum, neoliberalism’s model of justice endeavours to supplant the residual political goals of social equality, social security, and social wellbeing with makers of social progress that are only intelligible when viewed through the lens of neoclassical economic doxa. individualization the infiltration of the postwar terrain of social governance with neoliberal political rationalities reaches into individual conduct, and prescribes the citizen-subject of a neoliberal order (brown, 2005, p. 42), largely through discourses and strategies of individualization. while commensurate with the methodological and ontological individualism of orthodox economics and classical liberalism, individualization, or what beck characterizes as part of a broader contemporary compulsion “to live a life of one’s own,” is a distinct process that is quite unique in the practice of modern governance (beck and beck-gernsheim, 2002, pp. 22-26). as he explains, individualization has a different meaning than individualism, which lies at the heart of the neoliberal conception of social justice, and is more broadly understood as self-actualizing or self-seeking behaviour. individualization is a disciplinary and dividing practice that places steeply rising demands on people to find personal causes and responses to what are, in effect, collective social problems. in beck’s view, we are all now compelled to find a “biographic solution” to systemic contradictions (ibid, xxii). responsibility for social crises, which find their genesis in such macro processes as the globalization of production, geopolitical and environmental displacement, racism, or unequal gender orders to name a few, is shifted onto the shoulders of individuals. living a life of one’s own interpolates the entrepreneurial self who takes personal responsibility for her successes and her failures, most critically the failure of not being able to go it alone (brodie, 2007). individualization is increasingly embedded in strategies for social policy reform, which both promote the illusion of choice and are designed to shape citizens into selfsufficient market actors who provide for their needs and those of their families (brown 2005, p. 42). these innovations represent a fundamental shift in thinking that subordinates, if not explicitly rejects two critical assumptions that informed social studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 104 issn: 1911-4788 governance for much of the twentieth century: first, social structures systematically advantage some groups of citizens and disadvantage others; second, social policy appropriately corrects for systemic barriers and inequalities. yet, the individualization of contemporary social and political life is also rife with a series of paradoxes that undermine the legitimacy and stability of the neoliberal project and open space for re-forming social justice in a neoliberal era. first, as beck notes, individualization invites people “to constitute themselves as individual: to plan, understand, design themselves as individuals and, should they fail, to blame themselves. individualism thus implies, paradoxically, a collective lifestyle” (1998, p. 28). this invitation extends to members of groups, which by all indicators are structurally disadvantaged; they are collectively individualized with the expectation that they elect to rise above systemic barriers or, in the words of canada’s policy research initiative, depart the “identity markers” that confine them to the ranks of the “persistently poor” (brodie, 2008). however, these prescriptions are a mirage. as bauman explains, “how one lives becomes the biographical solution to systemic contradictions – or rather, this is what the hapless individuals are authoritatively told and come to believe to be the case (in fact, a ‘biographical solution to systemic contradictions’ is an oxymoron: it may be sought, but cannot be found” (2002, 68). beyond, this logical fallacy, the language of choice, which underpins individualization strategies, not only exceeds the grasp of the possible for most of us, but is itself illusory. again, bauman refines this point – “the factors that constitute [one’s] individuality – confinement to individual resources and individual responsibility for the results of life choices – are not themselves a matter of choice … more often than not, control over life is the way in which the story of life is told, rather than the way in which life is lived” (2002, p. 69). finally, and importantly, individualization strategies are often couched in the language of epochal necessity as a singular and necessary response both to the present postmodern and post-industrial moment that no longer corresponds to the one-size-fits-all identities and life courses of previous eras and to the relentless pressures of technological change and economic globalization. these conditions, we are repeatedly told, demand that people find expression and security through flexibility and adaptation. yet, without some pooling of the risks that collectively challenge us as flexible actors, the individualized life is an extremely risky and insecure life. there is a palpable difference between flexibility and precariousness, between being empowered to adapt to structural change, and being abandoned to devise personal strategies to survive forces beyond our control. by denying the language and legitimacy of collective claims-making, grounded in our shared experience of systemic vulnerability, individualization, in effect, represents the “institutionalization of insecurity,” and, for bauman, “a mode of domination grounded in the precariousness of existence” (2002, p. 68). conclusion the ultimate paradox of our neoliberal times is that the historically unprecedented human capacity to enhance and secure human wellbeing, locally and globally, should generate such degrees of precarious existence for the vast majority of humanity, indeed for all studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 105 issn: 1911-4788 things living. this elevation of “social insecurity into a positive principle of collective organization” (bourdieu, 2005, p. 12) is neither inevitable nor, for that matter, productive or efficient. rather, it is grounded in an unsustainable fundamentalism that must be contested as such. echoing polanyi’s indictment of laissez-faire, ronald wright observes in his short history of progress that “the idea that the world must be run by the stock market is as mad as any other fundamentalist delusion – islamic, christian, or marxist” (2006, p. 22). it is a fundamentalism that has not displaced the residuals of over two centuries of struggles for citizenship equality and social justice. it is also a fundamentalism that is unable to comprehend and actively fuels the emergent crises of the early 21st century, among them, global warming, rampant insecurity, the polarization of the north and the south, and pervasive antagonism to neoliberalism’s imperial designs. and, it is a fundamentalism which, having failed to deliver on its core promises of wealth, wellbeing, and freedom, increasingly governs as if we live in a “state of exception” (agamben, 2005). by raising the spectre of alien threats to our physical safety, it attempts to bypass the critical questions of justice, relying instead on secrecy, surveillance, and coercion. in the face of all of this, the necessary task of reforming social justice may very well hinge upon our collective insistence on putting the social back into our way of seeing and contesting neoliberal times. contemporary politics invite us to seriously reflect upon a time-worn adage: if you wish peace, care for justice (quoted in bauman, 2007, p. 5). studies in social justice volume 1, issue 2, 2007 106 issn: 1911-4788 references agamben, g. 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(1999). “the multi-layered citizen.” international feminist journal of politics, 1:1, 11936. journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 105 social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers angela renee whi goodloe*1 & jillian n. ardley1 1. school of education, norfolk state university, united sates *corresponding author: argoodloe@nsu.edu received : 2020-10-30 rev. req. : 2021-02-17 accepted : 2021-08-27 how to cite this paper: goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. (2021). social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers. journal of culture and values in education, 4(2), 105-119. https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.2021.9 this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) abstract perceptions on leadership training to sustain teachers of color vary in approaches, ideologies, and values. however, what evidence is within the literature to depict what effective principals do to retain, in particular, african american teachers? in the present study, the authors have reviewed the literature from 2011-2020 through the lens of critical learning theory. this examination led to an extrapolation of categories that indirectly embed social justice as a tool utilized for retaining african american teachers. nevertheless, many well-known strategies utilized to promote the retention of present-day african american teachers do not include this motivating call-to-action within the parameters of their approach or training of principals. social justice is an effective tool for supporting generation x students who willfully and actively participate in digital and physical campaigns against systematic racial injustice. therefore, educational leaders should transcend authoritative leadership and systematic racism with social justice as a pivotal strategy for teachers of color. keywords: teacher retention; social justice; principals; african americans; teachers of color; professional development. introduction perceptions do not go far enough to correct the problem of disappearing african american educators in today’s schools. moreover, “the history of race-based differential treatment of individuals in the united states is older than the history of the country itself” (carothers, 2018, p. 42). yet, finding and sharing strategies that are presently in practice to deter declines regarding diversity of the teaching population are sparse. this study addresses this challenge 10.46303/jcve.2021.9 https://cultureandvalues.org/ mailto:argoodloe@nsu.edu https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.2021.9 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 106 by using both ebscohost and google scholar to search terms and phrases to identify strategies principals use to retain african american teachers in public school settings in the united states. this literature review references principals and teachers, specifically about strategies principals use to retain african american teachers. while the literature provides a historical perspective to understand the plight of african american educators, social justice as a strategy directly to retain teachers of color is marginal in the literature. however, the history of displacement and inequality experienced by african american educators unequivocally relates to the shortage of african american educators (ingersoll & may, 2011). while the history of injustice endured by african american educators is evident, the integration of this history does not transcend to the actions of school leaders to ensure social justice as an intricate part of the approach for diversity and longevity in the profession. goodloe and ardley (2020) conducted a literature review that exposed a chasm in the literature regarding strategies principals use to ensure the retention of african american teachers. in particular, the literature review showed gaps of perspectives pertaining to social justice and the absence of the actions required by principals to guarantee an environment of equity for teachers of color. thus, the clear depiction of strategies and actions needed by principals to ensure social justice is urgently missing to sustain teachers of color. the question: “is there a need for sharing strategies that embed social justice to support the retention of african american teachers?” in response to this preliminary question, the inception of the research was a global consciousness awakening through black lives matter over the death of george floyd. george floyd, an african american man, whom police murdered in 2020. george floyd’s death was the catalyst that unified many voices and cultures around the world who rallied against the injustices orchestrated towards black lives. martin luther king, jr. said that a riot is in the language of the unheard. however, the degree in which voices of color are systematically silenced, and how principals utilize social justice as a tool to support african american teachers are questionable (capper & young, 2014). fortunately, as noted below, there are diverse school entities that are currently utilizing social justice toward the betterment of education: 1. in portland, oregon, educators participated in black lives matter celebrating progress made around racial justice in education. teachers wanted a more culturally responsive curriculum, especially for black and brown students (national education association edjustice, 2019). 2. in san jose, california, the santa clara county board of supervisors unanimously voted to pass a proposal to declare racism a public health crisis in an effort to dismantle and deepen individuals’ understanding of racism in education (reyes, 2020). 3. black lives matter and the los angeles african american teacher’s union collaborated with california state university, the nation’s largest four-year system, to launch a drive to address “anti-blackness” within the university system (cawood, 2020). the three american media events described above denote the gravity of the current struggle against injustice. these educators recognize that the very fabric of the educational system are the constructs of privilege or unprivileged, authority or subjectivity, power or powerless, and superiority or inferiority. these dichotomies are the underpinnings of an unjust society in https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 107 which the preponderance of a dominant group is glorified and protected through educational systems. bourdieu and passeron (2020) states the constructs of society present illusions of equality, in which the continuous perpetuation of symbols and practices of false freedoms and equity are learned through schools. society reproduces itself mechanically (bourdieu & passeron, 2000), thus an unjust society replicates unjust social norms. school administrators must be cognizant of such constructs and reflective to establish provable resolutions. for real change in schools, ongoing and continuous training is necessary to avoid the default modes in which school administrators revert to traditional practices that suppress people of color. principals, who are viewed traditionally as heroes (schweiger et al., 2020) in education, require new leadership skills. the plight of the hero today demands critical thinking to consciously review and implement policies that create environments to advance justice. moreover, teachers remain in schools where there is exemplary leadership (menon, 2014). african american teachers stay in schools where leadership is supportive (bristol, 2020), and equal protection of the law is administered intentionally and in a fair manner. the examples shown above demonstrate an influence of black lives matter and the new influence activists have on education. today, a transformative leader is an advocate and activist for social justice. social justice is fundamental to the implementation of strong programs in which african american teachers are not marginalized. the purpose of this study is to answer the following research questions: 1. what present strategies are used by principals that embed social justice practices to retain african american teachers? 2. is social justice one of the key strategies mentioned or recognized by principals in and of itself in scholarly publications to support the retention of african american teachers? in the realm of education for african americans, the progression of equality has been extremely slow. equal rights, civil rights, and social justice have merged into a chronology of struggle over 300 years from 1619 to the present. in the struggle for equality, the only absolute course for justice that corrects decades of inequitable practices is social justice. freedom for african americans following 1861 did not provide fundamental changes toward financial equity, while social equity progressed incrementally. thus, the struggle continues for adequate and fair practices in society, particularly in education. there is much work to be done to accomplish this salient goal for equity in america. a pivotal point towards the progression of equality in american educational history was the 1954 supreme court case, brown vs the board of education in topeka, kansas to desegregate schools. segregated schools violated the 14th amendment of the u.s. constitution and had a profound impact on the direction of the nations’ educational system that transcends its original intent (ramsey, 2020). this case ended segregated schools and led to the decline of african american educators (irvine, 1988). this case as noted ended segregation legally, but it did not cease the inequality exhibited within schools or its teachers of color. https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 108 the shortage of teachers and principals of color profoundly affects the success of students of color (carver-thomas, 2018). these issues are further magnified when unqualified teachers are hired out of their area of expertise when there are not enough qualified educators and administrators available to employ in public school settings (carothers et al., 2019). when diversity is absent and unqualified teachers are present, all children miss opportunities to engage in divergent thinking, and share different philosophies and values (vilson, 2015). teachers of color enhance school environments with multiple perspectives and ideas. lash & radcliffe (2014) noted that approximately two decades earlier researchers such as a.j. king, gloria ladson-billings, and j.a. gordon noted the need for teachers of color for a wide range of reasons which include the following: 1. the inability or unwillingness of middle-class teachers to teach students from low-income african american families; 2. the passion of african american teachers to educate african american students; 3. the need for all students to experience a multiethnic teaching force, and; 4. the necessity of a sincere and diverse representation of ideas and abilities in a teaching force that contributes to the development of america. the integration of varied cultures and perspectives strengthen the need for diversity in american schools. society is complex and there are many points of view heard and respected. perspectives of a dominant path to thinking or a singular way to ruminate, negates insights from others. people are not monolithic, but complex and layered with multiple dimensions of character, beliefs, norms, and behaviors. the lack of diversity is an identifiable consequence of singular ideas of thought and values in reactionary, polarized, and intolerant environments. social justice is a call of action for equality and shared perspectives. the literature reviewed by goodloe and ardley (2020) notably accounts for a lack of social justice as a strategy to retain teachers. yet, 83% of the nation's principals participated in professional development during 2016-2017 school year (nces, 2017). since school administrators are attending trainings, the professional development of principals need a new and broader focus on social justice. the understanding of the complex multiple layers of an unjust society is necessary to obtain a just society for all. the theoretical framework, critical learning theory, as it relates to social justice and the retention of african american teachers is a constructive alignment with equitable practices in education. critical learning theory is a philosophy that involves relentlessly analyzing power structures of society to ensure educational needs are equitable and just for all students (fitzclarence & giroux, 1984). social justice is fundamentally critical to the application of critical learning theory in which all educators become beneficiaries of an equitable education regardless of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, economic status, physical, mental, and/or emotional capabilities (sarid, 2020). according to the declaration of independence, social justice is inclusive of the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. kimberly j. robinson, a professor of law at the university of virginia, usa, said that despite decades of litigation, the state courts have not effectively been able to hold the states accountable for providing an adequate and equitable education (walsh, 2020). the critical learning theory perspective when applied dilutes elitist https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 109 theories of educational attainment and advocates for justice in education. racism confronted on all levels of educational access and equitable education becomes a right. thus, critical learning theory is essential for the sustainability of african american teachers. ultimately, fairness and justice rise when educators of color are respected in spaces free of racist ideologies. paulo freire (1971) stated that the purpose of education is to liberate. the freedom to think rather than recite conformist ideologies that suppress freedom is a process toward liberation. african american educators can only become leaders for liberation through equity in education. critical learning theory forces educators to confront historical tensions through social justice and close gaps of inequality for teachers of color. data and method this study used content analysis design (zhang & wildemuth, 2009) that aims to explore qualitative data through the contextualization of the content. researchers probed peerreviewed journals for reoccurring words, categories, patterns, and themes significant to the study. the researchers selected content based on the words and phrases relevant to the context of social justice to refine emerging practices by principals to retain african american teachers. researchers also regarded the historical context as well as the semantics in which words and phrases influenced the selection and analysis process for choosing indicators. for example, the words “black” and “african american” utilized in the literature describe the cultural group within the study. likewise, the coding for “social justice” included synonymous words such as “justice”, “equality”, “equity”, “freedom”, and “liberty”. this expansion of the words supported the investigation of relevant categories, themes, and patterns from the literature in which eleven categories emerged from the content analysis. see table 1 for details. table 1. key terms for social justice under investigation key terms for social justice under investigation 1. equality 2. inequality 3. civil rights 4. justice 5. liberation 6. freedom this scholarly study used the template from hallinger (2014) to frame the method for understanding the data. this format includes the following: a) framing the research in terms of the theoretical framework, b) choosing indicators based on the topic to find the relevant literature, and c) sharing the literature by stating their correlations or differences from the key questions. critical learning theory was the theoretical framework for the study and utilized key terms for “retention” and “african americans” and “principals” to narrow the data from the literature review done by goodloe and ardley (2020). the results from this study were further refined by reading the scholarly documents to see which journals embedded social justice as a way to support african american teachers by educational administrators. sources of data the data collected from scholarly documents dated 2011-2020 focused on principals who effectively supported the retention of african american teachers. ebscohost and google https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 110 scholar search engines were used to collect data from scholarly documents. ebsco information services is frequently used by researchers worldwide to access research through libraries. the contemporary, google scholar, is a free service web search engine that categorizes metadata of scholarly literature across multiple publishing formats and disciplines. of these two search engines, only peer-reviewed research documents were selected for this study. these databases were also selected due to their ability to analyze content based on selected indicators and timeframes under investigation. the search initially began with the key terms “principal”, “teacher retention”, “black teachers”, and “beginning teachers”. also, terms that focused on equity, justice, freedom, liberty, and inequality were used to narrow the assortment of research articles which correspond directly or indirectly to the focus of the study. to support the depth and breadth of the retrieval of scholarly documents, the search was not limited to full text or source type. however, documents were limited to the demographics of the united states due to the specific interest of african american teachers. key term indicators depicted by ebscohost and google scholar such as “administrator”, “teachers of color”, “longevity” and “induction programs” were also utilized and combined with previous terms noted to match “principal” with the direct subject -“black teachers”, to analyze methods of successful strategies for “retention”. this technique of finding research publications by mining key terms via suggested terms in search supported the retrieval of scholarly publications since 2011 on the given topic of interest. the usage of diverse key terms is significant since researchers use different terms to describe concepts and behaviors as the decades changed. discovering research publications, which focused on social justice, presented unique challenges in the review process. words that identified or were relevant to social justice were explored in documents gathered from the literature review by goodloe and ardley (2020). therefore, historical terms were applied to represent “social justice” throughout this research. social justice, the equality of individuals, is the focus. statements relevant to this topic were investigated in the journals that indicate strategies principals demonstrated as a significant reference to social justice. historical and current key terms associated with the topic is in table 2. once key phrases were selected for the subject of the study, the word “principals” was added to the search engine with either “and” or “or” boolean subsets to narrow the research to the given topic. by combining, the terms mentioned previously, 205 articles were unearthed. the categories noted for these journal are in table 3. this table indicates the frequency in which terms occurred as relevant indicators for the study. since the historical and semantic context on words have implications on the frequency in which the term or phrase appeared in the literature, the researchers were careful to be inclusive of diverse words. for instance, the phrase “school leaders of color” was recognized as a key indicator to identify principals in public schools because it was a recurring phrase. however, phrases such as: “school leaders” and “school principals” only yield small differentials of less than nine. https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 111 table 2. historical and current key terms utilized for principals historical and current key phrases utilized for search principals key phrases for principals under investigation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 t ra n sfo rm a tio n a l le a d e rsh ip s ch o o l p rin cip a ls ke e p p rin cip a ls tra in e ffe ctive sch o o l le a d e r s ch o o l le a d e rs s ch o o l le a d e rs o f co lo r s ch o o l a d m in istra to rs p u b lic s ch o o l a d m in istra tio n e d u ca tio n a l le a d e rsh ip u rb a n p rin cip a ls table 3. educational terms utilized in google scholar searches that yielded no data for literature review that embeds social justice educational terms utilized in google scholar searches that yielded no data for literature review that embeds social justice google scholar phrases results from search school principals build relationship to support school diversity 9 school leaders and underrepresented teachers 31 mentoring teachers of color 21 professional organizations, affiliations and teachers of color 1 school leaders of color and new urban teachers 3 strategies of school principals and teacher diversity 26 principals maintain teachers of color 1 school principals keep african american teachers 4 strategies used by school leaders with new teachers of color 3 practices of school principals to retain african-american teachers 2 school leaders of color 104 https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 112 data analysis techniques in order to conduct a content analysis as proposed by zhang and wildermuth (2009) from the derived data, procedures used the prescribed six steps: 1) identification and collection of data, 2) determine coding categories, 3) code the content, 4) check validity and reliability 5) analyze and present results and 6) conclusion. research publications relevant to the topic from two search engines were collected, read, and reviewed. next, concepts were highlighted within the publications that were related to the questions of the study and similar concepts were coded into categories with the same topic and focus from similar publications. these categories led to units or groups of publications. if more than one publication referenced a strategy or concept, emerging themes were coded. coding and naming of the group of documents were based on overarching strategies or concepts that principals used to support african american teachers. according to kvale (1989), the researchers consistently use words and phrase across peer-reviewed documents to investigate the occurrence of terms per research question to validate and to check the reliability of the search. once the information was validated, the documents within the categories were analyzed to note the embedding or the lack of infusion of social justice as a possible strategy for supporting african american teachers to draw conclusions and implications. results and discussion the organization of this section included the key findings from the literature review after the completion of the coding of the collected documents. subsequently, eleven categories that included the thirteen research documents denoted successful strategies utilized by principals to support african american teachers. table 4 contains the specific research documents or the lack of research documents in these categories related to social justice. research on exemplary strategies utilized by school principals to retain african american teachers is limited. the literature review content analysis demonstrates a need to expand the research to comprise social justice as embedded in curriculum and instruction, but limited to the training of principals to keep african american teachers. social justice is a continuous quest for equality. however, the implementation and the assurance of social justice among many principals is not evident as a strategy to retain african american teachers. the primary literature review conducted by goodloe and ardley (2020) explored strategies utilized by principals to support the retention of african american teachers from 2011-2020. as noted in table 4, this research did not show direct evidence of principals’ usage of strategies for social justice to retain african american teachers. yet, social justice is an effective strategy for supporting generation x students who willfully and actively participate in digital and physical campaigns against systematic racial injustice. for example, university students in norfolk, virginia, usa unified and held a demonstration against social injustice on july 18th, 2020. this rally began at norfolk state university with the support of the president, dr. javaune adams-gaston (13news now, 2020). students deliberately led actions against systematic injustice in our society. they gained the support of teachers and administrators to eradicate injustice and proceeded with a new consciousness to protect their inalienable rights. therefore, neglecting social justice as a tool to retain african american https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 113 teachers is a mistake. therefore, neglecting to address social justice to support the retention of african american teachers is a mistake. table 4. ebscohost successful strategies used by principals to retain african american teachers related to social justice results from the ebscohost research search terms: principals or school leaders or administrators and teacher retention and (ethnicity or race or culture or minority or minorities or teachers of color or black teachers or african american teachers or underrepresented teachers or urban teachers and teacher retention or teacher attrition or teacher turnover or teacher persistence results from search:118 relevant research related to social justice: 6 eleven categories citation of research 1. african american teacher retention social justice embedded farinde-wu, a., & fitchett, p. g. (2018). searching for satisfaction: black female teachers’ workplace climate and job satisfaction. urban education, 53(1), 86–112 olsen, a. a., & huang, f. l. (2019). teacher job satisfaction by principal support and teacher cooperation: results from the schools and staffing survey. education policy analysis archives, 27(11). 2. general retention goings, r. b., walker, l. j., & cotignola-pickens, h. (2018). school and district leaders’ role in diversifying the teacher workforce. educational planning, 25(3), 7–17. practices and ancillary practices social justice embedded 3. mentorship farinde, a. a., allen, a., & lewis, c. w. (2016). retaining black teachers: an examination of black female teachers’ intentions to remain in k-12 classrooms. equity & excellence in education, 49(1), 115–127. social justice embedded campoli, a. k. (2017). supportive principals and black teacher turnover: essa as an opportunity to improve retention. journal of school leadership, 27(5), 675–700. 4. grow-your-own 0 findings in ebscohost related to social justice 5. self-efficacy, self0 findings in ebscohost related to social justice actualization & mindfulness https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 114 6. professional 0 findings in ebscohost related to social justice affiliations 7. cultural 0 findings in ebscohost related to social justice responsiveness/ awareness training 8. relational fairchild, s., tobias, r., corcoran, s., djukic, m., kovner, c., & noguera, p. (2012). white and black teachers’ job satisfaction: does relational demography matter? urban education, 47(1), 170–197 demography social justice embedded 9. school climate* bristol, t. j. (2020). a tale of two types of schools: an exploration of how school working conditions influence black male teacher turnover. teachers college record, 122(3), 1–24. social justice embedded 10. social justice 0 findings in ebscohost related to social justice 11. policies 0 findings in ebscohost related to social justice the analysis of the literature also reflects documents that represent exemplary strategies for retaining african american teachers by principals. these strategies for inclusion and equality are not monolithic (wang, 2020), but they are as diverse as the populations within the schools. thus, social justice should not be a neglected tool to support african american teachers. it is evident that principals effectively utilize social justice concepts embedded in some of the strategies. however, none of the research noted it as the prime strategy or activity to retain teachers of color. among the eleven categories, social justice appeared in five of the categories as indirect references. these five categories included african american teacher retention, general retention and ancillary practices, mentorship, relational demography, and school climate. there were only four of the eleven categories with a direct relationship to social justice. these four categories included grow-your-own, self-efficacy/self-actualization and mindfulness, and professional affiliations, culture responsiveness/awareness training. these later categories indicated a relationship with other phrases associated strategies regarding social justice. among these categories, social justice is an action. therefore, placing social justice at the forefront, the researchers used relevant terms to decipher which articles were significant to the study, then the information was organized into categories. these categories are as follows: african american teacher retention and social justice, mentorship, relational demography, school climate, and areas with zero evidence. african american teacher retention and social justice social justice embedded in the research on retention by farinde-wu and fitchett (2018). these researchers and others such as goings et al. (2018) stated that retention was dependent on positive school conditions and the training of school leaders to keep teachers of color. principals https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 115 recognized as supportive administrators fairly enforce school rules. olsen and huang (2019) added to the scholarship of social justice through the examination of job satisfaction. job satisfaction was determined as administrative support and cooperation. when african american teachers have supportive principals they remain employed as educators. administrative support is unequivocally important to the longevity of career educators. mentorships mentorship is a common and an important practice in education to retain new teachers. however, mentoring programs that are entrenched in social justice practices are rare, but it is an important component to sustain african american teachers. farinde et al. (2016) describe mentorship as a key factor to maintain african american teachers and implied that social justice is necessary as does campoli (2017). campoli (2017) agreed that mentorship was important particularly to reduce the turnover rate of african american teachers. campoli (2017) also emphasizes that mentorship works when principals establish a positive supportive school climate. a supportive school climate facilitates fairness and equity as a significant indicator for a quality mentorship program that is beyond ordinary. relational demography relational demography as defined by fairchild et al. (2012) conceptualized as a set of racial and gender congruency items between teachers and principals, teachers and teachers and students. the disproportional difference of european american teachers to african american teachers affects the relational demography. fairchild et al. (2012) found that european american teachers are more congruent with teachers and principals, while african american teachers are more congruent with black students. this association between relational demography and social status suggests that the teacher-to-teacher relationship is collegial, while the teacher to student relationship is cultural. these associations force an examination of relational demography and the rooted influences of authority and power. relational demography is the expectation that relationships formed by shared values for social justice. school climate school climate is highly emphasized in school leadership programs. school climate is generally associated with the schools’ establishing structure, norms, values, and cohesive environments to promote success. school climate facilitates positive improvements toward student achievement, strong teacher relationships, and encouraging principals. it makes a difference when the school climate is associated with social justice (blitz et al., 2020). bristol (2020) embedded social justice in the conversation of african american teachers who remain in education and have supportive principals who are attentive to interpersonal relationships, particularly with african american male teachers. many of the articles examined highlighted teachers as a general population rather than teachers of color in the context of school climate. the establishment of a positive school climate must be intentional, inclusive, and fair by any school principal. areas with zero evidence six areas identified by goodloe and ardley (2020) may be good practices, but social justice was not regarded as a critical component to retain african american teachers: grow-your-own, self https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 116 efficacy, self-actualization, mindfulness, professional affiliations, culturally responsiveness, social justice, and policies were the noted categories. the findings did not render a correlation between social justice strategies used by principals and the retention of teachers of color. for example, although researchers such as goings and walker (2018) regarded practices such as grow-yourown as a prudent practice, grow-your-own may not be rooted in social justice consciousness. likewise, blitz et al. (2020) revealed a correlation between school climate and cultural responsiveness as a manifestation of negative racial school climate. they addressed social justice, but not in the context of a strategy used by principals to retain teachers of color. mavrogordato and white (2020) strongly suggest that principals either enable or obstruct social justice through policies implemented. policies and procedures structured and enforced directly impact school climate, rather than instructional transformational leadership to create a positive and productive school climate (macleod, 2020). principals make decisions to make culturally responsive environments a priority and determine policies and procedures to enforce or excuse it. thus, cultural responsiveness becomes a priority to create the school climate. the implementation of policies cannot be overlooked in the literature and the justification for cultural responsiveness and cannot be overstated to ensure the retention of teachers of color. although little was discovered about culturally responsiveness in the context of a strategy to retain teachers of color, blitz et al. (2020) restate the analysis of inequality in schools. this did not extend to strategies for social justice used by principals to retain teachers of color. reed and swaminathan (2014) emphasized that contextually responsive leadership practices rather than a singular best practice represents better solutions to the complexity in urban school leadership and social justice. a plethora of research on social justice and leadership exist, but the content of social justice and the retention of african american teachers is minimal. six areas within the literature review conducted by goodloe and ardley (2020) yield little evidence demonstrating that social justice was essential to the retention of teachers of color. conclusion and implications in the midst of black lives matter, it is unfortunate that the literature review did not reveal any articles that directly connected social justice with principals’ effective practices to ensure the retention of african american teachers. the literature is very general in regards to this discussion. notably, homogeneous populations are reinforced when principals do not commit to diversify teacher populations. principals must develop new relationships in diverse communities to attract teachers of color. an audit of bureaucratic procedures that perpetuate injustice and racism may be necessary to identify specific areas, then engage in a plan of action to rectify the injustices. questions that mitigate change are neglected when there is a void in the research. this study revealed an essential need for change and improvements by strengthening the retention of teachers of color through the following: 1. research to determine exemplary strategies must be continued to provide prudent information about eight areas in which there is little knowledge: grow-your-own, selfefficacy, self-actualization, mindfulness, professional affiliations, culturally responsiveness, policies, and social justice; https://cultureandvalues.org/ journal of culture and values in education volume 4, issue 2, 2021 goodloe, a.r.w. & ardley, j.n. social justice: a missing link in a literary review of successful strategies utilized by principals for retaining african american teachers journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2021 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org 117 2. professional development for principals to implement exemplary strategies identified by the research; 3. professional development for principals to recognize the personal values, dispositions and behaviors about systematic racism; 4. professional development for principals to identify causes of situations/incidents, not simply a focus on the effect to ensure thorough and fair investigations of events rather than reactionary responses to seemingly obvious outcomes; 5. professional development principals to recognize enablers or obstructions of justice to ensure policies and practices are implemented fairly to eradicate inconsistencies; 6. professional development to promote social responsibility initiatives, and; 7. conduct a school audit to ensure social justice. the void in the literature is a call “to do something” as is the call for justice among black lives matter activists, as the honorable john lewis said, “when you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up”. say something and do something to change fragmented social practices. principal training is imperative to rectify inequalities in schools and create environments for equal justice. in conclusion, educational leaders should transcend authoritative leadership and systematic racism with social justice in a movement. therefore, leadership skills are required to harness identifiable effective strategies that maintain the dignity and respect of african american teachers. strategies to ensure social justice as a primary practice are dependent on the ability of principals to advocate and implement best practices to increase the longevity among teachers of color. this responsibility to eradicate injustice and uplift social justice in american schools is a humongous task, but a necessary one. it is explicit that action is necessary to provide principals with tools and training to support teachers of color to increase both longevity and a commitment to education. references 13news now (2020, july 19). demonstrators gather at norfolk state university for unity walk 2020 [video]. youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfq4ny5g_gc blitz, l. v., yull, d. & clauhs, m. 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https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/right-to-education-ruling-jolts-education-advocacy-world/2020/04 https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/right-to-education-ruling-jolts-education-advocacy-world/2020/04 introduction studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 67 a socially-just internet: the digital divide, cybercultural agency, and human capabilities david toews, university of windsor abstract: this article argues that while modes of scholarship stressing structural insights into the digital divide and ethnographic insights into online communities each give us important information about current uses of the internet, for the sake of a unified social justice principle it is necessary to interpret these forms of knowledge in terms of what could be. marx’s formula ‘the development of each as a condition for the development of all’ is put forward as the principle of a socially-just internet actualized from the ground up. it is argued that the most rapidly emerging and important form of constraint upon ‘the development of each’ is the for profit online social media industry in which moments of human communicative creativity become packaged as commodities for commercial purposes. creative, cultural agency becomes an imposition rather than a liberation as represented in the industry ideology. it is argued therefore that groups that use the internet for serious play – the use of avatars in virtual worlds is discussed as an example – present us with a form of online subjectivity that is rising in importance as a form of cultural agency inasmuch as the play component is premised upon the rejection of pre-packaged forms of agency. support for a socially-just internet would thus mean supporting the online communities formed in this process. thus the argument is put forward that the importance of serious online play groups is not due to their potential for forming communities per se but is rather due to their potential for resisting the imposition of agency. inasmuch as online communities in the midst of such groups can bolster that goal, they can represent the development of human capabilities in a way that expands the theme of social justice. how can we incorporate the goals of peace and social justice into the theory and research methods of someone who is interested in the critical cultural analysis of the internet? i would begin by reminding us of an old, seminal principle. despite all the events that have intervened in the last one hundred and fifty years, and the histories that have cast alternating favorable and unfavorable lights on this foundational document for socialism and communism, one of its core principles remains, at the very least an unavoidable issue: in place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all (marx & engels, 1948, p. 31). the principle embedded here, i think, is that claims of social justice only make sense if they have some kind of universal relevance in human affairs. i once made an interesting discovery, however, about this particular quote when i was teaching the communist manifesto to students studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 68 in a sociological theory class. i stated the quote in question from memory as „the free development of all is the condition for the free development of each‟, and rather quickly a sharp student pointed out that i had gotten it backwards, implying that my error distorted its meaning. she was quite right: substituting „each‟ and „all‟ for each other in the phrase really does change the meaning, and the more i have reflected on this difference, the more i have wanted to write about it. essentially, this little experiment in practical logic highlights the term „the condition‟ and makes one realize how important this term is and how, i have come to believe, marx‟s principle should be interpreted. the question is not: what are the conditions, involving all of us, that would permit the building of a socially-just world that would, in principle, benefit each of us? rather, the question is: what are the conditions, involving each of us, that would permit the building of a socially-just world that would, in principle, benefit all? marx‟s condition for social justice raises an uncannily contemporary bottom-up, not top-down, vision of the future. this new interpretation was obscured from my view in previous readings, i now think, because i had assumed that marx‟s laundry list of socialist reforms (abolishing private property; extension of factories owned by the state; obliging everyone to work; and so on) had to first be in place before any actor could hope to have an impact. hence my pessimism. now i see that if we take the idea seriously that „the conditions‟ are such that they have to, from the very beginning, involve „each of us‟ (as distinct from the more abstract notion of „all of us‟), it still involves a lot of people but it now means that there can be, and we ought to learn ways to recognize and appreciate, different speeds and different contexts, different ideas and different acts, in the world of those that are seeking to promote social justice. there is, indeed, room to think of our internet tools in a new way. i used to do little more than fret over the monopoly of corporations like microsoft over the possible ways we can think and communicate, and i still do not like that form of proprietary control over software, but now i am beginning to understand it in a different light. first ibm, then microsoft, and now the new web 2.0 companies, have all along been trying to provide „social utility software‟, as the chairman of facebook likes to put it (johnson, 2007). they are commodifying social relationships, ideologically promoting but in practice distorting and stunting the „free development of each‟. this is typically characterized by the aggressive extension of regimes of surveillance to the context of consumerism (andrejevic, 2002). the interactivity of communication on the internet is further exploited by blurring the line between consumers and producers in order to extract labour from our most ordinary ways of interacting. a typical context for this exploitation is the „start-up‟ company; the process of individuals, small groups and companies taking risks to introduce innovations in personal computing and networking technology has for some time now been slotted into a narrative of capitalism. the ideal hero of this narrative is the freewheeling, innovative individual or group willing to translate their life lessons into marketable products. these entities are seen as existing for the purpose of finding ways to profit from the fragile communities, unstable habits, and even the anti-corporate sentiments of internet users. an interesting example well advanced on this curve is common craft, a website devoted to producing videos that „explain‟ various topics to „ordinary people‟. common craft cultivates a folksy, populist, left-leaning image. based in seattle, in the early 2000s its founders were inspired by the cluetrain manifesto (www.cluetrain.com). on its home page this document/website sets out its basic premise that “learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about „listening to customers.‟ they will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on http://www.cluetrain.com/ studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 69 their behalf” (www.cluetrain.com). common craft has accordingly fashioned for itself not just an ideology of the corporate voice become more human, but an ideology of the ordinary person as „owner‟ of the process of the production of value. 1 ostensibly to render the knowledge industry more grass-roots and democratic this conception places an accountability upon each person/producer that turns the collective components of their identities and needs into market engines to be exploited for enterprise and profit. the free development of each is distorted and stunted by a form of creative „ownership‟ which is merely a pretense for the process of harvesting of workers‟ productive capacities. the false ideology of the sovereign autonomy of the individual internet user, whether as producer or consumer, is all too often the organizational principle backing the „social opportunities‟ of the internet which act as the fuel for these myriad engines of the capture of human creativity and communication. in this context, the notion of the internet as affording opportunities for „the free development of all‟ has been far from helpful. arguably, it has only disarmed and placated those who are attracted to these voluntary online sweatshops. if it is to make sense, the „free development of each‟ (at least in my view of the significance of marx‟s formula) cannot not be reduced to the mere notion that each actor should be able to live in a society structured to provide opportunities for their development. this is because it is only possible to imagine such a state of affairs if we conflate the principle of the „free development of each‟ with a state of affairs that we imagine as the „free development of all‟. the rhetoric of helping humanity figures large in the self-justification of proponents of common craft and other start-ups in the social media sector. the capture of workers‟ creativity is presented as the realization of this social imaginary. the contemporary popular notion of an „open source‟ movement (see, for instance, www.opensource.org) feeds this wishful expectation. but such notions all too often merely function to allow companies like apple to outsource their problems at their leisure, stringing along contract developers who can‟t wait to serve them (vaughannichols, 2006). precisely by using the term „is the condition of‟ marx meant to avoid, not encourage, the conflation of his terms. it makes sense that he would do so, for it is regrettable when the principle of the „free development of each‟ turns into an abstract ideology that merely enables a new kind of voluntary servitude. there is no commitment to social justice there. i for one at least, would favor any interpretation that maintained the actuality, the here and now, of „the free development of each‟. what i take from marx is that all is lost if we do not create that condition. what would it take to create the condition of „the free development of each‟? certainly we would not know in advance what the outcome would be, though we would want to set out some goals, and we would want to examine our tools that we think we can use to promote those goals to make sure those tools do not have an in-built bias towards a limited consensus revolving around a pre-conceived conception of the „all‟. as john stuart mill put it, „better to be socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied‟ (2002, p. 397). our goals will of course have to be constantly adjusted as different problems of social injustice and different aspects of those problems are identified, and there is probably a set of criteria that underpin the term „social‟ in the term social justice, so we need to examine, as a matter of urgency, what that list would be and why their being „social‟ is so central for human development. at the same time, though, we need to 1 own it | common craft explanations in plain english. retrieved october 16, 2008, from http://www.commoncraft.com/own-it#comment-form. http://www.cluetrain.com/ http://www.commoncraft.com/own-it#comment-form studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 70 examine our tools. if you support the top-down perspective, any tools can be used to create the „all‟ to „manufacture consent,‟ as herman and chomsky put it (herman & chomsky, 2002). if the job is to build social justice from the ground up, to attain first of all the free development of each, then tools must be fashioned or appropriated in a way that allows the user to create something unique to him or her. this is the double problem, and the double solution, we have with the internet at the present moment of history. we are encouraged to set goals for peace and social justice because we can, but these calls are often irresponsible and not followed through. we seem to have the tools to communicate this message. but „the message‟ slides into an abstract sense of the globalization of communication. the tools are skewed in favour of the development of an abstract concept of the all and do not permit the actual development of each. we have placed a principle of globalization as our highest value and then assumed that education, for example, would trickle down to the grassroots. it‟s the classic administrator‟s dream, like that of urban planner robert moses to transform new york into an expressway world for the benefit of „all‟, at the expense of real neighborhoods and the actual practices of people (berman, 1988). we should work to prevent the internet from being conceived as another expressway world. for me this is exactly why the critical cultural and social study of the internet is so important today. the perspective of critical cybercultural studies examines the internet as a potential space of social justice and democratic politics for users who are already engaged with computer-mediated communications. it is a valuable perspective that is generating new data and insights every day. we also need to engage with studies of the digital divide, of course, to understand the disparities in the current global systems. these studies inform us of current actualities. we need to go further though, and look at this information from the point of view of „what could be‟. we need to reclaim the utopian ground that is being appropriated by google earth, myspace and windows live messenger. my point of view, as i have tried to justify above, stresses an interpretation of current actualities to the extent that they are already actualizing „the development of each‟, or providing obstacles thereto, as the condition of understanding and promoting social justice. however, i am also proposing to effect this interpretation without reducing this condition to mere abstract notions of individualistic liberty, since the key criteria of social justice is, after all, that it is a social and cultural construction. essentially, then, i am interested in a discussion that bridges the gap between „what is and what could be‟ in internet practices and research, from an over-arching social justice point of view which stresses the „ground up‟ actualization of social justice. a discussion, then, needs to take place that bridges structural and ethnographic analysis of internet practices from the standpoint of a normative, processual conception of social justice. to achieve a satisfactory depth of understanding one would have to examine the problems that have historically divided ethnographers and structural theorists and the many solutions that have been proposed as ways of synthesizing micro and macro, structure and agency theoretical orientations. here i am going to limit myself to pointing out a problem with the present state of internet research that gets in the way of this undertaking. this problem consists in the assumptions of researchers and theorists about „what could be‟, or about an ideal social justice outcome. for the sake of simplicity of argument let me for the time being reduce the approaches to digital divide (structural) vs. cybercultural (ethnographic) points of view. i am going to interrogate these positions on what they assume „could be‟, and examine their implications for research that is motivated by the problems of social injustice. my ultimate aim is to ask: how can studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 71 the goals of peace and social justice be incorporated into the theory and research methods of someone who is interested in the critical cultural analysis of the internet? the most well-developed approaches to online social justice to date have been those dealing with the problem of the digital divide. the digital divide encompasses all the social stratifications, political conflicts, economic inequalities, and infrastructural developmental delays that have prevented the internet from reaching vast numbers of users. 2 the proponents of the digital divide perspective generally assume that members of different societies and cultures around the world need or want to be users of the internet. this kind of assumption is fair in social science research that examines structures that prolong inequality and injustice in the traditional, offline world. it is fair to assume that members of societies would need or want access to all the goods of societies that are rightfully theirs. it is fair in that context because the actors in the traditional, offline world have no choice but to be and act in that world. in contrast, imagine a group of actors who came together and created a space for themselves in which they built an environment, which they could use from time to time, in which they expected to avoid harming each other but the main positive expectation was that social interactions therein would experiment with communication and usually involve some kind of creative expression. let us call them the serious play group. let us assume, for the sake of argument, all the members of the serious play group agreed with these expectations and faithfully tried to stick to their spirit for the time they were within that space. they could use the space for any kind of expressions or learning, to dramatize and learn about any kinds of real world conflicts or cultures. these are highly motivated participants in a social group, and they have chosen to enter their group‟s space. what we should note is that this would not be for everyone. not every actor would choose to be, or even know that they could be, involved in such a group. not every actor in today‟s world chooses to use the internet as a means to address their needs and wants. moreover, significant groups of users have entirely different schemas that guide their online practices. 3 the notion of a serious play group highlights a form of agency, along with attendant cultural schemas, tactics, and strategies of action that is very specific to online computer-mediated communication. one way to draw the contrast with the agency that the digital divide perspective generally deals with is to note how the latter perspective has its strength in illuminating problems of institutions and social interactions represented online which operate in the context of current trends towards globalization and networked individualism (wellman, 2002; hackworth, 2007). new social networks are enabled by computer-mediated communication. they are creations of actors who are highly selective as to with whom and where they associate. they form new kinds of communities with non-traditional spatial formations (wellman, 2002). the flipside is the mass of people who lack these means of selective association and spatial control, and hence lack increasingly important means of social, economic, and cultural capital. a key point to remember is that this whole problem of social transformation and accessibility to networked communities 2 norris has developed an interesting way of understanding this with the concept of information poverty (norris 2001). 3 i would add the caveat that if government agencies, corporations, employers, or other global institutions were to come along and disrupt groups like the serious play group, undermining the „play‟ aspect by creating conditions whereby offline social functions can only be accomplished on the internet, under these circumstances the digital divide perspective grows in relevance. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 72 by social networking cannot be accurately described in terms of group dynamics since it operates according to a logic of interest-driven contextual embedding and disembedding. if i see myself as a member of a community of lexus owners, i am going to jump across various socio-cultural, geographical, economic, and political contexts in order to interact in networks of like-minded others. in contrast, a group is an assembly of actors who do not need to be more than incidentally interested in each other. wellman sees a fundamental intransigence in the sociological conception of group that gets in the way of seeing the new realities of social networking (2002). i would see the concept of group as quite important as a means of describing some social assemblages such as those meant for serious play. i agree that groups are not necessarily, or even usually, communities. i would suggest we define a group as an event of assembly. the point i want to make here is if serious play groups are groups as such then the digital divide problem is not well set up to account for their formation. a serious play group is an event of assembly meant to explore creativity with communication and therefore cannot be defined as a social network or a community since the latter depend on communication taking defined, functional, and relatively stable forms. a serious play group defined from the perspective of a social network or community would appear as dysfunctional, and we would get the wrong idea about it. the members of the serious play group – let us say they are well-off westerners though they do not have to be – could certainly be said to be responsible for helping to solve the problem of the digital divide, but i would hold this to be true only qua members of their broader societies, not qua members of the serious play group. this in no way diminishes the intensity of the responsibility of those actors, of course, it just clarifies its source, and it permits us to appreciate the autonomy of the serious play group, and to explore what the latter could be a source for instead. i am concerned that the digital divide may very well entrench people‟s thinking about the internet in terms of generalizations relating to the power relations involved in actual institutional appropriations of the net. it is all too easy to rely on some vague narrative about the spread of the internet as some kind of abstract impersonal force like what weber called rationalization, an inevitable outcome of „our western logos‟, leading to an inexorably widening institutional iron cage that traps us all into employing its ways of thinking, being and acting. in actuality, the internet‟s history has always been related to large powerful institutions, but also to serious play groups (turner, 2005). when we want to think of where the internet came from and „what it could be‟, the digital divide perspective has no answers and instead we need ethnographic research in order to understand the actual use of the computer-mediated communication on the net and the directions implied by this actual use. it is a crime if actors are prevented from participating online because they do not understand the internet and are worried about how glocal and impersonal and conspiratorial it feels. it is sad if people think that all they can do as individuals is to click on a few preferences and banners set up well in advance by big companies. the digital divide perspective just does not have its strength in helping us to know what could be, with respect to the social justice dimensions of the net. it is unlikely that the net would resemble its present incarnation if it really was adopted even by a clear majority of the world‟s populations. we cannot, and should not rest our understanding of the internet on information about „what is‟ the case with respect to unjust distribution of access at the present moment. we should use that information to work toward a more equal distribution, for those that need or want the internet. we do not waste our time fighting to distribute prosthetic limbs to every person on the planet, but only those that need or have a good case for wanting one, and we want to make studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 73 sure that we understand how the technology is going to be used. working towards a better understanding of the use of the net by serious play groups will at least enable us to gain a clearer conception of a form of online subjectivity that is not based on narrow interests. the proponents of a critical cyberculture are well positioned for this task. they have a valuable perspective, to begin with, because they are able to avoid the problematic assumption that everyone desires to be an internet user. 4 an anthropologist studying an aboriginal tribe in australia can accomplish a great deal without in any way presuming that the ways of life of that tribe should be adopted by all human beings. this is because the main task of the anthropologist is the thick description of a culture, and their indifference to the interests of the rest of the world is actually a source of the objectivity of the anthropological, or in the case of the internet, the ethnographic voice. however, that does not mean there are not circumstances in which one might want to ask if certain specific cultures can be adopted more widely, to bring some wisdom to the world, and what the consequences of this might be. one also, of course, should at some point ask the question of development, of whether certain specific cultures have taken on their specific cultural features because they have been isolated from the world and its vaster resources, and to what extent and under what circumstances calls for the importation of western ways and means should be encouraged. it should be obvious that many social justice scholars and activists who do excellent and worthy work are involved precisely in these questions and in seeking culturallysensitive modes of the recognition of problems and identities, and of the distribution and delivery of basic resources. here i am just pointing out that such questions go well beyond what a traditional ethnographer will tend to deal with. the proponents of a critical cyberculture, as ethnographers, avoid the uncritical universalization of the subjectivity of internet, but are not equipped to analyze the digital divide. they have to work on the assumption that their methods are permitting them to accurately critically analyze what the internet and its actual usage in the social context is. but there is a more unique problem that only ethnographers of the internet have to face on a daily basis. the problem is not the heavy involvement of technology per se, since technologies have always come into the equation in traditional, offline communities. the problem is the norm of creative collaboration among internet users, particularly in the serious play type of use. ethnographers of traditional, offline communities can practice thick description and social justice activists can work for the development of those communities, and they will debate among themselves, as they ought to, about the consequences of intervention in a culture to distribute aid or promote education and the nature of the impact on various subjectivities and their identities. however, they prosecute this debate on the shared common understanding that the members of those communities are more or less committed involuntarily to their communities. they do not have to deal, primarily and on a daily basis, with subjects who have a voluntary, experimental relationship with their communities based on its potential for collaborative creative expression. at the same time, within internet research, there is a curious parallel between the digital dividers and the ethnographers insofar as they both tend not to explore whether a wider social usage of the net would alter its functions. in the scholarly mode that they have to employ, they both tend to discuss how the net „is‟ rather than what it „could be‟. in contrast, in the actual practices of 4 some notable internet ethnographic studies include the pioneer studies of howard rheingold (1993) and sherry turkle (1995), and many more recent studies, including baym (1998); markham (1998); danet (2001); howard and jones (2004). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 74 those who use the net, among bloggers for example, the norm is to constantly tease out the implications of all practices to make sure they fit the future. 5 the condition of online social justice would have to be a universal perspective, and not primarily in the sense of the theorist‟s perspective of looking down upon a great digital divide. this universal perspective must somehow be embedded in the plurality of online activities, including organizations and practices. 6 the phenomenon of serious play groups voluntarily using the internet for their own purposes is a significant form of internet activity which has played an important role at the beginning and continuously during the historical evolution of the net, and has always displayed an inherent resistance to corporate co-optation of online activities. to be sure, we will only fully understand the significance of serious play groups if we support the advancement of internet ethnography. but in the meantime the question becomes: in what sense might the voluntary nature of serious play groups using the internet constitute the kind of plural yet universal perspective we are looking for? might serious play groups be a source of inspiration for the advancement of online social justice? while we need to continue to research the social structures and ethnography of the internet, if these projects are to be steered in a way that renders them mutually supportive of social justice activism, one of the greatest tasks that lies ahead is the theoretical enterprise of critically examining the possible social justifications of promising internet activities. it is an enterprise of seeking common ground, and it is also becoming more and more urgently a critical enterprise as corporations have been moving faster to promote certain „social software‟ concepts of the internet than social theorists and social justice activists. for the companies promoting their products, a key problem is understanding how technical innovation allowing for greater flexibility and usability can be translated and promoted as a kind of agency, or expansion of the agency of the human user. take for example the „avatars‟ that users employ in order to interact in virtual worlds like second life (secondlife.com). in the technical design of systems that support avatars, it is a vital question of concern to social software developers to determine how an avatar can be deliberately designed to be technically flexible in terms of the contents of its identity. social software developers in general want to play, of course, to their companies‟ desires to promote mass personalization (miceli, ricotta, & costabile, 2007). attentions are much less focused, if at all, on the cultural dimension in which this flexibility comes to be, in actual practices, manifested as cyberplay that expresses the peculiar self-understandings, stories and symbols that come to be grouped around the identities of avatars and the online communities they inhabit. a central question for theorists addressing social injustice has been the problem of how to defend and implement human rights. the online context, in which humans use avatars which in turn expand human reality to a new level of sociable interaction and serious creative play, complicates this question, requiring that we explore the human meanings of avatars in relation to the meanings generated in avatar-to-avatar interactions. we must not dismiss the small but significant plurality of ways inhabitants of virtual worlds and participants in all kinds of online communities are using these tools every day, since very often their methods were not intended or conceived by their primary developers. serious cyberplay is play with the form of communication in the online context, and outcomes of play are impossible to predict. play inherently resists the imposition of agency. it does connect with 5 see for example http://lifehacker.com/ 6 the new media consortium (www.nmc.org) is notable for encouraging excellent work in this spirit. http://lifehacker.com/ studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 75 the more mundane issues surrounding the internet. resistance to corporate attempts to impose agency functions in the context of concerns over who can and should have access to technology. the recent rapid expansion of virtual worlds for children is a case in point. it is the rare family now who does not have a child using her avatar (the 3d graphic characters that move about in virtual worlds) to make points and build an online presence in sites like club penguin or stardoll. these sites seriously discipline and channel the agency of child actor-avatars. this is ostensibly due to their users‟ tender ages, but the disney executives who run club penguin will tell their boards that it is to train new consumers to accept their digital products. the appropriate institutions for the inculcation of good online habits in children, such as families and schools, are facing a cultural and ethical struggle which depends, like all social justice movements, upon participation and community. some social justice thinkers who have thought deeply about computer technology continue to be informed by the traditional view that „if anything, technology aids in the reduction of the other into an object or means‟ (walters, 2001, p. 22). however, at the same time it is recognized that „community protects and fulfils rights‟ (walters, 2001, p. 22). thus, the question of whether the virtual world can be a space of social justice is naturally understood, as a kind of default approach, as a question of whether it constitutes a real, effective community. ethnographers of the internet have worked diligently to prove that such communities can exist, albeit often in a fragile way (baym, 1998). however, the problematic of community needs to be re-shaped as we gain more accurate ethnographic information about serious play groups. to begin with, there are important differences between online and offline communities. online communities tend to be oriented to play. let us take, for example, the use of avatars in virtual worlds like second life, an area in which i am presently developing a long term ethnographic research project. 7 one of the debates that i have had with my internet research colleagues surrounds the ontological status and agency of avatars. 8 we have debated, for example, the analogy between avatars and puppets. like avatars, puppets are controlled by puppeteers, and can thus be considered within the world of the direct representations of the puppeteer. employing the model of the puppet/puppeteer relationship, the ethical considerations of avatarto-avatar interactions in second life would be similar those in studying offline interactions. puppets interact with other puppets. they do so as expressions of their puppeteers' intentions, or as vehicles of the puppeteers and/or audience's symbolic interpretations of those (on stage) interactions. thus, one could well argue that a dramaturgical theoretical framework, like that proposed by goffman (1973), would be an interesting way of studying second life interactions. traditional social interactionist theories work well in studying traditional offline social interactions, are time tested, and are a useful theoretical starting point. however, problems crop up in the online context. one finds, in practice, a significant disanalogy between avatars and puppets. second life avatar interaction is not like a puppet show because it is not a 'show' in the sense of a definite dramatic performance with a beginning, middle, and ending and a set of actors that are guided by a director. in second life there is no director. there is an orientation process 7 i acted as principal investigator in a pilot study that took place in 2007, „the impact of communicative creativity on human needs and social justice‟, humanities and social sciences research grant (hssrg), university of windsor, ontario, canada, 2007. 8 these discussions have taken place in march of 2008 on the listserver of the association of internet researchers (aoir). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 76 in which one learns the movements and communication functions of one‟s avatar, but once the basics are learned, the individual subscriber is left completely to his or her devices, to go and join or form groups for business, pleasure, education, or whatever. to use the language of the social psychology of george herbert mead (1967), this means that one avatar has to respond to the other avatar according to the way the first avatar's human user imagines is the attitude, not of the second avatar's human user, but of the second avatar, since there is no way to check the attitudes of the human user without disrupting the immersive quality of the virtual world. analogous to the need for concentration and immersion in a game as a condition of getting the most out of a game, immersion in second life is the whole point for the vast majority of its users. 9 adding to the difference from human-to-human interaction in the offline world, in second life avatars, of course, compared to humans have a different repertoire of possible movements and expressions with different in-built limitations (e.g. second life avatars can fly and teleport). so the human user of an avatar has to interpret the meaning of the other avatar‟s actions without being able to check the attitudes of the human user (or at least with an in-built discouragement in the world from doing so and a drastically-reduced ability to do so) in a context that is qualitatively different than a human context. and all of this takes place in an environment in which it is quite possible for an avatar to be harmed by another avatar. the capabilities of one avatar can be impaired by that of another, quite independently of the relative states of the human users. creativity and experimentation – serious cyberplay – is arguably the norm online, and avatarbased virtual worlds give a glimpse into where this world is heading. the quality of one‟s experience in second life depends on a distinct set of norms and values of its user community, and injustices within the virtual world can and do occur. all communities, whether online or offline serve a variety of functions of social integration and social regulation. a serious play group is not the same as a community. but when an actor in a group is recognized by a community they are then able to legitimately struggle for their right to the kind of life experiences they expect, and the capability to pursue them. in the online context, in which creativity is an over-arching norm, the serious play groups have need for community in order to support a struggle for a key primary right: the right to develop one‟s online technical and social capabilities. thus, groups, including serious play groups, depend on communities to nurture and protect the new conceptions of social justice they might develop. for other kinds of rights, of course it is appropriate and necessary for human beings to fall back on offline communities for recognition and support. but this new kind of right has emerged: the right to be able to develop one‟s abilities online. „wilde cunningham‟ is an actor-avatar and resident of second life. he is the creation of nine disabled people, who control their avatar by democratic vote and the help of their caregiver. in traditional computer-mediated formats, the standard unit of analysis is the „computer user‟. this is a thin description that does not capture the complexity of the actoravatar, as they are an in-world invention of individuals and groups. a key consequence of the radically different forms of social interaction that avatars enable is that they pose a theoretical problem for understanding the nature of sociability and unsociability in the virtual context. from 9 of course, however, second life is not a „game‟ since there is a plurality of activities of all different kinds with no general object and no quest. one must differentiate the non-gaming nature of second life with virtual online gaming worlds like world of warcraft. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 77 an outsider‟s point of view actors heavily involved in virtual worlds often appear unsociable due to the technical knowledge involved, a tendency towards technical elitism, a preoccupation with constant innovation, and fears of internet addiction. indeed, among those attracted by the numbers of subscribers to second life and to the idea of establishing a regular presence in-world – including individuals and private and public institutions – there have been concerns raised over a perceived inconstancy, fragility, and shallowness of participation levels in the virtual environments. the actors that operate avatars like wilde, however, believe second life permits them to sidestep stigmas and release creative and collaborative energies. in second life, users have gone beyond mere entertainment and utilitarian uses of communication, raising hopes for expanding the possibilities of human reality through their serious cyberplay. in the future, those struggling for rights-based social justice will have to recognize the centrality of these processes of virtual social reality in no less an urgent way than past societies based on print media communication espoused freedom of conscience. being free to develop each individual or group actor‟s abilities online means being free from obstacles to creativity, being free, for example to alter the source code for the software one employs for communication. martha nussbaum argues that social justice is a situation in which human capabilities are maximized (nussbaum, 2006). nussbaum‟s theory of human capabilities as the object of social justice develops a sense of the need of the engaged actor to be involved in activities in order to flourish. similarly, online capabilities, in which creativity is the foremost value, are not static assets or rights to be „accessed‟, or passive „liberties‟, but are a socially-needed, dynamic and constituent part of the socially-constructed identities of online actors. i have presented the digital divide perspective and the cybercultural perspective as structural and ethnographic traditions of internet research that are useful, though inherently limited, sources of documentary information about how the net is used. this is admittedly an over-simplification of the varieties of internet research, but my task here was not to outline this rich variety. the point i have wanted to stress in this paper is that online social justice depends on internet practitioners making a qualitative leap by actually performing social interactions that necessarily involve a more urgent question of „what could be‟ in terms of the „free development of each‟. the maximization of human capabilities, a promising theory, in the context of the net surely depends on strengthening online communities and encouraging the separation of corporate control and serious play on the internet. we also need to remember and be aware of the social structures that bind the offline and online worlds into a broader society which does break down into unfortunate stratifications that prevent equal access to technology. working towards internet social justice partly involves this broader social struggle. however, our struggles should be informed and guided, not by a negative sentiment of „well, if these are the paltry tools that are imposed on us today, at least i want my fair share of access to those tools‟. rather, we should take on a cognizance of the peculiar necessities of online interactions by recognizing, appreciating, and critically-scrutinizing the experience, norms, and values of communities who are actually in the process of developing and practicing what the net „could be‟. it is not just a case of understanding the serious play structuring the intensely sociable culture of online interaction better by supporting the advancement of internet ethnography, though the latter is important. what is crucial is seeking a basis for understanding the complexities of social justice in the virtual community. let us be critical, wary agents concerned to defend the gains and wellbeing of our broader societies, but let us be open to what virtual community actors are showing us „could be‟ – the free development of each as a condition for the free development of all. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 78 references andrejevic, m. 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(2007). web 2.0 summit. in m. zuckerberg (ed.), facebook technology. retrieved on march 14, 2008 from: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/10/17/web_20_summit_mark_zuckerberg_facebook.html markham, a. (1998). life online: researching real experience in virtual space. walnut creek, ca: atlantic press/sage. marx, k. & engels, f. (1948). manifesto of the communist party. new york, n.y: international publishers. mead, g. h. (1967). mind, self, and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. chicago: university of chicago press. miceli, g. n., ricotta f. & costabile, m. (2007). customizing customization: a conceptual framework for interactive personalization. journal of interactive marketing, 21(2), 6-25. mill, j. s. (2002). utilitarianism. in s. stumpf & d. c. abel (eds.), elements of philosophy (pp. 394-400). new york: mcgraw-hill. nussbaum, m. c. (2006). frontiers of justice: disability, nationality, species membership. cambridge, mass: the belknap press. rheingold, h. (1993). the virtual community. reading, ma: addison wesley. turkle, s. (1995). life on the screen: identity in the age of the internet. new york: simon and schuster. turner, f. (2005). where the counterculture met the new economy: the well and the origins of virtual community. technology and culture, 46, 485-512. vaughan-nichols, s. (2006). open darwin shuts its doors. linux-watch. retrieved on march 14, 2008 from http://www.linux-watch.com/news/ns walters, g. j. (2001). human rights in an information age. toronto: university of toronto press. wellman, b. (2002). little boxes, globalization, and networked individualism. in m. tanabe, p. besselaar & t. ishida (eds.), digital cities ii (pp. 11-25). berlin: springer-verlag. tarhan, ö. (2021). development of social justice awareness scale: exploratory (afa) and confirmatory (cfa) factor analysis. international online journal of education and teaching (iojet), 8(3). 1603-1622. received : 16.02.2021 revised version received : 28.04.2021 accepted : 14.05.2021 development of social justice awareness scale: exploratory (efa) and confirmatory (cfa) factor analysis research article author özge tarhan orcid id: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0783-6962 pamukkale university, turkey ocintar@gmail.com biodata: özge tarhan is a doctor research assistant in the turkish and social studies education department of faculty of education in pamukkale university, turkey. her research interests are social studies education, citizenship education, democracy education and political education. copyright © 2014 by international online journal of education and teaching (iojet). issn: 2148-225x. material published and so copyrighted may not be published elsewhere without written permission of iojet. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0783-6962 mailto:ocintar@gmail.com tarhan 1604 development of social justice awareness scale: exploratory (efa) and confirmatory (cfa) factor analysis özge tarhan ocintar@gmail.com abstract in this study, it was aimed to develop a measurement tool that measures the level of importance and value that secondary school students attach to social justice. accordingly, 352 participants, consisting of eighth-grade students, received a draft scale consisting of 47 items and a personal information form. the data obtained were checked for cronbach-alpha reliability, item-total correlation, and exploratory factor analysis. data obtained as a result of factor analyses show that the scale consists of a single factor. the variance percentage of the single-factor scale was calculated as 58.87%. the scale and personal information form prepared after efa analyzes were applied to 438 students for confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) procedures. the fit indices obtained as a result of the confirmatory factor analysis showed that there was a fit between the model and the data and that the proposed model was at an acceptable level. in the final form of the scale, the cronbach alpha internal consistency reliability coefficient was determined as 0.782. as a result of the analysis, a 39-point social justice awareness scale was developed in 4-point likert type. according to the results obtained, it was determined that the social justice awareness scale is a valid and reliable measurement tool. keywords: social justice, exploratory factor analysis (efa), confirmatory factor analysis (cfa), scale development, validity, reliability. 1. introduction the prerequisite for the development of stability and peace in societies is the provision of social justice. social justice is intended to make people living in a society feel safe, to meet their interests, desires, and needs. the plight of vulnerable people has been compounded by widespread issues with inequality. as a result, the concept of social justice has become increasingly important in the rapidly changing global circumstances (restubog, deen, decoste & he, 2021: 2). as a result of the fact that societies interact with each other today, social justice has become a very important area for eliminating differences arising from economics, social, political views, and education. social justice, in essence, is a matter of equal opportunity. it is about addressing all kinds of inequalities (barry, 2017: 24). at the heart of social justice is the fair and equal distribution of all resources in society to individuals, and for individuals in society to feel safe. when we look at the literature, it is seen that there are many definitions of the concept of social justice. özgüven has defined social justice as an area that compasses all areas from the state system to the economic and legal system, but also as an understanding of the law that has secularism, democratic regime, human rights and freedom, religious beliefs and tries to eliminate the extraordinary imbalance in income distribution and differences in regional development. (özgüven, 2003: 36-37). bell, on the other hand, made an important point when describing mailto:ocintar@gmail.com international online journal of education and teaching (iojet) 2021, 8(3), 1603-1622. 1605 social justice as the equal distribution of the sources of income of the society to its citizens, the belief in that society, the fact that all citizens with different ethnic roots or political opinion feel physically and psychologically safe and secure in the society in which they live, and as a result, citizens participate in democratic decision-making processes and have a sense of responsibility towards those who are different from them (bell, 2007: 4). in his definition, bell wanted to draw attention to how the mechanism of social justice in multicultural societies should work when it comes to all citizens living in a society whose faith, political opinion, and ethnicity are different. the concept of social justice is a concept related to the protection and maintenance of cultural differences and fundamental rights of people in society, as well as the provision of social and economic rights of people who have little voice. grant and gibson, who think that the state should have a responsibility for the elimination of injustices and unfair inequalities within society (grant & gibson, 2013: .90), support moffat, who argues that growing inequalities, especially between rich and poor nations, are the subject of social justice in order for all generations, now and future, to have equal opportunities and protect human rights, no matter how different they are from each other. (moffat, 2001: 7). in societies with cultural diversity, individuals should not be subjected to injustice in order to live in a free and peaceful environment regardless of their language, religion, ethnicity, and gender (demirkaya & ünal, 2016: 461). in this respect, social justice is considered a necessary mechanism for reducing or eliminating inequalities in education, health, social and legal services in society due to elements such as race, ethnicity, color, faith (rosner & salazar 2003: 1). at the core of social justice definitions are concepts such as multiculturalism, justice, equality, human rights, and democratic society. when the definitions are considered in the literature for social justice, it is seen that the concept of social justice, which emphasizes that everyone should have equal rights, is a guide that regulates how societies live in peace, and regulates respect for cultural differences, income distribution, and equality in terms of education, social status, and rights. for a society dominated by social justice consciousness, it is necessary to raise individuals who are conscious of social justice first. a peaceful and tranquil environment in society is formed by individuals with an understanding of social justice, which is one of the basic building blocks that enable individuals of different cultures to live together without problems. in societies that have become intertwined with globalization, it has become inevitable for different races, ethnicities, and social groups to receive education together. equal educational opportunities should be provided to all students in multicultural environments created by the coexistence of different groups. in particular, the equal rights of children from all social classes in education has brought up the concept of social justice education (griffths, 1998: 181). the existence of cultural, social, economic, ethnic, racial, and religious differences in societies, the various needs of each student, and the necessity of respecting and tolerating these differences make it necessary to teach social justice in schools. conducting informative studies on the content of social justice in schools and discussing social inequalities in classrooms will be important for students to empathize with individuals in the society in which they live in (gerdin, et al, 2021:14). an informed social justice education is needed for students to confront their assumptions and prejudices about the content of the social justice concept (wexler, 2021: 1). respecting human rights and differences, ensuring social justice, creating equality of opportunity, and a society dominated by democracy, teaching universal issues to individuals by schools is necessary and important at the point of educating society. at this point, the importance of education, therefore, what school administrators and teachers understand from social justice comes to the fore in raising individuals who have adopted the understanding of social justice. it is seen that teachers, who are the main elements of the education process, are very valuable tarhan 1606 routers at the point of raising students who know how to respect differences and have empathy skills and social justice awareness. the objectives of social justice education include allowing students to recognize the inequalities and injustices that exist in the society and world in which they live, to learn about how social change affects societies, and to be sensitive to injustices, to gain the ability to react to these inequalities when necessary (banks, 1994: 33; grant & sleeter, 2010: 251) but it also includes encouraging students to see, question and combat pressures such as racism, sexism, classism, religious and cultural discrimination in social life, and prejudice and social stereotypes against people with disabilities (gutstein, 2006: 112). only as a result of these will it be possible for students to grow up as citizens who have mastered the structural features of the society they live in and who believe in the necessity of social justice. it is now necessary for schools to improve their students' awareness of social justice while preparing them for life. students should prepare themselves not just for academic performance, but also for the creation of a more socially just and democratic society. social justice involves understanding and correcting social and economic inequalities in society. therefore, it is important that students encounter the principle of social justice, focus on it, and generate ideas about it. despite the existence of the scale that determines the social justice beliefs of teacher candidates in national and international literature, the scale that determines the perception of social justice of teachers and administrators working in primary, secondary and high schools, the attitude scale that determines the level of importance and value that is given to social justice by teacher candidates and scales that determine the social justice attitudes of creative drama educators; the lack of a qualified measurement tool that measures the importance and value level of secondary school students (11-14 age group) attach to the concept of social justice was a source of motivation for this study. therefore, a measurement tool is needed to measure the social justice level of secondary school students. as a result of the study, it is aimed to provide a reliable and valid scale for measuring secondary school students' perceptions of social justice. the study is regarded as important in terms of filling a gap in the national and international literature and contributing to the body of literature. 2. method 2.1. working group the scale used in the study was applied to 352 middle school students studying at secondary schools with different socio-economic levels in denizli in the 2020-2021 academic year to conduct efa analysis. after efa analysis, the reorganized scale was applied to 438 more students for cfa analyses. the schools where the research will be conducted have been selected randomly, taking into account the suitability of the research for its purpose. in line with the purpose of the study, research was conducted with middle school students. in determining the schools to be studied, the researchers, the socio-economic structures of the schools, the suitability of the school management and teachers, easy accessibility, volunteering in participation were taken into consideration. participants were selected using a simple random sampling method. this method is an effective method in that the sample of the research represents the universe (gay, mills & airasian, 2009: 333). the students who participated in the study are studying in the 8th grade. due to the excessive number of draft items and the fact that the topics related to social justice were all completed before the last grade of secondary school, the limitations that may arise in the 5., 6., and 7. grades were taken into consideration, and the selection of the 8th grades was deemed appropriate. international online journal of education and teaching (iojet) 2021, 8(3), 1603-1622. 1607 2. 2. development of the draft scale in order to collect the data required for use in the study, a personal information form was used along with a draft of a measurement tool that measures the level of importance and value that secondary school students give to social justice. in the preparation of the draft version of the scale for social justice awareness, scale development stages such as the creation of the item pool, obtaining expert opinions, pilot implementation, and determination of validity and confidence were followed (şeker and gençdoğan, 2014; tavşancıl, 2005). in the creation of draft items of the social justice scale, the theoretical structure in the relevant literature and the results of the research were used (bursa, 2015; cırık, 2015; gezer, 2017; goodman, 2000; gürgen, 2017; harding, siers & olson, 2012; ho and barton 2020; karacan, bağlıbel & bindak, 2015; keleşoğlu & metinnam, 2018; liebig, hülle & may, 2016; serpen-bayoğlu, duyan, & aldoğan-uğurluoğlu, 2014; serpen-bayoğlu & alpaslan 2019; ludlow, enterline & smith, 2017; özdemir & kütküt, 2015; torres-harding, siers & olson, 2012). it is aimed to determine students' awareness of social justice through the draft scale items. 47 items are rated on a 4-point likert-type scale. items of the scale include "strongly disagree", "disagree", "agree", and "strongly agree" options. the scale items were scored as 4 for “strongly agree”, 3 for “agree”, 2 for “disagree”, and 1 for “strongly disagree”. before finalizing the draft form of the self-efficacy scale, the opinions of experts (2 social studies educators, 3 social studies teachers, 1 turkish teacher, and 2 assessment experts) were taken into consideration. in line with expert opinions, some small changes have been made to the writing of items in terms of language, expression, and narration. in line with the statements received from the experts, some items were deleted and changes and corrections were made in terms of spelling, form, language, and narration in the remaining items. the preliminary application was made to 5 secondary school students to check whether the items in the draft form organized in accordance with expert opinions were understood by the students. during the preliminary application phase, students were asked questions about what the scale items mean. after the student feedback, some linguistic changes were made on the items, and the scale was made ready for application. in its final version, the social justice awareness draft scale form consists of 9 negative and 38 positive items. however, items number 9, 14, 23, 25, 28, 31, 33, 36, and 41 in the scale were scored inversely. expert and student feedback were evaluated and the draft scale prepared as 51 items was reduced to 47 items. 2.3. data analysis the data obtained to determine whether the draft scale items are related to social justice awareness have been subjected to analysis processes. during the analysis process, item analyses, efa (exploratory factor analysis), and cfa (confirmatory factor analysis) were performed in order to determine the structural validity of the draft scale. after the exploratory factor analysis, there are studies suggesting that the analyses be carried out through a single sample, as well as studies that suggest applying them on different samples. with sufficient sampling, deficiencies in the data set should be determined after the exploratory factor analysis and the data set should be edited. after these stages, cfa analysis should be performed. thus, both the data set can be made suitable for analysis and an estimation method suitable for the data structure can be chosen (ullman, 2012: 686). in this study, first, exploratory factor analysis was performed on the sampling of 352 participants. after the exploratory factor analysis, some items were removed from the scale and confirmatory factor analysis was performed on the data set obtained from 438 participants to which the new 39-item scale was applied. tarhan 1608 3. results 3.1. structure validity 3.1.1. exploratory factor analysis (efa) the main procedures in the conducting of the exploratory factor analysis in order to determine the structural validity of the social justice awareness scale are determining whether the sample size is sufficient for analysis and the methods used for the selection of factors, examining the results of kaiser-meyer-olkin (kmo) and bartlett tests, scree plots and factor loadings, choosing the factor rotation method, reporting the total variance rates explained and naming the resulting factors accordingly (kalaycı, 2015: 325; tabachnick & fidell, 2012: 2526). 3.1.2. validity analysis of the scale a 47-item scale in four-point likert type scale was prepared and applied to 352 students in order to determine ”the level of importance and value they give to social justice". exploratory factor analysis was performed on the collected data to determine the factorial structure of the scale and also to study its validity. as a result of the factor analysis, the explained variance graph was examined and it was observed that there is a dominant single factor in the scale. thereupon, the exploratory factor analysis was repeated a second time to be limited to a single factor. it was stated that the factor loadings should be 0.30 in the scale development process (büyüköztürk, 2002: 479). in exploratory factor analysis, which is limited to one factor, since the factor loading values of items number 1, 2, 4, 10, 15, 24, 33, and 38 was found to be less than 0.30, the exploratory factor analysis was repeated for the third time by removing a total of eight items. the final explained variance table for the exploratory factor analysis is shown in table 1. table 1. variance table of the scale factor eigenvalues eigenvalu es explained variance % cumulative variance % 1 12.329 31.613 31.613 2 2.605 6.680 38.294 3 1.991 5.106 43.400 4 1.452 3.723 47.123 5 1.257 3.223 50.345 6 1.199 3.075 53.420 7 1.114 2.857 56.277 8 1.012 2.595 58.871 kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy=0.933 chi-square value of bartlett's test of sphericity=6119.916 df= 741 p=0.000 international online journal of education and teaching (iojet) 2021, 8(3), 1603-1622. 1609 kaiser-meyer-olkin statistics were found to be higher than 0.50 at 0.933. in other words, the sample size was sufficient for the 47-item scale. the higher the kmo value, the better it is to perform factor analysis on the data set (kalaycı, 2005: 322). according to bartlett's test of sphericity, which tests the suitability for factor analysis, it was observed that the data for these data were suitable for factor analysis (p<0.05). when the total explained variance table was examined, it was observed that there were eight factors greater than 1 eigenvalue and 2 factors greater than 2 eigenvalues in the 39-item scale. however, when the scree plot regarding eigenvalues was examined, it was seen that 39 items were gathered under one factor. moreover, 32% of the features measured with a single factor can be measured. moreover, 32% of the features measured with a single factor can be measured (aksu, eser & güzeller, 2017: 17). the explained variance for a single factor scale is expected to be greater than 30%. the graphic regarding the eigenvalues are shown in figure 1. figure 1: factor graph for eigenvalues the sorted factor loads for the scale items of the single-factor scale consisting of 39 items are shown in table 2. tarhan 1610 table 2. factor loadings of scale items scale items factor loadings 17. children of different genders should be given equal responsibility in families. .744 11. heavy penalties should be imposed on people or institutions that create environmental pollution. .722 7. men and women can do the same job. .721 8. father and mother should take equal responsibility in childcare. .718 45. i react when others are treated unfairly. .705 35. people who have different opinions in the classroom should be respected. .702 47. men and women should be able to choose their professional fields of expertise. .671 16. i participate in charity campaigns for people in need. .650 23. i do not want to have an influence in the decision-taking of political decisions in my country. .649 37. i am against the restriction of fundamental rights and freedoms. .647 21. individuals who have different cultural backgrounds should live by respecting each other's differences. .638 41. i want people to be discriminated against for having different opinions. .635 44. i’m against people being pressured by their beliefs and opinions. .634 22. animals have the same right to life just like humans. .633 14. men should have more say in the family. .612 32. i react when i'm prevented from expressing my thoughts. .609 43. i know that living in a safe environment (family, school, society) is one of the fundamental rights. .590 34. those who commit violence against animals should receive severe penalties. .574 28. retired people do not have to have high salaries. .569 29. in a job application, the expertise of the applicants in their field should be looked at first. .567 25. i am not upset about some people being subjected to violence. .551 31. it does not matter that men and women have equal rights. .521 42. i would like to take part in the projects of non-governmental organizations (the red crescent, akut, çev, pasvak food bank, unicef,etc.) that help people in need. .516 5. i would like to fight all kinds of inequality in society. .513 6. teachers should treat students with high and low grades equally. .510 20. i'd like any idea to be easily discussed in my family. .500 12. students should be able to express their opinion comfortably in the classroom. .493 international online journal of education and teaching (iojet) 2021, 8(3), 1603-1622. 1611 30. disabled people should have equal rights like other citizens. .492 36. when i encounter an unfair situation (seeing someone who doesn't study for their exams getting a high grade by cheating or an innocent person going to jail etc.), i don't discuss the reasons for it in my head. .488 3. i believe that i should have a say in making decisions in my family on matters that concern me. .472 9. it is none of my business that my teacher distinguishes between male and female students. .456 27. children who come from a low-income family and children who come from a highincome family should be treated equally at school. .443 40. i care that all citizens receive equal access to health care. .417 46. a quota should be reserved for disabled individuals when recruiting employees. .362 13. i help those who come to our school through immigration from different countries. .362 26. every individual should have equal economic, social and cultural rights. .343 39. everyone in the society should be sensitive to children's rights. .341 18. equal job opportunities should be provided for everyone in the society. .334 19. i would like every city in our country to have equal access to educational, cultural, artistic and sports activities. .303 when the factor loads were examined, it was observed that the factor loads of all substances were higher than 0.30 and the factor loads varied between 0.303 and 0.744. 3.1.3. reliability analysis of scale the reliability of the scale was examined with the cronbach alpha coefficient. the cronbach alpha coefficient of the social justice scale consisting of 39 items was obtained with a high reliability of 0.939. the reliability coefficient varies between 0 and +1. the fact that the reliability coefficient takes values close to 1 means that the reliability and internal consistency between items are high and is desirable. the results of the item-total correlations of the scale items, also known as the validity coefficient are shown in table 3. tarhan 1612 table 3: item-total correlations scale items item total correlation 3. i believe that i should have a say in making decisions in my family on matters that concern me. .431 5. i would like to fight all kinds of inequality in society. .477 6. teachers should treat students with high and low grades equally. .491 7. men and women can do the same job. .702 8. father and mother should take equal responsibility in childcare. .696 9. it is none of my business that my teacher distinguishes between male and female students. .421 11. heavy penalties should be imposed on people or institutions that create environmental pollution. .678 12. students should be able to express their opinion comfortably in the classroom. .457 13. i help those who come to our school through immigration from different countries. .343 14. men should have more say in the family. .570 16. i participate in charity campaigns for people in need. .605 17. children of different genders should be given equal responsibility in families. .716 18. equal job opportunities should be provided for everyone in the society. .320 19. i would like every city in our country to have equal access to educational, cultural, artistic and sports activities. .299 20. i'd like any idea to be easily discussed in my family. .482 21. individuals who have different cultural backgrounds should live by respecting each other's differences. .596 22. animals have the same right to life just like humans. .597 23. i do not want to have an influence in the decision-taking of political decisions in my country. .609 25. i am not upset about some people being subjected to violence. .519 26. every individual should have equal economic, social and cultural rights. .342 international online journal of education and teaching (iojet) 2021, 8(3), 1603-1622. 1613 27. children who come from a low-income family and children who come from a high-income family should be treated equally at school. .423 28. retired people do not have to have high salaries. .536 29. in a job application, the expertise of the applicants in their field should be looked at first. .544 30. disabled people should have equal rights like other citizens. .473 31. it does not matter that men and women have equal rights. .481 32. i react when i'm prevented from expressing my thoughts. .571 34. those who commit violence against animals should receive severe penalties. .541 35. people who have different opinions in the classroom should be respected. .664 36. when i encounter an unfair situation (seeing someone who doesn't study for their exams getting a high grade by cheating or an innocent person going to jail etc.), i don't discuss the reasons for it in my head. .453 37. i am against the restriction of fundamental rights and freedoms. .597 39. everyone in the society should be sensitive to children's rights. .297 40. i care that all citizens receive equal access to health care. .399 41. i want people to be discriminated against for having different opinions. .604 42. i would like to take part in the projects of non-governmental organizations (the red crescent, akut, çev, pasvak food bank, unicef… etc.) that help people in need. .460 43. i know that living in a safe environment (family, school, society) is one of the fundamental rights. .525 44. i’m against people being pressured by their beliefs and opinions. .591 45. i react when others are treated unfairly. .665 46. a quota should be reserved for disabled individuals when recruiting employees. .355 47. men and women should be able to choose their professional fields of expertise. .636 it was observed that item-total correlations ranged from 0.30 to 0.72 and the item validity coefficients of all items were higher than 0.30. tarhan 1614 3.2. validity testing of the scale with confirmatory factor analysis in order to determine the “level of importance and value that is given to social justice”, the four-point likert-type scale was concluded as 39 items as a result of efa and the scale was finalized. then, confirmatory factor analysis (cfa) was applied to these 39 items. as a result of not meeting the assumption of multiple normality between items, parameter estimation was conducted by using asymptotic covariance matrix with robust unweighted least squaresuls method. the lambda values of the items and t values showing the significance of the relationship between each item and the latent variable were examined. as can be seen in figure 2, all values were found to be significant (p <0.05). therefore, no item has been removed. figure 2: diagram representation of t values for social justice awareness scale items fit indexes for model-data fit were examined and the model-data fit indices of the singlefactor 39-item scale are shown in table 4.. international online journal of education and teaching (iojet) 2021, 8(3), 1603-1622. 1615 table 4. goodness of fit indexes for the factor structure of the scale items goodness of fit index acceptable limit * value x2/df <5 moderate fit <3 good fit 2652.23/702 = 3.77 gfi >0.90 0.97 cfi >0.90 0.99 nfi >0.90 0.97 nnfi >0.90 0.99 rfi >0.85 0.97 s-rmr < 0.08 0.063 rmsea < 0.08 0.080 *references: baumgartner & homburg, 1996; bentler, 1980; kline, 2011 according to table 4, the similarity ratio of chi-square statistic was calculated as x2(702)=2652,23 p<0.01; the ratio of chi-square statistics to degrees of freedom was calculated as (x2/df)=3,77; the root mean square error of approximation was calculated as (rmsea)=0.080; standardized root mean square residual was calculated as (s-rmr)=0.063; comparative fit index was calculated as (cfi)= 0,99; goodness of fit index was calculated as (gfi)= 0,97; normed fit index was calculated as (nfi)=0,97 and relative fit index was calculated as (rfi)=0,97. all fit indices were above acceptable values. thus, the structural validity of the one-dimensional 39-point scale was accepted. the path graph for the scale items is shown in figure 3. tarhan 1616 figure 3: path graph for social justice awareness scale items the reliability of the scale was examined with the cronbach alpha coefficient. the cronbach alpha coefficient of the 18-item scale was found to be 0.782. the reliability coefficient varies between 0 and +1. the fact that the reliability coefficient takes values close to 1 means that the reliability and internal consistency between items are high and is desirable. the results of the item-total correlations of the scale items, also known as the validity coefficient are shown in table 5. international online journal of education and teaching (iojet) 2021, 8(3), 1603-1622. 1617 table 5. cronbach alpha reliability coefficients of the scale items item number item-total correlation alpha coefficient if item is deleted from scale m1 ,488 ,943 m2 ,465 ,944 m3 ,263 ,946 m4 ,564 ,943 m5 ,645 ,942 m6 ,462 ,943 m7 ,646 ,942 m8 ,219 ,945 m9 ,376 ,944 m10 ,427 ,944 m11 ,689 ,942 m12 ,703 ,941 m13 ,443 ,944 m14 ,383 ,944 m15 ,462 ,943 m16 ,618 ,943 m17 ,684 ,942 m18 ,709 ,942 m19 ,512 ,943 m20 ,571 ,943 m21 ,315 ,946 m22 ,495 ,943 m23 ,605 ,942 m24 ,517 ,943 m25 ,440 ,944 m26 ,605 ,942 m27 ,705 ,942 m28 ,687 ,942 m29 ,611 ,942 m30 ,562 ,943 m31 ,343 ,944 m32 ,664 ,942 m33 ,562 ,943 m34 ,707 ,942 m35 ,605 ,942 m36 ,655 ,942 m37 ,654 ,942 m38 ,529 ,943 m39 ,719 ,942 the item validity coefficients were found to range from 0.219 to 0.719. no item was removed from the scale since item-total correlations should be higher than 0.20 (balcı, 2009; büyüköztürk, 2012). the cronbach alpha reliability coefficients in terms of internal consistency of the items in each factor were also found to be high. tarhan 1618 4. discussion and conclusions there is no scale development study on social justice conducted with secondary school students (11-14 years old) in our country or abroad. developing a scale appropriate for this age group will be useful and instructive in assessing students' opinions on social justice components and the emphasis they place on this subject. given the changing global circumstances, it is clear that the need for social justice is increasing day by day. it falls to schools to teach individuals at an early age the importance of equality and respect for diversity, which are the basis of social justice (daniel et al., 2021: 10). for this reason, social justice studies with younger age groups would enable students to learn more about this topic and place a greater emphasis on it. in order to determine the perceptions of social justice of individuals of different age groups (administrators, teachers, teacher candidates, drama trainers) in turkey, along with the measurement tools such as "learning to teach for social justice–beliefs scale" (gezer, 2017), "teachers' perception of social justice scale" (gürgen, 2017), "perception of social justice in schools scale" (karacan, bağlıbel & bindak, 2015), "social justice attitudes of creative drama trainers scale" (keleş & metinnam, 2018) and "social justice leadership scale" (özdemir, kütküt, 2015), which were originally developed by researchers, "the turkish adaptation of learning to teach for social justice–beliefs scale" was also used. in the “social justice scale” study adapted to turkish by cırık (2015), a new scale was needed with the idea that the validity and reliability of the scale were conducted with university students and that the language used in the scale would not be suitable for secondary school students. it is believed that this scale will contribute to the literature as well. therefore, this study aims to develop a measuring tool that measures the importance and value secondary school students attach to social justice. looking at international literature, it is seen that scale studies related to social justice are carried out with teachers and teacher candidates. “quantifying social justice advocacy competency: development of the social justice advocacy scale. (dean, j. k., 2009). “development and psychometric evaluation of the social justice scale (sjs)” (torresharding, s.r., siers, b. & olson, b., 2012), “learning to teach for social justice-beliefs scale” (ludlow, h. l., enterline, e. s. & smith c., m., 2017.). as can be observed, there hasn't been a scale study of this problem with secondary school students (ages 11-14) in other countries. this study aimed to develop a scale that will be used to determine the level of importance and value that secondary school students give to social justice. the process of scale development began with literature review and creating an item pool. the scale obtained in the study was examined by both exploratory factor analysis (efa) and confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). efa and cfa were applied for the scale's structural validity. as a result of the efa, 8 items were removed from the scale, and the remaining 39 items were found to have a singlefactor structure that explains 58.87% of the total variance. the efa and cfa values show that the scale is one-dimensional. the fact that the scale components together account for 58.87% of the total variance and that the scale components have a positive and high degree of relationship with each other and with the scale's total score can be taken as evidence that the scale is one-dimensional. the concept of social justice includes issues such as equality of opportunity, cultural differences, injustice in the economy, and lack of equality in education. the scale is assumed to be gathered in one dimension because the sample group considers these issues to be strongly correlated with one another. the cronbach alpha internal consistency reliability coefficient of the scale was calculated as 0.939. item total correlations, which are the criteria of individual reliability of the items that make up the scale, were found between 0.30 and 0.72. as a result of exploratory factor analysis, the final version of the scale was applied to a new sample group and whether the obtained model was verified or not was tested with cfa. the model's goodness of fit indices obtained as a result of cfa showed that the international online journal of education and teaching (iojet) 2021, 8(3), 1603-1622. 1619 scale provided structure validity (x2/df=3,77, gfi=0.97, cfi=0.99, rmsea= 0.080, rfi=0,97 and srmr=0.063). findings from statistical analyses conducted to examine the characteristics of the scale reveal that the scale can be used as a valid and reliable tool to determine the level of importance and value that secondary school students give to the subject of social justice. in addition, in this study, explanatory and confirmatory factor analyses were performed using different data sets. this is an important factor that highlights the validity and reliability of the study. this research was conducted with secondary school students. more extensive research can also be done with primary school students using methods such as observation, interview and etc. longitudinal studies can be carried out with the same sample from secondary school to high school education. in this way, it can be determined how the given education affects students' perceptions of social justice. tarhan 1620 references aksu, g., eser, m.t. & güzeller, c. o. 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(edt.), structural equation modelling in (pp. 681-785).boston: pearson. introduction studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 1 introduction imagining social justice amidst guatemala’s post-conflict violence m. gabriela torres, wheaton college, ma violence 1 , whether it is understood as individual acts of aggression, structural inequality, or direct acts of coercion by the state, always encompasses injustice. in central america, the postwar period that was begun in the last decade of the twentieth century has been mired by multiple and compounding forms of violence that have magnified injustice. one of the most basic injustices is the reality that residents of guatemala city joined by the residents of its closest urban neighbours of san salvador and tegucigalpa as well as many of their counterparts in other large latin american cities live in fear of armed assaults and other arbitrary crimes that often end in murder (caldeira, 2000; rotker, 2002). a survey of guatemalan families conducted prior to a rise in crime rates after 2004 indicates the level of insecurity: 42 percent of respondent families reported that at least one of their members had been a victim of a crime in 2004 (plataforma de investigación y diálogo intersectorial para el diseño de una política de seguridad ciudadana (polsec), 2004). just over 80 percent of the crimes reported by these families were armed robberies that did not result in physical injury and that took place mainly in city streets mostly between the hours of 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. when individuals tend to engage in shopping and work-related activities. 99 percent of the robberies reported by guatemalan families took place within the municipal limits of guatemala city. amazingly, the threat of robbery was found close to home as 50 percent of the robberies took place within the city zone in which the individual resided. a more recent a survey of guatemala city residents that was conducted quarterly from 2006 to 2007 also demonstrates a growing concern with insecurity. in this survey, 40 percent of residents reported that they expected to be the victim of a violent crime within six months (pnud, 2007b). interestingly, when the same survey asked if the residents had witnessed a violent crime within the last six months, between 40 and 45 percent of respondents responded positively in the 2006 1 violence is conceived in this issue in adherence to bourgois’ suggestion that social science literature has categorized the breadth of social relationships that “buttress inequalities of power” into four interrelated conceptual categories (bourgois 2004). he suggests that the conceptualizations of violence in social science can be arranged into four general categories: direct political violence as is it generally discussed in political science literature, galtung’s (1975) sense of structural violence, bourdieu’s (1997) conception of symbolic violence and sheperhughes (1992) understanding of everyday violence (bourgois 2004). all four expressions of violence are discussed by the authors in this collection but menjivar focuses primarily on everyday and symbolic forms of violence, while drysdale walsh and godoy-paíz focus on symbolic and structural violence. for bourgois as for the authors in this collection, these four expressions of violence are intricately interrelated and in practice the increased intensity of one form of violence sustains and expands its other forms of expression. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 2 2007 period (pnud, 2007b). this is a sharp rise in violence given that in 2004, only 35 percent of respondents had witnessed a violent crime within the six months prior to the survey (pnud, 2007b; polsec 2004). guatemala is undoubtedly undergoing a crisis of “civic insecurity” that is characterized by a combination of high and rising levels of violence, a pervasiveness of impunity 2 , and an inability to comprehensively address the root causes of its post-conflict instability. the inability to find workable approaches to ameliorate what the country’s government calls “citizen insecurity” is not just a problem for official state institutions. effectively addressing post-conflict violence is also a problem for organizations and individuals working to promote social justice in the central american region (wola, 2006). whereas conflict resolution and attenuation were logical focal points for social justice promotion in the later part of the 20 th century, today social justice work needs to revisit the root causes that spurred conflict in the region in the first place. guatemala’s legacy of engrained social suffering, economic inequality, and gender disparity, among other social justice concerns, was left largely unaddressed by the peace process. as manolo vela and juan hernández pico have eloquently argued, guatemala’s peace process came almost as a decreed afterthought (hernández pico, 2005). it came to be an act (rather than a process) that sought to consolidate a nominal democratic transition that was developed without civil society consultations and was explicitly designed to leave the country’s economic or cultural legacies of violence unaddressed (vela, senquén-mónchez & solares, 2001). in 2007, 56 percent of guatemalans were living under the poverty line. inequality measures for the region show that in guatemala, the country with widest income disparity in the region, the poorest 20 percent of the population share in 2.9 percent of the national income while the richest 20 percent have access to 59.5 of the same (pnud, 2007a). nicaragua, the country in the region that followed a more contested process of democratic transition with some degree of civil society participation, now has the smallest income gap in the region where the poorest 20 percent of the population share 5.6 percent of the national income while the richest 20 percent have access to 49.3 percent of the same (pnud, 2007a). interestingly, where high rates of social inequality were present, criminal violence now seems to be working to magnify its social costs. the figures for el salvador, a country with a more comparable democratic transition and peace process, are similar to guatemala where the poorest 20 percent share in 2.7 percent of national income and the richest in 55.9 percent of the same (pnud, 2007a). in guatemala, violence is costly from a number of perspectives. in terms of foreign investment losses, the region’s current poor rankings in the indices suggest that guatemala is less than an ideal choice for foreign capital (estado de la región, 2008). though the social costs of violence are unquantifiable (kleinman, das & locke, 1997), estimates that have been made using figures such as direct health care expenditures, investment and material losses as well as increased investment in private and public security and law enforcement are useful in that they can suggest what the minimal societal impact of rising levels of violence can be. united nations estimates of 2 according to the united nations commission on human rights, impunity is “the impossibility, de jure or de facto, of bringing the perpetrators of violations to account whether in criminal, civil, administrative or disciplinary proceedings since they are not subject to any inquiry that might lead to their being accused, arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to appropriate penalties, and to making reparations to their victims” (united nations human rights commission, 2005). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 3 the economic and social costs of the post-conflict violence crisis in the region suggest that the levels of violence experienced in 2006 cost 7.6 percent of guatemala’s gdp in that same year (pnud, 2006; estado de la región, 2008). in the country with the highest rates of violence in the region el salvador violence has cost close to 11.5 percent of that country’s annual gdp since 2003 (pnud, 2005; estado de la región, 2008). these figures give a sense of the possible extent of the long term repercussions of violence in the region, and suggest that the current crisis of violence will inevitably have a widespread impact. resources that might have been used for social programs are diverted to responding and reacting to the strain of violence on institutions. looking at the social costs of violence with a qualitative lens, moser and mcilwaine estimate that rising gang and interpersonal violence levels seen early in the post-conflict setting could work to erode families’ ability to successfully participate in economic pursuits and to adequately support the education, health and nourishment of the next generation of guatemalans (moser & mcilwaine, 2001). in her essay in this collection, menjivar picks up where the estimates leave off— by addressing the personal costs of violence and the meanings of social suffering caused by violence in a rural ladino community. drysdale walsh and godoy-paiz in this issue address the growing complexity of the postconflict situation of the region by looking at the sources of violence that can no longer be easily identified. following patterns set by repressive regimes in the region during the 1980s, transnational and local gangs as well as organized crime syndicates have joined states in the use of violence and terror as a tool in their regular business practice (wola, 2006). non-state organizations— including the aforementioned gangs, and organized crime syndicates as well as quasi-police forces and even some rural communities— now engage in the quotidian use of violent acts to enact social control. in these contexts, violent acts have had multiple uses ranging from effective tools of governance to controversial forms of public justice (godoy-paiz, 2006; sanford, 2003). yet, what such violent acts have in common, is that perpetrators of violence are seldom sought or prosecuted, and only very rarely punished (godoy-paiz, 2006). analysts argue that it is perhaps the entrenchment of impunity into the social life of some central american states that has enabled the proliferation of social actors practicing violence (krujit & koonings, 1999). given the continuing concern with inequality in the region, the collection of papers presented here works to understand how the promotion of social justice is possible amidst the complexity of central america’s post-conflict violence. focusing on the ways that violence is lived, understood and addressed in guatemala, this collection of papers is a starting point for thinking through solutions to post-conflict violence that address social justice concerns for the region as a whole. because guatemala presents higher levels inequality and violence in the region, it is a good starting point from which to suggest ways that social justice can be attained through the crafting of policies that take into account “local” or “grassroots” understandings and practices of life with violence and injustice. addressing social justice concerns through local or indigenous knowledge allows analysts and policymakers to take into account the compounding effects of different forms of violence and to address the concerns that central americans find most pressing in their everyday lives. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 4 guatemala in the regional context of post-conflict violence violence in the central american region today is not uniform. the northernmost countries of the region (guatemala, belize, honduras and el salvador), suffer from much higher rates of crime and interpersonal violence than their southern counterparts. though the system devised for reporting of homicides in central america allows for a wide divergence between accepted, actual, and official homicide figures, the homicide rates estimated from official police records in 2006, are 56, 45 and 42 per hundred thousand people for el salvador, guatemala and honduras, respectively (ocavi, 2007a; programa estado de la región, 2008). in comparison, the homicide rates for the same period for costa rica and nicaragua were significantly less at 8 and 13 respectively (ocavi, 2007a; programa estado de la región, 2008). on average, the homicide rates of the northern part of the central american region are more than eight times the u.s. homicide rate and twenty-five times canada’s homicide rate in the same year calculated at 6.1 and 1.9 per hundred thousand respectively (department of justice, 2006; human resources and social development canada, 2008). current homicide rates have risen at alarming rates particularly in the two post-conflict countries of el salvador and guatemala which boast increases of 48 percent and 75 percent respectively since the signing of peace accords (ocavi, 2007b). high rates of violence, however, are not directly associated with civil war legacies, as nicaragua diverges from the high current indices of violence in post-war guatemala and el salvador. the region’s differing textures and levels of violence might be derivative of the different ways that conflicts were managed and “pacified” in the region. increasing levels of violence might be indicative of a number of factors including the geopolitical role of the northern part of central america for drug trafficking or the pervasiveness of impunity in the national legal systems. still, it seems counterintuitive that although the civil wars of the 1980s found nominal resolutions, residents of the region’s northernmost countries continue to live within the seemingly insurmountable spectre of violence and insecurity now outside of the context of war. the papers in this collection suggest that post-conflict violence in guatemala is on the rise because violent interaction has come to find a cultural and legal path through which it can become understood as a norm. addressing social justice concerns in this context requires an understanding of how violence comes to be acceptable and quotidian through institutional, legal and cultural practices. violence and social justice given the region’s shockingly high rates of crime and violence, the growth in social actors perpetrating violence, the variation in the social uses and understandings of violent acts, and the prevalence of impunity, one may ask if it is still possible to imagine an approach to violence attenuation in the region that is based on principles of social justice? the key to a social justice approach in the region lies in understanding how impunity makes the routine practice of violence possible. analysts and our informants have suggested from early on that it is the prevalence of systems of impunity in the region that is likely responsible for the proliferation of social actors engaged in violence (krujit & koonings, 1999; see drysdale walsh in this collection). yet, having perpetrators of violent acts routinely going unpunished studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 5 and, in most cases, not even prosecuted for crimes can also cause a proliferation in the types of violent acts that have characterized the region since peace accords were signed in guatemala and el salvador. given the proliferation of perpetrators of violent acts and types of violence, what alternatives are left for to attenuate violence? are manodurismo 3 or other forms of social dictatorships viable alternatives to reduce violence? is limpieza social or social cleansing commonly authored by communities, paramilitaries and organized crime now the only solution? or can violence be addressed through an adherence to social justice ideals? this collection of papers suggests that violence attenuation in the region is possible in adherence with social justice principles if we focus on local understandings of violence. local knowledge on how violence is lived and spoken about by individuals and how it comes to be defined and addressed by institutions and individuals is key to developing strategies that support social justice. accepting the primacy of local understandings requires coming to terms with the ways that violence can come to be expressed and accepted in understated and sometimes contradictory ways. menjivar’s discussion of illness and drysdale walsh and godoy-paiz’ discussions of guatemalan women’s inability to rely on state authorities for safety are two examples of how individuals are forced to accept and understand violence that is present in their lives. focusing on local understandings also requires appreciating the breadth of local practices through which violence is extended. this is discussed by godoy-paiz’ assessment of the role that guatemala’s legal restructuring has played in femicide maintenance, drysdale walsh’s account of the role of police and the attitudes of justice officials in the arbitration of domestic violence, and by menjivar’s discussion of how town gossip works to extend social control. yet understanding the local experience of violence detailed in the ethnographic accounts and case studies presented in the collection is not enough to construct a social justice approach to violence attenuation in the region. impunity systems 4 , both in guatemala in particular and in the region as a whole, must be understood as obstructions to social justice. systems of impunity working through the selective applications of legal or social sanction (as described by drysdale walsh’s informants) are a priori based on manipulation and prioritization of multiple forms of social injustice. social injustices promoted by systemic impunity in the region— for example, gender-based discrimination through femicide, or governance through the control of brute force by gangs and crime syndicates— do more than make multiple expressions of violence possible. systemic impunity anticipates increasing levels and types of violence. it extends and expands acts of violence into a social norm and forces systems of governance to incorporate what should be the state of exception. from the point of view of anthropology, impunity systems are of interest not just because they promote social inequalities but because they build inequality by further entrenching culturally accepted forms of discrimination. prior to engaging with the arguments found in the other papers in this collection, i want to briefly suggest the role that impunity plays to reconstitute 3 manodurismo as a socially sanctioned form of social control supports private acts of vigilantism, high levels of state-sponsored violence against those who come to be defined as criminals and populist “strongmen” leadership often accompanied by an open disregard for human rights concerns (godoy, 2006). 4 impunity systems include the active naturalization and social acceptance of multiple forms of violence as forms of culture, inefficient, contradictory, un-enforceable and inappropriately constructed laws as well as inadequacies in law enforcement personnel, a lack of institutional supports for citizen-driven solutions, and inadequate levels funding for law enforcement and crime prevention programs. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 6 guatemala’s social life. in keeping with the gender focus of the papers in the collection, i use the case of femicide in guatemala as an illustration of how impunity works to advance violence and inequality by building on culturally accepted forms of intolerance and difference. briefly examining the concept and practice of impunity, i suggest that successful violence attenuation is possible if impunity systems in the region are targeted as key obstructions to social justice. the practice of impunity femicide, defined as the processes through which violence against women becomes socially accepted and quotidian (russell, 1976), embodies the complexities of how impunity continues to be practiced in the context of post-conflict violence in the region. first labelled in mexico, the problem of femicide has gained currency for the region’s governments as foreign aid agencies have become eager to fund solutions to femicide throughout the central american region and academic analyses have rushed to condemn its practice (grais-targow, 2004; constantino, 2006). the pervasiveness of femicide in the region relies on a complex historical, cultural, and institutional legacy of gender-based discrimination (aguilar, 2005). in guatemala, the number of femicides rose from 213 in 2000 and 383 in 2003 to 665 in 2005 and is now in numerical decline to 605 in 2006 and 590 in 2007. as stated earlier, guatemala’s overall murder rates are extremely high and the murder of women is but a fraction of the total number of murders. men are in fact at least ten times more likely to be killed than women. according to an article published in the prensa libre on january 22, 2008, entitled “reportan 76 asesinatos en los primeros ocho días del mandato de colom,” just as femicide has grown, the murders of men too have been growing from 2,904 in 2000 to a height of 5,885 in 2006, with a small reduction to 5,781 in 2007 (ocavi, 2007a). what is astonishing in the murders of both men and women is the number of cases that are not investigated and remain unsolved. in 2007, guatemala’s supreme court, the crown prosecutor’s office and the government ministry sponsored a detailed case study of 553 random murders (fernández, 2008). only three of the 553 murders a rate just under 0.2% ever saw prosecution in a courtroom. looking at the murder records that could have been used to develop a legal file for prosecution, the same study found that half of the records were missing photographic evidence of the crime scene, a third of the records had no indication that forensic evidence from a medical doctor was collected, and in another third of the files no scientific substantiation of the evidence had been attempted (fernández, 2008). perpetrators of murder in guatemala function with impunity that demonstrates not just the state’s tolerance of multiple forms of violence (despite its research initiatives) but the extent to which violence has become naturalized into guatemalan society. nevertheless, as analyzed by berger and reviewed by drysdale walsh in this collection, the prevalence of impunity in guatemala has begun to be questioned as international and national opposition to femicide coalesce in the context of guatemala’s complex women’s rights movement (berger, 2006). the impunity system that supports the country’s high murder rate is rarely emphasized. police make arrests (and not all who are arrested are prosecuted) in only two percent of the more than 5,000 homicides each year in guatemala (menocal, 2006). more disturbingly, in the case of gender-based violence, impunity is even more pervasive; of the 2,300 femicide cases between 2000 and august 2006, only seventeen had been resolved and some of studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 7 those were exonerations. even in exceptionally heinous cases, impunity systems prevail amidst public outcry, as in the case of the murder of a mother and her three girls detailed in a newspaper account in prensa libre on september 28, 2007, entitled “criminales dejan mensaje.” in this case ana maria avila, 26, and her daughters jackelyn caroline, 9, heidi paola, 7, and melia elisabeth, 3, were murdered at the hands of three men that, according to several eyewitnesses, entered into their home one afternoon. jackelyn aged nine was found in the laundry sink where, according to prensa libre’s reporter, “she was presumably attempting to hide so she would not be murdered.” this account is one of many that detailed the horrors of the crime and publicly recoiled at the murder of children. yet, in the murders of jackelyn, her sisters and mother, bureaucratic bungling and a turf war between the ministerio público and the national police’s division of criminal investigations meant that the crime scene was not investigated and that no material evidence was collected immediately following the crime with the exception of a haunting signed note left by the perpetrators. according to the perpetrator, jackelyn and her female kin were murdered as a “consequence” of a romantic betrayal perpetrated by her mother. the reasons why the victims drew the attention of her killers were amply covered in the media, but the effort to seek out the killers received little attention. at the end of december 2007, a profile of the perpetrator had been established by police but no arrests had been made and no suspects had been identified. guatemala’s official response to the social ails that give rise to femicide— impunity, a cultural acceptance of gender inequality, and the presence of other pervasive forms of social inequality— has been complex and centred, as godoy-paiz and drysdale walsh suggest, around the proliferation of agencies, institutions and laws to address some of femicide’s legal supports. institutional responses have also been geared to address, mainly rhetorically, legal inequities and the lack of opportunities available for the education, economic advancement, and political participation of young and ethnic women 5 (secretaría presidencial de la mujer, 2005). president colom’s current approaches actively use the rhetoric of social justice. soon after he took power, colom centralized decision-making on social spending through the social cohesion council (consejo de cohesión social) which is headed by first lady sandra torres de colom. centralizing decision-making on social spending according to torres de colom seeks social justice through concrete and targeted reductions in inequality (gobierno de álvaro colom, 2008). one of the areas where the colom government has hoped to reduce inequity is by addressing disparity in the legal consequences of gender-based violence. after the enactment of the legal changes, described in detail in godoy-paiz paper, sandra torres de colom proudly suggested that she now knew that “women’s lives would be respected as it is now something that is sought in law” (gobierno de guatemala, 2005). such rhetorical support should work to suggest the government’s commitment to redressing inequity and, as drysdale walsh in this collection rightly points out, to readjust the balance in civil rights. unfortunately, the legal potential of these changes are not likely to impact the practice of impunity and thus are not likely to have an impact on the incidence of murders. interestingly, new femicide laws provide many of 5 examples of these types of policies and agencies are the plan for equal opportunities (plan de equidad de oportunidades) developed to cover the period from 1998-2001, or a variety of charity-like programs promoted by the first lady’s social works secretariat (secretaría de obras sociales de la esposa del presidente) since 1991 and aimed at addressing needs of girls and rural women as underprivileged sectors of the society (secretaría presidencial de la mujer, 2005; sosep, 2008). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 8 the same protections already available to male murder victims who, as stated earlier, are killed ten times as often as women. why is this type of legal redress of inequity ineffective at curbing the general practice of impunity? local understandings of post-conflict violence the papers in this collection suggest that the construction of effective solutions to the region’s post-conflict violence crisis needs to be situated beyond the legal and institutional realms. addressing the current crisis of violence must consider inequity in the application of and access to the law, as godoy-paiz does in this issue, and the social practices through which violence and impunity becomes naturalized into culture/society discussed by both menjivar and drysdale walsh in this issue. in essence, effective solutions to post-conflict violence need the deep understanding presented here of how violence is lived and mediated. menjivar’s contribution presents an ethnographic account of the multiple ways through which violence comes to be incorporated into the everyday life of ladino women in a rural guatemalan town. looking at how women are hampered from accessing healthcare resources by poverty and how physical symptoms are clustered into ailments such as nervios or debilidad that can only be endured, menjivar allows us to understand how male domination and violence is actively normalized by women themselves. this argument is furthered in her discussion of the violence of women’s gossip as it is used by both men and women to scrutinize and discipline women’s behaviors. she convincingly argues that understanding violence in this context is not just about understanding resource disparities but also about knowing how the local ways of speaking about and embodying violence are prone to misinterpretation. menjivar’s contribution to this collection suggests that violence is given cultural meaning as it is lived and mediated by social actors and as a result cannot be addressed outside the context of local “meaning-making”. for menjivar, understanding how a life with violence has become cultural norm is key to understanding the cultural supports for the problems of femicide that are taken up by godoy-paiz and drysdale walsh. godoy-paiz analyses the discord between the current high level of legal supports for women’s rights in guatemala and women’s increasing insecurity and physical vulnerability in guatemala city. she argues that the legal reframing that has occurred with much foreign impetus and inspiration is inadequate to address the problem of gender violence as it is lived and practiced in the country. the focus on formal rights decreed by law instead of the local social conditions of poverty and impunity is incongruous with the design of more effective solutions that seek lives with social justice. for godoy-paiz, gender violence in guatemala city is sustained by systemic impunity and poverty that forces victims of violence to accept threats, rapes, and assassinations. drawing on insights from anthropological research on violence and inequality, she suggests that a reframing of the “gender violence problem” in guatemala has to include an understanding of the processes through which both men and women come to socially support the presence of gender violence and impunity in their lives. godoy-paiz’s study of guatemala city residents shows how poverty, patriarchy and legacies of state-sponsored violence limit women’s access to social justice both within and outside of the legal framework. for godoy-paiz, understanding the social supports of gender violence in guatemala will not only serve to promote women’s rights studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 9 but it will also allow for an understanding of impunity systems and the everyday expressions of structural violence (bourgois, 2004). drysdale walsh looks at the way that guatemalan civil society organizations and state have been hampered in addressing the increasing incidence of violence against women and argues that closer coordination between them and international donors would serve to better address the problems of gender violence. she looks at the difficulties caused by the division of labor amongst the eight public policy and justice sector institutional agencies currently defined by the guatemalan state as responsible for addressing the different dimensions of gender violence. she also looks at how the lack of cohesion within the guatemala’s women’s movement and its tense relationship with foreign funding agencies limit the effectiveness of this sector of civil society. despite these caveats, drysdale walsh proposes that social justice can be forged for women in guatemala by coordinating the admittedly flawed knowledge and practices of civil society and the state. focusing on conaprevi (the national coordinator for the prevention of intrafamiliar violence and violence against women) as a case study of how effective civil society/state cooperation could take place, drysdale walsh shows how local understandings of violence from the grassroots rights organizations can be meshed with local institutional practices of the state to define more effective avenues for attaining social justice for women. social justice-inspired approaches to central america’s post-conflict violence must understand, as godoy-paiz does, that violence works at different levels and its multiple forms (gender, class, ethnic) are often superimposed and can be magnified. a social justice approach needs to privilege, as menjivar does, the way that victims themselves come to understand and accept social violence accepting, in menjivar’s example, inequality as “physical illnesses” instead of forms of abuse. yet, it is not just violence that needs to be understood through a “local” lens. drysdale walsh and menjivar show that institutional and individual approaches to the resolution of the region’s crisis can have the opposite effect and inadvertently work to amplify violence. understanding the particular reasons why states prefer to address inequality and violence through ineffective institutional and legal reforms can shed light on why impunity systems continue to function unabashed. the local understandings (meaning-making practices) of violence and institutional practices in this collection are not just illustrative of a social reality lived in guatemala but must be the basis upon which solutions to regional violence are crafted. as presented here, insights into the social life of violence its victims, its meaning, and its reproduction and extension can begin to suggest concrete ways to confront its injustice. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 10 references aguilar, a. l. (2005). femicidio: la pena capital por ser mujer. diálogo, 4 (44), 1-5. berger, s. (2006). guatemaltecas: the women’s movement 1986-2003. austin: university of texas press. bourdieu, p. (1997). pascalian meditations. stanford: stanford university press. bourgois, p. (2004).us inner-city apartheid: the contours of structural and interpersonal violence. in n. scheper-hugues & p. bourgois (eds.), violence in war and peace (pp. 301-308). malden: blackwell publishing. caldeira, t. p.r. (2000). city of walls: crime, segregation, and citizenship in sao paulo. berkeley: university of california press. constantino, r. 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(2005). terminar la guerra, traicionar la paz. guatemala: editorial de ciencias sociales. human resources and social development canada (2008). indicators of wellbeing in canada: security crime rates. retrieved on may 15 th , 2008 from http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/indicator.jsp?&indicatorid=57#moreon_1 kleinman, a., das, v. & locke, m. (1997). social suffering: essays. berkeley: university of california press. krujit, d. & koonings, k. (1999). societies of fear. london: zed press. menocal, c.(2006). 98% de asesinatos quedan inpunes. prensa libre. october 9, p. 12. moser, c. & mcilwaine, c. (2001). violence in a post-conflict context: urban poor perceptions from guatemala. washington: world bank. ocavi (observatorio centroamericano sobre violencia) (2007a). tasas de homicidios dolosos en centroamérica y república dominicana por 100,000 habitantes (1999 -2007). retrieved on may 15th, 2008 from http://www.ocavi.com/docs_files/file_378.pdf. ocavi (observatorio centroamericano sobre violencia) (2007b). reporte de las pandillas en el salvador. retrieved on may 15th, 2008 from http://www.ocavi.com/docs_files/file_423.pdf. plataforma de investigación y diálogo intersectorial para el diseño de una política de seguridad ciudadana (polsec) (2004). encuesta de victimización y percepción de inseguridad en la ciudad de guatemala (primera encuesta), vol. 2005. guatemala: polsec (plataforma de investigación y diálogo intersectorial para el diseño de una política de seguridad ciudadana). http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2006/data/table_16.html http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/indicator.jsp?&indicatorid=57#moreon_1 http://www.ocavi.com/docs_files/file_378.pdf http://www.ocavi.com/docs_files/file_423.pdf studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 11 programa de las naciones unidas para el desarrollo (pnud) (2007a). human development report data 2007/2008. retrieved in august 23rd, 2008 from http://hdrstats.undp.org/buildtables/rc_report.cfm. programa de las naciones unidas para el desarrollo (pnud) (2007b) informe estadístico de la violencia en guatemala. retrieved on may 15th, 2008 from http://www.ocavi.com/docs_files/file_415.pdf. programa de las naciones unidas para el desarrollo (pnud) (2006). el costo económico de la violencia en guatemala. retrieved on may 15th, 2008 from http://www.polsec.org/images/files/documentos/pdf/costoseconomicos.pdf . programa de las naciones unidas para el desarrollo (pnud) (2005). cuanto cuesta la violencia en el salvador? san salvador: pnud. rotker, s. (2002). citizens of fear: urban violence in latin america. new brunswick: rutgers univesity press. russell, d. e. h. & van de ven, n. (eds.). (1976). crimes against women: proceedings of the international tribunal. milbrae: les femmes publishing. sanford, v. (2003). buried secrets. new york: pallgrave mcmillan. scheper-hughes, n. (1992). death without weeping: the violence of everyday life in brazil. berkeley: university of california press. secretaría presidencial de la mujer (2005). acciones e iniciativas para la implementación del enfoque de género en el ministerio de educación. in organization of iberoamerican states country reports. retrieved on may 15, 2008 from http://www.oei.es/genero/documentos_paises.htm. sosep (secretaría de obras sociales de la esposa del presidente) (2008). misión y objetívos. gobierno de alvaro colom. guatemala city: guatemala. united nations human rights commission (2005). updated set of principles for the protection and promotion of human rights through action to combat impunity. sixty-first session, 8 february, item 17 of the provisional agenda.e/cn.4/2005/102/add.1 vela, m., senquén-mónchez, a. & solares, h.a. (2001). el lado oscuro de la eterna primavera: violencia, criminalidad y delincuencia en la postguerra. guatemala: flacsoguatemala. wola (2006). youth gangs in central america: issues in human rights, effective policing and prevention. washington, d.c: washington office on latin america. http://hdrstats.undp.org/buildtables/rc_report.cfm http://www.ocavi.com/docs_files/file_415.pdf http://www.polsec.org/images/files/documentos/pdf/costoseconomicos.pdf microsoft word reischfinal.doc studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 67 social justice and multiculturalism: persistent tensions in the history of u.s. social welfare and social work michael reisch, university of michigan abstract social justice has been a central normative component of u.s. social welfare and social work for over a century, although the meaning and implications of the term have often been ambiguous. a major source of this ambiguity lies in the conflict between universalist views of social justice and those which focus on achieving justice for specific groups. this conflict has been masked by several long-standing assumptions about the relationship between social justice and multiculturalism – assumptions which have been challenged by recent developments. the assumption that the pursuit of social justice requires the creation of a more egalitarian society has been challenged by the new political-economic realities of globalization. the assumption that the maintenance of individual rights complements the pursuit of social equality has been challenged by racially-based attacks on social welfare benefits and civil rights. most significantly, the assumption that a socially just society is one in which different groups share a compatible vision of social justice has been challenged by the realities of multiculturalism. this paper explores the evolution of four themes regarding the relationship between social justice and multiculturalism during the past century and discusses their implications for the contemporary demographic and cultural context of the u.s. these themes are: the relationship of cultural diversity to the nation’s values and goals; the contradiction between coerced cultural assimilation and coerced physical and social segregation; the relationship between individual and group identity and rights; and the linkage between “americanization” and the equal application of justice. introduction since the turn of the 20th century, social justice has been a central normative component of u.s. social welfare and social work, although its definition and implications have often been ambiguous (van soest and garcia, 2003; reisch, 2002; morris, 2002; grogan, 2000). today, while this ambiguity persists, mainstream social welfare organizations have established social justice as an ethical and curricular imperative of the field (council on social work education, 2001; national association of social workers, 1996). a major source of this ambiguity lies in the conflict between views of social justice which focus on the problems of class and economic inequality and those that emphasize differences in race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, which are now grouped under the studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 68 label “multiculturalism” (ewalt, freeman, kirk, and poole, 1996). recent attempts to resolve this conflict largely rely on rawls’ version of modern liberalism – which attempts to balance equality of individual and group rights and opportunities (rawls, 1999, 2001) – or an updated expression of social democratic ideals (gil, 1998). prigoff (2003) asserts that a “social justice framework” includes access to vital resources, participation in critical decision making processes, and respect for human rights and the various dimensions of personal identity, particularly culture. these rights implicitly focus on individuals, consistent with the “person-in-environment” paradigm that has dominated u.s. social work for a century. in current discourse, therefore, social justice is presumed to be consistent with multiculturalism – another term fraught with ambiguity – and with the reconciliation of individual and group rights and responsibilities (fraser, 1995; ramakrishnan and balgopal, 1995; van soest, 1995; caputo, 2000; platt and cooreman, 2001; marsh, 2004). yet, as yee and dumbrill (2003) point out, social justice is not an inevitable consequence of multiculturalism. they argue provocatively that by “essentializing and circumscribing people’s social identities” multiculturalism maintains oppressive structures, undermines efforts to generate social action, and ignores the historical context that produces various forms of injustice (108-110). potockey (1997) makes a similar criticism about the application of social justice to the international arena. thus, efforts to expand the original meaning of social justice to reflect 21st century demographic realities have produced new conflicts and contradictions. these contradictions have emerged because proponents of both social justice and multiculturalism have based their arguments on several debatable assumptions. first, that the pursuit of social justice requires the creation of a more egalitarian society whose principles of social organization reflect “the subordination of market price” (marshall, 1950, quoted in katz, 2002, p.1). today, this assumption is challenged by the new political-economic realities of globalization and their accompanying ideological rationales (pugh and gould, 2000; reisch, 2003). a second assumption is that the maintenance of individual rights is complementary, if not essential, to the attainment of social equality. this assumption has been undermined by racially-based attacks on legal entitlements to social welfare benefits and efforts to roll back civil rights and opportunities through both judicial and legislative means (piven, 2002). in the 2006 u.s. elections, many voters who supported ballot measures to increase the minimum wage also supported anti-immigrant and antiaffirmative action propositions. a third assumption is that a socially just society is one in which both “economic and social differences between social classes and groups are markedly reduced” (jansson, 2005, p. 24, emphasis added). this presumes that all groups in a society regard the reduction of social differences as socially just and desirable and that they share a common or at least compatible vision of what social justice means. differences over gay rights, the status of women in families, and the role of organized religion in communities are merely the more controversial illustrations of divergent conceptions of social justice. throughout u.s. social welfare history, the discourse on social justice has largely occurred on a parallel track to those over racial, ethnic, gender or sexual equality. yet, debates over the relationship between social justice and social welfare inevitably involve conflicts over the meaning of such terms as race, citizenship, and culture (katz, 2002; studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 69 gerstle, 2001; foner, 1999). during the past two decades, the public furor over multiculturalism has made explicit these underlying and largely unacknowledged tensions (yee and dumbrill, 2003; caputo, 2000; potockey, 1997; gould, 1996). the concept of multiculturalism recurrent conflicts over the consequences of diversity reflect the tumultuous history of racial and ethnic relations in the u.s. since the first half of the 19th century, proponents and critics of assimilation have battled over issues such as immigration, linguistic difference, and social equality. the underlying issue – whether cultural diversity constitutes a threat to the nation’s values and goals – remains unresolved. a related conflict emerged in the 20th century reflecting the contradiction between coerced cultural assimilation and coerced physical and social segregation. the views of both dominant and minority groups have alternated between an embrace of cultural amalgamation (i.e., the “melting pot”) and a celebration of cultural separatism. this has shaped the debate about the nature of social justice in an increasingly diverse society. a third theme involves the relationship between individual and group identity and rights. through the mid-1960s, social justice in the u.s. was usually equated with the application of “colour-blind” meritocratic principles – in martin luther king, jr.’s words (1963), that individuals be judged “not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.” the emergence of multiculturalism in the past several decades has been, in part, a reaction against both the ideal and the reality of a colour blind society. its proponents argue that in order to affirm individual identity it is essential to recognize the existence of systematic discrimination on the basis of group identity, which persists, in part, because of the conceptualization of racism and sexism in individual-to-individual terms (johnson, 2001; hill collins, 2000; young, 1990). as the controversy over affirmative action demonstrates, the u.s. is still struggling over the application of justice concepts based on individual rights to policies that address group needs. a fourth theme involves the linkage between “americanization” and the equal application of justice (foner, 1999). this linkage not only concerns the meaning of citizenship, i.e., legal rights, but also the balance between the attainment of universal ideals of life and liberty and the preservation of cultural distinctions regarding the meaning of the “pursuit of happiness” (katz, 2002). the question of how common political, economic, and social goals can be achieved in the context of increasingly cultural heterogeneity has yet to be answered.1 this paper explores the evolution of these themes in the u.s. during the past century and its implications for social justice in contemporary social welfare. it discusses the challenges of constructing a definition of social justice within changing demographic and cultural realities and its implications for contemporary social policy and social work. 1 unfortunately, recent scholarship continues to be plagued by definitional ambiguity and conflicting principles. a content analysis of documents in the field of social welfare conducted by the author unearthed no less than 25 terms that have been used, in one form or another, as synonyms for multiculturalism. each of these terms, however, has different nuances of meaning and serves different purposes. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 70 the emergence of social justice within social welfare the term “social justice” first appeared in the social welfare field during the progressive era (~1890-1917) as a synthesis of religious and secular ideas (leiby, 1978). it also reflected enlightened self-interest among elites in response to growing inequality and the perceived destruction of community bonds (elshtain, 2002; reisch and andrews, 2001). “justice,” in their view, implied the substitution of charitable principles, norms, and relationships with universal standards of decency that would be enforced by the state and rationalized by new methods of social science (addams, 1902; wise, 1909; tucker, 1913; holder, 1922; abbott, 1924). these definitions of social justice combined liberal and social democratic principles including equal rights, the diminution of class privileges (especially those based on birth), the preservation of individual dignity, and the establishment of equal opportunity in the marketplace. these tenets, however, were applied primarily to white men of northern and western european ancestry. the history of u.s. social welfare in the past century reflects the struggle to make these rights and principles universal. in depicting this struggle, two important points are often overlooked. first, groups striving to overcome various forms of social injustice, such as white male workers, women, racial minorities, gays and lesbians, and the disabled, did and do not – to this day – define either the concept of social justice or social justice-oriented goals in the same way. in fact, part of the struggle of each group has been a struggle to modify universal definitions of social justice, based on hegemonic values, to fit their particular historical circumstances and aspirations. this struggle has frequently caused tension and conflict between these groups and their mainstream allies, between different “minority groups” themselves, and even within their own ranks. these tensions have often made the development and maintenance of broad-based social justice coalitions difficult. this leads to a second observation. although it is widely accepted that the progress of social justice has been neither linear nor unidirectional, it is less frequently recognized how efforts to create a just society have transformed the meaning of social justice itself. over the past several decades, the introduction of such concepts in the policy arena as affirmative action, comparable worth, reasonable accommodations, and gay marriage have expanded the meaning of social justice well beyond the elimination of discrimination and class or gender-based privilege. while the rhetoric of social justice in the social welfare field reflects this changing definition, the complex policy and practice implications of applying social justice principles to an increasingly diverse and contentious society have been generally ignored. part of the problem lies in a failure to understand the peculiar evolution of these concepts. the origins of multiculturalism in contrast to debates over social justice, the discourse on what is now termed “multiculturalism” occurred in a variety of contexts, often without a clear or consistent focus. in the u.s., its central concern has been in relation to race, “a crucial line of division in american society since … the beginning of the 17th century” (foner, 1999, p. 12). ironically, at the turn of the 20th century, when social welfare leaders first proposed studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 71 re-orienting the field toward social justice, the nation was “more thoroughly racialized … than at any point in american history” (foner, pp. 12-13). although white proponents of social justice focused on the expansion of rights, the concurrent institutional and ideological abandonment of inclusive ideas of citizenship significantly stunted the growth of social justice within social welfare from the outset (katz, 2002; reisch, 1998). unlike european immigrants, people of colour did not have access to most whiterun social service agencies, even many settlement houses which professed social justice goals. in response, through the services developed by women’s clubs, churches, mutual aid and self-help groups, and benevolent societies, they forged a concept of racial or ethnic uplift, which combined elements of cultural pride and social assimilation that contrasted with mainstream conceptions of social justice which stressed “the general welfare” (gordon, 1991). these efforts were severely constrained by a lack of resources and resistance from both white social welfare leaders and members of their own community (day, 2003; waites, 2001; carlton-laney, 2001; iglehart and becerra, 1996). yet, given their “profound distrust of white people, the race lens through which [african americans viewed] nearly all of life’s circumstances” made perfect sense (carltonlaney, 2001, p. xiii). similar justifications existed among asian and mexican immigrants in the west and southwest and catholic and jewish immigrants in major eastern and midwestern cities. mexicans created mutual aid and self-help organizations to maintain their cultural equilibrium under oppressive social and economic conditions (beito, 2001; rivera, 1987; hernandez, 1983). chinese, japanese, korean, and filipino immigrants focused on economic gains and educational advancement and achieved considerable success on the west coast (chan, 1991; rivera and erlich, 1998). catholic and jewish immigrants from europe developed highly structured systems of social services, which included many features later adopted by mainstream organizations (o’grady, 1931; morris and freund, 1966). while these strategies enabled minorities to retain their heritage, languages, and customs, and provided them with some modicum of material, psychological, and physical security, they maintained the gap between the social welfare mainstream and those at its margins and made it more difficult to develop a unified vision of a socially just society. ultimately, these different perspectives on social justice produced different varieties of social services and emphasized policy changes that went beyond the social reforms proposed by mainstream social welfare leaders to incorporate more comprehensive advocacy of racial and social equality (hamilton and hamilton, 1997; reisch and andrews, 2001). in this regard, it is important to note that during the progressive era the concepts of race and culture were not equated as they are today. for example, while african american reformers agreed with white leaders of the settlement movement about the compatibility of cultural differences and the possibility of social integration, they added the critical dimension of race (and, occasionally, gender) as distinct components of the assimilation process (lasch-quinn, 1993; gordon, 1991; gordon, 1994). by expanding the idea of social justice to include themes of self-help, humanitarianism, and social equality, african american philanthropists and social service leaders redefined social justice in ways that would eventually have implications for the entire nation (carson, 1993). studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 72 the creation of alternative social welfare institutions was a response to the failure of social welfare leaders to recognize how their focus on universal rights ignored the structural and ideological sources of racism and sexism. well into the 1920s they accepted 19th century hierarchical conceptions of race, which conflated physical, behavioral, and cultural traits with social status (johnson, 1923; goldenweiser, 1922; drachsler, 1922; sturges, 1920). while remaining largely indifferent to issues affecting african americans and other racial minorities, they continued to believe that so-called immigrant “races” – hebrews, slavs, and italians, for example – could ultimately be assimilated through a combination of coercion and benevolence (carson, 1990). they viewed education and equality of rights as the ultimate solutions to the problems of prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination, yet continued to assume that common ground and shared interests could be found without major structural adjustments in society (wenocur and reisch, 1989). thus, racist and sexist attitudes about the implications of demographic and cultural diversity influenced the development of the idea of social justice even within the relatively sympathetic confines of the social welfare field. most of its leadership – predominantly white and protestant – believed that social justice rested on either christian or secular moral foundations which emphasized democracy and equality before the law, rather than equality of resources or power. concepts such as cultural equality were not seriously considered, even by settlement leaders such as jane addams, who were aware of cultural diversity (addams, 1902; lasch-quinn, 1993; elshtain, 2002). these views were reinforced by their personal, professional, and cultural isolation from the diverse populations who were the objects of their concern. as margolin (1997) writes, “given the sudden convergence … of different races, nationalities, languages, faiths, customs, and political ideas, it is not surprising that people were profoundly suspicious of one another… that the monied classes were fearful of uprisings and mass violence… and that the impoverished foreigner would be the focus of these fears” (p. 14). social justice and racial justice although most white social welfare leaders in the u.s. were tainted by racism, ethnocentrism, and religious prejudice, others such as addams, florence kelley, edith abbott, lillian wald, and sophinisba breckinridge, tried to incorporate racial equality in their vision of a socially just, pluralistic society (sklar, 1995, 1998; daniels, 1989; elshtain, 2002). inspired by african american scholars and activists, particularly w.e.b. dubois and ida wells barnett, they began to develop the bases for the late 20th century concept of multiculturalism (bent-goodley, 2001). addams’ ideas, for example, combined a belief in democracy, humanism founded on religious principles, and a respect for cultural heterogeneity (addams, 1902). influenced by her ideas, studies by louise koven bowen in chicago and mary white ovington in new york, modeled in part on dubois’ 1899 work, the philadelphia negro, documented widespread discrimination in employment and housing against african americans, even in the north (lundblad, 1995; elshtain, 2002; sklar, 1998). research by mary van kleeck (1915) under the auspices of the russell sage foundation made similar contributions regarding the conditions of industrial workers, particularly women and girls. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 73 yet, with few exceptions, u.s. social welfare leaders could not embrace a vision of social justice that incorporated full social equality. their acceptance of “segregation as either inescapable or desirable” and their failure to distinguish between the obstacles faced by european immigrants and african americans, or immigrants from latin america or asia, severely constrained even the best-intentioned efforts at reform (katz, 1986, p. 177). by regarding “the problems of all minorities as coextensive with the problems of immigrants, they failed to recognize that the social legislation passed during the progressive era had minimal impact on african americans and that conditions facing [them during this period] … were … unlike those of white citizens and legal aliens” (axinn and stern, 2005, p. 133). consequently, their support for cultural pluralism, while laudable for its day, tried unsuccessfully to balance the rhetoric of a universal humanity and the recognition of unique social and economic problems, which required selective approaches to social policy. the conflict between rights-feminists and maternalists is just one example (gordon, 1995). although their language and sensibilities were decidedly different from those of reformers in later periods, they were struggling with similar ideological and professional dilemmas – specifically, whether the goals of social justice as they defined them and the preservation of a multicultural (i.e., pluralistic) society were compatible. this attempt to reconcile diverse ends was not simply a matter of acknowledging the impact of cultural assimilation on terms dictated by hegemonic social groups. it would also require a philosophic and practical reorientation of goals and methods that was beyond the capacity, or even the comprehension of the vast majority of u.s. social welfare leaders. throughout the 20th century, these shortcomings prevented the development of policies and programs that reflected social justice principles (reisch, 1998). in response, minority communities constructed alternative strategies to achieve their own ideal of social justice. the rejection of assimilation prior to world war i, through such organizations as the ywca’s committee on interracial cooperation, the methodist women’s missionary societies, and the association of southern women for the prevention of lynching, white social welfare leaders demonstrated some willingness to work as equals with african americans in multicultural coalitions (weatherford, 1919; hammond, 1917, 1920). they helped organize the naacp and the national urban league, and served as delegates to the 1921 pan-african congress under dubois’ leadership. by the first world war, the national conference of social work (ncsw) had begun to integrate the ideas of social welfare leaders from minority groups into its conferences on a limited basis. yet, throughout this period, even the most reform-minded settlement houses continued to be racially segregated and the ncsw paid little attention to issues affecting racial minorities (chandler, 2001; carlton-laney and burwell, 1995; iglehart and becerra, 1995; lasch-quinn, 1993). few mainstream social welfare leaders spoke out against restrictions on immigration, particularly those directed at chinese, japanese, filipino, and mexican immigrants, who were largely regarded as either undesirable or “inassimilable” (axinn and stern, 2005). some joined anti-immigration organizations studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 74 which expressed anti-semitic and anti-catholic views (becker, 1968; leiby, 1962). much to her later regret, jane addams remained at the 1912 progressive party convention even after theodore roosevelt refused to seat african american delegates from southern states (elshtain, 2002; rosenberg, 1992). in response to this persistent racism and ethnocentrism, a few distinctive trends began to emerge among racial minority groups which shaped their pursuit of social justice. one was the rejection of the conception of assimilation. at ncsw conferences, african american speakers (wright, 1920; burns, 1920) charged that “melting pot” goals involved the loss of critical aspects of their communities’ ethnic heritage. roosevelt wright declared in 1919, “the negro wants a democracy, not a whiteocracy” (p. 286). this would include mutual respect, the end of oppressive laws and institutions, and equal rights and responsibilities. similar appeals were made on behalf of mexican immigrants (alvarado, 1920). another trend was the appearance of splits among white social justice proponents over the issue of race. florence kelley, a lifelong socialist who helped found the naacp and served as a delegate at the 1921 pan-african congress, criticized the national women’s party (on whose executive committee she sat) for its failure to promote the needs of african american women (sklar, 1995). years later, at her funeral, dubois eulogized her unique commitment to social justice and her opposition to “every single attempt to perpetuate in new law the old discrimination against american negroes” which distinguished her beliefs from those of her erstwhile allies who failed “to see the plight of the american negro as an integral part of the problem of american society” (dubois, 1935, quoted in aptheker, 1966, pp. 99-100). a third trend was the use of specific issues, such as lynching in the south or industrial conditions for women workers, to create multi-racial and multi-ethnic coalitions in pursuit of social justice goals. in 1920, in cooperation with the national federation of colored women’s clubs and both white and african american churches, the ywca (1920) published a powerful indictment of southern racial violence and specifically linked the anti-lynching movement to the cause of social justice and the preservation of the u.s. constitution. even these worthy efforts, however, were not without their ironies. in its attempt to bridge the gap between african american and white women, “the ywca used a language of christian sisterhood to articulate their concerns about racial relations” (robertson, 1987). this ignored the work on behalf of racial justice by jewish leaders, such as lillian wald, and many african american activists in the south, which antedated that of the ywca (wald, 1915; carlton-laney, 2000; salem, 1990; hine, 1990). in addition, many white women in the ywca had difficulty acknowledging the equal status of their african american “sisters” and were incapable of abandoning either their long-standing privilege or decades of social custom. one of the leaders of the antilynching crusade, lily hardy hammond, continued to believe that racial justice and racial segregation were compatible (hammond, 1917; chandler, 1995). a fourth and most significant trend was the emergence of increasingly vocal and visible contributions by african americans to the national dialogue over social justice and racial equality. marcus garvey’s movement for african american self-determination built upon and reinforced long-standing traditions of self-help. it also underscored the studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 75 importance of culture, not just race, as an organizing force and political rallying cry for other oppressed groups in u.s. society (gerstle, 2001; simon, 1994). perhaps the strongest argument for incorporating racial justice into universal conceptions of social justice in the 1920s appeared in the work of e. franklin frazier and chandler owen. a lifelong ally of labor pioneer, a. philip randolph, owen’s view of social justice combined a critique of capitalism, feminist ideas, and elements of “racial uplift” (owen and randolph, 1920). frazier’s writings (1924) reflected what dubois earlier termed the “dual consciousness” of african americans regarding racial justice and social justice and the ongoing tension it creates in their lives and work. the pursuit of the “dual agenda” implied in this consciousness distinguished african american efforts to achieve social justice from those of their white allies throughout most of the 20th century (hamilton and hamilton, 1997). the welfare state and social justice beginning with the new deal in the 1930s, the establishment of welfare state policies created, at least in theory, the political vehicle through which structural inequalities in u.s. society could be reduced, if not eliminated. from the outset, however, these policies sustained and even strengthened institutional racism and ignored the disproportionate effects of the great depression on african americans and other racial minorities in urban and rural areas alike (washington, 1934; haynes, 1935; bunche, 1940). like their predecessors during the progressive era, white reformers did not distinguish between the effects of poverty and those of racism, and refused to support policies that would compensate african americans for the long-standing discrimination they had experienced (jansson, 2005). in fact, the roosevelt administration consistently appeased racist sentiments (masked in the rhetoric of states’ rights) in such critical areas as employment, public assistance, and child welfare (patterson, 2000; hamilton and hamilton, 1997; rose, 1994). few social welfare leaders spoke out when mexican americans, many of them u.s. citizens, were deported during the 1930s (galarza, 1929; batten, 1930; hanna, 1935; anderson, 1940) or when japanese americans were incarcerated during world war ii (ennis, 1943; pickett, 1943; powell, 1943). the failure of u.s. social welfare leaders to make the elimination of racism a component of their social justice goals can not be explained by prejudice, ignorance, social custom, and privilege alone. the american association of social workers and other social welfare organizations were far ahead of other professional groups in banning racial discrimination within their ranks. some settlement houses had begun to target services to african americans and mexican americans in the 1930s (fisher, 1980). yet, all but the most radical social workers could not envision a socially just society or even a socially just system of social welfare except in terms of white, working and middle class concerns (trolander, 1975). as a result, within mainstream political and social movements, the pursuit of social justice in the u.s. lacked a complementary drive to achieve racial justice until the resurgence of the civil rights movement in the 1950s. one explanation for this failure is that the national mobilization required by the depression, world war ii, and the cold war forced americans to adopt, at least symbolically, an appearance of national unity which masked the persistence of social studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 76 inequalities based on race, religion, ethnicity, and gender. although some movements for racial justice began during the war, it was not until the late 1940s that widespread protests against racial or religious discrimination re-emerged. it took even longer for similar reactions to appear among other minority groups. the roots of a post-war resurgence of social justice activity, however, can be found in wartime presentations at the national conference of social work (cramer, 1943; granger, 1944; lett, 1944). in 1944, edwin embree made these prescient remarks: the white man of the western world is offered his last chance for equal status in world society. if he accepts equality, he can hold a self-respecting place – maybe a leading place – in the new order…but if the western white man persists in trying to run the show, in exploiting the whole earth, in treating hundreds of millions of his neighbors as inferiors, then the fresh might of the … nonwhite, non-western people may in a surging rebellion smash him into a non-entity (p. 109). a second explanation is that post-war economic prosperity partially hid the existence of long-standing social divisions behind a veil of consumption, while the growth of suburbs isolated many white americans from the problems of urban racial minorities (sugrue, 1995). during the post-war period, therefore, most social justice work in the social welfare field focused on eradicating discrimination in employment, education, and housing, fostering inter-group and intercultural relations at the community level, and promoting civil rights through statutory means, even among radicals (culberson, 1946; thomas, 1947; marcus, 1948; gentile, 1951; valien, 1949). the idea of the melting pot was still widely embraced as the means through which a socially justice society could ultimately be achieved (mead, 1949). in addition, the repressive climate of mccarthyism led large segments of the public to equate social justice movements, however modest, with communist subversion. many organizations that promoted social justice lost their tax-exempt status and experienced a precipitous drop in contributions and staff (schrecker, 1998; reisch and andrews, 2001). nevertheless, considerable progress occurred on several fronts, including the desegregation of the armed forces, annulment of anti-japanese laws and the establishment of a congressional commission to settle claims for damages suffered during their forced evacuation, and judicial attacks on school segregation, restrictions on voting rights, and the “separate but equal” doctrine (baldwin, 1949). a final explanation lies in the drive for professional status among social workers, which fostered a search for “universalist” theoretical frameworks that largely ignored the particular issues confronting racial and ethnic minorities and women or characterized differences in cultural norms as deviant (kluckhorn, 1951; barrabee, 1954; labarre, 1957; rohrer, 1957). these tendencies persisted as the social welfare field began to grapple with the complex issues of class and caste, and the challenges of desegregation in the aftermath of the historic 1954 brown decision (warner, 1953; mitchell, 1955; rowan, 1956; simons, 1956; ryland and wilson, 1954; klineberg, 1957; young, 1960). even during the relatively activist period of the 1960s, there was a paucity of literature on racism. leading publications, such as social work and the encyclopedia of social work did not devote much attention to the subject until the early 1970s, long after studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 77 the ferment of activism had subsided (simon, 1994). the first nasw code of ethics (1960) did not address race and ethnicity explicitly. it was not until 1967 that the term “nondiscrimination” was added. papers at the national conference on social welfare focused on civil rights rather than institutional racism, although several speakers emphasized the linkage between race and poverty, and presented the different cultural orientations of african americans in terms of equivalency rather than inferiority (berry, 1963; killian, 1964; riessman, cohen and pearl, 1964; collins, 1965). at the 1965 national conference on social welfare, whitney young (1965) made an explicit connection between “equality for negro citizens” as a right and economic and social justice (p. 53). although the national association of social workers formally called for the abolition of white racism in 1969, pressure to preserve professional prerogatives produced growing tensions between mainstream social service agencies and communitybased organizations in which racial and ethnic minorities played major roles (rose, 1972). a particularly vivid illustration of this conflict occurred at the 1969 ncsw conference in new york city when demonstrators from the national welfare rights organization used confrontation-style tactics to present their demands (proceedings of national conference on social welfare, 1969, 1970). during the 1960s, the divergence of social justice and racial justice goals was also inadvertently undermined by the writings of activists and intellectuals of all races and ideologies. in his influential book, the other america (1963), michael harrington, a democratic socialist, reinforced the long-standing notion that profound cultural differences existed between racial minorities and white, middle class americans. conservatives like edwin banfield and james q. wilson (1963) used similar arguments to critique the anti-poverty policies that harrington’s book had inspired. influential spokespersons, such as malcolm x (1964), and charles hamilton (1967), underscored the cultural differences of minority groups as part of a strategy to use enhanced cultural identity as a vehicle for community empowerment and liberation. over the next decade, this approach was adopted by feminists, gay and lesbian activists, and leaders of disability rights movements. these trends had several contradictory effects. on the one hand, by providing powerful rationales for the creation of separatist movements within communities of colour (and, to a lesser extent, among women, gays and lesbians, and the disabled), they inspired the development of new forms of scholarship, new models of social services and community development, and new theoretical frameworks that considerably expanded and revised the meaning of social justice in u.s. society (nussbaum, 1999; morris, 2002; young, 1990; hill collins, 2000; johnson, 2001). at the same time, the critique and widespread rejection of the liberal goals of assimilation, acculturation, and integration provided conservatives with a rationale to attack anti-poverty programs and other legislative or judicial attempts to achieve social justice (murray, 1984; mead, 1992). under the guise of promoting the use of social and behavioral science to inform public policy, even well-intentioned liberals resuscitated the social darwinist tendency to analyze social issues through the lens of group, rather than individual characteristics.2 2 ironically, liberal precedent for such arguments existed in the use of kenneth clark’s research to support the plaintiffs’ case in the 1954 brown decision and even as far back as 1909 in the testimony women settlement house leaders provided in the landmark case of muller v. oregon. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 78 paradoxically, this legitimated the use of research for both anti-egalitarian and social justice purposes. the controversies over the moynihan report (1965) about poverty in the african american community and billingsley and giovannoni’s indictment of racism in the child welfare system (1972) are vivid examples of these diverse responses. in the process of critiquing mainstream theoretical constructs about culture, society, and human needs, authors from racial minority groups and women often subsumed a universal emphasis on social justice within the more immediate concerns of confronting group-specific inequalities and oppression rooted in social identity (chestang, 1970). moore (1970) criticized the application of inappropriate paradigms to “groups who entered american society not as volunteer immigrants but through some form of involuntary relationship” (p. 463). there were calls within the social welfare field for a new separatism or “tribalism” to repair the social fabric and overcome the “virus of racism” (dodson, 1970; olan, 1971; shannon, 1970; morales, 1971). by the late 1970s, ethnic or gender-specific practice had become the norm in social welfare fields as diverse as youth work, services to the aging, mental health, and community development, often framed with the newly popular language of empowerment (bretz, 1978; ragan, 1978; morales, 1978; miranda, 1979). revisions of the nasw code of ethics (1979) gave official sanction to these trends. the emergence of so-called “identity politics” produced tensions among former allies over social justice goals and strategies, which became particularly acute between african american and jewish intellectuals, activists, and professionals (becker, 1971). admittedly, the relationship between individual and group identity and the pursuit of social justice was a delicate problem to negotiate both intellectually and politically. except among conservatives, there was broad acceptance of the need to address the systemic causes of social inequality and injustice and to analyze the effects of structural inequities within group constructs. james dumpson’s (1972) proposal to shift the field’s “emphasis on individual pathology and rehabilitation” to a focus on “the basic systematic changes … [including] the removal of socioeconomic and racial barriers to an equitable redistribution of the power, wealth, and income of the nation” reflected this shift (pp. 45).3 yet, the persistence of “selective” approaches to the problems of poverty and inequality and the resurgence of cultural identity among racial and ethnic minorities combined to reinforce prevailing beliefs about the cultural divide between racial groups and genders (de anda, 1984; gilligan, 1982). some observers criticized such debates for essentializing the concepts of race and gender and separating them from their social construction. it was difficult to envision an over-arching conception of social justice that satisfied these diverse tendencies (longres, 1997). in the political arena, the identification of anti-poverty programs as “black programs” and their equation with the social welfare system as a whole generated increased hostility toward “welfare” among whites (edsall and edsall, 1992). other significant political developments complicated efforts to expand the concept of social justice to include the emerging demands of women, gays, and lesbians. one was the 1965 3 the recurrence of this criticism throughout u.s. social welfare history, in slightly different form, is remarkable. see, for example, h. specht and m. courtney, unfaithful angels: how social work abandoned its mission (new york: free press, 1994). what is equally remarkable is how little has been done to address these concerns. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 79 immigration act which “represented a sharp ideological departure from the traditional view of america as a homogeneous white society” (takaki, 1994, p. 419). another was the controversial “maximum feasible participation” provision of anti-poverty programs created by the office of economic opportunity, which gave considerable power to local community action agencies, especially in african american neighborhoods, and supported the preservation of indigenous cultural activities among native americans (moynihan, 1965). a third was the passage of title ix of the 1964 civil rights act and the supreme court decision in roe v. wade, which gave women legislative and judicial mandates to push for greater gender equality (deckard, 1979). a fourth was the growing opposition to the use of affirmative action policies to achieve racial and gender equality, symbolized by the bakke case (farmer, 1978). the movement for gender equality was particularly significant because for most of the 20th century the connection between women’s rights and social justice had been largely ignored in the social welfare field (chambers, 1986). most feminist writing, research, and activism focused primarily on the specific needs of women, rather than their relationship to broader justice concepts. they tended to overlook the perspectives and needs of women of colour (abramovitz, 1999; gordon, 1991; gordon, 1994). by the late 1970s, however, themes such as the “feminization of poverty” helped women forge fragile alliances across racial and class lines (deckard, 1979; rosenberg, 1992). although bolstered by the growing output of feminist research in the 1980s, efforts to create greater solidarity among women attempted to substitute, with limited success, the centrality of gender for that of race or class. many activists and intellectuals of colour objected and, as a result, the fusion of universal social justice goals with more specific racial or gender justice goals was no closer to reality, despite the optimistic forecasts of some white feminists (hooyman and bricker-jenkins, 1984). in sum, the liberation movements of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s highlighted the contradictions between the prevailing rhetoric of social justice and the continuing focus of u.s. social welfare on individual, family, or community pathology, often tied (not always subtly) to racial, gender, or ethnic characteristics. the affirmation of group identity at the heart of these movements sought to overturn not only obvious manifestations of individual and institutional discrimination and inequality, but also to undermine the more benign, paternalistic thinking upon which they were based (young, 1990). to achieve these goals, members of the dominant group (largely white, male heterosexuals) had to acknowledge their ignorance, recognize and renounce their privilege, and confront their role in maintaining various forms of societal injustice and oppression. it was never clearly established, however, how an egalitarian, social justiceoriented society (or even social welfare system) was to emerge from this intellectual and cultural catharsis (johnson, 2001). post-modernism, multiculturalism, and social justice the growing popularity and influence of perspectives once identified as solely the province of feminists, such as social constructionism, paved the way for the broader acceptance within the social welfare field of ideas derived from post-modernism (leonard, 1997). during the past fifteen years, this development has produced a variety studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 80 of efforts to link the goals of social justice more closely with those of multiculturalism. they have challenged the dominant culture and normative power structure, particularly the oppressive relationships and unequal distribution of tangible and intangible resources they produce (hyde, 1998; leonard, 1995). although some scholars continue to regard discriminatory policies and institutions as the principle roots of societal injustice, others have forcefully linked social justice to the eradication of the structural and relational sources of both racism and poverty. they have proposed ways to emancipate people from oppressive social arrangements through radical redistributive measures or alternative organizing strategies (gibelman, 2000; beck and eichler, 2000). by the 1990s, the concept of multiculturalism had evolved substantially from its original emphasis on racial justice and its assimilationist roots based on cultural pluralism. it had primarily become a means to encourage racial, ethnic, gender, and cultural diversity, strengthen group identity, consciousness, and esteem, and promote what would have formerly been regarded as separatist practice (gross, 1995; keyes, 1991). among some scholars, multiculturalism has been limited to the addition of perspectives on race, gender, and sexual orientation into existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks (gutierrez, 1997; lum, 2000). writings on multiculturalism tended, therefore, to focus narrowly on alternative practice or research models rather than broad structural analyses aimed at more general social justice goals. a few scholars, however, have attempted to clarify the often ambiguous meaning of multiculturalism. wohl (1995) disputed media criticisms of multiculturalism – which had characterized it--in language remarkably similar to that of a century ago--as a threat to national unity and as an outgrowth of racism and gender bias. in contrast, he defined multiculturalism as a series of “initiatives to discover through interchange across multiple diversities, the strengths of personal and group identity and the human treasure to be mined out of the richness of our cultural and historical differences” (p. 81). fellin (2000) echoed this sentiment and proposed four principles of multiculturalism: inclusion, recognition, multiple identities, and demographic/cultural change. unlike previous discourse on civic equality, however, most u.s. scholars in the 1990s defined multiculturalism in terms which go beyond race, gender, and ethnicity (greene and mcguire, 1998). while a few writers distinguished the concept of diversity from multiculturalism (de anda, 1997; dungee-anderson and beckett, 1995), most authors do not link either concept explicitly with social justice (greene, watkines, mcnutt, and lopez, 1998). according to goldberg (2000), three conflicts emerge from these developments, including the “conflict between respecting the contents of all cultures versus supporting basic human rights” (p. 13). it is unclear how the remedy she proposed – that all people have “an unconditional right to their cultural identity” – can be translated into public policy when different identities clash with each other or take issue with universal conceptions of justice or rights. van soest and garcia (2003) also struggle to bridge the gaps between social justice and multiculturalism. they define the latter in terms of representation and democratic inclusiveness, rooted in the connections between politics and power, and the long-term consequences of institutional racism. in their recent analysis of five competing contemporary theories of justice, however, they identify only one which specifically addresses issues of race, ethnicity, or culture. nevertheless, they argue that a focus on the effects of racism and oppression is inextricably linked to the promotion of social justice. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 81 based on a human rights perspective, they posit eight core “social justice values”: life; freedom and liberty; equality and non-discrimination; justice; solidarity; social responsibility; evolution; peace and non-violence; and relations between humankind and nature (pp. 65-67). unfortunately, their lack of specificity, tautological argumentation, and subjectivity in defining and applying these concepts render them more of an ideological statement than a guide for policy change or political organization. in sum, recent developments in the social welfare field have further obscured the relationship between social justice and multiculturalism and made their goals appear less congruent than ever. scholars have sought to reconcile these concepts through different means. one is a return to pragmatic liberalism. another is a synthesis of the identity focus at the heart of post-modern and post-structural theory with earlier analyses based on marxism. a third is through the use of alternative “bridging concepts” such as the recapture of public space, the construction of multiple domains of power, or the promotion of social development (caputo, 2000; leonard, 1995; fisher and karger, 1997; hill collins, 2000; midgley, 1991). to date, no single synthesis has been widely embraced despite frequent entreaties from social welfare leaders (marsh, 2004). conclusion despite the increasing sophistication of scholarly inquiry, u.s. social welfare continues to be impeded by several outdated assumptions about the relationship between social justice and multiculturalism. first, that the divisions within u.s. society occur primarily along a “majority-minority” axis that juxtaposes a dominant cultural group (e.g., males, whites, heterosexuals) with “others.” second, that “minority” groups will remain in minority status – in terms of power and resources, if not numbers – for the indefinite future. third, that the expansion of social provision, whether through the market, the state, non-governmental organizations, or some combination thereof, will gradually create a more egalitarian, colour and gender-blind society, in which invidious discrimination will eventually disappear or significantly diminish. fourth, that as society becomes more demographically diverse there will be increased support for more egalitarian policies among all populations and that a consensus will evolve about the roles of various sectors in achieving broadly defined social justice goals. fifth, that concerns over multiculturalism are fully compatible with other social justice-related goals. finally, that the resolution of racial, gender, and cultural inequalities is compatible with the maintenance of the major features of the u.s. economic and political systems. the persistence of these assumptions, many of which have been challenged by recent trends, is both intellectually frustrating and politically constraining. at the most obvious level, new demographic realities underscore the increasing contradiction between the numerical status of so-called minority groups in many urban areas and the workforce as a whole and the persistence of institutional economic and social inequalities in employment, education, housing, and health care (u.s. census, 2005). prevailing assumptions also often fail to acknowledge that not all differences of status or privilege are equally significant in the distribution of societal goods, power, and opportunities. less obviously, they obscure the growth of social and political tensions among and within minority communities which are reflected, for example, in conflicts over such studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 82 issues as abortion, faith-based social services, gay marriage, stem cell research, child welfare laws, school vouchers, welfare reform, and immigration. although there is widespread rejection of the “melting pot,” it is not clear what alternative concept will provide the “social glue” to bind together an increasingly fractious multicultural society. nor is it clear which principles of social justice can go beyond “feel good” rhetoric (demographic “mosaics” and cultural “salads”) and shape meaningful policies which recognize the significance of differences without stereotyping them. a “human rights framework” appears to offer some promise as a bridging concept, but it, too, has been challenged because of potential cultural biases. yet, without some commonly shared guidelines, what vision of social justice can be adopted in societies where some communities’ ideal of social justice directly contradicts those of others? answering this question is increasingly important as the u.s. becomes simultaneously more socially isolated and unequal. unless the meaning of both social justice and multiculturalism is redefined in ways that make them more compatible, the possibility of their attainment will diminish under the increasing and inevitable pressures of economic, environmental, and physical insecurities in the years ahead. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 83 references abbott, g. 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(1965). civil rights – unfinished business, part two: civil rights and a militant profession. proceedings of the national conference on social welfare (pp. 42-54). new york: columbia university press. curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice: current issues in education, vol(number) 1 volume 22, issue 2 may 18, 2021 issn 1099-839x curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice: from the common to the exceptional alicia brianna saxe university of denver jodie l. wilson university of denver abstract: the unique capacity of aesthetic methods to provoke a variety of consequential educational outcomes has attracted considerable scholarship. less developed, however, is an exploration of teacher perspectives and implementation of six aesthetic themes of teaching: connections, risk, imagination, sensory, perceptual, active engagement (crispa). using an educational criticism and connoisseurship inquiry method, we asked two questions: 1) what are the intentions and practices of a high school teacher as he teaches english? 2) what are the intentions and practices of the same teacher as he teaches english incorporating crispa? we present an analysis that spotlights uncovered themes observed from applying crispa to teaching literature. we discuss the connection between crispa and the complementary curriculum; the capacity of crispa to enhance curriculum development and implementation; and add to literature that links aesthetics to social justice pedagogy. we include implications for educators seeking to enhance their practices. keywords: curriculum, aesthetics, social justice, complementary curriculum citation: saxe, a. b., & wilson, j. l. (2021). curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice: from the common to the exceptional. current issues in education, 22(2). retrieved from http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1963 accepted: month/day/year introduction in moments where the objectives of education are convoluted by standardization, corporate interests, and political polarization, it is essential that researchers and practitioners challenge highstakes and high-stress environments with pedagogical practices that honor educators’ present realities and promote deep engagement and learning. aesthetic approaches to education have been supported by a number of influential scholars who emphasized perceptive, creative, and sensorial aspects as vehicles for engaged learning experiences for both teachers and students (barone, 2000; http://cie.asu.edu/ojs/index.php/cieatasu/article/view/1963 saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 2 dewey, 1934; eisner, 1972, 2005, 2017; girod & wong, 2002; greene, 1988, 1995, 2001; huebner, 1962; meng & uhrmacher, 2017; moroye & uhrmacher, 2018; sinclair, 2009; uhrmacher, 2009; uhrmacher et al., 2016). less developed, however, is an exploration of the impact of aesthetically derived pedagogical approaches and their relationship to teacher beliefs and practices, particularly at the secondary level. one such pedagogical approach is a perceptual mode of teaching, which emphasizes the use of the senses as both a source of knowledge and more pragmatically as an aesthetically informed heuristic for lesson planning and teaching (uhrmacher et al., 2013). our study is concerned with the aesthetic themes—a research-based method of enacting a perceptual orientation to teaching (uhrmacher, 2009). we employed educational criticism and connoisseurship (eisner, 2017; uhrmacher et al., 2017), an arts-based approach grounded within the interpretive paradigm to explore and understand the impact of the intentional incorporation of six aesthetic themes on the curricular and instructional experiences of a high school english teacher. our research was designed to address the present gap in the extant literature regarding aesthetically-informed methods of teaching—specifically, how this pedagogical approach influences teacher beliefs and practices. to achieve these objectives, we asked two questions: 1) what are the intentions and practices of a secondary teacher as he teaches english, and 2) what are the intentions and practices of a teacher as he teaches english using the aesthetic themes? in this essay, we analyze and synthesize the role of six aesthetic themes in supporting a high school teacher’s personal beliefs and his intentions for his students. we conclude by outlining implications for educators and the larger field. approaches to education analyses of modes of teaching have historically focused on behavioristic (hunter, 2004; taba, 1962; taba, 1962; hunter, 2004; tyler, 1949), or more recently, constructivist (bruner, 1966, 1977; marzano et al., 2001; wiggins & mctighe, 2005) frameworks. rooted largely in john dewey’s (1934) ideas about art and experiences, aesthetic approaches to education have been theorized and implemented to invite innovative alternatives to traditional frameworks. dewey (1934) distinguishes ordinary experience from aesthetic experience, emphasizing incoherence, indistinction, and distraction in the former and unity, satisfaction, and completeness in the latter. more contemporary scholars have applied dewey’s ideas to aesthetic approaches in the classroom. for example, eisner (1994) expands on dewey’s emphasis of sensory stimulus, defending that “one of the major aims of education is the development of multiple forms of literacy,” which are fostered through, “a variety of forms of representation that humans use to represent the contents of their consciousness” (p. x). maxine greene (2001) describes aesthetic experience as “concerned about perception, sensation, imagination, and how they relate to knowing, understanding, and feeling about the world” (p. 5). conrad et al. (2015) portray aesthetic experience as “being fully present and riveted in the moment, when one’s senses are heightened, and when one might describe his or her experience as having been ‘consummated’ or fully complete” (p. 5). aesthetic approaches to education include the role of perception, imagination, and creativity—often via artistic means—in developing, implementing, and experiencing aesthetic curriculum and instruction for teachers and their students. several studies have specifically explored aesthetic teaching practices including the perceptual (uhrmacher et al., 2013), and deep aesthetic engagement (uhrmacher et al., 2016). other scholarship has applied qualities of aesthetic education within specific content areas such as science and math. as one example, mark girod and david wong (2002) explored aesthetic experience in a fourth-grade science classroom, emphasizing qualities of anticipation and saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 3 imagination. nathalie sinclair’s (2009) work called for a conception of aesthetic awareness in mathematics as a “connective force” (p. 45), arguing that “school mathematics offers few opportunities for the kind of mathematical inquiry described by dewey” (p. 52). mark faust (2001) conjoined literary theory with aesthetic education and argued that the experience of reading can be considered an ‘in-the-moment’ aesthetic process that has the potential for personal transformation for the reader. this scholarship, to which the present study aligns, provides evidence that aesthetic approaches to education can exist across a variety of conceptual and practical contexts. the impact of aesthetically designed curricula within the pragmatic realm of the secondary classroom, however, remains an area for further exploration. the aesthetic themes of education: crispa uhrmacher (2009) conceptualized a pragmatic approach to engaged learning distilled from both john dewey’s (1934) theories on art and aesthetic experience and from empirical research with teaching artists and educators at the aesthetic education institute of colorado. from this research, uhrmacher delineated six aesthetic themes, known by the acronym crispa, that educators and others may draw on to cultivate aesthetically engaged learning experiences: connections, risk-taking, imagination, sensory experience, perceptivity, and active engagement. uhrmacher maintained that although teachers seeking aesthetically engaged learning experiences for their students should strive to incorporate as many of the themes as possible, the core themes of connections, sensory experience, and active engagement are foundational. the first core theme, connections, is characterized by relationships between a person and their environment (uhrmacher, 2009). how people actively engage with ideas, literature, media, or other materials in a learning environment (conrad et al., 2015) can manifest through intellectual, emotional, sensorial, communicative (csikszentmihalyi & robinson, 1991), or social connections (conrad et al., 2015). teachers who can facilitate these various types of interactions encourage genuine and elongated engagement in the classroom. the second foundational element, sensory experience, refers to the use of one’s senses to experience an object or place. a sensory-rich learning environment fosters aesthetic experiences by inviting students to interact with and investigate subtle qualities in objects and places (conrad et al., 2015). active engagement, the third foundational element, necessitates student agency and active participation in the learning process (conrad et al., 2015). teachers who collaborate with students and integrate physical activity, choices, and/or personal meaning can cultivate a learning environment abundant in meaningful learning experiences. conrad et al. (2015) describe the concept of imagination in crispa as concerned with the manipulation of qualities or ideas: imagination may be intuitive, in which a person has a sudden insight; fanciful, in which a person combines unexpected elements such as with a dancing tree; interactive, in which a person works with materials to yield a product; or mimetic, in which a person mirrors or mimics the creative work of another. (p. 5) risk-taking refers to opportunities for students to engage in novelty—“a venture into the unknown” (uhrmacher, 2009, p. 624). research focused on risk-taking suggests that these experiences may increase students’ cognitive development, as well as their creativity, selfmotivation, and student interest in subject matter, such as science (uhrmacher & bunn, 2011). the next component, perceptivity, relates to sensory experiences in that a student develops a more nuanced understanding of an object’s particular qualities or context through their senses. saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 4 this involves closely examining subtle qualities that may normally go unnoticed in order to see or re-see for the sake of learning something new (conrad et al., 2015). creating an environment that invites students to remain open to new possibilities and “re-seeing” increases the potential for meaningful and aesthetically engaged learning experiences. in contemporary literature, scholars examining the aesthetic themes have theoretically and practically associated this approach with curriculum disruption (conrad et al., 2015), ecological educational experience (moroye & uhrmacher, 2018), perceptual lesson planning (uhrmacher, et al., 2013), and a tool to analyze chinese pedagogical methods such as chan teaching (meng & uhrmacher, 2014, 2017). emphasizing that aesthetic experiences are fundamentally sensorial, connective, and engaging, and that incorporating the aesthetic themes can engender enlivened classroom experiences, uhrmacher (2009) noted several potential outcomes of aesthetically engaged learning: an increase in student satisfaction and joy, long-term memory, perceptual knowledge, and personal creativity and meaning-making. this study aims to extend previous research on aesthetically oriented modes of teaching through an analysis of a teacher’s pedagogical choices and actions, both with and without the incorporation of aesthetic themes, in his lesson planning and classroom teaching. methods our study pursued two questions: 1) what are the intentions and practices of a secondary teacher as he teaches english? 2) what are the intentions and practices of a teacher as he teaches english using the aesthetic themes? to answer our research questions, we employed educational criticism and connoisseurship (eisner, 2017), an empirical, qualitative approach derived from the interpretive paradigm (guba & lincoln, 1994). similar to other qualitative approaches, educational connoisseurship and criticism seeks to discern and express the nuanced meanings of the educational situation through thick description (geertz, 1973) and critical analysis of patterns derived from multiple lines of evidence, including in-depth observation, interviews, and artifacts. although connoisseurship implies a certain degree of skilled knowledge, in this particular sense, it also speaks to the ability of the researcher, or critic, to seek and attend to the often subtle and unexpected qualities of the educational environment, including curriculum, pedagogy, and/or structure. while connoisseurship denotes the appreciation of qualities, criticism aims to disclose those qualities in a public form (eisner, 2017). widely aligned with aesthetics and the arts (conrad et al., 2015), the structure of educational criticism and connoisseurship is organized according to four interrelated elements: description, interpretation, evaluation, and thematics. the goal of description is to portray a vivid account that will “enable readers to get a feel for the place or process and, where possible and appropriate, for the experience of those who occupy the situation” (eisner, 2017, p. 89). interpretation involves explicating description by illuminating meaning, exploring consequences, and providing a discussion of the reasons for educational events. in short, description and interpretation within an educational criticism work simultaneously to enable vicarious participation (uhrmacher et al., 2017). evaluation accounts for the major function of educational connoisseurship and criticism—to improve the process of education (eisner, 2002)— by providing a vital link between interpretation and appraising the educational significance of the saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 5 specific educational context being studied (eisner, 2017). thematics allows for the generalization of findings that may extend beyond immediate settings and participants: educational critics provide the reader with an understanding of the major themes that run through the educational matters being studied. in turn, these themes provide the reader with ideas or guides for anticipating what may be found in other places. (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 3) taken together, the dimensions of description, interpretation, evaluation, and thematics enable the educational critic to “focus on the perception of qualities, interpreting their significance, and appraising their value, all toward educational ends. in short, the educational critic helps others see and understand what may otherwise go unnoticed” (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 22). theoretical framework we paired the methods from educational criticism and connoisseurship with the theoretical lens of the instructional arc (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 25). the instructional arc delineates three aspects of the curriculum: the intended (the planned for and anticipated); the operational (what actually happens), and the received (what students “take away” or experience). the instructional arc informed the entirety of the study from inception to analysis. site of study and participants participants included mr. marlin, a thirty-one-year-old white male high school english teacher, and his seventeen 12th-grade students from his advanced placement1 (ap) english literature course at an urban, independent high school in the western united states. in addition to observing mr. marlin’s students, we collected survey data from eight students and conducted an in-depth, semi-structured interview with one student. however, these data are limited and are beyond the scope of this particular article. mr. marlin was selected to participate in this study due to his prior training and experience using the aesthetic themes. in particular, we were interested in the intended and operational (uhrmacher et al., 2017, p. 25) aspects of the curriculum—what is planned by the teacher as well as what is actually enacted in the classroom. informed consent was secured from all participants. our role as researchers was informed by several perspectives. although both researchers had prior familiarity with the aesthetic themes, we were not acquainted with the teacher participant prior to the study. further, our perspectives as public and private school educators with over 15 years of combined teaching experience were managed to the extent possible so as not to interfere with the objectives of the study. finally, we engaged our reflexivity throughout data collection and analysis through written personal introspections and several mutual debriefing sessions (finlay, 2002). research design we investigated mr. marlin’s intended and operational curricula over four weeks through three data sources: interviews, in-person classroom observations, and artifacts. we began by 1 the advanced placement program offers 37 high school courses across 22 subject areas, which are standardized by an end-of-year exam. the exam is scored on a scale of 1–5 with many us colleges and universities awarding course credit for scores above 3 and often acknowledging students who have done ap coursework as having pursued greater academic challenges (schneider, 2009). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 6 interviewing mr. marlin before he taught a unit—a novel study of the grapes of wrath by john steinbeck—seeking to reveal answers to our first research question regarding his intentions and practices. during this initial interview, we asked the following questions: what are your intentions for your students? what personal beliefs, if any, play a role in these intentions? do your personal beliefs affect your practice? if so, in what ways? do you make your intentions clear to your students? if so, how do they respond? to answer our second research question, we intensively observed mr. marlin teach the ap english curriculum for approximately four weeks, both in tandem and separately, using the same observation protocol. this protocol (see appendix) was specifically designed to capture the various elements of the aesthetic themes, the quality and form of the content being taught, the incentives employed by mr. marlin, and the quality and form of student engagement. during the first two-week observation period, mr. marlin taught a traditional ap english literature curriculum, and during the second period, he intentionally incorporated the aesthetic themes into his lesson planning and teaching. we conducted a concluding interview with mr. marlin where we asked him to reflect on his experiences both with and without the intentional incorporation of the aesthetic themes through the following questions: please tell me about your experience planning and teaching using the aesthetic themes (crispa). in what ways, if any, did crispa influence your intentions and practices? what metaphor would capture your crispa-influenced vs. non-crispainfluenced lesson planning? we collected observational and survey data from eight students and interview data from one of those eight students in an effort to investigate the received curriculum, however those data are addressed in a separate article. consistent with a qualitative paradigm, observational and interview data were iteratively analyzed for emergent themes throughout the process of data collection and analysis. consistent with educational criticism and connoisseurship methods for analysis, data were initially annotated (an arts-based perspective analogous to ‘coded;’ see uhrmacher et al., 2017) for emergent themes independently by each researcher and subsequently in tandem for consensus. our overall strategy was to analyze these data holistically, with an eye toward emergent relationships grounded in the data that perceptively illuminated relevant features within this particular context (uhrmacher, moroye, & flinders, 2017). these emergent relationships and subt le qualities were advanced toward thematic categories and frameworks which served to inform our interpretations and evaluations. additionally, we employed member-reflecting (tracy, 2010) during our concluding interview with mr. marlin, which is defined as “sharing and dialoguing with participants about the study’s findings and providing opportunities for questions, critique, feedback, affirmation, and even collaboration” (p. 844). findings the primary objective of this study was to gain a deeper understanding of one teacher’s intentions and practices with a specific interest in the potential impact of six aesthetic themes (crispa) on his curriculum and instruction. three salient findings emerged from our interpretive analysis of mr. marlin’s intentions and practices, both as he taught using a more traditional saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 7 pedagogical approach and also by implementing crispa. first, mr. marlin possesses profound beliefs in developing his students’ orientations towards social justice and he views literature as the vehicle through which he can accomplish this. second, due to these personal beliefs, professional tensions exist as mr. marlin encounters obligations to teach through more traditional methods that do not explicitly emphasize social justice. third, incorporating the crispa elements appears to enhance the pedagogical expression of mr. marlin’s embedded social justice beliefs. in the following section, we contextualize these findings by narrating descriptive vignettes of mr. marlin’s beliefs and classroom practices. we then synthesize how incorporating the six aesthetic themes enhanced mr. marlin’s curricular and pedagogical strategies. we conclude with the contributions of our research to the larger field, including key points of departure for educators who desire to explicitly surface more meaningful aspects of their own beliefs and classroom practices through the incorporation of the aesthetic themes. prioritizing social justice if you’re going to read literature, it should have a purpose toward ends that you believe in, and justice and social justice are ends that i want to bring about to my students. i think the big question of the course is what power does literature have? what can it do for us in our lives that is relevant to helping us think about the world today? (mr. marlin) as part of the specific design for this inquiry, mr. marlin adopted two different pedagogical approaches: a traditional program guided by the a priori objectives of the ap literature curriculum and a more aesthetically centered approach informed by the six elements of crispa. our interview and observational data of the different approaches revealed evidence of a seemingly inextricable intent to infuse themes of social justice into the ap format. in terms of the intentional curriculum, the quote at the beginning of this section demonstrates mr. marlin’s priority of embedding social justice themes into his literature curriculum to help his students “think about the world today.” he makes content choices that differ from his colleagues with the “purpose toward ends” that he believes in, contending later that conventional ap english curriculum often fails to emphasize “bigger more important questions” which has the potential to damage students’ sense of satisfaction by “dissecting every line and word and phrase.” he chose literary works as “vehicles” that can both address structural inequalities and create opportunities for students to “apply [them] to their own lives.” while mr. marlin emphasizes social justice themes in his intentional curriculum, he concurrently acknowledges the importance of preparing the students to succeed on the ap exam and expressed sincere intentions to do so. he spoke about different techniques he would employ, many of which he learned by attending a national ap “boot camp” for ap literature teachers. he included spotts literary analysis, poetry analysis, and even a review of previously submitted ap essays in his lesson plans. these lessons, along with his participation in the extensive training, demonstrate an intention and commitment to guide the students to succeed on the ap exam. beyond the intentional curriculum, mr. marlin’s operational curriculum—what we observed in the classroom—aligned with his intentions to prepare students for successful performance on the end-of-year ap exam. however, mr. marlin found ways to simultaneously prioritize themes of social justice as he implemented his daily lessons. the scenario below portrays mr. marlin’s multitasking style, where he ensures that the students are engaging in an analysis of literary symbolism, while also attending to his social justice priorities. saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 8 “how do these characters interact with the world?” mr. marlin asks the class as he paces alongside the brick walls in the back of the room. “what does this say about steinbeck’s view of women?” the space fills with examples, anecdotes, and brave statements shared between peers regarding the depiction of women in the text. one student imitates her grandmother; shaking her index finger, “…it’s like we need two strong men around here!” a male classmate shares his perception with a different group, “the man here is incredibly stereotypical, don’t you think?” “what is the symbolism of the chrysanthemums?” mr. marlin poses after bringing the discussion back to the whole group. youthful voices embark on a short, fluid discussion of femininity, societal expectations, and gender roles. what does this story and our novel say about steinbeck? was he a feminist? conservative? how do you know? mr. marlin looks at the clock and abruptly shifts to reminding the class about upcoming assignments while the students rustle with their belongings and head out the door. mr. marlin made curricular choices and actions, such as reading chrysanthemums—a short story by steinbeck with deep symbolism regarding femininity and a woman’s identity—to explore the literary concept of symbolism. hence, while students “dissected” the text, they also engaged with social justice topics. personal tensions and professional diversions mr. marlin’s creed imbues his intentional and operational curricula with social justice, although not without a sense of conflict. although he is acutely sensitive to the fact that he must prepare his students for the ap exam in the spring, he worries about the more lasting implications of their learning experiences: mr. marlin elucidates conflicts around his implementation of the ap curricula and reveals that infusing justice themes into his lessons offers a way to navigate and resolve these tensions. “it’s a conflict that i’ve not had to negotiate previously… do we talk about choices that authors make with respect to syntax or symbolism? yeah, but they’re secondary, i would argue, significantly, to the larger themes that we’re trying to get at.” the following vignette depicts his seamless negotiation of ap needs and social justice priorities in his operational curriculum. ‘what is the role of the individual in confronting injustice?’ is written in maroon on the long whiteboard that stretches the entire width of the room. seventeen students sit at long wooden tables arranged in a large rectangle, heads peeking over the top of their macbooks, their spiral notebooks open, hands furiously writing. mr. marlin darts toward the board and draws three vertical lines down the front, separating it into sections. he calls for volunteers. one group of students congregates near the whiteboard while a second group moves to the hall to work on two additional whiteboards that are screwed into the burnt green wall. temporarily distanced from the sensitive ears of mr. marlin, a tall, brownhaired boy quips sarcastically: “the injustice was that this book was 450 pages.” a few students giggle but refocus quickly. with dry-erase markers in hand, students quickly begin answering the question by drawing out their ideas on the role of the individual in confronting injustice. one student draws stick figures with dialogue bubbles while another watches. another group is carefully drawing arrows connecting large boxes. after fifteen minutes, students are reconvened in the saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 9 classroom and mr. marlin asks them to reflect on and share their drawings with the rest of the class. “the role of the individual is to create power for the masses,” a girl responds astutely, pointing to the drawing in front of her. “one thing i noticed in all of our drawings is that they’re showing action, and i think that’s something we need more of,” gestures a boy with shaggy black hair. a tall boy in a grey hoodie resolutely declares, “i don’t think at this time we can have any faith in our elected leaders. it’s up to us.” another girl chimes in: “i personally have faith that our government is founded on principles we all can believe in. if we come together and protest or write letters, we can create change.” mr. marlin deftly moves to turn on the projector where “the phalanx theory” is showing on a slide. he elaborates on notions of groupthink as a student interjects her thoughts on the women’s march and other rallies happening across the nation. “how do we see this play out in the grapes of wrath?” mr. marlin asks. “here’s a counter to the phalanx theory,” he says, intensely darting behind the rectangular tables as he distributes excerpted copies of steinbeck’s the vigilante. the scene depicts the class in action, using different modes of expression (drawing, writing, talking) to communicate their ideas regarding a theme from their novel study. the students are able to connect the novel to their lives and the current context, and then they artistically link those connections back to another piece of writing. their abilities to analyze the texts in profound ways is evident, all the while they are grappling with large themes pervading the world around them. after observations were completed, mr. marlin confirmed his belief in the centrality of social justice in the curriculum. he describes his responsibility to teach through a lens of social justice in order to “...help students understand their place in the world and their privilege in the world and how it relates to their identity— race, wealth, and gender." beyond pedagogical choices, it appears that mr. marlin possesses a sense of moral and social obligation that resides at the core of his perspective about what is needed to make the world a better place. the conflict he experiences may never be completely resolved, but by diverging from the ap curriculum just enough, mr. marlin tries to meet the expectations of the students, who want to pass the ap exam, while simultaneously developing knowledge and skills around large issues of justice that they are bound to encounter long after the national exam in the spring. apples and cherries: the fruit of aesthetics during our investigation of mr. marlin’s intended and operational curricula, we observed his acute beliefs in social justice come alive. unexpectedly, we witnessed an intensified manifestation of these beliefs when he deliberately incorporated crispa into his lessons, as compared to when he was teaching with a more didactic and heavily prescribed ap curriculum. the vignette below depicts an intricate entanglement of crispa and social justice within the operational curriculum: students trickle into the classroom on a glorious fall morning, sunshine gleaming through the south-facing windows, illuminating the time-worn grains of the heavy wooden tables. “did you get a haircut marl?” asks a tall dark-haired girl after noticing the recent trimming. “is that crispa?” she teases. mr. marlin and the saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 10 other students break out in laughter in response to her cleverness. he composes himself and instructs the class. “please write the five senses in your notebooks and then circle one of them.” the students write swiftly in their spiral notebooks. mr. marlin takes four bright green apples and one equally vibrant green pear out of a brown paper sack and places them on the rectangular table in front of him. he asks the students who circled taste and smell to close their eyes. “if you chose sight, describe what you see with as much detail as you can.” the students with their eyes closed suppress giggles as they explore the items with the sense they selected. mr. marlin asks students to describe their experiences through the sense they have chosen. “what did you see? who got to eat? what did you hear?” he jots their comments on the whiteboard and then directs them to open their books to page 340 of grapes of wrath. “so... we’ve just continued this scene,” mr. marlin says. “i want you to look at all the sensory detail steinbeck provides. which senses are coming to life? how do authors create meaning?” two boys sitting side-by-side identify “the scent of decay” and eagerly take note of it. a few minutes pass before mr. marlin asks, “do we have any examples?” a student directs us to a passage describing fruit and furthers the classroom dialogue regarding the power of sensory details to foreshadow an underlying feeling of despair that all of the fruits are going to rot. the class calmly transitions into a daily routine of following along as one student summarizes the previous night’s reading assignment. as part of the task, the student is expected to send mr. marlin some sort of connection they made to that chapter. the students demonstrate creativity with this task, often presenting newspaper articles, historical pictures, or popular songs. this morning an image of beautifully ripe, red cherries is projected on the whiteboard as the student narrates the report of farmers dumping out over 30 million pounds of ripe cherries. surprised, the students begin debating the rationale of these actions and attempt to make sense of the situation, which mr. marlin seamlessly connects with another digital article. this one reports how a popular clothing brand instructed employees to tear holes in and throw out clothing that was not sold. “why would anyone do this?” mr. marlin asks. the discussion on literary uses of senses effortlessly transforms into a heated examination of the morality of wasting products for profit. “it’s just greedy,” remarks one student. “they’re just protecting their company,” replies another. “would you have given away the cherries?” mr. marlin poses to the class. an array of fervent standpoints zooms around the room, ranging from a business owner mindset to an altruistic stance of giving to those in need regardless of profits. in this example, mr. marlin leverages the six aesthetic themes of crispa— connections, risk, sensory experience, perceptivity, active engagement, and imagination— to propel his students to think differently about objects they are familiar with in order to flavor the recognizable with a sense of freshness. first, he orchestrates a sensory experience with the apples and pear that enables students to attend to more subtle qualities of the familiar fruits and enhance their perception of these familiar fruits in a new way. next, he connects these experiences directly to the text, prompting students to invoke their imaginations to engender new meanings from steinbeck’s intentions. finally, mr. marlin creates conditions for active engagement by encouraging his saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 11 students as they delve into an ethics-centered debate of industrial food and material waste practices. by inviting students to use their senses to understand literary content, mr. marlin creates aesthetically derived conditions that enable them to explore critical perspectives in ways they had not considered previously. mr. marlin later admitted that he was a bit nervous about this lesson, as he had never incorporated this particular experience for his students. likewise, the students also appeared skeptical in the beginning, suggesting that both the teacher and the students took risks in engaging in this experience. the lesson concluded with meaningful conversations that represented students’ complex contemplations surrounding sensory experiences, literature, and ethical industrial practices. crispa afforded mr. marlin the opportunity to create a dynamic learning experience that successfully attended to more traditional ap literature objectives while also amplifying his belief in the importance of teaching for social justice. the final assignment for the class is a further example of the intensified expression of his commitment to social justice. designed with the crispa elements in mind, mr. marlin asked the students to represent their learnings and takeaways from the novel study through any mode they wish. this kind of freedom on a task that is more commonly assigned as an essay involves students being able to connect with the text on a level of their choosing; take risks to express their learning (considering the unconventional format); apply their imaginative capacities to work with mediums other than essay-writing; engage their senses through artistic expression; spark nuanced thoughts through creative expression; and actively engage with the text in a new way. mr. marlin’s complementary social justice curriculum manifested itself throughout his intentional and operational curricula—what he planned to teach and what he actually taught. interview data illustrate his profound beliefs around social justice and concomitantly illuminate tensions mr. marlin experiences when emphasizing the ap curriculum rather than prioritizing themes of social justice. additionally, we witnessed a dance between the ap curriculum, themes of social justice, and crispa as mr. marlin waltzed through the mechanics of ap objectives while seamlessly twisting and spinning in lessons on justice and aesthetic experiences using crispa to choreograph the traditional and personal priorities of his curricular ballroom. discussion in this study, we ventured into the nuances of a teacher’s practice to expand what is known about six aesthetic themes of education and their potential to enhance the meaningfulness and vibrancy of teaching and learning. our analysis provides us with three prominent points of discussion. first, in support of previous research on the complementary curriculum (moroye, 2009), teacher beliefs play a significant role in what and how they teach. second, for educators teaching a heavily prescribed curriculum such as ap, crispa offers an alternative way to not only adhere to the former with fidelity, but to elevate the curriculum for themselves and their students. third, our data aligns with scholarship connecting aesthetic modes with various objectives in social justice education, and bolsters potentiality to foster empathy and critical thinking through crispa. we elaborate on each of these points below. complementary curriculum moroye (2009) delineates the concept of the complementary curriculum as the manifestation of an educator’s deeply held convictions, representing “the kind of experiences teachers provide for students, as well as in the ‘pedagogical premises and practices’ that result from the teacher’s beliefs” (p. 791). the complementary curriculum directly and indirectly saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 12 influences the way teachers approach their practice, often revealing aspects central to their identity. drawing from the work of parker palmer (2007), who argues that integrity is integral to a teacher’s selfhood and, therefore resides at the core of a teacher’s greatness, moroye (2009) notes that the complementary curriculum can be viewed as the “manifestation of a teacher’s wholeness or completeness of his or her integrity” (p. 805). as previously described and illustrated through the vignettes in our findings section, we observed the expression of mr. marlin’s complementary social justice curriculum across his intentional and operational curricula as well as augmented representations when realized through the six themes of crispa. social justice is integral to mr. marlin's identity and beliefs and this complementary social justice curriculum is explicitly woven into his pedagogical choices, both in his selection of literature, prose, poetry, and other texts as well as in the choices he makes in structuring learning experiences for his students. commenting on another teacher’s literature selection, he states, “it’s not my comfort level and i don’t think that it gets at some of the different, bigger themes that i’m hoping to get at.” he reiterates the need for his teaching to connect students with relevant issues related to justice, ethics, and morals. in addition to curricular and instructional manifestations, mr. marlin’s complementary social justice curriculum further materializes through his relationships and classroom management style. two principal elements in the social justice literature involve fostering an environment for the development of liberatory thinking and actions (carlisle et al., 2006) and building relationships of trust and reciprocity by listening to concerns and taking them seriously as part of a social justice agenda (gorski, 2013). in mr. marlin’s classroom, this takes the form of an open seating chart, no hall passes, loud and improvised large-group discussions, and grade contracts. as students arrive, they sit with friends and continue conversations until he makes a request for class to begin. we observed several students get up and leave the classroom and then return a short time later, all without any conversation or acknowledgment between teacher and student. mr. marlin creates grade contracts with each student, where each course begins with students signing an agreement for the grade they want based on predetermined measures of attendance, participation, and work quality. the students then receive a grade based on how well they fulfilled their contract. these pedagogical choices highlight mr. marlin’s commitment to socially-just learning experiences, which align and complement his intended and operational curricula. moroye (2009) found that when teacher beliefs reside within ecological perspectives, they will naturally bring those unique perspectives to bear on the curriculum, in both subtle and overt ways, regardless of the content focus of the class. moroye contends that the complementary curriculum may also be applied to other teacher beliefs and perspectives, including the arts or social and emotional learning. understanding one’s own complementary curriculum and applying it to their practice may offer educators a way to teach more authentically across curricular obligations. crispa as a curricular amplification a second discussion point from our analysis revolves around the opportunity crispa may provide to educators who seek to enhance their curriculum. our data suggest that crispa offered mr. marlin a mechanism through which he was able to enrich his intentional, operational, and complementary curricula. the intentional curriculum is what a teacher plans to do, therefore lesson planning can help reveal the intentional curriculum. a previous study of the impact of crispa on lesson planning found that crispa provided teachers with a means to “rethink the aims and processes of lesson planning itself.... a transformational tool that shifts lesson planning from writing down a linear saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 13 sequence of state-approved lessons, to a process that inspires teachers in their teaching (conrad et al., 2015, p. 14). when we asked mr. marlin to compare his two different approaches to lesson planning, both with and without crispa, he explained: the non-crispa teaching—getting definitions of various poetry and writing in a prescriptive way for the ap and things along those lines—the skills that are needed—it almost feels like a really simple rhythmic song, just like clapping. we just have to do this, and we just have to stay on pace and beat. as long as we hit all of the right notes, then it may not sound amazing, but it's gonna sound good enough to get by. teaching with crispa is like jazz music… you never know where it's gonna go. there are so many different possibilities with it. it’s an ensemble, there’s lots of different sounds, and plays, and unexpected turns and it’s not objectivebased, there's these—you know the eisner idea of expressive outcomes—it can have such an important influence and it can change mood, it can bring people to— i really like jazz music, so maybe that's why i am thinking about it that way, but it's not boring, it activates and makes you want to hear more. his analogy demonstrates that applying crispa to lesson planning (e.g., the intentional curriculum) has the potential to transform the process, supporting conrad et al.’s (2015) assertion of crispa as a transformational tool within the intentional curriculum. crispa also had an aggrandizing impact on mr. marlin’s operational curriculum. greene (1980) explains the holistic nature of aesthetic education as, “integral to the development of persons—to their cognitive, perceptual, emotional, and imaginative development. we see it as part of the human effort (and so often forgotten today) to seek greater coherence in the world” (p. 7). in this sense, she promotes aesthetic modes as a means to attend to a multitude of learning objectives. in our vignette, apples and cherries: the fruit of aesthetics, we witness a sensory experience providing the means to explore, fruit, literature, and justice simultaneously in what developed into a critical analysis of real-world social issues. we observed mr. marlin’s efforts to “seek coherence” in his intentional and operational curricula by not only infusing social justice, but by enhancing social justice ideals through the six themes of crispa. further, we defend that mr. marlin’s integration of crispa not only enhanced his operational curricula, but simultaneously brought to life his complementary curricula. as witnessed in the same example, mr. marlin used crispa to intertwine ap and social justice. this discussion is aimed toward educators who teach a prescriptive curriculum such as ap, with a resource that could exhilarate the more rigid program without diminishing the learning outcomes. we expand on this notion in the subsequent section. aesthetics and social justice while we maintain that crispa has the potential to amplify the articulation of various curricula, our research supports previous literature that underscores the specific capacity of aesthetic methods to catalyze learning in social justice education. sleeter (2014) synthesizes recent social justice education literature, extracting from it four common dimensions. social justice education: 1) situates families and communities within an analysis of structural inequities; 2) develops relationships of reciprocity from student to community; 3) teaches to high expectations by building on students’ backgrounds; and 4) develops and implements an inclusive curriculum that integrates marginalized perspectives and addresses themes of inequity and power (sleeter, 2014). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 14 maxine greene (1980) advocated for aesthetic education experiences that urge for the development of “more active sensibility and awareness in our students” (p. 8). her extensive scholarship demonstrates that aesthetic methods can empower students to know and understand enough to make sound choices through critical judgments, imaginative projections, and transformative actions. these fundamental skills provide pathways for students to develop empathy and compassion through “the capacity to see through another’s eyes, to grasp the world as it works and sounds and feels from the vantage point of another” (greene, 1995, p. 102). young (2019) draws from the work of greene (1995) and other curricular giants (see tom barone, 2000; wolgang iser, 1978; pinar et al., 1995) and her own experiences to argue that aesthetic curriculum methods evoke the senses. she defends: ...that by evoking the senses learners are also evoking the imagination, which in turn evokes an empathetic emotion toward others. by empathizing with others, learners may move toward social change or at least begin to conceptualize a theory and practice of social change because the senses enable learners to experience (even if only briefly) a different perspective and begin to act on their empathy. (p. 46) other research examined urban english language arts teachers and found that integration of aesthetic theories and methods of education in the curriculum provided opportunities for teachers to explore critical perspectives and issues of social justice and democracy within a neoliberal, test-based accountability educational system (costigan, 2013). this literature suggests that aesthetic approaches to education can facilitate social justice education goals as put forth by sleeter (2014). our data corroborate the work of greene (1995), costigan (2013), and young (2019) as we observed mr. marlin’s deep-seated beliefs in teaching for social justice reflect the four dimensions of social justice education that sleeter (2014) outlines. for example, he expressed his sense of responsibility to teach through this lens in order to “...help students understand their place in the world and their privilege in the world and how it relates to their identity—race, wealth, and gender.” it became clear that mr. marlin’s beliefs in social justice materialize in his intentional curriculum. he explained, [the grapes of wrath] has these chapters that are just narrative… they’re highlighting symbols or motifs. those sorts of things are what i’ll want to highlight. additionally, some big essential questions. this is a book that’s really about justice and how does an individual judge right from wrong? the cross-sections of social justice and aesthetics in mr. marlin’s curricular choices and actions are evident and we propose that expanding teacher capacities to connect social justice themes through aesthetic learning experiences may provide teachers with guidance to foster the skills and knowledge endorsed by both lines of study. implications we defend that our research has implications that extend across various contexts and stakeholders in education. first, gaining a deeper understanding of one’s complementary curriculum can elucidate the relationship between beliefs and practices (moroye, 2009). this awareness paired with the intentional implementation of crispa can allow teachers to better integrate their complementary curriculum to connect their selfhood to their teaching. while we don’t have evidence that crispa is a conduit for any or all complementary curricula, teachers saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 15 wishing to coalesce their complementary curriculum (whether that be social justice, spirituality, peace education, tolerance, environmentalism/conservation, etc.) into their daily pedagogical practice should consider crispa as a viable prospect. for instance, a science teacher with a complementary spirituality curriculum could integrate audio clips of different heartbeats during an anatomy lesson and ask students to engage with different mediums as they explain what they learn about the heart from hearing it. a math teacher with a complementary tolerance curriculum could apply native american basket-weaving techniques to their geometry lessons and encourage students to empathize with teachings from different cultures through mathematics. in this way, the aesthetic themes can invigorate a teacher’s complementary curriculum to encourage more meaningful teaching and learning. in a similar vein, our data aligns with the scholarship that links the power of aesthetic modes to meet various objectives in social justice education and reinforces the potentiality to foster empathy and critical thinking through crispa. as barone (2000) notes: “success in leading students out from where they are requires that the teacher offer stories or suggest other aesthetic projects that first speak to students in their present locations” (p. 130). just as mr. marlin demonstrated, educators can use personal, political, and historical stories, along with aesthetically designed assignments and projects to connect with students’ own narratives to lead them “out from where they are” and create the conditions to foster empathy. finally, as part of the current high-stakes environment, teachers frequently use (or are forced to use) curriculum giants such as common core and ap to inform and/or dictate their teaching. regardless of one’s stance on these standardized approaches, there are data suggesting that many teachers value the arts and wish to incorporate alternative, arts-based pedagogical practices (gulla, 2009; pinhasi-vittorio & vernola, 2013). aesthetics, and crispa specifically, offer a vehicle to enhance lesson planning, learning experiences, and a teacher’s deeply held beliefs. overall, crispa is not presented here as an alternative to the varying curricula the teachers engage with, but rather a mechanism through which they can expand, heighten, and enliven the curricular experience from beginning to end. future research this study offers further evidence and ideas about aesthetic modes of teaching; however, it looks very specifically at one teacher and one classroom. further research should involve formal and informal educational contexts across regions, demographics, and content areas. a second area to investigate involves the third component of the instructional arc: the received curriculum or what the students experience. while we collected data on student perspectives and experiences with crispa, that analysis goes beyond the scope of this particular article. future research must investigate youth perspectives and the impact of crispa, and other perceptual modes of teaching on p-16 students. finally, a deeper dive into aesthetic modes and social justice pedagogy could offer educators tangible tools to creatively foster empathy and attend to real world issues, regardless of their course content. conclusion research on pedagogical practices that emphasize the human experience is more needed than ever. much of the contemporary research effort contributes to the high-stakes system that prioritizes large sample sizes and (over)generalizations to further prescriptive practices. these meta investigations largely fail to encapsulate the vehicles available for teachers that humanize and inspire teaching and learning that “activates and makes you want to hear more.” saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 16 by intentionally incorporating crispa, teachers may explicitly connect how their deeply held beliefs—their complementary curriculum—are infused into their pedagogy. thus, we maintain that teacher identity and integrity may be enhanced through implementing crispa. additionally, for teachers who take seriously the important work of educating for justice, crispa provides teachers a means to not only facilitate such priorities but also as an entry point to overlay prescriptive curriculum with personal beliefs and values to invigorate the lesson planning experience. last, while we seek to preserve the fidelity of moroye’s (2009) original definition of the complementary curriculum, we also wish to provide shading that might illuminate another contour of the term. we offer a concomitant way to conceptualize the complementary curriculum as not only an expression of a teacher’s embedded beliefs, also as an empowering force that ripens deeply held passions brought to bear in the classroom. references barone, t. 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(2005). understanding by design. ascd. young, k. (2019). exploring a curricula of visual and poetic aesthetics. canadian review of art education: research & issues, 46(1). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 19 appendix observation protocol date: classroom: school site: duration: dimensions of educational connoisseurship & criticism description interpretation evaluation thematics open observations (e.g., wide-angle, multi-sensory, single-sensory, episodic, lens-specific, visual2) instructional arc intended operational received crispa: aesthetic themes connections risk-taking imagination sensory experience perceptivity active engagement quality of the content quality and forms of student engagement forms of representation incentives employed 2 adapted from uhrmacher, p. b., moroye, c. m., & flinders, d. j. (2017). saxe & wilson: curriculum, aesthetics, and social justice current issues in education, 22(2) 20 author notes alicia brianna saxe university of denver aliciasaxe7@gmail.com https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0526-311x jodie l. wilson university of denver https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5550-0166 more details of this creative commons license are available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/. current issues in education is published by the mary lou fulton institute and graduate school of education at arizona state university. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ here we are, amazingly alive in the work international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 1 “here we are, amazingly alive”: holding ourselves together with an ethic of social justice in community work cathy richardson and vikki reynolds abstract: in this paper, the authors describe their orientation to social justice based community work. the tenets of this work include: an ethical orientation towards staying alive in the work, descriptions of social justice, engaging with a hopeful skepticism, responding to privatized pain with justice-doing, and contesting the individualism of “burnout”. this is followed by reflections on the role of solidarity, the sacred, revolutionary love, resistance, and an ethic of belonging in the commitments to staying fully alive in community work. the authors discuss the importance of forging communities of care with other practitioners through shared and collectively held ethics. keywords: solidarity, sustainability, resisting burnout, social justice, belonging, ethics acknowledgements: as bud osborn says, “no human being accomplishes anything alone” (1999, p. v). we acknowledge the profound contributions of people we work alongside, who are amazingly alive, and who are struggling to stay alive amazingly. we are grateful to the anonymous reviewer who provided such an insightful and generative critique. we also thank susan illvitsky for her energy and assistance in structuring the paper, and erica jacquet for her assistance with editing and submission. andrew larcombe, jennifer white, and charleswaldegrave offered insightful critique which improved and expanded the usefulness of this writing. thanks to ga ching kong and jeff smith for their accounts of belonging and for their spirited ongoing solidarity. cathy (kianewesquao) richardson, ph.d. is a metis family therapist, activist, researcher, and associate professor at the university of victoria school of social work, 3800 finnerty road, victoria, bc, canada, v8e 2y2. e-mail: cathyr@uvic.ca. vikki reynolds, ph.d., rcc is a consultant, supervisor, activist, and instructor with the vancouver school of narrative therapy, vancouver, bc, canada. e-mail: vr@vikkireynolds.ca mailto:cathyr@uvic.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 2 “so here we are amazingly alive, against long odds and left for dead” (bud osborn, vancouver downtown eastside poet/activist, 1999, p. 9) joe, a first nations elder with shaggy hair and an uncertain smile, shows up at my counselling office and i almost fall off my chair. outreach workers have been looking for him because his health is so risky, he’s homeless again, and he hasn’t checked in with his parole officer. everyone is concerned for his life. we are beginning to suspect that he is either dead or in jail. i say, “joe! how are you?” he catches me up on the hell he has crawled through. i ask him to teach me how he “crawled through hell.” he says, “julie, a worker at detox, kept me alive.” joe says he puked on her twice and she just kept cleaning him up. when he was thinking of leaving detox, she followed him to the door telling him she would miss him. he was “nicing out” and she found him a cigarette. he said he was rude to her and she refused to take it personally, and told him she knew he could be more respectful. i said, “that is amazing, have you told her that? let’s call her!” we call detox and actually get julie on the speakerphone. i say, “julie, joe is here and he’s just told me that you are a reason he is still alive.” julie cuts me off excitedly, “joe is alive?” she is amazed. i say, “yeah, yeah, he is right here and he says that you are a reason he is alive.” in a shaky voice, joe says, “she remembers me?” julie responds, “of course i remember you joe, you puked on me twice!” i ask julie what it means to her that joe is saying that she is a reason that he is alive. she responds, “man, i can go to work for five years on this!” i ask joe what it means to know that he is going to help julie go to work for the next five years. in a dignified voice joe says, “maybe i’ll help her keep a couple more guys alive.” i staying amazingly alive in community work over the long haul requires a rich engagement with our collective ethics and spirited relations of solidarity. we will start with an orientation of accountability to the indigenous people whose territories we stand on. we will describe our orientation to our social justice-based community work which includes: our ethical orientation towards staying alive in the work, descriptions of social justice, engaging with a hopeful skepticism, responding to privatized pain with justice-doing, and contesting the individualism of “burnout”. we will reflect on the role of solidarity, the sacred, revolutionary love, resistance, and an ethic of belonging in our commitments to staying fully alive in our work. while we are writing collaboratively, at times we will speak as ourselves, cathy or vikki, in order to locate ourselves culturally and to resist conflating our important differences. we will use international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 3 a different font from our collaborative writing to indicate that we are speaking individually, and will begin these pieces with a name in parenthesis to identify which of us is speaking. starting where we stand, on joe’s land we stand on land soaked in the blood of an unreconciled genocide that occurred on unceded indigenous land. part of the history of colonization in canada has been the euphemistically called residential schools. former federal minister duncan campbell scott articulated the mandate of these schools as trying “to kill the indian in the child” (paul, 2006). “the residential schools were a key part of the broader and longer term colonial strategy that included genocide, land theft, and ethnocide. as far as euro-canadian treatment of aboriginal peoples is concerned, colonialism is the plot that drives every chapter” (coates & wade, 2009, p. 2). in june 2008 the canadian prime minister offered an apology from the government for abuses at these “schools”. [cathy] i watch my prime minister’s official apology to joe and his people for residential schools from a reserve with former residential school inmates. everyone is crying. some leave, it is too much to watch. as a canadian with metis, cree, gwichin, dene, and european ancestry, i watch this federal performance beside people who are visibly tormented by memories of state-imposed violence against children. [vikki] my prime minister never asked me or other settler people if we were sorry, or what we were sorry for, if we wanted to be accountable or how we wanted to be accountable for this political violence. it is an empty apology, given on my behalf, that pretends to clean my slate, requiring me to acknowledge nothing and to do nothing. in our partnership, no matter who we work with, we never forget where we are standing. we always start our work from this place, with our feet solidly positioned on the land on which we live, land that was never surrendered. here we are amazingly alive against long odds and left for dead north america tellin’ lies in our head. (osborn, 1999, p. 11) our ethical orientation towards staying alive in the work as community workers committed to social justice, we are ethically obliged to find ways to be “amazingly alive” in our work. the sustainability that promotes being amazingly alive refers to a spirited presence and a genuine connectedness with others. it requires more than resisting “burnout” and keeping a desperate hold on hope. we are amazingly alive in our work when we are able to be fully and relationally engaged, stay connected with hope, and be of use to clients across time. being amazingly alive in our work embraces a rich engagement with a spirit of social justice, and openness to the transformations we may experience as practitioners in this difficult work (martín-baró, 1994). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 4 we promote our sustainability through contesting injustice and committing to an ethic of doing justice (reynolds, 2010a). if we are not working from this ethic, we risk replicating dominance and causing harm to our clients and community members. staying alive in our work is not something we can do alone. it is relational and reflects a professional and ideological commitment to participating in collective action. shouldering each other up in the work, in alignment with our shared ethics, fosters a solid(arity) ground on which we can join against the separation and privatization of personal pain. from here we may contest power structures that cause harm to people, while minimizing the harm to ourselves that is caused by structural isolation. in these contexts of social injustice, in a society that is more just to some than to others, it is hard to stay alive in work alongside people who live in the margins and are forced to dance with death. this is where we work and our clients live. despite this dismal reality, here we are, amazingly alive. our ethical orientation is the medicine that keeps us alive and well. we strive to enact these ethics. describing social justice [cathy] what is social justice from an indigenous or metis perspective? (i use the term indigenous to be inclusive, as metis people are excluded by the term first nations. native is a kitchen table word my family has used to refer to themselves, and we think of aboriginal as more of a government word.) an indigenous world view encompasses shared values of how to live, be together, and take care of one another. mohawk psychiatrist clare brant (1990) articulated certain “native ethics” in an inspiring article, outlining an ethic of non-interference, non-competitiveness, sharing, and a native sense of time and timing. what stands out particularly is the ethic of holding one’s own counsel in terms of thought, opinion, or judgment about the actions of others. it is unethical to give advice or tell other people what to do. storytelling is a respectful teaching practice in indigenous life and serves to put experience in context, to inform the imagination and ethics of children, to teach, to soothe. stories provide moral explanations for human action. they educate young people. they explain creation and the reason for human existence. they may share information about the natural world and appropriate interaction between humans and other aspects of creation. stories are shared orally; they are spoken or sung. native literature professor thomas king (2003) writes that “stories assert tremendous control over our lives, informing who we are and how we treat one another as friends, family and citizens” (p. 9). stories form a theoretical prescription of how to behave within the parameters of the culture (richardson, 2004) and are imbued with the great mystery, sacredness, and recipes for social justice. in the metis buffalo hunt, there was a code of ethics aimed to keep everyone safe and ensure that everyone had enough food. violations of the communal code of ethics were punished with various forms of public humiliation. dignity was something earned through bravery and honourable participation, and people were held accountable for transgressions in ways appropriate to the times, such as cutting up one’s saddle for dishonourable conduct. inclusion, belonging, and participation in community were the central organizing principles which advanced the prospects of social justice (metis family services, n.d.). when we refer to social justice from a metis or indigenous perspective we are describing a quality and a practice of sharing wealth and resources, taking care of the most infirm or vulnerable, making sure that everyone is fed, clothed, cared for in mind and body, and offered belonging. the story we are telling is that everyone matters and everyone belongs. [vikki] from a western perspective, a socially just society may be described as one in which all groups of people, regardless of background, are included in the political, economic, and social decisions international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 5 of that society (orlowski, 2009). building a just society is a collective responsibility that requires front line workers to become activists for social change both in their work with clients and in their lives. social justice includes all domains of social life, beyond the more narrow scope of human rights and justice systems, which primarily uphold laws. indian author/activist arundhati roy (2005, 2009) speaks of attacks on social justice, and draws important distinctions between social justice and human rights: today, it is not merely justice itself, but the idea of justice that is under attack. the assault on vulnerable fragile sections of society is at once so complete, so cruel, and so clever ― all encompassing and yet specifically targeted, blatantly brutal and yet unbelievably insidious ― that it's sheer audacity has eroded our definition of justice. it has forced us to lower our sights, and curtail our expectations. even among the wellintentioned, the expansive, magnificent concept of justice is gradually being substituted with the reduced, far more fragile discourse of “human rights”. (2005, p. 331) the role of community workers/activists is to contribute to the making of a space in which the person who is oppressed gets to have their voice heard and listened to. social justice requires more than being heard by a practitioner; a person's words must matter, not be dismissed, and be met with an accountable response. brazilian popular education theorist paulo freire (1978, 2001) names this authentic dialogue, which he describes as an act of revolutionary love. if we are replicating oppression we are not in dialogue with each other. activist/scholar anita lacey eloquently calls these spaces of justice, which community workers contribute to, “the social divine” (2005a). american anarchist scholar noam chomsky (2005) cautions all of us in our assumption that we know what social justice is, or that we have hit some kind of developmental stage in humanism and that we can decide what is just. what is most hopeful for us in chomsky's caution is the idea that we need to create a future in which something we could not even articulate presently as justice could be possible. moments of the social divine hold glimpses of these possible just futures. wittgenstein (1953) says that the limits of our language are the limits of our world. we do not even know the words to describe what it is we are working towards, because we cannot yet articulate it, and have not yet acted to create our vision of social justice. there is often pressure on us as community workers to influence people into acceptable social norms and structures that do not fit with a just society. we resist these expectations that can result in us replicating oppression, and we enact our visions and hopes for justice-doing. when we speak of our work in relation to issues of social justice, we are acknowledging that many of our clients are in struggles for their lives, that these are issues of life and death. engaging with an ethic of justice-doing in our community work helps us to resist professional “talk of things hidden inside of the heads of individuals” (shotter & katz, 1998, pp. 88–89). the brain and body are a part of the holistic person's struggles – but we hold this idea alongside our knowing that a brain is contained within a particular body that is moving in the world and is subject to power. oppression does not happen to people in their brain. it happens to people in the world. certainly oppression in the physical/social world is inscripted onto the body, but we respond with justice-doing in the social world which is the site of intervention. responding with justice-doing the helping professions’ connections to ideals of neutrality and objectivity can invite us to accommodate clients to private lives of hell, which is not in line with any worker’s ethics (cushman, 2006). many progressive front line workers have spoken of the activist and feminist analysis of private pain/public issue. for example, working with women who have survived rape requires us to keep confidentiality of a particular woman's story, and to speak publicly contesting international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 6 the rape culture we live in. when we speak of the individualization of injustice and the privatization of pain, we are connecting with these rich histories from both activist and practitioner traditions that invite us to respond with justice-doing. in community work, kiwi tamasese (2001) of the just therapy team from aotearoa/new zealand speaks of “private issues, public problems”. imelda mccarthy (2001), from ireland’s fifth province team writes of how “public problems become private and privatized issues” in therapeutic practice. these multiple voices call for an ongoing move to action, to continue the practices of resisting neutrality, and to work for change in the social world where clients and practitioners live. mccarthy (2001) writes: it is crucial that the private issues of clients need to be entered into the public arena if social change is to occur. this publication does not refer to the specific details of confidential material but of the themes and trends.... the private and the public cannot be separated when one works with the poor; otherwise we are in danger of creating yet another arena for their silencing and further oppression. (pp. 271–272) we are accompanied by these practitioners, and the rich history of voices legitimizing our activism and contesting neutrality. we have never been neutral about sexual abuse. we have never been neutral about torture. neutrality is itself a particular political position. we take on oppression and injustices on all fronts, at the intersections of our power and privileges, where we have power and where we’re oppressed (crenshaw, 1995; robinson, 2005). justice-doing requires immediate responses. our work is imperfect, but required, and we cannot say to clients, “continue your suffering. we’ll get to you later when we know exactly what to do”. we acknowledge that our responses to oppressive situations will be imperfect. popular education has taught us to act and then reflect, analyze, and recreate our responses (freire, 1970). we cannot wait for better training, the arrival of the right teacher, or finding the right book. we take what we have learned from activist cultures, from progressive trainings, and from our families and cultures, and respond to need with action. while maintaining a critique of the idea of solidified theories, we hold close a teaching from chomsky (2005): social action cannot await a firmly established theory of man [sic] and society, nor can the validity of the latter be determined by our hopes and moral judgments. the two – speculation and action – must progress as best they can, looking forward to the day when theoretical inquiry will provide a firm guide to the unending, often grim, but never hopeless struggle for freedom and social justice. (p. 116) justice-doing is inspired by workers refusing to be contented with social cruelty. however, our work is not innocent and neutral positions are inherently political. a hopeful skepticism we invite a healthy and hopeful skepticism about whether or not we are enacting our ethic of justice-doing in any moment-to-moment interaction. hopeful skepticism is informed by ricoeur and kvale’s hermeneutics of suspicion (kvale, 1996; white, 1991), where we look to our practice to international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 7 see if we are in accord with our ethics. activists ask, “am i walking the talk?” holding an antioppression framework is fabulous, but theorizing is limited (tuhiwai smith, 1999). critical theory on its own cannot deliver a just society. [vikki] what matters is that we enact our ethics. for example, i make claims to being an ally and to acting accountably for my access to heterosexual privilege. whether or not i actually perform as an ally is best judged by the person facing the oppression. if a person who identifies as queer says, “you helped make space for my voice to be heard, then you got out of the way, and i experienced that as accountable”, then i know that i am in line with my ethics and hope for being an ally in that moment.ii contesting “burnout” and cynicism: bringing hope we are critical of the individualization of “burnout” and the limits of “self-care” which lays the burden of an unjust society on the backs of individual workers. we embrace the ethical practice of collective care. our community work is often a front line response to violence, abuses of power, and other acts of oppression: i believe that the level of what is being called “burnout” says a lot more about our society collectively than it says about us as counsellors individually. the problem is not in our heads or in ourselves, but in the real world where there is a lack of justice. the people i work alongside do not burn me out and they do not hurt me: they transform me, challenge me and inspire me. we're not “burning out”, we're resisting being blown up! what is threatening to blow me up is an inability to work in line with my ethics, and my frustrating failure to personally change social contexts of injustice that clients wrestle with and live in. (reynolds, 2009, p. 6) “burnout” is an overused term, and we believe that the problems that threaten our sustainability and effectiveness in our work are better described as spiritual pain. by this we mean the harrowing discomfort we experience bodily and spiritually when our work and our own limitations require us to work in ways that transgress and violate the very ethics that drew us to community work. this spiritual pain can be responded to with relationships of solidarity that help us hold close and enact our collective ethics (reynolds, 2008, 2010b). staying amazingly alive in our work requires that we work in the world we are in, with what is, and not what should be. discerning skepticism from cynicism is important. cynicism can paralyze us into believing not only that we can do nothing, but that nothing can be done. we believe that contesting cynicism is an ethical obligation for workers who align themselves with an ethic of social justice. healthy skepticism can help us engage with ethics by questioning our assumptions and generating our desire for something different. skepticism also invites community workers to look for evidence of the doing of the ethical positioning we claim, and not to smooth over the discomfort we experience when we transgress our collective ethics. in this sense, skepticism is in relationship with hope, and onside with staying alive in our work. “cynicism might be an appropriate reaction to injustice that cannot be changed. hope is an appropriate response to a task that, while difficult, is imaginable” (jensen, 2001, p. 2). cynicism can be simple. bringing a reasonable, believed-in hope to our work with clients is more complex and more difficult. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 8 we believe in the correlation of hope and staying fully alive in our work. in this we are backed up by freire (1970), who says, “hopelessness is a form of silence, of denying the world and fleeing from it. the dehumanization resulting from an unjust order is not a cause for despair, but for hope, leading to the incessant pursuit of the humanity denied by injustice” (pp. 72–73). honouring resistance in saying we honour resistance, we are acknowledging that whenever people are oppressed they resist. resistance is linked to repairing dignity when people’s lives and identities are under attack. there are three main assumptions we make about resistance: 1. whenever a person is oppressed they resist. 2. resistance ought not to be judged by its ability to stop the oppression. 3. resistance is important for its ability to maintain a person’s connection to humanity, especially in instances outside of human understanding. (wade, 1997; reynolds, 2010c) while resistance to oppression is ubiquitous, without a purposeful commitment to witness resistance, it can be disappeared, or be constructed narrowly, so that only that resistance which successfully stops oppression is acknowledged. coates and wade (2007) point out that language is used to either conceal or reveal violence and resistance. in clarifying real events in the world, we look for the person’s own account of their sites of resistance, their resistance knowledges (wade 1996, 1997), and the meanings these acts of resistance hold for the person. acts of resistance can draw attention to oppression that can go unnoticed and unchallenged or can pass for normal. in fact, acts of resistance can be indicators of safety and draw attention to the often ignored stories of the victims’ efforts to protect themselves and others (richardson & wade, 2008). resistance may not stop violence or social cruelty, but it does connect us with our sense of humanity and collective dignity. however, we are careful to not fetishize resistance, and certainly, not every act is an act of resistance. our hope is to transform our communities and society so that people can experience justice, not to witness acts of resistance for their own sake. when we (professionally, collectively) organize our community work around uplifting human dignity and contesting socio-political acts of oppression and cruelty, we demonstrate that our practice can offer social esteem and a kind of liberatory engagement, affirming life. so most days now i say shout shout for joy shout for love shout for you shout for us shout down this system puts our souls in prison. (osborne, 1999, p. 11) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 9 enacting solidarity solidarity speaks to the interconnections of our collective movements towards social justice, and in resisting oppression. profoundly relational understandings of solidarity have been credited to different indigenous elders. lily walker, an australian aboriginal women’s leader, describes solidarity beautifully while speaking to non-aboriginal activists at a land rights protest: “if you come here to help me, then you are wasting your time. but if you come here because your liberation is bound up in mine, then let us begin” (walker cited in sinclair, n.d.). [vikki] i heard a retelling of this wisdom when i was involved in a protest against uranium mining in kakadu, australia. there were few non-aboriginal folks present, and the aboriginal elder who was opening the event used a retelling of this phrase. was i there for her, for me, or for us? i did not participate in this land rights protest for aboriginal people, but rather because my life and my relational ethics are inextricably linked to solidarity with these struggles. i live on land that is unceded territory of other indigenous nations: different people, same issue. other ethical commitments i hold for sustainable environmentalism and against war prompted me to take a position against the mining of uranium, a product directly connected to the weaponry of warfare and imperialism. the threads of these particular complexities woven together connect me and this aboriginal elder in solidarity. there is always more solidarity than we can see. unbeknownst to me, in protesting the mining of uranium, i was taking a position in solidarity alongside cathy. when i met cathy she had just had her third hip replacement and explained to me that this was a result of a birth defect related to her family’s participation in uranium mining. [cathy] when my mother was a teenager, her family moved to uranium city where her father took a job at a uranium company. their family life consisted of seasonal work, trapping, hunting, and food gathering. during this time, workers and community members were not given accurate information about the dangers of uranium and radiation. clearly, the government and the military were aware of its profound destructive capacity to cause harm as they were developing the atomic bomb. i have heard of an indigenous prophecy that warned of the black rock in the ground and how it should not be removed by humans or their machines. by the time my grandmother evelyn reached her middle adult years, she had lost all her hair. she had kept radioactive rocks as borders for her flower garden. my grandfather had kept uranium samples in the basement and my mother worked in a laboratory. my family suffers from many related health problems, including two generations of baby girls who could not walk without surgical or medical intervention. uranium city is not too far from deline, also known as the village of widows (blow, 1999). after loading ore onto boats with bare hands, every single man in this village died. the uranium for the atomic bombs dropped on japan came from deline. there are now local indigenous committees deciding how the mining industry should interact with the dene community (m. kodakin, personal communication, 2010). our solidarity can be imperfect and fluid; we're not invested in perfect relationships of unity or cohesion. we look for points of connection, and spaces where we can back each other up authentically. this is informed by activist understandings of “groundless solidarity”, meaning that no site of oppression becomes the primary issue we organize around. we are inspired by canadian anarchist theorist richard day’s idea of “infinite responsibility” which invites us to always attempt to be “open to another other”, to the multiplicity of ways that we might not be enacting our collective ethics and not in solidarity across our differences and privileges (day, 2005, p. 18). our impermanent allegiances are based on situational and timely concerns that bring people together for moments of sacred collision and cooperation. cathy engaged with the practices of solidarity in a unique way as she gave the opening lecture at a minding the gap conference in victoria. she put three chairs on the stage behind the international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 10 podium. she invited her colleague, allan wade, who is well published, holds a ph.d., and is of mennonite/german/dutch and scottish ancestry, to sit in the middle chair. on either side of him she placed a book written by other white men who are also well published and held ph.d.s. cathy made public to all of us that her purpose was to show that white people, with authenticated and privileged voices, were saying the same things that she was saying as a métis person. cathy let us know that she was doing this to remind herself that she knew the facts, and that they were correct. allan's presence, sitting down behind her, reminded her that she was not crazy, and that there were nonaboriginal allies who would back her up when she named colonization. this particular and seemingly small act of solidarity shoulders us all up and fosters our hopes for respectful partnerships in our work and our lives across the differences of power that divide us. and shout with my soul shout for life more abundantly shout for all hard-pressed messed-with human beings (osborn, 1999, p. 10) an ethic of belonging for us, the necessity of belonging in community cannot be overstated, and we believe that a risk of not belonging is death. our lives and work have taught us that hate is not a metaphor, and that hate kills. hate works to divide people off from communities of inclusive liberatory belonging where culture can offer sites of healing (reynolds, 2002). in 2007 the american journal of public health published research that revealed lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are twice as likely to think about suicide as heterosexual youth, and three times as likely to attempt suicide (silenzio, pena, duberstein, cerel, & know, 2007). in 2010 the national center for transgender equality released findings that 41% of the transgender persons they interviewed had attempted suicide. these stark numbers could not take into consideration the transgender people who had died of suicide. reported numbers of suicides are always low because a death is only considered suicide when proven by legal investigations. transgender and queer persons are not killing themselves on their own. we believe that hate, particularly racism, homophobia, and transphobia, have a hand in these killings. this is not a metaphor. using the language of “suicide” and “overdose” masks the heart-wrenching suffering, daily indignities, and desolation many people experience. queer, trans, and racialized persons are given many violent messages that they do not belong, and that there is no place for them on the planet. a medicalized term such as “overdose” quiets our collective discomfort, and provides a “cause” for these stolen lives. concealing the violence of hate holds people criminally responsible for their own deaths, when they have been fighting hate to stay alive. “suicide” blames the victims, and lets our society allow hate to continue unnamed and unchallenged in these deaths. justice-doing requires we belong queer, trans, and racialized persons in our communities, and uphold our social responsibility to address the conditions that promote the horror of suicide. fostering belonging is at the heart of our efforts to become amazingly alive in our work, and to promote the possibilities of being amazingly alive in others. a community colleague, ga ching international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 11 kong, who is a counsellor and acupuncturist of chinese, irish, and english descent, articulates beautifully her understandings of our ethic of belonging: collective agreements in groups can be complex, or they can be simplified to the words vikki uses, “everyone is welcome.” this is profound. it is saying everything that is required to be said, as an ethic. when i use these three words in my work with youth and children, our bodies and spirits relax. rather than being in our heads with detailed rules, these words resonate within our bodies – everyone belongs, no matter what. belonging is something we all know how to do, each cell self-organizes to an authentic peace in a space where everyone belongs. (g. kong, personal communication, 2010) saying that everyone is welcome requires that we create spaces of inclusion and engage with the complexities of enacting respect. we structure safety in public and committed ways in collaboration with each other, and develop accountability practices that hold us to this ethic of belonging. we cannot work without these engaged practices that provide the scaffolding for an ethic of belonging. belonging jeff jeff smith is a music therapist involved in community activism and social justice oriented therapies whose ancestors are from ireland, england, and holland. following what anarchist philosopher gilles deleuze calls “lines of flight” (deleuze & guattari, 1987) from the spiritual pain associated with injustice and oppression, jeff has taken risks to align himself with clients and with his ethics (smith, 2010). he has been in some relatively dark places but he still has light in his eyes. [cathy] through recent developments with the islands of safety violence cessation project (richardson, 2009), jeff and i are forming a musical conspiracy, which means “breathing together” in solidarity, bringing music to people who have suffered the harm of violence and whose spirits are on the mend. in this, i am inspired with new life and breath in the work. like jeff, we hunger for our work to embrace ethical commitments and collectivity, for a move from longing to belonging (carriere & richardson, 2009). finding jeff, we invited him to belong with us in a networked community (lacey, 2005a) of practitioners organized around an ethic of social justice in a community of concern (madigan & epston, 1995). but we were reflexively asking him to let us in, belong to us. jeff has connected us with his community of helpers in resistance to work that replicates dominance. jeff’s response to his belonging in dark moments when i notice the massive chasm between my politics and the dominant conservative view that permeates our work, i lean heavily on my community of concern. this community serves as a gathering place for nomads like me when we flee from the colonial swagger of dominant institutions. connecting with my people provides an opportunity to blow off steam, rest, revitalize, share ideas, acknowledge multiplicity, and celebrate difference. while cathy and vikki’s mentorship, supervision, and encouragement to question and engage in multiple analyses of these kinds of events has informed my international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 12 personal ethics and politics of practice, it is their ongoing friendship that i value most. to experience revolutionary love in this work is life affirming. sharing food, music, stories, and communities has been a way of resisting the boundaries set up by the institutionalization of mentorship. more like a jam session than a teacher-student knowledge transfer, this kind of belonging is an improvisational practice that is always embodied and moving through the rhizome (deleuze & guattari, 1987), a place where multiplicities flourish and connect with the unknown. (j. smith, personal communication, 2010) we always seek to be part of communities of concern, to be supported in doing justice, doing dignity, and being accountable to specific communities and to each other for our transgressions. through belonging we invite spirited and generous invitations to collective accountability. we are looking for cover, to be blanketed by one another. this belonging is our antidote to being “blown up” by “burnout” and by individualism. the sacred [cathy] much of our work in community begins with an acknowledgement of the sacred, the land, and the connections between all living things. metis songwriter dana lynn seaborn has shared a prayer song invoked to open various meetings, gatherings and ceremonies: when will we learn to see the sacred? when will we learn we’re not alone? when will we find a way to heal our mother earth? then we’ll find the sacred is our home. (richardson & seaborn, 2002) my colleagues and i also find strength in singing the women’s warrior song or the strong woman song to activate courage, commitment and a spirit of justice and inclusion. my family from fort chipewyan lives in a toxic sludge of emissions from the tar sands. lake athabasca is the basin where fish and wildlife live and feed. my family hunts and fishes there; some of them work in fort mcmurray for economic reasons. others are fighting illness while some are standing up for animals and earth. i see these brave citizens at the united nations trying to raise awareness about this industrial nightmare, then returning home to a country recently awarded the “colossal fossil” award for ecological destruction by over 500 non-governmental organizations (demelle, 2009). whatever our position, we cannot escape the outfall when we live in community together. so, under these conditions, how can we uphold the sacred in all levels of interaction, whether deep, mundane or in-between? these experiences of sacred unrest prompt me to keep aspiring for change. when i return to northern indigenous communities, i am embraced by a deep embodied sense of belonging, of being “home”. i see people on the street that look like family. while i have never lived in the north, i feel the presence of my ancestors. cheryl aro, a gitksan woman from the gutginuxw house and the fireweed, sister and colleague of mine, refers to this as a “blood memory”, and is a deep recognition of connection and belonging to people and places of indigenous knowers (c. aro, personal communication, september 2010). the land welcomes me and i am belonged. it is this territory outside of language that moves me to be useful, to continue to walk and struggle alongside the kaska, the dene, the gwichin – the people. it lives within us across lives and pulls us back to places where our ancestors have walked. [vikki] my understandings of the sacred are grounded in my irish catholic roots, my family, and my places of cultural belonging. i am moved by being in communion with others, responding to something made possible in the social divine, and being in webbed relationships of revolutionary love within a spirit of solidarity. my father, bill reynolds, taught us how to hold an extensive clan together with belonging and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 13 compassionate love. my mother, joan reynolds, is the rock of our family, and taught us to be tenacious in holding onto love when it is hard. my relationship with the sacred is not unlike a spirited solidarity that feeds me through my belonging in activist culture. as activists we create temporary communities as acts of resistance to the walls and fences put up around the sites of neo-liberal globalization such as the recent g-20 and g-8 events in toronto. while activists are locked out, locked up, detained, and guarded by heavy security and military action, we create "spaces of inclusion" (lacey, 2005b, p. 404) in direct response to our exclusion in these meetings of global power holders. “activists create spaces of juxtaposition, in which diversity and inclusion are fostered... these spaces of justice are temporary expressions of what global anti-capital activists are striving towards... expressions of the social divine, a sense of being together in self-directed and shaped environment” (p. 404). my experiences of participating in the spontaneous co-creation of these “deliberately forged spaces” (p. 407) accompanies me in our community work. embracing the sacred in our work alongside people who are suffering from mean-spirited policies and right-wing ideologies aligns us with freire’s ideas of revolutionary love. freire (1970) describes revolutionary love as “emancipatory, and generative in terms of fostering further acts of love: it cannot co-exist with abuses of power” (p. 71). been o.d.’ed so bad made a doctor mad lookin’ at me said you’re still alive how can that be? said i don't know why i’m alive except i don't want to be but i got news for that doctor too right now i’m so alive feelin’ so free doctor your science ain’t nothing behind this mystery (osborn, 1999, p. 8) amazingly alive [cathy] on the way back from a ceremony where i received my cree spirit name, i was with some of my sisters at one of those gift shops at a ferry terminal. someone had the idea that we all buy an animal pendant to mark our trip and ceremonial time together. i agreed, even though i wasn’t particularly interested in the jewellery. i wore the eagle pendant on a subsequent trip up north. there, in the yukon, i attended a medicine wheel ceremony as a support person and ended up sitting with a young couple in a counselling session. at the end of our time together, the young indigenous woman lingered and told me quietly that she thought my eagle pendant was pretty. i asked her if she would let me give it to her, as a memory of the place and the time together. she agreed and we placed the eagle around her neck. she started to gently cry. she said that this was the nicest thing that anyone had ever done for her. in fact, she said that no one had ever given her a present before. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 14 there aren’t words to describe a moment like that, the energy that moves between us and the great mystery, weaving us together in particular moments that remind us we are alive. in this amazing valley, backed up by mountains, lakes, animals, and big sky, i imagined that she had been left for dead in those multiple foster homes and institutions that housed parts of her life. in that moment, something different happened that made the spirit dance. shout here we are amazingly alive against long odds left for dead shoutin’ this death culture dancing this death culture out of our heads amazingly alive (osborn, 1999, p. 11) this work is dedicated to flora tuhaka, often referred to lovingly as “mother truth” by her work colleagues, a maori elder with the just therapy team in aotearoa/new zealand, whose passion for sacred connectedness continues to move and inspire us. we miss her. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 15 references alcoholics anonymous. 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(n. d.). participatory action research. in aboriginal and indigenous social work. retrieved november 21, 2008, from http://www.aboriginalsocialwork.ca/special_topics/par/index.htm. smith, j. (2010). entering the rhizome: a description of a music therapy street outreach program. the drumbeat, 11(2), 10–12. tamasese, k. (2001). talking about culture and gender. in c. white (ed.), working with the stories of women's lives (pp. 15–22). adelaide, australia: dulwich centre publications. tuhiwai smith, l. (1999). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. london: zed books ltd. wade, a. (1996). resistance knowledges: therapy with aboriginal persons who have experienced violence. in p. h. stephenson, s. j. elliott, l. t. foster, & j. harris (eds.), a persistent spirit: towards understanding aboriginal health in british columbia. (canadian western geographical series 31, pp. 167–206). victoria, bc: western geographical press. wade, a. (1997). small acts of living: everyday resistance to violence and other forms of oppression. journal of contemporary family therapy, 19(l), 23–40. white, e. (1991). between suspicion and hope: paul ricoeur's vital hermeneutic. journal of literature and theology, 5(3), 311–321. wittgenstein, i. (1953). philosophical investigations. oxford, uk: blackwell. http://www.aboriginalsocialwork.ca/special_topics/par/index.htm� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 1: 1–19 19 endnotes i [vikki] “joe” is a pseudonym in this composite and fictionalized account informed by multiple experiences. joe’s story demonstrates an enlivening “giving it back” practice, which i was taught by members of alcoholics anonymous (2001) and narcotics anonymous (1988) fellowships. this practice honours the recursive engagement between practitioners and the people they work alongside. we can catch workers up on the moments of their work that might be unknown to them but hold great meanings for clients. as workers, we are open to being transformed in this work, just as joe is honoured here for his meaningfulness in julie’s life as a worker. ii [vikki] “queer” has been adopted by groups of people i work with as an umbrella term for some people who do not identify as strictly heterosexual. i use this term to speak of lesbian, gay, bisexual, two-spirit, and queer identified people, acknowledging that this is a problematic term for many reasons (fassinger & arsenau, 2007). people i work alongside who identify as queer may be in any of these groups, but primarily identify outside of heterosexual normativity, which refers to discourses which promote heterosexuality as normal. people who identify as trans do not identify strictly with the gender they were assigned to at birth, and may or may not transition to a gender in which they feel more congruent, which could be something other than male or female. they may or may not transition physically or socially to their preferred gender identity (nataf, 1996). all of these terms are problematic, contested, and evolving. i use these terms for clarity and because groups of folks i work alongside have settled on this imperfect phrasing for now (reynolds, 2010d). introduction studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 102 just above the fray interpretive social criticism and the ends of social justice andrew gibson, mcgill university abstract: the article lays down the broad strokes of an interpretive approach to social criticism. in developing this approach, the author stresses the importance of both a pluralistic notion of social justice and a rich ideal of personal growth. while objecting to one-dimensional conceptions of social justice centering on legal equality, the author develops the idea of there being multiple “spheres of justice”, including the spheres of „care‟ and „merit‟. each of these spheres, he argues, is subject to historical interpretation. he furthers this view by arguing that the social basis for these different spheres is best understood against the canvas of an ideal of self-fulfillment and individuality. based on the elaboration of these two sets of premises—a pluralistic conception of social justice and a collective ideal of personal self-fulfillment—the article outlines the basis for and challenges inherent to the practice of interpretive social criticism. introduction just recently, while talking with some of my university colleagues, i attempted to come up with a defense of free post-secondary education. running short on arguments about how lower tuition means greater accessibility to more canadians, i spontaneously mentioned something about how education strengthens the social fabric and increases general well-being. a rebuttal then came from one of my colleagues, who, with great enthusiasm, claimed that education is only worth supporting because it permits ―insurrectionary activity, procrastination, revolt and random displays of poetic terrorism‖. while taking the comment with a grain of salt, i was reminded of the palpable confusion that presently reigns in the university world with regard to the rationale behind social criticism. it is tempting to link the confusion surrounding the practice of social criticism to changes in the political landscape that came about in the late 1980s, after the fall of the great ideological divisions of the post-war period. my feeling, however, is that the problems of social criticism run deeper than this. the big issue has to do with the way in which university intellectuals relate to the morality and politics of the people they are criticizing. of the various critical programs and approaches that we see in the humanities and social sciences today, there exist important discrepancies between what is being thought up by professors and students, on the one hand, and the lived experience of the everyday morality on the other. the move towards ‗subversive‘ and ‗transgressive‘ intellectual contestation so popular on campuses in the 1990s is an example of the type of gulf i am talking about. while widespread in some university departments, its oppositional esoteric vocabularies have limited application studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 103 outside the university environment. 1 there is a different sort of critical approach, however, that also contributes to maintaining the gulf between intellectual labour and the democratic unfolding of a country‘s everyday morality and political life. this is the prestigious area of philosophy known as ‗normative critique‘. while the purpose of this paper is to outline the basis for a socially contextualized, interpretive approach to social criticism—one that is less detached and formulaic than normative critique, and thus more attuned to the plural and contradictory aspects of the historic morality of specific communities—the article proceeds in this task by first casting an eye on the shortcomings of the normative approach. in looking at the normative approach, i use the influential work of jurgen habermas as a focal point. there are other prominent philosophers who are much less attuned than habermas to the social contexts of moral expression and political organization. consider for example richard dworkin‘s emphasis on de-contextualized ―abstract justice‖ or john rawls‘ appeals to morality as it emerges from behind an ahistorical ―veil of ignorance‖. habermas is, indeed, perhaps one of the more empirically-sensitive philosophers of justice. and yet it would seem that even he succumbs to the pull of a universalistic, one-dimensional theorization of the moral world. when he is theorizing in this mode, he cannot but distance himself from the way in which people relate to the ideals and injustices of their respective political communities. 2 the interpretive approach to social criticism sketched below is largely a rehearsal of ideas put forth by other scholars—most importantly, perhaps, the american philosopher michael walzer and the german critical theorist axel honneth. their ideas are put together here in such a way that a particular kind of interpretive critique is brought to light. if we take social criticism, generally, to mean critical insight directed towards cultural affirmation, elaboration and betterment, its interpretive form can be understood as a matter of developing such insight based on the moral sensibilities and practices which have already gained a foothold in a specific time and place, in a specific country or ―community of experience‖. in the second part of the paper, i argue that instead of singularly focused, one-dimensional theorizations of social justice, we need to develop an historical, pluralistic view that starts from the premise that any one society will encompass a diversity of moral dispositions—what walzer (1983) calls multiple ―spheres of justice‖. this fits nicely with the complex formulation that honneth gives to the notion of social justice. in his reformulation of some old hegelian themes (1995, 2003, 2006), honneth sketches a broad yet historically specific interpretation of social justice involving not only the sphere of legal equality, but two other moral spheres as well—that of labour based ‗merit‘ and that of the more privatized morality of ‗care‘. one of the premises of the paper is that the scholarly interpretation of these different spheres of social life should form part of the bread and butter of social criticism. yet the manner of their historical patterning also suggests that social critics might do well to look to the greater purposes and goals that the morality of these different spheres can be understood to facilitate. in liberal democracies, one such purpose is frequently glossed as that of personal freedom or individual autonomy. the aspiration being referred to here is, i argue, best understood in terms 1 richard rorty (1991) provides an interesting, if schematic summary of an approach he caricatures as that of ―advanced literary theory‖. 2 habermas is also the author of excellent ―journalistic‖ work. see for example his sur l‟europe (2006), une époque de transitions (2005) and his ―crossing globalization‘s valley of tears‖ (2000). interestingly, the orientation of this work feels almost like the opposite of his normative philosophy. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 104 of an ideal of ‗personal growth‘ or ‗self-fulfillment‘. stanley cavell (2004) describes it as an ideal which centers on the discovery of what a person is made of and on the cultivation of what that person is ―meant to do, or to be‖ (p. 446). the ideal has been worked out in a fairly comprehensive manner in the literature on the romantic notion of ―authenticity‖ (trilling, 1972; taylor, 1991; nehamas, 1999). this is not to say that it is an ideal that is simply accepted without contestation. it is considered, for example, to play an important role in the motivational basis of contemporary consumer society (campbell, 1987; illouz, 1997). still, it would seem that much of this contestation is directed toward debased forms of authenticity and not toward debunking the ideal itself. even the relentless criticism of michel foucault (1984) calls attention to the promise of authenticity, or ―care of the self‖. the point of referring to authenticity is to show the important interplay between this personal growth ideal and the different spheres of justice, insofar as the latter may be understood as preconditions to the former. in the third section of the paper, i say a little more about what is meant by this ethics of personal growth. at the same time, i paint a rough picture of how such an ethics might be defended as a collective project within the context of liberal democratic states. this requires balancing off liberalism‘s ‗political neutrality‘ with the institutional structures that citizens of liberal democracies have historically sought to provide for themselves, as means to maximizing the possibilities of self-development and full individuality. in the last section of the paper, i return to the more practical aspects of interpretive social criticism. while emphasizing the importance of the social immersion and connectedness of the critic, i fend off the charge of critical circularity that is often held against interpretive critique. problems of relevance and breadth what may be seen as a current of cynicism in academia, perhaps even in society at large, has led to an abandonment of grand, utopian narratives. this being said, there still remain forms of social critique that hold horizons of collective betterment as their measure. we see some such critical programs in social science departments, but given the developmental path of sociology and other social scientific disciplines, it is difficult for such programs to come up with critical evaluations that go much beyond suggestive empirical description. 3 as a consequence, social criticism is often confined to debates within philosophy departments. the problem with this, if we‘re to believe walzer‘s (2002) caricature of the critic who has left the cave to go and ponder after truth on the philosopher‘s ledge, is that philosophical forms of critique seldom take seriously the moral orientations developed throughout the history of specific communities. 3 such empirical descriptions are, of course, invaluable indicators of what is going in large-scale societies, but their moral and political significance is not always obvious, neither to the sociologist, nor to the relevant political community. as adam swift (2004) notes, many sociologists ―regard what they do as relevant to matters of social justice in general, and of equality of opportunity in particular. they often acknowledge that their research is motivated, at least in part, by a normative interest in such matters. but that interest tends to be rather vague and diffuse. masters of precision when it comes to measuring and analyzing the empirical phenomena they study, they are, typically, less sure in their analytical control of concepts such as ‗equality of opportunity‘ or ‗life-chances‘. moreover, they are sometimes suspicious of attempts by others to treat normative issues with similar seriousness, holding – less or more consciously – that such issues are not amenable to intellectually respectable investigation‖ (p. 1). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 105 inquiries into the nature of ―justice-in-itself‖ that aim to elaborate a set of universally applicable moral rules are, according to walzer, not likely to hold much sway beyond the intellectual milieu in which they are thought up. keeping walzer‘s contention in mind, i want to briefly look at jurgen habermas‘s ―philosophical anthropology‖, as i believe that it shares some of the same problems. the goal of most forms of philosophical anthropology is to bring together different genres of academic inquiry in such a manner as to offer a set of coherent and convincing arguments about human nature (honneth & joas, 1988). this is undoubtedly an important exercise, if for no other reason than to debunk one-sided assumptions about ―the way humans are‖, which are often carried into the political arena and which serve to back this or that policy initiative. but the problem that besets this form of inquiry from the start is that it is notoriously difficult to substantiate any kind of human nature argument whatsoever (honneth, 2007). and we can assume that this is doubly the case for arguments that have as their aim a deep set of political reforms. the understanding that habermas (1984, 1990, 1998) has of his research on the ―pragmatics of communication‖ has brought him to question the democratic conditions of free and fair public debate. the basis of his critique rests an image of human nature that is fundamentally linked to our capacities as language-users. to summarize crudely, his position holds 1) that there are pragmatic presuppositions which language-use entails and 2) that we must respect these if we are to live up to the inbuilt standards of human sociability. habermas‘s portrayal of the social dynamic that these language-based presuppositions entail can be glossed as the unconstrained exchange of ―validity claims‖. in laymen‘s terms, the argument claims that the anthropological foundations of language-use point the way to an ideal configuration of public debate in which every individual is able to freely express their opinion on matters of common concern. habermas reasonably assumes that more just modes of public debate will bring about more socially just societies. on the basis of his anthropology of language, habermas posits the need for substantial political reforms in decisionmaking processes, which he believes will lead to a substantial revision of commonly accepted norms and practices. such predictions notwithstanding, the study of the pragmatics of human language-use allows habermas (1990) to postulate the following moral maxim: that ―every valid norm must satisfy the condition that all affected can accept the consequences and the side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone‘s interests (and these consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities)‖ (p. 65). this prescriptive formulation is an eloquent one and it has indeed been seductive for a large, if mostly western, intellectual audience. of course, the implementation of any such view is really only conceivable in democratic societies. and even in the most democratic of actually existing democracies, the policies stemming from such a proposal would be considered quite radical. my point is not that such a program of reform should be dismissed because of how radical it is. nor is it to say that habermas‘ ―discourse ethics‖ is without historical grounding in western democracies. rather, i am simply making the (perhaps trivial) point that the political relevance of any such program is not likely to stem from appeals to tenuously far-reaching anthropological claims related to universal criteria of human conduct. for the likelihood that any such relevance will be gained is highly dependant on the argument being made in a vernacular that speaks to the shared understandings of a particular political community (walzer, 1993, 2002; rorty, 1998). this would, in turn, require drawing persuasive links between the aims of free and fair public studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 106 debate, and the repertoire of moral sensibilities and practices that are already part of the social fabric. if taken as a form of social criticism capable of addressing the full scope of social injustices, habermas‘ approach suffers from another kind of weakness. the moral core of his contribution, which essentially requires that each person affected by a collective decision be in equal acceptance of it, emerges from a one-dimensional conception of social justice. it is onedimensional in the sense that it limits itself to a singular view of justice centering on a notion of equality as equal treatment. habermas‘s ‗ethical formalism‘ shares this limited egalitarian focus with other prominent schools of thought. the utilitarian logic of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, for example, also suffers from a restrictive egalitarian thrust coming from the central emphasis it places on the equal dignity of each person. the intuitive core of each of these dominant approaches to moral thought is, as taylor (1985) puts it, that ―everyone ought to count and all ought to count in the same way‖ (p. 231). 4 it is no secret that there is this sort of egalitarian emphasis in habermas‘ discourse ethics, as well as within his broader critically oriented anthropology of human communication. without trying to account for the motivation behind this style of egalitarianism, it seems fairly clear that if his approach were more society-specific and historical in character it would have to account for a wider breadth of moral sensibilities and practices. the discourse ethics approach provides the possibility of leaving each historically situated democracy to sort through this moral morass on its own terms—as long as it does so by way of the unconstrained exchange of validity claims. but this presumes that one can separate out the area of human communication as the linchpin of moral concern. it also presumes, as i have been arguing, that this linchpin is subject to both authoritative intellectual prescription and moral universality. certainly, there is a kind of intellectual intensity that is brought about through resolutely focused approaches to social justice. and when one considers the scandalous discrepancies that exist between the highly defendable ideal of equal treatment, on the one hand, and the manner in which certain groups and individuals are actually treated on the other, it is obvious that there is much work to be done. still, the perspective taken here is that social injustices are best addressed, not by appeal to overly abstract one-dimensional theories of justice focusing solely on equal treatment, but rather by appeal to the diverse moral standards and shared collective purposes that citizens hold in common. before being able to persuasively appeal to these, the critic must of course have an idea of what these in fact are. i have mentioned the collective ideal of personal self-fulfillment, but have not yet expanded on the moral understandings and practices that we might see as facilitating this ideal. 5 4 taylor‘s point is that each of these theories has a tendency to reduce the complex plurality of the moral world to a one-dimensional variation of moral universality. he argues that ―one of the big illusions which grows from either of these reductions is the belief that there is a single consistent domain of the ‗moral‘, that there is one set of considerations, or mode of calculation, which determines what we ought ‗morally‘ to do . . . we could easily decide that the universal attribution of moral personality is valid . . . but there are also other moral ideals and goals . . . which cannot be easily coordinated with universalism, and can even enter into conflict with it‖ (1985, p. 233). 5 there are, of course, many ways in which the purpose of self-fulfilment is supported and sustained in liberal democracies. while the paper focuses on three different spheres of justice, i am not making any claims about these being the only relevant spheres, or about them being ―systematically‖ related to an ideal of personal growth. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 107 equal treatment and what else? i will say more about the morality of equal treatment below, but i first want to draw a contrast between this moral domain and another, which until recently has drawn much less attention. this contrasting realm of moral practice exists at what sociologists call the ―micro‖ level of social interaction— in those seemingly unorganized moments of interaction between friends and loved ones. i am referring here to the moral outlook which has taken root over the last several centuries with the institutionalization of a privatized domain suited to modern family life. there is a distinctive moral sensibility at the heart of this realm of activity that has often been passed over in liberal egalitarian conceptions of social justice, where the focus is on each man and woman being treated with the same anonymous principle of equality. feminist scholars have, in recent decades, done the most to describe the precise nature of the sensibility that is woven into private relations of intimacy and family life. 6 an affectionate morality of ―care‖ has since been taken as the guiding sensibility of domestic life—that cherished private realm which has come to exist in juxtaposition to the instrumental demands of public life. in the caring environment of the family, the romantic partner, child and parent will each have their own unique set of vulnerabilities, needs and wants. the morality of equal treatment is not sufficient to meeting these highly personal demands. the moral feelings that guide this social realm move, somewhat oppositely, in the direction of a type of differential treatment requiring that attention be paid to the idiosyncratic needs and irreplaceable characteristics of the ―concrete other‖ (benhabib, 1986; baier, 1994). there are fairly straightforward links that can be made between this caring form of justice and the personal growth ideal mentioned above. ever since the middle of the 18 th century, the affectionate ties of marriage and family life have been increasingly protected from public demands of a more impersonal sort (ariès, 1962). the historic upshot has been the organization of a realm of social life infused with the supportive heightening effects of romantic and familial love. it is a realm where childhood has come to be lived out freely, in a largely self-exploratory manner, away from the burdens of toil. it is also a realm in which marriage, or romantic couplehood, has come to be lived out with greater equality and emotional freedom. 7 the developmental history behind the emergence of this realm of caring activity overlaps in many ways with the history of struggles for social justice. take for example the succession of 19 th century campaigns that aimed to alleviate children form the duties of labour, or later campaigns to reduce the number of working hours for adults in the hope that private relations would become a meaningful part of the social life of all citizens (parr, 1982). there have also been the various feminist waves that sought to free women from the constraints of domestic labour and from the limiting role-expectations that went along with this (luxton, 1980). it is only 6 the issue of this unacknowledged moral register was first brought to light in the kolhberg-gilligan debate in developmental psychology. carol gilligan (1982) made the argument for a distinctive yet largely neglected form of moral expression, which she, at first, thought to be more prominent in women. regardless of the psychological validity of her original findings, the door had been opened to another moral dimension, the importance of which has since been emphasized by feminist political thinkers, such as benhabib (1986) and baier (1994). 7 stanley cavell (1981) offers a stimulating analysis of how this newfound freedom was exemplified in hollywood movies from the 1930s and 1940s. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 108 in gradually liberating themselves from these patriarchal cultural expectations that women could imagine fully partaking in the expression of their personal needs and wants. this historical snapshot opens a window onto a moral realm that is often overlooked in hyper egalitarian conceptions of social justice. in addition to the important differences that exist between the morality of equal treatment and that of care, i want to draw yet another contrast with the ‗morality of merit‘. the distinction may be less obvious at first, since the registers of merit and equality are both institutionalized at the ―macro‖ level of social interaction. both forms of moral expression are woven into the cultural fabric of large-scale institutions, such as bureaucracies, legal systems and markets. 8 there are, however, fundamental differences between the two. while equality is woven into the practices of democratic citizenship, merit is as parkin (1971) and parsons (1971) argued some time ago, a moral standard which is part and parcel of the occupational division of labour. citizenship has to do with the way in which each person lives out their rights and responsibilities as a member of a self-governing polity. merit, on the other hand, pertains to the contribution in labour that each individual makes to the collective. the major, if paradoxical, difference between the two forms of moral expression is that while the first stems from a fraternal equality between citizens, the latter implies felt differences of worth between these same men and women (dubet, 2006). it will likely be fairly straightforward to convince the reader that the fraternal bonds of citizenship are pertinent to the building of a more socially just society. this fraternal ethos is commonly thought of in terms of 20 th century attempts to institute a basic set of ―social rights‖. the underlying rationale for securing these sorts of rights is that all citizens, as participants of a common democratic project, should be provided with the cooperatively instituted means to material security and social opportunity (marshall, 1950). in a similar manner, it might be argued that the project of securing social rights for each and all is both a ‗means‘ and a ‗due‘ for collectively sustaining just and democratic social conditions (taylor, 1985, chapter 11). there are also other ways of picking up the thread of collective selfunderstanding that is manifest in expressions of moral equality. after the great depression and into the post-war period, the institutionalization of social rights was, as canadian historian james struthers (1983) describes it, a matter of expressing group solidarity in the face of the vagaries of the market. if we return further back in time to the period of the canadian enlightenment we find yet another strand of the egalitarian ethos. in the first quarter of the 19 th century, the equality question was debated as a matter of ―intellectual equality‖ in public life. the argument which won the day was that it was not only those few that the monarchy selected for office which had ―the capacity to judge‖ (mcnairn, 2000). rather, it would eventually come to be seen that all citizens had the capacity, or at least the potential, to partake fully and responsibly in public life. this collective realization can be taken as a bridging point connecting the call for greater equality with the fastening of a foothold for the romantic ideal of personal growth. such a bridge was significant in that it provided an important steppingstone towards dignified self-presentation in public life. increasingly, men and women would, in conversation with their peers, be able to cultivate what they were to make of themselves as freethinking individuals. 8 jeffrey alexander‘s (2003) ―cultural sociology‖ offers a comprehensive grasp of the complex ways in which seemingly invisible ―cultural structures‖ are woven into societal institutions and practices. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 109 as mentioned above, the links between social justice and the egalitarian dimension of the everyday morality will surely seem obvious enough. what is likely to be more problematic is the manner in which the morality of merit can, it too, be understood to have a place in the landscape of social justice. we can link such reticence to a tension within the morality of merit itself. it is on the one hand a form of moral expression which demands that fellow citizens be recognized for the work they accomplish within the context of a cooperative political community. on the other hand, the more specific understanding at play is that some forms of work are worth more than others and need to be recognized as such. what comes about with this register of collective understanding, then, is a hierarchy of worth. it is not impossible to imagine a future society in which any such monolithic hierarchy of worth has ceased to exist. 9 from a contemporary perspective, it is plausible to conceive of the particular shape this hierarchy has come to assume as the outcome of a series of emancipatory steps forward. we can only grasp things in this light, however, by comparing the current hierarchy with that which came before it. to get a rough sense of this, we must look to the social life of medieval christendom, which was also made up of a hierarchy of worth, albeit of a radically different sort. there isn‘t the space to get into the manner in which this hierarchy was set up, except to say that it was based on a highly complex system of orders, ranks and titles, which were fixed by birth and blood but were also tied into an entire cosmological worldview (lovejoy, 1957). in the 17 th and 18 th centuries, this cosmological outlook took root on the shores of new france and british north america (miquelon, 1987; burley, 1997). but just as in europe, this age-old cultural structure was beginning to shift and change under the pressures of modernity. with the profound and enduring influence of the democratic revolutions of the late 18 th century, along with trends in industrialization and urbanization, the christian hierarchy of worth would eventually be so radically transformed as to give birth to a new moral order. the key element of this new order was that one‘s overall social status was to be tied to the sort of life one led and, more specifically, to one‘s efforts and contributions in this-worldly, productive activity. the process can be taken as one in which the question of where one stood in the eyes of others came increasingly within the sphere of one‘s own power, in the sense of resulting from one‘s own efforts and abilities. as such, one‘s social standing was progressively loosened from the grip of outside factors such as social lineage, nepotistic relations and property assets. at the same time, higher forms of social standing, which have always been covetously guarded by the elite, were, with the turn of the 20 th century, broadened to include a wider spectrum of occupations (keller, 1963; hartmann, 2007). this isn‘t to say that the new hierarchy stopped pitting the worth of some groups and individuals against that of others, but rather to say that any such hierarchy was increasingly subject to democratic pressures and influences. 9 walzer elaborates such a position in his spheres of justice. he speaks of multiple hierarchies of worth, where none would be predominant over others. in such a situation of ―complex equality‖, there would as he puts it be no more bmocs (―big men on campus‖). 10 in referring to this broadly western historical process, honneth (2003) notes that ―the extent to which something counts as ‗achievement‘, as a cooperative contribution, is defined against a value standard whose normative reference point is the economic activity of the independent, middle class, male bourgeois. what is distinguished as ‗work‘, with a specific, quantifiable use for society, hence amounts to the result of a group-specific determination of value—to which whole sectors of other activities, themselves equally necessary for reproduction (e.g. household work), fall victim‖ (p. 141). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 110 it is important not to exaggerate the magnitude of such influences. for there were democratic injustices in the very occasions through which a new schema of worth was being progressively worked out—injustices in impressing upon the public mind which people and professions would be worth what. 10 still, the injustices were themselves to become the subject of historic contestation. if we consider that the single most important indicator of social worth is the remuneration that individuals receive from their employment (swift, 1995; honneth, 2003), then the history of collective bargaining for higher wages becomes an important instance of a meritocratic struggle for social justice. the politicization of domestic labour, though more complicated, can also be understood as a struggle against an abysmal lack of social merit. 11 returning now to the ideal of self-fulfillment and individuality, there are some important parallels to be made between it and the merit sphere of activity. while the mastery of an occupation or pursuit of a career is but one avenue through which men and women may find an avenue of fulfillment, it is nonetheless a socially predominant one. it is of historic significance that each person today is in principle free to choose which occupation they should like to learn and practice. such life changing choices are of course not easy ones to make. an excellencebased hierarchy of publicly recognized worth may help to confirm, guide and inspire individuals in their choices. this does not preclude the need for equalizing democratic pressures concerning the nature and degree of differences in worth. rather, it in fact reinforces it. for it is essential, in light of the diversity implied by the very idea of individuality, that men and women have access to a broad base of rich and rewarding fields of work. i have been arguing in this section that social justice must encompass more than the sphere of justice as equal treatment. there are other types of sensibilities and practices which have had profound effects in recent centuries and which have led to the development of multiple, mutually irreducible spheres of justice. this argument takes for granted that such ideals developed within the context of nation-state communities. it is certainly relevant to question whether moral sensibilities are not in fact much more flexible and pluralistic than suggested by any notion of a homogenous national community. this is especially true given current global trade and immigration patterns. but as much as national communities in europe, for example, are beginning to open onto one another, there are persuasive accounts which suggest the nation-state still functions as the primary, if ―banal‖ nexus of political socialization (billig, 1995; kupchan, 1995). from the standpoint of social criticism, it is fruitful to conceive of each of the spheres of justice discussed above in relation to the support they provide for the romantic ideal of personal growth. but stating things in this manner poses the question of the extent to which it is in fact desirable to conceive of political reforms in relation to an ideal of human development—what is known in political theory as an ideal of the good life. 11 without equating domestic labour with non-domestic forms of gainful employment, a strong argument gain can be made for considering the historical devaluation of women‘s work, both inside the home and in the public realm, as variations on the theme of meritocratic injustice (rossler, 2007). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 111 “human development in its richest diversity” the standard position among defenders of liberalism is that states should never get involved with the promotion of any particular mode or style of living on the pretension that it is better than others. rather, political communities should be neutral with regard to the way in which individuals choose to lead their lives, at least with regard to state legislation. so long as particular styles of life are not harmful to others, the state should have nothing to do with the ends that individuals choose to pursue. the rationale behind this position of ‗political neutrality‘, which has flowed historically from the position of religious tolerance, is that any such stateinterference risks opening the way to violent oppression. 12 the 16 th century wars of religion are an historic case in point. more recently, nationalistic versions of ―the good‖ have tended to pit one ethnic mode of life against another, often with disastrous consequences. even when conceptions of how individuals should best lead their lives assume more seemingly benign forms, such as the deliberative citizen engaged in collective decision-making processes, defenders of political neutrality caution against it. aside from the danger of slippage towards greater manifestations of state-based authority, there is also the danger of paternalism, that among the diversity of purposes that individuals may hold, the promotion of any particular one will undermine the happiness of those men and women who simply do not share it. as ronald dworkin (1993) argues, ―no life is a good one lived against the grain of conviction. it does not help someone else‘s life but spoils it to force values upon him he cannot accept but can only bow before out of fear or prudence‖ (p. 168). many critics today argue that neutrality and ―tolerance talk‖ can be pushed too far, such that the excesses of the doctrine begin to mandate new forms of intolerance and state-based coercion. 13 others argue that neutrality is but a cultural artifact—that liberal democracies cannot avoid promoting a particular, if loose knit conception of the good life. the position taken up here is that there is indeed a moderate manner in which western democratic states should rightly be understood as promoting the good of a particularistic form of life. honneth and anderson (2005) describe this as state endorsement of a ―weak idea of the good‖. the ‗weak idea‘ they are referring to is that of an ‗intersubjectively‘ enhanced notion of individual autonomy. this, in turn, has much in common with the ideal of self-fulfillment referred to above. contrary to what might be assumed, the ‗weak‘ criterion does not refer to the habit that most western democracies have of routinely excluding the less privileged of their members from the hope of an autonomous existence. it refers, rather, to the fact that even the most egalitarian state can only go so far in promoting the way of life in question. for one of the very premises of autonomous self-fulfillment is that it can take shape in a great diversity of forms. it is true that at the heart of this way of life there lies an ethics of personal cultivation that opposes ―ascribed‖ and ―conformist‖ lifestyles. but there is nothing in the way of a detailed program as to how this cultivation should be pursued, nor is there any predetermined notion of what such cultivation will amount to for any one individual. certainly, there are men and women who serve as admirable examples of such a mode of life, whether in the mastery of a field of human activity or 12 the founding text here is perhaps john locke‘s (1689) a letter concerning toleration. 13 see, for example, wendy brown‘s (2006) study of the excessive rhetoric of tolerance and its implications in domestic and international contexts. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 112 the fashioning of a strikingly original selfhood. but any one of these examples will likely only be admirable in the eyes of a particular kind of person or audience (nehamas, 1999, chapter 4). in a sense, then, the most we can say about this particular mode of the good life is that it must be discovered for oneself. but if this is the case, the question then becomes: how can the political community get involved in supporting this mode of life without simultaneously undermining the premise of self-discovery? without getting into the details of this paradox, one can argue that the answer lies in the requirement that the state only ever promote this way of life to the extent of ensuring the conditions needed to make it a real opportunity for each and all (honneth & anderson, 2005). this would, among other things, require attending to the moral adjudication of the different spheres of justice—of, for example, care in the family, equal treatment under the law and merit in the world of work. as long as greater social justice is sought after in the organization of the different moral spheres, then the question of whether and how the life of personal growth is pursued need not be anything more than a matter of private concern. the cultural aspiration behind this way of seeing things—the aspiration, that is, towards ―human development in its richest diversity‖—is not something that is entirely new. 14 if it is an aspiration that we can agree is at the heart of many of our liberal democratic institutions—from the nuclear family to the institutionalization of the idea of ‗careers open to talent‘, from the fundamental freedoms to the flourishing of the arts, from the welfare state to the universal education system—then it is also something that social critics must be attuned to in speaking of the deficiencies and injustices of their respective societies. but how exactly should the interpretive critic go about speaking of such an aspiration and of the conditions present or lacking in the different spheres of justice? how, in other words, should she understand the art of her own practice? social criticism in an interpretive mode i began the paper by suggesting that one way of lessening the confusion surrounding social criticism would be to move away from overly abstract, one-dimensional approaches to the problem of social injustice. i mentioned that interpretive criticism constitutes just such a move, for it calls on social critics to look to the history and to the full breadth of contradictory tendencies in the everyday morality that permeates their respective political communities. such an interpretive exercise requires coming to terms with the pluralistic moral sensibilities that infuse collective practices. this exercise will be met with greater success, i have been arguing, if it also pays attention to the more encompassing purposes that citizens share in common, such as the self-development ideal mentioned above. 15 while these moral sensibilities and collective purposes may well constitute the bread and butter of social criticism, i have yet to say anything regarding the manner in which critics can be 14 john stuart mill uses this phrase, which he burrows from the prussian linguist wilhelm von humboldt, as the epigram to his famous on liberty. 15 certain other collective purposes shared by canadians are what might be described as more immediately social in nature. consider, for example, the aspirations behind the ―multicultural mosaic‖. charles taylor (1993) offers a powerful account of the relevant sense of collective purpose by outlining the potential of a ―deep diversity‖, by which he means a social diversity that enables multiple modes of civic belonging. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 113 understood to proceed in their interpretations. the first thing to consider in this regard is what walzer (1993) identifies as the requirement of ―closeness‖ or ―social connectedness‖. this seemingly commonsensical requirement is that a proper interpretation of moral sensibilities and purposes must be based on an intimate knowledge of their particular social meaning and texture. this requires rich insight of an historical or sociological sort into how the different moral understandings have developed, or even somehow failed to develop. it also requires a lived appreciation of what these understandings can mean in the context of a specific society. a second element of interpretation, which can really only stem from social connectedness and attachment to a common way of life, is a capacity for ‗prophetic idealism‘—the critic‘s ability, that is, to call upon social changes of a morally and politically progressive sort. now, in order to properly situate this issue of prophetic idealism, i want first to grapple with the main charge that is laid against interpretive criticism: the charge of critical circularity. simply put, the claim is that interpretive criticism is too close to the political fray, such that it will inevitably fail to gain the critical distance required to provide a non-redundant critique of the current social order. it is easy to grant that the social critic can be too close to the political fray, to the point of being unable to offer a properly critical perspective. typically, what this will mean is that the critic is too close to certain types of relationships, too close to the seats of political and economic power. this kind of proximity would certainly make it more difficult to see society whole. as walzer (1993) puts it, the ―actual wielding of power and the machiavellian ambition to whisper in the ear of the prince… are real obstacles to the practice of criticism, because they make it difficult to look with open eyes at those features of society most in need of critical scrutiny‖ (p. 60). but this practical issue has in fact little to do with what is really meant by the charge of circularity. for what is usually being referred to is a different sort of blindness, coming not from egoistic selfinterest but rather from the lack of an external viewpoint. the worry is a fairly straightforward one, as expressed by dworkin (1983) and then more pointedly by cohen (1986). if the critic is supposed to assess the question of social justice on the basis of ethical standards and practices that are already in existence, then how can the outcome be anything other than a condoning of the status quo? cohen poses the problem more acutely by confronting walzerian interpretive criticism, which he sees as inherently ―communitarian‖, with a fundamental dilemma. this ―simple communitarian dilemma‖ arises with the interpretive predicament of having but two methodological options for gaining critical leverage: gleaning collective values from existing practices, or gleaning them form the stories we tell of ourselves and then applying them to social practices. the dilemma is seen to arise because of the redundancy of criticizing the status quo on the basis status quo values, on the one hand, and from a problem of proof of evidence on the other (the problem here being that it is impossible to know which concrete ethical standards are carried in the stories we tell of ourselves). the way out of this dilemma requires an argument supporting the very existence of such things as common sensibilities and shared understandings. it also requires an argument about how we can move towards greater comprehension of the shape and substance of such diffuse cultural formations. finally, it requires an argument for how there inheres within the spectrum of shared understandings a ―surplus of validity‖ that reaches beyond the status quo. i do not have the space to defend the sociological claim that citizens of liberal democratic states share certain moral understandings in common. it will have to suffice to say that, while we rarely come upon uncontested terrain as to what these understandings actually are, it is quite studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 114 plausible to assume a spectrum of meanings, if only in the framing of recurring public debates, that are more or less representative of a particular political community. there need not be a consensus regarding these common understandings. for the condition of there being either consensus or cleavage is, as taylor (1985) argues, ―a certain set of common terms of reference‖ (p. 36). still, the possibility of effective social criticism requires that the critic take a step further onto this interpretive terrain and identify, among these terms of reference, those which are most representative of the community in question—those, that is, which the community would consider to be its finest, most admirable qualities (walzer, 1993). this move will inevitably be political in nature, in the sense of being subject to the sensibilities of left and right. for this sort of politicization is an inevitable part of the practice of social criticism in modern democratic contexts. there can be no final ―objective‖ critical intervention that will reconcile all differences within the pluralistic spectrum of collective meanings. what we see, rather, is a consistent yet diffuse and evolving set of meanings. and it is within such historical continuities of meaning that there inheres a ―surplus of validity‖ or ―validity overhang‖, which points towards the shared standards and collective images needed to move beyond the status quo (honneth, 2004). once a political community‘s finest, most admirable qualities are critically portrayed, whether with reference to practices, traditional stories or other moral artifacts by which a society would do damage to itself to disavow, it then becomes possible to persuade those in power of the need for reform in those areas of social reality which betray those very same qualities. such a betrayal might have sources in changes to the institutional structure of a society. consider, for example, the prospect of a country whose occupational institutions have been incrementally transformed such that the conditions of working life are no longer rewarding, not even for well-to-do middle and upper class professionals. more to the point, however, with regard to social injustices suffered by specific groups and individuals, the betrayal may be ―cultural‖ in origin. 16 by this, i mean that the gap between collective standards and the lived experience of social reality can be traced back to a hypocritical, moral lopsidedness. taken within the context of plural spheres of justice, moral lopsidedness looms when one dimension of the social morality comes to degrade or undermine another. 17 with respect to the spheres of care, equal treatment and merit, this slippage would constitute a betrayal of the moral logic of the spheres themselves, but also in the sense that the wearing down of any one sphere would stunt the social hope of human development and romantic freedom. 16 honneth (2006) picks up on this distinction with reference to two different genres of social criticism: one linked to the diagnosis of civilizational ―pathologies‖ and the other to the identification of changes linked to social injustices. 17 walzer (1983) describes this as a process of ―invasion‖, where the agents of authority and argumentative tactics of one sphere invade that of another. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 115 conclusion the article sketches a framework for a mode of social criticism that has not yet been sufficiently accounted for in the humanities and social sciences. the very premises of this interpretive form of criticism call into question the divergences that currently exist between the university milieu and the everyday world of morality and politics. the article begins by alluding to the withdrawal of the ―postmodern‖ critic into an esoteric campus politics. it then turns to the normative approach of jurgen habermas‘ critically oriented philosophical anthropology. i note, first, that his universal discourse ethics, while tenuously far-reaching in its empirical claims, tends to distance his critique from actually existing moral sensibilities, thus depriving it of much of its political relevance. habermas‘ approach falters in another sense insofar as it fails to account for the breadth and plurality of moral expression in the western world. indeed, given his discourse ethics methodology, habermas makes no attempt to account for the relevant diversity of moral standards that exists in, for example, germany, canada and most other western democracies. the second part of the paper juxtaposes the morality of equal treatment with two other spheres of justice, those of ‗care‘ and ‗merit‘. this provides a window onto the historical dynamics that have come to shape these different spheres. i draw affinities between each of the spheres by situating them within the context of a collective ideal of human development and self-fulfillment. in the third part of the paper, i suggest that this loose knit personal growth ideal can be defended as a way of life fit to liberal democracies. finally, the last section addresses the method and manner of interpretive social criticism. i pick up on the importance of the social immersion and connectedness of the critic and on her capacity for prophetic idealism. while i emphasize the need for a degree of critical distance from the political fray, i argue the importance of there being a close relation to the moral culture of the relevant political community—if not a closeness to its ―core values‖ then at least to its common terms of reference. it is by interpreting such common reference points that a ―validity overhang‖ rises to the fore. by defending this view, i am also able to defend the coherency of the interpretive approach against the charge of circularity. this allows me, finally, to discuss the implications for the critic of there being different forms of validity relevant to each of the different spheres of justice. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 116 references alexander, j. c. 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(1993). interpretation and social criticism. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. waltzer, m. (2002). the company of critics: social criticism in the twentieth century. new york: basic books. microsoft word b87 full issue 14072022.docx journal of education, 2022 issue 87, http://journals.ukzn.ac.za/index.php/joe doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i87a02 online issn 2520-9868 print issn 0259-479x assessment and social justice: invigorating lines of articulation and lines of flight lesley le grange department of curriculum studies, faculty of education, stellenbosch university, stellenbosch, south africa llg@sun.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7096-3609 shan simmonds research unit for education and human rights in diversity, faculty of education sciences, north-west university, potchefstroom, south africa shan.simmonds@nwu.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5005-9906 suriamurthee moonsamy maistry department of social science education, school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, pinetown, south africa maistrys@ukzn.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9623-0078 sylvan blignaut department of postgraduate studies, faculty of education, nelson mandela university, port elizabeth, south africa sylvan.blignaut@mandela.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5514-0604 labby ramrathan department of teacher development studies, school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa ramrathanp@ukzn.ac.za https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9963-0675 (received: 4 september 2021; accepted: 17 may 2022) abstract this article is a collective project. it is a rhizome-article that is an assemblage of five heterogeneous essays that trouble dominant practices of assessment, generally, but also within the context of the covid-19 pandemic. the authors problematise standardisation, measurement, quantification, and other technologies of performativity that dominate contemporary assessment practices in schools and universities. in the essays, the authors invigorate lines of flight from dominant assessment practices and do so in the interest of assessment that is more humane and socially just. they point out that, as with anything else, a rhizome-article also has lines of articulation/connection and invite readers to invigorate these as they read the essays. the authors of this article le grange et al.: assessment and social justice 25 draw on the works of several scholars but do so to think with them rather than having their work framed by them. keywords: assessment, social justice, performativity, lines of articulation, lines of flight introduction this article is a collective project. as authors, we are inspired by those who have been experimenting with alternative genres of article writing that represent collective projects of performing academic work (for examples, see peters et al., 2020, waghid et al., 2020). our article is an assemblage comprising five short essays on assessment, which align with some of the key topics outlined in the call for contributions to this special issue of journal of education. however, the assemblage here is not tree-like (arborescent) but rhizomatic. in their influential work, a thousand plateaus, deleuze and guattari (1987) distinguished between arborescent and rhizomatic thinking. arborescent thinking refers to conceptions of knowledge as hierarchically articulated branches of a central stem or trunk rooted in firm foundations, whereas rhizomatic thinking refers to chaotically complex networkings of stems interconnecting the upshoots of some grasses (sellers, 2006). deleuze and guattari (1987) identified six principles of a rhizome and, in this article, we shall invoke two: the principle of connection and heterogeneity, and the principle of multiplicity. the principle of connection and heterogeneity means that any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other, implying that the rhizome is a network that is in a continual process of becoming. deleuze and guattari (1987, p. 8) remind us that the rhizome has no points or positions such as those found in a structure, tree, or root—there are only lines. these lines enable proliferation in all directions to form an assemblage. concerning the principle of multiplicity, deleuze and guattari (1987) argued that the rhizome is a true multiplicity because, as new lines form and grow, the nature thereof changes itself. in contrast, arborescent thinking produces pseudo multiplicities whereby a single trunk produces branches that are variants of the same. the rhizome has no beginning and end and is always in the middle (en milieu). thinking with deleuze and guattari (1987) helps us in understanding assessment as an assemblage connecting learners, educators, knowledge, material resources, physical spaces, rubrics, concepts, criteria, objectives, and so forth. the assessment assemblage that dominates schooling and higher education is arborescent: integral to curriculum development in the tylerian mould, with iterations such as outcomes-based education and constructive alignment (le grange, 2014). assessment has also become territorialised by a measurement culture, standardisation, and performativity regimes. however, assessment can become deterritorialised (become other than what it is) through invigorating lines of flight from its current dehumanising effects. the rhizome figuration enables us to think about assessment as not having fixity and always in a process of becoming. the essays in this article assemblage invigorate lines of flight from the dehumanising effects of dominant assessment practices, based on the assumption that there can be no quality 26 journal of education, no. 87, 2022 education (system) if attention is not given to the quality of life of the human being. drawing inspiration from john rawls, murillo and hidalgo (2017) reminded us of the notion of fairness, arguing that “only with fair schools can we contribute to fair societies” (p. 15). they contended that fair assessment is usually construed along two ontologically confounding (binary) lines of thought, namely, legal justice versus social justice conceptions, with the former “related to equality, transparency, objectivity, and evaluation of class content; that is, an egalitarian conception” and the latter “associated with ideas such as adaptation, diversification of tests, and qualitative assessment, even taking into account students’ effort and attitudes” (murillo & hidalgo, 2017, p.14)—assessment strongly connected to the notion of equity. given the stark socioeconomic unevenness of schooling in south africa (maistry & africa, 2020), we argue that a purist egalitarian, legal justice-oriented conception of assessment is likely to undermine the rawlsian (1971) notion of fairness. in light of this, we encourage conceptions of assessment that invoke social justice as we trouble the performative nature of assessment and its perpetuation of socioeconomic unevenness, especially when assessment is (i) configured through the metric adequacy of a student, (ii) used to keep students on track toward a predetermined path (such as attaining a qualification, for example), and (iii) a way of normalising students within an individualistic and competitive culture of standardised assessment (biesta, 2009; flórez et al., 2018; reddy et al., 2015). flórez et al. (2018) proffered that assessment should rather embrace a “broader perspective” of social justice that “links metrics, education and society” so as to imagine “a contextualized approach to social justice” (pp. 662–3). through the five essays of this paper, nuanced conceptions of a contextualised approach to social justice are imagined to invigorate new lines of flight to generate alternative pathways to thinking about assessment in post-covid times. in the first essay, suriamurthee maistry reflects on the territorialisation of assessment in an era of neoliberalism including performative regimes and forms of surveillance that have become more nuanced during the covid-19 pandemic. his critique opens up possibilities for rethinking assessment in a post-covid-19 era. in the second essay, shan simmonds reflects on how the covid-19 pandemic has laid bare existing injustices in education systems and how online teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education has had further dehumanising effects. she finds inspiration from the new materialist concept of diffraction and the productive form of power (potentia) to generate vectors of escape from dominant thinking on assessment. in the third essay, sylvan blignaut focuses on what precedes assessment and particularly on the concept, epistemological access. he argues that if assessment is to contribute to enhancing the quality of education systems, then students should not only gain formal access to the university but should also gain epistemological access. he opens up ways of expanding the notion of epistemological access so that it goes beyond granting students access only to what is in the western canon. in the fourth essay, labby ramrathan troubles the measurement culture that dominates assessment practices in education systems and focuses specifically on the effects of quantification in assessment. he suggests ways in which we might rethink quantification in assessment. in the final essay, lesley le grange focuses on the concept of fairness in relation to classroom assessments, large-scale assessments, and examinations . he argues that a focus on what precedes assessment, and on le grange et al.: assessment and social justice 27 the consequences of assessment, offers lines of escape from fairness applied only to assessment design. deleuze and guattari (1987) have also helped us to think this article itself a rhizomatic assemblage. the essays comprise heterogeneous parts of the assemblage that were constructed by each author on their own with the only common thing in mind, the call for papers of this special issue. there is no single theory that has produced variants of same, as is the case with an arborescent assemblage. lines of connection between and among the ideas/concepts in the essays can of course be invigorated. we invite the reader to generate such conceptual connections as we shall do in the parting section of this article. the rhizome has no beginning and end; it does not have a single entry point. each essay in this article has a different point of focus. the different points of focus include higher education, schooling, undergraduate education, postgraduate education, broader systemic issues, and anecdotal musings. unlike the tree, the rhizome predominantly grows horizontally, and so in this article-rhizome, the essays should be read transversally rather than vertically; seeking linearity and golden threads should not be the aim. instead, what is envisaged is the invigoration of lines of connections that the disparate points of foci in the essays make possible so that unlikely fidelities may be constructed. we invite readers to relinquish their arborescent blinkers so as to increase their coefficient of transversality. transversal thinking proliferates newness because it maps rather than traces—the rhizome is cartographic and therefore always becoming. while the concept of assessment is commonly known as a measurement-based broad approach to obtaining information about what is learnt and whether students have acquired sufficient knowledge (van der vleuten & schuwirth, 2005), the concept has evolved substantially over the last few decades in terms of its purpose, its forms, and its processes. in this article we do not go into the details of what assessment is—nor of its evolution because there is a significant body of literature that speaks to this concept and its evolution—save to briefly summarise the main purposes of assessment. archer (2017) outlined broad purposes, namely, assessment to support learning, assessment for accountability, and assessment for certification, progress, and transfer. based on the purposes of assessment, the following assessment types have been identified: assessment of learning (van der vleuten & schuwirth, 2005), assessment for learning (kanjee & sayed, 2013), and assessment as learning (dann, 2012). assessment for learning data helps teachers to plan and decide how they could use such data to support learning better, and assessment of learning (also generally referred to as summative assessment) is to ascertain what students have learnt. however, our focus in this article is centred on a broader macro gaze on assessment informed by a social justice lens. a central question then to be pondered is: “how can we open up avenues to move assessment more in a direction to accommodate equity aspirations in a structurally and socially unequal society such as south africa?” 28 journal of education, no. 87, 2022 neoliberalism, performance assessment, and liquid surveillance (suriamurthee maistry) in this piece, i offer an account of the neoliberal meta-narrative that has been shaping higher education pedagogy and practices in the last three decades. i also reflect on the assessment predicaments that presented in the abrupt transition to online higher education programme delivery. i argue that the architecture of the online space (learning management systems such as moodle) has mutated into an efficient surveillance technology, especially as it relates to assessment and student performance monitoring. there is little contention that neoliberalism’s substantive ideational thickening in south african higher education is a response to global knowledge economy prerogatives (maistry, 2015). this marks a shift from the transformation (social justice) imperative—namely, that of higher education as social good for communal upliftment—to higher education as economic good. neoliberal creep into all facets of higher education (and society in general) has resulted in what might be described as normative ambivalence, a situation in which university academics can recognise and even articulate the perils that a knowledge economy ethos presents, but appear to acquiesce (raaper, 2016) in response to the neoliberal tidal wave of higher education performativity “initiatives.” žižek (2011) reminds us that ideology works at the level of subconscious, that subjects have an imaginary relationship with the real world that is mediated through language. in the contemporary higher education space, a performativity discourse prevails and permeates pedagogy and assessment practices. the marketisation of higher education (schwartzman, 2013) as a consumer product (commodification) has had the detrimental effect of curriculum narrowing—streamlining tight sets of graduate attributes in the preparation of subjects (human resources) with immediate economic production potential. the consequence is that assessment regimes degenerate into protocols that measure economic utility-producing knowledge and skills. the competitive market for labour (un)wittingly fuels a narcissism—individual pursuits (personal advancement) at the expense of the communitarian (gane, 2012). there is also much extant literature that applies foucauldian theory/concepts (the examination, hierarchical observation, and normalising judgement) that critiques and exposes the disciplining effect of performance assessment (see, for example, raaper, 2016) and the rendering of a visible subject susceptible to constant measurement and scrutiny. while a critique of the swing towards a performance culture in higher education is offered, i also recognise that in the “pre-performative era, higher education assessment practice has not been without tensions as it relates to inherent power hierarchy in student-professor teaching and assessment enterprise (lorente-catalán & kirk, 2014). in the discussion that follows, i argue that the neoliberal surveillance blueprint (already well established in the higher education space) as it relates to “monitoring, tracking, tracing, sorting, checking and systematic watching” (bauman & lyon, 2013, p. iv) of students (and their performance) has morphed in the online space into what might be described as liquid surveillance. the use of online assessment submission systems, online grading, and feedback le grange et al.: assessment and social justice 29 marks the creation of permanent digital profiling. while this might be considered an efficient way of monitoring student progress, it has the effect of rendering a permanent visibility—a valuable neoliberal spinoff brought on by the covid-19 pandemic, which has forced higher education institutions to move their programme offerings online given the health risks that close human proximity presents for virus transmission. there was a sudden but necessary move from face-to-face lecture hall teaching to emergency remote teaching (pandemic pedagogy), a distinct and distant relative of online teaching in the purist sense (barbour et al., 2020). the exigency that presented after a period of mandatory state-imposed lockdown was that of timeous academic year completion, an imperative that higher education neoliberal managerial elites believed was fundamental to the survival of the economic entities (universities) under their governance given the inherent competitive relationship between higher education institutions. the completion of the academic programme online, however, hinged on the ability of universities and the coalface academics, to rapidly “convert” traditional face-to-face assessment practices/protocols to the online space. assessment of learning to determine student success, usually determined through formal, sit-down examinations in confined venues, for extended periods of time (up to three hours or more), was unprecedentedly eliminated as an option. this marked a departure from traditional assessment practice in undergraduate (and some postgraduate) programmes in south africa. that university managers and academics were wholly unprepared for the challenges that the online space would present for both pedagogy and assessment is without contention. in the absence of costly proctoring technologies, the issue of test-taker authentication (rahim, 2020), assessment reliability, and validity presented as serious challenges and have been the focus of much academic energy (research and scholarship). some disciplines readily moved their objective-type assessments (multiple-choice protocols) online and utilised randomisation techniques to discourage student dishonesty (copying). disciplines that apply a variety of methods to assess student learning, that value conceptual knowledge and discursive skills development, were found wanting as they struggled to find ways to determine student success. two key issues emerge. firstly, neoliberal ideology at work in south african higher education facilitated the “ease” of transition to the online space with likely deleterious effects on assessment protocols, further nudging assessment regimes in the direction of assessing what is easily measurable. secondly, the technology afforded by learning management systems (like moodle) present as effective post-panoptic surveillance mechanism—“the everquickening march of technology, colonising more and more life areas and leaving intact fewer and fewer untouched ‘indigenous’ areas” (bauman & lyon, 2013, p. 9) like holistic, authentic assessment for and as learning. the current crisis (of) in assessment presents as opportune moment for academics to review and reflect on normative assessment practices and to reflect on how the neoliberal metanarrative is enabled through acquiescence. how might we turn around the assessment postpanopticon (in the online space)? how might we imagine a synopticon (mathieson, 1997), a 30 journal of education, no. 87, 2022 situation of agentic exercise of power in which subjects engage a process of surveilling the powerful few (neoliberal higher education governing elites, in this instance), their ideological intent, and how such ideology translates into degenerative pedagogy and assessment conventions—with a view to subverting such manoeuvres? the emerging body of literature of students as partners in higher education (see mercer-mapstone et al., 2017 for a comprehensive literature review of scholarship), which speaks to constructive ways in which faculty and students construct the teaching, learning, and assessment enterprise, holds much potential for reframing assessment towards more socially just, inclusive, and democratic (lorente-catalán & kirk, 2014) practices in higher education. when assessment rides the waves of covid-19: unmasking alternative imaginaries (shan simmonds) there is no doubt that covid-19 has exposed the inequities in our education system (jansen, 2020; motala & menon, 2020). the pandemic has further exacerbated the crude realities perpetuating south africa’s already stark socioeconomic inequalities. these include social injustices through digital and resource divides that have been detrimental to higher education transformational agendas, including the need to widen epistemic access (du preez & le grange, 2020). the emotional impact of the pandemic is also pervasive. the psychosocial well-being of students has intensified as they predominantly remain online, devoid of human contact, creating both a physical and social void and exposing that “the human cost of the covid-19 period is yet to be seen” (motala & menon, 2020, p. 95). we are reminded now, in a time where we must cover our faces with protective masks, that we need to unmask and face the injustices of our education system and seek alternative possibilities. for soudien (2020), this required being mindful of what our new learning about education (learning, teaching, and assessment) is telling us. being mindful requires more than a fixation on responding to practical anxieties around continuing business as usual to salvage the academic year, and managing health and safety by prohibiting contact classes on university campuses (motala & menon, 2020; soudien, 2020). for fataar and badroodien, it reminds us of our responsibility to ensure that the future of education post covid-19 provides opportunities for new and emergent imaginaries that “challenge our stances on reciprocity, human dignity, repair and a commitment to equal sharing” (2020, p. 4). said differently by soudien, the systemic shock of the pandemic has made profound the importance of recognising that learning is complex, and that mitigating this complexity requires “the just and moral step of recognizing that our children, all of them, are different” (2020, p. 17). the outcry to use the pandemic as a carpe diem moment sounds optimistic and hopeful in a period that has mostly been occupied by fear, darkness, and death. but it remains romantic when imagined in an education system entrenched in performativity regimes that are often not premised on the ideals of social justice. as a wolf clothed in sheepskin, the deceit of performativity fuels the university in all aspects including assessment. as an academic, i continue to face numerous online assessment challenges. the continuum ranges through fostering assessment that stimulates deep and inclusive learning (soudien, 2020), assessment le grange et al.: assessment and social justice 31 that recognises the social dimension in a time when social learning is not entirely impossible but, because it is devoid of physical contact, often comes at a cost—resources, digital literacies, and time (motala & menon, 2020)—as well as pressures from institutions for students to perform through continuous assessments with multiple opportunities until they are successful (simmonds, 2020). in this systemic shock (soudien, 2020), i strive for equality, fairness, and justice in my assessment practices but experience a constant tug-of-war with assessment as the qualification function of learning (biesta, 2009). i experience this through (i) institutional priorities measuring my performance as a lecturer, based more on how many of my students pass without acknowledging the meaningful utilisation of my assessment practices for learning and teaching and (ii) some of my students who, for financial reasons (examples include parents’ loss of employment) or their frustration with no-contact classes, have resorted to full and part-time employment alongside their full-time studies—sometimes resulting in measurement-driven learning, that is, students not participating in all learning opportunities but simply doing only the assessments needed to pass the module. the possible danger hereof is that assessment is commodified as “the sum of what is known” rather than an exhibition of learning that strives for the continuous becoming of knowing and the productive endeavour for the unknown. i invest these experiences in foucault’s (1977) idea of dynamic normalisation to try and make sense of them. dynamic normalisation, as surveillance or the awareness of being observed, has the potential to stifle individuality and create conformity. people are normalised when they end up acting, thinking, and being the same for fear of being caught out or punished (foucault, 1977). as an instrument of power, dynamic normalisation imposes homogeneity and self-governance (foucault, 1977). as an online lecturer, i am conscious of the need to mitigate a culture of measurement-driven assessment for the qualification function of learning. i feel the effects of surveillance now more than ever in terms of how my institution measures my performativity as a lecturer. what these musings also lead me to recognise is how this could make assessment representationalist (barad, 2007). representationalism is founded on the premise that “words, concepts, ideas, and the like accurately reflect or mirror the things to which they refer” (barad, 2007, p. 86). this leads to reflecting on representations like a mirror image where representations have no effect on the objects of investigation in the sense that they are “nothing more than iterative mimesis” (barad, 2007, p. 88). what this means for the type of measurement-driven assessment that i experience, is that institutions hold assessment at a distance from teaching, learning, and the world to which this could relate and, in addition, students experience assessment as a separate object. for me, this form of assessment depicts inter-action—when representations are “set up to look for homologies and analogies between separate entities” and as a result “reflecting on the world from the outside.” barad’s (2007, p. 88) so, what then are the implications of covid-19 for the future of assessment? i think barad’s (2007) ideas on shifting our thinking from reflection to diffraction is one alternative pathway. diffraction is a critical practice of engagement with “a commitment to understanding which differences matter, how they matter, and for whom” (barad, 2007, p. 90). what this could entail for assessment is the need for a heightened level of mindfulness. the type of 32 journal of education, no. 87, 2022 mindfulness that is not a reactive or descriptive response to the inequalities that have surfaced from covid-19 but, rather, a deeper engagement that exposes various nuances entangled in thinking about assessment as an opportunity for thinking beyond what is—and to image what could be. vested in agential realism, diffraction eschews representationalism and advances a performative understanding of different kinds of knowledge-making practice. here, “performative” is power that produces (potentia)—not power that normalises (potestas) (foucault, 1977, p. 194). when power is productive, knowledge-making is the “material practice of intra-acting within and as part of the world” (barad, 2007, p. 90). in terms of assessment, this could invigorate a shift from assessment as a tool to uncover preexisting disciplinary facts, towards assessment with the generative potential to develop different kinds of knowledge such as trans-disciplinary knowledge (barad, 2007). when assessment is embodied and embedded in this way, practices of knowing “are specific material engagements that participate in (re)configuring the world” (barad, 2007, p. 91). when assessment is an enabler for (re)configuring the world and how we participate in it, assessment practices are able to challenge performativity regimes that dehumanise assessment. when assessment is dehumanised, it is detached and preoccupied with keeping students on track of a predetermined path such as using their metric “worth” to determine whether they can attain a qualification. one of the effects thereof is that assessment practices can fall short in locating “bodies, brains and social spaces in their full entanglement” (soudien, 2020, p. 17)—so that assessment can be a complex entanglement of the material, discursive, and social; so that it can navigate any systemic shock (covid-19 or otherwise) because it is embraced in all its complexity and as a complicated conversation. as a complicated conversation, assessment is more humane and socially just because it provides a productive space (that is positive, hopeful, and affirmative) to ask difficult questions: “how might one work through and within performativity regimes in ways that are productive so as to imagine vectors of escape from dominant thinking on assessment?” “how might assessment practices be critical of normalising students as the same and, rather, embrace difference to open up alternative pathways for students to become?” “how might dominant individualistic and competitive assessment practices include more collaborative approaches so that assessment could contribute to knowledge-making that is socially just, affective, and mindful?” assessment and learning in postgraduate studies (sylvan blignaut) the danger here is that we end up valuing what is measured, rather than that we engage in measurement of what we value. (biesta, 2009, p. 43) in this essay, i will reflect on my experiences of assessment and learning in my capacity as lecturer teaching a research module to bachelor of education honours students, and teaching master of education students over many years. postgraduate studies as used here, therefore, refers to these two programmes. i will present this reflection predominantly from students’ views gleaned from teaching the module and my interactions with them. the main thrust of le grange et al.: assessment and social justice 33 my argument is that students’ conceptions of assessment are informed by instrumental/technicist notions of learning that lead to shallow learning, and which are closely aligned with neoliberal imperatives. the views of students on assessment that they bring to the classroom are largely inherited from their undergraduate years and the tacit/covert messages relayed to them in the neoliberal university. assessment has radically changed over the last two decades in higher education institutions in south africa (mcfarlane, 2016). as neoliberalism has gained momentum worldwide, south african public institutions have not escaped this hold. it is perhaps apposite to commence this essay with the observation that there is a conceptual link between teaching, learning, and assessment. the idea of assessment in education, generally, and higher education, particularly, links with one of the three central purposes of education as espoused by biesta (2013), namely, qualification. assessment is intricately linked to obtaining a qualification in higher education. as far as postgraduate qualifications are concerned, the assessment criteria are uncomplicated, straightforward, and transparent. what is required from students is to produce a treatise, dissertation, or thesis that meets the criteria as prescribed by the postgraduate studies committees of different institutions, and which are largely uniform throughout higher education institutions. to use an analogy from a sporting code such as a triathlon where athletes are required to participate in and complete three disciplines/legs, namely, a swim, a cycle, and a marathon—once the athlete crosses the finish line at the end, they are deemed to have completed the event. in an ideal world, this seems uncomplicated and easy enough but, concealed here, are the vastly different pathways students have travelled just to get to the access point of a postgraduate qualification. i am cognisant of the obstacles some might have encountered in their voyages. a question one can ponder is whether the test is a fair one for all. in order to successfully complete the event, the athletes have to put in months, if not years of training, which is the same for postgraduate students who must immerse themselves in the literature, engage in extensive reading, and work towards the skills required for the task. ideas encountered in the classroom should be explored further outside the classroom in order to craft a coherent research proposal consisting of all the elements that constitute it. generally, the postgraduate students who grasp the task and responsibility required early on are the ones who become successful in meeting the examination and assessment requirements and completing the qualification. meeting the assessment criteria for postgraduate studies requires effort, skills, responsibility, and agency from students. there is often a tacit expectation in higher education institutions, especially in the grip/age of neoliberalism, that all students should be successful. morrow (1994) similarly argued that students require epistemological access and agency in order to achieve success in higher education. epistemological access, as used here, refers to the extent to which students are capable of accessing the knowledge structures that universities offer. it goes without saying that without epistemological access, students will struggle to meet assessment criteria. morrow (1994) further drew a close relationship between achievement and agency; on epistemological access he continued thus: 34 journal of education, no. 87, 2022 epistemological access is not a product that could be bought or sold, given to someone or stolen. . . . epistemological access cannot be supplied or “delivered” or “done” to the learner, nor can it be “automatically” transmitted to those who pay their fees. (p. 40) similarly, in postgraduate studies, students should be committed to the task at hand, exhibit curiosity for learning, and set the necessary time aside required to read for such a qualification. in the classes i teach, i often encourage my students to read, ask questions, and to form peer groups to interact with one another. recently, when one of my students did not do as well as she had expected in an assignment, she asked me what the point was to interact with peers. she did not say it directly, but what i deduced from this observation was that she expected that all the learning she had to do should come from my teaching because that was my job. this is what waghid (2006) referred to as a frivolous notion of learning and which, i argue, is embedded in neoliberal thinking where students regard themselves as clients who pay for a service. this faith in teaching and the application of technical measures takes us perilously close to the idea of scientism and the idea that we can teach ourselves out of trouble. to meet the assessment criteria in postgraduate studies, students require responsibility or agency, as morrow (1994) put it. on one occasion, a student who obtained a reasonable pass mark asked me if she could resubmit given that she is a distinction candidate. in some undergraduate modules, students routinely achieve 100% and the expectation is that they can replicate that in the postgraduate research module. without getting too entangled in these issues, the idea of multiple opportunities is not something i necessarily oppose, and i have no issues about granting second opportunities to students who stumble in their first attempt; but, to extend that to all students who pass is impractical. also, i am more than willing to engage again with their work—not to attach a numeric value to it but, rather, for developmental and formative purposes, that is, to produce an improved research proposal. it is, after all, an important responsibility of lecturers to assist students with formative and developmental feedback given that they do the epistemological labour to facilitate epistemological access for their students. but, there is also a responsibility on the part of the student to engage in assessment as learning. in conclusion, assessment in postgraduate studies is contrary to, and not congruent with, neoliberal imperatives that are number based. it is not the main purpose of this essay to provide proposals as remedy, thus, a few ideas will suffice. one strategy that could be implemented to enhance epistemological access is a return to coursework master’s studies, which have almost disappeared from south african universities due to the higher subsidy that is earned from the department of higher education and training for master’s studies by research. taught master’s courses scaffold students better intellectually and could enhance epistemological access and simultaneously serve social justice purposes. we need to rethink admission criteria that presently, are based on percentages and consider, rather, a more holistic approach that is congruent with equity considerations such as background, potential, motivation, resilience, tenacity, and so forth. i will not elaborate here on admission criteria le grange et al.: assessment and social justice 35 because lesley le grange addresses this issue in his essay. we could also learn from the united states where coursework is an important requirement for doctoral studies. only by subscribing to, and adhering to, time-honoured and authentic assessment practices in postgraduate studies that allow epistemological access can we lay the foundation for rigorous postgraduate studies in south africa. i have invoked morrow’s (1994) idea of epistemological access for invigorating lines of flight and vectors of escape from the technicist/instrumentalist lenses with which postgraduate students view assessment in the neoliberal university. however, morrow’s (1994) notion of epistemological access should be expanded because it is restricted to knowledge that forms part of the western canon. i argue for an extended notion of epistemological access—one that makes provision for all knowledge forms, as has been called for by other scholars (see du preez & le grange, 2020; le grange, 2011) so that epistemological access encompasses epistemic/cognitive justice. quantification of assessment: an impediment to quality education (labby ramrathan) the quantification of assessments into grades or percentages that give an indication of the extent to which students and other interested parties have learnt or are competent has largely been within an audit culture in an audit society (hardy & boyle, 2011). shifting outside this culture requires bold steps and acceptance, especially in a social justice framework where the starting points are not the same for diverse constituents of the education system—yet end points (quantification of assessment) become the epistemic access decider. noting that assessment serves a diverse range of functions including grading and ranking for external stakeholders, providing students with feedback on their progress, and providing feedback to staff on the effectiveness of learning and teaching programmes (brew et al., 2009), moving out of this quantification culture in educational practices requires a complex process associated with beliefs (fullan, 2007)—especially in a context where meritocracy has been normalised. in this short essay, i show how complex the shift from the quantification of assessment can be—from a systemic perspective as well as from an individualistic perspective—as i reflect on my experiences in reconceptualising the undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education curriculum at my university. my attempts in shifting the dominant perspective of quantification of assessment using criterion-based assessment processes initially gained some interest amongst staff and students, but soon thereafter reverted to quantification. i present two examples of such shifts, one at the undergraduate level and one at the postgraduate level. in reviewing the conceptualising of teaching practice, both in pedagogy and assessment, in the bachelor of education degree, i advocated for three categories of assessment. the first category of assessment was a fail, the second a pass, and the third was pass with distinction. the rationale for these categorisations of assessment for teaching practice was a simple one: either one can teach learners in a classroom, cannot teach learners in a classroom, or there are 36 journal of education, no. 87, 2022 identifiable qualities that make one stand out as an exceptional teacher (faull, 2008). the fundamental question that formed the basis of this rationale was: “how can one quantify a pass or fail for a practice-based assessment based in a context influenced by some controllable variables, like knowledge of subject content, and a large number of uncontrollable variables like diversity of learners and learning contexts?” initially, this shift in assessment for teaching practice was quite acceptable and, after the first implementation of this way of assessment, challenges emerged. two particular challenges need noting. the first is that students complained that they were not able to ascertain from the pass or fail categorisation of teaching practice the extent to which they failed or how well they performed. a further concern raised by the students was that they were unclear in what aspects of teaching practices they performed well, and in what they did not perform well. quantification of the pass or fail would give them this knowing. the second concern was from an institutional perspective. the academic recording system was number based, and a qualitative entry could not be accommodated in the recording system. to get around this, quantifications were needed for a fail, pass, and pass with distinction. a number was then allocated for each class of fail, pass, and pass with distinction. the second example relates to a deep reflection on the difference between undergraduate and postgraduate studies, and the transition to independent inquiry and learning. as i worked through the policy documents framing programme design to reconceptualise undergraduate and postgraduate programmes within the revised national qualifications framework (nqf), i thought deeply about the intended learnings and the assessment thereof across these programmes. drawing on the level descriptors and purpose of qualifications of the nqf (south african qualifications authority [saqa], 2013), there is a transition from exposure to, at the undergraduate level, the knowledge base and established processes of inquiry towards the independent generation of knowledge through inquiry-based processes at the postgraduate levels of study. in this transition, there is a shift in the focus on knowledge and inquiry. in undergraduate studies, knowledge of, understanding of, and critical engagement with, amongst others, established concepts, theories, principles, and processes in established knowledge disciplines were the focus of engagement. the level descriptors include concepts such as fundamental knowledge, sound knowledge, and well-rounded knowledge, suggesting a grading on the acquisition of disciplinary knowledge. in the postgraduate study programmes, amongst others, positionality, process of inquiry, and critical thinking formed the basis of higher order teaching and learning. concepts such as intellectual independence, development of knowledge at an advanced level and demonstrate high-level research capability and make a significant and original academic contribution captured the intended learning in terms of the nqf (saqa, 2013). while it may be possible to determine the extent to which students know and can recall existing knowledge and processes within a discipline or across disciplines at the undergraduate level, it becomes more difficult at the postgraduate level to quantify learning, thinking and innovative inquiry processes that could change in a moment, inspired by various stimuli including assessment activities. in the following two examples of postgraduate studies that follow, i first show how quantification of assessment is meaningless to the students’ learning and, in the second example, i show how critical le grange et al.: assessment and social justice 37 engagement and transition to advanced knowledge and independent learning renders quantification meaningless based on the level descriptors for postgraduate studies of the nqf. in a research module that i was co-teaching at the master’s level, we engaged with the students about the expectations of the module and its assessment. we indicated that 10% of the marks would be allocated to demonstration of skills in referencing in the assessment tasks. they would get either 10% or 0% for referencing, and this could be a determining factor in their pass or fail of the module. the students were highly confused with clear indication of agitation through their facial expressions and questioning. they were reluctant to accept that there would be no partial marks for referencing; that either one knows how to reference according to an established form of referencing technique—or not. we used another example in the form of a sketch relating to late coming of a learner to school. in this sketch, we problematised the ontological notion of late from a teacher’s perspective based on time, to that of a learner’s perspective on how they planned their day. from the teacher’s perspective, the learner was late, arriving only at 10h30 to school yet, from the learner’s perspective, they were not late because they had planned their day accordingly to arrive at school at 10h30. through this sketch, the master’s students were unsettled from their epistemological understanding of late and, through further engagements, came to understand positionality and ontology in knowing. how does one then assess these master’s students’ learnings? can quantification reflect their learning which, in a moment, was disrupted? these two examples demonstrate the limitations of the quantification of assessment as the basis for quality education in teacher education and, indeed, across disciplines. the normalised discourse as symbolic power (bourdieu, 1991) on assessment being a measured quantity that makes certain thoughts, beliefs, and actions about success and quality education legitimate because of the power dynamics associated within an audit culture, both personal and systemic, sustains a view that quality education can be measured, quantified, and ranked. disrupting these power dynamics may open up new ways of conceptualising assessment. assessment as learning (dann, 2012) might be an alternative to the quantification of assessment for quality education. learning as a result of assessment, which the sketch on lateness illustrates, demonstrates the yet to be realised learning. noting that quantification of assessment has been ingrained within the education terrain, a process of re-enculturation is needed. in this respect, small but significant moves are needed in the way assessments are done within a module/subject. for example, the determination of pass or fail in a module/subject could include a quantification and a qualitative element—initially more quantitative with fewer qualitative elements and gradually shifting the balance in favour of qualitative assessment elements. this gradual shift should also be accompanied by an increasing number of modules/subjects taking similar assessment changes. this gradual shift is possible, as we have seen with the shift away from the dominance of quantitative methods in research to increasing levels of qualitative methods in research. 38 journal of education, no. 87, 2022 fairness in assessment (lesley le grange) broadly, assessment comprises three types: classroom assessment, examinations and largescale assessment (clarke, 2012). classroom assessment is performed by teachers, and involves the design and administering of assessment tasks that have at least three purposes: to support learning (formative assessment), for the teacher and the learner to gauge how a learner is performing against assessment criteria (criterion-referenced assessment), and to give teachers feedback on the effectiveness of their pedagogical strategies (evaluation). examinations are assessments that take place at the end of a learning cycle or grade, or at the end of formal or compulsory schooling. examinations provide information for high-stakes decisions such as whether a learner progresses to the next grade, whether a learner obtains a school-leaving certificate, or whether a learner gains access to higher education. in south africa, the national senior certificate examinations (nsce) results are also used in the calculation of academic performance scores by universities for admission purposes to particular qualifications. nsce results are also used to classify and rank schools, with some receiving the negative label of “underperforming schools.” clarke (2012) argued that the high-stakes nature of examinations creates a backwash effect on the schooling systems in terms of what is taught and how it is taught. given its high-stakes nature, the nsce, which is administered by the department of basic education (dbe) is quality assured by the independent quality council for general education and training, umalusi. large-scale assessments are system-level assessments designed to provide information on performance at a system level, and factors relating or contributing to such performance (clarke, 2012). they are mainly conducted by agencies outside of schools but there are instances worldwide, where large-scale assessments are conducted by panels of teachers and therefore based on teachers’ judgement. large-scale assessments happen at regional, national, and international levels. an example of regional assessments is the systemic testing done by the western cape education department, which involves the testing of learners’ achievements in mathematics and languages at grades 3, 6, and 9. the annual national assessments are an example of large-scale assessments occurring at a national level. examples of international large-scale assessments are the cross-national benchmarking tests that south africa participates in, such as the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) and the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss). external large-scale assessments are focused on how a system is performing rather than on individual learners, and results in schools, provinces, and nations are compared with one another against a norm (norm-referenced assessment). large-scale assessments involving panels of teachers could focus on learners and could also be criterion-referenced. this background is shared because in this essay, i wish to explore the concept of fairness in relation to the three broad assessment types i have outlined. it is important to bear in mind that the three assessment types have different purposes (kanjee & bhana, 2020) and therefore, the importance of fairness may weight differently depending on the assessment type. fairness might require greater consideration in high-stakes examinations than in large-scale assessments that are le grange et al.: assessment and social justice 39 sample-based. specifically, i wish to explore vectors of escape from the technical manner in which fairness in assessment is conceived and applied. reliability, validity, and fairness are core concepts in assessment. in classroom assessments, examinations, and large-scale assessments, reliability is typically improved through focusing on matters such as the number of assessment tasks, the difficulty of the test or task, the wording of items and instructions, as well as clarity and completeness of assessment guides (reddy et al., 2015). validity in classroom-based assessments, examinations, and large-scale assessments often narrowly places emphasis on content (curricula) validity, which concerns the extent to which a test is representative of the domain that it is intended to assess.1 for example, umalusi, will quality assure all nsce papers in relation to validity and reliability. validity should, however, be conceived more broadly. messick (1990, p. 1) argued: validity is an integrated evaluative judgment of the degree to which empirical evidence and theoretical rationales support the adequacy and appropriateness of interpretations and actions based on test scores or other modes of assessment. in other words, validity inferences should not only be derived from test scores but also from observing actions and behaviours. of the three concepts, fairness has generally received the least attention but, in recent years, we have seen a growing interest in fairness vis-à-vis assessment (tierney, 2017; rasooli et al., 2019). in relation to classroom and large-scale assessments, fairness is generally applied in technical terms in the sense that examiners ensure that learners sit for the same test at the same time, and that the same assessment criteria are used. mislevy et al. (2013) argued that fairness is improved when aspects of examinations are standardised to reduce variations that would advantage some and disadvantage others. however, i shall argue that fairness should be liberated from the technical manner (standardising) in which it is understood and applied so that it is invoked in the interest of social justice. the concepts, reliability, validity, and fairness inevitably intersect, but it is important to understand what makes (or could make) fairness different from the other concepts. tierney (2017) argued that “fairness is similar to validity and reliability in that it is not dichotomous, which means that it is determined by degree” (p. 797). however, he pointed out that whilst validity and reliability are technical qualities, fairness is not, although it is affected by technical quality. he suggested that “fairness is a requirement for the ethical practice of educational assessment, which in turn contributes to the broader matter of social justice” (tierney, 2017, p. 797). what tierney (2017) argued may, generally, be the case but messick’s (1990) broader understanding could make validity ethical too. however, the focus here is on fairness. for educational assessment to be an ethical practice that can contribute to social justice, assessment needs to be viewed as a social practice and not as a technology. fairness in assessment cannot therefore be a technical matter concerned with test construction. importantly, gipps and stobart (2009) pointed out that fairness should be 1 an expanded view of validity could, of course, be applied to assessment. see le grange and beets (2005) for insights on how validity is understood within different research paradigms. 40 journal of education, no. 87, 2022 concerned with what precedes the assessment and its consequences, and not only with assessment design. what precedes assessment and the consequences of assessment, are matters of social justice. the first relates to the educational opportunities learners are provided with, the access they have to resources, the environments in which they learn, and so forth. studies have shown that factors outside the school have a much greater impact on learner achievement than factors inside the school (fleisch, 2007; le grange, 2019). the major variables influencing learner achievement in south africa include the socioeconomic status of learners, teachers’ subject matter (content) knowledge, teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, resources, geographical location, and language of learning (fleisch, 2007). in south africa’s bimodal schooling where a large number of materially poor students underachieve and a smaller number of materially privileged learners perform relatively well, what precedes assessment requires attention. assessment cannot be deemed to be fair if what precedes the assessment in terms of educational opportunities and access to resources are so vastly different for the two sets of learners. the second, the consequences of assessment, relates to how assessments are interpreted, and the effect that assessments have on learners’ life chances. twenty-eight years into south africa’s democracy, the participation rates in higher education still reflect legacies of apartheid. in 2018, the participation rates for the different population groups (apartheid categorisations) were 19%, 15%, 46%, and 55% for african, coloured, indian, and white students, respectively (council on higher education, 2020). this means that the life chances of black students, in terms of career opportunities and for them to serve as role models in south african society, are significantly more curtailed than is the case with white students. this inequity could be addressed if the results of assessments such as those of the nsce are interpreted in more nuanced ways. gipps and stobart (2009) made a helpful distinction between equality and equity in relation to fairness. equality takes a mere quantitative approach in comparing the achievement of learners, whereas equity is concerned with the justice of the arrangements prior to the assessment. what might help to improve participation rates of black students is if equity and not equality becomes the principle of fairness when it comes to how universities interpret nsce scores and use them as part of their admission requirements. where universities have applied some aspects of equity as part of their admission criteria this has led to a public outcry, with privileged sectors of society invoking equality as fairness and not equity as fairness (for a review of equity in admission policies of some south african universities, see matsepe et al., 2020). if assessment is to contribute to social justice in south africa, the concept of fairness requires greater attention—fairness that incorporates what precedes assessments and also the consequences of assessments. there are many factors that precede assessments, and which lie outside the ambit of schools. however, there are strategies that teachers can apply in order to promote fairness in classroom assessments. broadly, these involve ensuring that all learners have equal opportunities to achieve learning objectives, providing a range of assessment tasks that test a range of abilities, eliminating all sources of bias in the curriculum and in assessments, taking cognisance of the sociocultural realities of learners, and bridging le grange et al.: assessment and social justice 41 knowledges,2 and so forth (for more specific strategies, see reddy et al., 2015). when it comes to public examinations, given the nature of such assessments, efforts to promote fairness is curtailed. however, examiners can reduce sources of bias, provide learners with certain disabilities more time to write, offer examinations in braille, and so forth. the proposal by the dbe to offer examination papers in multiple languages also promotes fairness. fairness also relates to how nsce results are interpreted and used by the universities in their admission criteria. in the interest of social justice, nsce results should be interpreted through an equity and not equality lens. as le grange (2010, p. 335) wrote in relation to the controversy over the university of cape town’s admission policy: fairness in the case of university admission policies would mean that one cannot simply apply the same criteria for admitting advantaged and disadvantaged students. the implication is that, in a country which has experienced decades of legal discrimination based on race, and where legacies of disadvantage remain, colour consciousness in public policies is crucial for a certain period of time. large-scale assessments involving panels of teachers have greater promise in promoting fairness if such panels comprise a diversity of teachers who serve different communities so that the needs, interests, and values of all learners are included in assessments. this would ensure that assessment is ethical where fairness and validity intersect, if messick’s (1990) broader conception of validity is embraced. parting thoughts this article assemblage comprises heterogeneous parts in which different authors attempt to invigorate lines of escape from the way assessment has become territorialised in contemporary times. the rhizome figuration helps us to understand that, even though in its territorialised forms assessment has the appearance of fixity, it is always becoming. although standardisation, measurement, quantification seem so entrenched, these practices can become other—can become deterritorialised. we have shown that concepts such as epistemological access and fairness can become other, can be deterritorialised and reterritorialised in the interest of cognitive and social justice. we noted that this article is a rhizomatic rather than a tree assemblage. the essays are not rooted in a single theory or theoretical framework (taproot of a tree) as is the case with the classic article. the article is a becoming, attempts to be something other, and maps alternative ways of doing assessment. as with a rhizome, as authors we were at times out of step and out of rhythm with one another: four essays focused on higher education, whilst one mainly focused on schooling; some authors focused on undergraduate education and some on postgraduate education; thoughts were generated from broader systemic issues but also anecdotal ponderings; and so forth. the attempt was to produce something new in the interest of social justice. this article-rhizome has multiple entry points, making multiple readings 2 for more detail, see le grange (2007, 2019). 42 journal of education, no. 87, 2022 possible. the reader is invited to start at any point and the essays can be read in any sequence. in this article, “as in all things, there are lines of articulation or segmentarity, strata and territories, but also lines of flight, movements of deterritorialisation and destratification” (deleuze & guattari, 1987, p. 3). lines of articulation evident in the essays are that irrespective of the context (higher education or schooling, undergraduate or postgraduate) the dominant assessment culture is technicist/instrumentalist. essays 1 and 2 articulate how the covid-19 pandemic is laying bare inequalities and entrenching practices of performativity; all essays articulate the dominance of measurement in assessment, and essay 4 expands on this by focusing the problem of quantification. there are many more lines of articulation/connection that can be invigorated and we invite the reader to map them. all the authors generated lines of flight from current assessment forms, practices, and concepts that have resulted in homogenisation, normalisation, and dehumanisation. we do not wish to conclude by putting what we have written in a nutshell for the reader. we have asked questions, and trust that our critiques of assessment practices have not produced variants of what exists but have opened up pathways for 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(2011). living in the end times. verso. introduction to social justice / by william ferree. digitized by the internet archive in 2016 https://archive.org/details/introductiontosoooferr introduction to social justice by rev. william ferree, s.m. the paulist press 401 west 59th street new york 19, n. y. nihil obstat : john m. a. fearns, s.t.d., censor librorutn. imprimatur : © francis cardinal spellman, archbishop of new york . new york, november 29, 1947. copyright, 1948, by the missionary society op st. paul the apostle in the state of new york printed and published in the u. s. a. by the paulist press, new york 19, n. y. ^ssfdiflsd preface rphe most important thing to note about this pamphlet is that it is only an introduction to the subject which it treats. as an introduction, one of its functions is to attract attention to a subject not too widely studied or understood. to do this, it will deliberately emphasize only new and neglected aspects of the truth. this deliberate emphasis on the unusual, however, should not blind readers to the fact that whatever was true in the past is just as true in the present. in insisting, as this pamphlet must insist, on the social nature and activity of man, there is no intention of denying in any way his individual nature and activity. it is only that this latter aspect of human nature is not the subject of this pamphlet. confirmed individualists will not like what they read in these pages. they will feel that their most cherished principles are being denied at every step of the way. the sole purpose of this preface is to point out to them, from the very beginning, that their truths of the individual order are not being denied —they are being completed. chapter i the work of pope pius xi a great social thinker pope pius xi was one of the greatest social thinkers of modern times, or, for that matter, of any time. one of his greatest contributions to social thought was his doctrine of social justice as explained in his encyclicals quadragesimo anno and divini redemptoris. what he did in these encyclicals was to complete an essential chapter of moral philosophy which had lain undeveloped, and largely neglected, from the very dawn of philosophy. this “unfinished chapter” has become steadily more important in modern times because it forms the missing link between moral philosophy on one hand, and the vast modern development which is known as “scientific sociology” on the other. the great struggle has raged over the radical instability of social phenomena. the fact-biased sociologist saw this instability very clearly; and concluded very early in his science that he would have to discard all “immutable” principles to make room for it; while the principle-conscious moralist, faced with so devastating a conclusion, resisted to the point of ignoring, or actually fearing, the facts. it is not surprising, therefore, that “scientific sociology” has been so intensely seeularistic and even materialistic throughout its whole development—neither the sociologists nor the moralists have been able to see very clearly how their sciences could be reduced to unity, or even to compromise. the problem was to put forward a theory of society which explained satisfactorily the countless fundamental changes of social organization which history reveals; and still be able to maintain, amidst this incessant and radical change, the unchanging rule of law. [s] the radical instability of human affairs first let us see what pope pius xi has to say about the radical instability of human society. the best statement of his views is to be found in a discourse delivered on may 15, 1926, to a group which had been commemorating the thirty-fifth anniversary of pope leo xiii’s encyclical rerum novarum (“on the condition of the working classes”). this discourse is in the direct line of pope pius xi’s own great encyclical, quadragesimo anno, which was written just five years later, on the fortieth anniversary of rerum novarum . as a matter of fact, the discourse is quoted (at paragraph 49) in quadragesimo anno, and the reference given; so that it is obvious that it should be studied with the latter document. the importance of the discourse is further emphasized by the holy father’s statement at the beginning that it resulted from some sort of divine inspiration. the holy father thinks himself in conscience bound to these dear sons who have come here in the expectation of some direction relative to their role as leaders of catholic action. that is why he will tell them in all confidence what the lord inspired him to say at the moment when, kneeling before him, he had repeated the beautiful prayer of st. thomas: da mihi, donline, sedium tuarum assistricem sapientiam. . . . the first reflection bears upon the instability of human affairs, and not only of the minor ones, but also of the great; not only of those which are contingent circumstances of social life, but also those which seem bound up with the very substance of things, and which we are not in the habit of conceiving in any other way than as unchangeable. there is an instability from which no single thing can escape, for that, precisely, is the essence of created things: they have not in themselves the reason for their own being. thus it happens that even for the greatest things, for those that are closest to the substance of certain institutions, instability is possible, and sometimes inevitable,—and it is even, in fact, commonplace, especially if we do not stop at the consideration of each fact in particular, but extend our view to the great considerations of history and of th^ road travelled by the human race. the fact is that precisely in those social elements which seem fundamental, and most exempt from change, such as property, capital, labor, a constant change ... is not only possible, but is real, [ 6 ] and an accomplished fact. it suffices to examine the course of history. of course, the fundamental principle: “thou shalt not steal,” remains immutable, and in disregard of it there is only violation of the divine precept. but what divers concrete forms property has had, from that primitive form among rude and savage peoples, which may be observed in some places even in our own day, to the form of possessions in the patriarchal age, and so further to the various forms under tyranny (we are using the word “tyranny” in its classical sense) ; and then through the feudal and, later, monarchical forms, to the various types that are to be found in more recent times! how many and how different attitudes in what concerns not only the great collectivities, but even the family, and individuals ! most of the last paragraph above is quoted in quadragesimo anno. it will be noticed that besides indicating profound changes in the concept and fact of property throughout the ages, this passage also indicates, as the pope himself is careful to point out in the last sentence, equally fundamental changes in the forms and ideas of the state and of the family, as well as in the norms and limits of individual action. the quotation continues: it is the same with labor. from the primitive work of the man of the stone age, to the great organization of production of our day, how many transitions, ascensions, complications, diversities! . . . what an enormous difference! it is therefore necessary to take such changes into account, and to prepare oneself, by an enlightened foresight and with complete resignation, to this instability of things and of human institutions, which are not all perfect, but necessarily imperfect and susceptible of changes. . . . the most pragmatical of the modern “scientific sociologists” could not surpass this statement of the radical instability “even of those great institutions which seem bound up with the very substance of things, and which we are not in the habit of conceiving in any other way than as unchangeable.” the pope could venture so boldly into this “no-man’s-land” between the moralists and the sociologists because he knew that he had already found the answer to the unsolved problem of both sides: how to maintain the reign of unchanging law if it is once admitted that the “very substance of things” is subject to change. [ 7 ] a philosophical detective story the principles which he had already clarified in his own mind, and intended to apply to the rapidly changing drama of modern history, were social justice and social charity. in this view, all society is simply a habitual organization (technically: an “institution”) of human actions; which is in constant and necessary flux precisely because it is an organization of action , but which at the same time is kept constantly—we could even say unchangeably—organized for the same end, human and christian perfection, by the laws of social justice and social charity. pope pius xi seems to have invented the very term “social charity” himself; but he picked up the term “social justice” from a growing popular usage which began about 1850. before 1850, “legal justice” or “general justice” were the only terms used to designate what we now call “social justice.” the history of “legal justice” had been a long and none too happy one; and when pope pius xi finally wrote the last chapter, he solved a philosophical “mystery story” whose solution had eluded the world’s best thinkers from aristotle on down. the story: aristotle it was in the fourth century b.c. that the story began. then aristotle discussed “legal justice”—and probably invented the term—in the fifth book of his ethics ; but he left the idea fuzzy and anemic. for him it wasn’t a special virtue at all, but rather a name for all virtues insofar as the law required their practice. it offered little help towards building a good society beyond the rather obvious information that lawabiding people made better citizens than gangsters. fifteen centuries later there the matter stood until the greatest thinker of the middle ages, st. thomas aquinas, took the idea up and made something of it. what he did was to redefine it as a special virtue which has the common good for its direct object . of course, the common good of society is so all-embracing that [ 8 ] every act of virtue done by the members of society will contribute something to it. in this “indirect” way, aristotle was right. that was why legal justice, whose direct object is the common good, was also called “general justice”:—for the sake of that common good it could also (i.e. “indirectly”) demand acts of every other virtue. thus, in defense of the common good of a country, it could demand bravery (“fortitude”) from a soldier. in this example the soldier’s virtue is not only that of fortitude (facing death bravely), but also that of social justice (defense of the common good); and every other virtue whatever could also become an act of social justice in the same way, i.e., by being done for the common good. this is a great improvement over aristotle’s imperfect notion, but it still leaves a tremendous question unanswered: if this social justice is now really a special virtue, does it have any special and direct acts of its own? it is easy to see how acts of the other virtues could all give the common good a “lift” once this common good is already a “going concern”; but is there an act of this special virtue which directly “makes” the common good—starts it off and builds it up, or rebuilds it if it happens to be destroyed? the suspense drags on much as he did for social justice, st. thomas, did not ask or answer this crucial question, and for over seven hundred years after him, few philosophers asked it and none gave the answer. of those few who did ask it, some denied that the question was a good one, and the rest said, no! in fact, one of the most recent of these, actually commenting on pope pius xi’s teaching, was so blinded by his own training that he could not see what the pope was driving at, and ended his discussion of social justice with the awful statement: “the common good is not an object which can be directly attained.” when it is remembered that the common good is the greatest of natural goods, that only under its sway can individual goods be attained or retained, that without it each individual’s share of personal perfection is either limited or destroyed, one can begin to realize what a mess society would be in if that state[ 9 ] ment were true! it may even be that the status quo (“latin,” as the colored preacher said, “fo* de mess we is in!”) results, as much as anything, from our widespread belief that it was true. the best that the social philosophers of the past could manage was to teach that in every action social justice required “a good intention” for the common good. but how uncertain this “good intention” is when not backed up by a complete theory of social justice, can be seen from the fact that the high-priest of unrestrained individualism, adam smith, appealed to it constantly to justify his destructive theories! few books profess devotion to the common good more often or more insistently than his wealth of nations. it was left for pope pius xi to put the question clearly and accurately—after twenty-three centuries!—and to answer it right. chapter ii social justice and its direct act “the encyclical on social justice” the long-missing specific and direct act of social justice is used as the title of the encyclical quadragesimo anno : “on the reconstruction of social order.” this title occurs in the heading of the letter; the words “quadragesimo anno,” being simply the first two words of the letter itself. this document is a truly masterly treatise on the whole virtue of social justice, though the applications of the theory are made mostly to the economic order, which is only one aspect, though a “most important” one, of social life. the term “social justice” is used ten times in this encyclical, and there are many other passages where the same idea occurs, but without the technical name. yet very few commentators seem to have realized that this is the subject, and the most important point, of the papal teaching. they discuss the living wage, the family wage, property, labor, capitalism, competition, monopoly, class war, communism—all the details [ 10 ] that are used for explanation and illustration—but miss the great subject of the whole encyclical! it would be a very salutary practice to refer always to the encyclical quadragesima anno as “the encyclical on social justice.” thus attention would be drawn to the central idea, instead of to the supporting details and illustrations. a common misunderstanding let us give an example of how the encyclical’s great message can be misunderstood. in paragraph 71, the holy father says: every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet common domestic needs adequately. but if this cannot always be done under existing circumstances, social justice demands that changes be introduced into the system as soon as possible, whereby such a wage will be assured to every adult workingman. now if we were to hand this quotation to a number of people, and ask each one of them what social justice demands in it, almost every one of them would answer, “a family wage.” they would all be wrong! look again at the syntax of the sentence: the direct object of the predicate “demands” is the clause “that changes be introduced into the system.” the pope’s teaching on the family wage is that it is due in commutative or strict justice to the individual worker;—what social justice demands is something specifically social : the reorganization of the system. for it is the whole system which is badly organized (“socially unjust”) when it withholds from the human beings whose lives are bound up in it, the power to “meet common domestic needs adequately.” very clear teaching the holy father later summarized the teaching of quadragesimo anno in several paragraphs of divini redemptoris (“on atheistic communism”). in paragraph s3 of this latter document he gives a very clear example for his teachings: [ 11 ] it happens all too frequently, under the salary system, that individual employers are helpless to insure justice, unless, with a view to its practice, they organize institutions whose object is to prevent competition incompatible with fair treatment of the workers. where this is true, it is the duty of contractors and employers to support such necessary organizations as normal instruments enabling them to fulfill their obligations of justice. here the two levels of justice are clearly distinguished. on the level of commutative or individual justice the employer is helpless , and note that this happens “all too frequently.” now evidently, if he is really helpless to do full justice, he does not sin when out of sheer necessity he falls short of justice. in individual justice the case is closed, for the employer can do nothing about it; and the injustice must be allowed to continue out of sheer inability to stop it. above this field of individual justice, however, there is the whole field of social justice, and in this higher field the case is never closed. the “helplessness” of individuals comes from the fact that the whole industry is badly organized (“socially unjust”). social justice demands that it be organized rightly for the common good of all who depend upon it for their welfare and perfection. therefore employers have the duty—the rigid duty of social justice which they cannot disregard without sin —to work together (socially) to reorganize their industry. once this reorganization (act of social justice) has been accomplished by group (social) action, then the employers will no longer be helpless in the field of individual justice, and will be under obligation to meet their strict duties in this latter field. something solid from the example given by the holy father, it will be seen immediately that social justice is not at all the vague and fuzzy “blanket word” that gets into so many popular speeches. it is an absolutely clear and precise scientific concept, a special virtue with definite and rigid obligations of its own. but there is no use looking to anyone earlier than pope pius xi for a definition and description of it complete enough to include the specific act (organizing) by which social justice [ 12 ] is directly practiced. there are suggestions and partial glimpses, of course, in every work that ever dealt with social problems; but if anyone before pope pius xi ever put all the pieces together in one coherent theory, he has succeeded in keeping his secret remarkably well! appendix a to chapter ii: quotations from quadrages1mo anno for the benefit of those who want to analyze more deeply the teachings of the holy father in his own words, some pertinent passages of quadragesima anno are here transcribed and commented upon. each passage will be prefixed by its paragraph number in the complete text to permit ready reference to the latter: for the common good 56. . . . however the earth may be apportioned among private owners, it does not cease to serve the common good of all. this same doctrine we ourselves also taught just above in declaring that the division of goods which results from private ownership was established by nature itself in order that created things may serve the needs of mankind in a fixed and stable order. lest one wander from the right path of truth, this is something which must be continually kept in mind. 57. but not every distribution among human beings of property and wealth is of a character to attain either completely or with a satisfactory degree of perfection, the ends which god intended. therefore the riches which socio-economic development constantly increase ought to be so distributed among individual persons and classes that the common advantage of all, which leo xiii had praised, will be safeguarded; in other words, that the common good of all society will be kept inviolate. by this law of social justice, one man is forbidden to exclude the other from sharing in the benefits. 58. to each therefore must be given his own share of good, and the distribution of created goods, which, as every discerning person knows, is laboring today under the greatest evils, due to the few exceedingly rich and the unnumbered propertyless, must be effectively called back to, and brought into conformity with, the norm of the common good, i.e., social justice. commentary notice in the above paragraphs that social justice is expressly directed towards the common good. this identifies it completely with the traditional ‘‘legal justice,” and with no other virtue whatsoever. in the technical language of the philosophers, “actions are specified by their ends,” and both the traditional legal justice and the modern social justice have identically the same end: the common good. the fact that so much of the above paragraphs is taken up with distributive justice, does not alter this conclusion in the least. it is social justice which directs the distribution in question towards the common good; exactly as we have seen, in a former example, that it can direct fortitude towards the common good. that is why social justice is also called “general justice”: it can demand an act of any other virtue whatsoever for the common good. a question of structure 70. conclusions of the greatest importance follow from this twofold (individual and social) character which nature has impressed upon human work, and it is in accordance with these that wages ought to be regulated and established. 71. in the first place, the worker must be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family. that the rest of the family should also contribute to the common support, according to the capacity of each, is certainly right, as can be observed especially in the families of farmers, and also in the families of many craftsmen and small shopkeepers. but to abuse the years of childhood and the limited strength of women is grossly wrong. mothers, concentrating on household duties, should work primarily in the home or in its immediate vicinity. it is an intolerable abuse, and to be abolished at all costs, for mothers, on account of the father’s low wage, to be forced to engage in gainful occupations outside the home, to the neglect of their proper cares and duties, especially the training of children. every effort must therefore be made that fathers of families receive a wage large enough to meet common domestic needs adequately, but if this cannot always be done under existing circumstances, social justice demands that changes be introduced into the system as soon as possible, whereby such a wage will be assured to every adult workingman.—and it will not be out of place here to render merited praise to all who, with a wise and beneficent purpose, have tried and tested various ways of adjusting the pay for work to family burdens. commentary the amount of futile discussion which has raged around this passage on whether the family wage is due by social or commutative justice, or even by distributive justice, is a brilliant vindication of st. thomas aquinas’ name for the discursiveness of human reason: he called it “defectus intellectus, f, which could be freely translated as “lack of vision” or “failure to see it whole.” from the beginning of the above passage it is important to realize that the thing under discussion is what we call “the wage structure,” — not any given wage for this man or for that. all the considerations [ 14 ] on the individual aspects of family life, on the functions, so to say, of the various members, are introduced to show on what considerations one must establish the norm for that structure. then if the “existing circumstances” (i.e., the whole industrial set-up, the “going concern,” the present structure) fall short of that norm, social justice “demands that changes be introduced”—not, be it noted, in the individual pay envelop of each individual head of a family (for it is precisely that which “cannot be done under the existing circumstances”), but in the “going concern” itself, in the organization of the whole enterprise: the procurement, financing, management, production, distribution, etc., so as to accommodate a wage structure adequated to the norm of social justice. once this new structure is established, it will be possible to meet the demands of individual justice for all concerned. in the little digression tacked on to the end of this paragraph (“it will not be out of place,” etc.), the question of structure is still further emphasized: the pope would not “render merited praise” to those who had “tried and tested various ways” unless he were dealing with a complex problem of reorganization requiring great prudence and perseverance as well as “beneficent purpose.” eternal vigilance 74. lastly, the amount of pay must be adjusted to the public economic good. . . . another point . . . especially vital in our times, must not be overlooked: namely, that the opportunity to work be provided for those who are able and willing to work. this opportunity depends largely upon the wage and salary rate, which can help as long as it is kept within proper limits; but which can be, on the other hand, an obstacle if it exceeds those limits. for everyone knows that an excessive lowering of wages, or their increase beyond due measure, causes unemployment. this evil, indeed, especially as we see it prolonged and injuring so many during the years of our pontificate, has plunged workers into misery and temptation, ruined the prosperity of nations, and put in jeopardy the public order, peace, and tranquility of the whole world. hence it is contrary to social justice when, for the sakfc of personal gain, and without regard for the common good, wages and salaries are excessively lowered or raised; and this same social justice demands that wages and salaries be so managed, through agreement of purposes and wills, so far as can be done, so as to offer to the greatest possible number the opportunity of getting work and obtaining suitable means of livelihood. commentary note in the above passage that the term social justice is used twice, and that there is an interesting difference between the two cases. the first is what we might call an “open and shut case.”—one completely disposed of once the solution is offered: “it is contrary to social justice when, for the sake of personal gain and without regard for the common [is] good, wages are excessively lowered or raised.” this is evidently a case of what we call bad will or malice, and it is simply and always wrong. but how about the men of good will—or, to put it more specifically, how about that famous “good intention for the common good” which was about all the philosophers of the past could demand in order that an act be termed legal or social justice? that “good intention” is no more than a starting point for this social justice: what social justice demands—far beyond a mere act of the will—is “management, through agreement of purposes and wills, insofar as can be done, to offer the greatest possible number . . . a suitable means of livelihood.” evidently, we are here face to face with something that can never be a closed case in this world. if that is the nature of the demands of social justice in this one small field, then it doesn’t take much thinking to realize that a serious and constant preoccupation with social organization, in all its forms, and at all its levels, is the duty, according to his capacity, of every man living in society. this is a big order, especially when it is further realized that such a duty (allowing, of course, for the inescapable and all too evident limitations of discursive reason) binds him in every exterior action of his life . it wll be interesting to see how it is done! what makes the good society—conflict or social justice? 88. attention must also be given to another matter. ... just as the unity of human society cannot be founded upon an opposition of classes, so also the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces ... a truth which the outcome of the practical application of the tenets of this evil individualistic spirit has more than sufficiently demonstrated. therefore it is most necessary that economic life be again subjected to and governed by a true and effective directing principle. this function is one that the economic dictatorship which has recently displaced free competition can still less perform, since it is a headstrong power and a violent energy that, to benefit people, needs to be strongly curbed and wisely ruled. but it cannot curb and rule itself. loftier and nobler principles—social justice and social charity—must therefore be sought whereby this dictatorship may be governed firmly and fully. hence the institutions of peoples, and particularly those of all social life, ought to be penetrated with this justice; and it is most necessary that it be truly effective, that is, establish a juridical and social order which will, as it were, give form and shape to all economic life. social charity, moreover, ought to be as the soul of this order, an order which public authority ought to be ever ready effectively to protect and defend. commentary this passage, which has not been quoted here in its entirety, deserves careful study. first of all, the holy father refuses three alternatives [ 16 ] to social justice as guides or norms of society. these alternative, but vicious, “norms” of society are the following: (1) class warfare, (2) free competition, and (3) economic dictatorship. the first, in parts of the encyclical not quoted here, is utterly condemned; the second and third are admitted to have utility, but what is absolutely denied to them is that they can ever be a directive principle, either of themselves or of economic life in general. both of these latter, especially the third one because of its extraordinary power, must be ruled by social justice and social charity. the first is entirely vicious because it is a direct negation of social justice and social charity. all this can be summed up in a sentence: not conflict in any form, but only social justice (organization for the common good) is the ultimate principle of society. here we can go a step further in considering the shortcomings of any theory of social justice which makes it a mere “intention for the common good.” the holy father is categorical in his statement that social justice must enter into the practical order before it can be said to exist. he says that all institutions, both those “of peoples” (governmental) and those “of all social life” (semi-public and private) must be penetrated with this justice. he insists further that “it is necessary that it be truly effective.” then, to explain this effectiveness, he leads us back once more to the master-idea of organized and institution-building action, without which social justice is a mere bandying about of words: “this justice must establish a juridical and social order which will, as it were, give form and shape to all economic life.” this remarkable expression, “to give form and shape to life,” recurs several times in pope pius xfs work, and will lead us later on in this pamphlet to an explanation of the institutions of life as “social habits.” here also we might note the great breadth of pope pius xi’s vision. the older “legal justice,” both because of its imperfect beginnings in aristotle and because of the suggestiveness of its name, always tended to be reduced to its narrowest possible meaning, for which we might invent the term “courtroom justice.” there is evidence to support the belief that pope pius xi recognized this tendency, and its almost complete triumph in modem times, and deliberately decided to throw off this weight of tradition from his own teachings. at the beginning of his pontificate, in the encyclical studiorum ducem, occurs the phrase “in re sociali et in jure recta principia ponendo de justitia legali aut de sociali”:—'“both in social life and in jurisprudence laying down correct principles for legal justice as well as for social justice.” 1 after this he abandoned “legal justice” entirely to the jurists and never used it in his social teachings. the older theory did not recognize the conl for the benefit of latin scholars who may be troubled by the translation of “aut” by “as well as,” the above phrase is immediately continued by: “itemque de commutativa aut de distributiva,” where “aut” cannot possibly have any other meaning. [ 17 ] fusion in the term because, for it, legal justice was somehow bound up with law; but in the completed theory of pius xi, social justice, far from playing any subordinate role to law, actually makes the law itself: “it is most necessary that it establish a juridical . . . order” the law in all its majesty is simply one of the institutions which social justice creates for the common good! finally, this passage brings forcibly to our attention the concept of social charity. this concept of social charity is very likely, as we have already seen, original with pius xi. the traditional virtue of “pietas erga patriam” certainly touches some of the same values; but even more certainly it is incomplete. the newer concept of social charity, is not developed in the encyclical to the extent that social justice is developed; and thus a great field is opened up to the research of philosophers and moralists to delineate clearly the meaning of this social charity and its scope. how to fail against social justice 101. with all his energy, leo xiii sought to adjust this (capitalistic) economic system according to the norms of right order; hence it is evident that this system is not to be condemned in itself. and assuredly it is not of its own nature vicious. but it does violate right order when capital hires workers, that is the non-owning class, with a view to and under such terms that it directs business and even the whole economic system according to its own will and advantage, scorning the human dignity of the workers, the social character of economic activity, and social justice itself, and the common good. commentary in this description of the social injustice of which capitalism has made itself guilty, we may notice once more that the question at issue is one of deliberate organization : “with a view to and under such terms as to” capture the very system of economic life itself for private and selfish ends. the pope then analyzes the evil of such an act: in the first place, it “scorns human dignity.” this is largely a failure against charity as we will see in chapter iii. in the second place, it “scorns the social character of economic activity.” this is a failure against both social charity and social justice, in that it disregards the fact that the organization of the industry “takes so tight a grip on the human life” of the workers that it largely determines whether and to what degree “their share of human happiness will be even accessible to them.” thirdly, it “scorns social justice itself”; that is, it formally denies that any obligation lies upon the industry to be so organized that each worker’s and the whole community’s “share of human happiness is accessible.” finally, it “scorns the common good.” it plunges the workers into misery and temptations, ruins the prosperity of the community, and puts in jeopardy the public peace and welfare. [ 18 ] two levels and many divisions 110. so as to avoid the reefs of individualism and collectivism, the two-fold (i. e., individual and social) character both of capital and ownership, and of labor or work, must be given due and rightful weight. relations of one to the other must be made to conform to the laws of strictest justice—commutative justice as it is called—with proper support, however, of christian charity. then free competition, kept within definite and due limits, and still more, economic dictatorship, must be effectively brought under public authority in those matters which pertain to the latter’s function (i. e., the common good). these same public institutions, moreover, ought to make all human society conform to the needs of the common good, that is, to the norm of social justice. if this is done, that most important division of social life, namely, economic activity, cannot fail likewise to return to right and sound order. commentary here we meet once more the two levels of justice: first, strictest (“narrowest”) or commutative justice, which directly regulates the relationships of capital and labor to each other; and then, above them. social justice, which by a proper organization of the whole industry, of the whole going concern, makes the payment of just wages possible in it. some writers have tried to explain this in a popular way by saying that when the business is in good shape and able to pay just wages, it owes such wages in commutative justice; but even if it is badly organized and in distress it still owes just wages, this time in social justice. this is inaccurate and highly misleading. even when in distress, it still owes just wages in commutative justice—only it can’t pay them! social justice does not give some sort of additional claim to “a just wage anyhow, regardless of circumstances”—what it gives is a direct and enforceable claim to have the business so organized that a just wage is possible; and even after social justice has brought about this happy state, it is still commutative justice which directly demands that the just wage be paid. note in the last part of this quotation how the vast concept of social justice goes far beyond the economic applications of the encyclical:—to “all human society” and “all social life,” of which economic activity is only “a most important division.” notice finally, that the power to make all human society conform to the norms of social justice is vested in institutions , in organizations of men, not in men as isolated individuals. social justice is something social. [ 19 ] appendix b to chapter ii: quotations from divin1 redemptoris since, as we have seen, “not conflict in any form, but only social justice can be the ultimate principle of society,” it is easy to understand why the holy father returned to his teachings on social justice in the encyclical “on atheistic communism” (divini redemptoris) . but he had another good reason for repeating and insisting on his former teachings: six years had passed since he wrote quadragesimo anno, and most people hadn’t caught on! though the passage in this second document is rather long, it deserves to be quoted in full. let’s get this straight! 51. in reality, besides commutative justice (which is strictly enjoined in the preceding two paragraphs, 49 and 50, of the encyclical), there is also social justice with its own set obligations, from which neither employers nor workingmen can escape. now it belongs to social justice to demand from each individual all that is necessary for the common good. commentary this is evidently an attempt by the holy father to silence some of his fuzziest “commentators,” who had been trying to “explain” social justice as somehow “straddling” various traditional virtues, especially distributive and commutative justice. not only does he expressly rule out commutative justice, but also, by implication, any kind of combination or straddling of other virtues. what he says is that social justice has “its own set obligations.” the common good and individuals 51. but just as in the living organism it is impossible to provide for the good of the whole unless each individual member is given what it needs for the exercise of its proper functions, so it is impossible to care for the social organism and the good of society as a unit unless each single part and each individual member—that is to say, each individual man in the dignity of his human personality—is supplied with all that is necessary for the exercise of his social functions. commentary here the holy father shows how distributive justice does get into the picture: it is not social justice, but social justice commands that it (like all other virtues) be observed in so far as the common good needs it. he could have used commutative justice or any other virtue in this paragraph, because social justice can command them all in the same way. that is why moral philosophers call all these other acts of virtue “commanded acts” of social justice. the proof of the pudding . . . 51. if social justice is satisfied, the result will be an intense activity in economic life as a whole, pursued in tranquility and order. this [ 20 ] activity will be proof of the health of the social body, just as the health of the human body is recognized in the undisturbed regularity and perfect efficiency of the whole organism. commentary here once more the holy father is careful to point out that a mere good intention for the common good is not enough. he makes it clear that the only criterion he will permit as to whether social justice is being observed is an actually good state of society. this is a large order ! what it amounts to, in the world as we know it, is simply a condemnation (if one insists on looking at it that way) to ceaseless effort. whether this “proof” that “social justice is satisfied” ever was in fact realized, or will be in fact realized, is a problem for history or prophecy; the only problem for social philosophy is that as long as it is not in fact realized, there can be no excuse and no mercy for lack of effort! let’s get down to cases 52. but social justice cannot be said to have been satisfied as long as workingmen are denied a salary that will enable them to secure proper sustenance for themselves and for their families; as long as they are denied the opportunity of acquiring a modest fortune and forestalling the plague of universal pauperism; as long as they cannot make suitable provision for public or private insurance for old age, for periods of illness, and unemployment. commentary this paragraph adds nothing new. it simply applies the preceding principles to practical details to make sure their full import will be clear. thus far, in this passage from divini redemptoris the holy father has limited himself to what was clear in the traditional teaching on “legal justice”: that social justice has the common good as its object, and that it can “command” the observance of other virtues for that common good. then he links this teaching with that of quadragesimo anno by quoting from that document: to sum up 52. in a word, to repeat what has been said in our encyclical quadragesimo anno : “then only will the economic and social order be soundly established and attain its end, when it offers, to all and to each, all those goods which the wealth and resources of nature, technical science, and the social organization of economic life can furnish. and these goods ought indeed to be enough both to meet the demands of necessity and decent comforts, and to advance people to that fuller and happier condition of life which, when it is wisely cared for, is not only no hindrance to virtue, but helps it greatly.” [21 ] commentary in the middle of this passage, it is interesting to note what might be called the elements of economic life : first, the wealth and resources of nature, secondly, technical science, and thirdly, the social organization of economic life. the first of these elements is fixed and stable, god’s gift about which man can do nothing whatsoever since it is not in his power to annihilate or to create. the second, which controls the first, is partly fixed, for there is such a thing as “natural capacity” for science, which is not uniform and not readily changed. yet man enjoys a considerable control over it by that “social organization” known as education. the third element, social organization itself, is entirely under man’s control. hence it appears that the only fully controllable factor is this third, both in itself and in its influence on the two others. when this is clearly seen, it is easy to understand why the act of social justice is the act of organizing. it is this element of organization that the pontiff then goes on to deal with in the second part of the text, which will follow. it is in this part of the quotation that pius xi goes beyond his predecessors to complete the theory of social justice. only individualism is helpless: social justice has an answer 53. it happens all too frequently, however, under the salary system, that individual employers are helpless to insure justice unless, with a vdew to its practice, they organize institutions the object of which is to prevent competition incompatable with fair treatment of the workers where this is true, it is the duty of contractors and employers to support and promote such necessary organizations as normal instruments enabling them to fulfill their obligations of justice. but the laborers too must be mindful of their duty to love and deal fairly with their emdloyers, and persuade themselves that there is no better way of safeguarding their own interests. commentary the two levels of justice as they are here outlined have already been commented upon in this pamphlet. here it will be sufficient to warn the reader that the unjust competition mentioned in the paragraph is only an example of what difficulties a business might face. the same principles would apply if the difficulty came from outside pressure, as in a “colonial economy,” or from lack of intelligence or energy within the industry. this is clear in paragraphs 72 and 73 of quadragesimo anno; and the general law covering all possible cases is stated in paragraph 69 of that encyclical, as follows: man’s productive effort cannot yield its fruits unless a truly social and organic body exists, unless a social and juridical order watches ovei the exercise of work, unless the various occupations, being interdependent co-operate with and mutually complete one another. and, what is still [ 22 ] more important, unless mind, material things, and work combine and form as it were a single whole. therefore, where the social and individual nature of work is neglected, it will be impossible to evaluate work justly and pay it according to justice. this paragraph deserves study for its implications as to how helpless an individual really is to secure his own perfection in an unjustly organized society. institutions are the key idea 54. if, therefore, we consider the whole structure of economic life, as we have already pointed out in our encyclical, quadragesimo anno, the reign of mutual collaboration between justice and charity in social economic relations can only be achieved by a body of professional and inter-professional organizations, built on solid christian foundations, working together to effect, under forms adopted to different places and circumstances, what has been called the corporation. commentary thus, as this whole quotation which we have been examining clearly shows, organizations and institutions furnish the key for the understanding of social justice; and there will be no effective insight whatever into social justice without this key. the last paragraph shows how profoundly the idea of organization enters into this conception of justice, as does also paragraph 69 of quadragesimo anno which was quoted in the comments immediately preceding it. both of these paragraphs make it absolutely clear that without right organization, without good social groups, without just institutions, there is no such thing as social justice, and in such a state the perfection of human life becomes impossible. chapter iii the dignity of the human personality: basis of a theory of justice in the individual order for pope pius xi, the theory of justice is based squarely upon the dignity of the human personality. his position is that charity regulates our actions towards the human personality itself, that image of god which is the object of love because it mirrors forth the divine perfections, and in a supernatural order shares those perfections. the human personality, however, because it is a created personality, needs certain “props” for the realization of its dignity. these “props” or supports [ 23 ] of human dignity, which include such things as property, relatives and friends, freedom and responsibility, are all the object of justice. to attack a human person in his personality itself, as by hatred, is a failure against charity; but to attack him by undermining the supports of his human dignity, as by robbery, is a failure against justice. and in the social order the same thing is true in the field of social morality. the human community, as such, shows forth the perfections of god in ways that are not open to individuals. this fact is very clearly stated in paragraph 30 of the encyclical divini redemptoris : in a further sense it is society which affords the opportunities for the development of all the individual and social gifts bestowed on human nature. these natural gifts have a value surpassing the immediate interests of the moment, for in society they reflect a divine perfection, which would not be true were man to live alone. society itself, therefore, as thus revealing further the perfection of god in his creatures, is worthy of love: of a love directed not only towards the individuals who compose the society, but also towards their union with each other. this love is social charity. moreover, as society thus makes available to man the further perfection of his potentialities of mirroring the divine perfection, it also is a support for these perfections, and hence is an object of the virtue of justice. this justice, social justice, which is directed towards the common good itself, requires that the society be so organized as to be in fact a vehicle for human perfection. an improvement over the past it seems evident that this view of justice as the virtue which directly regards the supports of human dignity whether in the individual or in the social order, is a more profound view than the traditional one which was built largely around the [ 24 ] technical conceptions of “equality, otherness, and debt.” it is true that it was always clear in justice that rights and duties pertained only to persons; but the immediate link of justice to the human personality was not clear. some strange things happened as the result of viewing justice in the more superficial way developed in pagan times. since in that view justice was determined by the three notions of “equality, otherness, and debt,” it became quite common to speak of individual or commutative justice as the “most perfect form of justice” since it most perfectly conforms to the elements of the definition. yet if one examines the three great kinds of possession which support human dignity—possession of things or property, possession of persons or love, and possession of self in the freedom to plan one’s own destiny and to work it out according to one’s own responsibility—then it becomes evident that the possession of things, the object of commutative justice, is the lowest of these supports. nowadays we would call commutative justice not the “most perfect” form of justice but the “strictest” (i. e. narrowest) form of justice; and this is the terminology which pius xi uses. the highest form of justice is social justice because it directly regards that highest natural good, the common good, without which other goods of human perfection are unobtainable. the result of past thinking it cannot be denied that at the present time the idea is widespread, that obligations of individual or commutative justice must always be met, but that obligations of social justice are not so rigid. this is totally false. the truth is that the obligations of social justice are just as rigid and much more weighty than the obligations of individual justice. it is true indeed that these obligations of social justice are harder to understand, harder to see; and that therefore the incidence of invincible ignorance, which excuses from action, may be expected to be greater. but whenever the obligations of social justice are understood and recognized, the duty of meeting those obligations is both rigid and very serious. [ 25 ] work to be done it is not at all difficult to see that this will require a profound readjustment of our appreciation of the nature and extent of our duties and obligations. much work of investigation and research remains to be done before these obligations of social justice can be made as clear to the common man as the obligations of individual justice have been made in the course of centuries of moral and social thought; but one thing is already abundantly clear; in the field of social justice we are dealing with serious matter— with some of the greatest obligations of our lives. chapter iv the object of social justice, the common good putting two and two together . . . to deepen our understanding of social justice we must get a clearer concept of its object: the “common good” or “general welfare” as it is called. let us start with two great facts: (1) an isolated individualist cannot practice social justice at all, he must associate himself with groups of various kinds and work along with them before he can practice it; and (2) every human action whatever has some bearing on the common good, and hence must conform to social justice or be sinful. . . . we get . . . surprised if these two points are put together, a rather startling conclusion emerges: since every action must conform to social justice or be sinful, and social justice can be practiced only by persons associated in groups, the obvious conclusion is that every action must be done in groups to be virtuous! two kinds of groups at first sight, this looks weird indeed; until it is remembered that man’s very nature is social, and then it is just what one [ 26 ] would expect. but it is not very clear how it is done. it becomes clearer when we see that there are two kinds of groups: informal or “natural”, ones like farm life, city life, mining, slums, frontier life; and the formal or “planned” ones like a stock company, a board of directors, a city government, a labor union, a medical association, a university, a taxpayers association, a baseball club, a monarchy. in the language of catholic action—another invention of pope pius xi—these two kinds of groups are called respectively “milieux” and “institutions.” “milieu” is a french word meaning “medium” as in the sentence “water is the natural medium of fish, and air is the natural medium of birds.” informal or natural groups: “the milieu” now if you will look at the examples given above of a “natural medium” of human life—farm life, city life, slums, frontier life—you will notice that they actually produce different types of people. the “hayseed,” the “city-slicker,” the miner, the slum-dweller, the frontiersman, are different types of human beings that anyone can recognize at a glance, whether they occur in books or in real life. and then there is the executive, the “jitterbug” (formerly the drug-store cowboy), the clergyman, the hobo, the laborer, and so on through the whole catalogue. these great differences in types of men all bear witness to the fact that every concrete natural medium of life exercises upon its members a continuous and powerful influence: an influence more or less confused, but very real. because of this continuous and powerful influence, the natural medium of life can largely determine the human perfection attainable by its members. thus pope pius xi could say of our modern industrial system: “bodily labor, which providence decreed is to be performed for the perfection of man’s body and soul, is being everywhere changed into an instrument of perversion; for dead matter comes forth from the factory ennobled, while men are there corrupted and degraded!” this “grip” which the natural medium of life has on human perfection is the source of the obligation to control it; and since it is made up precisely of all the actions of the people [27 3 in it, every one of these actions is under that obligation. it might be pointed out that the whole theory of specialization, inquiry method, and cell technique in catholic action is directed towards control of each one’s own natural medium of life; and the people who engage in this work or in work similar to it are the ones who are discharging their duty of social justice in their own sphere of life. all others, either deliberately or unknowingly, are failing. formal or planned groups: the institution but there is more to social life than these informal “natural media.” there are also the formal “institutions.” we have just seen one of these—catholic action—in its relation to the natural medium of life; and that relation is one of direct control. the natural medium of life is in itself too informal, too complex, too vast, too fluid and changing, too much subject to the will and shortcomings of thoughtless people, ever to be controlled directly by individual persons in it, for these individuals are helpless when, standing alone, they face its vast collective weight and pressure. pope pius xi pointed this out clearly insofar as the natural medium of the industrial employers is concerned; and the same principle is of universal application. we have already seen on several occasions the text in which he indicates this truth: “it happens all too frequently, under the salary system that individual employers are helpless to insure justice, unless, with a view to its practice they organize institutions, etc.” as was already said, the application of this principle is universal, and it applies to every level of social life: to the family, the neighborhood, the school, the professions, the parish, the state, the city, inter-state commerce, the nation, international relations, the united nations, the world court, the church, the whole of human society. every one of these things is an institution controlling some aspect of human life and made up of a whole network of subordinate institutions, each one controlling smaller aspects of human life. [ 28 ] duty and disorder the holy father points out a three-fold duty to these institutions: to organize, to promote, and to support. these are specific acts of social justice; and anyone who would refuse to perform them at his level of the institutional hierarchy would thereby fail against social justice; for institutions are, as the pope so clearly points out, “necessary instruments, enabling men to fulfill their obligations.’’ without them the individual is “helpless to insure justice” and his natural medium of life, his level of society, is in disorder, is socially unjust. when this disorder reaches up into higher and higher levels of society, it becomes a world disorder, a true crisis of civilization, such as we are experiencing today. the nature of the common good every higher institution depends on all those below it for its effectiveness, and every lower institution depends on those above it for its own proper place in the common good. it is precisely this whole vast network of institutions which is the common good, on which everyone of us depends for the realization of our personal perfection, of our personal good. it is wrong to conceive of the common good as a sort of general bank account into which one “deposits” when, for instance he pays his taxes to the state; and “withdraws” when he is appointed public coordinator of something or other at a hundred and fifty dollars a week, or when the state builds a road past his farm and thus raises its value. it is surprising how many people think that distributive justice is the virtue that assesses taxes and social justice is the virtue that pays them. both of these actions are distributive, that is, individual, justice; and become social justice only in a secondary way as they promote the common good. nor must we think of the common good as something which we can “share with another” like a candy bar pr an automobile ride. rather it is something which each of us possesses in its entirety, like light, or life itself. when the common good is badly organized, when society is socially unjust, [ 29 ] then it is each individual’s own share of personal perfection which is limited, or which is withheld from him entirely. everyone can do it when it is realized that the common good consists of that whole vast complex of institutions, from the simplest “natural medium” of a child’s life, to the united nations itself, then a very comforting fact emerges: each of these institutions from the lowest and most fleeting “natural medium” to the highest and most enduring organization of nations is the common good at that particular level. therefore everyone , from the smallest and weakest child to the most powerful ruler in the world, can have direct care of the common good at his level. this is a far cry indeed from those social philosophers who before pius xi could say with complete sincerity and conviction, “the common good is not something which can be directly attained.” chapter v the organs of the common good: social habits or institutions in our attempt to understand the common good we have dealt with what we called “social habits,” which were of two kinds: first, “natural media of life”; and, secondly, “formal institutions.” we must now examine these ideas a little more closely if we are to get a real grasp of our subject. surprised again let us start with a simple affirmation: all social acts whatever are highly organized. to some this may come as a shock, but let us take the simplest sort of act in the most material aspect of life; the act of buying and selling. some people might think that this requires no prolonged and arduous training—but it does. what a difference in procedure [ 30 ] from such an act in a “bargaining tradition/’ to the same act in a “fixed price tradition”! so great is this difference that it may take years for a man to make the transition from one to the other, even under the grinding force of daily economic losses. perhaps the easiest way to bring home this truth quickly, is to transcribe a few paragraphs from a report of a missionary in china: “in business, one chinese is supposed to be able to get the best of ten westerners. missionaries in china have, naturally, a great deal of business to do with the people, and their presence in a neighborhood is welcomed as much as a fox might welcome the advent of a chicken fancier. after a few years the stupid foreigner learns to take care of himself, and often achieves the honor of paying less than two or three times the price of an article. “the first thing any new missionary must do in a new area is to secure a piece of land. he looks about for a suitable location which the owner is willing to part with. i don’t remember the procedure in america. quite possibly the buyer might even approach the owner and ask him the price. such a step in china would be ridiculous and disastrous. one fine morning the missionary sends one of his friends down to look over that barren waste just north of the woods.’ he occasionally makes slighting remarks about the property’s being unfit for his purpose. finally he might confide (under pledge of great secrecy) to his number-one man, that he would take the property if the owner would sell it for five dollars an acre. all these harmless machinations are unknown to the world at large except for the few thousand people in the surrounding villages. the owner of the property carries out his part of the deal in much the same way as the missionary. this may continue for as long as two years until everyone is perfectly satisfied that everyone else knows his intentions. as soon as it is clear that the missionary will not take the land at any price, not even as a gift, and that the owner will never part with his property, not even at the price of 10,000 yuan ($3,000.00) an acre, the way is open for the transaction, which may be carried through with remarkable ease.” [31 ] deceptive simplicity to the westerner of this quotation such bargaining technique must be highly incomprehensible at the start, even though, perforce, he must submit to it—but it cannot be nearly so incomprehensible as our “fixed price technique” is to those who bargain. the idea of a just price is a much more highly organized social phenomenon than the apparently more complex and devious procedures of bargaining. the apparent simplicity of the former is in reality only the facility of acquired habit . if we were to examine instead of a simple exchange, the systems of property tenure, we would find incomparably more extensive and complicated institutions giving “form and shape” to human activity: what diverse forms has property had, from that primitive form among rude and savage peoples, which may be observed in some places even in our times, to the form of possession in the patriarchial age; and so further to the various forms under tyranny,—we are using the word tyranny in its classical sense,—and then through the feudal and monarchal forms down to the various types that are to be found in more recent times. ( quadragesimo anno , paragraph 49.) necessary to life and in every one of these forms the individuals within them had to conform to the institutional pattern (exactly as the missionary in china had to conform), if they wanted to participate in the common life. for this is what it means to “participate in the common life”—without a common expectation of a certain pattern of activity during transactions, no social intercourse is possible at all; just as individual life becomes impossible, except inasfar as it is sustained by outside help, in a certain strange disease in which all the common habits become somehow jumbled in the mind’s control of them. thus a victim of this disease, in picking up a telephone receiver, has no assurance at all that his hand will carry it to his ear—it will just as likely go through the motions of brushing his teeth; and an attempt on his part to correct the [ 32 ] action may result in motions of combing his hair or sticking the receiver in his tie. on the other hand, when he grasps a glass of milk, his hand may upset it against his ear like a telephone receiver. with all expectation of normal response removed, he is no longer able to meet the necessities of life. two levels of habit this profound derangement of normal processes reveals two orders of individual habits: that fundamental order which deals with the normality and abnormality of action itself; and then, built upon the normality of this order, another order of perfection,—of facility or difficulty of operation,—which is the world of art and virtue and their opposites. it is much the same in the social order: there is one level of social habits (that we have called natural media of life) which by offering expectation of normal response make social intercourse possible; and another level (institutions in the strict sense) which is built upon this first level, which make that social intercourse in fact good or bad; and this last is the order of social justice. virtue is the habit of doing good now this suggests a very interesting and very fruitful parallel: just as an individual is called “good” without qualification, not because of a single good act or good quality, even though it be of heroic proportions, but because of his good habits, that is, his moral virtues; so a society is not to be called “good” without qualification for the good individuals in it or for some great collective act of generosity or valor, but only for its good institutions, that is its social justice . and just as vice is as much a habit as virtue; so bad institutions are as much organized as good ones. the only difference is in the kind of organization and that is determined by its end: the good to secure the development and perfection of the full human life, and the bad to grasp some sort of immediate advantage regardless of the consequences. [ 33 ] chapter vi the laws of social justice in paragraph 57 of quadragesimo anno, pope pius xi speaks of “laws of social justice.” throughout the encyclical, he has set forth certain of these laws. without trying to be exhaustive in the matter, let us pick out a few of them for comment. it will be necessary sometime to make a complete analysis; but for an introductory pamphlet like this a mere selection will do ; for the ones chosen will give us a good idea of what the others might be. first law: that the common good be kept inviolate the first great law, the one mentioned in paragraph 57 itself, is “that the common good of all society be kept inviolate.” the meaning of this law is that in all private dealings, in all exercise of individual justice, the common good must be a primary object of solicitude. to attack or to endanger the common good in order to attain some private end, no matter how good or how necessary this latter may be in its own order, is social injustice and is wrong. the common good is not a means for any particular interests; it is not a bargaining point in any private quarrel whatsoever; it is not a pressure that one may legitimately exercise to obtain any private ends. it is a good so great that very frequently private rights—even inviolable private rights—cannot be exercised until it is safeguarded. thus, in a time when the common good of a whole nation is threatened by military attack, every man in it has an inviolable right to live in his own home with his wife and children—and none of them who are drafted can do it. second law: cooperation, not conflict “the unity of human society,” says pope pius xi in paragraph 88 of quadragesimo anno, “cannot be founded upon opposition.” the only alternative to building a society upor the common good, is to try to build it upon some particulal [ 34 ] good. but the particular good of each individual is different, and any particular good which is falsely made into an ultimate principle must necessarily be in conflict with every other particular good. two kinds of such conflict are possible: free competition , which doesn't care if others are wiped out; and dictatorship , which makes sure they are wiped out. free competition as a principle of society can only lead to greater and greater conflicts of interests, until finally the society itself is destroyed. dictatorship is a refinement of the same system, by which one kills off one's competitors at the beginning instead of at the end, thus making sure (it is hoped) that one at least will survive. people who advocate such courses have missed the great law of social justice that not conflict in any form, but only cooperation, organization for the common good, can make a real society. third law: one’s first particular good is one’s own place in the common good the first particular good of every individual or group is that that individual or group find its proper place in the common good. this is readily seen in paragraph 85 of quadragesimo anno: it is easily deduced from what has been said that the interests common to the whole industry or profession should hold first place in these guilds. notice that what is here under consideration is what we would call a “particular” good, even though it is “common to the whole industry or profession.” it is indeed common to the individual members of the industry or profession, but in relation to the great common good of the country, it is a good only of that particular group, therefore a “particular” or private good. now the holy father goes on to explain what the first and most important “particular” good for that group is: the most important of these interests is to promote the co-operation in the highest degree of each industry and profession for the sake of the common good of the country. [35 ] this is an interesting statement: the first particular good of any group is the common good above it. but is this really surprising? haven’t we already seen that every single action of every person is social and must be directed towards the common good? this simply says the same thing for groups. in the light of this principle, the first interest of every labor union should be the common good of the whole country; the first interest of the national association of manufacturers should be the common good of the whole country; the first interest of the farm block should be the common good of the whole country; the first interest in any industry, in any factory, in any department, at any bench; is the common good. and, to enter a larger field and give our “isolationists” the most unkind cut of all, the first of those “national interests” they are continually telling us to safeguard should be the common good of the world! it must be admitted that this is not the way most of us think at the present time, but that is because we have been badly educated. it must be admitted also that to carry out such a principle in practice looks like too big a job for human nature as we know it; but that is because we are individualists and have missed the point. of course it is too big a job if each one of us and each of our groups is individually and separately responsible for the welfare of the human race as a whole. but the point is that the human race as a whole is social. its welfare is preserved by the fact that it is the first interest of every single nation of which it is composed. those nations are preserved by the fact that they are the first interest of every group: civic, political, social, industrial, religious, cultural, etc., of which they are composed. and these groups are safeguarded by the fact that they are the first interest of every subordinate group of which they are composed. and finally, these subordinate groups are safeguarded by the fact that they are the first interest of every individual who makes them up. [ 36 ] fourth law: each directly responsible this brings us to the next great law of social justice. every individual, regardless of his age or occupation or state of life, is directly responsible for the common good, because the comman good is built up in a hierarchical order . that is, every great human institution consists of subordinate institutions, which themselves consist of subordinate institutions, on down to the individuals who compose the lowest and most fleeting of human institutions. since every one of these institutions is directly responsible for the general welfare of the one above it, it follows that every individual is directly responsible for the lower institutions which immediately surround his life, and indirectly (that is, through these and other intermediate institutions) responsible for the general welfare of his wboio country and the whole world. this is a far cry from older ways of thinking that did not see the common good was made up of this vast network of institutions. especially in economics the theory was prevalent that each person should make his living as best he could and let the common good take care of itself, or at best let the state take care of it. fifth law: higher institutions must never displace lower ones another law of social justice which stems from the institutional character of the common good is that no institution in the vast hierarchy which we have seen can take over the particular actions of an institution or person below it. this i c well stated in paragraph 80 of quadragesimo anno : the supreme authority of the state, ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly. thereby the state will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them. . . . therefore those in power should be sure that the more perfectly a graduated order is kept among the various associations, in observance of the principle of “subsidiary functions,” the stronger social authority and effectiveness will be and the happier and more prosperous the condition of the state. [ 37 ] in his encyclical, summi pontificatus, pope pius xii applies this principle to the state both as regards its subordinate institutions, and as regard the whole human family of which it is a part. if, in fact, the state lays claim to and directs private enterprises, these, ruled as they are by delicate and complicated internal principles which guarantee and insure the realization of their special aims, may be damaged to the detriment of the public good, by being wrenched from their natural surroundings, that is, from responsible private action. then again, to show the relation of the state to the whole human community: the idea which credits the state with unlimited authority is not simply an error harmful to the life of nations, to their prosperity, and to the larger and well ordered increase in their well-being, but likewise it injures the relations, between peoples, for it breaks the unity of supra-national society, robs the law of nations of its foundation and vigor, leads to the violation of others’ rights, and impedes agreement and peaceful intercourse. a disposition in fact of divinely sanctioned natural order divides the human race into social groups, nations or states, which are mutually independent in organization and in the direction of their internal life. but for all that, the human race is bound together by reciprocal ties, moral and juridical, into a great commonwealth directed to the good of all nations, and ruled by special laws which protect its unity and promote its prosperity. sixth law: freedom of association another great law of social justice is that of freedom of association. this derives from the hierarchical organization of the institutions of society which we have already examined. if every natural group of individuals has a right to its own common good and a duty towards the next highest common good, it is evident that such a group has the right to organize itself formally in view of the common good. in times past, as both pope leo xiii and pope pius xi pointed out, capital tried to deny this right of association to labor. in our own lifetime, we have seen governments deny this right of association to large groups of their citizens. totalitarian systems of [ 38 ] government, whether fascist or communist in character, live by the denial of the right of association to anyone but the party in power. it is interesting to see how pope pius xi insists upon the word “free” in the following passage of quadragesimo anno which sets forth this principle: 87. moreover, just as inhabitants of a town are wont to found associations with the widest diversity of purposes, which each is quite free to join or not, so those engaged in the same industry or profession will combine with one another into associations equally free for purposes connected in some manner with the pursuit of the calling itself. since these free associations are clearly and lucidly explained by our predecessor of illustrious memory, we consider it enough to emphasize this one point fully. people are quite free, not only to found such associations, which are a matter of private order and private right but also in respect to them “freely to adopt the organization and the rule which they judge most appropriate to achieve their purpose. the same freedom must be asserted for founding associations that go beyond the boundaries of individual callings. and may these free organizations now flourishing and rejoicing in their salutary fruits, set before themselves the task of preparing the way, in conformity with the mind of christian social teaching, for those larger and more important guilds, industries and professions, which we mentioned before, and make every possible effort to bring them to realization. social justice demands this freedom not only in order that each social group may be properly organized to make its own unique and necessary contribution to the general common good, but also so that the group may constantly safeguard the welfare of those who make it up. if effective control of any group ever escapes from its members, then that group no longer is responsive to the needs of its members. rather it satisfies the ambitions and the plans of the individuals who have “captured” the group for their own private ends. the well known “boring from within” tactics of communists who seek control of organizations in order to use them for their own political ends, are examples of such usurpation of groups for purposes other than their natural ones. any group which would find itself thus “taken over” by agitators or gangsters for their own ends, would have an obliga[39 ] tion in social justice to shake off such leadership and make the group once more representative of its members’ common interests. but it is not only by such usurpation from without that groups can fail to perform their proper function of safeguarding the interests of all their members. since all human institutions are in constant flux, as we have seen, it is essential that their members keep constantly on the alert to make the changing organization of the group correspond to the changing circumstances as time goes on. if this is not done, then every change which disturbs the balance of the common good, will throw unwarranted advantage to some individuals or groups within the institutions, and by the same fact will withhold their proper share of the common good from the others. this state of things is another reason why groups must be jree, for without such freedom they cannot readily adapt themselves to new situations. seventh law: all vital interests should be organized the last law of social justice which we will consider is that all real and vital interests of life should be organized, that is, should be deliberately made to conform to the requirements of the common good. here is where the individualistic thinker rebels at the doctrine of social justice. seeing the great complexity of life and the vast number of vital interests of which it is made up, he maintains that one who would try to organize every vital interest could do nothing else during his whole life since this alone would be a full-time job that would never end. in one sense he is right—it is a full-time job that never ends. but he is wrong in thinking that one would somehow have to take “time out” from his ordinary life in order to do this job. the vast and complex institutions of human life can be controlled and directed only by those who live in them, and only while they live in them. here we meet pope pius xps great principle “the first apostles to the workers ought to be workers.” this is the principle which in catholic action has become known as “milieu [ 40 ] specialization,” specialization according to the “natural medium” of each one’s ordinary daily life. the theory is that each one’s own life is so complex and so specialized, that he alone is a “specialist” in that life. in the same way, each group’s own interests are so complex and so particular to it, that only its members are specialists in the needs and aspirations and hopes and fears of that group. anyone who would try to run such a group “from outside” would evidently be a rank amateur who would not know the score. therefore the group must be run by those who are in it, and in order to run the group they must get together and decide in common the means they will adopt, in other words they must organize their life. however when we say they must organize their life we do not mean that they can do anything else. the “organization” of life which we speak of here is specifically “organization for the common goody if the people in a group are not conscious of this necessity of organizing for the common good, it is not true that they do not organize; what is true is that they organize against the common good. for it must be remembered that since man is a social being every one of his actions is social, that is it is bound up with the lives of others. when he neglects to see to it that his social actions contribute to the common good of those others with whose lives they are bound up, it is evident that he does not change his social nature. he still remains a social being, and his actions are still bound up with the lives of those around him. the difference is that those actions, being undirected towards the common good, may or may not now contribute to that common good—in fact, most usually will not so contribute. these actions become habitual within the group and gradually the whole group becomes disorganized; the common good is destroyed and the individual perfection of those who are in the group is lessened or destroyed. it is not true to think that man has a choice between organization or no organization within his life which is essentially social. the only choice he has is between organization that takes care of the common good, and organization which docs not take care of the common good. either way his actions [ 41 ] will be organized, will be social; but in the first case they will be socially good and in the second they will be socially bad. in view of all this it is evident that the principle pronounced above—that every vital and real interest of life must be organized for the common good—does not impose a new way of life upon anyone, but does impose a new purpose in life upon all ; namely, the purpose of promoting the common good of one’s neighbors, of those with whom one’s life is bound up. once more, this list of seven “laws of social justice” does not pretend to be complete. others would have to be added in a more complete discussion. chapter vii characteristics of social justice first characteristic: only by members of groups it might be good in order to make the notion of social justice clearer, to compare its characteristics with those of individual justice which are already well-known. the first great mark of social justice is that it cannot be performed by individuals as individuals, but only by individuals as members of groups. let us give an example. when john jones pays a debt to bill smith he is acting as an individual. he contracted the debt and he is paying it. we would be tempted to say it is nobody else’s business. example of indirect or “commanded” act of social justice but there is more to it than that. when he pays his debt, he is continuing a laudable tradition in his society, that debts are paid when they come due. by paying it promptly he contributes to the conviction which is prevalent in his society, that debts are to be repaid promptly. he not only furnishes a payment for his private debt, which is whatever sum of money he happens to owe, but he also contributes payment of a debt [ 42 ] which he owes to his society, namely, support of the principle that at the proper time debts are to be paid. moreover, when bill smith gets paid, he is in a position to pay his own debts to somebody else; and thus the healthy tradition of debt paying is still further strengthened. moreover, the confidence which men have in each other’s integrity, a confidence upon which all our social living together is built, is certainly promoted by the fact that both men discharged their obligations when those obligations became due. now this “tradition,” this “confidence” are social things, marks of the society as a whole, which set off that society of honest men from other societies of thieves or cheats or confidence men. these acts then, insofar as they contribute to the health of that society, are indirect acts of social justice (promoting the common good) although they are directly acts of individual justice. now notice that the individual justice is done as an individual. it is john jones or bill smith who pays the debt of john jones or bill smith. but when by their action they contributed to the health of the whole society, it was not merely as john jones or bill smith that they acted but as members of that society. example of direct act of social justice this is even more clear if we were to describe not an indirect act of social justice but a direct one. suppose for instance, that john jones’ and bill smith’s society have a long tradition of not paying debts. as a result of this fact that nobody ever pays debts, everybody is suspicious of everybody else, and no one will let out money or goods even in an emergency of his neighbor. emergencies, however, have a habit of coming up, and people suffer. likewise, all jobs that are too big financially for one person, go undone, because no one will trust another sufficiently to go into partnership. the consequence is that the economic life of the community as a whole is suffering more and more; and the people are gradually being reduced to destitution. we will suppose that john jones notices this condition, and [ 43 ] sees what the cause of it is: the whole group is not honest. he sets out, then, to change the group—to reorganize it into an honest community. the wrong way: individualistic the question is: what can john jones do as an individual? he might, for instance, decide to give the community “a good example” of honesty. that is, he might lend out all his money to others, thus showing that he trusts them, and undertake always to pay his debts exactly on time. it sounds good; but, remembering that what is wrong with that community is that everyone considers it normal to be dishonest, we might readily calculate the chances that john jones’ heroic honesty and trust would have of reforming the community. when he starts handing out his money freely, it is rather obvious that most of his neighbors will try to grab off as much of it as they can while the grabbing is good. when he is finally reduced to poverty, it is unlikely that his example will attract many followers. his mistake was to attack a social evil with only individual means. the right way: social how should he have gone about it? first of all, he should recognize frankly that he, as an individual , is helpless before the accumulated evil of the unjust system in force. then he should go out for help. if he is wise he will not tackle the whole community at once, but will look around among his friends or acquaintances and try to find other people who are as dissatisfied as he himself is with the poverty ridden condition of their community. with these chosen souls he would sit down to study the sad condition of their community and to see what could be done about it. when it became clear that dishonesty was the big obstacle in the way of a good life in the community, they could very well begin to study the necessity of honesty in their own relations, especially with each other. when all of them are convinced that honesty is absolutely essential to a good life together, it will become possible for them to agree among [ 44 ] themselves that they will trust each other. furthermore, they can agree to stand together against anyone of their number who goes back on his promise to be good. once this is accomplished they can begin helping each other out, lending money when necessity arises, or joining forces when big jobs come along that they cannot handle individually. furthermore, since they recognize that it is a social problem which affects the whole community they will be careful not to help anybody outside their “reform” group (which can be trusted to be honest), unless this outside person joins the group and himself takes the obligation to meet his just debts. and since they know very well what false ideas the community has on honesty, they will make it a condition of joining their group that the newcomers study the necessity of honesty as much as they themselves studied it when they started out — in other words, they will attempt to form their new members to honesty. actually they are setting up a new “social conscience” to take the place of the old falsified “social conscience” which had made dishonesty a normal thing. without going further into this example, it is already evident that in this social way of action—this organization of the community—something can really be done. these organized men are going to show to their disorganized community an example, not of going heroically broke as a testimony to honesty, but of arriving at economic security by the operation of honesty. this example will attract imitators—in fact, the smaller group will deliberately go out to look for imitators and train them to imitate. here you have the difference between individual action and social action and it is clear that social justice is never done by an individual xs an individual, but only by an individual in cooperation, in organization with others. second characteristic: it takes time a second characteristic of social justice (which comes directly from the fact that it can be done only by groups) is that it moves slowly and gradually. when john jones owes bill [ 45 ] smith fifteen dollars on january 2nd, he must pay bill smith fifteen dollars on january 2nd or be doing wrong. individual justice is done all at once at a definite time. but not so with social justice. in the example above of the change from a dishonest to an honest community it is clear that the process took some time—probably a long time. an even better example is the one that pope pius xi proposed; namely, that of an individual employer who was helpless to insure justice. the remedy which the pope suggested was that this employer had the duty to organize with the other employers so as to prevent unjust competition and permit fair treatment to the workers. here is an interesting point: when the process of organization begins it is clear that the employer in the holy father’s example is not paying a living wage. furthermore, and this is important, he will not pay a living wage until he has succeeded in reorganizing the industry in cooperation with the other employers. for only in the measure in which that reorganization succeeds, will his helplessness to pay a living wage disappear. yet from the very moment that he begins reorganizing that industry with his fellow employers, and all during the time which it takes to reorganize it, he is practicing socal justice. when he hears such doctrine, an individualistic moralist will howl to high heaven. he will say that the payment of a sub-living wage is unjust, is wrong; and that the employer is not allowed to cooperate in that injustice. direct cooperation in evil, he will say, is wrong in all circumstances, and cannot be permitted. either the employer must pay a living wage, or get out of the dirty business. evidently a man who would maintain so intransigent an opposition to evil would have a thirst for justice, but if he should succeed in driving out of that business the only employer who wants to reorganize it, it is difficult to see what good he has accomplished. pope pius xi, in the same discourse on the fundamental instability of human institutions which was quoted earlier, has this to say about the necessary time lag in social work: “to [ 46 ] tend to perfection, but to do what is possible: there you have the program to which human forces are permitted to pretend. if god demands something more, then he does it himself. . . .” this compromise with reality, this willingness to accomplish one’s end slowly and painfully, this “collaboration” in an evil institution until the change can be accomplished, this “remaining in a dirty business” in order to clean it up,—all this is hateful to good people who have not grasped the essence of social justice. in the past, these individualists, or “radical non-participationists” as they like to call themselves (from their doctrine of “radical non-participation in evil”) could be excused for their attitude, because no one was very clear on how a social problem could be attacked anyhow; and their theory of heroic resistance and even martyrdom was about as good as any. now, however, that the doctrine of social justice has been completed under the inspired pen of pope pius xi, many of these good people are going to have to change their fundamental assumptions and ideas. if they do not, they will find themselves willy-nilly 'collaborating in evil”—the great evil of social injustice. third characteristic: nothing is impossible another characteristic of social justice, which was already pointed out in chapter two, is that in social justice there is never any such thing as helplessness. no problem is ever too big or too complex, no field is ever too vast, for the methods of this social justice. problems that were agonizing in the past and were simply dodged, even by serious and virtuous people, can now be solved with ease by any school child. lest this statement seem too extreme, let us take an actual example of such an insoluble problem of the past. a common problem the following problem was proposed on a national radio hookup: i know many businessmen, lawyers, physicians, who lament the trend to the unethical in the special worlds in which they operate. they tell me that the tide is running against them, that too many of [ 47 ] their rivals have reduced business ethics and professional ethics to three principles: 1. everybody is doing it; 2. if you don’t do it, someone else will; and 3. you can’t do business nowadays with oldfashioned principles. especially in the metropolitan cities, they say, the degeneration is obvious. they blame this set of persons and that, but they all seem agreed that decline, if not actual decay, is upon us. “it’s easy enough,” they add, “for you preachers to tell us to stand firm, to hew to the line, and all that. but we have families to support, homes to maintain, food and clothing to buy. . . . we must do what the others do or be sunk. the crowd is running all one way ; we cannot forever buck the stream!” this is a sincere and straightforward statement of a problem as common as any to be met at the present time. in fact, it is an understatement: to complete the picture we should add that the laws of our secularized society are usually in favor of the crowd which is running all one way! it is not too hard to see that this is identically the same problem which pope pius xi presented in a passage which we have quoted several times: “it happens all too frequently, under the salary system, that the individual employer is helpless to insure justice.” the radio preacher happened to be a rather pronounced individualist, and the best answer he could give to his own problem was the following: “right is right if nobody does it. wrong is wrong if everybody does it. what the businessman needs, and what the professional man needs is a new declaration of independence.” no solution notice that the first part of this answer dodges the question. the businessman had said in effect, that he as an individual was helpless to insure justice. he knew the system was wrong, but he did not know how to buck it. the only information contained in the answer was that there is such a thing as right and wrong. if the businessman had not known that perfectly well before he stated his problem, he certainly would not have called his system wrong! the second part of the reply is more to the point; but that “new declaration of independence” which sounds so nice in a speech, is precisely what the businessman meant by the last [48] three words of his complaint: “we must do what the others do or be sunk” this certainly is not much help! it is difficult to see what other answers could have been given from an individualistic point of view; the speaker could of course have told the businessman to “use his own judgment/’ or to “do the best he can/’ but this once more is not much help; and the businessman is looking for help. the only other solution would be to tell the businessman that since he has to make a living, and has to pay his debts and meet his other obligations, he should go ahead with his business, since its injustice is something which he cannot help, and which is only indirectly willed. this may indeed offer the businessman a chance to save his individual soul while precariously balancing on a “good intention” in the midst of evil, but it certainly does nothing to remedy the evil. the right answer no other answer, except a frank admission that the problem is insoluble, could be given from an individualistic point of view. the answer which pope pius xi gave to his own statement of the same problem was not individualistic at all — it was social; namely, that the employer who found himself thus helpless to insure justice had a duty to organize , among the employers , institutions which would make the practice of justice possible. how this organization would be carried out we have seen in the simple example of social action above (the unjust community ) . once more notice how directly and clearly the pope solved that problem which was absolutely insoluble to the radio speaker who had an individualistic philosophy. that is why individualists, at least from now on, will not be very bright. not only that, but they will be downright wrong—failing against social justice. fourth characteristic: eternal vigilance another characteristic of social justice is that its work is never finished. this goes beyond what was said above about l 49 j the time-lag, about the slowness, with which social justice is accomplished. the point is that human institutions are always changing, even the most fundamental ones, in the words of pope pius xi already quoted, and these changes must always be directed to serve the common good. we, as human beings, cannot possibly foresee all the consequences of our actions. the inevitable result is that many of these consequences bring about unforeseen evil results; and as we go through life, acting always without ultimate realization of the consequences of our actions, these evil results pile up, one on top of the other, until many aspects of our social life are disorganized—have become unjust. when we try to correct that injustice even by social action it is clear that our actions once more will have consequences which we cannot foresee, and that many of those new consequences will also be evil. besides that, there are a lot of other people who are not even trying to be good; and the evil consequences of their acts also are continually piling up in all the institutions of life. the result is that social justice is not only a full-time job as we have seen before, but it is also an all-time job. a digression here we ought to digress a little bit to show how pope pius xi, who brought the theory of social justice to completion, provided also an instrument whereby the christian world could perform this full-time, and all-time, job. this instrument, which pope pius xi called catholic action, was both world-wide, in order to be able to face the greatest and most widespread of the modem evils, and at the same time was specialized in every walk of life so that in all that vast organization, not a single “amateur” would be at work. when a doctor for instance, or a banker talks to a hall full of workers on the dangers of communism, we may safely presume that all he knows about his subject is what he read in the papers; but when a worker himself talks to fellow-workers about the dangers of communism, he knows the hopes and fears, the injustices, the resentments that have made communism so attractive to the working masses of the world. [so] communism is only one example of such widespread evils. the institution of birth control, to take only one more example, is every bit as widespread, and probably as devastating in the damage which it is doing to christian civilization. many older catholic organizations have not seen what pope pius xi was trying to do with catholic action, and they spend a great deal of their time trying to get themselves called “ catholic action” without having the means to accomplish its purposes. if they wrould keep their eyes upon the two extremes pointed out here, namely a world-wide organization capable of attacking directly the greatest evils of the present day, and at the same time a movement which has specialized competence inside every natural medium of life, they would not make this mistake. it can be seen at a glance that if catholic action were organized according to the directions and norms which pope pius xi laid down, and which the present holy father is continuing, then the work of organization of every aspect of life, whose sheer vastness terrorizes or discourages the individualist, would be greatly facilitated. not, however, that catholic action works directly in the social order or the “temporal order” as it could better be called. it does not. what it does is to organize all catholics and keep them formed and ready , so that when the time comes for them to enter into the reorganization of any aspect of social life, they have the practical unity, and they have the specialized competence, to do it, and to do it well. no one who appreciates the concept of social justice, as it has come from the pen of pope pius xi, can afford to neglect his other concept of catholic action. they complete and explain each other. fifth characteristic : effectiveness a kind of corollary of the characteristic of social justice which we have just seen—namely, the characteristic that it is never finished—is that one’s work for the common good must be effective. it is not enough to do something with “a good ’ntention” for the common good, and then to turn onev back. [si ] one must “keep his eye on the ball,” and whenever the ball is not in the best position, one must work to put it there. this means that the final criterion of whether or not social justice is being practiced, is whether or not society is good. to put it in pope pius xi’s own words, from paragraph si and 52 of the encyclical divini redemptoris: if social justice is satisfied, the result will be an intense activity in economic life as a whole, pursued in tranquility and order. this activity will be proof of the health of the social body, just as the health of the human body is recognized in the undisturbed regularity and perfect efficiency of the whole organism. but social justice cannot be said to have been satisfied as long as workingmen are denied a salary that will enable them to secure proper sustenance for themselves and for their family; as long as they are denied the opportunity of acquiring a modest fortune and forestalling the plague of universal pauperism; as long as they cannot make suitable provision through public or private insurance for old-age, for periods of illness, and for unemployment. sixth characteristic: you can’t “take it or leave it alone” another corollary of this characteristic of social justice (that it is never finished) is that it embraces a rigid obligation . in the past when it was not seen very clearly how the duty of reform would fall upon the individual conscience, the idea became widespread that reform was a kind of special vocation, like that to the priesthood, or the religious life. it was all very good for those people who liked that sort of thing, but if one did not like that sort of thing, he left it alone. all that is changed! since we know that everyone, even the weakest and youngest of human beings, can work directly on the common good at the level where he lives, and since each one “has the duty” to reorganize his own natural medium of life whenever it makes the practice of individual virtue difficult or impossible, then every single person must face the direct and strict obligation of reorganizing his life and the life around him, so that the individual perfection both of himself and of his immediate neighbors will become possible. this idea should [52 ] not be taken alone, it should be held only in conjunction with the characteristics we have already seen, namely, that one cannot practice social justice alone as an individual, but only with others; and that the realization of social justice takes time. a footnote to a chapter of ethics now for a final remark, which is not exactly a characteristic of social justice, but rather a consequence of our present understanding of this virtue. in the past, when the way in which social justice could be realized was not too well understood, what is known to moralists as “the principle of double effect” was applied to the social order as well as to the individual order. this principle runs about as follows: “it is permitted to perform an action in itself good or indifferent, which has a double or multiple effect, namely, one or the other good effect and one or the other bad, on condition: first, that the good effect is immediate; secondly, that the end of the agent is honest; and thirdly, that there exists a proportionately grave cause.” this principle is necessary to free the individual conscience from responsibility for evil effects which are thus “indirectly” willed, and so permit the accomplishment of the normal and necessary duties of life. its ultimate basis is, of course, the absence of power to impede the evil effect: “no one is held to the impossible; hence, no one, if he does not do that which he cannot do, sins by omission.” when for example a doctor can stop an otherwise fatal hemorrhage only by ligating a blood vessel which at the same time sustains the life of a non-viable fetus, the fact of the matter is that the life of the un-born child is then simply beyond his control and hence outside his responsibility; so that when he ligates the blood vessel to stop the hemorrhage, and the un-born child dies as a consequence, there is nothing more to be said or done. if some means were open to his art to preserve that life after the ligature, the responsibility of the surgeon would still be engaged and he would have to try to save that life. [s3] how about the social order? now comes the crucial question: is this absence of power to impede the evil effect, ever verified in the social order? we have seen the answer above: no problem can ever be too big, too complex, too widespread, too vast for social justice to tackle. there is in the field of social justice no such thing as an impossible situation. the conclusion is that that principle “of double effect” does not belong in the social order in the same way that it belongs in the individual order. we have seen this already in the example of social justice which pope pius xi cited. his “individual employer” was “helpless to insure justice.” in the field of individual justice, therefore, that is the end of the story. nothing more is to be said. the employer simply goes on paying an unjust wage ( materially unjust) for the very simple reason that he is helpless to do anything else. but how about the social problem, the fact that his industry is badly organized and thus forces this helplessness upon him. in this social field there is no helplessness whatever. he can change the industry (by social, organized action) whenever he wants to start organizing, and he had better not wait too’ long because the words of the sovereign pontiff are explicit: “he has the duty ” another example: suppose a senator is faced by a bill which he judges necessary for the common good, but which has a “rider” attached to it which he thinks to be unjust. in individual justice he is permitted to vote for that measure which he has judged necessary, despite the fact that in so doing he also permits the unjust rider to become law. this latter effect is willed by him only “indirectly” insofar as he cannot safeguard the common good without permitting it. formerly, we would have thought that that, too, was the end of the story, as for the surgical operation outlined above. he need give the unjust effect no further thought, because he was helpless to prevent its occurrence. now, however, we know differently. he can vote for the necessary bill as before, but it was a social organization (legislative proceedure) which linked together that necessary bill and the unjust rider. it was this social organization, this sysw tem of law, which prevented him from doing full justice—that is from safeguarding the common good completely by the exclusion of the rider from the bill which was necessary. faced with this helplessness, he has the duty to organize socially against it. that is, he must after the passage of the bill, or even before it, if that is possible, round up sufficient support among the other senators to defeat the rider or to repeal it. this process may take a long time, but he must keep working at it to be just . 155 ] conclusion the theory of social justice which has been outlined in this pamphlet is tremendously important and far-reaching. no mere pamphlet could hope to outline the whole theory or to explore all its consequences. that is why this pamphlet is called only an introduction to social justice. the completed doctrine of social justice places in our hands instruments of such power as to be inconceivable to former generations. but let us be clear about what is new and what is old. none of the elements of this theory are new. institutions, and institutional action, the idea of the common good, the relationship of individual to common good,—all these things are as old as the human race itself. there is nothing more new in those things than in the school boy’s discovery that what he has been speaking is prose; nor must we ever believe that god made man a two-legged creature, and then waited for aristotle to make him rational. moreover, much of the actual application of these principles to practical life is to be found in older writers under the heading “political prudence.” when all that is admitted, there is still something tremendously new and tremendously important in this work of pope pius xi. the power that we have now to change any institution of life, the grip that we have on the social order as a whole, was always there but we did not know it and we did not know how to use it. now we know. that is the difference. [ 56 ] questions on introduction to social justice chapter i 1. what two encyclicals of pope pius xi show most clearly his greatness as a social figure? 2. how did the “scientific” sociologists try to explain the radical instability of social phenomena? how did the moralists react? did these tendencies have bad effects? 3. what was the real problem? 4. what is pope pius xfs opinion on the instability of human institutions? 5. did this opinion extend even to the most fundamental institutions? was this the usual way of seeing the problem? 6. why could the pope venture so boldly into the “no man’s land” between the moralists and the sociologists? 7. what are the great principles which pope pius xi intended to apply to the social problem? 8. what was social justice called before about 1850? 9. outline the history of the development of the doctrine of social justice. 10. in what way was st. thomas’ doctrine of social justice superior to aristotle? what important question however did he fail to ask concerning social justice? [57] chapter ii 1. what do most commentators miss when reading quadragesimo anno? 2. what is usually misunderstood in paragraph 71 of quadra gesimo anno ? 3. is it ever impossible to meet the demands of individual justice? is the one who finds himself in this circumstance morally guilty? 4. in such an impossibility, is the solution to be sought in individual justice, or in social justice? 5. why is it certain that social justice is the same thing as the traditional “legal justice.” 6. in paragraph 71 of quadragesimo anno what must be done if existing circumstances do not permit a living family wage? what is the common misunderstanding of the demands of social justice as set forth in this paragraph? 7. in the past about all that has been demanded for social justice was a “good intention” for the common good. is anything more demanded by pope pius xi’s doctrine of social justice? show how this demand is set forth in paragraph 74 of the encyclical. 8. what three alternatives to social justice does pius xi condemn as guides or norms of society? why? 9. what does pius xi mean by the statement that social justice must give “form and shape” to social and economic life? 10. in adopting the new term social justice, what meaning did pope pius xi seem to leave for the traditional term legal justice? was this an acceptance of popular understanding? [ 58 ] 11. did pope pius xi develop the doctrine of social charity with the same fullness of detail with which he developed that of social justice? what work therefore remains to be done? 12. what is the evil of trying to capture the very system of economic life itself for private and selfish ends? 13. we have seen that in individual justice an employer may be helpless to pay a just wage. is it right to look on social justice as some kind of additional claim on the employer by which he must pay a just wage anyhow? if this is the wrong idea, what is the right one? 14. outline the summary of his own teaching on social justice which pope pius xi inserted into the encyclical divini redemptoris. chapter iii 1. how does pope pius xi base the theory of justice on the dignity of the human personality? 2. what are the “props” or supports needed for realization of human dignity? 3. distinguish between a failure against charity and justice. 4. what is social charity and on what is it based? 5. what does social justice require of society? why? 6. what was the traditional view of justice, and how has pope pius xi improved upon it? 7. why isn’t commutative justice the “most perfect” form of justice? could the same be said about charity? 8. could you give any reason why “other goods of human perfection are unobtainable without the common good”? [ 59 ] 9. the duty of meeting the obligations of social justice, once they are understood and recognized is “both rigid and very serious.” why? 10. what has the result of past thinking done for social justice? why? chapter iv 1. why must every act conform to social justice, or be sinful? 2. can an isolated individual practice social justice? what does this imply? 3. give a definition of milieu. of institution. how do they differ? 4. how are people to discharge their duty of social justice? 5. give pope pius xi’s reason for the necessity of institutions. 6. what is the three-fold duty of institutions? 7. what is the relationship existing between the common good and every individual? 8. what is the common good? what is it not? 9. why can each individual have direct care of the common good at his level? chapter v 1. show by an example how buying and selling are highly organized. 2. why is the “fixed priced technique” apparently more simplified than bargaining? what is meant by “participating in the common life”? [ 60 ] 3 . 4. what is the function of the first level of social habits? what is the function of the order of social justice? 5. what makes society “good”? 6. what determines the “kind of organization”? why? 7. when is an organization “bad”? chapter vi 1 . can it be stated dogmatically that there are seven and only seven laws of social justice? 2. at what cost must the common good be kept inviolate? why? 3. if society is not founded upon the common good, what other good can it be founded upon? what, then, logically follows? 4. what advantages does co-operation (common good) have over dictatorship or free competition (particular good)? 5. with regard to the third mentioned law, what is your big job for social justice? 6 . you are responsible for the general welfare of your country and further of the whole world. why? 7. what reason does pope pius xi give for the fifth mentioned law? 8. give three reasons why there must be such a thing as “freedom of association.” 9. in the seventh law, what is meant by the word “organized”? list a few “real and vital interests” and show how they could be “organized.” [61 ] 10. what reason can you give for this statement: “the vast and complex institutions of human life can justly be controlled and directed only by those who live in them, and only while they live in them.” 11. why can there be no alternative in the question of “organizing”? chapter vii 1. what are the six characteristics of social justice? which do you consider the most important? why? 2. is there any distinction made between an indirect or “commanded” act of social justice and one that is direct? what is it? is it a “real” distinction? 3. what two ways of action are mentioned in connection with the reorganization of a community? which is the right way? why? 4. what connection does the first characteristic have with catholic action? 5. why can there not be such a thing as one precise act of social justice? 6. why does the individualistic moralist “howl” at such a doctrine as social justice? is he justified? 7. what changes will the ‘individualist” have to make in his thinking since pope pius xi has definitely stated his view on social justice? 8. what is the holy father’s view of organization for the betterment of social conditions? 9. why is the individual evidently helpless in going against the so-called principles of business and professional ethics? what must he do if he wishes to counteract these principles? must he try to counteract them? why? [ 62 ] 10. why do human institutions demand eternal vigilance on the part of social-actionists? in what direction must the social actionist always tend? 11. why can catholic action face all problems ( world-wide and local) effectively? 12. does the world-wide view of catholic action demand too much from the individual? what other element does catholic action consider? 13. does the holy father’s concept of social justice consequently demand catholic action groups? 14. why is “a good intention” for the betterment of the common good insufficient? does social justice demand more than good will? if so, what? 15. what is the final criterion as to whether or not social justice is being practiced? what does pope pius xi say about this? 16. is there any difference in the method of reform as practiced in the past in comparison to the method demanded by social justice today? why must it be different to be effective? 17. why does not the principle of “double effect” belong in the social order as it does in the individual order? 18. is the theory of social justice of recent origin? what do we know about social justice that has been neglected till now? what are the consequences of this knowledge? [63 ] deconstructing whiteness and coloniality in the human service field: possibilities for socially just praxis in child and youth care international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 248 mapping whiteness and coloniality in the human service field: possibilities for a praxis of social justice in child and youth care johanne saraceno abstract: this paper explores how a dominant western ontology rooted in white masculinity and coloniality is embedded in the systems and structures of professional helping in canada. with a critical, post-colonial feminist analysis, this paper locates canada’s colonial history as fundamental to ongoing policies and practices in the human services and child and youth care (cyc). the implications of coloniality for cyc suggest that as practitioners we might consciously engage in deconstructing the theories, structures, and values that shape how we practice. cartographies can assist us in reflexive and deconstructive endeavours. as one maps out the parameters and identifies the existing horizons, one might begin to envision how to then move beyond them. in examining the hegemony of professional helping, the intention is an invitation to work collectively toward models that foreground the social context of problems faced by individuals as well as creative, collective responses. strategies of an engaged solidarity and a model of socially just, decolonizing praxis offer potential sites for affirmative and transformative social change. keywords: whiteness, colonialism, social justice, child and youth care, intersectionality johanne saraceno is a doctoral student and sessional instructor in the school of child and youth care, university of victoria, po box 1700, stn csc, victoria, b.c., canada, v8w 2y2. e-mail: jsaracen@uvic.ca mailto:jsaracen@uvic.ca� international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 249 this paper undertakes a cartography to bring to the surface how a dominant western ontology rooted in whiteness and coloniality is embedded in the systems and structures of professional helping, including child and youth care (cyc). given increasing disparities between the wealthy and the poor, ongoing violence against racialized and gendered minorities, and a non-profit funding model that pits community service agencies against one another in bids for limited resources, this is an important and relevant topic for cyc. the main goal of this paper is to provide a cartography in the hope it will provoke further reading and an intentional engagement to interrogate policies and practices that sustain the current status quo to the disadvantage of many. elements of colonial history are foregrounded in order to highlight and begin to deconstruct how embeddedness in a dominant western ontology has shaped the field of human services. cartographies can be useful for making clear the power structures of society. cartographies can help us to see where we are situated so that we can then consider where we might like to go or how we might direct our energy toward change. in taking up this notion of the cartography, i will map out colonialism, whiteness and white privilege, the relevance and significance of neo-liberalism, and the construction of gender in a canadian context. nevertheless, given the scope of this paper, the complexities of these intersections will be explored to a limited extent. drawing on a range of literature from within and outside of cyc, i also map “professionalism” in the human service sector. this discussion locates cyc and professional helping as products of, and embedded in, a western ontology that privileges the normative values of whiteness and the coloniality of power. as suggested by braidotti (2006), mapping out where we are situated or located provides a useful tool for productive, critical engagement for change. in considering the implications for cyc, i discuss new possibilities for how we think about and enact support to individuals and communities. i discuss implications for shifting ways of knowing, doing, and being in cyc; i draw this term from white (2007) and her conceptualization of praxis as “ethical, self-aware, responsive and accountable action, which reflects dimensions of knowing, doing and being” (p. 226). how can we move across difference toward a model of praxis that seeks social justice through an intentional decolonizing stance and an affirmation of the complexity of life through solidarity? such a shift would benefit from a cartography of the assumptions taken for granted and the values underpinning professional helping in canada today. mapping or making explicit these hegemonic elements of the dominant culture then allows us to begin to examine the places we encounter or embody privilege in our own lives. i invite readers to consider how they might push the edges of their own horizons to contribute to ever expanding possibilities of what might be, so that we can all move toward models that foreground the social context of problems faced by individuals and generate creative, productive collective responses. theoretical orientation i locate my analysis within a hybrid feminist epistemology informed by critical/antioppressive, queer, post-colonial, and post-structural theories. feminist theory is important as gender is still used around the world as a pervasive category of discrimination (cole, 2009). international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 250 “patriarchy is the practice, phallocentrism the theory; both coincide in producing an economy, material as well as libidinal, where the law is upheld by a phallic symbol that operates by constructing differences and organising them hierarchically” (braidotti, 1991, p. 213). the consequence to this is an entrenched system of male privilege against which any “resistance” or “difference” to the norm is negated. this paper is grounded in an understanding that “hegemonic practices are invisibly built into the ‘grand narratives’ of the dominant culture and are woven into the fabric of our daily lives in ways that make it difficult to uncover, track, resist” (gilmore, smith, & kairaiuak, 2004, p. 280). feminism is polyvocal; there is no one defining perspective of feminism but rather, “many feminisms and feminist standpoints” (maguire, 1996, p. 107). according to haraway (1997), standpoints can be understood as “cognitive-emotional-political achievements, crafted out of located social-historical-bodily experience – itself always constituted through fraught, non-innocent, discursive, material collective practices” (p. 304). femaleness is not a universal experience in that multiple and complex elements such as ethnicity and class shape gender. “feminist post-colonial critique call[s] into question cultural, gender, and racial binaries among others” (schutte, 2007, p. 167). an intersectional lens acknowledges all of these elements as complex, varied, and co-constituting one another (carastathis, 2008). a conscious decolonizing feminist stance recognizes that practices and scholarship are “inscribed in relations of power” (mohanty, 2003, p. 19). “the central issue is the critique of universalism as being maleidentified and of masculinity as projecting itself as pseudo-universal and a critique of the idea of otherness as devalorization” (braidotti, 1994, p. 159). an ongoing challenge for feminist scholars and practitioners is how to make transparent dialectical paradigms while recognizing that we can only do this from within our constrained location (braidotti, 1991). queer theory expands possibilities for thinking about and doing social justice with its emphasis on disrupting dominant norms and creating openings that are more flexible and fluid by “interrogating the historical and cultural positioning of the unified ‘self’ characteristic of the western constitution of the subject” (watson, 2005, p. 68). smith (2010) describes this as making “theory queer, not just hav[ing] theory about queers. for both academics and activists, ‘queer’ gets a critical edge by defining itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual” (p. 44). critical feminist and queer theories have sought to foreground male and heteronormative privilege and disrupt “truth, objectivity, and certainty by a focus on ‘regimes of truth’” (lather, 1991, p. 23), making explicit the relationship between authority, power, and taken-for-granted assumptions which constrain the potential for many groups of beings to live vital productive lives. the intention is not to correct or supplant one truth with another but rather to advocate complexity and multiple possible conceptualizations. my vision for social transformation rejoins braidotti (1991) in that “the goal of the process of liberation is not to transform the powerless into the powerful; it aims to surmount the dialectical system in order to arrive at non-hegemonic form of consciousness” (p. 109). the concept of cartographies, according to braidotti (1994), provides “a sort of intellectual landscape gardening” where we can encounter the horizon, take our bearing. in other words, it is important to situate ourselves in the contexts of the structures and constraints and to draw as accurate a map as possible of existing structures, forces, dynamics, and interactions. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 251 braidotti (2008) proposes that cartographies act as “politically informed map[s] of one’s historical and social location, the purpose of which is to enable the analysis of situated formations of power and hence adequate forms of resistance” (p. 19). this concept derives from foucault’s (1975) cartographies of power. in this sense, cartographies can provide “alternative genealogies of thought [which] express a form of ethical and political accountability that requires an understanding of one’s specific location” (braidotti, 2010, p. 2). furthermore, this conceptualization also follows from deleuze and guattari who “stressed the importance of immanent analyses of the singular actualisations of concrete power formations” (as cited in braidotti, 2008, p. 19). ultimately, this exercise in mapping power relations and structural dynamics allows us to begin to consider possibilities for different ways of knowing, doing, and being. elements of a western ontology colonial history in this section, i will take inventory of some key concepts of a western ontology or world view and the normative values inscribed in the practices of professionalized helping. an understanding of coloniality and the dominant western ontology is important because it is the hegemonic foundation and power base, contested persistently and daily through varied forms of interpersonal and collective resistance, of canadian structures and institutions, including the human service field and cyc. human service work is inherently colonial; its central goal is to control and discipline bodies and minds (foucault, 1975; skott-myhre, 2004; wade, 1995) colonialism, central to a eurocentric settler world view (razack, 2002), is still relevant to those of us in the helping professions because it is embedded in all contemporary structures and institutions of canadian society, including the law, child welfare, education, psychology, and health. razack (2002) emphasizes that all existing institutions in canadian society evolved through a colonizer/colonized relationship. post-colonial feminist scholars define colonization as “a relation of structural domination and suppression – often violent – of the heterogeneity of the subject(s) in question” (mohanty, 2003, p. 18) and as “the project of converting the natives to christianity and of drawing colonized populations into european economic and political arrangements … [to] enable these [groups] to benefit from ‘becoming like westerners’” (narayan & harding, 2000, p. 94). economic and social growth in canada “continues to rely on the subjugation and relocation of entire indigenous societies, which sustain a system of chronic poverty, social exclusion, and political and cultural disenfranchisement” (de finney, dean, loiselle, & saraceno, 2011, p. 363). these types of colonizing relationships persist in the institutions of canadian society today, as demonstrated, for example, by the continued overrepresentation of indigenous children in government care and the statistically poorer health outcomes for indigenous people across canada (lavallée & poole, 2010). post-colonial theory, attempts to engage with “issues of identity, history, and culture that are the direct result of the colonial experience” (skott-myhre, 2008, p. 172). post-colonial theory engages critically with: european colonization and its legacy at the material and discursive levels… the conviction that the relationships between the present and the past, the local and the global, [etc.] are much more intertwined and of longer duration than appears in many accounts of social sciences. (venn, 2006, p. 1) international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 252 this lens makes it clear that colonialism is not a thing of the past and continues to operate in the institutions and policies of today. coloniality integrates an explicit analysis of the power of existing social structures and roots in colonial history. the coloniality of power is a concept advanced by quijano (2007) as constituting the crux of the global capitalist system of power. lugones (2007) explains, “what is characteristic of global, eurocentered, capitalist power is that it is organized around two axes that quijano terms ‘the coloniality of power’ and ‘modernity’” (p. 186). the concept of coloniality maps power as a force that colonizes the imagination and co-opts through access to pieces of the power system (quijano, 2007). this concept effectively captures the intersection of colonialism with capitalism and their modernist roots, which underpin the dominant western ontology. the modernist legacy includes the contradictory juxtaposition of “enlightenment ideals of respect, freedom, and equality [against] gender domination, and western domination in the form of colonialism and imperialism” (jakobsen, 1998, p. 4). yet the very social contract that holds that all men are created equal is, in fact, predicated on the subordination of women and the racialized other (pierson, 2005). “‘universalism’ [has] come to dominate a politics centered on the subject of rights, thereby occluding the force of global capital and its differential forms of exploitation from the theorizations of subordinated peoples” (butler, 2000, p. 36). the consequence of this for cyc is that historic political and economic struggles have been categorized into manageable units of individual disease or disorder (de finney, dean et al., 2011; jakobsen, 1998; kivel, 2002; mcknight, 1995; szasz, 2002). capitalism cannot be excluded from a discussion of western ontology and professional helping. in terms of productive social change (braidotti, 2008), callahan and swift (2007), lugones (2007), mclaren (2000), mohanty (2003), and skott-myhre (2008), among others, foreground the importance of considering the intersection of a capitalist economic system with a eurocentric colonial history in mapping out where we are in order to contemplate where we might go next. closely related to colonialism is the neo-colonial capitalist paradigm, neoliberalism. neo-liberalism neo-liberalism, the form that capitalism has taken in the last century, has significantly shaped policies and practices in human and social services and, thus, cyc. neo-liberalism is a political as much as an economic ideology; it has shaped canadian social, economic, and political systems under globalization (callahan & swift, 2007). based on a logic of free market values and globalized economies, it “enshrines values of competition, privatization, individual responsibility, surveillance, and managerialism” (phoenix, 2004, p. 228). callahan and swift (2007) note that under this ethos, economic growth takes precedence over living beings: “economic growth and maximum exploitation of the market are given priority over support and assistance to people ‘in need’ and…require that individuals decrease their demands on the state and simultaneously increase their activities as producers and consumers” (p. 159). neoliberalism, true to its modernist roots, advances the notion that everybody has equal opportunities to succeed whereas, in fact, entrenched systems of privilege facilitate or limit opportunities for mobility and status based on one’s social location in relation to intersections of class, gender, and race, among others. mohanty (2003) asserts that, “the hegemony of neo-liberalism, alongside the naturalization of capitalist values, influences the ability to make choices on one’s own behalf” (p. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 253 229). cultural tools such as education, the media, and corporate marketing have a powerful influence in shaping subjecthood. neo-liberalism is entrenched as a hegemonic world view and thus, “most people have [the sense] that not only is there no other alternative, but that this is the best system ever imagined…inequities are simply swept out of sight” (said, 2000, as cited in phoenix, 2004, p. 228). difference is acceptable in consumable units – furthering the illusions of an equal and just society (braidotti, 2006; jakobsen, 1998). “the phenomenon of globalization accomplishes a magician’s trick: it combines the euphoric celebration of new technologies, new lifestyles… with the complete social rejection of change and transformation” (braidotti, 2006, p. 2). neo-liberalism has profoundly shaped the structures and institutions of western societies, including professional helping and the construct of professionalization. before examining this relationship in more detail, white privilege, another thread of the dominant western world view, will be mapped out. whiteness and white privilege what is the history of “white” identity and “white privilege”? why is this relevant to consider? the concept of whiteness is intimately related to white privilege; white privilege underpins the structures and values of canadian society. whiteness is not only about skin colour but also about access to special privileges. whiteness initially differentiated “european explorers and settlers who came in contact with africans and indigenous people…‘white’ developed as an indication of difference based on skin colour” (skott-myhre, 2008, p. 168). according to kivel (2002), “whiteness is a constantly shifting boundary separating those who are entitled to have certain privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence is justified by their not being white” (p. 15). who qualifies as white is always a moving target, evolving with migrations of populations, politics, and economic factors. as rodriguez (2000) emphasizes, “race is not a natural, fixed phenomena but rather a social construct whose one constant or guarantee is its changing significance and effects given its evolving historical interaction and intersection with the political” (p. 5). historically, race has interacted with class, gender, and location to shape the structures of north american society (government, education, housing, and health care) through government legislation and policies that have protected and entrenched the advancement of the white, heterosexual, male subject (kivel, 2002; martinot, 2003; schick, 2002). white privilege is charted in our legal code. canadians have only to look at our own government’s indian act to see an explicit example of where white privilege and colonial values entrenched protections for the dominant group through the systemic marginalization and disenfranchisement of entire populations. white privilege “is produced and rationalized as survey lines, deeds, boundaries, purchase prices, and mortgages – signs of ownership and belonging… [it] is also produced relationally against the otherness of original habitants” (schick, 2002, p. 106). rodriguez (2000) demonstrates the complexity of how whiteness operates to sustain privilege and the positioning of the “other”: whiteness has a set of linked dimensions. first, whiteness is a location of structural advantage, of race privilege. second, it is a “standpoint”, a place from international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 254 which white people look at ourselves, at others, at society. third, “whiteness” refers to a set of cultural practices that are usually unmarked and unnamed. (p. 8) ultimately, whiteness and white privilege are unseen and unknown because of an assumption of normal. the invisibility of a dominant white ontology “colonizes the definitions of other norms, class, gender, heterosexuality, nationality, and so on – it also masks whiteness itself as a category” (dryer, 1988, as cited in harper, 2000, p. 129). throughout the feminist literature, tensions between whiteness and racialization and gender are centred in an attempt to map and dialogue about how to rework these problematic intersections. one way we can begin to map out or increase our awareness of the “colonial construction of whiteness as an ‘empty’ cultural space, [is] in part by refiguring it as constructed and dominant rather than as norm” (fuller, 2000, p. 82). stoler (1995, as cited in skott-myhre, 2008) considers intersections of race and sexuality in regard to “how whiteness is used disciplinarity [and] the ‘cultivation of a european self’ and how this self was ‘affirmed in the proliferating discourses around pedagogy, parenting…’” (p. 171). a willingness to question normalizing discourses in regard to learning and appropriate social behaviour is of particular relevance for cyc and human service practitioners as “much of the current research that underlies policy and evidence-based practice remains euro-western in its subject matter and methodological orientation” (de finney, green, & brown, 2009, p. 161). fee and russell (2007) note that, as canada does not have the same overt history of slavery and violent racialized conflicts as the united states, many canadians believe they are race-neutral. this presents additional challenges for raising awareness and engaging people in dialogue about the embedded nature of white privilege and white values in canadian society. “faced with an activist other, some deny white privilege, asserting that all have equal opportunities now, and others respond with what has been called ‘liberal guilt’” (fee & russell, p. 192). the embeddedness of white privilege is evident in the human services sector where western approaches are presented as “acultural—transcending considerations of culture. however, supposedly acultural models merely privilege western culture” (walker, 2004, p. 532). intersecting with colonial history, neo-liberal capitalism, and white privilege is the construct of gender. in the following section, i will link gender as an important element to consider as interwoven with the concepts explored above. gender and colonialism race, gender, and sexuality are all clearly linked when considering a western ontology through a critical feminist lens (braidotti, 1991, 1994; lugones, 2007; mohanty, 2003; razack, 2002; smith, 2005). “the central issue at stake at this level of analysis is the critique of universalism as being male-identified and of masculinity as projecting itself as pseudo-universal and a critique of the idea of otherness as devalorization” (braidotti, 1994, p. 159). gender is an ever-present construct that crosses borders of race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, and ability, among others. according to lugones (2007), “colonialism introduced gender itself as a colonial concept and mode of organization of relations of production, property relations, and ways of knowing. heterosexuality, capitalism, and racial classification are impossible to understand apart from each other” (p. 187). according to smith (2010), “the colonial status quo with its attendant international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 255 heteropatriarchy … is the logic that makes the social hierarchy seem natural” (p. 47). a full analysis of the intersections of gender with race, whiteness, and coloniality is beyond the scope of this paper, but this section sketches an outline of how a gendered hierarchy operates in relation to coloniality. intersectionality is a concept that enables us to consider the interplay between multiple aspects of complex subjectivities such as gender, race, class, age, and ability (carastathis, 2008). lugones (2007) adds: intersectionality reveals what is not seen when categories such as gender and race are conceptualized as separate from each other. the move to intersect the categories has been motivated by the difficulties in making visible those who are dominated and victimized in terms of both categories. (p. 192) white settler society has used place and space, including canadian academic institutions and courts of law, to entrench the colonial norms of white, male privilege (razack, 2002). fuller (2000) notes that, “the intimate links between race, gender, and sexuality take place at the level of the body and in a social context of oppressions and privileges” (p. 91). the issue of women’s bodies as sites of violence is pervasive in today’s society; approximately one in three girls, women, and transgendered people will experience sexual assault at some point in their lifetime (sexual assault centre of edmonton, 2009). deer (2009) explains further: rape and sexual violence are deeply embedded in the colonial mindset. rape is more than a metaphor for colonization—it is part and parcel of colonization … for many the oppression and abuse of women is indistinguishable from fundamental western concepts of social order. (p. 150) for women who are also indigenous or racialized, gender intersects to further increase their risk of some form of violence and discrimination under a western ontology (downe, 2005; mohanty, 2003; smith, 2005). smith (2005) emphasizes that resistance to sexualized violence is integral to indigenous women’s quest for sovereignty. several core, intersecting strands of the dominant western ontology have now been charted: embedded values and practices from a colonial history, the dynamics and entrenched systems of white privilege, the very real presence of capitalism and a dominant neo-liberal socioeconomic framework, and the entrenchment of a hierarchically ordered gender dichotomy. the next section will illustrate how these elements are rooted throughout current conceptualizations of professional helping. western ontology, the human services, and professionalism why is this discussion relevant to cyc? western ontology is deeply entrenched in the structures, policies, and beliefs underlying fields of professional helping in canada. canada is a white settler society, which, according to razack (2002), “is one established by europeans on non-european soil. its origins lie in the dispossession and near extermination of indigenous populations [and] continues to be structured by a racial hierarchy” (p. 1). this socio-historic context has significantly shaped our thinking international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 256 about social problems and helping. reyes cruz and sonn (2010), emphasize that “as a social science, community psychology is shaped by western academic traditions, discourses and structures that reproduce historical power hierarchies intertwined with the legacy of colonialism” (p. 203). human services work is inherently colonial, with the primary purpose being to control and discipline minds and bodies to “comply with the interests of the nation, the corporation, the family, or the agency… the task of forced assimilation is embedded within the dominant eurowestern paradigm of the helping professions… under the guise of moral goodness and helping” (skott-myhre, 2004, p. 90). psychology, with its influence extending throughout the human services, has played a significant role in the minoritization and marginalization of others as it reproduces hegemonic norms (lavallée & poole, 2010; morss, 1996). wade (1995) notes the “very close and mutually supportive relationship between colonialism and the so-called ‘helping professions’” (p. 168), as demonstrated by residential schools and child welfare, for example. walker (2004) proposes that “cognitive imperialism has been added to the goals of conversion and assimilation of the dominant governing society” (p. 531) and skott-myhre (2008) identifies the human service worker as, “an extension of the colonial or cultural machine [which] is always constituted in relation to the ‘other’” (p. 173). as braidotti (2010) emphasizes, “the critique of universalism and liberal individualism is a fundamental starting point to rethink the interconnection between the self and society in a non-dualistic manner” (p. 410). the above discussion invites further reflection as to why and how we engage in various practices in cyc, the implicit values and beliefs underpinning these practices, and how we can support children and families in the here and now while, at the same time, not blindly (re)producing hierarchical colonial dynamics. the business of helping our helping professions are, in fact, part of a broader system of neo-liberal structures which sustain the privilege and power of those deemed “normal” while all others, with their different ways of knowing and being, are minoritized. the devaluing of other ways of being and knowing is connected to the system of need and deficiency which has given rise to an expansive system of human services that aim to accommodate, assimilate, and rehabilitate all those who are “different” from the mainstream normative standards in all aspects of personal and social life. as we map out specific elements, it becomes clear that professional helping and the human services are embedded within the dominant eurocentric ontology, one in which whiteness, coloniality, capitalism, and gendered oppression constrain possibilities. the structures of professional helping have served to undermine individual and community capacity (gilmore, 2007; hillman & ventura, 1992; kivel, 2007; mcknight, 1995; rodriguez, 2007). one aspect of this problem is the establishment of government-funded services to those in need through a model of non-profit service delivery. through his analysis, mcknight (1995) asserts that “these models presuppose an individualized definition of client need” (p. 46). gilmore (2007) emphasizes that “non-profits providing direct services have become highly professionalized by their relationship with the state” (p. 45). this, gilmore states, has reduced the parameters of helping and narrowed funding to “program-specific categories and remedies which make staff become technocrats through imposed specialization” (p. 46). though at the present time non-profit agencies indeed provide useful and necessary supports to communities, they can also be viewed as part of the problem of perpetuating social inequities and international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 257 impeding social justice. how can we begin to think about models of care and justice that operate through different structures? in what other ways could we make use of resources so that community members’ needs are taken care of while they are also engaged? throughout the literature, professional helping has been critiqued to demonstrate its erosion of the innate capacity for community problem solving and local solutions (gilmore, 2007; kivel, 2007; mcknight, 1995; newbury, 2010a; skott-myhre, 2005, 2008; szasz, 2002). for example, mcknight (1995) makes explicit the assumption advanced through human service models that the professional, with presumed expertise garnered through formal education settings, “not only knows what [the client] needs, but also knows how the need is to be met” (p. 48). this underlying assumption embodies the paternalism and dominance of the colonial project. this view “defines citizens as people who cannot understand whether they have a problem – much less what should be done about it” (mcknight, p. 48). minoritized populations (racialized, disabled, female, queer) remain the most frequent targets of professionalized and specialized human service interventions (de finney, loiselle, & dean, 2011). individualizing problems and labelling deficits “obscures the conditions that contribute to these problems and in so doing, diverts our attention from insisting on any changes outside of [these] individuals who are already marginalized” (szasz, 2002, p. 22). this is part of the illusion of the neo-liberal global capitalist project – it devolves responsibility for social problems onto individuals while continuing to exacerbate those very social problems. how can we in cyc not consciously “replicat[e] the kinds of dominance we hope to alleviate; accommodating people to lives of poverty, and participating in practices that serve as social control” (reynolds, 2010, p. 2)? benefits of professionalization? the assumption that professionalized helping is better follows the natural logic of a western ontology, with its inherent privileging of hierarchy, power, and a paternalistic stance. professions are characterized by “monopolistic, patriarchal, elitist self-interest groups” (lochhead, 2001, p. 75). furthermore, according to eisekovitz and beker (2001), “the idea that acquiring the structural concomitants of professionalization will automatically lead to better service to clients is an assumption; it is not based on empirical proof” (p. 416). eisekovitz and beker point to the experience of at least one major allied field (social work) to suggest that there is no direct relationship between professionalization and improved services for clients. lochhead (2001) and garabaghi (2008) both assert that professionalizing is counter to the ethic and orientation of most cyc practitioners as it reifies artificial boundaries and disrupts authentic community relationships and networks. mcknight (1995) identifies several structural consequences that exist as a result of professionalization and its focus on individual deficiencies, including the result of a sense of dependency and a loss of knowing how to be in community. “professionals push out the problem-solving knowledge and action of friend, neighbor, citizen, and association” (mcknight, p. 106). hillman and ventura (1992) identify this same concern in their discussion about how the discourses emphasizing and elevating personal growth act as a substitute for meaningful work and satisfying, engaged political involvement: why do we need this ideal of the norman rockwell family, this make believe ideal that’s so rampant in politics and therapy? ...it is keeping an ideal in place so international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 258 that we can show how dysfunctional we all are. it keeps the trade going; this would be ivan illich’s view. we need clients. (p. 14) another structural consequence of professional helping is that it serves to reify existing educational and economic divisions. professional helping has become a thriving economic force with the labelling and identification of individual difficulties prompting the need for specialized education and training of professional helpers, agencies, and offices from which to deliver services, and supervisors and unions to protect the rights and needs of the professional helpers (kivel, 2007; mcknight, 1995; rodriguez, 2007). “professional efforts to certify work in the service area are stealing jobs away from the poor by putting these jobs in an elite status, requiring the kind of training and education that most poor people do not have [access to]” (mcknight, 1995, p. 99). what are the implications for ethical engagement with our clients and with our communities when our livelihood is dependent on the suffering and disenfranchisement of others? in reflecting on the common threads throughout the literature, it is evident that professional helping and professionalization have limited, if any, actual merit beyond the short term, for supporting individuals and communities to improve or resolve social and health problems. by design, professional helping is set up to position individuals as responsible for their problems and for resolving them. within models of professional helping, there is very little, if any, acknowledgement of or engagement with structural and systemic factors such as the law and social policy, or racialization, poverty, and gender-based discrimination. to engage in transformative social change requires us to challenge professional assumptions and models of helping in cyc and in the legal and socio-political contexts in which cyc operates. implications for policy and practice in child and youth care in order to foreground social justice in cyc praxis, it is necessary to make explicit the focus on individualized problems and work toward community-based solutions to transform the conditions and context of these problems, rather than just treating individual “symptoms”. like braidotti (2006), skott-myhre (2005) proposes that we rethink: the modernist individual subject, as a product of an earlier form of discipline … if we are to utilize psychology as a meaningful tool in the ongoing liberation of human beings from forms of control, dominance, and exploitation within the emerging system of dominance and sovereignty in the twenty-first century. (p. 46) in engaging with an ethic of social justice, what strategies will support the decolonization of ways of knowing, doing, and being? how can we work together for change in a way that is flexible and open to what might be that we cannot know now? until recently, liberation projects embodying mainstream concepts of equality were organized by separate groups (women, gay and lesbian groups, specific racialized or ethnic groups) around discourses of the rights of the individual: multiculturalism and empowerment. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 259 beyond multiculturalism and empowerment multiculturalism and empowerment models promote equality among individuals yet have been inadequate at supporting change on a broader social level because they remain embedded and operate within the parameters of western hegemony (jackson, 2007). a multicultural discourse of “embracing difference” too often defaults to essentialized images that inevitably foreground those who represent the dominant traditions or practices of the group, while further marginalizing those who do not fit within the prescribed boundaries (pereira, 2008). furthermore, as noted by fee and russell (2007), because of our less violent and divisive race history when compared to the u.s., canadians “typically represent themselves as tolerant and polite [creating a] mythology of racelessness” (p. 193). this presents a serious challenge to making transparent intersections of racialized and gendered violence and inequity. as rodriguez (2000), quoting mclaren (1997, p. 262), notes: color-blind discourse is not a racial project of benignly looking past race to the person under the skin motif… it is a project set up to “protect” white privilege and power by permitting “white people to construct ideologies that help them to avoid the issue of racial inequality while simultaneously benefiting from it.” (p. 9) the concepts of “empowerment” and “liberation” have limitations for achieving what they set out to do as they are inevitably constituted by a colonial history and a modernist-derived neo-liberal construction of the “individual” as an actor capable of social change (jackson, 2007). for example, freire’s work is built on “assumptions about the individual capacity for change through critical reflection” which ignore that “our life chances may certainly be determined by racism or sexism” (jackson, p. 208) and further contextualized by structural power and economic inequities. mohanty (2003) explicitly interrogates the neo-liberal ideology embedded in this notion that increased consciousness can enable an individual to change the structures of oppression and inequity. this implicit pressure on individuals to ameliorate their life circumstances often results in feelings of powerlessness, inadequacy, and an acceptance that compromise is the best or only way to achieve change for individuals who try to tackle social issues (jackson, 2007) in the face of deeply entrenched institutional structures. it is time to shift from focusing on problems at the margins to centring whiteness and taken-for-granted norms in order to interrogate how these perpetuate social problems. rodriguez (2000) advocates the positioning of whiteness within multiculturalism discourses in order to shift the focus from the “other” and to centre “critical analyses of whiteness as an invisible norm” (p. 3). harper (2000) emphasizes that it is important to consider “issues of power and powerlessness in relation to how racialized identities are produced and normalized” (p. 129). in centring whiteness and foregrounding issues of power, we can better map out the structures and practices that reify forms of discrimination that lead some groups to be overrepresented in our systems of care and justice. critical feminists have struggled to conceptualize issues of social justice in the wake of the disruptions to identity categories through post-structural analysis. lorraine (2007) states that “many feminists share [the] concern that poststructuralist feminist theory’s antifoundationalist wariness of overarching principles does not provide adequate grounding for the kind of social critique necessary for feminist change” (p. 268). lather (2008) raises this tension as well: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 260 “essentialism and identity politics might be bad objects from the vantage point of antifoundational theory, but they are often seen as the only, if not the best, strategy for advancing minority-based claims” (p. 223). wood (1995, as cited in mclaren, 2000) cautions against the risk to social justice presented by post-structural ideas: we should not confuse respect for the plurality of human experience and social struggles with a complete dissolution of historical causality where there is nothing but diversity, difference, and contingency, no unifying structures, no logic of process, no capitalism and therefore no negation of it, no universal project of human emancipation. (p. 153) lather (2008) identifies that a “tension around a realist position that mediates the essentialism of identity politics is a mark of postcolonialism in its use of histories of exploitation to foster strategies of resistance” (p. 222). like braidotti (2006), lather underlines the value in mapping out what is, in order to see how to uncover, track, and resist privilege and structural power to begin to work for change. ultimately, this tension is captured and summarized in braidotti’s (2009) reflection: “how [do we] engage [in] affirmative politics, which entails the production of social horizons of hope, while at the same time doing critical theory, which means resisting the present?” (p. 42). the invitation here is to consider productive strategies for working toward social justice by confronting existing structural inequities, while simultaneously thinking with complexity to conceptualize social change at the level of cultural transformation that eventually takes us beyond rigid identity categories and into new ways of knowing, doing, and being. in order for significant social transformation to occur, it is perhaps time to consider an ontological orientation that moves beyond a focus on human emancipation and makes conscious connections between human, animal, and plant ecologies. all life forms are interconnected (braidotti, 2006; haraway, 2008) and it is the modernist project that has entrenched a hierarchy and disconnection between different categories of beings. a stance of co-implication (mohanty, 2003) also resonates with many indigenous world views, for example the nuu-chah-nulth concept “heshook ish tsawalk” or “everything is one” (atleo, 2004, p. 10). decolonizing practice in contemporary settings, decolonization is the term frequently used to describe the reclaiming of a proud identity by indigenous people who have suffered the ravages of colonialism. with a decolonizing stance and vigilant critical reflection, we can begin to poke at and peel away layers of convention – social and professional practices – to disrupt privilege and make explicit how neo-colonialism continues to operate in normative ways of knowing, doing, and being in professional helping and cyc. decolonization “involves profound transformations of the self, community, and governance structures [and] can only be engaged through active withdrawal of consent and resistance to structures of psychic and social domination… a historical and collective process” (mohanty, 2003, p. 7). the literature suggests that it is time to move away from the dominant conceptualization of “helping” as a benign phenomenon, to think critically and creatively in order to “step outside the frameworks of colonial youth work and engage a different set of ideas, beliefs, and practices” (skott-myhre, 2004, p. 92). the link between solidarity work and decolonization must be explicit and “can only be achieved through ‘self-reflexive collective praxis’” (schutte, 2007, p. 172). as laenui (2000) asserts: international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 261 true decolonization is more than simply placing indigenous people into the positions held by colonizers. decolonization includes the re-evaluation of the political, social, economic, and judicial structures themselves and the development, if appropriate, of new structures that can hold and house the values and aspirations of the colonized people. (p. 155) decolonizing praxis is not about substituting a new set of rules or codes but rather mapping out new, engaged methods to uncover, track, and resist these hidden hegemonic normative values and practices. adopting a decolonizing stance demands an openness and willingness to map out coloniality and to dialogue with indigenous and other minoritized ways of knowing, doing, and being in a praxis of solidarity and social justice. this is crucial as “silencing indigenous worldviews has been and continues to be one of the major tools of colonization” (walker, 2004, p. 531). nevertheless, how do we engage authentically with indigenous wisdom and ways of knowing in ways that might benefit new approaches to relating and thus practice, without appropriating or recolonizing this knowledge? a question of justice in her discussion of social service work with marginalized and minoritized people, reynolds (2010) claims “this inherently political work requires an ethic of resistance that takes a position for justice” (p. 5). similarly, newbury (2010a) critiques “the dichotomy between care (as emotional and private) and justice (as rational and public) [as] false. care is justice” (p. 21). this has powerful implications made clear in reynolds’ (2010) assertion that neutrality is not possible; it is in itself an ethical stance not to work for justice. as derrida (as cited in caputo, 1997) advances, “the condition of possibility of deconstruction is a call for justice” (p. 16) and yet he also advanced the idea that one can never be just; “the only thing that can be called ‘just’ is a singular action in a singular situation” (as cited in caputo, 1997, p. 138). this requires that one who seeks to be just must remain engaged, alert, and self-reflexive. what implications does this hold for cyc practitioners? how can we cultivate practices to track how we enact justice (or not) in our work with children, families, and communities? in her call for making social justice explicit in cyc, newbury (2010a) discusses how the social service field conceptualizes its role as helping people to overcome “their” problems (care), which then renders invisible the fact that these are “our” problems. this latter stance, of acknowledged collective ownership of social problems, allows us to begin to think in terms of social justice and productive social change. kivel (2007) differentiates: “social service work addresses the needs of individuals reeling from the personal and devastating impact of institutional systems of exploitation and violence… social change work addresses the root causes of exploitation and violence” (p. 129). it is critical to adopt a praxis of solidarity and social justice to promote concepts that go beyond “service work” or “helper” to open up possibilities for individual healing that are grounded in a broader context of social transformation. as mcknight (1995) states, “human service is only one response to a human condition. there are always many other possibilities that do not involve paid experts and therapeutic concepts” (p. 103). furthermore, it is because of the influence of neo-colonial and modernist concepts of regulation and control of environments that services have evolved with medicalized, international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 262 formulaic, and standardized approaches to helping, in turn facilitating the development of experts, but which do very little to mitigate or change the circumstances of individuals struggling amidst the racialized, gendered, and economic inequities of canadian society (scott, 1998). solidarity as strategy an orientation to a praxis of social justice requires that we make explicit the connections between the challenges faced by individuals and collective experiences, given the western hegemony entrenched in canadian social, political, and economic structures. this next section explores strategies and actions to propose some beginning possibilities for mobilizing a socially just praxis. as discussed above, western ontology has strongly shaped existing models of human service which has led to professionalization and regulation which, through specialized technical interventions, have resulted in the growth of the non-profit and professional helping sectors but which have not succeeded in resolving issues of inequity and injustice such as inadequate and unequal access to health, housing, food, and education, or issues of interpersonal violence, mental health, and substance abuse. mcknight (1995) calls for a commitment “to reallocation of power to the people we serve so that we will no longer need to serve” (p. 100). solidarity strategies for mobilizing across identity groups against global capitalist inequities offer some potential for moving beyond “the binaries that structure liberatory struggle [as] ‘us versus them’ and ‘liberation’ versus ‘oppression’ to a multi-centered discourse with differential access to power” (lather, 1991, p. 25). as mohanty (2003) advocates, we must “move away from the ‘add and stir’ and the relativist ‘separate but equal’ (or different) perspective to the co-implication/solidarity one. the solidarity perspective requires understanding historical and experiential specificities and differences” (p. 242). mohanty promotes a feminist solidarity which foregrounds the intersection of gender with colonial repression and white dominance. may (2009) notes “the damage done by identity politics, and [that] it no longer holds the imagination of many… as early as the misnamed ‘anti-globalization’ movement, really an anti-neoliberalism movement, solidarity began to return to the scene in place of ghettoized identities” (p. 2). rancière (1999, as cited in may, 2009) presents an alternate construction of equality to support a solidarity approach to social change: “for liberals, equality is what must be granted and/or preserved by state institutions with regard to citizens. for rancière, equality is what is presupposed by those who act” (p. 9). this alternative provides a “bottom up” view of equality allowing “people [to] act collectively out of the presupposition of their equality, both to one another and to those in [power] that are said to be superior … equality, then, cuts against individualism and toward solidarity” (may, p. 9). mclaren (2000) sees the anti-capitalist struggle as a site of common ground from which to organize “revolutionary praxis and social transformation productively [as in this way] agency is neither limited to nor does it exclude agential spaces of ethnic struggle” (p. 155). this is liberating as it opens up possible ways of being with increased accountability and engagement in everyday life to and with one another as a viable and vital alternative to the current dominant, individualistic culture of self-interest. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 263 socially just praxis praxis is a concept that offers constructive possibilities for a solidarity-focused, decolonizing practice that is dynamic and responsive and mobilized through an ethic of social justice. white (2007) defines praxis as: the integration of knowledge and action (theory and practice … specifically, theory and practice are integrated and one does not precede nor hold greater value than the other (carr 1987). praxis is creative, “other-seeking” and dialogic (smith 1999). it is the place where words and actions, discourses and experience merge… praxis is expressed in particular contexts and thus can never be proceduralized or specified in advance. (p. 226) considering all the elements of this definition, praxis can be viewed as a potentially constructive model for anti-capitalist, solidarity work toward social justice. transformative or liberatory models of praxis strive to engage community members in shifting from an individualized view of an issue or problem to one that is more collective and politicized (de finney, 2007; lang, 2005; reyes cruz & sonn, 2011; reynolds, 2010; skott-mhyre, 2005; wade, 1995; white, 2007). a socially just model of cyc praxis will require an approach that integrates theorization and practice rooted in working and thinking collaboratively with diverse community members (de finney, dean et al., 2011). conscious awareness and a commitment to socially just praxis offer a site of possibility for transforming practice and supporting change at broader levels by connecting those who are currently pathologized on an individual basis to collective endeavours, and supporting meaningful engagement in regard to issues of concern to them. for white practitioners, our everyday interpersonal interactions and habituated responses warrant critical attention. as bordo (2008) writes, “white people, even those who theorize with sophistication about ‘cultural difference’ and the perils of ethnocentrism, are often clueless when it comes to the practical, concrete ways race matters” (p. 410). it is critical that “white settler societies transcend their bloody beginnings and contemporary inequalities by remembering and confronting the racial hierarchies that structure our lives” (razack, 2002, p. 5). here is a further invitation to interrogate instances of (white, male, class, or heterosexual) privilege in our own lives and practice. it can be a painful process requiring courage and compassion for oneself in order to begin the deep and honest examination of the ways in which privilege is reified through how we speak, move, take up space, and the assumptions that underpin our judgements. derrida’s (as cited in caputo, 1997) thinking could be useful with regard to this dynamic and dilemma. like hospitality and justice, the importance and possibility of being conscious of and disrupting privilege, is “sustained by its impossibility” (p. 111). this edge or tension requires us to always be vigilant in our reflexivity and endeavours to map out inequities and our complicity, and to make a commitment to integrate an ethic of social justice in an engaged and vital model of praxis. practitioners must be willing to cultivate an engaged practice of reflexivity: seeing oneself and other, oneself in relation to the other, interrogating assumptions, and remaining open to possibilities. as derrida says “the condition of the relation to the other” is that we can never international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 264 know the other (as cited in caputo, 1997, p. 14). this speaks to the importance of a fastidious practice of reflexivity in relation to interactions with others. as newbury (2010b) states, “selfreflection is at the heart of responsible and ethical practice” (p. 32), and for socially just praxis it is the tool that can help us to uncover, track, and resist hegemonic narratives and practices with intention. post-structural ideas offer some promising possibilities for cyc practice. skott-myhre (2005) envisions a transformation in practice in which “the metaphors of containing/controlling pathology and healing damage give way to an exploration of the potentials of flow and movement… recuperation and recovery of the afflicted ‘self’ would be abandoned in the discovery of multiple identities with infinite alterneity” (p. 48). this resonates with the potential for moving beyond dualistic constructions such as victim/perpetrator, good/bad, and mentally ill/ healthy. analyzing practices at the micro level can be helpful in terms of how to focus our reflections and to further map the effects of coloniality and privilege in professional helping roles. for example, it is also important for practitioners to be conscious of their power in the role of helper (de montigny, 1995), to rename unconventional ways of being as resistance in contrast to “disorders” (wade, 1995), and to draw out strengths in the stories of those with whom they work (anderson, 2004). madsen (2007) invites practitioners to take up the stance of “appreciative allies … a relational stance characterized by respect, connection, curiosity, and hope [and] a way of being that we actively attempt to bring forward in our interactions [with others]” (p. 22). in adopting an ethic of justice and a commitment to a praxis of social justice, it is important to ground post-structural ideas of difference and possibility in an analysis of the coloniality of power which acknowledges the structural and material realities that exist in today’s society under a dominant western ontology. conclusion the field of cyc exists within a broader context of professional helping embedded in a western world view founded in the privileging of capitalism, heteronormativity, patriarchy, and whiteness. solidarity in the form of coalitions organized around anti-capitalist resistance, decolonizing praxis, and an ethic of social justice all demand that we continue to map out the ways in which this dominant western ontology underpins the policies and practices of cyc. disrupting hegemonic discourses with indigenous and minoritized ontologies (including feminist, queer, majority world, and non-human) is not just of benefit to indigenous peoples but holds the potential for a productive, liberatory, cultural transformation that would also benefit those who are located outside of the minority represented as the normative subject (affluent, white, heterosexual, able-bodied, male). a commitment to social justice and to a decolonizing praxis necessitates a further commitment to engage in solidarity, to endeavour to disrupt and open to new possibilities the structures and institutions that currently sustain practices of inequity and privilege, and to explore alternative ways of knowing, doing, and being. as well as engaging in collective strategies for change, in the meantime each of us can engage critically with ourselves and the world around us, to interrogate our ways of knowing, being, and doing through critical reflection in order to begin to uncover, track, and resist taken-for-granted values and norms and to cultivate a praxis of social justice. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 265 toward unknown (forgotten or ignored) ways of knowing, doing, and being ultimately, this cartography of the dominant hegemonic practices and beliefs embedded in cyc represents but one layer of an overall commitment to justice and search for possibilities for sustainable living that embrace and nurture the complexities and interactions of all life forms. i am inspired to think beyond the bounds of this paper to truly revolutionary social change, which does not hold as an end goal human equality but rather harmonious cohabitation across species (braidotti, 2006; haraway, 2008). opening up to the legitimacy and wisdom of indigenous (as well as other minoritized, queer, and feminized) knowledge that has been historically pushed to the margins offers further possibilities for us to fully engage with the nonhuman world in negotiating more sustainable co-existence for all beings. the emerging post-humanist literature offers possibilities for further deconstructing our western ontology in terms of transgressing normative constructions that have sustained an understanding of human as superior to all others. this is expressed in braidotti’s (2006) statement that “a sustainable ethic for a non-unitary subject proposes an enlarged sense of interconnection between self and others, including non-human or ‘earth’ others, but removing the obstacle of self-centred individualism” (p. 28). haraway (2008) further illustrates this ethic with her example that “ducks deserve our recognition of their nonhuman culture, subjectivities, histories, and material lives” (p. 162). it is daunting yet exciting to consider the possibilities for a transformed world and way of being if we could take up rancière’s idea that “equality is what is presupposed by those who act” (as cited in may, 2009, p. 9) to open up dynamic, interdependent, and creative networks for communication, support, and sustainable living that respect difference and embrace complexity not just across the human spectrum but across species. international journal of child, youth and family studies (2012) 2 & 3: 248–271 266 references anderson, k. 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(1995). democracy against capitalism: renewing historical materialism. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement vol. 15, no. 2 december 2022 © 2022 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercial, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: luckett, t. 2022. youth activist paradoxes in the urban periphery of lephalale: the struggle for employment and climate justice in a coalrich region of south africa. gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, 15:2, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre. v15i2.8215 issn 1836-3393 | published by uts epress | http://ijcre. epress.lib.uts.edu.au research article (peerreviewed) youth activist paradoxes in the urban periphery of lephalale: the struggle for employment and climate justice in a coalrich region of south africa thembi luckett newcastle university, uk corresponding author: thembi luckett, thembi.luckett@newcastle.ac.uk doi: https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8215 article history: received 03/06/2021; revised 08/09/2021; accepted 20/10/2022; published 12/2022 abstract southern africa is understood to be a climate change hotspot, with youth and children most likely to be affected. the region has already suffered climate variability, with increased occurrence of floods and droughts, which are expected to escalate in the future. despite the fact that young people in the region are central to ecological and social justice debates, they are often depicted as uninterested and excluded from policy and decision making spaces – especially those living in global and urban peripheries. in this article, i speak to the nexus of youth, social and environmental justice, and climate politics. i do so by unpacking the everyday concerns and negotiations of youth activists in the urban periphery of lephalale in limpopo, south africa – not typically seen as an urban centre or a site of youth politics. lephalale is viewed as a future hub of power generation in south africa, the rapid growth of the town being based on the expansion of coal extractivism. the complexities and paradoxes around how youth are navigating their futures in this site of mega coal projects are explored through two case studies: the lephalale unemployment forum and the waterberg environmental justice forum. with climate and environmental catastrophe producing both shrinking futures and horizons of possibility, i argue that youth contestation and negotiation of their futures hold out possibilities, even with their contradictions, for collective reimagining of urban space and development. 1 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the financial assistance of the national institute for the humanities and social sciences, in collaboration with the south african humanities deans association, towards this research is acknowledged. this research was also supported by the ivan karp doctoral research award and by the international center for development and decent work. opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8215 https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8215 http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://ijcre.epress.lib.uts.edu.au mailto:thembi.luckett@newcastle.ac.uk https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v15i2.8215 through the methodology i employed to explore these negotiations and contestations, i aimed to be cognisant of how research is embedded in contextspecific powerladen social relations. while it was not explicitly collaborative research, what emerged from the process was the importance of slow, informal relationshipbuilding before, during and after the research, which would be the basis for a collaborative research project years later. this way of conducting slow research is particularly necessary for engagement across racial, cultural and class divisions, as well as for research that traverses the boundary between academia and social movements in this time of crisis. keywords youth politics; coal extractivism; climate justice; global south; south africa introduction southern africa is understood to be a climate change hotspot, with youth and children most likely to be affected (awojobi & tetteh 2017; betts et al. 2018; beukes 2021; engelbrecht et al. 2015; ipcc 2018; vogel et al. 2022). the region has already suffered climate variability, with increased occurrence of floods and droughts, which are expected to escalate in the future. the drying of the limpopo basin has been noted as a concern (maúre et al. 2018; vogel et al. 2022). in this context, notwithstanding a lack of financial clarity, cop26 made an unprecedented announcement regarding a just energy transition partnership ( jetp) with south africa to accelerate its transition from coal (burton 2022). despite the fact that young people are central to ecological and social justice debates, they are often depicted as uninterested and excluded from the policy and decisionmaking spaces – especially those in global and urban peripheries (beukes 2021; han & ahn 2020). nkrumah (2021) argues that young people are often given a tokenistic role in policy debates regarding climate change matters that most affect them. furthermore, while scholars have explored the nexus between youth and social and economic justice, less attention has been paid to youth activism and participation in climate justice and climate politics in the global south, including south africa (nkrumah 2021). correspondingly, o’brien, selboe & hayward (2018) call for greater recognition of the multiple forms, spaces and expressions of youth dissent in the face of climate change. in this article, i speak to the nexus of youth, social and environmental justice, and climate politics, in response to the above lacuna in scholarship. i do so by unpacking the everyday concerns, negotiations and paradoxes of youth activists in the urban periphery of lephalale in limpopo, south africa – typically not seen as an urban centre or a site of youth politics. the complexities of how youth are navigating their futures in the context of coal development and unemployment are explored through two case studies. in exploring the complexities of everyday politics, i heed sitas’s (2020) call to avoid simplistic binaries that set up youth as either passive or as sites of pure revolutionary politics; african cities as either sites of catastrophe or of optimism; or a simplistic binary between employment and development or environmental justice. in this framing, the city is understood as a complex entanglement of catastrophe and aspiration and local and global processes, as the socialspatial dialectics of the city both shape and are shaped by the politics and practices of its youth. this article is structured into four sections: first, i introduce researchasactivism, the methodology i employed to engage with members of lephalale community organisations; second, i sketch an overview of the place and its politics; third i discuss two case studies – the lephalale unemployment forum followed by the waterberg environmental justice forum; and fourth, i reflect on some of the complexities and paradoxes surfaced through the two case studies and the research process that i engaged in. luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20222 research-as-activism the research project on which this article is based used critical ethnographic methods, informed by feminist research principles, including attentiveness to lived experiences, subjectivities, alternative and situated ways of knowing, and cognisance of multiple and intersecting relations of power. i conducted fieldwork between 2015 and 2017, with site visits varying from four months to several weeks, and with followup interviews in 2019. this data was supplemented with ongoing media analyses into 2022. in my fieldwork, i traversed different sites in the town of lephalale and its surrounding areas, including its informal settlements, the small town of steenbokpan and surrounding farms, and the villages under the gaseleka royal council. i conducted participant observation at sites such as power stations, farms, and community and trade union meetings. i also conducted interviews with 80 residents (names of interlocutors have been protected using pseudonyms), including workers, the unemployed, and activists from environmental and women’s organisations. for the purposes of this article, i focus on the everyday negotiations and political practices undertaken by community and environmental organisations and activists in marapong, the township designated for black people during apartheid. reflecting on the research process i adopted for this project and future research to be conducted in environments of similar complexity, it is important to understand how research is embedded in complicated, powerladen social relations, with contestation over political stakes (von holdt 2022). oldfield (2008, p. 270) explains that these powerladen social relations are not only between universities and communities, but also structure complex ways in which ‘nongovernmental organizations link to community organizations and community organizations to “communities”, a mix of residents with specific local identities and interests’. the analysis of the relational topography is contextspecific and impacts research processes, products and afterlives (oldfield 2008). through the methodology employed, i aimed to be cognisant of some of this complexity and, while it was not explicitly collaborative research, what emerged from the process was the importance of slow, informal relationshipbuilding before, during and after the research process. this is particularly necessary for engagement across racial, cultural and class divisions, as well as research traversing the boundary between academia and social movements. this approach aligns with hailey’s (2001) reflections on the importance of moving beyond formulaic participatory research to intersubjective and informal processes of building mutual trust and respect. furthermore, as an intersubjective process, cognisance of one’s positionality is required. hall (1990, p. 18) states, ‘[t]here’s no enunciation without positionality. you have to position yourself somewhere in order to say anything at all.’ positionality is not only about one’s embeddedness in power relations – and as a white researcher, complicity in settler colonialism – but also about how one actively positions oneself in the research process and daily life. that i came to this research following involvement as an activist in labour and student movements, having already shared some political life with activists in lephalale, facilitated relationship building. before and during the research process, i spent time with organisations – attending meetings and assisting with workshops and media statements. this all contributed to a slow process of relationship building in a context permeated by suspicion and mistrust. caretta and faria (2020, p. 2) reflect on the importance of ‘time and care, for building those relationships of trust, respect, and conviviality so essential for rigorous research and for understanding complex social and spatial processes’. writing from a servicelearning perspective, winkler (2013) highlights the importance of building and maintaining transparent and trustworthy longer term relationships between university and community partners so that power imbalances and unrealistic expectations can be continuously addressed. thus, without these relations in place, it may be necessary to ask luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20223 who benefits from universitycommunity partnerships. according to baum (2000, p. 244), creating relations of trust and accountability, requires ‘sophisticated knowledge and skills, [and] years of time’. these relational processes are significant ‘products’ of research even if not typically viewed as a research outcome (oldfield 2008). the intangibles of mutual sharing, learning, engaging and acting together are significant in shaping and enabling future processes, as well as shaping how we imagine relations and spaces that could allow for human flourishing across traditional boundaries (oldfield 2008). the relationshipbuilding processes between myself and organisations in lephalale will extend into the future, such that, after many years, a more explicitly collaborative research project is now possible. the next phase of research involves working with the waterberg women’s advocacy organisation on a participatory arts project to investigate the gendered impacts of coal, with the aims of feeding into broader campaign work against coal development and supporting local and collective power to change corporate and government practices. this highlights the importance of recognising and affirming different ways of knowing, local knowledge and experience in research processes that can feed into policy work (oldfield 2008; sandercock 2003; winkler 2013). my ongoing research is embedded in this vision of working collaboratively with activists in the area and imagining other worlds in an attempt to ‘find ways to exist in a world that is diminishing’ (ahmed 2014, n.p.). the place and politics of lephalale the town of lephalale lies in the northern limpopo province of south africa. previously an agricultural space, lephalale developed around a coal mine and coalfired power station in the 1980s. with the development of the coalfired medupi power station, and possible future coal developments, it has become a place of interest. the site is a contradictory and contested symbol of ‘modernist progress’ and ‘fossil fuel catastrophe’. it is marked by modernist imaginaries of a future built on mega coal projects, neoliberal aspirations and foreclosure of habitable futures owing to social and environmental destruction. this locality is of particular significance as it holds south africa’s largest remaining coal reserves. the economy relies almost entirely on fossilbased energy and is one of the most carbonintensive economies in the world (ashley et al. 2020). this trajectory continues in the face of an existential catastrophe: that of anthropogenic, or humaninduced, climate change. the plans for increasing fossil fuel development in lephalale and its surrounds will radically alter the town and, in turn, its social relations and relations with nature, as well as further the trajectory of existential catastrophe. for these reasons, it is meaningful to explore youth politics and practices to uncover alternative futures for this site. following the boom in the 1970s and 1980s, a second boom in coal extractivism occurred with the development of medupi. lephalale is described as a postapartheid urban centre and a coal mining and petrochemical city of the future (mgojo 2016). the town, comprised of three urban nodes, ellisras, onverwacht and marapong, is located approximately 40 kilometres from the border of botswana (lephalale local municipality 2016b). in terms of its spatial organisation, lephalale municipality extends beyond the town to include 38 sparsely scattered villages, a few informal settlements, and farm areas (lephalale local municipality 2016a; monaledi 2016). despite the increased urbanisation, approximately 65 per cent of the population still live in rural villages and on farms located outside the town (lephalale local municipality 2016b). according to the 2011 census, youth, as defined between the ages of 15 and 34, represented the largest proportion of the population within the municipal area at 43 per cent – more than the national average of 37 per cent (south african government 2020). women comprise 54 per cent of the population of limpopo, but lephalale municipality has a dominance of men, constituting more than 54 per cent of the population (statistics south africa 2012). the 2016 community survey projected a 21.8 per cent increase in the male population compared with a 13.5 per cent increase in the female population (lephalale local luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20224 municipality 2019). this gender differentiation can be explained by the high prevalence of contract workers and professionals coming into the area to seek job opportunities in maledominated sectors, such as mining and construction (lephalale local municipality 2016a). despite the rapid population increase and urbanisation, which may have led to greater spatial integration, the spatial geography of lephalale remains divided and fragmented along race and class lines, perpetuating apartheid spatial planning and continued uneven and fragmented development (phadi & pearson 2018). the model of development as one based on extractivist megaprojects continues to be propagated even though 65 percent of the population still reside in rural areas. du toit (2017) argues that south africa’s postapartheid model of development and modernity was very much orientated towards the idea of the metropolitan, and out of touch with the lived realities of marginalised rural populations. subsistence agriculture has been largely ignored, with little state agricultural support or access to informal markets, water and land (du toit 2017; okunlola et al. 2016; sukume, mavedzenge & murimbarima 2015). the villages surrounding lephalale engaging in subsistence farming activities are no exception in this regard, continuing to be neglected and receiving little developmental support or socioeconomic opportunities, despite their central anchoring as a place of home in people’s lives. through the construction of medupi, the african national congress (anc) government attempted to discursively regenerate an image of great feats of engineering and modernity, around which a city would be built, but constant technical failures, soaring debt and corruption scandals overshadowed the project, with medupi now representing more a failed project of modernity. the neoliberalisation of the project through contracts with scores of private companies and with little accountability and oversight by the parastatal organisation generated high levels of labour dispensability. workers were cast aside after short term contracts expired and compelled to find ways of surviving in dusty marapong, waiting, perhaps for years, to ‘secure’ their next contract job. a form of dispensability was also generated through the health and environmental costs of extractivism that are unevenly distributed. davies and mah (2020) argue that environmental injustice unfolds wherever social inequality and pollution collide. in lephalale, residents of marapong, situated in the shadow of a coal mine and a power station, are particularly affected by the intersecting and reinforcing brutalities of slow violence and structural violence, which renders some lives disposable (davies 2022; murphy 2004; nixon 2011). some aspects of slow violence are literally driven into ‘the tissues of subaltern bodies’ (armiero & fava 2016, p. 79). thus, the infrastructures of lephalale’s megaprojects not only produced an affective landscape of possibility and aspiration, resulting in an influx of people from neglected rural areas, but also produced landscapes of loss, death and rupture. in this crisisridden terrain, the anc dominated processes of ‘development’. local political networks were crucial in controlling flows of resources and job opportunities. in conjunction, medupi functioned as a pivotal feature around and through which capital flowed and political networks were established. in the context of masculinist constructions of work and artilleries of power, women were often sexually exploited. for example, a lephalale unemployment forum activist explained the process of obtaining employment on the coal megaprojects: if you want the job [and] you are a woman ... you have to use sex ... your own body, using it like toilet paper ... it’s the councillor, hr [human resources manager] ... who uses women ... anc councillors because anc is the leading party … and they say ‘when you come with this [sex], i will give you the job’ (interview, lesego, 16 february 2017). these networks of power also played out through political violence. in 2021, two people were shot and 16 injured during an anc branch meeting for the selection of local councillors, resulting in anc meetings being called off. the violence was attributed to the mayor’s supporters, who used it to intimidate members and secure power (madia 2021a, 2021b). von holdt (2019) emphasises that violence has become an important resource in factional struggles over access to opportunities and capital, and in supressing luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20225 contestation. ‘patronagedependent accumulation’ patterns are constitutive of class formation where gatekeeper politics and patronage struggles, in a context of extreme inequalities, are part of the production of the everyday political economy (beresford 2015, p. 229; von holdt 2019). a politics of inclusion and exclusion (re)produces configurations of power that influence social and spatial dynamics, such as flows of capital, who has access to what (workplace and home) spaces, and under what conditions. as noted above, these configurations of power are deeply patriarchal and are constituted not only at the macrolevel – for example, through the allocation of tenders in the construction of medupi – but significantly through everyday practices at the local level. in this context of multiple crises – environmental, social, political, economic – there are political practices that potentially push towards alternative horizons. in marapong, activists and community organisers have built unemployment, environmental and feminist organisations, such as the evergreen arts centre, lephalale unemployment forum (luf), the waterberg environmental justice forum (wejf) and the waterberg women’s advocacy organisation (wwao). below, i focus specifically on two case studies: the lephalale unemployment forum and the waterberg environmental justice forum, which were both led by youth activists, as selfidentified by research participants. through my analysis of these case studies, i aim to highlight the everyday and paradoxical politics that young people undertake in lephalale in the complex navigation of their futures. the lephalale unemployment forum and the struggle for waged labour in lephalale, the hope (often frustrated hope) of a job, thought to make possible the building of a life, is constantly referred to. for instance, this hope was expressed by unemployed residents staying in the informal thular park shack settlement in marapong: ‘we have a belief maybe we’ll get a job. but it’s just a belief ... maybe one day we can get a better life’ (interview, 13 april 2016). this was a recurrent theme expressed by unemployed residents of lephalale. one such resident was lesego, who was in her twenties and a member of the luf leadership. she grew up in kroemhoek in rural limpopo and was the only child raised by her mother and father. her parents were born in the area and her father worked on a potato farm until he died when she was still at school. she moved to lephalale in 2013 in search of work; however, she did not manage to find work. at the time of the interview, she was staying in a shack in marapong with her boyfriend, who had initially found employment at medupi but was now unemployed. even though lesego was politically active in the luf, attending meetings and organising in her community, she experienced much of her time as ‘waiting’ and ‘wishing’ for a job for herself or her boyfriend. reflecting on her daily thinking, she pointed out: ‘sometimes i say “why don’t i get a job, so i’ll have my own house with my own family? that is why i don’t want to think to have kids right now because i’m suffering myself, what about if i have kids? no, let me wait for a kid”’ (interview, 16 february 2017). thus, ‘waiting’ for a job is also ‘waiting’ for and deferring a future, while simultaneously finding ways to navigate the present and the everyday. lesego’s future of ‘adulthood’ with a family and a house has been put on hold, but remains everpresent in her imagination. the project of building a life can only be planned for and actualised when the ‘waiting’ for (a job) comes to an end. lesego’s actions on their own were insufficient to realise a job, leading to a waiting state of ‘planning what cannot be planned’ (dobler 2020, p. 9). thus, young people organised collective action to intervene in their regimes of waiting. the lephalale unemployment forum was formed in response to the precarious waiting in time and space experienced by many in lephalale. waiting can come at ‘social and personal costs’, but can also be generative of action (mujere 2020; schwartz 1975; stasik, hänsch & mains 2020). the forum, comprised of disgruntled anc, economic freedom fighters (eff) and democratic alliance (da) members, was not aligned to any political party. it was an organisational space of collective luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20226 and active waiting – turning waiting into a shared experience around which social action and solidarity could be built (dobler 2020). lesego explained that her vision for the organisation was to stop people in lephalale being ‘used like toilet paper’ and under the control of the councillors, and to stop the suffering from the coal mine and coal power stations. she elaborated: i want them [the community] to enjoy the way they want to live at marapong. if they say, we don’t want this here at marapong, they don’t want it … i don’t want community to worry all the time … the water is there, the electricity is there, there is no shack, you have a toilet. i want that (interview, 16 february 2017). political repertoires to intervene in ‘waitings’ the luf took action to intervene in the ‘state of waiting’ and to shift the collective experience of ‘stuckness’ in relation to imagined futures, meeting up to three times a week on an open patch of land in front of the marapong library and the marapong job information centre. the meetings had a regular rhythm, with up to 100 attendees. the committee reported back on meetings held with eskom, exxaro and the municipality, and provided information about upcoming meetings and hiring processes (field notes). the luf initiated a range of protest actions and submitted memoranda of meetings with medupi and the local municipality. on several occasions, the luf saw it as their role to ensure fair recruitment processes by stopping political interference (field notes). in a meeting between medupi officials and luf representatives, the luf highlighted the role of the community liaison officer (clo), arguing that the clo was not performing their function in terms of sharing recruitment information. luf representatives proposed that the community should be involved in the appointment of the clo and that the officer should be accountable to the community and not only to eskom. the luf further advocated that it should be part of recruitment monitoring for fraud and corruption, thereby attempting to involve the organisation in processes around ‘waiting lists’ (field notes, 15 february 2017). on another occasion, the luf leadership reported at a community meeting that matimba had agreed to inform the luf of job openings, thereby creating dual processes of job information sharing and setting up the possibility that the luf might appropriate the bureaucratic recruitment practices (field notes, 21 february 2017). in these invited spaces, the luf also advocated for skills development and education as a means for people to achieve longer term decent employment. a committee member asked in a meeting with medupi, ‘there are locals who have been general workers for years and didn’t go on skills programmes and now have been demobbed [retrenched]. are you just going to demob people who don’t have skills?’ (field notes, 15 february 2017). he elaborated, ‘we want progress in this society. the most important progress is skills.’ the committee advocated for a free training centre in lephalale that companies should invest in. a better job and a better future for one’s children were often articulated through the importance of education. for example, for lesego, education was seen as the means of securing a better life. ‘i want them [future children] to enjoy life, not live like the way i’m living … education is the key’ (interview, 16 february 2017). as such, the imagined ‘good life’ does not significantly challenge the order of things, but the luf pressed for greater inclusion in this imagined horizon. however, the luf did not only engage with companies in invited spaces, but also pushed to invent spaces through more disruptive actions. here, i draw on miraftab (2004) to think through the intertwining practices of ‘invited’ and ‘invented’ spaces. while the above examples focused on activities to which the luf was invited and legitimised by government and parastatal companies, the organisation also created ‘invented’ spaces in which they directly confronted authorities. these two repertoires do not work in opposition, but luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20227 rather are flexible strategies employed by grassroots organisations to confront daily suffering and hardship (miraftab 2004). the oppositional and defiant strategies also opened doors to invited spaces by positioning the luf as a significant force in lephalale. on one such occasion of defiance, in october 2016 the luf organised a protest to lephalale local municipality to highlight issues regarding lack of employment opportunities, corruption and the environmental impacts of medupi. despite repeated notifications to the municipality regarding the protest, the municipality failed to respond. the forum decided to proceed with the march, which was violently stopped by police at 6 am (right2protest project, n.d.). lesego explained: the police came. they said, ‘you are not going anywhere’. they came with rubber bullets and started shooting, while we are sitting down. people ran away… that day, it was painful, but the community did nothing… what have we done? (interview, 16 february 2017). some of the luf leaders were arrested, including lesego. she described her night under arrest: ‘i was crying the whole night [in a cell] because we didn’t do anything. what kind of public violence are they talking about? what have we done? nothing’ (interview, 16 february 2017). the following day, forum members went to the police station to find out what had happened to their comrades, and a further five were arrested at the police station. they were all charged with public violence (right2protest project, n.d.). lesego explained that the arrests and police violence created fear amongst community members, especially women: ‘after the march, the women got scared and disappeared. they left me [in the organisation]’ (interview, 16 february 2017). repression is employed in order to preserve the power of local anc political authorities and that of private and state corporations. this is an attempt to limit people’s imaginaries of decent work and fair processes. despite this repression, the luf continued to intervene in shared waiting spaces and to invent and disrupt space in order to shift the political and social terrain of lephalale. lesego explained, ‘our organisation is powerful. [it] fights against corruption, maladministration … every radio station talks about that’ (interview, 16 february 2017). thus, through a combination of invited meetings and consultations, and more disruptive actions, the luf was able to build leverage to affect waiting regimes and future imaginaries around a central concern of employment in the lives of youth in lephalale. the waterberg environmental justice forum and the struggle for a future the waterberg environmental justice forum (wejf) was established in 2012 for lephalale and the broader waterberg area, working in six municipalities. boitumelo and molefi established the environmental organisation and, paradoxically, both were part of the leadership of the luf. boitumelo explained that they were moved to do so, with other youth in lephalale, because they ‘saw bad conditions in other mining areas and thought this is what is going to happen here’, given the projected coal developments. the wejf criticised the form of development happening in the area, contending that, ‘if you [companies] are busy killing us, you better not come’ (focus group interview, 12 april 2016). current coal developments and the likely future loss and destruction of natural spaces threatened their concept and experience of home as well as the futurity of home for their children. this is illustrated by boitumelo’s projection: ‘our children will never know a lot of things that happened back then, but i wish everything was still the same and they can experience what we experienced’ (interview, 8 april 2017). youth activists in lephalale incorporated multiple temporalities into their politics owing to a concern for ‘intergenerational equity for the yet unborn’ (nkrumah 2021, p. 331). despite being an urban centre, lephalale is surrounded by villages and vast farmlands and is thus still constituted through relations to luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20228 land as a source of livelihood and integral way of living. for many of the wejf activists, an appreciation of nature and its beauty was developed through their childhood experiences of growing up in the surrounding farms and villages. boitumelo was born in botshabelo village in gaseleka. his mother sewed clothing using a small machine, while his father worked at iscor’s mine in the 1980s and then at matimba in the 1990s as a ‘kitchen boy’. he dropped out of school when he was 16 to look for employment in lephalale because his family was struggling. at the time of this research, he was unemployed, living in marapong and trying to provide for two children. boitumelo explained that as a child, ‘i was loving my home and loving the nature, going to the bushes and enjoying the nature. there was a lot of things we could live on … those villages are no longer the same as before. the wetlands are always empty’ (interview, 8 april 2017). similarly, itumeleng, a committee member of wejf and a queer activist, explained that his childhood was a ‘beautiful experience’. he grew up on a farm in steenbokpan in the 1980s with his grandfather while his father worked in the mine. his grandfather was a farm worker who had a small patch of land allowing for subsistence farming. they planted ‘every vegetable or food you can think of ’. he continued, ‘we never went to bed hungry … we used to go in the morning … to the bush to hunt for rabbits’ (interview, 15 may 2017). the wejf’s vision for communities in the waterberg region is for sustainable development, including smallscale agricultural development, renewable energy and, importantly, to build youth activism in order to participate in the development taking place. a committee member explained, ‘we want to see young people coming out and not be[ing] afraid. young people keep quiet here, but we need young people to come out. we want to motivate young people. as young people, we must know that we have the power to challenge government’ (focus group interview, 12 april 2016). this power is understood as the potential to challenge both government and corporations in order to safeguard their futures. the vision to develop youth activism and their voice emerged from life trajectories. it was through these journeys that these activists were motivated to organise the youth to say, ‘no is no’ when confronted with harmful development. for itumeleng, for instance, it was important for him not to be ashamed of his sexual identity and to share this with other youth in the area. as the founder of the evergreen arts centre, he used art and theatre as a way of expressing and emboldening voice (interview, 15 may 2017). this was also connected to his environmentalism – expressed as a lifelong love of the environment and doing community work. for boitumelo, he went on strike at medupi in 2012 when he was a construction worker. as a consequence, he was arrested and charged with public violence. it took more than two years for the charges to be dropped and he was subsequently blacklisted from working on the megaprojects. he explained that this experience confirmed his resolve to ‘struggle and raise my voice … that’s when i started to be an activist’ (interview, 8 april 2017). the wejf’s vision for sustainable development was grounded in their experiences of rural life. boitumelo elaborated: you go to the agricultural project in the villages, there are no young people there, it’s only old people because they [young people] are saying, ‘we are going to the project of medupi, there is a lot of money there.’ yes, there is a lot of money, but you need to think ... the power stations don’t give us life, the thing that gave us life is this thing that they [the coal power stations] are destroying (focus group interview, 12 april 2016). the foundations of life are understood to be the land and the environment, which need to be sustained. thus, even though paradoxically the same activists were involved in campaigning for waged labour through the luf, they also understood that this was not to be at the expense of the foundations of life and that rural livelihoods needed to be supported. luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 20229 for boitumelo, when he was employed on the megaprojects, life was experienced as unhealthy and damaging. he explained: i think it’s better where i am [unemployed activist] because in a job i made a lot of debt. ... i was [a] money maker and chasing girls but that was not life. and even if i can go ask those guys, that’s all they do in lephalale, sitting and drinking all weekend. there are no activities here, there is no life here (interview, 8 april 2017). rejecting the life that formal employment enabled and adopting one of activism entailed personal costs and sacrifices for boitumelo. he survived by selling products that he bought in johannesburg when he went there to attend civil society workshops, as well as through the stipends that he received from ngos. these resources were used to support his children, but his familial relations were destabilised and disrupted through his loss of employment. thus, the complex and concrete life trajectories that led to environmental activism and the building of the organisation did not come without ramifications. political repertoires of the waterberg environmental justice forum the wejf developed different organisational focal points, including waste management; community health with an emphasis on hiv and aids and tuberculosis (tb); air, water and noise pollution; and safeguarding general biodiversity. these four foci developed in response to conditions on the ground. for instance, the area is the leading subdistrict in limpopo province for tb, with 9.8 per cent of deaths caused by it in 2012 (ramaliba et al. 2017). residents in the area suffer from sore eyes and sinuses and respiratory infections from the dust and air pollution. in order to address the above, the wejf undertook different political strategies. unlike the luf, the wejf placed greater emphasis on research, community education and awareness raising. employment, and the lack thereof, was an immediate concern for youth and residents of marapong, whereas environmental concerns, despite their importance, were seen as somewhat distant from the immediacy of breadandbutter issues. thus, the necessity for education and awareness activities. the wejf also engaged in practices of engagement with local government, companies and other key stakeholders; deployed constitutional rights; protested; and produced spaces of solidarity and alternative visions. here again, there was a movement between invited and invented spaces in these grassroots strategies. like the luf, wejf intervened with local government and companies in invited spaces, specifically in processes of consultation. these included participation in forums, such as the local economic development forum’s environmental group, and attendance at public consultation meetings for mining applications. wejf mobilised around human rights to push for more inclusive and democratic processes, arguing that these are ‘not apartheid days’ (field notes, 23 february 2017). the south african constitution, especially chapter 2, section 24 on environmental rights, was seen to be useful in monitoring noncompliance with environmental policies and rights. section 24 states that everyone has the right to ‘an environment that is not harmful to their health’ and to ‘have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations’ (south african government 1996, pp. 1251– 52). wejf utilised this as a basis for protecting the environment, youth and future generations of lephalale. the wejf committee inserted themselves into processes of development, asserting that ‘we make sure that companies recognise us and also the municipality’ (focus group interview, 12 april 2016), signalling the importance of youth constituencies. both government and private companies were criticised for their inadequate processes of consultation and lack of independent processes and accountability. the government was also criticised for conflating its processes of consultation with internal anc processes rather than working with nonpartisan community forums. companies, such as exxaro, were seen as having ‘their own people’ rather than nonpartisan processes for environmental reviews. luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202210 part of this work involved campaigning for transparency and accountability. for example, the ‘publish what you pay’ campaign was an attempt to hold mining companies accountable and pressure them to publish their profits as well as what they pay to social investment programmes (mabula 2018). another instance of mobilising democratic rights occurred with the development of sekoko coal mine in steenbokpan. in 2020, working with alliance partners, such as wwao, wejf involved the south african heritage resources agency (sahra) to assist families with access to protected ancestral graves that were inside the mine yard. sahra ruled that the graves must not be destroyed, damaged, altered, exhumed or removed from their original position given that the graves were heritage sites. and further, that the graves should be protected with fencing, and families must be given access to visit their ancestral graves (waterberg environmental justice forum, 2020). wejf also engaged in their own ongoing research and monitoring of developments in the area in order to participate in invited spaces effectively and engage in more disruptive actions when necessary. as boitumelo explained, ‘we must know things so we can challenge authorities … you must know your area better – you must know what is happening around’ (field notes, 23 february 2017). the organisation encouraged a culture of research in the community. at meetings, they advocated for information and evidence gathering: ‘you must go to any meeting where people are gathering just to listen and ask around what’s going on’ and further that, ‘sometimes when you take things emotionally, you are going to have a serious problem and so do some research first and make sure you have a solid ground’ (interview, 8 april 2017). residents and activists were encouraged to attend community meetings, local government sittings and environmental impact assessment meetings. wejf emphasised the importance of research in understanding the full and longterm implications of the megaproject developments rather than simply adopting discourses on development, as promulgated by local government and corporations: ‘they say lephalale is going to be a city and you jump up and down. no! … it’s not a city because you don’t have lights here. the lights are only for the power stations and mines’ (interview, 8 april 2017). the organisation placed an emphasis on education, awareness and campaigning in order to scythe through ideological dissimulations to comprehend the unfolding of toxic geographies and uneven development. this was undertaken through activities, such as community radio talk shows, programs at schools, doortodoor campaigning and community meetings. campaign work was often appreciated, for example, by older generations, including the seleka royal council which learnt about their environmental rights from the youth activists in the wejf (field notes, 11 april 2017). as such, the wejf’s practices of inventing space were focused on the slow building of alternative visions within different constituencies in marapong and surrounding rural areas. with employment being seen as the urgent and necessary horizon for a liveable life, the organisation did not have the mass base that the luf had in order to intervene in the status quo. rather, wejf had to navigate the immediate needs and the needs of future generations by finding ways to advocate for development that would not destroy the foundations of life instead of focusing on employment through megaprojects, which would result in the ongoing marginalisation of rural livelihoods and denigration of the natural environment. reflections on paradoxical youth activism in lephalale these two case studies highlight the paradoxical nature of youth politics in the unfolding of concrete and particular social– spatial relations. in a place such as lephalale, which has been spatially produced through the intersection of fossil fuel industries and rurality, there is no discrete separation of the rural from the urban, or linear development from rural to urban, but rather intersecting, uneven and adverse forms of development (du toit 2017; luckett 2021). in this model of development, it is unclear if the time of ‘the job’ will ever arrive for the youth of lephalale in urban informal settlements and rural villages. this waiting, which entails suffering under luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202211 capitalist conditions, is described by wrangel (2017) as a constant deferral of the future. in this sense, hope for a job can constitute a ‘stuckness’ in relation to time and space (potamianou 1997), as social life becomes a set of repetitive practices for economic and emotional survival, to ward off defeat in the neoliberal order (berlant 2011). however, in contrast to auyero (2011, 2012) who emphasises the state’s domination over subjects through imposed bureaucratic forms of waiting, theorists such as mujere (2020) and stasik, hansch and mains (2020) investigate shifting contestations and emphasise the productive or generative aspects of temporalities of waiting in africa. the precarious nature of work in and around medupi led to investment in ‘the job’ and ‘waiting for a job’ as sites of future possibilities (see kenny 2018 for an indepth analysis of work as a site of possibility and horizon of becoming). i have shown through the luf case study how the surplus or generative aspects of waiting for employment in lephalale include social action and forms of solidarity developed through a collective experience of waiting. the shared experiences and political repertoires described above point to the complexities of working both within and against the status quo in the struggle for liveable futures. these futures are not only about having employment in order to obtain ‘adulthood’, but also about having a safe and healthy environment in the present and for future generations. this struggle for future generations, however, often comes at personal and social cost. boitumelo’s experience of remaining a committed activist for wejf, despite his loss of employment, speaks to white’s (2013) analysis of the interpenetration of money and social relations, arguing that our relations are framed by the circulation of capital. economic activities become ‘conditioning stuff ’ of relationships and social relations become ‘subject to’ capital, or the lack thereof (white 2013, p. 141). familial and intimate social relations, which appear to have very little to do with political economy, are in fact mediated by the circulation of capital for realisation of intimacy and care. in this context, adopting alternative life strategies and a political vision is entangled with personal and relational loss; hence the significance of boitumelo’s statement: ‘i am passionate to teach our fellow lephalale community members to say it’s not about getting a job and making a living, as long as you understand what is [happening] around’ (interview, 8 april 2017). the two case studies highlight the importance of understanding the concrete dynamics of local and global processes and the role of youth politics in shifting terrains of struggle. in lephalale, youth intervened in invited spaces regarding both employment practices and environmental justice. given the neglect of rural villages and livelihoods, youth activists adopted seemingly paradoxical positions in demanding waged labour on extractivist projects and campaigning for environmental justice. they expanded spaces of inclusion through more disruptive actions and through the slow work of community education and awareness raising in order to shift political horizons and the modernist conception of development. the concrete life trajectories and paradoxical political practices of youth activists in lephalale reveal some of the complexities entailed in moving towards greater social and environmental justice. conclusion in this article, i have argued for the importance of exploring the nexus between youth activism and environmental justice politics in the global south, particularly in urban peripheries. i have shown, counter to discourses of passivity, that multiple forms and expressions of youth dissent emerge in the face of social and environmental injustices and precarious and uncertain futures. despite the complexities, hardships and repression that youth in lephalale encounter, many still struggle to use their voice to strengthen others and build spaces of collectivism and solidarity. youth activists embedded in local politics showed the necessity of bringing together immediate needs and future horizons in a context of gender, economic, social and environmental injustices. this was at times done in contradictory and paradoxical ways, especially in the situation of an extractivist model of development, alongside rural neglect and lack of genuine participation luckett gateways: international journal of community research and engagement, vol. 15, no. 2 december 202212 in decisionmaking processes, thereby highlighting the complexities of struggling for liveable presents and futures. reflecting on my role as activistresearcher, it is important to highlight that it would not have been possible to explore these two case studies without the trust and conviviality of the activists in the luf and wejf. this trust and conviviality in turn places an ethical demand on scholaractivists, not only in relation to accountability and transparency in research practices, but in the politics of everyday life. the slow processes of building and maintaining relationships of solidarity and trust require time, energy and emotional labour, which is not well understood or supported by the universityasbusiness that drives research ‘productivity’ as a highly individualised, competitive enterprise. flexible and slow processes are not often accommodated within the time frames and requirements of grantdriven research projects and university pressures. while knowledge production generated through engaged scholarship is receiving more attention in higher education (winkler 2013), little has been implemented in terms of resources, time and platforms to support ways of doing research otherwise. this is of particular importance in a context such as south africa, with a history of colonialism and ongoing forms of violence and extractivism, thus requiring a refusal to repeat relations of (knowledge) extractivism and rather contributing towards the transformation of social relations both within and outside the academy. finally, returning to the words of boitumelo, who warned that children will not experience flowing water – as limpopo increasingly becomes a desert – this moment of deep crisis signals the urgency of safeguarding the futures of unborn generations and natural worlds. in this context, there are no guaranteed outcomes and, moreover, no guaranteed progressive outcomes, but as solnit (2016) writes, ‘it is in the uncertainty that hopeful possibilities exist’. acknowledgements i thank the activists of luf, wejf and wwao for making this research possible. i also thank the intellectual guidance of my phd supervisors, prof bridget kenny and prof noor nieftagodien, as well as the collaborative process facilitated by the guest editors of this special issue. references ahmed, s 2014, ‘selfcare as warfare’. 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https://www.facebook.com/waterberg-environmental-justice-forum-wejf-1102360689788825 https://doi.org/10.1080/23323256.2013.11500054 https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456x12474312 https://societyandspace.org/2017/06/13/the-post-trump-desire-for-hope/ https://societyandspace.org/2017/06/13/the-post-trump-desire-for-hope/ microsoft word 63-75_sumner.docx studies in social justice volume 5, issue 1, 63-75, 2011   correspondence address: jennifer sumner, ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto, toronto, ontario, canada m5s 1v6, tel.: +1 416 978 0784, email: jennifer.sumner@utoronto.ca issn: 1911-4788 serving social justice: the role of the commons in sustainable food systems jennifer sumner adult education and community development program, ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto abstract food is a source of sustenance, a cause for celebration, an inducement to temptation, a vehicle for power, an indicator of well-being, a catalyst for change and, above all, a life good. along with other life goods such as potable water, clean air, adequate shelter and protective clothing, food is something we cannot live without. the global corporate food system, however, allows 800 million to go hungry, while an even larger number of people grow obese. based in money-values, this food system promotes accumulation first and foremost, enriching a few while creating economic, social and environmental externalities that are destroying local economies, devastating individuals, families and communities and degrading the planet. what would a food system look like that was based in life-values, centred on the commons and anchored by social justice? this paper will focus on the creation of sustainable food systems, beginning with the crises of the global corporate food system and then moving to the heart of sustainable food systems—the civil commons. introduction while food represents many things to many people, it has always been a life good or a means of life—that which sustains life. for this reason, food has been at the heart of the human endeavour for millennia. over the last 50 years, however, it has undergone enormous changes: food is no longer viewed first and foremost as a sustainer of life. rather, to those who seek to command our food supply, it has become instead a major source of corporate cash flow, economic leverage, a form of currency, a tool of international politics, an instrument of power—a weapon! (krebs cited in millstone & lang, 2003, p. 11) as food has morphed from a means of life to a blunt instrument of corporate control, it has lost any association it may have had with social justice, leaving in its wake hunger and obesity in equal measure around the world. both forms of malnutrition, in combination with a wide range of problems associated with industrial agriculture 64 jennifer sumner   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   and an export-based economy, are the inevitable outcomes of a corporate food system that eschews life values and pursues money values at the cost of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. in the face of the emerging global life-crisis in the realm of food, some argue that the corporate food system is broken (baker, campsie, & rabinowicz, 2010; scharf, levkoe, & saul, 2010), while others see it on the road to collapse (fraser & rimas, 2010). such arguments, in turn, raise questions about an alternative food system. this article will explore the possibilities for a new food system that aims to ensure everyone is fed nutritious food of their choice within the ecological limits of the planet. after discussing social justice and examining the global corporate food system, it will lay out the parameters of an alternative food system based in life values, centred on the civil commons and anchored by social justice. social justice although the term ‘social justice’ was first used in 1840 by a sicilian priest in an appeal to the ruling classes to attend to the needs of the new masses of uprooted peasants who had become urban workers (novak, 2000), it has a much longer history of practice. according to jackson (1995), the human struggle for social justice is timeless and universal, and can be traced back to lao-tzu in china, the slave revolts of ancient rome, and the levellers in england. social justice has been understood by modern scholars as an equitable vision of society, one in which all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure (adams, bell, & griffin, 1997) or as a process of moving toward equality (smith, 2000). power (1999) is more precise when she sees social justice as “a guarantee of an adequate and dignified level of material resources to allow every citizen the stability and security to participate fully in society” (p. 35). more recently, basok, ilcan and noonan (2006) go beyond power to define social justice as: an equitable distribution of fundamental resources and respect for human dignity and diversity, such that no minority group’s life interests and struggles are undermined and that forms of political interaction enable all groups to voice their concerns for change. (p. 267) the obverse of social justice is social injustice, which basok et al. (2006) contend has been growing in the past few decades, as access to resources is increasingly becoming more inequitable and new groups of people have become targets of racism and amplified vigilance due to their identity. following basok et al. (2006), we can understand social injustice as an inequitable distribution of fundamental resources and lack of respect for human dignity and diversity, such that minority groups’ life interests and struggles are undermined and that forms of political interaction do not enable all groups to voice their concerns for change. andre gunder frank (2002) has probed the question of social injustice, arguing that, at the largest social level, global processes, structures, and institutions seem to generate the greatest injustice. he concluded that there is no end to the issue of social injustice, just as there is no end to the quest and struggle for justice. serving social justice 65 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   since social justice presupposes life, and life presupposes satisfaction of our liferequirement for food, the food system is absolutely foundational to any socially just society. it is not surprising, then, that many authors have linked social justice specifically to food. for example, clancy (1994) makes the connection through sustainable agriculture, arguing that “the notion that social justice would be one of the ways in which alternative agriculture would distinguish itself from its conventional counterpart arose in several places, and out of several different sensibilities” (p. 78). wekerle (2004) unites social justice and food via food justice movements, using food justice to “highlight the focus on systemic change and the necessity for engaging in political and policy processes as well as consciously addressing issues of movement mobilization and strategies” (p. 379). for wekerle, such a focus “opens up linkages with a wider range of conceptual frameworks drawn from the literature on democracy, citizenship, social movements, and social and environmental justice” (p. 379). allen (2008) unites social justice and food via the food system, arguing there is a lack of social justice in the american agrifood system, as evidenced by prevalent hunger and obesity in low-income populations and exploitation of farm workers. given that many people seem ready to pay attention to improving the food system, she proposes that, “in a democratic society, the incorporation of social justice priorities and practices must be part of this effort” (p. 157). using basok et al.’s definition of social justice, allen (2008) posits that justice involves three criteria: meeting basic human needs, freedom from exploitation and oppression, and access to opportunity and participation. applying these three criteria to the food system, she argues that basic needs are not met because “more and more people are going hungry” (p. 157). she finds exploitation occurs throughout the agrifood system, as evidenced by farm workers living in poverty, enduring difficult and dangerous working conditions and lacking housing and health care. in terms of opportunity, she contends that “throughout the world, women are poorer, own less property, do more work, hold less power, are less educated, and suffer more hunger than men” (p. 158). for allen, it is clear that “our food system does not meet the fundamental criteria of social justice such as freedom from want, freedom from oppression, and access to equal opportunity” (p. 158). as these authors show, food provides a grounded connection to social justice because “no other public issue is as accessible to people in their daily lives as that of food justice. everyone—regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, or social class—eats. we are all involved and we are all implicated” (allen 2008, p. 159). with this in mind, we can explore food systems as vehicles for social justice or social injustice. we will examine the current global corporate food system and its association with social injustice, and propose a food system based on the commons that can serve social justice. food systems according to kaufman (2004), a food system encompasses a chain of activities that begins with the production of food and moves on to include the processing, distribution, wholesaling, retailing and consumption of food and, eventually, to the 66 jennifer sumner   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   disposal of food waste. while this linear configuration covers the main components of a food system, it does not convey the idea of a dynamic, interconnected system. in contrast, hay (2000) defines a system as a group of elements organized such that one is in some way interdependent (either directly or indirectly) with every other element. we can fruitfully combine these two explanations to define a food system as an interdependent web of activities that include the production, processing, distribution, wholesaling, retailing, consumption and disposal of food. this interdependent web can be very local, as in the self-provisioning of small, isolated groups, or huge, as in the global corporate food system. in terms of scale, however, no food system is inherently just or unjust—that depends on the agenda of those who are empowered by the scalar strategy (see born & purcell, 2006). global corporate food system following the definition of a food system, the global corporate food system can be understood as an interdependent web of corporate-controlled activities at the global scale that include the production, processing, distribution, wholesaling, retailing, consumption and disposal of food. in his book, stuffed and starved, raj patel (2007) describes the global corporate food system as “a battlefield” (p. 15), maintaining that it is impossible to think about such a food system without attending to the corporations that have controlled it for centuries, and who crack the supply chain like a whip: today, transnational agricultural corporations control 40 per cent of world trade in food, with twenty companies controlling the world coffee trade, six controlling 70 per cent of wheat trade, and one controlling 98 per cent of packaged tea. (pp. 99-100) this drive for total corporate control of the food system is corroborated by goodall (2005) who claims that ten multinational corporations control over half the world’s food supply. and in the united states, ninety-five percent of the food americans eat is a corporate product (mcmichael, 2000). using allen’s (2008) three criteria developed from basok et al.’s (2006) definition of social justice, we can determine that the global corporate food system denies social justice. first, it does not meet basic human needs. according to mcmurtry (1999a) a need for something exists if and only if, and to the extent that, deprivation of it regularly results in an absolute reduction of its owner’s life-range capability. this means that, among other things, food is a basic human need, and yet, as patel (2007) contends, the central problem in the global corporate food system is hunger. in 2004, there were “842 million people suffering from undernourishment in a world that already grows more than enough food to feed the global population” (ziegler, 2004). by 2010, over 1 billion people are estimated to be undernourished—there are more hungry people than at any time since 1970, the earliest year for which comparable statistics are available (fao, 2010). second, the global corporate food system does not guarantee freedom from exploitation and oppression. for example, the american planning association (2007) has outlined the general effects of the global corporate food system on local and serving social justice 67 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   regional areas. it argues that the global corporate food system contributes not only to the increased incidence of obesity and diet-related disease, but also to the loss and erosion of diverse culinary traditions (e.g., first nations and immigrant cultures). in addition, the apa finds that the global corporate food system is implicated in ecological crises, including extinction of species, declining aquifers and deforestation. and third, the global corporate food system does not provide access to opportunity and participation. according to the american planning association (2007), concentration of ownership in the food system means that decisions affecting communities are increasingly made by absentee business owners. moreover, to complicate matters, the association states that government policies may exacerbate this lack of access due to the increasing political influence of food industry giants. in this way, the global corporate food system does not serve social justice. on the contrary, it is deeply implicated in social injustice and its well-documented “humanspawned social maladies” (baptiste, 2000, p. 27), which are metastasizing into a global life-crisis of unsustainable proportions—part of what mcmurtry (1999a) refers to as the cancer stage of capitalism. indeed, fraser and rimas (2010, p. 164) contend that “cancerous is exactly the state of our twenty-first-century global food empire.” can we envision a more sustainable food system—one that meets all three criteria of social justice? to answer this question we need to turn to the heart of sustainability, the civil commons. sustainability, social justice and the civil commons sustainability is a popular term that has become a household word, and part of its popularity rests with its ambiguity. many have attempted to define it, but none links it to the common life-ground (sumner, 2005). the concept of the civil commons, however, opens up the possibility of a food system that is life-coherent, sustainable, and just. conceptualized by mcmurtry (1999b), the civil commons is “any co-operative human construction that protects and/or enables the universal access to life goods” (p. 1). in this way, the civil commons is co-operative, not competitive. it does not occur naturally, but is built by human agency. the civil commons protects through rules and regulations, and enables by opening up spaces and opportunities. it involves universal access, not paid access, to life goods, such as food, water, shelter, education, and healthcare. the civil commons can be described as “society’s longevolving system of conscious human protection of the larger life-host humanity lives from” (1999a, p. 213). examples of the civil commons are all around us, but have never been collectively named: public education systems, universal health-care programs, building regulations, water and power installations, bridges, social safety protections, laws, libraries, public broadcast media, sewage systems and social assistance. in essence, the nature of the civil commons can be expressed as follows: it is society’s organized and community-funded capacity of universally accessible resources to provide for the life preservation and growth of 68 jennifer sumner   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   society’s members and their environmental life-host. the civil commons is, in other words, what people ensure together as a society to protect and further life, as distinct from money aggregates. (mcmurtry 1998, p. 24) the civil commons is rooted in the life-ground, described by mcmurtry (1999a) as including all three planes of life: organic movement, sentience and feeling, and thought: “grounded life-sequence analysis…keeps its eyes on life and its capabilities to think, feel or do, observing whether there is maintenance, growth or decline in these vital fields of being alive” (p. 155). given its deep connection to the life-ground and means of life, the civil commons can be seen as foundational to social justice. johnston (2003, p. 32) makes this clear when she emphasizes that the key point is to “maximize control over the means of subsistence for the ends of maximizing life and social justice—not profits, nor the pursuit of money as an end in itself.” quoting naomi klein’s argument that what unites those resisting global capitalist encroachment is a radical reclaiming of the commons, johnston concludes that “the pressing question for many social justice and environmental activists seems to be less about how we can achieve sustainable development and more about how we can reclaim the commons” (p. 4). while these social justice and environmental activists do not distinguish between the commons and the civil commons, johnston (2003) confirms that the two are distinct. in the words of mcmurtry (1998): i have introduced the concept of “civil commons” to distinguish it from the traditional “commons”—the shared natural lands upon which an agricultural village economy depends. i mean by the civil commons both the traditional commons and all other universally accessible goods of life that protect or enable the lives of society’s members. ... the concept of the civil commons subsumes both the traditional commons and the built commons of universally accessible social goods evolved by public sectors since the industrial revolution and, in particular, since the end of world war ii. (p. 399) johnston (2003) notes that “the civil commons tradition is differentiated from the natural commons, or biosphere, so as to make clear that these are cooperative, and distinctly human traditions designed to give access to the means of existence provided by the biosphere” (p. 17). as co-operative human constructions that protect and/or enable universal access to life goods, the many forms of the civil commons are thus recognized as central to social justice. the civil commons has also been understood as central to sustainability. succinctly put, sustainability involves a set of structures and processes that build the civil commons (sumner, 2005). the structures can range from universities, governments and corporations to ngos, neighbourhood associations and social businesses, as long as they build the civil commons. the processes can include teaching, learning, decision-making, facilitating, governing and researching, as long as they build the civil commons. these structures and processes interact dynamically to create, support and spread the civil commons. the wider and deeper the civil commons—socially, economically and environmentally—the higher the level of sustainability. the more the civil commons is enclosed, the lower the level of serving social justice 69 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   sustainability. in this way, both sustainability and social justice are deeply connected to the civil commons, and all three concepts are central to sustainable food systems. sustainable food systems if sustainability is tightly tied to the civil commons, then moving from the noun “sustainability” to the adjective “sustainable” carries the same meaning. in this way, sustainable development involves development based on the civil commons, not on entrepreneurship initiatives or programs to bring the poor into the global market. sustainable communities centre on the civil commons, not on economic development or business skills training. sustainable food systems focus on building the civil commons in the area of food, not on promoting our current cheap food policies or creating new value chains in the global market. applying the meaning of sustainability to the definition of a food system results in the following: a sustainable food system involves an interdependent web of activities generated by a set of structures and processes that build the civil commons with respect to the production, processing, distribution, wholesaling, retailing, consumption and disposal of food…. (sumner, 2010, p. 210) in other words, to qualify as sustainable, a food system would have to focus on activities that contribute to co-operative human constructs that protect and/or enable universal access to the life good of food. it follows that a food system in the private sector would preclude sustainability by definition. the fiduciary responsibility of corporations to maximize shareholder return fundamentally conflicts with and even violates the public interest of ensuring that citizens are fed. this incompatibility is emphasized by michele simon (2006), a public health attorney, who argues that “under our current economic system it’s not a corporation’s job to protect public health.” since a corporation’s purview does not include public health, she puts forward the following observations: like water (and unlike most other commodities such as toys or electronics), food is indispensable and a basic human right. why have we turned its production over to private interests? shouldn’t at least some aspects of society remain off-limits to corporate control? (p. 318) in other words, a sustainable food system must reside in the public domain—a public system in public hands for the public good. like the canadian health-care system, a made-in-canada sustainable food system would be supported by four pillars: universality, accessibility, portability and public administration. based on a single payer, we would all contribute so everyone could eat. and following in the image of natural cycles, it would close loops as tightly as possible, so that positive synergies could be achieved. unlike the global corporate food system, a sustainable food system would highlight the role of farmers: they would be recognized for their knowledge and rewarded for their work. processing would not involve large, centralized facilities that skim profits from the value chain, but regional operations organized as worker co-operatives. distributors would connect the nodes of the regional system, not 70 jennifer sumner   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   lobby for global reach. wholesalers would facilitate distribution to everyone, not skim off profits for themselves. retailers would offer wholesome, nutritious food, not profit from obesity by selling “pseudo-foods” (winson, 2004, p. 302) laden with salt, sugar, and oil. consumers would obtain local food or fair-trade global food from social businesses, co-operatives, food clubs, community food centres or food banks (in the true sense of the term—where food surplus is stored), not supermarkets that specialize in faceless, placeless, unfair food. and all participants in the food system would compost waste either for personal use or for municipal depots that would recycle it back to farms. sustainable food systems and social justice in his work on regenerative or sustainable food systems, dahlberg (1993) stressed the “es”—ecology, ethics, and equity: (1) sustainability as long-term food sufficiency, i.e., food systems that are more ecologically based and that do not destroy their natural resource base. (2) sustainability as stewardship, i.e., food systems that are based on a conscious ethic regarding humankind’s relationship to other species and to future generations. (3) sustainability as community, i.e., food systems that are equitable or socially just. (p. 81) however, it is arguable whether any food system has ever promoted social justice. in his study of past civilizations, wright (2004) contends that agriculture has seldom solved the food problem because of two inevitable (or nearly inevitable) consequences: the first is biological: the population grows until it hits the bounds of the food supply. the second is social: all civilizations become hierarchical; the upward concentration of wealth ensures that there can never be enough to go around. (p. 108) arguable exceptions to food system injustice include plains indian tribes before european conquest or present-day cuba, with its rations of rice and beans and its flourishing urban agriculture providing free or low-cost vegetables. another exception is the city of belo horizonte, brazil, which declared food to be a right and developed dozens of innovations to assure everyone the right to food—including offering farmers choice spots of public space from which to sell to urban consumers, low-priced food markets on city property and people’s restaurants that serve meals for the equivalent of less than 50 cents (lappé, 2009). generally speaking, however, food has long been about wealth as well as power (friedmann, 1993) and as such, food systems have not generally been known as vehicles for social justice. the global corporate food system is just the current conveyance on a long road of social injustice with respect to food. hunger, undernutrition, undernourishment, chronic hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity have been the hallmarks of most food systems from the beginnings of agriculture to the present day. serving social justice 71 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   that said, a food system that promotes social justice is not impossible. in the words of albritton (2009), “we would like to see a world in which every woman, man and child could access sufficient nutritious food in an environment that encourages healthy eating and that produces the food in ecologically sustainable ways” (p. 122). following allen’s (2008) criteria developed from basok et al.’s (2006) definition of social justice, we can outline the parameters of a food system that promotes social justice. 1. meeting basic human needs since food is a basic human need, the central focus of a sustainable food system would be the equitable distribution of nutritious food to everyone in the system, within planetary limits. this would mean establishing clear resource and environmental limits (see jackson, 2009) and working within them. it would also mean not only remedying the problem that the minority of the world’s population— the so-called developed world—uses most of the resources, but also dealing with the scale of the global population in general. according to jackson (2009), “the fastest population growth has occurred in the developing world—driven . . . by a lack of education and inadequate access to contraception” (p. 77). a civil-commons approach to development, led by a sustainable food system and backed by free, universal systems of education (including sex education) and healthcare (including widely available birth control) would help to address both of wright’s (2004) arguments about the “inevitable” consequences of agriculture. in a sustainable food system, food would no longer be an opportunity for private enrichment, an instrument of power or a weapon to force compliance. instead, it would be the keystone of a system that ensured everyone was fed. food would be understood as a public resource to be stewarded, renewed and shared. in terms of stewardship, food waste in the system would be reduced and land on which to grow food would be protected as a vital resource. with respect to renewal, food would be grown organically, which builds up soils and eschews harmful synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. on the subject of sharing, food would be distributed equitably. food banks would develop stockpiles in times of plenty and divide up supplies in times of famine. 2. freedom from exploitation and oppression the power of food has long been associated with the accumulation of agricultural surplus—who owns it or controls it. as a public resource, food would lose this association and be understood as a collective good—owned by all and controlled by everyone. as food becomes disassociated with power, the ability to exploit and oppress people diminishes in a number of ways. first, like universal healthcare, a universal food system would relieve people of the fear of lacking one of the basic needs of life. no longer threatened with hunger, people would be freer to make productive choices regarding their future. and in a time of looming scarcity in fossil fuels (the basis of the global corporate food system’s fertilizers, pesticides and long-distance trade), 72 jennifer sumner   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   increasing natural disasters, endless wars for ever-scarcer resources and unstable climate conditions, policies to develop sustainable food systems will address questions of food security. second, cheap food policies as currently conceived would be eliminated. such policies have bankrupted farmers and destroyed farmland, but have been implemented to reduce the need to raise the minimum wage. as pollan (2010) explains, …instead of paying workers well enough to allow them to buy things like cars, as henry ford proposed to do, companies like wal-mart and mcdonald’s pay their workers so poorly that they can afford only the cheap, low-quality food these companies sell, creating a kind of nonvirtuous circle driving down both wages and the quality of food. the advent of fast food (and cheap food in general) has in effect, subsidized the decline of family incomes in america. (p. 2) instead of being out of reach of the lowest income earners, nutritious food would be subsidized by taxes on pseudo-foods. in this way, inexpensive pseudo-foods would no longer be the only choice for cash-strapped families, thus reversing the growing obesity epidemic and its related medical problems. third, workers in the food system would no longer be exploited. according to albritton (2009), food is among the most labour-intensive of all commodities. he argues that the final consumer in most instances is unaware of the exploitation of labour that occurs at almost every step in the food chain from field to table. in our technologically sophisticated capitalist economy, “food chain workers are among the most exploited, the most impoverished and the most exposed to hazardous chemicals” (p. 144). instead of such exploitation, he suggests that all those participating in the food chain be well paid as a reward for their important and often very demanding work. and fourth, food deserts would cease to exist. lister (2007) has described a food desert as “large gaps in the city where it is difficult or impossible to find a grocery store or supermarket within walking distance, and where the predominant means to buy food is through fast-food outlets and higher-priced convenience stores” (p. 169). the problem with food deserts is graphically described by a chicago food activist: in my neighbourhood, i can buy designer gym shoes, every kind of fast food, junk food, all kinds of malt liquor, illegal drugs, and maybe even a semiautomatic weapon. but i cannot purchase an organic tomato. (redmond in metcalf foundation, 2008, p. 17) the nodes of a sustainable food system would be arranged in such a way that food deserts would be phased out and all income levels would be able to obtain nutritious food of their choice, within planetary limits. serving social justice 73 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   3. access to opportunity and participation a sustainable food system would open up access to opportunity and participation for producers, workers and consumers. producers would not be tied to artificially low global market prices which force them to mine the soil just to service their debts. instead, they would be paid a living wage for their valuable contributions to vital life needs—food production and ecological services. producers would also develop or join co-operatives—civil commons constructs that would help them become more socially, environmentally and economically sustainable. workers in a sustainable food system would also develop or join unions or co-ops. in this way, they would learn valuable social and economic skills by being part of a horizontal commons structure, instead of remaining voiceless in minimum-wage, dead-end jobs at the bottom of the food hierarchy. for example, workers would democratically participate in the decisions that affected their working conditions. in this way, slave labour, unsafe working conditions and unequal pay—all in the name of food production and provision—would be relegated to the past. in a sustainable food system, consumers would no longer be faced with the illusion of abundance in grocery stores, which masks their lack of opportunity and participation in the global corporate food system. instead of the corporate mantra of “consumer choice” and the reality of little input regarding the range and quality of food offered, they would gain some control through consumer co-ops and neighbourhood social businesses specializing in food. this is in stark contrast to current conditions where high profit margins drive food retailers to dedicate an average of 31% of their shelf space to pseudo-foods and -beverages (winson, 2004). healthier food choices are exiled to the outer perimeters of the store (pollan, 2008) or, in the case of organics, ignored until they become a high-profit market niche shorn of the organic philosophy. in addition, a sustainable food system would provide learning opportunities in the realm of food—healthy food, local food, heritage food and culturally specific food. and like the healthcare system, it would provide a working model to learn from and replicate in other areas of life need, such as water and childcare. conclusion in his article on sustainable development, visvanathan (1991) turned the tables on the brundtland report—published as our common future—which advocated increased economic growth as the way to reduce poverty and did not contest the prediction of fiveto tenfold increase in world industrial output. instead, he proposed that the path to sustainability lay in our future as a commons. this paper has taken up visvanathan’s proposal by exploring our future as the civil commons—the heart of sustainability and the route to social justice. in particular, it has examined the role of the civil commons in sustainable food systems. from this examination it is clear that a sustainable food system would be a commons of commons—an overarching co-operative human construction that protects and/or enables universal access to the life good of food. at its best, a sustainable food system would be synonymous with the civil commons—serving social justice as it provided nourishing food to everyone, within the ecological limits of the planet. 74 jennifer sumner   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   references adams, m., bell, l.-a., & griffin, p. 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(2004). the right to food. report of the special rapporteur of the united nations commission on human rights, submitted to the general assembly, new york. 1 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices daniel morales morales1, carie ruggiano1, cee carter1, kimberly j. pfeifer1, and keisha l. green1* 1the university of massachusetts amherst *corresponding author: klgreen@umass.edu received : 2019-nov-02 accepted : 2020-jun-01 doi: 10.46303/jcve.03.01.1 how to cite this paper: morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l. (2020). disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices. journal of culture and values in education, 3(1), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.03.01.1 abstract the main purpose of this paper is to respond to the call to re-envision higher education and to share experiences of hope that provide concrete examples about possibilities of enacting liberatory education in higher education. this article focuses on the work of one junior faculty member and four doctoral students who participate in a critical inquiry group and research collective called the critical education research collective. as social justice educators, in this shared space we engage in meaningful teaching and inquiry practices that involve teaching and research methodologies, education theory, dialogue, reflection and praxis. while research has highlighted the ways in which inquiry groups can be used as an intentional and systematic examination into teaching practice, this essay describes the structure, functioning, theoretical standpoints, and the process of becoming a doctoral student and professor-led critical inquiry group. the group came together as a way to sustain the work and research development of both the doctoral students and the junior faculty in the collective. keywords: critical pedagogy, research collective, teacher education, culturally sustaining pedagogy https://cultureandvalues.org/ https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.03.01.1 2 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org introduction in teaching community: a pedagogy of hope, bell hooks (2003) asked, “are educational institutions ready to teach us something new? are students ready to learn something new?” (p. 2). she is not asking about new teaching techniques, or strategies for tackling standardized testing; hooks is likely questioning if educational institutions are ready to teach students the tools that will break systems of oppression. she is interrogating institutions, and reminding them of their duty to allow people to become fully human. in an effort to respond to this question, and in an attempt to challenge the way teaching and research is done, this essay describes the organization, functioning, and theoretical standpoints of the critical education research collective (cerc). the cerc is a critical inquiry group that seeks to disrupt and transform traditional, normative practices in an english methods course offered at a higher education teacher preparation program while also disrupting the traditional ways in which doctoral students are advised to conduct research at a top tier research institution. the cerc is composed of one junior faculty member and four doctoral students from across departments and disciplines with shared research interests and experiences focused on cultivating critical pedagogy in the teacher education classroom. the collective originally began as a research seminar, critical english education research collective (ceerc), for doctoral students interested in thinking, reading, and conducting research about social justice, equity, and access in the context of english language arts (teacher) education. we examined scholarship related to critical english education and worked with dr. green, a pretenured faculty member, to write an irb and design a research study involving our preservice english language arts (ela) teacher candidates. after the first year of working closely on this research project we decided to formalize our work and became recognized as a formal collective by the graduate student senate. this transition included our original aim to focus on the context of ela teacher preparation and was further expanded to explore and examine critical approaches to education more broadly, thus resulting in the change in our name to cerc. this paper will focus on how we enacted collaborative approaches specific to the ela strand of our research interests. our practice is aimed at how we, as a pre-tenured faculty member and doctoral students reflect on our work and nurture socially just kindergarten-12th grade (k-12) classroom practices frequently centered in teacher education literature pertaining to learning in urban contexts (duncan-andrade, 2004; duncan-andrade & morrell, 2008; emdin, 2016; matias, 2013a, 2016; picower, 2012). additionally, we grapple with how this important work -and obstacles to its practice -should be equally considered and implemented in rural and suburban school communities. regarding our interest in social justice education within the context of the english language arts classroom, we seek to attend to sociocultural issues and inequities related to race, ethnicity, language, class, gender, ability, and sexuality. within this context, our goal is to enact pedagogies that cultivate critical, multi-literacy skills aimed toward helping students both change their material circumstances and act as change agents within the broader contexts of their communities and society. because some members of our collective are situated within the https://cultureandvalues.org/ 3 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org teacher education program and others within the social justice program, our work is uniquely positioned at the intersection of higher education and k-12. these areas of research align in important ways to address the varying needs of our teacher candidates who are preparing to teach in different contexts (i.e., urban, suburban, and rural). in all of these contexts, they face similar challenges, such as tailoring curriculum to student interests and facilitating classroom situations that require encounters and learning across lines of social difference including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and language. the convergence of our research interests and areas of expertise within the cerc afford us the opportunity to contribute ideas, approaches, and knowledge that address these challenges of teaching for social justice in varying and nuanced ways. zadja, majhanovich, and rust (2006) claim that social justice is “based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being (p. 1). social justice education and teaching provides the distinct advantage of addressing educational and social disparity through equity driven approaches in and out schools. as a collective, we are learning how to address the diversity of our teacher candidates’ teaching contexts so that our discussions of socially just classroom practices readily address secondary student learning needs, experiences, and interests. however, we also face challenges given the larger context of education in us public schools and higher education institutions. for example, within teacher education, obstacles to teaching for social justice include: a state-mandated focus on the standardization of content knowledge and the performance of skills; challenges to ethnic studies curricular content that prioritizes the raising of critical consciousness through centering the lives of black, indigenous and people of color (bipoc); access to intersectional and collaborative relationships between faculty, students, and pre-service teachers; and limits of academic support in higher education that occur as the result of siloed and individualistic practices practices that can often act as a barrier to supportive and interdisciplinary approaches. these challenges remind us that schools are sites of social, cultural, and economic reproduction, and teachers play a pivotal role in aiding or disrupting this process. the reproductive aspects of schooling are particularly harmful because they work to reify hegemonic epistemologies and ontologies in educational spaces which then make invisible and silence already marginalized voices both in the classroom and on syllabi (cook-sather, 2002). to disrupt this process, it is important to look at the ways in which teacher training and professional development in both higher education and k-12 settings is constructed. the content and methodologies of such training varies but in some cases teachers are trained to teach to the test and therefore do not support students in developing the skills needed for higher education and civic engagement (darling-hammond, 2010; mirra & garcia 2017). two of our goals as a critical inquiry group are to explore what happens when educators come together through an equity-based model of teacher-researcher training and to explore what impact this model has on our classrooms and our practice as education researchers. in this essay, we describe how the cerc meetings were structured in an effort to develop and engage participants in social justice teaching and humanizing research. moreover, we provide insights into participants in a teacher-researcher led inquiry group https://cultureandvalues.org/ 4 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org and how this group begins to shift the conversation about teacher-researchers beyond the binary of effective and ineffective to a more nuanced understanding of our practice as always in a process. this echoes nieto’s (2003) notion of teacher development where she claims, “excellent teachers do not emerge full blown at graduation; nor are they just ‘born teachers.’ instead, teachers are always in the process of ‘becoming’” (p. 395). in the following section, we share more about the creation of our collective and we introduce our members. we describe our experiences in education, the reasons we joined the cerc, and our research interests. the connections among and between us constitute our collective, inform our work, and transform the ways in which we are becoming teacher-researchers. the cerc as a social justice academic space the cerc was created, housed, and operated in the college of education. all cerc members are social justice educators who, prior to our doctoral work, were either earlycareer or veteran educators. we were invited by a junior faculty member to be part of a research group that would study teacher education. this group would also help each member navigate and refine our respective research journeys. our past teaching and research experiences informed our desire and need to continue working with like-minded colleagues who are able and willing to support one another’s political and social justiceoriented pedagogy development as teacher-researchers. the cerc provided a space to connect our growing research interests with classroom practices, which deepened the group’s understanding and conceptualization of social justice practices and created a collective space for critical discourse and reflection. each cerc meeting regularly included three parts: 1) individual personal and academic trajectories check-ins, 2) theoretical and/or pedagogical readings and discussions, and 3) curriculum or theoretical discussions. these three parts were geared towards having group members engage in reflection, theory, and practice, and through this process, aimed to welcome our individual humanity, hold members accountable in nurturing and supportive ways, and invite materials and concepts from a variety of theoretical perspectives. ultimately, this process and approach translated into the creation of a safe space for asking questions and grappling with new ideas; it also acted as a counter space that mitigated the overwhelming presence of whiteness experienced in many of our more traditional graduate courses. positionality of the authors because “the biographical journeys of researchers greatly influence their values, their research questions, and the knowledge they construct” (banks, 1998, p. 4), we consider our journeys and varying positionalities as always in direct relation to our work and our process of becoming teachers and researchers. we deeply value the individual knowledge and experiences that each cerc member possesses and work intentionally to incorporate them as essential building blocks into our individual and collective endeavors and frames of understanding. https://cultureandvalues.org/ 5 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org cee carter cee’s current research informs teacher practice using participatory research methods that highlight student feedback and experiences in schools. cee’s work is also shaped by her former experiences in public schools as a math teacher and as a professional in non-profit education reform. these experiences exposed the racial, economic and gendered processes that impact education for young people of color in urban settings. therefore, in her work, she applies the critical lenses of radical black feminism and racial capitalism to highlight how power structures operate, persist, and position student learning and experiences in public schools. cee joined the cerc as a first year doctoral student to build and learn from a community of critical education scholars as well as learn about the research process from a critical, decolonizing perspective. dr. keisha l. green keisha is interested in critical teacher education, youth literacy practices, and humanizing qualitative research. as an assistant professor working with secondary english language arts preand in-service teachers, she is collaboratively building a communityengaged and field-based teacher preparation experience. her scholarship and teaching in the areas of critical literacy, critical pedagogy, and youth literacy practices demonstrate her commitment to working for equity and racial justice in education. in particular, keisha’s research centers youth voice, identity, and multiliterate lives of young people of color, as well as documents white pre-service teachers’ perception of themselves in relation to their culturally and linguistically diverse students and about how these same teachers incorporate principles of social justice and culturally sustaining pedagogies into their curricular content and instructional practices. broadly, keisha is interested in creating more opportunities to support preand in-service teachers through university-school-community partnerships. starting the cerc was an attempt to work collaboratively with doctoral students engaged in similar work as a way to demystify the academy and democratize knowledge production. daniel morales morales daniel grew up and attended school in a rural, working-class community in chile under dictatorship. he completed his vocational schooling in a neighboring city with the goal of having a job that would pay more than his mom’s occupation as a maid. college was not an option until his family realized that a college degree was needed to have a stable income. after quitting a business program, daniel decided to pursue a teaching degree. although he never worked as a teacher at a public school, daniel had the opportunity to study a semester in the u.s., and then pursued his master’s degree and doctoral studies in maryland and massachusetts, respectively. daniel’s interest in teacher training comes from his work with low-income and first-generation college-bound students. he joined the cerc to continue learning about critical literacies and methodologies and to organize and study with likeminded folks. https://cultureandvalues.org/ 6 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org dr. kimberly j. pfeifer kimberly’s current research includes working with preservice teachers and developing curricula centered on disrupting gender inequities in educational spaces. through this work, she examines the intersecting roles of gender, race, class, and age in order to better understand enactments and experiences of educational sexism. before pursuing a ph.d. focused on gender equity, kimberly was a middle and high school ela teacher of emerging bilingual and multilingual students. her pedagogical practice is rooted in culturally responsive and sustaining teaching, critical literacies, and interdisciplinary curriculum design. as a member of the cerc, kimberly has been able to meaningfully integrate her experiences as a k-12 educator and interest in teacher education, alongside the cultivation of a deepened understanding of critical pedagogy. carie ruggiano carie’s current research is focused on understanding and improving the schooling experiences for youth of color and their families in predominantly white, rural settings through critical and culturally sustaining approaches to teaching and learning. this interest is rooted in more than two decades of experience as a middle and high school english language arts teacher and is deeply inspired and driven by the experiences of her own children, who navigate predominantly white schooling and community spaces as young men of color on a daily basis. carie came to teaching with an orientation grounded in social justice approaches. this orientation would guide her praxis in k-12 classrooms and schools, and, now, informs her work with the preservice teachers whom she supervises and mentors in their development toward critical and culturally sustaining teaching. carie is dedicated to efforts to recruiting, preparing, and supporting teachers committed to transformative and liberatory approaches, especially in the english classroom. her membership in the cerc has allowed for deepened understanding among a community of fellow critical scholars who support the consideration and implications of applying this important work in rural contexts. the cerc as a collective critical inquiry group there are various types of collaborative groups that engage in teacher inquiry—e.g., teacher research communities, study practice groups, professional development schools, inquiry groups, and critical inquiry groups (cochran-smith & lytle, 1993, 2009). a critical inquiry group involves a collective of educators who “work to powerfully address the needs of their students while they engage in their own professional growth” (duncan-andrade, 2004, p. 340). similarly, cochran-smith and lytle (2009) use the term “practitioner inquiry” and claim that practitioner research is “a valuable mode of critique of the inequities in schools and society and of knowledge hierarchies within as well as beyond the local context” (p. ix). just as teaching is both a social and political endeavor (aronowitz & giroux, 1993; giroux 1988; paris & alim, 2017), a critical inquiry group as a model for teacher/researcher development can begin to challenge hegemony and hierarchies of power at school sites and universities (andrews et al., 2017; cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; duncan-andrade, 2005; picower, 2007). https://cultureandvalues.org/ 7 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org a critical inquiry group is an ongoing effort to learn, collaborate, and explore different ways to implement critical pedagogy. it is also a space to contemplate theory and locate theoretical implications that can be used in the transformation of classroom practices. challenging hegemony is at the foundation of an inquiry approach (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; duncan-andrade, 2005; picower, 2007) because it “involves making problematic the current arrangements of schooling; the ways knowledge is constructed, evaluated and used, and teachers’ individual and collective roles in bringing about change” (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999, p. 18). duncan-andrade (2004) observes that the critical in critical inquiry group draws from the scholarship of paulo freire which includes critical “dialogue, reflection, and praxis” (p. 341). within this practice, learning and teaching can begin to take freirian attributes of respect and mutual dialogue where people are humanized and knowledge production is encouraged. critical inquiry groups are also humanizing spaces where knowledge production is encouraged, making respect and mutual dialogue central attributes for such groups. in their discussion of critical inquiry groups, nieto and colleagues (2002) emphasize that its humanizing aspects support the work of educators. we conceptualize our work within this collective critical inquiry group as both disruptive and sustaining. given that the cerc is situated within the broader institution of formal education and housed within a college of education at a large, flagship university, its disruptive potential is located at the intersections of its purpose, structure and related activities, and practices. first, its purpose is to disrupt traditional approaches to teacher education and researcher training to center social justice. next, the structure and activities that we participate in diverge from what is typically considered the norm in formal (higher) education, norms which often follow a professor-student model of teaching, learning, and mentorship. through the cerc, dr. green invited and nurtured doctoral students’ individual and collective knowledge(s), expertise, and varied, but intersecting, fields of research. her mentorship was not limited to the space of the cerc; it also extended into the english methods course, where she gave us opportunities to shape the graduate education classroom. in this way, our teaching and learning activities were both altered and transformed, illuminating the implications of developing and sharing critical knowledge(s) in formal educational spaces. as a critical inquiry group of teachers and educational researchers, we inhabit a space of becoming as we draw on each other’s experiences and knowledge to strengthen our individual and collective work. through the cerc, we have not only been apprenticed into the field of educational research, but we have also challenged and critiqued traditional approaches to teaching and research within this field. the opportunity to challenge and critique traditional approaches, has transformed our individual and collective practice by encouraging us to notice and interrupt the ways in which we might be complicit with practices that decenter humanization for the sake of university priorities. therefore, we regularly prioritize engaging with theory to inform our thinking, and practice of research and teaching. in the following section, we share about the theories that have informed our thinking and transformed our work. our work in undergraduate and graduate education studies classrooms and the cerc is nested in a larger conversation about socially just practices for k-12 classrooms. thus, the theories we discuss inform how we introduce https://cultureandvalues.org/ 8 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org socially just content and practices to english teacher-candidates. we also describe how the theories we draw on inform our work with each other as teacher-researchers in the college of education. theoretical standpoints the following theoretical standpoints guide our work as educators, researchers, and cerc members. they also illuminate how educators (re)build inclusive classroom spaces that center the experiences of low-income and working-class students of color in k-12 classrooms. because our work and interests are positioned at the intersection of k-12 and higher education, we imagine that the approaches that we take to conducting research in the space of a critical inquiry group and the implications of what it means to enact critical, culturally sustaining, and decolonizing pedagogies as being equally important and translatable to both contexts. in the context of these reimagined spaces, educators work to unveil societal oppression, provide space for dialogue, empower and demonstrate care for marginalized youth, and engage in political development. teaching for social justice social justice education (sje) extends as far back as the era of enslavement with selfeducation and literacy movements among african americans, the common school movement of the 1830s, and 20th century thinkers such as dewey, dubois, and woodson (spring, 2013). however, sje was recognized and formalized in schools of education in the 1990s. today, sje is found in university courses and programs, k-12 teaching, curriculum and program design (adams et al., 2007). teaching for social justice is a pedagogical approach in and out of the classroom that works to address systemic inequity (e.g., related to race, ethnicity, language, gender, sexuality, ability, and social class.) through academic and critical literacy, towards social action (duncan-andrade & morrell, 2008; picower, 2012). social justice teaching is an umbrella term that encompasses various theories and pedagogies such as critical pedagogy, critical race, culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies, decolonizing pedagogies, ethnic studies, feminist, and social justice pedagogy (adams, 2007; chapman & hobbel, 2010; picower, 2012). social justice teaching provides an academically rigorous curriculum that examines oppression and empowers marginalized students, tends to individual students in a nurturing and caring manner and extends learning beyond the classroom (duncan-andrade & morrell, 2008; picower, 2012). educators’ capacity and willingness to enact teaching for social justice has historically been impacted by a political climate that dismisses equity-based pedagogies. moreover, social justice educators are often forced to either teach in a state of fear, compromise their social justice beliefs, or leave the classroom entirely (lipman, 2009; mcneil, 2009; sleeter, 2012). for educators working towards social justice, it is important to engage students in an analysis of social injustices, provide spaces for reflection and dialogue, and support their development of critical consciousness in order to recognize their humanity and collaborate towards our collective liberation and social transformation (matias, 2013b). https://cultureandvalues.org/ 9 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org critical pedagogy critical theory of education was born out of the need to understand how hegemony, masked in education policy, curriculum, and assessments, marginalizes and/or silences students, especially those from working-class backgrounds (duncan-andrade & morrell, 2008; freire, 1970). critical pedagogy originated from critical theory as a tangible, on-theground method of undermining oppressive schooling structures. freire’s (1970) concept of critical refers to a problem-posing, self-reflective, and dialogic pedagogy that aims to transform oppressive systems. freire also argued that praxis, or “reflection and action directed at structures to be transformed” (p. 51), can lead both oppressors and the oppressed to develop a critical consciousness (or conscientization) about the self, others, and the world. through this (new) naming of the world, those whose voices have been historically silenced (i.e., the oppressed) can subvert stories and realities that are socially constructed (by the oppressors) and often deficit-based (dejong & love, 2015). central to understanding critical pedagogy is the idea that there is a need for education to challenge social domination while developing critical literacy skills (freire, 1970; freire & macedo, 1987). this critical theory of education centers the importance of understanding how hegemony marginalizes students, especially those from working-class backgrounds (freire, 1970; duncan-andrade & morrell, 2008) broadly, enactments of critical pedagogy create and invite space to cultivate the skills for educators and students to engage in the multi-faceted nature of social justice education. as such, these concepts are deeply interconnected and always in relationship to each other. foundational characteristics of critical pedagogy include: working towards social justice in and out of school spaces; creating democratic and healing spaces in education; developing conscientization; deconstructing power, privilege and positivistic notions of knowledge; and engaging teachers and students in a praxis of theory and practice (akom et al., 2008; duncan-andrade & morrell, 2008; darder et al., 2009). critical pedagogy is used to name and examine the ways in which state and institutional structures act as mechanisms of cultural and economic reproduction. through an understanding of how power maintains itself, we can see that transforming educational institutions as necessary if we are to impact all aspects of society to one which is grounded in equity, love, and healing (battiste, 2004). culturally sustaining pedagogies in her highly influential work, gloria ladson-billings (1995) proposed a culturally relevant pedagogy (crp), aimed at the reformation of teacher education, specifically with regard to educating teachers for successful teaching with african american students. such an approach emphasizes teacher praxis and the co-construction of learning communities and environments that both understand and draw on students’ unique personal and cultural strengths. ladson-billings (1995) proposed three goals on which crp practices were grounded. first, teaching must yield academic success. second, teaching must help students develop positive ethnic and cultural identities while simultaneously helping them achieve academically. third, teaching must support students’ ability “to recognize, understand, and critique current and social inequalities” (p. 476). https://cultureandvalues.org/ 10 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org paris (2012) extended ladson-billings’ work further in his conception of culturally sustaining pedagogy (csp), which seeks “to perpetuate and foster—to sustain—linguistic, literate and cultural pluralisms as part of the democratic process of schooling” (p. 95). doing so demands that teachers must commit to the development of knowledge(s) beyond their own, while simultaneously engaging in a practice of critical self-reflection characteristics which are centered in notions of critical and csp. important aspects of the ideological departure from crp include, 1) an explicit focus on the plural and the evolving nature of youth cultural activity, and 2) a commitment to youth culture as holding counterhegemonic potential, though always in need of critical introspection (paris & alim, 2017). decolonizing pedagogies as a response to the logics of imperialism and settler colonialism, decolonizing pedagogies refers to approaches and practices educators and researchers might use to refuse or disrupt complicity in viewing each other, the land and knowledge as property (smith, 2012). in decolonizing educational research (2016), leigh patel argues that this way of viewing each other, the land and knowledge has had “material effects for learning, learners, and research” (p. 71), which can be seen in the traditional ways we practice education and educational research. patel especially pays attention to how black, indigenous, latinx, and asian students are heavily subject to educational intervention based on regular comparison to white students’ achievement scores. tuck (2009) argues that we might suspend the ways in which we rely on documenting narratives of damage and pain in our research, and instead opt to place a “moratorium on damage-centered research” to accomplish three goals: revisioning theories of change, establish tribal and community human research ethics guidelines, and create mutually beneficial roles for academic researchers in community research (pp. 423-424). however, tuck and yang (2012) warn that decolonization is not a metaphor as seen in intentions to decolonize our classrooms. for tuck and yang, decolonization as a metaphor weakens the aim of the concept of decolonization by rewriting settler innocence, or the sense that if we just do decolonization, then we don’t have to radically alter the structures that have created the settler state in which we live. additionally, tuck and yang (2012) describe decolonization as an “elsewhere” and a concept that unsettles us and “offers a different perspective to human and civil rights based approaches to justice” (p. 36). since decolonization is not a metaphor, decolonizing pedagogies can only refer to the ways in which educators and researchers are attempting to acknowledge and draw attention to how the logics of settler colonialism continue to situate land, knowledge and people as property to be owned. further, tuck and yang (2014) argue that researchers might opt for refusal in research, or attempting “to place limits on conquest and the colonization of knowledge by marking what is off limits, which is not up for grabs or discussion, which is sacred and what can’t be known” (p. 225). refusal then becomes a way of pausing to acknowledge how settler colonialism impacts our work and a way of being intentional about how to participate and situate our research (tuck & yang, 2014; patel, 2016). in sum, decolonizing pedagogy is in conversation with a history of imperialism, settler colonialism and how these realities have shaped and situated land, people and knowledge. it https://cultureandvalues.org/ 11 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org is an attempt to notice and name this history in our pedagogical and research practices and calls on us to refuse traditional ways of doing, being and knowing. these theoretical standpoints represent the principles in which we anchor our approaches to social justice education, both in how the methods course and the cerc are designed and enacted. the tenets of critical, culturally sustaining, and decolonizing pedagogies guide the ways in which we engage with our individual and collective research projects and how we (re)imagine the role of english teachers, teacher educators, and students as part of a broader sociopolitical context. finally, these principles inform and remind us of a desired way of being and are woven into the ways that we come together and learn from one another, as people deeply committed to equity, transformation, and liberation in and beyond educational settings. the following section serves to illuminate how we work to apply these theories to our always-developing practice. the cerc’s process of becoming in the early stages of the cerc, dr. green invited us to join a research project involving her english methods course in the college of education. dr. green’s invitation was extended to us as part of her regular praxis of reflection as a scholar-activist and teacherresearcher. committed to social justice teacher education, dr. green reflects on ways her english education classroom can invite opportunities for teacher-candidates to reflect on the political nature and practice of teaching. the ways in which we chose to implement and collaborate on this project not only supported us to regularly meet and establish ourselves as a collective, but also provided the opportunity for us to reflect on our praxis as becoming teacher-researchers. in this section, we describe how we engaged in theory through our cerc meetings and how we allowed our engagement with theory to shape practice in the graduate education classroom. these practices informed how we worked with one another, transformed our individual and collective teaching and learning activities, and illuminated the implications of developing and sharing critical knowledge(s) in formal educational spaces. in this section, we address these implications through a discussion of collective observation, praxis oriented engagements, student led research, shared facilitation, sustaining and enhancing social justice, and humanizing classroom culture and research practices. collective observation for the english methods research project, the members of the collective decided to be both participants in and observers of the english methods course. we acted as participant observers in an attempt to document what was happening and what was said in the course and in teacher-candidate practicum classrooms. overall, our observations and discussions focused on the sociopolitical context of teaching, and how the cerc was supporting, enhancing, or discouraging social justice teaching. the cerc doctoral students participated in the course by joining class each week; getting to know the english teachercandidates; contributing to class discussions; providing feedback on lesson plans; giving presentations based on our areas of educational expertise and research interests; and, https://cultureandvalues.org/ 12 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org journaling in response to class prompts. additionally, we participated in the course as observers, noting how the class discussion moved, the gender dynamics present, teacher candidates’ expressed concerns and challenges, discussions about students, and other notes that helped us identify opportunities to shift or add to the conversation about social justice education and the political nature and practice of teaching. we also observed teacher candidates in their respective middle and high school teaching practicum placements to understand how, if at all, teacher-candidates were becoming social justice educators outside of the graduate education classroom. moreover, as a group, we reflected about our own participation in the methods course after each session to determine how to structure the next week’s class. as the cerc, we also collaborated on the structure and agenda of our member meetings. our collective met regularly to discuss theory, our individual research endeavors, share updates about our progress on the collective research project, and reflect on our observations of the course. additionally, we suggested scholarly articles, books, and media for our collective and the methods course to engage and discuss. in the primary space of the english methods class we were able to hear, observe, and understand the way student teachers were processing what was occurring in the methods class. in addition to our participant observation, we gathered and provided feedback on teacher-candidate journals in which they responded to prompts about assigned readings, class discussions, and their practicum experience(s). through this role and our critical inquiry, we were able to learn pre-service teachers’ perspectives, lessons, frustrations, as well as opportunities for social justice education within both the english teacher-candidate group and their teaching practicum spaces. these perspective-gaining exercises helped us decide how and when we introduced social justice material as well as how to structure class to address the needs of the teacher-candidates. for example, carie gave a presentation about how to develop an english unit for to kill a mockingbird (lee, 1982) after students expressed a desire to learn more about how to apply our discussions about social justice to the english classroom. carie’s presentation addressed the need for a pedagogical skill by offering examples of lessons and activities teacher-candidates could use to create a unit. her presentation also incorporated additional texts such as images, videos, and further readings to illuminate the contours and histories of racism and resistance during the time of the novel and in the present-day u.s. and to center the voices of people of color through the incorporation of counter-storytelling. in the secondary space of this critical collective, members discussed their observations, questions, challenges, and opportunities to use their expertise to make sense of the english methods class. some of these discussions centered around how whiteness, in particular, showed up in the english methods course, especially with regard to how preservice teachers made sense of and either internalized or resisted the implications of their racial identity on their pedagogy. we also held conversations about our own research trajectories and how they intersected with the english methods course. a big part of our dialogue as a collective focused on how student teachers and doctoral students were merging academic and critical literacies, developing professional identities, and providing opportunities for reflection and action. we view this approach to praxis (reflection and https://cultureandvalues.org/ 13 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org action) and the co-construction of knowledge and learning as enactments of the critical and culturally sustaining theories that guide our work. praxis-oriented engagement in addition to the cerc space being a social justice space, the cerc was also a praxisoriented structure that engaged doctoral students in political and pedagogical development. the readings in the cerc space included topics on decolonizing pedagogy, ethnic studies, critical race theory, critiques of neo-liberal education, critical pedagogy, and youth participatory action research. some of the readings were collectively agreed on and aimed at improving both our teaching and research practices. these readings and discussions provided members from the cerc the opportunity to intellectualize our teacher-research practice. during the cerc meetings, we often discussed how we were regularly thinking about our teaching and practice and our facilitation of the english methods class provided a distinct opportunity for us to implement and improve our own praxis. each cerc member possessed different teaching expertise and research interests, so this allowed us to engage with the student teachers in varied ways and model the enactment of socially just lessons and units across intersecting interests of race, gender, and language. our audience -the student teachers -also benefited from this collaborative approach. in exit interviews and transcripts from class discussions, several students reflected on the benefit of learning more about theories and practices related to culturally sustaining pedagogies applied to their practice as developing ela teachers. specifically, they named the importance of incorporating multiple perspectives into one’s teaching practice. from a learner’s perspective, they reflected on the importance of class sessions that invited the voices of educators in the field enacting culturally sustaining pedagogy, and those of local students who attended two class sessions to share their educational experiences as young people of color. in addition to the students who attended schools in urban communities, many of our student speakers also attended predominantly white rural or suburban schools. coupled with their engagement with materials from the methods course that invited counterstories (solorzano & yosso, 2002), these experiences worked to help solidify a more embodied understanding of how critical and culturally sustaining pedagogy can be enacted. in turn, several of the teacher candidates attempted to replicate some of our class activities with their own students. additionally, by bringing voices in from both academic and local communities, we aimed to further demonstrate approaches to centering often silenced and minoritized voices in the context of the classroom (mitra, 2003; stauber, 2017). such approaches not only offer concrete examples for how teachers can disrupt traditional practices, but also served as a model for how and why affinity spaces can be created and sustained. affinity spaces are especially important and beneficial, particularly for students of color attending predominantly white schools. legitimizing collaborative doctoral student-led research understanding the process of a collaborative critical doctoral student-led inquiry group, like the cerc, as legitimate research begins to shift the paradigm of who is seen as a producer of knowledge in the field of education. through an interrogation of our teaching https://cultureandvalues.org/ 14 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org and research, we, as educators and researchers begin to establish ourselves within the teaching and research profession as capable of learning about ourselves through a research process. taking an active and democratic role in developing our own practice shifts the balance of power which, in traditional practices, often lies with the teacher or professor as expert, and doctoral students as learners. what stands out in our becoming as educators, researchers, and doctoral students is that we have the potential to put forth research that does not "emanate solely from theory nor from practice, but from critical reflection on the intersection of the two" (cochran-smith & lytle, 1990, p. 6). shared facilitation different from other types of teacher development (i.e., school-based professional development, curricular workshops, and teacher preparation programs), the cerc was a doctoral student/teacher-led and facilitated space. the cerc members collaborated with dr. green to lead and facilitate sections of the teacher-candidate english methods course. we also collaborated to lead and facilitate the collective’s research meetings while addressing concerns related to our social justice teaching and practice in urban, suburban and rural schooling contexts. in addition, the cerc’s structure approximated a horizontal leadership model, where doctoral students had a say in the decisions being made about the classroom and the research project. the space was created and organized to draw strengths from its members. this orientation allowed the group to determine the focus of the space and how best to develop ourselves pedagogically. facilitation also played a key role for maintaining an inclusive collective space, or one in which we prioritized sharing responsibility and embracing multiple perspectives. throughout the cerc meetings, members were encouraged to facilitate sections of the meeting, such as the check-ins, reading discussions, or the research discussions. in this shared space, multiple voices and perspectives were included to ensure that it reflected the various needs and perspectives of its members, which invited consideration of the diversity of student identities and knowledge that pre-service teachers will ultimately encounter, and we hope, nurture and sustain (paris & alim, 2017). through shared facilitation, the cerc created a cycle of teaching, learning, planning, implementing, and reflecting that was continually informed by this cycle. sustaining and enhancing social justice the cerc members benefited from the collective because we were able to trust our mentor and our peers. we were at times vulnerable with each other, we had to collaborate and were held accountable in the contexts of our teaching and research practices. the trust, vulnerability, collaboration, and accountability are interdependent components of a model of teaching and mentoring that can be described as a sustaining and enhancing social justice teaching (paris, 2012; patel, 2016). the cerc space was disruptive to traditional approaches to research and teacher education and distinct from individualistic, top-down practices that don’t allow for the individualized support, reflexivity, and opportunities to collaborate through shared knowledge that we routinely experienced. the cerc members voluntarily gathered and still gather in an academic space where we are able to share our political and https://cultureandvalues.org/ 15 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org pedagogical views and agendas freely. we view this willingness to meet and engage and the creation of a safe space for sociopolitical conversation as further evidence of the possibilities inherent in sustaining disruptions within academia. a key aspect for the development of teachers is that teachers possess or develop political and ideological clarity. however, often, teaching spaces and meetings might not provide an opportunity to have critical conversations about pedagogy and politics. bartolome (2004) claims that if teachers have political clarity, they will then be able to walk students through the steps of developing their own political consciousness as they interrogate how specific ideologies function in relation to power. trust was also a critical factor to be vulnerable. the structure and membership of the collective modeled vulnerability while providing a space for honest dialogue. we positioned social justice as an ongoing process of reflection and action, which required us to be vulnerable with one another, which in turn, pushed us to articulate both our teaching and research practice and then look to the group for support. we relied on each other to grow and learn. accountability served as a way to support and sustain our teaching for social justice. we held ourselves accountable by allowing our meetings to serve as learning spaces where we gave each other feedback about areas of improvement in teaching or research practices. we debriefed after every session of the english methods class and provided each other with constructive feedback about lessons we prepared for the class. we developed our sense of accountability, with regard to individual and collective research practices, through our involvement in each other’s lines of inquiry and development of ethical research questions and methods. we also challenged ourselves and each other to more deeply understand and anchor our work in critical and culturally sustaining pedagogies by engaging in shared critical introspection to regularly ask how if, at all, we were continuing to perpetuate traditional approaches to teacher education and research and how we might disrupt those approaches (paris, 2012; paris & alim, 2017). for example, kimberly and cee often brought this question up when debriefing the cerc activities in their joint car rides to and from observations and other academic engagements. in one instance, they asked how a desire to support teacher candidate morale in their early stages of pedagogical development often prompts feedback that fails to consider or center the political nature of teaching and instead solely centers notions of best practice modeled after state teacher evaluations. humanizing classroom culture and research practices according to freire (2000), a humanizing process can transform education into a practice of freedom, where students and teachers are complete human beings. san pedro and kinloch (2017) extended notions of humanizing praxis to researchers, calling on engagement in projects in humanization (pih) that center the relationships and experiences we share with one another in ways that emphasize our mutual desires for social justice in schools and communities, as well as in our professional and personal lives. projects in humanization (pih), they posit, are enacted primarily through “dialogic engagements” (p. 374). for the cerc, the idea is, that if pre-service teachers are engaged in a humanizing process, they, in turn, will humanize their students. however, this is a challenge if teachers https://cultureandvalues.org/ 16 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org have not had the opportunity to experience what a humanizing, democratic, liberatory education space looks and feels like. given that freire (2000) describes humanization as the struggle to understand the conditions that make us oppressed and then work to change those conditions, and san pedro’s (2017) centering of relational dialogue, the cerc proved to be important in its ability to nurture group dialogue across and at the intersections of our identities and scholarly interests. in turn, we were left with a feeling of being seen, heard, and valued and benefited immensely from the storying and sharing that transpired. applied to the english methods course, this humanizing approach provided the pre-service teachers with a space to meet, talk, listen, and challenge the isolation and alienation that they sometimes felt at their school sites and their academic spaces while simultaneously developing caring and supportive relationships with the cerc participants. similar to jones (2014), the collective critical inquiry provided support for the educator-researchers, who are also the authors of this piece, to find new meaning for our pedagogical and research possibilities. for example, kimberly developed an anti-sexist curriculum as part of her comprehensive exam requirements, which she later implemented as a series of workshops for pre-service teachers in her dissertation study. daniel is supporting a mentoring initiative for teachers of color and american indigenous teachers interested in ethnic studies in minnesota. cee is in the early stages of theorizing a methodological stance she calls pivoting, or a space of becoming in which one reckons with complicity and embraces the need to shift in the direction(s) of new learning. carie is currently developing a dissertation study aimed to facilitate an intervention utilizing digital storytelling as a tool for helping majority-white english teacher candidates engage in critical self-reflection and examinations of whiteness as part of their development toward culturally sustaining and anti-racist pedagogies. overall, this collaborative, critical inquiry group has helped us reimagine relationships between faculty, doctoral students, and student-teachers and our individual and collective work. conclusion this essay is informed by our experiences as doctoral students, teacher educators, emerging researchers and junior faculty. we remind ourselves often of hooks’ (2003) claim that, “if we are not able to find open spaces in closed systems, we doom ourselves by reinforcing the belief that these educational systems cannot be changed” (p. 73). facilitating an ideological shift within educational institutions is possible, yet only if there is a multilayered approach to address the need for change. it requires dedication from internal agents in educational institutions and organizing from people outside of educational institutions. an important key component to the collective was the inclusion of doctoral student voices. multiple doctoral student voices can enhance the outcomes of a teaching or research endeavor by illuminating factors that might not be visible to a lone teacher or researcher. such factors can include but are not limited to narrow perspectives or understanding that occur as the result of teacher/researcher positionality, prior educational experience(s), and/or varying degrees of experience. additionally, the small size of the group https://cultureandvalues.org/ 17 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org provided an intimate space for doctoral students to develop inquiry questions, action plans, support systems, and collaboration among members. throughout the years, members have supported each other in their trajectories, monitored one another’s progress, and held each other accountable. we view these actions as more than academic supports or endeavors; though they reflect our commitments to one another as students, teachers, and scholars, ultimately, it is the interconnectedness of our shared humanity that guides our work. relationships of mutuality martin luther king, jr. (1963) used the word mutuality to describe our interconnectedness. he claims that “we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly” (para. 4). our involvement in the collective helps us argue that our relationships became transformative and empowering. the flattening of the hierarchy present in doctoral students and faculty, and the development of openness and appreciation of the lived experiences of the student teachers and the members of the collective allowed us to see the importance of mutuality. we suggest that critical pedagogy happens in the intersections of roles and relationships. in our case it was the space where faculty, doctoral students, and student teachers interacted and learned together. the space helped us reconsider how teaching and learning are traditionally thought of and moved us to think of teaching and learning as done with students, not to or for them. our work started with re-imagining our relationships and roles. it was dr. green inviting the doctoral students to collaborate in learning with studentteachers and in teaching the class with her. it was thinking of our research questions together, and the goals for our collaborative inquiry on teaching for social justice. we believe that this is essential in establishing a culture of collaborative critical inquiry and democratizing knowledge production. in developing this shared vision for social justice, we shift in thinking about our individual research agendas to our collaborative research agenda. this essay is an attempt as doctoral students, teacher educators, youth workers, and social justice minded folks to examine how social justice teaching was sustained and enhanced through a collective critical inquiry group. we do not romanticize our work in urban and rural schools and spaces of teacher education, but instead think of social justice teaching as an ongoing and arduous process. a process which, when supported and sustained through community, holds great potential to disrupt both what it means to be teacher educators and education researchers in training. ultimately, if we hope to disrupt the practices that have prevailed in teacher training and educational research, we must first disrupt the power relations that exist in colleges of education between faculty and students and faculty and student teachers. https://cultureandvalues.org/ 18 journal of culture and values in education volume 3 issue 1, 2020 morales morales, d., ruggiano, c., carter, c., pfeifer, k. j., & green, k. l., disrupting to sustain: teacher preparation through innovative teaching and learning practices journal of culture and values in education © copyright 2020 e-issn: 2590-342x https://cultureandvalues.org references adams, m. 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(2014). r-words: refusing research. in d. paris & m. t. winn (eds.), humanizing research: decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223-247). sage. https://cultureandvalues.org/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1047621022000023316 http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x12441244 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej852632 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0042085911431472 microsoft word 1-10_noonan.docx studies in social justice volume 5, issue 1, 1-10, 2011   correspondence address: jeffrey noonan, department of philosophy, university of windsor, windsor, on n9b 3p4, canada. tel.: +1 519 253-3000 x 2396; email: jnoonan@uwindsor.ca issn: 1911-4788 life value and social justice jeffrey noonan department of philosophy, university of windsor since its publication in 1971, john rawls’ a theory of justice has defined the terrain of political philosophical debate concerning the principles, scope, and material implications of social justice. social justice for rawls concerns the principles that govern the operation of major social institutions. major social institutions structure the lives of citizens by regulating access to the resources and opportunities that the formulation and realization of human projects require. rawls’ theory of social justice regards major institutions as just when they distribute what he calls “primary goods” in a manner that he regards as egalitarian. hence, the subsequent social justice debate has been shaped by and large as a debate about the meaning and implications of egalitarianism. while on the surface a debate about egalitarianism as a distributional principle seems to uncover the core problem of social justice—how much of what everyone should get as a matter of right—the entire history of the debate has been conducted in abstraction from what matters most to people’s lives. it is as a corrective to such abstractions that the life-value approach to social justice has been developed. in this introduction i have three aims. first, i will substantiate the claim that the debate over social justice that has dominated political philosophy from rawls until the present is abstracted from what ultimately matters. second, i will provide a concise conceptual history of the development of life-value onto-axiology, defining its key terms and providing an overview of its importance for social justice. finally, i will provide a brief discussion of the unifying principle of this special issue and each of the four papers that make it up. primary goods, equality, and life-value i claimed above that the mainstream philosophical debate concerning social justice initiated by rawls is abstracted from what matters most to humanity. in order to substantiate this claim it is necessary to begin with a discussion of rawls’ theory itself. for rawls social justice concerns the principles that regulate the way in which major social institutions distribute what he calls “primary goods.” primary goods are “things that every rational man is presumed to want. these goods normally have a 2 jeffrey noonan   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   use whatever a person’s plan of life. for simplicity’s sake, assume that the chief primary goods at the disposition of society are rights, liberties and opportunities, and wealth and income” (rawls, 1999, p. 54). these are to be distributed according to two principles of social justice, and the principles interpreted according to the “difference principle.” the two principles of justice are: “each person is to have equal rights to the most extensive share of equal liberties compatible with a similar scheme for others. second, social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage, and b) attached to positions and offices open to all” (rawls, 1999, p. 53). the difference principle decisively affects the concrete application of these principles to the distributions of primary goods. it maintains that inequalities are permissible as incentives to the wealthy to act so as to ensure that the “economic process is more efficient, [and] innovation proceeds at a faster pace,” and, in general, becomes more productive, creating more wealth overall, and therefore a larger pool of resources for the poorer members of society (rawls, 1999, p. 68). widely assumed to be a depth critique of american capitalist society upon its publication, with some going so far as to believe it socialist, rawls argument is still a touchstone of egalitarian critiques of the prevailing socio-economic system (gutman, 1999, p. 17). nevertheless, a close investigation of its key terms reveals that it is neither critical nor egalitarian in a way that would make a material difference to the goodness of the lives of the least well off members of society. the crucial problem is that neither rawls nor his most famous interlocutors in the debate ever question, or even define, the ruling money-value system of the global capitalist market. instead, the legitimacy of this value system is presupposed, and debate confined to arguments over what amount of money should be redistributed from rich to poor, while the deeper problem of control over and use of life-sustaining and life-developing resources is never even broached. in illustration of this problem consider rawls’ definition of primary goods. the problem with this definition encapsulates the problem of the subsequent debate. quite simply, the problem with the definition is that it confuses goods that are primary values within the capitalist market system with goods that are primary values to human life. in liberal-capitalist society rights, liberties, and income appear primary, because they are the means by which the system reproduces and legitimates itself. human life, by contrast, reproduces itself through collective labour in the natural field of life-support through which the resources our lives require are appropriated or produced. different systems of collective labour are legitimate or not according to whether they enable everyone to satisfy their life requirements. real primary goods are the resources, practices, institutions, and relationships that support and enable life-activity. contra rawls, therefore, primary goods are not relative to particular social systems, and it is not rational to want them in unlimited amounts, but only in those amounts sufficient for purposes of life-maintenance and development. unlimited demand for life-requirements is materially irrational because appropriation of scarce life-goods at unsustainable levels undermines the very possibility of on-going life. rather than capture that which is fundamental to social justice, rawls confuses the system-values of a liberal-capitalist society with primary life-values, and normalizes the pathological demand for endless accumulation as “rational” regardless of the life value and social justice 3 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   actual extent of one’s own or others’ need. instead of defining and explicating what is actually primary to embodied rational life—the resources, relationships, institutions, and practices which support life and enable the development of its vital capacities—rawls assumes as primary the prevailing system-values, even though these are demonstrably destructive of the natural system of life-support and billions of peoples’ lives within different human societies. people’s lives are destroyed because the ecosystems they depend upon are destroyed or because they cannot afford to pay the money-price attached to commodified life-requirements. yet, as his invocation of the difference principle proves, rawls premises the possibility of social justice not on the spread of a commitment to egalitarianism in society, but to the unfettered growth of money-value—precisely the cause of the problem his theory is supposed to address. as i have noted, rawls’ theory has not been uncontroversial and it has given rise to a host of sympathetic critiques. the best of those critiques, by sen, pogge, and cohen focus on the ways in which rawls ignores the question of what people are actually able to do and achieve, his failure to consider the problems of the global distribution of wealth, and the contradiction between his professed egalitarianism and the difference principle (cohen, 1989, 2008; pogge, 1989, 2008; sen, 1992, 1999, 2009). as important as these argument have been in exposing the complexity of the philosophical and political problems posed by the goal of equality, they too all fail to supply the key principle missing from the entire debate: precise specification of a criterion by which to distinguish the resources, relationships, institutions, and practices that justice demands people have access to, from the values that liberalcapitalist society depends upon for its reproduction. this criterion can only be discovered if philosophy understands people not as atomic, self-maximizing consumers, as in classical liberalism and neo-classical economics, but as organically and socially interdependent members of natural fields of life-support and social fields of life-development. all are silent on this key issue because all begin from unquestioned acceptance of the prevailing value system as ultimate rather than the universal value system grounded in the natural and social systems of life-support and development. lifevalue onto-axiology, in contrast, distinguishes itself from existing value theories and social and political philosophies by uncovering and systematically explicating this real life-ground of value. it is from this life-ground of value, that the life-value theory of social justice derives, and its systematic explanation and application is the focus of this special issue of the journal. the life-ground of value, in the most general terms, is everything that is required for the survival and development of human and ecological life and their life-support systems. subjectively, it is “the connection of life to life’s requirements as a felt bond of being” (mcmurtry, 1998, p. 23). as is evident, the life-ground of value is deeper than the ruling value system of any society since it underlies the possibility and value of all life, not just human. it becomes relevant for theories of social justice as the objective basis by which goods which are of ultimate value because they are required for the maintenance and development of this life—as distinguished from system-values which allow a given social system to replicate and grow at the cumulative cost of human and planetary existence. that which the life-ground of value distinguishes as of ultimate value are life-requirements, or needs. liferequirements may be distinguished from consumer demands according to what 4 jeffrey noonan   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   mcmurtry has called the n-criterion: those resources, relationships, practices and institutions whose deprivation causes harm in the form of loss of organic lifecapacity. (mcmurtry, 1998, p. 164). from this life-grounded standpoint social justice requires that the ruling value system of any society ensure the universal lifenecessities for all. while other attempts have been made to define needs and posit their satisfaction as the basis of social justice, none of them have formulated a precise criterion of need, nor, in the case of human needs, successfully integrated the natural and social dimensions of human existence, nor, most importantly, uncovered the deeper lifeground within which human needs are anchored (see for example, braybrooke, 1987; doyal & gough, 1991; hamilton, 2006; lebowitz, 2010). the exemplary significance of life-value onto-axiology is thus not just that it supplies a criterion of need missing in other theories of social justice, but that it grounds social justice in universal life-needs and the capacities that they and only they enable. the comprehensive value theory undergirding the life-value understanding of social justice further supersedes the antitheses of nature and society, individual and community, life-requirements and life-capacities. this comprehensive value theory attains its fullest explication and defence in mcmurtry’s “what is good, what is evil: the value of all values across times, places, and theories” in the encyclopaedia of life-support systems. (eolss) (mcmurtry, 2010). the eolss is the world’s most comprehensive encyclopaedia of disciplinary and technical knowledges and has evolved to provide all that is required for the maintenance and development of life across divisions. what mcmurtry’s farreaching work shows inter alia is a blindness within philosophy to what is selfevident once it has been uncovered: that life is both a presupposition of value (in the sense that creatures must be alive to experience or accomplish anything) and valuable in itself in the ranges of life enjoyed which can be more or less comprehensive. there are two essential forms of life-value: the instrumental or ultimate value of that which sustains and enables life, and the intrinsic value of the enjoyed expressions of the life-capacities of feeling, thought, and action (mcmurtry, 2010, p.74). both are comprehended under the primary value axiom: x is of value if and only if and to the extent that x consists in or enables a more coherently inclusive range of thought/experience/action (2010, p.73). the qualifier “more coherently inclusive range” is essential to the success of life-value onto-axiology in overcoming the antitheses into which other theories fall. theories of social justice which are not anchored in consciousness of the lifeground of value tend to set the natural and social dimensions of human being at odds with each other, or see the relationship between human individuals and social organization as one of opposition and threat, or fail to properly explicate the organic relationship between life-requirement satisfaction and life-capacity development. productivist interpretations of marxism which link the achievement of social justice to the creation of a socialist society, and understand socialist society as removing the “fetters” on the growth of the productive forces are paradigm examples of the first problem. all social life depends upon the natural field of life-support, a fact ignored by marxist theory to the extent that it treats nature and other life as nothing but raw material for the satisfaction of human needs understood as culturally appropriate levels of demand satisfaction. this problem has its roots in marx’s own inability to life value and social justice 5 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   rigorously distinguish life-requirements from ever-growing consumer demands (marx, 1973, p. 163). in life-value axiology, by contrast, life-valuable levels of social productivity are determined by the concrete principle of life-sufficiency: a just society does not seek unlimited material abundance but sufficiency of resources to the purpose of universal and comprehensive satisfaction of life-requirements. the second problem is exemplified in liberal theories of social justice which, because they assume individuals are atomic abstractions arrayed in competitive relations with others, cannot coherently reconcile individual goals and social institutions and regulating principles. nussbaum’s version of the “capabilities approach” to social justice is a paradigm case. nussbaum correctly understands human beings as both “capable and needy” and understands need satisfaction as instrumental to the expression and enjoyment of human capacities in a “flourishing life.” (nussbaum, 1995, p. 75). she nevertheless maintains that human beings are essentially separate from each other such that their primary concern is maintaining their “liberty.” from this doctrine of the separateness of persons she infers the practical conclusion that “economic needs should not be met by denying liberty” (2000, p. 12). for life-value onto-axiology the opposition between satisfying economic needs and denying liberties does not arise, because human beings are not considered as essentially separate from each other, but interrelated and interdependent within the natural and social fields of life-support and lifedevelopment. socially produced wealth is a collective creation of human beings labouring in a natural world they did not create. as a collective product, social wealth is properly understood as common wealth to be used for the sake of universal and comprehensive satisfaction of life-requirements. individuality is enabled by each persons access to the universal life means and goods. in this view life-valuable liberty grows out of or emerges from this shared commitment to universal and comprehensive need-satisfaction. liberty of a life-valuable form is thus never threatened by collective efforts to ensure life-requirements are satisfied, because liberty in any meaningful sense presupposes such satisfaction. the real threat to liberty in the life-valuable sense comes from the opposite direction: the private accumulation of money-wealth not serving anyone’s life-need and attained through life-blind economic processes. the final opposition which life-value onto-axiology resolves is between liferequirement satisfaction and life-capacity development. both liberal and socialist theories of social justice which concern themselves with life-requirement satisfaction do so in the name of some undefined conception of human flourishing or the realization of human potential. but neither liberal nor socialist theories have any means coherent with their premises of specifying limits to capacity realization. liberals, fearful of charges of tyrannical limits to individual liberty, leave the direction of capacity realization entirely up to the arbitrary preferences of private individuals, or more deeply, the life-value indifferent system which leaves little choice for most people. sen for example thus feels that social justice is an institutional arrangement which enables people to live in the ways they have “reason to value” without saying anything further about what those reasons are or the content of the values those reasons support (sen, 1999, p. 87). his position is thus left open to the objection that not all lives that people have reason to value are good lives, either because the life contributes nothing good to the world or because it actively makes things worse for 6 jeffrey noonan   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   others. marxists too fall into a similar trap with loose and ungrounded talk about unlimited realization of potential. michael lebowitz, who has done much to defend a non-dogmatic humanist marxism defends socialism on the basis of the claim that it enables the all-round development of human capacities, without noting that the allround development of human capacities does not coherently exclude their development in life-destructive ways (lebowitz, 2010, p. 43). while it might seem obvious once disclosed, the point must nevertheless be explicitly made, that lifevaluable modes of capacity expression and enjoyment is distinct from full capacity realization, because the life-valuable forms are limited by considerations of the lifeinterests of other creatures and human beings. individual modes of capacity expression which worsen the natural and social fields without which no capacities at all can be expressed are objectively self-undermining. life-grounded social justice therefore requires what mcmurtry calls the life-coherence principle to establish the materially rational limits to individual and system demands. hence social justice does not create the conditions for unlimited capacity expression, but capacity expression which enables planetary and human life as a whole (mcmurtry, 2010, p. 97). this “life-coherence principle” as the ultimate ruling value of a socially just society has not been easily won. it is the outcome of a philosophical struggle that mcmurtry began 40 years ago through overland travels across over 80 countries in africa, the middle east and asia. he was progressively moved to understand the depth reasons behind the impoverishment and deprivation of people’s lives that he observed in his journey. initially, mcmurtry sought for an understanding of those causes in marxism. yet, as he systematically worked through marx’s texts, he became struck by the way in which considerations of life-need and life-capacity were increasingly displaced in favour of so-called “laws of motion” of capitalist society and the growth of the forces of production as the mechanical, and morally meaningless, driving force of historical development (mcmurtry, 1978). the limitations of marxism prompted mcmurtry to reflect upon the broader history of philosophy, a history which he discovered was marked by silence about the ultimate problem of human life-organization: what serves life, what destroys life, and what the systemic social blockages to understanding this difference are (mcmurtry, 1979, 1981, 1988, 1989). the actual turn towards an explicit theorization of the life-ground of value, the real origin of life-value onto-axiology, did not occur until 1998 and the publication of unequal freedoms. from that point on he has elaborated it in two subsequent books, numerous journal articles, and, most comprehensively and importantly, in the theme essay for unesco’s encyclopaedia of life-support systems, “what is good: what is evil: the value of all values across times, places, and theories” (mcmurtry, 1998, 1999, 2002, 2010). the articles collected in this special issue of studies in social justice, including mcmurtry’s comprehensive contribution, continue the process of elaborating and spelling out life-value ontoaxiology’s central importance to the solution of the most pressing theoretical and practical social and political problems in the contemporary world. life value and social justice 7 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   the papers the collection begins with the lead essay by mcmurtry. this lead essay provides a brief historical account of the development of life-value onto-axiology for readers unfamiliar with it, develops clear explanations of its core concepts, and, most importantly, extends his previous work on human rights into constructing a systematic life-value understanding of social justice (mcmurtry, 2011). unlike the competing theories discussed above, the life-value theory of social justice begins from that which truly is primary: the natural and social requirements without which human life can neither survive nor develop. mcmurtry’s article patiently works through the limitations of so-called “pro-life” advocacy both liberal theory and classical marxism, but it reserves its most formidable critical energies to expose and combat the real enemy of social justice: the underlying money-value regime of the “global corporate rights system.” internalized as the unquestioned and unquestionable value paradigm governing public and private behaviour, it mandates as “good” the instrumentalization of all that exists as means for the maximal production and accumulation of money-value for corporate entities (with a definitive criterial account of what a “corporation” exactly is in law and practice). richly illustrated with real-world examples, mcmurtry’s contribution lays bare the systematic threat absolutist corporate rights pose to the world, but also, and more importantly, the underlying life-value alternative of society’s organizing rights. this alternative is not based on theoretical abstraction but on our real life-ground that includes the air we breathe, the water and land we live from and the public, civil commons institutions we have built. the subsequent three essays apply the key concepts of life-value onto-axiology to important practical dimensions of social justice—the food system, education, and human rights in international law. three of the authors: jennifer sumner, howard woodhouse, and giorgio baruchello, are leading figures in the development and explication of the theory and practice of life-grounded social justice. the fourth author, rachael lorna johnstone lends her expertise in international law in a collaborative effort to bring life-value onto-axiology to bear on the legal side of human rights theory and practice. all, with the exception of johnstone, have published widely on core aspects of life-value philosophy previously (baruchello, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010; sumner, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010; woodhouse, 2001, 2001a, 2003, 2003a, 2005, 2009, forthcoming). the first two papers argue that advancing the cause of social justice requires that the food system and the educational system become civil commons institutions. as civil commons institutions they would be governed by the goal of universal provision and protection of life-requirements and life-standards. in each case their life-value as civil commons institutions is threatened by privatization and instrumentalization by the ruling money-value system. in the third paper, baruchello works for the first time with international human rights expert rachael lorna johnstone in a first foray to link together the concepts of (life) value and (human) rights, demonstrating that international law already has a language for life-value and that a nuanced appreciation of the latter concept amongst human rights specialists can bring about a more effective interpretation and implementation of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (icescr). 8 jeffrey noonan   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   sumner’s essay continues her important work on the global food system. her paper asks what a socially just food system would look like. as she demonstrates, the present global food system treats food as a commodity and its value as the money-profit returns it generates, primarily for large corporate agribusinesses. this corporate food system is indifferent to the nutritional value of the food it produces, to whether people can afford to pay for its food-commodities, and the life-conditions of farmers and farm workers which produce for it. since all who require nutritious food cannot access it under the ruling corporate food-commodity system, it cannot be socially just. social justice from the life-value perspective demands the comprehensive satisfaction of universal life-requirements for the sake of people’s wider and deeper expression and enjoyment of their life-capacities. hence, a socially just food system, sumner concludes, must be grounded in local control over arable lands, crops, and distribution systems and be governed by the overriding goal of sustainable provision of nutritious and healthy food as what each and all of their lives require. in other words, social justice demands that the food system function as a civil commons institution in which people are brought together in a spirit of cooperation and organized, shared commitment to the goal of ensuring the universal satisfaction of our basic need for healthy food. as essential as our need for healthy food is, our human nature is not realized by its provision alone. human nature is integrally natural and social. as food and water are to our body, so is education to our mind: the fundamental condition of its health and development. education is the most fundamental socio-cultural institutional requirement for the development of the cognitive and imaginative capacities that are the foundation for all humanly creative activity. in his paper woodhouse defends the life-value of education as a civil commons institution, exposing the threat posed to it by the subjugation of higher education to corporate-market values. woodhouse does not simply defend philosophical claims in the abstract, but makes his case through a discussion of an attempt to realize life-value principles of social justice by higher education outside of administration control. woodhouse’s essay examines the efforts of academics and community members to build the “people’s free university of saskatchewan” as an alternative to the increasingly corporatized agenda of the university of saskatchewan. his paper illustrates the ways in which civil commons institutions bind people together in pursuit of their shared life-interests, but also the difficulties the attempt to extend the logic of the civil commons—unpriced provision of necessary life-goods and services—faces in the concrete social conditions which currently prevail. one fundamental reason why it is so difficult to extend the logic of civil commons provision, even when it is clear to everyone that this logic is not only morally sound, but practically superior to market models of production and distribution, is because the typical interpretation of rights upon which the public morality of liberalcapitalism rests assumes that all collective action, from above or below, compromises individual freedom. nevertheless, picking up on a theme from mcmurtry, baruchello and johnstone examine the nature and implications of international human rights law, in particular the icescr and interpret it from a lifevalue perspective. this binding treaty includes, amongst others, clearly defined rights to “adequate food” (substantively more than a right “not to be hungry”) and “education… directed to the full development of the human personality” (icescr, life value and social justice 9 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   articles 11 and 13), the themes addressed by sumner and woodhouse. what the authors find is a comprehensive set of life-necessities recognized in international law and endorsed by no less than 160 of 192 united nations member states, including the liberal economies of the entire european area and canada. nonetheless, the authors recognize that these rights are not universally enjoyed in practice and examine the competing conceptions of value that hinder their fulfilment, not least the political ambivalence towards any substantial redistribution of resources, which shields itself behind a competing “right” to private property, a right that is not itself protected in either of the principal international human rights treaties, the icecsr or the international covenant on civil and political rights. the paper, written in light of the austerity packages sweeping the developed world, thus emphasizes the potential for protection of the life-ground that is offered by international human rights law, even as conceived of as consisting of individual entitlements. moreover, they argue that mcmurtry’s life-value framework provides a coherent model to evaluate state performance under the treaty. together these four papers provide a systematic account of social justice from the life-grounded standpoint. the importance of the life-value perspective grows in proportion to the severity of life-crises our world faces. these life-crises affect the natural conditions of planetary life in general, and the social, political, economic, and cultural conditions of good human lives in particular. the papers printed herein provide the theoretical and conceptual resources needed to understand the depth causes of these crises, and the practical tools which any efficacious solutions will require. references baruchello, g. 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(forthcoming). your money or your life! a critical canadian perspective on the world bank's "reform agenda" for higher education. international education. rauchberg final correspondence address: jessica sage rauchberg, department of communication studies & media arts, mcmaster university, hamilton, on, l8s 4l8; email: jess.rauchberg@gmail.com issn: 1911-4788 volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 imagining a neuroqueer technoscience jessica sage rauchberg mcmaster university, canada abstract the rise of mobile communication applications and technologies presents promising therapeutic and accessibility-related interventions for neurodivergent users. however, top-down approaches in human-computer interaction (hci) research often prioritize the needs and goals of allistic and neurotypical researchers and secondary stakeholders in media creation. furthermore, media technologies are created with a one-size-fits-all approach, with the intent of rehabilitating or curing neurodivergent ways of being. this article imagines neuroqueer technoscience as an extension of crip technoscience that amplifies new styles of relationality, selfexpression, and communication practices within the development of information and communication technologies (icts). using an interdisciplinary framework informed by crip technoscience and human-computer interaction research, the author presents three tenets for mediating neuroqueer subjectivities. keywords crip technoscience; human-computer interaction; neuroqueer studies; science and technology studies; disability justice introduction: locating a neuroqueer technoscience i am not an ideal user. by this, i mean bodyminds like mine are not the ones designers have in mind when prototyping new technologies.1 all of my electronic devices use dark mode. my left ear can hear, but processes sound within a defective range, or so a neuropsychologist once gleefully told me. this difference in audio-processing makes videos, vlogs, and other multimedia texts challenging to follow. closed captions or communication access real-time transcriptions (cart) transformed my relationship with 1 here, i am referring to eli clare’s (2017) terminology to determine the “inextricable relationship between our bodies and our minds” (p. xvi). the term “bodymind” is used to counter cartesian conceptualizations of the body/mind divide, which lead to ideologies of curing or erasing disability. thinking about the body and mind as separate from one another and better than the other entity (re)produces ideas about ableism. imagining a neuroqueer technoscience studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 371 media texts. i stim between website clicks and phone pickups. i rely on alt text and image descriptions when a website or post does not use high contrast color combinations. often i will use my laptop’s accessibility feature to read a page aloud to me. these retrofitted accessibility features make use of information and communication technology (ict) for neurodivergent and disabled users.2 cyberspace is a site of possibility. it may not be the option that everyone desires, but it presents many directions for world-making – if we want them. bodyminds like mine are not thought of as using the internet or other forms of new media technology. several human-computer interaction (hci) and feminist science and technology studies (sts) scholars have rightfully remarked on the pervasive imagining of a white cisgender male living in the global north as the consummate target group for the latest phone or tablet (see chun, 2011; nakamura, 2013; noble, 2018; wacjman, 1991). a growing market of neurodivergent-related new media technologies, such as speech/language supports, artificial intelligence, and gamified physical therapy, is intended to advance physical, cognitive, and social wellness (alper, 2017; gardner et al., 2021). however, despite the influx of media creation for disabled communities, many technologists design icts with a “solutions-based” method (ymous et al., 2020). these top-down commitments champion the needs of neurotypical designers, caregivers, and other stakeholders over neurodivergent users. such icts, marketed under the guise of therapeutic support, enforce aspects of cure and rehabilitation, reinstating centuries of the medical and psychiatric-industrial complex’s violence and harm against disabled people (ymous et al., 2020), which are now redistributed for the digital age. these practices typically position neurodivergent people as docile, passive subjects who veer outside the confines of humanity, and are rarely shown as researchers, designers, and experts in their own lived experiences (spiel et al., 2020; williams & gilbert, 2020; yergeau, 2018). however, what if we were always already experts? what if deficit was never part of the design process, but collective justice and liberation were? perhaps one way past rehabilitative and curative technoscience is through neuroqueerness, which positions autism and other forms of neurodivergency as “a neurologically queer motioning” that “defies and desires… toward disabled futures” (yergeau, 2018, pp. 18-19). what does the addition of neuroqueer provide for media creation? to pursue these questions, this essay extends recent conversations about crip design, language, and world-making. more specifically, i derive my analytical stance from aimi hamraie and kelly fritsch’s (2019) working 2 i use neurodivergent as a descriptor for individuals whose cognitive functioning differs from neurologically typical people (hughes, 2016). my inclusion use of neurodivergent centers autism, but also prioritizes learning disabilities, intellectual disabilities, adhd, tourette’s syndrome, dementia disorders, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and other identities. jessica sage rauchberg studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 372 definition of crip technoscience. this practice brings feminist science and technology studies into conversation with disability justice to name “practices of critique, alteration, and reinvention” that transform social relations and harness frictive political action (hamraie & fritsch, 2019, p. 1). my thinking is also informed through articulations of crip hci (williams et al., 2021), which draws from disability justice and critical disability scholarship to acknowledge a more pluralistic conceptualization of cripistemological design, computing, and creation. finally, i present neuroqueer technoscience as an expansion of crip technoscience that reveals how frictive material and structural change can facilitate new possibilities for political-cultural neuroqueer subjectivity in mediated spaces. building on crip technoscience’s anti-assimilationist commitments to material and structural transformation, i imagine neuroqueer technoscience working within these fluid boundaries to facilitate new possibilities for relationality, self-expression, and communication practices in technology creation. my argument is not that neuroqueer technoscience opposes crip technoscience or that neurodivergent people can only practice neuroqueer technoscience. instead, i suggest that both crip and neuroqueer technoscience are interconnected by potential nodes of world-(re)making. following these sticky and frictive threads, i propose here an idea of neuroqueer technoscience, addressing the ways neurodivergent people were always already creating, making, and engaging with technology. to do this, i amplify the previous work of neurodivergent scholars, cultural workers, and self-advocates (as well as accomplices) who note the exclusion of neurodivergent people from various forms of disability rights activism and organizing (indigenous action media, 2014; sins invalid, 2019). by neuroqueer, i am referring to a collective disidentification by neurodivergent communities from conceptualizations and heteronormative ideas of assimilation to neurotypicality and heteronormativity (egner, 2018). furthermore, i use neuroqueer to demarcate neurodivergent-led movements of cultural and media production within crip technoscience that disidentify with mainstream and neurotypical epistemologies for developing icts that center the needs and leadership of neurodivergent users. thus, my notion of neuroqueer technoscience aims to compliment crip technoscience (hamraie & fritsch, 2019) with its direct dissent from compulsory able-mindedness (kafer, 2013), and amplify neurodivergent-led expertise and creation. my conceptualization of neuroqueer technoscience is also strongly influenced by my own experiences as a multiply neurodivergent queer femme.3 as neuroqueer blogger ibby grace (2013) notes, the term neuroqueer is not exclusive. while neuroqueer originates from autistic self-advocacy circles, 3 i have “formal” diagnoses of non-verbal learning disability (nvld), visuo-spatial impairment, dyscalculia, and adhd. like many autistics, i too think of nvld as an autism misdiagnosis. i prefer to use “neurodivergent” or “neuroqueer” as a way of embracing the embodied disruption to neurotypicality. imagining a neuroqueer technoscience studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 373 any neurodivergent person who feels seen or liberated by the term may use it. neuroqueer is fluid in its tangibility and meanings, its connections to individuals, cultural texts, and communities. nick walker (2015) argues that neuroqueerness intends to unsettle “one’s cultural conditioning toward conformity and compliance with dominant norms… working to transform social and cultural environments” where a full expression of neurodivergence is “permitted, accepted, and encouraged.” here, i am interested in how neuroqueer logics can be used in conversation with crip technoscience to reassess and collectively transform what kinds of disability-related icts are designed and who is centered in the design process. like crip technoscience’s commitment to anti-assimilationist politics, i envision neuroqueer technoscience to disrupt networks of oppression beyond ableism and sanism.4 for instance, if racism, ableism, and classism are dominant norms in mainstream technoscientific creation, how does neuroqueer technoscience work with crip technoscience to disrupt such networks? how does neuroqueerness transform our relationships with media, power, and culture? finally, i am interested in the knowledge production and futures to which a neuroqueer technoscience may lead us. what happens when we take the other path? what happens when we create using stimming, augmentative and alternative communication (aac),5 and other neuroqueer communication styles? this essay imagines one possibility for what a neuroqueer technoscience could be, inviting readers to engage and dialogue. i outline three potential working guidelines for establishing neuroqueer technoscientific practices. in doing so, i hope to carve out a pathway for thinking beyond ableist and sanist discrimination in technology research. i draw primarily from critical/cultural studies, which are concerned with “investigat[ing] discourses of power and knowledge… cultural dominance and resistance in media… and social institutions” (ono, 2009, p. 2). my framing for neuroqueer technoscience challenges technoableism and neurotypicality in accessible and assistive technology research while extending critique to imagine a pathway to possibilities beyond. the essay is organised as follows. i first address common issues of ableism in technology research and interventions from crip and disability justice perspectives in technoscience. i then outline three working tenets of neuroqueer technoscience, drawing from previous projects, conversations, and concepts that embody each guideline. these tenets are certainly not the 4 i follow talila “tl” lewis’ working definition of ableism. they currently define ableism as: “a system that places value on people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normality, intelligence, desirability, and productivity. these constructed ideas are deeply rooted in anti-blackness, misogyny, and colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism… leading to… society determining who is valuable and worthy” (lewis, 2021). 5 used by nonand semi-speaking people, aac technologies augment already existing communication styles (e.g., gesturing) and offer an alternative to verbal speech (alper, 2017, p. 12). aac technologies can range from low-tech activity mats to apps utilized through a tablet computer that create synthesized oral speech (alper, 2017, p. 14). jessica sage rauchberg studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 374 only possibilities for scholars, self-advocates, technologists, or other communities who may benefit from crip and neuroqueer technoscience. however, these ideas may present transformative opportunities that place neurodivergent people at the center of the creation, design, and user processes. in conclusion, i address neuroqueer technoscience’s potentialities in theoretical and applied contexts, noting its significant contributions to the study, creation, and use of icts. my understanding of neuroqueer technoscience is deeply informed by the critical lessons that i have learned from autistic and neurodivergent elders, teachers, friends, colleagues, thinkers, scholars, and community members. thank you. this work is for you and us. beyond technoableism in ict design icts provide new possibilities for accessible and assistive media technologies. for example, the introduction of the tablet computer in the early 2010s presented opportunities for new mobile applications to support learning, communication, and social accessibility needs for many disabled users, especially neurodivergent people (alper, 2017; ellcessor, 2016). however, many of these devices and applications center on the needs and research goals of neurotypical design teams who prioritize rehabilitation and assimilation to guide technoscientific practice (hamraie & fritsch, 2019). additionally, design teams often take a “top-down” approach to develop technology, and non-disabled researchers become the agentic experts, while neurodivergent people are treated as passive users whose only role is to test out proofs of concept (gardner et al., 2021). ashley shew (2020) designates these practices as forms of technoableism, “a specific type of ableism around hyped and emerging technologies” (p. 41). technoableism presents disability as unnatural, unruly, and needing intervention via assimilation; this constrains the agency of disabled people.6 shew (2020) explains that technoableist rhetoric presents curative technology as good for disabled people while recycling ableist tropes (p. 43). technoableism is not an isolated issue: meryl alper (2021) notes that oppressions like technoableism are exacerbated by racism and classism, which determine who is a user and how access is (not) granted. akin to the boundary hamraie and fritsch (2019) draw between disability technoscience and crip technoscience, alper makes the vital distinction between mediated autism-friendly spaces and autistic-led cultural spaces, moving away from the idea of accessibility as something universally experienced and practiced (2021, p. 843). such issues echo throughout hci and aging studies (e.g., by prioritizing assistive devices for neurodivergent older adults), where 6 technoableism is not necessarily only an issue of representation; lack of disabled and neurodivergent programmers, technologists, and designers is also a significant issue. imagining a neuroqueer technoscience studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 375 neurodivergent users are rarely imagined as experts (see lazar et al., 2017). akin to autism research on technology, agency, and power, technoableism in this area of ict creation positions neurodivergent older adults as passive users whose neurotypes can be “cured” by using an app. technoableist rhetorics are not accidental: they intentionally reveal interlocking white supremacist networks of power and control in ict design, demonstrating (techno)ableism’s sticky relations to racism, classism, transphobia, homophobia, and other structures of marginalization (see benjamin, 2019). what is the next step if most icts designed to support and assist neurodivergent users discriminate against us? i think neuroqueer technoscience has much to learn from the practices and tactics developed by black and african american programmers and technologists in the late 20th century. in black software, charlton mcilwain (2019) offers essential considerations about diversity and representation in the tech industry. mcilwain asks: will our current or future technological tools ever enable us to outrun white supremacy… after all, [white supremacy] is not just our country’s founding principle. it is also the core programming that preceded and animated the birth, development and… computational systems. (2019, p. 8) noting pushes for tokenizing diversity practices in the 1960s and 1970s, mcilwain (2019) amplifies the work of organizations like afronet, as a virtual table where black technologists and programmers could work away from networks and institutions of white supremacy (pp. 96-97). networks like afronet serve as essential alternatives to mainstream diversity and inclusion efforts that continue to place marginalized communities in structurally dangerous situations. i am not saying that marginalized people cannot do important work to disrupt racist (and ableist) institutions or that diversity and inclusion are unnecessary. instead, i use mcilwain’s (2019) proposition to create community-led technoscience as a strategy to interrupt the continued public relations campaigns of “diversity and inclusion” that large social institutions (e. g., tech companies or universities) rely on to obfuscate the continuation of racist and ableist design practices. lelia marie hampton (2021) cautions against merely “diversifying” ict design teams. in their research about black feminist approaches to studying algorithmic oppression, hampton notes that merely bringing members from marginalized groups into the tech industry without changing the industry itself does little to remedy how oppressions are distributed amongst sociotechnical networks. hampton (2021) addresses how the use of diversification in the technology sector as a strategy to address anti-blackness in the creation and programming of icts “shifts responsibility [away] from ‘our technologies are harming people’… [and are] built into the power structures of white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy” (pp. 2-3). jessica sage rauchberg studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 376 placing disabled people on ict design teams that do not lead to institutions disrupting networks of oppression merely encourages tokenization. furthermore, assimilationist media practices fail to challenge the emergence of white supremacy and lead to the (re)production of technoableist rhetorics in assistive tech for neurodivergent people (shew, 2020; ymous et al., 2020). occupying space in an industry sustained by settler-colonial, capitalist, and eugenicist beliefs does not do the work of unsettling and world-remaking. neuroqueer approaches to technoscience ask: how do we move beyond these structures? what comes next? although my particular conceptualization centers on digital technologies, i think neuroqueer technoscience also embraces ideas about cross-movement activist practices as strategies for collective liberation as a form of design justice. sasha costanza-chock (2020, p. 23) defines this as a “framework for analysis of how design distributes benefits and burdens between various groups of people… explicitly focusing on the ways that design reproduces and/or challenges the matrix of domination (white supremacy…).” as i articulate further on in this essay, neuroqueer technoscience works in conjunction with design justice and crip technoscience to center anti-assimilationist leadership practices, expertise, and goals among neurodivergent users. neuroqueer and crip technoscience: connections and departures a call for a neuroqueer technoscience radically reimagines relational power and agency in determining the creation, development, and eventual use of media technologies. a neuroqueer approach amplifies the leadership of neurodivergent people and articulates access as an ongoing, relational, and political practice within crip technoscientific pursuits (chandler et al., 2021). to reimagine technology with a neuroqueer approach, technologists and ict designers may benefit from the crucial contributions of disability justice, which emphasizes the leadership of black, brown, and indigenous queer and trans disabled people, especially neurodivergent, intellectually/developmentally disabled (i/dd), and mad people (sins invalid, 2019). disability justice emphasizes that disability cannot be analyzed without understanding how it intersects with other political identities or forms of systemic oppression, such as settler-colonialism, racism, classism, fatphobia, homophobia, and transphobia (sins invalid, 2019, p. 25). cross-movement building is key to disability justice as an engaged theory-practice. unlike mainstream disability rights movements, which primarily center the needs and goals of white, physically disabled cisgender heterosexual men, disability justice names ableism and other facets of white supremacist logics (e.g., anti-blackness, racism, colonialism, homophobia, classism, transphobia). disability justice’s commitments to intersectionality help to understand the complex interworkings of these systems and facilitate the creation of collective alternatives that allow imagining a neuroqueer technoscience studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 377 disability communities to work towards structures of liberation and transformation (sins invalid, 2019, p. 13). finally, disability justice must always be in conversation with other liberation movements because world(re)making is not a single, but rather a coalitional, struggle. neuroqueer technoscience continues necessary interventions in crip technoscience, amplifying the polysemous ways disabled people create, hack, code, tinker, and experiment with technology as access, activism, and survival practices. crip technoscience draws from feminist science and technology studies and disability justice art and activism to “describe politicized practices of non-compliant knowing-making: world-building and world-dismantling practices by and with disabled people and communities that respond to intersectional systems of power, privilege, and oppression by working within and around them” (hamraie & fritsch, 2019, pp. 4-5; emphasis in original). instead of asking, “how can we fix or cure neurodivergence and disability?” a neuroqueer technoscientific approach offers an alternative query: by centering the polysemous lived experiences of neurodivergent users, how can we disrupt static hierarchies of ableist and sanist institutional power? one potential intervention is embedding ongoing accessibility practices into all forms of creative media engagement and relational supports. for example, arseli dokumaci (2019) offers micro-activist affordances as performative tactics disabled people rely on to reconfigure their environments. dokumaci’s (2019) inquiry focuses on physical disability, but i extend her original use here to consider the ways neuroqueer users coengage with icts to reconfigure neuroqueer subjectivities. for example, research teams can help support neuroqueer styles of media use. instead of forcing collaborators and stakeholders to assimilate to a device, designers can use their resources to support media reconfiguration with neurodivergent stakeholders, providing low-stim and scent-free environments, allowing for multiple types of communication (e.g., verbal, aac, text-only, sign language), creating plain-language guides, having breaks in focus groups, and honoring neurodivergent stakeholder goals with the use of the media technology and research dissemination (such as including stakeholders as coauthors) (see gardner et al., 2021; lazar et al., 2017; piepzna-samarasinha, 2018; spiel et al., 2019). in the following sections, i present three working tenets to demonstrate how neuroqueer technoscience engages with crip technoscience-informed practices to present anti-assimilationist technology as tools for relational world-making: neuroqueer technoscience extends crip technoscience to resist curative violence in technology use; neuroqueer technoscience prioritizes technological interdependence; and neuroqueer technoscience reconfigures who can be a creator and user. jessica sage rauchberg studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 378 neuroqueer technoscience rejects curative violence i offer neuroqueer technoscience as an intervention in crip technoscience’s tendency to privilege neurotypicality. sins invalid (2019) emphasizes the importance of cross-solidarity movement building between different members of disability communities, including “psych survivors, people with mental health disabilities, neurodiverse people… [and] people with intellectual or developmental disabilities” (p. 25). however, how are these commitments honored for neurodivergent, mad, and intellectually and developmentally disabled (i/dd) people? the 2020 documentary crip camp presents an idyllic retelling of the u.s.-based independent living movement (ilm), where white physically disabled people were (and still are) placed at the top of the disability hierarchy (lebrecht & newham, 2020). yet crip camp does not show i/dd, mad, neurodivergent, and racialized disabled people (especially black disabled people) in a similar perspective; for instance, the film presents the leadership of black panther member and disability advocate bradley lomax as a mere anecdote instead of a significant cross-movement leader whose expertise was crucial to the 504 sit-in’s success (sedgwick, 2021, para. 13). the tremendous segregation i/dd people face – especially black, brown, and indigenous i/dd people – reinforces carceral boundaries at the conjunctures of racism, intellectual ableism, and sanism (see erevelles & minear, 2010; sedgwick, 2021). the digitization of applied behavioral analysis (aba) demonstrates the legacies of racism and (techno)ableism.7 aba often entails panoptic and violent pathologic approaches, especially targeting nonand semi-speaking people as a way to force verbal language (bascomb, 2011; williams, 2018; yergeau, 2018). robin roscigno (2019) suggests aba actively harms and even maims autistic and neurodivergent people through its intent to erase and contain neurodivergence. in some cases, such as the u.s.-based judge rotenberg center, allistic administrators force autistic, neurodivergent, and intellectually disabled residents to wear electric shock devices, called a graduated electronic decelerator, which “modify” behaviors by delivering shocks up to 41 milliamps (roscigno, 2019). since the center’s opening in 1971, at least six residents have died from the pervasive levels of shock present in the ged (brown, 2020; yergeau, 2018). autistic self-advocates, cultural workers, and researchers continue to challenge aba’s pathologization. in this way, icts are used to “solve” aspects of disability through curative violence. by using the term curative violence i am referring to eunjung kim’s (2017) theorization that rehabilitative technology is used to practice 7 applied behavioural analysis (aba) refers to a series of therapies intended to “improve” socially significant behaviours such as speech and embodiment. many autistic and neurodivergent self-advocates have criticized aba’s punitive and rehabilitative approaches (see bascomb, 2011; brown, 2020; sequenzia, 2015; williams, 2019; yergeau, 2018). imagining a neuroqueer technoscience studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 379 cure, rehabilitation, and progress, while presenting disability as an obstacle to national identity building. for instance, many autism-related ict supports focus on artificial enhacements for verbal/spoken speech through augmentative and alternative communication devices (aac). neuroqueer technoscience asks, is the reasoning behind “giving voice” to nonand semispeaking neurodivergent people rooted in ableism? here, i suggest that icts developed with eugenicist or rehabilitative mindsets positioning users as “better” than disabled people who do not use them (alper, 2017). my thinking follows joseph stramondo’s (2019) theory of curative versus assistive technology: the orientation of how a device is situated around disability delineates its use as “assistive” or “curative,” further substantiating categories like “disabled” versus “non-disabled.” the programming of curative violence in technology is not always readily apparent: curative violence is often taken up by obfuscating eugenics, ableism, and neurotypicality with technoableist rhetorics of “enhancement” and “innovation,” as if disabled – and in particular, neurodivergent people – are not worthy of life unless they pursue the assimilative alterations of curative technology (see kim, 2017). rua m. williams (2019) proposes a similar critique through their concept of metaeugenics in so-called “assistive” technology for autistic children. they explain that metaeugenics are a subtle yet violent network of power that are deployed in the justification of curative, normalizing therapies for… deviance. once overt eugenics have failed, or have been deemed unpalatable, metaeugenics take over to ensure purity… [while] racialized, queer, disabled, or otherwise unsightly, unruly…. bodies are cataloged, captured, quarantined, incarcerated, sanitized, and rehabilitated (or not). (williams, 2019, pp. 65-66) stramondo (2019) also offers alternative, resistive, and refusal-based connections to such technology as a strategy to dispel the prominence of curative violence. like dokumaci’s (2019) offering of micro-resistive affordances, such reconfigurations of assistive technology redefine not only who is a user but what it means to be in relation with technology beyond metaeugenics and curative violence (as i articulate in the final tenet). through these reconfigurations, neuroqueer technoscience rejects the use of icts for rehabilitation or erasure of disability. note that my critique is not an outright rejection of assistive technology – many icts, like aac, can provide necessary support for neurodivergent people with varying access needs (stramondo, 2019). nor am i saying that all crip technoscience excludes or privileges neurotypicality. however, i offer neuroqueer technoscience as extending crip technoscience in this realm, reaffirming anti-assimilationist and coalitional transformation by troubling the representation of neurodivergent as deficit (ymous et al., 2020). universities and medical institutions are sites of violences like medical jessica sage rauchberg studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 380 racism and (techno)ableism, placing disabled and neurodivergent racialized people, and queer and trans people, in concentrated harm (dolmage, 2017; piepzna-samarasinha, 2018). i argue that neuroqueer technoscience leads us to new possibilities that sustain the wholeness of neurodivergent people and their goals, accessibility needs, and experiences. instead of designing for a cure, rehabilitation, or enhancement, a neuroqueer technoscientific approach might work to ensure that the lived experiences, goals, and skills of neuroqueer users are always already centered. neuroqueer technoscience builds upon crip technoscience’s liberatory and anti-assimilationist approaches to reimagine disability as a “set of innovative… skills” (piepzna-samarasinha, 2018, p. 216). for instance, lazar et al.’s (2017) moments, a digital art sharing project co-designed with older adults with dementia, demonstrates the potential of non-curative neuroqueer relational practices in crip technoscience. moments’ design team used their resources to facilitate a creative experience that allowed alternative ways of social engagement and non-verbal communication (e.g., artistic creation such as drawing, painting, collaging). most importantly, moments met users where they were, allowing diverse gameplay for creating the digital art, and bending towards the user’s skill set (instead of the user assimilating to the technology). imagining art as a non-verbal communication practice, the design team centered options that would appeal widely to the user group, such as scrapbooking or postcard decorating, which could be engaged with by several participants (lazar et al., 2017, p. 2150). the project’s success demonstrates the tenacious overlap between crip technoscience (i.e., centering skills, working through friction arising from clashing accessibility needs, designing for multiple modes of accessibility) and neuroqueer technoscience (i.e., alternative modes of self-expression, amplifying agentic production, centering non-neurotypical styles of social interaction and community building). while disability-centric technoscience may focus on enhancement or rehabilitation for disabled people, neuroqueer technoscience echoes crip technoscience’s disruption of progressive attempts at “overcoming” or “curing” disability (hamraie & fritsch, 2019). moreover, these movements hold other allegiances to care work and mutual aid, positioning icts as technologies to facilitate (often live-saving) community support. neuroqueer technoscience emphasizes technological interdependence, not independence noting the excessive prevalence of eugenics in north american health research, neuroqueer technoscience calls for ways of knowing, doing, and making that do not rely on allistic, harmful technologies to stylize neuroqueer communication supports. why must the “most optimal” forms of communication be rooted in spoken word and eye contact? what possibilities imagining a neuroqueer technoscience studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 381 emerge from imagining stimming as a vital part of the communication process or using multiple communication styles (i.e., a mix of both spoken and non-verbal communication)? is neurodivergent agency contingent on an individual’s ability to toilet, speak, or move in ways that conform to neurotypicality and independence (see williams, 2018)? cal montgomery (2001) names this violent privileging of independence over interdependency as an “assumption [to] speak for people with cognitive impairments… [which] assumes the ‘care’ families provide is always oppressive” (para. 19). montgomery’s powerful theorizing disrupts the distinctions between which forms of dependency are valued in mainstream disability communities and which are discarded. perhaps a better question to ask is: what happens when allistic and neurotypical research teams bend toward the communication needs and goals of neurodivergent bodyminds? a neuroqueer technoscience calls on bringing such communicative practices to interdependent creation and use of media. departing from the mainstream prominence of designing media supports as a “solution” to neurodivergency (alper, 2021; williams & gilbert, 2020; ymous et al., 2020), neuroqueer technoscience instead positions neurodivergent communication styles as valid and worthy in mediated spaces, regardless of individual access needs. neuroqueer technoscience extends crip technoscience by considering technology to support neuroqueer communication and relational practices. for instance, the critical design lab’s remote access party guide reconfigures technology to support interdependent neuroqueer and crip relational practices in a digital world (gotkin et al., 2020). the remote access party, derived from earlier work on crip technoscientific practices for facilitating accessible nightlife (see gotkin, 2019), moves beyond curative modes for digital social engagement. for instance, the open-source facilitation guide provides a detailed explanation of how participants can set up a remote access event, what to expect before, during, and after the party, options for participation, and opportunities for engagement, including roles to support accessibility, such as captioners, audio descriptors, and access doulas (gotkin et al., 2020, p. 6). here, each participant is essential to the success of creating a digital space of access, love, and community: a remote access party is incomplete without the work and needs of each individual, whether they are a partygoer or are providing access supports. by establishing thorough guidelines – with room for working through imperfect technology – the remote access party guide demonstrates how neuroqueer technoscience builds on crip technoscience’s anti-assimilationist and collaborative shifting of (digital) social spaces to co-create new ways of being, communication, and relationality. party attendees are invited to engage in ways that feel right for them: agency to turn on or off one’s computer camera or microphone, nonspeaking ways to participate in the space, and control over their participation in the web conferencing call. gotkin et al’s (2020) guide does not present itself as a universal solution for technoableism. however, it offers some crucial possibilities for using icts to collectively practice neuroqueer jessica sage rauchberg studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 382 relationalities in anti-assimilationist spaces. here, technology use does not amplify independence: instead, it shows the various ways neuroqueer (and crip) technoscience reconfigures technologies toward relational interdependence. i turn to interdependence as a micro-resistive turn (see dokumaci, 2019) for neuroqueer technoscience to program, code, or co-create new forms of subjectivities that depart from concepts of cognitive hierarchies and white supremacist conceptualizations of the ideal user. in a state of interconnected dependence (sins invalid, 2019), interdependence challenges western and neoliberal prioritizations of individuality and self-reliance. instead, interdependence “sees the liberation of all living systems and the land as integral to the liberation of our communities… we work to meet each other’s needs as we build toward liberation” (sins invalid, 2019, p. 25). noting that many western social institutions position disability and disabled people as passive and apolitical, disability justice always already uses interdependence as a “site of politicized resistance” through technoscientific measures of hacking, tinkering, and making within disability communities and beyond (hamraie & fritsch, 2019). hacking constitutes how disability organizers reimagine through realtering existing material and political arrangements (hamraie & fritsch, 2019, p. 4). through centering disabled expertise, activist hacking highlights crip technoscience’s commitments to political change and transformation. neuroqueer technoscience’s commitments to relational interdependence in digital worlds is revealed in the success of disability hashtag activism. in the midst of the 2019 u.s. wildfire season, disability justice activist stacey park milbern and the disability justice culture club partnered to support the #powertolive campaign against discriminatory power shut-offs (disability visiblity project, 2019). additionally, johanna hedva’s (2015) “sick woman theory” draws from their experiences with chronic illness and neurodivergence to affirm the validity of digital activism through embodiment and radical existance in a world invisibilizng racialized and disabled people. although hedva (2015) does not clearly position their theorization as a manifesto, the practice of sick woman theory as a technology of radical survival and digital world-making is significant to the formation of neuroqueer subjectivities. thus, neuroqueer technoscience does not position disability and ableism as single issues; instead, it addresses and disrupts how ableism is always in conversation with racism, settlercolonialism, classism, and other oppressive nodes that render multiplymarginalized people as invisible, and emphasizes the need for digital technology as a way to create interdependence (hedva, 2015; piepznasamarasinha, 2018). where crip technoscience may reconfigure disabled people’s relationships with social and cultural structures, i position neuroqueer technoscience as a co-collaborative reconfiguration of subjectivity. imagining a neuroqueer technoscience studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 383 neuroqueer technoscience reimagines who is a creator and user what does it mean to design neuroqueer futures? perhaps it begins with troubling the prospects of design(ers). sasha costanza-chock’s (2020) design justice offers to counter (techno)ableism and metaeugenics in design research towards new neuroqueer subjectivities. partially deriving their conceptualization from disability (justice) activism, costanza-chock (2020) notes that including the expertise of the most directly-impacted people facilitates new possibilities for experiential innovations that can transform lived experience. costanza-chock’s (2020) design justice may counter the limitations of universal design, a disability-centered practice emerging in the late 20th century to create environments accessible to any users (hamraie, 2017). universal design guidelines have since been adapted as an ethos for technology and ict design (bennett & rosner, 2019). however, as aimi hamraie (2017) importantly asks, who is everyone? namely, are neurodivergent people included within the definitions of everyone (see goodley et al., 2014)? are some neurodivergent considered more worthy and exceptional than others (i.e., is a speaking neurodivergent person considered more worthy of support than a nonor semi-speaking person)? similarly, ruha benjamin (2019) cautions against claims for a generic “design justice,” noting that well-intentioned ideas about designing solutions can sanitize and smooth over systemic oppression through one-size-fits-all approaches. instead, benjamin (2019) asks, what happens when the focus is on “plain old… liberation” (p. 177)? hamraie (2017) similarly presents their idea of collective access as a necessary intervention, which presents accessibility practices as a material-discursive understanding of relationality and interdependence as a means of social justice. one way we might create a neuroqueer future is by supporting the work of disabled and neurodivergent design teams in hci and mobile communication to meet the user goals and access needs of neurodivergent stakeholders or by stepping away from designing curative solutions (ymous et al., 2020). if technoableism promotes rehabilitation and curative violence, then neuroqueer (and crip) technoscience presents neurodivergence as essential for computing and user-experience practices. for instance, loren britton and isabel paehr’s (2021) work as melt adopts this approach through media arts practice. in particular, melt’s project, “rituals against barriers,” is informed by black feminist thought, feminist hci, and crip technoscientific practices to embrace a series of neuroqueer rituals as design paradigms. instead of pathologizing, curing, or rehabilitating, melt presents neuroqueer design methods such as bad listening (see smilges, 2020), questioning institutions, and tending to the “not perceivable” as generative sites for inquiry and technological creation (britton & paehr, 2021). through various stop-motion video entries and digital archives, melt’s politic of refusal simultaneously “resists” (techno)ableist barriers and generatively “connects” across differences (britton & paehr, 2021, p. 79). such (re)fusals extend crip technoscientific jessica sage rauchberg studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 384 paradigms for anti-assimilationist technological and digital artistic practice towards neuroqueer technoscientific creation. by fusing crip technoscientific paradigms for anti-assimilationist commitments to access and removal of structural barriers, melt’s use of digital artistic practice reveals the neuroqueer potentialities of leaning-in to so-called “deviant” relationalities. i think that neuroqueer technoscience provides the desired intervention of “what’s next” in both the creation and cultural understandings of icts. however, i want to be clear in what neuroqueer technoscience is and what it is not. neuroqueer technoscience argues that technoableism is tied to larger systems of white supremacy: we cannot talk about algorithmic ableism or designing around neurotypicality without addressing ableism’s complex networking around anti-blackness and other racisms, settler-colonialism and data colonialism (see couldry & mejias, 2019), digital (trans)misogynoir (bailey, 2021), shadowbanning of disabled content creators, and other forms of political violence emerging within the realm of the digital. nevertheless, neuroqueer technoscience is also a practice of optimism. it is the poetic prose of writing out alt-text for a kick-ass selfie so our friends with screen readers can partake in slivers of neuroqueer joy. it is imagining neurodivergent people programming, coding, and developing icts that support our access needs without humiliating us. it is allowing nonand semi-speaking autistic people to lead conversations on aac. it is imagining the coalitional collaboration towards something better. conclusion: what does a neuroqueer technoscience feel/move/stim like? last year, i posted the following questions on my personal twitter account: “what would a neurodivergent/neuroqueer social networking be like? what would this collaborative process entail? many neurodivergent people have conflicting access needs. how do we design for this without assuming that all access needs are universal?” my questions catalyzed a passionate, collaborative conversation.8 one suggestion called for a user-driven interface with different options that met the needs of individual users. one idea proposed different modes that would allow users to determine how much content they want to see on their page and the importance of customizable color contrast combinations. many commenters addressed strategies for organizing the network, including tagging systems designed around neurodivergent thinking styles and organization, and options for determining which pages users would want to feature on their accounts. for instance, some accounts mentioned tagging written text with tone indicators to help other users access a conveyed meaning more readily (e.g., this tweet is 8 the tweet responses are anonymized and summarized in order to protect the identities of the account holders participating in the conversation. imagining a neuroqueer technoscience studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 385 sarcastic or genuine) or set more explicit boundaries around availability to talk with other users. the tweet was by no means viral. however, it demonstrated the strong potential of a neuroqueer-driven world-(re)making via technology, one where neurodivergent people were always already imagined at its center and would be the driving force behind the expansion and generation of media creation. moreover, and perhaps most importantly, this single conversation revealed that neuroqueer technoscience is already happening. neuroqueer technoscience presents the possibility for innovative icts that facilitate threads of liberation for neurodivergent users. mainstream new media technologies are designed and framed around technoableism. social media algorithms program technoableist rhetorics into their codes, determining who gets to truly “belong” on a platform that can provide disabled people with significant social connections. additionally, technoableist icts generate an intent to emphasize dominant allistic and neurotypical styles of communication. rejecting the notion of creation-ascure, neuroqueer technoscience takes cues from disability justice and crip technoscience to reroute design leadership to neurodivergent communities, with the intent of supporting neuroqueer styles of communication, leadership, and lived experiences. by promoting these ideals, new media technologies, like mobile applications and smart devices, can embrace neurodivergent users where we are and imagine worlds where we were always already whole. i want to caution that there is a difference between designing for access and support and designing for enhancement and erasure. technology should not cure or erase neurodivergency, as rua m. williams (2019) importantly notes. neurodivergent people are tenaciously brilliant thinkers and tinkerers who are engineering our survival through activist technoscience and other forms of interdependent world-making (hamraie & fritsch, 2019). thus, a neuroqueer technoscience is not a fixed and static one-time practice. although i anticipate there are many ways neurodivergent people can practice (and already incorporate) neuroqueer technoscience, i imagine that neuroqueer technoscientific engagement amplifies access as a sticky, ongoing relational practice – one that is fluid and conceptualizes many neurodivergent bodyminds coming together to program, hack, and create better (digital) worlds. neuroqueer technoscience breaks past the tensions and complexities of technoableism and other forms of (digital) discrimination. by positioning neurodivergent people as experts and leaders, a neuroqueer technoscientific approach to digital creation and activism generates new ways of thinking, creating, and making survival possible, all with the click of a “share” button. i urge us to follow the many pathways collectively forged by neurodivergent and neuroqueer activists, artists, self-advocates, artists, and cultural workers. neurodivergent people may not be “the ideal user” in a technoableist world; however, as i discuss in this essay, neuroqueer technoscience rejects the idea of a singular, fixed user who must endure curative violence to be seen as jessica sage rauchberg studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 370-388, 2022 386 valid. instead, neuroqueer technoscience presents polysemous and collective ways of creating and engaging media. allistic and neurotypical researchers may imagine us as flawed, broken, and needing a fix. nevertheless, new media and mobile communication technologies can be transformative and liberatory – neuroqueer technoscience may be one potentiality that can help us reach there. join us. acknowledgments the author would like to thank miranda brady, 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(2020). “i am just terrified for my future” – epistemic violence in disability related technology research. chi ‘20 extended abstracts, 1-16. doi: 10.1145/3334480.3381828. zeffiro final before ts correspondence address: andrea zeffiro, department of communication studies & multimedia, mcmaster university, hamilton, on, l8s 4m4; email: zeffiroa@mcmaster.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 15, issue 3, 450-457, 2021 dispatch from data ethics to data justice in/as pedagogy andrea zeffiro mcmaster university, canada this dispatch charts my trajectory from thinking about the ethics of social media research to a rearticulation of the same concerns through a data justice framework. by outlining the movement from ethics to justice, i consider how such a paradigm shift could register with the ways in which we seek to empower students through literacies for data justice. research context one of my research threads over the last few years has focused on social media research ethics. a project on this issue grew out of a particular context in which i observed how, short of clear guidelines, certain forms of social media research were required to undergo institutional review while others were not, which is not to say that all social media research should be exempt from institutional review, but rather that such inconsistencies designated exempted research as ethical by virtue of exemption (zeffiro, 2019). this permissiveness for research norms is unsurprising given how conventional understandings of human research ethics are strained by the complexity of interactions between individuals, networks and technical systems in social media research (zeffiro, 2019). the first part of the project analyzed research ethics documents from all universities in canada in order to identify the trends, standards and norms for working with social media data in a canadian academic context. in 2017, there was not a single canadian institution that had public facing ethics guidelines that applied specifically to social media research (zeffiro, 2019). documents that referred to digital data collection did so in terms of internet research and redirected readers to the requirements of the tcps 2 (canadian institutes of health research et al., 2014). increasingly more common in from data ethics to data justice in/as pedagogy studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 450-457, 2021 451 canada are research data management (rdm) plans that outline protocols for data management and stewardship (canadian institutes of health research et al., 2016, 2018), which are by no means interchangeable with research ethics (zeffiro, 2019). the thrust of the project was to make an argument for the importance of having research communities develop ethical approaches for social media research, rather than allowing corporate entities that collect and grant access (or not) to public data establish the terms for research. research ethics is a domain through which we can assess our responsibilities as researchers by parsing our approaches for creating new knowledge from public social media data, and by making transparent the strengths and limitations of emerging forms of research (see also lee, 2017; shilton, 2016; taylor & pagliari, 2017; townsend & wallace, 2015; university of sheffield, 2016) from ethics to justice in the time between completing the pilot study and reflecting on the findings in scholarly venues, i have started to think profoundly about the limitations of research ethics as a domain for intervention beyond academic contexts. because ethics is such a charged term, it can provoke an individualized response aimed at substantiating the ways in which our actions and practices abide by ethical codes and protocols. in certain instances, ethics is a box to tick in the research process. at other times, we might find ourselves relying on research ethics as a kind of moral ignition that absolves us from further deliberation. however, if “ethical purity” is an end goal of research ethics, then we are merely cementing “moral institutional self-concepts” that serve as a continuation of the collective myth about research as an antidote to conditions of injustice (sabati, 2018; simpson, 2017; smith, 2012). the need for research communities to confront ethics is all the more urgent given how big tech is shaping ethics in its own image. in the last few years, the establishment of corporate ethics charters and ethics boards have come to signal self-regulation as a policy response to calls for industry oversight. ben wagner (2018) explains how this amounts to an “ethics washing”; ethics are operationalized through public facing initiatives as a means to resist regulation. we are provided with the sense of an investment in questions and concerns of ethics, while little or nothing is done to achieve them. if an ethics framework constrains how we come to understand the contradictions and challenges in social media research by regulating the purview of our engagement with ethics, then what is needed is a framework that invites a range of stakeholders and entry points (metcalfe & dencik, 2019) and that links social media to broader critiques of datafication (van dijck, 2014). in their introduction to the special issue of information, communication & society on data justice, lina dencik, arne hintz, joanna redden and emiliano treré write how, “we should use data justice as a form andrea zeffiro studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 450-457, 2021 452 of critique, a framework for shifting the entry-point and debate on datarelated developments in a way that foregrounds social justice concerns and ongoing historical struggles against inequality, oppression and domination” (dencik et al., 2019, p. 876). the work of scholars who are situating data within existing social justice agendas by cultivating a data justice framework are effectively reorienting ethical concerns about datafication from purely moral, technocratic or technological purviews, and advocating instead for collaborations between different movements and groups that bring together technological, social, economic, cultural and ecological dimensions in defining both problems and solutions (dencik et al., 2018). data justice emphasizes an understanding of data technologies and datadriven decision-making in relation to structural conditions that continue to create new inequalities and injustices (dencik et al., 2019; metcalfe & dencik, 2019; redden & brand, 2018). however, rather than locate injustices in data systems as errors or biases that can be fixed with more data, data justice seeks to understand the interests driving the processes of datafication by decentering data in the examination of these processes (dencik, 2019; metcalfe & dencik, 2019; taylor, 2017). thus, data justice is symptomatic of the complex ways in which data-driven processes permeate all facets of contemporary life and emphasizes how these technologies and processes reproduce, are reproduced by, and provoke a “matrix of domination” (white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, and settler colonialism) (costanzachock, 2018a, 2018b). literacies for data justice in/as pedagogy inspired by data justice scholarship, i am motivated to consider additional ways in which we can enact data justice in academic work. more specifically, how can we integrate data justice in teaching and learning? i ask this question having taught two iterations of a graduate course called data cultures. as i write this dispatch, i am preparing to teach it for a third time. the course explores the ways in which contemporary life and the environments we inhabit are mediated through data-driven technologies and practices. rather than emphasize the technical processes that enable datafication, the material considers instead the consequences of these processes and engages with intersecting issues of race, gender, class, ethnicity, ability, indigenous sovereignty, and climate crisis. for the upcoming term (winter 2020), i am revamping the assignments in order to reorient learning outcomes to data justice literacies. taking a cue from leslie shade’s work on digital policy literacy, which foregrounds digital policy as a key attribute of media and digital literacy (shade, 2012; shade & shepherd, 2013), i use “data justice literacy” as an intervention to broaden the principles of social media literacy to encircle data justice as a crucial element (shade, 2012). in this respect, in order for us to be from data ethics to data justice in/as pedagogy studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 450-457, 2021 453 able to engage critically and effectively in personal, professional and social contexts through social media platforms, we need to understand how data is a key asset in our exchanges. data literacy is applied elsewhere to advocate for the development of data analysis and statistical literacy. however, when couched in a data justice framework data literacy is decoupled from technical systems and engages instead with how data practices correspond to other social practices within social and political constellations (metcalfe & dencik, 2019). in what follows, i explore design speculations for two assignments aimed at advancing data justice literacies. these include: (a) an autoethnography of a data analysis tool; and, (b) authoring the terms of service for a fictional social media platform. autoethnography of a data tool the first assignment will require students to conduct an autoethnography as they learn a data analysis tool. following carolyn ellis and arthur bochner (2000), autoethnography is a form of autobiographical writing and research that “displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural” (p. 739). autobiographical reflection can empower students to delve into their own learning processes as they acquire a new technical skill and connect the process of learning to broader assumptions about what it means to do data analytics. for instance, a few years ago a student in the course proposed a research project predicated on scraping five years’ worth of data from the twitter account of a canadian political party. without any prior experience with social media analysis, the student was surprised to learn that they would need to go through the twitter api to access data and that they would be limited to accessing a few weeks of data. the student was unable to complete the project as originally intended, but it was the process of debunking the myth of social media analysis that was invaluable. leveraging this myth busting impulse, this assignment aims to have students dabble in the technical side of data analytics while having them reflect on data-driven research processes through a data justice framework. as i write this, i have yet to select the specific tool, but as i detail below, the tool itself is secondary to the learning process. the assignment will be organized as a semester-long exercise in which students teach themselves and each other a data analysis tool. some class time will be devoted to instruction, but otherwise the bulk of learning will happen independently. to assist students with organizing their time, i will provide a timeline with milestones and dates of completion. the learning objective for the exercise is to have students move from “data literacy” to “data justice literacy.” indeed, an anticipated take-away of the assignment is for students to refine a technical skill, but the implicit aim is to have them engage deeply with data justice. for example, students will be asked to andrea zeffiro studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 450-457, 2021 454 investigate the origins of the tool’s development and to seek out other research projects that have been supported through its application. questions guiding the written component will engage with data analysis broadly, and ask students to reflect on the neocolonial impulses of data analysis and extractivism (vera et al., 2019), and how data analysis tools and approaches that support research and teaching can also reinforce digital redlining (gilliard, 2017). in this respect, students will be prompted to consider the asymmetrical relationships of power, but they will also be asked to imagine how they could apply the tool towards a data justice initiative. thus, the objective of the assignment is not to have students “master” a tool, but rather to encourage them through autoethnography to bring to the surface the tacit assumptions about data analytics and to imagine a more equitable distribution of the tool’s benefits and burdens (costanza-chock, 2018a, 2018b). speculative terms of service the second assignment will have students work in groups to author terms of service for an imaginary social media platform committed to data justice. more specifically, students will employ “speculative design” as a methodology to assess (data) governance through a data justice lens. why focus on data governance? linnet taylor and hellen mukiri-smith (2019) encourage us to recognize data justice as connected also to thinking about how the governance of data technologies should be based on social justice principles. disentangling the ways in which data governance perpetuates and opposes a matrix of oppression is pivotal to data justice. in turn, how can we encourage students to intervene in processes of data governance? and how can we encourage them to not only imagine alternatives, but to script alternate possibilities? (dunne & raby, 2013, p. 90). the first part of the assignment will have groups select a social media platform and begin by reading its terms of service. students will keep a reading journal and reflect on their immediate thoughts, surprising discoveries, and contemplate their affective responses to the terms of service. after a few weeks, students will regroup and share their reflections. leveraging their individual responses as a starting point for collaboration, students will then work in their groups to rewrite the terms of service. the emphasis for this portion of the project is to translate the terms of service into non-technical language in order to make the document accessible to a general audience. throughout the translation stage, each student will continue to keep a journal to record their observations and experience. a set of questions will guide students to reflect on the process of translating the document, including the practicalities that went into deciphering the text and rendering it legible. students will be prompted to interrogate the discursive function of the terms of service, and the ways in which these documents are in effect governance from data ethics to data justice in/as pedagogy studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 450-457, 2021 455 structures that promote and constrain opportunities for participation. finally, students will be asked to consider how the terms of service reflect (or not) broader social, economic and political values. having worked through existing terms of service to understand not only the text itself, but also the ways in which these governance documents sustain (in)equities and (in)justices, students will then spend the second half of the semester rescripting the terms of service for an imaginary platform. this portion of the project will have two parts: (a) authoring terms of service for a fictional social media platform with data justice as its undergird; and, (b) a written reflection about the platform that will detail how its social justice ideology is sustained and affirmed by its terms of service. the written component will draw from appropriate academic literature (i.e., data justice, critical data studies) to support the analysis, and students will be asked to consider the differences and similarities between their fictional terms of service and the official document they translated. through the written piece, students will have an opportunity to bridge their individual observations and experiences with collaborative work, and in turn, consider processes for encouraging and sustaining equitable and meaningful participation in governance decisions. finally, speculative design is key to this assignment because as a methodology, it will encourage students to step away from merely assessing how a social media platform exists now to focusing on authoring terms of service that envision how and what these platforms could be (dunne & raby, 2013, p. 69). the fictional terms of service provide an opportunity for students to engineer not only a social media platform that reproduces and is reproduced by data justice, but also reflect on the kind of society whose values and preoccupations would engender the conditions for such a platform to thrive. postscript the origins of this dispatch began with a rather vague but charged question: what would it mean to prioritize (data) justice over (data) ethics in academic contexts? in reframing my thinking of data to be a matter of social justice, i have been motivated to integrate data justice literacies in teaching and learning. my hope is that the integration of creative and collaborative research-based assignments will encourage students to engage deeply with data justice, as both a framework and social movement, and empower them to continue to find ways to respond to prescriptive data paradigms. andrea zeffiro studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 450-457, 2021 456 acknowledgements the author wishes to thank drs. leslie regan shade and karen louise smith for their invitation to submit to the special section. additional thanks to dispatches editor vanessa farr and editor-in-chief david butz for their helpful suggestions. finally, the author would like to express gratitude to the graduate students enrolled in data cultures (2017-2021) for the enthusiasm, creativity, and care that they all brought into the learning space. references canadian institutes of health research, natural sciences and engineering research council of canada, & social sciences and humanities research council. (2014). tri-council policy statement: ethical conduct for research involving humans. https://ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique_tcps2-eptc2_initiatives.html canadian institutes of health research, natural sciences and engineering research council of canada, & social sciences and humanities research council. (2016). tri-agency statement of principles on digital data management. http://www.science.gc.ca/eic/site/063.nsf/eng/h_83f7624e.html canadian institutes of health research, natural sciences and engineering research council of canada, & social sciences and humanities research council. (2018). draft: tri-agency research data management policy for consultation. http://www.science.gc.ca/eic/site/063.nsf/eng/h_97610.html costanza-chock, s. (2018a, june 3). design justice: towards an intersectional feminist framework for design theory and practice. proceedings of the design research society 2018. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3189696 costanza-chock, s. 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(2019). when data justice and environmental justice meet: formulating a response to extractive logic through environmental data justice. information, communication & society, 22(7), 10121028. wagner, b. (2018). ethics as an escape from regulation: from ‘ethics washing’ to ethicsshopping? in e. bayamlioglu, i. baraliuc, l. janssens & m. hildebrandt (eds.), being profiled: cogitas ergo sum – 10 years of profiling the european citizen (pp. 84-89). amsterdam university press. zeffiro, a. (2019). provocations for social media research: toward good data ethics. in a. daly, k. devitt & m. mann (eds.), good data (pp. 216-243). inc theory on demand series. cook, doucet & rowsell final correspondence address: nancy cook, department of sociology, brock university, st. catharines, on l2s 3a1; email: ncook@brocku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 2, 187-194, 2017 visual research and social justice – guest editors’ introduction nancy cook brock university, canada andrea doucet brock university, canada jennifer rowsell brock university, canada traditionally, the sources of data in qualitative methodologies have been overwhelmingly linguistic, relying on the written and spoken word (crang, 2010; holliday, 2000; pauwels, 2010). ethnographic research in particular has seldom incorporated visual methods of data collection and analysis, although anthropologists and geographers have long used photographs, maps, sketches, and paintings to portray “native informants” (spivak, 1999), “the field,” and the practice of fieldwork (crang & cook, 2007; edwards, 1992). margaret mead (2003), for example, used visual “salvage anthropology” as a mechanism for “preserving” vanishing cultures by producing a permanent photographic record of them that scholars could study once those cultures disappeared entirely. perhaps this hesitance to engage with visuals in qualitative methodological repertoires is related to the crisis of representation, specifically to epistemological critiques of visual knowledge that foreground the role the “visual gaze” played in colonial appropriation and other projects of domination (gilman, 1986; gregory, 2003; lewis, 1996; said, 1993). it may also be linked to overdrawn claims for the representational facticity and verisimilitude of visual materials, for the “obviousness of vision that allows one to imply a transparency about the world and picture, that can suggest the visual offers ‘raw data’ as if bypassing troublesome issues of constructing knowledge” (crang, 2010, p. 212). the imperialist histories of visual knowledge and disputes about its epistemological status have, until recently, clouded our sense of how visual methods might be put to critical use in qualitative research as a way to understand and make sense of various aspects of social life. because visual nancy cook, andrea doucet, jennifer rowsell studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 187-194, 2017 188 representations have the potential to communicate important dimensions of people’s everyday lives and depict significant life events, they can be framed as engaging forms of seeing that create intimate representations of the social (pink, 2007; rose, 2012). and because visual awareness and engagement feature prominently in people’s everyday lives, qualitative researchers also have come to understand the importance of attending to the visual organisation and saturation of social life. consequently, as leading visual researcher gillian rose (2014, p. 24) has noted, “one of the most striking developments across the social sciences in the past decade has been the growth of research methods using visual materials” that offer such analytic advantages by operating in a critically reflexive register. indeed, visual research methods (e.g., emmel & clark, 2011; margolis & pauwels, 2011; mitchell, 2011; pauwels, 2010; rose, 2012, 2014; spencer, 2011; tinkler, 2013) and visual ethnographies (e.g., harper, 2003; pink, 2007, 2008; winddance twine, 2006) have flourished during this time period, employing a diverse range of visual materials for exploring research questions. they now constitute rapidly emerging subfields within the vast field of qualitative methodologies. these subfields embrace exciting creative, affective, epistemological, ontological, and methodological entanglements that emerge from research that explores photographs, film, memories, digital stories, and other visual artefacts (e.g., doucet, 2015; kuhn, 2007; kuhn & mcallister, 2006; langford, 2008; mcallister, 2011, 2012). the growth in these subfields is demonstrated by the steady rise of conferences, scholarly associations, publications, journal special issues, journals themselves (e.g., visual studies, visual anthropology, visual anthropological review, journal of visual culture), and handbooks on visual research methodologies, mainly in the united states and the united kingdom, but also across europe and scandinavia, and more recently in canada. we set out to explore visual research through our role as organising team members of the 2016 meeting of the annual qualitative analysis conference (also known as “the qualitatives”), which is attended annually at different canadian universities by canadian and international qualitative researchers. the conference theme was “visual research methods and visual ethnographies.” it was the first major research conference in canada to highlight creative intersections between qualitative research and photographs, filmmaking, visual artefacts, and visual representations, and to illuminate research outcomes that feature documentary films, photographic exhibits, and digital storytelling. presenters also explored transdisciplinary methodological, epistemological, and ontological issues in visual methodologies. we are grateful for a sshrc connections grant and funding provided through brock university’s social justice research institute, the centre for research in the social sciences, and the internal sshrc research grant system that allowed us to launch such an initiative. we had four objectives for the conference: (1) to expand canadian capacity visual research & social justice studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 187-194, 2017 189 in the burgeoning transdisciplinary and international fields of visual methodologies and visual ethnographies; (2) to establish a national, international, and transdisciplinary network of scholars and non-academic practitioners in visual research methodologies; (3) to mentor newly established and novice researchers in visual methods, visual ethnographies, and qualitative research practice; and (4) to produce high-quality peerreviewed publications that offer canadian and international scholars, students, and non-academic qualitative research practitioners guidance on, and examples of, innovations in visual research methodologies and ethnographies. the conference presentations charted new directions and highlighted transdisciplinary approaches to visual research mainly from the social sciences, but also from the humanities and life sciences. conference contributors embraced a wide number of visual methodological approaches: digital storytelling, photovoice, autophotography, filmmaking, video inquiry, archival and historical photographs, arts-informed narrative inquiry, and theatre. and their thematic foci included indigenous communities, masculinities, disabilities, hiv/aids, social housing, families, memory, urban spaces, mental health, refugee and immigrant women, eating disorders, marginalised youth, schools and education, and teaching with art, music, and film. this range of topics demonstrates the strong link that scholars are establishing between visual research and social inequalities; over the last decade they have increasingly employed, in critically reflexive ways, visual methodologies that explore a broad variety of social inequalities from the perspectives of socially marginalised and excluded groups (e.g., delgado, 2015; gubrium, krause, & jernigan, 2014; joseph, 2017; mannay, 2010; mitchell, 2006; sensoy, 2011; shah, 2015; singhal & rattine-flaherty, 2006; zehle, 2015). many of these scholars claim that beyond their empirical and theoretical benefits, participatory visual methods, like photovoice, politically empower subjugated research subjects through a shift of representational control from researchers to participants (for a critique of this claim, see butz & cook this issue; kothari, 2001). despite this deepening connection between visual methods and the analysis and subversion of social inequalities, little work has been published that explicitly relates visual research, methods, and ethnographies to social justice theorising (but see garber, 2004; keifer-boyd, 2011; kurtz, 2005; powell & serriere, 2013). this special issue of studies in social justice (ssj) emerges from the 2016 qualitatives conference as a contribution to qualitative studies in visual research, but also as a reflection on transdisciplinary conversations about the relationships between visuality and social justice in its theoretical, epistemological, methodological, and substantive forms. it focuses, therefore, on visual research that explores a range of intersections among filmmaking, photography, graphic novels, and social justice processes and interventions, including the issue of epistemic justice in visual ways of knowing. like the content of all ssj volumes, this special issue consists of three types of nancy cook, andrea doucet, jennifer rowsell studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 187-194, 2017 190 contributions: standard peer-reviewed research articles; dispatches, which are shorter commentaries about social justice praxis related to research activities, social movement experiences and practice, and social justice events from the vantage point of academic and non-academic practitioners; and creative interventions that explore social justice issues in an aesthetic (in our case, visual/textual) register. the article section of this special issue includes four research-based papers. matt rogers focuses on participatory media production by secondary school students as a critical pedagogical tool in social justice education. as the coordinator of the new brunswick school-based participatory filmmaking project what’s up doc?, matt has organised the production of over 60 student films since 2009, which have raised institutional critiques, troubled inequitable discourses, and addressed a wide range of social justice issues that students relate to their school experiences. he notes that participatory media practices such as these are usually heralded in the academic literature as social justice intervention strategies that necessarily empower marginalised groups within the larger student population. however, his experience with the what’s up doc? project suggests that a critical analysis of the visual/discursive representations that organise student-produced participatory films is required to achieve a more robust understanding of their complex social justice outcomes. his discourse analysis of seven films that were screened during the 2012 iteration of the project shows that many of them perpetuate as well as challenge marginalising social narratives and visual representations. for example, he demonstrates how sexist, racist, and heteronormative discourses organise these films, producing ambivalent participatory media texts that complicate and often undermine the social justice goals of the project. courtney donovan and ebru ustundag develop a connection between visual research and social justice theorising by focussing on graphic novels. they claim that graphic novels are an innovative visual/textual mechanism for representing socially marginalised subjectivities and experiences, especially experiences of trauma, which provide new insight into social justice theorisations. in contrast to legal or clinical approaches to trauma that focus solely on textual testimony and therefore limit insight into the complex, multifaceted nature and experience of trauma, the combination of visual and textual representation in graphic novels, they argue, provides a platform for communicating trauma experiences that are usually “unreadable,” unrecognisable, and inaccessible through text alone. they contend that graphic representations of trauma produce an opening to more complex and inter-relational understandings of trauma, offering social justice possibilities beyond legal and clinical institutions, and shifting the institutional emphasis on the politics of redistribution to one of recognition at various social scales. david butz and nancy cook situate their visual research contribution in the critical mobilities literature, particularly the debate about effective methods for mobilities research. many mobilities scholars are turning to a visual research & social justice studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 187-194, 2017 191 critical use of visual methods as a means of apprehending mobile cultures, practices, and meanings. the authors focus on how they used a specific visual/narrative method – autophotography – in a study of the social implications of road construction in shimshal, a northern pakistani mountain community, offering an assessment of its usefulness for mobilities research. the starting point for this assessment is rooted in the concept of epistemic justice, in which ethics and epistemology are mutually constitutive. they argue that a method’s effectiveness needs to be assessed on both of these grounds, in the specific research context in which it is employed. they develop the notion of an “autoethnographic sensibility” as an appropriate epistemological framing for their transcultural research context in which the persistent effects of colonialism systematically impede epistemic justice. autophotography, they demonstrate, meets the ethical/epistemological requirements of an autoethnographic sensibility, but it also allows them to understand how mobilities are socially instanciated and emplaced in shimshal, making autophotography an empirically and theoretically productive, as well as epistemologically ethical method for mobilities research. jennifer rowsell and emmanuel tabi examine the power and potential of visual methods coupled with sensory-led approaches to ethnographic fieldwork with racially diverse young men across different social contexts. important to their work are issues central to social justice, such as racial equity and the funds of knowledge that are so often marginalised or invisible when young people apply them in formalised school-based learning. reflecting on their many conversations with young men, rowsell and tabi explore these men’s relationship with literacy, their sense of failure, and the deficit language and framings they have experienced related to their literacy repertoires. rather than emphasising young men’s lack of conventional literacy skills, the authors focus on the ways they employ alternative literacy practices that are visual in nature, often accompanied by words and moving images. interrogating their visuals and talking through their stories and agentive qualities in collaborative ways has given both researchers an awareness of young men’s emotional worlds and the ability of the visual to allow for sense-laden, agentive meaning making. our issue also contains three dispatches. the first – by katherine boydell, chi cheng, brenda gladstone, shevaun nadin, and elaine stasiulis – focuses on the use of digital storytelling (dst) by healthcare professionals and advocates as a participatory visual method that has socially inclusive and just effects, such as engaging marginalised groups in shared experiential storytelling processes that promote social connection among participants, challenge power imbalances, and initiate social change. they draw on a study of rural youth who experience psychosis to develop this argument about the social justice potential of dst, describing how their participation in a dst research project fostered a sense of social inclusion and individual agency that affected their social experiences. nancy cook, andrea doucet, jennifer rowsell studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 187-194, 2017 192 second, patti fraser, flick harrison, and lynn fels contribute what they call a “video thought experiment” that responds to a question posed to participants at the 2016 performing the world conference in new york city, in conversation with the art for social change research project conducted at simon fraser university. it consists of discussions with artists about the relationships among performance, power, and place. in the third dispatch contribution, matthew hayes reflects on his ma research, which explored the corporate takeover of the north american funeral industry. during the course of his research, he met a funeral director in vancouver, tom, who then became the subject of his thesis, which combined textual exegesis with a co-produced documentary film. tom was already actively resisting the corporatisation of his field, and saw the film as a mechanism for furthering his fight for social justice rather than as an aspect of academic practice. matthew found his project hijacked by tom’s political agenda, which produced conflict regarding their aesthetic and conceptual visions for the film. matthew uses this experience to reflect on the ethical and practical challenges of using visual methods, and on intersections between ethnographic filmmaking involving academic and non-academic collaborators and social justice. the five creative interventions that conclude our special issue include a video called “water ethics: think like a watershed” in which jessica hallenbeck interviews scholars and artists to develop a framework for the ethical use of water that shifts away from a supply and demand model to one based on ethics, rights, responsibilities, and relationality. caleb johnson presents “downtown ambassador,” an example drawn from a 2011 art exhibition called counter mapping that speaks to the ways people are using visual art to creatively disrupt everyday life and imaginatively contest urban spatial design as a material politics and mechanism for the pursuit of social justice. manal aldowayan, a contemporary saudi arabian artist, contributes “i am,” a series of photographs that respond to a 2005 speech given by king abdulla al saud that called for all saudis to unite in building a better country, including improving women’s employment opportunities. aldowayan’s photographs critically reflect on the conservative questioning of what kind of jobs are appropriate for women by exploring the history of women’s economic contributions to saudi society, and by representing contemporary women whose paid employment intervenes in debates about the nature and suitability of women’s paid labour. “unmasking racism” is the visual/textual product of bharati sethi’s combined use of photovoice and poetic transcription. she explores how immigrant and refugee women in canada experience racism that structures their work opportunities and health outcomes; she does this by inviting these women to document their experiences in diary, pictorial, and conventional interview forms, and then she draws on this material to construct two poeticised photos. finally, andrew zealley presents “infecting mbembe,” which consists of visual text panels that deconstruct the biopolitical and neoliberal investments in, and visual research & social justice studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 187-194, 2017 193 management of, hiv/aids. using layered visual methods of superimposition and overwriting, he aims to develop more meaningful understandings of the complex mechanisms, regulations, and apparatuses entangled in this politicised field of medicine that produces truths about life, death, bodies, and identities. we thank special issue contributors for their thoughtful interventions that think through the processes and implications of visual research using various social justice frameworks. our hope is that these interventions help to chart new directions in and approaches to visuality in qualitative research, and to develop substantive, methodological, and epistemological aspects of social justice theory. references crang, m. 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(2013). using photographs in social and historical research. london: sage. winddance twine, f. (2006). visual ethnography and racial theory: family photographs as archives of interracial intimacies. ethnic and racial studies, 29(3), 487-511. zehle, j. (2015). investigating life stories: the photovoices of young people with disabilities in northern ethiopia. in s. miles & a. howes (eds.), photography in educational research: critical reflections from diverse contexts (pp. 21-35). new york: routledge. © 2022 vignesh karthik kr and vishal vasanthakumar. this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. politics caste: a global journal on social exclusion vol. 3 no. 1 pp. 107–122 april 2022 issn 2639-4928 brandeis.edu/j-caste https://doi.org/10.26812/caste.v3i1.348 caste, then class: redistribution and representation in the dravidian model1 vignesh karthik kr1 and vishal vasanthakumar2 abstract dravidian parties believe that changes to the economic structure will not lead to social justice if the upper/dominant castes continue to exclusively possess social capital. to them, and later, to the successive dravidian party governments, economic justice was not possible without first ensuring social justice. this view was held by the stalwarts of the dravidian movement such as periyar e.v. ramasamy (periyar henceforth), the subject of this engagement, and actualised by leaders such as c.n. annadurai and m. karunanidhi, whose electoral politics was a means to empower subaltern groups in tamil society. we contend that periyar was the chief aggregator of the ideas put forth by earlier social justice ideologues, and an effective disseminator of the dravidian political ethos among the masses, making his contribution comprehensive and unique. through an analysis of the approach of dravidian party governments towards affirmative action, administrative reform and legislation, and through comparisons of the performance of tamil nadu in terms of development indicators with other states, we reveal the profound influence of periyarist thinking on the dravidian movement and state praxis. the quest of the dravidian movement for social justice did not just focus on class inequalities but on caste inequalities, which it saw as a propagator of class inequalities. keywords caste, class, dravidian model, tamil nadu, periyar, welfare 1king’s college london 2independent researcher email: 1vignesh.rajahmani@kcl.ac.uk, 2vishalvasanth1494@gmail.com 1we borrow the phrase dravidian model from kalaiyarasan and vijayabaskar (2021) in which, model signifies the functioning of a system wherein multiple variables be social, political or governance interact towards delivering systemic outcomes. they contend that mobilisation against caste inequality can yield both dignity and development. 108 caste: a global journal on social exclusion vol. 3, no. 1 introduction analyses of the impact of prominent social activists tend to be delimited by the specific issues—caste and race inequality, gender discrimination, communalism—they fought. this issue-centric approach is illuminating per se, but can benefit immensely from examining movements in their entirety, i.e. recognising the multidimensional assaults on the prevailing social order. periyar e.v. ramasamy (periyar henceforth) as a social activist contributed to strengthening the social justice agenda in tamil nadu in a way that merits wider analysis incorporating the hitherto under-studied aspects of his activism. his radically reformist activism was firmly focused on recognitionredistribution-representation, the staples of any justice movement, but studies of his contribution have not paid sufficient attention to the economic component of the social justice gestalt: redistribution. the south indian state of tamil nadu is known for the dravidian movement that married progressive affirmative action policy with a relentless struggle for greater autonomy for states within india’s federal framework and, increasingly, it is recognised for its ability to democratise economic growth. this success entails not only redistributing the benefits of economic growth, but also predistribution of opportunities and resources that enable people to participate in the growth process. existing literature on tamil nadu pertaining to the scope of the article can be classified into two categories. one is of literature, including ramaswamy s. (1997), geetha v. & rajadurai s.v. (1998), subramanian n. (1999), pandian m.s.s. (2007) manoharan k.r. (2017), who elaborated and critically examined the role of prominent activists including periyar. later, they examined the role dravidian parties played in changing social relations within ‘caste society’. they highlighted the activism against systematic and graded discrimination emerging from caste as a lived practice, and the possibilities and limits of their approaches. pandian, ramaswamy, subramanian and manoharan differed in their evaluation of the potential and outcomes of the dravidiantamil subaltern construct. while subramanian contended that the movement could contain ethnic conflicts between seemingly hostile groups, he noted a differential impact on caste groups based on their relative ritual status and agility. pandian traced the genealogy and possible futures of the non-brahmin construct and periyar’s contributions. ramaswamy typologised the different kinds of activists ranging from u.v. swaminatha iyer to c. rajagopalachari and their contribution to political developments in tamil nadu. geetha and rajadurai discussed the contributions of anti-caste leaders from iyothee thass to periyar towards forging non-brahmin politics. ramaswamy expressed concerns over periyar’s support for tamil identity, while pandian noted, within the non-brahmin construct, concerns over conflicts between lower castes and the dalits. manoharan engaged with the limits of periyarist understanding and explored the tensions between the universalism and particularism in his anti-caste discourse. however, all of them concurred on the vital role of periyar in widening the anti-caste political repertoire across communities within the dravidian-tamil construct. at this juncture, we contend that periyar is not necessarily caste, then class: redistribution and representation in the dravidian model 109 the figurehead of the dravidian movement but the aggregator-in-chief of the ideas put forth by activists before him and a guiding light for the generations that followed. the other category of literature including harriss-white (1996, 2013), kalaiyarasan and vijayabaskar (2021) discussed the nature and quality of socioeconomic development in tamil nadu in the context of the changing political economy of the country and tamil nadu in particular. harriss-white (1996) had argued that government policies and investments induced the formation of agro-industrial capital, which helped the subalterns find mobility. however, the development state induced different outcomes across communities. for instance, there is sub-par representation of dalits in business sectors (harriss-white et al., 2013). kalaiyarasan and vijayabaskar (2021) provide an account of how tamil nadu (or the dravidian model) makes room for broad-based growth and development across communities, better than the rest of the country. however, they note that populist mobilisation within the state needs to reorient to address emerging complications in the social and economic realms. though the abovediscussed literature discusses the interplay between economic policies and their impact on social justice, it sees dravidian parties and their policies as the vectors for such discussions. our article traces the influence of periyar and his ideas on the dravidian parties’ redistributive policies. social empowerment and economic mobility were non-negotiable goals of the dravidian movement, which held the clear-eyed understanding in public policy theory and praxis that the latter is impossible to achieve without the former. for instance, in his introduction to the serialised tamil version of the communist manifesto he published in 1931 in his weekly magazine kudi arasu “republic”, periyar considered the caste system the single biggest obstacle to communism in the indian subcontinent. in a public meeting twelve years later, in 1943, he challenged his communist friends to recognise and annihilate the discriminatory caste system which distributes privileges to brahmins and shudras according to their status in the caste hierarchy before they aspired to introduce and expand communism. (ramasamy e.v., 2005) in other words, changing the economic structure will not have progressive outcomes if the brahmins (and banias) continue to wield the levers of social power. this in a nutshell is the worldview of the leaders of the dravidian movement such as annadurai and karunanidhi, who took electoral politics as the route to empower subaltern groups in tamil society. we present a careful analysis of their pragmatic policy-making approach, which can potentially reveal the profound influence of periyarist thinking on the praxis that grew around the quest for social justice. over the years, it has become clear that, within the ambit of political conflict, struggles for recognition were taking precedence over struggles for redistribution (fraser, 1997). it was important not just to deal with class inequalities but deep-rooted caste concerns as well, for the latter disallowed the members of oppressed castes from accessing precious physical, social and cultural capital. social justice politics, seen through the periyarist lens, prioritises the critique of caste-based inequalities and brahminism over economic inequalities. 110 caste: a global journal on social exclusion vol. 3, no. 1 affirmative action as an effective means to redistribution alongside representation in his essay ‘new times in tamil nadu’ pandian (2011) notes that the politics of the dravida munnetra kazhagam [dravidian (land) welfare association] (dmk henceforth) was built around two principal ideological planks: caste-based social justice and tamil identity. such politics emerged as a critique of caste hierarchy and brahminism, coupled with continuous improvisations in the reservation system for government jobs and seats in educational institutions for the lower castes. since the 1950s, the communists in tamil nadu regularly criticised periyar, annadurai, and subsequently the dmk, for stressing on caste and not class. to the communists, it was evident that casteism survived because of class-based rule. the president of the “forum of thought” best articulated the periyar-led dravidar kazhagam’s [dravidians’ association] (d.k) disagreement with the communists: it is unfortunate that communists believe indian social problems can be solved by economic means. indian society is a caste society and class conflicts are only secondary. the caste structure is forming a super layer over the new class structure. for example, in the newly established industrial colonies, the scavenger settlements are constructed separately from the rest. so the old caste society is being imposed on an industrial society. the class-minded trade unions, mostly led by communists, do not see this problem because their leadership is dominated by high caste people.2 these ideological underpinnings of periyar, the dk, and dmk paved the way for some of the boldest and strongest affirmative action reforms seen in india. they sparked a debate that is still heatedly discussed in india. even as the writers of the indian constitution generally agreed that graded and ascriptive inequality needed substantial redressal, they often differed on the methods to do so. ajantha subramanian (2019) noted that one of the major points of debate was around the appropriate constitutional language of social differentiation—specifically, whether caste should be accorded legal recognition. she notes that in refusing to accord the individual citizen primacy over the caste collective, opposing the coupling of caste with class criteria, and exceeding the 50 percent ceiling on reservation, dravidian party governments3 disregarded the liberal norm of formal equality. it can be argued that the sustained resistance of dravidian party governments against formal equality also led to a shift towards finding a balance between merit and affirmative action. formal equality did not seem to hold as much importance as redressing historic social injustices. this can be seen in multiple reforms of successive chief ministers; annadurai, karunanidhi, mg ramachandran (mgr), and jayalalithaa. 2meeting of the rationalist forum and forum of thought, coimbatore, april 1972 as quoted in charles ryerson’s regionalism and religion: the tamil rennaisance and popular hinduism. 3in the context of this article, by dravidian party governments we mean the governments led by the dmk and the all india anna dravida munnetra kazhagam [all india anna dravidian (land) welfare association] (aiadmk). caste, then class: redistribution and representation in the dravidian model 111 in 1970, the first backward classes commission, commonly known as the sattanathan commission, constituted by the karunanidhi-led dmk government, reported that the higher classes within the backward castes have been gaining disparate advantages from the quota system. in turn, this was hampering the aspirations of the smaller and more backward classes. in response, the commission proposed in its report the creation of a separate administrative category for the most backward castes and a fixed quota for them. in 1971, the reservation for other backward classes (obcs) increased from 25 to 31 percent and the reservation for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (scs and sts) from 16 to 18 percent. later, the aiadmk, led by mgr toyed with the idea of reservations based on economic criteria, which the dmk vehemently challenged. the aiadmk was routed in the 1980 parliamentary election. the social justice discourse the dmk popularised, combined with competitive electoral compulsions, led mgr to raise the reservation quota for the obcs to 50 percent. in 1989, karunanidhi returned to power and responded to the agitations by vanniyars (a lower backward caste group) with a 20 percent reservation within the obc quota for the most backward castes including denotified communities. in this way, he sought to check the disproportionate influence of a few dominant backward castes (kalaiyarasan and manoharan, 2018). after a supreme court directive, the tamil nadu government constituted the ambashankar backward classes commission in 1982 to review the enumeration and classification of ‘socially and educationally backward’ groups. it found that 87 percent of the state population was eligible for reservation, based on which the government further expanded the list of backward classes to include lower-caste converts to christianity and islam, bringing the total to 69 percent—the highest in the country. however, the most significant turning point was karunanidhi wholeheartedly supporting the prime minister v.p. singh coalition government in implementing the mandal commission’s recommendations. the mandal commission recommended 27 percent reservation for the obcs in central government and public sector enterprises, raising the total reserved seats to 49.5 percent. this was immediately challenged in the supreme court leading to the landmark indra sawhney vs. union of india judgement. tamil nadu’s political stance on reservation came through in two key arguments against the 1992 judgment. first, state counsel siva subramanium forcefully argued against the exclusion of a “creamy layer” from the ambit of obc reservation. he contended that it was “a mere ruse, a trick, to deprive the backward classes of the benefit of reservations.” second, he said the 50 percent ceiling was arbitrary, especially in states like tamil nadu, where the enumerated backward caste population was over 80 percent. subramanium heralded tamil nadu as a model state with its long history of reservation dating back to 1921 and where the quota has steadily grown to 69 percent at the time. (subramanian, 2019, p. 213). here one can clearly identify the emphasis on education in the dravidian movement as a method to propagate its social justice and economic development goals. this emphasis has roots in a long legacy of innovation in affirmative action, starting with periyar who set the precedent when he resigned from the indian national congress in 1925 after his resolution demanding caste112 caste: a global journal on social exclusion vol. 3, no. 1 based reservation in government institutions was disallowed in the kancheepuram conference of the tamil nadu congress (pandian, 2007, cited in kalaiyarasan and vijayabaskar, 2021). in 2007, the dmk also provided a 3.5 percent quota each, for muslims and christians within the obc share of 30 percent. in 2009, karunanidhi introduced the tamil nadu arunthathiyars (special reservation of seats in educational institutions including private educational institutions and of appointments or posts in the services under the state within the reservation for the scheduled castes) act to ensure representation for the most marginalised among the scs, providing them with a 3 percent sub-quota within the sc quota. in his seminal work, capital and ideology, thomas piketty (2020) has aruged that redistributive measures have contributed immensely to reduce inequalitites, especially caste-based privileges amongst oppressed castes. use of state legislative assembly and parliament to further social justice in an interview on 16 february 1965, a correspondent of pravda, the official organ of the communist party of the soviet union, asked karunanidhi about the goals of the dmk. karunanidhi responded that the goals were social justice in society, rationalism in culture, socialism in economy, and democracy in politics. the route to achieve these goals, he said, was via the parliament.4 the use of parliament by the dravidian chief ministers (annadurai, karunanidhi, mgr, jayalalithaa) resulted in legislations that had social justice and economic justice effects. the dmk government amended the hindu succession act, 1956, to ensure equal shares for women in ancestral property. the party introduced numerous schemes, including the anjugam ammaiyar inter-caste marriage assistance scheme and the dr dharmambal ammaiyar memorial widow remarriage scheme, as incentives that undermine caste and gender hierarchies (kalaiyarasan and vijaybaaskar, 2021). karunanidhi’s biographer a.s. paneerselvam (2021) notes that in his first term as chief minister, karunanidhi emerged as an important interventionist in the state legislature. his interventions on hindi imposition, police reforms, the budget deficit and the attempt by the union government to control items listed in the concurrent list were powerful articulations, especially when demanding the union to share power. they make their point by delving deep into constitutional provisions and the best practices that make a polity truly federal in character. his speeches provided an idea of social justice beyond caste-based reservation and targeted affirmative action. it was inclusive and implementable. karunanidhi prioritised social reform over all others in his first stint as chief minister. the tamil nadu agricultural labourer fair wages act, 1969, was enacted to enforce the payment of fair wages to agricultural labourers in the cauvery delta region and penalise landowners who exploited labourers. another act in the same year would ensure all tenancy rights and interests were maintained in the revenue records for the first time. in the following year, the tamil nadu land 4quoted from https://www.epw.in/engage/article/m-karunanidhi-dravidian-sun-sets caste, then class: redistribution and representation in the dravidian model 113 reforms (reduction of ceiling on land) act, 1970, was passed to reduce disparities in landholdings by reducing the land ceiling limit from 30 standard acres to 15 standard acres (one acre is 0.4 hectare). these reforms matured in the form of a specialist university to develop agriculture, learning and research in the agricultural sciences through the tamil nadu agricultural university act, 1971. seen together, his agrarian and land-related laws were the first bundle of administrative measures that targeted the development of rural tamil nadu. in response to multiple demands from small construction worker unions in tamil nadu, the tamil nadu manual workers (regulation of employment and conditions of work) act was passed in 1982. this act defined manual worker and principal employer and covered different groups of informal workers within the construction industry. it stipulated that workers, contractors, and subcontractors must register with the board. today, there are 34 welfare boards in the state covering a range of occupations. in 1994, the tamil nadu manual workers (construction workers) welfare scheme came into force. the benefits of this scheme include accident compensation, natural death compensation to survivors, funeral assistance, marriage assistance, maternity assistance, crèches for children of construction workers, education assistance for two children per family, assistance to buy spectacles and pension. welfare schemes and legislations such as these legally empowered many workers in the unorganised sector. tamil nadu also has welfare boards for transgenders and the differently-abled, a step towards creating a social security net for the extremely marginalised. annika wetlesen (2010) defines legal empowerment as a process in which the law is applied to increase the control people have over their lives and their extent of political participation. with regard to labor rights, collective organisation of the working poor increased opportunities for decent work, and social protection are key elements in the legal empowerment process. administrative reform although detailed analyses of every administrative reform and its impact on the dravidian movement are beyond this article’s scope, a few reforms, though by no means exhaustive, stick out to illustrate the influence of periyarist thinking on the praxis of the dravidian movement. according to ryerson (1988), periyar held up a system of ethics that blended a ‘scientific socialism’ with a non-theistic interpretation of tamil literary texts. the tincture of romantic nationalism that evr brought to his message of radical socialism gave that socialism much of its appeal. this socialism carried forward by dravidian governments was well reflected in administrative reforms that worked equally to improve the dignity of people, as much as their life chances. these reforms focused on ensuring the rights of oppressed castes and, overall, had a long-term programmatic commitment and generally sought to address caste-based biases as a method of economic empowerment. paneerselvam (2021), noted that the administrative reforms initiated by karunanidhi had a profound impact and vastly improved the delivery capabilities of the state. one of the earlier and more critical reforms included the 1973 administrative 114 caste: a global journal on social exclusion vol. 3, no. 1 reforms commission. it recommended that the existing part-time village officers be replaced by regular, transferable public servants who should form part of the revenue hierarchy. based on this recommendation, in 1975, karunanidhi promulgated an ordinance that abolished the system of hereditary village karnam and headmen and replaced them with village officers recruited by the tamil nadu state public service commission. this reform had implications from an economic and a social front. a hereditary village headman system allowed for the concentration of resources to few families and thereby a lot of the social capital. during this tenure, karunanidhi banned hand-pulled rickshaws and introduced cycle rickshaws instead, insisting that no man is beneath another to stand and pull a rickshaw. tamil nadu is the first state in post-independence india to introduce free mid-day meals for school children. the scheme, however, has its antecedents in the justice party rule in the madras presidency during the colonial period. the scheme acquired new life again under the chief ministership of k. kamaraj, through the slogan of ‘combating classroom hunger’ in the 1950s (rajivan, 2006). the programme retained children in schools and effectively reduced dropouts, especially those from a lower-caste and class background, and was further expanded from 1982 onwards by mgr. the dravidian model was not just to create social justice and welfare institutions but also for rapid industrialisation and economic growth. paneerselvam again notes that accelerated industrial growth happened only with karunanidhi’s creation of the state industries promotion corporation of tamil nadu (sipcot) in 1971. sipcot was responsible for establishing industrial estates across the state and creating land banks that proved very useful when the indian economy opened up in 1991. in 1999, karunanidhi was also responsible for the it boom in the state with the setting up the first tidel park,5 an information technology (it) park in chennai. to improve social harmony and reduce caste-based discrimination, karunanidhi introduced samathuvapuram (equality village), a housing scheme where a village of 100 houses was to be created. forty of these homes would be for dalits, twentyfive for backward castes, twenty-five for most backward castes, and ten for other communities. each village was to have one community hall and one burial ground. by 2001, over 145 samathuvapurams were created across tamil nadu. notably, despite such efforts, the scheme could not be scaled up owing to restive social tensions. tamil nadu for long has been lauded to have one of the best healthcare systems in the country. kalaiyarasan and vijaybaskar (2021) argue that the state’s better outcomes in health and nutrition have been made possible by ensuring relatively more equitable access to public health services and ensuring better utilisation. considering the mushrooming of large private hospitals across the state, the dmk government also launched the ‘kalaignar kaapitu thittam’, also known as chief minister’s comprehensive health insurance scheme, which provides health insurance. it was aimed at families living below the poverty line for life-saving treatment of up to rs. 1 lakh. 5tidel is a joint venture between tidco (tamil nadu industrial development corporation) and elcot (electronics corporation of tamil nadu). caste, then class: redistribution and representation in the dravidian model 115 given the dmk’s experience of implementing a slew of social welfare policies and the relative success rates achieved in the state, the party’s tryst with its variant of a universal basic income (ubi) scheme underlines the periyarist praxis within their policymaking approach. in march 2021, the president of the dmk made an electoral promise in their manifesto that every woman in the state would get rs. 1000 as monthly income support. on the face of it, the monthly transfer constitutes over 13 percent of the average monthly spending of a rural household6 in the state (2017). more importantly, the monthly income support was conceived as ‘urimai thogai’ or a rightful entitlement, not a gift transfer or homemakers’ wage. also, women are addressed as ‘kudumba thalaivi’ or family heads and not ‘illathu arasi’homemakers. such a conception radically expands the number of households covered and foregrounds the dignity of the beneficiaries. in his address on 7 march, m.k. stalin promised that households that hold commodity ration cards are eligible to receive the monthly transfer. as of january 2020, there are 20,231,394 ration cards in tamil nadu of which 49,472 (0.2 percent) are non-commodity cards.7 the former chief economic adviser of india, arvind subramanian, wrote in the economic survey of india, 2016, that a universal basic income promotes many of a society’s basic values that respect all individuals as free and equal. it promotes liberty because it is anti-paternalistic and opens up the possibility of flexibility in labour markets. it promotes equality by reducing poverty and efficiency by reducing waste in government transfers. the universal nature of the scheme makes it a lot more effective with lower leakages, as argued by scholars.8 the idea of this scheme is to guarantee a decent minimum income to women, which otherwise fails all tenets of justice. policy in comparative perspective dreze and sen (2013) attribute the relative success of tamil nadu on various development indicators to a long history of collective action, which in turn resulted in political mobilisation amongst the oppressed castes. a policy paper published by the centre of government and delivery of the tony blair institute for global change compared the economic trajectory of two indian states: uttar pradesh and tamil nadu. titled ‘inclusive growth in tamil nadu: the role of political leadership and governance’, the evidence-based paper pointed out that in 1960–61 these two states were not so different across several measures related to development. it further states that in 1960, the rural poverty rate in tamil nadu checked in at just below 70 percent, much higher than uttar pradesh’s rate of 48 percent. however, after nearly five decades of dravidian party regimes, often severely criticised, the situation is vastly different. according to the study, ‘by the year 2005, tamil nadu’s per capita income outpaced 6see p. 38 of https://www.nabard.org/auth/writereaddata/tender/1608180417nabardrepo-16_web_p.pdf 7see https://cms.tn.gov.in/sites/default/files/documents/foodcp_e_pn_2020_21.pdf 8see https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-return-of-targeted-cash-transfers/ article26155629.ece 116 caste: a global journal on social exclusion vol. 3, no. 1 uttar pradesh by 128 per cent—a gap more than twice as big as it was in the early 1960s. and in 2009–10, tamil nadu’s rural poverty rate dropped to nearly half that of uttar pradesh (21.2 percent versus 39.4 percent), and its urban poverty rate was less than half of uttar pradesh’s (12.8 percent versus 31.7 percent)’ (akileswaran, 2021). it is even more prudent to compare tamil nadu with india’s largest economy, maharashtra and gujarat, whose supposed development model led to the rise of narendra modi and the bjp. a report published by the niti aayog in association with the united nations ranked states on where they stood compared to others on the sustainable development goals (sdgs). tamil nadu stands a tied second amongst all states in india in the composite sdg index, while maharashtra stood at rank 9 and gujarat at rank 10. moreover, in sdg 1 (“no poverty”), tamil nadu ranks first in india, whereas gujarat stood at rank 16 and maharashtra at rank 17 across all states in india. in sdg 2, “zero hunger”, tamil nadu ranks 7 among all states and the highest amongst big states, whereas gujarat and maharashtra lie at the bottom of the table. gujarat ranked 18 and maharashtra at 20. ensuring basic amenities and aspiring to provide equal opportunities to all by different dravidian governments is seen by tamil nadu’s performance in sdg 4, “quality education”, tamil nadu ranked at 5 amongst all states whereas maharashtra came in at 8 and gujarat at rank 17 (niti aayog, 2020). moreover, an analysis by kalaiyarasan and vijayabaskar (2021: 19) found that tamil nadu has significantly reduced poverty across caste groups. for example, the gains scs made in the rate of poverty reduction between 1993–94 and 2011–12 in tamil nadu is 43.1 percentage points, which are significantly higher than gujarat at 34.3 percentage points. if there is something called periyarist gaze on dravidian rule or economics, then it is marked by the democratisation of opportunities in a caste society and then ensuring basic amenities as entitlements alongside reducing economic disparities. an analysis of the affirmative-action reforms, administrative reforms and legislation are intended to show a periyarist influence on dravidian policies, which in turn acknowledges the efforts of the social justice ideologues that periyar contributed to, furthered and democratised as he transformed the activism into a mass movement. while the leaders of the dravidian parties’ governments have attributed their policies to periyar, we do not fixate on a narrow causal argument between periyar and dravidian policies of social justice and economic development or a firm attribution of such outcomes to a favourable environment that the region enjoyed. while one could argue that states like uttar pradesh have fared so poorly because of factors other than lacking a periyaresque figure, we draw from pandian (2007, p. 7) to argue that a deterministic approach based on just contexts and landscapes would trivialise people’s efforts. it would end with us disengaging from the praxis and movements led by activists and reformers like periyar in tamil nadu. caste, then class: redistribution and representation in the dravidian model 117 communism, communists and brahmins in late 1931, periyar was on a year-long tour of europe, with an essential stop at the soviet union. periyar contrasted his time in the soviet union with his time in britain, france, greece, and germany. he noted that although they were “democratic nations, russia alone has no unemployment. there are a few beggars, but all old or infirm, and the state supports them”. (venkatachalapathy, 2017). the impact of the soviet union on periyar was significant. upon his return, periyar asked the members of his selfrespect movement to desist from using honorifics and urged them to use “thozhar” or comrade instead. according to venkatachalapathy (2017), periyar popularised this usage, and the communists adopted it later. moreover, his fascination with communism and the soviet union extended to naming newborn children (a popular custom in tamil nadu where elders are asked to name children) “russia” or “moscow” or “lenin”. however, periyar soon began to see that communism or even an approach towards eradicating material/asset-based inequalities wouldn’t work because of caste’s primacy in indian society. contrasting with the soviet union, he said, “since the western countries did not have caste, they had to wage a class war before communism could be reached. here, owing to the presence of caste, it is necessary to wage a caste war before achieving communism” (periyar, 2009: 1647, as cited in manoharan, 2019). later, periyar gave numerous reasons for ending his friendship with the communists. he charged them, among other treacheries, with “secret attempts to convert dravida kazagham branches into communist party units.” yet the fundamental reason was the brahmin preponderance in the tamil communist leadership and what the kazagham would have us believe to be its logical consequence, tamil communist subservience to north indian domination (harrison, 2015). periyar asserted, “in a country where there are no common rights, communism would only strengthen those who have been enjoying greater rights,” adding that abolishing the privilege of brahmins and the upper castes would result in going half the way towards the communist ideal (periyar, 2009: 1647, as cited in manoharan, 2019). the communists could not mount a sustained critique on periyar’s thoughts beyond the notion that he didn’t extend his seemingly material conception of religion to see the relationship between the methods of production and social, cultural and political values (sivaraman, 2013, 109). the breakaway of the dravidian movement from communism also stemmed from the critique that the communist movement in tamil nadu only looked upon the need for material equality and class relations. it failed to look into the themes of memory, identity, myths and superstitions, something that the justice party, dk and its offshoots have addressed to varying extents. sivaraman herself notes that the communists did not adopt a clear policy on periyar based on study or analysis. (sivaraman, 2013, p. 116). the welfare state brought forth by successive dravidian governments since 1969 focused on inclusive growth, i.e. social justice coupled with economic development. the dravidian movement clearly did not just focus on class as an essential factor for mobilisation but focused on caste inequalities as a propagator of class inequalities. 118 caste: a global journal on social exclusion vol. 3, no. 1 harrison (2015) reports the following comment by periyar in an interview on december 14, 1952. “the communists have their office at a foreign place, bombay or delhi, and they are just as interested in exploiting our country as any of the other foreigncontrolled parties. besides, most of the communists leaders are brahman. ramamurthi is a ‘pucca brahman’.” what periyar meant by brahman / brahmin got clearer with time and the politics propagated by his lieutenants annadurai and karunanidhi. even b.r. ambedkar shared periyar’s scepticism of the indian communists. to quote from volume 17 of babasaheb ambedkar’s writing and speeches, “the communist party was originally in the hands of some brahmin boys-dange and others. they have been trying to win over the maratha community and the scheduled castes. but they have made no headway in maharashtra. why? because they are mostly a bunch of brahmin boys. the russians made a great mistake in entrusting the communist movement in india to them. either the russians didn’t want communism in india-they wanted only drummer boys-or they didn’t understand”.9 both periyar and ambedkar shared a similar scepticism of indian communists while also believing that communism did indeed have a role in bringing about social justice in india. the sustained criticism continued to be that communism didn’t consider caste inequalities because the communist leadership consisted of proletariat upper-caste men. the dalit critique of the dravidian movement there has been sustained criticism from scholars such as hugo gorringe (2011a), rajangam s (2011), karthikeyan damodaran (2018), among others, that caste continues to be at the centre of politics in tamil nadu not despite but because of the dravidian parties (damodaran et al., 2012) with the claim that the non-brahmin movement was precisely that, a non-brahmin movement, not an “anti-brahmin” movement. having wrested control from the brahmins, the intermediate castes monopolised power in return (damodaran, 2012). subramanian (2002, p. 126) argued that dravidian parties ‘increased political participation, aided the representation of the emergent strata, enriched civic life, and thus strengthened pluralist democracy’. social pluralism, he explains, refers to the proliferation of autonomous associational forms that are tied neither to the state nor to each other. however, as gorringe (2011b) noted, this social pluralism has not been inclusive of dalit aspirations and that there has been a “dravidian” read lower castes hegemony over tamil politics. this critique goes back to the early political days of the dravidian movement, where, by stressing language rather than class, the dmk (and later the aiadmk) attempted to create an imagined community of tamils and avoid acting upon its politically sensitive election pledges on land reform, dowry and caste. sustained violence against dalits by lower-caste groups like the vanniyars and thevars have cast a shadow over dravidian notions of justice. however, anti-caste leaders like thol thirumavalavan of the vck have pointed out that the dravidian movement and the panthers movement fostered economic, educational, developmental and political assertions by the dalits that have led to intermediate castes falling back 9baws vol-17, part-1, page 406, dr b.r ambedkar caste, then class: redistribution and representation in the dravidian model 119 on brute caste pride as a weapon to defend their dominant status.10 thirumavalavan has gone so far as to say that he views periyar in the same light as ambedkar (gorringe, 2017, p. 38). the case of devendra kula vellalars,11 hitherto called the ‘pallars’, have also engaged with periyar in their claims to recognition and redistribution, albeit differently from that of the fellow dalit caste groups like paraiyars. gross (2017, pp. 176, 292, 381) argued that while periyar’s influence on contemporary devendra politics was mixed, prominent leaders invoked his ideology and regarded him to be the pioneer of the anti-caste and subaltern movement. not discounting the brutalities that members of the lower castes inflict on the dalits, she argues, the relative economic decline of the lower and land-owning castes has (vis-à-vis the dalits, who now have access to education and resources), unsettled the previously dominant caste groups. the social relations that were once well-defined are now complicated and in flux. at the same time, manoharan (2019: 289) highlighted the politics of containment versus that of appeasement practised by the dmk and the aiadmk respectively in their approach towards thevars and their attempts towards establishing dominance. to borrow nancy fraser’s framework (fraser et al., 2004), we should think about welfare politics not only in terms of who gets what but also who gets to interpret people’s needs. the politics and legacy of periyar’s self-respect movement have allowed for political claims-making in terms of group identity. however, periyarist thought on self-respect and dignity has also vested in people a claim to be full partners in social interactions. karthik k.r.v. and ajaz ashraf (2019) show the relative upward economic mobility that scs in tamil nadu have had thanks to multiple socialist welfare policies compared to states like uttar pradesh. in analysing the intergroup average annual per capita income in uttar pradesh and tamil nadu by looking at the indian human development survey 2011–12, they found that the average per capita income of scs in uttar pradesh was rs. 11,762/-, while in tamil nadu, it was rs. 28,109/-. the dravidian movement succeeded in aggregating a range of social groups marked by class, caste, linguistic, religious and ethnic diversity by establishing a chain of equivalence across these groups and communicating a political logic of difference vis-à-vis elite nationalism and caste elites (kalaiyarasan & vijayabaskar, 2021, p. 43). amit ahuja (2019) noted that multiple socio-cultural movements have led to the broad basing and mainstreaming of dalit grievances in states like tamil nadu and maharashtra as against states like uttar pradesh and bihar. however, it is worth noting that the quality of participation of dalits through electoral politics has continued to remain limited, with the number of ministerial positions given to dalits low and the portfolios assigned to dalits often not prominent. at the same time, the aspirations of dalits has been marked by periods of considerable support like the sub-categorised quotas for lower dalits or apathetic silences and worse use of state machinery to reinforce discrimination and dominance. 10see https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/tamil-nadu/dalits-targeted-for-their-upwardeconomic-mobility-leaders/article15617026.ece 11devendra kula vellalar is a group of castes formerly referred to as pallars. they were a part of the list of scheduled castes that were predominantly agricultural workers in southern tamil nadu. after years of assertion to be referred to as the devendra kula vellalar that signifies their’ sons of soil’ and ‘primal agricultural clan’ status as against pallars—a word that has become a discriminatory slur in common tamil parlance. 120 caste: a global journal on social exclusion vol. 3, no. 1 notwithstanding the chequered impact of the dravidian policies on social and economic fronts within the state, the current chief minister of tamil nadu, mk stalin, announced an all india federation for social justice12 in his republic day address in 2022. the idea hints at the importance of political pragmatism in finding allies in the quest for social and economic justice in the larger indian context, a practice that periyar consciously undertook, which explains his camaraderie with multiple activists fighting for various causes. periyar had vociferously defended independent dalit politics. he believed that separate social-political organisations for untouchable castes were necessary and was opposed to intermediate castes seeking a position of pride within the system of brahminism (manoharan, 2020: 8). similarly, manoharan also argued that periyar did not want to assume leadership of the dalits and sought to be a comrade in their fight for self-empowerment with the idea of fighting not for the equality of castes but the removal of caste as an identity-marker, an ambedkarite approach. such an understanding becomes a lot more compelling today when the state witnesses restive conflicts between lower castes or dalits. as a response, tall anti-caste leaders like thol thirumavalavan of the viduthalai chiruthaigal katchi continue to locate answers in the periyarist thought and approach. in sum, notwithstanding the dravidian parties’ mixed success, the periyarist gaze at social justice is a continuous instinctual-subalternising mechanism that foregrounds social justice as a precursor to economic justice in the quest for making an equitable society. while one of the markers of social justice—caste—is being continuously dealt with, questions of gender are gathering momentum with time. the redressal of the concerns raised by women and people from the lgbtqia+ community, while simultaneously addressing the newer complexities within the caste matrix that complicate class inequalities, will test the limits and possibilities of the sustenance and comprehensiveness of the dravidian political mobilisation. acknowledgements we wish to sincerely thank dr. dag erik berg for his comments and feedback on the earlier version of the article presented at anti-caste 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(2010). legal empowerment of workers in the informal economy: the case of the construction industry in tamil nadu, india. journal of asian public policy, 3(3), pp. 294–308. available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/17516234.2010.536346 liddell final before ts correspondence address: jessica l. liddell, school of social work, university of montana, missoula, mt 59812–4680, usa; email: jessica.liddell@mso.umt.edu issn: 1911-4788 volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 “we live in a very toxic world”: changing environmental landscapes and indigenous food sovereignty jessica l. liddell university of montana, usa sarah g. kington tulane university, usa catherine e. mckinley tulane university, usa abstract the purpose of this article is to understand how historical oppression has undermined health through environmental injustices that have given rise to food insecurity. specifically, the article examines ways in which settler colonialism has transformed and contaminated the land itself, impacting the availability and quality of food and the overall health of indigenous peoples. food security and environmental justice for gulf coast, state-recognized tribes has been infrequently explored. these tribes lack federal recognition and have limited access to recourse and supplemental resources as a result. this research fills an important gap in the literature through exploring the intersection of environmental justice and food insecurity issues for this population. partnering with a community-advisory board and using a qualitative descriptive methodology, 31 gulf coast indigenous women participated in semi-structured interviews about their healthcare experiences and concerns. through these interviews, participants expressed concerns about (a) the environmental impacts of pollution on the contamination of food and on the health of tribal members; and (b) the impact of these changes on the land, such as negatively impacting gardening practices. the authors of this study document how environmental changes have compounded these concerns and contribute to the overall pollution of food and water sources and unviability of subsistence practices, severely effecting tribal members’ health. in conclusion, we show how social and environmental justice issues such as pollution, industry exploitation, and climate change perpetuate the goals of settler colonialism through undermining cultural practices and the overall health of indigenous peoples. “we live in a very toxic world” studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 39 keywords food sovereignty; indigenous; food desert; gardening; native american; environmental justice environmental injustice is a contemporary form of historical oppression (burnette & figley, 2017; burnette et al., 2018) that is increasingly being explored in relation to indigenous sovereignty and health disparities (hoover et al., 2012; singer, 2018; tsosie, 2007; vinyeta et al., 2016). historical oppression of indigenous peoples has occurred across time through land dispossession via coercive treaties and forced relocation, and as a result of settler colonialism. it continues today through chronic, pervasive, and intergenerational forms of environmental injustices, which have disrupted cultural continuity, diet and well-being (burnette & figley, 2017; burnette et al., 2018). the environmental justice framework provides activists and scholars a way of conceptualizing how social justice issues, and historical and contemporary forms of oppression intersect with environmental issues such as land use, pollution and resource extraction. indigenous peoples experience disproportionate rates of acute and chronic health conditions, which are often linked to diet, and are an important social justice concern (blue bird jernigan et al., 2012, 2013, 2017; milburn, 2004; sowerwine et al., 2019). food security is the availability, access, and ability to procure safe and nutritious foods that are aligned with the food preferences of groups and consistent with their social and cultural customs and values (pinstrup-andersen, 2009). despite the pronounced impact that climate change and other environmental justice issues have on food production and the contamination of local resources (adamson, 2011; smith ahern, 2020), the intersections between environmental justice, social justice, overall health and food security have been underexplored. food security and environmental justice have also been understudied for state-recognized indigenous peoples who experience additional obstacles posed by a lack of federal recognition and the associated impairment in controlling and regulating their land and resources (crepelle, 2018; fletcher, 2006). this is an important social justice issue facing members of the tribe in this study. tribes located in the gulf coast experience environmental injustices, climate change, and land loss at accelerated rates due to both the impacts of climate change (e.g., rising sea levels) and industrial exploitation (e.g., oil company activities which weaken the land and accelerate wetland loss) (austin, 2006; maldonado, 2014). it is important to note that while the particular environmental injustices experienced by indigenous peoples are place-specific, parallel environmental injustices related to industry exploitation (e.g., oil extraction in standing rock, peru, and ecuador (giliowhitaker, 2019; sawyer, 2004)) and the impacts of climate change (e.g., warming oceans and rising sea levels in alaska (ahtuangaruak, 2015)) are extensively documented among indigenous peoples throughout the us and across the world (hoover, 2017). jessica l. liddell, sarah g. kington & catherine e. mckinley studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 40 this research fills a gap in the exploration of the interrelationships between health, environmental justice, social justice, and foodways for state recognized indigenous peoples who are impacted by colonization and place in distinctive ways. it is important to explore state recognized tribes specifically, as these tribes have not only undergone historical oppression related to colonization, but also continue to experience restrictions in acknowledgements and resources due to a lack of federal recognition. this research contributes to greater understanding about the connection between environmental justice issues, health and food security for indigenous peoples, necessary to develop targeted interventions and policies promoting the sovereignty and well-being of indigenous peoples. the purpose of this article is to explore the intersection of environmental injustice, social justice, health and food security among women from a staterecognized indigenous tribe in the gulf coast of the united states. the overarching research question is: “how has historical oppression undermined the health of indigenous peoples through environmental injustices and food insecurity?” we situate these experiences to show how settler colonialism, which began with the forced removal and genocide of indigenous peoples, is an ongoing process; it continues in the present through the exploitation of indigenous resources by industry and land loss related to climate change, industrial exploitation, and the precarious geographical location of the tribe resulting from forced tribal relocation (burnette & figley, 2017; glenn, 2015; hixson, 2013; wolfe, 1999). settler colonialism, food security, and indigenous peoples many of the contemporary and historic injustices experienced by indigenous communities can be linked to the history of settler colonialism, which has included genocide and the forcible removal of indigenous peoples from their ancestral land. settler colonialism is a component of historical oppression (burnette & figley, 2017); far from being viewed as a discrete, historical event, it can instead be understood as an ongoing process (burnette & figley, 2017; glenn, 2015; hixson, 2013; wolfe, 1999). as such, the extensive and concomitant health disparities experienced by indigenous peoples are not exceptional occurrences but are, in fact, consistent with the settler colonial project. forms of historical oppression experienced by tribes in this region include both past and contemporary social and environmental injustices, from being forcibly removed from ancestral land onto less desirable land to frequently experiencing exploitation by industries (ahtuangaruak, 2015; burnette et al., 2019; billiot, 2017; billiot & parfait, 2019; burnette et al., 2018; crepelle, 2018; gilio-whitaker, 2019; hoover, 2017; liddell & kington, 2021; liddell et al., 2021; sawyer, 2004). moreover, it is well documented that indigenous peoples are exposed to high levels of pollution in the air, water “we live in a very toxic world” studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 41 and land (thompson & kwok, 2004). while pollutants are context specific, they have important implications for food security as pollution can render food unsafe and unusable (hoover, 2017; rotkin-ellman et al., 2012). this article examines how environmental and social injustices such as these affect sovereignty and enculturation of indigenous peoples by negatively impacting food security. the continuation of environmental injustices and resulting food insecurity is an extension of settler colonial goals, in which indigenous peoples’ control over land and resources is impeded. tribal setting and context the focal tribe resides on the gulf coast, and lives throughout a large geographic region that is home to bayous, wetlands, and river systems (austin, 2006; lambeth, 2016; maldonado, 2014). this setting contributes to the economic, cultural, physical and mental well-being of the tribe in a variety of ways, including through the provision of food (austin, 2006; crepelle, 2018; lambeth, 2016; maldonado, 2014). activities such as gardening, raising livestock and especially fishing provide both nutritional sustenance and important cultural activities for the tribe (burnette et al., 2018). the focal tribe experiences oil and gas industry exploitation (crepelle, 2018; sawyer, 2004), as well as issues of land loss. climate change has caused rising sea levels, and more severe and more frequent hurricanes, both of which exacerbate coastal erosion (austin, 2006) and increased flooding (lambeth, 2016; tully et al., 2019). oil company infrastructure and activities, such as the dredging of canals, is prevalent in the region, and exacerbates these issues by weakening the land and leading to increased loss of wetlands, which are a natural buffer against flooding and storm surges (austin, 2006; tully et al., 2019). indigenous peoples in this region are adversely affected by oil rigs due to pollution, oil spills and this dredging of canals, but are also often employed by the oil industry, making them dependent on these corporations for their livelihood. this simultaneous oppression and reliance on the oppressor – due to their greater wealth, power and status – is a characteristic challenge of historical oppression (burnette & figley, 2017). while the effects of climate change and industrial activities on land loss, flooding and hurricanes is widely acknowledged, the issue of saltwater intrusion receives less attention, perhaps because it is not as visible (tully et al., 2019). saltwater intrusion can have a variety of causes and sets off a cascade of dramatic biogeochemical and environmental changes. the coastal region this indigenous group resides on experiences some of the primary causes of rapid saltwater intrusion, including sea level rises, storms and tides which push seawater inland, and increased water connectivity due to oil canals and levees (tully et al., 2019). saltwater has around 400 times more jessica l. liddell, sarah g. kington & catherine e. mckinley studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 42 salt than freshwater, and this dramatic change of ionic concentration causes significant osmotic stress to organisms not adapted to saltwater; very few plants can grow successfully in saltwater (tully et al., 2019). the gulf coast region also experienced the impacts from the historic and catastrophic 2010 bp oil spill, which dumped more than 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf of mexico, causing rapid contamination of the environment, including the contamination of previously relied upon food sources. this devastating event led to negative mental and physical health outcomes, as well as decreased employment and negative economic impacts for those in the region (cope et al., 2013; patel et al., 2018). the impacts felt by this indigenous group resulting from disasters such as this, climate change and petroleum activities is especially injurious considering the history of forced tribal relocation to this area (fitzgerald, 2015). although this indigenous tribe has been well-documented in the region and is recognized by the state, they have been unable to gain federal recognition, a process that is highly political with little standardization in enforcement (fletcher, 2006). without federal recognition, tribes are unable to receive benefits and resources afforded to them under federal treaty agreements which impedes their ability to receive resources following disasters (u.s. commission on civil rights, 2004). additionally, without federal recognition, tribes are unable to exercise authority over the use of the land on which they reside, including the preservation of sacred sites, and cannot enact environmental regulations as they desire, an important social justice issue (burnette et al., 2019; liddell et al., 2021; maldonado, 2014). a lack of federal recognition has also helped to facilitate environmental exploitation in the region by petroleum industries, and allowed bp to deny them resources following the oil spill since they only recognize claims from federally-recognized tribes (crepelle, 2018; liddell et al., 2021). occupational options for the tribe have been limited due to the history of educational discrimination, and the most common employers among the tribal members are the fishing and oil industries; this complicates the relationship many members have with oil companies (crepelle, 2018; maldonado, 2014). while previously many tribal members relied on indigenous healers for healthcare, this trend has been decreasing, potentially as a result of the changing landscape and the negative impact it has had on plants and medicines used in healing (bates, 2016; maldonado, 2014; vinyeta et al., 2016). this is an example of the multiple pathways through which the changing environment is impacting indigenous health and wellbeing. “we live in a very toxic world” studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 43 methods research design data was drawn from a larger qualitative descriptive study that took a holistic ecosystemic, life course, and resilience informed approach to investigate the reproductive and sexual health experiences of women from an indigenous gulf coast tribe (liddell, 2020; liddell & kington, 2021; liddell & mckinley, 2021; liddell & doria, 2022; liddell & lilly, 2022). although the broader study focused on women’s health, given that health, resilience and land are inseparable among many indigenous communities (kirmayer et al., 2009), environmental concerns came up emergently and frequently, warranting their own attention. this qualitative study centered the historical and social context for the focal tribe and deferred to participants’ voices, following their lead throughout the interview process. as such, many themes related to the environment, land, gardening and health emerged organically; these are the focus of this article. qualitative descriptive methodology has been frequently used and recommended for research with indigenous peoples (burnette et al., 2014; mckinley et al., 2019). the straightforward interpretation of findings elevates the real experiences of participants as portrayed by their own words, enabling a more accurate understanding and working to limit bias (denzin et al., 2008). the project utilized a community engaged research approach designed in collaboration with a community advisory board (cab) made up of tribal members. the principal investigator (pi) was invited to do this project by one of the cab members based on the pi’s previous engagement with the tribe. the study protocol and interview guide were designed with cab members, as were discussions about study findings and potential uses of research findings. the cab and the tribal council approved the study and offered feedback on the research study during each step of the research process. in addition, the steps outlined in burnette et al.’s (2014) “toolkit of strategies for culturally sensitive and ethical research with ai/an communities” were followed throughout. the qualitative descriptive methodology utilized semi-structured, in depth, qualitative interviews and conventional qualitative content analysis, the analysis of choice for qualitative descriptive studies. setting and participants the first author conducted interviews with 31 women from a staterecognized indigenous tribe located on the gulf coast. the tribe’s identity remains anonymous due to agreements with the tribal council, who requested their name not be included. this is congruent with best practices in conducting research with indigenous peoples and is related to previous jessica l. liddell, sarah g. kington & catherine e. mckinley studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 44 negative experiences other indigenous peoples have had with researcher exploitation (burnette et al., 2014). to qualify for the study, participants needed to be 18 years or older and self-identify as a woman and a member of the tribe. participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 71, with a median age of 51.17. most participants (83.4%) had at least one child, and those with children had an average of two or three children. data collection & analysis institutional review board (irb) approval was granted from both tulane university, and the tribal council. recruitment flyers were posted at tribal and community centers, and purposeful snowball sampling was assisted by the community advisory board. a semi-structured interview guide was used, informed by responsive interviewing (rubin & rubin, 2011), and questions followed the life trajectory to gain overtones of a life course approach (sandelowski, 2000). a life course approach was used to identify generational changes in health experiences, to understand life experiences with the context in mind, and to explore differences in perceptions about health issues. participants were asked a range of questions about their health experiences, including questions related to health barriers and supports in the tribe. here we focus on responses related to food and diet brought up by participants. see liddell & kington (2021) for the full interview guide. interviews were conducted from october 2018 to february 2019, and ranged from 30-90 minutes in length, with an average interview lasting 66 minutes. participants were offered a $30 gift card to compensate them for their time. interviews were recorded with participant permission, transcribed via a professional transcription service, then checked by the pi to make sure they had been transcribed verbatim. data were analyzed with nvivo software using conventional content analysis. this approach began with open coding to identify broad themes, followed by direct coding to identify subthemes (milne & oberle, 2005). all but three participants were provided a summary of all research findings (two were unable to be reached, and one declined to participate) through member checking. participants were supportive of findings and did not request that any changes be made. a summary of findings was also presented at a tribal council meeting and was approved by the tribal council. in the following quotes, interviewees are given anonymous identifiers to show how themes were represented across participants. results the importance of food in family and community traditions was a recurrent theme among women. nineteen of 31 women described concerns related to “we live in a very toxic world” studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 45 food and diet when asked about community health barriers. food was often described as an important reason for social gatherings. however, many women also mentioned concerns they had about food, including the themes of “food contamination” and “barriers to gardening.” women made explicit connections with changes they saw occurring in the environment and the themes of contamination of food and changes in the ability to garden. “we live in a very toxic world,” and “the food doesn’t taste the same”: food contamination participants described their concerns that environmental changes were negatively impacting the health of the community by polluting the food people have access to. participant 6 described concerns that the food people ate was being poisoned by toxins in the environment, noting that many of her family members died of cancer following the b.p. oil spill: all at the same time we lost them one after the other. and this is all after b.p. and my dad worked for them…that had a lot to do with it. so i think it might have been the seafood or something…i know after b.p. that’s when they [relatives] started falling like flies…you can tell it’s not…good stuff…. now, it stinks when you’re out there [on the water]. very nasty. i think that’s got a lot to do with the people getting sick too...i guess the old people, they lived longer because they didn’t have all this nonsense they have now because back, long time ago, the people used to live longer than they live now. this participant felt that tribal members used to live longer before the environmental contaminants introduced by the b.p. oil spill. participant 20 also described how tribal members used to live to old ages: my grandma was [a] 100 when she died. my great grandma was 96 when she died. yeah. or 97. she was, way up there, right… but nowadays…their diet is, i mean it’s, it’s seafood… whatever they can go out and catch… so i’m sure there’s a link. this woman felt that the decrease in life expectancy could be directly tied to changes in diet, and especially to contamination of seafood. participant 4 further highlighted how pollution in the water not only undermined tribal members’ ability to consume seafood from the water, but also the ability of tribal members to financially survive: because now there’s no shrimp. you can’t make a living off of shrimp no more… there’s no shrimp nowhere…even the crabs are not like when they used to be... [because of] pollution in the water. another participant (11) also described her concerns that the oil spill had caused there to be contaminants in the seafood: jessica l. liddell, sarah g. kington & catherine e. mckinley studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 46 it’s [that the oil spill is causing health problems] being kind of discredited because people are self-reporting… like… people say they have symptoms from like exposure from the cleanup, the dispersants… they’re like [government agency], “no, it’s not bad. it’s totally fine.” but it’s [contaminants] like killing animals and stuff. like i don’t think it’s totally fine. and not to mention all it does is make the oil sink. so that’s going to reemerge, and you know when it’s going to reemerge is when there’s a hurricane, like another bad hurricane that kind of stirs all that up… that was one of the things we’ve kind of talked about hoping that we can maybe do is come up with some type of way to test seafood for these hazards because so many people, especially like tribal communities rely on the seafood. this participant also noted that tribal knowledge was often being discredited; despite tribal members’ noting the changes to the seafood and the environment, government agencies often dismissed this type of experiential knowledge and data. this participant went on to state: so, if you can’t put money to it, it’s just like, might as well not exist. and it’s just like, well no, you [outsiders] don’t understand. like these people eat shrimp like three or four nights a week and now they’re having to go to the store…because people didn’t eat seafood for a while [following the b. p. oil spill]. like they said, they were pulling up crabs, crabs where like the gills were black. women also expressed that it was getting harder to find high-quality seafood, and noted concerns about possible toxins. participant 1 reported feeling like there were more toxins in the food: i believe it’s our diet that has caused the cancer, you know, and then all of the preservative[s] and all the fast foods…because that’s not healthy… it’s either chemical, all these things, it’s made out of a lab or do you take a chance and eat the chemicals from the water? yeah, it’s kind of give or take. what else do you do? the cancer rate over here is so alarming down here. it is very alarming. this participant felt that there was a risk for tribal members in eating food from the environment, while also describing feeling that the increase in fast food and processed foods was dangerous for the health of tribal members as well. reduction in the ability to live off food from the environment meant that tribal members had to rely more on fast food and processed food. participant 11 described the increase in processed food, in addition to discussing her concerns about the lack of regulation of food and its impact on health: we live in a very toxic world from everything that we touch and put in our bodies and breathe and drink and expose ourselves to… we live in a very contaminated world, especially with the food, processed food … i think it’s getting worse… the epa and the food administration and all these other “we live in a very toxic world” studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 47 organizations that control all of these things, the more, lax, they get on regulations… the more spikes that we’re going to see because… you don’t see it until it’s too late… we don’t see what we’re putting in our bodies and i’m guilty i mean, i just ate a hamburger from wendy’s… i’m in a lot of circles where i know… that eating processed meat is one of the worst things that you can do because the high rate of chemicals that are feed to these cows that are pumped with hormones, that are put into a facility that’s not completely… like the whole trail from grass to cow to facility to manufacturer, to plastic company to the supermarket…. we poison ourselves every day, with everything that we do… there’s not enough… water containers and… antibiotics soap that’s gonna stop it. this participant connected eating more processed food with existing health issues. participant 12 noted that food tasted different than when she was growing up: i feel like the food that you get from nature, that you get in the wild, don’t taste the same when i was growing up…. the food doesn’t taste the same… i like ducks and i like [indigenous name for a type of marsh hen] and stuff like that… they don’t taste the same, i really don’t eat... and i used to be crazy about that and i really don’t care for... in fact, i don’t even eat chicken or pork anymore… because when i see chicken, that the legs are this big, i won’t eat it… that’s not healthy. when she was asked what she thought caused this change, she answered, “all the chemicals.” this participant also described getting eggs from her son, who had his own chickens: “he grows his own chickens… i get my fresh eggs from my son.” this participant noted that in her own family she was seeing a return to, and a desire to still live off the land. “they going to die in that saltwater”: barriers to gardening although many women described gardening as being important in their families, especially while growing up, many stated that because of increased saltwater and flooding, it was getting harder and harder for people to continue to garden. participant 1 described not seeing young people garden as much, although she also reported being excited to work on her relative’s garden: “gardening… i see some, young people doing that, but not like a whole bunch you know?... that’s what i told my aunt… she’s got a big garden…. [i’m] excited to be able to start helping out there cause i haven’t been gardening forever.” this participant noted that growing up she had helped her grandmother garden, and that helping out in the garden was a common chore for younger children: we all had our part to do, duties. both of my grandmothers lived on the same street. when we were in school… we would go eat at our grand, one of the jessica l. liddell, sarah g. kington & catherine e. mckinley studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 48 grandparents’ house and walk over there… and then after school we would have to help with the garden, cause they both had huge gardens. so we had to all help out with that. all of us. so we grew up doing a lot of gardening. participant 4 also noted that young people no longer knew how to garden: “and the kids don’t want to learn how to make a garden.” participant 11 attributed some of the decrease in gardening to environmental changes: “it’s hard to grow fresh crops here with so much, so much salinity in our soil. so you won’t find as many people [gardening].” increased saltwater intrusion changed what types of crops and plants could grow in the soil. participant 16 also noted the issue of saltwater intrusion: it’s bad because of the saltwater. my husband plants peas and green beans but he’s got it up in a container so the water don’t... and everything else you can’t plant orange trees because the saltwater… even if you make a garden today when the water gets high what you going to do?... that’s why we plant in those containers… i got all my flowers on my porch because they going to die in that saltwater. although this participant was able to adapt by putting some of her plants on her raised porch, this was not possible for a full garden and for fruit trees. although many women described gardening as being important in their families, especially while growing up, many stated that because of these changes to the land, it was getting harder and harder for people to continue to garden. participant 11 attributed some of the decrease in gardening to these environmental changes: food wise, it’s just been decimated tremendously. not only by processing… i mean like here in [state name] agriculture below [city name] is almost, almost nonexistent except for like sugar cane… because it’s hard to grow fresh crops here with so much, so much salinity in our soil. so you won’t find as many people [farming]. our elders, like my grandfather, he, he’s been a gardener since he was six years old, helping his dad on a plantation and he’s 84 years old now and he still has a garden, but he, every year he swears that he’s not going to do it anymore… it’s not worth the hassle because it’s not producing what it once was. but a lot of that has to do with our grounds are so polluted and our grounds are so… chemical-ridden that is just like, it doesn’t even pay to eat what comes out the ground sometimes… especially down here, there’s so much salt in our soil that you can’t even get anything to grow. pollution and increased saltwater intrusion changed what types of crops and plants could grow in the soil. this participant also noted that although previously many tribal members had worked in agriculture, because of the changes to the environment many of them no longer were able to grow crops and eat foods that they grew to the same extent. participant 29 also described the hardship of growing a garden only to have it be destroyed by a storm and flooding: “we live in a very toxic world” studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 49 like, you go to get just fruits and vegetables, it’s expensive. not many people grow their own things anymore either… you spend all this money having a garden… making a garden and then the flood comes in and wipes it all out… and we have a huge yard and i always say we have so much room to have a garden… it’s just the floods… my brother actually was trying to grow some peppers and cucumbers and he did great… you just gotta be dedicated to it and know when to plant… around the hurricane season and you just hate to have it all wiped out if a flood comes. participant 10 also made the connection between the previous ability of tribal members to live off the land and their dependence now on the very companies that had destroyed the environment for food: and like the way we used to live… and then destroying the land… to where now we have to rely on you for the food. like we have to rely on the walmarts and like nobody farms anymore. [people] used to have like tons and tons of crops, people had crops, people had cattle, people had all their own livestock and everything, and so it’s, all the gas exploration has really like stripped us of our ability to even care for ourselves and made us dependent on the very infrastructure that’s destroying our environment. participant 1 described the important role that gardening played and the types of vegetables tribal members were able to grow previously: oh, everything. i mean, everything was seasonal too. green beans, okra. you know, squash, tomatoes, tomatoes, lasted pretty much all year long… tomatoes lasted. cucumbers. eggplant. potatoes, onions. a lot of potatoes. we ate a lot of potatoes. we used to dig a lot of potatoes… i can just remember my grandma’s garden. participant 11 described hoping that tribal members could learn more about aquaponics as a way to adapt to the changing conditions of the land: i think people learning how to do aquaponics… where they [the plants] don’t have to be necessarily in the ground… i think any kind of alternative planning like that, or self-sustaining kind of agriculture where we don’t have to rely so much on what we’ve normally used, but adapt to these new ways of, you know, being, providing for ourselves and, and also at the same time keeping cultural… influences in there, of growing our own food… because there are people and organizations and other, and other groups that they’ve learned to adapt to these changing conditions… and kind of try and take back of this health crisis that we’re in. this participant noted her hope and confidence in the ability of tribal members to combat some of the changes that were happening to the land, while continuing to be able to provide for themselves. jessica l. liddell, sarah g. kington & catherine e. mckinley studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 50 discussion findings highlight the impact of environmental and social justice issues on the food security of an indigenous tribe located in the gulf coast. tribal members described environmental and social justice issues that changed the land such that tribal members could no longer grow the foods they had traditionally grown, which contributed to food insecurity and undermined enculturation and resilience by obstructing subsistence practices (burnette et al., 2018). participants contrasted their current difficulties in successfully growing food with the experiences of their elders and their experiences growing up, when tribal members were able to subsist off of the land. this ability to produce one’s own food, rather than simply having access to food (i.e., food security) is a key tenet of food sovereignty and social justice, and tribal members describe clear disruptions to this process (hoover, 2017; menser, 2018). in addition, tribal members expressed concerns about the impact of environmental justice issues such as oil company exploitation on the health of community members, through the contamination of food and water. importantly, participants themselves saw and described the connection between environmental injustices, its impact on food security and availability, and their health. it is important to note that participants were not directly asked about environmental changes, or food security issues, highlighting the salience and importance of these issues for interviewees. many tribal members experienced a dissonant relationship with their oppressor (burnette & figley, 2017), as they were employed by corporate oil companies that undermined food and land security and indigenous health, whilst simultaneously providing needed employment. still, the ability to access fresh and safe seafood was severely impacted by corporate oil companies, undermining subsistence. the tension between dependence on local industry for employment, and concerns about its impact on the land and health of tribal members was prominent for tribal participants, and is consistent with previous studies noting this important social justice topic (mckinley et al., 2019). tribal member’s ability to recognize these impacts to the land emphasizes the particular part indigenous peoples, and women in particular, play in noticing environmental changes because of their close relationship with nature through subsistence practices (billiot, 2017; billiot & parfait, 2019; burnette et al., 2019; hoover, 2017; hoover et al., 2012; liddell et al., 2021; liddell & kington, 2021; vivas, 2012). these changes to the land, and their potential causes, were evidenced in the connections participants drew about the detrimental impact of increased salinity on the success of their gardening, a subsistence activity that is practiced predominately by women (hoover, 2017; tully et al., 2019; vivas, 2012). participants expressed their concerns that harmful environmental changes were undermining cultural knowledge and practices, which is a risk factor for negative outcomes across multiple dimensions (burnette et al., 2018; “we live in a very toxic world” studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 51 burnette et al., 2019; vernon, 2015). gardening is also important because it encourages physical activity and time spent in nature, both of which are important for physical and spiritual health and wellbeing (burnette et al., 2018; maller et al., 2006; mckinley et al., n.d.). enculturation, or engagement with cultural practices, has been found to contribute to indigenous resilience and engagement through connection to land and subsistence practices (burnette et al., 2018). both enculturation and subsistence practices are damaged by environmental changes, since many cultural practices involve land-based activities and time spent outside (billiot & parfait, 2019; burnette et al., 2018, 2019; jessee, 2020; kirmayer et al., 2009; mckinley et al., n.d.) there is a need to explore alternatives for tribes where gardening and relying on local food in the traditional form may no longer be possible, or where other barriers exist. this may be especially true for the context of this indigenous group, where the land is disappearing due to coastal erosion. participants worried about the impact of pollution on food and water because of industrial contamination, which is consistent with previous research that notes the environmental justice experiences of indigenous peoples (adamson, 2011; hoover et al., 2012; tsosie, 2007). pollution from industries, such as oil, is particularly salient for this indigenous group because of their lack of federal recognition, which makes holding the oil industry accountable or regulating its continued activities, difficult (billiot & parfait, 2019; crepelle, 2018; jessee, 2020; maldonado, 2014). in addition to changing the land itself, the pollution from local industries, such as oil, can impact subsistence food practices (burnette et al., 2019; liddell et al., 2021; rotkin-ellman et al., 2012; tirado et al., 2010). pollution understandably contributes to concerns about contamination of these food sources, which directly undermines indigenous health and food security (liddell et al., 2021; mckinley et al., n.d.; rotkin-ellman et al., 2012). pollution has deleterious impacts on health and wellbeing; it not only disrupts cultural subsistence practices, which contribute to resilience and bonding through intergenerational transmission of knowledge, but it also impairs indigenous peoples’ ability to consume traditional diets, necessitating the purchase of more processed and expensive foods (bodirsky & johnson, 2008; burnette et al., 2018; gracey & king, 2009). federally recognized tribes have successfully enforced protections of the environment, including regulating companies and local governments located offreservation but whose activities impact tribal members (crepelle, 2018; gilio-whitaker, 2019). the impacts of changes to food and gardening have especially important implications for social justice, as indigenous peoples’ physical health as well as cultural autonomy are undermined by these environmental changes. for instance, food has been described as medicine by some indigenous scholars and activists (adamson, 2011), and gardens have been proposed as a tool of decolonization through their reconnection with foodways and land, and as a way of addressing food security and health issues among indigenous peoples jessica l. liddell, sarah g. kington & catherine e. mckinley studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 52 (adamson, 2011; hoover, 2017; rudolph & mclachlan, 2013). gardens return land and foodways to indigenous communities in limited ways (sowerwine et al., 2019). the relationship to land itself is distinct for indigenous peoples; in contrast to the western view of ownership of the land, the relationship to land for indigenous peoples is based on recognition and reciprocity for the sustenance it gives (kirmayer et al., 2009; glenn, 2015). the relationship to the land also plays a role in many indigenous conceptualizations of health and wellbeing, and resilience (kirmayer et al., 2009). this connection to the land also means that environmental injustices may have particularly negative consequences for indigenous peoples who live in close relationship with their environment (cidro et al., 2015; vernon, 2015). limitations findings from this qualitative data were emergent and sometimes unexpected, largely due to the methodology used, which prioritizes participants’ voices and allows for their concerns to take precedence. a benefit to gathering data in this way is that the importance of food and food sovereignty was made salient without the participants being prompted; a limitation, is that we were not able to explore all of the relevant concepts related to food sovereignty. as such, important topics, such as the role of the community and the tribal council in reclaiming their food system and building food sovereignty in the face of these threats, were beyond this study’s scope, and thus not explored in this inquiry. future studies should explicitly follow up on emergent themes to explore food sovereignty and related topics in more depth, especially as they relate to community resilience and food sovereignty. another potential limitation is that the tribe’s identity remains anonymous due to agreements with the tribal council, who requested their name not be identified. this is congruent with best practices in conducting research with indigenous tribes and is related to previous negative experiences other indigenous tribes have had with researcher exploitation (burnette et al., 2014). because environmental changes are often highly unique to particular geographic regions and historical and contemporary contexts, and considering the immense diversity among indigenous peoples in the united states, these findings should remain specific to the tribe in this study. in addition, although a goal of this study was to explore the impact of environmental changes on the food practices of indigenous women, individuals were only interviewed at one point in time. future research may also want to explore the experiences of men who are uniquely impacted by their frequent employment by oil companies. longitudinal studies may be better able to explore these changes. this study also focuses on self-reported experiences of the impact of environmental change on food practices, and “we live in a very toxic world” studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 53 future research in fields such as public health or environmental sciences may be helpful in corroborating these findings. conclusion results demonstrate the importance of sovereignty as it relates to land for indigenous peoples and highlights the significance of federal recognition for indigenous peoples in achieving food security. the viability of land and subsistence practices are tied closely to the overall health of indigenous peoples, particularly in areas like the gulf coast, where resources are frequently extracted by industry, or where the effects of climate change have more damaging consequences and important social justice implications. despite the impact of these environmental changes and social justice issues on indigenous food security, their interrelationships are infrequently explored. these findings fill an important gap in the literature by exploring the intersection of environmental, social justice and food security issues among a state-recognized gulf coast indigenous tribe. this study documents how environmental changes have negatively impacted subsistence practices such as gardening, in addition to tribal member concerns about the impact of pollution on food and water sources, and tribal member health. this research builds upon previous research exploring the impact of environmental justice issues on indigenous peoples and connects it to food justice and sovereignty movements (burnette et al., 2018; 2019; liddell et al., 2021). viewed in the context of settler colonialism, these findings document how environmental justice issues such as pollution, industry exploitation, and climate change all further the goals of settler colonialism through undermining cultural practices and the health of indigenous peoples. important implications of these findings include the urgent need for federal recognition for tribal members and for their inclusion in the development of environmental policy and interventions. in addition, immediate action should be taken by both the public and private sector to address the extensive environmental damages and health impacts experienced by indigenous communities. acknowledgements the authors are thankful for the dedicated work and participation of the tribal members who participated in this study and our community advisory board members. jessica l. liddell, sarah g. kington & catherine e. mckinley studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 38-57, 2022 54 references adamson, j. 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(1999). settler colonialism. a & c black. introduction studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 79 the sport nexus and gender injustice ann travers, simon fraser university abstract: male-dominated and sex segregated elite professional and amateur sport 1 in north america constitutes a "sport nexus" (burstyn, 1999; heywood & dworkin, 2003) that combines economic and cultural influence to reinforce and perpetuate gender injustice. the sport nexus is an androcentric sex-segregated commercially powerful set of institutions that is highly visible and at the same time almost completely taken for granted to the extent that its anti-democratic impetus goes virtually unnoticed. the sport nexus’s hegemonic role in defining sporting norms (coakley & donnelly, 2004) means that its role in shaping lower level amateur and recreational sporting institutions and cultures is highly significant. fraser (2007) defines gender justice, and hence democracy, in terms of "participatory parity," that is, material and cultural equality for women. the sport nexus itself is characterized by highly gendered occupational segregation (coventry, 2004). it further contributes to gender injustice, homophobia and transphobia by promoting the ideology of the two sex system (fausto-sterling, 2000) and gendering citizenship as fundamentally male (burstyn, 1999). feminist strategies for sport reformation attempt to reduce or eradicate the role of the sport nexus in legitimating and perpetuating gender injustice. in this article i consider the potential of these strategies and conclude with a set of recommendations for transforming organized sport at both elite and recreational levels. fraser (2007, 2000, 1997, 1993, 1987) has a long history of writing within the tradition of feminist political science/feminist theorizing on democracy and the public sphere (see also pateman & mills, 2007; pateman, 1989; paxton & hughes, 2007; barnes, newman, & sullivan 2007; conway, 2004; young, 2000; benhabib, 2004, 2002, 1996). such feminist criticism of liberal-democratic theories and their supposed representation in western democracies is a wellestablished intellectual tradition. this work reveals that granting women de facto citizenship has not alleviated the problems resulting from the androcentric biases of liberal democratic theory and western democracy: the very role of citizen has been conceptualized and actualized as a male role (pateman & mills, 2007; pateman, 1989; young, 2000). in her most recent work, fraser contributes the concept of “participatory parity” as a measure of gender justice (2007). she contends that gender justice is a condition of democracy defined by cultural equality (recognition) and material equality (redistribution) (2007, p.25). gender injustice results when women are denied participatory parity by being culturally devalued and economically marginalized. for a society to be considered genuinely democratic, therefore, fraser argues that women need to be culturally and economically included. as fraser (2008, p.1) explains in a recent interview, gender justice, and hence democracy, requires 1 at the world and olympic level studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 80 social arrangements that permit all members to participate in social interaction on a par with one another. so that means they must be able to participate as peers in all the major forms of social interaction: whether it's politics, whether it's the labour market, whether it's family life and so on. and parity of participation is quite demanding. it is not enough that there be simply the absence of legal discrimination; it means that you have all the effective conditions for really being able to participate. the realm of sport in general and that constituted by the sport nexus, in particular, clearly qualifies as a “major form of social interaction.” as such, conditions of participatory parity that are undermined in or by the sport nexus are incompatible with democracy. the power of participatory parity as a measure of gender justice depends on the very definition of gender justice itself. if gender justice is defined in accordance with a narrow focus on women as an uncomplicated category, many of the failings of second wave feminism – to address the interlocking social forces of gender, race, class and sexuality (lemert, 1999) – are likely to be replicated. furthermore, without queer feminism's anti-essential reading of sex, gender and sexuality (fausto-sterling, 2000; burke, 1996; butler, 2004, 1990; haraway, 1997, 1991), much of the role of the sport nexus in contributing to gender injustice will remain invisible. the ideology of the two sex system itself is centrally implicated in gender hierarchy and supports sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. the sport nexus normalizes and reinforces the ideology of the two sex system to the detriment of women, gays and lesbians and the non-normatively gendered (gender queer and transgender persons). a queer (anti-essential) approach to the concept of participatory parity and gender justice reveals the role of the sport nexus elite male dominated sex segregated professional and amateur sport in normalizing, legitimating and perpetuating the cultural and material marginalization of women and the non-normatively gendered. common sense views of sport including its portrayal by mainstream media tend to insulate the sport nexus from critical examination, whether by trivializing it as merely entertainment, recreation or as a hobby for spectators or valorizing it as a grand expression of so-called national or universal values. in keeping with the critical tradition of sport sociology, i draw attention to the role of the sport nexus in promoting and perpetuating gender injustice through the cultural and economic marginalization of women and the non-normatively gendered. much of the critical work on gender and sport that documents its role in reinforcing orthodox masculinity and perpetuating sexism, however, fails to challenge the sex segregated structure of sport itself. this structure is coercive and in itself represents gender injustice (mcdonagh & pappano, 2008). the role of the sport nexus in contributing to gender injustice includes the institution‟s powerful role in normalizing and legitimating the ideology of the two sex system (faustosterling, 2000). this ideology plays a significant cultural and economic role in the attendant devaluation of women, gays and lesbians, and transgender people. it is no accident that faustosterling‟s sexing the body (2000) begins with a devastating critique of gender verification (sex) testing at the highest levels of sport to establish the failure of science to demarcate boundaries between male and female bodies. the measuring of bodily capacity and limitations that the sport nexus is purportedly organized around underscores its significant cultural role in the hierarchical demarcation of both sex and race boundaries (douglas & jamieson, 2006). that these socially studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 81 generated boundaries are culturally understood as natural and unmediated by social forces makes them all the more unassailable. the sport nexus and citizenship the sport nexus plays a significant role in gendering citizenship as male (and white and heterosexual). in her analysis of sport in western society as a “sacred rite,” canadian scholar varda burstyn (1999) documents the ways in which sport functions as a “men‟s club” that is used to consolidate male domination. her specific claim is that sport solidifies masculine privilege and the related masculine subtext of citizenship and national identity. mcdonagh and pappano (2008) observe that american women's second-class citizenship in the world of sport translates into and mirrors women's second class citizenship in the nation itself. in contrast to such racially inadequate accounts of masculine privilege, however, there is evidence to suggest that african-american and african-canadian male participation in the sport nexus may actually reinforce racist assumptions about black physicality and unintelligence thereby, somewhat ironically, perpetuating racism through inclusion (hoberman, 1997; abdel-shehid, 2005). my focus in this article is on the antidemocratic role of the sport nexus in perpetuating gender injustice (the cultural and material devaluation of women and gender transgressors), through its role in celebrating hegemonic masculinity and normalizing the two sex system, thereby institutionalizing and reinforcing gender inequality, homophobia and transphobia. the sport nexus genders citizenship as male by defining and reinforcing hegemonic masculinity and justifying (white, heterosexual) male supremacy (connell, 1987; anderson, 2005). in this role it complements and increasingly supplants the criteria of military service as a masculine qualifier for full citizenship (mosse, 1988). in one of her earlier contributions, fraser (1993) outlines the historical process whereby the role of citizen was conceptualized and actualized as a male role since it was ultimately dependent on an individual‟s ability to participate in political debate and, crucially, to defend his country in time of war. these qualities have been historically constructed as masculine rather than feminine (fraser, 1987). while i grant the claim that fraser and others make (solaro, 2006; feinman, 2000; young, 2000) concerning the historical connection between masculinity, military service and citizenship, i contend that the role of the soldier and the military in embodying and celebrating orthodox masculinity in the west has declined considerably since the vietnam war. this can be attributed to the public‟s awareness of the extent to which military forces are disproportionately made up of marginal rather than privileged members of the male population in terms of class and race (jeffreys, 2007) and the public‟s increasing skepticism about the justness of wars starting with vietnam, then the falklands, through to the two u.s. led campaigns against iraq and canada‟s military involvement in afghanistan (solaro, 2006). the highly publicized and celebrated battles that men wage on the football field, the baseball diamond, on the basketball court and on the ice provide powerful pedigrees for male leadership in both sporting and non-sporting arenas. and not incidentally, the more closely a sport is tied to national identity, the greater the emphases are on its inherent masculinity and the need to erect barriers to female participation (ring, 2008). for example, the sport of hockey is proclaimed by many to be "canada's game." the canadian men‟s hockey team victory over the soviet union in 1972 is understood as a defining moment in canada's nationhood; former star hockey player studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 82 wayne gretzky's celebrity status in canada is much higher than that of any of the nation's political leaders (whitson & gruneau, 2006). and in the united states where the sport of baseball is heralded as the "national pastime," legal challenges were necessary to enable girls to participate in little league. even so, little league responded to the legal requirement to gender integrate by establishing a softball division and streaming girls into it (ring, 2008; mcdonagh & pappano, 2008). at the college level, efforts to resist gender equity requirements resulting from the passage of civil rights legislation (title ix) culminated in the successful but dubious achievement of a "contact sport" designation and hence exemption for baseball (ardell, 2005). with the exception of individual „cheaters‟ who are caught using illegal performance enhancing substances, the heroic status of the successful male athlete and the appropriateness of the sport nexus for conferring such noble status are beyond mainstream reproach (beamish & ritchie, 2003). the image of the white male or (good) black male athlete tiger woods as opposed to michael vick (banet-weiser, 2004; zirin, 2007) as heroic warrior in the sport nexus (burstyn, 1999) resonates historically, nationally (miller, lawrence, mckay & rowe, 2001) and symbolically to produce a gendered (and raced) cultural understanding of citizenship that denies women equal recognition. this has both cultural and economic consequences. the sport nexus and the gender binary while sport in north america (and much of the world) is organized around binary notions of biological difference between males and females (kirby & huebner, 2002), queer feminist science and theory (butler, 2004, 1990; fausto-sterling, 2000, 1992; haraway, 1997, 1991) reveals the extent to which the taken-for-granted gender binary is as much constituted by assumptions about its existence as by the existence of distinctive and natural differences between only two sexes (butler, 2004; fausto-sterling, 2000, 1992). insights from postmodernism and queer feminist science have been incorporated into the literature on gender and sport to contribute powerful insights regarding the role of sport in normalizing and reinforcing the ideology of the gender binary and male supremacy (pronger, 1990; kane, 1995; rothblatt, 1995; theberge, 2000). the revelation that this two sex system is ideological rather than natural (fausto-sterling, 2000) underscores the role of sport in promulgating a vision of a stark biological divide between male and female bodies that is intricately bound up with gender injustice for women and gender transgressors throughout society. as kane notes, the establishment of gender difference is a “product of patriarchal social construction” (1995, p. 191). „male‟ and „female‟ bodies are produced, in corporeal terms, in social contexts that assume and privilege male athletic competence at the expense of female physical development (young, 1998; pronger, 1990). the institutionalization of the two sex system as natural through the maledominated, sex segregated sport nexus contributes to the cultural and economic marginalization of women and gender transgressors in the world of sport itself and beyond. the sport nexus not only demarcates hierarchical boundaries between men and women that resonate throughout society but plays a role in normalizing compulsory heterosexuality and gender conformity. this has powerful consequences for gays and lesbians, genderqueer and transgender people. because of their equation with effeminacy, openly gay male athletes, or suspected gay male athletes, have been overtly discriminated against, harassed, and occasionally victimized by homophobic violence. no gay male participant in the elite levels of north studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 83 american team sport has come out of the closet prior to retirement (anderson, 2005); women athletes – regardless of their sexuality or personal tastes, for that matter are routinely required to conform to orthodox heterosexual feminine norms in response to homophobia. for women, homophobia is a tool of sexism in restricting women‟s access to athletic development and participation in sport. homophobia equates female athletic accomplishment with lesbianism. thus, for men, the higher one‟s achievements in the sporting realm, the less suspicion there exists regarding homosexuality. in contrast, the more success a woman achieves in sport -with some differences depending on the sport the more suspect her sexuality becomes (griffin, 1998). the sport nexus is no more a welcoming place for gender deviants than it is for gays and lesbians. despite recent policy changes at the highest levels of organized sport to include postoperative transsexuals, the very investment of this policy in the two sex system closes doors. in 2003, the international olympic committee (ioc) adopted a policy to allow transsexual athletes to compete in their legal gender category provided they have been fully (surgically and hormonally) transitioned for two years prior to competing (bbc sport, november 14, 2003). this policy serves to reinforce binary gender and preserve the assumption of male athletic superiority. several scholars (teetzel, 2006; sykes, 2006; cavanagh & sykes, 2006) have observed that institutional anxiety about transsexual participation in sport is for the most part limited to concerns about male to female transsexual athletes rather than female to male transsexual athletes. this anxiety rests on the taken for granted convictions that men and women are fundamentally different and that all males are athletically superior to all females. the predominant assumption of male athletic superiority that characterizes this “unfair advantage discourse” (sykes, 2006) in sporting policy has a powerful hold on western consciousness. in spite of evidence that human variation is inconsistent with a two sex system (fausto-sterling, 2000) and failed attempts by the international olympic committee‟s medical commission to develop a definitive test for female athletes (fausto-sterling, 2000; sykes, 2006), gender deviant athletes must achieve dimorphic physical and hormonal conformity or face exclusion. the sport nexus normalizes, legitimates and reinforces the ideology of the two sex system with marginalizing consequences for girls and women, gays and lesbians and gender transgressors within the world of sport and beyond. the gendered economy of the sport nexus key sports in north american society are characterized by material (economic) gender injustice; but the role of these sports in celebrating masculinity and normalizing assumptions about female inferiority and the underlying ideology of the two sex system have a powerful cultural effect which in turn shapes economic opportunities. sport plays an important role in normalizing gender inequality by emphasizing differences between male and female bodies to celebrate masculine superiority and by disproportionately rewarding male participants through extensive opportunity structures and disproportionate patterns of remuneration (heywood & dworkin, 2003; hall, 2002; theberge, 2000; burstyn, 1999). the fact that the names of professional women‟s sport associations need to be specifically gendered while men‟s remain unmarked (for example, ladies professional golf association vs. professional golf association; women‟s national basketball association vs. national basketball association) is a powerful example of studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 84 the cultural assumption that sport is a male realm. sport is simply assumed to be a male prerogative unless an exception is noted. the combination of its highly masculinist character and its importance in valorizing competition, hierarchy and nationalism (coakley & donnelly, 2004) makes the sport nexus a key player in contributing to gender injustice. a symbiotic relationship exists between elite sport and mainstream sports media to the extent that such sports media needs to be understood as an integral part of the sport nexus. mainstream sport media play an important cultural and economic role in the sport nexus‟s celebration of masculinity through male sports and male athletes and the diminishment of women athletes and women‟s athletics (walton & butryn, 2006; messner, dunbar, hunt, 2000; van sterkenburg & knoppers, 2004). the role of sport media in making men‟s sports economic juggernauts underscores the relationship between economic and cultural social forces, the very dimensions that fraser draws on in her definition of participatory parity. studies of print and television media coverage of sport demonstrate the extreme marginalization of women's sport and women athletes (messner et al., 2000; van sterkenburg & knoppers, 2004). when women's sports and women athletes are covered, they are far more likely to be sexualized than their male counterparts (vincent, 2004). when women make progress in arenas typically identified as exclusively male, sexual representations are used to establish cultural boundaries that reproduce male supremacy (birrell & mcdonald, 2000; robinson, 2002). it is no accident that danica patrick's success in formula one racing was coupled with a semi nude photo shoot in sports illustrated’s hallowed (soft porn) "swimsuit edition" in 2008. this strategy for preserving male supremacy is borne out in a recent study (kane, 2008) on the effect of sexist marketing strategies for women‟s sports. kane found that the use of sexual objectification as a marketing tool, rather than building a greater fan base and greater interest in women‟s sports, actually undermines the female/pro-female (parents of girls, for example) fan base of women‟s sports while failing to generate a male fan base. the economic gender injustice that characterizes key sports is evidenced in occupational segregation and pay inequity (kay, 2003). many of the most lucrative sports are sex segregated and exclusively male at the professional level (hockey, baseball, football). where opportunities for women to play sport professionally do exist, significant pay inequity is the common condition. ladies professional golf association winnings fall considerably below (mens) professional golf association winnings; only recently has the sport of tennis begun the practice of paying men and women equally. the example of pay inequity in the one major north american professional sport that has a women‟s league as well as a men‟s league is powerful. i provide below a comparison of national basketball association (nba) and women‟s national basketball association (wnba) salaries. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 85 table i: nba vs. wnba 2006/2007 nba* wnba** base salary $427,163 $30,000 (rookies) $42,000 (veterans) maximum $18,257,750 $79,400 average $4,500,000 $55,000 notes: * http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/basketball/nba/team.salaries/index.html ** http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/sports/basketball/19wnba.html this, of course, leaves out perks (nba per diem of $106 versus wnba per diem of $60) and sponsorship deals with advertisers (lebron james ranks #1 with a $90 million deal over 7 years). in an article in forbes (www.forbes.com), on july 28, 2004, kurt badenhausen states that the income inequality that exists between men and women isn't just taking place in the boardroom or on the factory floor-it's also taking place on the playing fields of profession-al sports. in the united states women only earn 77 cents for every dollar a man does. in the world of sports the gap is even bigger. the world's 50 best paid athletes is the only forbes list comprised entirely of men. the 50th highest-paid athlete over the past 12 months was basketball's andre miller, who made $15 million. the top-paid female athlete during that time was serena williams, who earned $9.5 million, followed by her sister venus, who made $8.5 million. the top-paid men: tiger woods and michael schumacher, who both banked $80 million. you could put together a list of the 100 highest-paid athletes and still not find a woman on it. in a 2006 update, the top paid male athlete for that year was tiger woods who earned $87 million. the top paid female athlete in 2006 was maria sharapova who pulled in over $20 in sponsorship deals in addition to her prize money from tennis tournaments (difficult to ascertain but probably not more than 3 million). like anna kournikova, sharapova‟s marketability relates largely to her physical appearance rather than to her feats on the court, even though she is far more accomplished than the former. sharapova‟s stereotypical blonde beauty marks her as an appropriate object of male heterosexual desire (crissey & crissey honea, 2006; stead, 2003) – in contrast to the black noncompliance of the williams sisters (douglas, 2005) or the openly lesbian and heavily muscled amelie mauresmo. feminist strategies for reforming the sport nexus feminist strategies for reorganizing sport away from its role in promoting gender injustice fall loosely into four different approaches. in order to increase gender justice in and through sport we should: http://www.forbes.com/ studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 86 1. replace the current institutional structure of sport with non-competitive, non-hierarchical celebrations of physicality (radical feminist); 2. focus on and support elite women athletes as gender troubling figures and hence agents of change (third wave); 3. entirely eliminate sex as an organizational category (postmodern feminist); or 4. eliminate male-only sporting spaces while maintaining sporting spaces for girls and women (liberal feminist; queer). i examine these strategies for their potential to increase participatory parity for women and gender transgressors and conclude with recommendations for reforming professional and amateur sport to achieve greater gender justice. 1. we should: replace the current institutional structure of sport with cooperative, non-hierarchical celebrations of physicality; radical and cultural feminist scholarship shares the belief that "male supremacy and the subjugation of women [is] indeed the root and model oppression in society and that feminism[has] to be the basis for any truly revolutionary change (donovan, 1987). it is up to feminists to model institutions and processes characterized by internal democracy that is, shared decision-making in a nonhierarchical context (heywood & dworkin, 2003). while not all of the authors i invoke here are necessarily inclined to identify as radical or cultural feminists, their critiques of the sport nexus and recommendations for change are highly consistent with this paradigm. these scholars (burstyn, 1999; pronger, 1999; birrell & richter, 1987) indict sport in its current patriarchal capitalist iteration and seek to replace it with cooperative and nonhierarchical celebrations of physicality and play based on feminist principles of cooperation and inclusion. they seek sweeping changes to eliminate sports‟ endemic violence and hierarchical structure and call for new social institutions and practices that include and benefit everyone. such an approach equates the competitive and hierarchical organization of sport with a destructive (orthodox) version of masculinity and advocates for feminist sport reformation away from hierarchy and competition and towards recreation, expression, play and cooperation. critics of the current masculinist, competitive, hierarchical model of sport do not necessarily see the recent increase in women's participation as a step toward gender justice (suggs, 2005). from this perspective, nike‟s recent "just do it" campaign aimed at women consumers is an encouragement to define gender equality as the ability to play with the boys without questioning the rules of the game or its purpose. the rules of the game, however, are linked, at a fundamental level, to gender inequality, homophobia and transphobia. burstyn articulates a cultural feminist critique of sport as a men‟s club that consolidates male power and is thus anti-democratic. she makes a connection between masculine and corporate dominance of sport and advocates the de-masculinizing and de-corporatization of the sport nexus. burstyn condemns “the „sacrificial‟ nature of sport for both sexes” (1999, p. 275) and the brutality sport inflicts upon boys and men and models as appropriate social behaviour. she seeks a societal and institutional shift away from aggressive and competitive structures that harm both sexes and exclude many from participation to cooperative and physical recreation activities that involve and benefit the majority. advocating what i would term a postmodern cultural feminist approach to sport, pronger (1999) views gender as a relationship rather than as an identity assigned to a body. this is studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 87 significant in that he believes that women are as capable as men are of performing orthodox heterosexual masculinity. pronger contends that sport promotes a specific and narrow form of masculinity: one that focuses on territorial expansion (penetration) and resistance to incursion: “the team whose desire produces the most invasive phallus, which is called offensive strategy, and tightest asshole, known as defensive strategy, wins the game” (1999, p. 382). while challenging essentialist notions of sex difference by viewing masculinity as a cultural construction that women can partake in, pronger emphasizes the role of sports in normalizing the subjugation of women through the construction of “a set of binaries that emanate from the traditional homophobic construction of desire: winner/loser, top/bottom, dominant/submissive, phallus/asshole.” these binaries, “have their fundamental logic in the patriarchal construction of masculine/feminine as the proper dispositions of men and women, respectively” (1999, p. 384). in the world of sport as it is currently practiced, pronger observes, there are no “willing bottoms.” he links this kind of performance to gender injustice and advocates for nonmasculinist and anti-homophobic sporting practices for everyone. in tandem with feminist critiques of the sport nexus as fundamentally masculinist, cultural and radical feminist sport scholarship celebrates feminist possibilities for the transformation of sport (birrell & richter, 1987; lenskyj, 2003). key feminist principles of sport include cooperation and shared power and decision-making (an end to hierarchical and competitive relations in sport between players and between coaches and players); and the creation of an environment that emphasizes participation, inclusion, safety and joy over ability and winning. such a cultural and radical feminist overhaul of sport would obliterate the sport nexus and much of amateur sport as we know it. in its place, i surmise that the varied recreational activities for people of all ages and walks of life typical of municipal community center programming would be expanded infinitesimally. 2 prognosis for gender justice condemning and seeking to transform aggressive/combative/hierarchical sporting places and practices as expressions of heterosexual masculinity embraces an essentialist view of nonegalitarianism as fundamentally masculine and therefore deleterious. such a position is reminiscent of the sex wars of the 1980s that saw some feminists defining out of the movement so-called „male-identified‟ women who advocated pro-sex, anti-censorship, s-m-embracing politics (duggan & hunter, 1995). the institutional privileging of certain traits as inherently masculine or feminine even if you believe, as pronger (1999) does, that these traits can be performed by anyone simply rearranges the terrain of gender injustice rather than reducing it. in addition, such an inadequately nuanced analysis of male power fails to address the dynamics of race and class (carrington, 1998) that produce different relationships of privilege and inclusion for women and for men. this oversight reflects an analysis of gender relations as the foundation of all oppression (donovan, 1987); an analysis much-maligned by antiracist, queer and postmodern critiques of second wave feminisms (hines, 2005; heywood & dworkin, 2003). 2 for example, http://vancouver.ca/parks/cc/mtpleasant/index.htm. http://vancouver.ca/parks/cc/mtpleasant/index.htm studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 88 2. we should: focus on and support elite women athletes as gender troubling figures and hence potential agents of change in response to the fracturing of the essentialist identity politics of feminism‟s second wave, particularly by antiracist, postmodern and queer critiques, a tradition of scholarship selfidentified as "third wave" emerged. third wave feminism integrates postmodern, queer and antiracist deconstructions of essential identities and binary based epistemologies. according to hines, “in third wave feminism, multiple female identity positions are recognized and attention is paid to the ways in which women's identities are constructed in relation to difference" (cited in reger, 2005, p. 73). a third wave feminist perspective on sport and gender justice focuses on the role of the sport nexus in constructing women's identities and the potential of elite women athletes to resist and trouble stereotypical gender norms. (heywood & dworkin, 2003). third wave feminists contest radical and cultural feminist arguments that view competition as a „male‟ trait. critical of gender essentialism, they view progressive and competitive physicality in sport as neither fundamentally male nor fundamentally bad. not only should fiercely competitive and highly successful women athletes enjoy feminist legitimacy, they insist, but they should be valued for the powerful sociocultural role they play in the disruption of the gender binary (heywood & dworkin, 2003). drawing on a foucaultian analysis of oppression and activism that emphasizes resistance and refusal (foucault, 1982), third wave feminism celebrates and promotes resistance to gender norms in and through the highly public setting of competitive sport as a mechanism for achieving greater gender justice. according to this perspective, by refusing and resisting rather than accepting and actualizing stereotypical gender norms, gendered power relations are inevitably altered. far from viewing contemporary women athletes as being co-opted by a corporate, antifeminist nexus of domination as burstyn does, or as performing, albeit ably, for pronger, an oppressive masculine script, heywood and dworkin argue for the value and potential of sport as “the stealth feminism of the third wave” (2003, p. 29). stealth feminism celebrates the role of women athletes in actively resisting and refusing the ideology of the two sex system in particular and binary based epistemologies in general. much of the gender troubling potential of powerful women athletes rests on possibilities for media representation. a third wave feminist emphasis on representation directs critical attention to the role of mainstream sport media as part of the sport nexus in perpetuating a male dominated two sex system. in a highly influential article kane (1995) argued that the gender binary paradigm in sport is grounded in biologically deterministic notions of gender polarity and features an emphasis on difference and the dismissal and deliberate invisibility of similarities between male and female athletes. this invisibility is essential for upholding male dominance and is achieved through the symbiotic relationship between mainstream sport and mainstream sport media (kane, 1995, p. 191). kane insists that a more accurate model for sport reporting portrays the gender continuum. a third wave feminist perspective celebrates the gender troubling leakages that are occurring in traditional sport media reporting as a result of women's participation. coverage of women athletes whose performance flies in the face of assumptions of male athletic superiority undermines the ideology of the two sex system by making the gender continuum visible. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 89 prognosis for gender justice what is particularly powerful about this third wave strategy of focusing on and celebrating women athletes as gender troubling figures and hence potential agents of change is that it is already happening if only in a small way with the increasing visibility of powerful women athletes in north american society. we are seeing greater attention to gendered overlaps and performance – one has only to think of the nike ads of the new millennium pitting a sweatsoaked mia hamm against michael jordan on a seemingly level playing field even at the same time as male athletic superiority remains virtually taken for granted. resistance is powerful: attention to gendered overlaps in performance has the potential to undermine assumptions about sex difference that rationalize gender inequality; the joy and empowerment that some girls and women experience and demonstrate in competitive athletics disrupts common sense assumptions about women, about sports, and about men. glimpses of the gender continuum can be found in mainstream media coverage of "crossover athletes" (roberts, 2005, p. 7) elite women athletes who are competing in traditionally male only sporting contexts and the occasional reporting of performance overlap between male and female athletes. while western history is replete with examples of women competing against men in sport, a postwar amnesia regarding this history seems to have taken hold (ring, 2008; hall, 2002). even the explicitly feminist challenge to male dominance in sport and beyond made on the tennis court and in mainstream media by billie jean king in 1973 seems to have disappeared from cultural memory. beginning in the early 1990s, seemingly without this historical precedent, a number of women have competed with and against men in typically male-only sporting arenas. called "crossover athletes" by the new york times, a term that continues to emphasize binary gender, these women include manon rheaume and hayley wickenheiser in hockey, annika sorenstam and michelle wie in the pga, and danica patrick in formula one auto racing. while most sports media coverage reinforces the status of these athletes as interlopers or mere spectacles, the cultural visibility of such women engenders third wave feminist excitement. there are also glimmers of doubt regarding male/female athletic performance gaps. successful male athletes, such as ernie els of the pga, have publicly stated their support for a gender integrated elite professional golf tour (sportsnet canada 3 ), for example. in its october 23, 2007 nba preview issue, sports illustrated features a four page pull-out centerfold under the caption “inch by inch: the all-time, all-size all-stars.” 4 the subtitle asked “who‟s the best at every height? pro, college, men and women all included? is it bird or magic? elgin or oscar? shaq or wilt? calvin murphy or sue bird?” this colourful centerfold displays a tallest to the smallest lineup of players who are purportedly the best ever by height. it begins at 7‟7” with manute bol and ends at 5‟3” with mugsy bogues. both these players are men but the 5‟8” slot is awarded to sue meyers, the 5‟6” to dawn staley and 5‟4” to suzie mcconnell. in addition to the three women who are identified as the best ever at their heights, 11 of the 72 runners up, listed under the winner of each height category, are women – starting at 6‟4” and ending at 5‟3”. in this continuum-based showcase of the best north american basketball players of all time by height, out of 101 players listed, 14 are women. this is precisely the kind of sport journalism that third wave feminists are calling for sport journalism that 3 see http:www.sportsnet.ca 4 sport illustrated. october, 23, 2007 studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 90 renders the gender continuum visible! given the discrimination that girls and women experience in sport, it is rather incredible that more than 1 out of 10 of the best basketball players are women. we can only imagine what this centerfold might look like if potential female professional basketball players were sought out and nurtured to the same extent that male players are! the overlap between elite men and women players could only increase! i share the third wave feminist sense of excitement and possibility in response to the increased visibility of powerful women athletes and i feel vindicated by evidence that some women dominate not just other women but the entire field as well. but while i grant the power of sports media coverage of gendered overlaps and performance, the gender troubling figure of the elite woman athlete championed by sport media continues to have a white and heterosexual subtext. a few individual women superstar athletes have emerged – notably soccer player mia hamm, thanks in large part to nike‟s use of her image in an effort to increase its consumer base among women. mia is a gender troubling figure in terms of stereotypes of feminine frailty but her cooptation has played a role in the selling of a new “beauty myth” (wolf, 1992) for women that combines heterosexual femininity and a “six pack.” she is white and heterosexual; a good girl. the absence of the black and powerful tennis superstar williams sisters often subjected to censure from sport media for uncorroborated poor sportsmanship (douglas, 2005) or openly lesbian amelie mauresmo in sport marketing speaks to the kind of gender troubling that will be tolerated. 3. we should: entirely eliminate sex as an organizational category in sport queer postmodern feminism‟s deconstruction of the two sex system as ideological rather than natural (fausto-sterling, 2000, 1992; haraway, 1997, 1991; butler, 2004) supports an argument for the elimination of sex segregated sport. this argument can be summed up as follows: first, differences in men‟s and women‟s athletic performances can be attributed to social, political, economic, and psychological discrimination rather than biological factors. given the cultural context within which athletes develop and perform, there is no uncontaminated data to support essential performance related differences between men and women (pronger, 1990). second, sport is implicated in translating the ideology of the two sex system into the material reality of bodies that conform to sexist expectations (young, 1998). as such sport helps to mask the very gender diversity it plays such an important role in containing (fausto-sterling, 2000). third, the very separation of girls from boys and women from men constitutes gender injustice. the legal reforms that require equal facilities and equal investment in sport and recreation opportunities and facilities for girls and women reinforce rather than diminish gender injustice. rothblatt (1995) argues that just as racial segregation in sport has been abolished on the basis of the revelation that race is not meaningful as a biological category, so too should sex segregation. drawing on the landmark court case brown versus board of education 1954 to make the case that sex segregation is no more acceptable than racial segregation, rothblatt states that "separate is never equal" (1995, p. 73). for these reasons, therefore, all levels of sport should be radically restructured to eliminate sex identity as a basis for organizing, separating or grouping individuals. for similar reasons, sex should be eliminated as an identifying category in government documents, in legal requirements for marriage, and as a basis for separate public facilities such as washrooms. in sport, this strategy would see the elimination of sex categories in all levels of competition. no sporting organizations would be closed to women and indeed all studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 91 sporting organizations would be sex integrated including those for girls and women. sex identity would cease to be relevant as an organizing category or in terms of eligibility requirements. prognosis for gender justice such an across-the-board elimination of sex as a category for structuring sport might benefit a small minority of athletes currently categorized as girls and women possessed of an extreme degree of athletic ability, including the mental toughness required to play with and against men, many of whom can be expected to resist their inclusion. for a few of north america's most elite women athletes who are denied equal material opportunities and cultural rewards, such a restructuring could be unprecedentedly beneficial. consider canadian women's hockey superstar hayley wickenheiser , for example, or teenage golf phenom, michelle wie. hayley wickenheiser is considered to be the best female hockey player in the world and her play in multiple olympic games has been dominant. while there is a long tradition of women playing hockey in north america (theberge, 2000), opportunities have been scant in comparison to those available to boys and men. there is no professional women‟s hockey league to parallel the men‟s minor league system not to mention the national hockey league and indeed no expectation that any will develop in the near future; only the establishment of women‟s ice hockey as a medal sport in the 1998 olympics has created more (non-professional) opportunities for women. where separate leagues for girls do not exist in canada and the united states, girls have used the courts to gain the right to play on boys‟ teams (theberge, 2000). regardless of the increasing participation of women, hockey continues to be a male preserve (adams in whitson & gruneau, 2006). the identity of hockey as a sport is explicitly linked to canadian masculinity and the nhl in particular is an “arena of masculinity” (pronger, 1990). wickenheiser broke ground and held her own among men as the first female player other than a goaltender to play in a men's professional hockey league when she played on a swedish team for parts of two seasons in 2003 and 2004. she has just signed a contract to play for a third tier swedish men's hockey team (spencer, 2008, p. s5). michelle wie provides another powerful example. in addition to her ability to drive a golf ball more than 300 yards on par with many male golfers wie has made headlines and suffered scathing commentary from male and female players alike for playing both professional golf association (pga) and ladies professional golf association (lpga) events (millward, 2008) 5 . while she has not been particularly successful in pga events mostly failing to make the cut many of her male competitors have fared worse without experiencing criticism from media and fellow athletes for playing in the event at all. if professional golf ceased to be sex segregated and was organized, instead, by an ability-based (handicap) hierarchy, players like wie would participate in tournaments they were able to qualify for. this would be a big step, at least in 5 most recently, in the july 30, 2008 edition of the globe and mail, lpga legend and one time female interloper in a pga tournament annika sorenstam, chastised wie for forgoeing the lpga british open in favour of a pga tournament. sorenstam and other members of the lpga tour have said that wie should instead be learning to win on the women's tour, not attempting to qualify on the men's tour. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 92 formal terms, considering that several high-profile golf clubs in canada and the united states continue to be restricted to men only. eliminating sex segregation entirely, however including spaces and organizations reserved for girls and women would constitute a major setback for the participation of girls and women in sport. just because something is socially constructed in this case, the two sex system with its assumption of female inferiority does not mean it is not "real"; social forces have material consequences (young, 1998; lemert, 1999). eradicating single-sex sporting spaces for girls and women without a prior cultural overhaul would mean that girls and women would be subjected to sexist and masculinist sporting cultures that discourage their participation. rather than make visible the considerable overlap between sex categories and sporting outcomes, a sharp decline in female participation would reinforce cultural beliefs about sex differences and female inferiority. the tiny minority of elite women athletes who would flourish under such a restructuring would be so distanced from the majority as to be viewed as abnormal. entirely eliminating sex as an organizational category in sport would result not in participatory parity and hence gender justice but in greater cultural and material marginalization. one potential advantage of this strategy, however, relates to transgender participation. the irrelevance of sex status would put an end to the contested and difficult social negotiation and assignment of individuals to the gender binary. there would be no need, for example, for an international olympic committee policy for transsexual participation or for transgender persons to produce official documents attesting to their sex category assignment. in this regard, then, a measure of gender justice might be achieved. 4. we should: eliminate male-only sporting spaces while maintaining sporting spaces for girls and women going beyond the above strategy for eliminating sex as a basis for organizing all sport, this strategy makes a distinction between coercive and voluntary forms of segregation (mcdonagh & pappano, 2008). it calls for an end to male-only sporting spaces while maintaining the right of girls and women to organize separately. the adoption of this strategy would require sporting spaces and institutions that are currently all-male to abolish formal and informal mechanisms for single-sex recruitment, development, participation, leadership and employment. the strategy of pursuing greater gender justice by eliminating sex segregation in sport is consistent with a liberal feminist emphasis on individual rights, freedom from discrimimation and meritocracy (madsen, 2000), values that are purportedly fundamental to western democracies. the abolition of sex segregation in sport at both the highest levels and in many recreational contexts is required to achieve the formal gender equality – enacted thus far through occupational and human rights measures outlawing sex discrimination that western nations take such pride in (ware, 1992). an absolute end to discrimination in sport is yet another step in ensuring that merit, not ascription, determines opportunity and reward structures. the discrimination against women codified in professional and amateur sport policy and institutions is one of the last legal frontiers in the struggle against sexist discrimination. in an interesting parallel, liberal feminists have advanced similar arguments to justify the full inclusion of women in the military including combat roles (d‟amico & weinstein, 1999). a rights-based liberal feminist approach includes affirmative action measures to address inequalities in abilities that result from long term discrimination. mcdonagh and pappano (2008) call for an end to sex studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 93 segregation in sport with the proviso that single-sex sporting spaces be retained for girls and women: “all sports competitions should be based on the abilities of the individuals who seek to play, not on stereotypical attributes of sex or race groups. the only exception…is voluntary segregation for a subordinate group in order to compensate for past discrimination” (mcdonagh & pappano, 2008, p. 28) this liberal feminist emphasis on meritocracy supports an analytical parallel between sex segregation and racial segregation and their eradication as a necessity for social justice. mcdonagh and pappano (2008) claim that the coercive nature of sex segregated sport in north america is an injustice and must be abolished. coercively sex segregated sport makes women second class citizens off the field and fails to reflect actual physical differences between the sexes. mcdonagh and pappano draw on the same u.s. legal decision brown vs. board of education, 1954 that rothblatt does as noted above to assert similarities between racial and sex segregation. the forced separation of girls and boys and women and men is related to gender inequality; the very assumption of difference amounts to injustice. this strategy for reducing gender injustice requires an end to the social, political and legal tolerance of sex discrimination that characterizes north american sport today. but the abolition of sex segregated sporting spaces and institutions should not extend to those organized as single-sex spaces for girls and women. as a subordinate group, girls and women should be able to "choose participation on either a sex integrated or voluntary sex segregated basis" (mcdonagh & pappano, 2008, p. 80). from this perspective, voluntary segregation aimed at increasing group standing is an acceptable social practice for minority groups but not for dominant groups. potential for gender justice while gender inequality persists in canada and the united states, civil rights-based challenges to occupational segregation have eliminated most legal barriers to the full participation of women in all aspects of society (matthews & beaman, 2007; mcdonagh & pappano, 2008). and some of the major barriers to the full participation of girls and women in (mostly amateur, that is, nonfinancially remunerative) sporting activities have been removed (yurako, 2002). but while legal challenges have resulted in the integration of some sporting spaces (little league baseball, for example, ring, 2008; mcdonagh & pappano, 2008), most coercively sex segregated sporting spaces remain a taken for granted fact of life. title ix the most significant civil rights legislation relating to the participation of girls and women in sport in the united states – amounts to both a step forward and a step backward in the fight for gender justice in sport and beyond. title ix‟s requirement that federally funded institutions and programs offer equal access and opportunity to girls and women has contributed to gender justice by recognizing girls and women as athletes and providing institutional structures for their sporting activities (cooky & macdonald, 2005). in spite of considerable increases in the participation of girls and women in sport following the signing into law of title ix, however, this legislation continues to reinforce and promote gender injustice for girls and women by emphasizing the distinct and inferior status of women athletes. according to mcdonagh and pappano (2008), this is because the ultimate impact of title ix was to normalize female inferiority rather than to promote real gender justice. while they acknowledge that title ix "was important, even critical.... it unfortunately reinforced-rather than challenged-the belief that women are inherently inferior to men" (p. 223). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 94 abolishing single-sex sporting spaces for boys and men while maintaining them for girls and women would increase gender justice in sport and beyond in several ways. first, it would send a clear message through legal stipulations preventing male only policies and practices that sexist discrimination directed at girls and women is no more tolerable than racist discrimination directed at people of colour. gender integrating the sport nexus would put an end to the last formal institutional frontier for enacting and showcasing sexist discrimination. this would have powerful positive cultural and material consequences for the status of women. secondly, allowing girls and women to learn sport and compete with boys and men would improve their athletic ability, thereby lessening the culturally produced disadvantage that is the product of sexist discrimination. mcdonagh and pappano (2008) cite educational research that demonstrates the performance improvement of disabled students in integrated that is, nonsegregated classroom environments to draw a parallel with the merits of sex integration. they insist that enabling girls and women to compete with boys and men in sport will increase female performances. thirdly, this strategy for reducing the role of the sport nexus in perpetuating gender injustice would maintain important single-sex opportunities for girls and women that are necessary as long as their minority status persists. this strategy‟s distinction between coercive and voluntary segregation supports the abolition of one and the maintenance of the other in a manner that is consistent with rawls‟ (1999) „difference principle‟ for social justice, according to which discrimination is considered acceptable only when it reduces the marginalization of disadvantaged groups in society. the current male-dominated, sex segregated sport nexus maintains the status quo of gender injustice; forcing gender integration of this institution would be a step towards attaining participatory parity for women. the potential of this strategy for increasing gender justice in sport and beyond requires attention to a few challenges. first, maintaining single-sex sporting spaces for girls and women may perpetuate gender injustice if these spaces adopt binary based policies for inclusion. second, where sporting spaces are currently gender integrated, many are characterized by a climate of sexism and misogyny that keeps all but the bravest and almost freakishly talented girls and women from participating. as mentioned before, little league baseball responded to legal requirements to include girls by developing a program of little league softball and streaming girls into it (ring, 2008; mcdonagh & pappano, 2008). it took more than 25 years after that for a girl to actually participate at the highest level of little league baseball in the 2005 little league world series (about.com:baseball). and, in an attempt to break out of a recent batting slump, members of the chicago white sox major league baseball team used their bats to symbolically rape a blow up doll in their locker room (sportsnet canada). many male-only sporting spaces are sexist, misogynist and homophobic; harsh informal resistance to gender inclusion can be expected. it is not just that so many of the spaces of the sport nexus are male only; they tend to be fundamentally misogynist, homophobic and transphobic as well. abolishing formal barriers to the participation of women cannot be assumed to address this foundational component of sport. furthermore, to take up the parallel between racial and gender segregation in sport that rothblatt and mcdonagh and pappano draw: desegregation does not necessarily reduce social injustice. hoberman‟s (1997) indictment of the role of racially desegregated sport in perpetuating racism suggests that just as racism has been accomplished through inclusion (emphasis on black physicality over intellect; invisibility of blacks who are not athletes, entertainers or criminals; drawing black youth away from the classroom and onto the sportsfield; the illusion that desegregation means that racism is a problem of the past) sexism and studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 95 gender injustice may morph and survive through inclusion. danica patrick‟s recent formula one racing success and concurrent sexualization suggests this possibility. in addition to these concerns there are the inherent problems associated with liberalism‟s celebration of meritocracy as the ultimate expression of democracy. fraser‟s concept of participatory parity incorporates an economically socialist dimension in its indictment of hierarchy as inconsistent with democracy. i suggest that combining a queer feminist suspicion of the naturalness of all bases of hierarchy (fausto-sterling, 2000; haraway, 1997, 1991) with fraser‟s standard of participatory parity has the potential to sufficiently radicalize the liberal feminist basis of this fourth strategy to increase its inclusive potential. fraser‟s concept of participatory parity as a measure of gender justice complements queer feminist science‟s deconstruction of the two sex system as ideological and provides a powerful mechanism for the indictment of the sport nexus as anti-democratic. sport, like other social institutions that operate to privilege some members of society while marginalizing others, must be transformed away from binary-based biological epistemologies that privilege white corporate masculinity. applying a queer feminist turn to this strategy for reducing gender injustice by eliminating coercive segregation in sport ensures that the struggle for gender justice includes not only women and girls but gays, lesbians and gender transgressors as well. this makes it possible to generate both concrete, justifiable structural and procedural changes to sport institutions and practices, while retaining sufficient open-endedness to push for ever-increasing parity for all participants. below is a list of recommendations for institutional change that begin to provide a vision of this approach‟s power for change: recommendations the sport-nexus and sport media eliminate legal protection for male only professional sporting spaces; require all levels of sport to conform to occupational human rights standards relating to non-discriminatory practices with regard to development, recruitment and promotion. provide women and transgender persons with the option of sharing the general locker room with men or utilizing an equally equipped separate space while ensuring that formal team meetings and discussions are conducted in an inclusive space. adopt a zero tolerance policy for racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia with consistent and meaningful consequences for violations; consider and grant requests for government accreditation and support only for sporting organizations that demonstrate compliance with human rights requirements relating to the inclusion of women and gender transgressors; grant and renew broadcast licenses only to organizations that demonstrate a commitment to gender justice in their organizational structure and in all aspects of sports coverage. amateur sport eliminate legal protection for male only sporting spaces at all levels of sport; studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 96 provide women and transgender persons with the option of sharing the general locker room with men or utilizing an equally equipped separate space while ensuring that formal team meetings and discussions are conducted in an inclusive space. adopt a zero tolerance policy for racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia with consistent and meaningful consequences for violations; require amateur sport at all levels to invest equal resources into the recruitment, development and support of male and female athletes; certify and provide public facilities exclusively to amateur sporting associations that require all leadership personnel to undertake formal accredited training relating to gender justice in sport. allow and support organizations for girls and women only; require such organizations to adopt trans-inclusive policies (travers, 2006). the sport nexus: as solid as the berlin wall the abolition of sex-based structural barriers to the participation of girls and women is, arguably, only a few court cases away. legal challenges have already resulted in the ability of girls to play on boys‟ teams when no girls‟ teams are available and even when there are (less competitive) girls' teams available. in contrast, boys‟ efforts to play on girls‟ teams have failed (mcdonagh and pappano, 2008). this indicates that lower courts in the united states seem to have distinguished at least implicitly between coercive sex segregation as sexist discrimination and voluntary sex segregation for girls and women as a partial, legal remedy for decades of discrimination. these legal challenges have begun to alter the structure of amateur sport but this process will not be complete until a pivotal case or two reaches the highest courts and to parallel the impact brown vs. board of education 1954 had on the formal structure of racism results in an end to the structure of legal sex discrimination. the legal erosion of institutional gender injustice in amateur sport will inevitably ripple up to professional sport at all levels. increased opportunities for girls and women to participate in sport and the emergence of powerful women athletes – both those who excel in women‟s sport and those who “cross over” – have created fertile ground for pivotal legal challenges to male-only sporting spaces. the celebration of girls and women as athletes represents a cultural shift. this shift is generating a powerful group of pro-girl allies in the quest to end at least some facets of gender injustice in sport. importantly, these allies include parents of girls and women – a small but astute percentage of “soccer moms” and hockey dads who are angered by sexist discrimination against their daughters and are willing and able to use the courts to fight back. challenging as it is, changing the sexist structure of sport is relatively easy compared to the difficulty of transforming the entrenched mysoginist, homophobic and transphobic culture of sport and sporting spaces. after all, the inclusion of men of colour in formerly white, male sporting spaces has only partially changed the culture and material consequences of racism in sport and beyond and not necessarily in ways that decrease racial injustice. gay men participate in sporting spaces through amateur to elite levels but often pay the price of secrecy, fear and sexist and homophobic collusion in order to do so. it is entirely valid, therefore, to criticize liberal feminist strategies aimed at achieving legal change for failing to provide means for altering the culture of gender injustice that is foundational to male-dominated sporting spaces. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 97 merely including girls and women in these spaces is insufficient to accomplish this. and yet, the cultural power of inclusion is never insignificant as it provides a basis of legitimacy for further social justice initiatives. the shake-up of sport i propose is incredibly radical and yet consistent with the democratic norms north americans so ardently codify and pay lipservice to. it is this consistency that creates an opening for legal challenges to achieve at least some of the above recommendations. as a result, it is not as impossible as it seems. as history has shown, significant institutional social change is never out of the question. for example, african americans in the united states have used democratic ideology to de-legitimize racism through legal challenges and the achievement of civil rights legislation that prohibits racism. heroically fought for, this civil rights legislation has had an impact: racial inequality remains a fact of life but racism is disavowed and formal barriers to equality have been eliminated (morris, 1984). the 1947 racial integration of major league baseball that is so celebrated and taken for granted by the sport today was bitterly resisted at the time and for more than a decade after (lapchick, 2001). while many people never expected same-sex marriage to be legalized in canada, homophobia persists and same sex marriage is but one component of efforts to reduce it. this legal victory provides increasing legitimacy to struggles against homophobic gender injustice. the sport nexus contributes significantly to gender injustice but its ability to do so will be eroded as the legality of its practices of exclusion is contested. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1, 2008 issn: 1911-4788 98 references abdel-shehid, g. 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(2007). welcome to the terrordome: the pain, politics and promise of sports. chicago, illinois: haymarket books hlatshwayo final before ts correspondence address: mondli hlatshwayo, centre for education rights and transformation, university of johannesburg, auckland park 2006, south africa; email: mshlatshwayo@uj.ac.za issn: 1911-4788 volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 setbacks and partial victories: social justice struggles after 28 years of democracy in south africa mondli hlatshwayo university of johannesburg, south africa abstract post-apartheid south africa is ravaged by crises of extreme unemployment, poverty, and inequality. while the majority who were politically excluded by apartheid can now choose their government through democratic elections, social and economic justice continues to elude them. neoliberal policies which seek to reduce state expenditure on social services and promote state policies that protect the interests of big businesses at the expense of working-class and poor communities, along with corruption and abuse of power, are the primary causes of poverty and unemployment. however, what is missing in the assessments of social justice since the pre-1994 democratic era is the recognition that social justice organisations have not simply disappeared, but have actually remained involved in social justice struggles. based on information from in-depth interviews and internet sources, this article records some of the partial victories scored through these struggles, albeit in the context of generalised pauperisation of working-class and poor communities. these partial victories in the era of defeats show that these organisations, although weakened, have not given up the struggle for social justice. keywords social justice; south africa; democracy; setbacks; victories; inequality introduction despite being severely weakened through some of its leading activists joining the state and the private sector, as well as by factors such as neoliberalism, chronic underfunding, and the generalised decline in mass mobilisation since the dawn of democracy, social justice organisations in post-apartheid south africa have contributed to partial victories in the form of achievements that are accompanied by neoliberal constraints. such constraints include chronic unemployment and poor service delivery by the state, as well as setbacks in the form of the state’s inability to advance pro-poor policies and actions. mondli hlatshwayo studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 592 using in-depth interviews with several leading intellectuals from social justice organisations and academics who have written on social justice in south africa, this article critically discusses some of the partial victories scored by movements for social justice in the context of a generalised weakening of the struggles for social justice within the country post-1994. unlike other reviews of democracy, this one is sourced from those who have actively participated in struggles for social justice in post-apartheid south africa (du preez, 2013; friedman, 2019; mkhwanazi, 2014; smith, 2021). while analyses such as those from the aforementioned writers help in understanding the conditions of working-class communities, the poor in general, and the state of democracy, the challenge is that there is a dearth in the literature providing a summative evaluation of various components of social justice organisations in post-apartheid south africa.1 there have been sector-specific evaluations of trade unions, ngos, and social movements in urban and rural areas, but these do not provide an overview of the role of specific social justice organisations in a democratic south africa (bezuidenhout et al., 2017; brown, 2021; hlatshwayo, 2021; kenny, 2020; sisaye, 2021). to elaborate my point, kenny (2020) provides an analysis of the state trade unions and workers in post-apartheid south africa, an important subset of the social justice organisations, but her analysis does not, for instance, include housing struggles led by the urban poor. steyn (2012) and pithouse (2008) evaluate the roles of social movements involved in urban struggles for access to housing, water, and other basic needs, but do not discuss the role of social justice organisations in the workplace. while all these contributions give some understanding of the challenges and partial successes of relevant organisations, they do not assess partial victories or successes led by social justice organisations as a whole. below, the article sketches the socio-economic context in which social justice organisations operate, characterised by chronic unemployment, poverty, and inequality after 28 years of democracy. whilst the socioeconomic status of the majority of south africans has not improved in general, as is argued below, the paper also uses social justice and development theory to explain inequality, partial victories, and setbacks led by social justice organisations. subsequent to that, the paper delves into research design questions, and then presents the findings of the research. 1 on the one hand, authors, such as kenny (2020) and bezuidenhout et al. (2017), focused on the evaluation of trade unions as a social justice organisation since 1994. on the other hand, hlatshwayo (2021) and brown (2021) reflected on the state of social movements – one arm of the social justice organisation. sisaye (2021) examined the role of non-governmental organisations (ngos) after 30 years of democracy in south africa. to addresses this dichotomic analyses, this paper seeks to provide an overview of the state of social justice organisations irrespective of the sectors or areas in which they organise. social justice struggles after 28 years of democracy in south africa studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 593 chronic unemployment, poverty and inequality a number of scholars have evaluated the socio-economic conditions of those who had been politically, socially, and economically oppressed by racism and apartheid for well over a century – now in the period after 25 years of democracy (friedman, 2019; saul & bond, 2014). in assessing social justice after 25 years of the formal end of apartheid, beresford (2020) concludes: “twenty-five years after democratic transition, the political liberation of black south africans has yet to translate into socioeconomic transformation” (p. 6). essentially, in indirectly supporting the statement made by beresford (2020), most socio-economic statistics emerging after 25 years of democracy indicate that five democratically elected governments since 1994 have not been able to address social and economic inequality, and instead inequality has deepened. in 2019, even the conservative world bank admitted that south africa, which has voluntarily implemented its neoliberal policies in post-apartheid south africa, is the most unequal country in the world. the world bank also reported that the richest 20% of people in south africa control almost 70% of the resources (mlaba, 2020). similarly, the report by oxfam south africa noted that the average white male chief executive officer’s (ceo) income is equal to that of 461 black women in the bottom 10% of earners (cerruti & baloyi, 2020). and just over 30% of black women in south africa are in employment compared to 70% of white men, showing that black women have very low absorption rates in the economy. the report further states that many of those black women are employed as precarious workers earning low wages, with few or no benefits. qualified black women earn 24% less than qualified white women; black women between the ages of 18 and 34 with a university degree have an average monthly income of r13,000 (usd841.42), but white women of the same subset earn r17,000 (usd1,100.32) on average; almost 90% of black households do not have medical insurance and have to use the state’s poorly serviced medical facilities, while 70% of white-headed households have access to medical insurance (cerruti & baloyi, 2020). the report further reveals that the average monthly income of a black woman doing precarious work is just r2,500 (usd161.81), which, compared to a white woman in the same position who on average earns r10,000 (usd647.24), is very low (cerruti & baloyi, 2020). what is also worrying, according to the oxfam inequality report, is that the post-apartheid state has dismally failed to deliver services like water, electricity, health care, housing, public transport, education, and other services to those who were socially and economically disadvantaged by apartheid and racism (cerruti & baloyi, 2020; mlaba, 2020). on the other hand, the black economic empowerment (bee), a policy that was meant to increase the economic participation of black people, was seen to be only benefiting those who were politically connected, many of whom in the 1990s became billionaires and multi-millionaires. the broad-based black mondli hlatshwayo studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 594 economic empowerment (bbbee) act, no. 53 of 2003 was adopted by parliament to go beyond black ownership in the economy to focus on skills development and support for black businesses. this improved the positions of black people and black women in the workplace, expanding land rights to black folk and enhancing the conditions of black communities. in other words, the act was meant to subvert the economic inequality created by colonialism and apartheid. in 2013, the bbbee act, no. 46 of 2013, was amended to ensure that the private sector takes the policy seriously by, inter alia, giving more state business to those companies that implement elements of the policy (vilakazi & bosiu, 2021). perhaps the social group that has benefitted most from policies such as the bbbee is the black middle class, which grew from 2.2 million in 1993 to 5.4 million in 2008, and again to 6 million in 2018. since 2014, the majority of south africa’s middle class has been black (zwane, 2019). a very big portion of this class is located in the public sector, which means that the private sector’s top positions continue to be generally occupied by the white middle class (undp, 2020). the increase of the black middle class in the context of poverty, inequity, and unemployment means that the income gap between the black middle class and the poor and working class is increasing. however, the covid-19 pandemic and lockdown has seen this social group being squeezed economically through retrenchments, heavy indebtedness, and closure of many companies. it was reported by the undp (2020) that “as many as 34% of households are likely to exit the middle class into vulnerability [in 2020]” (p. 1). clearly, the covid-19 pandemic has deepened the poverty and unemployment crisis. for example, the lockdown, a measure intended to contain the spread of the virus, prevented many workers from participating in employment. between the end of march and the end of april 2020 (the onemonth hard lockdown), the national income dynamics study – coronavirus rapid mobile survey (nids-cram) was undertaken, involving a sample of over 6,000 adults aged 18 to 59. the results of the survey revealed a substantial decline in employment. importantly, about one out of every three employed persons in the sample “either lost their job or did not work and received no wages during april (2020)” (ranchhod & daniels, 2020, p. 1). south africa previously suffered from chronic unemployment, but this survey highlighted that the pandemic has exacerbated the situation. moreover, nearly a year later, the congress of south african trade unions (cosatu), the biggest trade union federation in south africa, stated that more than 50% of the working-age population were unemployed in february 2021, and this figure is the highest since 2008. close to 91% of those who are unemployed are black (mahlakoana, 2021). despite the aforementioned economic hardships, several stories highlight that some progress has been made, notwithstanding the general setbacks. through life history research of a black domestic worker who lives in johannesburg, and in an attempt to assess the progress made after 20 years of social justice struggles after 28 years of democracy in south africa studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 595 democracy, kihato (2014) argues that discourses of “success” and “failure” create binaries that are not that helpful in understanding the state of democracy and social life post-apartheid. instead, according to kitaho (2014), the domestic worker, referred to with the pseudonym “phindile,” shows that south africa’s transition to democracy has been characterised by “progress, setbacks and stagnation” (p. 357). despite setbacks regarding racial integration and low-income working-class communities, the housing programme, although very limited, provided many working-class families with shelter in the cities. in trying to explain the causes of difficulties to change the social and economic transformation in post-apartheid south africa, michie and padayachee (1998) and marais (2011) explain that the south african transition to democracy, and democracy in general, has been constrained by the neoliberal global environment promoting austerity measures, budget cuts, and privatisation, expressed from a policy perspective in the growth, employment and redistribution (gear) adopted in 1996. corruption is also one of the major causes of the lack of development of the infrastructure and the failure to deliver services to poor working-class communities. for example, it was reported in 2019 that south africa lost us$34 billion through corruption between 2009 and 2018 when jacob zuma was the state president (cotterill, 2019). despite some pronouncements and actions to curb corruption after the removal of zuma from public office in 2018, according to mlambo and masuku (2020, p. 549): the covid-19 pandemic has not only laid bare the inequalities within south african society but sadly, it has also portrayed how successive south african public sectors have failed to deal with corruption which has become entrenched within every sector of society. to sum up this section, the democratic transition from apartheid to democracy paved the way for the entrenchment of political rights for the black majority and the establishment of institutions seeking to support democracy, but the social and economic challenges, such as chronic poverty and unemployment, episodic xenophobic violence, murder, and rape are a threat to a democratic order. this has to do with the fact that struggles against apartheid and for democracy were not just about political rights but were also about social and economic justice (shapiro & tebeau, 2011). perhaps the recent uprising (in july 2021) after the arrest of zuma for contempt of court is an indication that south africa’s economic crisis and inequality are a key source of discontent in the country. about 3,000 shops were looted during the protests and 200 banks were vandalised in kwazulu-natal and some parts of gauteng. however, the uprisings were not in direct support of zuma, but were rather caused by chronic poverty and unemployment in the country. the initial protests may have been instigated by some of zuma’s supporters, but the subsequent uprisings were carried out by individuals who had no mondli hlatshwayo studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 596 demands related to the former president’s arrest. it was ordinary workingclass people who raided shopping malls located in the working-class areas characterised by unemployment and poverty (cottle, 2021). therefore, the partial victories discussed in this paper took place in the context of chronic poverty, unemployment, and inequality, which is theorised below. theorisation of social justice in the south african context social justice as a theoretical concept has to be contextualised and grounded in concrete issues, demands, and issues of those striving towards its attainment. subreenduth (2013) takes this point when she contends that social justice “is an ideal that must continually be re-visioned in theory, policy, and practice because context, history, and interconnected global relationships and global social movements change the landscape of justice and equity” (p. 581). in liberal democratic countries, especially in the global north, the majority of the population is not excluded from political participation and access to social and economic rights. subreenduth (2013) questions the notion of social justice in the context of neoliberalism, which tends to entrench racial and gender inequality especially in south africa, and argues that although political rights have been attained, the social and economic lives of many of those belonging to the black majority have not changed for the better. in explaining this conundrum, buhlungu’s (2010) theorisation of the failure of south africa’s democracy to deliver social, labour, and economic rights to the majority of the population has to do with the “paradox of victory.” on the one hand, the unions and other social justice organisations have a democratic space that enables them to organise relatively freely. on the other hand, economic policies adopted by the successive anc (african national congress) governments since 1994, as well as corruption, have derailed and undermined the attainment of social and economic justice for the vast majority of the population (buhlungu, 2010; lehulere, 2017). however, as taylor (2018) contends, south africa presents a difficult and complex case as far as political, social, and economic justice is concerned. the majority of the south african population lives in conditions that exclude them from accessing resources, economic activities, and livelihoods precisely because of the structural and resilient economic and social imbalances created by centuries of economic, political, and social projects based on colour and sex. social justice is also about dismantling political and economic institutions, laws, and policies that sought to socially exclude the black majority, and some progress has been made in this regard (taylor, 2018). although south africa faces many socio-economic challenges, scholars and analysts trying to understand the social justice struggle cannot ignore some of the gains that have been made since the dawn of democracy. according to taylor (2018), these gains include social grants that cover 17 social justice struggles after 28 years of democracy in south africa studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 597 million people in a country that has a population of 55 million people, as well as access to free basic education, primary health care, and free housing for income-poor households. however, hassim (2008) argues that social welfare and the political rights obtained by the black majority have not helped to curb the escalating rise in social and economic inequality. hassim (2008) elaborates: “a focus on social sector spending alone is inadequate to address questions of social justice” (p. 104). distributing social grants falls into the context where infrastructure such as transport, water, and electricity mean that women continue to carry most of the social and economic burden in households in patriarchal south africa. although women occupy key positions in the state institutions and parliament, they have not used these positions to advocate for pro-poor policies to undermine patriarchy and women’s oppression (hassim, 2008). a note on research design research to review the state of social justice organisations was funded in 2019 by the raith foundation, a south african donor supporting social justice organisations. a team of three researchers, including myself, conducted the study which sought to assess the role of social justice organisations between 1994 and 2020. the researchers also worked closely with the reference group constituted by leaders from organisations funded by the raith foundation. after public release of the report from the main study, it was agreed that the individual researchers could use the data that were collected to write their own independent academic articles, which would not in any way purport to represent the views of the foundation, its partners, and other researchers who had participated in the project. pursuant to this, 75 in-depth interviews with the leaders of trade unions, social movements, ngos, public intellectuals, and academics who have an intellectual association with social justice organisations in south africa were conducted. it must be noted that we were not able to interview all of the leaders of the social justice organisations due to time constraints. those who participated in the study were chosen based on their knowledge of, and experiences in, struggles waged by social justice organisations during apartheid, as well as their participation in social justice struggles as activists and as intellectuals during and after formal apartheid. they shared invaluable knowledge and information on partial victories and setbacks in the struggle for social justice since the dawn of democracy. the interviewees were against apartheid and continue to be involved in social justice struggles in postapartheid south africa. therefore, their analysis and views are based on their daily or even hourly engagement with social justice issues. to make sure that leaders of social justice organisations who did not participate in the study are also represented, the researcher perused their statements and views on youtube and other internet sources. the limitation of the research could be mondli hlatshwayo studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 598 that rank-and-file members of social justice organisations were not interviewed. however, the purpose of the paper is to capture the views and opinions of leaders of social justice organisations, and academics and formal intellectuals associated with the social justice organisations. their views, perceptions, and perspectives are important from a scholarly point of view, because their location helps shape the direction of social justice organisations. it is important to note that there are many partial victories or even victories that have not been mentioned here. for example, several land and environmental struggle victories and partial victories in certain localities have not been reflected on due to the limited scope and objectives of the paper. there are many access-to-land struggles waged by small and large communities; the reason for not addressing them here is because the land reform issue remains elusive, to the extent that all social justice role-players or organisations in the land struggles realise that in general the land question has not been addressed on a national scale. between 1994 and 2021, land redistribution and restitution has only moved from 13% to 17% of ownership by black people (kirsten & sihlobo, 2021). that is why there are debates about changing section 25 of the south african constitution and the establishment of a land agency of the state to speed up land reform. due to covid-19 and the national lockdown beginning in early 2020, data were collected virtually, using the online platforms of zoom and whatsapp. all interviewees gave their informed consent to having the sessions recorded, transcribed, and quoted in the publication of the findings of the research. below i discuss the findings from the interviews on what the participants regarded as successes or partial victories spearheaded by social justice organisations since 1994. the treatment action campaign’s (tac) victory in the struggle for antiretroviral drugs (arvs) after lengthy legal battles and mass demonstrations (some nearly a decade long), the south african government introduced free antiretroviral drugs (arvs) in the public sector in april 2004. today, south africa’s antiretroviral treatment (art) programme is the largest in the world, but also a direct result of the treatment action campaign’s (tac) campaigning. the programme has contributed directly to an increase in life expectancy from 56 years in 2010 to 63 years in 2018 (avert, 2020). what made the tac’s victory possible? kumi naidoo, an environmental activist, noted that an interesting feature of the tac’s victory was that it was an initiative of a social movement, not an ngo. the strategy that was employed was “fantastic,” according to naidoo, because it combined agitation, mobilisation and litigation, and concrete organisation of activists like field workers, before resulting in the saving of tens of thousands of lives social justice struggles after 28 years of democracy in south africa studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 599 by ensuring that poor people could access arvs (k. naidoo, personal communication, july 3, 2020). zackie achmat, who was a leader of the tac and led the campaign for access to arvs, had this to say about the significance of the victory: “i think that the struggle of the treatment action campaign, the struggle of tens of thousands of people in south africa meant that people across the world could get access to generic medicines that can save millions of lives and will continue to save millions of lives” (achmat, 2013). gender-based violence (gbv) struggles khwezi (pseudonym) was a 31-year-old hiv positive woman who brought a rape charge to the johannesburg high court in november 2005. the accused in the case was jacob zuma, then 63, who was about to become the anc president and the state president of south africa. although he was formally acquitted, the case demonstrated how women face vilification and violence when they lay charges of rape and sexual violence. right from the start, the zuma presidency, which began in 2009, was riddled with controversy. in condemning the african anc women’s league, a women’s structure in the anc, hassim (2008) had this to say: “the vocal leaders were perhaps the most shocking – the anc women’s league. the storm troopers of patriarchy, they mobilised actively against fezekile [khwezi] both in public and in private” (p. 1). on average, only one in nine rape cases are reported to the police in south africa. the country’s femicide rate is five times higher than the global average. in august 2018, thousands of people, mainly women, organised public events to highlight the crisis of gender-based violence in south africa (odufuwa, 2018). the events, which coincided with women’s month in south africa, were called “the total shutdown,” and spread to botswana, lesotho, and namibia (odufuwa, 2018). after that, there were women-led protests in sandton, a business and financial sector hub in the city of johannesburg, to highlight the complicity of big businesses in gender-based violence. government held a conference in 2018, and subsequently a national strategy plan on gender-based violence was drafted, but the problem is that due to the state’s austerity measures the plan is most likely not to be funded. according to wendy pekeur, an activist, some of the highlights as far as gender-based violence is concerned is that the gender-based violence conference, discussed above, in 2018 put on the government’s agenda the need to take gender-based violence seriously (w. pekeur, personal communication, may 29, 2020). besides what has been stated by pekeur, some laws have managed to advance the rights of women and children. in this regard, caroline peters, a community activist, elaborated: mondli hlatshwayo studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 600 if i look at the sexual offences bill and what we have achieved, and how far we have come – the domestic violence act, the trafficking of persons bill, and the child rights bill – the bills and rights put in place – our successes are huge. we have the best bills and acts. (c. peters, personal communication, may 27, 2020) despite the challenges in their implementation, the laws have had a positive impact on the fight against gender-based violence, according to peters: “the domestic violence act – before the act, if you called the police, the police would say it’s a domestic issue… and wouldn’t interfere. now the police must intervene and arrest” (c. peters, personal communication, may 27, 2020). another problem cited by peters is that sometimes police and clerks do not know their roles in the implementation of the laws that seek to protect the rights of women and children. twenty years ago, there was a lot of training for police and magistrates, but it made little difference to the number of instances of gender-based violence. creating awareness among members of law enforcement agencies is currently one of the key tasks of the state. resources have to be made available so that magistrates, judges, and police officers can ensure that all the laws are implemented (c. peters, personal communication, may 27, 2020). social welfare after a series of campaigns and legal battles between the state and ngos over social grants, in 2018 the black sash, an ngo, reported to the public that the south african social security agency (sassa) had signed a fiveyear contract with the south african post office (sapo) to disburse social grants to beneficiaries. the new bank accounts of social grant holders do not allow for the deduction of debit and stop orders. this was after the state terminated an unconstitutional contract with cash pay master services (cps) on 30 september 2018 (black sash, 2019). highlighting the significance of the victory scored by the social justice sector and the black sash, karabo rajuili, an activist, said that: the black sash played an important role in ensuring that money is not deducted illegally from the social grants of individuals who are already vulnerable economically. this can help to make certain that social grants are directly used to deal with hunger and poverty, especially in poor communities. (k. rajuili, personal communication, july 2, 2020) social relief was extended during the national lockdown in april 2020. for example, for the first time in south africa, the unemployed who did not receive any social grant and money from the unemployment insurance fund (uif) received r350 per month from the state for six months. shaeera kalla, a member of the c19 people’s coalition – an alliance of social movements, social justice struggles after 28 years of democracy in south africa studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 601 trade unions, and community organisations struggling for social and economic rights in the context of covid-19 – argued that the social grant was not enough, but it helped five million unemployed people to have access to some food (mathe, 2021). what was disturbing was that councillors who were supposed to help with the distribution of food parcels abused their power by stealing the food and distributing it to their friends and members of their political parties (mahlangu, 2021). housing and urban struggles as cities begin programmes of gentrification, working-class people and the urban poor become victims of forced removals and astronomical increases in rent, which results in open and hidden struggles in many cities globally. housing and urban struggles are a global phenomenon, often characterised by ongoing battles between slum dwellers, urban poor communities, and racialised minorities, on the one hand, and states, housing departments and agencies, local authorities, and the police, on the other (august & walks, 2018; chenwi, 2015; mensah & tucker-simmons, 2021; walks & bourne, 2006). for example, one of the crucial points raised in the study conducted by mensah and tucker-simmons (2021) is that redevelopment in areas like herongate, an area in ottawa, tends to entrench the racialisation of immigrant communities, as they face mass evictions led by the state, the private sector, and local authorities. joel modiri, an academic and activist, stated: “some of the landmark cases from grootboom until now – these are cases that have been driven through the social justice sector – pushed the jurisprudence in the direction of holding greater accountability for the state” (j. modiri, personal communication, july 10, 2020). irene grootboom was part of a group of 4,000 residents living in wallacedene, an informal settlement outside of cape town, who in 1998 launched a lawsuit against the south african government. the informal settlement lacked housing, piped water, sanitation, electricity, and other basic services. finally, in 2000, the (constitutional court of south africa, 2000) ruled in favour of grootboom and others, confirming that, constitutionally, they had the right to housing, so that government had to find the means for housing to be delivered to the residents of informal settlements within reasonable periods. at the same time, the government had to provide immediate social relief for communities that had no access to water, sanitation, or adequate shelter. despite the ruling, irene grootboom died in 2008 without having realised the right to housing, as ruled by the constitutional court (hweshe, 2008). christopher rutledge, an activist who supports mining communities in south africa, cited the grootboom case as a success, in the sense that it confirmed that the government has to take social and economic rights mondli hlatshwayo studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 602 seriously, housing in particular, by developing concrete plans to ensure that socio-economic rights are realised (c. rutledge, personal communication, july 16, 2020). harry may, an activist, had this to say about the setback in grootboom’s court victory: “on the housing [front], the sad part about the grootboom judgement [is that] she died without getting a house” (h. may, personal communication, june 12, 2020). another landmark judgement was initiated by the abahlali basemjondolo (abm), an urban-based social movement. the provincial government of kwazulu-natal tabled the kwazulu-natal elimination and prevention of reemergence of slums act, no. 6 of 2007 (“the slums act”), in 2007. the proposed law was unjust because it gave the already powerful landowners and municipalities in the province unlimited power to evict tenants and those who were landless. abm headed to the high court in kwazulu-natal to challenge this law, but lost the case early in 2009. subsequently, the organisation approached the constitutional court, which ruled in favour of abm and, in late 2009 ordered the kwazulu-natal provincial government to pay the legal costs (mitlin & mogaladi, 2013). working with the socio-economic rights institute (seri), abm scored another court victory in the durban high court in 2012. in 2009, a court order had instructed the ethekwini municipality to organise alternative housing for households that were removed from the siyanda informal settlement in march 2009 to pave the way for the construction of a road. the deadline passed in 2010, and the community was still living in a transit camp, under terrible conditions. on 19 september 2012, the high court handed down a judgement instructing the city’s mayor, the municipal manager, and the director for housing to find alternative accommodation for the evicted people. failure to do so, according to the judge, would result in the fining or imprisonment of the three officials. the judgement was ground-breaking in the sense that politicians and administrators in municipalities who fail to comply with court orders, especially those relating to social and economic rights, could be fined or imprisoned (abahlali basemjondolo [abm], 2019). according to s’bu zikode, a leader of abm, litigation is always accompanied by mobilisation of those who are directly affected by the injustice, such as forced removals and lack of basic services provisioning by the state. zikode (2018) elaborated on this point: “we have managed to resist all forms of repression, including evictions. that is one thing we have been able to do; we remain a home and a hope for thousands of shack-dwellers and other impoverished people in the country” (p. 1). besides court victories, some urban struggles sought to undermine the apartheid geography. bevil lucas, a leader of reclaim the city, an organisation affiliated with the housing assembly, prefaced his response to the question of how his organisation was undermining apartheid geography by saying: “we need to note that victory comes in various forms – long-term, short-term, and immediate” (b. lucas, personal communication, may 16, 2020). lucas then talked about the occupation of the old woodstock social justice struggles after 28 years of democracy in south africa studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 603 hospital, which began in 2017. according to lucas, the first phase of the occupation was initiated by only 30 people, and their efforts encouraged many homeless people in cape town to join the occupation. today, the old woodstock hospital accommodates 305 households who would have been homeless had they not decided to occupy empty state buildings in the inner city of cape town. the aim of the occupation, according to lucas, is to symbolically transcend the colonial borders created by colonialists and imperialists. xolobeni: environmental struggles xolobeni is a rural area located in the wild coast region of the eastern cape. the xolobeni community has been challenging the state (department of mineral resources) and an australian company, mineral commodities ltd. (mrc), which has been seeking to mine titanium on their land since 2010 (bega, 2019). in 2016, sikhosiphi bazooka rhadebe, a leader of the amadiba crisis committee (acc) – a community organisation opposed to mining in the area – was assassinated, and his untimely death was attributed to opposition to mining in the area by his organisation. other committee members were receiving death threats for their involvement in the antimining campaign (washinyira & groundup staff, 2016). after realising how mining in other parts of south africa destroyed the environment and caused pollution, as well as diseases and sickness like tuberculosis among mine workers, the xolobeni community rejected mining. media campaigns, legal actions, and protests became their tools of struggle to oppose mining in the area (washinyira & groundup staff, 2016). following research, educational workshops, community meetings, marches, and picketing, the acc approached the court to challenge the australian company transworld energy and mineral resources (tem) over mining rights in the xolobeni area. in her groundbreaking judgement handed down in 2018, judge annali basson ruled “that the mineral resources minister must obtain consent from the community, as the holder of rights on land, prior to granting any mining right to tem” (mitchley, 2018, p. 1). that was a significant court victory because government and politicians have always tended to ignore the cultural and environmental rights of communities when granting mining contracts to mining companies. again, in 2021, the high court in cape town ruled that defamation lawsuits amounting to r14.25-million brought by australian mining company mrc and its local subsidiary, mineral sands resources, against three environmental lawyers, two community activists, and a social worker who criticised the operations of the mine regarding its intention to mine in the xolobeni area, were an abuse of south africa’s legal processes (bega, 2019). mondli hlatshwayo studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 604 zuma must fall former president, jacob zuma, resigned on 14 february 2018 after a sustained campaign to force him to quit as president of south africa. various political formations, some civil organisations, businesses, and the mass media accused zuma of having handed over the executive authority entrusted to him to the gupta family. part of this campaign included journalists analysing “gupta leaks,” which led to the release of many email exchanges about corrupt activities on the part of the gupta family, in collusion with local companies and politicians. khadija patel, a journalist, recounted this victory, but also argued that a setback is that no one has been jailed for this massive corruption: “the gupta leaks was successful, but no one went to jail” (k. patel, personal communication, july 9, 2020). it was the media that analysed a series of leaked emails showing how the guptas, who were businessmen, had direct influence in the appointment of some cabinet ministers, leaders, and managers of state-owned companies, and the allocation of big state contracts; all these activities amounted to what is regarded as state capture. these leaks were made possible by the bravery of journalists and the fact that south africa still has an independent media (dadawala, 2020). social justice organisations, such as trade unions and ngos, played a role in the “zuma must fall” campaign. litigation, organising protests, and analysis of the gupta leaks to further expose activities of state capture, were some of the actions taken by social justice organisations. the establishment in 2018 of the zondo commission to investigate corruption and state capture, signalled the possibility of responding to corruption effectively within the confines of the law. to fight corruption and state capture, some social justice organisations have made submissions to the commission with a view to making sure that those who are guilty are brought to book. zuma’s resignation and the promises of cyril ramaphosa (who succeeded zuma) to end corruption did not in any way lead to the reduction of corruption in south africa. covid-19 and the lockdowns in 2020 saw corrupt acts allegedly perpetrated by national and local leaders of the ruling anc. former minister of health, zweli mkhize, who had to lead the fight against the pandemic was also accused of corruption and had to resign as minister. deokaran, who was a witness in gauteng's personal protective equipment (ppe) corruption scandal, was gunned down outside her house in august 2021 after dropping her daughter off at school (carmen, 2021). workers’ rights following “rhodes must fall,” a campaign calling for the removal of colonial symbols in public spaces and decolonisation, students fought a number of battles. provoked by the announcement of fee increments by social justice struggles after 28 years of democracy in south africa studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 605 university managers in 2015 and 2016, university students and workers intensified their struggle for access to higher education and to end the outsourcing of work in universities, respectively, leading to some partial victories for students and workers. dubbed as “fees must fall” (fmf) and “outsourcing must fall” (omf), students and workers participated in nationwide protests, and in this regard, shaeera kalla, a former student leader at wits university, highlighted some of the victories achieved. the obvious one was the no fee increase announced by the state, which indicates a material gain. another was the pressure placed on the national student financial aid scheme (nsfas) to accommodate more students; as a result, the department of higher education and training (dhet) allocated additional funds to the scheme. other victories were that the children of workers at the university were able to study free, and that outsourcing was discontinued (s. kalla, personal communication, may 29, 2020). according to kalla, student activists involved in fmf contributed to the struggles that ended outsourcing in 2015 and 2016. since the late 1990s, outsourcing of what was described as “the non-core activities of universities” led to black women who worked as cleaners losing direct employment with universities and, in effect, carrying most of the social and economic burden in the university context. before the student uprising, which began in 2015, campaigns against outsourcing were low-key and isolated from the public eye. kalla elaborated on how outsourcing of workers was ended: the ability to join together with the workers was very important to [the] fees must fall [campaign] at wits, particularly because we had to support their struggle for an end to outsourcing. they were also very supportive of our struggle for free education because that also affected the working class. (s. kalla, personal communication, may 29, 2020) the solidarity between students, workers, political groups, and some academics ended in less than a year what the unions could not end for close to 25 years. to be more specific, according to hlatshwayo (2020), the campaign resulted in wage increases for the workers, which in some cases were more than 100%, and in 2016 the repudiation of outsourcing by many south african universities. these two partial victories for students and workers in universities do not necessarily mean that struggles in institutions of higher education have stopped. democracy coincided with the entrenchment of neoliberal policies that sought to weaken the positions of labour. what has been happening since 1994 has been a trend towards the generalised rise of precarious work, which is a type of work that has no or very limited security and benefits (hlatshwayo, 2009; jinnah, 2020). as mentioned earlier, the covid-19 pandemic and national lockdown fuelled the burgeoning trend of precarious work through massive retrenchment and the entrenchment of chronic mondli hlatshwayo studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 606 unemployment. even workers who are regarded as permanent employees with benefits are more precarious due to retrenchments resulting from work reorganisation, eroding many victories scored by workers since 1994. eddie webster, an academic, spoke about the complexities of victories for the labour movement in post-apartheid south africa. for example, according to webster, having full-time shop stewards paid by management to do union work was a partial victory. on the other hand, the problem is that these fulltime shop stewards tend to get co-opted and end up serving the interests of managers, not workers. another example given by webster was that winning the right to strike and to have protected strikes are some of the victories for workers. however, webster noted another contradiction in this success by saying: your right to strike is protected by the labour relations act of 1995, but there are procedures which at times make it difficult to use striking as a weapon. so i think that sometimes these victories turn out to be a double-edge[d] sword. (e. webster, personal communication, may 28, 2020) cosatu president, zingiswa losi, argued that organised labour has scored a number of victories in post-apartheid south africa. losi comments: success is when the campaign has been won and employers and government have agreed to demands. they are implemented by the employer, passed into law by government and given resources; for example, the national minimum wage bill was passed into law and is being implemented across the country. maternity leave exists for all workers, paid for by the employer or the uif. parental leave is being implemented and laws have been passed that protect farm workers. access to the uif has been massively expanded and is being felt by millions of workers. (z. losi, personal communication, june 22, 2020) losi mentions the basic conditions of employment act and the minimum wage act, and there are laws that were passed in 1997 and 2019, respectively, as partial victories of workers, including precarious workers. pinky mashiane, a worker leader, concurs with the view expressed by losi, and mentions that domestic workers can now access the uif as well as approach the commission for conciliation, mediation and arbitration (ccma) when they are unfairly treated by employers, as outlined by the basic conditions of employment act (bcea), no. 75 of 1997. the regulation of a minimum wage and conditions of work by the state are some of the victories scored by organised domestic workers. however, one of the setbacks is that some employers do not comply with these legal requirements. educating and organising domestic workers around these victories will help them realise these rights (p. mashiane, personal communication, june 22, 2020). igshaan schroeder, who heads the casual workers advice office that supports the struggles of precarious workers in south africa, was more social justice struggles after 28 years of democracy in south africa studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 607 reserved about victories of labour in post-apartheid south africa. schroeder indicated that workers are fighting a struggle to defend their minimum rights. according to schroeder, it makes sense to talk about partial victories, which tend to be temporary and small in nature. he elaborated further by saying: it’s important to understand that it’s a period of defensive struggles… we have had quite a lot of partial victories, for example, workers are made permanent, and the minimum wage increases. but i regard them as partial victories because it’s not long before the bosses restructure and dismiss the workers again, or they just force the workers to sign new, shorter contracts. so it has been difficult for the workers to struggle to hold on to the victories. (i. schroeder, personal communication, may 28, 2020) contextualising partial victories and setbacks in some cases, these successes have been accompanied by contradictions, hence i regard them as partial victories. for example, progressive laws or policies may not be implemented by the state due to the inefficiencies within the bureaucracy and a lack of political will. some of the victories are visible and seek to directly undermine the racial geography created by the apartheid state and maintained by politicians and businesses that believe that black people are not supposed to live in cities like cape town. direct actions, like the occupation of an unused government building in the inner city of cape town, can be counted as partial victories, because they show that workingclass people can challenge the oppressive system and establish their own ways of living, which embrace democracy and solidarity (robins, 2021). another piece of advice from rutledge is that winning a court victory is important, but the implementation of court decisions is another matter. in the final analysis, according to rutledge, “without mass participation and mobilising people to claim their rights, a victory in court is meaningless” (c. rutledge, personal communication, july 16, 2020). this point raised by rutledge emphasises that social justice organisations must recognise that, in the final analysis, those who are directly affected by different forms of social and economic oppression can only achieve real and meaningful change by follow-through of initial victories. shamim meer, a feminist, mentioned that activists want to see the endpoint, which is about changing power relations in society, in order to improve the lives of workers, women, and all marginalised members of our communities, and to make sure that people participate meaningfully in decision-making at all levels. moreover, meer pointed out that, “we need to measure the incremental changes that move us towards that long-term goal” (s. meer, personal communication, may 28, 2020). changes caused by actions of social justice are incremental in the sense that social justice struggles are an uphill battle requiring organising, patience, and recognising that there are powerful forces constantly undermining social justice. mondli hlatshwayo studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 608 conclusion some of these mentioned partial victories, as alluded to by schroeder, demonstrate that social justice organisations and poor communities have to continue to struggle for social justice to improve their living and working conditions generally, from the short-term up to the long-term. the article has shown that political life in south africa, like elsewhere in the world, is contradictory and dynamic. if one just reads the statistics that show the depressing economic and social life in south africa, one may wrongly conclude that social justice struggles that are supposed to improve the social and economic lives of the economically excluded have disappeared. however, as this article has demonstrated, social justice organisations not only continue to exist, but they are also involved in a constant uphill battle characterised by defeats, setbacks, and some partial victories. more research is required on how to build social justice organisations that can cohere around common issues and demands without undermining the autonomy of each social justice organisation in its sector. acknowledgments i would like to thank the raith foundation for funding the data collection process that led to the production of this article. however, the views expressed in this article are mine and not those of the funder. the reviewers and the editorial team of the journal gave feedback which strengthened the quality of this article. comrades jessie turton, fatima shabodien, and isobel frye educated me about the state of social justice organisations as we were collecting and analysing data for the social justice organisations project. references abahlali basemjondolo (abm). 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(2021, january 6). reclaiming the city and building an urban common in woodstock. daily maverick. https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-01-06-reclaiming-the-cityand-building-an-urban-common-in-woodstock/ saul, j. s., & bond, p. (2014). south africa--the present as history: from mrs ples to mandela & marikana. boydell & brewer ltd. shapiro, i., & tebeau, k. (2011). after apartheid: reinventing south africa? university of virginia press. sisaye, s. (2021). the influence of non-governmental organizations (ngos) on the development of voluntary sustainability accounting reporting rules. journal of business and socioeconomic development, 1(1), 5-23. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbsed-02-2021-0017 smith, j. l. (2021). continuing processes of uneven development in post-apartheid south africa. african geographical review, 41(2), 168-188. https://doi.org/10.1080/19376812.2020.1860098 steyn, i. (2012). the state and social movements: autonomy and its pitfalls. politikon, 39(3), 331-351. https://doi.org/10.1080/02589346.2012.746184 subreenduth, s. (2013). theorizing social justice ambiguities in an era of neoliberalism: the case of postapartheid south africa. educational theory, 63(6), 581-600. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12043 social justice struggles after 28 years of democracy in south africa studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 591-611, 2022 611 taylor, v. (2018). social justice perspectives in south africa's struggle for social transformation. in g. craig (ed.), handbook on global social justice (pp. 157-172). edward elgar. undp (united nations development programme). (2020, august 31). south africa’s gdp could plunge 8 percent this year because of pandemic. https://www.undp.org/pressreleases/south-africa%e2%80%99s-gdp-could-plunge-8-percent-year-because-pandemic vilakazi, t., & bosiu, t. (2021). black economic empowerment, barriers to entry, and economic transformation in south africa. in a. andreoni, p. mondliwa, s. roberts & f. tregenna (eds.), structural transformation in south africa: the challenges of inclusive industrial development in a middle-income country (pp. 189-382). oxford university press. walks, a. r., & bourne, l. s. (2006). ghettos in canada’s cities? racial segregation, ethnic enclaves and poverty concentration in canadian urban areas. the canadian geographer, 50(3), 273-297. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1541-0064.2006.00142.x washinyira, t., & groundup staff. (2016, may 25). protest against australian company in cape town and perth. groundup. https://www.groundup.org.za/article/no-mining-xolobenidemand-activists/ zikode, s. (2018, december 11). dossier 11: the homemade politics of abahlali basemjondolo: south africa’s shack dwellers. tricontinental. https://thetricontinental.org/wpcontent/uploads/2018/12/190812_dossier-11_en_web.pdf zwane, t. (2019). black middle class more than doubled but the struggle continues. the city press, 29 april 2019, https://www.news24.com/citypress/business/black-middle-classmore-than-doubled-but-the-struggle-continues-20190429 schneider final correspondence address: christopher j. schneider, department of sociology, brandon university, brandon, mb, r7a 6a9; email: schneiderc@brandonu.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 public criminology and media debates over policing christopher j. schneider brandon university, canada abstract public criminology is concerned with public understandings of crime and policing and public discussions of such matters by criminologists and allied social scientists. for the purposes of this paper, these professionals are individuals identified by journalists on the basis of academic credentials or university affiliation as those who can speak to crime matters. this qualitative study investigates media statements made by criminologists and allied social scientists following the 2020 murder of george floyd with two questions in mind: how have they responded to debates over reforming, defunding, and abolishing police? what insight can these responses provide about public criminology more generally? i analyze statements offered by criminologists in news reports and on twitter using qualitative media analysis, an approach that emphasizes the processes through which discourse is presented to audiences. i argue that recent criminological debates in the media concerning the future of policing have exposed unresolvable tensions among scholars who engage in the practice of public criminology, suggesting that the public is not receiving coherent, authoritative messages about these issues. the findings also raise questions about public criminology and illuminate new concerns regarding scholarly expertise related to knowledge claims and credibility relative to social justice. keywords public criminology; policing debates; racial justice; media; qualitative media analysis introduction the year 2020 saw widespread public movements for racial justice, with calls to eliminate systemic bias and racism from the criminal justice system in response to the police murder of george floyd. this paper asks: how have criminologists and allied social scientists who produce knowledge about crime and its control responded in media to debates over the reform, defunding, and abolition of police? and relatedly, what insight might such responses provide about public criminology more generally? i answer these christopher j. schneider studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 228 questions by investigating statements offered by criminologists in news reports and on twitter using qualitative media analysis (altheide & schneider, 2013), a type of ethnographic content analysis that focuses on a reflexive, immersive awareness of the communicative processes, meanings, and emphases contained in media documents. i argue that criminological debates concerning the future of policing following the murder of george floyd on may 25, 2020 have exposed unresolvable tensions among various scholars who engage in the practice of public criminology. many of the widespread discussions about changes to policing were framed in relation to social justice, understood as racial justice, which concerns matters of fairness and equity in direct relation to policing and the criminal justice system (delgado & stefancic, 2017, pp. 120-124). discussions about racial bias in policing were a recurring staple of news coverage across north america in 2020. the general theme across these reports was rather pointed: police and law enforcement are biased in their treatment of racialized people who are disproportionately subject to police violence and death. african americans, for instance, accounted for 28% of people killed by police in 2020 in the u.s. despite being only 13% of the total population (mapping police violence, n.d.). a database of deaths across canada as a result of police action in 2020 reveals that black and indigenous people are disproportionately killed by police (flanagan, 2020; singh, 2020). evidence further indicates that police violence is a leading cause of death for young, racialized people in the u.s. (edwards et al., 2019). while data across north america show the disproportionate police killing of racialized people, what exactly is to be done about police violence relative to the actualization of social justice is another matter entirely. police reform is widely touted as the primary solution. the protests in 2020 against police violence, in which “defund the police” and “abolish the police” served as popular rallying cries, helped bring these important debates, previously located at the margins of public discourse, into mainstream news media discussions. the findings in response to the first research question articulated above reveal that some scholars responded by injecting lived experience into the debates. in answering the second research question, the findings provide evidence of competing strands of public criminology, affirming the basic argument of this paper that contemporary media debates over police have exposed unresolvable tensions among various scholars who engage in the practice of public criminology. my argument contributes to the public criminology literature by spotlighting how social justice concerns are simultaneously advanced and undermined by contradictory public criminological interventions, a process that problematizes struggles for racial justice and the push for social change following the police murder of george floyd. this research also contributes to scholarship on public criminology more generally by adding to the limited studies that investigate criminologists’ media statements (see richards et al., 2020) and by bolstering public criminology & media debates over policing studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 229 evidence that criminology remains a divided discipline, particularly over how criminology should be done (bosworth & hoyle, 2011). criminology is not monolithic, nor has it ever been. the events of 2020, however, seem to have (re)exposed tensions in the different degrees of criminological commitment to social justice issues regarding the maintenance, promotion, and dissolution of forms of state-sanctioned violence. public conversations in response to the social justice inspired events of 2020 have materialized into public debates ranging from calls for police reform to defunding and abolishing the police. loader and sparks (2011) suggest there are myriad ways in which criminologists and others under “allied banners” engage with publics about crime and related issues like policing, collectively understood as public criminology. a brief overview of the public criminology scholarship is provided in the next section to situate my research questions in a foundational literature. following that is a discussion of my methodological approach, which is theoretically informed by symbolic interactionism. next, i present my findings, which empirically underscore the argument of this paper that contemporary media debates over police have exposed unresolvable tensions among various scholars who engage in the practice of public criminology. i conclude by buttressing my analysis with insights from critical race theory to showcase epistemological concerns that the data raise for public criminology debates. public criminology public criminology is concerned with public understandings of crime, including how crime is discussed and subsequently managed (loader & sparks, 2011). it is generally understood as a particular approach to “doing” criminology, with a commitment to engaging in public education and debates about crime, rather than a particular theoretical perspective or methodological approach. while there is no universal agreement on the definition and scope of public criminology, it is generally regarded as an offshoot of public sociology, a cooptation of alfred lee’s (1978) question, “knowledge for whom?” and robert lynd’s (1939) query, “knowledge for what?” (burawoy, 2005). the aim of public sociology is to engage with multiple and diverse publics about public issues (burawoy, 2005). criminology follows a “distinctive progression” similar to public sociology (uggen & inderbitzin, 2010, p. 179), although questions about what publics public criminologists aim to engage and how are often less clear (piché, 2015). burawoy (2005) envisions public sociology as one distinct form of sociological practice that coexists alongside professional, critical, and policy sociologies. these forms of sociological practice vary in their commitments. the professional sociologist, for instance, embraces a neutral position consistent with the status quo, in the interest of careerism, whereas the critical christopher j. schneider studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 230 sociologist does the opposite by questioning the status quo. both achieve these interests from the confines of the ivory tower. the policy sociologist serves market-based interests, and the public sociologist addresses the needs of publics by generating dialogue. following burawoy’s (2005) categorization, uggen and inderbitzin (2010) apply the same typology to various practices of criminology. the professional criminologist contextualizes the study of crime in a body of disciplinary knowledge. policy criminologists apply theories of crime and methods to reduce and control crime. the work of professional and policy criminologists preserves the status quo by serving the interests of state institutions and therefore may perpetuate state violence and harm (piché, 2015). finally, critical criminologists aim to interrogate foundational questions about the meaning of crime for a scholarly audience. however, a basic feature of criminology that sets it apart from the discipline of sociology is its close relationship with criminal justice practitioners, which “makes some variants of public criminology more palatable” for criminologists (uggen & inderbitzin, 2010, p. 731). offshoots of public sociology have existed more-or-less as long as the discipline itself (shrum & castle, 2014). more recent attention to public sociology is credited to herbert gans, who coined the phrase in his 1988 presidential address to the american sociological association (gans, 1989). nevertheless, it was burawoy’s (2005) dramatic reinvention that sparked contemporary debates over public sociology (gans, 2009) – debates that were subsequently “imported” into more recent criminological discussions (loader & sparks, 2011). central to envisioning any form of public criminology is an orientation to some type of public-facing knowledge mobilization to generate debates and dialogue around crime matters. barak’s (1988) “newsmaking criminology” is a related example. barak suggests that newsmaking criminology concerns conscious efforts by criminologists to share their knowledge with publics and shape the presentation of crime-related news (see also turner, 2013). others assert that public criminology entails more than shaping news and should also close the gap between public perceptions of crime and criminologically-informed knowledges by injecting evidence into public debates (uggen & inderbitzin, 2010) and, in some other circumstances, by speaking in a “prophetic voice” against state and corporate crimes (kramer, 2012, p. 41; for a lengthier discussion of the ethics associated with taking a public moral position see hanemaayer & schneider, 2014). while public criminology has been criticized for appealing to the state (piché, 2015), others have cautioned against this limited view (henne & shah, 2020). criminology is not monolithic, nor is its public face. for instance, while criminology can and does operate in coordination with or in the interests of state apparatuses, some criminologists also critique governments or state actors in media outlets. public criminology & media debates over policing studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 231 as with public sociology, a common theme across the ideological and epistemological debates of public criminology is facilitating public dialogue. however, criminology remains a divided discipline (bosworth & hoyle, 2011) and concerns over the practice of public criminology is no exception. what public criminology is, who it serves, and how it is practiced and by whom, remain contested (henne & shah, 2020; nelund, 2014; piché, 2015; ruggiero, 2012). given these debates over public criminology, it is somewhat surprising that little research has empirically investigated who appears in the media, how often they do so, and what kinds of statements they make (richards et al., 2020). research also illustrates that social scientists use social media to engage the public and distribute materials in the public realm, but scholarship in this area remains underdeveloped (schneider, 2014, 2015, 2017; schneider & simonetto, 2017; wood et al., 2019). i address these gaps in the literature in what follows, but first turn to a discussion of my research methodology. methodology qualitative media analysis (qma) is a useful method to answer the question of how public criminologists responded in media to debates over the reform, defunding, and abolition of police in 2020. it is an ethnographic immersive approach to media documents that emphasizes the process through which discourse is presented to audiences (altheide & schneider, 2013).1 qma is theoretically informed by symbolic interactionism, a perspective that maintains that social order is symbolically communicated, with media playing an essential role in the process. qma is a particular type of ethnographic content analysis that focuses on a reflexive awareness of the communication processes, meanings, and emphases contained in documents. the study of media documents using this technique enables researchers to place symbolic meanings in context, but also to track the process of meaningmaking and the influence meanings have on social definitions of categories like reform, defund, and abolish. the method entails a 12-step process (see altheide & schneider, 2013, pp. 39-73). the researcher identifies the topic (step 1) and reviews the literature (step 2) and selected media documents (step 3). the next three steps create a data collection instrument or protocol. step 4 involves listing identified variables or categories that emerged during steps 1-3; the identified variables are then tested against the data (step 5), and the protocol is revised if necessary (step 6). a sampling strategy is then utilized (step 7). the data are gathered using preset codes (step 8) and analyzed (step 9). differences identified during the analysis stage are included in written summaries (step 1 for a detailed discussion of the “ethnographic” nature of this method, see altheide & schneider, 2013, pp. 23-37. christopher j. schneider studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 232 10), alongside typical examples (step 11). data are compared and contrasted, and differences are integrated into a manuscript draft (step 12). i focused on media formats in which claims made by criminologists and allied others appeared (steps 1-3). news media documents (i.e., mass media) served as the primary data source and twitter (social media) as a secondary data source. news and social media formats as data sources are consistent with spaces in which public criminology occurs, in the traditional sense (e.g., statements provided to journalists and published in news media) and e-public criminology (e.g., posts made to social media platforms like twitter) (schneider, 2015). lexisnexis was utilized to collect news media articles as the “primary documents, which are the object of study” (altheide & schneider, 2013, p. 7, emphasis in original). searches of news media were conducted between may 25, 2020 (the date of george floyd’s death) and december 31, 2020. data were downloaded and converted into searchable portable document format (pdf) datasets. i focused on statements made by criminologists and “allied others” presumed to have academic or professional knowledge on the issue of policing (steps 8-9). as the protocol was developed and revised (steps 4-6), lexisnexis searched documents for “criminologist” and “police reform” (164 results, 700 pdf pages), “criminologist” and “defund the police” (89 results, 402 pdf pages), and “criminologist” and “abolish the police” (12 results, 47 pdf pages). data analysis, aided by adobe acrobat pro software, involved reading, sorting, and searching collated statements by criminologists across the collected news reports, which allowed me to identify key themes associated with reforming, defunding, and abolishing the police. themes refer to “the recurring typical theses that run through the lot of the reports” (altheide & schneider, 2013, p. 53). subsequent searches of lexisnexis followed the same criteria with “professor” in place of “criminologist” so that allied scholars who engage with journalists about crime matters would also be included in retrieved data. these additional searches produced a lot more data: “professor” and “police reform” (3,024 results, 16,674 pdf pages), “professor” and “defund the police” (1,677 results, 11,061 pdf pages), and “professor” and “abolish the police” (361 results, 2,254 pdf pages).2 some statements on twitter were referenced in the collected news media documents. data from twitter served as “secondary documents,” or those records about primary documents that “are at least one step removed from the initial data sourced by a researcher” (altheide & schneider, 2013, p. 7, emphasis in original). sampling of all data materials followed qma’s “progressive theoretical sampling” approach (step 7), or “the selection of materials based on emerging understanding of the topic under investigation. the idea is to select materials for conceptual or theoretically relevant reasons” (altheide & schneider, 2013, p. 56). 2 several opinion pieces i authored or co-authored on related policing issues were excluded. public criminology & media debates over policing studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 233 while these data sets are very large, the pdf search function assisted with more quickly developing a deeper familiarity with the context of public criminology statements situated in coverage across multiple articles. the volume of these datasets was reduced to a more manageable size by aggregating the pdf files using adobe’s advanced search function to a lineby-line context. for example, an aggregated search of the largest dataset (i.e., “professor” and “police reform”) for “professor” reduced 16,674 pdf pages of data to 665 pages of line-by-line context. congruent with my research questions, these data were then carefully reviewed for names and supplementary data like title, rank, and position (e.g., associate professor of criminal justice, assistant professor of sociology), and published research like books or articles. retrieved names of professors were then re-entered into the datasets for a more nuanced reading of select news articles for additional context and references to relevant secondary documents. findings reforming the police a theme in response to police reform across examined articles were remarks from scholars that situated policing in strictly historical terms, often referencing or discussing policing in the context of slavery, racism, and colonization. such commentary usually seemed to suggest, directly or indirectly, that the policing institution and some of its practices (notably biasbased profiling) had not been reformed (i.e., changed), at least not relative to other related social, institutional, and governmental changes intended to remedy racial disparities and combat discrimination (e.g., affirmative action). an examination of the data revealed that, while police reform was understood generally to refer to corrections or changes to police practices, there was no one shared solution across reports among those scholars who agreed with, or argued in favour of police reform, or among those academics who offered tacit support. there were, however, numerous suggestions for reform touted by scholars with wide ranging academic expertise and across diverse disciplines. body-worn cameras were among the more popular suggestions and a frequently cited measure for realizing police reform. a thematic summary of the various remarks offered with respect to body cameras and police reform is illustrated in the following: “the big take-away from research on body-worn cameras is that their effectiveness depends on context and specific implementation, said andrea headley, an assistant professor at the john glenn college of public affairs at ohio state university” (frolik, 2020). professor headley’s statement and others like it are underpinned by the normative assumption of the necessity of police, a methodological position christopher j. schneider studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 234 that is consistent with headley’s existent research partnerships with police agencies. remarks by former police officers who had become academics were regularly included among the commentary provided by criminologists and allied others. some of these statements by former officers were critical of any proposed or enacted changes to status quo policing, an indicator of their positioning, first, as former officer and, second, as an academic. as an example, consider the following report on the approval of the creation of a separate department to handle traffic enforcement in berkeley, california: “traffic stops are one of the most unpredictable and therefore dangerous duties of law enforcement. there is no such thing as a routine traffic stop and to perform them effectively and safely takes months of police training in and outside of an academy,” said frank merenda, a former new york city police department captain who is an assistant professor of criminal justice at marist college. philip stinson, a criminal justice professor at bowling green state university, called the idea an “overly simplistic plan that could have deadly consequences for unarmed traffic enforcement officers.” (har, 2020) comments invoking fear-based concerns about reforms, like perceived dangers to police or to the public in the form of spikes in crime, emerged as a theme usually where the “expert” was expressing criticism of police reform. however, what stands out in this example is the emphasis on merenda’s status as a former police officer, which is presented before his academic credentials. in other words, merenda’s police experience is only buttressed by his scholarly credentials. philip stinson (also quoted above) is similarly reported elsewhere as a former police officer. not all former police officers turned academics were necessarily critical of police reforms, nor was their previous status mentioned each time they were quoted in media. the point to stress is that personal experience here extends to scholarly expertise where academic credentials add value to lived experience. for example, remarks by thaddeus johnson, a georgia state university criminologist and former officer with the memphis police department, link former police officer status and life as a black man: the reason i left the police force is everybody i arrested looked like me...there are a lot of black officers who are conflicted like that: “my god, what am i representing, what am i doing?” […] as a black man who has been on both sides of this, my god, i can see both sides of the suffering, but neither one can see the others because of their own suffering. (jonsson et al., 2020) highlighting lived experience alongside academic expertise was not unique to former police officers. the theme of lived experience appeared in commentary on police reform provided by black scholars regarding their own experiences with police as black people. for instance, recalling her interaction with an officer who was called to a dispute with a parking public criminology & media debates over policing studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 235 attendant, delores jones-brown – a retired professor of law, police science, and criminal-justice administration at john jay college of criminal justice – said that police see “blackness first.” the report continued: she said her husband of 29 years, a black journalist from philadelphia, has had such “negative experiences” with police officers over the years that he views dialing 911 as “a last resort.” his motto is “don’t call the police to this house unless somebody’s dying,” jones-brown said. (mahbubani, 2020) such experiences point to calls to defund the police that would reallocate resources away from law enforcement to subsidize social services that could respond in situations that do not warrant dialing 911 and summoning the police to otherwise non-life-threatening situations. defunding the police the conceptual distinction between reforming and defunding police was often unclear across news coverage, with discussions of both frequently appearing together in the same reports. stories about the meaning of defunding and subsequent clarifications provided by criminologists and scholars are a clear indicator that defunding lacks a basic definition or shared public narrative. this lack of a unified understanding was a dominant theme across reports. unlike statements about police reform, which were generally regarded as referring to change, a great deal of scholarly commentary concerning defunding the police focused on definitional issues. words like “reallocation” and “reimagining” recurred in statements as attempts to clarify the meaning of defund. a few thematic examples help demonstrate the point. when discussing a course he was co-teaching with his father, peter marina, an associate professor of sociology at the university of wisconsin-la crosse and retired police officer, said, “it shouldn’t be called defunding the police, it should be called reallocating resources” (vian, 2020). other scholars stressed that the phrase did not mean eliminating police, as was sometimes understood by the public. rather, the concept of defund simply referred to the moving of funds from police budgets to other social service providers: associate professor of criminal justice jennifer gibbs explained that when people call to defund the police, they don’t usually want to eliminate law enforcement altogether. rather, activists want to reform the law enforcement system and reallocate most of its budget to programs like education and affordable housing. “for so long, we have been investing more and more resources toward punitive measures to address a lot of social problems,” gibbs said, “at the expense of social programs that would help prevent crime and the need for the criminal justice system.” although gibbs hesitated to endorse the concept, she agreed it was a viable option. “the police are being asked to deal with any new social problem that comes up,” gibbs said. “drugs, mental illness. all of these things christopher j. schneider studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 236 are coming to the public’s attention, and because we don’t have another 24/7 emergency response system to deal with all of these issues, they fall to the police.” (baker, 2020) here gibbs provides a somewhat balanced perspective regarding defunding by bringing public attention to the ways in which funds could be reallocated. akwasi owusu-bemphah, an assistant professor of sociology at the university of toronto, added: “the defund the police movement really is a call to remove funds from police budgets, not asking police to move funds within their budgets” (thompson, 2020). in another news article, he clarified his approach, calling it “de-tasking” the police, suggesting that the “police are currently doing too much” and that “we want to scale back the work the police do, and associated with that would be a reduction in police funding” (rankin, 2020). however, owusu-bemphah’s remarks do little to add clarity to public understandings concerning the meaning of defunding, instead seeming to provide a discourse (de-tasking) that can be appropriated by police administrators to reify the need for police. others offered more direct assessments that outright dismissed defunding efforts. as reported in the toronto star, laura huey, a professor of sociology and criminologist, says the calls to defund police are occurring in a vacuum of evidence and policy… “there’s little research to suggest that many of the social programs likely to be funded in place of police forces will do much to reduce the social problems that have become police matters [...] because we don’t have good, solid evidence on what could potentially work, everything’s a trial, [and] this is a really risky thing to do when you don’t really know what the hell you’re doing.” (powell, 2020) in 2015, professor huey founded the canadian society of evidence-based policing (can-sebp), the core mandate of which is to empower canadian police agencies. the can-sebp is aggressively pro-police, beginning from an ontological position that assumes the necessity of police for social order and of conducting research that privileges police perspectives and voices (walby, 2021). can-sebp members’ interests with respect to funding and access for research are entwined with those of police, and can-sebp regularly provides commentary that could be characterized as antithetical to social justice concerns, further underscoring the organization’s position with respect to defunding the police. beyond definitional matters and the dismissal of defunding initiatives, some commentary, albeit less typical, took a decidedly more antagonistic and divisive tone, including remarks by academics who do not research police or criminal justice, or anything even tangentially related. as a standout example, harald uhlig, an economist at the university of chicago, shared his thoughts about defunding the police on june 8, 2020 to his more than 8,000 twitter followers, comparing those calling for defunding the police to “flat earthers.” public criminology & media debates over policing studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 237 the post generated subsequent news media coverage in the new york times (2020) and elsewhere: too bad, but #blacklivesmatter per its core organization @blklivesmatter just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice: “we call for a national defunding of police.” suuuure. they knew this is non-starter, and tried a sensible orwell 1984 saying, oh, it just means funding schools (who isn’t in favor of that?!?!). but no, the so-called “activists” did not want that. back to truly “defunding” thus, according to their website. sigh. #georgefloyd and his family really didn’t deserve being taken advantage of by flat-earthers and creationists. oh well. time for sensible adults to enter back into the room and have serious, earnest, respectful conversations about it all: e.g., policy reform proposals by @thedemocract and national healing. we need more police, we need to pay them more, we need to train them better. look: i understand that some out there will wish to go and protest and say #defundpolice and all kinds of stuff, while you are still young and responsibility does not matter. enjoy! express yourself! just don’t break anything, ok? and be back by 8 pm. social media like twitter offers the possibility for public facing scholars to be both the generator and interlocutor of dialogue. in this circumstance, professor uhlig’s comments generated dozens of comments on twitter and news media coverage. consistent with the basic theme of scholarly statements concerning the meaning of defunding the police, some users on twitter (including academics) also attempted to define the meaning of defund. as one illustrative example, susie symes replied to uhlig’s tweet: “like in economics, there’s a spectrum about what the term means, but broadly: reduce police budgets + spend the saved resources on improving lives in the community” (symes, 2020). another twitter user offered the following suggestion to uhlig’s twitter post: “end of policing by alex s. vitale start reading this book then decide.” vitale’s book is a key text regularly cited in response to abolishing the police, to which i now turn. abolishing the police abolishing the police received the least amount of media coverage, likely because of its outlier status or “extreme” position, as it was described in some reports on the spectrum of solutions to policing. there was less discussion and direct support of police abolition from academics quoted in news reports, compared to reform and defund debates. further analysis revealed that many of the abolitionist points made by criminologists and other scholars aligned closely with efforts to defund the police, making the gradual abolition of police the end goal of defunding. statements of this sort were made as the hopeful outcome of defund and divest movements. alex s. vitale, a professor of sociology and author of the 2017 book the end of policing, was among the most cited scholars on the question of christopher j. schneider studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 238 abolishing the police and the most mobilized in support of calls to abolish the police. professor vitale’s remarks below are illustrative of the position of gradual abolition, with an emphasis on harm reduction: no one is talking about a situation where tomorrow there is some magical switch and there are no police. what we’re talking about is an interrogation of the specific things that police are doing which have caused significant harms, have reproduced race and class inequality in america and demanding that we replace policing solutions. does that mean at the end of the process there are no police? well, we don’t know what is at the end of this process. it’s about communicating with communities about what their needs are that have been ignored by government for generations now and demanding that they no longer turn those things over to folks whose tools for solving their problems are guns and handcuffs, coercion, and threats. (isaacson & amanpour, 2020) similarly, patrick sharkey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at princeton university, had his remarks in a washington post article included in a new york times opinion piece: decades of criminological theory and growing evidence demonstrate that residents and local organizations can indeed “police” their own neighborhoods and control violence – in a way that builds stronger communities. we have models available, but we’ve made commitments only to the police and the prison system. (bokat-lindell, 2020) professor sharkey here provides evidence-based recommendations in support of social programs that can work as alternatives to police, an assertion that directly contradicts professor huey’s claims that evidence suggests otherwise (i.e., the need for police), thus revealing an incongruent ontological positioning between these two scholars. further analysis indicates that the language and theme of abolishing the police was often paired with statements provided by activists and abolitionists (less so scholars). “activist” and “abolitionist” were identity markers not generally associated with professors in the examined data, at least not directly. but there were exceptions. as an example, consider anup gampa, an assistant professor at harvey mudd college in california, who told the student life newspaper that he was “in full solidary not only with the call for defunding the police but to entirely abolish the police” (engineer, 2020). unlike reform or defund, there were no conceptual issues regarding abolish terminology across reports, and thus abolishing the police was the most consistent and cohesive of the three responses to policing in 2020. scholars pointed out that calls to abolish the police are rooted in the prison abolition movement. the prison abolition work of distinguished professor emerita angela davis of the university of california santa cruz was sometimes cited. as one example, tyler d. parry, an assistant professor of african american and african diaspora studies, claimed that, “police abolition is inspired by the prison abolition movement. what a number of people, angela public criminology & media debates over policing studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 239 davis among them, were in favor of is abolishing the prison-industrial complex” (scavone, 2020). ajima olaghere, an assistant professor of criminal justice at temple university explains: these institutions no longer work, so how do you fundamentally change them or turn them into something different? and i think abolitionists are calling for, in the case of policing, reduced dependency on and liberation from police because right now police are the gatekeepers to the criminal justice system as a whole – a system that is predicated on, and that imposes, retribution and deprivation […] we should have other institutions taking a larger and more proactive role in ensuring that we don't let people fall through the cracks. (kochis, 2020) a basic argument of this paper is that the more recent criminological debates concerning the future of policing have exposed some unresolvable tensions among public criminology scholars. all of this suggests that the public is not receiving a coherent, authoritative message about these issues, which can problematize struggles for social justice and the push for social change, among other concerns, to which i now turn in the concluding discussion. concluding discussion the movements for social justice in response to racialized police violence following the death of george floyd put a spotlight on public criminology across much of 2020. the statements herein provided by criminologists and allied scholars, while not generalizable, do provide some empirical insight into the role that criminologists play in injecting criminological materials into public discourse. i now return to the first question introduced at the outset of this article: how have criminologists and allied scholars who produce knowledge about crime and its control responded in media to debates over reforming, defunding, and abolishing the police? public criminology cannot exist without expertise from professional criminologists. at the core of criminology, as has been asserted about public sociology, is the understanding that professional criminology provides both legitimacy and expertise for public criminology (burawoy, 2005). one consistent finding about how criminologists responded in 2020 that cut across debates over reforming, defunding, and abolishing the police concerned matters of expertise. the findings indicate that one’s degree credentials, scholarly research and publications, and university affiliation collectively served as a baseline for the recognition and affirmation of research expertise across news media reports. this is unsurprising. however, the findings also reveal that criminologists and scholars responded by injecting their lived experience into these debates, drawing from encounters with police as racialized person, former employment in law enforcement, and sometimes both. this finding points to a burgeoning storytelling and counter-storytelling narrative turn that christopher j. schneider studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 240 adds “the notion of a unique voice of color” to public criminology, which is simpatico with critical race theory that builds “on everyday experiences with perspective [and viewpoint in an effort] to come to a deeper understanding of how” the public sees race (delgado & stefancic, 2017, pp. 11, 45). according to delgado and stefancic (2017), “the voice-of-color thesis holds that because of their different histories and experiences with oppression, black, american indian, [indigenous], asian, and latino writers and thinkers may be able to communicate to their white counterparts matters that the whites are unlikely to know” (p. 11). however, in other circumstances, albeit less frequent, some scholars injected personal opinions unrelated to their expertise or lived experience, as was the case with economist harald uhlig’s comments on twitter. what is at stake here is that the lived experiences of racialized scholars may be conflated by publics with the personal and irrelevant opinions of other scholars, which can possibly undermine advancements in racial justice. nevertheless, critical race theory’s narrative contributions to public criminology debates in 2020 are important and help advance our understanding of social justice related to criminal justice in that critical race theory has built “on the work of radical criminologists” and abolitionists who have collectively sought to draw attention to the racism baked into the entire criminal justice system (delgado & stefancic, 2017, p. 120; piché & larsen, 2010; saleh-hanna, 2008, 2017). the finding that the narrative turn of critical race theory is flourishing in public criminology debates across 2020 seems to suggest that some of the core tenets of radical criminology are working their way into mainstream popular thinking, by incorporating social justice concepts related to policing and “by describing the changing nature of what is to be abolished” (piché & larsen, 2010, p. 391; see also davis, 2005). the influence of radical criminology on critical race theory and 2020’s narrative turn in public criminology is also a finding consistent with research that maps criminology onto other theoretical interventions (e.g., ahmad & monaghan, 2019). future research might explore and further develop this matter as it relates to the literature on defunding the police and the police abolition movement. in their book public criminology?, loader and sparks (2011) contend that there are numerous ways in which criminologists and others under “allied banners” engage with publics about crime and related issues, as demonstrated by the data above. the evidence in this paper seems to warrant the addition of an “antagonistic banners” categorization of scholars; statements provided by criminologists and other scholars in response to 2020’s social justice movements were sometimes at odds, as was the case with questions over whether to reform or abolish the police, perhaps creating confusion among publics. when scholars like patrick sharkey and laura huey provide contrary statements about the same issue, with each citing authoritative “evidence” to support their position, who exactly is correct? while each scholar injected evidence into the debates over policing, it is professor public criminology & media debates over policing studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 241 sharkey who arguably speaks in a “prophetic voice” concerning criminological interventions oriented at harm prevention, and thus is more consistently situated within a social justice agenda (see kramer, 2012). the same could be said about remarks offered by professor alex s. vitale. furthermore, it has been suggested that laura huey and like-minded propolice colleagues “ignore critical literature and ignore existing literature on the topic” (walby, 2021, p. 4). nevertheless, media narratives citing these conflicting perspectives provide public audiences with information that shapes their understandings of definitional claims, like whether defunding the police is better or worse or is or is not supported by evidence. but because “the definition of the situation ultimately lies with audience response,” current research does not provide insight into the reception and lasting impacts of the legitimate and trusted expertise that criminologists offer publics (altheide & snow, 1979, p. 19). the findings also raise additional questions about public criminology and expertise concerning knowledge claims and credibility. reflecting on the issue of credibility, becker (1967) noted in his 1966 presidential address to the society for the study of social problems that, “‘everyone knows’ that responsible professionals know more about things than laymen, that police are more respectable and their words ought to be taken more seriously than those of the deviants and criminals who they deal with” (p. 242). given the close relationship that exists between criminology and criminal justice, academics who invoke law enforcement experience may be taken more seriously as the “real experts” than racialized scholars who discuss their personal encounters with police, the nature of their academic credentials aside (uggen & inderbitzin, 2010, p. 734). while there has been a lack of diversity in public criminology, the findings presented here suggest there is a growing array of voices being represented in the media as experts on policing and crime (uggen & inderbitzin, 2010). despite this move toward greater inclusivity, there is a danger in privileging of one form of lived experience (police officer) over another (racialized identity), and future research should explore this important and less understood knowledge credibility issue in public criminology. returning briefly to my second research question, what insight might scholarly responses to 2020’s movements for social justice provide about public criminology more generally? the topic of policing generated numerous, what we might call criminology-esque statements from a wide range of scholars across an array of disciplines. the data reveal that significantly more commentary was offered by academics under allied/antagonistic banners than was by “official” criminologists, as defined in media reports. the evidence also reveals that criminology-themed statements across reports frequently offered incongruent frames that both appealed to the state (reform) and were in opposition to it (abolish). this paper then provides evidence of competing strands of public criminology (public criminologies), adding confusion to public christopher j. schneider studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 227-244, 2022 242 understandings of criminology and related advancements in social justice. at a minimum, what these collective empirical observations seem to indicate is a continued blurring of already loose disciplinary boundaries. they also speak to broader concerns about the nature of public criminology (or criminologies) – what it is exactly, and who it speaks to – thus complicating the realization of social justice as it relates to public criminological interventions. future research might investigate how allied scholars (i.e., not criminologists) are engaging with crime and related issues with broad public appeal and reach, such as policing, with an eye to how the loosening of disciplinary boundaries might impact the advancement of social justice concerns. a shortcoming of this research is that it is limited to an analysis of statements made by criminologists in media. media data in this study highlight the unresolvable tensions that exist among scholars who engage in the practice of public criminology. so future research is necessary to identify and further delineate the different epistemological, ontological, theoretical, and methodological approaches and commitments of public criminologists to provide more insight into the individual motivations that underscore public criminological interventions. lastly, future research might take grassroots organizing and other efforts that draw on public criminology tactics into consideration to better understand the tensions among scholars who engage in public criminology. this exploratory research project contributes to the limited but growing scholarship that investigates public statements made by criminologists and other social scientists. it remains necessary to explore public criminology as it develops in media. the findings here are not intended for generalization. nevertheless, the materials herein add some necessary insight to our understandings of public criminology and provide a few directions for future research. acknowledgements i would like to thank my colleague stacey hannem for her helpful feedback on an earlier version of this manuscript. i am grateful to the two anonymous peer reviewers of this paper and editor nancy cook for providing many valuable suggestions for improvement. references ahmad, f., & monaghan, j. 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(2020, june 17). toronto police board to review anti-racism measures at friday meeting. cbc news. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ont-racism-police-1.5616712/ turner, e. (2013). beyond ‘facts’ and ‘values’: rethinking some recent debates about the public role of criminology. british journal of criminology, 53(1), 149-166. uggen, c., & inderbitzin, m. (2010). public criminologies. criminology & public policy, 51(2), 438-448. vian, j. (2020, august 31). digging into human rights policing. wisconsin state journal, sec. local, p. a2. walby, k. (2021). swat everywhere? a response to jenkins, semple, bennell, and huey. the police journal: theory, practice & principles. doi:10.1177/0032258x211002596 wood, m. a., richards, i., iliadis, m., & mcdermott, m. (2019). digital public criminology in australia and new zealand: results from a mixed methods study of criminologists’ use of social media. international journal for crime, justice, & social democracy, 8(4), 1-17. mortenson 106 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 white tesol instructors’ engagement with social justice content in an eap program: teacher neutrality as a tool of white supremacy leah mortenson keio academy of new york abstract this study highlights the teaching practices of three white instructors—who addressed social justice issues in the context of their english for academic purposes (eap) classes—to contextualize their pedagogy in relation to intersections of whiteness and english language teaching. the study was conducted at a four-year private university on the east coast in the united states, and data were collected over the course of a semester through observations, interviews with teachers, and document analysis. using social justice pedagogy (sjp) and critical whiteness studies (cws) as my frameworks for analysis, i suggest that white instructors’ remaining neutral on social injustices maintains whiteness in the context of english language teaching. implications are discussed for white eap instructors who seek to engage emergent bilingual (eb) students in conversations about social justice issues and disrupt existing power dynamics of whiteness and colonial legacies within english language teaching. introduction historically, english for academic purposes (eap) programs have prioritized using inauthentic, standardized materials to teach skills-based language instruction over adopting more critical positions to english language teaching that recognize the impact of the surrounding sociocultural and political histories on classroom contexts and interactions (flowerdew & peacock, 2001). rather than addressing ideological issues, or “cultural beliefs that justify social arrangements, including patterns of inequality” (macionis, 2010), discussions of societal inequities—which may unveil conflicting views among discussants—are often foregone, withholding opportunities for emergent bilingual (eb) students to participate in complex conversations about relevant social issues (benesch, 2010). the outer world impacts eb students’ school-based experiences, so bringing in relevant content that deals with historical and contemporary societal issues may provide them with opportunities to practise critical reading and research, deducing fact from fiction, and participating in civic dialogue: all skills and competencies that are crucial for their academic and career success. this study highlights the teaching practices of three white instructors—who addressed social justice issues in the context of their eap classes—to contextualize their pedagogy in relation to intersections of whiteness and english language teaching. the study was conducted at a four-year private university on the east coast in the united states, and data were collected over the course of a semester through observations, interviews with teachers, and document analysis. using social justice pedagogy (sjp) and critical whiteness studies (cws) as my frameworks for analysis, i suggest that white instructors’ remaining neutral on social injustices maintains whiteness in the context of english language teaching. implications are discussed for white eap instructors who seek to engage eb students in conversations about social justice issues and disrupt existing power dynamics of whiteness and colonial legacies within elt. https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 107 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 the study offers implications that echo the call of gerald (2020) for teacher education programs to integrate critical whiteness studies (cws) and critical race theory (crt) into their curricula in order to better prepare the majority white teaching force to work with diverse learners and adopt self-reflective, harm-reducing practices. it surfaces the “complicated conversation” (pinar, 2004) about curricula traditionally used in english language teaching and showcases it as a site of struggle reflecting the political, institutional, and sociohistorical priorities of a given moment. finally, it prompts journals to provide platforms for interdisciplinary investigations that seek to better understand the intersections of language and race, which has been minimally researched. literature review whiteness and english language teaching the population of north america is rapidly diversifying, and the relative proportion of white people is declining (frey, 2020; harvey & houle, 2006). for example, according to statistics canada (2021), 22.3 percent of the canadian population belongs to a visible minority group or groups, and that number is expected to rise to between 31.2 percent and 35.9 percent by 2036 (“2021 census,” 2021). the needs and interests of students are shifting in line with changing demographics, and white educators must evolve their practices to meet those needs. “decolonizing” english language teaching necessitates recognizing that the english language has been used as a colonizing force around the world to carry out acts of domination and oppression (kumaravadivelu, 2016; pennycook, 1998). lin and luke (2006) have recognized that the naming of teaching english to speakers of other languages (tesol) already establishes a dynamic of self-other in which the anglo teacher is “self,” and the learner is the perpetual “other” found lacking, which upholds a colonial narrative of oppressor and oppressed. instead of ignoring historical wrongdoings committed by anglo english speakers, an alternative is to acknowledge those histories within english language teaching to engage students in critical inquiry over social justice issues related to oppression through content-based language instruction (lynn et al., 2002). english language teaching may be seen as a border site where imperialism, linguicism, xenophobia, and racism overlap (kubota & lin, 2006; liggett, 2014; sterzuk, 2015; taylor, 2006). teaching english and whiteness—the set of rules, norms, and behaviours that govern status quo society and uphold white supremacy (roediger, 2006)—are intermingled as a majority of tesol instructors and college professors are white (davis & frey, 2019; motha, 2006), the idealized native speaker is often positioned as white (ruecker & ives, 2015), and both being white as well as being a native english speaker are identity markers that connote global power (motha, 2006). as the mode of communication for many colonialist acts, english has acted as a medium that reproduces and otherizes those of different racial, national, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds (luke, 2004). the “anglo” bias of english language teaching has been well documented in the literature, and scholars have denounced eap programs’ willingness to forego critical approaches to language teaching (canagarajah, 2002; flowerdew & peacock, 2001), condemning the ways that english language teaching tends to herald whiteness as “both a prize and a goal” (gerald, https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 108 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 2020). a study by lee (2015) showed how eap instruction in liberal multicultural canada uses culture as a proxy for race, replicating power dynamics that otherize eb students and position english as metonymic with whiteness. mackie (2003) addressed the role of patronizing desire and white saviourism in her teaching of the “esl [english as a second language] other,” who she constructed in her mind as “a monolithic community of people, joined by their sameness to each other and their difference from [her], and by their dependence on [her] to help them out of their difficulties and to provide a model of canadianness to which they could aspire” (p. 30). the task to recognize and disrupt patterns of whiteness in english language teaching is not an easy one as it has deep ties to colonialism. to avoid repeating societal patterns of domination and settler colonialism, white english language teachers must account for the intersections of whiteness and the english language to disrupt the colonizing power of tesol (kubota & lin, 2006). scholars have been engaged with the question of how to actualize decolonial, anti-racist teaching practices for many years. for example, kouritzin’s (2005) editorial in tesl canada asked what it means to be a white english language teacher and teacher educator who seeks to adopt anti-racist practices while simultaneously acknowledging her own internalized racism. wihak’s (2004) perspective investigated what it means to be white in canada and offered personal reflections on her own racial identity in a society that continues to marginalize indigenous communities despite governmental structures that proclaim to offer freedoms equally to all, writing that “insidious blindness to the effects of race is pervasive in white canadian society” (p. 112). fleming’s (2005) article asked what it means to be an anti-racist educator who resists personal privilege to challenge eb students to “seize hold of canada as their own creation to mold” (p. 90). educators and scholars have developed theory around the intersection of race with tesol (crump, 2014; ennser-kananen, 2020; lin & luke, 2006; kubota, 2002; kubota & lin, 2006; shin, 2011; von esch et al., 2020), investing time and energy into developing curricula that merges english language teaching with socially conscious content (guerrettaz & zahler, 2017; walsh marr, 2019). however, few studies have asked white english language teachers to reveal their own views about using ideological and/or social justice-related content to teach english. since english language teaching is wrapped up with native speakerism and whiteness (motha, 2006; ruecker & ives, 2015), this exploration of white english language teachers’ views is a critical piece of the puzzle to understand how to manifest decolonial approaches to english language teaching, and this lack of research into white english teacher views is the gap this study seeks to address. uncritical approaches in eap programs scholars have long critiqued eap programs for adopting uncritical and/or pragmatist approaches to english language teaching (allison, 1996; benesch, 1993; hyland, 2004; paltridge, 2001; pennycook, 1994; santos, 1992). uncritical and/or pragmatist approaches leave eb students unprepared to engage successfully in university-level content-area work, which necessitates understanding ideological issues (such as racism, sexism, gender discrimination, and ethnocentrism) that result in societal inequities. benesch (1999; 2001; 2010) has argued for the use of critical pedagogy in eap classrooms and has provided models for intervention and mediation in the context of critical conversations wherein teachers can model that critical https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 109 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 thinking is “neither an unguided free-for-all nor a didactic lecture but a balance between extended student contributions and gentle challenges by the teacher” (1999, p. 578). haque (2008) has argued that employing critical pedagogy in eap teaching is futile if not undertaken with simultaneous critiques of the institutions in which it is occurring. the challenge is multiplied when efforts are undertaken in contexts that self-position as “neutral sites” in which eap is seen as a “service industry to provide students with access to a neutral body of knowledge” (haque, 2008, p. 94) rather than an institution that is itself ideologically motivated and responsible for perpetuating inequities that otherize eb students. eap programs encourage instructors to adopt new genres, technologies, and researchinformed practices into their teaching (bahrami et al., 2019; hyland & shaw, 2016); however, the debate about what the larger purpose of eap programs should be—whether it is to convey a practical set of language skills to students, or to develop students’ critical thinking, effective communication, and abilities to speak in informed ways about relevant social issues such that they can participate in academic communities successfully—remains an active and ongoing one. canagarajah (2002) posited that the “accommodationist” approach so often employed in eap settings ignores students’ cultural backgrounds and neglects opportunities to advance their critical thinking skills about subject area content. more recent scholarship has highlighted potential outcomes of critical approaches to english language teaching that merge language and content instruction, reciprocally, to encourage learners to make text/context connections, and make the rhetorical and social expectations of texts clear (airey, 2016; canagarajah, 2006; schleppegrell 2013). for example, walsh marr’s (2019) response to canada’s 2008 truth and reconciliation commission (trc) sought to teach students about canada’s mistreatment of first nations communities while foregrounding critical english language instruction through examining historical texts and analyzing the language structures within the texts that construct specific narratives about what occurred, such as the use of active vs. passive voice to connote or deny responsibility for the harm committed against indigenous communities by whites in power. in a united states context, guerretaz & zahler’s (2017) article highlighted possibilities to de-silence race in an academic literacy class through using the novel a lesson before dying by ernest gaines (1993) to foreground multiliteracies and african american vernacular english (aave), as well as initiate critical conversations about historical injustices experienced by black americans in jim crowera united states—conversations that can set the stage for addressing contemporary injustices against black and brown communities and societal responses such as the black lives matter movement. talking to eb students about contemporary societal issues and the impact of culture, race, gender, class, and language (among other identity markers) on individuals’ and groups’ experiences of opportunity and/or oppression in varying contexts can position eb students to be more critical of the authority invested in english as compared to their first language (l1), which is a key component of decolonizing english language teaching (parkinson, 2016). this case study contributes to the existing literature by highlighting the practices of three white eap instructors who foregrounded social justice-based content in their eap instruction. the study offers implications for white english language teachers invested in adopting anti-racist, decolonial practices and highlights the importance of reflecting on one’s personal beliefs, https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 110 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 prejudices, and biases regarding racism, white privilege, and personal responsibility towards societal inequities. this study suggests that english language teachers who seek to decolonize their teaching cannot do so while remaining neutral on issues of injustice. research questions data for this study were collected over a semester, and the questions that guided it were: 1. how do white eap instructors conceptualize the politics of english language teaching? 2. what are tensions and/or alignments between how white eap instructors understand themselves and their beliefs about racism, prejudice, white privilege, and colonialism and how do those beliefs manifest in classroom conversations about social justice issues? 3. how do instructors’ conversations about social justice issues maintain or disrupt whiteness in english language teaching? methods theoretical framing social justice pedagogy (sjp) social justice pedagogy (sjp) represents a sustained commitment to acknowledging that systemic injustice is real and that in order to disrupt it, those with more power than other communities/groups/individuals must actively subvert their own privilege. taking inspiration from the definition given by cumming-potvin (2009), i understand sjp to be ethics in action that drive instructors to 1) promote visibility of marginalized persons; 2) speak out against oppressions and continually work to destabilize the status quo surrounding race, class, culture, and all other marginalized or minoritized identity markers; and 3) accept the above two codes of conduct as one’s ethical responsibility. a social justice agenda in teaching is one that sees the process of teaching as being instrumental to creating a fairer and more just society (zeichner, 2003). in this way, the purpose of teaching is to help students to grow into full participants and change agents for greater equity in their communities (parker, 2006). teaching for social justice is not a simple task, and the challenge is doubled when it is undertaken in the context of an educational system entrenched in historical inequities and oppressive institutions. for this reason, it is critically important that teachers not only engage students in conversations about social justice topics, but that they are also continually reflecting on the privileges and prejudices they may bring with them into the classroom and to these discussions. freire (2010) identified that liberatory and transformative pedagogy only occurs when both teacher and student are learning together, co-creating and re-creating knowledge, and when hierarchies of teacher and student dissolve and all parties are learning subjects (p. 69). similarly supportive of liberatory classrooms, hooks (1994) argued that in opposition to the banking model of education in which students are constructed as passive recipients of information, critical inquiry is an important part of learning since the “cozy, good feeling [of https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 111 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 being a passive recipient] may at times block the possibility of giving students space to feel that there is integrity to be found in grappling with difficult material” (p. 154). diangelo and sensoy (2012), kendi (2019), and saad (2020) further identifed that personal growth and learning may be found through embracing productive discomfort, seeking critical understandings of history, and reflecting on one’s positionality in society in relation to others. it is through this understanding of social justice pedagogy that i approached my analysis of the data and my interpretations of the participants’ words and actions in their classrooms. conceptualizing whiteness gillborn (2019) distinguished between “whiteness” and “white people” as not being one in the same; however, they often work in collaboration. “whiteness” comprises a set of assumptions, beliefs, and practices that disproportionately privilege white people and their interests; people who identify as white might serve the agenda of whiteness, but this is not a given, nor is it inevitable. leonardo (2002) delineated that while “white people” refers to an identity category typically based on skin colour, “whiteness” is a social concept that relates to structural inequities rooted in white supremacist racial dominance. as a “well-entrenched structure that is manifested in and gives shape to institutions” (castagno, 2013, p. 102), whiteness serves as a powerful kind of “social amnesia” that transcends national boundaries (leonardo, 2002) and upholds the status quo. in the context of education, it undergirds sustained inequities in schools that result in achievement gaps, pushes out students of colour, and maintains the school-to-prison pipeline (leonardo, 2013; morris, 2016; skiba, et al., 2014). in this study, “whiteness,” “white supremacy,” and “status quo” are used interchangeably to indicate the inextricable connections between society, as it has always been and currently is, and the maintenance of a racialized hierarchy. diangelo (2018) has provided a set of guidelines for identifying and working against white fragility—a state in which even the smallest amount of racial stress becomes unbearable for white people, triggering a series of defensive moves such as outward displays of guilt, fear, anger, as well as behaviours like silence, defensiveness, or leaving the stressful situation, all of which serve to reinstate the white racial equilibrium (p. 2). diangelo’s (2018) definition and examples of white fragility provided me with a critical framework for understanding statements of teachers in my study that relayed their relative levels of race consciousness and the degree to which the conversations they had with students about ideological issues maintained or disrupted whiteness in the educational space. study design positionality i am a white, well-educated, native english-speaking woman. i do not viscerally experience the societal injustices with which i am concerned (kay, 2018). however, given the privileges i have, i understand that it is my ethical obligation to listen to those whose lives have been challenged by more obstacles than my own, and i must also act out of my awareness of those facts. i seek to use my positionality to give voice to issues affecting individuals and communities for whom society is not constructed, since remaining silent on issues of injustice maintains the status quo of https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 112 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 white supremacy. milner (2007) identified that studying the self and studying the self in relation to others in one’s community can be a powerful means to effect change. wihak (2004) stated that “the meaning of being white is created by my own actions rather than just by the actions of other members of the white race” (p. 114). i do not believe it is possible to develop a positive white identity, and i agree with diangelo (2018) that we may strive to be “less white,” less racially oppressive, and more committed to “break[ing] with white silence and white solidarity, to stop privileging the comfort of white people over the pain of racism for people of colour, to move past guilt and into action” (p. 150). it is my hope that through researching my own community of white eap instructors and through subsequent actions taken in my own teaching and advocacy work, i can continue learning, evolve my teaching practice to be more equitable, and work to be a better accomplice for social justice work (kendall, 2021). i conducted this research in a united states context; however, i have chosen to submit this article to a canadian journal because racism within english language teaching is not limited to the united states, and both the u.s. and canada have similar legacies of racism, colonialism, and indigenous genocide with which to reckon (veracini, 2015). in u.s. universities, the student body is diversifying faster than the university instructors who are educating them, where 70 percent of university professors continue to be white, with disparities increasing in relation to professor status—adjunct, tenure, etc. (davis & frey, 2019). statistics canada collects data on age, rank, and gender of faculty and students in canadian universities; however, it does not collect data on race or ethnic makeup of faculty and students, and neither do provincial governments (wong, 2017). u.s. data may represent the most relevant parallel of information that may apply to canadian contexts. because the observations and conclusions made in this study may be transferable to a canadian context, i seek to understand, in the spirit of malcolm x’s (1965) call to white allies to get to work across our own communities, how we may contribute to building more equitable institutions and disrupt settler colonial, racist, and xenophobic patterns within english language teaching. case study case study was a suitable research method for this study as it allows for in-depth examination of a specific field site and community in which there is a shared culture (leedy & ormrod, 2013, p. 236). the study took place in the context of an eap program where i also taught at the time of the study. like my participants, i am also a white eap instructor. because my goal was to understand this group of teachers and gain a better understanding of the impact of white teachers’ underlying beliefs on the ways they engage with ideological content in the eap classroom, case study was a fitting research design as it may be utilized to learn more about a “little known or poorly understood situation” (p. 231). historically, eap programs have not adopted ideological approaches to english language instruction, so case study was an appropriate research method to allow me to gain insight into an understudied area. case study may also be utilized to highlight changes that occur in individuals or programs in response to specific events or circumstances (leedy et al., 2019), so it was appropriate for my goal of examining white teachers’ approaches to ideological content in the wake of social injustices happening in real time, such as instances of police brutality happening against black and brown people in the u.s. and in canada (simpson, 2020). https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 113 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 research context the study was conducted at a private, four-year university on the east coast of the united states. the university has about 14,000 students between both the undergraduate and graduate schools, and the eap program was founded a little over ten years ago. there were about 230 students enrolled in classes in the program for spring 2018, ranging from undergraduate to graduate levels and including both credit and non-credit bearing courses. demographically, students in all programs represented over thirty-seven countries; however, the majority of students came from china. as of spring 2018, there were 19 teachers on staff—14 of whom were adjunct and five who were full-time. fourteen of the teachers were women, and five were men. the demographics of the instructors were consistent with national trends for both the u.s. and canada in that 15 of the instructors were white, three were asian, and one was black. participants and data collection to gain access to participants for this study, i first sent out an informational email to all faculty in the eap program to explain my goals—namely, to observe the teaching of eap instructors whose courses addressed social justice issues—to better understand the opportunities and challenges in addressing such content with eb students. i received interest from three instructors, and after discussing the content they planned to address in their classes as well as working out scheduling requirements, since i would be observing their classes throughout the semester, i determined their classes to be suitable for the study. one instructor was male, two were female, and all three instructors identified as white. two of the instructors were american and one was canadian. the instructors all had non-tenure track appointments; one had a full-time position within the program and the other two taught as adjunct instructors. while each class within the eap program had overarching objectives that needed to be met, instructors had freedom to determine how they did so and could choose their own curricula and materials. the three classes i observed were 1) a graduate course in advanced reading, 2) an undergraduate academic writing class, and 3) an undergraduate course on media and culture. some of the ideological, social justice-based content that instructors addressed in their classes included police brutality against black indigenous and people of colour (bipoc), the black lives matter movement, protests, gentrification of the surrounding metropolitan area, and the violent legacy of christopher columbus. the classes met three times per week for 55 minutes per class. the teachers as well as the students in their classes consented to be observed and have their class participation and words documented. students in the classes came from vietnam, venezuela, saudi arabia, u.a.e., palestine, and ethiopia; however, a majority of students were from china. i collected the data for the study by audio recording each class period, taking detailed fieldnotes, and transcribing the period after class for later coding and analysis. i received ethics approval for the study from the institutional review board (irb) committee at the university where i was conducting the research as well as the university where i was completing my doctoral work as this comprised part of my dissertation research. for the sake of anonymity and in keeping with current reference guidelines in the publication manual of the american psychological association (7th ed.) (apa, https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 114 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 2020), i refer to the participating individual teachers and their students using the third person singular “they.” data sources and materials data sources for this study included observations, field notes, artifact review (of syllabi, class materials, etc.), and semi-structured interviews with instructors at three points throughout the semester (see table 1 for summary of database). i audio recorded class periods and interviews on my computer, i took detailed fieldnotes throughout the classes, and i bracketed my personal observations/evaluations in my fieldnotes in an effort to record only that which was observable in the classroom (emerson et al., 1995). my data analysis was ongoing and recursive, involving continual de-construction of my initial observations to reach deeper understandings (stake, 1995). in my transcription process, i documented interactions between students and teachers as “scripts” (grimm et al., 2014) and referenced students as “s1,” “s2,” etc. to maintain anonymity. table 1 summary of database methods data collection period (january 2018may 2018) data classroom observations ongoing fieldnotes, audiotape, and transcription on 54 lessons in three courses totaling 67.5 hours of observation fieldnotes ongoing recorded notes in classroom observations. focused on observable phenomena and bracketed personal thoughts interviews with teachers interview 1: beginning of semester interview 2: middle of the semester interview 3: end of the semester audiotaped and transcribed nine interviews with an average length of 1.5 hours per interview documents ongoing course syllabi, outlines, in-class materials, course website codebook ongoing synthesized quotes from classes and interviews to develop themes using an online qualitative data coding software program to relay participants’ words truthfully, i utilized verbatim coding (saldaña, 2021), and i allowed themes to emerge from the data (leedy et al., 2019). i employed a web-based coding software to help me to categorize, tag, and analyze my data (salmona et al., 2019), uploading https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 115 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 class and interview transcripts to the program and using the software to create a codebook that helped identify and organize overarching themes and sub-themes across data sources. creswell’s (2013) data analysis spiral served as a model for me to organize my data, analyze it as a whole, identify overarching categories and themes, and delineate findings within those themes. i repeated this process to identify outliers and/or allow for more nuanced understandings to develop from my initial observations. in line with scholars like maxwell (2013) and chang (2008), i believe that research is an ongoing process that expands outward to allow for more meaningful connections and analyses to be made the longer one sits with the data. findings i have organized my findings into three overlapping categories that relate to the earlier stated research questions, with my findings contextualized in relation to the research questions. the question related to the impact of instructors’ conversations about social justice issues on whiteness in english language teaching is addressed throughout the findings section and is further elaborated on and contextualized in the subsequent discussion. teachers’ beliefs about the politics of teaching “you can’t pretend it’s not political” in interviews, teachers shared their beliefs about the politics of teaching and showcased varying understandings of colonialism, xenophobia, racism, and white privilege. during an interview, a participant claimed that “you can’t pretend [teaching] is not political—especially language teaching,” and indicated that they valued allowing students’ own opinions and voices to take centre stage rather than their own, saying that they “weren’t there to create mini mes.” one participant shared that there have been moments when they have heard students’ opinions on social issues that they have “found repugnant,” which led them to question how they felt about helping students acquire language to express views with which they disagreed. a teacher shared that, in their opinion, it’s none of their business what students’ personal views are and how they may clash with their own. another teacher shared that they thought it was important to keep their feelings “tapped [sic] down” during conversations [about social justice issues].” another teacher shared that they had heard students make homophobic comments in class and asked, “what to do about that? if you figure out that answer, i will happily buy your book.” “i think the teacher should be neutral” teachers in the study expressed a desire to be neutral when speaking to students about ideological issues related to societal inequities. one teacher identified that they think that in order to be an effective facilitator of discussion, the teacher should be neutral on social issues. they did not think it was useful to share their own beliefs or “try to convince students of things” and said that instead, they wanted to communicate information to students “just the way [it is]”. one instructor shared their own experiences attending a seminar-based high school where teachers adopted neutral stances when discussing social and political issues, reflecting that these experiences shaped their own conceptions of “how things should be” in the classroom. when https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 116 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 discussing the process of choosing texts and resources for classes, teachers reported that selecting materials for how well they revealed “the reality of things.” another teacher shared that early on in their english language teaching career, they decided “to try to be as neutral as possible on social issues that come up.” they explained that they were raised in a military family where “you never talk politics and you never talk religion because military’s the family, and you have people from all sides coming in, and for an army officer, you always follow your leader no matter what your personal beliefs are.” teachers shared that they have had students who ask them on the side where they stand and they refuse to tell them because they have seen other teachers who do “go there” with students, and they were concerned about conflicting views being shared that could result in hurt feelings. when students asked what their political views were, one teacher answered, “i’ll tell you the answer my parents told me for 40 years—secret voter.” the teachers in this study did not see it as desirable or appropriate to share their personal politics with students and instead, insisted it was best to keep these separate from their teaching. all three teachers identified that “preserving the peace” and “minimizing potential conflict” were values they held in high esteem in their classrooms. they identified that they saw it as important to not “get on a soapbox,” and “yammer on about [their] opinions.” one teacher expressed pride when, in class, a student asked for their opinion on a race-related topic and another student cut in to say, “don’t ask [them]. [they’re] always neutral!” for the teachers, the idea of being seen by students as neutral on ideological issues related to racism, social, and political injustice seemed to be an ideal to which they aspired and viewed as a hallmark of effective and ethical teaching. teachers did not see a contradiction in acknowledging the political nature of teaching while also remaining silent about social injustices. scholars like diangelo (2018) may assess this denial of personal responsibility to address injustices as retreating from stress-inducing situations rather than showing beliefs that white people with unearned privileges are obligated to speak out on issues of injustice. many scholars (diangelo, 2018; kendi, 2019; saad, 2020) would agree that such denials foreground white fragility and reinforce the racial status quo. teachers’ beliefs about racism, white privilege, and personal responsibility “i don’t feel that i have the expertise to address these issues” in interviews, teachers shared their personal beliefs about racism, colonialism, white privilege, and personal responsibility to address societal inequities. common findings were that teachers believed a) they were not the appropriate person to speak about racism and other social inequities and that education and educating about such issues should be carried out by minoritized individuals, b) present-day inequities had nothing to do with them if they were not acting in racist ways, and c) any conversations about race, racism, or other injustices should be carried out in a “civil” manner in which no one is called a racist or told they are wrong. one teacher shared in an interview that because they don’t face racial prejudice themselves, they don’t often notice or think about it until/unless it is pointed out. this teacher has close family members of colour, and they identified that sometimes these family members https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 117 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 will “call [them] out on things with comments like ‘that’s such a white comment.’” i asked the teacher if they were bothered by these “call-outs” and they said no—that they found them helpful and that they “want[ed] to be educated about these issues so please, tell [them] what to do.” teachers shared that they don’t feel like they have the expertise to discuss racism with their students, and one participant said that “if [students] had a professor from a minority background, that would be very helpful.” other teachers shared similar views, identifying that because they are white, they don’t feel capable of speaking about injustice in an informed way. they said they would like to help forward the conversation, but they don’t know how, and one participant said, “i would like to be able to hear what the issues are—how can i help forward the conversation? how can i hear you? please stop me and let me know right away—you know— call me out on it.” they expressed a desire to be educated on racial and social justice issues and to be alerted if/when they were not understanding something, and they indicated feeling like it was more appropriate to be educated by minoritized people on issues related to injustice rather than educating themselves. “the confederacy is not my fault… i think we’ve got to drop it” teachers did not see themselves as being complicit in present-day inequities if they were not participating in individual acts of racism. one teacher shared their view that the alt-right has a slogan that “being white is okay” and said that they agree with this statement. they further explained their opinion that white americans “don’t need to bear the burden of the civil war,” elaborating to say, i think it’s a little absurd to be having these arguments about the confederacy still. because no one my age is responsible for it. i mean even if you are related to confederate soldiers, even if you know people that protested against the civil rights movement—it’s not my fault, and i don’t think it’s their fault either. at some point, i think we’ve got to drop it because as we’ve seen, it creates a lot of animosity. this teacher did not see themselves as having benefited from white supremacy, nor did they view its historical legacy as something that belonged to them. their comments highlighted a desire to smooth over past injustices and construct a vision of societal harmony rather than prioritize accountability. another teacher shared their experiences talking about racism while growing up, and said that they “were always able to have open dialogue [...] and everyone was allowed to share their opinions. and… you know, [these conversations] were conducted in a civil and organized way no one was called a racist and no one was told they’re wrong.” similar to the participant comment above, this teacher did not see it as their personal responsibility, as a white person, to account for racism’s historical legacy or present-day impact, and indicated valuing “civility and organization” in race conversations over accurate historical renderings and justice-oriented understandings. https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 118 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 manifestations of teachers’ beliefs in the classroom teachers’ beliefs regarding racism, white supremacy, the legacy of colonialism, and white accountability manifested in the classroom when speaking about social justice-related issues. teachers enacted their preferred stances of remaining neutral on ideological issues of social justice while simultaneously revealing their personal beliefs, both of which served to maintain whiteness. “i’m not saying right or wrong” teachers expressed their desire to remain neutral on issues of social justice in the classroom, and this value manifested in their approaches to teaching about social justice topics. in one teacher’s class on media and culture, students spoke about an excerpt they watched of the show black-ish about an upper middle-class black family trying not to lose touch with their racial community while facing pressure to assimilate to white, middle class norms. the episode is called “juneteenth” and it highlights a school play for thanksgiving put on by a white teacher whose efforts at diversity and inclusion include making students of colour play columbus and other colonizers. during the debrief of the episode, the teacher gauged students’ understandings of basic plot points, asking, “so, who’s christopher columbus?” a student responded that columbus “invaded north america and got the land and killed people,” to which the teacher responded, “ok, ‘invaded.’ interesting terminology. i’m not saying right or wrong.” in this case, the teacher’s perception of what it meant to be neutral on ideological issues meant that they did not confirm a student’s assessment of what columbus did as an “invasion," which by definition means “an unwelcome intrusion into another’s domain.” when i asked the teacher about this moment in a subsequent interview, they shared the following: t: i felt that it was such a loaded word [l: invaded?] yes. so, yes: he [christopher columbus] came. and yes, there was a lot of destruction. not true that he was in north america [laughs] ok, but i say all this—i was doing research on it, a day or two beforehand doublechecking what we were seeing in the show. ‘cause i was like, ‘well, i’ve got to see what’s true.’ so, i didn’t have all the research, i wasn’t able to go back and make sure: ‘this is absolutely true’ or not. so hence, i said ‘i can’t say true or not’ [laughs] ‘i can’t say right or wrong,’ but yet, i know there are some facts that we were taught that are incorrect. so, it was the loaded word [that made me respond in the way i did] and it would have been useful to say, ‘that’s a loaded word,’ because ‘invasion’ means that you are going there to destroy—in my mind, that’s the insinuation, the connotation. in this interaction, the teacher shares that they had been put off by the student’s use of a “loaded” term and did not feel adequately informed on the issues to be able to speak to what was true or untrue. this response indicates a gap, not only in the teacher’s own education on christopher columbus’ actions and legacy, but also in their confidence in being able to navigate addressing “loaded” terminology in the classroom. scholars like hess and mcavoy (2009), kay (2018), and loewen (2018) have addressed the utility of leaning into conflict in the classroom while also https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 119 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 acknowledging that it is an underdeveloped skill in teachers. this contention indicates that there is a gap not only in being informed on the issues, but also being equipped to address moments of discomfort, disagreement, ambiguity, and conflict so that the teachable moments that could come out of such tensions are not sacrificed. “riots are uncontrolled, unthinking beasts” teachers contradicted their stated desires to be neutral on social justice-related issues in the classroom. in the midst of a conversation about major turning points in the civil rights movement, for example, students discussed an image displayed on a screen showcasing burning buildings during civil unrest following the death of martin luther king jr. students were confused about why black people were burning their own neighbourhoods in protest, and the following interaction occurred: s1: why are angry people just destroying— s2: but when there are riots, you are supposed to fight for some rights… right? what are they doing? s3 [in disbelief]: why did they destroyed their own neighbourhoods?! t: riots are uncontrolled, unthinking beasts. there is no logic. s4: yeah, because it shows they are not thinking. s1: that’s like you just go out and destroy something. s5: for example, you’re angry and you destroy your tv. your own tv! [students laugh] s2: i read about attica—do you know attica riots? those african american prisoners were fighting for their rights because they have miserable lives in the prison. i thought that’s right, right? s5: they are expressing their anger, but they are not doing it in a proper manner s1: i just don’t get it because if i’m fighting for my rights, i don’t burn my own stuff [students laugh] t: well, i don’t think an angry crowd is going to take the bus to [wealthy neighbourhood] [students laugh]. s3: that’s what i say when i saw the baltimore thing. like why are you lighting fires in police cars and the cvs… t: ok, let’s move on. that’s where we finish. instead of prompting students further—for example, asking students what they thought would constitute a “proper” manner of protesting and/or providing information about the institutional, systematic disenfranchisement and discrimination experienced by bipoc that could reasonably lead to an eruption like the one they had seen in the pictures—this teacher positioned protests as unreasonable, illogical, and remained silent while students laughed about the idea of burning one’s own neighbourhood and made flippant comments about destroying their tv. rather than foregrounding riots as martin luther king jr. did—as “the language of the unheard” —and creating space for debate and informed discussion among students about the efficacy of protests in creating societal change—the teacher presented their opinion about riots in a way that left little room for debate, research, and discussion that may have expanded students’ conceptions of what this historical moment represented for oppressed people around the world. https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 120 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 discussion social justice pedagogy (sjp) requires sustained commitment to the idea that systemic injustice is real and that in order to disrupt it, those with more power than others must actively subvert their own privilege. the first research question of this study was answered in that the teachers in this study claimed to understand teaching to be political, conceptually, but did not act out of this understanding—as showcased by their avoidance of discussing social justice issues in unambiguous ways and/or approaching this content through critical lenses. tensions were showcased in teachers’ understandings of themselves in relation to racism, prejudice, white privilege, and colonialism, as they did not see these legacies as relating to them nor did they feel a need to account for them in their life or teaching. in the instructor’s refusal to address columbus’ legacy in clear and unambiguous ways, they sacrificed an opportunity to provide students with additional context and information about what columbus and other colonizers did, directly, via rape and genocide, and indirectly, to the taino and other indigenous people, and then ask students what they thought. for example, they could have addressed that prior to white contact, indigenous numbers in the united states and canada are thought to have been around 14 million, and by 1880—due to the disease, destruction, and deculturation brought by european settlers—indigenous numbers had declined by 98 percent (loewen, 2018). the teacher could have leaned into this moment of tension to discuss the meaning of the word “invasion,” allowing students to do their own research and debate, in relation to evidence discussed, whether columbus should continue to be celebrated as a hero. instead of doing any of this, their “neutral” response reaffirmed whiteness and revisionist history and neglected an opportunity for a critical conversation. the teacher who claimed riots are “unthinking beasts” that “[have] no logic” similarly missed an opportunity to engage students in a critical conversation while simultaneously sharing their own prejudiced perspective. this teacher did not follow up with students in this interaction during a few critical moments—for example, when the student said i read about attica—do you know attica riots? those african american prisoners were fighting for their rights because they have miserable lives in the prison. i thought that’s right, right? —this opportunity could have been a moment in which the teacher could ask students to pause and reflect over this statement to consider why someone might “burn their own stuff” as a form of protest: namely when they don’t have any other option. in interviews, this teacher indicated that they thought teachers should remain neutral in class conversations about social justice issues; however, in the context of this class conversation, they made their personal views about protests apparent, which students then mirrored in subsequent responses that such acts show “[people] are not thinking” and that “[protestors] are not doing it in a proper manner.” in contrast to the goals of sjp, the three white eap instructors in this study showcased personal beliefs and classroom practices that upheld whiteness when discussing social justicerelated content. they forewent opportunities to provide information about complex sociocultural phenomena, historical events, and cultural moments for their students, and in so doing, they did not serve the goal of disentangling english language teaching from colonial traditions but further reinforced dynamics of white supremacy. rather than minimizing confusion, misunderstandings, and stereotypes that were conveyed within these conversations, they sometimes added to the https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 121 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 misinformation and/or stereotypes themselves. the instructors operated under the assumptions that pedagogical neutrality is both possible and desirable while simultaneously revealing their personal beliefs about what is proper and correct. in interviews, instructor understandings of their own racial identities mirrored the idea that “they [bipoc]—not we [white people]—have race, and thus they are the holders of racial knowledge” (diangelo, 2018, p. 62), and showcased discomfort in addressing race and social justice issues in unambiguous ways. scholars like diangelo (2018) have addressed how white people often think they exist outside of the racial hierarchy and so don’t have to speak to it, when in fact, these silences are central to the hierarchy’s existence and maintenance. similar to this, the instructors in this study remained silent in conversations about racial and colonial injustice and did not approach these conversations from critical lenses (diangelo & sensoy, 2012), moving the class along to the next topic when they felt ill-equipped to navigate the challenging dialogic terrain. they denied access to white capital (solomona et al., 2005) and did not claim responsibility for dismantling hierarchies of oppression. in their discussion of social justicerelated topics in their classrooms, they re-affirmed whiteness with both their contributions and their omissions. counter to sjp scholars like cumming-potvin (2009) and zeichner (2003), the teachers in this study showed little awareness of teaching as instrumental in creating a fairer and more just society. in her essay “age, race, class, and sex: women redefining difference,” audre lorde (1984) reminded readers that, whenever the need for some pretense of communication arises, those who profit from [black people’s] oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them. in other words, it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes. i am responsible for educating teachers who dismiss my children’s culture in school. black and third world people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. (p. 114) in the same way lorde indicated above, instructors in the study desired to be educated by bipoc individuals on societal injustices. questions they asked such as how can i hear you? please, stop me and tell me right away, demonstrated their thinking that “black and third world people . . . [must educate] white people as to [their] humanity.” in contrast, white instructors’ personal and professional development, reflection, and personal responsibility to educate themselves about their own histories and racial identities is a necessary step to decolonizing education. in the context of contemporary social justice issues such as ongoing police brutality and disproportionate rates of incarceration of black and brown communities (alexander, 2010), disparate impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on bipoc individuals, especially women (erickson, 2020), and the lasting impact of worldwide colonialism on indigenous communities (loewen, 2018), white teachers’ neutrality in conversations about such social injustices serves the status quo of injustice (applebaum, 2009; nurenberg, 2020). love (2019) wrote that social justice pedagogies must call out the ways in which racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other forms of prejudice and hate are structural in order to consciously commit to building equitable school communities and societies (p. 55). the false https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 122 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 presumption that neutrality is possible in the classroom foregoes opportunities to use positions of privilege to a) educate oneself about history in accurate and inclusive ways, and b) use that knowledge to give voice to the social inequities facing minoritized communities. it sacrifices opportunities for rich, nuanced discussions that could help model for students what engaged civic dialogue and debate could look like (hess, 2009; parker, 2006). neutrality also presumes that all perspectives are competing on an equal playing field, which is untrue in our present-day contexts of societal injustice (kay, 2018; oluo, 2020; wilkerson, 2020). furthermore, researchers find that neutrality is impossible, and students are able to deduce their teachers’ views without them having been explicitly communicated (hess & mcavoy, 2009). milner (2017) argued that what and how teachers teach is never neutral since the questions asked, what information is included in syllabi and materials, and even who is called on are all choices that are impacted by one’s personal beliefs, values, and prejudices. if teachers’ beliefs already enter into their teaching in ways that are unbeknownst to them, one could argue that may be more beneficial to transparently disclose opinions so that these are not presented as facts. such transparency could help to promote open dialogue, debate, and allow students to develop their own ideas and critical thinking skills. it could also model for students that working through conflict can be an arena for growth and personal development (kay, 2018). research has found that students may perceive information differently depending on the racial and gender identity, among other identity markers, of the teacher who is presenting the information. for example, a study found that when a white man (who teaches at a prestigious u.s. university) taught his students about issues of race and societal injustice, students reported him as “objective,” “scholarly,” and “disinterested,” in their course evaluations. conversely, when an african american woman at the same institution taught about issues of race and societal injustice, she was perceived as “self-interested,” “bitter,” or “putting forth a particular agenda” (ladson billings, 1996). ideas about who can be neutral, when certain topics are allowed to be broached, and by whom, are deeply embedded in the racist fabric of our institutions. in order for educators to help build a more equitable framework, they must train themselves to see who discourses of neutrality serve, and who they marginalize. educators must further acknowledge that neutrality on the part of white teachers and silences on social justice issues are manifestations of white fragility that showcase leave-taking of stress-inducing situations (diangelo, 2018), which maintains a white supremacist framework. scholarship has shown that engaging students in conversation and debate in which participants may have differing views is essential for the development of requisite skills to participate in civic dialogue (hess & mcavoy, 2009; kay, 2018). teacher neutrality obscures the political nature of education and hides from view the pillars of prejudice on which neutrality, as a concept, rests. heybach (2014) has traced the etymology of the word “neutrality,” and reminds readers that the essence of the word means “no power being transmitted” and “being disengaged.” it is worth considering: what are the implications of “no power being transmitted” in the context of white english language teachers’ attempting to talk to eb students about social justice issues? https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 123 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 implications implications for ma tesol program development in light of the disproportionate numbers of white educators as compared to the increasing diversity of the student body (davis & frey, 2019), there is an urgent need for ma tesol programs to integrate critical whiteness studies (cws) into their curricula to address historic inequities, dynamics of white privilege that continue to manifest and duplicate in school settings, and the role of teachers in disrupting these patterns (gerald, 2020). white teachers must better understand themselves, the lasting legacy of white supremacy, and the power and privilege they bring to classroom interactions to change their behaviours and approaches to teaching english accordingly. teaching is a political act through which social stratification is either reinforced or disrupted (buchanan, 2015), so it is imperative to closely examine the content that is being taught in ma tesol programs to understand the role it plays in disrupting or maintaining whiteness in education. in english language teaching, this demand is all the more pressing because of ties between the english language, colonialism, xenophobia, and the relative capital afforded based on the languages one speaks and the colour of one’s skin, which have social, political, and economic ramifications (bourdieu, 1986; guerrettaz & zahler, 2017; ruecker & ives, 2015). there is scant research on white eap practicing and pre-service teachers’ engagement with confronting whiteness, privilege, and anti-black racism in the context of their studies (ennser-kananen, 2020; motha, 2006). however, crt scholars such as boler (1999) and ohito (2016) have suggested the value of practicing a “pedagogy of discomfort” with white pre-service teachers to push them to see themselves located within an inequitable system and “make meaning of the contours of racial oppression” (p. 455), and similar pedagogies can be practised in ma tesol programs. for example, faez (2012) showcased the takeaways of teacher candidates who engaged in critical reflection over their own linguistic experiences and identities, foregrounding race in those reflections. in initiating (white) pre-service teachers’ investigation of their own racial identities, teacher educators may help to render visible the “tight yet seemingly invisible hold that white supremacy maintains on teacher education” (ohito, 2016, p. 454), allowing such programs to begin addressing and responding to historical inequities in meaningful ways rather than being guided by people in power who may be motivated more by interest convergence than true changes of heart and/or a desire for racial equity (bell, 1980; gillborn, 2006). implications for eap programs there has long been debate in eap scholarship about the degree to which eap programs should adopt critical or pragmatist approaches to english language teaching (benesch, 1993; hyland, 2004; paltridge, 2001; pennycook, 1994; santos, 1992). scholarship showcases the importance of language learning being integrated with authentic content (airey, 2016), and scholars have criticized eap programs’ approach to language teaching that teaches the four skills areas (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) in isolation, arguing that this approach leaves eb students unprepared to participate in university-level content-area work meaningfully, since https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 124 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 university coursework tends to engage with ideological issues (canagarajah, 2002; 2006; parkinson, 2016). the work of benesch (1999; 2001; 2010) has argued for the use of critical pedagogy in eap classrooms and provides models for intervention and mediation in critical conversations, demonstrating, for example, how eap instructors can serve as “conversation facilitator[s] and, more judiciously, intervener[s] (1999, p. 578), prompting students to elaborate on their ideas to model that critical thinking is “neither an unguided free-for-all nor a didactic lecture but a balance between extended student contributions and gentle challenges by the teacher” (p. 578). haque (2008) and luke (1992) have identified that critical pedagogy in eap teaching could fall short in similar ways as uncritical language teaching if it is not undertaken in tandem with critiques of the institutions of which the eap programs are a part (haque, 2008, p. 94). this issue is exacerbated when eap programs, and universities more broadly, are constructed in the societal imagination as “service industries” allowing students access to a “neutral body of knowledge” (p. 94) rather than institutions that are ideologically motivated. in light of this, the primary recommendation for eap programs that comes out of this study is to engage faculty—in particular white faculty—in professional development that foregrounds: 1. explicit education about the historical intersections of tesol with whiteness, colonialism, racism, and xenophobia 2. critical approaches to eap that promote awareness of the politics of language teaching 3. critical reflection about the role that eap teachers play in upholding or dismantling white supremacist thought in the classroom setting 4. guidance for undergoing critical dialogues about social justice issues with students, for example, the bc teal respectful interactions guidelines (rigs) framework (“bc teal,” n.d.) and/or the bc human rights code (“human rights,” 2021). there are many other resources that could aid in this education and professional development, including use of and reflection over the harvard implicit association test (iat), critical readings of texts like white fragility by robin diangelo (2018), and not light, but fire: how to lead meaningful race conversations in the classroom by matthew r. kay (2018). authors such as davis (2017) have discussed the benefits of professional book clubs for fostering conversations about social justice issues, addressing biases, and reflecting on and critiquing one’s background and personal values to better understand the impact of educators’ socialization on their teaching practices. engaging in this kind of dialogic inquiry—in supportive and collaborative environments—may be a productive way for white english language teachers to hold themselves and each other accountable to understanding the legacy of whiteness in their work and the obligation to take action in their practice to effect change (kendi, 2019; oluo, 2020). limitations and future research this study was limited by time, and its findings are limited to three white eap instructors whose teaching i followed over the course of a semester. in spite of these limitations, i believe the takeaways from this study are transferable to contexts where similar problems may exist within english language teaching related to whiteness and settler colonialist histories. this study https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 125 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 responds to a gap in the literature related to calls to de-silence social justice issues in tesol— namely, how these conversations are undertaken, by whom and with what background knowledge and underlying beliefs—and showcases that understanding these factors are just as, if not more, important than solely the fact of having these conversations integrated into eap teaching. this study builds on the body of work that has been done regarding intersections of whiteness, racism, and settler colonialism in tesol (gerald, 2020; kubota & lin, 2006; lin & luke, 2006; sterzuk & hengen, 2019; von esch et al., 2020) and provides a cautionary tale to those who are interested in integrating social justice-related content into their eap teaching about the ways in which whiteness may find a home in these conversations—just as a spider weaves its web (lin & luke, 2006)—if they are not undertaken with simultaneous critical race reflection and anti-racist professional development of white instructors. future research could engage in critical inquiry about professional development framed by critical whiteness studies (cws) and social justice pedagogy (sjp) and its impact on white eap instructors teaching about social justice issues. conclusion the teachers in this study showcased contradictory beliefs about the political nature of teaching and their perceived obligation to account for historical and contemporary racial inequities, which manifested in the classroom conversations they undertook regarding social justice issues. teachers integrated social justice-related content, yet did not see themselves as the appropriate person to talk about such inequities. they did not believe they had an obligation to speak to historical and present-day racism, and they desired for conversations about such topics to be undertaken in an “open, civil manner” in which no one was called a racist or told they were wrong. they acknowledged the political nature of teaching more broadly and english language teaching, specifically, while simultaneously seeking to remain neutral on ideological issues in their classrooms. this study showcases the tensions in the three participants’ practices that ultimately maintained whiteness. white eap educators who are invested in decolonizing their teaching practices and seek to engage students in meaningful conversations about social justice issues must read and engage more with the concept of white fragility to uncover their own blind spots, understand and interpret their gut reactions to being called to account for racism in present-day society, and be willing to engage in critical conversations about social justice issues within their classes in a clear and unambiguous way. without programmatic development in eap and ma tesol programs to educate white teachers on the intersections of tesol with race, settler colonialism, and whiteness, the status quo will continue to reproduce itself through these programs, and use of social justice content in eap programs will reinforce dynamics of white supremacy rather than provide opportunities for critical inquiry, debate, and growth. acknowledgments i wish to thank my husband for his support and multiple reads of this manuscript. i would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editor scott douglas for gracious comments, https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 mortenson 126 bc teal journal volume 6 number 1 (2021): 106–131 https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 constructive feedback, and publication guidance. thank you, as well, to dr. kimberly brown for the encouragement to write and continued mentorship. references airey, j. 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(2003). the adequacies and inadequacies of three current strategies to recruit, prepare, and retain the best teachers for all students. teachers college record, 105(3), 490–519. the bc teal journal is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. copyright rests with the author(s). https://doi.org/10.14288/bctj.v6i1.422 https://doi.org/10.2307/40264542 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444820000269 https://doi.org/10.1002/tl.20332 https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v21i2.178 https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/equitable-campuses-but-for-whom/ https://www.universityaffairs.ca/features/feature-article/equitable-campuses-but-for-whom/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ microsoft word carroll with tables.doc studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 36 hegemony and counter-hegemony in a global field1 william k. carroll, university of victoria abstract social justice struggles are often framed around competing hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects. this article compares several organizations of global civil society that have helped shape or have emerged within the changing political-economic landscape of neoliberal globalization, either as purveyors of ruling perspectives or as anti-systemic popular forums and activist groups. it interprets the dialectical relation between the two sides as a complex war of position to win new political space by assembling transnational historic blocs around divergent social visions – the one centered on a logic of replication and passive revolution, the other centred on a logic of prefiguration and transformation. it presents a sociological analysis of the organizational forms and practical challenges that their respective hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects entail. since the spectacular announcement of the new politics of global justice in the 1990s – in chiapas (1994), paris (1995) and seattle (1999) – a good deal of sociological attention has been placed on the networks, communication technologies, nongovernmental organizations, and discourses through which these politics have been constituted and the transnational political terrain on which they move (e.g. keck and sikkink, 1998; olesen, 2004; smith, 2001, 2002; smith and wiest, 2005). in the same period, a literature has accumulated on the formation of a neoliberal transnational historic bloc, an assemblage of elite policy-planning organizations, transnational corporations, and global-governance organizations that has promoted, and to some extent consolidated, a hegemonic project of neoliberal globalization (gill, 1995; sklair, 2001; carroll and carson, 2003; robinson, 2004; nollert, 2005). on the premise that these phenomena are dialectically related, this paper traces the war of position between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic forces in the current era; a struggle in which conflicting visions of justice clash within a global field. globalization-from-below is diverse in its conceptions of social justice, yet its minions are agreed that injustice is rooted in contemporary social arrangements and structures that can be transformed through collective action. as globalization accentuates both human interdependencies and the awareness of those interdependencies, this “movement of movements” appears to be converging around a counter-hegemonic vision that integrates struggles against “maldistribution, misrecognition and misrepresentation” 1 presented at the joint rc02/rc07 session on alternative visions of world society: global economic elites and civil society in contestation, world congress of sociology, durban, july 2006. an earlier version of this paper was presented at the institute for global political economy, simon fraser university, vancouver, march 2006. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 37 within a dialogical framing of social justice in terms of parity of participation and the allaffected principle (fraser, 2005, pp. 79, 82-4).2 such an holistic project is not easily posited, let alone pursued, yet it gains shape and form as “activists create spaces, both physically and emotionally, that promote ideas of social justice in explicit opposition to the injustice enacted by the global institutions of neo-liberalism and global capital” (lacey, 2005: 405). globalization-from-above has trumpeted unfettered capitalism as the harbinger of individual liberty and material abundance, creating optimal consumer choice in the marketplace and a rising tide of affluence that lifts all boats. the neoliberal doctrine informing this vision locates “plain justice” in the market mechanism itself and denies that “social justice” is anything but “a dishonest insinuation that one ought to agree to a demand of some special interest which can give no real reason for it” (hayek, 1976, p. 90). notwithstanding hayek’s faith in the plain justice of the marketplace, by now we are painfully familiar with the logic and consequences of neoliberalism: the policies of fiscal retrenchment that degrade social programs, the accumulation by dispossession (euphemized as privatization) and “commodification of everything” (harvey, 2005), the harmful impact of deregulated global market forces on workers and communities, as exchange value reasserts itself at a centre of life (teeple, 2000). this triumph of “plain justice” over social justice has been a global phenomenon – hence the currency of the term transnational neoliberalism. if, as jessop (2002 113) holds, globalization is the complex and emergent product of various forces operating on many scales, in the economic field its most salient impact has been to strengthen the structural power of capital vis-à-vis agents enclosed within national states, as the circuitry of accumulation becomes more internationalized (gill and law, 1989). neoliberalism is the political paradigm that converts that structural power from a contingent and contestable accomplishment to a seemingly permanent reality, within which market-driven politics holds sway (leys, 2001). there can be little doubt that the power of neoliberal concepts “goes hand in hand with the changed orientation of an increasingly internationalised business community – industrial tncs [transnational corporations], big banks, financial conglomerates and other investment-related firms – or as some call it, of an ‘expanding transnational managerial class’” (bierling, 2006, p. 211). united through the ideological practices of various international forums and policy groups which have become venues for promoting a consensus around the cosmopolitan vision of a borderless world of friction-free capitalism, this transnational bloc of social forces is more extensive than its strict class base might suggest (bierling, 2006, p. 221). it encompasses public officials in international and national agencies of economic management, and a great range of specialists and experts who help maintain the global economy in which the tncs thrive – “from management consultants, to business educators, to organizational psychologists, to 2 as fraser goes on to explain, justice defined as parity of participation “requires social arrangements that permit all to participate as peers in social life. overcoming injustice means dismantling institutionalized obstacles that prevent some people from participating on par with others, as full partners in social interaction” (fraser, 2005, p. 73). the all-affected principle is what enables development activists, environmentalists, trade unionists, international feminists and indigenous peoples to make claims against the structures that harm them, “even when the latter cannot be located in the space of places” (2005, p. 84). this principle holds that “all those affected by a given social structure or institution have moral standing as subjects in relation to it” (2005, p. 82). studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 38 the electronic operators who assemble the information base for business decisions, and the lawyers who put together international business deals (cox, 1987, p. 360; sklair, 2001). as a hegemonic project, however, transnational neoliberalism poses great problems. its basic mechanisms – market liberalization, accumulation by dispossession, densification of capital circuits – do not allow for the wide ranging material concessions that, at least in the global north, stabilized class relations during the national-keynesian era (carroll, 2006). if hegemony is secured by constructing and maintaining a historic bloc whose constituent elements find their own interests and aspirations reflected in a shared project, neoliberalism’s bloc is thin, and made incrementally thinner by widening economic disparities world-wide and within national societies. the pervasive social injustices attendant upon neoliberal policy have been well documented by bourdieu and accardo (1999) and chossudovsky (2003), among others. in turn, they are accompanied by looming ecological issues, which neoliberalism seems incapable of seriously addressing, and a worrying record of economic instability, evident particularly since the 1997-8 financial crisis. neoliberal hegemony, to say the least, is far from secure. it is subverted not only by its own contradictions, which have inspired a movement for global justice, but by the territorial logic of states – most evidently expressed in the new uscentred imperialism (amin, 2005; harvey, 2005; stokes, 2005). it is in this context that we can understand the challenges facing neoliberalism’s organic intellectuals as they advance the project in an incipiently global civil society. global civil society as an emergent field organized policy planning behind the scenes has long been “a form of the socialisation of the conduct of class struggle on the part of the bourgeoisie” (van der pijl, 1998, p. 108). although “global civil society” entered the lexicon of social science only recently, kees van der pijl (1998) has traced the formation of imagined international communities for a developing cosmopolitan bourgeoisie back to the networks of freemasons in the late 17th century. as inter-imperialist rivalry and revolution tore apart that transnational brotherhood in the late nineteenth century, the rhodes-milner round table group emerged as a british empire-centred network of elite planning, to be joined in 1919 by the international chamber of commerce. since the founding of the mont pelerin society in 1947, but especially since the corporate offensive of the 1970s, strategized in the trilateral commission’s report on the crisis of democracy (crozier et al, 1975), neoliberal policy-planning groups have played a signal role in building, consolidating and bolstering this bloc, along with its norm of plain justice. they have conducted a war of position to shift “the balance of cultural and social forces” (femia, 1981, p. 53), and thereby to win new political space in a global field. if initially the bourgeoisie held sway in global civil society, from the late 19th century onward international labour organizations and left party organizations entered the field. since the 1990s, a wide range of subaltern groups opposed to neoliberal capitalism has begun to mount a concerted struggle for position, constituting a potentially counterhegemonic bloc of aligned social forces. certainly, the thousands of international ngos that now have “consultative status” with the united nations’s economic and social studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 39 council confirm the arrival of global civil society, and indeed of a global civil societystate complex. civil society, however, is not a unified “agent” (olesen, 2005), nor is it a collection of politically progressive groups (as implied in lipschutz, 1996), but a field within which interests and identities take shape vis-à-vis each other (urry, 1981); and, at that, it is hardly a level playing field (swift, 1999). from the neo-gramscian perspective taken here, global civil society appears as the terrain for both legitimizing and challenging global governance. ... further, global civil society is not just a sphere of activity, but a discursive space, which helps to reproduce global hegemony. ...[s]ocial movements must recognize they are positioned within this hegemonic constellation, and … that there are structural and discursive forces at play, of which the very framework of global civil society is itself a part, and which social movements themselves may actually be actively reproducing, rather than challenging (ford, 2003, p. 129). global civil society is, in short, profoundly tilted to the right by the dominance of capital in national politics, in international relations, in global governance and in mass communications. in these circumstances, movements for global justice face an ongoing challenge to find openings that do not lead into co-optative capture while building constituencies at the grassroots. but neoliberal groups, in spite of their greater resources and central locations within the ruling historic bloc, also face the challenge, mentioned earlier, of legitimating their practices and positions in a crisis-ridden era in which social injustices sharpen while the margin for dispensing concessions narrows. finally, it is helpful to understand global civil society as a multiorganizational field (klandermans, 1992) wherein diverse groups championing (or challenging) globalization, from above or below, take up specific niches in an organizational ecology that is itself substantially networked (carroll and shaw, 2001; fisher et al, 2005). global civil society comprises not only a terrain of struggle, not only a discursive space, but also a rich variety of organizations, with distinctive structures, projects and interrelationships, addressing transnational publics – whether privileged or subaltern (olesen, 2005). in examining some of these organizations, below, we open one window on the struggle for social justice in a global field. paired comparisons my focus here is on four key groups on each side of the complex relation between dominant class and subalterns. groups struggling within global civil society are diverse in their organizational structures, constituencies and modi operandi, making the task of comparative analysis quite complicated. to facilitate the process, i will use a method of paired comparison across four aspects of the struggle for hegemony: 1) the relation between capitalism’s “fundamental classes” (gramsci, 1977, p. 5), 2) the exercise of intellectual/ideological leadership, 3) the ecological question, and 4) construction of public spheres for forming consensus. for each aspect, a key neoliberal organization is paired with its counter-hegemonic counterpart -for instance, the world economic studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 40 forum and its antithesis, the world social forum. some pairings might be arguable, and the analysis is hardly exhaustive. the point of the exercise is not to satisfy some sort of multifactorial research design but to highlight the role certain organizations have played and the niches they have taken up in global struggles for hegemony. the four pairs of organizations are listed in table 1, along with sketches of core membership, organizational form and action repertoire/strategy in table 2. with this small, purposive sample we can glimpse some of the dynamics of hegemony and counterhegemony in a global field. comparing year of formation alone, it is clear that groups promoting neoliberalism attained positions of early influence in the global field, expressing the material, organizational and intellectual advantages that accrue to the dominant class, with defensive responses, on a global terrain, coming later, as in polanyi’s (1944) “double movement” of capitalist disembedding and social reembedding. on economic matters, intellectuals of the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie took the lead in the early decades of the 20th century, promoting market liberalization as a philosophical principle – already inscribed in the international chamber of commerce’s 1919 constitution, and given more rigorous definition in the work of the mont pèlerin society following world war ii. in both instances, liberalization received impetus from world wars, in the wake of which an open world economy – extending what van der pijl (1998) has called the lockean heartland, progressively dissolving hobbesian regimes committed to statist developmental logics – was trumpeted as a premise for peaceful international relations. yet despite the us open door policy, after the second world war consolidation of a corporate-liberal paradigm pushed neoliberalism to the margins. the same paradigm limited prospects for global oppositional politics. the keynesian class compromise marked the apogee of the westphalian political imaginary: it cleaved “domestic” from “international” political space (fraser, 2005), and in particular contained labour politics within national, reformist frameworks whose counter-hegemonic potential was further drained by a trade-union imperialism ideologically aligned with cold war anti-communism (munck, 2002, pp. 141-4). despite the more recent successes of thatcherism and reaganism and the triumph in the 1980s of the washington consensus, the struggle to neoliberalize the world has been far from straightforward. in the 1990s it met with major setbacks, including recession, crises, and the emergence of new forms of civil resistance to the incursions of capitalist globalization. international chamber of commerce, international confederation of free trade unions let us proceed to the first of our paired comparisons by considering two global organizations that encompass large memberships on each side of the divide between capital and labour. the paris based international chamber of commerce (icc) is the oldest global business policy group and from its inception has maintained a resolutely free-market conservative strategic vision. it is also the largest, claiming some 7,000 member companies and associations from over 130 countries. as a forum for transnational capitalist consultation, launched by investment bankers in the shadow of world war i, the icc has functioned as the most comprehensive business forum studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 41 committed to the plain justice of liberal markets. it has “long been a triumphant lobbyist for global economic deregulation in fora such as the wto, the g8 and the oecd” (balanyá et al, 2000, p. 166). as stated in its constitution (available online), the icc’s fundamental objective is “to further the development of an open world economy with the firm conviction that international commercial exchanges are conducive to both greater global prosperity and peace among nations.” this basic goal implies three aims – to promote 1) international trade, investment and services, 2) a market economy based on the competitive principle, and 3) global economic growth. the aims, in turn, are met via two principle means: 1) “political advocacy and lobbying” directed at international organizations such as the wto and un and at national governments, and 2) “provision of a range of practical services to business,” such as the international court of arbitration (kelly, 2005, p. 259). the icc provides a forum where capitalists and their organic intellectuals can forge a common international policy framework. since the mid-1990s its efforts to institutionalize an agenda of corporate self-regulation have fostered close working relationships with international institutions such as the wto and the un general secretariat (ibid, 166-174). finally, and importantly, the icc knits national chambers throughout the world into a single global network through its world chambers federation (wcf), which provides a vertical organizational link between the network of transnational capitalist interests carried by the icc membership and the untold numbers of smalland medium-sized businesses affiliated with local and national chambers of commerce. it is the combination of the group’s free-market vision, its institutionalization of transnational business practices, and its incorporation of local-level business into a global capitalist perspective, that gives the icc a unique niche within the organizational ecology of transnational neoliberalism (carroll and carson, 2003). the chamber reaches deeply into regional and national contexts, and mobilizes capitalists themselves as organic intellectuals engaged in business leadership. this organizational form gives impetus to a social bloc that extends from the global to the local. beyond its contribution to class formation per se, the council reaches into global political processes.3 although its ties to the un weakened during the years in which a keynesian developmentalism held sway, by the 1990s, on the other side of the reagan/thatcher era, the icc “pushed to the forefront of international affairs,” in the process expanding its membership and overhauling its identity, rebranding itself in 1998 as the “world business organization” (kelly, 2005, p. 263). in its recent efforts, the icc has targeted the un, entering in 2000 into a global compact for peaceful development and poverty alleviation and taking active roles within a host of un agencies (kelly, 2005, pp. 267-9) – all with the effect of securing legitimacy as an organization of both global governance and global business. if the icc has become the “world business organization,” perhaps what is most striking is the lack of any counter-hegemonic labour organization that could credibly make a parallel claim. factionalized into social-democratic and communist centrals at the 3 as kelly recounts (2005), the icc has been particularly proactive in times of crisis – as in the reconstruction following both world wars – helping to shape the global field in the direction of unimpeded market relations. the icc played a role as the only ngo granted the chance to address sessions at the united nations session on trade and employment in 1947-48, and thus in the still-birth of the (keynesian) international trade organisation. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 42 very time that the icc emerged as a source of transnational capitalist unity, organized labour would become largely contained within national states in the middle decades of the twentieth century, striking up social accords under the aegis of the kws or being absorbed into the party-state, and showing little interest in international organization or action – at the very time that capital, under the hegemony of the us open door policy, was rapidly transnationalizing. this meant that labour’s initial response to the neoliberal offensive would be mounted largely within national (or sub-national) fields and would be tinged with nostalgia for restoration of the status quo. although the international confederation of free trade unions (icftu) was formed in 1949, at least until the departure of the labour-imperialist afl-cio in 1969, and arguably until its 1996 world congress, which recognized the need for transnational action in response to capitalist globalization (munck, 2002, pp. 151, 13), it could hardly be considered a candidate for counter-hegemonic leadership of any sort. in a post-cold war context of neoliberal ascendance, the world’s largest international labour central finally took up the call for a global keynesian regime of social and environmental rights based on international regulation (munck, 2002, pp. 156). the icftu remains bureaucratic in structure, and skewed in its leadership toward a minority of unions from industrialized countries. still, it is the world’s largest, most representative trade union body, claiming 155 million members and 236 affiliated organization in 154 countries. organizationally, the icftu is structured as a confederation of national trade union centrals. its professional staff are tasked with organizing and directing campaigns on issues such as the respect and defence of trade union and workers' rights, eradication of forced and child labour, promotion of equal rights for working women, the environment, education programs for trade unionists worldwide, and organizing young workers.4 one can see in this list, a basis for alliances with a wide range of contemporary social movements, and indeed, since its 2000 congress in durban the icftu has been committed to building “alliances with ngos and civil society around shared values of human rights” (davis, 2004, p. 124). yet in the same year, the icftu signed on to the same global compact as endorsed by the icc – a purely voluntary framework that brings business, labour and environmental representatives together under the auspices of the un (munck, 2002, pp. 169). the icftu’s quest for global regulation has engendered a vicious circle – “a lack of mobilizing capacity, modest objectives, equally modest achievements, limited recognition by and relevance for rank-and-file trade unionists on the ground” (hyman, 2005, p. 148). the elite and grassroots “sides” of icftu’s action repertoire are potentially complementary strategic elements in a war of position, but only if the former does more than provide an ethical cover to the tncs and if the latter helps mobilize workers in ways that build alliances with other democratic movements. with membership from the global south (half of its total in 1999) rapidly increasing, the challenge is “to integrate the struggles and concerns of workers both north and south” (jakobsen 2001, p. 370), to create a “new internationalism” that moves beyond elite-level deals at the wto within the logic of neoliberal global governance (waterman 2005, p. 200). 4 go to: http://www.icftu.org/displaydocument.asp?doctype=overview&index=990916422&language=en, accessed 21 feb 2006. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 43 peter waterman (2001, p. 313) has put his finger on the biggest task: to break free of “the ideology, institutions and procedures of ‘social partnership.’ [which] have become hegemonic….” the icftu continues to express the national, industrial, colonial capitalism that gave it initial shape and form. two massive challenges reflect its disadvantageous position in the global field, both institutionally and culturally: one major challenge has to do with the role of a literally international confederation in times of globalisation. the icftu … is at the peak of a pyramidal structure several removes … from any flesh-and-blood workers. it is also an institution heavily incorporated into a traditional world of the inter-state institutions, with much of its energy addressed to lobbying these. the second major challenge … is the virtual invisibility of the icftu. here is an organisation with 155 million members and rising that has no presence at all in the global media or culture, whether dominant, popular or alternative (2001, p. 315). in comparison with the icc, whose aggressive drive for market liberalization has paid political dividends to its constituency, the icftu has cautiously sought global accords, clauses, and protections against the ravages of the market. whether this key organization is capable of leading, or at least actively participating in, a transition to the kind of new social unionism envisaged by waterman5 is a central question in the future of counter-hegemony. if, as hyman (2005) argues, the icftu has served primarily a “diplomatic” function for labour within the machinery of international institutions, its counter-hegemonic prospects hinge on going beyond that carefully circumscribed role, to participate in globalization from below. icftu’s recent involvement in the world social forum is a hopeful sign, to be placed alongside the major structural trend that favours a formative role for labour in any global counter-hegemonic bloc – the expanding size of the world’s working class and the sharpening class contradictions associated with neoliberal accumulation. the mont pèlerin society, the transnational institute the struggle for hegemony involves production and dissemination of ideas. in this, the mont pèlerin society (mps) has been distinctively in the vanguard of neoliberalism, serving “a more militant intellectual function than an adaptive/directive role in the background,” as has been the case with elite groups like the bilderberg conference or the trilateral commission. for mps, “the neo-liberal intervention was of a much more ‘willed’ than organically hegemonic nature” (van der pijl 1998, p. 130). when the society was founded in 1947, keynesian corporate liberalism was becoming a hegemonic policy paradigm; hence the task was to create, under less than felicitous conditions, a 5 to wit, a unionism struggling for increased worker control over the labour process and investments, intimately related to movements of such nonunionised categories as peasants and housewives and to other democratic allies, struggling against hierarchical and technocratic working methods and relations, favouring shopfloor democracy, active on the terrain of education and culture, and opened to networking and flexible coalitions (2001, p. 316-17). studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 44 hegemonic project that could ultimately contribute to a neoliberal counter-revolution. in his paper “the intellectuals and socialism” (1949), which can be read as a founding document of mps, friedrich von hayek drew two conclusions from his analysis of the influence of socialism in post-war policy and media circles. first, the right lacks such rising stars as keynes, hence the need “to rebuild anti-socialist science and expertise in order to develop anti-socialist intellectuals” (plehwe and walpen, 2005, p. 33). second, the socialist filter in the knowledge-dissemination institutions – universities, institutes, media – has to be attacked by establishing anti-socialist knowledge centers able to filter, process, and disseminate neoliberal knowledge (plehwe and walpen, 2005, p. 33). the mps set itself directly upon the first task and indirectly upon the second, with impressive results over the long haul. although the society laboured in relative obscurity for more than two decades, as the post-war hegemonic bloc dissolved it emerged as a major centre for neoliberal propaganda and informal policy advice, whether to pinochet’s chile or thatcher’s britain (van der pijl, 1998, p. 129). its membership grew from an initial group of 38 to a total membership of 1025 (48 women), with almost equal numbers from the us (458) and europe (438) and with a smattering of members in 27 non-euro-north american states. many members established or became active in 100 national-level right-wing think tanks, constituting a global network of neoliberal knowledge production and dissemination (plehwe and walpen, 2005, pp. 34-40). by periodically assembling “scientists” (mainly economists) and “practical men” (including corporate capitalists, politicians and journalists) committed to neoliberalism’s core principles of the minimal state and the rule of law, by fostering a worldwide network of neoliberal advocacy think tanks, the mps has not only provided neoliberalism with a durable anchor point within the space of economic doctrines (denord, 2002). it has managed to build capacity in global civil society for neoliberal culture, securing in the process the conditions for its own continued relevance. perhaps the closest left analogue to the mps is the transnational institute (tni), “a worldwide fellowship of committed scholar-activists,” as its website proclaims (http://www.tni.org).6 funded initially as a branch of the washington dc-based institute for policy studies (with which it continues to have close relations), the tni was one of the first research institutes to be established as a global organization – transnational in name, orientation, composition and focus. founded in amsterdam late in 1973, just as neoliberalism was beginning to find political traction, the tni has been a consistent critic of the new right. its first conference, "the lessons from chile," attended in 1974 by about 50 people including ralph miliband, andré gunder frank, herbert marcuse and johan galtung, helped build a political response to the coup that brought the first neoliberal regime to power. the conference established the tni’s presence on the european radical left, as did its first book-length publication, world hunger, causes and remedies (1974). 6 the san francisco-based international forum on globalization (ifg), established in 1994 in the heat of the nafta debates, also merits mention here, as a more north american based group (http://www.ifg.org), organized along more traditional think-tank lines. its 17-member board includes walden bello and john cavanagh, both tni fellows, as well as canadian activists tony clark and maude barlow. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 45 according to its own website account, the tni’s mission is to provide “intellectual support to those movements concerned to steer the world in a democratic, equitable and environmentally sustainable direction.” the institute has assembled an international network of hundreds of scholar-activists which is strategically mobilized to locate the most appropriate people to design and participate in study groups, international conferences, and the production and dissemination of working and policy papers and accessible books, often translated into several languages. at the centre of the network are the amsterdam-based staff and a couple dozen fellows, appointed to three-year renewable terms. they include journalists, independent researchers, and senior scholars from similar institutes in africa, asia, latin america, europe, and the us. the fellows meet annually in amsterdam, in a small-scale answer to mps’s annual retreat. but many of them are also actively engaged in specific tni programs and projects, summarized in table 3, where we see a wide-ranging yet coherent framework for counter-hegemony, organized along the themes of new politics, global economic justice (including extensive ecological elements), peace and security, and shadow economies. the knowledge that tni produces is both critical of dominant institutions and proactively oriented to creating or strengthening democratic alternatives, as in new politics’s emphasis on participatory governance. despite its meager resources (a budget of us$ 1.1 million in 2003 and a staff of 10), the tni engages in a multi-frontal war of position and gains energy from active collaboration with other ngos, institutes and movements throughout the world.7 one tni initiative worth highlighting is the “social forum process” that falls under the rubric of new politics. an active participant in the wsf and the european social forum (esf), the tni has reflected critically on the process in play at these events – the innovative developments and the nagging problems. at the designated web page one can find varied analyses by tni fellows.8 at a certain level of abstraction, and despite vast differences in scale, the mps and tni are kindred organizations. both engage proactively in knowledge production and dissemination to inform effective political practice; both have strategically built global networks and have collaborated with like-minded groups. but while the mps’s hegemonic project places the market at the centre of human affairs, the tni arises both as 7 there are currently eight continuing partners, namely, alternative information & development center, somo centre for research on multinational corporations, focus on the global south, institute of globalisation studies, institute for policy studies, institute for popular democracy (ipd), red pepper, and workgroup on solidarity socio-economy. tni programs sometimes entail collaboration with quite a range of groups (e.g., alternative regionalisms lists 21 project partners), reaching extensively into global civil society in various contexts. 8 go to http://www.tni.org/socforum/index.htm. hilary wainwright, editor of red pepper and senior research fellow at the center for labour studies at the university of manchester, provides a particularly acute interrogation of the new methodology for composing the program of the 5th world social forum. the new methodology was based on “dissolving a centrally decided programme and involving participating organisations fully in setting the framework of the forum's activities,” bringing the wsf’s organization to social-movement aspirations to join autonomy with horizontal connectedness while also testing “the potentiality of the new technologies to facilitate popular participation, share knowledge and develop dense networks of resistance and alternatives” (wainwright, 2005). as a representative of both the tni and the esf at the 2004 wsf, wainwright was tasked with evaluating the new methodology, with an eye toward its possible adoption by the esf. her detailed report, based on participant observation and extensive interviews with wsf participants, exemplifies the reflexive approach to praxis that characterizes the work of the tni, especially in its new politics programme. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 46 a critic of neoliberalism and an advocate for participatory democracy, social justice and ecology. the knowledge they create circulates, in the former case, among right-wing think tanks, academics, politicians and journalists mainly in the us and europe, and in the latter case, among left-wing think tanks and ngos, scholar-activists, social movements and alternative media, often in the global south. concretely, the two projects are embedded in opposing historic blocs, as each group develops and deploys knowledge with the strategic intent to make its bloc more coherent and effective. this entails quite different practices: the mps, firmly committed to hierarchy as a principle of social and political organization, fits easily into existing elite structures: its messages need carry no further than a relatively small circle. the tni, on the other hand, as a collective intellectual of the left, faces the challenge of reaching a massive, diverse potential constituency and creating new political methodologies that go against the grain in giving shape to emergent oppositional practices. world business council for sustainable development, friends of the earth international if on economic matters the global oppositional groups have been cast as respondents to neoliberal initiatives, the reverse is the case on the ecological question. capital is largely inured to ecological degradation (kovel, 2002), at least until it registers in value terms as threats to profits. the ecological movement that was inspired in the 1960s by critical texts such as rachel carson’s silent spring met largely with corporate stonewalling until the rio earth summit of 1992. yet already in the 1970s, ecological groups like friends of the earth international and greenpeace international were organizing and acting globally, and developing wide-ranging critiques of the devastation of nature by industrial civilization, even if they lacked a critique of capital. on ecology, the transnational capitalist class fought a rear-guard battle until its intellectuals developed an eco-capitalist response, to win back lost legitimacy. on its information-rich website (http://www.foei.org), amsterdam-based friends of the earth international (foei) describes itself as “the world's largest grassroots environmental network,” challenging the current model of corporate globalization and promoting solutions that will help to create environmentally sustainable and socially just societies. our decentralized and democratic structure allows all member groups to participate in decision-making. we strive for gender equity in all of our campaigns and structures. our international positions are informed and strengthened by our work with communities, and our alliances with indigenous peoples, farmers' movements, trade unions, human rights groups and others. in this framing we can see a project that transcends 1970s environmentalism. the description highlights the organization’s global scope, the close connection it draws between ecological and social issues, the direct challenge it mounts to capitalist globalization and its commitment to participatory democracy, gender equity and building studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 47 alliances through grassroots organizing. foei’s global social ecology has evolved from a project limited to specific concerns over whaling and nuclear power. the group’s membership was at first entirely euro-north american; only in the 1980s did its southern membership expand. foei’s global profile received a boost at the 1992 earth summit in rio de janeiro, “where a vocal mosaic of foe groups critiqued the business-as-usual approach of governments and corporations attending the meeting.”9 two years later, the agm adopted an explicit 'agenda', which has been developed further in the form of the sustainable societies programme, whose basic principles combine ecology with radical democracy: our vision is of a peaceful and sustainable world based on societies living in harmony with nature. we envision a society of interdependent people living in dignity, wholeness and fulfilment in which equity and human and peoples' rights are realized. this will be a society built upon peoples' sovereignty and participation. it will be founded on social, economic, gender and environmental justice and free from all forms of domination and exploitation, such as neoliberalism, corporate globalization, neo-colonialism and militarism. structurally, foei is highly decentralized. it is composed of autonomous organizations that must agree to open, democratic and non-sexist practices, to the pursuit of environmental issues in their social and political context, and to campaigning, educating and researching while cooperating with other movement organizations. the international serves to coordinate collective action globally, within the framework provided by six designated campaigns: climate change, corporates, genetic modification, forests, public finance, and trade. what is noteworthy in this list, and in the sketches of each campaign’s priorities in table 4, is the extent to which foei organizes its praxis in conscious opposition to neoliberalism and global capitalist domination. even in matters such as climate change, where a technicist discourse might easily prevail, the group frames its politics in opposition to powerful corporate interests and institutions such as the wto and wef. not surprisingly, the group has participated actively in the world social forum, hosting sessions in 2005 on four of its campaign themes and participating with other ngos in projects on forests and on the commodification of nature. the impressive global linkages that foei has forged since the 1980s and its social-ecological vision make it an important agency of counter-hegemony within global civil society. if the 1992 un earth summit helped catapult foei onto the global scene, it also catalyzed the global business elite to enter the debate. the world business council for sustainable development (wbcsd), formed in 1995 as a merger of two europe-based business councils, instantly became the pre-eminent corporate voice on the environment. currently the membership is 180 corporations as represented by their ceos, with members drawn from more than 35 countries. not surprisingly, membership is heavily skewed toward the developed capitalist core.10 council members co-chair wbcsd 9 the source for this quotation, and for the account in this paragraph is http://www.foei.org/about/25years.html. surprisingly little academic analysis of foei has been published. 10 of 177 member companies listed on its website (accessed 25 february 2006), 74 were based in the european core states, 44 were based in the us (39) or canada (5), 26 were based in japan and six were studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 48 working groups, act as advocates for the wbcsd’s policy positions, and oversee adoption of sustainable management practices within their own companies. these topflight global capitalists are complemented by a regional network of 54 bcsds – an informal confederation of organizations that, following the icc model, reach into civil societies to promote green capitalism in their respective countries or regions. finally, and as a measure of the degree of its commitment to broadening the eco-capitalist bloc, the wbcsd has developed what its website describes as “strong relationships” with 47 partners (see table 5). these include international and intergovernmental organizations, eco-capitalist news and information organizations, foundations, business organizations (notably, the icc and wef), and ngos (equally notably, world wildlife fund international and earthwatch institute). apart from its successful cooptation of wwfi into the cause of green capitalism, the list of partners is remarkable for its location in the euro-north amercan north: only two of the 47 groups are based outside of the triad, and only one partner is based in japan. as colin carson and i have noted elsewhere (2003), the wbcsd reflects a maturing elite awareness that transnational corporate enterprise must be coupled with consensus over environmental regulation. what makes the wbcsd unique in the global policy field are its efforts to surpass the prevailing dualism of “business versus the environment.” it presents a comprehensive vision of capitalist social and moral progress – anchored by its central axiom of “eco-efficiency.”11 within this retooled version of sustainable development, business, governments and environmental activists make concessions around a general interest in sustaining both the health of nature and the “health” of the global economy. in this way, gramsci’s (1977) formula for ruling class hegemony – that concessions granted in organizing consent must not touch the essential nucleus of economic relations – is satisfied. as one might expect, wbcsd serves as a forum for its member corporations, whose ceos meet annually, and carries out an elite lobbying function vis-à-vis institutions of global governance. but it directs much of its energy at educating its business constituency to adopt eco-efficient practices, a program of moral reform that aims to preempt coercive state regulation. its 225-page learning module on eco-efficiency, launched in 2005,12 is exemplary. it introduces the concept of eco-efficiency through an elaborate series of exercises. by working through dilemmas and case exercises, learners deepen their understanding and skills; in an “implementing” section they are taught how to appraise current performance and how to incorporate eco-efficient decisions into their business. as a hegemonic trope, eco-efficiency intends to reach well beyond the top tier of management, into “the hearts and minds of employees. demonstrating the value of an based in australia/new zealand. the rest of the world contributed a total of 38 corporate members, with three based in africa, 14 in asia (five of them in south korea and three in china), 10 based in latin america (three in mexico and three in brazil) and 11 on the european semi-periphery (five based in portugal and three in russia). 11 “eco-efficiency is achieved by the delivery of competitively priced goods and services that satisfy human needs and bring quality of life, while progressively reducing ecological impacts and resource intensity throughout the life-cycle to a level at least in line with the earth’s estimated carrying capacity.” in short, it is concerned with creating more value with less impact.” see the wbcsd co-efficiency module at http://www.wbcsd.ch/plugins/docsearch/details.asp?type=docdet&objectid=mtgwmjc . 12 available at http://www.wbcsd.org/docroot/zjuk9v12u48uxlww5mzd/eco-efficiency-module.pdf. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 49 eco-efficient approach will help employees recognize why it is important to implement and motivate towards action [sic]” (wbcsd, 2005, pp. 5) the discourses and strategies of the wbcsd advance a global self-regulatory perspective, emphasizing benchmarking and “best practices” as voluntary means toward green capitalism. its reflexive discursive and organizational frameworks draw realms liberal economists call ‘externalities’ — from employee relations to the health and safety of consumers — into an inclusive regulatory regime. the practices and discourses of corporate environmentalism, now employed by a range of tncs, are vital in this regard, and have in their own right contributed to a persuasive globalizing capitalist ideology (sklair, 2001). what the wbcsd furnishes is a reflexive orchestration of these corporate initiatives into a class-wide hegemonic project. world economic forum, world social forum founded in 1971 to mark the 25th anniversary of the centre d’etudes industrielles, a geneva-based business school associated with europe’s post-war managerial revolution, the world economic forum (wef) convened europe’s ceos to an informal gathering in davos, switzerland to discuss european strategy in an international marketplace. although the first meeting of ‘world economic leaders’ took place in 1982, on the occasion of the annual meeting in davos, it was not until 1987 that the forum changed its name to world economic forum. its inception as a truly global collective actor may be dated from that year. in the subsequent decade the number of participants grew from less than a thousand to over three thousand, about half of whom are invited as guests of the core membership. the guests – political leaders and officials, journalists, executive officers of research foundations and academic forum fellows – animate many of the panels and provide the forum with reach into civil society and a strong media profile (graz, 2003, pp. 330). like the wbcsd, the wef is organized around a highly elite core of transnational capitalists (the ‘foundation membership’) – which it currently limits to ‘1,000 of the foremost global enterprises.’ like the icc, the wef actively extends its geopolitical reach and influence. it has done so primarily through yearly meetings apart from davos and beyond the triad, with meetings in turkey, china, india, etc., and recently established a distinct operating body called the centre for regional strategies (crs) to “advance regional development and cooperation in the global economy.” indeed, in recent years the wef has sought to “shift away from an event-oriented organisation towards a knowledge – and process-driven organization,” as founder klaus schwab has remarked (quoted in graz, 2003, p. 334). in the months between the yearly extravaganza at davos, its members and ‘constituents’ populate a hodgepodge of policy work groups and forums, including the interacademy council, the business consultative group and the global leaders of tomorrow (graz, 2003, p. 334). the move to a more outcome-oriented institutionalization has coincided with a broadening of ideological discourse. in the 1980s and early 1990s, the forum promoted a free-market conservative agenda, closely aligned with the washington consensus, but by the mid-1990s persistent capitalist crises obliged it to adopt a more regulatory tack (van der pijl, 1998, p. 134). beginning in 1997, a project on ‘human social responsibility’, studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 50 followed by a litany of ‘social issue’ task forces, culminated in the un-affiliated global governance initiative (2001). with the wef, as with the wbcsd, we see an organization adapting to challenges from below and to crises associated with global capitalism, retooling neoliberal hegemony for changing times. if the wef can be described as “the most comprehensive transnational planning body operative today, … a true international of capital” (van der pijl, 1998, pp. 132, 133), it nevertheless faces major challenges in the form of responses from below that highlight a structural limitation of the elite club as a collective agent of global hegemony. such organizations “rely on a total cleavage between those sufficiently powerful to interact behind closed doors and those having no place in such exclusive arenas. the mobilization of creative forces takes place in a confined space cut off from the public sphere” (graz, 2003, p. 326). while exclusionary practices intensify elite unity, and even create a powerful social myth of capitalist consciousness, the retreat from the public sphere puts the wef and other elite organizations at a strategic disadvantage. “divorced from society at large … paradoxically their influence emphasizes their lack of legitimacy and therefore their inability to compete in the public debate. sooner or later this situation will foster the development of contending forces disputing their very existence” (graz, 2003, p. 337). enter the world social forum, a counter-hegemonic “open space” that was first convened in january 2001, as the progressive-democratic antithesis to the wef (teivainen, 2004, p. 123). although both groups may be seen as sites for wide-ranging discussion on issues of globalization, its promise and its discontents, the contrast between the wsf and global elite institutions like the wef is acute: while meetings at the world economic forum, un, wto and other global institutions are often closed and maintain top-down hierarchies, the wsf promotes a transparent organizing structure for its events. all workshops, seminars, round tables, panel discussions and testimonials are openly posted and participants are free to attend whichever event they want. there is no special entrance for different delegates, no excessive scrutiny as one enters a certain venue. (byrd, 2005, p. 156) although european activists were engaged from the planning phase forward, the wsf has local roots in the labour and other progressive movements of brazil, and particularly porto alegre, whose municipal and state governments allocated substantial human and material resources to launch the forum. after 2004 the forum moved to a decentralized, radically democratic mode of organizing its annual meeting, with participating organizations setting the agenda. in this and other respects, the wsf is “a new kind of political space created by and helping to consolidate a transnational subaltern counterpublic” (conway, 2004, p. 376) that in its diversity contains multiple public spheres. in contrast to the world-wide protest symbolized by 1968, which entailed parallel movements, each bounded by national borders, the protest against neoliberalism that is at the core of the wsf is organized globally (waterman, 2004, pp. 60-1). a dilemma built into the forum process is that between its mission as “an open meeting place” (stated as the first clause in its charter of principles) and the aspiration of many activists to transform it into a global social justice movement. in the former conception, the wsf’s “open, free, horizontal structures” enable a process of studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 51 prefiguration, bringing into being new forms of participatory democracy that incubate movements. to instrumentalize the forum would be to sacrifice prefigurative potential for tactical gains in the immediate conjuncture (whitaker, 2004, pp. 112-3). yet the absence of a “final document” at the conclusion of each forum has led to criticisms that the wsf is little more than “one huge talking shop” (keraghel and sen, 2004, p. 487). at the close of the 2005 forum, 19 high-profile thinkers, including tariq ali, samir amin, walden bello and immanuel wallerstein, issued a 12-point “consensus manifesto” that would pull the wsf in the direction of a meta-movement – foregrounding the ends to which the forum should direct its energy and the (state-centred) means for reaching them (see table 6). in june 2006 the forum took a step closer to an action orientation when it invited participating groups to indicate “the actions, campaigns and struggles” in which each is engaged, as a basis for the 7th forum, held in nairobi in january 2007.13 this shift, from organizing the forum around themes for discussion to organizing it around actions and their interconnections, is of great potential importance. whether the wsf can constitute itself as a hybrid of actor and arena, without devolving to either a tool for conventional political mobilization or a talking shop, remains unclear. notwithstanding this issue and emerging concerns as to whether the forum is becoming neither arena nor actor but logo and world franchise (sen, 2004, p. 223; huish, 2006), it is fair to say that the wsf comprises a signal development in global justice politics. it has struck directly at the level of meaning, countering the central premise of neoliberal hegemony since thatcher – that “there is no alternative” (sen, 2004, p. 213) – with “there are many alternatives” (de angelis, 2004). this claim “opens up a problematic of empowerment and defetishization of social relations, the two basic ‘ingredients’ for the constitution of a social force that moves beyond capital.” the wsf is indeed a site for prefiguration, for welding the present to alternative futures. as de angelis surmises, it is open to “alternative ways of doing and articulating social cooperation, at whatever scale of social action”; and thus serves “to recompose politically the many diverse struggles for commons that are already occurring” – suggesting alternative, de-commodified ways to fulfill social needs (2004, pp. 602-3). the wsf’s ongoing war of position within transnational civil society complements and extends the episodic wars of manoeuvre that have disrupted the summits of the wef, wto, g8 etc. the wsf and its regional and local offshoots “offer the liberal antiglobalisation and radical anti-capitalist movement a summit of their own, able to devise alternative strategies of globalization, … to make ‘another world possible” (farrer, 2004, p. 169). in nurturing the convergence of movements, the wsf produces “unprecedented coordinated action on a global scale” while embracing diversity – a paradoxical deepening of democracy (conway, 2004, p. 379). as a springboard into an alternative discursive and organizational space, the wsf embodies the “distinguishing mark” of the global justice movement: the commitment “to build solidarity out of respect for diversity” (patel and mcmichael, 2004, p. 250). one can see in the six thematic axes for the 2006 world social forum in caracas (table 7) a rich social vision that includes within its ambit the aspirations of a great range of contemporary movements. at caracas these themes were addressed in conjunction with 13 from wsf bulletin june 27th, 2006, available at http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/dinamic.php?pagina=consulta_fsm2007_ing. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 52 two “transversal axes” – gender and diversities – that introduced an intersectional analysis of power and empowerment into the discussion. still, the wsf faces great challenges in maintaining and enlarging the space it has opened. if, as graz (2003) claims, the wef’s growth has subverted its founding myth that the world’s elite can be brought into one place for content-rich networking, the wsf’s phenomenal growth may subvert its promise of open dialogue, if most participants become relegated to the role of spectators (huish, 2006, p. 4). conclusions our paired comparisons allow a few guarded inferences about the dynamics of hegemony and counter-hegemony in a global field, and their implications for social justice. on both sides, groups have become more institutionalized, complex and networked. the mps, wbcsd, wef and wsf have moved from the simple and non-cumulative practice of holding periodic meetings to more continuous and cumulative knowledge production, campaigns and outreach; the icc, icftu, tni and foei have extended their organizing activities to broader constituencies – reflecting a process of historic bloc formation. within each historic bloc, groups take up complementary niches in an organizational ecology. the intellectual/ideological leadership that the mps has exercised, for instance, is distinct from the contributions of the icc, the wbcsd and wef. it is their combination – ramifying through the multiplex networks of media, academe, business and states – that advances neoliberalism globally. of course, there is much more to a transnational bloc than a few peak civil-society organizations. we have only glimpsed the “tip of the iceberg”; indeed, a crucial component of the various groups’ praxis is in the connections they foster with national and local organizations. moreover, although reference was made earlier to “global governance,” this study has not directly considered the panoply of transnational quasi-state apparatuses (e.g., world bank), most of which articulate with, or form part of, neoliberalism’s historic bloc (cammack, 2003). national states also matter, not only as complexes whose relations to transnational bodies and treaties can encourage citizens’ participation in global politics (smith and wiest, 2005), but as crucial agents in those politics. the bolivarian alternative for the americas (alba), a transnational extension of the venezuela-based bolivarian project, presents a state-centred aspect of historic-bloc formation no less important than the activities of the groups examined here. alba poses a radical alternative to “free trade,” raising “the possibility and hope of development driven by the needs of the poor and the marginalized” (kellogg, 2006, p. 2). from origins in a venezuela-cuba mutual-aid arrangement, alba has expanded to include bolivia as a partner as of april, 2006 (kellogg, 2006: 7-8). our analysis has focused on global civil society, but agreements like alba and its hegemonic counterparts, the ftaa and wto (hatt and hatt, 2007), are integral to the formation of transnational historic blocs. intriguing comparisons await further investigation. in the conduct of a global war of position, the dominant class and its allies have several obvious advantages, which translate themselves into effective and distinct forms of organization. neoliberal civil-society groups are resource-rich, and they form on the sturdy basis of a transnational business elite – an organized minority that is already studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 53 ideologically cohesive, politically active and extensively networked. business activists are well positioned to influence policy and culture, via established political and mass communication channels. their action repertoire – a combination of producing and disseminating knowledge via elite channels and corporate media, lobbying key institutions such as the un and facilitating consensus formation among global and national elites – reflects this advantaged location. understandably, dominant forces organized themselves in the global field early. the story of globalization-from-above recounts their successful construction of a transnational historic bloc, including civilsociety groups as well as tncs and institutions of global governance, around a vision of plain justice and possessive individualism (neufeld, 2001). however, this historic bloc does not reach very deeply into the social infrastructure; for the most part it is restricted to the higher circles of the organized minority that is its real constituency: a north atlantic ruling class. its lack of reach into the global south, as revealed by our paired comparisons, is striking. for groups promoting global justice the situation is exactly reversed. constituencies are dispersed across many sites and networks, and issues of translation – from language to language, from culture to culture, from local to global – are central (santos, 2005). groups have scant resources and are generally positioned on the margins of political and cultural life, although the information revolution has opened opportunities for low-cost communications across distant places, and for the production of alternative media that now form a key component of global counter-hegemony (hackett and carroll, 2006). the action repertoire of these groups is unavoidably skewed toward mobilization at the grassroots through dialogue within and across counter-publics, consciousness-raising and building capacity to act collectively – using volunteer labour as the prime resource. conjunctural wars of manoeuvre, such as the 1999 battle in seattle, are only feasible on this organizational and cultural basis. the labour intensivity of counter-hegemony is rooted in a basic difference between capital and its other: … the atomized form of living labor that stands in conflict with the integrated, or liquid, form of "dead" labor causes a power relationship; the capital ("dead" labor) of each firm is always united from the beginning, whereas living labor is atomized and divided by competition (offe and wiesenthal 1980, p. 74). if this microeconomic reality underlies the structural power of international financial markets, tncs and institutions such as the imf, it also explains the resource richness of groups like the icc and wef. subalterns can only compensate for the dominant bloc’s inherent advantage in the control of vast pools of dead labour by building associations of living activists, armed with a willingness to act. given the power differential, globalization-from-below occurs in response to the social and ecological dislocations and crises that follow in neoliberal capitalism’s train. however, the bloc that is forming, as indicated by our four groups – all of which participate in the social forum process – penetrates much more extensively into humanity’s manifold lifeworlds, and increasingly includes the global south as a majority force. finally, from our paired comparisons we can distinguish between a logic of replication and a logic of prefiguration. the deeply structured relations that ground studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 54 neoliberal hegemony – the market, the capital-labour relation, the liberal state – are already regnant in the global formation. the neoliberal project is primarily to rework, to repackage and to reform, to validate, to demonstrate global capitalism’s continuing viability, to deflect calls for social justice by insisting on the plain justice of the market, to suggest pragmatic solutions that add up to a passive revolution – as in the wbcsd’s notion of eco-efficiency. the groups comprising the neoliberal bloc follow a logic of replication. for counter-hegemonic groups, the social relations that might sustain an alternative way of life are immanent, emergent, or need to be invented. as history shows, this is no mean feat. although abstract principles such as parity of participation or cosmopolitanism14 can provide theoretical guideposts, the challenge is an eminently practical one. the prospects for social justice in a global field hinge significantly on discovering political methodologies that activate democratic social learning as to how we might live differently, as in foei’s social-ecological vision of a peaceful and sustainable world of “interdependent people living in dignity, wholeness and fulfilment.” this involves a logic of prefiguration. 14 callinicos (2006, p. 241) submits that cosmopolitanism is a stance that can bring together the various strands of global justice politics without sacrificing the specificity of different groups’ claims. he borrows the principle from barry (1999, p. 36), who defines it as “a moral stance consisting of three elements: individualism, equality, and universality. its unit of value is individual human beings; 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(2005). labour and new social movements in a globalizing world system: the future of the past. labour history 46(2), 195-207. whitaker, c. (2004). the wsf as open space. in j. sen, a. anand, a. escobar & p. waterman (eds.), world social forum: challenging empires (111-21). new delhi: viveka foundation. world business council for sustainable development. (2005). eco-efficiency learning module. five winds international. available at <http://www.wbcsd.org/docroot/zjuk9v12u48uxlww5mzd/eco-efficiency-module.pdf> studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 59 appendix table 1 a judgment sample of eight key organizations for paired comparisons paired comparison name est’d international chamber of commerce (icc) 1919 capital / labour struggle international confederation of free trade unions (icftu) 1949 mont pèlerin society (mps) 1947 intellectual / ideological leadership transnational institute 1973 world business council for sustainable development (wbcsd) 1995 ecological politics friends of the earth international (foei) 1971 world economic forum (wef) 1971 (1987) global public spheres world social forum (wsf) 2001 studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 60 table 2 eight key organizations: constituencies, organizational forms, action repertoires name core membership organizational form action repertoire/ strategy icc corporations large and small, increasingly global membership federation, including companies and c of cs from 130+ countries consensus formation, lobbying, services to members, engagement with un, wef, etc. icftu 155+ million, us dominated until 1960s, recent shift to southern constituency confederation of national labour centrals elite diplomacy until recent shift to international labour solidarity and engagement with wsf mps economists, capitalists, thinktank directors, plus a few politicians and journalists from europe and us annual retreat, with close links to neoliberal advocacy think tanks worldwide constituting a global network of neoliberal knowledge production and dissemination transnational institute two dozen activist scholars, allied with many ngos, including wsf vanguard of fellows spearheads programs and projects attuned to a multifrontal war of position. facilitation of / critical reflection on praxis, outreach to partners in a range of targeted priorities. wbcsd 180 global corporations (as represented by ceos) committed to eco-efficiency, mainly based in triad council of ceos, subdivided into working groups chaired by ceos and reaching further via a regional network of bcsd and 47 partners serves as a forum, educates its business constituency on the virtues of eco-efficiency, promotes its vision as ecologically sufficient foei 1.5 million members, in national and local activist groups striving for environmentally sustainable and socially just societies decentralized network of autonomous organizations, coordinating collective action globally within six campaigns activist campaigns, popular education and communication, research wef initially european, increasingly global organization of 1000 ceos with other elite interests arrayed on the margins massive annual elite meeting, recent shift to more continuous engagement of members in task forces increasingly outcomeoriented, diffused into various regional activities, and interested in coopting the opposition. wsf many thousands of liberal anti-globalization and radical anti-capitalist activists, facilitated by an international council with delegates from 136 national and global nonparty organizations annual meetings: “open space” in which movements might converge without sacrificing autonomy, membership by organizational affiliation dialogical forum process (now polycentric and selforganized), spreading from porto alegra to regional, national, local and thematic forums studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 61 table 3 programs and projects at the transnational institute, 2006 source: http://www.tni.org program project description new politics considering how to achieve substantive democracy and participatory development in the context of current trends of globalization. three working groups: empowered participatory governance reviewing existing, emerging and past experiences (both successful and failed) of progressive and participatory governance developed by leftwing organisations around the world. new political thinking analysing the current situation of the left across regions and the ideological debates taking place in different social, cultural and political contexts. new forms of political engagement and collective action deals with the new identity of social movements at different levels of action (local, regional, and global) and the changing relations among movements, ngos, parties, trade unions and other socio-political actors engaged in national struggles against neo-liberalism and in the global justice movement global economic justice to help sustain the momentum of the transnational movement for global socio-economic justice by translating the vision implicit in the critiques of neo-liberalism into a workable alternative around which a new consensus can be built. seven projects: the wto and the threat to equitable public service provision to demystify trade and investment liberalization issues for ordinary people, and to support peasant, small farmer, small business, worker, consumer, environmental and other citizen movements in challenging the exclusive right of big business to shape the global economy in their own interest. the energy project coordinated by tni since 1999, a global association of progressive ngos and civic coalitions from latin america, africa, asia and eastern europe, focusing on research and advocacy activities on liberalization of energy and related services, etc. carbon trade watch a research and monitoring group producing in-depth information on the carbon economy from an holistic perspective. sustainable energy & economy network a joint project of tni and the ips, set up in 1996 as a loose network whose aim is to shift global energy policy away from non-renewable energy sources towards policies promoting renewable energy (ie. wind, solar) and priorizing the energy needs of the world's 2 billion rural poor people. alternative regionalisms a consortium of activist research organizations rooted in social movements struggling against the effects of neo-liberal globalization in their regions asia-europe relations: a people's agenda with partner organizations in asia, aims to provide critical analyses of significant developments in asia, including the impact of eu policy on the region, to strengthen people-to-people solidarity between europe and asia and to develop joint advocacy strategies on issues of common concern to constituencies in both regions. towards water justice highlights the role of european transnational corporations in the water privatization experiences of the south and showcases alternative water management models. peace & security challenges conventional militaristic and nuclear approaches to security with broader conceptions that encompass civilian rather than solely state or geo-political notions of security. failed states studies failed or failing states in the context of the post-cold war shift in global relations; challenges the idea that failed states can be technically rehabilitated without a reshaping of the international system of governance itself. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 62 program project description globalisation & militarisation this pilot project aims to map and further explore the linkages between globalization and war, between neo-liberal economics and the escalation of armed conflicts around the world, between failed economics and 'failed states'. shadow economies looks at the underbelly of globalization: on the one hand, the illicit survival economies of many parts of the marginalized south and, on the other, the ways in which organized crime profits both from neoliberal globalization. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 63 table 4 campaign themes, friends of the earth international, 2006 campaign theme description climate change “we call for urgent action to stop humans intensifying climate change. we demand climate justice, with emission reductions in the industrialised world, protection of the most vulnerable who already suffer the effects of climate change & legal challenges against the worst polluters.” corporates “we call for rights for communities & citizens to choose their local economies & to hold corporations legally accountable for bad practices. we challenge the powerful role of corporations in institutions like the world trade organization, the world bank, the un system & the world economic forum.” gm “we support the right of countries to ban or restrict the introduction of geneticallymodified organisms (gmos). we believe that countries have the right to decide what they want to eat, & we support sustainable agricultural practices & food sovereignty in order to avoid food crises in the first place.” forests “we want a halt to machine-intensive corporate logging & the conversion of forests to agriculture & pastures. we oppose "carbon sinks" & other schemes that replace diverse forests with tree plantations. we want local communities & indigenous peoples control to their forests in their traditional sustainable way.” finance “we want to see an end to taxpayers' money being used by public institutions like the world bank & export credit agencies to subsidize destructive oil, mining & gas projects & to stop public money being used to finance privatization of water & other essential services.” trade “we campaign to replace corporate globalization with fair & sustainable economies, based on democracy, diversity, reduced consumption, cooperation & caution. we work with others to curb the power & scope of the world trade organization & other regional & bilateral trade liberalization agreements.” source: http://www.foei.org/campaigns/index.html studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 64 table 5 partners of the world business council for sustainable development, 2006 international organizations • intergovernmental panel on climate change, geneva • organization for economic cooperation and development, paris • united nations commission on sustainable development, new york • united nations development programme, new york • united nations environmental programme, division of technology, industry and economics, paris • united nations global compact, new york • world bank, washington, d.c. news & content • partnerships with 10 news and analysis organizations (5 in uk, 3 in us, 2 in belgium), which support the business case for sustainable development. institutes • centre for applied studies in international negotiations, geneva • international institute for environment & development, london • international institute for sustainable development, winnipeg • stockholm environment institute, stockholm • the energy and resources institute, new delhi • world resources institute, washington, d.c. foundations • bellagio forum for sustainable development, osnarbrück, germany • development gateway, washington, d.c. • foundation for business and society, hovik, norway • rockefeller foundation, new york ngos • asia pacific roundtable for cleaner production, manila • earthwatch institute (europe), oxford, uk • iucn the world conservation union, gland, switzerland • wwf international, gland, switzerland initiative • global reporting initiative, amsterdam universities/training programs • five programs based in prominent universities and institutes of the triad. business organizations (outside wbcsd regional network) • ten groups based in europe (8) and us (2), including international chamber of commerce and world economic forum. studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 65 table 6 porto alegre consensus manifesto, january 2005 end means 1) cancel the public debt of countries in the south. 2) apply international taxes/rates to financial transactions, to direct foreign investment, to consolidated profits of transnational corporations, to the sale of arms, and to activities that emit gases that contribute to global warming. 3) progressively dismantle all kinds of fiscal, legal and banking havens. 4) ensure that each person has a right to work, to receive social security and to retire, respecting the equality between men and women. 5) promote all forms of commercial justice by rejecting the world trade organization free-trade regulations, and by implementing mechanisms that permit the processes of production that bring goods and services more progressively to a new level of social norms. the convention on cultural diversity that is being negotiated in unesco should explicitly claim the right of culture over the right of commerce. 6) guarantee the right of each country to nutritional sovereignty and security by promoting rural agriculture. this assumes complete suppression of the subsidies on the exportation of farm products by the north, and the possibility of taxing imports in order to stop dumping practices. countries should have the right to prohibit genetically-altered foodstuffs. new economic regulations that respect every person’s right to life 7) prohibit all “patents on the mind” and on living things (be they people, animals or plants), as well as the privatization of people’s common goods, namely water. 8) above all, fight for different public policies against all kinds of discrimination, sexism, xenophobia, anti-semitism and racism; fully recognize the political, cultural and economic (including the regulation of natural resources) rights of indigenous communities. 9) take urgent measures to put an end to the destruction of the environment and to the threat of serious climate change, exacerbated by the excessive use of individual transportation and non-renewable energy. begin to instate another model of development rooted in energy conservation and the democratic control of natural resources. a just and peaceful life for all of humanity 10) demand the dismantling of foreign military bases and the expulsion of their troops except those serving under an official united nations mandate. 11) guarantee the right to information for all citizens by means of legislation that: a) puts an end to the concentration of resources among a few exclusive communication giants; b) guarantees autonomy for journalists before shareholders; c) favors not-for-profit press outlets, particularly alternative and community-based ones. democracy of all kinds, from local to global 12) profoundly reform and democratize international organizations, among them the un, insuring the upholding of human, economic, social and cultural rights in concordance with the universal declaration of human rights. this implies the incorporation of the world bank, the international monetary fund and wto into the decision-making system of the un. source: http://opendemocracy.typepad.com/wsf/2005/02/previous_posts_.html studies in social justice volume 1, issue 1, winter 2007 issn: 1911-4788 66 table 7 thematic axes for the world social forum 2006 americas venue (caracas) 1. power, politics and struggles for social emancipation new global power patterns: relations among social movements and organizations, parties and the state. relationship between politics and economics. the role of the state: public and private spheres. struggles for democracy. social practices of resistance: new political cultures and new forms of organization. the world social forum: processes and perspectives. political projects and program proposals. solidarity and new internationalism. women’s movements, struggles against patriarchism and against all forms of violence. perspectives and political struggles of peoples and indigenous nationalities. youth struggles. horizons for change and transformation: are other types of socialism possible? 2. imperial strategies and peoples’ resistance neoliberalism of war and imperial order. militarization, criminalization of struggles and poverty, terror, terrorism and the culture of fear. the “war of civilizations” as a new strategy for imperial expansion. commodification of life and its legal-institutional instruments: “free trade”, foreign debt, international financial institutions; wto, the ftaa and ftas; multinational corporations. crisis of the institutions within the united nations system and international law. the struggle for human rights, and the rights of peoples. sovereignty and the struggle against colonialism. south-south relations. new perspectives for regional integration and people's integration. the debate on development. resistance, civil disobedience and struggles for peace. 3. resources for and rights to life: alternatives to the predatory model capitalism and threats to life: global warming and ‘natural’ catastrophes, loss of biodiversity, desertification. imperial appropriation and privatization of resources. struggles for access, redistribution and protection of resources: land, biodiversity, water, seeds and energy sources. indigenous lands and autonomy. urban crisis, social apartheid and violence. struggles for new urban spaces and relations. patterns of hegemonic knowledge and construction of anti-hegemonic knowledge. dialogue between knowledges. intellectual property and appropriation of knowledge. right to health. alternative health practices. sexual and reproductive rights and decriminalization of abortion. 4. diversities, identities and world views in movement plurality and inter-culturality. indigenous peoples and nationalities and people of african descent. racism and colonial legacy. latin-american and regional identities. local identities. knowledge, spirituality and interreligious dialogue. sexual identity and diversity. youth cultures and identities. spaces and rights for people with special needs. gender identities and sexual diversity. 5. work, exploitation and reproduction of life precariousness, exclusion, inequality and poverty in the north and in the south. work and gender inequalities. labor, unions and social organizations. migrations and new forms of exploitation. child labor. human trafficking. resistance and new social arrangements in labor. nonmercantile forms of reproduction of life: reciprocal treatment, indigenous communities, solidary economy, family-based agriculture, cooperatives and self-management. care economy. 6. communication, culture, education: alternative and democratizing dynamics right to information and communication in order to strengthen citizenship. resistance to the concentration of ownership of the media. social agenda in communication for building alternatives. democratization of access to new technologies. social appropriation of communication and information technologies, and on-line resistance (internet and mobile telephone systems). artistic production and de-commodification of culture. socio-cultural movements as forms of peoples' resistance. linguistic diversities and critical languages. right to education and student struggles. anti-hegemonic educational models and experiences of popular education. source: http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/noticias_01.php?cd_news=1910&cd_language=2 introduction studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 27 women in guatemala’s metropolitan area: violence, law, and social justice paula godoy-paiz, mcgill university abstract: in this article i examine the legal framework for addressing violence against women in post war guatemala. since the signing of the peace accords in 1996, judicial reform in guatemala has included the passing of laws in the area of women‘s human rights, aimed at eliminating discrimination and violence against women. these laws constitute a response to and have occurred concurrently to an increase in violent crime against women, particularly in the form of mass rapes and murders. drawing on fieldwork conducted in guatemala‘s metropolitan area, this paper juxtaposes the laws for addressing violence against women to guatemalan women‘s complex, multilayered and multi-dimensional life experiences. the latter expose the limitations of strictly legal understandings of the phenomenon of gender-based violence, and highlight the need for broad social justice approaches that take into account the different structures of violence, inequality, and injustice present in women‘s lives. on april 9, 2008, amid cheers and applause from the public tribune, the guatemalan congress passed the ley contra el femicidio y otras formas de violencia contra la mujer (law against femicide and other forms of violence against women) 1 . this law, which calls for penalties of up to fifty years in prison for those found guilty of violent crimes committed against women, and specific institutional measures to be taken for addressing the problem, came after years of activism and lobbying on the part of human rights and women‘s organizations in guatemala directed at eradicating distinct forms of violence against women. the approval of this law also signifies a response to the mass wave of gender-based violence that has swept guatemala in the first decade of the 21 st century. more than a decade after the signing of peace agreements in 1996, which brought about the negotiated end to one of the bloodiest armed conflicts in latin america‘s recent history, guatemala remains haunted by the consequences of war and faces serious problems of insecurity and violence, including growing homicide rates and organized crime (pnud, 2007). furthermore, in this ―post-conflict‖ context, there has been an alarming increase in rates of violence against women, particularly in the form of mass rapes and killings (amnesty international, 2005; pnud, 2007). this article is concerned with the gendered dynamics of violence in post war guatemala, and focuses on the experiences of women, who have historically been among the most vulnerable and unacknowledged victims of violence in the country. drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted throughout the year 2007 in guatemala city and surrounding municipalities, what is referred to as the guatemalan metropolitan area (área metropolitana de guatemala), i examine 1 for short, i use ―law against femicide‖. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 28 the multiple ways in which a context of gender-based violence and generalized insecurity affect women‘s lives, and consider what social justice might mean for women situated at a crossroads of multiple, diverse, and converging processes of injustice and violence. i examine the legal framework for addressing violence against women in the country, particularly three laws aimed at reducing and eliminating gender-based discrimination and violence: the ley para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia intrafamiliar (law to prevent, saction, and eradicate violence within the family), the ley de dignificación y promoción integral de la mujer (law for the dignification and integral promotion of women), and the ley contra el femicidio y otras formas de violencia contra la mujer (law against femicide and other forms of violence against women). 2 i argue that the emergence of these laws represents a significant victory for guatemalan women, that should be situated within the converging processes of peace negotiations and a growing women‘s movement on the one hand, and escalating generalized violence, insecurity, and crime, where violent murders of women have been on the rise, on the other. i juxtapose the legal framework for addressing violence against women to guatemalan women‘s complex, multilayered and multi-dimensional life experiences. this juxtaposition exposes the limitations of strictly legal understandings of the phenomenon of gender-based violence promoted by the state, which tend to shift the focus away from the social, political, economic and historical factors underlying violence toward women in guatemala. women at a crossroads of violence before the justification was ―you are not going out because you are a woman‖. now, mothers with good reason say, ―you can‘t go out because you could be raped, you could be killed‖. last month in my colonia there where two or three killings in one week. imagine, in one week! -ana 3 living in the barrio el limón, one of the countless so-called ‗red zones‘ of guatemala city with a reputation of high gang activity and crime, thirty year old ana, a mayan k‘iche‘ woman, fears for her safety every day. every morning when she gets on to the camioneta to travel to her workplace, she is uncertain whether she will make it to work and return home safely at night without incident. for ana, like many residents of guatemala city and adjacent municipalities, fears that she may be robbed, assaulted, injured, or killed at any moment are not unfounded. twelve years after the signing of the peace accords in guatemala, the country is described as, ―one of the most violent countries in the world officially in peace, where the human rights of the population continue without being fully respected‖ (pnud, 2007, p.9). thus guatemala has followed the worrying trend described by researchers of latin america (e.g. balán, 2002; caldeira, 1996; rotker, 2002) – namely, that despite certain recent democratic reforms, systemic human rights violations, as well as everyday crime and insecurity continue to thrive. in guatemala, in addition to continued political violence in the form of intimidation and violent attacks against human rights workers or individuals for political purposes, the country faces growing homicide rates, including increasing rates of murders of women, children and youth, 2 for full text of the laws see: congreso de la república de guatemala (1996, 1999, 2008) respectively. 3 i use pseudonyms to protect the anonymity of research participants. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 29 escalating gang activity and organized crime, high rates of fire arm possession and use, as well as high incidences of armed robberies, kidnappings, and theft (del alamo, 2004; amnesty international, 2005; asturias & del águila, 2005; logan, bain & kairies, 2006; caldh, 2006; ciidh, 2006; pnud, 2007; urías, 2005). moreover, there are indicators that problems of violence have intensified in the current post-peace agreement era. one report indicates, for example, that ―in the past seven years homicidal violence has increased more than 120%, going from 2,655 homicides in 1999 to 5,885 in 2006‖ (pnud, 2007, p.9). many explanations are offered for the persistence of violence in ―post-conflict‖ guatemala. not surprisingly, these vary depending on who is doing the analyzing of incidents and forms of violence, and for what purpose. while mareros (youth gang members) are often cited in governmental 4 and everyday discourses as the principle cause of current violence in guatemala, a deeper analysis of the present situation brings other factors to the fore. these include vast social inequalities and high levels of poverty along class, ethnic, gender, and geographical axes; rampant legal impunity; and clandestine groups (often linked to powerful individuals) that profit from illicit activities such as the trafficking of human beings, arms and drugs (pnud, 2007, p. 10). guatemala‘s long history of violence and state repression toward vast segments of its population spanning the colonial period, then through a long line of conservative and liberal dictators, and most recently exacerbated by decades of horrific internal armed conflict, is also at the core of persistent and ubiquitous violence today. the armed internal conflict, emerged in the cold war context and endured from 1960 to 1996. claiming the lives of 200,000 people and displacing 1.5 million, the war has been one of the bloodiest conflicts in latin america in the last quarter of the twentieth century. while both sides, the military and the insurgency, committed acts of violence, the u.n. sponsored truth commission found that over 90 per cent of acts of violence were carried out by agents of the state. mayan indigenous peoples, who were seen by the state as guerilla supporters, represented over eighty per cent of the victims of violence (ceh, 1999; odhag, 1998). during the war, women were among the targeted victims of state-sponsored violence: indeed, government agents carried out mass sexual violence, particularly in the form of rape and sexual torture, against women. the greatest proportion of this violence was directed at indigenous women, as a means of damaging the social fabric of indigenous communities, and to create a climate of terror in the country (ceh, 1999; odhag, 1998). as in other war-torn countries, such as rwanda, sierra leone or kosovo and bosnia-herzegovina (irin, 2004), rape and sexual assault of women in guatemala were part of the machinery of war. in the aftermath of the armed internal conflict, violence against women has been on the rise across guatemala. while human rights organizations and activists have long laboured to prove that genocide occurred during guatemala‘s armed conflict, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the concept of femicide—the killing of women by men because they are women 4 in 2007 the army general otto pérez molina of the partido patriota ran for president on a platform centered on battling crime in guatemala through attempting to quash gangs. though ultimately defeated by álvaro colom caballeros of the national unity for hope (unidad nacional de la esperanza, une), advertisements in newspapers, billboards and television for pérez molina commonly indicated that his party would take a mano dura (clenched fist) position for battling gangs and crime in the country. indeed, the clenched fist was his party‘s symbol. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 30 (russell, 2001, p.3)—has gained currency among women‘s organizations as they attempt to evidence the existence of this insidious, systematic form of violence against a targeted group. present-day violence against women in guatemala, particularly the increase in the killings of women, demonstrates all too well the ongoing violence that pervades guatemala‘s ―postconflict‖ era. various studies (e.g., amnesty international, 2005; caldh, 2006; pnud, 2007) attest to the disturbing increase, over the past eight years, in the murder rate of guatemalan women. for example, the amnesty international (2005) report, guatemala: no protection, no justice: killings of women in guatemala, which has played a central role in drawing attention to this disturbing issue, indicates that the number of women murdered annually over the three years spanning 2002 to 2004 almost tripled (from at least 163 women in 2002, to 383 in 2003, to over 527 in 2004). a subsequent report produced by the united nations development program for guatemala indicates that the numbers of murdered women in 2005 and 2006 were 518 and 603 respectively (2007, p. 30); these figures evidence an alarming trend that has received little attention by the guatemalan government and the international community. femicide in guatemala is occurring in a context of generalized violence affecting great segments of the population. both women and men face a situation marked by fear and the potential of being victims of violence at any given moment. moreover, a woman and a man‘s experiences of life in guatemala are influenced by their various social locations, including ethnicity, class, age, and geographic location. thus, not all women in guatemala experience life and violence in the same ways. while women‘s experiences vary, a focus on their lives is necessary as the violation of their bodies has constituted a virtually normative practice in guatemala. as certain scholars (e.g., few, 2002; nelson, 1999) highlight, since the spanish conquest, ethnic relations as well as national and state formation in guatemala have been maintained and (re)produced through gender and gendered violence. analogous to different historical periods in guatemala, including during the armed internal conflict, in the ―postconflict‖ context men are murdered with more frequency than women. however, there are indicators that proportionally the violence directed at women has increased at a higher rate in this period than the proportional increase in violence directed against men (e.g. see, palma & sas, 2007). furthermore, violent crimes against women often entail rape and other forms of sexual violence, and their bodies frequently show signs of mutilation of facial features and sexual organs (amnesty international, 2005). the patterned, gruesome, sexualized and misogynist nature of violence perpetrated against women is a central factor for distinguishing violence toward women and men, and suggests a need to carefully interrogate violence against women in particular. a number of factors impede accuracy in the recording of the murders of women in guatemala. a lack of public confidence in state institutions, indifference on the part of officials, and deficiencies within the judicial system to deal adequately with these cases, all contribute to the under-registration of violent crimes against women. in addition, it is widely believed that police forces collude with organized crime, as has been observed for other latin american contexts (caldeira, 2000; goldstein, 2003), and may thus be complicit in violence against women. the chronic lack of reporting, investigation, and prosecution of these crimes has resulted in a situation where the perpetrators of these acts remain largely unidentified and unpunished, which can be seen as exacerbating the climate of fear and insecurity present in guatemala. in guatemala, as in countless societies throughout history and around the globe, violence has been perpetrated on women‘s bodies for the purposes of sustaining patriarchal systems, nation studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 31 building and nationalism, and for the waging of war (das, 1997; giles & hyndman, 2004; malkki, 1995; olujic, 1998). finally, certain observers (e.g., del alamo, 2004; urías, 2005) have pointed out how documented rates of domestic abuse—a less publicly visible form of violence— are also alarmingly high in guatemala. due to the secrecy that often accompanies domestic violence and the great methodological challenges it poses for researchers (ellsberg, heise, pena, agurto & winkvist, 2001), the figures on such incidents are much more scarce, and perhaps even less accurate than the figures on cases of femicide. nevertheless, there are indicators that this form of violence in guatemala constitutes a serious social problem (e.g., see asturias & del águila, 2005; del alamo, 2004; la hora, 2003; urías, 2005). in her research on gender relations before, during and after the guatemalan civil war, anthropologist judith zur (1998), for example, listened to many women in the war‘s aftermath who told her that for them, men‘s alcoholism and violence in the home were central issues of concern. my study is focused on the metropolitan area (área metropolitana de guatemala, amg) 5 in the department (province) of guatemala. the guatemalan metropolitan area includes the municipality of guatemala city – guatemala‘s capital city – and surrounding municipalities including mixco, villa nueva, chinautla, and san juan sacatepequez. this area contains three million of the country‘s thirteen million inhabitants. as rotker et al. (2002) observe for other post-conflict and post-dictatorship countries in latin america, violence in guatemala in the postwar period has moved increasingly to urban areas, with the department of guatemala, and especially the metropolitan area, topping the list as the most crime-ridden area. in its statistical analysis of violence in guatemala, the united nations development program found that the department of guatemala, ―has accumulated during the last years more than 50 percent of the illicit activities that are registered in the country‖ (pnud 2007, pp.16-17). furthermore, 35 percent of the registered illicit activities at the national level are carried out in the municipality of guatemala city alone (pnud, 2007, pp. 16-17). as such, the report also indicates that, ―guatemala city is one of the most violent places on the continent‖ (pnud, 2007, p.24). as well as being the site of a large percentage of violence and crime in the country, the metropolitan area of guatemala also holds a significant portion of the country‘s urban poor (gellert, 1999, p.38). while the city remains the centre of political, commercial and industrial power, great segments of its population do not earn a sufficient income to cover their most basic 5 the area covering guatemala city and neighboring municipalities, such as mixco, villa nueva, chinautla, and san juan sacatepequez is commonly referred to as the área metropolitana de guatemala or área metropolitana de la ciudad de guatemala (metropolitan area of guatemala -amg). however, there is some disagreement about what constitutes the amg, with some researchers referring to the entire department of guatemala as the amg (gellert, 1999). in this article, i use the former definition as this was the definition i found was most commonly used during my fieldwork in guatemala. 6 at a national level, there are also indices of growing social inequalities and low human development trends. while in 1989 the extreme poverty strata represented five times the proportion of the population found in a situation of ‗high development‘, in 2004 it represented nearly ten times the same population (pnud, 2005). malnutrition among guatemalan children is extremely high: 64% of extremely poor and 53% of poor children suffer from malnutrition (world bank, 2003, p.14). compared to other countries in latin america, guatemala ranks poorly with respect to health indicators: life expectancy (65 years) is the lowest and infant mortality (40-45 per thousand) is the highest in central america (world bank, 2003, p.14). furthermore, literacy in guatemala ranks far below average in latin america; with an illiteracy rate of 31% in 2000, primarily represented by women, the poor and rural residents, only nicaragua and haiti rank worse (world bank, 2003, p.63). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 32 needs (valladares cerezo, 2003, p.5). according to a study of urban slums in guatemala city, approximately sixty per cent of the population of the metropolitan area can be classified as ―poor‖ (valladares cerezo, 2003, p.6). 6 in addition, it is estimated that one third of the inhabitants of the metropolitan area live in precarious settlements, many without running water, drains and sewage systems (valladares cerezo, 2003, p.3). thus, valladares cerezo (2003) points out that, in recent years the city has been characterized, by considerable horizontal expansion, with peripheral commercial sub-centres, an inefficient public transport system, proliferating precarious settlements, a free market economy and a decrease in state attention to housing needs. this article emerges from a larger doctoral project focusing on the impact of intersecting forms of violence on the quotidian experiences, lives, and social relations of differently-positioned women in contemporary urban guatemala. i utilized a combination of research methodologies during the course of this year-long study. participation observation served as an important research method: i immersed myself in everyday life in guatemala city, and spent time with women, and their families, in their homes throughout the urban area. during my initial months in guatemala, i sat in on a woman‘s support group, which was run by guatemala city-based institution that supports families of murdered women and victims of domestic as well as other forms of violence. with the permission of the support group participants, i was able to sit in on all of their by-weekly sessions over the four and a half month period their group met. i later interviewed various support group participants individually in their homes. in addition, throughout my stay in guatemala, i conducted structured and semi-structured with a range both indigenous and non-indigenous (ladina/mestiza) 7 women—including women not aligned to any particular institution—ranging in age from twenty to forty-five years, all of whom resided in the metropolitan area of guatemala. i also interviewed activists, human rights workers, as well as government and ngo employees whose work was related to, in broad terms, advancing women‘s rights and, specifically, aiding women in situations of violence. i selected guatemala city and its surrounding municipalities as the focus of my study as it represents an area little-studied in academic analyses of the impact of war on daily life and postwar reconstruction. literature on the consequences of wartime violence in guatemala has tended to focus—with valid reason—on rural areas of the northwest highlands, which saw the bulk of massacres during the armed conflict (e.g., see manz, 2004; zur,1998). however, as both truth commission reports (ceh, 1999; odhag, 1998) document, state sponsored violence during the first two decades of the war (1960s and 1970s) had an urban character. during the period from 1954 to the late 1970s, when u.s.-sponsored counterrevolutionary forces targeted politicians, academics, students, and trade unionists (committing ―selective‖ killings), acts of political violence were primarily committed in guatemala city (ball, kobrak & spirer, 1999; ceh, 1999; odhag, 1998). for instance, paul kobrak (1999) documents the systematic attack by state forces on leading intellectuals in the city, particularly those affiliated to the university of san carlos. furthermore, three of the most publicized war-time incidents – the 1980 burning of the spanish embassy that killed 39 k‘iche‘ peasants (including the father of nobel laureate rigoberta menchú), the vicious stabbing to death of anthropologist myrna mack chang in 1990, 7 in guatemala, the term ladino/a is used to refer to european descendents or (usually) to persons of mixed mayan and spanish ancestry. sometimes the term is used interchangeably with mestizo/a. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 33 and the 1998 murder of bishop juan gerardi (two days after he had presented the nunca más report outlining the horrific abuses of the guatemalan military) – all occurred in downtown guatemala city. moreover, the severity of violence in guatemala city during the post-war period signals a need to include an urban focus in analyses of the multiple effects of war on people‘s everyday lives and social relations in its aftermath. guatemala’s legal framework for addressing violence against women the laws passed in guatemala in the area of gender-base violence are the result of the convergence of both local and global processes. guatemala is among numerous states in the post-cold war era (see nyamu-musembi, 2006; ulrich, 2000) that have made judicial reforms in the area of violence against women. in the past two decades, international organizations and donors, within a framework of ―strengthening the rule of law‖, have paid increased attention to gender-based violence, and countries around the globe have passed laws against violence toward women (ulrich, 2000). in guatemala, since the signing of peace accords in 1996, the national congress has approved three important laws specifically directed at addressing gender disparities and protecting women against different forms of violence: the ley para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia intrafamiliar (1996), the ley de dignificación y promoción integral de la mujer (1999) and, most recently, the ley contra el femicidio y otras formas de violencia contra la mujer (2008). at this historical juncture, women in guatemala are protected by law against violence more than in any time in the past. paradoxically, widespread violence against women in guatemala in the post war period has been concurrent to women‘s increased legal protection against various forms of violence and discrimination. why, then, does violence against women persist? why has violence increased as laws to prevent it have been simultaneously passed? and, how far-reaching can the laws against violence toward women be in a context where the judicial system does not function effectively and impunity is rampant? the discrepancy between increased legal protection against violence and rising figures of violence against women suggests that the approval of laws for the reduction and eradication of violence toward women is not sufficient to address this social problem, and may only be a part of larger social changes required for its amelioration. the laws passed in guatemala aimed at reducing and eliminating distinct forms of violence toward women must be seen in relation to women‘s growing activism and lobbying. without the efforts of individual activists and women‘s and feminist organizations such as grupo guatemalteco de mujeres, tierra viva, the national coordinator of guatemalan widows (conavigua), and the no violence against women network, among others, that have worked tirelessly to raise awareness surrounding women‘s subordination in both the private and public spheres, it is unlikely the present laws would have even been proposed. their efforts have made violence against women an issue worthy of attention by members of congress, human rights groups, and segments of the guatemalan population—hardly a simple task considering the extent to which violence against women in guatemala is sanctioned both culturally, but also arguably by the state. the achievements of the guatemalan women‘s movement, particularly in relation to the laws on gender-based violence have significant historical roots. for instance, an organized women‘s studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 34 movement was already present in guatemala in the 1940s, with the creation of the alianza femenina guatemalteca, the first collective organization aimed at mobilizing women (carrillo, 2004, p.156). yet, it is in the last three decades in particular that the movement gained significant momentum and visibility. during this time, the women‘s movement expanded its organizational structure and increased its visibility (berger, 2006). furthermore, it placed the eradication of all forms of violence, including violence against women, at the centre its political agenda. though internally diverse and historically fractured along ethnic, class, and urban-rural lines, the women‘s movement has become a powerful player in shaping national policy (berger, 2006)—as the passing of laws in the area of women‘s rights attests. in their present struggles for social justice, guatemalan women are increasingly utilizing the instruments of international conventions and law as part of multi-faceted efforts to advance their rights and promote gender equality. on the one hand, an international human rights movement has created spaces for women to articulate their demands for greater social equality. the last two decades have given rise to a shift in the ways in which marginalized groups throughout the globe, such as ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, and women, are making claims for their rights. where nation-states are becoming weakened, or they assuage themselves of the responsibilities for providing for their citizens, due largely to neo-liberal reorganization, collectivities increasingly seek social justice redress in international forums (e.g., niezen, 2003; merry, 2006). accordingly, guatemalan women are utilizing the new opportunities emerging from international law and its forums for debate and exchange, such as meetings of the united nations (un), to advance their rights as women in guatemala. on the other hand, women‘s rights are challenged by an international human rights framework that draws on liberal rights ideals, and promotes formal equality universally. feminist scholars are critical of human rights discourses and practices precisely because of their universalist, as well as masculinist, orientations (e.g., merry, 2006; molyneux and razavi, 2002, p.7). the promotion of liberal rights and universal equality is often at odds with appeals for the recognition of the specific needs of particular peoples, such as women, and/or efforts to maintain cultural diversity (merry, 2006, p.131). transnational processes, and ―legal globalization‖ 8 , have nonetheless been an integral part of judicial reform in the area of gender based violence in guatemala. in addition to national factors, the international context has been an important part of the emergence of laws on women‘s rights in guatemala. the concept of femicide is an imported one in guatemala. in the 1990s, the cruel rapes, disappearances, and murders of hundreds of women in ciudad juárez, mexico drew international attention (e.g., see inter-american commission on human rights, 2002; ensalaco, 2006; olivera, 2006), and victims groups as well as feminist organizations ultimately came to utilize the concept of femicide to describe the situation. when a similar pattern of murderous violence against women was observed in guatemala, human rights and women‘s groups drew comparisons to the case of women in ciudad juárez. subsequently, women‘s groups in guatemala have participated in information exchanges and networking with women‘s groups in mexico, across different latin american countries, and beyond. local efforts to draw attention to the grave dimensions of the problem of violence against women in guatemala have both led to, and been supported by, international attention to the issue. for instance, in 2004 the un 8 i borrow this term from sieder (2004). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 35 special rapporteur on violence against women, yakin ertürk, visited guatemala to investigate the situation of women in the country and produced a report (ertürk, 2005) outlining her findings and specific recommendations for the guatemalan state and the international community for responding to the realities of guatemalan women. international flows of money into the country for ―peace‖ and ―democracy‖ building are also significant factors behind judicial reform in guatemala, and for understanding the emergence of laws against discrimination and violence toward women. in the post-cold war era, judicial reform is a central component of state and internationally driven initiatives for post-conflict and post-dictatorship rebuilding and democratization. these efforts, as is particularly evident in the guatemalan case, are often donor-driven (that is, they stem from external pressures), and do not necessarily emerge from within the state. donors including the world bank, the inter-american development bank, the united nations development program, or country donors such as the united states agency for international development (usaid) invest in democracy building, legal reform, and promotion of human rights (sieder, 2004, p.3), even while they promote a neoliberal market framework that ultimately makes their intentions suspect. nonetheless, legal reorganization and reform of the state together with promotion of human rights are now central components of armed conflict rebuilding and transition (sieder, 2004, p.3). judicial reform was a central component of the united nations brokered peace accords in guatemala, which included an accord specifically focused on reforming the guatemalan legal system. in particular the agreement for strengthening of civilian power and the role of the armed forces in a democratic society signed in september of 1996 outlined various measures for decreasing and redefining the role of the military, which had previously gone unchecked, and increasing the role of legal institutions in promoting internal security (see jonas, 2000). the agreement on strengthening civilian power, came after the comprehensive accord on human rights, signed in march of 1994. unlike other accords, that were to be implemented after the official signing of peace, the human rights accord would come into effect immediately (jonas, 2000, p. 71). under this accord, the government and the guatemalan national revolutionary unity (urng) vowed to meet their obligations under international law. as sieder (2004) observes, the peace settlement‘s focus on human rights meant that in the years following the signing of peace, strengthening the rule of law was on the agenda of the government, civil society, and the international community. among the peace accords signed, there was a comprehensive accord on human rights, accords for addressing social and economic aspects of the agrarian situation, for strengthening civilian power, and an accord on the rights of indigenous persons. however there was no accord that directly addressed women. women‘s rights are referred to by some as the ―missing‖ accord (e.g. jonas, 2000, p.86). susanne jonas suggests that this elision was largely the result of, ―long standing lack of attention to gender issues by both negotiating parties and the late development of the women‘s movement in guatemala‖ (2000, p. 86). nonetheless, the peace negotiations, which saw creation the sector de mujeres (women‘s sector), as part of the national assembly of civil society opened up spaces for a debate specifically around gender (berger, 2006, pp. 3436). the participation of the women‘s sector in the peace process also facilitated the organizational structure of the movement, which has increasingly come to work within governmental structures, not merely providing pressure from outside (ibid.). given the transnational influence on judicial reform in guatemala, the different laws aimed at reducing and eradicating gender-based discrimination and violence in the country draw upon studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 36 international law and conventions, in particular the convention for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (cedaw) and the inter-american convention on the prevention, punishment and eradication of violence against women (convention of belém do pará), both ratified by the guatemalan government —all of which frame women‘s rights in the language of human rights. the definition of violence within the family as a human rights violation is the most basic premise of the first of these laws, the ley para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia intrafamiliar (the ‗domestic violence law‘, approved in 1996). article one of the law‘s first chapter indicates that, violence within the family constitutes a violation of human rights […] and should be understood as an action or omission that directly or indirectly causes physical, sexual, psychological and/or economic harm or suffering both in the private and public sphere, on the part of relatives, partner, or ex-partner or with whom children have been procreated (congreso de la república, decreto 97-96, capítulo 1, artículo 1). this law represented an important victory for guatemalan women. in defining violence against women as a human rights violation, the law holds potential for legitimizing women‘s denunciations of abuses against them within their homes, a violence that is all too often hidden and silenced. for instance, up until recently rape was not considered ―rape‖ if it occurred in the context of marriage. 9 with the approval of the ley para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia intrafamiliar, women gained the possibility of prosecuting their aggressors for harmful actions committed against them that previously may not have been considered forms of violence. moreover, in addition to making it possible for women to denounce domestic abuse as a crime and violation of their rights, and calling on institutions to provide legal assistance to victims, the law makes ―security measures‖ (medidas de seguridad) possible. the ―security measures‖ are an important component of this law, making it possible for the accused aggressor to be ordered to leave the common residence immediately, have his/her weapons decommissioned, and child visitation rights suspended in cases of sexual aggression against minors (artículo 7). though it represents a significant victory for women in guatemala, the domestic violence law contains significant shortcomings. first among them is the law‘s failure to directly address domestic violence against women; its focus is violence within the family generally. in other words, it is possible under this law for a male spouse, grandparents, or children to be considered the victims of domestic violence. through its use of gender-neutral language, constant throughout all articles, the law fails to denounce violence against women. political scientist susan berger (2006, p.46) argues that the gender-neutrality of this law is not an accident. women‘s groups had pushed for and lobbied for a law that would address violence against women specifically, as it was premised on international conventions for addressing the rights of women ratified by the guatemalan state. however, berger explains, proponents of the law could not garner enough support within the national congress, and thus proposed in its place the ley para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia intrafamiliar. the fact that in the end, the law was framed in a gender-neutral manner, and focuses on individual victims and aggressors, 9 article 200 of the guatemalan penal code, which established that criminal responsibility for rape could be waived where the victim was over 12 years old and the perpetrator married the victim was only suspended in 2005 (amnesty international, 2007). studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 37 reflects the de-politicizing process that took place in its framing and approval. gender imbalances with respect to who is likely to be a victim of domestic violence were systematically ignored. furthermore, structural conditions such as the feminization of poverty, as well as social and historical factors that make women more vulnerable to domestic violence, were ignored by the law. in many ways the subsequent laws on women‘s rights and violence have built on and served as correctors of the ley para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia intrafamiliar. for instance, the ley de dignificación y promoción integral de la mujer (law for the dignification and integral promotion of women), approved in 1999, was broader in scope than the domestic violence law, and directly addressed women. its central objectives were, ―to promote the integral development of women and their participation at all levels of economic, political, and social life in guatemala‖ (congreso de la república, decreto 7-99, artículo 2a). this law had the potential to be far-reaching as it emphasized not only eliminating violence toward women, but also eradicating different forms of social discrimination against women, for instance in educational institutions or in the labour force. this law was also guided by the framework of human rights and had among its objectives promoting women‘s development in the different spheres of their lives as outlined in the guatemalan constitution, as well as international conventions on women‘s rights. the most recent law, the law against femicide, similarly corrects some of the shortcomings of the original law on violence within the family. while the ley para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia intrafamiliar failed to specifically address women, and the ley de dignificación y promoción integral de la mujer was general and hence difficult to apply, the law against femicide is both specific in its terms of application and directly addresses women. the first article of the first chapter states, the present law has as its objective to guarantee the life, liberty, integrity, dignity, protecttion, and equality of all women under law, particularly when because of their gender within relations of power or trust, in the public or private sphere, the aggressor commits against them discriminatory or physically, psychologically, economically violent practices, or disrespects their rights. the aim is to promote and implement dispositions oriented toward eradicating physical, psychological, sexual, economic violence or any type of coercion against women, thus guaranteeing them a life free of violence, based on stipulations in the political constitution of the republic and international instruments regarding women‘s human rights ratified by guatemala (congreso de la república, decreto22-2008, capítulo 1, artículo 1). the subsequent chapters and articles of the law against femicide are detailed in outlining penalties for different crimes against women, compensation for the victims, and obligations of the state. the law is also significantly more detailed than its predecessors in defining violence against women and the different forms this takes. one of the criticisms of the ley para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia intrafamiliar that i heard frequently during my research from staff within institutions that offered services to victims of domestic violence (such as the public ministry‘s office for attention to victims), was that the law still made it nearly impossible to try domestic abuse. i was told this was particularly the case when dealing with situations of psychological or emotional abuse, since the guatemalan penal code does not contain necessary studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 38 articles that would make such a crime possible to effectively prove in a court of law. thus, women‘s legal representatives had to work diligently to find other articles available, such as on physical assault, to mobilize in a court setting. the added detail of the articles contained in the law against femicide can thus partly be understood as a response to these criticisms. the passing of the laws in the area of women‘s rights and gender-based violence illustrate, as berger (2006) points out, that the women‘s movement in guatemala has put gender on the government‘s social, political, and economic agenda. moreover, there have been certain concrete results stemming from the passing of the laws. chief among them is the creation of the national coordinator for the prevention of violence within the family and against women (conaprevi), an organizational body that oversees the implementation of the ley para prevenir, sancionar y erradicar la violencia intrafamiliar. conaprevi has mixed, government and civil society, representation and has developed the national plan for the prevention of violence within the family (planovi 2004-2014). this ten-year plan establishes lines of actions for addressing violence within the family and against women, including research and statistical analyses of violence against women; prevention activities such as educational campaigns; providing, legal, psychological, and medical services to victims of violence; and strengthening of institutions that work in the area of gender-based violence prevention. limitations of the laws & women’s everyday experiences a mere review of written laws against violence toward women in guatemala is insufficient for understanding the reach and dimensions of problems of violence on women‘s lives, as well as the potential and limitations of legal reforms in this area. laws gain their significance in relation to the context out of which they emerge and where they are applied. thus, it is important to ask, what happens when the laws against violence toward women in guatemala are put into practice? what do the implications of judicial reform and the passing of laws in the area of gender-based violence really amount to for women living in a context where residues of war-time violence as well as post-war crime and insecurity intersect with gender-based discrimination, and constantly operate in tandem to intensify the other‘s effects? in her multi-sited analysis of laws against gender-based violence, anthropologist sally engle merry (2006) examines the complex interplay between a global rights-based women‘s movement, guided by the principles of human rights, and the implementation of international laws on gender in particular local settings. merry concludes that a global human rights approach often does not adequately accommodate the particularities and intricacies of local settings. drawing on the insights of merry it is important to ask, how far does the current legal framework for addressing violence in women‘s lives go to reduce incidences of violent acts, and as important, the quotidian processes and experiences of violence and injustice for women in guatemala? feminists scholars criticize liberal law making on the grounds that it disregards social justice through a focus on formal rights rather than substantive outcomes (molyneux & razavi, 2002, p.8). for instance, they argue that while neo-liberalism is premised on the freedom of contract, if the subjects of rights lack the conditions and resources to exercise their rights, freedom of contract does not truly constitute freedom (elson, 2002; nussbaum, 2002). with the passing of laws in the area of gender-based violence, a woman in guatemala now has the formal right to a life free of violence. however, what does this right mean to her if she is unable to freely walk studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 39 around her neighborhood without fear of attack or leave her home without being subject to family and/or community control? a strictly legal, formal rights-based, framework such as the one ascribed to by the guatemalan state, treats violence as an act involving an individual perpetrator and victim. this approach is problematic as it ignores the social conditions that give rise and sustain relations of domination. as the emergent body of social science literature on violence underscores, violence is contextual, therefore, the outcome of particular social, cultural, political, and economic structures and process that sustain and legitimize the suffering of certain groups of people (scheper-hughes & bourgois, 2004; caldeira, 2000; das, kleinman, ramphele & reynolds, 2000; malkki, 1995). moreover, the state‘s legal framing of violence against women not only ignores a woman‘s life history and context, but also that of the ―aggressor‖. we could learn a great deal about the social problem of violence against women by considering why men resort to violent actions. addressing violence toward women does not imply addressing only women‘s lives, but the conditions of the relations between individuals (men and women) and between individuals and their communities. women in guatemala confront a ―multidimensionality of systems of subordination‖ (forster, 1999, p.58) where political, structural, economic, interpersonal and symbolic violence intersect (menjívar, 2008), and synergetically manifest themselves on their everyday experiences. a global human rights approach to addressing violence against women, with a tendency to ignore particularities of the local context and an emphasis on individual victims and perpetrators, fails to capture the multilayered and multi-causal experiences of violence of women in guatemala—in itself a highly diverse segment of the population. indeed, the need to take into account, in state and institutional responses to violence against women, the various layers of violence in women‘s lives became more than apparent to me during the course of my research. in by-weekly sessions the women‘s support group for victims of domestic abuse and family members of murdered women i sat in on during my fieldwork, women not only discussed abuse suffered at the hands of their spouses, but also fears about other forms of violence either towards themselves or their children. for instance, doña celeste, a k‘aqchikel (indigenous) woman and mother i met in the support group and then later visited and interviewed in her home, shared the problems she regularly experienced with her spouse, including his drinking and abusive behaviours toward her and her children. doña celeste‘s life, however, was also layered with the pain she consistently carried with her since her first-born, nineteen year-old lorena, had been raped and murdered in 2003. the death of her daughter, she told me, changed everything for her and her family. if having to endure this tragedy were not enough, now she constantly worries about her other children. for example, her seventeen year-old daughter veronica (now her only living daughter), must walk past the home of her sister‘s suspected killer every day on her way to school. for a time, celeste and her husband pulled veronica out of school for this very reason. the decision of whether veronica should continue her studies was influenced by violence and fear of further violence. doña celeste also worries that the accused and his family may take reprisals not only on veronica but possibly against her other children. fear of reprisals was similarly an issue for other women i came to know during my research, such as thirty-nine year-old, doña rosa. doña rosa shared with me how one day she came home after work to find her home surrounded by neighbors and police officers, one of whom coldly asked her, ―are you the mother of the girl that was raped?‖. rosa described this as the worst moment in her life, as it turned out she was indeed the mother. her then thirteen year-old daughter, mildred, had been the victim of a vicious sexual assault by a man known to the family. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 40 furthermore, because mildred protected her nine year-old sister by hiding her in her arms, she was cruelly beaten and nearly killed. hers was one of those cases of femicide where the victim happened to survive—the cases that often do not make the headlines or official statistics. today, seven years later, the aggressor has not been sentenced, as his legal representatives have employed different legal measures to draw out his trial, doña rosa explained. as a result, doña rosa constantly worries that the aggressor may take reprisals on mildred or her other five children. gender-based violence against lorena and mildred, the daughters of doña celeste and doña rosa, had horrific consequences for the victims; in the case of lorena, it claimed her life. however, these stories of violence do not end there. these horrendous events are the beginning points of other stories, of other life and family trajectories, that must bear their consequences. both doña celeste and doña rosa, as well as their respective spouses and children now must also live the after-effects; the reverberations of those violent events and their adverse effects. husbands and male children also suffered as a result of the gender-based violence committed against these young women, a point often ignored by analyses of violence toward women. doña celeste‘s partner told me how he has to work alongside, and ―shake the hand‖ of the man he suspected was responsible for lorena‘s death. this daily act of symbolic violence angered him, but he could do nothing about it, he shared. his own violent behaviour toward celeste and their children might be seen in relation to his own condition of disempowerment and inability to act in other spheres of his life, including the injustice of lorena‘s death. both women told me they felt that a sense of just closure would result from their daughter‘s aggressors being punished, but it would not alleviate their fears of reprisals or concerns about crime in guatemala city or their concerns about mere economic survival. both women are poor; they make a living from making and selling tortillas, and do not read and write. their opportunities for social ascendency are extremely limited. what is more, stepping forward to denounce crimes against their daughters (that was possible with the assistance of the guatemala city based organization providing legal and psychological assistance to victims of violence where i met celeste and rosa) created its own set of problems for them. for instance, doña celeste believes that it was her own cousin that was responsible for her daughter, lorena‘s death. however, the cousin was declared innocent in court of any wrongdoing in the case. doña celeste‘s family has now turned against her. ―this hurt me‖, she stated: they are happy, and i am here with pain. they have humiliated my family in front of everyone. they even held a special church service, in front of my husband and other children, where they accused us of lorena‘s death, because we let her go out. this hurt me so much and i don‘t speak to my side of the family since then. my husband and children were there, we were all there when they said this to us. when the lawyers called me to be present at another public hearing, i said, why should i be there if justice is not made? as well as experiencing fear that the accused aggressor and those close to him might take reprisals on her other children, bringing lorena‘s case to court caused great divisions between doña celeste and her extended family. here, it is possible to draw parallels to the observations of sally engle merry in her research in hawai‘i and the battered-women‘s movement in the united states. merry illustrates how the sense of self promoted by a human rights approach, drawing on notions of the autonomous self, was often at odds with a sense of self rooted in the family, studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 41 religion and community for women in her study (2006, p.181). as a k‘aqchikel woman, for whom her extended family, religion and community were fundamental aspects of her sense of self, having to cut ties to her extended family has been for doña celeste a particularly painful experience. the guatemalan women‘s movement has effectively utilized instruments of international law to advance claims based on their collective identity as women. at the same time, the category of women is not a homogenous one, and the passing of laws against violence may have different outcomes for women depending on their situation in guatemalan society. the dominant legal system in guatemala, as with other state institutions in the country, has historically been guided by racist, classist, and sexist ideologies and practices, and has thus worked to reinforce existing social inequalities. in her analysis of justice and gender in rural guatemala between 1936 and 1956, historian cindy forster (1999) highlights the class and racial violence in the country that often paralleled incidents of sexual violence. using as her historical referent court cases of instances of rape of women and infanticide during the dictatorship of general jorge ubico and the subsequent democratic revolution, forster highlights patriarchal, as well as class and racial biases that underpinned legal proceedings and rulings, and thereby contributed to the routinization of violence against certain groups of persons. forster highlights how in a historical period marked by struggle over land – when class and racial identities tightly intertwined as ―elite fears of class war were expressed in racial language‖ (1999, p.56) – sexual violence against poor and indigenous women did not count in official terms as violence. indigenous women and women from lower socio-economic social strata were deemed dishonourable, and in some cases even ―bad women‖ (mujeres malas) by virtue of their social positioning, and thus their ―morality‖ could not be defended in court. forster cites cases where even documented physical proof of assault was not enough to convict an assailant. the social revolution of 1944 brought about changes in social attitudes towards rape and other forms of violence against women, forster points out. civil society, was less willing to condone violence against women after 1944, stemming in part from the new discourse of social equality between 1944 and 1954 (forster, 1999, p. 60). forster argues that the numbers of rape cases brought to trial increased in the revolutionary period; however, most men charged were never imprisoned or otherwise punished. in addition to the force of legal apparatuses to reinforce social inequalities, there is unequal access to legal institutions in guatemala. doña celeste and doña rosa‘s access to legal representation for their daughters‘ cases was facilitated by their residence in the department of guatemala, where most government and social services are found. had doña celeste and doña rosa resided in rural guatemala, accessing services of the state—however inadequate—would have proved particularly challenging. in a comprehensive study of indigenous women‘s access to justice in guatemala, the defensoría de la mujer indigena (demi) found that indigenous women encounter numerous obstacles when seeking out legal aid. these include their low socioeconomic status; 77% of indigenous women are poor and 58.3% illiterate (demi, 2007, p.28). other obstacles identified include language barriers (the great majority of institutions work in spanish not indigenous languages), discrimination and racist treatment, as well as insensitivity and the tendency for officials to blame women for their situations (demi, 2007). doña rosa experienced this insensitivity when the police officer asked her about the rape of her daughter without concern for the pain such news might cause her as a mother. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 42 furthermore, as revealed by the experiences of doña celeste and doña rosa, many guatemalans are deeply suspicious of state institutions (sieder, 2004, p.3). in a context where the state has been extremely repressive against its citizens, where the military has controlled the judiciary and acted with impunity, and police forces routinely partake in illegal activities, it is not surprising there would be such prominent mistrust among the population. thus, in the last decade and a half guatemala has seen the emergence of ―parallel states‖ (caldeira, 1996), and forms of justice, such as lynchings where groups have taken justice into their own hands and injured or stoned suspected individuals. 10 conclusion the passing of laws in guatemala in the area of women‘s rights, aimed at eradicating discrimination and violence toward women, are immensely important victories. against a historical backdrop of state, institutional, and culturally sanctioned disrespect for women‘s bodies and dignities, the significance of the laws against gender-based violence, cannot be undermined. nevertheless, as this article has illustrated, the assembly of laws for addressing gender-based violence in guatemala is not without certain shortcomings and limitations. among the weaknesses of the state‘s legal framework, is the conceptualization of violence against women as representing synchronic events, rather than on-going social processes. state and institutional approaches for addressing gender-based violence in guatemala could go further in situating the phenomenon of gender-based violence within social structures that contribute to its emergence and proliferation, including growing economic disparities and poverty, as well as enduring patriarchal practices and ideologies. the laws on their own fail to take into account how women‘s experiences of violence in post-war guatemala are multilayered and embedded in global and local structures of power and domination. in addition, it is not only gender-based violence that affects women; their experiences are layered with structural, political, class and ethnic violence that similarly need the attention that femicide and, to a lesser extent, domestic violence, have received. through framing violence toward women as merely interpersonal, the laws depoliticize gender-based violence. it remains to be seen how far the body of laws reviewed in this article can go in reducing rates of gender-based violence, especially when impunity is widespread in guatemala. at a national level, less than 2% of murders of women end in conviction (orantes, 2008). judicial reform thus far has been insufficient to halt increasing rates of violence against women; on the contrary, rates have significantly increased, parallel to the passing of laws on discrimination and violence against women. the passing of laws in the area of women‘s rights and eradicating violence toward women is one (important) aspect of a series of reforms that would be necessary for effectively addressing the prevalence of violence in women‘s lives. other reforms might include the actual application of the specific laws in this area and breaking the wall of impunity, the full 10 the united nations mission for verification in guatemala (minugua, 2001, p.1) found that between 1996 and 2001, there were a total of 421 linchamientos committed. the linchamientos occur primarily in communities that were affected by the violence of the armed conflict (in the northern and north western altiplano). various explanations are offered for the linchamientos including the high levels of insecurity in guatemala, the exclusion and lack of trust of the majority of the population in the judicial system, and the impunity prevalent in the country. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 43 implementation of the 1996 peace accords and subsequent recommendations of the truth commission report (ceh, 1999), as well as increased investment in human development. rather than be taken as solutions to the problem, which implies a finality the laws do not provide, laws in the area of gender-based violence could be taken as starting points for wider debates about the multiple and intersecting structures of inequality and injustices present in women‘s lives, and about how to begin adequately responding to them. judicial reform in relation to violence against women, and the spaces opened by the peace process (jonas, 2000) could serve as a platform for broader discussions and more holistic efforts to find solutions for the problems of violence in post-war guatemala. the question of justice in relation to violence toward women in guatemala needs to be reframed by national and international actors as one about social justice. scholars, policy makers, and governmental and non-governmental institutions should more readily look to the complexities of women‘s lives and take cue from guatemalan women‘s activism, which highlights the multiple spheres on which women‘s rights must be fought. formal legal rights are one important step in women‘s larger struggles for social justice. acknowledgements this research was supported by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada, the mcgill trauma & global health program, and the mcgill centre for research and teaching on women. i am grateful to kristin norget, ellen corin, ismael vaccaro and nikki porter for their helpful comments and suggestions. i also wish to thank ronald niezen for providing a forum in his legal anthropology class for me to explore my ideas. studies in social justice volume 2, issue 1 issn: 1911-4788 44 references amnesty international. 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(1998). violent memories: mayan war widows in guatemala. boulder, co: westview press. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu-projects/global_report/pdfs/guatemala.pdf georas et al final before ts correspondence address: jane bailey, faculty of law, university of ottawa, ottawa, on, k1n 6n5; email: jbailey@uottawa.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 ethical dilemmas in resistance art workshops with youth chloé s. georas university of puerto rico, puerto rico jane bailey university of ottawa, canada valerie steeves university of ottawa, canada abstract in 2017 and 2018 the equality project organized two transnational youth resistance art workshops with young people aged 15-22 who were interested in social justice activism. these educational and outreach workshops provided participants with background information about online social justice issues and explored ways to use art to push back against technology-facilitated violence and surveillance in networked spaces. both during the design phase and the implemention of the workshops themselves, we were confronted by three dilemmas associated with these sorts of resistive social justice art projects. this article explores these dilemmas, which include how facilitators of youth art workshops can enable the production of digital art in a manner that is attentive to intersectional issues of digital literacy and access; respond to artistic appropriations of sexually explicit, discriminatory or hateful speech and their relation to cultural appropriation; and protect youth participants from liability for contravening defamation, privacy, copyright or trademark laws as part of their artistic appropriations. throughout, we present examples of how the legal frameworks in our two jurisdctions (canada and puerto rico) shaped the resistance and social justice opportunities available to our youth participants. we also discuss the decisions we made in consultation with our youth participants about how to navigate the law, and provide a list of suggestions for addressing these dilemmas for those who may wish to facilitate or engage in youth resistance art workshops in future. keywords privacy; inequality; technology; art; self-expression; digital; social justice; art activism; copyright chloé s. georas, jane bailey & valerie steeves studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 356 the equality project is a seven-year partnership of academic reseachers, educators, civil society groups, policymakers and youth funded by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada.1 together, we are working to develop new knowledge about young people’s experiences of privacy and equality in networked spaces. we also collaborate with youth on educational and outreach initiatives designed to help young people participate fully in the networked environment and develop their capacity to promote online social justice. accordingly, our work is an example of social justice youth development practices as defined by ginwright and james (2002): it is grounded in research co-conducted with youth to understand how power plays out in online social relationships; our intersectional focus gives identity a central role; our outreach initatives seek to dismantle systemic barriers to online equality (which we define as the ability to participate fully in networked spaces without discrimination or harassment); and we work to encourage collective action that is consonant with youth culture and values (p. 35). as part of our educational and outreach initiatives, the authors conceptualized, organized, and facilitated two transnational workshops in 2017-2018, on artistic responses to online issues (the equality project, 2019).2 the workshops placed particular emphasis on artistic interventions to help push back against technology-facilitated violence and surveillance in networked spaces. the first workshop was held on february 24-25, 2018, at st. stephen’s community house youth arcade studio in toronto, canada, which organizes art activism programs for youth and provides multi-media tools for self-expression. the second workshop was held on april 23-24, 2018, at diagonal in san juan, puerto rico, a space for exploring and exhibiting contemporary practices in art alongside the use of technology and digital mediums (diagonal, n.d.). the workshop in canada was a two-day standalone event. the workshop in puerto rico was preceded by four sessions of artistic mentorship provided by artists carola cintrón moscoso and migdalia luz barens-vera to a pre-selected group of participants who then participated in the workshop directed by the forementioned artists and the authors. in order to stimulate the creative process of the participants in the workshops, we worked with two youth research assistants, grace foran and dillon black, to created five “imagination primers” that introduced the issues and highlighted particular projects where young people had used art to respond to tech-facilitated violence, discrimination, and surveillance: (1) “what are online harassment & tech facilitated violence anyway?”; (2) “resisting online harassment: #gamergate”; (3) “what is surveillance anyway?”; (4) “resisting surveillance with theatre: surveillance camera 1 the project is co-led by valerie steeves and jane bailey. 2 the workshops were an educational and outreach initiative and not a research initiative. accordingly, no data was collected. we made the decision not to collect data to ensure that the art participants produced was not coopted into adult frames of reference. ethical dilemmas in resistance art workshops with youth studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 357 players”; and (5) “resisting racism with art.” the equality project later incorporated these primers into a lesson plan for use in classrooms.3 following completion of the workshops, carola cintrón moscoso, migdalia luz barens-vera and georas organized an art exhibition entitled equality project. it took place in espacio diagonal on june 1, 2018 and included works by participants of the canadian and puerto rican workshops. in addition, bailey, georas and steeves developed a train the trainer workshop called youth, art & resistance: facilitating workshops for change based on our experience of organizing and facilitating these transnational resistance art workshops, and presented the workshop at the human rights research and education centre (hrrec) at the university of ottawa faculty of law on march 2, 2018. this article addresses three dilemmas related to questions of social justice that we confronted as part of organizing the transnational resistance art workshops, which were of particular concern to us given the fact all three of us trained as lawyers and georas completed graduate studies in art history and cultural studies. the first dilemma relates to the fact that enabling the production of activist digital art is necessarily connected with the question of digital literacy in ways that require transcending the narrative that universal access to technology will bring about equality. the second dilemma concerns the social justice implications of artistic appropriations of sexually explicit, discriminatory or hateful imagery and speech, and the related concern of cultural appropriation, all of which could arise as part of engaging in activist artistic resistance projects. the third dilemma is that workshop participants may create works that raise legal and ethical questions relating to defamation, privacy, copyrights, and trademarks, requiring organizers and youth participants to directly address the ways in which law can be used to repress artistic expression intended to promote social justice. here we focus on the three dilemmas to develop a deeper understanding of the social justice implications of our workshops. although legal issues are obviously of concern in our art workshops and are addressed in this article, the ethical and social justice issues take centre stage. furthermore, when we do address legal matters specifically, it is because legal questions arose in the design process for both workshops, invoking various jurisdictionally-specific doctrines and laws that shaped the opportunities for resistance in each location. although we refer to the laws of canada, the united states, and puerto rico as the united states’ colonial territory, our main interest is to identify ways in which arts-based social justice initiatives such as ours are shaped by the regulatory frameworks that establish and protect the status quo, and not to conduct a comparative legal study of how the legal questions play out in each jurisdiction. for instance, when the workshop organizers 3 the primers, the lesson plan and videos and still photos of the art our participants produced are available on the the equality project website at http://www.equalityproject.ca/resources/artexchange/ chloé s. georas, jane bailey & valerie steeves studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 358 discussed how to inform the participants of the potential legal risks associated with creation of their resistance artworks, we struggled between our desire not to chill their artistic expression, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the need to inform them about the risks, particularly as the risk of criminalization is higher for members of marginalized groups, especially if they are engaged in particularly transgressive forms of expression. central to our social justice concerns regarding the workshops was how to enable the participants to understand the social, economic, and cultural systems of repression nested in the very process of digital content production. creative agency itself is ambiguously enabled and compromised by the architectures of power materialized in the networked tools through which activist artistic content can be produced and distributed. the stakes for transgressive digital artworks are thus high in the hostile digital ecosystems that sustain the daily lives of youth, particularly when youth seek to undermine the power relations of the platforms where they create their art. digital art and digital literacy: questions of access and social justice the first dilemma we considered as we designed the workshops concerns enabling the production of digital art and its relationship to digital literacy. in part, this dilemma is grounded in important debates occurring within the field of digital art that raise questions about the workshop and possible future redefinitions of its scope and strategy. but it also reflects debates in the field of digital literacy that require a deeper enquiry into the relationship between art, technology, and social justice. many terms have been deployed to name art forms using digital technologies, such as digital art, multimedia art, cyberarts, new media art, social media art, tactical media art, hacktivist art, and even post-internet art. contrary to the traditional notion of an artwork that is seen as a linear and finished work, digital art is “time‐based, dynamic, and non‐linear” (paul, 2016). a digital artwork might not be repeatable or could reconfigure itself continuously. this makes the contextual understanding of a digital artwork more layered to the extent that it relates to the materiality of the artwork and the computational processes that transcend the work itself. digital art, in this way, does not refer to an essentialist, ontological or phenomenological understanding of the digital, but instead refers to “social forms that involve electronic and digital communication technologies … such as different types of collaboration [that transcend] specific pieces of hard‐ and software” (medosch, 2016, p. 357). digital art is an umbrella term to name art that is “predominantly understood as digital‐born, computable art that is created, stored, and distributed via digital technologies and uses the features of these technologies as a medium” (paul, 2016, p. 2). a critical distinction in this field is between works that make an instrumental use of digital technologies, merely as a tool of production, and ethical dilemmas in resistance art workshops with youth studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 359 works that engage self-reflexively with digital technologies. the instrumentalist approach is limited for our purposes in two ways. first, it does not unravel the traditional conception of an artwork as a finite object (e.g., sculpture, print, painting or photograph). second, it fails to interrogate the relations of domination that are embedded within the current market design of – and legal framework governing – networked tools (toews, 2008, pp. 6778). as zuboff (2019) notes, the surveillance capitalism upon which these technologies are based approaches human experience, including artistic expression, as “free raw materials for hidden commercial practices of extraction, prediction, and sales” (p. vii). whether an artist uses commercial software to create an artwork or simply displays it over the internet, the art itself will be captured in the data stream and used to fuel the information economy. the act of creating with networked tools is accordingly coopted into a system of wealth production that privileges the few at the expense of the many. david toews (2008) warns that, unless social justice proponents unpack how the ongoing commodification of digitally produced content is “blurring the line between consumers and producers in order to extract labour from our most ordinary ways of interacting” (p. 68), then we risk using these tools in ways in which, “creative cultural agency becomes an imposition rather than a liberation” (p. 67). self-consciously digital artwork can help us unpack these dynamics precisely because it “employs these technologies as a tool for the creation of a less material, software‐based form that utilizes the digital medium’s inherent characteristics, such as its participatory and generative features” (paul, 2016, p. 2). this affordance of participatory creation opens up a space for artists to make collectivist and cooperative works that can deconstruct the existing distribution of social goods and explicitly trouble the power relations embedded in the technological tools and platforms they use to create their art (rizvi, 1998). in spite of the fact that the tools themselves are part of the infrastructure of commodification, artists can “build social justice from the ground up” by appropriating the tools “in a way that allows [the artist] to create something unique to him or her” that “bridges the gap between ‘what is and what could be’ in internet practices” (toews, 2008, p. 70). digital art, however, poses the question of the technological and media literacy required to produce this kind of art. at first blush, social justice would seem to require that all members of society have access to the tools and skills they need to create digital content. because of this, the majority of social justice interventions around online literacy to date have focused on redressing the digital divide between technology haves and have-nots (toews, 2008, p. 71). the digital divide debate can be helpful because it enables us to question “all the social stratifications, political conflicts, economic inequalities, and infrastructural development delays that have prevented the internet from reaching vast numbers of users” to better “understand the disparities in current global systems” (toews, 2008, pp. 70-71). certainly, women and chloé s. georas, jane bailey & valerie steeves studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 360 girls throughout history have been systematically excluded and dissuaded from understanding and studying technology-related fields and languages (vitores & gil-juarez, 2016). this exclusion is further compounded by intersectional forms of inequality for racialized and other minorities, which resonates with one of the reasons why the st. stephen’s youth arcade studio in toronto was initially founded. among other things, the studio helps to support young people from bipoc (black, indigenous, and people of colour) and other marginalized communities to develop the portfolios necessary to gain admission to art schools by offering access to resources such as space and art supplies. in so doing, it helps to place them on a more even playing field with applicants from privileged communities for whom access to these resources is not a barrier. according to maría fernández (1999), artists who work in media arts must struggle to keep abreast of the latest technological developments, putting artists “who cannot afford to join the race ... at a disadvantage,” (p. 66) especially given the scarcity of funding for the arts. despite the innovative forms of activism put forward by media art, fernández (1999) is concerned with how the “technological imperative in the arts is creating a new and exclusionary universalism” (p. 69). if we combine the problem of access to art schools experienced by those at marginalized social locations with the systemic exclusion of girls and women from an understanding of the digital languages of technological and media platforms and software design, we can appreciate the stakes involved for them to produce digital art. however, the notion of the digital divide may also restrict more meaningful social justice action by positioning equality-seeking groups as somehow “information or technology poor” (eubanks, 2011, p. xviii), and therefore not able to articulate the myriad ways in which they experience and actively resist the technological domination that shapes their lives (eubanks, 2011, p. 35). as eubanks (2011) writes of poor and working class women, our participants’ artistic interventions: directly contradict the widespread belief that [they] lack access to technology. in fact, they describe their lives as characterized by technological ubiquity – technology shapes their workplaces, community institutions, and political experiences. but, unlike many of their middle-class counterparts, their encounters with it and the high-tech economy tend to be exploitative and limiting, increasing their economic vulnerability and political marginalization. (p. xix) this lived experience underlines the need to challenge the narrative that universal access to technology will bring about equality (toews, 2008, p. 72); it also suggests that social justice can perhaps best be advanced by helping young artists acquire a critical understanding of the ways in which digital content production is nested in social, economic and cultural systems of repression (buckingham, 2008, pp. 73-90). our workshops were designed to enable an artistic process of resistance to surveillance and technology-facilitated violence that was informed by this ethical dilemmas in resistance art workshops with youth studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 361 critical understanding. when we started the workshops, we explicitly addressed the possibility that our participants could choose to use digital or non-digital media to engage with the issues that concerned them; in the end, all of our participants created non-digital visual artworks. however, to make this a real choice, we also committed enough funding after the workshops to ensure that participants could access a variety of media – both digital and non-digital – to complete their artwork using whatever medium they choose. with participant permission, we also created digital works to exhibit their art online. interestingly, as some of the participants of the workshops insightfully suggested when they were planning their projects, they felt that art-asresistance may be more effective if artists use technologies subversively in order to unravel them from within. we believe that this raises important questions for reconceptualizing future incarnations of the workshop to further empower young people (particularly those at marginalized social locations) to produce digital and media artworks that critically engage with surveillance and technology-facilitated violence. artistic appropriation of sexually explicit, discriminatory or hateful speech and its relation to cultural appropriation the second dilemma concerns the ways in which laws governing speech and images may constrain artistic appropriation of sexually explicit, discriminatory or hateful imagery and speech, and the related concern of cultural appropriation, both of which could arise as part of engaging in activist artistic resistance projects (georas, 2021). our workshop participants talked about their experiences of encountering sexually explicit, discriminatory or hateful imagery and speech and some were interested in repeating that imagery and speech as a means of resisting and criticizing technology-facilitated violence, discrimination and surveillance through their art. for example, some of the artworks our participants produced included the intentionally transgressive use of discriminatory terms such as “slut” to challenge imagery of sexual violence, sexually explicit slut-shaming, and racist hate speech. similarly, in other contexts youth artists may choose to reproduce the “n” word or incorporate profanity into their works. while these kinds of images or speech may be offensive (and in some cases illegal) in one context, our youth participants felt that their repetition in the workshop could form part of an artistic project of activist recontextualization to confront audiences with these experiences. although it did not arise in the context of our workshops, youth artists may similarly choose to express themselves by employing words and images specific to particular cultures in order to respond, raising issues around cultural appropriation versus cultural appreciation. both of these actions could be affected by the legal frameworks in place to govern speech. chloé s. georas, jane bailey & valerie steeves studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 362 the following summarizes the legal concerns that we, as facilitators, considered before we conducted the workshops, and the approach that we took to mitigate constraints on our participants’ participation and selfexpression during the workshops. appropriation of sexually explicit, discriminatory or hateful imagery and speech historic examples: dworkin, langer and ringley. as we designed the workshop, we were aware of the fact that artists who have chosen in the past to resist systems of repression by appropriating sexually explicit, discriminatory or hateful imagery and speech have been subjected to legal action when their works have not been clearly distinguishable from the material that their work was intended to criticize or challenge (adler, 1996; matsuda, 1989). anti-sexual violence and women’s rights activist andrea dworkin, for example, wrote several works of fiction describing graphic acts of sexual violence against women in order to critique sexual violence as a tool of misogyny. some of these works were later detained at the canadian border on the basis that they constituted obscenity, although canadian customs agents ultimately released them (mackinnon & dworkin, 1994). similarly, sketches and paintings that depicted children involved in sexually explicit activity which were created by canadian artist eli langer and exhibited at a toronto art gallery in 1994 were subject to a forfeiture application under the canadian criminal code’s child pornography provision (ryder, 2003, p. 128). ultimately the court concluded that the artistic materials did not constitute child pornography because, rather than posing a realistic risk of harm to children, these works were meant to “lament the reality” of child sexual abuse (ryder, 2003, p. 128). the dworkin and langer cases represent just two of many examples of potential legal implications arising from artistic appropriation of sexually violent, discriminatory and hateful content that long pre-date the internet. these are not issues, therefore, that are new to the digital era. that said, the digital technologies that are the subject of our art workshops introduce certain additional complexity to the situation. for example, online display of artworks produced during the workshops expands opportunities for more interactive public engagement with art. at the same time, however, digital technologies allow for easy copying, modification, and redistribution of works that could, among other things, change the original artist’s intended meaning by removing the work from its original context. in this way, art originally intended to appropriate discriminatory, obscene or hateful content in order to criticize it could be modified or relocated into a different context that valorizes it.4 4 we discuss how our participants resolved this issue in the section on copyright issues below. ethical dilemmas in resistance art workshops with youth studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 363 artworks actually created online can raise similar issues. for example, in 1996 us college student jennifer ringley set up a 24/7 webcam in her apartment as a “social experiment” with numerous objectives including challenging mainstream media representations of stereotypically “perfect” women (bailey, 2009). one of the outcomes of ringley’s experiment, however, involved viewers searching through hours of relatively mundane video in order to cut out sexually explicit excerpts that were then used to “recreate material that shares many of the features of voyeuristic mainstream pornography” (bailey, 2009). overall, the dworkin, langer, and ringley examples help to illustrate the possibility of legal, ethical and social justice frictions that could arise in workshops designed to engage youth participants in artistic resistance against technology-facilitated violence, discrimination, and surveillance. not only might these works attract unwanted legal attention, they could also be appropriated by others to convey meanings contrary to those intended by the original artist. legal limits on expression: hate speech, obscenity, child pornography. as facilitators, we also struggled with the possibility that workshop participants’ art could potentially violate hate speech, obscenity or child pornography laws. the imposition of legal constraints on artistic and other forms of expression is the subject of a long-standing debate, the parameters of which are too vast to fully articulate in this piece. instead, our goal here is to loosely sketch two of the perspectives we considered as we sought to design a workshop to help youth participants advance social justice. the first perspective asserts that legal restrictions on sexually violent pornography (mackinnon, 1987), and on racist hate propaganda (matsuda, 1989) can be understood as equality-affirming acts. catharine mackinnon (1987), for example, argued that mainstream pornography both involves sexual violence against women and children in its creation and also undermines the humanity and equality of women and children more generally through representations of their degradation and dehumanization (pp. 210211). similarly, mari matsuda (1989) argued that racist hate propaganda not only wounds targeted individuals and groups, but also paves the way to other acts of violence against targeted groups by stereotyping them as less than human. viewed from these perspectives, legal restraints on these types of expression can be understood as equality-affirming social justice initiatives. in contrast, the second social justice perspective we considered argues that words and images cannot be understood as having static meaning – their meanings are multiple and determined in context. as a result, postmodern scholars such as judith butler (1997) have argued that the artistic reappropriation and deployment of racist or sexist commentaries in new contexts can serve as an effective social justice tool for defusing hatred and discrimination. from this perspective, legal restraints on pornography and hate speech undermine social justice objectives by exposing to criminal chloé s. georas, jane bailey & valerie steeves studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 364 sanction those who seek to criticize violent pornography (or hate speech) by appropriating it into artistic expression (adler, 1996). seen in this way, legal restraints serve to chill transgressive expressive resistance. in canada, exposure to criminal sanction and the associated risk of chilling resistive expression, however, is constrained at least in part by relevant defences, such as: (a) the “public good” defence to obscenity charges (canadian criminal code, s 163(3)); (b) child pornography charge defences of no undue risk of harm (canadian criminal code, s 163.1(6)(b)), and legitimate purpose (canadian criminal code, s 163.1(6)(a)); and (c) numerous defences to willful promotion of hatred charges (including truth, good faith opinion, public interest or benefit and intention to remove materials promoting hatred; canadian criminal code, s 319(3)). that said, it is important to recognize that the risk of criminalization may be higher for our participants as they are members of marginalized groups, especially if they chose to engage in particularly transgressive forms of expression (cossman, 2002). further, the child pornography offence is particularly broad, prohibiting 12 different actions including accessing such content (canadian criminal code, s 163.1(2) and (3)), and sets a relatively low threshold for violation. because of this, we knew that the provision could, subject to available defences (canadian criminal code, s 163.1(3)(a); r v sharpe, 2001), expose our youth participants seeking to address social injustices to criminal intervention in relation to issues that may be of most expressive importance to them. ethical and social justice issues. in addition to considering how the law could impact our participants, we also considered the possibility that raising these issues with our participants before they began to work could risk chilling artistic expression. such risk could be compounded in situations where power differentials based on race, age, gender, and other factors mean that discussions around these issues are likely to be understood more as warnings than as attempts at informed dialogue – especially where the issues are introduced by adult facilitators in sessions involving youth participants. however, we concluded that failing to discuss legal limits, as well as risks to participants such as others taking the content they have created in the wrong way or misusing it to support the very positions the participant seeks to critique through their art, seems unfair – particularly if (as discussed below) participants are asked to sign liability waivers relating to content they have consented to being posted online. we also struggled with the possibility that the context in which the workshops take place may also impose limits with social justice implications. here we draw on our own experiences with respect to educational modules created for use in schools. school boards censor modules that directly address many of the issues young people face online (e.g., hateful misogyny) and the language they use to express their experiences (e.g., profanity). thus, educational modules intended to help them navigate online pitfalls tend to be ethical dilemmas in resistance art workshops with youth studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 365 anemic and reinforce the impression that adults do not have a good understanding of what actually happens online. such contextual constraints, by definition, threaten to limit the efficacy of exercises such as resistance art workshops by imposing ex ante restrictions on what kind of expression is considered acceptable. moreover, these constraints may discourage participants from investing themselves in a process that appears so out of touch with their lived realities and experiences. in the end, we decided that it was best to raise these issues with our participants so that they could make informed decisions about their own selfexpression. we felt that a strict legal approach that laid down “ground rules” about what could and could not be said at the beginning of the workshop was inconsistent with the social justice aims of the initiative. instead, we chose to facilitate the approaches our participants took so we could help them explore ways to amplify their own voices in ways that made sense to them. cultural appropriation another ethical/social justice issue that we considered as we designed our resistance art workshop is cultural appropriation. we knew from previous work with youth that some participants might, for example, choose to address in their art attacks on marginalized communities of which they are not members, employing language or images from those communities in order to do so. there is some debate in the literature around what cultural appropriation is and whether, by definition, it entails a moral wrong (matthes, 2016). however, it is well-accepted that a member of a dominant culture’s use of an image, history or language specific to a marginalized cultural group is morally problematic because it interferes with the cultural autonomy of the marginalized group. loretta todd (1990) puts it this way: for me, the definition of appropriation originates in its inversion, cultural autonomy. cultural autonomy signifies a right to cultural specificity, a right to one’s origins and histories as told from within the culture and not as mediated from without. (p. 24) among the harms of cultural appropriation are the potential for misrepresenting the marginalized culture, exposing its members to discrimination, and potential loss of economic opportunity for members of marginalized groups (matthes, 2016, pp. 348-349). current discussions around cultural appropriation sometimes attempt to distinguish it from cultural appreciation, such that appropriation involves “the act of taking or using things from a culture that is not your own, especially without showing that you understand or respect this culture” (cambridge dictionary, as cited in brucculieri, 2018), while cultural appreciation involves acknowledging cultural sources, paying marginalized communities for use of their cultural chloé s. georas, jane bailey & valerie steeves studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 366 capital, or collaborating with those communities from the outset (brucculieri, 2018). although this issue did not arise during either workshop, we planned to bring it to the group’s attention if it did and discuss it more generally as a form of “cultural plagiarism.” we felt that this would pair reasonably well with the discussions of plagiarism (adoption and presentation of another’s work as if it were one’s own) that they would be familiar with as students. however, resistance art that “plagiarizes” from empowered sources in order to critique them (much like the process of using trademarks and other copyrighted material discussed below) is obviously distinguishable in social justice terms from members of dominant cultural groups’ appropriation of culture from marginalized communities. defamation, privacy, copyright and trademark considerations of artistic appropriations the third challenge we addressed as we planned the workshop was that participants may produce works that raise legal and ethical questions relating to defamation, privacy, copyright and trademarks. in other words, there could be a conflict between the resistance artwork method and the potential illegality of the works themselves, with important implications for the social justice potential of our workshops. defamation and privacy considerations since claims can also arise concerning the alleged defamation of a third party resulting from the publication of artworks produced by workshop participants, it is important to consider defamation and invasion of privacy as possible causes of action in addition to hate speech and obscenity. when considering defamation and privacy issues, the risks faced by schools in the us when publishing the works of students may be instructive. irrespective of whether or not our workshops actually take place in a school setting, we concluded that the normative criteria developed in the case law on this matter can be helpful in understanding some of the risks our workshops may raise and the related level of care we should exercise to both protect the participants and organizers of workshops like ours from legal liability. in the us school context, for example, negligence and defamation are common claims of liability that arise in relation to publication of student works. in order to avoid being found negligent, us school districts and teachers have an affirmative duty to take all reasonable steps to protect their students from foreseeable harm (dorlac v clairmont academy, 2007). this affirmative duty entails taking precautions to avoid harm and offering proper instructions to students (pirkle v oakdale union grammar school dist., ethical dilemmas in resistance art workshops with youth studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 367 1953; station v travelers ins., 1974). for the purposes of our workshops, if the publication of an artwork made by a participant could cause damage to the author, this doctrine suggests that there may be an affirmative legal duty to explain the risks of publication to the participants. in one us case, warner v lompoc (2002), two families sued a school district and a newspaper advisor claiming that comments in the student newspaper on the effects of divorce that were attributed to their daughters were defamatory and an invasion of privacy. while the court ultimately rejected the claims it commented that school officials had engaged in poor judgment by using the students’ names in the publication. these kinds of legal precedents could be relevant to workshops like ours in situations where participants seek to address technology-facilitated violence or surveillance by drawing on the experiences of others in ways that identify them. copyright considerations since the participants in our workshops were minors, the questions of capacity to hold copyright and to licence use and publication of one’s work by others arose. this issue was important to us because we hosted two exhibits of participants’ artwork, one online and one offline. copyright legislation in both the us and canada draws no distinction between minors and adults relative to copyright ownership (copyright act, 17 usc § 101 et seq; copyright act, rsc, 1985; copyrightlaws.com, 2019). the us copyright office's website, moreover, specifically states that “minors may claim copyright, and the copyright office issues registrations to minors, but state laws may regulate the business dealings involving copyrights owned by minors” (us copyright office, n.d.). similarly, us case law concerning this topic has operated under the assumption that minors can hold copyrights (mason v jamie music pub. co., 2009; a.v. ex rel. vanderhye v. iparadigms, llc, 2009; a.v. v iparadigms, llc, 2008). overall, the absence of an adult/minor distinction in us and canadian copyright legislation, existing us case law, and the guidance of the us copyright office's website support a minor's claim of copyright ownership in the works of authorship they create. subject to legislation that limits the enforceability of contracts entered into by minors, minors themselves (or through their legal guardians) may enter into agreements with other parties for the use of their copyrighted works, including exclusive or non-exclusive licensing agreements. the question of ownership is an important one from the perspective of social justice advocacy because it determines the extent to which the intellectual property of the artist seeking to trouble existing frameworks of oppression will be recognized and protected in law. it also governs the extent to which artists can re-appropriate the intellectual property of others (as discussed above) in order to deconstruct the power relationships that play out in networked spaces. further, participants’ copyright and their ability to chloé s. georas, jane bailey & valerie steeves studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 368 license others to use or publish their works must be taken into account by workshop facilitators who wish to exhibit, post or republish the works in other digital and non-digital fora. copyright law also raises important social justice concerns where workshop participants wish to incorporate pre-existing copyrighted works of others into their creations. the us copyright act of 1976, for example, establishes a series of exclusive rights or copyrights for authors, adult or minor, of original works. copyrights only exist if a work has two essential characteristics, namely, originality and that it be fixed in some tangible form (copyright act, 17 usc § 106). the exclusive rights to control the use and distribution of a copyrighted work established by copyright law include the exclusive power to reproduce or make copies of the work; create derivative works based on the work (namely, to alter, remix, or build upon the work); distribute copies of the work; publicly display the work; perform the work; and, in the case of sound recordings, to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission. derivative works are of particular relevance to our art workshops. a derivative work is: a work based upon one or more pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical arrangement, dramatization, fictionalization, motion picture version, sound recording, art reproduction, abridgment, condensation, or any other form in which a work may be recast, transformed, or adapted. a work consisting of editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications which, as a whole, represent an original work of authorship, is a ‘derivative work.’ (copyright act, 17 usc § 101) a derivative work is subject to protection irrespective of whether the underlying pre-existing work is still subject to copyright. however, the protection for the author of a derivative work is only in relation to the creative expression in the derivative rather than over the original underlying work. in other words, a derivative work can have simultaneous copyrights related to the derivative expression and relative to the original work upon which the derivative was inspired (copyright act, 17 usc § 103(b)). thus, if a participant in our workshops creatively appropriates a pre-existing work (such as an artistic representation used by a social media site) without requesting permission, they may violate the exclusive rights of the author of the original work. also, if a participant appropriates a derivative work (such as a translation of a pre-existing work), they may violate the copyrights of the authors of both the derivative and the underlying original work of art. doctrines of fair use in the us and fair dealing in canada counter the rigidity of the copyright regime (schechter & thomas, 2003, p. 213), which undermines the process of creative exchange. in the us, for example, in order to “promote the progress of science and useful arts,” (us const. art. i, § 8, cl. 8) the doctrine of fair use was adopted to permit uses of copyrighted materials without having to request permission when considered beneficial to ethical dilemmas in resistance art workshops with youth studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 369 society. the doctrine includes uses such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research (copyright act, 17 usc § 107), but is subject to a number of conditions that can make it difficult to predict whether any given use will be considered by a court to be a “fair use.” similar sorts of concerns have been raised with respect to “fair dealing” in s. 29 of the canadian copyright act (1985). thus, using protected contents without requesting permission necessarily entails some level of risk. in this way, the inherent ambiguity of these doctrines can undermine the free exchange of ideas at the heart of cultural and artistic production. in order to avoid copyright infringement claims, legal advisors often prefer to rely on the negotiation of contractual and licensing agreements, rather than on fair use or fair dealing. however, these agreements are highly complex, expensive, and generally inaccessible to young and struggling artists. moreover, lawrence lessig (2014) has called the incentives to licence a “permission culture,” whereby people feel pressured to request permission to use or modify protected works rather than rely on fair use. permission culture is an expression of entrenched economic and class interests of, for instance, the entertainment industry's increasing proprietary claims over cultural production, which unravels the capacity to freely share artistic production and generate flourishing cultural spaces. according to lessig (2014), “there has never been a time in our history when more of our ‘culture’ was as ‘owned’ as it is now. and yet there has never been a time when the concentration of power to control the uses of culture has been as unquestioningly accepted as it is now” (p. 12). the great irony is that the concentration of power associated with the increase in proprietary copyright claims occurs precisely alongside the emergence of the internet and digital technologies, which were initially celebrated for democratizing the access of cultural processes of production beyond traditional gatekeepers such as publishing houses and music companies. this dramatizes the disjuncture between the potentialities of new technologies and the ways in which the copyright regime works to protect the vested interests of the powerful. the vulnerability of workshop participants to legal claims of copyright violations in the context of fair use in the us or fair dealing in canada should not be underestimated. the main question is how to deal with this dilemma in terms of the workshop itself. the concern is whether to pre-censor the creative process with legal prescriptions, which we concluded would be counterproductive relative to the purpose of the workshop to enable forms of activist and critical expression. as already mentioned, this is complicated by the age and socio-economic status of our participants, who may feel doubly disadvantaged by the imposition of legal constraints that function to repress them or their expression at an event that is explicitly intended to give them voice. the integration of legal waivers of responsibility into the licensing scheme of the workshops posed difficult ethical questions given that the workshop is designed to be a critical engagement with technology-facilitated violence and chloé s. georas, jane bailey & valerie steeves studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 370 surveillance in ways that could implicate its participants. on the one hand, workshops are intended to encourage participants to explore activist artistic engagements, but on the other (through legal waivers of responsibility) we as workshop facilitators would be distancing themselves from works that could pose controversial legal questions and which could be precisely a symptom of the transgressive and critical depth of their artistic proposal. furthermore, the legally borderline nature of the work could be read as part of its performative deployment. whereas most of the artworks of the participants of the canada workshop stayed within the realm of original visual works given time constraints, the participants of the puerto rico workshop were engaged in a more long-term process of artistic mentorship prior to the workshop in order to assist them in the conceptualization and materialization of their projects. in both workshops, we worked to give our youth participants a visual vocabulary to deconstruct the seemingly monolithic popular cultural representations that shape their lives without inhibiting their creative explorations with legal prescriptions. however, when we developed a lesson plan so teachers could conduct the workshop in a school setting, we kept the cases about school liability in mind and included precautions and background information about the level of care that should be practiced in the undertaking of workshops addressing social justice issues such as technology-facilitated violence and surveillance in schools. we did this because our prior work suggests that, if schools and other organizations are not offered insight on how to minimize exposure to liability for themselves and for participants, they may shy away from engaging with projects like our workshops, which are aimed at addressing social justice issues that are often, by definition, controversial. in terms of the actual license we used to enable us to reproduce our participants’ art, we discussed our desire to hold the exhibits with our participants and provided them with model documents using various legal appropraches. after a collective discussion, both workshop groups opted for the creative commons attribution – noncommercial – sharealike 4.0 international license (creative commons, n.d) because it explicitly seeks to provide a community-based response to balance the strictures of intellectual property with online creativity and speech. trademark considerations similar to the copyright debate, the appropriation or transformation of trademarks in artworks is central to enabling a semiotic space for critical dialogue in relation to the companies whose pervasive cultural presence marks the technologically-mediated daily communications and habits of youth. however, once again, the space for resistive deconstruction will be shaped by domestic laws. ethical dilemmas in resistance art workshops with youth studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 371 for example, us courts have extended first amendment protections for parody and satire in trademark infringement lawsuits. trademark rights, while providing protection for the integrity of trademarks, “do not entitle the owner to quash an unauthorized use of the mark by another who is communicating ideas or expressing points of view” (l.l. bean, inc. v drake publishers, 1987). moreover, the us federal dilution statute establishes an exemption for criticizing and commenting on the “famous mark owner or the goods or services of the famous mark owner” (false designations of origin, false descriptions, and dilution forbidden, 15 usc § 1125(c)(3)(a)(ii)). artistic expression, as well as criticism, commentary and reporting, therefore cannot be censored through the deployment of trademark law to the extent that important cultural dialogue and commentary of the trademark of a company, product or person “would be all but impossible if speakers were under” the constant “threat of an infringement lawsuit” (the new kids on the block v news america publ'g, 1992). however, such protections do not exist in every jurisdiction. in canada, for example, “parody and satire are not defences to trademark infringement” (united airlines, inc. v jeremy cooperstock, 2017, para 83). the absence of such a defence in canada raises a potentially important limit on the subversive use of trademarks by participants in workshops like ours given the pervasive presence of trademarks in the lives of young people and on the social media platforms they inhabit. given these realities, artistic appropriations of corporate trademarks and copyrighted works could be an important part of young people’s critical engagement with institutional complicity in the technological facilitation of violence and discrimination. for example, one artist discussed the possibility of incorporating into her art work material in which the government asserted copyright. the assertion of copyright itself was interesting because it related to traditional patterns that had been created by indigenous peoples, so that including it in the artistic work would make an important statement about colonialism and repression. satiric, parodic and appropriative uses of trademarks and copyrighted materials can thus be seen as a crucial artistic strategy to publicly engage with the symbolic deployment of these digital architectures in young people’s lives, but their use can be complicated by the legal rules that are in place to protect intellectual property. conclusion: recommendations for addressing legal, ethical and social justice issues this article has addressed questions concerning social justice that arose as we designed and held our transnational resistance art workshops, including dilemmas about how to enable the production of digital art in a manner that is attentive to intersectional issues of digital literacy and access; issues of artistic appropriation of sexually explicit, discriminatory or hateful speech chloé s. georas, jane bailey & valerie steeves studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 372 and their relation to cultural appropriation; and, lastly, concerns relating to defamation, privacy, copyright and trademark considerations of artistic appropriations. as discussed, none of these issues is new to art workshops designed to support youth resistance to technology-facilitated violence and surveillance. instead, and as demonstrated above, they represent matters of long-standing debate and controversy within the art world and more generally among the public at large. we do not purport within the confines of this paper, therefore, to resolve them. our aim here is twofold: to raise awareness of the issues; and to offer the following modest suggestions for addressing them with workshop participants: • those wishing to facilitate resistance art workshops should understand the risks the workshops may entail and the related level of care that should be exercised to protect workshop participants and minimize exposure to liability; • workshop facilitators should specifically familiarize themselves with relevant legal issues in their respective jurisdiction; • workshop facilitators should engage in ex ante discussions of legal, ethical, and social justice issues with workshop participants, while working to minimize the potential chilling effect of such discussions by, for example, engaging young people as facilitators to lead discussions in order to avoid the power imbalance arising between adult facilitators and young participants; and • workshop facilitators and participants should make ex post decisions about which, if any, art produced at the workshop will be posted online or posted without identifying information relating to the artist, in light of associated legal, ethical, and social justice risks, with particular regard for potentially negative consequences to the young artist. acknowledgements thanks to the social sciences and humanities research council of canada for funding the equality project. thanks also to all of the participants in our workshops, to carola cintrón moscoso and migdalia barens vera for their mentorship in puerto rico, to bridget sinclair and all the staff at st stephen’s community house for their support in toronto, to dillon black, grace foran, andy villanueva and lorraine acevedo franqui for assisting with preparations for the workshops, and to vanessa ford for her research assistance on this paper. finally, thanks to the shirley greenberg chair of women and the legal profession, and to the university of ottawa for funding professor georas as visiting researcher at uottawa in 2018. ethical dilemmas in resistance art workshops with youth studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 355-374, 2021 373 references adler, a. 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(2019). the age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. profile books. _________ autumn asher blackdeer, phd, msw, assistant professor, graduate school of social work, university of denver, denver, co. maria gandarilla ocampo, msw, doctoral candidate, brown school of social work, washington university, st. louis, mo. copyright © 2022 authors, vol. 22 no. 2 (summer 2022), 720-740, doi: 10.18060/24986 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. #socialworksowhite: a critical perspective on settler colonialism, white supremacy, and social justice in social work autumn asher blackdeer maria gandarilla ocampo abstract: to date, social work continues to be a predominantly white-dominated profession; this is true across all levels of the profession’s current and aspiring membership, including students, practitioners, and faculty members. this racial composition is remnant of our profession’s history of upholding white supremacy and legacy of white saviorism. not surprisingly, foundational teachings of social work center and champion white women (e.g., jane addams) while neglecting the important contributions of black and brown social workers to the profession. the harm done by continuing and upholding these practices extends to all spheres that social work education touches, directly or indirectly. while the national association of social workers code of ethics would lead one to think of social work as a noble profession, the reality demonstrates that we continually fall short of that reputation. social work education is guilty of exploiting vulnerable and marginalized communities for the benefit of the profession under the guise of promoting social justice. for example, field placement, a cornerstone of social work education, continues to send mainly white students into communities of color for the purposes of learning, often treating the community as guinea pigs in the pursuit of white knowledge through experiential learning. although in the long run, field placements can have some benefits for communities, we need to be more critical about the practices we engage in and the ways in which they fail to advance social justice and reinforce the status quo. we are at a pivotal moment in our profession as we reckon with the dissonance between our preaching and practice. the purpose of this paper is to highlight the many ways in which social work education haphazardly 1) perpetuates colonialism and upholds white supremacy, 2) harms marginalized communities, and 3) fails to model our code of ethics. we make a call for serious introspection within the field of social work: to evaluate the power dynamics at play, reckon with our past, and plan for a profession that strengthens and lives up to its commitment to social justice. we conclude with recommendations for transformative change within the social work profession. keywords: social justice; white supremacy; settler colonialism; antiracism; social work education; social work practice; field education despite the supposed dedication to achieving social justice, the social work profession has continually perpetuated settler colonialism and white supremacy. several have pointed to the year 2020 as a moment of reckoning due to the global coronavirus pandemic and the national racial justice awakening spurred by state-sanctioned violence against black and brown lives. goode and colleagues (2021) posit that living in times of racial and political unrest requires social work activism; however, the social work profession remains largely silent as revolutionary social movements of our time unfold (jeyapal, 2017). if the social work profession were living up to its true mission of social justice, social activism would about:blank asher blackdeer & gandarilla ocampo/#socialworksowhite 721 be the norm and reactionary statements during times of civil unrest would be unnecessary from the profession. as part of the new generation of social workers, we refuse to remain silent. we add our voices to fellow social work scholars who have called for a reawakening of our profession and a radical confrontation of oppression (goode et al., 2021). social movements are a ripe opportunity to challenge the profession’s complacency and our notions of professionalism in favor of a more progressive social work that can challenge oppression and promote social justice (jeyapal, 2017). throughout this paper we will demonstrate how the social work profession 1) perpetuates colonialism and upholds white supremacy 2) harms marginalized communities, and 3) fails to model our code of ethics. we conclude with recommendations for transformative change within the social work profession. history of social work upon first glance the social work profession appears to be based upon specialized knowledge and a commitment to social justice, but the actually relies on authority and power (gambrill, 2001). scholars posit that in actuality very little evidence exists to support the social work profession’s supposed dedication to radical social change and structural transformation (brady et al., 2019). social work claims to originate from powerful social movements throughout time (reisch, 2013 as cited by brady et al., 2019); however, scholars have begun to delineate the following pattern regarding the social work profession’s actual involvement with social movements: as new social movements emerge, the field of social work begins to reject the social movement, including its leaders, members, and goals (brady et al., 2019). soon after, social work begins to lionize the social movement’s ideas, embracing its leaders, members, and goals, and attaches itself to its legacy (brady et al., 2019). finally social work uses the movements’ influential ideas and methods in order to co-opt any victories and subsequent icons for the credit of social work, not the social movement itself (brady et al., 2019). in other words, the social work profession opposes social movements as they emerge, and often will support them as they become successful as a means to attach the profession to its victories and leaders, without giving full credit to the movement itself. social work institutions formulate the backbone of the profession, and historically were not as grounded in social justice as one might think. social work has an extensive history of complicity, carrying out the government’s agenda and enforcing social control, from segregated settlement houses and social services; the removal, relocation, and genocide against indigenous communities; the incarceration of japanese americans; and the ongoing state-sanctioned violence against black and brown communities (brady et al., 2019; national association of social workers [nasw], 2021; tang yan et al., 2021). social work has been historically influenced by christianity, the doctrinal authority which upholds and justifies white supremacy (dyson et al., 2020), and deficit-based thinking (brady et al., 2019). early social work organizations were segregated, anti-native, and decidedly christian, with services primarily delivered through the church (brady et al., 2019). this heavy patriarchal influence on social work persists today in the paternalistic values and ethics imparted upon the profession. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 722 early social work saw different individuals as problems to be treated, a line of thinking that persists today through the medical model (brady et al., 2019). this deficit approach was carried out in the work of mary richmond and jane addams as they tied social problems to individual deficits and problematized individuals as people in need of treatment, often including institutionalization (brady et al., 2019). social work reproduces this line of thinking in treating marginalized communities, predominately those of color, as deficits or problems that need help integrating into white society, as social work promotes white civility as a benchmark of assimilation (fortier & hon-sing wong, 2019). social work and whiteness are further seen in jane addams’ 1910 words as she likened “pity for the poor” as charitable but juxtaposed “hatred of injustice” as radical (jeyapal, 2017). based upon this history, social work is actually founded more in charity than empowerment (lerner, 2021). this foundation of charity is perpetuated through hidden curriculum in social work education and manifests today as white saviorism. social justice while social justice appears as an explicit social work value, the actuality continues to reproduce racial and societal hierarchies (bhuyan et al., 2017). despite clear calls for social justice from the social work governing bodies such as the council on social work education (cswe), nasw, and the american academy of social work and social welfare, there is an evident lack of research on how to integrate social justice into the classroom through course content, syllabi, assignments, etcetera (atteberry-ash et al., 2021). previous research has shown that social work students start their programs with a strong social justice commitment and endorse that their education has a positive impact on that commitment overall; however, these students also report very little opportunities to learn or apply social justice theories and skills acquired in their msw programs (goode et al., 2021). research has found that social work students reinforce this dichotomy in viewing social justice as separate from clinical practice, stating social justice classes are too theoretical and fail to offer practical skills (bhuyan et al., 2017). schools of social work lack emphasis on social action overall (apgar, 2021). results also found an overall lack of social justice integration throughout the curriculum, reporting that a lack of institutional support reinforced whiteness as the dominant social work perspective and an overarching lack of practical social justice skills throughout the program (bhuyan et al., 2017). ultimately, social work students report a disconnect in curriculum and skills from the profession’s overall mission of social justice (goode et al., 2021). further, while social work purports to value social justice, the profession appears to stall in moving this ideal into motion through social action. social action, originating from community organizing, is essential to the social work mission of social change (apgar, 2021). the nasw says social work involves political and social action; however, recent work reports that social workers are largely not involved in efforts for systematic change (apgar, 2021). in fact, there has been a decline of activism within the field, with social workers spending less than 2% of their time engaging in macro practices such as community organizing or policy development (apgar, 2021). while there have been critical and influential voices throughout time, the entire social work profession itself falls short (brady et al., 2019), with some calling out the profession’s deep thread of insincerity asher blackdeer & gandarilla ocampo/#socialworksowhite 723 (gambrill, 2001). mainstreaming is defined as the combination of marginalized critical social work approaches with the institutionalized commitment to social justice (bhuyan et al., 2017). this reduces the discourse to creating a professional image or branding, rather than offering tangible skills in order to achieve social justice (bhuyan et al., 2017). social work as a field likes to “talk the talk,” yet proves time and time again that it lacks commitment to “walk the walk,” revealing this unchanging gap between our so-called dedication to social justice compared to the actual actions of activism (apgar, 2021). social work is guilty of mainstreaming social justice, reducing our mission to hashtags and virtue signals instead of an actual commitment to structural change. these conflicting ideas of valuing social justice versus taking social action lead the present authors to ask—is social work really committed to achieving social justice? settler colonialism present day discussions of white supremacy are remiss in the exclusion of the lasting impact of settler colonialism; this modern culture of whiteness is rooted in colonization, and must be named and addressed in order to dismantle white supremacy (lerner, 2021). coloniality is defined as the long-term patterns of power, seen throughout culture, labor, and knowledge production, that result from colonialism and survive beyond the colonial time period (almeida et al., 2019). coloniality is maintained in higher education through the criteria of academic performance of knowledge through which the experiences and values of marginalized populations become invisible (almeida et al., 2019). coloniality manifests through three key systems: hierarchies (racial division), knowledge (privileging white ways of knowing as “objective”), and societal systems (reinforcing hierarchy’s ability to regulate and segregate in order to uphold fellow systems; almeida et al., 2019). ultimately, controlling history, knowledge, health, and justice is coloniality in action (almeida et al., 2019). colonization is present in the classroom and is not merely something from the past (lerner, 2021). despite social work’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, social work continues to teach eurocentrically, perpetuating the colonization of indigenous peoples and knowledge and every other non-white population (dumbrill & green, 2008) through the continual invalidation and refusal of other ways of knowing (lerner, 2021). examples of this can be seen throughout social work curricula, including the teaching of eurocentric frameworks of research for knowledge building and of clinical models for assessment and treatment. social work teaches from an internalized colonial mindset, leaving students with little to no skills to decolonize their own education and organizations. such a mindset leads to the perpetuation of oppressive practice (lerner, 2021). further, social work is taught through an individualist lens, which posits that individuals make sense of their realities through reflection of their own social experiences, reinforcing how coloniality centers on individual issues such as identity development when in reality the entire system is causing harm (almeida et al., 2019). this coloniality is further seen in social work practice through the psychosocial assessment, a problematic and othering approach to an individual seeking help (almeida et al., 2019). specifically, the psychosocial assessment and like iterations (e.g., biopsychosocial assessments) do not fully consider how structural and systemic barriers manifest in the form of biopsychosocial problems and as a result, plans developed advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 724 from such assessments place the onus of resolving often structural or systemic based issues (e.g., poverty, racism, etc.) on the individuals seeking support. we can decolonize this approach by situating the problem within the matrix of coloniality and considering frameworks like the social determinants of health rather than a “neutral” context (almeida et al., 2019). for example, using the social determinants of health – economic stability, education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhood and built environment, social and community context (healthy people 2030, u.s. department of health and human services, office of disease prevention and health promotion, n.d.) can provide a better understanding of how context, systemic, and structural barriers impact individual health, shifting the focus away from individuals and highlighting the need for social workers to address system issues more broadly. beyond the classroom, colonization is perpetuated by the profession through inaction to address systemic and structural harm to marginalized people and communities of color. recently the nasw published a report in which they outlined the numerous ways in which the social work profession has failed to promote social justice by actively “supporting policies and activities that harm people of color” (nasw, 2021, p. 2). a major manifestation of coloniality in social work is the practice and perpetuation of white supremacy. white supremacy we must name these structures of white supremacy and colonization in order to begin to interrupt them (almeida et al., 2019; lerner, 2021). white supremacy is a mechanism of social control and oppression originating from european imperialism (almeida et al., 2019; beck, 2019). there has been extensive work (peweward & almeida, 2014) on how white supremacy has become law in the formation and cementation of the united states as a nation (almeida et al., 2019). within the literature, these formative processes are known as the racial contract, referring to how whiteness has been translated into social capital through the definition of beliefs, values, and behaviors (almeida et al., 2019). beliefs around individualism, as opposed to collectivism, as well as ideas and behaviors around professionalism are an example of this in social work. hegemony is how colonizers dominate power in society through economic, education, media, and government by forcing eurocentric worldviews on everyone, presenting white power as beneficial to all (lerner, 2021). the hegemony of whiteness posits that white is normal, neutral, and objective (beck, 2019). this has direct implications for conceptualizing research in what counts as objective. if whiteness is the norm, then whiteness is the only true objectivity, thus black, indigenous, and communities of color (bipoc) can never achieve truly objective scholarship. scholars have described how the academy perpetuates knowledge production based upon white logic (zuberi & bonillasilva, 2008). consequently, this inability for bipoc scholars to achieve “true objectivity” impacts the ways in which their scholarship is evaluated to be deemed worthy for funding, knowledge building, and integration into the profession. ultimately, these circumstances result in the practice of erasing and devaluing the contributions and presence of bipoc people, which reinforces hegemonic whiteness (frey et al., 2021). through these practices asher blackdeer & gandarilla ocampo/#socialworksowhite 725 and others, social work is complicit in maintaining and perpetuating hegemony (yee, 2016). in a recent report, the nasw detailed how social workers have historically and currently been complicit in shameful practices such as blocking black enfranchisement, helping lead “indian schools”, and contributing to overrepresentation in child welfare systems (nasw, 2021). despite social work being a predominately female-dominated profession, the patriarchy inherent within white supremacy reigns supreme (almeida et al., 2019). even at the turn of the century, social workers were calling for a reexamination of social work learning and practice for the inclusion of feminist theory into the curriculum (freeman, 1990). scholars advocated for a shift from a “women’s issues” approach to a broad integration of feminist content into the curriculum (freeman, 1990) which has yet to be realized nearly three decades later. conversations of gender oppression have been diluted and lost into broad sweeping feminist frameworks that center individual empowerment over addressing structural issues that impact women (almeida et al., 2019). a content analysis of articles on women and social work conducted from 1998 to 2007 found a decrease in both women’s and feminist content in social work journals (baretti, 2011), with researchers demonstrating that the influence of feminism in social work has been largely constrained to individual projects or initiatives and not across the curriculum or profession as a whole (phillips & cree, 2014). #socialworksowhite social work reproduces whiteness daily (jeffery, 2005), through centering whiteness in education (e.g., teaching a white-based social work history and failing to provide counter narratives), practice (e.g., client surveillance and gatekeeping of resources), and scholarship (e.g., excluding bipoc knowledge; crudup et al., 2021; frey et al., 2021). white privilege is a product of white supremacy (beck, 2019), and privilege is the mechanism of oppression remaining invisible in dominant groups (simon et al., 2021). we bypass addressing white supremacy in social work by talking about white privilege instead of the structures that enable and maintain this supremacy throughout our profession. jeffery (2005) identified a paradox in social work and whiteness: whiteness is taught as a set of social work practice skills, so when we teach self-reflexivity and are critical of whiteness, we are inherently inviting a critique of social work. if you have to give up whiteness, by current competency standards, how can you be a good social worker? (jeffery, 2005). scholars recommend a decreased focus on marginalized groups and identities and more on privilege and resistance to change (yee, 2016). in doing so, we can avoid traps such as viewing whiteness as a monolith and perhaps even become braver about challenging institutions that reinforce oppression (yee, 2016). this shift away from a voyeuristic view of communities of color is an invitation to turn the focus inward and evaluate how one comes to the work. however, merely changing views of privileged individuals will not eliminate oppression, just as increasing the number of people of color in higher education does not equate to systemic change (yee, 2016). ultimately, introspection without action is not enough. social work must move from surface level evaluations of privilege to actively dismantling systems and structures of oppression. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 726 respectability politics are a tool of whiteness utilized to weaponize the denial of power (haley, 2020). used as a tool to manipulate and control communities of color, respectability politics define non-normative behavior as deviations from whiteness, focusing on individual behavior instead of structural issues (haley, 2020). white social workers participate in respectability politics through enforcing whiteness on their peers of color which ultimately silence and further oppress communities of color under the guise of inclusion (haley, 2020). for example, a study of black female faculty at a researchintensive school of social work found that these scholars were unable to present themselves authentically and engaged in self-management, code switching, and appearance regulating due to unspoken, white-based arbitrary rules of professionalism (fields & cunninghamwilliams, 2021). further, these scholars received messaging that indirectly or directly minimized their qualifications to secure employment by referencing that hiring practices to increase inclusion, instead of their qualifications, would make it much easier for them to secure employment in the academy (fields & cunningham-williams, 2021). interventions to address manifestations of whiteness, such as respectability politics, fall short in their approach to address white individuals and further harm communities of color. people of color have had to learn to deal with whiteness in order to succeed and sometimes just to survive, and as such do not have the same experiences in unlearning whiteness as their white peers (gregory, 2020). further, racial equity focused social work interventions perpetuate racial oppression by leaving whiteness intact through avoiding discomfort, taking a color-evasive approach, and continuing the notion of omnipresent whiteness (gregory, 2020), just as the majority of diversity, equity, and inclusion (dei) workshops consider to center white feelings, comfort, and worldviews. social work is and always has been complicit in the social construction of whiteness (gregory, 2020). educators and students alike wonder why social work education fails to teach skills to enact structural change against oppressive systems and undo colonialism (lerner, 2021). scholars call for the academy to ask ourselves about our own involvement in white supremacy (beck, 2019). to interrogate whiteness, individuals must view the entire picture of colonialism, white hegemony, logic, and knowledge production (beck, 2019). the social work profession must be intentional in unmasking the insidious nature of white supremacy and its legacy of harm (beck, 2019). we have an ethical mandate to confront the white-centered nature of social work education by helping students understand how they perpetuate whiteness, so they do not end up blocking antiracist work for the sake of white fragility (lerner, 2021). we must take a deliberate, consistent, and holistic approach to uprooting whiteness in the social work profession. the antidote to white supremacy: liberating the mind, body, and brain from oppression (lerner, 2021). manifestation of whiteness in social work social work education there are three pillars of social work education: explicit curriculum, implicit curriculum, and field education (bhuyan et al., 2017). explicit curriculum includes the core educational competencies set forth by cswe, which social work teaches through a colonial, color-evasive, eurocentric approach to maintain present power structures (tang asher blackdeer & gandarilla ocampo/#socialworksowhite 727 yan et al., 2021). implicit curriculum refers to how students are socialized into the profession, including mitigating classroom conflicts, and reinforcing professional behavior (bhuyan et al., 2017). the professionalization of social work is a manifestation of neoliberalism, as the profession shifts to focusing on providing services more than it encourages critical thinking, movement building, or social action (brady et al., 2019). further, this implicit curriculum often mirrors hidden curriculum as students are socialized not only into the profession, but into the dominant (white) group overall (bhuyan et al., 2017). tang yan and colleagues (2021) describe this hidden curriculum in social work as neoliberalism in which mainstream narratives of social justice are privileged and market values such as consumerism and managerialism reign supreme. this has shifted the profession from radical social change through collective action into a micro intervention focused field that helps clients adapt to the systemic oppression around them (tang yan et al., 2021). social work is notorious for providing band-aids to our clients rather than advocating for actual structural level change. finally, field education trains social workers in environments that limit advocacy, penalize disruption, or embody perspectives from marginalized groups – essentially views or beliefs that represent or embody minority communities (bhuyan et al., 2017). social work education and practice teach with a curriculum mainstreamed for white students and marginalizing non-western theory and knowledge (lerner, 2021). i. explicit curriculum: teaching diversity and cultural competence diversity. social work education sidesteps social justice and focuses on teaching diversity and cultural competence instead. social work education began to address diversity in 1973 through identity-specific classes, eventually adding group-specific courses over time across sexual orientation, ability, gender, and country of origin (alvarezhernandez, 2021). this model of diversity is inherently representative of white supremacy in social work education, namely through the nature of hegemony herein where white populations are considered the norm, and all other groups are now othered and considered “diversity” (dumbrill & green, 2008). this concept of diversity is mainstreamed for individuals to accumulate advantage for the already advantaged, providing students with their msw badges of honor, instead of truly challenging disadvantage (bhuyan et al., 2017). social work is more concerned with tolerating difference through teaching diversity rather than disrupting the status quo of settler colonialism and white supremacy. centering diversity instead of social justice is a direct implication of accrediting bodies. cswe mandates learning of diversity in social work education yet provides no details on implementation (franco, 2021). schools of social work have taken varied approaches toward adding diversity into their curricula (atteberry-ash et al., 2021). some take a parking lot approach, covering diversity in one foundational class only, thereby leaving it in the parking lot, while others infuse the content throughout their curriculum or offer a hybrid parking lot/infusion combination (atteberry-ash et al., 2021). newer approaches include offering mini courses or workshops on diversity, similar to ceu style events (atteberry-ash et al., 2021). it is unclear which model is best for integrating diversity into social work curriculum, but none truly account for intersectionality advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 728 (atteberry-ash et al., 2021) or address the elephants in the room – colonialism and white supremacy. the problem of focusing on diversity as a proxy for social justice or social action is the omission of intersectionality in its entirety (atteberry-ash et al., 2021). diversity classes gloss over how intersecting identities are impacted by the institutional oppression embedded within systems, often failing to ask reflective questions or promote structural change (franco, 2021). social work can never be antiracist as long as we stay in diversity management and competency development (jeffery, 2005). diversity will never dismantle the master’s house. cultural competence. surface-level understandings of peoples’ lived experiences are known as cultural competence; academics use cultural competence as a way to avoid examining structural issues of dominance and oppression (almeida et al., 2019). current social work teachings on diversity and inclusion center on micro level practice, citing cultural competence as a key skill in order to demonstrate respect and respond to “difference” (craig et al., 2021). social work as a field has otherized diversity, collapsing in multiple concepts such as multiculturalism, intolerance, diversity, and cultural competence, humility, and sensitivity – all without an interrogation of colonization and cultural imperialism (almeida et al., 2019). overall, cultural competence lacks a social justice lens (franco, 2021). cultural competence remains the dominant social work framework (franco, 2021) despite critiques of perpetuating an individual focus rather than addressing systemic issues (craig et al., 2021). cultural competence has tried to save face with the addition of concepts like cultural humility and intersectionality; however, it continues to focus more on self-awareness rather than content that directly addresses oppression (craig et al., 2021). cultural competence is embedded within a mastery model that is underpinned by colonialism and the hegemony of white supremacy (franco, 2021). this notion of mastery pushes an all-knowing approach where individuals can develop expertise in another culture (franco, 2021). cultural competence norms whiteness and others communities of color while conflating culture with non-whiteness (franco, 2021; wagaman et al., 2019). cultural competence sets white students up to learn about the “other” without any critical reflection of their own racial identities or how they uphold racist systems (wagaman et al., 2019) and also overlooks intersecting identities within systems of oppression (franco, 2021). both of these haphazard pedagogical models of diversity, inclusion, and equity often utilize experiential learning, perpetuating harm against students of color while maintaining white privilege. experiential learning allows for students of color and other minoritized and marginalized students to draw from their lived experiences; however, white students are then able to absorb knowledge abstractly through others’ experiences (craig et al., 2021), often at the expense of their marginalized peers. the onus is always placed upon people of color to identify racism or “difference,” thus reinforcing the othering – allowing the dominant group to spectate instead of doing their own actual work (yee, 2016). research has shown that white comfort is linked to the pain and suffering of bipoc students, staff, and faculty (beck, 2019). social work perpetuates voyeurism and trauma tourism at the expense of students of color for the sake of white learning and comfort. asher blackdeer & gandarilla ocampo/#socialworksowhite 729 ii. implicit curriculum: neoliberalism in the academy the social work profession is embedded within the broader neoliberal system of the academy and continues to support the existing social order by enforcing the dominant (white) status quo (brady et al., 2019). there is substantial literature on the role of neoliberalism within the academy and how market-driven logic has changed institutional practices (yee, 2016). the academy is not culturally, politically, or ideologically neutral (dumbrill & green, 2008) and continues to reproduce inequality (bhuyan et al., 2017). the influence of the market system on the academy, seen through consumerism, professionalism, and capitalism, creates students as paying customers thus devaluing radical and transformative work for stakeholder fear of losing profit (bhuyan et al., 2017). capitalist market logic makes social work a commodity defined by standardized competencies and skills, thus narrowing the field to secure employment and reducing the profession to the logic of cultural capital production (bhuyan et al., 2017). social work has embraced the dominant narratives of capitalism and for-profit market-based solutions to social welfare problems (brady et al., 2019). neoliberalism is in direct opposition to the goals of social work and the curriculum taught within social work education (brady et al., 2019). neoliberalism encourages a onesize-fits-all approach (brady et al., 2019) instead of valuing the inherent dignity and worth of the person. further, neoliberalism devalues professional intellect and undermines the emancipatory nature and liberatory goals that social work strives to meet for its clients (brady et al., 2019). two main structures contribute to neoliberal social work education: governing bodies and the academy (brady et al., 2019). governing bodies in social work provide accreditation and licensure standards through competencies; these competencies are inherently behavior-focused and fail to encourage critical thinking and reflection (brady et al., 2019). the academy contributes to neoliberalism within social work through the increased corporatization seen through increases in tuition as financial support from the government decreases (brady et al., 2019). further, neoliberalism is seen in the professionalization of diversity and equity, in which students become consumers, assessed on their future contributions to the economy, thus rendering social justice as contradictory to the needs of the market (bhuyan et al., 2017). the influence of neoliberalism also manifests in social work in the form of symbolic anti-racism, which is purported through the notion that anti-racism, anti-oppressive, and anti-colonial work must be consumable and palatable, making colorblindness ideology preferrable and ensuring race is kept invisible (lerner, 2021). ultimately, whiteness and respectability politics reinforce settler colonialism and provide the foundation for the perpetuation of neoliberal policy (haley, 2020). iii. field education field education, the third pillar of social work education, is often described as the profession’s signature pedagogy, yet very little attention has been paid to addressing oppression within field education (razack, 2001). field education exists largely at the margins of social work education, often taught externally to the curriculum and the school (razack, 2001). the practice of field education overall can be oppressive to minoritized or advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 730 marginalized communities as the profession sends emerging social workers to cut their teeth in these communities, often at the risk of those already most vulnerable. internships or practicum becomes a real-life lab in which marginalized individuals and communities become the guinea pigs with which up-and-coming social workers can try and fail, at times hurting these communities in the process, all the for the sake of the student’s learning and growth. some students can exhibit poor boundaries, behavior and attitudes that are incongruent with social work values, and other challenging behaviors (street, 2019), which ultimately affect the people whom they are supposed to work with. the revolving door nature of these positions is also inherently problematic. sending social workers in training into a community for a time-limited stay, ranging from a few months to about a year, can further perpetuate social problems and is the epitome of placing student band-aids rather than addressing radical social justice solutions. while having student interns or practicum students increases the capacity of social services agencies to serve vulnerable individuals and communities, there are inherent challenges and power issues with having students with varying training and skill levels practice with marginalized communities. students may lack investment in the agency or work, have wanting experience and skills, or have generally problematic behavior (street, 2019) which impact the experience and quality of service received by individuals and communities. these individuals and community members may have no choice or believe they have no choice but to accept subpar service, which can indirectly and directly reinforce marginalization and oppression. this is exacerbated by the fact that there are currently no requirements for agencies to seek client and community input on their experience working with interns. other harms in field education have been identified in the role of field instructors and at practicum sites themselves. field instructors play a significant role in facilitating harm against practicum students of color. field instructors can choose to avoid or hesitate discussions of diversity and identity and often take a color-evasive approach to field education by denying racial differences (gooding & mehrotra, 2021; johnson et al., 2021; razack, 2001). this approach can gaslight practicum students of color and further exacerbate systemic issues they may already be contending with. further, practicum sites can be potential triggers for internalized oppression among students of color (razack, 2001), as students describe experiences of code-switching to survive and display professionalism. social work students of color are forced to remain vigilant, even in field placement, to successfully navigate their environments (gooding & mehrotra, 2021; johnson et al., 2021; razack, 2001). social work practice the bifurcation of social work into micro versus macro practice reflects the broader debate in the field’s overall mission of achieving social justice. some say social work has an inherent contradiction between individual versus societal level change (edwards et al., 2006). social work is more concerned with symptom management and ignores structural influences (tang yan et al., 2021) as individuals would rather do recognition-based or representational work (e.g., identity-based politics) rather than examining structural issues and interlocking systems of oppression (yee, 2016). social work reproduces the settler state through social service delivery that supports white communities at the expense of asher blackdeer & gandarilla ocampo/#socialworksowhite 731 black, indigenous, and other communities of color (fortier & hon-sing wong, 2019). this can be seen in how social work and welfare are utilized as a mechanism of control to manage and assimilate communities of color into the dominant (white) society (fortier & hon-sing wong, 2019). the settler state replication in social work is best described as a structure of elimination and is readily apparent throughout the removal of indigenous children, extraction of natural resources from indigenous land, and the overall racialization and dispossession of indigenous peoples overall (fortier & hon-sing wong, 2019). as social work has become an increasingly regulated profession, it has shifted towards competency-based learning as opposed to evaluating students’ critical inquiry of and engagement with social injustice. (hurley & taiwo, 2019). social work competencies reinforce the split and eventual hierarchy between clinical work and social justice, devaluing social justice theory as a non-transferrable skill (bhuyan et al., 2017). competency-based social work centers on thinking and acting where critical social work hallmarked by critical reflective practice, critical consciousness, and reflexive thoughts values analyzing discrepancies between what is said versus what is done (hurley & taiwo, 2019). as social work moves away from critical theories in order to prepare students for clinical practice, the struggle to bridge the gap between critical theory and competencybased practice greatens (hurley & taiwo, 2019). while some support enhancing micro-skills for effective practice (katz et al., 2021), social work needs to get more involved in policy and macro practice in order to prepare students to be true agents of change in championing social justice to dismantle oppression at all levels (dyson et al., 2020). macro social work is often devalued as “too big” to tackle; however, when we view things as static or immutable, we collude with the dominance in systems, reinforcing the narrative that there’s “nothing we can do” (yee, 2016). we fail to teach students how to think critically about the relevance of micro skills; for example, micro skills are necessary to engage in advocacy work and political activism. overall, social work students are less exposed to macro content, with united states-based social work programs offering twice as many micro or clinical specializations than they do for macro social work (friedman et al., 2020). previous research has found that students report valuing knowledge that translated into micro or clinical practice more than they did macro or systems knowledge (bhuyan et al., 2017). scholars call for a more robust macro skillset but merely adding concentration competencies are not enough (apgar, 2021). macro social work, including work in the political realm, is one such avenue to advocate for societal-level change in the pursuit of social justice. social workers have debated throughout time how “professional” it is to advocate for social change, particularly in the political arena (brill, 2001), stating there is a thin line between policy practice and politics (friedman et al., 2020). social workers have been critiqued as lacking political sophistication and having limited aspiration toward systemic change (hurley & taiwo, 2019). social work has avoided social justice, inclusion, and equity conversations for fear of partisanship (goode et al., 2021) and has been de-politicized in favor of emphasizing micro resilience over structural change (tang yan et al., 2021). ultimately, the majority of social work political involvement stops with voting (apgar, 2021). scholars purport at the turn of the century to be moving away from the belief that political activity is unprofessional, with charlotte towle stating that the “role of social work is to mobilize the advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 732 conscience of the community” (brill, 2001, p. 233). ultimately, social work cannot avoid political engagement if we are to challenge existing social inequalities (friedman et al., 2020). code of ethics social work has four distinct ethical periods throughout time: morality, values, ethics theory and decision-making, and ethical standards and risk management (chase, 2015). there were attempts as early at 1919 to draft a code of ethics in social work (reamer, 1998). starting in the late 1900s, the morality period is defined by jane addams’ hull house, a paternalistic approach to wayward individuals, and a shift in evaluating the client’s morality as opposed to the morality of the profession or practice (chase, 2015; reamer, 1998). the first code of ethics was adopted in 1960 by the national association of social workers (brill, 2001), and the values period began in the 1970s with the adoption of nasw’s new code that included more than 70 ethical principles (chase, 2015). the values period marked the shift in focus to professional values and ethics (reamer, 1998). the ethical theory and decision-making period began in the early 1980s and introduced ethical theory and ethical dilemmas (reamer, 1998). it was later revised and then had a major rewrite in 1996, which is when the first time nasw had an official mission statement (brill, 2001). also beginning in 1996, the nasw code of ethics extended social work guidelines and standards and ushered in the era of ethical standards and risk management (reamer, 1998). some scholars suggest we are entering a new period of ethics, the digital period, as the profession begins to reckon with the role of technology on values and ethics in social work practice (chase, 2015). there is a wide critique of social work values as ambiguous, privileging white epistemologies, and reinforcing colonialism (brady et al., 2019). codes of ethics are described throughout the literature as windows into a profession (brill, 2001), and the social work code of ethics leaves much to be desired. present social work ethical codes reflect the ambivalence of the profession. while originally developed to hold social workers accountable to the profession, they actually protect them from individual moral accountability (chase, 2015). how can our values be interpreted without a colonial lens? our lens determines how our ethics are interpreted and applied; the current lens is white supremacy and thus stipulates how social workers are seeing and interacting with the world. ethical codes are not synonymous with the morality or sanctity of a profession. for example, the german medical profession had one of the most highly developed ethical codes in their time, yet still participated in the holocaust (chase, 2015). the code of ethics prohibits discrimination by social workers and calls us to prevent and eliminate discrimination (lerner, 2021). how can we achieve the elimination of discrimination without centering social justice in our teaching, practice, and research? as such, it is imperative that the nasw code of ethics truly commit to social justice by explicitly calling upon social workers to actively confront and dismantle colonialism, white supremacy, and other forms of oppression. asher blackdeer & gandarilla ocampo/#socialworksowhite 733 implications for social work uprooting white supremacy scholars like craig and colleagues (2021) call for an increase in curriculum to focus on diversity and teach students to be allies. some have recommended models to develop allyship, such as the ally model of social justice (ally model) which centers on difference, oppression, and privilege and encourages a focus on self-awareness (craig et al., 2021). while beneficial for navigating allyship, these methods of training fall short in addressing structural and systemic issues in social work education. merely teaching students to be allies is not synonymous with dismantling harmful structures. from our experience, individuals may become hyper focused on demonstrating or proving their allyship, often to the point of being performative at best and white saviors at worst. to address colonialism in the classroom, scholars recommend social work pedagogy seriously and actively consider the matrix of colonization (almeida et al., 2019). social work pedagogy can disrupt coloniality by practicing critical consciousness within an intersectional framework by emphasizing critical consciousness, empowerment, and accountability (almeida et al., 2019). hudson and mountz (2016) recommend utilizing tools from intergroup dialogues such as identity-based caucusing, also referred to as affinity groups. these identity-based caucuses utilize a small group process to discuss privilege and oppression within an intentional space (hudson & mountz, 2016; lerner, 2021). these spaces allow open discussions without shame, guilt, or denial, and most importantly shield students of color from potential harm of having to witness their white peers process their whiteness (hudson & mountz, 2016). affinity groups are a great formative step to uprooting whiteness in social work education. several interventions and programs exist to help white people process their whiteness. combs and perron (2020) have developed a 12-step model of recovery from white conditioning and encourage white individuals to embrace their responsibility to undo the systems of privilege they benefit from, while others have formed antiracist alliances (blitz et al., 2014). some scholars recommend the acknowledgement and identification of bias in order to appreciate social justice in social work (rogerson et al., 2021); however, these individual actions are not enough. lerner (2021) has several recommendations for helping students reflect on their whiteness, including critical race theory, acceptance and commitment therapy, acknowledging mistakes, not comforting discomfort, countering white fatigue, and practicing cultural humility. social work must begin to address whiteness to fully acknowledge and uproot white supremacy. dyson and colleagues (2020) propose racial reconciliation and forgiveness as a path to healing and liberation. this reconciliation would eradicate both conscious and unconscious societal processes that perpetuate harm and encourage a grieving and mourning period to expose the denied effects of colonization (dyson et al., 2020). however, it remains unclear what truly counts as reconciliation and forgiveness. in a critique of canada’s reconciliation efforts towards first nations communities, fortier and hon-sing wong (2019) describe that this process did more to pacify white guilt and uphold a white savior complex in social work and the state while avoiding truly transformative change. ultimately, reconciliation advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 734 is hard work, which can lead individuals to live in a state of injustice-related dissonance thus leading to immobilization (wagaman et al., 2019). uprooting whiteness in social work will require continued social action and must move beyond dissonance and discomfort. social work education i. explicit curriculum in order to reorient the profession towards dismantling systems of oppression, scholars recommend starting with social work education (goode et al., 2021). scholars recommend a critical pedagogy of white supremacy, involving more than theory-based discussions of privilege but analyzations of domination (beck, 2019). this pedagogy would credit ida b. wells just as much as jane addams (beck, 2019). further recommendations for teaching diversity and inclusion include creating an open classroom environment and reshaping the role of the instructor to be more caring in order to facilitate conversations (craig et al., 2021). others recommend teaching teams for an anti-oppressive approach to teaching social justice courses, centering power differences and a shared generation and production of knowledge (garran et al., 2015). some recommend adding a particular course to critically analyze structural barriers and client-centered interventions in order to form a critical-competency perspective (hurley & taiwo, 2019). finally, scholars recommend using the power, privilege, and oppression framework (ppo) to guide the integration of social justice into social work education; by incorporating ppo in addition to social justice and diversity, social work can reshape its trajectory and reckon with the power in training the future of the profession (atteberry-ash et al., 2021). ii. implicit curriculum scholars have made recommendations addressing the institution at large, such as disrupting eurocentric-dominated curriculum, removing mainstream concepts like cultural competence, neoliberalism, standardization, diagnosis, and the medical model (lerner, 2021). further suggestions call for social work schools to own up to their outdated, offensive, and inaccurate curriculum and shift values towards practice-based knowledge as much as academic training (lerner, 2021). to realign the social work profession, we must choose empowerment over charity and actually encourage students to engage with systems to produce meaningful change, not just accept or collude with existing structures (lerner, 2021). some recommend combining theories such as anti-oppressive practice and intersectionality in order to fix social justice shortcomings in the social work profession like the overemphasis on cultural competence (franco, 2021). this combination approach would address both implicit and explicit bias, racism, and oppression in social work curriculum by naming and addressing white supremacy, power, and privilege (franco, 2021). ultimately, white social workers and academics need to move over and make space for other ways of knowing (dumbrill & green, 2008). asher blackdeer & gandarilla ocampo/#socialworksowhite 735 iii. field education simulation-based learning can disrupt the harmful cycle of field education for both marginalized communities and social workers of color. research has found that simulationbased learning is effective to develop student competence without harm to the client (asakura & bogo, 2021). others have enacted simulations in order to bridge class knowledge with field education (bogo et al., 2017). this represents an innovative approach to circumvent the issue of white students harming marginalized communities for the sake of learning. simulated experiences encourage skill, knowledge, and attitude development while facilitating the demonstration of student understanding and competencies to instructors (fulton et al., 2019). simulation-based learning can also interrupt the experiential learning models which allow white students to learn about privilege, oppression, and power at the expense of their peers of color (craig et al., 2021). further, simulation-based practicums can provide a more equitable and flexible option for students who may be challenged with the logistics of completing traditional placements. while simulation-based placements can be used to establish and develop skills, real world placements can then be used to enhance or strengthen these skills once students have demonstrated sufficient mastery to engage in practice that does not create harm. social work practice we need to bring social action back to social work, especially in response to calls to reform systems (apgar, 2021). social work education can (and should) encourage students’ political involvement and engagement. crowell (2017) recommends encouraging students to explore their political interest, or lack thereof, by utilizing a teaching tool they call policy genograms. these genograms map political and civic engagement of the student’s family of origin as a pedagogical tool (crowell, 2017). the entire social work assessment process needs an overhaul. scholars recommend including a structural analysis of race, class, and gender in order to understand health inequalities (almeida et al., 2019) from a systems level rather than blaming the individual. this can be achieved through raising critical consciousness using the matrix of coloniality in order to assess dimensions of power, privilege, and oppression (almeida et al., 2019). scholars have recommended praxis as the way forward in abolishing the dichotomy between theory and practice by teaching students how to implement theory into practice (gregory, 2020; franco, 2021; ladhani & sitter, 2020). emphasizing praxis would encourage students to apply social justice theories to all areas of practice, not merely stopping at individual level clinical work. consciousness-raising is essential to liberation; however, we must overcome the overvaluing of practice and competency more than critical thinking and theory. praxis offers a pathway to disrupting the micro-macro divide and reorient the profession toward taking social action in order to achieve social justice. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 736 code of ethics most cswe-accredited curricula do not have a specific ethics course, but rather embed the ethical code throughout (groessl, 2015). we recommend instituting critical ethical conversations in each of these courses. these conversations should critically discuss the lens of white supremacy and how simply knowing the ethical standards is not enough. we must teach upcoming social workers how to critically think and apply these ethical standards in practice, through a decolonial, social justice-centered lens. instructors can present an ethical dilemma, process various pathways and action with students, and ultimately discuss and debrief implications of applying the code of ethics from these varied perspectives. conclusion in order for social work to live up to its social justice mission, our profession must lead in truth telling and challenging white supremacy. we must hold ourselves and the profession accountable (beck, 2019). by knowing our colonial history and learning about our current collusion with white supremacy, social work can reckon with our past, take a critical look in the mirror, and start to plan for a more equitable future centered on social justice. social work must be antiracist, anti-oppressive, and anti-colonial (lerner, 2021). once social work acknowledges our reality, we can re-envision a better future, one that lives up to our mission, through critical, progressive, and unflinching advocacy (brady et al., 2019). references almeida, r. v., werkmeister rozas, l. m., cross-denny, b., lee, k. k., & yamada, a.m. (2019). coloniality and intersectionality in social work education and practice. journal of progressive human services, 30(2), 148-164. https://doi.org/10.1080/10428232.2019.1574195 alvarez-hernandez, l. r. 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(2008). white logic, white methods: racism and methodology (7th ed.). lanham, rowman, & littlefield publishers. author note: address correspondence to autumn asher blackdeer, graduate school of social work, university of denver. email: a2blackdeer@gmail.com https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2020.1868422 https://www.socialworkers.org/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=29ayh9qadxc%3d&portalid=0#:%7e:text=we%20apologize%20for%20supporting%20policies,work%20profession%20and%20in%20society https://www.socialworkers.org/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=29ayh9qadxc%3d&portalid=0#:%7e:text=we%20apologize%20for%20supporting%20policies,work%20profession%20and%20in%20society https://www.socialworkers.org/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=29ayh9qadxc%3d&portalid=0#:%7e:text=we%20apologize%20for%20supporting%20policies,work%20profession%20and%20in%20society https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2014.885007 https://doi.org/10.1080/02615470120044310 https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/43.6.488 https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2021.1910652 https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2021.1883492 https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2021.1924665 https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2018.1513878 https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2016.1170113 mailto:a2blackdeer@gmail.com poyntz final before ts correspondence address: stuart r. poyntz, school of communication, simon fraser university, burnaby, bc, v5a 1s6; email: spoyntz@sfu.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 producing authenticity: urban youth arts, rogue archives and negotiating a home for social justice stuart r. poyntz simon fraser university, canada abstract social justice needs a home, a place where it can be found, especially for young people growing up in fragmented and increasingly inequitable societies. community youth arts organizations have secured a certain prominence in this context over the past three decades and are now part of the urban infrastructures that shape connected learning networks in highly industrialized nations. in this capacity, youth arts organizations regularly engage a language and aesthetics of authenticity and trust as part of how they call out, represent and make a home for children and youth. this paper examines how authenticity in youth culture and youth cultural expression is negotiated by arts organizations and how organizations locate their own trustworthiness as allies of young people through the curation of online media archives. the analysis draws on the internet media archives of two youth arts organizations in canada’s largest english-speaking cities. the oasis skateboard factory (osf) in toronto, on is an extension program of the toronto district school board that enables participants to create their own brands and learn to run a skateboard or professional design business. reelyouth (vancouver, bc) started in vancouver in 2005 as a community media empowerment project, and now delivers programs across canada and internationally. the claims to youth authenticity articulated in each media archive reveal how authenticity and trust are negotiated ideologically by each organization and how organizations mark their ontological status, as a home from which young people can think and respond to an unjust world. i examine how youth authenticity is produced by analyzing how discourses of youth identity, connection and trust are deployed across each archive. whilst showcasing how authenticity is negotiated by each group, i show how the production of authenticity discourses by osf and reelyouth simultaneously convey a deeper reality: the way youth arts groups operate as care structures (scannell, 2014) that offer ontological security (giddens, 1991), and places of increasing “awareness of previously unnoticed interconnections” (frosh, 2019, p. 16) for youth. in this way, they operate as sites of border work, places of routing from which the work of social justice can be borne. stuart poyntz studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 376 keywords youth arts; non-formal learning; authenticity and trust; urban space introduction social justice needs a home, a place where it can be found. this is especially so for young people growing up in fragmented and increasingly inequitable societies, where the role of traditional sites of learning, including schools has undergone rapid change and where digital media are regularly a source of disruption and transformation, offering new sites of influence and persuasion and the “general broadening of risk-taking and risk-bearing as properties” of children’s and youth’s experiences (appadurai, 2013, p. 3). a home in this context isn’t a domestic space as much as it is a place for youth belonging, a site where “border work” happens, where young people are given opportunities to orient outward, to a larger world, to discover external relationships, negotiate identities and social skills and develop routes toward possible futures (christenson & o’brien, 2003, p. 4). community youth arts organizations have secured a certain prominence in this environment and are now part of the urban infrastructures (amin, 2014) that shape connected learning networks across highly industrialized nations (ito et al., 2018; poyntz et al., 2019). the roots of the youth arts sector go back to community organizing and community arts in the post-war era (bekerman et al., 2005). over the last 30 years, non-formal youth arts organizations have grown in significance as part of the general expansion of third sector, social service organizations under neoliberalism. youth arts groups have developed as intergenerational spaces of trust, care and connection that aid youth transitions through adolescence by creating participatory spaces to negotiate citizenship and address digital divides in highly mediated cultures (cf. poyntz et al., 2019). youth arts augment the semiotic resources and learning available for young people through traditional schooling and are linked to the acquisition of key literacies and networks necessary for work and citizen participation in global capitalist societies. in taking on this role in recent decades, youth arts organizations regularly engage a language and aesthetics of authenticity and trust as part of how they call out, represent and make a home for children and youth. discourses of authenticity matter because they authorize the ground of youth belonging. authenticity is a loose yet persistent signifier in young people’s cultures, one that continues to function as a tool of social orientation and wayfinding for teenagers, while serving as a popular reference point for public debates about credible information sources and the integrity of media representations of young people. in this paper, i examine how authenticity and trust are negotiated by arts organizations in ways that mark their ontological status as a home from which young people can think and respond to an unjust world. producing authenticity studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 377 the analysis draws on the internet media archives of two youth arts organizations in canada’s largest english-speaking cities and is part of youthsites: the non-formal learning sector in creative lives, a five-year sshrc-funded project examining the creative arts sector for socially disadvantaged youth in three global cities (london, toronto and vancouver). the oasis skateboard factory (osf) in toronto, on is an extension program of the toronto district school board that enables participants to create their own brands and learn to run a skateboard or professional design business. reelyouth (vancouver, bc) started in vancouver in 2005 as a community media empowerment project, and now delivers programs across canada and internationally. the osf and reelyouth internet media archives consist of a range of artifacts (more than 100 for each organization) and interfaces that collectively showcase each organization by curating youth-made media, national and regional mainstream news (print and video) coverage, blog posts and related participatory narratives, key research reports and other videos produced by and about the organizations between 2005 and the present. collectively, each online collection functions as a rogue archive (de kosnik, 2016), a non-traditional, non-canonical, specialized pool of media that articulates discourses of youth authenticity that helps to construct trust with key youth communities. to understand how the archives mark youth arts groups as a home for social justice, i draw on pauwels’ (2012) social semiotic framework to examine each organization’s media archive at two levels: (1) the technical and aesthetic interface on the homepage of each website; and (2) the language and aesthetics that dominate in the online searchable media archives of each organization. i examine how youth authenticity is produced by analyzing how discourses of youth identity, connection and trust are deployed across each collection. this deployment highlights how authenticity is ideologically negotiated by each organization; but, it also points to the way youth arts groups function ontologically, as spaces of provision, care and belonging for youth. organizations perform this latter role by presenting persistent, durable and consistent modes of representation, by opening up access to the “real,” by which i mean access to the means for reflective world disclosure (kompridis, 2006) and by staging access to forms of social agility and renewed relationships with official institutions, including schools. in the process, groups like osf and reelyouth operate as care structures (scannell, 2014) that offer ontological security (giddens, 1991) and a place of increasing “awareness of previously unnoticed interconnections” (frosh, 2019, p. 16) for youth. in this way, they operate as sites of border work, places of belonging and routing for the work of social justice. stuart poyntz studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 378 authenticity, trust and the youth arts sector authenticity is a fluid and much debated concept frequently challenged for its utility in cultural analysis (jenss, 2004). notions of cultural authenticity have historically been used by figures like adorno and horkheimer to critique the sullying of culture by consumerism, mass society and capitalist commodification. here, authenticity is associated with the fundamental qualities of a form of experience and inauthenticity is used to mark an adulteration or corruption of a primary mode of life. the problem with such critiques is that they tend to draw on essentialist notions that configure authenticity around the inherent qualities of a privileged form of culture or the “inherent quality of some object, person or process” (vannini & williams, 2009, p. 2). in the wake of seminal texts like peter berger and thomas luckmann’s (1967) the social construction of reality and the influence of various postmodernisms, however, the influence of essentialist or realist conceptions of authenticity has waned and pragmatist or sociallyconstructed notions of authenticity have risen to the fore (vannini & williams, 2009). driving these developments in youth studies and the sociology of childhood is the fact that authenticity remains a potent marker across consumer cultures, a measure of credibility for celebrities, brands and texts, and a wayfinding tool for teenagers in times of rapid socio-cultural and technological change. framing authenticity as a socially situated phenomenon shifts the concept away from associations with purity or singular cultural identities, focusing attention instead on how authenticity operates as a powerful form of social orientation used to locate distinct youth identities, needs and experiences. as a marker of social orientation, authenticity “refers to a set of qualities that people in a particular time and place have come to agree represent an ideal or exemplar” (vannini & williams, 2009, p. 3). authenticity is something that emerges through acts of mutual understanding, collective efforts at identity performance and common perceptions of space, locality and shared “things” (nayak, 2003). authenticity is not an absolute but a conditional phenomenon, a mutable experience that nonetheless continues to function as a marker of community, connection and trust. as emerging crises and risks have proliferated, questions of authenticity have become common in public culture. contemporary debates about information access, the credibility of information sources and the development of online “echo chambers” (bruns, 2019; chun, 2016) have all heightened concerns about what media and cultural forms young people can trust. these worries have extended long-standing anxieties about cyber violence and “stranger danger” (crooks, 2018; poyntz, 2013), which, while often overstated have nonetheless fueled media panics (drotner, 1999) about legitimate and authentic forms of online persuasion. changes in young people’s play cultures, the proliferation of risky online content, including producing authenticity studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 379 pornography, and the advent of data surveillance powered by algorithms that incorporate young people into the global imaginaries of consumer celebrity cultures and the archives of surveillance states, have all amplified the feeling that conditions of authenticity, connection and trust are more precarious and important than ever. even among online instagram “influencers,” authenticity – as opposed to popularity registered by “likes” – has emerged as a crucial element for sustaining relationships between cyber celebrities and their online communities (abidin, 2018; marwick, 2013). concerns about authenticity and trust are compounded by insecurities surrounding changes in young people’s working and learning lives, including the future threat posed by automation and growing skepticism about the fitness of modern institutions like schools to address the needs and hopes of youth (sefton-green & erstad, 2019). perhaps not surprisingly, novel sites of connected learning and media participation, including the youth arts learning sector, have gained prominence in this context. the youth arts sector is not often recognized as such, at least in part because the sector is not typically part of the remit of any one state ministry, secretariat or policy apparatus. it is a liminal space where the boundaries between institutions, policy fields, pedagogies, and subjectivities blur (poyntz et al., 2019). the sector includes a number of institutional forms and kinds of programs, including alternative-to-school and after-school programs, initiatives connected to art galleries and stand-alone institutions and projects that can have a relatively short life-span, but are intended to engage risk conditions related to youth health, job training and skills development, the development of creative voice and identity concerns, and so on. participants in youth arts organizations tend to be between 13 and 25 years of age. funding generally comes from a cross-section of sources, including private and community foundations, government programs, private donations and fee-for-service programming (poyntz et al., 2019; seftongreen, 2013). organizations differ in size and in general, support forms of education that exist outside the mainstream curriculum, aesthetic expression and visions of civic participation that run against the grain and opportunities for socially marginalized young people who are frequently denied them. youth arts organizations are often evaluated and monitored by local authorities at city level or even the nation state; and, projects typically fit within a complex network of routes for young people within learning institutions in the city. the range and impact of youth arts organizations has expanded in recent decades as grassroots and non-governmental organizations have proliferated under neoliberalism and turned civil society into a site of struggle over the role of non-market-based activities and collectivities (harvey, 2005; poyntz, 2018). soo-ah kwon (2013) marks the influence systems of neoliberal governance have had on the sector and our own work (poyntz et al., 2019) has traced a series of paradoxes that continue to shape the sector. among stuart poyntz studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 380 these paradoxes, the challenge of youth representation and recognition is an ongoing concern. in most jurisdictions, the youth arts sector depends on alignment with social policy and funding priorities among a patchwork of government and third sector funding bodies to secure its future; and yet the relationship of the sector with these sources is vexed. organizations are responsive to social policy, funding opportunities and dominant media representations about young people, and yet they’re equally attuned to the differences between state, market and philanthropic interests and the rights and needs of youth. in a recent paper we noted the challenge this poses: youth arts organizations must develop a language to describe who it is they work with that is responsive to the agendas of funders and credible with youth participants. yet, to negotiate this position is to tread paradoxically between the demands of external funders and respect for youth program participants. labelling young people is a profound challenge for the sector, because ‘deficit’ labels that refer to patterns of ‘exclusion’ and ‘vulnerability’ risk pathologizing and ‘othering’ the very youth the sector wishes to support. yet, it is just this language that constitutes the symbolic power of the sector among funders (poyntz et al., 2019, p. 271). using the language of social policy and prominent media narratives to engage external support is hardly surprising. and yet, it is here, within this struggle over the production and representation of youth that questions of authenticity and trustworthiness play out. the media archives produced and maintained by youth arts organizations are an especially robust site of such negotiations, and in what follows, i examine how osf’s and reelyouth’s media archives produce a language and aesthetics of youth authenticity as part of situating their role as allies of young people and “a gathering force” in the social life of communities (amin, 2014, p. 138). reading rogue archives the internet media archives of organizations like osf and reelyouth offer a rich site to examine how authenticity and trustworthiness are curated online because media archives stage a public assemblage of artifacts that enunciate the identity, intentions, impact, allies and key voices tied to organizations over their history. such collections are examples of what abigail de kosnik (2016) calls rogue archives, non-canonical, digital assemblages that are created about, “for and by highly specific communities” (p. 84). rogue archives have proliferated as the affordances built into digital technologies enable more and more people to undertake archival projects. such projects reflect a loosening of linkages between public memory and the state (auslander, 2008), as new networks of public memory have developed, tied to groups and communities wishing to preserve “whatever content they producing authenticity studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 381 [deem] suitable for digital preservation” (de kosnik, 2016, p. 1). internet media archives address the challenge of ephemerality for youth arts organizations, by offering a means and site for preservation of what has been done and what has been said about what has been done. in the process, they provide a rich site to interrogate how organizations like osf and reelyouth cultivate a sense of authenticity, connection and trust with youth. the media archives of both osf and reelyouth are neither exclusive nor ideal representations of the organizations. they are expansive and dedicated to persistent publication, yet they are also selective (i.e., not all media produced by or about an organization is present), subject to breakdown (i.e., broken links) and support mid-term rather than long-term content preservation. they “stabilize and reproduce particular practices and forms of knowledge” (lischer-katz, 2017), and in this way work as counter-canons that don’t represent everyone but recognize specific communities and forms of representation (de kosnik, 2016, p. 75). like most other community archives, osf’s and reelyouth’s archives are freely available, with artifacts that can be downloaded in their entirety and in general are not restricted by copyright. what constitutes an organization’s media archive is not straightforward in a time of incessant technology change and the rise and fall in popularity of specific platforms. facebook pages, instagram stories and twitter flows are now part of the online ecology organizations curate to showcase and promote their work and connect with others. but are they part of an organization’s media archive in the same way as a website sustained over years? the answer would appear to be yes, and yet how those spaces archive and “hold” the work of organizations is different than a proprietorial website. of course, websites have become rather moldy in an era obsessed with technological futurism and fomo (fear of missing out). nonetheless, if we think of websites as spaces or even repositories of artifacts – text, sound, video files, and so on – that allow for minimal forms of interactive connection with users, then they perform a valuable archiving function for organizations that regularly struggle to keep up with persistent transformations in digital architecture. in this paper, the analysis of the media archives of osf and reelyouth is limited to artifacts and experiences present on each organization’s website (http://oasisskateboardfactory.blogspot.com/ and https://www.reelyouth.ca/), with a specific focus on the artifacts curated in the media forum sections of each site. in each instance, there are more than 100 artifacts, including award winning youth-made videos, radio interviews, print and video links to national and regional mainstream news coverage, blog posts, research reports and other visual media produced by and about the organizations between 2005 and the present. in the case of osf, in addition to their home page, a pool of 40 artifacts were used as a representative example of the media archive, with particular focus on artifacts produced over the past seven years. other artifacts were either unavailable because links were broken or were stuart poyntz studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 382 deemed repetitive (i.e., similar programs or genres of news reporting). in addition to reelyouth’s website homepage, a pool of 37 artifacts were selected, again focused on material produced since 2012, and similarly, other artifacts were either unavailable or were deemed repetitive (i.e., similar programs or genres of news reporting). i am most interested in the way the archive of each organization produces aesthetic resources with symbolic power and resources that configure social identities and experiences of belonging. pauwels’ (2012) social semiotic framework for examining websites affords helpful tools to examine these foci at two levels: (1) the technical and aesthetic interface on the home page of each website; and, (2) the visual and audio language and aesthetics that dominate in the online searchable media archives of each organization. pauwel’s framework invites an examination of web objects and artifacts at multiple levels, including the material characteristics of the image (i.e., texture, resolution, sharpness, colour spectrum and so on); the signifiers and codes of static images (i.e., composition, lighting, camera distance, focus, etc.); the signifiers and codes of the shot (i.e., camera movements and shutter speed); editing choices within artifacts; audio signifiers; layout and design signifiers; and, internal absences (i.e., who is in and who is not in shots?, what are their relational positions?). pauwels’ framework is used to examine the design of each site, as a “look” with specific aesthetics, including the ways youth and youthfulness are referenced. within the available media archives, i examined how a sense of youth authenticity is produced by analyzing how the related notions of identity, connection and trust are curated online. i operationalized these categories by treating each as a social figuration produced through particular forms of representation. identity was examined in relation to common patterns of youth representation, including the key roles (who can you be?) proposed for young people. connection was analyzed in relation to how semiotic resources are used to say where youth are (i.e., where do they belong?) and what purpose each organization has for youth (how do they connect with youth?). trustworthiness was investigated by looking at how dominant things, actions and the style or tone of artifacts suggest a sense of sincerity and honesty. together, these foci explore the cultural expressiveness (what is there?) within each media archive. while the intended audience was also explored for each artifact, this research did not include an investigation of audiences’ reading practices vis-à-vis each site, so questions of target audience were only minimally helpful in the analysis presented. oasis skateboard factory, street culture and real worlds oasis skateboard factory is an alternative-to-school design program that operates out of a space in scadding court community centre in the historically low-income, immigrant-centred neighbourhood between producing authenticity studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 383 kensington market and dufferin grove in toronto. the program has been in operation since 2009, participants are 16-18 years old and can earn high school credits over one-to-two semesters by creating their own brands and running a professional skateboard/design studio. the program is an extension of the toronto district school board, but it has all the markings of a youth arts program, operating outside the normal strictures of formal schooling. participation is based on student interest, attendance is essential and in some sense is required and participants (26 per four-month program) come from across the city, including major suburban ring areas around toronto. activities run from 10:30 to 3:30 each day and are led by the program’s founder, craig morrison, and educator, lauren hortie, both of whom trained in community education. when one arrives at the osf website,1 the first thing one encounters is the osf banner, a simple black box with white text that includes the osf name and the, text, “school/sk8 & street art design services, located at scadding court community centre.” beneath that is what might be considered a program motto: “why be bored in school? go to a skateboard school!” there are no menu buttons at the top of the homepage; rather, as a blogspot one scrolls down the page to find material on information sessions, open house dates, a calendar of events for the month(s) ahead and much more. scrolling down the homepage, very quickly the osf logo appears in black and white in a street-graffiti style font. below this there are images of student-made skateboards, images of youth examining materials for board construction with the text, “student designers planning their next skateboard colourways by picking out custom dyed veneers in the @roarockit warehouse today,” and other images of osf clients, including an image from the toronto star, announcing that “justin bieber gets 14 new skateboards created by toronto students,” alongside an enlarged hashtag for #altmfg, that references an alternative design, manufacture and distribution network in toronto, of which osf is a part. there are links to the osf online shop, a series of text links, announcing that osf was selected #1 on the toronto star’s coolest schools list in 2011, hottest on now magazine’s (toronto’s main alternative weekly) “barometer” in 2012 and a series of other awards, including a status of women award in 2012 for lauren hortie and an arts educator of the year award (2012) for craig morrison. scrolling down further, there are a series of images of students, representing a diversity of genders and ethnicities. some students flash gentle gang signs, including the ily sign meaning, “i love you.” other images capture the students in a group, wearing custom-designed, indigenous-inspired hoodies, walking with boards through the streets of toronto. moving down further, there is reference to a thank you for a collaboration with elders from nunavut, the 1 the quotations, notations and references about oasis skateboard factory in this section are taken from blog posts, videos, news reports, public relations documents and other texts contained in the organization’s archive, during the period from august 01-september 30, 2019. the specific source of each reference is typically indicated in the text. stuart poyntz studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 384 innu-dominated territory in canada’s north. there is a movie-like poster under the heading, “class portrait double feature by anomaly 2018.” the poster reads, “they came from the factory” in green gooey horror film-like text. students from the previous year’s class are portrayed in the poster as zombies and other characters from an imaginary horror film. other posters from earlier years appear with the slogan “the youth are revolting.” program partners’ and community collaborators’ logos appear and include the toronto-los angeles creative agency, anomaly, roarocket, concrete wave magazine, evolve skate camp, manic coffee, ridenorth: canadian skate culture and various other skateboard brands and logos. there are at least two images of craig morrison and lauren hortie, neither of whom strike poses as typical educators. craig has a full beard, looking like an aging hipster and both he and lauren strike the looks of indignation common to boarding culture while holding boards and again, throwing mild gang signs. there is an upcoming events and announcements list, and then below that an extensive archive of articles, news reports and so on under the heading, “osf in the media …” collectively, the language and aesthetic of the home page is clean, with ample use of white space, allusions to street graffiti and street culture, reference to a diversity of young people and key allies and program support networks. there is a sense of cool entrepreneurialism about the space that references brands, logos, celebrities and events while underplaying signifiers – like grades, assignments and so on – common to formal schooling. importantly, the blogspot works in the sense that it functions seamlessly in a way that contrasts with the formal and sometimes spotty experience of many public school websites. the media archive on the osf site is a rich trove of artifacts that produce a language and aesthetics of youth authenticity by curating conceptions of identity, connection and trust. among the 40 artifacts examined were: profile videos from daily vice and the ytv show, the zone; a music video for obey clothing, featuring artist shepard fairey; a short documentary made by osf; a documentary on craig morrison; magazine profiles and listings from spacing independent urban magazine; a blog post by international artist, mark tirchner; many advocacy oriented news media articles from mainstream dailies in canada; an osf course listing from the art gallery of ontario; several student videos; student-produced articles from concrete wave magazine; and a single cbc radio interview featuring laurie hortie. to make sense of how youth identity is curated in the collection, it’s helpful to locate the youth we see and learn about, key youth allies and the roles proposed for young people. across the archived media there is a range of youth presented, representing a cross-section of genders, ethnicities and apparently socio-economic classes who come “from across the city”; but, there is also clear recognition of – a calling out to – specific youth identities. those identities include “punk rock types and skater dudes,” but also “girls into skateboarding, … graffiti artists and tattoo artists,” some kids who are producing authenticity studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 385 into writing, youth who “often come from challenging backgrounds and haven’t had a good go of it in school,” teens trying to “break out of the school mode,” “kids that just wouldn’t be in school, they would have dropped out,” and “kids who are anxious to get out in the world and make their mark.” not surprisingly in an alternative-to-school program, osf hails teens who have “fallen through the cracks,” kids who don’t succeed in school and sometimes represent the first in family to graduate from high school. the address to particular youth identities is reinforced through associations with key youth allies, including the aforementioned shepard fairey and mark tirchner, internationally renowned artists who bridge divides between street/public art, graffiti culture and the worlds of contemporary art. while recognizing particular youth identities, the roles proposed for young people in the media archive focus on becoming a young creative, an entrepreneur, artist and designer (“they are designers now”) with a distinct brand or design identity. taking on these roles is in turn presented as a way for young people to be “out in the world,” to discover “talent you didn’t know you had” and to become world-oriented or “engaged in real life.” a particular form of connection is curated in the media archive through semiotic resources that frame a sense of where youth are and the purpose of osf for young people. together, these elements configure a vernacular of belonging for youth. not surprisingly, this syntax is oriented around specific forms of public space – a public skate park, a non-traditional classroom, the “inner-city arts community,” particular “creative” neighbourhoods in toronto, including queen street west and kensington market. but it also includes hidden spaces, like a site, tucked down a dumpster-blocked laneway off of dufferin … [where] the oasis skateboard factory pop-up was a-buzz with participating student entrepreneurs, supportive friends and family, toronto design offsite attendees and maybe one or two lured in with the promise of free glory hole doughnuts. (oasis skateboard factory pops up at the baitshop, 2013) glory hole donuts is an upmarket toronto shop offering traditional and artisanal fare that in many ways sits in the sweet spot of osf’s appeal: as a program for kids who lack social and cultural capital that promises experiences of class uplift. a sense of connection is also constituted through the value proposition osf presents for youth, much of which is tied to a promise of access to the real (world) and to valued subject positions by learning to build skateboards. participants learn to build personal brands to promote self-development and real-world experience: “they are building their own brands, learning how to run a business. we have lots of pop-up shops, we sell everything we make and we get hired by clients to do jobs for them” (craig morrison). they reimagine high school as a skateboard company, treating participants “not as empty vessels but as equal partners who have something to offer” (craig morrison). they disrupt youth stereotypes: “we are reconnecting kids with stuart poyntz studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 386 something that got them in trouble: graffiti and skateboards, things that adults don’t like” (craig morrison). they give students a route forward, providing real world skills, helping student creators to find their market and run a design company. kids learn “to work with clients … doing high quality work, and making sure a job is done in a way that creates the next job” (craig morrison). they awaken untapped creativity, teach professionalism and focus on real life and doing something in the real world, “where things count.” they open networks and value kids as creative workers (e.g., partnering with ad agencies including anomaly in toronto). “no one hands me something that i only mark and put in a folder. everything we do is public: in the street, in a gallery, in pop-up shops, and at product launches” (craig morrison). by providing on-the-job experience, they legitimize kids with adult creatives and open up job placements. they also have a commitment to social justice. “we often talk about who you want to work with … a big corporation that doesn’t pay its workers well or with a small coffee shop that deals in a direct trade model. they are meeting other young people in these jobs and they start to see themselves having a place in the working world” (craig morrison). by “seeing their work acknowledged by the broader community, students begin to see themselves as participants in the city” (craig morrison). in addition to addressing specific youth identities and discourses of connection, the archive produces a sense of youth authenticity by curating a catalogue of dominant things, actions and a style or tone that together signify the trustworthiness or sincerity of osf. the single most important thing used to signify the trustworthiness of the organization is the skateboard, which is referenced across the archive, as the object of work and the site of creative self-expression, innovation and style. the skateboard is an object of transformation and the platform on which youth expression is actualized. in a globe and mail article from december 6, 2013, for instance, we read about “hannah duncan, a soft-spoken 18-year-old with hot pink hair, [who] shows off her design based on salvador dali’s the persistence of memory, with melting skateboards in the place of the painter’s iconic clocks” and “cassidy edwards, 18, [who] gives a report on the progress of her posterized design of michelangelo’s david.” (krashinski, 2013). in the same article, we’re told about “another board with a take on botticelli – except this time, venus is born on a clamshell covered in sweet tattoos.” other things, including the unorthodox learning space, the skatepark outside scadding court community centre, a large mural for obey clothing, are also present. but the skateboard is unquestionably the dominant thing in the archive, a transformative object both common to youth culture and a signifier of new beginnings, new relationships, new opportunities and possibly even a new self. among the many images in the archive, there is an otherwise bland artifact called “dare2create art and film” which includes images of youth producing their own boards. among these there are two images which show representations of the youth creators fashioned on to their boards. in one of these examples, producing authenticity studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 387 there is a before and after shot of a young woman, showing her as she was and as she has become, the board providing platform and inspiration for a reimagination of self. the dominant style and tone evident among the artifacts tend to reinforce the significance of skateboard culture. some of the mainstream news articles and videos tend toward the informational and advocacy for the program, but a series of videos, urban magazine articles and blogs highlight a street culture aesthetic through electronic music, hip hop, urban scenes, shots of skateboard parks, graffiti and massive urban murals. the power of these signifiers is only enhanced by the presence of specific celebrities, including the massively popular toronto artist (and basketball ambassador), drake, who along with shephard fairey, is presented as an ally of youth and if not a representative of osf, at least a testament to the integrity and credibility of the program. collectively, then, the language of youth authenticity assembled within osf’s media archive is anchored around the appeal of creative expression, entrepreneurialism and the power of branding as an exercise in self-creation and commercial development; the power of transformative objects, most especially the skateboard; the power of youth voice and the diversity of youth voices; the democracy of talent; and the credibility of celebrity. the organization offers the prospects of class uplift, as has long been the mandate of public education systems, for a range of kids who have otherwise been failed by the mainstream school system, as well as alternative routes to adulthood and to future education. in this historical moment, when the lure of creative economies, creative careers and even youth voice has become common in learning economies around the world, some of this will not be surprising. yet, how the organization stakes its claim to credibility among youth is not limited to these elements. like reelyouth, the power of organizations like osf has as much to do with the ontological security they afford as it does their ideological calling out to youth. i return to this theme below. reelyouth and youth citizens reelyouth differs from osf in many ways and yet there are important similarities.2 the organization started in 2005 in vancouver, is a youthserving project and is now organized around four program areas: the reelyouth film festival held annually and featuring youth-made films from across canada; an innovative intergenerational program that brings together youth and seniors to produce videos about the experiences of each group; a series of social justice-oriented programs; and, a professional film production 2 the quotations, notations and references about reelyouth in this section are taken from blog posts, videos, news reports, public relations documents and other texts contained in the organization’s archive, during the period from august 1-september 30, 2019. the specific source of each reference is typically indicated in the text. stuart poyntz studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 388 program. of these initiatives, the first three predominate, but interestingly, in the media archive the artifacts most often address reelyouth’s intergenerational and social justice programs. unlike osf, reelyouth operates in urban and rural regions and in recent years has produced programs ranging in length from one-to-four weeks across canada. the annual reel youth film festival screens short films made by young people under 20 and tours in partnership with youth media organizations, high schools, community groups and other film festivals. much of reelyouth’s funding comes from fee-for-service partnerships with community groups, school boards, indigenous nations and community foundations. the founding director, mark vonesch, continues to lead the organization, working with production mentors, some of whom had previous experience as participants in reelyouth projects. youth participation is voluntary and based on interest. the reelyouth website has a very different feel than osf. where the latter is linked to skateboard culture, reelyouth strikes a more grassroots, alternative tone. a drawn graphic of a young women of colour in a loosefitting skirt, holding a camera and looking out at the website user is prominent, while above her is the reelyouth logo, scripted in a slightly childlike font that reminds one of dr. seuss. the same font is used for the menu buttons at the top and side of the page, which link (at the top) to sections on programs/international projects/gallery/media/about us/donate. to the left of the page the menu buttons link to sections for home/submit your film/film festival/tour/resources/sponsors. beneath the top menu links are a series of hyperlinked text blocks of varying sizes that are presented using more conventional fonts, with varying realistic images and colours behind the fonts. these block hyperlinks take users to: the 2019 reelyouth film festival page; the reelyouth twitter feed; and, the reelyouth film festival at the vancouver international film festival. beneath this, another series of hyperlink blocks take users to a series of recent projects, including: prince george claymation programs; the sign-up for a mississauga, ontario film program; the film release for a vernon, b.c. program; the troublemakers 4.0 program, which is framed with rainbow colours; a program for lgbtq indigenous youth; and, the film release for a youth and elders documentary program hosted in the remote northern community of gjoa haven, nunavut. other than these links, white space predominates, creating a clean if grassroots feel across the site. no other logos or brand tie-ins appear on the homepage, except for customary links to facebook, twitter and youtube where visitors are invited to “follow us.” similar to osf, the media archive page for reelyouth is the repository of a range of artifacts, including (in summer 2019) a remarkable documentary placed at the top of the page and pulled from the general collection, called: if teardrops were pennies: julia cockney, an elder of tuktoyatuck. there is a series of videos from the troublemakers 4.0 social justice program that portrays an incredible range of activists, artists and identity switchers in a manner that both locates difference and subsumes difference into the human producing authenticity studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 389 family. there is a feature profile on young reelyouth filmmakers working with homeless seniors originally broadcast on cbc television’s anchor newscast, the national; a series of informational mainstream news stories about reelyouth; a range of news articles from daily and weekly newspapers from across the country; articles from a chinese language press outlet in vancouver; a cbc local radio interview; and, an article from the queer weekly paper, xtra vancouver. to make sense of how youth identity is curated in this collection, again it is helpful to locate how youth are represented and the key youth allies and roles proposed for young people. like osf, among the artifacts there is a range of youth presented, representing a diversity of genders (including non-binary youth), ethnicities and sexualities. but indigenous and refugee or migrant youth are more visibly present here. so too interestingly are the number of visibly white youth, reflecting the fact that the organization often works in rural regions across canada. in general, student filmmakers make up the majority of youth represented and importantly, many are revealed to have experience with the kinds of precarity (e.g., homelessness, isolation within their communities) explored in reelyouth projects. adult allies tend to be less obviously well-known media figures or artists and yet their connection with young people is often represented as quite profound. for instance, in a very simple dialogue, filmed over a black screen backdrop in a troublemakers 3.0 documentary, we meet sekani dalkeith, a native transgender rights activist who engages in a rich dialogue of discovery, memory and hope with jacoby macdonald, a queer/questioning youth. in other documentaries, we meet morgane oger (moving forward), a trans activist and human rights advocate from vancouver and in endurance, we meet jane eaton hamilton, a transgender photographer and artist. the aforementioned julia cockney is a remarkable indigenous elder who among other things, presents the land as a place of respite, imagination and discovery for young people. beyond this, the self-effacing humour and strength of a host of other adult allies – white seniors, indigenous leaders and political activists – hail young people through moments of care and attention, irony and acts of leadership and survival. in this context, the roles proposed for youth focus on becoming change agents, leaders, storytellers and witnesses for marginalized and under-represented communities who reveal specific realities “about living in canada and their vision of canada.” young people are represented as figures of hope, who can learn to be “part of a culture,” including cultures that have otherwise been ignored and abused in the past and remain deeply vulnerable today. in a manner different from osf, a sense of connection is curated in the reelyouth media archive largely through semiotic resources that frame a sense of where youth could be, as opposed to where they are. there are in fact few instances of what might called youth spaces (youth bedrooms, sport facilities, etc.) visible in the archive. rather, a series of videos highlight the land, as conceived and experienced in indigenous cultures as spaces of stuart poyntz studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 390 imagination where youth can be with cultures that are otherwise possibly unknown to them. what otherwise might be considered mundane spaces, including seniors care homes and the homes of indigenous and nonindigenous elders, are likewise presented in ways that hail youth through prospects of discovery. isolated, invisible city spaces, including stairwells, hidden sleeping quarters in city bushes and urban alleys in small communities are portrayed as sites of connection where youth are presented with opportunities to see and experience worlds around them that they might not otherwise know exist. more common sites of learning, including nontraditional classroom learning spaces and community centres are present, but a sense of connection through place is most commonly constructed through the introduction or re-imagination of new spaces and settings where youth are invited to engage and represent the world around them. reelyouth addresses young people through a value proposition that emphasizes the power in disrupting stereotypes and engaging with people and issues that appear under-represented in mainstream news reporting. learning a host of media production and animation skills is clearly part of what is put on offer, but these skills are represented as in the service of something presumed to be larger and more socially and politically significant: the opportunity to develop intergenerational communication. “we can’t build understanding between generations if we don’t have the different generations present in the same room” (mutya macatumpag, reel youth program mentor). media skills are also intended to foster connections across communities, particularly among communities that may otherwise be invisible to youth (e.g., those experiencing housing precarity, indigenous elders, seniors, queer and trans activists) and to develop youth’s voices in ways that help teens to reimagine the significance of the past and to reframe personal and social possibilities for the future. in short, the value proposition presented by reelyouth’s archive addresses the power of inclusion and the conditions needed to ensure a more socially just future. together, the promise of where youth could be, alongside powerful value propositions about the potential impactfulness of young people construct a sense of belonging in reelyouth’s media archive that anchors youth authenticity around the merits of an engaged life. while calling out to youth identities and discourses of connection, the archive sustains a sense of youth authenticity by curating a catalogue of dominant things, actions and a style or tone that together signify the trustworthiness or sincerity of reelyouth. among these, while no single object dominates as does the skateboard in the osf archive, there is a dominant style that seems aimed at conveying the sincerity of the organization. documentary realism is evident in a series of news stories, advocacy videos, video conversations, and portraits of various youth and adult figures across the archive, in ways that suggest a high degree of integrity, honesty and craft. whether in the form of an extended cbc documentary on reelyouth’s homeless senior-youth program, a newspaper producing authenticity studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 391 story about the documentary film, i am hitkoak, that recounts the life, culture and land of elder, alice ayalik hitkoak, or in numerous news stories (video and print), realism and the use of the camera as a window onto new worlds predominates. this style lends a sense of constructed transparency to the archive, as though here we are invited to find myriad efforts to convey faithfully worlds that otherwise lack the attention they deserve. this style suggests a kind of naïve innocence about what documentaries can do to open up the world, especially in an age of misinformation, fake videos and intense visual and audio distraction; but, this style and tone, alongside the playful innocence of reelyouth’s home page, convey a sense of integrity and trust, a hope that with more young people behind the camera, a more authentic and just world may prevail. the language of authenticity produced through reelyouth’s media archive is clearly about young people as citizens, actors in the world who are capable of witnessing and fomenting social change. in a manner, this is different from osf, but only in the sense that reelyouth explicitly interpolates young people as change agents, whereas osf addresses youth as participants in the world, as actors who have a legitimate and deserving place in the city. reelyouth’s claims to credibility, in other words, rest on a more explicit claim: that youth are not merely actors, but leaders of social change, partners with adults who can benefit from media skills in a time when social transformation runs through the screen and systems of media circulation orient our lives. youth arts, continuity and world disclosure the claims to youth authenticity articulated in the media archives of osf and reelyouth are different in style, content and possibly intention; and this is to be expected. each organization has linked their credibility to a language and aesthetics of youth culture in ways that offer promise for young people, including identities around which youth participants can link their experiences and hopes for the future. osf foregrounds the allure of entrepreneurialism, the appeal of the creative artist and work in the creative economy, networks of local businesses and alternative production associations, celebrities tied to toronto and international public art and the allure of city space and the street as public places that in ideal circumstances are open to all. as a discourse of youth authenticity, osf’s ideological appeal runs through the semiotics of consumer cultures, neoliberal subjectivities (i.e., the creative entrepreneur) and the imaginative prospects of youth style; and yet, at the same time, osf hails young people as participants in the city, actors who have a right to be in public and whose culture of graffiti, electronic music and street art is not only fit for the times, but a creative source for future self-realization. stuart poyntz studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 392 reelyouth’s media archive curates a somewhat different aesthetic and symbolic language of youth authenticity. their appeal is linked to citizen learning, to the power of the camera as a truth-sayer and to the appeal of diversity and inclusiveness among young people and within society at large. their credibility rests on the provision of digital skills, the allure of youth voices, especially among and for those marginalized from mainstream publics, access to people and communities woefully under-represented in the mainstream media and the power of documentary realism combined with a semiotics of transparency meant to open up windows onto the world. a spirit of innocence frames the language of youth representation in reelyouth’s media archive, combined with mild irony and the activist’s sense of urgency and earnestness. news media formats dominate, as opposed to the semiotics of youth consumer cultures; and, perhaps more clearly than osf, reelyouth foregrounds the allure of social change in its appeal to young people. while differences are apparent in each media archive, then, both channel ideological representations of young people that are hardly uncommon today. in their own ways, each rogue archive constructs visions of youth authenticity that while specific to canada (especially with references to indigenous cultures), will be familiar in many regions, testifying to the way globalization has inscribed youth cultures everywhere. the place-making or ground each organization offers for social justice struggles is not, however, linked to ideological representations alone. it is also and more significantly linked to the way authenticity discourses in each archive represent the ontological function of community arts groups, as spaces of provision, care and belonging for youth. this ontological ground is apparent in continuities that appear across each archive, continuities that point to how the youth arts sector itself has emerged as a critical provisioning infrastructure in a time when traditional institutions, including schools, have frequently failed young people and the challenge of youth transitions is as uncertain as it has ever been. one of the principle commonalities across the two media archives is the presence of durable, persistent and consistent modes of youth representation. by durable in this instance, i mean to draw attention to the materiality of the archives as technical resources, records of happenings that provide a form of historical memory for each organization. as the preceding research indicates, the degree of durability and permanence within each archive is concerning. some links fail, the visual interface of each site can change and the very significance of website-based archives can become moldy. but whether as website, cloud or a public social media newsfeed record (robards et al., 2018), the medium-term durability of each media archive produces a durable place of being-in-the-world for and about youth that in turn provides a record of permanence. this is a significant value of rogue archives more generally and in the case of osf’s and reelyouth’s collections, they instantiate a technical record that can be found and searched (in some sense) in a way that producing authenticity studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 393 provides a substantive and extended public record of youth cultural production. adding to the significance of these records as objects is the fact that they maintain a degree of stylistic and semiotic consistency directly tied to the organization itself. in this way, they mark a mode of youth being-in-theworld, a social and symbolic space of identity construction and orientation that maintains continuity over time. the media archives of osf and reelyouth are in a sense metonymic of the organizations as a whole: they are durable, persistent spaces of continuity that resist the general ephemerality of media culture, even if they are challenged by the same; they afford sites around which young people and others can gather; and, in this way, they constitute care structures (scannell, 2014) that contribute to a sense of ontological security by affording a valve against the failure of traditional modernist institutions of youth provision and a point of future orientation on the world. in affording sites of ontological refuge, osf’s and reelyouth’s media archives also share a commitment to providing access to the “real” for young people. they stage this commitment in diverse ways, some of which are shared, some of which are specific to each group. osf regularly asserts their commitment to student work oriented to the real world, real creative networks, real design contracts, a real creative practice in the form of a skateboard and design studio and their concern for a visual language of the real street, rather than the classroom. reelyouth’s commitment to the real is implicated in the organization’s name, but the archive stages the organization’s commitment more explicitly through youth-made documentaries about real people and vulnerable communities and a language of documentary realism meant to bring into the light unknown experiences and communities. these commitments matter but i want to make a stronger argument: they matter not simply (or merely) because of their ideological significance, as issues and connections to which young people might attend. rather, they matter because they signal how each archive (and by extension, each organization) orients youth to a horizon of realness, thereby affirming a normatively shared and valued place for youth in struggles over the real. by producing and affirming a felt sense of the real among young people, in their own ways, osf’s and reelyouth’s media archives provide access to the means for reflective world disclosure (kompridis, 2006). i mean that they afford a site where the “palpable materiality,” the real-ationality of the world is made open for attention by youth (frosh, 2019, p. 12). through their attention to the real, each organization renders into significance the conditions and elements of realness itself, the ground or round-about-me-ness of the world, in a manner meant to resonate for youth while demanding a response, action or an address. this is the starting point for social justice, a call and expectation to understand and act on the world. in a time of uncertainty around youth transitions, finding a space that opens up the prospect of such an address, that affords an affective relationship with the stuart poyntz studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 394 round-about-me-ness of the world is a vital contribution for youth and for building social justice infrastructures in community. finally, amidst the normatively framed ontological security constituted within osf’s and reelyouth’s media archives, they also overlap in the way they stage offerings of social agility and forward movement for young people, particularly in regard to the recalibration of relationships with powerful institutions of youth provision like schools, the media and work. both archives (and organizations) stake their credibility with youth at least in part through a recognition of the challenges young people face in a time of constrained and inequitable social resourcing, unstable and shifting work environments, ongoing youth identity crises and so on. this unstable environment is addressed differently by each organization, but across these differences common ground is evident in the way each organization constitutes a space of social transition, a home place for youth to stand in order to reconstitute powerful institutional relationships. this is evident across osf’s appeal to youth as a space for those who have “fallen through the cracks” and in the record of youth transitions to post-secondary school and viable work environments present in the archive. in reelyouth’s archive, social agility is staged through activists’, seniors’ and indigenous leaders’ stories. the significance of these records, however, has less to do with the particular claims any one statement presents, than with the way they collectively help youth orient to the world of power. the range of stories, complex narratives and statements about official institutions matter, but it is the collective contribution they make as a form of routing, a kind of social lineament or configuration oriented toward the future that is very much designed to enable young people to engage and respond to traditional institutions of power. in this way, osf’s and reelyouth’s media archives and the organizations themselves present collective spaces of ontological security, a home for border work to refocus and reimagine the disclosure of the world in a time when crises and rapid social, technical and political change make these kinds of spaces precarious and harder than ever to find. conclusion community media archives hold together forms of public memory that can and often have disappeared into the bottomless depths of the past. they offer a record of curation and cultural production that enables groups, like youth arts organizations to manage their own historicity and showcase their role as urban infrastructures of youth provision. their significance is at least in part in the way they manifest a record of happenings that have both ideological and ontological significance. in the current historical moment, as questions of youth authenticity and trustworthiness have become popular in youth culture and in discourses about youth culture, it is significant that the youth arts sector has emerged as a vital if often invisible space of practices that support producing authenticity studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 375-396, 2021 395 young people to question, critique and engage practices of injustice and opportunity. in this way, the sector affords a kind of home for young people, a durable place of trust and negotiation in fragmented and inequitable societies, where young people’s connectivity with the present is brought into view and routes for addressing the demands of social justice are opened. acknowledgements this research was supported by the sshrc insight grant, networks of nonformal learning: the state, youth as cultural producers and creative life pathways. references abidin, c. 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(2009). authenticity in culture, self and society. ashgate. the two sides of the representative coin studies in social justice volume 5, issue 2, 197-211, 2011   correspondence address: keith sutherland, department of politics, university of exeter, amory building, rennes drive, exeter, devon ex4 4rj, united kingdom. email: jkbs201@exeter.ac.uk issn: 1911-4788 the two sides of the representative coin keith sutherland1 department of politics, university of exeter, united kingdom abstract in federalist 10 james madison drew a functional distinction between “parties” (advocates for factional interests) and “judgment” (decision-making for the public good) and warned of the corrupting effect of combining both functions in a “single body of men.” this paper argues that one way of overcoming “madisonian corruption” would be by restricting political parties to an advocacy role, reserving the judgment function to an allotted (randomly-selected) microcosm of the whole citizenry, who would determine the outcome of parliamentary debates by secret ballot—a division of labour suggested by james fishkin’s experiments in deliberative polling. the paper then defends this radical constitutional proposal against bernard manin’s (1997) claim that an allotted microcosm could not possibly fulfil the “consent” requirement of natural right theory. not only does the proposal challenge manin’s thesis, but a 28th amendment implementing it would finally reconcile the competing visions that have bedevilled representative democracy since the constitutional convention of 1787. introduction this paper follows the example of hanna pitkin (1967), bernard manin (1997) and james fishkin (2009) in adopting a hybrid approach to the study of political representation. the reader will thus be taken on a roller-coaster ride, involving a combination of the history of political thought and analytical political philosophy alongside a consideration of some recent social science experiments in the practice of deliberative democracy. although the focus is a practical proposal for constitutional change, the paper starts by attempting to clarify the concepts involved. all good sermons begin with a quotation from canonical scripture, and my chosen text is the epistle of st. james [madison] to the new yorkers, in the tenth chapter, beginning at the eighth verse: [a] body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time . . . yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail (federalist papers, vol. 10, para. 8).2 198 keith sutherland   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   in this important passage “publius” (james madison) outlines two opposing aspects of political representation—“judgment” (disinterested decision-making) and “parties” (interests)—that, when combined in a single “body of men,” have a tendency to corrupt each other: for legislative decision-makers are also “advocates and parties to the causes which they determine” (federalist, 10, para. 8). madison’s view on political judgment appears to be that of a classical republican who believed in the possibility of virtue in human affairs (banning, 1988, pp. 194-195); but from the point of view of parties (interests) he is a proto-liberal, “concerned with men who are pursuing their own interests, sometimes rationally calculated, in a system that is more amoral than immoral” (howe, 1988, p. 108). liberal, that is, until one considers the passions that underlie those interests, at which point madison’s pessimism regarding the need to impose controls on the evil inclinations of man is close to thomas hobbes or even john calvin. but how can one writer be all these three creatures—republican, liberal and calvinist/hobbesian—at one and the same time? madison, like many of his eighteenth-century peers, was steeped in “faculty” psychology,3 which posited an ascending hierarchy of human nature: from the “mechanical” through the “animal” to the “rational” (howe, p. 109). according to this school of thought, the passions were part of man’s animal nature but “interest” inhabited a precarious half-way house—“passionate” when parties are motivated by short-term self-interest, “prudential” when motivated by long-term and general considerations. at the top of the pinnacle stood reason and conscience: collective, dispassionate, wise and virtuous. unfortunately, as alexander pope realized, “the ruling passion conquers reason still,” leading madison to the calvinist conclusion that the “stern virtue [reason] is the growth of few soils” (federalist, 73, para. 1). this is one reason why he advocated the enlarged republic, as it would provide a deeper pool from which to elect “a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations” (federalist, 10, para. 16), thereby ensuring that judgment was exercised by “the elect”—representatives of “enlightened views and virtuous sentiments” (federalist, 10, para. 21). madison deplored the formation of parties or “factions”4 because they seduced interests away from long-term and general considerations (federalist, 50, para. 6); furthermore he acknowledged that parties were likely to predominate, owing to the strength of the passions, and would thus tend to corrupt the constitution. hence the second role of the extended republic, over and above that of ensuring the judgment of a virtuous elite: “extend the sphere, and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests” (federalist, 10, para. 20). in an extended republic, with large constituencies, the multiplicity of interests balances out as “ambition counteracts ambition” (federalist, 51, para. 4). divede et impera: divide interests and reason will—given sufficient time—conquer all. while publius was advocating the positive benefits of the enlarged republic, his antifederalist opponents argued that the preservation of republican virtù required small political units and a primarily agrarian economy.5 they rejected the aristocratic hierarchy of merit assumed by faculty psychology, arguing instead the democratic case that the legislature should represent all “classes” (occupations) “descriptively”: “the farmer, merchant, mecanick and other various orders of the two sides of the representative coin 199 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   people, ought to be represented according to their respective weight and numbers” (dry, 1985, p. 125). unfortunately events such as shays’s rebellion6 meant that the delegates at the us constitutional convention were more than a little nervous about antifederalist plans for the legislature accurately to reflect the weight and numbers of the demos, so publius won the ratification battle. however he lost the war. all the calamities that madison predicted through combining judges and parties in a “single body of men” quickly came to pass. partisan interests and the corrupting influence of money, media and celebrity quickly put paid to his hope that an enlarged republic would produce enlightened and virtuous representatives. the unanticipated seizure of power by political parties during madison’s own lifetime meant that his hopes that the enlarged republic would balance out interests by allowing “ambition to be made to counteract ambition” (federalist, 51, para. 4) were dashed by the forces of factionalism. interests and judges became well and truly fused in an electoral system dominated by factional political parties. madison’s “republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government” (federalist, 10, para. 23) turned out be more akin to a dose of quack medicine. a binary solution to the representative conundrum it would appear then that the combination of judgment and interests in one legislative body inevitably leads to factionalism and corruption: one of the reasons why [the legislature] is so prone to the evils of factionalism, publius argues, is that legislators are constantly being cast in the dual role of advocates and judges in the causes before them (federalist, 10, para. 8). their self-interest corrupts what should ideally be a disinterested pursuit of the common good (howe, 1988, p. 124). but if madison is right—judgment and the advocacy of interests are impossible to combine in one “body of [fallen] men”—then why not have two bodies (judges and advocates) created by two entirely different systems of representation?7 according to hanna pitkin (1967), the primary duty of a representative is active advocacy—looking after the interests of her constituents. active representation does not require that an elected representative should resemble her constituents in any respect, only that she should act as a trustee or advocate for their interests, in a similar manner to a lawyer representing the beneficiaries of a trust fund. competitive elections are the time-honoured way to choose advocates to act on behalf of voters’ interests. in politics, however, we expect our advocates also to be judge and jury (and, in the case of fused parliamentary systems like the uk, executioner as well). but how can a member of the tiny elite of “natural” aristocrats returned by the elective process overcome her own self-interest and that of the faction she represents, so as to judge impartially on behalf of the whole nation? 8 according to the antifederalist view, this would require an aggregate solution: the legislative assembly should be “an exact portrait, in miniature” of the whole citizenry (adams, 1988, para. 13), one that represents the nation “descriptively”: the “farmer, merchant and mecanick” (dry, 1985, p. 125), rather than predominately white, male lawyers (and oxbridge ppe graduates). where better to 200 keith sutherland   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   look for a descriptively-democratic mechanism than fourth-century athens, the birthplace of democracy? ancient remedies for a modern disease the legal process is indifferent to who the advocates are (they are chosen purely on their competence and rhetorical ability) but we insist that final judgment be reserved to a randomly-selected lay group (the jury) whose verdict represents the considered judgment of the whole community. but if this works for the law courts, then why not the high court of parliament? most readers will share antifederalist scepticism about the dispassionate, rational judgment of a “natural aristocracy of wisdom and virtue” (howe, 1988, p. 117) magically transcending partisan interests.9 modern sensibilities are better represented by james surowiecki’s (2004) and philip tetlock’s (2005) arguments that the aggregate “wisdom of crowds” is a more reliable and democratic way of judging most issues than reliance on experts and aristocrats, natural or otherwise. if there is such a thing as the “general will,” then the best way to capture it is via the mechanical principle of condorcet’s “jury theorem” regarding the probability of a group of individuals arriving at a correct decision, rather than by privileging the “god’s eye” view of an aristocratic elite (grofman & feld, 1988; urbanati, 2006, ch.6). this principle of the “wisdom of crowds” has its origins in aristotle’s politics: the many, of whom each individual is but an ordinary person, when they meet together may very likely be better than the few good, if regarded not individually but collectively, just as a feast to which many contribute is better than a dinner provided out of a single purse. for each individual among the many has a share of virtue and prudence, and when they meet together, they become in a manner one man, who has many feet, and hands, and senses; that is a figure of their mind and disposition. hence the many are better judges than a single man. (aristotle, 2008, iii.11.1281b) the only way of harnessing the wisdom of crowds in a large nation state is via descriptive representation and, as the polling industry has demonstrated, the best way of ensuring accurate descriptive representation of large populations is through probability sampling using a randomly-selected microcosm (levy, 2008) a process known, when applied to political representation, as sortition. although the mechanism has its origins in fourth-century athens (they even invented a sortition engine, the kleroterion) it has not fallen entirely out of use: in addition to the anglo-american jury, the deliberative polling (dp) experiments of james fishkin (2009) and his colleagues have shown that a randomly-selected group of ordinary citizens conforms to condorcet’s jury theorem: it can judge an issue just as rationally as any elite body—at least when supplied with balanced expert advocacy. on the other hand election is the best—or perhaps the only—way of ensuring the active representation of interests. as bernard manin (1997) has argued, elections produce elites: “it is no accident that the terms ‘election’ and ‘elite’ have the same etymology and that in a number of languages the same adjective denotes a person of distinction and a person who has been chosen.” (manin, 1997, p. 140) this is because elections are designed to select the best candidate (hoi aristoi). manin’s the two sides of the representative coin 201 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   observation on the elite nature of the electoral process applies universally, irrespective of the extent of the franchise and the opportunity for everyone to stand as a candidate, so the term “elective democracy” is oxymoronic. as we have argued above, the crucial question is how to combine the two distinct aspects of representation—judgment and parties—without incurring the factional evils that madison deplored. a radical answer would be a binary division of roles within the legislature, as james harrington proposed in his commonwealth of oceana (1656). harrington’s proposal was based on the venetian ballot, which involved a combination of election and sortition. harrington presupposed the complete separation of executive10 and legislative powers and advocated a further separation within the legislature—responsibility for policy proposals being allocated to the “aristocratic” (elected) element in the legislature and voting rights restricted to the democratic (randomly-selected) element: “an equal commonwealth is a government founded upon balance . . . a senate debating and proposing, a representative of the people resolving, and a magistracy executing” (harrington, 1992, p. 25). according to j.g.a. pocock, the editor of the cambridge edition of harrington’s oceana, there is to be a “natural aristocracy,” constituted by the people themselves in the act of recognizing [via elections] and deferring to those of superior talent; it will possess its own “virtue,” the capacity to reflect, and will exercise its own function, that of proposing alternatives [italics added] between which the many’s “virtue,” the capacity to decide [italics added], entitles them to choose. the difference between aristocracy and democracy is moral, numerical and functional but has no necessary connection with the existence of estates, orders or classes. (pocock, 1988, p. 63) harrington’s functional distinction between the role of the few and the role of the many resonates with athenian political practice, for example pericles’ funeral oration: “although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it” (quoted in popper, 1950, p. 181). harrington illustrates the natural justice of his binary constitution with the example of two girls dividing a cake equally: two of them have a cake yet undivided, which was given between them: that each of them therefore might have that which is due, “divide,” says one to the other, “and i will choose; or let me divide, and you shall choose.” if this be but once agreed upon, it is enough; for the divident, dividing unequally, loses, in regard that the other takes the better half. wherefore she divides equally, and so both have right. (harrington, 1992, p. 22) in my own reworking of harrington’s proposal (sutherland, 2008) both elements— hoi aristoi and hoi polloi—sit within the same house: the elective element proposes and debates legislative alternatives and the sortive element decides the outcome by voting, in a similar manner to a trial jury. the right of elected politicians (hoi aristoi) to introduce legislative proposals are restricted to the manifesto commitments of the political party or parties that won the most votes in the general election.11 given that the winners of the election are not forming a government but only putting forward policy proposals, a nationwide system of proportional representation would most accurately mirror the raw preferences of the electorate. 202 keith sutherland   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   allotted members have the monopoly of the vote but cannot propose legislative alternatives, as descriptive-democratic legitimacy applies only in aggregate, rather than to individual members. in this respect elected members correspond to harrington’s cake divider, whereas the allotted members correspond to the girl who chooses which slice of cake to eat. a constitution along broadly similar lines has been proposed by marcus schmidt, who runs the largest danish opinion poll organization (hansen, 2005, pp. 54-55). schmidt’s proposal is for a 70,000-strong electronic second chamber, selected annually by lot. as denmark has only four million electors, this means that most citizens would serve for one year during their life, thereby emulating the rotation effect of athenian-style sortition—“rule and be ruled in turn” (aristotle, 2008, vi.1.1217b). the first chamber of parliament, elected on a party-political basis, continues to prepare all bills. working members of the second chamber have a paid day off every week to study and debate the proposals and then vote by pincodeactivated telephone (every vote is rewarded by a tax credit). in schmidt’s bicameral constitution, if the votes in the elected and allotted chambers fail to reach unanimity, then the proposal is put to a general referendum. however, the functional distinction within harrington’s legislature—between debating/proposing and resolving (known as “parties” and “judges” in madison’s terminology)—does not require a bicameral solution. indeed the trial jury analogy suggests that both elements would need to meet in plenary as it is hard to understand how a jury could adequately judge a case without first hearing the evidence.12 the vote in the general election—the “raw preferences”—would inevitably be unreflective, as anthony downs’s principle of “rational ignorance” still applies: an elector in a mass democracy has no reason to study the issues in depth because her individual vote has in effect no causal power. the power of the individual elector to change the outcome of elections is infinitesimally small: in modern democracies the extension of the suffrage cannot in the end empower individuals because once the democratic “cake” has grown past a critical size each voter’s slice becomes so small as to be causally irrelevant. this is because, unlike other public goods such as street lighting, the causal efficacy of the vote suffers from diminishing returns as the franchise is extended. however, the democratic mythology hides this fact so that democracy is not believed to suffer from diminishing returns. when people see through the myth, and discover voting is causally irrelevant, apathy results (graham, 2002) a result accurately predicted by hegel (2010, para. 311). however, the victorious party or parties in the election (hoi aristoi) would still need to convince the legislature through the force of their arguments, as voting rights would be restricted to the randomly-selected members (hoi polloi). it would no longer be possible for a victorious party to steamroller through a policy that was buried in an election manifesto that few had bothered to read or that was deliberately concealed before the election. but given it is the same electorate that is being balloted13 in two complementary ways (preference elections and sortition) one would anticipate that the party/parties that won the election would also have a reasonable probability of winning the parliamentary vote. however—and this is the point—the victorious political parties would need to ensure that their policies won both the electoral (unconsidered) vote and the considered verdict of the same population, sampled descriptively—populism checked by deliberative rationality.14 the two sides of the representative coin 203 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   the problem of consent and the triumph of election a constitutional proposal along harringtonian lines would inoculate the body politic against madisonian corruption and would honour in full the distinction between “descriptive” and “active” representation. a randomly-selected legislature is a “portrait in miniature” (adams, 1988, para. 13), one that mirrors the whole population “descriptively”—like one of fishkin’s deliberative polls; however, because the democratic legitimacy of such an assembly only applies in aggregate, it would be impossible for it to perform the active function of individual political representation, such as the initiation of legislative proposals, advocacy, and remonstration. but there is no reason why a descriptively-representative assembly should not determine the outcome of a debate, as the aggregate vote would reflect the considered views of the whole population. fishkin points out that the etymological root of “deliberation” is the latin libra (weighing) (2009, p. 35) so when a randomly-selected assembly member “like me” weighs up the arguments and judges accordingly then i am descriptively represented. but is it possible to take this further and argue that i thereby consent to the judgment of a randomlyselected assembly? the argument for this further claim would need to take the following lines (paraphrasing fishkin, 2009, p. 194): 1. someone “like me” would, ex hypothesi, exercise judgment in the same way that i would myself. the argument does not require a definition of the likeness criteria (age, gender, occupation, political preferences etc.), as the randomization process in principle reflects the incidence of any quality in the general population. 2. the number of representatives “like me” in an allotted assembly would be proportionate to the number in the general population. if the sample were not sufficiently fine-grained to reflect accurately the distribution of any quality deemed to be salient to the exercise of political judgment then the sample numbers would need to be increased accordingly. only a relatively small sample would be needed to provide an accurate gender balance, whereas the proportional representation of, say, albinos or molecular microbiologists would require a larger sample. the rapid growth of the polling industry is a testimonial to the accuracy and validity of the probability sampling principle. 3. therefore the aggregate judgment of the allotted assembly would represent the considered judgment of the whole population.15 4. all electors are currently deemed to consent to the results of a general election, whether or not “their” candidate was victorious; so the same principle should apply to the result of a vote in an allotted assembly, the only difference being the employment of one or other of the two mechanisms—election or sortition—that constitute a ballot. although one might argue that the consent involved is at best tacit or hypothetical, the same is true in both instances of the ballot. but according to bernard manin, this argument is false: “however lot is interpreted, whatever its other properties, it cannot possibly [italics added] be perceived as an expression of consent” (manin, 1997, pp. 84-85). the only way of 204 keith sutherland   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   establishing consent is via the mechanism of the preference election. this is on account of the natural right theory that was dominant at the time of the birth of representative government. but are preference elections really an effective way of demonstrating consent, given that the aggregated outcome can only approximate the views of the average voter? how can one be deemed to have consented to an outcome that one did not personally vote for? an investigation of the strength of manin’s argument requires a digression into the development of natural right theory. if in the end the notion of electoral consent has shaky foundations, then the fishkinian alternative merits serious consideration, especially as the canonical narrative of electoral consent will be seen to rely on an archaic corporatist perspective of the social orders which is of little relevance in an age that emphasizes the sovereignty of the atomized individual. natural right theory john locke (1632-1704) is the best-known advocate of the principle that all legitimate government rests upon the consent of the governed. just about the only thing that locke had in common with his intellectual predecessor thomas hobbes was the shared belief that the commonwealth (civic society) was the result of a social contract between subjects and their government. both writers are vague as to when and where this contract was signed. hobbes—who did not have a high regard for historians other than thucydides, whose work he harnessed for rhetorical purposes—argued, following grotius and selden, that the social contract was a logical deduction from observations on human psychology: given man’s innate combination of fearfulness, egoism and pride, the only rational (prudential) course is for all men to exchange their natural freedom for the order and protection of the sovereign. since each man’s imperative is the preservation of his own life, it matters little what form the resultant government takes so long as its sovereignty is unchallenged and peace is preserved. the context for hobbes’s work was the english civil war, hence his wish for peace at any cost: it is unsurprising that the war-weary should consent to any form of government that will ensure that the pikes can safely be returned to the thatch or, better still, melted down and turned into ploughshares. what a difference forty years makes. with the turmoil and bloodshed of the civil war behind them, locke and his friends and patrons could afford the luxury of desiring not just the protection of their lives, but also their liberty and property. the latter meant that all (property-owning) citizens should themselves consent to the tax-raising requirements of the executive.16 but this is where it all gets a little tricky, as locke slips, without justification, from insisting on the individual’s consent to taxation, to assuming the consent of only a majority, or even a majority of representatives. the slippage at [locke, 1967] para, 140, p. 380 takes place within a single phrase: however fair or necessary taxation is, “still it must be with his own consent, i.e. the consent of the majority, giving it either by themselves, or their representatives chosen by them.” (hampsher-monk, 1992, p. 104) the two sides of the representative coin 205 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   what makes the problem even worse is the historical fact that the parliamentary consent mechanism that locke was describing had its origins not in the “bottomup” theorizing of the social contract, but in the “top-down” requirement of medieval kings for the towns and counties of the realm to send knights and burgesses to meet with the king’s council. parliament was created for the convenience of the executive. attendance was a “chore and a duty, reluctantly performed” (pitkin, 1967, p. 3) and was in no sense considered a representative function. however “[t]he authorities who thus called for the election of representatives usually insisted that they be invested with full powers (plenipotentiarii)—that is to say, that the electors should consider themselves bound by the decisions of the elected, whatever those decisions may be” (manin, 1997, p. 87). thus electoral representation started out for the convenience of the executive, in order to establish the “consent” of the ruled: once the delegates had given their consent to a particular measure or tax, the king, pope, or emperor could then turn to the people and say: “you consented to have representatives speak on your behalf; you must now obey what they have approved.” (manin, 1997, pp. 87-88) very often the elected representatives of the people were merely asked to give their seal of approval to what the authorities had proposed. there were usually no policy choices involved and the process was often limited to a mere “acclamation” (manin, 1997, p. 88). philosophers were then recruited to justify this political imperative, resulting in the theory of natural rights: [m]ost strong rights theories have in fact been explicitly authoritarian rather than liberal. hobbes is representative, not exceptional. . . it is true that more liberal rights theories grew out of this conservative and authoritarian tradition . . . but the grotian origins of these liberal theories cannot be ignored, for they were always uneasily close to their authoritarian counterparts. (tuck, 1979, p. 3) given the tiny franchise of the late seventeenth century, and the domination of the commons by the patronage of landed interests, mps might very well have been unanimous in their opposition to levels of taxation that constituted an assault on their “natural right” to hold property. locke was no democrat: “he stands on the whole for the whig grandees, entrenched in the house of commons” (barker, 1971, p. xxvi) and for him, “by clear implication the test of membership is roughly equivalent to the forty shilling freehold” (franklin, 1981, p. 125). perhaps this is the reason that he appears not even to notice the conflation in his phrase: “his own consent, i.e. the consent of the majority” (locke, 1967, para. 140, p. 380). to a modern reader it is clear that one’s own consent may or may not coincide with the majority position; but with a small, relatively homogeneous property-owning franchise, it may well have been that parliamentary representation was simply a case of “chaps like us” whom one could rely on to protect the family silver. the construction of lockean-style government-by-consent in a mass democracy of atomized individuals with disparate views and interests is a much more serious challenge. hegel (like burke) adopted the pre-modern perspective that political representation was conducted through the corporations of civil society: “[deputies] are representatives not of individuals or a conglomeration of them, but of one of the 206 keith sutherland   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   essential spheres of society and its large-scale interests” (hegel, 2010, p. 160). however, a representative assembly in a greatly expanded franchise becomes a congress of individual particular interests, so the distinction between the majority and minority positions becomes a very real one. how is it possible to maintain the principle that everyone should give their own consent under universal franchise with the inevitable conflict between the interests of a “multitude of the particular men” (hobbes, 1969, p. 85). consent by proxy consent by the mechanism of preference elections is at best partial, tacit and approximate as it reflects only the consent of the majority (or at least its corporate representatives) and there is no obvious way for parliamentary representatives accurately to divine what the actual views of their constituents might be.17 but an alternative approach to electoral approximation, and one better suited to a mass individualist society, is sortive representation by proxy—i may not attend (and consent or dissent) in person but, if the sampling process is accurate, there would be people like me present who could participate on my behalf, and their presence would be directly proportionate to how many people “like me” there are in the wider population: a representative microcosm offers a picture of what everyone would think under good conditions. in theory if everyone deliberated, the conclusions would not be much different [italics added]. so the microcosm offers a proxy for the much more ambitious scenario of what would happen if everyone discussed the issues and weighed competing arguments under similarly favourable conditions. (fishkin, 2009, p. 194) but could representation by proxy ever be considered a form of consent? can i be a party to a contract that i did not sign myself? admittedly this is a difficulty. but it is no greater than that of mythical social contracts that are either the result, in hobbes’s case, of logical deduction of how a rational person would choose to act or, in locke’s case, “speculative economic history” (hampsher-monk, 1992, p. 90). and, as demonstrated above, the notion that consent is somehow embodied in electoral representation is true only under the near-unanimous conditions of the tiny property-based franchise of locke’s time. so consent by proxy would have to do very little work to improve on the dubious claims of consent by electoral approximation. fishkin’s rome healthcare dp enabled elected officials to argue that the “perceived legitimacy” of the dp results gave them the “cover to do the right thing” (fishkin, 2009, p. 151): the implication is that electoral success and legitimacy are anything other than synonymous. the crucial issue here is that of perceived legitimacy. a sophisticated knowledge of probability theory is required in order to understand how a sample can truly be representative of a target population. probability theory was unknown in classical times, casting doubt on the claim that the lot was used as a method of random sampling: dowlen (2008) argues that sortition was primarily a mechanism to inhibit factionalism and corruption.18 but that does not rule out probability sampling as a way of representing public the two sides of the representative coin 207 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   opinion in modern times (otherwise the opinion pollsters would all go bankrupt). all that is needed is to educate the wider public about the perceived legitimacy of the lot. participants in a symposium on fishkin’s book noted that careful experiments in deliberative polling are the best way of establishing the perceived legitimacy of majoritarian decision-making by a randomly-selected deliberative forum. jane mansbridge describes fishkin’s work as the “gold standard of attempts to sample what a considered public opinion might be on issues of political importance” (mansbridge, 2010, p. 55). focussing on the issue of consent, she describes the consent afforded by citizens to electoral representation as “somewhat tacit” and based on “incomplete information, incorrect premises, or manipulated loyalties” (mansbridge, 2010, p. 57). her hope is that lot will “make a significant comeback” but that would require both “a nuanced theoretical discussion of its [normative] legitimacy” as a form of representation and “sufficient citizen experience with the institution to make an informed judgment” (mansbridge, 2010, p. 57). we are only just beginning on this path, mansbridge concludes, and fishkin’s book is a milestone along the way, although “it will take a while for the public and for the deliberative system as a whole to give deliberative polls the credibility and the respect that they deserve” (mansbridge, p. 60). the jurist sanford levinson, another participant in the symposium, also focused on how a random sample might be seen as a legitimate form of representation: the legitimacy arises from both the equal probability that any given person (discounting for minimal baseline qualifications) might have been chosen and the perception by those not chosen that the system of lottery selection assures the relative “representativeness” of the sample chosen. to adopt the language of bill clinton, the deliberative assembly will look sufficiently “like america” to provide necessary reassurance that one’s own views are not absent from the assembly. (levinson, 2010, p. 66) although levinson acknowledges that the necessary grasp of probability theory (“representativeness”) will require a great deal of sophistication on the part of ordinary citizens, the biggest obstacle is the vested interests of elected legislators. fishkin’s 2007 dp in zeguo, china, did not suffer from this as the results were eagerly implemented by the local party leaders and people’s congress, thus suggesting that liberal democracy may actually impede the institutionalization of the deliberative process. the success of the zeguo dp has given rise to further projects in china which provide a judicious mix of élite and deliberative democracy, providing the “first glimmerings of another model” which “may set an example for public consultation in many settings around the world” (fishkin, 2009, pp. 155-156). the response from the political class in liberal democracies has been less enthusiastic: turkeys are unlikely to vote for christmas because, in the (possibly apocryphal) saying of john roche (paraphrasing acton): “power corrupts, and the possibility of losing power corrupts absolutely”. as a consequence fishkin appears to be cautiously promoting the dp as an informed focus group. this paper, however, has argued that deliberation by an allotted microcosm is a more legitimate way of indicating democratic consent than its electoral equivalent. as fishkin puts it, “consulting the public’s considered judgments is a bit like seeking its collective informed consent [italics added]” (2009, p. 195). one might 208 keith sutherland   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011   counter that perceived legitimacy is not the same thing as consent, but the legitimating narrative of electoral democracy fares no better on this score: few governments have the electoral majority’s vote. if a hypothetical contract (social or otherwise) is not worth the paper that it’s not written on, then perhaps we need a new discourse for the age of universal suffrage rather than the notion of consent, which was more appropriate to a corporatist age and a comparatively narrow and homogeneous franchise. conclusion this paper has attempted to refute bernard manin’s claim that the inexorable “triumph of election” is predicated on the natural right consent principle, and to provide an outline sketch of how the sortive alternative of what might be termed consent by proxy would be more relevant for the atomized individualism of modern multicultural societies. several other sortive proposals have featured in the recent literature (burnheim, 1989; callenbach & phillips, 2008; lieb, 2004; o’leary, 2006) but they are all potentially open to corruption on account of their failure to acknowledge and implement madison’s fundamental distinction between “judgment” and “parties.” the federalists won the ratification debate at the constitutional convention; a compromise solution would have included the antifederalist proposal for descriptive representation by proxy. perhaps now is the time for a 28th amendment to reconcile the federalist and antifederalist viewpoints by implementing the proposal for a binary legislature outlined in this paper. notes   1 i am grateful to conall boyle, bob brecher, jan-willem burgers, john burnheim, gideon calder, lyn carson, oliver dowlen, yoram gat, gordon graham, mogens herman hansen, daniel howe, ivo mosley, jason maloy and peter stone for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 2 in view of the numerous editions of the federalist papers and other works of canonical scripture, all references are to volume and paragraph rather than to a specific edition. 3 madison’s tutor at princeton was the scottish presbyterian cleric and moral philosopher john witherspoon. faculty psychology was in some respects a secularized version of the calvinist doctrine of original sin and madison’s famous “if men were angels, no government would be necessary” (federalist, 51, para. 4) was lifted straight from john calvin’s sermon on galatians 3:19-20, “the many functions of god’s law” (1558). 4 the reason madison and the other founding fathers disliked democracy and always connected it with factional evils is that they learned about it from plato, aristotle and plutarch, who were all critical of democracy (m.h. hansen, personal communication). 5 antifederalists preferred the simple and heroic spartan virtues to the corrupting influence of commerce and trade in unnecessary luxury goods: “frugality, industry, temperance and simplicity—the rustic traits of the sturdy yeoman—were the stuff that made society strong” (wood, 1969, p. 52). 6 an armed uprising in central and western massachusetts (mainly springfield) from 1786 to 1787. 7 the generic use throughout this essay of the words advocate and judge should not be confused with their specific judicial meaning; also parties, interests and advocates are treated as synonyms. also, although howe (1988) associates advocacy with self-interest, one can also be an advocate for a cause on the basis of ideological conviction—the motivating claim of many political activists. the two sides of the representative coin 209 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011     8 nadia urbanati also acknowledges the conceptual distinction between advocacy and judgment (“deliberation” in the sense of weighing alternatives) along with madison’s dilemma that “the actors who advocate their cause in the assembly are the same ones who pass judgment” (urbanati, 2006, p. 47). however her response is purely normative: “impartiality is at most a prescriptive maxim and a moral duty,” and relies on aristotelian and ciceronian notions of the norms of deliberative rhetoric: “advocates must ‘feel’ the force of others’ arguments in order to envision the path toward the best possible outcome” (urbanati, 2006, p. 47). that glosses over three obvious problems. first, classical rhetoricians assumed moral virtue as a prerequisite in debate, whereas their modern equivalents presuppose knavery (remer, 1995); second, the term advocate is drawn from jurisprudence, where the judging is performed by a supposedly dispassionate jury; and third, modern uk and similar parliaments are characterized by an almost total absence of deliberation (the outcome of the debate being predetermined by the parliamentary arithmetic) whereas in us-style constitutions, pork trading has more influence on judgment than deliberative rhetoric. compare also pettit, 2010, p. 65, drawing on skinner, 2005. 9 the early-modern republican theorist james harrington anticipated the modern view that élites were simply better at dressing up their own interests in discursive form. in fact by wisdom harrington does not mean a “platonic capacity to know metaphysical truths,” but simply an ability of the élite to calculate its own interests (remer, 1995, p. 552): “reason is nothing but interest, there be divers interests, and so divers reasons” (harrington, 1992, p. 171). 10 although this paper does not address how the executive should be constituted, harrington’s analysis would suggest that it is not a political office. if competence is the foremost requirement then there is no reason in principle for the appointment of government ministers to be any different from the recruitment process for any other senior organisational role. the general argument of this paper— that the distinction between the three aspects of political power (advocacy, judgment and execution) should be maintained by a unique selection mechanism for each role—would rule out using one process (election) for the selection of advocates and executives. the founders of the american republic deplored the corruption of the legislature by the executive and would have been equally dismayed by modern presidents acting “politically.” 11 in addition, government ministers would be entitled to introduce bills of a housekeeping nature as secondary legislation is normally viewed as an executive function. 12 for details of how to ensure balanced expert advocacy to enable a well-informed decision, an essential part of the deliberative polling experiments, see sutherland, 2008, pp. 133-8. 13 according to the oed, the word ballot incorporates both meanings—elections and selection by lot. 14 the time delay between the original elections and the debate in the allotted chamber would also greatly improve the quality of legislation by allowing space for extended deliberation in the media and the general public, an essential part of condorcet’s constitutional proposal (urbanati, 2006, ch. 6). 15 this was the principle behind the nomothetai (legislative courts) introduced in fourth-century athens. the nomothetai were selected by lot from among the jurors who were over thirty and who had taken the dikastic oath. “it was the wisdom of advanced age combined with the importance of the oath that distinguished the nomothetai from the assembly” (m.h. hansen, personal communication; c.f. hansen, 1990, pp. 222-226). 16 “[m]en must themselves consent (they cannot be bound . . . by the consent of their predecessors)” (tuck, 1979, p. 172). 17 “today, a person is deemed to be politically ‘represented’ no matter what, i.e., regardless of his own will and actions or that of his representative. a person is considered represented if he votes, but also if he does not vote. he is considered represented if the candidate he has voted for is elected, but also if another candidate is elected. he is represented, whether the candidate he voted or did not vote for does or does not do what he wished him to do. and he is considered politically represented, whether ‘his’ representative will find majority support among all elected representatives or not” (hoppe, 2001, pp. 283-284). 18 manin, however, argues that “thinking about the political use of lot may have led the greeks to an intuition not unlike the notion of mathematically equal chances. it was true, in any case, that lot had the effect of distributing something equal in terms of number (to ison kat’arithmon), even if its precise nature eluded rigorous theorization” (manin, 1997, p. 39). tuck notes that the estimation of probabilities predates leibniz and huygens’s mathematical studies—appearing, for example, in the writings of grotius and the members of the tew circle, thereby casting doubt on ian hacking’s account of the context in which the concept of probability emerged (tuck, 1979, pp. 104-5). 210 keith sutherland   studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011     whenever a medieval cook stirred the chunks in a cauldron of soup and then sampled it with a ladle she was expressing a confidence that the ingredients sampled in the spoon would be proportionate to the whole cauldron (the variables being the size of the spoon, the size of the chunks and how vigorously the cauldron is stirred). this may also help explain why many mathematicallychallenged writers working in this field (including fishkin and the present author) thought they had dreamed up the idea of sortition through their own sheer intellectual brilliance, only to find out later that they were reinventing a very worn wheel. references aristotle (1988). the politics. cambridge: cambridge university press. adams, j. 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(1985). the complete anti-federalist. h. j. storing (ed.). chicago: university of chicago press. fishkin, j. a. (2009). when the people speak: deliberative democracy & public consultation. oxford: oxford university press. franklin, j. (1981). john locke and the theory of sovereignty. cambridge: cambridge university press. graham, g. (2002). the case against the democratic state. exeter: imprint academic. grofman, b., & feld, s. l. (1988). rousseau’s general will: a condorcetian perspective. american political science review, 82(2), 567-576). hamilton, a., madison, j., & jay, j. (1948). the federalist. max beloff, (ed.). oxford: blackwell. hampsher-monk, i. (1992). a history of modern political thought. oxford: basil blackwell. hansen, m. h. (1990). the political powers of the people’s court in fourth-century athens. in o. murray & s. price (eds.), the greek city from homer to alexander (215-243). oxford: oxford university press. hansen, m. h. (2005). the tradition of greek democracy and its importance for modern democracy. copenhagen: the royal danish academy of science and letters. harrington, j. (1992), the commonwealth of oceana. j. g. a. pocock (ed.). cambridge: cambridge university press. hegel, g. w. f. (2010). philosophy of right. (t. m. knox, trans.). retrieved from http://www.digireads.com. hobbes, t. (1969). elements of law, natural and politic. london: routledge. hoppe, h.-h. (2001). democracy—the god that failed. new brunswick: transaction publishers. howe, d. w. (1988). the language of faculty psychology in the federalist papers. in t. ball & j.g.a. pocock (eds.), conceptual change and the constitution. (university press of kansas), pp. 107-136. levinson, s. (2010). democracy and the extended republic: reflections on the fishkinian project. the good society, 19, 63-67. levy, p. s. (2008). sampling of populations: methods and applications. chichester: wiley. lieb, e. (2004). deliberative democracy in america: a proposal for a popular branch of government. university park, pa: pennsylvania state university press. locke, j. (1967). two treatises of government. in p. laslett (ed.). cambridge: cambridge university press. manin, b. (1997). the principles of representative government. cambridge: cambridge university press. mansbridge, j. (2010). deliberative polling as the gold standard. the good society, 19, 55-62. the two sides of the representative coin 211 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 2, 2011     o’leary, k. (2006). saving democracy: a plan for real representation in america. stanford, ca: stanford university press. pettit, p. (2010). varieties of public representation. in i. shapiro, s. stokes, e.j.wood & a. kirshner (eds.), political representation (pp. 61-89). cambridge university press. pitkin, h. (1967). the concept of representation. berkeley, ca: university of california press. pocock, j. g. a. (1988). the american founding in early modern perspective. in t. ball & j.g.a. pocock (eds.), conceptual change and the constitution (pp. 55-77). lawrence, ks: university press of kansas. popper, k. r. (1950). the open society and its enemies. princeton: princeton university press. remer, g. (1985). james harrington’s new deliberative rhetoric: reflection of an anticlassical republican. history of political thought, xvi(4), 532-557. scott, j. (1993). the rapture of motion: james harrington’s republicanism. in n. phillipson & q. skinner, (eds.), political discourse in early modern europe (pp. 139-163). cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. skinner, q. (2005). hobbes on representation. european journal of philosophy, 13, 155-184. surowiecki, j. (2004). the wisdom of crowds: why the many are smarter than the few. london: abacus. sutherland, k. (2008). a people’s parliament. exeter: imprint academic. tetlock, p. e. (2005). expert political judgment: how good is it? how could we know? princeton, nj: princeton university press. tuck, r. (1979). natural rights theories: their origin and development. cambridge: cambridge university press. urbanati, n. (2006). representative democracy: principles and genealogy. chicago, chicago university press. wood, g. s. (1969). the creation of the american republic, 1776-1787. chapel hill: university of north carolina press. schroering final before ts correspondence address: caitlin schroering, department of sociology, university of pittsburgh, pittsburgh, pa, 15260; email: chs203@pitt.edu issn: 1911-4788 volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 constructing another world: solidarity and the right to water caitlin schroering university of pittsburgh, usa abstract globally, one in eight people lacks access to potable water; more people die from unsafe drinking water than from all forms of violence, including war. a substantial body of research documents that the privatization of water – led by global financial institutions working in collusion with governments and corporations – does not lead to more people gaining access to safe water. in fact, the opposite is true: privatization leads to both higher cost and lower quality water. for the past century, the dominant focus of transnational organizing has been “from the west to the rest,” and the frequent attention to movements in the global north has led to the neglect of transnational linkages between movements. drawing on fieldwork conducted on three right to water movements that span three continents (north america, south america, and africa), this paper examines efforts to reclaim the water commons, and how struggles have been driven by grassroots movements demanding that democracy, transparency, and the human right to water are prioritized over corporate profit. as feminist scholars have pointed out, the “standpoint” offered by marginalized actors offers important insights into the operation of systems of power and the strategies of survival and resistance that less powerful actors adopt in order to survive and thrive. this paper explores how transnational movements around water and other basic rights engage with and learn from each other. keywords right to water movements; transnational social movements; solidarity; alter-globalizations; water; resource conflicts mulheres, água e energia não são mercadorias! (women, water, and energy are not commodities!) movimento dos atingidos por barragens (mab or movement of people affected by dams) water is life! sanitation is dignity! laila, member of african women water sanitation and hygiene network/environmental rights action nigeria solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 103 people can go a few weeks without food, years without proper shelter, but only a few days without water. water is so fundamental we often forget how much we rely on it. despite numerous studies showing that privatization decreases access to safe water and increases cost, multinational companies continue to privatize water systems around the world. yet, people are also organizing to resist these policies and to reclaim the public sphere. campaigns against water privatization – or “right to water” movements – speak to the idea of water as a human right, not a commodity: as a public good, not a private service. this stance challenges the predominant capitalist logic of the state. campaigns opposed to water privatization are often campaigns countering neoliberal globalization generally and the privatization of other resources or energy structures in particular (almeida, 2014; barlow & clarke, 2002; olivera & lewis, 2004; subramaniam, 2014; bakker, 2007). one body of literature suggests that because it is so central to people’s basic survival the threat of water privatization is a type of privatization that elicits more social movement resistance than other resource conflicts around privatization (almeida, 2014; subramaniam, 2014). this paper examines efforts to reclaim the commons of water, and how grassroots movements drive the struggle and demand the prioritization of democracy, transparency, and human rights over corporate profits in public policy. as feminist scholars have pointed out, the “standpoint” offered by marginalized actors offers important insights into the operation of systems of power and the strategies of survival and resistance that less powerful actors adopt in order to survive and thrive (connell, 2007; collins, 2002, 2012). this paper is part of a larger research project on movements fighting for the right to water, and explores the following questions: (1) how are transnational movements communicating and organizing around water and other basic rights? (2) how are movements engaging with and learning from each other, and in what ways is the “west to the rest” paradigm subverted in these interactions? transnational social movement scholars have too often reinforced the idea that knowledge flows from the “global north” to the “global south,” although a strand of research has critiqued this dynamic as incomplete and as an example of methodological nationalism (see bracey, 2016; connell, 2007; desai, 2009; escobar, 1988; hughes et al., 2018; schroering, 2019a; mohanty, 2003; smith, forthcoming; smith & wiest, 2005; vieira, 2015).1 yet movements and ideas flow in various ways, including those not immediately measured or quantified. this is not a new process that i am describing; rather, i am challenging the literature on social movements that has suggested transnational movements flow vertically from 1 while i find the global north/global south binary problematic in various ways, including that it is not geographically accurate, these categories are commonly used in scholarship and policy circles, and they do more to decenter the united states and europe than the categories “developing versus developed” countries or “first world versus third world.” caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 104 the north to the south. this work expands the empirical foundations that can help illuminate the complex and multifaceted ways by which information and knowledge flows through transnational movement networks, thereby contributing to learning that can disrupt prevailing power alignments and social relations. i argue that people are linking their disparate fights together to win victories. the struggle is ultimately a conflict of power between who has a right to water. on the one hand are people and movements saying that access to water to meet basic needs is a human right. on the other hand, capitalists maintain that they have the “right” to profit from the privatization of water. too often, governments collude with private interests for capital in so-called public-private partnerships or ppps. this is a global movement, as i will detail later. as water justice and human rights scholars farhana sultana and alex loftus (2012) explain: recognizing the right to water signals that authorities can be held politically and legally accountable, enabling those who are denied water to have means to contest and struggle for water. opportunities can be created for marginalized communities and peoples to enter into (often elitist) decision-making processes of water policies, management systems and institutions. (p. 5) this relates to what jackie smith observes of rights language: “despite some academic critiques that have dismissed the transformative potential of human rights, i saw activists embracing this language in an emancipatory way (see santos, 2007; rajagapol, 2006)” (smith, 2017, p. 350). this becomes even more relevant as we see an international turn toward rightwing governments, with policies that place capital control and accumulation over life (smith, 2018). movements fighting for the right to water are part of a larger struggle for the right to livelihood. as subhabrata bobby banerjee (2011) describes, there are numerous struggles across the continents against transnational corporations and governments for land, livelihood and, i would add, water. these movements are not only local or global. instead, they are “translocal”: local communities living (and dying) in so-called democratic societies but governed in very non-democratic ways that are engaged in conflicts with both the state and the market, and sometimes even with ‘civil society’ while also making connections with other resistance movements in different parts of the world. (banerjee, 2011, p. 331 this translocal resistance relates to the processes and discussions taking place in movements for the right to water. according to banerjee (2011, drawing on sassen, 2006), translocality captures the idea that there are “specific local spaces that are distributed across multiple nation states involving particular configurations of actors, resources, territory, authority, rights and relationships of power” (p. 331). translocality provides for new solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 105 insights into understanding and analyzing change; of seeing (and participating in) movements as learning networks (desai, 2015; smith, forthcoming; schroering, 2019b). for the sake of clarity, below i outline three separate cases, each on a different continent. the first is movimento dos atingidos por barragens (movement of people affected by dams), located in brazil; the second is our water, our right out of nigeria; and the third is our water campaign, located in the united states. what i advance is that these three cases actually reflect a single case of a translocal movement for the right to water, with the national summit on the human right to water, nigeria’s water emergency: from resistance to real solutions against corporate control held in abuja, nigeria from january 29-30, 2019 (referred to here as the summit), as one specific convergence space of translocal organizing for the human right to water. indeed, there is a growing body of literature that examines the shifting formations of transnational organizing and the need to examine the wide “ecology of organizations, networks, practices, and strategies” of movements (evans & rodríguez-garavito, 2018, p. 10, emphasis in original). there is a convergence of campaigns and movements, with the summit as a translocal space of encounter that shows how they flow out of and into the summit. as evans and rodríguez-garavito (2018) contend, it is insufficient to examine movements in isolation and as single points in time – to do so provides only a partial understanding of the larger story. in the next section i discuss my data and methods, beginning with an overview of the cases of translocally or transnationally linked local water struggles. next i move to a discussion of the summit, and then address the importance of global solidarity in the fight for the right to water before concluding the paper with a discussion of why this translocal movement for water matters. data and methods background on cases movimento dos atingidos por barragens (mab), formally founded in 1991 as a national movement for the rights of people affected by dam projects, coalesced out of existing struggles (beginning in the 1980s) located in proximity to brazilian dams.2 mab leads the fight against the removal of families from their homes and opposes the privatization of water, rivers, and 2 mab organizes whole communities. they do have partner movements, non-profits, and unions who they work with in partnership, but the actual organization is of communities. mab leaders said they couldn’t give me an exact number of how many individuals this represents but definitely in the tens of thousands (and this number doesn’t include the other partner entities). (fieldnotes, summer 2018). caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 106 natural resources – resources upon which the communities depend for their livelihood. the movement seeks not just to resist current energy policy, but also to articulate alternatives. their motto is “water and energy are not commodities” (mab, n.d.). in brazil all of the corporations that construct, own, and operate dams are part of a large network of mineral companies, electric companies, and other corporate power. mab argues that the povo (people) should have sovereignty and control over their resources and that they should not be for private gain. mab also frequently participates in actions with both the movimento dos trabalhadores rurais sem terra (mst), movimento dos pequenos agricultores (mpa) and the transnational social movement la via campesina (lvc), as well as various other social movements, unions, and human rights organizations (fieldnotes, 2018; plataforma operáia e camponesa da energia, 2014). our water, our right (owor) began in 2014 when cappa (corporate accountability and public participation africa) learned “that the lagos state government had been secretly negotiating with the world bank to hand lagos water resources to privatisers under a globally-discredited public private partnership (ppp) structure” (cappa, 2021). owor is a campaign of cappa,3 and is in partnership with corporate accountability, a u.s. based ngo that is also connected to the our water campaign in pittsburgh and with flint rising in michigan, both places with water contamination crises that involved veolia.4 using language similar to that of water activists elsewhere, the activists in lagos, nigeria fight against the privatization of water and call for “transparency, accountability, and democratic public control in the management of public water infrastructure” (environmental rights action/friends of the earth, nigeria, 2016, p. 3). our water campaign is a coalition of environmental, labor, women’s health, racial justice, and other community organizations as well as individual residents, in pittsburgh, pennsylvania. formally coalesced in 2017 under the banner “our water campaign,” the coalition came together to address the public health catastrophe of the announcement of pittsburgh’s lead in the water crisis (pittsburgh united, n.d.a). the coalition fights to ensure that the city’s water is “safe, affordable, and publicly controlled.” the refrain of the importance of maintaining democratically controlled water is also used by owc. the point that water should be for people not for profits is key to organizing efforts of the owc. the coalition changed the name to our water, our rivers at the end of a 2018 planning retreat, merging it with another campaign of pittsburgh united (the organization that “houses” the 3 cappa was created in 2020 and was formerly known as environmental rights action (era) nigeria, founded in 1993. at the time of the summit, cappa was known as era, but i use the current name in this paper (cappa, 2021). 4 veolia – a corporation involved in water privatization – is discussed at length later in the article. solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 107 coalition),5 the clean rivers campaign, which addressed sewage, stormwater, and green infrastructure issues (fieldnotes, 2018). this echoes arguments i have heard from other activists – initially in brazil – that issues of drinking water and sanitation cannot be separated from each other. in january 2020 the coalition opted to return to the name “our water campaign” (still keeping the campaigns merged), noting that the language of “our” water signaled the idea that all of the water system issues are interrelated. mab was not a part of the abuja summit. however, members of both cappa (who learned i did work with mab) and mab (who knew i was attending the summit) asked me to connect them, which i have done. i am a part of the u.s. solidarity committee for mab, and i include a discussion of mab here, because as noted earlier i see my research and organizing as interconnected, and i posit that mab is an important part of this broader translocal fight for water justice, even as my focus in this paper is on the summit. as the paper progresses and concludes, my hope is that this will become clear. data and methods this study of translocal organizing and its influences on flows of knowledge and strategic learning draws from my participatory research in two organizing settings, pittsburgh, united states and brazil. while i focus on a particular convergence of activists at the human right to water summit in abuja, nigeria, january 29-30, 2019, i understand and treat the summit as an instance or space of translocality and intersecting learning networks that connect pittsburgh with nigerian and brazilian activist networks. i have been an “observant participant” with our water campaign since its inception in 2017, attending and participating in meetings, planning retreats, actions, lobby visits with elected officials, other public meetings, community canvassing, and additional activities. my engagement with owc led to my participation as an invited delegate from pittsburgh to the water summit in nigeria. i was also invited to attend pre and post strategy meetings of our water, our right. i spent two weeks in nigeria, visiting lagos, ibadan, calabar, and other towns, meeting with nigerian environmental activists and seeing firsthand some of the challenges around gaining socio-environmental justice. i have also made three research trips to brazil between 2018 and february 2020 as part of my research on grassroots struggles over water and resources, conducting nearly 40 semi-structured interviews with members of 5 pittsburgh united is a coalition of organizations (labor, community, faith, environmental) in the pittsburgh area that works to create “a community and economy that works for all people” (pittsburgh united, n.d.b.). caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 108 mab and affiliated movements in brazil.6 i also conducted hundreds of hours of participant observation of daily activities, meetings, and trainings, and many informal conversations. the descriptive detail in this paper draws from this work. the interactive dynamics of knowledge and power are well-studied and understood; however, following the critique by raewyn connell (2007), academia all too often fails to incorporate voices (i.e., knowledge) from the periphery. before beginning my scholarly study of social movements, i worked for eight years as a student and community organizer, and i have continued organizing work during my doctoral studies. my positionality as a white, cis-gender woman researcher from what is now called the united states shapes my perspectives, my objectivity, and my subjectivity. race, class, gender, sex, and geographic location all matter. indeed, there is a substantial body of work that calls for considering positionality when studying movements, and argues that knowledge production needs to come with and from the community (see bejarano et al., 2019; collins, 2015; conway, 2017; dalsheim, 2017; escobar, 2008; markoff, 2003; mohanty, 2003; santos, 2004; vieira, 2015; watkins, 2018). as belinda robnett (1996) writes, “it is equally important to analyze the different movement experiences as determined by one's race, class, and gender” (p. 1663).7 just as water conflicts involve power, power is also present in social movement resistance. it is present in activist discourses and assumptions, as well as in how scholars write and think about the movements they study (krishna, 2006). as paulo freire (2018) outlines in pedagogy of the oppressed, a neutral education process does not exist. neither does neutral theory, neutral methods, or neutral sociology. i maintain there is a place for scholarship that is transparent and says, “yes, i am emotionally invested in this work, and the world as it is makes me angry.” anger is an important catalyst, as rachel watkins (2019) powerfully states: “there’s a political knowing that comes out of anger.” this relates to both theory and methods. watkins speaks of the need for “ethical epistemology” in scholarship – of producing knowledge with and from the community being studied (watkins, 2018, p. 43). patricia hill collins (2015) argues that “intellectual activism” is needed in scholarship. i cannot be a post-colonial, post-imperial, post-white supremacy, postcapitalism scholar. i live in a world where those systems are very much alive and at work, and where my positionality means that i benefit from these oppressive systems. my positionality not only gives me certain privileges, it also shapes how i see the world, no matter how reflective and critical i am. 6 interviews were conducted in portuguese and lasted between 25 minutes and two hours (with the average being an hour). 7 i have explored this idea of knowledge production and what academics can learn from movement actors using the specific case of mab in a recently published paper (schroering, 2019a). solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 109 what i can be, however, is a scholar and person who interrogates the worldhistoric structures that shape what i see and what i know. i can seek with intentionality to be anti-colonial, anti-imperial, anti-white supremacy, and anti-capitalist.8 this is not just a theoretical stance; it is one lived out in praxis, and that also means that theory and praxis cannot be devoid of taking an ethical stance. to be clear: what i am calling for here is not new. w.e.b. du bois rejected disciplinary fragmentation, served as an extraordinary public intellectual, and saw theory and praxis as intertwined (du bois, 1952; rabaka, 2006; stewart, 1984). feminist scholars, decolonial scholars, indigenous scholars, and critical race theorists have built and used anticolonial research methodologies and constructed theories grounded in praxis and collaborative research methods for decades. social theory production can be a part of transforming society. yet, while things are shifting, the practice still remains in most of academia that there is somehow a detached neutral researcher who critiques their research subjects. and all too often the work of scholars who do this work – especially black women and scholars from outside the united states and europe – is either discounted or unknown. in this paper, i am both researcher and movement actor; i choose not to separate my militancy and my scholarship. or perhaps, as freire (2018) might say, i cannot in fact separate the two. the bifurcation of research and practice has depoliticized research and enlisted scholars in the work of reproducing hegemony, which works to the advantage of the hegemonic powers (who also fund research and academic institutions). the aim of this writing is to produce something that is engaging for academics and activists alike, for both need to be engaged in a conversation aimed at building shared knowledge. its focus is the idea that water is a human right, not a commodity. that argument is directly at odds with a capitalist logic that says capitalists have the right to privatize water, to turn it into a commodity, and to make money from it. there are two competing logics here: the capitalist logic that says someone has a right to make money with water versus the logic that says human beings have a right to water. i am doing this work because i am interested in furthering the second logic: how do we build a world where people have a right to water? and the right to livelihood in general? boaventura de sousa santos (2004) sees the world social forum (wsf) process as providing spaces for the articulation and advancement of “epistemologies of the south.” santos uses the space of the wsf to discuss how it engaged in what he coins the “sociology of absences” (2004, p. 14) through its intentional process to lift up voices previously marginalized and made invisible within global capitalism. he also sees the forums as spaces for the “sociology of emergences”(santos 2004, p.14), where social 8 see boaventura de sousa santos’ (2014) epistemologies of the south: justice against epistemicide for an excellent discussion that delves into ways in which scholars can work to be anti-colonial and fight against epistemicide in their own work. caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 110 movements engage with each other and demonstrate alternatives to current (capitalist) social relations. in these spaces, movement activists and groups from around the world both imagine and create empirical possibilities outside of the present reality, and develop networks and strategies aimed to help put these into place. this process is also about developing theories (created and lived out in praxis) to envision new futures. the summit: a fight against corporate power figure 1. translocal learning networks. figure 1 explains how the summit served as a translocal space for the sociology of emergences. the summit, co-organized by aupctre (amalgamated union of public corporations, civil service technical and how are transnational movements communicating and organizing around water and other basic rights? how are movements engaging with and learning from each other, and in what ways is the “west to the rest” paradigm subverted in these interactions? ngos such as corporate accountability, and international research and advocacy institutes such as tni and psi movement actors from disparate locales brought together by global south led movements to share, learn, and create strategies learning network continues and expands summits, like the one detailed in this paper national and international movement networks solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 111 recreational services employees), corporate accountability, cappa, and public services international (psi), brought over 150 people together from around the world to fight against water privatization and create solutions for public water (weinman, 2019). figure 2. nigeria international petroleum summit poster, abuja airport (photo: caitlin schroering). caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 112 pittsburgh activists with the owc received an invitation to attend the summit to share experiences of ppps, and their struggles and victories to reclaim their water. when three other activists from pittsburgh and i landed in abuja and exited customs and immigration, a billboard advertising the nigeria international oil conference (co-sponsored by shell) greeted us (see figure 2). their conference occurred at the same time as ours, with attendees staying at the same hotel. given shell’s horrible human rights and environmental record, especially in nigeria,9 it was significant that we shared space with that conference. it details the competing discourses of human rights and environmental rights versus corporate profit from extraction, control, and privatization of resources. multiple speakers – both in person and through pre-recorded video messages – highlighted the importance of the summit for everyone present. a video message from representative grijalva from arizona noted that the fight in lagos – where millions of people are not receiving water – is an essential struggle for justice and for human rights. he also noted how privatization will not solve the problem, because corporations want to maximize profit at the expense of public health. grijalva also argued that the issue is international and climate change will only make it worse. millions of citizens in the u.s. also do not have access to clean water, especially indigenous communities, communities of color, poor communities and rural communities. as grijalva said, the story of flint happens time and time again around the world: “it’s important for you to know that you have allies.” water is a human right and government has a responsibility to ensure that right happens, he noted. akinbode “bode” oluwafemi, executive director, cappa chronicled the failed history of ppps in lagos and noted that while the city has been the site of progressive struggles, it has also become the symbol of capitalism. lagos is “nigeria’s big apple” and the target of corporations. it is a megacity, and it is also mega-poor: 60% of residents live in slums and in poverty. bode stated: “the battle in lagos is that of reckless capitalism and our common humanity… we used to joke it was not a crime to be poor… now it is.” he continued, “capitalism can kill people.” summit participants also made the point that colonialism takes a new form today via world bank and other financial institutions pushing for ppps (weinman, 2019). this statement reflects what rob nixon (2011) calls “slow violence,” a term used to describe the suffering, disease, violence and environmental destruction caused from toxins, climate change, war, etc., that capitalism causes (see figure 3). conference participants also discussed how these effects are intensified in the era of climate change. indeed, as the u.n. intergovernmental panel on 9 i recommend looking into the life and work of ken saro-wiwa to learn more about this history, including saro-wiwa's diary, a month and a day: a detention diary (1995) and ogoni's agonies: ken saro wiwa and the crisis in nigeria (1998), edited by abdul rasheed na’allah. solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 113 climate change (ipcc) noted in 2015, “the world has not really woken up to the reality of what we are going to face in terms of the crises as far as water is concerned” (bhalla, 2015). figure 3. slide from summit on capital and the market (photo: caitlin schroering; source: cappa. reproduced with permission). conflicts around water are also conflicts around larger issues of equity, power, and access. one critical player in this conflict is veolia, one of the largest corporations involved in water privatization, currently on the shortlist to privatize water in lagos. in pittsburgh, the pittsburgh water and sewer authority (pwsa),10 plagued by administrative problems and financial distress caused by the interest rate swap die-off involving hundreds of 10 pwsa is a municipal authority with public governance. caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 114 millions of dollars in debt, entered into a ppp with veolia. pittsburgh hired veolia in 2012 to manage operations, and the contract stipulated that veolia would get to keep up to 50 cents to every dollar saved under its management (lurie, 2016). as aly shaw with the pittsburgh owc shared at the summit, veolia did not invest anything into the system. instead, pwsa (under the management of veolia), laid off workers and made an illegal chemical switch that spiked lead levels. the city terminated the contract with veolia, and shortly after the news broke of the city’s lead problem. the owc emerged soon after, and activists realized that the only way to solve the problems was to make the water authority more public and democratic. there have been subsequent attempts by water and gas companies to privatize the water, but the community has been successful at pushing back, and officials have backed off privatizing for now (schroering, 2019a; shaw, 2019). while veolia north america announced in february 2018 that it would stop "peer performance solutions" (pps), a form of ppp, due to public relation difficulties in pittsburgh (global water intelligence, 2018, p. 12; global water intelligence, 2019), the struggle is not over, and owc continues to monitor and organize against privatization. owc – and other participants from around the globe – were invited to the summit to share their failed experiences with veolia. summit speakers noted repeatedly that ppps never work out to the benefit of the people. as one speaker noted, “ppps use what you have, run it down” and then leave. all of the risk turns over to the government or public side, with all of the profit given to the corporation. globalized policies of privatization threaten human rights everywhere, and as climate change progresses resources will become even more scarce, with more of a push from corporations seeking to control and commodify water. indeed, on october 5, 2020, veolia acquired 29.9% of the shares of suez, another water multinational, with plans to eventually obtain full control (macleod, 2020; veolia, 2020). in response to resistance to privatization schemes and evidence of the failures of privatization to deliver on its promises, there is a global trend of remunicipalisation. tni (transnational institute) and psi (public services international) detail how by the end of 2019 there are 1,408 cases of remunicipalisation or municipalisation globally, encompassing over 2,400 municipalities in the world (kishimot et al., 2020, p. 22). one of the principal reasons for this trend is because privatized water services have almost always generated an increase in price and cost cutting that compromises water quality (food & water watch, 2016). activists use these figures to help make the case for why water privatization is undesirable and ineffective – if those who had privatized their water systems are now remunicipalising, who would want to privatize in the first place? on the first day of the summit, a participant from los angeles, representing black lives matter los angeles and corporate accountability said, “i am here to say that blm stands with struggle here [in nigeria]. [and solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 115 we] see the lack of access to water as violence. can’t have corporations controlling this precious resource.” this point relates with what nnimmo bassey, then chair of the board for environmental rights action/friends of the earth nigeria asserted: “all of the polluted waters in this country have been privatized by polluters” – and then oil companies use that water as a place to dump oil. this means a future of violence, illness, and poverty for children. he explained that we must fight against this and defend the human right to water at the regional, national, and international level, including working to clean up the niger delta and all polluted waters in nigeria and the world. the summit, bassey reminded us, was a place to share strategies and prepare to defend rights. the solution? water systems around the world must be modernized in a way that places control in the hands of people and is transparent and democratic. this is the only way to ensure the human right to water is recognized. our water, our right is a campaign to emphasize that no one has a right to privatize water. this resonates with what people in brazil told me. as one member of a human rights organization (centro de defesa dos direitos humanos or center for the defense of human rights) that partners with mab shared with me, “violations of human rights can occur in all places… people have the right to education, health, housing, work, to not be victims of violence.” this relates to the quote discussed earlier from one of the leaders of cappa who put it simply: “capitalism can kill.” or, as a social media post from owc on october 9, 2019, put it: “no matter how green we make our lifestyles, capitalism is not sustainable.” to be clear, the violence of capitalism is not new, as cedric robinson so meticulously details. the current global system of racism and capitalism, as robin d. g. kelley writes in the foreword to black marxism, “did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of ‘racial capitalism’ dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and genocide” (robinson, 2000, p. xiii; murphy & schroering, 2020). following debadatta chakraborty (2020), i argue we ought to add patriarchy to this list. as one participant at the summit noted, “we fight for our water [and] our life… need to fight for dignity for women and other disenfranchised groups.” summit speakers noted at various points the gendered dimensions of access to clean water and sanitation and asserted that women and children are most affected. water justice is also racial and gender justice. systemic injustice in its various and interrelated forms, including imperialism, colonialism, patriarchy, and racial capitalism is not new; but it is also true that the particular form of finance capital does create a different form of rapaciousness. there is a narrative that public services do not work and that the private sector can do it better, when in reality, the evidence (including the trend of remunicipalisation) shows the opposite. as one of the abuja summit participants noted, a few decades ago, when he was a child, there was a pump at the end of each street in lagos. each home did not have piped water, but each street did. people had access to clean, affordable water. now they do caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 116 not. why? because a complicated process of neoliberal austerity measures led by the world bank and imf and other financial institutions working with governments and corporations have made sure that public investment in infrastructure stopped. the “right to water” is a message embraced by movements opposed to its privatization. a majority of these actions to date have occurred in the global south but they are also becoming more common in the global north, particularly in response to the intensification of neoliberal policies, aging urban infrastructure, and state austerity programs (sultana, 2018, p. 486). this same austerity process is now unfolding in the united states as inequities in municipal maintenance coincide with collapsing municipal budgets. as an article published in the guardian by senator bernie sanders and representative brenda lawrence noted, water should be a human right, but in the u.s., it is treated as a for profit industry. together with representative ro khanna, they introduced the water act that would allocate up to $35 billion a year to overhauling the nation’s water infrastructure (sanders & lawrence, 2020). relatedly, owc also connects its work to the growing national discussion surrounding the affordability crisis: water rates have increased 80% in the past decade and two out of five u.s. households have trouble paying their water bills (lakhani, 2020). this is especially heightened amidst covid-19, with owc joining efforts to fight against water shutoffs (murray, 2020). there is also an explicit connection between race and water affordability, with black communities and other communities of color disproportionately impacted by rising costs in the united states (montag, 2019). water is about power (sultana, 2019). it is instructive to think about power in the context of a space like the summit in abuja: on the one hand there is the power of capital, as exemplified by the shell conference and the ongoing threat of water privatization; on the other hand, there is the power of people to bring about change, bringing together people from many different countries (mostly in africa) and three continents (africa, north america, europe). corporations work across geographic borders, so too must the resistance. spaces like the summit show that movements and activists are united, and that this movement is growing. they are also tools for building unity and growing the movement. as one participant stated in a question and answer section, “we need to work together because corporations work together” (fieldnotes, january 30, 2019). this illustrates a point made by the water justice and human rights scholar farhana sultana (2018): getting involved in local or regional water justice efforts can be a good start. but this requires recognition that water justice is never only local, but cross-scalar and global. it is also critical to pay attention to the ways that water is about gender, class, race, ethnicity, identity and place, and appreciate how it is linked to broader issues of social justice. such action and advocacy can foster collectivizing, alliances, and working with others to promote equity, human rights, and justice. solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 117 changing institutions, laws and norms are long-term goals that require sustained involvement, which is important to cultivate and support. (p. 489) as there are systemic forces engaged via corporations and global financial institutions, this struggle is not only local. movements also learn from each other and form coalitions through solidarity. the summit focused on how to resist privatization of public water supplies. on our last day in abuja, nigeria we learned about another dimension of water commodification and privatization: bottled water. over a dozen of the u.s. participants (plus members from cappa) rode in a van – escorted by civil police – over an hour away to where nestlé has one of two water bottling plants in the country. when we arrived, we stood outside of nestlé for a few minutes (surrounded by armed police) holding up signs that said, “nestlé take your hands off our water” and “water is a human right.” we next visited a community adjacent to the nestlé plant. while there, we met the chief. nestlé has given him an old packing container for an office. it served, essentially, as a dehumanizing attempt to buy him off. nestlé had built new water pumping stations, although no water flows from the taps. a plaque on the pump showed the date january 30, 2019 – two days before we had arrived. when we asked one of the nigerian activists about this the answer was simple: “they have spies. they’ve been watching us and suspected we would bring you here.” bottled water is an insidious piece of the conversation about water as a right versus commodity. companies like nestlé and coca cola have worked hard to create the idea that only commodified water (that they have often stolen from aquifers and bottled with fewer safety regulations than public tap water) is safe. not to mention all of the horrible plastic waste, which requires petroleum to produce. nestlé (and others including coca cola) do this in nigeria, in brazil, and in the united states.11 from michigan, united states to abuja, nigeria to the guarani aquifer in brazil, multinational companies seek to commodify and profit off of water by bottling and selling it.12 these companies then use marketing to convince people bottled water is better. sometimes bottled water is a safer option – but this is because of the lack of investment in public water infrastructure. i include this discussion of bottled water because it illuminates both how corporate players engage in similar activities transnationally, as well as how activist conversations in particular spaces connect and learn from each other to fight these forces. 11 nestlé, for example, owns 77 different brands of water, including perrier and poland springs, and controls around half of the market in the u.s. coca cola owns, among others, the popular brand dasani. in london, dasani is actually just tap water, and most of the water sold in the us under the label of dasani is also tap water. 12 a recent ruling from a michigan court, however, has asserted that nestlé cannot claim their activities constitute an “essential public service” (perkins, 2019). caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 118 my conversations and participation with other u.s. participants highlighted how the summit shifted their own thinking about organizing and how the struggle was not just local. as one pittsburgh activist attending the abuja water summit said: we can’t drink the water here… or in flint… or in pittsburgh… that is [something that is] shared. so we need to think about it globally… i’m thinking about what’s going on and how i’m going to put a global spin on everything now. another pittsburgh organizer stated on the first day that participating in the summit leads to “a different way of seeing the world which leads to a different way of organizing.” as another person asserted: “corporations want us to feel small and like we don’t have power but when we come together, we do have power” (schroering, 2019b). when i asked about the role of international solidarity, owor activists said that international solidarity needs to not just be a blip but something sustained. i also met people at the summit who know and work with mab, and we discussed the importance of movements in the global north learning from and working with global south movements. the right to water is a global fight to create another world(s) the summit served as a place to collectively create a path for solutions. one aspect of this is the public statement that participants drafted through a collective process on the last day. this statement affirmed the human right to water and opposed all privatization and corporate control of this life sustaining substance (“communique”, 2019). shortly after returning from nigeria, owc planned a lobby day training with local officials and created a pledge for officials to sign committing they were against privatization – and detailing exactly what we mean by that. we visited with over a dozen public officials, many of whom signed the pledge. the biggest victory, perhaps, was that the mayor – to everyone’s surprise – signed the pledge (see figure 4). on april 2, 2019 the industry trade journal global water intelligence updated pittsburgh’s status on its project tracker to “ppp option now looking unlikely” and cited the mayor signing the pledge as the reason (global water intelligence, 2019). i observed that this event and planning was influenced in part from the transnational connections made at the summit: pittsburgh activists returned energized: thinking about the issue in new ways and strengthened in a better understanding of the threats of ppps; planning and scheduling a week of lobby visits to coincide with world water day; updating the facebook page for our water campaign with a photo from the summit with us all holding up signs reading “united for water justice.” solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 119 figure 4. pittsburgh mayor pledge (photo: caitlin schroering). connections made at the summit also resulted in featuring owc/pittsburgh by tni as a case of remunicipalisation of public services with pittsburgh included in the water remunicipalisation tracker website (“pittsburgh”, 2019). this site also highlights two cases of remunicipalisation in brazil (where i first learned about remunicipalisation) and the writer is also a part of mab (“itu”, 2019; “tocantins state”, 2019). this is a small but important example of how movements are organizing and working with each other, and with entities like psi, tni, corporate accountability and others, who work in a way that helps to put information into a central place, and to enhance connections. it shows how struggles in the united states, nigeria, and brazil (and many other locales) are all part of this global movement of remunicipalisation and reclaiming resources for the public good rather than for private gain. i contend that this movement is an illustration of how the sociology of emergences that santos (2004) describes can take place. as noted earlier, as a result of the connection with veolia, corporate caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 120 accountability is also a partner of the our water campaign in pittsburgh, bringing national and transnational aspects to an otherwise local campaign. many (if not most) of the examples of anti-water privatization movements qualify as place bound because they focus on local (or national) struggles for control of water. yet, their issue identification is not bound only to place, as these groups articulate an interest in connecting their local effort to a broader, global struggle for water as a human right (desai, 2015; escobar, 2008; smith, 2017b; smith, forthcoming). the focus in social movement studies is often on outcomes (staggenborg & lecomte, 2009; wood et al., 2017). for sure, outcomes matter; outcomes can also be challenging to measure or see. how many movements did in fact change something – but it cannot easily be proven or measured? does it count? if so, how do we count it? is it possible that the focus on specific policy outcomes perhaps misses other less easily measured but still transformational changes? as kelley (2002, p. vii; see also rabaka, 2006, p. 738) puts it: unfortunately, too often our standards for evaluating social movements pivot around whether or not they “succeeded” in realizing their visions rather than on the merits or power of the visions themselves. by such a measure, virtually every radical movement failed because the basic power relations they sought to change remain pretty much intact. and yet it is precisely these alternative visions and dreams that inspire new generations to continue to struggle for change. one essential aspect of these right-to-water movements is tangible policy and system-level changes; another aspect is the path of getting there, of envisioning a new world. as mab activists would say, it is a process of creating a “novo caminho” – a new path (mab, 2017, p. 32). this work can go by various names including “alter-globalizations,” “globalization from below,” or “counterhegemonic globalization.” i have not often heard these terms used by movement actors; instead i hear the same sentiment expressed in different forms: the idea of “creating a new world,” “another world is still possible,” or a “new path” (see figure 5). as robin d. g. kelley (2002) wrote, articulating a new vision is the first step in building a new world; a revolution is a process and that process is transformational (p. xi; see also rabaka, 2006, p. 737). the work described here is about creating new forms of living and relationships in the present moment, a piece of which includes people developing shared understandings of oppression and exploitation and becoming empowered leaders in their communities. the potential transformative capacity of this process where people stand together against greed and for the right to survive and thrive ought not to be overlooked. as one presenter at the abuja summit asserted: “[we] need to build revolutionary force. but today… we will use a rightsbased approach.” another person stated, “we want to put alternatives on the table that aren’t available to the ruling class!” (fieldnotes, january 30, 2019). one of the most powerful short-term results of this summit was how it served solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 121 as a place for this international solidarity to be built; for people not to just hear of struggles elsewhere, but for people from flint and pittsburgh to meet people from lagos and vice versa, and to learn about how much we share in our struggles. the discussions at the summit relate also to marina sitrin’s (2012) work on autonomous movements in argentina. she writes about new solidarities and “el otro soy yo” (the other is me) (sitrin, 2012, pp. 47-48). this relates to mab’s “todos somos atingidos” which literally translates to “we are all affected” but better translates to “everyone is affected – even if indirectly – by these large dam projects.” figure 5. another world is possible (source: owc). conclusion the struggle for the right to water is driven by grassroots movements demanding that democracy, transparency, and the human right to water are above corporate profit. i argue that the movement for the right to water is important for three main reasons. first, attention to water is critical in the face of climate change. some regions will have too much, others too little, and conflicts will worsen. second, conflicts around water are also about equity, power, and access. organizing around water implicates a range of caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 122 other important dynamics, including trends of market deregulation, privatization, and austerity measures. third, movements fighting for the human right to water today represent a radical and transformative position in the face of recent government trends toward right-wing authoritarian governments that run on rhetoric of “law and order” and seek to further shrink the public safety net and impose harsh penalties on social movements fighting for the basic right to survival. when i think about the most basic things to survival, air and water are what come to mind. and in so many places everywhere on the globe, both of those things are polluted. air and water do not know geographic and political boundaries, and they flow where they want. the number of people on the globe suffering the consequences of polluted air and polluted water is only increasing. of course, the other truth is that the communities disproportionately affected – both in the united states and globally – are poor, are black, are brown, and many are geographically in the global south. each community, each country, certainly has its own histories and present realities (in which colonialism and racial capitalism play a significant part) that mean we should be cautious with making broad brush-stroke comparisons. each locality has its own distinct challenges. yet, there is a need to acknowledge how these problems are global, and develop an analysis that addresses the root of the problem: capitalism. capitalism uses racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, xenophobia, colonialism, imperialism and other systems of oppression to operate and grow. it always has, and it always will.13 we cannot recycle our way out of the problem or make individual choices that are going to fix it. the owc post i noted earlier put it succinctly: “capitalism is not sustainable” (fieldnotes, october 9, 2019). in other words, we need a paradigm shift, and we need to de-theorize and to reinvent new ways of understanding and living in our world (goodman & salleh 2013, p. 413). as leonard figueroahelland, cassidy thomas and abigail pérez aguilera (2018) put it: anticipating the global convergence of crises,[14] counterhegemonic social forces have solidified their challenge against the anthropocentric/patriarchal/ (neo)colonial/capitalist world-system. lvc and affiliates like brazil’s landless workers’ movement (mst), or others like the zapatistas (chiapas, mexico), tie food sovereignty to defending mother earth, decolonization, depatriarchalization, and indigenous revitalization. (p. 182) 13 see cedric robinson’s (2000) work on racial capitalism and the combahee river collective (1986). 14 these crises include the following: global food, water, environment and climate, economic inequality and financial instability, energy and other resource exhaustion or depletion, livelihood and health, refugees and displaced populations (figueroa-helland et al., 2018, p. 174). solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 123 mab also succinctly makes similar arguments in a statement produced at the end of a summit on water, held in the united states in 2017: our analysis is that capitalism is going through a productive crisis of character and provokes terrible consequences in society, spreading itself into a crisis of civilization and proving that, besides being unsustainable, it expands armed conflicts around the world, intensifies the destruction of nature and increases societal inequality, religious persecution and persecution of people of different sexual orientations, racism, patriarchy, sexism, xenophobia and all kinds of discrimination. this system is not able to provide for the basic demands of humanity such as food for all the population, health, education, dignity, liberty and justice. therefore, it is the working class who pay the bill of the crisis and suffer the consequences of capitalism, especially black and immigrant populations and traditional and indigenous peoples. (“letter from the ii international seminar”, 2017) there is a present global movement right now against police brutality, racism, and anti-blackness (especially in the united states, brazil, and nigeria) that is building momentum and gaining more attention (a planet, n.d.). the struggle for the right to water is connected to this fight. this fight for the right to water and sanitation is also a fight for the right to education, transportation and healthcare. it is the right to be free from police violence. it is a fight against the systemic realities that produce violence in all of its forms (see figure 6). as noted, black lives matter is a movement linked to owor and to the nigeria summit. there is a growing movement to #defund and to ultimately #abolish the police. blm and other activists are calling for the diversion of money from policing into other places like housing and education. the excuse that there is not money to invest in public water infrastructure simply is not true. there is always money. the questions are: who has the power? who is choosing where to spend money? who is profiting off of the current socio-economic-political system? who is not? to create a world where the right to water for all becomes a reality, we might consider connell’s (2007, p. 383) imperative for a “new language for theorizing,” which she argues would jettison imperialist and colonialist thought. the ability to imagine a different reality is a driving force for the movements fighting water privatization. boaventura de sousa santos’ idea of “epistemological imagination” is both insightful and encouraging. that is, the idea that we must urge the acknowledgement of multiple ways of living, different perspectives, and reservoirs of collaborative knowledge (santos, 2004, pp. 28-29). with this acknowledgment, and by engaging with and sharing experiences, a sociology of emergences (santos, 2004) to reinvent new ways of living and being becomes possible. other worlds are possible, and the roots to create those worlds are planted and growing. caitlin schroering studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 124 figure 6. owor post to social media on oct. 13, 2020 (source: cappa, which spearheads the owor campaign). acknowledgements thank you to neil gupta, michael murphy, madeline weiss, and jackie smith for your fact-checking, encouragement, and other valuable feedback on drafts of this paper. i extend my appreciation to sahan savas karatasli who provided insightful comments as a discussant on an earlier version of this paper that i presented at the american sociological association online conference in august 2020. thank you as well to the three anonymous peer reviewers and to david butz for your feedback. finally, i offer my deepest gratitude to all of the organizers, activists, and militantes in nigeria, the united states, brazil, and around the world who fight for the right to water each and every day. the work in brazil was supported by a tinker grant through the center for latin american studies at the university of pittsburgh, a nationality room grant through the university of pittsburgh nationality rooms scholarship program, and an andrew mellon predoctoral fellowship. solidarity & the right to water studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 102-128, 2021 125 references a planet. 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(2019, february 21). water justice for all: report-back from the national water summit in abuja, nigeria. corporate accountability. https://www.corporateaccountability.org/blog/water-justice-for-all-report-back-from-thenational-water-summit-in-abuja-nigeria/ wood, l. j., staggenborg, s., stalker, g. j., & kutz-flamenbaum, r. (2017). eventful events: local outcomes of g20 summit protests in pittsburgh and toronto. social movement studies, 16(5), 595-609. butz final layout dec 10 15 correspondence address: david butz, department of geography, brock university, 1812 sir isaac brock way, st. catharines, on, l2s 3a1; email: dbutz@brocku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 9, issue 1, 1-6, 2015 editorial: social justice scholarship in a neoliberal governance context david butz editor-in-chief, brock university, canada the articles that follow constitute the first installment of a special double issue of studies in social justice devoted to the perils and potentialities of combining scholarly work in an academic setting with social justice activism. they are also the first pieces published by the journal since it moved to the social justice research institute (sjri) at brock university.1 it is appropriate that the journal’s inaugural issues at its new home focus on the simultaneously fraught and productive relationship between activist and academic work, because the circumstances that brought studies in social justice to brock exemplify some of the challenges, opportunities, and ironies implicit in that relationship. studies in social justice was launched in 2007 at the university of windsor, and published its first eight volumes from windsor’s centre for studies in social justice. in 2013 the centre was dismantled as part of the university’s response to the government of ontario’s governance agenda for the province’s tertiary education sector; an agenda that combines funding cuts with greater provincial oversight, rationalisation of programming, and an emphasis on public-private partnerships as sources of university revenue. studies in social justice was left without funding or an institutional home, a casualty of neoliberal rationalisation. at about the same time – and in response to the same provincial strategy – brock university created and funded five new transdisciplinary research institutes. one of them, the social justice research institute (sjri), assumed management of studies in social justice. the sjri’s establishment is a welcome development for brock faculty and students eager to pursue social justice research and activist work in a supportive and well-resourced academic environment. its programming so far has generated many productive collaborations among scholars and with 1 to learn more about the social justice research institute (sjri), or to become a participating member, please visit http://www.brocku.ca/social-justice-research-institute. david butz studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 1-6, 2015 2 community groups, seeded numerous new research projects, supported the social justice-oriented training of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, and raised the profile of social justice scholarship on campus. we are thrilled that brock has committed substantial funding to a social justice research institute, if only for a limited period. at the same time, ensuring that the sjri operates effectively to nourish radical scholarship or progressive social change is a constant challenge given the current university governance context, which requires universities to satisfy an increasingly broad mandate with relatively fewer resources. in this context, brock’s new institutes will be considered sustainable beyond an initial period of generous university funding only if they become net revenue generators for the university through some combination of (a) direct funding that covers their operating costs (e.g., external grants or ‘public-private partnerships’), (b) the trickle-down effects of enhancing brock’s reputation or name-recognition (e.g., increased enrolments or research funding), or (c) serving effectively as flexible resources to meet brock’s rapidly-changing obligations to the provincial government through which it is funded (e.g., transdisciplinary or community collaborations).2 the vulnerability and lack of autonomy for sjri that is implicit in this combination of university expectations is at best a worrying distraction from the job of nurturing frontline social justice research and activist work; at worst, it enrolls the sjri into the very mechanisms of neoliberal governance that social justice advocates strenuously oppose. the latter is a constant danger – perhaps even an inevitability – because the sjri is funded directly through the office of research services (rather than through the university’s longstanding faculty and departmental governance structure), and therefore may be required to serve strategic or tactical goals that have little to do with the institute’s social justice mandate. as the articles in these special issues on scholarship and activism stress, the tensions and contradictions i’ve hinted at are characteristic of – if not inherent in – efforts to pursue a social justice agenda focused on transformative social change from within academic institutions that are heavily invested in succeeding in a competitive university funding environment. although most of the issues’ authors share with the founders of the sjri a conviction that the opportunities of pursuing scholar-activism in the present neoliberal governance context outweigh the risks, they also recognise the risks and offer their own experientially-informed strategies for managing them. i hope the sjri is able to learn from their insights. - 2 the difficulty in measuring (b) and (c) results in frequent reporting exercises and the nebulous language of ‘virtual balance sheets.’ social justice scholarship in a neoliberal governance context studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 1-6, 2015 3 readers and authors who have come to appreciate the quality and availability of pieces published in studies in social justice will be relieved to learn that the journal’s relocation to the sjri at brock university has not resulted in significant changes to its mandate, existing rigorous review and editorial procedures, or open accessibility. the transition has involved adopting the creative commons copyright licensing designation by-nd-nc for the journal’s publications, 3 and adding two new sections – dispatches and creative interventions – designed to expand the journal’s interdisciplinary character and stylistic variety. the journal now invites contributions to five sections: • research articles (6,000-8,000 words): original, previously-unpublished, and fully-referenced research contributions that significantly extend knowledge in the broad field of social justice along substantive, theoretical or methodological lines, and which are likely to be of interest to researchers and practitioners. articles are peer-reviewed by a minimum of two reviewers in a double-blind process. • review essays (< 6,000 words): critical and evaluative overviews of particular literatures, theoretical traditions, debates, activist experiences, etc., relating to social justice. review essays are intended as expert overviews for the benefit of activists and researchers who are unfamiliar with the area. review essays are peer-reviewed by a minimum of two reviewers in a double-blind process. • book reviews (1,000-2,000 words): reviews of important theoretical, political and research works relating to social justice issues. book reviews are vetted by the book review editors, but are not subject to peer review. • dispatches (< 4,000 words): reports or commentaries from the nonacademic and academic spaces of social justice practice, discourse and contestation. dispatches may report on research activities, methodological innovations, movement experiences, mobilisation efforts, educational practices, social justice events and actions, etc. they need not employ an academic writing style or speaking position. dispatches are reviewed and vetted by the editorial team, which works with authors as necessary to help shape submissions for publication. they are not exposed to a blind review process. • creative interventions: visual, aural or textual products that reflect on social justice issues using an aesthetic or evocative mode of address. creative interventions are reviewed and vetted by members of the 3 copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by their authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. by virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles may be used, with proper attribution (by), in educational and other non-commercial settings (nc); although articles may be quoted with attribution, they may not be used to create derivative works without authors’ permission (nd) – hence the copyright licensing designation by-ndnc. david butz studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 1-6, 2015 4 editorial team or others with competence in the relevant areas of creative practice. they are not exposed to a blind review process. the editors welcome independent submissions to each of these sections, as well as proposals for guest-edited issues that include contributions in one or more sections. we also invite submissions that combine or overlap categories, as do the articles in the present issue. these pieces are by design hybrids of research articles and dispatches: dispatches in that they reflect on the authors’ personal experiences as scholar-activists in a particular field of social justice practice (i.e., the university), and research articles because they expose these experiences to theoretically-informed analysis, and have passed through a double blind review process. - the journal’s expanded disciplinary reach and stylistic variety, together with attrition in editorial personnel associated with its relocation to brock, has meant assembling a new editorial team, as follows: • david butz, phd (journal manager, editor-in-chief): i am a professor in the department of geography at brock university, and a founding member of the faculty steering committee of the social justice research institute. i was for three years director of brock’s interdisciplinary graduate program in social justice and equity studies. from 2005-2015 i was an editor of acme: an international e-journal for critical geographies, also an open-access, on-line, peer-reviewed journal, and i have served on the editorial boards of four other journals. my research deals mainly with modernisation, social transformation, and political ecology in mountainous northern pakistan, with a recent emphasis on road building and mobility justice. i have also done work on the restructuring of the automobile industry in southern ontario, spatiality in jamaican reggae music, epistemological and methodological aspects of autoethnography, autobiography and autophotograpy, and the limitations of liberal understandings of research ethics. • monique deveaux, phd (editor): monique is a professor in the department of philosophy and canada research chair in ethics and global social change at the university of guelph. she serves on the advisory board of rowman & littlefield's book series, 'studies in social and global justice', and is director of ‘initiatives in global justice’ at the university of guelph. monique’s research lies at the intersection of normative ethics and social/political philosophy; it aims to bring social and political theory to bear on real-world problems, such as inequality, poverty, gender and racial injustice, and issues of culturalreligious accommodation. social justice scholarship in a neoliberal governance context studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 1-6, 2015 5 • vanessa farr, phd (dispatches editor): vanessa is an independent scholar, writer and consultant based in south africa. she earned her phd in women’s studies from york university, and has extensive field-level experience with crisis prevention and recovery in conflict-affected countries worldwide, especially in africa and the middle east. her areas of specialisation include demobilisation, disarmament and reintegration (ddr), the gendered impacts of small arms and light weapons, social development and gender, early recovery programming in protracted crises, and diverse aspects of women’s peacebuilding. • julie gregory, phd (book review co-editor): julie recently graduated from the phd program in sociology at queen’s university, where she investigated how various overlapping discourses buttress images of university campuses as particularly (un)safe environments requiring augmented techno-security apparatuses. her research is concerned with the commodification of fear, risk and security, community-based responses to crime, deviance and justice, and moral panics, social problems and moral regulation. she is also interested in post-subcultural theories and identities. • suzan ilcan, phd (editor): suzan is a professor in the department of sociology & legal studies at the university of waterloo and balsillie school of international affairs, and a founding editor of studies in social justice. she serves as a consulting editor of the canadian review of sociology and as an editorial board member of globalizations and the journal of namibian studies. suzan’s research covers themes at the interface of global governance, humanitarian and development aid, and migration studies, including humanitarian aid and refugees, citizenship rights and social justice, and the politics of poverty and development. • caleb johnston, phd (creative interventions editor): caleb is a lecturer in human geography at the university of edinburgh. he has served as a steering committee member of the glasgow refugee, asylum and migration network, as well as the global justice academy at the university of edinburgh, and currently serves on the editorial board of environment and planning d: society & space. caleb’s research has involved substantive ethnographic work in the city of ahmedabad, india, where he collaborated with two adivasi (indigenous) communities examining a range of issues related to a contemporary subaltern urbanism. he also has a long history working at the intersection of the social sciences and the arts. this work has paid particular attention to the capacity of testimonial theatre to produce sites for popular politics, circulating stories of suffering, and for forging new political attachments. he is the co-creator of nanay: a testimonial play, a documentary play engendering public debate about canada’s live-in caregiver program, which has been performed in vancouver, berlin, edinburgh, and manila. • samah sabra, phd (book review co-editor): samah completed an interdisciplinary phd at carleton university. her ethnographic doctoral david butz studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 1-6, 2015 6 research examined how arab canadians in the ottawa region negotiated various (pan)national identity discourses in their narratives about their own and others immigration experiences. samah works as an educational developer at carleton university, where her main areas of interest are pedagogical practices related to creating inclusive post-secondary educational spaces. this seven person editorial team is complemented and supported by an international editorial advisory board that presently numbers 17 scholars with a wide range of disciplinary and transdisciplinary competencies in areas of research related to social justice. we plan to expand the breadth of the editorial board over the coming months, so please contact me if you are interested in serving. - the opportunity to guide studies in social justice into a new phase of its existence is at once exciting and daunting. i’m delighted to be accompanied on this venture by six energetic and highly-qualified co-editors, and supported by an equally energetic and accomplished faculty steering committee at the sjri. i’m also most thankful to the journal’s previous editors (drs. tanya basok, suzan ilcan and jeffrey noonan) and manager (ms. nicole noel) whose hard work and wise decisions over the past eight years have ensured that studies in social justice is solidly established and well-positioned to further increase its readership, visibility and influence. finally, i wish to acknowledge sandra smeltzer and sara cantillon, the guest editors of this special double issue, whose cooperation and initiative has greatly helped the journal to enter this new phase of its existence on a strong footing. aspler final before ts correspondence address: john aspler, pragmatic health ethics research unit, institut de recherches cliniques de montréal, 110 avenue des pins ouest, montreal, qc, h3w 1r7; email: john.aspler@mail.mcgill.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 representation matters: race, gender, class, and intersectional representations of autistic and disabled characters on television john aspler institut de recherches cliniques de montréal, canada mcgill university, canada kelly d. harding canada fasd research network, canada laurentian university, canada m. ariel cascio central michigan university, usa abstract media reflect and affect social understandings, beliefs, and values on many topics, including the lives of autistic and disabled people. media analysis has garnered attention in the field of disability studies, which some scholars and activists consider a promising approach to discussing the experiences of – and for promoting social justice for – autistic people, who remain underrepresented on scripted television. additionally, existing portrayals often rely on stereotyped representations of disabled individuals as objects of pity, objects of inspiration, or villains. television may also serve as a primary source of public knowledge about disabled people and the concept of disability. it is therefore essential that such portrayals avoid stigma and stereotyping. we take a disability studies lens to critically analyze and compare representations of diverse people, who may sometimes be conflated in the popular imaginary, across television series about autistic characters (atypical, the good doctor), those with cerebral palsy (speechless, special), and a character with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (shameless). we employ an intersectional analytic framework to problematize representations of autistic and disabled people, using television, feminist, and critical disability studies literatures. we analyze how the formal structure of television storytelling can either enable or disable its characters, as well as how portrayals of disability that display a sensitivity to concerns raised by critical disability discourse do not necessarily display the same sensitivity when they intersect with marginalized experiences of gender, sexuality, race, and class. john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 324 keywords autism; cerebral palsy; fasd; disablement; representation; intersectionality; television media reflect and affect public beliefs, attitudes, and values. over the last few decades, scholars across numerous disciplines have explored media content to better understand how different groups of people have been represented, including what stories are told about which people, and which stereotypes are reinforced or contested (dahl, 1993; hacking, 2009; haller et al., 2012; henry, 2013; orchard, 2013). scholars studying media representations of disablement have identified problematic narrative tropes and stereotypes associated with disability, including the victim, villain, hero, and fool (barnes, 1992; darke, 1998; worrell, 2018). disabled individuals (i.e., those systematically excluded from full participation in society through the social and environmental disablement of different or stigmatized bodies and minds) are not always the subjects of their own stories, but objects of pity, inspiration, and burden (goffman, 1963; oliver, 1990). disabled people remain underrepresented on scripted broadcast, cable, and streaming television (glaad, 2020), where existing portrayals may continue to rely on problematic tropes (worrell, 2018). in this paper, we focus on scripted television in anglophone north america, connecting intersecting marginalized concerns about representations of disablement, gender, sex, sexuality, race, and class using crenshaw’s (1989) conception of intersectionality as a starting point. beyond content, we connect structure and features of scripted television (e.g., rules of a storyworld, genre norms, episodic or serialized mechanisms of storytelling) to the enablement and disablement of characters. we argue that television conventions provide a powerful opportunity for positive and inclusive representation, that intersectional approaches are neglected in television representations of disability partially because of these storytelling conventions, and that future texts can apply the strengths of television to further stories about a diversity of characters underrepresented or marginalized in ways that under realize their intersectional potential. researcher positionality statement and theoretical assumptions we approach this topic from various personal and interdisciplinary perspectives. john has a background in neuroscience and bioethics, studies fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (fasd) in canadian news stories, and works with people with fasd to understand their reactions to news coverage. kelly is an expert in fasd, specifically, with a background in developmental disabilities, human development across the lifecourse, and health service delivery. ariel is an anthropologist who studies social and ethical issues around autism and has worked with autistic youth and adults in a variety of representation matters studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 325 research contexts. we share social science methodological approaches and we take up a critical disability studies lens, which some scholars and activists consider a promising approach to discussing the experiences of – and promoting social justice for – autistic and disabled people (woods et al., 2018), while recognizing that the applicability of a disability perspective to autistic experiences has sometimes been contested (see e.g., participants in chamak & bonniau, 2013; kenny et al., 2016; lester et al., 2014). none of the authors identify as autistic or disabled; in this sense, we bring outsider perspectives to the issue of autistic and disabled representation. we contextualize this representation within broader discursive and cultural trends observed through engagement with various disability communities – who may or may not share similar experiences of stigmatization and barriers to social inclusion – and through our synthesis of a range of scholarly and advocacy writings. ultimately, we aim to bring different voices into the conversation while asserting our own arguments. this paper brings together scripted television shows about characters with diverse neuroatypical or disabling experiences,1 comparing representations of autistic characters with representations of characters with cerebral palsy (cp) and a character with fasd. we bring these representations into conversation both to problematize their connection and to consider how stigma and access barriers may impact these different groups of people who are popularly understood to be related through the language of the brain. in teasing apart and reconstructing similarities and differences through the lens of critical disability studies – pointing to opportunities for solidarity and justice among groups of neuroatypical or disabled people – we also open the space to investigate boundary work in these representations (i.e., the ways these representations outline similarities, differences, and groupings of people). our approach to disability studies frames concerns about people in the category of “disabled” as a minority in need of legislative interventions and civil rights protections. although the needs of different groups may not always align, the political action of the disability rights movement is one area of activism that can help advance intersectional approaches to social justice. this approach turns the critical lens back on society, ensuring that diverse groups can articulate the ways in which they are disabled, while also pointing to structural issues that can affect all marginalized people. that is to say, 1 while medical literature often groups these diverse experiences together as “neurodevelopmental disabilities,” we struggled to find an appropriate umbrella term. we have chosen to use “neuroatypical or disabling” to encompass people who do and do not identify as disabled. we chose neuroatypical to encompass people with a range of differences currently conceptualized as neurological, including both cognitive and motor differences, as others have also done (horn et al., 2019). the concept of atypicality describes this difference, implicitly contrasting with neurotypical individuals whose cognitive and motor styles are considered common and dominant in society (mueller, 2020). the term neuroatypical is similar to “neurodivergent,” a term closely associated with neurodiversity theory and the movement (kapp, 2020; milton et al., 2020), though not limited to this context (gold, 2021). john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 326 disabled people share political experiences of marginalization and can agitate in solidarity for shared emancipatory projects. we also wish to emphasize that given the diversity of language preferences, which vary generationally, interpersonally, regionally, and between communities, we use both person-first (i.e., “with disabilities”) and identity-first (i.e., disabled) language. while many autistic people and scholars prefer identity-first language (robertson & ne’eman, 2008), this is not the case for all disability communities (e.g., people with intellectual disabilities, cerebral palsy, fasd), wherein a lack of person-first language may perpetuate stereotyping and the marginalization of these populations (canfasd, 2021). finally, while there has been some scholarly discussion of the shows we analyzed (e.g., brady & cardin, 2021; cambra-badii et al., 2021; stern & barnes, 2019), it has been limited. much of the intellectual work exists outside hegemonic spaces of academic publishing, including blogs, news, and social media communities. we cite these sources, where appropriate, to provide insight into perspectives from autistic and disabled communities. while representation of autistic characters has received some attention, interrogations of representations of other neuroatypical or disabled people, particularly people with fasd or cp, remain lacking in comparison (schormans et al., 2013; will, 2019).2 representations of autistic people autistic characters have been increasingly represented on screen in recent decades, with the 1988 film rain main serving as a launching point for popular culture representations in anglophone north america (silberman, 2015). rain man drew on the trope of the autistic savant, an autistic person with extraordinary skills in a specific, limited area, often corresponding with significant difficulties in other areas of life. reliance on the savant trope carries the same risks as similar “supercrip” narratives, valuing autistic people only for their savant abilities – which most autistic people do not have – which devalues autistic life overall (loftis, 2014). since rain man, several television shows have prominently featured characters coded or identified as autistic. in the early 2000s, many of these representations were coded and largely conformed to the autistic savant trope, reflected through an understanding of autism as asperger’s syndrome and asperger’s syndrome as savantism (e.g., jerry espenson on boston legal, sheldon cooper on the big bang theory, abed nadir on community, zack 2 fetal alcohol spectrum disorder or fasd is a diagnosis given when an individual with cognitive, physical, and behavioural difficulties is known to have been exposed to alcohol prenatally (cook et al., 2016). cerebral palsy or cp refers to a heterogeneous set of motor difficulties (blair & cans, 2018). representation matters studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 327 addy and temperance brennan on bones). most of these characters were portrayed as highly logical, successful, and socially inept, with atypical and quirky behaviours played for laughs. they also often embodied a particular white masculinity that matthews (2019) calls “autistic techno-savant[ism]” (p. 58). later, in the 2010s, shows emerged that told more serious stories about explicitly autistic people, like max braverman on parenthood (holton, 2013). in these cases, a character’s autistic identity was often legitimized through a diagnosis. however, parenthood was not primarily about autistic characters or even autism communities.3 notably, both popular and professional representations often associate autism with whiteness, high socioeconomic status, and masculinity (jack, 2014; matthews, 2019). autistic scholars, artists, and self-advocates have called for greater diversity in the portrayal of autistic experiences, including the perspectives of autistic people of colour, women, and non-binary folk (brown et al., 2017). such portrayals are seen occasionally in representations of autistic boys of colour (e.g., connor on degrassi: the next generation), white autistic girls (e.g., isadora smackel on girl meets world) and women (e.g., dr. dixon on grey’s anatomy), and occasionally autistic women of colour (e.g., amber on atypical). disability media representation and intersectionality: tropes, stereotypes, and narratives on television several distinctive features of scripted television lend themselves to certain kinds of stories. more than most artforms, television (tv) is constrained by market and industry forces, such as actor contracts and ratings (mittell, 2015). tv has historically needed to appeal to broad audiences, which has likely contributed to a lack of diversity favouring protagonists in “unmarked” categories: white, straight, able-bodied, and male. however, recent shifts toward digital streaming platforms and the increased fragmentation of the tv landscape – sometimes described as “peak tv” (gray & lotz, 2019) – have also contributed to an increase in shows by diverse showrunners on diverse topics and identities. notably, tv storytelling takes place over long periods of time, allowing viewers to build possibly meaningful parasocial relationships with characters that do and do not represent them, and to engage with and consume metatext and paratexts that influence understandings of 3 we use the term “autism communities” here and in similar ways throughout this paper to distinguish representations that centre the views of certain parents and professionals rather than the views of autistic self-advocates. as explained by orsini (2009, p. 115), “autism advocacy” represents those “more interested in pressing for policy change around the treatment for autism and concern with its causes” while a term like “autistic advocates” reflects “the efforts of activists to create a positive identity for autistic people using, albeit not exclusively, a disability rights frame... members of the autistic or autistic rights movement decry the focus on and language of ‘curing’ autistics.” john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 328 authorial intent and real-world constraints on storytelling choices. tv is also structured by extrinsic genre norms and storyworld-intrinsic narrative rules (mittell, 2015). beyond questions of representation, the unique structure of tv also directly enables and disables characters. for example, extrinsic genre conventions of the episodic 21-minute american situational comedy (sitcom) often cause a return to status quo at the end of an episode (austerlitz, 2014), which can lead storytellers to take shortcuts around what might otherwise be a serious barrier to a disabled character; a barrier in one episode (e.g., difficulty socializing, lack of funds for specialized equipment) might be ignored entirely in another. at the same time, while these choices of convenience can provide examples of unrealistically accessible worlds, they can also help us imagine a world without (or with fewer) barriers. current study in this paper, we aim to combine work from television studies and disability studies, but it is also important to note emerging work in an area of research called “media disability studies,” which aims to address the complexities of media and disability together (ellcessor et al., 2017). while our insights are primarily focused on those from critical disability studies and related analyses about the representation of disability in media, we also aim to reflect concerns from television (and media studies) broadly, including the economic forces at play in media production (e.g., the choice of whether to hire disabled or neuroatypical actors; brady & cardin, 2021) and audience engagement and reception. specifically, we address representations of disability in shows featuring autistic characters, characters with cp, and a character with fasd. we have selected these three specific experiences to highlight the dominance of autism representation, the boundary work and limited engagement with intellectual disability in representations of autism and cp, the common erasure of non-white experiences despite racialized differences in diagnosis and access to services, and the ambiguous and inconsistent role money and socioeconomic status can play in these stories. methods informed by intersectionality as a guiding framework (crenshaw, 1989; hankivsky et al., 2014), we critically explored representations of characters on five american television shows (see table 1): atypical (rashid et al., 2017-present; autism), the good doctor (shore et al., 2017-present; autism), special (dokoza et al., 2019-present; cp), speechless (gernon et al., 20162019; cp), and shameless u.s. (wells et al., 2011-present; fasd). we focused on gender, sex, sexuality, race, and class, how characters’ representation matters studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 329 experiences of these social categories intersected with their experiences of disability, and how the metatext of the show furthered (or failed to further) nuanced representation. these shows were chosen by the researchers as recent examples that included a neuroatypical or disabled series regular character, with neuroatypicality and disability as structuring features of the storytelling and characterization. shameless u.s. was chosen as it is, to our knowledge, the only show featuring a series regular character with fasd, despite the character and diagnosis being peripheral. we employed two key approaches to data collection and analysis: critical discourse analysis (cda) and critical friend discussions. we chose cda (fairclough, 1989; titscher et al., 2000) as an interdisciplinary method, given our diverse backgrounds and shared attention to power dynamics, as well as the relationship between society, culture, and television discourse. our analysis attended to how intersecting social experiences were represented in a commonly consumed medium (i.e., popular broadcast, cable, and streaming television programming), reflective of the assumption that (like cultural studies) “society and culture are shaped by discourse, and… constitute discourse” (titscher et al., 2000, p. 146). as cda assumes that texts cannot be divorced from social and cultural contexts, we centrally employ intersectionality (crenshaw, 1989) as a theoretical framework elaborating on how experiences of disability cannot be separated from experiences of sex, gender, sexuality, race, and class, while referring to tv production and reception practices. as hankivsky et al. (2014) note, a central tenet of intersectionality is that human lives cannot be reduced to single characteristics (i.e., disability status). while our understandings and interpretations of intersectionality are informed by our readings of the shows’ constructions of disability and the characters’ social locations, it is important to bear in mind our readings of the show as scholars (and how those may differ from other audiences), our lived experiences and social locations, and how audiences make sense of, and engage with, the media they consume. we watched shows independently and together. independent viewing involved note-taking with an emphasis on identifying common themes, disability media stereotypes, and understanding the representation of disability intersecting with other categories of social experience. we met virtually to discuss episodes viewed alone or in pairs, our evolving understanding of each show, and to watch specific episodes together. in doing so, we engaged in collaborative data analysis. all levels of analysis were done by all authors. during these meetings, we engaged in critical friend discussions (smith & mcgannon, 2018) to challenge each other’s observations and interpretations of a show’s content, meanings, and narratives. these conversations ensured that we were able to explore and construct multiple interpretations of the data, with consideration for each researcher’s experiences and areas of expertise. these meetings enabled us to both watch and analyze individual episodes of a show, while also placing that episode within the broader context john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 330 of a show itself, the other shows watched, and social trends tied to media narratives and intersectional representations. these reflexive discussions were thus used to refine our analysis to ensure it fit well with our theoretical positioning and larger research aims. results and discussion in this paper, we combine our results and discussion in one section divided into two parts: (1) a description of each show and its core concerns; and (2) a comparison across these shows and their structures, employing an intersectional analytic framework that connects disablement to gender, sex, sexuality, race, and class. notably, extrinsic genre norms associated with certain kinds of shows (e.g., dramas, comedies) are constantly evolving. while the broadcast shows we analyzed can more clearly be described as traditional dramas or sitcoms, the shows on cable or streaming platforms belong to newly emerging structures (i.e., shows marketed or classified as comedies that nonetheless reflect dramatic topics and storytelling choices). here, we refer to such shows as “comedies.” show disability genre character diagnosis status air dates atypical autism 30-minute streaming “comedy” sam gardner explicit series regular / protagonist 2017 to present; 3 seasons the good doctor autism 42-minute broadcast drama shaun murphy explicit series regular / protagonist 2017 to present; 4 seasons speechless cerebral palsy 21-minute broadcast sitcom jj dimeo explicit series regular / protagonist 2016 to 2019; 3 seasons special cerebral palsy 15-minute streaming “comedy” ryan hayes explicit series regular / protagonist 2019 to present; 1 season shameless (u.s.) fasd 60-minute cable “comedy” carl gallagher coded / retrospective series regular / peripheral 2011 present; 11 seasons table 1. description of television shows analyzed. representation matters studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 331 autism atypical the coming-of-age netflix “comedy” atypical (rashid et al., 2017-present) was initially advertised around main character, autistic 18-year-old sam, questing for sex and (secondarily) romance. sam attends a mainstream high school and later college, sees a therapist and eventually works with a peer group and college disability services office, works in an electronics store, and has a passion for penguins. the series heavily features sam’s mother (elsa), father (doug), sister (casey), best friend (zahid), and girlfriend (paige). the lead actor, keir gilchrist, is not autistic, and the original team did not seem to include autistic consultants; both moves were criticized in the reception of season one, especially by autistic reviewers (e.g., luterman, 2018). season two addressed these criticisms by hiring autistic consultants and casting autistic actors for sam’s peer group, only a few of whom get much development. atypical focuses primarily on the heterosexual romance plot of a straight, white, academically-achieving artistic young man, and on the family drama surrounding his coming of age. it focuses heavily on sam’s parents’ relationship(s) and how sam’s parents reflect on sam and autism. much attention is given to autism mom tropes that are beyond the scope of this paper (see jack, 2014). disability justice issues sometimes appear against this backdrop: paige convinces the school to hold a “silent dance” (season 1, episode 8, “the silencing properties of snow”) to help sam avoid sensory overload; doug becomes involved in first-responder training after an officer misreads sam’s behaviour as criminally suspicious and arrests him. while both plots feature advocacy on behalf of sam (whether he wants it or not), season three implicitly critiques this advocacy when sam misses his appointment with college disability services. elsa attempts to navigate the services for him but finds that the office will only talk to students directly. when sam later engages with disability services, it is his own choice. it is difficult to say that atypical comes from an autistic point of view. sam is the main character and narratively bookends most episodes. sound and camera angles do often create an insider view to sam’s experiences of sensory overload. however, while the humour sometimes reflects sam’s sense of humour, jokes also seem to be at his expense. sam is not always given a say in key events in his own life, especially early in the series. the good doctor the good doctor (shore et al., 2017-present), an american medical drama, focuses on shaun murphy, a surgical resident recruited to work in a major metropolitan hospital. shaun – played by freddie highmore, who is not john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 332 autistic (finn, 2020) – is both autistic and a savant. the show navigates his capacity to be a “good doctor” despite the challenges he faces (e.g., difficulty communicating). the show has received both praise and criticism from autistic audiences, as well as researchers. sometimes heralded for its accuracy in depicting an autistic man (baños et al., 2018; nguyen, 2017) and perceived positive representation (moore, 2019), criticisms of the show include its “alleged commodification of people with autism” (stark, 2020, p. 2), with shaun’s character being an easy to accept and consume marketfriendly portrayal of an autistic person (duan et al., 2018; skudra, 2018). the central drama of the good doctor, beyond weekly medical cases, reflects tension between shaun’s surgical competence and his perceived poor coping mechanisms, social skills, decision-making, and bedside manner. given the interplay between autistic representation and representations of savantism, shaun often outshines his colleagues. however, despite his strengths, his excellence is often positioned in contrast to perceived deficits, including difficulty grasping the intricacies of doctor-patient relationships and hospital politics (baños et al., 2018). like sam in atypical, shaun is a straight white male protagonist. unlike sam, shaun conforms more to the savant trope in terms of difficulties and exceptionalities. his surgical skills and medical knowledge are foregrounded and externalized as imagined three-dimensional anatomical imagery, demonstrating shaun’s neuroatypicality and his application of that neuroatypicality to accomplish amazing feats. however, this element of the show has been criticized for reinforcing the notion that autistic people are always savants with a special skill or talent (baños et al., 2018; draaisma, 2009; nordahl-hansen et al., 2018). the good doctor explores many sources of discriminatory and prejudicial attitudes, including how hospital managers may find it difficult to accept that an autistic person can be a good professional (baños et al., 2018) and can succeed with ongoing positive support from mentors and friends. in season one, shaun often faces disrespect from patients, their families, and colleagues. these attitudes are critiqued when hunter, a man with quadriplegia, argues in season 1, episode 16 (“pain”) that “other doctor[s] started with a basic level of respect. it’s implied: they’re competent.” cerebral palsy speechless speechless (gernon et al., 2016-2019),4 an american sitcom, starred micah fowler (an actor with cp) as jimmy “jj” dimeo jr., the eldest of three 4 some of our discussion about speechless is derived from earlier work (see aspler & cascio, 2018). representation matters studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 333 children in a nuclear working-class family. the cast also includes his mother (maya), father (jimmy), brother (ray), sister (dylan), and speech aide (kenneth). although jj is ostensibly the protagonist, in its first season, jj’s younger brother ray served as an occasional audience surrogate, watching and supporting jj. speechless effectively addresses complex topics associated with disability across its entire run, ranging from an episode about “inspiration porn” (young, 2012) to reflections on ableist slurs, financial planning and support needs, disability and sexual activity, and accessible spaces. given its episodic format, many such topics are addressed within the confines of a single episode, which is how speechless can sometimes avoid addressing those same topics in every situation. for example, in season 1, episode 15 (“t-h- the c-l--club”), an unrealistically effective electronic communication board serves as a launching point for jj to consider dismissing kenneth as his speech aide – something the audience knows would be unlikely given typical tv acting contracts. this board exists to create and resolve narrative tension between jj and kenneth. when jj reveals that he feels like a burden, and kenneth assures jj that he is not, the board disappears from the world of the show forever, despite being such a useful tool. in reality, the board might be a financially inaccessible piece of equipment, or else could compliment jj’s use of an aide rather than be seen as supplanting him. special special (dokoza et al., 2019-present) is a semi-autobiographical show written, produced by, and starring ryan o’connell, a young gay white man with self-described “mild” cp, as a heightened version of himself seeking independence. ryan is about to start a new job as an unpaid intern at a feminist magazine (eggwoke) when he is hit by a car. he then uses this experience to explain his mobility challenges, rather than tell others about his cp. even before the accident, ryan feared telling people he is “gay and disabled.”5 ryan also has a codependent relationship with his mother, karen, echoing some of the tropes explored in atypical and embraced comedically by speechless. rounding out the cast are ryan’s only friend and ally at work (kim, a plus-sized indian-american woman and the most successful writer at eggwoke), ryan’s offensive boss (olivia, who runs eggwoke to exploit feminist discourse for profit), ryan’s love interest (carey), and his mother’s love interest (phil). overall, special explores the intersection of queer 5 in some ways, special seems to embrace a common misperception that frames intersectionality as additive, rather than constitutive (yuval-davis, 2006); as in, difficult experiences of being gay and disabled are added together, rather than seen as inextricable or constitutive of ableist homophobia or homophobic ableism. john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 334 identity and disability, internalized ableism, codependence, and falling through the cracks with a mild disability. fetal alcohol spectrum disorder shameless u.s. adapted from the british series of the same name, shameless u.s. (wells et al., 2011-present) is a “comedy” on showtime. shameless centres around the gallaghers, portrayed as poor, working class, and dysfunctional. frank gallagher, a single father of six (fiona, phillip, ian, debbie, carl, and liam), often spends his time drunk or scheming for money to get drunk. the show explores the diverse and often unhealthy relationships among the gallaghers via their interactions with frank as family patriarch and fiona as a stand-in parent. over its extended run, the show has explored many complex intersecting social determinants of health, including substance use, mental illness, poverty, crime, and adverse childhood experiences. shameless establishes early that each of the gallagher children were conceived while their parents were under the influence of several substances, including alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy, and acid. fans of the show have long speculated that the gallagher children could potentially all have developmental challenges because of these diverse prenatal substance exposures (secrecykilled, 2017). in shameless’ seventh season, one of the youngest gallagher children, carl, is indicated (perhaps jokingly) to have fasd. in an argument between carl and frank in season 7, episode 6 (“the defenestration of frank”), frank sarcastically congratulates carl for putting “...three words together! i told the doctors that fetal alcohol syndrome wouldn’t wreck your brain.” as the only known example of a series regular with fasd on tv, it is clear that fasd is the least commonly represented of the experiences considered in this paper. while carl’s disability is never explicitly addressed on shameless, this one-off line allows the audience to read (and reread) the story of carl as being about a person with fasd. when the narrative does focus on him, his stories are mostly about a troubled, impulsive, and violent child who does not comprehend the consequences of his actions and who performs poorly in school. his early behaviours include sociopathic tendencies framed as humorous representations of carl’s “dark future” and “budding psychosis” (season 1, episode 6, “killer carl”), including burning toys, abusing animals, and assembling an electric chair for a barbie doll. in later seasons, carl’s behaviours escalate to further violence, selling drugs, and eventually being sentenced to juvenile detention. interestingly, the show does not always frame these behaviours as a problem. given its dark comedic tone, carl’s apparent sociopathy sometimes enables him to be the hero, such as in season 1, episode 5 (“three boys”) representation matters studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 335 when he violently defeats bullies with a baseball bat or knocks out a predatory priest. however, while fasd stakeholders were happy about the introduction of a character with fasd (fetal alcohol spectrum disorder ottawa, 2016), the show’s reliance on carl’s destructive behaviours plays into common stereotypes of adults, particularly men, with fasd as violent, dangerous, and irredeemable villains or criminals (aspler et al., 2018). behaviours like hyperactivity or difficulties with emotional regulation and attention, as well as the assumption that individuals with fasd will have a poor life trajectory, can contribute to ongoing negative attitudes, perceptions, and stigma toward individuals with fasd (bell et al., 2016). therefore, while the inclusion of a character with fasd on tv is an important step forward, reliance on these stereotyped representations remains significantly problematic. structure of the television shows analyzed each show has a very different storytelling structure and style. both speechless and the good doctor have more traditional episodic formats, with the good doctor featuring standalone medical cases of the week that thematically connect to the doctors’ personal lives, and speechless resetting to the status quo at the start of most episodes. these shows reflect the expected extrinsic norms of traditional broadcast dramas and sitcoms, even as they develop their own intrinsic storytelling norms. in contrast, atypical, shameless, and special represent different versions of serialized “comedy” blending dramatic and comedic storytelling norms, on streaming platforms or cable networks, with stories that often continue seamlessly across episodes in contrast to more self-contained episodic cases or situations. atypical was produced for a streaming platform (netflix), so its structure is not defined by advertisement breaks, has a fairly linear storytelling style, and all episodes in a season appear online simultaneously. shameless is a 60-minute semisatirical “comedy” airing weekly on cable, where the characters swear excessively and the show explores more mature themes. special has the most unique structure (like atypical, produced for netflix), acting more as a series of vignettes given its short 15-minute runtime, almost entirely focused on – and told from – ryan’s point of view. intersectional analysis of television shows about autistic and disabled characters discussions of autism, social justice, and media are incomplete without an intersectional analysis of the ways different identities are represented. a commitment to social justice is key both to intersectional approaches (crenshaw, 1989; hankivsky et al., 2014) and the neurodiversity paradigm john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 336 used in the autistic rights movement (strand, 2017). intersectional framing includes an understanding of who benefits and who is excluded from the stories we choose to tell, and the upholding of long-standing assumptions or stereotypes about their social locations and challenges (e.g., the autistic savant narrative of the good doctor). despite the relevance of intersectional approaches within social justice movements, the shows analyzed in this paper display notable silences. media portrayals of disability commonly rely on stereotypes that frame people as pitiable, exceptional, burdensome, or villainous (barnes, 1992; darke, 1998; worrell, 2018). while each show conforms to some of these stereotypes sometimes, some also centre disablement and disabled characters in ways that challenge stereotypes and inject nuance into disability representation. however, even as portrayals of disability have grown in complexity, those same portrayals often fail to contend with intersecting experiences. specifically, these shows emphasize intersections of disability with whiteness and masculinity, without attending to the particularity of these experiences – potentially inappropriately universalizing them. while human lives cannot be reduced to single characteristics (hankivsky et al., 2014), most shows included here emphasize a characters’ neuroatypicality or disability as their central or defining characteristic. all five shows feature white male protagonists, mostly framed as straight, high achieving, and relatively financially well off. their identities inform their experiences in relation to neuroatypicality or disablement, but a presumption of whiteness and maleness enables these shows to remain silent on issues tied to race, sex, and gender. it is their atypicality that is marked and reflected explicitly in storytelling, despite the kinds of stories actually told being inextricably linked to, and constitutive of, their gender, sex, and race. although we do not aim to imply an additive approach to antioppression work or representation (yuval-davis, 2006), some of what is reflected in the media we analyzed implicitly embraces an additive model. disability, sex, gender, and sexuality both atypical and the good doctor centre young, white, academically successful, heterosexual men, reinforcing stereotyped imagery of an autistic person as white and male (matthews, 2019), while challenging stereotypical images of autistic people as non-sexual and uninterested in relationships (bennett et al., 2019). although the good doctor plays into the savant trope, atypical resists this trope by showing sam facing academic and artistic challenges. these challenges, especially in season three, parallel those of his non-autistic friends and family. both shows balance the protagonists’ strengths with a heavy reliance on burden tropes that instead centre the voices of family, employers, and friends. representation matters studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 337 similarly, both speechless and special initially focus on sexuality and disability, an important topic given that disabled people broadly are sometimes viewed as non-sexual. notably, special features a gay protagonist, which provides another lens on the same topic. in both shows, the burden trope is somewhat challenged by the protagonists seeking independence, especially from their overbearing mothers, a theme shared by atypical. while these shows emphasize overbearing mother stereotypes, shameless explores the contrasting selfish mother stereotype for individuals with fasd (aspler et al., 2018). monica, a largely absent mother who struggles with her own ongoing substance use and mental illness, is often vilified by her children, which reinforces misconceptions that women who use substances during pregnancy just do not love their children enough and that there is a certain type of woman who uses substances during pregnancy. shameless contrasts with the other representations of neuroatypical or disabled protagonists we analyzed in important ways. for example, most of carl’s story focuses on violence and criminality in poor socioeconomic circumstances. while autism is generally associated with whiteness and high socioeconomic status (jack, 2014; matthews, 2019), fasd is often constructed as a diagnosis for the marginalized (flannigan et al., 2018) with emphasis on the prevalence of fasd among special populations, including children in care, justice-involved individuals, and indigenous communities. these shows raise questions about the inclusivity of their production practices and their audiences. these shows do not all include people with disabilities as stars, consultants, writers, directors, or producers. whether a show centres either the voices of autistic and disabled people or the voices of their families can imply that, while a show may be about autism or disability, it might not be intended or understood as primarily for autistic or disabled people. this concern additionally permeates their handling of intersectionality both within disability communities and society in general. the concept of disability reflects an extraordinary breadth of experience. both special and speechless tackle these differences by raising questions about pan-disability solidarity, stigma, boundary work, and privilege. in both cases, categories of disability are carved up and set above and below each other – at times on purpose, directly exploring and critiquing boundaries, and at others, uncritically and implicitly endorsing those boundaries. for example, ryan tells his physiotherapist in season 1, episode 1 (“cerebral lolzy”): “i’m so fucking jealous of bob... it must be freeing to be so disabled... i’m not able-bodied enough to be hanging in the mainstream world, but i’m not disabled enough to be hanging around with the cool [physiotherapy] crowd.” this discussion, while framed as dark humour, ties ryan’s genuine and complex concerns about different experiences of disability to his self-loathing, internalized ableism, and decision to pretend he was hit by a car. his physiotherapist pushes back by arguing that ryan is “lucky” and “privileged” and that his comment was “offensive.” in contrast, after a blind date with michael, a d/deaf man, ryan reflects that he “can still john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 338 do better than a deaf guy” (season 1, episode 7, “blind deaf date”). although ryan is critiqued and learns from this experience, michael never returns. he exists solely as a punchline and so ryan can reflect on his internalized ableism. similarly, speechless creates a boundary between physical and intellectual disabilities when jj’s mother explains to a rude stranger in the pilot that “he’s all there upstairs,” a comment that shifts stigma away from one kind of disabled person onto another. speechless later returns to this topic with nuance when one of ray’s crushes uses the “r-word” in season 1, episode 21 (“p-r--prom”). ray concludes, it’s not about jj and [the r-word] not being an accurate description of him. what about people who do think a different way or at a different pace? should we reference them in a nasty way when we do something dumb because we think it’s cute? although “dumb” is also an ableist slur, speechless aims to demonstrate solidarity between different experiences of neuroatypicality and disability. boundary work is not explored in either autism-focused show, but the focus on high-achieving protagonists supports similar boundaries, with the good doctor endorsing the savant trope, and both the good doctor and atypical representing experiences of autism without intellectual disability. this trend in representation implicitly reinforces misconceptions that social justice movements such as the neurodiversity movement do not include people with intellectual disabilities, whereas in practice, neurodiversity advocates repeatedly challenge such misconceptions (vivian et al., n.d.). moreover, neurodiversity advocates have long asserted the relevance of neurodiversity not just as an autistic activism movement, but a broader disability rights movement inclusive of all people (vivian et al., n.d.). discussion of boundary work and possibilities for pan-disability solidarity in some shows introduce the possibility for engagement with these ideas, a possibility currently underexplored in television featuring autistic characters. each show engages with sex, gender, and sexuality through the lens of male protagonists. at times, they lean toward toxic masculinity; jj and sam were both initially portrayed as sex-driven teens. this portrayal may serve to normalize jj and sam as just like other teenage boys. however, the shows demonstrate their interest through scenes of boundary-violating behaviours, such as when jj becomes the cheerleaders’ manager (a non-existent position), secretively using his laser pointer to indicate his interest in parts of their bodies, or when sam breaks into his therapist’s house to leave her a romantic gift. these portrayals contend with an assumption that paradoxically co-exists with the idea of disabled people as non-sexual (i.e., that neuroatypical people are inherently sexually inappropriate or dangerous). shameless may also reinforce this trope. carl is portrayed as over-sexed, frequently masturbating, and obsessed with women’s body parts, although this is not explicitly representation matters studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 339 described as disability-related and may instead reflect adolescent development coupled with adverse childhood experiences and a lack of parental supervision. in contrast, the good doctor challenges these assumptions by demonstrating shaun’s caring and supportive attitude toward his partner, and her respect for his challenges, as they become more intimate. speechless and atypical also challenge these assumptions. despite early examples of inappropriate overtures, both sam and jj are later shown to be good, caring, and safe partners. in season 3, episode 21 (“the s-t-a- staircase”), when jj meets his girlfriend izzy’s parents, they assume he could never have or act on sexual desires. after jj and izzy conspire to prove them wrong by getting caught in bed, her father arrives home and angrily yells at them while helping jj down the stairs. though speechless leans on problematic gendered (and racialized) tropes in the angry, overprotective latino father, it also problematizes common assumptions about people with disabilities as unthreatening, cute, or non-sexual (medina-rico et al., 2017). similarly, in atypical, sam’s character arc later rests heavily on developing a mutually caring relationship with his girlfriend paige. special also focuses heavily on sexuality and romance, with the notable distinction that the protagonist is gay. while jj and sam are awkward teenagers excited and scared to find love and have sex for the first time, ryan is in his 20s and sexually inexperienced, which distresses him. in season 1, episode 2 (“the deep end”), when ryan attempts to engage in intimacy, his inexperience and discomfort become clear. his would-be partner ends their alone time, leaving ryan feeling hurt. the show is ambiguous as to whether ryan is hurt because he thinks that his inexperience or his (undisclosed) cp was at the root of the rejection. certainly, ryan thinks that his inexperience is at least in part tied to his disability. ultimately, ryan loses his virginity to a sex worker. the framing of the experience is extremely supportive of sex work and the act enables ryan, going forward, to have more confidence in himself. while the shows about cp and autism challenge various sex-negative stereotypes about disabled people, they also sometimes reinforce negative attitudes and stereotypes about women. in speechless, jj’s brother ray’s poor behaviour toward women receives encouragement from their father, who suggests he should hide how much scheming is involved in his interactions with girls, rather than change his attitude. sam receives similar encouragement from his father. the metatext seems, initially, oblivious to how ray’s possessive and entitled attitude toward women conforms to the nice guy trope – that some men (perhaps via geek masculinity) understand relationships as an exchange in which they pay the currency of niceness (through words, acts, and gifts) to win the goods of a kiss, a relationship, or a hookup (salter & blodgett, 2017). however, the writing does evolve as ray’s worst qualities become heightened, and he shifts from audience surrogate to mockable know-it-all in season two. later, in the series finale (season 3, episode 22, “u-n-r--unrealistic”), speechless explicitly interrogates john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 340 ray’s sexism. as the only boy on a school trip, he assumes he can choose any girl he wants, but after several rejections, he asks: “am i really that bad?” he then conducts an elaborate focus group with the girls in his grade that serves as a metatextual reflection on the reasons why ray is so unlikeable. in atypical, doug only changes his advice when he realizes the object of sam’s affection is his therapist. while speechless rarely challenges ray’s attitude toward women, it does feature complex female characters in maya and dylan. atypical, on the other hand, frequently portrays women as disruptive, dangerous, and corrupting forces. paige’s stress often acts as comic relief, with little exploration of the idea that paige’s reactions could be indicative of neuroatypicality and, regardless, should be worthy of empathy and support. similarly, women’s sexuality is framed as especially dangerous: elsa cheats and disrupts the family; zahid’s relationship leads him to break off his friendship with sam; and in season 3, episode 1 (“best laid plans”), sam misses a deadline and blames paige for “distract[ing him] with the promise of sex.” while there is some narrative pushback, sexuality – especially women’s sexuality – is nevertheless often portrayed as a corrupting influence. atypical also often reproduces essentialist understandings of gender roles, including overbearing mothers and uninvolved fathers among other hidden conservative tropes (see romero, 2017). however, sam’s tomboy-coded sister, casey, is one exception to these framings. when casey develops feelings for a female friend in the third season, sam models acceptance by reassuring her that it would not be “a problem” (in casey’s words) if she dated a girl (season 3, episode 9, “sam takes a walk”). while casey’s sexuality does lead to a breakup with her boyfriend, it is not treated as threatening in the same way as paige, elsa, zahid’s toxic girlfriend, or even sam’s sexuality. moreover, sam’s explicit support of casey seems to suggest a link between sam’s autistic perspective and queer acceptance. disability, race, and class these shows also engage with race through the lens of white protagonists. atypical features strong supporting characters of colour, including best friend zahid and members of sam’s peer group like jasper and amber; however, the show has also been criticized for portraying many characters of colour as villains (romero, 2017). similarly, while almost all of shaun’s colleagues or superiors on the good doctor are people of colour, few initially believe in him save for his white father figure and mentor. these shows nonetheless remain largely silent on race, especially compared to shows like speechless and special, despite clear opportunities to reflect on racialized experiences of disability. the clearest example of this silence in atypical surfaces in season 2, episode 6 (“in the dragon’s lair”) when sam faces police harassment while overwhelmed. sam provides a white face for this issue, but in doing so, representation matters studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 341 allows the show to be silent about police mistreatment of autistic people of colour. since sam is white, the narrative can choose to ignore the possibility of police brutality; an officer (himself a person of colour) interprets sam’s atypical behaviour as “tweaking” and only escalates the situation when sam’s friend zahid (also a person of colour) “charge[s]” in to help. the officer never frames sam as a danger to be beaten or killed, but as simply atypical enough to be arrested. the resolution to the situation is even more telling; doug and zahid frame the officer's actions as a problem to correct, not an expected outcome or daily occurrence to manage. this silence is especially notable considering intersectional approaches to police violence in autistic self-advocacy spaces such as the u.s. autistic self-advocacy network (strand, 2017). speechless most explicitly engages with race through jj’s speech aide, kenneth. jj replaces his first aide, a white woman who refuses to voice jj’s colourful word choices, with kenneth after hearing his “cooler” and, for jj, more authentic voice. black masculinity is often configured as cool, which speechless both explores with nuance and casually exploits. speechless also directly explores the overlap between the marginalization experienced by jj and kenneth, for example in season 1, episode 12 (“h-e-r---hero”), when kenneth points out the similarity between inspiration porn and the “magical negro” trope, “where the black character is just there to help the white guy on his journey and he mainly speaks in folksy sayings” (in kenneth’s words; see also hughey, 2009). on shameless, race is portrayed with complexity across the show’s long run. however, in relation to carl, race is explored through his appropriation of black culture as he begins to perform negative stereotypes associated with male blackness, particularly his language use, clothing style, and friend choices, as he joins a gang and starts selling drugs. while kenneth’s blackness is configured as cool on speechless, black masculinity on shameless is portrayed as toxic and aligns with the worst stereotypes about black men and communities of colour, especially in light of the show’s emphasis on poverty and the experiences of working-class individuals (adopted from its predecessor’s narrative of the “underclass” after thatcherism in the united kingdom; nunn & biressi, 2010). special more implicitly explores these issues. in season 1, episode 4 (“housechilling party”), ryan’s co-worker kim describes her experience of being marginalized as “a non-skinny, non-white girl” who has to “work overtime. it’s like ‘hey, i’m a voluptuous brown girl, but i'm wearing a $448 dress and i got a blowout, so i'm safe! accept me!’ it’s exhausting. and expensive. i’m in so much debt.” in this way, kim reflects on how her marginalization at the intersection of race and class are inextricable. special explores this intersection further by criticizing the exploitation of marginalization at eggwoke, where kim’s pieces about her lived experiences drive a huge amount of eggwoke’s traffic and reader consumption. john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 342 economic exploitation of marginalized identities is not the only important way class figures into these narratives. in many instances class is often only discussed when necessary for plot or character motivation; financial concerns are otherwise ignored. on speechless, the dimeos argue with insurance companies, their bathroom has no door, and their roof is covered by a tarp. however, the family does not appear concerned by certain other expenses. like in the previously discussed electronic communication board example, we can understand these inconsistencies within the structure of a sitcom, which removes barriers or presents challenges when narratively convenient (mittell, 2004). ray especially struggles with pressure to be or appear wealthy. while often framed as a joke, ray’s desires are nuanced when he explains that it has all been “for jj” (season 1, episode 19, “c-h— cheater!”). while class issues feature centrally in speechless and shameless, class figures ambiguously in special and atypical. certainly, kim’s concerns about appearing respectable reflect racialized class concerns. however, it is unclear how well ryan relates to kim’s dilemma. ryan is attempting to establish himself professionally in an unpaid internship and a new apartment. while ryan’s mother criticizes the unpaid nature of the internship, he works more for respect than out of financial necessity, as he has the support of his (single) mother and the money his mom won in suing the hospital that ryan calls his “cp money” (season 1, episode 3, “free scones”). this description might allude to an unexplored aspect of ryan’s struggle with identity and selfloathing, by constructing cp as primarily an injury to be compensated for. atypical also presents a picture of a middle-class white family living in the suburbs, although sam’s family does face financial limitations. casey is admitted to private school on an athletic scholarship and frequently feels out of place and judged. however, like in speechless, other massive expenses pass without comment, like sam buying a canoe. on the good doctor, shaun is shown to have grown up in poverty, before running away from home and being taken in by dr. glassman. shaun’s story is one of upward mobility where he has struggled to overcome early adversity to excel in a stable profession with a high income ceiling. while shaun initially lives in somewhat lower socioeconomic circumstances (e.g., sparsely furnished apartment, difficulty paying rent without a roommate), he quickly seems to succeed both personally and financially as a resident at a major metropolitan hospital. conclusion the results of our analysis demonstrate that while more portrayals of neuroatypical and disabled characters on television are emerging, representations exploring the nuanced intersections of disability in society are clearly needed to promote social justice inclusive of neuroatypical and representation matters studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 343 disabled people. positive representation includes highlighting the agency of disabled people, centring their strengths, and representing solutions to access barriers, all of which promote social justice by imagining inclusive fictional worlds that can inspire change in the real world. while the shows described here do include some of these representations, they also reproduce negative tropes (some more than others). autism-focused shows reproduce tropes of the autistic person as a savant, a burden, and at times as creepy, dangerous, or rude. comparison with shows featuring fasd and cp suggest that fasd is underrepresented (and deficit-focused), but that representations of cp have more successfully included actors and consultants with the featured disability. this difference may be related, at least in part, to visibility; while autism and fasd are sometimes described and understood as invisible; cp (being motor-related) is harder to “hide.” casting decisions might also reflect implicit biases about whose stories are worthy of being told and by whom. attention to intersectionality also reveals the limited range of stories being told about disability and their emphasis on disability as the central social location of the characters. they maintain the “unmarkedness” or default assumption of white, male, non-disabled heterosexuality. this focus on white male protagonists serves to bracket disability as the only part of social identity that matters for them, despite the sometimes-explicit ways heterosexuality, masculinity, and whiteness very much matter in, and are constitutive of, their narratives. while individual stories of white autistic and disabled men are indeed important, the collective focus on white men’s experiences misses an opportunity to represent the diverse experiences of disabled people of any sexuality, gender, race, or class. notably, while these shows do represent a range of experiences with class, the tendency to consider money only when convenient for the plot of a single episode may minimize the financial barriers facing many autistic and disabled people, portraying these barriers as easily resolved and not worth the long-term attention (e.g., in policy) that they warrant. tv storytelling choices, at least among the shows we identified, are often a matter of convenience. in these instances, disability is neither convenient nor the norm in terms of representation (for characters, actors, writers, or directors). that same idea of storytelling convenience can extend into other areas of social experience tied to race, gender, sexuality, and class, where we see predominantly white straight men as default protagonists. introducing other intersecting concerns as fundamental to a show’s storyworld could complicate narratives beyond what a show about disability, structured in less complex formats like episodic medical dramas or family sitcoms or even simpler serialized dramas, could support. yet these shows, while often tackling complex issues tied to disability well, may not be structured to support intersecting stories. however, in its best form, tv can help us actively imagine a world with fewer barriers. given the results of our analysis, we support recommendations for more diverse stories about autistic people as well as people with other john aspler, kelly d. harding & m. ariel cascio studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 2, 323-348, 2022 344 neuroatypical or disabling experiences, including representations of strengths and successes, inclusion of disabled actors, and input from disabled individuals in storyline creation, writing, directing, and production. we also recommend that shows not bracket disability as the one thing a show addresses by reflecting on how presumed white maleness informs the stories being told and by including the stories of other kinds of people. this recommendation is in line with the way television is often structured, where shows aiming for longevity and renewal must often move beyond their original premise to maintain interest. increasing diversity, especially diversity of autistic and disabled characters, would serve this purpose. finally, we recommend more research on representation, disability, social justice, and television structure that critically explores these representations and their role in society, including the advancement of media disability studies to understand how diverse audiences receive, engage with, and construct understandings of neuroatypicality and disability as part of their larger communities. despite the concerns we raise in this paper about existing portrayals of autistic and disabled people on scripted television, we have seen an overall trend toward increasingly complex representations. what was once described and coded as quirky has become explicit, with recent shows being centrally about autism, autistic experiences, or disability broadly – as in the new show, everything’s gonna be okay (2020), which features an autistic teenage girl as a series regular portrayed by an autistic actor. we hope this trend continues and call for more attention to 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(2006). intersectionality and feminist politics. european journal of women's studies, 13(3), 193-209. dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 little tokyo: history, memory, and community change a report compiled by ctsj 257: “critical praxis: voice, memory and community transformation,” occidental college spring 2012 table of contents i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. ix. x. xi. xii. 3 6 8 11 17 21 27 32 37 42 43 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 executive summary introduction history and memory working and living in little tokyo participation in the life of the community perceptions of change in little tokyo visions for the future analysis and conclusions appendix: sample interview questions interviewers and report co-authors acknowledgements “meanings of community in little tokyo” is a report created through collaboration with the little tokyo service center (ltsc) – a community development corporation – and a class in the department of critical !eory and social justice (ctsj) at occidental college – ctsj: 257: critical praxis: voice, memory, and community transformation. !rough a series of sixteen interviews with business owners, residents, and individuals from community organizations, this research aims to paint a picture of the little tokyo community’s collective voice. in light of continuing and future redevelopment of the area, developing a comprehensive understanding of the experiences and views of one of little tokyo’s most vital assets – its people – is a piece of a larger e"ort to document the landscape of the neighborhood at the outset of major changes that are set to occur. little tokyo is a small, yet deeply complex community, and the wide variety of opinions expressed by interview subjects in the report re#ect this. each interview reveals a di"erent perception of the community’s major stakeholders, its needs, its signi$cance, and how it should evolve in the future. however, what ties these narratives together is a genuine sense of loyalty and care for protecting little tokyo so that it can exist for the next generations to live, work, and play in for years to come. in order to provide a comprehensive account of the community’s voice, this report is organized into $ve thematic sections – history and memory, working and living in little tokyo, participation in the life of the community, perception of changes in little tokyo, and visions for the future – which are then concluded by an analysis section. !e $rst section of this report expresses how little tokyo has a very complex history that is not well known to many both within and outside of the community. !ose who are familiar with the history however, tend to emphasize little tokyo’s historical connection to the japanese american experience, the impact of the economy and development, the importance of local institutions, as well as the overall idea of community. it is also a widely held view that more should learn about little executive summary dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 3 executive summary dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 tokyo’s history and the reasons why and how it was created. moving into the present day, the experience of working and living in little tokyo is detailed next. interviews from community members from diverse walks of life highlight how daily routines di"er considerably based on peoples’ roles in little tokyo, and these schedules also tend to change depending on the day of the week and the time of day. one main similarity between them all however, is the fact that working and living in little tokyo entails interacting with a variety of di"erent people, businesses, and organizations everyday. since being a part of the daily life of little tokyo holds a lot of meaning for each person interviewed, many also express their hope for being able to communicate that signi$cance to visitors. perspectives on participation in the life of the little tokyo community are described in the third section of this report. while many interview subjects are involved in collective community e"orts such as the little tokyo community council and the business association, their enthusiasm for community participation is not held by all. however, most do agree on the necessity for all sectors of the community to participate, and so the kind of individuals and organizations who do and do not participate, as well as the amount of e"ort they put in, is a matter of much debate. !e fourth section focuses on perceptions of change in little tokyo. in the past $ve to ten years, little tokyo has gone through many physical and demographic changes. community members particularly note a rise in little tokyo’s number of high-rent apartments, its developing nightlife scene, an increased sense of safety, and more variety in businesses. !e community has also gone through much change recently as residents are becoming more ethnically and economically diverse, and the amount of participation coming from certain sectors, particularly the youth, is also starting to increase. finally, the $%h section of this report illustrates the varied visions for the future of little tokyo held by community members. many interview subjects emphasize the belief that supporting small businesses and the arts are important aspects 4 executive summary of sustaining little tokyo into the future. in addition, little tokyo’s future identity in relationship to the japanese american community is a particularly critical topic of discussion because while many stress the importance of little tokyo remaining a safe space for the japanese american community, others put more focus towards developing the area into a multicultural space. how the future sees these two dynamics connect or come into con#ict will play a key role in determining the future direction of little tokyo. !is report concludes with an analysis of the major themes that run throughout each of the $ve main sections of this report. little tokyo is currently at an important crossroads where outside development and internal change are forcing community stakeholders to contemplate how little tokyo can move forward into the future in such a way that also preserves its long-developed and complex identity. balancing respect for its history with acceptance of change is especially complicated by the fact that little tokyo’s diverse stakeholders bring perspectives to the table that do not always meet in agreement. as a broad collective however, the little tokyo community grants great value to multiculturalism, preservation of history, youth involvement, openness to visitors, positivity, diversity, and community symbiosis. 5 introduction dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 “meanings of community in little tokyo” reports on a collaborative e"ort between evelyn yoshimura, community organizing director at the little tokyo service center (ltsc), and a class in the department of critical !eory and social justice (ctsj) at occidental college. ltsc is a community development corporation that works to empower the community and provide critical necessities such as a"ordable housing services. ctsj is an interdisciplinary department that provides students with critical analytic tools, theories, and methods, centered on social justice. !is collaboration was facilitated by the college’s center for community-based learning (ccbl) due to mutual interests and concerns about changes the community faces as the metropolitan transportation authority (mta) moves forward with plans to build a regional connector in little tokyo. !e class, “critical praxis: voice, memory and community transformation,” brings together theory and practice as students learn about little tokyo through academic readings and interactions with the community. for the project, nine students, from frosh to seniors, interviewed sixteen community members based on a list compiled by evelyn yoshimura. interviewees included business owners (local and chain), residents (market-rate and a"ordable 6 housing), and individuals who work in a variety of non-pro$t community organizations (including service, arts, and religious organizations). !is report maintains anonymity of the interviewees. our objective has been to develop an understanding of the changes the community is experiencing and what little tokyo means to community members. here, were port on the themes and introduction dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 insights from the interviews. as people who are coming from outside the community of little tokyo, we attempt to re#ect what we have heard back to the community. as we acknowledge that what we hear is shaped by our own experiences and positions in society, we strive to avoid taking ownership over what the interviewees say. !e report is organized around $ve major themes. first, the report illuminates interviewees’ comments on little tokyo’s history. second, it re#ects on their experiences of working and living in the community. !e report then looks at how interviewees participate in the life of little tokyo. next, interviewees discuss changes they have observed in the neighborhood. in the last theme, community members explain their visions of the future for little tokyo. finally, we collect and re#ect on the memories, experiences, and voices that interviewees have shared with us in order to contribute to the image of little tokyo as future conversations continue to shape it. we hope this project, and the e"ort given by little tokyo community members, will spark and contribute to these further conversations. 7 history and memory dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 within little tokyo there are multiple, overlapping layers of history. !e ways these histories are learned, perceived and expressed is di"erent for every group and individual. from the perspective of di"erent generations; japanese and non-japanese persons; businesses large and small, local and corporate; nonpro$ts and other community organizations, little tokyo’s history is rich and complex. such diverse insights produce both complementary and con#icting accounts, but everything adds to the community’s history as a whole. in the end, little tokyo and its complexity has come to represent an important and unique social space. a few dominant themes found through the interviews about little tokyo’s history are the importance of japanese american history; the impact of economic issues, development and change; the importance of local businesses, organizations, and religious institutions; and the overall idea of community. many interviewees express a sense of attraction and/or belonging to little tokyo as opposed to other japanese communities. as one interviewee states, there seems to be a “special community dynamic that is little tokyo,” that has held the space together during di&cult times. most interviewees discuss events that have taken place a%er internment. one interviewee states that “little tokyo was the main meeting point for the japanese american community so it made sense to come back . . .[as] members always retained ties to little tokyo.” however, one interviewee notes that deteriorated conditions meant that little tokyo gained a “reputation [as] a bad place” which “hurt the community because people stopped coming.” yet community members came together and “instilled a sense of pride in the japanese american youth who had never really thought of this place [little tokyo] as their community . . . but . . . realized how important it was to them.” with the rise of community organizations, members 8 of the community came together to claim the space that had developed so much meaning for them. while most of little tokyo has gone under considerable development and change, much initiative has been taken to preserve its history and the heart of little tokyo, especially with the building of the japanese american national museum, public art monuments and the preservation of first street as a national historic district. another aspect of the community that is highly important to all interviewees is the continuation of local “mom and pop shops,” japanese restaurants with their “comfort food,” and religious institutions. !ese features of little tokyo are just as important to the preservation of the community and its history as the actual physical space that they occupy. despite the depth and importance of the past, interviewees raise concerns that not enough people know little tokyo’s history or have interest an in increasing their knowledge about it. interviewees state that most of the history they know was found through research and participation; some feel they should know more. !e interviewees who do know a lot about little tokyo’s history are typically involved in some kind of community organization, but each individual’s views are quite unique. interviewees hold a range of opinions on topics such as the early years of community development, the role of japanese corporations and their investments in the commuhistory and memory dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 9 history and memory nity, as well as the #ow of di"erent cultures in and out of the area. for example, some are opposed to non-japanese businesses, but others, including “youth[, are] more open to multiculturalism” and non-japanese experiences in little tokyo. !ere is greater collective agreement in terms of the desire to keep larger chain stores out of the historic community. everyone agrees that change is good and inevitable, but how that change happens and what is lost, transformed or incorporated into the community is always a complex topic of dispute and negotiation. despite these di"erences, most feel loyalty to the area and believe that “it is important for people to know how and why little tokyo was formed.” without its history, there would not really be a little tokyo; interviewees indicate that it is vital to continue to share and understand both the “positives and the negatives.” dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 knowledge of history is important for the continued existence and meaning of little tokyo despite its importance, sometimes not enough is known or shared about the community’s history majority understand change is necessary and inevitable all hope that as change happens, community history continues to be respected all hope that as change happens, community history continues to be respected connect future to the past key points 10 working and living in little tokyo dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 depending on whom you ask, a typical day in little tokyo looks very di"erent but always involves interacting with others. interviewees bring to light various intragroup contrasts, including daily pace, amount of community interaction, and sentiment towards little tokyo, as well as other di"erences. most of the information we collected re#ects the daily agenda for community organizations, residents, and two types of businesses (those open during regular business hours and those with longer hours) but does not necessarily re#ect the lives of community members in general, although many of the contributors have multiple roles as members of the little tokyo community. according to the nine people involved in community organizations (religious, cultural, youth and social service) we interviewed, their daily pattern can be unpredictable because of its fast pace and the variety and quantity of activities that go on. many subjects express involvement in a multitude of meetings and opportunities to network on a daily basis. as one interviewee explains, he meets with his sta", community members, and business people as well as writing emails, organizing, and 11 working and living in little tokyo dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 working on simultaneous projects. while many subjects express that there is a certain amount of routine built into their schedules, others are constantly faced by new tasks posed by the needs of the people whom they serve, including visitors and community members. every day holds new and old challenges so that the “typical day” for the community organizations is a day that is always rewarding but is unique from the previous and from the next. as explained earlier, many involved in community organizations must work with other businesses and community members in order to most e"ectively meet their own goals as well as common goals they have with other community entities. while this is a central aspect of organizations, one new youth organization stands out by saying that their ties to the community did not happen automatically. !ey say that just because they are a japanese american organization did not mean that everyone in little tokyo accepted them when they formed. overall, though, most express positive opinions about the community of little tokyo and their organizations’ relationship with it. one interviewee who works in a social service organization describes a common sentiment about working in little tokyo: “[!ere is a] good sense of community, when you go to work you feel like you are going to your ‘second family’ because everyone is working towards one goal.” similarly, for businesses that are open mostly in the daytime, working in little tokyo means that they, their employees and their customers are a part of a comfortable daily pattern. everyone who is a part of that pattern, including employees from neighboring businesses and even the mailman, chat throughout the day sharing local news; there is constant community bonded mostly through oral interaction. for these types of businesses, working in little tokyo provides a safe and familiar community atmosphere mirroring that expressed by most community organizers. as one eatery owner explains, by developing relationships with other businesses all parties involved will bene$t and if they are all thriving then his establishment will also be thriving. 12 working and living in little tokyo dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 in contrast to the regularity of businesses primarily open during the day, the speed for businesses that are open more o%en and for longer hours varies from day to night and within the week. !ese businesses see di"erent types of clients. one co"ee shop owner within the community states, “!ere are three speci$c groups of customers: o&ce workers, weekenders and the dinner crowd.” a restaurant owner gives another example of the changing appearances of the neighborhood. on a typical friday, according to him, lunch time is populated by mostly businessmen and businesswomen from the downtown area who usually do not come by except during their break, but at night there are many more people who are younger and who come to little tokyo for fun. !e co"ee shop owner previously mentioned says that the little tokyo roots association is one of the leading organizations within the community to promote nightlife. another resident agrees, saying that their 13 working and living in little tokyo dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 project, the “tuesday night café[,] is a space that is helping revitalize little tokyo.” while most community members express positive feelings about little tokyo, some o"er areas for improvement. one interviewee who works in a social service organization comments on the community trying to “get rid of the smoke shops and other stores with mature products” in order to improve conditions for children in the community. another believes that it is “not a friendly place for young people,” while others comment on the continuing struggle to reduce crime. yet the individual who works for improvement for families also comments that while (nearby) “skid row is a huge challenge in the community, it is [our] neighbor, and they are a part of the little tokyo community,” pointing attention to the need to improve conditions for all. !is expression of the need to connect to others is re#ected by another interviewee who states, “little tokyo cannot survive by itself. it needs to reach out and create larger connections.” one resident of the community comments, “some of the tenants [in my complex] don’t even know about the organizations and programs within little tokyo and greater downtown la,” while another comments that it’s really di&cult to be a resident because there are certain amenities that aren’t available in the immediate area. still, other interviewees $nd what they need and opportunities to make signi$cant connections within little tokyo. one business owner and resident explains that her family had settled in little tokyo originally because they didn’t have much choice, but now she has sentimental reasons for living in little tokyo and keeping her business where it has been for over 60 years. many residents express a similar emotional link to little tokyo. two religious leaders comment that their congregations’ places of worship have not changed since their return to little tokyo because most people feel a link to their own personal history as well as a link to the community. one interviewee says that little tokyo is like a “japan away from japan,” with a strong sense of togetherness: “you are able to come here and get things you can’t get anywhere else.” another says, “i love the fact there are some places you can buy 14 japanese things. like a kimono shop and you can even buy a japanese saw.” people within the community appreciate not only japanese products, but also the unique environment of the community. as one business owner and resident explains, “[little tokyo is a] safe, clean, quiet, pleasant place to live. it’s really cute here.” most residents believe that little tokyo is a safe and friendly neighborhood. a resident and an employee of a community service organization says, “!ere is a good sense of community.” she goes to work and explains that on an ordinary day she goes out, walks, and talks to business owners because for her it is “nice to keep that friendship going.” interviewees express the desire for little tokyo to be a place infused with meaning for community members and visitors, not simply somewhere that people treat “like a food menu,” picking items from the community without understanding their signi$cance. another interviewee states, “it must be a state of mind not just a location. !ere needs to be a conversation about what little tokyo is so that people are really aware of it. it should be about the visitors and the business people who know what little tokyo is and being able to take something meaningful away from dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 working and living in little tokyo 15 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 their experience within little tokyo.” a business owner expresses a concern about the long-term viability of the businesses that are at the heart of the community: “we do bring in a lot of people and tourists. but you always wonder about the economic realities as far as supply and demand: do the people who come here want to patronize our small businesses? or do they want to come look at all the japanese-y things and go to the johnny rockets?” another interviewee mirrors concerns about what little tokyo is in the eyes of those who visit: “people need to realize this is not their personal asian fantasy land! i mean (little tokyo) just looks like any other part of the city, and so it’s so funny to see people trying to construct something that isn’t quite here.” an individual who works in a social service organization brings the concerns back to the importance of maintaining the qualities of the community: “little tokyo has been around for 125 years and we don’t want it to disappear because it is a part of our history, it is a part of our heritage and legacy, a lot of people care about the community, and want to see it continue for another 125 years.” di"erent schedules. range and contrasts in routines organizations: fast pace, busy. challenges but overall sense of community businesses: comfortable pattern / busy, with di"erent kinds of people residents: room for improvement, but many have strong sentimental ties establishing lasting meaning for visitors and community members key points working and living in little tokyo 16 participation in the life of the community dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 !e sixteen interviews within this study provide a wide range of perspectives on community participation. many members contribute to the well-being of little tokyo through the little tokyo service center, the little tokyo community council, sports, religious organizations and youth programs. one community member says of the community council, “[it] pulls people together and provides a space to talk and build relationships.” a noted restaurant owner on first street participates via the little tokyo business association, with ties to the now-defunct community redevelopment agency. multiple spiritual leaders within the community feel that participation is at a good level. in general, the interviews conducted with these leaders provide some of the best information because of their unique relationships to the community. one religious leader within the community who is also a member of the community council feels his organization is very active within the community and has done a lot to boost levels of participation. he is a supporter of kizuna, a group of little tokyo youth who work with the older generation to increase youth involvement. 17 participation in the life of the community dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 another spiritual leader says, “we have been engaged from the very beginning [conversations about] the regional connector and in other things as well like the high speed rail.” both spiritual leaders mention work to build stronger relationships between korean and japanese residents, particularly among older generations. spiritual organizations within the community are highly active with its inner workings from youth to the elderly, as well as involvement with businesses. youth involvement is a focal point of discussion within the community. many members feel there is a lack of involvement, but cannot $gure out why, while others have created programs to $ll the void of youth involvement. one 18 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 participation in the life of the community community member has dedicated her career to youth involvement programs and has started many youth-speci$c summer programs. programs do exist for the youth to participate in, despite the relatively low level of activity. a prominent business owner within the community is adamant about keeping youth programs for japanese american youth active. a leader within the community council feels that more youth participation is necessary, and that youth bring important skills to the community. a spiritual leader within the community takes it further in saying that it is necessary to bridge the gap between the generations and is not as concerned about a lack of involvement. in general, the interviewees agree youth need to be represented, but one comments on negative interactions that occur between generations when youth act entitled, alienating older members of the community. !is interviewee sees kizuna as o"ering a positive way for youth to become involved. he says, “it’s been really gratifying to see kizuna . . . !ey are getting the message out to the youth to come back whether it’s a theater performance, or a festival, or a concert. we are really happy that we are actually passing on the baton to them and that there’s a hope, not only a hope but almost a con$dence that little tokyo will survive a%er we are done.” in a somewhat more critical voice, a first street business owner who participates in the little tokyo business association feels that community participation is somewhat lacking. !is view is not singular: another noted community member and owner of a small business says, “[!e community has a] strong sense of com19 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 participation in the life of the community munity in pockets,” meaning that the community consists of tight-knit groups and small networks, but these are disconnected from each other. !e first street business owner shares this view. he feels participation is low because community members are reluctant to make major changes within the community or because they are not able to work through disagreements.. !e perception of levels of participation do vary. a spiritual leader believes that businesses and restaurants cooperate and participate together well. !is leader says that what is “neat about little tokyo” is that for the most part, all the businesses cooperate with each other. another leader thinks the opposite, commenting that he doesn’t hear enough from businesses, despite seeking their input. a business owner from japan says, “participating within the community is not a duty, but a cause.” !is quote exempli$es the attitude towards participation in little tokyo. participation is clearly very important to many members in all walks of life. for this reason participation is a focal point and a point of di"ering perspectives within the community. little tokyo community council is the most popular route of participation businesses participate via the little tokyo business association variety of perspectives on participation youth participation is an important focal point religious organizations provide programs and other ways to participate high rent apartments/condos raise important issues many more visitors and a growing nightlife little tokyo has become safer and more diverse need for more parking space opinions revolving around the regional connector are varied with uncertainty about how it will a"ect little tokyo key points 20 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 perceptions of change in little tokyo over the course of the interview process, many of the participants had much to say when it came to the changes that little tokyo has gone through over the past $ve to ten years. many of the interviewees express a change in the types of residential buildings that have been coming into little tokyo, including apartments and condominiums. one interviewee notes “a signi$cant change is the new residences. !ey are nice apartments.” a few interviewees point out the increase in high-rent apartments in the area. one interviewee observes other changes that accompany this growth: “with all this housing, and a lot of the market rate housing, you have to be like a young professional. !ey moved in . . . that’s been a big change. . . . !ey were not here before. before, downtown and little tokyo were mostly old folks, and poor folks.” with the new type of living accommodations in little tokyo, community members are seeing new types of people moving into little tokyo, especially young 21 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 perceptions of change in little tokyo people. it is not only the residential side of little tokyo that has seen a change in the prices of buildings, however. one interviewee talks about how the increase of price on property in little tokyo is also a"ecting businesses: “even in just my time here, we’ve lost a lot of businesses. just like a month ago, my favorite sandwich place just closed down because their rents were raised and they couldn’t a"ord it.” !e little tokyo community is currently seeing a change in the prices, with e"ects for those living and working there. interviewees note that little tokyo has become much livelier and vibrant over the past $ve to ten years. little tokyo had not always been seen this way: “it used to feel really dead. it just seemed sometimes sketchy, not alive.” many of the interviewees said this has changed a lot. little tokyo had previously gone through a period where it lacked visitors, but now there are people walking the streets at all times. “people are coming into little tokyo whether in the day time or even night time. i say ten years ago i might be here at 7 o’clock or 8 o’clock and i’d look outside and there’d be no cars parked on the street . . . but now i go out at 9 o’clock and people are still looking for parking spaces. . . . !is means that people are coming into little tokyo.” as the community becomes more inviting, many of the interviewees comment on the night life that little tokyo has gained. one states, “!e nightlife has gotten fairly major. little tokyo has gotten really vibrant as a destination.” !e more-welcoming little tokyo is becoming is causing for an increase in foot tra&c. although most members of the little tokyo community that were interviewed see this as a good thing, a couple of interviewees believe that as little tokyo becomes trendier, it is more likely to become a tourist trap. a majority of the interviewees mention that as little tokyo increases in popularity, the community is becoming safer. during the period when little tokyo did not have many visitors, the amount of crime was much higher than it is now. a business owner notes, “we used to have cars vandalized or broken into; we used to have complete security systems because of break-ins, but over the past $ve years we 22 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 perceptions of change in little tokyo haven’t had any attempted break-ins . . . crime has really tapered o".” most interviewees feel that the reason for the decrease in the amount of crime over the past $ve to ten years results from little tokyo becoming an inviting and exciting place. crime has been brought down because now there are more people walking the streets of little tokyo at all hours. !is has allowed for little tokyo to become a safer place than it previously had been. little tokyo is also becoming a more diverse place. one interviewee explains that little tokyo used to consist of mainly japanese people, but now there are many chinese, korean, latino, and caucasian members of the community. some interviewees notice that there are many new businesses coming into little tokyo that are serving di"erent kinds of foods, which is also adding to the diversity of the community. another factor that people are noticing is the increase in new kinds of residents 23 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 perceptions of change in little tokyo into the community. most of the interviewees do not mind the increase of diversity in little tokyo. most share the same mind set as this interviewee: “!e world is changing, so is little tokyo. a lot more mixing going on and you can’t help it. we can’t just close the door and say ‘japanese only.’” however, a few interviewees express a fear that the japanese history and culture that exists within little tokyo will go away as it becomes more diverse. and because of this, they are skeptical of the diversity that is coming into little tokyo. a main issue that many of the interviewees have noticed that has been emerging in little tokyo is parking. one interviewee expresses that little tokyo used to consist of many more parking structures than it does now. five interviewees mention parking as a major issue in the neighborhood. !ey raise the question: if there is nowhere to park, how are people supposed to visit little tokyo? many business owners believe that parking is a major issue because if people not from the community want to come to little tokyo to eat or spend money in any way, they need places to park. although this is currently a huge issue for some, a few interviewees express no concern for parking whatsoever, focusing on other issues for the community. !e issue of parking is currently connected to concerns about the construction of the mta’s regional connector in little tokyo. amongst the interviewees, there are many di"erent views when it comes to the regional connector. a majority of the interviewees express that they believe that the period of time when construction is happening will have negative e"ects on the little tokyo community. although that might be the case, they feel that in the long run, the regional connector will be good for the community and that the community will be glad that it is there. other interviewees believe that the regional connector will have more negative e"ects on the community. !ey believe that development around the regional connector may lead to changes in the character of little tokyo. other interviewees are indi"erent to the regional connector or do not really know what it is. however, almost all interviewees who are aware and care about the regional connector are concerned about 24 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 perception of changes in little tokyo an increase in tra&c and congestion on streets during the construction period. as noted in the section above on “participation,” youth involvement is on the minds of many people within the community. five of the interviewees think that over the past $ve to ten years little tokyo has been lacking youth participation within the community. however, three of the interviewees believe that this is changing and that the youth are beginning to get involved. !ese community members think that this is happening because they believe that little tokyo has become a much more youth friendly place. !ey think that younger generations are realizing 25 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 perceptions of change in little tokyo the importance of little tokyo and are therefore becoming involved within the community. however, a majority of the interviewees think that little tokyo is lacking almost all youth participation, “it’s a very interesting dilemma when you talk about who are the leaders of little tokyo right now and i would probably bet on it that there is no one under $%y.” many people feel this is the case because the youth are not taking little tokyo as their community and also as a piece of their own identity. although there are con#icting thoughts on whether or not the youth are involved within little tokyo, almost all the interviewees agree that youth participation within little tokyo is important. little tokyo is currently making an e"ort to get the youth involved through organizations like kizuna. !e community sees the need for new ideas and thoughts that younger generations would bring to little tokyo. some of the interviewees also realize that little tokyo consists mainly of older people. !ey therefore understand the importance of youth involvement because when the older generations pass, it will be up to the younger generations to preserve little tokyo. it is because of this that many of the concerns of community members revolve around the youth and ways to get the youth more involved. little tokyo has gained many high rent apartments little tokyo now has many visitors and a nightlife little tokyo has become safer !e little tokyo community has become much more diverse parking has become a major issue in little tokyo !ere are di"erent perspectives on the regional connector and how it will a"ect little tokyo !e participation of the youth has become a source of a lot of discussions in little tokyo key points 26 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 visions for the future in the collected interviews, there is a strong trend supporting small businesses for the future viability of little tokyo. almost all of the interviewees express a dislike of corporate-owned or chain businesses. one individual says that corporate-owned stores were “what killed small-town america” and another states that they “literally are taking people’s money and not giving back or contributing.” !e residents and community organizations we interviewed support smaller businesses as well, stating that they give little tokyo its character; one interviewee states that the businesses are the “heart of little tokyo.” in support of the businesses, several interviewees express a vision of little tokyo with more parking, with concerns about the disruption 27 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 visions for the future and loss of parking during the construction of the mta regional connector. one business owner says that “parking is already tough in little tokyo and a lot of spots will be lost with expansion by mta, so hopefully they will do something to create a sort of shuttle system.” !ree interviewees see arts and other cultural forms as integral to the community of little tokyo. not only do they feel that the arts draw in customers who then patronize businesses, but they also feel that developing little tokyo as an arts district would supply a resource currently lacking in los angeles. a community arts leader sees interconnections between the arts and the sustainability of the neighborhood, stating, “as an artist i would like to see more art forms . . . because art tends to bring forward-thinking people. . . . art [also] brings in a lot of money.” because of the japanese american national museum, the ge"en contemporary, east west players, historic first street, and the tuesday night cafe, little tokyo already has a strong arts foundation to build on in the future. another strong pattern in the collected interviews is a vision of little tokyo as a central haven for japanese americans. a religious leaders says that he “really see[s] the need for a central place where everyone can regard it as their home in little tokyo. . . . we are hoping that the younger generations will buy into that, otherwise the japanese american community will pretty much disappear with the blending into the general population.” almost all the interviewees emphasize the need to bring youth into the community and express their concerns about youth preserving the community of little tokyo as well as japanese heritage. !e desire for more youth participation is shared even by business owners, one of whom talked about bringing in activities such as a bowling alley to attract kids. one movement that is well supported by business, community organizations, and residents alike is the upcoming budokan or recreation center project. although there are some comments of resistance to the budokan, most of the interviewees think it is a great step forward to draw in youth. one business owner says in support of the budokan, “i know that 28 they are building an athletic center here. i think that will bring a lot of families here and a stronger sense of community.” !ere are also several calls by community organizations and residents for places for community members and guests to hang out and where people would feel safe and relaxed. !ere are also repeated calls for green spaces and gardens, as well as a better library. interviewees interested in continuing to improve the quality of life in little tokyo include both small business owners and those interested in a more residential little tokyo, who talk about encouraging families to move into the community. several interviewees, including business owners, emphasize the need to clean up little tokyo and to make it a more safe space for customers and for youth. one interviewee, who works in a social service agency, envisions little tokyo as a safe space for youth around downtown los angeles. she says that she sees little tokyo as “more of a community . . . not too much based on big businesses, . . . more of a safe place for the families, a safe place for youth.” however, this vision of residential little tokyo could raise challenges for the community because bringing in more amenities for residents, such as a grocery store, could create an in#ux of chain stores that goes against other visions of little tokyo. a small business owner’s vision of maintaining the character of the community entails making sure that little tokyo is known as an enjoyable, safe space that visitors would leave with “a smile.” !e interviewees also hope for better community integration and communication. several individuals voice a hope for better communication between the di"erent stakeholders of little tokyo. one community organization leader expresses concern about who is currently considered a stakeholder, stating that “!ere are various degrees of ownership” in little tokyo that are unsustainable in the future. !ese interviewees see organizations such as the non-pro$ts and the little tokyo community council as leading the way towards a more integrated and well-represented future. !ere is some ambivalence among the interviewees regarding how best to dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 visions for the future 29 preserve little tokyo’s japanese heritage. !e interviewees are evenly divided on the issue of maintaining little tokyo’s japanese character in the future versus creating a more multicultural community space. several of the community organizations and businesses feel very strongly that japanese heritage is the heart of little tokyo and that emphasizing this heritage would bring more attention both to the businesses and to the rich history of little tokyo. religious organizations especially feel that japanese americans need a central place they can feel at home and accepted. one religious leader illustrates this view, saying he sees little tokyo as “a central location for japanese americans to be able to identify with and . . . dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 visions for the future to access. even as it gets smaller, as long as the spirit is intact, i think at least for the next couple of generations it will be okay.” many feel that the history of little tokyo should be preserved, and especially community activities such as nisei week. o"ering another view, a good number of interviewees feel that “dilution” of little tokyo’s japanese heritage is inevitable. !ey propose a multicultural community that “can be for everybody”and emphasize the fact that little tokyo has always been a richly diverse community. one community organization leader says that she wants “to see little tokyo as more complex-as a very layered place, with a really rich history.” she continues, saying that “little tokyo should never be exclusive.” !e interviewees of this opinion propose a global city ideal; one interviewee references the seattle model, and another envisions a little tokyo united with skid row and boyle heights. a religious leader also references a successful initiative where korean and japanese senior citizens breached cultural barriers by watching soap operas 30 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 visions for the future together as a move in this direction. !is religious leader speaks positively about the more diverse people who come to services at his institution. still, the interviewees who support multiculturalism also want to maintain little tokyo’s history and heritage. a quotation from a community organization leader best sums up this vision: “diversity is good. it’s trying to make that balance between who’s coming into little tokyo and who’s keeping up the history of little tokyo.” support small businesses as the heart of the community support arts in the community cultivate residential areas need for community space continue to create little tokyo as a safe space increase communication within the community japanese culture / multiculturalism key points 31 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 analysis and conclusions !e interviewees’ voices that speak to the themes above clearly show the rich texture of life in little tokyo. from what we have observed over the course of this project, little tokyo is currently at a tipping point in which the future of the community is in danger of being determined by sources outside of the community. from the varied perspectives of interviewees from di"erent positions in the community, we see how the perception of past and future changes and their varying e"ects will impact opinions on how to help direct the future of little tokyo. many residents and business owners of little tokyo have reacted to the prospect of change with a sense of positivity and hope for the future, indicating a positive dynamic toward change and the incredible agency that community members have in little tokyo because of its strong leaders and history of community organizing. !ere are many enthusiastic voices seeking to improve the community and to participate person32 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 analysis and conclusions ally in that change. however, there are also many pressures to retain the community dynamics and landmarks that little tokyo has treasured historically. balancing this respect for a historical space with the acceptance of change is di&cult-even more so when little tokyo’s vast array of stakeholders, unique history, distinct multicultural background, and precedent of community involvement pull the conceptions of what a future little tokyo should be like in di"erent directions. !e changes that little tokyo has been experiencing are already a"ecting the community dynamic. !ere are important di"erences in the ways business owners, community leaders, and residential members of the community view the purpose of little tokyo and how to help it grow. !is is in part because little tokyo is such a diverse area that serves many di"erent purposes. although the concept of multiculturalism has been presented as a building block of the community, it poses its own problems because the more backgrounds that are in need of representation in the community, the more di&cult it is to $nd solutions for problems that everyone can agree on. !ese di"erences are more prevalent lately due to the approaching mta project. !e community is at a tipping point: the mta regional connector exposes how fragile a community like little tokyo can be when faced with the threat of large corporations, public projects, and real estate developments. !is threat has opened an opportunity for the community to work together, but doing so can be di&cult because of the broad and varied impact the community has on di"erent members. some community members say there is an increase in communication between business, residents, and community leaders, in particular through the little tokyo community council, while others say there is not enough communication. either way, little tokyo is at a crossroads and continuing work is necessary to ensure its preservation. !ere is a tone of optimism in most of the interviews as people see the reduction in crime, the increase in business, and the in#ux 33 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 analysis and conclusions of youth culture as examples of the positive direction the community is going. !is optimism may be coming from the hope that the community will be stronger as it faces changes together. community members may remember the successes they have had in the past, with their responses to the proposed jail in the community and to the o&ce depot project. !ese provide hope for both surviving and thriving amidst new changes. community members come from such di"erent backgrounds that perceptions of the community can sometimes be very di"erent. some see little tokyo as a great triumph of community organizing and a crucible for bringing community members together, while others see it as just a place of business. some view the community as divided, but this could simply point to a larger trend of community members wanting more direct communication. !ere are also many anecdotes of good communication currently, especially through associations, community groups, and business organizations. !ere are notable di"erences in opinion about various issues between businesses and community organizers, di"erent generations, and residents versus business owners. !rough all of the di"erences in opinion, though, every interviewee celebrates some unique positive dimension of little tokyo: a piece of the community that they value, whether other little tokyo participants agree with them or not. awareness of past changes can have a major impact on how little tokyo will change in the future, especially since community organizing has been a major impetus in the past. many actions in the past, especially in the sphere of community organizing, are being mirrored currently in the attempts to band together and remain an important part of future decision-making, even while some members hope for greater communication. !e past also has an impact on the perceptions of important physical spaces in the community, as places that have been important to little tokyo historically are considered more essential to the community. !e responses to the mta regional connector by interviewees and the com34 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 analysis and conclusions munity at large can help to characterize the nature of the community’s reaction to an uncertain future. little tokyo’s community response is distinctive in its positivity and its history of e"ective change. for example, the exhaustive history of the little tokyo redevelopment project o"ers a multitude of examples of e"ective community organizing, change, and collaboration, sometimes in opposition to the city of los angeles’s larger plans. newer developments, including the nearby o&ce depot raise additional questions about the importance of a historical urban landscape and the future of what businesses will be considered positive contributions to the space. finally, many interviewees complicate the nature of little tokyo’s unity. many are of the opinion that in order to have a strong community, there needs to be unity. one community member states, “it’s not just the organizations, it’s not just the buildings, it’s the people that are involved in all the organizations and spaces.” one concern is that while the community is coming together now around the mta regional connector and collaborating on other community concerns such as crime, they do not necessarily come together independently for positive bonding actions. in other 35 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 analysis and conclusions words, the community comes together in order to address problems to be $xed. perhaps little tokyo is just the most visible in the public eye as it responds to forces that may threaten its viability. a community “coming together” can mean many di"erent things: it can mean mutual support for businesses, regular public meetings, or other ways to continue to develop the community. !e budokan project clearly raises community hopes for continuing to come together in a positive way to continue the social bonds and resources of little tokyo. overall, little tokyo has community energy in abundance and an overall positive reaction in the face of uncertainty. !is energy has fueled conversations and compromise in the past, and can continue to in the future. on a broad community level, it treasures such traits as multiculturalism, preservation of history, youth involvement, openness to visitors, positivity, diversity, and community symbiosis. it o"ers an inspiring example of a growing and changing community held together by community members and basic principles. !e phrase “welcome to little tokyo. please remove your shoes” embodies a collective attitude of respect for little tokyo’s history and prospective future and a celebration of japanese culture while welcoming all people from di"erent backgrounds and walks of life. little tokyo is at a tipping point external factors internal dynamics history and multiculturalism community response to the mta’s regional connector can help to shape the future response to changes are distinctive, optimistic, and draw on a history of e"ective change community energy and positive reaction in the face of uncertainty key points 36 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 appendix: sample interview questions background what is your name? where do you work and what do you do? history community organizations: what does your organization do? what is your organizational mission? how did your organization come to be in little tokyo? why is it here? how long has it been here? did you grow up in the area? if yes, what kinds of changes have you seen? what do you know about little tokyo’s history? if your family was interned, do you know anything about your family’s experience returning from internment? how did you learn the history of little tokyo? what kinds of di"erent stories have you heard about little tokyo’s history? what part of your personal history or your organization’s history in little tokyo would you want to preserve and pass on? business: why did you choose little tokyo for your business? how long has your business been here? what type of business prospects did you see in little tokyo? why have you kept your business here? did you grow up in the area? if yes, what kinds of changes have you seen? what do you know about little tokyo’s history? do you or your business have any connection to that history? if the business was here before internment, do you know anything about the experience of returning from internment? how did you learn the history of little tokyo? what kinds of di"erent stories have you heard about little tokyo’s history? what part of your personal history or your business’s history in little tokyo would you want to preserve and pass on? residents: how did you choose to live in little tokyo? how long have you lived here? did you grow up in the area? if yes, what kinds of changes have you seen? what do you know about little tokyo’s history? if your family was interned, do you know anything about your 37 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 appendix: sample interview questions family’s experience returning from internment? how did you learn the history of little tokyo? what kinds of di"erent stories have you heard about little tokyo’s history? what part of your personal history in little tokyo would you want to preserve and teach the outside world of la? working / living in little tokyo community organizations can you take me along a typical day working in little tokyo? (where do you go, where do you know people, what places do you visit?) what relationships do you have in little tokyo with other organizations or businesses? (both formal and informal) whom does your organization serve? what makes little tokyo special or meaningful for the work you do? for you? what makes little tokyo a positive place for your work? are there any particular challenges to your organization’s work here? who do you think are the biggest stakeholders for the community? has the gold line station a"ected your organization? if yes, in what ways? what is the heart of little tokyo? (business, cultural, geographical) businesses: can you take me along a typical day working in little tokyo? (where do you go, where do you know people, what places do you visit?) whar relationships do you have in little tokyo with other businesses or organizations? (both formal and informal) who is your clientele? what makes little tokyo special or meaningful for business? for you? what makes little tokyo a positive place for your business? are there any particular challenges to having a business here? who do you think are the biggest stakeholders for the community? has the gold line station a"ected your business? if yes, in what ways? what is the heart of little tokyo? (business, cultural, geographical) residents: can you take me along a typical day living in little tokyo? (where do you go, where do you know people, what places do you visit?) 38 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 appendix: sample interview questions do you belong to any organizations in the community? what makes living in little tokyo special or meaningful? are there any particular challenges to living here? how do you see little tokyo in relationship to larger communities? who do you think are the biggest stakeholders in the community? do you commute out of little tokyo? do you use the gold line? what is the heart of little tokyo? (business, cultural, geographical) participation in the life of the community business and organizations: what are some ways that you and your business/organization participate in the community? why do you do so? (do you feel responsibility to contribute?) does your business or organization sponsor any events in the community? if yes, which? would you consider yourself an active member in the community? what do you hope to accomplish through your participation? what do you think of community participation by others? are you a member of the lt business association? !e lt community council? do you see any bene$ts to the community from these? if you’re not a member, any particular reasons? are there speci$c businesses or organizations you think would be good contributors if they were to become members? residents: what are some ways that you participate in the community? (do you attend events or classes here?) why do you do so? do you belong to any organizations here? would you consider yourself an active member in the community? what do you hope to accomplish through your participation? what do you think of community participation by others? !e little tokyo community council? do you see any bene$ts to the community from these? if you’re not a member, any particular reasons? are there speci$c businesses or organizations you think would be good contributors if they were to become members? to what extent do shops in little tokyo meet your needs? do you shop here or elsewhere for what you need? are you able to $nd services you need here? changes in the community (last 5-10 years) 39 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 appendix: sample interview questions businesses/organizations have you noticed any changes that a"ect the community in little tokyo over the last 5-10 years? if yes, what kinds of changes? (physical, other) how do you feel about the changes, both personally and for your business/organization? how have changes stimulated or raised challenges for your business/organization? have you heard about the mta’s regional connector? what do you know about it? what changes might this create for the community? what are your thoughts about those possible changes? do you see any major generational di"erences regarding what little tokyo is about? what changes would you like to see? residents: have you noticed any changes that a"ect the community in little tokyo over the last 5-10 years? if yes, what kinds of changes? (physical, other) how do you feel about the changes? how have changes a"ected you personally? have you heard about the mta’s regional connector? what do you know about it? what changes might this create for the community? what are your thoughts about those possible changes? do you see any major generational di"erences regarding what little tokyo is about? what changes would you like to see? vision for the future businesses/organizations: in 10 years, what is your vision for the ideal little tokyo? how would it be the same or di"erent from how the community is today? how does your business/organization $t in with that vision? how is your vision of little tokyo connected to los angeles more broadly? what role do you see for other types of businesses, organizations, residences? do you see a role for chain stores and restaurants, corporate-owned ones? what is the role of the community’s history in your vision of the future? do you feel you have input into the future of little tokyo? if yes, in what ways? if no, why not? do you think little tokyo is headed in the direction of your vision or your business’s/organization’s? is your business/organization doing anything to create changes in the community toward this vision? residents: in 10 years, what is your vision for the ideal little tokyo? how would it be the same or di"erent from how the community is today? 40 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 appendix: sample interview questions how is your vision of little tokyo connected to los angeles more broadly? what role do you see for di"erent types of businesses, organizations, residences? do you see a role for chain stores and restaurants, corporate-owned ones? what is the role of the community’s history in your vision of the future? do you feel you have input into the future of little tokyo? if yes, in what ways? if no, why not? 41 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 interviewers and report co-authors maggie caneng michael chesler, layout designer brendan donahue kenji hammon kelsey hill dani lyons leah trujillo, photographer jordan rich education in action project assistant: kaitlin toyama professor donna maeda 42 dept. of critical !eory & social justice · occidental college · (323) 259-2856 acknowledgements !is project would not have been possible without the vision, work, and support of the following: evelyn yoshimura, community organizing director, little tokyo service center celestina castillo, assistant director, center for community-based learning, occidental college kaitlin toyama, education in action project assistant, center for communitybased learning, occidental college we especially want to thank all of the interviewees who so generously shared their time and thoughts with us. 43 1 little tokyo and the multilayered meaning of community kaitlin toyama occidental college “critical praxis: voice, memory, and community transformation”--a community-based learning course offered through the critical theory and social justice department at occidental college in collaboration with the school’s center for community-based learning--was created for students to explore questions of “voice”; dynamics of race, gender, and class; the multiple perspectives that shape the meaning of community; and the significance of preserving community space at times of great change. for the spring 2012 semester, the class examined these topics in the context of little tokyo in los angeles and worked in partnership with the little tokyo service center (ltsc) and their community organizing director, evelyn yoshimura. the final product of this partnership is the report entitled, “little tokyo: history, memory, and community change,” which compiles findings from sixteen interviews that the students conducted with a variety of little tokyo community stakeholders. the role i played in this class was as the education in action (eia) facilitator1 and as a bridge between the class and the community as a 4th generation japanese-american and los angeles transplant, who through the course of an undergraduate career, had found home in little tokyo. the following reflection is based on my experience in both of these roles--as a participant observer analyzing the students’ interactions before and during their time with little tokyo, and as a community member examining my own transformation through my relationship with the community and my experience working with the class. the first section of this paper, “the community and the class,” focuses on the former perspective and explores the ideas of creating community in the classroom and preparing the class to encounter the community. next, “the community and the individual” is my self-reflection on what little tokyo has taught me about belonging to a community. these two sections together explore how the meaning of community is reflected in three different types of relationships: between members within a community, between a community and non-community members, and between an individual and a collective. the first two of these relationships are considered through the context of the students’ experiences in the subsections entitled “creating community within the classroom” and “preparing the class to encounter the community,” respectively, and the third relationship is explored in the final section in my self-reflection. each relationship offers a different perspective on the meaning of community and together the themes that emerge are the importance of place, respect, unity, responsibility, and above all, love. 1 the education in action (eia) program is run through the occidental college center for community-based learning (ccbl). the mission of eia is to challenge and encourage students to become engaged, active participants in class, and to recognize they have a voice in their education. eia focuses on creating a means for students to serve as facilitators in classes from a range of disciplines. rather than working as a supplement to the professor academically, these student facilitators work with the professor and class to coordinate a community-based project, which is developed in coordination with occidental college students, faculty, ccbl, and nearby community institutions. 2 the community and the class: an exercise in empathy we started the semester talking about the importance of place – the ways in which places reflect personal histories, the ways in which people shape the places around them, and the ways in which places shape people. this topic was introduced early on through an exercise i led called the “history of place workshop.” in this, students pushed their desks to the classroom walls and imagined the room as a map of the americas and later as a map of the world. next, students went to the location where they were born and discussed their connection to that place with someone nearby. for instance, students talked about the hospital where they were born and what brought their parents to that specific city. we continued with the places where people grew up, where they found their “home-away-from-home,” and where their ancestry was traced back. creating community within the classroom this exercise had two main purposes. the first was for this activity to be a group icebreaker that went beyond name memorization and aimed to establish a safe environment where students would feel comfortable engaging with the group. by asking students to share a piece of their personal history, this activity helped each class participant begin to know their peers as complex individuals whose distinct identities have been shaped by the environments they have belonged to. our class was a very unique mix of students. though only eight strong it varied by region, grade, major, ethnic background, gender, extracurricular interests, and level of experience doing community-based work. with students coming from such different walks of life, it was important to develop a safe space that was conducive to collaboration and where everyone felt like they belonged and were respected. actively working to create this type of community environment within the classroom was also significant because it gave the students another way to learn about the meaning of community–by belonging to one themselves. by creating a sense of community between the students, the class experienced firsthand how the principles of respect, compromise, and cooperation are critical to the prosperity of a collective. in the context of the class, deliberately working to create such an environment and a productive classroom community lent itself to the success of the final report when the class faced challenges similar to those dealt with by the little tokyo community. the little tokyo community is small, yet deeply complex. it is multi-ethnic and multigenerational, and is comprised of a variety of stakeholders including businesses, community organizations, and residents who do not always agree on the matters that affect them all. the students encountered this variety of perspectives when they went on their individual interviews and as a result, when we came together to discuss findings on a particular topic we saw that the divides that exist within the little tokyo community were present amongst ourselves. each student felt the responsibility to ensure that their interview subject’s perspective was adequately represented in the final report, and at the same time each student also understood a different reality and opinion based on who they had interviewed. while these views often clashed with one another, the final report is very much a testimony to the community’s ability to come together with the understanding that a united voice is a stronger force than any single individual’s. in a similar way, the students were able to reconcile the different opinions they had heard and bring them together in the report as one, comprehensive voice. for the classroom community to see that the complexity created by differing perspectives is itself a characteristic that defines little tokyo was an important lesson in unity, and in the end, it gave the students a glimpse into the type of obstacles faced by all communities. 3 preparing the class to encounter the community a second objective of the “history of place workshop” was to prompt the students to recognize their own connection to physical spaces, so that they would be empathetic to that bond when held by others. in the case of little tokyo, it was especially important for students to consider how place is tied to identity. little tokyo is the historical, cultural, and spiritual home of the japanese and japanese-american people of southern california. as little tokyo is faced with the threats of gentrification, corporate takeover, and city encroachment, there is steadfast pushback aimed to maintain its integrity, so that despite any inevitable physical transformation, its history and significance are never lost. reflecting on their personal connection to place was a way for the students to develop empathy for the little tokyo community’s struggle to preserve its home. throughout the semester, students engaged in other reflection assignments where they contemplated their engagement with the class and the community. in their written reflections, the students overwhelmingly expressed feelings of responsibility – a responsibility to ltsc to put in a sincere effort while working on the final report and a responsibility to their interview subjects to report their opinions without bias. constantly encouraging reflection through classroom activities, discussion, and written assignments was critical in both preparing the class to encounter the community as well as guiding them to better understand the relationship they were building with little tokyo as non-community members. from the beginning of the semester until the final edits of the report, there was great concern over what the relationship between the class and the community would look like. students strongly expressed how they did not want to be a group of outsiders coming into little tokyo and critiquing the views and operations of the people there. it was encouraging to hear these concerns come from the students themselves because it demonstrated their awareness of the dynamic between themselves and the community. it indicated their understanding that their frames of reference, methods of interpreting experiences, and socioeconomic and historical background were not the same as those held in little tokyo, and as a result, they had to continuously check themselves to make sure that they did not impose their own worldview onto little tokyo. these exercises in reflection allowed the students to mull over their new connection to little tokyo and discover that the relationship that a community holds with non-community members is something that requires the responsibility of sincerity, respect, and self-awareness. these multiple efforts to use self-reflection to understand the relationship between a community and non-community members led the students to understand it through a lens of empathy and an acceptance of responsibility. this type of transformative learning is consistent with the pedagogy surrounding community-based education that asserts the critical inclusion of exercises in self-reflection. in his article “how critical reflection triggers transformative learning,” jack mezirow writes that “[t]o make ‘meaning’ means to make sense of an experience, we make an interpretation of it.” he continues, “[w]hat we perceive and fail to perceive, and what we think and fail to think are powerfully influenced by . . . our frame of reference, that is, a set of assumptions that structure the way we interpret our experiences” (1990). in this argument, mezirow is stating that the ways individuals interpret experiences are directly related to their realities, or frames of reference. in order to understand different perspectives it is necessary to deconstruct personal worldviews, and the way to do this is to engage in critical self-reflection. mezirow defines this as “reassessing our own orientation to perceiving, knowing, believing, feeling and acting.” in the context of community and servicebased learning, other scholars similarly maintain that “[a]s students reflect on their experiences 4 in various community settings, they need to struggle to make sense of their experiences when what they see and hear does not fit in with their existing worldview. this necessary adjustment may prompt them to a new visioning of reality” (zlotkowski and duffy 2010, 33-43). in our classroom, self-reflection was used as a pedagogical tool aimed at getting students to contemplate their relationship with the little tokyo community. the “history of place” workshop did this by focusing on reflection for the development of empathy, and later on with other forms of reflection, the focus was on pushing the students to think about their personal relationship with little tokyo and what that meant for how non-community members must encounter and work with a community. while we were not aiming for self-reflection to provoke any major worldview paradigm shift, we hoped that doing an exercise where students could contemplate their personal experiences would help them make the connection between their realities and the realities of others. deconstructing a personal relationship would help students empathize with that same relationship when it is held by others, and reflecting on changed perspectives throughout the course of the semester would be a way to learn through experience. one final way that we worked to prepare the class to encounter the community was by establishing a close relationship to our community partner that made clear the more literal responsibilities and role our class would have in little tokyo. during the project, community members relayed some reservation about being written up in a report because they did not want to feel as though they were being studied like animals in a lab. thus, it was imperative that the relationship between the class and ltsc was built on respect, solidarity, and mutual benefits. the community-based project was developed by ltsc as a part of a larger initiative of asset mapping that documented the businesses, community organizations, and other resources that currently exist in little tokyo in light of the major development that will be happening in the coming years. ltsc did not have the capacity to include the voice of its human asset, the community, into this larger project, and so the research that the class conducted contributed directly to the work of ltsc. thus, while the relationship between the students and the community carried many concerns from both parties, it also carried mutual benefits. ltsc would have this report to use to inform their own decisions about the future, and the students would gain valuable insight about the inner workings of a community. the steps that were taken to prepare the class to encounter the community were necessary to ensure that the relationship between the students and little tokyo was one based on respect, empathy, and responsibility. there is a saying that community organizers like to use when introducing little tokyo: “welcome to little tokyo, please take off your shoes.” what this phrase means, besides alluding to the asian and japanese custom of removing ones’ shoes before stepping into a home, is that little tokyo welcomes new faces and friends, but those who come into the community must respect what is already here. do not walk over and desecrate our home after we have welcomed you in. in this sense, the steps we took to prepare the students to encounter and understand their relationship to little tokyo not only made the class aware that they need to “take off their shoes” in little tokyo, but it also taught them why they must do so. the community and the individual: finding my way back home i was introduced to little tokyo the place at an early age. from the many short visits i took with my grandmother and other relatives living in los angeles, i came to know little tokyo through its restaurants, the japanese american national museum, and the east west players theater. along the way i also developed awareness of little tokyo as a place where the preceding generations of my family had been before. as i would walk along first street and pass 5 the restaurant where my father used to go during high school, the café where my grandmother would eat lunch after visiting the museum, the bronze statue that an uncle helped to carve, and the theater where another uncle debuted the first play he wrote, little tokyo became a place that held memories, and i felt comforted walking around the streets that my family has known. i was introduced to little tokyo the community much later as a college student. when i moved down south to begin my undergraduate education, little tokyo was one of the few places that i thought i knew in los angeles. however, my understanding of little tokyo was limited to the place created by my personal history, and i was not cognizant of anything beyond that. it was not until i participated in a japanese-american collegiate program during my second year in college when i began to learn about little tokyo and the people who have worked to create it for the past 150 years. those first meetings held at the japanese american cultural and community center marked the beginning of a path along which i connected with those who have organized in little tokyo for the last few years and the last few decades; learned about the radical history of the community; and saw that many of the same beliefs, hopes, fears, and passions that i hold resonate and reverberate throughout little tokyo. i found that this was a space where i have always belonged because generations of dynamic community members have worked to make it a place represented by the ideals of unity, equity, social justice, and service to others. little tokyo is home not only to my family’s past but also to my beliefs. hillary clinton wrote that “it takes a village to raise a child,” and i believe that it took a community to raise me as a student. belonging to the little tokyo community led me to develop my identity as a 4th generation japanese-american – a yonsei and a nikkei – and it gave purpose to that sense of belonging as it also taught me about collective good and about contributing to something greater than myself. as i feel like i am part of something bigger in little tokyo, i also see that the little tokyo community belongs to a greater progressive movement aimed at empowering marginalized communities to make the city a more equitable place for all. through the few years i have spent being active in the japanese-american and asian/pacific islander community, i have seen an inherent yet actively cultivated connection between the regions’ other distinct ethnic communities. this connection is based on a common commitment to justice and manifests in multicultural programming, political demonstrations, and statements of solidarity. this connection gives people strength, and seeing my community take part in such powerful acts of unity taught me what it means to be an individual operating within a collective. communities and collectives and movements are vehicles for individuals to pursue justice. one of the most illuminating descriptions of justice that i have read was written by a young martin luther king, jr., who wrote that “[j]ustice is never discontinuously related to love. justice is a negative application of love. . . . justice is a check (by force if necessary) upon ambitions of individuals seeking to overcome their own insecurity at the expense of others. justice is love’s message for the collective mind” (branch 1998, 86). these thoughts deeply resonate with me as i reflect upon what the little tokyo community has taught me about justice. individuals belonging to a larger community and communities belonging to a larger social justice movement are representations of love for something greater than the self. justice cannot be sought by the oppressed alone, and having the love to belong to a community means that your heart has the capacity to care about others. this sense of compassion, empathy, and love that comes from belonging to a community is fundamental in the pursuit of justice. in one of the readings assigned to the class, “the paradox of dispersal: ethnic continuity & community development among japanese americans in little tokyo,” authors toji and umemoto argue that the extent to which a community can be a space that allows people to connect and participate in a wide range of ways is indicative of the community’s strength (2003, 6 21-45). being an eia facilitator allowed me to experience the truth in toji and umemoto’s assertion as this experience gave me a new role to play in the community and a new perspective on my relationship to little tokyo. little tokyo was fundamental in helping me get through my undergraduate education with wisdom and a commitment to justice. little tokyo was my home, my safe space. little tokyo gave me strength, and inseparable from that strength will always be responsibility – a duty to make sure that little tokyo’s history will be remembered, that its community members will always have a cultural home to come back to, and that future generations will be able to walk the same streets and feel the same sense of support that i have. my experience as an eia facilitator gave me the opportunity to connect and participate in the community using my identity as a student. it was a way to bring my education home by taking the skills that i had internalized – research skills, critical analysis, and essay writing – and channeling them into a project that would support the work that others are doing to serve little tokyo. as i have already described, little tokyo is a community and a place that in many ways is defined by its diversity. the range of stakeholders, opinions, and visions present within the community can easily lead to debilitating divides, however what has arisen instead is a sense of unity and strength. this is because little tokyo is a place where a white student from the east coast and a japanese-american student with roots already growing in little tokyo can establish relationships to the community, can see those relationships bloom into a sense of responsibility to the community, and can use their backgrounds and identities to carry out that responsibility. in this way, toji and umemoto have illuminated the essence of little tokyo’s strength – the ability to develop responsibility and the avenue to fulfill it. as it seems, the relationships that exist between members of the community, between community and non-community members, and between individuals and the collective are not only what define little tokyo, but they also weave together to make little tokyo strong. conclusion through this class, the multilayered meaning of community was able to emerge and that is demonstrated through the different relationships that were cultivated over the semester – between outsiders and a community, between different community members, and between individuals and the collective. the relationship between the class and little tokyo demonstrates how communities must be treated with integrity and respect, and how those principles must be actively sought through different forms of preparation. the relationship between members of a community demonstrates the complexity of collaboration yet shows that the ability for disagreeing parts to come together in unity is what makes communities strong; it is necessary for their survival. finally, my personal relationship with the collective shows that the essence of participating in a community is that of responsibility, love, and ultimately justice. what i take away from this experience is twofold. first, observing class interactions and reflecting on my own relationship with little tokyo taught me that the meaning of community is multilayered. community is the product of the different yet interwoven relationships that surround it, and this makes communities complex, dynamic, and strong. second, this experience was not only about learning the meaning of community. it was also about learning from the community – little tokyo taught me about justice. belonging to the little tokyo community showed me what it looks like to work in solidarity with other communities in a movement fighting for ideals – equity, agency, opportunity – that affect all 7 people. having love for a collective greater than the self is fundamental to communities and it is fundamental to justice. in closing, this community-based learning experience was tremendously significant to me as it symbolized the culmination of my time as an undergraduate within the little tokyo community by connecting my academic world with my little tokyo world. in comparison to other community-based learning classes that i have taken, this was by far the most meaningful because instead of operating from the outside – applying class material to events surrounding a community – the class built relationships that allowed them learn from little tokyo in a way that was truly genuine. community-based learning for us was not about choosing a particular group of people or a place to help us understand a topic, but it was about how to learn through relationships and experience. instead of simply learning about the various issues surrounding a certain people and leaving that knowledge in the classroom, we worked to assist the work of the community and in turn, we were all profoundly changed by it. references branch, taylor. 1998. parting the waters: america in the king years, 1954-63. new york, ny: simon and schuster. mezirow, jack. 1990. “how critical reflection triggers transformative learning.” in fostering critical reflection in adulthood, edited by jack mezirow and associates, 1-20. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. toji, dean, and karen umemoto. 2003. “the paradox of dispersal: ethnic continuity & community development among japanese americans in little tokyo.” aapi nexus 1 (1): 21-45. zlotkowski, edward, and donna duffy. 2010. “two decades of community-based learning.” new directions for teaching and learning (123): 33-43. little tokyo research little tokyo reflection little tokyo and the multilayered meaning of community the community and the class: an exercise in empathy creating community within the classroom preparing the class to encounter the community the community and the individual: finding my way back home conclusion references bleakley final before ts correspondence address: paul bleakley, school of law, middlesex university, london, uk, nw4 4bt; email: pj.bleakley@gmail.com issn: 1911-4788 volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 unconventional labour: environmental justice and working-class ecology in the new south wales green bans paul bleakley middlesex university, uk abstract the new south wales union movement embraced the principles of heritage and conservationism in the 1970s through the imposing of “green bans” – a strategy wherein union members refused to work on construction projects that were a threat to the state’s natural or built environment. led by radicals like builders labourers’ federation leader jack mundey, the green bans were seen in several sectors as a departure from the traditional “old left” priorities of securing workers’ wages and conditions. rather than a hard shift towards radicalism, this article proposes that the green bans were instead reflective of an already existing conservationist tradition in the new south wales union movement. this reinterpretation is predicated on a content analysis of extant historical material such as contemporaneous news articles, personal memoirs, transcripts of political speeches and archival documents related to the policing of left-wing activism in the 1960s and 1970s. the results show that an existing tradition of engagement with a broad spectrum of social issues in the new south wales union movement predates the emergence of the new left, including the commitment to environmental justice principles that underpinned the green bans. keywords working-class ecology; environmental justice; trade union; green ban; gentrification; new left; australia introduction the late 1960s and early 1970s were a transformative time in australian politics, as they were around the world. the predominantly conservative social values of the post-war era began to give way to a new model for political engagement, predicated on more existential concepts related to antiimperialism and new social movements instead of the established binaries of marxism and bourgeois capitalism. while responsible for energising a new generation of social activists, this shift in the ideological landscape caused a unconventional labour studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 459 profound schism in the australian left. on one end of this divide was the old left, made up largely of trade unions which remained acutely focused on the conventional socialist mission to improve conditions for workers. on the other was the new left, a broader church of leftist activists campaigning on a diverse cross-section of areas from environmental conservation to civil rights for all (hamilton, 2016; marcuse, 2014). the green bans reflect a moment of convergence in which the old and new left in new south wales found common ground in their activist agendas. an action popularised by the builders labourers’ federation (blf) under communist party leaders bob pringle and jack mundey, the green bans were a policy in which trade unions like the blf could order its members to stop work on building projects that threatened the natural environment or, importantly, the historical built environment in areas of sydney like the rocks and hunters hill (burgmann & burgmann, 1998). the willingness to go on strike in protest of such issues seemingly signalled a shift to the new left from the trade unions that, historically, had focused more on matters of wages and conditions than social justice issues like heritage and conservation. while the departure from an exclusive focus on traditional labour issues seemed like a divisive point for the old and new left, this article shows that in new south wales the green bans were in keeping with a tendency towards radicalism that long existed in the city’s leftist community – long predating the emergence of the new left on the global stage (see lockwood, 1982; wreckers again, 1957). as this article outlines, the new left was less a “new” concept than a continuation of a proud tradition of activism that extended beyond traditional union-led campaigning, and focused more on galvanising the strength of the trade unions in support of various ancillary social justice concerns. this article describes how, in new south wales, a broader social justice agenda (notably environmental justice and conservation) was driven by proponents of social justice causes working from within old left organisations such as the trade unions and the local communist party (barca, 2014; coombes, 1996; soja, 2010). this article sets out to problematise the traditional conflation of the trade union movement with an old left that is only concerned with labour rights, to the exclusion of other, intersectional social justice issues (barca, 2014; stevis et al., 2018). the green bans have often been explained as a product of new left influence on the unions (including in hagiographic work by those at the forefront of the movement) (see burgmann, 2000, 2008). however, historical evidence suggests a different reality: new south wales unions were already steeped in a radical tradition of social justice campaigning. the reframing of activism in the new south wales old left is informed by a range of existing material outlining its campaign strategy, before and during the green bans era. the case for the new south wales unions being as concerned with wider social justice issues before the new left’s arrival as after is informed here by a content analysis of source material such as paul bleakley studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 460 contemporaneous news accounts, political speeches and materials, personal memoirs of those involved in the leftist movement and, in some cases, archival documentation related to the policing of the unions and other leftist groups during the period in question. eric monkkonen (2002) describes the study of such source material as inherently “opaque” and subject to the innumerable variables associated with the context in which it was produced (p. 45). as such, the historical material used in this article has been periodised and contextualised using what theda skocpol (1984) notably characterises as “sociology’s historical imagination” – an interpretive process that seeks to examine social phenomena in the sociocultural environment in which it occurred, rather than undertaking an evaluation that is effectively anachronistic. paradoxically, it is this historical analysis that offers the greatest opportunity for contemporary social justice campaigners to draw on the lessons of the green bans by providing a context-sensitive assessment of the tradition of social (and environmental) justice activism that predates the arrival of the new left. i do this by first turning to the existing literature on the new south wales green bans, then moving into a broader discussion of the intersection between trade unionism and political activism in australia. from here, i adopt a historical perspective to show that social justice (including environmental justice) was firmly on the unions’ agenda prior to the arrival of the new left in the mid-to-late 1960s. further, i examine the new left’s arrival as connected to the existing tradition of social justice campaigning in new south wales, embodied in the prominent green bans movement that took centre stage in the early 1970s. green bans in new south wales that the 1970s new south wales union movement participated in green bans was a significant moment for australian left-wing activism and, as such, prompted extensive analysis in the years that followed. consequently, there is a diversity of academic and popular literature on the subject that documents this period. most of this material, however, is concerned more with recounting the narrative of activism in the green bans era than explaining its emergence in the context of the old/new left divisions in the australian left, or as an extension of existing patterns of social justice campaigning in new south wales. it is this gap that my analysis addresses. my intention is not to revisit the details of the green bans, which are already well understood, but rather to take a wider perspective on the campaign and position it in its appropriate historical context. in doing so, the paper reframes our understanding of the extent to which the new left influenced the conservation campaign carried out by the trade unions, and also emphasises potential opportunities for collaboration with trade unions on environmental justice issues (burgmann, 2000; sparrow, 2004). even so, the existing unconventional labour studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 461 literature on the campaign (and the period around it) provides useful information essential to constructing a more complete appreciation of the events in question. perhaps the most comprehensive coverage of this era comes from meredith and verity burgmann in green bans, red union: environmental activism and the new south wales builders labourers’ federation (1998). with unprecedented access to the blf archives, burgmann and burgmann were able to construct the most comprehensive account of the green bans to date. their research suggests that, “the interaction between new left ideology and nswblf practice was, in the context of sydney in the early 1970s, a twoway process since the sydney new left was affected by its experience with the union” (burgmann & burgmann, 1998, p. 126). as the book explains, this two-way process operated such that sydney’s new left demonstrated to organisations like the blf that its belief in egalitarianism coexisted soundly with union values, whereas the trade unions showed far-left comrades how their resources and experience with collective action could assist the new left in conducting effective protest campaigns. the burgmanns’ position on the influential role played by the blf in incorporating shared new left values is further discussed in james colman’s biography of blf leader jack mundey (2016). in an endnote, meredith burgmann writes that, “to those of us involved in resident action groups and blf support groups at the time, jack [mundey] and the other blf leaders inspired in us a sense of hope, an absolute belief that we could change the world … or at least our community” (2016, p. 300). burgmann goes on to note that, “the rise of the new left and the de-stalinisation of the australian communist party” in the green bans era was responsible for liberating the left-wing activist community in sydney and, ultimately, changed the nature of union activism in australia (burgmann in colman, 2016, p. 300-301). in this respect, the green bans reflected a leftist movement that was once again free to acknowledge that environmentalism and conservation had always been central to marxism (soja, 2010; stevis et al., 2018). indeed, friedrich engels himself wrote as early as 1876 that, “after the mighty advances … in the present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise, and hence to control, also the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-today production activities” (engels, 1951, p. 83). jeff sparrow supports engels’ view on workers’ potential to address issues beyond the traditional paradigm of economic conflict, asserting that “the most important aspect of a class analysis is identifying the working-class as not simply a victim of environmental problems but a force capable of overcoming them” (2004, p. 5). this realisation of labour’s ability to influence issues usually reserved for the new left is highly apparent in the green bans, which kay anderson and jane jacobs (1999) construct as “the birth of modern environmental politics in australia” and note “have been canonised as examples of class-based urban social movements” (p. 1018). as paul bleakley studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 462 they rightly point out, the green bans are an interesting focus for analysis of how left-wing activism evolved in australia in this period, a profound moment when “the uniquely australian ‘larrikin left’ flexed its political muscle in nonworkplace arenas” (anderson & jacobs, 1999, p. 1018). trade unionism, politics and activism: an australian context the trade union movement in australia has been the subject of much commentary in the socio-political movements literature. in their study of the country’s unions, mark bray and jacques rouillard categorise the australian trade union movement as “autonomous … unlike the vast majority of union movements around the world, autonomous unions [like those in australia] are dominated by neither the state nor political parties” (1996, p. 198). stephen deery and helen de cieri identify a range of variables influencing union membership in australia, including gender, industry, family history and the mobility of the workforce (1991, pp. 60-61). notably for this study, their research found that, “employees who favoured the redistribution of income and wealth in society had a significantly higher probability of union membership” (deery & de cieri, 1991, p. 69). what emerges is a scenario in which workers supportive of social collectivism (in this case, social welfare) are more likely to join a union and, thus, are already primed to become subscribers to the organisation’s broader position on other collectivist social justice issues like environmental protection, which are removed from the economic issues that led them to join in the first place. despite sharing similar socio-political aims, not all australian unions have historically engaged in activism in the same way. although all trade unions campaign for workers’ rights in some capacity, the extent of political mobilisation in any particular union is often down to the historical and sociocultural conditions that affect it. maurizio atzeni (2009) argues that labour mobilisation is the product of workers “becom[ing] conscious of how ‘unjust’ a certain situation is … once collectively they can share and strengthen the same perceptions” (p. 12). in atzeni’s view, mobilisation is not the result of a stalwart union membership being ordered to take action by an activist leadership, but instead the result of shared grievances that provide the groundwork for collective action. atzeni’s position is somewhat at odds with john kelly’s theory of mobilisation (1998), which argues for the centrality of directive guidance to collective action. the competing premises of kelly and atzeni’s theories on mobilisation are important to the story of the green bans in new south wales. whereas the influence of charismatic leaders like jack mundey and mick fowler cannot be denied, leadership alone cannot account for the willingness of union members to participate in actions like green bans, through which they fought for causes like heritage and conservation rather than typical union concerns like working conditions or pay rises. there were direct benefits to the green bans for workers: many unconventional labour studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 463 of the heritage areas targeted for “protection” in sydney were traditional working-class areas, where the possibility of gentrification and development posed a tangible threat to “price out” existing residents, a large proportion of whom were affiliated with trade unions (barca, 2014; marcuse, 2009). the green bans thus reflected an urgent call to action for local union workers, predicated on the very real risk that unrestrained development would eventually leave them homeless. further, the scale of gentrification threatened to deprive all urban residents (including union members) of access to (a) heritage sites and (b) green space, already in limited supply in a city like sydney. the “right to the city” is central to spatial (and environmental) justice in the urban environment and, as peter marcuse (2009) and edward soja (2010) assert, can act as a “glue that binds” radical thinkers and campaigners, in spite of ideological differences that may exist in other areas. here, the common cause binding unions and new left oriented activists is manifested in the forces of gentrification, a process that soja characterises “as a force behind the displacement of preexisting poor populations” (p. 216) and “another form of spatial colonization, less overtly dominated by the state but not entirely different from the blunt institutional expressions of territorial power” in apartheid south africa or occupied palestine (p. 43). the conceptualisation of gentrification as a form of colonisation and territorial control goes some way toward explaining new left interest in “the cause.” whereas working-class union members fought for environmental justice for primarily practical reasons, for the new left gentrification represented yet another case of the elite contributing to the oppression of a subaltern population – in this instance, working-class urban residents. environmentalism is not solely the philosophical domain of the new left, however. in their introduction to a special issue of globalizations on environmental labour studies, stevis et al. (2018) assert that ecological conservation is, in fact, central to the marxist concepts that guide the trade union movement. this centrality is particularly true in relation to gentrification. as stevis et al. contend, “while nature is privately appropriated and exploited by capital, workers’ organisations tend to construct nature as labour’s other, a place to enjoy or a place to be protected from destruction” (2018, p. 439). in the same special issue, barca and leonardi (2018) build on this foundation to conceptualise a “working-class ecology … the place where working-class communities live and work, being typically affected by environmental injustice” (p. 487; emphasis in original). barca and leonardi go on to develop a topology of labour organisations (including, but not limited to, rank-and-file unions) in relation to their position on environmental justice and commitment to combatting environmental injustices that negatively impact the working-class ecology of local regions and memberships. importantly, barca and leonardi’s concept of working-class ecology is not inherently linked to the macro-issues of climate change, but instead the immediate physical environment workers inhabit. it is paul bleakley studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 464 this element that makes their construction of working-class ecology most relevant to the green bans, carried out in a period before these macroenvironmental issues came to the fore, and in pursuit of immediate defence of their environment from gentrification. a later article by barca (2014) refers to this as the “intersection of work and nature” and argues in favour of an interpretive framework that “incorporates analysis of the landscape as evidence of past human labour” (p. 3). doing so blurs the lines between the natural world and the built environment, allowing for greater incorporation of heritage protection actions into the broader discussion of environmental labour activism. i adopt barca’s conceptualisation of environmental labour in my analysis: here, labour and environmental activism are treated as ideologically-aligned movements that are “socially engaged … with utopian aims to expose unequal power relations, and promote new social or environmental orders” (bailey & gwyther, 2010, p. 1). in this sense, while seemingly motivated by distinct driving factors, the “utopian aims” of equity (and opposition to destructive capital) are shared by both trade unionists and environmental activists, offering a broad conceptual foundation for trade union green bans in 1970s new south wales. setting the scene for green bans in new south wales, before 1968 even before world war ii, the new south wales trade union movement reflected on the experience of campaigning on the type of broad social justice issues that, later, were central to the green bans of the 1970s. key members of the communist party and union movement were openly advocating for social change outside of the conventional wheelhouse of labour rights. the “new social movements” ushered in by the new left in the 1960s were (in reality) already a focus for many activists in new south wales, where there was a lengthy history of using organised labour to pursue causes outside its conventional remit. wright was not the only unionist in this era who saw great potential in using the apparatus of the trade unions to influence government policy outside of labour rights. in the period immediately after world war ii, the japanese withdrawal from indonesia resulted in a territorial dispute in which indonesia sought to assert its independence from previous colonial rulers, the netherlands. in solidarity with the indonesian campaign for self-governance, the sydney branch of the waterside workers’ federation (wwf) announced a “black ban” on dutch ships from 23 september 1945, refusing to work on dutch vessels until indonesian independence was recognised (sydney boycott, 1945). the labour council confirmed the boycott and it soon extended to other unions like the seaman’s union of australia and the federated ship painters and dockers union (lockwood, 1982). the ban on dutch ships lasted four years until 1949, when the dutch forfeited their claim to indonesia. the so-called “black armada boycott” was not an aberrant example of union political activism in the era: at a “peace unconventional labour studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 465 conference” held in sydney on 12 june 1950, representatives from the largest new south wales unions agreed to industrial action designed to combat a range of issues from nuclear proliferation to imperialist policy in south-east asia. jim healy, federal secretary of the wwf, noted at the conference that it was the unions’ position that, “peace is today, war is tomorrow, unless we stop it” (peace council, 1950). the post-war union movement was highly concerned with political acts that were seen as a threat to peace and, more importantly, saw an opportunity for union members to be active in disrupting the ability of governments to pursue these policies, both at home and abroad. although the concept of the new left was still in its infancy in europe and had yet to truly arrive in australia, the foundational, anti-imperialist principles of this philosophy were already being established in the australian left on the docks and worksites of new south wales. although the idea of formal green bans has been popularly credited to jack mundey and his colleagues in the blf in the early 1970s, union action to prevent developments similar to the green bans had been taking place in sydney for more than 10 years before properly entering the cultural and political zeitgeist with the struggle to protect the rocks. in may 1957, car sales company auto auctions sought to demolish a block of flats in the innercity suburb woolloomooloo and put in its place a car yard (homes before profits, 1957). the efforts to protect the building were led by alderman thomas wright, who campaigned for council to acquire the building in an effort to prevent auto auctions demolishing it and displacing residents (wreckers again, 1957). demolition began at the st. kilda apartments before the council could take possession of the property, but was stopped when the building workers’ industrial union (bwiu) agreed not to participate in “dwellings being demolished in a time of great housing shortage” (city council moves, 1957, p. 12). even so, auto auctions persisted in its attempts to demolish the building, continuing to send a non-union crew to destroy the property. in one instance in november 1957, 30 members of the building unions working on a nearby property were forced to chase a demolition crew employed by auto auctions away from the property, saying that “if the wreckers return, so will they [the union workers]” to prevent the destruction of the building (new policy needed, 1957, p. 10). though the unions managed to prevent the demolition of the st. kilda apartments, the combined efforts of the state alp, labour council, trade unions and residents’ action groups failed to pressure the state government to give discretionary powers to prevent demolitions to city councils in new south wales (demolitions are still on, 1957). the bwiu decision to stand against redevelopment is an important precursor to the local focus of the green bans more than a decade later. in their respective analyses, both nugent (2011) and uzzell and rathzel (2013) note that the history of environmentalism in the union movement is one that has evolved over time from a reactive, local focus on micro-issues (such as paul bleakley studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 466 redevelopment plans, as in the auto auctions case) to more global, proactive campaigning on macro-issues (like climate change). as nugent (2011) makes clear, it is often the localisation of environmental and conservation issues that prompts trade union members – not natural environmental idealogues – to participate in industrial action. in the auto auctions case, the conservation campaign was constructed as an effort to prevent the destruction of housing during a time of shortage, something that unquestionably impacted members. a similar argument would later be made in regard to the gentrification issue that lay at the centre of the 1970s green bans, albeit with a new left influence that allowed that campaign to be seen as both a reactive, local and proactive, ideological affair (barca & leonardi, 2018; soja, 2010). the new left arrives – radicalism reignited in the post-war era, a rift began to form in the global leftist movement between traditional labour-oriented marxists and a new breed of progressive who believed the left needed to turn its focus to a broader range of social issues affecting the proletariat, from feminism and civil rights to disarmament and an end to global imperialism. proponents of this new left like herbert marcuse believed that stabilisation in the economic system meant that the working classes were no longer incited to revolt in the way marx described and, thus, the next stage of human liberation was to overcome the “onedimensional” state of spiritual and intellectual poverty brought on by the triumph of capitalism (marcuse, 1964). like marcuse, economic prosperity was cited by other new left theorists like john saville as the root cause of the stagnation of socialism, and “the most important single reason for the miserable performance of the left … [and] its intellectual collapse in the face of full employment and the welfare state” (1959, p. 10). by the dawn of the 1960s, even eminent sociologist c. wright mills was calling for a reconstruction of leftist opposition: in his “letter to the new left” (1960), mills argued for a political left that continued to fight against oppression in all its forms, regardless of the fact that the old left marxist movement had essentially “won” its fight for improved wages and conditions in most industrialised countries by this point. despite mills’ call to arms, the arguments made by new left philosophers about the need for the left to expand the scope of its struggle to other oppressed groups had already taken hold in the old left of new south wales politics, notably reflected in the decades-long tradition of taking industrial action to support various social and political causes in the state’s trade union movement. the new left’s influence on the australian protest movement began in earnest with the elevation of laurie aarons as general secretary of the communist party of australia (cpa) after the retirement of old left traditionalist lance sharkey in 1965 (symon, 2005). the cpa had experienced a split in its membership the year before, driven by overseas unconventional labour studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 467 tensions between the soviet union and china. when the cpa threw its support behind the soviet union, prominent australian communists like the blf’s norm gallagher and wwf’s ted bull broke away to form the communist party of australia (marxist-leninist), arguing that in supporting the soviets the cpa had abandoned the basic tenets of marxism-leninism that united all communist movements around the world (knight, 1998). sharkey was a veteran leader of the cpa, installed in the role by the soviet government in 1930, and, as such, remained stalwartly committed to the soviet union. at the time, aarons led the pro-soviet faction and, in turn, he was well-placed to replace sharkey the following year. aarons’ initial support for the soviet union changed significantly after he became leader of the cpa: while initially an ardent advocate of nikita khrushchev’s liberalisation policies, he ultimately became a vocal critic of brezhnevian imperialism in the late 1960s (wells, 1970). aarons’s leadership of the cpa coincided with the election of cpa member jack mundey as secretary of the new south wales branch of the blf in 1968, around the same time that aarons began to adopt a more progressive, new left position on the cpa’s role in modern political advocacy (burgmann & burgmann, 1998; wells, 1970). mundey, a former professional rugby league player, was a long-time member of the cpa with a history of demonstrating on new left issues like nuclear disarmament and the vietnam war. he was arrested for defying police orders at an anti-war protest in 1964, only two years before becoming the sydney district president of aarons’ cpa, with his rise providing further indication of the ideological shift taking place in the party (at least in sydney) during this period (colman, 2016). the 1968 rebellion against soviet occupation in czechoslovakia has often been cited as a turning point in aarons’ ideological evolution, marking his final rejection of soviet imperialism. however, there is archival evidence to suggest that aarons was closely involved with some of australia’s most radical new left protesters even before coming out in favour of the cpa shifting further away from old left, pro-soviet principles. surveillance conducted by the special branch in queensland, a neighbouring state, identified aarons as having attended a meeting of the society for democratic action (sda) at the group’s headquarters on 27 march 1967. led by radical student organisers like brian laver and mitch thompson, the sda modelled itself on the new left contingent of the american students for a democratic society (sds), which later evolved into “the weathermen” or “weather underground” and became notorious for militant, often violent, activism (miller, 1994). at the time of aarons’ visit to sda house, the protest group was in the midst of a campaign against the queensland government’s restrictions on public protest. in a report to police commissioner frank bischof several months later on 6 july 1967, special branch chief leo de lange wrote that, “there appears to be little doubt, that all this has emanated as a result of the actions of aarons and gifford [charles evan gifford, paul bleakley studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 468 queensland cpa president]” (leo de lange to frank bischof, report, 6 july, 1967). although laver denied that “laurie aarons gave [the sda] our instructions early this year,” there is little doubt that laver’s radicals provided a model that aarons and his allies in the cpa sought to emulate (john herse & les hogan to frank bischof, report, 9 july, 1967). the shift toward new left ideology in the cpa did not occur in a vacuum: shaking off the authoritarian control of the pro-soviet faction in the late 1960s, aarons and his supporters (including mundey) only sought to reassert a tradition of campaigning on a social justice platform that had, only a decade earlier, been a central aspect of old left activism in new south wales. the green bans as an embodiment of new left politics in the sydney unions the cpa’s adoption of new left ideas in the late 1960s preceded the decision of the blf and other unions to begin participating in green bans in mid-1970. the origins of the sydney green bans lie in a decision made at a meeting of the blf executive on 12 may 1970, at which a committee including mundey and state president bob pringle agreed to “a new concept of unionism” that recognised the right of workers to ensure their labour was not used in ways to which they were ideologically opposed (burgmann & burgmann, 1999, p. 48). since the early 1960s, the blf had become increasingly concerned with town planning issues, particularly the boom in office block development that resulted in residential neighbourhoods being demolished and local populations being displaced. akin to union activists like thomas wright who sought to prevent the demolition of the st. kilda apartment block in 1957, mundey saw it as his union’s responsibility to “not just become robots directed by developer-builders who value the dollar at the expense of the environment” (thomas, 1973, p. 56). despite this characterisation of mundey’s position, the green bans were (as noted) not just an ideological response to the intellectualised prospect of ecological destruction or loss of urban heritage. as nugent (2011) notes, blue-collar workers are often in a position in which they are the first to feel the impacts of poor environmental management. while nugent was speaking here in a contemporary context about the loss of jobs due to climate change, his observation was true during the gentrification period of 1970s sydney: the same inner-city neighbourhoods targeted for “renewal” were home to working-class union members who would be forced out or “priced out” as a result of development (barca & leonardi, 2018). as such, the ideological rhetoric underpinning the blf’s commitment to green bans was intrinsically intertwined with a key concern of its proletariat membership: prime real estate in central sydney that was being targeted for development was largely home to working-class families who would be priced out of the area under a policy of gentrification (soja, 2010). unconventional labour studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 469 the first formal green ban was issued by the blf in 1971, after a residents’ action group from hunters hill approach the union for its aid in protecting a patch of bushland on the sydney harbour foreshore that was set to be developed into luxury housing (burgmann & burgmann, 1998). when the developers announced it would use non-union labour instead, like auto auctions had more than a decade before, a group of blf workers on another of the company’s building projects declared they would walk off the job “even if there is the loss of one tree” at the hunters hill site (mundey, 1988, p. 177). backed into a corner by the blf, the developers relented, and the bushland was successfully saved. the green bans continued for much of the early 1970s, focusing on protecting both the natural environment (as in hunters hill) and the built environment, particularly the inner-city neighbourhoods occupied by the working classes. famously, mundey’s blf is credited with having prevented the destruction of sydney’s historic district the rocks through a ban lasting from november 1971 until the end of the green bans era in 1975 (burgmann & burgmann, 1998; colman, 2016). the blf announced the ban would not be lifted until a development plan was agreed to by residents, and when such a plan was eventually agreed to after years of negotiation, it included provisions preventing high-rise buildings being constructed in the area. nowhere was the collaboration between organised labour and the new left intelligentsia more evident, however, than in the fight to save victoria street. from the late 1960s on, property in kings cross was being bought by developers like frank theeman, who sought to capitalise on the growing popularity of the city’s entertainment district (burgmann, 2000; rees, 2004). kings cross, an area both demographically working-class and characteristically bohemian, was home to many in sydney’s activist community, including prominent intellectuals and activists roelof smilde and wendy bacon (rees, 2004). while this group was dominated by libertarians more closely associated with the new left, in the green bans this group found an easy point of convergence with the old left unions, and the two worked together to enforce a green ban on victoria street. members of both groups were active in the victoria street action group (vsag), including seaman’s union and cpa activist mick fowler, who upon finding his rental property on victoria street sold to theeman’s developers in april 1973, staged a sit-in with the support of both the residents’ group and his fellow unionists (the fight to prevent, 1973). fowler’s sit-in lasted three years, and was a rallying point for anti-developer activism in victoria street. ultimately, theeman employed a collective of hired standover men and police officers to forcibly evict as many as 80 squatters (but not fowler) from the properties he owned in victoria street. as part of the evictions of 3 january 1974, theeman’s squad also destroyed residents’ houses and made them unhabitable, removing wiring and other living essentials to prevent squatters from returning (burgmann, 2008; rees, 2004). theeman’s act paul bleakley studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 470 triggered even stronger opposition from the blf and other unions adhering to the ban, who committed to continuing the fight to prevent “the human costs of the alliance of political power and profiteers … [despite] the use of thugs as scab labour” (burgmann & burgmann, 1998, p. 212). even after the disappearance and presumed murder of vsag organiser juanita nielsen in july 1975, residents’ action groups and several unions continued to frustrate theeman’s efforts to redevelop victoria street (burgmann, 2008; rees, 2004). however, they did so without the support of mundey and the blf. the green ban on victoria street was, ultimately, the driving factor in the blf national committee’s move to remove mundey and the rest of the new south wales blf executive from their leadership positions in october 1974. norm gallagher, the federal secretary of the blf, was a founding member of cpa breakaway group the communist party of australia (marxist-leninist) in 1964, and thus was already at odds with the aarons faction to which mundey was associated (moore, 2013). beyond this, gallagher was also grappling with the deregistration of the federal blf due to political and financial challenges the union was facing on a national level. the deregistration of the federal union was used by the developer-friendly master builders’ association (mba) to pressure gallagher to stop mundey and the green bans. the mba offered gallagher its support for re-registration on the proviso that the federal executive took control of the new south wales branch from mundey, who was costing developers significant money through his green bans (cook & goodall, 2013; moore, 2013). gallagher agreed, denying union tickets to mundey, pringle and their allies and fundamentally forcing them from the blf. in their absence, gallagher took control of the new south wales branch and almost immediately lifted the green ban on victoria street. members of the vsag assert that gallagher was seen in kings cross meeting with developer frank theeman around the time the ban was lifted, suggesting that theeman himself was behind the mba’s corrupt overture to gallagher and the federal executive (rees, 2004). in any case, gallagher’s takeover of the new south wales blf effectively brought an end to the green ban era in sydney. shortly thereafter in 1976, aarons resigned as national secretary of the cpa, loosening the new left’s grip on yet another old left institution (aarons, 2010). conclusion after his death in may 2020, jack mundey was (rightly) lauded as an urban leader who led campaigns that fundamentally saved sydney’s natural and built environment. his pursuit of the green bans in the early 1970s was revolutionary, using the structures of organised labour to mobilise active support for typically new left causes. mundey and the nswblf were not without their detractors in the old left trade union movement, however, unconventional labour studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 471 ultimately resulting in the blf federal executive intervening to strip them of their positions in the mid-1970s and bring an end to the green bans. on the surface, these actions seem to be a recalibration of australian unionism, returning it to its foundational values: giving a voice to working-class labour and campaigning to improve wages and working conditions. usually, the old and new left are constructed in binary terms. this conceptualisation promotes a narrative common in international contexts (yet not entirely relevant to the australian context) that casts trade unions as archetypal agents of a normative marxist labour movement. from this perspective, the green bans represent an aberration in which unions were influenced by (among other factors) a new left ideology then popular around the world. my analysis demonstrates that this representation is misleading. while the green bans were unquestionably driven by influential advocates of the new left like aarons and mundey, these men derived much of their influence from participating in ordinarily old left bastions like trade unions and the cpa. their participation in old left political movements predates the rise of the new left and so, as i have argued, the new left was less an influence on aarons and mundey than a useful framework for furthering their existing social justice agenda centred around a working-class ecology (barca & leonardi, 2018) that was typified by public campaigns grounded in environmentalism and conserving the built environment. rather than being influenced by a new left school of thought emanating from international thinkers like marcuse and mills in the 1960s, aarons and mundey were instead continuing an existing local tradition of social justice campaigning in the new south wales labour movement (barca & leonardi, 2018; burgmann & burgmann, 1998). union campaigning on a social justice platform, which would later become intrinsically connected to new leftism, was evident even before world war ii. unions’ anti-imperial boycott of dutch vessels in the late 1940s offers evidence that new left influence on unions in the late 1960s and early 1970s was not simply a case of locals taking up an international political trend, but instead continued a pre-existing strain of activism in the new south wales old left that had a history of supporting social justice causes of all kinds. even the green bans themselves were not an entirely new concept: from at least 1957 the state’s unions had been advocating for the protection of the natural and built environment, employing industrial action as a tool to pressure developers and the state to review its urban planning policies. this is not to say that mundey, aarons and their allies do not deserve credit for the innovative green bans policy. instead, my analysis reframes their actions as reflecting (or even celebrating) the unique character of social justice campaigning within the old left in mid-century new south wales, rather than as a subversion of that activism. the success of the green bans as a proactive environmental campaign by the unions was, at least in part, the result of the personal stakes trade union members had in the gentrification of paul bleakley studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 472 inner-city sydney. mundey and his allies were able to sell the green bans as not just part of an abstract ideological agenda, as the new left constructed it, but also as a necessary action to combat the impact of rampant neoliberalism on union members who risked being forced out by developers like frank theeman (nugent, 2011; soja, 2010). environmental labour theorists typically acknowledge that environmentalism in the union movement is a response to neoliberalism and macro-environmental threats to working-class jobs like climate change (nugent, 2011; uzzell & rathzel, 2013). my analysis suggests that environmentalism existed long before the global implications of macro-issues like climate change became apparent – and even before the ideological influence of the new left on unions in the late 1960s. instead, environmental activism in the 20th century new south wales labour movement occurred largely as a response to local issues, a reaction both to the potential displacement of workers and (somewhat presciently) a proactive strike against the neoliberal threat posed by a gentrified inner-city (burgmann, 2000; nugent, 2011; soja, 2010). the blf green bans represent what uzzell and rathzel (2013) assert is the case of “a local union … [being] much more tied to the immediate, everyday interests of their members” (p. 10). in the current struggle to achieve a balance between a trade union’s mandate to protect workers’ rights (and jobs) and support intersectional social justice causes like environmental and heritage protection, the green bans stand as a prime example of how campaigns for environmental justice in the union movement can be characterised (and, importantly, pitched to members) in local terms, rather than in a more ambiguous, mediated way. while the blf’s green bans were influenced by mundey’s affiliation with the new left-inspired, aarons-led cpa, the green bans were successful because of two primary factors: the direct impact on workers and, further, the existing tradition of localised heritage protection and campaigning for social justice causes in the state’s labour community. for contemporary practitioners, this insight reasserts the importance of framing environmental justice causes as local concerns to obtain the collective support of union members, rather than solely focusing on the common tendency in the modern neoliberal world to pitch such campaigns as global issues with critical macroeconomic implications. the case of the new south wales unions and the green bans shows that local resonance and tradition is far more persuasive to obtaining workers’ investment in environmental justice campaigns than crafting an ideological call to arms in the style of the new left or, indeed, many ecocampaigners operating in the current era of global activism. acknowledgements i would like to acknowledge the support of the editorial team and anonymous reviewers from studies in social justice who offered suggestions that provided an important theoretical dimension to this article. many thanks also unconventional labour studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 458-474, 2021 473 to the staff of the queensland state archives 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(1957, may 29). tribune, 11. jones et al final before ts correspondence address: chelsea jones, department of child & youth studies, brock university, st. catharines, on, l2s 3a1; email: cjones@brocku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 representing disability, d/deaf, and mad artists and art in journalism: identifying ableist fault lines and promising crip practices of representation chelsea temple jones brock university nadine changfoot trent university kirsty johnston university of british columbia abstract this paper revisits the dynamic discussion about journalism’s role in representing and amplifying disability arts at the 2019 cripping the arts symposium. chronicling the dialogue of the “representation” panel which included artists, arts and culture critics, journalists, and scholars, it reveals how arts and culture coverage contributes to the cultivation of disability, d/deaf, and mad art. given that the relationship between journalism and disability communities continues to be fractured in canada, speakers were invited to reflect on journalism and disability arts in relation to their own engagement with media as subjects, authors, and critics of disability arts reviews. the methods for presentation were cripped in multiple ways to provide the fullest access possible. the panel concluded with examples of ableist fault lines in representation practices where the disabled figure is an absent “ghost” in journalistic representation, warnings against journalistic reliance on traditional and objective narratives, and a call for artists to claim and write their own stories. ultimately, disabled, d/deaf, and mad artists need both control over artistic endeavours and output and influence over representation. this article reconnects journalism and disability communities, ultimately demonstrating that representation is a critical, co-constitutive process that can become more aesthetically and politically oriented toward social justice in its focus on disability, d/deaf, and mad arts. keywords disability arts; journalism; representation; crip; panel chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 308 figure 1. members of the “representation” panel at cripping the arts (photo: michelle peek photography courtesy of bodies in translation: activist art, technology & access to life, re•vision: the centre for art & social justice at the university of guelph). image description: five members of the cripping the arts “representation” panel sit on a stage. in the foreground of the image a blurred audience faces the panellists, who each have a microphone near their seats. in the background is a colourful, abstract illustration projected onto a screen. from left to right, the panellists in the image are michael orsini, leah sandals, shay erlich, peter owusu-ansah, and nadine changfoot. introduction in this panel exchange from the 2019 cripping the arts symposium in toronto, canada, six speakers and one moderator reveal how journalistic arts and culture coverage contributes to current shapings of disability, d/deaf, and mad art. the speakers, introduced individually below, come from a range of backgrounds with often overlapping roles – they are artists, arts and culture critics, journalists, and scholars. the purpose of this panel was to increase the rigour and cultural competency of critical disability, d/deaf, and mad arts in journalism by critically responding to journalistic coverage of disability arts. the launching point for this panel was a well-established understanding in disability communities that media representations have the potential to shape the attitudes of audiences toward disability (haller, 1999; longmore, 2003). journalism has historically coded disability coverage through negative tropes (clogston, 1991; haller, 1993). although the medical model forms a persistent storyline in much news media (bendukurthi & raman, 2016, p. representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 309 143), alternative themes such as social inclusion, solidarity in the disability community, and the treatment of disabled people have emerged in news reporting, such as in that of the 2015 new york disability pride parade (mellifont, 2017). notably, though, much of the literature on disability and representation in news media focuses on canada, the united states, australia, and other english-speaking contexts, leaving significant gaps in our knowledge about disability and representation elsewhere (bendukurthi & raman, 2016; parent, 2020). further, media representations also offer chances for us to think through the normative assumptions that ground these representations (titchkosky, 2020, p. 13). journalism – as both an industry and an individual practice by journalists – plays an important and complex role in educating audiences about social justice, including the rich, creative energies of crip arts, its effects, including aesthetic exploration, accessibility, presentation, and the growth of the disability, d/deaf, and mad arts sector. following the editors of this special journal issue, we use the term “crip” as a descriptor drawn from current discourse around disability arts in canada, including appeals to crip the arts through events such as the 2019 cripping the arts symposium, a university course taught by eliza chandler, and a special issue of canadian journal of disability studies (2019) each covering the topic of cripping the arts,. for the purpose of this writing, we simply follow christina myers’ (2019) explanation in canadian art of what it means to crip the arts: “to ‘crip’ the arts is to embrace the ways that disability can disrupt the status quo and lead with difference” (para. 7). aiming to bridge a gap between disability arts and media representation, we also note the adoption of crip in disability media discourses. consider, for example, the u.s.-based hashtag #cripthevote on twitter, which sought to raise awareness of disability issues during the 2016 presidential election. disabled folx producing their own media are beginning to insist that they are cripping representation – a sentiment that was ultimately urged onward by the panelists in the “representation” session.1 for example, mobile filmmaker laurence parent (2020) uncovers compulsory able-bodiedness in media representation by making her wheelchair an integral part of her filmmaking, and describes her work as crip and cripping (p. 202). following jonathan bartholomy (2020), we can think of cripping in a media context as “the act of revealing the overarching norms within a society that reinforce the dominance of the non-disabled perspective and its exclusionary practices (p. 59). layering together artistic and media crip ontologies that aim to disrupt and reveal oppression allows us to think through the fractured relationship between disability, d/deaf, and mad arts and media in ways that demonstrate that there is common ground among the fields. although “crip” does not yet 1 we use the term “folx” to be inclusive of black, indigenous, people of colour, non-binary, and trans persons. chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 310 grace the pages of traditional media style guides, to crip representation is a creative, critical, co-constitutive process that can become more aesthetically and politically oriented toward social justice through its engagement in disability, d/deaf, and mad arts. introduction to panellists to open the panel, each speaker sat on stage overlooking the audience, and was asked to introduce themselves to the audience by describing themselves. to avoid generalizations and to forefront the words of the panellists, we will introduce them individually, pulling on transcription excerpts of their own words (which, at times, were playful and met with laughter from the audience), in the order they sat on stage from right to left: peter owusu-ansah is a d/deaf visual artist working in toronto: “i am a black ghanaian. i am wearing a dark grey t-shirt, i’m wearing light grey pants, and my shoes are sort of a blueish-green with a brown stripe around the bottom. i’m a visual artist.” shay erlich is a wheelchair dancer, a performance art critic, and an accessibility consultant: “i am a white, queer, genderqueer, multiply disabled person. i am a wheelchair user, my wheelchair has lots of colours on it, it has purple highlights, green spokes, and yellow wheels. currently, i am wearing grey socks, skipped the shoes because they were bothering me, black pants with black polka dots, a blazer that is beige with red plaid on it, and a bright green shirt that says, ‘my other disability is a bad attitude.’ today i’ll be mostly speaking from my experiences as a disability arts critic, but [i wear] lots of hats.” leah sandals is an editor at canadian art magazine: “i am a white settler, cisgender woman, and i have greying brown hair. i am wearing black pants, black cardigan, black shirt with white polka dots because that’s so whimsical of me [laughter], and i have black boots and black glasses.” michael orsini is a former journalist and a professor in the school of political studies at the university of ottawa: “i am a white, cisgender, able-bodied male. i am wearing a purplish sweater, grey pinstripe pants, and new shoes that were on sale [laughter].” sarah jama is a community organizer based in hamilton, ontario, and co-founder of the disability justice network of ontario (djno): “i am a somali canadian, black woman, cisgender, um, i have cerebral palsy, which means i use my walker sometimes, but today i am in my electric chair. i’m from hamilton, ontario, which is territory of the haudenosaunee and anishinaabe people, and is governed by the dish with one spoon wampum agreement. my hair is in braids, i am wearing a dress with a really ugly red-and-white pattern which i wasn’t a fan of, but i’m running out of options [laughter].” representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 311 kirsty johnston described herself as a white, settler, cis-gender woman dressed mostly in black. “i have freckles and red hair that is going grey. let’s not dwell on that.” the panel moderator was nadine changfoot. she described herself as having “silver hair” that her salon is encouraging her to colour. the panel organizer was chelsea temple jones, who sat in the audience in order to communicate time signals to changfoot. jones is a white settler with shoulder-length blond hair. methods there is a backstory to this panel that involved jones and changfoot’s attempt to crip a panel format, and to move outside of traditional panel presentations. the work began with direct recruitment strategies, wherein jones worked in collaboration with event organizers to reach out to speakers, with the intention to ensure that disabled people of colour were represented. in effort not to overrepresent whiteness, jones ultimately stepped away from the panel, taking a backstage role. both jones and the moderator, changfoot, conceptualized their roles as connecting and supporting panelists through the entire process. therefore, between november 2018 and january 2019, jones and changfoot hosted two online meetings via zoom, which included an american sign language (asl) interpreter. the purpose of these meetings was to create time and space for panelists to meet one another and share ideas. in the meantime, jones checked in with the group regularly via email. during these group check-ins, the group’s desire to disrupt, or crip, traditional panel formats became clear. we were offered 60 minutes to speak. in a traditional panel this might amount to an equal division of time for each speaker – around five to seven minutes each. instead, we collectively decided that because people express themselves in varying modes and at varying paces, we would divide time based on the amount of time each speaker felt they might need to complete their thoughts. in other words, some speakers got more or less time than others. and, in effort not to privilege orality, panelists were invited to make a video or sound recording, bring an object, or offer some other form of creative expression to share with the audience. jones took notes on these preparatory conversations and shared these notes with the group using google docs so that panelists could add their thoughts and questions, facilitating dialogue between each other in between meetings and prior to the presentation day. during the symposium, changfoot deliberately sought out and spoke with each panelist prior to the panel. when the panel began, changfoot invited each panelist to introduce themselves by offering a visual description for access. jones sat in the audience, within view of changfoot. because this was a large-scale event with stage direction coming from venue staff, this chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 312 direction was streamlined to jones who communicated with changfoot through simple hand signals, indicating, most importantly, when it was time to wrap up the conversation. our decisions to this end were informed by a critical understanding of the risks involved in the chosen panel format of storytelling, the importance of recasting a panel presentation through crip time, and a concerted effort to develop arts-based panel questions, described below. avoiding “share your story” requests notably, in an initial online meeting via zoom in november 2018, three months prior to the cripping the arts event, panellists gathered and deliberated together online about the ways they wished to share their thoughts. the decision to focus on the relationship between journalistic representation and disability, d/deaf, and mad arts intended to provide panellists and symposium participants an opportunity to consider representational concerns from a range of perspectives shared by artists, scholars, and activists – that is, perspectives from the “lots of hats” panellists wear, to borrow erlich’s later words. these perspectives, uniquely shared by people who engage in both artistic production and media representation in a myriad of ways, mark the co-constitutive process of representation: both the creation and engagement with disability, d/deaf, and mad arts and journalism are factors in achieving social reform (burns & haller, 2015, p. 263). as panel moderator and organizer, respectively, changfoot and jones were also aware of the rampant casting of disabled people as “experts” on disability, and the tokenization risks, which are described here and in later sections of the writing. anticipating that the task of speaking on this panel would include speaking to the disability arts community's fatigue around journalistic and other requests to "share stories," the group opted not to focus on expertise or story-sharing entirely. the often-repeated request for experts to share stories has been described by jijian voronka (2015), who recalls being approached to speak – or perform – her consumer narrative at conferences and other events in paid and unpaid capacities. she explains that mad people’s lived experiences have “generated a commodity of plenary presentations” (p. 255). and, in her book care work (2018), leah lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha describes the risk of making public commentary on disability culture and disability justice: i have thought a lot about what i wanted to do to intervene in the very likely reality that, as i am a light-skinned, non-black, ambulatory, often verbally communicative person, mainstream media would want to cast me as “the face of disability justice” and thrust me into the spotlight as the one “expert” on this wacky new movement – erasing all of my comrades and fellow artists, thinkers, and organizers, particularly those who face certain kinds of ableism that are more overt and killing than some that i face. (p. 25) representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 313 certainly, part of being an artist and an activist involves speaking publicly about the work. however, drawing on piepzna-samarasinha’s point, offering stories of disability art to mainstream audiences is a complicated process that privileges some narratives over others and can put speakers’ stories in compromised positions. and, once disabled folx’ stories are released into the world, they are at risk of being co-opted by long-held mainstream tropes, such as recovery or success stories that bolster neoliberal notions of resilience (voronka, 2015) and supercrip stories that represent disabled characters as “superhuman” for overcoming adversity or simply living a normal life (clogston, 1991). the panel organizers anticipated that panelists had been asked, elsewhere, to rehearse the suspect, inclusionist narrative of disabled people gaining entry into a mainstream art world as the marker of their success – and we tried to avoid it. organizing a panel for crip time given the 60-minute timeframe for this panel, the group queried how aiming for even allotments of time among the panellists rested on ableist assumptions and ignored the principles of crip time. crip time is a relational phenomenon that reflects the temporal variations needed to accomplish everyday activities that are often confined to normative timelines (katzman et al., 2020). alison kafer (2013) describes crip time as a flexible way of thinking that challenges us to reimagine “our notions of what can and should happen in time... recognizing how expectations of ‘how long things take’ are based on very particular minds and bodies” (p. 27). we understood the irony of using crip time to highlight the inequitable distribution of temporal and other resources that go into participating on a tightly scheduled panel. still, we tried to compose a panel discussion that would “[bend] the clock” and take a “flexible approach to normative time frames,” even given the one-hour time limit (kafer & price in samuels, 2017). with six panellists, the group decided to facilitate a collective ethos within the panel whereby a consensus was forged for each panellist to have varying timelines to share their thoughts/answers to two questions, recognizing that some may take less time and others a little more. in these ways, crip time was a key element of the panel’s construction. arts-based panel questions with the risks around disability-related storytelling in mind, and with the intention to move through the hour-long panel in ways that honour crip time, the group reached a mutual decision to focus less on the old tell-your-storyagain request and instead to shape their responses around two arts-based questions: chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 314 question 1: given your practice, what word, image, feeling, sound, object, or colour comes to mind when you are faced with the word “journalism”? question 2: share your responses to journalists’ reviews of either your or other’s work. what would you like to see done differently in journalistic coverage of disability, d/deaf, and mad art, to grow all the dimensions that artists want to grow, as well as the culture? following each person’s introduction, including a visual description, panellists spoke to each question for varying amounts of time. the themes that emerged from this conversation are analysed below. panel discussion analysis pet peeves: journalists are getting it wrong with the disability rights movement in the 1980s in north america following and coinciding with the disability rights movement in the united kingdom, disabled, d/deaf, and mad artists took to self-representation as a way of resisting and disrupting cultural misrepresentations that were premised upon able-bodied and ableist norms to create and “establish disability as a valued human condition, shift control to disabled people so they may shape their narratives and bring this disability controlled narrative to wider audiences” (abbas et al., 2004, p. 1). the power of self-representation is inherently political in that disabled, d/deaf, and mad artists want to be seen on their own terms and this involves changing “the way society sees us” (chandler et al., 2018, p. 252). d/deaf, disability and mad arts and culture have grown, recently becoming a priority area for the canada council for the arts in 2008 and the ontario arts council in 2014 (ontario arts council, 2015). despite the over 40-year history of the disability movement, longstanding ableist representations of disability, d/deafness, and madness continue, evoking such descriptors of journalistic representations from panellists: “frustration” (shay erlich), “white fragility and mechanical monolith” (sarah jama), “crisis” (leah sandals), “history and ghosts” (johnston), “story narrative” (michael orsini), and “blank canvas” (peter owusu-ansah). notably, erlich’s frustration was expressed in their “top three disability arts criticism pet peeves,” which relate to ableist perspectives and disabling arts and journalistic practices. the first pet peeve is critics’ ignorance of d/deaf, disability and mad language and culture. when referring to sector artists, critics continue to use language that orients toward able-bodied norms instead of the conventions of disability, d/deaf, and mad culture. for example, in a review of d/deaf artist, d. j. demers, the comic was described as having a “hearing disability” (sumi, 2018), instead of the reviewer using the preferred cultural terms, from erhlich’s perspective, of either d/deaf or hard of hearing. erlich shared this disability cultural practice, representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 315 identifying as hard of hearing and fluent in asl. there is also a tendency toward “diagnoses-dropping,” an ableist practice whereby an artist’s biomedical diagnosis becomes a focal point, instead of the artist and their work, thus revealing both a hegemonic biomedical view of disability and an ableist compulsion to disclose disability (roman, 2009), both of which are irrelevant when it comes to the work. erlich’s second peeve is the focus by journalists on accommodation as the performance by describing it in detail and providing commentary on the accommodation, instead of concentrating on the artist and artistic practice itself. this is not to say that accommodation for accessibility purposes is not important. accommodation in arts venues through relaxed performance (rp) has been growing. originating in the united kingdom to provide access elements to theatre presentations for persons living with autism and tourette’s syndrome, rp has grown and continues to develop to make arts presentations more accessible for a wider range of disability and audience experiences (see kempe, 2015, lamarre et al., 2019). access elements of rp can include asl interpretation, live audio description, a visual and described guide to the theatre space (e.g., accessible washrooms, parking) and the presentation (e.g., allowing for soft talking about the presentation in process, cues for loud or startling noises, changes in presentation such as lights and noises for the rp itself), and guidance to patrons to be scent-free. the intention of rp is to create access to the art, not for the rp access elements to become an ableist focal point especially by a non-disabled audience or journalist. in the case of d. j. demers, the review (sumi, 2018) made the asl interpreter a focal point for non-d/deaf audience instead of focusing on the artist, content of the comedy, or the experience of d/deaf, disabled and non-disabled audience members attentive to the accessibility of the performance. in these instances, there is, for erlich, a “fetishization of accommodation” where the accommodation itself becomes the audience object, remaining within a biomedical understanding of disability. erlich’s third pet peeve is the acceptance by journalists, as well as audiences, of “disability mimicry” or “cripping up,” which refers to the problematic western tradition of non-disabled actors playing disabled characters and draws a parallel between this kind of entrenched ableist practice and the racism of blackface minstrel performance traditions (from o’reilly in sandahl, 2019; komporály, 2007). sometimes, these storylines follow a disabled character who becomes spontaneously able-bodied at different points of a performance, including at the end where, in one play given as an example, there is a huge celebration at which the wheelchair user, who is arthritic, gets up with the entire cast to dance. the reviews for this play were silent on the ableist perspective of an arthritic wheelchair user who is miraculously cured at apparent will. this kind of plot and character where disability becomes, as panellist michael orsini put it, “the punchline or the inspiration and uplift” of a story narrative, are also made and reported on for a primarily non-disabled audience. disabled characters become chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 316 “melodramatic devices” (longmore, 2003, p. 133) to relieve primarily nondisabled audiences of their anxieties around issues of loss of bodily autonomy. plots that end in cure and overcoming but also can feature death, saving the disabled character, or revaluation are, for mitchell and snyder (2000, p. 10), “narrative protheses” because they signal “something out of place” serving as metaphorical problem from the able-bodied gaze to be solved and disappearing disabled persons as subjects. refusing disappearance and being sidelined, disability, d/deaf, and mad artists create their own art and crip aesthetic. making crip aesthetic as disability, d/deaf, and mad arts and culture flourish, so does crip aesthetic – an aesthetic that emerges from disabled, d/deaf, and mad lived experiences that are valid in and of themselves (chandler & rice, 2013, chandler et al., 2018), bringing into cultural consciousness new and multiple spaces and narratives, orienting audiences to new perspectives and artistic presentations. erin ball’s performance at “crip shorts,” a performance event that took place at cripping the arts, is an example of a promising crip aesthetic for the plural ways she presented her acrobatic art form with and without different prostheses, with and without a wheelchair. she provided beautiful renderings of sculptural form, using both fluid and strong body movement with technical precision – for example, through many handstands up and down her wheelchair, including her body positioned in the splits with stilts, leg-length prostheses, shorter-leg prostheses, and without prostheses. to the audience’s delight, she fired confetti from her prosthetic legs upward into the air and toward the audience as the finale. ball made her body, her prostheses, and her wheelchair sites of unique aesthetic creation in ways that contained surprise elements. through combining multiple visual perspectives of her body and the technologies that were also entwined with it, a new kind of crip aesthetic emerged that included, but was not limited to, connective tension – beauty, delight, joy, and suspense – between ball herself and the audience. ball’s performance also invited the audience into the creation of new vocabulary specific to and experienced co-constitutively with her body, movement, and technologies as a disability circus artist, evoking haraway’s cyborg (2006), and reaching into crip futurities (rice et al., 2017) in a disability-prideful way. representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 317 figure 2. erin ball performs in “crip shorts” (photo: michelle peek photography courtesy of bodies in translation: activist art, technology & access to life, re•vision: the centre for art & social justice at the university of guelph). image description: shown in profile, erin ball is sitting sideways in her wheelchair facing the audience. her wheelchair faces stage left and she holds her right prosthesis upward toward the ceiling while she leans back and looks up. red, purple, and pink confetti is shooting skyward out chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 318 of her right prothesis. the stage lighting is orange, purple, and pink and it bathes her face and dangling ponytail as she gazes up. accessibility creation (rice et al., 2019), which refers to technologies such as written descriptions, access guides, live audio description, and recorded audio description that provide access for those living with disabilities to art and art events, has its own aesthetic specific to each event. through the work of artists, artistic producers, and curators, access documents themselves, such as the “cripping the arts access guide” (2019), become aesthetic outputs. when artists co-create access, a new aesthetic emerges that defies traditional aesthetic expectations. the live audio description, provided by kat germain, became an integral part of erin ball’s performance. germain’s descriptions and voice accompanying the performance created a warm and intimate soundscape, enhanced by the darkened venue, and brought the viewer into closer proximity to the intricate balances and manoeuvres executed by ball. as stimulating as ball’s work is in its live, immediate, sensual, and highly impactful constitutive elements, it is also clearly connected to longer histories of circus arts performance, disability performance (in and outside of circus contexts) (carter, 2018), as well as her own particular performance history and artistic oeuvre. one critically important way that journalists can engage with disabled, d/deaf, and mad artists is by locating them in these rich and important histories. when a disabled, d/deaf, and/or mad artist, such as erin ball, is centred, their artistry and crip aesthetic emerge as agential and prideful, liberated from biomedical markers that impose ableist norms and conventions, bringing the audience into an aesthetic realm of experience and sensation that requires new vocabulary and also inquiry into disability, d/deaf, and mad arts and culture. just as crip aesthetic is created by and emerges through disabled, d/deaf, and mad artists, it is also a thoughtful labour on the part of the audience to centre the artist(s) and disability, d/deaf, and mad arts and culture in the interpretive process and representation of the art. this description is also an example of representation called for by panellists to situate disability, d/deaf, and mad artists and their work within their own contexts. further, it exemplifies the panellists’ call for widening the interpretive possibilities. in one direction this widening should attend to the artists’ specific practices as they embody a range of technologies for the performance, including accessibility elements of relaxed performance (i.e., in this instance live audio description). in another key direction, however, the panellists also seek critical appreciation for and interpretive competence in the new aesthetic experiences as they arise from the totality of these diverse visual, and aural elements. this expansive labour is also historical, as will be discussed next. representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 319 isolating artists from history in connection with their curation of the touring exhibit “out from under: disability history & things to remember,” leading disability scholars and curators catherine frazee, kathryn church and melanie panitch (2008) have argued for the importance of situating “disabled actors and activists as the protagonists of their own history” by asserting that, there was – and is – much at stake in this enterprise. the claim to history is a declaration of self, place and solidarity at the same time as it is an articulation of new ground for debate. it is the brazen insurgency of outliers taking centre, refusing periphery. it is an announcement that we know, along with an affirmation that our knowledge matters. to make a claim to history is to count as author and social actor, to reach the tipping point from which entitlements to dignity, respect and the protection of human rights will be unstoppable. (p. 5) panellists at this cripping the arts panel also emphasized how journalists have both rich opportunities and responsibilities to locate disabled, d/deaf, and mad artistic work in relation to these histories. building cultural competency in these histories, languages, and cultures is an important step in avoiding erlich’s first pet peeve (that critics ignore disability language and culture). however, because non-disabled journalists covering disability, d/deaf, and mad arts are sometimes wholly new to the field of practice, there has often been an overemphasis on the work’s novelty, its origins in the individual artist’s biography, and the mistaken sense of disability, d/deaf and mad art as only very recently emergent. while some of these factors may well be relevant to understanding a specific exhibit or performance, overemphasizing them risks occluding critical dimensions of crip aesthetics as they relate to a specific artist’s choices in a particular historical moment. indeed, erlich’s arguments and those of other panellists resonate with those shared by u.s. disability performance scholar carrie sandahl in her 2018 article “using our words: exploring representational conundrums in disability drama and performance”: in a 2010 national endowment for the arts study, my colleague, dr. carol gill, and i found that artists are frustrated by critics who write in limiting ways about their work, often focusing on biographical information about the artist’s impairment, reducing complex works to a discussion of stereotypes, or using the unfamiliarity of being in the presence of disabled people performing as an occasion to work out their own anxieties about the nature of disability and thereby the nature of art itself. (p. 129) knowledge of and engagement with the histories of disability, d/deaf and mad cultures is one way to avoid such journalistic pitfalls. many contemporary disability, d/deaf, and mad artists recognize that their current work builds upon the profoundly difficult work of the field’s early activists and artists. over the past decades, these predecessors in a range of chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 320 different artistic fields have laboured to form and grow canadian capacity for the development of disability, d/deaf, and mad arts and culture. indeed, current identification of the need to support this vibrant arts sector and the creation of a disability arts officer position at the canada council of the arts, came only after decades of disability, d/deaf and mad arts practice, activism, and successful demands for change. for example, the past two decades of regular disability arts festivals in major cities across the country and the concomitant generation of formal reports from within the community concerning the disability arts sector’s canadian and international development were critical capacity-builders. journalistic coverage that seems unaware of the difficult and sustained work of cultural activists over time to address the profound systemic barriers facing disabled, d/deaf, and mad performers risks erasing this profoundly generative work. it also typically promotes retrograde exceptionalist, individualizing disabled superhero narratives over narratives that are critically engaged with the core tenets and debates of disability, d/deaf, and mad arts and cultures. in short, extending erlich’s argument above, it can be tremendously frustrating and disenfranchising if journalistic coverage isolates a single disability, d/deaf, and mad artist or audience from these histories, communities, aesthetics, and oeuvres. instead, as owusu-ansah argued, there is tremendous value in listening closely to the precise and nuanced insights proffered by disability, d/deaf, and mad artists and audiences. further, as jama has argued, there is authority and experience in such voices that should not be elided. akin to church, frazee and panitch above, jama and owusu-ansah underline how disability, d/deaf, and mad artists and audiences’ particular knowledges matter and are essential ingredients in the claim to history from which “entitlements to dignity, respect and the protection of human rights will be unstoppable” (frazee et al., 2008, p. 5). “ghosting” of crip aesthetics in theatre with regard to disability, d/deaf, and mad theatre, for example, building awareness of how any specific performance is haunted by these histories is a key means for generating more nuanced, detailed, and grounded journalistic engagement. in his influential book the haunted stage: theatre as memory machine (2003), theorist marvin carlson builds from the insights of many past theatre theorists to emphasize the role of ghosts in theatre production and reception. marking theatre as a site wherein audiences and performers routinely come into material contact with the very bodies, seats, sets, lights, costumes, properties, words, and narratives that they have encountered before, he emphasizes the profound power of “ghosting” in theatre. for any theatre journalist, then, awareness of such ghosts is critical. for example, if this is the third time a lead performer has been seen on a city’s stages in a particular play, either always playing the same character or representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 321 this time playing the parent when decades earlier they played the child, a journalist will likely remark upon such ghosting and the way it shapes the performance. if the moon in the set and the wheelchair on stage in this production are the same as those that have been used in all of a theatre-going community’s productions that season, audiences and journalists will notice this and make connections across productions. similarly, concurrent or successive productions of the same play are regularly compared by journalists for how they “ghost” one another in performance. theatre critics typically become aware (and are often expected to be aware) of these hauntings through regular and attentive theatregoing as well as reading related contemporary press, historical research, and interviews. equally importantly, theatre artists of all kinds can foster stronger engagement from disability, d/deaf, and mad journalists by ensuring all of these means for “ghostgathering” are accessible. for journalists, carlson’s concept of theatrical ghosting might also help clarify some of the challenges contemporary d/deaf, disability and mad theatre performers confront. on the one hand, the profound inaccessibility of so much theatre practice over time has meant that most d/deaf, disabled and mad theatre performers have not yet been featured on stages in ways that have allowed them to accrue ghosts at the same scale as non-disabled performers. as leading disability performance scholar carrie sandahl (2008) and others (longmore, 2003; mitchell & snyder, 2000) have demonstrated, stereotypical and profoundly inaccessible and ableist training, casting and professionalization practices have limited the number and range of ways d/deaf, disabled and mad performers have been able to take the stage. to build from an earlier example, there are as yet few d/deaf, disabled and mad performers on professional theatre stages who might be cast as the parent in a play after their well-known turn many seasons ago as the child. moreover, the kinds of ghosts that disabled performers have had to contend with regularly are those generated by the legions of disabled mimicries alluded to by erlich in their third pet peeve above; among these, for example, are the many performances of d/deaf, disabled and mad characters by nondisabled people whose turns have garnered mainstream artistic awards or other kinds of popular acclaim (oscar winners eddie redmayne for playing stephen hawking in the theory of everything, daniel day-lewis for playing christy brown in my left foot, and dustin hoffman for playing a fictional character described as having autism, raymond babbitt, in rain man). to make sense of the social injustices inherent in this longstanding practice, disability artists, scholars and journalists have gained from drawing parallels with critical race and performance artists and theorists who have demonstrated the systems of white supremacy and exploitation behind the longstanding practice of “blacking up.” for example, sandahl’s research cites blacking up to illustrate the fronts of two key kinds of ghosting battles facing d/deaf and disabled actors: chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 322 in the disability arts and activist communities, casting non-disabled actors as disabled characters is called pejoratively ‘cripping up,’ referencing the outdated practice of white actors ‘blacking up’ to play african american characters. in ‘cripping up,’ … an actor is cast to play a character from a less dominant social position. rarely is an actor of color, a woman, or a disabled person cast against type to play a character from a more dominant social position. actors from marginalized groups must battle on two fronts, then: to be cast in roles that resemble their own identities and to be cast in roles that do not. (2008, p. 236) journalists who are aware of these battles will be more easily able to discern a d/deaf, disabled or mad performer’s specific aesthetic choices or interventions with ableist traditions and ghosts. for example, they will have a stronger context for reflecting on the political and artistic impact of the alltoo-frequent theatre production moment noted in the panel when a nondisabled actor steps out of their character’s wheelchair to take a curtain call at the end of the performance. as several panellists noted, however, it is important to explore productions from a disability justice framework interested in how the parallels between blacking up and cripping up are merely one example of the myriad ways in which art and performance practices, traditions and ghosts have been shaped by intertwined systems of racism, classism, sexism, and heteronormativity. when she writes about disability justice in care work, lakshmi piepznasamarasinha cites the term’s coinage by the “black, brown, queer, and trans members of the original disability justice collective, founded in 2005 by patty berne, mia mingus, leroy moore, eli clare, and sebastian margaret” (2018, p. 15). in her definition and history of the movement she cites extensively sins invalid co-founder and executive director patty berne (2015) who explains that, disability justice activists, organizers, cultural workers understand that ablebodied supremacy has been formed in relation to other systems of domination and exploitation. the histories of white supremacism and ableism are inextricably entwined, both forged in the crucible of colonial conquest and capitalist domination. late performer, playwright and activist lynn manning has demonstrated how an awareness of intersectionality can help journalists understand and convey the many ways the show might connect with audiences. speaking with sandahl (2004) in reference to his acclaimed solo, autobiographical performance weights, a show in which he connected his black civil rights activism to his disability activism after becoming blind, manning explained: generally speaking, african americans respond most strongly to the stories and poems about my experiences growing up impoverished in south-central los angeles; disabled audience members are most raucous when i recount the tribulations of seeking services from the state department of rehabilitation; and visually impaired audience members make their presence known when i describe representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 323 rediscovering the world as a blind man. the demographic population whose response to weights has surprised me most is that of emancipated foster children. even though i summarize my foster home years in just a couple of sentences, former foster children are often effusive in their thanks for my sharing that aspect of my life with the world and being a positive role model. (p. 31) while manning’s account risked separating audience responses into siloes, his one-man autobiographical performance centered these narratives in his singular body and, akin to lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha and other disability justice activists, emphasized the interconnectedness of ableism, racism, and classism. manning’s awareness of the multi-directional resonances of his performance demonstrates the value for journalists in searching out and signalling for their own audiences the myriad ways disability art and performance can resonate with diverse audiences and help communities find one another. near the end of care work, lakshmi piepzna-samarasinha notes that she is “haunted by the question of, will all our work and lives be remembered and by who and how?” (2018, p. 254). journalists can play a profound role in helping artists and audiences to find, witness, appreciate, challenge, archive and remember. beyond supporting these critical acts of cultural connection and remembrance among people, journalists might also seek out the haunted histories of the particular sites in which they do so. for example, the cripping the arts “representation” panel took place in the same space as the 2003 performance of “in the room,” a collaborative performance involving an international complement of artists who identified as having lived experience with mental illness. the show was produced as part of the firstever madness and arts world theatre festival established and produced by workman arts, an over 40 year old company that has played and continues to play a complex role in the local and international development of disability, d/deaf, and mad arts and culture.2 considered by many to be the festival highlight, “in the room” was the culmination of months of long-distance preparations and 10 days of intensive in-person work bringing together artists from toronto’s workman arts, australia’s rag theatre troupe, and denmark’s billedspor. there were thus many ghosts “in the room” at harbourfront centre during cripping the arts in 2019 as we gathered in the same space which evoked many lingering questions: where would mad arts and culture fit in the 2019 moment? how were the contemporary discussions stretching, challenging, and bridging with debates and ideas of the past? what did it mean that these histories were available to some but not others now in the room? how might journalists play a role in making historical connections between such events 2 the madness and arts world theatre festival was a 10-day large-scale international performance event produced by toronto’s workman arts in partnership with the centre for addiction and mental health and the harbourfront centre that drew together and showcased the theatre of individual and company-based artists with lived experience of mental illness. chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 324 in order to strengthen the sense of disability history? further, what are the histories of people, performance, and culture of harbourfront centre itself? harbourfront centre is located on a site covered by treaty 13 between the mississaugas of the credit and the canadian government. cripping the arts organizers acknowledged this land and its history and in doing so they invited thinking about the kinds of disability, d/deaf, and mad people, lives and performances that have existed on these territories over time. how have colonialism and de-colonizing efforts shaped experience, understanding, art production and reception for disability, d/deaf, and mad people? these questions seek to remind researchers, artists, and journalists alike that disability, d/deaf, and mad theatre art and performance are created in specific historical contexts haunted by past cultural production that has shaped and been shaped by ableism, racism, colonialism, sexism and heteronormativity. when engaging with contemporary crip aesthetics, it can be meaningful for both performers and audiences if journalists ask about and consider the kinds of ghosts that are present with performers and audiences. what are the histories of the performance sites, roles, costumes, and props? how have the performance materials been featured, recycled and reimagined over time? what related roles and performances precede this current one? indeed, as it is a kind of performance, we could ask how the panel at the centre of this article might also be read for its ghosts of past discussions of crip aesthetics. what changes are evident in such panels over time? are there echoes of innovations in the discussions? journalists who invest their time in thinking about such questions and building their own capacity to answer them will be of tremendous value to disability, d/deaf, and mad artists, as well as the broader cultures they seek to engage, challenge, and shape. making art under a “regime of objectivity” in canada, there is a fractured relationship between disability communities and journalists (boyer, 1988; jones, 2014, 2017). these groups have struggled to communicate with one another, and debates about misrepresentation of disabled people characterize much of this relationship (jones, 2020). concerns about how disabled people ought to be represented by media emerged again during this panel, followed by warnings against traditional journalistic approaches to objectivity – including depoliticized angles that would frame disabled, d/deaf and mad people as tokenized experts, erasing collective movements and meaning-making. when asked to share responses to a journalist’s review of his work, owusu-ansah offered an example of his experience as the subject of a recent media article: i met the author of the article and they seemed pretty excited to meet me, and i was excited to meet them and sit down with them as well. as we had our conversation, it seemed to go fairly well, and when i read the published piece … i felt that it reflected the journalist’s perspective, not mine. representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 325 owusu-ansah’s account points to ongoing questions about the nature of disability representation in mainstream media: how can journalists best represent disability, d/deaf and mad arts, and who should make these decisions? should media reporting reflect the perspective of the journalist, or that of the story’s subject(s), or that of a wider movement or community? traditionally, journalism has responded to such questions by forefronting the value of objectivity. working with objectivity in mind, it can follow that stories which remain true to artists’ self-representations, contexts, and contextual histories while decentring journalists’ own personal views have merits for democratic communication. for instance, objectivity can serve both publics and counterpublics, such as when journalists employ neutrality as they hold politicians accountable. in other contexts, objectivity has been connected to journalism for social justice (hackett, 2010, p. 174). panelist jama reminded the room of news coverage of kent hehr, a disabled federal politician who, in 2018, was accused of sexual harassment. jama spoke to the audience about the value of having, and maintaining, unwavering objectivity: i’m thinking back to...when [hehr] was being talked [about] and covered in the media about having a disability, and his harmful terminology and his harmful behaviour towards women. people from the disability community were lashing back saying, ‘no, he didn’t do those things; he’s disabled. like, you can’t really attack him, that’s ableist.’ no! where is our clear stance on being steadfast and hard front, taking stances against sexism ... no matter who is saying it? even so, objectivity also strives for a normative ideal; the utility of stories that meet normative news values and translate relatively easily to the public is up for debate (hackett, 2010, p. 195). assuming the journalists’ perspective to be unbiased and apolitical and forefronting it aligns with journalism’s long-held episteme of objectivity, or what robert hackett and yeuzhi zhao (1998) have called journalism’s governing “regime of objectivity” (p. 20). hackett (2010) posits that “what objectivity means in practice, however, and whether it is a desirable and achievable goal for reporting in a democratic society, are debatable questions” (p. 180). we might extend hackett’s thought to ask what purpose objectivity serves if, as teodor mladenov (2016) points out, social justice can only be achieved when disabled, d/deaf and mad people have a say in the local and global policies that affect them. as such, there are current calls to dismantle the regime of objectivity in favour of journalism practices which might position journalists as people within their communities, knowledgeable of their histories and politics rather than as objective onlookers. this sentiment emerged in owusu-ansah’s thoughts later: “that individual who interviewed me, i wish they had been able to pick up more, to really hear more, to listen more to what was being said by the community.” though this was not owusu-ansah’s experience, the notion of listening more to what is being said by a collective is one that journalism praxis has taken up elsewhere for decades. journalism takes on different, chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 326 social justice-oriented forms that go by many names: citizen journalism, radical journalism, alternative journalism, participatory journalism, and community journalism, among others (hackett, 2010, pp. 186-187). by contrast with mainstream notions of objectivity, in alternative forms of journalism the roles of journalist and source become less distinct: rather than sources as experts whose thoughts are safely filtered through the “objective journalist, people like owusu-ansah can become conduits for journalists digging deeper into the marginalization and concerns of their own communities (robinson, 2017). yet, even when the media seeks to humanize marginalized groups it is possible for reporters to fall into stereotypical tropes. for example, in their analysis of disability representation in indian news media, nookaraju bendukurthi and usha raman (2016) detect a theme of “goodwill building” among stories that bridge marginalized groups and society – and the market. “in this context,” they write, “journalists often bear the responsibility of creating demand for and acceptance of [disabled people]” by emphasizing disabled people’s capabilities and readiness for work (p. 140). bendukurthi and raman explain this phenomenon as journalists’ attempts to “negotiate with society” while also helping the corporate world within which they are embedded (p. 140). indeed, the reality that news outlets are both sources of democratic information sharing and agents of the market economy demonstrates that journalistic representation is political, despite its attempts to be apolitical. this tension spills over into journalists’ praxis and speaks to the unresolved issue of how journalists can best represent disability, d/deaf, and mad arts. journalism in “crisis” owusu-ansah is not alone in his dissatisfaction with journalistic representation and the overall epistemology of objectivity. yet, changing the traditional ways journalism is done relies on changing the economies in which journalism is practiced. fiscal uncertainty continues to stymie systemic change within the field of journalism. with this in mind, panellist sandals explained that the word “crisis” struck her when she was asked to think about the word “journalism,” and that this word also has a particular way of impinging on the way disability art is covered: before and after the internet there was a certain crisis in journalism, a crisis of exclusion and bias. that is, people who work in journalism, especially before the internet but also after, did not realize how white, straight, abled, and cis the media industry is or was. ‘was and is’ would be a better way to say it. and therefore ... one of the ways this impinged, i think, on disability arts coverage was, ‘well if it doesn’t matter to a white, abled, straight, cis, and primarily male audience, we’re not interested.’ it doesn’t exist for us. we don’t even perceive it. representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 327 sandals described the working conditions for journalists both before and after the internet emerged as a major industry intervention: quick deadlines, conventional narrative storytelling expectations, and protocols that relied on colonial approaches rather than collaborative consensual approaches. “this is often in the name of objectivity,” sandals explained, suggesting that the regime of objectivity continues to hold a strong grip over storytelling traditions. yet, in her arguments against the journalistic, factory-like reliance on objective reporting, sue robinson explains that “today’s journalists must be trained to understand their complicities in what can be toxic struggles and they must be given the knowledge to help rebuild them” (2017, p. 303). or, put another way by anita varma (2019), journalists can be positioned for solidarity. positioning journalists in this way means making space for diversity awareness in journalism classrooms and curriculums, particularly through teaching disability studies (burns, 2016). and for practising journalists, this positioning means imagining more “vibrant, expansive, and complex representations of disability” (titchkosky, 2020, pp. 12-13) and a refusal to reduce social injustice to individual problems with a single source or story, for this approach can “stunt” social change (varma, 2019, p. 117). rather, varma appeals, “journalism that seeks to humanize marginalized communities often begins by symbolically transforming faceless swarms into human beings” (p. 117). humanization, as varma describes it, happens when journalists resist traditional, dehumanizing representations of certain groups as deviant (i.e., homeless people) instead of recognizing larger, social injustices (i.e., income inequality). it is perhaps the humanization of social injustices experienced by disabled, d/deaf and mad people that owusuansah’s story is missing when what is published seems to reflect the journalists’ perspective rather than his own. still, sandals cautioned that the crisis at hand goes beyond practices of inclusive representation and is deeply embedded in the economic trajectory of the field of journalism itself, which relies on a resolute business model: the journalism industry goes, ‘well now we understand we are faced with biases, but we are in a crisis with no resources’... even if we care about it and even if we can pay for it, the coverage we do of disability arts can’t be collaborative, consensual, slow, nuanced, or take unconventional or alternative narrative approaches – and it can’t be untangled with the art itself. indeed, woven into this panel, beyond questions of how journalists can best represent disability, d/deaf, and mad arts and their story subjects, is a bleak reminder that the work of representation is deeply linked to political and economic conditions. as journalists become increasingly disempowered in their attempts to do social justice work, disabled artists and their communities are left with the task of representing themselves. further and importantly, their means, energies and capacities to do this are, as both jama and manning chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 328 remind us, determined in relation to their intersecting experiences with race, class, gender, and sexuality. recommendations for journalists and disabled, d/deaf, mad artists a clear message from this panel is that, frustratingly, the recognition of disability, d/deaf, and mad art as a wide-ranging and diverse movement and practice is long overdue. when this context is included in journalists’ stories, understandings of art creation by disabled, d/deaf, and mad people broaden to include understandings and interpretations distinct from a non-disabled positioning. broadly speaking, panellists recommended to journalists that they aspire to become informed, and more importantly, enter into a critical disability politic (gorman, 2011). this means not only recruiting disability, d/deaf and mad journalists to write reviews, but also learning of the multi-faceted and rich complexities and histories of critical disability arts and culture. this also means learning about the current debates or politics within disability arts and culture that comprise the diverse parts of the movement, and recognizing these movements not as what jama referred to as a “mechanical monolith.” disabled, d/deaf and mad artists need to be asked for their preferred pronouns, identifiers, and terminology when being referenced. in so doing, opportunities for better understanding of the culture and the nuances, including productive tensions around self-representation and cultural norms of specific localities and communities, especially of bipoc (black, indigenous, people of colour) communities, will emerge. artists and journalists can agree for artists to read the copy prior to publication or even have the copy reviewed by the artist as part of the reporting process. this is already an informal practice experienced by the co-authors,3 and it builds trust and accuracy in reporting. journalists and disabled, d/deaf, and mad artists can engage in reciprocal communication to ensure that questions, answers, and copy are satisfactory, especially for disabled, d/deaf, and mad artists. for others working outside of the crisis-riddled industry of journalism, panellists ultimately explained that artists need both control over artistic endeavours and output and influence over representation. this can mean selfpublishing, withdrawing writings that are “edited to oblivion” (in sandal’s words), and supporting disability, d/deaf and mad arts organizations in putting out their own stories. jama expanded on these suggestions: 3 when interviewed by journalists, changfoot often asks to see the copy prior to publication or have the copy read to her as part of the journalistic process. her practice developed from being misquoted or having her meaning inaccurately presented in print, and realizing the importance of finding a process for building trust and understanding; she finds journalists have been obliging. representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 329 we live in an era where it’s so much easier to build social capital online. information is not such that people hold power now through the holding of information; it’s very hard to hold onto it. so, reach out to people online who are wanting to write similar stuff that you are; don’t succumb to people wanting to edit your crap. keep it for yourself. jama’s call is powerful, and we would be bereft to ignore the reality that disabled, d/deaf and mad folx belong to groups that are most likely to be digitally excluded (sourbati, 2012). gerard goggin (2016) points out that the exploration of disability mobilities has much to do with where we live, and those in the urban “smart city” may live with “promises that the coming hyper-digital urbanity will bring major steps forward for accessibility, usability and denizens with disability” while those in rural areas remain left behind (p. 539). yet, like race, gender, and sexuality among others, rurality is increasingly acknowledged as yet another intersectional marker concomitant to disability (pini et al., 2017; soldatic & johnson, 2017). and, even though internet access is an issue facing some communities, research into rural journalism suggests that local content stemming from small communities may be more resilient than that. for example, rural journalism in the united states has been shown to be quite participatory when local residents can share their stories with local media (wenzel, 2019). what’s more, as daniela stehlik (2017, p. 78) points out, place identity is significant, and is often marginalized by urban dominant culture and its assumptions about rural “isolation” as undesirable and absolute. that is to say that although digital exclusion exists, storytelling may be supported in different and rich ways outside of urban centers and, for some, maintaining place identity may trump the prospect of digital inclusion. while jama’s specific recommendation to reach out and engage in online storytelling may not prove accessible to all, it is reflective of the panellists’ general sentiment: a hope that disabled, d/deaf and mad folx will take back some control in the co-constitutive process of representing themselves in ways that align with their communities. conclusion: ableist fault lines and promising crip practices the methods for presentation during this panel on representation were cripped in multiple ways to provide fuller access. notably, considerations around representation began with a collective curation of the panel itself, a curation that allowed folx to step outside of tokenized expert narratives and some semblance of crip time to take precedence. together, all participants were clear to make clear and direct the panel against the ableist tropes of journalism they were all too familiar with, “the supercrip,” or serving as “the definitive representative disabled, d/deaf, mad voice,” or object of and for the journalist’s ableist gaze, instead privileging panellists’ interpretations of the relationship between journalism and disability, d/deaf, and mad arts chelsea jones, nadine changfoot & kirsty johnston studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 330 through open-ended questions and co-constitutively creating intersecting disability, d/deaf, and mad representational considerations. this public discussion reconnects journalism and disability communities, ultimately demonstrating that representation is a critical, co-constitutive process that can become more aesthetically and politically oriented toward disability, d/deaf, and mad artists and art. we – the panel participants who authored this paper – also understand that providing fuller access is an iterative process and have learned the importance of connecting with each panelist individually prior to the presentation in a way that begins with a crip ethos within the specific panel itself. while the panel was held within a more conventional time limit of 60 minutes, panel organizers and panellists co-created it according to a calibrated crip time, making efforts towards enacting crip community within the panel. speakers on the “representation” panel of the 2019 cripping the arts symposium reflected on the lines between journalism and disability, d/deaf, and mad arts in relation to their own engagement with representation. these lines – drawn mainly through panelists’ frustrations over the current, fractured state of affairs as one wherein disabled, d/deaf, and mad artists need both control over artistic endeavours and output and influence over representation – speak to many faults, or fault lines that were felt in the discussion. panelists expressed frustration with how disability, d/deaf, and mad arts are usually represented, as in erlich’s “peeves.” they argued for less journalistic reliance on framing disabled, d/deaf, and mad artists as singular experts that results in tokenizing and erasing of their communities with the accompanying risk of apoliticization. instead, they advocated for greater engagement with rich and meaningful disability, d/deaf, and mad histories and communities that shape their contemporary works. panellists also found affinity in the metaphor of ghosts and the action of ghosting the disabled d/deaf, and mad figure and its histories, particularly in the realm of theatre. the panel also revealed an ongoing battle between storytelling that nurtures a crip aesthetic and disrupts the dominant and obligatory regime of objectivity within which journalists are systemically subject. generally, panellists’ ideas rubbed up against dominant, traditional understandings of journalism that favour timely events, news hierarchies, detached reporting, a consumerist worldview, and the overarching paradigmatic value of objectivity (hackett, 2010, p. 185). however, comments from this panel also reveal representation to be a twoway street with disability, d/deaf, and mad artists struggling to be represented accurately, while journalism, and the people taking up this topic, work in what sandals chillingly calls a crisis. ultimately, panellists warned against journalistic reliance on traditional narratives and instead issued a call for artists to claim and write their own stories – to keep pushing forward the promise of crip practices. this call came with a hopeful closing comment from orsini: representing disability, d/deaf & mad artists & art in journalism studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 2, 307-333, 2021 331 i think there’s hope in understanding [what] moving away from a kind of identity politics necessarily, and thinking about what a focus on non-normative bodies and non-normative minds, brings to artistic practice. that gives me, i hate to use the word ‘hope,’ but that gives me hope. acknowledgements we thank the panelists who generously gave their time and deep sharing. thank you, as well, to cripping the arts for the opportunity to explore, rectify, and advance journalistic representations of disability, d/deaf and mad arts. references abbas, j., church, k., frazee, c., & 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(2020). disability imaginaries in the news. in k. ellis, g. goggin, b. haller & r. curtis (eds.), the routledge companion to disability and media (pp. 13-22). routledge. varma, a. (2019). when empathy is not enough: the possibilities for solidarity in the san francisco homeless project. journalism practice, 13(1), 105-121. voronka, j. (2015). troubling inclusion: the politics of peer work and ‘people with lived experience’ in mental health interventions [doctoral dissertation, university of toronto]. tspace thesis repository. uri: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/82532 wenzel, a. (2019). engaged journalism in rural communities. journalism practice, 13(6), 708722. doucet et al final dec 9 16_2 correspondence address: andrea doucet, department of sociology, brock university, st. catharines, on, l2s 3a1; email: adoucet@brocku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 10, issue 2, 194-198, 2016 consuming intimacies: bodies, labour, care, and social justice – guest editors’ introduction andrea doucet brock university, canada robyn lee university of alberta, canada alana cattapan dalhousie university, canada lindsey mckay brock university, canada the lines between care, paid work, and consumption are increasingly blurring, both conceptually and in everyday practices. more and more people are paying others – often less advantaged persons – to perform personal, often deeply intimate labours that include caring for children, the elderly, and disabled persons; cleaning houses; acting as surrogates; and providing eggs, sperm, and breast milk to create and sustain families. in addition to the growing repertoire of intimate labours, the intimate exchange of body parts is also on the rise as bodily fluids, tissues, and organs are being transformed into consumer products through “body shopping” (dickenson, 2008). these processes are simultaneously global and local, public and intimate, economic and affective, oppressive and empowering; they create new forms of intimacies but they also offer a great potential for exploitation and social injustice. the title of this special issue, consuming intimacies, has a double meaning. intimacies are “consuming” in that many people care deeply about connecting with and caring for others, yet, increasingly, intimate labours and exchanges are commodified and treated as consumer products. moreover, there are wide disparities between the geographical location, gender, race, and class of those who provide and those who receive intimate labours, as well as between those whose bodies are commodified and those who can afford to purchase organs, consuming intimacies: bodies, labour, care & social justice studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 194-198, 2016 195 tissues, and fluids. this special issue is produced from a symposium of the same title that was held at brock university in october 2015, which brought together 47 leading and emerging canadian and international scholars and artists to present, debate, and explore a wide spectrum of 21st century intimate labours and their associated economies. the symposium was supported by and connected to the social justice objectives of the social justice research institute at brock university. the symposium and outreach activities explored a broad range of critical questions and social justice issues that have arisen from interconnected concepts and practices of intimate labours and exchanges, care, social reproduction, bodies, consumption, and commodification. symposium participants examined correspondences and divergences between movements and transactions of care work and reproductive labour, on the one hand, and the exchange and sale of body tissues, fluids, and organs, on the other. they explored ways to protect vulnerable individuals and populations from exploitation by asking, for example, when, where, and why forms of intimate labours and exchanges are contentious (hoeyer, 2013), exploitative (dickenson, 2013), or “bioviolent” (moniruzzaman, 2012), who they affect, and in what ways. the symposium featured three internationally renowned keynote speakers: donna dickenson (emeritus professor of medical ethics and humanities at the university of london), monir moniruzzaman (assistant professor, michigan state university), and rhacel salazar parreñas (professor, university of southern california). all three have contributed to this special issue in ssj’s themed sections: dispatches and creative interventions. dispatches provide reports and commentaries on social justice practice, discourse, and contestation while creative interventions reflect on social justice issues using an aesthetic mode. two of the organizers of the symposium – cattapan and lee – produced dispatches through interviews that they conducted with our keynote speakers. cattapan’s interview with dickenson is captured by a co-authored dispatch titled “on bioethics and the commodified body: an interview with donna dickenson” while lee describes her experiences of engaging with and being inspired by the work of rhacel salazar parreñas in a dispatch based on their interview. moniruzzaman not only gave one of our keynote presentations, but also contributed to the production of a multimedia art exhibit, spare parts, which was displayed at the rodman hall art gallery in st. catharines ontario during the symposium. an online version of the exhibit is now posted at http://www.spareparts.exchange. through this publicly accessible website, the spirit of the symposium lives on and reaches a wider audience. this special issue features a creative intervention (a regular feature of ssj) entitled “spareparts.exchange: rahim and robert, stitched together in silence,” by monir moniruzzaman, camille turner, heather dewey-hagborg, and jim ruxton. this creative intervention highlights how artistic intervention brings together methodological innovation, critical reflection, artist-scholar andrea doucet, robyn lee, alana cattapan, lindsey mckay studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 194-198, 2016 196 collaboration, and social justice aims and potential impacts. the authors write, “spare parts connects artists, academics, and activists who present an alternative platform where audiences can construct meaning and confront the ethical questions of organ shopping. this contribution illustrates how academic research can be translated into an art project” with both fields speaking against “violence, exploitation, and suffering.” like the symposium, this special issue addresses two distinct yet connected streams of scholarship and creative thinking. the first focuses on intimate labours as “work that involves embodied and affective interactions in the service of social reproduction” (boris & parreñas, 2010, p. 7) – interactions that entangle production, social reproduction, and consumption. this work comprises a wide array of paid and unpaid labours, including new and reconfigured forms of intimate and commodified labours, done mainly by women, but increasingly by men, which have arisen in contexts of neoliberal restructuring and within “global care chains” (hochschild, 2000), “care diamond(s)” (raghuram, 2012), and the “international division of reproductive labour” (parreñas, 2000, 2012). the first stream is represented in four articles, by kendra coulter, rebecca hall, esther ignagni and ann fudge schormans, and amanda watson, as well as the dispatch written by lee. coulter’s article entitled “beyond human to humane: a multispecies analysis of care work, its repression, and its potential” focuses on interspecies solidarity as a form of care work, an ethical commitment, and a critical component in social justice theories and projects. in “caring labours as decolonizing resistance,” hall brings attention to the intimate labours of canadian indigenous women living in the northwest territories (nwt) and argues that these labours are sites of violence, creative resistance, and decolonization; her work contributes a decolonizing approach to social reproduction theories. in “reimagining parenting possibilities: towards intimate justice,” ignagni and fudge schormans describe the process of collaboratively creating a script and forum theater piece that they performed at the symposium. their article grapples with the eugenic legacy that shapes the contexts and experiences of contemporary parenthood and highlights the connections between parenthood, labels, disability, and intimate justice. finally, watson’s article entitled “quelling anxiety as intimate work: maternal responsibility to alleviate bad feelings emerging from precarity” widens meanings and practices of the care labour by 21st century north american mothers to include their responsibility for anxieties that, while often misconstrued as private, are actually forms of public care labour. through an analysis of popular editorial publications, she deepens interdisciplinary connections between affect theories and care theories. the second stream of articles presented at the symposium, and explored here in this special issue, concentrates on intimate labours and their economies, including exchanges involving organs, body tissues, and body fluids (e.g., milk, sperm, blood, kidneys). these corporeal exchanges fuse consuming intimacies: bodies, labour, care & social justice studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 194-198, 2016 197 intimacies and economies, serving to both reify and contest notions of altruism, exploitation, and commodification (dickenson, 2007). this stream interrogates how value is created in intimate labours and examines how these exchanges entail a “pushing back at the limits between production and social reproduction, production and consumption, production and circulation, to turn even the most intimate of bodily functions into exchangeable commodities and services” (cooper & waldby, 2014, p. 5). in this second stream we include journal articles by carla lam and lindsey mckay; two dispatches – one by alana cattapan and a second by katayoun chamany; and the creative intervention by moniruzzaman, turner, dewey-hagborg, and ruxton. lam’s article entitled “thinking through post-constructionism – reflections on (reproductive) disembodiment and misfits” navigates feminist post-constructionist theories to explore the epistemological significance of technologically assisted (reproductive) gendered embodiment and disembodiment (i.e., in vitro fertilization, surrogacy, and egg donation), drawing connections between gendered and maternal embodiment, technoscience, ontologies, agency, inequality, power, and social justice. in “generating ambivalence: media representations of canadian transplant tourism” mckay writes about commodified corporeal exchange. using a postcolonial theoretical lens, she shows how media accounts of transplant tourism generate ambivalence: a discourse not conducive to making what is unlawful at home unlawful abroad. her findings point to new political directions for those seeking social justice, human rights, and health protection for organ providers. chamany’s dispatch – “critical pedagogy: stem cell research as it relates to bodies, labor and care” – is based on her presentations at the symposium, which demonstrated the social justice impact of transdisciplinary curriculum development connecting the biological and social sciences. her contribution brings together an interdisciplinary team of scholars and activists and details their production of an open access educational resource, stem cells across the curriculum (scac), that highlights the transactional nature of life science through an integrated framework fusing biological and social dimensions and social justice concerns. it is our hope that this special issue on consuming intimacies engenders more debate, dialogue, conversation, and action on social justice issues around care, intimacy, embodied exchanges, social reproduction, consumption, and commodification. references boris, e., & parreñas, r. s. (eds.). (2010). intimate labors: cultures, technologies, and the politics of care. stanford, ca: stanford university press. cooper, m., & waldby, c. (2014). clinical labor: tissue donors and research subjects in the global bioeconomy. durham, nc: duke university press andrea doucet, robyn lee, alana cattapan, lindsey mckay studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 194-198, 2016 198 dickenson, d. (2007). property in the body: feminist perspectives. cambridge: cambridge university press. dickenson, d. (2008). body shopping: converting body parts to profit. oxford: one world. dickenson, d. (2013). exploitation and choice in the global egg trade: emotive terminology or necessary critique? in m. goodwin (ed.), the global body market: altruism's limits (pp. 2143). new york: cambridge university press. hochschild, a. r. (2000). global care chains and emotional surplus value. in w. hutton & a. giddens (eds.), on the edge: living with global capitalism (pp. 14-38). london: random house. hoeyer, k. (2013). exchanging human bodily material: rethinking bodies and markets. basel, switzerland: springer. moniruzzaman, m. (2012). "living cadavers" in bangladesh: bioviolence in the human organ bazar. medical anthropology quarterly, 26(1), 69-91. raghuram, p. (2012). global care, local configurations – challenges to conceptualizations of care. global networks, 12(2), 155-174. parreñas, r. s. (2000). migrant filipina domestic workers and the international division of reproductive labour. gender & society, 14(4), 560-580. parreñas, r. s. (2012). the reproductive labour of migrant workers. global networks, 12(2), 269275. anicha et al final june 18 18 correspondence address: cali l. anicha, forward program, office of the vice provost for faculty affairs and equity, north dakota state university, fargo, nd usa; email: c.mcdonaldmorken@ndsu.edu issn: 1911-4788 volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 dispatch advocates and allies: the succession of a good idea or what’s in a meme? cali l. anicha north dakota state university, usa canan bilen-green north dakota state university, usa ann burnett north dakota state university, usa abstract in this two-part dispatch we first trace the evolution of three interdependent terms – advocacy, allyship, and accountability – as a means to highlight their changing roles in driving impactful social justice efforts, then explore how this triad is manifested in a gender equity advocacy program fashioned at a midwestern united states university, the advocates and allies (a&a) initiative. in part 1, we describe a memetic theory of culture to situate the findings of an internet term search that reveals a mutable progression of meaning(s) for our threesome. this framework provides grounding for discussion in part 2 of the wider social milieu reflected in the evolution of a&a. we then offer an outline of central features of the initiative along with reflections from the field, and point out resources for learning more about how the program is being utilized. by surveying the succession of a&a within this culture-as-memetic context we intend to acknowledge what’s been done by others whilst furthering the important and unfinished work of gender equity in academia. we close with interpretations and conclusions. keywords equity; allyship; advocacy; accountability; culture; memetic advocates & allies studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 153 this two-part dispatch is presented in response to the tsunami of domination culture reaching around the world in waves of increasingly blatant white nationalism, xenophobia, jingoism, misogyny, and disablism. bitter manifestations of racialized, gendered, and enabled/ableist entitlements have become common daily occurrences from the schoolyard to the national stage. how might we who seek social justice navigate the storms of political and relational turmoil unleashed and repeatedly provoked by the current powersthat-be? how do we keep our heads up or down as the changing currents require, buoy ourselves up, and persist at the work of cultural transformation necessary to establish the more just and humane world we intend? first, it is vital to examine our own beliefs about what constitutes justice and injustice. a clear and coherent grasp of what justice looks like is as crucial as a full and nuanced comprehension of the operations and influences of hegemony: the myriad social processes through which human beliefs and practices perpetuate injustice, re-instantiating domination through consent as much as through coercion (lash, 2007). our awareness of these two strands – the justice we are determined to engender and the injustices we are currently enmeshed within – must operate in tandem, an approach that allows us to unmask the social practices that contribute to each. to chart this course, in part 1 what’s in a meme? we unpack what we have come to understand as an indispensable and interdependent social justice trifecta: advocacy, allyship, and accountability. we deliberately scrutinize accountability as a vital driver of social justice advocacy and allyship. in part 2 advocates and allies we share details about the development of a program that applies this pivotal triad in the work of men faculty working for gender equity in academia.1 following part 2, we present interpretations and conclusions. this mini-series is offered in the hope that our theoretical exploration, paired with an exemplar, will support us all in continuing to establish a world in which justice flows, in the words of martin luther king, jr. “down like water” and domination culture ebbs and finally disappears. part 1: what’s in a meme? in this section we probe the cultural evolution of the interdependent concepts of advocacy, allyship, and accountability. we begin by briefly considering a theory of culture as memetic, then survey the history of the three concepts via cursory internet term searches. the search results reveal swelling networks of the use of all three terms, as well as a shifting progression of meaning(s) for this potent triad, and thereby provide a view into the wider social contexts that underlie the origin and formation of the gender equity program described in part 2. 1 see https://www.ndsu.edu/forward/advocates_and_allies/ cali l. anicha, canan bilen-green, ann burnett studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 154 a memetic perspective on culture human cultures develop via networks of relationships and shared ideas; persistent ideas become cultural conventions guiding individual and group behavior and actions. when cultural knowhow is shared (balkin, 1998) a meme operates as a “unit of cultural transmission,” (dawkins, 1989, p. 192) to leverage the inherent power of compelling ideas via social learning (bandura, 2006; marsden, 1998). memes and genes are theorized to operate similarly: via repetitions or replication, variation or mutation, and fitness value or survival selection (blackmore, 1999). thus, when an idea-meme is shared, it is taken up by the mind(s) of other individuals, perhaps slightly altered, then remains in the “meme pool” if it demonstrates sufficient goodness of fit. for example, over the past several decades analyses regarding what constitutes racism and antiracism have shifted from highlighting how people of color are oppressed through negative attributions purveyed via social institutions, to a focus on the underlying beliefs in white superiority that engender the unearned privileging of white people. the central recognition that the effects of racism are made possible through system-wide practices of racialized discrimination has remained. approaches for identifying and addressing racial injustice have, however, changed. these analyses have been articulated within networks of people of color, then shared with networks of white people, and have emerged within various antiracism projects to guide interpersonal and institutional practices. we believe that, although much of the information proliferating in today’s digital age appears transient and inconsequential, some concepts become iterative cultural memes capable of wide influence precisely because they are meaningful and consequential. such is the case with the three big ideas we find central to effective social justice efforts: advocacy, taking action in support of a cause; allyship, entering into relationships to pursue shared goals; and accountability to/with those with whom the advocacy and alliances are engaged, a perspective that includes concomitant expectations of responsibility for action on behalf of justice. while academics tussle over definitions and measurement (blackmore, 2010; mcnamara, 2011; situngkir, 2004), corporate groups and internet users are rapidly finessing the art of meme marketing (memevertizing) to share ideas in “clever, memorable, easily communicated and absurdly contagious” formats (markowski, 2013, para. 5). setting aside for the moment academic uncertainties, we adopt a memetic perspective as “a useful heuristic [for gaining] insight into the nature of the social world” (marsden, 1998, memetic stance section, para. 1). it is from this angle that we investigate, via internet term searches, advocacy, allyship, and accountability as social justice memes. advocates & allies studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 155 advocacy, allyship, accountability: a relatively recent history advocacy and alliances are ideas with ancient roots in human cultures; but their social meanings and applications have shifted in response to changing values and politics. in today’s global digitized information age, interactive explorations of social justice theory and praxis are yielding synergistic insights and practices. in many social justice-oriented organizations, advocacy and allyship have become nearly synonymous with accountability. wwws? what would the web say?: via term searches on the world wide web, we traced the histories of advocacy, allyship, and accountability. limitations of this search include that only english language results are reported, thus the findings primarily reflect cultural views found in the united states, canada, and the united kingdom. given that the internet has been available to academia only since the 1980s, and for commercial and personal use only since the 1990s, this account is necessarily a constrained chronology of the threesome. even so, the number of search engine query “hits” summarized in table 1 shows a memetic progression in the evolution of advocacy and allyship, with the attendant emergence of accountability as a vital partner (search completed july 22nd 2016). results for a verbatim search for “advocates & allies” included the institutions where a&a (see part 2) is being replicated. the advocates & allies pairing was initially seen with lgbt+ organizations and was also seen on sites addressing: a support community for nonprofit groups, a human rights’ day event, homelessness, disability, support for public schooling, healthcare programs, youth engagement, mental health awareness, veganism, and domestic violence. overall, the results summarized in table 1 show that in the 1980s advocacy links primarily reflected concerns regarding “vulnerable persons” along with legal, medical, and religious issues (48,200 hits). the 1990s showed similar foci with increasing mentions of human and civil rights associations with the term (450,000 hits). calls for cross-cultural knowledge and respect emerged at the turn of the century (25,000,000 hits), and explicit recognition of a need for collaboration with persons for whom the advocacy is meant began showing up post-2010 (58,400,000 hits for 2011-2016). cali l. anicha, canan bilen-green, ann burnett studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 156 search terms advocacy, advocate (most results used both terms) allyship advocates and allies/a&a time period total results 1980’s 48,200 1 1,110 1990’s 450,000 14 6,870 2000-2010 25,000,000 983 102,000 2011-2016 58, 400,000 20,100 1, 110,000 topical results 1980’s legal, medical/patients, religious and “vulnerable persons” advocacy single result associated with safe zone webpage at rutgers university, “awareness and allyship” training noted to have begun feb. 15, 1988 business/labor, military/defense, political, medical/health, disability; mention of national gay rights organizing 1990’s similar to previous decade with occasional mentions of human and civil rights – title ix and disability/special education primarily lgbt; also antiracism + some commentary on accountability business/industry, political, health; increasing instances of antiviolence and antioppression, pro diversity and environment citations 2000-2010 continue to see medical, legal, religious; add consumer, housing advocacy; state the need for crosscultural knowledge, respect lgbt, antiracism, diversity, cultural competence do’s/don’ts using both terms for legal and issues-based community organizing: environment, lgbt, antiracism, sexism, disability, education, includes accountability of those with power/advantage 2011-2016 [denotes a 5rather than 10-year span] focus on skillbuilding in advocacy work; explicit recognition of need for collaboration with persons for whom the advocacy is meant pitfalls and commoditization of allyship/ally identities; despair of marginalized folks due to ineffective/insincere allyship/claims lgbt primarily paired with accountability for education and action; forward a&a and wepan; homelessness, disability selfadvocacy, tribal sovereignty table 1. internet history term search from 1980’s through july 2016. (note: the lgbt advocate magazine began publishing in 1967.) advocates & allies studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 157 allyship followed a similar path, though with lower frequencies – from a fundamental awareness of the concept, to cultural competence within alliances. the single instance of allyship found in the 1980s was associated with an lgbt safe zone site; hits grew to 20,100 by mid-2016. concerns regarding insincere and ineffective ally behaviors are found frequently in more recent posts; however, explicit mention of accountability emerged concomitantly on sites exploring allyship as early as the 1990s. in the 1980s and 1990s accountability primarily appeared in relation to business, military, political, and medical concerns, though the term was also seen in association with disability and gay rights. by 2000 accountability was firmly rooted in analyses of the responsibilities of persons with power/advantage regarding community activism for the environment, lgbt+ rights, antiracism, antisexism, and disability justice. an exploration of the content found on the most recently developed sites revealed a prevailing community-based construal of accountability in which whites are understood to be accountable to/with people of color, men to/with women, straights to/with gender nonconforming individuals, and tabs (temporarily able-bodied) and neurotypicals accountable to/with people perceived as disabled, etc. accountability to/with marginalized “others” is identified as crucial because clear understandings about the behaviors and systems that perpetuate social (in)justices rarely emerge spontaneously in the minds of privileged individuals. rather, persons directly experiencing unearned disadvantages become cartographers of the privilege landscape. unfortunately, and much to the detriment of us all, current dominant culture hegemony conspires with our tendencies to avoid uncertainty and discomfort, and thus operates to maintain the invisibility (to the privileged) of unearned advantaging. to be genuinely accountable, it is crucial to first seek out and listen to those with whom allyship is sought. in that listening, we must learn to recognize when in-group bias/superiority or stereotyping influences or interrupts accurate perceptions and understandings, and thereby perpetuates disconnection, judgment, and conflict. when advocates engage in deep listening and enter into allyship with a clear recognition that each one’s liberation is equally at stake, then genuine accountability can be cultivated. in sum, accountability is essential for and central to respectful, genuine, and beneficial advocacy and allyship. when it comes to the socially constructed and sanctioned unearned privileging of whiteness, maleness, gender-conformity, and physicaland neuro-typicality, those among us to whom privileges accrue are too often unaware and undereducated. until those of us with unearned advantage hold ourselves accountable to/with persons experiencing unearned disadvantage, we cannot fully comprehend the injustices of the world, or hope to engender justice. cali l. anicha, canan bilen-green, ann burnett studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 158 part 2: ndsu forward advocates and allies in part 2 of this dispatch, we investigate the memes of advocacy, allyship, and accountability in relation to the development of a gender equity program at a midwestern united states university. we begin by recognizing that the advocates and allies program (a&a) is founded on the important work accomplished by multiple sociopolitically marginalized communities who have developed and shared critical analyses and organizing tools for social justice. after recounting the succession of campus equity efforts that prefigured and provided crucial grounding for the program, we outline central features of the a&a faculty gender equity initiative. next, we share the responses of men faculty and administrators to their engagement in gender equity work. a review of campus equity efforts circa 1980s to present day academics are neither separate from nor immune to cultural contexts, and academia is a veritable bastion of unearned advantaging and privileging (thomas, 2017). thus, although critical studies of race, gender (cis and lgbt+), and disability are acknowledged as transdisciplinary academic fields, their knowledge-bases have necessarily been generated from marginalized communities. an honest review of the lineage and social evolution of the central tenets of any intellectual activism (hill collins, 2013) must acknowledge the legions of organizers and activists who have imbued advocacy and allyship with a rich critical cultural reserve that supports us all in the ongoing project of social equity. by examining the succession of this particular university-based program within the broadened social context detailed in part 1, we wish to give appropriate recognition to communitybased activists, whilst furthering the important and unfinished work of gender-equity in academia. in the late 1980s, and through the next two decades, the accountability meme came to life at our university through two primary grassroots sources. first, antiracist education and organizing workshops were hosted by local community organizations, often in collaboration with our university. those trainings, provided by the people’s institute for survival and beyond,2 and crossroads antiracism and organizing,3 were grounded in systemic power analyses and a recognition of the accountability of white people to/with communities of color in the work to undo racism. although the initial focus of the workshops was an analysis of the myriad ways in which people of color experienced racism, an examination of the primary role(s) of 2 see http://www.pisab.org 3 see http://crossroadsantiracism.org advocates & allies studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 159 government, schools, and religious organizations in perpetuating racial inequities followed. the take-home message was clear: those institutions were run by recipients of unearned privileging based on beliefs of white racial superiority, and racial equity would only be realized when white people understood and acted on this knowledge. this early antiracism work led to the development of tocar (training our campuses against racism), a local multi-campus initiative that provided a continuum of introductory, intermediate, and advanced antiracism education and organizing activities until 2010.4 though our university-sanctioned antiracism team has been decommissioned, the lessons learned continue to inform the personal and professional lives of many campus and local community members. accountability is also reflected in the safe zone trainings that have been held continuously on our campus since 2001.5 workshops offered through the current safe zone program have been adapted from community-based ally networks in support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual (lgbtqia) communities. similarly to antiracism work, safe zone programming is grounded in systemic power analyses; recognition of the accountability of straight people (cisgender hetero) to/with gendernonconforming communities is a central tenet. it is probable that there were influential social justice efforts on our campus that preceded our time, though we have not researched that question. what we can say from our current perspective is that the antiracism analyses shared with us by community organizers, in which white people are guided to seek out, listen to, and act with people of color, has stayed with us. we also learned that this is often difficult medicine for white people to swallow in the face of a social system that constantly represents white experience not only as the superior, but as the sole norm. similarly, safe zone trainings invite the cisgender heterosexual majority to recognize that their sexuality is presented as a sole and superior norm, and to accept accountability to/with gender nonconformists. although the ongoing educational and advocacy efforts of the safe zone program have been crucial in promoting a welcoming campus climate, local and regional politics continue to be less than welcoming. indeed, the recent rise in misogynistic rhetoric across the united states is allowing increases in gendered discrimination in all its forms (khazan, 2016). even so, our campus antiracism and safe zone efforts have borne fruit in the form of the a&a model. in 2008 the a&a program began as a signature project of advance forward,6 a national science foundation (nsf) funded gender equity initiative launched at our university. the program was distinctive in its focus on men faculty and offered an adaptable model for gender equity advocacy in academic workplaces (anicha, bilen-green, burnett, froelich & holbrook, 2017; anicha, burnett & bilen-green, 2015). unique aspects included that 4 see https://www.ndsu.edu/diversity/diversity_council_information/anti_racism_team/ 5 see https://www.ndsu.edu/safezone 6 see https://www.ndsu.edu/forward/ cali l. anicha, canan bilen-green, ann burnett studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 160 a&a was designed to address the gender equity education needs of men faculty while simultaneously leveraging their substantial social and university governance powers. to initiate the a&a model, tenured men faculty who had demonstrated engagement in gender equity efforts were recruited to establish a core group of advocates. the goal of the campus-wide program continues to be: (a) educate men faculty about gender inequity in academia; (b) introduce men faculty to strategies for bringing about positive change in their departments and colleges; and (c) build a supportive network of men advocates and allies to work to create a more equitable climate for women faculty. advocates are committed to increasing their understanding of gender bias and its impact on the academic careers of women. they educate themselves about issues of gender inequity, and they work to increase the number of women faculty, encourage the hiring and promotion of women faculty into administrative positions, and ensure the fair and equitable treatment of women within their institution. advocates develop and offer regularly scheduled ally workshops for men faculty who are interested in becoming allies, and follow up with informal meetings to discuss case studies with the intent of continuing to increase their and the allies knowledge about gender inequity in higher education. allies are men faculty who participate in gender equity (ally) workshops and are expected to take action primarily within their departments including by speaking up at meetings, inviting women colleagues to collaborate on research, and serving on committees in place of their women colleagues to reduce the inequity in service loads. allies can volunteer to become advocates as they become more familiar with the program. a comparison of the a&a program structures with equity approaches used in corporate spheres shows many similarities.7 however, the clarity with which a&a affirms and acts on the need to access direct support and guidance from women appears to be unique. rather than expecting men faculty to be knowledgeable about gender inequities, a foundational assumption of a&a is that all men, including highly educated academics, need multiple, iterative gender equity learning opportunities to become aware of the existing hegemony of noxious standards of what bell hooks has identified as patriarchal masculinity (2005). men faculty who participate in a&a accept responsibility for their own and other men faculty members’ (re)education and commit to taking corrective steps to overcome the patriarchal norms that shape them. to sustain awareness and inform action, men faculty in the a&a program consider inter/national, local, campus, and departmental data that reveal gendered inequities, and learn about the myriad ways implicit bias manifests in individual as well as institutional actions. importantly, maintaining formal advisory relationships 7 e.g., the national center for women and information technology comprehensive review of top 10 ways to be a male advocate for technical women at https://www.ncwit.org/resources/read-online-maleadvocate advocates & allies studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 161 with women faculty provides pathways for accountability and promotes effective advocacy and allyship. both of the sustained campus equity efforts, tocar and safe zone, reviewed above adopted a community-based social justice construal of accountability with slight variations to suit university contexts. several of the faculty members who developed the a&a program had also participated in those efforts and were well-grounded in analyses of accountability made there. if the forward a&a insistence on women faculty as advisors is understood as an accountability meme variant, then it appears to have demonstrated fitness value and successfully negotiated selection pressures to date. what do the men say? notes from the field although the a&a program was developed at our university expressly for men in academic settings, the approach is firmly rooted in the fundamentals of forming effective alliances for equity across sociopolitical differences. the effectiveness of the model relies on the approach being adopted by a stable network of advocates. we have recently garnered a second nsf grant to more comprehensively support the development and test the fidelity of a&a programs at other universities.8 since the inception of the model in 2008 we have gathered evaluation data from workshop participants; and in 2013 an external evaluator interviewed 15 advocates at our university to learn why they decided to join the initiative, what issues they hoped to address, and challenges they experienced.9 over the past year, interviews have been completed with men who are coordinating a&a programs on their commitment to accountability. informational sessions about the a&a model have been presented at a number of conferences, advocates and ally workshops have been held on 10campuses, and ethnographic notes describing attendees’ reactions were collected during recent advocate and ally workshops. these data show that men faculty participate in the a&a program for several reasons, the majority of which are internally motivated. reasons to participate include specific examples of inequities that were bothersome, distress about knowing that inequities exist, or simply a desire to be part of the solution to gender inequity. one advocate recalled a faculty search in his department in which a woman candidate was on the short list: “i remember a couple of my senior colleagues saying, ‘well, looks like maybe she’s been riding people’s coat tails.’ and you look at her record, and she had something like 50 publications and 35 first author publications. like, how can you look at that and say that she’s been riding coat tails?” another advocate remarked about the issues, “… in our engineering college, which 8 see https://www.ndsu.edu/forward/advocates_and_allies/about_advocates_allies/ 9 all internal and external evaluations are located at www.ndsu.edu/forward cali l. anicha, canan bilen-green, ann burnett studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 162 has struggled horrendously with gender representation, particularly at the faculty level. yeah, there’s problems and anybody sees it.” many respondents indicated that gender inequities observed for women family members had led them to desire to learn more and participate in gender equity efforts. one advocate explained, “because, you know, i have two sisters. so i know the difficulty, they talk at home.” others indicated that observing gendered discrimination or hearing information about gender disparities at their own university had led them to a&a involvement. one advocate noted that his department was “male-dominated” and after witnessing bias against women faculty, he wanted to “take steps to improve that and help more people understand the situation.” a few of the participants felt they were well-positioned to influence change, including one department chair who said, “i also thought that our department was a good example, and i could lead from that because we went from a department of two women and eleven men to now being seven women and six men, and i’d like to think i had something to do with that.” what do men faculty get from participation in a&a? advocates reported that a&a engagement provided them with opportunities to gain knowledge about social justice concerns and to take corrective actions; an ethnographic note taker reported, “participants highlight[ed] their commitment to diversity and gender equity/empowerment.” one interviewee noted that being an advocate “is as much a process of self-education as it is educating others, and so it’s both an advocacy group but also a study group.” on postworkshop surveys, a&a participants reported that the workshop had substantially increased their awareness of gender inequities and had provided them with useful tools and strategies for addressing gender equity. comments included on evaluations frequently indicated that participants especially appreciated talking through anecdotal scenarios that both described gender discrimination taking place and provided appropriate and effective responses. participants noted that having those conversations with other men was particularly beneficial. these data suggest that when men faculty are offered information, tools, and opportunities to work for gender equity, they are willing to do so. it may be that, when applied with critical analyses, using male workshop leaders and ensuring men-only dialogue is particularly wellsuited to disrupting patriarchal masculinity. as is true for social justice efforts in general, push-back is to be expected when a real threat to the status quo is underway (bishop, 2005).a recognition of the inevitability of such repercussions is one reason for recruiting tenured men faculty to act as advocates. nevertheless, even when protected by tenure, individual men acting on behalf of gender equity are likely to experience hostility and rejection from some of their colleagues; this is a concern in a workplace where collaborations and perceptions of collegiality can make or break a career. thus, anticipation of backlash also underlies the rationale for the development of interactive campus-wide support networks of advocates and allies. cohorts of men acting on behalf of gender equity may advocates & allies studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 163 be less vulnerable to backlash; however, meaningful institutional change requires tactical, thorough, and sustained efforts, meaning that men need to commit to the long haul (horton, kohl & kohl, 1990) and be prepared to meet resistance with persistence and creativity. so – what’s in a meme? interpretations and conclusions our cursory investigation of web content related to advocacy and allyship over the last 35 years indicates that the roles of advocates have morphed. overall, the essence of advocacy has shifted from political, legal, and economic foci, to the use of social power on behalf of vulnerable others, to expectations that unearned social power can be deployed to dismantle systems of unearned advantaging. similarly, the idea of allyship has shifted to express lateral rather than hierarchical “helping” relationships, and to expectations that allyship is an ongoing real-time behavior rather than a static identity. the forward a&a program took up the social justice memes of advocacy, allyship, and accountability that were central to the existing community-driven antiracism and lgbtq collaborations, and adapted them to advance gender equity in academia. accountability was centralized via formal processes for listening to the input of and acting with women faculty. this is no small contribution given the positioning of academics as “knowledge creators.” in the case of our institution, the community shared knowledge, ways of knowing, analyses, and lived experience with academics, and the academics translated those gifts into change processes for campus communities that had been hardwired to support privilege. reviewing our university history alongside evolving perceptions of advocacy, allyship, and accountability reveals that a&a is richly grounded in this social justice trifecta. in sum, our concern is that fidelity to the core meme of accountability is not lost. crucially, the gender-equity work of men must be grounded in a social justice construal of accountability lest it reflect no more than tired repetitions of unearned privilege. whether operating in academic, corporate, political, or community settings, recognizing this essential tenet will improve the effectiveness and integrity of social justice efforts. as this brief review of the conceptual terrain of advocacy, allyship, and accountability has shown, these are evolving ideas. with each iteration we come closer to the desired outcomes of equity and justice. if this contemplation on social justice has resonated with you, consider yourself memed. may you go forth and multiply! cali l. anicha, canan bilen-green, ann burnett studies in social justice, volume 12, issue 1, 152-164, 2018 164 acknowledgements this research in part was supported by national science foundation grants # hrd-0811239 and # hrd-1500604. references anicha, c. l., bilen-green, c., burnett, a., froelich, k., & holbrook, s. (2017). institutional transformation: toward a diversity-positive campus culture. journal of women & minorities in science and engineering, 23(2). doi: 10.1615/jwomenminorscieneng.2017017021 anicha, c. l., burnett, a., & bilen-green, c. (2015). men faculty gender-equity advocates: a qualitative analysis of theory and praxis. journal of men's studies, 23(1), 21-43. balkin, j. m. (1998). cultural software: a theory of ideology. new haven, ct: yale univeristy press. bandura, a. (2006). toward a psychology of human agency. perspectives on psychological science, 1(2), 164-180. bishop, a. (2005). beyond token change: breaking the cycle of oppression in institutions. halifax, n.s.: fernwood. blackmore, s. (1999). the meme machine. new york: oxford university press. blackmore, s. (2010). memetics does provide a useful way of understanding cultural evolution. in f. ayala & r. arp (eds.), contemporary debates in philosophy of biology (pp. 255-272). malden, ma: wiley-blackwell. dawkins, r. (1989). the selfish gene. oxford: oxford university press. hill collins, p. (2013). on intellectual activism. philadelphia, pa: temple university press. hooks, b. (2005). the will to change: men, masculinity, and love. new york: washington square press. horton, m., kohl, j., & kohl, h. r. (1990). the long haul: an autobiography (1st ed.). new york: doubleday. lash, s. (2007). power after hegemony: cultural studies in mutation? theory culture & society, 24(3), 55-78. markowski, j. (2013). the best examples of meme marketing. sparks: insights into content, marketing, pr, and results [social media blog]. retrieved from http://sparksheet.com/thebest-examples-of-meme-marketing/ marsden, p. (1998). memetics and social contagion: two sides of the same coin? journal of memetics evolutionary models of information transmission, 2(2), 171-185. mcnamara, a. (2011). can we measure memes? frontiers in evolutionary neuroscience, 3(1), 1-7. situngkir, h. (2004). on selfish memes: culture as complex adaptive system. journal of social complexity, 2(1), 20-32. capurri final feb 7 16 correspondence address: valentina capurri, department of geography & environmental studies, ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, on, m5b 2k3, email: vcapurri@ryerson.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 1, 170-173, 2017 book review issues in social justice: citizenship and transnational struggles basok, tanya & ilcan, suzan. (2013). don mills, on: oxford university press. isbn 9780195437751 (paper) ca$64.95. 208 pages valentina capurri ryerson university, canada issues in social justice is an excellent overview of core concepts that inform the debate on social justice within an increasingly global context. authors tanya basok and suzan ilcan, both sociologists, combine a strong theoretical analysis with more of an “on the ground” perspective that makes this text accessible not only to academics and professionals but also to students and the general public. in the introduction, the authors clarify that their study is intended to answer the three basic questions what, who, and how: what is relevant within a social justice context, who is included or excluded within the social justice discourse, and how decisions about the content of social justice are made (p. 4). they also define the meaning given throughout the text to the concept of social justice, understood as a process of change rather than a fixed status, a process that is not linear, but rather proceeds with advancements and reversals. chapter 2 provides a comprehensive and clear outline of social justice in relation to social inclusion and its three fundamental dimensions: equal access, democratic political participation, and cultural diversity. the discussion highlights how struggles for social justice do not necessarily encompass everyone, but rest on the inclusion of some and the exclusion of others. it is therefore essential to ask not only what kind of rights, benefits, and privileges should be provided to people in a socially just society, but also who is allowed to claim these rights and who is excluded from them. book review studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 170-173, 2017 171 the concept of citizenship and its relation to social justice is the focus of chapter 3. beginning with a discussion of the westphalian system and the primacy of the nation-state, the authors elucidate how in today’s world, social justice principles do not yet have universal application, but remain tied to citizenship status. a good summary is provided with respect to the evolution through time of the idea and practice of citizenship. references are made to t. h. marshall’s contribution to the notion of citizenship as well as to its limitations. throughout the chapter, the authors define citizenship both as a status that some people have and others lack, and as a set of practices shaped through social struggles. the welfare state developed after the second world war; its decline and the rise of neoliberalism are the subject of chapter 4. basok and ilcan offer a good analysis of the welfare system and its limitations, including the way “it produced exclusion, inequalities, and social divisions” (p. 85). they also provide a clear picture of what the rise of neoliberalism (with its emphasis on free-market solutions, entrepreneurialism, and individual responsibility) and the consequent displacement of social citizenship have meant for those people who are in a socially and economically marginalized position. chapter 5 represents a continuation of the discussion that began in chapter 4. here the authors discuss how, within the current system dominated by neoliberalism and characterized by the decline of a welfare approach, voluntary organizations have acquired a critical role in the delivery of public services to marginalized populations. in fact, voluntary organizations have assumed responsibility for a job that was in the past done by the state and have become “de facto agencies of the state” (p. 97), since the latter is largely responsible for their financing and does in effect ends up determining policy. after a brief history of voluntary organizations since the second world war, the chapter explains how the downsizing of the public sector under neoliberal agendas has left voluntary organizations, whose initial mandate was advocating for policy changes, scrambling to fill a void in service provision. by developing an unequal partnership (unequal because they do not control funding) with the state or the private sector, voluntary organizations have lost their independence as the state or private sector can now control how these organizations operate, how their policies are implemented, and how effectively their tasks are carried out. the practice of auditing that has become common among voluntary organizations and is a prerequisite to obtain funding has resulted in the transformation of these organizations into market-oriented and less politicized entities. this loss of independence and depoliticization might significantly imperil the ability of voluntary organizations to effectively advocate for social justice. the sixth chapter shifts the focus to human rights, and questions whether human rights norms and institutions can really provide universal protection and therefore address the social exclusion inherent in the concept of citizenship, a concept that remains under the purview of nation-states. overall, the chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the human rights valentina capurri studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 170-173, 2017 172 system, and highlights its strengths as well as its limits, particularly a still unresolved tension between “social and economic rights, on the one hand, and civic and political rights on the other” (p. 114). the authors also address the challenge of reconciling the idea and practice of universal human rights with the respect for cultural diversity. transnational activism is the topic discussed in chapter 7. here basok and ilcan distinguish between transnational activism “from above” and transnational activism “from below.” the first refers to activism carried out by international organizations, such as amnesty international or various united nations agencies, whereas the latter refers to advocacy efforts by transnational activist networks operating at the local or national levels and having a global reach. the chapter aims to demonstrate that transnational activism has the potential to bring forward social justice demands on a global scale, irrespective of the resistance of individual states, private agencies, or international organizations such as the international monetary fund (imf) or the world bank (wb). chapter 8 expands the discussion to the global sphere by focusing on “global social justice” and “global justice networks” (p. 168), as a way to assess whether a more socially just world can be reached. the world social forum is used as a model for creating a space where various individuals, social movements, and organizations from all over the world can develop alternative visions to the current neoliberal reality. while the authors appreciate the importance of the world social forum, they also maintain that there is a need to further expand spaces of democratic participation. overall, this is an excellent academic textbook largely addressed to undergraduate students that provides a valuable contribution to the discussion surrounding social justice in an increasingly globalized world. by adopting a thematic focus, the authors have been able to examine core concepts animating the social justice debate, from citizenship to human rights to transnational forms of activism. most of the limitations of the text are inevitable when trying to cover such a multifaceted and complex topic in a necessarily limited space. nevertheless, i would have liked at least a mention in chapter 5 of local voluntary organizations that have refused to be coopted by the state and that have successfully demonstrated how to maintain an advocacy orientation. the ontario coalition against poverty (ocap; see www.ocap.ca) in toronto, canada, would have been one excellent example worth mentioning. the discussion of human rights in the text correctly notes how their enforcement is severely limited by the dominance of national sovereignty, yet it fails to recognize that nation-states are organized globally along a very precise power hierarchy. clearly, some states can get away with repeated violations of human rights much more easily and frequently than others (for instance, few states but the united states would have been able to survive unscathed the scandal that has been the guantanamo bay detention camp, a place where human rights have been systematically and continuously violated). in the chapter discussing transnational activism, it would have been book review studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 170-173, 2017 173 helpful to point out a number of limitations with the activism of international and national organizations that have increasingly developed close partnerships with state actors and become part of a trend usually identified as “revolving doors,” whereby those working for various non-government organizations (ngos) move back and forth throughout their professional career between the ngo and government sectors (see, e.g., hilton, crowson, mouhot & mckay, 2012). this is certainly a worrying trend that should have us critically question the impartiality of several major ngos. finally, whereas the text offers an effective analysis on how economic decisions and shifts impact on social justice, it is largely silent on how geopolitics also plays a significant role in the maintenance of a world that is still socially unjust to many. a brief discussion of imperialism and neoimperialism would have made the analysis more complete and convincing. each chapter is accompanied by several text boxes that provide the reader with a more in-depth look at authors or concepts mentioned throughout the text. at the end of each chapter, readers can also find some provoking questions for critical thought, useful annotated readings on the topics discussed, and a short list of related websites. overall, this is a well structured and effective text that should be read by scholars and students in the social sciences, those involved in policy making, activists, and all those readers interested in social justice and the possibility to achieve a more socially just world. references hilton, m., crowson, n., mouhot, j., & mckay, j. (2012). a historical guide to ngos in britain: charities, civil society and the voluntary sector since 1945. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. _____ maria joy ferrera, phd, lcsw, associate professor, and sonya crabtree-nelson, phd, lcsw, associate professor, department of social work, depaul university, chicago, il. copyright © 2022 authors, vol. 22 no. 2 (summer 2022), 436-453, doi: 10.18060/24965 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. critical empowerment frameworks paramount to social justice work maria joy ferrera sonya crabtree-nelson abstract: as we continue to navigate the complex challenges of a pandemic and the urgent need for racial justice, social work faculty are well positioned to train the next generation of social workers in human rights work and structural change movements. authors discuss how engaging key critical empowerment frameworks that include critical race theory, structural competency, together with a decolonizing and transdisciplinary lens within community-engaged research and practice can provide social work students models for collective impact. leveraging university-community partnerships to directly provide faculty mentorship around human rights work will also be discussed. one author has been working with the institution’s law school and their neighborhood legal assistance project to provide support, legal resources, and advocacy. she has also co-founded and is developing a chicago-based coalition to address intimate partner violence-induced brain injury. the second author has helped start and develop two coalitions to advance a coordinated structural response involving the provision of mental health resource support and psychosocial forensic asylum assessments within immigrant communities. authors also discuss how students have been engaged in health equity work through a racial and healing justice initiative that values and provides training around healing circles within indigenous communities and communities of color. through these rich learning experiences, students internalize the value of critical empowerment frameworks that inform participatory approaches in collaboration and coalition building that are essential to social justice work and the process of social and structural change. keywords: human rights, social justice, transdisciplinary, structural competency critical empowerment frameworks we are in the midst of a health and human rights crisis. as we continue to navigate the complex challenges of a pandemic and the urgent need for racial justice, social work faculty are well positioned to train the next generation of social workers in human rights work and structural change movements. however, it can be argued today that the connection between human rights and social work is not evident to social workers (androff, 2018) and that we continue to be “unfaithful angels” who have abandoned the original social justice mission of social work working with the most oppressed individuals and communities who have experienced severe and mass human rights violations (specht & courtney, 1995). a general survey of the organizations, institutions, and contexts where social workers most work reveal more clinical or direct practice settings, with significant projected growth in child, family and school social work, healthcare, mental health, and substance use in the next decade (u.s. bureau of labor statistics, u.s. department of labor, 2021). competent social workers are desperately needed in these areas. these arenas enable social workers to witness some of the most oppressive structural and social conditions that have led to about:blank ferrera & crabtree-nelson/critical empowerment frameworks 437 community violence, poor education, child abuse and neglect, severely compromised mental health, and inequity in health and healthcare. as direct witnesses, social workers are then well positioned to engage equally in advocacy and social change efforts that are required of social justice work. to this end, we echo the work of scholars who have underlined the importance of conceptual frameworks that endorse an anti-oppressive, liberatory, action-oriented lens inherent in just practice (finn, 2021). we assert that as we collectively change the paradigm of social work education, research, and practice, fully engaging key frameworks need to be a large part of this change. the following paragraphs discuss the saliency of key frameworks that are critical to effective social justice work, including the utilization of a transdisciplinary lens and structural competency in solving complex social problems that stem from human rights violations; a more nuanced understanding of critical race theory and the need to decolonize our social work education and curriculum, research, and practice through community participatory action research and restorative justice approaches. we define and discuss these frameworks as it relates to social work and just practice, and then discuss how we have applied this in our teaching and practice as scholar-activists. engaging a transdisciplinary lens in social work social workers do well in considering and synthesizing various disciplines in research and practice. it is an inherently multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary realm of practice aiming to solve “wicked,” or complex humanitarian problems and social issues. although the concepts interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary are used interchangeably to refer to the involvement of multiple disciplines, they are each distinct here, and can be regarded within a continuum (broersma, 2014). multidisciplinary draws from different disciplines while maintaining the boundaries of these disciplines (choi & pak, 2006). interdisciplinary involves integrating two or more disciplines to the degree that knowledge and conceptual frames are informed by the other discipline(s). transdisciplinary involves researchers and practitioners from different fields who not only work closely together on a common problem but also create a shared conceptual model of the problem that integrates and transcends each of their separate disciplinary perspectives (flinterman et al., 2001; rosenfield, 1992; soskolne, 2000). with this, collaboration is key, and the social worker expands their repertoire of knowledge and expertise and is also open to acquiring new skills beyond what they traditionally do. it is for this reason that dual degrees in law, public health, migration studies, critical ethnic studies, among others contribute to working knowledge in justice work. social workers are well positioned to engage a transdisciplinary approach to research, practice, and activism that embraces different perspectives on problems, and creates comprehensive research questions that lead to comprehensive responses and effective solutions. in this sense we are challenged to transcend the traditional boundaries of our social work knowledge and expand the array of strategies in intervention and addressing wicked humanitarian problems. the social worker moves well beyond generalist practice to specialization in multiple realms. indeed, social workers are not known to “stay in their lane” given the many hats they wear, but this transdisciplinary lens challenges us to delve deeper in disciplines from which we would not normally develop expertise. a transdisciplinary approach in both research and practice advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 438 heightens the ability of social workers to grapple with complex societal problems and respond with a greater repertoire of theoretical frameworks from other disciplines that inform decision making in addressing these problems. a transdisciplinary team that involves social workers who engage cross-disciplinary collaboration can target interventions and coordinate response on multiple levels, including the individual, community, societal and structural levels (gehlert et al., 2017). later in this paper, we will discuss how we have engaged a transdisciplinary perspective in our community-engaged coalition building work with other disciplines, including law, medicine, psychology, and neuroscience. defining human rights to center social justice if social justice is at the core of our work, so is human rights. but how do we collectively define human rights? we start with the united nations universal declaration of human rights (undhr) that are fundamental and universal (united nations general assembly, 1948). it is not enough to be drawn to this field to “do good,” and with the best of intentions of helping others. to be human is to have implicit bias towards others. this reveals itself in how we are trained (e.g., adult psychopathology course, referencing the diagnostic statistical manual to categorize human “abnormal” behavior) to integrate a deficits perspective and diagnose the individuals we work with. although the field of social work has sought to broaden the lens when theorizing and contextualizing peoples’ lived experiences, the medical model is still the underlying core from which we “treat” and intervene in the “case” or the “client” (finn, 2021). in many contexts where social workers diagnose and treat clients, the social worker is placed in the position of power and individuals are not seen as participants or co-collaborators (finn, 2021). individuals, groups, and communities continue to be stigmatized for various reasons with social workers perpetuating harm by being part of systems that cause structural violence and harm. social work indeed recognizes the dignity and worth of every human being. in its mission and values, it is a human rights profession. social work can often be culture-bound in its ideas and practice so that social work in the united states, which still often centers on individual ideas about the self, can look different from social work in other developing nations where a collective personhood is the understood norm (finn, 2021). it can be argued that the social work presence in local and global human rights movements has been lacking in the past several decades (androff, 2018; healy, 2008). with more focus on human need than human rights, lack of visibility in social movements, as well as sustained global leadership in the social work field, social workers are challenged to contribute more to broader social change efforts. ensuring the explicit understanding among our students and practitioners of how we define fundamental and universal human rights enables us to be more pointed in these efforts. a rights-based lens endorses the main principles of human dignity, nondiscrimination, participation, transparency, and accountability (androff, 2015; mcpherson & abell, 2020) and affirms the rights of every individual to education, healthcare, and a standard of living adequate for health and well-being, including housing and medical care, etc. (united nations, 1948). we will discuss how our communityengaged transdisciplinary work has had particular focus on the universal right to adequate ferrera & crabtree-nelson/critical empowerment frameworks 439 medical care (article 25), freedom of movement between state and country borders (article 13), and the right to seek asylum from persecution (article 14; assembly, 1948). structural competency following the need to pursue broader, structural change to promote human rights and social justice are transdisciplinary strategic approaches that require structural competency. social workers are well aware of the structural violence that exists in our country the social structures economic, political, legal, religious, and cultural that prevent individuals, groups, and societies from reaching their full potential (galtung, 1969). perpetuated by oppressive systems of power, historical trauma and erasure, and the unequal distribution of resources, structural violence causes harm on a multitude of levels (e.g., police brutality, historical oppression through slavery or colonization, institutional racism, health disparities causing lower life expectancy in communities of color, etc.). we believe that the immensity of this harm cannot be addressed by cultural competency or cultural humility alone. while both may lead to an awareness of implicit bias in the clinical encounter, structural competency leads to diagnoses of economic and political conditions that produce health inequalities (metzl et al., 2018). metzl and hansen (2014) define cultural competency in structural terms, shifting focus away from an individual deficit lens inherent in the medical model, and pointing to neighborhood, policy, institutional and social conditions that regulate exclusion. more precisely, structural competency is “the trained ability to discern how a host of issues defined clinically as symptoms, attitudes, or diseases (e.g., depression, hypertension, obesity, smoking, medication “non-compliance,” trauma, psychosis) also represent the downstream implications of a number of upstream decisions about such matters as health care and food delivery systems, zoning laws, urban and rural infrastructures, medicalization, or even about the very definitions of illness and health” (metzl & hansen, 2014, p. 5). although the concept of structural competency is relatively new within the health and medicine arena, it is a perspective that is not new to the social work field, honing the idea that to combat structural violence, is to first study and understand its “social machinery of oppression.” (farmer, 2004 p. 307). while it is unnamed as such, this paradigm is at the heart of social justice work and its original mission, more often lost over time in the arena of struggle between individual need and social reform in the social work profession (abramowitz, 1998). structural competency and meaningful collaboration (e.g., coalition building) enabled by transdisciplinary approaches are necessary in building structures that promote individual health and community wellness and should be incorporated more stringently in social work education and training (downey et al., 2019). decolonization as a form of resistance decolonization can be defined as “the active resistance against colonial powers and a shifting of power towards acquisition of our own political, economic, educational, cultural, psychic independence and power” (movement for black lives, n.d., p. 19). decolonization demands an indigenous framework and a centering of indigenous land, indigenous sovereignty, and indigenous ways of thinking and is not a metaphor meant to relieve those advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 440 of accountability and responsibility without giving up land or power or privilege (tuck & yang, 2012). in her book on decolonizing methodologies of research, linda tuhiwai smith (2021) discusses the detrimental effects research has had on indigenous communities and stresses the importance of interrogating what we have historically regarded as knowledge theories about where we come from, civilization, gender, culture, etcetera, stating “some theories are crap..there are decades and decades of rubbish about us” (american indian studies [ais] red tawks, 2021, 42:15). she prompts us to examine “who is documenting our realities?” “how can we recover ‘erased knowledge?’” her work urges us as researchers, educators, and practitioners to critically understand the history of empiricism and positivism that is entrenched in the study of white communities, and research findings that are based on the white experience. in essence, the realities and lived experiences of indigenous communities and people of color have not been documented and included in our collective memory because they have often been omitted in our education. how do young, emerging social workers then come to understand the weight and immense impact of historical trauma experienced by these communities? decolonization calls for deconstructing the systems that have historically and continually oppress black, brown, and indigenous communities. with this is a responsibility for us to engage in the process of “unlearning,” and embrace our role in questioning the status quo, examining how we ourselves are part of or perpetuate oppressive systems, pushing the boundaries of positivist perspectives; adopting the work and research of scholars and practitioners of color, and the importance of mixed methods and qualitative research that centers narratives and the lived experiences of diverse communities, is community-engaged, participatory, and action oriented (absolon, 2019; coates & heatherington, 2016; sinclair, 2004). the role of young researchers serves an important role in this endeavor as well as our own humility and openness to continually “unlearn.” it may involve challenging years of clinical training that in essence, endorses western approaches to therapy and community practice that is insensitive to the indigenous frame and to community realities, and engaging in what is often discomforting-humility, and being open to the need to educate ourselves on community-based forms of healing and indigenous practices that are strengths-based. as smith puts it, the process of decolonizing is emotional, healing, unsettling, and not for the faint hearted (aisw red tawks, 2021). critical race theory to decolonize is also to reject a colorblind lens. race and ethnicity still matter profoundly in the us and many countries around the world. with this, it is imperative for social work to endorse a critical ethnic studies perspective that holds up a more aggressive, race conscious position. critical race theory (crt), coined by kimberle crenshaw (2010) in the process of examining the relationship between race and law, defines race as a social construct, striking the idea of biological racial differences. highlighting the role of institutionalized racial power, she asserts that racism is deeply ingrained in legal systems and policies as well as within individual bias and prejudice (crenshaw, 2010). following this, we cannot underestimate the historical and present-day impact of racism that is institutionalized, internalized, and personally mediated (jones, 2000). crt, also regarded as a perspective or approach, is not static but evolving. the perspective of crt asserts that ferrera & crabtree-nelson/critical empowerment frameworks 441 in addition to the legal system, the fields of health and medicine are similarly sustained by social, political, and economic forms of governance that is racialized (bridges et al., 2017). the crt perspective promotes notions of social justice that involve interrogating systems where racial discrimination is present, and the resulting outcomes that impact (i.e., oppress, discriminate, deny the rights of) individuals and communities of color. crt informs social work in its emphasis on the use of narrative storytelling, naming one’s own reality, and giving weight to intersectionality involving, among others, race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation, and how their combination plays out in various settings (crenshaw, 2010). the crt perspective is vital to structural competency work, as the discourse around crt is grounded in a legal context that examines the sources of racial oppression and the reproduction of racial hierarchy in various systems and structures (bell, 1995; crenshaw, 2010). restorative justice practice aligned with the decolonization perspective is challenging western ideologies, practices, and engaging in alternative forms of healing that intentionally draws from and builds on community strengths. restorative justice (rj) is an alternative paradigm that provides an opportunity for social workers to return to the original social justice mission. honoring the dignity and humanity of every individual, restorative justice practice recognizes all individuals involved in crime, and acknowledges the harms to victim, offender, and community. healing is therefore multi-tiered, involving dialogue grounded in the community where accountability and responsibility are essential and community members collectively identify and address harms, needs, and obligations in order to heal and put things as right as possible (zehr, 2002, p. 37). rj can be practiced in various contexts where community building is needed. grounded in indigenous practices, family group conferencing specifically honors the practice of maori people, and the practice of peace or talking circles has had a long history within native american communities in the us and canada. there is growing evidence of the positive impact of rj in violence prevention efforts and improved social relationships (katic et al., 2020; mills et al., 2019). the challenge with this framework is to move away from responses that are shaming, punitive, and corrective toward more restorative efforts that effectively address individual offender needs. with this, we better understand the factors that led the offender to cause harm. we then see the offender for who they are in their own humanity. understanding the structural violence that has impacted the individual offender is paramount, and thus, so is our own structural competency. restorative justice can also inform how we hold power structures that cause harm accountable and how we work with communities to facilitate healing from historical trauma (davis, 2019; o’mahony & doak, 2017; russo, 2018; waldram, 2014). although trauma informed approaches are valued in the social work field, increased discourse is needed around how therapeutic approaches can more thoughtfully respond to and be sensitive to the varied histories of trauma and oppression experienced by communities. social workers have increasingly engaged restorative justice practice within various contexts (gumz, 2009), but can certainly incorporate this practice even more by increasing discourse within our field and working to infuse rj more effectively within advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 442 social work education (van wormer, 2006). unsettling ourselves we write this from our own lens. we recognize our own positions of privilege and power as well as struggle and vulnerability. we recognize our developing critical consciousness regarding the systemic and structural contexts in which we are embedded, including the academic and social service industrial complex (rodriguez, 2017; smith, 2007); and our responsibility to challenge the systems and structures which perpetuate oppression and violence. there is still much for us to learn. but we begin by holding ourselves accountable. we hold ourselves accountable to each other, our students, and the varied communities to which we belong and with whom we interact by engaging in constant critical self-reflexivity and the discomfort of recognizing our own biases (kondrat, 1999), and the practice of unsettling (finn, 2021). we ourselves are capable of causing harm and being complicit in systemic oppression, and to be engaged in socially just work, must practice taking accountability for our involvement in the perpetuation of oppression and violence (russo, 2018). we look to our colleagues, students, and the communities with whom we collaborate and work to check us. more broadly, our ideas of social justice are largely drawn from western philosophy and political theory as well as judeo-christian religious ideas (finn, 2021). in practice, this means that our ideas about what is just largely dovetails with our own moral values and beliefs. we agree with finn (2021) that it is our responsibility as social workers and educators to critique what we have been taught and to critically engage with varied perspectives that unsettle our certainties regarding what is true, good, and just. finn further posits that the social work profession could, and in fact should, do more to center justice in our profession. as a part of this action, we believe in the difficult and necessary work of going beyond the superficial notions of human diversity and instead address the structural and political processes in place that in fact produce differences and our ideas about difference (finn, 2021). community based and participatory action research approaches as researchers, we hold tremendous responsibility to the communities we collaborate with. as social workers, we often are in roles that identify community strengths and resilience, and participate in community building. just as important is to hold ourselves accountable for the potential harm we cause to communities, as social workers, educators, and researchers. as previously stated, smith’s (2021) work in decolonizing methodologies discusses the history of indigenous communities and communities of color traumatized by research, highlighting the importance of trauma-informed practices in the research endeavor. as social work educators and scholar-activists, we can thrive in an environment that is aligned with our social justice perspective and that nourishes the inherent value in promoting human rights. to a significant extent, we can claim that we are embedded in such an environment. both authors have been community-based research fellows of the ferrera & crabtree-nelson/critical empowerment frameworks 443 irwin w. steans center, a center within our university that is committed to “working toward, and reflecting upon, change in solidarity with those who struggle in our communities for freedom, justice, and equality” (depaul university, 2022, welcome, para.1). as fellows and through the training and support of the steans center, we have learned how to leverage university-community partnerships in order for communities to benefit from university resources and expertise. engaging community partners is heavily valued and seen as critical to social justice work. the question, “who does our research benefit?” drives our scholarship and holds us accountable for establishing and sustaining a right relationship with community members. this fellowship instills a commitment within us to be reflective of our own privilege, position of power as academics, researchers, practitioners and how we can cause harm. community action research or community based participatory research involves community members who are directly impacted in all levels of the research process (israel et al., 2017). it is a research approach that most explicitly holds us accountable to the community every step of the way in our research process. critical questions thus include: “what is the purpose of our research?” “what are the outcomes?” “how can our research process directly exploit and harm the communities that it centers on?” “are we asking the right question(s)?” “am i the right researcher to be engaging in this research?” to engage in these questions sustains our process of unsettling and centers the health and well-being of the community and its members in our work. engaging students in areas of action with community partners the authors’ social work program recently implemented its new concentration in forensic social work, with the understanding that social justice, and global and human rights are at its theoretical and practice core (maschi & killian, 2011). this concentration, dual degree/certificate programming with women’s and gender studies, critical ethnic studies, and peace, justice, and conflict studies, together with the program’s heavy focus on community practice, has allowed faculty to engage students in global human rights frameworks and structural competency work (metzl & petty, 2017). social work students practice the art of social work in their internship settings. however, we are aware that not all internships infuse social justice and macro level advocacy to the same extent. to that end, we believe it is essential for social work programs to engage in various activities that promote social justice and allow students to both witness this as part of the fabric of the program as well engage in these broader activities with the community and transdisciplinary partners. the following paragraphs discuss our work as scholar activists leveraging university-community partnerships and facilitating diverse learning opportunities for social work students. this community-based work directly informs course content, dialogue, and how we make connections between theory and practice as educators in the classroom. with these rich learning experiences within an academic environment, students effectively internalize the value of critical empowerment frameworks including structural competency, decolonizing and crt perspectives, transdisciplinary and participatory approaches in intersectional collaboration and community coalition building. in figure 1, we illustrate these key empowerment frameworks that are paramount to socially just practice. these community partnerships and meaningful engagement with diverse disciplines exposes students and allows them to advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 444 participate in transdisciplinary, multi-institutional, and community-based organizing that is essential to the process of social and structural change. figure 1. critical frameworks paramount to social work justice the neighborhood legal assistance project (nlap) and pathways one author began a program in partnership with the msw student association and the law school. it is the msw resource desk that exists in partnership with the neighborhood legal assistance project. the msw resource desk at grace place soup kitchen provides social service information and referrals pertaining to housing, mental health services, social service benefits and medical treatment to guests of grace place a breakfast soup kitchen in the south loop. based on a model utilized at a legal aid firm in chicago, we have implemented a joint meeting with patrons of the soup kitchen in order to triage the situation and support one another’s services. the guest then does not need to tell the story numerous times. instead, both the legal and social work teams assess the situation, and supply support and referrals that are most appropriate. msw student volunteers serve guests who are homeless whose attempts to find work, housing, or public benefits have been stymied by their lack of information about or access to social services. although this may initially sound like a standard volunteer opportunity, it actually is a robust experience in a transdisciplinary setting that promotes social justice advocacy. msw students work alongside attorneys, law students, volunteers and staff who organize the soup kitchen. as critical empowerment frameworks in social justice work structural competency transdisciplinary critical race theory decolonization just practice(finn, 2021) critical frameworks paramount to social justice work human rights violations (wicked humanitarian problems) social and restorative justice (social and structural change) fi gure a ferrera & crabtree-nelson/critical empowerment frameworks 445 such, the students have opportunity to learn from others who are engaged in active social justice work at a micro, mezzo, and macro level. the attorneys and law students involved in the project work from a social justice lens similar to that of the social work students. one volunteer attorney works for a lobbying firm that is actively advocating for change that directly impacts the type of situations guests of grace place experience. social work and law students are challenged to connect the issues they see the guests faced with and to find ways to advocate on their behalf on a city, county, state, and federal level. this has led to many action items that include protests, calling and writing alderpersons, state, and federal representatives. students have stated that this experience feels like true social work to them. this truly is an example of individuals from different disciplines working together to create a shared conceptual model of the problem that integrates and transcends each of their separate disciplinary perspectives. this same author is a co-founder of the illinois coalition to address intimate partner violence-induced brain injury. unfortunately, the intersection between ipv and traumatic brain injury (tbi) is not well known to survivors, nor to those who provide services and assistance. services to assist survivors typically do not address the tbi symptoms, nor adapt their services to account for the neurological challenges that accompany a tbi. our society still struggles to understand the dynamics in ipv and often continues to blame the victims for the harm done to them. it is then no surprise that even though survivors of ipv generally experience prevalence of tbi estimated at 11–12 times greater than the published incidence of tbi from occupational, recreational, and accident events (lifshitz et al., 2019) that it is only now beginning to gain attention in the media. in 2018, we formed a group made up of individuals from depaul university and swedish hospital, part of the north shore university health system in chicago, who are dedicated to this issue. we collaborate with groups and individuals in arizona, ohio, massachusetts, and new york around four main areas: education, research, services, and advocacy. in addition, we have partnered with area organizations that work with survivors of ipv. this group personifies the important aspects of the transdisciplinary model. we are able to work with one another to create ideas and solutions that none of us would have been able to do in isolation. in addition, this collaboration is working towards structural competency as a network of diverse professionals and concerned community members to build structures that promote individual health and community wellness for a group that is one of our most vulnerable and often overlooked. this coalition has been a wonderful opportunity for students to participate in planning and action on a deep and meaningful level. one specific example includes students who participated in an elective on ipv in the winter of 2020. the author conducted the class in a community-engaged model where students had the opportunity to hear about the topic of ipv and tbi from area and national experts. the class then worked with the coalition to hold a symposium for professionals in the community who work with survivors of ipv. they participated in the planning, implementation, held small breakout groups, developed preand post-tests, and compiled all information from the tests as well as the breakout groups to disseminate to the coalition members. the symposium was a success with over 130 participants. students stated that this was the first class they had where they felt they put all of their social work skills together and were able to see the results of their efforts. many students have stayed advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 446 involved in the coalition and the activities to educate and disseminate information on ipv and tbi. the coalition for immigrant mental health, midwest human rights consortium, and a healing justice dialogue initiative one author is a co-founding co-chair of the coalition for immigrant mental health (cimh), which was established in 2016 to foster a collaborative, community-based and research-informed initiative that is a partnership between, mental health practitioners, community organizers, researchers, allies, and community members regardless of immigration status. cimh works to promote awareness of, and access to, culturally and linguistically appropriate mental health services through education, advocacy, and resource sharing in order to improve and facilitate access to services for immigrants and their families regardless of their status (cimh, 2021). the forming of the coalition followed the experience of doing community-based participatory research within the immigrant community to document the impact of a health promotion program. it became clear through the narratives of immigrant youth and the staff of community partner organizations that amidst the election of the then presidential administration of donald trump, undocumented youth and many immigrant families were in severe distress. depression, suicidal ideation, and other mental health needs heightened during this time, and there was a mental health crisis that was prevalent among the immigrant community (artiga & ubri, 2017; flores & kirkos, 2016). resources and mental health services were scarce. it was clear that antiimmigrant sentiment, a hostile sociopolitical climate, and policies that have excluded refugees and undocumented immigrants in particular (executive orders, the muslim ban, lack of access to healthcare due to status, etc.) created layers of structural barriers and violations on the basic human rights of immigrants and refugees. members of the coalition have drawn from a critical race theory perspective to understand the role of race and ethnicity within institutions, and local and national policies that discriminate immigrant groups and categorically deny healthcare access based on immigration status. the coalition involved multiple academic institutions throughout the chicagoland area, community members directly impacted by immigration policies, organizers, leaders, advocates, researchers, and mental health practitioners deeply invested in the health and wellbeing of immigrants and refugees. annual convenings over the past five years have brought together hundreds of attendees to learn more about how to engage best practices as mental health practitioners, educators, and community organizers and the intersection of policy and practice. there was a banning together of resources and exchange of information on immigrant-friendly health clinics and hospitals, and culturally sensitive, multilingual mental health practitioners, and educational programs on various relevant topics, such as “know your rights.” since its inception in 2016, this virtual coalition has drawn over 600 individuals to its listserv and has galvanized its members to engage in calls to action and focused advocacy efforts that have included: submitting public comment; participating in rallies and marches; writing and talking directly to local government officials and legislators about the physical and mental health needs of immigrant communities. ferrera & crabtree-nelson/critical empowerment frameworks 447 scholar activist members have engaged in community-based research and have utilized findings to develop social policy reports that call for needed social and structural change. social workers and students have participated in these activities and all the while have been exposed to the various roles social workers and other clinical practitioners can play in developing structures that promote health and wellness. the coalition building has led to the recent merging of two prominent mental health taskforce entities in chicago with cimh, and the establishment of the midwest human rights consortium (mhrc), a network of medical and mental health practitioners responding to the needs of asylum seekers by providing forensic asylum assessments. housed by the illinois chapter, american academy of pediatrics, mhrc is now a coordinated network of institutional and individual collaborators, providing training and ongoing mentorship and case consultation, and facilitating a referral network to connect qualified medical and psychological forensic assessors with asylum seekers and their legal representatives. engaging a transdisciplinary approach, mhrc works toward structural change synchronized by psychologists, attorneys, physicians, social workers, and other mental health practitioners who work on behalf of the health and wellbeing of immigrants and immigrant families. through the work of both cimh and mhrc, social work students have received training around the legal aspects of seeking asylum, navigating the immigration court system, and how to conduct clinical asylum assessments that may be used to advocate for the asylum seeker’s ability to stay in the us and receive the health and mental health services that they need. given that both cimh and mhrc involves mental health practitioners, there have been opportunities to examine and discuss differences in training and incorporate diverse perspectives and approaches to clinical work. for example, social workers and social work students learn from psychologists how to utilize reliable testing instruments to inform the assessment, while psychologists may learn from social workers and other practitioners how to facilitate more restorative justice practice through healing or wellness circles conducted with and more importantly, by undocumented immigrants. experiential learning allows social workers and social work students to witness first-hand how healing can take many forms, and the benefits of healing that takes place within and builds community. integrating a decolonizing lens of practice, indigenous healing practices are honored, valuing the strengths, resources, and resilience within communities that allow its members to heal themselves in a collective way. through the work of cimh, social work students have been able to develop their expertise in various other disciplines, including social media, web development and digital design, geographic information system mapping of mental health resources, and legal advocacy. attorneys involved with mhrc have also shared their expertise on the legal process and documentation, and how practitioners can develop a strong affidavit for the court. through ongoing communication and consultation, a transdisciplinary lens has enabled the team working with the asylum seeker (e.g., attorney, practitioners, interpreter) to effectively engage a trauma informed approach and coordinated effort toward the common goal of securing asylum. through one author’s role as co-director of the center for community health equity (cche), which is a partnership between a major medical center and teaching hospital, and their university, social work students have had the opportunity to be exposed to and learn advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 448 fundamental concepts in public health and health equity. cche utilizes transdisciplinary approaches to not only understanding the social determinants of health, but also to finding solutions to respond to the “death gap” (ansell, 2021) in life expectancy that is over 20 years of difference between the healthiest and wealthiest and the sickest and poorest of american neighborhoods (dwyer et al., 2017, p. 1009). through discovery and evidence in research, we best understand who is most impacted by the pandemic: where they live, and the social determinants of health that are salient. research then becomes a form of activism in design, informing multiple stakeholders, community members, and scholaractivists engaged in designing programs and actions that respond to the problems based on solution focused research. cche is a model of an academic center that has made conscious efforts to be an action-oriented center that is built on the collaborations between community members, researchers and academics, and the healthcare community. one of the many initiatives includes the formation of a healing justice dialogue series as a response to the social unrest heightened by the murders of george floyd, breonna taylor, adam toledo, and countless others who have been the victims of racial injustice and police brutality. this ongoing dialogue series aims to facilitate dialogue within and outside our university that: increases our understanding and consciousness around structural racism and violence; raises our awareness about the historical trauma and oppression black, indigenous and other communities of color experience, and how this has impacted individual and community wellness; helps us to learn from the resilience of diverse and indigenous communities and examine and experience nontraditional ways of healing; creates a community of healing and restorative justice; and heightens awareness and community activism. cche has joined forces with the university’s center for black diaspora, peace, justice and conflict studies program, and women’s center to establish and sustain this initiative. facilitated dialogue by outside guest speakers and local leaders in the field helps us to engage in difficult conversations that need to be had, encourages us to critically self-reflect, steep in our own discomfort, and acknowledge the healing many of our communities need amidst the anguish, rage, violence, illness, trauma, and loss they continue to disproportionately experience. this need was heightened by the impossibility of in-person gatherings amidst the covid-19 pandemic. the series is driven by a restorative justice perspective and follows the healing justice framework conceptualized by cara page, who envisions, “…how we can holistically respond to and intervene on generational trauma and violence and…bring collective practices that can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts and minds (and) continue to build political and philosophical convergences of healing…through interactive, daily practices that anyone can do” (transformharm, 2020, para. 1). through this initiative, social workers, social work faculty, and students have had the opportunity to learn about restorative justice practices that originate from indigenous communities, including skill building on circle keeping. peace, justice, and conflict studies has had a hand in exposing students to effective peace and circle keeping from a global perspective, and faculty from the women’s center share knowledge around feminist perspectives on empowerment and the role of accountability to ourselves and each other in building and repairing community (russo, 2018). ferrera & crabtree-nelson/critical empowerment frameworks 449 implications for social work we learn from paolo freire (1970) about praxis "reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed” (p. 126). through praxis, people who are oppressed can acquire a critical awareness of their own condition, and, with teacher-students and studentsteachers, struggle for liberation. freire points toward our role in critical consciousness raising within ourselves, our students, and our profession highlighting the complexities within human agency and power. we assert that the heart of social justice work must involve the deconstruction and dismantling of structures and systems that have caused and continue to cause harm and violence to communities. developing structural competence and engaging in a transdisciplinary lens keeps us on a path that centers the examination and interrogation of these oppressive structures and systems in order to promote radical change. when we consider the 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(2021). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. zed books ltd. soskolne, c. (2000). transdisciplinary approaches for public health. epidemiology, 11(4), s122-s122. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001648-200007000-00293 specht, h., & courtney, m. e. (1995). unfaithful angels: how social work has abandoned its mission. simon and schuster. transformharm. (2020). healing justice. https://transformharm.org/healing-justice/ tuck, e., & yang, k. w. (2012). decolonization is not a metaphor. decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, 1(1), 1-40. https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/tuck%20and%20yang%202012%20deco lonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf united nations general assembly (1948). universal declaration of human rights. un https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights u.s. bureau of labor statistics, u.s. department of labor. (2021). occupational outlook handbook: social workers. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-socialservice/social-workers.htm van wormer, k. (2006). the case for restorative justice: a crucial adjunct to the social work curriculum. journal of teaching in social work, 26(3-4), 57-69. https://doi.org/10.1300/j067v26n03_04 waldram, j. b. (2014). healing history? aboriginal healing, historical trauma, and personal responsibility. transcultural psychiatry, 51(3), 370-386. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461513487671 zehr, h. (2002). the little book of restorative justice. good books. author note: address correspondence to maria j. ferrera, department of social work, depaul university, chicago, il 60604. email: mferrera@depaul.edu https://doi.org/10.1097/00001648-200007000-00293 https://transformharm.org/healing-justice/ https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/tuck%20and%20yang%202012%20decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/tuck%20and%20yang%202012%20decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights https://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/social-workers.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/social-workers.htm https://doi.org/10.1300/j067v26n03_04 https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461513487671 mailto:alex.redcay@millersville critical empowerment frameworks paramount to social justice work critical empowerment frameworks unsettling ourselves community based and participatory action research approaches engaging students in areas of action with community partners the neighborhood legal assistance project (nlap) and pathways the coalition for immigrant mental health, midwest human rights consortium, and a healing justice dialogue initiative implications for social work chatterjee & das gupta final correspondence address: soma chatterjee, school of social work, york university, toronto, on, m3j 1p3; email: schat@yorku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 editors’ introduction on migration and indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world soma chatterjee york university tania das gupta york university introduction these are strange times to write about migration, anti-racism and indigenous sovereignty. the world has long swung to an authoritarianism of disturbing proportions. as this special issue goes to press, we are swimming in and against a virus that has robbed more than one million lives globally, infected more than 82 million (johns hopkins university & medicine, n.d.), and thrown countless into painstaking and enduring uncertainties, largely in authoritarian regimes, but generally as well. populist nativism and antiimmigrant xenophobia casting othered bodies and cultures as diseased threats to nations are unapologetic and rampant (chatterjee, 2020; paradkar, 2020; ccnc-sj, 2020). infections, hospitalizations and deaths are disproportionately affecting racialized and black populations – especially those who are poor – the working class and the elderly, and risking indigenous peoples by adding to existing conditions of food insecurity, lack of sanitation and essential services (gordon et al., 2020; united nations, 2020). nevertheless, grossly obscene profiteering off of alienation, immobility and illnesses envelop us instead of visions and concrete actions for a socially just recovery (de genova, 2020; hemingway & rozworski, 2020; barnea, 2020). in the 30th year of oka crisis, military aggression on indigenous communities for the pursuit of land, resources and profits remains relentless (see ahmed, 2020; robinson & shaker, 2020; unist’ot’en, 2020; yellowhead institute, 2020), as does police violence against black and indigenous peoples. as deaths, degradation and deprivation daily assault our sense of justice we indeed are grappling with “cruelty fatigue” even as the migration & indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 247 media, mental health and wellness industries insist on it being pandemic fatigue (bannerji, 2020). and yet, neither the threats of xenophobic authoritarianism or the shadows of a once in a century public health crisis could diminish the burst of vibrant popular movements re-igniting streets in north america, for black lives, indigenous land rights, justice for migrant workers, and non-status peoples and detainees criminalized by carceral states (grattan, 2020; migrant rights network, 2020; see also, abolition, n.d.; paradakar, 2020; scholar strike canada, 2020a). globally, from the new constitutional referendum in chile to farmers protesting neoliberal policies deepening poverty, hunger and rising farmer suicides in india, boundary pushing critiques of state machineries of exploitation, along with carefully thought-out acts of care and solidarity, send an urgent message that for those desiring a justice rich society, the stakes are really high. this is not meant to celebrate a romantic narrative of triumph of humankind over a virus and capital, especially as we witness the fierce return of the social and economic status quo. after all, “the way we respond to the crisis,” bayo akomolafe (2020) writes, “is part of the crisis.” clearly however, these circumstances also make it just the right times to be writing about migrant, anti-racist and indigenous justice. this special issue invited anti-racist scholars, educators, and activists to share how they conceptualize indigenous justice and freedom in a world that is also “chronically mobile and routinely displaced” (malkii, 1992, p. 24). what, we ask, are the theoretical, epistemological and methodological concerns in anti-racism with regards to the political citizenship of migrants, refugees and other displaced populations on occupied lands? do their conceptualizations of justice explicitly engage indigenous rights? which questions are urgent and how is that urgency articulated? which are relegated to the background? what are the discomforts and disagreements? it’s been more than a decade since, in the canadian context, bonita lawrence and enakshi dua (2005) signaled the necessity for more research on conflicts and collaborations between indigenous and anti-racist justice. anti-racist and progressive struggles, they contended, are predicated on indigenous erasure; indeed, “critical race and postcolonial theory… posit people of colour as innocent… [and not] settlers on stolen lands” (lawrence & dua, 2005, p. 126), and to correct this “antiracist complicity,” “theorists must begin to think about their personal stake in this struggle, and about where they are going to situate themselves” (p. 126).1 in a similar vein, but 1 for subsequent nuancing of this argument, see amadahy & lawrence, 2009; lawrence, et al., 2020; dhamoon, 2014; jafri, 2012; mathur et al., 2011; phung, 2011, sehdev, 2011; and more recently, jean kim, 2020; nhu le, 2019; patel, 2016; upadhyay, 2019, for conversations within and between racialized scholars about complicity and differential subject positions. on the other hand, see sharma & wright, 2008; sharma, 2020, for consistent challenges to the framework of complicity and complicit racialized subjects. the literature we engage and refer to largely comes from usa and canada. however, as a number of contributions suggest, similar conversations are happening across various sites. soma chatterjee & tania das gupta studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 248 with an exemplary engagement with postcolonial and subaltern studies, chickasaw scholar jodi byrd (2011, p. xix) asked whether “arrivants and other people forced to move through empire” can exercise their democratic justice claims without pushing indigenous dispossession “toward a vanishing point” (p. 3).2 in critical black studies on the other hand, tiffany king (2014, 2016), tiya miles and sharon holland (2006), christina sharpe (2016), rachel zellars (this issue) and other scholars have complicated black lives in the americas away from histories and discourses of colonization, conquest and settlement, specifically focusing on the “abjection” of black bodies from “the realm of the human” (sharpe, 2016, p. 14), and thereby also exploding the category of the laboring subject as the harbinger of freedom and justice. the incommensurabilities of anti-racist and indigenous justice and politics are many. jodi byrd (2011, p. xvii) offers an expansive account. while written in the context of the us empire, byrd’s concern is “much larger”: american studies, queer studies, postcolonial studies, american indian studies, and area studies have all attempted to apprehend injury and redress, melancholy and grief that exist in the distances and sutures of state recognitions and belongings… as liberal multicultural settler colonialism attempts to flex the exceptions and exclusions that first constituted the united states to now provisionally include those people othered and objected from the nation-state’s origins, it instead creates a cacophony of moral claims that help to deflect progressive and transformative activism from dismantling the ongoing conditions of colonialism that continue to make the united states a desired state formation within which to be included. that cacophony of competing struggles for hegemony within and outside of institutions of power, no matter how those struggles might challenge the state through loci of race, class, gender, and sexuality, serves to misdirect and cloud attention from the underlying structures of settler colonialism that made the united states possible as oppressor in the first place. as a result, the cacophony produced through us colonialism and imperialism domestically and abroad often coerces struggles for social justice for queers, racial minorities, and immigrants into complicity with settler colonialism. (byrd, 2011, p. xxxviii) albeit emerging in the wake of liberal democratic nation states, byrd’s concern that a “cacophony of competing struggles” “misdirects” from the primary violence of settlement can only be brushed aside by anti-racist scholars of migration and mobility at our own peril; even more so, as byrd also acknowledges that, it is all too easy … to accuse diasporic migrants, queers and people of color for participating in and benefiting from indigenous loss of lands, cultures and lives and subsequently to position indigenous otherness as abject and all other others 2 drawing on camau brathwaite’s arrivant trilogy, byrd uses this term “to signify those people forced into the americas through the violence of european and anglo-american colonization of the “new world” (2011, p. xix). all references to the notion of “arrival” in this piece are credited to byrd. migration & indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 249 as part of the problem, as if they could always consent to or refuse such positions or consequences of history. (byrd, 2011, p. xxxix). along this line of thought, byrd’s recent work articulates the indivisibility of anti-blackness and settler colonialism in the formation of the american empire (byrd, 2019). to make various arrivals legible within the framework of settler colonialism, they bring indigenous phenomenologies and epistemologies into conversation with critical theory, and remain, along with glen coulthard (2013, 2014a, 2014b; podur, 2015; walia, 2015), roxanne dunbar-ortiz (2016; dixon, 2006), eve tuck & wayne yang (2012), and a growing body of critical anti-racist scholarship (some of which we cite above and others we continue to come back to throughout this essay), a major influence on how we envision the relationship between anti-racist and indigenous justice. we start the following section by placing ourselves and this work at the intersections of anti-racist and indigenous justice. we understand the way we formulate the special issue activates a number of broad categories, most notably, anti-racism, migration and mobility, and indigeneity on the one hand, and the respective subject positions, such as indigenous, immigrant, racialized, black, etc., on the other. we also mobilize notions such as antiracist, migrant (we tend to use these two interchangeably) and indigenous justice and politics. each of these encapsulates multiple meanings and conceptual trajectories. as such, this section also offers clarity and addresses concerns over some necessary generalizations, either by placing them within relevant social and political phenomena and literature, or by offering explanations or definitions we chose to work with. we follow this with an outline of the thematic organization of the special issue. we conclude with a sense of appreciation and wonder about where anti-racist scholarship currently stands, and what needs to shift or re-orient in anti-racist engagement with indigenous justice. we also propose further and deepened conversations across theoretical and epistemological frameworks. floating in the diaspora: situating ourselves and this work soma i envisioned this special issue as a freshly minted assistant professor, coming out of a doctoral project exploring the devaluation of skilled immigrants’ labour in relation to post-liberalization canadian nationalism. during the six years of my doctoral study, i was asked many times about how my project on immigration, labour and nation building sits in relation to indigenous selfdetermination. indeed, this question was an absent presence in my political and intellectual horizon, a problem of epistemology as i now understand. as such, examining the constitutive relations between immigrants’ economic soma chatterjee & tania das gupta studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 250 integration – the cornerstone of my doctoral work – and indigenous colonization became “a core political and ethical task” for me (chatterjee, 2018a, pp. 1-2).3 being an immigrant researcher and educator of migration and nationalism in an era of recognition and reconciliation, i also came to appreciate, is a politically charged position. i was alerted to the troubling separation between anti-racist studies of migration, indigenous and settler colonial studies while teaching in canada, and in social work where instrumental concerns of reconciliation and indigenization outshone a necessary focus on the largest ethico-political project of decolonial freedom that was historically conceptualized as international and anti-empire (see getachew, 2020).4 as such, teaching, discussing and thinking about migrant and indigenous justice relationally were hard (see chatterjee, 2018b). in sync with the operations of the neoliberal academic industry, conversations were also taking place in closed circles of scholars, communities, activist and disciplinary networks, not always mutually accessible. this special issue for me was an effort to partake in and also encourage intersectional conversations, contestations and movements that were emerging across multiple disciplinary and theoretical homes, embarked on with the realization, particularly following my own problematic generalization of racialized labour in an article i wrote, that this is work i could not or should not do on my own. i was thankful when tania agreed to join me. tania as a marxist, i had a theoretical understanding of the connections between my struggles and those of indigenous, black and other minoritized and oppressed peoples. what i had an incomplete understanding of was how divided we are and how unequal we are amongst ourselves. this recognition has deepened through my engagement in feminist debates and my participation in anti-racist activism in toronto, a city i have lived in for most of my life. pulling together a coalition among south asians to fight “paki bashing” in the mid-70s was an accomplishment, although contested in a post-9/11 islamophobic world. in the mid 1980s, i was part of a coalition which brought together indigenous, black and asian women in fighting racism and sexism in ontario. looking back today, some might acknowledge 3 all the while during this time of reckoning, decades of aggressive neoliberalization of economic and social spheres in india (where i come from) was providing an ever-fertile ground for what is currently a deeply fascist government, socially and politically evicting all but caste hindus from the geopolitical territory and the idea of india. having witnessed postcolonial india’s spiraling down into anti-muslim xenophobia and venomous hatred against anything and anyone deemed “foreign” made me thoughtful about our conceptualization of nation state decolonization. 4 for example, education for reconciliation appeared much more compelling for a profession anxious to reconcile its long history of structural violence against indigenous communities. migration & indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 251 the coalition as a nascent recognition of our common struggles and a call to action, but also a failure to question what “equity” meant to indigenous peoples and thus an assumption of sameness and of innocence.5 i was part of interesting debates in the pages of feminist journals around “whose canada is it?” (das gupta & iacovetta, 2000), whether we (immigrant women) should claim our rights as “nation-builders” (ng & das gupta, 1981), and activist discourses around claiming our rights as “canadians” or as “immigrant women.” while we were busy pointing out racism and racial difference among women, we were incognizant of our own anti-black racism and our role within settler colonialism. later, at york university, colleagues were avid proponents of a degree program that brought together indigenous studies along with race, ethnicity, migration and diaspora studies, albeit with mixed success. when soma presented an opportunity to delve into these and other related questions in this special issue, i was eager to participate and thankful for the invitation to do so. this is the personal, professional and intellectual climate within which this special issue was conceived. as mentioned above, we were thoughtful of the weight of the subject and the rich conceptual register it invokes. some of these concepts, for example, sovereignty, migration and mobility, antiracism/anti-racist and racialized subject and black, indigenous, carry marks of long and violent histories and complicated debates. as anti-racist scholars with diasporic ethos, we struggle for example with the limits of sovereignty, or territorial decolonization (getachew, 2020; scott, 2004; sharma, 2020). and yet, in a project such as this where scholars were specifically invited to reflect on their engagement with indigenous justice, sovereignty – especially in its clash with migration and mobility – demands careful attention. we looked toward thomas king (2012) who sees no way around talking about sovereignty when it comes to indigenous issues in north america, a range of scholarship on the varied conceptualizations of sovereignty (see brown, 2018, for a useful review; see also lyons, 2015), and also (again) jodi byrd (2011, p. xvi) who, building on the chickasaw migration story, opens up the notion of sovereignty beyond its western canonical conceptualization, proposing that sovereignty “is found in diplomacy and disagreement, through relation, kinship, and intimacy... [and] in an act of interpretation.” in this spirit, we carried our focus on migration and mobility with a commitment to placing it in a dynamic relation with indigenous sovereignty. similarly, it is insincere to talk about migration or migrants without nuances. after all, we live in a world where thousands perish trying to cross borders (the migrant files, n.d.); a world where “borders never leave [some] alone” while others “traverse them practically at will and with very little thought” (sharma, 2006, p. 4). this dynamic of ceremonious welcome and 5 decades later, nicole penak, then indigenous caucus chair at york university, speaking on a panel organized by the race equity caucus of yufa clarified that indigenous peoples are not an equity seeking group in the way that racialized groups, women and people with disabilities are. i thank her for that simple truth. soma chatterjee & tania das gupta studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 252 precarious incorporation is a key technology for maintaining racialized class relations within the borders of major western jurisdictions.6 as such, we consider migration both as state engineered formal pathways, typically (but not always) leading to less precarious immigrant subjects, and the informal paths to sealed doors, fortress like nation states, “illegal”izing and endangering migrant subjects, and further cheapening their labour. nothing underscored migration and migrant labour as key planks of settler nation building with more clarity than the covid-19 pandemic. while global migration indeed came to a standstill, the reliance of real estate and construction boom on transnational mobility, and the absolutely crucial role of migrant workers in food production, supply and delivery, meat packing, retail services, warehouses, transportation, child and elder care, etc., lay exposed (agopsowicz, 2020; das gupta, 2020). thus, even as the pandemic challenged a fundamental assumption we started this work with – that the world is chronically mobile – questions of mobility and the legislative power of the nation state over movement, we suggest, remain more pressing than ever.7 similar clarity, we understand, is needed with regard to our references to indigeneity and indigenous. there are risks in working with a category as broad as indigenous, given there are hundreds of indigenous nations in the continent of north america alone, with vastly different treaty relationships, and historic and ongoing negotiations for sovereign access over land and resources. however, in a project such as this indigeneity was conceptualized in relation to migration and mobility. this is not to cast indigenous peoples as essentially spatially rooted but to pay heed to the central significance of land and land-based relations in indigenous epistemologies, more so in the context of migration and settlement being key building blocks of settler colonial state structures of legitimation. a number of contributors, as we discuss below, focused on this relational dynamic as being at the centre of their critical inquiries. finally, we were conscious also about how we understand and define antiracist and indigenous scholarship, both in their unique focus on immigrants’ 6 a number of observations from canada (where we work) are instructive here. for example, the federal government announced a record high immigration level as crucial for economic recovery (keung, 2020). in the early days of the pandemic, there was an outcry from growers (employers of the migrants who come under the seasonal agricultural worker program, farm worker program and the low skilled agricultural worker program), who considered border closure a threat to food security, indeed a threat to the nation, even while the workers’ exploitations exacerbated under the pandemic (scholar strike canada, 2020b). while ordinary people’s mobility was drastically restricted or threatened, elite migrants (including some postsecondary international students whose revenue generating potential canada is increasingly dependent on), continue to travel and move their capital around for investment purposes (springer, 2020), including into oil pipelines on unceded lands. 7 alex aleinikoff, the director of new york-based zolberg institute for migration and mobility, wrote: “with the ability to move about freely sharply curtailed in nearly every country in the world, immigration scholars will need to think hard about a fundamental assumption of the field: that we are living in an ‘age of mobility’” (aleinikoff, 2020). migration & indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 253 civil rights and sovereignty respectively, and their distinction from and intersections with anti-capitalist (marxist) scholarship, especially in the earlier years of anti-colonial movements. we understand each body of scholarship to have been committed to vastly different political projects, and are aware also of recent critiques of racism being conflated with colonialism.8 following from these deliberations, our references to racialized, diasporic, black, and indigenous subjects at various points in this editorial are purposely non-specific, but never unthought. “terminology,” thomas king (2012, p. xiii) writes with his usual and piercing precision, “is always a rascal.” we also believe that terms come to be through elisions, erasures and essentialisms. this project aimed to continue and strengthen the work of thinking through the relations between indigenous and various arrivant subjectivities. we take responsibility for any confusion and acknowledge multiple specificities that remain unaddressed in this work. we bring you a collection of 10 articles, five dispatches, one book review and a creative intervention, most from self-identified racialized and indigenous scholars, all engaged in thinking about relational dynamics of migration and indigenous sovereignty. disciplined readers looking to deepen their understanding of one clear theme could be disappointed. although rooted in the conversations in canadian anti-racist scholarship (another limitation we are working with and in), contributors come from and engage with various sites where similar questions are being asked, and similar dynamics are underway, namely but not exclusively australia, new zealand, the pacific islands and parts of the postcolonial south, including latin america. we also fostered a resolutely interdisciplinary stance, so the works presented are from widely diverse disciplines, and social, political and epistemic locations. archives are drawn from local institutional and transnational histories, personal narratives and reflections, existing literature, disciplinary discourses, state policy and non-profit initiatives, teaching practices and international humanitarian crises. the writings as well are distinct – including in regard to language, semantics, style, etc. – as vehicles for ethics and politics. as such, various conventions are applied to naming places, identifying scholars, and acknowledging authors’ own social locations on the lands or countries they are working from. as editors, we did not make any conscious effort to smooth over or standardize this unevenness, but rather let contributors attend to the demands of the subject as per their own political convictions and ethical compass. the following section walks through this rich and varied array of works, organized according to the themes of “space, place, the nation and the postcolonial,” “internationalizing and indigenizing in settler nation building,” and “being in just relations or solidarity.” 8 see jodi byrd (2011 & 2019) on this; see cheryl harris (2019) for an insightful discussion of and challenge to the analytical separation between racism, colonialism and sovereignty. we gesture toward this as literature we have come across in the process of working on this collection, although its intricacies remain outside of the scope of this introductory essay. soma chatterjee & tania das gupta studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 254 indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world: critical perspectives from anti-racist scholars of migration and mobility in the parlance of knowledge economy, close to two years dedicated to a special issue seems sacrilegious, but we carried on with the faith that anything worthwhile takes time. little did we know that 2020 would further derail and delay editorial work. the time it took to summarize works we read and discussed so many times also came as an interesting surprise, teaching us how the labour of selecting, reading and editing works is vastly different than that of placing them within an overarching vision (see tuck & yang, 2018, for beautiful discussion of the rewards and challenges of such work). this is not to say that we were keen to categorize the contributions. such an act, instead, goes against our commitment to break the silos between theoretical, political and epistemic orientations, an issue we come back to at the end. the themes that follow are porous also, making the works fall under multiple themes. in brief, while we do present a thematic organization below this is not a reflection of our understanding of the respective contribution made by each author. theorizing space, place, nation and the postcolonial we invited anti-racist scholars of migration and mobility to think through how they are grappling with indigenous self-determination in their respective areas of research, practice, scholarship. not surprisingly, the dynamics of place and space, commitment to understanding one’s place on indigenous lands, and the allied questions of place or nation, space, and nation state freedom were actively and conscientiously engaged. madelaine cahuas and alexandra matute engage women and non-binary black/afro-latinx, indigenous and brown latinx community workers in the city of toronto who practice a “way of being in place” (in the absence of any other mode of legal recognition than from the canadian state) that nevertheless refuses the standard citizenship label of “proud canadians.” theirs is an important challenge to the deeply entrenched desires for economic settlement and multicultural citizenship that circumscribe justice and politics for many racialized immigrants, bringing migrant and anti-racist justice into deep and disturbing tensions with indigenous sovereignty. this politics of refusal involves actively creating spaces for decolonial conversations (e.g., tales from the south, an initiative of poder & working women’s community centre), both on the everyday manifestations of and contestations to settler colonialism in canada, and the racial, colonial hierarchies imposed by “mejorando la raza” (notion of improving the race) that “haunts” the latinx diaspora. abdelfettah elkchirid, anh ngo and martha kuwee kumsa speak from varied locations within the circuits of empire, namely ethiopia, morocco & vietnam. their placelessness, which migration & indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 255 elkchirid articulates as “deep in my soul and deep in my body” is at the centre of diasporic experience, allowing critical empathy with the project of indigenous decolonization, while also troubling belonging, especially from within a liberal, eurocentric, inclusionary framework based on human rights. while inflected with the practices and pedagogical concerns in social work (particularly following the recommendations of the truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2015), they highlight a spatial dynamic frequently neglected in the deeply nationally-demarcated discipline. working from within the established analytic of settler colonialism as a regime that destroys to replace, karen soldatic articulates how indigenous and migrant population management in australia is a biopolitical exercise. forefronting apparently disparate sites – governing of indigenous peoples via statistical and income management regimes, migrant detention practices, and migrant labour employed in disability care work with indigenous peoples – that are entangled by processes of “deep colonization” (deborah bird rose, 1999, in soldatic, this issue), their article is a necessary step toward bringing migration and critical disability studies into conversation with indigenous sovereignty. paloma villegas, patricia landolt and their co-authors bring us close to “home” to scarborough (a racially and ethnically diverse neighbourhood in ontario) to demonstrate convergent and divergent narration of migrant and indigenous presence. informed by the interdisciplinary workshop “crossing scarborough,” their article engages assemblage methodology and archival portraits by victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu and bojana vidakenic to demonstrate the dynamic of invisibilization and hypervisibilization regulating migrant and indigenous presence in scarborough. their work is productively read alongside soldatic who mobilizes the notion of “circularity” to underscore how the australian settler colony reproduces itself through strategic presence (e.g., presentation of statistical data), absence (e.g., placing disability out of sight, banishing) and erasure (e.g., practices of eugenics and other forms of reproductive control) of the category of disability, and creating impairment in the process of eliminating it. both offer crucial reminders that settler colonialism is not an abstraction; rather the state and its institutions of legitimation are its arbiters. jaspreet ranauta draws on the modernity/coloniality framework to think through the transnational imperial linkages informing migration from indian british canal colonies in punjab to british columbia, canada, and the possibilities of telling these migration stories without silencing indigenous histories and presence. sedef arat-koc expands our understanding of why refugee protection and broader international relations should be brought into conversation with indigenous decolonization as they propose that the development of a critical refugee studies requires conversations with indigenous studies, especially in regard to place-based politics, land loss and planetary alternatives. in a vastly different challenge to place and land-based politics, nandita sharma locates the very notion of indigeneity as an imperial construct rooted in autochthony. drawing on examples from disparate sites soma chatterjee & tania das gupta studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 256 and asynchronous times – e.g., the british imperial rule in india, the rwandan genocide, and the more recent crisis facing the rohingya peoples in myanmar – sharma investigates “the intersection of claims of autochthony with the hegemonic global system of national sovereignty” that have and continue to fuel deadly conflicts. these are grounds on which they question “the hegemonic association of national territorial sovereignty with decolonization.” internationalizing and indigenizing in settler nation building a smaller cluster of articles and dispatches draws attention to the growing nexus between migration and internationalization of higher education in settler colonies. internationalization, currently a key source of revenue for resource-strapped higher education, sits in curious but productive contradiction to indigenizing higher education (something we are witnessing in canada as we write). from aotearoa new zealand, vivienne anderson and maori scholar zoe bristowe posit internationalization of higher education as a key instrument of settler colonial nation building in aotearoa, new zealand. critiquing internationalization’s foci on trade relations and human capital, they support a place-based ethic of care reaching back to mātauranga māori and oceanic epistemologies that predate colonialism. at the same time however, internationalization creates opportunities for indigenous and diasporic subjects to be in conversation. moana (pacific islander) writer kabini sanga and martyn reynolds transmit a dispatch about one such example, leadership pacific, a space in which moana academic migrants recreate “tok stori” (a melanesian form of communication) or “storying” sessions inculcating alternative pedagogies of relationality and dialogic leadership. adrian downey, a mi’kmaw scholar from nova scotia, canada, in a related vein, reflects on what they call “two constants” in their life: conversations with “recent settlers” and “a journey to understand what it means to be mi’kmaq in the modern world.” bianca gomez, an international doctoral student in toronto, canada, contributes a dispatch about being an aspiring permanent resident, and simultaneously a precarious and deportable racialized temporary worker-student whose labour conditions are stringently monitored by the state. problematizing the settler-indigenous binary, gomez wonders about their agency in movements for decolonization. being in just relations or solidarity as this project was unfolding there was a groundswell of solidarity in the form of collective action against intense police brutality directed at indigenous and black communities, a litany of black deaths in police encounters, and in defense of indigenous land rights. we feel a sense of deep migration & indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 257 gratitude for the fantastic and honest actions and conversations on solidarity between black, indigenous and other racialized populations. indeed, the tensions and contradictions within various projects of justice, which black studies scholar andrea davis (lawrence et al., 2020) calls “competitive citizenship,” in which justice becomes a zero-sum game so “one can gain only when another loses,” was foundational to the special issue. it was heartbreaking and inspiring at the same time to witness the urgency and challenges of solidarity becoming the political conversation of our times and also a theme occupying a number of contributions. the question of theorizing one’s place as anti-racist feminist on an occupied land, elaine coburn argues, invites engagement with the rich body of indigenous women’s scholarship. in a rigorous review of indigenous feminist thought from 1985 to date, coburn identifies the themes of “resilience”, “resistance” and “resurgence”, each of which brings indigenous feminists into complicated relationships of solidarity with anti-racist feminists. such acts of engagement, the author attests, should “aim to build relationships with anti-racist feminisms on lands that sustain us all” and comes with the responsibility to not “flatten out a wide range of voices… into a monolithic pan-indigenous bloc.” indigenous solidarity for detained refugees has served as a powerful interrogation of whose lands refugees are excluded from. centering on “the logics and histories of settler colonial statism” in such diverse places as brazil, palestine, kashmir, usa and canada, harshita yalamarty’s dispatch points out the utility of borders, walls, identity documents and travel bans in land appropriation. they discuss how “asserting the sovereignty of indigenous nations as opposed to colonial borders” in such slogans as “no ban on stolen land” (i.e., denouncing the ban against muslim majority countries under donald trump), and the indigenous passports issued for refugees detained by the australian state in papua, new guinea, ground migrant and refugee justice in indigenous sovereignty. similarly, scaffolding their article with “taike” – a punjabi term denoting kinship – ranauta writes to forge critical kinship pathways based on “shared and interwoven colonial histories of oppression and power,” highlighting in particular how the punjabi diasporic presence and economic activities in the pacific northwest have been entangled with british colonial projects in india and canada. different locales within the web of empire (see elkchirid, ngo & kumsa, who are also grappling with this) are threaded together, an analytical stance crucial in understanding the challenges and promises of solidarity. cahuas and matute suggest that solidarity could emerge through a “de-colonial politic of belonging” evident among working class latinx community members, refugees and exiles, who subscribe to a “citizenship of convenience” or a refusal (see simpson, 2014) of what davis in a 2020 conversation with bonita lawrence called “the terms offered to us by the nation,” indicating a disruption (see dhamoon, 2013) to the politics of incorporation into settler-colonial logic. amar bhatia, a professor of law, builds on their experience of bringing indigenous legal systems and treaties soma chatterjee & tania das gupta studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 258 into courses on immigration and refugee law. their dispatch focuses on the need to “translate” ideas about indigenous legal systems into activism and teaching, while cautioning about the “violence” of superficial incorporation. a key pillar of solidarity thinking is confronting uncomfortable truths (see lawrence & davis, 2020; lawrence et al., 2020), or as jodi byrd (2019, p. 207) suggests in the context of analytically centering blackness and indigeneity, to not glance away, to not make “too easy gestures of presumed affiliation and equivalency.” following that route and building on tiffany king’s call to think through the place of black discourse of conquest in contemporary discussions of genocide and settler colonialism, rachel zellars explores the “unthought”: the well-rooted “‘bare life’ of anti-blackness in our relations.” positioning black struggles on turtle island within an abolitionist framework, zellars invites us to grapple with “antagonisms of history,” akin to robert warrior’s invitation to “pick up the trail” of the shared history of “black people and indian people” (2006, pp. 322-323), as crucial to imagine a way of living “otherwise.”9 sedef arat-koc also engages liberatory indigenous scholarship on place-based sovereignty in their visioning for critical refugee studies, while also cautioning readers against any guarantee of solidarity between refugee and indigenous struggles. in their untitled creative intervention, andile gosine “stitches together” the exploitation of the caribbean diaspora and first people’s systematic displacement since the onset of colonization through a seamless network of images invoking shipwreck, the south asian cultural practice of lighting deeyas, and first nations beadwork. the “shared wreckage” of colonization, they say, entwines the “past, present and futures” of these communities. in their review of manu karuka’s book empire’s tracks, asmita bhutani, a doctoral student from toronto offers an example of one such historic entanglement: between chinese railroad workers and the cheyanne, pawnee & lakota peoples on whose lands parts of the central pacific railroads were built. the book is an impressive work not only on railroad colonialism, financialization of land and frontier logics, but also, as bhutani writes, “a remarkable piece of scholarship that harbors the potential for informing activist agenda for anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist struggles not just in the us but also other colonized indigenous nations as canada, new zealand and hawaii among others.” in the following, concluding section we transition to a series of summary observations, largely informed by our experience as editors of this project, our exciting, challenging, thoughtful and humbling conversations with the contributors and our very generous reviewers who pushed the boundaries of our thinking, but not least by our experience of being scholars and educators 9 elaine coburn in this issue also gestures via dua and amadahy towards the “often-occluded black indigeneity.” see also robyn maynard (2017), the recent conversation between andrea davis & bonita lawrence (lawrence et al., 2020), and leanne simpson, shama rangwala & robyn maynard in conversation with andrea davis (davis et al., 2020) on how to consciously and systematically engage in acts of solidarity between black, indigenous and other racialized subjects. migration & indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 259 of anti-racism and migration committed to decolonial solidarity. we offer these as “visioning,” for us and our students, and also as invitations to colleagues with similar commitment and inquiries. within and away from anti-racist scholarship on migration and indigenous sovereignty migrant and indigenous justice are structurally congruent but frequently appear to be nearly mutually exclusive and stripped off of mutual social relational entanglements in state policy realms, popular political discourses and non-profit governance. until recently, this was true in academic research and scholarship as well. this disconnect, as we have made clear, was one of the key curiosities informing this project. and yet, following byrd’s (2011, p. xxiv) caution about a liberal democratic apparatus shaping “freedom at the expense of another,” and andrea davis’ (lawrence et al., 2020) invitation to think about “tak[ing] up space that does not deny other possibilities of life,” we were careful not to collapse issues that require specific attention, nuances of articulation and careful execution even as we remained critical of how identities and subjectivities have been harnessed in the service of colonial capitalism. as we say this, our social locations, political affiliations and commitments, and historic entanglements raise crucial questions. asian diasporic subjectivity is increasingly an important site of inquiry. the subject positions we each embody have been typically understood as aspirational, positioned between enslaved, indentured and other precarious labour as the “model minority,” with a steadfast mantra of what philosopher lewis gordon has identified as “be white; above all, don’t be black” (see jean kim, 2020). more recently, asian subjects have come to be referred to as non-black, nonindigenous persons of colour. if the former, aspirational subject has been weaponized for the purpose of the liberal multicultural nations of the west (jean kim, 2020; davis et al., 2020), the latter two categories acquire meaning by important dis-affiliations. it was no surprise that questions were raised about the ethics and politics of us co-leading a project full of “cacophonies” (byrd, 2011, p. xxvii) and contradictions. to put it plainly, while humbling, and opening up expansive horizons of anti-racist, diasporic and indigenous social and political thought (that we remain committed to engaging further), this work also raised thorny questions, deep emotions and politics of identities. it is not an overstatement to say that the editors who started this project are not the ones who are bringing it to an end. nevertheless, we noticed important themes (some reinforcing existing scholarly trends), exciting promises, and disturbing polarizations in anti-racist scholarship on migration and indigeneity, which we outline below. first and foremost, we noticed a stable commitment to solidarity, both in thinking about research, teaching and theorizing, reflections on subject soma chatterjee & tania das gupta studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 260 positions, and the responsibilities that come with it. most contributors worked with keen awareness of anti-racism’s epistemological disregard of indigenous sovereignty, and offered some tangible pathways toward what is now understood as “a twofold commitment”; that is, to “considering how diasporic populations remain implicated in the ongoing violences of settler colonialism,” and to “practicing an intersectional politics of decolonial solidarity” (attewell et al., 2018, p. 192). in one way or another, all invested emotional and intellectual energies in conceptualizing their place in a land in which “the avenues laid out for immigrants’ success and empowerment are paved over native lands and sovereignty” (saranillio, 2013, p. 286). we remain excited about the ways divergent worlds – those of indigenous, black and racialized peoples, with all their diversities, and mutual knowns and unknowns – are coming together and making efforts to present a decolonial front. we worry, however, about a relative inattention to the totality of the colonial project. instead, a concern over complicity directs theorizing of one’s place & place making, eclipsing, in the process what nicholas de genova (2020) simply but powerfully articulates as “the relations between human life and state power,” manifest in this context in the tangible dynamics of land and labour in reproducing settler colonial property (see day, 2016). in contrast, we remember, among others, glen coulthard’s (2013, 2014a; podur, 2015; walia, 2015) unambiguous call for the death of capitalism, eve tuck & wayne yang’s (2012) caution not to metaphorize decolonization, and roxanne dunbar-ortiz’s (2016; dixon, 2006) reminder to not forget the importance of class & capital analysis as fundamental to opening up a meaningful horizon of anticolonial justice for indigenous peoples.10 on a related note, we also draw attention to an overall slippage of antiimperialist analytic from discussions of solidarity. growing and crucial conversations around indigenous and black relations show how far these communities have come in terms of understanding their deep relationality as part of the settler colonial frameworks in the americas. as our understanding of abolition and sovereignty as different but entangled frameworks of liberation deepen via these conversations, the diminishing role of racialized 10 while a detailed discussion of these concerns is beyond our scope, dunbar-ortiz’s following response to a question about her politics in an interview with chris dixon (2006) could be instructive: “well, i don’t know any more in terms of coherent descriptions. i continue – mainly out of stubbornness – to call myself a marxist. i still think it’s very important to keep focused on capitalism and the importance of class analysis. it’s in that sense that i still pay tribute to marxism. it’s sort of like if i was a physicist. all physicists are newtonians. they are newtonians plus everything that came after, but they wouldn’t feel ashamed of that. that’s the kind of debt i feel toward marx, who clarified the role of capital. we have to build upon that, not forget it. i think it’s forgotten too much in our social movements, or not even considered in the first place.” migration & indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 261 labour exploitation within the settler colonial edifice of destruction and replacement is troubling.11 this is not to say all labour or labouring conditions are equal. we don’t intend to homogenize the diverse ways in which land and natural resources are extracted, nor how our labours are deployed, but simply to indicate that they are all positioned relationally for the singular production of surplus and eventually capital. we write with careful observations of how the social reproduction of these extractive systems is ensured through heterosexist patriarchy, and by keeping aspirations divided (bannerji, 2015; smith, 2006; smith et al., 2010).12 in the context of the liberal canadian nation state’s enthusiastic embrace of discourses of recognition and reconciliation (coulthard, 2014a), ceremonial acknowledgements of indigenous land while continuing to aggressively protect extractive political economic relations, often via migration that sustains the racial regime of property relations (bhander, 2018), this analytical slippage remains a major concern. moving forward, we propose that anti-racist scholarship on relationality and complicity should develop an analysis that does not lose sight of the capitalist colonial project of simultaneous dispossession and precarious incorporation, a dynamic in which competing and cacophonous civil rights claims continue to take shape, and therefore, should be not only gestured toward, rather actively and concretely engaged with. secondly (and related to the above), we share concerns about anti-racist thought developing in vastly different trajectories. the one we discuss above embraces the urgency of decolonizing relations and articulates decolonization with recognition of indigenous difference and sovereignty. the second trajectory, on the other hand, operates from within an anti-imperialist framework, one in which freedom means freedom from a world of ongoing dispossession of the poor and working class and those on the move, and postcolonialism is a new mode of global governance. contrary to the first, it firmly places decolonization outside the rubric of sovereignty and launches a critique of indigenous nationhood on grounds of its contradictory, arguably deadly, and possessive logic (sharma, 2020; see desai, in byrd, 2011). an observation grounded in the deep and ongoing disappointments of the 11 on this note, we draw attention to iyko day’s conceptualization of settler colonial triangulation and yet the importance of place-based solidarity in anticapitalism. see also attewell et al. (2018), an excellent book review forum on how day’s book alien capital has been taken up across disciplines in humanities and social sciences, including in indigenous studies. 12 we remember june jordan’s writing in the context of feminist organizing: “i know i am not alone. there must be hundreds of other women, maybe thousands, who feel as i do. there may be hundreds of men who want the same drastic things to happen. but how do you hook up with them? how can you interlink your own struggle and goals with these myriad, hypothetical people who are hidden entirely or else concealed by stereotypes and/or generalities of "platform" such as any movement seems to spawn? 1 don't know. i don't like it, this being alone when it is clear that there will have to be multitudes working together, around the world, if radical and positive change can be forced upon the heinous status quo i despise in all its overwhelming power” (jordan, 1989; the quotation above is cited from the epigraph in bannerji, 2005, p. 144). soma chatterjee & tania das gupta studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 262 postcolonial world, this line of thinking is in generative tensions with byrd’s concerns about “trap[ping] indigenous peoples within the dialectics of genocide where the only conditions of possibility imagined are either that indigenous peoples will die through genocidal policies of colonial settler states (thus making room for more open and liberatory societies) or that they will commit heinous genocides in defense of lands and nations” (2011, p. xxxiv). one also remembers robert nichols’ (2020, p. 8) theorization (partially in response to the critique of possessive logic above) of “recursive dispossession” in which the dispossessed “are figured as ‘original owners,’ but only retroactively, a reflection of the peculiarity of the dispossessive process itself,” as in “possession is the effect of dispossession” (see also brenna bhandar’s 2018 discussion of dispossession as both a prerequisite and a consequence). and yet in a global order in which immigrants, migrants and refugees continue to meet indigenous nations in contested geopolitical territories, and thereby face the complex responsibility of carving out a workable and just coexistence, recognition and complicity which seem the dominant foci of anti-racist scholarship fall short as analytics. we should strive, rather, to envision justice and freedom in a world in which mobility is an always already condition – an aftermath of colonial and imperial displacement, a desire to move from the “zone of nonbeing” (fanon, 1952, p. xii), a key pathway to freedom – that is, admittedly, accessed unequally by dominant and subaltern actors. following adrian smith (scholar strike canada, 2020b), we do not mean movement to be a mere act of crossing borders, rather, it is an act of “stealing back life against unfreedom, carcerality, against racism which lubricates capitalist profiteering.” workers, smith compellingly says, “must continue to nestle everywhere, settle everywhere and establish connections everywhere.” however, we also remember byrd’s (2011, xiii) cogent critique of the poststructural challenge to the originary, of definitive appeal to anti-racist and postcolonial critiques: “in a world growing increasingly enamored with faster, flatter, smooth, where positionality doesn’t matter so much as how it is that we travel there, indigeneity matters.” it is in this context of world-wide migratory movements, colonial injuries, and contradictions of redress that we situate this special issue; to seek out, appreciate, and as needed, struggle over various conceptualizations of migrant-indigenous relations in all its cacophonies and possibilities. bringing different analytical pathways and scholarly commitments closer without losing their distinct foci, we attest, is of particular urgency at our current political moment.13 there is a need not 13 jodi byrd, for example, has shown us the potential of indigenous and postcolonial theories and epistemologies in conversation. their engagement with postcolonial, poststructural and subaltern theories, we note with respect, is against the grain in the context of indigenous resistance to critical theory (see byrd, 2011, pp. xxxi-xxxv for a discussion of this). similar engagement is found in the works of robert nichols cited here. conversations, as this discussion and others clearly show, are not easy to start, let alone sustain. however, they need to be committed to. migration & indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 263 only to understand how we all find ourselves together, but also, as simpson (davis et al., 2020) has conceptualized, to forge a “constellation of coresistances” to colonial sexual racial capitalism. we end with remembering robert warrior (2006, p. 325) writing about the future of black and indigenous relations in north america (an invitation that, we note, applies across times and spaces to various historic and contemporary relationships): what seems clear is that, on the streets of this continent’s inner cities and on the roads and pathways that cross indigenous enclaves around the world, the black people and red people will keep unfolding a history that criss crosses, zigs, zags, and doubles back. such acts of caring and critical engagement, allowing us to embrace what is unthought or difficult, imagine living otherwise, appreciate shared past, present and futures, and informing a justice rich future, are what we continue to wish for and strive toward. when so much remains to be done this end can only be a new beginning … acknowledgments we sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for their time and keen insights. this collection is better because reviewers went above and beyond their peer review commitments and provided rigorous yet generous suggestions. thanks to the contributors, not only for their thoughtful works but for their patience, as this publication was delayed due to a number of challenges, including the global pandemic. this project unfolded along with much unravelling of our world, but thankfully also with vibrant social and political movements and conversations that restore faith in humanity. finally, sincere gratitude to david butz for trusting this project and generous copyediting support, and to vanessa farr for editorial support with the dispatches. references abolition: a journal of insurgent politics. 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(2004). conscripts of modernity: the tragedy of colonial enlightenment. duke university press. sehdev, r. k. (2011). people of colour in treaty. in a. mathur, j. dewar & m. degagne (eds), cultivating canada: reconciliation through the lens of cultural diversity (pp. 263-274). aboriginal healing foundation. sharma, n. (2006). home economics: nationalism and the making of ‘migrant workers’ in canada. university of toronto press. sharma, n. (2020). home rule: national sovereignty and the separation of natives and migrants. duke university press. sharma, n., & wright, c. (2008). decolonizing resistance: challenging colonial states. social justice, 35(3), 120-138. sharpe, c. (2016). in the wake: on blackness and being. duke university press. simpson, a. (2014). mohawk interruptus: political life across the borders of settler states. duke university press. smith, a. (2006). heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of white supremacy: women of colour organizing. the color of violence: the incite! anthology (pp. 66-73). south end press. smith, a., khan, s., hugill, d., & mccreary, t. (2010, may 18). building unlikely alliances: an interview with andrea smith. upping the anti, (10). http://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/10-building-unlikely-alliances-an-interview-withandrea-smith/ springer, k. (2020, august 7). passports for purchase: how the elite get through the pandemic. ctv news. https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/passports-for-purchase-how-the-elite-getthrough-a-pandemic-1.5055025 migration & indigenous sovereignty in a chronically mobile world studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 246-267, 2020 267 the migrant files. (n.d.). https://www.themigrantsfiles.com/ truth & reconciliation commission of canada. (2015). truth and reconciliation commission of canada: executive summary. http://www.trc.ca/assets/pdf/honouring_the_truth_reconciling_for_the_future_july_23_2 015.pdf tuck, e., & yang, k. (2012). decolonization is not a metaphor. decolonization. indigeneity, education & society, 1(1), 1-40. tuck, e., & yang, k. (2018). building things not to last forever. critical ethnic studies, 4(2), 1-12. unist’ot’en. (2020) news archive. https://unistoten.camp/media/news/# united nations. (2020). covid-19 and indigenous peoples. https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/covid-19.html upadhyay, n. (2019). making of “model” south asians on the tar sands: intersections of race, caste, and indigeneity. critical ethnic studies, 5(1-2), 152-173. walia, h. (2015, january 21). interview with glen coulthard. rabble. http://rabble.ca/columnists/2015/01/land-relationship-conversation-glen-coulthard-onindigenous-nationhood warrior, r. (2006) afterword. in t. miles & s. holland (eds.), crossing waters, crossing worlds: the african diaspora in indian country (p. 321-326). duke university press. wu, c., qian, y., & wilkes, r. (2020). anti-asian discrimination and the asian-white mental health gap during covid-19. ethnic & racial studies. doi: 10.1080/01419870.2020.1851739 yellowhead institute. (2020, april 30). democracy dialogues: first nations’ crisis response before, during, and beyond covid-19 [video]. https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2020/04/30/democracy-dialogues-first-nations-crisisresponse-before-during-and-beyond-covid-19/ rutherford final feb 17 20 correspondence address: blair rutherford, department of sociology & anthropology, carleton university, ottawa, on, k1s 5b6; email: blair.rutherford@carleton.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 nervous conditions on the limpopo: gendered insecurities, livelihoods, and zimbabwean migrants in northern south africa blair rutherford carleton university, canada abstract this paper examines some of the gendered insecurities informing some of the livelihood practices of zimbabwean migrants in northern south africa from 20042011, the period in which i carried out almost annual ethnographic research in this region. situating these practices within wider policy shifts and changing migration patterns at the national and local scales, this paper shows the importance of attending to gendered dependencies and insecurities when analysing migrant livelihoods in southern africa. these include those found within humanitarian organizations targeting zimbabwean migrants in their programs and policies in the border area. these gendered insecurities, which are woven into the fabric of travel, work and accommodation for these migrant zimbabwean women in northern south africa, should be examined in struggles for social justice. by drawing on the lens of social critique to engender a wider sense of the social justice needs for zimbabwean women migrants in south africa, this essay aims to broaden the focus of activism on women migrants to also attend to gendered insecurities in their everyday economic and shelter-seeking activities. keywords south africa; zimbabwe; gender; insecurities; migration introduction it was already one of those awkward research moments where my expectations clashed with those who were introducing me to others, which then became much, much more uncomfortable. it was july 3, 2005 and i was spending my first full day on a commercial citrus farm in tshipise in northern south africa to see if it could be a place for me to do some research on zimbabwean migrants, who comprised the majority of the farm labour force. as i have commonly done in my research on issues concerning farm workers blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 170 in southern africa, the day before i had introduced myself to the farm operator to seek his (or, more rarely, her) permission to talk to the workers. this afrikaner senior farm manager was rather indifferent to my research, more worried about potential changing governmental plans for land restitution in south africa than issues concerning his largely foreign workforce. as i have experienced before, he had then handed me over to one of his senior workers, who himself was zimbabwean, whom he trusted would not say or show me anything which could embarrass the farm and who also would faithfully report back to him about what i did. the following day, i met up with this zimbabwean farm supervisor. he decided that the best way for me to be introduced and carry out some initial research was to take me to the part of the workers’ compound where food was being served to the seasonal workers, who all were zimbabwean, after the citrus picking work was done for the day. as dozens of clearly tired men and women were queuing up for a plastic bag of sadza (known more widely in south africa as pap, a thick cornmeal porridge) and beans, the supervisor loudly informed those waiting in chishona that i am a university researcher from canada who would like to speak to them about their experience in south africa and about crossing the border from zimbabwe. when there was a pause in the distribution of the cooked food, i suggested that if any would like to discuss their experiences a bit more, we could talk more privately on the edge of the clearing. a line of about 10 zimbabwean workers formed to meet with me on an individual basis, in a way that made me feel like i was dealing with customers or clients and not to learn about their often grim tales of survival in zimbabwe and south africa. all was going well, as i was gaining some more insight into the travels, travails, and ambitions of these zimbabwean men and women in terms of crossing the border and living and working in northern south africa. but i was not prepared for the young woman from near the end of the queue who came to me and spoke so softly and hesitantly that i initially had trouble understanding her. she would start talking about how hard it was to cross the nearby limpopo river, which forms the international boundary between south africa and zimbabwe, and how there were robbers, colloquially called maguma-guma, prowling on the zimbabwean edge of the border preying on the border-jumpers, and then she would go very quiet and look away. initially, i gently asked for some elaboration, but she would follow the same pattern of talking for a bit of time before trailing off into embarrassed silence. it finally dawned on me what she was referring to, that she was sexually attacked, and my heart sank. i asked her if i could try to help her to see any health professionals in the nearby town of musina, but she declined, as she said she was afraid of being caught as an “illegal migrant” in that urban centre and deported. i urged her to try to find some help, but i also recognized that she had approached me for some assistance and found me sorely lacking. she then left, heading back to the overcrowded part of the nervous conditions on the limpopo studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 171 workers’ compound where seasonal workers stayed, and i awkwardly continued talking with other zimbabweans for some time. hers was a troubling story in and of itself, but also, because sexual attacks were not yet publicly discussed as part of the risks of “jumping the border,” her allusion to this violence was particularly shocking to me. since my first research visit to northern south africa the year before, i had already heard of “maguma-guma,” the name for the typically zimbabwean men who would meet would-be migrants in the zimbabwean border city of beitbridge or in villages or unpopulated areas hugging the northern bank of the limpopo and offer them guidance across the river (for a fee); they also could end up robbing migrants jumping the border. by this research trip in 2005 one person had mentioned to me in passing that women migrants faced the risk of rape. but this was the first time i had heard, albeit indirectly, of the risk of sexual violence from these putative border guides by someone who had experienced it. by a few years later, knowledge of such attacks and risks was much more widespread in various public forms. this was partly a function of the reported rapid increase in the number of zimbabwean women and children crossing the border as the first decade of the twenty-first century moved on (crush, chikanda & tawodzera, 2015, p. 371), but it was due also to a growing number of organizations working to assist undocumented zimbabweans in this region. during my almost annual research trips to the region until 2011, i increasingly heard many such accounts, often quite explicit, not only from victims but increasingly from people who worked for the growing number of organizations who focused on zimbabwean migrants in this border-zone. news stories and ngo reports added to the attention this sexual violence began to receive. the incidence of such attacks seemed to increase, and the predominantly women victims of them had become an object of humanitarian intervention by some ngos in the border region. for example, médecins sans frontières (msf) set up an office in musina in late 2007 in response to the tens of thousands of zimbabweans crossing into south africa, where they provided emergency health services to these initially undocumented migrants fleeing political violence or the crumbling economy at that time in their home country. over the next six years in which they operated their office in the border region msf also developed a focus on survivors of sexual violence through, for example, setting up a clinic in musina for survivors of “sexual and gender based violence” in april 2009. as they reported, more than 75% of clients seen by msf in april were raped while crossing the border, and nearly 60% were raped by more than one perpetrator. seventy percent of the time, rapes were perpetrated with an armed threat (gun, knife, etc.) and almost 50% of clients had injuries due to associated violence. (msf, 2009, p. 14). while such work often provided important and timely support to women (and some men) who otherwise would have had difficulty getting medical blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 172 treatment, as undocumented migrants generally faced obstacles at south african health clinics and hospitals despite constitutional provisions saying otherwise (crush & tawodzera 2014), such efforts also contributed to the sense that sexual violence is principally a risk from illegally crossing the border, making it a function of the illegality of the migrants and thus solely a criminal matter, one which implies that state authorities need to act while humanitarian organizations assist those who were attacked. although those called maguma-guma definitely contributed strongly to the main form of gendered insecurity for border crossers, particularly for those who were new to the task of “jumping” the limpopo, such a concentrated focus of efforts directed towards what most officials called “sgbv” (sexual and gender based violence) at the border obscures wider practices of gendered insecurities, including violence, which many zimbabweans, particularly women, encountered in the first decade of this century while seeking livelihoods and shelter in northern south africa. the humanitarian focus on individual survivors of sexual violence puts into the shadow a whole range of other gendered insecurities, built particularly into the social and power relations through which many sought to forge livelihoods and shelter. as doris buss (2014) has pointed out, such concentrated attention on women survivors of such extraordinary violence can miss out both other forms of quotidian gendered insecurities and ways of seeking to mediate them. this is not a critique of such efforts by activists, humanitarians and others who seek to help the survivors and stop such forms of sexual violence. rather, i provide an alternative perspective that aims to provide insight into the deeper gendered hierarchies woven into everyday life faced by many migrant women, which occur in the penumbra of the glare of such massmediated spotlights. whereas the activism by humanitarian organizations and others brought some help and assistance to women who experienced sexual and gender-based violence,1 it occluded gendered insecurities woven into migrants’ attempts to seek livelihoods and shelter. in this paper, i argue that these insecurities are part and parcel of the gendered dependency relations zimbabwean women migrants need to work through – and with – as they pursue both livelihoods and shelter in northern south africa.2 these gendered insecurities, which are woven into the fabric of travel, work and accommodation for these migrant zimbabwean women in northern south africa should, i suggest, be examined in struggles for social justice for undocumented migrants and refugees in south africa. although in south 1 according to a contact with the msf office in musina, msf also provided assistance to the smaller number of male survivors of sexual violence, though there was limited public discussion of these male victims and survivors. 2 of course, it is important to point out that many south african women face incredible gendered insecurities, particularly in the form of sexual violence directed towards women, girls and lgbtq+ people. this paper only refers to the particular insecurities faced by migrant zimbabwean women in northern south africa, and not, say, migrant women coming from somalia, ethiopia, drc, etc. there may be an overlap with the types of insecurities faced by women from these other migrant communities and south african women, but not necessarily. nervous conditions on the limpopo studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 173 africa’s major urban centres social justice activists have conducted innovative struggles for rights for refugees and against xenophobia drawing on humanitarian logics as well as political activism (robins, 2009), the activism tends to focus on legal and humanitarian issues rather than the economic and housing insecurities faced by undocumented migrants (see shannon morreira’s (2010) research on the role of an activist group working with zimbabweans in cape town in the first decade of this century). as morreira (2016) insightfully shows, zimbabweans seeking asylum in south africa during this period had great troubles translating their claims into the narrow legal language and practice of “human rights violations;” a language and practice that were generally indifferent to the everyday power relations facing the undocumented zimbabwean migrants she studied in cape town. during my research period, there were no social justice activists working with zimbabwean migrants in northern south africa. humanitarian organizations helped to put a spotlight on vulnerabilities of women migrants to sgbv in northern south africa, but this overlooked the insecurities migrant women negotiate in the form of gendered dependency relations shaping access to economic livelihoods and accommodation. didier fassin has suggested such occlusions of quotidian gendered insecurities (buss 2014) are part of the growing hegemony of “humanitarian reason” as organizations and social scientists draw strongly on the lexicon of moral sentiments rather than social critique in both examining and acting upon the wider social world: “[i]nequality is replaced by exclusion, domination is transformed into misfortune, injustice is articulated as suffering, violence is expressed in terms of trauma” (fassin, 2012, p. 6). while tracing some of these gendered work experiences for zimbabwean women in northern south africa in the latter part of the first decade of this century, i will also show how the increasing presence of humanitarian and development organizations in this region after 2007 became incorporated into gendered livelihood strategies for these migrants. an institutional focus on “international migrants” can have consequences for the gendered livelihood strategies of these very migrants. by tracing how some of these humanitarian organizations became involved in zimbabwean migrants’ precarious attempts to find work and accommodation, my aim is to suggest the importance of also drawing upon the lens of social critique, what fassin (2008, p. 339) calls a “critical discourse” that tries to render “the complexity of issues and positions (which can be taken into account by social agents themselves),” to engender a better sense of the wider struggles for social justice in which these zimbabwean women migrants in south africa should be placed. this essay aims to broaden the focus of social activism concerning refugees and undocumented migrants in south africa to also attend to gendered insecurities in their everyday economic and shelter-seeking activities. although there have not been any mobilizations around this issue, i suggest there should be, as another way to “bring about social justice for migrants [is] by disrupting political order that denies them existence, voices, subjectivity, blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 174 and rights” (basok, 2010, p. 99). such a move, i suggest, allows an analysis to move beyond simply a “humanitarian reason” to one seeking social justice. after sketching out the broader political economy and immigration regimes shaping zimbabwean migrants in northern south africa from the 1990s to 2011, i will provide some examples from both the commercial farms and the town of musina of how gendered insecurities are interlaced within particular forms of hierarchical social and power relations shaping livelihood options for zimbabwean women and men. these examples highlight issues of inequality in terms of access to and control over important resources, and those which emerge from relations of dependency involved in livelihood practices. south african immigration policies towards zimbabweans, 1990s-2011 when i began doing ethnographic research in northern south africa in 2004, it was very difficult to find anyone self-identifying as a recent migrant from zimbabwe. in contrast, in 2010 it was easy to meet zimbabwean migrants who had arrived during or after 2000 residing in the northern south african border town of musina and surrounding area. self-identifying zimbabweans were working in the stores, hawking items on the sidewalk, and being paid as domestic servants in the town and townships; labouring in the fields, orange packing sheds, and in the offices of the commercial farms; and staffing a number of the non-governmental organizations operating there. the growing number of zimbabweans entering south africa is connected to post-2000 shifts in zimbabwe that saw growing political persecutions and a politically-induced economic “meltdown” as the zanu (pf) government sought to maintain its grip on power, which led to a massive exodus of zimbabweans (hammar, mcgregor & landau, 2010). an estimated three million plus zimbabweans left since 2000; more than a million are estimated to be living in south africa (crush et al., 2015, p. 366). in their examination of survey data from 1997, 2005 and 2010, crush et al. (2015) show that by 2005 there were some significant shifts in the characteristics of zimbabwean migrants to south africa. compared to those who migrated in the 1990s, these post-2000 migrants tended to be younger, following family members who had preceded them, while they themselves were more likely acting as a network for other family members and friends to follow them into the country. moreover, there was a growing “feminization” of migrants as more women were crossing south over the limpopo, given the worsening economic possibilities in zimbabwe and the deterioration of the various forms of social safety nets. from 2006-2011, a number of national and international organizations and government departments established offices in musina, given the dramatic increase in numbers of zimbabweans crossing the border who often were in a quite vulnerable situation. their mandate was to address or assist the growing nervous conditions on the limpopo studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 175 number of zimbabweans passing through or remaining in the musina area, fleeing political persecution or limited economic opportunities and trying to find a place of potential personal and financial security, at least temporarily (see also morreira, 2016). amongst others, the south african red cross, lawyers for human rights, msf, the international organisation for migration (iom), and the united nations high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) all opened offices in this border town. they joined save the children (uk) which already had a small program in musina directed towards “street children” for some years as well as the musina legal advice office, which had been in existence since the late 1980s. both of these organizations also started to develop programs for zimbabweans in northern south africa in the 2000s. a number of faithbased organizations, from established churches like the catholic church to congregations built around born-again evangelical ministers, opened up shelters for the zimbabweans. the department of home affairs built new offices and the department of labour opened up an office in the town. they were joined by peripatetic national and international journalists, officials with international ngos such as human rights watch and refugees international, and academics and graduate students from south african and international universities, all focusing on zimbabweans in musina and the surrounding area. there also were a number of changes in the broader immigration policies and the positioning of zimbabweans in south africa at large.3 over the last 20 years, zimbabweans have become publicly marked as the most numerous migrant group in south africa. they are marked in the sense that they are more likely than members of other nationalities to be subjected to discourses and practices in south africa that view them as “outsiders” and “aliens” – makwerekwere in the national vernacular (muzondidya 2010; rutherford, 2008). this xenophobic sentiment often characterizes zimbabweans and other african “foreigners” as threatening employment possibilities, security of property and of the person, public health, rights to public housing, and sexual relationships, amongst other issues that become identified for public concern and occasional moral panics and violence, particularly in the large urban centres of south africa (worby, hassim & kupe, 2008). although such violence has not been prevalent in northern south africa, such widelyknown and mass-mediated xenophobic violence and sentiments contributed to feelings of insecurity and otherness for many zimbabwean migrants living there during my period of research. there were growing numbers of zimbabweans migrating to south africa by 2005 as its own politics became more violent,4 and its social services and economic possibilities began to collapse for the majority of its population. 3 for greater insight into south african immigration policies more broadly, see crush (1998), peberdy (2009), and landau (2010). 4 see, e.g., hammar, raftopoulos & jensen (2004), sachikonye (2011), and rutherford (2017). blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 176 south africa was the major destination and the number of zimbabweans being deported from south africa increased dramatically: 10,861 in 1993, 21, 643 in 1997, 55,753 in 2003, and 204,827 in 2007 (crush et al., 2015, p. 374). home affairs officials recognized very few zimbabwean asylum seekers as bona fide refugees, leading to growing criticisms by national and international human rights and lawyers associations as potentially legitimate refugees were being deported back to zimbabwe (e.g., hrw, 2006; kriger, 2010; morreira, 2016). in july 2008, the department of home affairs opened a refugee reception office (rro) in musina, allowing asylum-seekers to initiate the process for applying for refugee status to south africa closer to the international border. the number of applicants arriving at the new musina rro soon outpaced the staffing capacities and applicants from zimbabwe (and elsewhere) remained for days, sometimes weeks, waiting for their documents. many observers and journalists began to raise public health and security concerns, particularly after south africa declared a cholera emergency in the district in december 2008 (in part as zimbabweans were fleeing a cholera outbreak in harare), and faith-based organizations began to establish shelters in musina’s townships for those waiting to receive their documents. international and national media sources increasingly ran stories about the humanitarian catastrophe (rutherford, 2011b). on april 3, 2009, in the middle of national election campaigns in south africa, the then minister of home affairs declared that there would be a moratorium on the deportation of zimbabweans, zimbabweans would be able to get 30 day visas to south africa for free; a de facto policy emerged that the asylum-seeker’s permit became the route for (quasi-)regularization. in northern south africa, any zimbabweans detained by authorities for lack of proper permits to be in the country were typically brought to the rro to receive an asylum-seeker’s permit, regardless of whether they fit the criteria for seeking asylum. with that permit, they had freedom of movement and employment while they waited for the slow process of being evaluated to see if they were recognized as legitimate refugees. this became the political subjectivity used by zimbabweans to seek permission to stay in south africa (rutherford, 2011a). then in september 2010 the “special dispensation” for zimbabweans was rescinded and those zimbabweans who were in the country on an asylumseeker’s permit had a short period to regularize their stay in south africa by applying for work, study or business permits. the ensuing “zimbabwean documentation project” was haphazardly applied (segattie, 2011, p. 56), regularizing some 255,000 zimbabweans, and deportations of zimbabweans resumed again on october 7, 2011. nervous conditions on the limpopo studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 177 gendered insecurities and the (inter)dependencies of work and accommodation the livelihood strategies for these zimbabwean migrants were often predicated on dependencies or interdependencies that can lead to conflict, exploitation, and other forms of vulnerabilities. these are particularly marked for women. in this section i examine some of the livelihood activities of zimbabwean women migrants in musina and the surrounding commercial farms, focusing in particular on various forms of dependencies and interdependencies on which they are predicated, and some of the gendered insecurities with which they are associated. some of these are conventional ones associated with workplaces, particularly those between employer or manager and employees, but others are also associated with landlords and humanitarian organizations themselves. by examining them, one recognizes that humanitarian organizations tend to overlook some vulnerabilities, and may themselves be implicated in them. the conceptual assumption here is that agency often appears through relations of dependency and subordination, providing particular forms of “capacity for action” (mahmood, 2001, p. 210). these relations of dependency have long structured livelihoods, relations of solidarity, and polities in southern africa (ferguson, 2015), and often entail various vulnerabilities. these are particularly acute for women. being a zimbabwean woman in musina during my period of research was associated with certain forms of work: washing clothes and doing other domestic labour; buying and selling objects such as fruit, boiled eggs, pens, etc.; and working in retail shops, particularly stores owned by south asian men in the business centre of musina. for example, many zimbabwean women in 2009 walked through the streets of the townships, looking for such piece jobs, whereas others would have regular customers, doing their laundry on certain days of the week. trading was another economic activity many zimbabwean women (and men) pursued. they would draw on linkages to other zimbabweans to get some capital to buy fruit or eggs and then vend them on the streets. others would sell for other zimbabwean women who bought the goods for sale, for a nominal amount of money or even simply for food. sometimes the women were able to exploit interdependencies for their own gain. one woman i call siphiwe explained in 2010 how she gained capital for her own business when she arrived in 2008. she said that shortly after arriving in musina she was asked by two women staying at one of the women’s shelters to buy undergarments for them in town as they had been robbed and raped when they jumped the border. she had used that money to buy a box of biscuits, which she then sold in town for a profit, giving her extra money after buying the undergarments. with that money, she bought a chicken to cook and used the maize meal rations, which she received from a church, to cook sadza and chicken to sell to zimbabweans waiting in the blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 178 queue at the rro to apply for an asylum-seeker’s permit. she was able to borrow the pots and plates from the shelters she was staying at to do the cooking and to serve the meal. after three weeks she had enough money to pay rent for a room and to buy an electric stove to keep her business going. such paths were rare and precarious. for instance, siphiwe ended up entering into a relationship with a man who had initially helped her business, but then, she said, ended up stealing much of her money and physically abusing her. her experience was not unusual. my research gathered numerous accounts of zimbabwean women in northern south africa who were confronted with demands for sex by those who controlled important resources in the workplace, accommodation, and transportation. although i did learn about some cases of violent rape, more commonly men in positions of authority placed demands on women to have sex with them. on the tshipise farm mentioned in the introduction, both female and male zimbabwean workers told me about what they called the “scheme” which occurred there. “if you want a job picking oranges here,” expressed one zimbabwean young man to me in july 2005, “you fall under the manager’s scheme. you have to pay.” the currency, so to speak, depended on the gender of the job-seeker. men had to pay in cash. women had to pay by sleeping with the manager. although zimbabwean men on this farm were more ready than zimbabwean women to talk to me about this “scheme,” a few women did tell that they had to submit to the demands of the manager to get a job. “life is too hard here in south africa for us zimbabweans,” observed one woman in august 2005, “there are too many predators here. wild animals in the bush when jumping the border and human ones on the farms…” i came across similar “schemes” on other farms, albeit not called that way. the term “scheme” reflects the general sentiment about practices whereby senior workers, often black south african or black zimbabwean men, would seek to “profit” from their gate-keeping role in terms of resources – such as a wage-paying job – by demanding sexual services from women job-seekers. in his research on a northern south african farm lincoln addison (2014) calls this the gendered “sexual economy.” demands for sex are just one form of structural violence laced through the raced and gendered economic and authority relations operating on the farms there (bolt, 2015, 2016). i heard similar accounts by young zimbabwean women who worked as shopkeepers in what were colloquially called “indian stores.” there are a number of relatively cheap consumer good wholesale and retail stores in musina, particularly off the main-road, owned and operated by south asian men (either born in south africa or asia). although many young women with whom i spoke saw these low-paying jobs as attractive, because they did not have to work outside in the heat or engage in physical activity and (for some) could try to steal some merchandise for resale after work, many also talked about risks of sexual assault by their proprietors or managers. i met a nervous conditions on the limpopo studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 179 few young women who said they left jobs in “indian shops” because bosses were sexually assaulting or harassing them. there were also risks in seeking accommodation in musina. unless the zimbabwean migrants already knew people with whom they could stay, they often ended up finding their own accommodation. many ended up staying with others they met in mkhukhu, typically one-room shacks built haphazardly in the backyard of houses in musina’s townships. renting out such shelters became one means of income-generation musina residents used since the growing influx of zimbabweans coming into the town. although such accommodations tended to be fraught with uncertainty for both landlords and tenants – over payments, conditions, concerns about theft, etc. – they sometimes also entailed gendered insecurity for some zimbabwean women. this usually took the form of landlords who offered free or subsidized rent if women slept with them, but i also heard examples of other forms of gendered coercion. one zimbabwean woman migrant reported that her landlady required zimbabwean women renting from her also to sell chicken feet at her bar. as this woman reported, because we did not understand venda very well, the landlady would talk to some venda men that she was offering them beautiful zimbabwean ladies from her house. in return she would then ask the men to buy her beer. this was being done without our knowledge; whilst we were selling the chicken feet these men would come to us to ask for sex. for many zimbabwean women who came to musina on their own, the precariousness of their livelihoods often overlapped with uncertainty over their shelter. sometimes the dependencies in one could help in the other; at other times, it could lead to gendered vulnerabilities. let me give the example of a zimbabwean woman i call taurai, who travelled to south africa as her husband had migrated to the country the year before but had stopped sending money back to help cover some of the expenses for her and their children. after leaving her children with her in-laws, taurai arrived in the musina taxi ranks in april 2009. a zimbabwean woman who she met there advised her to stay in town and not travel further as she had no asylum-seeking permit. the woman who advised taurai was selling boiled eggs in the taxi ranks and offered to share her room in a mkhukhu. in taurai’s words, “she told me that she had only stayed at this place for five days.... she herself was under the care of another zimbabwean woman who was renting the mkhukhu as she had no money to rent or pay for her own mkhukhu.” as taurai had money that she gained from selling a cow in zimbabwe from her husband’s herd, she then found another mkhukhu via another zimbabwean woman she met in the queue waiting for her asylum-seeker`s permit. a month later the woman who shared her mkhukhu left to work on the surrounding farms and the following month taurai found a job working in a spaza shop (a small shack selling basic food and household items, commonly found in townships). blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 180 she then gave up her mkhukhu as she was able to sleep in the shop for free and worked as a shopkeeper for two months. as she was paid less than half of her agreed-upon salary, by the second month she left the spaza shop and went to stay at one of the women’s shelters operated by churches in the township. a south african woman then came by the shelter looking for a housekeeper and promised a small stipend and a free room, so taurai moved into a mkhukhu in the backyard of her employer’s house, sharing it with six other zimbabwean women. the employment relationship quickly deteriorated, and the south african woman then told her that she was not going to pay her any form of salary and began charging her rent. when taurai started to complain, the landlady replied, in taurai’s words, “go and look for a boyfriend so that i could get some money. go to the truck stop in town to find a boyfriend.” rather than taking up this proposition taurai said she found piece jobs washing clothes and cleaning houses in a township of musina to pay the rent; a number of the other women staying at this place were engaged in sex work as their main source of income. in short, the livelihood and accommodation possibilities open to, and forged by, these zimbabwean migrant women in northern south africa were defined through various forms of hierarchies, dependencies and interdependencies that were highly gendered. they were also laced through with various forms of gendered and sexual vulnerabilities. whereas some of the growing number of humanitarian organizations focused on such vulnerabilities, as noted in taurai’s account they themselves also provided their own forms of gendered dependencies informing livelihood and accommodation possibilities for zimbabwean migrants. humanitarian organizations and gendered livelihood strategies humanitarian organizations in northern south africa helped zimbabweans in many ways over my research period – providing healthcare, legal advice, trauma care, and food, amongst other important services and support. they also worked with and lobbied different policy-makers on their programs directed towards zimbabweans. however, i will focus on how these organizations played a less obvious but still important role in the changing social and legal circumstances concerning zimbabwean migrants. none of them were involved in any social injustices with zimbabwean migrants (at least as i discovered), but seeing how they themselves were positioned by zimbabwean women and men in their precarious searches for work and housing underscores how their “humanitarian reason” overlooked one of migrants’ key insecurities. as my research assistant and i spent time with the ngos and churchorganized shelters working with zimbabweans in musina we slowly realized that the sites of these organizations were also important places for many of the zimbabwean migrants over and above the specific services that were nervous conditions on the limpopo studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 181 available to them. they offered health care, shelter and legal support, and were also incorporated into a key aim for many of the migrants: strategies to find work. for example, in july 2008 i was sitting inside a small storage room that also served as the office attached to the “i believe in jesus” camp located in one of the townships. this camp was established in early 2008 by zimbabwean and south african pastors to serve as the temporary shelter for the many dozens of zimbabwean men waiting for their applications for asylum-seeker’s permits to be processed. this july morning when i was talking with one of the zimbabwean pastors who opened and operated the camp (with support from the unhcr, msf and south african red cross), a middle aged black south african man entered the room with one of the zimbabwean men who worked at the camp as an “usher,” the term used for the few men whose job was to “maintain order.” the pastor excused himself and went to speak with the south african man. a few minutes later, the pastor sent the usher outside, who then returned with one of the zimbabwean women who helped to cook the evening food for the camp residents. shortly afterward the south african man left the camp with the zimbabwean woman in his truck. the pastor then told me that the south african was a commercial tomato farmer who had approached the pastor a few days earlier inquiring about finding a woman to be a domestic servant. the pastor then approached one of the zimbabwean women cooks and after confirming she was willing to work for the farmer, he contacted the farmer who then came to collect his new employee. as this example shows, the ngos and church groups in their spaces and activities provided locations for humanitarian support as well as for zimbabweans to look for jobs. they did so in three ways. firstly, they became known as places where zimbabweans congregated. a young zimbabwean woman standing outside a shelter for migrant woman in musina told me, “the shelter helps by providing a clean place to stay and some food at night, though it isn’t always filling. but the best part is that it’s a place to find a job as employers always come by here looking for workers.” although acting as a recruiting site for cheap labour was not part of the declared aims of the shelter, it was a typical example of how organizations whose mandate focused on international migrants (particularly from zimbabwe) in this border-zone were also used for other purposes by some of the social actors with whom they interacted. once the asylum-seeker’s permit became treated as a de facto work permit after march 2009, south africans looking for employees would come by these places assisting zimbabweans. such searches were very gendered. by 2009, employers looking for women workers tended to go by the women’s shelter. this would include those looking for domestic servants as well as commercial farmers looking for pickers or women to work in citrus packsheds. occasionally, other zimbabwean migrants would come by looking to employ women to work as a street vendor for them, going to sell fruit or other blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 182 type of food on the town’s sidewalks. in contrast, employers looking for male workers tended to go by the i believe in jesus camp, the el shaddai location (a born-again church which provided a free hot lunch to migrants), or to the department of home affairs’ rro, outside of which many zimbabweans congregated waiting to see if their permit would be issued or renewed. employers looking for men to work in construction jobs, day labour jobs requiring physical strength (such as off-loading delivery trucks) as well as commercial farm jobs would drive by these sites. even though by 2011 these organizations tended to also assist migrants from other african countries, particularly the drc, ethiopia and somalia, it was predominantly zimbabweans who used these locations as places of recruitment for jobs. zimbabwean migrants knew these sites as places employers frequented, and many often stood by these places during the day with the aim of finding work. some would come to these sites hoping to find permanent jobs or, for many others, to find temporary jobs to get enough funds to travel further south into the bigger urban areas of south africa. some zimbabweans whom we met at these places had left most of their money with relatives in zimbabwe or had it stolen as they jumped the border and were attacked by maguma-guma. they desperately needed some funds to travel. the position for many migrants was very precarious, as illustrated by an example of a 35 year-old woman i call chido who had initially arrived in musina in 2003. chido had begun making money in south africa by selling bananas on the sidewalk for a few months and then until 2007 she was a money changer, making decent profits as she changed zimbabwean dollars into south african rand, us dollars, botswana pula and vice versa. she then sunk 6300 rand of her profits into buying 70 boxes of green soap to sell to zimbabwe but was duped by a visiting zimbabwean man who claimed that he would sell them for her and split the profits. he took the soap and she never received any money from him. chido then moved to the women’s shelter in 2008 as she could no longer afford the rent and she was no longer able to send much money or food back to her dependents in zimbabwe. shortly afterwards she returned to zimbabwe and over the next two years she would return occasionally to musina, staying two or so months at the women’s shelter. as chido noted in november 2011, she gets “recruited at this shelter for piece jobs of washing and cleaning… i am paid 50 rand each time that i am recruited to do these jobs. you know, i cannot just sit in zimbabwe. i have to do something as i have five children and my husband has since passed away.” the second way these organizations were entangled in migrants’ jobseeking strategies was that people working for them became recruiters or gobetweens for zimbabweans, as in the example with the pastor at the i believe in jesus shelter, who arranged to find a domestic servant for the south african farmer. in many of the organizations, there were individuals who occasionally sought to arrange employment opportunities for zimbabwean migrants. they either acted as go-betweens for possible employers or offered nervous conditions on the limpopo studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 183 their own employment opportunities. the latter was the case at one church that provided a free lunch. the main person behind the church was an afrikaner man who also was a businessman. he would hire some zimbabwean male migrants for various jobs. third, the various organizations were occasionally sources of employment themselves. some of the ngos hired zimbabwean migrants to carry out projects. both the iom and the musina legal advice office, for example, hired zimbabwean migrants to undertake research or monitoring for them on a contract basis. the church-run shelters often hired zimbabweans to cook, clean and provide security. in these examples, the humanitarian organizations become incorporated into many zimbabweans’ strategies and tactics for seeking shelter, for finding livelihood opportunities for themselves and, often, for generating resources to remit back to dependents in zimbabwe and staying secure and safe. my research shows that most of the zimbabwean migrants who spent some time in northern south africa sought to forge relations, including hierarchical ones, with other zimbabweans or south africans in order to access shelter, food, income, or travel arrangements, or to remit goods and cash back to zimbabwe. these relationships were often precarious, risky and often temporary, as conditions changed. women, in particular, tended to find such relations of dependency and interdependency risky. yet, female migrants often had to rely on these relations as they sought out livelihood activities in south africa. in all of these activities, a crucial logic was the involvement of dependency relations. the humanitarian organizations became entangled in, and occasionally helped to perpetuate, what james ferguson (2013) has called “declarations of dependence.” many zimbabwean migrants staying in or passing through musina from 2008-2011 saw the various humanitarian organizations as not only sources of help and aid but also gendered sites to find possible livelihood practices, even if this was not explicitly part of their programming. indeed, sometimes the programming obscures one from recognizing these other uses zimbabwean migrants made of humanitarian organizations. conclusion borne out of uncertainties over their legal status, where and how they can find food to eat if not ways to earn money and a place to stay, and the reasons that led them to travel to south africa (political violence, marital uncertainties, severe poverty, etc.), zimbabwean migrants in northern south africa were generally in precarious positions. the types of precarity shifted blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 184 as the policies, laws and wider economies changed between 2004 and 2011.5 but generally these types of precarity were amplified for many of these zimbabwean women by the different forms of gendered violence and gendered insecurities they could encounter in seeking a way to make a living or some sort of shelter. as pamela scully (2011, p. 30) has pointed out in her wider historical analysis of human rights initiatives directed towards african women, it “seems more difficult [than expected] to bring discussions of sexual violence within the field of economic and social justice.” shannon morreira (2010, p. 446) argued that the activism by a social justice organization working with zimbabwean asylum seekers in cape town in 2006 downplayed “conditions in which asylum seekers lived in communities in townships in south africa.” with the absence of social justice organizations working with zimbabwean migrants in northern south africa during my research period – and no identifiable social justice initiatives by these zimbabweans themselves – i have examined the actions of humanitarian organizations. whereas media and some humanitarian organizations brought much attention to the risks of sexual violence in terms of crossing the border, there was no public discussion of the quotidian gendered violence and insecurities zimbabwean women faced in the workplaces, shelters, or other areas in which they were operating through relations of dependency. i encountered more women who worried and talked about the insecurities around forging a livelihood and findinga place to stay than who discussed the dangers coming from the maguma-guma. i am not saying it is an either/or situation – either one should focus on the sexual violence risk at the border or the gendered violence and insecurities embedded in many of the livelihoods – but without acknowledging the interrelationships of sexual violence with economic injustices, the humanitarian advocacy around refugees and undocumented migrants in south africa misses out on an important source of gendered insecurity. my title echoes the celebrated novel by tsitsi dangarembga. in nervous conditions dangarembga eloquently and insightfully demonstrates the colonial, racist, patriarchal, and gerontocratic pressures and inequalities which shaped black women’s bodies and lives in colonial zimbabwe in the 1960s and early 1970s during the intensification of the armed liberation struggle. her subtle and critical portrayals include a limning of patrilineal and affinal hierarchies and the gendered dynamics and insecurities involved in them. such a social layering shows that the subject position of being a woman has been shaped by “generations of threat and assault and neglect” (dangarembga, 1988, p. 138). these various forms of dependency shaped by age, gender, and lineage dynamics of kin and affinal relationships all contribute to the nervous conditions of the female characters. 5 some zimbabweans were far from vulnerable but profited in various ways from their time in south africa. nervous conditions on the limpopo studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 169-187, 2020 185 analogously, highlighting the gendered dependency relations shaping strategies for livelihood and accommodation by zimbabwean women migrants in northern south africa troubles portrayals of zimbabwean women migrants as mainly victims of trauma due to risks of sgbv. it disrupts (basok, 2010) the focus on exceptional traumatic situations by humanitarian logics, by examining the vulnerabilities found in everyday inequalities that social justice perspectives can demonstrate. as the number of zimbabweans crossing the border increased after 2000, there was growing humanitarian and policy attention to their situation in northern south africa (and elsewhere in the country). in terms of women migrants, this attention was mainly directed towards women’s shelters, health care, and attending to victims of sexual violence at the hands of maguma-guma. such blatant attacks are arresting and disturbing, as i experienced in a passing way in 2005. nonetheless, generally unremarked by many of these organizations was the threat of gendered insecurities within the livelihoods and strategies for shelter facing many zimbabwean women living on the commercial farms in northern south africa and in musina. through my “critical discourse” (fassin, 2008, p. 339) trying to better render some of the positions and gendered power relations that many of these women had to address in northern south africa, i have aimed to show the importance of mobilizing wider social justice initiatives rather than (only) focusing on humanitarianism (morreira, 2016). power and dependency relations in which many humanitarian organizations themselves became part and parcel, help to constitute the nervous conditions of the agency of these women. acknowledgements i want to thank the social sciences and humanities research council of canada for generously funding this research and my good friend rinse nyamuda who assisted me with the research. i also want to warmly thank the two anonymous reviewers of my manuscript as well as my co-editors of this special issue, daiva stasiulis and zaheera jinnah for their very helpful comments on a draft of this paper, david butz for his helpful editorial work as well as the audiences at the studies in national and international development seminar at queen’s university in 2013, the african studies association conference in 2014, the carleton university 2016 symposium on “intersectionality and migration” for helpful feedback on my presentations of different aspects of this paper. references addison, l. 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(2008). go home or die here: violence, xenophobia and the reinvention of difference in south africa. johannesburg, sa: wits university press. mcguire final jan 26 17 correspondence address: john thomas mcguire, school of liberal arts, siena college, 515 loudon road, loudonville, ny, usa, 12211; email: jmcguire@siena.edu issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 social justice feminism and its counterhegemonic response to laissez-faire industrial capitalism and patriarchy in the united states, 1899-1940 john thomas mcguire siena college, usa abstract this article uses the hegemonic/counter-hegemonic framework of italian scholar and activist antonio gramsci to explain how a movement known as social justice feminism emerged as a counter-hegemonic response to two hegemonic concepts established in and continued, respectively, the post-civil war united states: laissez-faire industrial capitalism and patriarchal dominance. in four stages from 1899 through 1940, social justice feminists pursued the promotion of an “entering wedge” labor legislation strategy and the increasing participation of women in national politics, particularly in the democratic party. while substantially successful in its goals, social justice feminism failed in two important aspects: its inability to work independently of a patriarchal political system, and, most significant, its apparent refusal to include women of color. keywords social justice feminism; antonio gramsci; hegemony & counterhegemony; historical sociology; feminist agency introduction words constitute so natural a part of our everyday discourse that some can become devalued through overuse. such is the case with “hegemony.” originally derived from the greek ἡγεµονία hegemonia, meaning “leadership” and “rule” (oxford english dictionary, 2015), the mass media constantly uses the word to express either the continuing superpower dominance of the united states or the rising power of the people’s republic of china.1 yet 1 for examples of the long-term use of “hegemony” in its overall terms of “great power” definition, see kelly (2014), and hayes (1988). social justice feminism & its counter-hegemonic response studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 49 “hegemony” encompasses a deeper meaning than just a ready moniker for global or regional domination. one of the persons who helped ground the word in multifarious meanings died after being released from a fetid italian fascist prison in 1937. antonio gramsci’s posthumously published publications have become extremely influential, particularly in his discussion of cultural hegemony and its ramifications in advanced capitalist societies. gramsci argued that the conceptualization and implementation of ideas in social discourse help to create either new inclinations or disinclinations among common populaces. his most important concern lay in how societal elites may establish cultural hegemonies that both placate non-ruling classes and simply reinforce existing economic orders. in response, gramsci advocated for the formulation of a set of political and cultural ideas, or “counter-hegemony,” from the non-elite classes, that would eventually establish a marxian, classless society (adamson, 1983; gramsci, 1971, 1987, 2007). using gramsci’s work as a framing device, this article argues that social justice feminism acted as a counter-hegemonic movement from 1899 through 1940 against two dominant strands in the united states’ cultural hegemony after the civil war: laissez-faire industrial capitalism and patriarchal dominance. 2 social justice feminists used a strategy of promoting and passing women’s labor legislation as an “entering wedge” for the eventual inclusion of all workers under state protection, and strengthening of women’s political participation. this counter-hegemonic movement, moreover, went through four stages from its creation to its final efforts in the late 1930s. in the first two stages, which lasted from roughly 1899 through 1918, social justice feminists defended the constitutionality of gender-specific labor laws in court litigation and created an alliance with new york’s factory investigating commission (fic) to promote and pass the most extensive labor legislation agenda in the united states until the new deal. in the third stage, which lasted from 1918 through 1933, the second counterhegemonic aim took precedence as further attempts at a gender-specific labor legislation agenda encountered limited success and the ncl legal network disbanded solved after the u.s. supreme court declared women’s minimum wage legislation unconstitutional. thus, from 1921 through 1928 eleanor roosevelt and mary williams (molly) dewson created a new partnership between social justice feminists and the new york state democratic party. in the final, most important, stage, which occurred from 1933 through 1940, the movement encountered its greatest successes, ranging from the passage of the fair labor standards act (flsa) of 1938, the united states” first maximum hours, minimum wages law, and the rise of the women’s division of the democratic national committee (dnc). yet social justice feminism still failed to become a true counter 2 the term “social justice feminism” comes from sklar, schuler & strasser (1998). for an extension of the term into contexts other than historicism, see kaslem & williams (2010). john thomas mcguire studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 50 hegemonic movement because it failed to both work independently of the patriarchal establishment and to include women of color. this article does not assume to be a groundbreaking gramscian analysis in terms of gender; over the past three decades feminist scholars have successfully reinterpreted and extended the italian scholar’s insights into such germane issues as paid work, sexuality, and violence (see e.g., ledwith, 2009; kenway, 2002). but it does intend to make a fresh contribution to the field of historical sociology (lachmann, 2013; skocpol, 1984, p. ix), and most importantly, it also emphasizes the pertinence of gramsci to the current global social and political situation. the once-dominant doctrine of neoliberalism, which focused on capitalistic markets and private property rights, sustained a significant decline after the severe economic effects of the great recession of 2007-2010 (synamon, fazzari & setterfield, 2013; domenic & levy, 2016). moreover, the ensuing, growing worldwide demands for social justice are further deepened by the growing climate control crisis (see e.g., held & young, 2011). gramsci’s hegemonic discussions therefore can provide new theoretical and practical bases for societies seeking to meet these new demands. gramscian hegemony and counter-hegemony while the ideas of antonio gramsci have been extensively used in fields ranging from sociology to feminist studies (see e.g., letherby, 2003), with nearly 400 academic papers based on his work in the last quarter of the 20th century (van der pijl, 2003, pp. 508-509), a full elucidation of his theoretical framework is necessary before using it in a historical context. what gramsci proposed, within the marxist ideological structure of rebellion and ultimate triumph against advanced capitalistic societies, was a polymorphous approach which saw the complex interplay of everyday living and discourse as something more than economic determinism. in the straightforward marxist methodology, economic developments totally initiate historical inclinations, especially in the hoped-for creation of a new, classless society (marx, 1977, 1989). while not all subsequent marxists followed this one-dimensional approach – vladimir lenin, for example, looked at how capitalism affected noneconomic areas such as culture and jurisprudence (lenin 1960a, 1960b) – gramsci, in the words of one commentator, used a “larger contextual process that managed to break with more rigid formulations of marxism” (harootunian, 2015, p. 115) by examining how ideas and their subsequent societal influences help create new predispositions, or lack of predispositions, among the common populace. part of gramsci’s formulation concerned the very fluidity of ordinary cultural discourse, which he saw not as a rigid system of class-restricted beliefs, but as an amorphous, uncertain process constructed from a threelayered interaction: the “spontaneous philosophy” of individuals, which social justice feminism & its counter-hegemonic response studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 51 encompassed language, conventional wisdom, empirical knowledge, and folklore; the “world views” of societal groups united by cultural and economic solidarities, and most important, the “dominant hegemonic view” of the ruling class (gramsci, 1971, p. 323). in order to maintain long-term societal stability, gramsci argued, a capitalist ruling class cannot frequently use violent coercion as a means of consensus; instead, the elite must convince the other, “subaltern” classes of the inherent validity of the system’s values and norms. thus dominant cultural hegemony relies on voluntarism, participation, and the apparent “common sense” that guides the society’s everyday understanding of the world, and relies on institutions such as schools and churches to disseminate the apparent traditions (gramsci, 1971, p. 333; gramsci, 1996, p. 91). but the ruling class’s constant need to justify its cultural hegemony therefore allows room for the development of counterhegemonies (gramsci, 1971, p. 323; adamson, 1983, pp. 170-179, 174; simon, 1982, pp. 58-79; bates, 1975, pp. 353-357). gramsci labelled the continual battle between the prevailing cultural hegemony and counter-hegemonic views in a society a continual “war of position,” in which the subaltern classes would need to formulate political and cultural ideas to overcome the prevailing common cultural consciousness. such counter-hegemonic forces, moreover, would encompass two agents: “class forces” which confront the processes of capitalist accumulation, and “popular democratic currents,” which encompass movements or identities involved in civil society (gramsci, 1971, p. 328; gramsci, 1992, p. 169; urry, 1981; femia, 1975, p. 34). gramsci did not see the war for position as an easily won conflict; instead, as the scholar lawrence freedman elegantly analogizes, “[t]he ruling classes” intellectual domination of civil society could be understood as a series of trenches and fortresses that could only be undermined by a relentless war” (freedman, 2015, p. 331), a conflict that would need the enlistment of the “elementary passions of the people” (gramsci, 1987, p. 418; see also reed, 2012; aronowitz, 2009). gramsci knew only too well the costs inherent in such a counterhegemonic conflict, for he vainly tried in the mid-1920s to unite the italian workers and peasants into an effective counter-hegemonic coalition that could overturn italian capitalism (gramsci, 1993, pp. 20-43; harootunian, 2015, pp. 115-120). as will be seen in the following pages, counterhegemonic efforts to counter advanced capitalistic systems in other countries also encountered difficult obstacles, even in the midst of economic dislocations that seemingly showed serious flaws in the prevalent hegemony. cultural hegemony in the post-civil war united states, 1865-1899 human history often concentrates on the violent upsurges that constitute revolutions against the established political order. but non-violent societal transformations can be equally significant. like the information revolution john thomas mcguire studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 52 which firmly established a postindustrial world after the late 1970s, the second industrial revolution, which most scholars mark as occurring between 1865 and 1920, produced similar effects in the united states and the rest of the western world. the world’s oldest republic found itself an urbanized, industrialized power, with new centralizations and refinements in communication and transportation (scranton, 1997; hounsell, 1984). a nation which encompassed ideologies of individualism and small societal structures now saw those ideologies dramatically transformed in the new industrial order (wiebe, 1967). part of this transformation incorporated the laissez-faire principles first eloquently enunciated by adam smith in his 1776 publication, the wealth of nations, in the cultural hegemony of the united states. the idea of social darwinism, or the idea incurred from darwin’s nascent theory of evolution that only the “fittest” of any species survived and applied to societal conditions, found an especially congenial base of support from the second industrial revolution’s beneficiaries such as john d. rockefeller and andrew carnegie, who only needed to point to their own humble origins to show how, through hard work and sacrifice, any man in the united states could rise to their status of financial scionship (hawkins, 1997; hofstadter, 1992) as women’s organizations in the united states encountered the ramifications of the second industrial revolution, social justice arose as a concept in the ongoing quandary of reconciling industrial and technological advancements with the dignity of working people. the term’s social and religious implications appealed to an american middle class firmly committed to its victorian bourgeoisie ways. in addition, reformers in the late 19th century took the term “justice,” which previously arose in legal contexts, and redefined it in terms of the social gospel so as to question social and economic inequities stemming mostly from, they believed, the cultural hegemony of laissez-faire economics and its corresponding rationales (mcgerr, 2005; fox & kloppenberg, 1998; diner, 1998; dawley, 1991). but even as women reformers challenged laissez-faire industrial capitalism, they also confronted another, formidable obstacle continued by the post-civil war cultural hegemony in the united states: patriarchal dominance. despite acquiring certain, limited rights such as the retention of property rights after marriage, white women in the mid-to-late 19th century confronted the paradox that, although citizens through the united states constitution and the bill of rights, they still could not exercise the right that most represented a citizen’s exercise of his or her power – the right to vote (cott, 2000). this bifurcated system of citizenship did not immediately deprive women of all possible social power, for as scholars such as estelle freedman note, women, in their “separate sphere” of civil voluntary organizations, managed to mount considerable agency in the abolitionist, temperance, and suffrage movements (freedman, 1979). but such agency did not resolve another, equally important question – how to create effective alliances with male politicians so as to create legislative means to not only protect industrial workers, but also social justice feminism & its counter-hegemonic response studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 53 to counter the prevailing cultural hegemony about state involvement in the new economic system. social justice feminism as a counter-hegemonic movement, 1899-1940 by the 1890s a counter-hegemonic movement against the tenets of laissezfaire industrial capitalism, known as progressivism, arose in the united states. this movement, which eventually gave its name to an era occurring between 1890 and 1920, originated from a desire to re-establish order in a society still absorbing the new societal presences of urbanization and industrialization, and a general dissatisfaction with the industrial revolution’s negative effects, such as unsafe labor conditions and noisome residential accommodations (diner, 1998; mcgerr, 2005). social justice feminism came out of this burgeoning counter-hegemony, and its main initiator, florence kelley, came from an interesting mixture of ideological, cultural, and practical origins. born in 1859, kelley graduated from cornell college in 1882. denied entry into the graduate school at the university of pennsylvania, she subsequently traveled to europe and enrolled at the university of zurich. while in switzerland, kelley joined the burgeoning socialist movement and undertook an english translation of friedrich engels’ the conditions of the working class in england in 1844. returning to the united states as the wife of an eastern european medical student, lazare wischnewetzky, kelley settled in new york city. but when wischnewetzky turned abusive, kelley and her children moved to chicago in 1891, securing a new home in jane addams’s hull house settlement (sklar, 1995). kelley soon established herself as a leading reformer in the nation’s second largest city. when john peter altgeld became illinois’s governor in 1893, he appointed kelley the state’s factory inspector. kelley’s proudest accomplishment in her four years as a state official centered on the passage of an eight hours law for working women. but she soon discovered the limits of progressivism in the united states when in 1895 illinois’s supreme court declared the law unconstitutional (sklar, 1995). altgeld’s controversial pardon of the convicted haymarket square rioters cost him re-election in 1896, and kelley lost her position. in 1899 she accepted an offer to become general secretary of the national consumers’ league (ncl), a newly created national federation of women’s consumer organizations. until 1907 kelley coordinated the league’s activities and encouraged the creation of new ncl branches throughout the united states. but a landmark case soon prompted her to enter the field of legal litigation. in muller v. oregon (1907), an oregon bakery owner challenged the state’s new hours law for women workers. kelley and her research secretary, josephine goldmark, worked with famed boston attorney louis brandeis to defend the statute when the case came before the u.s. supreme court. the team wrote what became known as the “brandeis brief,” a legal document that used not john thomas mcguire studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 54 only judicial precedents but also sociological evidence, especially industrial reports from european sources. the supreme court agreed with this new approach, declaring the law “reasonable.” no longer could the united states’ court system take comfort in the abstract realities of contractual obligation between employers and employees; instead, judges began to recognize that the messy realities of industrialism warranted serious consideration (mcguire, 2004; woloch, 1998). after its success in muller v. oregon, the ncl legal network next worked on passing and then defending a night work law before the new york court of appeals. in a rare reversal, the state’s highest court in people v. schweinler press (1915) overruled its previous decision against night work legislation, conceding that the ncl and the factory investigating commission had now demonstrated that overnight work proved cumbersome for working women. the legal network also continued its successful defense of labor legislation before the nation’s highest court. in bunting v. oregon (1917), for example, the supreme court ruled that men’s working hour limitations did not violate the 14th amendment’s “freedom of contract” principle, under which the employer–employee relationship could not be interfered with by the state (mcguire, 2004; urofsky, 1992). in addition to using the court system, social justice feminists also sought support for their counter-hegemonic aims through cross-class and crossgender support, which reflected gramsci’s ideas of “class” and “popular democratic forces.” two leading social justice feminists demonstrated the cross-class nature of the movement. in 1926 rose schneiderman, a former garment worker and president of the new york women’s trade union league (nywtul), argued that the quest for social justice included “the right to be born well, the right to a carefree and happy childhood, the right to education, [and] the right to mental, spiritual, and physical growth and development.” without these rights of industrial justice, schneiderman continued, full participation in the american political process by women would be impossible (schneiderman, 1926). three years later, frances perkins, an upper-middle-class, college educated woman, stated upon becoming new york state’s industrial commissioner that “social justice is possible in an industrial society” (perkins, 1929, n.p.). in addition, when the new york state legislature created the factory investigating commission after the triangle shirtwaist factory fire of 1911 killed 141 workers, kelley and the then-head of the nywtul, mary elizabeth dreier, quickly formed alliances with factory investigating commission (fic) leaders such as alfred e. smith and robert f. wagner, sr., who also served in important positions within the new york state legislature. from 1911 through 1915 the fic proposed over fifty labor legislation laws that received enactment, the largest successful program of its kind before the 1930s (mcguire, 2006). these necessary cross-gender coalitions with male politicians, moreover, would inspire future social justice feminists such as social justice feminism & its counter-hegemonic response studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 55 eleanor roosevelt to undertake the movement’s second counterhegemonic aim of increasing women’s direct involvement in the political process. social justice feminists expanded their networks to include such public administrators as mary van kleeck and mary anderson. after 1918 van kleeck and anderson pursued an alternative view of public administration that focused on social justice, not on the seemingly dominant “administrative orthodoxy” of efficiency and objectivity (mcguire, 2012a; mcguire, 2011). academic figures as sophonosiba breckinridge at the university of chicago also provided key motivation in sociology and social work (costin, 2003). thus the counter-hegemonic aims of social justice feminism received strong support from a variety of social nexuses. but, as with national progressivism, social justice feminism’s energy began to wane after 1917. the advent of the united states’ involvement in world war i, and the subsequent disillusionment concerning the war’s resolution and the treaty of versailles’ rejection by the united states senate, considerably dampened any impulse towards progressivism after 1920 (dawley, 2003). moreover, despite the formation of the women’s joint legislative conference (wjlc), a coalition of over twenty organizations in new york state, the wjlc’s attempt to continue the counter-hegemonic “entering wedge” strategy ran into the opposition of both conservative business interests and women who opposed gender-specific legislation because of their support of the proposed equal rights amendment. while hours and minimum wage legislation for working women eventually received passage through the new york state legislature in 1927 and 1933, respectively, these actions required long, hard years of lobbying and organizing. most important, the ncl legal network’s efforts came to a devastating halt when the u.s. supreme court declared women’s minimum wage legislation unconstitutional in adkins v. children’s hospital, 261 u.s. 525 (1923). in declaring that such a law violated the sanctity of the “freedom of contract” principle – in which no outside agency could intervene in the contractual employer-employee relationship – the united states’ highest court confirmed that the traditional laissez-faire industrial capitalistic order remained the national hegemony, despite the previous twenty years of progressivism (mcguire, 2001, 2014). because of the obstacles facing the continuation of promoting and passing gender-specific legislation, social justice feminists now centered on the establishment and extension of their second goal: providing increased participation for women in the national political system. this goal became the primary aim of two new social justice feminist leaders, eleanor roosevelt and dewson. from 1921 through 1928, roosevelt worked to make the women’s section of the new york state democratic party a stronger, more effective part of the party’s electoral activities, through a combination of lobbying, campaign organizing, and installing a strong network of women leaders within the party leadership. she therefore not only increased women’s participation within the democratic party, but also united social justice john thomas mcguire studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 56 feminists with party officials. dewson, a former social activist, entered politics in 1926 at roosevelt’s behest and quickly established herself as a shrewd, hard-working political organizer. by 1932 she became the head of the women’s division of the democratic national campaign committee, a significant harbinger of her future national political career (mcguire, 2014; ware, 1987). in his discussion of hegemony and society, gramsci discusses “organic crises,” which he saw as crises where the structures and practices that constitute and reproduce a hegemonic order fall into chronic and visible disrepair, creating new political and cultural contentions and allowing for the possibility of total societal transformation (gramsci, 1971, pp. 275-276). this organic crisis apparently occurred with the onset of the great depression in the united states after 1929, which, for the time being, soured many citizens on the idea of laissez-faire industrial capitalism (mcelvaine, 1993). it also provided the best opportunity for social justice feminism to promote its counter-hegemonic aims since the end of world war i, particularly when franklin d. roosevelt defeated herbert hoover in 1932 for the presidency. not only did roosevelt pledge to use government actively as a force not only to combat the economic crisis, but he also promised to undertake effective reform to both ameliorate and to prevent future capitalistic cataclysms. moreover, three important social justice feminists now assumed top positions in the new presidency: eleanor roosevelt, ostensibly “just” first lady, wielded considerable unofficial power not only as the president’s wife but also because of her formidable political skills; frances perkins received an appointment as the first female cabinet officer as united states secretary of labor; and dewson eventually became the chief organizer of women for the democratic party. the major counter-hegemonic force for social justice feminism within the federal government eventually became the women’s division of the democratic national committee (dnc). originally created in 1924, the women’s division remained underfunded and headed by a part-time director for the next nine years. but by the fall of 1933 eleanor roosevelt and dewson convinced both the president and the new dnc chairman, james a. farley, to establish a permanent, sizable budget for the women’s division and to make its directorship a full-time position. assuming the new directorship in october 1933, dewson spent the next three years increasing the women’s division’s power through campaign organizing, public speechmaking, and intra-divisional publications; by organizing regional conferences for members of the women’s division and informing them of new party and governmental developments through a reporter plan; and, most significant, by making the division an effective proselytizer for both the goals of social justice feminism and the new deal (mcguire, 2004; mcguire, 2012b; mcguire, 2014). by the mid-1930s both counter-hegemonic aims of providing an opening for the governmental protection of workers and increasing women’s social justice feminism & its counter-hegemonic response studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 57 participation in national politics became substantially fulfilled. in 1935 the united states congress passed the social security act, providing old-age assistance, and three years later enacted the flsa. by 1936, moreover, the women’s division became an effective part of the increasing democratic political gains in the united states. in the 1934 congressional elections, the democratic party countered usual political trends by increasing its congressional seats, and two years later president roosevelt received the largest-ever presidential mandate in united states history. thus the years 1933 through 1940 represented the most successful stage of social justice feminism as a counter-hegemonic movement. it did not mean, however, that the counter-hegemony totally removed the two societal hegemonies of laissez-faire industrial capitalism and of a patriarchal society (mcguire, 2014). the failure of social justice feminism as a counter-hegemonic movement social justice feminism failed as a counter-hegemonic movement in two ways: it could not become fully independent of the prevailing cultural hegemony, particularly in its patriarchal aspects, and most important, it did not include women of color. but one must be careful not to entirely assess blame to social justice feminists for their failure to fully divest themselves of the prevailing political hegemony. one of the central weaknesses of gramsci’s discussion of the formation of counter-hegemonic movements centers on his apparent inability to fully confront a central quandary in the war of position: how much of the prevailing political and social structures can be used in the implementation of a counterhegemonic vision? to totally divest a society of its traditional structure, especially one established over a period of 50 or more years, may be seeking to court disaster, as became clear with the attempted radicalism of the french revolution, which destroyed the bourbon monarchial system, but failed to replace the centuries-old system with a satisfactory alternative. the resulting chaos and disorder merely led the french back to a semi-monarchial system headed by napoleon bonaparte, who eventually declared himself french emperor. gramsci evidently did not include this seemingly inherent contradiction in his work. in social justice feminism’s case, women such as dewson and roosevelt needed to work very carefully with the overwhelmingly patriarchal leadership of the national democratic party. this proved especially important in upgrading the women’s division from a weakly funded and staffed part of the dnc to a strongly funded organization headed by a full-time director. even when dewson became the women’s division’s full-time director, she still needed to collaborate closely with the dnc chairman (and close collaborator with president franklin d. roosevelt) james a. farley from john thomas mcguire studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 58 1933 onwards. farley recognized the importance of democratic women to maintaining the party’s national control of the political process, but he still did not refrain from sometimes condescending to dewson. the normally feisty massachusetts native needed to restrain her natural impatience – at least until she wrote her 1949 memoirs, which, significantly, remained unpublished among her personal papers left at the franklin d. roosevelt presidential library (mcguire, 2014). even with this natural difficulty, social justice feminism cannot totally escape blame from failing to further secure support for its counter-hegemonic vision, particularly when it came to the question of race. this does not mean that all of the movement’s leaders failed to consider the issue in its full ramifications; florence kelley, for example, served as a board member of the national association for the advancement of colored people (naacp) after the organization’s creation in 1909 (sklar, 1995). but in arguably the largest, most successful stage of social justice feminism, the central organization for such an effort – the women’s division of the dnc – did not embrace the inclusion of all possible democratic women voters, particularly africanamerican women. the situation proved a most complicated one, for three reasons. first, as scholars have demonstrated, while african-american women did begin to realign in large numbers to the democratic party by the mid-1930s, such new recruits did not abandon their traditionally instituted dual strategy of pragmatism and critical detachment, particularly given that the united states’ oldest political party’s history not only incorporated a traditionally contentious attitude towards the institution and expansion of minority rights, but also because southern democrats, major controllers of congressional committees, continued to block major initiatives such as anti-lynching legislation from enactment (materson, 2009; white, 1999, higgenbotham, 1990). second, while dewson and eleanor roosevelt, in particular, demonstrated no overt hostility to african-american women, the two politically pragmatic women needed to keep in mind the ever-cautious attitude of the franklin d. roosevelt administration, which feared antagonizing the formidable southern congressional scions into blocking major parts of the administration’s new deal agenda (mcguire, 2013). finally, three of the women’s division’s leaders from 1933 through 1940, harriet elliott, gladys avery tillett, and mary thompson evans, came from the south, and their natural propensity therefore lay in disregarding, if not overtly rejecting, any approaches to african-american women (mcguire, 2012b). thus, ironically, the counterhegemonic movement of social justice feminism indirectly assisted the continuing racist hegemony in the united states by ignoring women of color. this internal contradiction can be most clearly seen in the example of crystal bird fauset. a philadelphia native, fauset established herself as a social and political activist in her native city during the 1920s and early 1930s, and then established a national presence through her burgeoning social justice feminism & its counter-hegemonic response studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 59 friendship with eleanor roosevelt. in 1936, fauset became the dnc’s first director of colored women’s activities at the start of that year’s national political campaign. but in the next four years, fauset became increasingly isolated in her relationships with social justice feminists in the women’s division, and even unable to interest eleanor roosevelt in direct efforts to encourage black voters. after the 1940 campaign, fauset left her directorship, and although she continued to participate in democratic party activities for the next four years, her frustrations finally boiled over during the 1944 campaign. finally breaking from her longtime party and her friendship with eleanor roosevelt, fauset announced her support for republican presidential candidate thomas e. dewey in september 1944. not only did fauset’s defection become the most significant sign of social justice feminism’s counter-hegemonic failure to include women of color, but it also symbolized a continuing failure of the democratic party to institute any true inclusion until the 1960s, when urban black women such as shirley chisholm and barbara jordan began to continue the advances undertaken by fauset two decades previously (mcguire, 2013). a major question that results from a consideration of social justice feminism’s counterhegemonic failures is whether the movement’s efforts led to what gramsci calls in his other writings a “passive revolution,” where the ruling class, confronted with the “sporadic, incoherent responsiveness of the popular masses, accedes to some part of the popular demands and thus institutes some partial amelioration or reform which it calls ‘progress,’ but is actually simply a pacification measure” (gramsci, 2007, p. 3:257). what one could say is that social justice feminism helped contribute to the main point of modern-day liberalism in the united states – to provide a balance between the persistence of the old order and the emergent new forces made possible by the nation’s capitalist development (harootunian, 2015, p. 132). in addition, one must also consider the following question: do passive revolutions, or the balancing of liberalism, defer a full consideration of systematic difficulties? (harootunian, 2015, p. 133). as some historians have argued since the end of the new deal, the reform efforts of the franklin d. roosevelt administration modified, but did not entirely eliminate, the possible excesses of a capitalistic system geared primarily on profit considerations. in fact, one could argue that any attempts at modification of capitalism ended with the advent of world war ii, and definitely disappeared after world war ii for two reasons: the unprecedented economic expansion that occurred between roughly 1947 and 1975, and then the increasingly antistatist policies of administrations, beginning with the highly popular rhetoric of the ronald reagan administration (cohen, 2003; chafe, 2003). thus the seeming permanent changes of the new deal order only modified, but did not fully replace, the hegemonic economic system that controlled, and still controls, the united states, just as the risorgimento of the 1860s did not change the elitist control of italian culture that existed before italian john thomas mcguire studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 60 unification. but such a failure at total change did not stop contemporaneous attempts at modifying gender barriers. social justice feminism gradually concluded by the end of the 1930s. the advent of world war ii, and the increasing likelihood of the united states’ involvement, meant that a federal government already wearied of domestic reform in the late 1930s became more apathetic towards a continuation of the new deal (mcguire, 2012b). perhaps what we can say is that social justice feminism helped pave the way for subsequent counter-hegemonic challenges. as demonstrated by such scholars as dorothy sue cobble and landon r.y. storrs, labor union and federal government feminists continued the fight initiated by social justice feminism, expanding the aims to include such things as equal pay and day care for the children of working mothers (cobble, 2005, 2014). in addition, the activism demonstrated by social justice feminists, particularly in forming new centers of political power within the national democratic party, helped prompt the formation of feminist organizations such as the national organization for women in the 1960s (collins, 2009). thus while counter-hegemonic movements do not always succeed in their immediate time period, long-term success can come through their slow yet sure infiltration of the always-fluid social, cultural, and political forces contained in the always-fluid cultural hegemony. conclusion karl marx’s explanation of the importance of economics in considering historical context still remains pertinent today. yet one must hesitate before accepting economic causes as the sole factors spurring on the course of present events eventually historicized into societal memories. reality seems too fluid, too multifarious to be encapsulated into a neat schema of upperclass dominance and lower-class exploitation. more complex causes need examination before we can accept a fully rounded picture of history (if such a goal can ever really be accomplished.) antonio gramsci’s elaboration of cultural hegemony with marxist roots stands as a welcome corrective to any tendency towards monocausality. the elucidation of cultural hegemony by gramsci, particularly in its discussions of how a societal elite seizes upon ideas and makes them tools to ensure conformity between classes, certainly becomes apropos to the consideration of social justice feminism and its counter-hegemonic movement against the prevailing concepts of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. by 1900 the tenets of laissez-faire capitalism seemed firmly in place, through which government barely registered as a presence on the capitalist maneuverings of a rapidly expanding economy, and the middle class, although at times discomfited by the changes inherent in the transformations of the second industrial revolution, nonetheless readily accepted the adage that with hard work and determination a man could still social justice feminism & its counter-hegemonic response studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 61 rise to the apex of society. seeming exemplars such as john d. rockefeller and andrew carnegie – men who started with modest means and who became the capitalist scions of the gilded age – exemplified this new cultural hegemony. in addition, the cultural hegemony continued after the civil war the idea of a patriarchal society that could dominate the affairs of women within the united states, particularly in a political context. social justice feminists such as florence kelley countered these two prevailing hegemonic ideas by using the promotion and passage of women’s labor legislation as an “entering wedge” for the eventual inclusion of all workers within the state’s protection, and by increasing women’s power within the existing patriarchal political party system. the first aim achieved substantial success by the end of the 1930s, as major laws such as the social security act of 1935 and the fair labor standards act of 1938 received congressional enactment. in addition, through the long-term efforts of eleanor roosevelt and molly dewson, women’s power increased within the national democratic party through the efforts of the democratic national committee’s women’s division. but even with these substantial successes, social justice feminism failed as a counter-hegemonic movement in two important ways. first, it never totally removed itself from the patriarchal political system prevalent in the united states, and second, it never made serious efforts to include women of color within its ranks. perhaps the most effective legacy of social justice feminism thus lies in its long-term participation in what gramsci would term a “passive revolution” in not only helping to refute laissez-faire economic concepts by making the state a more substantial counterforce in terms of worker protection and regulation, but also in instilling in the united states’ patriarchal political system a sense of feminist self-realization and power, however limited, this agency not only received revival and continuation by post-world war ii labor feminists, but also prompted dramatic realization by the rights movement initiated in the 1960s by such organizations as the national organization of women (now) (cobble, 2014, 2005; collins, 2009). finally, gramsci’s theories about counter-hegemony may seem outmoded or déclassé in a society where social fragmentation becomes even more marked as each year of the early 21st century passes. but if we look closer, we can conclude that the means of maintaining a cultural hegemony have actually increased, even in the supposedly destabilizing wake of continued globalization. as previously noted, the dominance of neoliberalism’s free market and individual property emphases now seems increasingly ineffective in an era of increased economic dislocation, surging outcries for social justice, and burgeoning environmental issues. governments can no longer easily repress popular discourse in return for the seeming surcease of economic mobility. such efforts can only result in failure, like the shipwrecked outlier robinson crusoe trying to escape the constant surveillance of drones in the firmament. gramsci’s theories, and their practical realizations in events such john thomas mcguire studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 48-64, 2017 62 as the ones described above, demonstrate both the potency of dominant cultural hegemonies and their counter-hegemonic responses. acknowledgements this is my first academic writing in the areas of interdisciplinary studies and historical sociology. i accordingly wish to thank david butz, monique deveaux and the three anonymous reviewers for making this initial effort better. references adamson, w. 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(1998). muller v. oregon: a brief history with documents. new york: bedford. brunner final correspondence address: lisa ruth brunner, department of educational studies, university of british columbia, vancouver, bc, v6t 1z2; email: lisa.brunner@ubc.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 towards a more just canadian educationmigration system: international student mobility in crisis lisa ruth brunner university of british columbia, canada abstract education-migration, or the multi-step recruitment and retention of international students as immigrants, is an increasingly important component of both higher education and so-called highly-skilled migration. this is particularly true in canada, a country portrayed as a model for highly-skilled migration and supportive of international student mobility. however, education-migration remains underanalyzed from a social justice perspective. using a mobility justice framework, this paper considers covid-19’s impact on canada’s education-migration system at four scales: individuals, education institutions, state immigration regimes, and planetary geoecologies. it identifies ethical tensions inherent to canada’s education-migration from a systems-level and suggests that a multi-scalar approach to social justice can both usefully complexify discussions and introduce unsettling paradoxes. it also stresses that the covid-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to reimagine rather than return. keywords internationalization; international students; higher education; mobility justice; skilled migration; international student mobility when announcing canada’s 2021-2023 immigration levels plan, immigration, refugees and citizenship canada (ircc) minister marco mendicino described parts of canada as “starved for people” (cpac, 2020, 21:53). referring to immigrants as something for a state to consume was both disturbing (in its dehumanization) and fitting (in its extension of canada’s capitalist settler-colonial project) (chatterjee, 2019). for a country in which immigration policy is population policy (ley & hiebert, 2001), the covid19 pandemic’s reduction of international human mobility had major repercussions. in just one year, canada’s population growth swung from a record high to a record low (statscan, 2020f). economic recovery, the government signaled, depended on immigration recovery (ircc, 2020a). towards a more just canadian education-migration system studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 79 but to claim canada hungered for people was not precise enough. it was canada’s “domestic immigration pool” that would be a focus, mendicino went on, highlighting international students as “a very attractive pool… to look very closely at” (hagan & bolongaro, 2020, para. 12). he offered a “simple” message for international students: “we don’t just want you to study here, we want you to stay here” (ircc, 2021a, para. 6). viewing international students as an immigrant source is just one element of what has become a distinct education-migration, or “edugration,” filtering system: those who (1) gain admission to, and graduate from, a canadian higher education (he) institution may (2) compete in the canadian labour market for a limited time, during which those who gain sufficient work experience may (3) remain in canada permanently (brunner, in press). in contrast to the united nations’ (2006) supposed triple win – where migration simultaneously benefits migrants, countries of origin, and destination countries – education-migration is painted as a different triple win: (1) students gain a valuable education and desirable citizenship; (2) he gains revenue, labour, and diversity; and (3) canada gains human capital, tax revenue, population growth, and soft power. like much in immigration and he today, individual and nationalist economic utility are the system’s driving forces (mccartney, 2020). this problematic framing ignores the system’s larger replications of privilege and power, invisiblizing externalized losses (such as brain drain) and problematic enablements (such as the dominance of a hierarchical global imaginary rooted in western supremacy which dictates the desirability of canadian education) (stein & andreotti, 2016). in any large-scale disruption, patterns of privilege and power persist, “but the narratives that justify them seem increasingly implausible” (apostolidis & mcbride, 2020, p. s-82). some see recent disruptions such as covid-19 and the climate crisis as opportunities to finally reimagine a more sustainable, reciprocal model of both international education (el masri & sabzalieva, 2020; stein, 2019b; yang, 2020) and international migration (bender & arrocha, 2017; sharma, 2020). in considering the ethics of canada’s education-migration system at this critical junction, this paper makes two contributions. first, it details canadian education-migration policies before, during, and potentially after the covid19 pandemic. second, taking a mobility justice approach, it explores their implications at multiple scales. constrained by the space of a single paper, the latter offers merely a taste of deeper conversations to be had. however, in attending to overlapping systemic vulnerabilities, it recognizes that mobility injustices occur not only after a migrant enters a country, but are, in fact, “the process through which unequal spatial conditions and differential subjects are made” (sheller, 2019, p. 26). in an effort to more fully grapple with the system’s complexities, it includes, yet also goes beyond, injustices faced by international students themselves. lisa ruth brunner studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 80 i begin by summarizing mobility justice and showing how its multi-scalar faming helps situate education-migration’s ethical issues. i then describe canada’s education-migration system specifically and contribute to its needed contextualization (riaño et al., 2018) by providing a pre-covid-19 snapshot, followed by an outline of key covid-19 policy responses. i outline examples of ethical issues revealed at each scale and conclude by discussing why this approach might complexify our collective inquiry around the ethics of education-migration in today’s uncertain times. mobility justice mobility justice was only recently developed as a framework (e.g., sheller, 2011, 2018, 2019) and is used in disparate ways (cook & butz, 2019). the term emerged from the mobilities paradigm, which critiqued the moral and ideological privileging of “sedentarist” perspectives – i.e., those which uphold prevailing “understandings of ‘society’, ‘social structures’, ‘citizenship’ and ‘governance’ in which static social relations are ostensibly produced, governed and bounded by the nation-state” (cook & butz, 2019, p. 10; sheller & urry, 2006; urry, 2007). instead, mobility was seen as foundational to social relations, necessitating a focus on how power is organized (at various scales) around the governance of mobility (in various forms) – not just movement but also immobility, stillness, and stuckness (cresswell, 2011, 2012). because modernity has increased and restricted mobility in uneven ways, concepts such as the kinetic elite/underclass (cresswell, 2006) and the potential capacity of mobility (described as motility) help us understand mobility capital (kaufmann et al., 2004) as both an outcome of, and mechanism of reproducing, systemic inequalities (benz, 2019). mobility justice builds on this paradigm with a mobility-focused take on social justice theory. following contemporary activist movements, it seeks a common framework to link social justice struggles (sheller, 2019). such struggles range from embodied, micro-level differential (im)mobilities (e.g., racialized and gendered spatial relations) to macro-level patterns of global (im)mobilities (e.g., decolonialism and climate justice). this is a tall order, requiring a practice which itself is mobile as it jumps across scales and ways of thinking about justice; indeed, its quest for “one common framework” (sheller, 2019, p. 33) risks grand theorizing. however, in compliment to more fine-grained analyses, it offers a systems-levels approach while also showing how justice itself “is a process of emergent relationships” based on the “interplay of diverse (im)mobilities” (sheller, 2018, p. 20). a key feature of mobility justice is its intersectional, multi-scalar approach. scale’s full theoretical history is beyond the scope of this paper; briefly, as a socially-constructed concept (marston, 2000), scale does risk oversimplification, overgeneralization, arbitrary delineation, and legitimizing towards a more just canadian education-migration system studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 81 the exclusion of actors and ideas (glick schiller & çaglar, 2011; van lieshout et al., 2011). the conventional reliance on micro, meso, and macro levels also has limitations. however, scales are ideally not used as “fixed nested sociospatial units of territory or governance,” but rather dynamic and relative “repositionings of territorially based forms of organization” operating in the context of global power hierarchies (glick schiller & çaglar, 2011, p. 72). the intention is not to separate scales (e.g., the local from the global), but to highlight their mutual constitution (glick schiller & çaglar, 2011) and allow for examinations of uneven applications of power (lan, 2015). multi-scalar analysis of international mobility grew in the past 20 years as researchers acknowledged the limitations of macro-level, quantitative, and methodologically-nationalistic approaches (xiang, 2013; glick schiller, 2015; williamson, 2015). a specifically intersectional multi-scalar lens of mobility (e.g., tungohan, 2020) highlights the simultaneous interactions of multiple vectors of differentiation (e.g., gender, race, and class) across scales (mahler et al., 2015). because exclusionary and inclusionary structures vary from state to state, people may, for example, “be relatively privileged – and actively seek privilege – in one country to balance the marginalisation in another” (purkayastha, 2010, p. 40). intersectional multi-scalar approaches tease out the implications of these concurrent, interlocking systems of power. while mobility justice is just one possible approach for analyzing education-migration, it is useful for two reasons. first, it helps rescale questions of ethics when analyzing (im)migration policies and laws. mobilities-focused approaches have already helped focus on “the movement involved in migration, rather than privileging the sending and receiving localities and their perspectives” (king & raghuram, 2013, p. 129). however, (im)migration policy and law are still typically viewed “as a relatively insulated and domestic-centered arena” (shachar, 2006, p. 153). states are undoubtedly key players in governing international student mobility regimes (brooks & waters, 2011), but their policies and laws do not govern only those within their borders. positing that society as a fixed territory bound by the nation-state no longer exists (urry, 2000), mobility justice pushes social justice theory “into the ‘post-societal’ present” – a necessary move for it to “remain theoretically, empirically and politically relevant” (cook & butz, 2019, p. 9). second, issues of highly uneven (im)mobility came to light at every scale of the covid-19 pandemic, from cellular virus transmission to global vaccine distribution. the pandemic reinforced existing disparities in who is denied or required to physically work (e.g., dobusch & kreissl, 2020) and who or what is permitted to travel (sheller, 2020b), with lockdowns and border restrictions applied strategically and unevenly (sheller, 2020a). it also brought major changes through mass demobilizations (e.g., workplaces, schools, airplanes) and new or renewed mobilizations (e.g., repatriations, telemedicine, online learning) (sheller, 2020a). mobility justice’s approach is lisa ruth brunner studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 82 well-suited to draw out the significance of covid-19’s impact on migration systems. in this paper i loosely adopt sheller’s (2018) use of four scales: individuals, education institutions, state immigration regimes, and planetary geoecologies. i offer this organizational rubric as just one initial, partial effort, remembering that scales are “always entangled, intersectional, performative, and constantly being remade” (sheller, 2018, p. 44). different or additional scales other than the four proposed could be useful for future work (e.g. the land). what i seek to highlight here is (1) the need to identify the scale at which a social justice claim is made (to interrogate its inevitable limitations), and (2) that by viewing multiple scales together – as multi-scalar approaches, such as mobility justice, urge us to do – their collective contradictions become clearer. this process can both interrupt the desire for universality and enable a layered way of holding paradoxes in view, making “what is invisible noticeably absent” (ahenakew, 2016, p. 333). in the next section, i offer a review of the education-migration literature structured by these four scales, to situate this paper, before turning to the canadian context specifically. the ethics of education-migration education-migration is an example of the talent for citizenship exchange spurred by the global race for so-called highly-skilled, or high-wage, migrants. in this exchange, knowledge and work are exchanged for the acquisition of citizenship in “a stable, democratic, affluent polity” (shachar, 2006, pp. 158-159; geddie, 2014). in this way, international student mobility has become a form of social mobility (kim & kwak, 2019; maldonadomaldonado, 2014) and commodity, influencing not only individual he enrolment decisions but he’s structure itself (baas, 2019). he institutions and immigrant-dependent countries alike now function as recruiters (rather than gatekeepers) (shachar, 2006) facilitated by a global education-migration industry (beech, 2018). as a result, education-migration encompasses several areas, including international student/education mobility, the internationalization of he, temporary foreign worker mobility, migrant “integration,” settler-colonialism, and the global knowledge economy. this involves a complex array of entangled ethical issues. imagining a just education-migration system is additionally challenging due to its basis on two meritocratic forms of institutionalized discrimination. just as baglay (2017) asked, “can immigration law, whose key function is to screen, differentiate, select, and exclude, meaningfully incorporate social justice values?” (p. 210), we may ask a similar question of he (stein, 2019a). selective he institutions are by definition exclusionary, and the global expansion of he perpetuates, if not exacerbates, societal stratifications (marginson, 2016). he may contribute to a common good, but as an towards a more just canadian education-migration system studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 83 increasingly globalized commodified good (locatelli, 2019), its admissions process bears some conceptual resemblance to immigrant selection (brunner, 2017). despite “requir[ing] serious reflection” (geddie, 2014, p. 245; kim & kwak, 2019), considerations of education-migration’s unique, systems-level ethical implications remain limited. scattered across multiple disciplines, most relevant critiques focus on only one step in the process (e.g., the study period) and one scale (e.g., that of international students). table 1 maps some key critiques of education-migration (at any step) made with academic anglophone global north literature. scale social justice issues individuals • racism, othering, violence, and exclusion • conflicting desirability discourses • deficit and lack of agency discourses • differential tuition • inadequate support services • legal temporality and limited rights • difficulty obtaining and maintaining (im)migration status (both temporary and permanent) educational institutions • academic/linguistic imperialism • neoliberalism • fragmented educational quality • institutions as immigration actors state immigration regimes • (settler) colonialism, in relation to (im)migration • meritocratic nationalism • brain waste/overeducation planetary geoecologies • brain drain/abuse and inequitable flows between global north and global south • global meritocracy and academic mobility as reproduction of privilege • unsustainability table 1. social justice issues related to education-migration, by scale. the scale of individuals is the predominant scale within educationmigration research. this literature focuses on experiences of international students (and in some cases, recent graduates working as temporary foreign lisa ruth brunner studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 84 workers, referred to as tfws).1 their legal status and relative voluntariness of movement generally affords them a relatively privileged position compared to, say, undocumented workers or asylum seekers (walia, 2013), although such categories occasionally overlap. still, this scale highlights uneven and conditional inclusion, both material and at the level of discourse. justice is generally positioned as being for individuals (i.e., international students, through inclusion in more robust institutions and state supports, or more facilitative immigration policies). the scales of educational institutions and state immigration regimes have commonalities; the literature positions them as both (1) sites of control and governance, while also (2) vulnerable in their systemic external dependency (e.g., on population/enrolment growth, capital, and labour). in the case of he institutions, justice is often positioned as being for the public (i.e., those who benefit from education as public good), although the public is defined in different ways (e.g., sometimes bound by a state, sometimes globally). in the case of state immigration regimes, justice is sometimes positioned as being for citizens (or permanent residents) bound within the state; in other cases (such as those found in critiques of state role in settler-colonialism), justice is for indigenous peoples and nations. proposed responses at both scales include more robust (or more fairly distributed) supports at the level of the state or nation. at the scale of planetary geoecologies, the focus shifts to the experience of all humans, and, occasionally, non/more-than-humans. here, systematic unsustainability is positioned as a vulnerability faced by everyone and everything (albeit unevenly), with justice sought for all humans globally (and sometimes non/more-than-humans). generally, more robust or more fairly distributed supports at a global level are offered as responses. as table 1 shows, there are many social justice issues to be addressed within education-migration, some of which are contradictory or incompatible. for the remainder of the paper, i use the canadian education-migration crisis point of covid-19 as an illustration. for context, i first provide a description of canadian education-migration just before covid-19 was detected in canada in 2020. education-migration in pre-covid-19 canada by imploring international students to stay, minister mendicino offered an explicit public acknowledgement that canadian international student policy had become “synonymous with immigration policy” (trilokekar & el masri, 2019, p. 47). for decades, ircc viewed the two arenas separately, refusing the entry of would-be international students who expressed dual intent (i.e., a 1 ircc distinguishes between its temporary foreign worker program and international mobility program. in this paper i refer to workers in both categories as tfws. towards a more just canadian education-migration system studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 85 desire to remain in canada permanently after their studies). but over the past 20 years, canada gradually developed its own dual intent, coming to view post-secondary international students as a source of not only temporary workers (ircc, 2018), but also of highly desirable immigrants (brunner, 2017; tremblay, 2005; trilokekar & el masri, 2019; williams et al., 2015).2 by 2019, education-migration played a major role in both temporary and permanent migration flows. contemporary canadian immigration has long been viewed by the government as an essential tool for population and economic growth. despite a record-low fertility rate (statscan, 2020a), canada’s 2018/2019 population growth rate was the highest in roughly 30 years, driven primarily by relatively high levels of immigration (statscan, 2019) which placed canada’s net migration rate among the highest globally (un desa, 2019). immigration was expected to account for 100% of workforce net growth in the near future (gac, 2019). in the eyes of the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd, 2019), canada’s economic immigration system was “widely seen as a role model for successful migration management” (p. 13) in its ability to solve a so-called problem faced by immigrant-dependent countries: how to select the most desirable immigrants who will efficiently integrate into their labour markets. canada succeeded in two ways. first, the 2015 introduction of express entry promoted a more flexible, demand-driven approach, shifting from a backlogged first come, first served mandate to a nimbler, just-in-time selection process. by ranking applicants and then extending rolling invitations to those meeting an adjustable cut-off number, the government could, theoretically, fine-tune its selection criteria and respond to immediate labour market demands. second, canada followed global immigration trends (akbari & macdonald, 2014; boucher & cerna, 2014) by relying on a two-step approach in which permanent residents (prs) were selected not from abroad but from among tfws already in canada. through the introduction of provincial nominee programs (pnps) in 1998 and the federal canadian experience class (cec) in 2008, canada benefitted from more reliable evidence of labour market success based on actual participation in canada (hou et al., 2020; sweetman & warman, 2010). this was a supposed antidote to the known “brain waste” or “overeducation” among those immigrants (selected from abroad) unable to leverage their human capital in canada (crossman et al., 2020; hou et al., 2020; lo et al., 2019). these changes had a notable impact. the number of new two-step economic immigrants with canadian work experience rose dramatically (from eight percent in 2000 to 46% in 2018) as did the number of tfws in 2 that said, some study permit applications are still refused for dual intent (e.g. pisarevic v. canada [citizenship and immigration], 2019), especially those from the global south (tao & arib, 2020). lisa ruth brunner studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 86 canada (roughly 60,000 in 2000 to 429,300 in 2018) (crossman et al., 2020). instead of selecting immigrants and supporting their integration, canada increasingly selected workers, affording the labour market more direct influence over who proceeded to the second step. some tfws such as seasonal agricultural workers were permanently temporary, while others, generally higher-skilled, were temporarily temporary – that is, on a pr pathway (rajkumar et al., 2012). regardless, a period of provisional admittance and conditional inclusion had become a prominent feature of canadian immigration. concurrently, another temporary resident selection process with direct impact on the pool of tfws expanded dramatically: the recruitment of international students (oecd, 2019). by 2019, canada ranked among the highest in the world both in its proportion and total number of international students (iie, 2019; unesco uis, 2022). canadian public postsecondary enrolment’s modest 2018/19 rise (1.8%) was driven entirely by international students, whose enrolment increased while domestic enrolment fell; the proportion of international students rose from 6.4% to 16.2% in a decade (statscan, 2020b). international students have been considered economically important since the 1980s (mccartney, 2020). since then, the canadian economy grew dependent on their tens of billions of dollars in annual expenditures, which, by 2019, had a greater impact “than exports of auto parts, lumber or aircraft” (gac, 2019, p. 2). in canada, public he is funded through a combination of low to medium public expenditures and relatively high tuition fees in comparison to other oecd countries, and it responded to budget shortfalls and enforced domestic tuition caps with hikes in largely unregulated international student fees (pechar & andres, 2011; williams et al., 2015). by 2019, international undergraduate tuition was roughly five times the average domestic university tuition rate, with approximately 40% of all tuition fees in canada paid by international students (statscan, 2020e). international students are a heterogeneous category (king & raghuram, 2013; o'connor, 2018), and not all are recruited for, or pay, tuition. in general, however, international student policies are uniquely located “at the confluence of migration policies and policies affecting the services industry, but where the services are sold to the migrant rather than provided by them” (riaño et al., 2018, p. 291). due in part to constant public reminders of their economic importance (e.g., ircc, 2021a) and a neoliberal climate positioning he as a commodity, they are often read as unproblematic, transient consumers (contributing to the economy) as opposed to tfws (competing in the economy). although international students are indeed framed by racialized tropes in which they are sometimes positioned as competitors (stein & andreotti, 2016), they remain relatively acceptable to the public in comparison to other migrant categories (o'connor, 2018). in reality, their work authorization – whether during or after studies – has also been permitted, and used as a recruitment tool, since the 1980s (ircc, towards a more just canadian education-migration system studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 87 2018). the typical international student transition entails three steps as part of a unique three-step immigration process (brunner, in press): (1) as a study permit holder, which allows part-time work, (2) as a post-graduation work permit (pgwp) holder, and (3) if certain criteria are met (e.g., one year of skilled canadian work experience), as a pr (see figure 1). figure 1. canadian three-step education-migration process. designed to “(1) attract international students to canada; (2) increase [their] participation in the canadian labour market; and (3) provide [them] with a pathway to [pr]” (cic, 2015, p. 5), the government considers the pgwp “generous” (cic, 2015, p. 6; ircc, 2018), as it is among the longest and least restricted of its type in the world (oecd, 2019). the pgwp is thus a selling point over competitor countries, leading canada to be described as among the most welcoming so-called host countries for international students (e.g., gopal, 2016; lo et al., 2019). while not directly responsible, there is a correlation between the 2008 expansion of canada’s pgwp program and increasing international student numbers (cic, 2015). in combination, international students’ economic importance, relatively benign political position, existing work pathways, and the fact that most are “young, have canadian educational qualifications and in-demand labour skills, and are proficient in one of [canada’s] official languages” led them to be seen as “ideal” immigrant candidates (gac, 2019, introduction), despite ongoing questions regarding their actual labour market outcomes (cic, 2015; hou & lu, 2017; ircc, 2019). largely self-funded, international students were also cost-effective immigrants for the government; their human capital was pre-vetted by academic application systems, and their subsequently limited integration needs (trilokekar & el masri, 2019, p. 45; hawthorne, 2012; oecd, 2019) were largely provided by education institutions. with immigration positioned (whether implicitly or explicitly) as a possibility, student and immigrant recruitment merged. 1: student •  study permit issued for duration of incanada portion of academic program •  authorized to work part-time off-campus and full-time oncampus •  time studying in canada counts towards pgwp length calculation •  work does not count towards pr 2: temporary foreign worker (tfw) •  post-graduation work permit issued for 8 months to 3 years, depending on program length and time in canada •  authorized to work in any job, anywhere in canada •  'skilled' work counts towards pr 3: permanent resident (pr) •  must meet certain (e.g. residency) conditions unless canadian citizenship is aquired •  can count portion of time as an international student towards citizenship lisa ruth brunner studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 88 however, canada struggled to meet international student retention goals. among those who arrived in the 1990s and early 2000s, roughly a quarter transitioned within 10 years (lu & hou, 2015), and more recent numbers have been lower than anticipated (tao & arib, 2020). not all international students aspire to immigrate, but informal polling shows widespread intentions to immigrate (canadian bureau for international education, 2018; esses et al., 2018), leaving significant capacity for systemic growth from a government perspective. it is here, having described a system viewed as integral to the future of canada, that i shift to covid-19. key education-migration related covid-19 policy responses on march 12, 2020, ircc tabled its 2020-2022 immigration levels plan; four days later, canada’s unprecedented covid-19 related travel restrictions reduced foreign entry to canada to a trickle as education institutions scrambled to transition to virtual learning. these changes led to three key impacts on canadian education-migration: (1) a (partially) lost cohort of international students physically present in canada, (2) the subsequent loosening of pgwp eligibility requirements, and (3) indications of a heavier future reliance on international students as immigrants. lost cohort: once instruction was fully virtual, many enrolled international students left canada. ircc quickly included study permit holders on their list of foreign nationals permitted to enter canada – if their travel was essential. determining the essential threshold was left to individual officers upon students’ arrival; for example, if courses were entirely online, travel generally did not qualify. many remained abroad. the travel restrictions had a bigger impact on incoming students. the forum of ministers responsible for immigration “reaffirmed the importance of newcomers, particularly international students, in keeping the economy and canada’s communities moving forward” in july 2020 (ircc, 2020b, para. 4). yet it was not until october 2020, after the start of the academic term, that ircc amended its travel restrictions to allow new incoming international students to enter canada. even then, service interruptions and application difficulties continued to present obstacles (cyr & landry, 2020; hiebert, 2020). combined with a reluctance to pay high tuition fees for online education, some students deferred. roughly half of those expected arrived by the fall of 2020 (hiebert, 2020). loosened pgwp eligibility: the pgwp is a high-stakes document for students wishing to immigrate; it can be held only once in a lifetime and is often the culmination of significant financial and educational investment. to be eligible, students must continuously maintain full-time student status in canada, of which distance learning may compose up to 50%. the permit towards a more just canadian education-migration system studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 89 length is determined by the length of the program. in essence, the factors in determining pgwp eligibility are the length of time spent physically in canada while maintaining continuous, full-time, and in-person studies. covid-19 disrupted all this: many students were physically outside canada, studying virtually, unable to maintain a full-time course load, and/or facing study interruptions. normally, this would render many ineligible for the pgwp, impacting not only international students’ long-term plans but also institutional recruitment and national immigration targets. in response, canada tweaked its pgwp policies multiple times: (1) students already in canada remained eligible for the pgwp even if they failed to meet the continuous, full-time, or in-person requirements due to covid-19, and (2) students outside canada remained eligible even if they failed to meet the inperson or physical presence in canada requirements (cyr & landry, 2020). later, in january 2021, ircc recognized that high unemployment prevented many pgwp-holders from meeting pr eligibility and announced that pgwpholders could apply for an additional 18-month open work permit. increased focus on international students as prs: overall, canada saw a dramatic decline in not just international students but all non-citizen/pr 2020 entries (statscan, 2020d), and the travel restrictions’ impact on canada’s population growth was “profound” (statscan, 2020c). the federal government subsequently announced relatively high immigration targets for the next three years to make up for 2020’s shortfall (ircc, 2020a). yet with travel restrictions still in place and applicants outside of canada facing processing delays, two-step immigration became the primary source of prs (statscan, 2020d). ircc’s pgwp quasi-extension indicated its hopes of retaining as many international students as possible. similarly, a historic express entry draw in february 2021 inviting 27,332 canadian experience class (cec) applicants to apply (close to six times the previous largest draw) at a comprehensive ranking system cut-off score of just 75 (less than half the previous record cut-off score) (ircc, 2021) indicated the government’s willingness to accept virtually any applicant meeting the minimum cec requirements. many were former international students. finally, in may 2021, the government opened 40,000 pr spots specifically for recent english-speaking graduates from canadian institutions; the quota was filled just a day later (ircc, 2021c). globally, canada’s covid-19 response was considered relatively supportive for international students (e.g., bilecen, 2020), and industry analysists predicted canada would be “the big winner” in future international student enrolments (ross, 2020, para. 13). yet these policy decisions also point to important questions of “who and what can move (or stay put), when, where, how, under what conditions, and with what meanings” – that is, questions of mobility justice (sheller, 2018, p. 11). in what follows, i return to the four previously mentioned scales (individuals, education institutions, state lisa ruth brunner studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 90 immigration regimes, and planetary geoecologies) to highlight four new issues that arose due to covid-19. once again, i stress that these scales are non-exhaustive, and this paper only gestures towards the full complexities; i outline them here as an articulation of what future research may more deeply explore. individuals: those who are absent or unseeable there is no doubt that individual international students and recent graduates were heavily impacted by covid-19. initial global research and media accounts pointed to the exacerbation of existing vulnerabilities, including deteriorated mental health, threats of (or actualized) status loss, fears of academic interruption, lack of adequate accommodation and food, job loss and financial concerns, loneliness, and concerns about family wellbeing (bilecen, 2020; coulton, 2020; firang, 2020), while chinese and other asian students experienced particular social exclusion and racism (newbold, 2020; zhai & du, 2020). canada’s policies largely underscored the country’s paradoxical reliance on, yet conditional inclusion of, temporary residents in canada. allowing international students deemed essential to temporarily work more than 20 hours per week (ircc, 2020c, para. 1) signaled not only their importance to the labour market but also the expectation that they not rely on public support. there is some evidence that employed study permit holders were concentrated in the service sector; while this disproportionally exposed them to covid-19, international students were also more likely than temporary foreign workers and permanent residents to lose a job due to covid-19 (wes, 2020). although technically eligible for the emergency response benefit, its minimum earnings requirement rendered it elusive for many international students, and they were ineligible for the canada emergency student benefit and canada student service grant. pgwp holders faced additional covid-induced challenges as tfws, such as job loss and worker exploitation (crossman et al., 2020). a mobility justice approach, however, also reminds us of those who are absent from, or unseeable in, the education-migration literature. mobility capital (kaufmann et al, 2004) is an unevenly distributed resource. if we consider international students as kinetically elite in that they disproportionally benefit from education-migration – even as they experience injustice – then mobility justice also asks us to consider the kinetic underclass or motility poor. attending to this scale means noting the absence of wouldbe international students who were immobile due to increased study permit refusals (tao & arib, 2020) or decimated family savings; future would-be international students who face the likelihood of increased class stratification within he as a response to expected periods of austerity (bilecen, 2020); and other potential migrants who are rendered less desirable through the towards a more just canadian education-migration system studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 91 reinforcement of international students’ desirability (trilokekar & el masri, 2017). we may also consider precarious low-wage canadian workers whose skill development is neglected in favour of a reliance on tfws (crossman et al., 2020). this reliance may implicate pgwp-holders, whose median employment earnings are less than half those among recent canadian graduates; they have been identified by the government as a “large low-wage workforce,” (cic, 2015, p. 9) unprepared for “long-term success” (ircc, 2019, p. 5). finally, we might reflect on the implications of canada’s ongoing settler-colonialism for individual indigenous people. education institutions: tightening of he and immigration covid-19’s impacts on canadian he were highly uneven. the for-profit short-term language program sector took an immediate hit due to halted enrolment. while public universities and colleges, who receive just under a third of their revenue from tuition fees (statscan, 2020e), were able to retain some international enrolment, economic impacts varied based on institution type and region. overall, canadian he’s vulnerability in terms of its reliance on international student inflows had never been clearer (el masri & sabzalieva, 2020; esses et al., 2021). from a mobility perspective, this points to an even further tightening of he and immigration in three key ways. first, the importance of the pgwp as a recruitment tool became undeniable (e.g., keung, 2020). both he and politicians lobbied the government to ensure virtual learning would not impact pgwp eligibility; one member of parliament said pgwp flexibility would “continue to make northern institutions a viable option for international students,” implying that without the pgwp, international students would not consider such institutions (the daily press, 2020). when one such institution declared insolvency in 2021 after a string of complex financial and governing challenges, a prominent he consultant blamed the university for not recruiting more international students (buse, 2021). second, institutions positioned themselves as critical to immigration. he formally requested from parliament looser travel restrictions on international students and increased financial support to make up for their losses. of significance was their justification for these requests: universities canada (2020) highlighted the role of international graduates in “revitalizing regions… struggling with outmigration and population decline” (p. 4), colleges and institutes canada (2020) highlighted their importance in “meet[ing] immigration targets” (p. 3), and languages canada (n.d.) noted its role as “an essential part of the equation for meeting canada’s labour force and immigration goals” (para. 2). in this way, he’s role as a source of immigrants became justification for its funding. third, as admission letters paved an even clearer path towards pr, covid-19 intensified the role of institutions as immigrant selection actors. lisa ruth brunner studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 92 we know the impacts of an employer-driven two-step canadian immigration process: it becomes driven by corporate interests (chatterjee, 2019), and top source countries skew anglophone (hiebert, 2019), reflecting not only employer concerns around language, but more significantly, racism and discrimination against foreign experience (e.g., bhuyan et al., 2017; lo et al., 2019; oreopoulos, 2011). this is not to say that immigration systems preceding the current two-step model were not also racist. however, as public education institutions emerge as more significant immigrant selection actors, their short-term interests will increasingly shape the long-term make-up of canada. he itself is undergoing marketization and fiscal pressure due to the pandemic’s economic recession. we have yet to fully see the impacts of a three-step immigration process driven increasingly by a neoliberal education system. this tightening of he and immigration raises larger questions around jurisdictional power. in canada, responsibility for he falls on the provinces, while immigration is controlled by a shared federal-provincial jurisdiction. however, the federal government is becoming more involved in he by way of international education (e.g., its 2014 and 2019 national strategies), and provinces and territories are intensifying their regional immigrant recruitment activities (e.g., the relatively recent growth of provincial nominee programs, many targeting international graduates). in the meantime, canada’s he’s funding model shifts more acutely from “publicly-financed” to “publiclyaided” (usher, 2020). although this paper lacks space to sufficiently discuss the changing landscape, a growing area of scholarship is recognizing its complexities (tamtik et al., 2020). state immigration regime: virtual versus physical tensions the government has long walked a difficult line with the pgwp: as mentioned, it is both a potential source of competition for low-wage work and a powerful recruitment tool for he. this has led to internal scrutiny of the pgwp and the international student program more generally to ensure international students are not using study permits “to gain full access to the canadian labour market” (regulations amending the irpr 2012, para. 12) and academic programs are not “visa mills” (para. 10). both are discourses of control, attempting to ensure migrants use education-migration only as the government intends (merrick, 2013). notably, these pre-covid-19 fears focused on virtual learning as an area of potential fraud (tao & arib, 2020), something covid-19 quickly changed. while online education was increasing in canadian he before covid-19 (johnson, 2019), covid-19 accelerated the sector’s interest. ontario invested $50 million in virtual learning (government of ontario, 2020), while some called for its use towards more ethical “international partnership models that enable canadian he to be delivered away from the traditional campus towards a more just canadian education-migration system studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 93 base” to reduce the reliance “on recruiting international students to canada” (el masri & sabzalieva, 2020, p. 326). however, study permits and their associated entitlements were predicated on students physically entering canada for in-person study. covid-19’s sudden push towards online education bifurcated mobility. for those international students stuck outside canada, some entitlements were barred; those scheduled as teaching or research assistants, for example, were unable to get social insurance numbers (and thus canadian work). yet tuition (despite drastic currency fluctuations), learning (despite major time zone differences), and motility (thanks to conditional study permit approvals and promises that distance learning would count towards a pgwp) continued to flow, although canadian educational credentials earned virtually during the pandemic do not appear to count towards points in express entry’s comprehensive ranking system. still, for the first time, international students could accumulate mobility capital before entering canada – that is, without physical international mobility. a lack of physical presence in canada was a loss to some (e.g., canadian communities who relied on international students as renters and consumers). yet it was a gain to others (e.g., students who preferred to remain outside canada yet still accumulate the capital afforded by international education and migration). some students avoided social injustices associated with canadian presence, such as racism or limited rights as a temporary resident. while border restrictions were surely felt as a mobility limitation for many, the allowances also meant a freedom to return or remain, speaking to supplementation of “the question of who can travel… by the question of who can stay at home” (ahmed et al., 2003, p. 7). ircc will soon have data on covid-19-era pgwp-holders. if the longterm integration data is favourable for canadian immigration objectives, the pgwp may shift to accommodate certain virtual programs, opening up new marketing opportunities for institutions. if not, virtual he programs, which are likely to increase regardless, may find the strength of canadian education tested if they are not connected to pgwp eligibility, especially at non-elite institutions. planetary geoecologies: denials of the past, present, and future as governments responded to covid-19, two dominant yet contradictory narratives were revealed: “‘we are all in it together’ and ‘close the borders’” (sharma, 2020, p. s-19). social distancing was enforced on a global scale through travel restrictions (sharma, 2020), with states like canada trying to mitigate risk and externalize harms to “sacrifice zones” outside their borders (sheller, 2020a), even while global financial systems and virtual technologies enabled the northward flow of economic benefits. lisa ruth brunner studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 94 the idea that physical movement should stop in response to covid-19 threats – only now, after state sovereignty has been established – is itself “a postcolonial fantasy of domination” (sharma, 2020, p. s-26). at this scale, we see denials of the past, present and future on a global level. there is a failure to recognize, for example, that “there is no mobility without the history of colonialism” (kaplan, 2015, pp. 124-125); in other words, the movement of people across the globe today is intimately (though not exclusively) shaped by the colonial past and present in both direct and indirect ways. many education-migration patterns are fueled by colonial histories and disparities, such as the predominant (but shifting) global south to global north movements, or the fact that the lower an international student’s home country gdp, the more likely they will transition to pr status (lu & hou, 2015; prokopenko & hou, 2018). there is also a failure to recognize that canadian education-migration is bound up in an ongoing settler-colonial system in which “dreaming, even in inclusive and multicultural tones, of developing an ideal settled state implicitly supports the elimination of indigenous peoples from this place" (chatterjee, 2019, p. 24). viewing international students as ideal immigrants who benefit canada over others may ultimately be environmentally, economically, and emotionally unsustainable (tallbear, 2019). similarly, dreaming that this is the last pandemic, or that the state or he will survive indefinitely, or that climate change is a distant event, may be a denial of the future when seen from this scale. canada’s education-migration system is not only embedded in such denials but actively reproduces them to the extent that the ethics of its very continuation comes into question. the planetary geoecologies scale is where the interlocking structural forces behind education-migration (e.g., neoliberal capitalism, colonialism, meritocracy, imperialism) are most visible. it highlights frequently overlooked impacts, such as the way mobility contributes to environmental privilege and the effects of the climate crisis through both literal and figurative borders (park & pellow, 2019). but it is also at this scale where one most keenly – and perhaps painfully, overwhelmingly, or fearfully – feels the magnitude and pervasiveness of the system’s ethical complexities. it dares us to face more difficult questions. here, we do not ask how educationmigration fails students, or how he’s role has changed, or if a state’s selection criteria deliver on its promises – but whether such a system can be just to begin with. addressing the desire to return to “normal” as this paper seeks to illustrate, a mobility justice lens can help tease out paradoxes of not just international student mobility in times of crisis, but even theories of justice. partial views of the system’s injustices (e.g., focusing on implications only for international students) may foreclose towards a more just canadian education-migration system studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 95 impacts on others bound up in the same system. in this way we might see that modernity’s shine is possible only through the denial of its shadow (mignolo, 2000); that is, the aspects of modernity “which we often cherish as sacred grounds for our interpretations of social justice, paradoxically create the conditions of injustice we are trying to address” (andreotti, 2012, p. 19). even when strategically necessary, it is important to recognize the inherent trade-offs of limited social justice analyses to avoid, if possible, reproducing different harms in the process (stein, 2019b). here i have shown, in a limited way, how articulating justice at varying scales may complexify existing conversations. mobility justice helps us begin to conceptualize the problems, but like all frames it is limited. articulation is of course not a solution, and highlighting relationships between (differently) vulnerable groups can exacerbate divisions in its own way. sheller (2018) outlines normative “principles of mobility justice” (pp. 173-174) seeking “more collective, non-individualistic and commons-based understandings of mobility” (sheller, 2019, p. 29). from this perspective, we might try to reimagine international student mobility beyond individualistic social mobility; if we continue to deny our collective entanglement (stein et al., 2020), we are always limited by costs and benefits based on separability. yet within our current meritocratic systems bound by the state, moving beyond an individualistic lens is a challenging task. one response is to ask what we learn from reframing our attention “towards the practices, regulations, infrastructures, moorings, systems, discourses or regimes that allow for differential movements and forms of mobile and immobile existences among all kinds of people” (raithelhuber et al., 2018, p. 12; emphasis added), a process which, in the case of (im)migration, requires questioning the state as a distributor of entitlements. while sheller’s (2018) set of principles include “fairness and equity in determining the freedom of movement across borders” (p. 174), she stops short of questioning borders altogether. moving forward, education-migration may benefit from engagements with the ethics of states and borders more generally (carens, 2013; shachar, 2009; walia, 2013). another response is “resisting the temptation for certainty, totality, and instrumentalization in western reasoning by keeping our claims contingent, contextual, tentative, and incomplete” (ahenakew, 2016, p. 333) – that is, not deferring a solution, but rather humbly letting go of the fantasy that there can be an easy solution and interrogating the (colonial) desire for purity and innocence in many social justice claims. looking at justice from a multiscalar vantage point reminds us that all solutions are partial and bring problems of their own. we in he especially (stein, 2019c) need to reckon with the depth of our own complicity in education-migration injustices. an attentive awareness and visibilization of such paradoxes may help us stay with the trouble (haraway, 2016) while moving the conversation in different directions. lisa ruth brunner studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 78-102, 2022 96 acknowledgements thanks to bill reimer, sharon stein, and vanessa andreotti for generative feedback on earlier versions of this paper; margaret walton-roberts and two anonymous reviewers for insightful suggestions; david butz for astute editing support; and the guest editors for bringing this special issue together. references ahenakew, c. 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(2020). mental health care for international chinese students affected by the covid-19 outbreak. lancet psychiatry, 7(4), e22. https://doi.org/10.1016/s22150366(20)30089-4 burkell & regan final before ts correspondence address: jaquelyn burkell, faculty of information & media studies, western university, london, on, n6a 5b9; email: jburkell@uwo.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 expression in the virtual public: social justice considerations in harvesting youth online discussions for research purposes jacquelyn burkell western university, canada priscilla regan george mason university, usa abstract information posted by youth in online social media contexts is regularly accessed, downloaded, integrated, and analyzed by academic researchers. the practice raises significant social justice considerations for researchers including issues of representation and equitable distribution of risks and benefits. use of this type of data for research purposes helps to ensure representation in research of the voices of (sometimes marginalized) youth who participate in these online contexts, at times discussing issues that are also under-represented. at the same time, youth whose data are harvested are subject (often without notice or consent) to the risks associated with this research, while receiving little if any direct benefit from the work. these risks include the potential loss of online social community as well as threats to participant rights and wellbeing. this paper explores the tension between the social justice benefit of representation and considerations that would suggest caution, the latter including inequitable distribution of research-related costs and benefits, and the traditional ethics concerns of participant autonomy and privacy in the context of youth participation in online discussions. in the final section, we propose guidelines and considerations for the conduct of online social media research to assist researchers to balance and respect representational and participant rights or wellbeing considerations, especially with youth. keywords youth; social media; social justice; research introduction online discussion groups, especially those involving youth, provide a rich source of naturalistic data for research (jowett, 2015). research use of these data raises social justice considerations including issues of representation and jacquelyn burkell & priscilla regan studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 398 equitable distribution of risks, benefits, and harms. research ethics addresses some of these issues, albeit with particular emphasis on the protection of individual research participants; other social justice considerations fall outside of research ethics issues or are in tension with them. in this paper, we consider the social justice implications of research that uses data harvested from youth social media. we begin by analyzing the risks and benefits of this type of research from a social justice perspective, highlighting the tension between representation and respect for participant rights and wellbeing. in the next section of the paper, we discuss the guidance provided in research ethics guidelines for researchers considering the harvesting of social media data for research purposes, focusing on the ethical considerations that are raised in these guidelines. we follow this analysis with discussion of specific examples of research that has used harvested social media data, with specific attention to the social justice issues that are raised by these studies. finally, we outline best practices and considerations that support ethical decisions about research involving the harvesting of social media information that are informed by social justice principles. a quick google search for discussion or support groups reveals support groups for transgender teens, pro-anorexia discussion groups, and support groups for those living with depression. there are also myriad online social spaces for group discussions of a more prosaic nature, such as reactions to and recommendations for books. some groups require registration and sign-in to access conversations, while others do not. some groups are moderated, while in other cases content and interactions are not moderated. some discussion group interactions are archived and potentially searchable on the open web, while in other cases content is accessible only in real time. participants in online discussion groups typically use nicknames or usernames and do not provide other personal (particularly identifying) information; however, in the case of groups that require registration, profile information may be available. online discussion groups are a valuable social resource, particularly for individuals who are members of marginalized populations. these groups provide venues for personal expression, exploration, and support that may not otherwise be available. they often involve discussions among individuals who lack support from those immediately present in their lives as they deal with sensitive issues that often lead to shame or bullying. in these discussions, narratives of personal stories provide not only a means of personal recovery but also a route to social and political change (costa et al., 2012). often referred to as support groups, these venues for online discussion empower members through sharing similar experiences, fears, and hopes and potentially revealing the social and structural factors that constrain their lives and the inequities that need to be addressed. for example, morrow and weiser (2012) point out that “the social and structural aspects of mental health continue to be marginalized as do the voices of people with lived experiences of mental distress” (p. 30). online social spaces are also expression in the virtual public studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 399 important venues for political organization and exploration of political attitudes (middaugh et al., 2017), enabling quick organization and real-world political action (yang, 2007). these spaces, and the interactions within them, are particularly important for youth who live under conditions of political oppression (bowe & blom, 2010, 2011; tufekci & wilson, 2012) and for whom exposure could entail significant risk. research that engages with the voices and stories (costa et al., 2012; de ridder & van bauwel, 2015; trevisan & reilly, 2014) of members of marginalized groups is important as a means of achieving social justice for these groups, but the research methods used also need to respect and protect both the group as a communal unit and the individuals within it. it is also important to note that the goal of representation cannot effectively be reached if researchers do not fully understand the content they are analyzing or the context in which it is produced. thus, researchers must guard against engaging in “helicopter research” (minasny & fiantis, 2018) in which researchers “come in to small communities, take their samples, and leave” (evans, 2018), with little understanding of the communities they study and without intention or action to ensure that the results of the research benefit the community members under observation (evans, 2018). although the term helicopter research is typically applied to international research with vulnerable communities, the same principles are relevant to outsider academic researchers who harvest data from online communities without benefit of extended engagement, negotiation, and deep attention to community values and rights. although concerns about helicopter research are increasingly present in the research ethics context, the question that more commonly determines the acceptability of harvesting social media discussions is whether the group discussions are public or private in nature. research ethics guidelines typically allow observation of behaviour in public spaces, so long as those being observed are not identified, and have no reasonable expectation of privacy. if these conditions are not met, research may be allowed under stricter conditions that include notice to participants and securing of consent. the question of whether online spaces are public or private is often contested, and online discussions occupy an apparently liminal position between public and private exchange. as a result it is often unclear whether participants hold an expectation of privacy in their group communications. from a social justice perspective, the implications for the conduct of research are complex. representation is a key social justice principle, and from that perspective participation in research, and therefore representation in the results of research and the knowledge that flows from these results, is of significant positive value. allowing covert research undermines the autonomy of participants, but may increase participation, and thus representation. by contrast, when research is acknowledged and participant consent is required, autonomy is supported but research participation, and thus representation, may suffer. moreover, requiring notice and consent jacquelyn burkell & priscilla regan studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 400 (which by definition makes research overt) can undermine the perceived safety of online social spaces, thus reducing the social value of these spaces that these individuals and groups have developed for their own purposes. the ethical issues regarding research using online discussion groups are even more problematic when youth may be participants in the groups. one issue is that minors are in many cases deemed unable to consent for themselves (e.g., health canada, 2019), in some cases because they are presumed to lack capacity (canadian institutes of health research et al., 2018, article 3.3), and research ethics guidelines typically require parental consent for participation, often in conjunction with youth assent for data collection (canadian institutes of health research et al., 2018, article 3.3). seeking parental consent for participation, however, may raise privacy issues for youth, especially as online groups offer a venue to discuss topics about which youth may not be comfortable speaking with parents or teachers (see e.g., taylor, 2008). if data collection is publicly acknowledged and thus could require consent, that may have the effect of limiting youth participation in these important discussions. a second issue is that youth are very sensitive to the perceived privateness of seemingly public spaces (boyd & marwick, 2011), and as participants in those spaces may have different conceptions of their interactions, and different standards and practices with respect to appropriate practices within those spaces, compared to adults (berriman & thompson, 2015). de ridder and van bauwel (2015) refer to social network sites as “extended places… strongly connected to particular offline local places of which they are often an extension” (p. 782). relatedly, youth often employ online discussions as a forum for trying on personas, presenting different selves, and discovering the self with which they are most comfortable (regan & steeves, 2010; steeves & regan, 2014), and observation within those spaces could compromise this important developmental exploration. for example, selfridge and mitchell (2020) found that youth living on or close to the street experimented on social media in expressing responses to the death of a friend of family member, particularly in terms of demonstrating grief or hope, with navigating difficult relationships, and with supporting each other. a third issue involves youth’s somewhat limited understanding of the role of researchers and the implications of being observed, especially in settings such as online discussions where researchers somewhat disappear into the background. in analyzing three co-research settings with youth, collier (2019) found that the presence of researchers became normalized, that “children did not appear to imagine audiences beyond me,” (p. 48), and “negotiating ongoing consent was tricky, primarily because they did not see the need for it” (p. 51). this process of normalization is also likely in studies such as hung’s (2020), in which the author was invited to join a group of 1618 year old boys on xbox’s live’s party chat as they discussed a range of issues, such as abortion rights, as well as “intimate and personal issues, such as romantic relationships, quarrels with parents, and expectations for the expression in the virtual public studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 401 future” (p. 600).1 finally, there is the risk of compromised anonymity and confidentiality for individuals whose online information is harvested, with or without explicit consent. if there is the possibility that youth can be reidentified, then that digital record could affect psychological and social development, future life options (burkell & regan, 2018; regan & steeves, 2010), and even personal safety. these traditional research ethics concerns address some but not all of the relevant social justice issues, and there are some differences between the two sets of concerns. hoffman and jonas (2017) argue that “justice occupies a precarious position in the history of research policy and ethics …[and] has received comparatively less explicit attention than other values, especially informed consent and beneficence” (p. 4). they point out that, oftentimes, social justice concerns in the research context are framed in terms of the selection of subjects, distribution of risks and benefits, and inclusion of vulnerable or marginal groups (p. 5). research accessing online discussions broadens representation and inclusion of hard to reach or otherwise invisible subjects, and may be able partially to correct for a “lack of attention to the needs and issues of populations currently marginalized in society” (fassinger & morrow, 2013, p. 69). in analyzing research involving online disability group interactions, trevisan and reilly (2014) found that the analysis of facebook content was instrumental in providing “disabled users with a lens to interpret the effects of policy measures and participate in relevant conversations,” that sharing experiences was “a fundamental step in the creation of group identity and collective agency” (p. 1135), and that the omission of discussions on semi-public facebook pages from the research record “would have in fact equated to the ‘silencing’ of disabled people’s voices” (p. 1137). lyons et al. (2013), borrowing from earlier work by crethar et al. (2008), argue that research can contribute to social justice when it promotes the principles of equity, access, participation, and harmony for culturally diverse populations, and the use of online social media data for research purposes can meet these considerations. to some extent, online discussion groups may select populations “because they are available, are in compromised positions or are manipulable.” but at the same time selection is “for reasons directly related to the problem being studied” (pieper & thomson, 2013, p. 102). research ethics requirements for notice and consent support participant choice with respect to data harvesting. at the same time, however, if participants are aware that data are being harvested this can have the impact of limiting participation in the research or in the online contexts from which discussions are harvested. researchers must pay careful attention to the autonomy of the participants whose data they wish to access so that they do 1 hung (2020) became acquainted with members of the group while working on a curriculum project at their high school (p. 599). he notes, “i received irb approval from my research institution and was given the participants’ consent to record their xbl chats” (p. 600) but does not provide further details. jacquelyn burkell & priscilla regan studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 402 not become “willing participants – even instigators – in reinforcing posthumanist systems of surveillance on populations we wish to support or observe” (luka et al., 2017, pp. 4-5). in order that research using social media data can contribute to the social justice aim of representation while at the same time protecting participant rights, researchers should not engage in helicopter science, but instead be sensitive to the culture of the community, enter the community with an open and inquiring attitude, and allow the research direction to emerge from the concerns of participants (fassinger & morrow, 2013, pp. 72-74). this requires a reflexive perspective that flexibly responds to the situation with attention to both research questions and the larger cultural context (luka et al, 2017, p. 30). again, however, this prolonged and more intense engagement with research participants will increase the intrusiveness of the research and thus its impact on the social ecology of the online environment. from a social justice position, an ethical framing of online research is not simply a private matter between the researcher and the subject monitored by a research ethics board, but necessitates a nuanced understanding of the users’ expectations of the online site and their experiences on the site, as well as the broader social and political context of the site and its purpose. research ethics guidance as research began to incorporate data from online discussion groups, research ethics boards (reb) were confronted with the questions of whether these projects required ethical review, and if so whether they should receive ethics approval. not surprisingly, rebs at different institutions came to varying conclusions for seemingly similar projects. national policy bodies responsible for ethical research standards began to review and revise their guidelines and requirements to account for internet research generally and particularly research involving online discussion groups. other guidelines emerged directly from the research community. the association of internet researchers (aoir), for example, issued guidelines in 2002 (ess & association of internet researchers ethics working committee, 2002), and provided updates and expansions in 2012 (markham & buchanan, 2012), and 2019 (franzke et al., 2019). the aoir guidelines identify the following six fundamental ethical guidelines: • the greater the vulnerability of the community and participants, the greater the obligation of the researcher to protect the community and participants; • because harm is determined based on the context, ethical decision making requires practical judgment attentive to the specific context; • all digital information involves individual persons even if that is not immediately apparent; expression in the virtual public studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 403 • the rights of subjects must be balanced with the social benefits of the research; • ethical issues arise in all stages of the research process; and • ethical decision-making is a deliberative process requiring consultation with many people and resources. (paraphrased from markham & buchanan, 2012, pp. 3-4). these guidelines raise key questions that researchers and ethics boards should consider when determining the ethicality of online research. they also address broader social justice considerations. rebs are informed by ethical guidelines in making their decisions; these guidelines, however, are not prescriptive but instead provide an interpretive framework for temporally and geographically situated individual ethical decisions. social justice considerations, especially those informed by virtue ethics and feminist ethics of care, “stress context and situation rather than abstract principles, and dialogue and negotiation rather than rules and autonomy” (edwards & mauthner, 2002, p. 20). thus, different rebs can reach different decisions regarding the ethicality of research when they are working under different ethics guidelines, and even when working under the same guidelines if local interpretations of the guidelines differ. despite the possibilities for different interpretations, all ethics guidelines recognize that vulnerable populations should be approached with special care. our current focus on online discussion groups involves a number of generally recognized vulnerabilities including those related to minors, politically or socially sensitive subjects, women, groups with special needs, illnesses, or emotional states (franzke et al., 2019, p. 17), which heightens the importance of social justice considerations during all stages of the research process. as luka et al. (2017) point out, with an ethics of care perspective, “being deeply aware of our own identity and agency is critical to being able to understand marginalized subjects without romanticizing or appropriating their experiences” (p. 31). a similar concern, discussed above as a concern about helicopter research, is the responsibility of researchers to avoid “inserting themselves into vulnerable communities to collect data, and abruptly leaving without returning findings to, or meaningfully impacting the lives of intended and unintended participants” (guishard et al., 2018, p. 9) research ethics guidelines such as those put forward by the association of internet researchers (franzke et al., 2019) offer insight into specific characteristics that signal a private, rather than public, online discussion. these include: • a closed discussion group that requires membership requirement for joining the discussion; • a sensitive topic of discussion; • terms of reference or privacy policies that limit research use of the data, or that specifically state the content will not be used for purposes beyond the immediate interaction or discussion. jacquelyn burkell & priscilla regan studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 404 circumstances that are seen to mitigate against an expectation of privacy include: • terms of reference or privacy policies that explicitly allow the use of the data for research purposes; • open discussion groups that do not require membership to join; • searchable archives of the discussions, particularly if these are available on the open web. the nature of public and private contexts is increasingly contested in a number of domains and questions arising in online discussion groups are not unique. spicker (2011) points out that disputes about ethics and social justice of covert research (i.e., research that is not declared to participants) focus on whether the circumstances are truly public, questioning the assumption that “doing things in a public place is public because it is visible” (p. 125). instead, spicker argues, “what defines something as public is not the geographical location where it happens, but the nature of the act” (2011, p. 125). one important research ethics consideration is participant anonymity. ethics guidelines highlight the need to ensure that participants cannot be identified. in the context of research use of online social media data, these guidelines are often interpreted to require anonymization of pseudonyms, in recognition of the facts that enduring pseudonyms can be meaningful identities in their own right and where attached to a significant amount of personal information including extended communications, have the potential to lead to real-world identification. another concern, less often addressed in research ethics considerations, is that online searches could locate material quoted from online discussion groups, and thus identify the source (both where the material appeared, and who produced the material), thereby compromising participant anonymity. in order to provide a more concrete understanding of how these ethical issues and social justice considerations arise in different research projects and how researchers account for these issues, in the next section we explore several examples. we selected these as illustrative of the types of research that rely on harvested social media data, and we focused on similar examples that provide contrasting approaches to research ethics and social justice considerations. all studies, by virtue of their publication, offer voice to participants, and thus meet at least minimally the social justice goal of representation. the studies differ, however, in how other social justice and research ethics considerations were addressed. all received ethics approval, although the details of such approval are vague given article length restrictions. this discussion is not intended to reflect on the validity of that approval or the ethical conduct of the research or researchers. our goal here is to highlight the types of research using online discussion groups as data that have been considered to satisfy ethical and social justice guidelines (often at different points in time), and to review these decisions in light of current guidelines and practices. expression in the virtual public studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 405 examples siriaraya et al. (2011) examined empathetic communication in one online discussion group: teenhelp.org. their study is in many ways typical of research involving online discussion group interactions. they analyzed posts to the public and anonymous moderated discussion group, accessible without a login requirement. posts were archived in a searchable database, and researchers downloaded for analysis messages from the earliest threads in the archived discussion. although they do not identify the dates for these interactions, this suggests that these posts occurred in the relatively distant past, since archiving would generally be reserved for older and inactive discussions. in order to protect the anonymity of those whose postings were analyzed, usernames were not reported. moreover, the published research did not use direct quotes from individual posts, but instead reported the frequency of various coded characteristics (e.g., empathetic communication) in the downloaded posts. subrahmanyam et al. (2004) conducted research involving online discussion groups taking place much earlier than those examined by siriaraya et al. (2011). it is also possible that subrahmanyam et al. (2004) collected their data before the aoir released their 2002 guidelines, and as a result their work could not have been informed by those guidelines. these researchers analyzed a 30-minute transcript from a moderated teen chat room to gain insight into the processes through which sexuality and identity are constructed. the researchers used a participant-observer approach to record chat room interactions. one researcher gained access to the group through an internet provider, following a process identical to that recommended to parents who were providing access to the group for their children; thus, it appears that some type of membership or sign-on was required to access the group. the group was moderated. no mention is made of seeking consent from the participants, nor did the researchers approach the moderator(s) to obtain approval for data collection. as required by the local reb, the researcher collecting the data did not contribute to the online discussion, nor did she respond to any messages directed to her. also, as required by the reb, user names were replaced by pseudonyms in the transcript used for analysis, and in reports of the data. the analysis was qualitative, and the published results reproduced individual statements and extended interactions between two or more discussion group participants. in neither example were participants informed about the research, thus there was no risk that the research disturbed the value of the online communities for participants. in terms of public versus private space, the research conducted by siriaraya et al. (2011) presents fewer concerns, as the data analyzed were drawn from a publicly available historical archive. subrahmanyam et al. (2004), by contrast, had much better opportunity to gain a contextualized understanding of the participant discussions by virtue of the researcher’s extended engagement in the discussion group, and the collection jacquelyn burkell & priscilla regan studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 406 of data in real-time as opposed to being downloaded from archives. at the same time, these advantages with respect to a fuller understanding seem to be disadvantages from the perspective of participant autonomy, because the research process involved greater (albeit covert) incursion into the online social environment. this is especially concerning given that access to the group required a sign-on of some description, which would tend to increase participant privacy expectations. both studies protected participants from the risk of re-identification through substitution of user names with pseudonyms. the analysis conducted by siriaraya et al. (2011) offers further protection in this respect because no direct quotes were included in the report. the direct quotes reported by subrahmanyam et al. (2004) seem to present a greater risk of re-identification, and thus a greater threat to participant anonymity and confidentiality; however, if the discussions were not archived (as the research report suggests, but does not confirm), then this risk can be discounted. covert observation of online interaction without participant consent or even notice to participants would seem in many cases to undermine autonomy. as indicated above, the practice is allowed under research ethics guidelines if it is deemed that the venue is public in nature and the observation and report do not present any threat to participant anonymity. conducting research under these conditions potentially increases the value of the research by minimizing artificiality and reactivity (calvey, 2008). if participants are not aware that they are being observed, such observation cannot disturb the value of online social interactions, nor restrict participation or speech, unless the covert researcher participates in those interaction, a practice which raises other ethical issues (see e.g., brotsky & giles, 2007). some data suggest that young people may easily become accustomed to observation by researchers, and express limited interest in negotiation ongoing consent once they have agreed to being observed (see e.g., collier, 2019). if such accommodation is easily achieved, then even overt research observation might only minimally disturb the social environment. however, there are practical difficulties with obtaining consent. in online discussion groups, users are typically identified by pseudonym and no other identifying information is available. in these circumstances it is difficult to contact participants off-discussion for consent. if the analysis uses archived discussion records, the individuals included in the discussion may not be participants at the time the research is conducted, so the researchers might not be able to reach them for consent. additionally, the nature of discussion is interactive, and participants often quote one another in responses, making it difficult or impossible to collect data if consent was received from some but not all participants. as a result of these considerations, researchers using online discussion groups as data rarely seek consent from participants. a study by høybye et al. (2005) demonstrates just how intrusive the process of seeking informed consent can be. their research involved participant observation of a small online cancer support group. existing and incoming members were approached for consent to collect data, and expression in the virtual public studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 407 participation in the group was restricted to those who consented. fewer than half of the original members consented to the research, and many potential new members were also unable to participate because they would not consent to the research. in this case, participants had full autonomy with respect to the research use of their online discussions. there are downsides to this approach, however, including the concern that participants may change their behaviour in response to the knowledge that they are being observed, the potential for coercion affecting participants who wanted to join the group after the research was started, and the reality that the nature and conduct of the research effectively limited participation in the group during the duration of the research to those who consented, thus excluding others from any benefits associated with participation in a group that had, until the research began, imposed no consent requirements on participants. a potentially less intrusive approach is to seek consent from group moderators rather than individual participants. evans et al. (2012) used this approach in a study examining social support available from archived online discussion groups. various moderated discussion groups were considered as sites of data collection. written permission to collect the data was sought from group moderators. in this case, moderators were viewed as community gatekeepers, and by gaining their consent the researcher achieved a measure of access to and participation from the community consistent with social justice claims (lyons et al., 2013). while this approach goes some way to respecting the autonomy of participants with respect to the research use of their data, it effectively substitutes one decision proxy (the moderator) for another (the researcher/reb; although see pullman, 2002, for an argument in support of reb proxy consent). another approach is to establish whether participants similar to those being observed would in theory consent to the use of their data for research purposes. stevens et al. (2015) consulted about their planned research with members of a different group focused on similar issues rather than seeking consent from the group they were studying. seeking input on research use of data from a similarly situated community (lyons et al., 2013) is a creative way of ensuring a measure of autonomy while also allowing research participation from a potentially marginalized community, assuming the parallel community endorses it. another approach is to seek consent only for the use of potentially identifiable data in publications arising from the research (e.g., quotations), rather than seeking consent for data collection (see e.g., mulveen & hepworth, 2006). whether or not consent is sought from participants for the harvesting of data, it is important from a research ethics and social justice perspective that participant anonymity and confidentiality be protected. a variety of strategies should be used to protect data sources (i.e., individuals and the groups in which they are participating). these include providing pseudonyms for participant user names, and not providing specific information that identifies the group from which the data were harvested. further protection for jacquelyn burkell & priscilla regan studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 408 individual participants can be offered by eliminating all attributions for quotes, including pseudonyms (brotsky & giles, 2007). these measures may be sufficient if interactions are not available in online archives, but additional protection can be provided through a process of “fabrication, involving creative, bricolage-style transfiguration of original data into composite accounts or representational interactions” (markham, 2012, p. 334). where data are collected directly from online archives, researchers should consider conducting searches for quoted material to ensure that quotations cannot be traced back to the website and from there to individual participants. mulveen and hepworth (2006) employed this technique by entering random phrases taken from discussion on the site into standard search queries, ensuring that the website was not among the returned results (see also stevens et al., 2015). best practices and further considerations a scan of published studies that use online discussion groups as sources of data reveals a range of practices designed to preserve participant autonomy in the absence of full informed consent, and also allow representation of often marginalized voices. these include: • examination of the group terms and conditions, and any privacy policy associated with the group, to ensure that these do not suggest that research use of data is restricted or precluded; • limiting observation to those groups that do not require membership (i.e., groups that are open to the public); • removal of identifying information, including usernames and user ids, from published reports; • seeking approval from discussion group moderators for data collection; • canvassing participants in other online discussion groups addressing the same issue to determine if they would be comfortable having their own discussions mined for research purposes; • seeking post-hoc consent from participants who would be directly quoted in research reports; • conducting searches to ensure that quoted material cannot be linked back to a specific discussion group through search results. the social justice consideration of representing more groups and authentic voices in research and doing so with respect for the value of the group is a legitimate argument for undertaking research involving youth in online discussion groups, if the research actually benefits the group being studied. researchers should understand that there are costs to this type of research, and that the individuals and groups, who are often marginalized, bear these costs. these costs include undermining the social ecosystem and value of the online communities to individuals and communities as a whole, loss of autonomy for group members, and risk of compromised privacy. these costs expression in the virtual public studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 409 must be mitigated to the greatest extent possible, and weighed against benefits to determine whether research should be carried out. our analysis of the literature on research ethics and social justice, as well as of research involving online discussion groups, indicates that several aspects of using data from online discussion groups, especially those involving youth, need more thoughtful discussion and guidance. we discuss four of these below. first, researchers should respect the communities they are researching. there should be no helicopter research but instead engagement with the community and attention to the value of the research for the community. the research should not merely add to knowledge about the group researched, or to understanding online communities more generally, but should contribute to the greater good of the community being studied or the interests of that community – and these interests should be explicitly noted on an ethics application. additionally, researchers should take active responsibility for protecting the integrity of the community by minimizing intrusiveness. researchers should not participate in community discussions unless they are actually a member of the community and the community is cognizant of the research activities. covert research should only be considered if the research is contributing to the community in an explicit way and if an ethics board is convinced that both individual privacy and the integrity of the community will not be compromised. if research is overt, then the researcher must anticipate and minimize the impact on the community. for example, if the researcher seeks consent, what happens to those who do not consent? are they precluded from participating in the online discussion? if that is the case, the value of the research results is diminished and the costs to the individuals and groups are increased. the questions of consent and protection of autonomy as respects access to online discussions is a second issue in need of more thoughtful discussion and guidance. researchers should first examine the online group’s terms of service or any other expressions of community values that might indicate the space or interactions are private, and respect these. however, these are often silent on academic research or vague and confusing. as we discuss above, securing direct and a priori consent from all participants is difficult, especially as some members may be hard to find, which may undermine community and participation. the appropriateness of moderator approval also needs to be clarified. in some cases, moderators may indeed know group members well enough to speak on their behalf, but in other cases, especially where participation in the group is fluid, moderators may not have sufficient insight to give what might approximate informed consent. consent from moderators should not be a one-time action, but should involve moderators as active members of the research team with an ongoing responsibility to revoke approval of the research or to point out the limits of this form of approval. a third issue in need of clarification in using data from online discussion groups involves determining participants’ likely expectation of privacy. in jacquelyn burkell & priscilla regan studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 410 making this determination, intuitions and reasoning based on the understanding of public versus private in the offline world do not always translate well or directly to the online environment. in the offline world, people traditionally retain a degree of anonymity or at least a degree of practical obscurity as they traverse and interact in public spaces. in the online environment, the public/private distinction is blurred. we know that participants can have an impression of privacy online which would likely apply to online discussion groups in which participants assume they are opening themselves to a sympathetic community. this would certainly seem to indicate that they did not expect that their comments and interactions would be used for research purposes. protecting privacy in an online research environment is more difficult because of the increasing ease of reidentifiability, since an internet search could turn up the source of a specific quote if the discussion group is archived and searchable on the web. with the amount of available data and the analytical tools associated with big data, it is increasingly difficult to de-identify data in any meaningful way. four steps seem to mitigate the risks to privacy and reidentification: use data in aggregate, don’t use quotes; provide pseudonyms for user names; if quotes are to be used, especially if harvesting from an online archive, carry out searches to ensure that the source cannot be identified; and, consider a bricolage-style qualitative report that brings together multiple quotes in an overall picture (markham, 2012). finally, the use of archived group materials needs clarification. if researchers seek to download and analyze the archived content of membersonly online discussion groups then it is feasible to ask for consent from members for use of the data. members can see what they have said, evaluate whether they are willing to have that information used for research purposes, and give meaningful informed consent. if some members refuse, the removal of their data would change the nature of the sample but still allow the research to be conducted as long as direct statements of those who refuse, and references to those statements, are removed. if many members refuse, then it is obvious that the research should not proceed. if researchers seek to download and analyze archived content of open online discussion groups that are searchable on the open web then there may be a general perception that the discussion is public, and as a result participant anonymity and confidentiality are moot. in this case, rebs will often allow the research to go forward or require moderator approval. however, we believe that these practices may not be ethically appropriate, as the individuals in the group likely do not have an expectation that the discussions have been archived and are searchable. the current discussions about the right to be forgotten would come into play here, and to be consistent with the spirit of that right rebs should look at these cases more critically than they have in the past, and require additional protections so that members of the group are not easily identified, that pseudonyms are used, and that other measures are taken consistent with respect for persons and beneficence. expression in the virtual public studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 3, 397-413, 2021 411 conclusion the use of online social media data produced by youth offers tremendous potential for insight, and researchers must be careful to attend to social justice issues as well as research ethics considerations in using these data for research purposes. in examining the research use of such data, two social justice issues arise, often in tension: the issue of representation, and the issue of respect for participant rights and wellbeing. researchers must be careful to balance these considerations in designing and conducting online research. when all is said, our final impressions are threefold: first, the use of these data can offer voice, in the research context, to populations that are typically not represented, and about issues that are not typically discussed in the research context; second, the use of data from online discussion groups without consent can undercut the respect for participant autonomy that is fundamental to research ethics; and third, for many participants, online discussion groups are important spaces for protected and valuable social interaction that may be disturbed by the presence of outsiders, including researchers. it is the responsibility of researchers to balance these considerations, working both to offer voice to marginalized communities while at the same time ensuring respect for participant communities, so that no harm comes to those communities, and that the cultural integrity of the communities are preserved. with respect to the issue of harm to the community, researchers must balance the push toward engagement and overtness in research (including securing informed consent) that is implicit in research ethics guidelines with the social justice consideration of the cost of interfering with the social ecosystem of the online community under study. in navigating online research where boundaries between public and private may seem to be blurred, we agree with guishard et al. 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(2007). organizing myspace: youth walkouts, pleasure, politics, and new media. educational foundations, 21, 9-28. liddell et al final before ts correspondence address: catherine mckinley, school of social work, tulane university, new orleans, la, 70118; email: catmckinley@tulane.edu issn: 1911-4788 volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 historic and contemporary environmental justice issues among native americans in the gulf coast region of the united states jessica l. liddell tulane university, usa catherine e. mckinley tulane university, usa jennifer m. lilly fordham university, usa abstract settler-colonialism is founded in environmental racism, and environmental justice is foundational to all forms of decolonialization. native american groups located in the gulf coast region of the united states are particularly vulnerable to environmental justice issues such as climate change and oil spills due to their geographic location and reliance on the coastal region for economic and social resources. this study used the framework of historical oppression, resilience, and transcendence (fhort) to explore the historic and contemporary forms of environmental injustice experienced by a native american tribe in the gulf coast region of the united states. this critical ethnography analyzed a series of individual, family, and focus group semi-structured qualitative interviews with a total of 208 participants. following the critical ethnographic method, data were interpreted through reconstructive analysis using nvivo. findings of this study reveal the continuing impact of the bp oil spill and difficulty accessing resources following the spill, complicated by the tribe’s lack of federal recognition. additional themes include the continuing impact of coastal erosion, historical and contemporary land loss, geographic marginalization, and concerns about a loss of tribal identity when tribal members are forced to relocate. lack of federal tribal recognition has exacerbated all of these issues for this tribe. this study supports national findings that native american groups experience extensive historic and contemporary environmental injustices and contextualizes these findings for a native american tribe in the gulf coast region of the united states. recognizing native american sovereignty is key to addressing the environmental justice issues described. jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 2 keywords environmental justice; native american; american indian, indigenous; gulf coast; climate change environmental justice, defined as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and polices” (u.s. environmental protection agency, 2020), has frequently been unobtainable for people of color (singer, 2018; tsosie, 2007; vinyeta et al., 2016). environmental injustice often includes disproportionate impact of environmental policies on the health and well-being of communities of color (maantay, 2002). issues of environmental justice and injustice are increasingly being recognized as needed areas of research and intervention among native american tribes (bates, 2012; cantzler & huynh, 2016; crepelle, 2018a, 2018b; fitzgerald, 2015; maldonado, 2014; vinyeta et al., 2016). environmental justice issues experienced by native american groups are comprised of both historic events (related to settler colonialism) and contemporary events, such as increasing land loss to rising water and pollution (billiot & parfait, 2019; canzler & huynh, 2016; vinyeta et al., 2016). although most research focuses on current examples of environmental injustice, an exploration of settler-colonial history reveals environmental oppression is fundamental to colonialism, as indigenous groups were pushed out of ancestral homes and pressured into relinquishing sovereignty over the land (billiot & parfait, 2019; canzler & huynh, 2016). colonialism at its root includes an extensive history of environmental racism, and scholars have noted how environmental justice is a foundational component of decolonization, as virtually every political struggle in which indigenous groups are engaged has environmental implications (canzler & huynh, 2016). framework of historical oppression, resilience, and transcendence this study used the framework of historical oppression, resilience, and transcendence (fhort; burnette & figley, 2017) to contextualize experiences of environmental injustice as distinct forms of historical oppression for one gulf coast tribe. this native-focused framework was developed through work with the focal tribe and integrates the impact of colonization in its organizing framework (burnette & figley, 2017). historical oppression is a distinct concept put forth within this framework; it includes both historical traumas (such as genocide, historical land loss, polluting of native lands, and famine) and contemporary trauma and oppression (including current environmental injustices, concomitant health disparities, political marginalization, and discrimination). historical environmental justice & native americans in the gulf coast region studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 3 oppression helps explain and contextualize contemporary environmental injustice experiences as continuations of oppressive practices imposed for centuries (burnette & figley, 2017). the fhort was developed with indigenous communities, including the focal tribe, and is helpful in situating strengths and resilience within the sociostructural causes of environmental and health inequities (burnette & figley, 2017; mckinley et al., 2020). this is important so as not to “blame the victim” for problems but rather to connect adverse social, environmental, and health conditions to their sociostructural causes, while acknowledging indigenous peoples’ immense strength and resilience after experiencing centuries of injustice (burnette & figley, 2017; mckinley et al., 2019, 2020). resilience is viewed here as the ability of individuals, families, or communities to adapt, recover, or bounce back from challenges and hardships (burnette & figley, 2017). the fhort has been used to explain and understand violence (burnette & figley, 2017) and health equity (mckinley et al., 2020), and it is recommended as a culturally based framework to situate inequities (mckinley et al., 2019); however, it is just beginning to be used to understand historical oppression related to environmental injustice (burnette et al., 2019), making this a novel and innovative contribution to the field. because of the immense diversity in the number and types of tribes in the united states – there are more than 574 federally recognized tribes (bureau of indian affairs, n.d.), more than 60 state-recognized tribes (national conference on state legislatures, 2015), and numerous other tribes that exist outside of either jurisdiction (u.s. government accountability office, 2012) – environmental justice must be examined within the context of particular tribes. the purpose of this study was to explore the historic and contemporary environmental injustice issues experienced by a tribe in the gulf coast region of the united states through the lens of the fhort. this tribe is referred to as “coastal tribe” to keep tribal identity confidential due to recommendations for culturally sensitive and ethical research (burnette et al., 2014) and tribal agreements. this study was conducted to address gaps in the existing literature on the experience of environmental injustice among native american tribes, particularly in the gulf coast region. the overarching research question was: how do tribal members perceive historic and contemporary environmental justice issues? environmental justice and indigenous people both historic and contemporary forms of environmental injustice impact the holistic well-being of indigenous people. indigenous people and other communities of color are more likely to be exposed to high levels of pollution and contaminants in their environment, which often have lasting negative impacts on the health of community members (maantay, 2002). this jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 4 exposure is implicated in high rates of asthma, cancer, reproductive health issues, and lowered life expectancies (billiot, 2017; hoover et al., 2012; singer, 2018). climate change, in particular, undermines the important spiritual, social, emotional and economic relationship that connects many native american cultural systems with the land, in addition to undermining indigenous healing traditions (billiot, 2017; vinyeta et al., 2016). loss of land also impedes the intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge (burnette et al., 2018, 2019; fitzgerald, 2015). indigenous food sovereignty is also negatively impacted when subsistence food practices are no longer available, which is harmful for indigenous health (burnette et al., 2018; billiot, 2017; billiot & parfait, 2019; whyte, 2016). frequently, the land on which indigenous people are located is especially vulnerable to climate change and repeated natural disasters, such as flooding, hurricanes, and droughts (burnette et al., 2019; singer, 2018; tsosie, 2007). indigenous groups risk land loss on multiple fronts, including rising water and land grabs aimed at exploiting natural resources (orta-martinez & finer, 2010; sawyer, 2004; singer, 2018; tsosie, 2007). oil company exploitation is a key example of both historic and contemporary oppression of indigenous peoples, beginning in the 1920s when oil companies seized land through semi-legal and illegal tactics and continuing to the present day in accelerated land loss through canal dredging and other forms of environmental damage (orta-martinez & finer, 2010; sawyer, 2004; tsosie, 2007). despite the apparent salience of environmental injustices experienced by indigenous peoples, research examining their experiences of and perspectives on these issues is limited. this study addresses this gap in the literature through a qualitative examination of historic and contemporary environmental injustice experienced by members of a tribe in the gulf south. coastal tribe the region inhabited by coastal tribe is a dynamic landscape influenced by its proximity to the gulf coast, wetlands and bayous, large river systems, and human-made infrastructure such as canals, levees, and others related to petroleum extraction (austin, 2006; lambeth, 2016; maldonado, 2014). many native american people in this region depend on coastal areas, swamps, and bayous for food, as well as cultural and economic resources (bates, 2016; johnson & clarke, 2004; maldonado 2014), making them particularly vulnerable to climate change (austin, 2006; crepelle, 2018a, 2018b; lambeth, 2016; maldonado, 2014). in the past century, the gulf coast has been impacted by multiple hurricanes, extreme flooding events, and the 2010 bp oil spill, which have negatively impacted tribal communities in the area (burnette et al., 2019; bailey et al., 2014). the bp oil spill, in particular, highlights the potential for future hydrocarbon events to devastate the environment and local communities. as environmental justice & native americans in the gulf coast region studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 5 one of the largest oil spill disasters in history, the bp oil spill killed 11 crewmembers and poured over 4.9 million barrels of oil into the gulf of mexico (smith et al., 2011). people living in gulf coast areas have faced rapid and unanticipated changes to their environment and livelihoods (fan et al., 2015). although relatively few environmental health studies have been done following the spill, and even fewer that look specifically at the impact on native american tribes that were affected, studies conducted with the general population or with other demographic groups indicated the spill negatively impacted self-reported mental and physical health, increased disparities related to healthcare access, and was associated with mental health issues related to displacement and unemployment in the aftermath (cope et al., 2013; croisant et al., 2017; fan et al., 2015; patel et al., 2018). climate change is thought to be associated with increases in the number and severity of hurricanes and other weather events in the region (lambeth, 2016). hurricanes and incidents of increased flooding exacerbate the impact of levee construction, dredging of canals, and oil extraction activities on coastal erosion (austin, 2006). recent research has shown the particular ways these adverse weather events impact the lives of native american peoples in the region (burnette et al., 2019). the impact of climate disasters, such as the impact of hurricanes on those living near the gulf, has received widespread attention; however, their impact on native american people has received little attention (bates, 2016; lambeth, 2016; maldonado, 2014; simms, 2016). this scarce attention is concerning, given native american tribes in this region are intricately connected with the environment for both social and economic resources, and the majority of tribes along the gulf coast live below sea level, placing them at high risk for flooding and land loss (fitzgerald, 2015). while research that specifically looks at the impact of relocation on tribal identity for native american tribes in this region is nascent (bates, 2016; lambeth, 2016; maldonado, 2014), interviews with the general population in the gulf coast find participants are highly ambivalent about relocation and worry it will undermine social relations and individual identity, which is strongly related to sense of place (simms, 2016). coastal tribe members were forced out of their ancestral homeland in the early 1700s and pushed into the coastlands and bayous where they are now especially vulnerable to the impacts of land loss, climate change, and tropical weather events (fitzgerald, 2015). in their new home, tribal members developed new traditions and practices centering around the water, and their lives continue to focus on and depend on this resource (burnette et al., 2019; billiot & parfait, 2019; fitzgerald, 2015). despite a long-documented history of existence in the region, a variety of historical events and political factors contributed to the tribe being denied recognition as a federal tribe, though it is recognized at the state level (billiot & parfait, 2019; crepelle, 2018a, 2018b). the federal recognition process has been criticized for being extremely expensive and time consuming, for being highly political, and for guidelines jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 6 being inconsistently applied (crepelle, 2018a, 2018b; fitzgerald, 2015; fletcher, 2006). this lack of federal recognition has severely undermined the ability of coastal tribe to access both state and federal resources following disasters such as hurricane katrina or the bp oil spill (burnette et al., 2019; crepelle, 2018a; maldonado, 2014; miller, 2003). tribes that are not recognized at the federal level do not receive the resources and benefits allocated in federal treaty agreements (u.s. commission on civil rights, 2004). many of these tribes are concentrated in the southeastern portion of the united states, and the majority of them lack access to land reservations (national conference on state legislatures, 2015; salazar, 2016). in addition to limiting access to needed funds and programs, lack of federal recognition has meant this tribe is denied the ability to control management of and access to land, water, and air in their community. it also limits their ability to receive funding following disasters, potential relocation following land loss, and the protection and handling of sacred sites (burnette et al., 2019; crepelle, 2018a; maldonado, 2014; miller, 2003). this is in contrast to federally recognized tribes that are usually able to regulate and control land under their jurisdiction, enacting environmental regulations they deem appropriate (burnette et al., 2019; crepelle, 2018a; maldonado, 2014; miller, 2003). this lack of tribal sovereignty has also allowed for oil companies to target and take advantage of individual tribal members, taking their land through legal agreements that are in some cases not fully understood by tribal members (billiot & parfait, 2019; crepelle, 2018a; maldonado, 2014; rhoan, 2010). in addition to losing land because it was held individually and not in a federal trust by the tribe, not being recognized prevented the tribe from receiving resources from bp following the oil spill because bp refused to recognize claims from state-recognized tribes (billiot & parfait, 2019; crepelle, 2018a; maldonado, 2014; rhoan, 2010). this marginalization impairs the physical safety of tribal groups whose land tends to be located outside of the protection of the levee system, a clear example of “environmental racism” (billiot & parfait, 2019; crepelle, 2018a; rhoan, 2010). although climate change and other environmental justice issues are increasingly impacting all tribal communities, and indeed all individuals, the lack of federal recognition has made this particular tribe especially vulnerable to its continuing effects. tribal members are not concentrated in one geographic area, but are spread out through the coastal region (crepelle, 2018a; maldonado, 2014). many tribal members are employed in the oil or fishing industry, further complicating this tribe’s relationship with the oil industry (crepelle, 2018a; maldonado, 2014). english is not the first language of all tribal members, and some tribal members experienced educational discrimination, where they were banned from attending either black or white schools (burnette et al., 2019; bates, 2016; crepelle, 2018a; maldonado, 2014). many tribal members environmental justice & native americans in the gulf coast region studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 7 continue to visit traditional indigenous healers, although this tradition is becoming less frequent. this change may be caused by environmental changes and barriers to the continued transmission of cultural knowledge (bates, 2016; johnson & clark, 2004; maldonado, 2014; vinyeta et al., 2016). in the face of these challenges, this tribe is highly resilient, tight-knit, self-sufficient, and values and supports family and community members (burnette et al., 2019; mckinley et al., 2019). although tribal members are buffered from some of the most negative impacts of climate change because of strong social networks, resilience, and self-sufficiency, their lack of access to resources and sovereignty has undermined their ability to recover from environmental disasters. methods research design this article is part of a broader critical ethnography to identify risk and protective factors across the ecological societal, community, family and individual levels related to psychosocial disparities among native american people (carspecken, 1996). the method of critical ethnography was chosen because it is congruent with the fhort, which is an extension of critical theory as outlined by paolo freire (freire, 1996). it has been recommended and used in numerous studies with native peoples as a culturally congruent decolonizing methodology (burnette et al., 2014; mckinley et al., 2019; 2020). critical ethnography focuses on power dynamics and centers the voices of participants, making it appropriate for the study population and purpose (burnette et al., 2014; mckinley et al., 2019, 2020). burnette et al.’s (2014) “toolkit for ethical and culturally sensitive research with indigenous communities” was used to guide the research process, ensuring this community-based study was conducted respectfully and ethically throughout. this research was conducted with a state-recognized (but not federally recognized) tribe located near the gulf coast in the united states. due to confidentiality agreements with the tribe, the tribal identity is not revealed. data collection participants were recruited through word of mouth and by distributing fliers online and at community/tribal agencies. all participants who consented to participate in the study were interviewed, and individuals across the life course (children, adults, elders) participated. data collection included: (a) participant observation, (b) individual interviews, (c) family interviews, and (d) focus groups. these methods engaged a total of 208 participants. all jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 8 participants were compensated for their time ($20 gift card to a local department store for individual and focus group interviews and $60 for the family during family interviews), and interviews took place where participants preferred (generally at community centers or at individuals’ homes) between june 2014-july 2015. interviews took a life-course approach (carspecken, 1996), using a semi-structured guide with questions developed from the overarching research questions. questions in the guide were geared to a fifth-grade education level. questions were developed from the fhort to understand how people responded to adversity and what contextual factors were salient. example questions include, “describe a hard time growing up and how your family responded to that challenge” and “what made things harder at that time?” it is important to note that although participants were not explicitly asked about their feelings or experience with environmental justice or injustice, these results inductively emerged from the data, adding to the credibility and trustworthiness of findings. data analysis interviews were professionally transcribed before being analyzed in nvivo 11, a qualitative data analysis program. a collaborative, team-based approach was used throughout data analysis. the data analysis team included native american and non-native american phd students who worked collaboratively with the principal investigator to enhance the project’s cultural sensitivity. reconstructive analysis, a specific type of thematic qualitative analysis rooted in critical theory, was used to interpret data. during reconstructive analysis, team members read and listened to transcripts several times to develop initial impressions of the data. then interviews were analyzed line-by-line to develop initial hierarchical coding schemes, paying attention to both implicit and explicit meanings in the data. team members met on a biweekly basis to compare and discuss findings. cohen’s kappa interrater reliability coefficients were extremely high (.90 or above). strategies for rigor all strategies for rigor of this particular method were upheld (carspecken, 1996). participants received the results summary, interview transcripts (with the exception of group interviews due to confidentiality), and the opportunity to discuss, change, or add to interpretations and results. no participant disagreed with researcher interpretations, although many participants expanded upon their previous statements in agreement with research findings. peer debriefing occurred weekly with four research team members. consistency checks facilitated participants’ perspectives. over half of participants were interviewed more than once. research findings were environmental justice & native americans in the gulf coast region studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 9 presented to the tribe on over 10 occasions during tribal council meetings, at trainings, during community group presentations, and during community dialogue meetings. results and discussion as coastal communities continue to experience exposure to environmental hazards due to land loss, climate change, and environmental exploitation by corporations and government agencies, research that addresses the unique experiences of vulnerable groups is needed to inform interventions and the provision of appropriate resources. here, the specific environmental injustices experienced by a gulf coast native american tribe are contextualized using the fhort (burnette & figley, 2017). this framework allowed us to see the interconnections between historic forms of oppression and trauma experienced by this tribe and contemporary forms of oppression, in addition to highlighting the ways in which this tribe has expressed resilience, pride, and optimism while experiencing environmental injustice. as figure 1 displays, a lack of federal recognition, oil company exploitation, the bp oil spill, coastal erosion, land loss, geographic marginalization, and lack of indigenous involvement in interventions were the most commonly mentioned forms of historical oppression participants described. other forms of historical oppression mentioned by participants included loss of natural flood barriers, contaminated food and water, lack of self-determination in relocation, pollution, educational discrimination and environmental changes due to climate change. lack of federal recognition, which undermines state-recognized tribes’ ability to exert sovereignty over the land, including in issues of management, restoration, preservation, and resources, was especially important since this form of oppression often interacted with and compounded the effect of other forms of historic oppression. experiences of environmental justice issues were reported across 30 individual interviews, eight focus groups, and 12 family interviews, comprising 51 total sources. the topic of environmental justice was referenced 185 times, across 51 female speakers and 17 male speakers. to preview results, the most prominent findings included: (a) continuing impact of the bp oil spill, (b) concerns about coastal erosion, (c) historical and contemporary land loss, (d) geographic marginalization, and (e) the loss of tribal identity. jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 10 figure 1. forms of historical oppression in the context of environmental injustice. continuing impact of the bp oil spill: “i don’t trust the water” the presence of oil companies has introduced an interesting juxtaposition for many tribal members. the land and environment were profoundly damaged by oil companies, yet many tribal members depended on the same companies for their employment. tribal members have adapted to the presence of these companies by accessing these job opportunities and building up tribal economic resources. a prominent issue, however, was the continuing impact of the bp oil spill, which harmed these economic supports in the community. these economic effects were felt because a large portion of the tribe relies on the oil industry for employment/income. additionally, tribal members were unable to eat seafood after the spill, which undermined cultural traditions and family time, especially traditions centered around food, fishing, and vacationing near water. there were persistent concerns about safety and health following the oil spill related to eating seafood, spending time on the water, and working in the oil industry on clean-up. tribal members had ongoing concerns about litigation and frequently had difficulty accessing resources following the spill, further complicated by the tribe’s lack of federal recognition and other factors. environmental injustice environmental changes due to climate change b.p. oil spill coastal erosion land loss loss of natural flood barriers lack of indigenous involvement in interventions oil company exploitation contaminated food and water lack of self determination in relocation pollution lack of federal recognition educational discrimination geographic marginalization environmental justice & native americans in the gulf coast region studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 11 the economic impacts of the bp oil spill were frequently mentioned by participants. loss of jobs in the oil and seafood industry following the disaster undermined many tribal members’ economic security. as one participant noted, some tribal members whose families had worked in the seafood industry for many generations had to leave the profession because of the spill: my daddy trolled [fishing by trailing a line behind a boat that has been baited], and i had one brother that still trolls . . . my older brother, he fishes. . . . he used to troll, but then he got a job, because he had a family, and he got to support his family, because after the bp, it’s like . . . [implied doesn’t occur anymore]. the economic impacts of the bp oil spill act as a risk factor for undermining the economic resilience tribal members developed. this was particularly poignant for some tribal members who expressed pride in the work of tribal members who brought seafood to the world: “it was beautiful . . . down here. i'm proud that a lot of . . . shrimp and seafood comes from our tribal members, things like that.” the damage to the seafood and fishing industry caused by the oil spill acts as a risk factor for cultural resilience and identity of tribal members. when asked how this increased economic stress following the spill impacted family life, another participant reported “they start drinking.” continuing litigation regarding compensation following the bp oil spill also negatively impacted tribal members, and the protracted and bureaucratic process of holding institutions and companies accountable has been conceptualized as a form of trauma itself (picou et al., 2004; rhoan, 2010; rung et al., 2019; strasburger, 1999). ongoing concerns about litigation were reported as a persistent stressor for many participants: “there is still a lot of litigation.” others noted they “were not allowed to speak about it or anything.” participants reported additional stressors following the spill related to losing the ability to eat seafood due to increased cost or health and safety concerns about seafood consumption after the spill. from the lens of the fhort, the ability to maintain traditional forms of subsistence living demonstrates tribal members’ resilience. by preventing tribal members from continuing to engage in such practices, the bp oil spill acts as a risk factor for wellness, leading to negative physical and mental health outcomes (burnette et al., 2018). one participant noted increased price: “the price of shrimp was sky high. they didn't have any.” participants also reported not necessarily trusting reports that the food was safe to eat: they say, “you can eat so many oysters, and it won’t affect you. you can eat this amount of shrimp that it won’t affect you. this amount of crabs, and it won’t affect you,” but the crabs are from the bottom. jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 12 another participant also noted this, saying, “now, they're saying the seafood’s safe, and then you hear [the] seafood’s not safe, so it’s like you hear different things.” concerns about safety went beyond worries about seafood, extending to fear about drinking the water for some participants. one participant said, “i believe it’s our water. i don't even drink coffee from the faucet water. i don't drink it . . . i drink bottled water because i don't trust the water.” the impact of years of oil company and governmental exploitation is reflected in participant distrust of reports from these agencies (billiot & parfait, 2019; rhoan, 2010). not being able to rely on local resources of food and water is a risk factor for economic and cultural resilience in the community. many participants mentioned worries about the impact of the oil spill and the oil industry on participants’ health. as one participant noted, “since the oil spill and all, my health been going down [sic].” another participant discussed the negative health impacts for those who worked in the oil industry during clean up and who lived in close proximity to it: “he died of cancer. he worked on a [sic] oil spill and then all these people that worked in the oil spill. . . . we counted eight people [who died], just in their limited community, with cancer. . . . this is from all spill [sic].” one participant noted how they expected more events like the bp oil spill to occur because oil companies were never forced to pay the costs: we would be wealthier than saudi arabia if we had kept all of our oil royalties. we got zero. starting in 2017, we're going to get a portion of one third of the oil royalties. we'll have to split [that] with the other coastal states. even though we put up over 90% of the damages from producing those oil royalties. everything that's happening to us is happening in the name of oil for america because america is addicted to oil and gas. . . . as long as they didn't have to pay the costs. the environmental costs, the social costs, the cultural costs, the tears and blood costs . . . for this participant, oil company exploitation was expected to continue as long as u.s. energy continued to depend on oil and government remained unwilling to hold oil companies accountable for the impact of their industry on local communities. problems accessing resources following the oil spill were especially complicated by the tribe’s lack of federal recognition, in addition to other factors: i would like for us to be recognized and then maybe we'd have more support of . . . you know like sometimes they have grants and stuff . . . the bp oil spill the shrimpers were really struggling, you know. we didn't have no help whatsoever, we still have to make do with what we had. another participant noted the particular irony of having to prove who they were following the spill, when they were not responsible for causing the damage: “that kind of upsets me too, because native americans were here environmental justice & native americans in the gulf coast region studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 13 first. you came here, and then we have to prove to you who we are. that's kind of messed up. and then after you screwed everything up.” lack of federal recognition has undermined tribal sovereignty and has allowed for oil companies to continue to exploit the land without paying for the consequences (billiot & parfait, 2019; crepelle 2018a; maldonado, 2014; rhoan, 2010). being denied tribal recognition at the federal level is an acutely experienced example of historical oppression; it both allowed oil companies to operate on tribal lands that were not able to be held in trust by the tribe and created barriers in accessing resources following the bp oil spill (billiot & parfait, 2019; crepelle, 2018a; maldonado, 2014; rhoan, 2010). concerns about coastal erosion: “by the time the levee's done, they ain't got no more islands” historic and contemporary forms of land dispossession are important forms of oppression tribal members identified. indeed, climate change and coastal erosion have been described as the “indigenous land dispossession of the twenty-first century” (fitzgerald, 2015, p. 89). the disappearance of this land was facilitated by the dredging of oil canals, the creation of levee systems, the draining of wetlands and swamps, and the increasing frequency and intensity of coastal storms (fitzgerald, 2015). these circumstances act as risk factors that impede the resilient strategies tribal members developed to adapt to and thrive in their environment. participants noted this dramatic acceleration in coastal erosion, causes of the erosion, and worries about losing the land and not being able to pass it on to their children and grandchildren. participants also reported seeing rapid changes to the land on which they had grown up: oh i've been seeing it for 25 years, it was steady, every time i get in my boat and go, everything was different. [parts of the land] was [sic] not there. [the land] started shrinking, shrinking, you go, you wait another couple of weeks, and it’s gone. . . . i think if . . . building all them levees, if they took that money and go to start on the outside, not inside, go start on the outside, build a levee out there, protect [land] . . . protect that first. by the time the levee’s done, they ain’t [sic] got no more [land], they ain’t [sic] got nothing down there. but that's engineering, that's government for you. tribal members have developed traditions for economic and cultural survival based upon their interaction with the environment, which are now being undermined by coastal erosion. participants also reported feeling that solutions were not being enacted at the local or federal level, and that interventions were not using local and indigenous knowledge about the area. as coastal erosion continues, interventions designed to mitigate its effects without including tribal members are likely to be unsuccessful (bates, 2016; billiot & parfait, 2019; crepelle, 2018a, 2018b; maldonado, 2014). denying jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 14 meaningful involvement in decisions about the environment is a key component of environmental injustice (u.s. environmental protection agency, 2020). being denied federal recognition is an example of historic oppression that continues to exacerbate contemporary forms of oppression by denying tribal members the sovereignty to participate meaningfully in the creation of environmental policies. a tribal member recalled their family land now being totally submerged by water: they used to have wild horses. my family had a lot of cattle there. all that’s under water. the woods, i mean all the thick woods. it’s all gone. all the houses, there’s no indication that there ever was woods or land, period. . . . now it’s just miles of water . . . miles. and if you don’t go out there often, you just never know if the land’s disappearing so fast. the perishing, people just don’t know. i mean, we did because we’re out in the water all the time . . . and we see it. as this individual notes, tribal members are in a special position to see these environmental changes happening because of their strong connection with and time spent out in the local environment. the intergenerational transmission of knowledge about the land acts as an important protective factor for tribal members, and its integration into environmental policy may lead to more effective and culturally relevant interventions. because of this intimate knowledge participants had of the land, they were able to see directly the relationship between the increase in coastal erosion and the intensification in oil company dredging and drilling in the region: in the early 30s, they discovered [oil] so that’s when they came in and started dredging all of our land. digging, putting these navigation canals all over the place and then so, since that has happened, there’s no fresh water to replenish that. they didn’t block that or nothing, sort of left it open to the gulf . . . so the gulf now, the saltwater, eats up the land. another participant reported seeing places where tribal members used to live disappearing because of the presence of oil company infrastructure in the area: i mean, they had people who used to live on bayou [name removed] they called. uh, but the oil companies came and the like, i don’t know, docks so the boats could pass, and the land, you know now the land is washed away and that’s where a lot of people used to live. these experiences are examples of contemporary land loss and displacement experienced tribal members, and act as risk factors for tribal members’ economic and cultural resilience. environmental justice & native americans in the gulf coast region studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 15 historical and contemporary land loss: “they don't tell you anything, you never get a letter, they just take” historical oppression in the form of land loss related to coastal erosion was further exacerbated by land loss due to oil company land grabs, in addition to a failure to include indigenous leaders in decision making and selfdetermination. not including indigenous voices in environmental policy is a violation of environmental justice and is likely to lead to interventions that fail to take account of the characteristics of the local environment and the needs of inhabitants (cantzler & huynh, 2016; u.s. environmental protection agency, 2020), in addition to being a form of contemporary oppression and a risk factor for community resilience. lack of recognition has exacerbated both historic land loss, when many tribal members lost their land to unscrupulous oil companies, and contemporary land loss, where individuals lose land to rising water and misinformation about land ownership and taxes. for one participant, their inability to pay caused them to lose their family land, saying, “if you don't pay your taxes, they'll take it [land] away . . . they done [sic] took it away.” for another individual, loss of land due to government rules and regulation was directly related to historical oppression through educational discrimination resulting in a lack of formal education for many tribal members. for this participant, this gap in education was purposeful: “no, they didn't want to educate the people because they get more power. the more educated you get the more power you've got, you can learn more about the law.” mistrust in the government, a consequence of historical oppression, extended back to colonization for some participants: if you live in a little shack . . . and it's been in your family for 6, 7, 10 generations. the land has been there. nobody's ever opened the succession because they didn't have money. . . . because people didn't trust government, it was part of their natural thing. . . . the government screwed them every which way from the time the government was french. . . . it was survival, so they don't trust government easily. they didn't read or write, and they certainly didn't trust the english. they found out that they stole everything. they never found successions and probates, so nothing was ever done. not being able to read and write because of educational discrimination and historical oppression, in addition to a lack of federal recognition, allowed land to be stolen in some cases because tribal members were unable to prove their ownership of the land. in other instances, land was taken as part of attempts by government agencies to mitigate land loss: not as . . . now they just, like they took our land for the levy and they keep taking more to build it up. they don't tell you anything, you never get a letter they just take. . . . it's for our protection, for our good so we can't say anything. jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 16 if tribal members were federally recognized, land would not be able to be seized in this manner, even as an attempt to prevent further land loss. finally, rising water was also responsible for contemporary loss of land: there's laws in [state name removed to protect tribal identity] that once the land turned into water, it becomes state property . . . it's not our bayous. . . . it once was our property because my grandfather, we own a lot of land down at our . . . i said a lot, but you know, a few acres . . . used to be our land. well now its water so, we don't get hardly anything. i think maybe $200 in royalty a year. where, way back in the days, it'd be $2,000 which is $10,000 today. yeah, it's hard, and they not stopping, you know? it's just, it's so much. so many issues of injustice around here. this participant noted the many interconnections among forms of environmental injustice experienced by tribal members. the impact of coastal erosion here is especially harmful since it not only deprives members of access to the physical land underneath the water but also denies tribal members ownership of the property itself once it is covered by water. these historic and contemporary forms of land loss undermine the economic selfsufficiency of tribal members and the transmission of important cultural traditions. geographic marginalization: “we all got here because we were kicked out or stormed out, or sold to, or shoved out of someplace else” inhabiting land seen as less desirable is an insidious form of historical oppression experienced by tribes. this has often led to living in areas especially vulnerable to environmental changes, which was noted as a common factor throughout the tribe’s history (fitzgerald, 2015). tribal members identified their continued geographic marginalization throughout the tribe’s history, noting that historically they were forced to relocate to the coastal and bayou areas of the region because it was less desirable land removed from city infrastructure (fitzgerald, 2015). currently, this marginalization continues as tribal members lose land, are unable to receive compensation, and are unable to afford to move to nearby communities where land is less vulnerable to climate change (burnette et al., 2019; billiot & parfait, 2019; fitzgerald, 2015). many tribal members were worried tribal identity may be lost if tribal members are forced to relocate farther away from each other and the gulf. these environmental justice issues impact tribal and family dynamics and intersect with sociodemographic factors. participants noted most tribal members will not have the economic resources to relocate to nearby communities. one participant explicitly described the role of socioeconomic status and geographic marginalization: environmental justice & native americans in the gulf coast region studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 17 everything is by the water. if you want to look at a person’s socioeconomic status in the hierarchy, you look at how close to the water they live, and what type of water. if it's river water, fresh water, and you live next to it, you're more likely to have lighter skin and more wealth and better schools to send your kids to. if it's saltier water and its wetlands, the more likely you are to have darker skin. another participant noted how in the history of the tribe, members got pushed farther and farther south, and this led to the development of many of the cultural traditions, and forms of resilience and self-sufficiency seen in tribal members today: it's different now, but it comes and goes. native americans got pushed further and further and further. because they were independent. . . . at first they were made slaves, but it was hard to keep a native american a slave because this being their homeland, they knew how to escape. the slave owners didn't know how to get them so they created a whole subculture as well. the native americans from along the river who escaped, escaped down to the bayous. of course, they became swampers and they cut trees in the swamp and they provided a service. they built businesses by providing wood and moss, and whatever. they become moss pickers and everything. this participant described the important role of enculturation and resilience for tribal members, who demonstrated their self-reliance and ability to adapt to changing circumstances. cultural traditions can act as an antidote to experiences of historical oppression (burnette & figley, 2017; wexler et al., 2009. this same participant expressed concern that because of the important connection between the land and tribal members, loss of the land would marginalize tribal members and hurt the community: the more people move around, the more it changes. they start to pick up and drop different traits based on where they've relocated. the environment plays a huge role in how their culture develops. in [state name removed to protect tribal identity], once people got here we had very little to do with outsiders. . . . down here, the people were disenfranchised. the people who settled this far down . . . doing the environmental advocacy because of all the stuff trying . . . actually, it's community advocacy, but part of our thing is if we don't have an environment, we don't have a community. . . . you see how the environment plays a role in the structure of the community, the survival of the community, or in our case, the destruction of the community. how we got here . . . the people who settled here, and have been here for generations and generations and generations. . . . like i told you the other day, we are the least transient population in the country. we all got here because we were kicked out or stormed out, or sold to, or shoved out of someplace else. this speaker highlighted the ability of tribal members to act resiliently in the face of hardship and to act as advocates for themselves and for their communities. importantly, this speaker also identified how resilience is a jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 18 “fluid process” (fleming & ledogar, 2008). this same participant expressed pessimism that effective action would be taken to protect the land: there is no way on earth they're going to save [region name removed to protect tribal identity]. it's not in the plans. it's not going to happen. we're too far from the mississippi, too far from the [river name removed to protect tribal identity]. sea level rise is going to be the final nail in the coffin of [region name removed to protect tribal identity] below the inter coastal canal, maybe the whole [removed to protect tribal identity]. by continuing to not honestly talk to the people of the coast and tell them, we're not going to save you. . . . they say, well, we're going to try or we're going to have this project or we're going to have that project. it is denying the people who need it the most the ability to make decisions . . . a failure to talk honestly and openly about the real risk posed by climate change was identified as being especially dangerous by this participant because it undermines the ability of the most vulnerable individuals to protect themselves, their families, and their communities. participants expressed concern about the impact of these environmental issues on their ability to continue to pass on cultural traditions and even their ability to continue living in proximity to other tribal members and family. the loss of tribal identity: “they're just throwing them under the boat” an important component of indigenous community resilience is indigenous cultural knowledge, values, and practices (kirmayer et al., 2009). connection to land and the environment are fundamental dimensions of this cultural resilience, and loss of land harms the intergenerational transmission of cultural knowledge (burnette et al., 2018; 2019; billiot & parfait, 2019; krimayer et al., 2009). concerns that loss of land and being forced to relocate would undermine tribal identity were frequent worries among participants. because tribal identity was often associated with the connection of many members to the seafood industry, one tribal member worried that, because of the fact that we live in one of the richest estuaries in the world . . . the most renewable resource in the world is right here in your backyard. sadly though, the world market has destroyed our prices. twelve years ago, a shrimper could get $4 a pound for 21 to 25 to the pound shrimp. today you might get $1.80. all the prices have dropped and people have to struggle to make a living. it's an honorable profession, but if you can't make a living, you've got to use your skills and put them where you can live. tribal members reported concerns about what would happen if they had to relocate, including worries they wouldn’t be able to move to nearby communities: environmental justice & native americans in the gulf coast region studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 19 if communities . . . have to relocate, they're not going to relocate in [region name removed to protect tribal identity]. they won't be able to afford to, so they're going to be competing now for housing, for jobs in other parts of the state that they may be not well adjusted to adapt to. no one in the regime of the coastal restoration and protection hierarchies is actively and designing for that eventuality and funding that eventuality. they're going to wait until . . . they're just throwing them under the boat. as indigenous cultural resilience is frequently tied to connectedness to place, including traditional lands and environments (kirmayer et al., 2009, many participants directly linked loss of land to loss of culture: we were here before the coast was. the coast moved to us, not us to it. they don't understand that by destroying the coast, and by allowing the coast to be destroyed, you're destroying a whole culture that really struggled to survive, and were brought here not in the best of circumstances. this loss of tribal identity was a concern for participants because they viewed the connection between the environment and culture as so strong: it's because of the environment. the environment is part of the social structure. if you have to relocate these native american tribal groups from [region names removed to protect tribal identity]. . . . if you have to start moving these groups, there's no way you can save the coast. . . . if they have to move north where there is no water, or not the type of wetlands that they're used to surviving in, they will survive because we're very strong, resilient people, but it will never ever be the culture that is here. a desire to preserve the land was strongly connected with a desire to preserve tradition and the ability to pass on tribal practices to one’s children. that this is our land, and we should do everything that we can to preserve it. i know that it's really far gone in my lifetime, but there are things that we can do to build it back up. we don't have to just let it go away. stay strong to your roots. if your family . . . if they . . . they do pow-wows, carry that on. that's something that will die if you don't pass it on to your children. although acknowledging the great risk of the current environmental issues facing the tribal community, this participant also expressed hope that the tribe would be able to persevere. these findings identify some of the key historic and contemporary environmental justice issues experienced by a native american tribe in the gulf coast region of the united states. participant responses indicate the most salient environmental justice issues faced by this tribe relate to (a) continuing impact of the bp oil spill and difficulty accessing resources, (b) concerns about coastal erosion, (c) historical and contemporary land loss, (d) geographic marginalization, and (e) the loss of tribal identity. interpreting these findings through the fhort allows for an exploration of both the risk jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 20 and protective factors that influence the well-being and resilience of tribal members experiencing environmental injustice. these findings indicate that historical oppression, especially in the form of a lack of federal recognition, is a major risk factor for tribal wellness and resilience in the face of environmental injustices. these findings also indicate forms of historical oppression often interact with each other, as is the case with educational discrimination and a lack of federal recognition allowing for oil company exploitation. these forms of historical oppression interact with the protective factors described previously, such as strong connections to the environment, the ability to adapt and live sustainably through subsistence living off the land, and passing down cultural traditions. these findings indicate that the ability of tribal members to bounce back and adapt from current environmental challenges may be undermined through their continued lack of federal recognition and the other forms of historical oppression they experience. conclusion this research identified the environmental injustice experiences of one native american tribe and contextualized these findings through the lens of the fhort. the results of this study indicate this tribe is especially vulnerable to continued environmental injustices such as land loss, climate change, and oil spills due to its reliance on the land for employment, cultural, and family traditions. these findings indicate there is a pronounced need for corporations and government agencies in the area to address and take responsibility for existing environmental damages, in addition to the implementation of increased environmental regulation going forward. the results emphasize the ways in which a lack of federal recognition influences tribal members’ experiences of environmental justice, acting as an additional risk factor that exacerbates the negative impacts of climate-related changes to the environment. a lack of federal recognition has exacerbated existing obstacles for tribal members in accessing needed resources following disasters such as the bp oil spill, hurricanes, and other climate-related changes to the environment. this lack of federal recognition has undermined the ability of this tribe to exercise sovereignty over their land, a key environmental injustice experienced by this tribe. this lack of recognition has also weakened existing interventions, as they have not meaningfully included the voices of local leaders. as participants noted, tribal members are often in the best position to identify needed interventions because of their close connection to the land and ability to observe changes in real time. cantzler and huynh (2016) offered a useful framework for analyzing whether interventions meaningfully engage with the principles of indigenous environmental justice. indigenous environmental justice must entail “fair distribution of the benefits of those resources, environmental justice & native americans in the gulf coast region studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 21 equitable decision making power over all matters affecting the resources, and the recognition of and respect for indigenous peoples and their unique cultural orientations towards the natural world” (cantzler & huynh, 2016, p. 219). recognizing tribal sovereignty over the land would allow for more stringent environmental regulation, as is the case for the city of albuquerque, which must abide by the higher water quality standards put in place by the pueblo of isleta tribe (crepelle, 2018b). other tribes have used the clean air act to restrict air pollution from off-reservation industries, and legal obstacles related to the dakota access pipeline largely rest upon its passage over federally recognized tribal land (crepelle, 2018b; gilio-whitaker, 2019). although these findings are extremely important for shedding light on the environmental justice issues experienced by this gulf coast tribe, it is important not to generalize these findings beyond this particular tribe as each tribe will have its own particular geographic and cultural context. these findings are also cross-sectional, and although our approach is congruent with the strategies outlined in critical ethnography, future research could benefit from repeat interviews over an extended period of time to explore long-term changes in greater depth. this may be particularly important when exploring issues of climate change. future research should further explore the health impacts of environmental issues in the region, as several participants expressed concern about increasing cancer prevalence and other health problems. these findings support national findings that native american groups experience high levels of environmental injustice (maldonado, 2014; vinyeta et al., 2016) and further contextualize these findings for a native american tribe in the gulf coast region of the united states. one of the distinct contributions of this work is it expands the use of the fhort to environmental injustice. these findings highlight that the experience of environmental justice issues and lack of federal recognition act as interacting risk factors that impact the overall well-being of tribal members. attempts to mitigate further land loss in the region should include native american leaders and voices and address concerns related to the loss of tribal identity associated with land loss. considering the rapid changes occurring to the landscape, the need for action driven by indigenous desires and knowledge is urgent. acknowledgements the authors are thankful for the dedicated work and participation of the tribes and research assistants over the years who have contributed to this work. this work was supported by the fahs-beck fund for research and experimentation faculty grant program [grant number #552745]; the silberman fund faculty grant program [grant #552781]; the newcomb jessica liddell, catherine mckinley & jennifer m. lilly studies in social justice, volume 15, issue 1, 1-24, 2021 22 college institute faculty grant at tulane university; university senate committee on research grant program at tulane university; the global south research grant through the new orleans center for the gulf south at tulane university; the center for public service at tulane university; office of research bridge funding program support at tulane university; and the carol lavin bernick research grant at tulane university. this work was also supported, in part, by award k12hd043451 from the eunice kennedy shriver national institute of child health & human development of the national institutes of health (krousel-wood-pi; catherine mckinley (formerly burnette) – building interdisciplinary research careers in women’s health (bircwh) scholar); and by u54 gm104940 from the national institute of general medical sciences of the national institutes of health, which funds the louisiana clinical and translational science center. research reported in this publication was supported by the national institute on alcohol abuse and alcoholism of the national institutes of health under award number r01aa028201). the content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the national institutes of health. references burnette, c. e., sanders, s., butcher, h. k., & rand, j. t. 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(2016). indigenous food sovereignty, renewal and us settler colonialism. in m. c. rawlinson & c. ward (eds.), the routledge handbook of food ethics (pp. 354-365). routledge. _________ jelena todić, msw, phd, assistant professor, department of social work, and m. candace christensen, msw, phd, associate professor department of social work, university of texas, san antonio, tx. copyright © 2022 authors, vol. 22 no. 2 (summer 2022), 389-415, doi: 10.18060/24972 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. integrating critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies to advance antiracist social work education jelena todić m. candace christensen abstract: the intersecting coronavirus, racism, and economic pandemics electrified u.s. social work organizations into creating long overdue antiracism initiatives. this necessary shift includes the council on social work education specifying that curriculums must consist of frameworks and practices that eliminate racism. social work educators will need to incorporate antiracism into their teaching. we argue that critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies contain frameworks and practices that align with antiracism. one of our fundamental assumptions is that liberation, which is a collective state of freedom from racism and other intersecting structures of domination, is the end goal of antiracism. we integrate concepts developed by critical pedagogy scholars, black feminists, and abolitionist activists with our experiences to share ten lessons we learned through decades of collective praxis as social justice educators committed to liberation. keywords: critical social work, social work education, critical pedagogy, abolition, antiracism, prison industrial complex as the american academy of social work and social welfare (aaswsw) adds eliminating racism as the 13th grand challenge (teasley et al., 2021) and all professional social work bodies explicitly commit to antiracism (council on social work education [cswe], 2021; national association of social workers [nasw], 2021; mendez et al., 2021), social work educators must reconsider the pedagogy we use to prepare social work practitioners for uprooting racism. racism is "the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice" (bailey et al., 2017, p. 1453). these historically rooted and culturally reinforced patterns influence the distribution of resources, producing and reproducing racial disparities in life outcomes (bailey et al., 2017; cogburn, 2019; krieger, 2011). racism also intersects with and mutually reinforces other forms of oppression (e.g., sexism, ableism, or heterosexism; ahmed, 2016; collins, 2019). as such, social work departments and social work education also embody and perpetuate racism (olcoń et al., 2020; teasley et al., 2021). to prepare antiracist social workers who can fully grasp and disrupt processes that produce and reproduce inequities at the micro (individual and interpersonal levels), mezzo (organizational and community levels), and macro (institutions and policies) levels of society, the social work pedagogy itself must be antiracist. we wholeheartedly agree with kishimoto (2018), who argues that antiracist pedagogy is more than curriculum content about racism, requiring that educators see pedagogy as an organizing framework for social change and an approach to “how one teaches, even in courses where race is not the subject matter” (p. 540). a systematic review of 25 empirical about:blank advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 390 articles examining the best teaching practices for preparing social workers to work with clients from historically excluded racial and ethnic groups found that the studies lacked methodological rigor and sound theoretical grounding (olcoń et al., 2020). also, less than half of the included studies reported findings related to racism. scholars suggest that social work programs should incorporate critical race and critical whiteness theories (olcoń et al., 2020) and prioritize critical consciousness development (morley et al., 2020) to prepare students for effective antiracist social work. of note, the recent advances in social work special issue on dismantling racism in social work education guest edited by charla yearwood, rosemary a. barbera, amy k. fisher, and carol hostetter made great strides in addressing these scholarship gaps. in this paper, we offer ten lessons we learned from integrating critical (freire, 1968/2000, engaged (hooks, 1994), and abolitionist (davis, 2003; rodríguez, 2010) pedagogies, aiming to further contribute to the operationalization of antiracist social work education. by critical pedagogy, we refer to freire's (1968/2000) participatory approach to education that emphasizes the development of critical consciousness, which is the ability to read the world critically; recognize how the larger social order conditions human life but does not determine it (giroux, 2010); and act to transform oppressive social conditions. engaged pedagogy, developed by bell hooks’ (1994), evolves freire’s critical pedagogy by highlighting that educators must see students as whole human beings, placing their wellbeing, healing, and joy at the center of pedagogical practices. lastly, abolitionist pedagogy challenges critical and engaged pedagogies to actively support abolition of the prison industrial complex (rodríguez, 2010), which is "a political vision" and "a set of strategies" aimed at eliminating the prison industrial complex (critical resistance, 2022; para. 3). the term prison industrial complex refers to the overlapping government and forprofit sectors' reliance on surveillance, policing, and imprisonment for racial and social control (critical resistance, 2022; jacob et al., 2021; schenwar & law, 2021). the prison industrial complex does not only include policing, jails, prisons, and immigrant detention centers (dettlaff et al., 2020; schenwar & law, 2021). its broad reach encompasses the coercive and punitive practices that other institutions (e.g., schools, healthcare, and social services) use to manage black, indigenous, other people of color, and poor people (dettlaff et al., 2020; jacob et al., 2021; schenwar & law, 2021) as well as the cultural apparatus that normalizes images of people of color as criminals and punishment as justice (alexander, 2012; critical resistance, 2022; jacobs et al., 2021; richie & martensen, 2019). while these pedagogical approaches have distinct features, all of them center on liberation. that is, all of them focus on education as a process aimed at supporting the struggle for freedom from racism, classism, heteropatriarchy, and other intersecting systems of domination that keep large groups of people from access to economic and social justice, self-determination, and “a full share of both the rights and responsibilities associated with living in a free society” (davis, 2003; phar, 2018, p. 604). in addition, all of them use educational processes that strive to reveal and counter individualism, hierarchy, ahistoricism, and power-blindness as ideological legacies of white supremacy and colonialism (bonilla-silva, 2018; davis, 2003; diangelo, 2010; feagin, 2020) embedded in education. todić & christensen /integrating critical, engaged 391 our positionality we are white, queer, feminist, social work educators, currently teaching as tenure track faculty at a hispanic serving institution. our students are mostly black, brown, indigenous, first-generation, or veterans. while we believe that these lessons are relevant to all social work educators, they may be especially relevant for white social work faculty who must actively work against centuries of socialization that normalizes white supremacy (kivel, 2017). we elevate the influence of black radical traditions and feminist epistemologies (collins, 2019; collins & bilge, 2020; combahee river collective, 1977/2014; crenshaw, 1991; davis, 2003; hooks, 1994; lorde, 1987/2020; robinson, 1983/2020) on our understanding of whiteness, intersectionality, racial capitalism, liberation, and antiracism. we offer brief descriptions of our own journeys to these pedagogies and antiracism. jelena todić my commitment to antiracism and prison industrial complex abolition began over 20 years ago with my commitment to ending violence against women. i immigrated to the united states from the socialist federal republic of yugoslavia in the mid-early 1990s, shortly before the dayton peace agreement. i am white and serbian. although i primarily identify as ex-yugoslavian, i claim my serbian ethnicity in light of my identification with the serbian long history of anti-imperialist struggles and my commitment to collective accountability for the atrocities perpetrated by the serbian forces during the balkan wars in the 1990s. i identify as ex-yugoslavian because i reject nationalism that resulted in these wars and value growing up in a socialist country that failed as a political experiment but gave me an embodied experience of nearly universal access to healthcare, quality education, and housing. aware of the ineffectiveness of the police to protect women in my immediate family from domestic violence and devastated by the serbian forces’ use of rape to brutalize bosnian women and their communities, i turned to feminism and peace studies during my undergraduate education to make sense out of the experiences. i was fortunate to begin my feminist journey by reading black feminist scholars, including bell hooks, patricia hill collins, and angela davis. the scholars introduced me to intersectionality and the reinforcing relationship between racism, patriarchy, and capitalism. immediately after graduating from college, i worked in san francisco, where i saw how organizations like haight ashbury free clinics and san francisco asian women’s shelter translated intersectionality to praxis in social services. it became clear that ending violence against women required the simultaneous focus on eliminating racism and other intersecting systems of oppression through global solidarity. during my msw in the early 2000s, i trained with a group of fierce advocates at assisting women with advocacy resources and education (aware), a hospital-based domestic violence program in st. louis, which advanced my understanding of antiracist and abolitionist praxis. in addition to deepening my knowledge about harm reduction and commitment to survivors’ self-determination, i learned how to translate intersectional analysis and incite!’s feminist abolitionist frameworks to social work practice, which have guided my practice and scholarship since then. through my work with bosnian and advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 392 african american survivors of intimate violence at aware, which hired me after i completed my msw, i learned that supporting safety for the vast majority of survivors with multiple marginalized identities demanded a commitment to building deep relational trust and finding creative solutions outside of the legal punishment system that too often exasperated harms without ever addressing the survivors’ needs. this approach to advocacy through solidarity required reflexivity, attention to power and privilege, and accountability through ongoing dialogue with colleagues and people that used our services. simultaneously, i became involved with the national conference for community and justice, one of the oldest human relations organizations. there, i worked closely for many years with a multiracial group of people of all ages, genders, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic backgrounds to develop and facilitate social justice education. this experience deepened my understanding of the importance of organizing white people to engage in racial justice work while building accountable relationships with social justice organizations and movements led by people of color. finally, i am a first generation college graduate and i directly experienced the impact of surveillance and control associated with the us immigration system for nearly 30 years. from my arrival in 1994 as a tourist, through my “naturalization” in 2013, and finally my mother’s “naturalization” in 2021, my engagement with the immigration process has been a source of constant stress and fear, even with the protections that whiteness and economic resources provided. together these experiences were essential for ensuring that antiracism and abolition were central to my understanding of ethical, social work practice and, ultimately, my work as a social work educator at the brown school of social work, the university of texas at austin steve hicks school of social work, and the university of texas at san antonio (utsa). while the composition of the student body shifted from school to school (from majority white at the brown school to majority people of color at utsa), the critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies remained relevant because they center power analysis and participants’ lived experiences in the intersecting systems of domination. m. candace christensen my commitment to antiracism and abolition is grounded in my personal experiences and dedication to dismantling values and norms that perpetuate interpersonal and structural violence. i grew up within a religious culture that positioned women, people of color, and sexual and gender minorities as a deviation from the ideal masculine, european, heterosexual norm. as an adolescent and young adult, i questioned this hierarchy and left this religious community, which allowed me to explore my intellectual and spiritual strengths as a queer, woman. eventually i landed in an msw program. for my advanced practicum i interned for a counseling center that employed a feminist multicultural approach to therapy. as part of this training, i was introduced to critiquing social problems through a critical, feminist, intersectional lens, which included the concept of whiteness as an attribute of white supremacy. this learning forced me to reflect on privileges and oppressions my whiteness perpetuated. also, i learned to view mental health problems as created or exacerbated by external forces, such as sexism, racism, homophobia, poverty, food insecurity, abusive employment, and interpersonal violence. once i graduated with my msw, i was excited to secure a position practicing therapy with families involved with todić & christensen /integrating critical, engaged 393 the department of child and family services (dcfs). i was enthusiastic about bringing my critical, feminist, intersectional lens to the range of challenges the families were experiencing. a few weeks into the job, i realized that the organizational objective was not to address the root causes of the harms my clients experienced, rather it was to quickly diagnose the children with a mental health disorder, so that the organization could receive payment via the contract held with dcfs. my values related to equity and justice would not let me stay in that job. instead, i chose a new path that i thought would grant me positional status to address the structural issues which created the trauma that caused these families to enter the family policing system. so, i pursued a ph.d. in social work. my goal in pursuing a ph.d. was to develop the skills and institutional status necessary to dismantle values and norms that perpetuate racialized, gendered, homo/transphobic violence. as part of my education, i took a course with professor dolores delgado bernal who introduced me to black and latinx feminist scholars (anzaldúa, collins, rigoberta menchú). this exposure reinforced my understanding of intersectionality and the role of whiteness and white supremacy in perpetuating racialized gendered oppression, which is often expressed through violence. eventually, as an assistant professor (now associate), i was able to further understand and apply critical theories (race, whiteness, queer) by continuing to read work produced by black, latinx, and queer feminist scholars. a key turning point was when jelena and another colleague, co-initiated an antiracist collective focused on transforming department structures. the collective activities have given me resources and skills for implementing antiracist and abolitionist pedagogies in the classroom. for example, the collective hosted a presentation by francisco peréz, the executive director of the center for popular economics, focused on racial capitalism (kundnani, 2020). that presentation led me to scholarship on the nonprofit industrial complex (incite, 2007/2017), which i now use in my teaching and research to critique the ways in which the nonprofit sector perpetuates whiteness and white supremacy. the ten lessons we describe embody our positionalities, commitment to antiracism, and extended engagement with critical, engaged and abolitionist pedagogies. including content on racism in all social work courses and assigning work produced by scholars of color is essential. however, given the pervasiveness of the white racial frame in the united states, which is “an overarching white worldview that encompasses a broad and persisting set of racial stereotypes, prejudices, ideologies, images, interpretations and narratives, emotions, and reactions to language accents, as well as racialized inclinations to discriminate” (feagin, 2020; p. 11), it is equally important, particularly for white social work educators, to make whiteness visible by assigning work that critically interrogates white supremacy and committing to a life-long process of questioning how whiteness operates in all areas of life beyond education (frey et al., 2021; kishimoto, 2018; ortegawilliams & mclane-davison, 2021; wright et al., 2021). the lessons here, however, focus on how to teach in a way that is antiracist because our experience and existing evidence (kishimoto, 2018; olcoń et al., 2020) indicate that this is where social work faculty may experience the most challenges. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 394 key assumptions we believe that social workers cannot engage in ethical social work or solve grand challenges for social work (aaswsw, 2022) unless we use an intersectional, critical analysis (ahmed, 2016; collins, 2019; collins & bilge, 2020; crenshaw, 1991; fook, 2003) to confront the complex legacies of colonialism and white supremacy in the society and the profession (jacobs et al., 2021; yearwood et al., 2021). this approach includes 1) a structural analysis of personal problems; 2) a focus on the role of social work and social welfare in social control; 3) an ongoing social critique that emphasizes power analysis; and 4) goal of personal liberation and change (fook, 2003). within this framework, we purport that a broad acceptance of power-over hierarchies, a false national narrative that people's individual choices explain their success, and a deeply ingrained belief in the u.s. as a place where everyone has equal chances to succeed, are ideological legacies of colonialism and white supremacy (bonilla-silva, 2018; davis, 2003; fook, 2003; combahee river collective, 1977/2014). these ideological legacies undergird the current racialized social and economic system, enabling the prison industrial complex and preserving white privilege and supremacy (bonilla-silva, 2018; davis, 2003; feagin, 2020) we further assume that racial capitalism, which refers to the idea that racialized exploitation and capital accumulation are mutually constitutive (robinson, 1983/2020), is a root cause of racial and economic inequities (laster pirtle, 2020). racial capitalism expresses the idea that american slavery grew out of pre-existing racism deeply embedded within european labor relations and consciousness, that framed regional, cultural, and language differences of slavs, irish, jews, and muslims as racial (kundnani, 2020; robinson, 1983/2020). capitalism economically expresses the white supremacy inherent in european culture, dividing workers of color and white workers ideologically and materially (kundnani, 2020). we also assume that racial capitalism interlocks with legacies of colonialism as well as systems of oppression based on sex, gender, sexual orientation, ability, citizenship, and other social group identities (collins & bilge, 2020; combahee river collective, 1977/2014; marable, 1983/2015; walia, 2021). therefore, it is vital to question individualism and strict power over hierarchies at the expense of interdependence and solidarity (davis, 2016). finally, we assume that social work is crucial in maintaining white supremacy through its implicit and explicit endorsement of racial capitalism and carceral logic. in a recent paper, jacobs and colleagues (2021) describe social work’s role in maintaining white supremacy through carceral social work, a term they refer to the field’s collaboration with police and social work policing practices. they detail coercive, punitive practices social workers use to manage black, indigenous, other people of color, and poor communities through the profession’s strong commitment to the criminalization of gender-based violence, participation in the surveillance and punishment of families through child protective services, and social work partnerships with the police in schools, and health services (jacobs et al., 2021). others have pointed to the role of the child welfare system in harming communities of color, calling for its abolition (dettlaff et al., 2020). these emerging critiques of carceral social work advance the existing critiques of social work’s embrace of neoliberalism, which emphasizes individual solutions and social service todić & christensen /integrating critical, engaged 395 provision rather than structural interventions that eliminate the need for social services (mehrotra et al., 2016; zelnick & abramowitz, 2020). critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies provide a tangible approach to undermining the ideological dynamics central to white supremacy and racial capitalism. these pedagogies do not directly alter the material conditions produced and reproduced by racial capitalism outside of the classroom. however, these pedagogies expose the cultural apparatus that normalizes top-down hierarchical relationships, individualism, competition, and punishment, which leads to the acceptance of the prison industrial complex and racial capitalism as inevitable. naming the pedagogies in syllabi and discussing them in class as they shape courses allows students and instructors to reflect on how white supremacist, colonial and carceral logics inform their worldviews. consistent with the prison industrial complex abolitionist project, which demands envisioning the future world we want and practicing that future in our current contexts (kaba & hassan, 2019), the classroom becomes a space for praxis. the focus is on critical reflection and action to transform educational processes and relationships that normalize white supremacy and racial capitalism among students and faculty. after briefly describing critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies, we share ten lessons we learned through 33 years of collective praxis, before and during the covid-19 pandemic, as social work and social justice educators deeply committed to liberation. we conclude with reflections on the inherent tension associated with bringing these transformative frameworks into institutional settings. critical pedagogy the role of critical pedagogy in social work education is to give students the ability to critically analyze social conditions that produce inequities (critical consciousness); link theory, reflection, and action (from here on referred to as praxis); and formulate collective responses to transform the unjust conditions at local and global levels. critical pedagogy asks, “how can the education process foster liberation?" in his book, pedagogy of the oppressed, freire frames critical pedagogy as “the practice of freedom” (hooks, 1994, p. 14). a core value is egalitarianism, which aims to flatten hierarchies and create social structures that foster individual and communal emancipation. this approach to teaching requires that educators shift from viewing students as passive recipients of expert knowledge and shift to a co-learning process through dialogue and solidarity. consequently, students become actors who take control of their learning. core critical pedagogical concepts include critical consciousness (conscientização) and praxis. critical consciousness emerges through individual and communal reflection on how current social conditions empower or disempower the collective. by answering these questions, communities develop theories of why oppression exists and how to dismantle the oppression. praxis is putting that theory of change into action. in social work education, critical pedagogy can create an affective, cognitive, and embodied connection to personal and collective suffering (pyles & adams, 2015); deconstruct the role of neoliberal social work and construct liberatory social work through anti-oppressive practice in the classroom (campbell, 2002; gutiérrez-ujaque & jeyasingham, 2021; redmond, 2010); and generate advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 396 counter-narratives about what social work is and who does it (chapman, 2011; pennell & ristock, 1999). in that sense, critical pedagogy is consistent with social work’s primary mission “to enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty” (nasw, 2021, preamble, para. 1). specifically, critical pedagogy’s emphasis on self-determination and human agency is closely aligned with the field’s commitment to enhancing “the capacity of people to address their own needs” (nasw, 2021, preamble, para. 2). engaged pedagogy in her book teaching to transgress (the first one in the trilogy), bell hooks (1994) embraces freire’s critical pedagogy but insists that pedagogy must go beyond engaging the mind. she calls upon thich nhat hanh's framing of teachers as healers who focus on "the union of mind, body, and spirit" (hooks, 1994; p. 14, para. 2). engaged pedagogy is "more demanding than critical pedagogy" because educators must teach in a manner that “respects and cares for the souls of our students" to "provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately begin" (hooks, 1994, p. 13, para. 1). for hooks, the goal is to nurture emancipation beyond education to secure a job, nurturing wholeness and an authentic voice (hooks, 1994). professors should value student expression and emphasize joy; therefore, the classroom must be a space that welcomes vulnerability and storytelling about experiences that affect students' daily lives (hooks, 1994). students should not be the only ones "confessing" and taking risks. hooks expects teachers to be vulnerable and reveal their own lived experiences as an approach to shifting unequal power distribution inherent in the hierarchical university structure (berry, 2010). social work scholarship references engaged pedagogy as an effective approach to building empathy to motivate antiracist work (abrams & gibson, 2013) and explore privileged social locations (nicotera & kang, 2009). in that sense, engaged pedagogy provides a foundation that social work students need to “advocate for human rights at the individual, family, group, organizational, and community system levels” and “engage in practices that advance human rights to promote social, racial, economic, and environmental justice” (cswe, 2022, p. 9). abolitionist pedagogy in addition to defining and outlining carceral social work, jacobs and colleagues (2021) recommend that social work education prioritize teaching about alternatives to policing, sharing and building alternatives with communities most impacted by the carceral system, and strengthening mutual aid traditions within social work. we add to these excellent recommendations one more key strategy: abolitionist pedagogy is critical for advancing anti-carceral, and therefore antiracist social work. as an extension of abolitionist politics, abolitionist pedagogy requires critical reflection on how mass incarceration, policing, and punishment are inseparable from socioeconomic/class repression, racism, indigenous displacements, and white supremacist colonization, and consequently entirely lacking any positive social function (rodríguez, 2010). educators must take on the role of political leadership in the classroom by taking an abolitionist stance (rodríguez, 2010). todić & christensen /integrating critical, engaged 397 according to rodríguez (2010), the abolitionist position is a manifestation of the revolutionary freirean pedagogy because it translates critical insight into action. in fact, there may be "no viable or defensible pedagogical position other than an abolitionist one" (rodríguez, 2010, p. 12). we would also say that abolitionist pedagogy aligns with hooks' (1994) guidance for educators to include self-disclosure and vulnerability when working with students, recognizing students as co-creators of the learning experience. by taking the pedagogical approach that "asks the unaskable, posits the necessity of the impossible, and embraces the creative danger inherent in liberationist futures'' (p. 12), social work educators model skills associated with anti-carceral social work. given the recent reckoning with social work’s role in maintaining white supremacy, abolitionist pedagogy is critical for the future of social work. ten lessons for antiracist social work education ten lessons emerged through translating these pedagogies into integrated classroom practices with supporting examples from diverse social work courses, including research methods, community practice, social justice, cultural competence, leadership, social determinants of health, and women's issues. the ten lessons are interconnected. together, they have the potential to build experimental learning communities that center mutuality and accountability, ensuring that social work students leave our programs prepared to work in solidarity with communities and organizations already engaged in antiracist liberatory efforts. embrace critical theory the ultimate aim of critical theory is to ask questions and seek answers that result in human liberation. critical theorists asserted that philosophy and theory should envision a world that meets the needs and cultivates the power of all human beings (collins, 2019). critical theory, which illuminates social problems through power analysis, forces us to go beyond individualist, ahistorical, and power-neutral perspectives that hinder accurately diagnosing the root causes of social injustice (collins, 2019; payne, 2021). it also seeks to eliminate injustice through praxis. in that sense, critical theory helps “discern meaningful patterns among both ideas and observations, and […] develop causal explanations” (krieger, 2014, p. 54) necessary for social transformation. all national social work professional organizations have embraced an explicit focus on antiracism in 2020-2021, which presents a significant challenge for the social work profession given the diversity of political philosophies that undergird social work practice (e.g., social cohesion, empowerment and liberation, and social change and development; payne, 2021). nevertheless, antiracism requires an understanding of racism as a structural issue and structural solutions that transform historically grounded inequities. given the structural nature of racism, we see the critical paradigm as the only lens that can inform social work actions to achieve social justice consistent with professional ethics (crudup et al., 2021; hanna et al., 2021; wright et al., 2021). a critical assessment of how racism is perpetuated at all levels of social interaction, is essential for dismantling the root causes of racism. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 398 on the first or second day of class, we define critical theory and its relationship to critical pedagogy, and we share scholars that influence our worldview. we explain that our goal is to help students develop a critical theoretical lens to view mainstream social work practice and expose our socialization into intersecting systems of domination. even if students do not fully embrace a critical social work paradigm in their practice, they must rely on critical theory to analyze evidence and organizational approaches to make ethical practice decisions. moreover, we ensure clear grading rubrics for all assignments so that students can trust that grading does not depend on their agreement with the critical tradition but their ability to articulate, critique, and apply it in the context of social work practice. question and interrupt manifestations of carcerality in social work education structural and cultural forces interact to sustain and expand the prison industrial complex. structurally, three interconnected patterns expand the reach of the carceral state, which is the “the spatially concentrated, more punitive [than the social welfare state], surveillance and punishment-oriented system of governance” (weaver & lerman, 2010; p. 818). these patterns include 1) increased investment in law enforcement responses that do not correspond to shifts in what is considered criminal behavior; 2) simultaneous divestment of resources from programs and services that would meet significant community needs; and 3) aggressive targeting of communities of color, poor people, and other socially marginalized groups that politically threaten current social power arrangements (davis, 2003; richie & martensen, 2019; schenwar & law, 2021). a cultural apparatus that includes the interconnectedness of white supremacy, the social construction of criminality, and the widespread acceptance of punishment as an approach to justice undergird these patterns (alexander, 2012; critical resistance, 2022; feagin, 2020; jacobs et al., 2021; richie & martensen, 2019). given this broad social context of carcerality, it is not surprising that social workers also practice surveillance, categorization, and punitive decision-making over access to services (jacobs et al., 2021). moreover, social work education socializes students into social work roles in these systems through standard pedagogical practices. for example, tracking class attendance and penalties for late assignments are common grading components in social work. professors typically unilaterally impose these policies as approaches to "teaching professionalism." however, tardiness has no intrinsic connection with students' understanding of the course material, and physical presence in the classroom does not constitute actual course work (close, 2009). instead, these policies rely on and normalize punitive deterrence (bosch, 2020). they emphasize technical aspects of professionalism while missing an opportunity to support students in exploring critical social work principles such as self-determination, autonomy, integrity, and interdependence (mullaly & keating, 1991; payne, 2021). another way to dismantle classroom carcerality would include engaging students in establishing grading criteria for assignments and overall course objectives. this effort would make students accountable to standards developed by the community rather than the measures that we create as instructors, further reducing the power differential. todić & christensen /integrating critical, engaged 399 “if you trust people, they become trustworthy” is an emergent strategy principle that guides our pedagogy (brown, 2017, p. 42). by experimenting with liberatory patterns at a small scale, we build the skills needed to create liberatory patterns at a large scale (brown, 2017). we trust students and firmly believe that they want to learn. instead of punishment (e.g., point deductions for absences or late assignments), we rely on relationships as motivation for learning. over years of implementing these policies with undergraduate and graduate social work students, we have not observed any increase in course absences or late assignments. we observe that up to 10% of students typically struggle with attendance and turning in assignments on time, which has not changed with the implementation of these policies. moreover, as evidenced by direct student feedback, course evaluations, and assignment submissions comparison across semesters, we have observed an increase in engagement and quality of student work. these policies also provided opportunities to discuss the meaning of self-determination and interdependence for social work practice, as students experienced their impact through the course structure. finally, we had several opportunities to support students who struggled with procrastination in getting the help they needed to address the underlying issues rather than punish them. firmly hold on to the centrality of reflexivity and accountability using these three pedagogies in an institutional setting requires deep commitment to reflexivity and self-evaluation, regardless of identity (hooks, 1994). for us as white higher education professors currently removed from the everyday impact of the prison industrial complex, engaging in rigorous internal work is critical (education for liberation network & critical resistance editorial collective, 2021). we also believe that accountability must accompany self-reflection. by accountability, we refer to “willingness to accept responsibility for one’s harmful actions or behaviors” (kaba & hassan, 2019, p. 64). we adopt this definition of accountability from abolitionists working within the transformative justice arena, which is an approach to creating safety, justice, and healing for survivors of violence that does not rely on the carceral state (jacobs et al., 2021). rather than “holding people accountable,” the transformative justice practitioners emphasize that people can only “take accountability” as it is an “internal resource” and an ongoing process of choosing to be responsible for one self and people we impact, for our choices and their consequences (kaba & hassan, 2019, p. 78). we approach reflexivity and accountability, through a firm commitment to both selfaccountability and accountability in relationships. again, we adopt the concept of selfaccountability from transformative justice practitioners. self-accountability refers to the ongoing process of reflection to align our actions in the classroom with our values, understand our past choices, and considering or changing future choices (kaba & hassan, 2019). it also includes genuinely being open to hearing from students about how our teaching choices affect them and demonstrating willingness to change based on the feedback. as white educators teaching predominantly students of color in the context of normative whiteness and white supremacy within social work education (bryant & kolivoski, 2021; ortega-williams & mclane-davison, 2021), rather than assuming trust at the beginning of each course, we work to earn trust through our actions throughout the semester. we also engage students at the beginning of the class to develop shared learning advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 400 community values so that all of us can engage in the process of self-accountability as a building block of solidarity. our collective work includes our commitment to supporting each other though ongoing dialogue about these pedagogies and skill sharing, working with other white people committed to racial justice, and working in solidarity with people of color in our department and community. ongoing commitment to learning from critical race theory and critical white studies scholarship as well as mobilizing with other white people committed to antiracism is an essential aspect of our work (crudup et al., 2021; gregory, 2021; kivel, 2017). for example, in 2020 jelena participated in a summer-long white accountability dialogue group with staff and faculty from diverse university departments including anthropology, communication, physics, and student affairs, which provided insight into not only how whiteness operates within social work but within all academic environments and processes. finally, we seek and welcome feedback and accountability from our colleagues, community partners, students, and friends of color. for example, in 2020 we were the founding members of an antiracism collective in our department, which provides ongoing opportunities for dialogue and productive conflict that is necessary for transforming our program. students provide critical feedback as well through dialogue and evaluations. we continue to listen and amplify their voices, including supporting their agency and following their leadership. last year, we supported a group of students who noted that our curriculum lacked ongoing focus on critical history. we co-organized a lecture series focused on the history of racial capitalism to address this gap, which was widely attended by students, staff, faculty, and field instructors. this year, we worked with a group of students who voiced inadequate support for lgbtqia+ communities to organize queering social work: theory and praxis. this series of events was grounded in intersectionality, focused on challenging cis-hetero-patriarchy in the social work curriculum, and centered on indigenous and people of color perspectives. self-reflexivity also ensures that we notice our own evolution and growth in understanding and using these pedagogies. for example, jelena maintained strict point deduction policies for late assignment until 2018, despite her long-term commitment to abolitionist ideas. engaging in deep reflection on theory and action, results in these transformational moments that lead us to deepen our praxis. moreover, neither of us considered working with students to construct assignment rubrics until one of the reviewers of this manuscript suggested it. we offer these observations not as performative accountability, but to point out that personal ego is not compatible with collective struggle (education for liberation network & critical resistance editorial collective, 2021). feedback is a gift. teach prison industrial complex abolition to stimulate courage, creativity, and hope needed to solve grand challenges beyond decarceration the key to prison industrial complex abolition is that it is not only about absence; it is about the presence (wilson gilmore as cited in kushner, 2019). abolition demands not only dismantling the prison industrial complex but also building models today that represent the equitable life-affirming future that we want (kaba & hassan, 2019). as such, todić & christensen /integrating critical, engaged 401 abolition provides the framework for solving social work grand challenges beyond promoting smart decarceration. it points to imprisonment and policing as “solutions” to problems rooted in unjust economic systems, racism, and other forms of oppression. imagining a world without prisons and policing, forces us to address issues we ineffectively address through incarceration. for example, in a social determinants of health course, students responded to arundhati roy's (2020) invitation to see the covid-19 pandemic as a portal to another world by considering how prison industrial complex abolition, as a transformational praxis, might direct social work efforts to eliminate health inequities. students answered the following questions during one of the class activities: “what does the world look like if we abolish the prison industrial complex? feel like? sound like? how may this new world impact health? provide one image and up to 100-word description.” one student answered: the abolition of the prison industrial complex would feel like a world without walls. a world without borders. endless possibilities. limitless opportunities. constant growth and movement towards a more equal world. a community of grace and forgiveness, of communal knowledge and support. where one mistake does not ripple out into a lifelong struggle that affects generations to come, but instead creates a wave that communities ride to adapt and serve the most vulnerable people in their circles. brown's (2017) emergent strategy provides a valuable framework for understanding how today’s choices can shape the abolitionist future we want. it asserts that "how we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale," emphasizing the importance of celebrating small shifts and understanding that they serve as a foundation for subsequent ones (p. 52). this principle suggests that our relationships are "a front line, a first place we can practice justice, liberation, and alignment with each other and the plane" (brown, 2017, p. 53). even though the higher education context limits how much true democracy is possible in the classroom, we see each class as an opportunity to practice mutuality and accountability as values and processes that undermine racial capitalism and white supremacy. these classroom practices at a small-scale are shifts that gradually "set the patterns for the whole system" (brown, 2017, p. 53). in other words, overtime, as students and instructors carry these skills and experiences into areas of practice beyond the university, they have the basic skills and knowledge to build decentralized and interdependent spaces in which carceral and white supremacist logics are not “common sense.” consequently, an abolitionist classroom may be best understood as what foucault (1986) referred to heterotopias or “spaces that provide an alternate space of ordering while paradoxically remaining both separate from and connected to all other spaces” (topinka, 2010, p. 55). because they combine and contrast multiple spaces and ways of knowing in one site, they create an “intensification of knowledge” that may not entirely “free us from power relations,” but “can help us re-see the foundations of our own knowledge” (topinka, 2010, p. 70), making white supremacy and racial capitalism more legible and therefore changeable. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 402 develop the circle process skills as instructors, we strongly believe in relationships as vehicles for change and invest a significant amount of effort in building a relational ecology (vaandering, 2014) within our classrooms. one tool we use to accomplish this throughout the semester is the circles process. the circle process is rooted in the talking circles that many indigenous peoples in north america have used for centuries and incorporates contemporary understandings of intergroup dialogue, consensus building, change theory, and transformative justice (ball et al., 2010). the circles have two essential elements: 1) they incorporate the values that participants feel are important for a healthy process and outcomes that are good for everyone; and 2) they reflect indigenous teachings about interconnectedness, a balance between inner/outer work and individual/community, and the inherent dignity and worth of every person. this process provides a structured form of dialogue, setting time to build relationships, offering space for expressing different viewpoints and strong emotions, and making difficult decisions. dialogue, relationship building, and offering space for strong emotions align with antiracist social work education. students can use these skills to identify and call out racism in the classroom and in practice settings (cruddup et al., 2021; whitaker, 2021). simply put, circles are one way to practice classroom democracy and antiracism (ball et al., 2010; davis, 2019). circles as a physical structure reflect shared power and disrupt institutional power over hierarchies, which reflect the broader social conditions resulting from intersecting systems of oppression. symbolically, all participants are equally distant from the circle center, representing that each participant has an equal voice (umbreit & armour, 2010). in that sense, the circles embody shared obligation and mutual accountability associated with interconnectedness (umbreit & armour, 2010). however, given the formal authority that instructors hold in the context of the neoliberal university hierarchy, it is critical to embed circles in the context of other pedagogical changes we describe. in the context of a punitive and hierarchical classroom, the circles are a gimmick. as we discuss in the other nine lessons, the instructor must value and model interdependence, mutuality, and accountability. there must be alignment between what we espouse to and what we model (education for liberation network & critical resistance editorial collective, 2021). that said, after experiencing and practicing circles, students also have an opportunity to reject them through reflection about the classroom process or anonymous mid-semester evaluations. based on our mid-semester and final course evaluations, however, students do report that the circle process is among the most valued aspects of our courses. while we do serve as circle facilitators (“circle keepers”), this role includes guiding the process but not controlling it (pranis et al., 2013). in the sequential circle, everyone gets a turn, and those who want to respond to something must be patient and wait until it is their turn to speak. if sequential, the circle is at times structured around topics or questions we raise as facilitators. however, students also take on roles of facilitators and circle-keepers. for example, in one course, after receiving the initial training, students took full responsibility for facilitating ongoing small group discussion, which amounted to approximately one-third of the class time. students facilitated independently and received coaching based on the reports of their discussion experience. although, not eliminating the todić & christensen /integrating critical, engaged 403 formal authority associated with the instructor role, this process does reduce the power differential. students’ evaluations indicated that this process was valuable and they learned from and with their peers. in non-sequential circles, such as problem-solving circles, a conversation may proceed from one person to another without a fixed order. regardless of the circle format, deep listening is its essential feature. strive to practice non-hierarchical ways of working in all aspects of your work modeling critical and engaged pedagogy (campbell, 2002; redmond, 2010) involves shaping the classroom to exemplify antiracist approaches outside the classroom. this work diminishes the power difference between the instructor and students, centering student lived experiences as legitimate knowledge and making learning experiences accessible (gutiérrez-ujaque & jeyasingham, 2021). in the liberatory classroom, we are transparent about our pedagogical choices, always ensuring that students understand how activities relate to desired learning outcomes. within existing higher education systems, it is not possible to diminish power differences to create true equity. for example, instructors can fail students, but students cannot fail instructors. however, within that hierarchy, instructors can diminish power differences in the classroom. for example, we use a formal mid-semester evaluation to solicit feedback from students about the course progress, which allows us to address issues and make changes. students also comment on our work (e.g., surveys, grants) and read the often-critical reviews we received from peers. by striving for non-hierarchical approaches in all aspects of our work, we deepen our praxis, making it easier to model it in the classroom. we have a shared research project focused on restorative and transformative justice with another colleague where we use the circle process to conduct our team meetings. we begin each meeting with check-in by sharing what is going on in our lives or answering a reflective question (e.g., “what is one area of personal struggle in your life where you could ease suffering?”) and use the circle format to report on our progress. we close each meeting with a check-out, which focuses on sharing insight from the meeting or answering another question (e.g., “what is one thing you are looking forward to in the next two weeks?”). this relational environment supports accountability and motivation to complete projects in a way that is similar to our relational classrooms. we have created conditions that allow us to take accountability when we make mistakes, provide direct feedback, apologize, ask for help, or overcome procrastination because we care about our individual and collective success. realize that critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies are adaptive before the shelter-in-place order in response to covid-19, we used critical pedagogy methods in our courses. however, the three pandemics that converged in 2020 deeply affected our students. many students lost their employment or housing, had to homeschool children, and struggled with accessing a home computer or reliable internet. the continued police violence against the black community deeply affected all of us. these three pandemics intersected and widened social disparities (bailey & moon, 2020; gould & wilson, 2020), including exposing the dramatic differences between how the pandemic affected us as childless, white, tenure track professors and our students who are primarily advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 404 people of color, many of whom are parents and essential workers. critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies were more relevant than ever. the circle process we established before the pandemic, as in-person instructors, extended this liberatory environment into a virtual space. antiracist, critical, and abolitionist pedagogies foster reflexivity, self-determination, mutuality, collective responsibility, and praxis. because these pedagogies insist on the dignity of all people and assume that no one is disposable, they already embody an ethic of care that centers the needs of students who experience marginalization, what hooks (2000) referred to as the from margin to center approach. in fact, while the transition to remote teaching challenged us, we actually had to change very little in our course structures. for example, during the initial months of the covid-19 pandemic, we modified the circle process by including an asynchronous use of google docs, which allowed us to join our students in a supportive community while continuing relational teaching. we started each week with a circle prompt and alphabetized student list. this way, students could check in whenever they could access technology or as their hectic lives allowed. some of the prompts that bolstered cohesion were, "share something you have read, seen, or heard that portrays how this pandemic is affecting us in a humorous light" or "please say hi and check-in by looking up your name on the list below and letting us know what has been the hardest for you since you last checked in." students also suggested prompts and provided feedback about the process, which resulted in subsequent prompts. for example, hi all. this week, we have a 2-part check-in. • part 1: inspired by the code switch podcast, d. suggested checking in by sharing a song giving you life during the pandemic. • part 2: i am also thinking about k.'s comment that checking in through the google doc circle may feel like talking to an empty room. • check-in using one of the heart emojis: o [green] = i am doing great, o [orange] = i am okay, o [yellow] = i am okay-ish, o [purple] = things are tough, o [blue] = i am in a bad place and would not mind if someone reached out to me. continuing the circle process after we transitioned to online teaching forged a vital bridge between pre-covid learning experiences and mid-covid, virtual learning. encouraging students to connect their personal pandemic experiences to the course content aligned seamlessly with the weekly circles. understand that not all students will appreciate this way of learning while these pedagogies work for the majority of students, they do not work for all students. many factors contribute to the resistance, and educators should prepare for working with it. first, all students and faculty have received hegemonic messaging from elected officials, public intellectuals, media, schools, families, and religious communities about liberation as utopian or unrealistic. this paradigm posits liberatory praxis as the todić & christensen /integrating critical, engaged 405 dissolution of all things wholesome, safe, and pure, limiting “the political imagination” and perpetuating a fear-based worldview (rodríguez, 2010, p. 16). second, even though these pedagogies create experimental liberatory spaces, the courses still occur in the context of a neoliberal university that emphasizes job market skills, competition, and individualism that students experienced during their undergraduate and likely their graduate social work courses (whynacht et al., 2018). given this context, uncertainty about grades and "doing things right" in a more collaborative emergent space with liberatory rules of engagement can be unsettling for students. these concerns reveal the limitations and inherent tensions in the liberatory approach to teaching, reminding us that liberation requires organized efforts beyond education. on one occasion, several students could not submit assignments by the deadline and approached their instructor to ask for an extension. when the professor referred the students back to the syllabus, reminding them that they did not need permission, students explained that they did not believe this policy and were “waiting to be tricked.” moreover, conflicting experiences in the liberatory classroom and neoliberal social work practices in their field placements may exacerbate these tensions. social work students may struggle to reconcile the dissonance between the state-involved practitioner who surveils and controls citizen behavior (through punitive social welfare policies and organizational practices) and the radical activist who dismantles oppressive state systems (morley et al., 2020; saleebey & scanlon, 2005). we incorporated antidotes to these barriers into our teaching. for example, we were transparent with students about our approach to education, and we encouraged students to share their misgivings. we reminded students that we aim to flatten the hierarchy, and for that to happen, students need to give us honest, direct, and timely feedback; however, we also dialogue with students about the limitations of this approach in the context of the academic hierarchy. nevertheless, the feedback loop included creating a space for students to share their fears and frustrations about critical, engaged, abolitionist teaching and learning. as instructors, we recognized these feelings, conveyed respect for them, and challenged students to remain open to new ways of understanding social problems, relationships, and solutions to these problems. we also included diverse forms of data demonstrating the personal and political benefits that a liberatory approach could yield. be aware of the invisible work of “making the academy a better place” developing growth-fostering relationships based on mutual empathy and our visible commitment to anti-oppressive praxis suggests to students that we are accessible and that they can trust us with experiences beyond class content (jordan, 2013; lenz, 2016). as such, students often approach us for mentoring, support around issues of social injustice, or advice for how to pursue social change efforts in the department, their practicum placements, or community. a substantial body of literature suggests that, not surprisingly, this work of "making the academy a better place" (social sciences feminist network research interest group, 2017) is most often taken up by those who occupy marginalized social group identities (e.g., people of color, women, queer people, first-generation faculty; reddick et al., 2020). while some may argue that these activities fall within one of five advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 406 functions of faculty jobs – research, administration, teaching, advising, and service – it is also widely recognized that universities do not value or reward these activities equally (thomas-davis, 2020). investing a substantial amount of effort into teaching, advising, and service, which liberatory praxis demands, may harm one's promotion and tenure (catterall et al., 2019; stanley, 2020). this tension creates a powerful ethical dilemma for faculty who use critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies, emphasizing praxis. while we have not mastered how to resolve this tension, a few strategies have worked for us. being transparent with students about the nature of our roles and building a supportive community (see the next lesson) can ease the burden of the tension; however, advocating for structural changes to assign value to this work and setting expectations that all faculty are responsible for making the academy a better place is critical. “freedom is a constant struggle”: organize with people like you and people different than you our final lesson may be the most important one. in a recent compilation of essays, freedom is a constant struggle, angela davis (2016) reminds us that the path to freedom is long. this is particularly the case for people with marginalized positionalities. we recognize that our white positionalities protect us from the violence and emotional labor that bipoc people experience doing this work (davis, 2016). as faculty in different stages of the tenure process (assistant and associate), we have supported each other in principled struggle (brown & lee, 2021). we strive to be honest and direct, take responsibility for our feelings and actions, and support each other through conversations that deepen our analysis of a situation while avoiding organizational gossip (brown, 2017; brown, 2018). we have also collaborated on teaching and research projects that have ensured that we can do more than we would have been able to do as individuals. for example, every year, we co-host an event where students in our courses, department, and the community come together to dialogue about social justice issues that impact our community. one year, we hosted an artist, mark menjivar, and his project, migration stories, after attending a listening session in the community. another year, we hosted a viewing of healing justice, facilitated by several community organizations, which explores the intersection of historical trauma, prison industrial complex, and racism, as well as abolitionist alternatives like restorative and transformative justice. finally, we are the founding members of a multiracial group of the faculty and staff that formed an antiracism collective in 2020, which has allowed us to focus on antiracism with intention and intensity. as kishimoto (2018) states, antiracist pedagogy is more than curriculum content about racism, requiring us to see pedagogy as an organizing framework. all of these projects have enabled us to deepen our political analysis and engage in praxis, build meaningful relationships, meet our research productivity expectations, and foster hope that change is possible. final reflection over the past several years, we have observed with enthusiasm an increased focus on antiracist, critical, and liberatory pedagogies. the advances in social work summer 2021 special issue on dismantling racism in social work education features a number of todić & christensen /integrating critical, engaged 407 innovative approaches to antiracist, critical, and liberatory social work pedagogies. for example, gregory (2021) outlines an introductory, three-unit, eight-lesson historically accountable critical whiteness curriculum “to facilitate informed participation in the pursuit of racial justice" (p. 616). moreover, jemal and frasier (2021) describe a course in critical social work informed by the critical transformative potential development (ctpd) framework that aims to bridge the micro-macro divide through engaging students in actively dismantling ideologies and practices of dominance. polk and colleagues (2021) offer lessons learned from a five-year systematic campaign to move all levels of their social work program beyond multicultural orientation towards critical race theory. this effort, driven by a self-organized cross-racial committee, bridged the field and tenure-line faculty hierarchy and mobilized institutional support. we are excited to learn from and build on these scholars' strong foundation by offering our take on what critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies can offer to social work education as the profession adopts antiracism. table 1 outlines the implications that emerged from our ten lessons. to successfully implement these radical pedagogies, it is critical to accept the discomfort, risk, and messiness of working within the tension between a neoliberal emphasis on outcomes and liberatory teaching focused on the process. using these pedagogies in the context of a department that does not universally subscribe to them is complicated. for example, students who see value in these pedagogies sometimes comment on our colleagues who do not use these pedagogies. we had to ensure that we supported our students' critique of punitive systems embedded in social work educations while not undermining our colleagues. therefore, we recommend that the entire social work programs implement these pedagogies collectively, learning from the process that polk and colleagues (2021) used to transform their department from multiculturalism to the critical race perspective. educators should also carefully consider how institutions coopt emancipatory ideas in service of maintaining the status quo (incite, 2007/2017). in a recent “lessons in liberation: an abolitionist toolkit for educators,” education for liberation network & critical resistance editorial collective (2021) underscore the importance of bringing abolition to education, while cautioning educators to not obscure its explicit aim to dismantle the prison industrial complex through campaigns and organizing outside of education. making a transparent commitment to these pedagogies and inviting critique from students and community members working within radical traditions could help prevent cooptation and generate empirical data about the effectiveness of pedagogical efforts to be antiracist. finally, building alternative spaces that deepen critical analysis and give us access to what is possible in our future is vital. at the same time, we engage in the slow process of broader institutional change. our classrooms are spaces where coenvisioning and co-realizing that future, in the present, makes it possible to remain focused, persistent, and resilient in the pursuit of a scaled-up liberated future for all. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 408 table 1. ten lessons: practical implications lesson implications for educators embrace critical theory read up on critical theory; have a book club; take a class; explore variations (critical race theory, critical feminism, critical queer theory). question and interrupt manifestations of carcerality in social work education remove punitive practices from teaching; instead, engage students with creating accountability standards through identifying shared values, codeveloping course syllabi, and creating assignment rubrics. firmly hold on to the centrality of reflexivity and accountability regardless of identity, commit to honest and deep reflection and self-evaluation about how you internalize white supremacy, carceral logic, and other dysfunctional power dynamics inconsistent with social work values and aims. build skills for self-accountability and community accountability. teach prison industrial complex abolition to stimulate courage, creativity, and hope needed to solve grand challenges beyond decarceration learn about prison industrial complex abolition and the role it plays in solving serious social problems. teach it. develop circle process skills attend a training. develop relationships with community-based practitioners who use restorative and transformative justice processes. this may mean participating in community circles or inviting community organizations to facilitate circles. strive to practice non-hierarchical ways of working in all aspects of your work integrate elements of non-hierarchical approaches into faculty meetings, research collaboratives, and committee work as a way to experience their benefits. realize that critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies support liberation regardless of the circumstances gather and incorporate student feedback into teaching methods and into revising courses. as an example, the circle method successfully transferred from in-person to online. understand that not all students will appreciate this way of learning provide structured feedback loops where stakeholders can air their concerns to work with resistance that emancipatory processes may engender. be aware of the invisible work of “making the academy a better place” build solidarity among faculty working within these frameworks, provide opportunities to receive peer feedback and coaching from experienced peers, and advocate for structural changes to assign value to liberatory praxis in academia. set expectations that all faculty are responsible for making the academy a better place. “freedom is a constant struggle”: organize with people like you and different from you construct intentional spaces that cultivate critical, engaged, and emancipatory organizational practices (e.g., faculty meetings, committee work, engaging with students). todić & christensen /integrating critical, engaged 409 references abrams, l. s., & gibson, p. 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(2020). the perils of privatization: bringing the business model into human services. social work, 65(3), 213-224. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/swaa024 author note: address correspondence to jelena todić, department of social work, the university of texas at san antonio, san antonio, tx. email: jelena.todic@utsa.edu author acknowledgment: the authors wish to thank rowen pemberton, msw, bshsph, cd(dti) for granting them the permission to quote their course assignment exploring the relationship between prison industrial complex abolition and health. they also thank three anonymous reviewers whose generous and rigorous feedback significantly improved the article. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i9.3059 https://doi.org/10.1891/9780826122599 https://doi.org/10.1111/curi.12057 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0003055410000456 https://www.uh.edu/socialwork/news/racial-justice-symposium/part-two/ https://www.uh.edu/socialwork/news/racial-justice-symposium/part-two/ https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/26873828.pdf https://doi.org/10.18060/23946 https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/swaa024 mailto:jelena.todic@utsa.edu smeltzer & cantillon final layout dec 10 15 correspondence address: sandra smeltzer, faculty of information & media studies, the university of western ontario, london, on, n6a 5b7; email: ssmeltze@uwo.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 9, issue 1, 7-17, 2015 guest editors’ introduction: scholar-activist terrain in canada and ireland sandra smeltzer university of western ontario, canada sara cantillon university college dublin, ireland introduction post-2008 economic crisis, academics are enduring and combatting greater corporatization on their campuses, the casualization of scholarly labour, more fervent pressure by administrations to demonstrate teaching ‘outputs’ and monetizable research ‘inputs’, and, in some cases, threats to their academic freedom (e.g., bailey & freedman, 2011; côté & allahar, 2011; hanke & hearn, 2012; lynch, crean & moran, 2010; mercille & murphy, 2015; nussbaum, 2010; slaughter & rhoades, 2004; tuchman, 2011; turk, 2014). moreover, when combined with family and other personal obligations, the publish or perish ethic of the profession means that a commitment to activist-oriented endeavours which promote social justice is often difficult to sustain (e.g., few, piercy & stremmel, 2007; hooks, 1994; napoli & aslama, 2011; rodino-colocino, 2012; smeltzer, 2012; ward, 2005). nevertheless, scholars at all levels of the tiered academic system continue to engage in myriad forms of activism on campus and within their respective local, regional, and international communities (flood, martin & dreher, 2013). indeed, given the conditions of neoliberalism and the educational and societal repercussions of a deteriorating welfare state, many scholars feel a stronger pull than ever to engage in activism that aims to make a difference in the lives of others (baker, lynch, cantillon & walsh, 2004; holborow, 2012, pp. 32-33; smeltzer & hearn, 2015). the overarching objective of this special double issue of studies in social justice (ssj) was to bring together scholar-activists from different disciplinary backgrounds to explore and discuss the relationship between sandra smeltzer, sara cantillon studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 7-17, 2015 8 scholarship and activism within this shifting landscape.1as the guest editors of these back-to-back issues, we asked authors to critically consider the rewards and challenges, successes and drawbacks of pursuing activist endeavours inside and/or outside their home institutions. specifically, the articles examine the ways in which canadian and irish academics negotiate their pedagogical, research, and service obligations with a commitment to social justice. the impetus for this collection grew out of a series of semistructured interviews conducted by sandra smeltzer with 19 scholar-activists from five irish universities in 2014, which in turn were based on similar interviews she conducted in 2013 with six academics from three universities in ontario, canada. we distributed a call for papers exclusively to canadian and irish academics, requesting that submissions be theoretically driven and selfreflexive. the response was overwhelming: we received abstracts from 127 scholars, representing 19 universities in canada and ireland, which speaks to the salience of this subject matter in both countries. as would be expected, we found it extremely difficult to winnow down the submissions to the pieces that appear in these issues. our decisions were, in large part, informed by our strong desire to facilitate a wide spectrum of perspectives regarding how scholars negotiate the tricky terrain of contemporary activism in both locales from a range of institutions, disciplines, viewpoints, linguistic backgrounds, and topics, and to represent voices from across the academic system’s hierarchical labour system. canada and ireland canada and ireland are not a common choice for comparative scholarship; they are more often compared to their neighbouring superpowers, the us and uk respectively. there are, however, grounds to explore the similarities and differences between canada and ireland in relation to scholar activism, thereby bringing into focus trends shared by the two countries and the potentially distinctive circumstances in each locale. to begin, there is a long history of irish migration to canada, with roughly 14 per cent of canada’s population claiming irish ancestry (statistics canada, 2006). this has helped foster positive working relations between the two countries based on key cultural affinities. english, for example, is the first and dominant language for the majority of the population, with both countries 1 in their articles, many of these authors use the terms ‘academic’, ‘researcher’, and ‘scholar’ interchangeably. for present purposes, the difference for us is the institutional setting. an academic is usually based at a university or other higher education or research institution, whereas a researcher or scholar, while often equally qualified in terms of academic qualifications or experiential knowledge in a research discipline, may be institutionally independent. scholar-activist terrain in canada and ireland studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 7-17, 2015 9 boasting another strong, state-supported official language (french and irish). they also have a shared history and a unique relationship with the uk, which is intimately intertwined with colonization and varying degrees of decolonization. as well, canada and ireland share the historical impact that religion has played in the development of their respective educational systems with catholicism being the majority religion in both countries. despite the vast differences in size, canada and ireland have a similar level of gdp per capita and identical un human development and education index rankings of 0.96 and literacy rates of 99 per cent (undp, 2012). of particular relevance to our discussion, canada’s and ireland’s tenured university systems are comparable with faculty members possessing relative, if increasingly jeopardized, academic and pedagogical freedom in comparison to many regions of the world. finally, at the macroeconomic level, canada and ireland, in line with global trends led by american industry, are witnessing diminishing welfare states under unfettered global capitalism; a trajectory that may encourage more academics to engage in social justice-oriented activism to help fill the gaps left behind. there are also some key differences between canada and ireland, particularly in terms of geographical size and population. of particular note is the discrepancy in terms of the number of educational institutions in each country and the overall size of their domestic academic communities: ireland has seven universities, compared to 98 in canada (universities canada, 2014). perhaps the most significant manifestation of this disparity can be found in inter-personal academic relationships. to a large extent, and especially within disciplinary areas, irish academics all know – or know of – each other in this relatively small community; this in turn impacts how much, in what ways, and with whom they engage in activism. as well, from the interviews smeltzer conducted in 2013 and 2014, it was clear that on campus activism appears to be more prominent in canada than it is ireland, which may be related to the fact that canadian universities tend to have more active unions of academics. irish academics who identify as scholar-activists instead tend to focus their energies on engaging almost exclusively in activist endeavours outside the academy. a final comparative issue to bear in mind is the impact of the global financial crisis and recession on academic labour and university resources. both countries are facing greater neoliberalization in higher education with the result being that, as noted above, they are struggling with deepening budget cutbacks, swelling numbers of precarious labour, and a stronger emphasis on market imperatives, including pressure to adhere to publishing and funding metrics. the austerity measures pursued in ireland by the coalition government in the aftermath of the bailout by the european central bank, the international monetary fund, and others, combined with the utilitarian, pro-market national strategy for higher education to 2030 (commonly referred to as the hunt report), have had a particularly negative impact on university funding, academic salaries, job and promotion freezes, sandra smeltzer, sara cantillon studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 7-17, 2015 10 student-faculty ratios, and the increase in casual and precarious labour within universities (hunt, 2011; labi, 2012; mercille & murphy, 2015; shattock, 2010; walsh & loxley, 2014). we are thus witnessing: the desire on the part of employers and the state to use the recession to implement a double-pronged strategy: to tie higher education more closely to the needs of capital and, also to entrench neoliberal ideology in what is taught and thought and in the way higher education work is done. (holborow, 2012, p. 12) the (recently ousted) conservative government under stephen harper in canada actively pursued similar austerity economics, including closing libraries, muzzling government scientists, discontinuing important services provided by library and archives canada, and harassing non-governmental organizations both legally and financially (especially those critical of the government). although canadian post-secondary education has certainly felt the painful brunt of such austerity politics, which have also served to compromise academic freedom, the damage has not (yet) been as extensive as that experienced in ireland (de peuter, cohen & brophy, 2015; hanke & hearn, 2012; turk, 2014; wyile, 2013). key themes and fault lines: the ‘double shift’ of scholarship and activism notwithstanding a number of differences between the two countries, several themes related to scholarship and activism emerged over and over again during the canadian and irish interviews, which are also very clearly reflected in the articles that follow in these issues. we found general agreement across the board that engaging in activist pursuits is usually a liability in terms of employment, promotion, funding, and, for some, intellectual freedom. not surprisingly, individuals in a precarious labour situation were particularly concerned that the time and energy they dedicate to their activist commitments would prove detrimental to landing a full-time academic position or securing tenure (see in this issue, o’flynn & panayiotopoulos, and manning, holmes, pullen sansfaçon, temple newhook & travers; see also flood, martin & dreher, 2013; kezar & sam, 2013; madeloni, 2014; smeltzer & hearn, 2015). relatedly, there was strong agreement that their home institutions preferred more sanitized forms of ‘community engagement’ over activism that might disrupt the political and economic status quo on campus (and presumably put at risk the institution’s ‘brand’) and off campus (jeopardizing funding from some of the institution’s sponsors and alumni donors) (flood, martin & dreher, 2013; hanke & hearn, 2012; smeltzer, 2015; vogelgesang & rhoads, 2003). many interviewees also discussed issues related to the feasibility, legitimacy, and/or difficulty of publishing academic material related to one’s scholar-activist terrain in canada and ireland studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 7-17, 2015 11 activism (see khasnabish & haiven, and manning, holmes, pullen sansfaçon, temple newhook & travers, in this issue). some commented on the struggle of trying to produce material that is useful to their respective communities, which requires different skill sets and consumes significantly more time to generate than most academics or activists recognize, as well as to fulfil their scholarly responsibilities of publishing peer-reviewed material (see cox, and petrick, in this issue; see also napoli & aslama, 2011; rodinocolocino, 2012). of particular concern for some individuals is how academics might ‘use’ their activist experiences for their own benefit in terms of scholarly publishing, conference presentations, and grant applications, and the ethics related to appropriating others’ voices (e.g., carapico, 2006; dickson-swift et al., 2007; rodino-colocino, 2012; routledge, 2004; smeltzer, 2012). constant reflexivity is therefore of paramount importance even when one’s research is explicitly collaborative, participatory, and in solidarity (autonomous geographies collective, 2010; dempsey et al., 2011). fabio rojas (2013) contends that “activism and academia don’t mix”, arguing that the former is about promoting social change, whereas the latter focuses on knowledge generation. with the exception of two individuals, none of our interviewees or authors have agreed with this perspective (which is also championed by the likes of stanley fish, jim a. kuypers, and richard vatz). instead they operate from the premise that the primary aim of scholar activism is to disrupt dominant discourses and challenge economic, political, and cultural power relations (e.g., fuller & kitchin, 2004; speed, 2006). this position, with which the guest editors concur, is embedded in a “social justice sensibility [that] entails a moral imperative to act as effectively as we can to do something about structurally sustained inequalities” (frey, pearce, pollock, artz & murphy, 1996, p. 111, emphasis in original). however, we did find notable discrepancy in terms of how much time and energy interviewees thought academics should dedicate to being an activist. certainly, as kamilla petrick discusses in her article for this issue, the availability of time, as well as intellectual and emotional space, to engage in academic or activist work is often determined by the ebbs and flows of one’s personal life. moreover, for some individuals, being an activist is their foremost objective, and an academic position provides the tools and resources that can help advance social justice. others see more of a balance between their scholarly and activist worlds, as one informs and supports the other. still others argue that although they are committed to their respective activist endeavours, being an academic remains their priority and obligation. despite this discrepancy, most interviewees relayed a very similar message, which did not come through as strongly in the majority of the written articles (which may speak to a reluctance to discuss one’s limitations in print): on one hand, they often felt overwhelmed by the time and emotional energy they were investing in both their scholarship and activist realms, while simultaneously often feeling guilty that they were unable to dedicate more of sandra smeltzer, sara cantillon studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 7-17, 2015 12 themselves to their chosen social justice pursuits. on the other hand, they clearly felt that their interventions were meaningful, that they were making a positive difference, and that this was, quite simply, their life’s work. perhaps more contentiously, interviewees and authors often diverged regarding their preferred approach to engaging in activist endeavours. for some, the most effective methods of advancing social justice are the ones that challenge and modify, but do not necessarily attempt to upend, ‘the system’ (e.g., pain & francis, 2003; shade, 2011; smeltzer, 2012), whereas others have chosen to engage in activities that actively seek to abolish the dominant political and economic framework (e.g., cloud, 2011; hale, 2008 james & gordon, 2008; piven, 2010). these positions represent familiar reformist versus revolutionary/radical approaches to fomenting change (e.g., croteau, 2005; luxemburg, 2007; panitch, 2008; young & schwartz, 2012); however, many individuals occupy viewpoints in the middle of the spectrum (e.g., rowe & carroll, 2014) and they alter their approach depending on myriad factors, including the issue at hand, personal obligations, and professional commitments. these differentiations are also intimately intertwined with expressed opinions about what constitutes meaningful and strategic activism. much of the tension resides in the distinction made between what we might call ‘back office’ activism that operates more behind the scenes and is thus less overtly public in nature, versus ‘front-line’ activism that is very public in its orientation. for us, although we believe that academics have a responsibility to act as engaged intellectuals within and beyond their university borders (e.g., coté, day & de peuter, 2007; giroux, 1991, 2015; fuller & kitchin, 2004; smeltzer & grzyb, 2009), how this plays out on the ground must be contextualized and is based on the individual, their capabilities, and on the specific issue of concern. concomitantly, we recognize the value in a multipronged approach to advancing social justice (see flood, martin & dreher, 2013), as demonstrated by the range of tactics described in the following articles. overview of articles the seven provocative articles that appear in the present issue cover a diverse gamut of issues, including concerns about the working relationship between progressive academics, students, and left activists; academics and social movements; time as a limited resource for scholar-activists; activist media projects; and lgbt activism in relation to both refugees and the parents of trans* children. given the range of personal and professional challenges inherent in negotiating the relationship between scholarship and activism, we asked these authors to openly and critically discuss their practices (bremwilson, 2014; dempsey et al., 2011; hale, 2008), which produced a broad spectrum of results in terms of how personal they chose to be in telling their scholar-activist terrain in canada and ireland studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 7-17, 2015 13 stories. learning from experience is the basis of alex khasnabish and max haiven’s article, which explores the possibilities for leveraging the complex and fraught privileges afforded to academics in order to create resources for activist movements. it focuses on lessons learned from the radical imagination project, an experiment in politically engaged, ethnographically grounded social movement research the authors have sustained in halifax since 2010. through this project khasnabish and haiven developed a practice of working alongside the small but energetic and diverse activist movements in the city. in their conclusion they argue that the value and success of social movements cannot be ascertained only by their ability to achieve concrete social change; rather, we need to learn from how movements operate themselves and how they can offer (sometimes unintentionally) alternative forms of social reproduction. laurence cox also looks at scholar activism from the perspective of social movements in his article, particularly within the irish context. he begins by arguing that many progressive academics have not embarked on the political learning curve necessary to effectively participate in social movements. cox contends that this isolation from transformative agency translates into a belief that existing institutional frameworks can be pathways to meaningful social change. based on his extensive involvement in a range of movements, combined with the various facets of his academic position, he concludes that the criterion for activist scholarship should be the extent to which scholars manage to reshape institutional structures on and off campus. moreover, cox argues that critical reflection is insufficient without praxis geared to changing that situation and creating more radical relationships that actively challenge the political and economic status quo. micheal o’flynn and aggelos panayiotopoulos also focus their attention on academia and activism in ireland, especially the complex relationship between scholars and practitioners. specifically, the authors examine their own efforts to draw together different strands of the left, reflecting on the reciprocal relationships that have developed between progressive academics and students, trade unionists, and activists. evaluating these initiatives, which have included reading groups, educational seminars, the publication of a quarterly paper, and the organization of precarious workers in higher education, o’flynn and panayiotopoulos conclude that there is indeed space for activism in academia and space for academia in activism. similar to petrick and manning et al., the authors also highlight the difficulties precarious academics face in trying to engage in activist endeavours both on and off campus. the pertinent issue of time is the focus of kamilla petrick’s article, which looks at the capacity of scholar-activists to engage in collective action under the tightening constraints of the neoliberal university. petrick explores this issue through semi-structured interviews with canadian scholar-activists and finds that academics across disciplines face increasingly severe time sandra smeltzer, sara cantillon studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 7-17, 2015 14 pressures. while dispelling the argument that lack of time excuses academics from activist involvement, she argues persuasively that the changing political economic paradigm of the university negatively affects one’s capacity to engage in reflective thought, and can dampen the extent to which ‘public intellectuals’ are able to fully participate in social movements. petrick concludes, like khasnabish and haiven, by stressing the importance of balance and self-care in one’s chosen avenue of activism. in their article, david skinner, robert hackett, and stuart poyntz explore the ways in which the different imperatives of academic institutions and activist organizations incorporate scholarly participation into progressive media projects. discussion focuses on the authors’ direct experiences with three particular projects: media democracy day, open media, and newswatch canada. in reflecting on what enables and constrains participation in these activist media projects, they argue that despite limits and pressures the case studies demonstrate that the fields of activism and the academy can be woven together in ways that produce key resources and energies to promote progressive media reform. the last two articles in this issue are concerned with the relationship between academia and lgbt activism. katherine fobear’s article looks at storytelling as a resource for speaking about social injustice and how it can be deployed by lgbt refugees to validate their truths and bring their voices to the fore in confronting state and public violence. she focuses her attention on three contexts where justice and injustice intersect in refugees’ storytelling: the canadian immigration and refugee board, public advocacy around antiqueer violence and refugee rights, and oral history research. drawing on her own experience of working as an oral historian and a vancouver-based volunteer and advocate, fobear argues that by being able to share their stories in a range of venues, lgbt refugees contribute to critical policy issues around inequality and immigration, which is an important step toward their protection and settlement in canada. in their deeply personal article, kimberley ens manning, cindy holmes, annie pullen sansfaçon, julia temple newhook, and ann travers explore the particular affective and ethical issues they face as parents, scholars, and activists seeking to understand and undo structural transphobia within the broader contexts of ageism, racism, sexism, and heterosexism in canadian society. the authors argue that allyship with their respective children does not imply that they have become ‘courtesy members’ of a marginalized group; rather, they occupy a position of liminality in which they live a commitment to their trans* children regardless of the discrimination they face in advocating for their loved ones. the article examines how their scholar activism assumes complex configurations of privilege and vulnerability, contending that without the institutional security that academic tenure affords, their capacity to continue to engage in activism remains in flux. these articles have begun a conversation, which will be continued in the forthcoming second part of this special double issue that addresses an even scholar-activist terrain in canada and ireland studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 7-17, 2015 15 wider range of topics and perspectives. we wish to sincerely thank david butz, the journal’s editor-in-chief, for encouraging this idea for publication in studies in social justice, and for his editing work to bring these issues to fruition. references autonomous geographies collective (2010). beyond scholar activism: making strategic interventions inside and outside the neoliberal university. acme: international e-journal for critical 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(2012). can prefigurative politics prevail? the implications for movement strategy in john holloway’s crack capitalism. journal of classical sociology, 12(2), 220-239. yalamarty final correspondence address: harshita yalamarty, graduate program in gender, feminist & women’s studies, york university, toronto, on, m3j 1p3; email: harshita@yorku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 dispatch lessons from “no ban on stolen land” harshita yalamarty york university, canada today at the #laxprotest, native people conducted a welcoming ceremony to call in our muslim and refugee sisters as relatives. we danced a long round dance to the beat of the drum… when another native brother took to the megaphone and told our new muslim relatives that we are here to protect and fight for them, that we and this land recognize their humanity, they wept tears of joy. that is what i witnessed today. that is the power of native-led movements. we never stopped practicing our own customs of kinship making, citizenship and belonging. this land recognizes our humanity because we never gave it up. trump and all us forms of citizenship and law are illegitimate on stolen land. so when we say "muslims and refugees welcome on native land," we mean it!! #nobanonstolenland #banusa facebook post by melanie yazzie (diné), february 2017 (reproduced in #nodapl archive) in this context, it is essential that, as we consider bans and walls, we do not exclude native peoples and histories from the conversation. the intentional erasure of native people from public conversations has historically led us to assume that the united states is the only entity that is entitled to claim control of these spaces, and that it is the inherent right of its government to welcome some migrants while restricting and placing quotas on others. elizabeth ellis (peoria) (2018) in this dispatch, i will reflect on the slogan “no ban on stolen land” and the lessons, theoretical and mobilizational, that it offers us in the current milieu. these lessons are modelled in words and practice by indigenous activists, thinkers and feminists, two of whom are quoted above. my hope is to carry on this conversation among fellow critical anti-racist educators, towards reframing the stakes around decolonization, indigenous sovereignty and migrant and refugee justice. lessons from “no ban on stolen land” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 475 *** in toronto, a pakistani man tells me that his visa application to india has been rejected multiple times. “i have a canadian passport, and yet…” he rues, “i just want to go see the taj mahal.” i wonder aloud whether the place of birth in his passport is the reason why, and he agrees with me; we reflect together on how those colonial borders are being redrawn and inflicted on us here, on the other side of the world. he adds that his nephew was not allowed to travel to the united states a couple of years ago, despite having a british passport. he says no more, because we both know he is alluding to the travel ban enacted by the american president donald trump in 2017. an “executive order on protecting the nation from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals,” introduced on january 27, 2017, prevented the entry of visitors from seven “countries of concern” – syria, iran, iraq, sudan, somalia, libya and yemen – for 90 days, and refugees from all countries for 120 days (full text, 2017). the order initially included green card holders, but an exception was made by the department of homeland security two days later. reports stated that customs and border protection (cbp) officers, tasked with policing entrants into the usa, were detaining and questioning people despite federal courts issuing blocks against detentions and deportations and bans on the order (helmore & yuhas, 2017). a five-year old boy, who was an american citizen with an iranian mother, was detained and handcuffed for more than four hours. the white house justified this action by claiming that they could not eliminate threats based on an individual’s age and sex (roberts, 2017). on february 4, 2017, a canadian muslim woman was denied entry into the usa after cbp officials checked her phone and found prayers, leading them to question her views on president trump (mann, 2017). later that month, a british welsh muslim teacher accompanying a group of students on a trip to the usa was denied entry and removed from the plane on their stopover in reykjavik, iceland (morris, 2017). the commonality in these cases is that the affected individuals are muslim, indicated by their names or bodily presentation; the indicators of their nationalities – their passports – do not seem to matter to cbp officers. in short, contrary to the letter of the executive order, the travel ban proceeded as a de facto “muslim ban,” by targeting muslim individuals and families regardless of their citizenship and their passports. this was justified by the cbp under the broad rubric of “protecting the nation from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals.” as the ban and its consequent detentions and deportations unfolded, protests erupted at airports across the country. protesters emphasized the narrative of the usa as a “nation of immigrants,” for example by singing songs like “this land is your land.” the glorification of this narrative serves to erase the history and presence of indigenous peoples in the usa harshita yalamarty studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 476 and other settler countries, by reframing initial settler occupation of sovereign indigenous lands as migration.1 seeking to counter this erasure and make connections with those affected by the travel ban, indigenous activists and professors melanie yazzie (diné) and nick estes (lower brule sioux) brought the slogans “no ban on stolen land” and “refugees welcome on stolen land” to the protests at the los angeles airport, changing the way the protesters claimed ownership and citizenship as they fought for immigrant and refugee rights (monkman, 2017). as lawrence and dua remind us, “to speak of opening borders without addressing indigenous land loss and ongoing struggles to reclaim territories is to divide communities that are already marginalized from one another” (2005, p. 136). yazzie’s facebook post, quoted in the opening epigraph, helped further spread this idea of linking refugee and migrant rights to a critique of the settler state, by describing indigenous-led calls for migrant and refugee justice grounded in indigenous sovereignty. the hashtag #nobanonstolenland quickly circulated across social media spaces. i watched these events on my computer screen in india, unable to travel to canada to rejoin my graduate program and my teaching assistant position, having lost my own passport at new delhi airport. while i waited for a new passport and a replacement canadian visa, i read the heartbreaking stories of other graduate students flying back to the us after their winter breaks, unable to exit the airport or their planes, returned to their countries, feeling immobilised and purposeless. at least i didn’t have to go to the usa, a few friends said to console me. in clear criticism of president trump and american policies, canadian prime minister justin trudeau tweeted messages of support and welcome for those refugees fleeing war and persecution. in mid-february, photographs emerged of a smiling royal canadian mounted police (rcmp) officer helping a refugee somali family across the usa-canada border at quebec. these photographs and their reception added to the narrative of canada as welcoming and tolerant, as opposed to an increasingly hostile and intolerant usa (paling, 2017). in 2014, at a black lives matter protest in portland, usa, against the decision not to indict police officer darren wilson for the murder of teenager michael brown, a freelance photographer captured a young, tearful black boy hugging a white police officer. the image became widely shared and held up as an example of the human face of race relations in america. taken together with the image of the rcmp officer helping a refugee boy, it is evident that technologies of infantilising people of colour enable the state to demonstrate its benevolent, paternalistic power, which offers and promises protection as long as people of colour remain harmless (grinberg, 2014). however, when we juxtapose “no ban on stolen land” with the photographs of the somali family’s border crossing, we can consider how this 1 see, e.g., moreton-robinson (2015) on australia, and razack (2002) on canada, among others. lessons from “no ban on stolen land” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 477 crossing took place between new york, usa and quebec, canada, on haudenosaunee land. on the map of turtle island, the canadian-us border is an illegal settler-colonial construct that violates indigenous sovereignty and cuts across indigenous territory. keeping this map – and the artificiality of borders – in mind helps us to grasp the breadth of violence faced by refugees fleeing us cbp officials and submitting to arrest by canadian rcmp officials, and to trouble the notion of “citizenship” on stolen land built on practices of what harsha walia (2014, p. 23) has called “border imperialism.” *** as i wrote this dispatch in 2019, the state of india had made its latest moves in effectively occupying the territory of kashmir and stripping it of its democratic rights, and large swathes of the amazonian rainforest had been set on fire yet again, threatening the indigenous tribes with forced displacement through “ecocide” in the amazon basin (tekayak, 2016). the disabling and debilitating of the people of kashmir is carried out through information and communication blackouts (kanjwal, 2019) pellet guns, enforced disappearances or curfews (zia, 2018), tactics that are chillingly similar to those used in the ongoing occupation of palestine (puar, 2017). around the world, it is evident that longstanding processes of settler colonialism are continuing unabated in various forms, working in tandem with state technologies that impose borders and destabilise people and communities, creating displacements and refugee populations.2 on august 5, 2019, article 35a and article 370 of the indian constitution were revoked by the government of india. these articles enshrined special status for jammu and kashmir, including a separate constitution, autonomy over its internal administration and a separate set of laws on citizenship and property ownership. this amendment also converted jammu, kashmir and ladakh to union territories, which are administered federally and do not have elected governments of their own. beginning the previous day, the government also ordered a total communications blackout to and from kashmir, and silenced news from the region. along with being cut off from the rest of the world, curfews and a heightened military presence demonstrate that a purposive immobilization of the people of kashmir is in process. further, these changes to the indian constitution mean that indian citizens 2 social media has been pivotal in amplifying voices of the kashmiri diaspora, some of whom are themselves displaced, and organizing solidarity vigils in support of kashmir across the globe through the hashtag #standwithkashmir. see the social media campaign toolkit by stand with kashmir 2019 (http://standwithkashmir.org) and the work of the critical kashmir studies collective (https://www.facebook.com/criticalkashmirstudies/). brazilian indigenous youth have also organized on social media to bring their voices as amazon defenders to public attention, with groups such as mídia índia (https://www.instagram.com/midiaindiaoficial/) (martinez, 2019). harshita yalamarty studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 478 can now buy and own property in kashmir, and already indian corporate interests have announced their multimillion dollar plans to invest in the region, at the cost of impairing local business networks (chaudhary, 2019; das gupta, 2019). on the other side of the globe, the right-wing regime in brazil has opened up the rainforest for clearing by cultivators, miners and ranchers, thereby enabling the deforestation and destruction of indigenous reserves within the amazon (correa et al., 2019), and rendering the landscape particularly vulnerable to spreading forest fires. in north america, despite fierce indigenous-led protests and credible environmental warnings against them, privately owned pipelines have been routinely approved for construction by the us and canadian governments, without the consent of the indigenous nations whose territories, living conditions and livelihoods would be affected; in multiple locations, this construction has been enforced with the use of state military power (standing rock sioux tribe, 2019; unist’ot’en camp, 2019). in each of these cases, the agenda of the militarised settler-colonial state is centered on land – that is, stealing land and land-based resources from those who live on it, and in the process scattering and discarding them. how do we make sense of these events in different corners of the globe, connected nonetheless by the logics and histories of settler/colonial statism, and how do we respond, organize and resist? as hokulani aikau (kanaka ʻōiwi hawaiʻi) states, “when indigeneity is placed at the center, when we turn our attentions in a material rather than a metaphorical way to the lands upon which we stand, to ʻāina, then we are able to challenge the fundamental legitimacy of the nation-state structure” (aikau et al., 2015, p. 83). to grapple with these issues, i find myself returning to the powerful brevity of #nobanonstolenland. yazzie spoke about the value of the hashtag as political education from screens to streets, and indeed, the proposed border wall on the us-mexico border was met with “no wall on stolen land,” and the slogan “no wall, no ban, no building on stolen lands” was used as a joint protest against trump’s travel ban and the israeli government’s plan to build settlements in gaza (alternative information centre, 2017). cherokee scholar joseph pierce (2019) also reminds us that building walls is a settler colonial strategy. wall street, the famous centre of capitalist activity and former slave market in manhattan, new york city (lenape territory), is named for the wall built by african slaves owned by the dutch west india company to keep out native people, pirates and english colonists (clarkson, 2008). analysing the slogan in her article “the border(s) crossed us too,” indigenous feminist elizabeth ellis (2018) states that by grounding our critique of the travel ban in indigenous sovereignty, “we critically reframe the conversation about borders and immigration and more effectively challenge us justifications for exclusion and expulsion” (n.p.). i propose that we add to this statement the need for conversation around “mobility,” encompassing voluntary, involuntary and forced mobility. lessons from “no ban on stolen land” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 479 indigenous populations have always been mobile, “by choice or by force, or some combination thereof” (peterson & chatterjee, 2017, p. 141).3 cherokee scholar qwo-li driskill (2004) refers to their family as “diasporic,” because of the removals and genocides they have endured (p. 52). asserting the sovereignty of indigenous nations as opposed to colonial borders, indigenous feminism has been characterised as “already transnational” in navigating settler-colonial realities (aikau et al., 2015). ellis (2018) lays out how the expansion of the usa as a settler-colonial state built upon regulating the mobility of indigenous people, and imposing constructions and restrictions where there had been none, inspiring the statement, “the border(s) crossed us too.” in canada, the story of indigenous mobility and purposive immobilization stretches from the indian act (lawrence, 2004), the history of the reserve pass system (carter, 1999, p. 163), residential schools, the “sixties scoop” (truth & reconciliation commission of canada, 2015) to the highway of tears (carrier sekani family services, 2006). in addition to forced removals and displacements, the state’s exercise of power in deciding mobility is enforced through the technology of the passport, as we saw in the unfolding of the 2017 travel ban. in his book the invention of the passport (2000), john torpey examines how modern nationstates assume the authority to restrict movement, and he turns to the metaphor of the state’s “embrace” of its population through the passport. in contrast to travel documents, passports stand as symbols of an individual’s affiliation to a nation-state, wherein states “embrace” and bind particular individuals to themselves as their nationals or citizens. these citizens are nurtured and rendered legible by this affiliation, and thus turned into resources needed by the nation-states to reproduce themselves. others – non-citizens, undesirables, illegals – are denied that embrace, for example through travel bans. radhika mongia (1999) argues that modern passports are imbricated in race-based exclusion, as they evolved as a technique of regulating migration by un-naming race and instead naming “nationality,” allowing nation-states to delimit their boundaries, assert their sovereignty and acquire a monopoly over who would be allowed within the state’s embrace. indigenous nations have long undermined the settler-colonial state’s authority over their movements, for example by issuing their own passports (ellis, 2018). the haudenosaunee have issued passports since 1923 as expressions of their sovereignty. high profile incidents such as the iroquois nationals lacrosse team being blocked from entering the united kingdom on 3 peterson and chatterjee (2017) use this phrase to describe the various circumstances under which people of colour came to be on this colonized land. i use it to evoke the displacements and removals, as well as migrations across territories, faced by indigenous people as well, in order to puncture the ostensible binary of refugees and migrants as mobile, and indigenous folks as not. elizabeth ellis, for instance, describes herself as “living as an uninvited guest in new york city on ancestral lenape territories” (2018, n.p.). harshita yalamarty studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 480 their haudenosaunee passports in 2010 (kolva, 2012), highlight the settlercolonial move of regarding haudenosaunee passports as “fantasy documents,” concretely denying their claims to sovereignty and right to move across international borders (hill, 2015). according to onandaga nation tadodaho sid hill, maintaining our sovereignty demands that we use our own passport. this is why we stamped the passports of visiting nations – including us americans and the british – in september when the world indoor lacrosse championships was held for the first time on haudenosaunee land: to underscore that this has always been and remains our land. (hill, 2015) it is important to note that indigenous passports function as statements and symbols of indigenous sovereignty rejecting settler colonial authority over borders; they are not backed by a state-centred bureaucratic and militaristic apparatus that presumes to impose borders. as a symbol of solidarity, indigenous nations have also issued passports to refugees, in order to critique refugee detention and incarceration systems while asserting indigenous sovereignty in the face of settler state violence. in 2010, two tamil asylum seekers indefinitely detained in villawood camp in sydney, australia were issued original nation/aboriginal passports;4 subsequent passport ceremonies created a space for migrants to recognize indigenous sovereignty and be allied with indigenous peoples (aboriginal passport ceremony, 2012). tasmanian aboriginal activist michael mansell articulated a critique of the settler nation-state’s self-narrative as the “nation of immigrants”, by drawing out the distinction between unarmed asylum seekers arriving as “boat people” and being denied basic human rights, and the arrival of the “original boat people” who led an occupation and genocide of indigenous peoples in australia (mansell, quoted in smith, 2013).5 as recently as july 2019, indigenous communities issued aboriginal passports to refugees being held for processing in papua new guinea, aiming to bring attention to australia’s offshore detention regime and its problems (faa, 2019). in each of these instances, the underlying message is clear: “under indigenous law, refugees are welcome to this land” (rise: refugees, survivors and ex-detainees, 2016). 4 for more about the unmapping of villawood detention centre on aboriginal land, see bui et al. (2017). 5october 2019 marked the 10th anniversary of the arrival of the ships mv ocean lady and mv sun sea, on the west coast of canada. together the ships carried more than 500 tamil asylum seekers, who were characterized by the canadian government as ‘illegal’ or human smugglers, and detained amid calls for deportation (hasan et al, 2019). at demonstrations outside the jails where asylum seekers were kept, indigenous elders opened the protests by welcoming the refugees (walia, 2014, p. 67). connecting the arrival of the komagata maru in 1914 to the ocean lady and sun sea, hasan et al. (2019) argue that “the colonization of indigenous nations in north america is connected to south asia through the european project of empire and colonial expansion” (p. 123). lessons from “no ban on stolen land” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 481 refugee communities in canada have also drawn on struggles against occupation in their homelands, to show solidarity with indigenous sovereignty. for example, on the website of students for free tibet canada, an indigenous land acknowledgement is accompanied by the statement, “we also commit ourselves to continue to unlearn and decolonize spaces we occupy and work in solidarity with indigenous peoples in their struggle” (students for free tibet, n.d.). using slogans like “no one is illegal; canada is illegal!,” migrant and refugee rights organizations such as no one is illegal (noii), based in canada, and refugees, survivors and ex-detainees (rise) based in australia, center indigenous sovereignty in their critiques of settler-colonial state policies. taking the example of support for the idle no more movement in 2012 from palestinians within the occupied territories of palestine as well as diasporic communities, dana olwan (2015) argues that these solidarities are not natural and cannot be presumed, but have to be relationally worked out in critical, strategic ways. *** in such a milieu, it is imperative that we as anti-racist educators and scholars turn to the leadership of indigenous activists, thinkers, elders and youth, to envision a future beyond contested geopolitical territories. as harsha walia, following sto:loh poet and author lee maracle, writes, “there is nothing contradictory about supporting struggles for migrant justice and indigenous self-determination; our liberation is interconnected” (2014, p. 68). returning to the protests led by yazzie and estes at the los angeles airport, yazzie in her facebook post mentions a welcoming ceremony and round dance, which invited refugees and migrants as well as non-indigenous activists and protesters into a different relationality with each other, one grounded in the history of the land and asserting the presence of indigenous people (monkman, 2017). eve tuck, allison guess and hannah sultan, with their work on the black/land project, write about necessarily “contingent collaborations,” offering a path as we reconfigure the work of decolonization together on the same land – work that offers no easy resolutions (tuck et al., 2014). cherokee scholar jeff corntassel calls for “insurgent education” (2013, p. 48), meaning that solidarity work in different places must follow the lead of local indigenous communities organising for self-determination. this solidarity work needs to guard against becoming ahistorical by “simultaneously recogniz[ing] the potential mutualities and various incommensurabilities of struggles for justice against settler-colonial states,” based on historically situated distinctions (olwan, 2015, p. 100) and a recognition of complicities. it also needs to guard against turning a “settler gaze” (corntassel, 2013, p. 50) on struggles that may seem far away, as with kashmir and the amazon basin, by making connections with local harshita yalamarty studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 482 indigenous struggles, as well as the campaigns organised by those communities in the diaspora. what might such relationality mean for refugees, migrants, black and other people of colour on indigenous lands? by reflecting on “no ban on stolen land” and its lessons, we can center indigenous sovereignty in supporting migrant and refugee rights. this could focus our critiques and efforts against the settler colonial authority which presumes to ban, displace, exclude, detain, and shrink the spaces and terms on which those displaced can relate to each other and respond to the violence of being rendered illegal or immobile. organising against the state’s controlling mechanisms and violences by taking our lead from indigenous communities’ refusal to cooperate with settler colonial logics of genocide can be a creative means of resistance that leads us toward just sites of coexistence and a viable future for all. acknowledgments i wrote this dispatch while living on anishinaabe and haudenosaunee territories, and tried to bring lessons from there to conversations in new delhi, india. thank you to nishant upadhyay, amar wahab and sabina chatterjee for making space and these conversations possible. references aboriginal passport ceremony. (2012, august 6). more than 200 migrants to receive aboriginal passport. [press release]. green left. https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/more-200migrants-receive-aboriginal-passports aikau, h. k., arvin, m., goeman, m., & morgensen, s. (2015). indigenous feminisms roundtable. frontiers: a journal of women studies, 36(3), 84-106. alternative information centre. (2017, february 14). no wall, no ban, no building on stolen land! protests against the racist agendas of netanyahu and trump are planned for wednesday in washington d.c., tel aviv, and across the u.s. https://web.archive.org/web/20170217145729/http://www.alternativenews.org/ bui, m., chan, d., perera, s., pugliese, j. & singh, c. (2017) villawood: a suburban deathscape in plain site. deathscapes: mapping race and violence in settler states. https://www.deathscapes.org/case-studies/villawood carrier sekani family services. (2006). highway of tears symposium recommendations report: a collective voice for the victims who have been silenced. https://www.highwayoftears.org/uploads/highway%20of%20tears%20symposium%20re commendations%20report%20-%20january%202013.pdf carter, s. (1999). aboriginal people and colonizers of western canada to 1900 (vol. 5). university of toronto press. chaudhary, a. (2019, september 2). in kashmir shops are closed and all is silent, but it’s far from peaceful. bloomberg quint. https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/in-kashmirshops-are-closed-and-all-is-silent-but-it-s-far-from-peaceful clarkson, g. (2008). wall street indians: information asymmetry and barriers to tribal capital market access. lewis & clark law review, 12, 943. lessons from “no ban on stolen land” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 483 corntassel, j. (2013). insurgent education and the roles of indigenous intellectuals. in m. s. smith (ed.), transforming the academy: indigenous education, knowledges and relations (pp. 47-51). university of alberta. critical kashmir studies collective. (n.d.) timeline [facebook page] https://www.facebook.com/criticalkashmirstudies/ correa, l., lobao, m., & kaiser, a. j. (2019, august 29). ‘join our fight’: indigenous people in brazil speak out against amazon rainforest fires. global news. https://globalnews.ca/news/5830182/amazon-indigenous-people-protest-fires/ das gupta, m. (2019, october 18). 43 companies with rs 13,700 crore investment plan promise j&k a new beginning. the print. https://theprint.in/india/43-companies-rs-13700-croreinvestment-promise-jk-new-beginning/307398/ driskill, q. l. (2004). stolen from our bodies: first nations two-spirits/queers and the journey to a sovereign erotic. studies in american indian literatures, 16(2), 50-64. ellis, e. (2018). the border(s) crossed us too: the intersections of native american and immigrant fights for justice. emisférica, 14(1). https://hemisphericinstitute.org/pt/emisferica-14-1-expulsion/14-1-essays/the-border-scrossed-us-too-the-intersections-of-native-american-and-immigrant-fights-for-justice2.html faa, m. (2019, 17 july). refugees on manus to receive australian first nations 'passports' from activists aboard sail boat. abc far north. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-0717/refugees-on-manus-island-to-recieve-aboriginal-passports/11310214 full text of trump's executive order on 7-nation ban, refugee suspension. (2017, january 28). cnn. http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/28/politics/text-of-trump-executive-order-nation-banrefugees/ global detention project. (2018, june 18). immigration detention in canada: important reforms, ongoing concerns. https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/immigration-detention-incanada-important-reforms-ongoing-concerns grinberg, e. (2014, december 1). the hug shared around the world. cnn. http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/29/living/ferguson-protest-hug/ hasan, n., krishnamurti, s., rahemtullah, o. s., thiyagarajah, n., & upadhyay, n. (2019). borders, boats, and brown bodies. in r. k. dhamoon, d. bhandar, r. mawani & s. k. bains (eds.), unmooring the komagata maru: charting colonial trajectories (pp. 121140). ubc press. helmore, e., & yuhas, a. (2017, january 30). border agents defy courts on trump travel ban, congressmen and lawyers say. the guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/usnews/2017/jan/29/customs-border-protection-agents-trump-muslim-country-travel-ban hill, s. (2015, october 30). my six nation haudenosaunee passport is not a 'fantasy document'. the guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/30/my-six-nationhaudenosaunee-passport-not-fantasy-document-indigenous-nations kanjwal, h. (2019, august 5). india’s settler-colonial project in kashmir takes a disturbing turn. the washington post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/05/indiassettler-colonial-project-kashmir-takes-disturbing-turn/ kolva, b. (2012). lacrosse players, not terrorists: the effects of the western hemisphere travel initiative on native american international travel and sovereignty. washington university journal of law policy, 40, 307-336. lawrence, b. (2004). “real” indians and others: mixed-blood urban native peoples and indigenous nationhood. university of nebraska press. lawrence, b., & dua, e. (2005). decolonizing antiracism. social justice, 32(4), 120-143. https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/bonita-lawrence-decolonizing-antiracism.pdf mann, h. (2017, february 8). canadian woman denied entry to u.s. after muslim prayers found on her phone [radio broadcast transcript]. cbc radio. www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/asit-happens-wednesday-edition-1.3972400/canadian-woman-denied-entry-to-u-s-aftermuslim-prayers-found-on-her-phone-1.3972404 harshita yalamarty studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 484 martinez, m. (2019, september 17). while the amazon burns, brazil’s indigenous peoples rise up. waging nonviolence. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2019/09/while-amazon-burnsbrazil-indigenous-peoples-rise-up/ mídia india-oficial. [@midiaindia] (n.d.) posts. [instagram profile]. https://www.instagram.com/midiaindiaoficial/ mongia, r. v. (1999). race, nationality, mobility: a history of the passport. public culture, 11(3), 527-556. moreton-robinson, a. (2015). the white possessive: property, power, and indigenous sovereignty. university of minnesota press. monkman, l. (2017, february 2). ‘no ban on stolen land,’ say indigenous activists in the u.s. cbc news. https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/indigenous-activists-immigration-ban1.3960814?fbclid=iwar2uil5fonaotg1dirl-xo8vcwkg8yyb3kfncofp8jnfjw0vmtfijljibc morris, s. (2017, february 20). british muslim teacher denied entry to us on school trip. the guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/20/british-muslim-teacherdenied-entry-to-us-on-school-trip olwan, d. m. (2015). on assumptive solidarities in comparative settler colonialisms. feral feminisms, 4, 89-102. paling, e. (2017, february 18). asylum-seekers fleeing u.s. border agents receive helping hand from quebec rcmp. huffington post canada. http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/02/18/hemmingford-quebec-rcmp-refugees-asylumborder-photo_n_14842790.html peterson, r., & chatterjee, s. (2017). dancing with complexity: decolonization and social justice dialogues. in m. morrow and l. h. malcoe (eds.), critical inquiries for social justice in mental health (pp. 138-164). university of toronto press. pierce, j. (contributor) (2019, august 9). joseph pierce on why academics must decolonize queerness (no. 37). [audio podcast episode]. in hyperallergic. https://hyperallergic.com/512789/joseph-pierce-on-why-academics-must-decolonizequeerness/ puar, j. k. (2017). the right to maim: debility, capacity, disability. duke university press. razack, s. (2002). race, space, and the law: unmapping a white settler society. between the lines. rise: refugees, survivors and ex-detainees. (2016, july 13). media release – sovereignty + sanctuary: a first nations/refugee solidarity event – 13/07/2016. http://riserefugee.org/media-release-sovereignty-sanctuary-a-first-nations-refugeesolidarity-event-13072016/ roberts, r. (2017, january 31). white house claims five-year-old boy detained in us airport for hours 'could have posed a security threat'. the independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/white-house-five-year-old-boydetained-dulles-international-airport-hours-sean-spicer-pose-security-a7554521.html smith, k. (2013, august 10). aboriginal groups welcome refugees. green left. https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/aboriginal-groups-welcome-refugees stand with kashmir. (n.d.) go #redforkashmir. https://www.standwithkashmir.org/redforkashmir standing rock sioux tribe. (2019, august 16). standing rock sioux tribe seeks court ruling to halt pipeline operations, as dakota access llc pushes for expansion. https://www.standingrock.org/content/standing-rock-sioux-tribe-seeks-court-ruling-haltpipeline-operations-dakota-access-llc students for a free tibet canada. (n.d.). mission. https://www.sftcanada.org/mission tekayak, d. (2016). protecting earth rights and the rights of indigenous peoples: towards an international crime of ecocide. fourth world journal, 14(2), 5. torpey, j. (2000). the invention of the passport: surveillance, citizenship and the state. cambridge university press. truth and reconciliation commission of canada. (2015). honouring the truth, reconciling for the future. http://caid.ca/trcfinexesum2015.pdf tuck, e., guess, a., & sultan, h. (2014, june 26). not nowhere: collaborating on selfsame land. decolonization: indigeneity, education & society. lessons from “no ban on stolen land” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 474-485, 2020 485 https://decolonization.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/not-nowhere-collaborating-on-selfsameland/ unis’tot’en camp. (n.d.). no pipelines: background of the campaign. https://unistoten.camp/nopipelines/background-of-the-campaign/ walia, h. (2014). undoing border imperialism. ak press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com yazzie, m. (2017). #nodapl archive – standing rock water protectors. https://www.nodaplarchive.com/solidarity-events.html zia, a. (2019). blinding kashmiris: the right to maim and the indian military occupation in kashmir. interventions, 21(6), 773-786. donovan and ustundag final correspondence address: courtney donovan, department of geography & environment, san francisco state university, san francisco, ca 94132; email: cdonovan@sfsu.edu issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 graphic narratives, trauma and social justice courtney donovan san francisco state university, usa ebru ustundag brock university, canada abstract in this paper, we explore the relevance of graphic novels to understanding and responding to the complex nature of traumatic experiences. we argue that graphic narratives of trauma, which combine visual images and written text, significantly differ from biomedical and legal accounts by presenting the nuances of traumatic experiences that escape the conventions of written testimony. building on the literature that integrates social justice concerns with visual methods and graphic medicine, we contend that graphic narratives effectively convey the complexities of traumatic experiences, including embodied experiences that are not always apparent, intelligible, or representable in written form, leading to greater social recognition of the dynamics and consequences of trauma. to illustrate this claim, we analyze una’s becoming unbecoming (2015), a graphic novel that explores themes relating to trauma and social justice. una relies on the graphic medium to explore the interconnections between personal and collective experiences of gender-based violence, and to show how physical embodied experience is central to her own experience of trauma. graphic narratives like becoming unbecoming also offer a space for addressing the emotional, physical and financial costs of survivorship that usually are not available in legal written testimonies, potentially leading to better justice outcomes for trauma survivors in terms of social intelligibility and recognition, and access to social resources for healing. keywords graphic medicine; graphic narratives; una; trauma; social justice; visual methods courtney donovan & ebru ustundag studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 222 introduction qualitative researchers have identified visual methods as powerful tools that can productively represent the complex lives of a diverse range of individuals and social groups (hill & azzarito, 2012; lorenz, 2010; rose, 2014). participatory visual methods such as photo-voice and photo-elicitation have been particularly popular as collaborative methods that decenter the research process by producing knowledge about the lived experiences of marginalized subjects from their own perspectives (castleden, garvin & huu-ay-aht first nations, 2008; power, 2014). rapid developments in digital technologies have expanded the variety of visual tools available to researchers in collaborative projects with under-represented and marginalized populations. digital storytelling and personal mapping approaches, for example, are newer visual methods that disrupt conventional modes of knowledge production, and deepen understandings of the complex operations of social inequalities and struggles for social justice (hidalgo, 2015; nanackchand & berman, 2012; ulmer, 2017). no matter which visual approaches are used, scholars argue for their value as modes of communication that enable vulnerable groups to articulate difficult and complex personal experiences in ways that text-based approaches often frustrate, opening possibilities for enhanced social recognition and claims for justice (lorenz & chilingerian, 2011; ogston-tuck, baume, clarke & heng, 2016). in this paper, we contribute to the growing literature on social justice and visual methods through a focus on graphic narratives, a relatively new form of visual qualitative methodology. graphic narratives, which are sometimes referred to as comics or sequential art, present written text and visual imagery within a series of juxtaposed panels to convey a story (mccloud, 1994). this interplay of visual imagery and text enables authors to produce narratives that communicate a range of experiences that are not always socially discernible and intelligible (squier, 2015; williams, 2015). we explore the potential of graphic narratives to convey the complexity of trauma as a particular type of social experience. our interest in trauma centers on the psychological distress or injury that is disproportionately experienced by low-income individuals, people of color, lgbtq individuals and women due to their social marginalization. we argue that graphic narratives are tools that effectively communicate what are often unrepresentable and unspeakable traumatic experiences. graphic narrative depictions of trauma move beyond traditional legal and clinical frameworks that provide limited understandings of trauma, and therefore hamper possibilities for justice for those who have experienced it. legal approaches, for instance, require traumatized subjects to provide “valid” and “measurable” evidence of trauma upon which judgments about justice are made. these evaluations of trauma are informed by formal textual testimony, as well as technical and specialized forms of knowledge, that are unable to capture the nuance and complexity of traumatic experience (brown, graphic narratives, trauma & social justice studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 223 2008). legal frameworks also focus on moral binaries or clear-cut distinctions – right/wrong or good/bad – that cannot accommodate complex, situated and experiential forms of knowledge. consequently, these institutional frameworks simplify the realities of trauma, and silence personal experiences (brown, 2008, p. 130), thereby creating a barrier to social recognition and justice (crawley & van rijswick, 2012). by intertwining written text and visual imagery, graphic narratives effectively accommodate the nuances of traumatic experiences that written testimony alone cannot fully capture. for example, much social justice work that focuses on trauma demonstrates that individual and collective traumatic experiences are shaped by various interconnected forms of violence and oppression. graphic narratives, which incorporate multiple modes of communication, provide more robust platforms for articulating these experiential complexities. they also offer a space for conveying the emotional, physical and financial costs of survivorship that is usually not available in legal written testimonies (cvetkovich, 2008). scholars and social justice activists argue that symbolic and physical violence is systematically perpetuated by legal and other administrative systems as they fail to understand these aspects of trauma, resulting in inadequate responses and allocations of resources (incite, 2006; spade, 2013, 2015). in this respect, graphic narratives that communicate traumatic experiences in their fullness and complexity call into question the justice system’s notion of a “fair” distribution of social rewards and burdens by highlighting the disproportionate physical, emotional and financial costs of survivorship, potentially leading to better justice outcomes for trauma survivors in terms of social intelligibility and recognition and access to social resources for healing. in sum, we argue that representations of trauma in the space of graphic narratives provide openings for more complicated understandings of trauma, which in turn offer possibilities for justice that extend beyond what can be achieved within institutionalized legal and biomedical frameworks. these openings and possibilities are even more realizable and compelling when graphic narratives on trauma are presented as memoirs that attest to the lived experience of trauma (gilmore, 2011), because they highlight the limits associated with text-based representations of testimony. we demonstrate these claims through an analysis of una’s becoming unbecoming (2015), a graphic narrative related to the traumatic issue of sexual assault and genderbased violence. our argument unfolds in three sections. first, we draw on work in the burgeoning field of graphic medicine (e.g., czerwiec et al., 2015) that employs graphic narratives to convey the complexities of health experiences, and to provide individuals the tools to make sense of their own health experiences, which can then be communicated to doctors and other health professionals. graphic medicine provides alternative ways to understand health and medical experiences that are not readily perceptible to most courtney donovan & ebru ustundag studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 224 people. this practice is particularly helpful in the context of trauma, when symptoms like anxiety often manifest through embodied sensations that are difficult to describe. graphic medicine literature shows how graphic narratives can communicate complex health experiences, thereby disrupting clinical and legal representations that tend to simplify experiences like trauma. second, we explore how trauma is framed in legal and biomedical contexts. we address existing institutional approaches for responding to trauma and the limitations of these approaches for achieving justice. third, we analyze the graphic narrative becoming unbecoming by una (2015), which focuses on both the personal experience of sexual violence and the collective experience of gender-based violence to illustrate how the two are connected. embodiment, or the physical embodied experience of trauma, is central to una’s experience of trauma, and to her combination of written and visual representations of that experience. she frequently references her somatic experience of trauma to demonstrate how that experience shapes the complexities of her everyday life, producing a complex and alternate form of testimony. una aims to make clear the nuance and complexity of trauma that is often missing from formal legal testimony, opening the possibility for social recognition, healing and justice. her graphic narrative demonstrates that comics and graphic novels are powerful visual approaches to social analysis; it artfully and effectively articulates the traumatic experiences of socially and politically marginalized individuals, including women, people of color and the disabled, that are often overlooked. this graphic narrative also represents a significant departure from the individualization of trauma characteristic of legal and clinical approaches by demonstrating how the collective is embedded in individual experiences. seeing and representing through graphic medicine scholarly and popular interest in graphic narratives is growing, and has recently extended into the realm of health and medical scholarship and practice; a growing number of health researchers, professionals and patients have turned to comics and graphic novels to understand and communicate the complexity of health experiences (e.g., chast, 2014; dahl, 2009; donovan, 2014; fies, 2006; forney, 2012; leavitt, 2012; small, 2009). health-related graphic narratives, broadly described as graphic medicine, are receiving widespread scholarly attention because of the ways they mobilize images and other visual codes to convey the nuances and intricacies of health and medical experiences (cohn, 2014; groensteen, 2007; mccloud, 1994). graphic medicine manifesto, for instance, offers a comprehensive overview of the productive uses of comics in medical education and pedagogy, their relevance to personal accounts and experiences of illness and the deployment of comics as a strategy for social change (czerwiec et al., 2015) graphic narratives, trauma & social justice studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 225 cartoonist and physician ian williams, who coined the term “graphic medicine,” addresses the important visual contributions made by sequential art in representing illness when he argues that this “graphic medium facilitates a complex visual layering of subjective and objective experiences, bridging the gap between clinical facts and personal experiences” (williams, 2014, p. 64). he demonstrates how graphic narratives on health, or graphic pathographies, deploy visual elements to create nuanced and accessible explanations of health and medical issues that contest accounts characteristically produced by medical knowledge. relatedly, he argues that sequential art is an avenue through which individuals can claim representational control over their health and medical experiences. written as memoirs, graphic narratives enable a person who has experienced a challenging health issue to reflect on identity, and destabilize the ways in which illness comes to define one’s identity. williams (2015, p. 119) writes, “making autobiographical comics is a type of symbolic creativity that helps form identity – a way to reconstruct the world, placing fragments of testimony into meaningful narrative and physically reconstructing the damaged body.” williams contends that the act of representing the body is significant for people who are experiencing different forms of illness that manifest in different ways. he identifies three embodied expressions of illness that comics help to convey: manifest, concealed and invisible. manifest illnesses are clearly visible as scars and other physical signs on the body. concealed illnesses are not readily apparent to the casual observer. symptoms present occasionally, and often create psychological stress for the affected person. invisible illnesses, like mental illness, leave no physically discernible symptoms or signs on the surface of the body. like concealed and invisible illnesses, trauma produces psychological and physical symptoms that may not be readily apparent. to represent the complexity of concealed and invisible illnesses, graphic medicine authors must rely on a variety of graphic and textual strategies to make the illness and its effects apparent, including the narrative techniques of metaphor and exaggeration. authors likewise may emphasize imagery and physical space to convey a mood or the feeling of isolation. as we demonstrate below, in becoming unbecoming (2015) una successfully relies on these strategies to convey to the reader the complex and overwhelming experiences of trauma. representations of health experiences in sequential art contrast sharply with other visual media and technologies traditionally used by health professionals in medical practice and public health initiatives to depict health, illness and disease (ostherr, 2013; serlin, 2011). these techniques include imaging technologies like mammograms, sonograms and x-rays (weir, 2006; woliver, 2002), as well as health brochures and pamphlets produced for clinics and public health offices that depict a narrow understanding of health and medical experiences. in contrast to the visual representations mediated by medical practitioners, patient portrayals of health related issues in comics and courtney donovan & ebru ustundag studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 226 graphic narratives radically recast the narrative of health and disease. the most important change in the narrative concerns the ability of patients to selfrepresent the immediate, lived experience of health and illness (charon, 2008). the issue of self-representation has been central to the study and production of graphic medicine narratives (czerwiec et al., 2015), because many graphic narratives are written in autobiographical form. the opportunity to speak for oneself about personal health and medical experiences includes the ability to “communicate immediate visceral understanding” (green & myers, 2010, p. 574), which is more achievable using sequential art that extends representational repertoires beyond written text and words alone. the visual/textual interface creates a hybrid form amenable to portraying an author’s personal health story, including the complex processes and experiences that shape their body, history and memory. in the space of the graphic narrative, an author constructs knowledge of the self. when an individual represents their experience of a particular health issue, a proximate relationship between the author and reader is established. the author speaks directly to the reader about their intimate experiences. the absence of an intermediary in the relationship minimizes the potential that readers will misunderstand an author’s experience of a particular health issue, which is especially significant for concealed and invisible illnesses that may be poorly understood or go unrecognized, contributing to significant psychological and physical suffering. for a person experiencing mental illness, for instance, the ability to speak for oneself about health and medical concerns is a political act. in the space of a graphic narrative, individuals can address and disrupt normative yet misleading ideas about mental illness. autobiographical graphic medicine narratives allow individuals with firsthand experience to depathologize and reinterpret what it means to live with a particular illness, providing them a sense of agency and empowerment (myers, 2015). this is an important step towards realizing social justice by rendering these experiences socially intelligible and recognizable. for those experiencing illness, the ability to counter normative and pathologizing discourses of biomedicine using the tools of graphic medicine is significant. other social groups that are perpetually misrepresented or rendered invisible by dominant discourses, like those who have experienced trauma, may also find graphic narratives useful in challenging totalizing discourses. trauma does not always present in ways that fit clinical diagnoses, which creates confusion and potentially compromises the physical and mental health of the person who has experienced a traumatic event. the graphic medium can be used to disrupt such a narrow and totalizing biomedical framing. in the section that follows we elaborate on the ways in which trauma tends to be framed in legal and biomedical contexts. we then address existing approaches for responding to trauma, particularly in relation graphic narratives, trauma & social justice studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 227 to sexual assault, and the limitations of these approaches for achieving social recognition and justice. traumatic complexities and limitations to justice biomedicine identifies trauma as intense emotional reactions to catastrophic stressors, harms caused by something external to the individual. this understanding of trauma focuses on how individuals assimilate different forms of injury or harm caused by external stressors, and how emotional and behavioral outcomes take shape following a traumatic incident. it also frames trauma as reactions that individuals have in the aftermath of situations believed to be beyond the realm of normal human experience (scaer, 2007; van der kolk, 2014). symptoms of trauma include re-experiencing the original traumatic event(s) through flashbacks or nightmares, avoiding situations associated with the original trauma and experiencing heightened arousal after the traumatic event, such as hyper vigilance, anger and sleep difficulties. the legal system has difficulty recognizing the emotional and psychic manifestations of mental illnesses, some of which are rooted in trauma. personal injury litigation has operated on a strict definition of bodily harm, contending that bodily injury can only be claimed when physical manifestations of trauma are apparent on the body. shen (2013) discusses cases in which courts dismissed the emotional stress of trauma and ptsd because of the lack of visible bodily injury. this tendency to differentiate between physical and emotional harm and to insist on physical evidence can have significant consequences for victims. without legal recognition of emotional harm, victims may feel that they are culpable for their experiences. trauma studies scholars identify other limitations of biomedical and legal framings of trauma that negatively affect survivors (e.g., joseph, 2013). in medicine and law, trauma is approached primarily as an individual experience, ignoring the ways in which traumatic events often affect many people (cvetkovich, 2008; gilmore, 2011). the widespread and normalized nature of gender-based violence and sexual assault exemplify how women’s collective experience is often isolated into individualized traumatic events. trauma studies scholars maintain that this division between individual and collective experience renders invisible the structural conditions and social events that give rise to collectively experienced violent acts. feminist arguments about rape culture aim to connect individual and collective experiences of sexual violence, which helps to minimize survivors’ feelings of shame and guilt. graphic narratives, such as maus (spiegelman, 1986), lighter than my shadow (green, 2013), a child’s life (gloeckner, 2000), and the courage to be me (burrowes, 2014), have been at the forefront of linking individual and collective trauma as outcomes of broader social conditions and events (caruth, 1996; craps, 2013). courtney donovan & ebru ustundag studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 228 legal understandings of trauma are limited beyond their definitions of trauma, bodily harm and victims. for example, trauma cases often do not make it to court, due in part to problematic processes related to reporting and investigating claims, which exacerbates the harm experienced by trauma survivors. a recent report on sexual assaults found that 79% of investigated cases did not end up in courts in canada (rizvic, 2018). ywca canada claims that 460,000 sexual assaults occur in canada every year, but very few of these crimes are engaged by the criminal justice system (johnson, 2012). their data show that of every 1,000 sexual assaults, 33 are reported to the police, 29 are recorded as a crime, 12 have charges presented, six are prosecuted, three lead to conviction and 997 assailants walk free. the personal shame of experiencing assault can explain why so many women do not make initial reports. this hesitancy is exacerbated by low conviction rates in cases that are reported. underreporting has significant ramifications for the social recognition of victims and their access to social, health and legal services, including compensations, funded-counseling and other healthcare services (craig, 2018). when cases do end up in courtrooms, sexual assault prosecutions rely on written and oral testimonies as evidence, which are often inadequate tools for conveying the complexity of trauma (buelens, durant & eaglestone, 2014; caruth, 1996; craps, 2013; lacapra, 2014). craig (2018) contends that when survivors of sexual assault bring claims to the legal system, they are required to construct victim impact statements, an extremely limited opportunity to describe their experiences. therefore, miller (2013) and balfour, du mont and white (2018) argue that victim impact statements frustrate procedural fairness, contribute to post traumatic distress, aggravate emotional distresses like shame and self-blame, silence survivors and render their experiences socially unreadable (craig, 2018). survivors consequently experience going to trial as an additionally abusive, humiliating and discriminatory trauma. this situation is especially traumatic for women with mental disabilities (benedt & grant, 2007), and racialized and indigenous women (razack, 2002). in the next section, we address how graphic narratives can overcome some of these legal limitations, with a particular focus on the incommunicability of trauma via written text. we analyze una’s becoming unbecoming (2015) to illustrate these claims. like other graphic narratives on trauma, it demonstrates that a combination of visual and textual narrative provides a more robust hybrid platform for documenting, describing and recognizing the experience of trauma as a foundation for claims to social justice. witnessing and embodiment in graphic narratives comics scholar hillary chute (2010, p. 2) claims that “today’s most riveting feminist cultural production is the form of accessible yet edgy graphic graphic narratives, trauma & social justice studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 229 narratives,” including persepolis (satrapi, 2007), fun home (bechdel, 2007) and hark! a vagrant (beaton, 2011). these graphic narratives compellingly communicate and make sense of the challenges women face in relation to traumatic experiences. questions concerning the body and embodiment are at the heart of these autobiographic narratives on trauma. women artists suggest the graphic form is productive because it helps to capture the nuances of an embodied experience that are often invisible and hard to articulate through words alone. una, an anonymous yorkshire author, is especially sensitive to the invisibility of traumatic experience. her graphic memoir becoming unbecoming (2015) explores her story as a victim of several sexual assaults in the 1970s. una positions her story in relation to the contemporaneous search for the yorkshire ripper, a serial killer who murdered 13 local women and attempted to murder seven more. by interweaving these stories, una considers her own embodied experience of trauma in the larger social context of gendered violence, demonstrating the link between her own painful experiences and those of other sexual assault victims. becoming unbecoming, therefore, troubles the dominant distinction made between individual and collective experiences of trauma. figure 1. (source: una, 2015, p. 7) a critical focus of becoming unbecoming is rendering accessible the confusion and pain of trauma, and the effects of experiences of sexual assault on a victim’s sense of self and personal development from an early age. on the very first page, una presents a haunting graphic of her younger self carrying a heavy, empty speech balloon over her shoulder as she climbs a steep hill (figure 1). the absence of words in the balloon foreshadows the cumulative effects of unspoken trauma, the victim-blaming culture that is courtney donovan & ebru ustundag studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 230 associated with it and the possibilities of justice that are never realized. the emptiness of the speech balloon conveys both the personal and social silences related to trauma. revisiting her early childhood later in the book, una acknowledges how these isolating experiences affect many young girls: “too many girls have to fight in silence” (2015, p. 169). una’s body is another prominent feature in this opening illustration, which ties her experiences of sexual assault as a youth to the murders and attempted murders of other women in yorkshire. she depicts her small frame moving slowly through the pages of her narrative, constantly encumbered with the weighty word balloon. she struggles forward, through her assaults and a wider world of sexual violence. her body bows down under the weight of repeated personal and systemic gendered injustices. una relies on the graphic medium to articulate how these injustices contrast to positive experiences in her youth. she references the pop culture and music that figured prominently in everyday life in 1970s yorkshire, specifically the artists that inspired her to learn to play the guitar. however, by identifying it as “a strange musical era” (2015, p. 11), she references the climate of sexism that informed her favorite rock music and television programs like top of the pops, in which male stars performed music while scantily clad, buxom women silently smiled and posed in the background. una conveys the sense of confusion she feels as she comes to understand this sexism and gendered expectations for women. although one of her favorite musicians advocated for her to walk tall with confidence, her own experiences suggested she should instead “lower my gaze” (2015, p. 14). pop culture may have presented a world of possibilities, but una realizes the limitations society placed on her as a girl. figure 2. (source: una, 2015, p. 1) graphic narratives, trauma & social justice studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 231 throughout the narrative, una stresses that her experience is not unique. she acknowledges that no female is truly “safe,” regardless of whether or not she is a “good girl,” and that rape culture leads to profound physical and emotional trauma, changing a person permanently. she achieves the latter by showing herself going through a full metamorphosis. in two illustrations, she has an insect’s body, which contrasts sharply with earlier representations of her youthful self, innocently playing with paper doll cutouts. figure 2, for instance, depicts una transformed into a hybrid human-insect, with antennae and translucent wings that help her navigate a world that continually alters her. repeated visual depictions of personal metamorphosis capture invisibilized traumatic experiences that leave a lasting effect, and may be difficult to articulate in words. figure 3. (source: una, 2015, pp. 34-35) una is able to speak directly to readers of the complex reality of her experiences and perspectives, implicating them in the narrative (squier, 2015). the lack of an interpretive intermediary positions the reader as a confidante and witness to unfiltered events and the emotions they invoke. una skillfully draws the reader into the pain and confusion experienced by her younger self. for instance, in a two-page spread she recalls her earliest experiences with sexual assault (figure 3). the first page depicts a young courtney donovan & ebru ustundag studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 232 una seated in profile as if observing the page that follows, her arms folded, leaning against a small opaque tree. she is seated on what appears to be a small hill, many times smaller than the steep one shown on the first page of the book. the small hill represents struggles that are not yet insurmountable. she is at the starting point of her struggles, which become larger over time. words follow the contours of the hill, una’s body and the tree, communicating the thoughts running through her mind prior to the assault: “i hadn’t really understood the situation” (2015, p. 34). on the opposing page, una depicts two scenes, moments before the assaults occur. in one scene we see young una about to walk alone into a field with an older boy. she recalls that he said he wouldn’t hurt her. in the other, una and her childhood friend sit smiling under a canopy of trees that is fashioned into a den. a sign announces “the den. keep out,” but it will offer no protection from two older boys who are approaching. both scenes emphasize her naivety and youth. readers are witnesses to una’s apprehension and anxiety about events that will leave a lasting effect on her sense of self. adjacent to the second scene, una recalls how one of the boys was able to get her trust and separate her from her friend. she confides, “i’m sure the same thing happened to my den-making friend, though we never spoke of it” (2015, p. 35). here, she references the ways in which trauma creates an isolating effect that frustrates women’s ability to share their experiences, even with those close to them. figure 4. (source: una, 2015, p. 120) graphic narratives, trauma & social justice studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 233 una suggests that the struggle to articulate experiences of trauma extends beyond interpersonal relationships to the ways in which administrative and legal systems deal with trauma. she notes that even when assault is brought to court, justice does not necessarily take place. she specifically asks, “where is justice?” (2015, p. 120), criticizing the lack of legal interventions into acts of violence against women (figure 4). her critique addresses more than the justice system’s failure to redress harms: “we can’t blame the justice system for the things it thinks and does, if it just thinks and does the same things as everyone else” (2015 p. 165). figure 5. (source: una, 2015, p. 165) courtney donovan & ebru ustundag studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 234 in figure 5, una points to the systemic failure of many institutions to respond to instances of trauma. below a group of policemen and barristers, she draws a reporter writing feverishly at a computer, alongside news cameramen that surround an attorney who is giving a briefing. she depicts the disparate individuals and institutions that are complicit in perpetuating the inequities of the justice system, and identifies how they are shaped by the same society that perpetuates sexism: “the words and images we use are all a part of the same landscape” (2015, p. 165). lawyers, police, the courts and popular media cannot impart justice when they convey to women that they must be passive, modest objects. una highlights the impossible feat women like her face in responding to this message and changing the culture of shame. she depicts this impossibility using a scale, one side weighed down by the word “slut,” the other holding una, slumped over, her wings bent down. justice has not been served; she is defeated. una’s narrative provides many visually stimulating yet heartbreaking depictions of her daily struggles living in the aftermath of sexual violence. we have drawn on only a small selection of them to support our arguments. our goal in analyzing them is to demonstrate how graphic narratives are a unique hybrid narrative form that relies on both visual imagery and text to convey the complexities of trauma and the opportunities to achieve justice for victims of trauma. conclusion becoming unbecoming (2015) offers a starting point for considering the ways in which graphic narratives can be utilized as visual methodologies that represent the complexity of trauma and traumatic experiences. it demonstrates how the hybrid form of written text and visual imagery can convey complex aspects of trauma that escape the conventions of biomedicine and law. graphic narratives are especially compelling as alternatives to text-based representations of testimony. they present opportunities for a more complicated understanding of trauma, which in turn enhances possibilities for achieving social intelligibility, recognition and justice for survivors. una’s work also demonstrates the ways in which explanations of trauma can extend beyond the limits of biomedical and institutional frameworks. graphic representations of trauma provide a space for articulating the ways in which individual and collective experiences of violence and repression are interconnected, and for the self-representation of those experiences, which helps to avoid the simplification of trauma to fit into existing institutional practices (giddens, 2015; gomez romero & dahlman, 2012), and to convey experiences, sensations and perceptions, like confusion and isolation, that are difficult to describe and perceive. she effectively uses the format of the graphic narrative to emphasize the centrality of the body to collective and graphic narratives, trauma & social justice studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 221-237, 2017 235 individual instances of trauma, and the structural conditions and social events that link individual experiences of sexual assault to prevailing conditions of sexism and widespread violence against women that produce collective experiences of trauma. becoming unbecoming also calls attention to the limits of the legal system in helping survivors achieve justice. legal systems are constrained by dominant evidentiary, reporting and investigating practices and moral binaries that are employed to understand and evaluate events like sexual assault. it also is restricted by its reliance on broader sociopolitical framings of gender and gender expectations to understand and adjudicate acts of sexual violence. justice cannot be achieved for trauma survivors when these limitations accrue to render traumatic experiences socially unreadable and unrecognizable. una’s work demonstrates the potential of graphic narrative as a space through which individuals may counter institutionalized approaches that present a barrier to achieving justice. in contrast to legal and clinical approaches to trauma that focus solely on textual testimony and therefore limit insight into the complex, multifaceted nature and experience of trauma, una’s effective combination of visual and textual representation provides a platform for communicating more complex and inter-relational understandings of trauma than is possible with through text alone, offering social justice possibilities beyond legal and clinical institutions, and shifting the institutional emphasis away from physical, valid and measurable “proof” of trauma to one of social recognition and justice at various social scales. acknowledgements we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback, as well as nancy cook for her generous and insightful editorial support. we would also like to thank una for permission to reproduce images from becoming unbecoming. we presented an earlier version of this paper at the 2017 graphic medicine conference in seattle, and would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to that community for their constructive feedback on our work. references beaton, k. 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(2002). the political geographies of pregnancy. champaign., il: university of illinois press. chamany final dec 12 16.pages volume 10, issue 2, 352-362, 2016 dispatch critical pedagogy: stem cell research as it relates to bodies, labor and care katayoun chamany the new school, usa as biomedical research has come to depend on human bodies, tissues, and cells, students pursuing life science education need to navigate ethical issues associated with biospecimen collection. these biological resources are valued differently depending on characteristics such as race, class, and gender. for instance, people with unique biological or physical characteristics can provide cord blood in exchange for educational scholarships or housing subsidies. in egg-sharing schemes the “donation” of a portion of one’s human eggs to human embryonic stem cell research can result in reduced costs of assisted reproductive services (dickenson & idiakez, 2008). as a consequence of these public contributions of biospecimens, a delicate relationship between the public and private sector is evolving, raising questions about ownership, compensation, access, and privacy. additionally, as genetic factors influence the value of these biospecimens, they also pose concerns about eugenics (klitzman & sauer, 2015). to address this changing landscape, an interdisciplinary team of scholars and activists embarked on a curriculum development project to promote scientific innovation and socially just practices. the product of this effort is stem cells across the curriculum (scac, n.d.), an open access educational resource that highlights the transactional nature of life science research by integrating the biological and social dimensions using a social justice framework.1 1 stem cells across the curriculum (scac) may be accessed at www.stemcellcurriculum.org. to view scac modules select “curriculum and cases.” to view artwork, infographics or presentations select “media and infographics.” specific urls for web materials are provided in the reference list. correspondence address: katayoun chamany, chair and mohn professor of interdisciplinary sciences, department of natural sciences and mathematics, eugene lang college of liberal arts, the new school, 65 west 11th street, new york, ny, 10011, usa; email: chamanyk@newschool.edu issn: 1911-4788 http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org stem cell research as it relates to bodies, labor & care 353 teaching biology in context two decades have passed since critics first challenged the pedagogy associated with science education. in 1990, sheila tobias demonstrated that scientific content devoid of interdisciplinary connections is lost on science non-majors who fail to see the relevance in their daily lives (tobias, 1990). at around the same time, two educators and social activists, paulo freire and myles horton, discussed the problems associated with decontextualized science learning. in we make the road by walking: conversations on education and social change they conclude that teaching biology without any social context is a fallacy (horton & freire, 1990). today, the intersection of reproductive and regenerative biotechnologies creates an opportunity for bringing social context to the fore (ikemoto, 2009). educators can teach basic biological principles and concepts through topics such as in vitro fertilization, embryo screening, and cell transplant therapies. in a traditional undergraduate curriculum these topics would span a series of courses only accessible to the life science major, and rarely address issues of procedural or distributive justice. this approach widens the gap between the scientifically literate and illiterate, and reifies the exclusionary nature of science. conversely, by hanging these topics onto the central theme of human development, all students are able to see science as central to the challenges that emerge during everyday life including life course events such as reproduction, disease, and aging. because the material is relevant and familiar, students’ confidence builds, allowing them to critically think about how life science research is conducted and in which direction the field should go. using a contextualized approach gives students the permission to pose questions regarding scientific investigation, thereby dispelling the misconceptions that science is about remembering facts, obtaining the “right answers,” and remaining separated from the general public. rather, by viewing science as an evolving process that is not only informed by scientists, but other members of society, they receive a more authentic learning experience. by dismantling the exceptional status of science as authority, students are better able to demythologize experts, recognize whose expertise and which voices are missing from the conversation, and become more comfortable with ambiguity. with this approach, students learn that paradigm shifts can prove challenging, and that sometimes the answers to complex problems involve multiple disciplines and methods. moreover, because biomedical research requires new forms of experimentation and technological development, issues of distributive and procedural justice become more relevant in this context. studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 352-362, 2016 354 katayoun chamany development of stem cells across the curriculum the development of the stem cells across the curriculum (scac) curriculum was informed by learning theories that underpin case-based teaching and learning, critical pedagogy, and infographic thinking. we intentionally designed flexible modules that could be used on their own, or in combination, in academic programs spanning biology, ethics, gender, race, and disability studies. the modules contain teaching notes and alternative implementation strategies that support customization, allowing instructors to dial the level up or down, depending on their course and student body. thus, this collection of modules supports the development of socially responsible scientists as well as non-scientists capable of making informed decisions regarding science and health policy. because of this civic component, new york state stem cell science (nystem) and new school university financially supported the development and dissemination of the project. by involving faculty steeped in the biological, ethical, political, and social dimensions of stem cell research (scr) we were able to unpack complex problems and develop curricular resources that do not allow a segregation of the biological from the social. our team consisted of six faculty members from new school university, one bioethics scholar from yeshiva university, and one learning sciences scholar from georgia tech university. no two faculty members were in the same discipline, though some collaborators had overlapping interests related to scr and its social dimensions. for instance, three of the faculty members were feminist scholars whose work spanned health psychology, literature, and philosophy. two faculty members were drawn from the humanities, literature, and religious studies, and four worked in more applied fields such as clinical psychology, health policy, bioethics, and communication design. with respect to social justice teaching, scholarship, and activism, four were active members in community engagement, government appointed committees, and/or grass roots scholarly groups focused on controversial issues regarding biopolitics and emerging biological and reproductive technologies at the local, national, and international level. all were actively teaching in the classroom. the student researchers were treated as junior scholars and had similar dimensional profiles. social justice framing as a first step in developing our project, we used a social justice framework to reorganize topics related to scr that we found disaggregated across courses offered by the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. topics such as committee composition, recruitment of research participants, funding schemes, informed consent, and clinical trials were organized under the heading of procedural justice, encouraging students to ask: who gets to studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 352-362, 2016 http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org stem cell research as it relates to bodies, labor & care 355 participate and direct scr, whether as a policy maker, scientist, tissue donor, or human research subject? topics such as public and private biobanking, registries and licenses, patents and commercialization, and disability discrimination were organized under the heading of distributive justice. this latter category collectively addresses access to the knowledge and products generated by the scr field and the potential marginalization of social models of health at the expense of investment in the biomedical approach to address disease and disability (see figure 1). figure 1. using a social justice framework to make biology relevant. topics related to stem cell research are deliberately organized to consider issues of procedural and distributive justice. having reorganized the content of the curriculum to encourage active questioning, we turned our attention to pedagogy. specifically because life science courses are known to be content heavy, lecture-based, and focused on defining terms and explaining processes, we explored student-centered learning approaches that encourage students to take risks, challenge the status quo, and develop higher order thinking skills. many of our teaching and learning materials reflect paulo freire’s model of pedagogy of the oppressed (freire, 1970). the learning activities meet students where they are and honor learners’ prior life experience, skills, and knowledge. this social justice framing in content and pedagogy is integrated throughout the project, and can be recognized in: 1) the list of learning resources; 2) information designs that present counter narratives; 3) assignments that incorporate multiple points of view; 4) assessments that cater to multiple intelligences; and 5) the diverse range of stakeholders represented in our materials. our approach is intended to attract and maintain the interest of students who may not always see how science plays a role in their lives and communities (harding, 1998). studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 352-362, 2016 356 katayoun chamany as concrete examples of the ways in which scac uses a social justice framework, we can look to the curricular modules and consider not only the selection of topics but resources that support social justice frameworks in these contexts. although many campuses have adopted the book the immortal life of henrietta lacks by rebecca skloot (2010), a critical pedagogy would caution against using this book as a singular anchor (kumar, 2012). though it provides a rich narrative for teaching the history of tissue culture and human subjects research, both of which are essential components of scr, it tells only one narrative, and more importantly, that of an outsider. our approach in the hela cells & hpv genes: immortality & cancer module incorporates resources that offer alternative narratives, providing a more diverse view of the events associated with establishing the first human cancerous cell line. we couple this text to research articles authored by anthropologists and sociologists who tie this story to those who have been historically marginalized by science and to artwork (see scac, n.d.: artworks) that presents counter narratives (javitt, 2013; landecker, 1999; weasel, 2004). for this reason we also recommend the inclusion of ruha benjamin’s book people’s science as it analyzes government investment in scr using perspectives from gender, race, and disability studies, to imagine ways that we can simultaneously invest in science and social equity (benjamin, 2013). similarly, the debates surrounding allocation of public health resources towards a social or biomedical approach to health is deeply analyzed in the disease, disability & immortality: hope & hype module. the voices of those that live with disability are brought forward as a way to broaden students’ views on advances made in the name of “cure” (shakespeare & watson, 2002). the goal of cure is further analyzed within the context of a growing number of companies purporting to cure individuals of a variety of neurodegenerative and genetic diseases with no data to support these claims. students view popular media, research articles, and activist actions that address the challenges associated with therapeutic misconception. a closer look at stem cells, accessible from the international society for stem cell research’s website, provides students with an example of socially responsible science put forth by a professional society (see isscr, n.d.). in line with our choice of resources, our learning activities also promote alternative interpretations of topics or terms that are often assumed to be value-neutral or commonly understood. in two modules, hela cells & hpv genes: immortality & cancer and disease, disability & immortality: hope & hype, we revisit the definition of “health,” and in the eggs & blood: gifts & commodities and stem cell & policy: values & religion modules we reflect on the definitions of words like “religion,” “sacred,” “secular,” and “dignity.” in these activities students begin to learn that though we speak the same language, these terms hold very different cadence for each individual. similarly, in the eggs & blood: gifts & commodities module we are careful to avoid gendered language, and opt to use phrases such as “individuals who studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 352-362, 2016 http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/hela-cells-hpv-genes-immortality-cancer.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/artworks.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/disease-disability-immortality-hope-hype.html http://www.closerlookatstemcells.org http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/hela-cells-hpv-genes-immortality-cancer.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/disease-disability-immortality-hope-hype.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/eggs-and-blood.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/stem-cells-policy-values-and-religion.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/eggs-and-blood.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/hela-cells-hpv-genes-immortality-cancer.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/artworks.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/disease-disability-immortality-hope-hype.html http://www.closerlookatstemcells.org http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/hela-cells-hpv-genes-immortality-cancer.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/disease-disability-immortality-hope-hype.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/eggs-and-blood.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/stem-cells-policy-values-and-religion.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/eggs-and-blood.html stem cell research as it relates to bodies, labor & care 357 provide eggs.” our decision is based on the fact that not everyone who can produce eggs identifies as female, and because some ovarian stem cell research was conducted on individuals seeking sex-reassignment surgery. by dedicating time to explore how language and differently lived experience place value on our practices and beliefs, scac questions our assumed shared values and creates space for open dialogue and acknowledgment of different points of view. because scac incorporates issues of social justice using student-centered learning activities, it demonstrates how diverse populations must negotiate differences in ways that move toward inclusiveness. because we are moving through a variety of topics and drawing on the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, we turned to infographic thinking to integrate all of these perspectives (pavlus, 2012). we chose to focus on the nature of different stem cell sources in our radial infographic as this is one of the most contentious issues in scr, raising several social justice issues. we were intentional in having our design address the movement of cells across space and time as they transit from bodies, to labs, to clinics and markets. our sources of stem cells radial infographic (see scac, n.d.) contains 55 hyperlinks to multimedia spanning blogs, artwork, film, news, and research articles in an effort to promote integrated learning. thus, this infographic empowers learners to explore the linked resources based on their interests and familiarity and encourages movement into novel areas by catering to what cognitive science research has revealed as multiple intelligences (kinesthetic, textual, visual, auditory, tactile) (northern illinois university). critical case pedagogy to provide a more contextualized view of scr and to help students develop mental schemas necessary for understanding and later retrieval of content, we felt it was important to provide a thematic focus to the curriculum in the form of case study modules. case-based learning (cbl) in the sciences has become a popular approach to interdisciplinarity because the story of the case requires students to view science through a wider, more humanistic lens. a case is “an account of real events that seems to include enough intriguing decision points and provocative undercurrents to make a discussion group want to think and argue about them” (barnes, christensen, & hansen, 2000). using case studies in the classroom has a long tradition in higher education, especially in the areas of medicine, business, and law, and was originally pioneered in the kennedy school for government and public policy. the premise of cbl is that the cognitive conflict offered by complex real world problems stimulates learning and initiates inquiry and collaboration by students. moreover, case studies that incorporate a role-play format support constructivist learning in which students are responsible for building their knowledge base collectively and collaboratively. to that end, the selection of studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 352-362, 2016 https://www.fastcodesign.com/1668987/why-infographic-thinking-is-the-future-not-a-fad http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/infographics.html http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html https://www.fastcodesign.com/1668987/why-infographic-thinking-is-the-future-not-a-fad http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/infographics.html http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html 358 katayoun chamany real-world characters in the scac case studies are intentional and deliberate, representing diverse members of society with respect to values, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, and ability. the use of cbl has been bolstered by research in cognitive neuroscience, which reveals how story telling and narratives improve learning retention as they help individuals make sense of the world. by crafting a story that includes diverse points of view and a range of different lived experiences, students are presented with opportunities to embody the lives of those that they may never encounter in their every day life, offering them a chance to develop a broader worldview. in general, cbl has advantages for underrepresented minority students and those who may not learn best through lecture and textbook readings. indeed, cbl has been considered a promising teaching approach to help overcome the barriers that are rooted in cultural and preparatory differences, especially if combined with intergroup dialogue (igd). additionally, creating “brave spaces” where conflicting viewpoints are discussed with civility, and individuals are not permitted to opt out of discussion by “agreeing to disagree,” promotes learning for personal and social responsibility towards social justice (arao & clemens, 2013). each scac case module reviews basics biological principles and ethical, legal, and social dimensions as can be seen at the table found on the scac website (scac, n.d.: about the modules). each case module can be used on its own, or in combination, and all cases emphasize the value of counter narratives that challenge the “dominant” narrative. by seeing the case study from different vantage points, students recognize that depending on one’s context, the “dominant” narrative varies. they identify areas of conflict among stakeholders who hold different values and use ethical reasoning to propose policies that promote scientific innovation and socially responsible practices. collectively, the case modules move from the history of tissue culture research, to the identification and isolation of embryonic stem cells, to the identification and manipulation of adult cells to enhance cell plasticity, to policies regarding cloning, embryo creation and destruction, biospecimen and egg provider compensation, and biobanking in the public and private sectors. within the case modules are stories that present an opportunity for roleplay. here, students are asked to adopt a role and engage in a simulated dialogue based on one that took place among researchers, activists, and policy makers at a real-world conference session or symposium. we were deliberate in emphasizing dialogue, as we found that students often stop listening to each other during debates (nagda, gurin, rodriguez, & maxwell, 2008). when students are more concerned about winning the debate they are unwilling to negotiate compromise, or amend their position, shifts that can only come from gaining a broader understanding of an opposing position. our emphasis on dialogue allows students to grapple with the full complexity of a case analysis and an opportunity to experience shades of grey. we offer studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 352-362, 2016 http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/about-modules.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/about-modules.html http://www.lwsd.org/sitecollectiondocuments/about-us/study-sessions/2015.06.22/comparing-debate-discussion-and-dialogue.pdf http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/about-modules.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/about-modules.html http://www.lwsd.org/sitecollectiondocuments/about-us/study-sessions/2015.06.22/comparing-debate-discussion-and-dialogue.pdf stem cell research as it relates to bodies, labor & care 359 students a more authentic learning experience by crafting a case narrative that involves real people and events negotiating complex issues for which there are no easy answers. an example of applying a critical pedagogy to cbl can be seen in the eggs & blood: gifts & commodities module where various views on egg provision for embryonic scr are presented in an effort to craft a policy proposal regarding compensation. some stakeholders argue that autonomy to participate in egg provision is critical if gender equity is to be realized, while others raise concerns about the nature of “choice” given the lack of information on longterm health risks, existing economic inequities, and the lack of genetic diversity in existing stem cell lines (roberts & throsby, 2008; roxland, 2012). this module is a good example of how we refrain from considering the non-biological aspects of scr as simply downstream issues. it is not only the implications of scr that engage the ethical, legal and political, but rather the very nature of conducting the research in the first place. if the cell lines are not diverse, then fewer people will be able to use products from this research. yet, by expanding who can provide eggs for escr we may intentionally exploit vulnerable populations. in this module, we have juxtaposed the biological and technical processes involved in egg provision and egg procurement with discussions regarding: 1) compensation; 2) equity and access to medical research and treatments; 3) health risks for young oocyte providers; 4) informed consent; and 5) the role of regulatory bodies such as the human fertilisation and embryo authority, institutional review boards, and new ethical oversight committees such as embryonic stem cell oversight committees and the most recently proposed embryo research oversight committee (emanuel & menikoff, 2011; isscr, 2016). future directions components of scac have been used in multiple institutions and programs including general education, bioethics, and biology courses at san francisco state university, a minority serving institution; bioethics and reproductive biology course at vassar college; an anthropology course at fordham university; and multiple courses at the new school including a summer program serving students from under resourced backgrounds and a university lecture course (see presentations on the scac website). scac was also selected as a model sencer course (science education for new civic engagements and responsibilities) (ncsce, 2016). these models are chosen based on their ability to engage students with complex issues that require a rigorous understanding of basic scientific principles and methodologies, connect to issues of civic importance, and provide instructors with appropriate teaching and learning resources that address clear learning outcomes (see sencer, 2015) studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 352-362, 2016 http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/eggs-and-blood.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/presentations.html http://www.sencer.net/resources/models.cfm http://www.sencer.net/resources/models.cfm http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/eggs-and-blood.html http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/presentations.html http://www.sencer.net/resources/models.cfm http://www.sencer.net/resources/models.cfm 360 katayoun chamany we are presently analyzing student learning outcomes data from the course implementations of scac. initial directed content analysis of student policy proposals and exams have revealed that we were able to achieve many of our goals. one such goal was broadening students’ views of the ethical issues associated with scr. at the start of each course we ask students to reflect on this and, not surprisingly, they are able to describe the debates surrounding the moral status of the embryos that may be terminated for embryonic scr. at the completion of a course in which scac was implemented students are able to read case studies and move beyond this singular ethical issue, providing detailed and nuanced descriptions. their responses speak to issues of economic and health equity, care versus cure dichotomies, vulnerable populations, just participant selection in clinical trials, compensation for biospecimens, and access to downstream medical therapies. case study assignments reveal that students are developing ethical reasoning skills as described by educational psychologist william perry. the progression of assignments track their development from dualistic thinking to more relativistic thinking, with many able to provide an evidence-based argument to put forth a committed position on a specific scr-related policy (see the perry network, n.d.). we have begun to map students’ comments regarding their own learning in response to the curriculum design and intended learning outcomes. these include: 1) an appreciation for an interactive infographic that allows for the navigation of large amounts of information with ease; 2) a recognition that people need to draw on biology to inform their decisions regarding scr; and 3) a tolerance for multiple points of view. we will continue this mapping project and plan to publish our results in future publications focused on life science and interdisciplinary education. the curriculum is freely available and we intend to refine our materials based on these data and user feedback. as research on stem cells, climate change, data science, and nanotechnology expands, we will need to address the ethical, legal, and social dimensions in ways that bring the complexity of these fields to the fore. educational resources that can integrate the scientific and social dimensions provide students with opportunities to develop the skills necessary for interdisciplinary exploration and problem solving. the cases studies found on the data & society research institute (n.d.) and the u.s. based national center for case study teaching in science (nccsts, n.d.) sites are a step in that direction. case studies that bring the voices of the marginalized to the center highlight the need for a responsive justice approach dependent on interdisciplinary learning. stem cells across the curriculum and the enduring legacies case collection developed by evergreen college extend standard case-based teaching and learning to issues of social justice (see enduring legacies, n.d.), but more efforts like these are needed if we are to meet the challenges of twenty-first century education. studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 352-362, 2016 http://perrynetwork.org/?page_id=6 https://datasociety.net/ http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/ http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/presentations.html http://nativecases.evergreen.edu/collection/ http://perrynetwork.org/?page_id=6 https://datasociety.net/ http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/ http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/presentations.html http://nativecases.evergreen.edu/collection/ stem cell research as it relates to bodies, labor & care 361 acknowledgements the author would like to acknowledge lianna schwartz-orbach, alexa riggs, and nancy pokrywka for their review of this manuscript. references arao, b., & clemens, k. 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(n.d.). stem cells & policy: values & religion. retrieved from the stem cells across the curriculum website: http://www.stemcellcurriculum.org/stem-cells-policy-values-andreligion.html sencer (science education for new civic engagements and responsibilities). (2015). the sencer model series. retrieved from http://www.sencer.net/resources/models.cfm tobias, s. (1990). they're not dumb, they're different: stalking the second tier. tucson, az: research corporation. weasel, l. (2004). feminist intersections in science: race, gender and sexuality through the microscope. hypatia, 19(1), 183-193. studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 352-362, 2016 coburn final correspondence address: elaine coburn, centre of feminist research, york university, toronto, on, m4n 3m6; email: ecoburn@glendon.yorku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 “theorizing our place”: indigenous women’s scholarship from 1985-2020 and the emerging dialogue with anti-racist feminisms elaine coburn york university, canada abstract in this article, i review contemporary indigenous women’s scholarship, describing transformations from 1985 to the present, first to characterize this scholarship on its own terms and second to situate this literature with respect to recent, nascent dialogues with anti-racist feminisms. what is the focus and range of indigenous women’s scholarship, from 1985 until today? what does this work seek to do, that is, what are the intertwined political and scholarly aims of this scholarship? i suggest that indigenous women’s scholarly writing is concerned with resilience, or survival, resistance or challenges to colonial power and relationships, and resurgence, or a turning-inward to renew indigenous knowledges and practices. in the discussion, i briefly consider how the increasingly rich and diverse field of indigenous women’s theorizing and praxis informs an emerging dialogue with anti-racist feminist scholars within the academy and in the broader context of colonial canada. keywords anti-racist feminisms; indigenous epistemologies; indigenous feminisms; resistance; resurgence “how can we theorize our “place,” when the place itself is stolen?” (razack, smith & thobani, 2010, p. 2) to answer that question, posed by three prominent anti-racist feminists, demands engagement with indigenous perspectives. towards those ends, i review contemporary indigenous women’s scholarship from 1985 to the present, exploring the following questions: • what is the focus and range of indigenous women’s scholarship, from 1985 until today? • what does this scholarship seek to do, politically and analytically? elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 430 • what are the different ways that indigenous women’s scholarship has begun to enter into dialogue with anti-racist feminisms? i seek to highlight indigenous women’s scholarly voices in their diversity, contradictions and individuality, since, as larocque observes, “we were most assuredly ‘human,’ and how best to know this but by our uniqueness?” (2010, p. 155). in its diversity, i suggest that indigenous women’s social scientific writing is concerned with resilience, or survival, resistance or challenges to colonial power and relationships, and resurgence, or a turning-inward to renew indigenous knowledges and practices. 1 each emphasis suggests different forms of solidarity with anti-racist feminisms, and moments when such solidarities are complicated, in an unequal, racialized gendered colonial context that shapes relationships within and beyond the academy. after defining key concepts, i describe three successive, overlapping “waves” of indigenous women’s research, and conclude by discussing the emerging dialogue with anti-racist women scholars within the academy and in the broader context of colonial canada. colonialism and indigenous women’s scholarship: some definitions as green (2003) describes, “colonization is not only about the physical occupation of someone else’s land, but also about the appropriation of others’ political authority, cultural self-determination, economic capacity, and strategic location” (p. 52), for the benefit of the colonizer at the expense of the colonized. in canada, colonization began over five hundred years ago and persists into the present, as the colonial state appropriates and occupies indigenous lands. with some hard-fought exceptions – often gained through the juridical system, where the colonial state is at once party and judge – the colonial state presumes its political, legal and cultural authority over indigenous peoples, who may be consulted but who are nowhere accepted as fully self-determining polities, much less as having authority over colonial actors. indigenous people are “original settlers, in the sense of being a deeply rooted and settled indigenous presence on this land we now call canada” (larocque, 2010, p. 7). as métis scholar chris andersen describes (2014, p. 15), indigenous people have a precolonial presence, that is, presence prior to the formalization of the colonial state. in addition, they are subordinated across their traditional lands but nonetheless maintain a will to perpetuate and further develop their own ways of being, knowing and doing. today, across lands claimed by canada, there are more than one hundred different peoples, including the nuu-chah-nulth, métis, huron-wendat, cree, saulteaux and 1 i do not examine indigenous women’s creative writing. for a rich discussion of indigenous literature, much of it by indigenous women, see larocque (2010). “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 431 diverse inuit polities, among others. further, as lawrence and anderson (2003) describe, indigenous women’s experiences include “reserve residents and urban women, those with indian status and those without, those who identify as mixed-bloods, those who call themselves métis,2 and those who identify unequivocally as “indian,” (pp. 11-12). inequalities cross-cut these communities, along the axes of class (menzies, 2018, pp. 4-5; alook, hussey & hill, 2019), gender (green, 2017; suzack et al., 2011), sexuality (belcourt, 2016; a. wilson, 2008), disability (demas, 1993) and more. indigenous actors, like all human beings, are diverse and may be complicit in unjust inequalities, whether endogenous or exogenous to indigenous communities. indigenous scholarship, a recent subset of indigenous knowledges, is writing produced by indigenous academics in university press books and scholarly journals, intended mainly if not only for academic audiences (see also coburn, 2016). this does not exhaust indigenous knowledges, as these have developed, in a wide range of forms, over thousands of years, prior to and outside of the creation of universities (battiste, 1998). further, indigenous ways of knowing are transforming understandings of scholarship beyond this working definition (see, e.g., s. wilson’s (2008) research is ceremony). in this essay, i consider scholarly writing that cheryl suzack of the batchewana first nation describes as feminist, because it “analyses how gender injustice against indigenous women emerges from colonial policies and patriarchal practices that inscribe gendered power dynamics to the detriment of indigenous women” (2015, p. 261). suzack’s description might be augmented by cree/saulteaux scholar gina starblanket’s observation that (some) indigenous feminisms, further, “see[k] to shed light on indigenous women’s experiences of heteropatriarchal and colonial oppression” (2017, p. 21), challenging men’s power over women and the institutional suppression, marginalization and pathologizing of same-gender relationships by the heteronormative colonial state and within indigenous communities. as starblanket observes, the most liberatory indigenous feminisms support the “resurgence of ways of being that are free from heteronormative logics of empowerment” (2017, p. 21), including questioning land-based knowledge practices that limit women and men to relatively rigid roles in the name of tradition (2017, pp. 28-33). conceptualizing such approaches as feminist is contentious for some indigenous scholars who write about indigenous women and gendered power, but do not identify with feminism, seen as commensurate with white liberalism (for a helpful discussion see st denis, 2017, and monture-angus, 1995, below). finally, as a practical limit on this essay’s scope, i consider indigenous women’s scholarship within the canadian context. the aim is neither to reify 2 métis is sometimes used, problematically, to denote “mixed heritage” (gaudry & leroux, 2017). in this essay, i follow métis scholars jennifer adese (2016) and chris andersen (2014), among others, in emphasizing métis peoplehood as political belonging grounded in a distinct culture, historically rooted in the red river region. elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 432 colonial borders nor to elide common dynamics with australia, finland, new zealand, sweden, and other settler states. 3 rather, this recognizes the specificities of the colonial histories and present of the canadian political economy and culture, including within scholarly traditions. indigenous women’s scholarship: the colonial context and the academy the current context for indigenous women includes ongoing genocide against indigenous peoples through forcible dispossession of lands and access to waterways, deliberate starvation, intergenerational trauma from the separation of children from families in the residential school, and the sundering of kinship relationships through contemporary social welfare systems. this includes, too, the systemic underfunding of indigenous housing, education, and health, chronic lack of access to clean water in many indigenous communities, and the uninvestigated murders of indigenous women and girls (national inquiry into missing & murdered indigenous women & girls: supplementary volume on genocide, 2019). to write that the political and social context for indigenous feminism is hostile is therefore to badly understate the circumstances. ongoing unjust inequalities, not least systemic violence, translate into “a scarcity in emotional and material resources, both personal and collective” (larocque, 2010, p. 144). indigenous women are often in a reactive struggle for survival. in the academy, indigenous persons and knowledges are notable for their centuries-long absence. as cree and saulteaux scholar margaret kovach and her colleagues observe, “given that the first university in canada, laval university opened its doors in 1663 followed by the oldest english language university, the university of new brunswick in 1785, one could interpret the integration of an indigenous presence as constituting a short period of inclusion within a long history of exclusion” (kovach et al., 2015, p. 23). indeed, under an 1880 amendment to the indian act, status indians who obtained university degrees were forcibly enfranchised – they lost indian status, and, given the patriarchal provisions of the act, so did their wives and children. although in the 1970s, indigenous faculty began to enter the academy in greater numbers, today, indigenous persons remain radically underrepresented as faculty, where they make up less than 2% of the professoriate (canadian association of university teachers, 2018, p.2), compared to nearly five percent of the canadian population. 3 see mohawk intellectual audra simpson (2014) for a sustained challenge to the colonial border between the united states and canada. for indigenous feminist theorizing that attends to similarities across a range of settler states within a globalizing, colonial, capitalist, patriarchal system, see, among others, sámi scholar rauna kuokkanen (2008) and maori and scottish professor makere stewart-harawira (2005). “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 433 contemporary institutionalized divisions of intellectual labour further marginalize indigenous scholarship. hence, indigenous knowledges are “specialized,” meaningful within “native studies” but supposedly without relevance to whitestream, canonical knowledges. familiarity with indigenous scholarship is rarely a requirement outside of native studies, although that may be slowly changing as a consequence of the truth and reconciliation commission (but see gaudry & lorenz, 2018). further, and uncomfortably, indigenous women’s voices are often marginalized within indigenous scholarship. as green (2007b) bluntly observes, “in canada, since the 1970s, the academic literature has been strengthened by the emergence of a cadre of aboriginal intellectuals, most of whom were gender-blind or hostile to gendered analysis” (p. 14). if many indigenous women critically analyze the intersections of race, gender and colonialism from diverse political, cultural and individual perspectives, they do so against the grain of much colonial and indigenous scholarship and despite a broader patriarchal, colonial and genocidal context. finally, indigenous scholarship develops within an academic context in which anti-racist feminisms have been absented from whitestream canons (for a survey of anti-racist feminisms up to the 2000s, see dua, 1999, pp. 8-9, 17). nonetheless, in the 1980s, anti-racist feminisms made visible and critiqued the whiteness foundational to canadian society (dua, 1999, p. 14), including social construction of “women of colour” as others against naturalized white citizens (bannerji, 2000; carty & brand, 1993). anti-racist feminists, including sedef arat-koç, himani bannerji, tania das gupta and the late roxana ng, among others, described and analysed the concentration of racialized women in low-paying employment (dua, 1999, p. 14) within a socialist feminist political economy framework. black and african feminists in canadian universities describe and analyse resilience and diversity among francophone and anglophone women in the diaspora, from slavery through to today (e.g., mckittrick, 2006; mianda, 1997; wane, 2009). yet white women’s scholarship dominates feminist contributions (carty, 2014; henry, 2015). in this way, the academy (re)produces the insights of “women of colour” – those women principally responsible for developing anti-racist feminisms – as marginal, rooted in their racialized, gendered and classed marginalization within the canadian political economy, as a whole, and within the university, specifically (dua, 1999, p. 19; henry et al., 2017). in short, both indigenous faculty and faculty racialized as “women of colour” are underrepresented, their scholarship marginalized. if this means there are shared reasons to challenge the whitestream status quo, this dialogue has to be actively sought out and created outside of the ordinary academic (re)production of knowledge. as the late mohawk scholar patricia monture4 (monture-angus, 1995) observes, in a context in which white women and 4 patricia monture published as patricia monture, patricia monture-angus and patricia montureokanee. elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 434 men dominate the academic conversation, “we do not know what the differences are between a black woman’s experience and an indian woman’s experience because we have never had the chance to talk about it” (p. 23). this dialogue must be achieved with limited resources, further complicated because indigenous and racialized women scholars’ energies are diverted into coping with and combatting those everyday and institutional racisms they experience personally (monture-angus, 1995, ch. 1; cote-meek, 2014; henry et al., 2017, ch. 6 & 7). in the discussion below, i consider how this dialogue is nevertheless emerging. contemporary indigenous feminisms: resilience, resistance, and resurgence imperfectly and with some “slippage” across conceptual categories (dua, 1999, p. 10), indigenous women’s writing, since 1985, is concerned with indigenous women’s resilience, resistance and resurgence. resilience means struggles for survival despite the genocidal colonial context. borrowing from lawrence and anderson (2005), indigenous women’s resilience is “about how we are ‘still walking’ in spite of some of the abuses that we have endured” (p. 6). as gail guthrie valaskakis (chippewa), madeleine dion stout (kehewin first nation) and eric guimond (mi’kmaq) (2009b) describe, “‘resilience’ means getting along, getting through, and getting out of a difficult situation” (p. 2), an emphasis on indigenous women’s agency that deliberately counters dominant “deficit” narratives focussing on indigenous women’s victimhood. as cynthia c. wesley-esquimaux (chippewa of georgina island first nation) (2009, p. 28) observes: instead of telling only the stories about trauma and victimization and pain, let us talk about our survival and our undeniable strengths. it is essential for us to articulate the strengths that we have, not only in a way that validates our survival, but in a way that validates and “victorizes” our ability to take control of our lives and be, in spite of past pain and present dysfunction. indigenous feminisms insist on indigenous women’s agency, strength and survival despite the ongoing violence of colonial, patriarchal power. indigenous women’s decolonizing resistance means, further, “challenges to the undemocratic, sexist, unrepresentative and colonial impulses” that are part of normalized, institutionalized relations and discourses across colonial canada (green, 2017b, p. 173). for some, traditional knowledges and practices are a powerful source of resistance, rooted in matriarchal relationships (monture-angus, 1995). others emphasize the need for a critical uptake of indigenous traditions, insofar as some reproduce patriarchal relations of power (green, 2017b; larocque, 2017) and heteronormative ideologies (starblanket, 2017) rooted in naturalized but actually historically “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 435 contingent and colonial male-female gender binaries (a. wilson, 2008; hunt, 2016, pp. 5-9). as indigenous feminists maile arvin (kanaka maoli), eve tuck (unangax), and angie morrill (the klamath tribes) (2013) describe, indigenous feminisms challenge “social systems in which heterosexuality and patriarchy are perceived as normal and natural, and in which other configurations are perceived as abnormal, aberrant and abhorrent” (p. 13) and hence rightfully destined for elimination. if indigenous women’s resilience is about indigenous women’s literal survival, resistance is about their selfconscious opposition to the reproduction of oppressive (hetero) patriarchal relationships, institutions and commonsense ideas that normalize heterosexuality and men’s power and authority over indigenous women. by resurgence, i follow kahnawake mohawk scholar taiaike alfred and tsalagi professor jeff corntassel (2005), in describing a turning-inward to draw upon and renew diverse indigenous worldviews, here with the aim of supporting indigenous women and girls’ self-determination.5 as starblanket (2017) observes, indigenous women’s resurgence “allows indigenous peoples to shift our focus beyond western liberal political institutions or actors and attribute ourselves with a greater degree of political agency to shape, and be shaped by, the world we live in” (p. 34). for many indigenous women, this means attentiveness to “everyday” relations and practices, challenging the depoliticitization of supposedly private “women’s issues,” including domestic violence (starblanket, 2017, p. 35). resurgence is about renewing everyday relationships “with others, with our languages, our spirituality and the lands we inhabit” (p. 34) to support indigenous women’s well-being. indigenous women’s scholarship describes and participates in indigenous women’s resilience, resistance and resurgence. performatively, indigenous women’s academic writing demonstrates resilience by enacting the survival of indigenous knowledges in (and beyond) the academy, albeit often at the margins. much of this scholarship is “resistance literature” creating a “counter-discourse” to dehumanizing eurocentric, hate literature (larocque, 2010, pp. 3-5), including by challenging damaging stereotypes created and reproduced through supposedly objective but actually colonial historiography, anthropology, sociology and other disciplines (smith, 1999; coburn et al., 2013; walter & anderson, 2013; hunt, 2014). this literature may not be heard – as larocque (1990) has written, “here are our voices – who will hear?.” nonetheless, this literature exists and may be drawn on by those seeking to learn from it. finally, by theorizing from diverse indigenous worldviews, rooted in “an ethic of care towards each other and the rest of 5 alfred and corntassel (2005) describe resurgence as about reconstructing, reshaping and actively living “the teaching of our ancestors” (p. 612). as they write, “we do not need to wait for the colonizer to provide us with money or to validate our vision of a free future; we only need to start to use our indigenous languages to frame our thoughts, the ethical framework of our philosophies to make decisions and to use our laws and institutions to govern ourselves” (2005, p. 614, italics in original). resurgence is a turning away from the colonizer and a turning inwards towards diverse indigenous worldviews and practices. elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 436 creation” (starblanket, 2017, p. 35), indigenous women’s writing participates in the resurgence of indigenous knowledges through and beyond the specific genre writing of the academy. first wave of resistance literature (1985-1995): indigenous women challenge the indian act the first wave of indigenous women’s academic literature, roughly from 1985 to 1995, centres on analyses and support for legal struggles against sexist provisions in the indian act. enshrining patriarchal, eurocentric cultural traditions as law, the indian act of 1876 stipulated that status indian men who married non-status women granted these women status. conversely, indigenous women who married non-status men were forcibly “enfranchised,” that is, both the women and their children and descendants lost federally recognized “indian” status. as simpson (2008) argues, such legislation indigenized white women, while indigenous women and their children, now without status, were obligated to leave the reserves on which they grew up and where, often, their families still lived. this gendered, forcible enfranchisement destroyed matriarchal traditions, where they existed, and created a new social reality, making outsiders of these women, their children and descendants (st. denis, 2007, p. 1073), unable to live or even be buried on reserve lands with their families and ancestors (green, 1985, p. 94, fn 14). for indigenous women, this created a long, difficult struggle in which they faced opposition from the colonial state and many men in their own communities. in the context of limited financial resources, pressures on inadequate reserves lands and male-led band councils,6 the national indian brotherhood (now the assembly of first nations) opposed indigenous women’s legal struggle to re-instate indian status for forcibly enfranchised women and their children (lawrence & anderson, 2005, pp. 2). scholarly writing thus joined with indigenous women’s legal struggles, which sought to turn the state’s juridical apparatus against itself, to make broader arguments against colonial and indigenous patriarchies and for indigenous women’s resurgent political, social and spiritual authority. in native studies review, green (1985) observes that the indian act presumed the colonial state’s right to decide membership on native reserves and did so in patriarchal terms, reflecting the fact that, “european societies were patrilineal and patriarchal” (pp. 82-83). against this, green argues for the absolute right for self-determining indigenous government, including the right to decide citizenship. for green, this means rejecting “violent and 6 until 1951 only men could vote in and stand for band council elections, according to the indian act (cannon, 2019, p. 16). today, these band council positions continue to be dominated by men (lawrence & anderson, 2005). “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 437 emotional” (p. 90) rhetoric mobilized by some indigenous male leaders against indigenous women, accused of “watering down indian genes and destroying culture” by out-marrying – charges she observes were not leveled against out-marrying men (pp. 90-91). at the same time, green argues that indigenous polities prepared to carry out responsibilities as nations are required to meet international obligations to gender equity, including with respect to citizenship (p. 92). in this way, green’s analysis of legal struggles is the entry point into a deconstruction of patriarchal logics, both colonial and indigenous, and an argument for indigenous nationhood. in the same year, cree scholar verna kirkness (1986) unfavourably contrasts the sexist provisions of the indian act and the patriarchal christian norms that inspired the legislation, with prior, gender-egalitarian indigenous practices. in asserting women’s voices as equals to men, kirkness argues that indigenous women are restoring traditional matriarchal authority systematically destroyed by the colonizers: “native women are emerging in search of the equality once enjoyed by women within indian society” (kirkness, 1986, p. 415). in her writing, kirkness draws on oral traditions that colonial scholars have typically ignored or discredited, insisting upon the validity and usefulness of this form of knowledge. epistemological and methodological innovation – bringing songs, for instance, into the annals of legal scholarship – combines with a call for resurgent gender-equal practices within traditional matriarchal societies, in which women and men are equally valued as complementary social and spiritual partners (p. 411). mary ellen turpel (1989), another cree legal scholar, highlights the efforts of the native women’s association of canada (nwac) to challenge sexist colonial legal principles, “based on the inherent jurisdiction of first nations to make laws for their own peoples” (p. 155). pointing to the limits of the colonial language of human rights, turpel roots indigenous women’s selfdetermining struggles in the “four directions” teachings. for turpel, these teachings emphasize responsibilities, respecting principles of kindness, honesty, sharing and strength (p. 155). what might today be called “resurgent” indigenous knowledges and ethics are repositioned, in the stead of colonial worldviews, as the normative principles underlying indigenous women’s voice and relationships of responsibility. in enough is enough: aboriginal women speak out, janet silman (1987) of scottish métis descent, published interviews with women from the tobique reserve in new brunswick. silman was invited to write the book as an academic liaison, so enabling “lay” indigenous women’s activists voices to be heard, as they fought the legal battle against the indian act’s forcible “enfranchisement” of indigenous women (silman, 1987, pp. 15-16). 7 7 likewise, the organization “indian rights for indian woman” cooperated with the advisory council on the status of women to publish a book by kathleen jamieson (1978), indian women and the law in canada: citizens minus. given the relative paucity of indigenous women in the academy, indigenous women’s associations strategically mobilized non-indigenous scholars to bring their voices into scholarly literature. elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 438 silman’s interviews are life-histories: women sharing their experiences growing up, their interactions with family, both french and indigenous, and their encounters with the catholic church and a “white society” that seeks to take away their languages and knowledge practices (juanita perley, in silman, 1987, p. 52). foregrounded are critiques of and resistance to eurocanadian, christian patriarchal tradition, including for how these inform the indian act’s sexist provisions. performing the resistance that they describe, these women recall the intergenerational transmission of land based knowledges, in their own words, so honouring their ancestors’ and their own insights and challenging the monopoly of white “expert” voices. finally, if not exhaustively (see e.g., battiste, 1989; johnston, 1989; mcivor, 1995), canadian woman studies published an article by the native women’s association of canada (nwac, 1992), linking ongoing legal struggles by indigenous women with new movements asserting their right to participate on their own behalf in constitutional discussions with the federal government. stating bluntly that, “so far, aboriginal men and male organizations have not represented our interests” (p. 14), the nwac insisted that, “negotiating a right to self-government does not mean recognizing and blessing the patriarchy created in our community by a foreign government” (p. 15). thus, the nwac challenged patriarchal racisms in the colonial state and male domination in indigenous communities, including through the institutionalization of (male) band council chiefs. patriarchy is represented as an exogenously imposed system of inequity, reproduced by contemporary indigenous men’s leadership. the article concludes with an assertion of resurgent indigenous women’s agency and the urgency of attending to their insights: “our voices must be heard” (p. 17). in these essays, the emphasis is on the politically urgent task of resisting colonial law and asserting indigenous women’s self-governing agency, often arguing that this is a renewal of indigenous women’s traditional authority. several scholars emphasize that indigenous polities are self-governing nations, with green arguing that, as nations, indigenous governments must uphold international commitments to gender equity in citizenship and other rights. if spurred on by the specific struggles against gender discriminatory clauses in the indian act, these indigenous women’s analyses are broader, challenging colonial governance and patriarchal practices. in so doing, these indigenous women scholars innovate from traditional indigenous epistemology, ethics and methodologies. turpel draws on insights from four directions teachings and silman, like kirkness, brings in oral histories so challenging colonial scholarly traditions that dismiss such knowledge as amateur, folkloric, biased or simply inferior (battiste, 1998). all insist on indigenous women’s self-determining authority against patriarchy, as enshrined in sexist clauses in the indian act, in male dominated band council governance and in constitutional negotiations with the colonial state that disregard indigenous women’s representation and participation. “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 439 second wave of resistance literature in the 1990s: diversification of indigenous women’s voices overlapping the first wave of resistance literature (see green, 1992, and turpel, 1993), what mohawk intellectual audra simpson (2014, p. 196) describes as the “second wave” of indigenous women’s writing emerged in the 1990s. new voices emphasize indigenous women’s diversity against homogenizing and dehumanizing stereotypes. some argue for the resurgence of traditional valorizations of indigenous women, said to hold distinct (often maternal) responsibilities, while others advocate for a critical engagement with tradition, as not necessarily emancipatory for indigenous women. less usually, two authors describe struggles for survival by indigenous women facing “triple jeopardy” given racism, sexism and homophobia or ableism, so challenging indigenous communities to make a place “in the circle” for all indigenous women and girls (a. wilson, 2008, p. 178), as integral to indigenous resurgence. in her book, iskwewak--kah' ki yaw ni wahkomakanak: neither indian princess nor easy squaws, janice acoose/misko-kìsikàwihkwè (1995) writes against “white-eurocanadian-christian-patriarchy,” referred to in an abbreviated shorthand as “weccp” (p. 21) – left deliberately un-capitalized to diminish this tradition’s historical authority. acoose is concerned with literal physical survival despite murderous violence against indigenous women, resistance to dehumanizing, sexist colonial ideologies in canadian fiction and resurgence through the revitalization of indigenous worldviews by indigenous artists, with a view to supporting a realistically complex portrayal of historical and contemporary indigenous women. drawing on diverse indigenous women scholars, including maria campbell and jeanette armstrong, acoose argues that animalizing, reductionist imagery distorts and attacks indigenous women’s humanity. such stereotypes deny the complex realities of indigenous women’s lives, making them targets of murderous violence: stereotypic images of indian princesses, squaw drudges, suffering helpless victims, tawny temptresses, or loose squaws falsify our realities and suggest in a subliminal way that those stereotypic images are us. as a consequence, those images foster cultural attitudes that encourage sexual, physical verbal or psychological violence against indigenous women. (acoose, 1995, p. 55) in an indigenous literary renaissance or resurgence, acoose turns to indigenous artists as leaders, informed by maternal-centric indigenous languages and cultures, in the vital struggle for indigenous women’s empowerment against “weccp.” in a collection of her essays, thunder in my soul: a mohawk woman speaks, monture (monture-angus, 1995) – one of the best-known voices from this period – argues forcefully that whitestream women’s political ambitions for equality are inadequate compared to the traditionally powerful, elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 440 and not merely equal standing of women in haudenosaunee culture (see also monture-okanee, 1992, 1993). as she famously expresses this idea, “equality is not a high standard in my way of thinking” (monture-angus, 1995, p. 179). in making claims “under the box of sex” (p. 141) whitestream feminism mobilizes a conceptual vocabulary that falsely universalizes white women’s experience; this is as inadequate as the english language for describing what it means to live specifically as a mohawk woman (p. 140). monture thus disavows “(w)hite, well-meaning, middle and upper-class feminists” (p. 20), especially those who appropriate her painful experiences and turn them into an object of expert analysis, so furthering their own scholarly careers. despite rejecting feminism, thus characterized, monture insists on the imbrication of indigeneity, class and gender in the production of colonial knowledge and colonial law. innovating what today would be called an intersectionalist perspective, monture wrote, “i can locate my own experience… as both an aboriginal and a woman” (monture-angus, 1995, p. 139). this social location informs an experiential knowledge that monture mobilizes to describe the oppression and violence that indigenous women suffer. as she explains with characteristic directness, under colonial relationships, “aboriginal women have been victims of abuse” (p. 145). at the same time, monture questions the ability of colonial law, including the canadian charter of rights and freedoms, to protect indigenous women from harm, since these declarations do not acknowledge “colonialism and colonization” (pp. 146-147), much less their implication in indigenous women’s oppression. critiquing nwac’s decision to engage with the charter, all while recognizing “the heart-felt emotion of their response” (p. 146), monture summed up her position bluntly: “canadian law is not my aboriginal solution” (p. 147). against colonial laws made by (white) men, monture emphasizes the indigenous women’s unique authority: “women are at the heart of it. women are at the centre of it” (p. 262) with specific responsibilities for the making of laws (p. 263) that allow all peoples to “retai[n], teac[h] and maintai[n] good relationships” (p. 258). indigenous women’s resistance to patriarchy means turning away from colonial worldviews, including as these are legally institutionalized as rights, towards specifically mohawk relations of responsibility led by women.8 an anthology published in this second wave of resistance scholarship, women of the first nations: power, wisdom and strength, edited by christine miller, blackfoot confederacy (siksikaitsitapi), and patricia chuchryk (1996), insists on indigenous women’s “power, wisdom and strength” as the title emphasizes. the editors mobilize diverse indigenous women’s voices – as well as white activists and scholars – to counter 8 monture does much more, bringing her perspective to concerns as varied, but related as indigenous children being separated from their families and communities by the colonial social welfare system and unmasking the injustices of the colonial juridical system and the incarceration of indigenous women. “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 441 portrayals of indigenous women as homogenous blocs.9 they resist scholarly and popular narratives that describe indigenous women as victims and in homogenizing ways: “we have maintained our commitment to diversity and our belief that in the diversity of women’s voices we can find strength and wisdom” (miller & chuchryk, 1996, p. 6). the collection includes scholarly historical explorations of métis, saulteaux and prairie women, from archival sources, as well as shorter chapters, some just a few pages long, drawing on knowledges passed down orally from one generation of women to the next. as betty bastien (1996), from the peigan first nation, observes, despite “racism and cultural annihilation,” “we must not forget” those ways of situating “ourselves” that honour “the interdependencies of self and others” (p. 128). for bastien, recalling indigenous peoples’ place within “the web of creation” (1996, p. 128) recalls indigenous women’s ongoing relationships with the natural world, relationships the colonial state has systematically sought to destroy. the collection features diverse, even divergent perspectives. beverly hungry wolf (1996), emphasizes complementary roles for women and men, maintaining that, “as givers of life, we women have special relationships to the earth” (p. 81) and so must teach children, indigenous communities and the broader public about responsibilities to the natural world. in contrast, larocque (1996) recognizes the usefulness of much traditional knowledge, but calls for more sceptical engagement, suggesting that, “as women we must be circumspect in our recall of tradition” (p. 14). respect and honour towards women, she warns, cannot substitute for difficult questions: “we must ask ourselves wherein lies our source of empowerment” (p. 14) and be prepared to critique and move beyond traditions harmful to and constraining upon women’s agency. neo-traditionalist approaches, centered on women’s maternity confront indigenous feminisms that argue for critical engagement with traditions, as the way forward for women surviving “the chaos, despair, hostility and death” brought about by colonial patriarchal rule (armstrong, 1996, p. xii). in this period, two interventions draw attention to the marginalization of indigenous women within their own communities, further complicating whitestream assumptions about the socially constructed category of “indigenous women” as unified, while contextualizing this marginalization within the violence of the colonial context. in 1993, doreen demas, a blind disability activist from the canupawakpa dakota nation in manitoba, published a still-rare article from an indigenous feminist disability standpoint. demas’ concern is to indigenize white disability services while ensuring that indigenous feminists support disabled women within their own communities. a lack of clear jurisdictional responsibility between colonial and indigenous 9 the contributors include rosemary brown, a white anti-racist activist, not to be confused with rosemary brown, the first black woman to be elected as a member of the legislative assembly in british columbia. elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 442 authorities, she warns, combines with chronic underfunding of indigenous agencies to produce “triple jeopardy” for disabled indigenous women, their needs unmet by both governments. in a similarly path-breaking article, alex wilson (1996), from the opaskwayak cree nation, writes about the then-recent resurgence of “two spirit” indigenous persons from across north america. the concept of “twospirit” is used “by many cree and other aboriginal lesbian, gay, bi, and trans people” (a. wilson, 2008, p. 193), wilson explains, to situate themselves as holding both masculine and feminine characteristics within spiritually charged relationships “deeply rooted in our cultures” (a. wilson, 1996, p. 304). for lesbian, gay and bisexual indigenous persons, wilson argues, racial and sexual identity are indissociable, given the simultaneous experiences of colonial racisms and homophobia. neither whitestream lgbt politics nor anti-racist lgbt struggles can address the specific existential and social realities of two-spirit persons. instead, the renewal of (diverse) indigenous spirituality and ethical commitments, like an ethic of non-interference that allows for a wide range of gender and sexual practices, support the distinctive sexual and gender expressions of indigenous two-spirit persons as they “come in” to their communities (a. wilson, 2008). this second wave scholarship recognizes the devastation of patriarchal colonialisms, but contrapuntally affirms indigenous women’s resilience, their capacity to survive genocidal erasure and to write specifically, for instance, as mohawk and/or two-spirit indigenous women. this means resisting dangerously dehumanizing stereotypes about indigenous women as sexually available “squaws” while challenging the invisibilization and marginalization of indigenous women with disabilities. resurgent traditional knowledge is an important source of insight and support, as when a. wilson (2008) invokes an ethic of non-interference to create space for two-spirit ontologies purposefully destroyed by colonial powers and now stigmatized by some in indigenous communities. in this second wave, reflecting the growing number of indigenous women’s voices in the academy, both diversity and divergences within indigenous women’s politics appear. some second wave scholars argue that indigenous women play especially powerful roles in challenging colonial patriarchies as mothers and grandmothers, while others, notably larocque (1996), caution that some resurgent traditionalisms discipline rather empower women and therefore require critical evaluation, with women’s well being the ultimate standard against which any practice or norm must be judged. this resurgence of a range of indigenous women’s standpoints, countering reductionist stereotypes and rearticulating cultural knowledge for the present in ways supportive to indigenous women, deepens with the third wave. “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 443 the 2000s third wave of resurgence literature: strengthening and broadening the field of indigenous women’s scholarship since the early 2000s, a third wave of indigenous women’s scholarship has developed, which, especially in the last decade, is now so vast and important as to defy any easy, much less comprehensive, description. during the first decade of the 2000s, critical indigenous women’s contributions include the publication of five edited collections: lawrence and anderson’s (2003a) strong women stories: native vision and community survival; green’s (2007a), making space for indigenous feminism; valaskakis, stout and guimond’s (2009a) restoring the balance: first nations women, community and culture; monture-angus and patricia mcguire’s (bingwi neyaashi anishinaabek) (2009a) first voices: an aboriginal women's reader; and suzack, shari huhndorf (yup’ik), jeanne perreault, and jean barman’s (2010) indigenous women and feminism: politics, activism, culture. these collections alone brought nearly one hundred indigenous women’s voices – including activists, traditional knowledge keepers, writers and artists – into the scholarly conversation through texts, interviews, and in some cases, poems and photographs. there is some tension across these collections. many contributors emphasize indigenous women’s vitality and strength but eschew to identify as feminist, while others specifically embrace indigenous feminisms, as a political commitment and source of necessary insight into racism, colonialism and patriarchy. as monture-angus and mcguire (2009b, p. 2) emphasize, there is “a great diversity of aboriginal women. not only do we come from different nations, each of whom have their own traditions, ceremonies, laws and languages, but aboriginal women also act in the world in multiple ways.” whatever the differences in argument, theme and approach, however, the third wave of indigenous women’s scholarship builds upon and affirms indigenous women’s knowledge and agency – on their own behalf and with respect to transforming relationships beyond current patriarchal colonial institutions, practices and ideologies. as lawrence and anderson (2003b) explain, indigenous women grapple with “the fallout of colonization and the challenge to rebuild” (p. 12), and indigenous scholarship reflects these ongoing struggles. this generates scholarship about a wide range of concerns. among them, kiera ladner (2000), examines the changing salience of gender within historical and resurgent blackfoot nationalisms. lawrence (2004) deconstructs the complexities of the colonial state’s social-legal production of new, gendered categories of indigenous personhood and the consequences for urban indigenous identity. zapotec scholar isabel altamirano-jiménez (2013) contributes political economic analyses of indigenous women’s resistance to neoliberal forms of capitalist dispossession, across the continent now called north america. in their edited collection, anderson, campbell and métis artist christi belcourt (2018) join more than 20 contributing authors to elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 444 describe indigenous women’s resilience against ongoing genocidal violence, in a persistent return to indigenous women’s ongoing struggles against murderous colonialisms and for reconfigured relationships on bases respecting indigenous women’s humanity. other indigenous women scholars diversely theorize the meanings of critical relationships, especially those with the land, and associated concepts like “place.” cree scholar karyn recollet (2015) investigates and celebrates urban spatial “glyphs” that perform solidarity and repossess cityscapes, while protesting violence against indigenous women. for their part, starblanket and heidi stark (turtle mountain ojibwe) (2018) refuse the western colonial idea of land, whether urban or rural, as “bounded territories in which only our primordial practices can permeate so long as they are understood as temporally and spatially fixed” (pp. 190-191). instead, “it is our mobility, our movement across the lands and waters that activates our relationships and responsibilities” (p. 192), demanding attentiveness to and the nurturing of expansive kin relationships, in recognition of those humans, plants and animals “who came before us, who already governed the territories we came to inhabit” (p. 193). in a related discussion, lawrence and anderson (2003b) ask what it means to “come home,” when land and associated cultural knowledges have been lost, or when home is a site of patriarchal oppression and must be struggled for and re-established as “a place where we have the respect, authority and freedom that are due us as native women” (p. 15). across multiple, complex conversations that can only be gestured to briefly here, the emphasis is on indigenous women’s agency, challenging the dominance of victim-centered narratives. as valaskakis, stout and guimond (2009b) argue, “women are guardians of indigenous traditions, practices, and beliefs – and agents of change for their families and nations” (p. 2). as sarah hunt (tłaliłila'ogwa) emphasizes, this includes the resilient presence of twospirit indigenous persons who decolonize with and through the revitalization of two-spirit sexualities and genders (hunt & holmes, 2015; hunt, 2016). pragmatic and “future-oriented,” they grapple with and seek to move beyond “historic trauma” to act for health and healing, including through artistic, cultural and language revival or resurgence (guimond, valaskakis, stout, & guimond, 2009b, p. 3). recognizing the hard realities of ongoing colonial violence co-exists with a contrapuntal emphasis on indigenous women’s and, as hunt underlines, two-spirit agency and possibility. for green (2007b), rebuilding indigenous relationships against patriarchy, including within indigenous communities, is a feminist task. in the most forthright statement of indigenous feminist commitments in the scholarly literature up to that time, she writes: aboriginal feminists. they exist; they choose the label, the ideological position, the analysis, and the process. aboriginal feminists raise issues of colonialism, racism, sexism, and the unpleasant synergy between these three violations of human rights. aboriginal feminists illuminate topics that but for their voices, would not be raised at all. (green, 2007b, p. 20) “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 445 such theorizing of the intertwinings of colonialism, racism and sexism is not always welcome within indigenous communities, construed as a betrayal of indigenous women’s solidarity with men or dismissed as white women’s politics (green, 2017b, pp. 12-13). feminist analysis is said to be “divisive” within indigenous communities and indigenous women who challenge patriarchy may be labelled untraditional, a powerful way of delegitimating their arguments in a context in which tradition is often insulated – dangerously, in green’s view – from critique (p. 13). indigenous feminisms persist because they are deeply connected with indigenous women’s broader struggles for justice and creative assertions of presence against colonial genocide. as huhndorf and suzack (2010) observe, “indigenous feminism…has arisen from histories of women’s activism and culture that have aimed to combat gender discrimination, secure social justice for indigenous women and counter their social erasure and marginalization” (pp. 5-6). a sharp political edge informs indigenous women’s scholarship, especially explicitly feminist indigenous resurgence that challenges historical and contemporary power inequities rooted in gender and sexuality (starblanket, 2017, pp. 25-28) collectively, third wave indigenous women’s scholarship describes and analyses indigenous women’s resilience despite genocidal colonial violence, marginalization and erasure, while celebrating resistance against the colonial foreclosure of indigenous women’s futures and challenging dispossession in both country and urban spaces. indigenous feminists support resurgence – at once scholarly, activist and artistic – contributing to the well-being of indigenous women, their families and communities. towards these ends, some, like monture (monture-okanee 1992, pp. 251-266), eschew the feminist label, while others emphatically embrace a new indigenous feminist politics, placing questions of gender, sexuality and power at the centre of resurgence movements and renewed responsibilities to each other and the land. this increasingly broad and richly diverse indigenous feminist scholarly conversation draws strength from indigenous women’s movements across politics, economics and culture. the nascent dialogue with anti-racist feminisms emerges in this context. “constellations of co-resistance”: towards indigenous and anti-racist feminist solidarity since the 2000s, indigenous women have explicitly theorized the relationship between indigenous and anti-racist feminisms, complicating narratives about existing or possible solidarities. lawrence and anti-racist feminist enakshi dua’s (2005) path-breaking, “decolonizing anti-racisms” contends that anti-racist feminists fail to recognize the ongoing colonialism of indigenous peoples on lands claimed by canada (p. 122) – or problematically integrate elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 446 indigenous feminisms as “single issue” topics rather than as vitally informing all anti-racist analyses. refusing a political “race to innocence” (fellows & razack, 1998), lawrence and dua argue for frank recognition of racialized migrants’ occupation of indigenous lands, whether voluntary or involuntarily, and so their functional implication in colonial dispossession. consequently, there is no easy structural alignment of interests or automatic solidarity across indigenous and racialized women. instead, significant political and scholarly labour lies ahead, beginning with forthright acknowledgement of “the complex histories of interactions between peoples of color and aboriginal peoples” (lawrence & dua, 2005, p. 136), in moments of cooperation and conflict. a few years later, zainab amadahy, an african american scholar-activist with cherokee ancestry, and lawrence (amadahy & lawrence, 2009) published a dialogue exploring black and indigenous relationships, including often-occluded black indigeneity. observing that “both black and indigenous peoples have experienced unique global levels of devastation as races” (p. 106) through the global slave trade and genocide in the americas, they warn that devastating histories may nonetheless be taken up unproductively – fueling antagonistic claims of the primacy of suffering of one community, while failing to acknowledge and challenge anti-black racisms in indigenous communities and the erasure of indigenous peoples in many black liberation narratives. further, urgent life and death struggles across black and indigenous communities maintain both in “a perpetual state of crisis” (p. 131), with little energy to divert into dialogue with each other. despite such challenges, amadahy and lawrence argue for the importance of relationshipbuilding between indigenous and black scholars, including feminists, for future generations and for the future of the earth that sustains us all. in more recent years, there have been further constructive efforts by both indigenous and anti-racist scholars to develop analyses informed by commitments to solidarity, although not all are specifically feminist. 10 among them, anti-racist scholars corey snelgrove and rita dhamoon with corntassel (snelgrove, dhamoon & corntassel, 2014) argue that solidarity demands recognition of the incommensurability of diverse indigenous worldviews and other knowledge paradigms. this demands that “we” hear indigenous women scholars in their own voices (antjie krog repurposed by huron wendat political philosopher yann allard-tremblay, 2019, p. 2), as they bring unique ways of knowing into the academy – knowledges violently suppressed in the genocide against indigenous peoples. monture writes as a mohawk woman scholar, for instance, with insights unique to her person but at the same time, deeply informed by haudenosaunee culture. rather than being inserted into existing scholarly knowledge paradigms, whether colonial 10 there have been unhelpful interventions, as well. if these must be deconstructed, i choose not to do that work given limited space here. see coulthard and simpson’s (2016) critique of “antinative sentiment,” in theorizing by some contemporary anti-racist scholars (pp. 252-253). “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 447 or anti-racist, her theorizing necessarily begins with an appreciation of the distinctive character and grounding of her scholarly-political contributions. this does not mean accepting indigenous women’s knowledge uncritically, an impossibility, in any case, given divergent, conflicting views among indigenous women. meaningful critical engagement – and possibilities for real solidarity – nonetheless depends on an expansive capacity to hear this knowledge in its own voice, not as raw material to be subsumed into another theory but as theorizing in its own right. as larocque (2010) insists, “of course, there are different theories about how we theorize, and there are also conflicting theories among us, but we do theorize” (p. 165). likewise, responsible engagement requires familiarity with the diversity and debates across and among indigenous women and feminists, refusing to flatten out a wide range of voices – incompletely and partially gestured to here – into a monolithic pan-indigenous bloc. as anti-racist scholars, whatever our social location, our relational responsibility to indigenous colleagues means becoming familiar with indigenous women’s literature in its range and depth, contradictions and common arguments. in pointing to recurrent themes of resilience, resistance and resurgence over three waves of increasingly rich, diverse scholarship by indigenous women, this essay seeks to encourage such familiarity. in so doing, i join an existing indigenous feminist and anti-racist scholarship. this includes, for instance, dhamoon’s (2015) characteristically insightful exploration of indigenous and critical race theorizing, which explores the “context of colonial formations of heteropatriarchal, racial capitalism and concurrent systemic implications in settler colonialism” (p. 34) and her innovation, with davina bhandar (bhandar & dhamoon, 2019), of a “colonial analytic” (p. 15) that seeks to simultaneously address dynamics articulated in both post-colonial and contemporary colonial contexts. in a different, but equally useful approach, robyn maynard’s (2017) analyzes state violence in policing black lives. if maynard focuses on the specificities of systemic anti-black hatreds, she consistently points to similarities and differences in the colonial policing of indigenous peoples, consciously opening up space for black-indigenous solidarity. short dialogues, like the conversation among simpson, black theorist rinaldo walcott and coulthard (simpson, walcott & coulthard, 2018) about the indigenous movement idle no more and black lives matters, alongside longer edited collections like the aboriginal healing foundation’s cultivating canada: reconciliation through the lens of cultural diversity (mathur, dewar & degagné, 2011), allow racialized and indigenous scholars to think through their relationship and responsibilities to each other amidst and against white supremacy, colonialism and associated violences and injustices. in opening up and pursuing these conversations and relationships, anishinaabe public intellectual leanne simpson (2016) writes about “constellations of co-resistance,” envisioned as “flight paths or doorways out of settler colonial representation and thought” (p. 27, drawing on insights by elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 448 jarrett martineau). in developing such flight paths, solidarity can mutually reinforce relatively marginalized groups, strengthening both across the margins – and this is necessary to survival in contexts of violence, exploitation and oppression. at the same time, scholarly theoretical and analytical vocabularies must express the specificities of harms and the distinctiveness of diverse knowledges, against a context in which indigenous peoples’ knowledges have been deliberated, violently erased and racialized women’s knowledges systematically marginalized. to borrow from lawrence and anderson (2003), indigenous women’s resilience, resistance and resurgence are existential and political projects that “explor[e] what we need to know about who we are and where we have come from as native women…to look at where our communities are now and where we want them to go” (p. 11). in surviving and resisting heteropatriarchal colonialism, indigenous scholars and actors share both common and distinct experiences of white racisms, institutionalized and personal, with anti-racist feminists. in turning away from colonial powers and inward to renew diverse indigenous knowledges, indigenous women innovate through their own distinct cultures and individual self-expression, while creating relations of responsibility to other peoples and to the natural world that may offer new political possibilities for solidarities across difference and inequities rooted in gender, race, sexuality and colonialism. if this essay has made any single overarching argument, it is that in “theorizing our place,” there is now a rich, diverse indigenous women’s scholarship with insights that may be appreciated on their own terms and more recently, with an aim to building relationships with anti-racist feminisms on lands that sustain us all. there is no neat end-point to such conversation, now or into the future, but only a commitment to a growing dialogue that, at its best, is rooted in four directions principles of kindness, honesty, sharing and strength (turpel, 1989, p. 155). as monture (montureangus, 1995) might observe, this is a process that stretches through to responsibilities in the present, for the seven generations to come and even beyond: “this story does not have an end. it goes on and on and on” (p. 23). acknowledgements thank you to soma chatterjee and tania das gupta for inviting me to contribute this piece and for editorial advice, and to ena dua, joyce green and emma larocque for conversations informing this article in different ways. i acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for suggestions on a very early, inadequate draft of this paper. i hope this responds to their important concerns. responsibility for the arguments here remains mine. “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 449 references acoose, j./misko-kìsikàwihkwè. 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(1996). the colonization of a native woman scholar. in c. miller & p. chuchryk (eds.), women of the first nations: power, wisdom, and strength (pp. 11-18). university of manitoba press. larocque, e. (2010). when the other is me: native resistance discourse, 1850-1990. university of manitoba press. larocque, e. (2017). metis and feminist: contemplations on feminism, human rights, culture and decolonization. in j. green (ed.). making space for indigenous feminisms (2nd ed.) (pp. 122-145). fernwood press. lawrence, b. (2004). “real” indians and others: mixed-blood urban native peoples and indigenous nationhood. university of nebraska press. lawrence, b., & anderson, k. (2003). strong women stories: native vision and community survival. sumach press. lawrence, b., & anderson, k. (2003). introduction: for the betterment of our nations. in b. lawrence & k. anderson (eds.), strong women stories: native vision and community survival (pp. 11-22). sumach press. lawrence, b., & anderson, k. (2005). introduction to indigenous women: the state of our nations. atlantis: critical studies in gender, culture & social justice, 29(2), 1-8. lawrence, b. & dua, e. ( 2005 ). decolonizing antiracism. social justice, 32(4), 120-143 . mathur, a., dewar, j., & degagné, m. (eds.). (2011). cultivating canada: reconciliation through the lens of cultural diversity. aboriginal healing foundation. maynard, r. (2018). policing black lives: state violence in canada from slavery to the present. fernwood press. mcivor, s. (1995). aboriginal women’s rights as ‘existing rights’. canadian woman studies, 15(2), 34-38. mckittrick, k. (2006). demonic grounds: black women and the cartographies of struggle. university of minnesota press. menzies, c. r. (2018). “all that old crap”: realizing our indigenous utopian potential – a response to palmer." dialectical anthropology, 42, 457-465. mianda, g. (1997). féminisme africain: divergences ou convergences des discours? présence africaine, 155, 87-99. miller, c., & chuchryk, p. (eds.). (1996). women of the first nations: power, wisdom, and strength (vol. 9). university of manitoba press. montureangus, p. (1995). thunder in my soul: a mohawk woman speaks. fernwood press. monture-angus, p., & mcguire, p. (2009a). first voices: an aboriginal women's reader. inanna publications. monture-angus, p., & mcguire, p. (2009b). introduction. first voices: an aboriginal women's reader (n.p.). inanna publications. monture-okanee, p. a. (1992). the roles and responsibilities of aboriginal women: reclaiming justice. saskatchewan law review, 56, 237. monture-okanee, p. a. (1993). ka-nin-geh-heh-gah-e-sa-nonh-ya-gah. canadian journal of women & law, 6, 119. national inquiry into missing & murdered indigenous women & girls. (2019). supplementary report: legal analysis of genocide. https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2019/06/supplementary-report_genocide.pdf native women’s association of canada. (1992). aboriginal women and constitutional debates: continuing discrimination. canadian woman studies, 12(3), 14-17. elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 452 razack, s., smith, m., & thobani, s. (2010). introduction: states of race: critical race feminism for the 21st century. in s. razack, m. smith & s. thobani (eds.), states of race: critical race feminism for the 21st century (pp. 1-19 ). between the lines. recollet, k. (2015). glyphing decolonial love through urban flash mobbing and walking with our sisters. curriculum inquiry, 45(1), 129-145. silman, j. (1987). enough is enough: aboriginal women speak out. women’s press. simpson, a. 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(pp. 21-41). fernwood press. starblanket, g., & stark, h. k. (2018). towards a relational paradigm – four points for consideration: knowledge, gender, land, and modernity. in m. asch, j. borrows & j. tully (eds.), resurgence and reconciliation: indigenous–settler relations and earth teachings (pp. 175-207). university of toronto press. suzack, c. (2015). indigenous feminisms in canada. nordic journal of women and gender research, 23(4), 261-274, suzack, c., huhndorf, s. m., perreault, j., & barman, j. (eds.). (2010). indigenous women and feminism: politics, activism, culture. ubc press, st. denis v. s. (2007). aboriginal education and anti-racist education: building alliances across cultural and racial identity. canadian journal of education/revue canadienne de l'éducation, 30(4), 1068-1092. st. denis, v. (2017). feminism is for everybody: aboriginal women, feminism and diversity. in j. green (ed.). making space for indigenous feminisms (2nd ed.) (pp. 42-62). fernwood press. stewart-harawira, m. (2005). the new imperial order: indigenous responses to globalization. zed books. turpel, m. e. (1989). aboriginal peoples and the canadian charter of rights and freedoms. canadian woman studies, 10(2), 149-157. turpel, m. e. (1993). patriarchy and paternalism: the legacy of the canadian state for first nations women. canadian journal of women & law, 6, 174. valaskakis, g. g., stout, m., & guimond, e. (2009a). restoring the balance: first nations women, community, and culture. university of manitoba press valaskakis, g. g., stout, m., & guimond, e. (2009b). introduction. in g. g. valaskakis, m. stout & e. guimond (eds.), restoring the balance: first nations women, community, and culture (pp. 1-9). university of manitoba press walter, m., & andersen, c. (2013). indigenous statistics: a quantitative research methodology. left coast press. wane, n. n. (2009). black canadian feminist thought: perspectives on equity and diversity in the academy. race, ethnicity & education, 12(1), 65-77. wesley-esquimaux, c. (2009). trauma to resilience: notes on decolonization. in g. g. valaskakis, m. stout & e. guimond (eds.), restoring the balance: first nations women, community and culture (pp. 13-34). university of manitoba press wilson, a. (1996). how we find ourselves: identity development and two spirit people. harvard educational review, 66(2), 303-318. “theorizing our place” studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 429-453, 2020 453 wilson, a. (2008). n'tacinowin inna nah': our coming in stories. canadian woman studies, 26(3), 193-199. wilson, s. (2008). research is ceremony: indigenous research methods. fernwood press. arat-kocfinal before ts correspondence address: sedef arat-koç, department of politics & public administration, ryerson university, toronto, on, m5b 2k3; email: saratkoc@ryerson.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 decolonizing refugee studies, standing up for indigenous justice: challenges and possibilities of a politics of place sedef arat-koç ryerson university, canada abstract, this paper interrogates the challenges and potentials for solidarity between refugees and indigenous peoples by bringing decolonial, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist critiques in different parts of the world, including in white settler colonies and in the third world, into conversation with each other and with refugee studies. the first section of the paper offers two analytical steps towards decolonizing mainstream refugee studies. the first step involves identifying, analyzing and problematizing what we may call “an elephant in the room,” a parallax gap between refugee studies and studies of international politics. the second analytical step is problematizing and challenging the popular discourses of charity and gratitude that dominate refugee discourses and narratives in the global north. the second section of the paper engages in a more direct and detailed discussion about challenges to and possibilities for solidarity between refugees and indigenous peoples. articulating historical and contemporary parallels between refugee displacement from land and indigenous dispossession of land, this section demonstrates that there are nevertheless no guarantees for political solidarity. it argues that potentials for solidarity are contingent on a politics of place, as articulated by indigenous and non-indigenous scholars; and also possibly on a reconceptualization and reorientation of refugee identity different from the ways it has been constituted in colonial discourses. keywords refugee studies; international politics; imperialism; indigenous justice; politics of place despite their disparate histories and geographies, and variations in their positionalities, refugees and indigenous peoples share experiences of displacement as well as a problematic, subordinate relationship to the nationstate. in recent decades, the expansionary, predatory nature of global capitalism and a planetary crisis of climate change have posed additional economic and environmental threats to dispossess and displace peoples. these threats, as well as the global rise of nationalism, militarism, sedef arat-koç studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 372 authoritarian populisms and white supremacy mean that solidarities between and among marginalized peoples and groups have gained a new urgency. in recent years, the term decolonization has been used most commonly to address and undo processes of indigenous colonization in white settler colonies. historically, however, the term has been used in relation to a variety of anti-colonial struggles and processes in africa and asia.1 by applying the term decolonization to refugee studies and dominant refugee discourses, this paper attempts to recover and develop a wider transnational analytic, to bring decolonial, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist critiques in different parts of the world, including in white settler colonies and in the third world, into conversation with each other. relying on critical, anti-imperialist observations made in the post-cold war period that have largely escaped attention in academic and political discussions, i suggest that currently there are obstacles to such conversations, primarily rooted in the ways mainstream refugee studies and dominant refugee discourses approach refugee issues and construct refugees. as an essential analytical step towards reflecting on the relations and tensions between refugee and indigenous justice issues, therefore, the paper starts with proposing ways to decolonize refugee studies. bhupinder chimni (1998, 2009) has argued that refugee studies, and more recently forced migration studies, have been largely euro/north centric in their institutional structure and orientation. ironically, even as the vast majority of the world’s refugees live in neighbouring countries in the global south, major research centres and key journals in the field are located in the global north, most theorizing is done in western/northern countries, and solutions are articulated in “north-dominated international governmental and non-governmental organizations” (chimni, 2009, pp. 16-17). based on chimni’s observations, it is possible to elaborate that one of the most important implications of this north centrism in refugee studies has been that the issues discussed and solutions offered are connected to the politically and geopolitically defined interests, priorities and concerns of northern countries: their “security,” their sovereignty, their resources (or lack thereof), their policies and institutions, their “culture,” their labour market needs, and their “refugee crises.” in contexts where there is partial, selective or conditional acceptance of refugees from the global south, the issue is once again presented as western compassion, generosity or “hospitality to strangers.” at the analytical level, i argue that the north centrism of refugee studies has two major implications that lead to colonization of refugee studies and refugee discourses. the first is an “elephant in the room,” an unacknowledged, unproblematized, but ubiquitous presence of international 1 see fanon (1966) for the early conceptualization of the term “decolonization.” in recent years, we continue to see the term used in relation to the independence struggles of formerly colonized states and regions in africa and asia. see, for example, bogaerts and raben (2012) and hargreaves (2014). decolonizing refugee studies, standing up for indigenous justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 373 politics and international political economy, and a curious parallax gap between refugee studies and studies of international politics,2 which lead to implicit presumptions of innocence regarding the role of powerful northern states in the making of refugees. of course, international relations and imperialism are not the only factors in refugee production. exclusionary and authoritarian nationalisms in post-colonial states and the comprador bourgeois relationship of third world elites to global capitalism play very important roles in forced migration. this paper, however, focuses on international relationships, as it is the focus missing in the academic literature and in popular discourses. another implication of this bias has been the tendency in northern discourses to approach refugee protection in a charity framework, one that enables not only an evasion of accountability regarding the conditions of refugee production, but also the expectation of gratitude from refugees, as wards of western states if they are given protection. in parts of my discussion problematizing the charity discourses regarding refugees, i rely heavily on critical refugee studies scholars, specifically those who have been writing from the vietnamese diaspora. as opposed to tendencies in mainstream refugee studies to conceptualize “refugee lifeworlds… as a problem to be solved by global elites” and to be blind to and to take international power relations for granted, critical refugee studies approaches refugee studies as a “site of social, political and historical critiques that when carefully traced make transparent processes of colonization, war, and displacement” (critical refugee studies collective, n.d.). as i try to demonstrate below, challenging the analytical gaps and biases in mainstream refugee studies and discourses has the potential to bring refugee studies into closer discussion with, and more likely to learn from, indigenous knowledge and politics. engagement with indigeneity could potentially inform and enrich refugee studies and discourses in two major ways. first, it could help push the focus in conceptualizations of refugee justice to go beyond policies, practices and experiences of protection or exclusion in migration and diaspora, to also address displacement and injustices in the international politics of refugee production. second, indigenous knowledge could inform a place-based episteme that helps to challenge the logic and discourse of the grateful refugee and also to inspire and inform alternative political subjectivities and collective political visions of another world beyond colonialism, imperialism, interventionism, war, capitalist expansion and environmental degradation. these would be decolonial collective visions that would help people imagine “how to live our lives in relation to other people and nonhuman life forms in a profoundly 2 i borrow the term “parallax gap” from harald bauder (2011). bauder mentions that even though “in settler societies like canada the aboriginal and immigration narratives are factually closely related” (p. 517) they are separated in public and academic discourses. drawing on zizek, bauder names this separation a parallax gap and proposes to close it. sedef arat-koç studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 374 nonauthoritarian, non-dominating, nonexploitive manner” (coulthard & simpson, 2016, p. 254). the paper is organized into two main sections. the first section addresses steps towards decolonizing refugee studies and refugee discourses in order to challenge the parallax gap and the charity framework, and to bring refugee justice into conversation with indigenous justice. the second section directly engages with challenges to and possibilities for solidarities between refugee and indigenous justice. articulating parallels between factors contributing to production of refugees and indigenous dispossession, this section argues that there are nevertheless no guarantees for political solidarity. potentials for solidarity are rather contingent on a politics of place, as articulated by indigenous and non-indigenous scholars; and also possibly on a reconceptualization of refugee identity and experiences different from the ways they have been constituted in colonial discourses. the paper focuses on refugees and forced migrants, as opposed to all migrants, immigrants, “arrivants,”3 or settlers in settler colonies. this is different from the tendency in the recent literature to discuss im/migrant – or specifically, racialized im/migrants – more generally. even though a rigid and dichotomous distinction between forced and voluntary migration is not valid in relation to real life experiences of many migrants, a general category of im/migrants, even non-white im/migrants, is very diverse in their class status (also including business class investors), their motivations for migration, their privileges in transnational mobility, and chances and conditions of belonging in diaspora. for this reason, i suggest that a focus on refugees may be particularly relevant and advantageous in attempts to bring indigenous and migrant justice issues into conversation with one another. by definition, refugees are people who have been forced to leave their place of origin. it can be argued that compared to other groups of migrants, the category of refugee more clearly and profoundly represents a sense of loss, an unresolved and grievable relationship to the places they come from, similar to experiences of land dispossession of indigenous peoples. while this focus is specific, my use of the concept is also wide and flexible, going beyond the narrow boundaries of “refugee” in international law and conventions, and including those forced out of their lands due to economic deprivation, “development” projects, climate change, etc. 3 the term is jodi byrd’s. she uses the term in her transit of empire (2011) to distinguish between white settlers and racialized settlers. decolonizing refugee studies, standing up for indigenous justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 375 decolonizing refugee studies i: naming the “elephant in the room” and addressing the parallax gap between refugee studies and international politics bhupinder chimni (1998, 2009) has argued that there has been a paradigm shift in refugee studies in the post-cold war period. one of the dimensions of this paradigm shift has been the tendency to underestimate the significance of external factors and to rely only on “internalist interpretations of the root causes of refugee flows which la[y] the blame at the door of the postcolonial societies and states” (chimni, 1998, p. 351). what is especially ironic about the post-cold war period is how the tendency to keep analysis of international political economy, international politics, and specifically imperialism, out of refugee studies precisely corresponds to a world context that has witnessed an intensification of corporate globalization and escalation of western political and military interventions. since the early 1990s, northern nations and nato have been conspicuously present on the world stage, actively intervening in the politics of southern nations and contributing to destabilization of vast regions. especially consequential for several southern countries since the 1990s have been so-called “humanitarian interventions” – typically, military operations – used as a pretext for regime change. curiously, in this very context, critical analysis and reaction to some imperialist interventions has been rather mute, most notably in cases of yugoslavia, haiti, libya and syria.4 the changes since the early 1990s have been legitimized through what has been called the “new ideology of imperialism” (furedi, 1994) that started to gain force right after the end of the cold war. whereas an explicit defence of imperialism had lost moral and intellectual legitimacy for the decades following wwii, there were efforts by western ideologues since the 1980s to “morally rehabilitate imperialism” by “discredit[ing]” the third world, “intellectually annihilat[ing] third world nationalism“ (furedi, 1994, pp. 101, 110). it is interesting how this ideology became influential even among respectable mainstream organizations. emerging in the mid 1980s as an offshoot of the highly respectable humanitarian organization médecins sans frontières (msf), liberté sans frontières (lsf), for example, attacked third worldism in two ways. it rejected northern responsibility for third world poverty and underdevelopment and challenged anti-colonial notions of selfdetermination as a foundational human right (whyte, 2019). by the 1990s “the ever strengthening consensus” in the west was that “the problems of the third world stem from its moral and cultural limitations” (furedi, 1994, p. 4 the mutedness, or at times, the confusion, in responses to these cases constitute a stark comparison with the reaction to the 2003 iraq war which was interpreted by most critics as an imperialist war. anti-imperialist critiques of interventions in the former yugoslavia, haiti, libya and syria, however, have been very few and far between. some exceptions are analyses provided by ali (2000) and johnstone (2002) on yugoslavia; engler and fenton (2005) and gordon (2010) on haiti; and engler (2012) on libya. sedef arat-koç studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 376 98). it was, therefore, “not colonialism but decolonization that [was] likely to be treated as problematic” (furedi, 1994, p. 98; italics in original). the perspective that has dominated northern interpretations of some of the southern conflicts of the last few decades is not just “internalist,” but also one that emphasizes the “irrational and uncontrollable” nature of conflict, assumed to be based (only or mainly) in ethnic and “cultural” differences. using a colonial, or what we may specifically call an orientalist lens on third world conflicts, this perspective sees the countries and peoples in the south as unable to govern themselves. 5 the recent proliferation of a vocabulary in international politics which speaks of “failed” and “rogue states” in the global south and “humanitarian interventions” and a “responsibility to protect” by the global north,6 suggests that countries and regions in the global south are perceived as the main source of violence in the world – both in relation to the people living there and as a threat towards the global north – while imperial violence is invisibilized, normalized and legitimized. as james paul, the former executive director of the new yorkbased global policy forum expresses, the official discourse in europe frames the civil wars and economic turmoil leading to the exodus of refugees from africa and elsewhere on “fanaticism, corruption, dictatorship, economic failures and other causes for which they [the europeans] have no responsibility” (deen, 2015). as this official discourse stays “silent about the military intervention and for change in which europeans were major actors, interventions that have torn refugees’ homelands apart and resulted in civil war and state collapse,” paul offers the term “regime change refugees” as a corrective to the dominant perspective on refugees (deen, 2015). in academic and popular narratives of international politics in recent decades, some stories of civil war, genocide and displacement have been widely circulated, but others have hardly been mentioned. whereas specific narratives about rwanda, (former) yugoslavia and syria, for example, have been repeatedly told, there has hardly been any attention paid to the genocide going on in the democratic republic of the congo since the 1990s. in relation to the countries whose stories of genocide and displacement have been told, there is only one narrative that overwhelmingly dominates the interpretations of what has happened and why. this narrative carefully omits any possibility that western countries or north-dominated international institutions may bear responsibility for the root causes and tensions leading to or the exacerbating the conflict. thus, if there are scant references to belgian colonialism in the making of hutu-tutsi tensions in rwanda, there is hardly any discussion of the more recent role that international financial institutions have played in creating and perpetuating the conditions for ethnic tensions (chimni, 1998; collins, 2002). the latter has also rarely been mentioned in 5 see said (1978, p. 33). also see andreasson (2005), on how orientalism has been used in relation to africa. 6 the “responsibility to protect” is a doctrine that has been part of international law since 2005. decolonizing refugee studies, standing up for indigenous justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 377 the case of the ethnic conflict in the former yugoslavia (chimni, 1998). also rare have been narratives that focus on the active political and military roles that nato and individual western states have played in the continuation – rather than peaceful resolution – of civil wars in yugoslavia (ali, 2000; chimni, 1998; gibbs, 2009; johnstone, 2002) libya (engler, 2012), and syria. despite the existence of a parallax gap, references to international politics are not altogether missing in refugee studies. there are indeed a few collections in the discipline of international relations that specifically focus on the relationships among forced migration, refugees and international relations (betts, 2009; betts & loescher, 2011; münz & weiner, 1997). informed by the realist perspective in international relations, however, many of the contributions in these volumes reflect and perpetuate a northern securitization bias in their approach to refugee issues. rather than assuming responsibility for the emergence or exacerbation of conflicts, this perspective assigns and advocates for a central role for the north to “solve” the problems through various interventions, including militarized “humanitarian interventions” for regime change and “economic reconstruction” integrating the country further into global capitalism. when refugees are mentioned in this perspective – as in the foreign policies informed by them – they are treated as “pawns and not concerns,” using violations of their human rights to “justify violence and naked exercise of power” (chimni, 2000, p. 253). in many cases, the claims to “humanitarianism” in foreign interventions go side by side with the rejection of refugees at the borders of the same countries that participate in “humanitarian” missions. the contradiction between these two positions is not problematized, but is often taken for granted in the mainstream of academic research and public discourses. commenting on the afghan war and the “humanitarian” concern in britain for afghan women, gary younge in the guardian exposes the ironies of this concern: so we murder and maim in the name of the common good – not so much a war as a humanitarian effort with the unfortunate side effects of death and destruction. and should those who we seek to protect [by our international military actions] arrive on our shores, all apparent concern evaporates in a haze of xenophobic bellicosity. whatever compassion may have been expressed previously is confiscated at the border. as soon as they touch british soil they go from being a cause to be championed to a problem to be dealt with. we may flout international law abroad, but god forbid any one should breach immigration law here… we love them so we bomb them; we loathe them so we deport them. (younge, 2002) critical voices that see and problematize the ironic connections and contradictions between foreign policy and refugee policy have often been marginalized in public discourse. one could argue that the parallax gap enables, as it also disguises, the irony in a period of (reconfigured and reemboldened) imperialism that there are, on the one hand, no borders for northern foreign policy, its economic policies, and political and military sedef arat-koç studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 378 operations around the world, but absolute borders when it comes to decisions regarding acceptance or rejection of migrants and refugees, who are often themselves displaced and dispossessed by no border foreign policies. decolonizing refugee studies ii: challenging discourses of charity and gratitude the second step in decolonizing refugee studies and refugee discourses would involve interrogating the kinds of subjectivities and relationships imposed on refugees. in the absence of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist perspectives in international politics and international political economy, refugees are perceived either as threats and burdens, or as helpless victims dependent on northern charity. in fact, there is a direct relationship between the absence of critical perspectives on western foreign policy, economic policies and wars, and the dominance of a charity framework in discourses of refugee protection. based on implicit assumptions of a manichean world neatly divided between “refugee producers and refugee havens” (nguyen, 2018, p. 469) – conceptualized in a south-north axis – even “refugeefriendly” liberal-humanitarian perspectives do not see the so-called “refugee crisis” as related to foreign policy. they rather see it as one of inevitable difficulties and shortcomings in adjusting policies, institutions and resources in countries facing sudden, unexpected, large influxes of refugees (belanger & saraçoğlu, 2019).7 the charity discourse posits the global north as absent and innocent in the production of refugees, and as benevolent and generous if – and to the extent that – it may choose to provide any protections. in the logic of charity, benevolence is discretionary and may therefore be extended, as it may also be equally “legitimately” denied. several researchers have pointed out a serious deterioration in the image and status of the typical refugee figure in the post-cold war period. during the cold war, european refugees escaping from the other side of the “iron curtain” were depicted as heroic individuals exercising political agency. perceived as people who had “a past, a story and a voice all of which were used to validate the west in its ideological war” (johnson, 2011, p. 1020), they were seen as ideal subjects for resettlement and naturalization in western countries (johnson, 2011; pupavac, 2008). even though the attitude toward third world refugees ranged from welcoming to ambiguous and outright exclusionary, there seemed to be some ideological value to refugees for most of the cold war period. the post-cold war era witnessed not only 7 belanger and saraçoğlu (2019) focus on a non-western case of imperial aspirations, that of turkey in relation to syria. they point out that turkey’s interventionist “neo-ottoman” policies in the syrian civil war have meant that turkey cannot simply be characterized as a benevolent “passive recipient” of syrian refugees. based on turkey’s political and geopolitical interests and goals, they argue that the “refugee crisis” in turkey needs to be understood also as crises of turkish politics and foreign policy. decolonizing refugee studies, standing up for indigenous justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 379 the loss of the ideological value of refugees (castles, 2003; johnson, 2011), but also increasingly racialized, victimized and feminized depictions of third world refugees as faceless, nameless, undifferentiated masses of humanity, lacking political agency and political voice (johnson, 2011). new discourses associated refugees from the global south with “mass movements, economic opportunism and threats to security,” helping generate and legitimize concerns about “the sanctity of borders” (johnson, 2011, p.1023). along with the diminished humanity, or even outright criminalization of refugees, it has not been surprising that refugee policies in the global north shifted in this period from enabling resettlement and integration to tolerating detentions and deportations, or at best emphasizing “preventive protection,” or temporary protection and repatriation (chimni, 2009; johnson, 2011). i argue that the charity discourse constructs refugees as colonial subjects, and re-colonizes them in a second way, after the violence of their displacement and dispossession. the charity framework denies responsibility for production of refugees – and can therefore legitimatize denial of protection – and defines for the recipient what the nature and conditions of “protection” will be. typically, it demands from refugees a confirmation and legitimization of power relations. this framework creates an enormous societal “appetite for refugee gratitude often leav(ing) no room [among refugees] for other emotions such as bitterness, resentment and anger” (nguyen, as cited by gallagher, 2016). gratitude is perhaps the main affect expressed in post-war refugee narratives (nguyen, 2013), often ironically towards the very state that has waged the war. the charity framework makes the expectation and compulsion to express gratitude so powerful that even for refugees whose displacement has been caused by imperial wars, such as vietnamese refugees in the u.s., “war sufferings remain unmentionable and unmourned” (espiritu, 2006, p. 329). there is, however, an additional element of colonization about the charity logic and the expectation of gratitude following from this logic, something more sinister than simply silencing and patronizing refugees. perhaps most negatively consequential in terms of the potential for solidarities with indigenous peoples is that the charity framework demands that refugees internationalize and celebrate the national myths and ideologies of the receiving state. as powerfully expressed in critical refugee studies, “the refugee’s thankfulness could be dangerously appropriated to justify american neo-imperial ambitions in the past, present, and future” (nguyen, 2013, p. 201). in what she calls “‘we-win-even-if-we lose’ syndrome,” yen le espiritu (2006) demonstrates how, decades after the vietnam war, the u.s. media has manipulated the figure of the “good” and “grateful” refugee to turn the humiliating and difficult memories of “a controversial, morally questionable and unsuccessful” war (espiritu, 2014, p. 1), where the u.s. was “neither victorious nor liberator,” into a war that was “necessary, just and successful” (espiritu, 2006, p. 329). sedef arat-koç studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 380 in 2015, the harper government, not otherwise known for refugee-friendly policies, passed the journey to freedom act to commemorate “the exodus of vietnamese refugees and their acceptance in canada.” analyzing the parliamentary debates preceding the passing of the bill, ang ngo (2016) argues that the discourse of the grateful refugee employed in these debates emphasized narratives of refuge and refugee success, and avoided any emphasis on the violence of the vietnam war and canada’s role in it that led to the exodus of refugees in the first place (p. 71). what vinh nguyen (2018) observes in relation to the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of the “fall of saigon” in canada are articulations simultaneously of gratitude for freedom (here) and condemnation of communism. as a “migration narrative that charts the movement from communist oppression to capitalist freedom,” this narrative revises history and passes “as an explanation for the [vietnamese] diaspora” (nguyen, 2018, p. 466; emphasis in original) of the 1970s and 1980s. also writing on vietnamese refugees in the u.s., mimi thi nguyen discusses how the liberal discourse of freedom functions both as a form of subjection and subjectivization (2012, p. 17); how ‘the “gift of freedom” has subjected the vietnamese to the violence of war in the name of freedom; and how, as refugees, it continues to constitute them as racialized – but enthusiastic – subjects of liberal empire. focusing on three vietnamese refugees, nguyen demonstrates the ironical positioning of refugees in relation to the imperial state. first discussed is kim phuc, the vietnamese girl whose photograph of having been burned by napalm became one of the iconic images of civilian suffering during the war. as a refugee, the adult phuc became an ambassador of forgiveness, “whose pardon absolves an empire of the criminality of war,” and whose “grace becomes that which she recompenses liberal empire for the gift of freedom – even napalm” (nguyen, 2012, pp. 86-87; emphasis in original). the other two figures nguyen discusses represent a more direct participation in u.s. national and imperial projects. these were vietnamese refugees who became prominent in the media during the “war on terror,” one as the architect of the patriot act and the other as a weapons designer for the u.s. military (nguyen, 2012). critical refugee studies reveals how refuge is often “employed by the state to legitimize its nationalist projects of violence – of colonial and capitalist accumulation – at home and abroad” (nguyen, 2019, pp. 126-127). contrary to refugee narratives that celebrate upward mobility and assimilation into the nation-state, this kind of analysis offers valuable steps towards decolonization of refugee studies and dominant refugee discourses. when combined with critical, anti-imperialist perspectives on international politics, such an analytical and political project of decolonization has the potential to bring refugee and indigenous issues and politics into closer affinity. decolonizing refugee studies and refugee discourses brings them into a discussion with indigenous politics, partly because it helps define the refugee experience in more holistic terms, beyond one limited to the diaspora – decolonizing refugee studies, standing up for indigenous justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 381 focusing on what happens after the escape, on issues of refugee agency and survival as well as challenges of legal status, labour market status, racism, etc. – to also emphasize displacement from land. this approach addresses the root causes and injustices of refugee production, and the mournability of the loss – of homeland, popular sovereignty, peace, and overall relationship to the place from which one has been displaced. even as he warns against the problems of collapsing indigeneity and diaspora, daniel coleman (2016) emphasizes their relationship, especially when diaspora is interpreted to be a space of forced displacement: these two cultural formations – indigeneity and diaspora – are deeply related to one another because the scandal of diaspora arises from people’s displacement from nativity and natality. that is to say, our sense of the injustice that occurs when people are forcibly displaced arises from the principle of priority, that people should have the right to govern themselves on their ancestral lands. (p. 62) refugees and indigenous justice: challenges and potentials for solidarity meaningful commonalities and parallels in the experiences of displacement, colonization and racialization by indigenous peoples and refugees mean that there are grounds for a politics of solidarity between them. in recent decades, the accelerated threats of climate change, capitalist and imperial expansionism, and politics of authoritarian nationalist populisms and white supremacism, have added to the necessity, urgency and desirability of solidarities across their disparate histories and geographies. in this section, i discuss the potentials for and challenges to solidarity. my argument is that potential affinities and solidarities between groups cannot simply be treated as academic or intellectual matters, guaranteed by objective observable parallels between (some of) their experiences. solidarity is rather contingent on politics, a transformative, anticolonial politics of place which can both address common problems and enable dreams of a collective future based on new principles, radically different from the ones established by settler colonialism. after discussing challenges to solidarity the following section elaborates on the potentials for solidarity between refugees and indigenous peoples: through a politics of place as articulated by indigenous and nonindigenous intellectuals, and reorientation of refugee identity. historically, we can identify a number of meaningful parallels and relations between developments in europe and colonization of the americas. commenting on the commemorative events marking 500 years of columbus’ arrival in the americas, ella shohat (1992) points out that there has been no acknowledgement, even in the counter-quincentenary events, of the relation between two important events that took place in 1492. reminding us that 1492 was the year when approximately three million muslims were defeated and around 300,000 jews were expelled from spain, shohat argues that the sedef arat-koç studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 382 correspondence between the two 1492s was not accidental, but rather politically, economically, and ideologically linked. the “discovery” of the americas, according to shohat, was made possible largely by the wealth confiscated from jews and muslims in spain. clarifying that she is not suggesting an exact equivalence between the treatment of muslims and jews in spain and of indigenous peoples in the americas, shohat nevertheless argues that there was a significant relationship between the two. in addition to the economic linkages between the two events, she discusses how “european christian demonology pre-figured colonialist racism” (shohat, 1992, pp. 96-97), and how the discourses about muslims and jews constituted some of the elements of the racism against indigenous peoples. some historical scholarship discusses how the “enclosure movement” which involved capture of the commons and the dispossession, impoverishment and eventual proletarianization of the peasantry, first took shape in britain and then became the model for colonization in north america, africa, india and oceania (greer, 2012; thompson, 1993). however, historical experiences of oppression in europe (e.g., for the irish during the potato famine, the dispossessed peasantry or the working classes) have not translated into a solidaristic relationship to indigenous peoples among europeans migrating to the colonies. rather, those oppressed in europe have turned into settler colonizers, invested in the settler colonial project as both an individual and collective solution to the social and economic crises they faced in europe. even for recent refugees from the third world, acknowledging their own colonial or post-colonial experiences in the countries of origin and experiences of exclusion and racism in diaspora provide no guarantees that they would necessarily identify with an indigenous project of decolonization. daniel coleman (2016) suggests that the goals of refugees and migrants are often expressed in a “politics of inclusion,” whereas those of indigenous peoples are expressed in a “politics of separatism and sovereignty” (p. 62). he specifically mentions tensions between indigenous commitments to literal places as compared to “diasporic distrust of nativism and its reputed essentialism” (coleman, 2016, p. 61). settler colonialism often involves complex and contradictory relationships between colonialism and racialization, placing racialized groups in a precarious continuum of racial hierarchy, rather than in a simple dichotomy against white settlers. eve tuck and k. wayne yang (2012) observe that in settler colonial states, “the refugee/immigrant/migrant is invited to be a settler in some scenarios, given the appropriate investments in whiteness, or is made an illegal, criminal presence in other scenarios” (p. 17). we can think about the “model minority” discourse as one of the ways in which racialized groups may be seduced to adopt settler subjectivity. as nishant upadhyay (2016, 2019) demonstrates, myths of “model minorities” are typically constructed against a backdrop of unmodel-others. whereas some authors emphasize the presence of the black-other in the making of model minorities in the u.s., decolonizing refugee studies, standing up for indigenous justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 383 upadhyay underlines the ubiquitous presence of the native-other in canada and the u.s. he suggests that “complicity and opportunistic alliances between whites and non-indigenous and non-black racialized communities (re)produce not just anti-black racism and white supremacy but settler colonialism and anti-native racism as well” (upadhyay, 2016, p. 252). however, as tuck and yang’s (2012) statement above suggests, processes of racialization operate in ways that never guarantee safe and equal belonging, even for “model minorities.” bonnie honig (1998) argues that dominant american discourses on immigrants often contain expressions of xenophilia side-by-side with expressions of xenophobia. she demonstrates how the figure of the “good” immigrant is often used to celebrate the virtues and values attributed to the nation, to show the disenchanted that the regime is worthy, and to discipline the poor, domestic minorities, and unsuccessful immigrants, by showing them that the system is fair. honig also argues, however, that “nationalist xenophilia tends to feed and nurture nationalist xenophobia as its partner” (p. 3, emphasis in original). we could argue that in the absence of an antihegemonic project of solidarity, a dance of xenophobia and xenophilia in nationalist discourses may potentially work to spread and strengthen the hegemony of settler colonialism, through the insecurity, anxiety, and desire for belonging it produces among racialized immigrants. despite tensions and challenges to solidarity, there have been a number of individual and collective attempts – with varying degrees of success – by some migrant justice activists in the canadian context to build solidarity with indigenous activists (fortier, 2015). 8 migrant justice activists who have attempted these initiatives of solidarity often come from open borders and no borders perspectives.9 as we see in the development of a canadian debate, however, some formulations of no borders have led to specific tensions with indigenous politics. in 2005, indigenous scholar bonita lawrence and anti-racist scholar enakshi dua published a co-authored article that critiqued anti-racist theory and practice for excluding indigenous peoples and perspectives. they argued that one of the main tensions between the two was based on “the postcolonial emphasis on deconstructing nationhood” (lawrence & dua, 2005, p. 131), which negatively impacted indigenous politics. lawrence and dua warned that the tendency of these theories of nationalism to “denigrate nationalism as representing only technologies of violence,” or to ‘reif(y)… categories that can degenerate into fundamentalism or “ethnic cleansing”’ (2005, p. 131) 8 fortier (2015) demonstrates how migrant justice activists have changed their slogans in order to make linkages to indigenous politics and establish alliances with indigenous activists. it seems, however, that none of the slogans have resonated successfully with indigenous activists. 9 it is important to recognize that open borders and no borders positions are theoretically, philosophically and politically informed and inspired by a variety of perspectives, including political and economic liberalism (bauder, 2015). only some of these perspectives prioritize a politics of anti-racism and migrant justice. sedef arat-koç studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 384 have particularly negative ramifications for indigenous peoples living under colonialism. a response to this article by nandita sharma and cynthia wright (2008/2009) reiterated a rather over-general(ized) and absolute critique of nationalism and sovereignty and argued for “decolonization without nationalism” (pp. 121, 128). stating that naturalizing indigenous connection to the land constituted autochthonic thinking (assuming being native to a specific area), they critiqued indigenous claims to belonging and ownership of a place. arguing that this thinking is (always and necessarily) embedded in and in turn fosters capitalist globalization (p. 124) and “neoracist politics,” they suggested that it hinders more egalitarian and universalistic visions of redistribution. this rather generalized, absolute critique of any and every form of nationalism denies any liberatory potential to (any kind of) nationalism and any notion of sovereignty. conceptual equation of imperial, anti-colonial third world and indigenous nationalisms implies that they are all (equally) delegitimized. not only does this position overlook the nuances and sophistication of indigenous debates on sovereignty, it also potentially silences and disarms some of the contemporary critiques and politics against imperialism in the third world. while it is of utmost importance to exercise caution and vigilance against potential tendencies in nationalism towards “violent nativism” and “essentialist sovereignty” (coleman, 2016, p. 73), these dangers are not present in the approaches current indigenous theorizing and activism take in relation to land and sovereignty. what we can observe instead are elements that open the way towards a solidaristic politics of place. contrary to fears of particularistic, parochial and xenophobic expressions of identity based in ethnicity, conceptions of indigenous identity and visions of indigenous politics and sovereignty articulated by leading indigenous intellectuals and activists emphasize an oppositional, anti-colonial political identity. there are no simple or exclusive references to either ethnicity or “tradition” in the way two leading indigenous scholars in canada, taiaiake alfred and jeff corntassel, for example, define indigenousness. openly arguing against ethnic and indigenous identities as artificial and state-created identities, alfred and corntassel (2005) use the term indigenousness in clearly contextualized and political terms, defining it as “an identity constructed, shaped and lived in the politicized context of contemporary colonialism” (p. 597): it is this oppositional, place-based existence, along with the consciousness of being in struggle against the dispossessing and demeaning fact of colonization by foreign peoples, that fundamentally distinguishes indigenous peoples from other peoples of the world. (alfred & corntassel, 2005, p. 597) glen coulthard (2014) and andrea smith (2011) vigorously criticize essentialist conceptions of indigenous identity. coulthard (2014) articulates a scathing critique of the false promise of recognition in the colonial politics of reconciliation recently dominating settler-indigenous relations in liberal decolonizing refugee studies, standing up for indigenous justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 385 canada. smith (2011) criticizes the approach to native studies, popular among some native and non-native scholars alike, that is preoccupied with identity and cultural representation. she agrees with sandy grande who finds this approach to be “obscur[ing] the social and economic realities facing indigenous communities, substituting a politics of representation for one of radical social transformation” (smith, 2011, p. 56). glen coulthard (2010) clarifies that the conception of land or place in indigenous politics and ethics is very different from a thing or object over which indigenous peoples would claim exclusionary rights. instead, it ought to be understood as a field of “relationships of things to each other.” place is a way of knowing, experiencing, and relating with the world… this, i would argue, is precisely the understanding of land and/or place that not only anchors many indigenous peoples’ critique of colonial relations of force and command, but also our visions of what a truly post-colonial relationship of peaceful co-existence might look like. (coulthard, 2010, pp. 79-80) glen coulthard and leanne simpson (2016) call for a politics informed by the ethical frameworks of “grounded normativity” and “place-based solidarity”: grounded normativity teaches us how to live our lives in relation to other people and nonhuman life forms in a profoundly nonauthoritarian, nondominating, nonexploitive manner. grounded normativity teaches us how to be in respectful diplomatic relationships with other indigenous and non-indigenous nations with whom we might share territorial responsibilities or common political or economic interests. our relationship to the land itself generates the processes, practices, and knowledges that inform our political systems, and through which we practice solidarity. (p. 254) elaborating on “grounded normativity,” simpson (2017) clarifies that it generates alternative conceptualizations of nationhood and governmentality that “aren’t based on enclosure, authoritarian power and hierarchy” (p. 22). taiaiake alfred (2010) envisions decolonization as a common future of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, which would be based on a radical imagination, a different set of values and principles than the ones canadians and americans have and continue to live with: would it be possible for people cultured in the north american mainstream to reimagine themselves in relation to the land and others and start to see this place as a real, sacred homeland, instead of an encountered commodity destined to be used and abused to satisfy impulses and desires implanted in their heads by european imperial texts?… in order to decolonize, canadians and americans have to sever their emotional attachment to their countries and reimagine themselves, not as citizens with the privileges conferred by being a descendent of colonizers or newcomers from other parts of the world benefitting from white imperialism, but as human beings in equal and respectful relation to other human sedef arat-koç studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 386 beings and the natural environment. this is what radical imagination could look like. (pp. 5-6) as the above discussion clarifies, there are strong perspectives and arguments in indigenous thought that address and counter what coleman (2016) calls “diasporic distrust of nativism and its reputed essentialism” (p. 61). non-indigenous scholars have also articulated thoughts on a politics of place. arif dirlik (2001) argues that a politics of place can be an alternative to what he problematizes as the two dominant and competing political logics of the present: essentialist identity politics and ethnic nationalism, on the one hand; and placeless politics of neoliberal imperial cosmopolitanism and globalism, on the other. advocating for a form of politics informed by places, dirlik and roxann prazniak (2001) distinguish “place-based politics” from essentialist “place-bound” nativism or ethnicist politics (p. 11). their notion of place parallels coulthard’s (2010) notion of place as “a way of knowing, experiencing, and relating with the world” and as “a field of ‘relationships of things to each other’” (pp. 79-80). defined as a metaphor for groundedness, rather than as geographic location, dirlik’s (2001) notion of place defies parochial boundaries and reified identities: “place as a metaphor suggests groundedness from below, and a flexible and porous boundary around it, without closing out the extralocal, all the way to the global” (p. 22). place-based thinking allows for a political consciousness that is based on a historicized and contextualized understanding of the relationships between people and the environment, and among and between different peoples who have co-existed and interacted in places over time. place-based politics may bring people together not only around various shared concerns – ecological, social, economic and political – but also on the basis of “recognition of a common destiny at the local level” (dirlik & prazniak, 2001, p. 10) and a desire to resolve issues democratically. dirlik and prazniak (2001) explain that the reason they prioritize placed-based politics is “not to close out options for action at the level of national or global spaces, but merely to reassert the priority of place-based practices for any democratic resolution of the problems of livelihood and social coexistence” (p. 11). as articulated by indigenous and non-indigenous scholars, intellectuals and activists, place-based thinking and politics allow for ways to remember, acknowledge, and address historical tensions and injustices among peoples, while also enabling an imagination of a just and peaceful co-existence and a different relationship to land. the kinds of visions offered by indigenous scholars for decolonization and sovereignty summarized earlier provide glimpses into what a politics of place in settler colonies may potentially look like. these visions are radically different from those of (neo)liberal multiculturalism which promises reconciliation and peaceful co-existence, but leaves existing socio-economic structures and power hierarchies unquestioned and intact. decolonizing refugee studies, standing up for indigenous justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 387 the possibility and will on the part of refugees to participate in a politics of place with indigenous peoples may depend partly on a reconceptualization and reorientation of their identity as refugees. vinh nguyen (2019) offers the notion of refugeetude as a potential pathway to solidarity. “[c]halleng[ing] conventional understandings that confine refugee to a legal definition, short time frame, and pitiful existence,” “a cloak that can easily be shed with the coming of refuge,” nguyen (2019, p. 111) suggests that the notion of refugeetude, referring to “a continued state of being and a mode of relationality” offers “a critical reorientation, an epistemological shift in how we think about and understand the category refugee.” with the “intensified production and criminalization of refugees” (p. 111) in the present conjuncture, nguyen emphasizes that many refugee stories are not about “successful integration and gratefulness towards the nation-state,” but rather about “socioeconomic and affective precarity” (p. 123). acknowledging that many refugees may indeed yearn for national belonging and therefore accept assimilation, nguyen nevertheless sees refugeetude as not “subscrib(ing) to what arendt calls a ‘false’ or ‘insane’ optimism, in which refugees hold out hope for total assimilation into a national body politic” (pp. 121-122). instead, he suggests that refugeeness may be “a catalyst for thinking, feeling, and doing with others – for imagining justice” (p. 111). drawing and building on hannah arendt, for nguyen “the keeping of refugeeness affords the refugee a more expansive vision of history and politics.” (2019, p. 123). it is through this vision that “refugee subjects can make crucial linkages between themselves and others who have undergone and are undergoing similar experiences within the ‘national order of things,’ including migrant, undocumented, racialized, and indigenous groups” (nguyen, 2019, pp. 123124). the concept of refugeetude can contribute to a reconceptualization of the identity and experiences of refugees in a direction that decolonizes them, potentially freeing them from the discourses of charity and gratitude discussed earlier. the complexities and contradictions offered by refugeetude provide some potential – without any guarantees – to start conversations and acts of solidarity around visions of justice among various groups in settler colonies who have various complicated histories and contentious relations with the imperial and national state. conclusion: the “right to escape” and the “right to stay put” i have suggested that engagements between refugee and indigenous notions of justice would benefit from an analytical perspective (and politics) that challenges compartmentalization and binary thinking, bringing experiences of anti-colonialism in the americas and other white settler colonies into conversation with the third world. such engagements would need to be done not through “colonial equivocation,” as an immigrant or refugee “move to sedef arat-koç studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 371-390, 2020 388 innocence” (tuck & yang, 2012, pp. 17-19), but rather by recognizing the specificity of decolonial thought and struggles in different contexts, avoiding “collapsing the different systems of colonialism [and contemporary imperialism], their distinct histories and racial formations” (tabar & desai, 2017, p. xii). refugee studies separated from international politics and international political economy, deprived of a critical (and specifically, anti-imperialist) analysis of international politics, would at best produce a liberal approach to refugee movements emphasizing individual freedoms, rights to mobility and a “right to escape” (mezzadra, 2004). unproblematizing and perhaps normalizing escape, this approach fails to connect with and address indigenous concerns about land and sovereignty. i suggest that decolonizing refugee studies also needs to involve analysis that engages with causes of refugee flows and a politics about changing the world in a positive direction to prevent the urgent need for such flows. the latter would need to be a transnational, but also a place-based politics. as dirlik and prazniak’s (2001) grounded but also porous notion of place suggests, there is no contradiction between the two. this is a politics that can confront colonialism and ongoing imperialism, as well as inequalities and environmental catastrophes at local, national and global levels. it would also need to be a politics that engages with rights to self-determination and inclusive popular, democratic sovereignty. this means that, as much as a “right to escape,” a decolonized refugee studies also needs to insist on what we may call a right to stay put. in expanding their notions of justice, and envisioning, imagining alternative futures of co-existence, refugee discourses have a lot to learn from, and be inspired by, indigenous thought and politics. references alfred, t. 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[doctoral dissertation, york university]. yorkspace institutional repository. upadhyay, n. (2019). making of “model” south asians on the tar sands: intersections of race, caste and indigeneity. critical ethnic studies, 5(1-2), 152-173. whyte, j. (2019). morals of the market: human rights and the rise of neoliberalism. verso. younge, g. (2002, august 19). under a veil of deceit. the guardian. www.theguardian.com/world/2002/aug/19/afghanistan.immigrationandpublicservices lenon final correspondence address: suzanne lenon, departments of sociology and women & gender studies, arts & science, university of lethbridge, lethbridge, ab, t1k 3m4; email: suzanne.lenon@uleth.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 16, issue 1, 143-161, 2022 polygamy, state racism, and the return of barbarism: the coloniality of evolutionary psychology suzanne lenon university of lethbridge, canada abstract this article examines the race-thinking and colonial reasoning circulating in two recent developments in canadian law with respect to polygamous marriage: the polygamy reference (2011) that upheld the criminal code provision on polygamy and the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act (2015). this legislation introduced changes to canada’s immigration regulations, which include the practice of polygamy as a basis for refusing foreign applicants and deporting foreign nationals. i address how insights from the field of evolutionary psychology were applied in the polygamy reference and what discursive and material resonances they had in the zero tolerance act. drawing on the work of sylvia wynter, i situate these judicial and legal developments in relation to violence, within colonial formations of state power, and as forces supporting white supremacy through the continuing valorization of monogamy as a foundational aspect of social and sexual citizenship in canada. keywords polygamy; canada; immigration; evolutionary psychology; coloniality; racism you see and feel modernity, it is announced, it is promoted, it is celebrated, it is full of promises. coloniality is more difficult to see. modernity’s storytelling hides it. but it is felt, it is felt by people who do not fit the celebratory frames and expectations of modernity. (mignolo, 2016, p. vii) to mark canada’s 150th year of confederation, canada post issued a “marriage equality” stamp, the fourth in a set of 10 that were unveiled throughout 2017 and showcased select moments of white settler nationsuzanne lenon studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-161, 2022 144 making over the past 50 years.1 this particular stamp commemorates the passage of the civil marriage act, which legalized same-sex marriage across canada in 2005. stylized in the shape of a maple leaf, its visual centre consists of a rainbow flag with the words “canada 150” to its right and “marriage equality” in both french and english directly below. celebrating this specific legal reform, the stamp exemplifies a particular kind of canadian (homo)nationalism that prides itself on its tolerance of sexual and gender diversity and imagines canada (and canadians) as inclusive, benevolent, and modern. as a commodity that enables the cross-border travel of paper and packages, this stamp is a metonym for canada as a safe haven in the face of homophobia elsewhere, not here, and so participates in “modernity’s storytelling” (mignolo, 2016, p. vii). yet the stamp does more than this; it also captures, in its negative space, the penalization and subjugation of difference and the suppression of resistance that have made monogamy the only “lawful” union and form of conjugal relations worthy of recognition by the state. attending to this context, and particularly to the state repudiation of nonmonogamous unions, this article examines two developments in canadian law that are coextensive with same-sex marriage equality and continue to set limits on the types of conjugal unions that can be recognized and legally tolerated in canada. the 2011 decision of the supreme court of british columbia (reference, 2011; hereinafter the polygamy reference) upheld 19th century criminal code provisions on polygamy, while bill s-7 (zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act, 2015; hereinafter the zero tolerance act) introduced changes to canada’s immigration regulations to include the practice of polygamy as a basis for refusing foreign applicants and deporting foreign nationals. this article highlights what sylvia wynter (2003) calls the “coloniality of being, of power” that circulates in both judicial and legislative formations of polygamy to double down on the primacy accorded to monogamous marriage as a marker of a nation’s cultural and political identity as white and civilized. my particular interest here is how historically intractable racist sentiments are engaged to demonize polygamy through the colonial logic of “barbarism,” so as to mark its fundamental difference from monogamy and its incompatibility with national identity. i begin by discussing the role played by the relatively new field of evolutionary psychology in the polygamy reference. its insights were employed to dismiss feminist expert evidence; to vault over the histories of racial animus that undergird anti-polygamy law in canada while 1 other commemorative stamps include depictions of expo 67, the charter of rights & freedoms, the canadarm, the trans-canada highway, and terry fox’s marathon of hope (canada post, n.d.). polygamy, state racism, and the return of barbarism studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-162, 2022 145 simultaneously reinvesting in racism to do so; and, concomitantly, to usher in a “coloniality of power” that seeks to racially stratify for the purpose of domination. evolutionary psychology is a knowledge-for-domination project that is sourced from colonial logics and marks racial difference as a signifier of cultural difference. that evolutionary psychology appeared as common sense in a 21st century canadian courtroom is disconcerting and should give those of us dreaming of and working towards social justice tremendous pause: what knowledge formations were galvanized in the name of gender equality and women’s rights? three years after the criminal code provisions on polygamy were upheld as constitutional in the polygamy reference, the federal government introduced legislation that ostensibly protected canadians from “barbaric cultural practices.” the second part of the article, then, provides an overview of the zero tolerance act and some of its material effects. i contend that the lexicon and colonial grammar of evolutionary psychology mediates both the intent and materiality of this act, even while it is not clearly identified as an operating frame. to accomplish these goals, i draw on two key concepts from sylvia wynter’s (2003) work: the “coloniality of being” and the “coloniality of power.” she describes the “coloniality of being” as the overrepresentation of a western bourgeois conception of man, an exclusionary mode of being human that denies others the ontological status of “human” (2003, p. 282). the “coloniality of power” refers to western and colonial knowledge systems that produce social stratifications for the purposes of domination, replete as they are “with an imperial bend, a will to objectivity and truth” (mignolo, 2014, p. 110; wynter, 2003). in short, i argue throughout this paper that the state’s use of evolutionary psychology structurally embeds the violence of racism into law by reviving a racial taxonomy of human populations and perpetuating a 19th century understanding of racial-cum-cultural difference. it becomes knowledge in the service of colonial formations of state power and a force supporting white supremacy in the continual valorization of monogamy as a foundational aspect of social and sexual citizenship in canada. in offering an analysis of the work evolutionary psychology does in the polygamy reference and its discursive traces in the zero tolerance act, this paper contributes to scholarly literature in canada that demonstrates the imbrication of colonial race-thinking in the legal treatment of polygamy (e.g., carter, 2008; denike, 2010, 2014; lenon, 2015; rambukkana, 2015) and contributes a race-critical analysis of the regulation of polygamous marriage to socio-legal and political science literatures (calder & beaman, 2014; campbell, 2013; campbell et al., 2005; gaucher, 2016, 2018). this paper’s analysis of canadian juridical and legislative (re)positionings on polygamy’s harms brings mignolo’s (2016) opening epigraph to life: through the celebration of monogamous marriage, against the necessary foil of the “barbaric practice” of polygamy, modernity is made visible; it is announced, it is promoted, it is celebrated. what remains critical is unmasking the suzanne lenon studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-161, 2022 146 enduring structures of white supremacy on which the modernity of the prohibition of polygamy is built and experienced by those whose different marriage relations are targeted under the banner of equality and security. to all these literatures, then, this paper offers a meditation on the polysemous term “social justice” as racial justice, one that has not liberal humanism as its horizon but rather the abolition of the very conceptual frames of european/canadian modernity that legitimize relations of dominance so as to imagine otherwise worlds, refashion new modes of relational logics, and reimagine a society without a colour line as arbiter of differentiated wellbeing. mesmerizing the court: evolutionary psychology and the criminalization of polygamy the residents of the community of bountiful, british columbia follow fundamentalist mormon teachings of the church of latter day saints (lds), including plural marriage as a central tenet of faith. bountiful has long been the subject of police investigation. in the mid 2000s, the attorney general of b.c. had actively sought advice from three different special prosecutors to determine whether the community’s two competing leaders, winston blackmore and james oler, could be charged for violating the criminal code’s prohibition on polygamy (section 293) without such a charge being interpreted as violating their freedom of religion as guaranteed by the charter of rights and freedoms (hereinafter, the charter). criminal charges were finally pressed against the two men in 2008 but these were subsequently dismissed in 2009 by the bc supreme court. it ruled that the attorney general had been overly aggressive in its pursuit of a prosecution against blackmore and oler. 2 instead of appealing this decision, the attorney general tasked the supreme court of british columbia with assessing the constitutional validity of section 293 through a reference case.3 the specific questions referred to the court were (i) is section 293 of the criminal code of canada consistent with the canadian charter of rights and freedoms? if not, in what particular or particulars and to what extent?; and (ii) what are the necessary elements of the offence in section 293 of the criminal code of canada? without limiting this question, does section 293 require that the polygamy or conjugal union in question involved a minor, or occurred in a context of dependence, exploitation, abuse of authority, a gross imbalance of power, or undue influence?4 several weeks of hearings in late 2010 and early 2011 featured arguments from a number of interested parties: the attorney general of b.c. who 2 see blackmore v. british columbia (attorney general), 2009. 3 see criminal code of canada, section 293, 2011. 4 see criminal code of canada, section 293, 2011, para 16. polygamy, state racism, and the return of barbarism studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-162, 2022 147 defended the polygamy provision; the court-appointed amicus curiae’s challenge to the law; bountiful residents’ testimonies about life in polygamous families; social scientists’ and legal scholars’ expert evidence; and 11 third-party interveners’ testimonies and submissions.5 chief justice bauman, in a 300-plus page decision that was released in november 2011, found that, while section 293 did not infringe on freedom of expression, association, or equality rights, it did violate freedom of religion under section 2(a) of the charter, and affected the section 7 liberty interests of children between 12 and 17 years of age who were married into polygamy. the court, however, found these violations justifiable under section 1 of the charter because of the intrinsic harms it understood polygamy to pose to women, children, society at large, and, perhaps most importantly, to the institution of monogamous marriage itself. with one small revision, namely that section 293 cannot criminalize minors who engage in plural marriage, chief justice bauman held that canada’s anti-polygamy provision was valid and enforceable. one particularly striking feature of the decision is its reliance on evolutionary science, specifically the field of evolutionary psychology, as the theoretical and methodological framework through which the harms of polygamy could be objectively identified and even quantified. chief justice bauman began his review of the evidence of polygamy’s harms “at the macro level of evolutionary psychology (simplistically, understanding current human behaviour by appreciating our evolutionary past)” (polygamy reference, 2011, par. 487). the expert evidence he draws on “posits that based on human mating psychology, certain harms are a predictable consequence of polygyny” (polygamy reference, 2011, par. 487). 6 evolutionary psychology is a darwinian approach to thinking about human inclinations in terms of historically evolved tendencies and adaptations (tooby & cosmides, 2005). drawing from 19th century horizons of understanding and taking the past several millennia as its temporal field, this approach returns to the scene of reproduction, to sexual difference, sex selection, and reproductive success that have long been used to explain the evolved characteristics and behavioral traits of animals. consequently, its proponents focus especially on “mating preferences” that ostensibly provide “reproductive advantage” through enhanced chances of genetic survival and proliferation in a competitive, hostile world. an approach to biological and 5 the list included the b.c. teachers federation, canadian coalition for the rights of the child, christian legal fellowship, david asper centre for constitutional rights, real women canada, stop polygamy in canada, and west coast leaf. for the amicus curiae, interveners included the b.c. civil liberties association, canadian association for free expression, canadian polyamory advocacy association, and the fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter day saints. 6 polygamy is a kinship-family structure that contains both polygynous (one man, multiple women) and polyandrous (one woman, multiple men) forms. it is polygynous polygamy that is of central concern in this legal case. suzanne lenon studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-161, 2022 148 physiological variation is brought to bear on social and political relations, historical contexts, cultural practices, and the individual and collective decisions through which we constitute norms. underpinning this is a scaffolding that hierarchically and normatively organizes differences between cultures and behavioural tendencies that is concerned with their “fitness,” survival, and advancement. as i argue below, evolutionary psychology is a knowledge project sourced from colonial logics that racially stratifies populations under the sign of “barbarism,” and in so doing (re)institutes contemporary relations of colonial difference on which modernity is established. craig jones, the lead counsel for the attorney general of b.c., enthusiastically embraced evolutionary psychology as the justificatory framework for upholding a criminal prohibition of polygamy in canada. reflecting on this strategy in a cruel arithmetic, jones (2012) constructs polygamy in a way that resonates with 19th century political theory, that is, in the context of the nasty and brutish battle for survival that is typically described as “human nature.” polygamy is something to be feared and reckoned with: it is “a powerful, primitive force; it is always there; it breathes, it waits and when it is released, it grows and consumes” (jones, 2012, p. 49). it is the force of “the primitive” – that is, of the (colonial) idea of “the primitive” as that which is within us and that drives our lesser natures, as that which is both “hardwired” into humans and that we rise above culturally, politically, and legally – that seemed to mesmerize the court. against the “power of polygamy, uncorked” (jones, 2012, p. 58), as jones describes what he wants us all to imagine and to dread as the inevitable consequence of decriminalizing polygamous marriage in canada, is the law, and, in this case, the time-honoured criminal laws by which we prevent such a descent. by this account, the legal imposition and preservation of monogamy is society’s salvation, an adaptive survival mechanism through which we protect the future of civil society and by which we establish our social, political, and cultural sophistication against the force of nature. the social good of imposing monogamy is that it will manage and curtail what jones’ leading expert, dr. joseph henrich, characterized as the likely “non-trivial” increase in the incidence of polygyny were it to be decriminalized (henrich, 2010, p. 21). for henrich, jones, and ultimately the court, evolutionary principles suggest that there is an “arithmetic” to polygamy’s harms: no matter how you cut it, “polygamy uncorked” increases demand for younger women as marriage partners; the phenomenon of “lost boys”;7 an increase in men’s violence and criminality; a decrease in parental investment in children (by men in particular); and a decrease in gender 7 “lost boys” is a collective label for fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter-day saints (flds) boys who are pushed out of their communities to increase the ratio of women to men for older, more powerful, male members (rambukkana, 2015, p. 188). polygamy, state racism, and the return of barbarism studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-162, 2022 149 equality that is intrinsic to western democratic values. as chief justice bauman argues, “s. 293 was, and indeed still is, intended to address the harms viewed as arising from polygamy; harms to women, to children, to society and, importantly, to the institution of monogamous marriage” (polygamy reference, 2011, par. 881). polygamy’s harms, he adds tautologically, “directly threaten the benefits felt to be associated with the institution of monogamous marriage” and they have done so since “the advent of socially imposed universal monogamy in greco-roman society” (polygamy reference, 2011, par. 883). by incorporating a prohibition on polygamy in canada’s original criminal code, chief justice bauman concludes that parliament was enacting its duty to safeguard the institution of monogamous marriage by actively suppressing “the evil reasonably apprehended to be associated with the practice of polygamy” (polygamy reference, 2011, par. 888). following the lexicon of evolutionary psychology, imposing monogamy is an adaptive strategy that keeps polygamy’s harms in check, and “may have helped to create the conditions for the emergence of democracy and political equality at all levels of government” (henrich, 2010, p. 60). western civilized societies, as this suggests, adhere to a social contract that favours and “imposes” monogamy. it is at the heart of this creative application of evolutionary principles, invoked here to keep ourselves civilized, that we find the structures of tautological colonial reasoning and the burden of white man’s laws. the concern here is less with the merits of evolutionary psychology as a conceptual framework to explain human behaviour and more with the work that its role as evidence was made to do in this critical ruling on the constitutionality and social necessity of canada’s criminal prohibition on polygamy. following sylvia wynter, katherine mckittrick (2014) remarks that science is “produced as an objective system of knowledge that enumerates and classifies ‘difference’ – botanical, racial-sexual, spatial, linguistic, and so forth” (p. 145). in wynter’s estimation, the scientific expressions of modernity – rational man, the cartographies of the plantation, the metrics of non-white/enslaved/gendered bodies, the mathematics of nature, the biological sorting – “disclose the ways in which the question of human life is mapped out by scientific imperatives that increasingly profit from positing that we, humans, are fundamentally biocentric and natural beings” (mckittrick, 2014, p. 145). three examples tie wynter’s insights to the work evolutionary psychology does in the reference decision. first, evolutionary psychology was given primacy of place in conceptualizing polygamy’s harms and thereby it helped justify a 19th century prohibition against polygamy. in fact, chief justice bauman dismissed as “somewhat naïve” (polygamy reference, 2011, par. 752) feminist expert evidence for the amicus curiae, evidence that highlighted more nuanced understandings of women’s experiences in polygamous families outside the discourse of harm. as lori beaman (2014), one of these expert witnesses writes, “reasoned discussion about whether suzanne lenon studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-161, 2022 150 polygamy is inherently harmful to women was, in my experience at least, almost impossible” (p. 132). second, adopting the reasoning of evolutionary psychology provided a new gloss to old biopolitical social contracts that tether marriage formations to political and cultural progress. often analogized to slavery as a “relic of barbarism” (gordon, 2002), characterizations of polygamy as barbaric, despotic, and degenerate, and white mormons as “race traitors” (ertman, 2010) were sensationalized through popular fiction and newsprint, circulated through political theory and philosophy, materialized in a series of draconian anti-polygamy laws, and applied in the jurisprudence of polygamy-related cases in the late 19th century u.s. that sought to curtail fears of a mormon theocracy taking hold in some states.8 in its seminal legal decision, reynolds v. the united states (1878), the u.s. supreme court (in)famously reasoned that polygamy was “odious among the northern and western nations of europe, and, until the establishment of the mormon church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of asiatic and of african people.” the court further argued that polygamy ultimately “fetters the people in stationary despotism” (pp. 164, 165-166). these same sentiments were articulated in a later supreme court ruling, late corporation v. u.s. (1890) that upheld both the dissolution of the church corporation and the forfeiture of its assets. the supreme court posited that “mormons were degrading the morals of the country through their religious practices” and that organizing “a community for the spread and practice of polygamy” constituted “a return to barbarism” (harrison, 2015, p. 106). such a community, the court declared, “is contrary to the spirit of christianity, and of the civilization which christianity has produced in the western world” (harrison, 2015, p. 106). in the face of such legal, political, and social persecution, the president of the lds church issued the first manifesto in 1890, in which he advised followers to “refrain 8 these laws included the morrill anti-bigamy act (1862), which criminalized polygamy, disincorporated the lds church, and prohibited religious organizations from owning property in excess of $50,000. in 1878, the u.s. supreme court upheld the constitutionality of the morrill act in reynolds v. united states. such legal initiatives failed to curtail the practice of polygamy. thus, congress passed the edmunds act (1882), which, in addition to banning cohabitation, disenfranchised both practicing polygamists and their wives. the supreme court again upheld the edmunds act in murphy v. ramsay, praising the legislature’s choice of monogamy as “the best guaranty” of morality (see eichenberger, 2012, p. 1077). in an effort to legislate an even harsher stance against polygamy, congress passed the edmunds-tucker act (1887), which criminalized male adultery and repealed the incorporation of the lds church. church property in excess of that proscribed by the morrill act was forfeited to the us government for the use and benefit of public schools in the territory. it annulled illegitimate children’s succession rights and disenfranchised female voters. as eichenberger (2012) notes, in recognizing that mormon women were not passive victims of plural marriage, the edmunds-tucker act signaled a turning point in the anti-polygamy campaign where mormon women, once the subjects of pity, had morphed into objects of public derision. see also gordon (2002) and harrison (2015). polygamy, state racism, and the return of barbarism studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-162, 2022 151 from contracting any marriages forbidden by the law of the land” (harrison, 2015, p. 102). it is against this backdrop that mormon settlers arrived in southern alberta in 1887 with the hope of finding refuge from the discrimination and persecution that targeted them in the u.s. (carter, 2008; embry, 1989; palmer, 1990). as recounted by carter (2008), canada, however, was hardly obliging and specified that the condition of their sanctuary was that mormon settlers cease to practice polygamy. canada had inherited a common law definition of marriage in hyde v. hyde and woodmansee (1866) that explicitly defined marriage “as understood in christendom [as] the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others” (at 134). this definition of marriage was a civil prohibition on the recognition of polygamous marriage. criminalizing polygamy occurred with the incorporation of an anti-polygamy provision into canada’s first comprehensive criminal code of 1892. this provision included a reference to mormons, which remained in place until minor amendments were made in 1954. while canadian officials were comparatively less hostile than their american counterparts of the time, the archives reveal similar racial anxieties. polygamy was described by politicians as “a serious moral and national ulcer” (house of commons, 1890, p. 3177), that “once gets a footing in canada will be very hard to stamp out” (bolderson, 1899). they further described mormons as “a self-satisfying sect” that “is a danger and a shame to every christian people” (royal, 1889). it is important to also consider how such discursive rhetoric used sexuality, gender, and kinship to draw not only transnational lines of civilization versus barbarism but internal, national ones as well. what scott morgensen (2011) calls “settler sexuality” and kim tallbear (2018) calls “settler sex and family,” that is, heterosexual, biologically reproductive monogamous white marriage and family, were made central to the project of white settler nationbuilding. settler sexuality and family took shape through violent legislative, educational, economic, and religious targeting of indigenous kinship formations. in this context, anti-polygamy law was materially and discursively put in the service of “settlement’s labour” (simpson, 2014, p. 21). for example, it was used by the department of indian affairs in the 19th century to target indigenous customary marriage law that allowed for more than one wife (carter, 2008). yet as carter (2008) argues, such efforts at criminalization were not entirely successful as (what were understood as) polygamous marriages continued. while efforts to eradicate the “evils” of polygamy were caught up in transnational fears of a barbarous “there” having made its way to a civilized “here,” rifkin (2011) suggests that the symbolic and cultural force that has been brought through law to the imposition of monogamy on indigenous communities might also signal lurking insecurity over assertions of indigenous sovereignty. adopting the reasoning of evolutionary psychology allowed the court in the polygamy reference to vault over these racialized histories. evolutionary suzanne lenon studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-161, 2022 152 psychology was deployed to map marriage tendencies across cultures in terms of a hierarchy of development measured by proximity to (western) “civilization” (as progressive, democratic) or remove from “barbarism” (as stagnant, despotic regimes). it recast the orientalist narrative of hierarchically ordered cultural difference as something empirically verifiable, biologically and genetically hard-wired, however much such verification was not furnished in this case, or at least beyond the statistical projections of polygamy’s “cruel arithmetic.” such statistical projections were primarily based on a seemingly timeless application of primate sex reproduction and mating strategies onto humans, as well as profoundly ahistorical, big data, quantitative surveys on the nature and variation in human mating and marriage patterns (henrich, 2010). while humans and other primates share a range of similarities due to our shared phylogeny, critical interventions into evolutionary biology and psychology caution that evolution is as much about discontinuity as it is about continuity (fuentes, 2021). the vast array of human ecological, social, and historical contexts offers better explanatory frameworks for male and female reproductive relationships, physiologies, and behaviour than differences in their reproductive classifications or patterns (fuentes, 2021). concepts such as mating strategies and marriage patterns, for example, are not stable sets of relations in biological, social, or political terms; they are neither inevitable outcomes of nature nor are they apolitical formations whose durability over time and space remain unchanged (smith, 2021). yet it was the broad, flat application of evolutionary analyses across time and across space that seems to capture the court and breathe new life into consolidating an imagined west as a set of morally and politically advanced yet vulnerable christian nations. vulnerable because, by its “cruel arithmetic” over deep evolutionary time, “human beings will have a tendency to adopt the practice [of polygamy] when the environment permits” (polygamy reference, 2011, par. 575). aberrations from monogamy, as a pinnacle of human evolution, come to be understood as reversions to more primitive states (smith, 2021). anti-polygamy law becomes, then, not a measure of the workings of racial and religious animus as much as a reflection of the evolution of social strategies that reflect the repudiation and management of humanity’s baser impulses. the “imposition” of monogamy, so formative to western civilization, reflects the advanced cultural “evolution” that those societies who practice polygamy lack. here, then, is the third, related example of the work that evolutionary psychology accomplished in the polygamy reference: by ushering in the race-thinking of coloniality, it made seemingly self-evident the superiority of monogamous marriage norms over the “cultural” practices of polygamy affiliated with “eastern,” and particularly muslim, states. it is with the prospect of biopolitical vulnerability that the court returns to the specter of the immigrant and the importance of taking steps to prevent polygamy, state racism, and the return of barbarism studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-162, 2022 153 polygamy from slipping past the national border. even though it is not their cultural practices but rather those of home-grown ‘celestial marriages’ of the fundamentalist church of jesus christ of latter-day saints (flds) that prompted this reference case, racialized populations figure as a looming presence. chief justice bauman calls attention to the role that immigration law already plays and might even further play in curtailing what he is convinced would be the likely spread of polygamy by permitting its entry into canada. the evidence furnished by evolutionary psychology regarding the population demographics of polygynous communities “suggest that in the event these immigrant communities were to become stable, their populations would expand comparatively rapidly” (polygamy reference, 2011, par. 560). even more at issue in dictating the need for a criminal ban on polygamy is “the possibility of an increase in the incidence of polygamy among those who are here” (polygamy reference, 2011, par. 574). rather tellingly, these are invariably not among “canadians,” but what he calls “people from cultures and faiths which practice polygyny who are already resident in canada who might take it up were it not prohibited” (polygamy reference, 2011, par. 575). it is from within and beyond the border, yet always invariably in sight of it, that the imagined return of barbarism underpins the regulation of polygamous marriage in canada. the task then, as this court sees it, is to make sure the environment remains hostile to polygamy, what the canadian government, three years after the reference decision, would call “protecting canadians from barbaric cultural practices” (government of canada, 2014). as i discuss in the next section, evolutionary psychology haunts such legislative hostility. as toni morrison (1988, p. 136) reminds us, invisible things are not necessarily not there. tracking the appearance and repetition of the continuities that have persisted in the juridical and legislative imposition of monogamy helps lay bare the enduring forms of race-thinking and colonial logic that insistently make the regulation of marriage a function of national identity. it is to this more recent manifestation in the zero tolerance act and the racist reforms that it makes to the immigration and refugee act of canada that i now turn. border racism in 2014, the (then) federal conservative government introduced bill s-7, the zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act. this legislative initiative was touted as protecting “canadian values,” described as the antithesis to barbarism. with the canadian border plainly in sight, it amends sections of the civil marriage act, the criminal code, and the immigration and refugee protection act (irpa) ostensibly to “prevent barbaric cultural practices from suzanne lenon studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-161, 2022 154 happening on canadian soil” (government of canada, 2014), defined as forced marriages, polygamy, and honour killings.9 “canadian soil,” or as katherine mckittrick (2014) suggests, the “sociospatial expression of western modernity” (p. 143), conceals the violences it requires as much as it reveals them. the “soil” of this territory currently called canada can only be ontologically claimed as such because of the ongoing structure of settler colonialism that has dispossession as its aim and “settler sex and family” as its ideal. despite its inflammatory title and leveraging of islamophobic stereotypes, or perhaps in part because of them, bill s-7 was passed by a majority in the house of commons across party lines. this conceptualizing of particular practices of violence against women as “barbaric” was shared terrain between political parties. if the consensus across the political spectrum is that polygamy is immoral and therefore rightfully illegal, then monogamous marriage too comes to stand as an evolved canadian value in need of protection, in discursive continuity with the polygamy reference. the discourse of barbaric cultural practices from elsewhere (over there, not here) coming to “canadian soil” obfuscates the gendered violence required to “make” canada in the first place. far from violence against women being a contradiction of canadian values, canada’s existence is a product of and indeed relies on ongoing violence against indigenous women and girls (see in particular simpson, 2016). what and who, then, is barbaric? this “coloniality of power” (wynter, 2003) is part of what evolutionary psychology allowed the court in the polygamy reference to vault over in its biopolitical aim to protect the institution of monogamous marriage. the amendments made to the irpa with respect to polygamy pertain to valid foreign polygamous marriages and not the plural unions of bountiful as these are legal nullities (bailey et al., 2005). to enter or remain in canada, foreign nationals and permanent residents must meet the eligibility requirements for the applicable visa (if required) and must not be inadmissible under sections 33-43 of the irpa, which include engaging in espionage, terrorism, criminality, or misrepresenting the material facts in the course of an immigration application (béchard & elgersma, 2015). turning on the understanding of the general and specific harms interpreted in the polygamy reference, the zero tolerance act introduces a new section 41.1 that explicitly ties family class migration to a securitization project. specifically, the act states, “a permanent resident or a foreign national is inadmissible on grounds of practising polygamy if they are or will be 9 bill s-7 is divided into three parts. part 1 modifies the immigration and refugee protection act (irpa) in order to amend the inadmissibility provisions. part 2 amends the civil marriage act (2005, c. 33) with respect to consent to contract a marriage, the age of marriage and when a new marriage can be contracted. part 3 amends the criminal code (r.s., c. c-46) and makes consequential amendments to other acts, changing the defence of provocation and introducing new offences and procedures related to forced marriages or marriages in which spouses are underage (béchard & elgersma, 2015, p. 4). polygamy, state racism, and the return of barbarism studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-162, 2022 155 practising polygamy with a person who is or will be physically present in canada at the same time as the permanent resident or foreign national.” prior to these reforms, a foreign national seeking temporary residence who practises polygamy in their country of origin was generally allowed entry, though with only one designated spouse; s.41.1 now bars their admission altogether, including were this person to seek to join one of their spouses in canada. additionally, an application for permanent residence can now be denied to someone not only on the basis of the relations they are currently in, but on the prospect that they may do so (i.e., that they “will be practicing polygamy with a person who is or will be physically present in canada at the same time” as the applicant; metrac, n.d.). even for permanent residents who already have status in canada, a finding of their practice of polygamy could result in their deportation on this basis alone. prior to these reforms, a permanent resident could face deportation if they were convicted under s.293 of the criminal code, or if they had misrepresented the facts about their status on their application. now, s.41.1 authorizes immigration officers to deport permanent residents and non-citizens suspected of engaging in polygamy even in the absence of a criminal conviction or a finding of misrepresentation. it must be noted that the irpa already imposed restrictions on family class immigration that effectively prohibited multiple spouses from being recognized. in other words, polygamy is not a form of marriage recognized for immigration purposes by canada.10 of course, this does not mean that these relationships do not exist or that they are not lived, felt, solemnized, and celebrated. the state’s refusal to recognize them, however, means that they are lacking the social and institutional support and public resources and services that are provided by law to those in monogamous unions. as noted by community advocates (south asian legal clinic of ontario, 2014) and feminist scholars (bailey et al., 2005; campbell, 2005; gaucher, 2016) alike, this lack of recognition heightens the vulnerability and increases the isolation of women and children and restricts their access to important support services. far from protecting them from polygamy’s harms, the reinforcement of anti-polygamy provisions would necessitate concealment, secrecy, and isolation, deterring women who are subject to abuse in such relations to seek health and social service supports so as not to jeopardize their immigration status and that of their children, thereby exposing them to greater risks of violence (metrac, n.d.). these consequences are the material effects of law’s violence: the affective lived realities of the micro and macro aggressions of state prohibitions and regulations that not only 10 some provinces and territories such as ontario, yukon, prince edward island and the northwest territories have extended recognition to polygamous marriages for the purposes of legal protections for polygamous spouses, including succession rights, spousal support, and division of marital property. parties to a polygamous marriage, however, may not obtain a divorce under canada’s divorce act (see bailey et al., 2005, pp. 10-12). suzanne lenon studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-161, 2022 156 deny recognition of such diverse family forms and erase them from view through their criminalization but that justify discrimination against them. so, whither evolutionary psychology? while its framework is not made explicit in debates over bill s-7 nor in the legislation itself, its language and racist tropes are acutely present, “cajoling us to reconsider the very distinctions between there and not there, past and present, force and shape” (gordon, 1997, p. 6). i return to toni morrison’s (1988) exhortation that “certain absences are so stressed, so ornate, so planned, they call attention to themselves; arrest us with intentionality and purpose” (p. 136). where, she asks, “is the shadow of the presence from which the text has fled?” (p. 137). it is clear from the foregoing description of the legislation, including its name, that the lexicon and colonial grammar of evolutionary psychology mediates both the intent and materiality of the zero tolerance act. it does not need to be made explicit in order to ascertain its presence. the framework of “barbaric cultural practices” that so profoundly underpins the legislation does not make sense without the work that evolutionary psychology did to double down on monogamous marriage as civilized and evolved in the polygamy reference. evolutionary psychology, as a western/colonial knowledge formation, is the constitutive logic of the zero tolerance act. it is part of the western/european “cosmo-political, religiosocial worldview” (walcott, 2020, p. 347) that characterizes itself as evolved and normal relative to its own experienced “norm of being human” (wynter, 2003, p. 292); it is part of the western/european worldview that constitutes itself as the apex of civilization and draws a socio-ontological line between rational, political (and i would add, monogamous) man (the settler of european descent) and its irrational human others (subordinated indians and enslaved negroes) (wynter, 2003, p. 314); and, lastly, a worldview that conceives itself therefore as always under threat. the absence of evolutionary psychology in the zero tolerance act is a presence that gives shape to the body politic through the irpa amendments. these amendments provide immigration officials, as the front line of state administration of immigration policy, with the renewed means to draw what w.e.b. dubois (1903) identified as the colour line. the seeming absence of evolutionary psychology is nonetheless a presence that is felt through the tragic irony of colonial benevolence that plagues the legislation in its desire to provide “more protection and support for vulnerable immigrants, primarily women and girls” (government of canada, 2014). this is a benevolence that understands itself as saving imperilled muslim women from dangerous muslim men, one that masks its own violence by locating its source in the “barbarism” of backwards, less evolved cultural practices (razack, 2004). the work, then, of evolutionary psychology, evinced by the juridical and legislative interventions on polygamous marriage, is inseparable from white supremacy’s violences. the temporality of both the polygamy reference and polygamy, state racism, and the return of barbarism studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-162, 2022 157 the zero tolerance act is palimpsestic, where the fears of barbarism are imperfectly erased, remaining visible across time – historically continuous – to still haunt and give formation to modern (hence racial) nation-states. conclusion the formations of race-thinking that imbue anti-polygamy provisions add further nuance to the significance of monogamous marriage to national identity, and to its role in marking the literal boundaries of the nation and the racial formations of its national character. in tracking the alignments between marriage and nationhood and attending to the work that has been put into securing in place the convention of monogamy, we come up against the colonial logic that keeps the structures of racial hierarchy in place, the very structures that organize the patterns of representation that have ensured that entire cultures and peoples can be rendered erasable, inadmissible, and deportable. in both the polygamy reference and the zero tolerance act, coloniality seeps out of modernity’s legal and evolutionary storytelling about why the universal imposition of monogamy is something that speaks to our moral superiority and ability to keep barbaric impulses in check. yet it is worth entertaining, however ironically, another variation of the common sense that evolutionary psychology makes out of human behavioural tendencies. this is to consider what must also be the behavioral product of evolution: the social formations and biopolitical practices of marking distinctions between groups, of fostering and protecting some to the exclusion and at the expense of others. that is to say, we need to consider also as an adaptation the tendencies of race-thinking and racism that seize upon marriage, not because it cares to “protect women” but because it facilitates the adaptive persistence of racial domination (denike, 2017). that is, it is worth asking how forms of race thinking and racism themselves have evolved and indeed are adapted so effectively, yet work spectrally including through law and policy so as to mask them as the works of hero-ism against violence and not as expressions and mechanisms of violence that they are. but i want more than this. yes, race and racism were created as an organizing logic of humanity, of the arbiter of differentiated humanness. and racism shapeshifts across time and space. but if we want to imagine otherwise possibilities, otherwise worlds, then we must abolish the very conceptual frames and modality of thought that produce categorical distinctions between populations, cultures, cosmologies, and worldviews that make such categorical distinctions desirable and understand them as maintainable (crawley, 2020). as evolutionary psychology is a western knowledge formation sourced from colonial logics and thus invested in and predicated on racial-cum-cultural difference, then the social justice, that is, the racial justice project that i orient to is what sylvia wynter (2003) calls suzanne lenon studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-161, 2022 158 “unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom.” this is a project of social and racial justice whose task is to unsettle the foundations of what we have inherited from imperialism and colonialism: the white, patriarchal, hetero-monogamous concept of man, produced by modern philosophical and scientific thought (including evolutionary psychology) so as to disavow other cosmologies, worldviews, forms of life, and “modes of being human” (wynter, 2003, p. 300). man overrepresents itself as if it were the human itself, the “final frontier/normal way of life” (mckittrick, 2014, p. 153; wynter, 2003). one cannot “unsettle” the “coloniality of power,” wynter writes, without a “redescription of the human outside the terms of our present descriptive statement of the human, man, and its overrepresentation… in the question of the who and the what we are” (p. 268) in all our relational possibilities so that we can secure “the well-being of the human species itself/ourselves” (p. 260). one small part of this, of re-imagining an otherwise, is a racial justice project that wants to unhook from the logics and conditions of european/western/settler intimacies that organize monogamy as a category of racial differentiation. in short, “the difficult labor of thinking the world anew” (mckittrick, 2014, p. 6). acknowledgements many thanks to the two anonymous reviewers for their sharp comments and feedback. in addition, this paper’s argument about racism’s own adaptive and evolutionary tendencies has been strengthened through my conversations with margaret denike about the 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(2004). imperiled muslim women, dangerous muslim men, and civilized europeans: legal and social responses to forced marriages. feminist legal studies, 12(2), 129-174. reference re: section 293 of the criminal code of canada, 2011 bcsc 1558 reynolds v. united states, 98 u.s. (8 otto.) 145 (1878) rifkin, m. (2011). when did indians become straight? kinship, the history of sexuality, and native sovereignty. oxford university press. royal, j. (1889). rg 18, file 68610, library & archives canada, february 7. simpson, a. (2014). mohawk interruptus: political life across the borders of settler states. duke university press. simpson, a. (2016). the state is a man: theresa spence, loretta saunders, and the gender of settler sovereignty. theory & event, 19(4), 1-16. smith, r. w. a. (2021). imperial terroir: toward a queer molecular ecology of colonial masculinities. current anthropology, 62(23), 155-168. south asian legal clinic of ontario. (2014). perpetuating myths, denying justice: zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act. http://www.salc.on.ca/finalbills7statement%20updated%20nov%2018.pdf tallbear, k. (2018). making love and relations beyond settler sex and family. in a. e. clarke & d. haraway (eds.), making kin not population (pp. 145-164). prickly paradigm press. tooby, j., & cosmides, l. (2005). conceptual foundations of evolutionary psychology. in d. m. buss (ed.), the handbook of evolutionary psychology (pp. 5-67). wiley. polygamy, state racism, and the return of barbarism studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 1, 143-162, 2022 161 walcott, r. (2020). diaspora, transnationalism, and the decolonial project. in t. lethabo king, j. navarro, & a. smith (eds.), otherwise worlds: against settler colonialism and antiblackness (pp. 342-361). duke university press. wynter, s. (2003). unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation – an argument. the new centennial review, 3(3), 257337. zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act, sc 2015, c 29. sager final before ts correspondence address: maja sager, genusvetenskapliga institutionen, lund university, box 188, 221 00 lund, sweden; email: maja.sager@genus.lu.se issn: 1911-4788 volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 critical legal practices: approaches to law in contemporary anti-racist social justice struggles in sweden maja sager lund university, sweden marta kolankiewicz lund university, sweden abstract based on interviews with legal practitioners working with or within antiracist social justice movements in sweden, we explore some dilemmas and paradoxes that appear when social movements pursue struggles for anti-racist social justice through the legal arena. how do the interviewees understand and critically relate to legal practices in contemporary anti-racist social justice struggles? what are the conditions of engagement of these organisations in the legal arena and how do they impact social justice struggles in sweden? what are the stakes in the legal practices of these movements? rather than a strategically chosen tool for social justice, legal practice could be understood as a kind of self-defence, as resorting to law is often a response to an unjust legal system, oppressive treatment by the state or disadvantage and deprivation. the interviewees’ reflections on their legal practices are informed by a fundamental ambivalence between the ideological commitment in the critique of law and their position from which it is impossible to ignore the legal arena. instead of taking a clear stance for or against the law as a tool for social justice struggles, we have attempted to understand what are the methods and the effects of legal practice that grow from this ambivalence. the accounts of our interviewees indicate that both practical strategies and ways of accounting for these aim at subverting and challenging the law while at the same time using it. throughout the analysis we have conceptualised these strategies as decentring, re-politicising and redistribution. keywords social justice struggles; activism; critical legal practices; legal arena; sweden; movement lawyering critical legal practices studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 535 introduction movement lawyering is a practice of law with an engagement in society, a tool for social justice… the interest in movement lawyering is growing in sweden. more movement lawyers are getting educated and engaged with civil society in issues such as anti-discrimination, human rights and the individual’s access to justice. this happens in a political era characterised by growing inequality and social polarising. (akademin för rörelsejuridik [academy for movement lawyering], n.d.)1 over the last decade, an engagement at the crossroads of legal practice and social justice activism has been growing in sweden. in this article, we take a starting point in interviews with legal practitioners and activists who represent this trend. among them are networks around the academy for movement lawyering, quoted above, an initiative bringing together lawyers and law students aiming to work for social justice in sweden. the analysis explores some of the dilemmas and paradoxes that appear when social movements and activists pursue struggles for anti-racist social justice through the legal arena. the inclusion of legal practices in social movements is in itself not a new development in sweden – legal aspects have been central to the work of trade unions, tenants’ interest organisations, consumer organisations and other organisations that stem from the 20th-century workers’ movement and social democracy. the growing engagement that the research participants represent here is, however, a new development in sweden in terms of the kinds of social movements, activism and social issues that increasingly have been addressed through legal practices. our specific focus in this article is on legal practices in relation to issues of racism and anti-racism.2 the legal practitioners who participated in the study are part of contemporary social justice movements in sweden that we broadly understand as anti-racist. the questions guiding the analysis are: how do the interviewees understand and critically relate to legal practices in contemporary anti-racist social justice struggles? what are the conditions of engagement of these organisations in the legal arena and how do they impact social justice struggles in sweden? what are the stakes in the legal practices of these movements? we formulated these questions partly in response to the ways in which the interviewees express that their legal practices are filled with tension and ambivalence. in the interviews, the interviewees are trying to navigate and make sense of their own practices, while situating themselves in relation to different forms of critique of and doubts about law. they have not chosen to 1 throughout the paper translations from swedish to english have been provided by the authors. 2 these interviews were conducted within the broader research project “the court as an emerging arena for struggles against and about racism,” which explores the possibilities and limitations of pursuing anti-racist activism through legal routes and practices. maja sager & marta kolankiewicz studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 536 turn away from the institutions and discourses of the law, yet many of them find it important to underscore that their legal practice is hesitant. explicit acknowledgement of the limitations of legal strategies for social change is at the centre of their reflections on their practice. we are particularly interested in how they explain and make sense of their legal practice despite – or in relation to – the ambivalence they express. in the following, we begin with a short methodological note presenting the sampling strategies and the material on which this study is based. here we also explain what we mean by contemporary anti-racist movements. then we situate the interviewees’ discussions about law and activism in the context of juridification in sweden. finally, we analyse – in dialogue with previous research on social movements and law and inspired by critical feminist and anti-racist theoretical explorations of law (butler, 1997; davis, 2005; delgado, 1993; smart, 1989; williams, 1991) – the interviewees’ legal practices as well as their reflections about the potential and the limitations of the legal arena. situating the fieldwork and the material the article is based on interviews with people who engage with legal practices as a part of their commitment to anti-racist social justice issues.3 legal practices are here understood as different forms of engagement with law (mccann, 1998, p. 81), from setting up legal advice points, to popular education on legal matters, to strategic litigation. within this broad definition of legal practices, we additionally differentiate legal strategies – more strategic actions aimed at achieving some political effects beyond the specific case at hand (cf. mathiesen, 2005, as cited in gustafsson & vinthagen, 2010, p. 641). this narrower category of legal practices would most typically be exemplified by strategic litigation.4 our material shows that legal strategies are usually combined with other forms of practices and integrated in the movements’ work for change. we started our fieldwork by identifying central networks and organisations working with anti-racism through legal practices in sweden today. we selected organisations, networks and activists of interest for this study through a combination of snowballing and strategic sampling informed by the literature on juridification and contemporary social movements (e.g., brännström, 2017) and anti-racism in sweden (e.g., groglopo et al., 2015; jämte, 2013; malmsten, 2007). our sample was delimited by three main 3 we conducted 18 interviews with 20 lawyers and activists (two of the interviews were conducted with two people working together). for the sake of anonymity, we have delinked quotes from particular interviewees. 4 “strategic litigation” is a term used to define a legal action that “aims to bring about broad societal changes beyond the scope of the individual case at hand. it aims to use legal means to tackle injustices that have not been adequately addressed in law or politics” (ecchr, n.d.). critical legal practices studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 537 criteria: engagement in legal practices of an anti-racist nature and with links to social movements. in addition, we focused on contemporary anti-racist social movements that use legal practices in sweden. these could be inscribed in broader social movements that sometimes are identified as a fourth wave in the social movements literature (peterson et al., 2018, p. 378). our definition of anti-racism, while rooted in the literature, was additionally shaped by our intersectional approach and the knowledge generated during the fieldwork about networking structures of the organisations.5 historically, there have been three sites around which antiracist movements gravitated in sweden (jämte, 2013; peterson et al., 2018). one is international solidarity dating back to the global anti-apartheid and anti-colonial movements. another has been asylum and migration issues that gained increased centrality since the 1980s, as a result of sweden restricting its policies in these areas and of growing racism towards immigrants and racialised people in sweden. the third site has been specific mobilisations against neo-nazi and neo-fascist organisations and activism. while these sites have remained important for mobilisation in the last decade or, as in the case of asylum and migration, even expanded, we also observe significant transformations. the most important one is growth of urban justice mobilisations in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas whose inhabitants are subject to racialisation (sometimes called “urban youth activism,” cf. rosales & ålund, 2017). another transformation has had to do with the increasingly intersectional character of solidarities across different mobilisations, with intersectional feminist, lgbtq and trans movements articulating anti-racist and intersectional power analyses. these considerations, derived both from the literature and the field, allowed us to identify the following anti-racist social justice struggles in sweden today as relevant for our study: migration rights and “no border” networks; urban justice movements located in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas; indigenous and national minority movements; and intersectional feminist, lgbtq and trans movements.6 in terms of the ways of engaging with legal issues, our sample included people involved in a variety of organisations: some are mainly law-centred and have legal activities at their core; for others, legal practices are just one form of mobilisation around a specific issue; still others operate as networks 5 in many respects, our definition has also been reflected in the emerging literature of this new wave of anti-racism (groglopo et al., 2015) or social movements more generally (peterson et al., 2018) that have been active in sweden in the last decade. however, there are still only a few studies that have analysed recent development in the movement. previous studies often cover time up to the first decade of 2000 (jämte, 2013; malmsten, 2007). 6 this research project has also grown out of our participation in some of these movements. one of the authors, sager, has been engaged in migration rights movements for many years. one of the tensions experienced in this work has been between the identification of the legal regulation of mobility as the very source of exclusion from rights, safety and autonomy, and the everyday practices and short-term goals focusing on “making it through” these very regulations (see e.g., nordling et. al., 2017; sager, 2018). maja sager & marta kolankiewicz studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 538 bringing together activist lawyers working for and with social movements. most of the interviewees are lawyers or law students; two have no legal education but have dealt with legal issues and legal advice as activists. many of these practitioners have themselves written about their approach to legal practices as well as the significance of the turn towards movement lawyering for struggles for social justice in sweden (e.g., al-khamisi, 2015; alkhamisi & kakaee, 2019; osman & herskovits, 2018). in this sense, their approach to legal practice is often politically vocal. the process of juridification in the swedish context one can say that movement lawyering becomes necessary as a result of the lack of a kind of real grounded presence of welfare institutions and state authorities that actually show their role for disadvantaged groups. (interview transcript) in sweden, an ongoing transformation of the conditions within which new social movements engage in the legal arena has been observed (taxén, 2017). this transformation has been identified as a process of “juridification” and described as a gradual shift towards a legal discourse in the arenas that previously had been dominated by other discourses, such as political or ideological discourses (cf. brännström, 2009, 2017). up to the 1970s, the role of the courts was mainly defined as implementing and interpreting legislation established through the parliamentary process. thereafter, the role of the courts and the law in general started to change, and this change accelerated after sweden’s accession to the european union in the 1990s (brännström, 2017, p. 61; 2019, p. 7). as a result, the role of the courts has shifted slightly towards that of monitoring and regulating the political arena and its compliance with legal regulations. issues that before would have been debated in political, ideological, economic, social or cultural terms started to be guided and dominated by legal language, arguments and rationale (brännström, 2019, p. 9). the juridification coincides and in some ways correlates with the ongoing, gradual dismantling of the swedish welfare state. this development, described as “the end of swedish exceptionalism” (schierup & ålund, 2011, p. 56), has taken place in the last few decades, when sweden transitioned from “the exemplary welfare state” towards “a deepening inequality [that] has been produced through market-driven politics of deregulation, privatisation and changes in the taxation regime favouring the well off and skinning the already disadvantaged on the margins of the social welfare system” producing “precarisation of work, citizenship and livelihoods” (schierup, ålund & neergaard, 2017, pp. 12-13). our interviewees understand activists’ and social movements’ turn to the law as being a result of these transformations: critical legal practices studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 539 when the welfare state withdraws, then the result is that one instead has to take singular issues to court as individual cases and appeal to authorities … then one has to use the rights legislation that exists, like claiming ‘i have a right to this’ and make a trial instead of just having these things provided [by the welfare system] as it used to be in sweden before. (interview transcript) in this context, the appeal to the law and the court as an arena for justice struggles can be understood as a result of both the lack of the social security network that traditionally has been provided by the welfare state in sweden and an individualisation of justice claims, which is sometimes described as characteristic of an expansion of rights-based mobilisation of justice struggles (brännström, 2017, pp. 66-73), as expressed in one of the interviews: now, every person is the architect of their own fortune; neoliberalism has individualised everything anyway. so then maybe it feels more reasonable to go to court than to organise collectively? (interview transcript) at the same time, while disadvantaged communities are particularly affected by the withdrawal of the welfare state, they might even in the past have been subjected to a lack of substantial access to social rights and to policing and state repression. for these communities, the state has rarely at any point meant safety and justice. disadvantaged urban neighbourhoods are one example of this, with the experience of racist stigmatisation, and social and economic marginalisation (rosales & ålund, 2017, p. 353). many of the interviewees have roots in these communities. another example is that of asylum-seekers and irregular migrants who are entangled between the constant necessity of proving deservingness of belonging and the vulnerability inherent to the condition of deportability (e.g., sager et al., 2016; söderman, 2019). yet another example is that of roma, sami and trans communities, all of them with different histories of state violence.7 for these communities, the welfare state has represented an ambiguity: on the one hand, a promise of inclusion into the structures of social safety; on the other hand, a history of control, surveillance and stigmatisation. thus, our interviewees are drawing on experiences of social movements whose relations with the state have been characterised by much more ambivalence and less history of cooperation with the welfare state than what has been characteristic of traditional swedish labour movements or the mainstream feminist movement. for these activists the lack of equal access is about a continuous lack – rather than a recent withdrawal of equal access to welfare state functions. 7 for the indigenous sami population, this is the history of centuries of settler colonialism (see lundmark, 2008). for roma and traveller groups, it is a history of policies shifting between exclusion and forced assimilation (see svanberg & tydén, 2005). for trans people, the acknowledgement by the state has meant a recognition that is strongly conditioned by medical terms (see alm, 2000; bremer, 2011). maja sager & marta kolankiewicz studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 540 for social movements, the process of juridification has had a range of effects with varying phases and aspects (gustafsson & vinthagen, 2010, p. 645). its impact on the ways in which social movements work towards transformation has been discussed in sweden since the 1970s, initially in what was called “legal strategy debate” (in swedish: legalstrategidebatten) in which marxist activists warned about the risks that the process of legal interpretation would overshadow the ideological core of the political conflict and eliminate its other – cultural, moral, political or economic – aspects. this kind of pessimist approach to law (mathiesen, 2005) has been challenged by postmodern understandings of state and law and the foucauldian definitions of power, which opened up more heterogeneous, complex and nuanced approaches to the practice of law by social movements (gustafsson & vinthagen, 2010, pp. 648-649). although our research participants’ approaches to the potential and risks of the process of juridification vary, there seems to be a consensus about the prevalence of a legal turn and its perceptible effects on social justice struggles. recurring is also the caution with which juridification is approached. such doubts are also prevalent in debates among activists and in social and political movements (e.g., kakaee, 2018; katzin, 2018), something that is also present in our material: i believe that juridification is dangerous, because it becomes very elitist and also it creates strong feelings of powerlessness… [it] might be the biggest ideological scourge of our times, exactly because it shifts ideological issues to seem like a question of interpretation, or like a kind of object for objective assessment – like that ‘it is like this or like that.’ and that in this way underlying conflicts of interest or conflicts of power are concealed. (interview transcript) the issue of social movements engaging in legal strategies tends to be phrased as an either/or question, both by the movements themselves (one example of this is the above-mentioned legal strategy debate in sweden) and in the literature on social movements and the law (see smart, 1989, for a feminist sceptical approach): is it most strategic to turn to legal practices in a social justice struggle – or not? in this article, we are inspired by the legal mobilisation perspective (mccann, 2006, in the us, and gustafsson & vinthagen, 2010, in sweden) and take our point of departure in the realisation that legal practices constitute an important part of social movements’ work. instead of exploring the potential and risks for social movements engaging in legal practices, our focus is on conditions, strategies, (subversive) uses and reflections in relation to law. as a consequence, the article tries to decentre the law, by showing how legal practices need to be understood as one among a range of strategies, often subordinated to others, and always specific to the context. at the same time, we attempt to show that law is an important frame that conditions the subjectivities, existence and struggles for justice (cf. mccann’s discussion on how law is not external to citizens, based on thompson, 1975). we build here on feminist understandings of subjects, critical legal practices studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 541 subjectivities and resistance as emerging always in relation to frames that constitute, restrain and condition them (e.g., butler, 1997). turning to legal practices – conditions and ambivalences in the following, we present some examples of legal practices with which our research participants engage. the main aim is to illustrate the complexity of strategic routes and choices involved in social movements’ engagements with law. the examples encapsulate the sometimes messy conditions under which activists and organisations feel compelled or forced to resort to the law. an important point is that it is difficult to separate the aims of the long-term mobilisation at the core of these movements from the situations of immediate urgency they respond to – the immediacy of situations often seems to require acute legal interventions that might even stand in tension with the overarching aims. the first example comes from two interviewees who are engaged in an organisation that offers legal support to social movements and to individuals fighting structural inequalities, and concerns their work against an eviction of a camp set up by eastern european roma people. it was a camp that was located on the outskirts of the city centre; around 150 people lived there. there were lots of complaints to the environmental department [ed] by angry people, so the ed worked hard to get rid of the camp. (interview transcript) the interviewee recounts the different legal ways the city’s environmental department (ed) tried to enable an eviction, and their organisation’s role in advising how to halt the process. the ed… tried to evict the camp by saying that it was an environmental hazard… and then we appealed that decision… [in the appeal], we tried to write a lot about human rights and the roma question and how roma people have been subjected to forced displacement over the years. but, in the end, we won based on formalities. we won because the decision to evict the camp was not sufficiently well communicated to the inhabitants in the camp. so that was a bit of a shame. it would have been better to win based on something else. but, at least, the camp still remained. (interview transcript) the story of the struggle for the roma camp is one of many stories involving appeals to courts or other legal interventions with different state agencies. it is typical to our material in how the issues placed at the centre by the activists (here, roma rights and state violence against roma) have little place in legal practice and tend to be replaced by formal issues (here, the formalities of how decisions were communicated to the camp-dwellers). it is also typical in that legal practice is accompanied by other types of activism. the mobilisation maja sager & marta kolankiewicz studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 542 against the eviction was developing among the people who lived in the camp, in cooperation with some local allied activist groups, at the same time as the lawyers were struggling to stop or postpone the eviction. eventually – after months of occupation, protests, demonstrations and appeals – the struggle failed and the camp was evicted (persdotter, 2019). the appeal against the eviction decision illustrates a basic position from which many of the interviewees work: one in which the law becomes a response to events understood as state violence. the legal practices are a sort of self-defence against oppressive and unjust state treatment. such selfdefence can take different forms: direct responses, as in the case above, or legal advice to disadvantaged groups, as in the next example. an interviewee working with lgbtq asylum-seekers describes his practice as follows: i give legal advice to newly arrived lgbtq migrants, mostly asylum-seekers… there can be quite a lot of different issues, but most of it is about the asylum process, like how it works. it might be someone whose asylum application has been refused, or someone who needs support to prepare for the asylum investigation at the migration agency, or wants to prepare before appearing in the migration court of appeal… a very common question is that the person who seeks advice has just applied for asylum, maybe a couple of months before, and wonders what is going to happen. they might feel, already after maybe three months, that the waiting time is very long. they feel anxious about what it is they will have to go through… they might think like ‘my sexuality or my gender identity is not really something i can present evidence of’… so i try to say that of course there is no hard evidence, but the only thing that you have is your own story. i encourage them to structure the story as clearly as possible in their own head, so that they have it prepared when they come to the migration agency. (interview transcript) the interviewee tries to prepare lgbtq asylum-seekers for a process in which the very fundamental recognition of a particular aspect of one’s identity as an lgbtq asylum-seeker is dependent on the capacity to narrate one’s self in the language and frames imposed by the authorities and the law. legal advice is conditioned by these interpretations of the law by the migration agency: my advice is normally to arrange the story about one’s experiences in a chronological way, because that is the structure that the migration agency wants… i think that the migration agency’s way of handling lgbtq cases in general is very dissatisfactory, and far too grounded in stereotypical ideas about gender identities... there is a very narrow idea about what an lgbtq person should have experienced. it is difficult for many case workers to accept that a person has not felt shame or guilt when realising… one’s sexuality or gender identity. so that is something that the investigator often really goes for then, like ‘aha, but how could you not have felt shame? that is remarkable since the society you come from condemns this identity so much!’… it is clear that the investigators expect this kind of very specific process: that one has to have felt a little bit different than other kids, then at some point one should have started to critical legal practices studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 543 identify why one has felt different, and connected this to one’s sexuality or gender identity and then also started to question it, felt confused for a period of time, maybe felt guilt or shame, and then finally arrived at a kind of acceptance. and then, one is expected to be able to reflect and describe this whole process. (interview transcript) while staking a claim through legal processes always entails submission to a particular kind of framing (cf. smart, 1989), for asylum-seekers it actually means living up to the migration agency’s understandings of credibility (wikström, 2014; wikström & johansson, 2013). this kind of legal practice is conditioned by another type of vulnerability with regard to the law: for pending or refused asylum-seekers the legal process could be described as the only possible route for being granted legal subject position in the first place. to be admitted to the community of subjects, the condition is to succeed in this process and within its tightly regulated framework of interpretations. another example of legal practice is an action for damages in a case that started with journalists uncovering the fact that a police district in southern sweden had kept a secret register of roma people. while this type of practice is not conditioned in the same way by a situation of emergency as the two above examples, it can still be considered to be an immediate response to oppressive state practices. when it was revealed in 2013, we had already been working with roma issues and roma rights. and we had identified this as a minority group exposed to human rights abuses. we had established contacts within the roma community. so when this was exposed… members of the roma community were very upset and we immediately started having a dialogue with roma representatives. and they also contacted us in regards to this. and we discussed how we should approach it: ‘what is the right way to proceed?’ and together we took the decision to wait and see how the already established system would approach the issue. because official investigations were initiated right away… and then these different investigations presented their decisions and none of them could establish that the register had been based on ethnicity… the police were criticised and damages of 5,000 sek were awarded to all of those who had been registered. but at the same time it was concluded that, despite the fact that basically there were only roma people on the register, the register was not compiled on ethnic grounds. (interview transcript) in this case, the decision to undertake a legal action was a reaction to the state’s failure to recognise and remedy its own oppressive practice. this failure was identified both by the roma community and by the organisation that supported them as a lack of recognition of a specific character of the register – that is, the ethnic grounds for the register. in this sense, the legal practice is a response to the failure of the state to be able to grant recognition in a situation where a minority group theoretically holds rights. these three cases instantiate different legal practices: from appeals to decisions by authorities, through legal advice, to civil action against the maja sager & marta kolankiewicz studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 544 police. moreover, they illustrate positions from which people represented by these activists resort to legal practices: that of their extreme disadvantage in front of the state and the law. our understanding of such engagements with the law has a point of departure in one main tension: between a critical approach to the law and the judiciary as a space for social justice struggles and the above-described positions that are already defined by the law and from which the law cannot be ignored.8 critical practices and rearticulations of law we try to show that the politics… that the law is political… and that sometimes maybe we should not use the law. (interview transcript) feminist scholars have questioned the centrality of law to the regulation of social relations and its potential for changing these (lacey, 1998, p. 8). similarly, carol smart does not limit her critique to problems internal to the law and judicial logics, but claims that the role legal knowledge has been given even in critical discussions is itself problematic. she writes that “part of the power that law can exercise resides in the authority we accord it” (smart, 1989, p. 25). this is reflected in our material when interviewees express concerns with centring the law and the court as the main arenas on which social justice struggles should take place. interviewees underline, for instance, that legal work is just one strategy among many and that the practice in itself can have many other results than the strictly legal ones: the legal work is just a strategy. there [in the neighbourhood in which the interviewee has organised socially disadvantaged youth during a period of conflicts with the police] we worked with culture, we worked with popular education, we worked with study support, we organised demonstrations, we worked with the language, with media; we wanted to be our own voice for what was going on and give another image of the events. so, of course, that became a much broader work which could mobilise more people… the legal work is just one more dimension in that work. the danger is when one overestimates the capacity of law to change these issues around unemployment or vulnerability or… ‘well, yes, now this court has said it is not allowed to beg in the streets, so then we can’t do anything about that.’ (interview transcript) 8 we are not addressing here more specific discussions about alternative dispute resolution that in many contexts has been increasingly used as a way of shifting from the court as a main arena in the search for justice. this is partly because these were not mentioned by our participants, and partly because of the traditional central role of administrative arenas in the swedish welfare state (reichel, 2011). it is, however, important to stress that many of these methods, such as ombuds, mediation or arbitration, have traditionally been very important for movements such as trade unions or tenants’ interest organisations. for more discussion on alternative dispute resolution in sweden, see lindblom (2008). critical legal practices studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 545 we understand the interviewee’s account of his legal practice as a way to decentre law. another informant describes vividly how her legal advice point, in another neighbourhood in a large city, has become in itself an example of how legal practice might evolve as being productive in unexpected ways: i regularly set up my own legal advice point in a library in a socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhood… i thought it would be purely legal issues… but it is just as much a meeting point. people come and say ‘i have a legal issue,’ but… they just want to hang out… so that really confirms my idea that the law is much more than paragraphs… we talk about police violence, about the privatisation of public housing, about gentrification, exclusion – even children’s education, that i don’t know anything about!… it has become a meeting point. (interview transcript) here, the impact of the practice is not limited to its legal effects; instead, its other aspects are stressed. this experience and articulation of legal practice can be understood as another way of decentring law: the meeting space that this lawyer’s practice has established is having consequences and effects in people’s lives, regardless of what happens with the legal case that took them there. the interviewees who define their engagement in terms of movement lawyering are most explicit with placing legal practice on the margin in relation to other tools in social justice struggles. in this approach, lawyers are treated instrumentally and their work is understood as subordinated to the movement and communities that have the priority to define problems at stake. one lawyer argues: i believe that one needs to be very humble as a lawyer and not believe that ‘i am the one who knows best because i know the law’… in this case, we chose to take the point of departure from the movements and the communities and these people’s wishes and to see what is legally possible to do… and i believe that, when it comes to these kinds of questions, those who have been subjected [to the oppressive practice] should be the ones who own the problem. (interview transcript) critical reflections on neutrality and objectivity of the judicial arena another central issue that emerges when social justice struggles take place in the judicial arena has to do with the inherent tendency to depoliticise conflicts when approaching them as matters of objective and ideologically neutral interpretations. this has been analysed in the swedish context by moa bladini (2016) and hanna wikström (2014), who discuss problems with the positivist ideal of objectivity on the epistemological level. they show how the feminist contributions to discussions about knowledge-as-situated (haraway, 1988) are particularly pertinent to law. bladini suggests a form of maja sager & marta kolankiewicz studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 546 situated knowledge as an ideal practice of lawyers and judges within which the ideal of objectivity can be kept at the centre while the approach to actually achieving it is more pragmatic. wikström (2014) offers a critical insight into how practices of belief, interpretation and knowledge production are central to power structures produced in and through the legal arena – she applies miranda fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice to understand what is at stake in the clash between asylum-seekers’ own accounts of their experiences and the judgements made by the migration authorities. many of the interviewees are engaged in pursuing justice for people who are excluded by invisible structures by the state’s negligence, or by the law itself: undocumented migrants, indigenous people, marginalised eu citizens, and trans people, are groups whose life situations and access to rights have been defined by judicial regulations and by legal categorisations. the experiences of these features of the law – its ability to withdraw, informally but also formally, and its sometimes violent effects of producing vulnerability – are a source of scepticism for several interviewees. this makes them question the dominant picture of the swedish judicial system as characterised by a particularly strong tradition of objectivity, a picture that collides with their experiences of the law as deeply implicated in structural injustices. one of the interviewees interrogates law’s neutrality with specific attention to racist structures: that has probably been the toughest thing for me to see during these years, when i feel like i have to bite my lip not to let it affect me emotionally: the times when it has become very clear to me that there is a racist undertone in all this. or when i have noticed also that, damn it, we are not… equal before the law… it doesn’t always have to be racism that makes us unequal, but often it is. so that means we are not equal before the law! the one thing that is supposed to be the same for everybody, and make us equals, if anything. (interview transcript) several interviewees are also doubtful whether their critique can be articulated through the legal system at all. they do not lack examples of specific cases in which the law has been applied successfully to address issues of sexual violence, racism or discrimination. still, the victories can sometimes be understood as contributing to granting legitimacy to problematic discourses and institutions of the law: the thing, or the problem, when people try to pursue social change through the law… is that they often choose cases that are perfect, like totally clean. cases where the person who is the victim has done everything right, and the perpetrator has done everything wrong, and then they win that case, and the result becomes this feeling that ‘yes, there is justice!’ (interview transcript) this kind of critique of the law and the judicial arena is crucial for understanding the interviewees’ cautiousness with carrying on social justice struggles in courts. critical legal practices studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 547 i think one should work with those cases. i don’t say one shouldn’t. i don’t say that organisations that do that are doing anything wrong; but if one does it, i think it is important to also problematise the court as an institution. to have a discussion about the role of the law and its function and how it operates – how it reinforces power structures and how it reinforces an image of these power structures, of itself really, as a guarantee for justice. (interview transcript) yet, when describing the work around court cases, one of the interviewees shows that, since the effective practice of law for social justice is dependent on broad mobilisation and activities in other arenas than the judiciary, legal cases can also have effects beyond the court’s decision. in this sense, legal practices consist in re-politicising the issues at stake, by making visible how individual instances of injustice are symptomatic of broader structural problems and by placing them in a political and social context. such repoliticisation is often an effect of a coordinated work on different arenas: the judicial one, the political one and in the media: i think there was a need to illustrate [the problem] in some way to the public, in order for it to become an important social issue. and it is very effective to use a trial, as it gives dramaturgy that the media easily buys. this is just how it works. and it brings matters to the fore. (interview transcript) thus, court cases might be used strategically to open up a political debate about certain forgotten or marginalised issues. thanks to the rhythm of legal proceedings, it becomes possible to keep them alive by creating a kind of media spectacle around them: this was a strategic litigation, in a way: that the case in the end was not about obtaining redress for those we represented, but to reach the bigger question. to make the discrimination visible, but also to obtain redress for all of those who were affected… things happen [during a trial in national courts]. we come with an indictment, the state responds, there is a trial in court, an appeal, another trial in the court of appeal, etc. so, all the time there are things happening, and because of this we feel that we can keep up the debate and discuss these serious questions. (interview transcript) this kind of legal intervention is consciously used as a strategy that, in order to be effective, needs to be constantly placed in the broader political and social context. what is criticised as a problem with the judicial approach – the focus on an individual victim (brown, 1995; spade, 2015) or individual perpetrator (blee, 2007; freeman, 1995) – might be strategically turned into an advantage, when a particular political and social problem is effectively illustrated with individual cases. thereby, structural problems are translated into stories with faces and names. critical legal practices work here in two directions: on the one hand, they translate and lift up individual cases to make broader social justice struggles more concrete for the public; on the other, they attempt to contextualise concrete legal cases, showing how these need to maja sager & marta kolankiewicz studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 548 be understood as parts of a larger social or political problem, like in the following reflection: in my opinion, judges in court are people who pick up on the general political debate, so i believe that the media attention we got influenced the result of the case. this is why we worked hard so that there would be multidirectional action there… and there were demonstrations and campaign films on youtube… it was a huge work, this too. (interview transcript) another way of engaging with entanglements between politics and the law is to disclose the political nature of the judiciary and legal practice and to question the actual neutrality of the legal system or of some laws. one central contribution of the movement lawyering is this kind of work for repoliticising the legal, as expressed in a report written by one of the founders of the network: this is a critical account of the law and the text is grounded in the politics of law as it does not draw a clear distinction between the law and politics… the point of departure of this report is an understanding of the law as highly politicized, in how it is created, applied and how it influences all of us. (al-khamisi, 2015) law as a resource i want to make law accessible. you know, it drives me crazy that it is so… that it belongs to an elite! (interview transcript) moving outside of the inherent tensions within the legal arena, there is another set of concerns present throughout our material. it is an understanding of the law as a resource that is unequally distributed in society and the judiciary as a centre of power that is dominated by an elite. these concerns represent a more materialist approach that treats law similarly to other material resources. interviewees address this inequality with demands or practices that we will describe as a redistribution of access to the legal arena. several interviewees identify the unequally distributed knowledge of law as a central problem in terms of access to justice, equal treatment and more generally in terms of an individual’s or a community’s relationship to the state. hence, many legal practices consist of education and advice for different groups. the most obvious example is legal advice for asylumseekers. but educational activities organised by the interviewees are also directed to people from disadvantaged communities, who despite their formal rights often lack actual access to justice. the case in point is that the law works like this: these are our rights, but these are not equal for all. so, even though the law should formally apply to all the citizens, that is not the case, because your personal capacity to make use of your rights is critical legal practices studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 549 almost crucial for whether you will be able to do it or not. and some people live in very difficult situations, where they often really urgently need to be able to use their rights, but they are also often the ones lacking in legal support, while the upper or affluent class of society often has access to very good lawyers. […] this is in a way a painful entry-point to the law. it is something that one can make use of in order to achieve some kind of political change. (interview transcript) moreover, the idea of redistribution of the law goes beyond the notions of access to justice or equality before the law and includes practices of extending the application and interpretation of existing laws. according to such an approach, it is not enough to pass laws that are aimed at eliminating different forms of injustice, like anti-discrimination legislation; case law also needs to be developed for these laws to be effective and not misused: it really is a challenge to create an impact for the legislation that we already have, for example the legislation on discrimination. then someone is needed to work with these cases, and who is going to do that? civil society cannot do it. the discrimination ombudsman says that they mainly work on strategic cases… and then, of course, it will be the most vulnerable who won’t have the capacity. (interview transcript) this approach to law as a resource that needs to be redistributed has often grown from interviewees’ own situated routes towards the practice of law. the interviewees who underscored their backgrounds in disadvantaged or racialised communities as decisive in their choice to become lawyers pointed out that the maldistribution of the law is already visible in law schools: as soon as i entered the classroom at the law school it was very striking how homogenous it was. in my cohort i think i was one of three black people in a class of 300 people. and that is not exactly representative of what society looks like. and i think that is a problem that continues into work life, like who sits in the courts and passes the judgements, et cetera. and i felt that there was a certain language in the law studies programme and an expectation about who we would be as students, expectations of certain shared references… like when a lecturer says: ‘when you are going to inherit’ [laughing], and i am very conscious of the fact that i will not inherit anything. and maybe it is reasonable that it happens, since a certain group is overrepresented in the classroom; but during the first two years i was feeling: what am i doing here? (interview transcript) thus, the issue of redistribution is about who owns the judicial field, who is overrepresented in it and who is excluded from it. this brings us back to the ways in which the interviewees are embedded in new social justice movements in sweden and to the importance of the relation between redistribution and representation for their struggles. maja sager & marta kolankiewicz studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 550 concluding discussion: decentring, re-politicising and redistribution in this article, we have traced the interviewees’ conceptualisations of what they “are doing” when they act in the legal arena. our point of departure has been that resorting to law is often a response to subjection to an unjust legal system, to an oppressive treatment by the state or to the situation of disadvantage and deprivation. thus, rather than a strategically chosen tool for social justice, legal practice could be understood as a kind of self-defence. while there is a variation among the interviewees in their views on law and in their commitment to it, all of them engage in a critique of law as a tool for social justice struggles. their reflections on their own legal practices are thus informed by this very fundamental ambivalence between the ideological commitment to the critique of law and the position from which they act, in which it is not possible to ignore the legal arena. rather than taking a stance for or against the law as a tool for social justice struggles, we have attempted to understand the methods and the effects of legal practices that grow from this kind of tension. we have done this by analysing not only practices themselves, but also the ways in which those who engage in them make sense of them as a part of their commitment to broader political issues. while we cannot analyse actual transformative effects of the critical legal practice based on our material only, the accounts of our interviewees indeed indicate that both practical strategies and ways of accounting for these aim at subverting and challenging the law while at the same time using it. throughout the analysis we have conceptualised these strategies for critically engaging with law as decentring, re-politicising and redistribution. decentring takes place when both methods and effects of the legal practice go beyond the legal arena. in this way the interviewees resist centring the law, something that has been identified as one of the core risks for social movements when engaging in the legal arena. such decentring is achieved when legal practices are subordinated to other elements of social struggles through an instrumentalisation of the law whereby it is treated as just one tool among others or as a “necessary evil.” decentred legal practices serve as responses to the needs that appear in activities that are more central to social struggles – such as political debate, protests, and other forms of mobilisation and resistance. re-politicisation has to do with reintroducing the political to the legal arena, which is often criticised as creating a semblance of neutrality and objectivity. it can take the form of a more general critique through which the law and its institutions are treated as reflective of society and inherent power relations. but it also happens when the justice claims made in the legal arena are staked in a way that goes beyond the individual case and make structural injustices visible. finally, everyday practices of legal advice and education are often grounded in an understanding of the law as a resource that is unevenly critical legal practices studies in social justice, volume 16, issue 3, 2022, 534-553 551 distributed in society, and thereby contributes – similarly to other forms of maldistribution – to sustain specific power relations. seen in this way, these legal practices are not only about access to justice, but also about redistribution of resources and power in society. acknowledgements we would like to express our gratitude to the research participants who generously shared their time, thoughts and analysis. we would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback. references akademin för rörelsejuridik [the academy for movement lawyering]. 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(1991). the alchemy of race and rights. harvard university press. rimke fg august 8 16 correspondence address: heidi rimke, department of sociology, university of winnipeg, 515 portage avenue, winnipeg, mb, r3b 2e9; email: h.rimke@uwinnipeg.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 introduction – mental and emotional distress as a social justice issue: beyond psychocentrism heidi rimke university of winnipeg, canada keywords psychocentrism; psychiatrization; medicalization; mental distress; neoliberalism; social inequalities; social injustice; victim-blaming introduction this special issue of studies in social justice critically explores the complex relationship between social injustice, mental and emotional distress/difference, and the pathologization of individuals in contemporary neoliberal society. our primary focus, as outlined in the “guest editors’ preface and acknowledgments,” is placed on critical theoretical and methodological approaches to studying and analyzing the power of medicine and psychiatry in modern society. the collective research trajectory aims to analyze the significant, and yet often overlooked, link between mental and emotional health/distress (private troubles) and social injustice (public issues) (mills, 1959). the essays in this issue interrogate and challenge dominant “psy” discourses and practices with an emphasis on poststructuralist and intersectional approaches to social inequalities and social injustices. the special issue highlights the importance of the relationship between embodiment, social inequalities, the pathologization of difference and psy truths (rimke, 2003). contemporary society has been colonized by the “psy complex” defined here as a hegemonic formation comprised of a loosely defined group of experts connected through their professional and social status, particularly psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurses, psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and social workers. it is conceived as a heterogeneous network of agents, sites, practices, products and techniques for the production, dissemination, legitimation, and utilization of psy truths. mental & emotional distress as a social justice issue studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 5 historically, the emergence of the psy complex occurs through the medicalization of morality in the 19th century (rimke & hunt, 2002). also, it is important to note that from the perspective employed here, the historical formation of the psy complex is inextricable with the emergence and maintenance of neoliberal culture where individuals are taken to be free and autonomous consumers responsible for their own health and illness or distress. additionally, the psy complex produces the psy industry that emerged in concert with the rise of capitalist industrialization in north america. the psy complex is problematized in this special issue by applying the notion of “psychocentrism,” the view that human problems are due to a biologically-based flaw or deficit in the bodies and/or minds of individual subjects. psychocentrism is itself a form of social injustice, where individual reformation rather than social and economic justice is promoted. mental and emotional distress are thus taken here to be the consequence of societies built on systemic social inequalities that reproduce social injustices while profiting from them. the articles in one way or another analyze the adverse and growing reach of the psy complex. before defining neoliberalism and social injustice, and outlining a short theoretical history of the concept of psychocentrism, a brief note on the politics of language is necessary. understanding the interrelationship between language, culture, power and social injustice is of paramount importance given that contemporary poststructuralist analyses examine the constitutive role discourse and knowledge play in the exercise of power and ab/normalization of human life. thus, to move towards a social justice model of mental and emotional life, it is vital to examine the ways that language can contribute to, or counteract, social inequalities. following the important sociological work of david pilgrim (2003, 2005), the language deployed throughout this special issue prefers to use “mental distress” over “mental illness,” the latter being stigmatizing, and therefore largely counterproductive. the term mental illness is also problematic because it gives the appearance of scientific proof and medical consensus, which has not (yet) been achieved. critical approaches to the psy complex have rejected the psychocentric hypothesis on theoretical, empirical and ethical grounds since the 1950s (foucault, 1954; goffman, 1963; kirk, gomory & cohen, 2013; smith, 1990). a now significant body of scholarship argues and demonstrates that the concept of mental illness is of dubious scientific validity. many scholars have argued that tautology, not science, is invoked regularly to warrant the legalized and unethical control of people who are seen to offend, threaten, and frighten. all efforts to date to define mental disorder have been flawed on a number of counts (kirk et al., 2013; pilgrim, 2005; turner & edgley, 1983). it is in this critical vein that the articles in the special issue challenge rather than fortify the psy complex and psy industry. following the pioneering feminist sociology of dorothy smith (1987, 1990), these critical heidi rimke studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 6 analyses are on guard against eurocentric, androcentric, masculinist, positivist social thought that serve the interests of dominant social groups at the expense of the dominated group. neoliberalism can be understood as a series of pro-market and procorporate policies that seek to integrate state and market operations to benefit the interests of transnational corporations and the wealthy. increasingly, neoliberal governmentality manages human subjectivities as an ensemble of social forces that both construct and reinforce individualization and privatization. evaluated on the basis of self-control expressed through a market rationality where health and illness are commodified, depoliticized and individualized, modern subjects are treated and viewed as either successful or failed consumers of mental and emotional health. as this special issue establishes, the early 21st century is defined by pathological individualism, where health is seen as something to be attained or managed by industrious, virtuous, and productive neoliberal citizen-subjects. social justice can be understood as the extent to which a society ensures an equal distribution of resources and opportunities in the political, economic, institutional, and social realms. further, social injustice should be understood as having undeniable mental and emotional dimensions. the focus of a social justice approach is based on the conviction that all individuals and groups within a given society have universal human rights, including an equal opportunity to participate in the educational, economic, institutional, and social freedoms and responsibilities valued by the community. those concerned with social justice work for structural change to increase social opportunities and improve social conditions of those who are politically, economically and socially disadvantaged and marginalized. psychocentrism: historical and theoretical summary the conceptual career of psychocentrism began to emerge in 1996 as part of my master’s work, which critically analyzed self-help literature as a form of neoliberal governmentality (rimke, 1997, 2000). my doctoral dissertation continued the study of psy discourses by documenting and analyzing the invention of normality primarily through the doctrine of moral insanity (rimke, 2005). the dissertation argues that medicalization and psychiatrization of immoral desires and conduct should be understood as shaped in the 19th century by a hybridization of christianist morality and enlightenment positivism, forming the spring-board for what eventually came to be referred to as abnormal psychology specifically, and psychiatry more generally. over the course of time, my conceptualization and use of the notion continued to develop in different social and intellectual contexts. its purpose is to provide an alternative or counterhegemonic reading to dominant psy approaches by providing a critical analytical tool. it thus offers a conceptual mental & emotional distress as a social justice issue studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 7 approach to critically examine and analyze psy discourses and practices in their intricate, specific, and universalized machinations. a key aim of applying the concept in this special issue is to attend to and emphasize the broader structural factors at play in the relationship between mental and emotional distress and social injustice. in the last 10 years of research and writing, i have applied the concept of psychocentrism to different social problems and discourses in contemporary society: individualistic theories of crime and criminality (rimke, 2011); cannibalism and the not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder (ncrmd) defense (rimke, 2010a, 2010b); the criminalization and pathologization of terrorism (rimke, 2012, 2016); and, the growth of the culture of therapy in neoliberal capitalism (rimke & brock, 2012). while the concept initially encompassed six basic characteristics, it has been expanded to include a total of 10 characteristics (which may or may not operate simultaneously) as follows: 1. reductionism: reducing the complexity of human experience and problems to simplistic explanations, usually by advancing the modernist view of the self-contained body-mind model; 2. determinism: claiming that human conduct and experience are determined by their “natural” bodily make-up (genetics, hormones, neurochemical, etc.); 3. essentialism: the view that humans are essential categorical or personality types; that groups of individuals possess an innate characteristic or essence that is permanent, unalterable, stable, static, etc.; 4. presentism or ahistoricism: historical amnesia or the analytical disregard for history and its role in constituting our present understandings of our selves individually and collectively; 5. naturalism: viewing humans as natural rather than social or socially located, shaped, and produced; 6. ethnocentrism: the assumption that one’s cultural practices and beliefs are normal and thus superior than other cultural practices and ways of being in the world; 7. double-standards: a set of principles unequally applied to two or more different groups. an example is the gendered double standard of sexuality where women are cast negatively while men are represented positively for the same sexual conduct; 8. victim-blaming: holding individuals and groups responsible for their own fates or negative outcomes, including their experience of mental and emotional distress or traumatic life experiences, usually by placing themselves in high risk situations; 9. positivism: using the prestige and veneer of science to construct mental illness as analogous to the same physical markers found in physical illness; heidi rimke studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 8 10. pathological individualism: the modern master status of the person defined in terms of ab/normalization and/or self-categorization and/or expert classification. the notion of psychocentrism provides a framework to investigate the ways in which neoliberal populations are governed according to psy knowledge. it also draws our attention to expert discourses that minimize or negate the deleterious effect of social inequalities. psychocentrism is based on on the human deficit model, while obscuring societal deficits and social relations of power that often underlie and contribute to human struggles and difficulties. it is important to study and deconstruct the ways that social injustices such as sexism, classism, racism, heterosexism, colonialism, ableism, ageism, adultism, sanism, and so forth, operate in, and intersect with, mental health problems. the interlocking axes of oppression and inequalities are inimical to human life and thus need to be taken into account when analyzing contemporary mental health in/justice. psychocentrism largely rests upon the epistemological prestige of positivism derived from the prominence of natural sciences. in particular, the claim that abnormality can be explained scientifically by isolating causal evidence for differences amongst individuals is especially problematic. psy discourses are contentious and problematic for many reasons: classificatory ambiguity, lack of physical/organic medical evidence, the highly subjective nature of notions such as normal and abnormal, the long, political and controversial use of psychiatric practices and interventions (electroconvulsive shock therapy, lobotomy, leucotomy, drugs), and conflicting empirical data, render the ethical and intellectual status of the psy complex scientifically and socially problematic. another problem of the dominant biomedical paradigm is that it remains strictly at an individualistic level, whether the abnormality is conceptualized as the result of faulty thinking, biochemical failures, or defective genes. personal deficits are explained as the by-product of any one, or a combination of, heredity, neurotransmitters, hormones, and so forth. constructing a science of psychiatry has proven problematic and elusive, yet billions of dollars each year are spent researching, promoting, consuming and advertising it. after over 100 years of the hypothesis that abnormal function and activity in specific brain circuits are the cause of mental illness, not one single biological marker for a single psychiatric disorder has been identified to validate mental illness as a medical disease (epstein, 2016). the assumption that the brain secretes mental illness like the kidney secretes urine (noll, 2011, p. 68), and that the right scientific tools can unlock such hidden secrets in the individual body or mind, have yet to be proven. no etiology or cause has been determined for any so-called psychiatric illness or disease as catalogued in the diagnostic and statistical manual, also referred to as the psychiatric bible, now in its fifth edition (apa, 2013). mental & emotional distress as a social justice issue studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 9 the cumulative pain and suffering due to inequalities takes its toll on individual minds, hearts, bodies, communities – and far more on some social groups than others. this special issue acknowledges the violent practices of patriarchal, colonialist, capitalist society that result in trauma, pain, and harm both directly and indirectly, primarily or vicariously. the opposite of oppression is not only feelings of peace, stability and support, it is also the privilege to be oblivious to others’ social and economic problems. to quote ursula franklin, “peace is not the absence of war. peace is the absence of fear. peace is the presence of justice” (2014, p. 36). psychocentrism, neoliberalism and the culture of therapy: a critical social analysis modern individuals face a multitude of social challenges and problems. supra-individual factors at the root of human struggles include: precarious employment or joblessness; lack of secure housing; mental, emotional, physical, sexual, spiritual, racial, and digital violence; financial problems; and the trauma and complication of climate disasters. the failure of connecting social structural forces in people’s lives at best results in a weak theoretical link between mental and emotional distress and social injustice. at worst, it uses psy discourses to blame the marginalized and underprivileged for their socially produced suffering. viewed from the depth and magnitude of global human suffering, psychocentrism promotes naive or superficial fixes to macrological social and economic problems. furthermore, the intersection of multiple social factors that structure access to resources, assistance and support, arguably, are key components in feelings of security, peace and a sense of well-being, the lack of which often lie at the base of human problems. in the current historical period, the “neoliberal self” is encouraged by a market-driven, consumer culture that normalize the notions of health, happiness, well-being, etc., as accomplished only or primarily through consumption practices. another indication of psychocentricity is the overuse of the word “normal” itself – historically we would have used words and terms such as “usually,” “typically,” or “on average.” we see the promotion of neoliberalism in our cultural and economic systems, which assume that all people are motivated by “rational self-interest” as homo economicus, defined in terms of money and resources. such an assumption disproportionately benefits the interests of corporate elites and the privileged classes. psychocentricity dovetails seamlessly with the values of neoliberalism by giving the appearance that “normalcy” is desirable, concrete and attainable. from this perspective, personal success is marketed as readily accessible to everyone and anyone, regardless of income level, educational background, geographical location, sexual identity, religious affiliation, and so on. from a critical social scientific perspective this is very problematic. pathological heidi rimke studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 10 individualism encourages us to close ourselves to others. it is done partly for protection out of fear and partly for expediency, but it is a decision to see ourselves as cut off from others as a basic social fact of life. psychocentrism prevents compassion, empathy and connectedness, and it prevents us from feeling a sense of ethical responsibility to those without voices, networks, and resources. the imperatives of governmental policies to ensure basic essentials for healthcare, education, and retirement security or legislation to protect consumers, environment and workers thus falls to the wayside as psychocentrism increasingly colonizes neoliberal culture. the growing material, mental, physical, and emotional tensions and struggles of contemporary society are expressed in multiple ways. the many harmful effects of white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy result in isolation, violence, anxiety, anger, apathy, repulsion, depression, and suicide. although individually experienced, such human experiences must be placed within the context of social life and structures. human lives are affected by growing economic deterioration and austerity, as well as social conflicts based on axes of age, sexual orientation, class, gender, physical appearance, familial ties, educational attainment, religious status, racialization and ethnicity, political repression, and other socially created insecurities. these include the lack of affordable and stable housing, growing underand unemployment, the erosion of pensions, rising food and energy prices, and toxic work environments, which negatively affect too many members of society in numerous troublesome and troubling ways. yet, the resounding messages provided by psy experts imply that people’s struggles are strictly personal – internally produced – as though our experiences in the world were somehow separate and distinct from the social conditions that shape, produce, and order those experiences. today, the psy industry is very big business with mass marketing for drugs and self-help strategies that encompasses all aspects of human life. this is a massive and growing industry, with estimates ranging from 35 to 50 billion dollars in profits annually for the self-help, and mental health and addictions fields alone. clearly, the industry of pathological individualism is the leading and best-selling genre in north america. although it is very difficult to obtain exact numbers from the corporate drug industry, several scholars have documented the dramatic rise of psychopharmaceutical prescriptions as the stock response to mental and emotional distress. in 2010, the top 10 fortune 500 companies – all pharmaceutical – made more profits than the other 490 companies combined (rimke & brock, 2012). the practice of polypharmacy has increased substantially over the past two decades, creating its own set of problems and consequences where “big pharma” is an economic and social empire (moncrieff, 2009). other intellectuals have critiqued the rise of a “pharmacracy” (szasz, 2003) or “pharmageddon” (healy, 2012) as a result of the psy industry. therapeutic culture has created an enormously profitable economic sector, from self-help books to the dramatic growth of pharmaceutical companies. mental & emotional distress as a social justice issue studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 11 many critics argue that pharmaceutical companies – rather than evidencebased research – are the modern day driver behind growing psychiatric diagnosis. it is thus no coincidence that the psy complex has become the most lucrative industry on the planet. further, when psychocentric research is funded by those pharmaceutical companies themselves, significant ethical and epistemological dilemmas arise, yet fail to be addressed by the state (rimke, 2010c). given its staggering commercial profits, the social influence and effects of the psy industry in wider society cannot be overstated. the increasing focus placed on individual responsibility has been occurring simultaneous to the dismantling of public health care and social services, forcing individuals to absorb structural deterioration. presumably, such therapeutic acts are equally available to all people, everywhere regardless of socioeconomic position or geographical location? what appears personal is socially proscribed and either internalized as a good citizen-subject or resisted as a bad, ungovernable citizen-subject. for, after all, even the most private self-examination is tied to social systems of valuation, imposition, judgement, and regulation (foucault, 1988). psychocentrism presupposes a very specific type of individual – primarily one with the economic means and cultural competence to own, use and have the time and resources to engage with psy expertise. as a result, many are systematically excluded from this form of health management as not all can be competent or capable “consumers” of health and wellness given the rampant poverty in neoliberal society. human health and illness involve social factors that are dismissed or marginalized within contemporary biomedical approaches, which therefore fail to fully capture the complexities of human being, subjectivity, injustice and social life. research indicates that there is an indisputable social dimension to health/well-being that cannot be reduced to, and explained at, the individual level alone. quality of life is likely the best indicator for mental and emotional health – secure housing, stable income, leisure time, social networks, community membership, meaningful relationships – thus demonstrating the social bases of human life. overview of contributions to the special issue the authors contributing to this special issue apply the notion of psychocentrism to frame and analyze different aspects or problematics of the contemporary psy complex. critical of dominant claims that lack evidence and/or ignore social inequalities, these articles emphasize and examine social relations of power and inequality that underlie human suffering. using psychocentrism as a critical epistemological framework to challenge dominant psy assumptions and discourses, the authors use a social justice lens or analytic to produce critical mental health scholarship. this necessarily entails an analysis of the ways that stigmatization, discrimination, heidi rimke studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 12 inferiorization, and dehumanization are explicitly tied to the problem of social injustice. the overall aim of the special issue is to chart and analyze the social and political relations at the heart of pathological individualism that is maintained and reproduced through psychocentrism. the articles provide critical, reflexive, interpretive, qualitative methodological approaches to critical research, theory, and analysis (rimke, 2010c). each analysis draws on critical theoretical and methodological approaches, such as performance ethnography, critical discourse analysis, content analysis, participant and naturalistic observation, interviews and focus groups, and therefore this issue provides multiple frameworks for critically analyzing the place and effects of psychocentricity. what is typically or normatively seen and represented as individualistic and pathological, is instead understood as historically constituted, culturally produced, politically oriented, and socially maintained. the essays demonstrate that experiences of emotional suffering and mental distress manifest within wider historical, economic, cultural and political contexts both locally and globally. critical mental health research examines not just how mental health issues are framed, named and studied, and how mental health treatment, care and supports are conceived and implemented. it also questions the psy logic of advanced neoliberal, patriarchal, and postcolonial societies, with its noxious effects on individual and collective mental and emotional health. the contributions examine the problematic bases and effects of traditional psy discourses and practices of power in six substantive areas in critical mental health research: the growing popularization of mental health first aid discourses; autism and opposing social movements to either fix or accept autistic people as they are; sanism or discrimination against those diagnosed as mentally ill as a form of unjust research; racism, incarceration and indigenous youth suicide; problematic eating patterns, sexism and female body image; and, homelessness and poverty as pathology. all of these approaches apply the concept of psychocentrism in their own ways. these articles also reject the neoliberal pluralist notion of social power as equally exercised by all individuals and social groups. further, they challenge the view that positivist knowledge production is socially neutral and universally beneficent. jan defehr provides a timely, critical analysis of the popularization of mental health first aid (mhfa) discourses, which are increasingly applied to define social catastrophes, such as the suicide crisis in indigenous communities, as psychiatric emergencies. the article shows that the globalized movement to pathologize human distress ignores or occludes social and historical sources of pain and suffering. she outlines the highly problematic mhfa model that seeks to train everyday people or non-experts to recognize the so-called signs of mental illness, providing further support for the spread of neoliberal psychocentric styles of thought. this is expressed forcefully in the conclusion where defehr points out that the training of mental & emotional distress as a social justice issue studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 13 neoliberal subjects as “citizen-diagnosticians” creates a new form of moral policing, which undermines social structural change that would ameliorate much social injustice. julia gruson-wood’s article examines the politics of the dominant behavioural therapy (aba) used to train and discipline both therapists and people with autism. she addresses the disagreement between those who seek to cure autism and those who seek accommodation for those who have a diagnosis or self-identity as autistic. the psychocentric suggestion that autistic people have a “natural” way of being fails to understand that all people are socialized or socially shaped, disciplined, normalized and subjectified. gruson-wood critiques the dominant biomedical approach by analyzing the aba framework, philosophy and strategies. she highlights the exceedingly controlling and self-governing aspects of aba training and aba experts/trainers. stephanie leblanc and elizabeth anne kinsella’s article provides an important discussion and analysis of the problem of sanism, a serious form of epistemic injustice. they challenge as highly questionable any type of psy knowledge that does not take into account the views and experiences of service-users, survivors and ex-patients as integral sources of information. traditional, expert psy approaches objectify and subjectify those who struggle with mental and emotional distress. drawing on feminist research and mad studies scholarship, they provide an important theoretical analysis of the relationship between sanism, epistemic injustice, and psychocentrism. mandi gray’s essay analyzes an inquest into the suicides of two indigenous female youth while they were imprisoned at the manitoba youth centre. her paper challenges the view that the inquest is a neutral and objective factfinding project designed to help or protect incarcerated youth. the official legal or medical texts treat the suicides as a consequence of mental illness, rather than the result of a matrix or intersection of multiple social inequalities due to social factors. viewing suicide as an individual pathology conveniently ignores the social, political, economic, and colonialist violence underlying indigenous children’s desire to die or to escape the helplessness, powerlessness, and pain due to incarceration itself. the suicidal deaths of c.j. and c.b. are a serious indictment of the institutionalized violence children face as prisoners of the canadian state. it is disgraceful that in 21st century north america, children are locked up in cages, far away from their families and communities, and punished and brutalized with inhumane treatment. that the prison environment itself is suicidogenic is erased in the inquest, which positions the institution, system and its agents as blameless. the article highlights the need to examine criminal justice practices and policies, if indigenous and youth justice is to be addressed and achieved. nicole schott, lauren spring and debra langan examine how performance ethnography is an important tool for critiquing – and extending the conversation about the pathologization of girls and women who identify as pro-anorexia and pro-bulimia (ana/mia) on internet websites. the so-called heidi rimke studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 14 mental illness of eating disorders is linked to the social promotion of gendered body images; yet, in the psy literature it is reduced to the individual failings of women and girls. the pathologizing of pro-ana and pro-mia identities unfairly ignores the influence of social structural factors in the relationship between feminization, embodiment, eating patterns and body image in patriarchal culture. the authors argue against psychocentricity that privileges the expert view. they advocate for a social justice approach that acknowledges the collective meanings of eating and body image issues for those who identify as anorexic or bulimic and for women and girls more generally who are immersed in a fat-phobic culture. the article on homelessness written by erin dej provides an important case study of some of the ways psychocentrism manifests among a socially oppressed and excluded population. she demonstrates that homeless individuals are simultaneously pathologized and responsibilized through psychocentric discourses. according to her research, homeless individuals are expected to exhibit signs of shame, gratitude, deference, atonement and guilt in order to present the self as remorseful to their superiors, the agents of the homeless industry. narratives provided by those struggling with economic inequalities displayed self-criticism rather than social criticism, and little selfcompassion. their status as economically and materially poor becomes individualized as a symptom of mental illness and/or addiction seen as personal rather than social failures. certain analytical threads are woven throughout the special issue: first, psy experts exercise power in the construction of knowledge that medicalizes and pathologizes what are ultimately social and cultural values and practices; second, expert discourses encourage users or subjects to locate “pathologies” inside themselves rather than a result of social processes, structures and experiences; third, expert discourse denies, trivializes or minimizes the importance of social factors and social relations at play in pathologies; and fourth, expert psy discourses distract from wider structural issues of social injustice. conclusion social inequalities lead many to experience marginalization, inferiorization and stigma, all of which are bad for human health and thus counter to living a healthy, meaningful and rewarding life. it is thus incumbent upon us to become aware of discourses and practices operating within and across systems of domination that blame individuals rather than highlight the many socially-based mental and emotional problems experienced by members in our communities. social justice approaches to mental health call on us to imagine and work towards alternative approaches to dominant biomedical discourses and practices as a public health issue and basic human right. mental & emotional distress as a social justice issue studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 15 neoliberal societies justify retrograde social policies that were meant to provide a safety net for the vulnerable, but which are facing systematic dismantling today. this can be witnessed in minimal or decreasing investments to education, housing, healthcare and social services, while increasing public spending in support of militarism, corporate welfare, the formation of a police state, deepening local and global inequalities, and ecocidal industrial practices. psychocentricity prevents, omits, erases, and negates the ability to understand how political and social structures, discourses and practices impact individual lives physically, materially, emotionally, mentally – and crucially – unequally in modern society. this special issue hopes to make these explicit and implicit connections between the personal and the social. the appeal of psy promises and fixes are the effects of an inescapably therapeutic culture that pacifies the population by promoting individualized explanations for socially-based problems. the imperatives of governmental policies to ensure basic essentials for the vulnerable would be a good starting point for improving mental and emotional health of the population. provisions of universal healthcare, educational opportunities for all, and social housing thus fall to the wayside as psy hegemony increasingly colonizes neoliberal culture. consequently, if one experiences mental and emotional distress, one is compelled to find the problem within the self. analyzing psychocentricity entails critiquing the psychiatrization of everyday life that often produces or masks the social, economic, political and historical bases of human pain, trauma, and struggles. it also means attending to mental and emotional distress as a significant public health issue. the problem of psychocentrism is a key challenge to addressing contemporary pain, suffering and vulnerability, as it is difficult to imagine how human wellbeing can ever be promoted in a meaningful manner without addressing the larger social, cultural, economic, and political factors that shape human relations and experiences. it is my hope that the articles presented herein will assist in starting the long overdue conversation on mental and emotional distress as a significant social justice problem. acknowledgments i would like to thank guy normand, kimberley ducey, and elly van der zande for their mental and emotional support while working on this special issue. references apa (american psychiatric association). 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(2010c). remembering the sociological imagination: transdisciplinarity, the genealogical method, and epistemological politics. international journal of interdisciplinary social sciences, 5(1), 239-254. rimke, h. (2011). the pathological approach to crime: individually based theories. in k. kramar (ed.), criminology: critical canadian perspectives (pp. 78-92). toronto: university of toronto press. rimke, h. (2012). securing injustice: the psychocriminalization of resistance as ‘political violent extremism.’ the annual review of interdisciplinary justice research, 3, 26-39. rimke, h. (2016). pathologizing resistance and promoting anthropophobia: the violent extremism risk assessment (vera) as case study. in h. ramadan & j. shantz (eds.), manufacturing phobias: the political production of fear in theory and practice (pp. 17-26). toronto: university of toronto press. rimke, h., & brock, d. (2012). the culture of therapy: psychocentrism in everyday life. in m. thomas, r. raby & d. brock (eds.), power and everyday practices (pp. 182-202). toronto: nelson. rimke, h., & hunt, a. (2002). from sinners to degenerates: the medicalization of morality in the 19th century. history of the human sciences, 15(1), 59-88. smith, d. e. (1987). the everyday world as problematic: a feminist sociology. boston: northeastern university press. smith, d. e. (1990). texts, facts, and femininity: exploring the relations of ruling. london: routledge. mental & emotional distress as a social justice issue studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 1, 4-17, 2016 17 szasz, t. (2003). pharmacracy: medicine and politics in america. new york: first syracuse university press. turner, r. e., & edgley, c. (1983). from witchcraft to drugcraft: biochemistry as mythology. social science journal, 20(4), 1-12. coulter final dec 2 16 correspondence address: kendra coulter, centre for labour studies. brock university, st. catharines, on, l2s 3a1; kendra.coulter@brocku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 beyond human to humane: a multispecies analysis of care work, its repression, and its potential kendra coulter brock university, canada abstract this paper approaches care work through a multispecies and interspecies lens, and challenges readers to expand both their analysis and their ethical considerations in order to include animals. first i present a conceptual framework to help illuminate and unpack the care work animals do in the wild, in homes, and in formal workplaces. i then highlight the complex ways animals’ bodies, minds, and families are involved in the production of commodities for human consumption, and the implications of such practices for animals’ own forms of caregiving. unfortunately, the fact is that for many animals, their primary experiences of care work are its repression. as a result, in the final section, i offer food for thought about the potential for care work to not only involve more empathetic embodied interactions and labour processes, but to be a springboard for expanded visions and projects of social justice which include humane jobs and recognize that “the social” is multispecies. keywords care work; human-animal relations; critical animal studies; gender and work; humane jobs care is integral to social justice. diverse scholars have theorized care, debated its conceptual and practical ethics, and explored how care is and could be interwoven with social and political praxis. as maría puig de la bellacasa (2012, p. 197) reminds us, care is “inseparably a vital affective state, an ethical obligation and a practical labour.” most research focused on care work has concentrated on people. in this paper, i expand the care work lens in order to include animals and to encourage scholarship and political action that takes their experiences seriously. care work is understood to be tasks, interactions, labour processes, and occupations involved in taking care of others, physically, psychologically, and emotionally. care work can be kendra coulter studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 200 proactive or reactive, formal or informal, and, when done by people, it may be paid or unpaid. much of the care work people do with/for animals has commonalities with human-focused care work, including the daily labour processes required, its feminization, its low pay or lack of pay, its precariousness, and its uneven physical and emotional risks and rewards (hamilton, 2013; hamilton & taylor, 2013; irvine & vermilya, 2010; miller, 2013; parreñas, 2012). at the same time, additional social and economic devaluation, distinct emotional complexities, and less workplace-based organizing further complicate the realities of care work undertaken with/for animals (bunderson & thompson, 2009; collard, 2014; miller, 2008; sanders, 2010; taylor, 2010). a handful of scholars are also beginning to analyse the interconnections among political work with/for animals and ideals and dynamics of care (coulter, 2016; donaldson & kymlicka, 2015; winter, 2016). a full and thorough examination of the intersections of animals and care work is a significant undertaking, one which is beyond the scope of this paper. here i offer a conceptual contribution that i hope will help propel further analysis and strengthen multispecies intellectual and political work. there is good reason to illuminate, interrogate, and critique the cultural and material processes of many kinds of human labour, particularly if interested in fostering multispecies justice; people’s actions (or a lack thereof) have beneficial, harmful, or fatal effects within and across species. in this paper, humans are considered, but i place animals’ work-lives at the heart of the discussion. to do so, i build from and expand on labour and care work literatures, feminist political economy, and human-animal and critical animal studies. i also enlist pertinent insights from animal ecofeminism, cognitive ethology, animal welfare research, and some animal rights theories. i consider animals’ involvement in formal, human-focused care work, as well as animals’ own caregiving processes. first i present a conceptual framework to help highlight and unpack the care work animals do in the wild, in homes, and in formal workplaces. i then illuminate the intersections, entanglements, and ruptures that come into focus when recognizing care work as more-than-human, and highlight the complex ways animals’ bodies, minds, and families are involved in processes of social, economic, and biological production, reproduction, and consumption, particularly in industrial agriculture. indeed, when we expand our conceptual lenses to include animals, the complexities of commodification and disposability figure in significant and unsettling ways. on the one hand, there is increasing interest in engaging animals in the provisioning of care work for people. yet, on the other hand, animals’ own forms of caregiving are rarely recognized as a kind of care work. moreover, many animals are also physically prevented from providing care to fellow animals and, in particular, to their own offspring. there is a conceptual denial occurring alongside institutionalized daily practices of literal denial. unfortunately, the fact is that for many animals, their primary experiences of care work are its repression. as a result, beyond human to humane studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 201 in the final section, i offer food for thought about the potential for care work to not only involve more empathetic embodied interactions and labour processes, but to be a springboard for expanded visions and projects of social justice which recognize that “the social” is multispecies. jocelyne porcher (2014) has also argued for “recognizing” animals’ work, but i conceptualize recognition in a different way, and see this as only one part of a broader intellectual and ethical project. i borrow, expand, and reshape nancy fraser’s (1995) intertwined concepts of recognition and redistribution as both an organizing framework for this paper, and as a kind of political engine for approaching the complexities of animals and care work. the crux of fraser’s argument is that neither a cultural or identitybased politics which seeks to counter discursive and symbolic erasure and legitimize diverse experiences (recognition), nor a political project concentrating on tangible valuation and compensation (redistribution) is sufficient on its own, but rather that both threads are necessary for justice and that they ought to be interwoven. fraser’s analysis stems from examination of human-focused social justice struggles (and particularly those in the united states in recent decades). she does not write about animals or employ a multispecies lens. moreover, although some animals are materially compensated for their labour in certain ways (through food, affection, tangible rewards, etc.) they do not receive monetary pay, nor would they be interested in that kind of literal financial redistribution. yet i wish to enlist the spirit of this argument – the need to see and to change what is provided to whom – as part of thinking about the intersections of animals, care, and work. accordingly, this paper will begin to illuminate and unpack the different kinds of care work performed by animals to recognize their labours as work. this means confronting the presence and absence of care work, including what thomas van dooren (2014, p. 91) calls “regimes of violent-care.” such processes can include the withdrawal or highly constrained and merely instrumental provisioning of care or partial care, or the active suppression and prohibition of caregiving labours. then to conclude, i will explore the complexities and possibilities of thinking about what redistribution might mean if animals are taken seriously as sentient beings, as social actors, as workers, and as providers of care. given the focus of this discussion, a brief comment on language and categories is in order before delving into the substantive material. humans evolved on earth and are also animals. as a result of this fact and for political reasons, within the growing body of human-animal studies and related literatures, there are scholars who consistently refer to other animals as nonhuman animals. for linguistic efficiency, to recognize heterogeneity among both humans and animals, and to avoid continuously identifying others in relation to but one of the species they are not, i use terms like people, humans, women, men, and so forth for homo sapiens, and refer to nonhuman animals as animals, or by their species or common name. i consider wild, farmed, and companion animals to varying degrees throughout kendra coulter studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 202 the paper, and raise particular concerns about farmed animals. crucially, in all cases, animals are still understood to be sentient beings who possess consciousness and an ability to think and feel, physically and emotionally. consequently, sexed pronouns are used for all who are considered in this paper; terms like “it” are not relevant, regardless of species membership. recognizing animals’ care work i propose three organizational categories as a starting place to highlight the breadth of animals’ work: (a) subsistence work; (b) voluntary work; and (c) work that is mandated by humans (coulter, 2016). subsistence work is that which is done by animals for themselves and often for/with others in order to survive. voluntary work refers to that which is usually done for humans in homes, although there are also animals who voluntarily assist other animals, even across species lines, including those who are physically disabled. the work mandated by humans includes a broad range of formal tasks and occupations. given the focus of this paper, here i will concentrate on how care work is involved in each of these three categories of work. subsistence work is the life-sustaining labour that living beings must perform in order to subsist. even though human societies were dependent on subsistence work for the large majority of our history (and many people still are), much contemporary labour research downplays its importance, or fails to see it as work, an omission challenged by historical, anthropological, feminist, and other cross-cultural scholarship. therefore by building on my anthropological training, enlisting a feminist political economy lens, and recognizing the realities of many animals’ lives, i challenge this overly narrow perception of work. for wild animals, daily life involves rigorous and multi-faceted challenges – from finding food and water sources in all seasons and regardless of the weather, to avoiding or escaping predators. these processes require and are work. i do not refer to these animals as “workers” but subsistence labour is nevertheless labour. the details are context-specific, and shaped by human behaviour and infrastructure, environmental factors, and animals’ position within their multispecies community and ecosystem. the work needed for mice in canada to subsist has similarities as well as differences with what elephants in tanzania need to do, for example. moreover, even within these geographic spaces, different regions would involve distinct hurdles and dangers. human actions, including “sport” and livelihood patterns (hunting, trapping, etc.), the erection of buildings, cities, and dams, and the creation and use of roads, train tracks, and so forth all affect animals’ abilities to engage in subsistence work. the effects of climate change, including dried-up rivers, droughts, and floods also create significant and increasing challenges for animals’ abilities to engage in life-sustaining subsistence work. subsistence will always include some care work, particularly intergenerational care work. of course, beyond human to humane studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 203 competition for resources and carnivorous or omnivorous animals’ subsistence work (including hunting or scavenging from nests) infringes on other animals’ abilities to survive and care for their young; this is driven by biological necessity not profit or greed, however. the (often but not exclusively unpaid) work done by people to ensure the wellbeing and future of younger generations can be understood as social reproduction. social reproduction is a set of tasks and a process, a daily and a generational dynamic, and an individual and collective project (bezanson, 2006; luxton & bezanson, 2006). specific tasks are continuously required: cooking, cleaning, laundry, and so on, to care for others as they are educated, empowered, entertained, healed; care work is one component of social reproduction. the cumulative effect of these individual and localized efforts is the larger social process of reproducing people, and of ensuring present and future generations of workers. in other words, social reproduction makes all other forms of economic and social activity possible. although most analysts of social reproduction have theorized it within a capitalist economic context, arguably, social reproduction has been essential to all human societies and forms of social organization, including subsistence-based foraging and farming communities. so far, social reproduction has been used to highlight and understand people’s work; i posit that the concept is also applicable to animals and helps us to see both domesticated and wild animals’ forms of care work (coulter, 2016). in the wild, animals engage in individual and collective strategies to sustain themselves, their offspring, other family members, friends, and their entire species. animals’ subsistence work in the wild is not only about basic survival, but also about health, safety, and as the growing body of cognitive ethology suggests, social and cultural practices as well. animals teach others and youngsters are socialized into their families and communities as they learn how to interact, resolve disputes, and understand social patterns. animals in the wild are not reproducing future workers for a capitalist economic system, yet they too engage in a kind of social reproduction. moreover, they engage in what i call ecosocial reproduction: wild animals’ subsistence and caring work is necessary for the reproduction of ecosystems (coulter, 2016). at the same time, it is important to note that humans benefit economically from certain wild animals’ social and ecosocial reproductive work, as is the case with bees. as bees collect nectar to feed their young, they pollinate over two thirds of all flowering plants, which allows those plants to reproduce. many of these plants are used by humans for food and other products. bees also make honey to serve as food for their hives during the winter, and some humans also take that honey to consume and sell. animals who live in people’s homes and as part of human families are the recipients and beneficiaries of humans’ care work and social reproductive labour. domesticated animals may also perform different kinds of voluntary labour in such contexts; some of it is a form of informal care work. animals can choose to provide care work for the people with whom they share homes kendra coulter studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 204 thereby illustrating my second category: voluntary labour. many companion animals continuously assess the people with whom they live, physically and emotionally, and proactively or responsively provide care of various kinds, especially emotional support, through their presence, behaviours, interactions, and touch. it will not surprise most dog lovers to learn that ethological research has found that dogs experience a physiological response and even “emotional contagion” when hearing or seeing people cry, and that they seek to express empathy and provide comfort in response by approaching and touching those in distress (custance & mayer, 2012; yong & ruffman, 2014). much of this is informal and may not widely be conceptualized as work. at the same time, such labour is increasingly being recognized and formalized through the employment and certification of emotional support animals. the care work animals do providing joy, kindness, and comfort is extensive and often crucial. this kind of interactive care work is especially important for seniors, marginalized or vulnerable people, and women who are confronting domestic violence, are homeless, or are precariously housed. dogs in particular can provide life-sustaining emotional support and motivation, companionship, as well as literal protection (fitzgerald, 2007; irvine, 2013a, 2013b; labrecque & walsh, 2011; lem, coe, haley, stone, & o’grady, 2013). care work is also implicated in the broad cross-section of work animals do that is mandated by humans. across space and time, humans have required that animals perform various kinds of work. animals’ labour was essential to the ascendancy of societies, the erection and functioning of communities, and the lives of individual people. although not called care work, such expectations were commonplace even in war zones; some animals were regularly used for hauling labour or weaponized, while others were kept specifically for companionship and emotional support. as noted, today there is growing use of animals for therapeutic and service work that benefits people. animals’ abilities to guide, assist, comfort, calm, and detect physical challenges like seizures before they happen are being enlisted in a range of places, including in homes, schools, libraries, long term care facilities, and courthouses. animals may be tasked with care work round the clock, or brought into the pertinent site for shorter shifts. there is a growing body of evidence documenting how different (human) individuals and groups benefit in physical, psychological, and emotional ways from animal-assisted therapy, service, and other activities. people often identify the animals and their contributions as life-saving, transformative, and essential (e.g., burgon, 2011; fine, 2010). the work necessary for the delivery of care in these ways requires great skill and multi-faceted communication work, which includes understanding, reacting, and conveying many kinds of information (coulter, 2016). it is psychologically and emotionally challenging for animals, and they are required to suppress their personal feelings, reactions, and instincts in order beyond human to humane studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 205 to behave in the proper way regardless of what is going on around them. for example, a service dog providing care to a person with a disability must not become distracted by people, other animals, or food. similarly, equineassisted therapy programs are noteworthy for a number of reasons, including because horses are sensitive animals who read feelings that people communicate intentionally or implicitly by their bodies (such as through an increased heart rate). yet even though the people involved may be anxious, especially initially, the horses are required to maintain a sense of calmness. i posit that this illustrates animals’ performance of the internal emotion work necessary to successfully perform the emotional labour requirements of their jobs (see also coulter, 2016). we ask a lot of furry and even some feathered care workers in such contexts, and these jobs require particular kinds of temperaments, intelligences, and attitudes. some animals excel, but not all are able or willing to engage in this kind of care work. whether and to what degree animals are able to express their disinterest or to refuse to participate is affected by people’s choices and attentiveness, the structures of the workplaces or programs, and the specifics of the animals in question – and their socially-constructed roles. i propose a continuum of suffering and enjoyment as a concept and framework for seeking to understand animals’ work from their perspectives, across contexts (coulter, 2016). where the work fits on the continuum is affected by the occupation and labour required, the co-workers or employers, the species, social relations and interactions, and individual animals’ own personalities, moods, health, preferences, and agency, among other factors. indeed when talking about animals and care work, it is important to note that “animals” refers to a very heterogeneous group, and that there are vast differences among the lives and labours of distinct species, and individual members of the same species (coulter, 2014). care work and its repression farmed animals are the largest group of land animals on earth (excluding invertebrates), and their experiences raise crucial questions for understanding care work within and across species. notably, some of the concepts and processes discussed here can be relevant to other contexts and industries, including animal experimentation and testing facilities. because many people currently choose to consume products made by or from animals’ bodies, this means that animals are being required to physically produce babies, milk, and eggs for human use. the increasing industrialization, corporatization, and consolidation of agriculture has affected human workers’ experiences, conditions, and health in significant ways, as well as the work they are required to do or prevented from doing. industrialization also has serious and intense impacts on animals. of course, regardless of the size or structure of a farm raising animals for food, those animals will be killed. farmed animals kendra coulter studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 206 are trapped within a perpetual cycle of disposability, the specifics, degree, and length of which vary. the patterns endemic to industrialized agriculture have exacerbated and changed a number of practices, however, many of which have a substantial and deleterious effect on the animals’ engagement with care work at every stage of their shortened lives. farmed animals’ bodies and parts thereof are used to create meat, leather, fur, food for companion animals, and other commodities, generally within one to a few years of birth. the practices on many contemporary farms and especially industrialized facilities have been well-documented by researchers and investigators, and i offer only a brief synthesis of the larger patterns here. human provisioning of care work is often instrumentalized, minimized, or fully eliminated in industrial animal agriculture. for example, in a barn with a thousand pigs or more (a common size today), if one becomes ill, the likelihood of a farm operator paying money for the animal’s medical care is low, particularly if she or he is scheduled to be slaughtered within a few months anyway. instead, the animals may be allowed to die, killed immediately and thrown out, or put onto the truck bound for the slaughterhouse in poor health. it is not uncommon for animals to arrive at slaughterhouses dead, ill, or with broken bones or other injuries. some kinds of animals are also deemed disposable very quickly simply because of their sex. some farmed animals are killed mere hours after their births, in fact. for example, in the mainstream egg industry, male chicks are killed promptly after birth because they cannot produce eggs. male calves within the dairy industry face a similarly dire future. in order for cows to physically produce milk, females must be impregnated regularly; like all mammals, cows only produce milk prior to and after giving birth as it is intended to feed their offspring (not be consumed by other species). in general, calves born will be 50/50 male/female. female calves are usually kept to become future milk producers. males, however, are not useful for the production of milk, so they are used to create veal. they are thus kept largely immobile, usually in individual crates or small hutches, for only three to four months, after which they are sent to slaughter. notably, whether the calves are male or female, they are normally taken away from their mothers within a few hours of birth so the milk can immediately begin being collected for human consumption. cows used for milk production are usually able to interact with other adult females to some degree, but prohibited from interacting with and raising their own babies. cows used to produce milk are also usually slaughtered for meat after a few years as their bodies become exhausted from repeated impregnation and milking, so they are seen as no longer useful. a similar process is true for hens, whether their eggs are nonfertilized and eaten or hatched then consumed as meat, and many are only kept alive for one to two years. chickens born to become meat are kept alive on average for eight to ten weeks and 600 million chickens are killed for meat each year in canada alone. cows’ natural life expectancy is 15 to 20 years; chickens’ would range from six to15 years. beyond human to humane studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 207 overall, both female and male animals face dire fates, and have common as well as distinct experiences in such contexts. as carol j. adams (2010), karen davis (1995), and lori gruen (1993) rightly point out, animal agriculture involves the particularly intense use and manipulation of females’ bodily processes and emotions.1 virtually all domesticated animals born under human control will be “weaned” by humans, as mothers and offspring are separated; such processes are trying for dogs and horses, too, unless allowed to proceed naturally and at animals’ own pace. yet, in most cases, companion animal mothers are first permitted to provide care work for their own babies for multiple weeks or months. the ability for farmed animals to provide care to their own offspring varies, but is often deeply constrained or entirely eliminated through literal separation and physical structures, some of which prevent all forms of social interaction. on farms raising cows for beef, females raise their own offspring before they are sent to slaughter after one to two years. yet many other animal mothers (such as cows and goats used for dairy production) are normally prevented from interacting with their infants for more than a few hours. female pigs on most north american operations are kept in gestation crates for most or all of the time they are used as breeders (i.e., for two to three years) within which they can only stand up or lie down. similarlydesigned farrowing pens house mothers who have recently given birth. piglets can nurse and be beside their mother for a few weeks or months (before being sent to a “finishing barn” to fatten for slaughter), but the mothers cannot turn or move to interact with and care for their piglets. instead, they are kept largely immobilized as mere milk providers. of this process, dave wager, the communications director for the national pork producers council in the united states, said the following: “so our animals can’t turn around for the 2.5 years that they are in the stalls producing piglets. i don’t know who asked the sow if she wanted to turn around” (friedrich, 2012, n.p.). the crates are often justified as “protecting” the piglets from their mothers who may accidentally lie down on them in cramped quarters (a few months before they will be sent to slaughter), yet are not used everywhere, are banned or being phased-out in many countries, and are restricted in future barn construction within canada. animal mothers (and often fathers, siblings, aunts, and so on) wish to interact with young individuals through many kinds of touch as well as oral communication, in order to provide sustenance, affection, warmth, reassurance, healing, protection, correction, and instruction, when they are allowed to do so. farmed animals engage in care work, when they are not isolated, separated, immobilized, or otherwise prevented from interacting with their own offspring and own kind. the fact remains, however, that many animals are not permitted to provide care to others. 1 for a larger exploration of the potential and challenges of using the term body work in such contexts, see coulter (2016). kendra coulter studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 208 given these realities, barbara noske (1989, 1997) enlists marx’s concept of alienated labour and applies it across species lines in a compelling way (see also stuart, schewe, & gunderson, 2013). alienated or estranged labour highlights the process through which workers are materially and spiritually separated from the products, results, and/or rewards of their labour, as well as from their own desires. noske (1989, pp. 18-20) argues that animals in industrial agriculture are alienated labour, kept estranged from (a) the product (their own offspring or parts of their body); (b) productive activity (not being able to turn around, move, or spread their wings); (c) fellow animals and their social nature; (d) surrounding nature; and (e) their species life. indeed, these animals are required to produce babies, milk, and eggs, not for their own or species-specific reasons, but entirely so that these can be taken and transformed into commodities for human profit and consumption. many of the animals are both literally and figuratively locked into processes of social dislocation, dis-aggregation, and estrangement. by enlisting the term alienation, we are forced to not only consider physical harm, but to recognize emotional and psychological effects. the growing bodies of cognitive ethology and evolutionary cognition research reveal that animals of all kinds have rich and complex social, emotional, and even moral, lives. humans are just beginning to understand the depth of animals’ innerworlds, relationships, and experiences. pigs, for example, are cognitively and emotionally complex and share many traits with widely loved and respected species like dogs (see e.g., marino & colvin, 2015). chickens are socially dynamic, exploratory, and intelligent, and, as barbara j. king (2013, p. 6) explains, they “grieve… like chimpanzees, elephants, and goats” (among other animals). only recently have researchers learned that cows have a broad range of context-specific calls for their offspring (de la torre, briefer, reader, & mcelligott, 2015). some of those calls express sorrow, and mothers are forced to use those calls often, because of human choices. it is difficult to overstate the physical, psychological, emotional, and intergenerational suffering perpetuated behind such terms as “factory farms” and “industrialized agriculture.” indeed, noske (1989) proposes the term animal-industrial complex to capture the larger political economic structures which fuel such patterns, and which have been exacerbated in the “necroeconomic” realities of the neoliberal capitalist context (drew, 2016). there is now a simultaneous institutionalized and industrialized exploitation of the processes of reproduction, alongside the repression or complete elimination of the caring and social reproductive labours that should follow once babies are born. to add insult to injury, the suffering animals experience as a result is widely denied, ignored, or simply condoned. beyond human to humane studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 209 confronting repression, fostering multispecies care the realities of animals’ care work are complex and diverse. animals are not widely recognized as providers of care work, yet the formal programs that task animals with providing care (through therapy, physical and emotional assistance, etc.) are gaining more attention and being expanded in many places. the research that has been done on such programs suggests that most scholars and people outside the academy alike accept that animals are providing care work in these cases, and there is greater interest in and comfort with these kinds of therapeutic and presumably positive dynamics. moreover, the effects and benefits of these forms of care work for human patients are of most interest to researchers. animals’ experiences and working conditions within human-focused care programs are not wellstudied. encouragingly, however, there is a growing awareness of the need to take these animals’ wellbeing seriously and to employ a multispecies lens in both research and practice (evans & gray, 2011; matsuoka & sorenson, 2013; ryan, 2014; rock & degeling, 2015; serpell, coppinger, & fine, 2006; weisberg, 2014; zamir, 2006). further work is needed to develop the most accurate, effective, and ethical multispecies standards for such contexts. i believe that some animals can justifiably be engaged in the provisioning of care work in these kinds of ways if relationships and daily labour are characterized by respect and reciprocity, and if both human and nonhuman workers are afforded protections and positive entitlements underscored by interspecies solidarity (coulter, 2016; donaldson & kymlicka, 2011). most animals are not engaged in these kinds of formal care work occupations, however. far more animals are kept in agricultural contexts where the realities of care work are more complex. animals’ animal-focused caregiving work is rarely recognized as such regardless of where it takes place, and it is often constrained or prohibited, particularly when the animals are to be physically consumed as commodities. animals’ pain, misery, and socially-constructed disposability in a number of human-controlled settings are widely rendered invisible to those outside, and are viewed in different ways by the people directly involved ranging from disciplined concern to dispassion to cold indifference (ellis, 2013, 2014; wilkie 2010). rhoda wilkie (2010) argues that farmers place animals on a commodity-companion continuum, which is usually shaped by the animal’s role and time on the farm (breeder, offspring, etc.). she also proposes the concept of “sentient commodity” to capture the tension that some farmers feel who recognize that the animals are simultaneously considered property and products to be bought, sold, killed, and consumed, yet also individuals with personalities and feelings. wilkie (2010, p.135) rightly points out that people in these kinds of work experience ambivalence “not because of their idiosyncratic history or their distinctive personality but because the ambivalence is inherent in the social positions they occupy.” they are not exclusively or specifically care workers; kendra coulter studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 210 they are farmers and farm workers, and care is to be provided within the specific expectations and determinations of their material conditions. agency is always possible and this must be recognized, but the structure of multispecies spaces directs perceptions and actions in specific ways and influences what is done and not done (arluke & sanders, 1996; blanchette, 2015). as peter dickens (1996) argues, industrialized capitalist reorganization of agricultural practices and labour has fundamentally changed the way people understand and know nature. workplaces that hold thousands of largely immobilized chickens in battery cages within which they cannot even spread their wings, or pigs in gestation crates where they cannot turn or move, create and perpetuate not only suffering but intense commodification and devaluation. turnover rates are high, as many people are unable to tolerate the daily practices and work requirements, and are unwilling to participate in such patterns. it is especially those with few options who must stay, although certain people are comfortable with these hierarchies, conditions, and workplace requirements for a number of reasons, including their perceptions of animals as unfeeling commodities unworthy of basic dignity. there is some heterogeneity among agricultural approaches and more considerate farming does exist, though any farm raising animals for consumption will ultimately mean death for the animals, and likely lead to limits on how animals are permitted to interact with and care for their offspring. animal agriculture is increasingly industrialized however, and the physical placement and construction of buildings, alongside the discursive obfuscation perpetuated through mass nouns like “meat” mean individual animals and their personal and shared experiences are pushed out of public view, and are infrequently considered worthy of consideration or care (adams, 2010). indeed, the strategic allocation or withdrawal of human caregiving labours, and the repression of animals’ abilities to engage in care work, both result from human choices and actions. these dynamics are socially-constructed; they stem from humans’ political, economic, and ethical choices, not from innate, automatic, or essential processes. they will be continued or changed based on people’s decisions. repression is an active process. many of the patterns that harm animals also endanger humans and the environment, and these interconnections are particularly salient when exploring the intersections of care work and social justice. claire jean kim’s (2015) call for multi-optic vision is particularly relevant. indigenous peoples and indigenous wildlife are both affected when rainforests are cleared for palm oil production or to make fields for cattle to graze before they are killed for meat. there is alarming public health research on the risks that stem from the live animal trade and industrialized agriculture, among other practices, and the risks are inequitably distributed along racialized, national, and classed lines. dangers include water, air, and soil pollution, increased greenhouse gas production, zoonoses (diseases spreading from animals to humans), and beyond human to humane studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 211 antibiotic and microbial resistance (e.g., akhtar, 2012; cutler, fooks, & van der poel, 2010; landers, cohen, wittum, & larson, 2012; world health organization, 2010). moreover, factory farming is one of the largest contributors of climate change-propelling greenhouse gases (caro, davis, bastianoni, & caldeira, 2014; gerber et al., 2013; lin et al., 2011; steinfeld et al., 2006). in factory farming and similar industries, animals suffer the most, but among humans, it is working class communities and people, women, racialized workers, indigenous peoples, and poor people who are disproportionately harmed (halley, 2012; nibert, 2014). as the effects of climate change deepen and expand, it is also these very people who will continue to be most seriously affected. by employing intersectional and multi-optic vision, it is clear that there are persuasive multispecies ethical, environmental, and political reasons for anyone who cares about social justice to take these entangled oppressions seriously. indeed, although driven by powerful economic interests, people of all kinds are implicated in these animal-worker-environmental harming processes in different ways. some are directly involved as workers who have varying degrees of control over their jobs and where they work (see e.g., blanchette, 2015; nibert, 2014; stull & broadway, 2013). other people are passively complicit, but make active choices about their consumption. an uncomfortable but undeniable fact is that, at present, so much human caregiving and social reproductive labour includes the purchasing, preparation, and consumption of commodities made from the bodily processes and dead bodies of animals who have been denied the opportunity to engage in their own care work, prevented from having autonomy over their lives and families, and given no opportunity to decline to participate in processes that cause them harm and death. humans choose to consume the very milk produced by animal mothers’ bodies that is intended to feed their own young. correcting these injustices requires questioning some of the most normalized hegemonic processes and beliefs about who is included in our ethical deliberations and webs of care (donovan, 2007; fitzgerald & taylor, 2014). animal advocates enlist the slogans “someone not something” and “friends not food” in order to challenge the commodification and desubjectivization of animals. indeed, if interested in thoroughly understanding care work, we ought to first acknowledge the social, economic, cultural, and interpersonal contributions animals make by working to improve the lives of others. we ought to recognize their labours, and that they are both sentient beings and social actors (see also cochrane, 2016). yet recognition of the repression of care and the troubling facts about how animals are seen and treated in the production of unnecessary commodities for human use is as essential, if not more important. moreover, the conditions of animals’ – and many people’s – lives also demand that we move beyond seeing, and even beyond critique; we need to develop solutions and alternatives. here the principle of redistribution i am adapting from nancy fraser comes into play. kendra coulter studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 212 if recognizing animals’ care work and its widespread repression is the first step, what is to be done? the answers to this question are many, and a rich and heterogeneous collection of animal studies and critical animal studies literatures offer different insights, viewpoints, and arguments about animals’ rights, property status, and the best routes forward, which i cannot effectively synthesize here. what i offer is complementary, and at times divergent, food for thought about the place of animals and care work in the present and future of not only our scholarship, but also our communities and lives. towards interspecies solidarity and humane jobs i propose the concept of interspecies solidarity as an idea, a goal, an ethical commitment, and an essential addition to theories and projects of social justice (coulter, 2016). solidarity is the political expression of empathy and compassion, and involves support despite differences. as val plumwood (2002, pp. 200-202) writes in her call for solidarity with nature, “both continuity with and difference from self can be sources of value and consideration, and both usually play a role.” in other words, someone does not need to be the same as you in order for you to feel and foster solidarity. there are clear connections among the exploitation of women, racialized peoples, and nature, including animals, and these can help forge connectivity, as well as bolster the case for change (e.g., adams, 2010; gaard, 2011; halley, 2012; kim, 2015). interspecies and multispecies solidarity should be promoted not simply because animals are like us and we are like animals, however, but because it is the ethical thing to do. others should not have to be like us for us to care about their wellbeing. interspecies solidarity can and should intersect with care, and care work. joan tronto compellingly argues that care can become “a tool for critical political analysis when we use this concept to reveal relationships of power” (1993, p. 172). this argument challenges us to move beyond instrumental approaches to care, into a more politicized, holistic vision. caring, empathy, and compassion can mobilize feelings and projects of solidarity, but solidaristic sentiments cannot remain internalized or individualized. as josephine donovan argues: understanding that an animal is in pain or distress – even empathizing or sympathizing with him [or her] – doesn’t ensure, however, that the human will act ethically towards the animal. thus, the originary emotional empathetic response must be supplemented with a political perspective . . . that enables the human to analyze the situation critically so as to determine who [or what] is responsible for the animal suffering, and how that suffering may best be alleviated. (donovan, 2007, p. 364) beyond human to humane studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 213 sally scholz (2008, p. 61) points out that solidarity encourages “not just personal transformation but social transformation.” put concisely, caring can be and can become political (briskin, 2013; cobble, 2010; herd & meyer, 2002) and can be the basis for creating more caring societies (e.g., glenn, 2000; tronto, 2013). this argument is not rooted in a naïve romanticization of caring, and without question dynamics of care can be coercive or contradictory. as thom van dooren (2014, p. 92) argues, “caring is not achieved through abstract well-wishing, but is an embodied and often fraught, complex, and compromised practice.” both recognition and redistribution are needed. thus, more ambitious visions which foster a political expansion of care cannot exclude other animals. animals are inextricably and intimately interwoven with our work, lives, and futures. a just and caring society cannot condone the exploitation and oppression of others, and cannot be built atop a mass, unmarked animal graveyard. as claire jean kim writes: most social justice struggles mobilize around a single-optic frame of vision. the process of political conflict then generates a zero-sum dynamic . . . a posture of mutual avowal – an explicit dismissal of and denial of connection with the other form of injustice being raised. this posture . . . is both ethically and politically troubling. (kim, 2015, p. 19; emphasis in original) interspecies solidarity and a multispecies approach to care work and social justice challenge us to strengthen and expand our thinking to overcome alleged divides, including species membership. humans are but one species on this planet. moreover, our actions have significant, lasting, and often fatal effects on other beings and on our shared world. accordingly, the idea of interspecies solidarity is not a monolithic blueprint, but rather it is an invitation to broaden how labour as a daily process and a political relationship is understood and approached, by emphasizing empathy, dignity, and reciprocity, and by seeing care as not only a practice or type of work, but also as the lifeblood of society and of this earth. how interspecies solidarity is used will be shaped by multispecies social actors and their contexts. in fact, in some communities, interspecies solidarity or comparable principles already exist (see rock & degeling, 2015). indigenous cultures are diverse, as are the views of people within them, yet many envision different kinds of multispecies interconnectedness. it is important to recognize these approaches and actors, what lessons they offer and wish to share, as well as how human-animal relations are being actively debated, adapted, and remade in indigenous communities today (e.g., beckford, jacobs, williams, & nahdee, 2010; robinson, 2010, 2014; robinson & wallington, 2012). moreover, there are non-indigenous communities, including in rural spaces, committed to visions and practices of multispecies respect (including for migrant workers), and these too can offer insights for alternate paths forward. indeed, as melanie j. rock and chris degeling argue, “many people care deeply about places, plants and nonkendra coulter studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 214 human animals, to the extent of offering assistance, expecting others to provide assistance, and codifying this expectation in contracts, policies, and laws” (2015, p. 4). scandinavian and nordic sociopolitical models can also offer lessons about the potential of social solidarity (lister, 2009; sandberg, 2013), and these ideals could be strengthened and expanded across species lines through the thoughtful use of interspecies solidarity. the respectful and the many damaging ways animals are conceptualized and treated are all instructive if seeking to cultivate interspecies solidarity and foster a more holistic approach to care work. sue donaldson and will kymlicka write: the challenge to developing non-exploitative cooperative relationships is most acutely posed by the case of domesticated animals who are significantly dependent on humans for basic care. . . . [people] must foster the circumstances and trusting relationships within which animals can exercise agency, and then interpret the signals that animals give regarding their subjective good, preferences, or choices. (donaldson & kymlicka, 2012, pp. 2-4) by understanding both normalized oppression and relations of genuine care, we can glean insights about how to end suffering, improve humans’ and animals’ lives, and foster humane action. in this crucial task, lori gruen’s (2014) concept of entangled empathy is particularly instructive and helpful. she defines it is as: [action] focused on attending to another’s experience of wellbeing. [it is] an experiential process involving a blend of emotion and cognition in which we recognize we are in relationships with others and are called upon to be responsive and responsible in these relationships by attending to another’s needs, interests, desires, vulnerabilities, hopes, and sensitivities (gruen 2014, p. 3). gruen conceptualizes entangled empathy as a multispecies process, one underscored by active, ongoing intellectual, emotional, and political engagement within and across species. succinctly, we must strive to consider our actions and patterns from the perspectives of other animals. in this spirit, perhaps what we should redistribute to many animals is autonomy over their own bodies and lives, and the right to engage in their own social reproductive and caregiving labours. health care researchers and practitioners have begun developing an approach called the one health model, which recognizes and promotes the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health (see, for example, fitzgerald, 2010; lerner & berg, 2015; mackenzie, jeggo, daszak, & richt, 2013; woldehanna & zimicki, 2015). this approach may offer conceptual and practical lessons for worlds of work and could serve as another foundational axis for a more ambitious, holistic approach to care work. indeed, the concept of interspecies solidarity ought to be expanded and integrated into both spheres of practice and into political projects. reciprocal beyond human to humane studies in social justice, volume 10, issue 2, 199-219, 2016 215 relationships along with political economic structures that help cultivate an ethically-rigorous multispecies approach to care work are necessary. essential to this challenge are what i call humane jobs: jobs that benefit both people and animals (coulter, 2016, forthcoming). in order to move workforces and economies away from damaging and destructive practices and industries, humane alternatives must be created which are about helping, not harming others. some existing jobs can be strengthened and expanded. others cannot be, and should be replaced with more empathetic and ethical areas of work; new humane jobs and employment sectors should be created. care work occupations and programs, particularly in health care for animals and in health care with animals (therapeutic engagements with nature and animals), offer good possibilities that warrant more examination and thoughtful consideration. without question, care work and workers are at the heart of a future with humane jobs. at the same time, there is potential in other areas as well, including in cruelty investigations and prevention, humane education, conservation, recreation, and agriculture and food production. we can create more humane jobs to grow, create, make, sell, and serve nutritious, sustainable food that does not involve violence, the exploitation of humans or animals, or the denial of care work. this discussion is only beginning to illuminate and interrogate the intersections of animals and care work. more thought, work, and care are sorely needed. some types of animals such as farmed animals are among the most oppressed social groups on earth. if we pay attention to spaces and relations of work, what should be changed and what should be nurtured both become clearer. animals are sentient beings who think and feel. they have minds, bodies, personalities, feelings, desires, and relationships that matter. we have an ethical obligation to think seriously about care work, its repression, and its potential and possibilities, from their perspectives. animals deserve to receive care and provide care – and they want to live. acknowledgements feedback from anonymous reviewers and thoughtful suggestions from andrea doucet helped strengthen and refine this article. i am grateful for the financial support of the social sciences and humanities research council of canada. references adams, c. j. 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(2014). animal assisted intervention and animal citizenship. unpublished paper accessed from the author. wilkie, r. m. (2010). livestock/deadstock: working with farm animals from birth to slaughter. philadelphia, pa: temple university press. winter, d. (2016). processes of caring among animal liberation activists in the united states and denmark. unpublished paper accessed from the author. woldehanna, s., & zimicki, s. (2015). an expanded one health model: integrating social science and one health to inform study of the human-animal interface. social science & medicine, 129, 87-95. world health organization. (2010). the fao-oie-who collaboration: sharing responsibilities and coordinating global activities to address health risks at the animal-human-ecosystems interfaces. retrieved from http://www.who.int/influenza/resources/documents/tripartite_concept_note_hanoi_042011_ en.pdf yong, m. h., & ruffman, t. (2014). emotional contagion: dogs and humans show a similar physiological response to human infant crying. behavioural processes, 108, 155-165. zamir, t. (2006). the moral basis of animal-assisted therapy. society and animals, 14(2), 179199. mensah & tucker-simmons final before ts correspondence address: joseph mensah, faculty of environmental and urban change, york university, toronto, on, m3j 1p3; email: jmensah@yorku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 15, issue 1, 81-101, 2021 social (in)justice and rental housing discrimination in urban canada: the case of ethno-racial minorities in the herongate community in ottawa joseph mensah york university, canada daniel tucker-simmons avant law, canada abstract in 2015, the predominantly visible minority immigrant community of herongate, in ottawa, ontario, was slated for redevelopment by its landlord, timbercreek asset management. this redevelopment involved mass eviction of the incumbent tenants, demolition of the existing affordable housing and its replacement with luxury rentals, which, by all indications, are beyond the financial reach of the former herongage tenants. this paper seeks to problematize large-scale residential real estate redevelopment in canada and examine its impact, using the herongate situation as a case study. among other things, it profiles the herongate community, its history and present redevelopment, and explores the legal framework, and the limits thereof, constraining mass evictions of this type in ontario. the findings indicate that the selection of herongate for redevelopment was not fortuitous; generally, racialized and immigrant communities like herongate are disproportionately likely to be selected for large-scale redevelopment projects, and thus subjected to mass-evictions. further results suggest that the dissolution of the herongate community – and the attendant dislocation of its members – has exacted a pronounced social and economic toll and compounded the racial discrimination already experienced by the former herongate residents, most of whom are visible minorities. the paper concludes with an appeal to imbue the redevelopment process with a greater regard for social justice, and a right to housing as a policy solution to address the injustice caused by real estate redevelopment. keywords housing discrimination; mass evictions; social justice; gentrification; ottawa joseph mensah studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 82 introduction in his “letter from america,” written as a prologue to danny dorling’s injustice: why social inequality still persists, sam pizzigati (2015) observes that “injustice envelopes us today and assaults us from every direction. we can’t escape it. injustice lurks everywhere we look, everywhere we click. week by week, only the particulars change” (p. xiv). one such particular is what we grapple with in this paper: the mass eviction of a group of lowincome minority renters in the herongate community in ottawa. as amartya sen (2009) points out, “what moves us… is not the realization that the world falls short of being completely just… but that there are clearly remediable injustices around us which we want to eliminate” (p. vii; emphasis added). convinced that some forms of injustice are remediable, this paper sheds light on the herongate situation, and provides reasoned arguments to promote social justice in canada’s housing market, in general, and the herongate community, in particular. the paper draws its theoretical insights from john rawls’s (1971) conception of social justice as fairness and danny dorling’s (2015) analysis of why social inequality persist. in 2015, the corporate landlord of the herongate housing complex, timbercreek asset management, began to implement a phased demolition of its properties in the herongate community. the first phase, which began in 2015, affected some 80 units in herongate (kestler-d’amours, 2018). a notice for the second, which was slated for 2018 and affected 150 units, was served on tenants by may of 2018, with the termination date of september 2018 (kestler-d’amours, 2018). by all indications, the notice complied with the minimum notice requirements and other obligations under the residential tenancies act of ontario. in fact, the tenants in the 150 units have all been evicted; the last ones left the complex in november 2018. media accounts have it that the landlord wants to demolish the herongate units mainly because, from the perspective of the landlord, the affected units are simply beyond repair (schnurr, 2018). couched in the theorization of social justice by rawls (1971) and dorling (2015), this paper examines the dynamics of housing discrimination and mass eviction, using the herongate situation as its main point of departure. more specifically, we examine the causes and manifestations of housing discrimination in canada, and explore whether the herongate situation exemplifies the phenomenon or not. to the extent that the herongate neighbourhood is an ethno-racial enclave, occupied mainly by visible minorities and muslims, we synthesize the extant literature on the formation of ethnic enclaves, the (de)merits of living in ethnic enclaves, and how mass evictions affect people in such neighbourhoods and herongate. finally, we take on the issue of “a right to housing,” and shed light on how mass evictions are regulated in canada in the context of this human rights ethos. there are a number of unique features about herongate that make it particularly well suited for a case study of modern gentrification and housing social (in)justice & rental housing discrimination studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 83 discrimination in canada. for one, the fact that the herongate community is virtually coterminous with the statscan census tract 5050007.02 permits a detailed analysis of the ethno-racial facets of gentrification processes. in addition, herongate’s socio-economic composition makes it an archetypal example of an urban space that is susceptible to the encroachments of contemporary gentrification. it has a high density of people of colour (70%), immigrants (52%), and muslims, and it is relatively poor. further, unlike the dismantling of africville and similar urban renewal projects of the 1960s and 1970s, which were state-led initiatives, the forced displacement of herongate residents was driven entirely by a financialized, corporate landlord, a somewhat newer and understudied phenomenon in the canadian urban context (fields, 2014; mensah, 2002). drawing on the extant literature as well as data from herongate, the specific questions addressed in this paper include the following: what is housing discrimination, and what evidence is there to suggest that it occurs in canada? how and why do ethnic enclaves form? what are the causes of large-scale evictions, and which parts of the city usually attract such fates? how does mass eviction affect its victims? to what extent are the existing canadian regulations on mass evictions efficacious in addressing the herongate situation? we intend to show that, indeed, canadian cities, including ottawa, are not immune to the phenomenon of housing discrimination, and that blacks feature markedly among its victims. while the herongate case study corroborates the extant literature on housing discrimination in canada, as we shall soon see, it exhibits a clear novelty in dealing with people who are, simultaneously, vulnerable to discrimination from the standpoints of their race, religion, and social class. the mutually reinforcing nature of this triple-jeopardy of discrimination makes the herongate situation highly detrimental to the lives of the victims. also, while most of the previous studies deal with the experience of housing discrimination at the micro or individual level, at its core, the herongate case is about the experience of housing discrimination at the macro or group level by way of mass eviction. naturally, then, the ensuing discussion goes beyond matters of individual identity and individual justice to those of collective identity and social justice, thereby eliciting discourses of collective action, social resistance, and mass compensation. in addition to providing much-needed advocacy, and attendant publicity, in support of those evicted from the herongate community and others like them who are fighting against rental discrimination, the paper could serve as a handy backgrounder for social justice and public interest legal practitioners and advocates grappling with housing discrimination in canada. before examining the theoretical base of the study, the next section provides a brief overview of the herongate community. joseph mensah studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 84 the herongate community in ottawa: a profile the herongate neighbourhood is situated some seven kilometres south of downtown ottawa and corresponds with census tract number 5050007.02. the neighbourhood is bounded in the north and east by the community of alta vista, in the south by south keys, and in the west by ridgemont. according to the census, herongate had a population of 4,681 in 2016, which represented some 0.35% of ottawa’s total population of 1,23,783 at that time (statistics canada, 2016). beginning in the early 1990s and continuing into the 2000s, herongate attracted an increasing number of immigrants and their families, particularly those of somali origin fleeing civil war. from the 1990s until the present, herongate was transformed incrementally into a predominantly immigrant community. perhaps the most striking feature of the herongate community was the overwhelming presence of visible minorities. by 2016, as many as 70% of the residents in herongate were visible minorities, compared to an overall visible minority proportion of 21.6% in ottawa (statistics canada, 2016). according to the 2016 census, 30.9% of herongate’s resident were blacks, 15.2% were arabs, and 11.8% were south asians; the comparable figures for ottawa in general for these ethnic groups at the time were 6.0%; 3.8%, and 3.1%, respectively. additionally, by 2016, more than half of herongate’s residents were immigrants, while only 19.7% of ottawa’s residents were immigrants (statistics canada 2016). with such a high concentration of visible minorities and immigrants, it was not surprising that many herongagte residents were of low-income background, with some 49.1% of them having incomes of under $40,000 per year by the 2016 census, compared to 21.2% of ottawa’s residents who belonged to this income category then. even though there is no data on housing quality in herongate, anecdotal reports by the residents and the landlord suggest that much of the complex required major repairs or redevelopment entirely. partly for this reason as well as others that are elaborated below, herongate was also an affordable place to live, with significantly lower average rents than alta vista on its northern border as well as much of the rest of ottawa.1 some of the evicted herongate tenants and other tenants from cognate properties owned by the same landlord, together with tenants from nearby properties owned by other landlords, have formed the herongate tenant coalition (htc) to resist the eviction, both through organizing efforts and through a legal application to the ontario human rights tribunal. a 2018 htc census found that approximately 120 of the 150 townhouses slated for demolition were occupied, and provided housing for approximately 550 1 the average rent statistics produced by the canada mortgage and housing corporation do not include specific statistics for herongate. however, reports from 36 evicted tenants suggest that most herongate residents either had to pay significantly higher rents or had to downsize when they moved to other areas of ottawa. social (in)justice & rental housing discrimination studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 85 people, including some 200 children (htc, 2018). moreover, nearly 90% of the tenants captured by the htc census were racial minorities, with somali immigrants accounting for about 44%; a significant proportion of the remainder were arab. the htc census also revealed that a sizeable proportion of the herongate tenants were newcomers to canada; and 21 of the units were homes to people who were receiving support from the rent geared to income (rgi) program in the city (htc, 2018). theoretical grounding this section sets the theoretical context by discussing our conception of social justice, together with our views on why social injustice persists in canada and around the world, drawing primarily on the works of rawls (1971) and dorling (2015), respectively. theorizing social justice: the rawlsian approach given the diversity of perspectives underpinning the regulation of social (in)justice, it is unsurprising that the theorization of social justice remains an area of intense debate. different principles yield different theories, with varying emphasis on themes such as desert, merit, entitlement, equality of opportunity, and equality of outcomes. perhaps the most substantive contemporary theory of social justice comes from the work of john rawls (1971), who sees social justice as a demand for fairness. even though it is virtually impossible to do justice to the rawlsian theory of “justice as fairness,” it is still worthwhile to identify its salient features to help ground our ensuing discussion properly. any fair distribution of benefits and burdens of society is expected to entail equality. however, equality means different things to different people, with some seeing it in terms of equal distribution of outcomes and others in terms of equal distribution of opportunities. rawls (1971) made a ground-breaking contribution to the debate on the relationship between social justice and equality with his emphasis on fairness. his theory starts with a thought experiment in which people find themselves in an “original position” from which they are working together to form a new society. how do individuals in this original position establish the principles of justice for their new society? to address this questions, rawls uses his famous metaphor of a “veil of ignorance” to postulate a situation in which all those who form the new society are ignorant of their place in it: they do not know their own background characteristics such as age, class, creed, place of birth, and gender. rawls argues that to be fair is to be impartial, and the most reasonable way to be impartial, in his view, is to operate behind a veil of ignorance. the overarching argument here is a simple one: even though we joseph mensah studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 86 might want to promote our self-interest, because we do not know our own place in society, we will play it safe and ensure that no one group is disadvantaged in order to give advantage to another group. by far the most important aspect of rawls’s (1971) theory for our present study is his difference principle, which posits that inequality in the distribution of scarce goods and services is justified if and only if it serves to increase the advantage of the least favoured groups in society. this is how rawls describes the application of the difference principle: in applying it, one should distinguish between two cases. the first case is that in which the expectations of the least advantaged are indeed maximized… the second case is that in which the expectations of all those better off at least contribute to the welfare of the more unfortunate. (p. 78) invariably, the herongate situation has “winners” and “losers,” with serious social justice implications, which are clearly amenable to a rawlsian analysis. drawing on the difference principle, we urge the powers-that-be to review all aspects of the case to see whether or not the mass eviction stands to increase or decrease the advantage of the least favoured group. rawls’ (1971) difference principle requires us to make the worst-off members of society as well-off as possible in our social justice estimation. in the next section, we examine why social injustice and inequality persist even in a rich country such as canada, drawing on the work of dorling (2015). why social injustice and inequality persist: insights from danny dorling regardless of where one stands in theorizing social (in)justice and inequality, we all have good reasons to appreciate danny dorling’s (2015) recent contribution to the discussion through his book injustice: why social inequality still persists. in this book, dorling examines the myths that sustain inequality in society. according to dorling, inequality persists because of five main myths, including the beliefs that elitism is efficient, exclusion is necessary, prejudice is natural, greed is good, and despair is inevitable. as sam pizzigati (2015) points out in his prologue to dorling’s book, “we have simply imbibed too many myths from those who lord over us” (p. xvi); and dorling’s effort is to cut through these myths to help ameliorate the situation. according to dorling (2015), one of the enduring myths that sustain inequality is the belief that elitism is efficient, and that people get to the top through meritocracy. feeding into this myth is the idea that the elite are, perhaps, a gift to others, who should be grateful for the elite’s talents and rewards. in dorling’s view, people are very similar in ability, and for the elite to think that they are perhaps superhuman – without acknowledging the intergenerational transmission of privileges, wealth, and other advantages – misses the point, and, indeed hurts not only the poor but also the elite themselves. social (in)justice & rental housing discrimination studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 87 another myth that sustains inequality, according to dorling (2015), is the belief that exclusion is necessary. in a way, this myth emanates from the first one, as elitism is often used to justify exclusion. as inequality widens through elitism, social and spatial exclusions become commonplace. the third myth in dorling’s account is the belief that prejudice is natural, which is, in turn, a derivative of the preceding two. as he puts it: elitism and exclusion have further causes and corollaries, and the chief among these is prejudice. as elitism and inequality rise, and as more people become socially excluded… those at the top more often look down on others with ever greater distain and, at the same time, with fear, as evidenced by growing social segregation. (p. 8) the idea that prejudice engenders fear is worthy of note here, since it underpins much of the racism and islamophobia that undermine the wellbeing of racialized people in many western countries, including canada. the next myth exposed by dorling (2015) concerns the belief that greed is good. dorling traces the greed that led to the financial crisis of 2008, for example, to the rise of elitism, exclusion, and prejudice in the preceding years. dorling notes that “by late 2014, chief executives of uk ftse 100 firms were paid, on average, 342 times more than their minimum wage employees” (p. 233). needless to say, the situation in canada is not much different. the final myth presented by dorling (2015) concerns the belief that despair is inevitable. there are indications that despair (in many of its guises, including fear, mistrust, uncertainties, anger, stress, and depression) has increased in recent years, as intraand inter-national inequalities widen. as dorling rightly notes, “human beings are not mentally immune to the effect of rising elitism, exclusion, prejudice and greed. they react like rats in cages to having their social environments made progressively more unpleasant… the greater the dose of inequality, the higher the response in terms of poor mental health” (p. 305). dorling urges us not to give in to despair as though it is inevitable, for it is not. what lessons can we glean from dorling’s (2015) work for our examination of the herongate situation? media accounts suggest that the corporate landlord of the herongate complex is planning to upgrade the property for a more affluent clientele of tenants. clearly, then, some elitism is implicated in the endeavour, as the planned eviction is to benefit the owner, as well as those in the top end of the housing market. similarly, the eviction entailed exclusion, since the plan is to replace the former low-income tenants with affluent tenants. also, there is some prejudice involved to the extent that most of the evicted tenants were minorities, the majority of whom are black and muslims who routinely encounter racism and islamophobia in canada. moreover, the planned upgrade, and the rent hike that would invariably come with it, points to some selfish desire or greed (justified or not) on the part of the owner. from dorling’s work, we are convinced these dynamics are joseph mensah studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 88 neither inevitable nor justified, and neither is the despair they engender for the individual and the collective. understanding housing discrimination and its prevalence in canada housing discrimination is a social practice in which individuals or families are treated unfairly in their effort to access or retain housing, based on their background characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, social class, gender, disability, or sexual orientation (lemert, 2011, p. 146; scott & marshall, 2009, p. 189). thus, housing discrimination is not limited to unfair treatment in accessing housing in a particular building or location; it also involves prejudicial treatment in retaining housing. clearly then, there are exclusionary and non-exclusionary dimensions to housing discrimination. the former connotes “actions and practices that exclude an individual or a family from obtaining the housing of their choosing [while the latter]… refers to discriminatory actions that occur within an already established housing arrangement” (roscigno et al., 2009, p. 52). there is considerable evidence to show that housing discrimination exists in canada, and this is unsurprising, given the prevalence of discrimination in canadian society, especially as it pertains to racialized people in employment, education, and law enforcement (james, 2012; tanovich, 2006; tator & henry, 2006). the common methodologies used to determine whether housing discrimination exist or not include housing discrimination audits or paired-testing methods, quantitative surveys, and qualitative interviews. with housing discrimination audits, two people – normally one white and the other a visible minority – pose as equally qualified home seekers, inquire about the availability of apartments or homes, and record their respective experience regarding whether they were called back, whether they ware told the unit was (un)available, whether they were required to pay any fee or deposit, etc. even though paired-testing studies are uncommon in canada, some noteworthy ones exist, including the pioneering works of chandra (1973) in montreal; the manitoba association of rights and liberties (1981) in winnipeg; garon (1988) in montreal; and henry (1989) in toronto. a more recent paired-testing study was conducted by the center for equality rights in accommodation (2009), which found significant levels of discrimination against all five groups studied: lone parents, blacks lone parents, people with mental illness, south asians, and people on social assistance. in addition to this paired-testing research, there are numerous studies in canada that rely on either quantitative surveys or qualitative interviews, or both, in cities such as montreal, london, winnipeg, ottawa and toronto, with the latter featuring most prominently (hulchanski, 1993; hulchanski & weir, 1992; mensah & williams, 2014; murdie, 1994, 2002, 2003; owusu, 1996; teixeira, 2006, 2008). while many of these studies deal exclusively social (in)justice & rental housing discrimination studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 89 with a particular ethno-racial group, some of them examine how two or more groups compare with each other, with african immigrants featuring quite frequently in these comparisons. for instance, murdie (2002) compares the housing discrimination faced by somalis and polish immigrants in toronto; mensah and williams (2014) compare the cultural dimensions of the housing problems and discrimination faced by ghanaians and somalis in toronto; and teixeira (2008) compares the housing problems faced by angolans, mozambicans, and cape verdean immigrants in toronto. teixeira’s (2008, p. 253) findings indicate that the darker the skin colour of the african immigrant, the greater the risk of discrimination in the rental market. clearly, there are studies pointing to the prevalence of housing discrimination in cities such as toronto and montreal, but is there any evidence of housing discrimination in ottawa? our extensive literature search uncovered only a few such studies in ottawa. still, the limited number of studies on housing discrimination in ottawa should not be taken as evidence of no housing discrimination in ottawa. there could be other reasons for this lacuna, including the lack of interest in such a controversial topic among mainstream canadian social scientists and the dearth of a critical mass of ethno-racial minority scholars to tell their own stories. meanwhile, given the prevalence of discrimination in many spheres of life in canadian cities, including ottawa (daigle, 2017; mohamed, 2007; social planning council of ottawa, 2008), it is hard to see how ottawa could be immune from housing discrimination. one of the first studies on housing discrimination involving ottawa was conducted by the canadian civil liberties organization (cclo) in 1976, and published in 1977 by alan borovoy. in this study, the cclo examined whether real estate agents in toronto, hamilton, london, windsor, and ottawa were willing to discriminate on behalf of a fictitious family, which purportedly wanted to sell its home, but only to a white person. the findings indicate that “of the 30 agents surveyed, 90% agreed to comply with the ‘gentleman’s agreement’ to discriminate” (borovoy, 1977, as cited in novac et al., 2002, p.16). in another study in ottawa, rupert (1997) found that as many as 60 neighbours mounted a campaign to oppose the opening of a group home for teenagers under the care of the children’s aid society of ottawa. in a related study, hodan mohamed (2007) examined the settlement and integration challenges of somali single mothers in ottawa, together with their health implications. she found that the women experienced race-based discrimination and social exclusions in their efforts to settle in ottawa, and that many of their mental health problems were underpinned by racial discrimination in employment and housing. joseph mensah studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 90 ethno-racial enclaves: exploring their formation and (de)merits from the standpoint of social theory, “ethnicity” is a socially constructed attribute of individuals or groups based on their culture or nationality. members of an ethnic group, therefore, share a common cultural heritage (macionis & gerber, 1999, p. 324). ethnicity is often distinguished from “race,” which is also a socially constructed attribute, but based on people’s physical characteristics, such as skin colour or hair texture (mensah, 2002, p. 16). while the two concepts are often used interchangeably, they are, indeed, different. thus, we find some scholars (mensah & williams, 2017) using the term ethno-racial to be all-embracing in an effort to avoid the conflation of the two concepts. an “enclave” connotes the spatial concentration of a particular group within a city (qadeer et al., 2010; walks & bourne, 2006), while an “ethnic enclave” implies the spatial concentration of an ethnic group and its cultural institutions and businesses (qadeer et al., 2010). another closely related concept is that of a “ghetto.” while “ethnic enclave” and “ethnic ghetto” are related, they are different because of their disparate formation. enclaves are normally formed voluntarily by their residents, within the strictures of the housing market and prevailing institutions and norms. ghettoes, on the other hand, are mostly formed as a result of extreme social exclusion practiced by mainstream society. of course, there is usually outside pressure behind the formation of both ghettoes and enclaves; however, the level of pressure is more intense in the case of ghetto formation. ethnic enclaves are generally looked upon far more favourably by outsiders, as “positive” spaces with some benefits to their residents, compared to what ghettoes could ever offer. the available canadian literature indicates that ghettoes, at least those that are comparable to what obtain in the united states, do not exist in canada (murdie, 1994; qadeer et al., 2010; walks & bourne, 2006). the spatial concentration of ethnic minorities in ethnic enclaves is often seen as a form of racial segregation, with all the pejorative connotations that the term conjures. to be sure, ethnic enclaves can undermine the integration and social mobility of some minorities. for one thing, life in the ethnic enclave undercuts minorities’ effort to learn the official language of the host society, as they are constantly interacting mainly with people of their own ethnicity in their native language. also, given the lack of local resources and employment opportunities in many ethnic enclaves, residents often endure long spells of unand under-employment, low-income and, sometimes, problems of crime. meanwhile, as mensah and william (2017) note in their thought-provoking book, boomerang ethics: despite the negative perceptions of minority enclaves in the minds of some canadians, it would be erroneous to think that there is nothing good about these places. among other things, spatial concentration allows ethno-racial minorities to maintain their cultural values and practices, strengthen their social networks and, ultimately, enhance their intragroup social cohesion. (p. 62) social (in)justice & rental housing discrimination studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 91 moreover, studies (e.g., peach, 1996; phillips, 2007; walks & bourne, 2006) show that such clusters allow minorities to attain the requisite critical mass of population to support their economic enterprises and sociocultural institutions. more often than not, the social networks engendered by these enclaves give ethnic-owned businesses a competitive edge over other businesses operating in these spaces. finally, ethnic enclaves provide some level of defense against racial discrimination from the majority. urban renewals, gentrification, and the mass eviction of the urban poor the prevailing literature generally deals with large-scale demolitions and evictions in cities under the umbrella of “urban renewal,” which is often used interchangeably with such terms as “urban redevelopment,” “urban reconstruction,” and “urban revitalization,” depending on place and time. over the years, urban renewal has been used to describe large-scale redevelopment of “the built environment in downtown and older inner-city neighbourhoods, typically undertaken by the state or more recently in the strategic form of a public-private partnership” (ley, 2002, p. 881). urban renewal projects were very popular from the 1950s to the 1970s, as they were used to change the general layout of cities by renovating and rearranging some buildings and roads (uzun, 2003, p. 365). indeed, since the publication of jane jacobs’s the death and life of great american cities (1961), the use of “urban renewal” has declined, with some scholars only deploying it in the past tense, in an effort to avoid its associated baggage. a closely related concept to urban renewal is gentrification. ruth glass, who coined the term gentrification in 1964, used it to describe a form of revitalization, entailing the upper-income (i.e., the gentry class) takeover of victorian mews in london, uk (glass, 1964). in its contemporary usage, gentrification connotes “the influx of upperand middle-class households into an area of old homes that were previously occupied by lower-middle and low-income individuals and households” (yeates, 1993, p. 221). since the global financial crisis of 2008, there is a burgeoning literature pointing to a newer form of gentrification, induced primarily by a growing financialization of the housing market (aalbers, 2008, 2016; august & walks, 2018; fields, 2014; fields & uffer, 2016; rolnik, 2013). perhaps, the best depiction of the new gentrification is by august and walks (2018) in their observation that: while traditional forms of gentrification involved the conversion of rental units to owner-occupation, a new rental-tenure form of gentrification has emerged across the globe. this is driven by financialization, a new tenant protection, and declining-social housing production, and it is characterized by the replacement of poorer renters with higher-income tenants. (p. 124) joseph mensah studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 92 evidently, gentrification is taking on different shapes in different cities, and, thus, becoming difficult to pin down as a phenomenon with a clear explanation. while its older version was dominated by “mom and pop” landlords, the newer version is underpinned by globalization and the growing financialization of the economy underway, with ownership accruing to private equity funds, financial asset management corporations, and real estate investment trusts (august & walks, 2018). moreover, the new gentrification involves what august and walks (2018) call “squeezing” and “gentrification-by-upgrading” (p. 124). with squeezing, the financialized landlords try to get as much revenue as possible from the incumbent renters. the common tactics used include rent increases; increases in ancillary fees, such as fees for parking and laundry; reduced services and maintenance; and harassment, disruptive renovations, and unwarranted evictions, as witnessed in the herongate complex. gentrification-byupgrading is where the financialized landlord uses a host of sophisticated asset management tactics to “upgrade, flip, and gentrify entire buildings” (august & walks, 2018, p. 124). the idea here is to reposition and transform the buildings to help shift their tenant base from lowto high-income people. in fact, media accounts suggest that the landlord of the herongate complex plans to upgrade the herongate units to “build an alignment” with alta vista an affluent and white community just north of herongate (“alta vista residents,” 2016; “petition,” 2017). census data indicate that alta vista is 80% white, with about 55% of its households having incomes of over $100,000 per year, which is far higher than what obtained in the herongate community, where only about five percent of the households had incomes of over $100,000 by the 2016 census. clearly, regardless of their causes, gentrification and mass evictions are exercises in displacement. the fact that neighbourhoods in and around the inner city tend to attract such projects too is quite telling in the context of the power differentials between the displacers and the displaced after all, the inner city is where the advantages of proximity and easy access to historic attractions are often found; why wouldn’t those with power manoeuver for such spaces at the expense of low-income people with no power? relatedly, given the empirically verifiable overlap between race, class, and space in urban canada (mensah & williams, 2017), and more so in the united states, it is unsurprising that such low-income neighbourhoods are mostly inhabited by ethno-racial minorities and new immigrants who generally struggle to find housing outside of the neighbourhood, due both to their exposure to housing discrimination and their lack of financial resources. social (in)justice & rental housing discrimination studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 93 the struggle for housing at herongate: insights from rawls and dorling dorling (2015) observes that “if you had to choose one word to epitomise the nature of human society as it is currently arranged worldwide, there is no better word than injustice” (p. 6). regardless of how one looks at gentrification and mass evictions, they often entail injustice of one form or another. some people are bound to gain, while others lose, depending on the context of who is doing the eviction and what options are available to the parties involved based on their respective socioeconomic and political power. the benefits of such projects may include increased revenues from the replenished housing stocks and the attendant increase in property tax, as well as access to improved amenities in the neighbourhood. for the most part, the new residents (most of whom tend to have more disposable income than the incumbent tenants) demand more upscale goods and services, resulting in what lees et al. (2007, p. 131) have dubbed “boutiqueification.” at the same time, not only are the incumbent tenants “forced to find alternative housing, but they also face the emotional impact of removal from social networks and familiar community structures” (murdie & teixeira, 2011, p. 73). moreover, such large-scale evictions tend to affect low-income people more, since they find it difficult to acquire alternative housing in other parts of the city. the situation is even more damaging if the victims are racial minorities for whom housing discrimination is a reality in most cities in canada. as the preceding paragraphs show, most of the tenants evicted from the herongate complex are somalis and other visible minorities, who are, susceptible to housing discrimination. moreover, the work of mensah and williams (2014) shows that somali immigrants, in particular, often live closer to their mosques to allow them to participate in their religious practices, including praying five times daily. additionally, somalis and other muslims prefer to live in their ethnic enclaves where they can easily procure religion-sanctioned (halal) food, and where women can wear hijab freely without condescending looks from outsiders. even the fact that some islamic sects disallow their members to borrow money with interest payments makes it difficult for them to acquire mortgage in the mainstream banking system, thereby undermining their home ownership. add to these challenges large household sizes – especially among somalis (mensah & williams, 2014) – and their need for prayer rooms and gendered spaces within their homes, and one would appreciate the unique difficulties that somalis and other muslims evicted from herongate encounter in their search for affordable housing. what would rawls and dorling say about the herongate situation? how do we reconcile the competing interest of the tenants and the landlord in the context of social justice? what does the herongate situation tell us about the urban citizenship and sense of belonging of the evicted tenants, particularly given that most of them look different and come from far away lands? should the evicted tenants be compensated, and if so by how much, knowing very joseph mensah studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 94 well that the poor, beset with income insecurity, can be easily enticed to accept low cash payments? undoubtedly, some of the evicted tenants may be able to afford their relocation with or without any support. however, for most of them, the eviction is simply too much to bear, not only because of the financial cost, but also because of the attendant emotional and health consequences (fullilove, 2001, 2004; goetz, 2011; paradis et al., 2014; shah, 2013). as fullilove (2004) observes, by destroying their individual and collective identities and their social networks, such displacements shake up, if not destroy, the basic roots of the displaced and their communities. with the difference principle, rawls (1971) entreats us to operate in ways that increase the advantage of the truly disadvantaged in terms of money, power, and access to scarce resources. compared to the landlord and the potential gentrifiers, the evicted herongate tenants are the least favoured, and thus deserve preferential treatment. adherence to the difference principle can come in many ways, ranging from the status quo to different levels of compensation aimed at a reasonable amelioration of the monetary, emotional, and health cost to the victims. with the herongate tenants protesting against their eviction, it follows that they would like to be reinstated; thus, from the standpoint of the difference principle, it would be prudent to take their request to return seriously. should this demand be too much for the landlord to bear, then different levels of compensation should be on the table for the tenants. with the difference principle, rawls draws our attention to the moral power and obligation that people have regarding their sense of justice. similarly, sen (2009) argues that “if someone has the power to make a change that he or she can see will reduce injustice in the world, then there is a strong social argument for doing just that” (p. 205). if one accepts this argument, as we do, then it follows that people with power should neither operate in their self-interest alone nor on the basis of mutual interest, but, indeed, go further to address the unilateral obligation that comes with the asymmetry of power they wield in society. evidently, both rawls and sen recognize the obligations of power and the need for the powerful to do more to advance the wellbeing of the poor and marginalized to reduce injustice. from the work of dorling (2015), we know that injustice is not inevitable; after all, hegemony breeds its own counter-hegemonic movement. accordingly, the herongate community and its supporters should be encouraged to resist the eviction, or pursue the commensurate compensation to redress the monetary, emotional, and health costs implicated in the eviction. to the extent the social justice advocacy is at its core moralistic, what forms of resistance are ethically permissible? what can the evictees of herongate demand from the landlord and civic authorities, without infringing on moral sensibilities? notwithstanding – or, perhaps, because of – the moral imperatives of social justice advocacy, the herongate protestors should not be faulted for their outrage. as sen (2009) poignantly reminds us, resistance to injustice is not only based on sound argument but it also draws on indignation (p. 390). still, among the most prudent approaches opened to the herongate social (in)justice & rental housing discrimination studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 95 protesters are open-minded engagements with the housing gatekeepers; petition-imbued public protest; and legal action, without any inclination toward physical violence and the destruction of property. the herongate situation: the right to housing and the regulation of mass evictions the herongate tenants and their allies engaged in various forms of resistance, including lobbying politicians, public protest, and legal action. still, they were displaced and only minimally compensated. though some were able to relocate within the neighbourhood, many others moved to disparate neighbourhoods and lost their connection to the herongate community. even if some of the herongate tenants are eventually afforded the right to return to the new development, which is one of the legal remedies some of them have requested from the human rights tribunal of ontario, they will never be fully compensated for the substantial disruption to their lives or the erosion of their community. one way to realize greater justice in development projects like herongate is to recognize a right to housing in canada. this right is enshrined in several international covenants, most notably article 11 of the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (icescr), to which canada is a signatory. the icescr’s broad guarantee of housing rights has been interpreted to include specific protections against mass evictions for large development projects. the institution tasked with reporting on and advancing the rights enshrined in the icescr, the un committee on economic, social and cultural rights, elaborated on specific rights with respect to evictions in its general comment numbers 4, the right to adequate housing, and 7, the right to adequate housing: forced evictions (kothari, 2007). these rights include a right for tenants to be consulted on large-scale development projects that threaten to displace them, and a right to return or permanent resettlement upon project completion. in 2007, the un special rapporteure published the basic principles and guidelines on development-based evictions and displacements, which enjoins states to ensure, among other protections, that those displaced in mass evictions carried out for the purposes of large-scale development may return upon project completion (kothari, 2007). although the icescr has been signed and ratified by canada, it is yet to be implemented by parliament into domestic law. the absence of a domestic law enshrining a right to housing means that although canada has committed itself internationally to upholding that right, there is no domestically judiciable law to make it meaningful and enforceable, despite an impressive, yet ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to have it read into sections 7 (right to life, liberty, and security of the person) and 15 (right to equality) of the charter of rights and freedoms in the context of charter litigation in joseph mensah studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 96 tanudjana v. canada (attorney general), 2014 onca 852. to date, whether section 7 of the charter guarantees a right to housing, or whether it imposes any other positive obligation on the state to take action (rather than merely restraining state action), is subject to an ongoing legal debate (cottrill, 2018, p. 84; heffernan et al., 2015, p. 30). in the absence of a justiciable right to housing in canada, there is no general right of return for tenants evicted en masse for the purposes of real estate redevelopment.2 it was not entirely fanciful for timbercreek to assume that it could redevelop herongate from an affordable to luxury rental complex without encountering major legal obstacles, such as the right to housing. in its eviction of herongate residents, timbercreek complied with the residential tenancies act, which regulates evictions in ontario, and it otherwise followed municipal regulations for demolitions and property development. although the manner in which timbercreek pursued its development violates international law, it could do so with impunity in the absence of a corresponding domestic law to stop it. a right to housing per se is therefore not being asserted in the legal challenge launched by the herongate tenants coalition in the human rights tribunal of ontario in various applicants v. timbercreek asset management inc., et al. hrto file numbers : 201936509-1 to 2019-36523-i. rather, the application advances novel arguments based on the anti-discrimination provisions of the human rights code of ontario, maintaining that it is discriminatory to displace a community composed overwhelmingly of migrants, people of colour, and people sharing other personal traits protected by the code, in order to replace it with a community of affluent whites. even if successful, the herongate case will not result in the recognition of a general right to housing in canada. although the herongate tenants’ application argues in favour of a right to housing, that right is not being advanced as the robust, constitutionally enshrined right that it was in tanudjaja (although the herongate case could help lay the groundwork for such a right in a subsequent case). rather, the application argues that where a violation of the right to housing, such as mass eviction without consultation or the right to return, creates a discriminatory impact by adversely affecting people because of their race, colour, and ethnicity, among other grounds, then the human rights code has been violated. put another way, the argument is that when a landlord develops its property, it is required by the code to ensure the development does not discriminate against people because of their race, skin colour, or other personal traits protected by the code. if the application is successful, the practical consequence will be that developers in ontario would be prohibited from acquiring a predominantly immigrant or racialized neighbourhood, and then evicting everyone for the purpose of developing upscale rental housing or condos to rent to more affluent whites. 2 the notable exception is toronto, and possibly other municipalities in canada, which have bylaws that empower the city to impose a right of return in certain circumstances. social (in)justice & rental housing discrimination studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 97 however, the rights being asserted in the herongate case are not a perfect substitute for a universal right to housing. they are an effective workaround for some, at best. what if, for example, a developer takes over a poor white working-class neighbourhood, evicts everyone, redevelops the property and then rents to more affluent whites? discrimination based on poverty or economic status is not prohibited by the code. so a mass eviction in those circumstances is not prohibited because of the absence of racial, ethnic, or other form of discrimination prohibited by the code. but should not the right to be free from arbitrary eviction be guaranteed to everyone, including working class whites? if so, what would those rights look like? how could they be enforced? more robust and meaningful housing rights, and greater social justice in housing, are possible. a justiciable right to housing has been implemented in other jurisdictions internationally, in some cases with admirable results (see, for example, king, 2015). an exhaustive list of states that have enshrined a right to housing in law is beyond the scope of this article, but noteworthy examples include south africa, scotland, and france. these countries and others have, to varying degrees, implemented the housing rights enshrined in the icescr and ancillary documents. south african courts, for example, have recognized a specific right of persons being displaced by large development projects to meaningful engagement and mandatory consultation (chenwi, 2015, pp. 78-80). had the right to housing been implemented in canada, the herongate evictions may have looked much different. conclusion forms of capital absorption in cities, including gentrification and mass evictions, are dialectical processes, and thus entail creative destruction or destructive creation. as such, these processes often have “losers” and “winners;” and to the extent that they also have class and racial dimensions, it is not hard to realize that it is the “poor, the underprivileged and those marginalized from political power that suffer first and foremost” (harvey, 2008, p. 33). it is clear from the preceding discussion that housing discrimination is real in urban canada. additionally, it is evident that, unlike the formation of ghettoes in the us, where extreme external pressures are involved, ethnic enclaves, such as the herongate community in ottawa, come about mainly because they conform, at least in part, to the needs of the minority group in question. even though such segregated spaces often engender negative connotations in the minds of outsiders, they help the minority residents to sustain their cultural values, strengthen their social capital and social cohesion, and ultimately promote their settlement and integration in the host country. clearly, then, mass evictions of minority populations from their enclaves do not only take a monetary toll on residents, joseph mensah studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 98 but they also exact considerable emotional, psychological, and health consequences – all of which have social justice implications. with insights from rawls (1971) and dorling (2015), we noted that it is about time that landlords seeking mass evictions paid due attention to the well-being of the incumbent tenants, especially when the tenants are lowincome minorities who are likely to face extreme difficulties in finding housing outside of their enclave. thus, mass eviction decisions should not be informed by raw economic considerations alone, for there are always some underlying ethical issues to be addressed. for one thing, if renovations lead to improvement in the housing stocks, and even yield profit for the city, developer, and landlord, at the expense of the vulnerable, weak, and poor members of society, then what are we to make of the moral sensibilities of our society? moreover, how are we to protect the interests of the powerless against those of the powerful? rawls, for one, would expect us to maximize the wellbeing of the powerless relative to the powerful in such situations. and from dorling’s work we know that resistance and counter-hegemonic advocacy in such situations are worthwhile, since, in his view, injustice and despair are neither justified nor inevitable. meanwhile, as demonstrators and social movement activists bring their loud laments about these mass evictions to the public, it is uncertain whether their opposition will be sustainable enough to produce any meaningful and mutually agreeable solution. still, there is hope, for urban resistant movements are increasingly going global, with supporters and signs of rebellion coming from far and wide places with the aid of social media. in addition to the pressures exacted by urban resistant movements and the insights drawn from the works of rawls and dorling, federal, provincial, and municipal governments have a role to play to resolve this social (in)justice. a clear policy suggestion from the preceding discussion is for the federal government to pass a domestically judiciable law – in consonance with the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (icescr) – to uphold canadians’ right to housing. relatedly, there is the need to establish a mass eviction complaints board, of a sort, at the provincial or municipal level to help resolve the conflicting interests of the parties involved in such disputes by conducting hearings and prescribing legally binding compensations. clearly, our approach to resolving the herongate situation has its limitations, since it dwells mainly on the antidiscrimination provisions of the human rights code of ontario, which, obviously, does not prohibit discrimination based on social class or poverty per se. thus, while poor blacks can be protected by the code, from the standpoint of their race, the same cannot be said of poor whites. until canada enacts a domestically justiciable law to enforce the right to housing, the need for further research to deal with the special case of poor whites who might fall prey to mass evictions cannot be over-emphasized. social (in)justice & rental housing discrimination studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 81-101, 2020 99 references aalbers, m. 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(2006). housing experiences of black africans in toronto’s rental market: a case study of angolans and mozambican immigrants. canadian ethnic studies, 38(3), 58-86. teixeira, c. (2008). barriers and outcomes in the housing searches of new immigrants and refugees: a case study of ‘black’ africans in toronto’s rental market. journal of housing and the built environment, 23(4), 253-276. uzun, c. n. (2003). the impact of urban renewal and gentrification on urban fabric: three cases in turkey. tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 94(3), 363-375. walks, a. r., & bourne, l. s. (2006). ghettos in canada’s cities? racial segregation, ethnic enclaves and poverty concentration in canadian urban areas. the canadian geographer, 50(3), 273-297. yeates, m. (1993). the north american city. harper collins. correspondence address: alison howell, humanitarian and conflict response institute (hcri), ellen wilkinson building, the university of manchester, oxford road, manchester, m13 9pl, united kingdom, tel.: +44 (0)161 275 8967, email: alisonr.howell@manchester.ac.uk issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 6, issue 1, 1-7, 2012 introduction: the politics of resilience and recovery in mental health care alison howell humanitarian and conflict response institute, the university of manchester, united kingdom jijian voronka ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto, canada recovery and resilience are now two of the central frameworks for organizing mental health care in the western world. these frameworks posit that mental health “patients” can recover from their illnesses, and that resilience may be developed as a strength in order to avert or prevent so-called mental illness from the outset. the turn to “recovery” and to “resilience” has occurred in a context wherein mental health governance models based centrally on institutionalization had been the subject of much political resistance from those who have been psychiatrized, and also in a context of the retrenchment of state services through neo-liberal restructuring and cost-cutting measures. large-scale deinstitutionalization in the second half of the 20th century was met with the development of “community-based” care as an alternative. currently, those negotiating mental health services often find themselves subject to a mixture of institutional and community based mental health services, as well as other secondary institutional systems that offer mental health interventions (universities, work places, primary education, etc). although such shifts apparently respond to the concerns expressed in the political resistance directed at total institutions (see goffman, 1961), these new models of community care have arisen within a neo-liberal context, wherein social services are increasingly subject to prove their effectiveness through efficiency models that require community agencies to meet targets, ensure flow-through, and collect evidence-based data on their effectiveness. simultaneously western states are downloading their social responsibilities to the voluntary sector and to citizens themselves. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 2 alison howell, jijian voronka whilst the concepts of resilience and recovery, then, originated in antiinstitutionalization movements, they have increasingly been incorporated into, and some would say co-opted by, medical reason and mental health policy. they have thus been re-figured: psychiatric experts now iterate that through recovery and resilience those who are deemed to have disordered minds can live “meaningful lives” despite the ostensible permanence of their “illness.” this understanding works to deny the possibility of a kind of recovery that would place patients or “clients” outside the remit of medical authority. whereas twenty years ago resilience and recovery were harnessed as organized frameworks for psychiatric survivors to avert the medical system through alternate means (including peer knowledge and support), they are now harnessed to incorporate psychiatric survivors into medical systems. they now work in ways that attempt to make psychiatric survivors responsible for their own adherence to prescribed ways of governing their interior lives, while at the same time leaving medical authority intact, since psychologists and psychiatrists have become experts in recovery and resilience. this raises serious questions about the social justice implications of these ostensibly humane approaches to mental health. approaching mental health through a social justice lens can reveal rich connections that highlight some of the most important themes in social justice research: inclusion, power, recognition, political economy, difference, equity and rights. and yet, the richness of this area of research has not been fully explored by social justice studies. this relates, in part, to the questionable notions of progress that surround psychology and psychiatry. with the march of time, we are told, these professions have become humane, liberal, and scientifically advanced. the sporadic attention to mental health in social justice studies also relates to the inadequacy of predominant approaches in the field. to be sure, any number of connections could be drawn between social justice and systems of mental health governance, but a limited number of approaches have been explored. for instance, connections have been drawn between social justice and mental health through the analysis of the psychological consequences of injustices. scholars working in this vein (see shephard, 2002) argue that high rates of, for example, depression in women or schizophrenia in afrocaribbean men, are the result of, or exacerbated by, societal unfairness. mental illness, in this approach, is essentially figured as the result of social injustice. while laudable in attempting to raise social questions to the overarchingly individualistic disciplines of psychology and psychiatry, this approach, however, fails to question psychiatric authority and its diagnoses, including “depression” and “schizophrenia.” the result is that this approach merely supplements a medical or biological model by providing complementary social explanations. it fails, however, to account for how marginalized people (such as the poor, colonial subjects, racialized people, queers and gender variant people, the disabled) tend to get disproportionately diagnosed or pathologized by the psychiatric profession, and how the psychiatric profession has been implicated in processes of colonialism, racism, sexism studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 introduction 3 and heterosexism, as well as in disability and war-making (howell, 2011; metzl, 2010). a second line of inquiry into the connections between mental health and social justice focuses on fair and equal access to health services and welfare provision. here, concerns over the decline of the welfare state and in particular of public health care provision are transposed onto questions of mental health, though again, without adequately questioning the authority of psychiatric practice. as such, questions about how “stigma” prevents the mentally ill from accessing services, or how socio-economic status, race and/or gender can impede or accelerate access to diagnoses and treatments are explored (corrigan, watson, byrne, & davis, 2005; cook & ngwena, 2007; kronenfeld, 2008; who, 2008), but the authority of such diagnoses and treatments, and the psychiatric professions more generally, go largely unquestioned. more recently scholarship located broadly in the field of critical disability studies has opened up new ways of thinking through the connections between social justice and mental health, precisely by challenging the norms that underpin the very value of “mental health” or “mental illness” as useful categories or ways of thinking about people. this scholarship takes inspiration, in particular, from re-invigorated activism that has developed out of anti-institutionalization and the service user/ consumer/survivor/expatient movements (church, 1995; crossley, 2006; everett, 2000), as well as the mad movement (morrison, 2005; fabris, 2011), which is exploring the positive valuing of madness as a form of difference, particularly through activism carried out under the banner of mad pride. this coincides with developments in critical disability studies, where scholarship on the human rights of people living with disabilities is complemented by scholarship illustrating that disability is a matter not of deficit, but of difference in embodiment. it may further take inspiration from studies in the history and sociology of medicine that trace the very contingent rise of psychiatric and psychological authority (hacking, 1995; rose, 1998; young, 1997), and also highlights a broader unease with bio-medicalism. at the same time, methods for peer/survivor research are increasingly being pursued, wherein survivors themselves contribute to knowledge production through user-controlled research (beresford, 2002; faulkner, 2004; faulkner & nicholls, 1999; godfrey, 2004; sweeney, beresford, rose, faulkner, & nettle, 2009). readers might best approach the articles in this special issue by suspending any belief in the authority of psychology and psychiatry, and questioning the bio-medicalism that deems some people normal, and others abnormal. indeed, the articles included here help those interested in social justice to pose questions about sanism, which, for perlin and dorfman, “is inspired by (and reflects) the same kinds of irrational, unconscious, bias-driven stereotypes and prejudices that are exhibited in racist, sexist, homophobic and religiouslyand ethnically-bigoted decision making” (perlin & dorfman, 1993, p. 49). further, we must query how and why it is that we are able to continue to approach the “thinking differently” of thoughts, experiences, behaviours and knowledge that is evoked through madness as inherently a studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 4 alison howell, jijian voronka problem that needs to be eradicated. thus, the articles included here can be approached with an eye to viewing madness not as a deficit, but as a matter of difference, so as to view those who are subject to diagnosis as rightfully able to make choices about their engagements—or disengagements—with systems of mental health care, as well as medical and other authorities. this is not only a political stance: it can open up rich avenues for re-thinking the connections between mental health and social justice, and furthermore, for re-thinking social justice itself. indeed, the articles included here do just that, in particular by examining how the concepts of resilience and recovery are put to work in contemporary systems of mental health governance. why resilience and recovery? the answer: precisely because these concepts appear so benign at first glance. unpacking these notions can reveal the ways in which they are powerful tools in the governance of those deemed mentally ill, and also by extension, all citizens. in the case of recovery, what was once a term that was generated from the survivor movement, the focus was on “recovery in,” whereas its current reiteration has transformed into “recovery from.” to distinguish, the idea of “recovery in” presumes “that recovery must be grounded in a focus on survivor rights, peer support and recovering from the oppressive effects of being a mental patient” (poole, 2011, p.15). however, as mental health systems have yielded to demands that they be more recovery-oriented, the social justice-orientation of “recovery in” has shifted into a model that has become “recovery from.” focusing on problematic neoliberal individualist principles including hope, empowerment, self-determination and responsibility, and the offering that with client-centred intervention and support, some can find cure, others “resume normalcy” while still others can build meaningful lives while living with mental illness (poole, 2011), thus reinstating the expertise and authority of psychiatry and psychology. importantly, “recovery from” has become a quantifiable measurable concept, model, and framework that practitioners are now busily receiving grants for and providing evidencebased research on, and through which they have found a place where they can remain central professionally. as for resilience, the concept parallels the notion of recovery. where recovery posits the ability of subjects to recover from an illness, the notion of resilience ostensibly recognizes the innate capacities of people to “bounce back” in the face of challenges or sources of distress. the capacity to be resilient is not, however, left to chance: psychologists have become authorities in instilling resilience, especially through the increasingly authoritative techniques such as cognitive behavioural therapy, or “positive psychology.” these changes are deeply tied to broader austerity measures: getting citizens to be resilient in the face of challenges is not only cheap (in that it diverts patients out of public health care systems, in favour of self-help and positive thinking), it is also about aspiring to create a resilient citizenry, able to cope with uncertainty. this is a technology of looking inward: rather than confronting austerity measures or other matters of social justice through political action, citizens are enjoined to look inward, gather their strengths, studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 introduction 5 and be resilient. recovery and resilience, then, are notions deeply embedded with both the economic and the social imperatives of contemporary neoliberalism. the articles included in this special issue engage these themes across a number of national settings, institutional spaces, and empirical sites, from universities to mental health commissions, to national policy in an international context. they focus, especially, on canada, ireland and the united kingdom, where recent and significant changes in mental health governance have relied heavily on the notions of recovery and resilience, often to questionable effect. they deal, as we have said, with some of the most central themes in social justice studies. we have highlighted the question of difference above, but the question of inclusion also bears heavily on the discussion of mental health and social justice. in particular, many of the articles in the issue tackle the exclusion of users of psychiatric services and those who identify as mad from decision making, and the ways in which peers and service users can and should be meaningfully included in mental health provision, policy, and in the conduct of research. the articles also explore the pitfalls of inclusion, as recovery and resilience models within mental health systems now depend on inclusion as a best practice to prove that they are “doing the recovery model right,” raising questions about what happens, both to service users and systems of power, in the process. just as scholars in other fields (chaun ku, 2003; minh-ha, 1989; spivak, 1999) have inquired about the appeal, process and result of the inclusion of native informants (spivak, 1997), so too must we think through what limits and to what effect the conditions of mental health service user participation is constituted. as one of us has previously noted, the harnessing of the mad informant (voronka, 2010) into mental health institutions has continuously failed to decentre the hegemony of biomedicalism. this raises question about meaningful participation, the management of diversity, what interests are being served by such inclusion, and whether playing the mad informant secures notions of individuals as mentally ill for medical professionals. evoking such questions, as several of the following articles do, about practices of giving voice, inclusion, and storytelling, foregrounds the dangers involved in participation and inclusion, especially given that those who have had contact with the mental health system are often still denied basic human rights. in putting together this special issue, then, we worked to include authors who identify as mad, as service users, as allies, and as activists in the field of mental health reform, and to privilege research that meaningfully involves such groups, or that tackles the broader discursive and policy frameworks within which notions of recovery and resilience circulate and gain power. in their article on “uncovering recovery” david harper and ewen speed trace the increasing dominance of the recovery and resilience models across the psychiatric survivor movement, the third sector, and especially, mental health policy in the uk. they focus on how the recovery and resilience models of mental health individualize social problems, how they remain embedded in a notion of difference as deficit, obscuring structural causes of distress studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 6 alison howell, jijian voronka in the process. they thus raise significant questions about the social justice implications of the rise of the resilience and recovery models in mental health policy in the uk and beyond. marina morrow and julia weisser, in their article “towards a social justice framework of mental health recovery,” provide an analysis that foregrounds an understanding of power in the mental health care system, highlighting interlocking forms of oppression through an intersectional analysis. based on a research project they conducted in vancouver, canada, which included both researchers and participants with lived experience of mental health service use, they raise pressing questions about the professional and bio-medical dominance over the meaning of recovery, to the exclusion of questions of social justice in the mental health field, such as the erosion of social welfare supports. by focusing on how user involvement in mental health service provision in ireland is unfolding, liz brosnan’s article on “power and participation” highlights the power relations inherent in attempts to include mental health service users. by drawing attention to the invisible aspects of power in operation in the recovery model, brosnan draws attention to the ways in which social inequalities and injustices experienced by service-users are often overlooked in mental health service provision and policy. katie aubrecht’s paper draws attention to the ways in which resilience discourses are harnessed in a particular institution: the university, and the ways in which resilience programming is strategically deployed so as to enjoin students to think positively about their experiences of university life and thus avert any experience of distress or disability. the aim of producing a healthy and “well” student body, however, fails to address inequalities amongst students, nor how such inequalities might be important in addressing student distress. finally, the special issue concludes with an article written by a number of activists and advocates in the field of mental health reform and psychiatric survivor/mad pride activism who are working together as the recovering our stories collective. it details an event which they organized in toronto, canada that sought to highlight some of the social justice issues involved in sharing personal stories of recovery with and for mental health professionals. it explores the ways in which the once transgressive act of sharing survivor narratives in order to “talk back to psychiatry” has now become a solicited commodity by mental health organizations in order to further their own stakeholder status as progressive, recovery-oriented service providers. as a collection, the articles help us think through some of the pressing political questions about social justice that have arisen with the adoption of the mantras of resilience and recovery in mental health governance. references chaun ku, j. s. (2003). producing the native informant: third world immigrant women’s activism and self-making practices in the immigrant services sector (unpublished doctoral dissertation). toronto: unpublished oise/university of toronto. church, k. (1995). forbidden narratives: critical autobiography as social science. amsterdam, overseas publishers association. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 introduction 7 cook, r.j., & ngwena, c.g. (eds.) (2007). health and human rights. aldershot, england: ashgate. corrigan, p.w., watson, a.c., byrne, p., & davis, k.e. (2005). mental illness stigma: problem of public health or social justice. social work, 50(4), 363-368. crossley, n. (2006). contesting psychiatry: social movements in mental health. new york: routledge. everett, b. (2000). a fragile revolution: consumers and psychiatric survivors confront the power of the mental health system. waterloo, on: wilfred laurier press. fabris, e (2011). tranquil prisons: chemical incarceration under community treatment orders. toronto: university of toronto press. goffman, e. (1961). asylums: essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. new york: doubleday anchor. hacking, i. (1995). rewriting the soul: multiple personality and the sciences of memory. princeton: princeton university press. howell, a. (2011). madness in international relations: psychology, security and the global governance of mental health. london: routledge. metzl, j. (2010). the protest psychosis: how schizophrenia became a black disease. boston. ma: beacon press. minh-ha, t.t. (1989). woman, native, other: writing post-coloniality and feminism. bloomington and indianapolis, in: indiana university press. poole, j. (2011). behind the rhetoric: mental health recovery in ontario. halifax & winnipeg: fernwood. perlin, m.l., & dorfman, d.a., (1993). sanism, social science, and the development of mental disability law jurisprudence. behavioral sciences and the law, vol. 11, 47-66. morrison, l.j. (2005). talking back to psychiatry: the psychiatric consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement. new york, ny: routledge. rose, n. (1998). inventing ourselves: psychology, power, and personhood. cambridge: cambridge university press. spivak, g. c. (1997). diasporas old and new. in a. kumar (ed.), class issues: pedagogy, cultural studies, and the public sphere. new york, ny: new york university press: 87-116. spivak, g. c. (1999). a critique of postcolonial reason: towards a history of the vanishing present. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. shephard, b. (2000). a war on nerves. london: jonathan cape. sweeney, a., beresford, p., rose, d., faulkner, a., & nettle, m. (2009). this is survivor research. hay-on-wye: pccs. voronka, j. (june 2010). consuming consumer narratives: a struggle over how to eat and how to be eaten. opening plenary presented at critical inquiries. centre for the study of gender, social inequities, and mental health, simon fraser university, vancouver. world health organization (2008). mental health gap action programme: scaling up care for mental, neurological, and substance use disorders. geneva: who press. young, a. (1997). the harmony of illusions: inventing post-traumatic stress disorder. princeton, nj: princeton university press. _________ hye-kyung kang, phd, msw, associate professor, department of social work, seattle university, seattle, wa copyright © 2022 authors, vol. 22 no. 2 (summer 2022), 360-388, doi: 10.18060/24953 this work is licensed under a creative commons attribution 4.0 international license. re-envisioning social work education: building and living a social justicefocused clinical social work curriculum hye-kyung kang abstract: social justice is a central principle of the social work profession and education. however, it can become a hollow ideal unless it is specifically addressed in all applications of social work practice. scholars have long questioned the social work profession’s commitment to putting social justice into practice. clinical social work has been particularly criticized for its lack of attention to social justice and for failing to address the concerns of the oppressed by relying on individual intervention while overlooking system-level changes. given that clinical social work is the largest specialization in social work practice, clinical social work programs must re-envision their curriculum to fully address this criticism and educate future social workers to pursue social justice at all levels of practice. this paper presents the collective work of the social work faculty at a clinical social work program to construct a social justice-focused clinical social work curriculum, which culminated in a statement on social justice commitment in their curriculum, illustrates the iterative process of this work, and discusses the lessons from this experience. implications include the importance of shared understanding of social justice and articulating how it operates in all aspects of social work practice as well as in social work pedagogy. keywords: social justice, social work education, clinical social work, social work curriculum social justice is a central principle of the social work profession and education (council on social work education [cswe], 2015; international federation of social workers [ifsw], 2018; national association of social workers [nasw], 2021). however, scholars have long questioned the profession’s commitment to putting social justice values into practice (bowles & hopps, 2014; corley & young, 2018; mclaughlin, 2009; schiele & hopps, 2009). clinical social work has been particularly criticized for its lack of attention to social justice and for failing to address the concerns of the oppressed (mclaughlin, 2009). one prominent criticism of clinical social work is that it often relies on individual intervention and fails to take on system-level changes or advocacy (apgar, 2020; corley & young, 2018; epple, 2007). despite the criticism, clinical social workers do consider social justice as essential to clinical practice and recognize the connection between social justice, advocacy, and clinical practice (mclaughlin, 2009; varghese & kang, 2019). however, extant research on clinical social workers’ engagement in advocacy indicate that social workers spend little time for advocacy in practice (mclaughlin, 2009). there are many external barriers to clinical social workers’ engagement in advocacy, such as rigid organizational structures, constricting job descriptions, and experiences of marginalization within organizations when social workers do engage in advocacy (mclaughlin, 2009). another barrier seems about:blank kang/re-envisioning swk education 361 to be internal. some clinical social workers in mclaughlin’s study were concerned about social justice advocacy taking the focus off individual clients. this concern evokes the historical macro-micro tension of the social work profession where micro and macro practices are conceptualized as separate domains, creating a false binary for social workers (epple, 2007; apgar, 2020). one contributor to this false binary seems to be that practice models and frameworks do not prepare for social work students and practitioners to make a clear link between clinical practice and social justice (mclaughlin, 2009). in fact, one of the most frequent questions that social work faculty receive from social work students is how to apply social justice values in practice at their practicum. students and practitioners often complain that their clinical supervisors are not apt to explain how their agency work connects to social justice (garran et al., 2022). this phenomenon is puzzling since social work scholars and practitioners have been making specific efforts to promote social justice in clinical practice (e.g., asakura et al., 2020; fook, 2016; harrison et al., 2016; kang, 2013; mclaughlin, 2011; morgaine & capous-desyllas, 2014; parker, 2003; swenson, 1998; varghese & kang, 2019). one contributor to this challenge may be the ways in which social justice and advocacy are taught in the social work curriculum. often, social justice is taught in stand-alone courses and advocacy is confined to macro practice courses; they are not fully integrated into clinical courses and the clinical social work curriculum (mclaughlin, 2009; mehrotra et al., 2017). given that clinical social work is the largest specialization in social work practice (apgar, 2020), clinical social work programs and educators must re-envision their curriculum to fully address this criticism and educate future social workers to specifically integrate social justice at all levels (micro, mezzo, macro) of intervention. authors such as apgar (2020), corley and young (2018), epple (2007) and mclaughlin (2009) call for recognizing the interdependence between clinical practice and social justice and situating advocacy as an integral part of clinical social work. the seattle university (su) social work department faculty is answering this call to action by creating a clinical social work curriculum that integrates a clearly delineated set of social justice principles across all courses, taught by all instructors. in the following sections, the collective work of the su social work faculty to construct a social justicefocused clinical social work curriculum, which culminated in a departmental statement on social justice commitment, is presented, and the iterative process of this work is described. the lessons from building and “living” a social justice-focused clinical social work curriculum and implications for social work education are shared. process the su social work department faculty had a unique opportunity to re-envision a clinical social work program from a social justice focused and community-based perspective when creating a new msw program in 2015. reflecting the social justice principle of the social work profession and the need for equitable clinical care in advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 362 marginalized communities, the inaugural director (the author) proposed the following mission for the new program, which was enthusiastically adopted by the faculty in 2016: the mission of the su msw program is to educate students for social justicefocused and community-based advanced clinical social work practice. the program seeks to advance equity in access to excellent clinical social work practice for historically marginalized populations by preparing competent and effective practitioners who restore, maintain, and enhance human and community wellbeing with unwavering attention to social and economic justice. the program is committed to respectful engagement and collaboration with community partners in its scholarship, teaching, and service.(( seattle university master of social work program, n.d., para. 2) with this mission, the faculty engaged in steadfast work to re-envision clinical social work. this work took an iterative process where the faculty developed the clinical social work curriculum with an explicit focus on social justice, implemented the curriculum, engaged in regular discussions around what social justice-focused and community-based social work meant in application, and shared our continuous research and experience with one another as we revised the curriculum. when the bsw and msw programs transitioned out of an interdisciplinary department and established an independent department of social work in 2017 the department adopted an expanded department mission statement. while the initial focus was on the explicit curriculum, we also worked to develop the implicit curriculum and departmental policies and processes to be consistent with the social justice mission. this manuscript focuses on the explicit curriculum. the faculty recognized that this work must be done with intentional dedication of time and energy and that both the process and the product (curriculum) must reflect our social justice values. therefore, the faculty implemented the following meetings where all fulltime faculty participated (and part-time faculty were invited, but not required, to participate): 1) social justice meetings and retreats: two initial full-day retreat sessions followed by monthly meetings to continue to develop a shared conceptualization of social justice and to delineate how it is demonstrated in our curriculum and teaching, which culminated in the departmental statement on social justice commitment; 2) critical pedagogy meetings: monthly meetings to share how social justice is explicitly applied in each course so that faculty could build on one another’s classes to achieve vertical and horizontal integration of social justice in our curriculum; 3) critical pedagogy consultation sessions: informal meetings where professors can seek and receive consultation, feedback, coaching, and support from their department peers on classroom issues regarding power and privilege, equity, microaggressions, etc. (garran et al., 2014); and kang/re-envisioning swk education 363 4) assessment sessions: dedicated time at year-end retreats to assess how we are progressing on implementing our social justice commitment as a department (including reflection on the results of the student experience survey). these dedicated meetings served as opportunities for faculty to collaborate on the continuous process to develop, implement, analyze, reflect on, and revise the ways in which social justice is demonstrated in our syllabi, learning materials, application assignments, and teaching practices. such articulation of a shared conceptualization of social justice in the curriculum was essential, and “living” this conceptualization meant a process of constant evolution and mutual adaptation. the social work department grew from five full-time faculty to nine between 2016-2019. given our equity principle, we did not want the ideas of original five faculty to impose on the new faculty. as new faculty members joined the department, they contributed new perspectives, and faculty discussed, debated, expanded upon, and revised the social justice statement until consensus was reached. again, consistent with our equity principle, part-time faculty were not expected to take on extra workload such as participating in social justice meetings, and they typically did not attend them. to ensure that the implementation of the social justice-focused curriculum is consistent across the msw and bsw courses, the program director of each program discussed the social justice principles and their applications in particular courses with adjunct faculty. the msw curriculum was developed before the program launched and admitted students. however, since the program was launched the department regularly sought feedback from students through student experience surveys on diversity and social justice in our explicit and implicit curricula, which were analyzed and used for improvement and future planning. see table 1 in appendix for samples of student surveys. the msw program director also holds regular informal meetings (“director’s tea”) with msw students to gain their perspective and direct feedback throughout the academic year. in addition, the department seeks feedback and consultation on its explicit and implicit curricula (including educational policies) from community members through quarterly meetings with the community advisory committee and the practicum advisory board whose membership includes representatives from current students, alumni, practicum instructors, and community organizations. the feedback and consultation from students and community members are applied to continuous improvement of the msw curricula. finally, the department’s progress on social justice commitment (along with other educational outcomes) is reported yearly to the department’s community advisory committee members who serve as our accountability partners. social work department statement of commitment to social justice in our curriculum (seattle university dept of social work, 2020) the departmental statement of social justice commitment, adopted in september 2020, reflects our work since 2016; it explicates our conceptualization of social justice and illustrates how it is implemented in our curriculum and in our pedagogy. the statement, shared in its entirety here, is a collective work of the department faculty. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 364 our commitment the social work department is committed to educating students for social justicefocused social work practice by integrating a social justice lens throughout our undergraduate and graduate programs. all courses in our curriculum, rather than one or two designated “diversity” courses, examine issues of social justice. the department seeks to prepare competent and effective practitioners who restore, maintain, and enhance human and community well-being with unwavering attention to social and economic justice. as we do so, we integrate four central facets of social justice: (i) an equity lens, (ii) antioppressive analysis and practice, (iii) critical pedagogy (including multiple critical theories), and (iv) decolonizing framework. in this document, we introduce our definitions of social justice and explain how we incorporate it into our department. why social justice? the social work department’s commitment to social justice builds off the mission of seattle university (su). the university is committed to value-oriented education. su is committed to teaching, learning, and growth of the whole person through a process of formation for leadership to improve the well-being of others and work toward “a just and humane world” (seattle university master of social work program, n.d., why social justice, para. 1). the department prepares its students with knowledge, values, and skills to analyze social inequity and oppression in its manifest forms, and to seek systemic change as effective advocates for social and economic justice. in addition, the social work department’s focus on social justice is in keeping with the values of the social work profession: the purpose of the social work profession is to promote human and community well-being. guided by a person-in-environment framework, a global perspective, respect for human diversity, and knowledge based on scientific inquiry, the purpose of social work is actualized through its quest for social and economic justice, the prevention of conditions that limit human rights, the elimination of poverty, and the enhancement of the quality of life for all persons, locally and globally. (cswe, educational policy, 2015, 2015, p. 5) social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people. social workers’ social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice. these activities seek to promote sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression and cultural and ethnic diversity. social workers strive to ensure access to needed information, services, and resources; equality of opportunity; and meaningful participation in decision making for all people. (nasw, code of ethics, 2008, preamble, para. 1) social workers have a responsibility to promote social justice, in relation to society generally, and in relation to the people with whom they work. this means: challenging negative discrimination… recognizing diversity… [and] distributing resources equitably. (ifsw, statement of ethical principles, 2018, p. 4) kang/re-envisioning swk education 365 justice is clearly an essential value of the social work profession and social work education; however, it can inadvertently become a hollow ideal unless it is specifically addressed in all applications of social work knowledge and skills. consequently, the concept of justice anchors the curriculum, and is central to the department’s mission. our conception of social justice introductory notes our bsw program prepares students for generalist practice while our msw program has a clinical specialization. the following ideas and plans about social justice will be applied in ways that correspond with the focus of each program. in addition, these definitions and goals may change as we continue to grow and learn and as we respond to changes to the higher education landscape, and changes in scholarly, socio-political, cultural, and activist thinking. this document is ever evolving, and it reflects our current thinking about the current landscape. as faculty, we are in process with this work. the following is an articulation of our goals and commitments. however, we are not there yet. our curriculum will be revised on an ongoing basis, and our faculty constantly strives to learn more, so that we can achieve the goals stated on the following pages. sometimes we succeed and sometimes we fail, but we continue trying. this is a lifetime of work, and we will not ever be done with it. we are always working to live up to the aspirational goals and values described in the following sections. finally, although this document focuses on our curriculum, we have also been incorporating a social justice analysis to the implicit (non-curricular) aspects of our program. this includes admission and enrollment, advising, course scheduling, hiring, mentoring, scholarships and allocation of resources, etc. our four-facet framework the social work department is committed to integrating a social justice lens throughout our programs. we understand social justice as a concept involving multiple dimensions. as such, we integrate four central facets of social justice: 1) an equity lens, 2) anti-oppressive analysis and practice, 3) critical pedagogy, and 4) decolonizing framework. social justice facet 1: equity lens in this department, the concept of justice is examined through the lens of equity, rather than equality. while equality guarantees equal rights and access under the law, it does not address the reality that some people need more than others,or have been denied equal access throughout history. on the other hand, equity is concerned with addressing need and restitution, rather than mere equality. equity requires equality under the law but also advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 366 requires the remedying of material hardships. equity involves economic, political, social, and human rights and opportunities. our department operates from the assumption that social justice is not measured merely by legal equality or by simply an equal distribution of social and economic goods. yes, social justice includes legal equality and equal distribution of goods, but it also encompasses whether people are able to reach their full capacities, how decisions are made, which and whose perspectives are represented, and to what extent. consequently, seattle university’s social work department defines equity as consisting of four components: (a) distribution; (b) representation and recognition; (c) process and participation; and (d) capabilities. students in our department can expect to be required to interrogate these four concepts: distribution throughout history, many influential thinkers considered the distribution of wealth, resources, and goods to be a key component of social justice (reisch, 2002). distributive justice is the idea that resources should be distributed equally, and social and economic systems must be arranged and redistributed so that they most benefit the least advantaged members of society. consequently, systems of economic oppression or structural discrimination must be challenged in order to create social policies directed toward a more just distribution of social goods. poverty and economic inequality are the result of structural economic oppression and the systematically unequal distributions of resources. equity that is focused on distribution is based upon the redistribution of goods and resources as determined by need, rather than by class, merit, or identity. one example of how we utilize this aspect of equity can be seen in how we distribute scholarships to our students. in our department, scholarships are based upon need, rather than on merit, because too often merit is measured by criteria that are more easily achieved by students with resources. representation and recognition equity that is focused on issues of representation and recognition is concerned with how marginalized groups are treated in the public sphere (e.g., the media, literature, research, or the law), and whether/how they are granted access to certain social institutions (e.g., schools, marriage, public accommodations, voting, etc.). representation and recognition require full equality under the law for all social identity groups, as well as their fair, accurate, and multi-dimensional representation in cultural and educational domains. in the pursuit of social justice focused on representation and recognition, our department centralizes the concept of intersectionality. originating from black feminists such as patricia hill collins (2002), the combahee river collective (1977), kimberlé crenshaw (1989), bell hooks (1990), and audre lorde (1983), intersectionality requires the examination of any issue through the lens of multiple identity groups. feminists of color have argued that there are multiple oppressions, along lines of social identity groups such as gender, race, and class (as well as ability, age, citizenship, ethnicity, religion, and kang/re-envisioning swk education 367 sexual orientation). intersectionality posits, among other things, that it is impossible to understand any one experience of discrimination without understanding how it is impacted by all other systems of oppression and privilege (racism, capitalism, sexism, heterosexism, xenophobia, able-ism, etc.). an intersectional analysis recognizes that people have both advantages and disadvantages due to their locations in multiple systems of oppression. thus, they can receive privilege from their position in one system (e.g., racism), but be disadvantaged because of their position in another overlapping system (e.g., homophobia). true justice requires liberation from all of these oppressions, none of which can be assigned a place of primacy over the others. by virtue of their positions on society’s “margins,” certain groups have unique and important perspectives that must be centralized in social justice work. centering the margins is the process of prioritizing the needs of those people who have been marginalized. building off of the ideas of bell hooks (1990), many social justice activists engage in “trickle up social justice work,” which operates from the assumption that social justice trickles up, but it does not trickle down (defilippis & anderson-nathe, 2017; flanders, 2012). in other words, if policies are made with the intention of helping the most dominant members of society, the benefits rarely trickle down to also support the most marginalized. however, policies designed to help those at the margins usually trickle up and also provide benefits to those with more privilege. centering the margins is the commitment to serving everyone by prioritizing the needs of those placed at the bottom of structural hierarchies. one example of how we operationalize this aspect of equity is through our commitment to representational equity in our curriculum. at least 50% of the learning materials in all social work classes (and other classes designed by social work faculty) will reflect nondominant perspectives, knowledge and authorship of people of color, and/or knowledge and authorship of other marginalized populations. process and participation we believe that equity cannot be measured only by outcomes, but also by the systems of process and participation that lead to the outcomes. equity that is focused on process and participation draws from long-standing notions (going back at least to jean-jacques rousseau, 1762/1993) that the people must come together to function and legislate as a collective, and that decision-making must be made by the people, not the elite. to do this, equity efforts must focus on increasing the ability of subordinated groups to access power and control in all areas of society. social justice requires a society where all people have access to, and control of, various systems and institutions, such as voting, government, education, media, economics, social services, etc. examples of how we operationalize this aspect of equity can be seen in various courses taught at the undergraduate and graduate level. in the community practice course, learning activities are designed so that students work on community development or organizing issues in collaboration with community partners. community partners determine the issue that they would like students to understand and collaborate on, develop collaborative learning/project work plans that are mutually useful to the community and the students’ advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 368 learning, and help evaluate and/or reflect on the project. such assignments provide pertinent opportunities for students to deepen their engagement with the community in the learning process. in the program evaluation course, students work on an impact evaluation for a selected agency using community-based research methodologies. in the policy courses, students get an opportunity to participate in advocacy and lobby events, such as the nasw lobby day. capabilities we also believe that equity requires that all individuals be able to live up to their own capabilities. we draw on the ideas of amartya sen (1985, 2011), martha nussbaum (2003), and others who examine social justice through the lens of capabilities. capabilities can be described as the opportunities that an individual has in order to achieve their fullest potential or do what they believe adds value to their own life. these capabilities are impacted by social, political, economic, and cultural structures that individuals are embedded in and interact with. we believe this framework is connected to the social work value (described in the nasw code of ethics) of the dignity and worth of all people. social workers promote clients’ self-determination and seek to enhance clients’ capacity to change and to address their own needs. because of this, we believe that social justice requires the need for all individuals and communities to get equitable opportunities to reach their full potential. with our department, we operationalize this aspect of equity in our pedagogical framework as well as the contents that we teach the students. for example, all professors utilize a diverse set of teaching tools and close mentorship so that students from all backgrounds and learning styles can be supported to achieve their fullest potential. in addition to this, our hallmark course on social justice ensures that students understand the inequities at micro, mezzo, and macro levels, and how it impacts an individual or community’s ability to access opportunities to achieve well-being. our department defines equity in all four of these ways, and we believe that without a careful and critical investigation of the mechanisms and sources of inequity in distribution, representation and recognition, process and participation, and capabilities, inequities may go unnoticed. or worse, inequities may be blamed on the marginalized. as are result of the above, we are committed to teaching about social justice in ways that: • look beyond the usual questions of diversity and equality, to examine the more complex issues of distribution, representation and recognition, process and participation, and capabilities; • emphasize and explore equity (including all of the above dimensions of equity) in the classroom discussions, readings, assignments, and through field practice. kang/re-envisioning swk education 369 social justice facet 2: anti-oppressive analysis and practice. we begin with an anti-oppressive analysis. our understanding of social justice includes a critical anti-oppressive analysis (morgaine & capous-desyllas, 2014). an anti-oppressive curriculum examines the dynamics of power that produce economic oppression (poverty, homelessness, exploitation, and class disparities) as well as inequities, discrimination, and oppression based upon identity (race, gender, ability, immigration status, religion, sexuality, etc.). our department is committed to respect for diversity, and to considering the impact of human diversity and intersectionality on human development and functioning. to prepare students for practice with diverse individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities, the department emphasizes a critical consideration of the impact of intersectionality on human development and functioning, and the social work practice setting. an anti-oppressive analysis emphasizes the consequences of structural injustice and socioeconomic oppression on the lives of vulnerable populations, and the importance of equity-based practice. such an analysis must centralize the historical, economic, and structural contexts that produce oppression. see tables 2-4 in appendix for examples of assignments. as a result of this analysis, we are committed to the following as we teach students how to engage in social work practice: in the classroom and in the field, we educate students to bring an anti-oppressive analysis into their practice. anti-oppressive practice (aop) requires the social work practitioner to critically examine the various power imbalances that are found in society, within organizational structures, and between the social worker and their clients. aop requires that social workers strategize ways to diminish all three of those power imbalances, promoting equity and empowerment for their clients in all contexts. the department emphasizes the interconnection between individual struggles, structural inequalities, and historical oppression. we also emphasize how those struggles are connected to human diversity and intersectionality. all of these areas of study must be integrated in order to understand human development and functioning, and to engage in empowering practice. a vital aspect of aop is critical analysis of client and social worker relationship. building on the concept of critical reflexivity (d’cruz et al., 2007; fook, 2016; lay & mcguire, 2010), social workers are compelled to locate themselves and their clients within the larger sociopolitical and historical dynamics of power in analyzing and understanding not only the client-worker interactions but also the interactions between the worker, the client, and the larger systems (including organizations and social and economic policies). from the basis of that critical analysis social workers are called to co-create, with clients, interventions that consider changes at all (micro, mezzo, macro) levels. we train our students to think critically about both the strengths and limitations of their agency-based practice, and to be informed of the important critiques of the non-profit industrial complex that has been offered by a range of activists and scholars (incite: women of color against violence, 2007). these critiques contend that when social service advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 370 work is completely disconnected from large social change work it has the potential to calcify social problems. they also argue that many nonprofits are structured like for-profit corporations and may function in ways that do not promote social justice values. and yet, these critics also recognize that most social service workers and social service agencies are operating from the best of intentions and frequently do very important work, despite the reality of working within the significant legal, funding, and structural limitations of 501(c)3s. consequently, our faculty help students to wrestle with these tensions, and to identify ways that agency-based work can be conducted in alignment with the social justice principles we have identified throughout this document. in the classroom and in the field, we educate students to make the connections between the problems facing an individual and the structural issues that may be contributing to those problems. furthermore, such analysis of power is required at all levels of interaction—micro, mezzo, and macro—including in client-social worker interactions. it also encourages seeking interventions that integrate micro, mezzo, and macro level changes, including activism. our goal is to train our students to develop strategies for creating a just society, free from oppression, racism, exploitation, and other forms of discrimination in the larger society by engaging at the community, legal and political levels, while also delivering services with individuals and families in an inclusive manner. in the classroom and in the field, we educate students to make advocacy a central part of their practice. promotion of human and social well-being involves all levels of practice, including advocacy for human rights, social justice, and economic justice. the department explicitly aims to educate students to understand manifestations and mechanisms of oppression. these forms of oppression may include the larger policies, norms, or laws that can impact the ability of social work agencies to provide effective services, as well as those manifestations of injustice that can occur within direct social work practice. students are thus prepared to understand the impact of the organizational realities in which they practice as it affects clients and community members, as well as social workers, and their relationships with each other. with this understanding, students can collaborate with clients or community members as partners with whom to advocate for policies and practices that advance human rights and social, economic, and environmental justice. in the classroom and in the field, we educate students about evidence-based practice. in the classroom and in the field, we introduce students to a wide range of thought, modalities, interventions, programs, adaptations, and ideas that are thought to enhance well-being. we train students in the knowledge and skills related to evidence-based practice but also acknowledge the limitations and need for further model and intervention development to meet the unique needs of communities, particularly marginalized and diverse communities. we understand that the evidence for these practices is not applicable for all individuals, families and communities. we consider how many interventions, services, and programs are not accessible, even to those they were designed to serve. we recognize that some communities are underserved or unserved, and therefore requirements kang/re-envisioning swk education 371 of evidence-based practice can stifle or prohibit the ingenuity and creativity needed to develop programs for them. therefore, we teach students to think about ways that interventions can be adapted and developed. we also teach students to consider other research-informed interventions and promising practices. we teach students about clinical skills from a place of curiosity and compassion— understanding that just as individuals, families, and communities have unique reactions to systems of oppression, students also may have unique reactions to learning the material. we believe that students should be equipped with a wide range of therapeutic tools in order to provide choice in their practice. what may provide regulation, connection, and calm for one, may be triggering and dysregulating for another. the on-going impact of systems of oppression cannot be ignored in every aspect of clinical work and therefore a trauma sensitive approach is woven through courses. we work to destigmatize social work and mental health by both understanding the complex systems within we are living and our natural reactions to those systems. we consider how harm happens in each system in unique ways for different people. we, along with students, challenge ourselves to find many different ways to connect. because critical self-reflection is an integral component of anti-oppressive practice, students have opportunities to self-reflect on not only the material presented, but on how the material sits with students and how reactions are often connected with the lens of their experience. our goal is for this self-reflection to be done with compassion and patience and to be on-going throughout the program in a supportive environment and a life-long practice. we understand that ultimately this helps us to show up authentically in our work. social justice facet 3: critical pedagogy our philosophy of teaching centers social justice-focused content and process the department’s commitment to social justice is carried into teaching and learning; as such, educational content and process must be congruent with each other. deeply influenced by freire’s (1970/2018) critical pedagogy, the department strives to foster an equitable environment where students and instructors co-construct critical knowledge. we believe that students’ own lived experiences and life knowledge can help inform class discussions and practice. deconstructing where ideas or facts come from helps students uncover unstated assumptions, biases, or values, and examine the role of power in the creation of knowledge. we consider critical thinking an essential skill for social work practice an important aspect of critical pedagogy is critical thinking. in this philosophy of teaching, critical thinking incorporates critical analysis that questions normative discourses and excavates dynamics of power that undergird such discourses. social work knowledge is necessarily complex and equivocal because the lives that social workers are entrusted to work with are complex and heterogeneous. furthermore, social workers can unintentionally participate in maintaining repressive normative discourses if they lack advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 372 critical analysis. this critical perspective of knowledge, which is practiced and reinforced through class content and process, helps students understand that critical analysis is an essential tool and process for social justice practice. instructors actively promote the development of multiple perspectives in students’ analyses through class discussions, instructor feedback, and peer feedback. equipped with critical thinking, critical reflection, and respect for diverse paradigms of knowledge, students are prepared to engage in research-informed practice with unwavering attention to social and economic justice. we believe that students should be exposed to a range of theories that foster critical thinking we believe that there is no one all-purpose theoretical approach to our practice. understanding the strengths and limitations of multiple theories will give students a range of perspectives and options from which to draw in their academic work and in their practice. therefore, we are committed to doing the following in our classrooms: • the department fosters critical and complex thinking in students through its education, and this principle is infused and explicitly present throughout the curriculum. in order to foster critical thinking skills, instructors encourage students to question what may be taken for granted/normalized and what may be silenced or “othered” in all aspects of learning, including textbooks, articles, and lectures. to prepare students for practice in today’s diverse world, the department underscores the importance of multiple perspectives in understanding diverse realities. • we help students deconstruct dominant ideologies and behaviors. • faculty invite students to take ownership of their learning rather than assume a traditional role of a passive receiver of education. • faculty and students are encouraged to bring themselves into the course content, putting their lived experiences in the contexts of the class material, and learning from each other’s practice and lives. instructors often urge students to be accountable to the collective’s overall learning by actively participating in all aspects of the learning process. facilitating this active adult learning stance may include opportunities for students to take active leadership in class, such as a class discussion leadership assignment where students assign themselves to lead a brief class discussion. • students are encouraged to extend their critical thinking skills to reflect on the ways in which their assumptions, social locations, and actions influence a situation and how this reflective process in turn changes their thinking and practice. • we are also committed to helping students explore how marginalized communities define justice for themselves. for example, the concept of “restorative justice” comes out of the work of various subordinated groups, including american indigenous populations (zehr, 1990). it is a framework that kang/re-envisioning swk education 373 approaches justice by focusing on the needs of the victims, the offenders, and their communities. it is more focused on healing than on punishment. victims take an active role in the process, while offenders are encouraged to repair the harm they have done. restorative justice is just one example of the different conceptions of social justice to which our department is committed to exposing students. • critical thinking and analysis guide the department’s approach to learning social work theories. the department employs a multi-theoretical model and emphasizes robust and critical understanding of contemporary social and psychological theories that inform social work knowledge and practice. • the department is grounded in the person-in-environment framework. this framework informs the department’s use of ecological and systems perspectives to conceptualize social work practice, which locate the focus of work within the person-in-environment interaction. together these perspectives influence and inform the elements of practice by situating difficulties and interventions within and between the systems at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. this holistic view of the client or community member allows for comprehensive assessments that interrogate interactions and mutual influences between the person and the environment. in doing so, students learn how larger issues of economic or social injustice can impact the immediate well-being of clients and community members. • we encourage students to consider theories that look critically at how society is constructed, as well as how knowledge is produced and disseminated. for instance, critical race theory puts race at the center of critical analysis by focusing on how endemic and pervasive racism is in society and its institutions and emphasizes multiple and varied voices of people of color (williams, 1991). similarly, feminist theories, marxist theories, queer theory, postcolonial theory, and other critical theories also focus on structural analyses of society, while elevating the voices and lived experiences of various marginalized groups. our classes may combine these critical theories with more dominant social work theoretical frameworks to help students develop complex and nuanced theoretical understandings of their work from multiple perspectives. • theories are not assumed to be authoritative or unequivocal but understood as always evolving and enriched by diverse perspectives of participants. thus, the department encourages students to engage in deep interrogation of knowledge paradigms and contextual examination of relevant theories. the emphasis is not on finding the “right” theory that works for every case but rather on critical understanding of theoretical tenets and their applications, moderated by contextual appraisal for just practice. course contents and assignments are designed to foster this learning process. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 374 social justice facet 4: a decolonizing framework preface we acknowledge that there is no one, unified conceptualization of decolonization in scholarly literature. in fact, decolonization is a controversial issue. indigenous scholars such as tuck and yang (2012) warn against turning decolonization into a metaphor and contend that decolonization must “bring about the repatriation of indigenous land and life” (p. 1), and that the project of decolonization is distinct from the project of social justice. we also heed the distinction between colonialism and settler colonialism as argued by scholars of settler colonialism such veracini (2011) and steinman (2016). we interrogate the continuing impact and practice of global colonialism and settler colonialism and our practice as social work educators and practitioners. in this endeavor we use the lens of coloniality (quijano & ennis, 2000) to understand global colonialism: the historical and continued modernist production of eurocentric global hegemony that includes european conquest and occupation; racialization (omi & winant, 2012) and formation of “racial” hierarchy of the world population; re-identification of geocultural regions from the european dominance perspective; production of global capitalism through subjugated labor, resources, and products; and establishment of eurocentric dominance of production of knowledge and culture. veracini (2011) and steinman (2016) distinguish settler colonialism from colonialism in that the project of settler colonialism is displacement and elimination of the indigenous people and world (as compared to domination and extraction of labor and resources of the colonial project). thus, steinman argues, that decolonization and settler decolonization are different projects. in this context, we are aware that the decolonizing framework that we are engaging here is in the sense of global colonialism. this view also at least partially reflects the makeup of our faculty; more than half of us are from nations that are historically, formally, and/or culturally and economically colonized. but more than that, we are thoroughly aware that coloniality is deeply implicated in the system of education, including social work education, within which we were educated and also currently located. in our efforts to avoid reducing decolonizing into a metaphor, we follow the guidance provided by gray et al. (2016): decolonizing social work requires that the [social work] profession acknowledge its complicity and ceases participation in colonial projects, openly condemns the past and continuing effects of colonialism; collaborates with indigenous peoples in engaging in decolonizing activities against public and private colonizing projects, and seeks to remove often subtle vestiges of colonization from theory and practice. (p. 7) kang/re-envisioning swk education 375 background we know that universities are often sites of the colonial project edward said (1978) described how western nations have dealt with the peoples they have colonized: by not merely settling and ruling over them, but also by authorizing views of those people that define how they are understood. gayatri chakravorty spivak (1999) argued that colonized people are forced to engage in discourse, knowledge, laws, and norms that have been developed by the colonizers. western countries perpetuate these views through their educational systems, where western thought becomes the standard – assumed to be universally relevant, valid, and applicable to all. often what we understand as scientific and rational/objective knowledge actually serves the hidden agenda of assuming european superiority and non-european inferiority. universities often center the experiences of white, western people, making them the invisible norm against which all other races and groups are compared. by perpetuating the idea that whiteness is normal, all other people are implicitly (or explicitly) understood to be different, exotic, dangerous, and/or inferior. there is a “direct and material relation between the political processes and social structures of colonialism on the one hand, and western regimes of knowledge and representation on the other . . . western epistemology and systems of knowledge have been integral to the internal colonial domination suffered by indigenous and nonwhite peoples” (tejeda et al., 2003, p. 24). for seattle university, the act of colonization is not merely metaphorical; it is also quite literal. we are on occupied coast salish land, and seattle university is on the homelands of the duwamish people. and we continue to benefit from this settler colonialism and occupation. we know that social work is also often a site of the colonial project. we recognize that the social work profession has often contributed to colonizing and oppression. the profession began, in part, by sending “friendly visitors” to try to change the alleged moral failings of the poor, and by creating settlement houses where immigrants were taught dominant norms and behaviors (addams, 1899; katz, 1996; lasch-quinn, 1993; park & kemp, 2006). the profession also has a history of working with the government to monitor, target, regulate, and discipline communities of color. this has occurred in such areas as the welfare system, child protection services, and the criminal justice system, among others (schiele, 2010). because of social work’s partnership with the state, we recognize that, in the words of freire and moch (1990), “the social worker, as much as the educator, is not a neutral agent, either in practice or in action” (p. 5). in addition, we recognize that social work has often served to uphold economic inequality in the united states. piven and cloward (1971/2012) have documented how social welfare policy functions to support capitalism, rather than supporting poor people. kivel (2006) has argued that social service programs can institutionalize and professionalize serving and controlling the poor instead of working to eradicate poverty. and reisch (2013) has written about the ways in which neoliberal economic policies have shaped and limited social work practice. these and other scholars contend that social workers often blame the victims of economic exploitation and inequality for their own poverty, and focus on “fixing” poor advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 376 people, instead of working to challenge the systems that cause the exploitation and inequality. social work education can perpetuate oppression as well. students are often taught cross-cultural competency that assumes static and generalized conceptions of the cultures being studied. cross-cultural competency frameworks rarely position white experiences as a cultural phenomenon under study, which results in whiteness remaining invisible or the “norm” while simultaneously othering different racial groups. cross cultural competency also puts social work students of color in the untenable position of assuming the social worker is a white american, and thus situates their own communities as “other” and in need of help from white people. this approach only propagates marginalization and internalized racism for students of color, and upholds the worldviews, knowledge bases, and experiences of dominant white society. finally, su’s social work faculty recognize our own culpability. we know that we have been trained in the same oppressive paradigms as the dominant culture, and have internalized many problematic ideas. consequently, we are committed to thinking critically about our own practices and pedagogies. we must also be open to feedback from each other and from students, in order to continue the ongoing work of liberating our teaching. we know that social work also effectively responds to oppression and enacts change. despite the oppressive history described above, the social work profession also contributes to liberatory work, when done thoughtfully and with a focus on social justice. some forms of social work (anti-oppressive practice, strength-based practice, radical social work, critical social work, anti-colonial practice, indigenous social work practice, traumainformed practice, etc.) focus on working with clients and community members in ways that prioritize their autonomy and dignity, and in pursuit of social and economic justice (morgaine & capous-desyllas, 2014; mullaly & molgat, 2002; reynolds, 1942). through clinical practice, social workers respond to the complexities of people’s lived experiences by practicing from equity and anti-oppressive lenses. throughout our country’s history, at times social workers have been actively involved in various social justice movements (antiwar, civil rights, immigrant rights, economic justice, welfare rights, education reform, etc.) and built coalitions with numerous social justice activists and organizations (reisch & andrews, 2014). the profession of social work has made important contributions to social justice. our commitment to decolonizing our curriculum. as a result of all of the above, we are committed to decolonizing our curriculum. • the faculty recognizes from our collective teaching experiences that the lack of representation of non-dominant perspectives as the source of knowledge has been a perennial problem. not only is this shortfall problematic in terms of equity in representation but also it seriously limits students’ ability to learn and use multiple and critical perspectives. kang/re-envisioning swk education 377 • decolonizing knowledge in academia requires challenging oppressive knowledge, pedagogies, and methodologies. social justice requires a relationship between the dominant and the subordinate that allows voices to be heard from the ground up. the dominant must be willing to unlearn domination and embrace their duty to others. • we are committed to training our students to become leaders in dismantling unjust and unequal colonial legacies of power. in order to liberate the classroom, we require faculty and students to reflect on our dominant values and beliefs and to consider alternate ways of knowing, while examining how certain groups of voices, ideas, values, and peoples are marginalized, while others are privileged. • we are committed to training social worker students to attack the systemic roots of poverty and economic inequality, rather than blaming the victims of those systems. this requires educating students about the role that neoliberal economic policies play in the lives of their clients and community members, as well in the design and delivery of social work programs and services. • we are committed to beginning to liberate our profession by looking at social work practice, theory, research, programs, and policy through a critical, decolonized lens. • we are committed to utilizing culturally relevant forms of scholarship and education that resist frameworks and paradigms that serve to universalize. • finally, for all of the above reasons, the social work department has made an explicit commitment to representational equity in our curriculum. at least 50% of the learning materials (defined as required and suggested readings, videos, guest speakers, and exercises) in all social work classes will reflect: • non-dominant perspectives • knowledge and authorship of people of color • knowledge and authorship of other marginalized populations. lessons learned and implications for social work education presented below are the lessons we learned from our department’s work to create and implement a social justice-focused clinical program and their implications for social work education: 1) it is imperative to have a collective commitment to a mission. re-envisioning a curriculum is rarely a smooth process and takes significant time and energy; our process was no exception. however, while the process of re-envisioning clinical social work from a social justice perspective was complicated, sometimes challenging, and demanding (especially since faculty’s workload is already full), the collective commitment to our mission brought us together and inspired us to re-dedicate our time and energy to this necessary work. 2) developing and implementing a social justice-focused clinical social work curriculum is a continuous and iterative process. there is no “end point” as we are all work in progress. faculty regularly examine our effectiveness and advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 378 limitations in integrating social justice and collaborate on continuous assessment, revision, implementation, and reflection. through this process, faculty practice critical analysis and pedagogy, demonstrating consistency in our philosophy and practice. 3) social justice must be addressed and its applications must be articulated in each course (rather than only in a stand-alone course on justice or in policy courses). vertical and horizontal integration of social justice concepts and applications throughout the curriculum enhances students’ comprehension of social justice as an integral part of clinical social work. furthermore, social justice must be addressed in each stage of clinical practice (engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation), and multi-level (micro/mezzo/macro) analysis and intervention should be required. assignments can be designed so that students are challenged to make explicit connections between social justice concepts and practice (atteberry-ash et al., 2019). see tables 2-4 in appendix for sample assignments. 4) social justice commitment should be consistently present in both explicit and implicit curricula and in departmental policy and processes. while the department’s primary focus was on the explicit curriculum, it guided our implicit curriculum as well as how we operated as a department. for example, the department took leadership in social justice issues within the college of arts and sciences, such as offering social justice teach-in sessions, writing open letters about institutional racism, sponsoring campus-wide events to promote social justice, and supporting student activism. consistent with equity principles, the department elected to allow all full-time faculty (tenured, tenure track, and non-tenure/clinical track) and staff equal voting rights on all departmental decisions except those prohibited by the university’s policies, such as tenure and promotion decisions. allocating resources, such as student scholarships, is guided by the equity principles. the department’s social justice focus also impacted student recruitment as well as faculty and staff hiring since we were unambiguous about our social justice commitment in our communications with prospective candidates. 5) evaluating our progress has been more difficult than we thought. we had instituted social justice and diversity survey for every course in the program to gain student feedback, but the response rate fell low after a few quarters even with incentives like a drawing for gift cards. students complained that they felt over-surveyed since this survey was in addition to the regular, university-based course evaluation survey and the msw program year-end survey. the program put the social justice and diversity survey on hold at this time and is researching a better way to gain student feedback for every course. in the meanwhile, the program is relying more on other avenues of feedback (e.g., director’s tea, community advisory committee, and practicum advisory board). kang/re-envisioning swk education 379 6) evaluating the impact of re-envisioning a clinical curriculum on clinical practice in a systematic manner is challenging. we have received anecdotal information from practicum instructors and alums about how our curriculum is influencing their practice in the field. however, our current alumni survey does not capture this information sufficiently. in addition, since the program has been in existence for only five years the long-term impact is yet to be seen. the program is currently researching a better way to gain this perspective. 7) institutional context is important. as discussed in the social justice statement section, the department’s effort is consistent with the institution’s social justice mission and goals. the university supports the department’s work on social justice because it helps the institution achieve its overall goals. lack of congruence between the department and the institution may pose additional challenges. in this paper, i shared the process of building and living a social justice-focused clinical program, the departmental statement of social justice commitment, and implications for social work education. as indicated, the work is continuous and will evolve as we continue to grow and learn and respond to changes to the higher education 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(1990). changing lenses: a new focus for crime and justice. herald press. author note: hye-kyung kang, seattle university, department of social work. email: kangh@seattleu.edu https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/54.3.195 https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649215615889 https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/43.6.527 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203465547 https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/tuck%20and%20yang%202012%20decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf https://clas.osu.edu/sites/clas.osu.edu/files/tuck%20and%20yang%202012%20decolonization%20is%20not%20a%20metaphor.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/00377317.2019.1702344 https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473x.2011.10648799 mailto:kangh@seattleu.edu advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 384 appendix a table 1. sample student surveys: social justice & diversity survey & year-end survey table 2. sample assignments overview table 3a. paper 1: engagement table 3b. paper 1: assessment table 4. paper 2: research & theory informed intervention table 1. sample student surveys: social justice & diversity survey & year-end survey social justice & diversity survey* the su master of social work program strives to practice social justice & embody diversity in every aspect of the program from the way we administer to how we teach. this survey will help us to identify the extent to which both are practiced in the classroom. please answer all of the likert scale questions & use the comment box to supplement your responses. 1= none at all, 2= a little, 3= a moderate amount, 4= a lot, 5= a great deal q1. to what extent did the course content (reading materials, activities, assignments etc.) in the seminar portion of socw 5010 "foundation field practicum," promote social justice? q2. to what extent did the course content (reading materials, activities, assignments etc.) in the seminar portion of socw 5010 "foundation field practicum," promote diversity? q3. how effective was your instructor in the seminar portion of socw 5010 "foundation field practicum," in addressing social justice in his/her/their instruction (teaching methods, facilitation, etc.)? q4. how effective was your instructor in the seminar portion of socw 5010 "foundation field practicum," in promoting diversity in his/her/their instruction (teaching methods, facilitation, etc.)? q5. please share additional comments regarding social justice & diversity in the seminar portion of socw 5010. *the same survey was conducted on every msw course. year-end survey [diversity section]** please rate the following statements from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree". 1= strongly disagree, 2=disagree, 3= neither agree nor disagree, 4=agree, 5=strongly disagree q1. social work classes encourage discussions about diversity & difference. q2. i feel free to raise issues about diversity that are important to me in my social work classes. q3. the social work program demonstrates a commitment to diversity in its: a. curriculum b. selection of field sites & clientele c. faculty d. student cohort q4. i am treated with respect in the social work program: a. by faculty b. by administration & staff c. by my fellow classmates q5. please share additional comments about diversity in the program. ** this survey is part of a larger year-end survey. only the section on diversity is shown here as an example. kang/re-envisioning swk education 385 table 2. sample assignments overview assignment 1: engagement & assessment (part 1 of the case study assignment) course: socw 5610 advanced practice i: clinical social work with individuals case study assignment this three-part paper assignment is designed to help you build a complete case study. while this assignment is divided into three parts, they collectively form an integrated case study. therefore, you must use the same case for all three assignments. the assignment takes you through the process of change: engagement, assessment, intervention, & evaluation. in this assignment, you are strongly encouraged to integrate knowledge & skills from generalist curriculum courses (e.g., human behavior in the social environment, human development, social justice, policy, & research) as well as courses that are concurrently taken in this quarter (mental health diagnosis & specialized practice practicum). this assignment supports integration between course content & field learning. it also enhances horizontal & vertical integration of learning as students are expected to build on the generalist practice curriculum knowledge & skills as well as the mental health diagnosis course (which is concurrently taken) content. read the following instructions carefully & address all items on the list in your paper. all identifying information must be removed and/or disguised. use pseudonyms for individual names, agency names, etc. graduate-level writing is required for this assignment & will be considered in grading. i urge you to consult with the writing center in advance to get editing support before you submit your paper. paper 1: engagement, assessment, & case formulation paper 2: research & theory informed intervention paper 3: evaluation, ethical consideration, & self-reflection table 3a. paper 1: engagement section objective(s) a. description of client • who is the client? document brief identifying information including name (a pseudonym), age, gender identification, racial identification, & ethnic identification. b. referral • who referred the client? self-referral? voluntary? involuntary? • when was the referral made? what was the referral process? c. engagement process & use of self • what is the context of client engagement? (e.g., community-based mental health agency setting? school setting? medical setting? etc.) • when was the context of your initial contact with the client? (at intake? after intake & then assigned to you? transferred from another worker to you?) • what is your role with the client? how was the relationship negotiated with and/or explained to the client? • what are your strengths in terms of working with this client? • what are your initial fears & assumptions, especially in regard to intersectional identities/positionalities? • what are some possible transference/counter-transference issues? • what power dynamics have you anticipated/observed/experienced? • reflect on the engagement process. what have you learned about your use of self in this process? what are some contextual issues you might have missed in the early phase of engagement? how would you use this insight in the continuous engagement with the client? advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 386 table 3b. paper 1: assessment section objective(s) d. presenting concerns/ issues & history a. what are the presenting issues from the client’s perspective? b. what are the presenting issues from others’ perspectives (family, friends, referral source, etc.)? c. what is the history of the issue(s)?  when did it begin? is there an identifiable incident?  how has the client been coping with it? what has been helpful? what exacerbates the issue? d. has the client experienced similar issue(s) before? what happened? e. has the client had similar issues before? what were the results? f. what would the client most want help with? e. contextual intersectional analysis (biopsychosocialspiritual assessment) a. what is the client’s age? in which activities & responsibilities does the client engage in accordance with his/her/their life stage (e.g., school, job, etc.)? what are the resources & barriers related to the client’s life stage? b. how does the client identify in terms of race & ethnicity? what is their impact on his/her/their life? (e.g., how does the client experience structural & institutional privilege or marginalization due to his/her/their identities? what is the client’s relationship with his/her/their racial & ethnic identities? how does the larger community support or marginalize the client’s identities?) c. how does the client identify in terms of gender? how does the gender identification impact the client’s life? (e.g., how does the client experience structural & institutional privilege or marginalization due to gender identification? what is the client’s relationship with his/her/their gender identity? how does the larger community support or marginalize the client’s gender identity?) d. how does the client identify in terms of sexual orientation? how does the sexual orientation impact the client’s life? (e.g., how does the client experience structural & institutional privilege or marginalization due to sexual orientation? what is the client’s relationship with his/her/their sexual orientation identification? how does the larger community support or marginalize the client’s sexual orientation?) e. what is the client’s socio-economic status, & how does it influence his/her/their life? (what are the client’s income sources? are the client’s basic needs met? what impact does the socio-economic status have on the client’s ability to access material or social capital resources? how does the client experience structural & institutional privilege or marginalization due to socio-economic status?) f. how is the client’s physical health & how does it influence his/her/their life? are there any health/medical problems (including substance abuse)? does the client have access to culturally appropriate medical & dental care (including routine care, chronic or short-term illness care, emergency care, rehabilitation care, & long-term care)? g. if the client has disability issues, how is the disability understood in the client’s community contexts? how adapted/accessible are home, neighborhood, workplace, school, etc.? what are the client’s specific needs, challenges, or strengths related to disabilit(ies)? h. what does spirituality mean in the client’s life? does the client follow a religious or spiritual tradition? does the client have other connection to spirituality (such as a moral or philosophical values/beliefs)? how do the client’s spirituality and/or religion shape the meaning of the client’s life? i. what is the client’s immigration and/or citizenship status & history? how does the client’s (or client’s family’s) immigration status or history influence the client’s life (including structural & institutional privilege or marginalization)? kang/re-envisioning swk education 387 section objective(s) j. what is the clients’ family context? who does the client identify as his/her/their family (family of origin, chose family, etc.)? what is the relationship dynamic between family members? use a family genogram to illustrate. k. what is the client’s community context (e.g., how does the client identify & feel about his/her/their communities)? who are the client’s support system, important friendships or relationships, & what are their impact on the client’s life? use an ecomap to illustrate. how does the larger community support or marginalize the client’s communit(ies)? l. what is the client’s developmental history (including intellectual, physical, emotional, etc.)? include all significant developmental/childhood experiences, markers, & challenges. what is the impact of the client’s developmental history on his/her/their current life? m. does the client have any relevant intimate relationship history? what is the influence of the relationship history? n. strengths & challenges. what are the client’s key strengths? how does the client protect themselves from anxiety & stress? what self-soothing or self-regulation strategies does the client use? what resources or obstacles facilitate or inhibit the client’s management of current issues? o. does the client have any previous experiences with clinical or psychological services? how did he/she/they experience them (strengths, challenges, etc.)? describe relevant history & current contexts. p. does the client have any involvement in legal or social services? describe relevant history & current contexts. what is the impact of the legal/social involvement on the client’s life? q. which social, institutional, & local policies are implicated in this case? what is the impact of these policies on the client’s ability to cope with the current issue(s) or to access necessary services or resources? what is the client’s understanding of this impact? f. safety assessment. is the client in danger to self or others? if so, has the safety plan been constructed, documented, & implemented? (students must report any safety concerns to the practicum instructor & follow the agency protocol regarding safety.) table 3c. paper 1: theoretical case formulation section objective(s) g. theoretical case formulation the main task of this section is to draw a theory-informed analysis of the case, i.e., “i think this is what is going on in this case, & these are theories that help me understand what the client is experiencing.” which theories (use theories from hbse, human development, and/or social justice classes) help you understand what this client is experiencing? use no more than three theories so that you can engage in deeper analysis. briefly summarize what the theory says (i.e., what are some tenets that are relevant in this case?) & describe how it helps you better understand what the client may be experiencing & the context of his/her/their experience. advances in social work, summer 2022, 22(2) 388 table 4. paper 2: research & theory informed intervention sample assignment 2: research& theory-informed intervention (part 2 of the case study assignment) paper 2: research & theory informed intervention section objective(s) a. theoryinformed intervention discuss how the theories you used in the case formulation section inform you about the direction of intervention. please make a specific link between the theory & the intervention. b. the best research evidence conduct literature review of relevant literature (library research) to find the intervention models/strategies that are most likely to be effective for the client. discuss how they may be applied to your intervention with this client. include critical analysis of evidence-based interventions in the context of social justice & cultural relevance for the client. c. drawing upon the theories & the research evidence, describe your plan for intervention. a. identify & discuss your treatment goals & treatment methods, separating immediate from long term. how would you collaborate with your client on the treatment planning? what would be the core elements of a treatment contract with this client? are these interventions likely to be accepted by the client? are there elements that might be uncomfortable or unacceptable to the client? are the interventions realistically available & can they be funded? b. what social justice-oriented social change goals can be part of, or related to, your work with the client? what resources might you mention to the client as ways to promote the changes they wish to help make? what resources might you help connect the client with to promote these changes? what clientcentered advocacy would you engage? how might you work to promote social changes, including policy changes, related to this client & case? c. use your agency’ treatment plan template or sample templates discussed in class to write up a treatment plan that would be appropriate for your agency’s context. d. what support would you need from your practicum instructor? schiele, j. h. (2010). social welfare policy: regulation and resistance among people of color. sage publications. coburn final jan 25 17 correspondence address: elaine coburn, international studies, glendon college, york university, 2275 bayview ave, toronto, on, m4n 3m6; email: ecoburn@glendon.yorku.ca issn : 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 review essay against the grain: socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng elaine coburn york university, canada abstract this contribution seeks to highlight the important scholarship of roxana ng, arguably one of canadian sociology and political economy’s most underappreciated theorists. like her activism, ng’s academic work is both wideranging yet firmly focused on major, unjust inequalities. her research particularly concerns the canadian capitalist political economy but inevitably, given the embeddedness of these social relations within worldwide historical relations, stretches beyond national borders. in particular, ng sought to unpack the everyday, intertwined – exploitative and unjust – relations of class, race, and gender, and the ways these unjust relations are articulated through migration and citizenship. this contribution situates the reception and uneven uptake of ng’s varied work before critically analysing her contributions to understanding (1) immigrant women’s labour in canada, (2) the complex racialized, gendered relations of power in the academy, and (3) the liberatory potential of embodied epistemologies, specifically qi gong meditation. in the conclusions, i consider the overall contributions and some contradictions of her work, in moving from the local to the global, and from the personal to the political. keywords academy; globalization; roxana ng; sociology; traditional chinese medicine roxana ng’s theorising and empirical research, like her activism, is systematically concerned with major, unjust inequalities, how they are produced and reproduced, as well as how they may be challenged. specifically, ng seeks to understand gender, race, and class as these are articulated through contemporary nation-states and capitalist relationships, drawing in part on her own insights as an immigrant woman to canada. at the same time, ng challenges epistemologies rooted in cartesian mind-body dualities. informed by unwarranted assumptions about radical separations between the intellect and the body-spirit, and between human beings and socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 137 other life forces, she argues that these dualities are unhelpful. not least, they obscure embodied ways of knowing that may be critical sources of insights, at once personal and political. as this suggests, ng’s sociology and political economy include strong commitments, simultaneously political, epistemological and with methodological implications. she takes seriously the lived experience of relatively dominated persons, understanding the lives of immigrant women, in particular, as sources of insight into webs of social relations that are both immediate and local, while stretching world wide. she insists on the relevance of ways of knowing that specifically engage the body-spirit as well as the intellect. specifically, she values insights from traditional chinese medicine, usually marginalized in european traditions of knowing. she rejects the positivist premise that political commitments to social justice represent a contaminating bias that warps “objective” knowledge. instead, she maintains that these commitments lend urgency to the search for truths. in this way, political commitments to social justice inform a research approach emphasizing the epistemological value of the lived experiences of relatively dominated, racialized women. underlying this is the premise that all knowledge emerges from researchers and social actors who are inevitably socially situated and who are never neutral but hold political (and moral) values. in keeping with this insight, ng maintains that often, even usually, true descriptions and analyses of social realities are disguised by hegemonic ideologies that misrepresent actual social relationships. typically, she argued, existing social inequalities are understood as inevitable or desirable, so supporting the interests of the powerful who benefit from these inequalities. sociological inquiry may therefore play an important role in unmasking the common-sense of hegemonic ideologies, not least by confronting dominant, ideological claims with the realities of social life as experienced everyday by dominated actors, including immigrant women. in this approach, ng’s work joins other feminist epistemologies and methodologies, as elaborated, for instance, by collins (2009), harding (2004), and smith (2004). with them, she pursues new ways of doing research outside still-dominant, if often critiqued positivist paradigms, by centering subaltern women’s standpoints as a (if not the) privileged starting point into social inquiry. in this review essay, after situating the reception and uneven uptake of ng’s varied work, i offer a detailed account of three major strands of ng’s theorizing and research. in particular, i emphasize commonalities across what might appear to be quite different concerns regarding first, immigrant women’s labour, second, complex relations of power in the academy and third, the liberatory potential of embodied epistemologies, specifically qi gong meditation. in the conclusions, i consider the overall contributions of her work, in moving from the local to the global, and from the personal to the political. yet, i point out that her work is not without tensions. not least, i consider whether it is possible to reconcile ng’s insistence, on the one hand, elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 138 regarding the useful, expert role of the sociologist in unmasking hegemonic ideologies and, on the other, her urgings that researchers take seriously the lived experienced and beliefs of relatively dominated social actors who may accept hegemonic accounts of their own lives. ultimately, i suggest that ng’s research does offer new ways of understanding the intersections between the local and the global and the personal and the political. by privileging a feminist epistemology that takes into account the ways that race, class, gender and nation are produced through everyday interactions, she sheds new light on workplaces that range from the garment industry to the academy. importantly, however, her sociology and political economy is not only descriptive and explanatory. rather, she offers pragmatic insights that inform struggles for social justice, especially if not only those led by and for immigrant women. situating ng’s sociology and political economy in many ways, ng’s sociology and political economy are shaped by the institutional ethnographic approach developed by her mentor, dorothy smith. recalling her decisive encounter with smith, when she was working in the vancouver-based women’s centre where smith was an active presence, ng (2006, p. 96, n. 2) writes: “i was so impressed by the feminist methodology that she (smith) was developing that i left vancouver in 1978 to study with her at the ontario institute for studies in education” (oise), located at the university of toronto. certainly, as goli rezai-rashti (1994) observes, ng’s contributions draw on smith’s emphasis on the importance of beginning theory from social relationships as experienced in everyday life. writing and analysing from her own standpoint as a racialized immigrant woman to canada, however, ng expanded smith’s feminist framework, as originally formulated, to emphasize the ways that race, class and gender are discoverable not as distinct, abstract concepts, but, “in the everyday/everynight world of experience” (smith 2004, p. 42; for a brief discussion of ng’s research as an exemplary application of institutional ethnography, see campbell and gregor (2000, pp. 114-116). as smith (1992, p. 90) observes, ng has usefully explored how, for instance, “the category ‘immigrant women’ is constituted in the social relations of the canadian state and the labour market.” such socially constructed categories are not conceptual abstractions. rather, they profoundly shape and are reproduced by supposedly neutral institutional processes, as well as buttressing stereotypes that inform everyday social interactions. put differently, ng’s work shows how the historically contingent ontological category of “the immigrant woman” has consequences for the actual, lived experiences of chinese women, among others, who have socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 139 migrated to and live and work in canada.1 at the same time, the lived experience of actual immigrant women may be used as evidence to challenge hegemonic, often stereotypical conceptions of “immigrant women.” ng’s work can be understood as contributing to a burgeoning anti-racist feminist theorizing and marxist scholarship, much of it connected with the ontario institute for studies in education (oise) at the university of toronto. alongside daiva stasiulis and abigail bakan (2005) himani bannerji (2000), sherene razack (1998), nandita sharma (2006) and sunera thobani (2007), among others, ng’s theorizing and research is attentive to the simultaneous experience of race and gender as articulated through the state and capitalist class relations. her research may therefore be understood as participating in scholarly conversations that are explicitly informed by political efforts to support migrant workers, including research concerned with: • how a vastly unequal world capitalist system produces mass migration and a gendered, racialized labour force divided between citizens and noncitizens, the latter including “illegal” or undocumented migrant workers (stasiulis & bakan 2005); • the ways that, in the latest iteration of historically changing ideologies of nationalism, the state of canada officially valorizes discourses of cultural difference and diversity, obscuring gendered and racialized class inequalities (bannerji, 2000; • how relations of domination and subordination are organized and sustained in the classroom encounter, which is never a “naïve” interaction between men and women, whites and racialized others, but always informed by diverse histories of radically unequal colonial and neo-colonial power (razack, 1998); • how national immigration policies enable people to enter canada, where they often work without formal legal status and so without formal legal protections granted other workers, functioning as cheap labour profitable to capitalist enterprises (sharma, 2006); • the ways that the law symbolically transforms the raw violence of colonialism into new nationalisms, creating a class of legal citizens who act as “exalted subjects,” enjoying powers denied to racialized, legally demarcated and implicitly inferior others (thobani, 2007). put another way, ng’s research may be understood as part of a broader scholarly conversation, informed by pressing political struggles and led 1 in referring to historical ontologies, i borrow from philosopher ian hacking (2002). through this concept, hacking calls attention to ways of being that are historically possible at particular moments and that subsequently disappear. same-gender sex, for instance, has existed with and without the historical ontology of the queer, gay, lesbian or bisexual person. similarly, women may cross borders but “the immigrant woman,” as an ontological category – and associated stereotypes – comes into being through state institutional procedures, and other means, at a given historical moment and may subsequently disappear. hacking himself develops the concept of historical ontologies from michel foucault’s vocabulary. elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 140 primarily by racialized women scholars, investigating the imbrications among race, gender and labour, law, nation and capitalism. given her scholarly and activist concerns, it is unsurprising that ng’s publications have appeared primarily in feminist, anti-racist and socialist journals. these include, for instance, publications in canadian women’s studies/les cahiers de la femme (2002), canadian ethnic studies (1981), and studies in political economy: a socialist review (2007). in addition, she has published in edited scholarly collections that offer radical critiques of an unjust status quo, including books like the politics of diversity: feminism, marxism and nationalism, edited by roberta hamilton and michèle barrett (ng, 1986), pedagogies of difference: rethinking education for social change, edited by peter pericles trifonas (ng, 2003), and indigenous peoples’ wisdom and power: affirming our knowledge through narratives, edited by julian kunnie and ivy nomalungelo (ng, 2006). these titles are suggestive of ng’s diverse but related interests in anti-racist feminisms and marxist theories, as well as in the social construction of the nation, education systems, and understandings about what does (and does not) constitute knowledge. in many instances, ng’s publications reflect her close ties to political and social activism. thus, some of her writing was published with the support of advocacy and political organizations and was specifically intended to inform struggles, in a pragmatic, immediate way. her early co-authored work, immigrant housewives in canada, for instance, was published by the immigrant women’s centre in toronto (ng & ramirez, 1981). along not dissimilar lines, she was part of a collective that edited race, class, gender: bonds and barriers (vorst et al., 1989), published with the support of the society for socialist studies. as this survey of her writing suggests, ng both participated in and was supported by institutionalized as well as informal networks of radical feminist, anti-racist and socialist scholars, as well as by social justice activists, in and outside the academy. at the same time, this representative (if non-exhaustive) overview of ng’s publications suggests another reality, shared by many radical feminist, antiracist and socialist scholars. that is, her research and theorizing was and remains relatively marginalized within more mainstream academic publications. by way of illustration, despite her consistent concern with the social reproduction of social inequality, a major sociological question, the canadian journal of sociology does not contain a single citation of ng’s work. the canadian review of sociology has just three references to her scholarship (eichler, 1985; li, 1992; sharma, 2001), each limited to a short, parenthetical reference to her research by and for chinese immigrant women. in other words, ng’s theorizing and research have been taken up by politically like-minded colleagues, but much of her work is circulated apart from a (euro-canadian, liberal) “malestream” social scientific tradition. these traditions still understand radical feminisms, anti-racisms and socialisms as secondary and specialized. professional scholarly competency, socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 141 as a sociologist, does not demand familiarity with the approaches developed by ng and other feminists, anti-racists and marxists (for a useful account of how the marginalization of feminisms, anti-racisms and marxisms is routinely accomplished in academia, see smith, 2004, especially chapter 3). perhaps then, it is not surprising that there is no critical accounting of ng’s work taken as a whole. when other scholars have mobilized her work, they tend to pull apart her varied writings about social inequality, considering each empirical domain as a separate matter. typically, for instance, eichler (1985, p. 625) cites ng for her co-authored study of immigrant housewives in the context of a feminist analysis of gendered househould labour. in a separate publication, shahjahan (2014, pp. 2-3) draws upon ng’s rejection of cartesian mind-body dualities to develop ideas about decolonizing pedagogies in the education system. last, mackey (2002) mobilizes ng’s work in her critical analysis of canadian official multicultural policies of “cultural difference and national identity.” such diverse uses of ng’s writing are a testament to the wide-ranging applications of her research. nonetheless, the consequence of this characteristically segmented mobilization of her insights is that there is no single, overall, critical appraisal of her theoretical and empirical research. there are, however, occasional essays explaining the important impact and influence ng had on her students, many of whom she wrote with collaboratively (e.g., mathew, wong, ng, woschuk & patton, 2008). diana gustafson (1998), for instance, recounts her experience in one of ng’s graduate classes. unconventionally, this class featured qi gong meditation, deliberately challenging cartesian dualities of thought and body, mind and practice. as gustafson explains, her initial, deep scepticism about ng’s pedagogical methods cannot be separated from the dominance and hence taken-for-granted authority of western ontologies and epistemologies in the canadian classroom. yet, in the end, gustafson suggests that ng’s traditional chinese medicine-based teaching, as well as ng’s careful construction of a “safe and supportive environment” allowed for “transformative learning” (1998, p. 55), that profoundly altered gustafson’s understandings of knowledge, health, medicine, and ultimately of herself as an embodied being. if such essays offer important insights into ng’s pedagogy, epistemology and her impact as a teacher, nonetheless they do not offer an overview of ng’s theorizing and research. ironically, although ng consistently demonstrated a high degree of reflexivity, situating herself within her research by making explicit the immigrant woman academic’s standpoint from which she researched, taught and wrote, she never produced a critical overview of her own contributions. her professional webpage offers only a short summary of her work, including a radically incomplete résumé of her publications – she lists five co-authored books and just two co-authored articles of the several dozen that she elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 142 published.2 for whatever reason, ng never issued an edited collection of her own essays, with an introduction that might have sought to explain the tensions and commonalities across theorizing and research that she did over more than three decades. this review essay therefore seeks to partially remedy this lacuna by considering, together, three significant theoretical and empirical contributions that ng made in her teaching, writing and activism. specifically, i survey, first, her research on globalization from the standpoint of migrant women workers, second, her writing on academia from her own standpoint as a minoritized, immigrant woman, and third, her insights into challenging opposition-mobilizing insights from traditional chinese medicine. in the conclusion, i consider some of the commonalities and tensions across these three important areas of ng’s theorizing and research. globalization from the standpoint of migrant women workers ng’s research was motivated by questions about the production and reproduction of unjust social inequalities, as well as the possibilities and strategies for creating more socially equal and just relationships. as briefly observed above, in seeking answers, she consistently began from the standpoint of dominated classes and groups. in particular, ng privileged the viewpoint and experiences of migrant women workers in canada. hence, an important preoccupation from about the 1990s onwards was ng’s concern with the latest phase of world capitalism, popularly referred to as globalization. given hegemonic conceptions that celebrate globalization as the harbinger of wealth, but also of human rights, rising ethical standards and even the end of sweatshops and pollution (ng, 2002a, p. 74), ng asked if this characterization of globalization was true and, if so, for whom.3 specifically, she asked, as a concrete empirical question, if this characterization of globalization is accurate from the standpoint of the mostly female, mostly immigrant asian garment workers in canada. in asking questions from such perspectives, she insisted, “abstract, macro processes” (ng, 2002a, p. 7) like globalization are brought back to the realities of everyday social relations, particularly the experiences of those objectively exploited and dominated. abstract theory is made to confront everyday social existence. 2 see her website, now under the authority of the estate of roxana ng: www.oise.utoronto.ca/lhae/faculty_staff/1596/roxana_ng.html 3 i understand “globalization” as the world-wide reach of capitalist social relationships, including through the liberalization of trade and finance. a typically optimistic assessment of globalization, from the popular if specialist economics magazine the economist (2007), is the following assertion: “it’s easy to assume, with globalisation, that a rising tide lifts all boats. and most people do gain, even if the improvements in their way of life can sometimes be hard to discern…” here, failure to appreciate the benefits of globalization are understood as difficulty in “discerning” them, not as evidence that globalization may not be as beneficial for “most people” as is often supposed. socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 143 from the perspectives of migrant women workers in canada, ng argued, it was clear that globalization was not the positive development championed by specialized economics and business media. rather, globalization, characterized by instantaneous world financial exchanges and the ease of capital movements across the globe – enabled by new technologies and facilitated through trade agreements understood as first and foremost political agreements (ng, 2007, pp. 202-205) – was associated with stagnant wages rather than increased wealth and limited respect for workers’ legal rights, never mind wellbeing. specifically, the transformation of the global political economy from the 1970s to 1990s, meant important changes in the world garment industry (ng, 2007). increased global competition and the creation of special export processing zones (epzs), featuring low corporate taxes and few labour rights, were facilitated by free trade agreements that specifically diminished protections for domestic industries. in efforts to compete with lower production costs elsewhere, not least in epzs, most of which are located in asia, garment manufacturers in canada shut down production, entailing massive layoffs as they shifted from sites in canada to lower cost production sites worldwide. clothing was and is then imported back to canada, through internationalized production chains made possible through new transportation and communications technologies. the remaining garment industry in canada shifted from formal labour to casualized homework, often piecework (ng, 2002a, pp. 75-76), in an effort to lower production costs and remain competitive with overseas operations. at the same time, unionization within the garment industry dropped from a high of about 40% in the 1960s and 1970s to 20% in the 1990s (p. 77), in part because of concerted resistance by governments to changing labour legislation that would allow for the unionization of homeworkers, leaving many workers without organized worker advocacy. in describing these processes, ng confronted the myth of globalization and its supposed universal benefits with the realities of the restructuring of the garment industry in canada. she documented the ways this left immigrant women workers engaged in increasingly precarious, isolated, low-paid work. at the same time, ng contrasted chinese garment workers’ situation in canada with stereotypical discourses casting chinese immigrants as successful and wealthy, hence not in need of scholarly investigation nor of solidarity. in the late 1990s and early 2000s, common sense discourse around chinese immigrants in canada stressed their wealth – as ng put it, the idea that “they bring lots of money into canada and build monster homes” (ng, 2002b, p. 2). yet, in reality, many chinese migrant women workers were and are facing terrible working and living conditions. as ng explained, “not only are they not rich. they are the subjects of severe exploitation, and sexism and racism in the labour market” (2002b, p. 2). indeed, ng stressed that nonenglish speaking women garment workers from china serve as a factor of adjustment for capitalist employers. these women’s suppressed wages, nonelaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 144 unionized home working conditions – later transforming into flexible movement between homework and factories (ng, 2002b, p. 8) – and irregular labour, enabled capitalist employers to maintain profits despite intensified, global competition. ng thus laid bare the actual, everyday social relations and realities behind “globalization” for these women workers against mainstream economics’ suggestions that globalization leads to uniform improvements to the livelihoods of all. where mainstream economic news celebrated globalization, she mobilized evidence that describes the realities of everyday, gendered exploitation of a captive labour force. in particular, ng observed that the beneficiaries of chinese immigrant women’s labour were capitalist employers, who preserved profit margins by using these women’s work as a flexible, inexpensive variable in production. at the same time, ng unmasked stereotypes that cast chinese immigrants to canada as a homogenously wealthy community, emphasizing the precarious, hard existence of many chinese migrant women workers. on the strength of such observations, ng argued these women’s position within the world capitalist political economy is that of captive workers, despite their formally free status. that is, she argued that these women are simultaneously “essential to and disposable within a capitalist economy” (ng, 2002a, p. 5). their labour is necessary to allow for the production of cheap clothing and so profits for the owners, yet may be discarded during periods of lower demand. moreover, this captive status, despite the low pay and uncertain hours, is reinforced by multiple factors. these include the fact many do not speak english and lack affordable childcare that might enable them to work outside the home, in a context where women are still responsible for most childcare and unpaid household labour. further, these women’s skills are devalued, since regardless of the substantive content and complexity of the work itself, their women’s work is constructed as less skilled than work done by men within a gendered division of labour (ng, 2002a, p. 5). aggravating this negative assessment of the women’s labour, in canada, western educational certificates are the only accepted proof of skill and competency (ng & shan, 2010, pp. 176-178). in short, a lack of formal, western educational credentials is taken as proof of lack of skill, so justifying lower wages as “unskilled” labour. at the global level, the hardening of immigration and refugee requirements and limitations on migrant worker mobility, combines with human trafficking on a broad scale to create a new category of illegal or undocumented racialized workers. because of their illegal status, these workers have few formal rights (ng, 2002a, p. 77). hence, globalization is characterized by a global division of racialized labour, in which these women’s illegal or undocumented status exacerbates their vulnerability to pressures from capitalist employers, making it difficult to leave even the most badly paid, precarious piece-work. in such ways, ng unpacks the complex constellation of factors contributing to these women as formally free but actually unfree labour, a consequence of a range of variables, from women’s responsibilities socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 145 for unpaid childcare and household labour to the implications of immigration law for ease of worker organization and respect for workers’ rights. although ng does not draw out these insights for more general analyses of the world capitalist system, it is not difficult to imagine these. hence, for instance, if these women’s formally free labour is actually captive labour, this is suggestive of the contradictions of a capitalist system that employs liberal rhetorics of freedom while overlooking the reality that many workers have few alternatives to badly-paid, precarious work for survival. likewise, in emphasizing the ways that undocumented workers, for instance, are created politically through formal immigration, and refugee and migrant work policies limiting their mobility and rights, ng drew attention to these as deliberate political processes rather than economically or technologically determined inevitabilities. ng applied the same critical acuity to the study of programmes that were supposedly meant to help migrant women workers as she did to mainstream economic myths about the supposedly universal benefits of globalization. in practice, she argued, training programmes for these women tend to be motivated by the needs of states and employers, not by the needs of women migrant workers themselves (ng, 2002b, p. 9). hence, such “training” programmes imagine the women to be the problem, their poor working conditions a straightforward consequence of their lack of english language skills and supposedly limited work competencies. this meant that advocacy for these women focussed on improved personal skills. at the same time, such approaches left unchallenged the gendered idea of these women as unskilled workers, therefore deserving of lower pay and incapable of other, supposedly more skilled and better paid kinds of work. moreover, such approaches did not address racism in and outside of the workplace, as factors limiting employment mobility, including across borders. neither did these approaches consider these workers’ precarious legal status and the problems this poses for formal labour organizing and the protection of workers’ rights. finally, these approaches leave unexamined questions of childcare and the gendered division of labour. in short, training leaves unconsidered a host of critical factors that these women face, from legal constraints to discrimination to gendered double days as they seek better paying employment. yet, ironically, ng argued that such state training programmes could fulfil some important, if unintended, functions for migrant women workers (ng, 2002b, pp. 7-9). thus, for instance, english language classes were attended, not necessarily in order to enable job mobility, but rather to enable parents to understand english language correspondence about their children. training classes in new garment-making skills were taken up, not so much with the aim of better pay or employment – workers were very realistic about their limited opportunities, ng observes (p. 7) – but, for instance, to learn how to make affordable, stylish new clothes for themselves and family members. such training sessions were also important in allowing workers to socialize, including the exchange of complaints about working conditions, sometimes elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 146 resulting in coordinated actions against employers, for instance, around unpaid work. in some instances, training coordinators emphasized formal decision-making and organization, creating spaces for debate, decisionmaking and action, so that such sessions became important spaces for learning about how to organize debates and discussions and then to act upon these politically. in short, existing structures – including training programmes that are currently more responsive to the state and employers than workers – have the potential to answer to the multiple needs of women migrant garment workers, including for learning and creating spaces for political advocacy. in such ways, ng emphasized the contradictions within capitalism, between the rhetoric of free labour and the realities of captive labour, between promises of training for better jobs and the realities of limited opportunities in a context of anti-immigrant racism, among other factors. however, ng’s analytical and policy work did not end with descriptions of the world as it is. rather, she considered practically how these women’s lives and work might be bettered through collective agency via institutions existing here and now, for instance, through training centred around workers’ needs rather than state or employer priorities. such action means taking the standpoint of the migrant women workers themselves seriously, as experts about their own experiences and priorities. academia from the standpoint of a minority, immigrant woman although most considerations of ng’s theorizing and research separate her writing about chinese immigrant women from her reflexive analyses about the university and pedagogy, these are not separate concerns. that is, ng did not only study and work in solidarity with minority, immigrant women. rather, she herself was a minoritized, immigrant woman. particularly in the latter part of her career, her own work experiences in the university became a focus of research about the ways that unequal relations of citizenship, gender and race play out in academia. as ng observed, in a typically direct statement, “it is not easy to be a minority, a woman and an immigrant in a society that upholds white male supremacy” (ng, 2011, p. 345). if this is true of canadian society, generally speaking, it is likewise true in the specific institutional configuration that is the university, an institution historically conceived, as with so many institutions within contemporary capitalism, “to preserve the privileges of certain classes of men” (ng, 2011, p. 345). ironically, ng observed, moving up the hierarchy of academy does not make being a woman, an immigrant and a minority easier, but rather more difficult. this is because academic relations of power become more narrowly centered on specific types of bodies, experiences and ways of knowing, so that the minoritized woman scholar is repulsed as a challenge to the previously homogenous upper strata of academia. socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 147 in looking at the how of this marginalization of minority women professors, ng observes that it may be accomplished both directly and indirectly. direct attacks include sexist, racist and other attitudes that tend to dehumanize minority women and rob them of their authority. “sexism, racism, a sense of class privilege and other such biased attitudes” (ng, 2011, p. 345) are shared by many, perhaps most administrators and colleagues. these normalize the disrespect of women, minority, immigrant and working class professors. often, these attitudes are shared by students, too, who may draw upon the (relatively) dominated position of women immigrant minorities in broader society to exercise power within the classroom and undermine professorial authority and even basic human dignity. yet, minority women are not necessarily attacked directly for their persons. rather, more insidiously, they are challenged for the research they choose to pursue, the ways they think about knowing, and relatedly, how they carry out teaching. specifically, ways of knowing and teaching that emerge out of traditions other than those of western enlightenment thinking are devalued. the professor herself is not attacked, but “only” the importance of her research and teaching and the ways that she carries this out, if these are not focussed on standard topics and carried out in standardized ways that recentre upper class white male and western experience (see, for instance, smith, 2004, pp. 15-28). likewise, tenure and promotion depend on writing, publishing and teaching in standardized formats where the standards reflect the interests, pre-occupations, traditions and methods of dominant classes and groups. in such ways is academia made difficult for the immigrant, the minority, the woman and many others. in her essay “woman out of control,” ng (1993) revisits these concerns, through the description and analysis of a particularly painful personal experience as a woman migrant minority professor. ng refuses to separate out race, class and gender, since the social encounter is shaped by the simultaneity of all these relationships. yet, describing this is difficult, since as bannerji might observe (1987, p. 12), language fails to cope with the simultaneous, not separate and sequential experience of ethnicity, class and gender – here, misleadingly separated out by commas. specifically, bannerji (1987) observes that she does not enter a room first as a woman, then as a professor and then as a person of colour – in everyday experience, these social relationships are produced through the simultaneity of race, class and gender. in the same way, ng analyses her experience in an account that challenges analytical distinctions that misrepresent the lived realities of gender, race and class inequalities as somehow separate. as ng recounts, during one of her classes on minority groups and race relations, a self-identified white male immigrant student formally complained about her teaching and threatened legal action, arguing that her course was being used “as a platform for feminism” (see also ng, 1994, p. 41). he observed that half of her readings referred to gender and women’s issues and elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 148 so did not match the course description.4 he further complained that she had marginalized him in the classroom as a white male. and, he suggested that her meditative exercises, about which more in the next section of this paper, were inappropriate in a graduate classroom and that she was pursuing “a particular political agenda” (ng, 1993, p. 192), this last apparently juxtaposed to the possibility of a nonpoliticized academic curriculum. in a meeting about the complaint with ng and the student, a member of the university administration remained carefully “neutral,” later suggesting that ng take seriously the student’s criticisms of her course (ng, 1993, p. 192). in her essay, ng takes apart this incident as an example of much broader processes, to show how racism, sexism and class inequalities unfold in everyday social relationships, including those which are apparently explicitly guided by commitments to fairness, or if not fairness, neutrality. in particular, ng observes that the university administrator’s neutral stance at the meeting with ng and the student who complained about her class, was based on a fiction: that she and the student were equals. that is, the administrator bracketed consideration of race, gender and class, as if they were not present in the classroom and meeting. yet by remaining neutral, even when the student called ng “a woman out of control” on three separate occasions (ng, 1993, p. 197), the administrator de facto sided with the student in undermining ng’s professorial authority, and indeed in questioning her reasonableness. more broadly, the administrator’s neutral stance meant that the assumption that ng’s feminist and anti-racist teaching were the product of an unmanageable personality, went unexamined. in contrast, standard teaching, which leaves patriarchy and racism unanalysed – for instance, under the assumption that feminist and anti-racist scholarship is marginal and outside of the canon hence not central to university learning – was implicitly reaffirmed as normal and reasonable. “but i don’t have problems with any other courses! i only have trouble with yours,” is how the student put it (ng, 1993, p. 192). the fiction of equality, unexamined, leaves sexism and racism intact in such interactions. the administrator’s neutral stance also obscures power within the professor-student relationship and the ways that a professor’s apparently straightforward power over the student is complicated by race, gender and other unequal social relations. as ng observes, the realities of power are inscribed in bodies and they are much more complex than straightforward professorial domination of any student. this is not to say that professors have no power, only that this is complicated by inequalities irreducible to professorial authority. as ng explains: each time i stand in front of the classroom, i embody the historical sexualisation and racialization of the asian female (who is thought to be docile, subservient and 4 note here the apparently exclusive construction of feminism as necessarily separate and distinct from analyses of racism. ng observes, “i was pleased that unwittingly i had achieved a balanced curriculum…” (1994, p. 41). socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 149 sexually compliant) even as my class privilege, formal authority and professional qualification ameliorate some of the effects of this signification. (ng, 2006, p. 98) in other words, gendered, racialized, and classed power is formed through moments of social interaction in the classroom, as well with in interactions with the administration and among colleagues. the racist and sexist stereotypes that shape those interactions are themselves indissociable from larger histories and political economies, including the exercise of white colonial power over asian bodies and associated, gendered fantasies of asian women’s submission to the white male, colonial person. in recounting this, ng’s point is that her experience, repeated in variations over the years, if not always culminating in the threat of legal action, is not unique to her own university career or to the individuals involved. rather, it is illustrative of the ways that the university classroom – like all social spaces – is saturated with relations of power. hence, the apparently personal and idiosyncratic encounter between ng and the student is in fact (also) political. indeed, the encounter reveals the ways that inequalities are institutionalized, for instance governing what is considered standard, acceptable course material and what is not. as ng insists, this has implications for the ways that racism, sexism and more are tackled within and beyond academia. in particular, the insistence on inequality and power as social, not individual, suggests that it is not enough to treat racism and sexism, for instance, as an attitude problem held by an individual. this is the perspective that informs increasingly ubiquitous prejudice awareness workshops (ng, 1993, p. 191-192), which are supposed to sensitize individuals and so create more tolerant and equitable social relations. but such attitudinal shifts are inadequate to dealing with inequalities that are not only in people’s heads, but institutionalized. hence, to truly begin to address the social reproduction of inequality requires “a fundamental re-examination of the structures and relations of universities” (p. 191). such a thorough going re-examination would entail, for instance, a serious re-appraisal of what can be admitted as scholarship and what constitutes competent, useful teaching. this would require an examination of deep assumptions, including ontological assumptions about the nature of being and epistemological assumptions about knowing and learning, that shape expectations of what constitutes not just standard but best-practice university research and teaching. it appears likely, for instance, that the student’s assessment of meditation exercises as inappropriate in the university classroom, for instance, are rooted in unexamined radical cartesian mind/body dualities that imagine actual, physical bodies as more or less irrelevant to learning, as if knowing is a matter of a disembodied intellect. it would also mean, at a minimum, recognizing the sometimes contradictory power relations that come into play among administrators, colleagues and students at the university, all of whom bring race, gender, age, class and various status attributes to the academic setting. it would require recognition elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 150 of the ways that existing unequal social relations are naturalized, hence depoliticized, while ideas and movements that challenge a naturalized, unequal status quo are cast as political or biased and therefore inappropriate in a classroom imagined as a neutral space where politics can – and should – be bracketed. in short, ng insists that inequality and discrimination are not only about attitudes, or what happens inside people’s minds. rather, they are about social relationships, institutionalized rules of neutrality ultimately rooted in fictions of social equality. often, they are legitimated by common sense ideas, for instance, the assumption that it is both possible and desirable to create the classroom as a neutral space devoid of political content. beginning from this observation, it is possible to imagine a thorough going programme for the reevaluation of dominant forms of scholarship and academic relationships, which have become normalized and institutionalized. challenging oppression from the standpoint of traditional chinese medicine if this is true inside the university, it is also true outside of it. again, despite the apparent separateness of ng’s research concerning working class immigrant chinese women, and her own experiences in the classroom and concerns with pedagogy, common social dynamics underlie these seemingly distinct domains. not least is ng’s concern with inequality, how it is produced and reproduced; this critical stance is an entry point into informing transformative struggles that will challenge unjust inequalities. in her own words, ng formulated the central question of her research and teaching practices this way: “how do the oppressor and the oppressed coparticipate in acts of oppression?” (ng, 2009). by co-participation, ng was not suggesting that the oppressor and the oppressed participate as equals in the reproduction of unjust inequalities. clearly they do not. walmart makes profits from the cheap clothing produced by chinese garment workers in canada, for instance, while these women earn very little. walmart is relatively mobile, including internationally, even if such mobility has some costs, while the chinese women migrant workers are formally if not practically limited in their mobility. this is both because of immigration rules specifically limiting (legal) working class movement across borders and because of practical obstacles to both legal and undocumented movement, including racist attitudes and behaviours that make mobility socially difficult. nonetheless, following from gramsci (ng, 1993, p. 194), among others, it was obvious to ng that dominated and oppressed peoples and individuals do incorporate dominant ways of thinking and doing into their everyday lives, often if not always conforming to these even at personal cost. of course, challenging dominant practices imposes other costs, as we have already seen socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 151 with respect to teaching anti-feminism and anti-racism in societies and universities characterized by systemic sexism and racism. increasingly, in answering her own question about the how of reproducing relations of oppression, ng adopted the standpoint of traditional chinese medicine (tcm). in particular, she mobilized the meditative practice of qi gong, against the cartesian privileging of the mind-intellect over the bodyspirit that dominates canadian society, western countries generally and academia as well (ng, 2011, p. 344). instead, ng argued that it is critical to understand both oppression and anti-oppressive politics and teaching as simultaneously about the intellect, body and spirit.5 one insight from this is that confrontations of power are marked in the body (ng, 2011, p. 346). in other words, she wrote, the experience of unequal power does not occur only in the mind: rather, mind, body and spirit are all implicated. but this approach also insists that human liberation is not simply a matter of mindconsciousness, rather, the body and the spirit are likewise inevitably implicated in struggles for social justice. central to tcm is the idea of qi. ng says that qi is commonly translated as “energy flow” (ng, 2011, p. 349), but she suggests that qi is perhaps better understood more simply as “what animates life” (p. 349). qi is simultaneously material and immaterial, a “quality we share with all things” (p.349) so connecting the microcosmos and the macrocosmos. the free flow of qi is important to a healthy mind, spirit and body, with disease understood as a blockage of the free flowing of qi (p. 350). from this perspective, critical reasoning, both learning and teaching, require the free flow of qi. otherwise, as ng experienced as a graduate student, the intense intellectual effort required for research and teaching may inhibit the flow of qi, resulting in physical discomfort and even illness (p. 344). when qi is freely flowing, ng argues, the body-spirit is healthy and mindfulness is possible. in turn, this embodied mindfulness enables the kind of critical reflexivity that is necessary to challenge the routine reproduction of inequalities in the mind-body-spirit among the oppressed.6 5 to be more precise, ng differentiates the intellect, which she says is often confused with the mind in western cultural and medical traditions, from the body-spirit (2006, p. 95). elsewhere in the same chapter, she emphasizes that she knows simultaneously in her “heart, gut and mind” (2006, p. 97), once again refusing the cartesian dichotomy in which only the mind (and ultimately, the mind as guaranteed by a christian god) is the only source of legitimate knowledge. still later, she observes that in traditional chinese medicine, the physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions of bodily organs, where organs are a western concept that has no exact tcm equivalent or meaning, are indissociable (2006, p. 104). 6 for those who think this approach far-fetched, it is worth recalling that even classical theories insist on the human experience as always-also a bodily one. thus, for instance, karl marx was concerned with the physical and psychic toils that working class labour imposed on the worker, as in his 1880 workers’ inquiry (marx, 1997), which included questions on “muscular and nervous strain.” his condemnation of capitalism as unequal, exploitative social relations that reduce too many human to being mere “appendages to the machine” is an observation about the body and mind of the worker, both deformed through the repetitive physical and psychic labour of much factory work. likewise, in his early works he emphasized, in masculinist language, elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 152 by mindfulness, ng means the ability to stand at one remove from takenfor-granted ideas that are embodied in practices and relationships that become automatic. ng (2011, p. 352) observes that the woman or babysitter who looked after her pets when she was away, for instance, gobbled down her food within minutes at mealtimes. when ng asked about this, her babysitter rationalized her behaviour as a consequence of her job in a hospital, where she had very little time to eat (p. 352). yet, the babysitter continued to wolf down her food, decades after retiring. in this way, she continued to embody her earlier status as a worker, when she was considered insufficiently important even to be allowed the time to eat properly. ng argues that mindfulness, encouraged through regular practice of qi gong meditation, is a form of critical reflexivity that allows us to see and feel behaviours – like this woman’s automatic gobbling of food at mealtimes – that are too often unthinkingly repeated. it is not enough to know this intellectually. clearly, ng’s babysitter did know where her mealtime behaviour came from as she was able to explain it. however, this did not enable her to change her behaviour. to allow for this change, ng emphasizes that we require a specific kind of mindfulness that is a mind-body-spirit consciousness. it is only when we are self-consciously aware of our mind-bodies-spirit that we are able to begin to challenge oppressions that are not just in our minds but inscribed in our bodily habits. importantly, in emphasizing the potential liberatory power of qi gong, ng was not arguing that oppressed individuals are responsible for their own liberation, as if liberation from unequal social relations could be resolved through a personal, individual act. but ng never subscribed to the idea that the oppressed are solely victims, a view that arguably comforts the status quo by encouraging paralysis among the oppressed. beginning with the experiences of the oppressed, and then taking a mindful distance from those experiences – since experience never speaks directly but is inevitably filtered through dominant ideologies and unequal social relations that inscribe themselves in bodily habits – oppressed peoples and individuals can learn to critique their own oppression and then begin to undo at least their own implication in that oppression ng quotes a student experiencing significant health concerns, for instance, who was having difficulty maintaining a journal required for ng’s class on embodied learning. eventually, she moved from asking “why can’t i just write?” to the more helpful, more “compassionate” question: “what is this resistance about?” (mathew, wong, ng, woschuk & patton, 2008, p. 358). “real, corporeal man, man with his feet firmly on the solid ground, man exhaling and inhaling all the forces of nature…” (marx, 1964, p. 180, emphasis in original). i would venture that this breathing in and out of the “forces of nature” would not be unfamiliar in tcm, with its stress on self conscious awareness of breathing as a way of becoming aware of connections between the microcosmos and the macrocosmos. ng might have argued that a footnote like this repositions a masculinist western theory as canonical, as if tcm can only be accepted against the standards of western theory. socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 153 rather than intellectually dismissing her resistance, she instead took seriously that gut refusal. in other words, the student was able to come to new selfunderstandings by being attentive to her embodied resistance to writing, asking what this resistance revealed and therefore what it might teach her about herself. the stubborn refusal to write, being stuck, became a source of knowledge and “possibilities,” as the student put it. arguably, a more purely intellectual approach might see such resistance as irrational, therefore not worth investigating but only worth mastering. this hinders rather than helps a reflexive, embodied understanding of the self. the broader implication is that through collective and personal selfreflection at once bodily, intellectual and spiritual, “consciousness can be changed” (ng, 2011, p. 354). hegemonic consciousness, that is, consciousness that justifies existing oppression, is not destiny. against dominant actors who maintain that the unjust status quo is necessary, inevitable or desirable (often out of self-interest), the possibilities for social change are reclaimed. such processes of consciousness raising are often, perhaps even usually, uncomfortable (see e.g., mathew, wong, ng, woschuk & patton, 2008), precisely because they often challenge taken-for-granted ways of understanding the world that are widely accepted. they demand new ways of knowing and new ways of seeing. ng maintained that qi gong meditation, in particular, is a useful way of enabling individuals to recognize the construction of knowledge by embodied subjects. this is because qi gong facilitates the sensuous awareness of the mind, body and spirit, in particular moments and particular spaces. given this, ng argued that there is a natural sympathy between the practices of qi gong and critical, feminist theories, which like historical materialism stress the historically and spatially specific nature of dominant ideologies (2011, p. 354). this insistence on the profoundly situated nature of social relations, bodies and ideas, challenges common sense understandings that present existing relationships as natural and eternal, hence impervious to challenge and change. this is not, however, unique to perspectives informed by qi gong and tcm. ng observes that some indigenous feminist approaches emphasize that healing among abused indigenous women requires songs, meditation, ceremonies and other forms of embodied practices (2011, p. 355). oppression is experienced in the mind, body and spirit. it follows that human liberation requires a consciousness that engages not just the mind but the body and the spirit. from the local to the global and from the personal to the political taken together, what do these three aspects of ng’s research suggest? if ng’s research particularly concerns the canadian capitalist political economy, inevitably, given the embeddedness of these social relations within worldwide historical relations, her insights stretch beyond national borders. elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 154 in particular, as i describe above, ng sought to unpack the everyday, intertwined – exploitative and unjust – relations of class, race, and gender within contemporary nations and within world capitalism. she was interested in the how, that is, in the concrete ways that these unjust relations are articulated through migration, nation, citizenship and the workplace, including in the specific workplace that is the university, at any given historical moment. at the same time, ng was concerned, pragmatically and politically, with ways to raise consciousness against taken-for-granted inequalities. at an individual, personal level, ng called for a serious appreciation of traditional chinese medicine as necessary to creating an embodied mindfulness. ng argues that such embodied mindfulness is necessary, if not sufficient, to moving towards an unalienated human agency, which inevitably involves the body-spirit, as well as the intellect. put another way, if oppression is written into the body-spirit and its habit, then liberation must include an appreciation of the body-spirit and mind. in short, ng’s sociological imagination, the linking of biography and history (wright-mills, 1959), is not just an intellectual, imaginative leap, but at the same time one involving consideration of the whole person, as body, mind, and spirit. indeed, as ng insisted, the researcher herself is body, mind and spirit, working best when she is conscious of this unity and seeks to encourage the free flow of the life force against its fragmentation. liberation is never, however, only an individual, personal act. rather, inequality is social, often produced and reproduced among those committed to equality as individual persons. therefore, it takes collective struggle to transform relations of domination. in thinking strategically about how garment workers’ might obtain better working conditions within a more equitable global political economy, for instance, ng refers to ngos, unions, public citizens and researchers as necessary to the creation of alliances worldwide to bring about social change (ng, 2002a, pp. 79-80). embodied individual consciousness may be necessary for social change, but such individual-level enlightenment is not sufficient either. rather combatting unjust inequalities is a concrete, material, that is, social activity. in her theoretical, epistemological and methodological approach, ng builds on smith’s institutional ethnography, with its emphasis on the ways that exploitation and injustices are reproduced in everyday social relations (smith, 2004). this approach firmly sets social relationships at its centre, in contrast with more individualistic and behavioural approaches that emphasize unjust inequalities as (solely or mainly) the consequences of prejudiced or biased individual attitudes and behaviours. in this sense, ng’s work was firmly sociological, rather than psychologising and behavioural, even while – drawing on gramscian definitions of hegemony – she acknowledged the powerful ways that racist and sexist common sense damage human relations (ng, 1993, p. 194). on this latter point, ng followed gramsci in emphasizing that hegemonic ideas frequently arise from dominant classes and groups, in socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 155 their interests. the fiction that chinese immigrants to canada are uniformly wealthy, for instance, obscures the realities of working class chinese men and women, especially undocumented workers. these workers are formally free but actually captive to poorly paid, oppressive workplaces. attending to the lived experiences of these workers unmasks such stereotypes. often, unjust inequalities and oppressions exist systemically or objectively in bureaucratic categories and processes. in other words, in everyday social relations “we are not made equal” (ng, 1993, p. 196), even if many of us – to use a problematically general term – are committed to human equality in our deepest held beliefs. the employer who pays chinese immigrant women less than chinese men for their work may be hewing to standards of “fairness” given that chinese men supposedly do relatively more skilled work, in a garment industry marked by sharp, gendered divisions of labour. such apparently neutral, objective processes mask the ways that definitions of skill are themselves gendered, while taking for granted gendered divisions of labour. similarly, the university administrator who refuses to support either professor or student in charged encounters between a racialized women professor and a white male student may do so in the name of neutrality. yet such understandings of neutrality and, implicitly, fairness depend upon the social fiction that human beings hold equal status in power in the university and in society. likewise, rejecting qi gong in the classroom, to instead privilege learning through texts and oral exchanges alone, may appear to be a matter of providing a good, rigorous and serious learning experience. yet the supposed obviousness of such claims ultimately depends upon privileging euro-centric ways of knowing, themselves dependent on culturally specific mind-body dualities. undoing racism, sexism and other unjust inequalities therefore cannot be accomplished by focussing singularly on personal beliefs and attitudes around racism, sexism, the working class and the unemployed. rather, they will require social scientists and activists to carefully investigate how such inequalities are reproduced objectively through mundane social interactions and seemingly objective institutional processes – not only subjectively, in the minds of social actors. in undertaking such investigations, ng rejected the idea that social science speaks, god-like, from an objective “nowhere” (see also smith, 2004, pp. 4569). too often, objectivity is ideology dressed up as science. thus, ideas supportive of dominant classes and groups seem self-evidently true, while the ideas of dominated classes and groups, who have relatively weaker access to the means of diffusing their ideas, including in the university, appear highly contestable. a graduate course on health citing michel foucault is acceptable, but one centering qi gong meditative practices will be subject to challenge, reflecting the relative power of european versus chinese modes of thinking within the canadian university. certified economists describing globalization are respectable, expert and citable sources, but the lived experiences of workers who circulate across borders are merely anecdotes – by definition elaine coburn studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 156 inexpert and therefore, less credible sources, including in both academic literature and the mass media. in her own work, ng refused to take for granted this social organization of knowledge. instead, she sought to analyse and describe the world and human relations by taking seriously the standpoint and experiences of those who are dominated and oppressed, as we have seen, particularly investigating the lived experiences of migrant women workers in canada (on feminist “standpoint” theory see harding, 2004). hence, ng’s analysis was informed by her commitment to begin with and work from the experiences of those who are often ignored and silenced because of their relatively dominated social positions. of course, taken together, ng’s contributions are not without their tensions. notably, for instance, ng calls for us to centre the experiences and perspectives of the oppressed. the lived experiences of dominated classes and groups are important sources of knowledge about actual social relationships, often challenging common sense ideas about social world. at the same time, ng reminds and cautions us that the oppressed do not necessarily experience their domination in straightforward ways. rather, they may repeat and embody dominant ways of knowing, doing and being, even at a cost to their own wellbeing. in other words, they may not recognize their oppression as such. instead, as marx (1978, pp. 173-175) would have argued, they may accept their own oppression as natural, inevitable, and even, to reference a contemporary mask for much oppression, merited if not desirable. indeed, ng would argue that even those who reject the normalization and legitimation of unjust inequalities cognitively, may not be able to escape the embodied reproduction of their own oppression and domination. hence, social justice minded researchers need to attend to the experiences and perspectives of the oppressed, but this does not mean that we suspend what we know, as researchers, about the reproduction of unjust inequalities and uncritically accept their interpretations of the world – especially insofar as these merely echo dominant ideologies. researchers have time for reflection that many ordinary workers do not, and that reflection and analyses informed by scholarly (as well as practical) learning from prior struggles deserves to be taken seriously. at the same time, researchers might work to create spaces in which subaltern classes and groups may learn from and with each other, so that space and time for reflection – as well as struggle – are not reserved for scholars and the well-off, but made possible for each and all. finally, as briefly observed earlier, ng’s work is motivated by a commitment to socially just change. arguably, this commitment informed her efforts towards analytical rigour and clarity, since the stakes of social change do not allow for sloppy analyses that might mislead solidarity work with and for the exploited and oppressed. this rigour included a reflexive awareness of the personal costs of social change, since struggles with and for dominated actors inevitably face the countervailing powers of dominant actors whose interests are threatened by the possibilities of fundamental social socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 157 transformation. sometimes, ng observed, even forms of civility are dangerous for social change, as when empathetic desires to maintain harmonious relationships with “those close to us” lead us to mute our critiques of social justice (ng, 1993, p. 200). likewise, ng examined the ways that dominated actors – and even we who think of ourselves as working for social justice – may reproduce unjust inequalities and relations of exploitation, despite our best intentions. if ng warned that living and working “against the grain” (ng, 1993, pp. 198-201) entailed personal risks and costs she was, however, never a fatalist. rather, she maintained that political commitments to social justice were possible and necessary. ultimately, her work in the academy and outside of it was premised on the thesis that social justice is potentially achievable through collective struggle, even if the successes of social justice movements are never inevitable and never permanent. acknowledgements i would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for careful readings, monique deveaux for clear editorial advice, and david butz for his useful recommendations throughout the review process. your suggestions have strengthened the paper. finally, i hope that this review encourages those who are not familiar with roxana ng’s contributions to read her work. references bannerji, h. 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(2005). negotiating citizenship: migrant women in canada and the global system. toronto: university of toronto press. socially just social science from the standpoint of roxana ng studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 136-159, 2017 159 the economist. (2007, february 8). mutiny in the ranks. retrieved from www.economist.com/node/8679931/print thobani, s. (2007). exalted subjects: studies in the making of race and nation in canada. toronto: university of toronto press. vorst, j. et al. (eds.). (1989). race, class, gender: bonds and barriers. toronto: garamond press. wright-mills, c. (1959). the sociological imagination. oxford: oxford university press. elkchirid et al final before ts correspondence address: abdelfettah elkchirid, faculty of social work, wilfrid laurier university, waterloo, on, n2l 3c5; email: aelkchirid@wlu.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 narrating colonial silences: racialized social work educators unsettling our settlerhood abdelfettah elkchirid wilfrid laurier university, canada anh phung ngo wilfrid laurier university, canada martha kuwee kumsa wilfrid laurier university, canada abstract in this paper, three racialized social work educators unsettle our settled colonial silences as acts of self-decolonization and as a way of responding to the call to action by the truth and reconciliation commission of canada (trc). hailing from the uneven manifestations of global capitalism and coloniality in morocco, vietnam, and ethiopia, we draw on various critical theories to interrogate our unique entanglements with the imperial project of entwined settler colonialism and white supremacy. we narrate our embodied coloniality and how the virulent materiality of global processes of displacement and dispossession plays out in each of our personal stories, everyday encounters, and practices as educators. with the aim of teaching for social justice by modeling, we share the processes of unsettling our colonial settlerhood and puncturing our racialized innocence. each story addresses three themes: contact and colonial relations with indigenous peoples of canada, complicity in global coloniality, and responsibility in responding to the trc call to action. the first story provides a broad outline of our struggles with the indigenous/settler binary created to perpetuate the various forms of displacement and dispossession in settler colonialism. the second story probes the complexities in the settler category by engaging difference-making as a central technology of dispossession. the third story probes the complexities in the indigenous category through interrogating the perils and promises of recognition and reconciliation in the context of global hierarchies of nation-states and global indigenous resistance. we conclude by moving beyond our divergent trajectories and offering shared critical remarks on the human rights framework, the nation-state framework, and the coloniality of social work. abdelfettah elkchirid, anh phung ngo & martha kuwee kumsa studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 288 keywords decolonization; indigenous; model minority; settler colonialism; recognition; reconciliation; social work education introduction we acknowledge that we live and work in ontario on the traditional territories of the neutral, anishinaabeg, haudenosaunee, and mississauga peoples of canada. we are thankful for generations of indigenous peoples who have cared for this land. we are three racialized social work educators whose pedagogy, research, and practice are primarily informed by various critical and antiracist frameworks. we came to canada as migrants and refugees, which makes us de facto settlers within the grand scheme of the displacement and dispossession of global capitalism. yet, it has been a long and difficult journey for us to identify as settlers, as the global geopolitical processes of settler colonialism are insidious and often veiled. while claims of social justice and equity sit at the heart of our scholarship, indigenous self-determination has been conspicuously absent from our critical antiracist analyses. if this was 15 years ago when lawrence and dua (2005) were just beginning to expose the colonial complicity of antiracist struggles, we might claim unawareness. there is no dearth of scholarship on the issue now. scholars have produced significant bodies of literature (e.g., amadahy & lawrence, 2009; chatterjee, 2018a, 2018b; kennedy-kish & carniol, 2017; murad, 2011; simpson et al., 2018; walia, 2015; wane et al., 2013; wilson et al., 2015). also, settler colonial studies has been established as a new field since (veracini, 2011), and settler scholars are producing critical scholarship (e.g., davis et al., 2017). and we have scholarship on critical indigenous studies (e.g., absolon, 2011; alfred, 2005, 2018; blackstock, 2017; coulthard, 2007; daschuk, 2013; kennedy-kish, 2017; sfu’s vancity office of community engagement [sfu], 2017). today we have no excuse because we are aware of the racialized colonial displacement and dispossession of indigenous peoples in canada (coulthard, 2007; daschuk, 2013; sfu, 2017) and around the world (mignolo, 2011; wolfe, 2006, 2016) as part of the imperial project establishing global capitalism and white supremacy. we are aware of the ongoing colonial violence and genocide against indigenous peoples and the mounting indigenous resistance. despite awareness, however, colonial violence continues in many forms, including broken treaties, nonrecognition of land rights and sovereignty, stigmatization of treaty-protected hunting for livelihood, overrepresentation of indigenous people in child welfare and prisons, nonattention to severe health and income disparities, denial of basic services, desecration of sacred grounds and ceremonies, pollution of the environment, poisoning of air, earth and water, and drilling of pipelines through the two percent of indigenous territories that remain in indigenous racialized social work educators unsettling our settlerhood studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 289 hands. indeed, we know of the horrors of residential schools and the ongoing transgenerational trauma. we understand these as specific strategies in the broader schemes of settler colonial elimination of indigenous peoples (daschuk, 2013; wolfe, 2006). in this paper, we weave together our critical analysis by drawing on critical antiracism, settler colonial studies, and critical indigenous studies. from critical antiracism (e.g., badwall, 2015; bakan & dua, 2014; razack, 2004; tuck & yang, 2012) we draw on both the macro processes of material political economy of white supremacy structured by global capitalism and neoliberalism, and the micro processes of how individuals embody white supremacy where it becomes a woven fabric of self-understanding enacted or resisted in everyday life. similarly, from settler colonial studies (e.g., davis et al., 2017; rifkin, 2013; wolfe, 2006, 2016), we draw on both the macro processes of displacement and dispossession by which indigenous peoples are torn off their lands and livelihoods for the possession and inhabitation of settlers, and the micro processes by which indigenous and settler individuals embody a self-understanding they enact or resist in everyday life. finally, from critical indigenous studies (e.g., coulthard, 2007; daschuk, 2013; sfu, 2017; trc, 2015), we draw from both sides of the debate, where one side views decolonization and reconciliation as possible within the settler colonial nation-state, and the other side views these as impossible short of returning indigenous land to its rightful stewards. we appreciate works that are already interweaving antiracism, indigenous self-determination and settler colonial studies (e.g., chatterjee, 2018a, 2018b; murad, 2011; tuck & yang, 2012). these theories play out through the uniqueness of our individual stories narrated from our shared field of practice as social work educators. in a powerful satirical question, cindy blackstock (2017) asks if social work has the guts for social justice and reconciliation. while honoring the longstanding indigenous struggles for justice (coulthard, 2007; sfu, 2017) and acknowledging the many recommendations of the royal commission on aboriginal peoples (1996) left unaddressed, in this paper, we focus on the trc’s call to action, particularly the articles on the education of social workers (chatterjee, 2018b; trc, 2015). although both the trc’s call to action and social work are couched within the human rights framework (united nations, 1994, 2007), as disillusioned scholars, we seek to critically engage the human rights framework as a mechanism of global coloniality. we narrate our stories here as acts of self-decolonization and to educate by modeling as we wrestle with our innocence and unveil our colonial complicity. each story engages three themes: our colonial relations with indigenous peoples of canada, our complicity in global coloniality, and our response to trc’s (2015) call to action. we position abdel’s story to provide a broad outline of our struggles with the indigenous/settler binary, anh’s story to probe the complexities of the settler category, and martha kuwee’s story to probe the complexities of the indigenous category. abdelfettah elkchirid, anh phung ngo & martha kuwee kumsa studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 290 abdel’s story: complexifying the indigenous/settler binary i am an immigrant to canada. i am muslim and originally from morocco. i migrated to the us, became an ethnic graduate social work student, and moved to canada for work. i was never trained to work with indigenous clients. nor did i ever take initiatives to educate myself on the struggles between settlers and indigenous peoples of this land. i didn’t need to, because i was firmly ensconced in my ethnic space; or shall i say trapped in my ethnic space? i am displaced from my own people’s place and thrown into the placeless space of the perpetual migrant. i am a placeless migrant whether in the us or canada. i feel placelessness deep in my soul and deep in my body. i cannot relate to indigenous/settler struggles over place. that is not my struggle; it is theirs. i am neither indigenous nor settler. i am placeless. no, i am not a settler. settlers are europeans; i am not european. settlers are colonizers; i am not. i know colonizers distinctly. they are french and spanish in morocco. they are primarily english and french in canada, but they are all white; i am not. i am innocent of colonizers’ guilt. i am colonized; my communities are colonized. i am not a settler, period! i am not born here, so i’m not indigenous either; that goes without saying. this indigenous/settler binary is a daunting rigid structure (wolfe, 2013). i teach trauma-informed social work practice but the key issues of trauma (sullivan & simonson, 2016) that cut across the indigenous/settler binary remain silent in my work (e.g., elkchirid, 2012). this indigenous/settler binary traps me into placelessness and undermines my social justice work. it blinds me to the profound interconnectedness of community struggles from across the divide (chatterjee, 2018a) so, am i being insincere in claiming innocence? in case you wondered, no, i’m not faking my innocence. i feel it profoundly. this innocence is my reality, my truth. i know i do not commit injustice intentionally. in fact, injustice is committed against me and my various communities. i fight injustice passionately wherever it rears its ugly head. my solid commitment to social justice is unshakable. but i also know that my claim to such innocence masks my complicity in the settler colonial project. this is also my truth, my reality. by positioning myself as innocent, i know i am disconnecting from my responsibility for indigenous justice and undermining my own struggle (davis et al., 2017). this is the everyday contradiction i wrestle with (chatterjee, 2018a). until i puncture my innocence, my silence will continue to perpetuate injustice even as i struggle to end it. after years of reflecting, i find that my position within the indigenous/settler binary is politically illusive and intellectually restrictive. i now realize that this binary tension between immigrant and indigenous communities is integral to settler colonial nationalism (chatterjee, 2018a, 2018b; murad, 2011; tuck & yang, 2012; wolfe, 2013). it is designed to keep me away from indigenous struggles and prevent solidarity. i need to racialized social work educators unsettling our settlerhood studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 291 acknowledge the depth of my embodied colonialism. for example, i often teach students how to work with “hard to reach” ethnic communities without questioning the concept of “hard to reach” and how it signifies colonial concepts of less civilized or non-developed countries or communities. my embodied colonization is much deeper and broader than i can imagine (rifkin, 2013). it is as much local as it is global, and it sets me apart from the indigenous peoples of my homeland too. *** i remember growing up in morocco. my homeland thinks of itself in many ways as african, amazigh/berber, arab, european, islamic, maghrebian, mediterranean, etc., but the rich diversity of its peoples is seen through a singular homogenizing colonial lens. its history is colonial even long after independence and morocco’s achievement of sovereignty. colonial legacy continues in subtle but utterly devastating ways (zakhir & o’brien, 2017). at school, my peers and i used to value moroccan scholars who studied in france, and we saw those who didn’t as having a lower quality education. so, even long after french colonizers left, we continued to value their language and culture and frown upon our indigenous languages and cultural values. i remember taking pride in speaking french and teasing those who weren’t fluent in it. to me, speaking french was an expression of social status; it was being civilized (fanon, 1967; zakhir & o’brien, 2017). i didn't even consider that neither of my parents spoke french! looking back now and reflecting on my indigeneity, i realize how being born in my homeland doesn’t automatically make me indigenous there. even in my homeland, colonial epistemic violence had already displaced me from my indigeneity and integrated me into the global colonial system (wolfe, 2016). my movement out of my homeland continues the displacement of my indigeneity and ushers in new colonial reintegration through the colonial and neoliberal structuring that places white supremacy as the dominant global system (wolfe, 2016). i am a displaced person even in my own birthplace, a colonizer even as indigenous. i realize how the human rights framework, which indigenous peoples of my homeland claimed to fight for national selfdetermination, is itself a mechanism of incorporating nations into global colonial hierarchy of economic, social, and political power. as tascón and ife (2008) argue, it is a mechanism of maintaining white supremacy and trapping everyone else in a hierarchy of subordinate positions. migrating to north america, i bring these subtle embodiments of colonization. the colonizer’s language follows me into my social work practice (elkchirid, 2012). in my cross-cultural work with clients from north african countries, we must speak french to overcome the differences in our local dialects. at the same time, enacting my embodied colonizer through speaking french aligns me with the bilingual canadian state and sets me abdelfettah elkchirid, anh phung ngo & martha kuwee kumsa studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 292 apart from the indigenous peoples of this land yet again. the ugliest face of the colonial game is that it centers itself among marginalized groups and becomes the glue holding us together, as it also simultaneously centers itself between migrants and indigenous peoples, binding us together through colonial relations. this separation of indigenous people from immigrants and immigrants from other precariously positioned immigrants is a testament to the sheer materiality of global processes of displacement and dispossession perpetuating the settler colonial project (chatterjee, 2018b; wolfe, 2016). *** moving forward, how do i engage my ethical responsibility towards the trc (2015) call to action as a social work educator? following others (chatterjee, 2018b; murad, 2011), i seek to move my teaching beyond simplistic notions that the barrier to reconciliation is ignorance and can be resolved through education. instead, i engage colonial structures of separation to decolonize my pedagogy without reducing decolonization to a metaphor (see tuck & yang, 2012). i draw from across the colonizing structures of national boundaries to link global and local colonial practices. i teach how social work itself is a colonial project designed to keep down racialized populations within the hierarchies of global coloniality and white supremacy (badwall, 2015). i resist how eurocentric models of social work (mental health, elder care, child welfare) are implemented in indigenous communities and nonwestern countries. indigenous knowledge transmission across generations was interrupted by colonialism and dismissed from curricula. i counter this systemic dismissal both by advocating for institutional decolonization and by including indigenous content from canada and from around the world to indigenize the courses i teach. as a further personal responsibility for my own decolonization, i follow my african role models like ngũgĩ wa thiong’o (1986) to decolonize my mind. i take the risk of publishing my works in african journals. for dissemination of knowledge and career advancement, the aim is to publish in western journals. while this gives more credibility and visibility to my work, i feel uneasy that it reinforces colonial structures and perpetuates the perceived notion of western academic superiority. i have also started to unsettle my colonization by publishing my works in arabic. this is a return to who i am, as suggested by indigenous scholars (absolon, 2011; alfred, 2018; wa thiong’o, 1986). it took me two decades to connect to my moroccan roots and write articles in my mother tongue. although i can easily write in english or french, writing in arabic is my attempt to inspire future moroccan generations to decolonize. i choose arabic because it is the only language i can truly call mine. however, i cannot escape the coloniality of it, as arabic came to my homeland through the arab conquest of morocco. i cannot escape that morocco’s arabization policy is a colonial nation-building project closely racialized social work educators unsettling our settlerhood studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 293 related to broader pan-arab nationalism (daoudi, 2018; loutfi, 2017). although i embrace my local arabic mother tongue to resist the global colonization of french, i cannot deny the local colonization of arabization that marginalizes other indigenous mother tongues, especially the mother tongue of indigenous berber/amazigh (cma, 2016). these are the silences i am starting to unravel at the depth of my disconnection from indigeneity in morocco, canada, and beyond. these are the complexities of decolonization i wrestle with every day. anh’s story: probing the complexity of the settler i was born in vietnam and came to canada at an early age. i don’t consider myself indigenous to vietnam nor a settler to canada. i am one of the inbetweens that fall right through the cracks of the indigenous/settler binary. unlike other racialized people, however, i don’t fall on jagged concrete. i fall on the illusive comfort of the discursive cushion of the model minority, the vietnamese canadians. i am a “vietnamese boat person,” one of many internationally displaced persons who beat the odds and survived, “resilient exiles” who thrived and made it in canada, “hard-working refugees” who turned adversity into opportunity – or so the discourse goes. this praise extracts me from my humanness, my flesh and bones, and reduces me to a discourse – a productive discourse that holds me up as an example of the good refugee. in the colonial order, there is a use for me, a subjugated belonging as a good refugee turned model minority. i could even be proof of the state’s goodness and morality in refugee rescue. critical scholars (bauder, 2008; dauvergne, 2005; hyndman, 2000; nyers, 2006) argue that the refugee protection enterprise serves both material and discursive functions required to support canada’s humanitarian discourse as the land of refuge. this humanitarianism is a core facet of the canadian imperial project at home and abroad. domestic and international actions in refugee rescue and support – such as the ideological construction of desirable refugees (krishnamurti, 2013; madokoro, 2016; mountz, 2011), canada’s proud role as a peacekeeping nation (razack, 2004; regan, 2010), and the prominence of liberal humanitarianism as a tenet of national identity (tascón & ife, 2008; wayland, 1997) – operate to secure the hegemony of both white settler society within canada and canada’s place as a global humanitarian leader. humanitarianism abroad remains central to national identity which veils the state’s continued oppression of indigenous peoples and precariously situated migrants at home (chatterjee, 2018a; hyndman, 2003; mountz, 2004; sharma, 2006; zine, 2009). as a vietnamese canadian, i continue to be known through my “refugeeness” and canada’s continued national identity building project is active in sustaining this flattened subjectivity (bauder, 2008; ngo, 2016a, abdelfettah elkchirid, anh phung ngo & martha kuwee kumsa studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 294 2016b). for canada to be a refugee haven, there must be authentic refugees to rescue and shelter. i see a troubling ugliness of global coloniality in which i am inescapably entangled. the term “vietnamese boat people” still circulates to serve canadian national and international identity. the concept was recently evoked and reiterated to bolster canada’s identity as a safe and peaceful haven for refugees in the syrian refugee crisis. in an incredible colonial fantasy of reversal (hage, 2016; ngo, 2016a), canada becomes the liberator and rescuer, when in practice it is the persecutor and oppressor. canada discursively emerges as the rescuer and the peacekeeper, thus erasing its intimate complicity in global warfare, specifically, in my case, the war in vietnam (cbc, 1975; price, 2011; ziedenberg, 1995). this misrecognition is an orchestrated technology of the state to further isolate and invalidate the belonging of indigenous peoples to this land. *** i grew up next to the largest first nation reserve in canada. i had classmates who are indigenous. they received similar poor treatment to me: the neglect, the derisive attitudes, and the racism from teachers and peers alike. how did i not see my struggles in solidarity with theirs? the answer is not as straightforward as the question, and i am careful in drawing similarities here. my move to draw connections between my experiences of oppression and my sense of indigenous peoples’ oppression is a move to innocence. i want to think we are more similar than different. but this need for sameness is dangerous. when i seek commonality through shared hardships, i make a move to innocence (razack, 2004; tuck & yang, 2012). i decontextualize indigenous hardships from the web of colonial power relations that position me favorably in relation to them, thus concealing our complex positioning in relation to the state. contrary to the oppression of my indigenous classmates, in a convoluted way, my oppression seems to have a way out, a redemption. it instils the false hope that i could elude colonial oppression by enacting the model minority (pon, 2000) and playing the grateful refugee (nguyen, 2013, 2019). such operations of misrecognition by the state are purposeful technologies of colonial division and dispossession. indeed, the system is set up to set us apart (american university of beirut, 2013; chatterjee, 2018a, 2018b; coleman, 2016; coulthard, 2007; sfu, 2017). the closer i came into belonging to the state as the good refugee, the further my indigenous classmates were alienated from it. by flaunting the good, integrated, multicultural subject, i was allowing myself to be co-opted and sucked into the settler colonial system of dispossession whereas many indigenous communities had to hide their origins and cultural practices, or be particularly targeted like my classmates if they dared to identify as indigenous. indeed, the system is also arranged to set immigrants apart from other immigrants and refugees as well (chatterjee, 2018a; snelgrove et al., 2014). racialized social work educators unsettling our settlerhood studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 295 as if to resist this separation, i feel the burning desire to draw similarities from across hardships here too. if my desire for sameness with indigenous peoples feeds my complicity in colonial dispossession, my desire for sameness with all those i see as settlers is no less harmful. there are many who reject the settler label, a label particularly traumatic for the descendants of africans who were brought to turtle island in shackles (king, 2014; morgan, 2019; thomas, 2019). collapsing differences and lumping together all non-indigenous communities as settlers is as dangerous as separating them. indeed, the complexities within the settler category also complexify decolonization and the building of solidarity among the various struggles (tuck, & yang, 2012). however contradictory and messy, the need for solidarity among colonized communities locally and globally cannot be emphasized enough (sfu, 2017; simpson et al., 2018; snelgrove et al., 2014). and so, i find myself complicit in this cacophony of local and global colonial material and discursive practices. my struggles have a discursive narrative globally, a colonial progress narrative that people from the “third world” should expect hardships, but with western education and hard work, they will eventually do well in canada (bauder, 2008). this is also the integration narrative of immigration and multiculturalism: that hardship is expected in being new to the host country, but it will get better. my father worked long hours of hard physical labor at local warehouses producing toxic housing materials, and weekend jobs at nearby farms extracting ginseng from the land for international export, just to earn several dollars an hour. he engaged in activities that deplete and pollute the soil, air, and waters traditionally protected and cared for by indigenous peoples of this land. i remember how my father fished in the local, now polluted river to feed us. by the time i was ten, i knew how to gut, descale, and cook fish. these are not knowledges i shared growing up; my yearning to belong among my friends did not allow it. this has been my silence, the ugly underbelly of “hard-working resilient refugees” who survive through their inescapable entanglement in canada’s colonial appropriation of indigenous land and its devastation of the environment. i feel like a walking contradiction. while the strong intergenerational mark of the grateful rescued refugee feels deeply inscribed in my body and subjectivity, the various struggles within me to shed this and other colonized subjectivities are equally strong. my challenge is to steer these wrestling colonial narratives toward various struggles for justice. *** in my social work teaching, i respond to the trc call to action by working to multiply my points of reference, and seeking out the voices of marginalized communities to disrupt and contest the discursive power of state policies and abdelfettah elkchirid, anh phung ngo & martha kuwee kumsa studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 296 practices (chen, 2010; ngo, 2016a, 2016b). i remind students that canada’s immigration policy and system, its lauded multiculturalism and humanitarianism, are part and parcel of an imperial project of colonization and dominance. i show students that the model minority discourse is part of the broader policy of multiculturalism designed to create a maligned relation among peoples and communities. however, pointing out external colonial structures in my pedagogy and critique is one thing; unveiling my own internalized colonial structures is more difficult. i demonstrate that even in my zest to critique canadian multiculturalism for subgrouping indigenous communities as just another cultural group, i participate in maintaining colonial hierarchy by paying singular attention to the colonizer rather than multiplying my points of reference (chen, 2010). now, where do i go with this troubling awareness? moving forward, in response to the trc (2015) call to action, i challenge myself to do the work of decolonizing myself and my work. when i catch myself critiquing the racialization of minority communities as if racialization does not affect indigenous peoples, i stop right there and take responsibility for my exclusion. i make sure that we collectively learn how to build inclusion and solidarity without collapsing differences. teaching by example, i invite learners to think through contemporary policies and practices, and how crucial the consideration of indigenous treaty rights and relations is to our reflective process (burke, 2004; tuck & yang, 2012; walia, 2012). i start decolonizing myself by returning to who i am, as indigenous scholars suggest (absolon, 2011; alfred, 2018; wa thiong’o, 1986). when i suppress my worldviews and my teachings from my ancestors, i allow and even expect the suppression of indigenous worldviews and teachings. when i say, “i am ok with being treated this way, it’s not as bad as how i was treated before somewhere else; it could be worse,” i am complicit. by standing up and saying, “i am not ok with being treated this way and i am not ok with indigenous peoples being treated this way,” i’m standing up for justice. it is from this point that we, refugees, subjugated and subjugating guests, colonizers and colonized, can start our work. martha kuwee’s story: probing the complexity of indigeneity i came to canada as a refugee, fleeing from political violence in my homeland, ethiopia. like my colleagues, i critically engage the colonial fantasy of reversal (hage, 2016) through which canada becomes the rescuer of refugees. like many, i wrestle with being named a settler (king, 2014; morgan, 2019; thomas, 2019). i too fall through the cracks of the indigenous/settler binary. i didn’t even choose to settle here. i certainly didn’t come looking for the land of milk and honey; i was violently thrown out of one. how can i be a settler when i am myself brutalized by ethiopia’s violent settler colonial displacement? racialized social work educators unsettling our settlerhood studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 297 arriving in canada in the aftermath of the oka crisis,1 i saw another face of the colonial violence that threw me out of my homeland. i strongly identified with the struggle of indigenous peoples here. their struggle echoed my own oromo people’s anticolonial struggle for self-determination, a struggle for national liberation in which i was deeply enmeshed. with oka, i saw my struggle against colonial violence starting all over again – in a different face on a different land. i was already at war with canada’s white settler colonial state. i see the displacement and dispossession of indigenous peoples around the world as a racializing global capitalist colonial project of land grabbing and resource extraction, now continuing through neoliberal restructuring of the world (dominelli, 2010; razack, 2004; wolfe, 2006). i’m not a settler! i asserted. i am indigenous, just not indigenous to this land. and i joined the fray on the indigenous side, to steer clear from the settler pole of the binary as my “race to innocence” took the whole of me (tuck & yang, 2012). after all, reclaiming my indigeneity is something i paid a hefty price for. my indigeneity was not simply a question of birth; it was and still is an active political process of reconstructing indigenous subjecthood. but my relationship with indigenous peoples of canada remains ambivalent at best if i continue to claim innocent indigeneity. to many of my indigenous friends, i am a settler on the land stolen from them by the colonial state. there is another place i belong to and call my homeland; they have only this one. that’s the bottom line. i’m a settler alas! but a different kind of settler from, say, the wealthy, able-bodied, heterosexual white male colonialist settler. what remains invisible is that this troubling sense of belonging to bounded homelands and sovereign nation-states is a highly emotionally charged and deeply embodied modernist discursive practice of global coloniality (chatterjee, 2018b; mignolo, 2011; wolfe, 2016). much like other boundaries of difference making, national boundaries present as natural and get deeply embodied. indeed, we enact and resist them everyday. i remember having a strong visceral reaction to how migrants were constructed as wanting inclusion into canada as opposed to indigenous peoples’ wanting out (monture-angus, 1995). i want out too, i wanted to scream, out not only of canada but out of the entire global family of nation-states! indigenous sovereignty in canada and elsewhere is couched in this framework of selfdetermination within the global family of nation-states, thus reproducing instead of subverting hierarchies of racialized global capitalism and colonialism. this ambivalence is why i simultaneously resist and embrace the 1 the oka crisis was a showdown between indigenous people, the provincial police, and the canadian army in the small town of oka, quebec, in the summer of 1990. it was a crisis over a land dispute that drew worldwide attention to indigenous land rights. for details, see cbc digital archives at https://www.cbc.ca/archives/topic/the-oka-crisis. abdelfettah elkchirid, anh phung ngo & martha kuwee kumsa studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 298 notion of self-determination in my engagement with indigenous peoples’ struggles here and elsewhere. *** this ambivalence has its roots in my entanglement with global coloniality. i was only 17 and in my first year of university when i found fanon’s (1963, 1967) works. i was just 19 when i translated the communist manifesto into my indigenous oromo language. to the utter chagrin of my devout protestant parents, i embraced the social gospel and turned away from their christian gospel because i found it stigmatizes indigenous peoples as heathen/pagan and their spiritual ceremonies as devil worship. although protestant christianity offered oromos some relief from the land grabbing dispossession of the ethiopian settler-colonial state, it also had a devastating effect on their indigenous religion and their entire way of life economically and politically, socially and psychologically, materially and spiritually. forging its own consolidation, the ethiopian settler-colonial state pursued assimilationist policies assaulting indigenous history, culture, and language. the civilizing mission of global coloniality is fiercely at work here. although unique in its own context, the ethiopian colonizing process of displacement and dispossession of indigenous peoples echoes the political economy of land grabbing and indigenous elimination in other settler colonial nation-states. although there were no white settlers, a racial hierarchy of colonial domination echoes other nation-states like rwanda (wolfe, 2006) where one ethnic group is instated at the apex of the colonial state for its religious and historical ties to the west (sorenson, 1993). indeed, global capitalism and colonialism are deeply implicated in the invention and consolidation of ethiopia as a dependent colonial state (holcomb & ibssa, 1990). ethiopia is an invention of european colonialism, an empire of struggles and contestations, and a prison house of many indigenous nations. as a fired-up young revolutionary, i embraced marxism passionately. when marxist globality was put to praxis in my locality, however, indigeneity was viewed as backward and uncivilized. alas! my coveted worldview came with its own tag of the civilizing mission. fanon’s passionate plea grabbed me as he urged anti-colonial strugglers not to seek salvation from the west (capitalism) or the east (socialism/communism), but to look deep into our own indigeneity (absolon, 2011; coulthard, 2007; fanon, 1963, 1967; sfu, 2017). here i see the complexity of fanon’s piercing insights. no, decolonization is not a metaphor; i agree with tuck and yang (2012). decolonization must cut deep into the social, cultural, economic, political, psychological, emotional, material and spiritual realms. it must simultaneously be personal and political, local and global. the parallel between indigenous peoples’ struggles for self-determination in canada and ethiopia and the response of the settler-colonial states is overwhelming. for every step forward there have been several steps back, racialized social work educators unsettling our settlerhood studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 299 raising the question whether recognition and reconciliation are at all possible within the settler-colonial nation-state. as coulthard (2007; sfu, 2017) ardently argues, recognition doled out by the canadian state cannot lead to indigenous self-determination because true recognition requires reciprocity but there is no reciprocity when the playing field is steeply inclined. in ethiopia, despite going through rounds of revolutions and gaining some grounds in indigenous self-determination, currently indigenous folks are painfully experiencing the skewed power of the settler-colonial state. state machination to perpetually defer self-determination is pushing more and more indigenous movements toward radical alternatives. moderate spaces are increasingly shrinking, although some continue the fight from within the state (absolon, 2011; blackstock, 2017; trc, 2005). i see both perils and promises in recognition in the context of global hierarchies of nation-states and global indigenous resistance. racialized hierarchies of colonial systems perpetuate themselves by using both brute force and the subtle power of internalized racism and colonialism (bakan & dua, 2014; coulthard, 2007; fanon, 1963, 1967; sfu, 2017; wolfe, 2006, 2016). to me, strategies that attend to both objective structural and subjective psychological layers of colonialism promise to inch towards the recognition of indigenous self-determination. like my colleague anh, i particularly appreciate fanon’s advice to take our eyes off colonial powers and focus on nurturing anti-colonial solidarity among indigenous struggles (chen, 2010; fanon, 1963). the perils are many. one is the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t catch-22 like possibility of self-determination. struggles within the state must reckon with skewed power of the colonial nation-state, and struggles outside the state must reckon with skewed power of the global family of nationstates. can we imagine a different formation of indigenous nationhood and sovereignty? internalized colonialism is another peril where indigenous people turn colonial violence inward in lateral violence at the expense of indigenous solidarity. as a disillusioned revolutionary, i have learned to look for salvation within indigenous grassroots. as a disillusioned indigenous activist also, i have learned to question indigenous purity and homogeneity even at the grassroots. in the end, i take comfort that recognition is not an event, but a process constantly negotiated in multiple ways. *** picking up my ethical responsibility in response to the trc (2015) call to action in my social work teaching, i seek to engage students at all levels and complexities of colonization, from the deeply personal and emotional to the broadly political and global. i am astonished by how little we know about the connection between global and local colonialities, by how effective colonization has been in masking and naturalizing its devastating dividing abdelfettah elkchirid, anh phung ngo & martha kuwee kumsa studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 300 practices as benevolence. cutting through centuries of discursive materiality, sedimented in history and in each of our bodies, requires the hardest work of excavation, often accompanied by high emotionality, anger, shame, guilt, and distancing from the learning. no, decolonization is not a metaphor. it is complex, excruciatingly painful, deeply transformative and arduous work of excavating, unlearning, and relearning that is ongoing. i am also astonished by how little we know about social work’s own history of “helping” indigenous nations, communities, families, and individuals. social work is regarded as a highly esteemed helping profession and students seek training on how to help effectively and improve the lives of vulnerable groups and individuals. puncturing the innocence of such highly regarded notion of helping and connecting it to its colonialist function is a huge challenge. how social work helping scooped indigenous children from their families and cultures and herded them into residential schools is out of reach to many even when it is so obvious. many do not connect the dots between the residential schools and the over representation of indigenous people in child protection and prisons. how colonization here and around the world happened behind the smokescreen of ‘helping’ to civilize the savage for their own good is another hidden colonial silence we attempt to narrate in our classrooms. the embodied experiences we each bring to our classrooms are invaluable learning resources, and we begin with our bodies in the classroom to make visible the stories, narratives, histories and historicities we embody. closing remarks in an act of self-decolonization, each of us has unsettled our settler subjectivities in very personal ways that we hope social work students will find meaningful and beneficial. beyond our divergent stories of homeland, trajectories to canada, approaches to analysis, and strategies of responding to the trc’s call to action, here we conclude by weaving together three interrelated themes of our shared critique. we offer brief critical remarks on the human rights framework, the nation-state framework, and the coloniality of social work. the human rights framework is important for us to critically engage primarily because the trc’s call to action is framed by human rights, grounded in the united nations (2007) declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, and affirmed by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco, 2018) policy on engaging indigenous peoples. we focus on the human rights framework also because it is the only international legal instrument, and because our own profession of social work is deeply rooted in it (united nations, 1994). however, as disillusioned scholars coming from communities that embraced human rights and waged anti-colonial and anti-imperial struggles for self-determination racialized social work educators unsettling our settlerhood studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 301 and sovereignty, we seek briefly to critically engage its glaring limitations. the notion of human rights is the product of the european enlightenment project where the reference point for what is human is the white man. it is designed to create and maintain global coloniality and white supremacy (tascón & ife, 2008). human rights served as a smokescreen behind which colonial violence and indigenous genocide happened around the world. the human rights framework is but an instrument of the broader nationstate framework of capitalist liberal modernist organization of the global space. it creates racialized hierarchical power relations of colonial capitalist system locally, nationally and internationally. as disillusioned scholars coming from backgrounds rooted in the anti-colonial struggles of our various communities, we are profoundly skeptical of eurocentric frameworks. therefore, we align ourselves with aspects of decolonial scholarship (e.g., fanon, 1963; mignolo, 2011) to promote epistemic disobedience and shift the geopolitics of knowing. from this angle, we see the nation-state framework as a difference making project designed to curb people’s mobility, pigeonhole populations within bounded nation-states, and naturalize these structures. it carries out the heinous acts of simultaneous dispossession in our homelands and our precarious positioning in our adopted lands (chatterjee, 2018a; ngo, 2016a). indeed, it creates and regulates our deepest desires for homeland and belonging. it is within this critique that we position the questions of land rights and indigenous sovereignty as issues of justice, although we see the implications as subverting itself and reinforcing capitalist colonial nationstate structure. within canada, the nation-state evolves from white settlement to settled whiteness where the racialization of both indigenous and migrant settlers intensifies at the same time as these groups are pitted against each other. we need to interrogate canada’s multiculturalism to understand the ways in which we can disrupt colonial relations, divisions, and separations. we need to make visible canada’s ongoing violence against indigenous peoples and racialized persons as a colonial continuity (heron, 2007; razack, 2004; regan, 2010) which now folds groups, such as vietnamese-canadians, into its project of national and global hegemony. when the hegemonic processes that veil our understanding of ourselves in entanglement with canada and with one another are interrogated, there may be space made for mutual understanding, empathy, and ultimately mobilization for change. it is within this space of mobilizing for change that social work can redeem itself from being a regulatory arm of the settler colonial nation-state to opening paths into relational solidarity among racialized communities. chen (2010) urges us (racialized, marginalized people) to multiply our points of references, our objects of desire. our views are obscured when we do not see one another in our struggles – when our frames of reference and with it, our objects of desire, are only directed back at the colonizer. he argues we have consistently looked to the center of power – the colonizer – for recognition abdelfettah elkchirid, anh phung ngo & martha kuwee kumsa studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 287-305, 2020 302 and affirmation. instead, we should be multiplying our gaze. rather than looking up, we must be looking over and across at one another, for strength and affirmation. this is a decolonial act social work can facilitate. by multiplying our gaze, we also follow others 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(2013). recuperating binarism. a heretical introduction. settler colonial studies, 3 (3/4), 257–279. wolfe, p. (2016). traces of history: elementary structures of race. verso. zakhir, m., & o’brien, j. (2017). french neo-colonial influence on moroccan language education policy: a study of current status of standard arabic in science disciplines. language policy, 16(1), 39-58. ziedenberg, j. (1995). canada's vietnam legacy. canadian dimension, 29(5), 24-28. zine, j. (2009). unsettling the nation: gender, race and muslim cultural politics in canada. studies in ethnicity and nationalism, 9(1), 146-157. khasnabish & haiven final galley nov 23 15 correspondence address: alex khasnabish, department of sociology and anthropology, mount saint vincent university, halifax, ns, b3m 2j6; email: alex.khasnabish@msvu.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 outside but along-side: stumbling with social movements as academic activists alex khasnabish mount saint vincent university, canada max haiven nova scotia college of art and design, canada abstract in this article, we critically reflect on the production and measurement of ‘success’ and ‘failure’ both in social movements and social movement research. we do so by focusing on the radical imagination project, an experiment in politically engaged, ethnographically grounded social movement research we have sustained in halifax, nova scotia since 2010. we discuss our methodological strategy of ‘convocation,’ distinguishing it from other social movement research approaches, and reflect on the difficulties inherent in practicing these methods within the austere realities and pressures of the neoliberal university. we explore the ways in which the particular complexities of the fraught field and habitus of the would-be academic-activist might be critically assessed and best mobilized to assist in the reproduction of movements, without also unduly reproducing the neoliberal university or its architectures of privilege and power. keywords social movements; social movement research; solidarity research; radical imagination; social change; social reproduction; neoliberalism; academic activism in this article, we reflect on the successes and failures (and, indeed, the discursive production of ‘success’ and ‘failure’) in social movements and social movement research. in particular, we focus on the radical imagination project, an experiment in politically engaged, ethnographically grounded social movement research we have sustained in halifax, nova scotia since 2010. the project, which combines intensive interviews, community focus groups, educational events, and participant observation, has been guided by the principle that we, as researchers, want to do more than merely observe social movements at work. we want to instead explicitly and intentionally create new atmospheres and processes to ‘convoke’ the radical imagination. outside but along-side studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 19 thus, we have developed a practice of working outside but alongside the small but energetic and diverse activist movements in the city. in response to the question of the potentials, pleasures, and perils of ‘academic activism’, we wish to explore the possibilities for leveraging the complex and fraught privileges and opportunities provided to academics in order to create resources for movements that they might not otherwise possess or create. we distinguish our methodological strategy of ‘convocation’ from both ‘invocation’ (where researchers observe and report on movements) and ‘avocation’ (where researchers are called away by movements to submit their skills to movement-led projects). we reflect on the difficulties inherent in practicing these methods within the austere realities and pressures of the neoliberal university. theoretically, we approach the problem through materialist feminist conceptions of social reproduction and the potentiality of the commons, asking how both movements and researchers ‘reproduce’ themselves (or fail to do so). we are interested in the ways in which the particular complexities of the fraught field and habitus of the would-be academic-activist might be critically assessed and best mobilized to assist in the reproduction of movements, without also unduly reproducing the neoliberal university or its architectures of privilege and power. this is all the more important in an age of political-economic crisis, which has included the repression of social movements (wood, 2014) and in which fragmentation, diffusion, segmentation, and diversity are the norm in movement cultures. three models of reproduction this essay builds on a three-part theory of reproduction which integrates marxist, cultural studies, and materialist feminist approaches to offer a framework for understanding how individuals, institutions, and systems interact amidst complex crises. from a marxist perspective, reproduction refers the questions of the reproduction of capital as sketched initially by karl marx (1981) and developed more fully by theorists such as rosa luxemburg (2003) and louis althusser (2014). marx, famously, focused his analysis of capitalism on the production of wealth and the extraction of surplus value, but only elliptically and in fits and starts described the ways in which the crisis-prone system was reproduced as a whole. for marx and subsequent thinkers, capitalism is driven, ultimately, by contradictions which, if unmet, lead to systemic crises (see harvey, 2006). for instance, industrial capitalism requires the aggregation of proletarians in factories, but affords them the opportunity to organize and rebel. likewise, competition drives individual capitalists to constrain wages and mechanize production to create commodities more cheaply, but this leads to depressed wages and unemployment and, hence, lowers demand for commodities and heightens the possibility of revolt. alex khasnabish, max haiven studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 20 capital develops an array of techniques to temporarily ‘fix’ these contradictions, usually by ‘externalizing’ them onto vulnerable and marginalized populations (de angelis, 2007; harvey, 2006). such ‘fixes’ include: the expansion of markets through colonialism; the use of fascism and other repressive regimes to take more authoritarian control over the economy and workers’ lives; the destruction of social surplus through military expenditure and war; the use of advertising and marketing to expand the field of desires and demands; and the growth of the prison-industrial and educational-industrial complexes as a means to warehouse surplus workers without endangering the inherent logic of the system (davis, 2005). the second valence of reproduction draws on the work of post-war cultural studies scholars and refers to the ways in which class and other power relations are reproduced between individuals, institutions, and systems (bourdieu, 1993; hall, 1986, 1997; hoggart, 1998). for instance, ruling class cultural institutions, from private schools to the opera, from dinner clubs to professional associations, all provide a venue in which class relations and sensibilities can be reified, reinscribed, and reproduced through social interactions. likewise, popular cultural spaces and practices can offer the means to awaken dwindling class consciousness among the working class and offer the potential to subvert and transform the status quo and the ruling class interests it embodies. several generations of feminist and queer scholars (e.g., butler, 2006; eisenstein, 2004; haraway, 1991; hooks, 2000; mohanty, 2003) have investigated the ways in which gender is socially constructed and reproduced through social institutions, cultural norms, popular media, social interaction, and structures of power. anti-racist scholars have mapped how the meaning of skin colour, accented speech, (presumed) ancestral origins, and socioeconomic status all fold into the reproduction of race (e.g., fanon, 1982; gilroy, 1993; hall, 1993; mills, 1997). the final valence of reproduction draws on the materialist feminist tradition of maria mies (1986), vandana shiva (1988), silvia federici (2003, 2012), and mariarosa dalla costa and selma james (1975), among others, who argue that attention to reproductive labour is central to an understanding of both capitalist and patriarchal power dynamics. while marx based his analysis of capital and struggle on the productive apparatus of society – the means of production – these authors note that the largely unwaged, feminized work of reproducing social life, which ranges from bearing and raising children to maintaining the family and community, is the actual bedrock of material social relations. without the production of new workers, and the reproduction of workers’ bodies and souls within the unpaid workshop of the family, there could be no ‘production’. today, with the rise of the so-called service sector as a key economic realm, we have seen this reproductive labour move into the formal waged economy and become more directly subjected to capitalist labour discipline. moreover, the sector remains largely ‘feminized’: women are overrepresented and, due to persistent and evolving patriarchal outside but along-side studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 21 conditions, work remains highly exploitative, precarious, and poorly paid (see federici, 2012). recognizing capitalism’s parasitical appropriation of the work of social reproduction allows us to see it for what it is: secondarily, a system of production; primarily, a society-spanning system in which the reproduction of social life itself is always and everywhere at stake. this recognition helps us overcome the tenacious tendency to posit an artificial break between a ‘real’ economic base and a contingent cultural or institutional ‘superstructure’. this insight has been central to other radical theorists and practitioners, particularly those belonging to, or influenced by, the italian autonomia movement and its legacies. these have frequently focussed on the biopolitical nature of capitalism, the reorientation of capitalism away from an exclusive focus on the exploitation of labour and the production of commodities and toward the production or harnessing of social life and subjectivity (caffentzis, 2013; cleaver, 2000; dyer-witheford, 1999; federici, 2012; hardt & negri, 2000; holloway, 2002, 2010). further, we can identify that capitalism functions only by conscripting and being conscripted to patriarchy, white-supremacy, colonialism, and other systems of power in order to reorient the reproduction of social life toward its own endless, limitless reproduction. as john holloway (2010) so perceptively notes, the pre-condition for capitalism is the enclosure of our life-affirming, useful, concrete doing in the form of exchangeable, quantifiable, alienated, and abstracted labour. this means that we are, ultimately, the creators of the very social world that exploits us and reduces us to objects. in this context, as marxist-feminists such as federici (2003) and mies (1986) have so incisively argued, primitive accumulation is not merely a historical phase of capitalist development. rather, it refers to the constant drive of capital to colonize, marketize, and commodify the lifeworld and the sphere of social relationships. capitalism is defined by struggle: on the one hand, individuals and communities constantly seek to develop resistant forms of autonomy, solidarity, and value within, against, and beyond capitalism; on the other, capital is constantly seeking to enclose, co-opt, and harness these spaces and processes so as to endlessly reproduce itself. thus, capitalism names a struggle over the fabric of life itself and, as holloway (2010) asserts, in this sense we are the crisis of capitalism both as we reproduce it as a system and as we struggle to reclaim our doing from it. the crisis of academic reproduction as we have elaborated elsewhere (haiven & khasnabish, 2014), we understand all crises to be, at some level, crises of capitalist reproduction, whether it is the global ecological crisis; the ongoing financial crisis; the crisis of the nation-state, which has given rise to all manner of demonic reactions (fundamentalism, ethnic nationalism, imperialism); or the crises of alex khasnabish, max haiven studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 22 debt, anxiety, or alienation at the level of everyday life. all such crises result from the tension and friction between forces and movements at all three aforementioned levels of capitalist reproduction. such an approach can offer us important insights into the contradictions within capitalism and, therefore, the sites and opportunities for leveraging social transformation. we see the university as one such site and the crises germane to the neoliberal academy as not merely a baleful curse, but an important set of structural transformations that can inform strategic interventions. other contributions to these special journal issues speak voluminously to the crisis of academe, whether it is the crisis of the liberal university’s core mission (scholarly independence and values sacrificed on the altar of austerity), the crisis of academic labour (the rendering precarious of teaching and research staffing), the crisis of corporatization (industry partnerships, advertising), or the pedagogical crisis (the liquidation of critical thinking and radical thought in favour of streamlined curricula aimed at credentialization). for our part, we simply wish to map these overlapping crises onto the threefold theory of reproduction elaborated above. they each stem from conflicts between, on the one hand, the university’s role as an institution built and maintained to reproduce capitalist economic and social relations and, on the other hand, the university as a site of struggle over the way social life will be reproduced for its inhabitants and for society at large (edu-factory collective, 2009; haworth, 2012). those of us who survive, fitfully and precariously, within the university have become virtuosic at locating and cultivating spaces of abundance within and between its crisis tectonics. because of this, we should not default to shamefaced hand-wringing over the relative luxury and privilege enjoyed by academic researchers when they interact with social movements and other actors. while no doubt partially true (though only for those of us fortunate enough to have tenure-track positions), we should also recognize our special competencies and opportunities as survivors within a hostile ecosystem, a virtuosity of survival that can inform the sorts of research we do, not primarily in order to generate data, but to catalyze radical social change. in suggesting this we are not simply reifying the prowess of the academic as the consummate example of the neoliberal subject, deftly navigating and leveraging precarity toward the actualization of their own value. following moten and harney (2013), we affirm that all knowledge is produced collectively and collaboratively, and that the university, in its hegemonic role, is an engine of theft whereby that common knowledge is enclosed, sorted, and revalued in the interests of the reproduction of capital and capitalism, with sometimes the side-effect of reproducing the academic as an elite worker-subject, with all the material and immaterial privileges that accrue. we are suggesting that academics need to pay careful attention to, and cultivate the particular latitudes of, freedom and potential they possess and put them to work in the interests of other forms of reproduction that strive toward the revolutionary transformation of social life and institutions. we are outside but along-side studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 23 calling for a thorough examination of the differential, problematic, unequal, and highly contingent forms of virtuosity we have necessarily developed, not as a result of research or professionalization, but by virtue of survival within the increasingly hostile and austere academic workplace. this is a workplace that has, according to the edu-factory collective (2009) and andrew ross (2009), come to prefigure and model new capitalist techniques and circuits for the extraction of value and intellectual and affective labour through the harnessing of subjectivity, the leveraging of precarity, and the flexible distribution of institutional risks and rewards. our value to movements cannot be based only on our ability to redirect toward them the material and intellectual privileges of the university; instead, it must be based on a recognition of the particular forms of subjugation, subjectivity, and potential we encounter as academic subjects and the lateral, negotiated, difficult solidarity we can form with others encountering the same or other forms of subjugation. the crisis of movement reproduction one of the most important insights offered by social movement scholarship, and one well-known by anyone who has spent any time working collectively with others in a struggle for social change, is that movements are not merely vehicles for contentious politics but laboratories for experiments in living and being in ways other than we are now (day, 2005; dixon, 2014; j. juris, 2008; maeckelbergh, 2009; polletta, 2002; sitrin, 2012; sitrin & azzellini, 2014; walia, 2013). commonly referred to as prefigurative politics, at their most intentional and elaborate, such experiments seek explicitly to model the world movement participants want. in a more anarchistic vernacular, we might say that in this political vein the means of struggle must be commensurate with the desired ends. from this perspective, we can understand movement cultures and politics as intertwined around the question of reproduction. the way movements reproduce themselves – that is, how they, in a day-to-day and organizational fashion, sustain themselves and their participants – has dramatic consequences for the kind of social reality they prefigure. many movement participant-observers have noted that in the context of an increasingly austere and militarized state, the prospects for a politics that seeks to exert pressure on decision-makers through the spectacle of protest seem increasingly dim (day, 2005; dixon, 2014; holloway, 2002; sitrin & azzellini, 2014). this suggests that both movement participants and those researchers who seek to work with them ought to think differently about movements themselves. more than extra-institutional vehicles for contentious politics, movements are also the spaces for alternative forms of, and experiments in, social reproduction. for better or worse, they are spaces where people find and reproduce community. movements are not only places where friendships and alex khasnabish, max haiven studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 24 other relationships blossom, they are also undergirded by networks of sociality, care, and shared purpose. the activists we interviewed as part of our research on the radical imagination (discussed in greater detail below) often shared houses or practiced other forms of collective or communal living, they provided emotional and sometimes professional support for one another, and they often formed and based their activism on the strength and creativity of these social bonds. movements thus become spaces where activists reproduce their bodies, their minds, and their souls. how do we do research with social movements at a moment marked by a profound crisis of their reproduction? it is always a mistake to measure social movements’ successes and failures only by the achievement of their stated objectives (e.g., particular policy changes, electoral victories, or fruitful campaigns) because it ignores the ways in which they create and sustain platforms for counter-hegemonic forms of social relationality and reproduction. in periods of social movement downturn, the costs of such narrow focus are magnified and lead to overly cynical and pessimistic assessments of the potential for social change. in such times, how might those of us who enjoy the conflicted, double-edged, and perhaps inherently unjust privileges of the (securely employed, funded) academic best put our powers to work not on, not for, but with social movements? with these questions in mind we undertook a study of what we called the ‘radical imagination’. we wanted to know what it was that animated the spirit of refusal, revolt, and reinvention that allowed social movements to sustain themselves even in the darkest of times. we wanted to understand how those who have a radical vision for changing the world in unlikely ways sustain and spread hope, courage, and conviction amidst what might appear, to an outside observer, like failure. so what do we mean by the ‘radical imagination’? the hegemonic notion of imagination comprehends it as an almost transcendental feature of the individual human brain. for us (see haiven & khasnabish, 2011) it is, rather, a collective practice. the radical imagination is not something individuals possess; instead, it emerges from sparks between people as they work together to confront the inequalities and injustices of the dominant social order. in this sense, ‘radical’ does not refer to any particular political orientation but, rather, following the word’s etymology, denotes an ability to trace social problems to their systemic roots. following the work of cornelius castoriadis (1997), we understand the imagination as constantly at work in social life – indeed, the imagination is the magma-like substance out of which social institutions of all sorts are formed, from schools to prisons, the conventions of heteronormative love and marriage, to the stock market. in addition to physical and legal infrastructure, all social institutions are held in place and gain force through the shaping of social imaginaries (see also appadurai, 1996; taylor, 2004). the radical imagination, then, is generated in the tension between social actors and the ‘imaginary’ institutions and systems that surround them and to which they are conscripted. outside but along-side studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 25 as such, studying the radical imagination requires unconventional tools. it cannot be observed and measured in a static form; it must be stimulated and experienced in struggle, debate, and contestation. further, for those who wish to study in solidarity with movements (rather than perform research on movements), the objective cannot be mere observation but transformation. we sought to design a research agenda that took the crisis of social reproduction seriously, and that allowed us to better understand the ways in which movements both contest the disastrous reproduction of neoliberal capitalism and also provide spheres for experimenting with other modes and formations of care, sociality, and social reproduction. elsewhere, we (khasnabish & haiven, 2012) have identified three key categories of research strategies that are explicitly ‘in solidarity’ with social movements: invocation, avocation, and convocation. invocation could be said to represent the dominant voice of social movement studies in the academy. in this approach researchers make use of their academic status and standing both to legitimate and examine movements as vehicles for contentious politics. this stance has yielded important insights in terms of the dynamics of social movement activity and has also helped lend legitimacy in the eyes of some sceptics to non-institutional forms of political activity. invocation also maintains the division between movements and those who study them and, in so doing, primarily produces knowledge about movements for a specialist academic audience. the second strategy is that of avocation: a calling away from. this posture describes researchers who, in a variety of ways, renounce the unjust autonomy and privilege of their academic status and seek to go to work within movements, putting their skills and whatever resources they may possess at the disposal of the movement itself. forms of feminist action research and participatory action research often follow this path and have contributed vitally both to movements and community-based struggles, as well as to grounded knowledge about social change struggles from within. but avocation can only be a successful strategy when there are fully formed movements and organizations prepared to host and make use of engaged researchers. what about when movements are in states of fragmentation or reconsolidation? this leads us to our third strategy of convocation: to call or summon something into being collectively. in this strategy, researchers seek to work dialogically with movements while retaining and seeking to make productive use of the unjust, unearned, but potentially fruitful autonomy and resources that accompany academic-based research. what kinds of possibilities open up to all of those who participate in a research process when the end goal is not the generation of units of academic knowledge to be converted into capital, but when the process itself becomes the goal; a way of making time and space for an open-ended grassroots inquiry guided by the collective? in this way, research becomes a way not merely of documenting or cataloguing movements, or any other social phenomenon for that matter, but of rigorously exploring the terrain of the possible. thus, in the fall of alex khasnabish, max haiven studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 26 2010, we initiated an ethnographically grounded, politically engaged social movement research project with self-identified radical social justice activists in halifax, nova scotia. with a research team composed of the two of us as the project’s co-directors and two research assistants recruited from the local social justice community, this project was configured as an experiment in research with rather than for or about social movements, with research as a catalyst for ‘convoking’ – collectively calling into being – the radical imagination. the project was funded initially by a two-year standard research grant from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc) and thereafter through collaboration with a variety of academic programs and social justice organizations, as well as by grant money provided by mount saint vincent university. from fall 2010 until the conclusion of our active research phase two years later, our research team interviewed more than 30 self-identified ‘radical’ social justice activists in halifax. in semi-structured, open-ended, and indepth one-on-one interviews, we asked our participants about their political biographies, assessments of the status quo and the potential for social change, the best pathways for social change, experiences within social justice organizations, what it would mean to ‘win’, and what the future looked like. drawing out emergent themes from our interviews, in the second year of the project we hosted a series of three ‘dialogue’ sessions in a public, accessible venue in halifax, which was open and free to the public and to which our participants were invited. the three sessions were framed around issues and themes that had stood out to the research team in the interview stage: fighting back collectively in the age of austerity; the relationship between struggles against capitalism and struggles against oppressions; and the form and strategy of organizing today. the latter is essentially a question about more autonomous, grassroots, and horizontal forms of organizing versus more hierarchical, centralized, and disciplined ones like traditional leftist parties. while this concluded the active research phase of the project, we later began to curate an ongoing speakers series through which we have brought researchers and activists from outside of halifax’s radical milieu to the city to give academic and public talks about their work and its relationship to struggles for radical social change in order to continue to stimulate dialogue about a variety of issues bearing upon social justice today. in addition to publishing in academic venues about our work, we have disseminated our research in a variety of ways including: our project website (see http://radicalimagination.org); numerous presentations in public, activist, and academic contexts; shorter and more accessible pieces written for wider audiences and published on-line; media appearances, especially those in community and social justice venues; a two-day ‘festival’ of the radical imagination featuring eight local and visiting radical scholar-activists; and an audio documentary about the project featuring the voices of many of our participants that is, at the time of this writing, in the very final stages of production. outside but along-side studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 27 like other engaged researchers, both within and outside of the academy, our research-based engagement with social movements and the diverse individuals and collectives who constitute them draws from a methodological toolbox that prioritizes grounded experiences and the lived reality of social life and struggles for social change (conway, 2004; dixon, 2014; frampton, kinsmen, thompson, & tillezek, 2006; j. juris, 2008; j. s. juris & khasnabish, 2013; khasnabish, 2008; maeckelbergh, 2009; sitrin, 2012; sitrin & azzellini, 2014; wood, 2012). open-ended interviews, focus groups, public forums, and participant observation in the social justice milieu in halifax made up the broadly ethnographic bedrock of our research. by ethnography we mean not only a research methodology including participant observation and in-depth interviews, but also a mode of writing and analysis that seeks to convey the subjective experience of being ‘in the field’. politically engaged, ethnographically grounded research with social movements also must adopt a somewhat different posture than ethnographic methodologies situated inside more conventional, objectivist paradigms. when the aim of research is not the generation of ‘better data’, but rather the facilitation of a dialogic process of grassroots, critical, and collective inquiry, its approach and outcomes become less descriptive and more catalytic. as academically positioned researchers working in a spirit of solidarity with those struggling for social justice and change in the radical milieu in halifax, we came increasingly to see our role less as scribes for, and interpreters of, movement activity and more as curators of critical, dialogic processes and encounters. in adopting this orientation to our research, we do so aware of and inspired by the ethnographically informed work of other politically committed scholar activists (see e.g., conway, 2004; frampton, kinsmen, thompson, & tilleczek, 2006; j. juris, 2008; j. s. juris & khasnabish, 2013; khasnabish, 2008; kinsman & gentile, 2010; maeckelbergh, 2009; sitrin, 2012). we are also very much aware that our own approach to scholarly activism (or activist scholarship) is only one point in a much wider constellation of attempts, both within and outside of the university, to carry out rigorous, critical inquiry with those engaged in struggles for radical social change and social justice (e.g., colectivo situaciones, 2011; dixon, 2014; frampton, kinsmen, thompson, & tilleczek, 2006; harney & moten, 2013; shukaitis, graeber, & biddle, 2007; sitrin & azzellini, 2014). it is worth noting here that our research methodology and approaches to knowledge production have remained in the hands of the research team and, most specifically, in our hands as project co-directors. unlike other approaches to community-engaged research we have not submitted the project as a whole to the control of the activist milieu in halifax, though we would argue that when we began the project in 2010 the fragmentation and cleavages that marked the radical milieu in halifax would have made this fraught, if not impossible. while other engaged researchers have gone to work with and within social movements in ways that have put the research alex khasnabish, max haiven studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 28 process and its outcomes much more directly in the hands of their constituencies of concern than our own approach, we felt strongly about the value of our orientation and the need for the maintenance of a certain distance between the project and the community it sought to engage. moreover, although we have not strayed far from fairly conventional models in terms of our written work emerging from the project, the diversity of our public educational initiatives (website, audio documentary, film and speakers series, the festival of the radical imagination and other popular events) have been much more collaborative, democratic, and accessible in form, organization, and content. essentially, our goal was to craft a research methodology that understands the radical imagination as emerging within and between social movements as they engage with the three-fold crisis of capitalist reproduction at the level of political economy, at the level of society and subjectivity, and at the level of community and care. movements, we found, imagine, develop, demand, and fight for both alternative models of social life (ways of living otherwise) and alternative orders of social reproduction (the way we organize the reproduction of social life itself) within, against, and beyond the capitalist order. at the same time, movements also operate as micro-communities: zones of alternative social reproduction that allow participants to form new social bonds based on their principles and aspirations. yet, crucially, we found that these two goals – levelling a militant critique of social reproduction and modelling an alternative – were never quite in alignment. there was always tension and friction, conflict and experimentation occurring within and between movements and movement actors as they struggled through resisting the predations of the dominant order, advancing alternatives to it, and maintaining themselves as communities of care capable of nurturing and prefiguring ways of living otherwise. through our research we found that these differences, tensions, and contradictions usually remained tacit, unspoken, and unacknowledged. our convocatory approach, then, was an attempt to leverage the unique (but also unfair and problematic) privileges and opportunities held by (tenuretrack) academics to create spaces and times for social movements to more explicitly and efficaciously address these contradictions. in this sense, we were influenced by the work of fraco ‘bifo’ berardi (2009) when he suggests that in an age of neoliberal capitalist acceleration, when nearly all spheres of life, subjectivity, and sociality are ‘enclosed’ by the market and when social movements in many countries seem defeated, activism must comprehend itself on some level as a form of radical collective therapy. translated into our terms, this would be a therapy to help individuals and movements understand and heal from being caught between the multiple contradictions of capitalist reproduction, as well as the contradictions germane to social movements as they seek to contest that order of reproduction and invent and practice new models of it. outside but along-side studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 29 between success and failure over the course of our active research phase, from 2010 to 2012, our research team noticed three distinct patterns emerge out of our one-on-one interviews with activists. the first was that some of the richest, most reflexive, and nuanced insights collaborators offered were in response to our interview question asking them to narrate their personal political biographies. here, ideological beliefs and orientations corresponded to changes in individuals’ life circumstances and relationships, further convincing us of the intertwined nature of the radical imagination and the conditions of social reproduction. the second was the almost uniformly bleak and dystopian way most activists spoke of their visions of the future, usually with explicit reference to the catastrophic consequences of anthropogenic climate change and the rise of totalitarian governments. the third pattern that emerged from our interviews was that, when asked to describe what it would look like to ‘win’ (a question we borrowed from the turbulence collective, 2013), almost all our collaborators responded, after an uncomfortable pause, with brief, taciturn, and sometimes meekly apologetic or wryly sardonic answers. these answers were either extremely broad and abstract negations of the present order (e.g., “the end of capitalism”) or highly particular (e.g., the passage of an all-too-often modest legislative reform). these responses confused us, expecting as we did that the tireless activism we were witnessing must be motivated by broad, rich, bold, and comprehensive visions of other possible worlds of social justice. we came to take a keen interest in the pregnant, uncomfortable pause that frequently preceded the answer. we named this significant gap ‘the hiatus’ (haiven & khasnabish 2013) and came to see it as symptomatic of the double bind we have outlined above: on the one hand, movements must contest and confront the crisis of capitalist reproduction and, on the other, function as alternative models of social reproduction. the hiatus stems from a debilitating sense of inertia and failure in the face of the meagre or nonexistent pace of systemic change, often producing either activist burnout and movement dissolution or causing movements to turn inward and devolve into subcultures of solace in a heartbreaking world. compounding this is the fact that, in halifax and many other smallto medium-sized urban centres, much important social justice work often gets done by a fairly small number of engaged people. in environments characterized by seemingly endless attacks on existing rights, much social justice activism becomes a defensive battle. with resources, time, and energy stretched thin, activists often face burn-out and its attendant negative consequences for physical, mental, and emotional health. all too often, activist spaces are sites of frenzied activity, self-exploitation, and sometimes toxic patterns of behaviour directed against self and others. the recognition of this has led to a protracted and important discussion about selfand community-care and how that might be considered within the larger alex khasnabish, max haiven studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 30 framework of organizing. such sensations and frustrations were all too familiar to us as academics bound up in and with an institution which, torqued by the force of neoliberal commodification, produces chronic fruitless overwork and destructive interpersonal and institutional drama. these insights taught us a great deal about the realities of movement success and failure. as with individuals, movements do not spend their existence soaring in the airy heights of victory or mired in the depths of defeat. indeed, the quotidian experience of social reproduction – of caring for ourselves and others and so renewing our capacity to labour – is the most common state for individual and collective entities in the world. as we have noted, in a very real sense this means that movements, as well as the individuals who make them up, dwell most commonly in the hiatus between success and failure. the significance of this recognition is that rather than focusing only or primarily on the most spectacular moments of movement activity, it is worth thinking about the tremendous amount of movementrelated work that goes on outside of these moments of high drama and how it relates to the nature and direction of the movement in question. hence, we discovered that our project was not primarily aimed at enabling movements to succeed, and indeed that our measurements and notions of success and failure were often misleading. if we attempt to ascertain the value and success of social movements purely by their ability to achieve concrete social changes, we miss a great deal about how they actually work. we miss the way they offer (intentionally or unintentionally) alternate forms of social reproduction. we also miss the role they often play as way-stations in the biography of individuals or the genealogy of ideas; the way movements, in spite of their objective victories or defeats, act as watersheds of the imagination, collecting, recycling, and redistributing ideas, techniques, visions, and people. we discovered that the role of our project was to hold space open for slower, more intentional critical conversations, to probe and question the often unspoken or unacknowledged tensions and possibilities within and between movements and within and between movement actors. as a consequence of this, we were forced to re-examine our own notions of success and failure as academic-activists. we were not conventionally successful at collecting formally reliable data. nor were we successful at stimulating some sort of revolutionary epiphany or energizing transformation in the movements we worked with. yet we also did not fail. we experimented with a process which began with a critical and self-reflexive assessment of our own subject positions and virtuosity as subjects existing within, against, and beyond the neoliberal, crisis-wracked academy. based on this, we devised and experimented with an investigation of the radical imagination based on meeting movements not as monolithic political actors but fragmented, fractured, and contradictory entities, made up of fragmented, fractured, and contradictory actors. for us, ‘working alongside’ movements means devising research that convokes the fabric of social contestation and outside but along-side studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 31 the radical imagination. to do so, we need to complicate our notions of what success and failure might mean, both for movements and for research itself. we are wagering this strategy of convocation on the belief that activistacademics working with social movements can envision themselves as more than either trusted insiders or privileged outsiders, but can instead imagine forms of solidarity research occurring along-side the movements they work with. such an approach depends on an honest and forthright assessment of the opportunities and dangers the academic brings to table. but it also depends on a consideration of how the academic habitus produces us (and exploits us) as subjects and compels us to cultivate a virtuosity of resilience and persistence within an increasingly austere and hostile environment. all too typically this virtuosity is applied to the reproduction of the neoliberal university, which, evolving as a key institution within the high-pressure environment of the three-fold crisis of capitalist reproduction, adapts a system of rewards and punishments to elicit from us the virtuosic production of academic capital in the form of publications, service, teaching, and credentialization. of course, in spite of the university’s mythology, it is far from a meritocracy and the rewards and punishments, as well as the opportunities for resistance, are unevenly distributed along axes of race, class, gender, citizenship status, ethnicity, employment status, and other vectors of oppression. yet we are keen to experiment with how academic virtuosity might be redirected, reappropriated, and repurposed in the interests of working with movements that are contending with the same tri-fold crisis of reproduction that gave rise to that virtuosity in the first place. here we are attempting to summon and channel what might be called the ‘university after the university’. today, the university is the site of the harnessing and leveraging of its denizens’ virtuosity toward the reproduction of the hegemonic institution and the form of neoliberal capitalism it has been made to serve. it is an institution adept at displacing or externalizing its own crises onto its inhabitants (students, teachers, staff) in the form of student debt, chronic over-work, and precariousness. in the world we might seek to build beyond the crisis and beyond capitalist reproduction, the university will have to become something radically different. how might the university become a fulcrum for the production and facilitation of new forms of social reproduction? how might academics grasp this potential and put it to work in the present? how can we envision our work as academic-activists, not as saviours or as bystanders of social movements, but as partners, accomplices, and co-conspirators? more importantly, how can we, today, take up the mantle of the scholars we might yet become in the world we might build together? that is, how can we, borrowing the language of prefigurative politics, imagine prefigurative methodologies? these would be methodologies borrowed from what seems like an impossible future; one where our role might be facilitating healthy, honest, and robust forms of social reproduction. alex khasnabish, max haiven studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 18-33, 2015 32 references althusser, l. 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(2014). crisis and control: the militarization of protest policing. london: pluto. blithe & lanterman final feb 6 17 correspondence address: sarah jane blithe, department of communication studies, university of nevada – reno, 1664 n. virginia st., mail stop 0229, reno, nv, 89557; email: sblithe@unr.edu issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 camouflaged collectives: managing stigma and identity at gun events sarah jane blithe university of nevada, usa jennifer l. lanterman university of nevada, usa abstract gun violence persists in the united states, claiming lives and escalating healthcare costs. this article seeks to contribute to social justice work on the “gun problem” by studying gun collectives. to understand gun culture and to identify gun violence reduction strategies, we study places where gun owners organize – legal (and sometimes illegal) settings that facilitate dialogue about gun issues. based on participant observation and collaborative event ethnography at gun shows and a private shooting party, this analysis presents findings about the practices gun collective members use to manage stigma. we conclude that when participants in gun events attempt to subvert core stigma through everyday stigma management practices, they effectively facilitate the unfettered exchange of potentially dangerous goods, promote the invisibility of oppressive structures, and normalize violence. keywords gun culture; social justice; gun violence; stigma; identity; firearms; collaborative event ethnography gun violence is a persistent social problem in the united states, yet national dialogue about gun violence frequently results in dichotomized, political debates about gun ownership (melzer, 2009). in this paper, we argue that reducing gun violence is a social justice issue, and that social justice scholars must engage in national discourses about guns in order to ultimately reduce gun violence. for this analysis, we turn our gaze to the organization of gun collectives, places where gun owners and gun culture are accessible, to begin to understand how “gun culture” and “gun owner identities” unfold. understanding gun collectives is an essential first step in untangling the divisive, life-and-death conflict currently taking place in the united states about guns. sarah jane blithe, jennifer l. lanterman studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 114 gun collectives are frequently stigmatized and membership and activities within gun collectives can be considered “dirty work” (ashforth & kreiner, 1999). tangling legal, illegal, controversial, and stigmatized actions together with political advocacy, gun collectives and gun collective members must grapple with a myriad of techniques to manage their identities. much of this identity work occurs through macro discourses about gun ownership; thus, studying gun collectives and the discourses that both permeate from and influence gun owners through a social justice lens is critical (dempsey et al., 2011). vendors, attendees, and other individuals related to gun events, such as people who rent space to gun shows, or people who provide advertising services, engage in similar discursive practices, which mutually reinforce one another in efforts to manage stigma. the co-constructed discourse serves to bond gun collective members together, even as many individuals view guns, gun laws and rights, and gun culture in different ways. taking a social justice approach to academic scholarship suggests a particular focus on creating transformative social change, “helping to build a better world” (dempsey et al., 2011, p. 257). social justice work “assumes that there is an urgent and immediate need to transform social and material relations. social justice scholarship brings with it a diagnosis and a call to action” (dempsey et al., 2011, p. 258). further, as social justice scholar larry frey described, social justice scholars try to make interventions in contexts in which racism, conflict, oppression, and cultural struggle occur (frey, in dempsey et al., 2011; see also broome, carey, de la garza, martin & morris, 2005). certainly, gun violence is an issue wrapped in racism, conflict, and cultural struggle. scholarship from a social justice perspective takes a transformative approach: intervening in discourse and, as mohan dutta argues, offering “entry points for engaging with the truths that are hidden or erased” (dutta, in dempsey et al., 2011, p. 259).1 our analysis is an attempt to uncover some hidden and erased discourses within gun collectives, in an effort to contribute to the larger social justice agenda of reducing gun violence. politicians, public health advocates, and outraged citizens have lobbied for and endorsed efforts to curb gun violence in the united states. to date, success has been limited for many reasons. one reason is that the relationship between “firearms and their use in homicide… is complex and obviously involves cultural factors” (editorial, 2007, p. 1403). cultural understandings about firearms and firearm use are necessary to better understand why firearms are used to effect violence. however, gun culture and socialization are very difficult to study because the issue of gun ownership is tangled up in discourses of individual rights, laws, and stigma. further, members of gun collectives are vastly different in their relationships to guns, in their opinions about gun control, and particularly in their gun use habits (melzer, 2009). 1 bud goodall, a communication social justice scholar claims “intervention in discourse is our job” (dempsey et al., 2011, p. 264). camouflaged collectives studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 115 one approach to studying gun culture and socialization is through gun organizations, where individual members collectively identify with some shared values and practices. this paper is part of a larger project aimed at understanding gun culture in an effort to identify effective gun violence reduction strategies. a first step in this effort was to identify places where gun owners organize – legal (and sometimes illegal) settings that facilitate dialogue about gun issues. to situate this study, we first provide background information on gun collectives and firearm violence. next, we examine scholarship on stigmatized organizations and the practices organizational members used to manage core stigma, including privacy, secrecy, and false transparency. then, we discuss our use of collaborative event ethnography as a method of data collection, and present our findings about the practices gun collective members used to manage stigma. we conclude that when participants in gun events (i.e., vendors and attendees) attempt to subvert core stigma through discursive stigma management practices, they effectively facilitate the unfettered exchange of potentially dangerous goods, promote the invisibility or oppressive structures, and normalize violence. gun collectives and stigma gun collectives, firearm events, and even dialogue about gun ownership are rife with stigma. particularly because of the association of guns with violence, gun collectives must manage the stigma that is often attached to guns. gun shows, in particular, are often considered as a problematic area in debates about firearms and violence. associations between firearms and violence are not unwarranted: the united states has the highest rates of homicide and firearm homicide rates of all industrialized democracies (editorial, 2007). mass shootings are far more common in the united states than in any other high-income country, and are often committed with legally acquired firearms (brent, miller, loeber, mulvey & birmaher, 2013). for example, the shooters in the columbine high school mass shooting had a friend legally purchase some of their firearms from a gun show without a background check, taking advantage of what is known as the “gun show loophole” (kirk, gilmore & wiser, 2015); the shooter in the aurora, colorado, movie theater attack purchased his guns legally at three different gun stores (castillo, 2012). in addition to the cost of human life, gun violence in the united states is expensive. the annual cost of medical care for firearm-related injuries exceeds $2.3 billion (corlin, 2002) and more than $27.3 billion when both medical costs and loss of productivity are calculated (max & rice, 1993). of critical concern is the strong link between firearm violence and high rates of firearm ownership. while we do not wish to imply that all gun ownership results in violence, the connection between firearm ownership and firearm violence is important to flesh out (ott, aoki & dickinson, 2011), sarah jane blithe, jennifer l. lanterman studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 116 particularly because only nine percent of privately owned firearms are registered around the world (karp, 2007). the united states has a very high rate of private firearm ownership, and also extremely high rates of gun violence. the link between gun ownership and gun violence suggests that studying gun ownership is an important step in studying gun violence. gun-oriented organizations are sometimes forced to engage in hidden practices (scott, 2013) because their businesses face frequent opposition. guns shows often attract protesters and must deal with petitions to shut down their businesses, particularly in locations with high-profile shootings (parker, 2012; yee, 2013). recently, for example, florida’s new orlando gun show scheduled george zimmerman, former neighborhood watchman who was acquitted of murdering 17-year-old treyvon martin, to sign autographs at the show. the scheduled appearance drew intense community criticism and the host facility, the majestic, denied the new orlando gun show the space, forcing the organization to find another location for the show (buchanon, brown & murphy, 2014; ober, 2014). in another example, the saratoga arms fair, a new york gun collective, drew immense pressure to postpone their gun show after the nearby newtown, connecticut elementary school shooting. the owner opened the show to protesters, counter protesters, and intense media scrutiny. one attendee applauded the organizer for “not giving into the pressure” (yee, 2013. p. 1). another explained, “i feel we’re kind of persecuted…gun owners are blamed for certain things. we’ve been under attack for a long time, and we’ve been framed for things” (yee, 2013. p. 1). although the show hosted a record number of attendees, the collective must renew its license and permit annually, and is subject to ever-present legislation which would make the entire show, or the sale of specific items in the show, illegal (yee, 2013). the national rifle association (nra), the largest and most visible gun organization in the united states, has received intense media exposure and is considered highly contentious (elsbach & bhattacharya, 2001). as melzer (2009) describes it, the nra is a “four-million-member conservative social movement organization (smo) and political lightning rod” (p. 1). although it originally organized primarily to provide gun safety training, it has evolved into the highly public face of opposition to any restriction on firearms. the nra’s uncompromising stance on gun and ammunition control is the defining characteristic of its identity, which can cause controversy for nra members and nonmembers (elsbach & bhattacharya, 2001). in recent years, the nra has been engaged in a heavily covered battle about legislation to ban assault weapons, which are sold at most gun shows and used in many shooting ranges. because the national debate about gun ownership is so contentious, gun organizations face different constraints than other organizations. the assumption that gun events can be dangerous adds to the pressure sponsoring organizations experience. recent tragedies at gun events, such as the case of an eight-year-old boy who accidentally shot and killed himself with an uzi at camouflaged collectives studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 117 a gun show in 2008, a nine-year-old girl who accidentally shot and killed her gun range instructor with an uzi in august of 2014, and the death of american sniper author chris kyle, who was shot to death at a gun range in 2013, are reflective of the potentially dangerous conditions that exist at events involving firearms and ammunition (berman, 2014; lavietes, 2011). for these reasons, although gun events are typically highly publicized, organizers must also manage aspects of their business in relation to controversy. the notion of organizational stigma stems from goffman’s (1963) work on individual stigma, and describes negative judgments that are applied to an organization. hudson (2008) describes core stigma to describe the unshakable taint some organizations experience by their very existence. for core stigmatized organizations, routines, attributes, outputs, customers, or purpose carry enough stigma to make legitimacy impossible. for these organizations, complete social acceptance is an impossibility. examples of core stigmatized organizations identified in the academic literature include men’s bathhouses (hudson, 2008; elwood, greene & carter, 2003), brothels (blithe & wolfe, 2016; wolfe & blithe, 2015), or white power organizations (dobratz, 2001; futrell & simi, 2004; simi & futrell, 2009). the very nature of these organizations induces outside stigma. hudson (2008) also describes event stigma, to explain the stigma attached to organizations as the result of a specific event, such as the 1989 exxon valdez or the 2010 bp oil spills. in cases of event stigma, organizations suffer a spoiled image as a result of the event (hudson, 2008). organizations that experience event stigma engage in practices to address the stigma associated with that event, such as a public relations campaign, in order to survive. gun collectives experience both core stigma and event stigma. they are core stigmatized, rife with political controversy, illegal activities, and extensive legislation to set boundaries around their operations. however, gun collectives are also subject to repeated event stigma. individual or mass shootings – particularly shootings in surprising or public places – carry event stigma that attaches to gun collectives. because these events are so frequent, the event stigma attached to gun collectives constantly reinforces the core stigma. gun collectives become further entrenched in stigma, polarization about gun issues is reified, and, as a result, these organizations retreat into a shadowy existence. managing identity hughes (1958) describes dirty work as tasks that contain taint in a physical, social, or moral sense. while many occupations are partially or wholly “dirty,” people engaged in dirty work challenge their stigmatized identities in order to construct a positive self-concept (ashforth & kreiner, 1999). in general, people like to think of themselves in a positive way, and consider their actions as socially important. social identity theory suggests that sarah jane blithe, jennifer l. lanterman studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 118 individuals enhance their self-esteem through social identities and thus work hard to improve their self-definitions (ashforth & kreiner, 1999; tajfel & turner, 1986; hogg & abrams, 1990). of particular interest to this study is a technique that ashforth and kreiner (1999) call reframing. reframing allows individuals to transform the meaning attached to their identities by either infusing stigmatized aspects of work with positive outcomes, justifying the societal need for their work, neutralizing or negating stigmatized aspects of work tasks, or normalizing the stigma of dirty work by rendering stigmatized aspects of work as normal, everyday, non-stigmatized tasks (ashforth & kreiner, 1999; ashforth, kreiner, clark & fugate, 2007). studying the practices of people engaged in dirty work provides a rich context for understanding how positive meanings arise from identity construction in stigmatized places (ashforth & kreiner, 1999). participants at gun shows – vendors, attendees, and other related individuals, such as people who rent space to gun shows – experience moral taint because they engage in activities that are sometimes considered sinful or dubious, illegal, or require deception or confrontation. they also experience physical taint stigma, which arises from potentially dangerous conditions (ashforth & kreiner, 1999). people manage stigma and taint as collectives and as individuals. the members of gun collectives engage in both group and individual attempts to subvert the stigmatized aspects of their individual and collective identities. the endeavor to manage stigma is placed on all gun owners to some extent, in or out of events, even those who do not engage in illegal practices, because the stigma attached to gun culture is so pervasive. managing privacy one common way organizations deal with stigma is to engage in privacy practices. stigmatized organizations, which may or may not be at risk of exposure, take privacy seriously and regularly hide aspects of the organization deemed to be private. in a general sense, the concept of identifiable attributes, which can be linked to individuals, sets privacy parameters. davis (2006) explains, “the privacy of individuals, groups, or institutions is their ability to determine for themselves when, how, and to what extent information about themselves is communicated to others” (p. 117). for a variety of reasons, individuals desire to remain unidentifiable (adams, 2006), and in many western countries most people consider privacy to be a legal and moral right (davis, 2006; hollander, 2001; petronio, 2010). specific aspects of personal identity, such as age, gender, name, location, political affiliation, health, wealth, and bank account number are determined to be aspects of an individual’s life that require protection (adams, 2006). when organizations take privacy measures, individual members’, customers’, and partners’ information is not considered public. organizations and collectives become co-owners of private information and are enlisted together camouflaged collectives studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 119 to protect it (petronio, 2010). further, specific organizational information might be kept private as well, such as profits, location, names, political affiliations, profits, and bank account numbers. for hidden or stigmatized organizations, the need for privacy is inherently important. when privacy is threatened, individuals and organizational members may go to great lengths to protect sensitive information. the threat of exposure – i.e., the intended or unintended release of information about the discreet operations of an organization – can result in greater stigmatization or dismantling of the organization. to address the threat of exposure, organizational members engage in privacy management techniques (adams, 2006) to ensure privacy. petronio (2010) developed communication privacy management theory to describe the ways in which people manage privacy. she argues that managing privacy is rife with tensions that underpin the interplay between individuals and collectives. among these techniques are secrecy, anonymity, reframing, forced invisibility, and false transparency. communication in this sense does not necessarily equate with spoken words, but can include artifacts, gestures, symbols, and emblems, all of which are visible in the activities of gun collectives. for example, a background check is a communicative artifact. it signifies a particular type of sale, that there will be a record of the sale, and it identifies some relational boundaries between buyer and seller. thus, even if no words are exchanged, conducting a background check is highly communicative. secrecy is one tactic to preserve privacy (hollander, 2001). protecting secrets may require lying and solitude, for sharing private secrets with other individuals compromises privacy. because privacy is considered a right, secret holders take up power positions in the restriction or flow of private information. other ways individuals protect the privacy of stigmatized collectives is through anonymity and invisibility (marx, 2006). by removing names (lucock & yeo, 2006) and visibility (burkell, 2006) members of stigmatized collectives gain more control over their privacy. as rawlins (2009) points out, transparency does not equate with visibility. rather transparency is the opposite of secrecy. thus, transparent organizations are those which disclose as much information as possible – good or bad. in a time when expectations for organizational transparency have increased, stigmatized organizations may engage in false transparency, that is, the pretense of transparency, which draws attention away from stigmatized activities. taking what we know about stigmatized organizations from research on privacy and its theoretical neighbors, secrecy, transparency, and visibility, we asked the following research questions: how do members of gun collectives manage stigma?; and what (if any) techniques do members of gun collectives use to manage their identities? sarah jane blithe, jennifer l. lanterman studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 120 methods to address our research questions, we used qualitative, interpretive methods. specifically, we employed collaborative event ethnography (cee) to guide observations at seven gun shows across the country and one shooting party at a private shooting range. details about the data collection procedures, the sites, analysis, and verification are included below. researcher positionality over the course of our study, people have asked us how we, as individuals, feel about guns, gun violence, and gun control. of course, our analysis is not separate from our experiences, so presenting our personal relationships to our research topics is important. however, our relationship to guns is complicated. neither of us supports taking away all guns from civilians, and neither of us supports unfettered rights to firearm ownership. we are both concerned with gun violence, and throughout the research were sometimes shocked to see extremely violent images and slogans. we are both frustrated with attempts to shut down positive communication or decision making on the grounds that talking about guns is too polarizing. the first author is from littleton, colorado, two miles (3.2 km) from columbine high school, the site of the 1999 mass school shooting, 17.5 miles (28 km) from aurora, the site of the 2012 mass theater shooting, and seven miles (11 km) from arapahoe high school, the site of a 2013 deadly school shooting. she also grew up in a hunting family with several guns in her home. the second author is married to a united states marine. she has spent time in an environment supportive of responsible firearm use and possession throughout her marriage. she first learned to use firearms on her uncle's farm at age 12 and has used various firearms at shooting ranges as an adult. these personal relationships to guns undoubtedly shaped our research motivations, observations, and analysis. data collection procedures our first step in collecting data was to gain access to our desired sites. our initial research design included interviews with participants at gun shows and gun ranges. after gaining institutional review board approval, we contacted the organizers of three gun shows. all three show owners denied us access. one of the organizers explained that “asking questions about gun violence or safety might make show attendees aggressive or violent.” the show owners explained that for our own safety, we could not have a booth in the show with our cards and questions, nor could we formally interview attendees. we also pre-purchased time in an indoor gun range. however, before we had a chance camouflaged collectives studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 121 to enter the site, police shut the range down, arrested, and indicted the owner for selling illegal firearms – some without serial numbers – to undercover police (bellisle, 2014). in light of these events, we decided to begin with observations of public gun shows. we soon realized that our observations of gun collective events would prove a rich source of data, and decided to conduct a collaborative event ethnography at multiple sites. collaborative event ethnography (cee). cee helped us to study large events in action (büscher, 2014; brosius & campbell, 2010; ganesh & stohl, 2013). designed to help researchers engage with numerous participants and a large geographic space in the moment, cee allowed us to take in some overall observations about gun collectives, large amounts of visual communication and texts, as well as detailed information from individual members we spoke to at events. more traditional ethnographies emphasize local, individual, organizational, or smaller group experiences, and tend to draw data from deep immersion in a culture. cee takes the concept of “studying up,” or taking on massive scale sites while also “studying down,” or drilling into individual stories and experiences of people within the site (brosius & campbell, 2010, p. 248). this dual approach helped us build what robbins (2002) calls “ethnographic symmetry” (p. 1511) and what büscher (2014) describes as “empirical nuance” (p. 133). the logistical constraints of conducting research in such conditions are substantial. to overcome these difficulties, we used a multi-sited ethnographic approach (hannerz, 2003), and looked for themes and striking differences across shows. we also used a team approach when conducting the observations, and attended most events together, sometimes with the additional eyes of research assistants. the cee technique also allowed us to handle multiple subcultures within the larger umbrella of “gun culture.” at each show, we observed some prevalent subgroups (such as hunters, veterans, survivalists, conceal and carry advocates, the nra, historical artifact collectors, women, and machine gun enthusiasts). cee allowed us to gather data from all of these groups while also observing the culture of the event as a whole. we cannot emphasize enough the importance of the team aspect of our observations (büscher, 2014). the two researchers and the research assistants all came to the shows with vastly different backgrounds. our relationship to, thoughts about, and experience with guns, differed greatly. our different theoretical, methodological, and content expertise framed our observations such that our observations were sometimes overlapping, but also quite different. for example, the first author, a communication scholar, included information about evident discourse, while the second author, a criminal justice scholar, frequently made note of particular illegal weapons; some of these observations might have gone unnoticed without the diversity in our expertise and interest. we debriefed every event together, and conducted all coding and analysis together in order to make sense of these differences. our interdisciplinary collaboration marked an essential component of the cee. sarah jane blithe, jennifer l. lanterman studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 122 we wrote scratch notes and headnotes (lindlof & taylor, 2002) during the shows. our scratch notes included brief handwritten notes. headnotes included mental recordings of important, interesting, or shocking conversations, our feelings, and impressions. we each wrote detailed field notes after the events, which resulted in over 50 single-spaced pages of notes and nearly 200 artifacts (flyers, business cards, pamphlets, booklets, stickers, etc.). sites. we observed seven gun shows in three states (nevada, ohio, and virginia). observations lasted between one hour and fifteen minutes to over two and a half hours. the two biggest shows each boasted over 1,000 displays, and one and a half acres (0.61 ha) of exhibits. at the shows, we walked around, listened to conversations, observed visual displays, collected texts, and interacted with other participants. vendors eagerly engaged in conversations with us in efforts to sell their products or to have us sign up to support their causes or specific organizations (such as the nra). sometimes our roles as researchers were part of the conversation, other times we simply listened to others’ conversations as we walked through the show. during the course of our research, one of our research assistants was provided a contact for an organization that took people to a secret gun range to shoot “big guns.” she arranged for us to observe an event. after securing permission from the owners, we received oral directions to the meeting spot, which was marked with a temporary flag, and we followed the company owner to the range. there, we met the range owner and four range masters. on the day we observed, a bachelor party had booked the range and requested to shoot an ar-15 slide fire, an ak-47 slide fire, a mac-11, and an mp5. they also had the option of shooting the 50 caliber browning machine gun (bmg) for an additional fee.2 the prospective groom got additional rounds, and all of the participants had the option to shoot other guns, for an extra charge, if they decided to on site. the shoot lasted four hours. before the bachelor party arrived, we had the opportunity to converse with the owner and range masters about our research. data analysis and verification. consistent with our data collection, data analysis proceeded as a team effort. we analyzed the field notes together and developed themes inductively, grounded in the data. we assigned every piece of data a rough categorization, achieved through our joint observation and understanding of the notes. next, we refined, reduced, expanded, and collapsed categories as some themes featured more prominently and others faded into the background. we reread the data in the categories to see if we 2 the ar-15 slide fire and ak-47 slide fire are semi-automatic rifles with bump-fire stocks. these stocks reduce recoil and cause the shooter to discharge rounds at a higher rate. the mac-11 is a sub-compact machine pistol. the mp5 is a sub-machine gun. the bmg is a heavy machine gun. this is a crew-served weapon, which means it requires more than one person to operate it. camouflaged collectives studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 123 reached a clear pattern in the data. we present representative observations in the analysis. data verification included triangulation (lindlof & taylor, 2002) of the themes between both researchers’ individual field notes across events and the artifacts. how gun collectives manage stigma and identity the data revealed that members of gun collectives engage in a number of practices to avoid or reduce stigma associated with gun culture and with instances of gun violence. specifically, gun collectives managed identities through the use of privacy or secrecy tactics, drawing a historical narrative, and through normalizing activities. privacy and secrecy the use of privacy and secrecy is one practice that allowed members of the gun collectives to manage stigma associated with the illegal or legal but stigmatized aspects of gun collectives. as previously discussed, illegal activity sometimes occurs at gun shows. the sale of illegal guns, hollowpoint bullets or teflon-coated bullets (otherwise known as “cop killers”), which are illegal in some states and controversial in others, occur at some gun shows. however, the organizational values and practices of privacy and secrecy allow members to de-identify with this stigmatized aspect of the collective, so they can still maintain a positive identity. the specific methods used to secure privacy and secrecy varied between gun shows and the shooting party. generally, these methods revolved around concealment and limiting access to information. the gun events featured several practices with either the intent or effect of securing privacy or secrecy regarding the purchase or possession of firearms and ammunition. these practices revolved around rendering it difficult to track transactions and firearms. specifically, we observed cash only transactions, few background check requirements or enforcement, methods to conceal firearms, instructions and materials to build firearms, covert transactions, and secret locations. cash only practices featured prominently at the gun shows. some gun show organizers deal exclusively in cash. vendors inside the shows also dealt predominantly in cash. booths often included signs that read, “cash only” or “credit cards not accepted.” cash only transactions may serve several purposes. while cash is certainly convenient and helps vendors avoid additional fees, it also helps vendors and customers avoid credit card transactions, which produce searchable records. gun collective members may wish to avoid searchable records of gun transactions for a couple of reasons. first, searchable records of transactions create tax obligations. second, cash sarah jane blithe, jennifer l. lanterman studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 124 only transactions allow vendors and customers to avoid background checks. we witnessed only one transaction during which a vendor called for a background check. in all other transactions we witnessed, vendors did not ask customers for their state of residence or documentation of a background check. requirements to purchase firearms vary by state, but pre-sale screenings for criminal history, restraining orders issued for domestic violence, and severe mental disorder are one of the most common gun regulations. failing to complete these screenings is another way the gun collectives ensured privacy. in all three states we visited, all licensed firearm dealers are required to conduct background checks on buyers. dealers in nevada may also accept a concealed carry permit issued after july 1, 2011, which obviates the need for a background check. however, gun shows are temporary sale sites and are often loosely regulated (law center to prevent gun violence, 2013). we only saw a background check booth at one show. the booth was strategically positioned away from traffic, tucked in a corner far from the entrance and exit. when we asked the woman working at the booth if background checks are required for firearm purchases, she shrugged her shoulders and winked. neglecting to conduct background checks works well to ensure privacy. without documentation, there is really no way to know who purchased firearms, how many firearms were purchased, and which firearms were purchased at the shows. the concealment of weapons was a popular theme at the gun shows, and also served as a privacy strategy. a diverse array of products to aid the legal and illegal concealment of weapons was available for purchase. weapon concealment goods included items such as holsters, concealed carry clothing, and purses with compartments to conceal handguns. the gun shows we observed usually included several vendors advertising courses for people wishing to obtain concealed carry permits. weapon concealment facilitates impression management. the possession or carrying of firearms is a divisive issue in the united states, and may result in stigmatization and considerable difficulty moving through the business of daily life. hiding their weapons permits owners to be selective about with whom they share their gun ownership. gun owners can conceal their weapons when surrounded by people who are not supportive of gun ownership. this type of situational negotiation and impression management has been documented in people who participate in sub-cultures or groups that involve core stigma, such as white supremacy activists (simi & futrell, 2009) and women who have had abortions (astbury-ward, parry & carnwell, 2012). being careful to conceal an aspect of one’s identity or life that may trigger stigma is also a tactic that reduces scrutiny of one’s activities (kanuha, 1999). one extreme method we observed to ensure firearm ownership privacy was the build-your-own guns. at these booths, multiple gun parts are available for purchase, so that individuals can customize their weapons. these booths also sold instructions for building handguns, rifles, and machine guns. building firearms rather than purchasing serialized weapons from a legitimate dealer camouflaged collectives studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 125 makes it difficult to track weapons. not all gun parts are serialized, and savvy customers can purchase a receiver that is 80% or less complete, build the remaining firearm, and never be required to engrave a serial number on the completed weapon (bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms & explosives, n.d.). as one gun collective member noted, people can buy barrels and other non-serialized firearm components “with reckless abandon.” homemade weapons can be very difficult to identify in gun crime cases, because the parts can be modified, thereby complicating ballistics analysis. covert transactions were observed at several shows. private sales are not highly regulated. the gun control act of 1968 includes no federal requirement of documentation of firearm sales between private parties. however, some state statutes regulate private transactions. at the ohio and virginia gun shows, we observed secret transactions. a gun collective member alerted us to the practice of engaging in illegal sales by walking the perimeter of the show and listening for people to say “selling.” once aware of this practice, it was fairly easy to observe this type of sale. if the person in possession of the firearm was willing to sell it, then both parties walked over to a less obvious location, engaged in a brief discussion, and exchanged cash for the firearm. there was no exchange of documentation. this may be legal in some states, but it is illegal in others, and generally inadvisable in case the firearm is used in a future crime and the serial number is still associated with the original buyer. in either case, these covert transactions prevent the tracking of the firearms in question. stigmatized organizations regularly convene in secret locations. in our observations, the gun shows were public, but the shooting party was held at a secret location. the owner of the company running the party indicated that he would meet us at the turn-off for the range. it was a non-descript turn-off with no markings that would indicate to what the unpaved road led. upon his arrival, the company owner got out of his truck and posted temporary flags to mark the turn-off and path for the shooting party participants to follow through the mountains to the range. we met the land owner after we reached the range. he indicated that the location is secret, and both the company owner and land owner repeatedly requested that we not divulge the location of the shooting range. the privacy practices used by gun collective members helped the collectives and individual members avoid stigma. however, these practices also generated loopholes through which illegal activity was possible. people who are legally prohibited from possessing firearms (e.g., individuals convicted of felonies) or people conducting straw purchases (e.g., purchasing firearms for other people) would easily have been able to purchase multiple weapons. the combined privacy techniques used by gun collectives maintains vendor and customer privacy from government surveillance, facilitates the violation of laws, and helps members manage stigma. sarah jane blithe, jennifer l. lanterman studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 126 historical narratives we estimate that over 75% of the booths at the gun shows sold items which could be considered controversial, racist, or anti-semitic. however, vendors selling these items drew upon a common historical narrative to justify their products. the practice of framing racist or anti-semitic items as historical preservation allowed gun collective members to maintain a positive selfconcept and identification with the collective, while tactically deidentifying with the racist, colonialist, and anti-semitic aspects of the organization. by reframing their sale and display of highly racist artifacts as historical preservation, rather than acknowledging their racist implications, the vendors (and buyers) avoided the stigma attached to the sale of controversial items. through this practice, gun collective members deidentified with the racist implications of their artifacts. for example, one vendor had a 24 by 18 inch (61 x 46 cm) framed certificate which read “jap hunting license.” beneath the certificate, the vendor’s sign read, “largest collection of rare wwii documents.” the racist implications of displaying such a sign in modern times were reframed in terms of historical interest. in other examples, we witnessed a man walking around in a confederate civil war costume near a confederacy canon, and saw a metal sign that read “colored people” with an arrow below it. other offensive historical artifacts included a number of figurines and other trinkets (tea sets, lunch boxes, drawings etched on hides, etc.) depicting american indians as savages, or as the captives of white men. at most booths with these kinds of historical items were also a plethora of antique guns. by far the most common stigmatized artifacts were nazi paraphernalia. at some booths, small nazi medals were mixed in with other war medals. in one extreme case, an entire corner space (the largest exhibit space at the show) featured a 10 by 18 foot (3 x 5.5 m) nazi flag, a full uniform, nazi firearms, a plethora of medals, anti-semitic signs (such as “no jews”), and jewish identification armbands. field notes from every gun show included references to the abundance of nazi items. a few booths had signs saying “hitler was right” and “mein kampf,” the title of hitler’s autobiographical manifesto. the prevalence of these booths was perhaps the most consistent thread across the gun shows, and historical knowledge seemed to be a high point of pride. we overheard this exchange at one show: buyer: wow, man, this is amazing (leafing through civil war documents). vendor: thanks. yep. it’s pretty great. i get to sell history here. the pride with which the vendor spoke of “selling history” was evident in his smile and vast collection of war artifacts. some booths even had pamphlets with information for joining historical or collector societies, some of which required a sponsor or private invitation. camouflaged collectives studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 127 in many cases, the connections to history seemed to imply life was better in the past, particularly with respect to owning guns. for example, the nra was giving away betsy ross flags, with the 13 stars in a circle, for people who registered at the event. one woman explained her connection to history and her interest in historical flags. she said, “we need to remember just who america is supposed to represent.” the women in this example wanted people passing by her booth to rewind the clock to a time in history that she perceived to be better than the present. one of the researchers noted this sentiment in her field notes. she wrote, there are lots of civil war materials. they seem to be nostalgic for a “better time” when they could possess firearms without regulation. this was also a time when a large percentage of the population didn’t have many rights. how do they feel about equal rights for women and people of color? of course, much of u.s. history is rife with inequality, oppression, and racism. the sheer number of artifacts which now symbolize hate and oppression on open display likely created tension for some people at the shows. however, by reframing the sale of offensive items as the sale of historical artifacts, the vendors and people purchasing the items avoided some stigma and kept non-racist identities intact. in an interesting twist, the historic narrative was also used for new items. for example, a bumper sticker read, “governments support gun control” with the nazi swastika next to it. in another example, one vendor featured a john wilkes booth bobble-head figurine. john wilkes booth is clearly a historical figure (he assassinated president lincoln), but the bobble head is a new product. another vendor had a collection of purses with hand painted scenes of american indians in captivity. the purses are new, but they are depicting scenes of historical genocide. the image of former president obama was frequently placed alongside other historical figures. for example, we observed bumper stickers and t-shirts featuring obama’s picture beside adolf hitler and mao zedong with phrases beneath, including “we’ve seen this before” and “brothers in tyranny.” comparing a recent u.s. president to historical leaders who promoted genocide drew on a historical discourse, even though the items themselves were recently produced. while clearly political, these items were set in a historical context, which was prominent and seemingly valued at every gun show. normalizing activities at gun events as discussed earlier, gun events are potentially dangerous sites. however, the members of the gun collectives we observed managed the potential stigma attached to the dangerous aspects of the events by normalizing them. they did this using three primary practices: (a) adopting a casual attitude to their actions and the events as everyday activities; (b) juxtaposing innocuous items sarah jane blithe, jennifer l. lanterman studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 128 next to potentially dangerous weapons; and (c) making these events “family friendly.” we describe each below. the people attending gun events performed a highly casual attitude toward the events, and often acted as if they were not, in fact, handling potentially dangerous weapons. for example, in the parking lots of gun shows, people often walked to and from their cars carrying multiple weapons and ammunition. in one example, a man carried four transparent trash bags (two in each hand) full of ammunition through a casino, with three rifles slung around his shoulder. in a similar example, a man carried two rifles and a large axe. another man walked through the parking lot with a bulletproof vest, a machine gun over his shoulder, and a bucketful of ammunition. a final example from the parking lot featured a father rather carelessly swinging an assault rifle in his right hand, holding the hand of a young girl with his left hand. these examples show how the weapons at gun events – guns, knives, ammunition, etc. – were treated as everyday objects. there were no provisions to wrap the guns separately from the ammunition, for example, or any measure at all to prevent possible violence that could have occurred as a result of procuring weapons and ammunition. inside the show, framing weapons as ordinary was also common. at every show, we witnessed people handling, aiming, and what could only be called “carelessly swinging” weapons as they explored the show. on one occasion, the show became very crowded. after feeling a nudge, one author noticed the barrel of a handgun on her side. another time, one researcher noticed a handgun incidentally aimed at the other researcher’s back. yet another time, a young boy, aged around ten perhaps, aimed a black polymer rifle with a high capacity magazine at another passersby. a final example involves an approximately four-year-old girl handling a machete while her father purchased magazine clips for an assault rifle. although the weapons in these examples were presumably unloaded, the ho-hum nature with which people at the shows engaged with the items suggested an air of casualness. nobody seemed to be concerned by or even notice these behaviors, which were evident at every gun show we attended. this is similar to what ott, aoki and dickinson (2011) describe as “converting weapons of violent conquering into ordinary, everyday objects. to domesticate means to make familiar, normal, and acceptable something that was formerly wild, dangerous, or uncontrollable” (p. 219). the weapons at the shows we attended were made ordinary through the casual nature with which the show participants interacted with them. a final aspect of the casual atmosphere at gun collective events was the prevalent presence of alcohol. many shows had multiple stands for purchasing alcohol, and individuals frequently walked around with bottles of beer or mixed drinks during the shows. although mixing alcohol with guns and ammunition could heighten the potential danger of an event (parker & mccaffree, 2012), the presence of alcohol also served to solidify the casual, everyday atmosphere of gun events. the casual handling of weapons and camouflaged collectives studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 129 alcohol for purchase normalized the experience of gun shows, turning gun events into social events, which overshadowed the potential for danger and stigma inherent in the items for sale. a second way members of gun collectives normalized their activities was by juxtaposing innocuous items beside potentially violent or dangerous items. at every show, there were booths with jewelry and novelty pieces made of bullets, for example, a bottle opener made from a spent 50-caliber browning machine gun (bmg) cartridge. this round could “split a body in half” as one show attendee claimed, yet it was for sale as a campy trinket. similar items included a plastic ice cube tray in which each ice cube was shaped like a grenade and a wwii grenade hand painted and fashioned as a christmas tree ornament. at a few shows, a booth with water meditation beads, was situated next to a table full of assault rifles. dog toys, geodes and other rocks, guitars, scented candles, jerky, hot sauces and jams, jewelry, toys, and blankets were also sold, mixed in with the weapons, violent political t-shirts, and historical items for sale at the gun shows. these items seemed to make the gun show feel similar to a craft show in some places, which normalized the otherwise shocking items (such as the wall of magazine clips) at the events. a final way the gun collective members normalized the event experience was to make it a “family affair.” children were present at every show, and every show had at least one booth that specialized in children’s toys, including toy guns. many participants attended the show together as a family, and at least four vendors at every show were children, selling goods alongside their parents. one show featured a rubber band gun shooting gallery for kids, and another had a marshmallow shooting range for children. one booth sold remote control helicopters which appeared to have two to three children watching throughout the show. at another show, a boy scout troop had a table at the entrance, and scouts were all over the inside of the show selling boxes of popcorn. at that same show, a balloon artist made balloon animals for kids. another show had an ice cream cart with a line of families waiting to get a sweet treat. the gun events were clearly marketed as “child-friendly,” and collective members brought children to the event. discussion and implications the data from this study reveal that members of gun collectives subvert stigma through the use of privacy and secrecy, by mobilizing a historical narrative, and by normalizing the experience of gun events. although these techniques aid individuals in avoiding some of the core stigma attached to gun events, subverting stigma using these practices leads to a number of social justice difficulties. first, it allows for the exchange of potentially dangerous and illegal items to go on unfettered. safety regulations can be ignored, and individual accountability does not exist because so many practices work to secure the privacy of members’ identities. part of the sarah jane blithe, jennifer l. lanterman studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 130 difficulty in reducing gun violence is that laws and rules are easy to subvert. because privacy and secrecy are so engrained in the gun cultures we observed, it is difficult to promote an open and honest dialogue about gun ownership, laws, safety, and violence. historically, our mutual inability as a society to talk about gun ownership has allowed gun violence to continue. there has simply not been enough social action to resolve gun violence, partly because of stunted dialogue about this contentious issue. a second problem that arises through the use of stigma avoidance techniques is the invisibility of oppressive structures. by ignoring racism, anti-semitism, and the power imbued in the invisibility of whiteness, such oppressive structures can persist. selling the symbols of oppressive regimes and creating new products which evoke hatred and persecution makes discursive space for the continuance of oppression. the historical narrative nourished at events, in particular, allows members of gun collectives to harken back and celebrate a time when many people in the united states were more oppressed (ott et al., 2011). revering a time of oppression, because it allowed for unfettered “rights” of individuals in power, is harmful to everyone, particularly people from historically oppressed groups. as mcmurtry (2011) described, “rights” have slowly become absolute in recent years, “yet any deeper value principle to determine whether these increasingly totalitarian rights are valid has remained unconceived” (p. 11). the historical narrative of unfettered rights euphemizes the racist and anti-semitist themes at gun events. because members of gun collectives are actively involved in shaping laws, making structural and power inequalities at these events visible is a critical need. it is necessary to reduce racist, anti-semitic and sexist discourse to promote social justice. finally, when members of gun collectives normalize their activities and weapons, they also normalize violence. by making it appear that gun events are safe, or “family friendly,” awareness of the potential for violence at these shows is subverted. further, when guns become everyday items which even children can aim, handle, and sell, people can more easily overlook the possibility for violence outside the confines of the show. normalizing the potential for danger and violence might benefit stigmatized organizations and their members, but it can cause problems at the larger societal level. gun violence is a social justice issue which requires intervention. normalizing the violence and potential for danger inherent in gun events makes the need for intervention less visible. through this research on gun collectives, we contribute to knowledge about identity management strategies and stigma avoidance strategies, revealing some dark or unsavory techniques people sometimes engage in to manage hidden aspects of their identities. we have also shed some light on stigmatized collectives, which have been overlooked in research. sykes and matza’s (1957) description of neutralization techniques among juvenile delinquents is useful for thinking through how members of gun collectives manage stigmatized identities. they describe how members of a stigmatized camouflaged collectives studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 131 (sub)culture deflect disapproval by denying responsibility for deviant actions, denying injuries which result from deviant actions, denying victims, condemning condemners, and appealing to higher loyalties. although not all gun owners or gun collective members are “delinquent,” the stigma and illegal activities observed in gun collectives create conditions which allow them to operate like a subculture which experiences disapproval from a large cultural group. as the data presented here reveal, the participants of gun events engaged in all of these techniques. additional implications for social justice scholars perhaps the most striking implication that emerged from this research is the desperate need for social justice scholars to engage in gun violence research. discussions about gun violence are so polarizing that they are usually reduced to discourses of rights, laws, and control, rather than focusing on solving the issue of gun violence itself. as more scholars engage in social justice projects, this research provides an example of how to conduct interdisciplinary research about “wicked problems” (caron & serrell, 2009). some social issues require interdisciplinary knowledge, and social justice scholars are uniquely positioned to be part of sticky conversations about big problems. the intersections of gun culture with other social identities requires the sophistication of a social justice lens. most of the participants in gun collectives are conservative white men (melzer, 2009) engaging in what gibson (1994) describes as a hyper masculine culture of warriors. further, media coverage of gun violence is almost exclusively focused on mass shootings and white victims, when gun violence perpetrated against people of color rarely gains national media attention. in addition, at gun events, women are characterized almost exclusively as victims, in need of protection from men and guns. how social identity intersects with various gun cultures is a necessary next step in gun violence research which would be best facilitated through a social justice lens. we began collecting data for this project just after the sandy hook elementary school shooting – a horriffic event which choked the united states with grief. at the time, it seemed as if the nation was ready to do something about gun violence. however, as the months wore on, the promised activism and passion expressed to end gun violence faded into familiar complacency. in the end, no new gun control laws emerged after sandy hook. since then, at least 1,274 mass shootings have occurred in the united states,3 including the 2016 orlando nightclub shooting, the san bernadino community center shooting, the oregon community college 3 mass shootings are events in which four or more people are killed, not including the shooter (lopez & oh, 2017). sarah jane blithe, jennifer l. lanterman studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 132 shooting, and the south carolina mass shooting at a historically black church, to name a few. the resulting loss of life is at least 1,409 since, as a nation, we said “never again.” to clearly understand the problem of gun violence, we emphasize that mass shootings make up only a small portion of firearm deaths each year in the united states (lopez & oh, 2017). our country has become a “rampage nation” (klarevas, 2016). different groups try to frame gun violence to suit political positions. many try to silence discourse about gun violence, moving instead to talk about dichotomized positions regarding gun ownership. overcoming these discursive difficulties in order to understand gun culture and to reduce gun violence is one of the most pressing social problems in the united states today. we call for more research to approach gun violence in different ways to generate a more nuanced understanding of gun culture and identity. to conclude, in this study we identified three practices members of gun collectives used to manage their potentially stigmatized identities. these strategies included purposeful privacy and secrecy, drawing on a historical narrative, and normalizing their activities. we discussed how these stigma avoidance tactics ultimately allow laws and safety rules to be avoided, mask racist and patriarchal ideologies, and serve to normalize gun violence. such practices allow gun culture members to remain camouflaged, hiding stigmatized and unsavory aspects of their collectives. identifying these kinds of social practices of gun collectives is one step in achieving greater social justice through the reduction of gun violence. references adams, c. 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(2013). anonymous agencies, backstreet businesses, and covert collectives: rethinking organizations in the 21st century. stanford, ca: stanford university press. simi, p., & futrell, r. (2009). negotiating white power activist stigma. social problems, 56(1), 89-110. sykes, g. m., & matza, d. (1957). techniques of neutralization: a theory of delinquency. american sociological review, 22(6), 664-670. tajfel, h., & turner, j. c. (1986). the social identity theory of intergroup behavior. in s. worchel & w. g. austin (eds.), psychology of intergroup relations (2nd ed.) (pp 7-24). chicago: nelson-hall publishers. wolfe, a. w., & blithe, s. j. (2015). managing image in a core-stigmatized organization concealment and revelation in nevada’s legal brothels. management communication quarterly, 29(4), 539-563. camouflaged collectives studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 113-135, 2017 135 yee, v. (2013, january 12). despite protests, gun show in upstate new york goes on. the new york times. retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/nyregion/despite-protestsupstate-new-york-gun-show-goes-on.html?_r=0 correspondence address: irina velicu, spiru haret university, strada doamnei 13, bucharest, romania. email: irinavelicu@hotmail.com issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 6, issue 1, 125-141, 2012 the aesthetic post-communist subject and the differend of rosia montana irina velicu spiru haret university, romania abstract by challenging the state and corporate prerogatives to distinguish between “good” and “bad” development, social movements by and in support of inhabitants of rosia montana (transylvania) are subverting prevailing perceptions about central and eastern europe (cee)’s liberal path of development illustrating its injustice in several ways that will be detailed in this article under the heading “inhibitions of political economy” or balkanism. the significance of the “save rosia montana” movement for post-communism is that it invites post-communist subjects to reflect and revise their perception about issues such as communism, capitalism and development and to raise questions of global significance about the fragile edifice of justice within the neo-liberal capitalist economy. however, resistance to injustice (and implicitly affirmations of other senses of justice) is an ambiguous discursive practice through which rosieni make sense as well as partake their sense of rosia montana. the movement brings about a public dispute which may be compared with a differend: (in lyotard’s words), a conflict that cannot be confined to the rules of “cognitive phrases,” of truth and falsehood. this article argues that while post-communist events of “subjectification” are unstable and thus, are to be viewed aesthetically, this same ambiguous multiplication of political subjectivity may facilitate the creation of social spaces for imagining alternative possibilities of development. introduction to rosia montana: context and brief history the following conversation took place between two inhabitants of rosia montana, transylvania. b: to me, those who have sold their houses, taken away their dead because they have received money, cannot be considered human. for someone to sell their dead, now that’s an odious, unacceptable thing! don’t you think that one day studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 126 irina velicu there will be no more gold left? and don’t you think that you may die before reaching my age?! look how sick the mine has made me! e: it isn’t in my power to decide what the future will be like. for this there are other people, who have the knowledge to do this. anyway, what future? you simply don’t have an alternative to mining. alburnus maior told us to pick berries, but that’s a one-month job! then there was the idea of a milk processing plant and a sawmill, but with whose cows and what wood?! alburnus has only been giving me words for five years. with words i can’t feed my family. gold gives me something real (szombati, 2007, p. 20). this conversation is not peculiar to the small semi-urban village called rosia montana in transylvania (romania). in the last twelve years there has been an increasing perception of anxiety regarding the possibilities for development within post-communist societies: business elites with the support of the state are being perceived as having the power to define the conditions of possibility for romania to exist as a space of valued raw resources and cheap human capital. in the case of rosia montana, the years after the anti-communist revolution brought the verdict of a future of mono-industrial mining to be realized by foreign companies which own the resources and the know-how to valorise what the state can only sell. in the 1990s, the gold temptation incited a canadian corporation to propose the project for one of the largest mines in europe. ever since, rosieni (the population of rosia) are torn between the choice of selling their land and the struggle to preserve it. in 1997, the romanian government granted the right of exploration and exploitation to euro-gold resources (later on named rosia montana gold corporation, rmgc, and referred to by rosieni as the “gold”) while the terms of this contract were classified as secret information. declaring the area “mono-industrial” and allowing rmgc’s land exploration brought the village to a deadlock: from the outset, alternative possibilities of development were nullified. the history of gold exploitation in romania has generally been described as a history of hardship for the miners, be they ancient slaves (prisoners of wars), feudal iobagi (servants) or later on in modern times, workers and private entrepreneurs. the resource of gold has been among the main reasons for romans’ domination and other ruling powers. mining has, therefore, been the main activity of rosieni and it has both made them rich and alienated them. however, for the first time in its history, the place seems condemned to annihilation. the new corporate mining project is not only suspected of bringing elusive and unsustainable wealth but also the community’s death because of the new technology, i.e., cyanide open cast mining. in a press conference organized on august 22, 2008 in bucharest, nadia mezincescu, coordinator at the romanian academy in bucharest spoke about the paradox of rosia montana: despite being the oldest village of romania, with historical and cultural heritages to be valued, the romanian government preferred to let it “die” and sell it, “how could a community exist for two-thousand years and then gradually die in tenyears? something extremely wrong is happening in rosia, a malefic synergy, a programmed and systematic crime to impoverish studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 the aesthetic post-communist subject 127 and kill a community!” rosieni have become aware of this danger since 2000, when over 300 subsistence farming families from rosia montana and 100 families from the neighbouring area of bucium decided to form the alburnus maior organization to oppose the rmgc. for alburnus maior and its supporters, the project would mean relocation of 910 households, displacement of about 2,000 persons from 740 houses and 138 flats, demolition of four mountains, a lake of cyanide and toxic waste covering over 1800 hectares of land, demolished houses and buildings (many of them being of cultural patrimony such as the famous roman galleries) and, last but not least, the exhumation of ancestors through the destruction of nine cemeteries and eight churches. developing one of the largest movements with the support of national and international ngos as well as other institutions, rosieni’s protests echoed the “not for sale” discourse of the global justice movement, criticizing corporate conduct, the social and environmental costs of economic development and the corrupt complicity between the state and the corporation. however, despite strong opposition and its capacity to block the corporation for more than ten years, the majority of rosieni have gradually accepted to sell their land and properties to the corporation for various reasons: lack of jobs or profit (by declaring the area mono-industrial, different economic investments or activities were banned), desires for a different lifestyle away from the perpetually stressed situation, children’s needs to attend different schools etc. depopulation is now haunting the area, with political pressures for project implementation being resuscitated in the context of the economic crisis. currently, after the strong advocacy of the basescu’s administration in support of the corporation, the new social-democrat government is proposing a new approach to the evaluation of the mining project, as to fulfil respect for laws, environmental protection, social care, and also to offer relevant benefits for the state-budget. travelling to rosia, i often overheard: “we will sell our country . . . we will be the new slaves.” although former communist countries do not share the (anti)colonial discourse, i started to think of what prompts these comparisons. i visited rosia montana four times during the summers of 2007 and 2008; firstly, i participated in a few public events such as the hay festival and other protests. my later work as a volunteer/project coordinator with a few ngos helped me access a network of environmental activists and supported my research within the tension-ridden community. after meeting some of the most outspoken leaders of the movement both from the village and from other cities, i conducted fifteen semi-structured interviews while having informal discussions with around ten more rosieni. i also informally talked with six rosieni who had sold their land. the selection of interviewees was random— while walking on the streets of rosia i met people who were curious and/or suspicious about my presence and started conversations—and through the snowball sampling technique—few of the known activists i contacted directly led me to other people. interviews were taken at the person’s household or in the plaza of the village. they usually lasted from thirty minutes to two hours studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 128 irina velicu depending on the individual case. i used a semi-structured interview protocol that was marginally adjusted according to circumstances. my own presence in rosia emerged from a commitment to a larger struggle for social justice for marginalized peoples in the developing world. despite my recognized sympathy for the opponents of the project, some of the leaders insisted on remaining anonymous. others agreed to give their names and signed my university protocol for the phd dissertation, being proud to be supporting the cause by any means possible and encouraging me to “tell the world” about them. they also offered me poems and gifts of spiritually symbolic meaning. in my fieldwork i often realised that it is close to impossible to make an accurate distinction between “my story” (i.e. my interpretation of the situation) and the stories of rosieni—the interactive transformations were inevitable while our language reproduces a social pattern and a pre-established set of possibilities (terdiman, 1985). there is no naive primary understanding of field data that one can conceptualize only afterwards (barthes, 1974). we always operate with a narrative in the mind even before the data gathering process. i chose to talk about the social harm made by the current neo-liberal trend in post-communist societies through the reification of market relations; that “something real” which the corporation, and not the state, is supposed to be able to offer, being promoted as the “success” story despite opposition and ambivalence towards it. interviewing key protagonists in this globally relevant struggle concerning freedom of choice, property rights, indigenous rights and environmental rights, i argue that “save rosia montana” has transformed the invisible into a visible centre of democratic struggle bringing together people of all ages, genders, professions, and ethnicities to denounce injustice in its various forms. the “save rosia montana” movement is one of the most enduring and largest movements in romania which managed to place on the political agenda the importance of critique and ambivalence with regard to the liberal developmental path. the movement that expanded beyond the local has been an opportunity for the post-communist romania to address and debate its ethical dilemmas and critically examine the spread of the market and foreign capital, the role of the state and the transformation of social interests, ideas and feelings. the following sections of this article will show how, in a context of what i call balkanism or the new inhibitions of political economy, rosieni supported by ngo activists from romania and other countries have made their voice heard with regard to the intrusive and destructive effect of corporate economic monopolies promoted as state policy. talking about justice is, first of all, talking about what ranciere (2004) calls the “partitioning of the sensible world” (p. 65). for the last twenty years rosieni and romanians were told how to feel about the present, the new political economy and communism; they were often denied the right to remember the past other than by denying it. through this movement, rosieni discovered they can tell others about the other feelings and sensibilities they have. peasants and/or miners, rosieni broke their habitual sense of self and life, reinventing themselves in multiple studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 the aesthetic post-communist subject 129 ways as entrepreneurs, ngo activists, tourist guides, marketing persons, poets, or actors. the 2010 hay festival mirrored these desired alternatives: entitled “rosia montana, as a big stage,” it gathered people from all over romania as well as other countries for workshops, debates, eco-entertainment activities, tour-visits etc. these acts of subjectification constitute illustrations of an aesthetic post-communist subject, whose political subjectivity is hereby multiplied and pluralized. this article also argues that post-communist events of “subjectification” are unstable and thus, are to be viewed aesthetically. the significance of the “save rosia montana” movement for post-communism is not just that it invites post-communist subjects to reflect and revise their perception about issues such as communism, capitalism, and development as well as to raise questions of global significance about the fragile edifice of justice within the neo-liberal capitalist economy of our world. resistance to injustice (and implicitly affirmations of other senses of justice) is an ambiguous discursive practice through which rosieni make sense as well as partake their sense of rosia montana. the movement has also furthered the idea that the pursuit of social justice is not a matter of simplistic dualism—good or bad development, profitable or not, positive or negative—but rather that it has to become a process of negotiation (open and on-going). we are not speaking here of justice as if we know exactly what it means (for any of the parties); surely activism has secured a (limited) sense of justice for some just as the corporation has done for others. more importantly here is the unsettledness of any of these senses of justice and resistance to injustices, which sets the alarm for a differend about social justice. as the second section of this article will show, the movement brings about a public dispute which may be compared with a differend: (in lyotard’s words), a conflict that cannot be confined to the rules of “cognitive phrases,” of truth and falsehood. inhibitions of political economy: post-communism, balkanism and developmentalism after 1989, economic, social or environmental problems in eastern europe have mainly been attributed to a lack of capitalism, other critical alternatives being inhibited by communism’s institutionalized narratives about the misdeeds of capitalism (tamas, 2009). the “inevitability” and desirability of the capitalist market and liberal democracy has not generally been questioned. even the shocks of privatization, the social and economic insecurities, and the new forms of poverty have been presented as inevitable and conducive to a better life. rosia montana is an illustration in this sense: it was meant to become a globalized place, dependent on extra-local centres of power, integrated into a network of investments and information. this has been the liberal vision shared by international financial institutions which shaped romanian industrial policy after 1990. the liberal reforms in the mining industry took place under the auspices of the european union, studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 130 irina velicu the imf and the common “wisdom” (among elites) was that mining, like other industries, had to be fundamentally restructured, which, in most cases, involved closures and privatizations. the world bank was to provide the expertise and the financial means for alleviating the social effects of mine closures (larionescu, 1999).in this context, romania, like other eastern european countries, has been one of the many bargains to be exploited for cheap labour, soft environmental and social/labour standards, where the corrupt bureaucracies could function as a facilitator. much of the literature on post-communism has, therefore, focused on the region’s need to transition to a liberal democracy and capitalism. the process of transition was often seen as “corrupt” which merely meant, insufficiently capitalist: venture capitalists were supposedly contaminated through dubious deals with the former communist elite (nomenklatura) which would explain the tainted nature of the “new capitalism.” the “real” capitalism has been “yet to come” after an extensive hunt for (and cleansing of) communists, scapegoats for most problems. it is no surprise that shortly after the arrival of rmgc in rosia, its representation as a unique “saviour” has been perpetuated through institutional settings (state, media and corporate) creating a feeling that without this project the region can slip into the new periphery, excluded from investment and development. however, the tendency to label opposition to corporate globalization in romania as anti-modern or extremist could be seen as a perpetuation of the balkanist or balkanization legacy. by “balkanist” we refer here to the historical tradition of describing central and eastern europe as never quite developed, never quite civilized, semi-oriental, quasi-colonial, and a periphery of europe. the east has historically been portrayed as such, destabilizing yet reinforcing the identity of the west. it is identified as industrially backward, lacking the advanced social relations and institutions of the developed capitalist world, irrational and superstitious, basically unenlightened, “ignorant, poor and sick people, over whom already europe is planning ‘spheres of influence’” (du bois, 1945, p. 58). broadly, one can argue that there is no difference between orientalism—as colonial cognitive techniques of governance—and these balkanist discursive practices applied to central and eastern europe, with the exception of scale: central and eastern europe (cee) is not quite down in the abis of barbarism but rather, in between civilization and barbarism (wolff 1994, p. 13). however, it is still a “striking resemblance to this ethos of colonial discovery” (borocz 2000, p. 870). balkanism is used in the media and in literary studies to indicate not only fragmentation and eternal strife but also dehumanization and lack of civilization, the status of being not quite ready for the blessings of democracy and liberal development. this state of ambiguous in-betweenness, at the gates, on the bridge, never quite inside either west or east, never quite free from “the vices of the east, nor acquired any of the virtues of the west” (ehrenpreis, 1928, pp. 11-13) is perceived as a dangerous road—its vacillation and ambivalence cannot be relied upon to authentically praise the new capitalist regime. in other words, it (cee) studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 the aesthetic post-communist subject 131 should prove its commitment to western values, “not because ‘they’ are totally different, but rather because “they” have fallen into difference over time . . . the categorical orientalist holds out the possibility of redemption for the fallen through capitalism, democracy, civil society, privatization and the like (kideckel 1996, p. 30). this form of balkanism has been internalized and perpetuated by rosieni also, who are ready to internalize this visitor’s (imagined) normative gaze assuming that perceptive (mainly western) travellers can see through their thin veils of self-pride to their darkest secret, i.e., ethnic stigma: “we are the last, the worst, the most hopeless; . . . unable to create an endogenous model they voluntarily ‘colonize’ themselves with an exogenous model” (antohi, 2005). while not focusing here on the development of a critical concept of balkanism (opposed to balkanization), the implication of the above ideas is that there is a tendency to oversimplify the representation/ discourse and identification/subjectivity of an entire region as well as of a movement in an attempt to freeze/fix or arrest their ambiguities, uncertainties, and contradictions. this aspect of ambiguity and uncertainty, contradiction and disagreement is of special relevance for an aesthetic post-communist subject and the discourse on social justice. as igor kyotoff was arguing, this is the type of society in which “a person’s social identities are not only numerous but often conflicting,” where one is likely to encounter a “drama of identities,—of their clashes, of the impossibility of choosing between them . . . the drama, in brief, lies in the uncertainty of identity . . . ” (kyotoff, 1986, p. 89). it is with these ambiguities, that one may start thinking critically and re-imagining alternative futures. in this sense, neo-liberal globalization and its developmental projects operate within this framework of balkanism. its imposition of truth and power has been a violent act, exercised by the ruling elites as well, and pushed as the ideal thought especially in periods of crisis: “an increasing volume of information that is continually coded and recoded to meet the interests of corporate capitalism” (white, 1991, p. 120). moreover, popularizing the idea of modernization as upgrading, these forms of rationalization will supposedly “treat” the illness that caused the region’s backwardness and help the miserable people. balkanism/balkanization has become a neo-liberal tool in the attempt to inhibit differences that might, otherwise, inform alternative critical discourses meant to adjudicate issues of social justice. balkanist (and implicitly developmentalist) overtones have haunted the rosia montana movement, being used and abused to perpetuate the image of an illiberal society whose desire to protect cultural values signifies a perilous historical tradition of anti-modernism. the corporation has instrumentally used the concept of balkanism to trivialize and lock the movement into dichotomies: traditional versus modern, nationalist versus liberal, communist versus capitalist: “in romania and hungary, groups opposed to the rosia montana project play on old resentments of foreign companies and of capitalism in general” (rmgc, 2007). any form of opposition to the liberal capitalist economy is inhibited and accused of complicity with old dangerous studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 132 irina velicu forces while eventually manipulating these inhibitions to manufacture and capture consent for “the only alternative.”as the corporation argues, “our project is the only viable development for the rosia montana valley. by opposing our project, the ngo alburnus maior is preventing any opportunity, and any choice, for the development of the community in rosia montana” (rmgc, 2007). moreover, the leitmotif of “facts” has been used by rmgc as a means to discredit the opposition. whether it was about the “true story” and the “facts” about the situation of the area or about the nature of the arguments or the ethnicity of the opponents, the corporation has been articulating the narrative of modernity to discredit not only a certain target group but also the mindset of centuries inscribed in the culture of the area, a culture whose baggage of emotional attachments (to nature and mountains) and archaic superstitions have been devalued and stigmatized. while the “real” story of the corporate project has been many times articulated in the modern language of scientific and technological discourse, one that is obviously the appanage of a few, the choice to take a stance out of other beliefs and emotional attachments has been considered anachronistic, hilarious, and dangerous. however, the current nationalisms of the balkans are reactions that serve the beautification of capitalism and democracy (zizek, 1993). when talking of resistance in balkanist terms, the spectrum for the examination of resistance is limited to bolstering the mainstream liberal discourse. rosieni do understand what the newly anti-communist capitalists wish to hide, “that what they are denouncing as perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism.” (zizek, 2009). in other words, the stories of the rosieni remind us of zizek’s invitation: “perhaps the disappointment at capitalism in the post-communist countries should not be dismissed as a simple sign of the “immature” expectations of the people who didn’t possess a realistic image of capitalism” (zizek, 2009). the, differend, as a conflict over justice, is evident in rosia/romania in the pondering between resistance and acceptance of the market logic of expansion that portrays itself as uniquely superior: those who preferred the corporate project (supposedly in line with western liberal values of development) do not form a homogeneous group of corporate supporters just as the oppositional group has never been a unitary one but complexly gathering environmentalist or liberal-rights claims as well as more nationalist or socialist ones. the conflict of rosia is a conflict over the existence of particular spheres of experiences, which makes it (and its protagonists) political in ranciere’s understanding of aesthetic politics: “politics is first the conflict about the very existence of that sphere of experience, the reality of those common objects and the capacity of those subjects” (ranciere, 2004, p. 65). when talking about “aesthetics” one can think about the way in which the sensible world can be partitioned and re-partitioned. what are the feelings one “should” or “should not” feel? what is the “normalcy” of certain feelings or beliefs? studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 the aesthetic post-communist subject 133 responding to legal illegalities in post-communist transitions one of the most frequent phrases in the controversy is a strong belief of the rosieni’s ‘home is not for sale’ and particularly, their parents’ home and their ancestral inheriting is not to be commercialized. for many corporate supporters this belief sounds archaic and hilarious mirroring incapacity to adapt to the mobility of capital economy. but “home” has a special meaning for the moti, the inhabitants of the apuseni mountains of transylvania. petru is a 61 year-old retired person who decided to live away from his family (living in a village close to rosia) and come back to his old parents’ home in rosia montana. for him, this return symbolized a return to a meaningful life after decades of work. however, his surprise was that he could not enjoy a peaceful life because of the corporation’s presence. he has opposed the corporate project from the beginning and considers himself to be an active citizen in the village, participating in all the events of the local opposition. petru told me his feelings about the situation and explained to me his motivation for not selling his land; as in other testimonies, we find out that the selling of a home and of a community with ancestral spiritual bonds is “inappropriate”: it is not appropriate to sell the parent’s home; then it is not appropriate to sell and destroy churches and cemeteries because these are fundamental for life; then comes our nature . . . it is a psychological war . . . we are stressed all day by this company . . . it is hard to watch them around here every morning. it was better before the revolution, more peaceful. we have been stressed in the last 13 years . . . our whole life is all too nerve-racking ever since the company has come here. what is conveyed is a special perspective on the nature of the distribution of social goods, the rules/norms/mental models of socially acceptable behaviour in the specific role of “rosian” (inhabitant of rosia montana). discursive practices involve ways of being in the world that signify specific and recognizable social identities: rosieni throughout centuries have learned to “be” miners, rosieni, romanians, moti, christians; now they are learning to become activists and tour-guides. my host in rosia, lucretia, talks with great love about her family and does not feel poor just because they do not have enough money; she rather seemed frustrated because of the present societal neglect of their possessions as being outside of what “wealth” is. she used to say that “she has all she needs in rosia” and could not understand why the value of her life-style is shamed as “poor” and “backward.” similarly, one of my interlocutors is questioning development as promoted by the corporate supporters and generally by actors such as the world bank, the european union or the corporations as marginalizing the power of local poorer people who do not have access to the resources needed to meet the standards of these global actors. he, thus, thinks that all politicians are puppets in the hands of people with money. he openly talks about his preference for alternative development that comes from common decision-making and consultations at the local level: studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 134 irina velicu a long time ago people were making a living with two cows; i now have fifteen cows and they say my farm is not large enough for european standards. why the hell do you tell me that i’m poor? why do i need to consider your standards? so i’ll be under your control? i don’t want any type of development . . . don’t want just anyone to come here to change the area. i tell people openly “you have to grow up, you cannot be dependent on the gold (corporation) or whoever comes, dependent on others just as drug addicts. we can read the above as the thought that, in order for the “new poor”— destitute by globalization’s processes—to become agents of their own destinies they need to regain a policy space where they can articulate and make visible their own narrative. this is what the movement in rosia tried to do. it revealed, facilitated the expression of and encouraged the rosieni way of thinking about their future developments as having to do with quality of life and people’s choice to live productive and creative lives according to their needs and interests. the arrogance of corporate conduct, however, fuels the inability to listen to the poor as equals not only in dignity as humans but in imagination (of the world to live in). with the money from a house with seven rooms some just managed to buy an apartment with two rooms in the city . . . . and the corporation replies: well, you are a peasant, why are you so demanding? as if we are mentally retarded because we are from the mountains here and we do not know life and we do not think: “we will tell you what to do, we know better,” the corporation was saying to them. the consent of the rosieni to individual negotiations as initiated by the corporate representatives has been fragile; as one local man confessed to me, “what ‘negotiation”? they tell us what the terms and the money offer is and we can only accept or not.” in addition, financial packages were only offered periodically and secretly (offers were strictly confidential and made from time to time when the political situation seems more favourable to the project), which made the corporate tools of normalizing behaviour even more efficient: people sometimes sold their properties for lower prices just because they were afraid the corporation might stop buying land and they will be left alone and isolated. the gold’s agents started to say: ‘be careful because it is something international! you will have to leave!’ others said: ‘you must sell while you still have an offer because after a while money will be finished and you will be left without land and money’. unable to avoid the individualized negotiation process (most rosieni, even if they refuse negotiation, had been periodically visited, if not harassed, by corporate representatives presenting their offer), the rosieni had no choice but to let the corporation set the rules; it has, thus, had the power to fragment and tear not only the opposition movement but also families themselves. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 the aesthetic post-communist subject 135 in rosieni words, divide et impera (divide and conquer) was the corporate strategy: they started to break up families, buying the younger ones, convincing the older, the parents . . . through intimidation, blackmail, trying to oblige them to withdraw from alburnus. they closed rosiamin, the state factory, so that people become unemployed, another form of intimidation. instead of our cultural centre they made their own information point (or better i should say disinformation). they even wanted to take the school building so that we send our kids away. even the town doctor left. they do everything in their power to make us leave and give up. the stories of rosia remind us that the enlightenment model persists through balkanism and liberal developmentalism: in post-communist romania, within the context of globalization, the tendency to homogenize lifestyles can be observed and along with it, the tendency to devalue and marginalize as inefficiently old and poor, traditional means of being. stripped of non-monetary values, it is no surprise the rosia becomes, in the corporate story, a desert land that must be interfered with and exploited to extract material value for commercial purposes. the differend of rosia montana and the aesthetic post-communist subject on the one hand, for many rosieni as well as romanians, what is at stake in rosia’s conflict is life itself as existence within a historical aboriginal territory: the corporate mining project means the removal of a village, a community with homes and values: “the village will be removed together with all its history and its churches, to leave room for a place that could not be inhabited” (turcanu, 2002). on the other hand, the “bread and butter” arguments are widespread as well, because of the lingering scarcity of (financial) resources; these indeed, make resistance to economic development projects unpalatable. hence, the majority of the inhabitants in rosia eventually agreed to sell their possessions. sharing the corporation’s discourse, some of the former rosieni believe in the possibility that the corporate project can bring progress and better their lifestyle. should the corporation carry out the project as they say, both the people and the environment would benefit. therefore, there are people in rosia who present their self-displacement as a new happy beginning regarding their former home as a devalued land; as one displaced person declared, “things have changed for me ever since the corporation came here. my sons are both working for it now. they graduated in it and accounting studies respectively.” selling one’s land in rosia montana has often been presented as a “smart move,” an intelligent choice to negotiate a good price and access a different opportunity for a life outside the deadlock of a periphery village. according studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 136 irina velicu to the corporate propaganda, those who sold are to be seen as “normal” people looking for modern lives, moving on to a different lifestyle instead of being incapable of adjusting to the new realities. the “seller” is, hence, a citizen who understands the global economy, who upgraded himself from the old, and does not fall into the trap of old-fashioned ideological activism. however, buying land for utopias may be the new “enslavement” i first heard about when travelling to rosia—the dependence of the majority on the “wage” in the context of resource alienation. rosieni feel uncomfortable with the perception that they are just commodities, and they will end up with selling only their own labour in order to make a living. this market seems beyond their control and thus they internalize it as natural and inescapable while also criticizing and revolting against such a narrow-minded ideology. this subjective uneasiness is however, pushed to the margins and hidden though corporate ads in an attempt to simplify representations: “people from rosia montana just want to work” (rmgc, 2011-2012). but talking with few of the people who sold their land one would notice that contentment goes hand in hand with disappointment. memories of “home” and of the past are a daily companion of an anguished present and displacement appears as a nonauthentic choice; moving from rosia was something one “had to do” for the sake of a future that sounds different, a future where rosia and its lifestyle become a thing for an anachronistic past: if there is no gold (corporation), no other company would come here anyway. peace and recreation in rosia are long gone. in time, rosia will become just a legend. we all had jobs during communism. it was safer. now, with investors, one day you work the next day you are unemployed. while the ideological and political propaganda of the corporation has found the right soil to grow the seeds of co-option into the fantasy of capitalist liberation and prosperity, the prevailing feeling in rosia is that nothing/no one can offer solutions to ease the pains of these disruptions (“the state is silent and corrupt,” “capitalists only want money in their pocket”). neither the market nor the state is trusted to address grievances. one can read a permanent vacillation between acceptance, seduction, and internalization as well as critique and opposition to the market ideology and developmentalism, which offers us the framework to think about the case in terms of a differend: who are the “victims”? who is the “common enemy”? as my host lucretia was saying, “one morning i say “to hell with them”; the next day i think of selling”; her sadness about potential abandonment/ displacement was mixed with joy about showing a visitor her home, cattle and garden, accompanied by the request to tell the world about them. there are scenes and images i witnessed that undermine the verbalized selfunderstanding, the stories rosieni express and the stories they think they are in, making any judgment about facts and feelings unstable. although the various “isms” may be invoked, they can also be easily ridiculed without studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 the aesthetic post-communist subject 137 the fear of looking contradictory, in private conversations or over a glass of wine. by telling and discovering various and often conflicting “truths” about themselves, rosieni are resisting the fixity of power regimes. this subjective ambivalence brings contradiction into a discursive space (that of post-communism) which desired no contradiction. in other words, community’s tensions as well as personal inner conflicts may be seen as a differend in lyotard’s words, namely, a conflict that cannot be confined to the rules of “cognitive phrases,” of truth and falsehood (lyotard, 2007, p. xii).from this perspective, both parties seem stuck in “playing the victim’s game.” rosieni that wish to preserve their land accuse the corporate supporters of being “materialistic” and interested in short-term financial gains. supporters of the mining project accuse the opponents of being hostile to job-creation and modern development. convincing evidence for both the “victims” can always be provided within the borders of their respective genre of discourse. but either selling or preserving land, one cannot appraise the probity of these choices because there is no universal “moral” framework to adjudicate them. many people ask: so, what now? the corporation has been blocked for more than ten years but what about “us” and the village? displaced rosieni often appear in the media lamenting their loss. there is overwhelming uncertainty about what “success” or “change” means, and widespread frustration that romania has no leadership that can produce “responsible” development in support of the people. therefore, awareness about the impossibility of naming a “real” victim/traitor/enemy/community has been growing. dichotomies have gradually been loosened and blurred. the complex legal and environmental problems associated with the mine and the opposition emerging has postponed any political/legal decision while other economic activities were banned. this may be seen as a disruption, a “break,” a silence following a search for answers not yet found by humanity about what development/prosperity could be all about and the alternatives to industrialism. the situation mirrors the hole in the national flag that the “revolutionaries” in 1989 were happily waving as a symbol for another order that has not yet been “homogenized by any positive ideological project” (zizek, 1993, p. 1). personal stories show that representations are blurred by the ambiguities of everyday life. reluctant to be called “activists,” their everyday struggle is both reinforcing and subverting the “truths” of this controversy by introducing the variable of ambiguity. personal stories and perception show that both national feelings of rootedness and the support for corporate mining are not forms of closed ideological engagement (of nationalism or neo-liberalism) manipulated towards some programmatic ends. the narratives of people do not simply reveal anti-modern/anti-industrial sentiments just as they do not reveal some blind credulity in the mantra of the market; they do not simply display allegiance to one ideology or another. therefore, self-identification is volatile and unstable. as the interviews show, there is a strong sense of living the “drama of uncertainty” both at the macroand micro-level which studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 138 irina velicu makes their feelings unstable and difficult to understand or label. here, both cognitive and emotional “attachments” are blurred by the uncertainty of structural changes. when the current director of rmgc, dragos tanase, was asked what will happen to those residents of rosia montana who refuse to sell their properties. tanase’s answer was illustrative: “we will discuss with the local community to find solutions to convince everybody” to sell their properties (hotnews, 2010). his answer first contains a presupposition of a (homogeneous) community; to establish the “reality” of rosia on either side has meant to extend a certain protocol to the whole of rosia and imply that there is some sort of generally accepted “national ego” or sensus communis. second, it also presupposes that (or ignores the fact that) “convincing everybody,” i.e. achieving (near)-consensus on selling properties could be possible without repression of differences. in other words, inventing a “real” community and purging it of all ambiguity assumes the role of a single, unique option rather than constitute only one possible road satisfying one regime of truth and power and the sense of justice of some while inevitably alienating others. suppressing the ambiguity and the elements of disharmony implicit in it by demonizing what is constructed as “abnormal” mirrors the rationalist project of the enlightenment which constructed its own social “ontology of concord” in order to give an appearance of natural predominance to fabricated concepts such as rationality, justice and self-fulfilment (connolly, 1988). the story of rosia is, therefore, multiple, contradictory, fractured and complex, an illustration of counteraction to the violence of a monopoly of discourse of truth about selves, justice and development. portraying the corporate version of the “truth” about rosia as the only one would otherwise become a totalizing practice, produced and reproduced continuously in language and action—as opposed to one practice among other possibilities. as shapiro argued, “no representation is innocent of practice” (shapiro, 1988, p. 97) and there is violence in the conviction that one possesses the truth. the differend reveals rosia as both an object of cognition (to be observed) and the object of an idea (to be imagined). in the former case, rosia is an object of commodification, marketization, exploitation, that is, subject to a protocol established by a power-authority (be it the state, the corporation or the ngos); in the latter case, rosia is an idea/concept imagined by a heterogeneous group of people living and contesting the objects of cognition; here, no protocol of judgment could be established without committing wrongs to some parties and without appeal to a sort of totalitarian adjudicating. ideas such as community, prosperity/poverty, labour, rights, proletarian, peasant, are in themselves discursively represented and hence contested. despite attempts to transform the differend into a multitude of litigations over objects of cognition subjected to the protocol of economics and law, “truths” about rosia are still to be imagined. finding a new idiom to settle this differend would require imagining/creating an “alternative” predicated on the multiplicity of disordered subjects and spaces. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 the aesthetic post-communist subject 139 ambiguity and unsettled internalization is here relevant for an aesthetic resistance and sense of justice predicated on disagreement (discord), multiplicity and heterogeneity. the aesthetic reveals this situation of fractured interpretations of what is meaningful and valuable. these attitudes are to be seen aesthetically because they deny certainty. without a sense of certainty, individuals such as the rosieni can be political in an open and critical sense of subjecthood (ranciere, 2006) and not merely ideological, in any programmatic sense, thus remaining open rather than producing closure. we, therefore, argue that an important insight for ethics and politics is to see that “subjects are best understood not as static entities . . . but as beings with multiple possibilities for becoming” (shapiro, 2008, p. 8). conclusions: on aesthetic justice movements this article is an invitation to the possibility of seeing the rosieni as ‘aesthetic post-communist subjects’ given the fact that there is no single fixed intelligible (ideological) discourse to their feelings. challenging (fixed) representations, rosia’s campaign has eventually stimulated a different kind of thinking about subjectivity. the encounter between the moral and market economy has been such that it prompted rosieni to substitute recognition of self as a proletarianminer into multiple imagined possibilities for reinvention of self (including the migrant self). this rupture (often difficult and unpleasant) has created the conditions of possibility for multiple affirmations. rosieni are both considering and resisting multiple discursive positions in the construction of their own reality and identity, collectively and individually. rosia montana is, thus, investigated here as an “object of discourse”: how it becomes spoken of, and under what conditions this is made possible. discursive formation is “a space of multiple dissensions” (foucault, 1972): resistance to injustice (and implicitly affirmations of other senses of justice) is an ambiguous discursive practice through which rosieni make sense as well as partake their sense of rosia montana. this aesthetic space of uncertain subjectivity is, by its nature, incompatible with domination as it often stands outside the realm of the “politically relevant.” it is in this space of culture that hybridization becomes relevant as a micro-practice: neither one thing nor the other, neither communist nor capitalist both before and after the fall of the wall. the unreliable commitment of the east of europe to prevailing regimes of power/truth/justice can be seen as a drifting sand of any hegemonic platform. this ambiguity, seen as merely a “dangerous incompleteness” on the drawbridge towards the ideal capitalist society, may offer other venues for political and ethical understandings. as the rosia montana case also reveals, human consciousness may be the host of multiple ideologies interacting and competing for meaning-making and practice-development: the aesthetic ambivalence of the everyday subject. subjectivities reproduce social orders of the present, the past and the imagined future while no homogeneous knitting of these is absolute or definitive. the studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 140 irina velicu “seduction” of various ideologies is often the object of consciousness for the individual agent while the capturing of his or her consent is an on-going struggle not only for the programmatic elites themselves but for the self’s own consciousness. the ideological seduction of our consciousness is often transitory, temporary, and contextual rather than absolute. a crucial element for ethical reflection here is not the subject or his or her consciousness but the conditions of possibility for such ideological seduction or under which speech becomes meaningful and prevailing, which are in themselves historically contingent. the economic mode of production may be an aspect of the power relations, but it is not the only one. power is a particular hierarchy of classifications through which the social world order becomes constituted. change of, and resistance to injustices is made possible through the very nature of the social dimension as complex, indeterminate, incomplete and open to chance. an aesthetic approach to resistance and 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(1994). inventing eastern europe. the map of civilization on the mind of enlightenment. stanford, ca: stanford university press. http://www.rmgc.ro http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09zizek.html?_r=4&scp=1&sq=slavoj+zizek&st=nyt http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/opinion/09zizek.html?_r=4&scp=1&sq=slavoj+zizek&st=nyt hawthorne-steele final galley mar 8 16 correspondence address: isobel hawthorne-steele, school of sociology & applied social studies, ulster university, shore road, newtownabbey, bt37 oqb, northern ireland; email: i.hawthorne@ulster.ac.uk issn: 1911-4788 volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 transforming communities through academic activism: an emancipatory, praxis-led approach isobel hawthorne-steele ulster university, northern ireland rosemary moreland ulster university, northern ireland eilish rooney ulster university, northern ireland abstract this article tracks the engagement of university faculty in academic and community activism during thirty years in conflict-affected northern ireland. over time, the team of three academics who wrote the article developed programs to help tackle educational disadvantage in a deeply divided society riven with violent conflict. our pedagogical approach was driven by social justice principles in practice. in the process, students became what ledwith & springett (2010) describe as participative activists in the academy and in their own communities. the aim of this collective activism was to foster transformative change in a society that is now in transition from conflict. key examples of critical practice are described. we use a case study approach to describe challenges faced by faculty and participants. we argue that academic activism and community partnership can play a positive role in community transformation in the most difficult circumstances. keywords transformational education; emancipatory praxis; critical reflection; community-academy engagement isobel hawthorne-steele, rosemary moreland, eilish rooney studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 198 introduction the links between educational underachievement and poverty in the uk are widely known and evidenced (e.g., house of commons, 2014; department for education, 2009; machin, 2006; willis, 1977). in the north of ireland,1 these links persist despite the northern ireland assembly’s commitments to tackle poverty and inequality (ofmdfm, 2006; ofmdfm, 2010). this article argues that academic activism can play a significant role in transforming marginalized and disadvantaged communities by creating innovative educational opportunities that seek to challenge norms, question inequalities and discrimination, and develop the social capital of disadvantaged communities. set in the deeply divided context of the north of ireland, where communities of identity are often tightly interwoven into the fabric of geographical areas, the case study presented in this article examines the impacts of activism undertaken by the authors, who comprise a community development team in the faculty of social science at ulster university (formerly university of ulster). recruitment of students from marginalized backgrounds has been a key feature of the university’s strategy for widening access (university of ulster, 2012/13). a primary focus of our activism has been to work directly with disadvantaged communities, in order to provide educational opportunities to those who would not normally gain access to higher education. this enhances quality of life and positively impacts on the life-chances of individuals in those communities. founded on the radical community education approaches of professor tom lovett, a key figure in adult and community education in northern ireland, the cornerstone of this work for the past 10 years has been the delivery of a part-time bsc hons community development exclusively to adults working or volunteering in community or voluntary organizations (e.g., a neighbourhood community centre, a women’s group) or public bodies (e.g., department for social development, department of health, social care & public safety). although the degree was established primarily to develop a professionally accredited higher education qualification for those working in community and voluntary organizations, public bodies increasingly have a community development remit, which has led more employees from the public sector also to seek places in the program. as partnership is central to community development work, the synergy developed by students across public and community/voluntary sectors is one of the program’s key strengths. the majority of students recruited to the program are the first members of their families to access third-level education. they usually live or work in areas of deep-rooted socio-economic disadvantage (hawthorne-steele & 1 we use the terms ‘north of ireland’ and ‘northern ireland’ alternately in the text in recognition of the contentious nature of sovereignty and of naming the jurisdiction. transforming communities through academic activism studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 199 moreland, 2014), and a significant number are ex-political prisoners and excombatants. over the last five years, the program has been particularly successful in recruiting protestant working-class males, which is among the hardest groups to re-engage in education (harland & mccready, 2012). in gramsci’s (1971, p. 9) terminology, the program’s students are in fact “organic intellectuals,” in that their learning in the program about structural causes of poverty and disadvantage resonates strongly with their lived experiences. having experienced the transformative learning process for themselves within the community development program, they are well placed to be the forerunners of transformative learning within their local communities in a post-conflict north of ireland. over the course of three years of part time study, student cohorts develop communities of learning with their peers, sharing information, learning, and providing support to each other through a challenging but rewarding journey. taking this journey while also living and working in a society emerging from conflict provides additional challenges and opportunities for students and faculty. the curriculum is embedded in the local context, encouraging students to critically reflect on their community’s long-held beliefs and values, and to develop critical models of practice. in this article we argue that university-based programs such as this can provide a neutral and critical space where students from varied and often diametrically opposed political positions are able to engage in difficult social justice conversations, and create a dialogical space in which transformational learning can take place. recently, there has been renewed interest by uk government bodies to tackle the educational underachievement of marginalized groups. the higher education funding council for england, which is also the regulatory body for higher education in northern ireland, is committed to widening access and improving participation in higher education for hard-to-reach groups who are traditionally under-represented. the current strategy of the statutory body responsible for delivering on this commitment across the north of ireland – the department of education and learning – aims to encourage and support those “…who are most able but least likely to participate... to achieve the necessary qualifications to apply to and to benefit from, the higher education that is right for them” (delni, 2012, p. 2; emphasis in original). whilst in the past our activist effort to engage mainly nontraditional students from communities that experience high levels of poverty, inequality, and disadvantage has largely gone unnoticed, this new policy context, and especially the current northern ireland government policy on widening access and increasing participation, has placed greater value on this important area of our work. the community development team’s success in attracting and retaining ‘hard to reach’ students, many of whom graduate with a first-class or upper second-class honours degree, is clear testimony to the role of academic activism in bridging the huge gulf between universities and working-class communities. this case study illustrates how we, the community isobel hawthorne-steele, rosemary moreland, eilish rooney studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 200 development team, continue to contribute to lovett, clarke & kilmurray’s (1983, p. 159) vision for creating “an alternative adult education system or institution, committed to the twin processes of uniting the working-class and resolving the deep social, economic and political inequalities and injustices inherent in this society, through collective action bridging the sectarian divide.” part one of the article briefly outlines the historical and social context for our academic activism, which builds on the previous commitment of faculty members and is being continued by long-standing and newer members of the team. part two provides examples of this praxis, in order to argue that engendering transformational learning that extends beyond the individual, to impact upon wider geographical communities and communities of interest, is central to our academic activism. part three describes how academic activism such as ours has the potential to create synergies between local communities and the university, and can result in the creation of models of best practice (e.g., the transitional justice toolkit program). the article’s conclusion argues that academic activism has an important role to play in the transformation of communities, especially those who find themselves in the most difficult circumstances, and that the commitment of faculty members to developing and engaging in this practice can make a difference to the lives of the individuals and wider communities experiencing injustice, inequality and marginalization. historical and social context of academic activism ulster university currently has four campuses across the north of ireland in coleraine, jordanstown, derry/londonderry,2 and belfast. in the early 1970s, the university of ulster established an institute of continuing education at the magee campus in derry/londonderry, the main focus of which was to reengage adults with education, particularly those who had left school with few or no qualifications. a key figure in developing the institute was professor tom lovett, whose own experience of leaving school at a young age without qualifications and obtaining a scholarship as a trade union activist to study at ruskin college, oxford, fuelled his vision to provide education that would connect with the issues affecting working-class communities. his objective was to ignite a movement for social change that focused on broader critical engagement with inequality (lovett, clarke & kilmurray, 1983). people who were living in disadvantaged areas during the outbreak of civil disturbance in 2 we use this terminology – derry/londonderry – because the name of the city is contested, and each term has different political/religious/cultural connotations. whilst the legal name for the city and county is londonderry, the legal name for the district council is derry and strabane. the name londonderry is mostly favoured by those with protestant/loyalist/unionist identities whilst derry is mostly used by those with catholic/republican/nationalist identities. transforming communities through academic activism studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 201 northern ireland during the 1960s experienced its worst impacts; over 80 percent of violent trauma during the conflict occurred in the most povertystricken urban areas of belfast and derry/londonderry (fey, morrissey & smith, 1999). given that this educational process was taking place in a deeply divided area devastated by conflict, lovett, clarke & kilmurray (1983) emphasised that the key challenge for faculty was to provide a neutral space for students from opposite sides of the conflict (i.e., predominantly catholic nationalists and predominantly protestant unionists) to engage in dialogue, particularly on common issues such as poverty and inequality, which affect working class people on both sides of the political/religious/cultural divide. in this neutral space students could begin critically to analyze structural causes of poverty and inequality in order to understand alternative perspectives and build solidarity around collective issues. in addition to working with nationalist and unionist communities in derry/londonderry, the institute of continuing education engaged with local communities on either side of the nearby border between the north of ireland and the republic of ireland to develop programs that responded to their selfidentified needs, including workshops on human and welfare rights, poverty, and housing. by developing innovative learning programs, the institute fostered community-university relationships that helped transform these communities and dismantle the ‘ivory tower’ image of the academy. this commitment was maintained when the institute moved in the late 1970s to the jordanstown campus (10 kilometers north of belfast). for over 20 years, a small group of faculty delivered accredited and non-accredited programs on this campus and in a range of community venues across the greater belfast area, including in the innovative ulster people’s college, founded in 1982 by community activists and academics led by lovett. taking inspiration from myles horton’s highlander centre (horton & freire, 1990), the ulster people’s college was established as a non-formal education center to provide opportunities for cross-community dialogue around social, cultural, and economic realities in an educational space that was accessible and safe for both nationalists/catholics and unionists/protestants (lovett, gillespie & gunn, 1995). the institute of continuing education closed in the late 1990s; however, faculty sustained their commitment to academic activism, largely by establishing the community development program in the faculty of social science at ulster university. the need for a professionally accredited higher education program in community development gained impetus from the historic and transformative development in political relations between britain and ireland, manifested in the belfast/good friday agreement (northern ireland office, 1998). in the agreement section on rights, safeguards and equality of opportunity, the british government made a distinct commitment to promote “social inclusion, including in particular community development” in the north of ireland (northern ireland office, 1998, p. 20). this reference to isobel hawthorne-steele, rosemary moreland, eilish rooney studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 202 community development formally recognizes the critical role played by local neighbourhood groups and community networks in northern ireland in sustaining the work of peace building over the course of a long conflict. this recognition was subsequently built upon in the publication of documents such as the compact between the voluntary & community sector and government (department for social development, 1998) and, later, the concordat between the voluntary & community sector and the northern ireland government (department for social development, 2011).3 the importance placed on community development as an approach to working with disadvantaged and disaffected communities is further reflected in other government policy documents (department of health, social services & public safety, 2010; department for social development, 2012, 2013; ofmdfm, 2013), all of which represent working in partnership with local communities as pivotal to creating a lasting peace and sustainable future for the north of ireland. these key documents, which legitimize and support the work of the community and voluntary sector, have been developed largely as a result of three interconnecting features, which continue to dominate the context of community development in northern ireland. firstly, the legacy of historical division between the nationalist/catholic and unionist/protestant communities continue to shape and impact community development programs. virtually no program within the community or voluntary sector, whether it be a parenting course or return to work skills program, can afford to ignore segregation, which continues to impact where people live and work and their sense of safety in accessing areas perceived to be of the ‘other’ side. the second feature links to this, in that substantial european and us funding has been provided to the community and voluntary sector to promote peace and reconciliation. the third feature is that those who played a part in the conflict (i.e., excombatants and ex-paramilitaries) have been actively supported by the state to work in their communities, and in doing so to contribute to building a peaceful and stable society (rooney & swaine, 2012). shirlow and mcevoy’s (2008) research identified the community and voluntary sector as one of the few areas of employment open to those previously involved in the conflict and indeed many ex-prisoners/ex-combatants are keen to work in their communities, to help build reconciliation, and to act as positive role models to young people to prevent them from engaging in anti-social behavior and joining paramilitary organizations. in addition, shirlow and mcevoy (2008) argue that whilst some political parties have had difficulty 3 the compact (1998) and concordat (2011) are policy documents drawn up by the department for social development, which is the northern ireland government department charged to oversee the community and voluntary sector. a number of key organizations in this sector contributed to writing these agreements, which have provided the foundation for the development of partnership approaches between statutory and community/voluntary organizations to tackle social problems. transforming communities through academic activism studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 203 accepting this, it is largely recognized that building a peaceful and stable society requires the re-integration into society of people who previously played a part in the conflict.. these three features impelled an increased demand among community workers and activists for professional qualifications in community work, which the part-time bsc hons community development was designed to meet. in this context, our academic activism is centred on the principle that community education and learning are key to community development (logue, 1990). by providing space for engagement to those who might otherwise not be heard, the community of learning that developed around the program is evidence that in situations of conflict, community development can be a means of empowerment (lovett, clarke & kilmurray, 1983). whilst craig, mayo, popple, shaw & taylor (2011, p. 7) suggest that “the broad church nature of community development” can include anything “from statesponsored, well-resourced programs to small-scale, poorly resourced, but independent community action,” the academic activism undertaken by faculty members in the community development program has always sought to situate “educational purpose in a wider social and political analysis that entailed critical engagement with the policy context as it related to the reality of people’s lives” (shaw & crowther, 2014, p. 4). thus the underlying ethos of the program is premised on creating space and opportunities for critical exploration of poverty, social exclusion, alienation and resilience in local, national and international contexts. in order to prepare community workers who have been engaging in practice for many years – without any qualifications – to have the academic capacity to study at university, the community development team developed the accreditation for prior learning (apel) community development pathway, which recognizes and builds on the experiential learning this constituency has gained through their community work and activism. we describe this apel community development pathway, and the community development program itself, in the next section. transforming communities through university education the fundamental principle of promoting social change is at the core of the community development program. the program operates according to the premise that opportunities for grassroots inclusion and collective action can be realized through educating local community development workers to become “organic intellectuals” (gramsci, 1971, p. 9) who promote effective social transformation initiatives that inform policy and social and economic investment, particularly within disenfranchized and marginalized communities. in this section we shall explore some of the innovative academic activism that we have developed over the last decade. these practices are rooted in an ethos of community engagement and inclusivity. isobel hawthorne-steele, rosemary moreland, eilish rooney studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 204 one of the most successful innovations to date has been our apel pathway, which has recently gained recognition at a national level through the star award conferred by aontas (the irish national adult learning organisation). the star awards are presented to outstanding, learningcentred adult education projects. the apel pathway this initiative originated in response to requests from community activists and from paid community development workers for easier access to degree level qualification. in recognition of the tremendous experiential learning and informal education gained by these individuals, rosemary moreland (2009a; 2009b; 2007) established the apel pathway to the bsc hons community development. this pathway accords validity and formal credit-bearing recognition to students’ community-based experiential learning, thus enabling community activists and paid community workers to reflect on their knowledge, understanding, and grassroots experience of community practice. experienced community workers and activists are invited to attend a short course on apel, in which they are introduced to models of experiential learning, critical reflection, non-formal and informal learning. in addition, they are introduced to the national occupational standards in community development work that provide the basis for a reflective portfolio,4 which they are required to submit for entry into the community development program. this has the benefit of alerting faculty to those students who may require additional support, whose academic writing may not yet be sufficient for entry to the degree, and who may be advised to take preliminary qualifications first. the reflective portfolios submitted by applicants to the program are assessed by faculty members according to university guidelines on accreditation of prior learning. if the evidence presented in the portfolio is deemed sufficient, applicants can gain direct entry to year two of the community development degree. where this is not the case, applicants have one further opportunity to resubmit their portfolio, and if they are unsuccessful on their second attempt they are guided towards other more appropriate levels or areas of study. the apel pathway is founded on freire's (2001) pedagogy of hope, which views education as a learning process for all involved. it is thus deeply embedded in the concept of making a difference by enhancing community and social justice through developing consciousness that “has the power to transform reality” (taylor, 1993, p. 52). moreover, freire’s (1996) maxim 4 the national occupational standards in community development work act as a guiding framework for this emerging professional area (see http://www.fcdl.org.uk/learningqualifications/community-development-national-occupational-standards/). transforming communities through academic activism studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 205 that, ‘we must start where people are’ is taken seriously by faculty members who guide the learning process. in this vein, gramsci's (1971) concept of the “organic intellectual” affirms the capacity of those who have not previously benefited from formal education to critically analyze and challenge the status quo, and to articulate alternative paradigms. it is also a reminder that frameworks of understanding are critical sites of power that are produced, practiced, and critiqued within the academy (knapp, 2005; cleary, 2003). bsc hons community development building upon the ethos established in the apel pathway, the community development program is firmly rooted in a pedagogical framework that supports innovative and learner-led creative spaces that foster collaborative working and learning for both faculty and students. the primary aim of the program is to infuse academic commitments with freirean (friere, 1996) praxis in order to provide a platform for faculty and students to engage in a shared learning space. this aims to raise levels of conscientization through critical reflection, which is essential to emancipatory learning. the role of the faculty is to facilitate critical reflection and learning as a democratic process of dialogical interaction between participants and educators. this is consistent with biggs’ (1996) focus on the centrality of student learning as a process of constructional alignment, where the students are equipped with the necessary skills to construct meaning from their learning. faculty provide the scaffolding to support this process by aligning the learning activities with the learning outcomes. we do this by creating a safe space where students can engage and practise these tools for reflection. faculty members are cognizant of the physical environment and recognize the importance of creating a growth-promoting climate that is conducive to shared learning. we agree to a contract with students, establishing rights and responsibilities within the class that typically includes things like actively listening to one another, having respect for others’ opinions, values, and beliefs, and having respectful regard of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, cultural traditions, religion, and political perspectives. an important basis of the contract is that each participant refrain from aggressive or oppressive language and behaviour. this also allows for students to call ‘time-out’ if they feel unable to continue with a discussion at any time, or if they believe that the contract has been breached. these practices are embedded in the core values of the national occupational standards for community development (e.g., equality, anti-discrimination and empowerment) (federation for community development learning, 2015). our goal, in equipping students with the tools for transformational learning, is to enable them to utilize these tools within their communities so as to create local learning spaces that foster inquiry, dialogue, reflection and action. students practise active listening that develops authentic relationships where each individual enters the internal isobel hawthorne-steele, rosemary moreland, eilish rooney studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 206 frame of reference of the other, and that has the propensity to promote unconditional positive regard. based upon a person-centered approach (rogers, kirschbaum & land, 1990), these transformational learning tools enable individuals to see the world through the other person’s lens and to challenge their own constructs. the vast majority of students find this an illuminating process, whereby they can name their practices (e.g., campaigning for or lobbying against the current contentious issue of flying flags) and recognize other practices akin to their own. they gain a conceptual language to describe the processes in which they are involved, and more importantly, they develop tools to analyze at a deeper level the broader structural causes of inequality and injustice, which they tackle on a daily basis. this process alerts students to how frameworks of understanding can aid the post-conflict transformation of communities where they live and work. one of the ways in which this happens is through the pedagogy of post-conflict peacebuilding. by using rooney’s (2014) grassroots transitional justice toolkit, students and faculty engage in critical discourse that explores and challenges produced by deeply rooted cultural perspectives. using the conceptual framework of the toolkit has helped students to map some of the momentous milestones in the journey towards a peaceful society in the north of ireland. students are challenged to reflect on and articulate their practice and apply newly learned skills to practice situations as employees or volunteers in community organizations, and as such they participate in the world as effective and creative decision-makers. schugurensky (2002, p. 64) argues that when this transformation takes place, adult learners can then “move towards becoming socially responsible citizens and will have acquired the skills of helping others to move, from oppositional dialogue, to collaborative discourse.” the program’s aim, therefore, is to help develop active, socially responsible, democratic, and compassionate community development workers and activists. this form of pedagogy is a means by which students can move towards questioning the limitations of familiar knowledge based on local culture, family structure, and mainstream societal systems and institutions. the value of critical questioning is also supported by freire’s (1970/1996) model of conscientization, whereby learners move from a state of naivety, or apathetic acceptance, to a point where they begin to question the mainstream frameworks of understanding within the wider constructs of society. according to mezirow (1991, p. 155), the onus is on educators to democratize the educational environment, by adopting a more “inclusive, differentiated, permeable, and integrated perspective.” this is a seismic shift away from the traditional power base of the educator as sole owner of curriculum knowledge, and toward shared learning in which the relationship between learner and educator is one of equal and mutual engagement. trying to encourage students to engage in this form of self-reflection can be very challenging and it does not always work. for example, one male student stated in class that he had absolutely no desire or intention to engage transforming communities through academic activism studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 207 in self-reflection. he was vociferous in his protests and responded with either anger or humour when challenged by peers or faculty. although this student was required to complete reflective learning logs as part of his assessment for a work placement, he engaged minimally with the task and demonstrated little movement on the transformative learning trajectory. however, there have been many other students who initially resisted self-reflection but having engaged in the process, found it to be valuable. these examples are captured in comments made in the ten year course evaluation (cownie, hawthorne-steele & moreland, 2014, pp. 9-16) as follows: reflective practice! i used to shudder…but when you get your head around it, when you apply it…you completely see it as core to your work. …well, all the modules were good but reflective practice was probably the one i got most out of. mind you, i was not saying that at the start…i just could not get it…i know now why…i just listened and went ‘no, i don’t get it’... reflective practice took a long time to sink in…it’s about continuous improvement …i see it now and i use it now. another challenge for faculty employing a transformative learning approach is bringing students together from polarized ends of the political spectrum. the student group often comprises high profile ex-combatants who are currently striving to bring their respective communities into a peacebuilding process in northern ireland. this can be a difficult journey for both students and faculty as many of the opinions expressed are diametrically opposed, and it can be extremely challenging to gain an appreciation of alternative perspectives on the conflict. we appreciate that transformational learning cannot occur unless students desire to engage in the reflective process, and this is not something that can be forced. thus, whilst faculty strive to create a growth-promoting climate (rogers, kirschbaum & land, 1990), we recognize this does not always work and there have been times when we have had to be extremely sensitive to live issues, such as disputes over territorial boundaries in contested spaces, that permeate the learning environment. furthermore, faculty recognize the difficulty that some students have in grasping the essential tenets of the subjects being taught. meyers & land (2006, p. 22) describe such gaps in understanding as “liminal spots.” to address these gaps, the team introduced a reflective journal template that challenged students to reflect on their learning, and in particular, to address their emotional experiences throughout the course of the program (hawthorne-steele, moreland & o’donnell, 2009). in piloting the reflective journal template, we identified an important limitation: students did not explicitly articulate the concepts they did not understand (i.e., the template was a ‘reflecting on’ model, which only enabled students to identify gaps in their learning toward the end of the course). in order to address this problem, isobel hawthorne-steele, rosemary moreland, eilish rooney studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 208 isobel hawthorne-steele introduced a critical reflection of learning (crol) pro forma. the crol is a two-page document with question and answer boxes for students to fill in. students are asked to first reflect on the taught class, and specifically to think about what concepts and language they found particularly difficult to understand. they are then asked to describe what measures, if any, they took to rectify the problem. prompts such as “write your own ‘to do’ task list for this module (reading, sourcing materials, critiques, essay plans, meetings, etc.)” and “what source/s did you use to help overcome this liminal spot (peers/tutor/articles/texts/professional practice teacher/internet resource),” are used to encourage students to engage in selfhelp and peer-support mechanisms. having undertaken this process of selfhelp, they are then asked to describe their level of understanding regarding difficult concepts and terminology. after engaging in this process, students are given an opportunity to comment on other aspects of their learning and to indicate whether they would benefit from attending further group or individual tutorials. from this information, core liminal spots are identified, which in turn inform what further teaching and tutorials are required for the module. students using this crol model have thus been able to identify what perkins (2006, p. 137) describes as “troublesome knowledge,” and have expressed appreciation for being given a non-threatening method of asking questions about theoretical concepts and academic or professional language. in practice, this often results in students engaging in peer group social media fora (e.g., facebook groups), exchanging sourced materials and sharing learning. some of this learning is evidenced in reflections from past students, elicited from the program’s ten year evaluation noted above (cownie, hawthorne-steele & moreland, 2014, p. 9-17): you can get bogged down [stuck] in your own community….in a mixed group you are likely to be challenged and this makes you question your biases and prejudices. i must admit, i had not sat down and heard the ‘other’ perspective. i am a lot more confident now in dealing with different views. to say that the course broadened my reading is an understatement ... i really never thought i would get the chance, or have the ability to understand writers such as gramsci ... deprived communities need to know about hegemony! there is definitely a perception in the sector that that [sic] many community posts are ‘boxed off’... now i can say ‘i have a degree and i deserved this position.’ cranton (1994, p. 22) describes this process of reflection as “a comprehensive and complex description of how learners construe, validate, and reformulate the meaning of their experience.” however, the outcomes are unpredictable and in some instances unintentional. educators engaged in this process must therefore reflect on the ethical and professional aspects of providing safe spaces, in which individuals engaged in problem-posing are transforming communities through academic activism studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 209 able to question the status quo and challenge paradigms are afforded the support they need to reconstruct their meaning schema. community-university synergy we have emphasized the wider implications of our teaching praxis in the local context of deeply divided neighbourhoods in a society emerging from conflict. we each continue to engage in community activism alongside teaching and research. this engagement is central to the community development program’s emancipatory principles. on occasion, initiatives that have their origins in the community can lead to remarkable community-university synergies. eilish rooney’s voluntary work with bridge of hope in north belfast, for instance, has involved conversations about dealing with the past and the local impacts of post conflict transition.5 this led her to develop a community based transitional justice grassroots program to facilitate these conversations (rooney, 2012a). at the university this resulted in major curriculum changes to the community development program with the introduction of a module entitled, grassroots transitional justice. this module is based on the community initiative and is taken by all community development students in the second year of degree studies. the community based initiative led to community/academy engagement in a partnership between the bridge of hope and ulster university’s leading law research institute, the transitional justice institute. the partnership originated when bridge of hope contacted rooney and asked her to join with them and former political prisoners from local nationalist and unionist districts in a conversation about transitional justice (rooney, 2012a).6 the exchange between people with opposed political positions was made possible by bridge of hope’s long-term therapeutic work and positive relations with victims and survivors of the conflict in north belfast. the working-class areas of north belfast are amongst the most disadvantaged districts in ireland and britain and have suffered disproportionate conflictrelated trauma. local protests, from the holy cross blockade in 2001 to recent ‘flags and parades’ protests at twaddell avenue, regularly turn the 5 bridge of hope is a department of ashton community trust that provides services to victims and survivors of the conflict across the north (see http://www.thebridgeofhope.org/). dealing with the past involves creating ‘safe’ spaces where those from different perspectives can talk about their experiences of the conflict and the hurt that has been inflicted on them or that they have inflicted on others. the main purpose of this work is to gain an understanding of other perspectives in the conflict, in order to acknowledge the hurt that has happened on all sides, and to begin to move forward to building a more peaceful, shared society. 6 the term ‘transitional justice’ refers to a range of legal and non-legal ways a society moving out of violent conflict deals with past human rights abuses. the strong focus on the past is matched by a concern with the future. it is also an area of academic research and civil society advocacy. isobel hawthorne-steele, rosemary moreland, eilish rooney studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 210 area into a battleground that disrupts local life and threatens the peace. north belfast seems the unlikeliest of places for the learning exchange that originated in bridge of hope over five years ago (rooney & swaine, 2012; rooney, 2014). at the heart of this initiative was local people’s willingness to engage with each other and with rooney about their diverse experiences of conflict and transition. faculty members in the transitional justice institute joined others from leading community and voluntary organisations in seminars to share research and advocacy experience with local people. louise mallinder, professor of human rights and international law, for instance, contributed her expertise on how amnesty is deployed in diverse transitional justice circumstances (mallinder, 2014a; mallinder, 2014b; mallinder and hadden, 2013). the local enthusiasm for this learning exchange led rooney to design a community based toolkit program, and to author the transitional justice grassroots toolkit (rooney, 2012b) and transitional justice grassroots guide (2014) to accompany the program. 7 the program is designed to empower, equip, and encourage people in disadvantaged areas to use the toolkit and guide as a way to engage in critical conversations about the impact of conflict and transition in daily life in their community. these two resources are also now key texts in the community development degree’s grassroots transitional justice module. thus, an initiative that began life as a local, community-based conversation inspired the community development team to integrate grassroots praxis into the degree curriculum. on the research side, this community program was included among the research impact case studies the transitional justice institute submitted to the uk research excellence framework (ref) in 2014. the transitional justice institute’s submission achieved the number one ranking for research impact in law among uk universities. the submission made the case that this grassroots transitional justice program, based in one of the most divided and volatile communities in the north of ireland, produced an internationally recognized participatory program for former political prisoners and combatants, for local women and members of advocacy organizations. the transitional justice institute’s scholarly inputs on truth, institutional reform, reparations, reconciliation, and amnesty have led to direct engagement with community activists at the coal face of transitional processes. the submission also cited feedback from participants that indicated an eagerness to investigate transitional justice in local and international contexts. the bridge of hope/transitional justice institute’s partnership has now delivered a university accredited toolkit training program for community and civil society organization activists who plan to provide the transitional justice grassroots toolkit to local groups and within their organizations. 7 the toolkit and guide are available online at www.thebridgeofhope.org and at www.transitionaljustice.ulster.ac.uk transforming communities through academic activism studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 211 this will allow others to join in and broaden the critical conversation about transitional justice started in bridge of hope in 2011. the university accreditation for trainees also means that anyone completing the toolkit training program will be eligible to gain admission to ulster university’s community development degree program. conclusion we believe that committed and persistent academic activism can make a difference when lives are changed by conflict, and people proactively engage in building a more peaceful society. the academic activism outlined in this paper is evidence of academy-community engagement that makes transformative differences, which, when added to the multitude of efforts made elsewhere in northern irish society, helps to change the script of community empowerment and peace building. it arguably helps to reinterpret the narrative of past political hostility and violent conflict. individual and collective meaning systems are thereby altered in ways that can positively influence wider social relations and ways of life (martín-baró, 1996). the community development degree program and its allied toolkit program do not, however, alter concrete, coercive inequalities. these programs do not change the deepening levels of deprivation or the failures of political progress in northern ireland today. yet, in the spirit of the grassroots transition work, these efforts are about believing and acting as though “we can always do something” (rooney, 2014, p. 10). this involves those of us in the academy accepting the responsibility to create and respond to opportunities for alliances with community activists. the benefits are mutual and radical. acknowledgements: eilish rooney acknowledges support from the political settlements research programme. references cleary, j. (2003). ‘misplaced ideas’? colonialism, location, and dislocation in irish studies. in c. carroll and p. king (eds.), ireland and postcolonial theory (pp. 16-45). cork: cork university press. cownie, e., hawthorne-steele, i., & moreland, r. (2014). the degree of transforming community spaces, principles to praxis. coleraine, northern ireland: university of ulster. craig, g., mayo, m., popple, k., shaw, m., & taylor, k. (eds.). (2011). the community development reader: history, themes and issues. bristol: policy press. cranton, p. (1994). understanding and promoting transformative learning: a guide for educators of adults. san francisco: jossey-bass. isobel hawthorne-steele, rosemary moreland, eilish rooney studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 212 delni (department of education and learning northern ireland). (2012). access to success: an integrated regional strategy for widening participation in higher education. belfast: delni. retrieved from http://www.delni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/del/access%20to%20successan%20integrated%20regional%20strategy%20for%20widening%20participation%20in%2 0he_0.pdf department for social development. (1998). compact between the voluntary & community sector and government. belfast: department for social development. department for social development. (2011). concordat between the voluntary & community sector and the northern ireland government. belfast: department for social development. retrieved from http://www.dsdni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/dsd/consultationconcordat-for-relationships-between-govt-vc-sector.pdf department for social development. (2012). join in, get involved, build a better future. a strategy and action plan for northern ireland. belfast: department for social development. retrieved from http://www.dsdni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/dsd/join-in-get-involved-2012.pdf department for social development. (2013). urban regeneration and community development policy framework. belfast: department for social development. retrieved from http://www.dsdni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/dsd/urcd-policy-framework.pdf department of health, social services and public safety. (2010). investing for health strategy review. belfast: department of health, social services and public safety. federation for community development learning. (2015). community development national occupational standards. retrieved from http://www.fcdl.org.uk/learningqualifications/community-development-national-occupational-standards/ fey, m., morrissey, m., & smith, m. (1999). northern ireland’s troubles: the human cost. london: pluto press. freire, p. (1970/1996). pedagogy of the oppressed. hammondsworth, england: penguin. freire, p. (2001). pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy, and civic courage. oxford: rowman & littlefield. gramsci, a. (1971). selections from the prison notebooks. london: lawrence & wishart. harland, k., & mccready, s. (2012). taking boys seriously: a longitudinal study of adolescent male school-life experiences. belfast: centre for young men’s studies. retrieved from http://www.ulster.ac.uk/sass/files/2014/09/taking-boys-seriously-de-final-pdf.pdf hawthorne-steele, i., moreland, r., & o’donnell, c. (2009). enabling reflective practice: a tool for assessment. proceedings of the aset placement and employability professionals’ annual conference (pp. 99-100). university of lancaster: aset. hawthorne-steele, i., & moreland, r. (2014). transformational learning journeys of adult learners in a divided society: barriers to accessing higher education. in m. hill, a. hudson, p. jones, r. renton, d. saunders & j. storan (eds.), widening access to higher education in ‘divided societies’ (pp. 81-93). leicester: niace. horton, m., & freire, p. (1990). we make the road by walking: conversations on education and social change. philadelphia: temple university press. house of commons education committee. (2014). underachievement in education by white working-class children. (1st report of session 2014-15, hc142). london: the stationery office limited. retrieved from http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmeduc/142/142.pdf knapp, g. (2005). race, class, gender: reclaiming baggage in fast travelling theories. european journal of women’s studies, 12(3), 249-265. ledwith, m., & springett, j. (2010). participatory practice: community-based action for transformative change. bristol: policy press. logue. k. (1990). community development in northern ireland: perspectives for the future. belfast: community development review group. lovett, t., clarke, c., & kilmurray, a. (1983). adult education and community action. kent, england: croom helm. lovett, t., gillespie, n., & gunn, d. (1995). community development, education and community relations. newtownabbey, northern ireland: community research and development transforming communities through academic activism studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 213 centre, university of ulster. machin, s. (2006). social disadvantage and education experiences. (oecd social, employment and migration working paper no. 32). retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/social/soc/36165298.pdf mallinder, l. (2014a). amnesties, prosecutions and the right to truth. retrieved from http://rightsni.org/2014/02/amnesties-prosecutions-and-the-right-to-truth/ mallinder, l. (2014b). amnesties, prosecutions and victims’ right to justice. retrieved from http://rightsni.org/2014/02/amnesties-prosecutions-and-victims-right-to-justice/ mallinder, l., & hadden, t. (2013) the belfast guidelines on amnesty and accountability. belfast, northern ireland: transitional justice institute, university of ulster. retrieved from http://www.ulster.ac.uk/_data/assets/pdf_file/0005/57839/thebelfastguidelinesfinal_00 0.pdf martín-baró, i. (1996). war and mental health. in a. aron & s. corne (eds.). writings for a liberation psychology. essays by ignacio martín-baró (pp. 108-121). cambridge, ma: harvard university press. meyers, j.h.f., & land, r. (2006). threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: issues of liminality. in j.h.f. meyers & r. land (eds.). overcoming barriers to student understanding: threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (pp. 19-32). routledge: london and new york. mezirow, j. (1991). transformative dimensions of adult learning. san francisco: jossey-bass. moreland, r (2007) engaging learning communities: valuing experience. in l. mcilrath, a. farrell, j. hughes, s. lillis & a. lyons, mapping civic engagement within higher education in ireland (pp. 182-191). ireland: aishe & campus engage. moreland, r. (2009a). learning from experience – credit where credit’s due! community development skills manual (p. 230). sheffield: federation for community learning. moreland, r. (2009b). learning from experience – what’s it worth? community development skills manual (pp. 228-229). sheffield: federation for community learning. northern ireland office (1998) the agreement: text of the agreement reached in the multi-party negotiations on northern ireland (10 april 1998). (cmnd. 3883). [good friday agreement/ belfast agreement]. belfast: hmso. retrieved from http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/events/peace/docs/agreement.pdf ofmdfm. (2006). lifetime opportunities. government’s anti-poverty and social inclusion strategy for northern ireland. belfast: northern ireland executive. retrieved from http://www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/sites/default/files/publications/ofmdfm_dev/lifetime-oppanti-poverty-and-social-inclusion-strategy.pdf ofmdfm. (2010). improving children’s life chances. the child poverty strategy. retrieved from http://www.northernireland.gov.uk/final_child_poverty_strategy_-_agreed_by_executive__22_march_2011.pdf ofmdfm. (2013). together building a united community. belfast: northern ireland executive. retrieved from http://www.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/together-building-a-united-community.pdf perkins, d. (2006). constructivism and troublesome knowledge. in j.h.f. meyers & r. land (eds.), overcoming barriers to student understanding: threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (pp. 33-47). london and new york: routledge. rogers, c., kirschbaum, h., & land, v. (1990). the carl rogers reader. london: constable. rooney, e. (2012a). transitional justice grassroots engagement. belfast: ashton community trust. retrieved from http://www.thebridgeofhope.org/media/transitional%20justice%20grassroots%20engage ment%20report%20act%20copyright-2.pdf rooney, e. (2012b). transitional justice grassroots toolkit. belfast: ashton community trust. retrieved from http://www.thebridgeofhope.org/media/transitional-justice-toolkit-book.pdf rooney, e., & swaine, a. (2012). the “long grass” of agreements: promise, theory and practice. international criminal law review, 12(3), 519-548. rooney, e. (2014). transitional justice grassroots toolkit: users' guide. belfast: ashton community trust. schugurensky, d. (2002). transformative learning and transformative politics: the pedagogical isobel hawthorne-steele, rosemary moreland, eilish rooney studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 197-214, 2015 214 dimension of participatory democracy and social action. in e. o’sullivan, a. morell & m.a. o'connor (eds.), expanding the boundaries of transformative learning: essays on theory and praxis (pp. 59-76). new york: palgrave. shaw, m. & crowther, j. (2014) adult education, community development and democracy: renegotiating the terms of engagement, community development journal, 49(3), 390-406. shirlow, p., & mcevoy, k. (2008) beyond the wire: former prisoners and conflict transformation in northern ireland. london: pluto press. taylor, p. (1993) the texts of paulo freire. buckingham: open university press. willis, p. (1977). learning to labour: how working-class kids get working-class jobs. farnborough: saxon house. university of ulster (2012/13) widening access and participation strategy 2011/12-2015/16. retrieved from http://www.ulster.ac.uk/secretary/policyimplementation/policies/wap_strategy.pdf social justice design and implementation in library and information science the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 6(3), 2022 issn 2574-3430, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v6i3.38798 ijidi: book review mehra, b. (ed.). (2021). social justice design and implementation in library and information science. routledge. isbn-13: 978-0367653835 (paperback). 312 pp. $44.95 us. reviewer: halie kerns, suny canton, usa book review editor: stephanie robertson, brigham young university—hawaii, usa keywords: diversity; inclusion; librarians; library and information science; social justice publication type: book review ibraries are in a constant state of flux, reinventing themselves to align with the needs of their community. as part of this metamorphosis, they continue to assess and change their missions and goals. social justice design and implementation in library and information science, edited by bharat mehra and published in 2021 aims to give concrete examples of different libraries’ approaches their evolution of services, resources, and more than anything, their purposes. the volume comprises eighteen different chapters, each one written by librarians presenting social justice motivated approaches to the field of library and information science. as a librarian living in and serving a rural, primarily low-income community, the book’s passion for taking action resonated with me deeply. additionally, as a new librarian, it is proven examples like these that help shape my practice. ultimately, this book is a call to action and guide for librarians to improve the lives of people in their community through the conduit of library services. paul t. jaeger’s forward starts the book off by deeply tying the tradition of social justice to information institutions. using missions of longstanding library organizations as the metric, jaeger concludes, “the modern history of the field of library and information science is a history of continually innovating to promote equity and inclusion for the individuals and communities served by its institutions,” even if it not always as clearly codified (p. xvi). he continues to outline historical examples of social justice to cement this legacy, noting that the list does not mean every library has automatically been on the right side of history. again, jaeger makes it clear that this kind of action does not happen by accident. it must be purposeful work. the editor and contributor, bharat mehra, continues to expand on this assertion by introducing why a library necessitates strong social justice advocacy, especially in the twenty-first century and during the pandemic era. at this point, the ability to highlight and share accurate information in a sea of mis/disinformation is a vital act of resistance that cannot be done passively. this resistance needs to involve action and not just weak lip service. mehra is clear on that by stating, “lacking in today’s lis world is an understanding of the ‘how to’s’ in operationalizing and implementing social justice beyond a ‘feel good’ and ‘loosy-goosy’ approach” (p. 13). the book presents an antidote to such half-hearted movement, which is powerful because it shows specific l https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index social justice design and implementation the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 6(3), 2022 issn 2574-3430, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v6i3.38798 85 actions that library workers and libraries have taken to work toward their social justice goals and weave social justice theory into their everyday practices. there is no one way to summarize the chapters in the book; they share projects, data, and theories that cover a vast array of topics. each chapter is a peek into a different approach or project created and carried through by library workers. reading front to back is a rich and colorful adventure, but as an encyclopedia of ideas to flip through for inspiration, the book stands strong too. to give an idea of the topics covered, the chapters are organized into five different thematic sections (listed below). each one brings something fresh to the table regarding the role of libraries in people’s lives while giving the reader examples of tangible changes that can be made in the way they think about and carry out their work. part i, “emerging responsibilities,” starts off with chapters that detail the effect of the pandemic on libraries (“libraries fighting for social justice during the covid-19 pandemic”) and the unique role of rural libraries as social justice epicenters in their communities (“role of rural libraries in supporting social well-being in their communities”). while the latter sounds specific to libraries in rural areas, it actually contains insights that rural librarians have gained through their “local nested connections” which librarians in any setting can apply to grow a sense of belonging and inclusion in their communities. as times change, so do people’s ideas about the role the library should play in everyday life, and this volume contains many examples of library workers who are ready to embrace these changes. part ii, “reflective case practices,” is chock-full of tangible examples of positive additions to library ecosystems. two chapters (“wilkes county public library’s involvement in the food justice movements in rural north carolina” and “a public library’s response to substance abuse recovery”) outline examples of programs that targeted underserved patrons and coordinated to meet their needs in the library. the two other chapters take a more theoretical approach, one centering on practitioner inquiry as a mode of social justice to create empathetic and supported librarians (“understanding the librarian identity”) and one centering on digital storytelling as a tool for community empowerment when integrated with critical thought (“digital archives and inclusion of underrepresented groups”). these four chapters outline the steps and stumbles, helpful outlines, and inspirations for all. part iii, “reaching out: new research approaches and strategies,” focuses on specific communities’ use of the library and their unique needs. two chapters (“positioning social justice in a black feminist information activist community context” and “conceptualizing co-mapping knowledges to promote social justice outcomes with aboriginal communities through design pedagogy”) consider librarianship within different pedagogical and theoretical frameworks to better connect with the community by thinking critically about whose knowledge may be left out of library design. similarly, the other two chapters look at two different specific populations: migrant latinas (“everyday information practices of migrant latinas living in boston”) and older adults (“multidisciplinary perspectives for an integrative critical gerontology information framework”). each chapter asks how a social justice driven agenda can grow the services these populations need in the library. together, the chapters in this section demonstrate a transformation from simply providing general services to targeting specific needs. part iv, “transforming lis education,” aims to create change from the start through the educational experience of emerging librarians. each chapter takes on a different social justice perspective that future librarians should be familiar with to form an inclusive professional https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index social justice design and implementation the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 6(3), 2022 issn 2574-3430, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v6i3.38798 86 practice. the section opens with a discussion on how lis programs fail to produce culturally competent librarians, which becomes an issue that is then echoed throughout the field (“the mis-education of the librarian”). from there, readers are provided with a discussion on creating resources with accessibility in mind, which is particularly useful since librarians can be leaders who guide instructors (“creating accessible learning environments and informing social justice through inclusive course design”), as well as a chapter outlining lis classes that give students hands-on tools for addressing community homelessness (“the social responsibility of libraries to address community homelessness”). “indigenous-engaged education” discusses the recruitment and engagement of indigenous scholars as part of mlis programs to grow the numbers of indigenous librarians and lis academics in canada and abroad. this chapter bookends the first chapter about shortcomings in lis education by presenting a case study on actively preparing lis students to promote social justice in their communities (“designing for social justice in the mlis curriculum”). overall, this section is a powerful answer to many feckless declarations about what changes can be made in lis to grow diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workforce. finally, part v, “instruments of action and change,” ends the book on a strong note of resilience and inspiration. “an autoethnographic narrative of institutional injustice” plots the journey of one librarian to combat the conservative tide of homophobia and transphobia that swept her campus by creating an lgbtq+ history project to document people’s experiences, starting with her own. the next piece (“inspiring information communities to advance the un sustainable development goals”) lays out the process of using information action briefs related to the united nation’s own development goals to inspire change concerning social inequalities in libraries. this section ends with an international librarian perspective on social justice initiatives for lgbtq+ people in libraries worldwide (“implementation of social justice design in developing international guidelines for lgbtq+ library resources, services, and programming”). all chapters manage to further these discussions on a broader level than just the individual institutions, reminding us that libraries are part of many different overlapping communities. if anything, the main shortcoming of this book is its immensity. it is impossible to synthesize all the information and examples in just one book review. as the editor, mehra presents so many rich texts and each could easily be expanded into a short book on its own. social justice focused library texts have been popular for many years. however, this book stands out due to its use of concrete examples of success and failure to back up its social justice theory. all library students and/or professionals can benefit from the knowledge in this book at any stage of their careers. as mehra states in the introduction, it is not enough to simply talk or theorize about social justice as a library pillar; it is the actions taken by library workers to serve their communities that make the tangible difference. this book outlines both the theory and the practice of materially creating the social justice driven libraries the world deserves. halie kerns (kernsh@canton.edu) is access services librarian at suny canton where she focuses on creating accessible and inclusive library services for her community. https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index mailto:kernsh@canton.edu microsoft word 91-125_baruchello & johnstone.docx studies in social justice volume 5, issue 1, 91-125, 2011   correspondence address: georgio baruchello, faculty of social sciences, university of akureyri, iceland. email: giorgio@unak.is rachael lorna johnstone, faculty of law, university of akureyri, iceland. tel: +354 460 8666, email: rlj@unak.is issn: 1911-4788 rights and value: construing the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights as civil commons giorgio baruchello* & rachael lorna johnstone** *faculty social sciences, háskólinn á akureyri/university of akureyri, akureyri, iceland, **faculty of law, háskólinn á akureyri/university of akureyri, akureyri, iceland. abstract this article brings together the united nations’ international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (icescr) and john mcmurtry’s theory of value. in this perspective, the icescr is construed as a prime example of “civil commons,” while mcmurtry’s theory of value is proposed as a tool of interpretation of the covenant. in particular, mcmurtry’s theory of value is a hermeneutical device capable of highlighting: (a) what alternative conception of value systemically operates against the fulfilment of the rights enshrined in the icescr; (b) the increased relevance of the icescr with regard to the current global economic crisis; (c) the parameters to determine the degree to which the rights at issue have been realized. reflections on environmental implications of both the icescr and mcmurtry’s axiology conclude the article. introduction law and philosophy have met each other happily on many occasions. indeed, jurisprudence, legal theory and, to a relevant extent, constitutional law are nothing but a combination of legal and philosophical concerns, aims, conceptions, and methodologies. however, as far as the present authors are aware, there has been hitherto no attempt whatsoever to bring together the 1966 international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (icescr) and john mcmurtry’s lifegrounded onto-axiology, a specific theory of value.1 such a coupling, as the following pages will show, does not constitute a futile academic exercise. rather, the icescr can serve as a prime example of “civil commons,” that is to say an original philosophical conception of mcmurtry’s that is entering the mainstream of the nomenclature of today’s anglophone social scientists and humanists and, on occasion, institutional practice (e.g. dartmouth common master plan, 2009).2 at the same time, mcmurtry’s theory of value can provide the theoretical underpinning required for a more nuanced understanding and perhaps a theoretical 92 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   framework for interpreting the icescr. mcmurtry’s work enables us to unpack the legal principles of the icescr as the real content of social justice: guaranteed access to those goods and institutions needed by human beings to survive, develop, and live good lives. mcmurtry’s work has not to our knowledge been analysed from a human rights perspective, but it too is well recognized within the un network, having been adopted as the philosophical perspective within unesco’s encyclopedia of life support systems (eolss). in what follows we will analyse the icescr from the standpoint of mcmurtry’s life-value onto-axiology, emphasising throughout how it gives legal substance to the core values of mcmurtry’s life-grounded understanding of social justice.3 before proceeding to the coupling of the icescr and mcmurtry’s axiology, an introduction to each will be provided. subsequently, mcmurtry’s theory of value will be utilized to reveal: (a) what alternative conception of value systemically operates today against the fulfilment of the rights enshrined in the icescr; (b) the increased relevance of the icescr with regard to the current global economic crisis; (c) the parameters to determine the degree to which the rights at issue have been realized, (a) notwithstanding. reflections on the environmental implications of both the icescr and mcmurtry’s axiology conclude the article. introduction to the icescr a human rights chapter was not included within the 1945 un charter itself but the economic and social council established under the charter was entrusted to set up “commissions in economic and social fields and for the promotion of human rights” (article 68). at its first meeting in 1946, it established the commission on human rights (chr), with which it entrusted the task of drafting a binding treaty on human rights law, as well as the commission on the status of women. in 1948, the united nations’ commission on human rights agreed and submitted to the general assembly the universal declaration of human rights (udhr), where it was approved with no negative votes.4 however, the udhr is not a treaty and therefore not in itself legally binding. the udhr was expected to form the foundation for a treaty to which states could commit themselves, but during a process that took nearly two decades, two, not one, treaties emerged: the icescr and the international covenant on civil and political rights (iccpr). it was another ten years before they would come into force (whelan & donnelly, 2007). modern readings often interpret the division of the udhr into two distinct treaties as cold-war politics: the west was suspicious of economic, social, and cultural rights qua rights; the east considered them as more fundamental than civil and political rights (arbour, 2006; tomasevski, 2005). the truth is, as usual, more nuanced and the udhr owes the breadth of its content in some measure to the united states of america and in particular roosevelt’s “four freedoms” (alfredsson & eide, 1999; eide, 2001; whelan & donnelly, 2007). western states and traditional allies of the united states, including australia, canada, germany and the united kingdom were amongst the first state parties to the icescr. however, having signed the covenant during the carter presidency, american resistance to the icescr was only consolidated during the reagan administration (alston, 2009). rights and value 93 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   the transformation of the udhr into two legally binding treaties, rather than one, was intended to address not so much differences of opinion about the relative importance of different rights but more pragmatic concerns about implementation: in particular, state capability and institutional justiciability (alfreddson & eide, 1999; whelan & donnely, 2007). to the extent that fulfilment of economic, social, and cultural rights had significant budgetary implications, it was not self-evident that the courts were the proper fora for such fine assessments (alfredsson & eide, 1999). yet, it was pointed out that economic, social, and cultural rights were no different from civil and political rights in this regard in that both groups contain both positive and negative elements, or, in the common parlance of the united nations committee on economic, social and cultural rights (escr committee), established to monitor state compliance with the icescr, duties to respect, protect, and fulfil (alston & quinn, 1987; craven, 1995; scott & macklem,1992). civil and political rights likewise require state expenditures (certification case, 1996, para. 77). from the standpoint of a life-grounded understanding both are equally essential as what any just society must guarantee to each of its citizens. still, at the time of drafting, it was obvious that a number of states were in no position to guarantee overnight all the economic, social, and cultural rights promised in the udhr but they were better equipped to facilitate civil and political rights. in most states, in 1966, there was already in place a rudimentary framework that could ensure even those civil and political rights that require extensive state investment, such as the right to a fair trial or the right to vote. in other words, the overwhelming majority of states had operational courts, functioning judiciaries and could hold rudimentary elections. yet, most were very far from guaranteeing adequate housing or health-care facilities for everyone, nor could any such infrastructure be built in the anticipated three months period between ratification and entry into force (alfredsson & eide, 1999; whelan & donnely, 2007). thus, whilst states agreed under the iccpr to guarantee civil and political rights to the full immediately, they agreed only to work towards full enjoyment of economic, social, and cultural rights, i.e. they undertook the obligation to “progressively realize” these rights.5 the progressive realization standard solved the capability problem: states had to take all appropriate means—within their means—to realize the rights in the icescr. however, this formulation brought with it its own set of problems, in particular, the justiciability problem. how could courts adjudicate the satisfaction or violation of rights that lacked explicit benchmarks, that were effectively contextual and which depended on the relative means of each state party? if there is no absolute obligation on the state, how can it be determined if the state has breached its obligation? in reply, we would point to numerous rights within the icescr which are not vague at all, such as the right to join a trade union of one’s choice and the right not to be discriminated against in respect of economic, social, and cultural rights (icescr, 1966, articles 8 and 2(2)). on the other hand, there are likewise rights within the iccpr that are inherently vague and subject to contextual interpretation such as the right to privacy which can be subject to “lawful” and “non-arbitrary” interference and must be balanced against freedom of expression (iccpr, 1966, articles 14, 18 and 19(2); scott & macklem, 1992). with regard to more complex rights, two decades of output from the escr committee has provided ever greater clarity and precision as to what is required of state parties and adjudication by the committee under the new communications 94 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   process will further enrich understanding (op-icescr, 2008).6 economic, social, and cultural rights have been introduced into modern constitutions and are regularly adjudicated by judges all over the world, most famously in south africa.7 the justiciability horse needs no more flogging here.8 the escr committee is not a creature of the icescr, in contrast to its counterpart, the human rights committee, established under the iccpr (article 28). instead, the escr committee was established nearly ten years after the covenant came into force, on the back of resolution nr. 1985/17 by the united nations economic and social council (ecosoc). like the human rights committee, it reviews state reports, discusses them with state parties and makes concluding observations, and it issues general comments addressed to all state parties (langford & king, 2009). if the heart of the iccpr is the “right to life” (article 6), the heart of the icescr might be considered the “right to live” i.e. the right to live a dignified life; the right to a quality of life; the right to a life free of fear of hunger and destitution; a life where the human spirit has space to flourish. this flourishing, which is contingent upon the comprehensive satisfaction of the needs recognized by the ‘right to live’ is the ultimate goal of life-grounded social justice. genuine fulfilment of the covenant requires realization of many of the values that are at the heart of modern conceptions of “social justice,” such as access to fair employment, education, and healthcare provision. the substantive provisions of the icescr include: the right to self-determination of peoples, including the right to control their own natural resources (article 1); the right to work (article 6); the right to just and favourable conditions of work, including remuneration (article 7); the right to trade union organization and participation (article 8); the right to social security (article 9); the right to recognition and protection of marriage and paid leave for new mothers (article 10); the right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing, and housing (article 11); the right to the highest attainable standard of health (article 12); the right to education (articles 13-14); and the right to take part in cultural life, to benefit from scientific progress and to benefit from one’s own intellectual creations (article 15). overlying these rights is the principle of non-discrimination (article 2(2)), with gender equality emphasized (article 3), the prohibition of abuse of rights (article 5), and the permission for states to set limits on the enunciated rights only “for the purposes of promoting the general welfare in a democratic society” (article 4). as an international treaty, the icescr is unquestionably binding as a matter of international law (vclt article 26). nevertheless, state practice does not always conform to states’ obligations. indeed, alternative or even incompatible normative frameworks can shape the discourse. to name just a few examples vis-à-vis articles 1, 6, 12 and 13 respectively: (a) in 2009, the government of peru responded by means of police and military crackdowns to protests by indigenous populations against the legislation that opened peru’s virgin forests to oiland gas-drilling operations (cordero, 2009); (b) in 2010, unemployment in the eurozone reached double figures; but the european central bank engaged in no quantitative easing to counteract this trend, comparable to the steps taken between 2007 and 2009 to rescue failing private banks (oecd, 2010); (c) in the past biennium, the adoption of a universal healthcare coverage in the united states of america has been vocally rights and value 95 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   opposed by mobilized individuals that dub themselves the “tea party” movement, and whose number and influence are reshaping the republican party (espo, 2010); (d) plans are being unveiled in the british parliament to slash education funding at tertiary level at english and welsh universities, which are therefore likely to take in fewer students in the future and demand higher tuition fees (vasagar, 2010). apart from suggesting that governmental authorities neglect the covenants to which they are bound, the examples above signal that alternative conceptions of value exist and may even be predominant in politics and institutional life, to the point of rejecting the rights enshrined in international law. how are such views to be assessed? do they imply that the values embodied by the icescr are incomplete? in pluralist societies such as ours, which values should be upheld and, above all, upon what grounds? in the following sections, we will show how the work of mcmurtry can help to answer some of these deep and controversial questions. introduction to john mcmurtry’s axiology possibly terrified by the consequences of the uncompromising statements of value characterizing totalitarian ideologies, all “classic” anglophone theorists of value of the second half of the 20th century have offered highly abstract and impractical interpretations.9 whether intentionally or not, these interpretations have reflected the dominant liberal economic conception of value of their age, whereby the “preference satisfaction” of the contract-stipulating individual determines value by the exercise of allegedly universal and neutral money-demand in the so-called “free market.” thus understood, value is ultimately subjective (i.e. different individuals have different values), atomistic (i.e. societies’ values are aggregates of individuals’ values) and quintessentially human (i.e. human beings ascribe value to non-human beings, which would otherwise possess none). mcmurtry (2009-10) is aware of the perplexities that arise regularly with regard to any objective determination of value: “as the recent history of philosophy discloses, the multiplying particular bearings of language games, specific practices, incommensurable epistemic perspectives, anti-foundationalist conversations and poststructural principles of difference have overwhelmed the very idea of a unifying value system, good or ill, as inconceivable to acceptable meaning” (para. 1.10.4).10 nevertheless, after pondering upon the recurrent “meltdowns” of the post-brettonwoods age and the social and ecological losses accompanying them, he claims that we must: “follow reason where it leads to recover step by step the missing lifeground of values and the ultimate meaning of how we are to live” (para. 1.16). since the formal and relativist options debated in mainstream axiology have proven tragically useless vis-à-vis both economic and ecological crises, he endeavours to provide a substantial and objective alternative.11 yet what exactly is the “lifeground” that has gone amiss and that, if recovered, can reveal how we should live? the definition of this key-term is unusually simple to grasp: “concretely, all that is required to take the next breath; axiologically, all the life support systems required for human life to reproduce or develop” (mcmurtry, 2009-10, glossary).12 without enough bread, clean water, breathable air, open spaces in which to move, regular sleep, acceptable education and meaningful socialization, no value whatsoever that we cherish will ever be expressed in reality.13 here the life-ground works beneath 96 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   established ideological and philosophical disputes about the meaning of social justice to expose its material core in the satisfaction of human life-requirements. all values with no exception, whether ethical, political, economic, epistemic or aesthetic, rely upon this vital platform—the life-ground—typically in a pre-reflexive manner.14 there can be no life, not to mention any good life, outside this ground. as mcmurtry (2009-10) states, “life support systems—any natural or human-made system without which human beings cannot live or live well—may or may not have value in themselves, but have ultimate value so far as they are that without which human or other life cannot exist or flourish” (para. 6.2.1).15 even the civil and political rights enshrined in liberal democratic constitutions and in the iccpr itself—be they justice, equality, liberty, or democracy—are formal fictions if the prerequisites for prolonged survival and adequate individual and social existence are not met. as eloquently stated forty years ago by liberal icon isaiah berlin (1969): “it is true that to offer political rights, or safeguards against intervention by the state, to men who are half-naked, illiterate, underfed, and diseased is to mock their condition… what is freedom to those who cannot make use of it? without adequate conditions for the use of freedom, what is the value of freedom?” (p. 124). mcmurtry calls “needs” these prerequisites, the scrutiny of which serves then the end of clarifying the composition and the scope of the life-ground.16 not anything that we may claim to “need” is, after closer scrutiny, a need.17 according to mcmurtry (1998), “‘n’ is a need if and only if, and to the extent that, deprivation of n always leads to a reduction of organic capacity” (p. 164).18 only that without which organic capacity is harmed regularly and unequivocally counts as need. we can live, and even prosper, without motorbikes or memory pens, but we cannot live, not to mention prosper, without nourishing food, shelter and several hours of sleep per night. upon such needs and their prolonged, secure satisfaction rests everything else that may be regarded as valuable: art, sport, conversation, commerce, scientific research, sexual experimentation, political activism, philosophical meditation, etc. and whenever any such derivative form of agency harms or hampers the prolonged, secure, universal satisfaction of needs, then disvalue ensues.19 whilst the recognition of human needs by mcmurtry is an important beginning, the satisfaction of human needs is not the same as the recognition of human rights to the satisfaction of the same. needs should not be met by the state as a matter of welfare, a matter of charity, which the state enjoys discretion to withdraw. a citizen should not beg for the assistance necessary simply to stay alive; instead they should be able to demand that their needs be met and, moreover, have confidence that their needs will continue to be met. “to enjoy something only at the discretion of someone else, especially someone powerful enough to deprive you of it at will, is precisely not to enjoy a right to it” (shue as cited in skogly, 1993, p. 769). holding a right is a special sort of entitlement for which there is no shame attached to its claiming; and it is an entitlement that remains notwithstanding budgetary uncertainty or constraints on the duty bearer. given that mcmurtry (2009-10) regards life as unfolding along three modes of ontological manifestation—i.e. “thought,” “experience” (also “feeling” or “felt being”), and “action” (also “biological movement” or “motility”)20—the fundamental coordinates of value are as follows (italics in the original): rights and value 97 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011    “x is value if and only if, and to the extent that, x consists in or enables a more coherently inclusive range of thought/feeling/action than without it” (para. 6.1);  “x is disvalue if and only if, and to the extent that, x reduces/disables any range of thought/experience/action” (para. 6.1).21 devoid of a theoretical underpinning as comprehensively abstract as mcmurtry’s life-ground—the attainment of which is after all the philosopher’s raison d’être—the world’s nations have provided themselves with an array of concepts, traditions, collective praxes, facilities, charities, foundations, and disciplinary branches whose main task is enable to foster life capacity expression and enjoyment. ethical principles, notions of the common good, human rights, life-expectancy rates, hygiene standards, methods for waste disposal, suicide rates, manic-depressive pathologies, crime rates, literacy levels and many other dimensions of individual, social and natural existence have been conceptualized, discussed, followed, scrutinized, addressed and managed daily by corresponding institutions, such as ethical committees, scholarly communities, human rights treaty bodies, municipal registrars, public hygiene offices, mental hygiene departments, police corps and other law-andorder enforcers, schools, research centres, etc.22 whether conscious or not of their life-serving function, much of organized human existence, both material and immaterial, has been spent in view of conceiving, perceiving, preventing, denouncing, and countering any assault on life capacity, as this is revealed by the particular, standardized indicators that are specific to each institution.23 mcmurtry (1999) lists a vast and diverse array of conceptions, arrangements and artefacts aimed at fulfilling these paramount ends in most diverse socio-historical contexts: [u]niversal health plans, the world wide web, common sewers, international outrage over vietnam or ogoniland, sidewalks and footpaths, the chinese concept of jen, the jubilee of leviticus… water fountains, robin hood of sherwood forest, the air we breathe, effective pollution controls… music… old age pensions, universal education, sweden’s common forests… the second commandment of yeshua… the rule of law, child and women shelters, parks, public broadcasting, clean water… the un declaration of human rights, occupational health and safety standards, village and city squares, the brazilian rainforests, inoculation programmes, indigenous story-telling, the ozone protocol, the tao, the peace movement, death rituals, animal rights agencies, community fishhabitats, food and drug legislation, garbage collection, the ancient village commons before enclosures. (pp. 206-207) all of these human creations are “civil commons” i.e. “[a] unifying concept to designate social constructs which enable universal access to life goods. life support systems [cf. note 5] are civil commons so far as society protects and enables their reproduction and provision for all members” (mcmurtry, 2009-10, glossary). the predicate “civil” used in mcmurtry’s phrase reveals the socially constructed and socially aimed dimensions of the commons.24 mcmurtry is not talking, say, of pastures available to all without supervision and sanctions for misuse, but of pastures that the community recognizes and manages to yield life-supporting fruits for the 98 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   whole community through time.25 as a consequence, mcmurtry’s notion should not be confused with garrett hardin’s (1968) unregulated natural “commons,” whose tragic doom justifies their appropriation for private ends. on the contrary, mcmurtry’s works are, usually, critical of such an appropriation, inasmuch as it has taken place for class or elite benefit (e.g. 19th-century highland clearances [richards, 2000]) and/or converted the existing civil commons into means of non-universal (e.g. 1999 privatization schemes of water resources in south africa [pauw, 2003] and elsewhere [roberts, 2006]) and/or non-life-enabling ends (e.g. the use of scientific knowledge for the production of biological weapons), thus perverting their original function. historical examples of this perversion abound, as highlighted by the numerous tokens of resistance to each, e.g. the english peasantry’s revolts against early-renaissance enclosures, the anti-colonial catholic-communist costa rican social legislation of the 1940s-70s, recent eu-wide protests against the bolkenstein directive, contemporary non-governmental organizations’ (ngos) demands for the re-regulation of de-regulated speculative trade of peoples’ currencies. different economic systems, the life-ground, and the icescr mcmurtry’s negative emphasis on privatization and his positive emphasis on the commons might suggest that he is a member of the marxist camp, to which he did in fact contribute a significant piece of research (mcmurtry, 1978) at the beginning of his long scholarly career (mcmurtry, 2008). however, since the civil commons are meant to guarantee universal access to life goods, mcmurtry departs from the marxist tradition, which focuses on guaranteeing access to the means of production of life goods to a numerically predominant yet specific social class. also, by linking the notion of civil commons to that of need, mcmurtry presumes no framework of historical necessity, as with marx’s structural laws of socio-economic development, but rather a framework of biological necessity alone, i.e. no matter what our beliefs and preferences may be, we are going to suffer reduction of organic capacity and eventually death if we do not meet our vital needs. departing further from the marxist paradigm, mcmurtry’s emphasis upon biological necessity opens value judgments to domains of existence completely neglected by the marxist canon, such as planetary ecosystems and the earth’s biosphere. finally, mcmurtry’s approach does not even imply the abandonment of today’s free market economies, which mix already liberal elements (e.g. freedom of contract between companies manufacturing armaments and the engineers that they employ) and socialist ones (e.g. state-funded bailouts of bankrupt private companies), but its effective regulation according to lifegrounded criteria (e.g. careful and consistent implementation of food-and-health regulations in for-profit food manufacturing). from a life-grounded perspective, which system of ownership, management and trade ought to be predominant is not relevant per se, as an ideological, ethical or political summum bonum.26 similarly, and in contrast to many international agreements of recent decades, the icescr is neither a trade agreement presupposing significant degrees of free-market activity, legal frameworks and economic policies; nor does it depend upon free-market activity or any particular legal framework or economic policies. the escr committee has taken care to point out that the treaty rights and value 99 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   does not exclude a libertarian model as long as everyone’s rights are in fact fulfilled, noting in 1990 that: [t]he undertaking “to take steps… by all appropriate means including particularly the adoption of legislative measures” neither requires nor precludes any particular form of government or economic system being used as the vehicle for the steps in question, provided only that it is democratic and that all human rights are thereby respected. thus, in terms of political and economic systems, the covenant is neutral and its principles cannot accurately be described as being predicated exclusively upon the need for, or the desirability of a socialist or a capitalist system, or a mixed, centrally planned, or laissez-faire economy, or upon any particular approach. (general comment no. 3, 1990, para. 8) it is thus quite reasonable for the state to assume that individuals will be able to a large extent to satisfy their own rights, with a minimum of state intervention. for example, individuals should be likely to be able to satisfy their rights to work and to an adequate standard of living, with the state only stepping in for those who are unable to do so independently (alfredsson & eide, 1999). there is one notable exception in the treaty: the right to education, which, at least at primary level, must be compulsory and free (icescr, 1966, articles 13(2)(a) and 14). in practice, the escr committee’s ecumenical approach to market systems only goes so far; a state party is not simply empowered to intervene to guarantee the relevant rights for its inhabitants but is obliged so to do when a dogmatically antiinterventionist approach leaves some individuals unable to secure their own economic, social, and cultural rights. for example, concluding the review of the report on hong kong in 2001, the committee considered that the region’s reliance “on the philosophy of ‘positive non-interventionism’” was a factor limiting the full implementation of the treaty and “had a negative impact on the realization and enjoyment of the economic, social, and cultural rights of hong kong’s inhabitants, which has been exacerbated by globalization” (escr committee, 2002, p. 176). similarly, the committee has expressed the view that increasing privatization of services has been accompanied by increasing challenges for certain groups of vulnerable individuals to satisfy their own basic rights; hence increasing responsibilities for state parties to intervene to ensure their rights are guaranteed qua rights (craven, 1995). from a life-grounded perspective, if the appropriation of the commons for private ends is preferred and performed, as ceaselessly done worldwide in the past three decades, it is crucial that it be able to spur life-capability more widely in both space and time.27 from such a perspective, an economy is truly successful if it can “secure provision of means of life otherwise in short supply (i.e. the production and distribution of goods and the protection of ecosystem services which are otherwise scarce or made scarce through time)” (mcmurtry, 2005). consistently, true “civil commons” are only those life-support systems that genuinely allow for such an economy to operate. since life is the value-compass utilized by mcmurtry, not any priced commodity contributing to the generation of profit or to augmented grossdomestic-product (gdp) figures should be counted as wealth-creation: “claimed ‘economic goods’ which disable or do not enable life abilities are not means of life; they are economic ‘bads’” (mcmurtry, 2005). carcinogenic pesticides, cluster 100 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   bombs, junk commodities, speculative financial products and hazardous mining are not good. they are bad. they may be extremely profitable, like slaves had been for many centuries, but inasmuch as they reduce life-capacity, they are “goods” if and only if we wish to indulge in oxymoron.28 perplexingly, standard economics endorses unflinchingly such an oxymoronic language.29 all life-reducing items of trade mentioned above are called, in standard economic language and praxis, “goods,” with no exception. this glaring conceptual confusion, whereby nourishing bread is equated with golden toilets, can take place because in a value-system devoid of life-coordinates all that which does not compute as an item of trade in the free market is marginal or de facto invisible unless it is reconstructed as monetary loss or business opportunity (baruchello, 2007a, 2008). non-moneyed people, cultural homogenization, pollution, the loss of biodiversity, and the melting of the arctic ice-shelf are economic “externalities” until, say, reduced cost of labour, carbon trade mechanisms, medical research, and lawsuits by indigenous communities seeking compensation make them expressible in moneybased terms. it is only whether and when the “externalities” can be “internalized” that economic calculus can actually compute them in its equations. this externalization of living beings and life support systems takes place regularly even if no economic calculus can actually exist without many of them and, in reality, presupposes several “externalities” throughout (e.g. the generation of children, human languages, earth’s breathable air and oceanic plankton).30 as soon as this “internalization” occurs, any item may become a tradable “good,” even if the former “externality” has not been reconstructed as life-serving civil commons, but rather as a non-universal and even life-damaging for-profit activity (e.g. unnecessary stressinducing medical testing of paying pregnant women, disappearance of traditional birthday songs from films and plays due to copyright attribution, exclusive air stations in polluted asian capitals). moreover, these “goods” can now be attributed a value-expressing price by exercise of money-demand in a comparative market system of aggregate individual preferences.31 this fact implies that sight may be lost altogether of their other axiological dimensions, for their economic value is now forcefully on the foreground, not their religious sacredness, incomparable beauty, categorical moral normativity, vital ecological function, etc. as former chief economist of the world bank lawrence summers stated: “the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that” (as cited in smith, 2007).32 this conceptually confused yet “impeccable” logic explains why life-enabling economic, social, and cultural rights, irreducible to money-value have been repeatedly sacrificed to the pursuit of life-impairing economic efficiency, as amply testified33 by, e.g.: longer working hours (bunting, 2004; icescr, 1966, article 7(d)); less-inclusive pension schemes (elliott & atkinson, 2008; icescr, 1966, article 9); reduced parental leave (law 173/2008, article 7; law 70/2009, article 18; icescr, 1966, article 10); cheaper, lower-quality school meals (“allarme mense,” 2008; icescr, 1966, article 11(1) and 12); reduced healthcare provision (stuckler, king, and basu, 2008; icescr, 1966, article 12);34 increased market opportunities for performance-enhancing drug-dealing, whether legal or illegal (angell, 2004; d’argenio, 2008; icescr, 1966, article 12);35 cuts to educational services rights and value 101 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   (mcmurtry, 1998; icescr, 1966, articles 13 and 14); and reductions in publicly funded cultural programs (“budget cuts,” 2008; icescr, 1966, article 15). similarly, since at least the late 1970s, when it comes to determining the course of monetary policy in free-market economies, their sovereign right to issue coin and credit, and the levels of taxation for capital gains, there seems to have been no other guideline but to make entire countries “attractive” to business.36 this attractiveness has been so interpreted as to be achieved by slashing protective regulation, thereby maximising returns for private shareholders, even if entire societies are harmed in the process (glyn, 2006; mcmurtry, 1999; stiglitz, 2003) and democratic self-rule is thwarted by oligarchic privilege.37 indeed, the conflict between genuine political autonomy and large concentrations of wealth is as old as the very first modern democracy (jefferson, 1816, 1817) and it has been described most adamantly by w.l. mackenzie king former prime minister of canada (comer, 1996, p. 16): “until control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of the sovereignty of parliament and of democracy is idle and futile... once a nation parts with control of its credit, it matters not who makes the nation’s laws... usury once in control will wreck any nation.” the inherent conceptual confusion and absence of decisive life-criteria within the economic logic epitomized in sumners’ quotation can explain why so much contention has surfaced amid experts about whether the results of the long wave of privatizations of the 1980s-2000s have been socially positive or negative (e.g. florio, 2004). as regards more specifically the privatization of credit creation and its unregulated free movement across borders, even influential conservative european statesmen seem to have no doubt any longer that it has been harmful, rather than beneficial, to collective wellbeing (e.g. putin, 2009; sarkozy, 2010; tremonti as cited in cazzullo, 2009).38 this fact becomes most evident if life-grounded nutritional standards and death rates are taken as relevant indicators of collective wellbeing, as done by spokespersons of one of the most active promoters of 1980s2000s financial liberalizations, i.e. the international monetary fund ([imf] plant, 2008; strauss-kahn as cited in swann, 2008).39 as epitomized by bill clinton’s presidency of the united states of america, privatizing services and productive structures that had been previously held by public bodies and delivering them into worldwide free trade was claimed to better serve human communities by promoting “growth,” “development” and, as implied by analogous watchwords, much of what is desirable and good.40 such has been the “conventional wisdom” of the past few decades, despite the equally obvious problems that profit-oriented activities posited vis-à-vis, to name one critical area, environmental safety.41 indeed, as leading finnish jurist aulis aarnio (1991) observed back then: “environmental values and economic values often clash, as in the protection of the forests and waterways. almost without exception, the values that have prevailed have been economic” (p. 131). the current crisis, the life-ground, and the icescr twenty years later, the imf acknowledges that “[t]he world economy is entering a major downturn in the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s” (“major global 102 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   downturn,” 2008) and the un’s secretary-general states that the “economic and financial turmoil sweeping the globe is a true wake-up call, sounding an alarm about the need to improve upon old patterns of growth and make a transition to a new era of greener, cleaner development” (ban, 2009). under these momentous and dramatic circumstances, mcmurtry’s substantial and objective theory of value, which treats life as the paramount end of human agency and economic activity as a means, becomes a plausible conceptual tool for reconsidering the axiological hierarchies that have led the international community to the crisis denounced by the un’s secretary-general. indeed, if one considers that mcmurtry’s main works focussed already in the 1990s on the pernicious axiological confusion of de-regulated financial activity in the face of persistent socio-economic meltdowns and environmental losses, their relevance as the current crisis is concerned is manifest and cassandra-like.42 under the same circumstances, the icescr becomes a major point of reference vis-à-vis the sort of value-choices that should be made so as to guide policy-making and international cooperation. first of all, the rights addressed by the icescr are precisely the sort of rights that today’s crisis affects most critically. in times of crisis, it becomes more difficult for people to realize their own needs, fulfil their own rights, without state intervention; yet the state is simultaneously under pressure to cut such assistance, both domestically and internationally. both scientific journals and mainstream media sources—the latter being generally more cautious vis-à-vis the economic powerhouses from which they directly or indirectly depend—have been revealing amply and candidly the astounding social, economic, and cultural losses due to the economic crisis since 2008.43 secondly, as discussed in part 4, the icescr addresses economic, social, and cultural rights from a position that is ostensibly neutral as to a state party’s economic system, at least up to a certain extent.44 as such, the icescr endures as a set of binding goals for the international community regardless of the dominant market ideology within a state and irrespective of whether the crisis incites more or less intervention. in fact, the escr committee has pointed out that in times of economic crisis, the treaty becomes more, not less important: “under such circumstances, endeavours to protect the most basic economic, social, and cultural rights become more, rather than less, urgent” (general comment no. 2, 1990, para. 9).45 thirdly, of 192 member states of the un, 160 are parties to the icescr and a further six have signed it.46 the state parties include states from all different geographical, legal, economic, cultural, and religious traditions at all levels of development, indicating shared recognition of the importance of economic, social, and cultural rights. emblematically, after decades of negotiation, the optional protocol (op-icescr, 2008) was unanimously adopted by the un general assembly in december 2008—just as world leaders were waking up to the depth of the current financial crisis. when opened for signature in september 2009, twentynine states immediately signed the protocol, indicating their support for the communications process. since then and at the time of writing, a further four states have signed and two states have ratified it.47 fourthly, and crucially for the aims of the present work, the icescr embodies paramount life-goals, consistent with mcmurtry’s understanding of value. the lifegrounded character of the icescr is manifest already in its preamble in which the rights and value 103 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   vital dimensions of felt being and action are acknowledged as the goal to strive for: “the ideal of free human beings enjoying freedom from fear or want” (emphasis added).48 each state is required to ensure the conditions that allow for moving in this direction, in other words “to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights” (icescr, 1966, article 2(1)). no “freedom, justice and peace” can be attained if states fail in this task. to secure this fulfilment is not charity (icescr, 1966, preamble); it is not an option; and it is not an expression of good will: it is a duty of states. so crucial are these rights, that even individuals are said to be morally bound by them: not as charity, not as an option, not as an expression of good will, but as a moral duty to their fellow citizens: “the state parties to the present covenant… realiz[e] that the individual, having duties to other individuals and to the community to which he belongs, is under a responsibility to strive for the promotion and observance of the rights recognized in the present covenant” (icescr, 1966, preamble).49 strengthening the life-centred tone of the covenant, article 1 affirms that “[i]n no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence.” article 7 speaks of “just and favourable conditions of work… a decent living for themselves and their families… safe and healthy working conditions… rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” article 8 requires “the right of everyone to form trade unions and join the trade union of his choice,” given their historical role in promoting equitable access to life-goods under democratic regimes (e.g. noonan, 2006). article 9 recognizes “the right of everyone to social security, including social insurance.” article 10 acknowledges “[t]he widest possible protection and assistance… to the family… mothers… all children and young persons… [who] should be protected from economic and social exploitation… [e.g.] employment in work harmful to their morals or health or dangerous to life or likely to hamper their normal development.” article 11 identifies “adequate food, clothing and housing” as well as freedom “from hunger” and “an equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need” as key-factors in adhering to the covenant. article 12 adds “physical and mental health… the reduction of the stillbirth-rate and of infant mortality… environmental and industrial hygiene… medical attention in the event of sickness.” articles 13 and 14 further acknowledge the thinking dimension of life by stressing “the right of everyone to education… primary education… [to be made, if not already so,] compulsory and free to all,” whilst “[s]econdary” and “[h]igher education” should “be made generally available and accessible to all.” similarly, article 15 highlights “the right of everyone… to take part in cultural life… enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications… the conservation, the development and the diffusion of science and culture.” labour standards, nutritional standards, health and safety regulations, living standards, education, healthcare provision, the promotion and diffusion of cultural activities and scientific knowledge: they all spring from the life-ground and, unsurprisingly, they are recognized as valuable by the international community. mcmurtry himself (2010) emphasizes the pivotal role that the rights enshrined in the icescr should play in rebuilding the life-fabric of “meltdown-ed” societies, “because of their centrality to contemporary human life and their bridging across the received disjunction between economic and ethico-political rights in an integrated 104 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   shape.” as a matter of fact, the onto-axiology of mcmurtry (2010) allows us to perceive that “the unifying principle of these rights is to protect and enable human life,” which encompasses action (e.g. means of subsistence), felt being (e.g. mental health) and thought (e.g. education). a counterfactual test may suffice to further substantiate this point: none of these rights can be sensibly described as intentionally, eminently or evidently prone to biocide or life-destructive agency, at least as long as mcmurtry’s work is adopted as a viable philosophical hermeneutic, that is, a creative, insightful, learned, and rigorous set of wideand deep-reaching categories of interpretation of reality. fulfilling one’s duties, the life-ground, and the icsecr the icescr appears to be a case of “civil commons.” on the one hand, the rights addressed by the icescr are a conceptualization of the “commons” upon which human communities stand and, possibly, flourish, e.g.: the shortand medium-term life-sustaining means that all members need (articles 1 and 11); the protection and generation of human life (article 12); its adequate care, socialization and education (articles 10, 13 and 14); the long-term life-sustaining and life-enriching occupational, vocational and recreational opportunities of the physically and mentally fit members (articles 6, 7, 8 and 15); the humane and humanity-enhancing assistance due to those who are not fit (articles 9 and 12). on the other hand, the vast institutional consensus underpinning the icescr as a binding legal document requiring its parties to report regularly on the implementation of the covenant manifests that these commons are “civil” in the sense that they allow for civilization to be and continue to be (articles 16 and 17). the icescr shows vividly how the international community already possesses long-standing resources for interpreting and resolving life-threatening circumstances, despite the fact that even a legally binding international human rights treaty is difficult to enforce. one means of evaluating firm obligations and adjudicating violations is to set a minimum level below which the citizens of all nations should never be allowed to fall, which is what the escr committee has defined as “minimum core” obligations (general comment no. 3, 1990, para. 10; langford & king, 2009; chapman & russell, 2002). in this respect, mcmurtry’s understanding of human needs can serve as an example of where exactly one should set the threshold of the minimum core, at least as actual living persons—as distinguished from legal persons—are concerned. progressive realization of the icescr ought to be pursued without drastic short-term sacrifices that undermine the most rudimentary means of life in the present. a failure to guarantee the minimum core, the fundamental organic capacity of each person in a state’s jurisdiction, constitutes a violation of the covenant unless the state can demonstrate “that every effort has been made to use all resources that are at its disposition in an effort to satisfy, as a matter of priority, those minimum obligations” (general comment no. 3, 1990, para. 10). the reduction of organic capacity can take many forms, be more or less expedite, and more or less rapidly fatal. death is its most easily detectable indication, and it is in fact mentioned in the icescr itself (e.g. article 12). still, it is possible to observe reduction of organic capacity long before that final stage, which is what the icescr rights and value 105 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   presumes by its references, inter alia, to “the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger” (article 11(1)), and “the prevention, treatment and control of epidemic, endemic and occupational diseases” (article 12(2)(c)). social scientists tracking rates of spousal abuses, nutritionists and social workers monitoring nutritional imbalances and poverty, public health experts reporting on pathological trends and their causes, whether aware of the covenant or not, are all engaged in a worldwide assessment of life-grounded phenomena that are pertinent to the aims of the icescr.50 as concerns the variety of ways in which reduction of organic capacity can happen, scientific standards are debatable and debated, as all human creations are, but are nevertheless employed daily by national public bodies and international authorities in determining, for example, the acceptable quality level of school meals (e.g. 1981 united states department of agriculture [usda] discussions on whether to assess ketchup as a vegetable), the new types of car engines that may be manufactured and sold (e.g. european-union[eu]-wide emission standards), plausible grounds for separation or divorce (e.g. german judges’ use of expert psychiatric opinions), literacy requirements for job applicants (e.g. british literacy and numeracy tests for aspiring civil servants), the regularity and fairness of democratic elections (e.g. regular monitoring of elections worldwide by the organisation for economic cooperation and development [oecd]). consistently, the escr committee requires states parties to submit detailed and disaggregated sociological data in its initial and periodic reports in order to review each state’s situation in light of its obligations (state report guidelines, 2009).51 in this connection, mcmurtry (2002) offers a “well-being index” (wbi) comprising “the complete and universal set of needs which all humans require to be met in order to flourish” (p. 156). this re-grounding of standard scientific and institutional criteria and praxes as civil commons includes: 1. breathable air, sense-open space, and daily light (atmospheric means of life) 2. clean water, nourishing foods and self-waste disposal (bodily means of life) 3. shelter space from the elements with ample provision to retire, sleep and function (home means of life) 4. environmental surroundings whose elements and contours contribute to the whole (environmental means of life) 5. intimate love, social inclusion, safety and healthcare when ill or infirm (caring means of life) 6. activities of language-logos/art-play to choose and learn from (educational/recreational means of life) 7. meaningful work or service to perform (vocational means of life) 8. self-governing choice in each’s enjoyment consistent with each’s provision (just form of life) debatable and perfectible—mcmurtry himself has produced different versions of it—the wbi highlights several needs without meeting which human life, both individual and collective, would eventually disintegrate by accumulated physical and mental deficiencies.52 the wbi has a willing accomplice in the escr committee’s 2001 statement on poverty, in which the committee attempts to integrate human 106 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   rights in poverty eradication strategies. the statement addresses poverty in the following terms: in the recent past, poverty was often defined as insufficient income to buy a minimum basket of goods and services. today, the term is usually understood more broadly as the lack of basic capabilities to live in dignity. this definition recognizes poverty's broader features, such as hunger, poor education, discrimination, vulnerability, and social exclusion. the committee notes that this understanding of poverty corresponds with numerous provisions of the covenant. in the light of the international bill of rights, poverty may be defined as a human condition characterized by sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights (escr committee, 2001 para.. 7-8). considering the wbi in light of the icescr and the work of the committee, we can compare as follows: 1. atmospheric means of life: the icescr incorporates “the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health” (article 12(1)) and imparts a duty on states to take steps towards the “improvement of all aspects of environmental and industrial hygiene” (article 12(2)(b)) and ensure a “[s]afe and healthy working environment” (article 7(b)). the escr committee recognizes “a healthy environment” as a fundamental component of the right to health (general comment no. 14, 2000, para. 4 and 15). 2. bodily means of life: “the states parties to the present covenant recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing, and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions” (icescr, 1966, article 11(1)). identified minimum core rights include the right not to be hungry and to have access to nutritionally and culturally adequate food and a safe water supply covering essential needs, with non-discriminatory, genuine and safe access to and equitable distribution of water facilities (general comment no. 12, 1999, para. 8; general comment no. 14, 2000, para. 43(b)(c); general comment no. 15, 2002, para. 37). the state parties “recogniz[e]… the essential importance of international cooperation based on free consent” (icescr, 1966, article 11(1)). with regard to the right to be free from hunger (as distinguished from the right to adequate food), state parties “recognizing the right of everyone to be free from hunger, shall take, individually and through international cooperation, the measures, including specific programmes, which are needed:” to improve food production, conservation and distribution and ensure an “equitable distribution” of food supplies (article 11(2)).53 rights and value 107 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   3. home means of life: this is incorporated in article 11 above and has a dedicated general comment (general comment no. 4, 1991). additionally, “[b]asic shelter, housing and sanitation” are recognized as minimum core components of the right to health (general comment no. 14, 2000, para. 43(c)). the right to social security crosses both bodily and home means of life, including, as the minimum core, that each have access to social security providing a “survival standard” (general comment no. 19, 2007, para. 59). 4. environmental means of life: the icescr has a limited approach to the environment, recognizing its value only where it contributes to the realization of “human” rights. this point will be addressed in greater depth below (part 7). 5. caring means of life: “the widest possible protection and assistance should be accorded to the family, which is the natural and fundamental group unit of society, particularly for its establishment and while it is responsible for the care and education of dependent children… special protection should be accorded to mothers during a reasonable period before and after childbirth” (icescr, 1966, article 10). the escr committee has highlighted the importance of family for persons with disabilities and older persons, groups whose members have historically found their rights to live in a supportive family environment constrained (general comment no. 5, 1994, para. 30-32; general comment no. 6, 1995, para. 31). the committee has a dedicated general comment on the right to health in which they identify the minimum core components of health-care, including non-discriminatory access to and equitable distribution of health-care services and essential drugs (general comment no. 14, 2000, para. 43(a) and (e)). 6. educational/recreational means of life: states parties “recognize the right of everyone to education” (icescr, 1966, article 13(1)). this right is not only the right of children to schooling but to all individuals of all ages to education at a suitable level. the minimum core incorporates basic primary education and equality of access to all for education at other levels (general comment no. 13, 1999, para. 57). primary education must be “compulsory and available free to all” (implicitly including adults who lack basic numeracy and literacy skills; icescr, 1966, article 13(2)(a)) and this is the only provision for which the means for progressive realization are spelt out in a distinct icescr article, which requires: each state party to the present covenant which, at the time of becoming a party, has not been able to secure in its metropolitan territory or other territories under its jurisdiction compulsory primary education, free of charge, undertakes, within two years, to work out and adopt a detailed plan of action for the progressive implementation, within a reasonable 108 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   number of years, to be fixed in the plan, of the principle of compulsory education free of charge for all (article 14). the minimum core of the right to “take part in cultural activities” (article 15) includes non-discriminatory access, free expression and choice as to whether to participate in cultural activities, and involvement of stakeholders in development of policies relating to cultural activities (general comment no. 21, 2009, para. 50). further, states recognize, within the context of the right to work, the right of everyone to “[r]est, leisure and reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay, as well as remuneration for public holidays” (icescr, 1966, article 7(d)). 7. vocational means of life: the icescr states that “the states parties to the present covenant recognize the right to work, which includes the right of everyone to the opportunity to gain his living by work which he freely chooses or accepts, and will take appropriate steps to safeguard this right” (article 6(1)) and they “recognize the right of everyone to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work” (article 7). within the minimum core of the right to work are the fundamental principles of equal access to employment and non-discrimination (general comment no. 18, 2005, para. 31). 8. just forms of life: the indivisibility of the icescr and the iccpr means that fundamental freedoms may not be sacrificed in order to fulfil basic needs or economic, social, and cultural right (icescr, 1966, preamble; general comment no. 3, 1990, para. 6 and 8). thus, for example, is individual self-determination recognized as a central element of the right to health and coercive medical treatment is prohibited (general comment no. 14, 2000, para. 34). in line with mcmurtry’s theory of value, rights are established by the icescr so that needs are met and life thus enabled to open towards wider ranges of:54 (a) action, e.g. stepping from sheer survival (the right not to be hungry as the minimum core) to adequate food, i.e. a nutritious, well-balanced diet (full realization of the right to food); (b) felt being, e.g. stepping from adequate food to adequate good food (food can possess an aesthetic dimension that encompasses several different levels of sentience); and (c) thought, e.g. stepping from adequate good food to adequate, good, culturally significant food (traditions and local culture can be expressed and apprehended via food choices and food-related rituals).55 the icescr was not promulgated in order to specify only a floor below which nations may not fall. rather, it was meant to provide its parties with defining principles and purposes concerning the sort of development desired by the international community. the “minimum core” obligations are merely a starting rights and value 109 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   point. the distance from which each country still stands from fulfilling the covenant over 30 years after its entry into force, and, indeed, the regressive outcomes in a number of states, suggest that new conceptions of the factors that systematically oppose the icescr are needed.56 the time may have come for mcmurtry’s axiology to enter into the human rights mainstream. the environment, the life-ground, and the icsecr mcmurtry’s wbi is his most conspicuous contribution to the alternative standards for the measurement of growth and wellbeing (e.g. human development index [hdi], genuine progress indicator [gpi], the statistics canada system of environmental and resource accounts) that have been championed in the recent past by a number of scholars and scientists, such as amartya sen (1992) and gene shackman (2006-9).57 some such alternative standards have already been used by the un and other institutions, including the world bank, in order to deal with the dimensions of human capital and natural capital and, more generally, to attempt to assess growth and decline in non-market-dependent ways.58 nevertheless, they are still far from being the leading parameters of evaluation actually employed by individual states and major international organizations vis-à-vis economic performance and inform most decisive aspects of policy-making (latouche, 2004, 2007). almost without exception, what has appeared to be paramount to states in the end is growth or potential for economic growth, narrowly defined by life-blind money-value parameters, whilst human rights considerations have been left largely undersupplied (mcmurtry, 2002, 2009-10). were growth measured in this sense to correspond with progressive realization of economic, social, and cultural rights, then the bare pursuit of growth would be a reasonable interpretation of the most “appropriate means” for a state to take to fulfil the covenant. yet, as highlighted by the current crisis, this does not seem to be the case (e.g. un, 2002-9 and ban, 2009).59 in particular, what has emerged from expert debates on the destabilization of climate and hydrological cycles is that the type of growth pursued under the banners of “globalization” and “international trade” has had systemic negative implications upon both human health and the environmental conditions of planetary survival. that is to say, “globalization” and “international trade” have had systemic negative implications upon the integrity of life support systems at all levels, thus affecting the possibility of satisfying vital needs through generational time (un, 2002-10; worldwatch institute, 2009). as we write, the deepest “living conditions” of humankind, present and future, are being impoverished to an unprecedented rate. the international scientific community at its highest and most representative levels has denounced vocally and repeatedly that human civilization has become for the first time in its history a threat to the planetary environment that allows for humanity’s own existence (union of concerned scientists, 1997). eminent scholars have further emphasized this point. a few weeks before his death, hans jonas (1993), father to modern bioethics, declared in a speech (translation by the authors): [e]very debate about race has become anachronistic, irrelevant, almost farcical vis-à-vis the gigantic challenge that our threatened environment 110 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   throws in the face of the entire humankind. caught in the grip of this challenge, whether it knows it or not, humankind becomes one kind, as it loots its earthly home, shares the fate of its own ruin, and remains the only possible saviour of both: the earth and itself... [t]he "human condition" has been transforming... in the old days religion told us that we were all sinners because of the original sin. today it is our planet's ecology that accuses all of us of being sinners because of the overexploitation of human ingenuity. back in the old days religion terrified us with the last judgment at the end of times. today our tortured planet predicts the coming of that day without any divine intervention. the final revelation... is the silent scream emerging from things themselves, those things that we must endeavour to resolve to rein in our powers over the world, or we shall die on this desolate earth which used to be the creation.60 these words may seem rhetorically blown out of proportion, but heed should be paid to the fact that there is actually no aspect whatsoever of the earth’s environment that has not been depleted in the processes of extraction, production, transportation, consumption, and disposal of the “goods” enhancing today’s mainstream conception of “growth”: the biosphere-protecting ozone layer, breathable-air producing and reproducing pluvial forests and oceanic life-systems, vegetaland animal-lifesupporting hydrologic cycles, self-regenerating water aquifers, nourishing-foodproducing arable spaces, and natural-equilibrium-maintaining and scienceand technology-inspiring biodiversity (un, 2002-10). denials of this dramatic situation are an exercise in intellectual dishonesty, as the causal link between the pursuit of profit in contemporary market economies and environmental degradation becomes visible every time environmental and health-and-safety regulation, or effective enforcement thereof, is resisted as “too costly,” “rigidifying” or “anti-competitive” (gaggi, 2008; international labour organisation, 2006), or is by-passed by illicit behaviour and/or by off-sourcing to countries that have actually little such regulation or none at all.61 mcmurtry’s serving as honorary theme editor for the philosophy section of unesco’s eolss highlights the fact that one of the recurring concerns of his oeuvre is the acknowledgment that a healthy biosphere is valuable as such. by contrast, the icescr does not address environmental concerns for their own sake. for that reason, the escr committee cannot make broad statements of law or policy on environmental issues but can only address the environment from a strict anthropocentric perspective. in other words, under the icescr, the environment has no intrinsic value, but is only valuable to the extent that it maintains or improves humans’ abilities to enjoy their economic, social, and cultural rights. as a result, the committee has no self-standing general comment on the environment or the need for the development required to fulfil economic, social, and cultural rights to be “sustainable.” nevertheless, the perpetual validity of the icescr implies that immediate moves to fulfil its provisions must not come at the cost of future fulfilment.62 thus, the committee recognizes both the relevance of the environment for current enjoyment of human rights as well as the need for sustainability in the means chosen to realize human rights.63 a “healthy environment” is an integral factor in realising the highest attainable standard of health and explicitly addresses states’ responsibilities to reduce rights and value 111 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   workplace toxins that threaten the health of either employees or the general population (general comment no. 14, 2000, para. 4, 11 and 15). the right to water requires control of pollutants and additional protection in times of crises, such as conflict or natural disasters (general comment no. 15, 2002, para. 7 and 22). the committee adopts “respect for the environment” as one of the aims of education, with reference to the world declaration on education for all, and considers it “implicit in, and reflect[ing] a contemporary interpretation of article 13(1)” (general comment no. 13, 1999, para. 5). sustainability was addressed by the escr committee in 1991 in the general comment on the right to adequate housing which requires “sustainable access to natural and common resources, safe drinking water, energy for cooking, heating and light, sanitation and washing facilities, means of food storage, refuse disposal, site drainage and emergency services” (general comment no. 4, 1991, para. 8(b)). the concept came into its own in the context of the right to food when the committee asserted that adequacy and sustainability are two sides of the same coin: “the notion of sustainability is intrinsically linked to the notion of adequate food or food security, implying food being accessible for both present and future generations” (general comment no. 12, 1999, para. 7). the sustainability of food resources is considered to be so fundamental as to constitute an element of the minimum core of the right to adequate food (general comment no. 12, 1999, para. 8). on the same basis, sustainability is a crucial component of the right to water (general comment no. 15, 2002, para. 11). these comments are particularly relevant for contemporary capitalist countries, the number of which has grown tremendously since the disappearance of europe’s communist bloc. from a life-grounded standpoint, for example, a global free market that still causes scores of diseases due to pollutants, junk food, and addictive substances, (boffetta, 2006; world health organization [who], 2009) while corporate pharmaceutical profits boom, (angell, 2004) is not a desirable development model for it implies that such a market has been interested inherently in perpetuating or worsening such pathological circumstances rather than preventing them (clorfene-casten, 1996). on a global scale, as hans jonas’ remarks anticipated, “growth” in the orthodox economic sense may have even been pursued successfully for the past two decades (shackman, 2007), the ongoing international crisis notwithstanding. yet, at the same, this narrowly conceived growth has been reducing the likelihood of planetary survival via depletion of the earth’s life support systems and the ability of states and the individuals within them to realize their economic, social, and cultural rights (un, 2002-10).64 concluding remarks lawrence summers’ “impeccable” logic stands today under-reformed, if not unreformed, within the legal frameworks and the concrete policies of nearly all countries suffering from the ongoing economic crisis.65 on the contrary, states have rescued and revived profit-driven banks that were responsible for the crisis with public money, which is not being used to fund life-protecting and life-enhancing institutions. quite the opposite, public expenditures are being reduced most thoroughly in several countries so as to counter the risk of inflation, which is 112 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011   demonstrated thereby to be a much more pressing concern to many governments, economists and business elites than environmental degradation and the fulfilment of the rights enshrined in the icescr.66 such money-centeredness and life-blindness do not come as a surprise, for the lifedestructive expressions of today’s leading economic system have been not aberrations, but recurrent, ordinary aspects of the same.67 they are the result of a faulty understanding of value, which does not consider the long-term satisfaction of vital needs as paramount, and focuses instead upon for-profit “short-termism” (baruchello & lintner, 2009, p. 40). laconically, mcmurtry (1999) connotes this faulty understanding of value as follows: “the system is by its inner logic a horizonlessly expanding money-demand machine engineering all that lives to extract more money value from it, to reduce the costs of continuing its existence, or to extinguish it as of no money worth” (p. 242).68 in this system, value has been shown daily and repeatedly not to correspond to the life-grounded parameters enshrined in the icescr, but rather reduced to the money price that one can get for whatever alleged “good” may be traded in a money-based market of buyers and sellers, such that each of them seeks only, or is expected to seek only qua rational agent, the most for herself (castoriadis, 1997a). if the rights sanctioned in the icescr are ever to enjoy a brighter future, then many governments, economists and business elites will have to prove themselves capable of undergoing a major value shift, which is what mcmurtry’s axiology has been offering for some time. notes   1 for the sake of avoiding repetition, “theory of value” and “axiology” are used as synonyms. in contrast, mcmurtry’s “life-grounded onto-axiology” is going to be explained and discussed in detail. although still alive and active, john mcmurtry has already produced a significant amount of literature in axiology, which can therefore be considered established as a coherent set of conceptions. 2 the number of researchers making use of this original notion has been growing steadily for at least a decade (e.g. ato, 2006; dickinson, becerra, & lewis, 2009; finlay, 2000; florby, shackleton, & suhonen, 2009; hodgson, 2001; johnston, 2003; johnston, gismondi, & goodman, 2006; jordan, 2004b; kaara, 2005; mook and sumner, 2008; noonan, 2006; scarfe, 2006; shurville & brown, 2009; shurville, brown, and whitaker, 2009; streeck, 2009; turner & brownhill, 2004; westhues, 1999). 3 as of 2003 john mcmurtry has been the honorary theme editor for the philosophical section of eolss, i.e. the world’s largest repository of information on sustainable development and related issues or, as defined by the un, on “life support systems” i.e. “[a]ny natural or humanengineered (constructed or made) system that furthers the life of the biosphere in a sustainable fashion. the fundamental attribute of life support systems is that together they provide all of the sustainable needs required for continuance of life. these needs go far beyond biological requirements. thus life support systems encompass natural environmental systems as well as ancillary social systems required to foster societal harmony, safety, nutrition, medical care, economic standards, and the development of new technology. the one common thread in all of these systems is that they operate in partnership with the conservation of global natural resources” (un, 2002-10, “definitions,” para. 2). 4 there were 48 positive votes and 8 abstentions. rights and value 113 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011     5 cf. icescr, 1966, article 2(1) and iccpr, 1966, article 2; article 23 applies a “progressive realization” standard vis-á-vis equality in marriage since states did not consider themselves able to immediately guarantee this right. this is not to suggest that even in 2011 states are successful in fulfilling the iccpr in its entirety. 6 in july 2010, op-icescr had attracted 31 signatures and 2 ratifications. on coming into force, it will have a competence comparable to that of the human rights committee to consider communications from aggrieved individuals or groups. noteworthy are also the general comments by the escr committee, 1989-2009, and the concluding observations on state reports, included in the committee’s annual reports to the economic and social council (ecosoc). 7 curiously, south africa is not a party to the icescr, having signed in 1994 but never ratified, yet its constitution reflects much of its content, even using the committee’s framework of duties to respect, protect and fulfil human rights (constitution of the republic of south africa, 1996, s7(2); see also liebenberg, 2009). other countries that incorporated economic, social, and cultural rights in recent constitutions include: brazil, bulgaria, burkino faso, congo, colombia, estonia, hungary, macedonia, poland, and turkey (cf. langford, 2009, footnote 39 and this collection in general for reviews of over 2000 cases). 8 for a review of the debate, see nolan, porter, and langford (2007). the debate has moved on from whether economic, social and economic rights are justiciable to how they can best be adjudicated (p. 29). 9 harvard professor ralph barton perry (1954) argued: “a thing—anything—has value or is valuable in the original and generic sense, when it is the object of interest—any interest” (pp. 23). nicholas rescher (1969), “champion” of the anglo-american analytic tradition, rarefied further the notion of value and reduced it to the status of linguistic rationalization of individual yens: “a value represents a slogan capable of providing for the rationalization of action by encapsulating a positive attitude toward a purportedly beneficial state of affairs” (p. 9). even more abstract was zdzislaw nadjer's (1975) option, whereby: “m is an axiological value if and only if m is a judgement, ascribing the quality of valuableness to objects, properties or states of affairs, and constituting within the given value-system a final justification of other judgements of the system” (pp. 63-4). 10 michel foucault (2008) claims that the prolonged experience of top-down determination of social values by the state, from “bismark’s state socialism” to “national socialism” (p. 101), was a crucial factor in the development of german neo-liberalism, most notably hayek’s work its emphasis upon individual independence in value options by way of the principle of free choice in the free market. 11 mcmurtry (2009-10) characterizes his own theory of value as “onto-axiology,” thus stressing the connection between value—as indicated by “axiology”—and being as such—as indicated by the prefix “onto-.” the life-ground is therefore both (a) the vital platform of life support systems upon which all values stand as real-world beings, and (b) the prime value that all beings reveal, whether explicitly (e.g. mcmurtry’s own theory, the un’s eolss) or implicitly (e.g. by eating, seeking medical assistance, or preferring life to death). 12 a considerable amount of philosophical and socio-political literature has centred in recent years upon “life,” yet in connection with the foucauldian notions of “biopower” and “biopolitics” (e.g. agamben, 1998, 2005; esposito, 2004, 2005). however, no attempt has been made to clearly define “life” and articulate it beyond the juxtaposition of “zoe” (biological life) and “bios” (political and/or fully human life), nor has any objective criterion of value been proposed in this context (nacci, 2009). 13 limited attention has been paid by western philosophers to the life-ground, which has been regularly presupposed or left under-analyzed (allen & baruchello, 2007; baruchello, 2007b). as a consequence, this essay is going to refer extensively to john mcmurtry and mcmurtry scholars. 14 to deny the life-ground’s import constitutes a token of performative contradiction (baruchello, 2009). besides, even philosophical pessimism (baruchello, 2005) and otherworldly religions have testified to it (baruchello, 2007b). 15 logically, it is possible to distinguish between life as possessing intrinsic value and the lifeground as being instrumentally valuable. ontologically, this is impossible: “all that is of worth consists in and enables life value to the extent of its experienced fields of thought, felt being and action (intrinsic value), and what underlies and enables these fields of life themselves, life support systems” (mcmurtry 2009-10, para. 6.1.4). 16 after maslow’s (1943) pioneering work in the field, rollo may (1969) was alone, in the late 1960s, in challenging pareto’s notion of ophelimity and suggesting that value is what satisfies a 114 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011     need, rather than a preference. later, apart from mcmurtry, few others have tackled “need” in depth, e.g. jennifer sumner (2005, 2008) and jeff noonan (2006)—who are mcmurtry scholars like giorgio baruchello—len doyal and ian gough (1991), david wiggins (2002), and julio boltvinik (2007). 17 “need” is hardly discussed and articulated in recent literature, to the point of being undistinguishable from the cognate notion of “preference” (or “desire,” “want”), e.g. one of italy’s most used reference websites for students in economics and the social sciences recites: “needs are a feeling of dissatisfaction due to the want of something. human needs are unlimited, subjective, resurgent and variable” (“i bisogni,” 2007). yet, as argued by jeff noonan (2006) “needs” and “preferences” (or “desires,” “wants”) can be distinguished sharply from each other. first of all, “deprivation of needs always leads to harm whereas deprivation of wants is only harmful in light of revisable self-interpretation” (p. xiv). secondly, “needs are satiable whereas wants are not” (p. 57). 18 to avoid misunderstandings, it should be emphasized that: (a) organisms can be harmed psychologically, not just physically; and (b) organisms are not always reducible to individual creatures. it is long-standing practice in the sciences to regard societies (e.g. spencer, 1860; steiner, 1985; hodgson, 1993) and ecosystems (e.g. bunyard, 1996; lovelock, 1979) as being organisms comprising others within themselves. 19 there may be simpler and more complex comparisons of value or evaluations of life-gains and losses. nevertheless, if mcmurtry’s axiology is correct, then the preferred option in hard cases should be still the result of comparisons of life-value, e.g. a court’s painful decision to separate a child from her cruel parent to foster the former’s “best interest,” or john of salisbury’s and john milton’s classic justifications of tyrannicide. 20 no ontological dualism is implied: “although we can distinguish the cognitive and feeling capacities of any person, this does not mean dividing them into separate worlds as has occurred in the traditional divisions between mind and body, reason and the emotions. life-value ontoaxiology begins from their unity as the nature of the human organism” (mcmurtry, 2009-10, para. 6.3). 21 mcmurtry’s onto-axiology allows for the determination of good and evil, cutting across received dualisms (e.g. utilitarianism vs. deontology, free choice vs. paternalism, free trade vs. protectionism, individualism vs. collectivism, etc.). life-enablement and disablement signal respectively positive progress and negative regress. 22 noonan (2006) argues that the history of democracy should be understood as the struggle of downtrodden sectors of society to attain guaranteed access to vital resources and pursue increased life-capability. 23 in our use of “institution” as semiotic artefact we follow castoriadis (1997b): “the social imaginary is not the creation of images in society, it is not the fact that one paints the walls of towns. a fundamental creation of the social imaginary, the gods or rules of behavior are neither visible nor even audible, but signifiable” (p. 183). 24 buried in historical contexts, the life-supporting character of the civil commons has been expressed in a variety of forms. the same applies to their management, e.g. religious precepts, laws, medical prognoses. 25 the “civil commons” embrace both social and natural commons, for the latter become social too as soon as they are conceived of as commons and regulated accordingly. 26 george soros (1998) and joseph stiglitz (2003) dub “market fundamentalists” those economists who, since the 1970s, have been proclaiming one interpretation of capitalism—known as “neoliberal” or “neoclassical”—to be absolutely good. still, the dogmatic, if not outright political character of economics runs further back in the history of the discipline, as the michigan institute of technology’s economics visiting committee tried to have paul samuelson’s 1948 classic textbook called off because of its inclusion of “left-wing” keynesian economics (poterba as cited in krugman, 2010b). 27 it follows that, were the privatized civil commons to fail a life-grounded test of success, alternatives ought to be sought promptly, e.g. nationalization of “too-big-to-fail” private companies, as discussed in galbraith (1977). 28 unless explicitly and effectively prohibited by public authorities in their capacity as civil commons, the for-profit commerce of human beings or parts of their bodies is far from being a thing of the past, not only as a daily engagement for criminal organizations, but also as an acceptable notion amongst academics. morrison and wilhelm, jr. (2007) argue the outlawing of rights and value 115 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011     indentured servitude to be an example of how the state has historically “undermined an agent’s property rights over his own person” (p. 43). on his part, savulescu (2003) argues that “[p]overty which is acceptable to a society should not be a circumstance which prevents a person” from selling her organs; to prevent it by law exemplifies “paternalism in its worst form” (p. 193). were ever the trade of human organs to be explained on life-grounded premises, still the fundamental question is begged here as to why the poverty that leads a person into selling no less than parts of her body should be accepted at all. 29 in 2009 the world bank criticized the chinese government for not stimulating adequate domestic consumption (rampini, 2009)—of whatever consumer goods, e.g. life-enabling rice and lifedestructive cigarettes. 30 ingerid straume (2008) argues that the conceptual blindness to children of liberal and neo-liberal economics extends to traditional liberal political thought, which takes as its starting point the adult. 31 this idea is often referred to as “consumer sovereignty,” whereby some people, i.e. moneyed people, are willing to purchase certain priced goods rather than others, thereby steering their production and their price. in this manner, money-demand determines that one thing is more important than another (galbraith, 2007). 32 most examples of for-profit life-depletion discussed in this essay focus on the biological dimension of life, but the psychological dimension is commonly affected too, for entire sectors of today’s economy thrive on promoting, preserving and managing human unhappiness (galeano, 2000; orbach, 2009). 33 our use of references to mainstream media sources is meant to show how mcmurtry’s axiology allows for the comprehensive understanding of everyday phenomena that are treated typically as distinct. 34 jordan (2004a) argues that free-market emphasis on individual choice has not only reduced the funds available to public services, but has also damaged their role as the collective context for convivial, co-operative social relations and the socially beneficial sense of widespread solidarity and civic community. 35 aside from outright crime (public accountant, 2008; “usa,” 2008), the border between legal and illegal profiteering is porous, insofar as illegal revenues are recycled in, and to the benefit of, legal ones. 36 hobsbawm (1995, 2000), elliott and atkinson (2008) argue that the advent of neo-liberalism in the 1970s meant the end of a thirty-year-long period of state-overseen, real-economy-centred, wealth-redistributing development, which was itself a keynesian “compromise” aimed at preventing any illiberal, soviet-like revolution from taking place in the west. in this view, neoliberalism has been staunchly counter-reformist. 37 exceptions have not been absent altogether, such as china and, more recently, malaysia, whose governments refused to follow wholeheartedly this agenda, despite pressure from the imf and the world bank (basu, 2008; mcmurtry, 1999). still, meltdowns have been frequent worldwide, bearing high social and environmental costs. 38 many critical voices of the 1980s-2000s, including mcmurtry’s, were ridiculed and marginalized by growingly dogmatic economists and streamlined scholars, thus preparing the ground for today’s crisis. sneeringly, foreign affairs contributor jagdish bhagwati (2002) wrote: “the disappearance of alternative models of development provoked anguished reactions from the old anticapitalists of the postwar era… from socialists to revolutionaries… captive to a nostalgia for their vanished dreams… in fields other than economics. english, comparative literature, and sociology are all fertile breeding grounds for such dissent” (pp. 2-3). 39 in the aftermath of the recent “credit crunch” crisis, the number of persons going hungry worldwide grew sharply as a consequence of the subsequent real-economy crisis that reduced commercial and employment opportunities for vast sectors of the population of many countries (fao, 2008; vidal, 2008). this latter and more life-destructive crisis is still unfolding, also in the affluent nations where the former crisis was initiated, as noted by respected commentators (e.g. krugman, 2010a; posner, 2010). this crisis adds also further havoc to the impacts of previous structural adjustment programmes and policies, which have been widely researched and critiqued in connection with the actual enjoyment of economic, social, and cultural rights (narula, 2006). countries with imf-led structural adjustment programmes have been found to have worse food security, both relative to other similarly situated countries and to themselves prior to the imf’s intervention (e.g. argentina; cf. langford & king, 2009). having much stronger enforceability mechanisms than human rights treaties, the effect of some international financial restructuring 116 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011     agreements has been to divert state’s attention from its obligations to its population and towards its agreements with international financial institutions (narula, 2006). besides, the loan conditions imposed by the imf often make it less rather than more likely that the loan will ever be repaid (narula, 2006). indeed, the charters of such organizations as the imf and the world bank do not explicitly authorize them to take account of human rights matters when formulating and implementing restructuring programmes. nor, being states, can they become parties to the icescr or any other human rights treaty, even if they so desired. on the other hand, to the extent to which certain human rights norms constitute customary international law and even ius cogens—such as the prohibition of slavery and apartheid—the permissible actions of these organizations may be prescribed (belgium v spain, 1970, para. 34; un, 1945, article 55). still, few, if any, provisions of the icescr can be considered to have reached the status of customary international law, therefore it may be more conducive to consider instead the responsibility of the member states of multi-state institutions, the vast majority of whom are parties to the icescr. 40 democracy itself has been believed to follow from free trade: “just as democracy helps make the world safe for commerce, commerce helps make the world safe for democracy. it’s a two-way street” (clinton, 1996, p. 36). consistently, independent non-capitalist countries were targeted in secret since the 1980s for “quiet revolutions” aimed at bringing them free trade and western-style democracy (e.g. chossudovsky, 1996). 41 we do not claim that public provision of services and public ownership may not be as environmentally damaging as their private counterparts, as amply demonstrated by the disastrous environmental record of former soviet union (deutsch, feschbach, & friendly jr., 1968; ziegler, 1990). systemic arrangements may be necessary, albeit per se insufficient to secure lifeprotection and promotion: individual behaviour must also be consistent with systemic aims for these to be attained, partially or entirely. 42 mcmurtry (1999) writes: “[f]inancial crises always follow from money-value delinked from real value, which has many names but no understanding of the principle at its deepest levels” (p. 243). 43 starvation levels are still rising (“u.n.: one billion worldwide face starvation,” 2009); unemployment soars around the developed world (“a decade of high unemployment is looming,” 2009; barkham, 2010; seager & elliott, 2009; weisbrot, 2010; tremlet, 2010; vinnumálastofnun, 2010); wages are cut (traynor, 2009; mcdonnell, 2009); and out-of-work social security rights— paid for by contributions during the boom years—are under attack (elliott, 2010a); pensions are reduced (traynor, 2009) ; mental pathologies are expected to take a heavier toll in coming years (smith, 2008); nutritional standards have been dwindling and the physical and psychological development of an entire generation of children (i.e. about 250 million) is bound to suffer from it (de pee et al., 2010); education becomes less affordable to larger sectors of the population in affluent countries (“crescere un bambino?,” 2010); healthcare provision is threatened by budgetary concerns arising from public bailouts of bankrupt private banks (triggle, 2009), despite the imf’s unusual advice not to cut public expenditures and keep current taxation levels (iezzi, 2008; elliott, 2010b); and so are the promotion and diffusion of cultural activities and scientific knowledge even in countries that are said to have been affected only limitedly by the crisis (“actors condemn harper’s culture cuts,” 2008). 44 cf. general comment no. 3, 1990, para. 8 quoted above, at p. 11 and accompanying text. 45 the 2008 “credit crunch” was due to “toxic assets” created and traded for profit by the world’s largest financial institutions, which were rescued from the brink of bankruptcy by massive state intervention (stiglitz, 2010) and henceforth allowed to: (a) lend money for profit to taxpayers whose tax-money had saved them; (b) deny money to public bodies to the point of nearbankruptcy (e.g. the us state of california); (c) pay bonuses to executives responsible for the “crunch” due to “toxic assets”; and (d) speculate against and/or force states to cut public spending via control of treasury bonds and other securities. whilst (a) and (c) contradict the capitalist ethos, (b) and (d) have obvious negative implications for publicly funded civil commons. 46 states which have signed a treaty undertake not to undermine its object and purpose, pending ratification (vclt, 1980, article 18). 47 the protocol will come into force when 10 states have ratified it, thus giving individuals and groups within those jurisdictions the right to bring communications indicating violations of their rights to the escr committee (op-icescr, 2008, article 18). 48 the icescr here refers explicitly to two of the “four freedoms” articulated by f.d. roosevelt (1941), which formed the foundation of the udhr (whelan and donnelly, 2007). the preamble of a treaty is not legally binding on state parties per se, but forms part of its context and indicates rights and value 117 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011     its object and purpose. therefore, when interpreting the substantive articles, reference to the preamble can be made (vclt, 1980, article 13). 49 non-state actors, as well as states, are prohibited from relying on any of the rights within the icescr to deny others the same (icescr, 1966, article 5(1)). 50 at the implicit heart of biology and medicine there are grounds from which one may deduce universal criteria of planetary and human life-needs, hence guidelines for public welfare too. however, today’s “life sciences” epitomise the life-blindness of much scholarship and scientific research, for this term includes life-destructive praxes such as the corporate stipulation of new disorders and the development of biological weapons. 51 the data requests have been criticized for being too detailed and burdensome, in particular for developing states (chapman and russell, 2002). 52 jordan (2004b) criticizes mcmurtry for producing different indexes and explains this fact by suggesting that whereas most biological needs are invariant, emotional and thought-related ones are not so. rubino (2010) claims jordan: (a) to be confusing invariant emotional and thoughtrelated needs with the varying degrees of awareness of them and the many means by which to satisfy them; as well as (b) to be missing the scientifically appropriate openness of mcmurtry’s wbi to empirical correction and theoretical amelioration. 53 “shall” is used to indicate a binding state obligation and the use of “everyone” indicates that the obligations of state parties are to all world inhabitants, not only those in the home state, nor even only those inhabitants living within other state parties. also, the escr committee goes further, relying on articles 55 and 56 as well as the icescr to state that: “international cooperation for development and thus for the realization of economic, social, and cultural rights is an obligation of all states” (general comment no. 3, para.14). in other words, the committee does not only claim that states should take the covenant into account when engaging in development cooperation but that development cooperation itself is an obligation, not a discretion for members of the un. 54 noonan (2006) observes that needs balance one another, as, say, the need for liquid fluids is eventually countered by the need to urinate, or the need to be educated, if unrestrained by the needs to properly rest and socialize, will eventually turn into unhealthy ivory-tower bookwormlike existence. needs, unlike wants, are satiable. however, life-enablement can progress farther than the perfect satisfaction of needs, for it is possible to think of an impeccably sustainable worldwide community of healthy, happy, educated human beings, who test the limits and improve upon athletic ability, explore at ease the pinnacles of aesthetic bliss, and dwell passionately yet wisely the utter depths of learning. perhaps, this was the ideal horizon towards which the drafters of the icescr dreamt for humanity to be able to advance, after experiencing the great depression and its most abhorrent child, the second world war. 55 general comments no. 4, 1991, para. 8(g), 12, 1999, para. 8 and 14, 2000, para. 12(c) focus upon the importance of the cultural appropriateness of housing, food and healthcare respectively. 56 in blatant opposition to the life-aims of the icescr, primary education is not available for free to millions of african children (transparency international, 2010) and labour unionization in some developed countries has been reduced to a tiny fragment of the total workforce (friedman, 2008). 57 an ongoing effort in this direction can be found in giovannini, hall, morrone, and ranuzzi (2009), who are developing an alternative framework to measure the progress of societies for the oecd. 58 to these all, mcmurtry (2009-10) adds a theoretical foundation, which perhaps philosophy alone can produce. still, it is significant that attempts have been made to evaluate performance in ways that differ from those of standard money-bound criteria (e.g. “full employment” in keynesian economics). 59 although the icescr and the escr committee are ecumenical regarding the type of economic system employed by a state to realize, progressively, the treaty, the committee expresses doubts that rights can be fulfilled entirely for all in a wholly unregulated market and recommends that in the case of privatization, the state ensure some back-up protection for vulnerable groups (e.g. general comment no. 3, 1990, para. 8, general comment no. 5, 1994, para. 11-12, general comment no. 14, 2000, para. 35, general comment no. 18, 2005, para. 25). 60 jonas’ work, especially jonas (1984), adds the awareness of life-destruction to the understanding of modern science-technology, whose study qua binomial was initiated by his famous mentor, martin heidegger (1982). 61 as this article is being completed, news agencies report of the $1.2m fine imposed on londonbased trafigura for illegally exporting toxic waste to ivory coast, thus causing illness to about 118 giorgio baruchello & rachael lorna johnstone   social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011     30,000 local inhabitants. possibly, trafigura had attempted to adhere to the waste-dumping logic sanctioned by lawrence summers. 62 neither the icescr nor the iccpr contain provisions for denunciation (withdrawal) by states parties, in contrast to the vast majority of treaties in other fields of international law. 63 general comment no 19, 2007, para. 11, recognizing the need for social security schemes to be sustainable “to ensure that the right can be realized for present and future generations.” 64 revealing of the degree of planetary exhaustion is the recent proposal by maldivan president mohamed nashed to create a fund whereby to purchase a new homeland for his nation’s inhabitants, as their archipelago is foreseen to disappear under water in the near future (“le maldive,” 2008). 65 the mind-lock of leading economists and policy-makers is exemplified ostensibly by the notion that some countries were affected less severely by the “credit crunch” of 2008 because of “backward” banking systems that were more tightly regulated and/or less prone to speculation (draghi, 2008). 66 whereas money was created by central banks across the globe to salvage the international financial system from itself, any such money-creation has been resisted for the past thirty years as inflationary and irresponsible, especially if prompted for environmental and/or social aims (halimi, 2008; “threat of inflation,” 2009). 67 money-demand does not determine the ranking of different options amongst private agents alone. typically, in capitalist countries, money-demand has been driving the behaviour of public institutions as well. the need for food and shelter of millions of third-world sub-saharans carries little money-demand, whereas the first-world’s middle-classes’ desire to travel across the globe carries much more. as a result, first-world states subsidize private enterprises designing new aircraft engines more generously than they fund aid programmes for african countries (european commission, 2007; “panel urges g-8,” 2008). 68 the absence of any life-grounded goal for this self-replication of money-sequences is one of the crucial reasons why mcmurtry (1999) claims capitalism to have reached its “cancer stage” (cf. the title of the book). in its systemic patterns of agency, this self-replication of money-sequences mimics the life-disconnected self-replication of cancerous cells within a living host. a second reason is that this self-replication of money-sequences, exactly like the sprawling of cancerous cells, leads eventually to loss of organic capacity, given that planetary life support systems and societies’ civil commons have been stripped visibly and regularly in order to allow further selfreplication of money-sequences. a third reason is that societies’ civil commons such as publicly elected governments, business schools, and regional development agencies have failed to perceive and respond to the ongoing assault, or actively contributed to it (chomsky, 2003), analogously to the immune defences of a living organism that do not recognize the ongoing pathology for what it is. references a decade of high unemployment is looming (2009, december 27). msnbc business. retrieved from 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(1990). environmental policy in the ussr. amherst: university of massachusetts press. wiebe final galley mar 14 16 correspondence address: sarah marie wiebe, department of political science, institute for studies and innovation in community university engagement, university of victoria, victoria, bc, v8w 2y2; email: swiebe@uvic.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 decolonizing engagement? creating a sense of community through collaborative filmmaking sarah marie wiebe university of victoria, canada abstract the visual medium has the potential to be a creative avenue for enhancing awareness, critical thought and social justice. through the prism of collaborative filmmaking, academic-activists can enrich textual analyses while creating what jacques rancière calls a “sense of community” among participants. this article reflects on the process of co-producing an indigenous youth-driven documentary film, indian givers, which is publicly available on youtube. it discusses the applied practice of engaging in a collaborative process with the aim of countering western models of knowledge. the film and this article each draw into focus the experiences and stories of indigenous youth who live in a highly polluted place commonly referred to as canada’s “chemical valley.” informed by chantal mouffe’s notion of agonism, i contend that collaborative filmmaking contributes to anti-oppressive and community engaged scholarship by facilitating intercultural dialogue, offering a reflexive and relational approach to research, co-creating knowledge and contributing to social action. this paper reflects on some of the challenges of collaborative filmmaking in order to contribute to academic-activist research. as an anti-oppressive research tool, collaborative filmmaking provides a forum for resistance to dominant colonial discourses while creating space for radical difference in pursuit of decolonization. keywords indigenous peoples; community engaged scholarship; collaborative filmmaking; intercultural dialogue; environmental justice politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, around who has the ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time. (rancière, 2004, p. 8) collaborative filmmaking is an artistic practice with the potential to help transform knowledge production and enhance dialogue. this type of artsbased intervention is often geared toward what peter nyers refers to as “radical equality” (2010, p. 131), where individuals speak and contribute to decolonizing engagement? studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 245 political life in unexpected ways. indeed, as jacques rancière (2004, p.8) highlights, art can disrupt “the sensible,” acting as an aesthetic intervention into the “general distribution of ways of doing and making” in order to create space for situated modes of being and forms of visibility. in this article i argue that collaborative filmmaking can be used to create such a disruption, thereby providing an opportunity for community engaged scholarship. this form of scholarship draws upon principles of participatory action research (par), which include community relevance, equitable participation, action and change, and research design (cahill, 2007; ochocka & janzen, 2014; pain, 2004; wiebe & taylor, 2014). community engaged scholarship can thus be viewed as an anti-oppressive, anti-hierarchical research approach that shifts power relations away from an authoritative expert. reflecting on my experience co-producing indian givers, 1 a documentary film created with indigenous youth from the aamjiwnaang first nation community in southwestern ontario to address issues related to racism and ongoing environmental injustice, i contend that collaborative filmmaking can create a “sense of community” among its participants (rancière, 2009, p. 26). by involving indigenous youth as equal participants in the co-creation process, the film revealed knowledge about their everyday lives and experiences. in the discussion that follows, i examine some of the opportunities and challenges we encountered during the filmmaking process and conclude by suggesting that this creative methodology can be a useful and productive approach for academic-activists wanting to conduct collaborative research initiatives, particularly in the colonial present. creating a forum for intercultural dialogue i want to give an understanding of first nations issues today, and talk about why everything is the way it is. to show that we aren’t, you know, this extinct species of people. we’re not just in museums and textbooks. we are actually living people today. (jake rogers, indian givers, 6:18) indian givers is a 60-minute documentary film that is publicly available on youtube. the film takes viewers on a journey through the eyes of young indigenous people living on the aamjiwnaang first nation’s traditional territory. it offers a glimpse into their ongoing struggles as they seek to 1 to access indian givers, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pot411gjzdm. timestamps from the film are provided throughout the text (e.g., 6:18). ‘indian’ is a term that appears in canadian law, policy, and discourse and is charged with contested meaning. its use in the film is in response to language from canada’s colonial indian act, which came into effect under section 91(24) of the 1867 constitution act, and gave the federal government the exclusive authority to legislate in relation to “indians and land reserved for indians.” despite the explicit language in the indian act referring to canada’s indian peoples, in this article i use the term indigenous peoples, as the concept of the ‘indian’ in canada is an ill-informed colonial creation, which indian givers addresses. sarah marie wiebe studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 246 maintain a connection to their indigenous identities in a now polluted landscape. the traditional lands of the aamjiwnaang first nation are occupied today by canada’s chemical valley, a heavy industrial complex located in southwestern ontario, and home to approximately 62 petrochemical and polymer facilities on both sides of the canada-u.s. border. this situation affects the local atmosphere, water, and soil, as well as residents’ health and wellness. it compromises both their physical and cultural survival, thus connecting issues of environmental and reproductive justice (ecojustice, 2007; hoover et al., 2012; wiebe & konsmo, 2014; wiebe, forthcoming). the film follows the narratives of three indigenous youth as they fight for physical and cultural survival, and confront mainstream canadian society while living in an environmentally stressed setting. throughout the documentary, these three youth interview community members who discuss the realities of coping with everyday environmental assaults on their homes, bodies, and territories. accessing and bringing to light this experiential knowledge through an artistic medium can rupture oppression and open up space for alternative stories, experiences, and truths to emerge. through this visual medium, young indigenous people were able to challenge social exclusion and stereotypes by making their existence visible and knowable. the film gave voice to something they felt had been silenced. in doing so, indian givers emerged as a serious attempt to engage with indigenous peoples, identities, and cultures – to highlight the meaning of indigeneity, or being indigenous today – in order to interrupt stereotypes and open up a forum for intercultural dialogue. my definition of interculturalism is informed by chantal mouffe’s (2005) notion of agonistic pluralism and inspired by québec’s consultation commission on accommodation practices related to cultural diversity (bouchard & taylor, 2008). from my view, intercultural dialogue moves beyond multicultural policies by cultivating conditions that allow for creative tensions in the spirit of respect for differences. in other words, interculturalism is a philosophical approach to difference that does not seek to eliminate differences while seeking a common identity. in practice, it entails an iterative dialogical process that creates space for exchange, negotiation, and dis/agreement rather than confrontation and division. informed by this approach, and based on the principles of community engaged scholarship, our collaborative film initiative in aamjiwnaang aimed to both visualize and contextualize participants and their lived experiences. similar to rancière’s claims about community theatre, collaborative filmmaking is a vehicle that has the potential to create a “sense of community” among participants who are involved in the process (2009, p. 16); it brings individual bodies together as a collective for which non-hierarchical relationship-building is crucial. building relationships is central to actionoriented, intersectional, and indigenous research, which explore and emphasize complexities, while acknowledging entanglements between decolonizing engagement? studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 247 researcher and researched, facilitator and participant (banister, leadbeater & marshall, 2011; clover, 2011, 2014; kindon, 2003; kovach, 2009; mullin, 2003; thomas & britton, 2012, p. 212; tuhiwai smith, 1999). from this perspective, relationships matter more than results (miller & smith, 2012, p. 332). ethical relationship-building that is respectful of indigenous ways of knowing can challenge mainstream western forms of extractive knowledge production, which clearly delineate between ‘the researcher’ and ‘researched.’ from a collaborative approach, scholars must respect the agency of communities, which entails looking alongside the subject, issue, or context under examination, rather than “looking at” passive research participants (kindon, 2003, p. 143). collaborative film thus brings all involved members into the process and makes them co-producers. a relational, reflexive and anti-oppressive approach situating myself and questioning my inherited social and geopolitical context illuminates the vantage point i bring to this study. awareness of social location – of the researcher’s place – in relation to the research context is a crucial aspect of action-oriented, community engaged, intersectional scholarship (hankivsky, 2012; wiebe & taylor, 2014). originally from the west coast of canada, and raised just outside of vancouver, b.c., on tsleilwaututh territory, i have always been passionate about social justice issues and the environment. as someone with mixed western/european settler ancestry, my training as a graduate student at the university of victoria and the university of ottawa instilled in me a way of thinking critically about settlement, ongoing conditions of colonization, and the significance of place to indigenous ways of life. understanding the lasting impact of colonization is critical to any conversation or research methodology oriented toward decolonization. my doctoral studies took me from canada’s west coast to the nation’s capital, ottawa. prior to commencing my dissertation research, i viewed a canadian broadcast corporation film, the disappearing male (de guerre, 2008), which featured citizens of aamjiwnaang and their ongoing reproductive health concerns. the film drew attention to the community’s recent discovery of a declining rate of male births, considered to be a result of noxious endocrine-disrupting chemicals released into the surrounding atmosphere (mackenzie, keith & lockridge, 2005). during my studies at the university of ottawa, i began a research assistant position through york university’s faculty of environmental studies in toronto, which sought to support the aamjiwnaang first nation health and environment committee in its efforts to raise environmental awareness within the community, and to support youth efforts to defend their culture and land through creative modes of expression. during this experience, i worked alongside the faculty’s research team on a photovoice project that provided aamjiwnaang youth sarah marie wiebe studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 248 with a lens through which they could shed light on their surroundings (flicker, savan, kolenda & mildenberger, 2008; scott & smith, 2012). in january 2011, following several conversations, ceremonial invitations, and established protocols, i relocated from ottawa to the city of sarnia, situated at the southernmost point of lake huron, canada, on aamjiwnaang land and next to canada’s ‘chemical valley.’ in the final stages of my doctoral field research in 2011, at the request of then high school student jacob rogers (jake), i began to work with youth leaders from the young people’s council within aamjiwnaang, as well as with an environmental youth group called the aamjiwnaang green teens, on what came to be indian givers. although my role as an informal advisor, consultant, and member of the research team was to examine how the community mobilized to seek recognition and redress for their ongoing health concerns, including a skewed birth ratio, as an academic-activist volunteer i supported youth activism within the community. once my pre-determined phase of fieldwork and data collection came to a close in 2011, plans to leave sarnia shifted when jake approached me with a request to work together to disrupt misconceptions about indigenous peoples in his local high school. we reached out to his peer leaders and together began to meet weekly, brainstorming a vision for how best to combat stereotypes and educate western youth about indigenous values and beliefs. so began our collective disruption. together, we discussed various issues that concerned these peer leaders, ranging from balancing their indigenous identity with ‘modern’ society to protecting their increasingly polluted environment. throughout the process, members of our newly formed kiijig collective – a name referring to “young people of the land” – began to find confidence in their voice (see lindsay gray, 15:00). in addition to giving visibility to the often invisible issue of racism, youth involved in the project were able to interview public figures in sarnia, ask probing questions and document responses through the visual medium (see film scene with sarnia mayor mike bradley, 26:45). we chose filmmaking as the vehicle to advance intercultural dialogue for radical action and social change, because it offered a way for young people to raise their concerns with authority figures and address misinformation about indigenous peoples, while collectively working toward decolonization. co-creating knowledge: a prismatic process the key thing here is raising awareness. (travis stonefish, nmaachihna indigenous enviro-education centre, moraviantown, indian givers, 39:45) collaborative filmmaking unsettles, challenges, and ultimately seeks to change universal perspectives. it does so by refusing to gaze at an ‘other’s’ lived reality with curiosity, detachment, professionalism, and neutrality; decolonizing engagement? studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 249 instead, it aims to interrupt a monolithic gaze with the views of the participants themselves (sontag, 1997, p. 55). in doing so, it moves beyond a voyeuristic, distanced, touristic, objective mode of looking at research subjects and instead looks alongside participants of a community. by bringing indigenous and non-indigenous youth together to work collectively, our kiijig collective attempted to create space for us to see and interpret injustice together. as a result, change occurred for both the youth who gained confidence in expressing their voices on screen and in terms of my own personal transformation as i learned about relational indigenous values and beliefs. this informed our internal governance structure throughout the filmmaking process, and prompted us to move away from a hierarchical, linear research model of engagement. as we came together, our group created a sense of community and a community of resistance. 2 we sought to challenge dominant discourses “through group agency” (shaw, 2012, p. 227). evidenced by scenes in the film that show indigenous youth in their everyday environments, this medium offers a glimpse into some of the ongoing challenges confronting the youth in their struggle for cultural survival. by working together, we hoped to raise awareness about the ongoing realities of canadian colonization, including the persistent legacy of residential schools and the “60s scoop” (sucharov, 2015; truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2015). as discussed in the film at 17:45, 24:00 and 25:20, both of these state-sanctioned policies entailed the mass removal of indigenous children from their families by the canadian child protection system. throughout our collaborative project, we continually revisited the kiijig collective’s governance structure, roles, and responsibilities, as well as the overall message of the film. such an iterative, rhizomatic, and non-linear communicative process signifies how film can function as a kind of prism for radical aesthetics and knowledge production (deleuze & guattari, 1987; lynes, 2013, p. 10). at the same time, we never entirely erased a hierarchical governance model. early in our group’s formation, we discussed and assigned respective roles and responsibilities. i was nominated the role of ‘executive producer’ given my position as a researcher familiar with how to leverage funding from various sources. during our discussions, we reviewed various duties associated with film production. participating youth felt that given my presence in the community as a doctoral student and researcher, i would provide leadership as a liaison between indigenous and non-indigenous supporters. this role was crucial to securing funding from a range of sources 2 angela davis used the term “community of resistance” in her remarks during the wall street occupation in washington square park, october 30, 2011 (see http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=hlvfpizooii; accessed december 17, 2013). similar to questions posed by davis (e.g., so how can we be together? how can we be together in a unity that respects and celebrates the differences among us?), the kiijig collective asked questions about how to work across differences to build a cultural understanding that is not simplistic or oppressive, but multifaceted, prismatic and complex. sarah marie wiebe studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 250 (including the band’s education department, lambton-kent school district, and the city of sarnia), maintaining accountability to our funders (both indigenous and non-indigenous), and facilitating dialogue among all participating members of the kiijig collective. within a few months, we secured funds to finance pre-production, production, and post-production of the film. most of our budget went to hiring local non-indigenous filmmakers for each of these phases, as well as to costs associated with production, including gas, food, and accommodation for the crew to attend conferences and events as deemed necessary for the production process. as the only member of our production team with a vehicle, i often assumed the role of ‘line producer’ and ensured that group members had transportation to various shooting sites. we interviewed members of the aamjiwnaaang first nation, elders, policy-makers and activists and wove together their stories with the broader narrative about the youth’s struggle to reclaim their indigenous identities, lands, and traditions. production took place during an eight-month period in 2011-2012, followed by a series of iterative shooting/reviewing/editing meetings to discuss the overall scope and message of the film. as noted above, our collective intended to make marginalized experience visible and knowable. in so doing, the film facilitated awareness about the community’s “fleshy” and “situated knowledge” (campbell, 2007, p. 379; gabrielson & parady, 2010; haraway, 1988, 1991; mouffe, 2005; yanow, 2003). similar to other creative visual methodologies, filmmaking strives to create an atmosphere of engagement that is both emotional and transformative. the playful, collaborative filmmaking process can thus be an “affective vehicle” (tremblay & jayme, 2015), which is experienced through the body (bloustein, 2012, p. 121). during our interactions throughout the indian givers production process, for example, the ability to reflect back on oneself with a sense of humour, enabled by a relaxed and engaging atmosphere, provided space for ample learning moments. the resulting rapport allowed participating group members to enter some complex and difficult conversations about lived challenges pertaining to racism. as a relational, reciprocal, and affective tool, this approach made learning about difficult topics more inviting to young people who were brought into the process as co-learners and co-producers. in so doing, this process challenged existing societal power imbalances, while making knowledge accessible to communities beyond the academy. as a group production, collaborations evoked deep connections among participants of the collective, thus disrupting conventional patterns of scholarly enterprise, which often operate under the guise of value-free, objective, and emotionless research. throughout the filmmaking process, both indigenous and settler group members (including the hired filmmakers) confronted and reflected on their own positions, beliefs, and perspectives. at the same time, perfect reconciliation of diverse worldviews was not the objective of our project. chantal mouffe’s notion of agonistic pluralism decolonizing engagement? studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 251 resonates; it questions unanimity and homogeneity while awarding a positive status to difference, highlighting how perfect reconciliation is an impossibility (2005, pp. 5, 9, 19, 98). for mouffe, although deliberation may not always achieve consensus, deliberative tensions can be harnessed in productive ways to cultivate awareness. the closing scenes of indian givers draw into focus the importance of agonistic pluralism in two ways. first, the action of indigenous youth reclaiming their high school hallways while dressed in clothing traditional to their culture articulates their desire to make themselves visible and known, although their (predominantly) non-indigenous peers demonstrated awe, dismay, or indifference. while no consensus was achieved between indigenous and non-indigenous peers, the film provides a forum for selfexpression without imposing one particular worldview on the viewer. second, as aamjiwnaang elder mike plain articulates in the film’s final frame, the mere existence of indigenous peoples is an everyday act of survival and resistance. although the film may not immediately lead to reconciliation between indigenous and western worldviews, it is a relational research tool that creates space for intercultural dialogue beyond the lifespan of the film, when used in a classroom setting to facilitate discussion. in this respect, academics teaching about topics pertaining to race and environmental justice can continue to be “together, apart” with community members while addressing common concerns in different contexts (rancière, 2009, pp. 52, 57). as i discuss in greater detail below, by serving as a critical tool for social reflection and action, the film provided valuable lessons about intercultural encounters for both indigenous and settler collaborators. learning from community, reaching beyond the academy film, video art, photography, installation and all forms of art can rework the frame of our perceptions and the dynamism of our affects. as such, they can open up new passages towards new forms of political subjectivation. (rancière, 2009, p. 82) cultivating awareness about how all canadians are implicated in ongoing processes of colonization is a first step toward addressing injustice. doing so is not, however, a licence for researchers to speak for indigenous peoples or to attempt single-handedly to solve apparent injustices without community consultation and input. although “we must understand these relationships to understand ourselves and politics” (shaw, 2008, p. 6), scholars attempting to decolonize engagement must be mindful of the danger in appropriating voice and assuming a leading role in organizing for justice (tuhiwai smith, 1999). as donna haraway (1991, p. 193) states, a researcher committed to social justice is obliged to respectfully join together with communities of difference “without claiming to be one another.” indeed, respect for difference does not sarah marie wiebe studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 252 entail erasing distinguishing features of one’s identity; rather, a commitment to decolonization involves a willingness to open up the possibility for intercultural “engagement across difference” (lynes, 2013, p. 20; tuhiwai smith, 1999). within our collective, this translated into facilitating dialogue and cocreating knowledge without fundamentally reconciling differences. however, while we learned from one another, we struggled to find a consensus on issues pertaining to funding, governance, ownership, and film distribution. we realized that developing a shared funding model that builds in a component for skills development amongst participants is crucial. to produce, shoot and edit the film, the kiijig collective hired ian alexander and sadie mallon, two independent sarnia-based filmmakers from western/european backgrounds. although we applied for additional funding for capacity building and training for the indigenous participants, we did not receive it. as a result, the filmmakers provided training on a volunteer basis by including the youth in all stages of the process. this is a limitation of the project. in order to be more thoroughly collaborative, participatory, and communitydriven, initiatives like this must develop skills and training among all participants and build them into the funding model from the outset. we also struggled to find the most culturally appropriate governance model for our group and did not always reach a consensus about ownership of the footage gathered; moreover, some members were uncomfortable with entering the film into a festival circuit. the film certainly has the potential to contribute to meaningful discussion about indigenous-settler relations, environmental justice, and reconciliation, but our collective continues to debate the best process for translating the content into concrete policy outcomes. we agreed that it would be inappropriate to profit from the film, and decided to make the entire feature publicly accessible on youtube, where it is available for use as a teaching tool for public education. as a courtesy, any member of the kiijig collective who screens the film lets the other members know. we determined that we all share responsibilities as equal spokespersons for the film. from the outset, the collective agreed that the film would be a collaboratively produced product and not ‘owned’ by any member, and therefore came to an agreement that decision-making must be conducted collectively among the group by consensus. this was a challenge in the final stages, because not all participating youth could attend each post-production meeting. the final film was reviewed by all members and then screened at their high school in june, 2012. additional screenings were subsequently held at several environmental justice conferences in ontario, although not all youth had the support or funding to travel to these events. it is now clear to us that collaborative film initiatives must build in funding for dissemination. at all stages of filmmaking, we sought advice and mentorship from the education and environment departments in aamjiwnaang, as well as from an elder. broadly speaking, the film proved to be well-received within the decolonizing engagement? studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 253 community, although a few of the youth involved in the project reported some strained relations in the immediate aftermath among their peers at school and with authority figures in the community. we addressed this issue in several sharing circles with our elder advisor. this serves as a reminder that one cannot approach such processes with naiveté about the uncertainties, tensions, and frictions that inevitably emerge during creative collaborations. power relations are always present in any democratic process, no matter how rational, reasonable, or consensus-based. indeed, collaborative initiatives, like democratic deliberation, are “far from smooth” processes (mouffe, 2005, p. 3). nevertheless, power relations cannot simply be erased, and controversies and conflicts can be conduits for social change. concluding reflections on the art of engagement grounded in relationships and informed by community engaged scholarship, collaborative filmmaking has much to offer the practice of academic-activist research that is oriented toward decolonization. as indian givers reveals, collaborative, community engaged processes can focus on diverse knowledges and experiences in order to shed light on the lived realities of those living with and ‘sensing’ the adverse effects of environmentally unjust public policies (wiebe, forthcoming). by involving young people as conduits for translation, storytelling, and representation in their own words, terms, images, and emotions, film served as a compelling medium to “democratize experience” (sontag, 1997, p. 3). for example, in the concluding scene of indian givers, the youth reclaimed their high school hallways wearing clothing traditional to their culture. these images served to “shock” viewers and offer them something different to see (sontag, 1997, p. 19). by affecting the viewers and opening them up to seeing something anew, this emotional charge may prompt new thinking and novel insights. working toward social change in a contemporary context of ongoing colonization is no simple feat. decolonization is a large challenge, requiring significant systematic and structural change. co-creating knowledge about the lived effects of colonization is a starting point, and collaborative filmmaking is one small step toward the broader aim of decolonization. scholars committed to addressing and interrupting injustices will need to think carefully about ‘so what?’ and ‘what’s next?’ after provoking these artistic interventions. with respect to our collaboration in aamjiwnaang, indian givers is, as noted, a publicly available film, which is now used in high school and university classrooms as a teaching tool. going forward, to influence social change and support meaningful policy development, scholars and public officials must invest time and effort into relationship-building between community members, educators, and policy officials. connecting experiential knowledge to policy-making processes requires both imagination sarah marie wiebe studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 254 and translation as academic-activists consider how best to inject this knowledge into systemic legal and policy processes. as an academic-activist committed to the practice of community engaged scholarship, i continue to employ visual tools in ongoing research projects that work closely with indigenous communities who seek to co-create knowledge by identifying problems, research approaches, and viable solutions together. for example, to fish as formerly is a short film i coproduced with members of the tsawout first nation on vancouver island (british columbia), 3 which the community screened as part of their aboriginal oral evidence before a national energy board hearing in victoria on november 28th, 2014 (neb hearing order oh-001-2014: 11565). through these types of creative, collaborative interventions between indigenous and settler communities, arts-based research can complement existing academic-activist scholarship by creating space for difference and dialogue. although these processes can create safe spaces and culturally appropriate contexts for knowledge sharing, as researchers entering and departing this terrain we must be mindful of our responsibilities to and relationships with the people and places encountered in our research. mouffe’s notion of agonistic pluralism accentuates how the task of democratic politics – and by extension democratic academic-activist research projects – must not “eliminate passions from the sphere of the public” (2005, p. 103). to be clear, the research process is not free from friction, but friction can also be productive for dialogue. rather than erasing difference, dialogical initiatives informed by mouffe’s notion of radical democracy bring conflicts to the fore, “to make them visible so that they can enter the terrain of contestation” (2005, p. 34). collaborative filmmaking as an anti-oppressive research tool is both radical and relational: it brings into focus opportunities for community building through site-specific struggles on an iterative, ongoing basis. at the same time, this prismatic process does not seek to erase difference but sheds light on dissenting voices, while making space for and facilitating the expression of diverse perspectives. acknowledgments this research benefitted from a social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc)-funded joseph-armand bombardier canada graduate scholarship, an ontario graduate scholarship (ogs), and a population health improvement research network award. i wish to express very special thanks to all members of the aamjiwnaang green teens, young people’s council within aamjiwnaang, and kiijig collective, for their continued openness and contributions to the production of indian givers. 3 access to fish as formerly at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtqk1ir9ibc decolonizing engagement? studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 255 funding from the lambton-kent school district, the city of sarnia, and the aamjiwnaang first nation education and environment departments made this film possible. this article benefitted from feedback during the community filmmaking & cultural diversity conference at the british film institute in january 2014. i am also grateful to have benefitted from numerous conversations with affiliates of the institute for studies and innovation in community university engagement at the university of victoria who helped me craft these ideas. comments and feedback from my dear friend, boreal collective photojournalist and constant creative source of inspiration laurence butet-roch, significantly enhanced this paper. finally, i would like to say thank you to the external reviewers and special issue editors for creating a productive space to flesh out academic-activist scholarship. this opportunity helped to sharply hone my contributions to the field, both in the community and in the academy. references banister, e., leadbeater, b., & marshall, a. 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(2008). indigeneity and political theory: sovereignty and the limits of the political. london: routledge. sontag, s. (1997). on photography. new york: picador. sucharov, m. (2015, june 25). the ‘sixties scoop’ still ripples through canadian families. the globe and mail. retrieved from: http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=4 thomas, v., & britton, k. (2012). the art of participatory video: relational aesthetics in artistic collaborations. in e-j. milne, c. mitchell & n. de lange (eds.), the handbook of participatory video (pp. 208-222). lanham: altamira press. tremblay, c., &. jayme, b. (2015). community knowledge co-creation through participatory video. action research, 13(3), 298-314. truth and reconciliation commission of canada (2015). trc final report. retrieved from: http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=890 tuhiwai smith, l. (1999). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. london: zed books. wiebe, s., & konsmo, e. (2014). indigenous body as contaminated site? examining reproductive justice in aamjiwnaang. in f. scala, s. paterson & m. sokolon (eds.), fertile ground: exploring reproduction in canada (pp. 325-358). montreal & kingston: mcgill-queen’s university. wiebe, s., & taylor, m. (2014). pursuing excellence in collaborative community-campus research: 2014 cccr national summit backgrounder. (background paper prepared for the 2014 cccr national summit, november 3-4, 2014.) community-based research canada. retrieved from: http://www.communitybasedresearch.ca/resources/677%20national%20summit/participant %20backgrounder%20oct%2029.compressed.pdf decolonizing engagement? studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 2, 244-257, 2015 257 wiebe, s. (forthcoming). everyday exposure: indigenous mobilization and environmental justice in canada’s chemical valley. vancouver: ubc press. yanow, d. (2003). assessing local knowledge. in h.m.a. wagenar (ed.), deliberative policy analysis: understanding governance in the network society (pp. 228-246). cambridge: cambridge university press. stasiulis et al final mar 25 20 correspondence address: daiva stasiulis, department of sociology & anthropology, carleton university, ottawa, on, k1s 5b6; email: daiva.stasiulis@carleton.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 14, issue 1, 1-12, 2020 migration, intersectionality and social justice – guest editors’ introduction daiva stasiulis carleton university, canada zaheera jinnah university of victoria, canada blair rutherford carleton university, canada this special issue contributes to a growing paradigm shift among migration scholars seeking to unpack the complexity of power relations, inequities and forms of social oppression among migrants, and intrinsic to border and migration policies, through the deployment of intersectionality as an analytic tool (abu-laban, 1998; anthias, 2012; bastia, piper & carron, 2011; carastathis, kouri-towe, mahrouse, & whitley, 2018, grosfoguel, oso & christou, 2015; truong, gasper, handmaker & bergh, 2014). both migration and intersectionality are inextricably linked to social justice. both involve processes of categorization that are deeply embedded in social science and policy, providing an important means by which we construct and apprehend the social world. both also serve political purposes and agendas, and are associated with hierarchical systems of “worthiness” and access to bounded systems of rights (crawley & skleparis, 2018, p. 51). international migration involves authorized and unauthorized human crossings across borders of nation-states whose sovereignty is daily enacted through legally and (in accordance with international law) “legitimately” discriminating between those who are deemed to be desirable entrants and those defined as undesirable. in the latter category are migrants who defy border restrictions, rendering them prey to a host of risks and predations. this special issue explores the multiple pathways across state borders and the multiple jeopardies and experiences within the borders of “transit” and “destination” countries among migrants who embody the characteristics of those whom the late african-american poet and activist june jordan (2005) describes as “the wrong people of the wrong skin on the wrong continent” daiva stasiulis, zaheera jinnah & blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 2 and who also may be the “wrong sex” and the “wrong gender identity,” or the wrong religion, nationality or ethnicity. most of the papers gathered in this thematic issue were originally presented at a conference on intersectionality and migration held in ottawa at carleton university in the fall of 2016. this conference was conceptualized by the three guest editors as part of a broader research and teaching partnership between carleton’s migration and diaspora studies and the institute of african studies, and the african centre for migration and society at wits university, south africa, to raise questions and explore opportunities on migration studies. it brought together scholars based in south africa and canada whose research on migration encompassed these two destination countries as well as south korea, and where migrants originated from countries in southern and eastern africa, south and east asia, and central and south america. it soon became apparent that the focus of most papers was trained on the most precarious of migrants produced by the intersection of their non-citizenship statuses with their location in low-wage work and “obfuscated employment relations” (anderson, 2010, p. 300) or in statedesignated categories that left them highly vulnerable to hyper-exploitation and oppression. commonly, destination and transit states either reinforce such precarity or ignore its effects in producing highly insecure and inhumane conditions and high probabilities of violence. other transecting relations of power deepen and define migrants’ exposure to structural insecurities vis à vis state authorities, employers, various mobility agents including traffickers, and hostile, xenophobic and fearful local populations. the topics in this special issue range broadly – and include work in segmented labour markets and struggles for livelihood; the links between family, security and nation-building; border, migration, health and employment policies; inter-migrant relations, law and legal reform; crimmigration and deportation. collectively, the articles in this issue suggest that despite the many characteristics of migrants deemed “undesirable” through their location in racialized, gendered, class and other power relations, states both tolerate and selectively recruit certain groups of such “wrong” migrants who are perceived to serve significant purposes for states, employers and families of better-resourced residents. these include providing household care of children and elders, a captive cheap and disposable labour force, or (as in south korea) biological reproduction of a nation grappling with declining fertility rates. the categories in which states place such migrants draw upon, compound, and deepen subjugating processes of racialization and class oppression, that are also gendered, sexualized, and may be intertwined with other stigmatizing dynamics. rarely, a promise for more permanent status in destination countries is extended to low-wage or poor migrants, whose combined and intersecting characteristics may be regarded as producing a cultural or civilizational deficit or drain on state resources. yet to the extent that such pathways to regularization or permanence exist, they are almost always contingent on the migration, intersectionality & social justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 3 fulfillment of several exacting conditions. these egregious conditions vary from country to country and also by the state-defined categories (temporary seasonal worker, migrant caregiver, marriage migrant, refugee, etc.) where migrants are placed. as elaborated below, migration categories entitle select migrants to some level of “protection, rights and resources whilst simultaneously disentitling others” (crawley & skleparis, 2018, p. 59). among the many injustices experienced by migrants compelled to prove their worthiness for long-term legal residence or citizenship status is forced separation from family members and considerable loss of autonomy and ability to safeguard their person, health and livelihoods against a broad range of possible hazards. in other cases, such “wrong” migrants are placed in a purgatory of permanent impermanence. in all cases, through its migration management apparatus and several other agencies, the state plays an active role in perpetuating and ignoring the multiple sources of insecurity that migrants face. states may actively seek to indefinitely sequester in deplorable conditions and deport migrants deemed unfit for settlement, integration or humanitarian assistance, or they may simply overlook their very existence, rendering invisible the gross violation of human rights that their treatment within these states represents. as u.s. supreme court justice william brennan wrote in a 1987 case, “[b]anished from everyday sight, they exist in a shadow world that only dimly enters our awareness” (quoted in hernandez 2019, p. 15).1 formidable barriers exist to bringing meaningful social justice to undocumented, unauthorized, and even selected migrants with temporary status, who bear considerable risks but who nonetheless persist in crossing borders as a survival strategy, often fleeing unbearable perils as much as motivated at forging a better life in a relatively wealthier or more stable country. neoliberalism, succinctly defined as market-based governance practices such as “the privatization, commodification and proliferation of difference,” accompanied by “authoritarian, national-security driven penal state practices” provides a global landscape that since the 1980s, has compelled and managed global migration (mohanty, 2013, p. 970). thus, as mohanty elaborates, neoliberal states facilitate travel across borders and cosmopolitanism for some economically privileged communities, but such enhanced mobility occurs at the expense of a more halting or stalled mobility, a “holding in place” through conditionality, criminalization and incarceration of impoverished migrants with irregular or temporary statuses (hernandez, 2019; mohanty, 2013). 1 justice brennan was here referring to prisoners in general, but his sentiment applies as well to vulnerable migrants, whose presence is hidden from view, forgotten or ignored. daiva stasiulis, zaheera jinnah & blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 4 de-fetishizing migrant categories migrants may be forcibly displaced by deteriorating political, economic, military or climatic conditions or domestic or sexualized violence. often when crises compound, protracted conflict in a country devastates its economic infrastructure, producing severe shortages and loss of homes and livelihoods. in such circumstances, movements across national borders may become the only survival strategy available. the un’s 2019 global trends report estimates that worldwide close to 71 million people were forcibly displaced from their homes by wars, violence, and deepening human rights, political and economic crises – about twice as many as 20 years previously – with roughly 26 million counted as refugees by the unhcr (edwards, 2019). these conditions have contributed to the ballooning in overall numbers of international migrants globally, reaching an estimated 272 million in 2019, comprising 3.5% of the global population, compared to 2.8% in 2000 (edwards, 2019). most international migration occurs within rather than across regions, particularly in sub-saharan africa, the middle east, eastern and south-eastern asia, latin america and the caribbean, and central and southern asia. many migrants cross borders to contiguous states where conditions are scarcely better and a far cry from offering a safe haven, rights or secure livelihood (united nations department of economic & social affairs, 2019).2 migrants may also be actively recruited through temporary labour schemes, in sectors and jobs often rejected for their grim conditions by more settled workers, whom by virtue of being citizens, especially in wealthier countries, have relatively greater autonomy, work choices, and familial, community and state protection and support. international labour migration is rising with the international labour organization estimating that in 2017, there were about 164 million migrant workers worldwide – an increase of about nine percent since 2013, with about 42% female (international labour organization, 2018). as impressive as these official figures may be, they vastly undercount the numbers of migrants from countries in the global south who work in other countries, insofar as they are incapable of capturing the large numbers of “irregular” migrants (some of whom enter through having been smuggled or trafficked) who may wish to escape notice of state authorities for fear of punitive consequences, or whose employers may wish to hide their crimes from authorities. many migrants who enter through irregular migration frequently engage in a variety of risky micro exchange transactions for survival, often with other migrants who live similarly perilous lives within the grey economy (see rutherford, this issue). regardless of whether the perceived risks of remaining in home countries or the lure of better 2 by contrast, international migrants in north america, oceania, northern africa and western asia, in the vast majority, were born outside their region of residence (united nations department of economic & social affairs, 2019). migration, intersectionality & social justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 5 livelihoods in destination countries are stronger, the rise in increasingly restrictive immigration regimes and hostile environments towards distinctly racialized or otherwise “othered” migrants in migrant-receiving countries accentuates the extreme vulnerability of unauthorized border-crossers, lowwage migrants, and non-waged migrants. migration scholars, policy makers and international organizations have long distinguished between “forced” and “voluntary migration” (similar to the un and ilo categories discussed above regarding forced/refugees and labour migrants). yet the distinctions between these categories drawn in migration management policies, laws and conventions are not always clearcut and the uses of such categories are deeply politicized. thus, while the un refugee convention offers a legal definition of a refugee, “its interpretation and application takes place at the national level reflecting national interests and priorities which change over time” as is apparent in shifting “safe country lists” which result in the production of “deportable failed asylum seekers” (crawley & skleparis, 2018, p. 51). crawley and skleparis (2018) persuasively argue that binaries such as forced vs. voluntary migration fail to capture the nuanced complexities of mobile lives across space and time, reworked and re-categorized in new locations. as schrover and moloney (2013, p. 8) observe, many migrants who entered as “guest workers” during the 1970s to north-west europe were fleeing politically repressive regimes, such as those of salazar in portugal, franco in spain, the colonels in greece, and king hassan ii in morocco. migrants categorized as guest workers were escaping both poverty and repression, and when the guest-worker schemes came to an end in the mid1970s, applications for refugee status and family reunification swelled in number. as these authors suggest, “[c]ategories of migrants are like communicating vessels: migrants change categories, and the bureaucrats who decide on entry or residence might allocate them to different categories” (2013, p. 8). states that appear to offer shelter from constant human insecurity might also attempt to close off legal entry to all but the most select immigrants, thus creating novel irregular movements of “illegal” migrants. a significant problem flagged by crawley and skleparis (2018, p. 55) with the “dichotomous, location-based categorization which dominates much scholarly and policy-thinking is that it presupposes that people move between two fixed places.” the addition of a third location – such as “transit state” – is an effort to conceptually include the in-between origin and destination states, but “replicates the linear understanding of migration processes and experiences” (crawley & skleparis, 2018, pp. 57-59). as these authors suggest, many migrants considered at one time the country to which they initially moved to be a destination country where they intended to settle. yet circumstances such as failure to secure a good livelihood, political factors, severe discrimination (e.g., based upon or targeting some combination of race, sexuality, or religion) or lack of access to citizenship or rights may daiva stasiulis, zaheera jinnah & blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 6 result in onward migration and the seeking out of another country in which to settle and live. in their journey involving loss of homes, livelihoods, and members of families, displaced peoples might in one location be a refugee, in another a migrant, and in yet another may adopt or be designated some other status: “[p]eople can and do shift between and across categories both in their countries of origin and as they travel through space and time” (crawley & skleparis, 2018, p. 59). as brenda yeoh suggests in her characterization of migrations in and out of asia, they are less likely to “take the form of permanent ruptures, uprooting and settlement [and] more likely to be transient and complex, ridden with disruptions, detours, multi-destinations, and are founded on interconnections and multiple chains of migration” (yeoh, 2017, p. 144). yet, in each space, mobile persons may have their rights and their interactions with others fenced in and severely restricted by a particular migrant or non-national category that defines their relation to the state within which they are (often) temporarily residing. while expressing recognition of the risks of opening up categories such as “refugee” which provide protection under international law, crawley and skleparis suggest that scholars approach migration policy categories from a more critical perspective and question how it is that those placed in one category are somehow more deserving than others (2018, p. 60). specifically, they advocate challenging “categorical fetishism,” which treats categories such as “‘refugee’ and ‘migrant’ as if they simply exist, out there, as empty vessels into which people can be placed in some neutral ordering process” (crawley & skleparis, 2018, p. 49). as discussed below, introducing an intersectionality lens may go some distance in comprehending why some mobile humans are placed in more or less deserving categories than others, exposing them to multiple forms of injustice. the articles in this special issue are informed by such a critical perspective, asking how it is that household migrant workers, seasonal agricultural workers, petty traders, migrants exploited by other migrants, unauthorized border-crossers, migrant sex workers, racialized migrant women and men, migrant women victimized by domestic violence – in other words, “the wrong people of the wrong skin on the wrong continent” (jordan, 2005) – are categorized, rendered problematic or invisible in law and policy, and treated as abject, less deserving, deportable and even disposable. transnational and national networks of migrant activists, human rights ingos (international non-governmental organizations) and trade unions have also been involved in a project of de-fetishizing migrant categories. indeed a central goal of no-border movements is abolishing the entire system of categorization in relation to national borders. they have sought a range of legal and extra-legal protections against violence, hyper-exploitation, imprisonment, deportation and even deaths among the most vulnerable among border crossers and migrants. as zaheera jinnah (this issue) outlines in her article on female migrant domestic workers (from zimbabwe, malawi migration, intersectionality & social justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 7 and lesotho) in south africa, post-apartheid gains have been made as part of sweeping reforms in employment standards in the 1990s that recognized, for instance, that care workers were “employees” rather than servants, and that non-citizen workers as “residents” deserved rights on par with citizen workers. in a sobering assessment of familiar patterns experienced by migrant domestic workers worldwide, jinnah concludes that actual pay, working and living conditions have scarcely improved. in canada, employment standards in some provinces boast equal coverage for temporary and citizen agricultural workers and offer some level of protection to migrant caregivers. yet, as daiva stasiulis (this issue) argues in her paper on “migrant disposability,” lax administration of these provisions and the puny fines imposed on employers for often-gross breaches of standards suggest that such protections for migrant workers exist primarily on paper. underlining the willful neglect of human rights violations against migrants is the unwillingness of “host” countries (including all western migrantreceiving states) to sign the 1990 united nations international convention on the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families (icmw), rendering the icmw “one of the most neglected treaties in international human rights law” (pécoud, 2017, p. 57). as pécoud dryly observes, “the rights of migrants are difficult to reconcile with market logics in destination countries” and the under-ratification of the treaty reflects lack of support for migrant rights at both national and international levels (2017, p. 57). compounding the absence of state protection of migrant rights is a reluctance of many migrant-producing countries to ratify the convention for fear of alienating rich destination countries and the promise of bountiful remittances sent to migrant-origin countries earned from the blood, sweat and tears of poorlyor un-protected migrants (pécoud, 2017, p. 65). often, as in south africa, the expansion in international and state recognition of the human and worker rights of migrants appears to float above and scarcely touch the reality of deteriorating material conditions and increased risks faced by low-wage migrant workers. as ndlovu’s poem “the migrant nurse dilemma” (in this issue) expresses, state documentary practices in barring migrant access to fundamental rights such as health care poses a dilemma for front-line health care workers, who acknowledge that citizenship trumps human rights and international protocols bear little weight. states are constituted as the primary guardians of sovereignty (cohen, 2018, p. 83), and an inter-state consensus dictates that state sovereignty is contingent upon state expansion of control and fortification of borders against unauthorized or non-selected migrants. the pre-eminence of national (state, employer, and citizen) interests prevails even when some state laws recognize certain rights of noncitizens, as other legislation and their enforcement may deny those rights. as ndlovu notes in the explanatory text following her poem: daiva stasiulis, zaheera jinnah & blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 8 it [access to health care as a right for all] is protected in the south african constitution however this is not clearly outlined in the national health act or the immigration act (ncumisa, 2018). this has created a grey area in which many migrants experience challenges accessing health care, while health workers may also experience frustration over a lack of guidelines on how to deal with nonsouth african patients. those migrants subjected to the greatest punitive controls are invariably marginalized and marked as unfit, uncivilized, or security risks through a variety of intersecting (e.g., racialized, class-based and gendered) discourses. states and major segments of populations in receiving countries have stepped up efforts, as detailed by all authors in this special issue, to exclude, criminalize and deport these migrants (abji) and subject them to a variety of harms – including stigmatization as fraudulent (lee-an), precaritization (jinnah), gendered and racialized insecurities (rutherford, liu), and even disposability as human waste (stasiulis). the absence of perspectives or consultations with the most marginalized – migrant and immigrant women – in legal reforms in precarious work such as sex work silences the voices of those who experience the greatest risks and harm. as jamie liew argues, this silence reproduces epistemic violence against these migrants in employment sectors heavily populated by (im)migrants. the absence of intersectional analysis contributes to a failure to address many of the root causes that render racialized, migrant female workers prey to violence, hyper-exploitation, and rightlessness. efforts to exclude, invisibilize, dehumanize, deport and dispose of vulnerable migrants occurs even while many of the economies and citizens of receiving states reap rich rewards from the employment and hyper-exploitation of migrants with precarious statuses in the form of business profits, cheaper food and more affordable privatized child and elder care. why intersectionality for migration studies? the promise of intersectionality for addressing justice concerns of migrants, and injustices created through the migration process, is rooted in its simultaneous engagement with multiple power relations that exclude and silence the most marginalized. since its introduction into scholarly literature in the 1980s, intersectionality has been strongly linked to issues of social justice and has occupied a central position in analyses of global, national and localized inequalities as well as in feminist legal, political and policy discourses of international human rights (cho, crenshaw & mccall, 2013, p. 786). intersectionality as an analytic framework or conceptual tool made its initial appearance within feminist and anti-racist scholarship during the 1980s in several mainly global north countries, where women of colour and antiracist feminist scholars and activists sought to bring issues of racism to the migration, intersectionality & social justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 9 fore and give epistemic privilege to the most marginalized communities of women. 3 these writers began to name, analyze and interrogate the relationships among the distinct and multiple forms of discrimination, oppression and agency among women whose life experiences and identities defied single axis thinking. intersectionality was designated in a variety of ways (including black/chicana/mohawk/south asian, etc., feminism, antiracist feminism, triple oppression), with each designation often signaling the author’s multi-layered and communal standpoint, epistemology, and intellectual and political affiliations. in the united states, african american women (many of whom self-identified as “black feminists”) and other racialized and colonized women provided theorization and significant empirical analyses that demonstrated their oppression could neither strictly be defined in terms of gender nor race. key pioneering intersectionality scholars in the u.s. included patricia hill collins (1991), hazel carby (1982), kimberlé crenshaw (1989, 1991), bonnie thornton dill (1988), bell hooks (1981) and chandra talpade mohanty (1986) who sought to “decolonize feminist scholarship.” in canada, authors who first began to explicitly theorize how race, ethnicity, gender, and class co-constituted experiences of subordination and resistance for immigrant, black, indigenous and other racialized women (and less commonly men) included sedef arat-koc (1989), abigail bakan (bakan & stasiulis, 1997), himani bannerji (1987), monica boyd (1992), dionne brand (1984), agnes calliste (1989, 1993), gillian creese (creese & stasiulis, 1996), tania das gupta (1991), marlee kline (1989), patricia monture-angus (1995), roxana ng (1986), and daiva stasiulis (1987, 1990, 1999; stasiulis & yuval-davis, 1995).4 significant early scholars of intersectionality working in britain were amina mama (1982), pratibha parmar (1982), floya anthias and nira yuval-davis (anthias & yuval-davis, 1983, 1992). in australia, gill bottomley, marie de lepervanche and jeannie martin (bottomley, de lepervanche & martin, 1991) were among the early scholars of intersectionality. this is a woefully very partial (and somewhat idiosyncratic) list of scholars who were involved in fashioning intersectionality as an analytic tool in these various contexts.5 3 collins and bilge (2016, pp. 3-4) contend that intellectuals and activists in the global south “have [long] used intersectionality as an analytic tool, often without naming it as such,” simultaneously confronting several axes of social division such as (in india) caste, gender and class. 4 for an insightful analysis of this early canadian anti-racist, feminist scholarship, see dua (1999). 5 the idiosyncrasies here largely capture a partial list of the network of anti-racist feminists with whom stasiulis interacted, read, or occasionally had the pleasure of collaborating with, in the 1980s and early 1990s. the references to relevant scholarship are also merely indicative. the building of a feminist intersectionality lens attentive to issues of race, racism and colonialism critically reflected upon the national specificities of intersecting relations of power, but was equally a collective, transnational endeavor, and has become even more so in its 21st century “renaissance.” daiva stasiulis, zaheera jinnah & blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 10 as crenshaw’s (1989, 1991) foundational analysis of legal redress of violence against black women in the united states illuminated, intersectional analysis was required to ensure that african american women would not fall between the cracks of laws and policies that implicitly assumed that women were generically white or black people were generically male. no longer would a race-free analysis of women’s oppression, or race-, genderand colonialism-free analysis of class exploitation suffice to account for the specific mutually constituted and layered forms of oppression experienced by black women, indigenous women, or other women of colour in the united states, britain, canada, australia, and several other countries. as virtually all of the initial intersectionality writers were women, the subjects of analyses were almost exclusively oppressed women or more infrequently women privileged through their respective locations in relations and discourses of race/whiteness, class, sexuality, colonialism and imperialism (amos & parmar, 1984; ware, 1992). while the original trinity of “gender, race and class” (grc) became by far the most significant constellation of social relations explored in intersectional analysis of marginalized people, its application to study complexity and power across a variety of disciplines, national and local spaces, and communities of people, has seen an efflorescence of various combinations of power and identity including sexuality, ethnicity, indigeneity, religion, age, generation, ability, and citizenship status, as well as the original grc trinity. at the same time, simply adding more intersections does not, we would argue, strengthen the critical potential of intersectionality to advance the social justice claims of migrants (carastathis et al., 2018, p. 9). rather, specific choices of (a manageable number of) axes of power permit deeper understandings of their genealogy through time and space, and are more likely to offer insightful analyses of migrant experiences, and law, policy, resistance and solidarity. there are historical lessons here to be learned from the foundations of feminist and critical race intersectional thinking in praxis. the rootedness of theorizing about intersectionality in activism among those excluded from or subordinated in progressive social movements and rightsand equality-enhancing social welfare policies, assured a close relationship between scholarship advancing analyses of multiple, simultaneous and intersecting sources of oppression, and praxis aimed at transforming systemic forms of discrimination, exclusion and oppression. social justice was foregrounded as well in intersectional analyses that sought to comprehend and address structural forms of inequality, such as the links among capitalism, colonialism, racism and hetero-patriarchy. in contrast, social justice concerns began to fade in a type of identity-focused scholarship when intersectional thinking became unmoored from concrete struggles and analyses of structural power. filtered through a post-structural and postmodern (proliferation of differences) lens, much intersectional analysis engaged in a more playful and often creative consideration of the complexity of overlapping individual identities, ignoring, however, the embeddedness of migration, intersectionality & social justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 11 identity in material bases of intersectional injustice, violence and oppression (cho, crenshaw & mccall, 2013, p. 797). the focus on inequality, oppression and social (in)justice dimmed in cultural analysis that sought to study and theorize the infinite complexity, hybridity and transnational fluidity of identities. at the same time, intersectionality scholars have cautioned against the adoption of too rigid an opposition between identity and power, arguing that recognition of marginalized identities is essential for addressing the exclusions of subjugated communities (cho, crenshaw & mccall, 2013, pp. 797-800). here intersectional identities are what produce embodied, situated knowledge, and perspectives that have traditionally been marginalized and erased in many disciplines and interdisciplinary scholarship such as migration studies (dhamoon, 2011, pp. 232-233). demarginalizing such knowledge is in turn critical to resistance strategies that focus on “dismantling the violent capacities of racialized-gendered systems that operate under the pretense of neutrality” (dean spade, quoted in cho, crenshaw & mccall, 2013, p. 798). as tungohan (2016, p. 353) suggests, many of the migrant grassroots organizations base their mobilization of members on the anti-essentialist premise that intersectional identities are derived from grassroots politics rather than politics being derived from identities. for example, a decades-long tradition of dissident diasporic filipino theatre has migrants as active creators of scripts reflecting their struggles, painful separation from children and family and indignities of migrant caregiver life. equal parts politics, therapy and socializing, such artistic expressions are empowering for the most subjugated of migrants. they are also one strand of resistance within multi-scalar grassroots networks such as migrante and gabriela where activists view their struggles as ranged in opposition to interlocking structures of power (tungohan, 2016). such creative interventions also attest to the situated character of such knowledge and forms of resistance. the article by geraldine pratt, sarah zell, caleb johnston and hazel venzon (this issue) sharply demonstrates such potentialities as they analyse the “testimonial play” nanay about the interactions among filipino domestic workers with their children, nanny agents, government officials and canadian employers. different patterns of filipino migration to different canadian cities are regulated by diverse temporary worker and provincial migration programs, producing distinctive micro-geographies of intersectionality, power, marginalization and solidarity. there are other contributions that insightfully examine as well as illustrate creative interventions that seek to challenge the layering of injustices facing different migrants. the multiple methods in this special issue speak both to how knowledge is being created and how social justice issues such as migration are being represented in both academic and popular domains. in their piece in this issue, “we the people” by the mestizo arts & activism (maa) collective, young people of colour living on the west side of salt lake city, utah (usa), provocatively center issues of social justice. daiva stasiulis, zaheera jinnah & blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 12 they question notions of power in whiteness, class, race, gender and sexual identities by repurposing the preamble of the us constitution. through a performance in the state of utah legislature, the group assume roles of what they call “corporates,” those representing political and economic power, and residents of a neighborhood challenging ideas of who belongs, who gains, and who controls access to economic and political power. in their dialogue, they write, “[w]e own your labor and know that you need the money… so, go ahead and quit if you don’t like the health plan…. there’s a person behind you, waiting to replace you! not to worry – we got your interest in mind – so sit back, relax and let us take control.” elsa oliveira and rebecca walker (this issue) draw on their experience in a participatory arts-based project with migrant women in johannesburg, most of whom were still waiting for a decision on their refugee applications. reflexively examining the process of research and the creation of quilts by the women, they engage in important deliberations concerning the ethics and politics of power and relationships in research, while showing through their analysis and images how these women challenged hegemonic discourses of gender and citizenship as their “creative works weave through many strands of their lives, from being accused of witchcraft, to watching loved ones murdered, and the difficulties of raising a child with disabilities.” the screenprints by moozhan ahmadzadegan invite the readership of this special issue into a conversation about current debates in canada and elsewhere concerning migration and refugees. the overlay of queries over stock pictures very familiar to, say, those who are conversant with mediated discussions about european immigration to settle the americas and australia or about war in the middle east this century, arrests the viewer, prompting one to (further) rethink how xenophobia permeates so much of the public discourse in one’s communities. intersectionality in migration studies intersectionality is an analytic approach that understands “the social reality of women, [men and non-binary genders] and the dynamics of their social, cultural, economic and political contexts to be multiply, simultaneously, and interactively determined by various significant axes of social organization” (stasiulis, 1999, p. 347, emphasis in original). the implicit or explicit adoption of intersectional frameworks in migration studies has stemmed from the realization that migrants are not undifferentiated human subjects, nor can migrant movements be defined only along one parameter of difference: thus, neither “women” nor “migrant women” are unitary groups with common experience, with the latter highly differentiated through the intersection of their lived circumstances in their home, transit and destination countries and their mode and status of entry, racial and ethno-religious differences, skill level, age, and education, among others (anthias, 2012, pp. 102, 106). migration, intersectionality & social justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 13 the connection between migration and intersectionality was often implicit in much of the early intersectionality scholarship of the 1980s and 1990s. this seemed inevitable in high immigrant-receiving countries such as canada (and australia) where the official state narrative taken up by many migration scholars is that canada (or australia) is a multicultural nation built on successive waves of immigration (kaushik & walsh, 2018, p. 28). some of the authors of such pioneering scholarship (such as feminist historians and social scientists of various minority ethnicities) were immigrants from less favoured countries themselves or had grown up in immigrant households and thus experienced first-hand distinctive forms of othering (see, for canada, iacovetta, 1992; lindström, 1988). black caribbean female scholars documented the devastating impact of punishing racialized routes to migration in canada for black immigrant women offered by foreign domestic worker policies (calliste, 1989; silvera, 1989). colonialism and fading european empires had established pathways of international migration leading these scholars to discern just how enmeshed migrants and immigrants were in (settler) colonial logics that also were intertwined with relations of race, class, gender and sexuality. more recently, it has been less the multiplicities of relations of power that constituted the construct of “immigrant women” (see ng, 1986) and more, as salina abji argues in this issue, how “race, gender and other axes of difference are mobilized in the enactment of punitive immigration controls.” such controls can have devastating and deadly consequences as migrants deemed “illegal” may be imprisoned and denied a modicum of rights or care. perhaps more astonishingly, despite their legal and highly regulated presence in canada, low skill temporary labour migrants can also be subjected to technologies of disposability in sites such as immigration law and provincial/territorial employment legislation, the workplace, transport, living conditions, access to health care and the practice of medical repatriation of injured and ill migrant workers (see stasiulis, this issue). whether an intersectional lens is still in its infancy or well-established as a key analytic lens within contemporary migration studies is a matter of debate, and likely also reflects the prevailing paradigms within different branches of migration studies. thus, carasthasis et al. (2018, p. 6) observe that “the majority of (forced) migration [and refugee] scholarship continues to approach the subject without attending to the simultaneity of experiences and co-implications of positionalities shaped by gendered, racialized, class, and sexuality-based power relations.” indeed, they argue that the “question of gender” in migration remains a marginal focus and when deployed, gender has been included as an “essentially demographic category” rather than understood as produced “through both nationalized and transnational heteropatriarchal power relations” (2018, p. 7). similarly, kaushik and walsh (2018, pp. 34-35) argue that the significant body of research focused on settlement and integration (in canada) “has almost entirely refrained from using intersectionality as a main analytical framework.” daiva stasiulis, zaheera jinnah & blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 14 in contrast, scholarship on the globalization of reproductive labour, examining female-dominated migration from (and within) the global south to the global north, especially domestic, household or care workers, but also migrant sex workers and nurses, has at least since the late 1980s been keenly focused on global north-south divisions, and dynamics of racialized, gendered, class-based power relations (arat-koc 1989; bakan & stasiulis, 1997; calliste, 1989; parreñas, 2001; romero, 1992; silvera, 1989; stasiulis & bakan, 2003). an intersectionality lens has been utilized to inform the structural dynamics of colonialism/imperialism, capitalism and patriarchy that have given rise to unfree labour systems and reinforced the citizenship divide in receiving countries between employers and employees (bakan & stasiulis, 2003). in many countries, options for even highly educated women to migrate from the global south have narrowed to temporary stateauthorized migrant programs or through undocumented and irregular migration directed to address the care gap in middle and upper class private family households. this is clearly a vast, though often invisible globalized sector of employment where the entry of the migrant woman analytically altered the thinking of many feminist scholars in exposing the limitations of single axis thinking. not merely the position of migrant women in hierarchies of race, class, gender and citizenship, but their relationship with employers positioned in more privileged positions within these intersecting dynamics abruptly erased notions of “shared sisterhood” in feminist discourse. such analyses applied intersectionality to various levels of scale and spatiality – from exploring the devastating dislocations among local populations stemming from the imposition of imf and world bank structural adjustment policies in home countries such as the philippines, to the replication of these globalized racialized, gendered and class-based dynamics of privilege and oppression played out at the micro level in private family households in destination countries (stasiulis & bakan, 2003). as migration studies have tended to reproduce northern-centric social science, we are less aware of how the concept of intersectionality has traveled or how an intersectional sensibility has informed scholarship on gendered patterns of migration circulating within the global south (grosfoguel, oso & christou, 2015; oishi, 2005; truong et al., 2014). this does not mean that migration studies have ignored the south but rather that this scholarship has placed the emphasis on the south as migrant producing rather than migrant receiving or as regional sites where migration circulates (yeoh, 2014). many scholars working within or writing about the exploitation of female migrant household workers in the southern as well as northern hemispheres have for some time incorporated intersectional approaches that give “attention to class, race, gender, citizenship, language and other forms of social difference” (yeoh, 2014, p. 143). as jinnah (this issue) observes, despite such research conducted through an intersectional lens, there is limited scholarship on the “heterogeneity of global care chains, the perspectives of employers and migration, intersectionality & social justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 15 workers, and the dynamics and patterns in [different regions] of the global south.” further, in the case of south africa, a protracted history of colonialism and apartheid has strongly informed migration studies scholarship in the country. concepts of race, class, and masculinity are inherent in much of the germinal work in this field (see for instance crush, williams & peberdy, 2005; dodson & crush, 2004; moodie & ndatshe, 1994; moodie, 1988; wolpe, 1972). however, an explicit intersectional analysis was only introduced in the late 1990s and 2000s, following the transition to democracy, and a new migration regime, which heralded diverse and rapid flows of migration. ally (2006) and dodson (2000) raised questions of how multiple identities such as gender, race, migrant status and class shape migratory experiences. their work illustrates the difficulties and importance of developing a layered analytical framework that is both responsive to the gendered and racialised context of the country (collins 1998), but also able to transcend these approaches to raise broader questions that speak to a global scholarship on precarity and resilience (dodson, 2000). in the last two decades, south african migration studies have broadened in scope and analysis. ongoing scholarship on migration policies (segatti, 2011), gender (kihato, 2013), regional migration, (schierup, 2016) xenophobia (nyamnjoh, 2006), sexuality (caminga, 2017) and labour (barchiesi, 2011; jinnah, 2010; munakamwe, 2017; rutherford, 2008) attempts to understand the diversity and complexity of migration from multiple approaches. new questions of nationality, ethnicity, migratory status, sexuality and gender identity, and class, alongside longer-standing issues of governance and citizenship, show how migration studies might be enriched by intersectional approaches. migration policies in “settler society” countries in the global north, as well as more developed hubs in the global south, have been shifting towards temporariness and conditionality, with narrowing and more complex pathways to permanence and citizenship. in the global south, transient migration has long been prevalent giving rise to hierarchies of citizenship and non-citizenship, often constructed through intertwining assets or “deficits” based on class, race, nationality, language, religion, and disability (among others) (yeoh, 2014). at the same time, more affluent asian countries, confronting their own demographic fertility and household care challenges, are defining the characteristics of new distinctions between settler and temporary migration. jiyoung lee-an’s analysis (this issue) of marriage migration to south korea powerfully conveys how the combined characteristics of migrants from asian developing countries are constructed through state and popular discourses as alternatively desirable or risky for the nation-building and fertility projects of that state. specifically, women from southeast asia of child-bearing age who marry older south korean men are provided pathways to permanent status if they fulfill their reproductive promise, whereas unions between south asian migrant men and older korean daiva stasiulis, zaheera jinnah & blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 16 women are treated with suspicion and assumed to constitute “fraudulent marriage.” the centrality of a critical intersectionality lens is thus, however unevenly, implicitly or explicitly informing a growing body of migration research. the absence of intersectional analysis is much more glaring in legal reform of sectors of work, living conditions and health policies, where there is notable representation if not domination by vulnerable migrants. thus, jamie liew’s (this issue) analysis in the canadian context of the mountains of text produced by parliament and the courts in legal reform of sex work contains scant mention of the multiplication of risks among racialized migrant women with irregular status, thus adding epistemic violence to their everyday experiences of risk, uncertainty and violence. migrants deemed illegal are rendered invisible and thus left to deteriorate. state sovereignty and national border security are prioritized over the ontological security and autonomy of vulnerable migrants. the proliferation in types of migration and categories of conditional, temporary and unauthorized statuses, many without a pathway to permanence, produced or abetted by restrictive neoliberal and securityconscious immigration policies, has broadened the focus of justice-minded intersectional writing in migration scholarship. moreover, the fact that violence and risk permeate the livelihood of migrants within (non-safe) borders of states necessitates adopting an intersectional analysis of “not only ‘irregular’ migration, but also the strategies of survivorship that racialized and migrant women [and men] have developed to address the multiple forms of violence in their lives” (abji, this issue; see also rutherford, this issue). the promise of analytic gains in deploying an intersectional lens in answering questions such as why specific migrant groups face discrimination, oppression, violence and dehumanization – or alternatively, relative privilege – becomes apparent in rich, insightful ethnographic work that illuminates the hazards and opportunities of crossing borders, and being forever marked as not belonging in specific national or local spaces (e.g., rutherford, 2017). thus, in this issue, anthropologist blair rutherford illuminates how an intersectional lens can inform the ways in which the survival of zimbabwean female migrants in south africa is continuously rendered insecure by risks of violence, not merely at the border but also in various sites and by various actors in work, shelter, and unexpectedly, in their interaction with humanitarian organizations. similarly, ying-ying tiffany liu’s (this issue) ethnographic and participatory fieldwork in johannesburg, spent in kitchens of restaurants owned by chinese petty capitalist migrants, who employ but also hyper-exploit other (zimbabwean) migrants, reveals how intersectionality can be fruitfully deployed as a flexible analytical tool attentive to not only larger structural forces but also highly localized economic and sociopolitical conditions. liu’s finely textured ethnographic research reflects that differences among distinct national and racialized migrants are not merely hierarchical but also result in patterned migration, intersectionality & social justice studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 17 interdependencies among migrants who possess various types of social and economic capital. intersectionality, less a theory than an analytic sensibility (cho, crenshaw & mccall, 2013, p. 795), assists in making sense of the complexity and diversity of migration, discriminatory state (im)migration and a host of other exclusionary policies and laws, and migrant experiences, agency and politics. insofar as each concept named within specific intersectional frameworks (race, gender, class, sexuality, colonialism, etc.) is itself the subject of intense debates and lack of consensus, intersectionality is helpful in only marking out certain ground for analysis rather than actually performing that analysis. for instance, with the global rise in discrimination against muslim immigrants, intersectionality theorists debate whether or not islamophobia is a form of racism and whether religious identities, differences, clothing and symbols have been racialized (grosfoguel, oso & christou, 2014, p. 635). certainly the prominence of various concepts in academic and popular discourses in different national contexts to signal similar forms of fear and hatred, exclusion, violence and discrimination (such as xenophobia against migrants in the south african context) reflects the situatedness in place and time of knowledge and understanding of specific social relations of power in intersectional analyses. such placeand historically-situated analysis inhibits essentializing type of thinking and indeed the production of any universalizing intersectional theory. it is the rigidity (such as the essentialism, categorical fetishism and imposed stability of the rcg trinity) of intersectional frameworks that is often the subject of harshest critiques among theorists. as the papers and creative interventions in this special issue illuminate, it is often more productive to examine what intersectionality does to enrich our understanding of the complexities of migration, the vulnerabilities of migrants, and the oppressions built within migration policies, rather than to dwell on the question of what intersectionality is (cho, crenshaw & mccall, 2013, p. 788). the augmenting embrace of intersectionality by migration scholars directs attention to the intertwining dynamics of key structures of power pertaining to the relationship between migration and social (in)justice. it is an important analytic sensibility to confront and redress the epistemological and social erasure within state policies, laws and citizens’ consciousness of entire mobile networks, distinctive social communities and groups of migrants who are demonized for their “wrong” presence within state borders, and who like poet june jordan (2005; emphasis in original) declare: “i am not wrong: wrong is not my name. my name is my own my own my own.” in this vein, the mestizo arts & activism collective created caution (this issue) in response to on-line racism in a local salt lake city newspaper. this is a striking photographic image of solidarity “by us and for us” that subverts misleading narratives about the latinx community. caution offers one glimpse into how the creative capacities of the community can be harnessed to serve research and education purposes about the community’s daiva stasiulis, zaheera jinnah & blair rutherford studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 1-21, 2020 18 criminalization and exploitation through the “school-to-sweatshop pipeline.” it offers a defiant refusal to be defined by denigrating images and discourses of racialized undocumented migrants and residents by offering an alternative vision of how a much maligned immigrant community demands recognition and justice. not surprisingly, as several of the contributors suggest, intersectionality has become a key analytic and political sensibility in the tool box of activists who seek not merely to understood the interlinking sources for the injustices and insecurities of border and migration policies, but to transform and abolish them. references abu-laban, y. 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(2017). transient migrations: intersectionalities, mobilities and temporalities. transitions: journal of transient migration, 1(1), 143-146. studies in social justice volume 3, issue 2, 145-154, 2009 correspondence address: diane-gabrielle tremblay, télé-université, université du québec à montréal, montréal, qc, h2x 3p2, canada. tel: +1 514 843-2015, email: dgtrembl@teluq.uqam.ca issn: 1911-4788 work, insecurity, and social justice diane-gabrielle tremblay télé-université de l’université du québec à montréal, montréal, canada this issue on work, insecurity, and social justice appears very timely, given the present economic crisis, in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008-9, and constitutes an important contribution to the debate on this theme. indeed, over recent decades, work has become less and less secure for many groups (less educated, some aging workers, some women, etc.) and income and economic insecurity have moved high on the agenda of individual and social preoccupations. despite the existence of workers with more or less stable jobs, and despite some labour regulations or collective agreements favouring job stability, slow growth periods and repeated crises in the 1980s, 1990s, and again in 2008-9 have resulted in workforce rationalization and layoffs, long-term unemployment, and a reduction in the coverage of as well as level of employment insurance benefits for jobless people. today only about one out of every two workers is eligible for employment insurance, and in the resource-dependent regions of canada, where unemployment is higher and long periods of unemployment are more frequent, many workers end up excluded from the employment insurance regime and must rely on social assistance regimes. furthermore, available jobs are often precarious and poorly paid, which leads to lower benefits while many aging workers are altogether excluded from employment when companies are confronted with difficult times. in the current economic environment, companies are in an endless search for improved competitiveness and productivity, which often results in demands for flexibility, diversified types of employment, changing work shifts, and ultimately, insecurity for workers. globalization and the international division of labour have contributed to the displacement of both investment and jobs to developing countries, which leads to an increased feeling of job insecurity for many groups (lowe et al., 1999), potentially more so for those entering the labour market (youth) and those about to leave (aging workers). employment insecurity is partly a subjective notion; something an individual feels given his or her job situation and the overall economic situation. job insecurity, however, can lead to income insecurity and economic insecurity, and this is, of course, a very difficult situation. 146 diane-gabrielle tremblay studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 in the north american context in particular, where social benefits are often not as high as in many european countries, especially the nordic countries, economic insecurity can lead to important issues of social justice (freyssinet, 2003). indeed, aging workers in canada, for example, have much lower benefits than those found in belgium. this can translate into an important issue of social justice, since some individuals may have worked hard all of their lives, but still find themselves in a situation of poverty at the end of their active career. this is, of course, only one view on the relations between work, insecurity, and social justice. in recent years, there has been debate regarding the meaning of the concepts of security and insecurity itself, with some authors indicating that this is a relative concept whose meaning changes over time. according to standing (1999, p. 37), security involves a sense of well-being or control, or mastery over one’s activities and development, as well as the enjoyment of a certain amount of self-esteem. inversely, insecurity involves anxiety and uncertainty (standing, 1999). collective security can also be distinguished from other forms of security or insecurity. again, as per standing (1999, p. 37), collective (or societal) security could be seen as the need to identify with or belong to a group and typically to exercise control over the behaviour of others or to limit their control. security arises from multiple forms of identity, such as class, occupation, and community membership (standing, 1999), to which we would add territorial belonging (fontan, klein, & tremblay, 2005a, 2005b), which are also sources of social identity, and therefore, a certain level of security. the company or employer can also be considered a source of security, so it is therefore possible to refer to a certain amount of “company security” such as that found within a japanese company which generally ensured employees a long term job (tremblay & rolland, 2000). there is also individual security; a person’s curriculum vitae, skills, and union membership can provide a feeling of personal security (standing, 1999, p. 37). another question has arisen in research: how can insecurity and security be measured? this is a particularly complex issue which has been the subject of relatively little study. dasgupta (2001, p. 9) indicates that there are both objective and subjective measures. objective measures are interesting but limited: unemployment rates, average length of employment vs. unemployment, fixed term contracts vs. indefinite employment, skill transferability, etc. these constitute individual measures of the likelihood that given individuals will maintain ongoing employment, stability, and security. there are also contractual measures, such as the rate of non-standard jobs or job status (vosko, zukewich, & cranford, 2003), and institutional measures such as legal protection and collective agreements (dasgupta, 2001, p. 9). as well, there are subjective measures. these may relate to the feeling that one’s permanence in employment is guaranteed by the company, as in japan, or by society and public employment policy, such as in sweden. in order to assess an individual’s relative insecurity or security, the following measures would be of interest: the likelihood of losing one’s job, the likelihood of finding another, the value of the current job, and the value of the future job or period of unemployment (dasgupta, 2001, p. 9). therefore, we may conclude that insecurity is related to the perception of risk and this perception may vary from one person to another and in different contexts. work, insecurity, and social justice 147 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 in the context of mass production and large organizations (fordism), the stability of employees was considered to be a desirable standard for industrial society. the development of trade unionism and the seniority standard contributed to making it expensive for a person to quit his or her job, which tended to favour job stability and the non-mobility of employees. we might wonder why the regulation of the job market occurred. in fact, historically speaking, employment standards, unionization, and unemployment insurance came about as a result of workers’ struggles, as a way to compensate for workers’ weaker power, but also to ensure stable labour supply for companies who wanted to counter chronic labour instability among farm workers at the beginning of the industrial era. over the years, income security became associated with the welfare state. however, benefits were only for full-time workers while women were frequently dependent on the family benefit coverage of their spouses (tremblay, 2008). in light of the reservations set out about the importance of the labour market as the source of rights, insurance, and income, certain questions arise such as whether job security is still important today, and if so, why, for whom (an issue of social justice), and how. from the point of view of employers, job security is a constraint on efficiency and flexibility in adjusting production. publications of the oecd have shown an inverse relationship between job flexibility and job security. further, a study of several european countries showed that economic slowdowns always relaunch the debate about labour flexibility, precarious forms of employment and wage reductions (freyssinet, 2003). some, especially employers, raise the notion that workers should adapt to having less security. however, this raises an issue of social justice, since not all need to adapt to this. in support of job security, some defend the idea of job security as the main source of economic security, and thus criticize the restrictions imposed on the employment insurance regime several years ago in canada. job security is considered important for the well-being of workers and their families, as well as being seen as favouring macro-economic stability. furthermore, it appears that flexibility and wage reductions do not necessarily translate into job creation, contrarily to orthodox economic theory’s claims (freyssinet, 2003). there are other avenues to economic security and possibly to social justice, and some theorists defend the concept of a guaranteed or citizen’s income. while flexibility is necessary, and some consider that job protection works against flexibility, a citizen’s income, or minimum guaranteed income, could possibly offer some form of economic security and provide some degree of social justice. some writers indeed believe that this would simultaneously ensure social justice and efficiency (standing, 1999, p.184). however, this position is contested by many. it overlooks the non-financial advantages of work, including participation in social life, self-esteem, and personal development. other critics hold that the cost of providing such a citizen’s income at an appropriate level would be extremely high, and that a true minimum income is more realistic. finally, it is argued that the stigma attached to social assistance would not necessarily disappear by just changing the name of the program, even though some believe that a “citizenship” income, considered the right of every citizen, might change people’s perspective (standing, 1999). this remains an issue of debate in relation to social justice and economic security. 148 diane-gabrielle tremblay studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 in this issue, two papers deal with end of career and retirement issues, since this is a period of work life which often translates into income or economic insecurity and raises many issues of social justice. the difference between retirement schemes, which may seem normal to the nationals of different countries such as canada and belgium, raises the issue of social justice. indeed, public retirement schemes are apparently more generous in belgium and more workers can manage to retire early and live decently, which is not the case for many canadians, who need to work later, and even return to work in some cases, especially in the aftermath of an economic and financial crisis such as that which came upon us in 2008-2009. this crisis will surely have effects on unemployment, exclusion, economic insecurity and social justice over the next decade. the first paper, by nathalie burnay, deals precisely with what happens to older workers in a changing social policy context. the author first reminds us that in comparison with other european countries, as well as many north american or asian countries, the employment rate of older workers in belgium is rather low. in fact, burnay indicates that there had been a trend of decreasing participation in the labour market for workers over 55. in belgium in 1960, 85% of men aged 55 to 59 years were active while in 1980, it had decreased to 74 percent and in 1997 the proportion further decreased to 49 percent, a sharp decline. as for women, the author indicates that participation has been very low until the late nineties: about 20 percent for women 55 to 59 years of age, and approximately five percent for women aged 60 to 64. the proportions reached 31 and 9 percent respectively in 2005, which is still quite below that observed in many other zones, including canada, where participation rates are much higher. burnay reminds us that international organizations have been quite preoccupied about the viability of pensions systems. in belgium, as in the european union, the government decided to introduce a series of measures in the early 2000s aimed at encouraging older people to remain in or to re-enter the labour market. the author indicates that in more recent years different factors have led policy makers to reevaluate this policy since it has proved somewhat more difficult than expected to keep people in employment. in such a context, the balance between public policies, trade unions and older workers appears to be disruptive. the paper addresses this challenge thus: the author presents research which sheds light on the impact on workers and discusses the results of this changing social policy pattern in terms of well-being and intention to leave the labour market. the author reminds us that from the perspective of new institutionalism early departure from the labour market needs to be understood not simply as a personal choice but rather as a public policy question. she also reminds us that it is the “social benefits” system that encourages particular behaviour in individuals by offering or withdrawing employment opportunities for those over 50, as has been shown in the work by guillemard, amongst others. the author mentions that the belgian social protection policies reflect the continental model (a combination of state, private, semi-private, parastatal and ngos that provide benefits) where the generous unemployment benefits coexists with many possibilities of early withdrawal from the labour market and very limited systems which encourage and integrate the older employee, and this of course has an impact on the attitudes and preferences of aging workers. indeed, it appears that older workers are condemned to inactivity at the end work, insecurity, and social justice 149 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 of their careers and that early retirements are quite numerous, a trend which is difficult to change after some time of functioning in this manner. while many consider the possibility of early retirement to be an issue of social justice, it is clear that the public retirement schemes are creating a heavy burden for the state budget, and this is an issue in many countries today, but maybe more so in belgium because of its many rather generous schemes. burnay’s paper addresses the important issue of well-being at the age of retirement, as well as the intentions of older workers to retire and sets all of this in the context of changing policies in order to show how these policies influence the attitudes and preferences of workers, given their impact on income and economic security. her paper indicates that public policy developed since the 1980s in france as in belgium has fundamentally changed the view of retirement in society as well as the associated models or norms. because of this, alongside the then established system, new approaches are now seen as equally legitimate. the author indicates that this is not sufficient to explain the important movement towards early retirement in belgium. according to burnay, other variables intervene, particularly other normative elements such as self realization, personal growth, and the need to do something “different” in life. these elements are quite interesting and the analysis presented here helps us to better understand an important societal change: it appears that “the individual no longer expresses their individuality through only one facet of their life but compose elements and facets of their life into a whole through various levels of symbolic participation.” all of these elements make it possible to keep a certain distance as regards work and professional investment or other dimensions of self realization. on the basis of burnay’s paper, the end of one’s career is seen as a special period of life in which individuals can reassert or redefine their identity with other forms of activity, either within the family circle or outside it, with volunteer work for example. the “older unemployed” status established in the 1980s in belgium has clearly contributed largely to the well-being of this specific category of unemployed people, and this is clearly viewed as an element of social justice for the workers concerned. it is, therefore, difficult for the state to go back on these advantages which people apparently enjoy, in relation to early retirement. burnay’s paper also shows that early retirement is not only the result of a desire to escape, and thus leads to a multidimensional and very interesting view on end of careers in the labour market, work, economic security, and self-realization. in the paper by tremblay and genin, the question of how to support older workers who want, or need, to stay longer in employment in order to have decent incomes is addressed. this issue is of great importance, especially from a point of view of social justice with regards to income, considering the fact that public retirement schemes in canada offer limited income and that many have lost money in their retirement funds in recent years (due to the financial crisis and, sometimes, poor management of these funds including fraud in some cases). the challenges faced by organizations and governments are unprecedented. the demographic evolutions most industrialized countries are facing question the traditional tripartite model of education-workretirement, according to which these three phases are found in succession, with little or no overlap. indeed, continuing education is needed more and more to maintain the competences of workers throughout their work life. moreover, retirement can represent a period of time nearly equal to work life. the cost of this “expanded” 150 diane-gabrielle tremblay studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 retirement is judged unacceptable by many governments, leading to the question of how to encourage older workers who want to stay longer in employment. interesting conclusions can be drawn from this paper with regard to these challenges which concern retirement income and social justice. first of all, the authors show that perception about retirement appears more or less unchanged over the years and remains very positive. consequently, one of the barriers to the employment of older workers may be the image of retirement itself since it is still perceived as a gift or a right, which is, once again, a social justice issue. however, if the right to retire can be seen as an issue of social justice, the right to a decent retirement income should be as well. unfortunately, this is not the case for many. while the paper does not address the financial dimension, it is known that up to 30% of retirees return to the labour market, many for lack of sufficient funds at retirement. this number may increase in the aftermath of the present financial and economic crisis. the research also shows that the perception of retirement contrasts with the perception of age. indeed, a large majority of respondents do believe one can perform quality work after the age of 65 but, nevertheless, many appear to want to retire. this result questions work in itself. the research also shows that forcing people to stay longer in the labour market is a largely unpopular measure. consequently, governments and organizations should probably adopt a more voluntary approach; hence the importance of the evaluation of the different options to encourage older workers to stay longer in employment, since they vary from one professional category and sector to another. the results highlight the importance of the sector and type of job in the measures or incentives that could encourage older workers to stay longer in employment. governments and organizations, therefore, should adopt a contingent approach in order to ensure social justice; i.e., all incentives do not necessarily fit all jobs or all sectors, and it may be unjust to force people who have worked very hard, in difficult sectors, to go on working in difficult conditions, while white collar and professionals or managers may see an extended work life as a positive. this paper also indicates that among the measures that could support older workers who want to stay longer in employment, the progressive reduction of their working time appears the most attractive option. such an approach represents an important breach in the traditional tripartite model. indeed, it would inaugurate a new period of time between work life and total retirement. organizations and government should then develop new systems (in terms of social security or laws) to institutionalize this period of time so that older workers can draw advantages from it without losing the benefits of their retirement, thus ensuring social justice between the various categories of workers. the paper by cloutier, bernard, and tremblay addresses the issue of social justice from a gendered perspective. it analyses the evolution of men and women’s work over a decade (1997-2007), on the basis of statistics canada labour force survey. the authors show that the significant increase in the presence of women on the labour market is one of the most important events to have occurred over the last few decades on the issue of work, economic security, and social justice. job feminization has grown to become a regular feature in most oecd countries and it is thus important to analyze how exactly women have gained their place in the labour work, insecurity, and social justice 151 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 market, whether it is with more precarious jobs, as was often said in the past, or whether they have accessed the same economic security (same wages and job stability) as men, which would mean that social justice has been attained. the authors show that, unfortunately, this is not necessarily the case. the massive integration of women into the labour market has translated itself into very different forms of hiring, of jobs, and in working conditions that often tend to increase gender inequality, and thus, social justice between men and women. even where differences between wage earnings of men and women have strongly decreased in terms of their respective numbers, and this may appear to favour better social justice for women, some indicators also uncover a degradation with respect to job quality of some subgroups. indeed, female employees fare less well than their male counterparts. women often hold less lucrative jobs, are more often confined to part-time work against their will or to short-term employment, and are given fewer opportunities to deploy and establish their skills because they are given jobs and assignments that require little, if any, proficiency or aptitude. persistent gender inequality clearly wears more than one mask; it is not related only to access to employment and to wages, and may conceal true social injustice. although they have gained equal footing with men in their level of schooling (statistics canada, 2006) and filled the education gap, women apparently still cannot achieve their full potential and access complete socioeconomic independence in less prominent professional occupation or employment status; women are more likely to depend on a spouse’s or on someone else’s immediate support, financially or otherwise. gender disparity, however, is not limited to the labour market: there are acute gender issues as well in the division and sharing of family responsibilities and these are highlighted in the paper. the uneven distribution of domestic and professional work between men and women implies that women, although they are part of the workforce, will assume responsibility for more family tasks than men and this apparently has an impact on the types of jobs that many will have access to, thus creating some form of injustice in regard to men’s situation; on the other hand, men shoulder more responsibility for financial resources through work in the paid labour market. actually, both trends reinforce each other in maintaining women in a situation that is less interesting in both spheres, that is the private—home or family—sphere and the public, paid work sphere. the paper presents a very detailed analysis of the way in which work quality has evolved for women and for men in québec over the last decade and proposes a new multidimensional typology that could be used to analyze the situation in various other countries, on the basis of data available in the labour force survey. this paper represents a contribution to the research being done on “quality of work” all over the globe at present and also contributes to the reflection on economic insecurity and social justice in relation to employment and conditions of work. in morel’s paper, the main concern is with economic insecurity, a theme which is very high on the agenda in times of high unemployment, and with the need of a theoretical shift in economics for analysing and devising efficient and innovative policy reforms to combat employment insecurity and, thus, economic insecurity. it is clear in periods of economic crisis and unemployment that social justice is questioned. indeed, the persons excluded from employment are the last ones to have entered the labour market, the less educated, the oldest or youngest, depending on a firm’s strategy or options. in any case, it brings forward issues of social justice. 152 diane-gabrielle tremblay studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 morel considers that the analysis of the crisis and its impact must be questioned and that mainstream economics is unable to provide appropriate theorizing about economic phenomena, including economic insecurity. it thus appears important turn to economic theories which radically question the dominant paradigm in economics. john rogers commons’s institutionalist theory is proposed here as a substitute. the author highlights the fact that the inadequacy of mainstream economics, or of neoclassical economics, is a fact insufficiently known. she mentions that this approach generates an economic analysis on the basis of concepts and models disconnected from the real-world economy and because of this fact it cannot provide appropriate theorizing about key factors of economic life, nor strategic economic issues. the author indicates that it is essential to proceed to a theoretical reconstruction in economics. what is at stake is all the more important in the present economic context, since it is our ability to understand economic insecurity in all its complexity, as well as to design appropriate solutions to it by means of innovative analysis of labour and employment issues. first, the author of this paper outlines the distinctive character of commons’s institutionalist theory by presenting some of its crucial methodological differences with neoclassical economics. commons is one of the founders of what is called the original institutionalism, which was developed at the end of the 19th century and continued until the 1940s in the united states. commons’s theory, whose relevance to the world today is being rediscovered, provides a coherent interdisciplinary conception of economic facts, grounded in their cultural context, in which economics, law and ethics are reconciled. the author then explains how economic insecurity is conceptualized as an “instituted” process with this theory of institution. a better mastery of this specific school of thought in economics appears to help solve the problems met by mainstream economics by proposing a real theoretical alternative for the development of a truly evolutionary, trans-disciplinary, and ethical economic theory. the author thus presents a very stimulating reflection in a context where every government, party, or organization is searching for means to bring us out of the economic crisis while trying not to have such a situation reproduce itself too quickly. the author considers that the current worldwide crisis characterizes itself by an overdeveloped sophisticated financial sector which is clearly detrimental to sustained employment, due to the fact that labour has become the main adjustment variable in economic processes. if this crisis, which, according to the author “has now degenerated in many countries into a crisis of employment, jeopardizing the economic status of important segments of the population and primarily those who are the most vulnerable—is a turning point for the goal of achieving decent work and social justice, it is clear that platforms of action should be rooted in a sound theoretical basis.” it is in this perspective that the author presents commons’s institutionalism as an economic theory that could play an important role in the social sciences. the general thrust of the paper is thus to demonstrate that commonsian institutionalism represents a real theoretical alternative to mainstream economics for the development of a truly evolutionary, trans-disciplinary, and ethical economic theory that could contribute positively to less economic insecurity and more social justice. work, insecurity, and social justice 153 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 all four papers thus contribute to important insights on the issue of economic insecurity and social justice. the last paper does so from a more theoretical perspective, engaging in discussion on the right to work and the right to a decent income as a basic issue of social justice, thus answering standing’s proposal (1999) of citizenship income, while the three others address the situation of specific categories of workers, namely aging workers in the first two cases, and women versus men in the third. as mentioned above, the specificity of the north-american context for aging workers is that they are expected to ensure their economic security largely on their own. in this context, aspirations to prolong working life may appear, but as we say, these aspirations appear to be associated to a demand for more flexibility at the end of the life course. the situation in belgium is different and the paper shows that policies have an important impact on the attitudes and preferences of workers, given their impact on income and economic security. it also shows that it may be difficult to change policies once workers have organized on the basis of specific policies, for example more generous benefits in a situation of unemployment, as is the case in belgium. in canada, social benefits are often not as high as is the case in many european countries, especially the nordic countries; economic insecurity can lead to important issues of social justice. but age is not the only dimension to be taken into account and one paper shows that a gendered analysis brings forth interesting elements. in québec, it appears that women’s employment situation has improved and is closer to that of men in general. however, this situation also highlights the importance of detailed analyses of various groups, since the situation varies widely, and low levels of education still bear a cost in terms of economic insecurity. all these issues lead to important questions in terms of social justice: how to ensure more social justice among various groups in the labour market and how can more justice be ensured through policy? all the issues of insecurity and social justice could not be covered in so few articles, but the articles in this issue do lead to important questions that encourage further research on the relations between work, insecurity, and social justice. the question, thus, appears to remain open still: how to ensure simultaneously economic security, social justice, and efficiency? (standing, 1999; dasgupta, 2001). the papers on aging workers highlight the importance of the non-financial advantages of work, including participation in social life, self-esteem, and personal development, which explains why some workers want to go on working past retirement age for reasons other than economic security. this however raises a social justice issue, since not all workers can work at a later age; work is more physically difficult for manufacturing workers than white collar and often leads to an accelerated biological aging process. also, as mentioned previously, the stigma attached to social assistance still remains and this is why economic security needs to be addressed and orthodox economics and neoliberal views questioned (see espinganderson, 1985 and chapon & euzéby, 2002, on the evolution of social models and the market). this issue of retirement and the end of one’s career remains an object of debate in relation to social justice and economic security; the present economic crisis has questioned the neoliberal orthodoxy, many wonder whether our governments and leaders will have the courage to question dominant economic dogma and try to ensure social justice and economic security. the papers presented here cannot address all of the many dimensions of insecurity and social justice. they do make a contribution, however, to the debate on issues of 154 diane-gabrielle tremblay studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 work and economic insecurity and they relate to social justice inasmuch as the right to work and the right to a decent income are at the basis of the issues dealt with in all the papers. the papers thus constitute an important contribution to advancing the debate on the meaning of insecurity, on the dimensions to be studied, and on ways to resolve the situation of insecurity, while respecting social justice issues. references chapon, s., & euzéby, c. (2002). vers une convergence des modèles sociaux européens? revue internationale de sécurité sociale, 55(2), 49-71. dasgupta, s. (2001). employment security: conceptual and statistical issues. geneva: international labour office. esping-anderson, g. (1985). politics against markets: the social democratic road to power. princeton: princeton university press. fontan, j.-m., klein, j.-l., & tremblay, d.-g. (2005a). collective action in local development: the case of angus technopole in montreal, canadian journal of urban research, 13(2), 317-336. fontan, j.-m., klein, j.-l. & tremblay, d.-g. (2005b). innovation sociale et reconversion économique. le cas de montréal. paris: l’harmattan. freyssinet, j. (2003). les trois inflexions des politiques de l'emploi. alternatives économiques, 210, 38-45. lowe, g., schellenberg, g., & davidman, k. (1999). re-thinking employment relationships. (cprn discussion paper no. w-5.) ottawa: canadian policy research network. paugam, s. (1998). le revenu minimum d'insertion en france après six ans: un bilan contrasté. intervencions économiques, 28, 21-45. retrieved from www.teluq.uquebec.ca/interventionseconomiques standing, g. (1999). global labour flexibility: seeking distributive justice. london: palgrave. statistics canada, (2006). chapter 4: education, women in canada: a gender-based statistical report (5th ed.) (p. 89-97), (catalogue no. 89-503-xpe). ottawa, on: statistics canada. tremblay, d.-g. (2008). precarious work and the labour market. in d. raphael (ed.), social determinants of health: canadian perspectives (pp. 75-87). toronto: cspi press. tremblay, d.-g. & rolland, d. (2000). labour regime and industrialisation in the knowledge economy: the japanese model and its possible hybridisation in other countries. labour and management in development journal, 1(7), 1-20. vosko, l. f., zukewich, n., & cranford, c. (2003, october) le travail précaire: une nouvelle typologie de l'emploi. l'emploi et le revenu en perspective, 4(10), 40-51. studies in social justice volume 4, issue 1, 1-6, 2010 correspondence addresses: catherine e. hundleby, department of philosophy, university of windsor, windsor, on n9b 3p4 canada. tel: +1 519 253-3000 x 3947, email: hundleby@uwindsor.ca phyllis rooney, department of philosophy, oakland university, rochester, mi, 48309-4401, usa. tel: +1 248 370-3390, email: rooney@oakland.edu issn: 1911-4788 just reason catherine e. hundleby department of philosophy, and women’s studies program, university of windsor, windsor, ontario, canada phyllis rooney department of philosophy, oakland university, rochester, michigan, usa during significant periods of the history of western philosophy, the pursuit of epistemic goods such as reason, truth, and knowledge was considered quite distinct from the pursuit of moral and political values such as goodness, rightness, and justice. knowledge was often theorized as the product of universal norms of reason and unbiased observation, that is, untainted by individual interests or by cultural or political values. during these past centuries (since the scientific revolution especially) epistemologists and philosophers of science have regularly taken scientific knowledge as their model of epistemic achievement in theorizing conceptions and ideals of reason and knowledge. at the beginning of the twentieth century, logical empiricists distinguished meaningful scientific knowledge from value claims, and yet in the early years of the vienna circle some of its members emphasized the role of science in the political project of making the world a better place (okruhlik, 2004). in the latter decades of the twentieth century the traditional distinctions between science and values and between reason and justice came under more thorough critical scrutiny. in particular, thomas kuhn's (1962) structure of scientific revolutions provided the catalyst for significant philosophical work examining the role of historical, social, cultural, and political values in the development of scientific knowledge. two decades later, genevieve lloyd's (1984) man of reason set the stage for feminist examinations of the ways in which philosophical ideals of reason encompassed male norms and associations, often through the explicit devaluation of female or “feminine” traits or experiences (cited in rooney, 1994). as work in feminist or, as it is now sometimes called, liberatory epistemology has continued to show, traditional ideals of reason and knowledge regularly accommodate, if not reinforce, unjust social divisions, particularly those relating to gender, race, and class (alcoff & potter, 1993; sullivan & tuana, 2007). in 2 catherine e. hundleby, phyllis rooney studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 consequence, feminist and liberatory epistemological work is centrally concerned with motivating accounts of reason and knowledge (including scientific knowledge) that make visible social inequities among reasoners and knowers, something that traditional accounts of a universal, transhistorical, disembodied reason fail to do. this visibility and critical attention is considered necessary to the development of accounts of “just reason.” such accounts of reason and reasoning underwrite concepts and theories of social justice that explicitly aim toward meaningful social progress in a world still significantly constrained by unequal access to social and political goods. in challenging the traditional philosophical segregation of reason and knowledge from politics, feminist and liberatory epistemologists are not suggesting that knowledge reduces to a political contest. they argue, instead, that understandings of reason and knowledge need to engage more constructively with the ethical and social specificities that frame scientific and other knowledge projects, including social and political knowledge projects that explicitly seek to advance social justice. in particular, such understandings draw attention to the fact that the ways in which theorists conceptualize, think, or reason about social and political issues have regularly given voice to specific perspectives over others, thus limiting opportunities for insight and resolution. all of the papers and the book review in this volume advance “just reason” in this way: they give reason and voice to concepts, views, or perspectives that have usually not been included in standard debates about particular social and political issues. these issues include identity politics in multicultural societies (mason), discourses about war and violence (stone-mediatore), debates about same-sex marriage (jaarsma), the role of consciousness-raising in meaningful social change (fischer), and the recognition of indigenous knowledges and epistemes in the academic institutions of the global north (lange on kuokkanen). new or previously disregarded concepts and voices show us ways to provide more adequate reasoning about social justice. in “reorienting deliberation: identity politics in multicultural societies,” rebecca mason argues that in debates about identity politics rights discourse is not sufficient to address the concerns of nondominant cultures. the perspective that shari stone-mediatore urges we consider is the anti-war perspective of many families of slain and wounded soldiers. in “epistemologies of discomfort: what military-family anti-war activists can teach us about knowledge of violence,” she reveals the inadequacy of standard but distant political expertise that claims neutrality. the perspective that ada jaarsma challenges in “rethinking the secular in feminist marriage debates” is shared by feminists and liberatory thinkers on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate, as well as right-wing opponents to same-sex marriage. that perspective rests on the uncritical assumption of a divide between the secular and the religious, and it thus fails to recognize that the religious-secular divide is a politically loaded distinction that requires contextualized critical appraisal. the development of progressive forms of understanding at the level of the knowing individual or self is the subject of clara fischer's “consciousness and conscience: feminism, pragmatism, and the potential for radical change.” fischer views consciousnessraising as significant in the development of new cognitive practices that are necessary for sustained social change, something that many accounts of social change overlook. just reason 3 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 mason's apologia for identity politics employs the notion of “horizons of intelligibility” borrowed from linda alcoff. horizons of intelligibility are contexts for reasoning in which one can situate oneself relative to social identities, and this approach demonstrates an alternative to the rights-based view of what it means to appeal to a social identity. mason maintains that attention to identity, understood as rational placement regarding a horizon of intelligibility, aids the recognition of each other’s guiding reasons and values and thus provides a basis for communication across sociocultural differences. she argues that such an understanding of identity challenges jeremy waldron's account of identity politics understood largely in terms of rights claims or demands. identity politics “ground both claims for redistribution and recognition” (p. 8), mason acknowledges, but they need not be the obstacle to deliberation that waldron claims, but rather can be a resource for understanding and deliberation. waldron's formulation of identity politics as a rights claim obscures the relationship between cultural identity and reasoning that alcoff's view illuminates because it treats identity as a starting point for reasoning. stone-mediatore argues that “responsible thinking about institutionalized violence, including war, demands a distinctive kind of thinking-within-discomfort for which conventionally trained public-affairs experts are ill-suited and for which undervalued epistemic traits play a crucial role” (p. 26). academic and professional expertise, along with the epistemic authority that expertise garners and on which it depends, shields reasoners from fully understanding the causes and effects of routine social violence. the institutionalized violence that concerns stone-mediatore is severe and systemic and “results . . . from established social and political institutions that systematically offend human dignity, or systematically deprive certain people of the conditions necessary for physical and mental integrity” (p. 30). she maintains that contemporary north american understandings of war reveal deep problems with the ideal of rationality as detachment. “although typical of political discourse, their construction-project and law-and-order metaphors have little relation to the insecure and chaotic reality of war” (p. 35). the expertise of michael ignatieff and fouad ajami, in particular, “demonstrate[s] greater commitment to neoliberal and neocolonialist discourses than to the complexity of the situation on the ground” (p. 35). current feminist disagreements in the u.s. over same-sex marriage can be traced to two strands in feminist theory, jaarsma argues. on the one hand, discourse theory supports a version of liberal feminism that seeks access to marriage for gays and lesbians and promotes other types of marriage reform. seeking legal reform makes sense given that discourse ethics employs communicative rationality as the means to democratic justice. the results of reform are less promising from the perspective of queer theory feminists who suspect the exclusionary nature of marriage, citing its sexist and racist heritage; they suggest instead that we need deeper rethinking of the nature of larger legal structures relating to citizenship. establishing clear targets for discourse reform is difficult because of the problem of distinguishing the rational from the patriarchal elements of discourse, and that entails, in the united states especially, a need to question the divide between religious culture and the secular state. marriage itself has religious origins and is not morally neutral. jaarsma argues that we must embrace cognitive dissonance as a general virtue of liberatory reasoning. the feminist debates over same-sex marriage reveal a pernicious assumption that the religious and the secular have clear mutual boundaries, whereas in fact negotiating this divide involves self-creation. not only 4 catherine e. hundleby, phyllis rooney studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 religion but secularism too has a specific history with its own paradoxes. instead of appealing to secularism, she advocates a post-secular turn in which liberatory thinkers accept the dissonance among our various ethical commitments. whereas jaarsma treats political commitments as existential leaps, clara fischer views our ability to transform ourselves as a gradual matter of acquiring deweyan habits: “for dewey, we are constantly faced with a choice between acting in accordance with the old, static self, or with the new, dynamic self” (p. 71). fischer applies the pragmatist framework of john dewey to understand how personal moral change that provides the basis for political change is possible because of the selfreflexive aspects of human reasoning. knowledge depends on an engagement with the world that is motivated by uncertainty, yet having knowledge remains dynamic because “uncertainty results from the conversion process and characterizes one's existence as a feminist” (p. 79). emphasizing the dynamic aspect of the self implies not simply change but moral progress. this deweyan morality of ongoing personal transformation complements jaarsma's prescription of dynamic embodied engagement. however, fischer’s attention to the individual reveals problems with sudden epiphanic accounts of coming to feminist consciousness, and she argues that such personal, political, and moral changes accrete slowly. it is the longstanding strength of gradually engrained deweyan habits that provides for ongoing feminist resolve, although feminists also rely on feminist communities of approvers and reprimanders to establish those habits. social justice relates to reason in specific ways in each article. mason's move away from the language of rights allows individual understanding and reasoning a role in identity politics, and thus in addressing social injustice. she acknowledges the importance of waldron's concern with human rights, which is part of the terminology of the established dialogue for addressing social justice issues. however, mason argues that the language of rights only provides a starting place for civic reasoning based in identity politics. civic deliberation is an open-ended process rather than a matter of compromise among pre-defined rights. for stone-mediatore, attention to those who directly suffer from its social injustice aids reasoning about institutionalized violence. “personal ties to war, when combined with a concern for honesty about the world that homes loved ones, can help [people] to face vexing realities, even when this exposes them to intellectual uncertainty and social ostracization” (p. 38). understanding the phenomena of war for stone-mediatore depends on recognizing the limits of abstract thinking and its tendency to distract us from the concrete human historical details of war. creating social justice is entwined with a changing self according to both jaarsma and fischer. for jaarsma, the sorts of rational and political conflicts that emerge in anyone's life can be seen writ large in the feminist debates over same-sex marriage. the lesson to be learned is that our personal compromises among forms of justice and demands of rationality constitute ourselves as particular moral and rational beings. for fischer, personal transformation is a layered and recursive process moving with and against past habits and surrounding communities. thus, achieving social justice in our communities requires pressing ourselves to change, but personal transformation and progress also depend on engagement with communities of likeminded people. just reason 5 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 reasoning that is socially just but also evolving is the issue in rebecca kuokkanen's book, reshaping the university: responsibility, indigenous epistemes, and the logic of the gift, reviewed in this issue by lynda lange. kuokkanen argues that the university suffers from viewing knowledge in terms of exchange rather than giving. this view of reasoning must change if the academy is to cease marginalizing and silencing indigenous peoples. kuokkanen proposes that universities adopt an alternative “gift logic” that is notable in indigenous cultures and that draws on virtues of respect, responsibility, and reciprocity. “the marginalization of indigenous peoples is not (only) a question of racism or ethnic minority rights, but it is a marginalization of peoples with rights to self-determination” (p. 89), as lange explains. kuokkanen does not idealize indigenous cultures for being more virtuous, but she argues that they offer valuable alternative conceptions that will continue to develop. only one of the benefits of an academy with a “gift logic” is greater inclusion of indigenous reasoners themselves. in sum, just reason shows us social justice as a process of reasoning (among other things). it is a way of positioning ourselves for democratic engagement (mason); it motivates reasoning about the changing material details of institutionalized violence (stone-mediatore), or about the contingencies of the very concepts we employ (jaarsma); it requires self-transformation as we aim to reason justly (fischer); and it draws attention to considerations of the cognitive resources that can be found in indigenous cultures, which will encourage the fuller participation of indigenous peoples in academic and political institutions (kuokkanen, lange). as all of these papers show, bringing about the changes in ourselves and the world that genuinely support greater social justice depends on just reason in the form of flexible and strategic reasoning from a variety of perspectives. acknowledgements this issue of studies in social justice on the topic of “just reason” was developed with the support of the canadian society for women in philosophy and the social sciences and humanities research council of canada who sponsored the conference “reason, activism & change: philosophical considerations,” october 3-5, 2008 in windsor, ontario. the conference discourse led to three of the four articles in this volume. sshrc also provided financial support for the work of lauri daitchman and candace nast as editorial assistants on this issue, and we are grateful to lauri and candace for their dedication, care, and reliability. the conference also received financial support from carol reader and the following sources at the university of windsor: department of philosophy; office of the president; faculty of arts and social sciences; centre for studies in social justice; “excellence in engineering (3-e); faculty of law; martha lee, stephen jarislowsky chair in religion and conflict (university of windsor and assumption university); stephen pender, research leadership chair; women’s studies program; political science department; environmental studies program; psychology department; centre for research in reasoning, argumentation and rhetoric; and the windsor university faculty association. references alcoff, l., & potter, e. (eds.). (1993). feminist epistemologies. new york, ny: routledge. kuhn, t. (1962). the structure of scientific revolutions. chicago, il: the university of chicago press. lloyd, g. (1984). the man of reason: “male” and “female” in western philosophy. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. 6 catherine e. hundleby, phyllis rooney studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 okruhlik, k. (2004). logical empiricism, feminism, and neurath's auxiliary motive. hypatia, 19(1), 4872. rooney, p. (1994). recent work in feminist discussions of reason. american philosophical quarterly, 31(1), 1-21. sullivan, s. & tuana, n. (eds.). (2007). race and epistemologies of ignorance. albany, ny: state university of new york press. correspondence address: suzan ilcan, department of sociology and legal studies, and balsillie school of international affairs, university of waterloo, waterloo, ontario, canada n2l 3g1, tel.: 519 888 4567 ext.31022, email: suzan.ilcan@uwaterloo.ca issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 7, issue 1, 1-6, 2013 networks of social justice: transnational activism and social change suzan ilcan university of waterloo, canada anita lacey the university of auckland, new zealand transnational activism is broad in scope and scale and underscores forms of activism and struggles that operate within, across, and beyond the state. we understand the term transnational activism to designate a range of synchronized cross-border activities, campaigns, and movements on the part of networks of activists working counter to various state actors, international actors, or international institutions. it includes a diverse array of participants engaging in activist networks—from those working in local and regional groups to those associated with national and international organizations— with the aim of bringing about social, economic, and political change across borders. over the past several decades, the establishment of transnational forms of activism has emerged in response to themes relating to interventions by states and international actors around issues ranging from the privatization and commodification of land, to neo-colonial and imperial processes of the appropriation of assets, to gender, sexuality, class, and race relations, to undocumented migrants, border control, and immigration policies, to human and citizenship rights. in many spaces and places around the globe, we can identify several transnational forms of activism. there are grassroots activist groups and movements that operate in local and national circles and that have a transnational reach, and aim to bring awareness to issues of social injustice. we may think here, for example, of the global days of action in seattle, genoa, gleneagles, and elsewhere against neoliberal institutions and state governments (see gill, 2000; klein 2002; routledge & cumbers, 2009), the formation of the world social forum and numerous regional forums, the antifree trade agreement activisms waged in widely varied locales like south korea, ecuador, and thailand, and the diversity, scale, and significance of studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 2 suzan ilcan & anita lacey the arab spring movement and other activist movements such as the global justice movement and the zapatista movement. the global justice movement is a transnational movement of grassroots activists and organized advocacy groups working for global justice on economic, social, political, and environmental levels, and working against the neoliberal model of international development and the policies of the states and international institutions that advance it (hadden & tarrow, 2007, p. 215). it can be traced back to the international movements of the 1970s and 1980s relating to such social justice issues as peace, human rights, development, ecology and women’s rights, and has since been building and consolidating stable networks (pellow, 2007; pianta & marchetti 2007). likewise, the zapatista movement, which initially began on january 1, 1994, is well known for fostering economic and political support through its grassroots struggles for autonomy and contestations against the mexican government, for condemning the hunger, poverty, and lack of democratic institutions available to indigenous and other communities in the mexican republic and elsewhere, and for politicizing activists’ interconnected grievances primarily against neoliberalism (see andrews, 2011, p. 139). these transnational forms of activism draw our attention to particular forms of contested knowledge about state and international institutional support for neoliberal agendas, to the diverse identities or subjectivities of the network of activists involved, and to grassroots demands for social justice and social change. in addition to grassroots forms of transnational activism, there are transnational activist organizations that address a wide spectrum of social justice issues which extend beyond the territory of a state, such as those ranging from demands for fair trade, fair treatment, and human rights for vulnerable groups, to the eradication of poverty, violence against women, and authoritarian forms of rule. such forms of activism frequently engage in diverse struggles that can push social justice demands for human, migrant, and citizenship rights, gender equity relations, and sustainable public health, housing, and education rights and services to the transnational community agenda, despite conflicting pressures from certain states, private agencies, and international organizations (basok & ilcan, 2013; ilcan 2013a). these struggles involve equally diverse agendas, goals, and movement tactics. concurrent to transnational struggles for social justice are those movements that seek to exclude and define the social and political community in limiting and exclusionary ways, such as antigay or racist, xenophobic activism. in general, political participation in these and other similar forms of transnational activism is increasingly enhanced by information and communication technologies (icts) through, for example, quicker interaction, the sharing of strategies and information across massive distances, and the low costs of interactive communication (see bennett, breunig, & givens, 2008; gillan & pickerill, 2008). but gillan and pickerill (2008) also emphasize that activists have revealed concerns regarding uneven accessibility, surveillance, enigmatic and diffuse audiences, and difficulties in building trust online. given the diversity of goals, approaches, and political identities of the studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 transnational activism and social change 3 participants involved, transnational activism cannot be easily understood in comparable or equivalent terms. rather, it is influenced by the actions and engagements of specific kinds of participants, by the orientations and perspectives that guide the demand for future social, economic, and political transformations, and by the successes, challenges, and limitations that characterize its forms. for example, no borders—which emerged in 1999 with the aim of connecting pro-migrant and anti-capitalism protests against restrictive border controls, anti-migrant policies, and deportations—is an expanding coalition of diverse grassroots groups (anarchists, feminists, civil liberties groups, and migrant and refugee organizations) that works to interconnect people from different political practices and with different regional experiences (no borders, 2011). from our perspective, it is crucial to consider the historical, social, and political conditions that shape transnational forms of activism, that raise social justice questions about state and international practices and policies, and that foster rhizomatic links to other anticipated contestations, forms of knowledge, and everyday transformations (see also ilcan, 2013b; lacey, 2013). the articles in this special issue on transnational activism alert us to how transnational activism and struggles can involve different local, regional, national, transnational, and international activities that are fluid and characterized by varying network groups, agencies, and organizations that cannot be simply territorialized at the level of the nation state. in the first article on struggles against bilateral free trade agreements (ftas), aziz choudry explores the apparent disconnect between northern movements against global and regional free trade negotiations, such as through the world trade organization, and southern struggles against specific free trade agreements. he argues that a wide range of localized resistance movements have countered ongoing and specific trade agreements, including in south korea, central american free trade agreement countries (costa rica, honduras, nicaragua, el salvador and guatemala, and the dominican republic), ecuador and thailand, but with little attention from or engagement with transnational global justice activism. choudry contends that the successes (and sometimes lack thereof) and modes of activism arising from these mainly southern struggles could inform both global justice movements’ practice and thinking and dominant scholarly and movements’ conceptions of global justice. his analysis calls for greater attention from the north to the south, recognizing that connections are slowly forming between south-based anti-fta activists and that these social movements are vitally producing and sharing knowledge pertinent to the struggles against global capitalism. this role of networks is highlighted by luisa veronis in her examination of the role of non-profit sector networks in contributing to immigrant political participation. specifically, veronis explores the potentials and limits of the hispanic development council’s (hdc) networks at the community, city, and transnational levels. this council serves as an umbrella advocacy organization for agencies assisting latin american immigrants in toronto, canada. the ethnographic study of hdc seeks to address the role of networks studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 4 suzan ilcan & anita lacey of immigrant non-governmental organizations (ngos) and advances the argument that hdc networks demonstrate that advocacy in a context of neoliberal governance is possible. further, veronis demonstrates that nonprofit sector ngos, like hdc, can navigate multiple modes and scales of engagement simultaneously, and that they do not have to choose between a centre, margin, or middle ground position. knowledge production and dissemination as power is a central argument of carol harrington’s article that considers transnational feminist networks. harrington makes use of social movement and governmentality theories to explore the ways in which transnational or global women’s organizations have contributed to knowledge of women as a population category. in the field of development, for example, european and u.s. women’s organizations promoted international standards on women’s status, producing data and rankings, as a means to include women in global government. likewise, internationally networked women’s organizations have produced knowledge on who is safe, who is insecure, and how women are to be made safe. harrington provides a rich account of the power of international women’s organizations, and she argues that their power lies in production and dissemination of a category for government, that of women as cross border population category. in a very different focus on women’s activism to that provided by harrington, liza mügge presents an analysis of the extent to which turkish and kurdish migrant women in the netherlands have engaged in transnational activism before and after the fall of the berlin wall. the two women’s groups that are the focus of mügge’s study—the turkish women’s federation in the netherlands (htkb) and the international free women’s foundation (ifwf), present unique case-studies of transnational turkish and kurdish politics in the netherlands, which she argues is otherwise almost completely male-dominated. for both groups of women activists, mügge found that struggles for or concerns with gender equality were distinctly secondary to broader ideological focuses, which stem from political parties in their homelands. while gender remained subordinate as an issue for activism in these two organizations, mügge argues that after the end of the cold war, new social justice claims emerged and the groups continue to evolve as their transnational links with the “homeland” also change. marcia oliver’s article on transnational antigay activism’s interaction with and impact on local dynamics in uganda offers further insight into the complex relationship between local and transnational activist knowledge transfers. oliver demonstrates that antigay activism in uganda is shaped by the politics of the u.s. christian right’s pro-family agenda as well as local manifestations and interpretations of colonial-inspired notions of “african” sexuality and the increasing impacts of global neoliberalism. along with post-colonial scholars and activists, oliver argues that these latter effects are not only manifest in antigay activism but can also inform northern activists and donors working in defense of gay and lesbian rights, providing vital lessons for social justice activists’ engagement with local communities. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 transnational activism and social change 5 oliver’s contextualized examination of uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill offers awareness into the complex dynamics and expressions of local and transnational antigay activisms. she demonstrates that while the u.s. christian right continues to impact antigay discourse and politics in uganda, these influences are shaped by legacies of colonialism and the flow of capital and inequalities wrought by neoliberal globalization. moreover, this activism is also shaped by specific local particularities relating to “african” culture and tradition, neo-colonial influence and power, and national sovereignty and identity struggles which in turn present a keen sense of dynamism that belies a simple uni-directional notion of power in transnational activism. the next article provides a consideration of pro-same-sex marriage and anti-proposition 8 activism in california, u.s.a. alexa degagne examines the activism of three californian pro-same-sex marriage organizations, equality california, join the impact, and the courage campaign. she argues that these organizations adopted, challenged, or appropriated neoliberal and social conservative political rationalities in their strategies to promote greater social inclusion with regard to marriage. she finds that in the course of their campaigns all three organizations espoused certain elements of social conservative and neoliberal political rationalities in order to attempt to gain greater inclusion through same-sex marriage. degagne highlights the potential dangers of such movement strategies that potentially re-imagine spaces of exclusion. the exploration of these three elements of the “no on proposition 8” movements is also a pertinent reminder from degagne that the politics and movement tactics of the three organizations highlights the diverse politics of wider gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual movements. in the final article, nandi bhatia explores social justice-oriented south asian drama in canada. bhatia examines the dramas’ use of notions of home of origin to portray and bring to the fore issues of social justice and discrimination. she argues that this type of south asian drama serves as a vital art form for diaspora and non-diaspora as it provides a social text on rightsbased struggles. south asian drama therefore acts as political movement; its producers, participants, and audiences simultaneously produce and are introduced to new ideas of the homeland, as well as the new home, and social justice enacted in these spaces. this volume’s contributions provide compelling evidence that it is critical to consider how various forms of transnational activism can produce short or long-term change, contribute to new forms of knowledge and knowledge mobility, offer the potential for enlarging the social and political spaces of transnational activism, locally and globally, and raise questions about the role of powerful organizations and states in these and other similar processes (see also lacey, 2005; olesen, 2011; routledge & cumbers, 2009). continued research is needed on transnational activism to show how different forms of activism at the local, national, and international level are activated, how connections and fissures are created within and across groups and organizations, and how activist networks, agencies, and organizations are enlisted and how they imagine their efforts towards attaining social justice studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 6 suzan ilcan & anita lacey and social change. these and other related issues can be fruitfully explored through the expanding, interdisciplinary research that is currently being conducted on this theme, including the articles in this special issue. although outwardly diverse, the seven articles in this volume examine how various forms of transnational activism aim towards bringing about a more sociallyjust world and, equally, how vital it is to understand those that do not. these articles contribute to understanding the complexity of movement organizing and knowledge production across transnational social and political space, as well as the widely varied instrumental and less recognizable impacts of movements for change. it is our hope that these contributions will inspire further debates. references andrews, a. (2011). how activists “take zapatismo home”: south-to-north dynamics in transnational social movements. latin american perspectives, 176(38), 138-152. basok, t. & ilcan, s. (2013). issues in social justice: citizenship and transnational struggles. toronto: oxford university press. bennett, w. l., breunig, c., & givens, t. (2008). communication and political mobilization: digital media and the organization of anti-iraq war demonstrations in the us. political communication, 25, 269-289. gill, s. (2000). towards a postmodern prince? the battle of seattle as a moment in the new politics of globalisation. millennium, 29(1) 131-140. gillan, k. & pickerill, j. (2008). transnational anti-war activism: solidarity, diversity and the internet in australia, britain and the united states after 9/11. australian journal of political science, 43(1) 59-78. hadden, j. & tarrow, s. (2007). the global justice movement in the united states since seattle. in d. della porta (ed.), the global justice movement. cross-national and transnational perspectives (pp. 210-231). boulder, co: paradigm publications. ilcan, s. (ed.). (2013a). mobilities, knowledge and social justice. montreal and london: mcgillqueen’s university press. ilcan, s. (2013b). paradoxes of humanitarian aid: mobile populations, biopolitical knowledge, and acts of social justice in osire refugee camp.” in s. ilcan, (ed.), mobilities, knowledge and social justice. montreal and london: mcgill-queen’s university press. in press klein, n. (2002). fences and windows. dispatches from the front lines of the globalization debate. london: flamingo. lacey, a. (2013). symbolic knowledge mobilities and biopolitical governmentalities of resistance of soloman islands’ pipol fastaem. in s. ilcan, (ed.), mobilities, knowledge and social justice. montreal and london: mcgill-queen’s university press. in press. lacey, a. (2005). spaces of justice: the social divine of global anti-capital activists’ sites of resistance. canadian review of sociology and anthropology, 42(4) 403-20. no borders. (2011). homepage. retrieved from http://www.noborder.org/iom/ olesen, t. (2011). introduction. in t. olesen, (ed.), power and transnational activism (pp. 1-20). london and new york: routledge. pellow, d. n. (2007). resisting global toxins: transnational movements for environmental justice. cambridge, ma: mit press. pianta, m. & marchetti, r. (2007). global justice movements. the transnational dimension. in d. della porta (ed.), the global justice movement. cross-national and transnational perspectives, (pp. 29-51). boulder, co: paradigm publications. routledge, p. & cumbers, a. (2009). global justice networks: geographies of transnational solidarity. manchester and new york: manchester university press. manning et al final galley nov 24 15 correspondence address: kimberley ens manning, department of political science, concordia university, 1455 de maisonneuve west, montreal, qc, h3g 1m8; email: kimberley.manning@concordia.ca issn: 1911-4788   volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 fighting for trans* kids: academic parent activism in the 21st century kimberley ens manning concordia university, canada cindy holmes simon fraser university, canada annie pullen sansfaçon université de montréal, canada julia temple newhook memorial university, canada ann travers simon fraser university, canada abstract in this article we explore some of the affective and ethical dimensions that we have faced as parent academic-activists seeking to understand and undo some of the structural transphobia that currently exists in canadian society. informed by critical feminist, critical race and black feminist thought, trans* scholarship, queer theory, and anti-oppression analysis, we discuss how our academic-activism assumes complex configurations of privilege and vulnerability. keywords transgender; children and youth; autoethnography; parental activism; academic activism; social action when we apply the insights of queer and feminist theory to the work of raising children, we become invested in providing all children – not just those who show the signs of gender non-conformity – with the social, cultural and political tools they can use to simultaneously work with and against the gender binary. (ward, 2013, p. 47) fighting for trans* kids   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 119 introduction gender expression and gender identity, understood as binary concepts, that is, either male or female, are vivid examples of the very structure of domination upheld in western society. as academic-activists we have allied with our children and with many others to better understand, explain, and undo structural transphobia within broader contexts of ageism, racism, sexism, heterosexism, and the ever-increasing criminalization of poverty (hodgson, 2013; kumashiro, 2002; snorton & haritaworn, 2013). in this article we explore some of the affective and ethical dimensions we have faced as parent academic-activists fighting for our trans* children.1 many academic parents are familiar with the competing demands of parenting children while trying to complete book chapters, course lectures, and grant applications. it is almost an understatement to say that these demands are stressful, if not at times totally overwhelming.2 as the primary caregivers of transgender children, our academic work has, however, taken on a whole new layer of meaning that we could never have imagined prior to becoming parents. the allyship we undertake in relation to our children does not comprise a form of “courtesy stigma” (goffman, 1990, pp. 41-45), or the allyship of sympathetic individuals who become “courtesy members” of a marginalized group, as has recently been suggested of parents who publicly support their adult gay and lesbian children (johnson & best, 2012). rather, we occupy a position of liminality; most of us are not trans* but given our desire to ensure the well-being of our children, and the discrimination we face advocating for and with them, we live a commitment to our children that cannot be picked up or put down as we like.3 at the same time, our struggles are also shaped by our commitment to finding ways for our children and other children to safely speak their truth and self-advocate at a moment when they are perceived to lack the capacity for self-determination. informed by critical feminist, critical race and black feminist thought, trans* scholarship, queer theory, and anti-oppression analysis, we explore some of the anxieties and privileges that give rise to and shape our allyship. in particular, we consider how the economic, cultural, and social capital                                                                                                                 1  transgender or trans* is an umbrella term that describes a wide range of people whose gender identity or gender expression differs from what they were assigned at birth. it may include those who identify as transsexual, two-spirit, transitioned, bigender, genderqueer, cross-dressers, gender variant, gender fluid, or simply man or woman (grant et al., 2011; forge, 2012). in some contexts, an asterisk is used (trans*) to actively include non-binary and/or non-static gender identities. ‘gender creative’ is one of many terms that describe “children whose gender identity and/or gender expression differs from what others expect of their assigned (natal) sex. others include ‘gender independent’, ‘gender non-conforming’, ‘gender variant’, ‘transgender’, and in the case of aboriginal children, ‘two-spirited’” (pyne, 2013, n.p.). 2 see castañeda & isgro (2013); mason, wolfinger, & goulden (2013); and o’brien hallstein & o’reilly (2012) for three thoughtful recent explorations of gender and family in academia. 3 our reference to liminal allyship draws upon the work of ryan & runswick-cole (2008), who are academic parents of disabled children. kimberley ens manning, cindy holmes, annie pullen sansfaçon, julia temple newhook, ann travers   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 120 inherent in our academic positions enables us to support trans*-positive scholarship about gender independent children both within and outside of our university contexts. yet, even as we maximize these relations of power, we also recognize their limits; our power is conditional on secure academic appointments and tenure (circumstances disproportionately associated with whiteness and class privilege), on activist-positive and parent-positive academic cultures, and on our own finite energies to manage the many demands of teaching, research, parenting, and activism as they blur together, sometimes productively and sometimes problematically. as white scholars and teachers we also recognize our power to silence non-academic communities and epistemologies and thus work to build anti-racist strategies into our activism and scholarship. we begin with a brief discussion of some of the collective work by academics, practitioners, and community activists underway to create a more gender-expansive society. after an introduction to research methods, the main section of the article will focus on five short analytic autoethnographies. cindy explores the interplay between lived experience, queer and feminist community work, and the analyses of critical trans* academic-activists, and how these various facets shape her parenting, activism, and research; annie discusses how her background in ethics deeply informed her decision to accept her transgender daughter; kimberley reflects on how the intersecting processes of grant preparation, research, and writing propelled her into activism and provided her with new tools to understand and engage in social movement activism; julia uses insights from black feminist theorists to explore the pressures of silence and disclosure when parenting, activism, and academics overlap; and ann draws on her own scholarship in critical race theory and necropolitics to discuss the raced and classed dimensions of supporting a transgender child. as will be evident in the following discussion, academic work, activism, and parenting have become intensely ‘blurred’ in our lives. while the theoretical frameworks that have guided our scholarship have helped us navigate parenting our trans* children and provided us with resources and platforms from which to advocate for change, we all struggle with the costs of advocating for our children. background over the last five years, a small number of canadian educators, lawyers, academics, community activists, physicians, and youth have sought to educate the public about childhood gender diversity and to create new gender expansive possibilities in educational, social, and medical support and care for children and youth. disregarding theories that childhood gender nonconformity could be ‘fixed’ by altering parental behaviour, these individuals sought to challenge the systems of gender normativity not only affecting trans* children, but all children and youth; an approach that travers (2014, fighting for trans* kids   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 121 pp. 54-68) calls a “transformative gender justice perspective.” it was not until the national conference on gender creative kids held in october 2012, however, that some of us met together for the first time (manning, pullen sansfaçon & meyer, 2014; annie, ann and kimberley attended the conference). spurred on by that gathering, and a subsequent workshop held by rainbow health ontario a year later,4 many new academic collectivities have taken shape in the country, including the preparation of several large team grant applications. at the same time that all five of us have been involved in drafting grant applications, publication projects, and presentations focused on transgender children and their families, we have simultaneously become increasingly involved in public activism beyond the academy. in 2014, we participated in various forms of activism: annie filed a human rights complaint in quebec in the hope that her child might change her gender identification documents; ann and cindy worked hard with others to apply anti-racist ethics to found the british columbia safer schools coalition in support of the vancouver school board’s trans*-positive update to their gender and sexual diversity policy (see bc safer schools coalition, n.d.); julia began to offer training in children’s gender diversity to professionals who work with young children and founded both a local support group for parents of gender diverse children, as well as a national social media-based support group that now has nearly 300 members; and kimberley, as a founding member of gender creative kids canada, co-facilitated workshops on gender identity and expression at the english montreal school board. given our strong on-going commitments, all five of us have member research status in communities and projects supporting transgender children and their families. these experiences have provided us with a basic starting point for employing analytic autoethnography, the methodology we have adopted in writing this article. the value of analytic autoethnography is that it attends to narrative visibility of the researcher’s self, and incorporates a strong commitment to theoretical analysis and thereby engages in a larger enterprise of social science debate (anderson 2006, p. 378). the following five autoethnographies were written by each author and are based, in part, on semi-structured interviews – conducted in person or via skype – that kimberley undertook with annie (may 9, 2013), julia (november 21, 2014), ann (november 25, 2014), and cindy (january 12, 2015), and that annie undertook with kimberley (january 5, 2015). ann decided not to reflect on her interview per se, but rather to focus her autoethnography on a family crisis that emerged after the interview had already taken place.                                                                                                                 4 rainbow health ontario “works to improve the health and well-being of lgbtq people in ontario, and to increase access to competent and lgbtq friendly health care services across the province” (rainbow  health  ontario,  n.d.). kimberley ens manning, cindy holmes, annie pullen sansfaçon, julia temple newhook, ann travers   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 122 cindy – interdisciplinary studies (sociology, social work, geography): “not a problem of identity, but of discrimination.” my activism and scholarship about gender and sexual diversity and the marginalization of trans* and gender non-conforming people was already part of my life before i became a parent, with connections to my own lived experiences of hetero/cisnormativity and sexism as a queer femme partner of a masculine woman, combined with my community work in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit, queer (lgbt2sq) feminist, and other social justice movements. i became politically active in the late 1980s when i got involved in feminist activism on my university campus and worked as a frontline advocate in community-based feminist anti-violence organizations. through intensive dialogue with other activists (many of whom were lesbian feminists of colour and indigenous women) i was introduced to the writings of academic-activists audre lorde (1984), bell hooks (1989), chrystos (1988), leslie feinberg (1993, 1996), kate bornstein (1994), and others. i began to develop a critical analysis of the harmful interlocking effects of sexism, heterosexism, transphobia, racism, and classism in society, which in turn became the focus of my community-based and academic work. i worked with feminist nonprofit organizations and social justice movements addressing social and health inequalities and my subsequent academic research, which focused on colonial violence and violence in the lives of lgbt2sq people, grew directly out of these experiences. since welcoming our child into the world twelve years ago, my partner and i have consciously tried to bring a critical social justice approach to our parenting and family life. we embraced queer and anti-racist feminist politics; my partner expressed her masculine parenting identity as a ‘lesbian dad’ (fleming, 2011; holmes & fleming, 2009). our queer feminist values meant that we changed the words while reading children’s books, bought a diversity of clothing styles and colours for our child, avoided referring to ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ clothes, and in so many other ways tried to resist the gender binary by challenging sexist, racist, and heterosexist assumptions about what it means to be a girl/boy. but when our child began to experience discrimination based on their gender expression at age four and five, i developed a deeper understanding of the regulation of gender and the impact of gender-based violence and discrimination on gender non-conforming children’s health and well-being. [our child’s] gender non-conformity was not… something where i turned to anyone or anything about…until [child’s name] began to encounter discrimination from the outside world....but when they started to experience discrimination and harassment….i guess we started to really have problems at school when [child’s name] was in kindergarten because they were having problems accessing bathrooms and being harassed in the bathroom and being told they were in the wrong bathroom, being harassed on the playground… (cindy, individual interview, january 12, 2015) fighting for trans* kids   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 123 my partner and i had numerous meetings with the teacher, the viceprincipal, and the counselor at our child’s school. although they were caring, they did not know what to do beyond assigning a bathroom buddy (which was not enough). on the whole, we felt that the seriousness of gender-based violence in the lives of young gender non-conforming children was not understood and that the school lacked training and policies to create safe learning environments for gender diverse kids. i turned to support from transgender activist aiden key, who founded the gender odyssey family conference in seattle washington in 2007 for families of trans* and gender non-conforming children. here, i found the validation and concrete support i was looking for from someone with a critical analysis of the impact of gender-based and transphobic harassment and discrimination on the lives of young children like my own. i also turned to handbooks for families and professionals that address the experiences and needs of transgender and gender creative kids (brill & pepper, 2008; ehrensaft, 2011). however, i found it necessary to ground my understanding of my child’s experiences of discrimination and threat of violence in the work of critical trans* academic-activists (bauer et al., 2009; namaste, 2000; spade, 2011) and grassroots trans* community groups (e.g. forge, 2012; sylvia rivera law project, 2012). the theorizing and organizing by these critical trans* scholars and grassroots trans* community activists offers an intersectional framework to understand the broader cultural and political contexts of erasure that structure gender non-conforming and trans* children’s lives. namaste’s analysis of erasure has been critically important for theorizing and documenting the way trans* people are made invisible–through discourse and institutionalized practices–and excluded from health care, social services, and anti-violence organizing (see, for example, bauer et al., 2009). this work can help us more deeply understand the intersecting systemic and structural relations of power that marginalize trans* and gender non-conforming children. through my experiences as a parent i entered into new forms of advocacy and activism, including building a coalition to mobilize support for policies to support gender non-conforming and trans* children and youth in schools and developing new relationships with other parent activists of trans* and gender creative children. these forms of activism overlap with, and blur the boundaries between, my past and present academic research about violence in the lives of queer and trans* adults. they have also led to new research trajectories and academic collaborations centered on the health of trans* children and youth. this work, as a cisgender queer parent academic-activist, has been transformative on many levels. i had academic knowledge, i had community social work experience, i had my partner’s experience. but this is a…deeper level of understanding in seeing how my child navigates the world. i understand the policing of gender and its impact on their body on such a deep, deep level. (cindy, individual interview, january 12, 2015) kimberley ens manning, cindy holmes, annie pullen sansfaçon, julia temple newhook, ann travers   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 124 as a parent academic-activist of a gender creative child i am always learning. my learning is shaped by the complex intersections between our lived experiences (as a queer parent, my child and partner’s experiences), my past and present community work, critical scholarship and trans* activism, and the way my fear for my child’s safety and my fierce love for their happiness and well-being propels me toward further activism and research. annie – social work: “talk the talk, walk the walk.” values of social justice, self-determination, and human dignity, understood through anti-oppressive and critical lenses, have always been pivotal to my articulation of professional ethics in teaching, research, and professional practice in social work. from an early stage of my career, i have been driven by a desire to develop a deeper understanding of, and develop tools to facilitate, ethical practice and conduct in professional social work. to do so, a virtue ethics framework (macintyre, 1985; 1999) has led me to argue that ethical practice can be achieved through the development of character traits anchored in collectively agreed upon professional values that would lead a person to act ethically in any given moral situation, and to display those traits in every sphere of his or her life. virtue ethics is a form of moral philosophy proposed by aristotle that challenges the use of moral principles for ethical life and, instead, claims that one needs to develop character or personality traits that, once acquired, will always influence the person to act rightly. those traits, which are developed through habituation by drawing on practical reasoning abilities, have to strike a balance between vice and excess, and promote human flourishing of self and others. courage, which is neither recklessness nor cowardice, is often cited as a virtue (see pullen sansfaçon and cowden 2012 for further discussion). when i found myself parenting a trans* child, applying an analysis of gender and age discrimination5 with regard to broader social justice issues similarly helped me to accept my daughter as a transgender person who deserves my respect and support. furthermore, a virtue ethics framework has helped me in my journey to become an academic-activist, and to reflect on the way forward for us as a family when we moved to a new neighbourhood in 2009. at that time, my child was seven and increasingly persistent about her gender identity. as her mother, i had always been supportive of her true self, but perhaps because of worries about her security and what others might think of her, i was still a little reluctant to allow her to display her gender non-conforming behaviour outside of our home. i was also finalizing a book on social work ethics (pullen sansfaçon & cowden, 2012) that stresses the importance of critical                                                                                                                 5 in the province of quebec only adults can change their gender marker on official documents (e.g. birth certificate, health card, driver’s license). because transgender children and youth cannot obtain a civil status that matches their gender identity, many experience discrimination in their day-to-day lives. fighting for trans* kids   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 125 and ethical reasoning during deliberations about ethical issues and dilemmas. i vividly remember writing a case study about a gender non-conforming child, and thinking “my gosh, i have been off the track the whole time with my child!” accepting your child, despite his/her differences with others is fundamental to the value of human dignity and self-determination, but mobilizing oneself to challenge constraining environments is also essential to confronting oppression, furthering human rights, and defending the concept of social justice. integrating virtue ethics into my reflection on parenting therefore brought my understanding of gender identity and expression to a new level. my scholarly work has, in this sense, contributed to my reflection on, and understanding of, ethical approaches to parenting. however, embedding this theoretical framework into every sphere of my life has also led me to realize that ‘talking the talk’ was not sufficient: i needed to ‘walk the walk’ and to begin to challenge those inequalities and experiences of oppression in the life of my family. to do so, i needed to develop and draw on important character traits, such as critical thinking, courage, and righteous indignation. it is from this moment that i started working more proactively to make my daughter’s environment a safer place by challenging oppressive structures of our environment, rather than only trying to keep her safe inside the home. my position as a faculty member was definitely helpful in the process as it enabled me to network with other academic parents. indeed, being a professor played a key role in building my confidence and allowed me to move from advocate (supporting and defending my daughter's needs in her social environments such as school, health centre, etc.) to activist by attempting to challenge broader injustice through political and social action.6 it also gave me direct access to current scholarship, which i slowly began to draw upon to assert myself. to this end, being a scholar provided me with the legitimacy to take positions on the care of transgender children. yeah, so i think people around me are okay [with her being gender nonconforming]. i had some people who were not so keen on us facilitating [child’s name]’s transition, but then again it comes back to values and virtues. for me you know if i want to be coherent with who i am, then i’m not going to say ah yeah you know of course i understand what they’re saying, i understand its destabilizing, but it’s … in the end i always say it’s my way or the highway, for that [supporting my child] is non-negotiable. (annie, individual interview, may 9, 2013) also, as an academic, i could begin to engage in research and contribute to knowledge production on the topic of transgender children. however, i had to re-orient my research career and enter the field of gender studies with a phd in ethics. furthermore, the decision to engage in knowledge generation                                                                                                                 6 according to piven (2010) and flood, martin & dreher (2013), generating supportive networks of like-minded scholars is an essential component of undertaking academic activism.   kimberley ens manning, cindy holmes, annie pullen sansfaçon, julia temple newhook, ann travers   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 126 about transgender children and families also created new challenges, such as being a parent and a researcher engaged in the same issues that i experienced at home as a parent, in a world that seems to mostly value research production that is disinterested. i moved into a perplexing phase of my academic career when i first started to speak out as an activist. it’s about that balance between disclosing what i do for work and what i do for life. that’s the main challenge for me. because if i was not in my position, it’s like a bit of a vicious circle, because my position gives me access to resources to be able to advance the cause but i think if i didn’t have that position, i would be able to get out even more. it’s constraining and enabling. (annie, individual interview, may 9, 2013) it took me a long time to come to terms with the idea that i could undertake research on a topic so close to my heart without being biased. with time, however, i came to accept that research can be situated and critical. despite both its constraining and empowering possibilities, scholarship was central to my becoming an activist insofar as it provided me with access to knowledge and resources. if one is to integrate values into every sphere of one’s life, one must start by reflecting on one’s own possible relationship with the broader society, and how one would act if driven by social justice, human dignity, and self-determination. adherence to these values, which came through critical reflection and scholarship, was central in the early years of supporting my child as she affirmed her gender non-conformity, and will continue to be central in my scholarly activism on transgender children in the future. kimberley – political science: “the grant proposal as manifesto.” but the activism for me is really thinking about the more global changes that need to happen. we need to change society, not the child, right, and so that’s kind of been the approach since we prepared the first grant application. (kimberley, individual interview, january 5, 2015) for the past 20 years, i have focused much of my scholarship on the gender dynamics of social movements in the people’s republic of china. it thus came somewhat of a surprise to my tenure review committee in january 2011, when i submitted a social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc) insight development grant application on the topic of the social and political worlds of gender non-conforming children and their families in canada, great britain, and the united states.7 the decision to write this team grant had been last minute. up until that point, i had struggled to see how my scholarship could be translated into an arena in                                                                                                                 7 the sshrc insight development grant is designed to support scholars who are choosing to depart from their previous area(s) of expertise to pursue a new focus of research. fighting for trans* kids   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 127 which i had carried out no previous work and about which i felt i understood so little. in part, my struggle can be attributed to the fact that i was still beholden to a view that the study of transgender children was the exclusive domain of physicians, psychologists, and educational specialists, not parents or political scientists. academic activism was not something unknown to me; in fact, my master’s thesis focused on the work of chinese women academic-activists in the early 1990s. in the heady two years leading up to the 1995 fourth world conference on women (a moment when the term gender, shehui xingbie, was first being used in the people’s republic of china), i sought to understand how women intellectuals were striving to change conditions in china through their researching, speaking, and organizing efforts. but it was not until i realized that my child’s gender expression was likely going to be a lightning rod for discrimination and violence that i felt propelled to resituate my own scholarship in more political terms. writing the grant would play a key role in this process. over the course of three weeks of intensive research and writing, something quite unexpected happened: my fairly isolated journey as a parent advocate began to shift into being part of a larger community, and my own understanding of the issues affecting trans* children and their families began to politicize. on the one hand, colleagues immediately stepped forward to provide the ideas and research support necessary to craft a strong grant application. on the other hand, the process of reading and writing rapidly transformed my own consciousness, helping me to begin the hard work necessary to understand the intersecting origins of trans* oppression. in particular, i drew upon the work of judith butler (1990; 1993) to make sense of the pathologizing literature that still dominated the north american study of childhood gender non-conformity and viviane namaste (2000) to understand the erasure of trans* lives in canada. by the time my coapplicants and i finished and submitted the final draft of the proposal we not only had a template for a research project, but a powerful blueprint for social action. although we did not understand it then, we helped lay the conditions for the emergence of our own activism. four years and a conference, website, community-based organization, and several media events later, i have just finished writing a paper on the recent explosion of parental advocacy in canada (manning, 2015). similar to annie, i have abandoned the idea that my ability to contribute to new thinking in this arena requires me to work from a place of ‘detached neutrality’. instead, i have fully embraced analytic autoethnography as a central methodology in my work, a concept i was first introduced to in the context of collectively working on this article, “fighting for trans* kids.” at the same time, i have found my understanding of the gender dynamics of social movements immeasurably enriched by my academic parent activism. indeed, even with an open academic culture, extensive social support, and a feminist partner, i have encountered tremendous challenges to ‘undo gender’ kimberley ens manning, cindy holmes, annie pullen sansfaçon, julia temple newhook, ann travers   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 128 as a parent activist – challenges that were not unfamiliar to many chinese revolutionaries who struggled to juggle pregnancy and parenting with their activism. to cite just one example, my child ‘came out’ to her peers at school (an extremely emotional process that included a facilitated class discussion by a professional psychologist) just days after my family moved into a partially renovated house and the same day i opened the gender creative kids conference. on maternity leave and caring for an eight-month old baby, it is unsurprising that i collapsed with bronchitis less than two weeks later. for me, there is little question that the embodied and affective processes of ‘mother-as-activist’ have at times pushed me to the limits of my endurance and health, a critical struggle that continues to shape my understanding of social movements to this day. julia – sociology: “silence.” your silence will not protect you. (audre lorde, 1984, p. 41) fear can be silencing. for parents of transgender children, silence about our children’s gender diversity may also feel like the only protection we can offer from a world that poses significant dangers to their safety and well-being. at the same time, our silence serves to construct gender diverse children as an invisible population (hellen, 2009), further contributing to their marginalization. as activists and academics we constantly have to weigh the risks and benefits of silence as we advocate for our children and seek to educate others about gender diversity. while there were incredibly difficult personal moments when my child transitioned, i was fortunate that my academic background provided me with a framework to question the pathologization of children’s gender diversity and come to terms with my child’s identity. the work of ann fausto-sterling (2000; 2012) made clear for me the complex inseparability of social and biological explanations of gender. my background in feminist theory, particularly black feminist and queer theories, helped me to understand how dominant discourse can silence the experiences of marginalized groups. i’m a sociologist working in health. so […] it’s not a big leap for me to see transgender people’s lives as being medicalized and how transgender people have been defined and continue to be defined by the medical system. it disturbs me sometimes how much, still, transgender people have to depend on the medical system for legitimacy. (julia, individual interview, november 21, 2014) in contrast, family, friends, educators, and health care providers were much less comfortable with the concept of gender diversity. many reacted initially to our child’s identity with shock and confusion, and we experienced outright hostility and rejection from a close friend who viewed transgender children through the lens of pathology. fighting for trans* kids   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 129 there’s so much fear […] there’s so many myths and misunderstanding. i think unfortunately sometimes when people are driven by fear, that’s when it gets the scariest. that’s when people have these almost violent reactions […]. (julia, individual interview, november 21, 2014) for a time i felt immobilized and silenced by the loss of my friend, by the reactions of disbelief and disgust we encountered, and by fear for my child’s future. however, i came to realize that the only way i could cope with that fear was to fight to change this transphobic world that sees my child as a threat. pain does not have to be stifling, but can be a catalyst for social change. just as bell hooks (2010) writes about turning passion into action for political change, i realized that my love and desire to protect my child could be funneled into a powerful force for activism and advocacy. i also recognized that i could draw on my privilege as an academic health researcher in order to be seen as a legitimate advocate for the well-being of trans* children. today, i regularly give training sessions on children’s gender diversity, and my academic privilege provides a safe ‘mask’ from behind which i can educate and advocate while still protecting my child’s privacy. however, a recent experience made me realize that this mask of silence can also render me unexpectedly vulnerable to the emotional work (hochschild, 2012) of advocacy. i was asked to give a workshop on children’s gender diversity to the staff of a junior high school. the response to this presentation usually involves many questions and considerable skepticism, but in the end the experience has been almost entirely positive. however, on this day, just as i began, one of the educators in the audience stood up, banging the desk in front of him. he loudly identified himself as “conservative” and opposed to the “progressive agenda” that “these parents are trying to push.” throughout the presentation, he interrupted over and over again, ranting against transgender children and their parents with anger and derision. this individual confronted me as an academic; i believe he would not have spoken so aggressively had he realized he was attacking me personally. externally, i remained calm, but internally i was shaking with the overwhelming fear and anger of a parent defending her child. it took immense emotional effort to maintain my professional academic mask. by the end of the workshop, i was physically and emotionally exhausted. it is a well-known feminist saying that the personal is political and, equally, the political can be deeply personal. when your activism is connected to your parenting, and you bring your activism into your academic work, all three overlap until the boundaries are so blurred as to be almost non-existent. this blurring of boundaries creates a constant tension: are my actions to try to change the world and to make it safer for my child simultaneously making her unsafe? when i give an academic presentation to fellow researchers or a training session to health care providers, i have to make a judgment about how much to reveal or hide about my child and our family. will this information help create awareness and understanding? how safe is it for kimberley ens manning, cindy holmes, annie pullen sansfaçon, julia temple newhook, ann travers   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 130 these people to be aware that my child is transgender? even my participation in this article, identifying myself as an academic parent of a transgender child, is a risk, and not one that i have taken lightly. i constantly second-guess myself on the risks and benefits of silence. in the darker moments, when facing an audience who would see my child as aberrant or ill, and my support for her as misguided or even abusive, the mask of silence feels safer. but silence also creates shadows, creates fear, and creates shame. as audre lorde so wisely reminded us, silence may appear safe, but its protection can only ever be a precarious illusion. ann – sociology: “that grinding feeling in my gut.” i am a sociologist who works primarily on issues relating to sex and gender while working hard to integrate critical race and class analyses into my scholarship and activism. i am the leader of a research team that is working to develop a video game model of the life experiences of transgender and gender non-conforming children and youth in the greater vancouver area, and i engage in social action research and participate in local, national, and international initiatives on behalf of transgender and gender non-conforming children and young people. i am also queer and trans* myself and experienced a childhood of abuse, gender oppression, and self-hatred. i became as invisible as i could to survive adolescence, but university gave me a safe place to come out of hiding. since coming out of that first closet, i keep striving for greater authenticity and accountability. my efforts are grounded in my own privilege as i enjoy a charmed life as a white, middle-class professor and habitually comport myself with a sense of polite entitlement and self-confidence. i am the white trans/queer parent of two black children, one of whom is transgender and i am working out much of my and their lived reality through my academic work. the current manuscript i am working on situates transgender and gender non-conforming children in the radical critical race theory of necropolitics. as mbembe (2003) defines in his groundbreaking piece on the subject, necropolitics represents state power over who lives and who dies. some members of society are awarded with life and life-sustaining resources while others are not. though mbembe focuses explicitly on state atrocities on a large scale (e.g. colonialism, the nazi concentration camp, apartheid, gaza), queer and trans* necropolitical analyses (haritaworn, kuntsman & posocco, 2014; puar, 2007; snorton & haritaworn, 2013) identify systemic racism, classism, and the power of the state as axes of precarity that shape which categories of queer and transgender members of the social body live and which either die or suffer a ‘slow death’ (berlant, 2007). my own trans/queer identity, the blackness of my children and the transgender being of my daughter means that i have ‘skin in the game’ and a fighting for trans* kids   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 131 sense of urgency around the ways in which race and gender place my children at risk. while i have been an anti-racist ally since childhood, i notice how easy it is, in some ways, to relax into the comfort of the whitestream (denis, 1997; krebs, 2012) as a shaping force of my world, 8 or to expect to be congratulated for resisting racism. but, for the past 10 years, anti-black racism has been deeply personal to me. my 10-year-old child is a transracially adopted african-american, 9 transgender citizen of canada, with white queer parents, one of whom identifies as trans/non-binary (and both of whom have demanding full-time jobs), a white older sister, and a younger brother who is african-american but lighter in colour and for whom it seems everything comes easier. while i am currently on study leave with book project deadlines, my partner and i have made the difficult decision to remove our 10-year-old from the school she has known and loved since kindergarten, and where her transgender transition and status has been almost entirely nontraumatic. i have worked so hard to find safe spaces for our black transgender daughter, including investigating various schools from the time she was threeand-a-half and wearing dresses ‘as a boy’. until recently, the school our daughter has attended has provided a warm climate. since the fall of 2014, however, she has been explosive at home and talking about self-harm. she also became engaged in a hostile dynamic with a newly arrived child in her class who has experienced trauma of his own. the ongoing challenges resulting from our daughter’s learning disabilities, combined with being targeted by this student (behaviour that has been stopped but that has had a residual effect on my daughter’s sense of comfort), has pushed our vulnerable child over the edge. the solution for children like mine, recommended by the professionals we have consulted with (and paid for out of pocket), is some form of home schooling until an appropriate alternative school is found. i may just be the most reluctant home schooler in the world, but pulling her as closely into my orbit as i can right now while seeking out a range of professional and social support for her, feels like the only right thing i can do. and i am not sure it is right at all: our daughter is incredibly upset to be kept out of school. this, not my book project, has me up at five in the morning with that grinding feeling in my gut. the kind of support our daughter needs requires wealth and maternal resources and this rankles me. in addition to the personal wealth necessary to support her, it requires a bank of maternal caregiving (messner, 2011). that                                                                                                                 8 for example, i arrived at the u.s. border recently to realize that i had left my passport at home. although i was worried, i knew my race and class privilege meant there was a good chance my drivers’ license would be accepted as sufficient identification. as i expected, the whitestream operated as a magic carpet; i was allowed to proceed with a warning to “remember to bring my passport next time.” 9 the term “transracially adopted’ refers to circumstances where child and adoptive parents belong to different racialized groups.   kimberley ens manning, cindy holmes, annie pullen sansfaçon, julia temple newhook, ann travers   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 132 grinding feeling in my gut is there because my partner and i, with all the cultural and material resources that we have and are able to muster, are unable to protect this child from harm. according to dean spade (2011), gender, race, class, and immigration status are vectors of vulnerability and security that impact life chances. add systems of normative ability to that list. parents of children who are made vulnerable by these vectors fear for their children’s well-being in deep ways. i see our daughter’s future as a black transgender woman or as an effeminate man (she is still deciding) and want her to excel in school as a way to limit her vulnerability, but this is not happening and i am extremely worried about her. when our daughter was a baby and i thought of her as a boy, i would resist comments from white people such as “oh, i bet he’s going to be a great football player,” with “whatever he decides to do after medical school is up to him.” this was an effective way of interrupting racist stereotypes of physicality and embodiment but it traded on wealth and cultural capital. that my partner and i may fail to protect our daughter from exposure to future ‘risk’ is behind that grinding feeling in my gut. how are we ever going to protect her and give her the resources she needs not just to survive but thrive? i would do almost anything. closing thoughts in an era of “intensive mothering” (hays, 1996, pp. 6-9) and in the face of the contradictory institutional pressures that comprise academia, our liminal allyship assumes affectively complex and, at times, contradictory configurations. underlying all five narratives is our fierce desire, paraphrasing cindy, to protect our children from harm and to give them the resources they need to survive and to thrive. our need to protect our children is a strength, pushing us forward to actively fight for the rights of all trans* kids. but it is also what renders us vulnerable to the emotional strain of liminal allyship, no matter the resources we are able to access. in the attempt to counter the gendered and racialized discrimination that our children and so many other children face, we have all deepened in our understanding of the queer, trans*, feminist, and anti-oppression scholarship that has so long stood as a basis for making sense of our own identities and for guiding our research. for the three of us who are tenured professors, the academy has provided more than theoretical resources; it has supported our professional decision to begin to research, write, publish, and speak publicly about the challenges facing trans* children in canada today. the 2012 conference on gender creative kids, and the website that was designed in its wake, for example, would never have transpired without the support of colleagues and funding from sshrc. in a post-recession era of fiscal austerity, it is heartening that grant review boards have recognized this work as valuable and worthy of significant funding resources. for the two of us who hold postdoctoral fellowships and are currently seeking permanent fighting for trans* kids   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 133 tenure track positions, the future is less certain. without the institutional security that tenure affords, our capacity to continue to engage in academic activism remains in flux. at the same time, we are also gendered as ‘mothers’ (although ann’s transgender non-conformity creates a queer fit for this category). more specifically, we are gendered as white, middle class, academic ‘mothers’; a privileged site of economic, cultural, and social capital. indeed, we are ethically accountable to our scholarly and activist communities. and to our children and families, in the context of this privilege. a central challenge to our liminal allyship thus not only entails interrogating the costs of silence versus speech and the deep imperative to protect our children, but also interrogating the limits of methodologies, including the autoethnographic method, in which speech itself is weighted with power and thus requires vigilant theoretical interrogation.10 we recognize that even as we advocate for our trans* children and for the realization of gender justice more broadly, we often find ourselves crashing ashore on the racialized, classed, and gendered landscape that is early 21st century academic motherhood. acknowledgements this research was supported by a social sciences and humanities research council of canada (sshrc) insight development grant. file number: 6112012-0078. cindy acknowledges funding from michael smith foundation for health research. references anderson, l. (2006). analytic autoethnography. journal of contemporary ethnography, 35(4), 373-395. bauer, g. r., hammond, r., travers, r., kaay, m., hohenadel, k., & boyce, m. (2009). "i don't think this is theoretical, this is our lives": how erasure impacts health care for transgender people. journal of the association of nurses in aids care, 20(5), 348-361. bc safer schools coalition. retrieved may 27, 2015, from http://bcsaferschools.com berlant, l. (2007). slow death (sovereignty, obesity, lateral agency), critical inquiry, 33(4), 754-780. bornstein, k. 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(2012). hockey and the reproduction of colonialism in canada. race and sport in canada: intersecting inequalities. toronto: canadian scholars press. kumashiro, k. (2002). troubling education: queer activism and anti-oppressive pedagogy. new york: routledge falmer. lorde, a. (1984). sister outsider: essays and speeches. new york: crossing press. macintyre, a. (1985). after virtue (2nd ed.). london: duckworth. macintyre, a. (1999). dependent rational animals -why human beings need the virtues. london: duckworth. fighting for trans* kids   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 118-135, 2015 135 manning, k., sansfaçon, a. p., & meyer, e. j. (2014). introduction. in e. j. meyer & a. p. sansfaçon (eds.), supporting transgender and gender creative youth: schools, families, and communities in action (pp. 1-12). new york: peter lang. manning, k. (2015). attachment politics and the rights of the trans child. 2015 law and society association conference, seattle, wa, usa. mason, m., wolfinger, n. h., & goulden, m. (eds.). (2013). do babies matter? gender and family in the ivory tower. new jersey: routledge university press. mbembe, a. (2003). necropolitics. public culture, 15(1), 11-40. messner, m. (2011). gender ideologies, youth sports, and the production of soft essentialism. sociology of sport journal, 28, 151-170. namaste, v. (2000). invisible lives: the erasure of transsexual and transgendered people. chicago: university of chicago press. o'brien hallstein, d. l., & o'reilly, a. (eds.). (2012). academic motherhood in a post-second wave context: challenges, strategies, and possibilities. toronto: demeter press. piven, f.f. (2010). reflections of scholarship and activism. antipode, 42(4), 806-810. puar, j. (2007). terrorist assemblages: homonationalism in queer times. durham, nc: duke university press. pullen sansfaçon, a., & cowden, s. (2012). the ethical foundations of social work. new york: routledge. pyne, j. (2013). rainbow health ontario fact sheet: supporting gender independent children and their families. retrieved from http://www.rainbowhealthontario.ca/wpcontent/uploads/woocommerce_uploads/2012/10/rho_factsheet_gic_e1.pdf rainbow health ontario. retrieved june 22, 2015, from http://www.rainbowhealthontario.ca/ ryan, s., & runswick-cole, k. (2008). repositiong mothers: mothers, disabled children and disability studies. disability & society, 23(3), 199-210. snorton, c., & haritaworn, j.a. (2013). trans necropolitics: a transnational reflection on violence, death, and the trans of colour afterlife. in s. stryker & a. aizura (eds.), transgender studies reader 2 (pp. 66-76). new york: routledge. spade, d. (2011). normal life: administrative violence, critical trans politics, and the limits of law. brooklyn, ny: south end press. sylvia rivera law project. (2012). systems of inequality: poverty and homelessness. retrieved from http://srlp.org/files/disproportionate_poverty.pdf travers, a. (2014). transformative gender justice as a framework for normalizing gender variance among children and youth. in e. j. meyer & a. p. sansfaçon (eds.), supporting transgender & gender creative youth: schools, families, and communities in action (pp. 5468). new york: peter lang. ward, j. (2013). get your gender binary off my childhood! towards a movement for children's gender self-determination. in m. friedman & f. j. green (eds.), chasing rainbows: exploring gender fluid parenting practices (pp. 43-51). bradford, on: demeter press. abji final feb 7 20 correspondence address: dr. salina abji, sociologist and community-based research consultant; email: salina@salinaabji.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 punishing survivors and criminalizing survivorship: a feminist intersectional approach to migrant justice in the crimmigration system salina abji canada abstract scholars have identified crimmigration – or the criminalization of “irregular” migration in law – as a key issue affecting migrant access to justice in contemporary immigrant-receiving societies. yet the gendered and racialized implications of crimmigration for diverse migrant populations remains underdeveloped in this literature. this study advances a feminist intersectional approach to crimmigration and migrant justice in canada. i add to recent research showing how punitive immigration controls disproportionately affect racialized men from the global south, constituting what golash-boza and hondagneu-sotelo have called a “gendered racial removal program” (2013). in my study, i shift analytical attention to consider the effects of the contemporary crimmigration system on migrant women survivors of gender-based violence. while such cases constitute a small subgroup within a larger population of migrants in detention, nevertheless scholarly attention to this group can expose the multiple axes along which state power is enacted – an analytical strategy that foundational scholars like crenshaw (1991) used to theorize “structural intersectionality” in the us. in focusing on crimmigration in the canadian context, i draw attention to the growing nexus between migration, security, and gender-based violence that has emerged alongside other processes of crimmigration. i then provide a case analysis of the 2013 death while in custody of lucía dominga vega jiménez, an “undocumented” migrant woman from mexico. my analysis illustrates how migrant women’s strategies to survive gender-based violence are re-cast as grounds for their detention and removal, constituting what i argue is a criminalization of survivorship. the research overall demonstrates the centrality of gendered and racialized structural violence in crimmigration processes by challenging more universalist approaches to migrant justice. keywords crimmigration; migrant justice; intersectionality; gender; race; illegality; gender-based violence; immigration detention; canada salina abji studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 68 on december 1, 2013, lucía dominga vega jiménez – an undocumented migrant woman of colour from mexico – was apprehended by canadian border authorities in vancouver after being pulled aside by transit officers for a fare-enforcement infraction. lucía was subsequently held in immigration detention for 19 days, the majority of which she spent in prison – a controversial practice given that immigration detention is supposed to be administrative in nature and not punitive (global detention project, 2012; amnesty international, 2015; united nations committee on human rights, 2015). on the day before lucía was scheduled to be deported, she attempted suicide in an airport detention facility monitored by a private-security firm with no training in trauma-informed crisis response (burgmann, 2014; dawson, 2016). lucía later died in hospital, although news of her death was not made public until one month after she passed, when a journalist caught wind of the case and began asking questions (dyck, 2015). migration scholars have approached cases like lucía’s as mounting evidence of “crimmigration” (stumpf, 2006), defined as state laws, policies, and practices that work to criminalize a range of irregular and temporary forms of migration. the us crimmigration system is characterized by increasing convergences between criminal law and immigration policy, where unauthorized forms of migration are more likely to be punished as criminal infractions rather than administrative violations as has historically been the case (armenta, 2017; hernández, 2017; menjívar, cervantes & alvord, 2018). in the canadian case, remaining in a country without authorization is still on the books as a civil infraction, yet the tactics used to enforce immigration controls are increasingly punitive – constituting what weber (2002) terms procedural and symbolic criminalization. the tactics of crimmigration in canada range from political discourse and immigration policies that frame (often racialized and poor) refugee claimants and asylumseekers as “bogus” or fraudulent, to the police-style tactics of immigration raids and the housing of detainees in jails without time limits on how long an individual can be held (arbel & brenner, 2013; bosworth & turnbull, 2014; goldring & landolt, 2013; walia, 2013; razack, 2017; silverman, 2014).1,2 while scholarship on crimmigration has provided important insights into the forms of injustice that migrants like lucía increasingly encounter at the border and beyond, the gendered and racialized implications of crimmigration remain largely underdeveloped in this literature (garner, 2015; golash-boza & hondagneu-sotelo, 2013). indeed, a number of feminist and critical race –––––––––––––––––––––––– 1 although estimates suggest between 200,000-500,000 non-status migrants living in major cities across canada, there is no publicly available reliable data on this population (goldring, berinstein & bernhard, 2009). the fact that these numbers have been cited for over a decade remains a major issue. 2 migrants living without legal status in canada may have (often ineffectual) status elsewhere such as their countries of origin, but a small percentage have no status anywhere and are stateless. punishing survivors & criminalizing survivorship studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 69 scholars have intervened in recent years to better unpack how race, gender, and other axes of difference are mobilized in the enactment of punitive immigration controls (armenta, 2017; cervantes, menjívar & staples, 2017; menjívar et al., 2018; moffette, 2018). taken together, these scholars have begun to show the disproportional impacts of mass deportation and detention on racialized men from the global south, who are more likely to be framed as criminals and threats to the social order as a justification for the scaling back of rights (golash-boza, 2016; pratt, 2005). i add to this research by using a feminist intersectional approach to consider the gendered and racialized implications of crimmigration for migrants like lucía. in doing so, i shift analytical attention to lucía’s complex positionality – not only as a migrant woman of colour living without authorization in canada, but also as a survivor of gender-based domestic violence, whose claim for refugee status was denied by the canadian state.3 in doing so, i draw from the foundational work of feminist intersectional scholars like crenshaw (1991) who positioned the issue of gender-based violence against women of colour as central to theorizing structural intersectionality. crenshaw defines structural intersectionality as the co-constitution of gendered, racialized, and classed structures of state power in law (see also bhuyan, osborne, zahraei & tarshis, 2014; maynard, 2017; walia, 2013). i apply this approach to extend crimmigration scholarship, providing a reading of lucía’s case that is informed by my own fieldwork and interviews with service providers working within the anti-violence against women sector in toronto, canada (abji, 2016, 2018; abji, korteweg & williams, 2019; bergen & abji, 2020). i argue that what gets criminalized in such cases is not only irregular migration, but also the strategies of survivorship that racialized and migrant women have developed to address the multiple forms of violence in their lives. the research thus draws important attention to what i argue is a growing nexus between migration, security, and gender-based violence that is largely overlooked by literature on crimmigration, and that extends more recent feminist and critical race critiques of the crimmigration thesis. the article begins by defining crimmigration and its impact on irregular migrants in the canadian detention system. i then return to early work by feminist intersectional scholars to develop my analytical framework, which centres the lived experiences of racialized migrant women survivors of gender-based violence in detention. in applying this analytical framework to my reading of lucía’s tragic death in detention, i trace the gendered and –––––––––––––––––––––––– 3 while it is beyond the scope of this paper, the experiences of (racialized and poor) trans-people in immigration detention is another under-studied sub-group that is likewise important for examining the structural violence of crimmigration (collier & daniel, 2019; lee, 2019). in this paper, i use the category women to refer to women-identified individuals, recognizing the fluidity of gender identity. salina abji studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 70 racialized injustices that survivors experience in a system that not only criminalizes their migration pathways, but also criminalizes the strategies of survivorship developed by migrant women and their advocates to navigate the multiple sources of violence in their lives. crimmigration and migrant justice in canada since the early 2000s, scholars have approached state practices of mass deportation and detention as evidence of a growing crimmigration system (bourbeau, 2018; hernández, 2017; stumpf, 2006). in the us context, which has predominated within crimmigration scholarship, the decision to re-enter a country from which one has been deported is punishable as a criminal offence under regulations introduced in 1996 (stumpf, 2006).4 as crimmigration scholars have argued, the move to treat irregular migration as a crime rather than a civil infraction has played a major factor in the direct criminalization of migrant populations (armenta, 2017; hernández, 2017). importantly, this convergence between criminal and civil law is always partial: that is, it often does not come with the same (albeit limited) protections such as the right to appeal, the right to appointed counsel, protection against self-incrimination, and other constitutional rights (stumpf, 2006, pp. 392-395). as such, the forms of migrant injustice experienced by illegalized migrants in a crimmigration system are often two-fold: consisting both of forms of criminalization for infractions that used to be considered civil infractions, as well as an absence of basic civil liberties afforded at least in theory to citizens who commit crimes. crimmigration in the canadian context has received less attention compared to the us, in part because irregular migration still remains on the books as a civil infraction. likewise, the population of non-status migrants in canada is a smaller percentage of the population compared to the us, and rates of deportation and detention are also much lower in the canadian case.5 yet, as i and others have argued, processes of crimmigration and the related securitization of migration have nevertheless shaped migrant precarity in canada, and certainly shaped the tragic circumstances surrounding lucía’s death (abji, 2016; bergen & abji, 2020; bosworth & turnbull, 2014; goldring & landolt, 2013; molnar & silverman, 2018). there are three interrelated factors that characterize crimmigration in the canadian immigration system: (1) criminalizing and restrictive immigration –––––––––––––––––––––––– 4 under the 1996 illegal immigration reform and immigrant responsibility act (iirira). 5 numbers of deportations in canada have declined steadily in recent years under the liberal government, peaking in 2012 at 18,921 removals under the previous government (cbsa, n.d.). detentions in canada peaked in 2013 with 14,362 detentions that year. rates have since levelled off to between 6,000-8,000 detainees per year at the time of writing (gdp, 2012, 2018). for a more detailed discussion on the factors shaping migrant precarity in canada compared to the us see goldring et al. (2009) and goldring & landolt (2013). punishing survivors & criminalizing survivorship studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 71 regulations, (2) police-style border enforcement tactics, and (3) punitive conditions of detention without independent oversight. for example, a series of changes to refugee determination introduced between 2008 and 2014 introduced symbolic and procedural criminalization in the treatment of refugee claimants and asylum-seekers (atak, hudson & nakache, 2018; béchard & elgersma, 2012; bhuyan et al., 2014; weber, 2002). the rightwing conservative government in power at the time mobilized criminalizing notions of fraudulent or “bogus” refugees to justify restrictions on access to permanent residency, often combined with neoliberal rationalizations of efforts to cut down wait times and the backlog of so-called legitimate claims (silverman, 2014).6 for example, refugee claimants from mexico were reclassified under changes introduced in 2012 under bill c-31 as claimants from “safe” countries or “designated countries of origin” (dco). by classifying mexico as a “safe” country and hence unlikely to produce refugees, legislators justified restrictions on the timelines for making claims (from 60 days to 30-45 days) – a seemingly bureaucratic change that in reality imposed procedural unfairness based on country of origin, given that claimants had less time to secure a lawyer and to prepare necessary testimony for making their claims (atak et al., 2018). claimants under dco also had no right of appeal, although they could ask for a federal court review but would remain deportable during this time (béchard & elgersma, 2012). the federal government was widely criticized for including countries like mexico and hungary on the list of “safe” countries given well-documented human rights abuses and targeting of minority groups such as state impunity in the deaths of women (or femicide/feminicide) in mexico and the political persecution of roma refugees in hungary (garcía-del moral, 2016; jric, 2012).7 these criminalizing restrictions targeting immigration “fraud” and “bogus” refugees were coupled with the expansion of police-style border enforcement tactics in the post-9/11 period. in 2003, the canadian government created the canada border services agency (cbsa) and soon after launched a multipleborder strategy that included inland enforcement by both uniformed and plain-clothed officers seeking out undocumented migrants in workplaces, hospitals, transit, schools, child welfare and women’s shelters (abji, 2016; arbel & brenner, 2013; bhuyan et al., 2014). crimmigration scholars have pointed to the mirroring of police tactics by immigration authorities as a key component of the criminalization of irregular migration, and often buttressed –––––––––––––––––––––––– 6 importantly, the regulatory changes introduced by the federal conservative party were the culmination of decades of both liberal and conservative restructuring of the refugee and immigration system introduced through neo-liberalization of social services such as settlement and migration in the 1990s. these “reforms” were intensified with the rise of more right-wing conservative policies on immigration and security in the post-9/11 period (abji, korteweg & williams, 2019; bhuyan et al., 2014). 7 in may 2019 the liberal party in power removed all countries from the dco list. salina abji studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 72 by cooperation with local police (stumpf, 2006). moreover, critical race scholars have extended this analysis by showing how punitive immigration enforcement often mobilizes dominant notions of racialized communities as more dangerous or as sites of criminal or terror-related activities requiring increased profiling and surveillance (armenta, 2017; moffette, 2018; romero, 2008). a third interrelated factor of crimmigration in canada is punitive conditions of immigration detention. scholars have documented the wide degree of discretion that individual officers have for detaining migrants both prior to deportation, as well as for those attempting entry such as certain classes of asylum-seekers and unauthorized border crossers under legislation introduced in 2012 (moffette, 2018; silverman, 2014).8 critical race scholars have extended these findings to show how dominant ideas of racialized men as security threats or criminals are mobilized in these everyday moments of discretionary power by border officers. this criminalizing discourse obscures the ways in which the detention of these groups facilitates global capitalism by removing those dispossessed by economic restructuring (golash-boza, 2016). indeed, by the cbsa’s own admission, roughly one-third of detainees held in 2009-2010 were failed asylum-seekers considered “low-risk” by officials at the time of their detention (eidn, 2014; gdp, 2012). what this in effect means is that people are being detained in part because their stated fear of returning (where they may face death, harm, or human rights abuses) could easily lead to an officer considering them a flight risk and then detaining them. the discretionary power of officers to detain is exacerbated in canada by the lack of independent oversight of the cbsa coupled with the controversial practice of holding detainees in jails rather than administrative holding centres.9 this gives rise to procedural forms of criminalization, where a lack of clear jurisdiction between provincial jails and the federal border agency leads to punitive treatment. indeed, the global detention project has reported cases where prison guards were not even aware of which prisoners were immigration detainees being held on administrative grounds and which were serving sentences for crimes (gdp, 2018). it is thus unsurprising that the mental health needs of migrant detainees – who may have experienced trauma from war or displacement and who often experience psychological and physical symptoms during the removal process – are often overlooked –––––––––––––––––––––––– 8 the federal conservative government passed anti-smuggling legislation (bill c-31) in 2012, which included provisions for mandatory detention for “irregular arrivals” (see atak et al., 2018). 9 canada routinely detains non-citizens in jails rather than administrative holding centres that are specifically designed for immigration detainees (gdp, 2018; pratt, 2005). roughly 40-60% of detainees are held in correctional facilities on any given day, where they mix with the prison population and have limited access to legal, medical, and social supports (gros & van groll, 2015). punishing survivors & criminalizing survivorship studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 73 and rarely understood in a prison system that is already limited in the availability of health supports (gros & van groll, 2015). these punitive conditions are further exacerbated in the canadian case, where migrants can be held indefinitely as there are no current time limits on detention as in other immigrant-receiving countries (gdp, 2018; track & paterson, 2017). importantly, the indefinite nature of detention has been compared to psychological torture and is widely regarded by the un and international human rights organizations as an arbitrary and unjust deprivation of human liberty (gros & van groll, 2015; track & paterson, 2017). canadian human rights organizations and activist groups have brought to the attention of the un the multiple human rights violations that migrant detainees experience: while the un has reprimanded canada for its use of jails and indefinite detention, at the time of writing there has been no movement on the part of the government to establish an independent armslength body for addressing and investigating non-citizens’ complaints against the cbsa (unhcr, 2012; united nations committee on human rights, 2015).10 the crimmigration thesis thus offers a compelling if harrowing analysis of immigration detention in canada. however, a growing number of feminist and critical race scholars have argued that the crimmigration thesis is not enough – more attention to the intersectional dynamics of crimmigration with other systems of oppression such as gender, race, and class is needed to fully understand the forms of migrant injustice that diverse populations experience (bosworth, fili & pickering, 2016; golash-boza, 2016; golash-boza & hondagneu-sotelo, 2013; maynard, 2017; nobe-ghelani, 2016; razack, 2017; walia, 2013). in what follows, i outline a feminist intersectional approach for analyzing such cases and then apply this approach to a deeper reading of lucía’s story as evidence of the criminalizing of migrant women’s strategies of survivorship at the nexus of migration, security and genderbased violence. advancing feminist intersectional approaches: centering the survivorship of migrant women of colour a feminist intersectional approach to crimmigration extends beyond a singular focus on the convergence between criminalization and immigration –––––––––––––––––––––––– 10 at the time of writing, the liberal government has ear-marked funds for an arms-length monitoring unit for cbsa in its 2019 budget, following decades of activist organizing and at least 16 reported deaths in immigration detention since 2000 (molnar & silverman, 2018; tunney, 2019). however, the implementation of this unit has yet to materialize. activists remain cautiously optimistic. salina abji studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 74 in law, policy and practice. rather, such an approach examines the constitutive role that race, gender, class, and other salient axes of difference play in shaping the processes and effects of crimmigration across diverse migrant populations. in their work on mass deportation and detention in the us, golash-boza & hondagneu-sotelo (2013) use such an approach to analyze the disproportional impacts of punitive immigration controls on racialized men from the global south. they explain how crimmigration processes function as a “gendered racial removal program” where dominant notions of racialized masculinity as threatening (whether by virtue of criminality or security threats) are used to justify the expulsion of a group whose labour power is expendable after decades of neoliberal restructuring and the crisis of global capitalism (golash-boza & hondagneu-sotelo, 2013). dominant notions of racialized masculinity as threats are powerful in part because they draw from tropes that are deeply-embedded in histories of settler-colonialism and racial capitalism that continue to shape and inform national identity (glenn, 2015; maynard, 2017; stasiulis & jhappan, 1995). more recently, cervantes et al. (2017) analyzed the racialized and gendered logics used to justify the detention of latin-american female detainees in the us, as well as a growing for-profit industry providing alternatives to detention. here they show differences in how racialized femininity is mobilized by state authorities, in this case drawing on dominant notions of latina women as threats to the social order in terms of their reproductive power, their sexuality, or as “burdens” on the welfare state. on the surface, these stereotypes seemed to produce less punitive treatment compared to the treatment of racialized men, such as alternatives to detention that position the state as a paternalistic protector of so-called bad mothers whose vulnerabilities must be weighed against punishment. however, as cervantes et al. (2013) show, this “soft punishment” translates into equally punitive treatment in practice within a carceral system. indeed, emerging scholarship on migrant women in detention is buttressed by a burgeoning grey literature documenting the forms of discrimination that migrant women experience in detention (brané & wang, 2013; molnar & silverman, 2018; nijc, 2014; rabin, 2009).11 detained women are more likely to be asylum-seekers compared to men; they are more likely to be single-parents compared to men, with less overall social support in mitigating the effects of incarceration for themselves and their families; and women are more likely than men to report experiencing domestic violence or sexual assault prior to detention (brané & wang, 2013; nijc, 2014; rabin, 2009). –––––––––––––––––––––––– 11 there is also a growing grey literature documenting the detention of children, whether unaccompanied or as part of family units (gros, 2016). in the canadian case, children accompanying single mothers have been counted by cbsa as “visitors” rather than detainees, and until recently have not been included by cbsa in official statistics. punishing survivors & criminalizing survivorship studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 75 in the canadian case, there is a significant lack of publicly available data on the number of men, women, and trans people in detention, let alone on the prevalence of sexual violence.12,13 i thus build upon this growing body of scholarship to begin tracing the racialized and gendered dimensions of migrant justice in the crimmigration system. in doing so, i return to early feminist work on intersectionality, which centred the issue of gender-based violence as central to understanding black women’s experiences (combahee river collective, 1983; crenshaw, 1991; lorde, 1984; see also glenn, 2015; maynard, 2017; walia, 2013; carasthathis, kouri-towe, mahrouse & whitley, 2018). for early-intersectional theorists like crenshaw and others, the issue of violence against women of colour was central to any structural analysis. this was in part because they understood the ways in which state power and the political movements that resist state power could produce multiple forms of violence and erasure in racialized women’s lives over and above the interpersonal forms of violence typically studied. in her widely-cited article, crenshaw (1991) theorizes structural intersectionality as the co-constitution of gendered and racialized structures of state power in law. she argues that by centering the experiences of women of colour, scholars can tease out the ways in which different systems interact to produce particular forms of precarity that are obscured when focusing solely on singular analysis, such as race-based analyses that assume a male subject, or gender-based analyses that assume a white subject. writing at a time when the us crimmigration system was in its infancy, crenshaw’s structural-intersectional analysis of genderbased violence was prescient in calling attention to the role of deportation and immigration policy as one of several key factors shaping access to justice for black women – an aspect of her early work that has been largely overlooked (1991, p. 1245). crenshaw offers two critiques of restrictive immigration controls in theorizing structural intersectionality. first, she challenges the lack of a race and gender-based analysis in legislation targeting immigration “fraud’ which neglects to consider the effects of such policies in increasing racialized women’s risks of gender-based violence (1991, p. 1247). second, she critiques legal changes that take gender into account but assume a white, middle-class female subject. in such cases, the specificities of minority women’s experiences are excluded, thus producing barriers for individual women to access supports. moreover, crenshaw points to how women of colour and their families and communities are perversely criminalized –––––––––––––––––––––––– 12 a recent journalist investigation found five reported allegations of sexual assault within the cbsa between 2016-2018 but no details were available on the outcome or actions taken (swain, wesley & davis, 2019). 13 in terms of demographics, earlier accounts from scholars suggest that roughly 70-75% of detainees are male, and that racialized men from the global south are the dominant group in detention in canada (pratt, 2005). salina abji studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 76 through such efforts to protect white women (crenshaw, 1991, pp. 12481249). crenshaw’s early work on the structural violence of immigration controls for survivors of gender-based violence has been followed by a burgeoning feminist field addressing this issue (abji, 2018; abji et al., 2019; bhuyan et al., 2014; glenn, 2015; maynard, 2017; stasiulis & bakan, 2005; walia, 2013). taken together, feminist critiques of immigration controls in canada illustrate what i have termed a growing nexus between migration, security and gender-based violence. this nexus includes formalized practices of border officials entering women’s shelters or standing around the perimeter as part of the broader crackdown on migrant populations living without status (abji, 2016; villegas, 2015). it also includes legislation targeting genderbased violence introduced by the right-wing conservative government, such as the “zero tolerance for barbaric cultural practices act” introduced in 2014, which combined new restrictions on immigration with changes to criminal and family law, thus mobilizing the issue of gender-based violence to advance a carceral crimmigration agenda (abji et al., 2019; singh, 2016). by bringing attention to this nexus in my re-reading of lucía’s experiences of detention and death, i thus extend crimmigration scholarship as well as recent critiques by feminist and critical race scholars. in what follows, i outline my methodology before turning to lucía’s story. methodology while there have been at least 16 reported deaths in immigration detention in canada since 2000, lucía’s story offers an important – if harrowing – opportunity to analyze the experiences of survivors of gender-based violence in detention (gdp, 2018; molnar & silverman, 2017). because her case received national media attention along with a widely publicized coroner’s inquest and social movement advocacy campaigns, there are more details of her story publicly available for analysis compared to other deaths in detention. this is important for research on immigrant detainees, since researchers must navigate a complex process of protecting migrant vulnerability and privacy while trying to make visible that which state institutions actively try to render invisible (goldring & landolt 2013). my analysis of lucía’s story is thus illustrative rather than representative, offering only those details that are publicly available in order to develop an analytical model for theorizing migrant justice more broadly. my methods were three-fold. first, i conducted discourse analysis of thirtyfour artifacts directly relevant to lucía’s case, including newspaper articles, cbsa memos, the coroner’s inquest report, campaign press releases, and policy reports. in my analysis i coded examples of symbolic, procedural and direct criminalization across three intersecting axes of oppression: immigration status, racialized-gender, and gendered-racialization (glenn, punishing survivors & criminalizing survivorship studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 77 2015). i then triangulated this analysis with findings from my broader research project examining the impacts of immigration policies on survivors of gender-based violence. this included data from my ethnographic fieldwork among migrant rights activists in toronto (2011-2015) and interviews with 30 service providers working with migrant women survivors of gender-based violence. when the story of lucía’s tragic death in detention made national headlines in january 2014, i was in the midst of conducting fieldwork and interviews, and thus had the opportunity to discuss the impacts of detention on survivors with a sub-sample of interviewees. while the interviewees were based in toronto (not vancouver where lucía was detained), they nevertheless were key informants with 15 to 25 years of experience working with refugee and migrant women across a range of organizations such as women’s shelters, settlement agencies, and legal and medical clinics. through active participation in the field, i also co-organized a community forum in toronto on immigration detention, which included a live re-enactment of a detention hearing of a racialized migrant woman detainee, followed by lively discussion among activists and service providers who work with migrant women survivors. my analysis of lucía’s experiences in detention is thus grounded in extensive fieldwork among migrant rights groups, to which i bring added insights from feminist intersectional scholarship on migrant justice and gender-based violence. in what follows, i first offer an account of lucía’s story, focusing on police-style border enforcement practices and punitive conditions of detention that shaped her experience. i then apply an intersectional analysis to trace mutually-constituting factors of gender, race, and immigration status that together produce migrant (in)justice for survivors of gender-based violence. through this unpacking, i argue that migrant women’s strategies of survivorship are criminalized – symbolically and procedurally – leading to a form of migrant injustice not adequately captured in existing scholarship on crimmigration. honouring lucia’s story: crimmigration and migrant (in)justice in canada lucía dominga vega jiménez was a mexican national whose application to remain in canada as a refugee was denied in 2010. while details of her refugee claim are private, the inquest into her death revealed that she feared violence from an abusive ex-boyfriend as well as fear of “torture and death” were she to return to mexico (ministry of justice, 2014). when her refugee claim was rejected in 2010, lucía applied to have her case reviewed by the federal court, but her application was dismissed (woo, 2014). it is believed that the cbsa initially deported lucía to mexico, and that she subsequently re-entered canada without authorization where she lived without status and salina abji studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 78 worked for cash as a cleaner at a vancouver hotel (burgmann, 2014; woo, 2014). under canadian law, lucía’s decision to re-enter canada without authorization was a civil infraction (i.e., not a criminal infraction). yet, as i go on to show, the procedures used to detain her, along with the conditions of her detention, were highly punitive in practice and constituted evidence of crimmigration for non-citizens in canada. lucía was detained on december 1, 2013. at the time, she was travelling on the vancouver skytrain when transit officers pulled her aside after she could not produce proof of payment. instead of issuing her a ticket, transit officials called the cbsa who checked lucía’s name against their database and dispatched an officer to the scene. as legal scholars have pointed out, lucía was not informed of the right, nor given the opportunity, to speak to a lawyer before the cbsa officer questioned her at the skytrain office (gros & van groll, 2015). according to a lawyer from the bc civil liberties association, the cbsa officer “purported to be her friend and introduced herself as a ‘liaison person’” (gros & van groll, 2015). however, she asked lucía questions “that, when answered, resulted in self-incrimination, and the resulting information was eventually used against her in a detention review hearing” (gros & van groll, 2015). when news reports of lucía’s death surfaced, activists in vancouver launched a “transportation not deportation” campaign to protest what they saw as clear and on-going racial profiling of latino, black, and indigenous communities by vancouver transit police (tnd, 2015).14 it was soon revealed that a memorandum of understanding (mou) had been in place between greater vancouver transportation authority and the cbsa at the time that lucía was questioned by transit officers who then notified the cbsa, triggering her detention by authorities (ball, 2014; tnd, 2015). but lucía could just as easily have been apprehended by border officers at her workplace or in going about her daily life – a form of precarity that scholars have shown has negative psychological effects on migrant well-being as well as intensifying the risks of exploitation from abusers threatening to report migrants to authorities such as employers, landlords, intimate partners and family or community members (bhuyan et al., 2014; goldring & landolt, 2013). lucía was subsequently held in immigration detention for 19 days, the majority of which she spent at alouette correctional centre for women (accw), a provincial jail. as noted at the inquest, lucía was issued prison clothes and was held in the high-risk portion of the jail, despite being detained for administrative reasons (ministry of justice, 2014). –––––––––––––––––––––––– 14 according to an internal cbsa memo obtained by the tnd campaign via freedom of information request, in 2013 transit police made 328 referrals to cbsa, of which 62 resulted in investigations for removal (tnd, 2015). punishing survivors & criminalizing survivorship studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 79 the inquest showed how her repeated requests for medical appointments to deal with physical and mental health symptoms were ignored – in one case due to a bureaucratic error where the prison database mistakenly showed that she had already been transferred to another facility leading to a cancelled medical appointment (ministry of justice, 2014). records of her final request for medical care showed that lucía self-identified as needing “crisis” level support, yet without any independent oversight her family had little legal recourse to address potential violations of lucía’s right to basic health supports – a complaint that had a better chance of being addressed if lucía had been incarcerated for a criminal offence rather than a civil violation.15 when lucía was handcuffed and transferred to the vancouver airport detention facility or “immigration holding centre” (ihc) the day before her scheduled deportation, she was held in a facility described by advocates as a “dungeon” with no windows and where even the lawyers of detainees report being unable to access their clients housed there (shantz, 2014; ministry of justice, 2014; walia & hassan, 2014). although the vancouver facility is operated by the cbsa, the government contracts out elements of the operation to private companies, including the private security firm that was responsible for lucía’s safety and security at the time of her detention (gdp, 2018). according to the inquest, the cbsa had failed to adequately monitor and address on-going problematic practices on the part of the private security company: the officers on duty during lucía’s detention had falsified the logs indicating that they had done rounds of the facility whereas they had instead been playing video games in the office (ministry of justice, 2014). on the day before lucía was scheduled to be deported, she attempted suicide in an airport detention facility monitored by a private-security firm with no training in trauma-informed crisis response (burgmann, 2014; dawson, 2016). at the time of lucía’s attempted suicide in the facility, there was also no female officer on duty, and officers had received no training in providing trauma-informed crisis response (outside of basic first aid and training in how to handcuff and detain prisoners). the facility itself was also not equipped with standard harm-prevention protocols used in jails, which might have prevented lucía from being able to attempt suicide by hanging herself in the shared shower facilities. it was only when other detainees alerted the security officers by repeatedly banging on the door of their office that an officer was able to break into the locked bathroom and attempt to resuscitate lucía. lucía never regained consciousness and later died in hospital on december 24, 2013. she was 42 years old. the news of lucía’s –––––––––––––––––––––––– 15 coroners inquests by definition cannot find “fault” but can only make recommendations (molnar & silverman, 2018; paterson, 2014; shantz, 2014). the jury at lucía’s inquest made 23 recommendations including that an independent ombudsman be appointed to mediate any complaints put forward (ministry of justice, 2014). salina abji studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 80 death was not made public until one month after she passed, when a journalist caught wind of the case and began asking questions. punishing survivorship, criminalizing survivors: a feminist intersectional analysis of lucía’s story the regulations targeting immigration “fraud” and “bogus” refugees that shaped lucía’s migration pathway were problematic in lacking a gender and race-based analysis. by declaring mexico a “safe” country, the legislation failed to recognize pressing issues of feminicide and state impunity in addressing the deaths of mexican women, as well as the role that canadian foreign policy may have played in intensifying conditions of poverty and instability that form part of the conditions of violence in mexican women’s lives (aberman, 2014). shortened timelines for making refugee claims also lacked a trauma-informed approach to refugee determination: such an approach would take seriously the uneven process that survivors of genderbased violence often require to make sense of their experiences of violence and the effects of trauma in being able to recount details, as well as the significant barriers that survivors may encounter in collecting the necessary evidence to support claims (bhuyan et al., 2014). while changes to the refugee determination process were thus problematic for all refugee claimants hailing from so-called safe countries, gendered and racialized notions of safety and legitimacy shaped the forms of political and procedural injustice experienced by migrant women seeking to survive gender-based violence in situations where they felt unsafe enough to uproot their lives. most of the service providers i interviewed also described how regulatory changes not only punished women’s attempts to migrate as a survival strategy, but also criminalized the strategies that advocates themselves had developed over decades of anti-violence work. for example, in the early 1990s, feminist activists were successful in pressuring the canadian government to develop the first gender-based policy recognizing genderbased violence and other forms of gendered persecution as legitimate grounds for filing a refugee claim in canada (abji, 2016). this policy helped establish canada’s reputation on the world stage as a leader in addressing the gendered dimensions of refugee determination. however, in the decades that followed, contradictions emerged between policy and practice when claimants filing gender-based refugee claims encountered re-victimization and discrimination in the process – including, for example, dominant myths about sexual violence that positioned racialized women in particular as lying to take advantage of canada’s humanitarian policies (bhuyan et al., 2014; see also mckinnon, 2016). many of the service providers i spoke to described how they developed strategies to help women in crisis navigate a problematic system: one such strategy, for example, involved applying for humanitarian and punishing survivors & criminalizing survivorship studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 81 compassionate (h&c) grounds to remain in the country at the same time that one filed a refugee claim. this double-application allowed migrant women survivors to better negotiate re-victimization and improve their chances of obtaining permanent residency as a key strategy in violence prevention. if a woman’s claim for refugee status based on gender-based violence was rejected, she could remain in the country while her h&c claim was being processed. the lengthy timelines for refugee applications to be processed also allowed applicants to gather the necessary evidence to build their h&c case, such as evidence of strong ties to the community – a factor that many survivors struggled with given the effects of isolation, poverty, and trauma typically associated with domestic violence. however, in 2012, the federal government introduced a one year bar on applying for h&c for failed refugee claimants, during which time migrant women like lucía would have been deportable (mattoo, mann & romano, 2017). the service providers i interviewed highlighted this change in particular as evidence that the strategies of survivorship that they had themselves developed as advocates to help survivors navigate a racist and sexist system, were being systematically criminalized through restrictive regulations (abji, 2018). the lack of an intersectional and trauma-informed analysis in regulations targeting refugee protection was coupled with expanded border enforcement practices at this time. initially, the cbsa’s practice of police-style border enforcement tactics also lacked an intersectional analysis. indeed, there is a large body of feminist scholarship showing the effects of women’s fears of deportation in cases of domestic or interpersonal violence: abusers often use threats of deportation as a tool of power and control, and women’s fears of being deported (or having their family members deported) may prevent them from reporting or leaving abusive situations (bhuyan et al., 2014; carasthathis et al., 2018; crenshaw, 1991; razack, 2002; stasiulis & bakan, 2005; walia, 2013). this is true also for other forms of gender-based violence, such as sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape at the hands of employers, landlords, faith leaders, family or community members, or others in positions of power. the service providers whom i interviewed pointed out, however, that the increased presence of border officers (uniformed and plainclothed) that they witnessed as cbsa expanded its practices, made it much more difficult to mitigate against migrant women’s fears of deportation – particularly for racialized women whose communities were already overpoliced. several described a case in 2006 when a racialized non-status woman was handed over to the cbsa by toronto police after reporting domestic violence to authorities (landolt & goldring, 2013). activists immediately responded to the case and were successful in pressuring the toronto police to adopt a “don’t ask” policy, where police officers were not to ask about immigration status unless they had a bona fide reason to do so (abji, 2018). however, activists were unsuccessful in their attempts to combine this with a “don’t tell” policy, meaning that there is no firewall that salina abji studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 82 prevents toronto police from reporting cases to the cbsa (abji, 2018). at the time of lucía’s detention, vancouver police had no dadt (don’t ask, don’t tell) policy in place, thus affecting the likelihood of non-status witnesses or victims of crime coming forward to report.16 when more reports began to surface of cbsa officers entering or standing around the premises of women’s shelters and agencies offering anti-violence against women programs, activist groups across the country launched a national campaign in 2008 against the practice, called the “shelter sanctuary status” campaign (abji, 2016; villegas, 2015). it was largely in response to pressure from advocates that the cbsa decided to formalize its problematic practices: in 2011, the agency issued a policy directive outlining its justification for entering women’s shelters, which included a series of protocols for how to do so with “sensitivity” (abji, 2016). as i have argued elsewhere, the directive re-framed women’s human rights to protection from gender-based violence as a “lower order” concern – equivalent to that of a special interest group – that did not detract from the state’s sovereign authority to enforce borders across any territory in its jurisdiction, including women’s shelters (abji, 2016, 2018). what this assertion in fact produced, i argue, is a criminalized framing of women’s efforts to survive – through, for instance, seeking shelter or protection from gender-based violence – where the act of living without authorization is decontextualized and rendered a threat to the safety of the canadian population that can only be addressed through removal (abji, 2016). thus, the cbsa’s justification of border enforcement in women’s shelters was implemented despite protests from activist groups, including major state-funded women’s organizations. in this way, the cbsa prioritized discourses of national security and risk to safety for the canadian population over decades of feminist research and activism on the role of deportation as a barrier in the global fight against gender-based violence. this re-casting of migrant women’s efforts to survive as acts requiring expulsion can likewise be seen in the framing of lucía’s expressed fears of returning to mexico as constituting a flight risk requiring her detention. indeed, many of the service providers i interviewed were critical about the discretion of individual cbsa officers to detain as a type of “entrapment” for survivors of gender-based violence, where survivors’ fears of violence and death at the hands of abusive partners were perversely understood as justifications for deprivation of liberty – a particularly egregious practice given international guidelines on the use of administrative detention as “a last resort” (amnesty international, 2015). –––––––––––––––––––––––– 16 at the time of writing, vancouver police have adopted a similar policy as toronto where they will not ask about immigration status “unless there is a legitimate reason” to do so, again leaving the practice itself open to the discretion of individual officers (canadian press, 2018). punishing survivors & criminalizing survivorship studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 83 in lucía’s case, a pre-removal risk assessment (prra) could have acted as a safeguard against deportation to a situation of high risk (i.e., risk of persecution, torture, risk to life, cruel or unusual punishment). the service providers i spoke to who worked with failed refugee claimants like lucía, however, described significant systemic issues in survivors’ access to this mechanism. for example, migrants facing deportation have only 15 days to apply from the point at which a cbsa officer determines that they are eligible to apply for a prra. during this time, the individual is not subject to removal but may be detained. evidence presented at the inquest showed that lucía intended to apply for a prra, however, the process itself proved challenging due to difficulties meeting with legal counsel, language barriers and challenges accessing an interpreter, lack of access to the necessary paperwork which did not travel with detainees, and multiple issues with the phone system that limited the capacity of detainees to access necessary evidence (gros & van groll, 2015; ministry of justice, 2014). one service provider i interviewed described how the process of prra was difficult enough for migrant detainees, but that for survivors in particular, the process was fraught with “procedural unfairness” (interview, toronto, 2014). as she explained: “this is really hard for anyone who has experienced trauma, but especially for women who are survivors of violence, where it takes so long for people to even be able to speak about their experiences, to remember their experiences, to understand what’s relevant, to get evidence, it takes so long” (emphasis in original). in lucía’s case, when the deadline for her prra passed, she contacted a cbsa officer in a panic to let him know that she still wanted to apply. reports showed, however, that the cbsa officer failed to inform lucía of her right to apply regardless of missing the deadline – instead the officer told her it was too late to apply, and she would be deported (ministry of justice, 2014). in addition to the problematic conditions of detention experienced by all detainees, my interviewees pointed out how practices of confinement can also be triggering for survivors of gender-based violence, who may experience additional psycho-social health impacts from being detained (goldring & landolt, 2013). while we cannot know the specific health impacts of detention on lucía, who according to the inquest self-reported as being in “crisis,” many of the service providers i interviewed described how detention exacerbated the effects of gender-based violence and trauma in migrant women’s lives (ministry of justice, 2014). indeed, evidence presented at the inquest described lucía as “withdrawn and uncommunicative” in her final days. one of her detention hearings needed to be cut short because “she was sobbing uncontrollably” (ministry of justice, 2014). as one of my interviewees put it, “detention is the nice immigration word for it, but it’s horrific. it’s jail. it’s not supposed to be punishment, but it is… pretty much every woman i work with has identified the immigration system as another form of trauma” (interview, toronto, 2014). perhaps it is not surprising then, salina abji studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 84 that activists responding to crimmigration in canada often described deportation and detention as forms of state violence against women – a framing that i observed frequently over my four years in the field (abji, 2016). lucía’s tragic suicide and death within that system can thus be seen not as an aberration or exception to the rule, but rather as an outcome of that systemic violence. discussion and conclusion in this research, i showed how current approaches to crimmigration were useful yet limited in teasing out the convergences between criminalization and immigration that shape the experiences of non-citizens. in my case analysis of lucía’s tragic death in detention, i demonstrated how securitized policies against “immigration fraud” shaped the contexts of reception that lucía experienced as a refugee claimant from mexico. the canadian state’s expansion of border enforcement practices in the post-9/11 period not only intensified her experiences of precarity as an undocumented migrant living in vancouver, but also exposed her to punitive practices mirroring criminal prosecutions, such as her housing in a women’s prison. when i centred lucía’s positionality as a survivor of gender-based violence, however, a deeper story emerged not sufficiently addressed in the crimmigration literature. applying crenshaw’s notion of structural intersectionality, i demonstrated how, for survivors of gender-based violence like lucía, immigration is not only a pathway to citizenship, but also a strategy for surviving the multiple sources of violence in their lives. i then argued that the growing nexus between migration, security and gender-based violence effectively punished strategies of survivorship used by oftenracialized migrant women as a key component of crimmigration processes. drawing from my own fieldwork and interviews with advocates, i showed how the strategies that feminist organizations had developed to help migrant women navigate access to citizenship were routinely shut down through antifraud and anti-crime measures. these were often because of the genderedracialized effects of seemingly gender-neutral and race-neutral policies. in lucía’s case, restrictions on access to refugee claims limited the timeframes that she and others like her had access to in order to gather evidence in a system already rife with misogynistic beliefs and practices. her detention in a women’s prison exposed lucía to potential re-traumatization as well as new risks of experiencing sexual violence without independent oversight, in addition to the mental health effects of deportation and detention that come with such punitive measures for all detainees. finally, the lack of independent oversight meant that the series of bureaucratic errors and systemic violations of her rights that lucía encountered failed to offer her the protection from self-harm that she might have otherwise had. overall, my re-reading of lucía’s story showed how crimmigration is not only a form of legal violence punishing survivors & criminalizing survivorship studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 67-89, 2020 85 affecting migrant access to justice, but also a way in which survivorship – or migrant women’s strategies for surviving gender-based violence – are also being criminalized through these processes. while my case analysis was illustrative rather than representative, the findings have important implications for crimmigration scholarship moving forward. first, the research calls for greater attention to the complex positionality of racialized women survivors of gender-based violence. this would necessitate better access to data ranging from the demographic composition of migrants in detention to the lived experiences of survivors across multiple categories of difference both prior to and in detention. indeed, future research should continue to push the intersectional frame further to consider how gender-based violence intersects with other salient dimensions such as sexuality, gender-identity, ableism, ageism and so on (stasiulis, 1999). finally, attention to the intersectional dimensions of crimmigration have important implications for how migrant justice is theorized and achieved. by illustrating the ways in which crimmigration punishes survivors and criminalizes survivorship, this research calls for a more robust understanding of the links between migrant justice and freedom from genderbased violence as fundamental to the project of reforming and transforming the crimmigration system. acknowledgements with respectful gratitude to lucía dominga vega jiménez: may your story help others. thank you to the research participants who so graciously shared their insights and knowledge with me. i also gratefully acknowledge comments from the editors and anonymous reviewers, as well as from daiva stasiulis, kristie o’neill, paulina garcía-del moral and workshop participants at carleton university and the university of toronto who provided generative feedback on this paper. this research was supported by funding from the social sciences 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(2014, october 2). electronic monitoring not an alternative to immigration detention. province opinion. retrieved from https://theprovince.com/opinion/harsha-walia-and-syed-hussan-electronic-monitoring-notan-alternative-to-immigration-detention weber, l. (2002). the detention of asylum seekers: 20 reasons why criminologists should care. current issues in criminal justice, 14(1), 9-30. women for refugee women. (2015). i am human: refugee women’s experiences of detention in the uk. retrieved from http://www.thebromleytrust.org.uk/files/wrw_iamhuman.pdf woo, a. (2014, january 31). woman who died in cbsa custody feared returning to domestic trouble in mexico. globe & mail. retrieved from https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/woman-who-died-in-cbsacustody-feared-returning-to-domestic-trouble-in-mexico/article16644691/ rogers final correspondence address: matthew rogers, faculty of education, university of new brunswick, fredericton, nb e3b 5a3; email: mrogers2@unb.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 2, x-xx, 2017 volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools: tensions between critical representation and perpetuating gendered and heterosexist discourses matthew rogers university of new brunswick, canada abstract although participatory media practices are often adopted to address social issues with youth in school and community contexts, there is a lack of critical analysis of the visual and discursive representations that organize student-produced participatory films. to respond to this concern, i employ critical discourse analysis to examine a series of films that were created for a new brunswick school-based participatory filmmaking program that i coordinate, called what’s up doc? since the project’s inception in 2009, students have produced over 60 films that have raised institutional critiques, troubled inequitable discourses, and addressed social justice issues. drawing attention to discourses that framed students’ films, i show how the work may perpetuate, rather than fully resist, marginalizing discourses, narratives, and visual representations. in particular, i show how the films may reproduce and authorize sexist discourses, demeaning narratives, and heteronormative assumptions. youth may have undertaken filmmaking to generate social commentary and resist inequity, but critical engagement with the what’s up doc? program demonstrates how discursive power operates on, in, and through participatory media texts. keywords participatory video; critical pedagogy; education; critical discourse analysis; critical filmmaking pedagogies introduction although participatory media practices are often adopted in educational contexts to address social issues, there is a lack of critical analysis of the visual and discursive representations that organize student-produced participatory films. more generally, as low, brushwood rose, salvio and palacios (2012, p. 50) suggest, when participatory media practices are matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 196 adopted to address social justice issues, scholars often examine them using “celebratory and uncritical” narratives, which construct participatory video as a socio-political intervention strategy that is unquestionably empowering for marginalized groups. for the scholars above, and others like walsh (2012, 2016), these dominant narratives tend to forestall critical analysis of participatory video approaches, projects, and products, and reduce the likelihood that practitioners and researchers will attend to how oppressive power relations operate on and through even the most self-reflexive participatory media project. consequently, there is still a dearth of research that critically analyses the visual representations produced in these types of projects and the discursive patterns that organize youth participatory films (kindon, 2003; milne, mitchell & de lange, 2012). in this spirit, this paper employs critical discourse analysis (krzyżanowski & forchtner, 2016; van dijk, 1993) to examine a series of social justice oriented films that were created for the 2012 iteration of an annual new brunswick school-based participatory filmmaking program called what’s up doc? i have been the coordinator of the what’s up doc? program since 2009. the program emerged out of an earlier participatory filmmaking project i coordinated in a new brunswick alternative education center, and formed the empirical focus of my phd research (rogers, 2014). i collaborated on the first project with my research supervisor, dr. linda eyre, and the muriel mcqueen centre for family violence research at the university of new brunswick. following the initial collaboration, the regional school district literacy coordinator invited me to organize a larger participatory filmmaking initiative for grade 11 youth in english eleven-3 classrooms – a streamed literacy program for students who are deemed non-academic. the schools involved in the initiative are in the new brunswick anglophone school district-west and represent rural and urban contexts. working closely with teachers and administrators, the program has provided me with an opportunity to explore the intersection of critical theories and pedagogies (agger, 1998; freire, 1970; giroux, 1981, 2011; kincheloe, 2008), arts-based inquiry (barone & eisner, 2012), and participatory video (milne, mitchell & de lange, 2012) with youth in school contexts. through a combination of critical and participatory filmmaking pedagogies (mitchell, 2011), the what’s up doc? program is designed to create opportunities for students and teachers to engage with collaborative filmmaking as a way to address issues of equity and social justice in their schools and communities. the pedagogies adopted in classrooms are intended to create spaces for youth voices and agency. further, the pedagogies aim to open up possibilities for teachers and students to collaboratively address equity issues in schools and to inform institutional and social change from their perspectives. the program includes an annual what’s up doc? film festival that is held once the films have been produced. the program provides openings for youth to mobilize critical social commentary to generate schoolbased and public dialogue on issues that affect their lives. since the program participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 197 began in 2009, students and teachers have produced nearly 70 diverse films that have raised institutional critiques, troubled inequitable discourses, and addressed social justice issues. although i have worked collaboratively with teachers and students in what’s up doc? from its inception, the scope of this paper is limited to an analysis of elements of the third year of the program (2012). that year, teachers, students, and i collaborated on the production of seven short films on a range of social justice issues, including intersecting dimensions of class, gender, and dis/ability. at the 2012 film festival, the seven films, including a behind the scenes documentary, were screened to an audience of over 300, including youth, educators, administrators, the students’ family, and the public. in this paper, engaging critically with the discourses that structure some of the what’s up doc? films demonstrates how the program, and the participatory student documentaries, do not escape the effects of power. for participatory media approaches to live up to the promise of promoting social justice, these types of representations, and their implications, cannot be assumed to have social justice outcomes simply because they adopt a participatory framework. by drawing attention to the discourses that organize students’ films, i ask how participatory video projects with youth, which are intended to address social inequities in school contexts, might also perpetuate marginalizing narrative and visual representations. in particular, i address how three of the seven 2012 what’s up doc? films reproduce sexist and heteronormative discourses. as what’s up doc? films perpetuate systems of marginalization despite of their social justice orientation, an approach that attempts to understand the complex and contradictory discursive effects of these films is essential to pedagogical social justice practice; simply adding participatory media production to classroom pedagogies does not guarantee social justice outcomes. although the students’ films may have created spaces to address critical issues related to equity, youth voice and agency, and institutional change, without critical engagement with these texts, educators and students may overlook how dominant discourses, marginalizing power relations, and institutional forces organize and are perpetuated by them. to begin, i elaborate on the theoretical and pedagogical contexts of our work in the what’s up doc? program. specifically, i speak to the influence of critical pedagogy and participatory video on our collaborative filmmaking initiatives. next, i discuss my pedagogical and methodological collaborations with teachers and youth, focusing on how we use the context of participatory video projects as opportunities to explore social justice themes in the classroom. i then discuss critical discourse analysis, and use this approach to reflect on gendered and heterosexist representations in the films. i conclude with a series of reflections and suggestions for educators intending to use participatory media pedagogies with youth to address social justice issues. matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 198 critical pedagogy and participatory video critical pedagogy applies critical social theories to the field of education to understand and resist systems of power and marginalization in schools and society (kincheloe, 2008). although the field has been shaped by various theoretical influences, it is generally accepted that it emerged from the postwwii neo-marxist theories of the german institute for social research, more popularly known as the frankfurt school (darder, baltodano & torres, 2009). embracing a critical pedagogy requires resisting the notion that education is apolitical (giroux, 2011; luke & gore, 1992; mclaren, 2009, 2017). critical educators see schools as playing a role in both maintaining and resisting social inequalities through practice and discourse (giroux, 1981, 2007; lather, 1998). the what’s up doc? program is grounded in this thinking (rogers, 2017) and is inspired by paolo freire’s (1970) critical pedagogical theories that oppose “banking” models of education. according to freire, banking practices constrain youth agency by requiring students to passively ingest the politically sanctioned curricula of the day. when banking models are adopted, students are presented information with few opportunities for inquiry or critical reflection. for freire, the paucity of agency and critical analysis in education practice encourages students to accept status-quo thinking, customs, and systems that maintain social and political inequity. critical educators seeking to counter the dehumanizing implications of banking require classrooms that provide students with opportunities to raise questions and identify the workings of power within schools and society. to work toward socially just schooling practices, freire argues, more participatory models of education in which power relations are renegotiated in classroom contexts, educators relinquish aspects of their authority, and students are recognized as active agents in learning processes are essential. for those who take up freire’s works, these approaches have the potential to be emancipatory because they address inequities in broader societal contexts. our work in the what’s up doc? program is also informed by other critical theories (see rogers, 2017), including anti-racist (dei, 2006, 2010), decolonizing (tuhiwai smith, 1999), and critical disability (goodley, 2010). in this paper, feminist, gender, and queer theories (butler, 1990; connell, 2005, 2009; lather, 1991, 1992; launis & hassel, 2015; plummer, 2011; schilt & westbrook, 2009) receive close attention. these critical frameworks provide the theoretical backdrop for my analysis of student projects. feminist scholars have mounted compelling critiques that trouble the field of critical pedagogy’s scarce attention to themes of gender, patriarchal societies, and women’s knowledge (lather, 1998; launis & hassel, 2015). in a similar vein, queer theorists concerned that heteronormativity, homophobia, and transphobia remain unaddressed are pushing the terrain of the field (graham, treharne & nairn, 2017). in recent decades, poststructuralist work in critical pedagogy (e.g., darder, baltodano & torres, 2009; giroux, 2011; porfilio & ford, 2015) has critiqued the positivist and structuralist logic participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 199 embedded in early marxist critical theories, thereby contributing to the development of feminist, queer, and disability theories (plummer, 2011; scherer, 2016). for those adopting poststructuralism, a singular focus on economic structures does not adequately capture the many forms of power and inequity at work in society. the grand narratives of marxism and early critical theorists, and applications of freire’s critical pedagogies that romanticize the emancipatory potential of participatory education models, often neglect other systems of privilege and marginalization. in developing an analytical approach that traces multiple and intersecting forms of social inequity, poststructural theorists propose a nuanced and complex understanding of power. for example, foucault (1995) and lather (1991) argue that, beyond economic and organizational structures of societies, power operates through discourse and the construction of knowledge. poststructuralism thus marks a turn away from the structural and ideological focus of critical theory, toward the power/knowledge relation (foucault & gordon, 1980). for foucault, knowledge, and the process of its construction, is tied to the power relations that organize the context of its production (foucault & gordon, 1980; rogers, 2012). institutional power relations give rise to a set of epistemological rules that shape how knowledge is negotiated in a given context. foucault (1970) refers to these foundational rules as discourse (i.e., the grammatological foundations of truth of a society), and the historical set of rules that structure and organize discourses of a given society as the épistémè. for foucault, the rules a society uses to distinguish true and false statements are arbitrary because societies can adopt different truth-making practices. this means that discourses and épistémès are never neutral; rather, they are tied to the power relations in an historical epoch and place/society. social institutions produce and perpetuate knowledge, and the rules governing its production, in ways that maintain their social positioning. by endorsing or rejecting the rules through which a society produces knowledge, discourses and the épistémè retain power, structuring the possibilities of how people can think, behave, rationalize, and talk in a social context (cook, 2007; mills, 2004). discursive regulations of knowledge production can include those related to who is permitted to be a knowledge producer (e.g., experts, scientists, the able-bodied, men), what methods must be followed to produce truth (e.g., scientific, quantitative, or qualitative), or what institutions are authorized to be knowledge producers (e.g., church, governments, schools, business). the strength of discourses and the épistémè are ensured by excluding and delegitimizing knowledge that is not produced through sanctioned discursive systems. for foucault, bertani, fontana, ewald and macey (2003), this powerful exclusion leads to subjugated knowledges, meaning, the positioned knowledges of those who are marginalized by the organization of the épistémè. poststructuralist notions of power/knowledge and discourse have influenced feminist and queer theorists (e.g., lather, 1991, 1998; kirsch, 2000), who matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 200 have shown how patriarchal power shapes and operates through the construction of knowledge of gender and identity, and how heterosexist/homophobic/transphobic societal power relations are connected to essentialist binary discourses of gender and sexuality. in the field of critical pedagogy, the theory of power/knowledge has drawn attention to the necessity of resisting discourses that contribute to systems of privilege and marginalization (fairclough, 2013; haddow, 2017). for example, feminist and queer critical educators have mounted compelling critiques of the knowledge systems of mainstream education, showing how they are often shaped by patriarchal and heteronormative discourses (plummer, 2011; robinson, 2005; rodriguez, martino, ingrey & brockenbrough, 2016). feminist, queer, and foucauldian theories of discourse have been influential in the what’s up doc? program, and are particularly important for my analysis below. the films produced by students in the 2012 iteration of the program critique gendered and heteronormative discourses and call for institutional action and change that will support more equitable social practices associated with gender and sexuality. the films strive to represent subjugated knowledges and borrow from feminist and queer theories to resist inequity, the institutional practices that support it, and the discourses through which it is maintained. specifically, the films discussed here show how youth produced narratives and visual representations that exemplify and/or directly critique sexist and homophobic discourses. although some films highlight youth agency and students’ successes with social critique, my analysis reminds us that power does not cease to operate simply because a film adopts critical discourses and representations. before addressing this contradiction more fully, i discuss the particular critical pedagogical method that underpins the what’s up doc? program: participatory video. participatory video methods tend to encompass collaborative video-based inquiry pursuits by grassroots groups and researchers, practitioners, or mediaproducers (milne, 2016; rogers, 2017). as collaborative approaches, these media-based methods are also informed by, and build on, participatory action research (whyte, 1991). in participatory research, inspired by the work of freire (1970), community-based research partners are typically involved in identifying themes for social inquiry, planning and implementing research processes, and sharing the knowledge produced through the study. historically, feminist scholars have played a key role in designing and implementing participatory research and pedagogical approaches as a way to challenge power relations and the politics of knowledge production (maguire & university of massachusettes at amherst, 1987; rogers, 2016). elaborating on how participatory research presents opportunities for more equitable approaches to inquiry, oliver, de lange, creswell and wood (2012) argue that participatory methods support social justice by creating spaces where the agency and knowledge of marginalized people and groups can be fostered, rallied, and mobilized. participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 201 like participatory research more generally, participatory video is often used to challenge traditional inquiry practices by privileging multiple interpretive perspectives and validating the voices of research and filmmaking participants. participatory video also tends to be implemented in community contexts as a media-based vehicle to address social and political inequalities (milne, mitchell & de lange, 2012; white, 2003). when participatory video projects are undertaken, practices tend to value dispersed control over the direction of film narratives, and non-hierarchical media collaborations that run counter to traditional filmmaking structures. this shift in filmmaking power dynamics is intended to encourage the representation and mobilization of subjugated knowledges of individuals and groups who are marginalized in public policy and institutional discussions. elaborating on this point, plush (2012, p. 79) suggests that participatory video “can be especially valuable for marginalized groups that are often shut out of policy debates and decisions that affect their lives.” although participatory video tends to embody a collaborative spirit (mitchell, 2008; mitchell & de lange, 2011), it is important to remember that, like all educational or interventionist strategies, this approach is influenced by social power dynamics (mookejea, 2010; plush, 2012; shaw, 2012; walsh, 2012), and therefore requires critical and nuanced analysis of its methodological complexities and representational politics. for example, when mitchell, de lange, and moletsane (2016) propose that adopting cellphone technologies might help practitioners negotiate questions of power, ownership, and sustainability in participatory video projects, they temper their argument by suggesting that cellphones may also open up projects to a whole new set of ethical complexities and political tensions. similarly, walsh (2016, p. 405-6) raises critical questions about how participatory video projects often rely on unquestioned discourses of neoliberal empowerment. she reminds us that when projects are understood in individualistic ways, “systemic power relations often continue to be overlooked … [and] personal empowerment [is emphasized] over broader social and political forces.” shaw (2016) introduces another issue by complicating the politics and the role of participatory video project coordinators. although she agrees that facilitators should avoid paternalistic approaches, shaw argues that complex power dynamics exist within groups involved in participatory video projects, and that hands-off approaches may not always be appropriate or ethical. these examples echo kindon’s (2016, p. 501) view that, although participatory video has the “ability to facilitate participant empowerment … [this assumption] must be tempered by greater critical engagement with the complexities of power” that structure the process and representational outcomes of participatory video. as milne (2016, p. 402) suggests, these critical voices provoke much needed “debate and encourage readers to critically reflect on their own research and participatory video practices.” this paper contributes to such critical reflection by showing that whereas participatory video production may support youth agency, it can matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 202 simultaneously perpetuate marginalizing discourses and systems of power, and therefore undermine, rather that support, broader projects of social justice. the “what’s up doc?” program the what’s up doc? program, teachers, and administrators – myself included – were motivated by the idea that participatory pedagogies have the potential to support social justice by making room for student agency and critical social and institutional commentary (rogers, 2017). a student who i interviewed in 2012 expresses this sentiment when he describes the what’s up doc? program as an action-oriented process that signifies a shift in youth agency and school power dynamics: “we get to voice our own . . . opinions, whereas, if we were just in like regular class, we wouldn’t have the opportunity . . . in this we actually get to say [and do] … something about it.” his observation echoes our assumption that classroom-based participatory video is a good starting point from which to make space for marginalized voices and subjugated knowledges in this institutional context. each year, students choose topics for critical inquiry and engage with documentary filmmaking to generate dialogue on a range of social justice issues. in a collaborative setting, they are encouraged to explore their topics through different theoretical lenses. in this spirit, the what’s up doc? program attempts to adopt participatory critical filmmaking pedagogies to engage youth in “building and mobilizing knowledge from their perspectives; [examining] power relations between individuals, institutions, and societies; generating important societal and institutional critique; and spurring and mobilizing reflection, dialogue, and informed social action” (rogers, 2017, p. 232). we view participatory video as an opportunity to raise critical dialogues that could address marginalizing discourses and social practices. during the 2012 iteration of the program, i collaborated with five high school teachers (three women and two men) in three literacy classes to implement a series of seven filmmaking projects. in the what’s up doc? program, we used participatory video as a critical pedagogy (rogers, 2017) to • explore questions of power, equity, privilege, and marginalization in education and society, • introduce students to analysis that is informed by an intersection of, and debates between, multiple critical social theories (e.g., marxist, feminist, anti-racist, post-colonialist, dis/ability studies, and queer theories), and, • question and move beyond individualizing discourses (i.e., discourses that locate analysis, critiques, or action at the level of the individual, and fail to incorporate a focus at the level of discourse, institutions, or social organization). in introducing the program to students, we proposed that they would have the opportunity to share their voice and generate social commentary on issues participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 203 they deemed important to their lives. we also suggested that the projects would include a participatory classroom dynamic, which would allow them to speak back to social and institutional power. in 2012, the program involved one grade 10 and four grade 11 english language arts classes. the students in these classes were between 15 and 18 years old, and the group represented a mix of male and female-identifying students, with a slightly larger population of male-identifying students. over a 12 week period, i split my time between the five classrooms. i provided professional development sessions and workshops on the conventions of filmmaking, and i collaborated with the teachers to develop filmmaking pedagogies for their classrooms. through critical reflection, the teachers and i engaged in frequent modifications of our filmmaking pedagogies. ongoing informal planning sessions occurred daily, before and after school, at lunchtime, and via email correspondence. i also used this time to work with the teachers on critical approaches to social commentary. for example, we discussed how the themes students were exploring in their films could be analyzed with different forms of social criticism (e.g., feminist, marxist, queer, anti-racist, dis/ability). whereas the filmmaking procedures carried out during what’s up doc? were planned systematically, the approach the teachers and i used in introducing students to critical theories and social justice issues was far less structured. at no point did we have formal lectures or lessons on marxist, feminist, queer, anti-racist, or dis/ability studies perspectives. rather, critical theories were introduced through discussion, workshops, or feedback when they became relevant to the themes, issues, and circumstances that the students presented in their films. the decision to introduce topics in this way relates to an attempt to negotiate the participatory elements of the program. students were in charge of choosing their themes for the films, and the teachers and i used the participatory context as a springboard for discussions about discourse and power. the most explicit discussions of critical theories occured in class activities, when the teachers and i asked the students to analyze visual media texts. for example, we sometimes asked students to critique media for gendered, homophobic, or racialized representations. critical discussions of representations were mostly addressed on an ad hoc basis with students during writing, production, and post-production activities. for instance, the students’ scripts gave us an opportunity to pose questions related to issues of sexism, racism, classism, ableism, and homophobia. because what’s up doc? occurs in a classroom/curricular context, it is important to consider how institutional practices of schooling shape the program and influence how students react to, or work through, the experience. for example, school assessment practices may have some influence on how students negotiate their work and collaborations. although the program places value on resisting inequitable institutional practices, locating this work in a curricular context presents a contradiction: what if students resist the pedagogies associated with participatory filmmaking projects? although the matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 204 program is designed with a participatory framework, implicitly coercive schooling practices encourage students to engage in the work whether or not they want to participate. there can be academic, assessment-based, and institutional consequences if students resist the what’s up doc? program. for educators taking on these kinds of projects, this contradiction is important to consider (milne, 2012). any agentic expression of resistance that students express through non-participation points to how power is being negotiated in these collaborations. it also provides a glimpse into how participatory video practices, when implemented in school contexts, are still an instrument of institutional power. the coercive power of assessment also raises ethical questions. assigning a grade to participatory projects put the onus on students to participate without fully recognizing the potential repercussions of their involvement. it is quite likely that some students feel uncomfortable participating in large group discussions about social justice issues. public expressions could appear to be overly personal, contentious, and even dangerous (ellsworth, 1992; roman & eyre, 1997), and the recognition of its potentially threatening nature just begins to point to some of the complexities associated with adopting participatory video projects in schools. i elaborate on a few more complexities below by examining gendered and heterosexist representations in the students’ 2012 films. first, however, i discuss how i employed critical discourse analysis in the film analyses. critical discourse analysis drawing on foucauldian theories of power/knowledge (foucault & gordon, 1980; foucault et al., 2003; rogers, 2016), critical discourse analysis is used to examine how language and texts are structured by discourse and power. as discussed above, foucault describes discourse as the regulatory framework that shapes knowledge and gives language and text meaning in a given sociohistorical context. discourse can be understood as the negotiated sets of epistemological rules that a given society uses to produce and endorse truth claims and normative behaviours (mills, 2004). for foucault, knowledge, truth claims, and discourse are never neutral, but are culturally negotiated based on power. as he states: truth is a thing of this world . . . and it induces regular effects of power. each society has its regime of truth, its general politics of truth: that is, the types of discourses which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true. (foucault & gordon, 1980, p. 133) the sanctioned discursive rules of a society render what is deemed intelligible and what counts as truth. therefore, discourse is a force that limits “what can participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 205 be said and not said” (locke, 2004, p. 34), and even what can be thought in a given social context. for mills (2004, p. 10), discourses do not only shape knowledge in a socio-historical context, but they are also a productive force that ensures power relations in that context are maintained. or, as she puts it, discourses “are enacted within a social context, which are determined by that social context and which contribute to the way that social context continues its existence.” providing further elaboration on theories of discourse, cook (2007) reminds us of foucault’s view that power and discourse are not fixed, immutable, or stable, but, rather, contested and constantly in a state of negotiation and collision. cook (2007, p. 17) writes: discourses structure meaning, thought, and action in all realms of social life. but they are not unified or unchanging. there is a multitude or regime of competing, converging discourses circulating in every society, each relevant to a particular realm of social action and subject to challenge and transformation. it is this frailty and fallibility of discourse that those who adopt critical discourse analysis to advance social justice find most promising and productive. in this respect, they take up the method to consider how power discursively organizes speech and text, and disrupt discursive formations that give rise to social inequity (krzyżanowski & forchtner, 2016; rogers, 2004). for example, my choice to use critical discourse analysis to examine how heteronormative discourse structured some of the what’s up doc? films is tied to my belief that this mode of inquiry can interrupt, contest, and help to renegotiate some of the discursive social foundations that marginalize lgbtqia+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, questioning/queer, intersexed, asexual, “+” those who identify with non-heteronormative sexual identities) people and communities. my view relates to foucault’s (1978, p. 101) argument that “discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling bloc, a point of resistance, and a starting point for an opposing strategy.” following this perspective, i recognize how politicizing discourse can open possibilities for re/imagining knowledge and circumstances to support equity and social justice (van dijk, 1993). in this research, critiquing heteronormative and homophobic discourses that structure some of the narratives in the what’s up doc? films gives students, teachers, and me a “starting point” from which to attempt to disrupt taken-for-granted heteronormative powers. this paper represents one element of my critical analysis of discourse and representation in the what’s up doc? program. here, i show how three of the seven 2012 what’s up doc? films were influenced by gendered, sexist, and heterosexist discourses. because what’s up doc? is envisioned to support youth agency, it is vital that we, as the educators and practitioners involved, develop deep understandings of how discourse shapes our work and collaborations. during production of the films, teachers, students, and i would often have conversations about discourses that might be influencing the films matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 206 and representations. i pursue an analysis of these elements in my doctoral research, examining how competing discourses produce meaning and shape representations in the students’ final film texts. for this, i consulted field notes and footage for examples of discourses that teachers, students, and i identified during the program. i also completed a number of close readings of students’ scripts and viewings of the final films. my analysis of narrative representations in the films includes considerations of dialogue and utterances, text title cards, and the selection of shots, camera angles, editing, and character choices. for example, to analyze how discourses around gender and sexuality structure the films, i examine how representational choices in the films can be understood through mulvey’s (1975) concept of the “male gaze.” i also draw on connell’s (2005, 2009) theories on gender, sexuality, and power to articulate how essentialist discourses structure dialogue. the work of scholars who analyze representations of gender in advertising and media texts was also helpful (e.g., giannino & campbell, 2012; schroeder, 2007; schroeder & borgerson, 1998). this type of work helped me explore how the positioning of men and women, and the camera angles through which they are represented, are shaped by discourse. my analysis also considers the films in light of critical concepts like heterosexism and heteronormativity (robinson, 2005) to show how the work may have been structured by, and contributed to, systems of heterosexual privilege. while my analysis here problematizes some representations in the films, many of the discourses that organize the films are critical in nature and support social justice knowledge. for example, the films authorize subjugated knowledges and resist discourses that perpetuate systems of privilege and marginalization in terms of gender and sexuality. however, contradictory representations in the films complicate these emancipatory possibilities. by critiquing the students’ films, i do not mean to undercut the agency or knowledge of the youth involved. rather, my analysis is intended to offer a reminder that all educational practices, even those intending to enact subjugated knowledge and support social justice, are shaped by and cannot escape power. i am also aware that problematic power dynamics limit and shape my analysis. in future projects with youth, i will incorporate time for participatory discourse analyses with youth participants – an approach that may prove to be a better way to represent their voices and contributions and co-construct detailed analyses of their films. my analysis here draws on van dijk’s (1993) insight that making power visible can open important spaces for resistance and discursive re-negotiation. i hope this work can be helpful in identifying and subverting some of the inequitable discursive patterns that influence the what’s up doc? program. participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 207 the films in 2012, seven films were screened to an audience of over 300 at a theatre at the university of new brunswick. the films tackle a range of social justice issues, including the stigma of mental illnesses, the cost of healthy eating in schools, and ability and intelligence. to draw out some of the complexities and tensions involved in using participatory video approaches in schools, my analysis raises questions about discourses of gender and sexuality that structured three of the 2012 films: challenging the norm; that girl: one little heartbeat; and step back, move ahead (table 1) film description challenging the norm this film addresses how sexist and heterosexist discourses and essentialist thinking can be marginalizing in schools. as one student put it, the film challenges thinking like “girls are not supposed to play sports” or “guys are not supposed to be interested in fashion.” that girl: one little heartbeat as a student explained, the film centers on “the struggle that teen parents go through.” it addresses the personal, social, and economic implications of the absence of in-school daycare provisions for teen parents. through interviews with former teenparents the filmmakers suggest that discourses around teen parenting influenced the decision to halt daycare services in their school. step back, move ahead this film explores the economic sustainability of rural communities. in particular, the filmmakers focus on how gas prices increase the cost of living for people living in rural areas. as one student explained: “everyone is moving now, because of the gas… they just can’t afford to live out here the way things are going.” table 1. brief synopsis of student 2012 what’s up doc? films. gendered, sexist, and essentialist discourses both challenging the norm and that girl focus on how essentialized discourses of femininity and masculinity constitute social systems of privilege and marginalization. they trouble determinist and essentialist perspectives that divide men and women into rigid gender categories and draw attention to how patriarchal and heteronormative discourses structure western societies. they also resist gender dichotomies, and show how hierarchal gendered discourses are confining, marginalizing, and lead to violent situations. challenging the norm employs a critical tone by celebrating high schoolaged youth whose performance of gender resists essentializing discourses and practices. feminist scholarship has long demonstrated how essentializing discourses structure a bifurcated view of men and women as having natural, matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 208 opposing, and fixed characteristics that dictate temperament and behavior (launis & hassel, 2015). connell (2009) illuminates the connection between essentialist discourses and power in discussing how these discourses have historically disenfranchised women in the western world. as she states: women are supposed to have one set of traits, men another. women are supposed to be nurturant, suggestible, talkative, emotional, intuitive and sexually loyal; men are supposed to be aggressive, tough-minded, taciturn, rational, analytic and promiscuous. these ideas have been strong in western culture since the 19th century, when the belief that women had weaker intellects and lacks capacity for judgment than men was used to justify their exclusion from universities and from the vote. (connell, 2009, p. 60) as connell and feminist theorists have demonstrated, the dominance of essentializing discourses maintain inequities, patriarchal social systems, and gender-based violence. challenging the norm resists essentializing discourses by taking audiences through four vignettes that show how these discourses contribute to genderbased marginalization. the first vignette involves a young man who applies for a position at a women’s clothing store; the second portrays a female hockey player who encounters sexist gendered assumptions; the third tells the story of a young woman who is ridiculed for her competence in online video games; and the last tells the story of a male football player whose peers degrade him for his interest in fashion. each vignette in the film includes a device the students called a “power statement.” these statements “break the fourth wall,” meaning the characters look directly into the camera to address the audience. through their statements, the young filmmakers question representations of appropriate gender performance and advocate for equitable social acceptance for youth who perform gender in ways that do not reflect essentialized understandings. by challenging essentialized gendered binaries and celebrating an array of gendered expressions, the film relates to butler’s (1990) view of gender as performative. although gender is actively constructed based on the discourses available in a given context, butler’s theory of performativity incorporates agency in relation to how one practices a gendered identity. butler argues that subjects are not passive, but actively involved in producing gender on a moment to moment basis through embodied action. in this way, gender is a verb and not an adjective. the notion of performance creates space to resist and disrupt dominant gender discourses, and leaves room for individuals to explore agency in their performances of gender. although that girl adopts a different theme – the closure of a school daycare program – it also engages in critiques of essentialized gender discourse. specifically, the film examines how dominant discourses of femininity support oppressive social practices that marginalize teen mothers. as the filmmakers explain, teen mothers, and young women who engage in sexual activity, more generally, are often shamed by being represented as participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 209 “sluts” and “whores.” the film shows how discourses of femininity function to mark teen mothers as deviant, thereby legitimizing their social marginalization. these aspects of the films demonstrate how student filmmakers used their work to critique sexist, hierarchal, and essentialist gender discourses. nevertheless, to develop more critical and nuanced understandings of the work associated with what’s up doc?, it is important to recognize how these films, and others in the series, can also authorize marginalizing gendering discourses and practices. step back, move ahead is one example. to address issues of rural poverty, the film employs a series of caricatured fictional vignettes to show how increases in the cost of living disproportionately affect people living outside urban communities. although each of the vignettes is meant to satirize economic structures and classing practices, taken-for-granted elements support demeaning gender discourses. for example, the film positions male characters as dominant and rational, and females as irrational and childlike. young women serve solely as plot devices and objects for men, or they are altogether absent. there are no female protagonists in any of the vignettes. in the first, the protagonist is a young man who wants to borrow his father’s car; in the second, it is a young man who has to sell his truck; in the third, it is the rural male landowner. even a song written for the film, riverbend, tells a story of a man who faces economic hardship. as i have briefly discussed in another text (rogers, 2017), unreflexive casting and character choices in step back, move ahead highlight the structuring influence of patriarchy in the what’s up doc? films. in this paper, i provide additional theoretical analysis of these choices, and of the representations of men and women in step back, move ahead that are organized by discourses of women’s subordination. one vignette in the film foregrounds two teens, whose plans to go on a date are thwarted by the young man’s father. two elements in the scene perpetuate marginalizing gender discourses, the first being the initial exchange between the two teens (one male-identifying and one female-identifying). the young man is depicted as composed and self-confident when he asks the young woman on the date. however, this cool performance is not mirrored in the young woman’s response. after hanging up the phone she screams, “he’s coming at eight!” her reaction in this scene is structured by patriarchal gender discourses that also organize most popular culture media texts. understanding how the male gaze influences media representations is useful to this discussion. for mulvey (1975), dominant western cinematic conventions function to support patriarchal assumptions. in theorizing mulvey’s notions of the male gaze, in relation to reality television, giannino and campbell) (2012, p. 62) citing (gamman & marshman, 1989), explain that: mulvey contends that film serves the political function of subjugating female bodies and experiences to the interpretation and control of a heterosexual male gaze. according to mulvey, any viewers’ potential to experience visual and matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 210 visceral pleasure from watching hollywood movies is completely predicated upon acceptance of a patriarchal worldview in which men look and women are looked at; men act and women are acted upon. she further contends that this distinctly male-oriented perspective perpetuates sexual inequality by forcing the viewer, regardless of gender, to identify with and adopt a perspective that dehumanizes women. on the screen, this translates into constructions of heterosexual men as active doers and constructions of women as objects for men’s pleasure. in recent years, mulvey (interviewed in sassatelli, 2011) and her contemporaries have interrogated some of the initial, deterministic conceptualizations of male gaze (abbott, wallace, & tyler, 2005). unquestionably, the concept of the male gaze can support the view that audiences have no agency and are ”forced” to accept patriarchal worldviews, but i acknowledge the agency of the viewer to support or resist discourse. nevertheless, i remain troubled by demeaning gender discourses in popular visual texts and in step back: move ahead. evolving perspectives on the concept of male gaze help me recognize how elements of the vignette that depict the budding relationship between the two teens can perpetuate oppressive social conditions through dominant gender discourses. the contrasting performance and positioning of the characters perpetuates representations of subordinate femininity. this means that the scene, as i have previously stated (rogers, 2017, p. 234), “has the potential to validate problematic discourses that suggest that young women’s value is only related to their relationship with young men.” in the film, the young man enjoys a position of authority, while the young woman is constructed as a passive sexual object for his consumption. the text constructs the female character as if she is utterly fulfilled by the male character’s attention. the young man is in control, whereas at the prospect of a date, the young woman is represented as animated, emotional, irrational, and almost childlike. in clear contrast, the young man does not reciprocate the sentiment and behaves like the relationship is inconsequential. in reflecting on how the young man is represented as dispassionate, and the young woman as if she thinks she is fortunate to be able to date the boy, it becomes possible to garner how male gaze and patriarchal discourse structure the scene. specifically, the narrative is structured by a discursive arrangement that suggests that women hold a subordinate societal position, and that their social worth is tied to their ability to establish romantic bonds with men. in terms of gender discourses, the exchange between the boy and his father in the next scene is also troublesome. although the scene is satirical and intended to provide an absurd comedic example of the consequences of economic conditions, elements of the vignette are structured by sexist discourse. for example, degrading and objectifying discourses organize the father’s stern reply to the boy’s request for the family vehicle. like his son, the father’s demeanor, and his disregard for the young woman, are shaped by patriarchal discourse when he says, “why don’t you date a girl from participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 211 williamsburg?” – as if the boy’s current love interest is an object he can simply discard and replace with another girl who lives nearby. in this way, the father positions women as objects for men’s pleasure and supports a patriarchial social system. heteronormative, heterosexist, and homophobic discourse gendered discourses and hierarchies in what’s up doc? films are also perpetuated through heterosexist discourses and narrative representations. although some of the students sought to use their films to explore feminist and lgbtqia+ themes, attention to elements of their narrative work shows how some films are also structured by essentializing heteronormative discourse that tacitly support homophobic or transphobic assumptions. queer theories, drawing on poststructuralist and feminist perspectives on gender, have shown how essentializing discourses not only maintain patriarchal privilege, but also co-constitute heteronormativity, heterosexism, homophobia, and transphobia (launis & hassel, 2015; eyre, 1993; payne, 2010; rich, 1980). queer theory, as plummer (2011, p. 197) states, “is the postmodernization of sexual and gender studies. ‘queer’ brings with it a radical deconstruction of all conventional categories of sexuality and gender.” by elaborating on theories of gender and sexuality, queer theorists have demonstrated how the dominance of essentializing discourses in societies propagates an assumption that appropriate sexual behavior is based on binary biological sex categories. for queer theorists, this has meant that taken-forgranted essentializing discourses have long constituted heteronormative societies that privilege heterosexual people and marginalize everyone else. as schilt and westbrook (2009, p. 443) explain: heterosexuality – like masculinity and femininity – is taken for granted as a natural occurrence derived from biological sex. heterosexual expectations are embedded in social institutions, “guarantee [ing] that some people will have more class status, power, and privilege than others” (ingraham 1994, 212). the hierarchical gender system that privileges masculinity also privileges heterosexuality. its maintenance rests on the cultural devaluation of femininity and homosexuality . . .the gender system must be conceived of as heterosexist, as power is allocated via positioning in gender and sexual hierarchies. in other words, societies structured by heteronormative privilege, afforded through taken-for-granted essentialized understandings of sexuality, contribute to systems of marginalization and abuse of lgbtqia+ people, or those who do not neatly fit into supposedly natural gender dichotomies. in some ways, all of the films produced through the 2012 what’s up doc? program perpetuate heteronormative and heterosexist discourses, despite the recent prevalence of critiques of homophobic and transphobic violence in schools. in the years leading up to 2012, lgbtqia+ themes were never matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 212 explicitly addressed in the what’s up doc? films, which points to implicit heterosexism and heternormativity. 2012 marked a shift in how explicit students were about sexuality themes. however, a critique of discourses that structure theses films shows how lgbtqia+ themes may have been addressed in ways that perpetuate heterosexist privilege. for example, even though challenging the norm critiques some gendered discourses, it simultaneously perpetuates gendered hierarchies, heterosexism, and homophobia. in one vignette, two boys tease the protagonist – a male football player – for wearing a shirt from the gap, calling him effeminate for having shopped at the store. they articulate “i got it at gap” by elongating the emphasis on the letter “a” in the store name and kinking their hands at the wrist, implying that his clothing choice is inappropriate for a heterosexual male and therefore open to ridicule. although the scene might not explicitly condone the homophobic assumptions presented by the two antagonists, it perpetuates sexist, heterosexist, and homophobic discourse by endorsing pejorative associations to characteristics considered feminine or gay. the heterosexist power in the scene provides an opportunity for critical engagement; however, this opportunity is never seized by the performers. after the two boys hurl insults and leave the frame, the protagonist’s girlfriend offers him support saying, “don’t listen to him, he’s stupid. you are more of a man than he will ever be.” rather than challenging the pejorative notion that his clothes signify gayness, her comment affirms the homophobia of the two boys. she implies that being a “man” (i.e., conforming to hegemonic masculinity that is unquestioningly heterosexual) is a good thing, with heterosexist and sexist discursive implications. her argument reaffirms the homophobia articulated by the two boys. read this way, the young woman’s comment, rather than seizing an opportunity to challenge homophobic discourses, questions the idea that wearing particular clothing is a signifier of homosexuality. in this way the film is organized by a pejorative heteronormative discourse. a similar situation arises in another vignette in challenging the norm, where the filmmakers attempt to disrupt sexist and homophobic discourses that marginalize women in sport. a title card in the film reads, “gender doesn’t influence skill level, gaining confidence and skill doesn’t make you butch.” although this may not have been the students explicit intention, the suggestion that success in sport “doesn’t make you butch” pejoratively construct lesbian, bisexual, or trans women who participate in sport. this exercise of power is reiterated elsewhere in the film. the opening scene depicts the protagonist, a female hockey player, applying makeup and lipstick – signifiers of heterosexual femininity – while dressing in hockey gear. although the vignette challenges gender discourses that associate athletic women (a process of masculinization) with lesbianism, the film simultaneously perpetuates notions that behaviours associated with butchness should be moderated by practices of “emphasized femininity” (connell, 2005). as with the previous vignette, this story presents instances when participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 213 heterosexist discourse could be challenged. for example, comments that the female hockey player “must be butch or something,” and the title-card “being good at sports doesn’t make you butch” present an opportunity to challenge heteronormativity. unfortunately, the critical opportunity was missed. implications and suggestions for educators as this analysis has shown, some of the 2012 what’s up doc? films draw on critical theories to challenge inequitable discourses. the students’ critical intent to create change on social and institutional levels is evident in their efforts to use their films to incite dialogue about topics like gender, class, sexuality, and ability. according to advocates of participatory video, critical and political dialogue among youth peers, and between youth and people in positions of institutional power, can be the roots of political action and social change. the video project, therefore, supports mitchell et al.’s (2010, p. 220) view that “critical awareness and (arguably) empowerment [can] result when media production [with youth is] encouraged.” the what’s up doc? program provided a space and opportunities for critical dialogue among students, teachers, and school administrators during the program, and when the films screened at the film festival. in 2012, this was exemplified when we held a panel discussion after the film screenings to allow the filmmakers to address questions about their films. during the conversations, the students had a chance to continue the critical discussions and institutional critiques they raised in their films with the audience – made up of teachers, administrators, friends, family, and local policy makers. these conversations focused on issues of power, gender, sexuality, class, and ability. all of the films, the inclass discussions, and the festival panel discussion carved out space for critical perspectives on discourse, status quo conditions, and the contemporary social practices that create them. however, this analysis also reaffirms that power does not cease to operate simply because critical or participatory pedagogies have been implemented (ellsworth, 1992; lather, 1991; lather, 1992; rogers, 2016; wheeler, 2012). because many of the discourses that structure the what’s up doc? films contribute to systems of marginalization, there is a need to engage in deep analysis about issues of representation when undertaking participatory video pedagogies with youth. although there are many ways that this analysis can inform practice, curriculum, and policy, below i identify a few of the most important. first, for educators, this analysis demonstrates the need for vigilance in challenging marginalizing discourses that structure participatory filmmaking and critical pedagogy initiatives, as well as the productions themselves. a critical analysis of what’s up doc? reminds practitioners that all texts, even those intended to support social justice, can perpetuate systems of marginalization and power. as educators committed to social justice, we must matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 214 reflect on why and how this happens. at the same time, however, to negotiate practices that are based on collaborative democratic participation, we must also find ways to challenge problematic representations without relying on authoritarian pedagogical approaches that seek to control the direction of students’ work. second, when critical participatory filmmaking pedagogies are adopted, it is vital that projects are not rushed or implemented without opportunities for critical self-reflection. for critical reflection on work to be meaningful, educators and students require structured and consistent opportunities to problematize all texts produced. during our collaborations in the what’s up doc? program, many opportunities for critical analysis were missed or overlooked, which was often a result of our efforts to navigate the politics and complexities of participatory video work in a public school context. had schedules been more flexible and schools open to interdisciplinary programs that permit the exploration of critical themes in more rounded ways, perhaps these politics would be quite different. in the what’s up doc? program, institutional constraints, disciplinary boundaries, and the fact that specific curriculum outcomes had to be addressed by the end of the term, influenced how much time we had and how frequently we were able to engage in critical reflection with students. the rushed context, especially during production and editing phases, usually produced superficial discussion at best. during the early months of the project, we were committed to critical analysis, but as deadlines loomed, our priorities often shifted toward completing a finished, aesthetically pleasing final product for the festival. our preoccupation with production value echoes thomas and britton’s (2012, p. 215) concerns about participatory video aesthetics. they suggest that the value of participatory video work is often framed in a “process/product binary.” for those adopting participatory video methods, it is sometimes favorable to assume that the collaborative process, rather than the media product, is of most value in terms of advancing social justice. this emphasis on process relates to the claim that, as a “tool for social change” (p. 214), participatory video projects can support agency, critical consciousness, and collective action amongst grassroots groups. during the what’s up doc? program, teachers, students, and i had to negotiate how much value we placed on the creative/reflective process or on achieving a final product for the festival. as much as it is favorable to assume (especially in an educational context) that the process is always more important than the final product, it was important for us to remember how these products exist within powerful social and institutional contexts. this recognition relates to thomas and britton’s (2012, p. 216) view that a sole focus on process is problematic, because this overlooks how the media texts that get produced are shaped by and “embedded in social relations. these relations are between facilitator and participants, participants themselves, and participants and audiences.” in the what’s up doc? program, the process of critically analyzing our own film work, particularly nearing the time for the festival, was sometimes participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 215 deprioritized because of concerns related to social, institutional, and audience responses to the work. for example, students had to negotiate how they were creating films to satisfy their teacher’s academic expectations and curriculum outcomes structured by the provincial government. students may have had to think about how their films, and the messages embedded in them, could create tensions or consequences for them in the classroom, or at school. this might have meant that some critical lines of analysis and dialogue were halted before they were even initiated. furthermore, concluding the what’s up doc? program with a formal public event also means that social relations beyond the classroom must be considered. the public festival puts the eyes and ears of peers, parents, teachers, and administrators on these projects. this broader attention adds a layer of pressure and ethical complexity for students and teachers. nearing the time of the festival, teachers and students often begin to consider how their work will be received by a larger audience. in these instances in 2012, priorities sometimes shifted away from content and process, to trying to achieve a high quality aesthetic in the final product. as some students expressed, this was because they wanted to create products they would feel comfortable sharing with audiences. in hindsight, it is apparent how these concerns shifted our attention towards production and aesthetic qualities and away from critical analysis of the aesthetic representations. perhaps bypassing a formal event, like a film festival, at the conclusion of the program could create more opportunities to deconstruct visual representations. had the experience with producing step back, move ahead been less rushed, or if students had been able to discuss the film in other classroom contexts, we could have engaged in discussions about representations of gender in the film during production and post-production processes, rather than simply after the film was complete. had we structured adequate time, or thought more deeply about process and product negotiations, we could have found space for group screenings of footage and discussed questions such as what gender discourses are supported? how might this text perpetuate heterosexism? how does this comment take gender and heteronormativity for granted? even when projects are finished, educators still have great opportunities to challenge discourses that structure texts. teachers and students can explore how the narrative and visual representations might perpetuate hateful notions or inequitable discourses, and generate ideas about what could be done differently next time. in a program focused on social justice, time must be devoted to critical reflection on video products. finally, this analysis demonstrates the value of critical literacies and social justice education in school curriculum, which is currently a significant gap in educational discourse and practice. without such skills and understandings, students will likely reproduce oppressive discourses, as was the tendency in what’s up doc? films. some critical discourses, while subtle and insufficiently nourished, are highlighted in the curriculum document that matthew rogers studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 216 influenced the what’s up doc? program. the document, the atlantic canada english language arts curriculum (new brunswick department of education, 1998, p. 134), recommends that literacy programming should encourage students to “explore, respond to, and appreciate the power of language, literature, and other texts, and the contexts in which language is used.” in this way, concepts of power and the social implications of language are given some focus. critical perspectives are also highlighted when the document tasks teachers to have students “respond critically to complex print and media texts” by exploring “the diverse ways in which texts reveal and produce ideologies, identities, and positions” (p. 30). although these words provide space to explore critical themes, explicit reference to critical social theories (e.g., feminist, queer, anti-racist, marxist, dis/ability theories) are completely omitted. this means that the theoretical tools that students and teachers need to engage in critical media analysis are obscured. including curriculum outcomes that focus on critical media literacy explicitly informed by feminist, marxist, queer, anti-racist, post-colonial, and dis/ability theories might better educate students and teachers about how all media texts are structured by discourse and power. furthermore, in the context of participatory media projects like the what’s up doc? program, the inclusion of specific critical theories in the curriculum might encourage students to be more attuned to how power operates within their own media projects and better equip students and teachers to edit or amend their work to make stronger, more inclusive arguments for equity and social justice. this analysis has expanded understandings of the limits and possibilities of critical participatory video projects with youth. the fact that marginalizing and oppressive discourses structured what’s up doc? films affirms loiselle’s (2007) view that video work with youth can foster counter-hegemonic discourses but, at the same time, reinscribe oppressive power relations. this contradiction reminds critical practitioners, like myself, to temper celebratory assumptions and proceed reflexively when engaging with this praxis. the analysis here provides important reminders and examples of how power and institutional and discursive contexts shape and constrain critical pedagogy programs like what’s up doc? it also shows the importance of being attentive to how these initiatives may contribute to the marginalization of the students involved and draws attention to the importance of being constantly vigilant in challenging marginalizing discourses that may surface in the context of critical pedagogy initiatives. it also highlights the importance of developing new critical literacy strategies designed to enable students and teachers to explore how social conditions, issues, and perceived realities are connected to power structures. participatory critical filmmaking pedagogies can be productive tools in educational projects for social justice. however, reflecting on the what’s up doc? program suggests that these pedagogies are complex, ethically intricate, implicated in school power relations, and filled with tension. i hope this discussion has contributed to the growing chorus of critical voices in the field participatory filmmaking pedagogies in schools studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 195-220, 2017 217 of participatory video making. like low, brushwood rose, salvio and palacios (2012), mookerjea (2010), and shaw (2012), i agree that it is important to trouble romantic, celebratory, and non-critical constructions of these approaches. participatory video, on its own, will not bring about youth empowerment; that can only be maximized if the practice is part of broader, critically reflective projects for social justice (plush, 2012; rogers, 2016; walsh, 2012). acknowledgements this research was supported by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada, the new brunswick anglophone school district-west, dr. linda eyre, rina arsenault, and the muriel mcqueen fergusson centre for family violence research. the author would like to thank all students and teachers involved in the what’s up doc? program, the editors of this special edition of ssj, and the anonymous referees for their feedback, suggestions, and criticism. references abbott, p., wallace, c., & tyler, m. 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(1991). participatory action research. newbury park, ca: sage. correspondence address: carlo fanelli, ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, ontario, canada m5b 2k3. email: carlo.fanelli@ryerson.ca issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 8, issue 2, 113-117, 2014 introduction austerity, labour and social mobilizations: rebuilding trade union and working class politics carlo fanelli department of politics & public administration at ryerson university peter brogan department of geography at york university since 2008, austerity has dominated the public policy agenda across the political spectrum. across north america and europe this has meant an emboldened radicalism from conservatives as new pressures to privatize public services, in particular health care, pensions and public education, coalesce with efforts to implement so-called right-to-work laws and the removal of public sector collective bargaining rights. furthermore, the right to demonstrate and protest—the most basic of fundamental freedoms—has been severely constrained amidst hardening disciplinary and repressive state apparatuses. this remaking of social relations and institutional structures, however, has not been solely a matter of conservative class war, but has also been deepened and extended by liberals and social democrats with the backing of ruling class circles. work for welfare initiatives, the weakening of employment standards legislation, attacks against social assistance minimums and the erosion of progressive taxation, once deemed central to the “new deal,” are now deemed extravagant entitlements allegedly unaffordable in a new age of global capitalism (pantich & gindin, 2012). the public sector, especially unionized workers, have become a prime target of restructuring as capital and the state seek to create new spaces for accumulation. these new pressures have traversed scales of public administration, ushering in what can otherwise be termed an era of “permanent austerity.” despite capitalist class and state militancy, however, studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 114 carlo fanelli & peter brogan unions and progressive social movements have been unable to stop, let alone reverse, decades of combined and uneven retrenchment (fanelli, 2013; lichtenstein, 2012; panitch & swartz, 2003; ross & savage, 2013). the effects of these policies, of course, have not been class neutral. rather, those who caused the crisis in the first place—the capitalist class and states which enable them—continue to shift the costs of the crisis onto working class communities. the politics of austerity exacerbate racialized and gendered oppressions in the form of wage and benefit concessions, reductions to social services and increases in unpaid labour, further reinforcing ethno-racial and gendered hierarchies. oftentimes for labour, successes have now been reduced to limiting the extent of concessions in their various forms, while social movements generally struggle with finding new ways of mobilizing against the upsurge in authoritarian populism. this special issue of studies in social justice reveals that regardless of the political party or coalition in power there has been a common tendency to further discipline workers to the imperatives of capital amidst a hardening of neoliberalism. with evermore authoritarianism and coercion, the state has come to lead in narrowing the field of free collective bargaining, suspending trade union rights and implementing an aggressive program of dispossession. without the collective capacities to successfully challenge these measures, unions have reached an impasse; unable to translate militancy (where it is enacted) into an alternative ideological perspective and political and economic program, they desperately continue to hang onto previous gains that look increasingly insecure and fragile in an age of austerity. how, then, might workers in north america and europe rebuild trade union capacities and working class politics? what lessons can be learned from municipal workers’ struggles? what new forms of trade union organizing have been effective in contesting the austerity agenda? how have social movements and progressive forces adapted and responded to these new conditions? the articles which follow begin to address precisely these questions. in a thorough reappraisal of us labour and social movement literature, keith mann analyzes the current state of international protest and trade union confrontation. he argues that a closer look at labour mobilizations over the last five years reveals a new form of emergent activism. from the arab spring to anti-austerity protests in greece and spain, the occupy wall street movement and labour struggles in wisconsin and chicago, mann challenges common assumptions about so-called old and new social movements. he suggests that a new labour movement is emerging that shares many common features with new social movements, such as a universalistic emphasis on deeper democracy, social justice, an end to racial and gender oppressions, and good jobs for all. in this sense, the old demarcation between labour on the one hand and social movements on the other is increasingly blurred as the two coalesce around common struggles. next, peter brogan analyzes the chicago teachers union (ctu) transformation from business to radical unionism. he shows how the ctu effectively challenged austerity measures by building a broad-based, rankstudies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 introduction. austerity, labour and social mobilizations 115 and-file-led activist union that places social justice at the forefront of their demands. brogan discusses the political and economic pressures that preceded the 2012 round of negotiations between the chicago board of education and the teachers’ union, and explores the uniqueness of the 2012 strike and its aftermath, with particular attention on its implications for broader social justice struggles across chicago and beyond. he shows how an amalgam of socialist and progressive activists was able to build unity across the union, effectively challenge the entrenched leadership, and build an empowering working class unionism by developing a long-term strategy and vision for change. in a similar vein, carlo fanelli explores attacks against trade union rights and freedoms for municipal workers in the city of toronto. fanelli contends that, like in the chicago case, the municipal state propagated a false trade-off between wage restraint on the one hand and the protection of public services on the other, using it as a divisive wedge strategy to separate the users from the producers of public services. as part of this strategy, this meant structurally shifting the burden of recession onto workers and the users of public services by further marketizing and commodifying the public sphere. fanelli explores the concession-filled 2012 round of collective bargaining between the canadian union of public employees (cupe) locals 79/416 and the city of toronto. he makes the case for an alternative political strategy for municipal public sector unions while stressing the importance of a radicalized labour movement rooted in demands for workplace democracy and social justice. the experiences of the ctu and cupe locals 79 and 416 paint a vivid picture of resurgent neoliberalism in the wake of the great recession. while each case study has its own specificity, together they provide fruitful terrain for developing an understanding of how long-term neoliberal policies are expanded and intensified in moments of crisis, while at the same time illustrating how global cities continue to be critical spaces of both neoliberal policy experimentation and contestation. the concluding article by jiří navrátil, explores the evolution of the czech social justice movement over the last decade. he discusses how progressive movements have evolved over time and what transformative factors have impacted their potency. navrátil shows how the scale and focus of social mobilization and activism have vacillated over time, traversing transnational, domestic and localized scales. examining the splits amongst social justice groups, he discusses how an emphasis on anti-war mobilizations, antiglobalization protests, police repression, demands for deeper democracy, and socio-economic dislocations has shifted over time. navrátil concludes by discussing the reasons for the recent domestication of czech social justice activism, with a particular emphasis on recent mobilizations against hardright populist governments pushing a program of austerity and privatization. while each of the unions and social justice movements involved in these struggles have had very different historical trajectories, relationships with the state and political cultures, collectively mann, brogan, fanelli and navrátil illustrate the variety of forms of resistance and mixed successes of those struggling for democracy and social justice in the twenty-first century. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 116 carlo fanelli & peter brogan resisting austerity: the case for a radical politics if trade unions and working class communities are to resist austerity, rebuilding the capacities of organized labour to fight back against concessionary demands must seek to build community-labour coalitions from the bottom up (brogan, 2013; tattersall, 2010). as long argued by scholar-activists like sam gindin (1995; 2006; 2012), kim moody (1988; 2007), bill fletcher jr. and fernando gapasin (2009), in order for unions to live up to their potential as transformative workers’ organizations, they will need to be reinvented. as part of this strategy of reinvention, a revived emphasis on working class politics must seek to transcend what are often insulated labour and activist subcultures. considering the weak state of anti-capitalist/progressive forces and organized labour in north america and europe and their inability to translate support for their political positions into broader political influence, new political organizations and sustained mobilizations that challenge the rule of capital are gravely needed. if unions are to reappear as a movement and not simply hang on as a relic of the past, they will need to move beyond the limited defence of their own members’ interests and fight for the interests of the working class as a whole. as the articles collected here suggest, doing so requires having feet both inside and outside the trade union movement— that is to say, rooted in an organizational form explicitly intent on building a broader working class movement across the many cleavages among workers and grounded in a critical analysis of (neoliberal) capitalism. in light of historical and contemporary attacks against free collective bargaining, it is becoming increasingly clear that unions and oppressed persons generally can no longer, if they ever could, put their faith in the courts, laws or governments to enforce the postwar class compromise. this postwar “consensus” has been thoroughly eroded in the face of trade union and social justice activists’ inability to adequately counteract cumulative decades of concerted attacks. despite four decades of neoliberalism and the intensified attacks following the great recession, there has yet to be a commensurate rejuvenation of socialistand anti-capitalistinspired mobilizations. examining the reasons for these failings is important since the shapes taken (or not taken) by struggles over austerity and social justice will determine whether neoliberalism continues uninterrupted or whether something new and historically unique can capture the public’s imagination. considering what the working class is facing collectively, organizing solely around specific issues, workplaces and particular constituencies cannot add up to the kind of strength, organization and structure that is needed to bring about wide-ranging change. although labour unions often remain the largest, most organized, resourced and stable institutions fighting against the rule of capital, they cannot themselves beat back the consolidated attacks by the state and capital. while trade unions must be a central part of any radical political renewal, their rebirth is equally dependent upon a broader revitalization of the left outside of organized labour and working class politics as a whole—what marx identified as a social and political formation united in difference. the course of neoliberalism has thoroughly eroded what vestiges remain of trade union militancy, while studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 introduction. austerity, labour and social mobilizations 117 social movements generally remain isolated in small-scale and resource-poor coalitions. given the ongoing onslaught against public services, private and public sector unions and progressive movements, trade unionists and social justice activists must come to the bitter realization that the existing ways of doing things are not working. this, in our view, is the only realistic starting point from which to move forward. the inability of both organized labour and activists to confront this impasse belies the need for a new kind of radical, anti-capitalist political project suited to the current historical and social conjuncture, one that interrogates both its own historical failures as well as the transformations in the political, economic, socio-spatial and cultural changes under which we are struggling today. the challenge before trade union and social justice activists is to move left of social democracy or risk increasingly becoming an impediment to rather than an instrument of a renewed working class politics. in other words, labour and social justice activists must lead left if austerity is to be challenged. the failure to do so may regrettably amount to an historic class defeat. despite the setbacks to trade 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(2010). power in coalition: strategies for strong unions and social change. ithaca: cornell university press. correspondence address: marina morrow, faculty of health sciences, centre for the study of gender, social inequities and mental health, simon fraser university. 11514 blusson hall, 8888 university ave, burnaby, british columbia v5a 1s6, canada. tel.: +(778)782-6906, email: mmorrow@sfu.ca issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 6, issue 1, 27-43, 2012 towards a social justice framework of mental health recovery marina morrow faculty of health sciences, centre for the study of gender, social inequities and mental health, simon fraser university julia weisser1 centre for the study of gender, social inequities and mental health simon fraser university abstract in this paper we set out the context in which experiences of mental distress occur with an emphasis on the contributions of social and structural factors and then make a case for the use of intersectionality as an analytic and methodological framework for understanding these factors. we then turn to the political urgency for taking up the concept of recovery and argue for the importance of research and practice that addresses professional domination of the field, and that promotes ongoing engagement and dialogue about recovery as both a personal and social experience. to this end, we describe a unique project that sought to deepen our understanding of how recovery is being thought about and applied in the current context of mental health care in vancouver, bc, with a specific focus on how, and whether, people are taking up and addressing dimensions of power that we see as critical to the operationalization of recovery within a social justice framework. emerging from our research and discussion is a set of critical questions about whether or not the political moment in canada with respect to re-invigorating recovery should be embraced, versus a rejection of the concept of recovery as too limiting in its scope and too vulnerable to professional co-optation. “recovery is not a concept that i really relate to because i don’t think that i’m recovering from my life experiences, i’m incorporating them. i’m not surviving, i’m becoming.” – world café participant studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 28 marina morrow & julia weisser the idea of recovery originally had its roots in the psychiatric survivor movement. yet while this movement has had empowerment and resistance to the dominance of psychiatry as its main goals, the concept of recovery has since shifted in recent years. this has led to vigorous discussion about the usefulness of the concept, and about its uses in the context of the increasing authority of biomedicalism and neoliberal policy regimes (jacobson, farah & the toronto recovery and cultural diversity community of practice, 2010; mental health “recovery” study working group, 2009; morrow, wasik, cohen, & perry, 2009; morrow, in press; poole, 2001; rossiter & morrow, 2009). thus, a canadian debate is emerging that is concerned with the ways in which recovery has become distanced from its roots in psychiatric survivor activism, and its role in an evolving mental health system is being questioned (poole, 2011). in our view, central to any discussion about recovery must be recognition of the profound discrimination faced by people who have been psychiatrized, and the connections between recovery and the social and structural barriers that shape, facilitate or impede recovery. these social and structural aspects are articulated and enacted through a number of dimensions of power such as biomedicalism, racialization, sanism2, sexism, ageism, heterosexism, etc., calling out for an intersectional social justice analysis of recovery. that is, an analysis that foregrounds an understanding of power as it is distributed in the mental health care system, and the accompanying interlocking forms of oppression through which it operates (burman, 2004; burman & chantler, 2003; lefrancois, 2011; rossiter & morrow, 2011). in this paper we set out the context in which experiences of mental distress occur with an emphasis on the contributions of social and structural factors and then make a case for the use of intersectionality as an analytic and methodological framework for understanding these factors. intersectionality is a theory which can be used to examine the ways in which various social and cultural categories (such as race, sex, class, etc.) intertwine, as well as the relationships between them (crenshaw, 1991; knudsen, 2006). thus, it is a powerful tool for exploring the various social, political and economic processes through which people experience oppression and privilege (hankivsky, 2011). we then turn to the political urgency for taking up the concept of recovery and argue for the importance of research and practice that addresses professional domination of the field, and that promotes ongoing engagement and dialogue about recovery as both a personal and social experience. to this end, we describe a unique project that sought to deepen our understanding of how recovery is being thought about and applied in the current context of mental health care in vancouver, bc, with a specific focus on how, and whether, people are taking up and addressing dimensions of power that we see as critical to the operationalization of recovery within a social justice framework. emerging from our research and discussion is a set of critical questions about whether or not the political moment in canada with respect to re-invigorating recovery should be embraced, versus a rejection of studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 towards a social justice framework 29 the concept of recovery as too limiting in its scope and too vulnerable to professional co-optation. in this respect, our work highlights a number of key issues, such as: given the dominance of the biomedical paradigm in mental health and the focus of resources on acute and psychiatric care, how can the social and structural barriers faced by psychiatrized individuals be addressed in recovery? if the participation of people with lived experience in mental health system reform, as advocates and peer support workers, is one of the cornerstones of a recovery-oriented system, what does it mean when peers face ongoing discrimination and become co-opted by professionalism? finally, but perhaps most significantly, drawing on our research participants’ call for a social justice framework in mental health, we consider the components of an intersectional social justice framework and the possibilities this has to offer vis-à-vis recovery and a transformed mental health care system. mental health and social and structural inequities experiences of mental illness and distress, regardless of their origins, take place in a social, cultural and historical context (e.g., hacking, 2002; porter, 2002) which includes environments of discrimination that are structured through legal, medical and psychological practices and policies. these practices and policies play out in distinct ways for different groups within society. there are now substantive bodies of literature which illustrate the ways in which the practices of psychiatry have served historically to pathologize some groups of people (e.g., women, racialized peoples, people living in poverty) over others (baker & bell, 1999; caplan, 1995; caplan & cosgrove, 2004; metzl, 2009; van os, kenis, & rutten, 2010). this has resulted in, for example, psychiatric diagnoses being disproportionately applied to certain groups (e.g., schizophrenia to black men) and the psychiatrization of women’s normal life experiences such as the post partum period and menopause (metzl, 2009; ussher, 1991; 2011). researchers have further documented the effects of social inequities such as homelessness, racism, colonialism and poverty on mental health, both with respect to exacerbating existing distress and/or creating distress (boyer, ku, & shakir, 1997; kirmayer, brass, & tait., 2001; mental health commission of canada, 2009). furthering the literature on stigma against people diagnosed with “mental illness” is a burgeoning scholarship which argues that diagnoses and labels of mental illness themselves constitute a form of inequity. this is referred to as “sanism,” (birnbaum, 2010; fabris, 2011; ingram, 2011; perlin, 2000) or in lefrancois’s (2011) terms, “psychiatrization,” which she sees as the practice, or result, of sanism. sanism and psychiatrization are thus used to understand the discrimination against people diagnosed with mental illness, but also go further in their aim to unsettle assumptions about rationality, normality and madness. finally, more medically oriented literature has made the argument that certain groups in society are more vulnerable to mental illness and are thus at studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 30 marina morrow & julia weisser risk of not receiving services and supports (patterson, somers, mckintosh, shiell, & frankish, 2008; standing senate committee on social affairs, science and technology, 2009). taken together, these varied ways in which social and structural inequities in mental health operate tell us something about the ways in which power is distributed in the mental health system. chief among these forms of power is biomedicalism and the pharmaceutical industry, which when coupled with the dramatic erosion of the social welfare system in canada over the past 15 years, has led to a system that rations resources based on diagnosis and severity of symptoms, and responds primarily through medication and medication management over and above social supports and responses. biomedicalism also operates discursively within society to ensure that the dominant way of understanding distress is through the lens of neurobiology, eclipsing all other possible frameworks and approaches. we counter this trend with a call towards applying the analytic lens of intersectionality to the study of and amelioration of social and structural inequities in mental health. intersectionality involves the examination of the social, political and economic processes through which oppression and privilege are experienced by individuals (e.g., lefrancois, 2011; rossiter & morrow, 2011). as asserted by many, we see intersectionality as necessarily coupled with a social justice framework, which understands social and health inequities to be about differential access to power and resources (burgessproctor, 2006; collins, 1990; hankivsky, & cormier, 2009). although in recent years mental health has gained a profile on the national policy agenda, the social and structural aspects of mental health continue to be marginalized as do the voices of people with lived experience of mental distress, especially those that challenge psychiatry. it is in this context that recovery is being re-invigorated and to which we turn to next. recovery as political exigency recovery as a concept and as a framework for guiding the mental health care system is currently being re-imagined and re-animated in the canadian context. following several decades of focus on health reform, canada as a nation has only recently turned its attention to mental health with a focus on scrutinizing the existing mental health service system (see kirby, 2006), the outcome of which has been the establishment of a mental health commission which had a mandate to develop a national framework and strategy for mental health (mental health commission of canada, 2009). the establishment of a recovery-oriented mental health system is the cornerstone of the strategy, which was released in the spring of 2012 (mental health commission of canada, 2012). thus, recovery as a concept and as a guiding framework for mental health care must be addressed with some urgency as policy decision makers and mental health planners and providers are primed to integrate recovery into the mental health care system and/or re-invigorate existing recovery-oriented programming and practice. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 towards a social justice framework 31 recovery has been conceptualized in a myriad of ways but in general the literature and discussion of recovery falls into three camps: that which emphasizes recovery as a personal journey; that which addresses the social aspects of recovery; and that which rejects the concept of recovery outright for its contribution to both sanism and the process of psychiatrization. the first camp has dominated the conceptualizations and practice of recovery in the mental health care system and too easily plays into purely biomedical understandings of mental illness (morrow, in press). that said there is an emergent discussion of recovery in the context of rights, anti-oppressive practice and intersectionality, all of which have social justice as their goals. on the issue of rights there is a long tradition within psychiatric survivor activism of identifying the ways in which the rights of individuals and psychiatrized people as a group have been breached (fabris, 2011). some of this work has been integrated into discussions about recovery (mental health “recovery” study working group, 2009; repper, 2011). repper, for example, writing in the uk context looks at recovery and social inclusion using a civil rights frame, and focuses on the idea that everyone—including those deemed “mentally ill”—have the right to determine the course of their own lives, regardless of whether or not they are regarded to possess insight (2011). another promising approach is that which is emerging from intersectionality frameworks and anti-oppressive practice. although these approaches have not been widely adopted within the mental health system (rossiter & morrow, 2011; van mens-verhulst & radtke, 2008) there is some evidence to suggest that they could be applied to discussions of recovery (burman, 2004; poole, 2011; rossiter & morrow, 2011; van mens-verhulst & radtke, 2008). anti-oppressive practice bears much in common with intersectionality approaches but it emerges from social work and is focused primarily on how to engage with social and structural inequities in practice from the perspective of providers (poole, 2011); it may or may not operationalize an intersectional framework. like intersectionality, however, anti-oppressive practice recognizes the role of structural and systemic barriers in differentially shaping the lives of groups and individuals. missing, however, from both frameworks is an explicit recognition of sanism as a form of oppression, that is, the valuing of rational thinking and socially acceptable forms of behavior, and the subsequent ostracization and/or punishment of people who do not or cannot conform. some argue that sanism must be seen as a form of oppression akin to that of sexism or racism (ingram, 2011; lefrancois, 2011), however, more analytic work is required to think through the varied ways in which sanism systematically oppresses people. in the canadian context, with some exceptions, (jacobson, farah, & the toronto recovery and cultural diversity community of practice, 2010; mental health “recovery” study working group, 2009) the research literature has not substantively investigated what people with lived experience of psychiatrization have to say about recovery and its meaning vis-à-vis their lives and connections to the mental health care system. further, studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 32 marina morrow & julia weisser recovery as a paradigm for mental health care system transformation has only recently begun to be discussed and empirically investigated (o’hagan, 2004; morrow, pederson, smith, josewski, jamer, & battersby, 2010; myers, 2010; piat & subetti, 2009) and questions remain as to whether recovery is the best conceptual framework for system change. the research we present next constitutes an attempt to begin to redress these gaps and further the dialogue on recovery as it is occurring in contemporary mental health practice. the research our project began with the formation of a research team that included people who identified as having had lived experience of mental distress and use of the mental health care system; health policy decision makers in our local health authority; service providers; and academics, all of whom had an interest in exploring social inequities in mental health recovery (morrow, jamer, & weisser, 2010). the collaborative research team was intentionally sought to help build connections between people differently positioned in relation to the mental health care system, with the idea that this would generate beneficial discussions as well as useable research outcomes. the purpose of the study was to explore conceptualizations of recovery in the mental health field that addressed social and structural inequities in mental health, with a particular interest in foregrounding people’s lived experiences of mental health issues and system use. the study involved a scoping review of the literature (arksey & o’malley, 2005), a world café (brown & isaacs, 2005), and creative knowledge exchange. scoping review methodology, “aim (s) to map rapidly the key concepts underpinning a research area and the main sources and types of evidence available, and can be undertaken as stand-alone projects in their own right, especially where an area is complex or has not been reviewed comprehensively before” (mays, roberts, & popay, 2001, p. 194). a scoping review of mental health and other relevant literatures was conducted in order to identify current definitions, models, and conceptualizations of recovery and to explore recovery in its intersections with social inequities (weisser, morrow, & jamer, 2011). world café methodology involves concurrent round table discussions which are focused around a set of questions of relevance to the issue being explored. brown & isaacs (2005) refer to this approach as “conversations that matter,” in part because it allows for multi-layered discussions which build upon one another, and fosters the expression of multiple perspectives and kinds of knowledge (in this case personal, professional, academic). our world café was structured around four discussion questions, each relating to different aspects of the team’s interest in mental health and social inequities (morrow, jamer, & weisser, 2010). the questions evolved out of dialogue among the research team members, over a number of meetings and included: 1) what are some of the social and structural barriers that impact studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 towards a social justice framework 33 people’s mental health recovery?; 2) what are the strengths and weaknesses of current mental health recovery models with respect to addressing social and structural inequities?; 3) what would components of a recovery model look like that integrated social and structural inequities and how would we get there?; 4) how can people’s experiences with mental health issues inform the development and practice of recovery? what would it take to support and implement this model? the world café participants included twenty four mental health and social service front line workers; mental health and addictions managers; policy makers; people with lived experience of mental distress; family members; and community leaders engaged in mental health work. although many participants wore several hats (such as service user and service provider, family member and policy maker, etc.), about half of the participants identified as having lived experience, and about half were service providers, managers, or policy actors in the mental health field. throughout the world café participants moved from table to table, not as a group but in different formations each time, to ensure that everyone attending would come into contact with each other at some stage of the process. each discussion table had a facilitator and a note taker who recorded and tracked the emerging conversations. the notes from the world café were organized thematically and then analyzed in order to begin to identify some of the key components of a mental health care system that would be informed by multiple perspectives and would be responsive to social and structural inequities. the last stage of the project involved creative knowledge exchange through the development of a series of four skits illustrating each of the four topics mentioned above. the skits were linked with some analysis, quotes from the world café, and a discussion of the findings for presentations to relevant audiences (morrow, jamer, weisser, willow, & omura, 2011a; morrow, jamer, weisser, willow, & omura, 2011b; morrow, jamer, weisser, willow, omura, & ingram, 2011). the four skits were respectively titled, “revolving door,” “the multiple meanings of recovery,” “round peg, square hole” and “medical model.” each skit highlighted an aspect of the current mental health care system in bc to which practitioners and service users could relate. for example, the “revolving door” skit shows how the system is currently crisis oriented and the ways in which services (both psychiatric and social ) are tied to psychiatric diagnosis and level of severity, which acts as a disincentive towards recovery for some service users for fear that getting better will mean losing housing, disability benefits or other valuable supports. “round peg, square hole” illustrates the ways in which the mental health care system is largely unable to deal with the complexities of people’s lives. people often have to seek services and supports from a variety of places rather than being able to have a range of needs met within all services. in what follows, we detail both the findings from our scoping review and from the world café noting those of relevance to our contention that an intersectional social justice framework is needed for mental health system transformation. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 34 marina morrow & julia weisser the findings recovery in the literature: the scoping review in order to surface literature that might tell us something about the intersections between social and structural inequities in their relation to recovery, a scoping review of the literature was conducted. the literature reviewed was from 1980 onward and was from canada, the united states, the united kingdom, australia, or new zealand. using purposive sampling and a search of social science databases, both peer-reviewed and grey literature (e.g., non-published reports and project descriptions) was reviewed in order to identify current models and frameworks for mental health recovery. attention was paid to whether, and to what degree, existing literature addressed social and structural inequities in mental health and the degree to which the development, application and evaluation of recovery models are professionally versus experientially driven (weisser, morrow, & jamer 2011). emerging from the literature review were several broad themes, including: the concept of recovery as potentially oppressive or harmful; the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the term recovery; the concept of second class citizenship for people diagnosed with mental illness; recovery as a cornerstone of mental health system transformation; and the need for a framework that makes use of the social determinants of health and/or the social model of disability. finally, there is an emerging conversation about social justice in mental health. there are two different schools of thought in the current literature about why the concept of recovery may be harmful. the first is the idea that recovery offers a false sense of hope, that it implies a return to the pre-illness self, and is therefore misleading (whitwell, 1999). peyser (2001) argues that recovery is not possible for those who are extremely mentally ill, and that concepts such as empowerment cannot help those who are completely held hostage by their “illnesses.” according to peyser, people who “lack insight” are simply unable to effectively use the tenets of recovery (2001). in contrast to this viewpoint are those who accuse recovery of being either a passing trend or a cash grab—a way to download responsibility from the state to the service user (davidson, o’connell, tondora, styron, & kangas, 2006; dickerson, 2006; ridgway, 2001). that is to say, the imperative to recover is viewed simply as an extension of the neo-liberal agenda (morrow, in press) and a call for citizen productivity (myers, 2010). this literature, from two different philosophical positions, raises questions about the usefulness of the concept of recovery—some authors, for example, suggest that recovery cannot be realized in the context of discrimination (myers, 2010), while others feel that the concept is inadequate in the context of the medical realities of mental illness (peyser, 2001; whitwell, 1999). myers (2010) also discusses the concept of the mental health service user as “second class citizen,” one to whom much-needed cultural capital is denied (p.300). he speaks specifically of those who are disenfranchised socially and economically to the point where the general tenets of recovery are no studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 towards a social justice framework 35 longer possible or available to them (myers, 2010). myers’ work is consistent with the many personal narratives of psychiatrized people who document the ways in which they have been oppressed and marginalized by the system (blackbridge, 1997; blackbridge & gilhooly, 1985; capponi, 1992, 1997, 2003; fabris, 2011; shimrat, 1997). literature on mental health system transformation focuses not just on individuals but on the ways in which the system as a whole can become recovery-oriented (adams, daniels, & compagni, 2009; friedli, 2009; mental health commission of canada, 2009; o’hagan, 2004; piat & subetti, 2009). although this process has not yet been fully documented or empirically studied in most regions, there are some promising signs for its success. for example, new zealand as a nation has perhaps gone the furthest in terms of moving away from individual conceptualizations of recovery towards one that views cultural (re)integration as recovery, and has applied this concept directly to system change (o’hagan, 2004). so, for example, with the support of its mental health commission, new zealand has had success in educating its mental health workers about culturally diverse perspectives on mental health, including recovery. in the literature, social inequities were rarely mentioned, and where mentioned race, ethnicity, immigration, and culture were privileged above other types of inequities such as disability, age or sexual orientation. additionally, when issues such as racism were mentioned, it was almost always in the context of the individual’s struggle with racism; that is to say, racism as a structural and systemic problem was rarely discussed. even literature that did focus on structural barriers, culturally appropriate services, or an overhaul of the mental health system (jacobson, farah, & the toronto recovery and cultural diversity community of practice, 2010; o’hagan, 2004), did not go so far as to address the overlapping and intersectional nature of oppression in mental health or the complex relationship between social inequities and recovery. for example, some excellent canadian work has been done which focuses in on the cultural relevance of the concept of recovery. jacobson, et al., (2010) identify a “culturally-responsive model of recovery” (p.19) which places the individual in context (family, community, geography, culture, oppression/ privilege, social determinants of health, history, etc.) but their analysis discusses each form of oppression separately rather than as interlocking. almost all of the literature tends to address one aspect of social inequity at a time in its relationship to recovery. so for example, o’brien and fullagar (2008), address gender; myers (2010), addresses class; lapsley, nikora, and black (2002), jones, hardiman, and carpenter (2007), ida (2007), and armour, bradshaw, and roseborough (2009) all address culture; and daley (2010), addresses sexual orientation. thus, the recovery literature mimics what is found in the mental health literature more generally, that is to say that the literature tends to treat social processes as variables that can be used as discrete categories of analysis. the literature also tends to privilege certain categories over others (e.g., gender and culture are privileged over sexual studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 36 marina morrow & julia weisser orientation) (rossiter & morrow, 2011). despite this there is some evidence, as discussed earlier, of an emergent literature which addresses rights and social justice as components of recovery (mental health “recovery” study working group, 2009; repper, 2011). the world café in this section we discuss the themes emerging from the world café that focused on intersectional issues such as: power and control in mental health; social and structural inequities; the co-optation of peer workers in mental health; and social justice. social and structural inequities: addressing power and control. i don’t see the connection between recovery and the mandates of mental health teams. it’s kind of like a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if the mental illness must be “serious and persistent” in order to get funding, how can a person “recover” from it? (world café participant) the system has been very limited in the way it understands mental health. recovery goes beyond the medical model, in that it includes the medical model but it can include much more. it [recovery] is more holistic and goes away from the reductionist understanding of mental health. (world café participant) the quotes above reflect a common theme emerging from the world café, that is, that people who are entrenched in the mental health system often have very little control over their own lives, which necessarily makes recovering difficult or impossible. participants noted often that the mental health care system and associated support systems are designed to perpetuate themselves, by upholding people’s dependence upon them. many participants, for example, spoke about the ways in which the mental health system rewards pathology, and how it is oriented towards crisis rather than prevention, leaving those to fall through the cracks who are more stable but still need help. participants felt that if there were adequate treatment resources available to everyone who needed them, people might feel freer to get better, as they would not be worried about the possibility of losing their support systems and access to treatment. in this vein, numerous examples of the ways in which policies and bureaucratic practices work against recovery were discussed, with a focus on poverty, disability benefits, service mandates, and resource constraints. thus, by using local examples, participants illustrated the ways in which social assistance and disability benefits are set up so as to trap people in cycles of dependence and poverty, rather than assisting them to move forward with their lives when they are ready and able to do so. for example, the prohibition against accumulation of assets when on disability benefits or income assistance, and restrictions related to the amount one can earn studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 towards a social justice framework 37 in paid work while on benefits, were cited as formidable barriers in terms of people being able to improve their financial situations and also as a discouragement from seeking employment. this combined with substantial barriers to employment (lack of workplace accommodations for mental health disabilities, discrimination, etc.,) form insurmountable obstacles. several issues related to service mandates and resource constraints were raised during the world café. it was noted that some people are excluded from receiving much-needed treatment because they do not fall into the increasingly crisis-oriented mandates that organizations must follow. similarly, world café participants noted that the disconnect between different services/sectors can negatively impact recovery; for example, a 30 day in-patient hospital stay can result in a loss of housing, which can impact a person’s ability to get well. the corporatization of peers at the world café we found that participants were extremely interested in discussing how people with lived experience might play more meaningful roles in policy development and peer support positions. the world café participants focused their discussion on those who work in mental health, such as peer support workers and facilitators, peer specialists, peer researchers, advocates, consultants, and board members. the discussion centred around ways in which these roles could move beyond tokenism and instead involve the full integration of peers into the mental health system, in a way that is meaningful both to them and to the people they are supporting. historically, peer support workers within mental health have been poorly compensated and typically hired on short term contracts3. many peers are being integrated into pre-existing bureaucratic structures; however, problems exist in terms of genuine integration. many of these problems have to do with the system itself, and the ways in which these structures and their practices may not always be comfortable for all peers. in relation to this, one participant in the world café coined the phrase “the corporatization of peers,” and another the “loss of peerness,” to describe how the peer role has been co-opted by professionalism over time, descriptions which were eagerly taken up by many others at the table. these terms were used to describe both the subtle, and not so subtle, ways in which peer support workers who are part of mental health teams or who work in hospitals are encouraged to act “normal,” professional, or well socialized—thus losing the very essence of what makes them peers in the first place. many participants argued that this need to appear professional creates distance between the peer support worker and the person they are supporting. additionally, many peer support workers are expected to uphold the values of the medical model, regardless of whether they or the person they are supporting agree with this model. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 38 marina morrow & julia weisser a social justice approach to mental health in the world café discussions, participants raised the idea of a social justice approach to mental health. specifically, this conversation was tied to discussions of the ways in which psychiatrized people were viewed by society and discriminated against. so, for example, participants wanted society to become more accepting of the full expression of the human condition and experience, rather than viewing people solely through a biomedical lens which some felt unduly pathologized people. further, some participants pointed out the fact that social expectations of mental health get taken up in conceptualizations of recovery, creating standards about what a recovering person should look and act like. among other comments were discussions about the role of the pharmaceutical industry in propping up narrow biomedical definitions of mental health, and a call for more expansive ideas about what constitutes knowledge about mental health, with a focus on the role of lived experience. despite widespread enthusiasm at the world café for frameworks of recovery that were rooted in notions of social justice, it was our observation that participants often struggled with framing recovery in terms of social and structural inequities. although social justice was named, there was a tendency for people to revert back to more individualistic framings of recovery, or to discussions about specific barriers in the system, rather than to understand these barriers as structurally produced and differentially experienced. the one exception was that participants were able to articulate how individual notions of recovery may not resonate with people from non-dominant, ethno-racial groups. for example, some cultures value collectivity over individuality, or inter-dependence over independence, as well as hold a place for unique behaviors in a way that contemporary western society does not. in these instances culture was still viewed more as an individual attribute and discussions of how systemic racism and/or ethnocentrism might be at play in the mental health system were not raised (morrow, jamer, & weisser, 2011). thus, participants themselves were so embedded in the current mental health system and its discursive practices that they appeared to struggle to move away from individualistic framings, even as they began to name forms of discrimination such as racism, sexism and—importantly—sanism, in relation to recovery. this is not surprising given how few spaces currently exist to discuss the social and structural aspects of mental health. further, we observed that even in the context of our world café the discussion became polarized between the role of the biomedical and the role of the social in mental health, and around the needs and concerns of different “stakeholders.” the latter was most obvious with respect to debate about the role of families, especially with respect to making treatment choices on behalf of their family members. as a way of untangling these tensions and challenges we suggest that one method of framing recovery is to attend to social and structural inequities through the lens of intersectionality (morrow, jamer, & weisser, 2011). intersectionality, for example, would allow the power dynamics in families studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 towards a social justice framework 39 to be explored, and would surface the ways in which loss of rights for people diagnosed with mental illness are a part of those dynamics that cannot be ignored or eclipsed by discourses of care and treatment. in general, using the framework of intersectionality allows a way out of polarizing the biomedical and the social, by revealing that people’s “mental illness symptoms” might be linked or produced in simultaneous ways with conditions of poverty, homelessness, and other forms of inequity (weber, 2006). intersectionality also allows for an analysis of the ways in which power is at play in the mental health care system. the driving force behind this viewpoint is “the pursuit of social justice” (weber, 2006). in summary, our findings suggest that service providers and users in the mental health care system struggle to resist the idea of recovery as a personal journey, but are often thwarted in these attempts due to the systematization of biomedicalism. the authority of biomedicalism works to undermine broader social and structural understandings of recovery. it also reflects a sanist ethic in its treatment of people in the mental health system and of the peers who are trying to support them. an intersectional social justice framework for mental health recovery in our view to answer the world café question, “what would it take to transform the mental health care system and does recovery have a role in this transformation?’, a reformulation of recovery as embedded in particular social and structural contexts which foreground an intersectional social justice approach is required. the components of such an approach are as follows: • recognize and address the ways in which active discrimination against people diagnosed with mental illness is systemic, and the ways in which this is compounded by other experiences of oppression (e.g., sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, ageism, classism, heterosexism). thus, sanism must be understood as a key critical analytic lens for understanding mental distress. • psychiatric survivors must be at the forefront in leading the re-invigoration of recovery as it was originally characterized by the psychiatric survivor movement, and in so doing, develop new structures and ways of organizing the mental health care system so that “peerness” can be retained. • rebalance the mental health care system to address both the biomedical and social needs of people. specifically, we need to: 1. enact changes to the social welfare system that would allow for people to break the cycles of poverty and dependence. this would include: i) raising the rates for social assistance and disability benefits to bring them in line with the cost of living; ii) allowing people on disability benefits to hold assets and have asset accumulation; iii) allowing people more flexibility to go on and off disability benefits. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 40 marina morrow & julia weisser 2. challenge biomedicalism and open up a discursive space for discussion about mental illness that does not preclude the biomedical, but that allows for a wider range of understandings and approaches. as canada moves towards adopting a recovery framework for mental health it will be critically important for regions and communities to actively engage in “recovery dialogues” and to support the active leadership of psychiatric survivors in this process. in this way we can begin to re-capture the roots of recovery in claiming the humanity of psychiatrized people, expose the abuses of psychiatry, and prove that people whose lives are marked by distress can continue to live full and meaningful lives with dignity. it is clear from our work that active discrimination against people with mental illness is systemic, that sanism continues without being questioned and that much work needs to be done in order to incorporate a social and structural analysis of mental health and recovery into the current mental health care system. further, recovery without a full recognition of the current social and political context which has eroded social welfare supports will be impotent to foster real systemic change. thus, mental health providers, advocates and decision makers must strongly resist further trends toward biomedicalism. this does not mean a rejection of the role of biology in mental health, but rather, recognition that the biological occurs within a social context that involves interlocking forms of oppression which impact mental health and erode social justice. only if these conditions are met can we truly seize the political moment for re-invigorating, and we would argue, re-inventing recovery. notes 1 the authors would like to thank the centre for the study of gender, social inequities and mental health, writing group and particularly, brenda jamer and our two anonymous reviewers, 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(2008). closing the gap in a generation: health equity through action on the social determinants of health. geneva: world health organization http://whqlibdoc.who.int/hq/2008/who_ier_csdh_08.1_eng.pdf http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/andre-picard/mental-health-strategy-draft-doesnt-go-far-enough/article2149012/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/new-health/andre-picard/mental-health-strategy-draft-doesnt-go-far-enough/article2149012/ http://www.vanmens.info/verhulst/en/wp-content/intersectionality and mental health2.pdf http://www.vanmens.info/verhulst/en/wp-content/intersectionality and mental health2.pdf butz & cook final correspondence address: david butz, department of geography & tourism studies, brock university, st. catharines, on l2s 3a1; email: dbutz@brocku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 the epistemological and ethical value of autophotography for mobilities research in transcultural contexts david butz brock university, canada nancy cook brock university, canada abstract this article responds to calls from mobilities scholars for methodological innovation and reflexivity by (a) detailing our use of autophotography in a study of the everyday implications of a newly-constructed road for a small community in mountainous northern pakistan, and (b) assessing autophotography’s attributes as a visual/narrative method for mobilities research in that setting, on ethical and epistemological grounds. we demonstrate that autophotography’s anti-objectivist epistemology of vision and participant-driven character, the portability and easy userinterface of compact cameras, and the inseparable mix of visual and narrative data the method produces, combined to attenuate epistemic injustice in our research, while also generating productive insights regarding the movements, representations and embodied practices our research subjects associate with the road. these points are developed with reference to literature on visual methods, mobile methods and subaltern autoethnography, as well as to the visual/narrative representations produced by study participants. the article concludes by exemplifying how research subjects used the road and its associated mobilities as discursive resources for the constitution of collective identity: to position their community in relation to modernity and tradition, to distinguish the community from its neighbours, and to articulate worries about the consequences of rapid social change. keywords mobile methods; visual methods; autophotography; photo elicitation; autoethnography; epistemic justice; gilgit-baltistan; road construction; mobilities the “mobilities turn” traces how mobility discourses, practices, and platforms shape socio-material realities by engendering movement and stasis in differentiated ways (sheller, 2011, p.1). scholars suggest effectiveness in this the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 239 regard requires adapting and developing methods that access the activities, events, and meanings through which mobilities are socially instantiated (d’andrea, clolfi & gray, 2011; hannam, sheller & urry, 2006; urry, 2007). a vibrant literature attempts to define the terrain of “mobile methods,” suggest broad areas of methodological focus, and analyse the usefulness of specific “methods for mobilities research” (sheller & urry, 2006, p. 2017; see also büscher, urry & witchger, 2010; fincham, mcguiness & murray, 2010; merriman, 2014; manderscheid, 2014; spinney, 2015; warren, 2017). a sub-set of this scholarship focuses on visual methods (cresswell, 2006; hein, evans & jones, 2008; larsen, urry & axhausen, 2006; lorimer, 2010; spinney, 2011). we contribute to this latter literature by detailing how we used a specific visual method, autophotography, and assessing its usefulness for mobilities research. our argument has epistemological and ethical dimensions, which we develop in relation to epistemic justice and autoethnography. autophotography involves providing research subjects with cameras, asking them to photograph specified aspects of their lives, and collecting their oral explanations and interpretations of the resulting photos (johnsen, may & cloke, 2008; thomas, 2009). the method has three distinguishing features: it produces a combination of visual and oral data, it is participant-driven (bryne, daykin & coad, 2016; ford et al., 2017; mannay, 2010) in that visual productions are shaped by photographers’ image-making decisions, and it may be employed on the move by participants who produce photos as they follow their daily routines. we employed autophotography in an ethnographic project that investigates the social consequences of a newly-constructed road for residents of shimshal, an agricultural community of about 125 households located in the karakoram mountains of pakistan’s gilgit-baltistan administrative unit (figure 1). shimshal’s five hamlets are situated 60 kilometres into a tributary valley of the hunza river. until the mid-1960s, when the engineering corps of the pakistani and chinese armies began constructing the all-weather karakoram highway (kkh) to traverse the length of the hunza valley from gilgit to the chinese border at khunjerab pass, the region was accessible only by footpath or rough pony track (khalid, 2011). although shimshal was farther from the main hunza valley than most villages, it was well-integrated into a regional pedestrian mobility regime.1 as sections of the kkh opened to vehicular traffic in the late 1970s, communities along its route became subject to a new mobility regime, and those in side valleys began constructing link roads to access motorised transport (kreutzmann, 1991; wood & malik, 1 this mobility system consisted of a network of footpaths and pony tracks, some located close to valley floors and others linking communities via mountain passes and high pastures. low paths were used in winter, when streams could be forded easily; alpine paths were used in summer, when weather conditions were favourable. travel between villages was infrequent until the late 1970s, and limited mainly to adult men; most travel occurred among pastures and between the settlement and pasture zones within community territory. david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 240 2006). by 1985, shimshal – still three days’ difficult walk from the kkh – was one of only a few communities that remained remote from a new roadbased regional mobility constellation. in the early 1980s, community leaders enlisted the support of the aga khan rural support program ngo to build a link road to the village.2 construction began in 1985; the road was completed 18 years later, in 2003, through a combination of volunteer labour and intermittent support from government and ngos. building the road was a staggering undertaking, which involved great individual and collective sacrifice; it is understood by many shimshalis as the community’s greatest display of unity and collective endeavour. after the road opened a three-day walk became a two-hour jeep ride with dramatic and socially uneven implications for mobility (cook & butz, 2011, 2017). we have been recording field notes and taking pictures related to the road’s construction and use since our first trip to shimshal in 1988, as aspects of previous ethnographic projects. in 2007 we obtained community permission to more systematically study the road. our autophotography project was a component of that study, which also involved other qualitative and ethnographic methods. we employed autophotography partly in response to calls for innovative approaches that interrogate the structuring effect of mobilities discourses, practices, and platforms on social life more effectively than conventional conversational techniques. the prospect of participants taking away digital cameras and bringing back pictures and narratives shaped more by their patterns of movement than by ours seemed a promising way to understand shifting mobility discourses and practices in shimshalis’ everyday lives. we also hoped the method would enlarge the variety of shimshalis we spoke with, provide another self-directed way for villagers to express themselves, and help situate participants’ perspectives in everyday life spaces. consequently, we initiated a small autophotography project in summer 2011, during which time 16 women and 35 men provided us with 344 narrativised photos. autophotography proved to be well-suited for the mobility context we are studying, yielding a more productive process and richer results than we had anticipated. 2 the aga khan rural support program (akrsp) is a branch of the aga khan development network, an international ngo connected to the aga khan, the spiritual leader of ismaili muslims, a large population of whom live in northern gilgit-baltistan. akrsp was founded in 1982 to promote rural development in the region, and established a presence in communities by coordinating village and women’s organisations through which savings, low-collateral loans, and agricultural extension could be arranged. communities were encouraged to participate through the promise of a productive physical infrastructure project selected by residents; shimshalis chose a road. due to the shimshal road’s scale akrsp funded only a small portion of its cost. the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 241 figure 1. location of shimshal in gilgit-baltistan, pakistan. the paper begins by describing two dimensions of epistemic injustice – testimonial and hermeneutical – and outlining how qualitative research may reproduce them, to emphasise their importance for research design. in our research context the lingering effects of colonialism present significant impediments to epistemic justice, so we propose an epistemology based in postcolonial theory – an autoethnographic sensibility (butz, 2010; butz & besio, 2004) – as a way to address the influence of colonial discourse on our research interactions and analyses. epistemic justice and autoethnographic sensibility serve as conceptual resources for the paper’s main section, which describes our use of autophotography, situates it in relation to mobile and visual methods, and assesses its epistemological and ethical efficacy as a visually-oriented method for mobilities. we differentiate autophotography from mobile methods that involve researchers moving with mobile subjects, and explain why it is preferable in our context. developing this argument involves critiquing ethical claims to empowerment that are often associated with autophotography, as well as epistemological assumptions of accuracy, authenticity and closeness that surface in discussions of visual and mobile methods. we offer epistemic justice as a more appropriate way to frame autophotography’s ethical benefits, and autoethnography as a more productive way to describe the epistemological characteristics of autophotography’s visual/narrative yield. the article concludes by david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 242 exemplifying how research participants used the road and its associated mobilities as performative resources for the constitution of collective identity. ––– according to social epistemologists, epistemic injustices take two forms: testimonial and hermeneutical. testimonial injustice occurs when “someone is wronged in their capacity as a giver of knowledge” (fricker, 2007, p. 7), for example, when they are excluded from speaking or granted less credence as a knowledgeable speaker because of context-specific prejudice or structural arrangements that undermine their capacity to be received as credible. all qualitative research risks testimonial injustice, through processes that define study populations, select samples, choose research sites, etc. researchers frequently make decisions that are sensible in the context of a specific project, but which exclude or devalue the testimony of some prospective subjects for reasons of convenience or prejudice. transcultural ethnographic research, for example, often privileges the testimony of english speakers, educated persons, and men. when whole bodies of academic knowledge are shaped by such credibility deficits and excesses, then the research process itself reproduces testimonial injustice, helping to create conditions for other axes of social injustice. testimonial injustice is an important concern in our research context, where convenience conspires with local power structures to reduce our capacity to treat women, youth, uneducated and low status people as credible knowers. even more intractable is hermeneutical injustice, which transpires when “someone is wronged in their capacity as a subject of social understanding” (fricker, 2007, p. 7). hermeneutical injustice relates less to a person’s lack of credibility as a knowledgeable agent than to their social intelligibility: their capacity to be understood on their own terms. it occurs when an individual or social group lacks communicative resources to articulate important features of their experience, or when an audience is unable to make sense of some people’s self-articulations. in these instances a discursive community has failed to develop the vocabulary or concepts to render the experiences of some people intelligible, even to those who experience them (medina, 2012). even when speakers can express themselves in a manner that they find intelligible, their self-expressions may be nonsensical to their intended audience, because the latter’s interpretive resources are insufficient for making sense of certain domains of experience. hermeneutical injustice is always a risk in qualitative research, because our efforts to understand research subjects on their own terms are hampered continuously by the mediating effects of our own pre-existing vocabularies, conceptual frameworks, ontological commitments, disciplinary conventions, etc., which often impose meaning on research subjects rather than accessing their own self-intelligibility. moreover, subjects’ efforts to express themselves – especially transculturally – may be similarly hampered by a lack the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 243 of adequate vocabulary or conceptual resources to describe certain categories of experience, or by other power differentials inherent to specific research relationships that render them mute, incoherent, or unintelligible. although testimonial injustice may arise from individual prejudice it is often structural (anderson, 2012). hermeneutical injustice is always structural, because it results from the epistemic characteristics of a discursive formation, which exceed individual communicative transactions. colonialism, for example, provides a backdrop in our research context for contemporary testimonial and hermeneutical injustices, even as it is reproduced by them (butz & besio, 2004). the epistemic effects of colonial discourse are evident in the exaggerated authority of western knowledge modalities for both researchers and local subjects, the transcultural power relations that saturate the research field, and the tendency in development discourses and elsewhere to treat locals as “native informants” (spivak, 1999, p. 113), rather than reflexive knowers. undermining such outcomes involves tracing their effects on transcultural knowledge production. understanding subjects’ utterances and crediting them as knowledge requires considering how they are shaped by a global field of imperial power and its enactments in research interactions. postcolonial scholarship is helpful for this, especially mary louise pratt’s formulation of autoethnography, which refers to: instances in which colonised subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the coloniser’s own terms. if ethnographic texts are a means by which europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are those the others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations... autoethnography involves partial collaboration with and appropriation of the idioms of the conqueror. (1992, p. 7; emphasis in original) elsewhere she adds: autoethnographic texts are not...‘authentic’ forms of self-representation… rather they involve a selective collaboration with and appropriation of idioms of the metropolis or conqueror. these are merged or infiltrated to varying degrees with indigenous idioms to create self-representations intended to intervene in metropolitan modes of understanding. (1994, p. 28; emphasis in original) pratt describes autoethnography as “the struggle for interpretive power” (jean franco paraphrased in pratt, 1999, p. 39), which for colonised populations necessitates “produc[ing] oneself as a self for oneself” simultaneous “to produc[ing] [one]self as an ‘other’ for the coloniser” (1999, p. 39). pratt focuses on textual communications in colonial situations, but autoethnographic expression applies to many contexts structured by historical relations of domination, our research site among them; we think it describes a characteristic mode of transcultural self-representation in these situations (butz, 2010; butz & besio, 2004). conceptualising shimshalis’ interactions david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 244 with us as autoethnographic helps to avoid epistemic objectification (fricker, 2007, p. 133): treating subjects as native informants rather than producers of knowledge. autoethnography provides a discursive frame for understanding subjects’ communicative interactions with us, imagining purposes in their self-expressions, and interpreting them as knowledge-producing endeavours in which locals and researchers are simultaneously subjects and objects of knowledge. an “autoethnographic sensibility” (butz & besio, 2004) constitutes a mode of analysing our involvement in this communicative process and helps us appreciate our responsibilities to respondents’ selfrepresentations; it is a form of critical reflexivity. three practical imperatives follow. first, as autoethnographic expression is an interventionary effort by people subordinated in an uneven discursive field, we have a responsibility to listen analytically for the autoethnographic characteristics of research subjects’ self-expressions to us and other metropolitan agents that impinge on their lives. such attentiveness is not just a tool for researcher reflexivity, but also a resource for analysing how transcultural interactions shape subjects’ identities and lives. second, an appreciation of autoethnography requires us to support subjects’ efforts to intervene intelligibly and credibly in metropolitan modes of representation. this applies most obviously to our own analyses, but also to autoethnographic projects unrelated to our research, for example by working to amplify locals’ transcultural voices or helping locals perfect an idiom that renders their perspectives meaningful to metropolitan audiences. it also inspires us to build our research around communities’ autoethnographic projects. third, attentiveness to autoethnographic communication encourages us to employ data generating methods that enhance the autoethnographic characteristics of locals’ transcultural communications with us, and modify them to enable locals to express themselves intelligibly and subtly in an autoethnographic register. together these aspects of an autoethnographic sensibility provide an epistemological framework for our transcultural research practice and practical strategies for addressing the testimonial and hermeneutical dimensions of epistemic justice. they are considerations in our methodological choices, including incorporating autophotography into our investigation of road construction and mobility in shimshal. consequently, our assessment of autophotography as a visual/narrative method for mobilities research below involves evaluating its effectiveness in relation to these ethical and epistemological priorities. first, however, we situate autophotography in relation to discussions of mobile and visual methods. ––– mobility scholars argue that understanding movement’s import for individuals and social relations requires developing new approaches for apprehending mobile cultures, practices, and meanings. although many the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 245 techniques are suggested, emphasis is placed on “mobile methods,” approaches used on the move to “capture, track, simulate, mimic, parallel and ‘go along with’” mobile subjects, objects, images, and ideas in motion (büscher, urry & witchger, 2011, p. 7; larsen, urry & axhausen, 2006). explanations for this methodological focus stem from the claim that movement is a fleeting, materially-embedded, embodied, and experiential phenomenon, which cannot adequately be represented using conventional cognition-oriented methods. authors assert that accessing “the more intangible and ephemeral meanings of mobility” (spinney, 2009, p. 826) requires moving with research subjects: participating kinaesthetically in their movement experiences, eliciting their commentary in specific mobility contexts, and observing practices and spaces of movement that would be inaccessible via verbal or textual representation alone. moreover, by enabling researchers to experience particular mobilities in situ, mobile methods are understood to promote greater sensitivity to how the attributes of place shape and are constituted through movement (hein, evans & jones, 2008). much methodological innovation associated with mobile methods involves vision and visuality. motion and vision are understood to be closely intertwined (büscher, 2006; murray, 2009; pink, 2008), because visual recognition is an organising dimension of sensorial experiences of movement (phillips, 2005). therefore, “moving with” methods enable researchers simultaneously to see the mobile world subjects see and to observe them in it. moreover, vision is an aspect of kinesthetic and affective mobility experiences that may be recorded and replayed to evoke enactments or contexts of movement. historically, visual representation was used by social scientists mainly to offer empirical flavour or back-up to accompanying text. photographs, paintings, sketches, and maps were presented as authoritative and objective portrayals of a time and place, despite being composed according to certain interests and pictorial conventions (lutz & collins, 1993). visual representation fell out of favour among social scientists in the 20th century’s latter half, first as positivist perspectives rejected the validity of visual data (packard, 2008, p. 65), and later as critiques associated with the crisis of representation made the supposed objectivity and transparency of visual representation untenable, and feminist and postcolonial scholars diagnosed the visual gaze as complicit in colonial appropriation, the subjugation of women and other projects of domination (gilman, 1986; gregory, 2003; lewis, 1996). as mike crang notes (1997, p. 368), “academia and photography do not walk innocently in the world. hovering in the background is the shade of some panoptic apparatus, recording, surveying and disciplining bodies.” recent calls to reintroduce visual methods respond to poststructural critiques of “pure vision” (kearns, 2000, p. 338) by approaching visual representation as a social practice shaped by the intentions, aesthetic sensibilities, ideological commitments, and spatio-temporal contingencies of david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 246 creators and viewers, rather than simply as a technologically-mediated way to present facts on a landscape. some mobility scholars think this antiobjectivist approach to visuality aligns well with the mobility turn’s emphasis on the affective, experiential, practiced character of mobility, which helps explain the emergence of visual mobile methods. however, epistemological challenges remain. as noted by peter merriman (2014), in much of the mobilities literature there lingers a dubious implication that the participatory character of mobile methods enables researchers to more “accurately interpret, represent and understand a world increasingly constituted in mobilities” (fincham, mcguiness & murray, 2010, p. 5). similar problematic claims to accuracy and authenticity appear in rationales for using visual methods in mobilities-oriented and other research (guell & ogilvie, 2015). this deployment of visually-oriented mobile methods to gain more accurate or authentic understandings risks contradicting the epistemological foundations (a) of mobile methods, in non-representational and postfoundational theory, and (b) of visual methods, in an approach to visual artefacts as discursively organised to produce particular representational and self-representational effects, including that of accuracy or realism. one of our challenges was to exploit the advantages of visually-oriented methods for studying mobilities without succumbing to the epistemological shortcut of associating visuality or participation with accuracy. our decision to employ autophotography – a visual method but not a mobile method in the moving-with sense – responded to this challenge, while also addressing other ethical and epistemological concerns. our research involves living in shimshal with a local family for extended periods, so we participate continuously in the mobile practices and rhythms of village and household life. these immersive, embodied experiences of mobility are important sources of insight, but they are also limiting and selective in ways that would not be overcome by formalising them in an explicitly mobile method. the village has many important spaces of mobility that we simply cannot have embodied access to, including certain domestic and religious spaces, and spaces that are gendered in particular ways. a participatory mobile method would not provide us with embodied access to these spaces or the practices that occur there, even though there is no prohibition on locals telling us about these spaces and aspects of the things that happen in them. certain other village spaces are accessible to us, but not with certain categories of shimshali subject (young women especially), whose reputation would be jeopardised by being co-present there with a foreigner. this tells us something about the socially differential nature of motility in shimshal (see warren, 2017), but also means that go-along methods would systematically exclude certain groups of shimshalis from participating in our research. again, members of those groups may show us photographs or talk to us without constraint; it is a particular context of embodied co-presence that is socially dangerous. the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 247 we also worry that go-along methods would be experienced as intrusive and embarrassing for some shimshalis, with unhelpful epistemological effects on their representations as well as negative implications for epistemic justice. as outlined above, we understand shimshalis’ interactions with us to be autoethnographic, and think it is important to help create the conditions for rich autoethnographic expression. participatory mobile methods that involve moving with research subjects through the shimshal landscape may be effective in this regard if those subjects are our close shimshali friends or village elites; with most prospective participants they would produce a context of awkwardness or embarrassment that would limit their capacity to represent themselves or their village effectively (i.e., to their satisfaction) in an autoethnographic register. finally, moving-with methods have been criticised for “focus[sing] on mobile and active subjects at the expense of a broader understanding of materialities, practices and events” (merriman, 2014, p. 169), which are also important features of a mobile world. the mobility implications of road infrastructure exceed embodied and affective experiences of movement itself: landscapes are reshaped, new artefacts are introduced, and social relations, identities and community discourses are reconstituted. mobile methods can interrogate some of these implications, but not necessarily more effectively than conventional methods, and not without epistemological and ethical costs. we hoped autophotography would afford some of the benefits of including shimshalis’ visual representations in our study without exposing our research to the disadvantages of approaches that would involve us moving with research participants. autophotography is one of several visual methods that have become popular since the 1990s, including in mobilities research. its multiple names – self-directed photography (aitken & wingate, 1993), photo-elicitation (harper, 2002; mandleco, 2013), and photovoice (bananuka & john, 2015; wang, 2006) – indicate several variations, which nevertheless share three epistemological characteristics: (a) they employ an anti-objectivist epistemology of vision; (b) they generate visual-narrative data through a subject-oriented process; and (c) they utilise portable photographic technology. in what follows, we interrogate these characteristics, explain why they are well-suited for mobilities research, and describe our use of the method. autophotography expands the focus of visual research from visual artefacts to visuality: the network of “picturing practices” (crang, 1997) that shape the production and reception of artefacts and give them meaning in particular contexts (crang, 2010; rose, 2007; thomas, 2009). 3 this is an anti 3 the term “picturing practices” emphasises the contextual action involved in seeing, framing, showing and viewing, which highlights photography “as practice rather than representation, as taking part in the world rather than reflecting it” (crang, 1997, p. 360). as crang (p. 362) argues, “images are…parts of practices through which people work to establish realities…[they] are not david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 248 objectivist epistemology of vision, where visual artefacts are less important as sources of knowledge than the practices of visuality that surround them, and more useful when examined in relation to this broader context. autophotography generates a mix of visual artefacts and associated picturing practices by asking research subjects to produce photographs that relate to a specified object of inquiry and then provide verbal commentaries on them. this combination of photographs and narratives, accompanied by observations and descriptions of the compositional process, helps researchers learn how subjects produce visual representations in specific contexts, what images they produce in relation to the object of inquiry, why they produce the pictures they do, how they interpret them, and how they use them as social resources (johnsen, may & cloke, 2008). the key is a participant-oriented process that allows photographers to shape their representations according to their own interests and circumstances (belin, 2005; mannay, 2010). the resulting visual/narrative productions are valuable precisely for their subjectivity: their rootedness in particular interests, perspectives, aesthetic preferences, and contexts of reception. researchers find these epistemological characteristics helpful for appreciating subjects’ complex, materially-grounded experiences and interpretations of their social worlds, as evidenced by the method’s use in researching constructions of the self (kohon & carder, 2014; phoenix, 2010), the relationship between place and everyday life (dixon & hadjialexiou, 2005; lombard, 2013), students’ negotiations of educational institutions (clark-ibáñez, 2004; demarie, 2010), experiences of immigration and belonging (faber, moller & pristed nielsen, 2013; streng et al., 2004), interpretations of health and disability (booth & booth, 2003; carnahan, 2006), commuting practices (guell & ogilvie, 2015), and travel behaviour (guell, panter, jones & ogilvie, 2012). in this empirical literature autophotography and its variations are described as techniques through which visuality may be used to expand on insights provided by more strictly conversational, observational or participatory methods (castleden, garvin, & huu-ay-aht first nation, 2008; johnsen, may & cloke, 2008). authors frequently emphasise that autophotographic data “captures” or uncovers “real” experience, provides a “more complete and complex picture” of reality, and together with other methods contributes to an analytical strategy of triangulation (e.g., guell & ogilvie, 2015, pp. 215, 201, 214). these claims attribute a factuality to subjects’ photos and narratives, which is at odds with an anti-objectivist visual epistemology. arjun shankar (2016, p. 158) argues that “the uncritical use of photovoice has allowed a kind of reinvigoration of a positivist orientation toward authenticity, in the idea that the ‘true story’ comes through a community’s images and words.” shankar (2016, p. 184) fears that the result “will only serve to reinforce –––––––––––––––––––––––– so much counterposed to reality as a route through which worlds are created”; in other words, they are autoethnographic, ways of producing a self for the self as well as for others. the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 249 stereotypical imaginings of marginalised peoples facilitated by the positivist trap of an image as ‘mere description’” and suggests approaching subjects’ photos as aesthetic productions through which image-makers are understood to be producing, not reflecting realities. our strategy of treating the image/narrative-making process as autoethnographic addresses the same epistemological issue as shankar’s focus on aesthetics: autophotography’s reality-producing effects. autophotography’s participant-orientation is also understood to have ethical benefits, which are often framed in terms of empowerment, particularly a shift of representational power from researchers to research subjects (padgett et al., 2013; shah, 2015). indeed, empowerment of subjugated groups to “define, analyse and critique their communities through photographs and the analysis of photographs” (joseph, 2017, p. 293) is often identified as autophotography’s central motivation and defining characteristic (delgado, 2015; johnson, 2011). consistent with these empowermentoriented assertions, much autophotographic research has focused on indigenous groups (castleden, garvin, & huu-ay-aht first nation, 2008; kaplan 2015), youth (corcoran, 2015; sensoy, 2011; zehle, 2015), impoverished or homeless people (bukowski & beutow, 2011; dixon & hadjialexiou, 2005; johnsen, may & cloke, 2008), and others whose perspectives are under-represented in scholarly and public discourse (belin, 2005; booth & booth, 2003; mannay, 2010; mcintyre, 2003). some studies problematise claims that autophotography empowers research subjects (allan, 2012). for example, josh packard (2008) found that his homeless male subjects’ technical ineptitude with cameras, seeming lack of familiarity with pictorial conventions that would help make their photos intelligible to viewers, and paucity of “confidence or capital needed to communicate their knowledge” verbally (2008, p. 73) conspired to attenuate the empowerment-effect he anticipated. packard (2008, p. 74) concludes that his attempt to “giv[e] voice to the voiceless was undermined because of the extreme marginality of [his] participants and the inherent power discrepancy between a housed researcher and the homeless participant.” other authors reject the notion of empowerment through participatory methods altogether, associating the claim with neoliberal ideologies of responsibilisation and crude theories of power, and questioning assumptions that participatory methods enable more truthful or agential expression (alejandro leal, 2007). to imagine that empowerment is achieved by ceding representational control supposes “that people who wield power are located at institutional centres, while those who are subjected to power are to be found at the local or regional level – hence the valorisation of ‘local knowledge’ and the continued belief in the empowerment of ‘local’ people through participation” (kothari, 2001, p. 140). the discourse of empowerment through participation overlooks how power relations organise the local, and how participatory techniques can articulate local knowledge in ways that reproduce local power structures. members of subordinated groups may feel compelled to articulate norms that david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 250 reassert established hierarchies, thereby legitimizing local knowledge in ways that perpetuate their subjugation. a foucauldian understanding of power is better-suited for our shimshal research, which occurs within a web of social relations structured by multiple powers, where our own capacity to exert influence at the local scale rarely exceeds our research participants’ and hosts’, despite our privileged positioning in global relations of knowledge production. the power we exercise in research encounters and on local selfrepresentations is neither discrete enough nor sufficiently-located in our own agency to be within our power to relinquish or redistribute. we cannot expunge our influence or that of powerful local actors and discourses from subjects’ self-representations, or offer them speaking positions outside the field of power through which they are constituted. we cannot, therefore, anticipate empowerment. we find it more plausible to frame autoethnography’s ethical attributes in terms of the testimonial and hermeneutical dimensions of epistemic justice. although there is little we can do to change internal power dynamics that reproduce testimonial injustice within the village, we can reduce the extent to which our research perpetuates testimonial injustice against certain groups by employing methods that shimshalis from a variety of subject positionings are likely to engage with willingly, comfortably, and with a sense of competence. go-along mobile methods do not satisfy these criteria, as they exclude certain groups of shimshalis from participating altogether. conventional interviewing methods are also deficient in this regard; villagers associate interviews with household surveys and fact-seeking interrogations employed by development agencies, and community discourses frame the authoritative knowledge these external actors seek as the domain of village elites. consequently, most shimshalis are reluctant to participate in formal interviews, and nervous of overstepping their representational authority when they do. photography has fewer constraining connotations in shimshal. its practice is not strongly-associated with village elites; nor are preconceptions evident regarding who should take photos and discuss them with us. it is most closely-associated with village youth, whose perspectives are often excluded from research on shimshal. men are more likely than women to be familiar with cameras, but there is no social constraint on women using photographic technology, and the photos our female subjects produced were as technicallycompetent as those produced by men. still, despite concerted efforts to recruit female subjects, fewer than half as many women than men participated, for two main reasons: women’s daily household work leaves little free time to take photos and talk about them; and some women lack the social confidence (or support from male family members) to contribute their perspectives to research in any form. gender disparity in our sample remains a site of the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 251 testimonial injustice, which we did not fully overcome.4 nevertheless, our sample was more varied in terms of age, social positioning and gender – and less-crowded with community elites – than more conventional conversational methods or more innovative mobile methods would have allowed. our four young research assistants (two men and two women) recruited subjects through a combination of inviting people to participate and waiting for them to ask. villagers also recommended each other, or hinted to us that someone hoped to be invited. we regularly reviewed the characteristics of our sample, and strategised to make it deeper or more varied, often by recruiting from particular groups, especially women, or identifying specific individuals to round out the sample. during the project’s four-week duration, 16 women, ranging in age from 19 to 70, and 35 men between 18 and 75, provided us with 344 narrativised photos. two ways methods can deny credibility to subjects’ expressive efforts is by framing research tasks too narrowly to allow meaningful self-expression (e.g., closed-ended interviews) or requiring competencies subjects don’t have (e.g., standardized interviews). accordingly, we framed our expectations as openly as possible by formulating the following simple instructions: please take pictures that convey the importance of the shimshal road in your everyday life, and come back to talk about them. these instructions assume the shimshal road is important to people’s lives, which imposes some constraint on subjects’ self-expression. however, we had conducted enough prior research in shimshal to be confident of villagers’ sense of the road’s significance. moreover, most participants had no difficulty answering the question in both the negative and the positive, or articulating degrees of importance. we also approached conversations with photographers as non-directively as possible. most days we met with two to four participant-photographers. after we uploaded their photos onto our laptop (and their own usb keys to take with them), participants spent a few moments looking at them and providing brief descriptions of each, before selecting five or so photos they wanted to discuss in detail. most photographers had 20-30 photos to select from, one elderly man had 96, and a few had less than a dozen. when participants sought our advice in selecting photos to discuss, we gently directed them toward those that expanded the variety of our data set. observing participants select images provided a sense of what they valued in photos, especially as they often discussed the process aloud. after a participant had chosen their pictures and provided a title for each, we discussed the selected photos in detail. conversation was moderated by the research assistants, while we took 4 in 2013 nancy and her female assistants together arranged visits to the homes of 28 middleaged and older women, to speak with them at length – over tea, and usually a meal – about their family’s mobile history. these unstructured conversations in the comfort of women’s homes, and in the context of their daily routines, allowed some women who may have felt uncomfortable producing photos to contribute their perspectives to the study. david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 252 detailed notes, inserted our own probes, and sometimes asked for translations when the wakhi-language discussion got too difficult.5 most participants referred directly to their photos to address the road’s importance to them. some talked about the road but not their photos, or the photos but not the road, or neither the road nor the photos, but rather seemingly-unrelated aspects of social change in their lives. zul haja, for example, used a photo titled “nazia’s umbrella” to argue that shimshalis’ identities have recently become shaped by greater integration with wider currents of thought and knowledge (figure 2). she told us that more people are using umbrellas, sun-screen, and wide-brimmed hats to shade themselves and their children. she thinks there are two reasons for this. first, people have become more aware of the damaging health effects of solar radiation, the thinning ozone layer, etc., and are especially concerned to protect their children from the sun (note the small child on nazia’s back). second, she speculated that as shimshali women become more exposed to south asian and global ideologies of youthful beauty, they are more concerned to retain a fair, unwrinkled complexion. in ms. haja’s telling, nazia’s umbrella symbolizes a new type of shimshali femininity: educated and preoccupied with down-country standards of beauty and motherly responsibility. as one of shimshal’s few female community leaders, and a self-styled role model for younger women, she used her photo to promote a version of femininity that she herself exemplifies. although the road figures implicitly in ms. haja’s reference to imported cultural influences, it serves mainly as a device for furthering her own project by way of ours. we interpret participants’ moves to take control of conversations in this way as evidence that they were using the project for autoethnographic purposes. our plan was to meet individually with participant-photographers, accompanied by the research assistant who had recruited them, but this soon proved impractical. most participant-photographers showed up when it was convenient for them and sat in on discussions until it was their turn, or lingered after their turn to see other photographers’ pictures. frequently half a dozen of us huddled in our room, looking at pictures, pondering their import, and drinking tea. explanations often grew into relaxed and lively group discussions, where details were added, divergent interpretations voiced, and broader themes developed. these discussions clarified certain points of fact, but most participants presented their photos as evocations of personal experiences of mobility and change. allowing participants to discuss their photos in a group context re-introduced certain village power dynamics into the conversational space, sometimes with negative implications for testimonial justice, as when elderly men “corrected” women’s or younger people’s commentaries. on the other hand, many participants would have felt more intimidated and constrained by a procedure that involved strictly 5 all shimshalis speak wakhi as their first language, but they are educated in urdu and english. a few people chose to converse in english; most used wakhi. the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 253 scheduled appointments and more formal one-on-one conversations, than they were by the animated, laughter-filled, group discussions that characterized the conversational aspect of the project. moreover, observing group discussions helped us appreciate photography as a social practice and resource for asserting identities, serving interests, and producing and negotiating truths. the conversations generated by this procedure were remarkably rich, in terms of the range, detail and intimacy of themes, examples, and reflections participants developed. the presence of a photograph to focus attention, orient embodied presence, and mediate conversation helped dispel nervousness and awkwardness, and nurtured a relaxed atmosphere. people told us they were excited by the chance to discuss their pictures and hear others’ opinions, an enthusiasm we attribute to participants’ sense of discretion in terms of what photos they produced and how they were interpreted. we nurtured this discretion by involving the community and our local research assistants in design and recruitment decisions, encouraging assistants to lead discussions and manage project logistics according to local sensibilities, providing photographers with relatively open instructions, and allowing discussions to unfold as unstructured conversations among peers. figure 2. nazia’s umbrella (photo: zul haja, 35, f, homemaker/local council member) we also think our relatively non-directive use of autophotography has benefits in terms of hermeneutical justice: subjects’ capacity to express david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 254 themselves as they wish and to be understood on their own terms. our openended instructions, subjects’ liberty to compose photos without intervention or surveillance, and the discretion to comment on them as they pleased all contribute to this prospect. but hermeneutical justice also involves attributing credibility to subjects commensurate with the epistemological characteristics of their representations. a key epistemological feature of shimshalis’ communications with us is their autoethnographic character, and therefore our responsibility in terms of hermeneutical justice is to conduct research that nurtures an autoethnographic mode of communication, and to receive shimshalis’ self-representations with sensitivity to their autoethnographic characteristics. if autoethnography is a form of interventionary and self-interested transcultural self-representation, which produces a reality for the self and an other, then autophotography’s combination of photography and unstructured conversations has several strengths as a vehicle for autoethnographic representation. cameras are technological extensions of a photographer’s eye, which enable photographers to present viewers with a version of what they see from the same vantage point. but not exactly the same vantage point, because photographers look out toward the edge of a location centred on their own kinaesthetically-embodied presence, while viewers are situated at a scene’s periphery looking into it. photography thus both invites viewers into a scene and keeps them at bay. shimshalis’ photos offer representations of aspects of their socio-material context, but in a form mediated by this inviting/distancing characteristic of photography, as well as by the compositional discretion of photographers in terms of content (e.g., choice of scene, framing, distance) and form (e.g., exposure, depth of field, focal length) decisions, both of which are productive resources for the performance of identity. content decisions associate the photographer-self with a social, locational, material context, and in our case present a particular rendering of their preoccupations regarding the road. through these devices photographers may perform themselves or their community in various ways: as modern, traditional, wealthy, family-oriented, entrepreneurial, devout, thoughtful, educated, rustic, footloose, etc. decisions related to form or aesthetics perform the self in similar ways, but in a somewhat different register, for example, as artistic, imaginative, whimsical, eager to please, rushed for time, or technically proficient. a photo produced by a middle-aged woman from a wealthy family – zaib aman – illustrates autophotography’s autoethnographic character (figure 3). in her telling, this “modern washroom” is a space where her family experiences the effects of vehicular mobility. she said the road makes transporting bathroom fixtures possible, but only for wealthy people. she emphasised that just a few households have modern bathrooms, but everyone in shimshal has become more concerned about cleanliness, and everyone wants these bathrooms, even if they only work half the year when the water runs. through this combination of photo and narrative, ms. aman constructs the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 255 herself as modern, wealthy, and well-educated – a trend setter – in keeping with her family’s social position. the photo’s contents and accompanying narrative perform her identity as distinct from other shimshalis, while also performing the community as aspiring to the hygienic modernity she depicts. the photo is a complex, multi-scalar self-performance, in which content combines with a highly-symmetrical composition to situate her in relation to shimshal, and shimshal in relation to modernity. figure 3. modern washroom (photo: zaib aman, 48, f, homemaker) david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 256 the decisions photographers make about form and content are shaped by an anticipated context of reception: photographs are identity performances for an audience, which in our project includes photographers themselves, foreign researchers, other community members, and potentially an audience of nonshimshalis. the photographs are performances of and for an individual and ethnographic self, as well as for metropolitan outsiders, the most proximate of which – ourselves – know the community well and are understood locally as powerful producers of knowledge and valuable resources for individual and collective projects. reading photographs as autoethnographic offers a way to practice an anti-objectivist epistemology of vision commensurate with our research context. autoethnographic expression has interventionary objectives, but is only successfully interventionary if it is intelligible to its metropolitan and local audiences. according to pratt (1992), this necessitates adopting aspects of a metropolitan idiom, and mingling them with a local idiom. in shimshal, photography exemplifies these characteristics. as an expressive practice photography is new to shimshal, but all villagers are familiar with metropolitan photographic conventions, because they have seen countless pictures in books, magazines and increasingly on-line, including pictures of their own landscapes and social contexts in adventure tourism publications and development reports. arguably, all of our participants were competent transcultural communicators in a photographic idiom, whether or not they were experienced photographers, because of their familiarity with metropolitan compositional conventions. moreover, most cameras – including the nikon coolpix digital cameras we used – bias photographers toward producing horizontal images, impose constraints on composition (e.g., in terms of dimensions), and have automatic features (e.g., exposure, focus, depth of field), which unless overridden direct photographers to take pictures that conform to standard conventions. cameras therefore limit photographers’ creative discretion, while also providing templates for achieving a degree of transcultural intelligibility. these camera-effects undermine claims that autophotography affords autochthonous self-expression, but highlight the method’s strength for generating representations that communicate across knowledge communities and thus intervene in metropolitan knowledge. familiarity with global compositional conventions, combined with the built-in constraints of cameras, helped photographers produce pictures that both other shimshalis and we as researchers found sufficiently intelligible to serve as productive starting points for conversations. these conversations allowed participants to add specific and abstract meaning to their photos, with the effect of producing a richer autoethnographic intervention situated more explicitly in expressive intention and transcultural identity performance. the social situation in which photos were discussed compelled photographers to perform in the moment the autoethnographic characteristic of speaking simultaneously to an audience of insiders and outsiders. observing photographers address multiple audiences simultaneously offered insights the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 257 regarding photography’s constitution and performance as a social practice. for example, adult participants often used the discussions to educate our young research assistants about aspects of shimshal’s past or present, thereby satisfying an intra-community didactic interest and asserting their social seniority. when these lessons contained implicit criticism of today’s shimshali youth, they were usually directed to us rather than our assistants, to avoid embarrassing them. in other cases photographers communicated points to us, ostensibly by addressing research assistants or other onlookers. idiom – and sometimes language itself – varied depending on who was being directly addressed. many participants knew us before the project began, and almost all assumed we are familiar with community affairs, the road-building process, and life before the road; this assumption made it easier to address multiple audiences simultaneously, and to take pictures they thought would be intelligible to us. sometimes participants used photos to continue conversations they had begun with us in other circumstances. these observations demonstrate that accuracy and authenticity are inappropriate epistemological descriptors for what our participants showed and told us, and also that the prospect of empowering participants by removing the influence of our agency and positionality from their autophotographic performances is unrealistic. so far we have discussed two of autophotography’s three main epistemological characteristics: its anti-objectivist epistemology of vision, and its participant-oriented process for generating visual-narrative data. it remains to discuss the method’s reliance on portable photographic technology, which can be used in a variety of social and locational circumstances. the mobility of small cameras augments the benefits of autophotography’s anti-objectivist epistemology and participant-orientation, in two respects. first, the near-global ubiquity of cameras and their easy user interface give the method considerable social mobility, enabling almost anyone with sight to create complex and deliberative images. second, compact cameras’ portability allows photos to be taken in places, at times, and of artefacts and activities embedded in subjects’ daily lives that would not otherwise be accessible to researchers. expanded possibilities for generating visual information from beyond researchers’ physical and social reach helps reverse the conventional ocular gaze of research, thereby enhancing subjects’ representational and interpretive discretion. the spectator’s view from the edge of things, which is typically most available to researchers, is replaced in autophotography by a more intimate view. this optical and cognitive reorientation deepens the method’s potential to generate rich, novel, and placeembedded insights regarding subjects’ relationships to an object of inquiry. participants’ capacity to move through their daily routines with cameras gives autophotography limited but important characteristics of a mobile method. still cameras are not well-suited to capturing movement itself, except to the extent that photographs freeze postures or attitudes of motion. however, photos can effectively portray contexts, artefacts and consequences david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 258 of mobility; articulations of movement itself may be added when photographers discuss their pictures. for example, an elderly man named barkat ali shah produced a photo of several “generations of lighting,” which he carefully positioned in his home (figure 4). the photo is static – almost a still life – but it became animated through mr. shah’s explanation, which associated each type of lighting (grease lamp, coal oil lantern, hurricane lamp, high pressure propane lamp, lightbulb) with a different period in shimshal’s history of mobility. he included detailed descriptions of himself and his father carrying lamps and other unwieldy items to shimshal by foot, and emphasised the transportation possibilities afforded by improved paths culminating with the jeep road. evidently, he wanted to describe his family as lighting innovators in shimshal, while also reminding research assistants of the mobility difficulties their ancestors faced. he enrolled us as allies in this didactic and self-representational effort, because unlike our assistants we had walked the route to shimshal many times before the road’s completion, and remember when currently-obsolete forms of lighting were common. mr. shah taught us nothing new about shimshal’s history of lighting or mobility, but the association he constructed between lighting and mobility infrastructure, and the way he wove his family’s achievements into that association, alerted us to certain connections shimshalis draw between mobility and identity, and to one of the many corners of their lives in which they discern the road’s influence. that he constructed a small temporary museum of lighting specifically to photograph again demonstrates that photos produce rather than capture or mirror visual realities. figure 4. history of lighting (photo: barkat ali shah, 59, m, farmer/animal health specialist) the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 259 for our purpose, which is to investigate the difference a particular mobility infrastructure is making to shimshali lifeworlds, the capacity of photos to situate subjects’ perspectives on the landscape, in material artefacts, in the spaces of their lives, is a significant benefit. discussions of mobile methods emphasise the importance of considering mobility in relation to materiality, embodiment and place (cresswell, 2006, merriman, 2014, spinney, 2015). hein, evens and jones (2008, p. 1269; emphasis in original) stress that “materiality is the simple acceptance that people, things, and even ideas are situated somewhere,” and note that “the idea of embodiment is closely related to place, which recognises that the position of a phenomenon in space and time is an essential determinant of its characteristics” and, we would add, of the characteristics of the place in which it is positioned. these insights have three implications for our research, which relate to our use of autophotography. first, if we are interested in how new mobility infrastructure intersects with people’s lives, it is insufficient to focus on the experience, practice and representation of movement through a landscape or in places; we should also study how the socio-material character of places are reshaped by the infrastructure and the mobilities it affords. this is especially important in shimshal, where the embodied mobilities of much of the population have not been noticeably affected by the road’s construction (see cook & butz, 2017), but whose lives have been reshaped by a new landscape of artefacts transported along the road. the road’s “meaning” to many shimshalis has less to do with greater ease of personal travel than with changes to their homes or re-landscaping of the village. participants exploited the portability of cameras to photograph a range of village places they wished to represent as materially reconstituted by artefacts that were uncommon or unavailable in the village before the road’s construction. they framed, composed and visually “froze” these artefacts, either in situ or in an arrangement tailor-made to photograph. photos portrayed the material aspects of these socio-material changes to place, while the social implications of changing materiality were often addressed in photographers’ commentaries. naveed ahmed, for example, photographed an assortment of new electric kitchen appliances located in a relative’s traditional kitchen (figure 5). the picture portrays the material make-up of a household space, and hints at aspects of women’s reproductive labour. his commentary reflected on household economies and changes in the way husbands and wives relate. he stated that the man in this household works many hours for low wages in a distant city to purchase and transport consumer items that save his wife a small amount of labour. in mr. ahmed’s telling, these appliances are not very useful in shimshal, except to signify the man’s appreciation for his wife’s efforts to maintain a home in his absence, and as a materially-emplaced symbol of his purchasing power. it is hard to imagine either this intense focus on a micro-environment, or mr. ahmed’s sophisticated commentary, arising from a go-along visual-mobile method, or from a more conventional david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 260 interview process in which selectivity and premeditation are more difficult. mr. ahmed, a young student eager to perform himself as studious, treated the exercise as a research assignment, carefully selecting his scene, composing his picture, and speaking with the homemaker, before offering commentary.6 figure 5. old kitchen with modern equipment (photo: naveed ahmed, 18, m, student) autophotography’s capacity for fine-grained selectiveness also has benefits for epistemic justice relative to move-along visuallyor kinaestheticallyoriented methods. the latter may allow subjects to select a route, but not to limit the accompanying researcher’s apprehension of scenes or events along it. mr. ahmed could have taken us to this house, showed us the appliances, and talked about them in situ; but he couldn’t do that without exposing us to other parts of the house, other artefacts in the house, or household members, any of which may have interfered with his argument. moreover, he may have felt compelled to answer our questions about things we saw during our outing together or think on his feet in ways that prevented him from shaping his intervention as he wished. second, to say that “the position of a phenomenon in space and time is an essential determinant of its characteristics” (hein, evens & jones, 2008, p. 6 an objectivist reading of the photo would produce a different interpretation than the photographer wished to promote. the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 261 1269) suggests that place is an actant in the research process: where people are located influences what seems important or true to them, and their performances of self. the road’s meaning to shimshalis may vary depending on where they are; their preoccupations in relation to it are place specific. mobile methods such as walking interviews address this issue by allowing researchers to move through a landscape with participants, but with the disadvantages specified above, and usually with significant spatial limitations (warren, 2017). autophotography allows subjects to place themselves in various locations, make photos that relate to their thoughts in those places, and use those photos to inform subsequent discussion in a different place. this process does not remove the influence of the socio-spatial context in which subjects discuss their photos (i.e., our room, in the company of our assistants and assorted onlookers); nor would we want it to, given the autoethnographic resources to be found there. but it does allow photographers to bring self-performances that are constituted in the places of their daily lives into the interview context in the form of photographs. again, we aren’t implying that this gives us a more accurate rendering of who people are, what they think, or how the road is important to them, but it does expand the range of embodied locations from which they perform and communicate for us. the extent of this expansion depends on the spatial range and variety of photographers’ daily routines, and on the duration they have to produce photos. to make the best use of our cameras in a limited field season, and to prevent them being lost or damaged, we allowed participants to keep them for one day only. this short duration limited the range and variety of locations subjects could photograph, especially for female homemakers whose reproductive labour kept them busy and close to home. they mainly photographed the interiors of their houses, their children, or outside spaces close to home. among our female participants, only young students, grandmothers and those with leadership positions in community organisations photographed spaces distant from their homes. men took pictures in and of a wider variety of domestic and public spaces, commensurate with their greater and more autonomous mobility. men were also more likely to include wideangle landscape shots, while women usually focused more tightly on things close to them. the photographs as a set provide some indication of differences in daily mobilities between and within genders, but not straightforwardly, because homemakers used their photos to perform homemaker identities, female students performed identities as modern and emancipated by photographing shops and other public spaces, and men performed authoritative masculinity via a wide range of interior and exterior shots, including prospects from vantage points above the village. the photos reproduce – or challenge – gendered expectations as much as they represent gendered patterns of mobility. two pictures produced by the late mohammad shafa exemplify how the road’s meaning may vary depending on where photographers are. the first is david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 262 of an old hand-woven yak hair carpet in mr. shafa’s home (figure 6). his commentary stressed the beauty, durability, and significance of village-made carpets, before reflecting on the loss of these aspects of local culture as the road brings cheaper and gaudier manufactured replacements. the conversation was saturated with the regret and nostalgia of a widower whose only child lives far away, for whom home is a lonely reminder of a happier past. the second photo shows the shimshal cricket team returning triumphantly from a tournament in another village (figure 7). here mr. shafa’s commentary focused on shimshal’s history of sporting excellence and the new opportunities village athletes have to distinguish themselves now that the road makes travel to tournaments easy. the two photos – one a closeup interior in a lonely home, the other a wide-angle shot of a happy moment in village life – generated quite different takes on the road, the village’s future, and mr. shafa himself. figure 6. qolen plos (a specific pattern of yak hair carpet) (photo: mohammad shafa, 63, m, farmer) the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 263 figure 7. the cricket team arrives (photo: mohammad shafa, 63, m, farmer) a third important reason to situate shimshalis’ perspectives in the spaces of their lives via autophotography is to distance our analysis from the global north-centrism of mobilities research. although “road impact” studies are common in international development scholarship, few studies employing a mobilities perspective have focused on south and central asian mobility articulations (but see butz & cook, 2011, 2015; hussain & smith, 1999; shneiderman, 2013; sur, 2013). consequently, theorisations of mobility risk presuming a normative infrastructural environment characteristic of the industrialised north, with commensurate assumed artefacts, practices, subjectivities and mobility inequalities. a well-developed transportation infrastructure is assumed in most of the conceptual literature, as are a variety of motorised conveyances or at least wheeled vehicles. even studies of walking situate pedestrian movement in an environment of machines, as an alternative or complement to vehicular mobility. mobile subjects are imagined to be competent passengers, if not always drivers. these underlying assumptions don’t hold for much of the global south. among shimshal’s adult population some individuals have never ridden a wheeled vehicle, and for many people traveling by jeep is still a rare experience. women often display a visceral dread of jeep travel, and their frequent “car-sickness” is received as a positive display of shimshali femininity. artefacts that are too large, heavy or fragile to be carried by foot still stand out as new in a built landscape that was until recently shaped solely by the affordances and david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 264 limitations of pedestrian movement. how to produce an analysis that benefits from the many conceptual insights of mobilities scholarship without assuming the same ontological ground that underpins that scholarship, and how to articulate the features of shimshal’s mobility context in relation to mobilities research without sensationalizing, othering, or locating it in the past are challenging questions. a full answer is beyond this paper’s scope, but must involve attention to shimshalis’ own attentiveness to the subtle implications of place for the experience of a new vehicular mobility platform, and of vehicular mobilities for the micro-constitution of place. autophotography is a useful resource for developing such attentiveness. figure 8. privacy wall (photo: naveed ahmed, 18, m, student) a second photo by naveed ahmed helps to illustrate autophotography’s utility in this regard (figure 8). it shows two men building a boundary wall to separate the roadway from private property. in mr. ahmed’s telling, the road passes close to people’s homes, which disrupts their privacy and security, and endangers children. recently, such walls have become common in shimshal, to protect crops from livestock, and to satisfy a growing desire for personal privacy. according to mr. ahmed, the new roadway is understood as public space, where anyone can walk freely, socialise, or conduct business. other village spaces, including paths between fields and along irrigation channels, have become less public, a circumstance reinforced by boundary walls. consequently, villagers feel less free to use these paths than formerly, and the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 265 landowners are increasingly likely to prevent other villagers from crossing their property. mr. ahmed said that villagers now use the main road to walk from place to place, even if their journey takes longer. he concluded that although the road enables long distance vehicular mobility, it decreases the efficiency of pedestrian movement within the village. his commentary begins with the emplaced, embodied action portrayed in the picture. he then widens his scope, using boundary wall construction as a resource to talk about the road’s disruptive implications in shimshal, with its particular history of mobility: impeding pedestrian movement, strengthenening the differences between public and private space, endangering children and livestock, and changing sight-lines. whatever we make of this combination of photo and narrative in terms of accuracy or performativity, it articulates an attentiveness to place that pries us loose from the metropolitan imaginaries of much mobilities research, which casts roads as mundane, boring, even passé. through its intense place-specificity, naveed ahmed’s production intervenes in these imaginaries. ––– this paper responds to calls from mobilities scholars for methodological innovation and reflexivity by detailing our use of autophotography and assessing its characteristics as a visual/narrative method for mobilities research. taking inspiration from fricker’s (2007) conceptualisation of epistemic justice, we start from the position that ethics and epistemology are mutually constitutive, and therefore that methods must be assessed situationally on ethical and epistemological grounds. pratt’s (1992) concept of subaltern autoethnography provides a productive epistemological framing for transcultural research interactions in our colonially-inflected context, from which we develop a set of epistemological/ethical research priorities that together constitute an autoethnographic sensibility; for autophotography to be suitable for our research it should allow subjects relatively unrestricted opportunities for autoethnographic expression, and constitute data in a form that is amenable to interpretation and analysis as autoethnographic. we argue that autophotography’s combination of visual/narrative self-expression meets these criteria, if two temptations are avoided: to imagine visuality as a shortcut to accuracy or authenticity; and to imagine the participatory character of autophotography as empowering to research subjects. conceiving of autophotography’s yield as autoethnographic helps avoid these temptations. meeting the ethical and epistemological requirements of an autoethnographic sensibility is a necessary but insufficient criterion for claiming a method is suitable for mobilities research. it must also have the capacity to generate insights regarding the activities, events and meanings through which mobilities are socially instantiated. numerous mobilities scholars have argued that this requires explicitly mobile methods that involve researchers moving with or visually tracking mobile subjects in motion. david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 266 although we appreciate the advantages of mobile methods for certain mobilities research, in some settings they may impede epistemic justice by excluding certain groups from participating, and by constraining autoethnographic expression among individuals who do, with detrimental epistemological effects. autophotography’s process of inviting subjects to take photos at times and places of their choosing and then discuss their significance at a later time in another place can attenuate these liabilities, while retaining many of the strengths of go-along methods. similar to more explicitly mobile methods, autophotography situates subjects’ perspectives in the socio-material spaces of their lives, allowing them visually to perform the material contexts, artefacts and consequences of mobility, and to later add verbal articulations of movement itself. autophotography’s capacity to produce visual representations that are emplaced in the spaces of subjects’ daily lives is a significant advantage for mobilities research, especially in contexts where changes to the material and social character of place are experienced as important lifeworld consequences of a new mobility constellation. specifically, this capacity helped us investigate how the socio-material character of shimshali places are reshaped by the new road and the movement it affords, and how the places in which shimshalis contemplate the road’s significance influence their perspectives and the ways they are articulated. moreover, autophotography’s microattention to place and people’s embodied occupation of specific places helps us consider features of shimshal’s mobility context in relation to a larger ouvre of mobilities scholarship, while remaining sensitive to ontological differences between shimshal and the global north settings that much mobilities scholarship investigates and presumes. although we articulate these advantages in relation to our own research context, we don’t think they are limited to it. we have insisted that for epistemological and ethical reasons shimshalis’ pictures and commentaries should be understood as autoethnographic: reflexive self-performances that produce rather than reflect a version of truth. although we asked shimshalis to take pictures that convey the importance of the shimshal road in their everyday life and then tell us about them, we cannot analyse the resulting representations as capturing or accessing realities about the road’s significance that pre-exist their visual/narrative expression to us. 7 instead, we must read the photos and narratives as transcultural performances of identity in relation to the road, which have been shaped by the affordances and constraints of autophotography, and by characteristics of the field of power in which it was employed. similarities among participants in terms of the content or form of visual/narrative productions demonstrate 7 photos demonstrate the existence in shimshal of certain artefacts like sinks, lamps, kitchen appliances and boundary walls, and in their commentaries photographers provided factual information about the cost of travel, the number of tractors in the village, their own mobility patterns, etc. some of these factual details are helpful to our investigation, but they are byproducts of autophotography that hardly justify the method. the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 267 that individual photographers are using the road discursively as an identityperforming resource in shared ways. consequently, one relevant analytical question is, how are shimshalis using the road as a discursive resource for the constitution of individual and collective identity? (see campbell, 2012; dalakoglou & harvey, 2012; demenge, 2012). although a detailed answer is not possible here, we devote our final paragraphs to illustrating how pictorial and narrative references to the road were used to promote three overlapping discourses of shimshali identity. figure 9. old and new boy (photo: sher ali, 50, m, teacher) first, a majority of participants referenced the road or road-based mobility as a device for situating shimshal in relation to modernity and tradition. the road’s construction was portrayed as a pivotal event, separating past from present, tradition from modernity. in these tellings the road was itself evidence of modernity and the propellant for other changes that brought modernity and eroded tradition. participants had various takes on the attractiveness of modernity in relation to tradition, but almost everyone stressed their own and the community’s status as modern. an example of this past/present interpretive framing was staged by retired teacher sher ali, in a picture titled “old and new boy” (figure 9). on the left is a modern shimshali boy, with his sunglasses, bicycle, clean western clothes and cheeky grin. on the right is a so-called traditional boy from mr. ali’s own youth, dressed in old-fashioned clothing and carrying a basket for david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 268 transporting manure. in his commentary, mr. ali seemed both proud that today’s youngsters enjoy free time and nice possessions, and regretful that they are an expense to their parents rather than a productive resource as he was as a boy. the main theme in his narrative was a sense of the road as a pivotal event that clearly separates the traditional past from the modern present. mr. ali juxtaposed tradition and modernity in a single composition; numerous other photographers presented photos in pairs to achieve the same effect. figure 10. wedding gift (photo: mirza aman, 45, m, jeep driver) second, many photographers employed the road discursively to position shimshal in relation to other places. sometimes, as in “boundary wall” and “nazia’s umbrella,” the emphasis was on shimshal’s increasing similarity to larger and more urban places. in these instances the discourse of shimshal’s increasing modernity was linked to a narrative of diminishing distinctiveness, a concern that animates much shimshali conversation. other photographers the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 269 incorporated the road into assertions of shimshal’s continuing cultural distinctiveness, even from neighbouring villages. mirza aman, one of shimshal’s passenger jeep operators, submitted a picture of himself unloading goats from the roof of his jeep, which he transported from shimshal as gifts for a wedding in a nearby community (figure 10). he related that weddings require numerous meat dishes, and shimshal is famous for livestock, which can now be transported live along the road. consequently, shimshalis get invited to many weddings in neighbouring villages, with the expectation that they will bring sheep or goats as gifts. he complained that guests from other villages give blankets or tea sets worth 500 rupees, but shimshalis are expected to donate an animal worth up to 15 times that amount. embedded in mr. aman’s mobility account are distinctions that position shimshal positively in relation to its neighbours. the road is represented as bringing these longstanding comparative identity features to the fore in particular ways. figure 11. compressor machine (photo: sifaat karim, 32, m, electrician/shopkeeper/farmer) third, shimshalis frequently produced photos and commentaries that situate villagers in relation to each other, often by drawing on the trope of village unity, specifically the ways modernisation has eroded it, and demonstrations that shimshal remains a unified community despite modernization. most photographers associated village unity with a traditional david butz & nancy cook studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 270 past before the road, and blamed new market relations, greater economic differentiation, and more distanciated social networks for what they represent as a decline in unity. nevertheless, they differentiated shimshal positively from other villages by insisting that it remained more unified than most. numerous photographers represented the road-construction process as an important unifying event, but the road itself as an agent of dis-integration. three photographers took similar photos of an air compressor, around which they constructed the latter claims. the compressor was donated early in the road-construction process, and used by shimshali volunteers to drill holes for blasting. it now sits abandoned in the corner of a field. sifaat karim, a shopkeeper who took one of these photos, told us that to him the compressor signifies both unity and disunity (figure 11). it is a reminder of the village’s unity during the construction process, the recent erosion of which is signified by the compressor’s current neglected condition. according to mr. karim, people have become more focused on self-interest rather than the wellbeing of the village. he attributed this change to people’s greater interaction with and dependency on the outside for education, employment, and donations. as villagers rely more on distanciated cash relations and less on subsistence relations with other villagers, they have less time and incentive to help each other. like other photographers, mr. karim associated different shimshali identities with different phases in the community’s relationship with the road. as these examples indicate, shimshalis’ visual/narrative productions offer many truths about the road’s importance, truths produced in a particular transcultural context, tethered to the times, places and artefacts portrayed in the photos, and shaped by individual and shared self-representational interests.8 in the process, photographers used the road as an interpretive frame to communicate something about themselves, to position their community in relation to modernity and tradition, to distinguish themselves from their neighbours, and to articulate well-worn worries about the consequences of social change. we conclude that the road’s discursive usefulness is an important part of its significance to shimshalis. this may be the most productive analytical insight we gained from our autophotography project, and the one with greatest potential to contribute to mobilities scholarship. in 2006, tim cresswell characterised mobility as “socially produced motion” consisting of movement, representation and practice (p. 3). since then, the meanings that are attached to motion, mobile populations and the infrastructure that enables movement have been an important focus of 8 in addition to analysing these autoethnographic productions, it is important to circulate them locally and transculturally in a form close to how they were presented to us. for that reason, and with photographers’ encouragement, in 2012 we mounted an exhibition in shimshal of 114 of the photos with accompanying captions, to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the road’s completion. the printed photos remain as a permanent archive in the community. we are also producing a book that features 130 of the photos with lengthy summaries of photographers’ commentaries in english, urdu, and wakhi. the book will be available locally, throughout pakistan, and abroad. the value of autophotography for mobilities research studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 238-274, 2017 271 mobilities inquiry. our study contributes to that focus in two ways: by creating a context for shimshalis to articulate versions of the road’s meaning to them, and more innovatively, by reversing cresswell’s formulation to show how the road is used representationally to give meaning to other aspects of themselves and their lives. acknowledgements we are grateful to our shimshali hosts, collaborators and participants for their enthusiastic involvement in our research; special thanks to the family of daulat amin, our long-term hosts in shimshal, and to our excellent research assistants, fatima parveen, shamshad begum, sakhawat ali and javed shafa. thanks also to loris gasparotto for his cartographic assistance. the paper has benefitted from the thoughtful suggestions of two anonymous reviewers and of special issue editors andrea doucet and jennifer rowsell, for which we are appreciative. this work was supported by the social sciences and humanities research council (grant number 410 2009 0579), and the brock university council for research in the social sciences. references aitken, s. c., & wingate, j. 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(2006). sustaining livelihoods and overcoming insecurity. in g. wood, a. malik & s. sagheer (eds.), valleys in transition: twenty years of akrsp’s experience in northern pakistan (pp. 54-119). oxford: oxford university press. zehle, j. (2015). investigating life stories: the photovoices of young people with disabilities in northern ethiopia. in s. miles & a. howes (eds.), photography in educational research: critical reflections from diverse contexts (pp. 21-35). new york: routledge. villegas et al final correspondence address: paloma e. villegas, department of sociology, california state university san bernardino, san bernardino, ca 92407, usa; email: paloma.villegas@csusb.edu issn: 1911-4788 volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 contesting settler colonial accounts: temporality, migration and place-making in scarborough, ontario paloma e. villegas california state university, san bernardino, usa patricia landolt university of toronto, canada victoria freeman independent scholar, toronto, canada joe hermer university of toronto, canada ranu basu york university, canada bojana videkanic university of waterloo, canada abstract the paper considers how the logic of settler colonialism, the active and ongoing dispossession of indigenous peoples, shapes scholarship on migration, race and citizenship in canada. it draws on the insights of settler colonial theory and critiques of methodological nationalism to do so. the concept of differential inclusion and assemblages methodology are proposed as a way to understand the relationship between indigeneity and migration in a settler colonial context. the paper develops this conceptual proposal through an analysis of a single place over time: scarborough, ontario. authors present portraits of scarborough, ontario, canada to understand how migration and indigenous sovereignty are narrated and regulated in convergent and divergent ways. together, the portraits examine historical stories, media discourses, photography and map archives, fieldwork and interviews connected to scarborough. they reveal how the differential inclusion of migrant, racialized and indigenous peoples operates through processes of invisibilization and paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 322 hypervisibilization, fixity and erasure, and memorialization. they also illustrate moments of disruption that work to unsettle settler colonial dispossession. keywords differential inclusion; assemblage methodology; migration; indigenous sovereignty; methodological nationalism; knowledge production introduction the truth and reconciliation commission of canada (2015) and canada’s sesquicentennial commemorations of 2017 re-ignited debates about the relationship between indigenous sovereignty, migration and settlerhood. for scholars of migration, racialization and citizenship, the discussions centred two concerns: how does settler colonialism mediate the way our research understands indigenous sovereignty; and, what dialogue and knowledge might help disrupt the influence of settler colonialism on our research field. in 2017, villegas and landolt organized the interdisciplinary workshop crossing scarborough to facilitate a discussion about the presence of settler colonialism in migration scholarship and to contribute to answering these questions. villegas and landolt then led a collaborative writing process to examine the connections across co-authors’ research, and identified the concept of differential inclusion and assemblages methodology as starting points for challenging this mediation. crossing scarborough brought together scholars from sociology, history, geography, law, art, and education to examine indigenous and settler presence, mobilities, and migration relationally, over time and at a single site. our focus was on what is now known as scarborough, ontario; a site that has been actively inhabited by different nations and peoples for the last 15,000 years. we continued and extended our conversations to write this paper and considered reviewer feedback to engage with the contributions of indigenous scholars. in particular, assemblages methodology allows us to juxtapose and interweave threads of social life that occur at different points in time to understand the matrices of power of settler colonialism. the concept of differential inclusion helps theorize how the hierarchies of social relations operate in a settler colonial context (casa cortes et al., 2015). we demonstrate how indigenous, settler and “arrivant” individuals and collectivities are hierarchically classified, sorted and included in canada’s nation-building project in ways that produce variable degrees of inclusion and exclusion, precarity, and subordination. the paper is organized into four sections. the first section reviews relevant literature and presents our theoretical and methodological proposal. the second section describes scarborough, emphasizing its characteristics as a temporally complex and multi-scalar research site (cf. cowen, 2020). it discusses diverse moments, migrations and settlements that have shaped present day scarborough in order to emphasize the layers of social relations contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 323 that constitute the place. this is followed by a presentation of the four portraits that emerged from the workshop. the portraits demonstrate how differential inclusion operates in a settler colonial state. the discussion links the four portraits and the conclusion expands on the conceptual and methodological contributions. settler colonialism and migration scholarship a central challenge for scholars of migration, citizenship, and racialization is to understand and undo the longstanding symbiosis that exists between the temporal and socio-spatial logic of settler colonialism and our fields of study. settler colonial theory specifically its analysis of temporality and sociospatialities, and critiques of methodological nationalism serve as a starting point for this assessment. the concept of differential inclusion and assemblages methodology are proposed as a way to unsettle the temporal and socio-spatial logics of dispossession and erasure that currently informs a lot of research on migration and citizenship. as an invasive structure of power, settler colonialism operates through a distinct temporal and socio-spatial logic to continually and permanently eliminate and replace indigenous societies physically, culturally, and spiritually (coulthard, 2014; wolfe, 2006). scholars argue that settler colonial temporality constructs a foundational timeline that annuls the prior and ongoing presence of indigenous peoples and locates the settler-state in a past that is prior to all (asch, 2002; povinelli, 2011). they point to the colonial-era doctrine of terra nullius or vacant land as the defining sociospatial logic of settler colonialism. the doctrine holds that lands were uninhabited or that indigenous societies were sufficiently inferior to presume vacancy (asch, 2002). this rationale legitimizes continual dispossession, through forced relocations, land seizures, treaties, and other colonial practices to ensure settler access and control over land and resources (wolfe, 2006). as a result, the settler-state narrates nation-state formation as an always forwardlooking process or settler futurity (tuck & gaztambide-fernandez, 2013). in this case, it narrates canada as a nation of immigrants, a place in which new peoples are constantly arriving to settle a land vacant of indigenous peoples. indigenous and anti-racist scholars present important critiques that demonstrate the operation of settler colonialism in different social science disciplines and research fields (byrd, 2011; lawrence & dua, 2005; sharma & wright, 2008; simpson, 2014; tuck & yang, 2012). of particular relevance to our discussions is scholarship that centres the politics of decolonization (lawrence & dua, 2005; tuck & yang, 2012). lawrence and dua (2005) argue that anti-racist scholars are implicated in the maintenance of settler colonialism through a lack of recognition of the complex relationships between indigenous peoples, european settlers, migrants, and racialized peoples. they argue that all migrants have historically been and paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 324 continue to be settler colonizers: intentional or unwitting participants in the dispossession of indigenous peoples. other scholars nuance this argument, pushing for recognition of the global structures of power that organize migration flows. byrd (2011) proposes the term arrivant rather than migrant. these alternative terminologies emphasize that the transatlantic slave trade and other colonial and imperial practices of dispossession and exploitation produce different forms of forced migrations that are not easily collapsed into the singular notion of settler (dhamoon, 2015; sharma & wright, 2008). another research strand rejects settler colonialism as a fait accompli and foregrounds indigenous presence and refusal. scholars examine the politics of indigenous refusal and contestation to illustrate settler colonialism’s failure to eliminate indigenous lives and sovereignties. they centre indigenous survivance (vizenor, 1998), the active process of surviving and working against settler colonialism, and ongoing projects for decolonization (tuck & yang, 2012). they also examine indigenous futurity (macoun & strakosch, 2013; tuck & gaztambide-fernandez, 2013). indigenous scholars challenge liberal nationalism’s ideal of social inclusion as a viable and desirable alternative and call for a refusal of liberal recognition from and inclusion into the settler state (alfred, 2005; coulthard, 2014; simpson, 2014; volpp, 2015). scholars also document the population management strategies of the canadian state (bhatia, 2013; bohaker & iacovetta, 2009; cowen, 2020). bohaker and iacovetta (2009) examine postwar programs of the department of citizenship and immigration that targeted immigrants and indigenous peoples for assimilation into liberal citizenship. they argue that a “we are all immigrants” narrative was used to deny aboriginal rights and manage the presence of indigenous peoples in canada and their pathway to citizenship. similarly, backhouse (1999) traces the legal history of racial categories, such as “eskimo” and “indian,” and their attachment to different populations. bhatia (2013) examines the ways canadian immigration laws breach treaty relations and prevent the exercise of indigenous sovereignties. similarly, critical migration scholars examine their research field’s longstanding attachment to methodological nationalism; a research paradigm that naturalizes the nation-state, equates society with the nation-state and national territory, and conflates the national interest with the purpose of the social sciences (wimmer & glick schiller, 2003, p. 576; see also de genova, 2013; hayden, 2018; meeus, 2012). methodological nationalism dovetails with the temporal and socio-spatial logic of settler colonialism through an investment in a specific version of the nation-state that aligns with settler colonial narratives of place-making and bordering. as a result, it renders movement across westphalian borders as exceptions to the rule of immobility (de genova, 2013). at the same time, pre-colonial migrations and movements across borders of relevance to indigenous peoples and nations, forms of movement that do not cross these international borders, are deemed irrelevant to understanding social dislocation and adaptation (brown, 2018). contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 325 methodological nationalism also imposes a socio-spatial logic of fixed attachments in which particular people are associated with or fixed to specific places and apart from other places and people. echoing the mechanisms of indigenous dispossession tied to settler futurity, migration scholars invested in methodological nationalism conceptualize social life as a linear arrangement in which people move from a place of no-history, through migration to a condition of foreignness and non-citizenship, to citizenship and national membership or lack thereof (landolt et al., forthcoming; meeus, 2012). differential inclusion & assemblages methodology the concept of differential inclusion and assemblages methodology help weaken the links tying scholarship on race, citizenship and migration to the epistemic order of settler colonialism. they specify how matrices of power operate in the liberal settler colonial moment in ways that toggle between inclusion-recognition and exclusion-rejection. first, the concept of differential inclusion reveals how settler colonialism creates interpellated hierarchies of settler-migrations and indigenous dispossession. differential inclusion rejects binary understandings of inclusion/exclusion and emphasizes the underlying violence of both. it understands inclusion as a hierarchical, partial and conditional process that is contingent on the socio-spatial and temporal context. the concept reveals the classificatory systems imposed by nation-building projects that sort individuals and collectivities into different types of populations on the basis of legal status, race, class and other interlocking facets of oppression (casascortes et al., 2015). differential inclusion produces variable degrees of precarity, subordination, disenfranchisement and exploitation, as well as variable degrees of inclusion and recognition. inclusion and erasure occur together through the twin dynamics of invisibilization and hypervisibility in which individuals and communities experience limited representation or heightened negative representation. differential inclusion also constitutes some places as precarious and others as privileged, certain and stable (banki, 2013). it creates conditional spatialities (tazzioli, 2014) and mobility rich and mobility poor individuals and collectivities (wilson & weber, 2008). second, we employ assemblage as a methodological tool (baker & mcguirk, 2017) to analyze how settler colonialism produces a matrix of power characterized by indigenous dispossession, racialization and multicultural recognition. assemblages thinking apprehends social life as constituted dynamically by heterogeneous material and discursive components (ong & collier, 2005, p. 4) that come together to produce complex configurations of power. components have different temporal and spatial scales (de landa, 2006) and operate under constant negotiation (villegas, 2014). as components are assembled, they produce variable and paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 326 indeterminate multi-scalar effects and interactions (delanda, 2006; deleuze & guattari, 2005; ong & collier, 2005). power is conceptualized as a matrix of structured contingencies and indeterminacies, pointing to the need to analyze the intricacies of variable components and their assembling, reroutings and unexpected consequences over time (saldanha, 2012). employing assemblage methodology encourages consideration of diverse material and discursive fragments of social life as constitutive elements in the production of differential inclusion within settler colonialism, and of the constant possibilities by which matrices of power can be substantiated, congealed or unsettled. concretely, it encourages interdisciplinary and collaborative knowledge production, which emerges as a valuable strategy to break the analytical silos of methodological nationalism and its investments in settler colonialism. it also encourages identification of diverse components that may come together to produce settler colonial differential inclusion. in turn, the fragmentary and relational notion of power developed through the concept of differential inclusion connects with the idea of “settlerhood as an object that subjects possess” and to the framing of settlerhood as a matrix of power (dhamoon, 2015, p. 25; see also madokoro, 2019). assemblages methodology erodes the temporality and sociospatialities of settler colonialism that locate populations only in the present or the past, and occurring in orderly sequence and somehow separate and distinct from each other. it permits us to reframe settler colonialism as a web of social relations that connects differently included individuals and collectivities, including indigenous/migrant/settler/arrivant, in complex and dynamic ways. as we illustrate below, the crossing scarborough workshop explored the discursive and material production, policing, and rendering of scarborough and its peoples over time. drawing on the concept of differential inclusion and the analytical possibilities of assemblages methodology, we reveal the workings of settler colonialism and affirm the utility of developing differential inclusion and assemblages methodology as tools for unsettling migration scholarship. crossing scarborough scarborough, now an inner suburb of toronto, ontario, has always been a place of crossing, migration and settlement (gidigaa migizi & simpson, 2018). over thousands of years, different indigenous nations and language groups have lived apart and together, intermarrying and travelling between what is now known as georgian bay and lake ontario. these experiences are part of the oral traditions that inform indigenous presence and relations with the place (methot, 2016). gidigaa migizi & simpson (2018) explain that “the north shore of lake ontario and nearly every river that flowed into lake ontario is the traditional territory of the michi saagiig nishnaabeg... and that the aayadowaad (huron) lived among us with our permission” (p. 29). they contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 327 recount, “we were the shoreline people and they were the agricultural, field, gardening people” (p. 30). indigenous scholars recognize varying interpretations of traditional territorial demarcations and their relevance for contemporary relations among indigenous peoples and between indigenous peoples and the canadian state (marche, 2017; methot, 2016; younging, 2018). settler colonial place-making first named the place glasgow (1793) and later scarborough (1796). there are two particularly important elements to note from the 19th century european settler colonial histories of the region. on the one hand, the area was consistently described as an empty land and a pastoral paradise to be ordered and inhabited (freeman, 2010; hermer, 2002). on the other hand, the area is part of the williams treaties of 1923, widely viewed as one of the worst treaties in canada because of the rapidity and mendacity with which it was imposed (see portrait by hermer below). monuments visibilizing, celebrating, and commemorating the settler colonial account of the land and its taming are present throughout the region. the settler account is woven into the landscape, enshrining the successes of canadian elites as the common national heritage (cowen, 2020). there is also a profound absence of consideration for what the politics of the williams treaties of 1923 signify for peoples and relations on the land. in the post-world war ii period, industrial development transformed scarborough into a modern suburban utopia for middle-class and ascendant working-class white families. yet the suburban landscape and its distance from the downtown core led urbanites to reject its sanitized ethos and rename it scarberia. in subsequent decades, city planners identified scarborough as a site for social housing projects for a growing population of racialized immigrants and refugees. scarborough also faced government disinvestment and limited social services as compared to downtown toronto, leading to depictions of the area as an inner suburb, a coupling of inner city and suburban characterizations (cowen & parlette, 2011). scarborough is often represented in janus-faced terms: as a vibrant multicultural immigrant gateway and a dangerous and impoverished place – a scarlem – that houses the city's racialized working poor (basu & fiedler, 2017; gillmor, 2007; videkanic, 2017; villegas, 2018). this creates a simultaneous hypervisibility of negative representations linking place and race and migration processes (villegas, 2018), and an invisibility and erasure of the social and economic exclusions faced by area residents. in the seventies, global migrations transformed scarborough once again. racialized and migrant families with ties and relations in the caribbean, south asia, east asia, and africa began to make scarborough home. a growing number of indigenous peoples also started to take up residence in the area (abebe et al., 2019). their collective presence and transnational connections shaped the landscape of contemporary scarborough. local residents created political, civic and faith-based organizations (basu, 2017), restaurants and ethnic malls, and organized public events and festivals (e.g., paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 328 taste of lawrence, tamil fest) and community-engaged, resident-led projects (basu, 2017; east scarborough storefront, n.d.). a network of social services designed for indigenous and racialized or migrant residents including community health centres, clinics, service hubs, immigrant settlement services was also established (canadian centre for refugee & immigrant healthcare, n.d.; east scarborough storefront, n.d.; native child & family services of toronto, n.d.; toronto central health line, n.d.; toronto east quadrant local immigration partnership, n.d.). recent fiction situated in scarborough illustrates these rich and diverse experiences (chariandy, 2017; hernandez, 2017). in what follows, we present four portraits that illustrate the development of scarborough through an investment in settler colonial place-making and differential inclusion. this investment involves interlocking practices of erasure, dispossession, historicization, memorialization, and architecture. the four portraits illustrate how indigenous sovereignty and presence, settler colonial presence, and migration flows are interpellated in discursive and material forms. the portraits also offer examples of practices that unsettle and disrupt an investment in settler colonialism and methodological nationalism. the mother of scarboro by victoria freeman in march, 1796, david thomson and his wife found their way hither, apparently having followed the indian trail which was subsequently opened as a highway and known as the danforth road. (boyle, 1896, p. 26) david and mary thomson are memorialized as the founders of scarborough. the presence of david and mary thomson and their descendants is ubiquitous (see figure 1). they are honoured in the naming of david and mary thomson collegiate and thomson memorial park, commemorated on their joint tombstone in the cemetery of st. andrew’s presbyterian church, and in the collections of the scarborough historical museum, all situated on lands that were formerly part of their family property. the story of mary thomson, the “mother of scarboro,” was related in the memorial volume the township of scarboro 1796-1896, published in 1896 to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the city. it was edited by david boyle, the first official archaeologist of ontario and the founder and curator of the provincial museum, a precursor to the royal ontario museum. contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 329 figure 1. photograph of the thomson family 100th anniversary reunion on the thomson property, 1896. (reproduced with permission.) in boyle’s edited collection, mary thomson’s story was written by mary agnes fitzgibbon, founder and secretary of the women’s canadian historical society. incorporated in 1896, the women’s canadian historical society encouraged the collection and preservation of canadian historical records and relics, and “the building up of canadian loyalty and patriotism” (women’s canadian historical society, 1896, p. 2). these aims were similar to those of other historical societies then proliferating across ontario as middle-class women sought to participate in the project of nation-building from their legal position as second-class citizens (gunn, 2016, p. 3). in honouring pioneer women such as mary thomson, women historians established the moral and historical claims of euro-canadians to the land and simultaneously used the stories of “brave and independent female pioneers” to fight for women’s rights (gunn, 2016; morgan, 2001, p. 13). fitzgibbon highlights mary thomson’s bravery as a pioneer woman, alone in her “forest log-house” while her husband worked during the week in the then distant town of york, only returning each saturday night to bring provisions. as fitzgibbon recounts: during these first seven months of their life in the township, mrs. thomson had not seen another of her own sex, until one day an indian woman came into the cottage… the face was strange, the language spoken unintelligible, but mrs. thomson welcomed her gladly. albeit, of an alien race and color, they were women, and they understood one another by the freemasonry of sympathy paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 330 divinely implanted in the breast of woman. (boyle, 1896, p. 34) in this description, the settler woman is named and it is she who welcomes the indigenous woman. the indigenous woman is not named; she is strange and unintelligible – alien on this land. where she lives, what becomes of her, or what she thought about the encounter with mary thomson remains unknown. yet, according to the story, for a moment the two women meet and “understand” each other in a tacit sisterhood – a sympathy divinely implanted. fitzgibbon’s narrative of sisterhood temporarily bridges the divide between indigenous person and settler, further legitimizing the settler’s place on the new land and indigenizing the settler woman. as mary thomson “welcomes the stranger gladly” the settler woman takes the indigenous woman’s place; replacement occurs without the need for violence (johnston & lawson, 2000, p. 364). through the hardships of pioneer life, mary thomson is narrated to produce a sense of indigenous authenticity (johnston & lawson, 2000, p. 369). the encounter of the sisterhood also echoes the longstanding settler colonial narrative of indigenous people welcoming settlers. like the toronto coat of arms that until 1997 portrayed a mississauga warrior on one side of the crest and the female figure of britannia on the other, the assertion of mary thomson and the indigenous woman’s sisterhood portrays them as willing partners in the settling of scarborough. the reality of indigenous-settler relations in the toronto and scarborough areas in the mid-1790s was far more complex than this romanticized view. while there are other documented friendly encounters between settler women and indigenous individuals from the 1790s, smallpox and alcohol were already wreaking havoc in the region. the september 1796 murder of mississauga chief wabakinine on the toronto waterfront after the attempted sexual assault of his sister by an off-duty british soldier sparked widespread mississauga outrage and demands for justice in the very same month as the women’s encounter. fearing that the mississaugas, with the help of a broad alliance of western indigenous nations, could wipe out the british at what was then a remote outpost, colonial administrators called for a considerable shipment of arms, the construction of a blockhouse, military settlement along strategic routes into york, and secret instructions to the first indian agent at york to “foment jealousy” and mistrust between the mississaugas and the haudenosaunee to break up their alliance. the mississaugas were also realizing that their 1787 and 1788 agreements to share land, in which they were promised that the settlers would help them and that they could hunt and fish as before, were viewed by settlers as extinguishing all indigenous rights to the lands in question (johnson, 1990, pp. 234-238). if mary thomson and the indigenous (likely mississauga) woman did indeed share a moment of connection, it was in the context of various forms of colonial violence in which they were both enmeshed. contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 331 figure 2. township of scarborough inscription. (photograph of dedication in boyle, 1896). the encounter was further memorialized in the epitaph on the thomson family tombstone (see figure 2). located in st. andrews bendale, presbyterian church and cemetery in scarborough, the tombstone reads: in memory of mary thomson, the mother of scarboro, who died the 8th november, 1847. aged 80 years. here her remains repose side by side with those of her husband david thomson, whose gravestone tells the land of their nativity and when they settled in scarboro, which was then a wilderness. on the opposite bank of the passing rivulet, a little above this burial-ground, they built their lonely cottage, and there they contended successfully against the hardships paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 332 of a forest life; and there she passed the first seven months after their settlement without seeing a woman and the first was an indian. as her husband, she lived and died respected, leaving behind her 100 descendants. (boyle, 1896, p. 39) in this portrayal, the settler woman is almost biblical in her begetting, populating the new settler nation. the indigenous woman’s descendants are unknown, her presence remains in the past and does not populate the present. mary’s one hundred descendants, in contrast, are woven into the tapestry of the national family. in the rhetoric of maternal imperialism, mary thomson is to be remembered as an iconic “mother of the race.” we do not know where the indigenous woman is buried or if anyone remembers her. this remembrance articulates who is to be included – and who excluded – as legitimate and rightful citizens of canada (gunn, 2016, p. 29). on stolen land: the miller lash estate and the williams treaties of 1923 by joe hermer the miller lash estate, erected in 1913, is an example of colonizing developments that occurred on stolen land (see figure 3). its construction, evolving utility, and the settler accounts of these processes inscribe the land in ways that belie its violent history and present. there are two different and yet intertwined histories that weave together the place-making that occurs on and through this site. figure 3. photograph of the miller lash estate, 1913. (reproduced with permission.) in 1911 toronto bay street lawyer and businessman miller lash bought 375 acres along highland creek and by 1913 built a 17 room mansion. the contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 333 miller lash estate ran as a working farm that included a mill on the creek, a coach house and arboretum. in 1944, after lash’s death, insurance businessman e. l. mcleod bought the estate, installed an olympic-size swimming pool and held the property until 1963 when the university of toronto bought it for their new scarborough campus (university of toronto scarborough, n.d.a). the university of toronto scarborough (utsc) opened three years later. the mansion was used for some time as the residence of utsc principals, and the grounds for athletic events. in the early 1990s scarborough college renovated the house and it is now used for college functions, and is rented out for weddings and a remarkable number of film productions. a perennial memorialization of the settler colonizer’s account of the land occurs through the miller lash estate. presently, there are several historical plaques on the grounds of the estate that celebrate settler activity on the land. most notably, there is a 1977 plaque (see figure 4) erected by the university that tells the story of an inquisitive miller lash out on a placid drive through the countryside. in the account, which may be told as a legend, miller lash is described as a stranger to the landscape. he is struck by its picturesque qualities during his leisurely sunday drive down what is now old kingston road. the result is an origin story, tinged with nostalgia, of a natural place discovered as a contrast to urban life and commerce. and yet despite the fact that the text has the authority and the format of historical memorialization, the story may not even be true. here we see the arrogance and entitlement of settler history, in this case as expressed by the university. while indigenous peoples in the area have, for example, been told that their oral histories of the land will not be accepted in court actions, settler institutions can produce authoritative text through the memorialization of a miller lash legend that may be entirely fictional. the 2019 university of toronto scarborough website echoes the 1977 settler account of the land. in a description meant to introduce virtual visitors (including prospective students) to the campus, it describes “our story” as follows: university of toronto scarborough has modest roots as a turn-of-the-century summer escape from the city heat of muddy york – as toronto was then nicknamed – for local businessman miller lash. from scenic, pastoral paradise to world-renowned centre of innovation and inspired learning, this is the story of this campus. (university of toronto scarborough, n.d.b) again we see the appearance of the legend of the discovery of a pastoral paradise. the legend can erase thousands of years of indigenous physical, spiritual and cultural presence, which is subsumed into a natural wildness and disorder that can be tamed and transformed. the arts and crafts style of miller’s mansion and outbuildings remains today as a profound visual reminder of how the crafted natural landscape (highland creek stones and paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 334 local hewn timbers) is now exclusively understood as a celebration of settler pioneer commerce and leisure. figure 4. 1977 coach house plaque on the miller lash estate (photo: joe hermer). the settler account obscures colonial dispossession and specifically the 90 year long indigenous political battle over the lands that include the miller lash estate. in 1916 r.v. sinclair was appointed by the federal minister of justice to investigate claims and complaints from the mississaugas and chippewas that widespread settlement, resource extraction and harvesting was occurring on traditional lands that had not been legally transferred by indigenous peoples to the government. in his report, sinclair (1916) confirmed that “the indian title to these lands has never been extinguished and i am of the opinion that some arrangements should be made for quieting the title.” in effect, miller lash – who “purchased” the lands in 1913 – had bought land the province had stolen from indigenous people for development. the sinclair file lay dormant for three years, until 1921 when the provincial and federal governments appointed ottawa lawyer a.s. williams to follow up. on october 10th, 1923, williams filed his report confirming sinclair’s account and documenting a tract of approximately 13 million acres of unceded land in southern and central ontario.1 the two levels of government moved with remarkable speed, and within 22 days williams had 1 unceded land refers to traditional indigenous territories that were not signed into treaty. indigenous peoples entered into treaty agreements to share the land and not to relinquish their rights and traditional relationship to the land (younging, 2018). contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 335 personally secured all necessary signatures. the williams treaties were signed in october and november 1923 by the government of canada and ontario, and by seven first nations: the chippewas of beausoleil, georgina island and rama, and the mississaugas of alderville, curve lake, hiawatha (https://williamstreatiesfirstnations.ca/; see also surtees, 1986). there are three features of the williams treaties of 1923 that are particularly important to note. first, the treaty was intentionally rushed with little real care or consideration for overlaps between it and pre-existing rights and treaties, including the treaty 20 area settled in 1818. further, the williams treaties are the only treaties in canada that extinguished all traditional harvesting, fishing and hunting rights. third is its naked financial exploitation. the williams treaties made a one-time payment of $500,000 with no annual payments, and no additional reserve land. of the $500,000 each of the 1,350 members of the seven signatories were to be paid $25, just under $34,000 in total. payment was not made directly to the members. instead, funds were given to indian agents to disperse. the remaining $466,000 was to be split between the seven reserves. the actual funds were sent to the superintendent general of indian affairs to be held in trust for each of the seven signatory nations. no one actually knows what happened to these $466,000. williams and his commissioners on the other hand were paid a stipend of $100 dollars a day when working on treaty business (blair, 2008). at the conclusion of the williams treaties in 1923, ontario premier howard ferguson stated with relief and certainty, “every tribe that could possibly have a claim on the white man’s government has now been taken care of” (surtees, 1986). yet almost as soon as it was signed, the williams treaties became the subject of fierce legal action. the seven signatories have argued for decades that it was an underhanded treaty obtained by mendacity and trickery. the signatories were not allowed lawyers in signing the treaties and there was substantive evidence that williams and indian agents assured indigenous leaders that their harvesting rights in particular would be protected. this was buttressed by the belief that treaty 20, which overlapped with the williams treaties lands, would continue to protect traditional harvesting rights. it took nine years before the seven signatory nations got a copy of the actual treaty agreement. in 1992 the seven signatories sued the federal government in what is known as the alderville action. the case sat in the courts for 24 years until may 2017 when the federal and provincial government along with the seven signatories announced that they would move to a negotiated settlement, ending the lawsuit (government of canada, 2018; williams treaties first nations, 2019). the memorialization of the miller lash estate is a standard practice of erasure of indigenous presence in park settings or emparked landscapes. it echoes the experiences of ipperwash park, banff national park and stanley park. the exclusion and erasure of indigenous histories is both ideological and instrumental. it is ideological in making a pastoral paradise that evokes paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 336 euro-canadian community, unchanging values and national sentiment. it relies on a temporally narrow settler colonial view of nature, predicated on limitless exploitation, serendipity and convenient leisure. it is instrumental in acting as a site from which finely detailed forms of social control and banishment can occur where unwanted bodies, cultures and knowledge are erased. settler colonial erasure and dispossession, however, are continually unsettled through the enduring political demands of the williams treaties nations who continued to press titles and rights up to 2017. scarborough as sub/urban/altern cosmopolitanism by ranu basu as a long-time community member, migrant-settler and urban-scholar living nearly three decades in scarborough, i have observed, studied, and here reflect ethnographically on the changing dynamics of this part of the city. i start from the idea that a city-building movement needs a contested mode of analysis (basu, 2019) that demonstrates and challenges hierarchies of space and their close entanglement with the hierarchies of racialized, exiled, and class divides. i do so in conversation with the insights of saidiya hartman (2019) who writes about the intimate lives of young black women in turn of the century philadelphia and new york city. in wayward lives, hartman (2019) considers the rich landscape of black social life as everyday struggles focused on radical imaginations intoxicated with freedom. hartman considers the ways these multidimensional lives are flattened and dismissed into a social void by neglect and oppression (2019, p. 8). hartman’s observations resonate with the experiences of scarborough as a place that has been planned and neglected, constructed into a social void, and with the complexity of the lives erased and stigmatized through invisibilization and hypervisibilization. at the same time, scarborough has been home to a heterogeneity of racialized migrant/asylum (non-citizen) working class and indigenous communities whose radical imagination constitutes a rich sub/urban/altern cosmopolitan space (i.e., suburban, subaltern, cosmopolitan) (basu et al., 2013; basu & fiedler, 2017). the socio-spatial heterogeneity of scarborough is reflected in the diverse landscape and place-making practices that are interwoven into the informal political infrastructure of the city.2 the ethnocultural landscape is richly diverse both in the range and scale of public spaces and services offered at the grassroots level – from community organizations for the elderly to congregate and socialize; provision of international language classes for children in the basements of social housing complexes; after-school homework clubs and resume-writing workshops in mosques, churches and gurudwaras; medicinal ayurvedic and naturopathic remedies in local grocery 2 in 2016 the population of scarborough was 632,095, 57% were foreign-born and 40% had arrived after 2001; 73% of the population was categorized as “visible minority” (city of toronto strategic initiatives, 2018). contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 337 stores; palmistry-planners and income-tax consultants renting spaces at the back of local corner stores; reggae record shops with rhythmic beats and lyrics spilling into the streetscapes. the socio-cultural and economic infrastructural realities of how migrant spaces have been produced in scarborough and the rhythmic contours of its everyday life provide a counterhegemonic narrative to the logics of a rationally defined settler-neoliberal city. these are spaces of “intoxicated freedom.” this spatial assertion of such institutional practices is often the result of neoliberal state-level exclusionary norms – whether in the domain of education, health, employment or community investment. yet, the urban form, function, and imaginary of contemporary scarborough are under continuous scrutiny and simultaneous oblivion (basu, 2019; basu & fiedler, 2017). in the early 1980s, scarborough was narrated as a quiet, mostly uneventful suburb. in later years the increasing presence of migrants in the area coincided with the idea of scarborough as a place of potential violence and random criminal acts. media coverage, for instance, first described violent crimes – robbery, domestic violence, and other crime – as isolated incidents. these slowly assumed the character of endemic conditions brought on by the area’s residents. scarborough came to be seen as a failure of modernist planning, as unpalatable and “a distasteful, aesthetically bleak, bland and dangerous landscape” with cartographic shadings bordering on “neurotic” (toronto star, 2008; ormsby, 2009). its spatial (and racial) representation continues to be ridiculed with nicknames such as scarberia, scarlem, and scarblackistan, and described as a “zit” and an “urban blandness verging on blight” (dimanno, 2007). these practices of denigration and criminalisation combine with ideas about the everyday as unexceptional to create the dystopian city – a place that is in constant need of repair, fixing and reform. such erasure is strategically achieved through the dismissal of any kind of creative agency, cultural autonomy or conscious appreciation of the complexity of sub/altern cosmopolitanism that links to hartman’s idea of lives lived, radical imaginations and intoxicating freedom. these are active modes of suppression (hartman, 2019). erasure also takes the form of racial violence and hypervisibility as in the example that follows. on october 2nd, 2018 the third floor of scarborough’s radisson hotel that temporarily housed 577 refugee claimants, the majority from nigeria, was torched by a group of white supremacists (huffington post, 2018). anti-refugee sentiment had been circulating for a while including through online videos taken secretly of the residents of the hotel by white nationalists. their media coverage offered derogatory and offensive remarks – casting doubt, maligning the refugee claimants, their safety, and their sense of security (gunn reid, 2018; levy, 2018). emboldened by the recent election of premier doug ford of the progressive conservative party, arsonists attacked the refugees. yet, juxtaposing such violent modes of erasure, scarborough has proven to be a compelling counter-hegemonic force that has challenged the ideations of paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 338 such hate-based movements. scarborough and its residents create complex spaces of encounter, civic engagement, and grounded experiences of a vibrant subaltern cosmopolitan public. as alluded to earlier, residents have developed wide ranging and heterogeneous forms of public spaces, from economic, socio-cultural to political spaces of engagement (see figure 5). figure 5. space of encounter (photo: ranu basu). migrants talk about and understand these spaces as places of refuge and peace, of memory, desire and imagination, civic engagement and fluid resistance (basu et al., 2013). for example, at harmony house community centre, seniors come together to sing in bengali, cantonese and tamil. their multifarious musical practices are filled with joy and pride as they share in the celebration of important cultural events (e.g., new years’ day, independence day, paila baishak (beginning of spring), among others). the unique black presence through the caribbean migrant community (particularly from guyana, jamaica, and trinidad and tobago) is similarly culturally embedded in the landscape and part of the broader spatial imaginary. it is here that first instances of toronto’s international celebrations of caribana (a cultural and political carnival event) are rehearsed and practiced in the streetscapes of local communities. bangladeshi women’s organizations similarly have successfully organized precarious workers for better working conditions and living wages in collaboration with non-status workers, and have rallied in support with other racialized workers and labour unions in dialogue with the state. such collective and diverse spaces of regular community engagement have over the years provided the venue and opportunity for empowerment and consciousness raising, not only within scarborough but beyond. contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 339 a transnational form of solidarity and activist event relates to the tamil protest movement. in 2009, the tamil protest movement gained momentum and support from diverse parties originating in the heartland of scarborough. from local grocery stores to restaurants, messages to the broader public on the violence in sri lanka were made evident on storefronts and other public spaces. as of 2018, a large street festival on one of the main arterial roads of scarborough is organized by the tamil community and attracts over 200,000 attendees from across the gta. the heterogeneity is deeply cosmopolitan in its form and practice, engaging a wider public in these festivities. scarborough is a city of multifariousness, what hartman refers to as a place of intoxicating freedom. through these heterogeneous place-making practices, it forms a city of integrative multiplicity (basu, 2017; basu et al, 2013); a heterotopic space that is complex, diverse and sophisticated in its political realm and public spaces, and finely attuned to the practices of exclusion and dispossession that limit its possibilities. the guild of all the arts: unsettling history by bojana videkanic lee maracle’s (2000) poem “war” offers a way to think about unsettling the stillness of history. “to re-write history with my body” (maracle, 2000, p. 65) is to offer one’s embodiment, one’s being-in-one’s-own-body, as a tool for reconsidering history. in other words, maracle’s presence, her life, her witnessing-by-living as an indigenous woman rewrites settler colonial history. a similar reclaiming and rewriting of history happened in 2017 when cree/saulteaux artist lori blondeau produced a series of performance art interventions at the guild park and gardens in scarborough.3 blondeau’s performance-cum-photographic series is titled pakwâci wâpisk (2017).4 in it blondeau creates powerful gestures of remembering and offering symbols of indigenous sovereignty. each photograph in the series shows the artist following a different conceptual strategy: she places herself at specific sites, donning a long red velvet dress that gives her performance a regal air. the pose is carefully staged; blondeau stands firmly upright and defiant, as she looks into the distance. the artist performs and embodies power. the power of blondeau is amplified in the dialogue with the site she occupies. in pakwâci wâpisk blondeau occupied the guild park in scarborough as a form of performance-for-the-camera that restaged and disrupted scarborough’s settler architecture (see figure 6). the work is 3 the series was produced as part of the (un)settled project, a curated art residency and performance/intervention art series on the grounds of the guild park and gardens in may and june 2017 and curated by bojana videkanic. each of the artists spent a few days creating work on the grounds of the guild to intervene on the site and its history. for more see http://www.unsettledproject.com/. 4 pakwâci wâpisk translates from cree as wild stone. paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 340 juxtaposed to bondeau’s older photographic series asiniy iskwew (2016),5 in which she situated her performance on sites important to indigenous histories and connected to sacred rock formations of the plains peoples (in blondeau’s case, specific cree beliefs).6 the site of the performance for pakwaci wapisk at guild park has deep relevance given the overt celebration of settler colonialism that it signifies. the guild park and gardens stands as a microcosm of settler colonial place-making. the guild was a project of spencer and rosa clark who purchased 40 acres of the bickford estate grounds in 1932 (breithaupt & clark, 1899; lerek, 1992). the clark’s were inspired by william morris, a leading designer, activist and thinker of the british arts & crafts movement. based on morris’s vision of a holistic approach to arts and crafts, the site was named “the guild of all arts,” and contained studio spaces, living quarters, and sales and exhibition galleries for artists (ligold, 2000, p. 25). the clarks worked to tame and manicure the land and buildings of the guild. they added dining rooms, guest quarters and recreational facilities to the bickford estate, and purchased surrounding farms to protect their investment. the guild lands eventually spanned 500 acres, stretching from lake ontario to kingston road, and from livingston road to galloway road. over the years, the clarks transformed the estate into a fantasy landscape. they collected and incorporated discarded architectural facades from toronto building demolitions into the landscape. the park was intentionally littered with bases of statues, crown moldings and columns that were used to erect structures that resembled faux english and french garden follies. historically, these eye-catching and extravagant architectural structures provided visual spectacle for the owners of european palaces. in the clarks’ version, the garden follies were meant to inspire the artists-in-residence and delight the public. the deliberate structuring of the guild mimicked a stately palace; its greek theatre, sculptures and footpaths signaled the site’s antecedents in the british 18th and 19th century imperial model. 5 asiniy iskwew translates from cree as rock woman. 6 the earlier series was produced on sites in saskatchewan. contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 341 figure 6. lori blondeau pakwâci wâpisk (photo: bojana videkanic, 2017; reproduced with permission of the artist). the guild’s settler colonial architecture worked to replace indigenous culture and life by building over it and by placing it in the past. caricatured images and symbols of indigenous life are frozen in different sculptures and architectural fragments. a particularly poignant remnant is part of a threepiece keystones brought from the bank of toronto building that used to stand at the corner of king and bay streets in toronto. the keystone shows the old paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 342 city of toronto coat of arms and contains two figures: one is britannia and the other is an indigenous male warrior (see figure 7).7 there are also standard symbols of canadian national identity such as the beaver and maple leaf. the depiction of the indigenous warrior is stylized and stereotypical. he is placed safely next to the british crown, symbolising their partnership and shared stewardship of the land. made in 1912, the sculpture shows indigenous peoples and the land existing outside of the present, safely relegated to the depths of history. in other words, settler colonial placemaking fixes indigenous life in the past. figure 7. architectural fragment in guild park, the city of toronto coat of arms (photo: bojana videkanic). the point of departure for blondeau’s conceptual framing is the acknowledgement that the space where the work was installed has a particular urban, social, and political indigenous and settler colonial history. it carries with it multiple, complex narratives that exist as deeply buried sediments underneath official language. the artist offers a complicated, messy, alternative history; she unsettles the linear story of canada, and the clean, neatly packaged products of its memorialization. the guild park is the epitome of canadian modernity, a vestige of the imposed colonial order wanting to tame “nature.” the human figures we expect to find on top of the 7 britannia is a female personification of the british empire often found in sculptures, paintings and other visual representation (hewitt, 2017). contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 343 architectural remnants are missing, and this opens up a space of intervention. blondeau placed herself on empty seats of colonial power to disrupt their potential.8 by claiming the space, blondeau unsettles the colonial order. her monumental, life-sized photographs take the form of alternative memorials that replace the linear settler colonial narrative of what belongs in the past and in the present. blondeau offers a form of interjection and witnessing as she occupies the space of the suburban scarborough neighbourhood to offer, through her bodily presence, another story of place. blondeau’s work is an excavation and churning of the sediments of the cultural and political phenomena around us: indigenous politics and dispossession and an announcement of indigenous presence and futures. these alternative narratives create a space to pause and reflect, to think about her – and our own – embodied existence on the land. lori blondeau chose to work with tensions and hostilities that emerge over sites of history, sites in which nature and human intervention clash, and sites of memorialization and public memory. whether in the park or the gallery space, memory and history are questioned. ultimately, the artist asks who decides what we remember; thus, “to erect a statue is to take revenge on reality” (taussig, 1999, p. 21). rather than thinking of monuments as sites where truths might reappear, what is at work in the mechanism of monumental representation is the fact that all monuments are always already toppling. blondeau’s work recognizes this truth of the instability of western monumental representation, and offers a different take on history. the artist offers an alternative history – or deep histories, if you will – of the lands that are currently called scarborough and canada, and in doing that reasserts ongoing indigenous presence on this land. just as blondeau stands on top of the ruins of western modernity we find in scarborough’s strange park, her monumental gesture produces a rupture: history fills the present moment prophetically showing the fault lines in the present. discussion the four portraits capture scarborough as an assemblage of representations and experiences of differential inclusion, co-constituted across time, space, individuals and collectivities. components within this assemblage contribute to and uphold settler colonialism as a simultaneous project of ongoing indigenous dispossession and settler/migrant/arrivant recognition, racialization, and stigmatization that operates through linear temporalities. importantly, components of the assemblage also contest and erode a hegemonic settler colonial narrative, temporality, and socio-spatiality. freeman’s portrait demonstrates how narratives of the thomson family 8 personal communication with the artist during her residency at the guild and as part of the (un)settled art project. paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 344 contribute to the foundational timeline of settler colonialism and to hegemonic knowledge production. as ahmed (2000) notes, during such encounters, the other is recognized as a stranger, as being out of place. in this case, the narrative produces thomson as the one who belongs, while the indigenous woman is marked as the stranger. this official story legitimizes settler mobility and dispossession of indigenous territories, while also contributing to a project of white indigenization, locating settlers as industriously taming the land. given this framing, the encounter between mary thomson and the unnamed indigenous woman presents a linear story of migration and arrival disconnected from privilege, power and indigenous dispossession. however, freeman denaturalizes this linear time and place-making. her analysis connects different moments in calendar time: 1796, 1847, and 1896. she pauses to consider a more fulsome history of who was on the land, challenging the static and flattened depiction of indigenous peoples that is portrayed in the thomson family storyline. we can link her analysis to accounts that complicate our understanding of the various indigenous nations working, living, and moving through scarborough in that period (gidigaa migizi & simpson, 2018). like freeman, hermer denaturalizes the linear and socio-spatial separation and fixity of settler colonialism by moving across and connecting different points in time that demonstrate the process of indigenous dispossession: 1911, 1923, 1944, and 1963. he situates the purchase of land by bay-street investor miller lash in primitive accumulation, pointing to the absence of a treaty agreement and the unceded character of the land. he also juxtaposes the bucolic depiction of investments in land as leisure activity to the political battles led by the seven signatory nations of the williams treaties. this 90 year indigenous struggle over land and sovereignty is woven into the politics of higher education. tensions remain as the university of toronto scarborough’s website and memorialization project continue to celebrate a hegemonic history-making project, at the same time that some of its members (faculty, students, indigenous knowledge keepers) work to produce counter-hegemonic relations and narratives of place. videkanic’s portrait also disrupts the narration of linear time and placemaking in scarborough. built to promote the arts, guild park is another thread woven into the fabric of settler colonial knowledge and creative production. the park has become an archive and cemetery of relocated toronto building remnants and statues. statues that harken to greek and colonial british aesthetics are interwoven with static caricatures of indigenous history and presence. the built environment assembles narrative threads of european and anglo imperial history to produce a presumptively coherent storyline of white-settler supremacy that locates indigenous people in the past. in fact, architecture and memorialization are central themes in the analysis of freeman, hermer, and videkanic. cemeteries, archives, schools, universities, and parks facilitate erasure and memorialize domination: these places and their subduing presence are planned. they are key features of the contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 345 settler colonial city (hugill, 2017). they also expose the investment of historians and artists and other scholars in methodological nationalism, taking for granted both the settler colonial nation as the organizer and container of society and scholars’ work in the telling, archiving, and institutionalizing of that story of nation-state formation. basu’s analysis of scarborough picks up on the effects of settler colonial place-making on contemporary experiences of living and working in scarborough. the land and architecture are no longer presented as a white haven tamed through settler-indigenous encounters like the sisterhood discussed by freeman, or the acumen and sense of industry of a bay street investor and his hired architects discussed by hermer. this scarborough is constituted as both a social void and as a multicultural inner suburb. through this portrayal, we can read scarborough as a complex space of differential inclusion through which migrants, racialized, and indigenous peoples experience the erasures of invisibilization and hypervisibilization. the place and its residents are produced as part of the dangerous and abject inner city, but are also offered spaces of multicultural recognition. indigenous presence and histories are written out of both mainstream accounts. for this reason, basu’s contribution becomes an essential feature of our analytical strategy, because it disrupts the silos and erasures of settler colonial differential inclusion. reading basu’s theorization of sub/urban/altern experiences in scarborough challenges the logic of methodological nationalism, specifically multicultural recognition of migrant and racialized peoples in scarborough within the immigrant-nation narrative. a counter-hegemonic project of recognition entails examining shared alliances, complicities, and responsibilities independent of canadian sovereignty (bhatia, 2013). this project includes examining how differently situated and included subalternized groups (racialized peoples, descendants of enslaved peoples, indigenous migrants from elsewhere) are implicated in or subjected to a settler colonial project in canada. it also reimagines the encounters possible among the differentially included, encounters that do not centre white settlers and erasure. videkanic reminds us that monuments are also programmed with their destruction. we see snippets of such a destruction, and unsettling of hegemonic framings of history, through lori blondeau’s work at guild park as well as the impromptu solidarity practices toward sri lankan tamils in 2009 that basu describes. assemblages methodology focuses on these contingencies and their possible interconnections, encouraging us to think through the different registers or temporal and socio-spatial dimensions of unsettling. while blondeau’s performance involves an intentional staging, it also generates contingent possibilities of encounters with park visitors. encounters between scarborough residents described by basu also demonstrate this contingency. contingencies emerge at times of heightened awareness of injustice and inequality, and gain resonance through festivals or paloma villegas, patricia landolt, victoria freeman, joe hermer, ranu basu & bojana videkanic studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 346 the refurbishing of warehouses into places of worship. yet for blondeau and the scarborough residents basu describes, this is not a complete dismantling or unsettling. the possibility of violence and reinsertion of the settler colonial structures remains. conclusion settler colonial studies and the critique of methodological nationalism reveal how research on migration, racialization and citizenship contribute to indigenous dispossession. together, the colonial-era doctrine of terra nullius, and the foundational timeline of the settler colonial state annul the prior and ongoing existence of indigenous peoples on the land and indigenous sovereignty to legitimize dispossession. this logic has echoes in knowledge production. thus, scholars of migration and associated fields often ignore the complexity of relationships among indigenous peoples, european settlers, and migrants and racialized peoples in canada. they underplay migrants’ vexed relationship to indigenous dispossession (lawrence & dua, 2005; sharma & wright, 2008). in failing to account for indigenous dispossession, scholars of migration and citizenship end up treating settler colonialism as a fait accompli and disregard indigenous survivance, refusal, and contestation (tuck & yang, 2012; vizenor, 1998). migration scholars’ long-standing attachment to methodological nationalism, or the naturalization of the nationstate, is a further entrenchment of settler colonialism in knowledge production. methodological nationalism aligns with settler-futurity as it conceptualises social life as a linear arrangement in which people cross an international border, from a place of no-history to a condition of foreignness and non-citizenship, or to that of citizenship, membership and presumed desire for recognition (landolt et al., 2019; meeus, 2012). in order to weaken the links tying scholarship on race, citizenship and migration to the epistemic order of settler colonialism, we have applied the concept of differential inclusion and assemblage methodology to a single site over time, mapping the links and relationships across different moments through which indigenous presence, migration processes, and place-making occur. differential inclusion is a hierarchical, partial and conditional process that is contingent on the socio-spatial and temporal context that produces variable degrees of precarity and stability, subordination, disenfranchisement and exploitation, membership and recognition. the concept centres complex relational dynamics through which violence and inequality are realized. assemblages methodology apprehends social life as constituted by heterogeneous and partial material and discursive components that come together to produce complex configurations of power of variable stability. we find that the concept of differential inclusion, methodological nationalism as a critique of the research enterprise, and assemblages methodology help us to understand the ways the settler colonial state is contesting settler colonial accounts studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 2, 321-351, 2020 347 re/produced. in our analysis, differential inclusion produces a matrix of belonging, rights and, in/visibility that centres white settlers. we recognize that a focus on differential inclusion involves paying attention to how the marginalization and stigmatization that racialized peoples, forced migrants, and descendants of enslaved peoples’ experience do not negate the benefits some can accrue from recognition and inclusion into the settler colonial nation-state. for this reason, methodological nationalism becomes an important contribution to research on settler colonialism. it helps to bridge critical migration studies’ disruption of the nation as the assumed and default container of society and forces us to question which nations are assumed or allowed to be that default (the settler nation) and examine how they are narrated. furthermore, our analysis explores contestations to settler colonialism from those differentially included, what basu refers to as sub/urban/altern cosmopolitanism occurring in heterotopic spaces. these open the door to imagining different futures, those that centre indigenous, racialized, and migrant communities and the relationships among them. as we continue to engage in research on migration, racialization, and nation-building in the settler colonial state it is not feasible or sustainable to explain migrant selection, settlement, and removal systems in isolation from indigenous presence and leadership. it is a conceptually thin reproduction of the foundational timelines of the settler colonial state. this implies the need for scholars to disengage from promoting the settler colonial state’s agenda to produce scholarship that can contribute to a richer and more sustainable conversation about unsettling and decolonization. acknowledgements paloma and patricia wish to thank soma chatterjee and tania das gupta, editors of the special issue, as well as the anonymous reviewers who provided valuable feedback that improved the manuscript significantly. we also thank our co-authors and all of the participants of the crossing scarborough, nation, migration & place-making between the trc and the 150 workshop: ranu basu, amar bhatia, t. l. cowan, victoria freeman, bahar hashemi, joe hermer, suzanne methot, wendy philips, paul pritchard, adrian smith, bojana videkanic, and cynthia wright. references abebe, a., cerda, e., elliott, s., hill, m., iveniuk, j., nurogho, k., quaison, g., sathiyamoorthy, t., & ware, e. 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(2018). elements of indigenous style: a guide for writing by and about indigenous peoples. brush education. honeyford et al final before ts march 10 19 correspondence address: michelle a. honeyford, faculty of education, university of manitoba, winnipeg, mb, r3t 2n2; email: michelle.honeyford@umanitoba.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 “it’s me trying my best to bring awareness to the issues”: narrative assemblage and visual text-making as sociopolitical inquiry in canadian history michelle a. honeyford university of manitoba, canada timothy s. beyak university of manitoba & louis riel school division, canada felix sylvester hardman louis riel school division, canada abstract in this collaborative inquiry, we – felix, a grade 11 student; tim, a high school social studies teacher; and michelle, a literacy education professor – explore civic engagement and the politics of literacy in the classroom as developing practices for engaging in sociopolitical issues. we consider the “means and mechanisms” by which students in a grade 11 canadian history class were invited to “scrutinize the values and priorities” of indigenous peoples and european explorers in nouvellefrance, and to come to a deeper understanding of exploration and settlement in relationship to exploitation and colonization. we share how it happened that negotiating a written assignment to produce a piece of visual art allowed felix to create a personal and political expression of the important concepts of the unit, demonstrating that a wider range of civic engagement and literacy practices have an important place in the classroom. in the process, we highlight tensions in multiliteracies pedagogies and wonder at the assemblage created by felix’s literacy artifact. together, we are inspired to consider the kinds of critical and creative expressions that an art piece and its entangled practices, connecting texts, inspirations, and ideas produce, and the engaged sociocultural, political and historical inquiry that can emerge when the curriculum is learned in relation to becoming an artist, student and activist. keywords participatory politics; civic education; assessment; political expression; multimodality; multiliteracies; new literacy studies; inquiry; social studies michelle a. honeyford, timothy s. beyak, felix sylvester hardman studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 74 in this collaborative inquiry, we explore civic engagement and multiliteracies in the visual text and art-making of a student in a grade 11 history class. our inquiry begins from the belief that our classrooms hold great potential to be spaces where young people are actively engaged in learning about significant social, cultural, and political issues, and provided with opportunities to develop the literacy practices that will enable them to participate fully as citizens (beach, campano, edmiston, & borgmann, 2010; biesta, 2011). we consider visual and multimodal text-making to be a valued form of sociopolitical inquiry and knowledge production in secondary classrooms, with the capacity to deepen students’ conceptual understandings, expand their perspectives, develop empathy, support and develop writing and literacy practices, and explore their subjectivities as citizens (albers & sanders, 2010; alvermann & hinchmann, 2012; beach, johnston, & thein, 2015; miller & mcvee, 2012). in our experience, invitations to produce visual and multimodal artifacts in the classroom open up possibilities for learning that are “necessarily... unsettling, generative of new readings and writings of the words and the worlds of youth” (vasudevan & reilly, 2013, p. 456). in this article we explore one piece of visual art produced by felix as an extended response to the issues studied in unit, “first peoples and nouvellefrance (to 1763)” in the provincial grade 11 canadian history course. we respond to the call to involve “adolescent students in naming their own practices and knowledge” (bomer, 2012, p. x), aware that “studies of learners’ visual texts as culturally situated visual representations of their thoughts, beliefs, and experiences are scarce” (albers, 2010, p. 160). our approach was to consider felix’s text and discussion of the text as “narrative assemblage,” a dynamic and fluid engagement in “communicating and coming-to-know” (miller & mcvee, 2012, p. 3) history differently. through collaborative inquiry, we follow the “intimate relationship” of the artist to his visual text as well as to the other texts that inspired and informed his artmaking (albers, 2010, p. 157). our approach was rhizomatic, rooted in affective forces – the flow of feelings, sensations, connections and happenings that the piece and our conversations evoked for us (collier, moffat, & perry, 2015; honan, 2004). to help create a sense of coherence for readers, we have organized our discussion and analysis using jocson’s (2018) framework of youth media texts as pedagogy, as assemblage, as placemaking, and as critical solidarity. while a linear structure belies the fluid, iterative, spontaneous, and ongoing nature of the teaching/learning/living/inquiring/becoming that characterized this work, we found these conceptual lenses to be very generative in thinking with felix and his art, and while presented sequentially, we might suggest they be imagined as prismatic – subtle turns that highlight the colour, texture, affect, influence, unpredictability and nuance of felix’s practices as storyteller, artist, student, citizen, and knowledge producer. narrative assemblage and visual text making as sociopolitical inquiry studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 75 a collaborative inquiry into student writing and text making we approach this inquiry from multiple social locations. michelle is a white, cisgender woman born and raised in canada in a close-knit multigenerational immigrant family, who lived, taught, and studied for many years in the u.s. before coming to manitoba as a language and literacy professor and teacher educator. tim is a white male, born in the u.s. and raised in canada in a third-generation family of mixed european ancestry, a graduate student and educator who teaches canadian history and global studies at an urban high school with a student population of approximately 790 students in grades nine to 12. felix identifies as a white transgender male who has interests related to art, politics, activism, and an interest in tetrapod animals and amphibians. at the time of writing this article, felix had successfully passed tim’s grade 11 history of canada course. michelle and tim share an inquiry stance (cochran-smith & lytle, 2009) focused on the complexity of teaching better (lytle, 2008). as a full-time teacher and part-time graduate student, tim weaves his teaching and research through practitioner inquiry, interested in identity spaces for teaching and learning and education for human rights and social justice. for two years, tim and michelle have been involved in a practitioner inquiry group focused on becoming better writers and teachers of writing. inspired by carini’s (2001) descriptive review of student writing, the group has developed a practice of collaborative inquiry (simon, 2013), coming together regularly to engage in close reading, writing, and discussion of students’ multimodal writing.1 the process reflects our belief that our “positions in classrooms [are] sites from which... rich theories of literacy learning can not only be applied, but also developed” (simon, 2011, p. 365). as educators from a range of grade levels (k-16), content areas, and school divisions, our teaching and thinking has benefited from our diverse perspectives. we notice more about our students’ writing and have a deeper appreciation for our students as writers, and we lean more towards creative and personal forms of writing, multiliteracies, and choice in our pedagogies (honeyford & capina, 2017). thus, when felix was struggling academically in the first unit of the history class and tim discovered in a parent-teacher conference with felix’s 1 the process we followed included these steps: the teacher who volunteered to be the presenter that evening would set the context for the piece, describe the teaching/learning situation, share any ancillary materials (e.g., writing prompt/invitation details, handouts), explain why they chose that particular sample of student work, and pose one or two inquiry questions about the piece and what they wished the group to think about. after a round of clarifying questions, the group would read/view the piece and engage in individual writing for 15-20 minutes. a discussion would then follow, structured by three rounds: first, each person would describe what they noticed about the text; then another round for further description and analysis, then a final round to address with presenter’s questions and offer any additional questions or thoughts about the writer, piece, or pedagogy. the presenter (who would take notes, but not comment during the rounds) would then have a chance to respond. (the process developed organically as we adapted it to our interests from easton, 2009.) michelle a. honeyford, timothy s. beyak, felix sylvester hardman studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 76 mother that felix found academic writing to be a challenge – but that he often doodled and drew – tim invited felix to respond to the extended written response assignment at the end of the unit with a visual text. the prompt asked students to “explain how life changed for first peoples and/or europeans in this period of exploitation and settlement colonization. discuss the good, bad, and challenging from multiple perspectives” (see figure 1 for felix’s response). figure 1. felix’s extended response as visual text (image by felix sylvester hardman, 2018; pencil, ink, pencil crayon, and highlighter marker on paper). narrative assemblage and visual text making as sociopolitical inquiry studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 77 through felix’s drawing and their discussion of the visual text, tim determined felix’s understandings in relation to the essential questions of the unit. over the semester, felix was encouraged to pull out his sketchbook and use his drawings in conversations with tim to develop stronger, more detailed writing. with felix’s permission, tim shared the drawing with michelle in the context of their collaborative inquiry. with more questions generated by rounds of appreciative, descriptive review, tim and michelle invited felix and his parents to be part of a fuller descriptive inquiry. a conversation with felix and felix’s mom was scheduled and recorded with permission. with the transcript and drawing, tim and michelle engaged in iterative cycles of rhizomatic analysis (clarke & parsons, 2013; honan, 2004; honan & sellars, 2007; sellers, 2015), which generated new questions to think with (jackson & mazzei, 2012). in this paper, we focus on two of these: 1. what questions and possibilities are produced in thinking through felix’s text as pedagogy, assemblage, place-making and critical solidarity? 2. what does felix’s discussion of his visual text and art-making suggest about engaging young people in social studies classrooms as artists, knowledge-producers, and citizens? text as pedagogy in exploring felix’s text as pedagogy, we consider the ways that the curriculum and pedagogy of the history class, as well as felix’s own inquiries, are diffracted in his visual text.2 the provincial curriculum is framed around the question: “how has canada’s history shaped the canada of today?” (manitoba education & training, 2014). in this class, as well as others, tim’s teaching is informed by concepts of citizenship that recognize that throughout much of history, citizenship has been legitimated by forces of democracy, human rights, and public debate, while also limited by forms of exclusion based upon classism, racism, and gender. tim aims for students to come to understand the idealist view of canada as a bilingual and multicultural country that values prosperity, peace, and democracy, yet in reality struggles with issues of social justice, privilege, power, and inequity. he strives to create dialogic spaces for students to explore the distinct nature of canadian society, government, and institutions, but also the contradictions of citizenship in historic and contemporary contexts. 2 by using the word diffracted, we are signaling a non-representational stance by which we are more interested in difference, becoming, and possibility than in accuracy about what the text means. in other words, we ask, “what did this produce, or make happen/possible?,” rather than “what did this mean?” (see barad, 2007; davies, 2014; mazzei, 2014). michelle a. honeyford, timothy s. beyak, felix sylvester hardman studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 78 in this first unit of the course, two essential questions are posed by the curriculum: (1) who were the first peoples, and how did they structure their world?, and (2) why did the french and other europeans come to north america, and how did they interact with first peoples? within the school, many students have limited knowledge about first nations, métis and inuit peoples. tim knows that some students hold beliefs buttressed by unfair and inappropriate myths and stereotypes of indigenous peoples, cultures, and communities, and that education has been to blame. as justice murray sinclair, chair of the truth and reconciliation commission of canada, has stated, it is …the way that we have all been educated in this country…[that] has brought us to where we are today – to a point where the psychological and emotional wellbeing of aboriginal children has been harmed, and the relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people has been seriously damaged. (sinclair, 2014, p. 7) tim teaches about colonization and assimilation policies in canada and their impact, with the goal that students will begin to make connections between the past and the present, and to see how they have all been “influenced by the myth of ‘civilizing’ the other” (saada, 2014, p. 107). through critical and decolonial lenses, tim works with his students to deconstruct discourses of othering in history, as well as in the media, popular culture, literature, and politics so that students become more critical thinkers, more engaged in justice-oriented citizenship, more aware of historical and political injustices, and more attuned to listening and responding with compassion to stories and experiences different from their own (saada, 2014). for tim, exploring the history of canada by studying the land, and the people whose lives were closely tied to the land, offers affordances for students to experience learning in relationship to colonial structures and discourses, policies and systemic practices of inequity. tim knows it can create anxiety to disturb students’ normative patterns of thought and consciousness and to “reflect critically on their own cultures and the epistemological and ontological assumptions behind their actions,” to acknowledge “how they are positioned, and how they position others, and to realize the complex relationships between power and knowledge at historical, social, and international levels” (saada, 2014, p. 111). to support students in thinking conceptually and relationally with new (and often disruptive) ideas, tim often incorporates visual and conceptual models. for example, early on in this unit, tim introduced students to a framework (see figure 2) for thinking about the relationships between the people and the land upon which they live, the reality they experience, and culture and institutions they create as a result of their social, economic, and political interactions with the environment, landscape, and resources. narrative assemblage and visual text making as sociopolitical inquiry studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 79 figure 2. the matrix model: landscape and culture (image adapted from mills, kalman, & filice, 2016). across a range of texts, tim and his students applied the “triangle diagram” (e.g., see figure 3) to appreciate how the structure of first nations were directly and powerfully changed with the arrival of european explorers, the dynamic nature and integrity of culture, the self-determination of nations of people, and the sheer strength of will that ensured the survival of indigenous peoples in the face of devastating adversity. by applying heuristics (like the triangle diagram) to think about big ideas, engage in recursive meaning-making, and recognize the complex, contentious, and challenging aspects of questioning their own knowledge and assumptions, students develop practices of historical thinking (seixas & morton, 2012) that are embedded in, and expected outcomes of, the social studies curriculum: (1) establishing historical significance; (2) using primary source evidence; (3) identifying continuity and change; (4) analyzing cause and consequence; (5) taking historical perspectives, and (6) understanding ethical dimensions of history (manitoba education & training, 2014, pp. 123). in tim’s classes, these practices become more meaningful and nuanced in the layering of multimodal texts from diverse periods, places, and perspectives (e.g., videos, archival photos, articles, biographies, primary sources, artifacts, guest speakers). michelle a. honeyford, timothy s. beyak, felix sylvester hardman studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 80 in this unit, for example, which prominently featured samuel de champlain (aka the “father of new france”), tim juxtaposed the narrative of de champlain in the official textbook with another authoritative text, the dictionary of canadian biography (trudel, 2014), as well as with primary sources, including the translated journals of de champlain and his own drawings, and a series of pbs documentaries (animated mini films featuring excerpts from the english translation of de champlain’s work as well as historian interpretation). across discussions of these texts, various contested and contradictory portrayals emerge, and tim encourages his students to explore how and why a single story (adichie, 2009) of de champlain has persisted over time, and who wins and loses from the unchallenged power of dominant narratives in the history of canada. figure 3. whiteboard drawing and discussion notes. in fact, felix began talking about his drawing by saying he was inspired by what he has – and has not – learned in school. he acknowledged he has been unknowingly implicated in an education that has perpetuated racism and discrimination. his anger was the impetus for his art-making: it’s basically like me just getting really mad about how things were taught in school and how stuff like this has been glossed over. like you see colonizers coming to north america, and it’s always like, ‘look at these brave white men. they’re so brave for crossing the sea and killing some indigenous people.’ you know, it’s like, ‘nah, not really. not really at all.’ samuel de champlain is featured but not easily recognized in felix’s drawing (figure 1). when felix pointed to the figure coloured in fluorescent narrative assemblage and visual text making as sociopolitical inquiry studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 81 highlighter yellow on the left side of the black and white striped structure (a moving “ship-slash-fort”), felix said he wanted to portray de champlain and another explorer – facetiously referred to by felix as simply “the other guy” – not as gloried founders and explorers, but “like demons.” felix turned the dominant explorer narrative on its head: the white european men are portrayed as wild and inhuman. the young indigenous women who have come to trade are confronted with what appears to be both hideous and insidious. there is a strong sense of impending doom for them and for the land; already, the landscape has been damaged and the men’s eyes seem full of uncontrolled greed and desire. as felix talked, he moved his finger above and between the explorers contained in the “ship-slash-fort,” and traced the shape of the red-tiled roof: “i don’t know if it’s easy to see but there’s almost a triangle here... i made the top – kind of sharp because it’s going down over her head and then across.” tim’s “triangle diagram” is referenced in the visual grammar (kress & van leeuwen, 2006) of felix’s piece, cutting across the landscape, inclusive of the ship-slash-fort. above it are the fiery sky and circling crows; below, in the green grass, in the path of the moving ship-slash-fort, are the three indigenous women. the triangular shape encompasses felix’s exploration of how social, cultural, economic, and political life would be forever changed for the indigenous peoples and for the land. felix chose the colours of the image to demand attention to the issues. i used bright colours so that no matter what you thought about this kind of thing you can’t look away. if you think, ‘well like it’s not that big of a deal,’ you’re forced to look and like, ‘oh shit, it was that big of a deal.’ the array of contrasting colours is certainly eye-catching; the composition achieves the goal of holding viewers’ attention. if presented in class with an open-ended question like, “what do you notice?,” the piece would spark a generative dialogue. even tim, who had viewed and discussed the image many times with felix, was still noticing new things. but for felix, the drawing was intended to prompt acknowledgement of the legacy of colonization and to inspire action: that’s kind of what i want it to be. you have to acknowledge this at some time. you can’t ignore it forever. and that’s kind of what we’ve been doing. yeah, like the prime minister in 2004 said i’m sorry about the colonization, but has he actually done anything to reverse the effects of it? no, no. felix articulated connections between the concepts of the unit and contemporary politics and indigenous issues. in following political events and news online, felix is an avid reader of blogs, explaining that online “you don’t have to ask” people about politics, that it’s easy to “scroll through their page and... you’ll know about” where they stand politically. in fact, felix stated that his online networks contributed to changing his own thinking michelle a. honeyford, timothy s. beyak, felix sylvester hardman studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 82 about race and racism: “i was kind of turning into a horrible little racist kid in like 8th grade and then i was online a lot and i would be scrolling through people’s blogs and if i came across an indigenous person who was an activist, i would be like, ‘oh i’m curious about this; i’m going to read this.’” felix noted that reading about the experiences and perspectives of indigenous writers was transformative: “i was like, ‘oh, maybe someone who is not exactly like me is not the ‘other’ after all.’” considering felix’s text as pedagogy illuminates how curricular concepts and practices came to (in)form and in turn, be shaped by felix’s art and ways of thinking. felix’s visual text and his talk about his work exemplify the personal and political significance and complexity with which he was beginning to re-learn the (singular) history of the explorers and first peoples, as well as his own positioning and relationships as a student, artist, and citizen. text as assemblage to think through felix’s text as assemblage (deleuze & guattari, 1987) is to recognize how texts are always alive, moving, and open to becoming something new and different as they connect and function with “other assemblages – other writings, histories, memories, places, people, ideas, events, and so forth” (preston, 2015, p. 39). text as assemblage connotes the material, discursive, and artefactual in text-making (honeyford et al., 2017; kuby & gutshall, 2016; pahl & rowsell, 2010), as text-producers create in relationship to other texts, images, discourses, objects, and places (comber, 2016; somerville, davies, power, gannon, & de carteret, 2011). all parts of the temporary assemblage – artist, viewer, art piece; all inspirations and impulses in creating and viewing and in dialogue about the work – are entangled, “forming relations and connections across signs, objects, and bodies in often unexpected ways” (leander & boldt, 2012, p. 36). because “such activity is created and fed by an ongoing flow of affective intensities,” our efforts to follow these flows “gives rise to questions that create the possibility of more ways of seeing and valuing” (leander & boldt, 2012, p. 36). pedagogically, we believe this marks an important shift. we did not approach felix’s text with a pre-determined framework, criteria, or rubric for evaluation (which simply determines the presence – or absence – of a priori qualities, reducing a complex text to a checklist of established meanings, and limiting the possibilities for generating new insights). instead, we sought to pursue the inspirations, impulses, and intensities of felix’s work in order to “explore the ways in which ideas behind assemblage call attention to layers of meaning that come together through intertextuality, multimodality, and symbolic creativity” (jocson, 2018, p. 19) – to be open to connections, narrative assemblage and visual text making as sociopolitical inquiry studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 83 relationships, and ideas that we never could have guessed or imagined in advance. one of those was the artistic inspiration for felix’s depictions of samuel de champlain and “the other guy,” the enigmatic french explorer, étienne brûlé. showing us photos from his phone, felix said he was inspired by medieval woodcuts and the painted triptychs of hieronymus bosch, a style felix reverently described as “weird surreal abstractness.” in evoking a dutch painter from the 15th century, most famous for his fantastical illustrations of hell (see the last judgement, the garden of earthly delights), felix layered into his drawing the religious overtones of exploration as well as the suffering of indigenous peoples through colonization. for, “perhaps more than any other artist of his time… bosch’s inferno has become ingrained not only in pop culture, but also in the broader western conception of hell as a place of torture, monstrous creatures, and never-ending suffering” (dunne, 2016, n.p.). felix explained that his style was also influenced by jonathan “bogleech” wojcik, “a self-professed ‘life-long monster fanatic, insect lover, and creator of the pointless website, bogleech.com, where he publishes articles on creepy creatures, a weekly webcomic and other stuff” (chilling entertainment, n.d.). a quick scan of bogleech’s website and social media channels highlights elements of his style in felix’s drawing. thus, we see a clear example of how …assemblages by youth place them in a cultural-historical continuum alongside artists whose works have been legitimized and popularized by culture industries, as well as those whose works have yet to be seen or recognized by the masses. assemblages can position young people as producers of knowledge to expand larger discourses of history, culture, and politics. (jocson, 2018, p. 20) another example of the rich intertextuality, multimodality, and symbolic creativity of felix’s text was generated by the significance of disease. in an assemblage of colour, science knowledge, environmental literacy, and awareness of french fashion, felix illustrates his understandings of the relationships among exploration, colonization, and disease. pointing to “the european” on the right, felix noted that he is physically marked as carrying disease: this guy’s kind of like if you’ve seen a little petri dish, he’s got bacteria growing on him like, ‘oh shit, this guy’s got some bad diseases on him.’ like i don’t know if you can really tell, but those are like little microbes, like bacteria... i don’t know if it’s like small pox or what, but he’s got it real bad. felix described de champlain (on the left), as “kind of yellow, like you know those biohazard suits? i’m not sure which class of biohazard suit that is, but it’s toxic, brightly coloured.” this, too, is a warning: “don’t touch.” felix noted that “it was fashionable to be french back then,” so the irony of the hazmat suit and colours influenced by “brightly coloured things in nature like michelle a. honeyford, timothy s. beyak, felix sylvester hardman studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 84 poisonous mushrooms or brightly coloured berries” is a deliberate indictment, a warning in both natural and human terms, past and present, of deception and danger: “it’s like you don’t want to eat that because you don’t know what’s in it. it could be really bad.” impending death is a theme, with multiple warnings for the indigenous women: the fire in the sky, the circling crows, and the idea that the text itself is a cautionary tale. as felix explained, the sky is drawn to look like “when there’s a forest fire – like the sky just kind of turns orange, so it’s like there’s something wrong with the sky. there’s something wrong with the land right now and like, i think i know where it’s coming from, you know?” the birds are crows, harbingers of death, but similar in appearance to ravens: ravens are an important bird... in a lot of first nations cultures, kind of like a trickster, but they also bring the sun to land, bring fire to the people, or like the [story of the] raven and the clam shell,... where the raven brought the clamshell and the people came out of it. [but] in europe, like you think of a crow and you think, ‘oh, that thing is going to be pecking at my corpse if i’m not careful, so i don’t like that bird’ and if you hear about the black plague like the crows must have been all over the place... with all the bodies piled up. so, if you’re european back then, it’s like, ‘i don’t like seeing those crows.’ very different birds, but they look super similar. these are crows in the picture and they’re there to eat whatever gets left behind once the colonizers are done….that one has a little horn. they’re kind of like, you know when you have a marching band in front of someone like, here’s the important person, kind of like that. felix compared the image to cultural myths, folktales, and oral stories, particularly stories adults might tell to children to warn them of danger (e.g., not to go into the woods for fear of a “bogeyman”). felix gave several examples, including stories of the qalupalik in inuit culture, which felix learned about through his own research, looking for visual allusions to other warning narratives. the qalupalik inspired another drawing felix showed us, referencing it several times in our conversation. it was clear throughout our discussion that felix’s art-making was inspired by and was the catalyst for further inquiry and research. in the process of drawing the women, for example, felix explained he had researched cree women’s clothing “so that it’s not just like a halloween costume i’m drawing.” he admitted that he had “already started, so her [single-braided] hair, i don’t believe is entirely accurate and hers [in two braids] is in the back and normally they’d have it in the front.” felix acknowledged he was “not proud” of that and would change it if he could. he portrayed the cree women as young to emphasize the legacy of colonialism: i actually had ages in my head for all of them when i was drawing them. she’s 23, she’s 25 and she’s just turned 19. i don’t know. i thought like something about being young and like they have a lot of life and this is going to take it away from them. maybe not when they’re still young, but maybe when their kids are still young. narrative assemblage and visual text making as sociopolitical inquiry studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 85 felix’s visual text and art-making and our dialogue created new insights about felix as an artist, history student, and storyteller, and the potential for “everyday texts and stories produced by students” to generate conversations about the “social and cultural landscapes in students’ lives relevant to the curriculum”; the possibilities created when “assemblage becomes key in teaching and learning” (jocson, 2018, p. 19). text as place-making text as place-making draws attention to how place is produced in felix’s image and narrative, but also in relation to the classroom and local context. for spaces are “woven from a web of phenomena/activities/relations” and the “spatial spread of social relations can be intimately local or expansively global, or anything in between” (massey, 1994, p. 265). we live in treaty 1 territory, the traditional lands of the anishinaabeg, cree, oji-cree, dakota, and dene peoples, and on the homeland of the métis nation. the city of winnipeg sits at the confluence of two rivers, the site of indigenous trading grounds for centuries, home to urban indigenous and métis peoples and immigrants from all over the world. thus, we understand conceptions of place as “a ‘meeting place’ or an ‘intersection’ imbued with social meanings, power relations, and... politics,” as sites that are historically and currently marked by “overlapping, sometimes conflicting, social realities” (jocson, 2018, p. 74). place-making features prominently in felix’s visual text. amidst the (un)natural elements of the prairie, forest, and sky, felix drew the meeting of the indigenous women and european explorers in the context of the shipslash-fort. as felix explained, the europeans appear …attached to their forts, because they wouldn’t leave the forts that much and so if indigenous people decided, ‘well let’s get these guys out of here because like i’ve had enough of them, they’re just horrible, like get rid of it,’ they [the defenders of the fort] could just sit in their forts and be shooting at them and they [the indigenous peoples] wouldn’t have much of a fighting chance against that. felix indicated the tentacles under the “ship-slash-fortress” indicate movement: the ship just moves. so, it [the legs] got longer and they kind of just walk across the sea floor like a big creepy thing and the guns are kind of like on the side. they don’t look like guns though; they look like weird mouths, i guess, but they are supposed to be a mixture of a cannon and the head of a musket, but they don’t shoot like guns, they just shoot that purple slime poison stuff. the purple poison, or “acid,” is in a drippy puddle under the ship-slash-fort. felix explained that although he decided not to draw it (for fear of losing the michelle a. honeyford, timothy s. beyak, felix sylvester hardman studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 86 detail in the foreground), the ship-slash-fort has left a trail of acid in its wake: “there’s definitely a trail going through the woods and along the way the trees are dying and the path is just absolutely charred.” the continued movement of the settlers from east to west on indigenous lands is also portrayed by the tentacle-like legs which “represent the carts and oxes and horses that they would use to move stuff around.” the black and white stripes of the ship-slash-fort are a tribute to cartoons and stories of predators in nature: it’s mostly because i just like that old beetlejuice cartoon a lot and also just because i don’t know if you’ve ever seen a cuttlefish hunting, but when they hunt they start flashing black and white stripes to confuse the prey and overwhelm its senses and then it [the cuttlefish] just closes in and gets it [the prey]. and that’s kind of what i thought of this ship, this ship-slash-fortress thing. it’s a living thing and it’s not very good. …there’s like its eye... it’s mostly just there to look a bit unsettling, but it’s also there to look…i wanted to make it look like it’s alive. felix acknowledged that life in the fort was not without its challenges. describing the eyes peeking out of the slots, felix said, yeah, the eyes inside the ship would be like when they’re trapped and they can’t leave because they might, it’s a new environment and there’s wolves outside and stuff, so it’s kind of like people trapped inside and there’s scurvy and all that, so it’s basically just waiting to die. there are more overt messages about taking land from the indigenous peoples: on the ship-slash-fort are two flags, one with the word, “die” and the other with the message, “go away,” because, felix explained, that’s what they [the white settlers] wanted. they wanted the indigenous people to like just leave. once they figured, ‘oh, we can just kill our own animals and get fur, like get out of here, we don’t need you anymore; why are you still here?’” the message is clearly “get out,” said felix, but in return, the white settlers who would continue to come were not hearing what felix imagined the indigenous peoples were saying, “but it’s like, ‘that’s where we fuckin’ live.’” place is a scene of conflict and violence in felix’s visual text. the fort is marked with “decapitated heads” inspired by a story of …someone who was planning to rebel against champlain, and someone [else] overheard that and said, ‘well, we’re going to cut that guy’s head off’... and also in old france, they would just like behead someone and put their head on a stick. it’s like, ‘hey, don’t mess with me, look what i’ve got’... so you can imagine how jarring it would be to see someone’s head on a stick just outside the fort of someone you’re going to trade stuff with. narrative assemblage and visual text making as sociopolitical inquiry studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 87 the indigenous women have come in good faith to trade: they carry corn and fur and “they’re getting stuff in return” but, as felix explained, what they got had “germs from europe on it so it’s eventually going to kill you and whoever eats it will also get sick so it’s like not a very good deal. that’s why that hand that has the bag of gunpowder has the purple stuff on it.” the economy of place has changed with the coming of the explorers and settlers. the women are members of a society who held/hold a worldview situated upon the interconnected nature of relationships, kinship, creedal values, respect and diplomacy, and trade. they were only just to discover that the arrival of the explorers would forever change this place, from a relational place of knowingness and understanding into a place of difference, economically-based, where rules trumped relationships and were enforced by punishments, and where peace was dictated by the victors – a new world indeed. felix’s text warns that conflict and division will spread beyond the fort to encompass the land: the red trees were, like i wanted something to pop out because i didn’t think brown trees were going to look that good but also like i couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to get too close to places where the white people were settled. once they started getting how they are, like shooting people and saying ‘get out of here, this is our land now.’ i imagine those woods are like, ‘don’t go in there. like stay out of those woods, don’t hunt there. cuz you don’t know what they’re going to do to you.’ felix made a comparison to how gentrification in an urban centre can force people out of their neighborhoods, while richer citizens move in: it’s kind of like in a poor neighbourhood and they start putting up those fancy, expensive condos and all of a sudden no one else can afford to live there, so someone who drove up to that neighborhood again or like walked through it twenty years later, they would say, ‘i lived here, i grew up here, but i don’t recognize anything. it’s not how it used to be... and not for the better, either.’ felix acknowledges that issues of racism permeate this place, with legacies of forced removal, land-rights abuses, and racial violence. on an international scale, felix explains, canada has a reputation for multicultural diplomacy and peace: “especially since like we’re seen as ‘oh, we’re a nice country, we’re not racist up here,’” but the truth is “we have some pretty bad issues. i think [this city] has its own kkk; like, we have a big problem here.” as a historical thinker/citizen and artist, felix is realizing the connections of racism and genocide inherent in canada’s colonial past and acknowledging their legacy today. michelle a. honeyford, timothy s. beyak, felix sylvester hardman studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 88 text as critical solidarity felix’s text is an example of how young people create media to critique systems of inequity and power – to utilize “written, oral/aural, and visual forms of communication as a means to challenge dominant ideologies and power relationships that underlie them” (jocson, 2018, pp. 52-53). youth may become more personally aware and interested in issues of social justice through teachers like tim, who embed a critical literacy and social justice stance in their classroom. of course, youth may also have intimate experiences with these issues and their implications in their own lives (which may or may not be reflected in the curriculum or classroom). the sociopolitical nature of youth media then, may be borne out of – or become a catalyst for – personal investment in sociopolitical issues, and a desire to produce and circulate texts as a means of showing critical solidarity, of “ally[ing] [them]selves with others” (jocson, 2018, p. 52). as felix stated in response to a question about what his image was about: “i would say it’s me trying my best to bring awareness to the issues because i’ve only like gone into being like activist super recently and i guess it’s my way of trying to be like an ally.” in critical solidarity, felix is warning the women that “this is something that’s a new threat. they’re not familiar with it and they don’t know what it is, just like, it’s here now and they need to watch out for it.” felix embeds the text with visual cues of his solidarity with the indigenous women: i know at first i was making the indigenous women’s eyes yellow because i just like making weird-looking eyes, but then i thought, i want to make them look like the most human ones here because the colonizers really didn’t have any empathy or didn’t even see the indigenous people as people, they just saw them as, ‘oh those things on the land that we want to get rid of eventually because they’re in the way.’ felix lamented that indigenous women and girls continue to suffer violence today: like they didn’t treat them like human at all, especially when you look further down along the [time] line and even today they’re just like, the ‘others’ and that’s why i made their eyes [colonizers] like so bright and weird. in felix’s art-making, a new connecting thread of solidarity emerges between the indigenous women and the young filles du roi of nouvellefrance, sent by the king to produce colonists (or in felix’s words, to “repopulate” the land). felix positions the body of the young filles du roi to show how they were exploited: she’s a filles du roi... and i was kind of [suggesting], by her pose, like that she was just there to repopulate the colony. that’s why her legs have their own separate slot like that, and yeah, it’s ew. i felt gross drawing it. narrative assemblage and visual text making as sociopolitical inquiry studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 89 felix’s solidarity is expressed in the affective implications of drawing the young girl in such a position, but this discomfort is outweighed by the responsibility felix feels as an artist to complicate the “explorer as hero” narrative. felix also explains that while the eyes of the filles du roi show her to be human now, that might change: “her eyes [the young filles du roi] aren’t like that [those of the explorers] yet because she’s still so young and she doesn’t really understand the gravity of the situation.” felix compared the practice of inculcating racism and hate in the young to what happens in the westboro baptist church: “like it’s kind of like when you see westboro baptist church and they have these signs and these kids holding one and the little kid doesn’t understand what’s going on yet but they’re going to grow up to be like that eventually.” as an artist, felix has been inspired by other artist-activists who use their work for political action and critical solidarity. felix spoke admiringly of graffiti artist and gay rights activist keith haring (particularly his work silence=death), who used his art to draw attention to the aids epidemic. felix argued that schools have an important role to play in gender rights education, teaching young people about the history of gender oppression. while the topic is approached in health class, felix challenged tim: “we don’t have anything on lgbt history and i feel like that’s really important... we haven’t addressed it at all in history class and we have a lot of like really rich history that you’d only know if you were looking for it specifically.” felix argued all students should learn about the stonewall riots and the first pride events in their city. however, felix is deeply concerned about the commercialization of the lgbt movement. he showed us a photo on his phone of a placard held at a protest with the statement “our community is not an ad campaign.” just like the anger he expressed about the colonizing narrative he was led to believe in school, felix charged, i’m just sick of companies just slapping the rainbow flag on their products in june. and if they sell some product with a rainbow on it none of that money goes to like, comes back to the community. we’re just like basically an accessory, slap it on your product to look good. critical solidarity is a significant component of civic engagement and multiliteracies pedagogy. through creative and critical literacy practices, critical solidarity is about youth “having the freedom to judge for themselves the relative merits of alternative possibilities rather than being indoctrinated into a particular worldview” (jocson, 2018, p. 52). for felix, that includes opportunities to engage in the issues that are important to him: “police brutality; missing indigenous women – cases that are never fully investigated; anything involving lgbt rights; and of course, the kinder morgan pipeline.” felix admits that he is relatively new at being an activist: michelle a. honeyford, timothy s. beyak, felix sylvester hardman studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 90 yeah. i haven’t done that enough i don’t think. like it seems whenever there’s a protest or a rally i always google it and i’m like, ‘oh, that happened three weeks ago. oh no.’ i would have wanted to be there for support and i wasn’t. with art, felix said he was trying to do more to “bring awareness to the issues,” but he also noted that the process takes time: “i want to say like it took me two and a half weeks and a lot of that was just figuring out like where i want this to go and stuff.” concluding questions felix made it clear that after taking the piece home to show his father (who had only seen it in progress), it would come back to the classroom “where it belonged” and where tim plans to use it in his future grade 11 history classes. in the classroom, youth media like felix’s drawing, a bricolage of readily available school-supplies (highlighters, coloured pencils, markers, and a fine-tipped black sharpie) can “become resources for various types of cultural remix and learning opportunities” (jocson, 2018, p. 12). unlike most papers and assignments that serve as evidence of learning and then quickly become products of history themselves, felix’s drawing will become part of the ever-changing assemblage of the unit. it will join other texts and material objects, students, experiences, and affective forces in tim’s courses as invitations for learners to think and feel with, as catalysts to move into new journeys of learning, doing, being and becoming with. this is particularly important in social studies pedagogy, for “democracy has to be judged not just by the institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard” (sen, 2009, p. xiii). for felix and other young people, the study of history and sociopolitical and cultural issues in education – issues that span generations, time, and local and global borders and spaces – have the potential to open up opportunities for participation, connection, movement and action. but as the poet martín espada argued, such work needs to be rooted in historical understandings and the capacity to imagine a different present and future: any progressive social change must be imagined first, and that vision must find its most eloquent possible expression to move from vision to reality. any oppressive social condition, before it can be changed, must be named and condemned with words that persuade by stirring the emotions, awakening the senses. thus the need for the political imagination. (martin espada cited in christensen, 2017, p. xi) in thinking with felix’s text as pedagogy, assemblage, place-making and critical solidarity, we wonder about political imagination in the context of the present and futures of our young people. is felix a reader of harbingers of the narrative assemblage and visual text making as sociopolitical inquiry studies in social justice, volume 13, issue 1, 73-93, 2019 91 present time? is that what history helps felix do? does multiliteracies pedagogy cultivate the political imaginations of young people so that spaces outside the classroom become sites of critical change and transformation? how might we approach historical thinking as creative and critical literacy practices that acknowledge the truth of our broken relations in our communities and world? how would pedagogy and politics change if curriculum and civic issues were encountered as assemblages with “neither a beginning nor an end, [but] always connectible or modifiable” (jocson, 2018, p. 19)? how might our classrooms, communities, and world change if the purpose of education was to engage in “learning as a process of sharing, reciprocity, respect, collaboration, healing and creating sustainable relationships” (sefa dei, in press)? in following the flows of our inquiry, we find ourselves circling back to when felix sat down with us to talk about his drawing. he looked at the image and asked, “where should i begin?” ultimately, in our individual and collective acts of pedagogy, assemblage, place-making and critical solidarity, we need to be asking that question as well. references adichie, c. n. 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(2013). starting with what is: exploring response and responsibility to student writing through collaborative inquiry. english education, 45(2), 115-146. somerville, m., davies, b., power, k., gannon, s., & de carteret, p. (2011). place pedagogy change. amsterdam, nl: sense publishers. trudel, m. (1966/2014). “champlain, samuel de,” in dictionary of canadian biography, vol. 1, university of toronto/université laval. retrieved from http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/champlain_samuel_de_1e.html vasudevan, l., & reilly, m. a. (2013). in the middle of something: reflections on multimodal inquiry as artful bricolage. journal of adolescent & adult literacy, 56(6), 455-459. correspondence address: lucy costa, the empowerment council, 1001 queen st. w. room 160, toronto, on m6j 1h4, canada. email: ms.lucycosta@gmail.com issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 6, issue 1, 85-101, 2012 recovering our stories: a small act of resistance lucy costa the empowerment council, canada jijian voronka ontario institute for studies in education, university of toronto, canada danielle landry school of disability studies, ryerson university, canada jenna reid critical disability studies, york university, canada becky mcfarlane ryerson university, canada david reville school of disability studies, ryerson university, canada kathryn church school of disability studies, ryerson university, canada abstract this paper describes a community event organized in response to the appropriation and overreliance on the psychiatric patient “personal story.” the sharing of experiences through stories by individuals who self-identify as having “lived experience” has been central to the history of organizing for change in and outside of the psychiatric system. however, in the last decade, personal stories have increasingly been used by the psychiatric system to bolster research, education, and fundraising interests. we explore how personal stories from consumer/survivors have been harnessed by mental health organizations to further their interests and in so doing have shifted these narrations from “agents of change” towards one of “disability tourism” or “patient porn.” we mark the ethical dilemmas of narrative cooptation and consumption and query how stories of resistance can be reclaimed not as personal recovery narratives but rather as a tool for socio-political change. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 86 kathryn church, lucy costa, danielle landry, becky mcfarlane, jenna reid, david reville, jijian voronka we all have stories. many of our stories are deeply personal. some of our stories are painful, traumatic, hilarious, heroic, bold, banal. our stories connect us— they reflect who we are and how we relate to one another. stories are extremely powerful and have the potential to bring us together, to shed light on the injustice committed against us and they lead us to understand that not one of us is alone in this world. but our stories are also a commodity—they help others sell their products, their programs, their services—and sometimes they mine our stories for the details that serve their interests best—and in doing so present us as less than whole. becky mcfarlane, recovering our stories event, june 2011 introduction sharing experiences through stories or “testimonies” by people who selfidentify as having psychiatric disabilities has been central to the history of organizing resistance and change in and outside the psychiatric system (church, 1995; cresswell, 2005; morrison, 2005; on our own, 1980-1990). in the last decade, however, mental health organizations have begun to use and rely on personal stories from users of mental health services—people who are often homeless or struggling to survive below the poverty line. it is now commonplace for mental health organizations to solicit personal stories from clients—typically, about their fall into and subsequent recovery from mental illness. these stories function to garner support from authority figures such as politicians and philanthropists, to build the organizational “brand” regardless of program quality, and to raise operating funds during times of economic constraint. this paper discusses an event called “recovering our stories” which was held in toronto, canada in june 2011 (from this point forward, we refer to event organizers as “the collective”). it was intended to interrupt the proliferation of this popular type of storytelling within the mental health sector—judging it to be not just problematic but “pornographic.” by pornographic we mean that, while some people reveal their most intimate personal details, others achieve relief through passive watching, while still others profit from the collaboration of those on the front lines in compromised positions. today storytelling is far from being an unstoppable juggernaut: rather, it is in our hands how stories can be used and abused as sought after commodities. “writing up” the june event is our call for further action and reflection from other psychiatric survivors/consumers about how to reclaim personal stories and efforts at mobilization. “people with lived experience” has become the catch-phrase to designate those who speak directly to “living” lives affected by mental illness. but lives are shaped and constructed by social, political, economic, and cultural realities that necessitate an analysis of inequity. our “small act of resistance” was an imperative: resistance to the hegemonic influence of biomedical determinism that occurs by way of a most personal avenue—self disclosure. we offered people an opportunity to focus discussion on the ability of the mentally ill to studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 recovering our stories 87 organize and work towards change using a social justice agenda (crossley, 2006; fraser, 1987). just as feminist, anti-colonial, im/migrant, migrant, racialized, disabled, and aboriginal (first nations, metis, and inuit) activist groups in canada have worked towards reclaiming subjectivities that are of value, so too has the consumer/survivor movement fought for its worth and dignity. our social justice agenda transcends the goals that are commonly assumed to bind mental health mandates and mission statements—locally and nationally. it calls for more than simply working towards improving access to services, increasing peer involvement, bettering client care, and other concerns related to the mental health system. like the authors of mad pride-mad culture, our agenda “asserts the rights of ‘mad’ people without pleading for minor concessions, but instead changes the world into a fit place for us to live” (curtis, dellar, leslie, & watson, 2000, p. 8). grounded in the recognition that there are many ways to “be” and “understand,” our “politics of resistance” fundamentally calls into question the ways in which mental health mandates are normalized and assumed as “truth.” more pointedly, it questions the ways in which mental health systems have begun to promote their own agendas by co-opting the language of social justice itself. fraser (1987) has commented that the means of interpretation and communication tied to the cultural imperialism of dominant groups is their ability to express its values, goals and achievements as the norm as well as attaining and sustaining cultural status through these norms. here, we seek to explore how the resignification of language such as “resilience” and “recovery,” as told through client accounts, is a means by which mental health service systems have been able to absorb resistance accounts, sanitize them, and carry them forward in ways that are useful for them, without disrupting their dominant practices. it is precisely through this recalibration of norms that mental health systems are able to maintain their cultural and economic status which occurs partially through the incorporation of the patient story wherein this incorporation ruptures away from the history of psychiatric survivor storytelling to radicalize, towards one that uses stories to further solidify hegemonic accounts of mental illness. this disregards the original purpose of storytelling to work towards radical change. the situation is very similar to that of other social action groups, such as non-status migrants, “who are generally denied the right to express themselves as political beings, [however] engage in a political act or an assertion of political subjectivity” (basok, 2010, p. 99) in order to better organize for change. psychiatric survivor organizing that attends to broader issues of social justice (discrimination, not stigma; employment; human rights violations) disrupts the traditional focus on the psychiatrized as “mentally ill” patients in need of a cure. it orients away from medical intervention and towards a broader impetus for respecting, responding, and incorporating difference into the social milieu. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 88 kathryn church, lucy costa, danielle landry, becky mcfarlane, jenna reid, david reville, jijian voronka stories on parade and stagnant welfare rates how and why did getting the mentally ill to divulge their lives become so pervasive in the last decade? grappling with that urgent question motivated us to create a forum for larger discussion and exploration. within the collective, many were familiar with being asked to speak. familiar, as well, with being asked quite explicitly for “the story” of diagnosis, treatment and recovery: this by contrast with, for example, being asked to speak of the actual employment/activist work that we do within various settings. our initial thoughts on how we might best intervene on this growing practice revolved around the idea of developing a series of workshops for current and future psychiatric survivor/consumer storytellers. we knew that many of the individuals who were active on the storytelling circuit could be quite critical of the broader mental health system and, if given the opportunity, were more than capable of developing a useful critique of this intensifying practice. we thought of venues in which to deliver workshops or educational sessions of this nature. we knew also that there were other psychiatric survivors/consumers who would be interested in engaging in this project, if only because the opportunities for learning within the actual mental health system were few and far between. so, we knew why a set of workshops might be useful and we knew where we wanted to hold them. the question of content was more challenging. should the workshops focus on ideological questions, such as, “who profits from your story?” or should they be practically based and offer “tips,” such as, “how not to say something you will regret later”? over a number of weeks, our deliberations caused us to shift away from the workshops and towards planning a public event that would include a keynote speaker (american poet and story-teller eli clare was our final choice), as well as locally-based individuals who could speak to storytelling within aboriginal, consumer/survivor, and academic communities. in our view, the three sectors or “circuits” of story solicitation would complement the questions we hoped to raise by the end of the forum. we favoured a public event over a workshop because we recognized that a workshop directed at consumer/survivors who tell their stories would interrupt only their practice; it would have no impact on those that were soliciting stories (both individuals and institutions). we wanted researchers, service providers, and psychiatric institutions to know that we knew they were using our stories—not in consumer/survivor interest—but for the benefit of professionals. we wanted to make it public so that, at the very least, they might hesitate before they asked us to bare our souls for their gain. personal and political storytelling originated with psychiatric survivors who were eager to counter the silence and dehumanization that was core to the experience of being a “mental patient” (chamberlin, 1978; on our own, 1980-1990; reville, 1988; shimrat, 1997). the consumer/survivor movement fought long and hard to have the voices and narratives of their members understood as politicized accounts, and not just delegitimized rants of people who are routinely dismissed because of diagnosis (berkenkotter, studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 recovering our stories 89 2008). in the 1980’s and 1990’s, psychiatric survivors began to insist that their perspectives represented real knowledge of how the psy-complex worked1, and that this knowledge must be taken seriously in public decisionmaking (for more on the psy-complex see rose, 1990). like other social movements, we found venues to speak back to psychiatry (both inter and intraorganizationally) (crossley, 2006). over time, these acts of resistance were systematically co-opted as psy industries learned how to manipulate these stories to their own purposes. in the last decade, as capitalist societies have emphasized the substantial losses in productivity associated with mental illness2 and the potential profit inherent particularly in pharmacology (whitaker, 2010), personal stories have entered the marketplace (jamison, 1997; steele & berman, 2001). campaigns to normalize mental illness feature well-known “talking heads” who use their status and public profile to propagate the message that “it can happen to you.” in canada, they include broadcasters shelagh rogers and valerie pringle, singer steven page, and margaret trudeau. to popularize the message that mental illness affects us all3 social service agencies have recently cornered the market on personal storytelling. for a twenty dollar honorarium and a couple of transit tokens, select psychiatric survivors are recruited and paraded in front of institution staff, patients, boards of directors, and local politicians in an effort to prove that the golden road to recovery will reveal itself—but only if you take your medication and listen to your mental health care providers. issues of systemic poverty and discrimination, an appalling lack of choice in services, and mistreatment are conveniently left out of the story. favoured stories feature the uplifting message that with a little hard work and perseverance, you too can be cured. common themes include: how this or that service saved my life; how this or that medication saved my life; and how this or that pursuit of a normal existence saved my life. the ubiquitous message is that mental illness is a biological problem and treatment (i.e. pharmaceuticals) the solution. funding to do critical work that challenges the way the mental health system conducts itself is difficult to find. quantitative data and statistics take precedence and most philanthropy is dedicated towards research that explores brain functioning or chemistry.4 given the dominance of this bio-medical storytelling, rarely are organizational funds directed towards autonomous and critical narratives. the recovering our stories collective was not sponsored by an organization or institution; all of its activities and products were created by volunteers and through donations in kind. in ontario, the struggle to be included as full participants in civic engagement began on a shoestring. it came about with the support of volunteers and other allies who were doing social movement organizing in the 1990s (church & reville, 1989; church, 1995; nelson et al, 2006; reaume, 2002). the 90s also saw the rise of psychiatric survivor/ consumer-run support groups and organizations that stressed the importance of inclusion and consumer/survivor voice within mainstream mental health agencies. zines, books, and reports were produced by mad people themselves, studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 90 kathryn church, lucy costa, danielle landry, becky mcfarlane, jenna reid, david reville, jijian voronka independent of mental health institutions (campbell, 2011). a number of these consumers/survivor organizations have since been defunded and/ or absorbed into larger mental health organizations, but the legacy of their practice has made it increasingly difficult to exclude persons with psychiatric disabilities from the formal governance of mental health organizations and institutions (reville & church, 2012). by the late 1990s, practices of “client-centered care” and the involvement of people with “lived experience” became requirements if an organization was to represent itself as a community based or community involved service provider (bhui, aubin, & strathdee, 1998, crawford, 2001; department of health, 1989). at the same time, the methods by which organizations sought participation remained rooted in conservative and paternalistic values. psychiatric survivors and the more radically marginalized were not recruited; instead, those who called themselves “consumers” and those more or less appeased by the mental health services they had received were the first to be chosen to sit, speak, and represent on various boards, in consultations, and on panels. while the collective was well aware that lived experience was important, we were concerned that some lived experiences were not being relayed. sanitized stories were preferred—but they do little to change the way that agencies function or to address broader issues such as poverty, unemployment and discrimination. these conditions persist despite the work of social service providers, police, government and other powerful institutions capable of implementing systemic change.5 a pressing item on our agenda was to equip those who were being paid, cajoled, and/or manipulated into storytelling with some basic tools that would enable them to question and/or resist the practice. to acknowledge that, for decades—even centuries—the very institutions that had deliberately and systemically erased the experiences of psychiatric survivors in their charge were suddenly scrambling to squeeze every salacious and gory detail out of their journey to recovery was an exercise in consciousness-raising. a further complication in the evolution of storytelling lies in the paradoxical gains levered out of research that champions consumer/survivor participation and harnesses discourses of inclusion. as literature and more importantly “evidence” is being constructed as to the importance of inclusion so too are these discourses being co-opted into the flexible agendas of liberalism for its own gains (cooke & kothari, 2011; mcruer, 2006). the very research that is supposedly conducted to empower those with psychiatric disabilities (and more generally, across-disability communities) becomes the research which is enveloped into the “talk” of managing the disabled. for critical researchers wanting to do emancipatory work the challenges are daunting. in the qualitative paradigm, narrative researchers in particular tend to think of themselves as “the good guys.” they are not trading in large scale surveys and cold, hard statistics to make their living. rather, they are interested in purpose and meaning, and draw on methodologies that attempt to counter “the dominant perspectives representing the hegemonic studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 recovering our stories 91 interests of ruling groups” (o’shaughnessy & krogman, 2012). in general, they take the time to cultivate trust with participants. they are sensitive to power, empathic, even emotional when eliciting various dilemmas of social justice. but often unremarked is how it is precisely this type of researcher who may pose the most threat: the ones who, by their very self-reflexivity have discovered how to be really effective at stealing stories for their own academic gain. ironically, efforts made to deliver genuine involvement in mental health research, while significant, also demonstrates the need for further reflection on methods and practice. communications and social media as resistance as a collective, our project was to alert the community to the dangers of storytelling. at a time when language, public debate and opposition are censored or overly regulated, not only by authorities but by the professional helpers who “regulate personhood” (hook, 2007; rose, 1990;), the collective engaged various audiences on this highly taboo subject. from intent to implementation, all of our products (posters, info-cards and a public discussion) were created to resist the technologies that encourage people to tell bio-medical stories. social media allowed an even broader reach and an expanded dialogue. in designing the event poster, a major consideration was to ensure that all elements of the design conveyed an aesthetic that would have cross-cutting appeal to not just our primary target audience: people in the radical queer/ disability studies arena. we recognized the need to be inviting to a highly diverse group: consumer/survivors who are actively engaged in storytelling (as individuals and in groups); service providers and mental health experts who benefit from survivor narratives; individuals in the disability community who were already concerned about the interests that such voicing serves. we debated the language we should use to describe those who have had psychiatric encounters. consumers would speak to service providers, an important constituency that the group agreed was crucial to have in attendance. we wanted to ensure that those who solicit “patient porn”6 for their organizations were present. at best, we wanted to unsettle the takenfor-granted language of their work. others pointed out that using the term consumer would alienate the psychiatric survivor/mad/ex-patient movement, and not appeal to the politicized. we bantered back and forth on whether to use “consumer,” “consumer/survivor,” or “psychiatric survivor” to describe those that were telling such stories. we decided against using “service users” (common in the uk lexicon); “mad” (too radical); “ex-patient” (too antiquated?) for the text of the poster. finally, one member declared herself unwilling to use consumer just to appeal to service providers. to do so would debase our purpose and ensure that the poster had no political weight for the rest of us. in the interest of creating a poster that we would all be proud to hang on our walls, we settled on, “in studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 92 kathryn church, lucy costa, danielle landry, becky mcfarlane, jenna reid, david reville, jijian voronka whose interest? how psychiatric survivors can use our stories to change the world.” claiming the word our signified that the event was organized mostly by psychiatric survivors. the phrase, “use our stories to change the world,” gave the title an uplifting, hopeful twist. it also acknowledged the potential of our narratives, if used collectively, to challenge power. for the info-postcard, we chose the slogan, “hands off our stories.” it was derived in part from an experience in which someone grafted their emotional desires/deficiencies onto the personal narrative of one of our members. “go get your own agony!” they replied. another option we tossed around was, “back off, and get your own story,” cheeky words derived from a sandwich commercial.7 both slogans connote what audiences do (and do with) when confronted by pain, oppression, and systemic discrimination in which they are unwittingly or unconsciously implicated. what audiences do when they listen to a story depends on where they are positioned. audience members who work within psy service systems often pull on stories in ways that work for them. they also hear in ways that protect them from being implicated in systems the storyteller is naming as oppressive, unjust, or discriminatory. sherene razack calls this “stealing the pain of others.” the “pleasures of flinching” allows an audience to vicariously and safely descend into degeneracy, reemerging unscathed, without having to confront their implication and collaboration in the storyteller’s narrative (razack, 2004; 2007). the gleeful “hands off our stories” was at once a reclamation of our own life histories (ones that had been relegated to case files and whispers), and a declaration that these “tragedies and triumphs” belonged to us. they could not be claimed by systems of intervention that simultaneously took credit for our recoveries and remained distanced from the “unbeautiful” struggles and resistances that have been unexplored in recent storytelling. a gaze more familiar to the freak shows of the past has been finding its way forward into meetings, fundraisers, and research (clare, 1999; fausto-sterling, 1995; garland-thomson, 2009; longmore, 2005; garlandthomson, 1996;). it is a modern day voyeurism whereby, in listening to a cast of characters, spectators continue to justify the “otherness” of madness while curbing the watcher’s anxiety. as late as the mid-20th century, visiting asylums for voyeuristic entertainment was a common form of amusement. joseph workman, former superintendent for what is now called the centre for addictions and mental health, once criticized such spectators as “emptyheaded visitors” who came to “stare and laugh” at patients (reaume, 2002, p. 182). somewhat later, foucault wrote: madness here was erected as spectacle above the silence of the asylums, and it became, for the joy of all, a public scandal. unreason was hidden away discreetly in houses of confinement, but madness was a continued presence of the world stage, more strikingly than ever before. (2009, p. 144) thus, mad stories have become a kind of pornography that is produced and studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 recovering our stories 93 consumed in the interest of the audience itself. like those inmates paraded out in the past, the storyteller is barely acknowledged, and rarely appropriately compensated. in addition to the info-postcard, the collective created buttons to remind our audience of the nature of this consumption and to encourage conversation beyond the event itself. a local artist created the design; a small circle pin displaying the words patient porn stroked out by a red diagonal line. this visual exemplified the use of stories as exploitation as well as the refusal to have stories used as patient porn. a humorous memento, the buttons were a small token from us to the audience, transmitting a simple yet provocative message—and encouraging people to fill out an evaluation form. enticed by the message, audience members were eager to own such a provocative pin. some found the graphic language too strong but for the collective, again, it provoked a notion of resistance. the front of the info-card featured an image of four hands grasping for a microphone alongside the christened slogan “hands off our stories.” for the collective, this image symbolized attempts to reclaim the voice which has been a site of contention and co-optation. but the info-card was also meant to inform. on the reverse was a list of suggestions, written from a critical perspective and intended as a reminder of the potential for stories to be stolen and appropriated by organizations and institutions. six tips cautioned that: • participation is voluntary. you can always say no. • ask yourself, who profits from you telling your story? • what purpose does personal story sharing serve? • how do large organizations use stories to make material change? • story telling as an exercise of labour/work. do you get paid? • the internet lasts forever. because of the technology available today, your interview or story will likely be accessible to the public for a very long time. that includes future employers and landlords. finally, the info-cards served to connect torontonians to the recovering our stories website, email address and facebook page. the group strategically disseminated the postcards throughout the city, targeting community dropin centers, institutional settings, university mental health centers, and so on. this distribution launched the communication of ideas between the collective members and the greater toronto community. in addition to providing practical advice to potential storytellers, the cards were meant to stir interest leading up to the recovering our stories event. the collective also created a website (www.recoveringourstories.ca), a facebook page, an electronic e-invite and a gmail account to manage inquiries. we circulated the posters electronically as well as posting them in hotspots. we drew on our varied personal contacts to ensure that researchers, academics, consumer/survivors, service providers, journalists, critical students, politicos and all who intersect across such nexuses were invited and would spread the word. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 94 kathryn church, lucy costa, danielle landry, becky mcfarlane, jenna reid, david reville, jijian voronka interlocking social justice: disability, race and queer politics june 28, 2011 was the big day. we chose it to coincide with the anniversary of the stonewall riots, an informal event on the toronto lgbtq pride schedule. with this political reference, we hoped to stress the importance that resistance struggles have played as vehicles for social change, and to acknowledge the interlocking issues that queer and mad communities face. a few days ahead of time, columnist helen henderson (2011) covered the event for the toronto star. her piece got the word out. “grassroots group takes back patients’ stories,” declared the headline: some call it “patient porn,” which is not exactly the same as “disability tourism,” but not totally different either. both are ways in which the world in general does the quickie exploration tour of the world of disability. we might as easily talk about gender tourism or racial tourism or any other expedition into otherness, any trip into what travelers call unchartered territory. they peak, peep, peer, probe, poke their noses in and come away thinking they have gained perspective. this may or may not be true, but either way the risks are huge for those who find themselves the object of such study, no matter how wellintentioned or how scholarly. (henderson, 2011) we held the event on the campus of ryerson university in toronto’s downtown core—close to the lgbtq pride toronto activities with easy access for most people. on that rainy afternoon, one of our members welcomed the packed house by articulating the purpose that brought us together. we chose to quote these passages in length out of a respectful attempt to leave our members thoughts intact: our collective came together with very specific goals in mind. we were not interested in establishing another organization—all of us belong to a number of organizations and are engaged in a great many examples of resistance. here, we wanted to: a) produce some tips for psychiatric survivors who have been asked or who might be asked to share their personal stories—which we have done and which is available at the registration table. b) put on an event that brought together people that represented many different interests to think, listen, and learn about the difference between storytelling as an act of community building or as an act of personal resistance—and the solicitation of personal stories that fit the specific agenda of an institution, organization or agency. c) call attention to the importance of solidarity—by hosting an event that looks at storytelling from different perspectives—recognizing that the kind of “patient porn” that has become prevalent within the psychiatric survivor community is a phenomenon that other marginalized communities can relate and respond to. another of our members marked the historical transition from oppositional studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 recovering our stories 95 storytelling to patient porn: for the longest time, the mental health system wasn’t interested in our stories. our stories, after all, were the stories of mad people and, therefore, not credible. by the mid80s, though, some parts of the mental health system began to think that what we had to say might be of interest. so, in 1985, the canadian mental health association national published a pamphlet called “listening to people who have directly experienced the mental health system.” as the idea of consumer participation became more popular, more and more of us were invited to tell our stories. telling our stories didn’t make us rich. one storyteller, expecting to receive an honorarium for telling his story, instead was presented with a small bag. in it, he found a pack of cigarettes, a pack of chewing gum and a bag of peanuts. we’re not speaking for peanuts anymore. our stories have gone mainstream. if you have been selected by the mental health system to tell your story, you will be familiar with people coming up to you and telling you how courageous you are, how you must have been misdiagnosed, how you are a hero for getting out of bed in the morning. if you’re like me, you will attempt to set people straight—no, it’s not courage, you may say, it’s my life—and you will wonder why people have such a hard time getting it. if you’re like me, you may wonder, too, if you have become part of the “patient porn” industry. you may be looking to create spaces where you can reclaim your story and tell it in solidarity with others who are seeking social justice. many people had come to hear eli clare, our keynote speaker. white, disabled, and queer, eli has a book of essays on disability, queerness and liberation (1999, 2009) and a recent collection of poetry (2007). proudly claiming a penchant for rabble-rousing,” he is a huge draw across the disability and queer communities. we believed that eli could speak to the political nuances of storytelling in ways that would not alienate our audience. we knew that his presence would attract those who otherwise might spend a summer afternoon elsewhere. others in the audience were consumers/ survivors familiar from other events; many were mental health providers, and there was a strong showing of young students. the concluding panel of commentators included an academic who tries to use consumer/survivor narratives to elucidate systemic oppression. she argued that researchers: need to conceptualize our studies outside of the dominant narratives that govern people’s lives—the psychiatric narrative, as a prime example. much of what i read in the community mental health literature fails to question biomedical disease formations. our studies remain encased in diagnostic categories, even when they enact participant involvement that is quite admirable. these categories are not just debatable; they are being actively contested. we need to weigh in against them, openly, wherever we can. following the lead of community-based research, we should be as participatory as possible in the enactment of our studies—working closely not just with people or in sites where we are comfortable but with strong leaders studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 96 kathryn church, lucy costa, danielle landry, becky mcfarlane, jenna reid, david reville, jijian voronka from politicized organizations and communities who will challenge us to push the envelope. as we do this, we need to know that even impeccable participation is no guarantee against difficulty in working across difference. in our research, if we listen only for the “lived experience” of individuals, and only for processes of illness and recovery—we will miss many other vital storylines. we need to complicate what we are listening for: to listen less for stories of healing and recovery and more for stories of resistance and opposition, collective action and social change. our event only touched the surface of a myriad of questions. we have yet to unpack the ways in which stories within the mental health sector perpetuate racism or homophobia. another one of our invited panelists spoke to the difficulty of relying on “social determinants of health,” a discourse that at its core is meant to address inequity. however, with a focus on “outcomes” based on clinical indicators and standards, are such priorities authentic or do they further shift racialized stories and voices into more comfortable and digestible narratives? further, intergenerational trauma talk is now also commonplace with its commitment to “healing,” but can that inadvertently coerce familial relations (healing) when it may not be the desired choice? who benefits from stories of reparation? what psychiatric abuses have yet to be reconciled? and further, as gorman (2013 forthcoming) has identified, race is still only being discussed as “stigma” or “trauma” in the psychiatric paradigm. next steps? “honour stories. respect survivors.” the collective had previously decided that some form of feedback, participation and/or criticism from the audience was an important outcome from the day. it would enable us to gauge peoples’ perceptions and engagement with the questions we had raised at the event and identify whether there were others who had similar concerns and questions. it was also meant to guide us in any next steps we might need to take on as a group. following the event, an evaluation form was offered at a table near the exit along with a small reward for its completion—the no patient porn pins—and a promise of confidentiality.8 of the 200 plus who attended, 63 people took the time to complete the form. apart from one likkert scale and a list of identifiers, it was open-ended. feedback was generally positive. on a scale of one to ten, respondents gave the event an average rating of 8.8. the collective was interested in knowing whether both of the groups we targeted in our marketing had showed up at the event: those caught up in the politics of storytelling and those implicated in the institutional practice of appropriating stories. we included a series of tick boxes beside various identifiers as a means of collecting data on the diversity of social locations in the crowd. these identifiers included, “psychiatric survivor/consumer/mad,” service provider/worker,” researcher,” student,” media,” and “other” (with an studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 recovering our stories 97 open field). as hoped, all groups were represented. the majority of attendees also selected more than one of the listed identifiers. the open-ended questions were designed to find out whether the audience had heard our messages. as well, they offered a further opportunity for reflection, inviting respondents to revisit the dilemmas that storytelling presents. questions included: “what did you learn about storytelling within the psychiatric survivor/consumer/mad peoples’ community?” “what did you learn about the process or ethics of sharing personal stories?” and “what do you think would improve the way people tell their story?” a surprising number of respondents took the time to write lengthy, thoughtful responses. others kept their comments brief and to the point: “honour stories. respect survivors.” a few detractors expressed feeling overwhelmed: “but too much in 1 session. overwhelmed, where to go next.” anonymous respondent “2 workshops in terms of content. break needed. realize that folks are on board, no need to push.” anonymous respondent the other comments section that we included at the end was generally left untouched, apart from a few general responses about the length of time: “a very good integration of issues for many communities. excellent use of limited time frame for presentations.” anonymous respondent “i would have liked more time.” anonymous respondent responses to the open-ended questions ranged from recapping to simply echoing lines from eli clare’s talk and those of the other presenters and panelists. however, some respondents reflected on their own use of storytelling practices: “as a journalist, it really made me think about how i navigate my craft and how my colleagues navigate their storytelling and how i need to reflect on how i will take that into my future endeavours.” anonymous respondent “as a researcher, i need to further problematize my relationship with those who are researched and how our research gets framed (i.e. recovery and not resistance).” anonymous respondent the responses confirmed that the audience was receptive to and engaged with the speakers’ messages. however, the evaluation does not tell us whether attendees who are implicated in the institutional practice of appropriating stories will be compelled to act to change those practices. indeed, a follow up column by joe fiorito from the toronto star on the event offered a bizarre and confusing analysis. in his column, “telling stories is part of being human,” fiorito (2011) wrote about being distracted at the event by the workmen studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 98 kathryn church, lucy costa, danielle landry, becky mcfarlane, jenna reid, david reville, jijian voronka outside while listening to the talk, from which experience he concluded that the only story was the “human story.” as a journalist, fiorito is in the business of writing the human story of the tragic and unfortunate, and this “working class” news often includes stories about psychiatric survivors/consumers, living in poverty or dying as a consequence of horrendous living conditions and systemic discriminations. these stories are often told within a “last stop” or “end stop” narrative— when things have gotten dangerously bad or, even better for a salacious story, have resulted in death. however this “end story” too is a narrative form, one that is valuable within journalistic circles often competing for coverage not only with other journalists but with the barrage of stories and testimony that fill our newspapers, books, journal articles, government reports and legal proceedings. and these stories are governed by parameters that fit the page and are accessible to the “average reader.” the fact that these stories are often left unwritten until an end, and that it is difficult or uninteresting to shed light on the history or moments when individuals were treated as objects, as less than human, appear to have been lost on fiorito. butler (2004) poignantly has queried, “who counts as human? whose lives count as lives? and finally, what makes for a grievable life?” (p. 20). popular media coverage that waits until an ultimate end story is easy, lewd and indecent media. is this coverage meant to redress, or rather is it caught up in similar processes that the collective wishes to expose—stories used as a way to sustain journalistic stakeholder gain on front-page headlines? the collective hoped for something more, something beyond the regulation of stories that re-create a dualistic tragedy/heroic disability chronology. conclusion the recovering our stories collective formed as a purposeful group organized with the intent to agitate and unsettle leading assumptions that individual stories can single-handedly change deeply embedded, oppressive and interconnected powerful social structures. we seek to question the use and propagation of personal narratives, and elucidate how our stories are increasingly being used as a way to harness support, funding, or press coverage for the systems that we recognize as being part of the problem. our discussion is meant to add to the ongoing work that is beginning to call these practices out as suspect and damaging. we hope to further explore a theory of storytelling and practices of storytelling (we have in fact, told a complicated story here) that allows and mobilizes psychiatric service users to have the freedom to create, build and be innovative their own identities and histories, which would simultaneously enable and allow a basis through which psychiatric survivor/consumers can resist unethical exploitation. finally, survivor/consumer storytelling is intricately connected to narrative control and history-building. in the past, voices and stories were relegated to case histories and most often been used as evidence to incriminate and abuse. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 recovering our stories 99 reclaiming our stories as political knowledge that elucidates social injustices has, over the last half-century, been a founding movement strategy to connect and collaborate with others. this paper traces how our stories have suddenly been understood as useful by dominant hegemonic orders and incorporated into neoliberalist mental health agendas in order to support and sustain the validity of health service systems. we seek to mark and disrupt this trajectory, asking those who reveal their stories to consider doing so in a way that is politically accountable and focused on social justice change. and through this small act of organizing resistance, we inform those that solicit stories that we are now asking, in whose interest? notes 1 attempts to be inclusive and engaged in participatory initiatives or research bolster the optics for large organizations. there is increasingly more grant funding available for those with the resources to apply for them. however, most committees, advisories, etc. with clients/patients are extremely vague on how they reach their decisions (e.g. consensus, vote) and rarely measure the inclusion of patient voice. 2 the organization for economic co-operation and development found people with mental illness are often off sick from work, and between 30 and 50 per cent of all new disability benefit claims in oecd nations are now due to poor mental health (oecd, 2011). 3 for example, mental health affects us all was the title of a human rights seminar presented by the public service alliance of canada in dec. 2010. 4 for example, in toronto the centre for addiction and mental health received a $30 million donation from the daughters of the late audrey campbell and their families. it is the largest private donation ever made to a mental health centre in canada. it will fund a research institute focused on brain science (camh connexions, 2012). 5 in 2010 and 2011 there have been a number of reported shootings by police on individuals identified as having a mental health issue. the toronto star commented that police training was inadequate (tapper, 2011). 6 lucy costa recalls hearing the phrase patient porn in approximately 2005 from fellow activist lana frado. lana in turn, references heather mckee as coining the provocative term. 7 the “back off, get your own sandwich” commercial produced by maple leaf meats for their product, lean ‘n’ lite sandwich meat held a tv spot entitled: “sandwich defense” (circa 2000). 8 names and email addresses were collected upon arrival for possible use in future organizing. references basok, t. (2010). introduction: opening a dialogue on migrant (rights) activism. studies in social justice, 4(2), 97-100. berkenkotter, c. (2008). patient tales: case histories and the uses of narrative in psychiatry. columbia, sc: university of south carolina press. bhui, k., aubin, a., & strathdee, g. (1998). making a reality of user involvement in community mental health services. the psychiatrist, 22, 8-11. butler, j. (2004). precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. new york: verso. campbell, s. (2011). unsettled: discourse, practice, context and collective identity among mad people in the united states 1970-1999. doctoral dissertation. york university. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 100 kathryn church, lucy costa, danielle landry, becky mcfarlane, jenna reid, david reville, jijian voronka centre for addiction and mental health. (2012). camh connexions: a publication of the centre for addiction and mental health,12(1). church, k. (1995). forbidden narratives: critical autobiography as social science. amsterdam: international publishers distributors, & routledge (reprinted by routledge, london, no date) and transferred to digital printing 2003). church, k., & reville, d. (1989). user involvement in the mental health services in canada. canada’s mental health, 37(2), 22-25. chamberlin, j. (1978). on our own: patient controlled alternatives to the mental health system. new york: mcgraw-hill book company. clare, e. (1999). exile and pride: disability, queerness, and liberation (reprinted in 2009). cambridge ma: south end press clare, e. (2007). the marrow’s telling: words in motion. ypsilanti, mich: homofactus press. cooke, b., & kothari, u. (eds.) (2011). participation: the new tyranny? london: zed books. crawford, m. (2001). involving users in the development of psychiatric services—no longer an option. the psychiatrist, 25, 84-86. cresswell, m. (2005). psychiatric “survivors” and testimonies of self-harm. social science & medicine, 61(8), 1668-1677. crossley, n. (2006). contesting psychiatry: social movements in mental health. new york: routledge. curtis, t. dellar, r. leslie, e., & watson, b. (eds.) (2000). mad pride: a celebration of mad culture. london: spare change books. department of health. (1989). working for patients. london: hmso. fausto-sterling, a. (1995). gender, race, and nation: the comparative anatomy of “hottentot” women in europe, 18151817. in j. terry & j. urla (eds.), deviant bodies, (pp. 19-47).bloomington, in: indiana university press. fiorito, j. (2011, july 6). telling stories is part of being human. the toronto star. retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/article/1020089--fiorito-telling-stories-is-part-of-being-human foucault, m. (2009). history of madness. (j. murphy & j. khalfa, trans.). new york: routledge taylor and francis group. (original work published 1961). fraser, n. (1987). social movements versus disciplinary bureaucracies: the discourses of social needs. chs papers, 8, (1-37). center for humanistic studies, university of minnesota. garland-thomson, r. (1996). freakery: cultural spectacles of the extraordinary body. new york: nyu press. garland-thomson, r. (2009). staring: how we look. oxford: oxford university press. gorman, r. (forthcoming 2013). mad nation? thinking through race, class, and mad identity politics. in r. menzies, g. reaume, & b. lefrancois (eds.), mad matters: a critical reader in mad studies. toronto: canadian scholars press, inc. henderson, h. (2011, june 25). grassroots group takes back patients’ stories. the toronto star. retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/printarticle/1013300. hook, d. (2007). foucault, psychology, and the analytics of power. new york: palgrave macmillan. jamison, k. r. (1997). an unquiet mind: a memoir of moods and madness. new york: vintage books. longmore, p. (2005). the cultural framing of disability: telethons as a case study. pmla, 120(2), 502-508. mcruer, r. (2006). crip theory cultural signs of queerness and disability. new york: new york university press. morrison, l. j. (2005). talking back to psychiatry: the psychiatric consumer/survivor/ex-patient movement. new york: routledge. nelson, g., ochocka, j., janzen, r., & trainor, j. (2006). a longitudinal study of mental health consumer/survivor initiatives: part 1—literature review and overview of the study, journal of community psychology, 34(3), 247–260. o’shaughnessy, s., & krogman, n.t. (2012). a revolution reconsidered? examining the practice of qualitative research in feminist scholarship. signs, 37(2), 493-520. on our own. (1980-1990). phoenix rising: the voice of the psychiatrized. toronto. retreived from: http://www.psychiatricsurvivorarchives.com/phoenix.html organisation for economic co-operation and development. (2011). sick on the job? myths and realities about mental health at work. retrieved from: http://www.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/ studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 recovering our stories 101 display.asp?k=5kg6tl4jzcs4&lang=en&sort=sort_date%2fd&stem=true&sf1=title&st 1=mental+health&sf3=subjectcode&st4=not+e4+or+e5+or+p5&sf4=subversioncode&ds =mental+health%3b+all+subjects%3b+&m=1&dc=4&plang=en razack, s. (2004). dark threats and white knights: the somalia affair, peacekeeping, and the new imperialism. toronto: university of toronto press. razack, s. (2007). stealing the pain of others: reflections on canadian humanitarian responses. review of education, pedagogy, and cultural studies, 29(4), 375-394. reaume, g. (2002). lunatic to patient to person: nomenclature in psychiatric history and the influence of patients’activism in north america. international journal of law and psychiatry, 25(4), 405-426. reville, d., & church, k. (2012). mad activism enters its fifth decade: a snapshot of psychiatric survivor organizing in toronto. in a. choudry, j. hanley, & e. shragge (eds.), organize! building from the local for global justice. oakland ca: pm press/between the lines. reville, d. (1988). don’t spyhole me. in b. burstow & d. weitz (eds.), shrink resistant: the struggle against psychiatry in canada (pp. 157-197). vancouver: new star books. rose, n. (1990). governing the soul: the shaping of the private self. florence, ky: taylor & francis/routledge. shimrat, i. (1997) call me crazy: stories from the mad movement. vancouver: press gang publishers steele, k., & berman, c. (2001). the day the voices stopped: a memoir of madness and hope. new york: basic books. tapper, j. (2011, november 23). mental health advocates find police training inadequate. toronto star. retrieved from http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/1068090--mentalhealth-advocates-find-police-training-inadequate whitaker, r. (2010). anatomy of an epidemic: magic bullets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental illness in america. new york: broadway paperbacks. correspondence address: isolde daiski, school of nursing, faculty of health, york university, toronto, 344, health, nursing & environmental studies building, 4700 keele street, toronto, ontario m3j 1p3, canada, tel.: (+1) 416 736 2100 ext. 66616 , email: idaiski@yorku.ca issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 6, issue 1, 103-123, 2012 homelessness in the suburbs: engulfment in the grotto of poverty isolde daiski school of nursing, faculty of health, york university, toronto, on, canada nancy viva davis halifax critical disabilities studies, faculty of health, york university, toronto, on, canada gail j. mitchell school of nursing, faculty of health, york university, toronto, on, canada andre lyn united way of peel region, (formerly social planning council of peel) peel, on, canada abstract this paper describes findings of a research inquiry into the lived experience of homelessness in peel, a suburban region located in the greater toronto area in ontario, canada. it is based on the data from a collaborative project undertaken by members of the faculties of health and education of york university with two local community organizations. the dominant theme of the narratives was that suburban homelessness is similar to being engulfed in a grotto of poverty, isolated from the rest of the community and invisible to it. once entrapped in the grotto, it is almost impossible to escape from it. there were four sub-themes: (a) falling into the grotto, (b) living/struggling in the grotto, (c) envisioning escape routes from the grotto, and (d) beauty, community and hope in the grotto. following a discussion of the findings, researchers describe strategies to address homelessness through promotion of social justice for all. this paper describes findings from a research inquiry into the lived experience of homelessness in peel, a suburban region located in the greater toronto area in ontario, canada. it is informed by a collaborative project undertaken by members of the faculties of health and education at york university, one studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 104 isolde daiski, nancy viva davis halifax, gail j. mitchell, andre lyn member of the social planning council of peel (spc peel) and in consultation with the peel poverty action group (ppag). the spc peel had requested the research collaboration. their goal was to study homelessness in their region and to prepare a video for use by ppag to inform and educate policy leaders, politicians, social and public service workers, healthcare workers, and educators, and to draw attention to suburban homelessness. we approached the project as a research inquiry focused on the participants’ perspectives of living in extreme poverty. in addition to the creation of a video, the findings which emerged from the narratives of participants are described in this paper. readers can view the video at: http://ppag.wordpress. com/spaces-and-places-video/ background historically, homelessness has been considered a problematic phenomenon of large urban centres, places that attract diverse groups of people searching for employment, housing, or other resources for life and survival. in contrast, the suburban areas of cities have been regarded as more stable communities of families with a large concentration of middle-income earners. massey’s (1996) prediction of increasing class segregation alongside growing densities of urban poor communities and intense unrest between those who have and those who have not has not unfolded as anticipated. rather, the years from 2000 to 2010 have been marked by growth of global poverty in both suburban and urban areas (berube & kneebone, 2006). “poverty is becoming ever more widespread, and persons without sufficient resources are surfacing in suburban and rural communities where issues of homelessness mostly remain hidden and unaddressed” (hulchanski, 2007, p.20). preston, murdie, d’ addario, sibanda, et al. (2012) found that recent immigrants to toronto increasingly settle in suburban areas, due to lack of affordable rental housing in the city core with its upscale condominium developments. these newcomers constitute the new hidden homeless living in overcrowded conditions in the suburbs. homelessness in this project was broadly defined as: an extreme form of poverty characterized by inadequate housing, income and social supports. people defined as homeless include those who are absolutely homeless (i.e. temporary, intermittent or ongoing), as well as those who are at risk of homelessness (underhoused). the absolutely homeless may be living in shelters, outdoors in public or semi-public spaces, with friends or relatives (couch surfing). those who are “at risk” of homelessness may be precariously housed, living in hotels, rooming houses or apartments, and transitional housing, but who may potentially lose their housing due to eviction, inadequate income or because they are fleeing violence. (gaetz, 2008) homelessness and poverty in urban areas are well researched, particularly their impacts on health, (bryant, 2004; cheung & hwang, 2004; frankish, hwang, & quantz, 2005; hwang, 2001; layton, 2000; levy & o’connell, studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 homelessness in the suburbs 105 2004; o’connell, 2004; the street health report, 2007; woolf, 2007). we know that morbidity and mortality rates are significantly increased for those lacking stable housing and other associated social determinants of health, such as secure access to food and healthcare (hwang, 2001; hwang, martin, tolomiczenko, & hulchanski, 2003; mikkonen & raphael, 2010; o’connell, 2004; raphael, 2003). some literature also describes the lived experiences from the perspectives of those who are homeless (acosto & toro, 2000; daiski, 2008; 2007; lafuente, 2003; davis halifax, 2010, davis halifax, meeks, yurichuk, & khandor, 2008; davis halifax & yurichuk, 2007). and, further, we know that local and regional politics and race/gender issues impact how homelessness is experienced, emphasizing the need to bring multiple stories of homelessness and poverty to light (berube & kneebone, 2006). allard (2009) reported that social services in american cities are seldom located in the downtown areas, where the poorest citizens live, and therefore effectively out of their reach. he called for service agencies locating closer to those who use them. this contrasts with canadian cities where major charitable, social, and healthcare services are mostly located in densely populated downtown cores where upscale condos now prevail. both allard (2009) in the us, and hulchanski (2007) in canada also observed a recent shift of poverty and homelessness into the suburbs where social services are ill-equipped to keep up with the increasing demands. for the suburban area of peel region with a current population of 1,159,400 the last available statistical data clearly show a disturbing trend of growing poverty and homelessness: in 2010 shelters in peel served 11,920 individuals, including 1,974 families, 696 youth and 3,134 dependents (region of peel, 2011). between 2001 and 2006, the rate of low income families with children under 17 years of age grew by 4.7 percentage points, almost 5 times that of the rest of ontario combined. in 2006, 20% of children under 6 years of age were living in low income families, up from 14 per cent in 2001 (region of peel, 2011). between 2005 and 2006 the use of services to prevent evictions rose by 14%. finally, in 2007 over 14,000 families were on the waiting list for affordable public housing, for which the average waiting period for an individual or family was more than 17 years (spc peel, 2009). with the recent recession it can be assumed that the needs would have increased further. in march 2010 alone more than 14,500 separate individuals used local food banks (region of peel, 2011). in spite of the above statistics, the growing numbers of homeless persons in peel remain largely unnoticed. not surprisingly, anecdotal reports from ppag members suggested that because the general public is not aware of or prefers to ignore homelessness in their suburban community, politicians who tend to respond to the public’s interests and visible problems also pay little attention. as the invisibility itself seems to be a major contributor to the hardships of suburban homelessness, we believe that exposure and public education are required urgently. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 106 isolde daiski, nancy viva davis halifax, gail j. mitchell, andre lyn method before starting, the ethics review of the larger project had been carried out by the university’s office of research administration. the data for this paper were taken from the transcripts of the audio and video recordings interviews of the larger project. this paper is focused on the lived experiences of persons who were previously or who currently are homeless in peel region and who are considered experts of their own lives. our goal was to obtain an in depth record of the experiences of homelessness in this community. a gadamerian hermeneutic approach best fit our collective intentions and research purposes; specifically, this means that understanding emerges out of a circular relationship of the engagement between what is known and unknown while always influenced by context, history, values and meanings (gadamer, 1990). this approach focuses on the wholeness of lived experience and the co-constituted nature of knowledge and understanding, the in-between of familiarity and unfamiliarity. emergent understanding thus involves a movement to new meaning. since all four researchers had previously conducted research with homeless people in urban areas, we were able to draw on the familiar by connecting to the unfamiliar of homelessness in a suburban context to discern the uniquenesses of these latter experiences. recruitment and interviews in community-based research, collaboration with community members and groups is essential (minkler & wallerstein, 2008). with the mediation of local charitable agencies we spent the early months of this project walking the streets, ravines, and wooded areas with men and women who knew homelessness from first-hand experience. we discovered a community that lives in the margins of the larger community: in alleys, doorways, staircases, abandoned vehicles, and clothing boxes, mostly hidden from public view. we posted flyers with an invitation to participate in the project in local soup kitchens and shelters. fifteen participants were eventually recruited for this study, which we designed purposively to include as many diverse individuals as possible. as in-depth interviews generate large amounts of data, the intent was to focus on depth and quality rather than breadth, with the aim to increase understanding rather than providing facts (munhall, 2012). the primary research question was: what is the lived experience of homelessness in suburbia? to better understand homelessness in this context and in keeping with research guided by hermeneutic phenomenology, our role was to listen, discern, and illuminate the meanings persons gave to their experiences of homelessness. at the end of the interviews, which were either recorded on video or audio-taped and lasted between 40 and 90 minutes, each participant received an honorarium of $15 canadian. the members of the research team created the interview guide and conducted the interviews with the participants. questions began with an studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 homelessness in the suburbs 107 open-ended invitation to speak about the experience of being homeless. further questions were: from the participants’ perspectives, what led them to becoming homeless? what are their day-to-day lives like? what strategies are required in order to prevent homelessness or, once homeless, to get out of it? what is helpful, what hinders? prompts, such as tell me more about this or please go on, were used whenever we felt they were necessary to obtain as much depth as possible in participant description. data analysis the interviews were transcribed verbatim, and we employed diekelmann, allen and tanner’s (1989) seven-stage collaborative process of analysis. we, the researchers met regularly to review transcripts and discuss the meanings embedded in the individual texts. each of us created stories from several transcripts depicting the experience of homelessness from each person’s perspective. we then shared and explored identified meanings and repeating ideas emerging from the analysis. once we agreed on the core ideas, we discussed and refined their meanings within the context of the emerging overarching theme called a constitutive pattern (diekelmann et al., 1989). as homelessness in the suburban context is mostly invisible and unacknowledged, it seemed to entrap the persons who fell into it and, once there, it seemed nearly impossible to escape from it. the over-arching experience of homelessness emerging from our research was that it was like being engulfed in a grotto. we then finalized the sub-themes and their emergent relationships with the over-arching constitutive pattern. the four related sub-themes found in the narratives were: 1) falling into the grotto; 2) living struggling in the grotto; 3) envisioning escape routes from the grotto; 4) beauty, community and hope in the grotto. historically and structurally grottoes have been associated with underground locations. the many connotations of grotto include: earthiness, fertility, darkness, and death (connelly, 2003). therefore, the idea of the grotto inspires scary imagery of dangerous underground chambers. the nuances of engulfment connoted by the grotto include being swallowed, lost, “to disappear underground” or “to plunge deeply and inextricably into a surrounding medium” (oxford english dictionary, on-line version). this sense of being “disappeared underground,” relates to the effects of poverty and homelessness; of feeling invisible and unable to escape. it refers to the lack of a presence on the landscape, in contrast to downtown areas where people sitting and sleeping on the street visible to all are a common sight. however, it needs to be mentioned that, even in cities, those who are visibly homeless are only a small percentage of the overall numbers. in 2009, for example, the city of toronto reported the number of those visibly homeless in the downtown area only, those easily counted in the shelter systems and by street outreach, as 4,390 (the wellesley institute, 2009, p. 4). this number represented a snapshot as the hidden homeless, estimated at up to 69 % of studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 108 isolde daiski, nancy viva davis halifax, gail j. mitchell, andre lyn total numbers, are staying out of sight for various reasons, including survival strategies. thereby they are left out of the count, under-representing the phenomenon. finally, there is also another side to grottoes: they can be located amidst beautiful gardens and landscapes (miller, 1982). as engulfment depends on the media in which one is engrossed it also can mean being immersed in friendship and love or communities, therefore offering hope and possibilities, which is reflected in the last sub-theme. the various meanings were present within the data collected. findings we begin by reporting on the participants and their perspectives on suburban homelessness. pathways into poverty are then discussed. daily life and institutional barriers to escaping poverty are described. finally, what participants believe would help them effectively and permanently leave homelessness is presented. emerging patterns of community and cohesion are then identified, followed by discussion, our conclusion, and our recommendations. demographics the participants represented a diverse group of people living in the alleys, door ways, staircases, abandoned vehicles, clothing boxes, shelters, and substandard rooming houses of the suburban terrain. there were seven women and eight men. ages ranged from early 20s to 70s and included ethnic groups of caucasians, african canadians, first nations peoples, persons of south asian origins and some of mixed heritage. most were canadian born, with about one third having immigrated. some were former professionals, others former trades persons, while others had little work experience. several persons were employed in casual labour as well as social services. almost all volunteered currently or previously in the local drop-in centres or food bank. one participant ran for local councillor at the time. three pensioners were included. some participants were single, some had children, and most were divorced or widowed. few had any family support. they identified as heterosexual or queer. almost all were in poor health and suffered from a variety of acute and chronic health conditions. two engaged with the arts, one a visual artist and another was writing poetry. the common bond they all shared was extreme and lasting poverty. in order to protect the participants’ identities pseudonyms, not real names, will be used with the quotations below to illustrate the themes. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 homelessness in the suburbs 109 engulfed in the grotto the concept of engulfment in the grotto emerged as the central metaphor representing what it is like to live in poverty without sufficient housing or resources and became the overarching, constitutive theme of the stories we heard and recorded. all participants described an overwhelming sense of being swallowed, trapped and invisible as in the following quote: we’re going round and round and round . . . so, we don’t pull out of the situation we’re in. we stay in that same hole. we can’t crawl out of it because...we can’t get the help. somebody to pull us out of that hole . . . (art, living in a rooming house, formerly on the street for many years) further we learned how life in a grotto is physically hidden from most eyes, pinpointed by the following quote: people say there is no homeless in peel. when you walk down the street here you don’t see people sleeping on a bench in the daytime or sitting on the streets [like] you do if you were in toronto. [here homelessness] is tucked away. (beth, an older woman previously couch-surfing with friends when on widower’s pension alone; now receiving old age security she affords a room in a rooming house) in time one’s sense of dignity gets eroded and what can become a homeless identity is shaped and further contributes to the sense of entrapment with no possibility for escape. one participant shared this sentiment with us: when you are chronically homeless there is a certain sense of resignation and accepting this as your lot in life . . . . it means . . . existing in terms of where is my next meal? where is my next bed? this is who i am . . . (long silence). so, when you resign yourself to that, you give up and you exist . . . 25 years in the capacity of a homeless man full time, chronic health issues . . . . (norm, a middle aged man, previously homeless in many different places after being sexually abused as teenager; now lives in a rooming house; volunteers for community outreach and receives welfare) life in the grotto with its sense of desperation seems to change the self perceptions of those who are homeless as being/becoming the “other.” they also described diverse ways of falling into the grotto—the first sub-theme. falling into the grotto like, you don’t plan to be homeless . . . you’ll be paying your mortgage and things collapse. you come home from work one evening; your door is locked with the sheriff there, you wonder, what happened? (diane, mother of five, unemployed, living with her children in her mother’s apartment) and, i am not homeless but one of my greatest fears is becoming homeless. i live studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 110 isolde daiski, nancy viva davis halifax, gail j. mitchell, andre lyn on cpp (canada pension plan) and old age security, which equals about $720 a month. i don’t have any money for transportation and i do not get a bus pass. my rent is $600 a month. i have had my name in for subsidized housing for years but there is a long waiting list. i only have $120 for the month to cover food, medications, clothing, toiletries, etc. i use food banks once a week to get through each month. (ethel, a pensioner, lives in small apartment) the following story of sam, a man who immigrated to canada is also quite typical. after he arrived in canada, he started working in a small grocery store for minimum wage while supporting a wife and four children: i was never out on the street but i live in constant fear of homelessness, which means “sleeping under a tree or on an air duct.” when i first immigrated to canada 20 years ago, we bought a beautiful, big house we could not pay for on my modest salary. after we exhausted all savings we had to declare bankruptcy. you buy a home out of emotions rather than practicality . . . immigrants fall into this trap. the family was evicted, and they continued to experience inadequate and insecure housing. for five years they lived without gas heating and hot water; as they were unable to pay for both, they chose to pay the electricity only, which meant they had to use the oven for heat in the winter. “to take a bath we had to heat the water and carry it upstairs or bathe in icy cold water . . . my wife eventually left me and the children. poverty put a strain on our family” (sam). betrayal and theft can also lead to homelessness. william, a former professional now a pensioner, was defrauded by a “friend” he trusted. he now lives in a shelter and currently uses a wheelchair: i have become homeless since retiring. i met someone that needed some help so i helped them out, lent them some money and somewhere along the line they got hold of my interac (bank account access) card and cleaned out my bank account so that i was completely broke. i . . . didn’t have any money to go anywhere . . . . i’ve slept in tents. i’ve slept up in trees. i spent a couple of nights under the bushes over at the church. the overhang there was dry and you didn’t get wet. i put my knapsack down, i put my head on it and went to sleep. (william) fleeing domestic violence is another door-way into the grotto of homelessness and poverty. beth, cited above, described her experience of isolation and entrapment in poverty while in her abusive marriage, which also affected her children: i lived in an abusive relationship for 28 years. i had four children and we were very poor . . . never had enough money for food. my husband would never give me any money and he took the child benefit cheques from me as well. i lost two children while pregnant probably because i was starving. i lived in fear and so did my children and i have a lot of guilt about that. i felt very alone and i felt like there was no one i could trust. we all have scars from that experience. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 homelessness in the suburbs 111 besides spousal abuse, child abuse is also a frequent pathway to homelessness. several participants reported physical or sexual abuse in their own families, while others described unhappy experiences in a string of foster homes. most of the time, these events led them to run away as soon as they could, only to encounter more abuse and violence on the streets. several participants related losing their jobs and then their homes. even though some participants were casually employed and worked for minimum wage, they noted how hard it was to save for the required first and last months’ rent and to keep up the payments; this economic precariousness entraps them in poverty. people in extreme poverty therefore live at the brink, at best, in constant fear of losing their housing, or at worst, they actually lose their housing and cycle in and out of living with relatives/friends, in rooming houses, on the streets and in shelters. the grotto might have different recesses in which one may live and often move about, but no exit. living in the grotto means struggling in the grotto—the second sub-theme of the engulfment pattern. living struggling in the grotto the following quotes typify the subtheme of living/struggling in the grotto: i was sleeping in the bus terminal, and the alleyway . . . in a van seat, but it blocks the wind so it’s just like, dark and dingy...just scary. i had garbage thrown at me. i had beer bottles thrown at me, well...this is my home so please don’t disturb me . . . it’s dark and lonely and it’s full of bugs (karen, 21 years old, lives with addiction and frequent abuse on the street; she had just found a room in a rooming house). and, “to be homeless means to be unnumbered and unidentified. it also means an unaccounted citizen living outside your constitutional rights; a nobody” (alex, middle-aged, living with bi-polar disorder, cycling between street and shelters). entrapped in poverty, there are ever-present dangers when struggling in the grotto. like the woman above almost every person talked about experiencing violence on the street or in shelters, ranging from having belongings stolen to being assaulted, physically and/or sexually. one man related his experiences of sexual exploitation as a homeless youth, which was similarly represented in the narratives of several other participants, both women and men: here i was, 16 years old and naïve . . . there was this guy who told me how much god loved me and how god had brought me to him so he could teach me what love was all about. having won my confidence and my trust, he went on to sexually abuse me over a three month period. i spent the next 25 years running away from that shame and guilt. i became dysfunctional . . . huge amounts of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidal ideation. (jean, describes himself as chronically homeless and drifting for many years, now has small apartment) studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 112 isolde daiski, nancy viva davis halifax, gail j. mitchell, andre lyn karen, cited above, described how she once was violently attacked: the knife went in and then through and then out. and he stabbed me . . . and i had both my arms pinned together . . . for 24 hours i couldn’t literally move my arm because the knife was right through it. despite these dangers, some participants who were absolutely homeless preferred to stay on the street rather than in shelters. “shelters here are packed. a couple of years ago a lot of people lost their jobs, they lost their houses. a lot of houses went under. and where do they [people] have to end up? in shelters” (diane, previously cited). shelters are avoided due to overcrowding, insect infestations, and perils associated with sleeping in close quarters, including health and safety concerns: “so, you’ve got a dorm full of 20 guys, you don’t know who is doing crack, who is doing speed, who is doing heroin, you don’t know who is an alcoholic” (art, previously cited). violence, however, is often also perpetrated by those who are supposed “to serve and protect.” norm, cited previously, who lived on the street for years, described his experience with law and order agents: “can’t sit too long or they [police] chase you off. better to keep walking. also, if they see you hanging around the park or sleeping on a bench and if there has been a break and enter in the area they assume it was you.” the following is a vivid portrayal of encounters with police similar to several others’ experiences: i avoid the police like a plague. well, my experiences with the police have been pretty rough, pretty bad. i’ve been on the underside of society since i was a teenager . . . police when they deal with stuff on a regular basis they become very cold. there are good police officers but there are ones that just.., i’ve been handcuffed for sleeping on [someone’s] property so hard that my wrists swelled up . . . they bend the wrists and put you to the ground and say all sorts of nasty stuff in your ear, (graham who was episodically on the street, now lives in rooming house, works casually and receives welfare) finally, more subtle forms of violence, such as lack of respect, dehumanize as this woman explains: most people think you are just a bum, you are a street person. they [we] are actually “real people.” maybe [our] money is not enough. people should know i am “me,” i have certain morals i’d like to live by and to keep. (diane, cited previously). the ultimate existential violence is denial of personhood, being called a nobody. art, cited earlier, related that when a young child looking at him asked his mother, “‘who is that man?’ the mother answered: ‘nobody dear, he’s homeless.’” (art). when people with low incomes can afford housing on the private market, the only available option is substandard houses in the suburbs. some of the rooming houses were described as “crack houses.” all were overcrowded, with small rooms, frequently without windows and lacking proper cooking studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 homelessness in the suburbs 113 and food storage facilities. the shortage of affordable housing, and a lack of oversight, means landlords can exploit the situation with impunity, as norm, who was previously cited, explained: i call these guys scumlords, not slumlords, scumlords because they take advantage of the poor and use it to their advantage to get monetarily ahead, which is all right but when you do it to the detriment of somebody else’s wellbeing it’s wrong. alex, cited previously, spoke of “mice all over the kitchen” in his rooming house. graham, also previously cited, described his housing and living conditions in a typical fashion: i live in a rooming house. i pay $400 per month for a room and shared kitchen with 11 other adults. two out of the four burners work on the stove. the fridge door falls off. some people do not have windows in their rooms. after my rent i have $120 to live on for the month. i go to the soup kitchens and the food bank every week. beth, previously cited, talked about how living in her apartment is extremely difficult due to her poor health: i live in a very small, very crowded apartment. there is no bathtub. the laundry is downstairs and i can’t always get there. i find it too difficult physically to get back up to my apartment. i have a bad back: herniated disc and scoliosis as well as a small hip fracture. i also need medication for my kidneys. my knees are bad and i have a bad infection in one of my toes. there are days i just can’t get out of bed because i am not feeling well enough. day to day challenges were often met with ingenuity and defiance, allen, has a physical disability due to work related injury he previously lived on the street. he now receives a “small pension,” works casually, and lives in rooming house. he discussed some innovative strategies: staying clean is the hardest thing! even though i have a bus pass nobody wants you in the washrooms at the bus station. i sometimes see people putting paper towels on the floor and giving themselves a sponge bath. to keep clean i use baby wipes. i can clean my whole body with one wipe. he went on to describe his strategy for sleeping on the bus during the long suburban routes: when i was on the street, welfare cut me off. i had nothing. on the buses during the day i would sleep all the way out on a route, get off and then walk around for an hour and get on another bus and sleep all the way back. i can get a good hour of sleep on a bus. the bus shuts down around one or two in the morning. from then until five or six i walk to keep warm. it is pretty hard to stay warm at nights until march, april. i carry newspapers to keep me warm when sitting on a park bench. (allen) studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 114 isolde daiski, nancy viva davis halifax, gail j. mitchell, andre lyn karen, cited earlier, talked about the recent closing of the only women’s shelter in the area, forcing her and other women who cannot afford the fare to the closest women’s shelter, a long bus ride away, to sleep on the street. she also related that the food bank/soup kitchen was recently moved to the outskirts of the city, which she believes to be a deliberate strategy to make life difficult, inciting defiance: trying to get us, all bums and alcoholics and crack-heads, they’re just trying to get rid of us so we can move to different places. but, as we all said, we’re not leaving. you can’t make us leave. this is where we were born and raised. this is where we were growing up, we’re not leaving. i’ll put up a fight to stay in my area. (karen) coexisting with this persistent sense of space and right to stay were imaginings of escape routes from the grotto. envisioned escape routes from the grotto participants made several recommendations that they thought would be helpful to escape the grotto. consider the following quotation by jean, a long-time street survivor cited previously, referring to social agency workers. “[workers need] to have the capacity to build empathy. not sympathy, empathy. you have to create an alliance with the people that you’re dealing with...” (jean). the social support agencies such as ontario works were frequently described as insufficient, while the workers’ large workloads and job stress were acknowledged. the following statement captures this sentiment: most of the ontario works [employees] . . . they should be...a little bit more compassionate . . . and then you wonder why their turnover of staff is . . . constant . . . because . . . each worker, roughly, has 160 to 300 people per month . . . some of these workers cannot take the stress and leave the job. and they transfer you almost every 3 to 6 months to a new worker. so, you get used to that worker . . . they want to help you and you’re getting ahead and what happens? they introduce you to somebody else that has no compassion at all. and then you start from scratch. (graham) alex, who lives with bipolar disorder, also shed light on how hard it is to negotiate social support. he is currently on welfare, trying to get disability pension: i put in over 40 years of work, off and on. i have a good trade but i’m getting to a point . . . the doctor says my working days are over. nobody is listening . . . i’ve been actually declared . . . unfit to work, mentally-wise . . . all these problems are starting to build up...i have to let it out, i have to speak to somebody who is going to listen . . . (alex). studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 homelessness in the suburbs 115 a lack of addiction treatment centres represents a barrier for those wanting to quit their addictions. treatments provided often are thought to be too short in duration and therefore ineffective. they are usually not available at the time the person is ready: putting somebody in a detox for a week and then kicking them out on the street does not work because two days later they’ll be back on booze and/or drugs or whatever the problem was. they’ll promise somebody when they think they’re ready, they’re going to go for treatment and you can’t get them in a treatment centre because there are not enough spaces available. (tina, a middle aged woman, now housed, volunteers for outreach work and receives welfare) jean, who is divorced, lives in small apartment where his young son visits on weekends. he explained: anything that will improve the environment . . . to [help with] addiction. like i said, you don’t become an addict for nothing, you don’t say one day, “you know what? i’m going to become an addict today” . . . there are reasons why and those reasons have to do with your early childhood, the way you’ve been treated...i’ve been an addict since i was 11 . . . you’re raped and you’re molested and you do fourteen foster homes between the age of three and 11. (jean) most participants stated they did not want to receive government handouts. finding stable employment was seen as most important and more job counselling and regulations to prevent exploitation through casual insecure employment were recommended: need to be in a stable job to provide for my family and a roof over my head. that’s help. because that’s the main thing of life right now. and...at the moment it seems like there is no door opening . . . i have the key but no door . . . (diane, cited previously, had taken courses for community work) oversight of “slum landlords” was a strong recommendation by participants to prevent the exploitation in rooming houses. building affordable public housing was named a priority with several participants making recommendations to convert vacant buildings into housing. the fourth subtheme is a reminder that human beings have ways of seeing and believing in beauty, community and hope, despite struggle and despair. beauty, community and hope in the grotto there were many tales of friends helping friends--providing a place to sleep till they get back on their feet, or lending money, and of dedicated workers that make a difference. several participants looked for ways to create a community as this person explains: “my biggest fear [is] loneliness. you know what i mean...not being accepted...so i’m trying to get involved in the community itself” (alex, cited earlier). “helping others helps, that is why many of us volunteer to ‘give back’,” diane, cited earlier, explained. she studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 116 isolde daiski, nancy viva davis halifax, gail j. mitchell, andre lyn continued, “i now volunteer at [a drop-in centre]. i want to work, not stay on social service . . . helping other people straightening out their lives, it helps me to cope with mine, deal with my own stress.” several participants talked about ingenuous strategies to be and share with family and friends. graham saved every penny to be able to take his daughter to a movie every saturday. jean took his son to the airport to ride the escalators for fun and enjoyment together on his birthday, because that is all he could afford. many helped each other out, letting friends stay with them in their rooming houses. hope was described by many as what kept them going. william, who lives in a shelter, despite having been defrauded by those he helped stated: “i still have hope that, one day, i will get an apartment and a black cat – this hope is what keeps me going” (william). and lorna (who also volunteers in the community and lives in rooming house, expressed: “i’ve always had hope. i spend a lot of time hoping and praying that everything is going to work out” (lorna). hope is also expressed by karen who writes poetry in the evening and by alex in painting landscapes. lastly karen stated: “i am all by myself. since 13, living on the streets. i have been suicidal, i’ve been in mental wards; i have been raped five times, but i’m still here and i hope to become a nurse one day.” engulfed in the grotto of poverty was the overarching theme or pattern researchers identified in the descriptions from the participants. we now turn to the literature to discuss the theme and subthemes with some additional detail discussion comparing urban and suburban homelessness we found many commonalities with urban homelessness in our suburban project. people seem to become homeless following several pathways into poverty: loss of job, disabilities, addictions, loss of housing due to inability to afford the rent, divorce and domestic abuse of women and / or children are amongst the main reasons (clapham, 2003; daiski, 2008; 2005; klodawsky, 2010; wellesley institute, 2009). once they fell into poverty, our participants described the difficulties they experienced, such as when applying for social assistance. the canadian welfare system is inherently punitive through measures such as low welfare rates, which steadily declined over the past two decades, and which have restrictive eligibility criteria (national council of welfare, 2010, [recently axed by the federal government]; organisation for economic co-operation and development, 1999). moreover, in hard times social services are typically the first to be cut (craig, 2010), which forces people to choose between essentials, such as paying rent, having electricity, or buying food (allard, 2009; scanlon & adlam, 2008). when accessing social service agencies, like their urban counterparts, participants talked about how hard it is to qualify and how easily social benefits are lost altogether due to minor irregularities (daiski, 2007, 2008; street health, 2007). just like in studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 homelessness in the suburbs 117 urban areas (daiski, 2007) addiction treatment facilities, long underfunded, were reported not being available for people ready to quit. congruent with allard’s (2009) and hulchanski’s (2007) observations we discovered that as poverty moves progressively to the suburbs the already scarce resources there are increasingly unable to keep up, overburdening those who work there. social agencies in the suburbs are greater distances apart than downtown and hard to access without transportation. the few existing shelters were described as packed, unsafe and unable to meet the needs. that shelters are unsafe and have strict and oppressive rules, such as early curfews and lack of privacy, has been widely reported (acosta & toro, 2000; daiski, 2008; 2007; lee & schreck, 2005; miller & keyes, 2001). to make things worse, in the suburb of brampton discussed here, the nearest shelter for women is a long bus ride away in the mississauga area. as no drop-ins or soup kitchens exist at the shelter location, the women have to come back to brampton each day for food and social services. those unable to afford transportation are forced to sleep on the street, risking assault and rape, as described by karen in our project. while social housing is scarce in downtown toronto, in the suburbs it barely exists at all, as the long wait times for admittance to shelters proves, such as an average of 17 years in peel region (spc peel, 2009). when people finally found housing in the private sector, it was usually substandard and environmentally unsafe, as well as exploitative. while lack of safety in housing had been reported in downtown toronto too (daiski, 2007, 2008), in suburban areas due to the scarcity of social housing there, the problem seemed even worse. jacobs (2011) described how substandard housing conditions lead to social inequity and disproportionately ill health. we found this to be true with our participants who almost all reported major health problems. in peel region soup kitchens and drop-ins exist in but a few places. one of the soup kitchens combined with the only food bank, located at the outskirts of brampton is difficult to reach, as it is several kilometres from the city centre. we also heard about the adversities participants faced performing daily rituals of personal hygiene where apart from two faith-based drop-ins, no shower facilities exist. with fewer public places in the suburbs, where those who are homeless can gather, trespassing on private property leads to more violence by authorities. as lee and schreck (2005), gaetz, o’grady and buccieri (2010) and gaetz (2004) have described, behaviours which are necessary for survival, socalled nuisance behaviours are criminalized. laws against loitering in public places give the police the power to remove and arrest people, making them targets of institutional violence, as the participants described. as there is no alternative place for them to go they are forced to hide in unsafe locations to escape the authorities, putting them at increased risk for violence from criminals. valuable police time handing out tickets which can never be paid and incarcerations of the poor are other consequences of living on the street (gaetz, et al. 2010). overall, suburban and urban homelessness seem mostly alike, but the studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 118 isolde daiski, nancy viva davis halifax, gail j. mitchell, andre lyn degree of hardship appears even more intense outside of the city core, as suburbs lack resources and adequate, affordable public transportation; after all, suburban areas were never designed around the needs of the poor. the most important difference between the urban and suburban homelessness experiences is that the latter is much more effectively hidden. social stigma and safety concerns encourage the homeless to stay invisible by hiding in ravines and woods and blending in with their surroundings as much as possible. this makes it easy for passers-by to overlook whatever signs of homelessness are around them. the suburban homeless person effectively disappears underground in the grotto of poverty. homeless identity and social justice our participants, feeling excluded from the rest of the community, deplored the lack of respect they felt should be shown to them as humans “who live by their own values.” noddings (2002) writes about society viewing housing as an “extension of oneself” (p. 445). lacking housing therefore challenges a person’s identity. how interpersonal isolation and self-alienation of people who are homeless is fuelled by the stigma society attaches to homelessness was described by rokach (2005). her participants, like ours, felt shunned by society and they too considered themselves “unidentified and un-numbered.” lafuente (2003) discussed how these attitudes led to feelings of powerlessness amongst her participants who internalized the meanings of “bum” and “street person,” the same terms used by our participants to describe how they believe to be seen by others. referring to a homeless person as a “nobody,” as some of our participants had related, is an example of ultimate denial, as “nobody” then is homeless; it also represents an extreme form of dehumanization. if the existence of homeless persons by members of society is acknowledged at all they are, at best, becoming the “other” (boydell, goering, & morrell-bellai, 2000; johnson, bottorff & browne, 2004). kearney (1986) discusses “othering” as scape-goating of individuals thought undeserving and responsible for society’s ills. this moral component of othering acts as a strong barrier to the public’s will to prevent and abolish homelessness and is also present in the neo-liberal discourse of individuals’ responsibility for their own situations. accepting a common humanity in all and recognizing our individual situations as inherently unequal is an imperative of social justice. craig (2010) believes that looking beyond the neo-liberal discourse of “equal opportunities for free independent individuals” towards achieving outcomes of equity for all, a redistributive type of justice must be developed. klodawsky (2010) advocating for “rights to the city” for all, claims that cities (and other places) should be “inhabitated” by all citizens rather than becoming the “private properties” of a few. while the context might change, homelessness and poverty emerge from social inequities and are inherently unjust in any environment. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 homelessness in the suburbs 119 recommendations for change we believe that being homeless is a denial of social justice. padgett (2007) found that housing first approaches work even for those living with addictions and mental illness: those who were housed experienced themselves as ontologically secure; having a place of their own allowed for daily routines, privacy and provided a secure base. coldwell and bender (2007) too showed that, even for those who experience severe mental illness, proper support systems helped to reduce clients’ symptoms and kept them housed. feeling secure was deemed the determining factor. similarly, a new city-run program streets to homes is currently operating in toronto and preliminary evidence suggests it is effective (falvo, 2008). this program subsidizes private housing for people on the street and initially provides support and counselling to make the transition to a housed life easier. however, no such capacity for support exists in the suburbs so far. as this program targets the visibly homeless on the street, which neo-liberal governments might see as embarrassing and as interfering with business agendas, there is less money left for upgrading and maintaining existing public housing, which precipitates a trend towards privatization (klodawsky, 2010). the danger is that without oversight market based housing can lead to exploitation and neglect, as we have seen. in addition, as long as suburban homelessness remains invisible it will not be on the political agenda. therefore awareness-raising is the first important step. feeling excluded, many of our participants were trying to create ties in the community by volunteering their services to help others. hilfinger messias, dejong, & mcloughlin, (2005) reported that homeless women who volunteered were seeing themselves as empowered, possessed deeper insights and understanding and were better able to empathize and win the trust of those currently homeless. however, there is a caution attached to volunteering: work provided by people in extreme poverty for free, can easily lead to further exploitation. they should be reimbursed justly. to abolish homelessness in any environment, we agree with zlotnick, robertson and lahiff (1999) that a stable, adequate income is a prerequisite to stable housing and food security. it is also the most effective strategy to attain equity as individuals then can choose how to spend their money according to their needs (kirkpatrick & tarasuk, 2009; woolf, 2007). current social assistance programs, including pensions, as well as minimum wage, should be raised to a level where recipients can pay for basic necessities (daily bread foodbank, 2012). safe and secure housing, in turn, is a crucial prerequisite to health (krieger, 2007; raphael, 2007) and could go a long way in improving health and healthcare costs (frankish et al., 2005; padgett, 2007). it might decrease incarcerations (gaetz, 2004), reduce violence and assaults (gaetz, et al., 2010) and generally improve health and quality of life (orpana, lemyre & gravel, 2009). further prevention of homelessness through timely interventions such as counselling for family violence, job retraining and emergency funds should be priorities. as our participants suggested, more public housing and oversight of studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 120 isolde daiski, nancy viva davis halifax, gail j. mitchell, andre lyn private rooming houses are needed, and addiction treatment facilities should be readily available. police and security personnel need education about serving and protecting all citizens, including those who are homeless and efforts should be directed to create public spaces where people can stay safely without fear of being attacked and raped rather than criminalizing those who have no place to go. public washrooms and shower facilities would also make life easier, such as already exist in downtown toronto. it seems that societal attitudes and ignorance, silos of complicated bureaucracies and neo-liberal ideologies are barriers “to crawling out of the hole” and must be overcome. limitations of the study this study took place in the suburban region of peel of the greater toronto area and with a relatively small number of participants. it was not meant to be exhaustive but to begin to shed light on homelessness in the suburbs, which is mostly hidden. while the findings might be specific to this particular place, the dearth of resources and social institutions outside of city cores, as well as the relative invisibility, we believe are quite typical and help to understand the meaning of suburban homelessness. conclusion the aim of this research was to obtain an in-depth view of the lived experiences of 15 diverse persons who were homeless in the suburban context. whether our participants were living on the street, in shelters, or in substandard rooming houses, extreme poverty and the accompanying stress prevented them from eating and sleeping properly, and from regaining secure housing. lacking income security, many cycled between living on the street and substandard housing. engulfed in the grotto of poverty they struggled, unable to escape. as suburban homelessness and poverty remain mostly invisible, public awareness needs to be raised so that effective social policies can be developed to help people to get out of the poverty cycle. while important, something more than empathy is needed for them to escape poverty (morse, bottorff, anderson, o’brien, & solberg, 2006; zufferey & kerr, 2004). policies that advance equity and support from all levels of community are required. based in principles of redistributive social justice which focus on outcomes meeting human needs, all citizens deserve adequate housing and to be treated with dignity and respect (craig, 2002). the rights of all, including the poor, to inhabit the city should be upheld (klodawsky, 2010). a community-based approach with those who are/have been homeless sitting on the table when policies are developed is essential for success (minkler & wallerstein, 2008). raising awareness about homelessness in the suburbs, we hope, will therefore be a first step towards achieving rights-based social justice. we studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 homelessness in the suburbs 121 need to build a compassionate community in which all citizens have equitable opportunities, enabled by adequate resources, that will prevent them falling into or help them escape from grottoes of poverty. therefore we believe it is imperative to ensure that the hopes our participants shared with us for a better future can be realized. references acosta, o., & toro, p. a. 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(2007). future health consequences of the current decline in u.s. household income. jama, 298(16), 1931–33. zlotnick, c., robertson, m. j., & lahiff, m. (1999). getting off the streets: economic resources and residential exits from homelessness. journal of community psychology, 27(2), 209–224. zufferey, c., & kerr, l. (2004). identity and everyday experiences of homelessness: some implications for social work. australian social work, 57(4), 343–353. http://www.ncw.gc.ca http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/view/entry/62331 http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/view/entry/62331 mcelligott -final feb 6 17 correspondence address: greg mcelligott, community & justice services program, humber college, 3199 lake shore blvd. w., toronto, on, m8v 1k8; email: greg.mcelligott@humber.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 invested in prisons: prison expansion and community development in canada greg mcelligott humber college, canada abstract this paper critically examines the claim made by canadian conservative politicians that prison expansion is likely to produce economic gains for canadian prison towns. such claims raise many questions about the actual beneficiaries of prison construction, and the depiction of prisons as “infrastructure” serving some public good or even promoting social justice. after reviewing relevant literature from american debates on this topic, i focus on more specific canadian conditions, and use public tendering data to trace the path of prison spending. the evidence suggests that prison expansion is unlikely to benefit surrounding communities, although interests elsewhere tend to reap major gains. keywords incarceration; prison expansion; community economic development; infrastructure; critical criminology; public policy; canada introduction most activists have heard the argument that “there is just no money” to fund improvements in the social services, especially if it means hiring more staff. such claims raise all sorts of questions about public priorities, taxation policies, the state of the global economy, and so on. at a more basic level, they highlight what economists call the “opportunity cost” of any action: using public resources in one area means they are not available for use elsewhere. this problem is important because some things that governments buy are fantastically expensive, and so displace many other options. for example, according to one estimate, the lifetime cost of a single f-35 fighter aircraft could fund over 45,000 childcare spaces for a year, or house every homeless person in victoria, bc, for 27 years (hyslop, 2012). few items concentrate spending power as intensely as major military purchases. but while canada’s fighter program was eventually delayed, prime minister stephen harper’s conservative government (2006-2015) invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 87 proceeded with prison expansions worth substantially more than an f-35, and boosted spending on correctional services canada (csc) to about 10 times that amount each year. even if one disputes exactly what this means in foregone childcare, homeless shelters, and the like, the sacrifice is clearly significant and persistent. from the perspective of those who struggle for social justice, then, the cost of prisons is usually the cost of opportunities foregone. however, a competing narrative portrays prisons as instruments of a kind of social justice themselves. when government officials claim that prison construction will bring prosperity to local communities, they imply that economic growth will alleviate all sorts of inequities – or at least make them more tolerable. this is also, broadly speaking, the justification for using infrastructure spending as a tool of economic development – a strategy to which the new trudeau government seems deeply wedded. but can prisons really be used in this way? are they really a means of boosting local economies? and if so, are any resulting benefits worth the cost of all those lost opportunities? this paper will consider the impact of construction spending related to the harper government’s prison expansion program, which was unveiled in a series of announcements prior to the 2011 federal election. a later statement by public safety minister vic toews made the government’s position clear. “there will be an increase in terms of construction jobs for the community,” he said, “in addition to new hiring at the facility when the units are ready to be staffed. this is an important part of ensuring tangible economic growth for the communities located around csc’s institutions” (cited in piché, 2015, p. 158). toews and others also repeatedly claimed that “…the cost of a safe and secure society is an investment worth making” (csc, 2010). borrowing arguments used in the united states, harper’s ministers suggested that initiatives of this sort could (a) enhance public safety, while (b) stimulating the economies of host communities with jobs for workers and contracts for local businesses. similar claims have been investigated in the american case, focusing on how prisons affect community development. insights from that research will be used here to trace the impact of harper’s program. the intent is also to expand the range of the us works, which focused mostly on american examples at the expense of prisons in other contexts. after outlining the debate surrounding the previous us prison boom, we will deal briefly with the argument that prisons can enhance public safety, or at least deliver some sort of public good, as infrastructure spending is said to do. these claims are at least questionable, for reasons having to do with the nature of prisons, and the partisan considerations at work in this particular project. evidence drawn from the canadian government’s public tendering process will then be used to show who won the prison contracts here, and how that relates to where the money was actually spent. the evidence suggests that prison towns were very unlikely to receive net gains from prison construction. the paper’s final section considers how that fact might be used greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 88 to decouple private interests from prison expansion, and reclaim public space for better uses than prisons. lessons from the us the idea that prisons could be used as a means of economic development became popular in the us during the 1980s and 1990s. the “conventional wisdom” of the era was that prison building, like other major works projects, would bring construction jobs and related contracts to the communities around the job site, and increase demand for local services at least temporarily (genter, hooks & mosher, 2013). but unlike bridges or roads, prisons employed a fairly large permanent staff in jobs that were seen to be “recession-proof.” these were said to bolster the foundations of local economies when other industries were on the wane (hatcher, 1994). as prisons had to be resupplied on a regular basis with everything necessary to keep prisoners alive and contained, local businesses could expect contracts to serve those needs, and some might find a new clientele among the families and relatives who visited prisoners. prisons would place more demands on local infrastructure (sewers, roads and so on), but the hope was that they would spur upgrades benefitting everyone.1 taxes paid by prisons would boost local government revenues, and prisoners would boost town populations for census purposes, meaning that per-capita grants from higher levels of government would also rise (hatcher, 1994). later research would show that few of those grants were actually affected by local census populations, but prisons did help to distort the political redistricting process – often in favor of conservative rural politicians who openly rejected any obligation to represent disenfranchised inmates (hunter & wagner, 2007). prisoners might never see the community centres their presence helped build, or benefit from the enhanced political strength of surrounding neighbourhoods, but these were counted as important community gains (whiteside, 2002; hunter & wagner, 2007). justified by claims like these – and of course many others related to prison’s alleged crime-fighting role – the american prison boom did not begin to slow down until the second decade of the 21st century. by this time, many studies seemed to show that community benefits were not as likely as prison proponents believed, and the latter were thrown into increasingly defensive positions. much of the newer research suggested that whatever economic effects prisons had, they were more muted or complex than some had initially hoped (glasmeier & farrigan, 2007). in a large urban centre the impacts might be less noticeable, for example, while those in a small rural area might be more 1 similar claims are used to justify the huge expenses involved in hosting “world-class” events like the olympics. but if we want better roads, why do we have to stage the olympics – or build invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 89 evident (besser & hanson, 2005). prison construction would produce few local jobs if outside companies won the contracts, and brought their own specialized workforce in to do most of the work (genter, hooks & mosher, 2013). prison staff might be fewer, more insecure and paid less if a private company ran the prison, and one study suggested that bad conditions on the “inside” could actually help drive down working conditions in the surrounding community (mosher, hooks & wood, 2007). if the prison were publicly run, staff would likely be hired from a state-wide or national list, and locals were often at a disadvantage when competing for those jobs. and however they were hired, prison staff did not necessarily live in the prison town. commuting staff took their “recession-proof” spending elsewhere when they bought a house, or groceries, or entertainment (king, mauer & huling, 2003). local businesses often faced frustrations similar to those of prison town workers. while prisons inevitably buy some of their supplies locally, many of the big contracts are handled centrally, so that bulk purchases are made on behalf of all the prisons in a state, or all those run by the same company. this usually means that local firms are forced to bid against much bigger operators to win contracts for a nearby prison (hooks, mosher, rotolo & lobao, 2004; besser & hanson, 2005; courtright, packard, hannam & brennan, 2010). the prospects for local infrastructure upgrades tended to be undermined by bidding wars as well. in this case the participants were civic officials from various potential prison towns, who used subsidies of various kinds to attract a new prison. often this meant paying for the enhanced infrastructure a prison needed, even at the expense of other local priorities (mosher, hooks & wood, 2007; madoc-jones, 2009). many local governments actually absorbed the cost of building private prisons and so the net benefit to their communities was even less clear (besser & hanson, 2005).2 desperate economic times erode government revenues to begin with, but because many bidders promised tax breaks for private prison companies (most public prisons do not pay taxes in the us), tax revenues were reduced still further (besser & hanson, 2005). it might be argued that the potential benefits of prisons would have been greater if local governments had not been so desperate. but it may be equally true that only economic desperation could make prisons look like the best development opportunity available. in the united states, prisons may have had marginal effects on censusbased grants and they do give small prison towns more political clout than 2 during the only canadian experiment with a privately run adult prison, ontario’s conservative government under premier mike harris (1995-2003) paid for all the upfront construction costs involved. this might be construed as a large public subsidy to the host community of penetanguishene except that, as will be shown below, construction spending and other alleged benefits tend to leave town. in this instance (and others), such upfront spending might be better regarded as a subsidy to the prison management company (management and training corporation), aimed at reducing its costs to make privatization appear more viable (mcelligott, 2008). greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 90 they would otherwise have (hunter & wagner, 2007). however, surveys like the census can cut both ways. as a british observer pointed out, crime rates inside prisons, when added to those of the host community, may suppress local property values (madoc-jones, 2009). perhaps this is why national crime statistics in the us now entirely exclude offences committed in prison, giving an artificial boost to the apparent success of “tough on crime” initiatives (voorhees, 2014). problems such as these led eason (2010) to try to reframe the debate. eason argues that about 70% of the prisons built during the us boom were built in the south, usually in larger, more racially diverse rural towns characterized by “concentrated rural disadvantage,” and often nearby an existing prison (2010, p. 1025). to him this does not suggest that “locally unwanted land uses” are being dumped disproportionally on poor, racialized communities. instead he makes the perhaps reasonable point that if introduced into struggling local economies, prisons can make important contributions by slowing their decline (eason, 2010). so even if prisons have little impact on traditional measures of economic health, things might be worse in their absence. of course, it is very difficult to know what might have been, and arguments like these can be used as a last-ditch defence for practically any policy option. but eason does indirectly highlight the degree to which this entire debate has been waged on the familiar terrain of mainstream economics. some of (the many) limits to this perspective will be noted below. linked closely to the claim that prisons offer “recession-proof” jobs is the assumption, common in many similar booms, that this particular bull market will never end. prisons are easier to defend in economic terms if we expect demand for their services to follow a constantly rising curve. but as lawrence (2013) points out, fifteen states actually closed prisons in 2011-12, giving rise to some ironic debates about how local economies might be stimulated by repurposing the sites of closed prisons. inevitably discussion of such “postcarceral keynesian” strategies gives rise to talk of condos (as they have in kingston after the peninentiary closed – see ferguson, lay, piché & walby, 2014) or penal museums (both the us and canada apparently have more of these than any other country in the world – see ross, 2012; walby & piché, 2015). but the fact that penal conversion strategies are being considered at all is grounds for optimism, and we will return to this topic in the conclusion. a more serious limitation of the “local benefits” debate in the us is that prison town boundaries provide only an arbitrary and changeable way of defining where local benefits should be measured. eason (2010) and hooks et al. (2004) make a point of using county boundaries instead. but why not consider the regional or national implications of prison siting? analysts using this broader perspective would be forced to consider the consequences of prison expansion on other communities – especially on those urban centres from which most american (and canadian) prisoners are drawn – but also on prisoners, on the environment, and so on (frost & gross, 2012; madoc-jones, 2009; lynch, 2007). invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 91 mainstream economic analysis also tends to be vague about how wealth and income are distributed. if local economies receive some spinoffs, but prison building serves primarily as a way to enrich its financiers – as buitenhuis (2013) says is the case with public-private partnership arrangements in ontario – are these truly local benefits? prisons, infrastructure and the public good at this writing, the liberal government that defeated harper’s conservatives is unrolling its signature infrastructure program, promising to invest billions of dollars over the next decade in transit, social and green projects (lpc, 2015, p. 14). the party’s platform justified all of these as efforts to “deliver the services we need, create jobs, and restore economic security to the middle class” (2015, p. 11). the inclusion of items like “early learning and childcare” (2015, p. 13) under the (social) infrastructure label shows how malleable its meaning has now become, but traditionally infrastructure has been associated with more concrete projects that involve construction companies and related trades. harper’s conservatives tended to favor the traditional usage, and their spending priorities were different from those of the liberals, but by treating prison building like an infrastructure program they too pushed toward a more expansive definition. my focus is on prison-related effects in harper’s earlier regime, but because there is at least a rhetorical overlap with the infrastructure initiatives now unfolding, a few words of clarification are needed. contracting scandals in either domain will not be pursued here – although the new liberal program has already sparked warnings about these, and money wasted in this way would amplify the opportunity costs discussed above (curry, 2016; canadian press, 2016). rather, the point is to challenge the common assumption that funds earmarked for projects in a particular location actually benefit the people living there. because the same industry (and often the same company) builds prisons, hospitals, bridges and highways, my conclusions might have wider application as well. there is danger, however, in speaking of all these projects as if they were equivalent. as amy buitenhuis (2013) points out, prisons are not just another form of infrastructure, presumably serving some clear-cut public good. saying “a prison is a hospital is a road” tends to depoliticize important policy choices, she argues (2013, p. 109). considered only as a series of contracts where the goal is “value for money,” the larger implications of prison spending are hidden. on the one hand, choosing prisons means not choosing things like schools that might be better at both suppressing crime and creating jobs (besser & hanson, 2005). on the other hand, the choice of prisons may entail serious social costs and severe collateral damage. from the perspective of a long tradition of critical scholarship, prisons are destructive in their own right, as greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 92 their rehabilitative efforts consistently fall short of their propensity to create crime, and their toxic by-products (racism, gang violence, family trauma and so on) undermine their net contribution to any public good (foucault, 1995; christie, 2000; parenti, 2000; stern, 2006; gilmore, 2007; drucker, 2011).3 by some accounts, the balance here is so skewed that prisons are comparable not to bridges and the like, but to weapons of state like the f-35 (morris, 1995; davis, 2003). at the very least we can say that prisons’ contributions to a public good (like public safety) are not as clear as those of other projects that fall under the infrastructure label. a stronger position might be that prisons are so deeply inscribed with injustice that they can never build social justice, even indirectly. prisons serve many purposes, and some of these are defended by powerful interests even if they do not serve a recognizable public good. one frequently highlighted in the critical literature relates to prison’s role in reinforcing (often highly racialized) labour market discipline (ignatieff, 1978; mancini, 1996; oliver, 1998; rusche & kirchheimer, 2003; alexander, 2010). the 2007 report of the csc review panel (a roadmap to strengthening public safety), which helped to shape the federal prison expansion program, stresses goals related to that purpose, and in turn reflects the influence of the “common sense revolution” attempted by the mike harris conservatives in ontario (19952003). harris’s militantly pro-business government had combined sustained attacks on labour, the poor, and other social groups with legal changes that made it easier to degrade jobs and intensify work. it also undertook ambitious efforts to consolidate bureaucracies and local governments into much bigger, more centralized operations (mcelligott, 2007). everywhere the harris conservatives displayed an extraordinary faith in the capacity of buildings and machines to change people’s character. this “tory high modernism” was particularly evident in the reorganization of the province’s jails (mcelligott, 2008). some of the ontario players were later active at the federal level – on the review panel, and in harper’s conservative cabinet. their harder line on prisoners was embodied in the panel’s call for a rebranded system of “earned parole” (csc rp 2007, pp. 114-18). earned parole would use economic pressure (longer work, lower pay, and more deductions) to make “privileges” like decent housing dependent on prisoners’ attitudes to work, obedience, and self-improvement (csc rp 2007, pp. 47-49). parallel legal changes should reduce prisoners’ charter rights, the panel argued, in order to compel “active” participation in programming, reinforce respect for prison authorities, and curtail “frivolous and vexatious grievances” (csc rp 2007, pp. 6, 16-17, 62, 168). the rationale for this arrangement was that it better reflected the harsh 3 a widely quoted us report concluded in 1973 that “the prison, the reformatory and jail have achieved only a shocking rate of failure. there is overwhelming evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it” (cited in alexander, 2010, p. 8). invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 93 realities of the outside world, where participation in the legitimate labour market purportedly guaranteed self-sufficiency and other rewards (csc rp, 2007). but given the context in ontario and elsewhere, the effect would likely have been to make those realities even harsher – by driving down work expectations among prisoners, former prisoners and other marginalized workers (mcelligott, 2007). these proposals are relevant here not only because they cast further doubt on the idea that prisons can be treated like politically inert infrastructure. they also produced a recommendation that csc’s 58 prisons should be consolidated into a much smaller number of “regional complexes” (csc rp, 2007, p. 157; mcelligott, 2008). each of these would confine 1,500-2,000 prisoners – about the size of ontario’s new “superjails” and about three to four times the size of the biggest csc prison at the time (csc rp 2007, pp. 157-158, app. a). 4 putting minimum, medium, maximum and “special handling” units within the same walls would save on operating costs and make drug interdiction easier, according to the panel (csc rp, 2007, pp. 27, 61-62, 156-157). ranging all the security levels in plain view – from least uncomfortable to exceptionally horrible – was also meant to enhance internal discipline, as prisoners would be given a visible incentive to work and behave, and could be more easily transferred if they did not. as the panel argued, the regional complex design would allow officials “to reinforce an overall correctional management model that stresses offender accountability” (csc rp, 2007, p. 158). the panel offered few suggestions about the internal organization of these complexes, but in ontario and elsewhere the new centralized prisons followed the “tough, no frills” model of the us supermax (hannah-moffat & moore, 2002; mcelligott, 2007, 2008). the huge size of these buildings, and their heavy reliance on walls, automation, and other impersonal forms of control, meant that every prisoner – regardless of their security level – would likely be treated more brutally than in older institutions. prisons of this sort are also consistent with the designs favoured by private prison operators and financiers, but, as will be seen below, private interests have a major stake even in nominally public prisons. 4 provincial prisons, which hold people who are awaiting trial or serving shorter sentences, contain more prisoners and are themselves going through similar reorganizations (see piché, 2014). greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 94 partisan considerations although the conservative government expressed support for the panel’s vision (csc, 2008a), the building boom that followed the 2010-11 announcements seems, at first glance, to have taken a very different form. rather than the mass reorganization implied by the panel’s regional complex plan, which would have involved many prison closings and intensive rebuilding in a few select areas, the government committed itself to expanding about two-thirds of the existing csc prisons. these expansions, however, were arranged in a way that contributed to the creation of a more gradual and less centralized version of the regional complex idea. many csc prisons already shared their grounds with one or more facilities of different security levels. the units that were added (usually 96or 50-bed buildings) tended to bolster such multi-level sites, or to begin others (mcelligott & piché, 2012; csc, 2012). the “mini-regional complex” model that emerged seems to be capped at about 500 beds, which is in line with the advice of an internal csc report issued after the panel’s (csc 2008b, par. 5.1.2). it has the virtues of avoiding the huge and concentrated spending commitments – up to $1 billion for each 2,200-cell complex – that would have been necessary with the larger model (csc rp, 2007, app. f, p. 15). three older prisons were closed in 2012 (including kingston penitentiary) and a new policy has all facilities in one site sharing a single name. so, by 2015, csc’s web page listed only 43 prisons in its jurisdiction – down from 58 when the panel issued their report (csc, 2013; csc rp, 2007, app. a).5 as we were reminded in both the 2011 and 2015 federal elections, spending on prisons and infrastructure items can have important political implications (curry & hannay, 2015; piché, 2015). crucial decisions about the shape of csc prison reform were made while the harper conservatives were an insecure minority government (2006-2011). during this period, their signature punishment bills were being held back (perhaps by design), making estimates of future prison populations even more uncertain and controversial than usual. and, like any minority government, the conservatives were trying to secure and expand their political base. in this context, it probably made more political sense to spread the new spending across many prison sites (and ridings), rather than focusing it on a few super-sized regional complexes. the government certainly tried to gain political traction with the funding announcements, as public safety minister vic toews and other prominent conservatives participated in a carefully orchestrated series of media events in the last few months before the 2011 election (see piché, 2015). 5 the following prisons have now been lost, mostly due to renaming: westmorland; leclerc (closed); montée ste-françois; saint-anne-des-plaines; kingston (closed); frontenac; pittsburgh; fenbrook; riverbend; rockwood; and ferndale. the csc website still lists ontario’s regional treatment centre, but notes it has been closed (csc, 2013). invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 95 table 1. prison funding announcements by csc region, and federal election results, 2008 & 2011 note: “new $” refers to the value of prison expansions, as announced in late 2010 and early 2011. party labels are c=conservative; l=liberal; b=bloc québécois; n=ndp; i=independent. the author would be happy to provide a more detailed breakdown by riding on request. sources: author’s calculations based on canada (2005-13; 2008 & 2011); cbc (2011); csc (n.d.); csc rp, (2007, pp. 171-172); google maps (n.d.); piché (n.d.). some inkling of the political impact made or intended by these announcements can be seen in table 1. in the 2008 election, the conservatives won 20 of the 32 ridings containing federal prisons. three years later, after new money had been announced affecting 24 prison ridings, the conservative score was 21 out of 32. the only major shift among the prison ridings was from the bloc to the ndp in quebec. obviously larger forces were at work here, and it would be difficult to determine what role prison funding played in the election outcome. it is clear, though, that because conservatives dominate most of the prison ridings, spending on prisons made political sense for them, especially if it was distributed widely among existing region federal prison ridings (promised new funding) new $ (million) 2008 results vs. 2011 results c l b n i atlantic 3 (3) $85 1 2 1 1 1 quebec 8 (5) $133 7 8 1 ontario 5 (4) $140.5 4 4 1 1 prairies 12 (8) $150 12 12 pacific 4 (4) $92.5 3 3 1 1 totals: 32 (24) $601 20 21 3 2 7 9 2 greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 96 sites. even in opposition they likely still have an incentive to push for such spending.6 on the other hand, had they followed the panel’s advice and started building the first large regional complex in kingston, they would have pumped all that money into one of the few prison ridings that consistently voted liberal. had they used the money for other purposes entirely, its distribution might not have been so politically useful for conservative candidates. so, partisan considerations likely influenced the shape of csc’s prison expansion, and certainly affected the way it was publicly promoted, even if the tories seem to have made few direct gains from the program in electoral terms. it is possible that the parade of prison announcements served more symbolic ends – reinforcing the conservatives’ image as the “tough on crime” choice for voters – but any effects of this kind would be hard to trace. we do know that prior to the 2015 election – which they lost – the conservatives tried to do something similar with the “canada 150” community infrastructure fund. critics suggested that the program was little more than “a ‘slush fund’ for good news announcements leading up to the election,” and frequent promises of local funding (albeit in smaller amounts) again filled the media (boutilier & davis, 2016, n.p.). a later analysis showed that conservative ridings were much more likely to benefit from these grants, even though they were supposed to be awarded by non-partisan public servants (boutilier & davis, 2016, n.p). it is also possible that the influences here were not so much partisan as ideological. that is, prison–building might have been seen as an essential anchor for the coercive turn in criminal justice policy, to which the conservative government was deeply committed. it is true that conservatives have a long history of relying on new buildings and machines to reinstate older social values. this is the “tory high modernism” mentioned above, and its influence extends at least from the opening of kingston penitentiary in 1835 to the closing of that same institution in 2012 (see mcelligott, 2008). the original “regional complex” idea fits pretty clearly into this tradition. the current version seems to have compromised tory high modernism by embracing more pragmatic political calculations, and by appeasing those within csc who defended smaller prisons (see csc, 2008b). however, table 1 does show how much space still exists for partisan appeals that play up the supposed local benefits of prison construction. the 32 ridings containing federal prisons, if seen as one large “prison constituency,” elected more mps than all but three provinces in 2011. making similar calculations for provincial prisons and legislatures (even allowing for consolidation here) would spread this net even further, and make the penal constituency even bigger. prison spending and incarceration rates in canada still fall far short of american levels – as do those of nearly every other 6 the 2015 federal election took place under new riding boundaries, so comparable data is not yet available. invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 97 country in the world (walmsley, 2015). yet the size of the penal constituency here should serve as a sobering reminder that a large and growing set of interests may believe they have a stake in continued prison expansion. but what effect does prison funding actually have in all these ridings? despite the larger issues raised above, the rest of this paper will assess the claims of the harper government from a narrow, “common sense” perspective. it simply asks whether the prison expansion project is likely to create local jobs, and contribute to local economic growth, as they promised it would. where did the money go? in the canadian case, several things are clear from the outset. first, while the american debate focuses mostly on brand new prisons, the harper conservatives added units to existing prisons. so, a really accurate measure of the latter’s impact would consider only the net effect of the expansions, subtracting the influence of the prior status quo. this is why the data below focus on construction expenses. the canadian additions tended to be large, however. most often a prison would gain a unit with 50 or 96 beds, and in total at least 2,700 beds were added (with double-bunking potentially adding many more; see piché, 2014, par. 73). this is the equivalent of creating four or five large prisons and then distributing them across the country in pieces the size of small ones. csc has not (yet) allowed private prison companies to operate its prisons, or finance their construction, although there were hints that a future wave of expansions might make both possible (tencer, 2012). among other things, this means that public service hiring rules still apply. most new hires will be paid at union rates, selected through national competitions, and placed where need arises – not necessarily in their hometowns. those who come from elsewhere and settle in a prison town might spend money locally, but those who commute from other places would be less likely to do so. and of course, any local benefits from increased staff spending would depend on there being more staff or higher wages. because csc, like other large employers, is committed to labour-saving technology and work intensification, neither of these can be assumed. given staff reallocations due to csc closings in ontario and quebec, there are no guarantees that job competitions will even be open to prison town locals. the fact that csc is projecting absolutely flat staffing levels until 2017-18 is not encouraging in this regard (canada, n.d. b). similarly, csc and other federal departments are obliged to send all major outside purchases through a national bidding process that now happens greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 98 mostly online.7 companies near an expanding prison are forced to bid against other national (and sometimes international) firms in order to win a local contract. there is some evidence that informal quotas exist in tender decisions, as contracts for items such as dairy products are often split between national and local suppliers (merx, n.d.). but the value of even the largest of these pales in comparison to the construction contracts, as will be seen below. overall, csc continues to spend most of its budgets on personnel costs – averaging about 67% from 2009-13 (canada, n.d. a). because these are still mostly governed by collective agreements with unionized staff, there are very few opportunities for local businesses to win contracts in this area. other csc purchases are internal, from government agencies such as public works. but csc has turned to outside suppliers at a dramatically increased pace since the conservatives took power. in fact, the nominal value of csc spending on private providers doubled from $362 million in fiscal year (fy) 2005-6, to $737 million in fy 2012-13 (canada, 2005-13a, b & c). csc tenders contracts for a variety of reasons, and not all are directly related to prisons, but the biggest ones by far are construction-related. public accounts figures show that capital spending as a share of total csc expenses rose 45% from 2009 to 2012 – from 8.6% to 12.5% respectively (canada, 2013), and much of this would have gone to private companies involved in construction projects. so, while csc continues to spend the vast majority of its budget on personnel and other operating costs, opportunities for private profit making have increased dramatically for those who wish to supply, and especially to build, its prisons. the claim that new prisoner populations could boost census counts, and therefore grants and representation for prison towns, has been made at least once to justify prison expansion in canada (drumheller mayor bryce nimmo, in zickefoose, 2010). but in fact the situation here is more complex than it appears to be in the us. the canadian census counts prison as someone’s residence only if they spend at least six months there; otherwise they are counted at their last address (canada, 2009). this means that provincial prisoners would rarely stay long enough to be counted (because most are on remand or serving shorter sentences). federal prisoners (who all serve at least two years) would be counted as long as they had arrived six months before the census date, and as long as census enumeration was adequate. per capita transfers would be based on these numbers. however, municipalities receive only about 20% of their revenues through various federal or provincial transfers, and these transfers are not necessarily calculated on a per capita basis (slack, 2009). federal institutions like prisons do not pay property taxes to municipalities, but they may pay “payments in lieu of taxes” (pilt) which are more discretionary, and fluctuate as priorities change in ottawa (fcm, 2008). pilt statistics are available from 2010 on, 7 first through merx and since june 2013 through buyandsell.ca. some 30,000-50,000 tenders for all federal departments are listed there each year. invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 99 but they are not broken down by federal department (canada, 2015). yet a cursory analysis suggests that pilt growth has little connection with prison expansion. of four prison towns that were some of the biggest prison contract winners, only one (springhill, ns) saw a consistent rise in its pilt payments for all federal buildings between 2010 and 2014. in two others (mission, bc and kingston, on), increases were inconsistent or marginal. and the prison town that won the most valuable contracts (abbotsford, bc) actually experienced a decline in its pilt payments over the same period (canada, 2015). so, the local tax benefits of hosting a prison in canada are less certain than in the us, and the possibility of incremental gains through prison expansion seem to be unpredictable at best. as noted above, the conservative government promised just over $600 million in expansion funds to 24 prison ridings in the run-up to the 2011 federal election. they claimed that construction jobs and permanent hiring, along with new business opportunities, would help stimulate local economies. this section has already cast doubt on many of these claims, but what about all those construction contracts? details regarding tendered contracts can now be found in canada’s public accounts. most federal contracts are multi-year (usually three years), and many change in value as work progresses (or stalls). but taking the last published value of each contract gives some sense of what the government actually paid each contractor, and allows us to compare total commitments here against what was promised. there is uncertainty in the data, because not all contracts are clearly labeled. a csc contract that says something like “96bed living unit, ontario” clearly relates to a prison, but does not specify which one. other labels are more vague, or relate to construction in csc offices (regional or national headquarters, probation and parole, etc.). for purposes of this paper, only contracts with a clear prison connection were considered, and those with a clear connection that did not name a particular prison were categorized as “unspecified” in each province. a more elaborate study might quite reasonably allocate some of these other expenses among the prisons, however. timing is also an issue, as some construction contracts started before the announcements, and some announced construction (especially in quebec) had still not been tendered when the data was gathered in the spring of 2014. to deal with this problem, data were included from all csc construction contracts tendered since the conservatives first won power in fiscal year 2005-6, and extending to 2012-13, the latest available at the time. as can be seen from figure 1, however, the value of csc construction commitments rose dramatically after the 2010-11 announcements, and the vast majority of contracts since 2005-6 seems to be related to them. in any case, considering all the contracts over the longer period should make any local benefits more, not less, visible. greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 100 figure 1. csc prison construction commitments, 2005-2013 note: these figures are in nominal dollar values and only cover identifiable prison contracts in the “acquisition of land, building and works” category. contracts are counted in the year they first appear, and by the total government commitment (not annual expenditures) given the most recent values for each. e = election year. source: author’s calculations based on canada, 200513c. the final total in figure 1 ($729,782,124) provides a conservative estimate of the total value of all csc prison construction contracts (over 200 of them) made public between 2005 and 2013.8 figure 1 also gives some indication of where the money went, but this question is trickier than it seems. on the surface the contracts concern changes to prison spaces, and so the expenses will leave physical traces in each prison that received an upgrade. thus, it may make sense to display the results in something like figure 2, which 8 in addition to the exclusions previously noted, this figure does not include, “smaller contracts” (360 @ $140m in 2012-13), or the services of architects and engineers, which have totaled up to $5 million a year but are listed separately. smaller contracts (“contracts under $250,000 and cost plus contracts under $25,000”) were listed separately in the public accounts data after 2008, but only grand totals were given, with no details on the contracts. thus, it was impossible to consolidate these figures, or locate the contract winners. see canada (2005-13b, 2005-13c). 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 2005-2006 2006-2007 2007-2008 2008-2009 2009-2010 2010-2011 2011-2012 2012-2013 total $ m il li on s csc prison construction commitments, fy 2005-2013 atlantic quebec ontario prairie paci:ic total e e e invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 101 shows how roughly $730 million was distributed among the federal prison towns. figure 2. total prison construction commitments, 2005-2013 note: a few of the contracts list two or three prisons where the work will be performed, without specifying the breakdown. figures in such cases were split evenly between all the prisons involved. source: author’s calculations based on canada, 2005-13c. figure 2 shows that of the 32 towns containing 54 prisons, construction was planned in at least 25 towns, although there are broad disparities in the amounts each town received. these are presumably related to the number of prisons in each town, their degree of need, their significance in csc planning or some partisan political calculus. however, given the doubts noted above about whether prisons are really infrastructure, we cannot assume that expanding them will actually serve a public good (the case might be clearer for hospitals or roads). doubts about prisons’ effectiveness in fighting crime n $0 $40,000,000 $80,000,000 $120,000,000 $160,000,000 dorchester, nb (dorchester, shepody hc, westmorland) renous, nb (atlantic) unspecified nb springhill, ns (springhill) truro, ns (nova ifw) unspecified ns cowansville, pq (cowansville) donnaconna, pq (donnaconna) drummondville, pq (drummond) joliette, pq (joliette ifw) la macaza, pq (la macaza) laval, pq (federal tc, leclerc, msf) port-cartier, pq (port-cartier) saint-anne-des-plaines, pq (archambault, rmhc, rrc, sap) unspecified qc bath, on (bath, millhaven) campbellford, on (warkworth) gravenhurst, on (beaver creek, fenbrook) kingston, on (collins bay, frontenac, joyceville, kp, kitchener, on (grand valley) unspecified on stony mountain, mb (rockwood, stony mountain) unspecified mb duck lake, sk (willow cree hl) maple creek, sk (okimaw ohci hl) prince albert, sk (riverbend, saskatchewan pen.) saskatoon, sk (regional pc) unspecified sk drumheller, ab (drumheller & annex) edmonton, ab (edmonton, edmonton ifw, grierson) grand cache, ab (grand cache) hobbema, ab (pê sâkâstêw centre) innisfail, ab (bowden & annex) unspecified ab abbotsford, bc (fraser valley ifw, matsqui, pacific/rtc) agassiz, bc (kent) harrison mills, bc (kwìkwèxwelhp hv) metchosin, bc (william head) mission, bc (ferndale, mission, mountain) unspecified bc total prison construction commitments, fy 2005-2013 greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 102 could lead to similar conclusions (mathiesen, 1990). so, what about jobs and local contracts, the benefits that were promised? mosher, hooks and wood (2007) observed that when american prisonbuilding was undertaken by “outside” companies, the latter were more likely to bring their own specialized workforce with them, so that local construction hiring would be minimal to non-existent. if we assume that locally owned companies are more likely to hire locally, then the prospects for local hiring would be better in the canadian case if prison contracts were awarded to firms that came from the same prison town. the public accounts data lists the corporate offices of all contract winners, so it is relatively easy to determine their origins.9 table 2. “local benefits” by prison town, 2005-13 note: the percentages represent the value of local company contracts versus the value of all contracts for that town. some can exceed 100% if a company wins contracts in other prison towns. nlc = no local contracts. source: author’s calculations based on canada, 2005-13c. the results, however, are shocking. while 25 prison towns had tenders for work in their area, in only eight did local companies win prison contracts 9 national head offices were used when the data listed regional head offices of national companies. there was also at least one joint venture, and this data tells us little about corporate ownership structures, subsidiaries, and so on. so conceivably this task could get much more elaborate. prison town value of contracts won by local companies as % of local contract dollars available laval qc 122% edmonton ab 107% kingston on 43% abbotsford bc 34% bath on 13% kitchener on 9% drummondville qc nlc saskatoon sk nlc invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 103 (canada, 2005-13c). and even these were not clear-cut success stories. as can be seen from table 2, companies in only two of these towns (laval and edmonton) won more than 43% of the contract dollars available for their town. in fact, these two won contracts worth more than 100% of the local contracts’ value by also winning contracts in other prison towns. drummondville and saskatoon companies won all of their contracts in other towns, but could not bid locally because there were no tenders for local work. and despite all the money being poured into kingston and abbotsford, local firms won relatively small portions of the contract dollars available there. in 17 other prison towns with construction work available (68% of the total), local companies won nothing. it is possible that these statistics would be different if we knew more about those unspecified contracts, but it is unlikely that a very different pattern would emerge. so, if outside construction companies do tend to rely largely on their own permanent workforce (rather than subcontracting or hiring locally), then prison town locals probably had little access to these construction jobs. since we have acknowledged that “local” boundaries are somewhat arbitrary, table 3 makes similar calculations for wins by provincial, if not local companies. so, if an outside company wins a contract for a local prison, what are the chances that the “outsider” is at least from the same province? considering provincial company wins as a percentage of contract values available in the province, it seems the news continues to be bad for those expecting benefits close to home. four provinces and territories (newfoundland, pei, the nwt and nunavut) have no federal prisons and so received no benefits at all from these contracts. manitoba did very badly (6%), new brunswick and bc/yukon broke the 50% barrier, and nova scotia and alberta scored in the 80-90% range. quebec and ontario both managed to score around 125%, indicating that their companies won contracts in other provinces as well. but the real winner in this regard was saskatchewan, whose companies hauled in over two and a half times the contract values available in their province. what the pattern suggests, then, is that contract money is slightly more likely to stay in the home province than in the local town. but the distribution here is very uneven, and clearly not related to the number of csc prisons in each province (see table 3). a closer examination of contract winners by corporate office shows that these tend to be concentrated within a few large centres in each province. the left column of table 4 shows the 10 towns and cities whose companies won the most contract dollars during the period studied. even within this group, there was a big gap between the top town and the bottom one – concord, ontario won nearly four times as much as dartmouth, nova scotia. but as a group, these 10 centres took over 56% of all the contract dollars available. sixty-four other towns had companies win contracts, but those top 10 won more than all of them combined. greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 104 table 3. “local benefits” by province, 2005-2013 note: this list does not include contracts won by corcan, csc’s prisoner work program. corcan is included in the prison town figures because its spending has local effects. it is separated in the corporate office figures because, as an agency (a special operating agency) of the federal government, it is not a direct producer of private profit, and presumably nearly all jobs created would be for prisoners. source: author’s calculations based on canada, 2005-13c. the disparity is even greater if these winning towns are arranged into some common regions or metropolitan areas. as can be seen in the right column of table 4, the greater toronto area is the big winner in this scenario, as companies within its boundaries won over $200 million in contracts – about 28% of all the money available. but altogether, the top 10 regions took nearly 79% of the funds, leaving 31 other regions to split the remainder. clearly many factors come into play to determine a town’s chances to win these contracts. not only must they have relevant construction-related industries, but these firms must also be competitive (usually meaning large),10 the tender process must be fair (without rigged bids or political interference), and so on. the evidence so far suggests that what harold innis (1933) called the traditional “metropoles” of canada’s political economy continue to 10 anecdotal evidence suggests that large government construction contracts tend to come with elaborate paperwork and monitoring requirements that can only be met by larger companies. province csc prisons in the province value of contracts won by provincial companies as % of provincial csc contract dollars available saskatchewan 5 260 quebec 13 127 ontario 12 124 nova scotia 2 88 alberta 7 82 bc/yukon 9 59 new brunswick 4 56 manitoba 2 6 newfoundland 0 n/a pei 0 n/a nwt 0 n/a nunavut 0 n/a invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 105 dominate this field, as they do so many others. consequently, prison towns – unless they are in the metropoles – are unlikely to win the contracts on which those construction jobs depend. table 4. top ten tender winners by location of corporate office, fy 20052013 note: this table excludes corcan, and figures are rounded nominal dollar values. source: author’s calculations based on canada, 2005-13c. table 5. top ten (of 125) corporate winners, 2005-2013 note: figures are in rounded nominal dollars. bondfield also built ontario’s south-west detention centre. source: author’s calculations based on canada, 2005-13c. a complete list of all 125 corporate winners, and the amounts they won, is available on request. this pattern of highly uneven gains continues when considering the companies themselves (table 5). in contrast to purchasing for items such as rank by city (of 74) value ($m) rank by metro area (of 51) value ($m) 1 concord on 85.6 1 gta, on 206.4 2 mississauga on 63.2 2 lower mainland bc 57.9 3 saskatoon sk 36.6 3 greater vancouver bc 47.8 4 edmonton ab 36.0 4 halifax-dart. ns 38.2 5 calgary ab 32.3 5 saskatoon sk 36.6 6 ottawa on* 30.9 6 edmonton ab 36.4 7 abbotsford bc* 30.9 7 montréal/laval qc 33.2 8 chilliwack bc 26.1 8 calgary ab 32.3 9 regina sk 23.7 9 ottawa on 31.0 10 dartmouth ns 22.8 10 regina sk 23.7 rank company & corporate office total won ($m)1 1 bird construction company (mississauga on via winnipeg mb, richmond bc) 63.2 2 bondfield construction co. ltd. (concord on)2 60.9 3 corcan (ottawa on, via kingston on, abbotsford bc & riverview nb) 39.5 4 graham construction & engineering inc.(saskatoon sk) 32.5 5 maple-reinders inc. (edmonton ab) 26.0 6 elite construction inc. (concord on) 24.6 7 pcl construction management inc. (regina sk)* 23.7 8 maxim 2000 inc. (dartmouth ns) 21.4 9 upa concept a joint venture (calgary ab) 20.3 10 pomerleau inc. (st-georges qc) 19.9 greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 106 food, counselling and medical services (which tends to be widely distributed, though in much smaller amounts), prison construction contracts have gravitated in large chunks to a few big firms. thus, bird construction co. of mississauga, the top scorer here, won prison contracts worth about $63 million over eight years. with one exception, all the other firms on this list are high flyers in the construction industry. in fact, to be on this list would probably make any company a high flyer, since it usually involves winning one or more contracts worth about $20 million apiece. names like bondfield, graham, and maple-reinders should be familiar to anyone who has ever passed by a canadian construction site or highway project. pcl was in the news recently because its ceo made a point of telling his employees not to vote ndp in the 2015 alberta election (maki, 2015). most provinces – including alberta until recently – put few restrictions on corporate political donations, and it is easy to imagine that links forged at the provincial level might follow politicians who travel to the federal one (editorial, 2015). these connections point to the need for a broader study of the economic power and political influence of the construction industry in canada. but for now, it can simply be noted that these top 10 companies won 46% of all the prison contract dollars available, leaving the remainder to be split among 115 other companies. corcan – the federal agency that manages prisoner work programs – is the exception noted above, as it is not a private company. but its success in this area is a testament to csc’s continuing attempts to make prisoners into useful workers. corcan’s website highlights the historical precedents for having prisoners build prisons, starting with the construction of kingston penitentiary in 1835 (corcan, 2013). the csc review panel urged ottawa to adopt a more work-focused version of rehabilitation for prisoners – including apprenticeships with construction companies in particular (2007). so, mobilizing a very low-paid workforce to help with the prison expansion, in the guise of enhancing their work ethic, is a strategy that seems entirely consistent with conservative penal policy. but neither the extreme concentrations noted above, nor the plan to have prisoners build their own cages, is likely to improve a prison town’s chances of gaining local construction jobs. conclusion: decoupling and reclamation echoing the logic of the “conventional wisdom” in us prison debates of the 1980s and 1990s, public safety minister vic toews had promised that prison expansion would lead to local jobs and contracts. as has been shown above, later american evidence undercut that wisdom and cast doubt on the economic case for prison building. in canada, the case for local benefits is similarly weakened by the public service’s centralized hiring and purchasing practices, different tax and transfer payment arrangements, commuting prison invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 107 staff, and by the decision to add to existing prisons, rather than building entirely new ones. two elements of the “conventional wisdom” received little coverage above. the prospect that prison building might improve local infrastructure was not really investigated. but it was noted that prisons themselves are not infrastructure, as it is commonly understood. related improvements probably vary from prison to prison, and if inadequate measures are taken they can actually harm the local community by overloading sewers, roads, etc. (mcelligott, 2007). in any case, this kind of work was tallied with the construction contracts considered above, and, like them, was reduced by the decision not to build new prisons from scratch. another neglected source of potential benefits was the surge in prison visitors that might bolster local retailers. again, the incremental nature of canada’s prison construction reduced the new business potentially available from this source. if the system becomes further centralized (making visits more onerous), or if it follows provincial trends in adopting video visitation (possibly online, making travel unnecessary), gains from this source will be further reduced. but fundamentally this issue, like the infrastructure question, requires further study. the construction contracts analyzed above are clearly directly related to prison expansions, and they provide the best data available so far on incremental effects. non-construction tenders, as was mentioned, are much smaller than construction ones. total values for construction tenders were about 12 times higher from 2010-13 (merx, n.d.; mcelligott & piché, 2013). considering only the incremental effects of non-construction expansion (the additional amounts now required for food, clothing, etc.) would have meant dealing with even smaller numbers and much less reliable data. but what do the construction contracts reveal? as has been demonstrated above, construction contracts appeared to flow to about 25 of 32 prison towns, and government spokespeople played up this appearance. but very few of the companies who won the contracts were from the same prison town, and usually they were not even from the same province. in fact, construction contract winners were very concentrated in a few large metropoles and a few large companies. it was assumed on the basis of us experience – and this assumption might well be tested by future research – that outside ownership made local jobs and subcontracts much less likely. but this combination of apparent local benefits and more substantial outside ones has the effect of widening the web of interests with some connection to prison building. rather than just 25 or 32 prison towns, we can now count at least 125 companies with head offices in 74 towns in eight provinces and one territory. each of these can be said to have some sort of connection with prisons. more to the point, we can say that key parts of the construction industry, and many related ones, seem to have bought into prison expansion. the primary beneficiaries of their involvement are likely to be the ceos and greg mcelligott studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 108 owners of those companies, but, as ever, they will focus attention on job creation rather than profit levels. obviously not every contract dollar goes to ceos, but in recent years this group has been very adept at securing for themselves the greatest, and fastest-growing, share of whatever surplus is created (mackenzie, 2015). the fact that so many other towns and jobs appear to benefit only helps to legitimate their position, and that of the conservative politicians who see prison as the answer to so many social problems. it is important to note that all of this has been accomplished without the overt involvement of any private prison company. “public” prisons, it turns out, have always been reliant on the private sector, and construction projects clearly amplify this effect. but because the canadian companies involved are active in other fields, two interesting possibilities arise. first, it is clearly possible to shame corporations that are involved in unsavoury activities, but first they must be identified. in this case the next step would be to re-politicize prisons as “not just another infrastructure project,” so that prison building becomes a recognizably shameful activity. construction companies presumably care little what they build, as long as it is profitable and relatively practical. so why not make prison building uncomfortable, and encourage builders (and related interests) to focus on other projects? groups like end the prison industrial complex (epic) have already done substantial work in this direction, and epic inspired the research for this paper (see epic, n.d.). broadly speaking, the task here is to decouple prison expansion from the private interests that support it. decoupling in the context of something like the current liberal infrastructure program would obviously be easier for the affected companies to accept. if billions of construction dollars are raining down in other areas, there would be much less reason to focus on prison projects. on the other hand, if prison funds were re-routed to building pipelines or military bases, this would not be much of a victory for those concerned with social justice. and in fact, if the results above had turned out differently, and prison funds actually stayed in the local community, this would not have been much of a step forward either. in that case, more communities would have had a deeper stake in the perpetuation of an expensive, unjust and destructive system. yet even asking about alternative uses for prison funds means dealing seriously with the opportunities foregone when billions of public dollars are pumped into prisons. hospitals, schools, recreation centres, roads, sewers, green energy – any of these might conceivably engage a constellation of interests similar to those now supporting prisons, and many would be more effective at preventing crime, reducing victimization, or serving other public goods. a more serious effort at decarceration and sentencing reform might envision reclaiming prisons as socially useful public spaces. conversion and retrofitting could occupy the building trades, and likely direct more traffic to local businesses. a group called yes, in my backyard is cataloguing the wide variety of conversion projects now underway in the us (see yimby, n.d.). these are remaking prisons into drug rehab, training and community centres, invested in prisons studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 86-112, 2017 109 homeless shelters, sports facilities, affordable housing, theatres and so on, but many other possibilities are conceivable. and projects of this sort are likely more amenable to community input, and thus more conducive to creating real local benefits, than any prison initiative. in short, the prospects for social justice in this field depend on decoupling interests and reclaiming existing prison sites. the counter-narrative offered by the harper conservatives, which tried to engage prison towns with stories of local contracts and local benefits, is misleading in both respects. acknowledgements my thanks to david butz and the anonymous reviewers of this paper, who all offered extraordinarily thoughtful and supportive suggestions for improving its earlier drafts. references alexander, m. 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(2010, september 1). two alberta prisons get $50m to expand. calgary herald. retrieved august 2010 from http://calgary420.ca/forum/index.php?topic=2979.0;wap2 correspondence address: alex khasnabish, department of sociology and anthropology at mount saint vincent university in halifax, 166 bedford highway, halifax, nova scotia, b3m 2j6. phone: (902) 457-6565 e-mail: alex.khasnabish@msvu.ca issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 8, issue 1, 45-65, 2014 subterranean currents: research and the radical imagination in the age of austerity alex khasnabish mount saint vincent university, canada abstract against a backdrop of austerity, securitization, and the rampant enclosure of public spaces and democratic processes including the university and scholarship, this article critically explores what prefigurative engaged research—research capable of not simply documenting what is but contributing to struggles for social justice and social change—might look like, what it can contribute, and what its limitations are. beyond familiar calls for a “public” or “applied” social science and drawing on a two-year-long project focused on radical social movements and the radical imagination in halifax, nova scotia, canada, this article explores what politicallyengaged social science research might offer to social justice struggles aiming to construct a more just, democratic, dignified, liberated, and peaceful world. for the majority world—for everyone outside the enclaves of privilege located disproportionately, though by no means exclusively, in the global north—globalized neoliberal capitalism and its logic of accumulation by dispossession (harvey, 2003; mcnally, 2011) has been only the most recent chapter in a more-than-five-century history of genocide, colonialism, and imperialism. in the global north, the social violence unleashed by neoliberalism (increasingly precarious or nonexistent work, entrenched and deepening inequality and immiseration, the evisceration of public services, the enclosure of public space, the augmentation of the state’s repressive apparatuses alongside the withering of its commitments to even the most basic elements of social welfare) has meant a low-intensity war declared against actors, institutions, and practices identified as contrary to this neoliberal order. in this context, the university has become a key site of struggle both in terms of what a remade academy could offer to capital (research studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 46 alex khasnabish and development, resources, expertise) and what it does not (an imperfect space of critical and free inquiry), a struggle that has manifested within the academy along clearly disciplinary lines. this is not a lament for the by-gone days of the liberal university imagined as a place of free inquiry, democratic participation, and critical discussion. indeed, we would do well to remember that dominant institutions like the university have always been tied to the production and reproduction of the social order in which they are enmeshed (wallerstein, 1996). rather, at issue is how institutions like the university and academic disciplines function to either facilitate the construction of more just, democratic, egalitarian, and liberated socio-political and economic orders or how they work to entrench, defend, and deepen power, privilege, and inequality. knowledge work, particularly in its academic disciplinary formation, has often lived a complex and frequently compromised relationship with systems of power and privilege (lal, 2002; l. smith, 1999; wallerstein, 1996). for example, as someone trained in the anthropological tradition, i am bound up in a discipline shaped by powerful interests, specifically imperial and colonial ambitions. it is not my intention here to delve deeply into this troubled history and anthropology’s relationship to empire-building, colonization, and genocide, nor do i want to suggest that this is all that anthropology is or could be. rather than dwelling on the profoundly compromised history of anthropological knowledge production, i want to acknowledge this history and use it as a starting point for further exploration. indeed, if this history is troubling—as it should be—the ongoing weaponization of anthropology and other disciplines should be equally so and certainly be more cause for action and intervention today (network of concerned anthropologists, 2009; price, 2011). of course, cultural knowledge has always been seen by occupying forces as central to realizing dreams of domination and exploitation, but this kind of knowledge is now seen as absolutely central as elites confront unconventional challenges to the status quo with the aim of achieving “full spectrum domination”—control over the production and reproduction of social life itself—rather than success or failure measured in conventional battlefield terms (hardt & negri, 2004). in the face of concerted attacks on critical thought and independent inquiry which have only deepened under the banner of “austerity” unfurled in the wake of the 2007 financial crisis, some social researchers embedded in the increasingly neoliberal university have sought to render service to corporate, political, and economic elites and so secure their own positions. instead of shedding light on the nature and causes of social violence and inequality or the movements aiming to challenge them, research ensconced within the repressive apparatus of the neoliberal state facilitates the repression of struggles and defends established systems of power, privilege, and authority (hedges, 2010). rather than seeking accolades, security, or relevance by offering up social research in the service of empire, reloaded of course for the 21st century, we would do well to consider what engaged, critical social science research might offer to living struggles for social justice. without studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 subterranean currents 47 trying to speak for or give direction to movements or to merely archive them and thus speak for and about them as we accumulate academic capital, what can the engaged social researcher contribute to efforts to confront the entrenched and deepening violence, inequality, and injustice that continue to characterize so many people’s contemporary social realities? in what follows, i explore what engaged social science research might offer to struggles for social change and the construction of a more just, democratic, dignified, liberated, and peaceful world. drawing on a two-year-long project focused on radical social movements and the radical imagination in halifax, nova scotia, canada, i attempt to chart, albeit in a preliminary and incomplete way, what prefigurative engaged research—that is, social research capable not simply of documenting what is but of participating in collectively bringing something into being—might look like and what it can offer. radical imagination, method, and prefiguration in august 2010, funded by a standard research grant from the social sciences and humanities research council of canada, a four-person research team consisting of two research assistants from the local activist community, my project co-director, and myself began “the radial imagination: a research project about movements, social change and the future.” from its earliest planning stages, my co-director and i conceived of the project as an explicit attempt to “convoke” the radical imagination—that is, to call something which is not yet fully present into being—in collaboration with activists self-identifying as “radical” in halifax, nova scotia, canada. from the perspective of our collective project, the term “radical” names movements or approaches that understand the social problems that concern them to be irresolvable within the current political system and so seek systemic change. in particular, both as researchers and political actors, we are interested in radical social movements that have emerged in the wake of the so-called “antiglobalization movement” and that stress values of participatory democracy, radical equality, and anti-oppression in pursuit of social, economic, and ecological justice (day, 2005; graeber, 2009; juris, 2008; khasnabish, 2008; maeckelbergh, 2009; sitrin, 2012; wood, 2012). as for the radical imagination—the capacity to project how the world might be otherwise—we have argued (haiven & khasnabish, 2010; khasnabish & haiven, 2012) that the imagination is a collective process rather than an individualized thing, and that its wellspring is not the romanticized and fetishized image of the genius-at-work but communities and collectivities as they work their way through the world. the radical imagination, a term which is seemingly ubiquitous in its invocation today but almost nowhere critically defined, helps us frame the way radical social movements and those who constitute them seek to refashion the space of the political by stressing radical notions of democracy, responsibility, participation, and a politics of the act over dominant liberal paradigms of a studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 48 alex khasnabish politics of representation and demand (day, 2005; solnit, 2004). historian ian mckay (2005) has called such radical political initiatives “experiments in living otherwise”—social laboratories for the generation of alternative relationships, subjectivities, institutions, and practices that prefigure the world these movements seek to build (conway, 2004). “prefigurative politics” refers to the general shift in emphasis away from attempts to seize the state apparatus or influence existing socio-political systems and toward the construction of alternative futures in line with the aspirations animating social justice struggles (holloway, 2002a). the politics of prefiguration that are so central to many contemporary forms of radicalism can be traced to peace, queer, anti-racist, student, feminist, and ecological struggles (the socalled “new social movements”) that emerged in the wake of world war ii (bagguley, 1992; epstein, 1991; melucci, 1985; polletta, 2002; touraine, 1988). these struggles focused not only on influencing dominant political, social, and economic institutions but on the transformation of the production of everyday life itself (epstein, 1991; katsiaficas, 2006; polletta, 2002). examples of such prefigurative struggles include, but are in no way limited to, alternative education initiatives (day, de peuter, & coté, 2007; haworth, 2012), migrant justice collectives (lowry & nyers, 2003; walia, 2013), squats and politicized housing cooperatives (bockmeyer, 2003; katsiaficas, 2006; wachsmuth & pasternak, 2008), direct action affinity groups and networks (graeber, 2009; juris, 2008), indigenous solidarity groups (keefer, 2007), and radical attempts to build relations of solidarity rather than charity across borders (featherstone, 2012; katsiaficas, 1987; khasnabish, 2008). our research-based intervention into the field of radical imagination and radical politics seeks to address a central problem identified by recent scholarship on radical social movements in north america and elsewhere which has demonstrated that established methods and theories are insufficient to address the rise of a politics of prefiguration (day, 2005; holloway, 2002b; juris & khasnabish, 2013; katsiaficas, 2006; polletta, 2002; selbin, 2010). in our project, we have argued that the radical imagination defines not something radical social movements like those listed above have but something they do. without visions of how the world might be different than it is, social change action lacks the force necessary to animate it. the radical imagination is the spark that animates them and exists only in the context of the dialogic encounters between actors. unlike ideology which is a fairly coherent, structured, and elaborated system of interlocking ideas about the world and one’s place in it, the radical imagination can be thought of as a shifting horizon of possibility that, like all horizons, recedes as we walk toward it. as a result, the study of the radical imagination necessitates the crafting of new methodologies capable of participating in this process, not merely describing it from afar. but why ground this project in halifax, nova scotia as opposed to any of the large, cosmopolitan urban centres that have served as backdrops for many of the summit spectacles so characteristic of the heyday of the alterglobalization movement? in the first place, we chose halifax because it is studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 subterranean currents 49 where we live. rather than seeking the most exotic and dramatic locale for our research, we have sought instead to ground our work in our own space and place and to try to contribute something to radical social movements and the fabric of struggle from our own location as engaged researchers. beyond this, there are several other factors that make halifax an ideal site for our project. a mid-sized city of approximately 300,000, halifax is a regional military, administrative, and economic hub on the periphery of the canadian state. in locating this project in halifax, we sought to both mobilize our pre-existing knowledge of the city and its activist history as well as to shed light on a unique location whose radical social movement fabric was—and, at the time of this writing, still is—in the process of reconstituting itself. a formerly prominent colonial centre, in recent years halifax has found itself marginalized with respect to national and global politics and economics. measured by almost any index (population, economic growth, immigration rates, gdp, etc.) halifax is by no means a substantial influence on national, let alone global affairs. and yet, in an age of globalization, even the margins are traversed by lines of power and globalizing economic, institutional, cultural, military, and political flows (appadurai, 1996). as an example of this, in june 2007 halifax played host to the atlantica summit of canadian and us political and economic leaders eager to transform the north-eastern seaboard into a free trade zone. complete with a race-tothe-bottom for labour and environmental standards, the goal of the summit was to lay the groundwork to turn the region into a “gateway” for goods produced in asia to enter the continental united states while simultaneously accelerating energy exports to the us (sinclair & jacobs, 2007). this summit was an obvious target for radical activists in the halifax area and beyond given the neoliberal paradigm it exemplified and protests were planned along the lines of the convergence model that had become so prominent through the alter-globalization movement. despite the appropriateness of the target and the established protest repertoire, the protests themselves resulted in what almost all participants and observers report to be an unqualified disaster. entrenched disagreements over protest tactics and inadequate collective participation in the protest planning process led to a poisonous polarization between more conventional protesters and a “black bloc” engaged in clashes with police. veteran activists note that the event ruptured relations of trust and cooperation that had been built over decades, toxifying the local ecology of radical activism. fragmentation and sectarianism followed closely on the heels of this fracturing of the field of radical politics. at the same time, this situation affords us a unique opportunity to study the radical imagination in action as radical movements seek to reconstitute themselves in a relatively small socio-political space. social movements have long been objects of social scientific inquiry. particularly from the 1960s on, social movement scholarship has, at its best, shed important light on how, why, and with what consequences people have organized themselves to try to achieve some kind of social change outside of formal political structures and processes. in contradistinction to earlier studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 50 alex khasnabish generations of sociological work which cast social movements as little more than irrational, unwashed mobs that functioned, at best, as “escape valves” maintaining the equilibrium of the status quo, social movement research since the 1960s has taken social movement action seriously and sought to understand these collective actors not only in terms of the structural factors affecting their lifespan (tarrow, 1988) but also their capacity to mobilize resources (zald & mccarthy, 1979), take advantage of openings in the political system (meyer, 2004), advance claims and frame issues (benford & snow, 2000), deploy consciousness, emotion, biography, and culture as social change tools (goodwin, jasper, & polletta, 2001; jasper, 1999; mansbridge & morris, 2001), and network their efforts across national borders (bandy & smith, 2005; della porta, kriesi, & rucht, 2009; keck & sikkink, 1998; j. smith, 2008). this is all important and insightful work but the bulk of it also positions social movements as political actors vying for influence and leverage within the established political system, rendering it insufficient for the study of contemporary radical tendencies whose aspirations are a direct challenge to the very form of the socio-political itself and which are embodied by a variety of unconventional actors outside of political parties and ngos. in response to the inability of more conventional methodologies to perceive and make sense of radical challenges to the status quo and attempts at cultivating alternatives to it, in the radical imagination project we have turned to methods grounded in ethnography and participant-action research to develop an approach better attuned to these new radical tendencies (conway, 2004; graeber, 2009; juris & khasnabish, 2013; juris, 2008; khasnabish, 2008; maeckelbergh, 2009; sitrin, 2012). engaging social movements as living entities produced and reproduced through the interactions of those individuals and groups that constitute them, as well as through the interventions they undertake in relation to the wider social world, demands a research methodology that takes seriously and treats as primary living social realities rather than approaches that offer diagnostics of movements, mapping them onto a political landscape delimited by dominant socio-political and economic institutions, powerful actors, and their attendant ontologies and epistemologies. there are important threads within the tremendously broad ethnographic methodological field from which to draw in order to achieve these ends. understood not just as a set of qualitative research methods, ethnography is a mode of analysis and writing that aims via “thick description” to communicate complex social realities to broader audiences. this attention to the lived is the crux of ethnography’s analytical utility as well as the basis for its potential political significance. in this regard, it should come as no surprise that ethnographers have been compelled—often by the very people with whom they have worked—to address the politics of knowledge production if for no other reason than because ethnographic work is grounded in the lives of others. critiques of ethnographic research are certainly nothing new, having been raised by feminists, indigenous peoples, and anti-colonial struggles (l. smith, 1999), among others, going back decades. within anthropological circles, it was the “crisis of representation” in the mid-1980s studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 subterranean currents 51 that shook objectivist and positivist approaches to ethnography (clifford & marcus, 1986), advancing the banal but fundamental observation that every act of representation is also an act of power and naming anthropology’s historical imbrication with systems of power and domination. confronting these challenges, engaged researchers have plumbed the political potential of ethnography by exploring it as a form of socio-political and cultural intervention. indeed, an emerging body of work produced by politically engaged scholars testifies to the utility of ethnography as a research method particularly well-suited to research with social movements. this is due in large part to the fact that as a methodology it insists on the explicit positioning of the researcher in relation to her research “field” and those who occupy it. even for researchers who seek to eschew the political, this positioning is unavoidable. this self-reflexivity and the willingness to be a part of and, potentially, to be transformed by the act of engaged research is something that is all too often absent from more conventional investigations of social movements. additionally, because of its focus on lived realities, ethnographic methods are particularly well-placed to facilitate a serious exploration of social movements as producers of knowledge rather than simply objects of research (conway, 2004; juris & khasnabish, 2013; maeckelbergh, 2009; sitrin, 2012). david graeber has gone so far as to suggest that ethnography could be a model for the “would-be nonvanguardist revolutionary intellectual” because it offers the possibility “of teasing out the tacit logic or principles underlying certain forms of radical practice, and then, not only offering the analysis back to those communities, but using them to formulate new visions” (2007, p. 310). terming it “militant ethnography,” jeffrey juris has articulated a similar vision of radicalized ethnographic practice which refuses the valourization of “objective distance” and the tendency within the academy to treat social life as an object to decode (2008, p. 20). instead, juris argues that in order “to grasp the concrete logic generating specific practices, one has to become an active participant” and within the context of social movements this means participating in and contributing to the work of these movements themselves (2008, p. 20). juris (2007, 2008) describes a militant ethnographer as someone who not only sympathizes with the struggles of those with whom she works but who is committed to being directly involved in a given struggle over the long term by taking on work, responsibilities, and risks borne by activists themselves. this does not mean that the militant ethnographer only produces tactical or strategic analysis for the movement in which she is involved; indeed, such an ethnographer should produce engaged research capable of speaking to a variety of constituencies. the practice of militant ethnography also does not imply an erasure of issues of power and privilege or the abandonment of commitments to rigorous research methods; rather, its deep logic is grounded in the premise that taking sides is something everyone is already doing and, in the context of social justice struggles, rather than being a violation of ethical research, is directly a part of it. but while militant ethnography resonates with the methodological approach we advance in the halifax studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 52 alex khasnabish radical imagination project, it remains a posture whereby researchers tend to disappear into movements. our own approach tries instead to mobilize the weird autonomy—compromised, privileged, imperfect, unjust, but nonetheless potentially productive—of the academic vocation in order to help collectively craft a space and a process capable of calling something into being which is not yet fully present (khasnabish & haiven, 2012). in the absence of sustained, radicalized mass movements (the surprising emergence of the occupy movement notwithstanding), in the midst of concerted attacks by political and economic elites on hard-won social justice gains, and faced with the waning of previously compelling imaginations of radical political possibility, our research-based intervention in the field of radical imagination must do more than explore fetishized invocations of it, it must participate in the process of collectively calling it into being. convoking the radical imagination the halifax radical imagination project goes further than most ethnographic accounts of social movement activism in the sense that it seeks not merely to observe but to convoke the radical imagination, to catalyze a public dialogue between those who make up radical social struggles and understand radical imagination as a dialogic process. we have sought to achieve this through several different project stages. the team’s active research phase began in september 2010 and was constituted by one-on-one interviews and focus groups, supplemented by our attendance at movement events and a selfreflexive process involving regular team debriefings. project outreach was carried out by placing advertisements in local alternative media sources (print, radio, and on-line), postering and pamphleting in public spaces, using preexisting research and activist connections with groups and individuals, and word-of-mouth participant recruitment. since september 2010, we have conducted nearly thirty one-on-one in-depth and open-ended interviews with diverse members of the halifax activist community. our participants included student activists, radical publishers and academics, anarchists, trade unionists, feminists, queer activists, punks, marxists of various stripes, independent media makers, local food and climate justice activists, and members of direct action collectives. focused on getting research participants to reflect on their own political biographies, notable moments of radicalization, perceptions of opportunities and barriers to radical social transformation, and visions of the future, these interviews aimed to collect an archive of radical activism in halifax at a particularly crucial time marked, on the one hand, by movement reconstitution and, on the other, by an ascendant right wing agenda. we believe this kind of archive has utility not only for social movement scholars but for future generations of activists and organizers, particularly given the absence in so many grassroots, non-institutional movements of a place or process to intentionally curate the collective memory of struggle. the interview stage of this project constituted our initial attempt to provoke studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 subterranean currents 53 a wider dialogue amongst the activist community in halifax. flowing from the interview phase were two critical and interrelated processes. the first was constructing our project website (radicalimagination.org), an interactive space serving as a digital archive of thematically-organized interview clips from consenting interviewees as well as hosting project publications and other outcomes (including an hour-long audio documentary) and providing up-to-date information to participants and the broader public about ongoing project events. at the time of this writing both the website and the audio documentary are still in the final stages of production but both are aimed at expanding the dialogic process of convoking the radical imagination we initiated through our research in halifax. we will strive to disseminate the audio documentary more broadly once it is completed, particularly via activist and other independent media. the second process emerging from the interview stage was the organization/ planning/hosting of a series of three events we configured as “dialogues on the radical imagination” held in the winter and spring of 2011. the dialogues were free events, held in a community rather than academic space, and open not only to project participants but the broader public. rather than simply being a forum for the research team to present our analysis to the community, we structured the dialogues in a way that foregrounded our project participants and positioned the research team as facilitators. each dialogue session was initiated by an invited panel of project participants who took turns offering short (generally 5-10 minutes) and often provocative statements based on personal experiences of organizing and activism that served as springboards for moderated, open discussion amongst project participants and members of the broader community. lasting two hours each, these dialogues orbited around three key problematics: building resistance and alternatives in an age of austerity; the relationship between anti-capitalism and struggles against other structural oppressions; and the question of how we organize effectively for social change. the objective of these sessions, from the perspective of the research team, was not to “solve” these complex issues or chart a singular way forward for radical leftists in halifax but to open a space and a process where it could be possible to safely—though not necessarily comfortably or in ways free of conflict—explore these contested and diverse terrains. these dialogues, in turn, served as a gateway into the project’s final stage (the radical imagination speaker series) which involved inviting speakers with experience in a variety of radical struggles from outside of the halifax context to participate in public talks followed by engaged, critical discussion sessions. in this final stage, our intention was to bring a selection of perspectives and experiences not necessarily found within the local context in order to provide new fuel for the dialogic process of convocation we aimed to stimulate. what i have sought to provide here is an overview of our attempt to build a research-based intervention capable of participating in social change processes and not just cataloguing them. there will, of course, be much more to say as the research team critically engages not only with the reflections offered by our research participants in interviews, on-line, and studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 54 alex khasnabish in public discussions but with our own reflexive analysis along with those of our participants of the process itself. we suspect that at the end of this dialogic process we will have many more questions than answers about the radical imagination and its relationship to radical social change struggles. nevertheless, we are also convinced that our attempt at developing this dialogic, engaged process has already been productive in terms of generating discussion and possibilities concerning the ways engaged research may be used as a radical social change tool, particularly at a time when the horizons of what is socio-politically possible are obscured by crisis, austerity, and an evermore augmented repressive apparatus. notably absent from our research process is any description of what the radical imagination looks like at this moment in halifax. while some may find such an absence curious, this neither surprised nor troubled the research team at all. as i have noted throughout this piece, the radical imagination is not a thing; it is a collective process. our research intervention into the field of social justice struggle in halifax aimed not to catalogue the characteristics of the radical imagination of individuals or collectives but to provide a new space and process capable of offering opportunities to those engaged in radical social justice struggles in which to consider in an open, expansive, and non-sectarian way where their struggles have come from, where they are now, and how they might move forward. elsewhere, we have discussed how one of our key research outcomes was the realization, derived largely from our interview process and a key question we asked each participant about what it would mean to “win” (turbulence collective, 2010), that movements do not spend their lives occupying the airy heights of victory or mired in the depths of defeat but in the “hiatus”–the everyday, unromantic space between success and failure that is the space of social reproduction and persistence (haiven & khasnabish, 2013). our research was therefore not an attempt to catalogue movement wins and losses or to help resolve tactical or strategic debates or to offer an analysis of a specific movement milieu at a particular moment in time, but to explore how research mobilized from the unjustly quasi-autonomous and privileged location of the university might assist movements in learning how best to make use of and dwell within this hiatus. it is our conviction that the hiatus between success and failure is the vital space of daily life (indeed, as each of us probably intimately understands, it is where we as individuals spend most of our lives) and, as such, it is the space in which movements and those who constitute them are produced and reproduced as living social entities. marxist-feminist scholars and activists such as maria mies (1986) and silvia federici (2003, 2012) have demonstrated the centrality of the work of (feminized, invisibilized, unremunerated) social reproduction—that labour that brings labour power into existence and which nurtures and sustains it—not only to capitalist accumulation but to the forms of social life upon which we collectively depend. social movements are, therefore, also sites of social reproduction, and the ways in which this labour is carried out and the ends to which it is directed (what kinds of social spaces and subjectivities it produces) are perhaps all the more significant when we studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 subterranean currents 55 think about radical movements as sites of prefiguration. the reproduction of systems of oppression and exploitation within movements is a deeply troubling dynamic commented upon by numerous scholars and activists (bishop, 2002; featherstone, 2012; graeber, 2009; martinez, 2000; mohanty, 2003; osterweil, 2010; polletta, 2002; walia, 2013). while the forces propelling this internalization of systemic injustice are complex, movements have often deferred addressing the perpetuation of oppression within their own spaces through recourse to a more “urgent” or “immediate” set of concerns, crises, or struggles (bishop, 2002; mies, 1986). movements and their participants often claim they lack the time and space necessary to deal with systematic oppressions and the perpetuation of injustices within their own ranks in the face of a multitude of external crises demanding their urgent attention. this kind of rationalization, one we encountered not infrequently in our own research in halifax, ultimately endlessly postpones the work of coming to terms with these poisonous dynamics and perpetuates the very violence and injustices social justice movements purport to oppose. without claiming that our research intervention successfully resolved this vexing problem in the radical milieu in halifax, our dialogic, convocatory method furnished tools and a context capable of making time for activists and organizers to confront and collectively work through such everyday realities. while our research team was, collectively, averse to conceptualizing research only or even primarily as a form of “radical therapy,” we were nonetheless regularly struck by and remain convinced of the fact that university-based research with social movements undertaken in a spirit of solidarity is capable of offering opportunities that movements and those who comprise them cannot or do not offer themselves. rather than operationalizing and cataloguing movements’ political efficacy or lack thereof and so reinforcing and reproducing conventional notions of “success” and “failure,” our research led us to problematize notions of what counts as “success” and “failure” for solidaristic social movement research and to ask honest questions about what we as engaged researchers can offer. the result was not a disavowal of the hiatus between success and failure either for movements or those who study them; instead, it highlighted the importance of devising strategies of dwelling well in the hiatus and seeking to understand and intervene in it as the space and time of movement reproduction. critical reflections there are some important insights to be drawn from the radical imagination project and its process. first, an admission: nothing in our research at the time gave us even a hint of the emergence of the occupy movement beginning in september 2011. occupy came to halifax in october 2011 with a lively occupation of the grand parade grounds in the heart of the city’s downtown core and involved many people outside of the “usual suspects” in activist terms. that it did not detect the subterranean currents of dissent that studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 56 alex khasnabish would ultimately explode into occupy is not necessarily an indictment of our research but such an absence does and should give us pause and compel us to consider how our own positions as engaged researchers carry with them their own set of assumptions, prejudices, and blindspots. or perhaps we did not miss this percolating dissent; rather, it is possible that our own initiative simply was not built to intersect with this gestating movement. further critical reflection on the project, participant feedback, and research team debriefing is necessary before anything definitive can be said on this point. one vexing question with which we have contended since the earliest stages of this project is whether or not conducting social movement research like this contributes, however unintentionally, to the surveillance, repression, and demobilization of social justice struggles. for example, by curating an on-line archive of activist interview clips, are we not furnishing the state’s security apparatus with a searchable database that renders the fabric of radical social change movements visible to those who seek to disrupt them? and yet, we are equally convinced that if systems of violence, exploitation, and repression are to be successfully challenged, it will only be through mass collective action capable of challenging the status quo and building alternatives to it. engaging people in an accessible, collective, and dialogic way is essential to catalyzing these kinds of movements and convoking the radical imagination essential to inspiring them. this approach, facilitated to varying degrees by the research team, is also methodologically rigorous and robust, providing the framework for critically productive encounters to occur between people committed to a variety of social justice struggles. any and all information relating to social justice struggles is prized by those invested in defending the status quo and the interests it serves. recognizing this, our project has carefully avoided collecting anything that might be considered “operational information” as it relates to activists and their movements. indeed, the project’s focus has always remained squarely on facilitating a collective space and process to convoke the radical imagination with radicals in halifax rather than collecting information about strategies, tactics, and balance of movement forces. of course, we have also sought to strictly protect the confidentiality of all our participants and the anonymity of those who have requested it. none of this makes the risk of our research being co-opted disappear, but it does, at a minimum, build in safeguards that mitigate against it. we remain convinced, as we were at the outset of this project, that having these conversations is now more necessary than ever but only if they truly do contribute to movements and the radical imagination animating them. if not, they are either exercises in academic capital accumulation or group therapy sessions, neither of which meet our identified objectives. many participants reported positive outcomes from the project. they found the interview phase useful, providing a rare opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue about their political biographies, social change commitments, and ideological orientations in an unconventional format not tied to the day-to-day work of their activism. appreciation was often studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 subterranean currents 57 expressed for the archiving of these dialogues through the project (specifically the website) in a way that would be accessible to other activists and the broader public, although this was frequently joined by a wry skepticism that people would actually take the time to read and engage each other’s reflections. others, however, expressed their frustration with the emphasis on “dialogue” and “debate,” contending that such practices were overvalued and could even function to obscure profound ideological and personal tensions within the activist community. some activists simply refused to participate, judging the process from a distance as too disconnected from the pressing issues confronting them in the context of their own social change work or too compromised by its academic location. still others participated but did so anonymously, some choosing to do so out of a wariness of state surveillance, others out of concern for what they perceived to be a highly judgmental community. while we never expected the project to engage everyone in the activist community in halifax and we are loathe to read too much into these dynamics without more evidence and further reflection, it is safe to say that, to some extent at least, this unevenness reflects the deep fractures that continue to scar the landscape of racial activism in halifax and the inability of a process like ours to assist members of this community to work through them. from a methodological perspective, many participants criticized our recruitment strategy, suggesting that “activism,” “radicalism,” and social movement participation cannot be limited to those who self-identify as such, noting that such self-identification highlights the voices of those with social privilege. we were also faced with skepticism about the goals of the project itself, with more than a few activists expressing the belief that it was designed, first and foremost, to accumulate academic capital and only secondarily to benefit the community. some participants challenged the ethical framework guiding the project, claiming that, despite its commitment to engaging primarily anti-hierarchical social movements and the extensive consultation of the activist community during its design phase, it nevertheless lacked formal mechanisms ensuring community direction and oversight. the dialogue sessions produced similarly ambivalent outcomes. on a positive note, many participants spoke of appreciating taking part in a collective process aimed at discussing “big” ideas and sharing political experiences, motivations, and commitments in a space they perceived to be neutral. many agreed that such spaces were relatively rare in their political experience and they also reported being inspired by the sessions. from our perspective as researchers, we were pleased with the relatively high turnout for each session (between thirty and forty in each case) as well as the fact that many returned for all three sessions. but the dialogue sessions did not escape criticism. for example, some participants with more political experience expressed frustration that the dialogues did not contribute tangibly or practically to movement strategy or solidarity. on this point, it is worth remembering that forging solidarity and answering tactical or strategic questions were not actually the goals of the sessions or the project. quite the studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 58 alex khasnabish opposite, in fact, was true, as the dialogues were intended to make differences and disagreements more transparent, lay bare some of the oppressions and injustices internalized within the space of movement reproduction, and stimulate broader collective visions of socio-political possibility. other criticisms raised concerned the choice of the panelists we invited to initiate each session. due to reasons ranging from schedule conflicts to lack of interest, our panelists were often less diverse that we had initially imagined, both in terms of their backgrounds and their political positions. for those more experienced politically, the relatively open nature of the dialogues inhibited their ability to engage one another directly in more sophisticated— and often animated—strategic debates for fear of alienating less seasoned attendees. compounding this, many of our participants from marginalized constituencies—queer, african-nova scotian, and even women—felt that the events’ open-ended and lightly-moderated format did not allow for an effective exploration and practice of anti-oppression politics, thus allowing the sessions to be dominated by the familiar cast of privileged characters. this concern was highlighted during the second dialogue session which aimed to stimulate critical discussion about the intersection of oppression and capitalism and oppression within social movements. while the free-flowing discussion was lively, it rested almost exclusively on the question of capitalist oppression and exploitation and conspicuously avoided the more troublesome and all-too-often submerged issue of movement participants’ own behaviours and practices as they relate to the reproduction of systemic oppressions within and outside of movements. this issue came to the fore again in the leadup to the final dialogue session as issues of sexual aggression, patriarchy, and sexism within the movement were brought up by a number of activists. many participants felt that the project ought to commit time and resources to assisting the community in working through these dynamics, but we have yet to succeed in crafting an effective, collaborative, and engaging way of doing so. this is a prime illustration of the importance of the space—the hiatus— between “success” and “failure” that movements so often dwell within and the quotidian work of reproduction that takes place there. our inability to address in a deeper and more satisfying way the reproduction of oppressive systems within this space does not attest to the impossibility of solidarity research doing so; it only illuminates the importance of the attempt and the limits of our own specific approach. on the whole, however, the research team has been pleased by the community response to the radical imagination project. while not every activist, organizer, or self-identified radical in halifax responded to the project with unequivocal enthusiasm, many were excited to take part in it, others saw a qualified utility in it, while for some it was met with disinterest and skepticism. given that the objectives of the project were never instrumental or tactical, along with our conviction as researchers that the radical imagination is both a subterranean current in collective thought and an everyday manifestation and process, the impact or outcomes of the project are difficult to measure. for those disappointed or frustrated by the fact that we did not studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 subterranean currents 59 provide a snapshot of what the radical imagination in halifax looked like as we wound down our active research phase, we would only remind them that this was never our objective. from the outset we eschewed using research to capture a picture of a specific movement at a specific moment in time and in a specific context and then using this data to generate explanatory models about how movements work, what the relationship between different kinds of social change “variables” is, or how movements “succeed” or “fail.” instead, we sought to mobilize our position and resources as academically-located researchers in order to contribute to processes of knowledge production that movements are already engaged in, albeit in a tremendous diversity of ways and with varying levels of commitment and success. in this respect, we were heartened by the fact that many of those who took part in the radical imagination project reported positive experiences and a broader capacity to collectively envision the future. and yet, from our perspective as researchers, we also feel that the critical discussions carried on through the phases of this project did not achieve the kinds of innovation, provocation, and inspiration for which we had hoped at the outset. in this sense, the radical imagination project as surveyed here was our first attempt at learning to work in the hiatus—in the everyday spaces between euphoric victories and demoralizing defeats—and something we must refine and refocus as we strive to do so better. in some critical ways our methodological toolbox relied too much on methods steeped in conventional assumptions of “successful” research outcomes (good data, novel outcomes, contributions to “the field”) and “successful” social movements (wellestablished, clearly organized, capable of influencing political institutions and decision-makers). indeed, from our perspective—further confirmed by the reflections provided by participants—the critical, engaged discussions our project aimed to catalyze were largely a rehashing of debates that have taken place amongst radicals at least since the 1960s. indeed, as the project proceeded, it was the conviction of some members of the research team that despite our committed attempts to create a novel, radicalizing process capable of convoking the imagination, we simply did not push far enough beyond a relatively conventional qualitative research paradigm and so never managed to facilitate a truly collective, dialogic research space or process. this realization, in part, stimulated the third stage of the project focused on inviting speakers from outside of halifax to come to the city and give talks on issues relating to the radical imagination and radical social change. the first iteration of the radical imagination speakers series ran in january 2012 and featured dr. glen coulthard, a member of the yellowknives dene first nation and a professor in the first nations studies program and the department of political science at the university of british columbia. in two talks over two days—one aimed at a broader community audience, the other held in a university space and attended primarily by academics—coulthard focused on indigenous struggles, place-based imagination, de-colonization, and the fabric of radical struggle for social change in the context of the canadian state. the talks stimulated considerable interest and critical discussion amongst studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 60 alex khasnabish those who were in attendance. they were also digitally audio recorded and posted to the halifax media co-op website and will ultimately be uploaded to the radical imagination project’s website. the second installment of the series took place in august 2012, featuring dr. gary kinsman, a long-time queer liberation, anti-poverty, and anti-capitalist activist and a professor of sociology at laurentian university. kinsman’s talk, held in a public library in the historically marginalized but currently gentrifying north end of halifax, was entitled “queer liberation history: resisting capitalism and oppression and challenging the neoliberal queer.” much like coulthard’s talks, kinsman’s presentation generated considerable interest in the activist community and was also digitally recorded for archival purposes. in november 2012, max haiven, my radical imagination project codirector and a professor at the nova scotia college of art and design, gave a presentation based on his experiences working with occupy sandy, the grassroots mutual aid response to superstorm sandy that devastated the new york metropolitan area in october 2012. focusing on how the idea and practices of the commons provide a means of resistance to “disaster capitalism” (klein, 2008), haiven’s presentation generated fruitful dialogue on questions relating to community capacity-building and the role of the state in the age of austerity. we continued the series in the fall of 2013 when academics and activists silvia federici and george caffentzis visited in october and delivered a series of lectures on the politics of the commons. in these public talks, federici and caffentzis discussed themes including women and the global economy, the politics of work under capitalism, anti-debt struggles, and the concepts of the commons and their enclosure. their visit took place alongside a public celebration of the 250th anniversary of the halifax commons, a large parcel of land in the middle of the city, some of which remains public parkland and some of which has been privatized or used to house hospitals and other public institutions. it also occurred alongside the halifax people’s history conference, a two-day event aimed at presenting the rich and diverse histories of people’s struggles for social justice in nova scotia. the conference was organized by a non-sectarian, grassroots, anti-capitalist initiative called solidarity halifax, a group that emerged as our primary research phase was drawing to a close and that represents an important and exciting initiative in the social movement landscape of nova scotia. in november 2013, the radical imagination project hosted two talks by harsha walia, a vancouver-based feminist and anti-racist organizer and author of undoing border imeprialism (2013) noted for her work with no one is illegal, a direct action collective committed to migrant justice. walia’s first talk focused on feminism, anti-oppressive practice, and solidarity while the second was about people’s movements challenging border imperialism and both generated significant interest within the local social justice community. the following week, the project co-hosted the book launch of yellow ribbons: the militarization of national identity in canada (2013) by studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 subterranean currents 61 local author and activist a. l. mccready. we are currently planning further instalments of the radical imagination speakers series. the feedback we have received from participants to date and our own impressions of it to date confirm the utility of this project stage for activists seeking to rebuild movements and spark their radical imaginations. our hope for this stage of the project continues to be that voices from outside the halifax community will catalyze and provoke new ideas and conversations that might otherwise not be possible. this is not because our research participants lack the necessary imagination, but because, as we discovered in our interviews, dialogue sessions, and conversations, complicated personal and political histories render some important issues and debates essentially taboo. outside perspectives and voices may allow us to navigate fractures and fissures that otherwise might be impassable. conclusion: social research, social change, and the future at a historical moment marked by limitless crisis, war, austerity, deepening inequality, social decay, and an ever augmented repressive state apparatus, researchers and other intellectuals willing to offer ideological and technocratic fixes in defense of the dominant order and the elite interests it represents are now cast as “public” social scientists par excellence. but, as janet roitman (2013) has so perceptively noted, declarations of “crisis” today are not simply descriptions of empirical realities; they are invocations of the powerful that serve to open up certain pathways for action while foreclosing others. as traditional sources of funding for research and post-secondary education dry up, withered in the neoliberal desert, more and more universities, faculties, departments, and academics have felt compelled to court private, vested interests—particularly from the corporate sector—to replace them and, in so doing, have paid for their continued existence with their autonomy, integrity, and critical capacity. in this sense, the trope of crisis has served as a powerful disciplining tool reshaping the ways research, critical inquiry, and education are envisioned, valued, and practiced. against research as technocracy, i have attempted to chart an alternative approach to what a practice of solidarity research might look like. while it should be abundantly clear the radical imagination project is far from perfect, as an experiment in innovating an ethnographically-based research method capable not only of documenting social movements and social change struggles but actually engaging them it has proven promising. more than this, our project has also demonstrated that it is possible to conduct engaged, committed research that participates in efforts to realize a better world without sacrificing academic rigour or our imperfect autonomy as researchers in so doing. indeed, through this work we fruitfully explored the utility of the weird and always unjust autonomy of the academy as a way to do research with social movements that contributes something to them that they are not doing for themselves. in this sense, our project not only provided studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 62 alex khasnabish resources and neutral space for activists to have discussions they were not having elsewhere, it also intervened in the frenzied temporality of activism so frequently characterized by urgent mobilizations to defend against both the erosion of gains won and fresh attacks to the fabric of social justice. this slower space and time provided by our solidarity research, as i have discussed throughout this piece, allowed for critical moments of deep reflection and afforded the opportunity for activists to have conversations about “big ideas” that they felt they did not have the time or luxury for in the course of their day-to-day activities. this is, hopefully, not all solidarity research can do, but it is nonetheless a satisfying and useful place to start. the systemic forms of violence, inequality, and exploitation shaping our world today will not be solved through technocratic fixes or through the proper application of expert knowledge. in fact, if the latest convulsions of global capitalism reveal anything, it is that our systems of knowledge production and application have largely become far too enmeshed in the status quo and the dominant interests it reflects. what is needed, then, at least in part, are approaches to critical research that seek not only to describe a given phenomena or to ruminate endlessly on its complexity but to participate in facilitating collective, grassroots ways of envisioning and, ultimately, materializing alternatives to systemic forms of oppression and exploitation. critical and engaged research grounded in rigorous, principled methods matters—perhaps now more than ever given the ideological, mystifying nature of the ascendant right’s assault on basic principles of reason, justice, democracy, equality, freedom, and peace—and while it is not the only or even the most important piece in the social change puzzle, it has the potential to assist social justice struggles in ways that go beyond providing good information or reliable analysis. today we face a concerted attempt to enclose our collective imagination of the politically possible by those with vested interests in diminishing our capacity to envision and live otherwise. in the face of this, critical social research must not only help reveal structures and systems of violence, exploitation, and oppression—as well as those who benefit from their perpetuation and those who are consumed by them; it must also contribute to people’s capacity to imagine and forge paths beyond them. references appadurai, a. 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(1979). the dynamics of social movements: resource mobilization, social control, and tactics. cambridge, ma: winthrop. operationalizing theories and methods to integrate social justice in lis scholarship the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.36678 operationalizing theories and methods to integrate social justice in lis scholarship guest editor: bharat mehra, university of alabama, usa keywords: lis scholarship; methods; research; scholarship; social justice; theories publication type: editorial editorial n april 2021, with the indictment of the murderers of george floyd and ahmaud arbery in the united states, the quest for racial justice found a sliver of hope. this sliver of hope gleamed only slightly though, for the genetic legacy of human oppressions and all forms of subjugation towards each other are deeply entrenched in our evolutionary record and cultural history. so too, are the interlocking social, cultural, political, and economic systems of privilege that systemically continue to favor some groups of people, while disenfranchising others from similar freedoms of thought, expression, equitable opportunity, and human fulfillment. thus, these momentous judicial verdicts serve as only a measure of justice. yet, they provide an urgent opportunity for all of us to find the voice to speak up, speak out, and take actions to dismantle white privilege and to destabilize white superiority that all too often seem to throttle the whole of humanity into “the sunken place,” an abyss of darkness. we, as library and information professionals across the world, still have much work to do to continue challenging the intersecting injustices we encounter in our everyday lives at work and at home, in all its ugly shapes and intensities. the journey to reform our institutions and communities and achieve any substantive transformations and measurable progressive changes is still a long, dark, and winding road. in response to our contemporary racial trauma and political turbulence, this special issue of the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion (ijidi) (volume 5, issue 2) highlights excellent examples of social justice scholarship in library and information studies (lis) that illustrate intersecting theories and methods in the delivery of research, teaching, service, and engagement activities. this collection of articles includes novel contributions that exemplify creative weaving of these intersections that are empirical, methodological, theory-focused, pedagogical, and/or practical in nature. the purpose of this special issue is to bring together voices of both emerging and established lis researchers with ranging interdisciplinary perspectives and transdisciplinary paradigmatic roots that embrace social justice as an intentional and deliberate strategy to generate impact via information-related work (bernier, 2019; cooke et al., 2016). the term “scholarship” in the title of this special issue is intentionally used to serve multiple agendas. first, it contextualizes documentation and analysis through intersecting lenses of diverse theories and alternate methodologies from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary origins i https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi operationalizing theories and methods the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.36678 to promote a social justice standard in lis research and practice, education and teaching, policy development, service design, and program implementation. furthermore, when we think of the term, “information scholarship” (embedded within the concept of “lis scholarship”) the idea also broadly reflects intersections and overlaps within the traditional teaching-researchservice/community engagement paradigm where these tenets are all too often treated as isolated and separate in an elitist and exclusionary western-centric academy, with marginal relationships and relevance to community-embedded contexts (mehra, in press; mehra & gray, 2020). also, the idea of “information scholarship” challenges privileged notions surrounding constricted and fragmented constructs of pedantic theory in information research that have been traditionally considered highbrow and separate from library practice or methodology. further, the expression highlights the problems in the reliance on narrowly operationalized qualitative research in lis during its infancy on primarily mimicking biased western-centric sources of the social sciences (such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology) with their own shortcomings (e.g., internalization of positivist and postpositivist strategies and research representations exclusively disseminated through closed networks) (creswell & creswell, 2018; cronin, 2008; fidel, 2008; mehra, 2021a; olson, 1995; sandstrom & sandstrom, 1995). these unhealthy legacies might still be considered inherent, for example, in editorial practices of mainstream journals in lis and beyond, that impose stringent word-count stipulations emerging from descriptions of positivist or postpositivist research on humanistic, interpretive, and critical scholarship, as if they are the same (mehra, 2021b). this probably led to a “watering down” of their analysis in the latter, that then seemingly gets misperceived as incomplete, ad hoc, and lacking rigor. with a shift in perception for lis scholarship in mind, this collection showcases research that adopt rigorous models, frameworks, theories, methods, and approaches to further social justice and inclusion advocacy in the lis field to further principles of fairness, justice, and equality/equity for all people. the six articles included in this collection selectively present a diverse array of lis scholarship using intersecting theories and methods highlighted in their analysis. table 1 summarizes this research collection in terms of their category/functional role, context of study, representative theoretical bent, operationalized research methods, and deliverable/implications for social justice scholarship in lis. table 1. overview of issue contents article name and author category/ functional role context of study theoretical bent operationalized research methods implications for social justice in lis more than lip service (winberry) research/ framing lista and liss databases drawing ties between theory and methods in lis content analysis of 247 records typology of social justice in lis literature understanding social justice through practitioners’ language (mills, kociubuk, & campana) research/ framing public librarians bridging divides in theoretical notions of equity, engagement, and empowerment across to the practitioners’ world grounded theory analysis of 20 semistructured interviews with public library staff demonstrate a complex, multifaceted portrait of how practitioners describe equity, engagement, and 2 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index operationalizing theories and methods the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.36678 empowerment case study inquiry & black feminist resistance (gray) research/ approaches + context reflections of research into the role of activistmothers in a chicago public housing community role of familial in an ethnic, racial, and gendered community; black feminist resistance case study inquiry of the personal narrative; storytelling significance of a critical-qualitative case study approach in community-focused research meaning and memory: reconsidering the appalachian oral history project (sikes) research/ approaches + context appalachian oral history project; black identity in central appalachia community archival studies; oral histories and black identity ethnographic methods in archival and historical scholarship complex understanding of place and identity; reclaiming of stories and oral histories; space for traditional research to push boundaries and embrace political advocacy as an aspect of the fight for social justice engaging with silences (kitchens) report from the field/ approaches + context clayton state’s master of archival studies program theorizing of educating archivists analysis of class discussion activities + course assignments insights for development of social justice intersections in the archival education curriculum a qualitative study exploring neurodiversity conference themes, representations, and issues of inclusivity (mellifont) viewpoints/ emerging domains ocd as a form of neurodivergence inclusivity of neurodiversity conferences content analysis of 22 conference flyers and 14 scholarly articles evidence-based justification for intersectionality and explicit inclusion of ocdfocused content in neurodivergence conferences note: category/functional role, context of study, representative theoretical bent, operationalized lis research methods, and deliverable/implications for social justice scholarship in lis represented in the articles published in this special issue. the first two research manuscripts play a “framing” representational role in the collection. joseph winberry’s opening article “more than lip service: identifying a typology of “social justice” research in lis” presents a purely scholarly context in reporting findings of a literature review of self-identified “social justice” research in two large academic databases of lis—the library information science & technology abstracts (lista) and library and information science source (liss)—to identify the components that make social justice research intersections possible. the results present a valuable typology of two research types and eight sub-types for organizing existing social justice research within lis, arguably as an emerging sub-discipline. j. elizabeth mills, jacqueline kociubuk, and kathleen campana’s article “understanding social justice through practitioners’ language” develops a critical semantic foundation of social justice 3 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index operationalizing theories and methods the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.36678 concepts, situated within the public librarian practitioner’s understanding. this works-inprogress study presents a grounded theory analysis of 20 semi-structured interviews with library staff and their community partners. the research explores and unpacks the practitioners’ language to demonstrate a complex, multifaceted portrait of how these practitioners describe equity, engagement, and empowerment. the next two research manuscripts describe select approaches and contextual settings for the study of social justice in lis. laverne gray’s article “case study inquiry & black feminist resistance: reflections on a methodological journey in the furtherance of lis social justice research” explains the researcher’s ownership of tools of inquiry using personal narrative. using the researcher’s journey as an example, a narrative inquiry approach is explored through a theoretical and methodological iterative case development process. the paper calls for a need in lis social justice inquiry models to utilize a critical-qualitative approach of case study development in the pursuit of community-focused research. scott sikes’ contribution, “meaning and memory: reconsidering the appalachian oral history project,” employs emerging ethnographic methods in archival work and historical scholarship to provide an enhanced understanding of place and identity, allowing for a reclaiming of stories by black residents in central appalachia, united states. in this process, the author generates intellectual space within the intersections of theory, method, and discipline of traditional information science research to advance the discipline’s boundaries by embracing political advocacy as an aspect of the fight for social justice. joshua f. kitchens’ article “engaging with silences: clayton state master of archival studies program’s approach to teaching” reports from the field and discusses the theoretical underpinnings to educating archivists, systematically integrating social justice in its various components. analysis of class discussion activities and assignments illustrate how an archival education curriculum can prepare students to engage with issues of representation in archival collections once they are in the field. the last article by damian mellifont entitled “a qualitative study exploring neurodiversity conference themes, representations, and issues of inclusivity” represents a special viewpoint in emerging opportunities as it critically investigates inclusion in conferences related to ocd-focused content. the exploratory research applies content analysis of 22 conference flyers and 14 scholarly articles to generate evidence-based justifications for a greater inclusion and intersectionality in generating future conference themes and representations. i was or currently am affiliated with three doctoral committees of authors in this collection. their work as well as those of others went through a rigorous review process to sharpen, strengthen, and eventually polish the manuscripts to make them shine. i intentionally draw attention to these professional connections with the authors in order to take ownership of my positionality and situatedness of these social and professional ties in the emergence of this lis scholarly network of social justice advocates. through the process, i also challenge misrepresented notions of objectivity of positivist and postpositivist researchers and their reliance on citing each other’s work in high impact-factor journals that failed to acknowledge the existence of their “invisible colleges” for a very long time (crane, 1972). here, my strategy to “make visible” my own professional ties with the authors is a direct confrontation of these lapses of the past. further, my critical strategy serves to pinpoint the “dirty economics” associated with the scholarly publication business models that have created partial tenure and promotion policies favoring positivist and postpositivist research in their predominant resistance to action research, social justice/advocacy, and community-engaged scholarship, amongst other 4 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index operationalizing theories and methods the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.36678 alternate modes of assessment and research productivity (mehra, bishop, & partee ii, 2018). the development of such a social network of lis professionals as social justice advocates involved in social justice scholarship is noteworthy. the emergence of social justice-oriented lis research is significant within lis and its predominant majorities of white and female constituents that have sustained their own hegemonic canons, theories, methods, and paradigms to entrench themselves and their impact, while including some and excluding others. i truly appreciate the partnership with ijidi in providing a valuable opportunity to publish emerging scholarship in this regard. developing such a collection allowed for exploring creative integrations of lis theories and methods to further social justice agendas through a scholarly venue. the generosity and commitment of the editorial staff and anonymous reviewers in providing timely, constructive, and detailed feedback on the manuscripts was most humbling. the epistemic protest waves against racially motivated police hostilities (e.g., black lives matter movement) have exposed the wide and deep cracks in the practice of american justice, equality, freedom, human dignity, fair government, and the “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” espoused in united states declaration of independence (u. s. citizenship and immigration services, 2007/2008). lis professionals have played a limited role in applying their theory development and methods applications (amongst other efforts) to mobilize actions in supporting the recent public outcry for an immediate stop to human rights violations of african americans and other racial minorities in the united states (carney, 2016; lebron, 2017; mehra, 2021c). lis professionals now have this potential to extend their scholarship from its shackles of a limited past and current constraints (winberry & bishop, 2021). the contextual situatedness in this current problematic racial age and political divisiveness in its scale of horror, which includes: implications of racial violence, propensity of white resistance to justice, degree of intensity in the public outrage, and its national-and-global spread has now forced complacent lis scholars and educators (amongst others) around the world to integrate action-oriented social justice efforts of community activism, racial advocacy, and progressive change (mehra, 2021b; cooke 2020). social justice and inclusion advocacy in lis through an information lens of analysis and communication action can promote fairness, justice, and equality/equity for all people. in the past lis scholars have tip-toed around these issues, clinging on to outdated notions of perceived neutrality, being passive bystanders as community dynamics enfold, and exhibiting resistance to decenter their inherent privileged positions of power and authority (gibson et al., 2017). the selected articles in this special issue begin to challenge some of these blinders and provide a glimpse of how progressive lis scholars are drawing on varied intersections of theory and methods to generate social justice impacts that are intentional (deliberate), systematic (rigorous), actionoriented, and outcome-driven to deliver meaningful information systems, services, and other forms of information products (jaeger et al., 2014; mehra et al., 2019). they illustrate ways to address the gap of the “how-tos” in developing lis scholarship and technological deliverables that change imbalanced status quo power dynamics in tangible and meaningful ways (allen et al., 2019). in conclusion, i share select themes and my strategies in compiling this collection. i tried to focus on action-oriented initiatives in lis scholarship that further social justice principles in specific contextual settings of lapse. the degree and intensity of actions and the involvement of various internal and external stakeholders obviously varied. we will continue to see a threading of emerging lis and non-lis theoretical and conceptual groundings in conjunction with traditional 5 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index operationalizing theories and methods the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.36678 and non-traditional methods and methodologies to further aspects of impact beyond the ivory tower of the academy. lis scholars are beginning to apply entrenched research paradigms and methods of the past (e.g., postpositivist and quantitative approaches) towards new conceptualized research modes in their study of social justice content and related matters of significance. these efforts represent a new wave of social justice scholarship and provide possible beginnings for postpositivist researchers to engage more deeply in the explorations of relevance of their work towards social justice concerns. the “so what” implications and specific strategies to change the existing scenarios of inequities and conditions of marginalization will continue getting strengthened with such efforts. for example, it is more than an occurrence of “social justice” vocabularies in various exclusive electronic databases to identify trends in a white-ist (white + elitist) lis scholarship that makes the research itself, an example of social justice work (mehra & gray, 2020). also, documenting the number and themes from big datasets of online contributions of diverse underserved constituencies on twitter about their experiences and perspectives, presents a correlation distribution or regression analysis of the findings. what is done as a result of these research findings and what role underserved stakeholders are playing in making changes to their disenfranchised circumstances are valuable directions in social justice to explore such examples. tangible and concrete information-related deliverables that improve an understanding of a phenomenon under study and provide actions to change deliberating conditions, are valuable goals to consider in forthcoming lis scholarship integrating social justice theories and methods. that said, this collection of social justice lis research contributes to the ongoing discourse within our profession that can lead towards individual and social empowerment, change agency, community building, and community development outcomes, thereby, generating greater impact beyond our predominantly white-ist isolated ivory towers of the academy and other exclusive spaces of power and privilege (mehra & gray, 2020). references allen, d., given, l. m., burnett, g., & karanasios, s. (2019). guest editorial: information behavior and information practices: a special issue for research on people’s engagement with technology. journal of the association for information science & technology 70(12), 1299-1301. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24303 bernier, a. (2019). isn’t it time for youth services instruction to grow up? from superstition to scholarship. journal of education for library and information science 60(2), 118-138. https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis.2018-0055 carney, n. (2016). all lives matter, but so does race: black lives matter and the evolving role of social media. humanity & society 40(2), 180-199. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0160597616643868 cooke, n. a. (2020, september 11). turning antiracist knowledge and education into action. publishers weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industrynews/libraries/article/84313-are-you-ready-to-stand-in-the-gap.html cooke, n. a., sweeney, m. e. & noble, s. u. (2016). social justice as topic and tool: an 6 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24303 https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis.2018-0055 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0160597616643868 https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/84313-are-you-ready-to-stand-in-the-gap.html https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/84313-are-you-ready-to-stand-in-the-gap.html operationalizing theories and methods the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.36678 attempt to transform a lis culture and curriculum. the library quarterly: information, community, policy 86(1), 107-124. https://doi.org/10.1086/684147 crane, d. (1972). invisible colleges. university of chicago press. creswell, j. w., & creswell, j. d. (2018). research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5th edition). sage. cronin, b. (2008). the sociological turn in information science. journal of information science 34(4), 465-475. https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0165551508088944 fidel, r. (2008). are we there yet?: mixed methods research in library and information science. library & information science research 30(4), 265-272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2008.04.001 gibson, a. n., chancellor, r. l., cooke, n. a., dahlen, s. p., lee, s. a., & shorish, y. (2017). libraries on the frontlines: neutrality and social justice. libraries 99. http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/letfspubs/99 jaeger, j. t., gorham, u., taylor, n. g., & kettnich, k. (2014). library research and what libraries actually do now: education, inclusion, social services, public spaces, digital literacy, social justice, human rights, and other community needs. the library quarterly: information, community, policy 84(4), 491-493. https://doi.org/10.1086/677785 lebron, c. j. (2017). the making of black lives matter: a brief history of an idea. oxford university press. mehra, b. (in press). social justice design and implementation: innovative pedagogies to transform lis education. journal of education for library and information science 62(4). mehra, b. (2021a). elfreda annmary chatman in the 21st century: at the intersection of critical theory and social justice imperatives. journal of critical library and information studies 3 (special issue chatman revisited: re-examining and resituating social theories of identity, access, and marginalization in lis. edited by n. a. cooke and a. n. gibson). https://journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jclis/article/view/142 mehra, b. (2021b). overcoming interrelated challenges to “diversity by design” in the lis tenure and promotion process in the american academy. in k. dali and n. caidi (eds.), humanizing lis education and practice: diversity by design (pp. 105-118). routledge. mehra, b. (2021c). enough crocodile tears! libraries moving beyond performative antiracist politics. the library quarterly: information, community, policy 91(2), 137-149. https://doi.org/10.1086/713046 mehra, b., bishop, b. w., & partee ii, r. p. (2018). a case methodology of action research to promote economic development: implications for lis education. journal of education for library and information science 59(1-2), 48-65. https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis.59.12.06 7 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi.org/10.1086/684147 https://doi.org/10.1177%2f0165551508088944 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2008.04.001 http://commons.lib.jmu.edu/letfspubs/99 https://doi.org/10.1086/677785 https://journals.litwinbooks.com/index.php/jclis/article/view/142 https://doi.org/10.1086/713046 https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis.59.1-2.06 https://doi.org/10.3138/jelis.59.1-2.06 operationalizing theories and methods the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.36678 mehra, b., elmborg, j., & sweeney, m. (2019). a curricular model in a “social justice and inclusion advocacy” doctoral concentration: global implications for lis (juried paper). proceedings of the association for library and information science education (alise) annual conference: exploring learning in a global information context, knoxville, tennessee, september 24-26, 2019. mehra, b., & gray, l. (2020). an “owning up” of white-ist trends in lis to further real transformations. the library quarterly: information, community, policy 90(2), 189239. https://doi.org/10.1086/707674 olson, h. (1995). quantitative “versus” qualitative research: the wrong question. proceedings of the annual conference of the canadian association for information science. https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/ojs.cais-acsi.ca/index.php/caisasci/article/view/414/362 sandstrom, a. r., & sandstrom, p. e. (1995). the use and misuse of anthropological methods in library and information science research. the library quarterly: information, community, policy 65(2), 161-199. https://doi.org/10.1086/602775 u. s. citizenship and immigration services. (2007/2008). (revised). the declaration of independence and the constitution of the united states. u. s. citizenship and immigration services. https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/uscis/office%20of%20citizenship/citizenshi p%20resource%20center%20site/publications/pdfs/m-654.pdf winberry, j. & bishop, b.w. (2021). documenting social justice in library and information science research: a literature review. journal of documentation 77(3). https://doi.org/10.1108/jd-08-2020-0136 bharat mehra (bmehra@ua.edu) joined the school of library and information studies at the university of alabama as professor and ebsco endowed chair in social justice in january 2019. from january 2005 to december 2018, he was a faculty member in the school of information sciences at the university of tennessee. his research focuses on diversity and social justice in library and information science and community informatics or the use of information and communication technologies to empower minority and underserved populations to make meaningful changes in their everyday lives. he has applied action research to further engaged scholarship and community engagement while collaborating with racial/ethnic groups, international diaspora, lgbtq+ people, rural communities, low-income families, small businesses, and others, to represent their experiences and perspectives in the design of community-based information systems and services. homepage: bmehra.people.ua.edu. 8 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi.org/10.1086/707674 https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/ojs.cais-acsi.ca/index.php/cais-asci/article/view/414/362 https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/ojs.cais-acsi.ca/index.php/cais-asci/article/view/414/362 https://doi.org/10.1086/602775 https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/uscis/office%20of%20citizenship/citizenship%20resource%20center%20site/publications/pdfs/m-654.pdf https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/uscis/office%20of%20citizenship/citizenship%20resource%20center%20site/publications/pdfs/m-654.pdf https://doi.org/10.1108/jd-08-2020-0136 mailto:bmehra@ua.edu http://bmehra.people.ua.edu/ references fobear final galley nov 18 15 correspondence address: katherine fobear, liu institute for global issues, university of british columbia, 6476 nw marine drive, vancouver, bc, v6t 1z2; email: kfobear@mail.ubc.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 “i thought we had no rights” – challenges in listening, storytelling, and representation of lgbt refugees katherine fobear university of british columbia, canada abstract storytelling serves as a vital resource for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* (lgbt) refugees’ access to asylum. it is through telling their personal stories to the canadian immigration and refugee board that lgbt refugees’ claims for asylum are accessed and granted. storytelling also serves as a mechanism for lgbt refugees to speak about social injustice within and outside of canada. in this article, i explore the challenges of storytelling and social justice as an activist and scholar. i focus on three contexts where justice and injustice interplay in lgbt refugee storytelling: the canadian immigration and refugee board, public advocacy around anti-queer violence and refugee rights, and oral history research. i describe how in each arena storytelling can be a powerful tool of justice for lgbt refugees to validate their truths and bring their voices to the forefront in confronting state and public violence. i investigate how these areas can also inflict their own injustices on lgbt refugees by silencing their voices and reproducing power hierarchies. keywords lgbt refugees; forced migration; queer studies; community activism; activist-scholar; oral history; storytelling i remember writing down my story for my hearing. i remember at the end, the file that i was presented was like bigger than a bible in thickness, it was a big, big file. there was a lot of stuff in there, i basically empty my heart in that, you know. and again my whole story was that i really thought that nobody cared about homosexuals. i thought that we had no rights. (interview with hector, june 2013)1 stories matter for refugees. refugees make sense of their past and present experiences, interact with each other, and participate in cultural, political, and 1 hector is a gay cisgender refugee from south america. he claimed asylum in the early 2000s and is now a canadian citizen. as with all interview participants quoted in this article, hector’s real name and country of origin are kept confidential. “i  thought  we  had  no  rights”   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 103 social conversations through sharing their stories. it is through telling and retelling their stories to the canadian border service agency (cbsa) and the canadian immigration and refugee board (irb) that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans* (lgbt) refugees work to gain asylum in canada . 2 the significance of lgbt refugee stories continues long after claimants receive a positive decision on their refugee claim, as their stories are powerful tools to bring attention to larger issues around anti-queer violence and provide a counter-narrative to anti-refugee sentiments in mainstream canada (murray, 2014). 3 for lgbt refugees, being able to share their stories and thus contribute to critical policy issues around inequality and immigration is an important step toward social justice about refugee protection and settlement in canada. in recent years, refugees have emerged as powerful political actors in canada, using their stories to challenge stricter immigration controls by canadian federal and provincial governments (de genova, 2010; nyers, 2010; naples, 2009). lgbt refugees across the country contribute to this discussion by sharing their stories with the irb, the media, via public events, and by participating in community-based research projects. their stories serve as a crucial source of knowledge around the intersection of gender and sexuality in immigration. growing awareness in the media around persons seeking protection in canada from anti-queer persecution abroad has brought attention to underlying heteronormativity in the canadian asylum process and the need to offer protection to lgbt refugees (jenicek & wong, 2009; jordan, 2009; murray, 2014). valerie janesick (2010), sharene razack (1996), and alan wong (2009) remind us that storytelling is not, however, a neutral process. activists and researchers must be critical of how stories are used and who is allowed to tell another’s story. lgbt refugees’ stories are a critical component to their claim for asylum and are important to their sense of self. these individuals are active storytellers in the sense that they work hard to construct their narratives, choose what to reveal and what to elaborate. for many who have lived in silence most of their lives because of homophobia and transphobia, being able to share their story with outsiders can induce a sense of pride and accomplishment. at the same time, lgbt refugees can also experience 2 i use the phrasing ‘lgbt refugees’ to refer to individuals who file a refugee claim based on fear of persecution because of their sexual orientation or gender identity (jordan, 2010; mule & gates-gasse, 2012). ‘trans*’ refers to individuals who do not associate or identify themselves with the gender assigned to them at birth; it is an umbrella term for gender nonconforming and gender variant individuals (roen, 2001; stryker, currah, & moore, 2008; spade, 2008). according to westbrook & schilt (2009, p. 461), “cisgender refers to individuals who have a match between the gender they were assigned at birth, their bodies, and their personal identity. this term is a complement to trans* or gender nonconforming individuals who may not associate their assigned gender at birth with their personal identity or body”. 3 ‘queer’ refers to non-heterosexual and/or gender-variant individuals (phelan, 2001; valocchi, 2005; luibhéid & cantú, 2005), as well as an anti-essential theoretical and political approach to sexuality and gender (epprecht, 2008). a queer perspective to migration in particular emphasizes sexuality and gender as a critical component to processes of migration (luibhéid & cantú, 2005). katherine fobear studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 104 silencing, and the appropriation and misuse of their stories if their narratives are coopted to serve nationalist agendas and support systems of power that marginalize racialized and indigenous queer individuals inside and outside canada. it is therefore important to be critical of the ways in which storytelling is used for social justice (north, 2006, 1995). i work with lgbt refugee stories on a daily basis as an oral history researcher and as a volunteer for rainbow refugee, a vancouver-based organization assisting persons claiming asylum in canada on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and hiv status (see http://www.rainbowrefugee.ca). as a volunteer for rainbow refugee, i help lgbt refugee claimants tell their stories at their irb hearings. i also facilitate public speaking opportunities for lgbt refugees to share their stories with policy makers and media. in my oral history research, i interview and analyze lgbt refugees’ life stories in order to understand their experiences of home and belonging in canada. the potential efficacy of storytelling as a social justice resource informs my commitment to record lgbt refugee stories and to ensure that refugees voices and concerns are at the forefront of social change. as valerie janesick (2007), bell hooks (2009), and lee anne bell (2010) argue, storytelling is an important social justice tool for marginalized communities. when members of oppressed communities are able to tell their stories, they can challenge norms and speak directly to the social, economic, and political forces that marginalize them (janesick, 2010). their knowledge is based on everyday experience, granting them authority as storytellers and critical knowledge-producers. in this article, i explore the challenges of storytelling and social justice as an activist and scholar. i focus on three contexts where justice and injustice interplay in lgbt refugee storytelling: the canadian irb, public advocacy around anti-queer violence and refugee rights, and oral history research. in each arena, i explore how storytelling can be a powerful tool of justice for lgbt refugees that validates their truths and brings their voices to the forefront in confronting state and public violence. i investigate how these arenas can also inflict their own injustices on lgbt refugees by silencing their voices and reproducing power hierarchies. at the forefront of my exploration are questions around voice, representation, and ownership of lgbt refugees’ stories. justice and injustice: working with lgbt refugee stories as a volunteer and activist i remember the judge [irb member] at my hearing. i felt connected to her. i felt that i was speaking to a human being, to an authority figure that has a very sound understanding of a single soul individualized in many complex forms. our bodies were connected. i felt that i was speaking to her heart. i spoke my truth, my heart’s truth, to her. (interview with jordan, july 2013) “i  thought  we  had  no  rights”   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 105 the excerpt above comes from an interview i conducted with a gay refugee from south asia who is an active volunteer for rainbow refugee and has shared his story publically several times. his description of the hearing expresses the powerful and intense feelings many lgbt refugees experience in sharing their stories with the irb.4 for many of these individuals who have been oppressed and silenced in their home country, telling their story to a representative of the canadian state and having their story taken as credible and valid is a source of personal justice.5 at the same time, the refugee board hearing can also serve as a place of silencing and injustice. claimants are under intense scrutiny by irb members for credibility and proof of legitimate fear. in this atmosphere, refugees face significant pressure to tell their story that is intelligible and compelling. consequently, as david murray contends, lgbt refugees’ stories are often forced into particular scripts that reproduce ethnocentric ideas around gender and sexuality, as well as support ongoing colonial structures of power (murray, 2014; morrissey & jordan, 2013; fobear, 2014). in order to make a refugee claim in canada, claimants must write a detailed story about their lives and the reasons they fear returning to their countries of origin. these stories are submitted as their basis of claim and used as primary evidence for their refugee hearing. in preparing for their hearing, claimants must gather evidence that proves their identity and supports their story. evidence may include birth records, hospital records, and police reports, as well as letters and photographs from family or friends corroborating a person’s story. these documents are reviewed by the deciding irb member prior to the refugee hearing. at the hearing, which can last up to eight hours, the claimants are asked a series of questions regarding the evidence presented and why they are seeking refugee protection. during this stressful ordeal, claimants are under intense scrutiny for any inconsistencies in their stories. a mixed-up date or inconsistent telling of an event may be sufficient for a case to be rejected as not credible. the fate of claimants is in the hands of the irb, which does not have to ask critical questions of itself regarding its regulation of refugees’ bodies; nor are members held directly accountable for their decision-making or their actions during the hearing (colaiacovo, 2013). refugees do have the opportunity to appeal a negative decision to the immigration appeals court, but the success rate is very low (heller, 2009; morgan, 2006; jordan, 2009; laviolette, 2009, p. 438; miller, 2005; murray, 2014; fobear, 2014; shari & ou jin lee, 2011). refugees may not lodge an                                                                                                                 4 the immigration refugee board (irb) is an independent administrative tribunal that is responsible for making decisions on immigration and refugee matters in canada. irb members, who are public servants nominated into the position by the irb, are given the authority to determine a claimant’s eligibility for convention refugee status (immigration and refugee board of canada). 5 in 1991, canada became the first western nation to grant refugee status on the basis of sexual orientation. since 1991, canada has had the world’s highest acceptance rate for asylum based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and hiv/aids status (fobear, 2014, p. 52). katherine fobear studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 106 official complaint directly against irb members’ actions. sharing intimate stories with strangers and state officials can be difficult and traumatizing for refugees (hopkins, 2009; cabot, 2014; lacroix, 2006). for lgbt refugees, there is the added fear and shame of talking openly about their sexuality and/or gender identity (jordan, 2010). moreover, they must tell their story under a hostile political and social environment in mainstream canada that frames a large majority of incoming refugee claimants as ‘queue jumpers’, ‘bogus,’ and a threat to canadian society (hari, 2014; diop, 2014; jantzi, 2014). there is ever-present fear of being misheard, or perceived as not being consistent or credible. this is a serious risk, often due to cultural differences in storytelling and because of the irb members’ own biases or stereotypes regarding gender and sexuality (murray, 2014; jordan, 2010; laviolette, 2014). claimants also run the risk of being rejected if they do not appear to be gay or trans* enough (lewis, 2010; murray, 2014; shuman, 2014; bieksa, 2011). as queer scholars have argued, there is a wide variation with regard to sexuality and gender that is often culturally, socially, and location-specific (walks, 2014; boellstorff, 2007; gorman-murray, 2009; luibheid, 2008; manalansan, 2003; knopp & brown, 2003; altman, 1997; binnie, 2004; chao, 2000; oswin, 2006; valdes, 1998). these differences are often not taken into account at refugee hearings. lgbt refugees frequently have to act as cultural translators around sexuality and gender to the irb, especially because western sexual or gender identity categories and lifestyles do not easily or exactly translate across cultural differences (oswin, 2006). the hearing can be validating experiences (as in the case of jordan), where irb members take into account claimants’ particular circumstances and work with them to make sure they are comfortable telling their story. however, i have also witnessed several instances where claimants were not accepted as being homosexual by the deciding irb member because they did not look ‘gay’, did not have a relationship with a person of the same sex, or did not feel comfortable talking about their sexuality. the deciding irb member disregarded the cultural and socio-political context in which these claimants lived, failing to take into account the internalized homophobia that comes from living every day in fear of being discovered as a sexual minority by strangers, loved ones, and state officials. for many, this fear of discovery not only causes shame and trauma that makes it very difficult to talk about sex and sexual preference, but also limits opportunities to find same-sex partners. my primary concern as a volunteer is to make sure that lgbt refugees are prepared as much as possible for their hearing, which means helping them tell their stories to potentially biased irb members. together, we talk about their experiences in their home country and the fears they have if forced to return. i answer questions about the hearing process and specific concerns they have about their case. when we identify parts of their story where an irb member may request more clarification, i work with the claimants in explaining their story in a clear and straightforward manner. we talk about their everyday social reality as persons who are gender nonconforming or attracted to “i  thought  we  had  no  rights”   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 107 members of the same sex. in this process, the claimants can feel a sense of relief in being able to tell their story to an outsider, gaining confidence in their case by taking charge of how they want to share their experiences to the irb. it is through this work that i assist lgbt refugee claimants maintain the integrity and truth of their stories. i make an effort to instill confidence in them that their stories matter and deserve to be listened to by the irb. during the period that refugees are undergoing the asylum process, getting through the hearing and receiving a positive decision is the most important goal in maintaining their safety and freedom from persecution. claimants learn quickly, however, that the refugee process is just one in a series of obstacles that must be overcome to have a safe and comfortable life in canada. economic, political, and social inequalities remain long after refugee claimants have been accepted as convention refugees6 into the country. as much as canada offers a place of protection, freedom, and relative acceptance for lgbt refugees, it can also be a place of discrimination and isolation. after moving to the country, refugees often continue to experience racial and ethnic discrimination, homophobia, transphobia, and income inequality. these forms of marginalization hinder access to adequate housing, medical care, education, and employment, which refugees must work through as they build a home for themselves in canada (brotman & lee, 2011). being able to publically address these inequalities through the telling of their stories to a wider canadian audience can be one source of social justice for lgbt refugees. yet, as i describe in the next section, public advocacy comes with its own forms of justice and injustice. telling your story as an act of social justice: working with lgbt refugees’ storytellers in public advocacy being able to talk about my experience as a transwoman and as a refugee was such a great experience. i was so nervous standing up there on the stage. there were many people from immigration organizations and even people from my home country. but, i just kept reminding myself that these people are there to listen to you. i told them the difficulties i experienced as a transwoman in my country. i am still with difficulties here as a transgender refugee in canada. it felt like a big achievement for me to go out there as a woman and talk. a year ago, before i got my refugee, i never would have been able to do this. i gained more confidence in myself as a woman and a refugee. (interview with tiffany, january 2015) over the past ten years, immigration and asylum in canada have gone through a dramatic overhaul. what once was a system that actively                                                                                                                 6 ‘convention refugee’ is the official term for individuals who have been accepted as refugees and are given asylum in canada and in other countries. the definition comes from 1967 united nations protocol to the 1951 refugee convention (united nations high commission for refugees, 2010, p. 15-16). katherine fobear studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 108 encouraged immigration has transformed into a system that limits immigration to individuals of wealth and privilege (root, gates-gasse, shields, & bauder, 2014; abu-laban, 1998). of particular concern, visa restrictions for countries outside of the united states and western europe prevent many individuals from legally entering canada. without a visa, refugees may be arbitrarily detained for several months in county jails and prisons throughout the country (silverman, 2014). moreover, the canadian border services are under increasing pressure by the federal government to deport failed refugee claimants and undocumented migrants (silverman, 2014). in order to prevent ‘bogus’ and fraudulent refugee claims, canadian citizenship and immigration shortened the refugee process from one year to three months (diop, 2014; hari, 2014; vinokur, 2015). the short processing time creates significant stress for refugee claimants and their service providers, limiting the time available to meet with lawyers and other support personnel to help prepare for hearings. the shortened time period also creates obstacles to collecting important evidence, such as medical documents or police reports. in addition to these immigration constraints, funding for instate refugee health care and services was cut across canada in 2012 (marwah, 2014; warmington & lin, 2014). as a result, refugees are no longer able to access provincial medical service plans and must pay out-ofpocket for most of their medical services (hari, 2014; ratkovic, 2013; dawson, 2014).7 in the current conservative immigration climate, refugees and undocumented persons have emerged as powerful public advocates in canada (nyers, 2010). peter nyers writes that one of the key ways that undocumented persons and refugees have asserted their autonomy as political actors is by reclaiming the discourse that defines their existence (2006). refugees have worked to challenge negative labels of their asylum claims being bogus through sharing their stories publically (nyers, 2010). they have made a significant contribution to challenging public perceptions around gender, sexuality, and asylum by speaking in a variety of forums, ranging from vancouver city councils to the office of citizenship and immigration, from public rallies to talking with the media (the early edition, 2015; logan, 2014). it is through telling their stories that audiences see the complexity of lgbt refugees’ lives. social justice cannot happen with just one voice; it takes a cacophony of different voices engaging with each other in respectful dialogue to make a difference. as a volunteer and activist for rainbow refugee, i work with our lgbt refugee members to share their stories with a wider public audience in order to raise awareness about the issue and to situate their voices in the center of                                                                                                                 7 under the new refugee health care plan, in-state refugees receive restricted federal health coverage across canada that includes basic emergency care and treatment for illnesses that are a risk to public health (for example, hiv/aids, tuberculosis, and malaria). thus, illnesses that are not considered a public threat are not covered under the in-state refugee health plan, nor are hormone replacement, anti-anxiety, and anti-depression medications (marwah, 2014). “i  thought  we  had  no  rights”   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 109 social and policy discussions around immigration and inequality. my work involves advocating and creating opportunities for lgbt refugees to be speakers and contributors at workshops, panels, and events on asylum, immigration, homophobia, and transphobia. as a volunteer for rainbow refugee, i am not permitted to share the stories we hear from the lgbt refugees we work with unless they give explicit permission. when our members want to share their stories and participate in public actions, i connect them with organizers, policy makers, and journalists, with whom i then work to help develop a respectful mode of engagement. although several of our members have experienced a sense of justice in being able to use their stories to advocate for others, thereby providing a critical voice against hierarchy and oppression, this is not always the case. similar to the ways in which lgbt refugees’ stories can be confined to certain western and colonial scripts in the refugee hearing process, they can also be used to dismiss ongoing violence against queer individuals within canada. with the recent rise in anti-homosexual legislation in places like india, russia, uganda, and nigeria, as well as the increasing attention being paid to the persecution of sexual and gender minorities in parts of the middle east and elsewhere in africa, lgbt refugees are often invited to be interviewed by newspapers and attend public speaking events around homophobia and transphobia in a global context. however, focusing only on lgbt refugees’ experience and knowledge of anti-queer violence outside of canada ignores the violence that many marginalized communities face inside the country. as i have argued elsewhere (fobear, 2014, p. 53; see also razack, 1996; jenicek & wong, 2009): this is not to suggest that persecution against sexual and gender minorities in other countries is not a serious issue. the difficulty arises though when lgbt refugees’ search for freedom from homophobic and transphobic persecution in their countries of origin becomes the only element of their story addressed in the canadian public sphere. in other words, instead of focusing only on where lgbt refugees come from, it is important to create spaces that allow them to talk about their experiences living in canada and to connect these lived realities to larger discussions around social justice for migrant, racialized, and indigenous lgbt persons (haig-brown, 2011). as ann cunliffe and geetha karunanayake argue, social justice organizing needs to link local and global movements together in dialogue (2013). racialized, immigrant, and indigenous lgbt and two-spirit persons face significantly more violence in canada than their white citizen counterparts (lamble, 2008; harper, jernewall & zea, 2004; giwa & greensmith, 2012). 8 this violence is historically situated in the context of canada as a white settler colonial state                                                                                                                 8 ‘two-spirit’ is a spiritual and cultural term used by first nations and native americans to describe individuals who have both male and female spirits within them (driskill, 2010). katherine fobear studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 110 that has worked to remove indigenous communities’ sovereignty and restrict immigration on the basis of race, gender, sexuality, and class (haig-brown, 2011; fobear, 2014). connecting the dwindling social support for refugees and stricter asylum processes to the historic and ongoing marginalization of indigenous and racialized persons in canada is an important step toward dismantling larger structures of power and toward challenging political, economic, and social injustice. yet, state funding and institutional support to create spaces for dialogue and community engagement is scarce. as a person who has one foot in academia and one foot in community activism, i try to use my hyphenated position of activist and scholar to circumvent institutional barriers to funding and support for community-based initiatives. social justice in research: working with lgbt refugee stories as an oral historian devran: coming here, leaving everything behind, coming here making a refugee claim and then facing all the isolation, stress, and fear…well difficult is not enough to explain it. katherine: i can only imagine. devran: no, you can’t. you can’t imagine what it is like. that’s okay. but, you can’t understand what it is like. (interview with devran, june 2013) oral history has become popular as a way for refugees’ histories and experiences to be preserved and critically explored. it is a methodology that is accessible to both academic and non-academic persons, as it requires relatively little equipment and expertise. oral history has the potential to connect communities together in order to preserve their stories and provide counter-narratives to mainstream historical knowledge. it is because of its radical potential to bring forward alternative or nuanced versions of history and social life that many feminist, anti-oppression, indigenous, and civil rights scholars and activists have taken up oral history as both a methodology to record voices of the oppressed and marginalized, and also as a political means to insert these voices into popular historical consciousness, to challenge oppressive systems, and to promote radical change (abrams, 2010; brown, 2006; frisch, 1990; jessee, 2011; yow, 1995; aql, 1995). over the past 20 years, oral historians have turned a self-reflexive and critical lens on their own research practice, examining how – in addition to challenging power relations and inequalities through participatory knowledge-building (abrams, 2010) – oral history research can also reproduce inequalities between oral historians and participants. building from the work of feminist, postcolonial, queer, and critical race theories, oral historians are challenging positive assumptions about the objectivity and neutrality of oral history (abrams, 2010; gluck, 2008; bornat & diamon, 2007; yow, 1995; plummer, 1994; ramirez & boyd, 2012; armitage & gluck, 1998; best, 2003; jessee, 2011; day, 2009). oral historians have come “i  thought  we  had  no  rights”   studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 111 to recognize that they are not neutral listeners, but rather come into interviews with their own biases, sympathies, assumptions, and positionalities (abrams, 2010; gluck, 2008; reay, 1996), which may lead them to treat refugees and their narratives insensitively or use them exploitatively (horsley, 2007; jessee, 2011; mackenzie, mcdowell, & pittaway, 2007; nygreen, 2006; rosinska, 2011), particularly in a context where researchers occupy multiple positions of privilege vis-à-vis the latter, especially in terms of citizenship status, education, and employment (nygreen, 2006). the relationships oral historians have with the communities they work with are multiple and constantly changing (gluck, 2008). oral historians must be reflexive regarding how their presence affects their participants, and the lasting impact of their research (nygreen, 2006; cunliffe & karunanayake, 2013; wagle & cantaffa, 2008). as an oral historian recording the life histories of lgbt refugees, it is difficult to separate my roles of activist and scholar. most of the persons i interviewed know me in my role as a volunteer and activist for rainbow refugee. in many ways, i “work the hyphen” (fine, 1994, p. 70) by not separating these positions; instead, i use them as a bridge between the lgbt refugees i work with and myself. as much as my activism, volunteerism, and research affects the people i work with, their stories, actions, and authority affect me and influence my outlook on the world. indeed, the borders between researchers and participants can be blurred (but not erased) as we work to understand each other (chatterton, fuller & routledge, 2007). it is a dialectical relationship that requires a commitment to discussion and shared authority over both research and praxis. for me, this has meant using my position in academia and rainbow refugee to hold public events where lgbt refugees can speak directly with the public and people in positions of power, to work with other service providers on housing and employment for lgbt refugees, and to disseminate articles that are both academic and publicly accessible. conclusion: lgbt refugees, storytelling, activism… and the academy all of the storytelling initiatives i’m involved with take time and require effort that are not generally supported by academia, in part because, as charles r. hale writes, activist research in academic institutions is understood as controversial (2008). the intense and competitive economic atmosphere of higher education has meant that academics must sacrifice valuable time and energy with local communities in order to produce a high quantity of academic work and be eligible for research grants (downs & manion, 2004; maxey, 1999; autonomous geographers collective, 2010; askins, 2009). moreover, state and private sector funders discourage activist work that disrupts hierarchical power structures and “police activist scholarship when it approaches issues those in power would prefer to leave unexamined” (greenwood, 2008, p. 335). academic institutions also sometimes do not recognize work outside of the limited confines of peerkatherine fobear studies in social justice, volume 9, issue 1, 102-117, 2015 112 reviewed articles, books, dissertations, and conference presentations. until academia as a whole recognizes and values different forms of knowledge production as a necessary means for social justice, there will always remain the danger of an unproductive separation and relationship of inaccessibility between researchers and the communities with which they work (hale, 2008; frey, 1998; lorenzetti, 2013; burnett, 2003). despite these limitations, i have sought alternative avenues outside of academia to disseminate the knowledge given to me by my participants. art has been one mechanism for me to ‘work the hyphen’ between activist and scholar. i was granted funding to support collaboration between local queer artists and lgbt refugees in vancouver, in order to create “the painted stories project”,9 a series of leadership and painting workshops for, and led by, lgbt refugees. the workshops provided refugees with a vehicle to share their stories through painting and digital media (barsotti, 2014); they created a mural that was publicly displayed in the 2014 queer arts festival in vancouver, and produced a documentary that is available on youtube (seeking protection is not a crime, 2014). lgbt refugee activists later used the finished mural and documentary as an advocacy tool at several public events. as these examples illustrate, art can provide meaningful ways of engaging with lived experiences that can affect us deeper than through written text alone. this process is ongoing and will continue after my current research is ‘officially’ over. it is through my continuing engagement with refugees’ stories that i challenge myself to go beyond the limitations of power relations and seek new areas of creativity and dialogue for social justice. acknowledgements i would like to thank the editors and reviewers for helping me to develop this article. without their guidance and patience this article would not have come to fruition. thank you to the volunteers and members of rainbow refugee for helping me to learn and grow as an activist and academic. i will always be learning from them. i would also like to thank brandon cirillo and edward chinevere for their much-appreciated copy-editing work. references abrams, l. 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(2010). convention and protocol relating to the status of refugees. united nations high commission for refugees. retrieved from http://www.unhcr.org/3b66c2aa10.html valdes, f. (1998). beyond sexual orientation in queer legal theory: majoritarianism, multidimensionality, and responsibility in social justice scholarship or legal scholars as cultural warriors. denver university law review, 75(4), 1409-1464. valocchi, s. (2005). not yet queer enough: the lessons of queer theory for the sociology of gender and sexuality. gender and society, 19(6), 750-770. vinokur, d. (2015). institutional independence and bias in the context of the immigration and refugee board of canada. canadian journal of administrative law & practice, 28(2), 169-201. wagle, t., & cantaffa, d. (2008). working our hyphens: exploring identity relations in qualitative research. qualitative inquiry, 14(1), 135-159. walks, m. 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(1995). ethics and interpersonal relationships in oral history research. oral history review, 22(1), 51-66. studies in social justice volume 3, issue 2, 231-245, 2009 correspondence address: doris marie provine, school of transformation, arizona state university, tempe, arizona, 85287-0403, united states. tel: +1 480 965-7682, email: marie.provine@asu.edu issn: 1911-4788 justice as told by judges: the case of litigation over local anti-immigrant legislation doris marie provine faculty of justice & social inquiry, school of social transformation, arizona state university, tempe, arizona, usa abstract in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform at the federal level, many american states and localities are undertaking their own legal reforms. the new state and local laws have been challenged by immigrant-rights organizations and individuals on the grounds that the federal government has already pre-empted the field. the lawsuits bring a new narrative voice—that of judges—into the boiling u.s. immigration debate. judges engage the controversy over local enforcement of immigration enforcement, as they have other contentious disputes, both as pragmatic decision-makers and as spokespersons for justice. the tensions this dual role entails are explored here in the context of a single, controversial case. close-up analysis of the judge’s narrative strategy reveals a range of specific techniques to create moral distance from a decision, combined, ironically, with the enlistment of moral themes to justify the ruling. the inter-twining of rule-of-law and justice rhetoric mirrors and also shapes a broader politics of justice in the united states. introduction the inaugural issue of this journal carried an interview with david harvey in which he observed that ideas about justice had changed in his lifetime. in the 1970s, activists focused on what justice might look like in a better world because they were convinced that justice is sometimes achievable. that conviction has disappeared: “[i]njustice is what we talk about. we don’t have a positive conception of justice; we have a negative conception of lack of justice—injustice. that is a very important mobilizing idea” (pender, 2007, p. 16). harvey’s observation certainly fits the case of immigration policy. no one seems certain about how to achieve justice in immigration, but there is constant talk of the injustices of the current system. those who would restrict immigration are as dissatisfied as those who advocate its expansion, which helps to explain why “comprehensive” immigration reform is so difficult to achieve in the united states and in other wealthy immigrant-receiving nations. 232 doris marie provine studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 in the united states, municipalities and states have responded to the political vacuum and more dispersed patterns of immigrant settlement with their own initiatives. in 2008 state legislatures considered 1,562 bills and enacted 240 immigration-related laws on subjects ranging from eligibility for drivers licenses to sanctions for employers who hire persons without legal status (national conference of state legislatures, 2009). many cities and towns have enacted their own legislation (ramakrishnan & wong, 2007). most of these laws are designed to make it more difficult for immigrants without legal status to work, acquire housing, or become eligible for educational or other benefits. at the same time, some local police forces are being asked or required to inform federal immigration officials when they encounter potentially unauthorized persons (decker, lewis, provine, & varsanyi, 2009). the rise of anti-immigrant legislation at this level has, not surprisingly, provoked litigation from those most affected, particularly employers and immigrants. the role that courts can play in the controversy is limited, but important for both pragmatic and ideological reasons. judges have no power to rule on the wisdom or efficacy of legislation, but they can determine whether lawmakers are acting within their proper scope of authority in creating law, and they decide who can sue for relief from its strictures. for state and local governments, the principal issue is whether they can step into the perceived gap in the current federal framework and adopt their own regulatory statutes and ordinances. those who challenge these laws must show that they have suffered a sufficient degree of harm, a complex issue when the complainant is without legal status to remain in the country. while the ultimate impact of these legal challenges remains uncertain, it is clear that a new voice has been added to the sharp political debate over unauthorized immigrants and their rights. judges speak to these issues with a distinctive approach. the stories they create in their opinions begin from the premise that justice can be achieved through the proper application of the rule of law. although most would admit that justice is not always achieved, the prevailing view is that justice is most likely to be achieved through high quality lawyering and competent judging focused on the rule of law. this collective conviction that justice is within reach is the very quality that david harvey found lacking in contemporary public debate. judicial decisions thus merit attention as a distinctive species of justice talk, even apart from their practical impact. for critical legal scholars, the relationship between law and justice is much more problematic (see e.g. delgado, 2007; fitzpatrick & tuitt, 2004; kairys, 1998; unger, 1996). from a critical perspective, judicial opinions memorialize a kind of victor’s justice in which alternative voices are either muffled or absent. in this view, judicial decisions are hegemonic in their claim of final authority, but they hide the exercise of power involved by claiming to rely only on abstract principle that is neutrally derived from precedent and other binding authority. law, in other words, hides its prejudices, and its violence, by clinging to its formality (cover, 1985; fish, 1991). so, from a critical perspective, the debate over whether judges are “activist” or not begs the question—all judging is an exercise in power, and judgment often provides a rationale for the powerful to remain that way. to claim the process is a search for justice is to place a conceptual fig leaf over a political process. justice as told by judges 233 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 but for judges, maintaining the fiction of a decision’s inevitability is not a matter of individual proclivities – it is an occupational requirement. every judicial opinion necessarily has both pragmatic and ideological goals. at a pragmatic level, the judge’s narrative must provide a history of the dispute, review the legal process involved, and defend the result reached. at an ideological level, the narrative must subtly re-frame the controversy to fit within a relatively narrow rule-of-law framework. by creating a sense of the inevitability of the result, the judge implicitly suggests that justice has been done. appeals to justice may also be more direct, but they will always rest within a legal frame. a judge who appealed to moral principle in deciding a case would blur the carefully constructed boundary between law and justice (sarat, 2004, p. 93). judges write judicial opinions, in short, to dampen conflict and enhance the legitimacy of the judicial process through story telling. in the anglo-american context, that is a judge’s job (see e.g. powell, 2008). in attempting to separate law from moral impulses and from social context, judicial narratives implicitly assert that the two can be separated, and should be, at least in the context of litigation. this professional project has been successful, so successful in fact that americans often rely on judicial opinions to trump moral arguments. the professional project, however, has not been entirely successful. empirical research on satisfaction with courts indicates that, while the public expects justice that is blind to a judge’s personal preferences, litigants also expect judges to be realistically engaged in the dispute at hand (ewick & silbey, 1998; merry, 1990; nielsen, 2000; shiffrin, 1989; tyler, 2006). conley and o’barr (2006), for example, note the widespread expectation among law’s consumers that it will reflect a reasonably attentive response to social problems, and the disappointment that people experience when the process proves unresponsive: “scholars are discovering that citizens come to the law seeking a holistic response to their social problems, and go away unhappy when it insists on its institutional isolation” (p. 871). such expectations among non-professionals suggest a paradox that cannot easily be resolved. on the one hand, americans are comfortable with the idea of conceptualizing justice in legalistic terms, and used to relying on courts to resolve difficult moral issues. de tocqueville (1835/2003) noted the american citizen’s reliance on law and fascination with courts early in 1835 after he toured the u.s. but this tendency has a serious downside. when ordinary americans believe that justice issues can be neatly resolved through legal analysis, they will abstain from more encompassing and searching debate. it is important to understand that judicial opinions intentionally avoid confronting moral concerns directly and intentionally narrow the scope of concern. public debate over contentious issues like immigration enforcement should be more open to moral concerns, and more broadly based. but how do judges construct inevitability in their decisions? discovering these narrowing techniques requires close analysis. the ideal vehicle for studying the process is a single, controversial case, because this is the most difficult type to depoliticize. the strategy of decision and the specific tactics deployed should be relatively easy to spot in this context. the case examined here, lozano v. hazleton, is appropriately contentious and well known, particularly to people who follow news about immigration. 1 the suit involves hazleton, pennsylvania, a small town that in 2006 adopted legislation designed to discourage settlement by unauthorized immigrants. the local ordinance was one of the first of its kind, and partly for that reason, became a test case in the debate over the power of localities to devise their 234 doris marie provine studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 own rules for deflecting unauthorized immigrants. within a year, according to the migration policy institute (2007), approximately 90 localities had proposed more than 100 similar ordinances, and at least 35 had passed. judging as a political act the link between an individual judge and the decisions he or she reaches has long fascinated political scientists and historians. how does this literature bear on the issue of morality in judging? in political science, there is a very substantial academic literature linking judicial decisions to beliefs and attitudes, usually through aggregate analysis of votes on an appellate bench. these studies suggest the connection between personality and behaviour, treating decisions themselves as little more than justifications for previously held beliefs. such findings could be read to lend support to the argument that judges are too “activist,” that is, too willing to bring moral concerns to bear in reaching their decisions (lipkin, 2008; provine, 2005). what is important to note, however, is that judges themselves firmly reject this whole approach to their work. judges consider the “activist” label either as an insult or as a serious misunderstanding of their devotion to the core principle that law alone determines the outcome of adjudication (see e.g. o’scannlain, 2009). “judicial activism” was a lay term for a lay audience that has found traction in politics, but not in the legal profession (kmiec, 2004). the legal profession appears to be devoted to the fiction that judges are mere oracles of the law. law students learn how to pluck rules of law from judicial opinions, to be deployed as needed. the role of moral ideas in the legal process remains unproblematized and suspect in legal education. as austin sarat (2004) observes: “law schools generally try hard to undo the naïve, innocent impulses of their entering students, in particular their impulse to think about law in moral or political terms…. the goal of professional education remains constant – to sever the connection between the question of what is good and right and what the law permits or prohibits” (p. 87). legal practice reflects this same preoccupation with techniques for manipulating rules and suspicion of moral argumentation. lawyers may litigate an issue with an eye to moral sentiments, but they do so strategically, engaging in an outcome-oriented politics of law to achieve their goals (scheingold 1974, sarat 2004). this is not to say that lawyers are unmoved by moral conviction. cause lawyers, for example, promote their vision of justice through litigation (epp, 1998; mccann, 2006; sarat & scheingold, 2001. but for purposes of law practice and litigation, law and morality remain quite separate. judges carry this professional project forward in their opinions. as cass sunstein (1996) notes, it is their goal to attempt to resolve cases without taking sides (p. viii). the legal rules to be applied must emerge from the law, not from the judge, reflecting the baseline principle of blind justice. the use of the first person must be avoided. fulsome citations to precedent are standard because they demonstrate reverence for authority and help to diffuse the reality of individual authorship. facts must be linked to these legal rules in a way that suggests the inevitability of the decision reached. the judge, in other words, must appear to be above the justice as told by judges 235 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 controversy, but immersed in law. to a critical reader, the judicial narrative is a study in judicial modesty cloaking the exercise of real power. a case like lozano v. hazleton, which challenges the power of a local community to determine its own destiny, puts judicial narrative skills to a difficult test. will the court uphold the rights of persons without a legal right to remain against the wishes of local citizens, as expressed through their elected representatives? immigration has always been an emotional issue, “a powerful and elemental leitmotif of american national development,” according to daniel tichenor. he suggests that americans are perhaps distinctive among citizens of countries of immigration in “the degree to which they have woven immigration narratives and iconography into their collective cultural identity” (tichenor, 2002, p. 871). the case law concerning the power of localities to restrict unauthorized immigrants was sparse when the aclu and other groups and individuals filed their challenge to the hazleton ordinance. this created a significant legal problem for judge james m. munley, the federal district judge in the pennsylvania middle federal district court who was assigned to decide the case. there were no supreme court precedents directly on point. those that were most relevant focused on other issues, or were old and predate current federal legislation. nor had the intermediate appellate courts taken a clear stand. the situation has changed only slightly since then. other federal district courts are beginning to weigh in on the issue, and at least three of them have reached decisions sharply at variance with judge munley’s decision in the hazleton case (see e.g. preston, 2008). several of these cases have resulted in appeals, but decisions had not been reached in any of them at the time of this writing, including an appeal filed by hazleton in this case. 2 an indication of the lack of available guidance from appellate courts can be seen in discussions that are occurring in some state and local legislative bodies. representatives are being pressured to enact restrictive laws, but they have become wary of the costs of defending these laws. riverside new jersey rescinded its hazleton-type ordinance, citing the fiscal burden of defending it (migration policy institute, 2007). indiana received so much conflicting advice from legal experts about the constitutionality of its own proposed employer sanctions law that it moved the topic to a study committee after a september 2008 hearing (kelly, 2008). hazleton takes a stand the hazleton city council took decisive action against unauthorized immigrants working or residing in hazleton on july 13, 2006, when it enacted the initial version of its illegal immigration relief act. a number of revisions and additions followed during august and september. in the final version, employers were required to check the immigration status of those they wished to hire. failure to do so would result in loss of one’s business license for five years. landlords were also affected. renting to persons without legal authorization to remain in the united states could result in a $1000/day fine. the new legislation also declared english to be the city’s official language; city employees were required to get official permission to translate any document. mayor louis j. barletta, grandson of an immigrant, drafted this legislation. he wore a bulletproof vest to the council meeting that considered the proposals in order 236 doris marie provine studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 to suggest a connection between undocumented immigration and violent crime, a connection not evident in the local crime statistics. 3 mayor barletta’s opposition to undocumented immigrants and his advocacy for local action made him a media celebrity and gave him visibility in washington and in immigration forums in other locations. 4 his vows to make hazleton “the toughest place on illegal immigrants in america” netted him many favourable emails and donations to a web site, small town defenders. 5 he ran for congress in 2002, 2006, and again in 2008, losing in a close election against the long-time incumbent, paul kanjorski. mayor barletta’s strong support for the hazleton ordinance may also have helped him gain re-election as the city’s mayor. the issue, barletta argued, is not at all racial – he claimed to “love” “his” legal immigrants. it was the undocumented immigrants who threatened hazleton’s peace, security, and way of life. with the influx of undocumented immigrants, he mused, “i’ve lost my city” (powell & garcia, 2007). not surprisingly, hazleton’s new law drew national attention. a lawsuit soon followed challenging the city’s right to control work and living opportunities on the basis of legal status. the lawsuit was brought by a coalition of immigrants and supportive civil-rights organizations against hazleton’s mayor and council, who were defended by their own group of lawyers. the case turned on two issues. the preliminary question, which had to be answered in the affirmative for the case to continue, was whether persons without legal status to remain in the united states could nevertheless be heard in its courts to complain about legislation directed against their continued residence, and whether they could proceed anonymously. the plaintiffs, once they established their right to be heard, were asking the court to decide that hazleton had exceeded its law-making power, pre-empting a role reserved for the federal government. hazleton’s new law sparked a trend. four neighbouring pennsylvania municipalities and one in new jersey quickly passed identical ordinances. other communities both near and far began to consider them. the trend, which has since become nationwide, appears to be centered in small cities and towns across the united states, rather than in most major cities. passions about immigration are most likely to be aroused, powell and garcia (2007) observe, “not in the urban megalopolises, but in small cities and towns, where for the first time in generations, immigrants have made their presence felt” (p. 1). hazleton mayor barletta was correct in claiming that immigration had transformed his city. in 2002 hazleton, with 22,729 residents, was nearly 95 percent white. wages and educational levels were below national averages.6 but at about that time puerto ricans and dominicans from the new york/new jersey area began to arrive, attracted by jobs and the low cost of living. 7 cargill meat solutions, a meat-packing plant, opened in 2002, offering employment to approximately 1000 people, about 600 of whom were latinos. the new latino residents helped the town grow to 31,000 people, while the non-hispanic population declined slightly (powell & garcia, 2007). the county became one of the fastest-growing latino destinations in justice as told by judges 237 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 the united states. this influx of new residents increased the vitality of a central city that had been hurt by economic decline. this was not the first time that hazleton has been transformed by immigration. the discovery of anthracite coal in the 1830s helped the tiny town grow into a small city by giving employment to a diverse population of poles, italians, irish, and other european immigrants. 8 manufacturing came later, fuelling the economy as coal declined. during world war ii hazleton was a boomtown because of its production of silk parachutes used in war-time. its population was 38,000 in 1940. the city had steadily declined in size until cargill’s arrival. these changes occurred in a place that is relatively isolated from major urban areas. the nearest neighbours are wilkesbarre, allentown, and scranton, pennsylvania. philadelphia lies nearly 100 km to the southeast. hazleton, nestled in the foothills of the pocono mountains, has made a virtue of its rural character. the city’s web page describes its golfing, fishing, hiking and biking in glowing terms as key elements in its quality of life. the lawsuit on august 15, 2006, after a failed settlement attempt, a coalition of hazleton residents, local businesses, and community organizations filed suit in federal court to block the “illegal immigration relief act.”9 judge james m. munley scheduled two weeks for the trial, which began on march 12, 2007. a 70-year-old pennsylvanian who had remained in the state through college, law school, law practice, and twenty years as county judge before becoming a federal judge in 1998, his ties to the locality could not have been stronger. judge munley was not only an experienced judge, but also a law teacher and author of several articles. his 206-page opinion in lozano v. hazleton reflected his zest for writing and devotion to clarity. two national organizations, the american civil liberties union and the puerto rican legal defense fund, represented the plaintiffs, along with a coalition of individual attorneys and locally based organizations. the immigration reform law institute, the mountain states legal foundation, and several private attorneys represented hazleton. three organizations, including the us chamber of commerce, filed amicus briefs. it was clear that this was going to be a big case and that it would be appealed, no matter what the result. the decision at the trial level would nevertheless determine the facts of the case and a working framework for decision. appellate courts must respect the lower court’s evaluation absent a manifestly incorrect resolution of the legal issues. the right to be heard hazleton strongly contested the right of the plaintiffs to bring the case to court. the plaintiffs, a coalition of immigrants with and without authorization remain in the united states and organizations supporting them, sought a permanent injunction against enforcement of the city’s illegal immigration relief act. how, the city asked, could anyone without the right to be in the united states complain about this legislation? and what stake did persons with legal status have in pursuing litigation? 238 doris marie provine studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 a decision that these plaintiffs had no “standing to sue” would quickly bring the case to a close. the “standing” issue occupied nearly half of judge munley’s opinion. he began by reciting us supreme court precedents requiring that the plaintiff allege “such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy” as to justify judicial intervention. 10 he then described the injury sustained by each plaintiff, and granted all but one pair of them the right to proceed (lozano v. hazleton, 16-18). judge munley rejected defendant’s contention that these immigrants, because they were not legally present, have no grounds for complaint. immigrants, he responded, even those currently without papers authorizing their stay, are not necessarily illegally present in the united states. the matter remains indeterminate until an appropriate legal official has ruled on the matter (43). it was legally irrelevant that some of these immigrants believed that they were “illegal” because they are not qualified to make that judgment. judge munley reinforced the point by caricaturizing the city’s position: this argument appears to be a species of argument often heard in recent discussions of the national immigration issue: because illegal aliens broke the law to enter this country, they should not have any legal recourse when rights due to them under the federal constitution or federal law are violated. we cannot say clearly enough that persons who enter this country without legal authorization are not stripped immediately of all their rights because of this single illegal act (43-44). he reminded the city that the 14th amendment offers its protection to “persons,” not just citizens. there are several noteworthy elements of a law-based theory of justice in this part of the opinion. first, judge munley repeatedly deflected attention from his own role as the sole judge in this case by consistently referring to himself as “we” and by using the passive voice (“recognized by law”). even in this passive form, the court decides nothing—it “finds” the results it announces. judge munley also took the opportunity to reassert the pre-eminence of law by reframing the term “illegal immigrant.” whether or not an immigrant is legally present, judge munley reminded his audience, can only be decided by a competent legal authority. that some of the parties to the dispute characterize themselves as “illegal immigrants” is legally irrelevant. more significantly, judge munley asserted the relevance of higher law, the u.s. constitution, in resolving this dispute. the protection of anonymity the city of hazleton also objected to allowing some of the plaintiffs to proceed anonymously. anonymous litigation is not strictly prohibited in american jurisprudence, but it is generally discouraged by the federal rules of civil procedure and by traditions of vigorous advocacy. the city alleged that the unnamed plaintiffs did not follow requirements in seeking an exception, nor did they qualify for one. in letting them proceed as “john doe” plaintiffs, the defendants asserted, the court (i.e. judge munley) was affirming and supporting evasion of us law. the judge justice as told by judges 239 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 responded to this attack in his usual passive, third-person style: “we find no merit to the defendant’s arguments, but we shall address them all” (59). the judge’s discussion of the anonymity issue began, not surprisingly, with a recitation of relevant authority, including nine factors found by other courts to weigh in favour or against the use of pseudonyms by plaintiffs. he also felt obliged to discuss a case relied upon by the city, jane doe 1 v. merten, in which a federal district judge had denied undocumented immigrant students the right to proceed anonymously. the students were contesting a virginia law that prohibited undocumented immigrants from admission to state universities. 11 judges have a procedure for handling such situations: a decision at the same level cannot be “controlling,” but it should be considered “persuasive authority”—if it is “on point” and “correctly decided.” judge munley thus had two options: to “distinguish” merten as inapposite to the current case, or to criticize it as incorrectly decided. he chose to “distinguish” merten: unlike merten, where plaintiffs were seeking admission to state colleges and universities, the plaintiffs in this case do not seek to receive any goods provided by the state. further, their immigration status does not determine whether they will be subject to the terms of the ordinance. accordingly, the individual identities and interests of the plaintiffs are not at issue in this case to the degree they were in merten and are not necessary to reach the issues of constitutionality raised by the lawsuit. the intense public interest in this case makes the risks from exposing sensitive information about one’s identity exponentially more dire than in merten and make more persuasive plaintiffs’ reasons for seeking to proceed without revealing their true names (66-67). at this point judge munley turned to the facts of the case before him. he detailed threats received by persons associated with the case, and described fights that had broken out the night the city council adopted the illegal immigration relief act. even us citizens associated with the case, judge munley noted, had faced “public condemnation and confrontation” (73). the rich description of these details stands out in an opinion otherwise devoid of context. the details work to defend the judge’s decision regarding anonymity, and they reinforce the sense that, if this dispute were not heard by a court of law, it would be decided in the streets. yet nowhere in this discussion does judge munley betray any sign that his own sense of justice and decent conduct has been offended. nor did he infer any improper motive in the defendant’s demand that all of the immigrant plaintiffs identify themselves: “we have no evidence to indicate that defendant adopted this position for illegitimate reasons” (81). his final point, however, was subtly condemning. judge munley again repeated the defence charge that he was recognizing and affirming evasion of the laws in allowing undocumented plaintiffs to proceed anonymously. his response to this direct, and grave, attack was to invoke the founding principles of our nation: a venerable principle of constitutional law holds that all persons in the united states have rights under the fourteenth amendment to the united states constitution, whether they are citizens or not…. allowing the doe plaintiffs to proceed anonymously in the unique conditions of this case would not reward them for evading the country’s immigration laws. it 240 doris marie provine studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 would instead provide them an opportunity to secure the rights guaranteed them by the constitution of the united states (83-85). the exchange between the defendants and judge munley illustrates how depersonalization can defuse conflict, even within the confines of a case. the defendants couched their assertion of an ethical lapse in institutional terms, referring to “the court” rather than the judge by name. judge munley’s response was similarly impersonal. but this exchange went further. judge munley invoked the u.s. constitution to drive home his argument. in so doing, he reached for a higher-law principle, aligning his position with long-accepted principles of justice as embedded in the fourteenth amendment’s guarantee of due process of law. he further intimated that all individual rights protected by the constitution are guaranteed, not on the basis of citizenship, but on the basis of personhood. hazleton’s right to regulate undocumented immigration the sections that deal with hazleton’s power to restrict the employment and housing of undocumented persons constitute most of the second half of the opinion. this part is replete with citations to case law but almost devoid of references to the local context. the issue was whether hazleton had overstepped its powers, intruding upon the federal government’s traditional superior, or plenary, power in matters related to immigration. the federal level, in other words, holds the trump cards, and when it chooses to play them, it takes precedence. the procedures hazleton had created, according to the plaintiffs, also violated constitutional guarantees of due process, equal protection, and privacy. in addition, the plaintiffs contended, hazleton had exceeded its powers under pennsylvania law. judge munley considered each element of these claims in turn, methodically laying out the arguments and the relevant case law and announcing his decision on each element. the initial question was whether there was any room for local employer-sanctions ordinances after congress had created its own regulatory scheme in the immigration reform and control act of 1986 (irca). hazleton wanted to avoid a head-on collision with the federal law, so it followed the federal law’s basic framework, but imposed its own penalty for non-compliance: suspension of the offending company’s business permit. (the federal statute, on the other hand, imposed fines and criminal sanctions.) it is not very clear from irca’s language how much discretion remains at the local level. irca states: “the provisions of this section pre-empt any state or local law imposing civil or criminal sanctions (other than through licensing and similar laws) upon those who employ or recruit …. unauthorized aliens” (section 1324a(h)(2)). judge munley decided against hazleton. he noted that the city had developed, not just its own sanction, but its own standard for behaviour: “under hazleton’s interpretation of the provision, a state or local municipality properly can impose any rule they choose on employers with regard to hiring illegal aliens” (96). then he moved to the penalty issue, referring to the city’s provision for suspending a violator’s business license as the “ultimate sanction.” the wording suggests a kind of entrepreneurial death penalty. building on this idea, judge munley argued that justice as told by judges 241 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 congress could not have intended to allow localities to have such a weighty sanction: “it would not make sense for congress in limiting the state’s authority to allow states and municipalities the opportunity to provide the ultimate sanction.” so, the judge concluded, hazleton’s sanction could not stand: “such an interpretation renders the express pre-emption clause [of the federal law] nearly meaningless” (ibid.). to someone unfamiliar with legal argument, it might seem odd that the judge found support for his point in a supreme court decision that had ruled against unauthorized immigrants. the case, hoffmann plastics compounds, inc. v. nlrb (535 u.s. 137 (2002)), involved the right of these immigrants to join a union. they lost because the supreme court gave priority to the federal government’s interest in controlling employment of unauthorized immigrants over the federally protected right to organize (147). plaintiffs had achieved the victory they sought. judge munley nevertheless felt compelled to discuss several variants on the pre-emption issue, “for purposes of completeness.” he used this discussion to demonstrate the intricacy of the federal regulatory approach, and the federal government’s long-standing interest in employment. the effect was to bolster his decision by suggesting how employers might find themselves “betwixt and between” federal and local regulations. hazleton’s effort to discourage apartment rentals to undocumented tenants also failed under the weight of federal pre-emption and other constitutional defects. the rental ordinance required a verification process designed to prevent landlords from “harbouring” unauthorized aliens. hazleton had erred, judge munley ruled, in assuming that all unauthorized aliens are deportable (128). federal officials sometimes give unauthorized immigrants residency status, he noted, and aliens have procedural rights in this determination. no state or locality could possibly know who might ultimately be allowed to stay. in support of his position he drew on justice blackmun’s concurrence in plyler v. doe: “the structure of the immigration statuses makes it impossible for the state to determine which aliens are entitled to residence, and which eventually will be deported.”12 the entire discussion proceeded as if there was a clear path through the forest of precedents and statutes cited by the litigants. to find that path, all that was required was careful legal analysis. there was no discussion of the one inconvenient political fact that brought about this controversy. hazleton had acted because federal law was widely perceived to be ineffective in discouraging employers from hiring unauthorized immigrants. legally speaking, it was irrelevant whether city leaders had been motivated by high-minded concerns for local workers with legal status or by calculations of base political advantage arising out of fear of newcomers. motivation is sometimes, but not always, relevant in law, a reminder that legal forums often can define their own scope of inquiry and concern. hazleton, like the texas school authorities in plyler, was interfering with a well-calibrated federal administrative structure. justice concerns, however, found their way into judge munley’s narrative at several points. he returned to this theme near the end of his opinion, focusing on the high ideals of the u.s. constitution, while subtly disparaging hazleton for using its law-making power to harm a “disfavoured group”: the genius of our constitution is that it provides rights even to those who evoke the least sympathy from the general public. in that way, all in this nation can be confident of equal justice under its laws. hazleton, in its zeal 242 doris marie provine studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 to control the presence of a group deemed undesirable, violated the rights of such people, as well as others within the community. since the united states constitution protects even the disfavoured, the ordinances cannot be enforced (189). conclusion by casting hazleton’s legislation as an attack on society’s most vulnerable people, judge munley drew upon the proud tradition of the civil-rights movement. hazleton, from this perspective, had deemed some of its residents “undesirable” and used its law-making power to encourage them to leave. the city’s illegal immigration relief act thus bore a passing resemblance to the jim crow laws of an earlier era and the race hatred that underlay them. on the opposing side in that struggle, and this one, were the constitution, and dedicated lawyers and judges determined to uphold its principles. the moral basis for the decision was finally clear. but should hazleton’s motivations be judged so harshly? judge munley’s opinion entirely avoids the dilemmas that face small communities in adjusting to large numbers of new residents. it says nothing about the failure of the federal government to more actively support the integration of immigrants or to recognize in its own programs the ineffectiveness of its control over unauthorized entry. the 1986 legislation had combined legalization with sanctions as a quid pro quo. hazleton’s leaders may have been frustrated that the federal government had not kept its bargain or even acknowledged the problems its policies had created. even reading hazleton’s legislation in a more critical light, it can at least be said that violence had been (for the most part) avoided, something that was not true in an earlier era when vigilantism was common. clearly there are more dimensions to this conflict than judge munley addressed in lozano v. hazleton. litigation confines conflict, domesticating it, and channelling energies into limited, particularized inquiry. the intervention of skilled, highly paid legal professionals with no personal stake in the conflict is thought to bring rationality and calm to the scene. 13 the decision in lozano v. hazleton will not settle the issues at stake, nor will the appeal, whatever its outcome. legal decisions frame disputes too narrowly to satisfy the yearning for justice that moves people who believe they have suffered serious harm. jenness (2001) has observed the same tendency in the wording of civil-rights guarantees, which, by custom and convenience, are set forth in generic terms that mask the pain and outrage that prompted their adoption. a judicial narrative is, of course, much more nuanced and detailed than a statutory prohibition. the successful recall that judge munley spoke of the “excessive zeal” of hazleton’s leaders without admitting to any feelings on his own part. i suggest, however, that judge munley revealed in his long opinion a certain zeal for a legally constrained justice. he deployed a judge’s usual stratagems to depersonalize judgment and render it “blind.” he put law at the centre of his response to the litigants, de-contextualizing the dispute from the particular personalities involved. most significantly, he drew from the well of constitutional ideals to suggest the underlying values at stake in this controversy and the need for a just resolution. justice as told by judges 243 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 judicial narrative uses the tools of law to build a final result, while subtly suggesting affiliation with the broader contours of justice. were opinion-writing a cloistered professional activity, judicial strategies for depersonalizing their decisions would be of only passing interest. in american political culture, however, these narratives play a more significant role. judicial decisions provide rhetorical heft in public debate, and even more importantly, they subtly shape ways of framing issues and make them seem familiar and defensible. consider for example, the irritating retort: “what part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?” the implication here is that law provides a ready answer to the question of how to respond to people who have settled in communities without authorization. the belief that law can be divorced from moral concerns is false, and dangerously so. but this belief is widespread because legal habits of thought are pervasive in the united states. de tocqueville noted, and praised, this tendency over a century ago; he should perhaps have viewed it with a more critical eye. whether or not one agrees with judge munley’s opinion in lozano v. hazleton, it is important not to be seduced by its methodology. judicial decisions are a necessary element in the resolution of social conflict, but they are not a sufficient guide to moral choice for concerned observers. the difficult questions raised by enforcing immigration laws against settled residents require an expedition into moral territory that lawyers and judges—and many of the rest of us—tend to avoid. notes 1 (no. 06-cv-01586-jmm (m.d. penn. 2006, 153 dlr a-3, 8/9/07). the page quotes in the sections that follow are taken from the initial citation. the case is currently under appeal in the u.s. court of appeals for the third circuit in philadelphia. oral argument occurred on october 30, 2008. as of this writing, a decision on hazleton’s appeal has not been reached. 2 the third circuit u.s. court of appeals has the case under appeal (lozano v. hazleton, pa. (no. 07-3531; 22 dlr a-7 2/4/08). the eighth circuit is hearing an appeal from a districtcourt decision that upheld a valley park, missouri city ordinance similar to hazleton’s (gray v. valley park, mo. 2008 u.s. dist. lexis 7238 (e.d. mo. jan. 31 2008). see 22 dlr a-7, 2/4/08. the ninth circuit has decided not to rehear its september 17, 2008 decision upholding arizona’s employer sanctions law (chicanos por la causa inc. v. napolitano, 9th cir. no. 07-17272, 182 dlr aa-1, 9/19/08, denial of re-hearing 3/9/09). the tenth circuit is reviewing a district court’s preliminary injunction that postponed enforcement of portions of an oklahoma law that involved employer sanctions. a federal district court recently ruled against an unusual illinois law that would have barred employers from using the federal employee verification system, e-verify (no. 07-3261). in villas at parkside partners v. the city of farmers branch (2008 u.s. dist. lexis 42452 (n.d. tx may 28, 2008) a federal judge granted a permanent injunction barring enforcement of a city statute that required proof of citizenship prior to renting or leasing residential property on grounds of federal pre-emption. 3 while thefts and drug-related crime have increased on a per capita basis since 2000, rapes, robberies homicides, and assaults have decreased. gaiutra bahadur, “hazleton gets a jolt it didn’t want,” philadelphia inquirer, september 20, 2006, p. a-02. 4 barletta visited washington to suggest that the department of homeland security establish an immigration control enforcement (ice) office in the hazleton area. he participated in a forum at notre dame university on october 12, 2007 as one of three prominent speakers on immigration. 244 doris marie provine studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 5 this website features a picture of mayor barletta and his call for donations, which can be sent c/o the mayor. http://www.smalltowndefenders.com/public/ 6 this document, prepared by the state of pennsylvania, but based on u.s. census bureau figures (population division) can be found (along with other demographic information) on the hazleton chamber of commerce, greater hazleton community profile. http://www.hazletonchamber.org/images/stories/pdf/profile.pdf. see also a demographic profile prepared by pennsylvania for cities in the state: http://www.idcide.com/citydata/pa/hazleton.htm 7 savageau’s places rated almanac ranks the hazleton, scranton, wilkes-barre area below the national average, with hazleton offering less expensive living than its rivals. this information is quoted in the greater hazleton community profile, footnote 6. 8 one observer described hazleton in 1837 as a “patch” with a few houses, a hotel, and an inn. the determined efforts of ario pardee to bring this new type of coal to market had a major impact on hazleton, which incorporated as a city in december 1891, with 14,000 residents. in 1899 it attracted a french manufacturer, the duplan silk corporation, which eventually employed 2000 residents, displacing coal as the city’s major industry. that plant closed in 1953, leaving a relatively weak local economy fueled by manufacturing and tourism. see our roots: hazleton area history retrieved on 4/12/09 at: http://www.hazletonhistory.8m.com/pardee.htm 9 letter to louis barletta, august 15, 2006 offering to settle without cost if the city would revoke the ordinance and promise not to enact others attempting to regulate immigration. fifteen plaintiffs’ lawyers, representing nine firms and associations, signed the letter. mayor barletta received a letter in july from many of the same attorneys opposing the statute and arguing that the proposed ordinance was unlawful. letters on file with the author. 10 p. 14, lozano v. hazleton. # 3:06cv1586. judge munley is quoting from simon v. eastern kentucky welfare rights org., 426 u.s. 26 at 38 (1976). the doctrine of standing has few clear guidelines. it is fundamentally pragmatic, based on the idea that courts should not get involved in disputes without the justification of an injured party demanding relief. the courts often state this requirement in constitutional terms, citing the constitution’s grant of jurisdiction to courts for “cases and controversies” arising under article iii, section 2. 11 jane doe 1 v. merten, 219 f.r.d. 387 (e. d. va. 2004). a may, 2007 new york employment law letter discusses this dilemma in the context of fair labor standards act claims by undocumented immigrants, suggesting that inquiry into a worker’s immigration status would likely intimidate workers from filing valid claims. such inquiries should therefore be avoided. (michael dichiara, vol. 14, issue 5, may, 2007). 12 plyler v. doe, 457 us 202 (1982) at p. 236. this case overturned a state law excluding undocumented alien children from public schooling in texas. it is currently under attack by conservatives who see it as an obstacle to their efforts to deter unauthorized immigration. 13 the plaintiff lawyers requested $2,333,351.50 for time and resources spent on the case, citing fees of up to $410/hour for some of the attorneys. see plaintiffs’ petition for attorneys’ fees and costs, pedro lozano v. city of hazleton, civil action no. 3:06-cv01586-jmm. at least one wilkes-barre law office touted its membership on the team in advertizing its services http://www.poconoimmigration.com/id11.html. references bahadur, g. (2006, september 20). hazleton gets a jolt it didn’t want. philadelphia inquirer, a-02. cover, r. (1985). violence and the word. yale law journal, 95, 1848. decker, s., lewis, p., provine, d.m., & varsanyi, m. (2009). on the frontier of local law enforcement: local police and federal immigration law. sociology of crime, law, and deviance, 13, 263-78. delgado, r. (2007). the law unbound! a richard delgado reader. new york, ny: paradigm. de tocqueville, a. (2003). democracy in america. new york, ny: penguin classics. (original work published 1835) justice as told by judges 245 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 epp, c. r. (1998). the rights revolution: lawyers, activists, and supreme courts in comparative perspective. chicago, il: university of chicago press. ewick, p., & silbey, s. (1998). the common place of law: stories from everyday life. chicago, il: university of chicago press. fish, s. (1991). law wishes to have a formal existence. in a. sarat & t. r. kearns (eds.). the fate of the law. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. fitzpatrick, p., & tuitt, p. (2004). critical beings: law, nation, and the global subject. aldershot, uk: ashgate. jenness, v. (2001). the hate crime canon and beyond: a critical assessment. law and critique, 12, 279308. kairys, d. (1998). the politics of law: a progressive critique. new york, ny: basic books. kelly, n. (2008). (2008, september 10). legal minds at odds over immigration edicts. retrieved from http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?aid=/20080910/news07/809100301/ kmiec, k. (2004). the origin and current meanings of judicial activism. california law review, 2004, 1442-1480. lipkin, r. j. (2008). we are all judicial activists now. cincinnati law review. 77, 182-238. lozano v. hazleton (2007). no. 06-cv-01586-jmm (m.d. penn. 2006, 153 dlr a-3, 8/9/07). mccann, m. (2006). law and social movements: contemporary perspectives. annual review of law and social science, 2, 17-38. merry, s. (1990). getting justice and getting even. chicago, il: university of chicago press. migration policy institute. (2007). top 10 migration issues of 2007: issue #7: us cities face legal challenges, and all 50 states try their hand at making immigration-related laws. retrieved from http://www.migrationinformation.org/feature/display.cfm?id=659 national conference of state legislatures. (2009). state laws related to immigrants and immigration in 2008. retrieved from http://www.ncsl.org/programs/immig/2008statelegislationimmigration.htm nielsen, l. b. (2000). situating legal consciousness: experiences and attitudes of ordinary americans. law & society review, 34(4), 1055-90. o’barr, w. & conley, j. (2004). back to the trobriands: the enduring influence of malinowski's crime and custom in savage society. journal of law and social inquiry, 27(4), 847-74. o’scannlain, d. f. (2009). on judicial activism. open spaces quarterly. retrieved from, http://www.open-spaces.com/article-v3n1-oscannlain.php pender, s. (2007). an interview with david harvey. studies in social justice, 1(1),14-22. powell, j. h. 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(2004). crossing boundaries: from disciplinary perspectives to an integrated conception of legal scholarship. in a. sarat (ed.) law in the liberal arts. ithaca, ny: cornell university press. savageau, d. (1999). places rated almanac. new york: wiley. scheingold, s. (1967) the politics of rights: lawyers, public policy and political change. (1st ed.) new haven, ct: yale university press. shiffrin, s. h. (1989). the first amendment, democracy, and romance. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. sunstein, c. r. (1996). legal reasoning and political conflict. new york, ny: oxford university press. tichenor, d. (2002). dividing lines: the politics of immigration control in america. princeton, nj: princeton university press. tyler, t. (2006). why people obey the law. princeton, nj: princeton university press. unger, r. (1996). what should legal analysis become? new york, ny: verso. judging as a political act hazleton takes a stand hazleton the lawsuit the right to be heard the protection of anonymity hazleton’s right to regulate undocumented immigration conclusion smith final correspondence address: jackie smith, department of sociology, university of pittsburgh, pittsburgh, pa 15260; email: jgsmith@pitt.edu issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 local responses to right-wing populism: building human rights cities jackie smith university of pittsburgh, usa abstract today economic vulnerability, heightened inequality, and reduced government capacities have fueled nationalist and xenophobic movements in many countries. such movements threaten democracy and human rights within countries and globally. less visible amid these disturbing trends – but no less important for the future of democracy – is the simultaneous expansion of locally-organized human rights initiatives around the world, especially since 2000. a proliferation of placebased movements claiming “rights to the city” is becoming increasingly visible and trans-locally networked. after outlining some of the global dimensions of this development, i discuss work happening in the u.s. city of pittsburgh, pennsylvania and explore the broader possibilities for locally based human rights initiatives to address contemporary threats to social justice and peace. keywords human rights cities; local activism; democracy; globalization; social polarization the recent growth and electoral success of right-wing populism can be attributed to economic insecurity resulting from the competitive, marketoriented processes of economic globalization and consumerist culture. global economic policies, known as neoliberalism, emphasize global trade and finance over local and national economies, reduce government regulation and welfare spending, and privatize state functions. such policies have encouraged the redistribution of wealth from working people and communities to global corporations and a growing transnational capitalist class, exacerbating economic inequality both within and between countries (evans & sewell, 2013; harvey, 2005; robinson, 2014). the privileging of economic expertise and the lack of transparency and public engagement in trade negotiations further undermines the democratic legitimacy of states and jackie smith studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 348 international institutions (da costa & mcmichael, 2007; evans, 1997; markoff, 1999). changes in the global economy, communications, and the practice of warfare have thus fundamentally altered the structural and cultural bases of national identities and notions of belonging. globalization has produced what kaldor calls “spectacle nationalism,” which “requires passive participation, watching television or joining a crowd but its capacity to mobilise active participation such as paying taxes or risking one’s life in wars is greatly weakened” (kaldor, 2003, p. 168). citizenship thus mirrors other forms of consumption, emphasizing individual gratification over social responsibility and group solidarity. this undermines the democratic values and empathy that help generate social cohesion and support effective governance, and it sets the stage for the kinds of exclusionary mobilizations we see today. in the early 1990s benjamin barber argued that the consumerist and market emphasis of neoliberal globalization would render democratic institutions meaningless and fuel movements defending traditional values and nationalist identities against perceived global threats (barber, 1992; see also moghadam, 2012). kaldor and her colleagues likewise anticipated that neoliberal globalization would encourage a variety of “anti-globalist,” nationalist, and xenophobic backlashes while hollowing-out democratic institutions (kaldor, 2003). since the persistent advance of neoliberal policies has fueled inequality and widespread corruption in government and business and prevented the emergence of responsive political leadership to address urgent social crises, today’s surge of right-wing populism should come as no surprise. seeking to fill this governance vacuum are populist movements advancing parochial defenses against economic globalization. at the same time other actors, many emerging from earlier human rights and global justice movements, are also organizing locally to advance a more inclusive and progressive form of globalization grounded in widely recognized values of human rights and dignity. mobilizing around claims of the “right to the city,” growing numbers of people in cities and communities around the world are seeking to defend peoples’ and communities’ access to basic needs such as water, housing, a healthy environment, and access to food, health care, and transportation. these movements for social inclusion have been less visible than those on the right, in part because of their incompatibilities with the discourses of capitalism and consumerist culture and their marginalization from mainstream media and politics. in addition, much of the work of these movements happens outside the realm of what is typically defined as “politics” – that is, outside the sphere of political parties and electoral politics. or their emphasis is on municipal and local politics, which are marginalized in the worldviews of neoliberal globalizers. yet, in the aftermath of the election of donald trump, more are paying attention to these local initiatives, recognizing their potential to challenge the dangerous rhetoric and policies of the right (see, e.g., barber, 2016; gerken, bollier, local responses to human rights populism studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 349 gerstle & alperovitz, 2016; goodman, 2016; heinberg, 2016; hoxie, 2016; katz, 2016; norberg hodge & read, 2016). this paper documents the emergence and spread of local human rights initiatives and considers their potential role in helping communities address pervasive problems of economic stagnation and the polarizing and exclusionary politics they have generated, while helping build local capacities for addressing basic human needs and strengthening community resilience. i begin by discussing the global emergence of place-based efforts to realize human rights in localized settings. i then provide a more in-depth look at one such initiative, the human rights city initiative in pittsburgh, pennsylvania to show how this sort of project can counter the critical threats from right wing populism by promoting cross-cutting ties in communities, cultivating human rights and democratic values, bringing structural racism and violence into public consciousness and debate, and advancing human rights-oriented practices and policies. the methodology i employ is “observant participation,”1 stressing my role as an active participant in this movement as well as a researcher. this method draws heavily from critical feminist scholarship, emphasizing reflexivity and “strong objectivity” (see, e.g., harding, 1992) to engage in what santos (2014) refers to as the sociology of absences and emergences. in other words, this method can help uncover the people and experiences as well as the subaltern transformative practices and projects that are silenced and made invisible by mainstream culture and institutions. here the researcher is not seen as an outside observer, but rather as a social being whose identity and involvement in a social context impacts the questions asked, the methods of analysis used, and the content of the observations or responses obtained. i use practices of “active listening” to uncover the various ways that power relations manifest themselves in individual and group behavior (see, e.g., doerr, 2009). my involvement in this social context results from particular relationships with people and with a community, and i am attentive to these relationships – and to status and power imbalances they represent – in my analysis. my fellow-activists, moreover, are also co-investigators. i actively involve them in my ongoing questions about our work, we discuss emerging ideas or hypotheses about what actions might move us towards the changes we’re seeking, we generate thoughts about the institutional changes required to remedy the failures of existing arrangements, and i share conclusions and results of my study in varied formats that are accessible to diverse audiences. such methods make visible the knowledge that grows from activists’ work for social change. they also illuminate complex dynamics of coalitionbuilding and social struggle amid long-standing social divisions of race, class, gender, ethnicity, etc. this movement is explicitly attempting to transform these social identities and the conflicts they manifest, and i am able to use my 1 i am grateful to jeffrey juris for introducing me to this concept. jackie smith studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 350 own positionality and experience to try to better understand the various ways individuals might respond – through their thoughts, feelings, as well as actions – to new perspectives or challenges to their pre-existing conceptions of self and community. i first became familiar with this emergent movement while doing research on the world social forums. there, i saw that many groups were using human rights language in their efforts to build coalitions to resist economic globalization. despite some academic critiques that have dismissed the transformative potential of human rights, i saw activists embracing this language in an emancipatory way (see santos, 2007; rajagapol, 2006). moreover, the use of human rights framing did not seem to be linked to a particular place or issue-focus; activists from both the global north and south and groups working on trade, environment, or other issues seemed just as likely to be speaking in human rights terms. what stood out, however, is that it was the people and groups who were most harmed by economic globalization who were leading the effort to mobilize around human rights and dignity. to understand activists’ strategies in the world social forums and to learn how groups build and manage coalitions across national, cultural and other differences, i began engaging in more local work to implement ideas from these global movement spaces where i lived, including south bend, indiana and later pittsburgh. when i moved to pittsburgh and learned that the city had just passed a local proclamation naming it the fifth human rights city in the united states, i became engaged in work to build a coalition of groups to help actualize the proclamation. co-organizers and i formed the human rights city alliance in 2013, and the observations i report here are made as a leader in this effort. i do not attempt here to evaluate the actual impacts and effectiveness of the work we are doing, but rather to demonstrate how activists use the idea of “human rights city” to expand political and legal imaginaries and to make possible conversations and relationships that would otherwise be unlikely. in doing so, i argue that such initiatives help address the highly polarized ideological divisions that plague our society today and counter dynamics that encourage right-wing mobilization such as social segregation and dehumanization of marginalized groups. documenting how local groups are working to overcome divisions and to transform public discourses in their communities can help us identify policies and strategies that can reduce the appeal of reactionary leaders and help strengthen social cohesion and democratic institutions. rethinking urban governance: social movements and political imagination neoliberal globalization has remade cities and fundamentally altered local power structures in ways that favor transnational corporations and investors local responses to human rights populism studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 351 over local residents. around the world, capitalists and corporate elites are increasingly influential in urban planning (sklair, 2017). as capitalists seek new opportunities for profit-making, they are increasingly acquiring urban land and property and financializing real estate markets (sassen, 2014). this process has fueled growing tensions between residents – for whom the city is home and community – and entrepreneurs, who view the city as a commodity desired for its exchange value rather than use value (logan & molotch, 1987). thus, in cities worldwide we see similar processes of dispossession and social exclusion of poor and working class people – especially people of color – as development for elite consumption transforms urban landscapes (harvey, 2012). many analysts privilege states and other elite actors as the central players in governance. yet, most analyses of conflict and transformative social change point to the essential roles that civil society plays in promoting effective governance, such as catalyzing policy change; monitoring governments’, parties’, and corporations’ compliance with the law; and mobilizing public support for government programs (appadurai, 2002; bell & o'rourke, 2007). studies of post-war settings show that civil society participation in governance is essential to building lasting peace; as such participation helps with intermediation between citizens and the state, advocacy for marginalized groups, monitoring powerful actors such as states, political parties, and corporations for accountability, socialization for a culture of peace, and fostering social cohesion (paffenholz & spurk, 2010; paffenholz, 2010). such functions are central to reducing polarization and building stable communities even where large-scale violence has not (yet) occurred. thus, greater attention to how civil society actors mobilize and carry out these functions is needed so that these efforts can be better supported. i argue that human rights cities are an example of locally-rooted initiatives to mobilize community residents into the work of local governance and to help overcome the polarizing tendencies reinforced by national and global politics. human rights cities are distinctive in that they advance a conscious political project that re-envisions and re-orients the social order around principles of human rights, rather than globalized markets. this involves a fundamental transformation of social relations in order to ensure that the means of survival are available to all human beings and protected for future generations. they stress an attachment to place that directly counters globalization’s footloose logic. whereas the dominant ideology holds that globalized markets are best at producing economic growth that then produces other social goods, activists advocating for human rights point out persistent failures of this logic. they argue that policies should be crafted with the primary aim of protecting and advancing human rights, rather than treating rights as a by-product of growth. thus, these initiatives activate residents’ political and legal imaginations – that is, their ability to envision possibilities and strategies for achieving a society very different from what exists in jackie smith studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 352 practice and in prevailing discourses and imaginaries.2 for if a group cannot imagine such a community, it will never realize it. given the entrenched political and economic power of corporate and financial elites and the (related) increasing marginalization of growing numbers of people from access to secure livelihoods, it is clear that those seeking to protect and advance human rights must somehow radically alter the larger political and economic order if their needs are to be met. of course, the rise of right-wing movements reflects one response to growing economic inequality. but to challenge prevailing power arrangements, those wanting a more inclusive society need to come together around a different social and political project that provides a distinct counter-narrative to the competitive individualism and consumerism of market-based globalization. i argue that human rights can provide the language and inspiration for such a political project. existing representative democratic institutions and economic policies that privilege markets and large corporations systematically exclude the voices of people most harmed by corporate globalization. structural unemployment, displacement and criminalization of communities of color, and anti-immigrant policies marginalize and exclude globalization’s “losers,” while the “winners” amass more wealth and translate that into political influence – corrupting democratic institutions (see, e.g., sassen, 2014). to address the underlying forces polarizing societies and undermining the viability of institutions and communities, activists are calling for efforts to “change the music,” or “flip the script,” and engaging in forms of “insurgent citizenship” to demand basic rights and social inclusion (holston, 2009; see also harvey, 2012). human rights cities advocates are trying to counter “spectacle nationalism” and its exclusionary and violent tendencies by helping redefine public discourse to include the voices of marginalized groups and articulating inclusive collective identities, values, and priorities that counter those of mainstream culture and institutions. for instance, rights advocates argue that “no human being is illegal,” and that human rights have no borders in response to today’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. by organizing public activities where such ideas can be articulated and where people can discuss ideas for making change, these movements engage residents as active participants in advancing this political vision. the human rights city model might be seen as a form of what fetherston (2000) calls transformative peacebuilding, which targets the underlying power relations and exploitative, competitive relationships that fuel conflict and violence. transformative peacebuilding focuses on conflict as a system, and works to address its root causes by fundamentally confronting power inequities in ways that alter existing relationships and identities and that generate shared projects that support more equitable and just social relations. for instance, by mobilizing residents around claims to the right to housing or 2 on political and legal imagination, see, e.g., khasnabish (2008) and desai (2015). local responses to human rights populism studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 353 the right to water, these initiatives point to the contradictions between market logics that drive economic policies and widely shared assumptions about what it means to be human. such discourse can undermine the legitimacy of the system, or at least impede further efforts to marketize basic human needs. shifting the discourse in this way challenges the privileged position of capitalism and corporate elites in democratic policy making. this work is advanced in part through what habermas (1981) calls communicative action, which involves intersubjective dialogue between a community of actors which enables [people] to reconstruct common understandings of their lifeworld and, therefore, renew the shared basis for culture, social integration, and socialization that underlie a mutual existence…. communicative action does provide a means of renegotiating the bases of mutual existence distorted by […] cultures of violence. (fetherston, 2000, p. 212) communication and transformative relationship-building across major social divides is at the core of the work of human rights cities.3 as the following examples illustrate, human rights city organizers work to bring diverse groups together and challenge prevailing politics, discourses, and agendas. the practices of human rights city activists nurture relationships that are obstructed by prevailing policies, helping overcome the segregation of affluent from poor communities and the sorting out of cities by race and ethnicity and other divides. the human rights framework provides an alternative normative foundation that can unite residents around collective identities and projects and foster mutual understanding, respect, equity, and cooperation while actively contesting the hegemony of capitalist principles of individualism, exploitation, hierarchy, and competition. human rights cities movements a “human rights city” is a municipality that refers explicitly to the universal declaration of human rights and other international human rights standards in its policies and programs. there are growing numbers of such cities since 2000 (oomen, davis, & grigolo, 2016; van den berg & oomen, 2014). barcelona is a leading human rights city in europe, and san francisco became an early u.s. human rights city with its 1998 adoption of a city ordinance reflecting the principles of the convention for the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (grigolo, 2011). below i explore another kind of human rights city, namely those that are explicitly designated as human rights cities under a growing global initiative launched by the 3 i use the word “transformative” here because the aim is not to simply create new friendships based on prior inequalities and assumptions, but to reconstruct social relations in ways that acknowledge past harms and put forward new bases for reconciliation. jackie smith studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 354 peoples decade on human rights learning (pdhre) following the un human rights conference in vienna in 1993. according to pdhre’s website: a human rights city is a city or a community where people of good will, in government, in organizations and in institutions, try and let a human rights framework guide the development of the life of the community. equality and nondiscrimination are basic values. efforts are made to promote a holistic vision of human rights to overcome fear and impoverishment, a society that provides human security, access to food, clean water, housing, education, healthcare and work at livable wages, sharing these resources with all citizens – not as a gift, but as a realization of human rights. (pdhre international office, 2006, p. 3) pdhre organizers have worked to promote human rights city initiatives in different parts of the world, including at the world social forums and in other movement and un venues. rosario, argentina became the first human rights city of this kind in 1997, and since then at least two dozen more cities have followed.4 there is no single pathway to a human rights city: some cities, like barcelona and san francisco, incorporate elements of international human rights law into local legislation. others adopt formal human rights city ordinances. some of these initiatives have involved cooperation between public officials and civil society groups, but the key leadership and impetus is typically from non-governmental human rights advocates. formally designated human rights cities are bottom-up, civil society-led efforts to re-envision communities’ role in local governance and to prioritize human rights in local policies and practices. rather than looking to national governments to enforce human rights or confining themselves to conventional political discourses and tactics, human rights city advocates seek to change the entire frame of policy reference. they begin with the radical assertion that the point of governance is not to promote the interests of business, but rather to protect and advance all human rights (including economic, social and cultural rights) for all residents (including noncitizens). this form of “insurgent citizenship” (holston, 2009) points to the often significant gaps between human rights ideals and community realities, and engages in various forms of action to reduce those gaps. as the growth model exacerbates problems of structural unemployment, gentrification and other forms of forced displacement, declining social services, and environmental damage, the notion of a human rights city offers residents a chance to reclaim and re-build community as they address deepening crises that are most keenly felt in local settings. it provides an opportunity that is lacking in conventional political spaces for residents to engage in explicit thinking and 4 among these are alexandria, egypt; nimamobi, ghana; korogocho, kenya; mogale, south africa; nagpur, india; gwangju, south korea; edmonton, canada; washington d.c., usa, and jackson ms, usa (for a full list see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/human_rights_city, a wikipedia site i created with my students when we realized that no entry had yet been written). local responses to human rights populism studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 355 discussion about shared goals, values, and notions of place, identity and belonging. these kinds of conversations reflect work to expand residents’ “political and legal imaginations” and they directly challenge hegemonic notions of politics, citizenship, and economy, which privilege national and global sites of power. by mobilizing and engaging residents around notions of place, human rights city activists are offering a radical alternative to globalizing forces that require the subordination of local and national communities, economies, and ecosystems to globalized markets. such conversations also generate uncomfortable realities as they expose what are often vast inequalities in the experiences of residents from diverse racial and economic backgrounds. to the extent that such conversations are successful at fostering empathy while altering people’s social relationships and understandings of place, they open the way for new models of politics and creative insights that can generate support for redistributive solutions that strengthen social cohesion and local democracy. below i provide selected examples from my work with pittsburgh’s human rights city alliance (hrca) of how human rights city initiatives can help reduce social polarization and strengthen communities’ capacities to address social, ecological and financial crises. i focus on how the hrca has worked to address structural racism in a highly segregated city with a history and present of racial tension and exclusion. racism in the region’s steel mills and unions confined african american workers to the most dangerous and low-paying jobs, and the effects remain today in the large and persistent racial inequities in income and other measures of well-being. pittsburgh has among the highest rates of black poverty (33%), infant mortality (13.7%), and unemployment (16.6%) in the united states. african american median household income is less than half that of white residents (smith, 2017; center on race & social problems, 2015). the political marginalization of african americans, moreover, has led to repeated displacements, and pittsburgh has seen more than 20,000 african american residents pushed out of the city since the 1980s (fullilove, 2016).5 as in other u.s. cities, pittsburgh police have also been implicated in numerous killings, maimings, and other discriminatory practices violating the basic human rights of african american residents. yet, the city’s revitalization around the higher education, health care, and technology industries has enabled public officials to celebrate the claim that pittsburgh is a “most livable city.”6 activists and many low-income residents have countered, “livable for whom?” 5 while white residents were also displaced as pittsburgh’s steel industry declined, they had more resources to allow them to move to new economic opportunities outside the region. displaced african americans, in contrast, tended to move to neighboring suburbs of pittsburgh, where they have had less access to jobs and public services. 6 the designation of “most livable city” has been given to the city by numerous commercial media entities, including forbes in 2010, and most recently the economist’s intelligence unit jackie smith studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 356 in response to these conditions, hrca and its allies have made it a priority to address racial inequalities as a first step towards making pittsburgh a true human rights city. a key aim of the hrca is to help create spaces for diverse organizations and community members and leaders to come together to engage in dialogue and creative thinking – communicative action – about how to address the gaps between human rights ideals and practices in our city and region. at the same time, the alliance works to amplify the language of human rights in the public discourse by communicating with public officials, encouraging activists and organizations in various sectors to frame their struggles in human rights terms, and supporting varied opportunities for human rights learning. a human rights city action plan outlines major priorities and proposals for changes, drawing from work by groups around the city and from other human rights cities (human rights city alliance, 2014). below i describe some of this work to provide a foundation for further comparative research on how local movement initiatives like this can help address critical social conflicts. promoting a human rights constituency and culture one of the biggest challenges for human rights advocates in many u.s. cities is to convince political activists and leaders to view human rights as a useful organizing framework. our experience has revealed an “american exceptionalism” where many see the language of human rights as referring only to places outside the united states – not to situations in this country (finnegan, saltsman & white, 2010). most u.s. residents don’t know much about how international institutions and treaties operate and what prospects these mechanisms offer for local activists. this is changing, however, in light of the new u.s. administration, which promises to deny the traditional strategy activists used of mobilizing federal entities to enforce human rights against state and local authorities (escr-net, 2016). in addition, the u.s. political system encourages a focus on electoral politics and an issue-based orientation to advocacy that marginalizes human rights principles and dismisses or stigmatizes internationalism. thus, much of the work in the early years of the hrca has been to help translate information about global processes for grassroots audiences. the aim here is to increase local knowledge, demonstrate how a human rights framework can facilitate organizing, and highlight connections across issues and intersecting human rights. by inviting people to visualize how our city could look if it was organized around human rights, we were asking them to imagine a very different place. participants quickly learned about the intersecting nature of human rights, ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– 2014 livability survey. city officials often celebrate this label as they advance policies and projects that displace poor residents. local responses to human rights populism studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 357 and recognized that we needed to change people’s mindsets as well as public policy and government practices. for instance, politicians and the public are accustomed to thinking of local politics as mainly about attracting new revenues for the city and limiting taxes, and in the process they ignore – or simply pay lip service to – questions about equity, quality of life, and community. in our work to advocate for the right to housing or the right to healthy food, we have sought to engage a larger public in thinking about what these rights mean and whether market-oriented policies can achieve them. if large segments of voters hold local politicians accountable to human rights as opposed to market standards, these public officials will find new ways to address the lack of affordable housing or the presence of food deserts in our city. one general observation from this work is that all of hrca’s activities have been explicit in their intention of creating spaces for building crosscutting connections across social divisions – especially race, class, and gender. each of our events has helped connect people of different backgrounds, providing spaces for learning and strategizing as we strengthen the local constituency demanding and supporting human rights claims. in this work to build bridges across groups, we have found that despite the radical implications of human rights, the language appeals to both mainstream and radical groups as well as politicians. while the vagueness of human rights can lead to its co-optation by elites, if used right, it can be a political advantage. very quickly people have tended to see (if they hadn’t already) that the privileging of economic growth in public policy meant that human rights would always be neglected. the human rights lens helps clarify how economic growth systematically undermines the ability of some groups in the city – in pittsburgh, as elsewhere, this is especially african americans, immigrants, people with disabilities, and youth – to enjoy even the most basic rights. from here, we can invite residents to consider not just different policies but also new practices and institutions that could better accomplish the aims of our human rights city. the major activities of the alliance have included work to spread human rights values in our community and to inspire people to take action. annual celebrations and mobilization around international human rights day, participation in a locally organized summit against racism, and celebration of indigenous peoples day on october 12th each year have been central to our organizing strategy that seeks to shape a human rights culture and to build and activate a broad human rights constituency. i describe each of these activities briefly to illustrate how they can contribute to transforming social conflicts by highlighting democratic values, building shared local identities, and advancing cooperative actions centered on human rights. the hrca uses the annual international human rights day celebration (december 10) to raise consciousness in the city about our human rights city status and about the gaps between this vision and the experiences of residents. such work promotes a human rights culture that supports mutual jackie smith studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 358 understanding, respect, and empathy among residents. many residents remain unaware of our status as a human rights city, and like cities everywhere, physical segregation often prevents residents from appreciating the experiences of less privileged residents. such separation contributes to the silencing and dehumanization of marginalized groups, which in turn enables the rise of politicians promoting racist and exclusionary policies. as one of the only explicit human rights groups intentionally seeking to mobilize a broad base of residents, the hrca has organized annual press conferences and rallies with representatives from diverse human rights groups in the city to reflect on the state of human rights in our city and to lift up some of the leading struggles of the time. in the last two years we have expanded the work to mobilize human rights days of action in the days surrounding international human rights day. we invited various activist, community, and church groups around the city to take some action recognizing international human rights day. we listed these events on a shared calendar on our website and social media as a way to show the connections among our diverse struggles. this activity has helped build connections among activist groups, show the intersectionality of human rights, and encourage a wider range of groups to consider their own work within a human rights framework. it expands human rights discourse and supports the growth of a human rights culture in our region as more activists and residents use explicit human rights language. in addition to annual activities around international human rights day, the hrca has worked to promote a human rights constituency and culture through network-building. for instance, in 2016 we worked with a coalition of activist groups coming together to fight displacement of poor and largely african american residents to organize a housing summit at a local university. this event aimed to shift the public discourse around housing from one based on market logics, which focused on negotiating with policy makers and developers to allocate affordable units in planned developments, to one based on the human right to housing. summit content – including keynote speakers, workshops, and a website with films and other learning resources – was designed to help residents understand the global factors shaping pittsburgh’s housing market and to enable residents who did not experience housing insecurity to learn about how the affordable housing crisis impacts families and neighborhoods as well as the larger city.7 an important emphasis here was on how global economic forces contribute to the “serial forced displacement” of communities of color (fullilove, 2016), which helps link conceptually today’s widespread urban housing crises with international migration and the genocides against indigenous peoples. the summit also provided opportunities for networking and for residents to learn about the work happening in pittsburgh and other cities for housing justice. 7 see http://housingsummit.wikispaces.com/ local responses to human rights populism studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 359 most voluntary coalitions flounder where there are no resources to support basic communication and coordination work across groups that are not organized to work together. the housing summit is one important example of how coalitions like the hrca can provide such resources, drawing from universities and local expertise and volunteerism to nurture and sustain relationship-building among diverse groups in the city. but this project was only possible because key leaders (myself included) could devote extensive time to building relationships in the community. in addition to work with activist groups, and to help expand the base of resources available for human rights work, the hrca has been working to engage faculty and professionals at the city’s numerous universities in work to promote human rights and human rights education. we created a university human rights network to connect university faculty, staff and students interested in human rights and to help link pittsburgh’s activist community with researchers and centers that can provide information and other resources to support human rights advocacy, education, and organizing in our region. the network also works to support advocacy for human rights on the city’s college campuses. building a human rights city requires changes in more than city government, and the university network seeks to press universities to engage in policies consistent with human rights norms. universities affect the region’s labor practices and economic development plans, including the displacement of low-income and african american residents from neighborhoods near campuses. this network helped support a student neighborhood tour on universities and affordable housing in pittsburgh to follow-up our housing summit and enable students to connect with local organizations. the university network itself grew from collaboration between hrca and the university of pittsburgh’s global studies center to convene local, national, and international human rights city leaders for a conference to explore how the human rights cities model has been used in other communities. the conference generated ongoing connections, a follow-up meeting hosted by washington dc’s human rights city steering committee, and led to the development of a national human rights cities alliance within the framework of the largest grassroots human rights organization in the united states, the us human rights network. these national connections link pittsburgh with other human rights city leaders and with the global human rights movement, inspiring and informing our local activism. fighting institutionalized racism the alliance’s work has benefitted from pre-existing efforts of pittsburgh residents to fight racial injustice, which include most notably an annual summit against racism where hundreds of participants learn about the jackie smith studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 360 priorities and concerns of african americans and other people of color, learn about the work being done by existing groups, organize panels, identify allies, and build networks to support the human rights city initiative and its racial justice component in particular.8 in keeping with the intentionality of our “people-centered human rights” agenda,9 we have sought to organize panels with african american leaders in the city, jointly identifying key priorities for work to address the needs of residents who have been denied the ability to enjoy all their basic human rights. our panels have sought to reinforce working relationships with different groups in the community and to highlight local human rights struggles as they relate to racial inequalities and discrimination. participants had the opportunity to learn about how institutionalized racism impacts the daily lives of fellow pittsburghers, reproducing racial inequalities in education, working conditions, neighborhoods, housing, and civil liberties. they also met organizers working to change these conditions, often gaining new information about their city and about activism within it. panels we organized thus helped raise consciousness about the forms of institutionalized racism in pittsburgh and local strategies for addressing it. in the 2016 summit against racism, we built upon our prior work and our networks with other activist groups to more explicitly engage residents in thinking about how international human rights treaties can be used as a tool for advancing human rights locally. specifically, our collaborative panel highlighted work being done by several local groups as part of the national “cities for cedaw” initiative, which encourages cities to adopt legislation that implements the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (cedaw). we also helped educate participants about the convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (cerd) and its review process, which encourages grassroots participation in local monitoring efforts to inform the us human rights network’s shadow reports. the panel helped connect pittsburgh groups with the larger human rights movement and to familiarize residents with international legal mechanisms that can become part of our local human rights strategies. these sessions also help strengthen relationships and build support for other collaborative initiatives, including the annual may day march for immigrant rights and the housing summit described above. they help raise 8 our website – www.pghrights.org – includes a report from the 2015 18th annual summit against racism. the report may be accessed directly at https://pghhumanrightscity.wikispaces.com/file/view/summit%20against%20racism%202015%20repo rt%20and%20agenda%20priorities.pdf/539653736/summit%20against%20racism%202015 %20report%20and%20agenda%20priorities.pdf. 9 the hrca draws from previous antiracism organizing through its work with the us human rights network. the ushrn promotes a “people-centered human rights movement” that emphasizes lived experiences and leadership on those most directly affected by human rights violations, rather than a strictly legal approach to human rights. another key document in this tradition is the jemez principles for democratic organizing (see www.ejnet.org/ej/jemez.pdf). local responses to human rights populism studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 361 consciousness in a larger activist community and reinforce a human rights framework for thinking and discourse. while it is difficult to assess the quantitative impacts at this early stage in the hrca’s work, over time, repeated exposure to sessions like these have increased the responsiveness of local residents to the human rights messaging we use, and more community leaders have become engaged in our work. for instance, leading organizers who were part of the various projects described here have agreed to join the hrca steering committee. since the human rights city model doesn’t fit prevailing conceptions of politics, it is often difficult for people to fully understand how to participate. these gatherings enable repeated exposure to human rights language, helping expand the human rights constituency in our city while deepening working relationships among antiracism activists. historical truth-telling another example of local work to translate global human rights thinking into local contexts is our effort to confront historical and ongoing human rights violations through public recognition of indigenous peoples day. the idea for this day first arose in 1977 at the international conference on discrimination against indigenous populations in the americas. a handful of cities in the united states have recognized the day, but in 2014, the human rights city of seattle became the first large city to do so. it adopted a resolution renaming october 12 indigenous peoples day in that city, explicitly linking the decision to that city’s status as a human rights city. one of our group members attended a rally organized by local activists honoring indigenous peoples day in october of 2014, and he brought ideas from that rally to an hrca meeting. given the recent news about seattle’s indigenous peoples day, the group was especially enthusiastic about the idea of moving this initiative forward in pittsburgh.10 we reached out to relevant groups in our community and drafted a text to submit to city council. the text was based on seattle’s resolution and it incorporated a demand made by local activists for “the teaching of indigenous peoples’ history as recommended by indigenous communities in our public schools.”11 the city council of pittsburgh passed a non-binding will of the council recognizing the 12th of october as “indigenous peoples’ day” on the eve of human rights day in 2014, and residents continue to refer to this legislation as we recognize indigenous peoples day each fall. 10 organizers in seattle were likewise elated to hear that their work inspired action elsewhere (personal communication with seattle human rights commissioners, august 18 2016). 11 the text of the legislation is available at: http://pghhumanrightscity.wikispaces.com/file/view/indigenous%20peoples%20day%20will%20of%20th e%20council.pdf/533004498/indigenous%20peoples%20day%20will%20of%20the%20counci l.pdf. jackie smith studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 362 subsequently, we have continued to work with the local native american council and native american student organizations as well as other local organizations and activists to organize celebrations of indigenous peoples day, and to raise public consciousness about the violent history of western colonization and its lasting impacts on people of color. one innovation introduced in 2016 is to encourage participants to reach out to educators, congregation leaders, and other community groups to encourage them to take some action to recognize indigenous peoples day. in 2017, we built upon this idea to encourage residents to read and organize neighborhood or larger group discussions of a book by a native american activist, and we provided a discussion guide to support such action. this draws from a recognition of our group’s limited capacity as a volunteer organization as well as of the need to decentralize the work of building a culture of human rights. hrca provides educational resources to support this on our website and via regular communications with participants, as well as through the events it organizes. indigenous peoples day challenges the celebratory accounts of christopher columbus’s encounter with the americas and the subsequent european settlement. pittsburgh does not have a large population of indigenous peoples given its history of forced migration, relocation and genocide against the people who initially lived on this land. thus, the voices of those displaced from this region are not prominent in the public discourse and consciousness. but our principled commitments to the people-centered human rights approach sensitized us to the work of indigenous social movements and human rights organizers around the world, convincing us of the centrality of historical “truth telling” about this country’s imperialist, colonial, and genocidal history as a key initial step in our work to build a city based in human rights. such truth-telling both acknowledges the enduring impacts of past human rights abuses – including the erasure of indigenous histories and voices from public discourses – and creates space for healing and for the rebuilding of more just relationships and communities. indeed, as we witness the rise of right-wing populism and the spate of hate crimes following the recent u.s. election, it is clear that such truth-telling about history is critical to fostering a more cohesive, inclusive, decolonized democratic culture here and elsewhere. by supporting annual indigenous peoples day celebrations, hrca helps create spaces for more public scrutiny of the prevailing accounts of u.s. history. as we know from other human rights work around the world, truthtelling is essential to promoting healing, to address ongoing trauma and its consequences for individuals and communities, and to realizing a broader culture of human rights. thus, the transformation of consciousness and culture we are seeking with the human rights city initiative requires that we tell new stories about our past so that we can imagine a different future that advances “dignity and justice for everyone.” indigenous peoples day work and related historical truth-telling – such as the un’s international decade of people of african descent and the international day of remembrance of local responses to human rights populism studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 363 victims of slavery and the trans-atlantic slave trade – is a form of communicative action and an “exercise in retrospective radical imagination” (santos, 2007, p. 29) that enables a re-orienting of relationships in our community by making visible the history of systematic violence that reinforces difference and denies some groups’ full enjoyment of human rights. discussion and conclusion the growing political influence of right-wing populist movements indicates a broader “crisis of legitimacy” for prevailing political and economic institutions linked to economic inequality, financial instability, and ecological crises (chase-dunn, 2013). fundamental changes in the economy and labor markets as well as in communications have undermined national identities and diminished the meaning of citizenship. this destabilizes social cohesion and local community resilience. exclusionary movements have arisen within this leadership vacuum, as those excluded from the benefits of globalization seek alternative policies that will address individual and social needs. nevertheless, especially since 2000, movements for “the right to the city” have been growing around the world as people face growing threats to their individual and community well-being. i have argued that these locally-based, rights-claiming movements offer a model of politics that can counter the divisive tendencies of capitalism and reduce the appeal of exclusionary populist rhetoric. they do so by actively engaging residents in constructive work to redefine citizenship and transform their communities to prioritize human rights over material wealth. in their latest annual report, human rights watch (2017) focused on the global threats from rising authoritarian populism. these authors conclude that the only way to stop the spread of demagoguery and defend basic human rights principles is to build broad popular constituencies that are organized to defend and demand human rights: civil society organizations, particularly groups that fight to uphold rights, need to protect civic space where it is threatened, build alliances across communities to show the common interest in human rights…. the demagogues [build] popular support by spinning false explanations and cheap solutions to genuine ills. the best antidote is for the public to demand a politics based on truth and the values on which rights-respecting democracy has been built. populists thrive in a vacuum of opposition. a strong popular reaction, using every means available…is the best defense of the values that so many still cherish despite the problems they face. (roth, 2017, p. 13-14) such work to transform public discourse and consciousness has been happening largely outside the broader media coverage, through a growing global movement that is building human rights culture and demanding the jackie smith studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 364 actualization of human rights principles. movements for human rights in cities and communities are helping connect diverse groups and deepen analyses of the intersections of economic and other human rights and of how economic globalization impacts these rights. in doing so, they are cultivating the broad popular constituencies for human rights that are necessary to defend and enhance democratic governance. i have argued that the human rights city model provides a framework for a political and institutional culture fundamentally different from globalized capitalism. human rights cities are attempts to re-define community identities, priorities and values and to re-design local institutions in ways that help achieve those. using various strategies to enhance community dialogues, translate ideas and models across locales, and build relationships across diverse groups, they seek to “flip the script” of economic globalization subordinate market ideologies to the values of human rights, inclusion, dignity, and community well-being. expanding political and legal imaginations, building networks among community groups and neighborhoods, and making visible the impacts of economic policies on the human rights of residents is critical to changing the political culture from one that fuels competition, conflict, and violence to one that privileges well-being and equity. the global expansion of human rights treaties, norms, and institutions is a resource for transforming national identities and notions of citizenship, effectively re-defining citizenship and governments’ obligations regarding human rights (koenig, 2008). by examining the work of local human rights activists, we can better understand both the mechanics of how such global-local transformations can occur and the potential of human rights as a foundation for a more just and peaceful society. by building connections, consciousness, and platforms for collective action, human rights cities initiatives can help communities address deep structural inequities of race and class segregation while fostering social cohesion and building broad bases of support for collective identities and projects centered on human rights. working to change the language and priorities of politics in ways that de-emphasize the city as an economic “growth machine” (logan & molotch, 1987), and instead accentuate the city as a place where residents live lives sustained by vibrant neighborhoods and healthy communities, human rights city initiatives make space for residents to engage in building a different kind of city. yet, the challenges to this work are significant. globalization’s corporatefriendly policies contributed to media monopolies that limit the media space and public attention available for critical analyses and perspectives. this is where work in the “sociology of absences” is key for reversing the omissions and silencing that helps legitimate an unjust social order. and a chronic problem all voluntary groups face is the challenge of recruiting and sustaining active volunteers. fatalism in the face of today’s enormous crises and trying daily struggles for survival makes apathy and consumerist escape a preferable option to activism for many (eliasoph, 1998; schor, 1992). local responses to human rights populism studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 365 my observant participation in this work convinces me that academic workers can – and i believe we must – use our privilege in reflexive and strategic ways to support these kinds of transformative social movements. scholars can help inform a “sociology of absences and emergences” – by attending to people and processes marginalized by mainstream academic and other institutions. we can, for instance, provide our time, expertise, organizational support (such as note-taking and report writing), and access to university resources such as space and financial support. by helping tell the stories of these movements in both scholarly and more general audience writings, we can help bring legitimacy to residents’ human rights claims and broaden the audience attentive to human rights issues. scholars can also contribute to the important work of critical public education by organizing public events and building websites that nurture community scholars who understand the complex global forces impacting their communities. we can help train residents to do research on and write about urban policies and their disparate outcomes and to expose corporate human rights violations. we can help local residents learn about activism in other locales and cultivate both intersectional and translocal connections among activists and groups. finally, we can support the critical work of documenting and broadcasting the vital local knowledge that is emerging from the work of people who are striving to transform our world. acknowledgements i am grateful to my fellow human rights organizers for their contributions to this ongoing research experiment. special thanks to vickie casanova willis for her careful review of this text and for the many conversations we’ve shared, which have shaped this project immensely. the global studies center at the university of pittsburgh provided financial and intellectual support for this research, and i’m grateful to michael goodhart, roger rouse, and joshua mcdermott for their intellectual and practical contributions to this work. references appadurai, a. 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(2017). infant mortality in pittsburgh and beyond. national health corps, pittsburgh. retrieved from www.nationalhealthcorps.org/pittsburgh/blog/infant-mortality-pittsburghand-beyond van den berg, e., & oomen, b. (2014). towards a decentralization of human rights: the rise of human rights cities. in t. van lindert & d. lettinga (eds.), the future of human rights in an urban world: exploring opportunities, threats and challenges (pp. 11-16). amsterdam: amnesty international netherlands. retrieved from jackie smith studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 2, 347-368, 2017 368 http://amnesty.nl/content/uploads/2016/12/the_future_of_human_rights_in_an_urban_worl d_0.pdf?x44743 correspondence address: david harper, school of psychology, the university of east london, stratford campus, water lane, london, e15 4lz united kingdom. tel.: +44 (0)20 8223 4021, email: d.harper@uel.ac.uk issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 6, issue 1, 9-25, 2012 uncovering recovery: the resistible rise of recovery and resilience david harper school of psychology, university of east london, united kingdom ewen speed school of health and human sciences. university of essex, united kingdom abstract discourses of recovery and resilience have risen to positions of dominance in the mental health field. models of recovery and resilience enjoy purchase, in both policy and practice, across a range of settings from self-described psychiatric survivors to mental health charities through to statutory mental health service providers. despite this ubiquity, there is confusion about what recovery means. in this article we problematize notions of recovery and resilience, and consider what, if anything, should be recovered from these concepts. we focus on three key issues, i) individualization, ii) the persistence of a deficit model, and iii) collective approaches to recovery. through documentary analysis we consider these issues across third sector organizations, and public and mental health policy. firstly, definitional debates about recovery reflect wider ideological debates about the nature of mental health. the vagueness of these concepts and implicit assumptions inherent in dominant recovery and resilience discourses render them problematic because they individualize what are social problems. secondly, these discourses, despite being seen as inherently liberatory are conceptually dependent on a notion of deficit in that talk of “positives” and “strengths” requires the existence of “negatives” and “weaknesses” for these concepts to make sense. we argue that this does little to substantially transform dominant understandings of psychological distress. thirdly, these issues combine to impact upon the progressive potential of recovery. it comes to be seen as an individualistic experiential narrative accompaniment to medical understandings where the structural causes of distress are obscured. this in turn impacts upon the potential for recovery to be used to explore more collective and political aspects of emotional distress. drawing on the work of fraser, we use this critique to characterize “recovery” as a “struggle for recognition,” founded on a model of identity politics which displaces and marginalizes the need for social, political and economic redistribution to address many of the underlying causes of emotional distress. we conclude by stating that it is only when the collective, structural experiences of inequality and injustice are explicitly linked to processes of emotional distress that recovery will be possible. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 9 david harper and ewen speed introduction people who experience psychological distress also experience social injustice. this injustice impacts upon their social, economic and political lives. for example, the social patterning of distress reflects broader social inequalities (mirowsky & ross, 2003) as does people’s experience of mental health services (pilgrim, 2009; rogers & pilgrim, 2003). furthermore, the acquisition of psychiatric diagnoses may also present barriers to full time employment, or create barriers to housing (social exclusion unit, 2004). these barriers to full social, political and economic participation can be characterized as a problem of redistributive justice (fraser, 2000). mental health service users and survivors also experience devalued identities through the acquisition of psychiatric diagnoses. fraser (2000) identifies this as a problem of recognition, whereby a normatively framed negative aspect of identity stigmatizes a particular group. one of the sources of such devaluation is the way in which psychiatric terminology is deficit-laden and pathologizing (gergen, 1990). however, in recent years, the popular and professional literature has become increasingly dominated by concepts that appear to reject a deficit-based approach. in this article we focus on two of these concepts in more detail: recovery and resilience. we consider the possibilities these concepts offer people in the mental health field, in particular, in terms of struggles around the politics of recognition and redistribution. we provide a perspective from the uk, where the recovery approach has been gradually appearing in mental health policy over the last decade (perkins & slade, 2012). that the notion of recovery has moved from being a marginal to a central concern in mental health services in the uk (pilgrim, 2008), north america (anthony, 1991, 1993), australia and new zealand (australian health ministers, 2003; o’hagan, 2001; ramon, healy, & renouf, 2007) and elsewhere in a relatively short amount of time is striking. although proponents argue that the focus on recovery and resilience is a uniformly positive development, in this article we problematize this stance. as with many taken-for-granted concepts, there are a number of unintended consequences that flow from their use in a policy context—consequences that may not be obvious to many survivors and professionals and which may even be inconsistent with the stated aims of authors. moreover, these developments have tended to be framed within a broad framework informed by identity politics. this has significant implications for issues of social and distributive justice in terms of mental health service users and survivors. in this paper, we will critique three aspects of discourse related to recovery and resilience as they are utilized in policy frameworks. firstly, we argue that these concepts are individualistic, based on medicalized and neoliberal notions of individual responsibility. this individualism is commensurate with the rise of neoliberal identity politics, focused on individualizing disparate group struggles of recognition rather than collective struggles around redistribution. secondly, we contend that, rather than banishing deficit, recovery and resilience discourse simply reframes deficits as strengths and studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 uncovering recovery 10 is thus implicitly reliant on deficit-based models. this failure to challenge the underlying deficit inherent in contemporary notions of recovery results in a situation whereby recovery can be seen to present barriers to social and political participation. in turn this can be seen as extending (rather than limiting) the stigmatization of the identified group (i.e. perpetuating their status subordination, see fraser, 2000, 2005, 2007). finally, we note how important structural factors (health and social inequalities) are de-emphasized and backgrounded within a neoliberally informed framework of identity politics. these three aspects of recovery and resilience obstruct rather than facilitate efforts to improve the situations of mental health service users/survivors, obscuring the social and political links between distress and structural injustice. moreover, the focus on the individual means that the collective responses to injustice seen in the activities of the broader survivor movement are downplayed. finally, the failure to escape deficit-laden discourse means that there is a restricted conceptual repertoire available to problematize these inadequacies. the paper includes both a documentary and conceptual analysis of these notions, focusing primarily on recovery (since this concept is founded on an assumption of resilience). first we define the concepts. defining resilience and recovery the nature of resilience resilience refers to an ability to respond to and cope with adversity. evidence to support the notion of resilience as an aspect of mental health includes a consistent research finding that rates of mental distress vary between people from apparently similar backgrounds. similarly, goldberg and huxley, (1992) discuss the notion of spontaneous restitution whereby a proportion of people experiencing mental distress spontaneously improve without external intervention. resilience was promoted by the humanistic psychotherapies in the 1940s and 1950s, and the human potential movement of the 1960s promulgated the notion of self-healing human beings. in terms of the historical development of “resilience,” these approaches combined with libertarian professional movements (such as the 1970s radical non-interventionist social work). by the late 1980s there was a move towards solution-focused therapy (de shazer, 1988) and, within mainstream psychology, towards positive psychology (seligman, 1998). this entailed creating a research paradigm where the emphasis was on psychological processes that were deemed to be protective or ameliorating rather than those which were deemed to focus on deficits. it is in these broad therapeutic contexts that the problematic notions of resilience and recovery developed. one important distinction to be made is between the term recovery and the notion of recovery. many commentators conflate the two, which can studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 11 david harper and ewen speed lead to confusion. thus chamberlin’s groundbreaking on our own (1978) is sometimes credited as part of the history of the recovery movement. however, the actual term recovery only appears twice in the whole book, both times mentioned only in passing. as davidson, o’connell, tondora, lawless, & evans (2005) note “the only thing about which most stakeholders seem to be able to agree, in fact, is that the notion of recovery has become the focus of a considerable amount of confusion and debate between and among various constituencies within the mental health community” (p. 480). the origins of the recovery model in mental health lie in the work of william anthony (1991, 1993). broadly speaking, it is a highly individualized and experiential concept, which proposes a framework for recovery from “mental illness,” based on individual changes to attitudes, behaviours and beliefs by the psychiatric patient. anthony notes that the work of survivors like deegan (see deegan, 1998) was one of the inspirations for this approach and deegan does, indeed use both the concept and the term recovery. in the context of this paper, it is worthy of note that survivor groups tend to place more emphasis on the work of deegan and other survivors, in their use of recovery. pilgrim (2008) delineates three competing versions of the recovery approach: a biomedical version focused solely on an improvement in symptomatology; a more socially-oriented model, in the tradition of psychiatric rehabilitation, focused on improvements in symptoms and quality of life; and a psychiatric survivor movement approach focused on liberation rather than cure. for example, for those survivors who popularize notions of recovery—like deegan (1998)—their main concern is, arguably, to critique the narrow limits of traditional notions of rehabilitation and with developing narratives of hope, rather than delineating a model per se. moreover, some survivors see the notion of recovery as the antithesis of a reductive professional-led model. coleman (1999) explicitly advocates a political notion of recovery, contrasting it against a psychiatric conceptualization. dillon (2011) also outlines a political and collective approach to recovery, contrasting it with a biomedical approach, arguing that “improving all of our personal experiences means that we must collectively address oppressive political structures. this for me is why the personal is political” (2011, p. 157). we return to this issue later. within the literature, anthony’s is not the only model (see, for example, jacobson & greenley, 2001). in their review of recovery models leamy, bird, le boutillier, williams, & slade (2011) examined 97 separate contributions. in addition, there have been attempts to clarify, through qualitative research with service users/survivors, key elements in accounts of recovery from distress (adame & hornstein, 2006; adame & knudson, 2008; cohen, 2005; ochocka, nelson, & janzen, 2005; young & ensing, 1999). this range of competing versions means that specific concepts of recovery are often vague. we present some analysis of policy documents to offer some empirical grounding to the ways in which recovery is being used in a practical context. we identify three key problems. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 uncovering recovery 12 three problematic aspects of recovery and resilience discourse we now proceed by demonstrating the three elements of this critique through documentary analysis, before relating this analysis to wider concerns around social justice. 1. individualization no health without mental health (department of health, 2011) is a uk “crossgovernment mental health outcomes strategy” intended to establish parity of treatment between services for people with mental and those with physical health problems. in one sense, it can be regarded as an attempt to redress some of the status subordination experienced by mental health service users. it is selected for analysis here because it offers a governmental narrative of how recovery is defined and operationalized in a policy context. recovery is explicitly defined in section two of the strategy, under the heading of “guiding values and principles.” these are listed as “freedom, fairness, and responsibility,” (2011, p. 16). the definition of recovery is listed under the first of these values (freedom). within this definition, recovery is outlined through reference to a detailed footnote that describes recovery as follows: the term “recovery” has developed a specific meaning in mental health. it has been defined as: “a deeply personal, unique process of changing one’s attitudes, values, feelings, goals, skills and/or roles. it is a way of living a satisfying, hopeful and contributing life, even with limitations caused by the illness. recovery involves the development of new meaning and purpose in one’s life” (anthony, 1993) . . . although the term is not used in relation to children and young people, the underlying principles of the recovery approach are equally applicable. this quote from anthony offers the most frequently used interpretation of what recovery is, and how it relates to a person’s mental health. the onus for recovery is on the individual, whereby that individual must change their attitudes, values, feelings, goals, skills and roles, in a deeply personal way, in order to effect change within their own life. rather than effecting social change, the marginalized other is required to change their personal outlook. by failing to problematize the medical model, anthony’s model requires that the person accept that they have an illness (i.e. that they endorse the medical model). recovery is thus framed as the need for the service user to acknowledge the inappropriateness of their negative beliefs, values and behaviours and to rethink these “inappropriate” cognitions and behaviours into a set of more satisfying, hopeful and contributory values and behaviours. this model of recovery makes emotional distress an explicit problem of individualized identity, rather than for example, an effect of structural inequality. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 13 david harper and ewen speed the individualized personal nature of recovery is a central theme across another uk policy document, this time from rethink, a leading uk mental health membership charity. the document is entitled 100 ways to support recovery (slade, 2009). like the cross government strategy this document draws from the work of anthony to provide a framework for recovery but adds a distinction between “personal recovery” (seen as within the domain of the “expertise of people with lived experience of mental illness”) and “clinical recovery” (seen as within the domain of the “expertise of mental health professionals”). clinical recovery is concerned with the eradication of symptoms, the restoration of “social functioning” and other ways of “getting back to normal,” (p. 4). this distinction functions to effectively locate “personal recovery” as an adjunct to clinical recovery, and this complementarity avoids recovery being seen as inherently contested. the document outlines four “personal recovery tasks” (p. 4). these are listed as: i) developing a positive identity; ii) framing the “mental illness”1; iii) self-managing the mental illness; and, iv) developing valued social roles. we focus on the third task, which illustrates an important aspect of an individualistic approach to recovery: responsibilization. neoliberal policies invite people to see certain problems as the responsibility of the individual rather than, for example, the state. as a result, taking personal responsibility (through self-management) of the “mental illness experience” (p. 4) entails, as lemke argues “shifting the responsibility for social risks such as illness, unemployment, poverty, etc., and for life in society into the domain for which the individual is responsible and transforming it into a problem of ‘self-care’” (lemke, 2001, p. 201). for example, the document states, “framing the mental illness experience provides a context in which it becomes one of life’s challenges, allowing the ability to self-manage to develop. the transition is from being clinically managed to taking personal responsibility through self-management,” (p. 4). this program of self-care, lemke argues, is tightly aligned with neoliberal forms of government, which “characteristically develop indirect techniques for leading and controlling individuals without at the same time being responsible for them,” (p. 201). an example of this can be seen in the document where it notes that self-care “does not mean doing everything on your own. it means being responsible for your own well-being, including seeking help and support from others when necessary” (p. 4). elsewhere in the document there is a direct comparison between traditional approaches and recovery approaches. under a section entitled “goals of the service” (p. 6) traditional approaches are defined as “anti-disease” whereas recovery approaches are defined as “pro-health.” similarly, “compliance” is contrasted with “choice,” and a traditional “return to normal” is contrasted with a recovered “transformation.” this demonstrates a clear attempt to studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 uncovering recovery 14 “positivize” recovery-oriented services. self-management and patient choice are key elements of neoliberal health policy. these ascriptions are of a piece with other ideological processes that seek to define service users as responsibilized consumers. this idea is further iterated in the fourth criterion. previously traditional services sought a return to normal, whereas, recovery services, we are told, seek transformation. this transformation is construed in terms of the individual service user, not in terms of the wider structural conditions of inequality. this obviously has implications for the shape of policy initiatives to reduce mental health service users and survivors experience of social injustice. the championing of practices of choice, selfcontrol and personal transformation are compatible with neoliberal forms of healthcare provision intended to produce responsibilized individualized service users. one way in which this has been manifested in traditional service approaches has been in linking distress with internal deficits and recovery with internal strengths. it is to the centrality of the notion of deficit that we turn next. 2. the persistence of deficit the second element of our critique is that recovery and resilience discourse continues to be implicitly reliant on a model of deficit. consider again the 2011 strategy document, no health without mental health. the strategy is organized around six key strategy goals. each goal has an accompanying explanation that identifies specific examples of the overall goal. limitations of space mean we can only focus on one goal here: “more people with mental health problems will recover.” the accompanying explanation identifies seven indicative examples: more people who develop mental health problems will have a good quality of life—greater ability to manage their own lives, stronger social relationships, a greater sense of purpose, the skills they need for living and working, improved chances in education, better employment rates and a suitable and stable place to live. (p. 6) this extract contains a number of features that clearly imply a particular underlying aetiology of emotional distress. implicit in this model is an assertion that people who develop mental health problems have a poor quality of life, are unable to manage their own lives, lack strong social relationships, have a lesser sense of purpose, lack necessary skills for living and working, have lesser opportunities for education, employment and poorer access to secure housing. all of these characteristics are predicated on existing negatives (deficits) being reframed as potential positives. a deficit model persists in that, although framed in positive terms, each positive term is dependent for its meaning on the opposite negative term. billig, et al. (1988) note how this is a common feature of thinking and talking. a focus on strengths does not do away with the notion that there are studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 15 david harper and ewen speed deficits; indeed they are predicated upon an underlying and enduring deficit model. this model is normative, accentuating the positive aspects of deficits, rather than challenging the ontology of the deficit model. as such, it reifies difference and sustains the subordinated status of mental health service users. this approach to recovery does not offer an alternative means of understanding the nature of emotional distress; it simply reframes existing understandings of mental illness. this is problematic when the point of origin of much recovery work was about challenging existing notions of mental health and proposing alternative notions of emotional distress. next, we focus on the third element of our critique, the backgrounding of structural injustice and collective responses to it. 3. de-emphasizing structural causes of, and collective responses to, distress earlier, we identified four “personal recovery tasks” (p. 4) in 100 ways to support recovery (slade, 2009), the fourth of which was “developing valued social roles.” a clear emphasis in this fourth criterion is put on relationships with others and the support that this might bring: “working with the person in their social context is vital, especially during times of crisis when support usually received from friends, family and colleagues can become most strained” (p. 4). crucially, the social context is defined in terms of what it might add to the interpersonal context. this reduction of the meaning of “social” to the “interpersonal” prioritizes a very narrow view of the social (predicated on personal interaction), and limits the potential for consideration of issues of social injustice within such a narrow context. this is not to say that inequality is ignored in discussions of recovery. for example, jacobson and greenley’s (2001) model of recovery includes a concern with empowerment but this is framed as “a sense of empowerment” (p. 483), a psychologized and individualized reading of empowerment, rather than an actual redistribution of power. thus, inequality is not ignored but it is addressed in a narrow individualized form. this prioritizing allows for a backgrounding of many of the key issues of social inequality that are known to contribute to poor mental health (such as the community-wide impacts of living in areas of poverty, see dorling, 2011). the rethink document appears to accept a priori that social inequality will be present, but places the onus on the service user to rearticulate the effects of social inequality in terms of their individualized, responsibilized self. this is redolent of the spoiled identity of the service user implicitly evoked by anthony, (1993). this model (directly or indirectly) has the effect of minimizing the role and import of social inequality in population level rates of emotional distress. it functions to make mental illness an individual problem with personal solutions. this model draws from an individualized rights-based form of identity politics, which, as the social perspective network argues, does “not focus enough on the need for society to change as well,” (slade, 2009, p. 56). studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 uncovering recovery 16 for white (2004) these kind of accounts obscure context—the opportunities or material conditions which facilitate people getting through adversity. smail has made a similar point—that the extent to which people can make changes in their lives will depend on their access to powers and resources (e.g. educational, physical, social, political and suchlike). although, he argues, these originate in the external material environment “possession of or access to such powers will often appear superficially as personal characteristics or qualities” (1990, p. 8). these manifestations of responsible individuals speak directly to neoliberal models of the service user. in our analysis of these documents we have seen a number of recurring themes. the focus on individual journeys, whilst to some degree welcome, also leads to practices of atomization (where social processes are reduced to individual elements), individualization and responsibilization. moreover, the dominance of medical understandings of emotional distress is perpetuated, since the recovery model does not challenge them. the recovery model does not erase the notion of deficit; more accurately it reframes it, limiting the potential for developing truly alternative models and understanding of the nature of emotional distress. finally, social inequality, whilst acknowledged, is backgrounded and there is a tension between the personal and political in that recovery is seen as an individual and personal practice, which simultaneously downplays the role of collective and political aspects of distress. individualization, deficit, inequality and social justice our argument here is not that the personal should be secondary to the political, more that an awareness of the need for balance between the personal and political needs to be acknowledged by practitioners and service users. there is a need to rebalance the tension between the politics of recognition and the politics of redistribution such that they complement rather than contradict each other. to do this, we utilize fraser’s framework founded on notions of status (rather than identity) as a means of contextualizing and explaining the implications of recovery-based individualization, deficit and inequality in relation to questions of social justice (see fraser, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2007). we consider how these three factors combine to marginalize consideration of more macro level contributors to emotional distress, such as conditions of economic inequality (fraser describes this marginalization as a “problem of displacement”). also, we consider how a focus on identity underscores rather than disavows differences between the pathologized “other” and the normative “mainstream” (fraser describes this as a “problem of reification”). we accomplish this through a consideration of processes of power and domination in the mental health field, particularly in terms of the continuing dominance or hegemony of biomedical approaches. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 17 david harper and ewen speed recovery and hegemony we have argued that dominant norms of medicine and indeed government are embedded in, and perpetuated by, the mainstream recovery model. consequently, it offers survivors little in the way of alternatives to the present medical and politically dominant ways of making sense of emotional distress. the recovery model clearly engages with an “identity model” of recognition. this model characterizes any negative judgment of a social group as a problem of “misrecognition,” whereby the majority regards an element of the groups’ identity as negative. the task within this frame (for members of the minority group) becomes one of making the negative trait positive, such that the misrecognition might be redressed. the solution to this misrecognition is that members of minority groups …reject such images in favor of new self-representations of their own making, jettisoning internalized, negative identifies and joining collectively to produce a self-affirming culture of their own—which publicly asserted will gain the respect and esteem of society at large. (fraser, 2000, p. 110) the recovery model clearly fits into this political project. the question it begs is where the critique of social inequality, or medical power might fit in these self-affirmed representations. the recovery model directs attention to the positive group identity whilst simultaneously failing to problematize the conditions (beyond the group) that contributed to the situation; it is blind to the wider social and political struggle. it also displaces the political nature of the struggle between different power elites and the psychiatric patient that were such a central feature to the history of the psychiatric survivor movement. notions of equivalence and difference allow us to bring consideration of this political struggle back into the discussion. equivalence and difference laclau and mouffe (1985) assert that political struggles can be characterized in terms of “logics of equivalence” or “logics of difference.” the former relate to those struggles where the differences between groups are downplayed to create a united front against a common enemy, whereas the latter relate to struggles where differences are accentuated. an example of equivalence would be a social movement against psychiatry, where differences of class, gender, ethnicity etc. would be backgrounded (but not denied) and similarities between groups would be accentuated (thus creating a collective banner behind which to mobilize—e.g. as psychiatric survivors). however, this dynamic is problematic. the logic of equivalence must seek to build a broad based movement against a hegemonic power, in a dynamic context that acknowledges and embraces difference rather than reifying the collective identity; fraser describes this as an “affirmative recognition of difference” (2000, p. 116), perhaps characterized as a broad coalition. if the movement studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 uncovering recovery 18 does not recognize this difference then the collective equivalence between actors risks becoming atrophied. fraser (2000) touches upon this dynamic when she discusses the reification of identity politics. for fraser, there is a tendency for equivalences to become a singular, simplified group identity. the promotion of recovery, within the mainstream, as a user-led process for dealing with emotional distress, lends recovery discourse an authenticity that it does not command and imposes a singular “simplified group identity which denies the complexity of people’s lives,” (fraser, 2000, p. 112). this singular identity (e.g. as recovering service users) does not pay sufficient attention to other ongoing political struggles across different groups of actors, such as the dominance of psychiatric pathology or economic inequalities and the impact these factors have in perpetuating emotional distress. relatedly, logics of difference are those strategies intended to amplify dissimilarities between and within groups. this logic seeks to break down chains of equivalences and to foster differences in order to maintain a position of dominance in the field. consider again the problems of misrecognition. identifying specific groups as deficient or inferior locates them within “institutionalized relations of social subordination” (fraser, 2000). institutionalized subordination limits opportunities for participatory parity, and therefore marks a clear case of social injustice. somewhat paradoxically, the recovery “model” could be argued to be seeking to redress this disparity, by rearticulating this “deficit” within a normative “strengths” framework. however, it fails in this regard; by seeking parity through a valorized individualized identity, whilst ignoring the need for institutional social change. the focus on a “recovered” identity supports dominant norms, and constructs an “unrecovered identity” as intrinsically negative. it ignores the need for transformations of “institutionalized value patterns” (fraser, 2000), that themselves block opportunities for participatory parity. in this context, the focus on individual change alone is always doomed to failure in a social justice context. the collective survivor movement offers an alternative focus for progressive politics. the survivor movement as a social justice movement historically, the survivor movement represented an attempt to transform medical dominance. it sought to offer a counter-hegemonic strategy, based on non-medical understandings of emotional distress, informed by social justice and equality. in this sense, it sought to create a logic of equivalence. we do not intend to homogenize the survivor movement; like any other movement, it comprises cross-cutting currents of thought and action but, we would argue, a dispassionate observer of the movement in the 1970s and 1980s would not have said that its main concern was recovery per se. rather, the main demands of the movement were to call for the ending of coercive practices and the development of “patient-controlled alternatives.” part of this project involved developing a focus on the survivor’s individual experience as a studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 19 david harper and ewen speed counter to the totalizing, pathologizing discourse of medicine. this resistance against universalistic medicine built on the 1960s counter culture (such as assertions that the personal is political, see hanisch, 1970), the women’s movement and other civil rights campaigns and the anti-psychiatry legacy (such as laing’s 1967 work on the politics of experience). in this contemporary context we suggest that the experiential, personal biography element of the survivor movement has been co-opted by mainstream politics and medicine, and that the radical redistributive element has been marginalized and displaced. within this co-opted model, recovery is concerned with inward transformation as a solution to individual problems, whilst the social and political context is backgrounded or ignored. by extension, these accounts also privilege professional-led interventions to help recovery. this is problematic as survivors’ accounts show that their journeys are extremely diverse with professional involvement playing a part only in some narratives (e.g. adame & hornstein, 2006; adame & knudson, 2008; cohen, 2005; ochocka, clare & may, 2005; young & ensing, 1999) whilst many survivors report “experiencing recovery” only after freeing themselves from professional intervention (thornhill, et al., 2004). that the recovery movement has not, for example, led to any serious challenge to the medicalization of distress is further evidence of this co-option. the focus on individual, rather than collective, experience functions to accentuate differences between survivors and indeed organizations. by focusing on individuals the role and potential of collective approaches is obscured. by co-opting recovery, and focusing on individuals, there is clearly a neglect of the social and material context of emotional distress and, in neglecting the impress of power, there is a tendency to voluntarism—the idea that people can simply change through force of will despite countervailing structural factors (smail, 2004). similarly, many of the real demands of the survivor movement have been obscured. as trivedi (2010) notes, what does the recovery approach have to say about professional power? one of the striking things about the survivors movement has been just that—it is a collective social movement (crossley, 2005; speed, 2006). harper (2010) notes the 24 demands made by the mental patients union (mpu), set up in the uk in late 1972 following an occupation of the paddington day hospital by patients and staff (spandler, 2006). only nine of these demands have been met, many only partially. the 15 outstanding demands include: the abolition of compulsory treatment and seclusion; the “abolition of irreversible psychiatric ‘treatments’ like ect, psychosurgery and medication; and that ‘all patients should have the right to have any ‘treatment’ which they believe will help them” (roberts, 2008). claims like these from the survivor movement can be regarded as attempts to mobilize a collective campaign, to identify those aspects of psychiatric practice that are political, or that speak to a common experience. developing a campaign around these issues would enable service users to identify their collective similarity (or equivalence) rather than focusing on a politics of misrecognition. it would allow service users to draw attention to, and problematize, processes of, social injustice, studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 uncovering recovery 20 economic, political and social inequality that are so prevalent in the incidence of emotional distress. there is clearly a need to return to the some of the key demands of the survivor movement and to consider how to maintain an explicitly transformative agenda in mental health research, policy and practice. beyond recovery and resilience: alternative conceptualizations given the problems with recovery and resilience discourse what are we to do? can it be reclaimed and used differently in order to achieve greater social justice for those in distress? or, is it so inherently limited that we need to move beyond it and use an entirely different vocabulary? there are a number of things in favor of the first approach. firstly, the term recovery is in wide use in the general population. secondly, the recovery model is widely known and may provide a vehicle for addressing issues of injustice and making certain demands, for example that services reorganize so they are consistent with political notions of recovery. however, there are also things in favor of the second approach. for example, whilst the term recovery is in wide use, many understand it as a medical term, implying recovery from an illness or disease (wallcraft, 2005). although there are other non-medical definitions of recovery, the issue is that the term itself has an ambiguous meaning. because of this, on what basis can we say that a mental health service is or is not “recovery-oriented”? how do we deal with conflicts between models (e.g. clinical recovery versus personal recovery)? does it simply become a case of arguing for one’s own definition of recovery: “this is what recovery really means …” or “this is what recovery means for me”? rather than seeking a consensus view of what recovery is, it is, perhaps, more useful to think about the ways in which some of the underlying principles of the survivor movement might lead to a re-invigorated debate about how the personal can be made political, such that struggles of recognition can complement struggles of redistribution, to effect progressive social change. moreover, if we are to try to move beyond recovery and resilience discourse, it is important to consider ways of holding on to elements that are likely to be helpful in leading to more socially just outcomes. in proposing a way forward, it is necessary to identify an approach that combines the progressive elements of a politics of recognition with a struggle for redistribution. in a mental health context, redistribution would involve engaging with the social, political and economic processes that created processes of status subordination for service users, across all aspects of social, political and economic participation. fraser (2000) proposes a solution that rejects the identity mode of misrecognition and instead argues for a politics of status. this alternative neither reifies subordinated identity nor does it displace struggles for redistribution. instead it seeks to undermine notions of group specificity, arguing that it is not a misrecognized studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 21 david harper and ewen speed identity that is the endpoint of any political struggle, but rather the struggle should seek “institutional remedies for institutionalized harms” that are a consequence of misrecognition. a recovery model based on an implicit notion of deficit clearly does not accomplish this. but the recovery model is not alone in this regard. fraser argues that any struggle that relies solely on issues of recognition will fail. moves for redistributive justice must be coupled to issues of recognition. the economic impact of being identified as a psychiatric patient must be considered in conjunction with the social and political impacts of this identification. it is only when redistribution and misrecognition are considered together that the extent of the social injustice can be gauged in line with the best means of addressing it, such that parity of participation can be considered. what should we recover from “recovery”? firstly, the focus on the individual biographical narratives of survivors seems genuinely helpful, as does the notion of each individual going on a personal journey. secondly, the optimism about the possibility of healing, of engaging in a process of change in a person’s relationship to distress is to be welcomed. there is an assumption that all these elements exist because of the recovery approach or model but, in fact, they pre-existed the wide use of this term. neither biographical journey narratives nor optimism necessarily entail the other conceptual and policy baggage that recovery and resilience bring with them as we have described. indeed, the way these concepts have been implemented in services has led to a number of unintended consequences in that the “personal” has become disconnected from the “political.” thus, within the recovery and resilience literature there is little emphasis on the importance of survivors getting together and sharing experiences, even less, that they might seek to act on insights gained in this process. however, in the context of the women’s movement, for example, this link between personal and collective understanding and action was key (hanisch, 1970). it is necessary that the link between individual narratives and wider social, political and economic struggles are strengthened and maintained. possible alternatives need to value individual narratives but place them in a collective context, developing explanatory accounts that are not located intra-psychically but rather, which are attentive to the structural conditions which might facilitate “coming through” adversity or “moving forward” (ochocka, et al., 2005) and which also acknowledge the impact of social inequalities on aetiology and the ability to change in relation to distress. in focusing on the power of individual survivor narratives it is important not to simply appropriate them so as to insert them into professionally derived conceptual frameworks. instead more socially just frameworks are required, more fully grounded in everyday experience. these might include not only accounts of their distress but also problematic relationships with health services. or address power disparities in relation to professionals and studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 uncovering recovery 22 clashing viewpoints on the nature of that distress, or indeed broader issues of inequality around class, ethnicity, gender or sexuality. in understanding distress there is a need for more sophisticated understandings of experience (trivedi, 2010), framed in people’s own words, using the language that survivors themselves use (wallcraft & michaelson, 2001). however, these narratives need to be understood in a collective and political and economic context. it is no surprise that some of the most inspiring personal accounts occur at survivor-run conferences like intervoice’s2 annual international hearing voices conference attended by equal numbers of survivors and professionals. at such events, the individual is not simply relating a biographical narrative, rather they are giving a public testimony, often intended to lead to changes in services—here, the personal is indistinguishable from the political. in this regard, boyle (2003) suggests a focus on aetiology that examines the social and societal causes of distress. in her discussion of another individualized and psychologized concept—that of “vulnerability,” boyle suggests that one alternative is to focus on the external causes of things to which people are supposedly vulnerable: then, rather than simply naming the damage, we might gradually name the systems or people who do the damage, eventually making them the subject of our sentences … [w]e might also take up paul gilbert’s recent suggestion (2002) and have a “defeat abuse,” rather than “defeat depression” campaign. (2003, p. 30) such a focus might lead us to identify the structural facilitators of recovery (e.g. stable income, good housing, employment etc.). another way of examining the social context is to look towards approaches that firmly locate the individual in their social and societal context. hagan and smail (1997a, 1997b) for example, introduce the notion of power-mapping. this is a process of identifying with a service user what access they have to a whole range of resources (e.g. personal, bodily, interpersonal, social, financial etc.). burton and kagan’s (2008) societal case formulation provides another way of doing this. the aim in these kinds of approaches is a form of collective conscientization (freire, 1974) where people come to understand the structural causes of their oppression. smail talks of the related notion of “outsight” which he contrasts with what he terms “magical voluntarist” forms of therapeutic help—that is, approaches which are based on the assumption that, perhaps with the expert help of a therapist, a person is able to change the way they think about the world through sheer force of will, rather than attempt to change the world that causes them distress. if the aim of magical voluntarist psychology is to achieve the kind of “insight” that allows the person to see the error of their ways and adjust their conduct accordingly, the aim of a social environmentalist psychology is more or less completely the opposite: to help the person achieve “outsight,” such that the causes of distress can be demystified and the extent of their own responsibility for their condition put into its proper perspective. (smail, 2005, p. 32) studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 23 david harper and ewen speed conclusion—challenging the binary? our critique leads to two key conclusions. firstly, there is a need for the implications and limitations of recovery and resilience discourse to be much more fully elaborated by different proponents. the one size fits all approach to recovery and resilience is not adequate nor is it appropriate in the context of a progressive politics of emotional distress aimed at greater social justice for those who experience it. indeed, we would argue that positive psychology does little to move the debate on, as it continues to be constituted by the ghost of psychological deficits. talking about strengths simply privileges the other side of the binary opposition of deficit-strength. we need, instead, to challenge this opposition. secondly, one way of distinguishing different approaches to recovery and resilience is how they conceptualize the political (and the social and the economic) in the experience of emotional distress (both individually and collectively). we do not discount the need for recovery and resilience approaches to give a central importance to individual experience but it is absolutely vital that the conceptualization of individual experience is one that can be tied back to collective and structural experiences of distress, inequality and injustice. notes 1 possible alternate meanings for the “illness” are offered in the context of “spiritual, cultural or existential crises.” however, although other frameworks are alluded to, the lack of a sustained analysis of structural factors risks those identified factors being regarded primarily as lifestyle factors. 2 http://www.intervoiceonline.org/ references adame, a.l., & hornstein, g.a. 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(1970). the personal is political. in s. firestone & a. koedt (eds.) notes from the second year, (pp. 76-78), new york: radical feminism harper, d. (2010). tensions and dilemmas in clinical psychology’s relationship with the service user movement. clinical psychology forum, 209, 35-38. jacobson, n., & greenley, d. (2001). what is recovery? a conceptual model and explication. psychiatric services, 52, 482-485. laclau, e., & mouffe, c. (1985). hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. london: verso books laing, r.d. (1967). the politics of experience and the bird of paradise. harmondsworth: penguin leamy, m., bird, v., le boutillier, c., williams, j., & slade, m. (2011). conceptual framework for personal recovery in mental health: systematic review and narrative synthesis. british journal of psychiatry, 199, 445-452. lemke, t. (2001). “the birth of bio-politics”: michel foucault’s lecture at the college de france on neoliberal governmentality. economy and society, 30(2), 190-207. mirowsky, j., & ross, c.e. (2003) social causes of psychological distress. second edition aldine de gruyter: new york. ochocka, j., nelson, g., & janzen, r. (2005). moving forward: negotiating self and external circumstances in recovery. psychiatric rehabilitation journal, 28, 315-322. o’hagan, m. (2001). recovery competencies for new zealand mental health workers. wellington: mental health commission of new zealand. perkins, r., & slade, m. (2012) recovery in england: transforming statutory services?, international review of psychiatry, 24(1), 29-39. pilgrim, d. (2008). “recovery” and current mental health policy, chronic illness, 4, 295-304. studies in social justice, volume 6, issue 1, 2012 25 david harper and ewen speed pilgrim, d. (2009) recovery from mental health problems: scratching the surface without ethnography. journal of social work practice, 23, 475-487. ramon, s., healy, b. & renouf, n. (2007). recovery from mental illness as an emergent concept and practice in australia and the uk. international journal of social psychiatry, 53, 108122. roberts, a. (2008). mental health and survivors’ movements and context. retrieved from: http:// studymore.org.uk/mpu.htm rogers, a., & pilgrim, d. (2003). mental health and inequality. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. seligman, m.e.p. (1998). president’s column: building human strength: psychology’s forgotten mission. apa monitor, january, 2. slade, m. (2009). 100 ways to support recovery: a guide for mental health professionals, rethink recovery series: volume 1. london: rethink. retrieved from: http://www.rethink. org/document.rm?id=8914 smail, d. (1990). design for a post-behaviourist clinical psychology. clinical psychology forum, 28, 2-10. smail, d. (2004). psychotherapy and the making of subjectivity. in p. gordon & r. mayo (eds.) between psychotherapy and philosophy (pp. 130-140). london & philadelphia: whurr. smail, d. (2005). power and interest in psychology: elements of a social materialist understanding of distress. ross-on-wye: pccs. social exclusion unit. (2004). mental health and social exclusion. london: office of the deputy prime minister. social perspectives network. (2007). whose recovery is it anyway? london: author. retrieved from:http://www.spn.org.uk/fileadmin/spn_uploads/documents/papers/spn_papers/ recovery_and_diversity_booklet.pdf spandler, h. (2006). asylum to action: paddington day hospital, therapeutic communities and beyond. london: jessica kingsley publishers. speed, e. (2006). patients, consumers and survivors: a case study of mental health service user discourses. social science and medicine, 62, 28-38. thornhill, h., clare, l., & may, r. (2004). escape, enlightenment and endurance: narratives of recovery from psychosis. anthropology & medicine, 11, 181-199. topor, a., borg, m., di girolamo, s., & davidson, l. (2011). not just an individual journey: social aspects of recovery. international journal of social psychiatry, 57, 90-99. trivedi, p. (2010). a recovery approach in mental health services: transformation, tokenism or tyranny? in t. bassett & t. stickley (eds.), voices of experience: narratives of mental health survivors (pp. 152-163). chichester: wiley. wallcraft, j. (2005). recovery from mental breakdown. in j. tew (ed), social perspectives in mental health: developing social models to understand and work with mental distress. london: jessica kingsley. wallcraft, j. & michaelson, j. (2001). developing a survivor discourse to replace the “psychopathology” of breakdown and crisis. in c. newnes, g. holmes, & c. dunn (eds.), this is madness too: critical perspectives on mental health services (pp. 177-190). ross-onwye: pccs books. white, m. (2004). narrative practice and the unpacking of identity conclusions. in m. white, narrative practice and exotic lives: resurrecting diversity in everyday life (pp. 119-147). adelaide: dulwich centre publications. young, s.l., & ensing, d.s. (1999). exploring recovery from the perspective of people with psychiatric disabilities. psychiatric rehabilitation journal, 22, 219-231. correspondence address: liza mügge, faculty of social and behavioural sciences, university of amsterdam, oz achterburgwal 237, room: 3.51, 1012 dl amsterdam, netherlands, tel.: (+31) 20 525 2173, email: l.m.mugge@uva.nl issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 7, issue 1, 65-81, 2013 women in transnational migrant activism: supporting social justice claims of homeland political organizations liza mugge university of amsterdam, netherlands abstract this article studies the conceptions of social justice of women active in transnational migrant politics over a period of roughly 20 years in the netherlands. the novel focus on migrant women reveals that transnational politics is almost completely male dominated and directed. two of the exceptions found in this article include a leftist and a kurdish women’s organization supporting the communist cause in the 1980s and the kurdish struggle in the 1990s in turkey, respectively. in both organizations, gender equality was subordinated to broader ideologies of political parties in their homeland. leftist activists in the cold war era supported a narrow definition of the “politics of redistribution,” while kurdish activists, combined classical features of the latter with those of traditional identity politics. introduction since the fall of the berlin wall in 1989, the demise of communism and the continuing ascendance of free-market ideology, claims for social justice have shifted from redistributive issues to the “politics of recognition” (fraser, 1996, pp. 3). while the first type of social justice claims seeks a more just distribution of resources and goods, the goal of the second type is a difference-friendly world. in the latter view, “assimilation to majority or dominant cultural norms is no longer the price of equal respect” (1996, pp. 3). examples include claims for the recognition of ethnic minorities and gender differences. globalization has increased the potential of such identity politics to become transnational. while there has been ample attention given to the transnationalization of women’s activism and women’s claims for equality— both distributive and difference-friendly (naples & desai, 2002)—as well as to migrant transnationalism (vertovec, 2009), little research has focused on transnational claims of migrant women. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 66 liza mügge this article examines how turkish and kurdish migrant women in the netherlands had and have been involved in transnationalism before and after the fall of the berlin wall. which conceptions of social justice do they advocate? in what forms of transnational activism are they involved and to what extent are they influenced by factors related to organizations and politics in the country of origin? the next section points to the absence of gender in the literature on diaspora, transnational, and migrant politics. it is followed by a contextual section on the migration process of turks and kurds to the netherlands and the development of the transnational organizational political infrastructure there. in particular, it shows that transnational politics is almost completely male dominated and directed. subsequently, i present the only two exceptions to such male domination in my sample: one leftist and one kurdish women’s organization, supporting the communist struggle in the 1980s and kurdish resistance in the 1990s in turkey, respectively. the analysis confirms a shift in social justice claims after the demise of communism, in line with fraser’s argument. intriguingly, however, although both organizations work with and for women, gender equality is subordinate to the political paradigms of marxism and ethnic nationalism adhered to by the political parties they sympathize with. gender: a lacuna of diaspora, transnational and migrant politics scholarship despite a widespread scholarly agreement that gender matters in all social, economic and political spheres, research addressing gender outside typically “female” spaces, like the household, are scarce (al-ali, 2002; levitt & jaworsky, 2007, pp. 137-139; mahler, 1998, pp. 82-87; vertovec, 2009, pp. 64-66). for instance, in most recent “state of the art” and “taking stock” special journal issues and edited volumes on migrant transnationalism and diaspora, full contributions or chapters on gender are absent (e.g. bauböck & faist, 2010; ben-rafael, sternberg, liwerant, & gorny, 2009; fibbi & d’amato, 2008; khagram & levitt, 2008; martiniello & lafleur, 2008; pries, 2008; vertovec, 2009). not surprisingly, gender goes unnoticed in empirical studies on diaspora and transnational migrant politics (brand, 2006; esman, 2009; ögelman, 2003; østergaard-nielsen, 2003; shain, 1999; sheffer, 2003; for an exception see aliefendioğlu, 2004). confirming this pattern, gender is not considered in studies on migrants’ political participation and their organizational networks in the receiving country (schrover & vermeulen, 2005; van heelsum, 2002; vermeulen, 2006; yurdakul, 2009). there are, however, good reasons to bring gender into the study of diaspora, transnational and migrant politics. existing scholarship suggests that migrant men’s and women’s involvement in social networks and transnationalism take very different forms (de tona & lentin, 2011; fouron & glick schiller, 2001; hagan, 1998; itzigsohn & giorguli-saucedo, 2005, p. 896; menjívar 2000, pp. 157-193). the general finding is that migrant men play a role in public, studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 women in transnational migrant activism 67 formal and institutionalized domestic networks of migrant organizations and the transnational ties these maintain with homeland-based actors. in contrast, women seem to play an important role in informal networks consisting of friends and family. in other words, migrant women do not (manage to) get out of the transnational “private sphere.” transnational politics is about getting a transnational public role (salih, 2007). it is the institutionalized and public nature of migrants’ organizational and transnational ties, which exceed the levels of the private sphere and the individual, that structures transnational politics (mügge, 2010). a gendered analysis of the institutional level, therefore, provides a first impression of the women’s organizations or organizations directed by women that have a public role in transnational politics. before proceeding to that step, however, the following section provides background information on the emigration process from turkey to the netherlands and the gendered nature of the migrant organizational landscape. gendered emigration and migrant organizations migrants from turkey are the largest non-western migrant group in the netherlands (388,967 in 2011).1 as kurds are not registered on the basis of ethnicity or self-identification but on the country of birth (of at least one of the parents), which in this case is turkey, official numbers for the netherlands do not exist. their estimated number is 100,000 (moors, van den reek vermeulen, & siesling, 2009). significant migration from turkey was concentrated between 1964 and 1974, facilitated by a labour agreement between the dutch and turkish governments. labour migration predominantly included turkish men, but when they opted for permanent stay in the netherlands, their wives and children followed quickly. already in 1972, half of the turkish migrants were women (schapendonk-maas, 2000, p. 26). a similar pattern is observed in germany (aliefendioğlu, 2004), and as figure 1 shows, it still holds today. kurds were underrepresented in the first wave of labour migration in the 1960s as recruitment took place mainly in western and central turkey, where few kurds lived. this changed in the early 1970s when labour was increasingly recruited from eastern turkey (van bruinessen, 1999). many kurds arrived in the netherlands after the 1980 coup in turkey (bakker, vervloet, & gailly, 2002, pp. 162-167). compared to other migrant groups in the netherlands, migrants from turkey are extremely well organized; they have at their disposal a number of organizations that are connected in dense networks, and isolated organizations are rare (fennema & tillie, 1999; van heelsum, tillie, & fennema, 1999). moreover, their organizational structures are more stable than those of other groups (mügge, 2011a). many organizations established in the 1970s and 1980s still exist. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 68 liza mügge figure 1 turkish population in the netherlands, 1996-2011 source: statline, central bureau for statistics, http://statline.cbs.nl/statweb/ between 1998 and 1999, the institute for migration and ethnic studies (imes) of the university of amsterdam found 1,125 organizations among turks (including kurds); only five per cent of those (61) focused on women. the study also collected more detailed data, including the names of the organizations, their addresses, and the names of their board members from the dutch chamber of commerce. this information was available for 69 per cent (773) of the turkish organizations. using the original database, i established that only five per cent of those organizations (40 out of 773) were directed by women, and the grand majority of this subset specifically targeted women rather than the migrant group as a whole (see table 1). table 1 female director and type of organization type of organization number women 35 religious 2 cultural 2 unknown 1 total 40 the imes analyzed turkish organizational networks on the basis of the interlocking directorates of organizations: organizations were connected when one person was on the administrative board of two or more organizations. turkish population in nl 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 19 96 19 97 19 98 19 99 20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 in th ou sa nd s year total men women studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 women in transnational migrant activism 69 none of the organizations directed by a woman have a central position in the overall network of turkish organizations (see figure 2 in van heelsum & tillie, p. 20). this means that the turkish organizational network is almost completely male-dominated. that said, some organizations, such as the conservative islamic milli görüş, organize activities specifically by and for women (for examples in germany see sökefeld, 2008). mirroring the position of women in islamist political movements in turkey, this work has largely remained informal (white, 2002). gendered institutionalized transnational migrant politics using the imes migrant organizational network as a starting point, i identified the key persons in migrant organizational networks who maintained institutionalized ties with political actors in turkey or the diaspora. as noted earlier, the imes network was constructed exclusively using interlocking directorates. since administrative boards are seldom transnational in the sense that people from both the netherlands and turkey are formal members, additional research to expand and update the imes network was needed. between 2003-2005 new data was collected in the netherlands and turkey through interviews with organizational leaders and elites, through my own observations during activities, by reading newspaper articles, websites, organizations’ brochures and reports.2 the new national and transnational ties i found were based on structural or sporadic cooperation, advice, memberships (among organizations and individuals), and kinship. during the interviews i asked interviewees to provide me with the contact details of homeland organizations with which they maintain ties (for full methodology see mügge, 2010). compared to the original data, the more qualitative approach only led to a very small increase in the number of organizations directed by women. similarly, this additional work confirmed that the transnational ties maintained between migrant organizations in the netherlands and collective actors in turkey are by and large run by men. throughout my fieldwork, however, i had many conversations with women in both the netherlands and turkey. during two fieldtrips i spent a whole day in each at the side of a female member of a cultural organization involved in radical transnational politics, one radical leftist, and one kurdish—both members of political parties which are illegal in turkey. the conversations i had with them gave me an inside perspective on the role of women in their organizations. in both cases the women were very active, but did not belong to the administrative board. they had their own female networks within the organization and seemed no less radical than their male colleagues. yet they had no formal authority.3 studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 70 liza mügge figure 2 national and transnational ties of turkish and kurdish organizations square: political party circle: migrant organization/ngo black: turkey grey: the netherlands/europe source: mügge (2010, p. 104). figure 2 visualizes the national and transnational ties of the turkish and kurdish migrant organizations. only two organizations directed by women in the largest two clusters of the turkish and kurdish organizational network have been transnationally active in the past or in the period under study: the turkish women’s federation in the netherlands (htkb) and the international free women’s foundation (ifwf) founded in 1977 and 2001, respectively (see the circled organizations in figure 2). in the 1970s htkb united eight women’s organizations. although the federation still exists, its transnational activities and ties have diminished over time. in the period under study (2003-2005), it maintained rather strong ties with other turkish migrant organizations in the netherlands, facilitated through membership in the consultative council of turks in the netherlands (iot). the iot was founded by the dutch government in 1985 to represent the general interests of turkish migrants in the netherlands and provides the htkb with a central position in the network (in figure 2 located in the cluster on the right). the htkb is the only women’s federation in the council, since iot member federations unite general organizations, often with separate women sections. the fact that kurdish organizations are not members of the iot explains aabf aadd abkbf adutdf akp anaf atib bahadin bbp birgun chp cumhuriyet dehap dehap-eu didf didf-de diyanet dsdf emep ernk evrensel fed-kom hadd hak-der hdf hdv himv htf htib htkb htkib htr htskf ifwf igmg ihd iot karatay kgk kncca kon-kurd mg-nn mhp nif nmr odk odk-a odp pir sultan pm rmn shp siyaset sp this tikf turk evi u-cami uetd ulku vtskmv wtcyanyana y-chp yek-kom studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 women in transnational migrant activism 71 why the cluster of kurdish organizations and political parties is not attached to the centre. instead, they form a separate sub-cluster of european kurdish diaspora organizations and the kurdish party dehap based in turkey in which the ifwf is well embedded (in figure 2 left of the centre). both the transnational activities of the htkb in the past and the ifwf in the period under study related to violence of the turkish state against the left, kurds, women or an intersection of these. the different eras in which both organizations were transnationally active—the htkb in the 1970s and early 1980s and the ifwf in the 2000s—have in common that state repression of their counterparts in turkey reached its high point. moreover, both organizations have been politicized by political refugees fleeing prosecution in turkey. the following sub-sections describe their transnational ties and actions and analyse them in the context of the struggle for social justice of the leftist and the kurdish movements in turkey. redistributive social justice claims: women and the turkish communist party the htkb was established as the women’s organization of the association of turkish workers (hti̇b). hti̇b was founded in 1974 by a group of turkish workers and refugees who had fled the turkish military repression of 1971 (can & can-engin, 1997, p. 66). the federation was unambiguously marxist and sympathized with the turkish communist party (tkp), which had been illegal in turkey for most of its existence. initially, hti̇b had a homeland directed goal: to include turkish workers in the netherlands in the struggle of the turkish people for a “democratic” turkey. between 1975 and 1979 hti̇b became a national umbrella with different branches in the netherlands. on a supranational level it established close ties with other turkish organizations in european countries that supported the tkp. the influence of the tkp on hti̇b increased when tkp leaders fled to the netherlands and became members of the organization (nell, 2008). initially the mission of the htkb was to “emancipate” turkish women in the netherlands. along with the political developments in turkey and hti̇b, it started to support the progressive women’s movement (i̇kd) in turkey (see santing, 1987). the i̇kd was founded in 1975 on the directive from the turkish communist party (tkp) and was closed by constitutional law in 1979, just before the coup d’état in 1980. by then it had grown to 30 branches across turkey and had 50,000 members. one of i̇kd’s founding members found refuge in amsterdam and became involved with the htkb.4 in exile she continued her political activities for the i̇kd and the tkp together with several leftist parties and trade unions which were outlawed in turkey. the leadership of those leftist parties equally found a home in migrant organizations across europe and started solidarity movements against the junta (mügge, 2013). there was little, but some, clandestine contact with actors in turkey. “our friends were under police interrogation, we didn’t like studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 72 liza mügge to write letters because they could be used against them.”5 (in the mid-1980s, when the political conflicts in turkey cooled somewhat, htkb activities gradually shifted to the integration of turkish women in the netherlands. they closely cooperated with leading organizations and persons in the dutch feminist movement and with female leftist politicians. this experience inspired a htkb board member and i̇kd founder to support the initiative to establish the association for the support and training of women candidates (ka-der) upon her return to turkey in the 1990s.6 ka-der unites members of all major political parties and aims to strengthen the position of women in politics at all levels of decision-making and to fight discrimination against women in politics (tekeli, 2010, p. 119). although ka-der maintains some contact with individual turkish feminists in european countries, often former political exiles, there are no structural ties with turkish migrant organizations.7 transnational ties with the htkb served for i̇kd activists as a temporary residence to continue their class struggle. when the turkish communist movement fell apart in the mid-1980s, those ties dissolved. former i̇kd exiles returned to turkey to support the women’s movement there, whereas the htkb intensified its endeavours to stimulate the emancipation of migrant women in the netherlands. the organizational structure of the htkb and hti̇b was copied from the i̇kd and tkp in turkey. as a consequence of the military coups of 1971 and 1980, htkb and hti̇b became interwoven with the i̇kd and the tkp and replaced some of its functions. i̇kd and the tkp cadre in exile entered the board of administration of htkb and hti̇b. the i̇kd was established in response to a top-down initiative to strengthen the tkp with a women’s organization. the tkp leadership considered the i̇kd “a rich source for the tkp of young woman communists who [had] been tested in action” (as cited in ozcurumez & cengiz, 2011, p. 26). as a former i̇kd member put it, “the membership period was considered as a process consisting of several stages leading to party membership” (as cited in ozcurumez & cengiz, 2011, p. 26). the i̇kd did not directly address gender equality, but associated “its raison d’être with the ideological conviction of class identity and struggle” (ozcurumez & cengiz, 2011, p. 24-25). publications originating from moscow, rather than feminist writing from western countries, were the main inspiration for i̇kd members: “we found solutions to everything in those publications” (as cited in ozcurumez & cengiz, 2011, p. 27). the aim of the organization in its statutes was described as: all women, but first of all working class women, should be able to use fully their legal rights in the family and the society. the priority of the organization is therefore rearranging the laws that harm women’s rights and freedom [and] defending women’s labor in accordance with equal pay principle in the factories, fields, bureaus. (as cited in ozcurumez & cengiz, 2011, p. 25) i̇kd references to everyday women’s problems were limited to demanding kindergartens in factories. such demands have led to accusations of studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 women in transnational migrant activism 73 “feminism” and weakening the socialist front, something i̇kd members naturally tried to avoid (as cited in ozcurumez & cengiz, 2011). within the ideological pressure of the orthodox left, feminism was branded a bourgeois deviation (sirman, 1989). the “woman question” was …simply an introductionary [sic] question intended to recruit women to join the communist cause and become activists. [i̇kd’s] existence is related to a political organization with massive political objectives; the particular objective of arriving at solutions to women’s problems is, at best, subsidiary. (ozcurumez & cengiz, 2011, p. 26) the i̇kd was heavily criticized by second wave feminists “for subordinating women’s issues to the cause of socialism and the labour movement” (tekeli 1990 cited by ozcurumez & cengiz, 2011, p. 24). in the 1980s, however, women who had been active in leftist political organizations such as i̇kd became the key actors of the independent women’s movement. they started to criticize the male domination in the leftist movement. in small consciousnessraising groups they paved the way for the second feminist wave in turkey (al-rebholz, 2010; çubukçu, 2004). first-wave feminism, claiming the extension of citizens’ rights for women, had ended already in 1935, with the official closure of the turkish women’s organization. it was argued by the state that with the newly founded turkish republic in 1923 legal equality between all citizens, irrespective of gender, had been achieved (berktay, 2004). the new civil code (1926), based on swiss law, replaced islamic law and polygamy was officially outlawed (mango, 2002, p. 438). furthermore, women were granted suffrage rights and education became compulsory for both girls and boys (pusch, 2000, p. 483). the downside of those changes was that this “state feminism” created the myth that turkish women had full equal rights with men; consequently, there was no more need for women’s organizations: “kemalist [state] ideology was the only option available to women” (tekeli, 1992, p. 139). surprisingly, the second feminist wave evolved just after the 1980 coup when all political parties were closed except those few founded and controlled by the military; many political leaders, labour unions and political organizations were banned from politics (diner & toktaş, 2010, p. 45). violent confrontations between radical leftist and right-wing groups that had led to political instability served as the main justification for the military’s intervention in politics, and spawned a “depoliticized” environment in the 1980s (diner & toktaş, 2010; also see pope & pope, 1997). it was at this moment, when civil society was severely restricted, that an independent women’s movement flourished. some scholars have argued that this momentum in 1980 was partly due to the opportunities presented by the imprisonment of many male political activist and leaders (diner & toktaş, 2010, p. 45). in the post-coup period women’s organizations defined themselves as “feminist” for the first time (as cited in ozcurumez & cengiz, 2011). the number of women’s organizations rose from ten in the late 1970s to 64 in studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 74 liza mügge the 1980s and early 1990s (diner & toktaş, 2010, p. 47). second-wave feminists fought against the patriarchal gender roles and relations “so that the rights granted by law could be put into practice in social, cultural, political and economic domains” (çubukçu, 2004, p. 56). in addition to the leftist feminist groups, islamic activists, and secular nationalists, also known as kemalists, started to organize. whereas kemalist women represent the officially dominant ideology of the state (arat, 2010; arat-koç, 2007), the leftist or “new” feminists and islamic women put forward counter ideologies (sakaranaho, 2008, p. 50-51). the i̇kd and the htkb clearly did not challenge patriarchy; they operated between the first and second feminist waves in turkey. it was a period in which the “state feminism” of the early republican period largely turned into a “party feminism” (eslen-ziya & korkut, 2010, p. 320). the claims of party feminists for social justice can be characterized as “redistributive” in its narrow sense, encompassing only class-centred orientations in line with the dominant ideologies of the cold war period. their remedy for injustice is economic restructuring (fraser, 1996, p. 7). the politics of recognition and redistribution: the kurdish struggle in contrast to the htkb, the ifwf does not present itself as a migrant organization but as an international women’s foundation fully committed to supporting social and humanitarian projects for women and children in the middle east. the foundation is carried by women “who personally experienced the devastating effects of war and men’s violence,” and it “struggles against all forms of militarism, fascism, nationalism and discrimination … by taking peaceful solutions of social questions as its basis.”8 they mainly focus on kurdish women in turkey and female kurdish refugees in europe, but simultaneously aim to bridge human rights with the kurdish question.9 ifwf particularly opposes the policy of assimilation and discrimination against the kurdish people. the organization cooperates ad-hoc with international women’s organizations as well as with kurdish organizations in the diaspora that sympathize with the pkk, women’s organizations in turkey and the kurdish political party (which was dehap at the time of my research in 2004). for instance, they provided support to a feminist organization with a large kurdish membership, katagi, in istanbul.10 like ifwf, they consider themselves “anti-patriarchal,” “anti-militarist,” and continuously address the salience of the kurdish question by sending press releases to leftist parties, syndicates and other relevant actors in civil society in turkey. ifwf’s broad cooperation came to the fore in supporting the protests against the rape and torture of gülbahar gündüz, who was an executive member of the women’s section of the kurdish party dehap in istanbul. gündüz was abducted from the street in june 2003, possibly by policemen. she was interrogated, sexually abused and tortured: “the men told her that studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 women in transnational migrant activism 75 she should not be leading political activities because she is a woman and that this would be a lesson to her” (cf. fidh, 2003; khrp, 2003).11 the gündüz case was broadly interpreted as a frontal attack against the peace struggle of kurdish women. it received ample attention on kurdish websites, hosted from both europe and turkey itself.12 following the gündüz case an ifwf delegation was invited to the women’s branch of dehap in istanbul. dehap informed the delegation about gündüz and other cases of female members of the party who had been tortured and raped.13 ifwf called on women’s institutions “to express their solidarity with gulbahar gündüz and to show their protest against the practices of the turkish security forces.”14 the objectives of ifwf resemble the activities of the kurdish women’s movement which evolved out of the kurdish nationalist movement, fuelled by the establishment of the kurdistan worker’s party (pkk) in 1977. the pkk initially was marxist-leninist oriented. it opposed “turkish imperialism,” which, it argued, was prevalent in “turkish kurdistan” (güney, 2002, p. 123). the organization held kurdish landlords primarily responsible for collaborating with the turkish ruling classes (taspinar, 2005, p. 94). the pkk strategy was to mobilize destitute social classes, the uprooted smalltown youth and poor peasants against these landlords and traditional chiefs cooperating with the central government in ankara (taspinar, 2005, p. 95). for the pkk, the intensity of kurdish national feeling was accentuated by the loss of spoken kurdish among its founding members (mcdowall, 1996, p. 419). the 1980 coup has been crucial for kurdish women’s awareness; the detention of tens of thousands of kurdish men forced women to take a more active role in society and politics. kurdish women’s groups started to pinpoint the multiple “exploitation” that they experienced because of their gender and ethnicity. first, they criticized the patriarchal system dominant in kurdish culture and endorsed by the nationalist movement. second, they felt oppressed through the “imperialist” system that the central state imposed on kurdish people. at the same time, these women condemned mainstream and state feminists for being “ethnocentric” and exclusionary of other identities (diner & toktaş, 2010, pp. 41, 47). gradually, kurdish women became active in political parties like dehap and gained public visibility in a number of organizations (diner & toktaş, 2010, p. 49; yüksel, 2006). the 1980s and 1990s witnessed the rise of kurdish nationalism and an increasing militaristic response by the turkish state (ilkkaracan, 2001). the leader of the pkk, abdullah öcalan, began to insist that the kurdish movement’s “basic responsibility [was] to … liberate women” (as cited in marcus, 2007, p. 173). he stressed that the pkk’s revolutionary fight would be impossible without the presence of women. among pkk members, however, it was frequently argued that the time was not right for women’s rights and that priority should be given to national self-determination (kirişçi, 2009). according to marcus, (2007) it is unclear whether öcalan truly believed in gender equality, “but he certainly understood that he could gain a powerful ally if he defended their rights” (p. 173). it seemed to work: studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 76 liza mügge women comprised a third of the pkk’s armed forces by 1993. but joining the pkk may simply have been the better of two options. many young women saw the pkk as an acceptable form of escape form their daily lives: a kurdish father could block his daughter from working … from going to high school … but it was not easy to criticize her decision to fight for kurdish freedom. doing so could raise questions about a family’s real loyalties, which in turn could put the family at odds with the pkk. . . . such comments could raise questions inside the pkk about the loyalties of the girl who had joined, possibly endangering her life. besides, the pkk was said to protect a girl’s virginity with the same zeal as her family, something that helped shore up support for the pkk. (marcus, 2007, p. 174) the explicit attention to gender equality was largely part of a strategy to strengthen the movement, which very much resembles the working style of the turkish communist party in the 1970s. since the early 1990s, kurdish political parties have taken part in parliamentary elections under different names, since all of them at one point or another had been closed by constitutional courts. in the period under study hadep had just closed and its work was continued by dehap.15 the parties have had and still have active women’s branches and women on the executive level. indeed, one of the heroines of the kurdish struggle is a woman, leyla zana. it could be argued that the aims and activities of the kurdish organization ifwf, as well as their transnational ties with pro-kurdish women’s organizations and parties, are a part of the third feminist wave in turkey. similar to third-wave feminisms in western countries, third-wave feminism in turkey is characterized by its religious and ethnic diversity (kerestecioğlu, 2004). however, in contrast to deconstructive feminists or queer activists, kurdish women do not challenge the essentialism of traditional identity politics. the redistributive elements of the social justice conception of kurdish women are not surprising since the kurdish national movement has its origins in the leftist movement of the 1970s in turkey (white, 2000). kurdish women emphasize multiple exploitation on the basis of gender and ethnicity. therefore, their conception of social justice contains elements of both the politics of redistribution as well as of the politics of recognition. following fraser, those are “dimensions of justice that can cut across all social movements” (emphasis original fraser, 1996, p. 6). such a blurred conception of social justice is clearly reflected in the transnational activism of the ifwf. conclusion this article has analyzed the conceptions of social justice of women active in kurdish and turkish transnational migrant politics in a period of roughly studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 women in transnational migrant activism 77 20 years. the historical perspective has allowed us to study whether the shift in conceptions of social justice from the politics of redistribution in the cold war period to the politics of recognition in a neo-liberal context observed among traditional social movements also applies to transnational migrant politics of women. inspired by fraser (1996), this article has asked to what extent both dimensions of social justice are mutually exclusive or can be combined. so far, gender outside typical female spaces has been understudied in research on migrant transnationalism. a gendered analysis shows that transnational politics is almost completely male dominated. women’s role in transnational politics is mostly invisible and private. in a period of roughly 20 years, only two organizations directed by women had a central position in the network of transnational politics: the leftist women’s organization htkb and the kurdish women’s organization ifwf. in both transnational programmes, “the woman question” has clearly been subordinated to a broader political programme, in these cases marxism and kurdish nationalism. additionally, women seem to acquire a more central role in transnational politics when political movements in the homeland are outlawed and many of their male members are detained. their support, either to the general movement or to the women in the homeland, then becomes vital for the organization. in the case of htkb, its transnational orientation diminished when the turkish communist party (tkp) fell apart and the political climate in turkey cooled. in contrast, the ifwf was created to support kurdish women in exile or in turkey who faced oppression by the turkish state due to their own political activities and convictions or those of their male relatives. due to this “supportive” working style, the transnational politics of migrant women did not develop its own conceptions of social justice, but adopted the ones of male-dominated political organizations. the transnational ties of htkb and ifwf mirrored the ideologies and activities of the leftist women’s movement in the 1980s and the kurdish women’s movement in the 1990s and 2000s. questions on gender equality, therefore, have been addressed in rather instrumental ways to strengthen the homeland party. in these cases, gender hierarchies from the homeland were not challenged, but rather reproduced. in that sense, migrant women do not really “go public” in transnational politics. the conception of social justice in transnational activities and ties observed during the cold war period fit the narrow definition of the “politics of redistribution,” as its remedy for injustice is economic restructuring. in the neo-liberal context of the 1990s and 2000s, the kurdish movement combines both elements of justice of the politics of redistribution and recognition. emphasis on the first form of social justice is an obvious result of the marxist heritage of the kurdish movement. while elements of the latter are defined more narrowly, kurds do not aim for the deconstruction of categories, as queer activists or migrants might do. their struggle is based on recognition of the category “kurd” as a distinct ethnicity. the organizations in the sample studied were mostly led by first-generation migrants. in those organizations women’s roles were predominantly private. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 78 liza mügge over the past decade, secondand thirdgeneration turks and kurds have gradually entered the boards of administration of mainstream organizations or established their own alternatives. the question is how this generational change will play out for the extent to which women get a more public role in migrant politics or the mainstream politics of the receiving society. unless new conflicts evolve in the homeland, or old ones regain intensity, it is unlikely that they will continue transnational political activities; instead, their struggle for social justice will focus on discrimination in the receiving societies. acknowledgements an earlier and shortened version of this article has been presented at the conference “men and masculinities moving on again! transnationalising flows, technologies, institutions, theory,” linköping (2011) and is published as a conference proceeding (mügge 2011b). i thank anja van heelsum for sharing the database on turkish organizations, the studies in social justice reviewers for their constructive feedback and the harvard centre for european studies for hosting me as a visiting scholar in spring 2012. notes 1 statline, central bureau for statistics, http://statline.cbs.nl/statweb/. 2 this study was part of a phd project on transnational politics of surinamese, kurds and turks in the netherlands, completed at the institute for migration and ethnic studies at the university of amsterdam in december 2008. 3 it is noteworthy that the migrant organizations figure 1 are for the great majority established and directed by the first generation. by the late 1990s second generation youngsters started to become part or administrative boards, and in leftist organizations i also observed females. it is thus possible that today the picture looks different. 4 interview with a founding member of ikd and former htkb member, istanbul, 19 november, 2005. 5 ibid. 6 ibid. 7 interview with the director of ka-der, istanbul, 1 august 2003. 8 for the full mission statement see http://www.freewomensfoundation.org 9 interview with ifwf board member, amsterdam, 27 october 2004. 10 interview with a volunteer of katagi, istanbul, july 15, 2003. 11 see http://www.omct.org/violence-against-women/urgent-interventions/ turkey/2003/10/d16566/, accessed 10 may 2011. 12 see for instance http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/isku/, http://www.kwahk.org/ articles.asp?id=18, http://ydicagri.org/ingilizce_sayfalar/gulbahar.html, http://www. kurdmedia.com/article.aspx?id=9213, all accessed 10 may 2011. 13 interview with a board member and member of dehap istanbul, istanbul, 8 august 2003. 14 see http://www.freewomensfoundation.org/english/news/press%20statements/ pressreleases%20ifwf%2001.htm and http://www.enawa.org/scripts/wwwopac.exe ?database=brief&isutf8=1&%250=100383, accessed 10 may 2011. 15 at the time of writing the name of the party is the bdp. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 women in transnational migrant activism 79 references al-ali, n. 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(2006). the immigrant organising process. the emergence and persistence of turkish immigrant organizations in amsterdam and berlin and surinamese organizations in amsterdam, 1960-2000. amsterdam: amsterdam university press. vertovec, s. (2009). transnationalism. new york: routledge. white, j. b. (2002). islamist mobilization in turkey. a study in vernacular politics. washington: university of washington press. white, p. (2000). primitive rebels or revolutionary modernizers? the kurdish national movement in turkey. london: zed books. yüksel, m. (2006). the encounter of kurdish women with nationalism in turkey. middle eastern studies, 42(5), 777-802. yurdakul, g. (2009). from guest workers into muslims. the transformation of turkish immigrant associations in germany. newcastle: cambridge scholars publishing. stasiulis final feb 17 20 correspondence address: daiva stasiulis, department of sociology & anthropology, carleton university, ottawa, on, k1s 5b6; email: daiva.stasiulis@carleton.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 elimi(nation): canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour daiva stasiulis carleton university, canada abstract this article utilizes the lens of disposability to explore recent conditions of low-wage temporary migrant labour, whose numbers and economic sectors have expanded in the 21st century. a central argument is that disposability is a discursive and material relation of power that creates and reproduces invidious distinctions between the value of “legitimate” canadian settler-citizens (and candidates for citizenship) and the lack of worth of undesirable migrant populations working in canada, often for protracted periods of time. the analytical lens of migrant disposability draws upon theorizing within marxian, critical modernity studies, and decolonizing settler colonial frameworks. this article explores the technologies of disposability that lay waste to low wage workers in sites such as immigration law and provincial/territorial employment legislation, the workplace, transport, living conditions, access to health care and the practice of medical repatriation of injured and ill migrant workers. the mounting evidence that disposability is immanent within low-wage migrant labour schemes in canada has implications for migrant social justice. the failure to protect migrant workers from a vast array of harms reflects the historical foundations of canada’s contemporary migrant worker schemes in an “inherited background field [of settler colonialism] within which market, racist, patriarchal and state relations converge” (coulthard, 2014, p. 14). incremental liberal reform has made little headway insofar as the administration and in some cases reversal of more progressive reforms such as guaranteed pathways to citizenship prioritize employers’ labour interests and the lives and health of primarily white, middle class canadian citizens at the expense of a shunned and racialized but growing population of migrants from the global south. transformational change and social justice for migrant workers can only occur by reversing the disposability and hyper-commodification intrinsic to low-wage migrant programs and granting full permanent legal status to migrant workers. keywords migrant labour; disposability; decolonizing settler colonialism; intersectionality canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 23 introduction societies now treat migrants less as a sustaining resource than as temporary hyper-extractive labor, potential nuisance, moral challenge, burden, or threat. there is little reason…to show social commitment, loyalty, or responsibility. citizenship is a far-off consideration. (goldberg, 2015, p. 120) during much of this century, canada has engaged in a profound transformation in its migration and citizenship policies, evidenced particularly strongly in its rising reliance on temporary migrant workers. precarity, conditionality and illiberal norms have diluted and supplanted permanence and the promise of inalienable citizenship in how large numbers of migrants are selected and governed.1 among the most significant reforms, offsetting decades of settler-style immigration has been the shift in the relative importance of temporary migrant workers vis à vis immigrants granted permanent residence upon entry, with the sharpest increases occurring among low-wage, “low-skill” temporary workers in an expanding range of economic sectors and occupations (faraday, 2014; walsh, 2014).2 in 2008, for the first time, a greater number of temporary foreign workers (tfws) came to canada than new permanent residents; in some provinces, this shift occurred earlier (e.g., 2006 in alberta; see alberta federation of labour, 2007).3 while permanent migration and citizenship have long been 1 precarious citizenship status refers to a range of non-citizenship or less-than-full legal citizenship statuses in a given nation-state. on the one hand, citizenship status, like pregnancy, is an either/or proposition. but citizenship and non-citizenship “exist on a spectrum, involving a pool of rights that are variously offered, denied, or challenged, as well as a set of obligations that are unequally demanded” and are a product of active negotiation involving numerous state and non-state, individual, collective and institutional actors (stasiulis & bakan, 2003, p. 2; see also goldring & landolt, 2013, p. 3). “conditionality” as defined by landolt and goldring “denotes the material and discursive conditions that must be met to acquire and exercise the formal or substantive right to remain present within a national territory and/or to access entitlements and social goods, including the labor market” (2015, p. 857). 2 according to the parliamentary standing committee whose mandate it is to examine the temporary foreign worker program, “the high-wage stream is comprised of positions where the wage rate offered to the temporary foreign worker is at or above the provincial/territorial median wage, while the low-wage stream encompasses those positions with wages that are below the provincial/territorial median wage” (standing committee on human resources, skills & social development & the status of persons with disabilities, 2016, p. 3). “low wage” is often conflated with “low skill” occupations that were earlier (in 2002) defined as those occupation classified as noc ‘c’, requiring no more than high school education or two years of job-specific training, and noc ‘d’, requiring no prior training or education (foster, 2012, pp. 25-26). 3 the numbers of tfws entering canada (at all skill levels) reached a historic high in 2012, with just under 200,000 new entrants, before plummeting in 2015 to 90,000 (office of the auditor general of canada, 2017, p. 4). major reforms and steep application costs were introduced to the tfw program in 2014, in response to criticisms of conservative tfw policies that displaced precarious (e.g., older, female) canadian workers in the service industries, and which substantially deterred employers from hiring temporary, and especially low-wage migrant workers. thus, the numbers of approved low-wage tfw positions tumbled from 58,502 in 2013 to 10,980 in 2015 (standing committee on human resources, skills & social development & the status of persons with disabilities, 2016, p. 7). nonetheless, the “stock” or number of daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 24 considered a “cornerstone of canadian immigration policy since confederation” (pendakur, 2000, p. 3), temporary recruitment of foreign populations, regarded as unfit to settle and mingle with or assimilate to the culture, values and institutions of bona fide “white” settlers has also a long history in meeting canada’s labour market demands (stasiulis & jhappan, 1995, p. 97). in the first decades of the 21st century, such non-settler migrant labour, whose undesirability as settlers is co-constituted through intersections of race, class and gender, as well as other social and political identifiers, frequently exceeds permanent settler migration. this article explores low-wage temporary migrant labour through the lens of disposability, an analytical framework that frequently informs indigenous scholarship on the continuous and devastating violence and neglect of indigenous lives, health and well-being under white settler colonialism. a central contention is that “disposability” or rendering into “human waste” is a form of discursive and material relation of power underlying settler colonialism that creates and reproduces invidious distinctions between the value of “legitimate” canadian settler-citizens (and candidates for citizenship), and the lack of worth of indigenous peoples and undesirable migrant (and racialized) populations residing in canada, often for long periods of time. intrinsic to settler colonialism is a “logic of elimination,” a drive to reduce indigenous peoples who are regarded as an obstacle to the appropriation and settlement of land (wolfe, 2006; see also coulthard, 2014; day, 2015). however, this eliminatory project also pertains to the racialized migrant populations from the global south sought for their capacity to provide flexible, malleable and cheap labour, yet deemed unfit for settler citizenship. as will be briefly discussed later in this article, there are parallels as well as important distinctions in the technologies of disposability applied to temporary migrants as compared to indigenous peoples.4 drawing upon the “european truism” about guest workers, who despite state intentions, proved that they were “here for good” (castles & kosack, 1984), siematyicki suggests “there is nothing more permanent than a temporary foreign worker” (2010, p. 63). in this article, i refine this argument in discussing how the permanency of temporary worker programs in canada, constituting a significant and permanent labour market tool (foster, 2012), is built on the assumption that there is nothing more indispensable and disposable than a temporary worker. the hyper-exploitation and disposability of low-wage, migrant labourers is consistent with canada’s foundation as a white settler colonial society wherein the fitness for national membership is migrant workers present in canada (on december 1st, including those whose stay extends beyond a single year), climbed steadily from 89,746 in 2000 to 310,000 in 2015 (alini, 2018). 4 as the topic of this article is temporary low-wage labour migrants from the global south, i acknowledge that i do not do justice to the distinctive character of the settler colonial eliminatory project as linked to land, sovereignty and culture of indigenous peoples and the powerful resistance to which it has given rise, which is compellingly conveyed in the writings of indigenous scholars. canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 25 based on proximity to certain norms that are associated with european settlers and that are racialized, gendered and class-bound. the question of “who benefits” from the recruitment of highly exploited and yet disposable migrants is complex, but includes employers in food production and a growing number of sectors facing barriers in recruiting labour locally, the state, a host of profit-making intermediaries, white middle and upper class citizens, and also wealthier segments of canada’s multi-racial citizenry, some of whom represent the successful, “bootstrap” good-immigrant narrative (kwak, 2018). as evelyn nakano glenn (2015, p. 60) submits, “settler colonialism’s response to undesirable exogenous others has often swung…between the poles of ‘elimination’ and coercive ‘exploitation’.” both exploitation and elimination are intrinsic to low-wage temporary migrant worker schemes, with the pernicious consequence that low-wage migrant labour is disposable yet indispensable. while migrant activists and critical scholars have long sought to strengthen the employment protections and rights (e.g., to health and social benefits and family reunification) of temporary migrant workers, my contention is that the oft-mentioned yet under-analyzed disposability of low-wage tfws has lent an inherent instability to the very partial and often unattainable rights and employment protections of tfw programs. legislated protections for migrant workers are rendered inaccessible through regulatory neglect or blatant violation by host and sending states and employers, and because of migrants’ overriding fears of potential dismissal and repatriation. unlike citizen-workers, migrant workers are not a canadian electoral constituency or priority among canadian politicians, making whatever gains they have made more easily reversible and expendable according to the government of the day. this article is organized into three analytical sections and a conclusion. first, i provide some background on shifts and emerging patterns in the recruitment of temporary workers to canada. second, i engage with theoretical perspectives that examine the disposability of humans, with an eye to producing a synthetic framework that can deepen our understanding of the conditions that generate temporary (low wage) migrant labour, particularly as it has been recruited and organized during the 21st century in canada. marxian and other political economy theories of forced labour and the impact of neoliberal globalization on the mobility of populations are key to understanding the dynamics of human disposability as applied to migrant labour. zygmunt bauman’s chilling analyses of the production of human waste frames such disposability as “an inevitable outcome of modernity” (2004, p. 5) with racialized national borders serving as a key site where authorized violence against those marked as disposable occurs (razack, 2017, p. 3). the dynamics of human disposability in canada are also illuminated by its own historical “logic of [human] elimination” as a white settler society (wolfe, 2006). thus, rather than seeing the proliferation of low-wage temporary migrant labour forms of recruitment as a departure from daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 26 or the end to settler immigration (dauvergne, 2016), i contend that it represents a recent reiteration of the “dual logic” of settler colonialism – driven to dispossess indigenous peoples and to develop mixed settler/disposable labour systems (coulthard, 2014; day 2015, p. 113; galabuzi, wallis & sunseri, 2010). i conceptualize “human disposability” as a settler colonial technique of governing indigenous peoples and unfree racialized migrant labour, with a focus on elaborating its applicability to the latter. the recruitment of select racialized and gendered groups as indispensable yet disposable labour to develop infrastructure and specific economic sectors and to aid in social reproduction has a long history, which will be briefly touched upon here. in the third section, i suggest that like parallel concepts developed by scholars to understand migrant labour – e.g., their cheapness, flexibility, precarity, and unfreedom – the disposability of migrant labour is multidimensional and processual involving several sites, technologies, and actors populating the “space of flows” that contribute to inhumane conditions that hasten injury, chronic illness, deportability and even death of migrant workers (castells, 2001; sargeant & tucker, 2009). much of the documentation of migrant disposability has occurred in live-in caregiving and particularly agricultural work, which has recently expanded in numbers of tfws even during periods where there has been a contraction in other program streams.5 it is here that many migrant labour activists, journalists, academics, and a film-maker have sought to bring attention to the dehumanizing work and living conditions that waste away the bodies, minds and souls of migrant workers from countries such as mexico, jamaica, guatemala, and barbados (hennebry, 2010; lee, 2016). the medical repatriation of ill and injured workers, absence of subsequent, postemployment health care, and deaths of some of these workers resulting from hazardous workplace and living conditions, comprise important steps in rendering waste to these migrant workers (orkin, lay, mclaughlin, schwandt & cole, 2014). under the trudeau liberal government, there have been new measures introduced to uncover and impose fines on employers found to be non-compliant with the regulations of temporary migrant programs. my analysis of government data on non-compliant employers indicates how priority is given to the assumed adverse impact of migrant worker employment on jobs for canadian citizen workers and to maintaining employer access to a vulnerable and disposable migrant labour force, rather than to addressing the root causes of these vulnerabilities. in the conclusion, i address how the disposability of tfws, which is at the core of low-wage migrant worker programs, has implications for the framing 5 thus, while the number of tfw positions approved through a labour market impact assessment (lmia, a type of labour market screening) decreased from 163,035 position in 2013 to 90,211 positions in 2015, the number of approved positions in the area of “primary agriculture” increased from 45,366 to 53,303 (standing committee on human resources, skills & social development & the status of persons with disabilities, 2016, p. 7). canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 27 of justice and human rights campaigns undertaken in migrant worker selfadvocacy and by migrant justice organizations. reforms to temporary migrant worker programs while contemporary “temporariness” in migrant status intrinsically suggests the possibility of disposability regardless of migrant skill level (stasiulis, 2008), temporary employment-related migration is highly hierarchized. the criteria by which migrants are judged to be fit candidates and on probation for future citizenship as opposed to temporary and expendable labour reflects their positionality in a matrix of social relations that includes north-south divisions in the global economy, race, gender and class, and the kinds of capitals they possess. thus temporary migrant worker schemes in canada include, at one extreme, highly valorized knowledge workers and other bearers of prized cultural capital who have the means to take advantage of opportunities in the global economy and whose permanent residence is supported by employers and state authorities (prokopenko & hou, 2018, p. 9). at the other extreme, propelled by employer demand for greater access to low-wage, low-skill workers, it embraces those who are recruited solely for their ability to withstand exhausting, and often dehumanizing working and living conditions but who are socially unwelcome and deemed unfit, and/or lacking in key attributes such as education credentials and official language fluency as entrance fees for joining the “inner circle of national membership” (walsh, 2014, pp. 597-598). the dramatic increase in the numbers of tfws relative to permanent immigrants has been accompanied by a reversal in the relative proportion of high skill to low skill migrants. whereas in the 1990s, migrant worker programs favoured high-skill occupations, such that in addition to the longstanding (purportedly low-skill) streams for seasonal agricultural workers (sawp) and live-in-caregivers (lcp), roughly two-thirds of tfws were high-skilled workers. 6 since 2002, with the introduction and substantial expansion of the “stream for lower-skilled occupations” in the temporary foreign worker program (tfwp) (prokopenko & hou, 2018), employerdriven recruitment of workers with time-limited visas have been channelled to food processing plants, the hospitality and tourist sectors, fast food restaurants, construction, and nursing homes, joining the longer-standing schemes for seasonal agricultural workers and private family caregivers. this has substantially increased their presence in economic sectors “at the sharp 6 thus in 2005, the top occupational groupings for which lmos (labour market opinions, then a requirement for granting employers leave to import tfws) favoured high skill occupations in the arts (musicians, film producers, directors, technical film-related occupations), and specialist physicians. in contrast, by 2008, the top occupations had shifted to low wage occupations involved in food production and service, construction and cleaning; only the fifth highest remained higher skilled (musicians and singers) (foster, 2012, p. 29). daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 28 end of de-regulated labour markets in jobs characterized by low wages, insecurity and obfuscated employment relations” (anderson, 2010, p. 300). the intensification in the employment of low-wage migrant workers has led to the proliferation of what legal activist-scholar fay faraday terms “zones of exceptionality” within a quilted labour market with patchworks of differential rights and pockets of permanent precarity (faraday, 2016, pp. 7, 31). low-wage migrants who move into the most precarious forms of lowpaid work originate from countries in the global south, and they enter labour market sectors that are both racialized and gendered (e.g., female caregivers from the philippines, predominantly male mexican and caribbean seasonal agricultural workers; see foster, 2012, p. 29).7 low-wage workers, also designated as “low-skill,” play fundamental roles in the canadian economy and society, such as caring for children, the elderly, and the chronically ill, and harvesting crops and processing food. a great many also perform work in harsh, nasty and often debilitating conditions rejected by canadian workers and their living situations are often equally hazardous to their health as their working conditions (hennebry, 2010, p. 74). employers in sectors such as agriculture frequently complain that they are unable to find local workers willing to undertake the dirty, difficult, and often dangerous work on offer and that their preference is to hire temporary foreign workers (alberta cattle feeders’ association, 2017; vanraes, 2018). the latter often become the only workforce to remain in these jobs, albeit largely driven by fear of job termination and resulting loss of legal status. while protected by employment standards in most (provincial/territorial) jurisdictions, these protections in many cases exist in name only, so significant are the barriers to access them and the pressures placed on fearful workers to refrain from reporting their violation (mclaughlin, hennebry & haines, 2014). protective measures in all jurisdictions are accompanied by lax oversight. migrant worker contracts enforce an inordinate dependence of workers on single employers to whom they are tied through exclusive work permits and on unscrupulous recruiters, immigration consultants and employment agencies who exact illegal and financially crippling fees from workers (faraday, 2014, p. 36; 2016, p. 47; tomlinson, 2019). language and cultural barriers, enforced physical isolation, chronic indebtedness, and fear of deportation increase this dependence (foster, 2012, p. 25). the precarity created among low-wage migrants by the laws and policies of canadian and provincial governments begs “the fundamental question of why broad classes of workers who have historically played a significant role in building canada 7 while in 2000 prior to the expansion of the tfwp, almost 58% of tfws originated in developed countries (united states, australia, the united kingdom, japan), by 2009, lessdeveloped countries (philippines, india, china and mexico) made up almost 54% of the tfws’ origins (foster, 2012, p. 29). by 2018, the top five source countries for tfws to canada by labour market impact assessments (lmias, that had supplanted the lmos) were mexico, jamaica, guatemala, india and the philippines (employment & social development canada, 2019a). canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 29 are now, in law, generally ineligible for pathways to permanent residence and citizenship” (faraday, 2012, pp. 15-16)? so striking is this trend that in a recent book, immigration law scholar catherine dauvergne (2016, p. 2) nostalgically opines that along with other restrictive reforms, the shift to temporary labour migration in canada spells the demise of “settlement” and the end of an “era of settler societies.” such nostalgia for past permanent residence immigration policies, while critical of the unsettling effects on migrants of restrictions on permanent residence, also renders immigrant settler policies “innocent of the violence and dispossession” that led to the establishment of the settler colonial state (simpson, 2014, p. 25). in seeking to make sense of this dramatic (albeit volatile, tap-on, tap-off) policy shift, normalizing temporary migration to canada, many migration scholars apply a “precarity” lens to define the specific vulnerability and exploitability of low-wage migrant workers in terms of a nexus between precarious legal/immigration status and precarious employment conditions (faraday, 2014; 2016, pp. 31-32; fudge, 2012; landolt & goldring, 2015; marsden, 2011). others have turned to marxist political economy frames to describe the proliferation in canada of “unfree labour” schemes whose chief politico-legal mechanisms are temporary migratory status and employerspecific permits (bakan & stasiulis, 2012; choudry & smith, 2016; sharma, 2006; walia, 2010). in contrast to these highly elaborated analytical frameworks that have deepened our understanding of the specific assemblage of structural forces, abject material conditions, discourses, institutions, policies and actors that have created and justified the hyper-exploitation experienced by temporary low-wage migrant workers, the “disposability” of migrant labour appears in most scholarship as a descriptive term (byl, 2011; choudry & smith, 2016, p. 5; walsh, 2014, p. 585). little analytical attention has been devoted to how low-skill migrant workers, multiplying across economic sectors and swelling in numbers, are rendered “disposable” through the policies and practices of a network of (receiving and sending) governments, employers, and an industry of third-party recruiters. similarly, scant analysis exists of how such disposability may mark them as distinctive from or similar to other groups of vulnerable populations, either in close proximity (e.g., indigenous communities) or occupying the contemporary global economy. disposability of migrant workers theorized different theoretical literatures – marxist-inspired analyses of labour and specifically unfree labour, bauman’s (2004) “outcasts of modernity,” and settler colonialism as an ongoing rather than merely historical structure (glenn, 2015) – provide distinctive and overlapping lenses through which to view an under-analyzed aspect of the conditions of low-wage, temporary daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 30 migrant workers in canada.8 each of these frameworks, while insufficient in themselves, offer important insights into the rendering of temporary migrant workers into redundant “human waste” – a process that is antithetical to the “permanency,” successful integration, and “contributions” to the nation of its immigrant population of highly diverse origins that form strands of the official narrative about canadian multiculturalism and nation-building. marx’s critique of capitalism and his labour theory of value provide a key starting point for understanding the contemporary disposability of low-wage migrant workers (yates, 2011). under capitalism, value is rooted in labour, specifically its unique capacity to produce value. but labour also takes on the form of a commodity and as such is consumed and can be disposed like other commodities when it is no longer needed. indeed, disposability, a process whereby workers can be hired and fired – individually and en masse – to meet the demand of capital accumulation, is at the core of marx’s notion of the industrial reserve army of labour (marx, 1990, pp. 784-785). mechanization reduces necessary labour time even as it increases the pace and intensity of work; the new efficiency means less labour is required, thus reducing formerly active labour into a “kind of waste excreted from the system of production and wages” into unemployment and underemployment, and also “separated partially or fully from domains of capitalist exchange and social life” (yates, 2011, pp. 1688-1689, 1679). disposability in marx’s and contemporary marxian writings thus refers to two distinct processes – expendability (producing the reserve army of labour) and the wasting away of the health, bodies and lives of workers. for marx, capitalism “squanders human beings, living labor, more readily than does any other mode of production, squandering not only flesh and blood, but nerves and brain as well” (marx, 1991, p. 180, cited in yates, 2011, fn. 11). marxian perspectives such as yates (2011) posit the disposability of labour as immanent to capitalism as a totalizing mode of production, pointing to the necessity of human labour and the rendering of humans into waste as 8 this is not an exhaustive survey of literatures that might assist in enriching our understanding of different dimensions of disposability of migrant workers. thus, perry (2012, p. 197) draws upon foucault’s analysis of biopower and state racism to illuminate the bio-political significance of the canadian seasonal agricultural workers wherein racialized workers from the global south, deemed the “inferior race,” cultivate life-giving, health-enhancing food for the canadian population, considered a population whose lives are worthy of sustaining. another literature that contributes to an understanding of human disposability in migrant labour migrations focuses on what kevin bales (2004) refers to as the “new slaves” who constitute “disposable people” in the globalized neoliberal economy. the significance of bales’ framing for analysis of temporary migration to canada is not to deem all “low-skilled” temporary worker programs as equivalent to the “new slavery.” nonetheless, clear instances of enslaved temporary workers in canada exist; duped by and indebted to unscrupulous recruiters by the promise of good jobs and permanent residence, many such workers are without status or money and sometimes imprisoned by traffickers (tomlinson, 2019). rather, the same forces (e.g., boundless supply) that render modern slaves vulnerable to slavery and disposability, also severely curtail the costs of maintaining temporary migrant workers and augment their deterioration and disposability. canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 31 contradictory yet necessary dynamics for continued capital accumulation. marxian perspectives have also offered incisive analyses of the various phases of global capitalism – particularly in the global south – that have led to the contemporary worldwide prevalence of temporary contract migration. especially significant has been the now common wisdom that much migrant labour, designated as “low skill,” is “unfree labour” and does not conform to the legally autonomous, formally non-coerced labour that marx identified as the labour form upon which capitalism is quintessentially dependent (bakan & stasiulis, 2012; choudhry & smith, 2016; miles, 1987; sharma, 2006). this has led to fertile analyses of the assemblage of political upheaval, neoliberal economic policies, and financial, military and environmental conditions that have “freed” from sustainable livelihoods an estimated one billion plus people in the global south to function as a burgeoning “relative surplus population” (davis, 2006; united nations human settlements programme, 2003), a small portion of whom are then recruited as “unfree” migrant labour by wealthier states only to be made vulnerable to retrenchment and expulsion. 9 indeed, the tfwp can be understood as exploiting the broader context of cataclysmic economic, social, environmental and political changes in the global south pushing people out of rural livelihoods into urban slums and then out of their home countries, leading to “the internationalization of what marx called the ‘reserve army of labour’” (calugay, halhaire & shragge, 2016, p. 154). in a second and highly influential framework of human disposability – zygmunt bauman’s analysis of the production of “wasted lives” – attention is paid to the production, culture and flow across borders of “impoverished human waste,” as an inescapable outcome of modernization, “order-building” by states, and capitalist economic progress “that proceeds through degrading and devaluing older ways of making a living” (2004, p. 5). whereas previously, and coinciding with colonialism, superfluous people would be transported from colonizing countries to (e.g., settler) colonies, the reverse traffic of the “flotsam and jetsam of planetary tides of human waste” epitomizes modernity. in a developed-society context where economic security of citizens has eroded and with the shrinking and disappearance of the “social state” and the social safety net, new “legitimation formulas” emerge (bauman, 2004, p. 90). unauthorized migrants and asylum seekers (from distant parts of the globe unloaded into “our own backyard”) are an easy target for demonization that accompanies nationalist campaigns promoting security and safety of citizens through mobilization of feelings of public anxiety, risk and insecurity (bauman, 2004, pp. 55-56). they “provide governments with an ideal deviant other”; indeed, bauman “is tempted to say 9 i am unable to do justice of this large body of scholarship on the conditions rife for human disposability in what is often blandly described as “migrant-sending countries.” for a recent illustrative analysis of the ongoing devastating effects of neo-liberal globalization that have resulted in a sustained process of production of unfree migrant labour in the philippines, see spitzer and piper (2014). daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 32 that were there no immigrants knocking at the doors, they would have to be invented” (bauman, 2004, p. 56). while the rendering into waste of “excessive, redundant” mobile populations is the outcome of complex social processes involving many actors (public and private interests including smugglers and traffickers), bauman gives priority to the (destination) nation state, which holds exclusive monopoly, based on its “fictional” and even “phantom-like” claims to sovereignty over performing the task of “sifting out, segregating and disposing of the waste of order-building” (bauman, 2004, p. 33). drawing on agamben’s (1998) ancient roman legal notion of homo sacer, which empties human and divine value from the lives among those so designated, bauman contends that under modernity, it is the uncontested monopoly of the contemporary nation-state that presides over the construction and regulation of distinctions between “citizen and homo sacer, belonging and exclusion, useful (=legitimate) product and waste” (2004, p. 33). realizing the central role of the state (in sending, transit and destination countries) in the active oversight, rejection, incarceration, deportation and speeding up of the biodegradation of bodies is important in recognizing states’ culpability in human rights violations and in the destruction of human beings. while bauman’s analysis has been insightfully utilized to convey the callous disregard for or invisibility of the deaths of “irregularised travellers” and asylum seekers at borders (spijkerboer, 2017) and in immigration detention centres (razack, 2017), it is notable that bauman himself includes economic migrants in his analysis of the flow across borders of “impoverished human waste.” he suggests that economic migrants who manage to land on affluent shores are met by such accusations as “sponging,” holding to “disreputable habits and creeds,” and more recently (especially if they are muslim), charges of terrorist conspiracy. it is possible that some theorists have paid scant attention to the disposability of economic migrants because they hold to a distinction between a population that serves an economic purpose (e.g., as a reserve army of labour) and the “redundant,” whose only purpose is to make modernity possible through their disposability and who are “always on their way to becoming waste” (razack, 2017, p. 3). this is where the marxian insight of the double-nature of labour under capitalism is germane – the necessity of human labour and the relegation of humans as waste as contradictory yet necessary dynamics for continued capital accumulation. as bauman argues, states seek to “find a balance between two blatantly contradictory yet equally vital postulates of airtight borders and of access to cheap, undemanding docile labour” (p. 61).10 10 although the notion of “airtight borders” is a myth, it serves a key ideological function of dehumanizing the “flotsam and jetsam of planetary tides of human waste” (bauman, 2004, p. 57) and of justifying governance centred on securitization. this has seen european and north american governments supplementing tightened border control regulations with a frenzied construction of border walls, barbed wire-topped fences, and the deployment of militarized surveillance, including drones (stasiulis, 2018). canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 33 disposability in canada’s white settler colonialism canadian social justice scholarship has seen a notable resurgence in interest in the framework of settler colonialism (stasiulis & yuval-davis, 1995) for illuminating “ongoing colonialism, the dispossession of indigenous lands, and the actual/attempted elimination of indigenous peoples” in order to inform and support movements for indigenous resurgence (snelgrove, dhamoon & corntassel, 2014, p. 2; see also simpson, 2014). key to understanding the concepts of “white settler society” and “settler colony” is their status as historical constructs and hegemonic myths about the nation, “consigning distinctive roles in production, reproduction and nation-building to indigenous and different groups of european and non-european women and men” (stasiulis & yuval-davis, 1995, p. 8). the generative power of these myths includes “their utility for multinational corporations who have profited immeasurably from the appropriation of indigenous lands and from the cheap and divided labour of racially, ethnically and gender-segmented labour markets” (stasiulis & yuval-davis, 1995, p. 8). as glenn (2015, p. 67) aptly argues, settler colonialism is not merely a past historical event, but rather serves as an ongoing structure that can reveal the “underlying systems of beliefs, practices, and institutional systems that undergird and link the racialization and management” of indigenous peoples and subjugated racialized migrant populations and their descendants. it is also “a framework that is amenable to intersectional understanding because it is widely understood that colonial projects simultaneously structure, race, class and sexual relations between colonists and the colonized” (glenn, 2015, p. 55). the template for disposability of humans in white settler colonial states such as canada was set by the eliminatory projects of colonial authorities and settler elites to reduce, remove, assimilate and erase indigenous peoples, with appropriation of land rather than proletarianization serving as the primary motive (coulthard, 2014) for “eliminating the native” (snelgrove et al., 2014, p. 13). 11 decimation of indigenous peoples by various forms of still unprecedented genocidal violence, as well as the repeated refusals of indigenous peoples to be assimilated to settler colonial ways (simpson, 2014), meant that colonial and capitalist elites had to look elsewhere for labour. indigenous peoples were dispossessed of their lands and confined to reserves, wrested from their sovereign administration, and presumed through various racist, patronizing tropes to hold dispositions unsuited to work the land or take up work in urban areas. in this sense, indigenous peoples were treated as disposable and ultimately in an expanding capitalist economy not indispensable. settler colonial elites were thus compelled to seek bulk foreign 11 it is important to acknowledge, however, that in canada for two centuries (1670-1870), settler colonialists also sought and depended upon indigenous labour for their successful exploitation of natural resources and survivability. indeed, the knowledge and labour of indigenous (both male and female) peoples proved decisive to profitability during two centuries of the fur trade (stasiulis & jhappan, 1995, pp. 101-104). daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 34 labour to build transportation infrastructure, and for the development of multiple and successive natural resources for export, and eventually, industrialization through import substitution (stasiulis & jhappan, 1995, p. 97). from the beginning, however, the recruitment of populations from abroad was bifurcated between those whose assumed moral character, civilization, and physical appearance, judged through specifically white british and northern eurocentric lenses, made them “exalted subjects” fit to populate the nation (thobani, 2007), and those prejudged (through a variety of often sexualized orientalist, anti-black, etc., racisms, each with their own distinctive genealogy) as being “unassimilable” – i.e., not merely embodying serious deficits but rather lacking the innate capacity to be remolded into acceptable settler-citizens. in the second category, and at the bottom of an implicit racial/ethnic ranking, were various groups of migrant men and migrant women (rarely both and rarely family units) who were recruited solely for low-wage, back-breaking labour and under conditions that ravaged the health and well-being of workers. the epistemic exclusion from the process of building and joining the “canadian nation” rendered these migrants deemed unfit for settlement both cheaper than euro-canadian workers and expendable. as “settler culture valorized the heteropatriarchal [white] family as the moral foundation” of canadian society (glenn, 2015, p. 65), the refusal of family migration to migrants from caribbean and asian countries acted both as a form of negative eugenics and another marker of their disposability. the assumption here was that if their families were not granted access, these migrants would be more likely to return to their country of origin once their labour was no longer required. the supposition that some migrants with civilizational deficits were unfit and would not settle made it easier to justify the imposition upon such workers of multiple forms of political, cultural, and spatial exclusion, and methods of labour discipline rejected by settler-workers. reinforcing the othering of those recruited solely for their flexible labour was the exclusion from tangible benefits accorded by the state to the national citizen-subject “in the form of proprietorial access to land, citizenship, mobility, employment [options], social citizenship” (thobani, 2007, p. 21) and other (e.g., civil and political) rights, including the right to mobilize, dissent and struggle against inhumane and illegal conditions. historical precedents for disposable migrant labour the entry into what is now western canada beginning in 1858 of thousands of chinese peasants and workers, driven from rural china by war, rebellion and poverty, bore many of the hallmarks of a temporary migrant labour movement. some of this army of male labourers took up a variety of types of work on the canadian west coast, toiling as labourers, cooks, laundrymen, canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 35 teamsters, domestic servants, and providing auxiliary services to mining communities (chan, 1983, 2013; creese, 1988). like contemporary foreign workers, chinese labourers were governed by discriminatory legislation and employer practices: the head taxes imposed upon them, reaching a historic high of $500 in 1923, followed by an almost complete ban on immigration; the prohibitive costs and ultimate ban against bringing in spouses and children; restrictive covenants in some cities such as vancouver, with respect to purchase of property; indenture with specific employers and debt bondage to recruiters; wages significantly (sometimes 50%) lower than for white workers; and barriers imposed to citizenship acquisition and access to professions. all of these measures clearly demarcated the chinese as cheap, unfree and disposable labour, rather than as permanent residents or national subjects. the logic of disposability was wretchedly transparent in the high numbers (600) of estimated deaths among the 15,000 chinese railway workers in 1880-1885, and eugenics-informed legislation “protecting” white women from workplace interaction and intimacy with chinese men in the isolated male bachelor societies.12 the bulk labour of male chinese workers is but one of several significant historical precedents for temporary migrant worker schemes in canada, that established niches in the labour market, filled through recruitment of foreign workers made vulnerable and considered disposable through their positioning as poor, racialized, from the global south, and often gender-segregated. black caribbean female domestic workers were another group that historically were treated as hyper-exploitable and disposable migrant labour. as summed up by agnes calliste (1994, p. 132), canada’s immigration policy regarding blacks “was structured by a dialectic of economic, political and ideological relations: employers’ demand for cheap labour to do unskilled and domestic work was set in tension with the state’s desire to exclude blacks as permanent settlers.” nonetheless, unlike many affluent states (e.g., in europe), canada for the most part “eschewed guest worker programs for most of the twentieth century, [recruiting] migrants as permanent settlers and future citizens” (walsh, 2014, p. 584). the contemporary shift in immigration policy from a policy of overwhelmingly permanent immigrant settlement toward increasing reliance on unfree, temporary workers can be traced to the 1973 precursor to today’s temporary work programs known as the non-immigrant employment authorization program (nieap). the nieap relied on legal differences 12 while these early chinese migrants frequently remained in canada and are part of canada’s historical narrative regarding early “settlers,” the legal scaffold of tight controls and restrictions governing their work and lives, and sometimes a total disregard for the conditions that were to protect their health and lives, are strikingly similar to modern-day policies and practices governing contemporary unfree, racialized migrant workers. so too are the discourses and emotive responses from white canada that blocked integration of this so-called “yellow peril” with an admixture of “intense fear, hatred and demonization” (pon, coloma, kwak & huynh, 2017, pp. 5-6). daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 36 organized among citizens, immigrants (permanent residents) and migrant workers to ensure employer access to an unfree migrant workforce. migrants were regulated in this program through a foreign work visa assigning them to a specified employer, stipulating the workers’ occupation, residence, length and terms of employment in canada, and the expectation of immediate exit from the country upon expiration of the labour contract (sharma, 2006, p. 19). elaborating on the sites and technologies of “disposability” inherent in the burgeoning in temporary migrant schemes and numbers of workers, especially in low wage sectors of the labour market, is important to elucidate the obstacles to achievement of rights and equality with citizen-workers. once disposability alongside hyper-exploitability are accepted as the underlying principles driving canada’s low-wage temporary worker programs, the idea that significant and long-lasting change can occur merely or primarily through lobbying and incremental reform processes is seriously brought into question. sites and technologies of migrant disposability while all nation-building involves forms of exclusion of populations deemed as unqualified for national subjecthood and citizenship, there is an inherent dynamic of elimination of indigenous peoples and disposability of racialized migrant bodies in canadian nation-building, linked to canada’s foundations as a white settler colony. the technologies of disposability are not identical for indigenous people and migrants. for instance, the “technology of erasure” through cultural assimilation practiced on indigenous peoples (glenn, 2015, p. 68) is not executed for temporary migrant workers who unlike (permanent resident) immigrants are ineligible for settlement or integration services (stasiulis, hughes & amery, 2011; alberta federation of labour, 2007). similarly, migrant workers but not indigenous peoples may face legal deportation (see below on “medical repatriation”), although both populations are subject to forms of spatial containment. migrant workers may be spatially confined and hidden or invisibilized (e.g., in private family households or on farms), whereas many indigenous peoples are confined on reserves, rendering both populations as out of sight and out of mind. both types of confinement are also frequently linked to exposure to waterand air-borne harmful toxins. rather than moving toward some form of “post-settler” form of governmentality, the normalization and expansion in recruitment of temporary low-wage migrant labour renews and reproduces the white settler colonial logic of dividing populations between worthy settler-citizens, and disposable subhumans. in the construction of migrant disposability, the role of law, especially canadian immigration law, but also provincial employment law, is critical here in securing the link between temporary status and disposability (fudge, canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 37 2012; marsden, 2011, 2018). the disposability of temporary migrant labour is constantly reproduced in law: a wobbly legal scaffolding of migrant worker temporariness, protections, omissions and implicit threats, reflecting the interests of receiving and sending states (intent on migrant remittances), and often masking the free reign given to employers and unregulated intermediaries such as labour recruiters and immigration consultants. one way of outlining the processes of disposability that shape and constrain every aspect of migrant workers’ lives is to examine the sites, technologies, and discourses of migrant labour disposability. for instance, razack (2017) documents how “waste disposal” of immigrant detainees occurs in prisons that serve as immigration detention centres, while spikjkerboer (2017) argues that the border and security laws of states compel unauthorized migrants to evade border controls, resulting in deaths. for legally employed temporary migrants, there are several sites, technologies and corresponding sets of powerful stakeholders that contribute to their disposability. these sites include, first, the transborder space of recruitment, migration and contract employment, where the chief actors are various authorities in sending and receiving states (including sub-national states), labour brokers, and employers. as discussed below, the workplace, accommodation, transportation modes, inadequate health care system, and the repatriation to sending countries all constitute additional key sites for disposability of temporary migrant workers. both an excess of action (tight regulation of workers) and deliberate inaction (in protection of workers’ safety and rights, tracking and punishment of non-compliant employers) reproduce the disposability of migrant workers. inherent in the admission and legal status of all temporary worker programs is the notion of “temporariness,” which is typically understood as a residency of short duration and limited rights, carrying with it an implicit possibility of removal.13 as rajkumar, berkowitz, vosko, preston & latham (2012, pp. 485-486) point out, temporariness in migrant worker schemes exists along a continuum, offering “privileged forms of temporariness” to the “high skilled” and “restricted forms of temporariness” for the “low skilled.” the former may be “temporarily temporary” while the latter are “permanently temporary.” this means that regardless of time spent working in canada, the vast majority of low skill workers entering through temporary work schemes remain tied through their work permits to individual employers. they never attain the status of permanent residents and are denied such rights as security of presence, family reunification, eligibility for 13 in april 2011, under the harper conservative administration, temporary residence and removal became institutionalized in the “four-in, four-out” rule for temporary migrant workers. under this rule, temporary foreign workers who worked in canada for four years were not eligible to become temporary foreign workers again unless they are out of canada for four additional years. under the trudeau liberal government, this rule was rescinded, which lengthened the time workers could legally be in canada, yet provided no pathway to permanent status. daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 38 settlement and access to most social welfare services. the circumstances of their work and housing conditions (e.g., caregivers “hidden in the household,” agricultural workers housed far from main roads) render them concealed and segregated, and shape their exclusion from integration in the local communities where they work and live (basok, 2002; binford, 2013; hennebry, mclaughlin & preibisch, 2016; stasiulis & bakan, 2003). the living conditions for low-wage migrant workers are by no means uniform and conditions of residence, within the discretionary control of employers vary. factors such as the very limited non-work hours for migrants, the material deprivation and unhygienic conditions of much employer-provided accommodation (particularly for seasonal agricultural workers), predispose neighbours living in the same communities to fear and avoid social interaction with migrant workers. in a 2013 open letter to the mayor of leamington, the activist group justicia for migrant workers (j4mw) remarked upon the open hostility from members of the city council shown towards jamaican migrant workers, disparaging their use of public libraries, alleging that too many “loiter” downtown and are “lewd” to local women, and criticizing the growth of “ethnic businesses” catering to migrant workers. j4mw argued that these negative and fearful attitudes of city councilors reflect forms of racial stigmatization, and familiar racialized, sexualized tropes of dangerous black men, that are designed to segregate migrant workers as much as possible from “the white citizens” of the community (j4mw, 2013). disposability, while frequently undefined, is linked to temporary migrant worker deportability. harsha walia, for instance discusses how these two conditions of migrant workers are interlinked in arguing that, “[t]he condition of being deportable assures that migrant workers can be super-exploited, as well as being readily disposable, especially during moments of labour unrest or economic recession” (2010, p. 79, emphasis added). in other words, disposability is here regarded as carrying through with termination of employment and actual removal of workers to their country of origin when migrants resist deplorable conditions or when structural conditions worsen. deportability, endemic among migrant workers who are “permanently temporary” pertains more to the overriding threat of involuntary removal to sending countries than to the actual practice of deportation (basok, bélanger & rivas, 2014, p. 1394). deportability constitutes “one of the main disciplinary techniques” assuring compliance among workers to accept harmful and inhumane conditions in working and living conditions and to surrender their autonomy and endure injury and illness, pain and fear (basok et al., 2014, pp. 1395, 1405). as basok et al. argue, many migrants fear deportation regardless of whether they are legally in the country on a temporary worker visa or contract or if they are working without authorization, but this deportability is experienced in a variety of ways and also variably enforced (2014, p. 1399). notably, they suggest that “it is not the frequency of deportation, but its canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 39 possibility that keeps unauthorized migrants anxious, fearful and disciplined” (p. 1399). citizen-workers by contrast are conspicuously free of this particular source of fear, anxiety and discipline, although they may experience many sources of employment precarity. as i suggest below, disposability permeates many other sites in migrant journeys that exemplify and heighten the disposability of temporary migrant workers. as (live-in) caregivers and seasonal agricultural workers together account for about twothirds of all low-wage migrant workers, virtually all from global south countries such as mexico, the philippines, and jamaica, examples are drawn from these two sectors to illuminate the logic of migrant disposability (faraday, 2016, p. 30). health deterioration linked to job, transport, and living conditions the job site offers an array of sector-specific conditions that hasten the physical and mental health deterioration of temporary migrants. among those most often noted in scholarly and community-based research on live-in caregivers, where the workplace and housing are combined and provided by the employer are: non-payment of earned wages and overtime; long work hours and being on call 24 hours a day; exhaustion; substandard and unhealthy housing (e.g., unventilated laundry and basement rooms or sharing a child’s room), insufficient and poor quality food; lack of privacy; employer surveillance; sexual abuse; inability to take sick leave; isolation and loneliness linked to separation from family; sexual and racial harassment; and vulnerability to false accusations of theft (spitzer & torres, 2008, pp. 15-16; stasiulis & bakan 2002, pp. 252-253; vahabi, wong & lofters, 2018, pp. 592, 596). live-in caregivers experience an absence of control and autonomy in most aspects of their lives, stemming from the curtailment by employers of their movements, family life, visitors, time off, cooking, and use of space. conditions affecting caregivers’ physical and mental health show variation across employing households, and it is difficult to generalize on the basis of small samples of research interviews or self-reporting questionnaires (carlos & wilson, 2018; vahabi, wong & lofters, 2018). nonetheless, the evidence is strongly suggestive of a high prevalence of physical and mental health decline among caregivers since arriving in canada (e.g., 43% of 30 respondents working in the greater toronto area (gta) reported a decline in physical health and 30% reported poor mental health; vahabi et al., 2018, p. 595).14 another study that interviewed 21 lcp filipina migrants in the gta 14 the most common conditions reported as post-arrival health issues in vahabi et al.’s study were: “urinary tract infection, high blood pressure, intestinal/stomach problems and respiratory illnesses” (2018, p. 595). the literature (oddly) refers to such health decline as the “healthy immigrant effect,… i.e., migrant workers arrive healthy as indicated during [mandatory] predeparture medical screening; [subsequently] their health status declines” while they are working daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 40 (carlos & wilson, 2018) discusses the prevalent violation of the federal government lcp requirement of employer-provided third-party health insurance in the first three months prior to lcp migrant eligibility to join the (ontario) provincial health plan. in this study, only one-quarter of participants were provided such mandated health care. those not covered by insurance jeopardize their health by failing to seek medical care when injured or ill until their provincial insurance kicks in. given the hazardous conditions and punishing pace of work associated with agricultural work,15 it is unsurprising that local residents routinely reject jobs on farms because of health and safety concerns (preibisch & hennebry, 2011, p. 1034). cattle industry and other farmer associations regard temporary foreign workers as a “lifeline” filling vital positions rejected by canadian candidates in the “midst of an acute labour crisis” (alberta cattle feeders’ association, 2017). as hennebry (2010, p. 73) observes, the significant increase in seasonal agricultural workers in the last 25 years has meant that a growing share of occupations linked to the canadian food system with high rates of workplace injury, work-related illness and death are taken up by racialized migrant workers from the global south. among the most serious health risks facing migrant farm workers are: viral, respiratory, neurological and physical illnesses stemming from unprotected handling of and exposure to pesticides and chemicals, musculoskeletal injury, contact with food and water-borne diseases associated with fertilizers, repetitive stress injuries, gastroenterological issues, sexual health conditions, and mental health concerns (hennebry, 2010, p. 75; mclaughlin, hennebry & haines, 2014, p. 2; orkin et al., 2013; pysklywec, mclaughlin, tew & haines, 2011). while farm workers, regardless of their citizenship status, experience many of these agricultural health risks, the level of risk is greatly amplified in the case of migrant workers. in ontario, where roughly half of agricultural migrant workers are recruited, protection under the occupational health and safety (ohs) act came late to agricultural workers, introduced only in 2006. in their 2010-2012 interviews with 100 migrant (primarily mexican and jamaican) farmworkers with self-reported health issues or injuries, and 64 stakeholders (e.g., employers, government officials and migrant advocates), mclaughlin et al. (2014, p. 8) found that while there were reported improvements in the health and safety of some workplaces since the adoption of the ohs, there was limited evidence of improved training and protection in many agricultural worksites. echoing earlier (pre-ohs coverage) studies that found that less than one-quarter of migrants working in ontario and bc with pesticides and farm machinery had received formal training (hennebry & preibisch, 2012; russell, 2003), only 13% of the 100 migrant mexican and and residing in canada (vahabi et al., 2018, p. 596). agricultural seasonal workers recruited into the sawp must also pass such medical screening prior to arrival in canada. 15 “between 1990 and 2012, there were 2,324 agriculture-related fatalities in canada, an average of 101 fatalities each year” (united food & commercial workers union canada, 2018, p. 1). canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 41 caribbean workers had received training in safe pesticide use. while 75% were given gloves, less than five percent were provided with a mask or other personal protective equipment. in a scene starkly illuminating the divide between non-citizen workers and citizen workers in documentary film maker min sook lee’s (2016) migrant dreams, shot in leamington ontario, unprotected migrant workers are spraying pesticides in a greenhouse while a supervisor walks in, completely suited-up and masked. migrant farmworkers commonly work 63-65 hours per week (in contrast with the standard canadian 40 hour week), at a punishing pace, in extreme weather, with exposure to toxic chemicals, and under pressure to exceed digitally monitored targets (mclaughlin et al., 2014, p. 5; hennebry et al., 2016, p. 529). earlier studies have found illness and injury rates to be approximately 25% for mexican workers and jamaican workers, with onethird of the jamaican workers reporting a long-term disability as a result of illness or injury from working in canada (binford, 2013; russell, 2003). researchers identify a myriad of reasons for the intensified risks of injury, illness and death doing farm work among agricultural migrant workers. they include the jurisdictional quagmire stemming from joint governance through federal immigration programs and provincial legislation, wherein certain protections such as health insurance and ohs are promised by the federal sawp but are within the purview of the provincial jurisdiction, where they are most often poorly administered or completely ignored. in addition, researchers cite the multiple barriers that exist to seeking health care and worker’s compensation including: fear of termination; loss of wages or other punitive consequences from employers; lack of independent transportation; language and cultural-related barriers; absence of knowledge of the health care system, insurance coverage or worker’s compensation claim system; long work hours and limited clinic hours; and worker reluctance to lose paid work hours (orkin et al., 2014). seasonal agricultural workers are covered by provincial health insurance upon entry in ontario, yet only about 20% carry an ohip card; those who enter through other low-wage migrant programs, such as migrant caregivers, have a three-month probationary period. in their survey of nearly 600 migrant farm workers in ontario, hennebry et al. (2016, pp. 529-530) found that, despite the ubiquity in debilitating health problems, with over half of workers citing exhaustion, back pain and muscle fatigue, less than one quarter reported seeing a doctor or indeed receiving information about use of the health care and insurance system, and 93% did not know how to access workplace safety insurance. most of those who were injured or ill postponed medical visits (hennebry, 2010, p. 76). mclaughlin et al. (2014, p. 13) argue that a major barrier to structural and policy reforms that might promote long-term migrant worker health is the ease with which employers can replace older, injured and ill workers with “younger, fitter, healthier workers at the beginning of each season” – in other words, their disposability. as discussed below, fear of deportation following injury or illness has a real substantive basis in the daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 42 practice of medical repatriation from canada to the migrants’ home countries (orkin et al., 2014). a high level of carelessness for the safety of agricultural migrant workers on the part of employers and farmworker intermediaries (such as farm labour contractors) is evident in road transport – another common site for injury and deaths among migrant agricultural workers. in 2012, 10 peruvian farmworkers were killed in a collision near stratford, ontario, between a van carrying the workers and a flatbed truck (barnes, 2013, p. 656). barnes (2013) reports on a spate of transportation-related deaths and injuries of migrant farm workers from the global south. particularly notable were the rising number of bicycle deaths (many hit-and-run) among mexican workers in the leamington area, with its “lack of adequate bike paths along the rural roads between farms and commercial centers” (barnes, 2013, p. 654). living conditions of migrant farm workers, usually on employers’ property, have repeatedly been identified in migrant surveys and media reports as hazardous to health (hennebry, 2010, p. 74). housing is regularly described as “dilapidated, unsanitary, overcrowded and poorly ventilated” (preibisch & hennebry, 2011, p. 1035). hazards of deplorable living conditions and toxic workplaces merge as workers are provided untreated water, inadequate toilet facilities and living quarters in close proximity to pesticides and fertilizers (hennebry, 2010, p. 74). as hennebry suggests (2010, p. 75), while not all migrant worker housing is inadequate, a lack of consistency exists because of a dire under-regulation and absence of federal guidelines regarding accommodation and amenities for migrant farm workers, a conclusion similarly reached in a “primary agriculture stream review” commissioned by the canadian government (employment & social development canada, 2019b). employers resist the suggestion of standardized housing requirements, however, worrying that a potential national standard would increase their costs, leaving the federal government resigned to accepting that this matter is too “complex” to be nationally regulated (employment & social development canada, 2019b). medical repatriation the practice of “medical repatriation” of migrant farm workers, who develop health problems or injuries that prevent them from continuing work, crystallizes the disposability of low-skill migrant workers. through rare access to canadian government records related to repatriation for medical purposes of injured and ill migrant farm workers during 2001-2011,16 orkin 16 records on the repatriation of migrant farm workers are administered by “foreign agricultural resource management services, a federally incorporated non-profit corporation authorized by employment and social development canada” (orkin et al., 2013, p. 193). such records are not normally available for public or academic examination, but were brought to light when they were canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 43 et al. (2014) found that 787 repatriations to barbados, mexico and other home countries occurred among 170,315 migrant farm workers in ontario (4.62 repatriations per 1000 workers). the most commonly identified diagnostic reasons for repatriation were for medical or surgical reasons, including musculoskeletal (strained, broken or severed upper and lower extremities), gastrointestinal-related illnesses and external trauma, including poisoning. while approximately 97% farm workers are male, three medical repatriations were attributed to pregnancy of female migrant workers. only a tiny fraction (1.3%) of medical repatriations resulted from migrant workers’ requests. many migrant workers, fearing termination or repatriation, continue to work with serious health concerns, while others leave their workplaces but resist deportation in the fear that they will be unable to access health care in their home countries (orkin et al., 2014). migrants who have fallen ill or are injured face pressure to return home by representatives of their sendingcountry government agencies. when they seek medical care, time off to recover, or are hospitalized, many migrants are fired and sent home or not invited back the following season (hennebry et al., 2016, p. 531). as orkin et al. (2014, p. 196) argue, medical repatriation is “at once an occupational health event, an international deportation and a termination of employment” that is uniquely imposed upon migrant workers: “[t]here are perhaps no other canadian occupational settings where workplace injuries and illnesses…[ ]…result in employment termination and deportation without further medical care or income security.” indeed, the canadian labour congress “has identified repatriation provisions in [sawp] contracts as the employer’s bluntest tool to suppress workers’ rights” (orkin et al., 2014, p. 196) the disposability of migrant workers continues once they have been deemed too ill or injured to work. their provincial health care expires when their employment is terminated or their contracts expire, and they are normally shipped home to deal with under-resourced health care systems in their home countries. common outcomes such as chronic illnesses, terminal conditions and deaths are unmonitored and far from canadian public consciousness. the case of sheldon mckenzie, a jamaican farm worker who in january 2015 sustained an ultimately fatal head injury at work in a tomato farm in leamington illuminates this end-stage of the disposability cycle for low-wage migrant workers. his relatives in toronto fought pressure from a jamaican consulate liaison officer to ship him home and began the process of application of a humanitarian visa to permit him to remain until his untimely death in a windsor hospital (marchitelli, 2016). his cousin remarked of the prevalent practice of medical repatriation of injured migrant farm workers: “it’s worse than slavery – they dispose of them” (marchitelli, 2016). the indifference and absence of monitoring by the canadian government regarding health outcomes following medical repatriation and the absence of entered into evidence during a human rights tribunal of ontario hearing concerning the death of ned peart, a migrant farm worker. daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 44 inquests into migrant deaths are further indicators of the routine treatment of racialized migrant workers from the global south as disposable sub-human units of production. such deaths are deemed unworthy of investigation, and at least within canada’s borders, the loss of migrant lives is rendered invisible, ungrievable and undeserving of memorialization (butler, 2004). holding non-compliant employers accountable? until recently, employers of temporary workers faced few consequences for non-compliance with labour and health-and-safety laws. a 2017 report by the federal auditor general chastised the tfwp for its lack of oversight. as a result, in 2018 the trudeau government stepped up employer inspections and the online naming and shaming of non-compliant employers (wright, 2018). 17 while immigration, refugees and citizenship canada’s website “list of ineligible employers,” established to identify employers in breach of provincial laws protecting tfwp workers had listed only one employer in august 2017 (wright, 2018), this number jumped to 168 as of time of writing (may 2019; see immigration, refugees & citizenship canada, 2019). of these 168 non-compliant employers, 11 of whom were identifiably in the primary agriculture section, the reasons for non-compliance were not listed for 52 employers, most of whom faced a oneto two-year ban on hiring temporary workers. the most commonly listed provision breached by employers was the reported failure to provide the inspector with documents (57); the next most common (47) was failure to match pay or working conditions or actual job listed on the offer of employment. while monetary penalties varied in amount, ranging from $500 to (the second highest amount of) $16,000, the median monetary penalty was a paltry $1000 imposed upon 36 employers. the highest fine of $54,000 (plus a one-year ban) was levied against cape breton-based kameron coal management ltd., whose breach of the tfwp program was over-paying american workers in comparison to the rates that had been advertised locally. interestingly, here the severest punishment was meant to protect local canadian workers, rather than exploited migrant workers. this concern with the impact of the tfwp on citizen-workers is consistent with a major focus of the federal auditor general’s report, where the program is critiqued for allowing (usually lower-paid) international workers to take jobs that out-of-work canadians could fill (press, 2017). thus, canadian government efforts to deter the use of foreign workers as a preferred workforce have been accompanied by polarizing nativist discourses 17 on-site inspections by employment social development increased seven-fold in one year, with 1,340 on-site inspections reported to have been launched and in various stages of completion by may 2018 (wright, 2018). canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 45 that pit canadian settler-citizens against temporary and non-status foreign workers. an important instance of this was the harper government’s 2014 clampdown on temporary migrant workers through its “putting canadians first” rhetoric, that not only involved significant set-backs for migrant worker rights but also legitimized the hostility and suspicion of migrant workers on the part of canadian workers. under the liberal trudeau government, the federal auditor general’s report criticized the caregiver stream of the tfwp for providing “an immigration loophole for families to reunite in canada, rather than fill a labour shortage” (press, 2017), reiterating the portrayal of migrant live-in caregivers as “system cheaters,” first voiced by former conservative immigration minister jason kenney (gaucher, 2019), and conveniently ignoring an explicit, long-standing objective of the former livein caregiver program – namely to provide a pathway to permanent residence for those who had fulfilled two years of live-in caregiving (stasiulis & bakan, 2002). while two of the 17 reasons for non-compliance listed on the non-compliant employer website spoke directly to breaches of the live-in caregiver program, including the non-provision of “private and furnished living space in the home,” none of the 168 non-compliant employers were identifiably participating in the migrant caregiver program and there were no breaches listed under the two explicitly caregiver non-compliance breaches. thus, the recent increased monitoring and public visibility given to employers who are seen to violate provisions of the tfwp have reinforced rather than undermined divisions between canadians and disposable others and done little to foster equitable conditions in the treatment of the two workforces. conclusion: implications of migrant disposability for migrant worker justice kristina torres, 28, came to canada from the philippines under a federal live-in caregiver program that she said has left her feeling “disposable” and less than human. (thompson, 2016) commenting on the sea change in government migration policy favouring temporary migration, byl (2011, p. 96) remarks that the astonishing rise in tfws “indicates a clear shift in government policy, which has occurred without public debate, without a clear analysis of tfw programs or the outcomes of such programs. canada has acquired a guest worker program that rivals those of the united states and europe and it appears that most canadians are completely unaware of this fundamental change in how we deal with people wishing to come to canada” (2010, p. 96). given that lowwage migrant workers are tied to employer-specific permits, threats of termination and repatriation are powerful disciplinary strategies. these daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 46 migrants endure painfully long separations from their families and often cannot return home because of the debt bondage to unscrupulous recruiters and because of the compulsion to send home remittances (vahabi et al., 2018, p. 592). ill health, injury, and pregnancy result in termination or non-renewal of work permits, denial of or delay in medical treatment (as provincial health insurance is dependent upon valid work visa) and repatriation. the assumed disposability of low-wage migrant workers has led to a growing and deep divide between “two canadas”: the first populated in the majority by white, middle class canadians, governed by a combination of liberal democratic and neo-liberal principles (in tension with each other); and the second (the proliferating “zones of exceptionalism”) governed by illiberal and neo-liberal principles. socially and sometimes physically segregated from the first canada, an entirely different and inhospitable canada is experienced by lowwage migrant workers from the global south. the expanded preference for “permanently temporary” labourers from the global south over immigrants with pathways to citizenship reflects the status of temporary labour schemes as an enduring labour market tool intended to provide maximum flexibility and profitability for employers in a growing number of sectors in the canadian economy (keung, 2017). this trend is in keeping with a shift in global north countries “from macroeconomic policies to multiple micro programmes directed at specific labour market niches” relying piecemeal on increasing the number of temporary foreign workers to fill permanent labour shortages (barnes, 2013, p. 657). the augmented receptivity among employers and public officials towards expanding temporary foreign worker programs is not accompanied, however, by a welcoming environment in the wider community for those recruited through these programs. unlike permanent residency, temporary migrant schemes rely upon the endless supply in poorer countries of younger, fitter and healthier workers, who undergo pre-migration health screening, permitting employers to regularly terminate, repatriate and rehire new workforces. every site in the multiple phases of the circular migratory process and work sojourn of lowwage temporary workers (pre-departure, travel, workplace, living conditions, return) has been associated with health vulnerabilities, inordinate stress and degradation of the physical and mental well-being of workers, resulting in a high incidence of chronic injuries, terminal illnesses and uninvestigated deaths. fear of termination by employers for daring to show human frailties and seeking treatment for injury or illness further hastens the likelihood of deportation to sending countries. migration scholars and advocates have suggested the inappropriateness for vulnerable migrant workers of the one-size-fits-all canadian health care system designed for permanent residents and citizen workers and the need for more transnational forms of migrant health and safety, and health care through coordinating access to information, training, and year-round insurance between sending and receiving countries (hennebry et al., 2016, p. canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 47 535). the continuous stalling and lax administration of reforms that would free workers to seek more beneficial paths to workplace safety and health (such as delinking employment contracts from individual employers) reflects the historical foundations of canada’s contemporary migrant worker schemes in an “inherited background field [of settler colonialism] within which market, racist, patriarchal and state relations converge” (coulthard, 2014, p. 14). intrinsic to nation-building in settler colonial states is a “logic of elimination,” that continues to draw upon racialized, north-south, class and gendered stereotypes regarding migrant fitness for and exclusion from citizenship and justifies a revolving door of disposable labourers. the human degradation within the seasonal agricultural worker program, now in operation for over half a century, is less a “relic of canada’s racist and colonial past” (perry, 2012, p. 189) than a contemporary iteration of this settler colonial logic. migrant activists have fought for decades to make small gains in the iniquitous conditions of temporary migrant work with respect to wages, benefits, worker autonomy, and right to family life, and to stem and reverse the deterioration in some of these legislated conditions and de facto exemption from worker and human rights protections. 18 the marked expansion in temporary migrant work sectors and numbers, and the narrowing of paths to permanent residence over the last couple of decades raises significant social justice flags. as sarah marsden has argued “the effects of less-than-permanent residence on migrants should be of concern to a liberal democracy that purports to maintain equality rights for those within its territory” (2011, p. 2l1). greater visibility, recognition, and democratic scrutiny of the inhumane conditions that literally degrade and destroy migrant bodies and lives may bring much needed and more urgent pressure to examine the very premises of government temporary worker programs that deem it appropriate to use and discard human beings for the sake of corporate profit, and cheaper food and privatized care for canadian citizens. various organizations seeking change on behalf of migrant farm workers, migrant caregivers and other low-wage temporary workers advance different frames (e.g., combatting precarity, ending unfree labour) and employ a rich array of practices and strategies to advocate for the labour and human rights of migrant workers, including public protests, legal education, assisting individual cases, and (federal and provincial) legal and policy reform. the most far-reaching demand sought over several decades by coalitions of self 18 in 2014, under the harper conservative government, the right of migrant caregivers to apply for permanent residence in canada was restricted, as a cap of 5,500 permanent residents annually among migrant caregivers was imposed, introducing new uncertainty and vulnerability among all those admitted into this program. the trudeau liberal government has introduced new requirements (e.g., application for a lmia) for migrant caregivers to remain in canada following expiration of two-year work permit, adding new costs and time to seeking permanence in canada (mckiernan, 2019). daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 48 organized migrant worker groups and their allies continues to be permanent residence status for all migrant workers upon arrival. in the interim, the migrant worker alliance for change seeks “the creation of open or occupation specific work permits that are not reliant on employers and that would allow workers to move freely between jobs and workplaces and work for any employer in a sector” (migrant worker alliance for change, 2019). the implicit premise of much advocacy is that lobbying governments will incrementally and eventually reduce or eliminate the hazardous conditions of temporary migrants; this evinces a faith in liberal democratic institutions that from time to time bears fruit, but about which many migrant justice organizations are legitimately skeptical, even as they engage in such advocacy in tandem with other strategies seeking in effect to end temporary migrant worker schemes. incremental reform strategies fail to recognize the changed market conditions in canada and globally wherein precarious work has been on the rise since the 1980s in the form of temporary, seasonal, casual and contract labour, and the so-called “gig economy” (kalleberg, 2009). provincial conservative governments are riding the tides of antiimmigrant and racist sentiments in canada, especially prevalent among conservative voters, to impose punitive and exclusionary (“canadians first”) policies against migrants and asylum seekers.19 recent shifts towards more disciplinary and less justice-based migrant worker policies illustrate how unwarranted is the assumption that the deeply racialized and eliminatory dynamics of settler colonialism are a thing of the past, rather than an ongoing reality not only for indigenous peoples but also for poor racialized migrant women and men from the global south. as one instance of recognition of the limited impact on migrant social justice of liberal democratic reform, the framing of activism of leamingtonbased justicia for migrant workers (j4mw), a non-profit activist collective that fights for space for workers to articulate their concerns without fear of repatriation, appears implicitly to reflect the notion that temporary migrant schemes are built upon the total control, disposability and dehumanization of migrants. j4mw’s demands for transforming deeper structural inequalities tied to neoliberal globalization in sending countries that produce a surplus of labour, and canada’s neo-colonial and racist treatment of migrant workers, suggest a transnational framework of “migrant as human” that links the disposability of migrants to processes of ongoing settler colonial violence (barnes, 2013, pp. 662-663). while some government analysis of the 19 according to a poll conducted by ekos in april 2019, 40% of canadians said that they believe there are “too many “visible minorities coming to canada,” with a whopping 71% of conservatives voicing this opinion in contrast to only 19% of liberal supporters (domaise, 2019). among recent punitive policies and laws imposed upon migrants and racialized/religious minorities are the slashing of legal aid for refugees and migrants by doug ford’s conservative ontario government (gray, 2019), and the so-called “secularism law” that prohibits judges, police officers, government lawyers and teachers from wearing “religious symbols” (such as hijabs and turbans) in quebec introduced by the caq government of françois legault (authier, 2019). canada’s “post-settler” embrace of disposable migrant labour studies in social justice, volume 14, issue 1, 22-54, 2020 49 shortcomings of temporary migrant labour schemes pit migrant workers (portrayed as “taking the jobs that out-of-work canadians could fill”) against marginalized populations in canada with high unemployment rates such as indigenous peoples, a disposability lens suggest that the two populations have in common their targeting for exclusion, demonization, dehumanization and elimination. a disposability lens helps account for the obdurate resistance of government migrant worker schemes to lasting progressive transformation, and in particular the refusal of the federal government to grant permanent residence and the civil freedoms of canadian citizens (such as the right to change employers and occupations) to all migrant workers. it also suggests the potential for fruitful alliances among groups enmeshed in a neo-settler colonial logic of elimination in seeking more fundamental and decolonizing structural change.20 in many instances, those migrants at the “sharp end of deregulated labour markets” (anderson, 2010, p. 300) remain segregated and stigmatized, their exclusion and disposability constituted through immigration law and a host of sites in their work sojourn and migrant journeys that consign them to a zone of exceptionality in the second, less visible canada. as temporary workers are recruited in ever expanding sectors of the economy, however, they are less likely to be in “hermetically sealed communities” (de genova, 2002, p. 422) than in the past, and instead more likely to be coworkers, neighbours, clients, intimate friends and members of households engaged in social relations with citizens and permanent residents. this expanded range of social relations with “ordinary canadians” offers opportunities for greater visibility, education, alliances and activism. such activism would be informed by an utter rejection of “permanently temporary” migrant worker programs that are premised on the inherent wasting away and disposability of human beings. acknowledgements a version of this paper was presented to the “canada program” at the weatherhead centre for international affairs, harvard university, on november 18, 2019. i gratefully acknowledge the insightful and critical comments on an earlier draft of this article i received from salina abji, megan gaucher, zaheera jinnah, jamie liew, augustine park, blair rutherford, and two anonymous reviewers. 20 the question of whether racialized migrants or people of colour should be considered “settlers” by virtue of living and owning land appropriated by indigenous peoples is an important question for social justice struggles (see lawrence & dua, 2005; snelgrove, dhamoon & corntassel, 2014). while this complex debate is beyond the scope of this paper, my hope is that the foregrounding of the “disposability” of both indigenous peoples and racialized, low-wage temporary migrants offers new understanding for some of 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(2011). the human-as-waste, the labor theory of value and disposability in contemporary capitalism. antipode, 43(5), 1679-1695. gazso final feb 1 16 correspondence address: amber gazso, department of sociology, 2060 vari hall, york university, 4700 keele st., toronto, on, m3j 1p3; email: agazso@yorku.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 being homeless and becoming housed: the interplay of fateful moments and social support in neo-liberal context jason webb york university, canada amber gazso york university, canada abstract this paper presents a qualitative analysis of stories of adults who transitioned from being absolutely homeless to becoming housed. participants’ stories are particularly salient for what they reveal about this transition in the midst of other challenges including substance use, criminalization, and violence, and within a neoliberal social policy context. through strategies of narrative analysis, two interconnected processes of becoming housed are discovered: (a) experiencing fateful moments; and (b) perceiving and creating social supports. the main conclusion is that fateful moments in individuals’ lives intersect with the push and pull of instrumental and expressive supports from family, community, and the state to culminate in an exit from absolute homelessness. the implications of these findings for understanding and responding to homelessness are also discussed. keywords homelessness; becoming housed; narrative analysis; fateful moment; social supports in this paper, we present findings from a qualitative analysis of interviews with previously homeless adults to explore their stories of becoming housed in toronto, ontario in the midst of multiple personal and structural challenges. beyond lack of shelter, these included drug use, violence on the streets, and weakened state provisions for income security. through stories, we see the interplay between fateful moments and social supports. specifically, becoming housed occurred when moments of epiphany in individuals’ lives intersected with the push and pull of instrumental and expressive supports from family, community, and the state. this main finding permits us to critically engage with some assumptions of the current neojason webb, amber gazso studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 66 liberal social policy context (mckeen & porter, 2003; rice & prince, 2013), such as the ideas that individuals are self-sufficient, personally motivated, and reject social or public intervention in their lives in their conformity to a strong market ethos (harvey, 2007; howard, 2007). for example, we note that individuals’ experiences of fateful moments can be seen to invoke feelings of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility necessary to their becoming housed. however, we argue that because these fateful moments intersect with socially supportive relations, this disturbs the assumption that the adoption of these and other neo-liberal imperatives are the sole reasons for leaving the street. our research therefore offers an opportunity to theorize the difficulties inherent in responding to homelessness and implementing a housing strategy in the neo-liberal era of the late welfare state. the social policy context in canada, an estimated 35,000 people are absolutely homeless, living “rough” on the street or in shelters, and another estimated 50,000 people are precariously housed (e.g., couch surfing at family and friends’ homes) (gaetz, 2010; gaetz, gulliver & richter, 2014). although there is considerable diversity among persons who are homeless, aboriginal peoples and queer youth are disproportionately represented (belanger, awosoga & head, 2013; city of toronto, 2013). in some cities and regions such as the greater toronto area and peel region, the number of persons absolutely homeless continues to grow (city of toronto, 2013; daiski, halifax, mitchell & lyn, 2012). according to the 2013 street needs assessment survey, over 5,000 homeless people in toronto (population approximately 2.9 million) spent the evening of april 17, 2013, outdoors or in city-administered shelters or treatment or correctional facilities (city of toronto, 2013, p. 13). homelessness in canadian cities is attributed to social and structural change (gaetz, donaldson, richter & gulliver, 2013). a labour market characterized by an increase in employment that is part-time, contractual, seasonal and low-waged has contributed to financial insecurity or poverty in many households (lewchuk, 2013; shier, jones & graham, 2010). while the wealthiest in canada have become wealthier, persons of lower and middle incomes have experienced stagnating incomes or greater income insecurity (organization for economic co-operation & development, 2008; broadbent institute, 2014), and the withdrawal of welfare state protection through neoliberal restructuring. as a policy framework, neo-liberalism favours individual freedom of choice, responsibility, self-sufficiency, and correspondingly, reducing the role of the state in people’s lives and encouraging market competition being homeless & becoming housed studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 67 (brodie, 2007; larner, 2000).1 problems of income insecurity are attributed to individual failings at being risk taking, market citizens (i.e., employed), rather than to political, economic, and structural conditions (dolson, 2015; harvey, 2007; larner, 2000; mckeen & porter, 2003). scholars generally agree that the neo-liberal policy framework in canada has meant a decline in the social safety net (rice & prince, 2013), and, specifically, the restructuring of policies and programs that could prevent homelessness or support homeless people. the post-1960s deinstitutionalization movement, for example, removed persons with mental health problems from institutions out of respect for their rights and autonomy, but placed them in communities where services that would provide safe, adequate care and affordable housing were underfunded (armstrong & armstrong, 2010; niles, 2013; snow & anderson, 1993). second, eligibility for social assistance has tightened and become conditional on employability efforts post-1990. while receipt of social assistance was always to be “a last resort” and never meant to replace income from paid work, the introduction of stricter welfare-to-work program requirements has represented a distinct shift away from social citizenship and entrenchment of market citizenship as a basis to claim income support (gazso, 2012). third, in the 2000s, neo-liberalism has become linked with criminalization of the homeless in the name of public safety (gaetz, 2013). when the provincial governments of ontario and british columbian enacted the safe streets act, in 1999 and 2004 respectively, police officers were given the power and authority to ticket street-involved homeless people for panhandling and squeegeeing in public (gaetz, 2013; o’grady, gaetz & buccieri, 2013). finally, the lack of a long-term, affordable housing strategy has long been cited as a major explanation of homelessness. between 1989 and 2009, the federal government’s investment in affordable housing declined 40% in relation to total gdp expenditures (lewchuk, 2013). in 1996, the responsibility for provisions of affordable housing was devolved to the provinces (hulchanski, 2009). between 1991 and 2006, household demand for affordable housing in ontario increased by 200,000, with 627,535 households in need in 2006 (ontario ministry of municipal affairs & housing, 2014). in the city of toronto, the average waiting time for affordable housing is 8.4 years (monsebraaten, 2016). the ontario provincial government has yet to release its own strategy to deliver affordable housing. 1 we acknowledge that neo-liberalism as a coherent project is contested in canada and elsewhere (larner, 2000; peck & tickel, 2002). jason webb, amber gazso studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 68 transitions in homelessness: the current literature the current literature on homelessness is heavily concentrated on reasons for becoming homeless and the experience of homelessness. becoming homeless can be explained through the metaphor of a pathway (chamberlain & johnson, 2013; mallet, rosenthal & keys, 2005). for example, unemployment, poverty, housing crisis, family break-down, mental and physical health challenges, substance use, and problematic contact with the child welfare system have been found to lead to homelessness (belcher & deforge, 2012; coates & mckenzie-mohr, 2010; chamberlain & johnson, 2013; gaetz, 2013; karabanow, 2008; thompson, bender, windsor, cook & williams, 2010). pathways into homelessness can also differ by gender, race/ethnicity, and indigeneity (anderson & collins, 2014; tutty, ogden, giurgiu & weaver-dunlop, 2013. p. 1505). the causes of the overrepresentation of indigenous peoples among canada’s homeless are argued to additionally include the nation’s history of colonial policies and practices (e.g., residential schools) and ongoing discrimination (anderson & collins, 2014). the everyday life experience of being homeless is understood to be compounded by many of the same factors that led to homelessness. homeless women have been found to experience higher levels of mental health problems than homeless men (nemiroff, aubry & klodawsky, 2010). substance use has been studied as an effect, not just a cause of homelessness (duneier, 1999; grinman et al., 2010). research into work-family dimensions of homelessness has been a particularly important contribution to the literature. scholars find that people who are homeless engage in a variety of subsistence activities, including paid employment (karabanow, hughes, ticknor & kidd, 2010; shier, jones & graham, 2010; persaud, mcintyre & milaney, 2010). and whereas research of the past assumed that the homeless experience was one of social isolation, more recent research reveals that diverse interpersonal relationships among homeless people develop in response to their circumstances (dordick, 1997; irwin, lagory, ritchey & fitzpatrick, 2008; karabanow, 2008; rokach, 2004, 2005; stablein, 2011; sterk-elifson & elifson, 1992; toro & oko-riebau, 2015; toro, tulloch & ouellette, 2008). for example, bourgois and schonberg’s (2009) ethnography on homeless intravenous substance users in california revealed that they develop a moral economy of mutual support to endure the criminalization of their substance use engendered by the united states’ war on drugs. questions around how homeless individuals becoming housed have perhaps been better answered with regard to the experiences of youth. qualitative studies have found that homeless youth are more likely to exit the street if they are personally motivated, have supportive relationships with family and community service providers, and access affordable housing and income support (karabanow, 2008; wilks, hiscock, joseph, lemin & being homeless & becoming housed studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 69 stafford, 2008). for youth who have experienced trauma before and during homelessness, access to services like therapeutic counseling is important for transitioning off canadian streets (coates & mckenzie-mohor, 2010). studies that have focused on adults’ exits from homelessness all point to access to affordable housing as a primary reason, but are mixed in their findings on the importance of other factors. klodawsky, aubry, nemiroff, bonetta and willis’s (2007) mixed method and longitudinal study of adult homelessness in ottawa led them to conclude that economic factors, interpersonal supports and conflicts, health problems including substance use, and access to housing and community services can both impede and facilitate exits. focusing on homeless canadian women, nemiroff, aubry and klodawsky’s (2010) quantitative study showed that exits were more likely for those with dependent children, which they attribute to women’s personal motivation to be caregivers and their access to subsidized housing. for persons with a history of mental illness and housing instability, developing strong relationships with others was crucial to their “gaining stability” and therefore maintaining housing (forchuk, ward-griffin, csiernik & turner, 2006). zlotnick, tam and robertson’s (2003) quantitative study based in alameda county in the united states found mixed support, however, for whether family, friends, and community services facilitate exits from the street. for those with substance use problems, social networks had little impact on leaving the street. we now turn to our own qualitative research which afforded us an opportunity to consider to what extent several of the above factors mattered to the re-housing of absolutely homeless adults, especially in view of how this transition occurred in the neo-liberal social policy context we described earlier. methods the narratives we analyze were extracted from a larger qualitative, crosssectional study of which the second author was the principal investigator. this study explored how families create networks of social support to manage low income in the greater toronto area by drawing on informal and formal sources of instrumental and expressive support.2 in the larger project, 70 participants aged 16 and older and representing 20 “families by choice” (kin and fictive kin relations) participated in semi-structured interviews with 2 our research distinguishes between source and type of social support. whereas informal sources of support include family and friends, formal sources of support included community supports like foodbanks and state supports like social assistance. and whereas instrumental support includes financial or material assistance and physical aid, expressive support includes affection and guidance. jason webb, amber gazso studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 70 the second author or a research assistant between 2009 and 2010.3 the design of this larger study integrated insights from the life course perspective, which understands events over a person’s life course (e.g., high school graduation, child birth) to be agentially, structurally, and historically constituted and to further shape specific trajectories (e.g., family or career) and relationships with others (elder, 1994, 1998). single-point-in-time, semi-structured interviews with members of each family by choice raised questions about events that prompted participants’ creation and use of social support networks, and how types and sources of support changed over time.4 interviews lasted on average an hour and a half and were audio recorded. all 70 transcribed interviews were coded using the qualitative software nvivo, first by common words and ideas, and then for common themes, following grounded theory principles of coding (e.g., open and axial coding) (strauss & corbin, 1998). in our later reflections on data collection and initial analyses, we were intrigued by the stories that 15 participants shared with the second author. these 15 participants were part of five families by choice.5 some of the experiences of these 15 participants were shared with the entire sample (e.g., the creation of families by choice because of distinct life course events, such as immigration and family conflict) (see, e.g., gazso & mcdaniel, 2015). their transitions into and out of absolute homelessness, however, further set these 15 participants apart from the larger sample. the 15 participants included six lone mothers, three common law couples (both partners interviewed), two single men, and one single woman. all lived in subsidized housing at the time of the interview and accessed ontario works (social 3 the second author completed interviews with 55 of 70 participants; 15 participants were interviewed by a research assistant. participants were recruited using purposive and snowball sampling at non-profit organizations targeting low-income families. the initial participant had to be over the age of 16, experiencing low income and parenting a child; the participants who were subsequently interviewed made up their family as the initial participant defined it. participants ranged in age from 18 to 84 and “families by choice” ranged in size from two to seven people including kin and fictive kin. that is, families by choice included biological or marital relations (kin) and people unrelated by blood, marriage, or adoption but perceived as family (fictive kin). 4 we acknowledge the limitations of single-point-in-time interviews, such as those articulated by briggs (1986). as well, we recognize that a life course perspective may be perceived as most rigorously applied and theorized through longitudinal research in general, and through ethnographic methods in particular. in this paper, our approach follows research in sociology that draws on insights from a life course perspective to interpret cross-sectional quantitative (prus, 2004), mixed methods (cooke & gazso, 2007; mcdonald, 2011), and qualitative data (allen & picket, 1987; mcdaniel, gazso & duncan, 2016). such cross-sectional research is thought to reflect the life course perspective in the design of (open or close-ended) questions written to enable participants to provide an overview of life course events and transitions retrospectively, in the present, and prospectively. this orientation was embedded in interview questions, which were designed by the second author in consultation with other, collaborating researchers in the original, larger study. 5 given our use of purposive and convenience sampling, note that not all members of these five families by choice experienced homelessness. hence, ours is not a paper about homeless families. being homeless & becoming housed studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 71 assistance) for income. they ranged in age from 21-54 years. all were parents but only 10 had children in their care; the remaining participants’ children were in the care of others or the child welfare system. eleven of the participants were in recovery from drug or alcohol addiction. each told stories of becoming housed in the midst of variable experiences of substance use, criminalization, and violence. we were compelled to try to understand their stories and found we could do so through narrative analysis. narrative analysis celebrates the diversity of individual experience and is particularly adept at revealing lives considered marginal (bischoping & gazso, 2016; benjamin, 1968; jackson, 2002). through the act of storytelling, participants are understood to develop a sense of agency, articulate purpose, and create their belonging in their social context (jackson, 2002); a narrative retains “traces of the storyteller” and may also bestow wisdom onto others (benjamin, 1968, p. 367). in narrative analysis, the story produced or collected is understood to be co-constituted by the interviewer and participant (see also briggs, 1986; mishler, 1991). the analyst particularly focuses on participants’ recounting of their life experiences over time, with emphasis on the meanings therein. as well, as previous research has established, a small sample (<20) is not unusual in analysis attuned to a rich understanding of unique cases (crouch & mckenzie, 2006), the plot of each narrative and the narrator’s evaluation of it (ahmed, 2013), or how transitions and turning points shape a life course in opposition to traditional work-family trajectories (mykelbust & solvang, 2006). our analysis strategies were informed by those used in the study of narratives from the life course perspective. we explored participants’ narratives for reference to the events or transitions that precipitated or were linked to their homelessness, as well as perhaps their addiction and criminalization. we did so under the assumption that some participants would contextualize their stories of becoming housed, the recent past, by “back stories” about becoming homeless or life on the street. we also endeavored to discover the turning points or fateful moments that prompted participants to dramatically alter the course of their lives, understanding these as culturally and institutionally contextualized (berger, 2008; giddens, 1991; goodey, 2000; macknee & mervyn, 2002). we were sensitive to gasker’s (1999) insight that epiphanies are symbolic events in a life course that individuals will define as such. finally, we analyzed narratives about becoming housed for what they revealed about how participants perceive and make sense of changes in their identities and self (see also linde, 1993).6 each author re-visited the interview transcripts and coded them according to these interests. we analyzed stories for each participant alone and then 6 for this strategy, we understood identities to emerge from relations with others (mead, 1984), including to whom an individual is accountable, and perceived that these relations further result in individuals’ creation, reproduction, or revision of their identities (e.g., from child to street youth) (adams & marshall, 1996; kroger, 2000; raskin, 2006). jason webb, amber gazso studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 72 considered the interviews as an ensemble. throughout, we compared our coding and re-coded our data to achieve a shared perspective. upon completion of our analysis, we found we were able to categorize the thoughts, actions, interactions with others (e.g., friends, caseworkers), and changes in self behind leaving the street according to two interconnected processes: experiencing fateful moments; and perceiving and creating social supports. although each process describes the stories of all 15 participants, we focus on only the stories of five participants in this paper due to limitations of space. these five participants represented family 19 in the original project and included amy and her partner isaac, and amy’s close friends elijah, jennifer and andrew; the latter two friends are a couple.7 when we met them, all were housed, receiving ontario works entitlements, recovering from addiction, and identified each other as family. amy and isaac shared the raising of their son with isaac’s mother, isabel. jennifer, andrew, and elijah all had children but these children did not live with them and were either in the care of an ex-partner or grandparents, or had been adopted by others. amy and isaac self-reported their race as “mixed” (e.g., caucasian, black, aboriginal), andrew and elijah identified as black, and jennifer as métis. below, we briefly sketch out some highlights of the “back-stories” of members of family 19. these back-stories begin to suggest the significance of absolutely homeless persons becoming housed given multiple challenges, including the neo-liberal social policy context. • amy (age 30) grew up in and out of foster care because of her mother’s addiction and never achieved a feeling of security or home. she steadily increased her use of crack cocaine throughout late adolescence and eventually ended up on the street. • isaac (age 32) began to use drugs as an adolescent. after his parent’s divorce, he had a tumultuous relationship with this father who also experienced addiction; he recalls engaging in substance use with him. eventually isaac dropped out of high school and started “running the streets.” following his placement in foster care by child welfare services and his continued drug use, he became homeless. • elijah (age 49) witnessed the murder of his father before he immigrated to canada at age six. he experienced feelings of isolation and inability to conform to the norms of his mother’s household during his young childhood and adolescence. his greater attachment to his peers and drug use in young adulthood contributed to his homelessness. as he recalled “slowly over the years the character started to change. so now i started to become a street person. instead of like a decent guy that dresses up nice. and then i started dressing like a bum…” • jennifer (age 36) remembers her life growing up in manitoba as one of moving back and forth between her mother and grandmother’s house. she left her grandmother’s home at the age of 15, the first of many entrances 7 the participants’ names were changed to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. being homeless & becoming housed studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 73 onto the street, because her grandmother’s boyfriend sexually abused her. in her words, “i didn’t really have much of a childhood… i was really young. i think my first drink i had when i was eight, started drinking heavy at 12, 13, left home at 15. i was like a full-blown alcoholic by then probably.” • andrew (age 39) dropped out of high school in adolescence. he met his father for the first time at age 17 in hospital when he became severely ill. his homelessness was connected to his gang-related crime, incarceration, addiction, and the subsequent strained relationships he had with his mother and other family members. findings experiencing fateful moments as we have observed, participants’ experiences of absolute homelessness were marked by hardships. beyond absolute poverty, these variously included addiction, violence, and criminalization. our participants’ experiences are common to those of other adults who are absolutely homeless, according to the current literature. our participants, however, also told stories of a fateful moment or series of moments that triggered feelings of resiliency, isolation, grief, or fear that underscored their motivation to become housed. fateful moments changed participants’ perceptions and experiences of their homelessness, and thus their sense of their present self and a future self as housed. during her 20s, amy’s life was characterized by drug use, sex work, mothering, bouts of homelessness, and violence. it was while living with a partner who was a drug dealer that amy decided to relinquish the care of her children to child welfare services. so i called and they [children’s aid society, hereafter cas] came and got my two sons. and, ah, and their father was like, ah, he was very resentful that i had done that. and, ah, you know, i didn’t see him giving up the selling drugs… i had basically crushed us with my relapses. so now there’s no money to pay the rent, you know and, ah, the kids are gone. so there’s not really any reason to stay in the apartment… and he can run drugs from anywhere, right. so yeah, we kind of broke up. and without the stability or anybody to account to, i just went off the deep end... you know, i could just see this dragging out, like i’m staying in the shelter… it’s an argument with them [cas] just to get our weekly visits put back together so they see mommy and daddy one time. and i was like, ‘no, this is not going to happen.’ so i went back out on the streets. the fateful moment of fracturing intimate ties with her children seemed to set amy adrift from her identity as mother and more attuned to that of a drug jason webb, amber gazso studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 74 using homeless woman. this fateful moment also echoed some of amy’s earlier experiences of family trauma. it was later in her life on the street that a man soliciting for sex attacked her with a knife. this violence became the defining moment from which amy re-considered her lifestyle: three times, he sliced me, three. and like that, ah, really showed me like, you know, either i’m getting older or i’m getting stupider, or i’m just willing to put myself in more risky situations. and i don’t even realize that i’m doing it because i’m all about the drugs. you know what i mean? so, if i keep going this way, if i keep going this route, what’s going to be the next situation that i get myself into? and i have to stand back… the next situation i may not be able to stand back and go, you know. so, yeah, i think that was a big one for me. in her early 20s, jennifer migrated to toronto from manitoba with two children and the father of her second child. her eventual entrance into homelessness was shaped by her drug use and sex work. when i moved downtown toronto, it was the first time ever [being homeless] since i was 15. like i’d lived on the street, but i’d always had… some roof over my head. but when i hit downtown toronto, it was just different. and so i was living in a hotel… but these people would take over my room and would make it impossible for me to do what i had to do [sex work] to make money to pay it. and i was like five days behind now… because of what i was doing [drug use], i didn’t sleep every night anyways. so i just decided i would, you know, when i’m tired, i’ll just lay my head down wherever. so i did do that… downtown there, so probably for about eight months i did the sleeping outside and wherever. jennifer did not tell a story of a specific fateful moment but rather several that spurred her desire to become housed. she spoke at length of how certain events prompted her growing self-awareness and of her feeling the need to seek out treatment for her addiction especially in order to reconnect with her children. she too had relinquished her children to outside care once on the street: “i always said to myself before i had my children that i would never put my children through what i had to go through growing up, being in that environment. because it led to where i went.” whereas amy’s story was of constructing an identity as a street person and addict over her identity of mother, jennifer’s story of giving up of her children was in order to preserve her mothering identity. this act was both contradictory and conforming to a core principle of the contemporary ideology of intensive mothering: mothers selflessly care for others more than themselves (hayes, 1996). drug use, crime, trauma, violence, and loss characterized elijah’s life on the street. from 1989 to 2010, elijah experienced chronic, absolute homelessness and repeated incarceration. sleeping outdoors led him to be vulnerable to violence: “i’ve been stabbed a few times. i’ve been stabbed in my lung, and my abdomen… near my heart with a bottle, cut in my face, stabbed in my eye, stabbed in my kidney.” elijah was also devastated by multiple deaths in his family: “the loss of my son… the loss of my mother. being homeless & becoming housed studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 75 like they both died when i was in jail. my son was murdered.” these experiences further alienated him from his family and his sense of self: i was starting to get distant… from all my family. so now it’s just me. so then there was no real emergency to change my life, like there was no real input from nobody to say ‘pull yourself up, do this or do that.’… and, ah, the sense of value was lowered, extremely… i wouldn’t look at myself and say ‘well, i’ve got to pull up or change the way i’m living or whatever.’ i just kept going, going, go to jail, come out of jail, go right back to the block. the sheer number of elijah’s traumatic experiences can be interpreted as a series of fateful moments. the beginnings of elijah’s transition into becoming housed, however, can be pinpointed down to his epiphany: “i started getting tired of going to jail.” amidst a two decade cycle of homelessness, drug use, crime, and violence, elijah became tired of elijah – of the self he was on the street. perceiving and creating social supports like other researchers of adult homelessness, we find that receipt and exchanges of instrumental and expressive supports, from both informal and formal sources, shaped participants’ exits from the street. however, our participants’ stories additionally reveal how becoming housed occurs through the intersection of individual, fateful moments with these social supports, especially the creation of fictive kin relations. some participants were pulled off the street by kin or fictive kin (informal support), and then further supported through community programs and services, and income assistance (formal support). this pull was effectively felt when it connected to experiences of fateful moments and subsequent individual motivation. isaac implied his motivation to become housed by his story of social isolation and feeling unloved on the street for the person he was: a man hustling, and being hustled, for money or drugs. like on the streets, not having nowhere to go, just realizing like nobody loves me out there, and like everybody just wants one thing from me you know. the money or drugs. and i went home to my mom’s [isabel]… yeah, like my relationship with my mom is like if, and you’re not on no drugs, you can come home, you want to try, you can come home you know. isabel’s (isaac’s mother) encouragement of isaac to leave the street also intersected with a series of fateful moments in his life: five close friends died in his last two years on the street and he found out a past girlfriend was pregnant. as he put it: jason webb, amber gazso studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 76 i’m going to die out here, the way how my life is going… and then on top of that amy getting pregnant and, you now, hearing ‘oh, it’s yours.’ so that was an event. and i seen amy still on the streets. i was kind of like at my mom’s. and i just said, ‘you know, that doesn’t look right.’ you know, you running around on the streets, homeless, pregnant. ‘if you want to come to my house or whatever, we can work from here. we can start from here.’ that’s what we did. we started making plans for the baby, yeah. isabel’s offering of both instrumental and expressive support encouraged isaac to pursue an identity as a recovering addict – not a drug user – and a father. isaac became housed by first living with and rebuilding family relations with his mother, partnering with amy, and then accessing formal social supports including treatment for addiction, social assistance, and subsidized housing. amy lived with isaac in subsidized housing at the time of our interviews with them. isabel had guardianship of their son since amy and isaac were seeking treatment for addiction; she lived part-time the home of amy and isaac to support their parenting while sober. we see amy’s experience of extreme violence as a fateful moment that prompted her to entertain leaving the street but also observe that she was pulled off by isaac and isabel’s offering of instrumental and expressive supports. she explained how this support facilitated her sobriety and her becoming housed: from isaac, i just need him for affection that’s about it… he’s always there for, you know. …but also she’s [isabel] a role model for me. and she’s, i think she’s very, very aware of that and she doesn’t mind to like, you know, bring over things and show me what i should be cooking. … and like, you know like ah, tips on financial, like budgeting and stuff like that… amy’s friend jennifer also offered crucial expressive support of her becoming housed: so it’s like, you know, when she [jennifer] started to steer her life in another direction, i didn’t even know she was gone. you know, and so we met back up out there [subsidized housing]. i wouldn’t say that we were tight or anything [on the street]… because we know each other and it’s like a new situation for both our couples… if there’s something you guys need, you got it and vice versa. ... [she is] somebody i look to in my sobriety, you know, somebody who i would go to for advice…like just somebody to stay connected in that network…of sobriety, of being clean and sober. besides solidifying family ties with jennifer, amy’s exit from homelessness was further buttressed by a strong relationship she developed with a caseworker at a homeless drop-in centre. the caseworker, according to amy, is “like a mom and like a police.” she counseled amy on boundary making in order to develop self-esteem and an identity as a sober and housed mother, partner, and friend: “she’s just there to make me know that anything being homeless & becoming housed studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 77 is possible.” significantly, the caseworker is the godmother of her and isaac’s child. other participants’ experiences of fateful moments pushed them off the street. they first reached out to formal, community programs and developed strong relationships with front-line caseworkers, and then expanded their informal, family sources of instrumental and expressive support. for example, jennifer’s story of leaving the street is one of personal motivation shaped by not one but a series of fateful moments over time. she sought out support to become housed through a shelter in her community, relying on knowledge she had gained from her earlier experiences of being homeless and becoming housed. she then supplemented her support from community with those she thought of as family: her partner andrew, as well as amy and isaac. whereas she felt she was simply “passing through” amy and isaac’s lives when they were all homeless, jennifer’s sobriety and maintenance of a home was supported by family-making with them. in her words, “living in a city you don’t have any family right? so, ah, you find, to tend to find family…they’re like part of the family… we actually know them from downtown [on the street]. that’s where i met them.” for still other participants who experienced criminalization, the interplay between fateful moments and social supports was more complex. andrew and elijah’s stories illustrate this complexity. andrew became housed through a fateful moment created by the criminal justice system: he could agree to treatment for addiction under judicial supervision (via drug treatment court) or go to jail. andrew’s commitment to becoming housed and sober was later buttressed by the instrumental and expressive support he received from his treatment program, his partner jennifer, and friends isaac and amy. as part of his recovery, andrew was also renewing close relationships with his non-custodial children. a rather quiet and reserved man throughout the interview, andrew was animated when he described his efforts at reembracing his identity as a father: “and now i’m starting to reunite with them… it’s going really good... i’m supposed to be seeing her [his daughter] sometime this weekend. i spent last weekend with her…” elijah’s desire to become housed was pushed by his epiphany about jail time, but similar to andrew’s experience, he was also pulled off the street by the criminal justice system, and specifically, his choice to participate in an out-patient treatment program for addiction in lieu of jail time. as he explained: i don’t want to go out and be dirty again, i don’t ever want to be homeless and camh [centre for mental health and addiction] helps. the program really helps because even though it’s not a volunteer thing, it’s a requirement because if you don’t do the program, you go to jail. so that’s a big thing and the main thing is i don’t want to be on the streets anymore. jason webb, amber gazso studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 78 as well, elijah’s motivation to become housed and stay sober was distinctly tied to a change in self-perception, facilitated by an unexpectedly supportive fictive kin relationship with the peer support worker in his treatment program. she’s like a good friend, she’s really close to me. and i go and i see her. even days that i don’t have to…go connect to the group, i still go… because if you want help, you can go, right. so i go because i want the help, i want to get strong right. and i spend time with her. and you know it’s inspiring because, you know, she’s like my big sister, say. right, cause we’re the same age group but she’s ahead of me in recovery so i look up to her… and she sort of looks at me and says ‘don’t fuck up’ you know. and she makes me feel guilty if i do, you know. finally, elijah observed that his transition from the street was further made possible through expressive support received from amy and isaac: “when they [amy and isaac] heard that i was doing okay, they were so proud of me. like, they invited me over to their house for dinner… they’re my friends.” his feelings of isolation in the past were replaced by supportive fictive kin relations, which we perceived to have had a transformative effect on his sense of self. discussion our analysis of participants’ stories reveals that becoming housed occurs through the interplay of fateful moments with family, community and state support. we see this main finding as offering an opportunity to critically engage with how this interplay unfolds in the neo-liberal social policy context. specifically, our participants’ stories of the processes of becoming housed offer a strong counter-narrative to some neo-liberal assumptions. on the face of it, the importance of participants’ experiences of fateful moments to their becoming housed appears to conform to the neo-liberal principles of individual responsibility, freedom of choice, and selfsufficiency. through our strategies of narrative analysis, we were able to pinpoint the fateful moment or series of moments that seemed to prompt participants’ contemplation about leaving the street (see also karabanow, 2008) or varying feelings (e.g., fear, isolation). when participants defined fateful moments as suggesting their life off the street was possible, there were distinct elements of personal choice and motivation involved in the subsequent laboring to become housed and often sober. our participants’ stories were layered with evaluations of their agency and responsibility in becoming housed (see also labov & waltezky, 1967). and yet, through participants’ stories, we found that becoming housed could not have been achieved through individual contemplation, motivation, and action alone. participants’ exits from the street were further facilitated by the ways in which fateful moments intersected with informal and formal sources of instrumental and expressive support. to briefly review, some being homeless & becoming housed studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 79 participants (e.g., isaac and amy) appeared to be pulled out of homelessness by informal (family) supports, and their choice to accept this support intimately tied to their experience of fateful moments. formal sources of support were initially important to other participants who pushed themselves to become housed in response to a fateful moment or series of them, and were soon supplemented by informal sources of support. for still others, a complex mix of informal and formal – family, community, and state – sources of instrumental and expressive support pulled and pushed participants into housing following opportune moments in their lives. our finding of the importance of fictive kin relations also counters what we term “conventional” familialism, an ideology underscoring the neo-liberal policy framework. conventional familialism rests on the notion that individuals should first and foremost turn to kin for instrumental and expressive support rather than the state; care is to be provided by family first, the state second. the kin imagined, however, are largely relations formed through heteronormative, nuclear family dynamics. recall that in our study, each of the 15 participants who became housed were members of families by choice, which were an integral component of networks to manage low income. amy, isaac, elijah, andrew and jennifer were members of family 19. thus, it is particularly noteworthy that many participants in our study sought out instrumental and expressive support from people they defined as family – not simply family determined by blood or marital relations – in the transition to becoming housed. not all participants who were homeless could just go home or re-unite with kin. traumatic relations with kin were sometimes the reason participants were on the street. overcoming homelessness was therefore facilitated by forming intimate partnerships or inventiveness in constructing fictive kin relations. for some participants who became housed and pursued sobriety, the importance of creating and sustaining fictive kin relations could even emerge after supportive relations were developed with community service providers. this creation of family dovetailed with receipt of other formal supports such as social assistance benefits and access to subsidized housing. however, access to shelter and receipt of income benefits did not mean an escape from income insecurity for our participants; total ontario works’ incomes did not raise participants above low income cut offs (tweddle, battle & torjman, 2013). community supports for low income families (e.g., food banks, dropin centres) were necessary to participants’ meeting the challenges of maintaining housing or sobriety. the meeting of shelter and food needs was further complemented by community treatment for addiction in many cases. especially when community caseworkers became perceived as family, the distinction between informal and formal sources of support could disappear and ideas about who counts as family significantly blur. additionally, all participants told stories of how their renewal or creation of kin and fictive kin relations distinctly influenced their construction of postjason webb, amber gazso studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 80 homeless identities (e.g., of parent, friend, and recovering addict). in their stories of becoming housed, participants were also unravelling and mending tears in the fabric of their self and making sense of their current identities (linde, 1993). for example, to be a mother for jennifer meant not mothering her children the way she herself was, and the pursuit of sobriety through family and community supports. elijah’s stories were layered with his deconstruction and reconstruction of who he was, how his character changed on the street, and how his relations of accountability to others while housed mattered to who he wanted to become. isaac constructed his self as constantly evolving in interactions with others: as moving from the identity of a street person to that of an addict in the past, to being a recovering addict and a father at the time of the interview. policy implications and recommendations as we observed earlier, the neo-liberal policy framework has translated into provincial and municipal responsibility for provisions of affordable housing. thus far, however, the common political response to homelessness in toronto continues to be providing and managing emergency shelters at the municipal, city level. emergency shelters are not a long-term, sustainable plan. they simply move people on and off the street in the short-term. while they provided much needed temporary housing, they do little to correct the limited availability of affordable, permanent housing in the city. as well, the onus of responsibility for finding affordable housing still rests with the individual. our research suggests a multi-pronged response to homelessness, involving multi-level governance and coordination of federal, provincial, and municipal policies and programs and community is, at minimum, the strategy we need to imagine. such a housing strategy, however, cannot be just about increased spending on existing social policies and programs and greater accessibility of affordable housing. indeed, broader, structural level changes in perspective and interpretation of homelessness are needed. an adequate response to homelessness would begin with a two-fold paradigm shift. first, a concentrated effort that defines housing as a legal (section 7) and equality (section 15) right under the canadian charter of rights and freedoms. equal access to affordable housing would facilitate social inclusion and social justice (pomeroy & evans, 2008; rawls, 1971; united nations, 2006). second, a realization that people require more than just shelter in order to exit homelessness; they require instrumental and expressive support from multiple sources in order to meet their other health and economic needs. in terms of the latter, we recommend a specific response to homelessness that has the potential to encourage exits from the street. given our findings, we argue that existing municipal and community programs for the homeless in toronto and elsewhere, could improve and expand client-centered service by creating being homeless & becoming housed studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 81 designated time and space for peer networking and peer mentoring. peer networking has the potential to recalibrate the power dynamics between service providers and adults who are homeless, in that homeless individuals identify their needs and develop their strategies to meet them through collective exchange. furthermore, peer mentoring respects homeless individuals’ knowledge base and the capacity to exercise a social right of citizenship – the right to be cared for and to care for others. this specific recommendation particularly challenges the neo-liberal ideology that promotes self-reliance and self-care among citizens to resolve market inequalities (wilson, 2007). instead, we advocate for an active partnership between the state and citizens that protects and honours citizens’ selfdetermination through social relations. in our view, we learn from our participants that responses to homelessness that overlook how becoming housed is a life course transition entangled with personal and structural challenges, and mediated by intersecting fateful moments and available social supports, are simply bound to fail in creating social inclusion and housing justice. conclusion the purpose of this paper was to explore the processes by which absolute homeless adults become housed in the midst of multiple barriers, including their social location within a neo-liberal social policy context. we used strategies of narrative analysis to explore these processes. our analytic strategies allowed us to attend to the events and interactions linked to becoming housed, and the changes of self that occur in the midst of them. in doing so, we closely followed amy, isaac, elijah, jennifer, and andrew’s stories to find that it is the interplay of fateful moments and social support that culminate in becoming housed. though ours is cross-sectional research focused on a small sample of stories of adults (and so not generalizable), our findings contribute to our understanding of the processes of becoming housed. our study also encourages us to seriously consider the difficulties in responding to homelessness in a neo-liberal social policy context. to quote larner (2000, p. 21): “in acknowledging the complexity of neo-liberalism we stand a better chance of identifying possibility to advance social justice aims in a new context.” acknowledgements we are grateful for the time and knowledge participants shared with us. we are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their comments, which improved the quality of this paper. finally, we thank katherine bischoping jason webb, amber gazso studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 65-85, 2017 82 and benjamin christensen for their supportive reads of an earlier draft of this paper. the study referred to in this paper was 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(2004). the lonely and homeless: causes and consequences. social indicators research 69(1), 37-50. rokach, a. (2005). private lives in public places: loneliness of the homeless. social indicators research, 72(1), 99-114. shier, m., jones, m., & graham, j. (2010). perspectives of employed people experiencing homelessness of self and being homeless: challenging socially constructed perceptions and stereotypes. journal of sociology & social welfare, 37(4), 13-37. snow, d., & anderson, l. (1993). down on their luck: a study of homeless street people. berkeley, ca: university of california press. stablein, t. (2011). helping friends and the homeless milieu: social capital and the utility of street peers. journal of contemporary ethnography, 40(3), 290-317. sterk-elifson, c., & elifson, k. w. 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(2003). disaffiliation, substance use, and exiting homelessness. substance use & misuse, 38(6), 577-599. correspondence address: diane enns, department of philosophy, mcmaster university, 1280 main street west, hamilton, ontario, canada l8s 4k1. tel.: (+1) 905 525 9140 ext. 27529, email: ennsd@mcmaster.ca issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 7, issue 2, 181-187, 2013 justice after violence: critical perspectives from the western balkans diane enns mcmaster university, canada introduction ... to many people who lived through the war in bih justice would be a world, a life, a history in which the war had not happened.—stef jansen two decades after violence broke out following the dissolution of yugoslavia, considerable obstacles continue to challenge those struggling for justice in the region. in bosnia-herzegovina1 especially, the success of nationalist ideologies and the ethnic cleansing that was their outcome—ending in an awkward internationally engineered system of governance—have left in their wake a host of vexing, interrelated problems. by now, their effects are well known to scholars and peace-building practitioners working in the region: an impoverished political framework that remains starkly divided along ethnic lines and is rife with corruption, a deep distrust of political leaders, persistent inequality, and little interest in reconciling with those who became wartime enemies. how to deal with past atrocity and its legacy in the western balkans is a matter of ongoing debate and frustration, often exacerbated by the gap between local and international perspectives and by competing paradigms in the peacebuilding, human rights and transitional justice fields. post-war justice mechanisms have focused on the prosecution and punishment of a select few war criminals, neglecting questions of broader responsibility and fostering resentment over the lack of justice at the community level or over what is perceived to be a biased application of the law. rising inequality and poverty, institutional breakdown, and the long-term effects of trauma, studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 182 diane enns add to the immense challenges of rebuilding societies after war. under these circumstances, peaceful relations across nationalist lines, a flourishing civil society, and responsible state leaders mutually engaged in creating a better future, seem utterly remote. we are presented here with an opportunity to reflect on the complicated relationships between justice, rule of law, reconciliation, inequality, politics, and peace. each of the contributors to this issue of studies in social justice takes on the challenge of this opportunity, engaging with different aspects of these relationships and their contradictions, primarily in the context of post-war bosnia-herzegovina, which bore the brunt of the violence, from 1992-95, but also in neighbouring croatia and serbia, and in the western balkans more generally. if there is a common thread that runs through these essays it is that a juridical form of justice is limited in what it can do in the aftermath of violent conflict. for many scholars and practitioners this is by no means a surprising conclusion, but it does run contrary to the reigning paradigm of what i will call the global post-conflict justice industry. since the 1990s, transitional justice has become the favoured approach for countries dealing with past atrocities, promoting criminal prosecutions, truth-seeking commissions, reparations, and reconciliation programs as effective methods of responding to war crimes and human rights abuses. but many have criticized its almost exclusive dependence on a criminal justice framework at the expense of other approaches to dealing with the past—approaches initiated by the affected communities themselves, by a politically active civil society supported by strong institutions and by capable leadership. my own view is that transitional justice, now taking precedence over other paradigms like reconciliation, conflict transformation, or even peacebuilding, puts too much faith in the law as the best method of dealing with the aftermath of political violence. the promise of law to rectify the injustices of the past is an appealing one, but the catharsis that victims experience in being heard and in hearing the truth about war crimes, and their relief or elation when perpetrators are sentenced, are limited, if valuable, experiences. despite this promise, truth commissions and criminal prosecutions on their own do not often foster social repair and might even hamper much needed social and political change. that we are now in danger of placing too great an emphasis on judicial mechanisms to deal with the effects of violent conflict is borne out in the essays that follow. but the authors in this issue also caution against placing too much faith in the promise offered by discourses on peace and reconciliation. the moral imperative to reach across ethnicized and nationalized enemy lines and forgive past grievances in the interests of peace is often externally imposed, based on an international mischaracterization of the conflict as an eruption of historic ethnic hostilities and a reductive understanding of the factors that caused the violence. a simplistic version of reconciliation might conflict with the need for justice—not only legal, punitive justice, but social justice—including the immediate material needs of a population whose daily lives have been altered beyond recognition. the essays in this issue thus point to an important lacuna in the fields studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 justice after violence 183 of transitional justice and peacebuilding. this lacuna is politics; specifically, a robust civil society politics, which, by all accounts, is sorely lacking in the region. the demands for justice as rule of law on the one hand, and for reconciliation and peace on the other, tend to neglect politics, if by politics we mean collective congregating, speaking and acting with the interests of a pluralist public in mind. justice must be viewed and practiced within a broader social and political context, alongside other elements necessary for rebuilding societies and states devastated by war. without an active civil society and the will to bring about social, political, and economic change, justice may end up meaning very little. our point of departure is timothy donais’s accurate assessment of the gap that exists between “the lofty ambitions of the international community in terms of bringing justice and rule of law to afflicted countries, and the messy, compromising realities of the effort to translate vision into practice” (p. 189). in post-dayton bosnia, despite the emphasis on rule of law, and what donais believes are “substantial achievements” on this front, the peace process remains as fragile as ever (p. 191). structural injustice continues, perpetuated by an underlying structure of political power that remains largely unaltered since the end of the war. bosnia’s political system remains dysfunctional, with leaders unable to govern competently a population rigidly divided along ethnic lines with little evidence of improved relations in several decades. nationalist rhetoric, donais notes, is still “the key currency of political life” (p. 202). in such a dismal political context—steeped in acrimony, fear, and mutual distrust—the rule of law cannot simply function as a neutral arbiter. this is evident in donais’s analyses of two prominent manifestations of rule of law practice in bosnia: police reform and efforts to curb widespread political corruption. in recognition of its limits, donais suggests that rule of law should be more broadly connected to peace and justice. to this end he calls for significant changes to the current political dynamics, the development of consensual arrangements acceptable to all key political actors, and a reengaged civil society. the widespread corruption to which donais alludes is the subject of our next contribution by vesna bojicic-dzelilovic, who analyzes the relationship between informality and inequality and its effects on the social reintegration process in bosnia-herzegovina. the rise of an informal economy in conjunction with corruption, which has given rise to a discriminatory system of rule which rests on informal relations was due to the disintegration of the bosnian state through the fusion of violence, crime, and extremist politics. informality, as bojicic-dzelilovic defines it, has an ambiguous effect in terms of social justice outcomes; it is linked to poverty, corruption, inequality, and social injustice, but is tolerated at the everyday level. if informality was triggered by war, it has been sustained by post-war elites. but the fact that the same group of actors controls both the polity and the economy is often overlooked in current analyses of the bosnian state. bojicic-dzelilovic complains of the myopia concerning inequality in certain academic and policy debates that focus overwhelmingly on the politics of studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 184 diane enns bosnia’s statehood, for politics is inseparable from its economic foundations. to complicate this relationship further, she calls attention to the destructive impact of informality on interpersonal and institutional trust, since trust does not develop when some individuals benefit from the inequities created by informal arrangements. unequal access to assets and resources, bojicicdzelilovic explains, especially the accumulation of wealth and power on the part of ethnic elites who were prominent war-time players, exacerbates a sense of discrimination and social injustice and ultimately undermines social reintegration. bojicic-dzelilovic concludes that any analysis of noncompliance with state sanctioned rules, in states transitioning from communism and/or war has to factor in the transformation of the state itself. in bosnia-herzegovina, the transition to a stable “positive peace” requires a reconstruction of the relationship between state and society (p. 218). this is proving to be an extraordinary challenge, as donais also pointed out, since twenty years after the end of the 1992-95 war there is still no “collective vision of a shared national project” that would repair social relations. thus, while the political leadership has a significant role to play, given bosnians’ lack of trust in their leaders, and even disgust for politics, the public pressure required to disturb the status quo and invigorate democratic process is not forthcoming. stef jansen addresses the relationship between justice and politics from a different angle, throwing into question the demand for reconciliation as a requirement of justice. concerned with the explicitly political dimension of justice, manifest in a liberal reconciliation discourse in bosnia-herzegovina that serves to reinforce a nationalist version of history, jansen considers whose reconciliation is being desired in this region, by whom, for whom and for what? pre-war encounters with neighbours, strangers, or family members across national lines—distinctions that only acquired their current significance through war—were simply “practical dimensions of everyday life” (p. 233). jansen asks: why would anyone now perceive these “international” or “ethnonational” encounters as virtuous acts of reconciliation? “to accept such a reductionist definition of ‘sides’ in an identitarian matrix,” he suggests, “would represent the ultimate crown on the nationalist hegemonizing projects of the 1990s” (p. 232). the desire for justice evokes more than judiciary procedures, jansen insists. in a post-war context, however, the meaning of justice is difficult to pin down. beyond retributive justice, punishment and reparations, justice may evoke much broader utopian notions of balance. but the object of hope for most people, he observes, is “a normal life.” people do not engage with one another based on an abstract notion of common humanity—the kind of equal and inalienable humanity that reconciliation projects assume we all share—but as persons who establish some degree of mutual recognition based on specific social positionings and identifications. this mutual recognition beyond reductive nationalist identities is the most promising, yet most challenging, requirement for an alternative to bosnian “politika;” challenging given that politics is blamed for the cause of the war and the studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 justice after violence 185 suffering that was its outcome. in jansen’s view however, a situation that is widely seen as caused by politics cannot be overcome or even improved without recourse to politics. active politicization would bring about a more just future. the next two essays point to the power of ethnicized narratives in shoring up this resistance to such politicization, and to the limits of the law in easing this resistance. dejan guzina and branka marijan elaborate a critique of the use of international criminal justice in bosnia-herzegovina, claiming that transitional justice approaches and the international criminal tribunal for the former yugoslavia (icty) have not overcome divisions but constructed parallel worlds in the region. in fact, they remark that the icty and domestic trials “are increasingly seen as political theater of the absurd rather than the mechanism that would allow the truth about the war to be unearthed.” while transitional justice approaches are touted as capable of inspiring respect for rule of law, and of creating a valuable historical record, guzina and marijan outline the political abuses of these methods: bosnian elites use the past to play to their own ethnic groups in order to pursue nation building projects. there is a reluctance to acknowledge one’s own guilt and responsibility, as evidenced by the naser oric trial. elites are not alone, however, in determining the outcomes of transitional justice processes. local actors have yet to come to terms with a historical narrative that would transcend ethnic divisions, a process stymied by the fact that bosnian local communities continue to be physically and psychologically segregated from one other. but bosnians are not simply puppets passively responding to elites. guzina and marijan examine popular perceptions of war and its aftermath in sarajevo and banja luka in particular, to show the disjunct between internationally sponsored goals of reconciliation and local acts of contestation and citizenship practices. before the war, these cities were the multiethnic and multicultural centers of bosnia; after 1995 they emerged as symbols of division and mutually contradictory nation building projects. the narratives that help sustain these changes cannot be simply dismissed, guzina and marijan argue—the stories that people tell themselves enable them to cope. the authors conclude that analyses of the conflict in bosnia must take into account what gives these narratives their power, and what are the objective political, social and economic factors that continue to provide a fertile ground for their widespread support. jelena subotic is also concerned with public narratives of the past in bosnia, croatia, and serbia that remain mutually exclusive, contradictory, and irreconcilable. practices of remembrance or memorialization, whether in the form of public commemoration efforts or history classes in schools, have served to entrench incompatible versions of the past and contribute to further mistrust and the prevention of truth and justice. memory projects tend to reflect each state’s interest in deflecting responsibility for atrocities committed by its own leaders and citizens, justified as defensive action. history education, which subotic argues is naturally “fraught with analytical, ethical, and interpretive minefields” (p. 268), is particularly problematic in studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 186 diane enns bosnia-herzegovina, where education policy is decentralized and controlled by local authorities. history has come to represent the ethnic politics of the majority population; in bosnia itself, three different sets of history textbooks circulate, each providing an ethnicized version of bosnia’s past. subotic argues that to rectify this ethnicized memory work we need a reparative sense of justice that leads to practices that show states are willing to acknowledge responsibility for past violence. to this end all three states should accept an official regional commission of inquiry into past atrocities and should initiate comprehensive educational reform and memorialization efforts such as establishing memorial sites. these are necessary for a comprehensive post-conflict justice framework. crucial in this process are memory projects that forego dwelling on their own victimization in isolation and include a broader regional focus. as our other authors have argued, subotic stresses that in order to take these critically necessary steps in pursuit of regional justice, profound political change must take place first. finally, in a review essay of angelina jolie’s much publicized film in the land of blood and honey (2011), in tandem with juanita wilson’s and hanschristian schmid’s related feature films, as if i am not there (2010) and storm (2009), brian phillips considers whether film can contribute to justice processes in the aftermath of violent conflict. like the other contributors to this issue, phillips makes the case that courts of law leave an unfortunate lacuna in the requirements of justice. rape in particular falls into this lacuna, as courts struggle unsuccessfully to accommodate the experience of victims of rape in war. filmmakers have risen to the challenge of filling the need for complementary processes alongside juridical procedures in the long struggle for justice and recovery after war. while jolie’s film appears to offer victims of sexual violence a sense of justice by giving them a voice, phillips argues emphatically that this film does not fulfill such a promise, and in places actually exploits victims’ suffering. thus for phillips, the film raises serious moral concerns about the recreation of scenes of atrocity in cinema in general, and the retelling of the bosnian tragedy in particular. he questions the therapeutic function of “giving voice” that is commonly highlighted in human rights and peacebuilding discussions more broadly; a therapeutic model tries to reconcile people with their past, not materially transform their lives. it is social justice that populations need, phillips asserts, not therapeutic measures. phillips concludes that rather than imagining that a film can on its own offer some alternative form of justice for victims by recreating their experience, “the real potential of film as a contribution to the transitional justice toolkit perhaps lies in its capacity to shred the comforting, formulaic prescriptions about dialogue, dealing with the past, and reconciliation that are too often voiced in peacebuilding enterprises—those wishful strategies for social reconstruction that show little understanding of just how long and hard the road to post conflict justice can be…” these are appropriate sentiments on which to end this issue, for it is clear studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 justice after violence 187 from all of these contributions that there are no easy or comforting formulas to apply in the struggle for justice in the wake of destructive violence—only partial, imperfect, and contingent answers that must arise out of collective political engagement. there is no justice without politics. notes 1 scholars writing on bosnia-herzegovina variously refer to the country as bosnia, bosnia-herzegovina or its abbreviation, bih. the authors in this issue each have their own preferences. correspondence address: john foran, social sciences & media studies bldg., university of california, santa barbara, ca, 93106-9430, usa. phone: 805-893-8199, email: foran@soc.ucsb.edu issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 8, issue 1, 5-25, 2014 beyond insurgency to radical social change: the new situation1 john foran university of california, santa barbara, usa abstract the arab spring and u.s. occupy movements surprised the world in 2011, showing that movements for radical social change remain viable responses to the intertwined crises of globalization: economic precarity, political disenchantment, rampant inequality, and the long-term fuse of potentially catastrophic climate change. these movements possess political cultural affinities of emotion, historical memory, and oppositional and creative discourses with each other and with a chain of movements that have gathered renewed momentum and relevance as neoliberal globalization runs up against the consequences of its own rapaciousness. three paths to radical social change have emerged that differ from the hierarchical revolutionary movements of the twentieth century: 1) the electoral path to power pursued by the latin american pink tide nations, 2) the route of re-making power at the local level or seeking change at the global level, both by-passing the traditional goal of taking state power, and 3) the occupation of public space to force out tyrants, as in tunisia and egypt. this paper assesses the strengths and limitations of each path, arguing that social movements and progressive parties together may possess the best chances for making radical social change in this new situation. these threads of resistance may also point toward a future of radical social change as we imagine their enduring results, selfevident and more subtle. “if egypt could get rid of mubarak, wisconsin can get rid of walker!” john nichols, in uprising, tells of a demonstrator in madison who was holding up this sign on a cold february night in 2011, the words written in arabic. when he asked the man how he had come to know arabic, he said, “i don’t. i had it translated on google last night.” nichols comments that when a middleaged unionized american is inspired enough by the arab spring to use the studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 6 john foran internet to translate a slogan for his struggle in wisconsin into arabic, then something is going on (nichols, 2012). and something is indeed going on. egyptian activist maor eletrebi sent a letter to wisconsin, in which he wrote: “the beauty of tahrir square you can have everywhere, on any corner, in any city, or in your heart…. breathe deep, wisconsin, because justice is in the air” (quoted in nichols, 2012, p. 1). later in the year, when adbusters called for an occupation of wall street, they asked “are you ready for a tahrir moment?” (adbusters, 2011). radical social change, in the sense of a deep transformation of a society, community, region, or the whole world in the direction of greater economic equality and political participation, and accomplished by the actions of a strong and diverse popular movement, is clearly in the air we now breathe. the signs are everywhere: the events of 2011 were of a world-historical order. the arab spring brought the overthrow of dictators by non-violent mass popular resistance in tunisia and egypt, by force of arms in libya, with syria in agony (and by the time you read this?), and with the courageous stands of ordinary people in the streets of bahrain, yemen, and elsewhere. the occupy wall street movement seemed to come out of nowhere six months later, and morphed with astonishing speed into like-minded occupations in hundreds of u.s. cities within six weeks. just before and after 2011, we also witnessed the indignados’ revolt in spain, student protests in santiago, london, and quebec, street demonstrations and battles in england and greece, movements around corruption in india and housing in israel, striking miners in south africa, pussy riot in russia, and workers wild-catting and communities fighting pollution across china, and finally, the american autumn of occupy wall street. in mid-2013, egyptians took to the streets again to oust their one-year old morsi government, citizens protested throughout brazil at the high cost of buses and the olympics, and the occupation of a park in central istanbul by a few green activists brought thousands out to protest the authoritarianism of their government. though state power was taken only in tunisia and egypt, the breathtaking scale and speed of events marked 2011 as one of the most militant years in the history of radical social change. something is indeed going on. explosions of change always raise the question: where do they come from? it looks like these dramatic events just happen. but there is always a history, and a context. their global sweep affirms the need for what hamid dabashi (2012) has termed a “liberation geography,” and leads to another question: are these events connected? what—if any—threads of affinity do they share, and what explains their simultaneity and common sensibilities? we are witnessing the rise and articulation of new political cultures of opposition and creation on a global scale, not altogether unprecedented but very different from those that inspired the great social revolutions of the twentieth century. and these changes may also point towards future prospects as we try to imagine their enduring results and impacts—self-evident and more subtle. it seems likely that these will be many, widespread, and long-lasting, no matter what happens in the next election or at the next public confrontation. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 beyond insurgency to radical social change 7 political cultures of opposition as the threads of creation in taking power: on the origins of revolutions in the third world (foran, 2005), i proposed a hypothesis about the origins of revolutions that brought together the economic and social dislocations of dependent capitalist development, the political vulnerabilities of dictatorships (and, paradoxically, of truly open polities where the left could come to power through elections), and a conjunctural economic downturn accompanied by a favorable moment in the world system where leading outside powers did not (or could not) intervene. looking at the world since 2009, we see versions of each of these: the glaring contradictions of neo-liberal capitalist globalization, the persistence of personalist regimes (especially in the arab world) and wide disenchantment at the hollowing out of representative democracies in europe, north america, and latin america, the deepest and most dangerous global economic downturn since the 1930s, and finally, the attenuation of u.s. power due to the military occupations of iraq and afghanistan, growing public debt, the rise of asian economic centers, and the financial bubbles that brought on the great recession. in the twentieth century, when all of these more or less structural conditions presented themselves, the final, requisite piece for fundamental social change was one of agency and culture: the ability of revolutionaries and ordinary citizens to fashion powerful political cultures of opposition capable of bringing diverse social groups to the side of a movement for deep social change, as happened in the mexican, russian, chinese, cuban, nicaraguan, and iranian revolutions. it should be noted that there are also political cultures of legitimation that states draw on, and that these can fray for many reasons, so that in a gramscian sense there are always multiple political cultures on both sides of a particular state/civil society divide, whose proponents constantly maneuver for position, and ultimately for hegemony. the origins of radical political cultures lie in the experiences of people, in the subjective but shared emotions and dynamics that animate their daily lives and colour their politics. at the same time, revolutionary discourses, in the form of consciously articulated ideologies—such as socialism, nationalism, democracy, or radical interpretations of religion in the twentieth century— travel from revolutionary groups into local settings, as well as circulate between revolutions. meanwhile, historical memory, cultural experience, and “idioms” or folk understandings also circulate in communities, putting people’s concerns in everyday terms such as fairness, justice, dignity, or freedom, or as concretely as “bread, land, and liberty,” “death to the shah,” or “patria libre o muerte!” in any society, there may exist more than one political culture of opposition, for people don’t necessarily share the same experiences, speak the same idioms, or respond to the same formal ideologies. the most effective revolutionary movements of history have found ways of tapping into whatever political cultures emerge in their society, often through the creation of a common goal—“the regime must step down” or “the foreign studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 8 john foran powers must leave.” when this happens, a radical or revolutionary movement can gain enough committed followers to take power when other favourable conditions are present. the forging of a strong and vibrant political culture of opposition is thus an accomplishment, carried through by the actions of many people, and, like revolutions themselves, is relatively rare in human history. it now appears clear that the political cultures of opposition that enabled the great social and anti-colonial revolutions of the twentieth century are being transformed in new directions. what we might term the “old” or classical cultures of revolution typically featured armed insurgents who directly engaged the state and its military, though they were aided in all cases by nonarmed groups and organizations who provided crucial support activities of many kinds [see figure 1]. figure 1 the making of “old” political cultures of opposition in the mexican, russian, chinese, cuban, iranian, and nicaraguan revolutions in russia and china, and more loosely in nicaragua and cuba, socialist political parties existed alongside the revolutionary armies and gave direction to them. in iran, the network of mosques and clerics provided the organizational base for the mass demonstrations and general strike that undermined the shah’s government without taking up arms. a common thread across cases is the hierarchical structure of the movements, with well-identified individuals at their head—emiliano zapata and pancho villa, lenin and trotsky, mao tse-tung, fidel castro and che guevara, khomeini, and the somewhat less famous sandinista leadership of the ortega brothers. the hierarchical nature of guerrilla militaries, socialist parties, and religious leadership meant that influential figures—always male, and often privileged in background—would lead in the name of the people. all of this was equally studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 beyond insurgency to radical social change 9 true of the great anti-colonial revolutions in vietnam, algeria, angola, mozambique, and rhodesia/zimbabwe. these political cultures produced broad and powerful revolutionary movements, defeating highly militarized states with powerful external backers (usually, in fact, the united states). once in power, however, they too often fragmented, as different groups had their own aims, and the common bonds that had united them all proved fragile and difficult to sustain. i am not suggesting that the limitations of these revolutions can be laid entirely at the feet of the political cultures that made them—far from it. of substantial weight in the outcomes of each were other factors that acted independently of political culture and human agency: external intervention and disadvantageous positions in the world-economy chief among them. but the possibility remains that despite the strength and solidity of these revolutionary political cultures, so indispensable in overthrowing the states they opposed, they still possessed features—especially the combination of the leaderships’ emphases on formal ideology over popular idiom, and the hierarchical nature of the organizations that came to power—which must be counted among the achilles heels that led to the disappointing and limited outcomes that followed. in the twenty-first century, the nature of movements for what we might now call radical social change rather than revolution has itself changed, as activists, reformers, dreamers, and revolutionaries globally have pursued nonviolent paths to a better world, intending to live and act as they would like that world to be. that is, the ends of justice are no longer held to justify the means of violence, but the means of non-violent resistance reflect and guarantee the ends that they seek. in this, they embody and illustrate the virtues of “prefigurative politics” (polletta, 2002) and in particular, horizontalist ways to realize them (sitrin, 2006, 2012; zibechi, 2010). i have recently begun to call these positive, alternative visions “political cultures of creation” (foran, 2013). movements become even stronger when to a widely felt culture of opposition and resistance they add a positive vision of a better world, an alternative to strive for to improve or replace what exists. in this sense, some of the differences between old and new movements for radical social change seem to include the attempt to get away from the hierarchical organizations that made the great revolutions and move in the direction of more horizontal, deeply democratic relations among participants; the expressive power of using popular idioms more than ideological discourses; the growing use of nonviolence; and the salience of political cultures of creation alongside political cultures of opposition and resistance. [see figure 2]. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 10 john foran figure 2 the emergence of “new” political cultures of opposition and creation in the twenty-first century (dotted lines indicate relationships that are more loosely connected): the zapatistas and the global justice movement are bolded so as to stand out from the italicized pink tide of elected left governments in latin america, with commonalities in plain text to the century-old problem posed by lenin—who is not a particular favorite of the movements under discussion—“what is to be done?”2 (at least he got the question right!), social movements in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first dozen years of the present one have been offering some strikingly new and interesting answers. two distinct and rather different paths to change have been pitted against each other by scholars and practiced by participants on the ground: the electoral path to state power being pursued by the elected left-of-center governments of the latin american “pink tide,” most radically in venezuela, ecuador, and bolivia, and the opposite route of turning one’s back on state power, and instead carving out autonomous spaces both below it at the level of the community as the zapatistas and occupy are doing, or above it, as the global justice movement and global climate activists have sought to do. the arab spring opens up a third new path, starting with massive non-violent direct action and following up with a protracted struggle for new democratic institutions. all of these paths can be distinguished from what came before, not least in the new political cultures that have attracted people to them. global affinities precursors. it may be that the first harbinger of the new movements was the events of may 1968 in france. as in 2011, they seemed to come out of nowhere, and grew with an unprecedented intensity and speed from small studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 beyond insurgency to radical social change 11 actions into a wave of revolt, involving occupations of schools and factories, demonstrations and direct action in the cobble-stoned streets of paris, democratic, open debate with participation for everyone with something to say, and a massive general strike. the movement’s tactics grew out of a vision of a different mode of everyday life, of a new community that would be personally liberating and empowering. it presaged a world of direct, participatory democracy, on as large a scale as possible. in its best moments, “many people, not only students, but old and young, men and women, intellectuals and workers, the specialized and the unskilled, spoke simply about what shape the world should take, what should they do and be, what life should be like” (poster, 1975, p. 385). it set a high standard for political cultures of creation, and marked a new departure in the culture of movements for radical social change. yet, with no agreed-upon common demands or goals, and no organized political outlet, the forging of a political culture strong enough and effective enough to hold together the disparate parts of the movement eluded them; by mid-june the movement seemingly vanished into thin air as suddenly and surprisingly as it had appeared. or did it? though the protests around the world in 1968 ended in defeats almost everywhere—perhaps most consequentially in france, czechoslovakia, and mexico—they created significant political and cultural legacies of protest which have come down to us in the form of new social movements today. as cohn-bendit told paris-match: “a different world is going to be made over” (quoted in labro et al., 1969, p. 53). this is a remarkable prefiguring of the global justice movement’s famous slogan a generation later: “another world is possible.” and as immanuel wallerstein observed: “the spirit of 1968 flows through [the] arab spring and [the] occupy movement” (wallerstein, 2011). the may and other global protests of 1968 marked the beginnings of something new, and their most striking feature may well have been their vibrant political cultures of creation. another twentieth-century precursor followed close on the students’ heels when chilean socialist salvador allende led the popular unity coalition to power with a slim plurality in the 1970 elections and began to construct what his supporters called “the chilean path to socialism” through legal, constitutional means and with massive popular enthusiasm and support, departing sharply from the armed struggle path to power of previous revolutions, and achieving a share of state power that had eluded the explosion in france. the political cultures of chile’s left and centrist social forces—perhaps two-thirds of the population—initially presented a lively, varied panorama of social justice-oriented, class-conscious, and articulate reformers and democratic revolutionaries. but in the vise tightened by u.s. economic and political destabilization, chilean society polarized politically. the democratic center and the democratic left lost confidence in each other, and in their own capacity for unity (see the accounts in cooper, 2001; spence, 1978; valenzuela, 1979). when the military seized power on september 11, 1973, the dictatorship that followed and the world’s first neostudies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 12 john foran liberal economic model condemned chileans to a reign of terror and loss. chileans would restore their fragile democracy only fifteen years later, after numerous demonstrations, through a decisive repudiation of pinochet at the polls. the allende years represent an incalculably precious missed opportunity for the transformation of society through democratic means. many observers at the time argued that revolutionary democratic paths to a better world were doomed by internal contradictions and powerful counter-revolutionary intervention, and the experiences of the grenadian and sandinista revolutions in the 1980s reinforced this view. yet a quarter century later, the experiences of the pink tide governments in latin america suggest that the chilean path to socialism contains more positive lessons, with venezuela, bolivia, and ecuador pursuing a “twenty-first century socialism” that is democratic and original, reminding us that flexibility and imagination should temper historical analysis and political action itself. a democratic socialism for the twenty-first century in latin america. in the late 1990s a democratic route to radical social change unfolded throughout much of latin america, most vigorously in the venezuela of hugo chávez, first elected in 1998, and in bolivia under its indigenous president evo morales, first elected in 2006. chávez (who died in 2013) and his supporters have made gains in education, literacy, nutrition, and health care, with significant and growing popular participation among the poorer two-thirds of venezuelan society, including residents of barrios and shanty towns, indigenous and afro-venezuelan people, women, and workers. in both bolivia and venezuela there has been far less emphasis on an ideological appeal to socialism by the leaderships of these elected left-ofcenter governments, and in its place we find an upsurge in new, popular conceptions of social justice. in fact, chávez coined the term “21st-century socialism” precisely to emphasize its democratic roots in the allende and post-1979 sandinista experiences. when asked what he understood by “socialism,” evo morales, the president of bolivia, replied: “to live in community and equality…. it is an economic model based on solidarity, reciprocity, community, and consensus. because, for us, democracy is a consensus…. and beyond that, [it means] respecting mother earth, the pacha mama” (quoted in dieterich, 2006). felipe quispe, an aymara indigenous leader who is critical of all politicians, including morales, adds to this a strand of nationalism: “the foreigners can stay as long as we get 90 percent of the power. if not, there will be war…. we will rewrite history with our own blood. there will be a new sun, and even the rocks and the trees will be happy” (quoted in parenti, 2005, p. 18). carlos laime, a 33 year-old tailor, makes this connection: “i feel more bolivian since an aymara is in power. now we can talk about majorities, and in [public] offices the people who are served are not only those wearing ties” (quoted in manrique 2006, p. 8). for morales, “if globalization does not admit difference and pluralism, it’s a selective globalization, therefore it will be almost impossible to resolve environmental issues and save humanity…. so studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 beyond insurgency to radical social change 13 we’re talking about a profound change in the economic models and systems” (morales, 2007). such a change will clearly draw on and require the embrace of new political cultures of creation by a wide coalition of people, differently located but imbued with some common desires and dreams of deeply radical social change. despite their differences, recent center-left governments of brazil, uruguay, bolivia, ecuador, el salvador, paraguay, venezuela, chile, and argentina have all tapped into political cultures that differ markedly from the older revolutionary tradition, highlighting instead a democratic route to power and the effort to build a more participatory political system. the current of socialism is being reworked in new, more democratic directions in the post-cold war era, and the depth of the democratic ideal is arguably proving a more solid barrier to external and internal intervention than in the more polarized era of the allende experiment with this form of revolution in the 1970s. in looking at all of these cases together, we find a democratic route to power and the effort to build a more participatory political system on the parts of significant sectors of their populations. “we want a world in which many worlds fit:” re-making the nature of power through direct action. just before the emergence of the pink tide, the zapatistas opened the twenty-first century on january 1, 1994, the same evening that the mexican and u.s. governments were celebrating their north american free trade agreement deal. behind masks of anonymity they rose to visibility and issued an invitation to join them that resonated powerfully with the first stirrings of the global justice movement, which heard the call that “another world is possible.” zapatismo is not an ideology, but rather a new way of making radical change, embracing the vision of changing the world without taking power, as the title of john holloway’s 2002 book so aptly puts it, and instead attempting to remake the nature of power altogether. here we are clearly in the presence of a new political culture of creation, expressed in stories, myths, dreams, and poetic narrative. the encounter of the western revolutionary tradition with indigenous values and practice in chiapas has shaped the nature of radical social change to this day (conant, 2010; gunderson, 2013). turning their backs on established ideologies, and drawing instead on their own political idioms, indigenous communities provided core zapatista principles such as mandar obedeciendo (to rule by obeying), arguing that leaders should serve the community and struggle for its issues rather than the community existing to further the vision of the leadership. another innovative zapatista practice is suggested by the phrase dar su palabra (literally, to have one’s say). the goal is to make decisions that benefit from the diverse insights of all present, thereby seeking solutions which have eluded them in the past. such discussions can take much longer than formal debates followed by votes, but once decided they endow the group’s choices with a broader legitimacy. for javier eloriaga, “we have to do politics in a new way. you can’t accept only what is possible because it will bring you into the hands of the system. this is a very difficult struggle. it is very, very difficult” (quoted studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 14 john foran in dellacioppa, 2009, p. 73). or marcos: “zapatismo is not an ideology. it is not a bought and paid for doctrine. it is an intuition” (big noise, 1998). part of this involves “walking at a slower pace,” acknowledging that change is a long and slow process, not secured with the mere seizure of power or electoral victories. indeed, the zapatistas have said that they do not aspire to take state power in the traditional sense, but rather, to create “a free and democratic space for political struggle” (quoted in hayden, 2002, p. 226). they have inspired activism far beyond their own communities, drawing the emergent global justice movement to their 1996 “intergalactic encounter” against neoliberalism, and captured the imagination of north american and european youth (and a few sociology professors!), among many others. the latter half of the 1990s witnessed the rise of a global justice movement, a “movement of movements” that achieved public visibility when a broad gathering of students, union activists, and environmentalists joined in civil disobedience and direct action to shut down the meetings of the world trade organization in seattle in november 1999. if we focus especially on the political cultures of creation that animate the global justice movement, we can see some further novel features, many of them paralleling the zapatista rebellion. on the subjective side of experience and emotion, it is useful to point out that love—of life, of people, of justice—often nurtures the vital force that impels ordinary people into extraordinary acts. expressing hope and optimism, it provides a constructive counterpoint to those other powerful animating emotions, hatred and anger. to this, we may add the subjective experience of hope (is hope an emotion?), which offers people a positive vision of the future to counter feelings of hopelessness and despair. in the words of david solnit, one of the organizers of the spectacular seattle action of 1999: “hope is key. if our organizations, analysis, visions and strategies are lanterns, then hope is the fuel that makes them burn bright and attracts people to them” (d. solnit, 2004a). hope and love sustain the emotional foundations of the new political cultures of creation, as attested in the 2013 film occupy love (ripper). as with the zapatistas, we can also discern here a sharp turn toward popular ways of speaking over ideological texts. it should be observed that this rejection of ideology does not mean that these movements are “nonideological” so much as they are “anti-ideological,” steeped in ideas and ideals even as they reject all “isms.” this vision entails radically different modes of struggle for an age of globalization where the location of the enemy is the increasingly interlocked institutions of global capitalism in the form of the wto, imf, world bank, transnational corporations, and rich and majority world states. global justice activists have mixed old and new modes of struggle: sit-ins, boycotts, strikes, and occupations of land or factories with civil disobedience, occupations of schools and public spaces, world gatherings such as the world social forum (a prime site for the elaboration of political cultures of creation), web-based campaigns and networks of activists, the building of community-based institutions such as co-ops, people’s kitchens, clinics, and a hundred other forms of direct action aimed at undermining and studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 beyond insurgency to radical social change 15 transforming the system rather than reproducing it. in a no doubt conscious echo of the zapatistas, direct action organizer david solnit writes: “the world cannot be changed for the better by taking power…. capturing positions of state power, either through elections or insurrection, misses the point that the aim of uprooting the system is to fundamentally change the relations of power at the root of our problems” (d. solnit, 2004a, 2004b, xix). occupy would emerge from and take a page from this movement. before this happened, however, the u.s. response to the september 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on new york’s twin towers effected a large setback for projects of deep social change, militarizing the clintonian course of globalization from above by a transnational elite and opening up a new and uncertain economic and geopolitical period. it also broke the growing momentum of the global justice movement with its “war on terrorism” discourse. it created horrifying facts on the ground in a shattered iraq and afghanistan that defy restitution, and conjured paralyzing new fears and amorphous threats in the united states where none existed before (shadid, 2006). the cause of global justice was put on the defensive, forced to organize an anti-war movement, which in fact coordinated the largest antiwar demonstration ever on february 15, 2003, a month before the invasion.3 by 2006, the bush administration had finally overplayed its hand, at home and abroad, stumbling in its prosecution of the war in iraq, its response to hurricane katrina, the wire-tapping of its own citizens, its budget priorities and massive indebtedness, and its studied inaction on global warming and climate change, thereby giving renewed momentum to a movement that would eventually sow the seeds of occupy. the new political cultures and 2011 we arrive at last to the movements that shook the world in 2011. in january and march, long-entrenched dictators fell to popular uprisings in tunis and cairo, and newly elected political leaderships offered greater hope for positive social change than had existed in the region in decades. this came about through massive occupations of public space by broadly-based social forces that resolutely resisted state repression with non-violent, ongoing, and creative direct action (“civil disobedience” seems too mild a term for this). in both cases, and unlike elsewhere in the greater arab spring (libya, syria, and bahrain), the regimes they faced and the armies that supported them gave way to popular demands and stepped aside. the u.s. scrambled from stubborn disbelief and compromise maneuvers to withdrawing its support for the “democratic dictatorships” of zayn al-abidine ben ali and husni mubarak, each of whom then ceded power. after these clear targets were sent into exile or prison, the movements faced the structural obstacles of old regimes of the economic and (especially in egypt) military elites and quickly (in tunisia) or slowly (in egypt) pushed them into elections that cemented these non-violent political revolutions (anderson, 2011, 2012). studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 16 john foran it is possible to make sense of these revolutions in terms of the patterns of the great revolutions of world history, and the model of social revolutions put forward in taking power. namely, a political economy of dependent, neoliberal capitalist development sharpened the grievances of populations living with high and rising levels of unemployment, the highest in the world, in fact, for women and for youth under 25 (achcar 2012; beinin 2011, pp. 26-27; goldstone 2011, p. 36). that this is a globalization story is suggested by the fact that it was the youth generation of 2010 that made the revolts, not that of 1990 at the dawn of globalization’s effects in the region. the regimes that ruled both countries were classic cases of the type of personalist dictatorship most vulnerable to revolutions historically: amassing riches while excluding the majority of the population from a meaningful vote and repressing dissidents ruthlessly. this meshing of the economic and political elite made the dictators in each case a clear target of popular wrath. the conjunctural elements of revolutionary outbreaks were also present by the end of 2010: the effects of a teetering global economy on already desperate populations fueled the economic downturns (again, a question of timing: 2010, not 2007 before the crisis). the interconnectedness of global crises meant that one could “read the world in a loaf of bread,” as christian parenti put it: the hot summer of 2010 devastated the russian grain harvest, raising the cost of the egyptian people’s staple later in the fall and bringing many to the point of rebellion (gelvin, 2012, pp. 21-23; parenti, 2011). the international conjuncture was also critical to the movements’ success. this is most obvious in the case of libya, where nato’s intervention stopped qadhafi’s counter-offensive just short of benghazi, then crippled his air force and the movement of heavy armor out of tripoli. in the cases of egypt and tunisia, the timing of the revolutions owed much to favourable turns in the world system: the events in tunis moved so swiftly that neither france nor the united states could react to them before ben ali was gone, while in egypt, the us wavered uncertainly in its support of mubarak, and ultimately decided to cast him to the winds while trying to maintain its influence on the army, which wisely stood aside to protect its own interests and stay on the winning side. in syria and bahrain, rebels enjoyed no equivalent geopolitical opening. in terms of the political cultures of opposition and creation that underlay the arab spring, we might comment first on an emotional aspect. as mehran kamrava (forthcoming) notes, the pillars of the ruling bargains born in the national liberation movements of the 1950s, “once sources of comfort and mass ebullition, now [were] comprised of fear, loathing, suspicion, and submission.” when crowds poured into the central squares and roundabouts of tunis, cairo, tripoli, and manama, they broke this fear, and perhaps, with it, long-structured or assumed patterns of deference more generally. it is also clear that the arab spring revolts were driven less by appeal to any ideology than by tapping into popular idioms of everyday concern. these were concentrated in the slogans chanted by crowds, in the first instance against the dictatorships: in egypt, “we won’t leave until he leaves” (khalil, studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 beyond insurgency to radical social change 17 2011, p. 5). in tunisia, “bread, water, and no ben ali” adroitly captured the twinned economic and political demands of the movement (anderson, 2011). in tunis, “the tone of the protests was rather one of reappropriating patriotic language and symbols: women and men lay in the streets to spell ‘freedom’ or ‘stop the murders’ with their bodies and worked together to tear down and burn the gigantic, stalin-style portraits of ben ali on storefronts and street corners” (marzouki, 2011). and though the state responded with violence, the call in the crowds of tahrir square was typically for salmeya—staying peaceful (khalil, 2011, p. 1). on top of these demands for an end to authoritarianism and a turn toward meaningful democracy were the economic and social demands. in egypt, alongside the popular demand for “dignity, democracy, social justice” were heard calls for “bread, freedom, social justice,” and most direct, “we want to live! we want to eat!” (beinin, 2011, p. 25). graffiti in sidi bouzid, tunisia, the cradle of the revolution, read “no to youth unemployment,” and “no to poverty” (knickmeyer, 2011, p. 124). it is no surprise that in the uprising in sidi bouzid on december 17, 2010 the words “employment is a right, you band of thieves!” were heard, an echo of an earlier uprising of miners in 2008, or that the french revolution’s “liberty, equality, fraternity” was transposed into “work, liberty, national dignity” (achcar, 2012). a coalition of young people and labour formed the backbone of the arab spring. class and generation combined to create the nucleus of broad popular movements that provided both the numbers and the slogans that animated the political cultures in play. students, including significant numbers of women, had engaged in anti-mubarak demonstrations since the early 2000s, and on the day the us launched its invasion of iraq, march 20, 2003, they and others were numerous enough to break the security force’s cordon around tahrir square and hold it for several hours, with alternating cries of “down with america!” and “down with mubarak!” (khalil, 2011, pp. 39-41). in the summer of 2004, a movement of young leftists proclaiming its message in its name—kefaya, enough—emerged to challenge the official elevation of mubarak’s son gamal as his eventual successor (khalil, 2011, p. 43ff). it is of interest that the zapatistas’ rallying cry had been “ya basta!” (enough already) and that the youth movement in georgia that led the rose revolution in november 2003 took the name kmara! with the same meaning, while the ukraine’s orange revolution’s youth activists called themselves pora (it’s time) (rosenberg, 2011, p. 132). the core activists and more than 70,000 on-line members of the april 6 movement (the date of a major workers’ revolt in 2008) came out of kefaya and used social media and organizing skills learned in serbia and elsewhere to facilitate and coordinate actions in egypt’s 18 days of revolt (rosenberg, 2011, p. 127ff). young egyptian activists of the april 6 movement had visited serbia to learn the techniques of non-violent civil disobedience from the otpor! (resistance!) youth movement that helped unseat slobodan milošević in october 2000; otpur! had also helped train the georgian and ukrainian groups named above. serbian youths, in turn, had read the works studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 18 john foran of u.s. political theorist gene sharp, steeped in the examples of gandhi and martin luther king, jr.4 they then set up the center for applied nonviolent action and strategies (canvas) in belgrade, which trained april 6 activist mohammad adel in the summer of 2009. april 6 took otpor’s distinctive clenched fist for their own logo, and carried it into tahrir square on their flags in the first days of the uprising (rosenberg, 2011, p. 141). and just after the events started on january 25, a 26-page pamphlet, widely attributed to april 6, came out, entitled “how to protest intelligently” (rosenberg, 2011, p. 141).5 when textile workers at the state-owned misr spinning and weaving company rose up against the police in mahalla al-kubra on april 6, 2008, they were riding a wave of labour actions that had been ongoing since 2004, and gave impetus to a new wave of labour actions in the run-up to 2011 that repudiated the state-controlled unions and forced economic issues such as a minimum wage onto the public stage (khalil, 2011, pp. 51ff; mason, 2012, pp. 19-22). elsewhere, as gilbert achcar had observed, “nobody can ignore the fundamental role played by the tunisian general labor union” (achcar, 2012). mahmoud al-shaar, who had been a leader at one of the occupied textile factories, said in 2011: “there is a spirit of optimism between all workers, in every sector. during the revolution, we were here from day one. but now it’s reached the point where we look around and we recognize these other delegations from the days in tahrir square, people from totally different sectors: we know each other’s faces, we shake each other’s hands, we slap each other on the back” (mason, 2012, pp. 22-23). one indication of the youth and class composition of the tahrir demonstrators was provided by a medical volunteer: “among the dead who fell during the recent demonstrations was found not a single well‐known oppositionist, nor even a known activist. these are young people from disadvantaged neighborhoods, who put themselves on the front lines” (hennion, 2011, quoted in anderson, 2011). nor were all participants from the middle and working classes; inhabitants of cairo’s slums, such as the garbage-pickers (mostly young men and children) of moquattam, joined in (mason, 2012, pp. 6-7). the originality of this approach to overthrowing dictators suggests that yet another path to radical social change has opened up in the twenty-first century: the sustained occupation of public space followed by the struggle for a more open democratic polity, a kind of third way between taking national power through elections and re-making power by wresting communities from neo-liberalism’s clutches. as the arab spring turns three, the challenge now is to turn the political revolutions into social ones, and for the voices of workers, youth, and women to make themselves heard as they were when bringing down the dictatorships. whether the political revolutions in tunisia, egypt, and libya can be pushed further toward social transformation aimed at alleviating crushing poverty and redressing class inequality is an open question. a crucial difference is that the winning political parties in these first elections have studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 beyond insurgency to radical social change 19 not voiced the sentiments or responded to the desires of the people who have come out into every capital square, as the mass demonstration that brought about the coup against the morsi government and the mass demonstrations by morsi’s supporters afterwards showed in 2013. what can be predicted is that their futures depend on the courageous engagement of the social movements and civil society organizations that forced the democratic openings and their ability to shape the direction and composition of the newly elected democratic leadership and parties (in egypt this has proven extraordinarily difficult, perhaps impossible). and this, in turn, depends on the complex (and undoubtedly long-term) process of forging, sustaining, and reconciling the new political cultures of creation—of democracy, reformist islam, and popular sovereignty—that brought victory in the first place. experience, emotions, and idioms all must find organizational expressions equal to this daunting task, or perhaps better put, movements and parties must find a language to bridge their differences. occupy everything. the second half of the year witnessed the rise of an equally improbable challenge at the heart of the system. occupy wall street succeeded against all the historical and cultural odds to electrify ordinary americans in the fall of 2011. it drew on some of the threads of resistance that we have traced since 1968: discussion-based decision making, occupations of the commons, nonor post-ideological ways of speaking, affinity groups dedicated to addressing particular issues and sustaining the encampments— in sum, new yet not-so-new ways of doing a creative politics. its makers tapped the arab spring’s techniques of struggle and the liberating public festivals of occupation in spain, the street confrontations and creative actions in austerity-hammered athens, and the temporary occupations in the english and chilean student movements over the course of 2010 (among the best of the earliest accounts to date are mason, 2012; flank, 2011; solomon & palmieri, 2011; taylor et al., 2011; van gelder et al., 2011). to these, the occupy movement added its own versions of general assembly and a brilliant discursive attack on the political and economic elites, seen as “the one percent” responsible for the deteriorating lives of “the ninety-nine percent.” the process and the message resonated widely across the us, spreading quickly from new york to other major metropolitan areas (los angeles, boston, oakland, chicago, detroit), smaller cities and towns, and educational institutions such as the university of california. an immense national discussion on the crisis was held, knocking the american political and economic establishments off balance for a time. by mid-autumn, there were occupations in motion across the globe. the system struck back in late fall with a police offensive coordinated by u.s. mayors across the country, using strong arm tactics to force occupy to abandon most of its public spaces. the movement merged into many smaller, local forms in the course of 2012 (including occupy the hood, occupy debt, and occupy sandy in the wake of the disastrous hurricane of november 2012), with the occupiers discussing and acting on the ways to do this most effectively in the new conjuncture (schneider, 2012; r. solnit, 2012, 2013). sociologist keith kahn-harris studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 20 john foran has termed the movements of 2011as “the movement without a name,” the expression of “a trend, a direction, an idea-virus, a meme, a source of energy that can be traced through a large number of spaces and projects. it is also a way of thinking and acting: an agility, an adaptability, a refusal to accept the world as it is, a refusal to get stuck into fixed patterns of thought” (kahnharris, 2011). in sum, it marked the further growth of political cultures of creation. problems and prospects the obvious political question is: can these new political cultures of opposition produce—or at least contribute to—some type of global transformation of the sort that is needed to deal with a world in crisis? these cases have shown their ability to move beyond ideology in favor of the strengths of popular idioms demanding social justice and have shown us some of the advantages of horizontal networks over vertical hierarchies. but how to fashion largescale popular spaces for democracy, and how to articulate the discourses that will bring together the broadest coalitions ever seen onto a global stage constitute great challenges. the left has achieved state power in an important set of latin american countries; does it have the will, internal support, and global room for maneuver to redirect resources to the poorest sectors of society? the experience of obama and the european center-left has shown rather clearly the limited room for maneuver and the dimming prospects for significant reform, domestically or globally, through these parties. the zapatistas have registered concrete gains on a local level; will they be able to generalize these accomplishments beyond chiapas? the global justice movement has raised significant opposition to neoliberal globalization. can this movement, with all the others, reverse the tide of neoliberal capitalism? as the zapatistas argue, and the disappointing experience of lula and the workers party in brazil who watered down their radical program once in power has shown, elections are not a magic solution to undoing fundamental structures of exploitation. this should be a continuing task for the post-arab spring decade that is underway. but neither is direct democracy a panacea, as the zapatistas’ containment in chiapas and the dispersal of occupy suggest. and yet, the capacity to re-occupy public space is crucial for the long-term success of the arab spring, as the vigorous protests which culminated in the coup against president mohammad morsi in egypt and the flash uprisings in turkey and brazil reminded us in the summer of 2013. what, then, lies between or beyond direct action and elections? one idea is to combine electing “progressive” governments and forging social movements to push them from below and beside to make good on their promises, and to make links with other movements, nations, and organizations everywhere. in other words, rather than the dichotomous choice between seeking to change the world through elections versus building a new society from the bottom studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 beyond insurgency to radical social change 21 up, the future of radical social change may well lie at the many possible intersections of deeply democratic social movements and equally diverse and committed new parties and political coalitions. the pink tide is already working near this intersection. other struggles that point toward this include the long movement for radical reforms in kerala, india, the experiences of the world’s green parties, the political movement that grew up in iceland after the great crash of 2008, and the global climate justice movement. in kerala, for example, a series of elected, non-charismatic (in a positive sense) left-of-center governments over the past fifty years have raised the quality of life—whether measured by nutrition, health, life span, access to food and shelter, and literacy education—to standards that are superior to elsewhere in india and would be the object of envy in most of the world. they have done this despite a lack of monetary resources, a low per capita gnp, and even with deep structural unemployment, because they have been pushed from below by strong, independent social movements in civil society of workers, women, and lower castes. this synergetic relationship has succeeded in forging and maintaining relatively equitable, more participatory conditions of life for the more than 30 million people who live there, even in periods when the left has not been in power (franke & chasin, 1994, heller, 1999). the world’s green parties also embody a new political culture of creation, sometimes themselves acting to bridge the divide between those who seek to take state power and those who seek to transform the very nature of power. though far from power in many places—notably the us and uk— and having made truly invidious compromises when in government as in germany (jachnow, 2013), they also hint at the powerful combination of social movement dynamism from below and a new kind of party organization. moreover, they are transnational in vision and organization in a way that other parties, including those on the left, are not. iceland undertook a hopeful political experiment dubbed the “saucepan revolution” when the raucous banging of pots and pans in popular street protests in january 2009 forced the right-of-center government responsible for the precipitous collapse of iceland’s banks to yield power to a new governing coalition of socialists, democrats, greens, and the left, who were affirmed in a general election in april 2009. in the face of a horrific economic crisis, the creative actions of the left-green movement and social democratic alliance government, and the many networks that pressure and support them, produced solutions such as the 2009 referendum in which 98 percent of the population rejected the previous government’s agreement to repay the foreign debt of the failed banks, another indication of this new political culture (chataigne 2009; krugman, 2011; júlíusson & helgason, 2013; magnason, 2008; r. solnit, 2008; wade & sigurgeirsdottir, 2010). the fragility of the new situation was laid bare in the april 2013 elections which returned the center-right to power. 2011 ended with the impact of occupy on the un climate negotiations in durban, south africa, carried forward again at the end of 2012 in doha, studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 22 john foran qatar. the negotiations themselves produced the expected non-ambition and irresponsible delay, but a growing coalition of progressive countries inside the negotiations, young activists who raised their voices and built their own strong ties, and the global climate justice organizations that stood and sat with them in an occupation of the corridors and streets worked together to deliver a rather different outcome from the triumphalist official one or the pessimistic verdict of some movement leaders (foran & widick, 2013). the actions and communication processes established between the state actors inside and the social movements outside continue to work together for a fair and binding treaty to lower greenhouse gas emissions, perhaps the most pressing issue of our time. conclusions it is entirely possible that the future of radical social change lies at the various intersections of deeply democratic social movements and equally diverse and committed political coalitions. hamid dabashi, the first great theorist of the arab spring, proposes that we consider the events a new kind of “openended” revolution. that ever-expanding public space and political participation are precisely what inform my idea of open-ended revolution, in which the distinction no longer exists between the french [revolution’s] (social) and american [revolution’s] (political) model, in arendt’s terms. but in fact the fusion of the two will have created a third model, closer to what trotsky meant by “permanent revolution” (and that we hear in the egyptian slogan al-thwarah al-mustamarrah), but this time in a more gradual, systematic, and grounded manner in which not just the working class but also women and students—that is, the two social formations that expand the economic into public space—will be integral to the revolutionary unfolding. (dabashi, 2012, p. 247) it will take time for these open-ended revolutions to blossom and reach their full potential. important to this process will be the articulation of powerful political cultures based on participatory (not formal, representative, elitecontrolled) democracy and on economic alternatives that challenge the neoliberal capitalist globalization that created the conditions for their flowering in the first place—namely, political cultures of creation as well as opposition. the people in each of these places—the most radical ones, the younger ones, the most savvy—rejected the dysfunctional social and political systems they had inherited. they were not about renegotiating anybody’s ruling bargain. and they succeeded. or at least they haven’t failed. and, like their counterparts everywhere, they are not done yet. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 beyond insurgency to radical social change 23 notes 1 this essay draws substantially on its older sister, “global affinities: the new cultures of resistance behind the arab spring,” forthcoming in kamrava. 2 in anna karenina, tolstoy’s protagonist asks “what is to be done? what is to be done? what’s the best way to act in this terrible situation?—that’s what we must think about”: see the new york times magazine (december 23, 2012), 46. 3 in fact, “between january 3 and april 12, 2003, 36 million people across the globe took part in almost 3,000 protests against the iraq war” according to french academic dominique reynié (cited in callinicos 2005). 4 amazon’s webpage asserts that “from dictatorship to democracy was a pamphlet, printed and distributed by dr gene sharp and based on his study, over a period of forty years, on non-violent methods of demonstration. now in its fourth edition, it was originally handed out by the albert einstein institution, and although never actively promoted, to date it has been translated into thirty-one languages. this astonishing book travelled as a photocopied pamphlet from burma to indonesia, serbia and most recently egypt, tunisia and syria, with dissent in china also reported. surreptitiously handed out amongst youth uprisings the world over how the ‘how-to’ guide came about and its role in the recent arab uprisings is an extraordinary tale”:http://www. amazon.com/dictatorship-democracy-gene-sharp/dp/1846688396/ref=sr_1_1?s=bo oks&ie=utf8&qid=1355440345&sr=1-1&keywords=gene+sharp april 6 compiled its own manual based on a range of sources and members’ own experiences (ishani 2011, 144). for a trenchant critique of the politics of april 6, see roberts 2013. 5 it is true that otpor took money from, among others, rightwing and counterrevolutionary democracy-promoting institutions like the notorious national endowment for democracy in the united states, and that the einstein institution had similar links, as my reviewer pointed out to me. likewise, among the funders of canvas are to be found freedom house. that this makes them guilty of being “in the service of imperial projects” (see barker 2011), is, i feel, a stretch too far. references adbusters. 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(2005). bolivia’s battle of wills. the nation (july 4), 13-18. parenti, c. (2011, july 19). reading the world in a loaf of bread -soaring food prices, wild weather, upheaval, and a planetful of trouble. retrieved from http://www.tomdispatch.com/ archive/175419 polletta, f. (2002). freedom is an endless meeting: democracy in american social movements. chicago: university of chicago press. poster, m. (1975). existential marxism in postwar france: from sartre to althusser. princeton: princeton university press. ripper, v. (director). (2013). occupy love. canada: canadian media fund. roberts, h. (2013). the revolution that wasn’t. london review of books, 35(17) (september 12), 3-9. retrieved from http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n17/hugh-roberts/the-revolution-thatwasnt rosenberg, t. (2011). revolution u. in council on foreign relations (ed.), the new arab revolt (pp. 27-42). new york: council on foreign relations. schneider, n. (2012, september 24). occupy, after occupy. retrieved from http://www. thenation.com/article/169761/occupy-after-occupy shadid, a. (2006). night draws near: iraq’s people in the shadow of america’s war. new york: picador. sitrin, m. (2006). horizontalism: voices of popular power in argentina. oakland: ak press. sitrin, m. (2012). everyday revolutions: horizontalism and autonomy in argentina. london: zed. solnit, d. (2004a). the new radicalism. interview with rachel neumann, alternet. retrieved from http://www.alternet.org/story/19308/the_new_radicalism solnit, d. (2004b). introduction: the new radicalism: uprooting the system and building a better world. in david solnit (ed.), globalize liberation: how to uproot the system and build a better world, xi-xxiv. san francisco: city lights books. solnit, r. (2008, october). news from nowhere: iceland’s polite dystopia. harper’s magazine. retrieved from http://harpers.org/archive/2008/10/news-from-nowhere/ solnit, r. 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(2010, september-october). lessons for iceland. new left review (65), 5-29. wallerstein, i. (2011, november 4). the contradictions of the arab spring. al-jazeera. retrieved from http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/20111111101711539134.html zibechi, r. (2010). dispersing power: social movements as anti-state forces. oakland: ak press. studies in social justice volume 3, issue 2, 213-230, 2009 correspondence address: sylvie morel, département des relations industrielles, université laval, québec, qc g1k 7p4, canada. tel.: +1 418 656-2131 x 2477, email: sylvie.morel@rlt.ulaval.ca issn: 1911-4788 employment and economic insecurity: a commonsian perspective1 if a theoretical shift in economics is a prerequisite to the reorientation of public policies in a progressive way, one must admit that there is not a single alternative to mainstream economics. indeed, there are several varieties of “heterodox” economic theories, that is to say those questioning the dominant paradigm in economics. sylvie morel université laval, québec city, québec, canada abstract the principal concern of this paper is with the need of a theoretical shift in economics for analyzing and devising efficient and innovative policy reforms to combat employment insecurity. mainstream economics is unable to provide appropriate theorizing about economic phenomena, including economic insecurity. thus, we must turn to economic theories which radically question the dominant paradigm in economics. john rogers commons’s institutionalist theory accomplishes that. first, the author of this paper outlines the distinctive character of this theory by presenting some of its crucial methodological differences with neoclassical economics. second, she explains how economic insecurity is conceptualized as an “instituted” process with this theory of institution. a better mastery of this specific school of thought in economics appears to escape the problems met by mainstream economics by proposing a real theoretical alternative for the development of a truly evolutionary, trans-disciplinary and ethical economic theory. introduction the inadequacy of mainstream economics, or roughly speaking neoclassical economics, in conceptualizing its own research objects, which are economic realities, is a fact insufficiently known. indeed, this approach generates an economic analysis on the basis of concepts and models disconnected from the real-world economy. not surprisingly then, it cannot provide appropriate theorizing about key factors of economic life, nor strategic economic issues. because of their epistemological posture, neoclassical economists do not pay attention to the real problems of the malfunctioning of economic institutions, and the economic insecurity they generate. thus, to proceed to a theoretical reconstruction in economics is imperative. what is at stake is our ability to understand economic insecurity in all of its complexity, as well as to conceive creative solutions to it by means of innovative analysis of labour and employment. 214 sylvie morel studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 however, within these theories, priority must be given to the ones focusing on economic security, rights, and duties guaranteeing it. john rogers commons’s institutionalist theory accomplishes that. commons is one of the founders of what is called the original institutionalism, which was developed at the end of the 19th century and continued until the 1940s in the united states. commons’s theory, whose relevance to the world today is being rediscovered, provides a coherent interdisciplinary conception of economic facts, grounded in their cultural context, in which economics, law, and ethics are reconciled. this paper has been divided into two parts. first, we will outline the distinctive character of commonsian institutionalism by presenting some of its crucial methodological differences with neoclassical economics (section 1). second, we will briefly explain how economic insecurity is conceptualized as an “instituted” process with this theory of institution; note that we will focus on economic insecurity in the area of labour and employment (section 2). to demonstrate that commonsian institutionalism represents a real theoretical alternative to mainstream economics for the development of a truly evolutionary, trans-disciplinary and ethical economic theory is our general concern. j. r. commons’s institutionalism: a radical methodological shift from mainstream economics the theoretical wealth of original institutionalism2 is greatly underrated in the field of economics. indeed, the methodological and conceptual tools of this school of economic thought have been under-utilized in the analysis of the complex realities and major challenges of the 20th century (adams, 1994, p. 347).3 this situation is fully illustrated by the fate that was reserved for j. r. commons’s theory. indeed, it has been said of him that, within the institutional movement, he was “the least understood of its major theoreticians” (ramstad, 1986, p. 207). his seminal contributions to the field of labour history and industrial relations have been widely acknowledged (kaufman, 1998). but, for a long time, commons’s theoretical framework had little impact, despite its strength and originality. 4 fortunately, this situation is changing. for example, commonsian institutionalism until recently was generally ignored in france. 5 however, in recent years, the publication of a number of theses (bazzoli, 1994; dutraive, 1993b; maucourant, 1994; morel, 1996), books (bazzoli, 1999; chavance, 2007; morel, 2000) and articles, grouped in special issues of journals or published separately in french economic reviews, 6 commons’s institutionalism is increasingly being recognized as a fundamental theoretical contribution able to achieve a profound renewal of economic analysis, in all the fields of economics, and particularly, in labour economics and industrial relations (gislain, 2003b; ramstad, 1998). in addition, many economists think that commonsian institutionalism can open new opportunities for gender analysis; specifically, many feminist institutionalist economists think that both approaches would benefit to grow by building on one another, as argued by the economists who remain in favour of a “feminist institutionalism” (jennings, 1993; mayhew, 1999; nelson, 2003; peterson, 1990; waller & jennings, 1990; whalen & whalen, 1994). has helped to partially fill this gap. 7 employment and economic insecurity 215 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 all this interest comes from the fact that it completely breaks with mainstream economics, insofar as it proposes a logic of inquiry as well as conceptual and methodological tools which are radically different from those of mainstream economics. first, let us specify why we can speak about a mainstream or orthodox school of thought in economics. economic theory has developed since the end of 19th century under the label of “neoclassical.” this school of thought saw its influence grow gradually during the 20th century to become dominant in the 1940-1950s. now, for the majority of economists, “economic science” is synonymous with this school. neoclassical economists adopt a technical definition of economics as being the “science of choice,” that is to say “the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses” (robbins, 1935, p. 16). the coordination of economic activities rests on the “market,” an imaginary theoretical construction represented by the confrontation of “supply” and “demand,” articulated around a concept of equilibrium (of prices and quantities). because the market is primarily an intellectual product of economists, a theoretical construct based on a series of assumptions and hypotheses; this sense of the term is to be distinguished from that which refers to the empirical reality of the place where economic transactions occur. another key element of neoclassical economics is its reference to a perfect competitive model. society is seen as the collection of autonomous individuals, conceptualized in accordance with the figure of homo œconomicus. neoclassical economists postulate that economic subjects, or “economic agents,” are equal, free, and rational. according to the rationality postulate, economic action is understood as a utilitarian behaviour of utility maximization (or profit maximization) under a budget constraint (or cost constraint). because of the key role of the rationality postulate and the systematic use of mathematical formalism, in line with the “hard sciences” paradigm, neoclassical economics is defined more by its methodology than by its subject matter. of course, neoclassical economics is more complex than what appears here. the basic model has been frequently revised. however, its basic foundations remain the same. for example, if the “economic agent” is studied in “strategic interactions,” such as in game theory, its action is still dictated by a utilitarian and optimizing logic; the same observation applies for current labour market theories (such as efficiency wage theory, implicit contract theory, or insider-outsider theory); if modern game theory has stressed “imperfect competition” and “information uncertainty,” it is increasingly focused on microeconomic behaviours (the principle of methodological individualism criticized below); if today’s mainstream economics seems to some people to integrate the issue of institution, and thus be concerned with institutional issues, its theoretical framework of analysis is still dominated by the concept of the market. from this perspective, the contrast between the orthodox economic current and commons’s heterodox approach is striking. indeed, while it is beyond the scope of this article to summarize the abundant literature demonstrating the radicality of the departure of the original, or commonsian, institutionalism from mainstream economics, or “new institutional economics” (dugger, 1996; dutraive, 1993a; gislain, 2003a; gislain, steiner, 1995; nelson, 2003; ramstad, 1986; tool, 1994), it is crucial to bear in mind that commonsian economics replaces the representation of the economy in terms of the market by one in terms of the institution. thus, it is fundamentally a theory of institution,8 one of its essential 216 sylvie morel studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 specific qualities being its articulation with a theory of action (gislain, 1999); this has nothing to do with the inclusion of “institutional influences” into a theory centred on the market. the same can be said of mainstream economics’ purported consideration of “evolution” which is based on methodological principles completely different from the evolutionary conceptions of institutionalist economists like veblen and commons (gislain, 1999) because, in the final analysis, due to its philosophical basis and the methodological choices they entail, commonsian institutionalism is completely extraneous to the basic foundations of mainstream economics. 9 indeed, one of the reasons why the theoretical contribution of commons has not been correctly appreciated until recent years, is that it rests on a philosophical foundation that is not well-known: pragmatism (bush, 1993; tool, 1994). as underlined by y. ramstad (1998), it “is difficult for most economists to discern the abstract structure of commons’s theoretical system because it manifests heterodox methodological presumptions and because commons, drawing mainly on peirce, defended it in the unfamiliar language of american pragmatism” (p. 309). pragmatism has been qualified as “the first great philosophical movement authentically american” (deledalle, 1995, p. 24).10 philosophical pragmatism appeared around 1870 in cambridge, massachusetts, and received its original shape from charles sanders peirce, william james, and john dewey. it was influenced by darwinism, in that both the knowledge and the logic of inquiry cannot be understood in static terms;11 they are inherently a process, a process of change, conditioned by the context of inquiry. commons refers explicitly to peirce’s and, above all, dewey’s “social pragmatism,” when talking about the method of investigation he attempts to apply to economics, “the pragmatism of human beings” participating in economic transactions (commons, 1934/1990, pp. 150, 156, 157).12 first, both schools oppose one another on the conception of objectivity in science. on the one side, neoclassical economists have a dualist conception of the knowledge process: they postulate that the objectivity of the scientific discourse rests on a clear distinction between “positive” (what is) and “normative” (what ought to be) dimensions, pretending that the latter can be excluded from economic science. economists must study “facts” separately from value judgments which belong to the domain of normative economics. in other words, they defend a view of economic science as a positive science that states universal scientific truths beyond any subjective bias concerning the objects studied. institutional economists, on the other side, consider that the normative dimension of scientific investigation cannot be extracted in order to produce a purely positive knowledge. values and judgments are an inescapable part of theory, an inherent and continuing part of the process of inquiry (tool, 1994, p. 205). furthermore, for dewey, “values are a form of knowing.” also, objectivity requires, not an ideal elimination, but the recognition of the importance of values in the reality to be studied at each phase of the process of thus, the profound originality of commonsian theory stems from the fact that, at the methodological level, pragmatism is radically different from the conception of knowledge inherited from cartesianism, which is the epistemological foundation of orthodox economic theory. to say that original institutionalists use methodological prescriptions, coming from the logic of inquiry of philosophical pragmatism, means that you can contrast neoclassical economists and institutionalist economists on many points, namely the following ones. employment and economic insecurity 217 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 inquiry. 13 second, in the neoclassical theorists’ view, an economic problem must be examined by means of deductive reasoning. thus, inferences regarding all concrete cases are made from an a priori conceived economic model defined with respect to natural law theory. in so doing, neoclassicists pretend to enunciate universal scientific truths. institutionalists, on the other hand, apply an abductive methodology. for them, knowledge and action are linked. the process of inquiry, in dewey’s terms, is not defined as a purely intellectual operation, but as an action on the world, a transformation of the inquiry subject, a main idea of dewey’s pragmatism. as for commons (1934/1990, p. 103), he asserts that a pure theory cannot be developed in economics as it can in physical science, “because physical materials have no purposes, wills, rights, or interests.” as scientific knowledge is “opinion,” in the sense of shared beliefs from those forming the scientific community, the “facts” studied by economists as for example, wages or prices, are not naturally derived from the “free interplay of market laws,” but the products of the socially constructed realities of money and value of work. thus, analysis of economic phenomena is situated in time and space, as they are integrated in their cultural context. the emphasis on culture implies “that social processes are not governed by universal laws and do not have universal meanings; rather, processes and meanings are mutually and historically determined” (jennings, 1993, p. 114). this also means that the pseudo-neutrality of science, as the aim to which neo-classical theory pretends, is in itself a social construct that must be closely scrutinized in order to identify the hidden ideological content, vested interests, and political agendas it carries. 14 neoclassicists adopt a methodology giving pre-eminence to mathematic formalism, thereby reducing the focus of analytical proposals and constructs to those materials that lend themselves to this treatment. according to a canonical methodological precept of mainstream economics, the validity of a theory rests upon its predictive power, and not its capacity to describe reality. in social inquiry, theory and facts are in permanent interaction. the instrumental logic of pragmatism rejects essentialism, that is to say “the formulation of eternal verities, first principles, or essences” (bush, 1993, p. 62). as outlined by bush, the approach is “contextualist,” to the extent that knowledge is developed out of consideration of the context in which facts are an inherent part, instead of being deduced from first principles totally disconnected from the experienced problematic situations inquired. this methodological procedure guarantees a theorization grounded in the reality of economic facts. 15 in contrast, institutionalists regard primarily the capacity of a hypothesis to offer coherence and causal understanding; in that sense, it is not to say that predictability is unimportant but, above all, that predictions do not serve to establish the warrantability of hypotheses (bush, 1993, p. 75). in fact, institutionalists are especially concerned with “institutional dysfunctions,” which cause social problems, such as unemployment, macroinstability, inequality of income, discrimination, environmental deterioration, and the like. they examine how inquiry can contribute to their resolution by remodelling the institutional structure in a progressive way (tool, 1994, p. 221). the theory is valid if it permits making a useful and creative diagnosis related to the identification and the resolution of real problems. this again relates to pragmatism, which is a “philosophy of the citizen”: “the essential task of the american philosopher is to serve society. it is in that sense that we use the word 218 sylvie morel studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 ‘citizen’: the citizen is the servant of the city. the philosopher is a citizen” (deledalle, 1954, p. 187).16 if we can say that the conception of a logical and fictitious time in neoclassical theory makes it disappear, so does society. indeed, society is reduced to the aggregation of its parts. in accordance with the principle of methodological individualism, the explanation of economic phenomena rests on the analysis of individual behaviour. human action is conceived in a very specific manner, that is, as previously stated, according to a theory of action centered on the homo œconomicus postulate. thus understood, the economic agent is an isolated individual whose actions are motivated by a purely introspective utility maximizing behaviour. for institutionalists, on the one hand, the individual is not examined as an isolated being, but as a social being whose individual action is based on logics that are socially regulated by the working rules the treatment of time is another main difference between the two schools of thought. mainstream economics is constructed around the notion of general equilibrium (guerrien, 1989) and, consequently, is static. more importantly, equilibrium implicitly conveys a normative dimension while it depicts a situation of harmony of interest. indeed, neoclassical equilibrium is optimal, when “we live in the best of all possible worlds, barring minor frictions” (dugger, 1996, p. 33). in contrast, institutionalists focus on dynamic change and the conflicts of interests which necessarily arise through it. institutionalism is described as a “processual paradigm” insofar as its subject is economic process, as it takes place in a specific, dynamic, cultural context (dugger, 1996, p. 31). to explain the process of continuous change, institutionalists use an evolutionary methodology. this term refers to a non-teleological and processual approach differing from the one “evolutionist” economists use in defending the idea of a law of progress (gislain, 1999). from that perspective, institutions are understood as being in continuous transformation in historic, unpredictable, and irreversible time. consequently, the researcher must go back to history to be able to grasp reality, especially the genesis of the customs which are crucial in the dynamic process of institutional change. 17 of custom and the going concerns to which his or her social groups belong. this refers directly to commons’s original theory of the institution whose essential characteristic is to be a theory of action (gislain & steiner, 1995; ramstad, 1993). the institution is defined as “collective action in control of individual action” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 69) expressing the fact that individual action is “embedded” in the broader logic of collective action, not least because of the mere fact of living in society. as shown by commons (1934/1990, p. 73), if “it be considered that, after all, it is the individual who is important, then the individual with whom we are dealing is the institutionalized mind.” this is consistent with the whole-part mode of apprehending reality, typical of the holist method endorsed by commons (ramstad, 1986). in commons’s words, to speak of a transactional economy, “we can rightly say, regarding the operations of the human will, that the whole is more than the sum of its parts” (1934/1990, p. 629). however, it must be noted that this holist approach does not result in any kind of determinism. indeed, on the other hand, commons defends a theory of action that leaves a wide scope for human will. thus, even if individual action is a social construction regulated by internalized rules in the institutionalized mind, the latter is at the same time an active subject in the process of transforming these rules, since his or her employment and economic insecurity 219 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 action informs their evolution. however, in the act of choosing, it is not introspection which dominates, as commons points out, but projection in the real environment. in accordance with philosophical pragmatism, the individual is an “acting” being whose willingness is shown in action depending on the “situation” and “opportunities” defined by collective action.18 but, let us come back to the definition of the institution, which is far more complex than it seems at first. as previously stated, commons defines it as being “collective action in control of individual action.” but he also presents what he calls a “derived” definition of it, “collective action in restraint, liberation, and expansion on individual action” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 73). commons proposes an extensive definition to stress the fact that, as he states, “collective action is more than control of individual action: in this way, institutions are social constructs in constant evolution which reproduce themselves under the influence of human will. thus, commons’s approach reconciles collective “control” and individual will, which are usually viewed as irreducible. institutionalist methodology goes beyond the sterile opposition of both determinism of methodological individualism and holism. …it is, by the very act of control, as indicated by the auxiliary verbs, a liberation of individual action from coercion, duress, discrimination, or unfair competition, by means of restraints placed on other individuals. and collective action is more than restraint and liberation of individual action – it is expansion of the will of the individual far beyond what he can do by his own puny acts. (commons, 1934/1990, p. 73) finally, in neoclassical theory, economics is depicted as a quasi-exact science, different by nature from other social sciences. the metaphor “hard” is applied to its science as the opposite metaphor “soft” is seldom used to depict the difference. the institutionalist way of thinking economics stresses the fact that it is, in reality, a social science. economics is characterized by its trans-disciplinary nature, involving an inescapable ethical dimension which stems from the fact that it deals with interactions of human beings among themselves. the commonsian concepts: economic insecurity as an instituted process economic insecurity, in the common use of the term, refers to the uncertainty and precariousness that affect individuals’ access to, and maintenance of, the means of existence. but it goes well beyond the pecuniary dimension. economic insecurity is also, to a large extent, a problem of confidence in the future. it is not only a question of having a low or irregular income, but also of being uncertain about receiving an income at all (gagliardo, 1949, p. 8). in commons’s view, this refers to the concept of futurity. all individuals and not merely capitalists (commons, 1934/1990, p. 618), commons stated, act in expectation of the future: “man lives in the future but acts in the present” (p. 84). as a purposeful going concern, so does a social institution (p. 619). this theory of the human will in action is even labelled by the author a “science of futurity.” 19 therefore, economic insecurity or its opposite, economic security, can be explained by stressing the strategic role played by the present expectations of the stability of collective action guaranteeing everybody a share of 220 sylvie morel studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 the social output. here we are led to the concept of citizenship by the issue of the “lien social,” i.e. the social cohesion necessary to preserve within the going concern of the society so that it can be maintained in operation, which requires that each of the “shareholders” be assured of the security of expectations concerning the part of social wealth which will be returned to them. in other words, it is through an economic theory of citizenship that commonsian institutionalism helps us to conceive economic insecurity in all its complexity, integrating, among others, the ethical dimension of justice. basically, this refers to the original representation of the economic subject in commonsian institutionalism. indeed, instead of examining, like orthodox economists, the action of disembodied, isolated economic agents, the commonsian economist deals with people as “citizen-individuals.” in other words, the economic subject is considered an individual, connected with various networks of social relations, and as a citizen endowed with rights and duties. in that perspective, the focus for the researcher is on the evaluation of the economic status instituted for individuals. citizen-individuals are people with rights and duties, freedoms and vulnerabilities. economic security, or the institution of working rules permitting economic vulnerability to transform into rights, is precisely what is called in commonsian economics an economic status. such a study of the economic positions occupied by individuals involves various concepts, such as those of social relation, transaction, negotiational psychology, rights and duties, opportunities, and, as noted futurity. without attempting to develop each of these innovative concepts, i will nevertheless briefly outline the problem of economic insecurity as an instituted process derived from them. our starting point can be commons’s definition of institutional economics, because it places us from the outset in the field of ethics. let us specify first that this definition goes beyond the notion of social provisioning put forward in institutionalist (dugger, 1996; mayhew, 1999; waller & jennings, 1990) and feminist literature (nelson, 1993, 1996; power, 2004) as an alternative to the neoclassical definition of economics as the “science of choices.” to define economics as the study of “social provisioning” is to emphasize the fact that, basically, economic activity refers to the ways people organize collectively to secure their standard of living (power, 2004, p. 6): “for institutionalists, and for feminists, economies are society’s organizations for provisioning [. . .] provisioning is the process of trying to assure culturally appropriate levels of food, housing, clothing and care” (mayhew, 1999, p. 480). institutionalism has been defined by a. gruchy as “the science of social provisioning” in order also to sketch out the processual nature of this paradigm (as cited in dugger, 1996, p. 31). veblen too “understood the real economy as a social provisioning process,” in which he included many of women’s domestic activities (jennings, 1993, p. 113). finally, j. a. nelson (1993, p. 32) indicates, from a feminist perspective, that the focus on how to ensure the provisioning of human life meets the requirement of a definition of economy which considers human beings in relation to the world. if we now turn to commons, we find the following definition: if the subject-matter of political economy is not only individuals and nature’s forces, but is human beings getting their living out of each other by mutual transfers of property rights, then it is to law and ethics that we employment and economic insecurity 221 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 look for the critical turning points of this human activity. (commons, 1934/1990, p. 57) for commons, political economy was not a technical issue, as is the case for mainstream economics. it dealt with human activity in its relation, not “of man to nature” and things, which is the standpoint of neoclassical economics, but “between man and man.” the focus then is put on human beings interacting in institutions whose function is to regulate property. these institutions evolve over time and space. this definition carries the interactional, legal, and ethical dimensions of economics. it gives a central role to conflicts of interests and power relations that surround the relations of ownership. economic insecurity is created by the difficulty faced by individuals in ensuring their survival in the ownership rights system of capitalism. here, the legal dimension of economics is fundamental. not only must we conceive economic insecurity as a central concern for economists, but we must also understand that this refers, as does any economic problem, to social realities instituted by the rule of law. according to commons, economists erred by focusing on the actual exchange or use of economic resources and outputs, and by failing to distinguish between the legal transfers of the rights to a thing and its physical transfers. the strategic element of economic life is legal control rather than physical control. from this viewpoint, economic life can be understood in “processual terms as an ongoing series of legal transfers of property rights” (ramstad, 1986, p. 234). rules defining property rights structure production and distributional processes. therefore “there is nothing ‘natural’ about the concrete character of those rules and the processes they effectuate” (ramstad, 1998, p. 311), whether these refer to the market or to any other economic entity. by centering on exchangeability, not of things but of property rights, economic analysis can focus on the evaluation of desirable behaviour in human beings in society which is ethics: “but legal control is not only an economic quantity, it is control of the future behaviour of individuals upon which the dimensions of that economic quantity will depend” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 87). but if “the ultimate unit sought in the problem of correlating law, economics, and ethics is a unit of conflicting interest of ownership,” this is an incomplete picture of economic interrelations: “the ultimate unit of activity must also be a unit of mutually dependent interests” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 57). in fact, mutual dependence is, as conflict, another basic fact of economic life. this, in turn, implies the maintenance of order. order is maintained by the working rules of collective action which govern the transfer of legal control of property rights, but also efficiency through cooperation (commons, 1934/1990, p. 6). cooperation is necessary to efficiency and to overcome scarcity, but it does not arise from a presupposed harmony of interests. cooperation must instead be seen as an “artificial” harmony of interests, coming from the necessity of efficiency and institutionalized through collective action. so, contrary to the principles of orthodox economics, according to commons, “harmony is not a presupposition of economics—it is a consequence of collective action designed to maintain rules that shall govern the conflicts” (p. 7). these working rules are precisely what ensure security of expectations: “the orderly expectations, assumed by all economists under the name of “security,” which is a special case of the general principle of futurity, we name, for our present purposes, simply order” (p. 58). 222 sylvie morel studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 this brings us to the concept of transaction, that is, for commons, “the smallest unit of institutional economics” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 58). the three principles of conflict, dependence, and order are contained in each transaction. (p. 92). transaction—trans-action—expresses the theoretical shift already mentioned that goes from exchange of commodities to relations between individuals. transactions are transfers of property rights: “transactions […] are not the exchange of commodities, in the physical sense of delivery, they are the alienation and acquisition, between individuals, of the rights of future ownership of physical things, as determined by the collective working rules of society” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 58). these transfers of rights must be negotiated between the parties concerned, and consequently give place to a negotiational psychology. but, unlike the essentialist, physicalist, and one-dimensional standard analysis, which shows only the homo œconomicus, institutionalism offers a pluralist theory of instituted action (gislain & steiner, 1995). indeed, rather than a purely fictitious logic of action and applicable to all economic agents in all transactions, it illustrates the diversity of economic positions of actors. this comes from the fact that these positions and the logics of action implemented within them, depend namely on the characteristics of the types of transactions in which the actors are involved. as the commonsian theory of the transaction includes different types of transactions, in each one several types of actors’ positions are made possible by their specific working rules. thus, transactions resolve themselves into three types: bargaining, managerial, and rationing transactions. 20 these are the “ultimate units of activity into which all economic relations can be resolved” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 117). first, the bargaining transaction is the social relation covering the transfers of legal control of property rights and brings together parties, although deemed to be legally equal (as are formally the employer and the worker), “may be economically unequal (coercion) or economically equal (persuasion)” (p. 64) (such as what often happens during labour contract negotiations). its purpose is the distribution of wealth and the inducement to produce and deliver wealth. this transaction is instituted on the basis of at least five actors (two buyers and two sellers, meaning that there is almost always potential for another buyer or seller in a transaction). the negotiational psychology, or the psychology of action specific to the negotiation carried out in the transaction, by which the transactors mutually influence their conduct, is that of persuasion or coercion.21 thirdly, the rationing transaction is the social relation relative to the “negotiations of reaching an agreement among several participants who have authority to apportion the benefits and burdens to members of a joint enterprise” (like the activity of a board of directors of a corporation in making up its budget for the ensuing year, of a legislative body in apportioning taxes, or of collective bargaining between an association of employers and an association of employees) (p. 67-68). founded on the principle of sovereignty, this transaction constitutes a relation of “authority,” in ultimately, scarcity is the underlying principle of bargaining transactions. secondly, the managerial transaction is the social relation concerning the production of wealth and grows out of a relation between two persons instead of four: a superior and an inferior (such as the supervisor and the worker or the manager and the managed). command and obedience is the negotiational psychology of managerial transactions and efficiency is its principle (p. 64). employment and economic insecurity 223 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 which transactors are in a legal position of inequality, from superior to inferior. its negotiational psychology is that of pleading and argument. for commons, these three types of transactions are functionally interdependent, so that they together constitute what he calls a going concern, an expression designating all types of social organizations in which the individual member is controlled by the same set of informal (custom) and formal working rules, such as the family, the corporation, the trade union, the state, and so on (p. 70). in various transactions, individuals can occupy different economic positions that respectively endow them with a set of rights and duties towards other individuals and the collectivity (p. 81). the commonsian conceptualization of the actor’s status is thus developed. it is worth noting here that, for commons, security is primarily an economic concept (morel, 2003). indeed, it is one of the four economic statuses derived from social relations. first, for commons, an economic status is a social relation “consisting of the expectations towards which each party is directing his economic behaviour” (p. 70). the four types of economic status are security, conformity, liberty, and exposure. in commons’s institutionalism, the control of individual action by collective action can create four types of situations: power, disability, immunity, and liability. in accordance with the principle of relations reciprocity, these statuses are instituted in pairs. commons points out that they correspond, in the field of ethics and law, to social relations, which are conjugated in terms of rights and duties.22 then, we see that, instead of depicting the economy as a mechanism automatically oriented towards equilibrium and peaceful harmony where equal economic subjects meet, commonsian institutionalism focuses on economic inequality and power relationships between individuals and groups, and the reality of conflict in the distribution of income and wealth. the acknowledgment of these key issues is a big step for the understanding of real economic life. in fact, it means that economic analysis goes beyond an individual’s status of legal equality and draws attention to to institute an economic status of security—in other words to guarantee a position of “security of expectations” as to the means of existence of each citizen who, otherwise, would be in a position of exposure – means to create rights for those who have a power deficit in social negotiations – the source of their economic insecurity—and working rules to compensate for the effects of their position of economic inferiority. since the relation between the economic positions held by individuals are correlative and reciprocal, to institute rights for some means to simultaneously institute duties for others. by imposing duties on those who hold, relatively speaking, an excess of power, the rights of others can be protected. in theoretical terms, we can state that if collective action intervenes to support individual action, it creates a right for the individual, which corresponds, for his or her counterpart in the transaction, to a duty. this right/duty pair creates the economic status of security/conformity. the alternative option, where collective action does not provide any guarantee, is a case of non-right, and symmetrically of non-duty. the corresponding economic status is exposure/liberty. this means that one transactor is exposed to gain or loss equivalent to the exercise of liberty by the other, who can do as s/he pleases (p. 81). the identification of each element is relatively easy to the extent that we accept that, in an employment relationship, employers and employees are not in a symmetrical position: employers have a greater power of negotiation, with the option of holding back the product (employment). 224 sylvie morel studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 the different modes of transactional psychology as actually occurs in the negotiations: “the ethical psychology, or what we call negotiational psychology of bargaining transactions is, as we saw above, that of persuasion or coercion, depending on opportunity, competition, and bargaining power” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 64). therefore, according to the specific characteristics of each transactional relation and of the law regime concerning the conditions of competition, some situations of abuse of bargaining power and coercion may occur. to analyse economic insecurity as an instituted process means, first, that this reality of unequal bargaining power in the relation of employment is fully taken into account. second, it signifies that transactors’s economic positions are understood as social constructs: as the product of working rules of collective action, they are institutionally generated. commons viewed the economy as an “authoritatively instituted complex of intertwined working rules” (ramstad, 1998, p. 311). thus, economic status reflects the collective willingness or, conversely, lack of willingness, to set up the working rules necessary to compensate for deficits of power within society. in other words, there is no such thing as an unregulated economy. the current situation results, not from an absence of an actor’s intervention, but of specific kinds of it: income inequality, low wages, precariousness, reduced social security, and lack of public services, or macroeconomic instability come from collective actions reducing responsibility towards labour of, mainly, employers and the state. this is done by transferring the cost of economic adjustment to labour. in commonsian terms, it reflects the choice to institutionalize positions of non-duty, or economic status of liberty, which permit the development of management practices and state interventions defining non-right positions, or economic status of exposure for large segments of the population. commons thought that the insecurity of labour threatened western civilization. this is why he considered security the major “labor problem” of capitalism (commons, 1921b). in this context, fostering economic security of the majority was an economic objective at least as important as fostering security for investment (commons, 1921a). it is not surprising then that he devoted so much effort, not only to theorize economic insecurity, but to combat it also as a practitioner. in accordance with the pragmatist abductive method, throughout his life, commons developed theoretical analysis in conjunction with its research to solve real problems. this approach to inquiry was therefore systematically followed by the author until he developed his sophisticated theoretical framework: “commons’s theories were themselves continually tested and revised through their applicability to the innumerable concrete problems he wrestled with as a member of both state and federal commissions and as the author of several pieces of innovative legislation” (ramstad, 1986, p. 209). commons could therefore feed his theoretical analysis of his long experience as a practitioner in the field of arbitration in industrial relations and social policies (industrial accidents, unemployment insurance, etc.). speaking of the debates surrounding the draft program of unemployment insurance in wisconsin, 23 he said: “it was, indeed, through the aid of these ten-year discussions and my participation in them that i finally reached the formulation of the more abstract theory of “institutional economics” which i now learned to define as collective action in control, liberation, and expansion of individual action” (commons, 1934/1990, pp. 841-842); the latter is, as we said earlier, the extensive employment and economic insecurity 225 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 definition of the institution. thus, for commons, the pragmatist theoretician, theory, and practice were two dimensions of the process of social change: for commons, theory and practice should go hand in hand. his concern with how to alter economic theory so as to take proper account of the institutional factor and his practical concern with how to bring about a reasonable reconciliation of the conflicting interests of business and labor are simply different aspects of the same problem (rutherford, 1990, p. xxxii). it is by virtue of the principle of reasonableness that rules counteracting the effects of the position of economic inferiority of the greatest number should be instituted. it is precisely in these terms, that is to say as working rules compensating economic positions of non-power, that institutions favourable to wage-earners, such as employment policies, labour legislation, and social security programs, should be understood. the concept of reasonable value is the ethical principle used to guide the collective process of conflict resolution to a social order formed in reference to the preferred practices, for a given society and at a given period, that is for a given historical stage of development. 24 for commons, the meaning of reasonable value, or reasonable capitalism, is an attainable ethical ideal: it can be named pragmatic idealism in the sense that this “highest attainable regard for one’s social responsibilities” is an ethical goal “evidenced by the fact that it actually exists, and can be investigated and testified to as facts, in the practices of the best concerns that are able to survive in the then existing struggle for existence” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 741). thus, this is how working rules of collective action can guarantee to “citizen-workers,” who otherwise would be in a position of economic exposure, economic positions of security of expectations in relation to the behaviours of actors on which their livelihoods depend. thus, the citizen to whom we lend a hand in arranging counter-powers that will institute her or him in a position of right, will be empowered of “recognized capacity” to call upon the collective force of the concern to protect and assert for him all the claims against others which the rules of the concern recognize and enforce” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 688). and this, commons adds, “is the meaning of citizenship and membership.” because he anticipates that authoritative power will be instituted for him or her, the actor may have confidence in the future and, according to the concept of futurity, adapt correspondingly his or her current behaviour. as this confidence in working rules of collective action permits individuals, as well as groups, to go ahead without fear (p. 696), his present action will emerge transformed. 25 finally, the theory of reasonable value depicts an economic conception of justice. as explained by y. ramstad (1998, p. 317), it reflects a theoretical shift in economic theory, “from the practice of viewing allocative efficiency as the overriding economic problem to that of viewing economic justice—the realization of reasonable values—as the paramount problem.” as society means “the concerted action of all participants in a going concern,” a project of social justice must give importance to the shares of the total output which participants are able to command in order to be considered a part of the concern (commons, 1934/1990, p. 617). the best nation, stated commons, (p. 634), is “that where rights, duties, liberties, and exposures are best rationed among individual and classes.” a related point is that reasonable value thus is the meaning of the institution of economic status of security. 226 sylvie morel studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 is connected to industrial democracy. in fact, commons’s “citizenship theory of labour” (ramstad, 1998, p. 317), or “his theoretical demonstration that just labour market outcomes can emerge only if “collective action in control of individual action” in the labour market is effected through working rules jointly determined by the worker “citizens” of enterprises—provides a theoretical rationale for elevating workers to the role of equal partner in determining the working rules that structure bargaining, managerial, and rationing transactions directly affecting workers.” in that view, the strengthening of a tripartite institution, such as the international labour organization (ilo), to deal with contemporary labour problems by promoting labour rights and decent work, finds a theoretical legitimization (mcintyre & ramstad, 2003). conclusion commonsian general theory demonstrates that it is possible to respond to the inadequacy of neoclassical economics without rejecting a theorizing and sophisticated abstract framework analysis. to the contrary, in this article, we attempted to demonstrate that a crucial challenge confronting us now is to bring to the forefront theories which fundamentally question the dominant paradigm in economics. being radically different in the way to understand economic rules and processes at the ontological, methodological, and conceptual levels, commonsian institutionalism is a theoretical alternative to mainstream economics. commons’s theory owes its strength to its social investigation approach, its logic of inquiry rooted in philosophical pragmatism, and its original analytical categories which can be used in a highly flexible way. consistent with its pragmatist mode of inquiry according to which theory and experience cannot be separated, economic theory is enriched by confronting “facts.” while the continuity of human experience is understood as a real process to be closely scrutinized, theory is not a fictive abstraction of reality. in contrast, it is directly connected to the real economic problems that disturb the course of the experiment, whether they happen in the life of an individual or in the functioning of the economy. therefore, economic theory offers useful analytical framework for action, in particular at the political level of transforming the economic world. on the conceptual level, commons’s institutionalism is a rich and dynamic representation of human action in society, operating on the construction of an individual which contrasts sharply with the homo œconomicus of orthodox economics. the individual in commons’s institutionalism is characterized as a social being. he or she has a will that acts on collective action, and on which conversely, the latter has a direct effect. collective action delimits individual action, both in terms of imagined possibilities and individual room to manoeuvre. this institutionalized mind is a being with bounded reason, more reasonable than rational, living in the future, and whose actions largely draw their meaning from customary rules. he or she is a being whose logic is based on negotiational psychology, deriving from its embeddedness in transactions, that is its commitment to different networks of action, or going concerns. lastly, the commonsian individual is a citizen with rights and duties which evolve according to the changing rules of these going concerns. economic status, including that of employment and economic insecurity 227 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 security, is defined by social positions of rights and duties, which are socially constructed and governed by formal and informal working rules. all these elements fundamentally confirm an ethical question. they are tools used to imagine the rules of what is reasonable, which serve to establish the economic status of security. therein lies the power of commons’s institutional theory for the analysis of conflicts surrounding income distribution and redistribution, as well as the attendant insecurity and poverty. given its ethical concerns, commonsian institutionalism converges with analyses that seek to bring out issues of equality and justice, such as feminist theory. the democratization of economic knowledge, aimed at giving people more power on economic decisions that affect them, is another of its ethical dimension. all this should be kept in mind in a period where every government, party or organization is seeking to devise the means to resolve the economic crisis. we know that the current worldwide crisis reveals the structural problems of finance-led capitalism. this specific capitalist configuration characterizes itself, among others, by an over-developed sophisticated financial sector detrimental to sustained employment, due to the fact that labour has become the main adjustment variable in economic processes. if, as desired by the ilo, this crisis—which has now degenerated in many countries into a crisis of employment, jeopardizing the economic status of important segments of the population and primarily those who are the most vulnerable—is a turning point for the goal of achieving decent work and social justice, it is clear that platforms of action should be rooted in a sound theoretical basis. in this regard, j. r. commons’s institutionalism shows that economic theory still has an important role to play in the social sciences. notes 1 the author thanks the reviewers whose comments have helped improve this article, and the translator, lise m. douville. 2 the founders of american institutionalism are t. veblen, j. r. commons, and w. c. mitchell. 3 “only a comparatively small percentage of articles in the journal of economic issues is devoted to presenting research findings about actual institutions and economic behavior. (…) what is lacking is good application of that theory in order to explain how some bit of the economy works, in a manner that is interesting and meaningful, in the policy sense, to a wide audience” (adams, 1994, p. 347). 4 b. e. kaufman (1998) also shows that two other scholarly contributions of commons have been widely neglected: his role as a founding member of the field of law and law and economics, and in the founding and early development of the academic field of personnel/human resource management. 5 in this country, commons’s work remained virtually unknown to economists. gaëtan pirou was the only one who introduced commons in his lectures at the école pratique des hautes études from 1935 to 1938, which have been published as: les nouveaux courants de la théorie économique aux états-unis. however, institutionnalist tradition has remained alive in the united states within the association for evolutionary economics (afee) (1965) and the association for institutional thought (afit) (1979). the main institutionalist publications are the journal of economic issues (1967) and the journal of institutional and theoretical economics. 6 p. adair (1991), “l’institutionnalisme américain. un chapitre clos dans l’histoire de la pensée économique.” cahiers du gratice, 1, mai, p. 1-37; m. renault (1992) “l’économique institutionnaliste et la philosophie pragmatique: la nature humaine, les totalités et les valeurs.” economies et sociétés, série pe oeconomia, n°17-8, pp. 171-201; 228 sylvie morel studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 cahiers d’economie politique. histoire de la pensée et théories. lectures de john r. commons, n°. 40/41 (2001); cahiers du gratice, n°. 19 (2000); economie & institutions, n° 1 (2002) & n° 2 (2003). 7 on this question, see morel, 2007. 8 the same analysis applies in the case of t. veblen, whose theory of the institution is intended to replace the old political economy; on this question, see gislain & steiner, (1995). 9 and i have not talked about the hermeticism displayed by mainstream economics relative to feminist economics: despite its abundance, the impact of this literature developed since the early 1990s is absolutely negligible (ferber & nelson, 2003). 10 this translation is mine. 11 importantly, institutionalist economists use methodological darwinism, which is completely different from social darwinism. 12 on links between commons’s work and john dewey’s “pragmatic instrumentalism,” see albert & ramstad, 1997; rutherford, 1983; tool, 1994. 13 “thus, values as such are not contaminates of inquiry; instrumentally warranted values are the necessary standards by which choices are made in the process of inquiry” (bush, 1993, p. 90). 14 as outlined by p. d. bush (1993, p. 98), the term “instrumentalism” refers to the instrumental function of ideas in the process of inquiry, as their value is not appraised in terms of an approximation to an ultimate truth, but for the capacity they possess for the solution of problems. 15 it is worth noting that this has also been called “instrumentalism,” but in a very different sense than pragmatist instrumentalism. in mainstream economics, instrumentalism only means that a theory is an instrument for prediction; see friedman, m. (1953). the methodology of positive economics, in m. friedman (ed.), essays in positive economics, chicago, university of chicago press, pp. 3-43. 16 this translation is mine. 17 terms in italics refer to commons’s concepts. 18 choice involves, in one and each act, three dimensions: “performance, the exertion of physical or economic power in one direction; avoidance, the rejection of the next best alternative performance; and forbearance, the choice of a lower as against a higher degree of power in the actual performance” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 19). 19 on commons’s conception of futurity, see gislain, 2002. 20 there are also two other kinds of transactions in commonsian institutionalism: strategic and routine transactions. they refer to what commons calls the limiting and complementary factors, used to depict the “human will in action.” 21 negotiational psychology is a social psychology with fundamental communicational components; on the relationship between american pragmatism, commonsian intitutionnalism and communication, see albert & ramstad, 1997; albert & ramstad, 1999; renault, 1999; 2007. 22 commons points out the fact that his formula of “social relations” is derived from the work of professor hohfeld of the yale law school: “the “social relations” are derived from hohfeld’s “legal relations,” but are enlarged to include economic and moral concerns, as well as the state—his political or legal concern” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 77). 23 this program, for which commons was the main instigator, was the first of its kind in the united states. it served as a model to the american unemployment insurance system, originally introduced in the framework of the social security act of 1935. 24 on commons’s reformist ideal of reasonability, and its ethical dimension, see bazzoli, 1999. 25 a status is “an expectation within which the individual adjusts his present behaviour” (commons, 1934/1990, p. 412). employment and economic insecurity 229 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 references adams, j. 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(1994). institutionalism: a useful foundation for feminist economics? in j. peterson & d. brown (eds.), the economic status of women under capitalism: institutional economics and feminist theory (pp. 19-34). aldershot, uk: edward elgar. the commonsian concepts: economic insecurity as an instituted process houston & morse final jan 23 17 correspondence address: serin d. houston, departments of geography and international relations, mount holyoke college, 50 college street, south hadley, massachusetts, 01075, usa; email: shouston@mtholyoke.edu issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 the ordinary and extraordinary: producing migrant inclusion and exclusion in us sanctuary movements serin d. houston mount holyoke college, usa charlotte morse mount holyoke college, usa abstract this article analyzes the sanctuary movement for central americans and the new sanctuary movement, two united states faith-based social movements, to think through the ways in which these pro-immigrant efforts paradoxically render migrants figuratively mute and often excluded from conceptualizations of the nation and its inhabitants even as they advocate for legal inclusion. we examine this tension of inclusion and exclusion through the frequent representation of migrants’ histories and christianity as extraordinary in the sanctuary movement for central americans, and migrants’ lives as ordinary in the new sanctuary movement. we identify two key processes by which this framing of migrants as extraordinary or ordinary limits the enactment of full social, political, and economic inclusion: (a) public support is principally granted to certain stories, religions, identities, and experiences; and (b) migrants are consistently positioned, and often celebrated, by sanctuary activists as “others.” the discourses of migrants as extraordinary or ordinary effectively generate broad involvement of faith communities in sanctuary work. yet, as we argue, this framing comes with the cost of limiting activist support only to particular groups of migrants, flattening the performances of migrant identities, and positioning migrants as perpetually exterior to the us. reliance on discourses of the extraordinary and ordinary, therefore, can truncate opportunities for making legible a range of migration experiences and extending belonging to all migrants, outcomes that arise in contrast to the purported inclusionary goals of the faith-based sanctuary social movements. keywords sanctuary; migration; religion; social movements; united states serin houston, charlotte morse studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 28 introduction in march 2012, members of the southside presbyterian church in tucson, arizona gathered to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the church’s public declaration as a sanctuary for central american refugees. to honor this involvement in the broader social movement known as the sanctuary movement for central americans (what we – like purcell (2007) and others – refer to as the sanctuary movement [sm]), congregation members watched footage of the movement’s actions, listened to stories from sanctuary activists, and learned about current immigration policy in the united states (paniagua, 2012). this was a day of honoring faith-based, pro-immigrant activism. in june 2014, a mexican family, comprised of daniel and karla neyoyruiz and their teenaged us-born son carlos,1 sought sanctuary in this very same church due to daniel’s deportation orders. decades had passed since the church offered a safe space for central american asylum seekers, but the symbol of the sanctuary provision remained potent. the family stayed at the church for a month while they awaited an appeal to daniel’s deportation ruling. he ultimately received a one-year stay of removal and a work permit (dickson, 2014). in june 2015, the family moved into sanctuary again in tucson because daniel’s one-year grace period had expired. after about ten days in sanctuary, daniel received another one-year stay of removal (taracena, 2015). such acts of advocating for and providing sanctuary to mixed-status families facing deportation underscore a primary purpose of the new sanctuary movement (nsm). although the sm and the nsm have differences given each movement’s distinct socio-historical contexts, they share a foundation in christian beliefs and practices. for instance, drawing upon liberation theology, both sanctuary movements emphasize bearing witness to atrocities and responding to a higher moral authority (abramsky, 2008; marfleet, 2011; nawyn, 2007). the ethos of “welcoming the stranger” (abramsky, 2008, p. 28) and “responding to your neighbor, [the] christ in each one of us” (willis-conger quoted in fife, corbett, merkt, & willis-conger, 1987, p. 21) are core tenets of the movements and reflect that faith-based social movements frequently anchor their decisions and actions in religious ideals. in the sm and nsm, the expressions of “loving thy neighbor” and welcoming the stranger help faith communities recognize that “living as a person of faith requires action” (hondagneu-sotelo, 2007, p. 11) and that immigration issues pertain to them even if they are white, middle class and us-born. the religious commonality and focus among movement members provides a connective tissue for activist work, which can then intensify the commitment to religious 1 we use actual names for people and places of worship involved in the sanctuary movements because we are analyzing the public narratives of sanctuary, and we want to acknowledge the work of activists and migrants as we examine the prominent narratives about migrants and sanctuary. the ordinary & the extraordinary studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 29 beliefs and the enactment of what is called by activists social justice. although social justice can vary in definition, it generally pertains to a deep concern with persecution and injustice (hondagneu-sotelo, 2007; marfleet, 2011; pirie, 1990). the fusion of social justice ideals and religious beliefs in the sanctuary movements is important for the activism and for our interpretations of the movements. specifically, we take seriously the point that “religion is a human practice” (hondagneu-sotelo, 2007, p. 7), and think through how proimmigrant sanctuary efforts undertaken in the name of social justice can paradoxically render migrants figuratively mute and often excluded from conceptualizations of the nation and its inhabitants even as these efforts advocate for legal inclusion. we examine this tension of inclusion and exclusion through the frequent representation of migrants’ histories and christianity as extraordinary in the sm, and migrants’ lives as ordinary in the nsm. we identify two key processes by which this framing of migrants as extraordinary or ordinary limits the enactment of full social, political, and economic inclusion: (a) public support is principally granted to certain stories, religions, identities, and experiences; and (b) migrants are consistently positioned, and often celebrated, by activists as “others.” the discourses of migrants as extraordinary or ordinary effectively generate broad involvement of faith communities in sanctuary work. yet, as we argue, this framing comes with the cost of limiting activist support only to particular groups of migrants, flattening the performances of migrant identities, and positioning migrants as perpetually exterior to the us. reliance on discourses of the extraordinary and ordinary, therefore, can truncate opportunities for making legible a range of migration experiences and extending belonging to all migrants, outcomes that arise in contrast to the purported inclusionary goals of the faith-based sanctuary social movements. examining the exclusions that emerge alongside efforts for inclusion demonstrates how social justice in theory can depart from social justice in practice. to unpack the narrative of the extraordinary migrant and its influence and impact, we first analyze the sm and illustrate how the repeated focus on the extraordinary hardship and christianity of migrants abbreviated opportunities for migrants to articulate their identities on their own terms. in the second half of the paper, we demonstrate how the discursive framing of the ordinariness of migrants’ lives in the nsm excludes many migrants from consideration of sanctuary, and makes the supported migrants visible in limited capacities. such a reading of the sanctuary movements illustrates the power of narrative framing and the delicate balance between crafting archetypes for activist purposes and negatively simplifying complex life experiences. serin houston, charlotte morse studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 30 extraordinary hardship and devoted christians: the sanctuary movement for central americans the sanctuary movement (sm) of the 1980s and 1990s emerged in response to the migration of people from central america – primarily el salvador and guatemala – into the us as a result of political violence and oppression. the motivation for this movement, as described by sanctuary activists themselves, stemmed from a personal violation of a sense of morality and justice, and a desire to help people who had been persecuted (chinchilla, hamilton, & loucky, 2009; fife et al., 1987; golden & mcconnell, 1986; marfleet, 2011; pirie, 1990). the ways in which these impulses translated into a discursive framing of migrants is what we analyze here. in particular, we focus on how the repeated emphasis on the extraordinary hardship and extraordinary christianity of migrants helped garner support for the sm. at the same time, we suggest that this framing excluded migrants from narratives of the us as a nation and limited the representational space available for articulating migrants’ experiences and identities. before we develop our analysis of the sm, we briefly contextualize the movement. the united states’ cold war policy of containing communism caused the us government under president ronald reagan to fund and otherwise support authoritarian regimes in central america that were opposing communist revolutionaries (booth, wade, & walker, 2010). as a result, many central american citizens fled their home countries and sought political asylum in the us. despite the refugee act of 1980, which should have eliminated geographical and ideological biases in asylum acceptance, the us government classified many central american applicants as economic migrants rather than possible refugees fleeing from a “wellfounded fear” (unhcr, 2010, p. 14) of persecution. on this basis, the us government rejected the asylum claims of many central americans (crittenden, 1988, p. 23). outrage about the us government’s role in the central american wars, the constant flow of migrants attempting passage into the us, and the deportation practices that followed helped set the stage for the public formation of the sm (bau, 1985; crittenden, 1988; davidson, 1988; fife et al., 1987; van ham, 2009). specifically, on march 24, 1982, the second anniversary of salvadoran archbishop oscar romero’s assassination by a rightist death squad, southside presbyterian church in tucson, five san francisco east bay congregations, and several other churches openly and publicly declared themselves sanctuaries for central american asylum seekers (coutin, 1993; lorentzen, 1991; ridgley, 2010). these declarations drew attention to the sm as a growing forum of political activism. sanctuary activists assisted migrants across the us-mexican border, housed migrants in places of worship and safe houses, provided material, religious, and legal support, and publicly spoke out about the plight of fleeing central americans and the injustices of us immigration policies. from the beginning, the the ordinary & the extraordinary studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 31 movement had strongholds across the us-mexico border region and california. over time, the sm extended to include tens of thousands of people and comprised a sanctuary network spanning 34 states. lorentzen (1991, p.14) describes it as the “largest civil disobedience movement in north america since the 1960s.” the practice of providing sanctuary to central americans in religious spaces, depicted as harboring illegal aliens in section 274 of the immigration and nationality act (ina), happened enough times that the federal government began to take serious note of the sm. as a result, in 1985 the immigration and naturalization services (ins, now the us citizenship and immigration services) implemented operation sojourner. during this covert operation, federal government employees entered sanctuary communities in arizona to gather information about the evasion of federal law (mccartney, 1985). among the most notable outcomes of these infiltrations were the sanctuary trials in which members of the movement were accused, and a few convicted, for “alien smuggling” charges (carro, 1989). subsequent federal and legal battles led to some gains for migrants. most significantly, in 1990 the us congress introduced temporary protected status (tps), and in 1991 the settlement of the class action lawsuit american baptist churches v. thornburgh created abc status, so named after the plaintiffs. tps granted salvadorans who had entered the us before september 19, 1990, 18 months of legal residency, and abc granted an impartial interview and adjudication for salvadorans and guatemalans present in the us. combined, the two statuses entitled all salvadoran and guatemalans already present in the us to a fair adjudication of asylum petitions (coutin, 2011, p. 581; nawyn, 2007, p. 143). although these designations did not secure full political asylum, tps and abc recipients did achieve temporary legal status in the us. these legal cases illustrate how the sm gained national traction and recognition. the movement focused conversations at the federal scale on immigration policy reform and revealed the power of social movements in helping migrants secure some safety and possible legal status. although we recognize the significance of temporary protective measures and do not want to minimize the crucial role that sanctuary provided, we now draw attention to dominant descriptions of migrants within the sm. perla and coutin (2012, pp. 80, 88) discuss how the ascription of refugee identity to salvadoran migrants by sanctuary activists provided a sense of legal legitimacy and a forum through which to connect with us audiences. simultaneously, they acknowledge that the refugee label constrained migrants’ lived experiences and their recognition as important activists in the movement, as they were expected to perform the role of refugee in ways that fit dominant us expectations. similarly, we argue that the concerted focus on telling stories about the extraordinary hardships endured by migrants and their extraordinary christianity reduced the possibilities for other stories to emerge and for migrants to feel included in the sm. a key part of movement serin houston, charlotte morse studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 32 mobilization rested on stories (chinchilla et al., 2009), so the potency of the extraordinary migrant narrative is important to consider. founders of the sm quickly realized the power of stories to stimulate support and used that power as a tool for movement building. consequently, migrants, often described as “prophetic witnesses” (pirie, 1990, p. 382), delivered testimonials to faith communities about perilous border crossings and violence and injustice in their home countries, in order to raise awareness about their situations and expand the reach of the sm (chinchilla et al., 2009; cunningham, 1995; golden and mcconnell, 1986). migrants “provided direct and tangible evidence of conditions most parishioners were otherwise aware of only indirectly and constituted a direct link between the humanitarian and the educational goals of the movement” (chinchilla et al., 2009, p. 107). pirie (1990, p. 381) explains that sanctuary activists experienced a “traumatic awakening” to the brutalities of the wars and the us government’s involvement in such violence primarily through hearing migrants’ stories. john fife, one of the founders of the sm, recalls that prior to meeting central american migrants, he could not have placed el salvador on the map. yet, once he “had to hear about death squads, and churches being machine-gunned, and about priests being murdered” (fife et al., 1987, p. 22), he learned about the region and was called to action in sustained and extensive ways. places and people became visible to him and others through stories of trauma and violence. the repeated and personalized recitation of trauma and persecution by migrants was an important tool for the awareness raising and mobilizing efforts of the sm. yet, such public narratives required migrants primarily to identify themselves vis-à-vis their own trauma and locate themselves as thusly distinctive from their audiences. such practices reveal how efforts made to generate inclusion and make migrants knowable, so as to prompt empathy and support from a broader faith community, also ironically reinscribed migrants as traumatized others. the use of personal accounts of trauma to inspire social activism in other people raises concerns about what gets circulated and publicly consumed in the name of a wider mission. stacey merkt, another early member of the sm, states that hearing the stories from migrants enabled people of faith to show their courage, overcome their fears, and live out their faiths (fife et al., 1987, p. 27). such an assertion indicates that migrants’ stories of extraordinary hardship were often mobilized to give us citizens a chance to deepen their faiths. this practice of capitalizing on a typecast of trauma makes us question the extent to which the goal of advocating for migrant inclusion was undermined by the desire to extend activists’ faiths through encounters with migrants. we surmise that such outcomes do not bear out social justice aspirations. migrants could be subject to deportation if they made themselves physically visible (juffer, 2009), so sanctuary activists often shared migrants’ stories on their behalf (caminero-santagelo, 2012). this marks another venue within which migrants became primarily symbolic and useful for what the ordinary & the extraordinary studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 33 they represented through their experiences. literally muting the voices of migrants themselves, albeit important for safety concerns, points out how othering can happen through material practices. although the discursive framing of the migrants as extraordinary due to their hardships held sway in meetings within faith-communities, the physical hiding and silencing of migrants also situated asylum seekers as extraordinary. if their personal biographies had not been as they were, migrants might have been able to stand and tell their own stories, in the varied and multi-faceted forms that a citizen enjoys. caminero-santagelo (2012, p. 102) suggests that this kind of appropriation and dramatization of migrants’ personal narratives became, on the one hand, a strategic “way of speaking, as the subaltern, that could for once be heard by the american public.” on the other hand, this abstraction of stories from embodied experiences positioned migrants as silent others. the practice of speaking on behalf of others also reduced the literal voice that migrants had within the movement. migrants noted “objectification” and “hierarchies between those who defined and those who were defined” (coutin, 1993, p. 126) in such encounters. the repetition of stories about the extraordinary adversities that migrants suffered further entrenched normative assumptions within the sm about whose stories were profound enough to stimulate support and recognition for the movement. migrants who did not fit the script were often excluded from the movement. for instance, in october 1982, tucson sanctuary workers sent a pair of mayan adolescents from guatemala to sanctuary activists in chicago to receive sanctuary. however, the next week the tucson sanctuary group received a letter from chicago explaining that the pair “had no understanding of the political conflict in central america and were therefore not useful” (crittenden, 1988, p. 91). the teenagers did not convey the narrative of migration that underpinned much of the sanctuary work. their personal stories, though riddled with trauma, did not follow the anticipated script of extraordinary horrors and violence. furthermore, they were mayans who did not speak spanish, so the translation needed to communicate with english-speakers was more complex than activists accustomed to spanishenglish translations could easily orchestrate. purportedly, the adolescents were put back on a bus to tucson, but never arrived. sanctuary workers in tucson assumed that they had been deported, as they never heard of these teens again (crittenden, 1988). the tucson activists deemed the narratives and experiences of these adolescents extraordinary and worthy of sanctuary. in contract, the chicagobased activists heard the testimonials of these teens differently, and did not see the adolescents as useful representations of the need for sanctuary. therefore, the teens, as not extraordinary enough to be given the chance for sanctuary, were sent back. as this example shows, the narrative of the extraordinary migrant shrank the space available for describing migration, one’s life experiences, and the need for safety. consequently, exclusions emerged alongside efforts for inclusion. serin houston, charlotte morse studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 34 another key avenue through which migrant exclusion unfolded alongside aspirations for migrant inclusion was the sanctuary activists’ descriptions of migrants’ christianity. as we explain below, migrants’ devotion to christianity was seen as more pure and authentic than that of us-born activists. we understand this emphasis on migrants’ christianity as another channel through which the narrative of the extraordinary migrant surfaced. the sense of awe articulated by sanctuary activists about migrants’ christianity carried particular weight because of the centrality of religion to the sm. as with the descriptions of migrants’ hardships, the celebration of migrants’ christianity helped generate support for the sm and perpetuate notions that migrants were different (i.e., other) than the christian us activists engaged in the sanctuary movement. therefore, even though accolades about the purity of migrants’ christianity were meant to support and include migrants, they also worked to position migrants as outside the parameters of us christian practices. in this way, the esteemed extraordinary christianity of the migrants drew activists to them and their cause and excluded migrants from the us-based faith communities. the migrants’ extraordinariness in terms of religion prompted both support and exclusion. john fife explains that after he went to central america for the first time in 1982, he became “converted”: “i discovered a new way of reading scripture, of seeing the community of faith under enormous pressure and persecution respond with courage and faith” (fife et al., 1987, p. 26). he further notes that “covenant communities” throughout the us experienced “spiritual reformation,” akin to the 16th century reformation, through encounters with migrants gaining assistance in the sm (fife et al., 1987, p. 26). fife is not alone in his depictions of the religious practices of central americans as prompting conversions and spiritual reformation, descriptions that we understand as proxies for the extraordinary. many sanctuary activists experienced a “conversion” (coutin, 1993) or “baptism” (purcell, 2007) through the figurative and literal border crossings necessitated by their participation in the sm. activists claimed that migrants were closer to god than the white, middle-class activists, and therefore were sources of knowledge and inspiration (coutin, 1993, p. 71). sanctuary activists further named faith, truth, life, spirit, courage, and strength as attributes the central americans could teach them, while saying they (i.e., the activists) only offered tangible items, like material aid, technology, and nutrition to the migrants (coutin, 1993, p. 155). as witness to this perspective, bob, an involved activist, explained, “i’m not there to minister to [the central americans]. they minister to me” (as quoted in purcell, 2007, p. 127). from our vantage point, this representation of migrants’ christianity both homogenized migrants and positioned them as others. it also situated migrants as vehicles for encountering and then mimicking profound christian devotion. migrants served as the terrain through which sanctuary activists could rekindle and expand their religious practices and give purpose to their days. possibilities for political solidarity, and the recognition of a the ordinary & the extraordinary studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 35 plurality of experiences, were minimized when such perceptions and practices prevailed, because of the uneven relationship created between activists and migrants. the need for migrants to fulfill the role of providing conversion experiences meant that there were incentives for migrants to perform christianity in ways that enabled activists to extend their own faith practices. we contend that a commitment to such a framing of migrants as extraordinary christians promoted othering and reduced chances for coalition building and agency, key components of social justice. the sanctuary movement for central americans arose from the concerns about systemic violence and injustices expressed by us-born, primarily white, people of faith. drawing upon religious ideals to guide and compel this movement, sanctuary activists assisted migrants in crossing the us/mexico border, getting out of detention, and gaining access to the us legal system. stories of extraordinary horror and violence inspired support for and grew the movement. at the same time, the repeated narratives of trauma reduced migrants to their experiences of atrocities, and diminished the possibility for articulating other identities, for forging commonality with citizen activists, and for claiming self-authorship and voice. public support was principally granted to people who shared a particular narrative of trauma, one that became more normative and entrenched over time. additionally, the celebration of migrants’ christianity and the associated experiences of conversion paradoxically further positioned migrants as others. migrants were perceived as religiously different than sanctuary activists, even though most identified as christian, and therefore served as sites for deepening activists’ christianity. moreover, although migrants were celebrated for their religious beliefs and devotion, this status situated them as exterior to us-based faith communities. a key stated goal of the sm was greater migrant inclusion within the us; yet, by analyzing the narrative of the extraordinary migrant put forward in the sm, it becomes evident that exclusions materialized alongside efforts for inclusion. these examples from the sm collectively raise questions about what non-reductive frameworks social movements could use to gain support, build solidarity, and achieve political and social change. these questions persist in the case of the nsm and the narrative of the ordinary migrant. another ordinary american: mixed-status families and the new sanctuary movement the new sanctuary movement (nsm) strives “to defend, protect, and advocate for immigrant families’ rights – lifting up their humanity and spotlighting the immoral and, some would argue, illegal immigration policies that would rip families apart” (purcell, 2007, p. 4). through this focus, the nsm principally advocates for granting legal status to unauthorized migrants, particularly parents of us citizen children, by highlighting the serin houston, charlotte morse studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 36 hardship and trauma induced by “unauthorized existence, familial separations, and living in fear of deportation” (caminero-santagelo, 2012, p. 93). in drawing attention to specific families as symbols of the horrors of deportation-caused family separation, the nsm aims to humanize immigration debates, call for comprehensive immigration reform, and enable religious conversion through changing us-born faith communities’ “hearts and minds” (yukich, 2013a, p. 43) about immigration. much like members of the sm, nsm activists express faith-based motivations and often justify their participation in the movement with religious language (abramsky, 2008; kotin, dyrness, & irazábal, 2011). descriptions of and justifications for the nsm state the need to “welcome the stranger” as described in leviticus 19, “love thy neighbor as thyself” as outlined in luke 10, and “learn to do good, seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow” (new sanctuary movement, 2015, p. 3) as stated in isaiah 1.2 despite the significant shared religious foundations, an important discursive difference exists between the sm and nsm. specifically, while the sm focused on the extraordinary hardship and christianity of central american asylum seekers, the nsm rationalizes its advocacy and builds support for the movement through an emphasis on the stated ordinariness of unauthorized migrants in mixed-status families. migrants living in sanctuary are routinely framed as just like every other american. they are depicted in public stories and media coverage as the average (and reified) us resident: heterosexual, married, with children, and employed (salvatierra, 2007, p. 3; yukich, 2013a). the power granted to the narrative that migrants are analogous to ordinary citizens means that migrants are encouraged to emphasize their roles as workers, husbands or wives, and parents. consequently, there is limited space available for plural and alternative narratives of the self to emerge and for migrants who may not fit into these categories to be seen. setting up the evaluative metric of who is ordinary and thus worth supporting, and who is not (yukich, 2013b), illustrates how othering practices unfold through such framing. although such labeling effectively distinguishes migrants represented as ordinary from those who raise concern, the categorical ordering also demonstrates how migrants are persistently located as exterior to the us and within a constrained representation. even though caminero-santagelo (2012, p. 93) notes that the nsm is an “effort to challenge the exclusion of the undocumented from the nation-state,” the use of the ordinary migrant frame does not wholly advance this political ambition. indeed, as we show in this section, the narrative of unauthorized migrants living in sanctuary as ordinary simultaneously contributes to exclusionary practices and creates calls for inclusionary measures. before we 2 leviticus and isaiah are books in the old testament bible; luke is a book (one of the gospels) in the new testament bible. the ordinary & the extraordinary studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 37 examine the ordinary migrant frame, we offer some context for this contemporary sanctuary movement. the wider political anti-immigration climate and the rise of the religious right had significant impacts on the formation of the nsm (yukich, 2013a). within this broad ambit, different origin stories of the movement exist. yukich (2013a), for example, explains that a december 2005 letter to president george w. bush from cardinal roger mahoney, archbishop of los angeles, awakened the “moral imagination” (salvatierra, 2007, p. 2) of people in the us and initiated conversations about the development of a renewed sanctuary movement. in contrast, in an interview with alternative news site truthout, a national grassroots coordinator for immigrant rights at church world service traces the nsm’s origins to the swift raids of 2006,3 and the subsequent activist responses (bader, 2014). highlighting a different place and year, irazábal and dyrness (2010) identify the nsm’s origin as a january 2007 meeting of various faith organizations in washington dc to listen to testimonies of mixed-status families grappling with the threat of deportation. bell (2010) suggests that the movement actually began in chicago in 2006 when elvira arellano, an unauthorized mexican migrant with a us citizen son, sought sanctuary in the adalberto united methodist church after receiving deportation orders. arellano, often described as “the [eventual] poster child for the movement” (abramsky, 2008, p. 26), lived in sanctuary with her son for a year. when she was deported in august 2007 after attending an immigrant right’s event in los angeles, outrage about her experiences sparked further growth of the movement (abramsky, 2008). she returned to the us to seek asylum in 2014 and sought sanctuary in the adalberto church once again (engler, 2014). her persistence in protesting immigration laws that separate mixed-status families has caused people to liken her to rosa parks (thayer, rodriguez, & perez jr., 2014). irrespective of the precise beginning of this faith-based social movement, the focus on mixed-status families facing separation due to deportation orders, and the mandate to expand public and personal understandings of religion through political activism, underpin the nsm. faith communities partner with migrants as a way to personalize immigration and help congregants realize that immigration questions are religious and moral ones (yukich, 2013a). as of 2016, the nsm consisted of over 300 faith communities in twelve cities throughout the us (sanctuary2014, 2016). the specific manner in which mixed-status families interface with nsm activists around sanctuary has changed somewhat over the last ten years. for instance, in the early years of the nsm, activists focused on hosting in sanctuary “representative families who would become the face of the immigrant reality” (salvatierra, 2007, p. 2). these families usefully 3 the swift raids refers to the coordinated immigration and customs enforcement (ice) raids on six meat-processing plants owned by swift & company in six states. about 1,300 unauthorized migrants working at the plants were arrested during these raids (bader, 2014). serin houston, charlotte morse studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 38 embodied the struggles for mixed-status families that compelled the nsm, and therefore served as figureheads. as dyrness and irazábal (2007) explain, “by showcasing the circumstances of a few individuals who voluntarily come forward to claim sanctuary, it [the nsm] hopes to call attention to the plight of the millions of immigrants who live in fear of arrest and separation from their families.” members of these initial representative families occasionally lived in sanctuary at a place of worship because immigration and customs enforcement (ice) seldom enters schools or places of worship to complete arrests (us immigration and customs enforcement, 2011, p. 2). more commonly, nsm activists welcomed unauthorized migrant parents facing deportation into a community of sanctuary, where congregants would accompany migrants to detention hearings, advocate for stays of removal, take care of children, and offer emotional and spiritual support during trying times (yukich, 2013a). the 2014 resurgence of the nsm still values the practice of providing sanctuary, but the sanctuary seekers are seemingly more self-selecting, rather than hand-picked as was the case earlier. for the most part, these individuals seek sanctuary in places of worship in an effort to resist deportation orders. although the representative families profiled in the early days of the nsm had national origins from all over the world (yukich, 2013a), the people living in sanctuary since 2014 have predominantly identified as latino/a. as a 2015 organizing pamphlet circulated to congregations and faith communities considering or engaging in sanctuary explains, “sanctuary can be utilized as a way to protect central american children and families from being deported back to violence and persecution” (new sanctuary movement, 2015, p. 4). this regional focus stems from noted concern about the rise in unaccompanied minors from central america coming into the us and the growth in raids in many latino/a communities (new sanctuary movement, 2015). the places of worship now affiliated with the nsm predominantly identify as christian (yukich, 2013a). despite some of these variations between the early years and current expressions of the nsm, the frame of the ordinary migrant remains. the ordinariness of migrants matters both in the public representations of mixed-status families and in the process of securing sanctuary. as a nsm organizing pamphlet from 2007 indicates, not all families are appropriate for sanctuary. the pamphlet recommends recruiting families with the following characteristics: …a good work record and a history of contributing to their community. it is also helpful when families can speak from the heart about their love for their children, their neighborhood, their community and this country, as well as their religious faith. (new sanctuary movement, 2007, p. 2) the underlying assumption in this description is that families who possess such qualities are easier to help because they are ultimately more legible to members of the faith communities that would support sanctuary. as one of the ordinary & the extraordinary studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 39 the early goals of the nsm was to build compassionate relations between us-born, predominantly white, members of faith communities and unauthorized migrants, relatability between the groups was key. not just any unauthorized migrant would do. anyone entering into sanctuary should be ordinary enough (i.e., married, heterosexual, parent, and employed as indicated in the description above) to be familiar as a proto-neighbor or community member for the us-born activists (houston, 2016; see also yukich, 2013a). put differently, “it is critically important for the average american to hear the stories of immigrants that break negative stereotypes” (new sanctuary movement, 2007, p. 2). ensuring that families in sanctuary could perform such work through their ordinariness was therefore crucial for the movement. to further build bridges between migrants and citizen activists, the pamphlet cites the importance of selecting families for sanctuary who have clean legal records (or at worst, distant and minor infractions), and families who have a high likelihood of gaining a stay of removal (new sanctuary movement, 2007, pp. 2-3). the nsm legal briefing advises that families with a possible avenue for circumventing deportation may “need sanctuary for a shorter time period than families without potential relief from deportation, and the end result of granting sanctuary may be less traumatic than offering sanctuary to a family that inevitably faces deportation” (center for human rights and constitutional law, 2007, p. 3). in other words, the recommendation is to offer sanctuary to individuals for whom a stay of removal is fairly likely. similarly, an updated 2015 organizing pamphlet recommends individuals who face deportation, but have a strong chance of securing prosecutorial discretion, as preferable sanctuary dwellers. indeed, migrants who “have a reasonable potential of receiving a stay of removal, order of supervision or some other form of administrative relief” (new sanctuary movement, 2015, p. 6) are especially welcomed into sanctuary. only a handful of families met these stringent criteria and lived in sanctuary during the initial years of the nsm (dyrness and irazábal, 2007). one key participant and representative member of early sanctuary was liliana “santuario” who, with her infant son, moved into sanctuary at an united church of christ in simi valley, ca in may 2007 to avoid deportation and separation from her us citizen children and husband (abramsky, 2008, p. 26). her residence in the church caused sustained and vocal counter-protest. in the midst of cries that she was “illegal” and a “criminal,” liliana and her supporters sought to demonstrate her humanness to the opposition. put differently, they sought to blur the distinction between citizen and noncitizen by highlighting her ordinary – and recognizable – identities as a mother, a wife, and a long-standing community member (jcfjcjcfjcf, 2011). drawing on religious tenets, activists emphasized that liliana and her family were all children of god (jcfjcjcfjcf, 2011; yukich, 2013a). indeed, this mixed-status family was similar to any other family except that they faced the devastating prospect of separation due to serin houston, charlotte morse studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 40 deportation. after three years of living in sanctuary, liliana was granted deferred action status. for the following five years, her attorney and supporters worked to transform her status into something more permanent. they were successful, and in late 2015 liliana received a green card (larkman, 2016). liliana’s story is one that shows how sanctuary can lead to changes in individual legal status and can transform communities’ understanding of and personal commitment to immigration reform. through tireless advocacy and support, liliana gained formal inclusion within the us. she can now narrate her own story of self and more fully and publicly perform her range of identities. yet, this was not always the case. abramsky describes the early days of liliana’s journey in sanctuary: liliana, a beautiful young woman, is always surrounded by handlers. she claims to be keeping a diary, in english, designed to help her learn the language, but the diary, which her handlers urge her to read to me, has clearly been written by a publicist. “this is a country of opportunity,” she reads aloud, her handler correcting her pronunciation. “but where is the love and compassion? when i think of the united states, i think of the statue of liberty. give us your poor and free and huddled masses. i yearn to breathe free.” liliana’s handler looks at her. “very good. excellent,” she tells her. (abramsky, 2008, p. 27) this depiction of liliana illustrates our central point about the exclusions that surfaced alongside efforts at inclusion. the representational space available for liliana to tell her own story in her own language and to describe her reasons for seeking sanctuary was virtually non-existent when she lived in sanctuary. instead, she became visible within the public sphere principally through a script, which drew upon cultural referents, such as the statue of liberty and the trope of the land of opportunity, that may have carried more weight with the citizen audience than liliana herself. this management of public image ultimately constrained the discursive space available for narrating her story and explaining migration through an individualized and intersectional lens. additionally, even though liliana moved into sanctuary in hopes of securing long-term legal inclusion within the us, being in sanctuary required her to repeatedly identify – and become known as – an unauthorized migrant, which situated liliana as exterior to the nation. this positionality and praxis incited vocal opposition to liliana and her sanctuary, which further marked her as other. after many years, liliana’s goal of political inclusion reached fruition. yet, the process of securing this inclusion also produced exclusions, both for liliana herself and for the wider community of unauthorized migrants who remained invisible due to the nsm’s concentration on representative mixed-status families with specific characteristics. the positioning of migrants’ lives as ordinary is still prevalent in the nsm. for example, arturo armando hernández garcia, husband of ana and father of two daughters (the youngest of whom is a us citizen), lived in sanctuary in the first unitarian church of denver, colorado, from october 2014 the ordinary & the extraordinary studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 41 through july 2015 (mcghee, 2015). public storytelling by journalists and sanctuary activists alike underscored that hernández garcia was an ordinary person who worked hard, cared for his family, and contributed to society. for example, melanie asmar wrote the following in a story about hernández garcia: he got a driver’s license the last year it was legal for undocumented immigrants to do so before the law changed again in 2014, and renewed it regularly. he paid his taxes and never used false documents or a stolen social security number. he learned english and eventually started his own flooring business, negotiating to win jobs installing tile and ceramic floors in big apartment complexes. (asmar, 2015) articles about hernández garcia emphasize that a 2010 felony charge of menacing with a weapon at a workplace altercation resulted in a jury verdict of not guilty (asmar, 2015). bridging the distance between citizen and noncitizen through explaining and rationalizing any tarnish on a record is important for acquiring support. narratives of ordinariness help with this project as a groundswell petition on hernández garcia’s behalf indicates: “arturo is a loving husband, father of two children and small business owner who has lived in the us for 15 years” (groundswell, 2014a). the stories about hernández garcia underscore his ordinariness as heterosexual, married, a father, and a business owner to draw attention to the unfairness of his deportation situation (houston, 2016). similarly, the minor traffic violation that brought rosa robles loreto, who lived in sanctuary for 15 months in tucson, arizona, at the southside presbyterian church (prendergast, 2015), into the sightline of authorities is downplayed in her public narrative. advocacy on her behalf stresses, “rosa has two beautiful boys, a loving husband, and has lived in tucson since 1999. she is an active member of the community, volunteers at her church, her sons’ school, and their baseball teams” (groundswell, 2014b). according to these narratives, she is basically an ordinary citizen in every way except legal status. the dimensions of her life that become visible do so principally through the sanctioned and selective typology of the ordinary migrant. the current mobilization around jose juan federico moreno, who moved into sanctuary in chicago in april 2016, echoes this narrative pattern. descriptions of moreno highlight his roles as a “loving husband and father of five us-born children” (groundswell, 2016). his charge of an aggravated dui (driving under the influence of alcohol) is explained away within the context of his unauthorized status. emphasizing moreno’s identities as a dad and husband works to elicit empathy for his case. as all of these examples make plain, the narratives of migrants living in sanctuary “are less about violence and terror than about the quotidian, ordinary life they have built … we have been here for years; we have contributed to the society, our communities, and the national economy; and we have raised our children here” (caminero-santagelo, 2012, p. 96). throughout the nsm, the focus on serin houston, charlotte morse studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 42 sanctuary seekers as ordinary community and family members who embody moral lives in the us, but now confront potential devastation, or death, through deportation, has been persistent. when living in sanctuary, migrants and their families are offered up for public consumption through scripted sound bites. the ordinary frame becomes a largely depersonalized rendition of individuals because migrants are primarily described as married, employed, heterosexual, and with children. other family constellations and life histories do not achieve recognition in such public storytelling. consequently, each person and case sounds the same. even though the nsm works with a few families as representatives of a wider group, this handful becomes ubiquitous in their depictions of ordinariness. this leads us to question the primary purpose of providing sanctuary – is it mostly to grow the nsm and raise awareness about unfair immigration policies through assisting particular migrants with relatively uncomplicated (and presumably successful) cases? or, perhaps it is to provide a venue for white, politically progressive, and religious citizens to become more informed about immigration issues? where is the concern for the unauthorized migrants facing deportation who do not fit the sanctuary criteria? admittedly, the focus on the ordinariness of migrants has been effective in certain cases; robles loreto and hernández garcia learned they were low priorities for ice, so felt safe enough to leave sanctuary, and liliana got a green card. still, we argue that the use of the ordinary motif also curtails the possibilities for expressing the self in multiple ways and enacting inclusion and belonging for the dynamic and multi-faceted millions of unauthorized migrants residing in the us. even though the nsm works to include unauthorized migrants, the primary way of doing so (i.e., by emphasizing ordinariness) also excludes many people and life experiences. much like the use of the extraordinary in the sanctuary movement, this approach ultimately minimizes the space available for articulating a plurality of identities (beyond heterosexual, married, employed, and parent) and sets up boundaries around who is worthy of advocacy and inclusion within imaginaries of the nation. this strikes us as detrimental, since migrants are pushed further to the margins of public recognition if they do not fit the anticipated script, and migrants’ own sense of agency and autonomy is significantly diminished when they have to adhere to the predetermined narrative of the ordinary migrant. conclusion in this paper, we critically examine the narrative frame of the extraordinary and ordinary migrant within the sm and nsm to unpack how these two faith-based social movements worked to advance, and in the process also constrained, the goal of expanded legal status for unauthorized migrants. by the ordinary & the extraordinary studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 43 paying particular attention to the underlying logics and assumptions of these narratives, we reveal how experiences of otherness for migrants are instantiated and how support for unauthorized migrants is principally granted to people who fit within the categories (and associated expectations) of the extraordinary or ordinary migrant. this analysis, therefore, demonstrates how the sanctuary movements produce inclusion and exclusion for migrants, and shows how pressures to have viability and longevity as a movement can undermine the goals of contesting discrimination and marginalization. highlighting how the narratives of the extraordinary and ordinary migrant emerge in the sanctuary movements helps explain why and how inclusionary social justice ambitions do not always unfold as intended. the formation of the sanctuary movements stemmed from overarching concerns with persecution and injustice. yet, efforts made to remedy these situations often relied on narrow typecasts of migrants that were not necessarily beneficial to individuals or migrant communities more broadly. as a result, it is unsurprising to us that few immigrants or people of color participate in the nsm as activists (yukich, 2013a). yukich (2013a) reports that many immigrants and immigrant activist groups feel unwelcome because of the few people of color in the nsm, the particular christian overtones, and the commitment to evolving the faith of us-born people through interactions with unauthorized migrants. the desire to deepen the faiths of us-born activists illustrates once again how priorities of the us-born often supersede the needs of migrants and direct the mechanisms for social change. using the ordinary and extraordinary to analyze the sanctuary social movements also raises questions about activism and social change tactics. an organizing pamphlet from the nsm stresses that, “we are not the leaders of this movement, those in sanctuary are. … we should always remember that sanctuary is not something that we do for our undocumented brothers and sisters, it is something we do with them” (new sanctuary movement, 2015, p. 7, emphasis in the original). although this sentiment hints at a solidarity approach, in practice sanctuary seekers are very beholden to the faith communities supporting them financially, emotionally, legally, and spiritually and do not have much latitude in the narratives of their life experiences, as our many examples attest. bagelman (2016, p. xvi) depicts people living in sanctuary as occupying a “suspended state” as they are neither here nor there and instead are waiting for some sort of adjudication on their case. she, along with others, describes living in sanctuary as a “sometimes prison-like form of protection” (bagelman, 2016, p. xvii), as people are physically constrained within the boundaries of the safe sanctuary space. in such a setting, where questions of power and access are dramatically skewed, it is easy to understand how the practice of charitable helping adopts a more prominent role than solidarity. still, we question what sanctuary activism could look like if a solidarity ethos of working together and a commitment to self-reflexivity came to the fore. how might a default to easy depictions of the extraordinary or ordinary migrant fade away with serin houston, charlotte morse studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 44 such an approach? what might social justice mean, and what form would it assume in such instances? although we cannot predict what a reconfigured sanctuary movement based upon equity and solidarity would look like in practice, we can identify patterns wherein sanctuary is reductive even when applied in secular settings, such as the case of sanctuary legislation, “local immigration policies, resolutions and/or ordinances that counter exclusionary state or federal legislation” (houston & lawrence-weilmann, 2015, p. 101). many of the provisions offered to migrants in sanctuary legislation are legitimized because of the economic contributions of migrants or the ways in which migrants physically embody multiculturalism within a city (houston & lawrence-weilmann, 2015). the dependence on such “neoliberal logics” (houston & lawrence-weilmann, 2015, p. 103) within sanctuary legislation demonstrates that both faith-based and secular engagements with sanctuary paradoxically rely on typecasts of migrants in their efforts to produce broader support for migrants themselves and for immigration reform. thus, we believe that sanctuary as a currently practiced form of governance or social movement limits the extent of political, social, and economic inclusion of migrants. dynamic social change will require refashioned approaches and narrative frames that cultivate solidarity and belonging in policy realms and social mobilizations. such transformations could help reshape the terrain of immigration reform debates and the daily material realities for many migrants in the us. these transitions would be worthy, in our estimation, of the description “extraordinary,” and they would qualitatively remake ordinary daily life. acknowledgments the authors would like to thank olivia lawrence-weilmann, kiana lussier, and quinn wallace for many inspiring and fascinating conversations about sanctuaries. they also extend their thanks to ned houston and richard wright for commenting on earlier drafts of this article. the anonymous reviewers and editor david butz supplied incredibly helpful and extensive feedback, which made this paper much stronger. the authors are grateful for the constructive comments and support. finally, dean of faculty research assistantship grants from mount holyoke college enabled the collaboration that sparked this paper. the authors are very appreciative of this funding. references abramsky, s. (2008, february 7). gimme shelter: what the new sanctuary movement offers, beyond a safe space, for the undocumented. the nation. retrieved from http://www.thenation.com/article/gimme-shelter/ asmar, m. (2015, february 24). a denver church joins a nationwide movement to provide sanctuary to undocumented immigrations. westword. retrieved from the ordinary & the extraordinary studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 45 www.westword.com/news/a-denver-church-joins-a-nationwide-movement-to-providesanctuary-to-undocumented-immigrants-6578160 bader, e. j. (2014, november 26). new sanctuary movement seeks to protect undocumented immigrants. truthout.org. retrieved from www.truth-out.org/news/item/27672-newsanctuary-movement-seeks-to-protect-undocumented-immigrants# bagelman, j. (2016). sanctuary city: a suspended state. new york: palgrave. bau, i. (1985). this ground is holy: church sanctuary and central american refugees. new york: paulist press. bell, k. (2010). the sanctuary movement: how broken immigration policies affect cities. los gatos, ca: smashwords. booth, j. a., wade, c. j., & walker, t. w. (2010). understanding central america (5th edition). boulder, co: westview press. caminero-santagelo, m. (2012). the voice of the voiceless: religious rhetoric, undocumented immigrants, and the new sanctuary movement in the united states. in r. lippert & s. rehaag (eds.), sanctuary practices in international perspectives: migration, citizenship, and social movements (pp. 92-105). new york: routledge. carro, j. (1989). municipal and state sanctuary declarations: innocuous symbolism or improper dictates? pepperdine law review, 16(2), 297-328. center for human rights and constitutional law. (2007). new sanctuary movement legal toolkit. los angeles: center for human rights and constitutional law. chinchilla, n., hamilton, n., & loucky, j. (2009). the sanctuary movement and central american activism in los angeles. latin american perspectives, 36, 101-126. coutin, s. (1993). the culture of protest: religious activism and the us sanctuary movement. boulder, co: westview press. coutin, s. (2011). falling outside: excavating the history of central american asylum seekers. law & social inquiry, 36(3), 569-596. cunningham, h. (1995). god and caesar at the rio grande: sanctuary and the politics of religion. minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. crittenden, a. (1988). sanctuary: a story of american conscience and the law in collision. new york: weidenfeld & nicolson. davidson, m. (1988). convictions of the heart: jim corbett and the sanctuary movement. tucson, az: university of arizona press. dickson, c. (2014, november 6). this church is reviving the sanctuary movement to shelter undocumented immigrants from deportation. the daily beast. retrieved from www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/11/this-church-is-reviving-the-sanctuarymovement-to-shelter-undocumented-immigrants-from-deportation.html dyrness, g., & irazábal, c. (2007, september 2). a sanctuary for immigrants. the los angeles times. retrieved from http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-op-dyrness2sep02-story.html engler, r. (2014, april 1). elvira arellano the illegal alien returns to chicago. american thinker. retrieved from http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/04/elvira_arellano_the_illegal_alien_return s_to_chicago.html fife, j., corbett, j., merkt, s., & willis-conger, p. (1987). the sanctuary movement: conspiracy of compassion. in j. wallis (ed.), the rise of christian conscience: the emergence of a dramatic renewal movement in the church today (pp. 17-29). london: macmillan. golden, r., & mcconnell, m. 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(2007). religion and a standpoint theory of immigrant social justice. in p. hondagneu-sotelo (ed.), religion and social justice for immigrants (pp. 3-15). new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. houston, s., & lawrence-weilmann, o. (2015). the model migrant and multiculturalism: analyzing neoliberal logics in us sanctuary legislation. in h. bauder & c. matheis (eds.), migration policy and practice: interventions and solutions (pp. 101-126). new york: palgrave macmillan. houston, s. (2016). sacred squatting: seeking sanctuary in religious spaces. in s. chattapadhyay & p. mudu (eds.), migration, squatting, and radical autonomy (pp. 183188). new york: routledge. irazábal, c., & dyrness, g. (2010). promised land? immigration, religiosity, and space in southern california. space and culture, 13, 356-375. jcfjcjcfjcf. (2011). new sanctuary movement with liliana. video retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypkehvgqtvo juffer, j. (2009). compassion and rage: the face of the migrant. south atlantic quarterly, 108(1), 219-235. kotin, s., dyrness, g., & irazábal, c. (2011). immigration and integration: religious and political activism for/with immigrants in los angeles. progress in development studies, 11(4), 263-284. larkman, c. (2016, may 16). a california congregation celebrates sanctuary. united church of christ. retrieved from http://www.ucc.org/news_california_congregation_celebrates_liliana_s_sanctuary_051520 16 lorentzen, r. (1991). women in the sanctuary movement. philadelphia, pa: temple university press. marfleet, p. (2011). understanding ‘sanctuary’: faith and traditions of asylum. journal of refugee studies, 24(3), 440-455. mccartney, s. (1985, october 24). the governments’ ‘operation sojourner.’ the lewiston daily sun, p. 4. retrieved from https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=zcpaaaaibaj&sjid=gggfaaaaibaj&pg=1266%2c4599628 mcghee, t. (2015, september 5). in metro denver illegally, arturo garcia worked and lived in shadows. the denver post. retrieved from http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28766138/metro-denver-illegally-arturo-garciaworked-and-lived nawyn, s. (2007). welcoming the stranger: constructing an interfaith ethic of refuge. in p. hondagneu-sotelo (ed.), religion and social justice for immigrants (pp. 141-156). new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. new sanctuary movement. (2007). new sanctuary movement tool kit. interfaith movement for immigrant justice. retrieved from http://static1.squarespace.com/static/56948ad40e4c11c98e2e1871/t/56cba7574c2f85d6f12 4b4c9/1456187224346/new+sanctuary+toolkit.pdf new sanctuary movement. (2015). sanctuary not deportation: a faithful witness to building welcoming communities. retrieved from http://sanctuary2014.org/wpcontent/uploads/2014/10/sanctuarytoolkit-updated-final.docx paniagua, t. (2012). sanctuary movement: 3 decades of activism. arizona public media. retrieved from https://www.azpm.org/s/8379-sanctuary-movement-3-decades-of-activism/ prendergast, c. (2015, november 11). rosa robles loreto leaves sanctuary of tucson church. arizona daily star. retrieved from http://tucson.com/news/local/rosa-robles-loretoleaves-sanctuary-of-tucson-church/article_2e0ae3c4-8891-11e5-b998-173e7444fbbf.html perla, h., & coutin, s. (2012). legacies and origins of the 1980s us-central american sanctuary movement. in r. lippert & s. rehaag (eds.). sanctuary practices in international perspectives: migration, citizenship, and social movements (pp. 73-91). new york: routledge. the ordinary & the extraordinary studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 27-47, 2017 47 pirie, s. (1990). the origins of a political trial: the sanctuary movement and political justice. yale journal of law and the humanities, 2(2), 381-416. purcell, e. (ed.). (2007). the public sanctuary movement, a historical basis of hope: oral histories, book i. san francisco: sanctuary oral history project. ridgley, j. (2010). cities of refuge: citizenship, legality, and exception in u.s. sanctuary cities (unpublished doctoral dissertation). university of toronto, toronto. salvatierra, a. (2007). sacred refuge: with comprehensive immigration reform off the congressional agenda, the new sanctuary movement steps into the breach. sojourners magazine, 36(9), 12-14. sanctuary2014. (2016). sanctuary movement. retrieved from www.sanctuary2014.org/ taracena, m. (2015, june 18). undocumented father gets another one-year stay, leaving sanctuary at tucson church. the range. retrieved from http://www.tucsonweekly.com/therange/archives/2015/06/18/father-re-enters-sanctuaryat-tucson-church-after-one-year-deportation-stay-granted-by-ice-expires thayer, k., rodriguez, m., & perez jr., j. (2014, march 23). immigration protester back at chicago church that sheltered her. chicago tribune. retrieved from http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-elvira-arellano-immigrationchicago-20140323-story.html unhcr (united nations high commissioner for refugees). (2010). convention and protocol relating to the status of refugees. geneva: united nations. us immigration and customs enforcement. (2011). policy 10029.2: enforcement actions at or focused on sensitive locations. retrieved from https://www.ice.gov/doclib/erooutreach/pdf/10029.2-policy.pdf van ham, l. (2009). sanctuary revisited: central american refugee assistance in the history of church-based immigrant advocacy. political theology, 10, 621-645. yukich, g. (2013a). one family under god: immigration policies and progressive religion in america. new york: oxford university press. yukich, g. (2013b). constructing the model immigrant: movement strategy and immigrant deservingness in the new sanctuary movement. social problems, 60(3), 302-320. book review: teaching for justice: implementing social justice in the lis classroom the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 2(3), 2018 issn 2574-3430, publish.lib.umd.edu/ijidi/ ijidi: book review cooke, n.a., & sweeny, m.e. (eds.). (2017). teaching for justice: implementing social justice in the lis classroom. sacramento, ca: library juice. isbn 9781634000178. 317 pp. $35 us. reviewer: laverne gray, university of tennessee, knoxville, usa book review editor: norda a. bell, york university, canada keywords: critical theory; lis education; pedagogy; social justice publication type: book review hen matriculating for the mlis degree, i learned of the value of libraries and their communities of service. my training and education insisted on the importance of the organization of information, responding to patrons, the value of collections, community engagement, access to information, literacy instruction, privacy, and the digital universe. often in course discussion, social justice issues were a persistent undercurrent within the historical and contemporary function of the profession i was eager to enter. as an african-american adult student of color, i trained myself to use my experiential lens in my role as a recently returned peace corps volunteer with previous experience teaching students of color in an urban setting. my critical consciousness was ever present and my previous graduate study in education informed my questions and world view. i emerged from library and information science (lis) education equipped with the latest knowledge, eager to contribute to the organizations and communities i worked with. however, i found that explicit theoretical foundations of social justice, what it means and how it contributes to library practice, was missing. this is not an indictment of my rich lis educational experience, it is an acknowledgement of a different time. the text under review addresses the needs of the present time to explicitly make social justice education a primary feature of lis teaching and learning. nicole cooke and miriam sweeney make the argument that lis educators should actively engage tensions represented in the social spaces in which professionals operate, becoming central tools in preparation for future generations of librarians and information professionals. this text is the answer to questions on the value of teaching social justice to information professionals, by offering both epistemological and applied examples on how this can be accomplished. teaching for justice: implementing social justice in the lis classroom is a grassroots project originating from an association for library and information science education (alise) 2015 pre conference workshop on social justice teaching in lis. the editors and contributors offer experiences in a myriad of approaches to embedding social justice in the lis curriculum. in the introduction to the text, the editors state that “social justice implies action, it challenges us to work towards the betterment, equality, and respect for those we want to include” (p.6). this admonition is foundational to the call for lis educators to facilitate lis students’ navigation of, and engagement with, diverse communities. the text holistically shifts librarianship and the training of professionals from awareness and acknowledgement of diverse communities to checking imposition of ideals and embracing engagement through the lens of other populations. it is not just diversity. social justice becomes the credo for professional training with activity and critical scrutiny that provides reciprocal benefit both to teacher and student. w http://publish.lib.umd.edu/ijidi/, http://libraryjuicepress.com/ teaching for justice the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 2(3), 2018 issn 2574-3430, publish.lib.umd.edu/ijidi/ the text examines teaching for justice in three parts: theoretical frameworks, teaching in the classroom, and teaching outside the classroom. each area addresses topics using innovative thinking and pedagogical practice beyond templates, encouraging both curiosity and creativity for the reader. what does teaching for justice look like? following the tradition of paulo freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed (2000), the text contributors emulate praxis, the embodiment of theory to practice, in a variety of lis educational environments. in the first section, theoretical frameworks for social justice in lis curricula, contributors theoretically examine the social justice paradigm in lis teaching and practice, sustainability frameworks, and the journey towards social justice in lis. each chapter makes the case for social justice thought and curricula, which is foundational to understanding the need for a critical approach to society and professional activity. this approach to teaching engenders liberation of the self, through understanding power relations, that influence practice in the field. the second section tackles teaching social justice in the lis classroom. in four chapters, contributors address course development in diversity, youth services, explicit teaching tools for social justice, undergraduate race and justice course development for non-lis undergraduates, and implementing exercises in an online environment. the chapters provide detailed examples of various engagement experiences with students through theoretical-based course development and exercises. section three tackles social justice in study abroad activities and leadership training of paraprofessionals in rural communities. the chapters address the challenges of teaching social justice in lis workspaces and community environments. the strength of this ground-breaking text is the theoretically rich placement of many pedagogical considerations in teaching in the context of social justice. the book rightly assumes the nonseparation of social justice to lis. the text overtly addresses the current climate wrought with divisionary thought and discourse by challenging systemic injustices in teaching and learning. although the book purports to offer implementation in the lis classroom, it delivers so much more. it offers a shifting of the instructive paradigm in lis beyond inclusion of social justice to a clearly stated argument and justification of the centrality of social justice in disciplinary and professional considerations. each chapter brilliantly stands alone and is in concert with others. the collective essays provide both personal narrative and practical tools often found in classroom teaching texts. the fusion of theoretically informed pedagogical attention brings a reflexive tone to the book which makes it an enjoyable read. the obvious audience is lis educators and doctoral students. i believe that it can be used in the mlis classroom as a transparent text supporting classroom engagement in social justice learning. the concluding chapter is rightly entitled a call to action, which demonstrates the collective power of engagement each author addresses throughout the text. in my training as a future lis educator, i interpret the call as an opening to consider what the text offers in my teaching and professional contributions. i highly recommend this text to educators, practitioners, and students in lis and beyond. reference freire, p. (2000). pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary ed.). new york: continuum. 133 http://publish.lib.umd.edu/ijidi/, teaching for justice the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 2(3), 2018 issn 2574-3430, publish.lib.umd.edu/ijidi/ laverne gray (lgray7@vols.utk.edu) is a phd candidate in the college of communication and information with a concentration in information sciences. her education includes mlis at dominican university, ms ed in educational psychology (northern illinois university), and a ba in rehabilitation/child development at (wilberforce university). before beginning doctoral studies, she was a librarian for eight years at several academic institutions. her research focuses on black feminist activism in information environments, cultural studies, social justice, and critical pedagogy. she was inspired to become a librarian from her peace corps service in west africa. 134 http://publish.lib.umd.edu/ijidi/, mailto:lgray7@vols.utk.edu reference correspondence address: melanie bedore, quest university canada, 3200 university boulevard, squamish, bc, canada v8b 0n8. email: melanie.bedore@questu.ca issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 8, issue 2, 207-228, 2014 food desertification: situating choice and class relations within an urban political economy of declining food access melanie bedore quest university canada abstract while food deserts create whole sets of tangible consequences for people living within them, the problem has yet to be the subject of much normative, in-depth evaluation as an urban political economy of food access. this paper provides a critical analysis of a specific food desert and its responses, drawing on a case study of the low-income, spatially segregated north end of the small city of kingston, ontario, canada. the main thrust of the paper is that the food desert remains a useful yet underexplored phenomenon through which to reveal the complexities and tensions surrounding the treatment of “choice” in a classed society. understood as an urban political economy of declining food access, the food desert phenomenon reveals capital’s complex role in the promotion or violation of dignity through the urban geographies of acquiring food for oneself, family, or household. through the data presented here, the article also argues for a collective pause among critical scholars to radicalize, rather than reject, the role of consumer choice in a more just food system, and for further normative engagement with urban landscapes of retail consolidation. introduction while the social sciences continue to advance many normative campaigns for justice, this has not been the case for over a decade of research on the food desert problem. the food desert concept is used to describe compounding low income and poor access to retail food outlets (wrigley, warm, & margetts, 2003) at scales such as the neighbourhood or census tract. food deserts are the subject of a wealth of mostly quantitative research in fields such as public health, applied geography and critical geographic information systems studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 208 melanie bedore (gis), and urban planning. at its most basic, the lack of walkable, fullservice retail food outlets in poor neighbourhoods is a problem of distributive injustice1. while food deserts create whole sets of consequences and burdens for people living within them (ver ploeg, et al., 2009), the problem has yet to be the subject of much normative, in-depth evaluation of the urban political economy of food access. such analysis is long overdue, for at least two reasons. the first is the historical magnitude and projected continuation of retail food capital flight and consolidation, which are key to understanding food deserts (larsen & gilliland, 2008; mcclintock, 2008; bedore, 2013). in line with the legacy of neil wrigley’s work (2000, 2002, 2003; wrigley, coe, & currah, 2005) in geography, food desert research is incomplete without due attention to the global retail food environment (donald, 2013). while equal consideration must be given to the local-level socio-economic conditions affecting consumer demand in low-income areas, wrigley’s work in particular shows a decadeslong trajectory of continuous reorganization on the part of the world’s most powerful food firms over the last thirty years, reflecting the historic trend of simultaneous expansion (into new global markets) and contraction (through mergers and acquisitions) (boothman, 2009). the canadian grocery retail trade highlights the very recent continuation of this tendency2. in light of the uncertainty of sustained growth by retail food capital brought about by food price fluctuations and global economic recession, retailers are—more so in recent years—aggressively rationalizing costs as they seek out competitive advantages and new economies of scale (eg., wood, 2013). at the same time, research by the usda suggests that over 23 million americans alone live in food desert areas, with 11.5 million of those people coping with simultaneous low income, poor food access, and no personal vehicle (usda economic research service, 2009). critical scholars throughout the social sciences are well positioned to consider these international trends and their more locallevel consequences through social justice research. second, limitations of current research agendas and perspectives could be better contextualized by normative approaches to the food desert problem. the problem currently has good political currency and has been thoroughly rescaled, with responses formulated and implemented at city and neighbourhood scales (through grassroots, urban planning, and mayoral initiatives, for example) through to national-level policy and programming. nevertheless, the longevity of these efforts is uncertain, given that critics are quick to point out the mixed bag of research questions and evidence that is driving current responses3. at the same time, single interventions such as a new grocery store can make for rather draconian solutions to the complexity of poor food access, which is shaped by both the supply-side factors noted above and socioeconomic conditions of particular places. nevertheless, they are currently the most studied food desert interventions, and the results here are similarly mixed (cf., wrigley, 2002; cummins et al., 2005, 2008; sadler, gilliland, & arku, 2013). in addition, public discourse on food deserts aligns itself easily with studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 food desertification 209 condemnation of people’s own poverty, poor choices, and other perceived individual-level failings. as such, it may draw focus, blame, and subsequent “disciplining” policy efforts toward low-income individuals and communities, while paying insufficient attention to the structural economic causes of the problem (guthman, 2011; shannon, 2013). one way to move past these limitations “may entail recognizing the multiple ways in which individuals value and interact with their food environment, rather than elevating a single optimized rationality defined primarily through nutrition and cost” (shannon, 2013, p. 12-13), and adding approaches that “emphasize the multiple normative frameworks that shape these practices, such as how family relationships, concerns over class status, or cultural norms influence food procurement” (ibid.). this paper takes up this call, providing a normative analysis of a particular food desert problem and its responses, drawing on a case study of the low-income, spatially segregated north end of the small city of kingston, ontario, canada. understood as an urban political economy of declining food access, the food desert phenomenon offers a novel way to critically and relationally evaluate the mundane geographies of daily life in a classed society. it is also an entry point for the study of capital’s complex role in the promotion or violation of dignity through the urban geographies of acquiring food for oneself and one’s family or household. as a consumptive act, food procurement is bound up with individual choice, desires, and class status, which are too often dismissed as diversions from more urgent critical evaluation and mobilization around systemic problems with the global food system and restructuring global economy. through the data presented here, i initiate what is hopefully a collective pause among scholars to engage seriously with the food desert problem as a restriction of individual choice and autonomy that, while problematic, are important expressions of power, independence, and belonging by the poor in a consumer society. case study and primary data collection this opportunity to study poor food access emerged in 2006 in kingston, a small city located in the southeastern region of ontario, canada. despite its small population of only 123,000, it is the largest city between the major urban centres of toronto and ottawa. its stable economy and sizeable middle class are owing to its status as a regional service hub and a large public sector employer (see bedore & donald, 2011). kingston has a decades-old reputation for having some of canada’s most visible socio-spatial polarization (finnigan, 1976; osborne & swainson, 1988; lukits, 2009). north kingston is a quintessential ”wrong side of the tracks,” known for an extensive history of poverty, political disenfranchisement, and concentration of high-needs populations. the details of the store closures, north kingston, and the city’s spatialized class divide have been described elsewhere (harris, 1981, 1988; lee, 2000; studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 210 melanie bedore kingston mayor’s taskforce on poverty, 2007; bedore & donald, 2011; bedore, 2013). most important for this study, however, is a brief profile4 of two neighbourhoods within north kingston. first, the neighbourhood of rideau heights saw its closest grocery store, the kingslake iga, close in early 2007 (see figure 1). according to the 2011 national household survey, rideau heights has 6,432 residents, occupying 2,883 dwellings (a. eusebio, personal communication, may 1, 2014). it houses the vast majority of the city’s public housing, including row housing and high-density apartment buildings administered by over a dozen housing providers. in relation to the overall city of kingston figures, the frequency of residents experiencing mental illness, physical disability, food insecurity, unemployment, and single parenthood is high in this neighbourhood, while car ownership, education, access to basic services, and incomes are comparatively low (city of kingston, n.d.; kingston community health centre, 2010). for instance, data from 2006 show that 32% of residents had no secondary or post-secondary school diploma or certificate, and a further 32% had only high school education. median family income in rideau heights was $35,247 in 2005, compared to the city’s median income of $69,530 (city of kingston, n.d.) a door-todoor survey of this neighbourhood undertaken for this research also revealed that over one third of residents in this neighbourhood may experience food insecurity within a given year. anecdotally, public transit service is inconsistent and generally lacking in the area. since rideau heights is a residential neighbourhood bordered by industrial land and major roads, at the time of study residents had some peripheral grocery options that could be walkable depending on one’s location, including a butcher, a produce vendor, and some convenience stores. the iga was, admittedly, a strange fit for the neighbourhood: it was a mid-priced grocery store, located in a strip mall facing a major road, whose target customers were commuters, tourists, and leisure shoppers (hence the liz clairborne women’s apparel store located next to it) rather than rideau heights residents. as such, it was not affordable for some people; however, it was valued as a walkable one-stop option for many of the area’s carless residents. shortly after this closure, another took place in the inner harbour neighbourhood, which has a population of 7,271 residents occupying 3,694 dwellings (a. eusebio, personal communication, may 1, 2014). while the inner harbour is gentrifying, it has a significant number of poor households (statistics canada, 2013) and a historically blue-collar economic and cultural identity (harris, 1981). the inner harbour is adjacent to kingston’s waterfront and downtown area, so it enjoys somewhat better access to walkable services than the more isolated rideau heights, including two grocery stores, a lowercost food basics and a high-priced (and likely cost prohibitive) metro. residents living close to downtown can also access a small independent grocer and a few ethnic food retailers. despite these possible options, inner harbour residents were concerned and angered by the closure of a small, nearly century-old neighbourhood grocery store called grant’s no frills. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 food desertification 211 this store had been an independent, family-owned business; after several decades the family sold it to the loblaw corporation, which closed the store in 2009 (see figure 2). unlike contemporary food retailers that are often located on main streets and in commercially zoned areas, grant’s no frills was constructed prior to modern zoning orthodoxies and hence had the closest possible proximity to the surrounding residential neighbourhood. while it offered almost no parking space, it was extremely walkable—and affordable—for residents at all income levels. this study is theoretically grounded in the urban political economy tradition that embeds class relations in the space of the city and explores the role that urban development, governance, and planning can play in relieving or exacerbating inequality. the approach looks to capitalism as an overarching economic system with clear urban manifestations, namely, the spatiality of uneven power relations and distributional outcomes in the city (cardoso & breda-vásquez, 2007). the article also draws from scholarly dialogues around liberal and political-economic formulations of social justice discussed in the following section. primary source data used for this article was collected by a triangulation of methods between 2006 and 20095 in order to best assemble the perspectives and experiences of low-income north kingston residents. most relevant to this paper are the results of three focus groups held in the north end. adult participants meeting criteria for food insecurity6 were recruited using posters placed in social service agencies, apartment building lobbies, bus shelters and on signposts. lasting two to three hours, each focus group hosted between ten and thirteen participants. twenty-seven people were involved in the three focus groups, nineteen of whom were women. while participants were not asked to identify whether they were members of any visible minority group, only one participant was not visibly caucasian, with english being their non-native language. the lack of racial diversity in the focus groups is not unusual for kingston: the 2011 national household survey estimates that only 6.1% of the population of the kingston census metropolitan area (9,330 individuals) belong to a visible minority group, compared with 25.9% of ontario’s overall population (statistics canada, 2014). perhaps half of participants identified themselves as being parents to children living at home. open-ended questions were designed to explore participants’ experiences accessing food within a broader framework of low income, and to probe the boundaries of participants’ thinking about justice and their ideal food procurement places and experiences. additionally, four widely advertised, open-invitation public meetings about the no frills closure were held in the inner harbour during this time, convened by a local elected city councilor and community activists in order to consider the public’s options for recruiting a replacement grocery store, stopping the closure, or repurposing the vacant building. attendees ranged in age from young post-secondary students to seniors, and—alluding to the gentrification taking place in the neighbourhood—presented as being from a range of socio-economic backgrounds. these meetings, which were eventually formalized as the new frills downtown revitalization project, studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 212 melanie bedore provided a valuable opportunity to collect public comments in a less-contrived setting. i attended each of these meetings, identifying myself as a researcher and recording the proceedings in order to collect local people’s reactions to the store closure and their beliefs about the obligations, motivations, and responsibilities of the parent retail company. data was also collected from forty-two interviews with key local stakeholders, including elected officials, head bureaucrats, commercial property developers, food retailers, anti-hunger activists, retailing experts, and sustainable food systems advocates such as local farmers and paid organizers. these interviewees were targeted for their respective expertise or for their ability to contribute unique perspectives on food access and the challenges within north kingston, food-related or otherwise. finally, as a food researcher i inadvertently earned “insider” status with respect to local and regional food campaigns happening at the time. as such, i was privy to conversations and meetings taking place regarding food system localization and 100-mile diet-type endeavors at the time, and i draw from one particularly insightful meeting in the case analysis presented below. each of these types of primary source data was transcribed and read multiple times by the researcher. they were coded thematically to answer larger research questions about 1) perceptions of kingston’s changing retail food landscape, 2) historical context surrounding local food desertification, and 3) food desertification as social injustice. within these broad themes, a more reflexive identification of sub-themes helped to develop an appreciation for nuanced perspectives on “choice,” “dignity” and other ideas covered below. food access as neglected spatial politics of choice and dignity the issue of poor and declining food access for people with low income is intimately tied to class relations and changing geographies of the built environment in the capitalist city. there is also an undeniable relationship between individual wishes, desires, choices, and preferences and the practices of traveling to, and shopping for, food. these individual subjectivities emerge, harvey (2000) explains, through the availability of circulating variable capital for the working classes. the prospect of spending this disposable income generates complex relations between “needs,” “wants,” and “luxuries” that affect lifestyle choices, status symbols, and fashions as set by the rich, powerful, and famous. these set relative standards for the laboring poor since, as marx also insists, the sense of well-being is a comparative rather than an absolute measure and the gap between rich and poor is just as important as the absolute conditions of sustenance. (harvey, 2000, p. 115) as harvey emphasizes from marx, consumption is biologically and relationally essential within capitalist accumulation, yet this process of acquiring goods and services is complicated by the emotionally charged navigation of needs, wants, consumer choice, and consumer culture. hence, marx is clear that relative or comparative perceptions of well-being are as studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 food desertification 213 important as the absolute measures of the same. socio-spatial processes of food shopping and travelling to get to food reveal class disparities in the emotional consequences of unmet needs, standards, and desires. it is necessary, for this reason, to wrestle with the complex push-and-pull relationship between dignity and the built environment of consumer capitalism. on the one hand, constant restructuring/remaking of this built retail environment is a spatial strategy employed by capital that creates necessary class tensions (harvey, 1973). when understood through the lens of neoliberal urbanism, the burdens of shifting consumer landscapes easily lend themselves to depoliticized narratives about the need for individual responsibility, entrepreneurialism, and prudence (e.g., leitner, peck & sheppard, 2007). at the same time, i show here that engagement with this oppressive geography of retail capital has the immediate individual-level benefit of enhancing dignity of economically marginalized people. there are strong contemporary traditions of liberal philosophy within which to interpret the consequences of food deserts. liberalism considers issues around the relationship between institutions of governance and the individual, and the values of individual freedom, preferences, choice, and dignity (pattanaik, 2009). in their most basic form, sen (1970, p. 87) writes that liberal values seem to require that there are choices that are personal and the relevant person should be free to do what he likes. it would be socially better, in these cases, to permit him to do what he wants, everything else remaining the same. liberalism and the urban spatial form are closely intertwined because of cities’ inherent diversity and uneven power relations (katznelson, 1997), making it an important validating framework through which to understand the emotional subjectivity in food access struggles in light of capitalist class relations. wishes and desires are taken most seriously, perhaps, by sen’s capabilities approach (sen, 1985, 1992, 1999; nussbaum & sen, 1993; nussbaum, 2000), developed over the past thirty years as a critique of rawls’ (1971) preoccupation with the distribution and possession of primary goods. the capabilities approach assigns great importance to people’s ability to express and realize their wishes and desires. it is not commodities—objects and things—in themselves that are important, but rather how commodities enhance and enable our functionings, “what the person succeeds in doing with the commodities and characteristics at his or her command” (sen, 1985, p. 10). as robeyns (2009, p. 43) summarizes, the main claim of the capabilities approach is that in making interpersonal comparisons of advantage, we should focus on people’s real or effective opportunities to do what they want to do, and to be who they want to be, instead of focusing on peoples’ holdings of social primary goods or their mental states (as in certain forms of utility). these beings and doings are called a person’s functionings, and include such basic functionings studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 214 melanie bedore as being healthy, being sheltered, not being mentally ill, engaging in social relations, and more complex and specific functionings such as combining a career with a gender-egalitarian family life. the approach’s contribution to this study is its acknowledgement of the diversity of goals, desires, and aspirations to “be” and “do” among a heterogeneous population of individuals. for this case, people’s functionings could be considered their aspirations for food procurement experiences that promote feelings of dignity, autonomy, and belonging within a broader consumer culture, and for cross-class parity and respectability more generally. these functionings, i argue, are impaired by the narrowed capability for choice in food desert conditions and their consequent exacerbation of class tensions. the spatial embeddedness of dignity and indignity is often taken for granted, yet it situates choice and autonomy as critical to human self-actualization. for jacobson et al. (2007, 2009), the concept draws attention to our beliefs about what standards a society formally or informally considers necessary in order for all individuals to enjoy a “good” life, beginning with basic feelings of self-respect, autonomy, and control over oneself. dignity may be felt and honoured in the “normal, unspoken conventions of mutual respect in everyday life” (sayer, 2007, p. 565), and understood as core feelings of self-command and autonomy, “to be in control of oneself, competently and appropriately exercising one’s powers” (ibid., p. 568). seen in this way, dignity is internally constructed and held; however, it is also profoundly social, being positively or negatively affected by interactions between individuals (jacobson, 2007). dignity, then, is affected by the exercising of choice and autonomy and is profoundly socio-spatial, which jacobson understands in terms of the embeddededness of encounter in place and space. dignity encounters take place in specific settings, public or private social and physical environments. the dignity dimension is related to several sets of conditions: the positions of the individual or collective actors; features of the setting; and properties of the broader social order in which the setting, actors, and encounter are all situated (jacobson et al, 2009, p. 726). the city is a scale of particular interest with respect to the lived experiences of vulnerable populations. within the city, for example, the habitual quest for resources such as affordable food and shelter can promote or violate alreadymarginalized people’s dignity due to the myriad of challenges, burdens, disappointments, and even dangers that complicate the search for essential goods (ibid.). liberal values—as deployed by the capabilities approach and others— do not preclude the importance of assessing the institutions and systems of economic production and social interaction and whether these foster the capabilities needed for people to achieve their subjective goals and values. several contemporary political philosophers do precisely this: young (2000, p. 33) proposes, for example, that social justice be defined as the institutional studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 food desertification 215 conditions for promoting self-development and self-determination7 of a society’s members, and she is principally concerned with the forms of institutionalized oppression that prevent this, such as the limits of local democracy. sayer’s (2005) arguments about the moral significance of class also engage with people’s emotional responses to class inequity, grounded firmly within “the need not only for a politics of recognition but a rejuvenated egalitarian politics of redistribution that confronts the injustice of class inequalities openly” (p. 232). finally, fainstein’s work on the just city (2001; 2005; 2010) attempts to reconcile tensions surrounding democracy, diversity, competitiveness, and cohesion, acknowledging the need to grapple with competing claims from groups marginalized on economic and non-economic grounds. her attempts are lauded for doing so without neglecting “the strong explanatory potential of the political economy tradition” (cardoso & breda-vásquez, 2007, p. 386). this project attempts to walk this same line, recognizing the importance of individual subjective dignity and freedoms within “the constraining power of the global capitalist political economy” (ibid.). north kingston’s food desertification as an urban political economy of food access and choice the emotional consequences of declining retail food access must be understood first of all as one only dimension of vulnerability inherent to food procurement practices for food-insecure individuals and households with low income. life with low income and the restricted mobility that often comes with it are shaped by socio-economic factors that limit access and individuals’ choice sets within retail settings (e.g., mcintyre et al., 2003; wiig & smith, 2009; dachner et al., 2010). these limitations are endemic to the processes of considering, comparing, selecting and rejecting items for purchase (gregson, crewe & brooks, 2002). north end residents situate the costs and burdens of the iga and no frills grocery store closures within a broader context of daily struggle with poverty, noting, for example, that when you feed yourself [poorly], you don’t feel right. you don’t act right. you don’t work properly. the human body is, like, don’t operate well. (inner harbour focus group no. 2, male). people who have families, you gotta get what you can get, you can’t get all them good foods, you just gotta get what you can get. (inner harbour focus group no. 1, female) it is important to acknowledge that grocery store closures and food desertification, then, may be less dire problems in themselves and more ones that further compound the ongoing struggle to do things such as remain healthy, raise children, navigate the social welfare system, and just “get by.” moreover, exposure to negative emotional consequences is commonplace studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 216 melanie bedore for the poor even without the compounding consequences of food desertification. reflecting jackson et al.’s (2006) distinction between choice between stores and choice within stores, even when north enders try to simplify their shopping habits to avoid emotional vulnerability, a gap between disposable income and a person’s wants or needs can lead to embarrassment and degrading situations. these instances must be regularly endured while living on a fixed income, which is often synonymous with dependence on meager social assistance and disability payments, […] with the grocery stores…things are on sale, you see all these people going, buying expensive stuff, stocking up, blades of roast, you’ve got to get other stuff ‘cause you can’t afford to get it. it’s embarrassing no matter what, because you don’t have the money to get it. (inner harbour focus group no. 1, female) oh yeah, it’s really embarrassing when you think you’ve got enough groceries for enough money, and you get up there, and, okay, you’re ten dollars short. okay, i have to put this back and this back and this back, and it’s really embarrassing to do that, because that says ‘you don’t have a lot of money’. and it is embarrassing to say you don’t have a lot of money, especially when you’re buying food, ‘cause that’s an essential part of life. (inner harbour focus group no. 2, female) embarrassment and shame are often confined to internal dialogue and feelings, but they are socially co-constructed, deriving from peoples’ direct or indirect social interactions and encounters with others (eg., chase & walker, 2012). these interactions make visible the disparities between others’ affluence and financial freedoms (as perceived by the poor) compared with their own, whether through a glance at another shopper’s cartload of food or by disrupting the flow at the checkout line to remove or return items they cannot afford. declining choice and its consequences through the lens of declining choice, the north kingston grocery store closures reveal compounding emotional consequences, explored here as two dimensions of individual dignity violation and injustice. first, food desertification creates further narrowing of choice for the poor, which is an important element of self-worth in capitalist society. in the north end, residents acknowledged that the small scale and inner-city location of the no frills made it an important part of people’s personal geographies of food procurement. while it is appreciated by people with cars and no discernible barriers to retail food access (one of whom noted, “i almost go there every day. we have a car, but i walk this way, it’s in the neighbourhood” [january 8 meeting, female]), its importance is far greater among people who face multiple concurrent barriers, including low income, old age, disability, carlessness, and/or limited food storage capacity in a small apartment, when i first moved there, i didn’t realize how important it was to have the studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 food desertification 217 grocery. after a while, you get really dependent on it. you have to have freezers and, like, lots of room in your home if you’re gonna go out and pay money to go out and get groceries and bring them into your home, it’s so much easier to go to the grocery store three times a week, stuff like that, and we have a lot of people in the neighbourhood, i think, who are living in apartments, not able to store groceries, and they need to get affordable groceries. [february 7 meeting, male] [no frills is] a major food source. i know a lot of people need it, they don’t have transportation, they have to walk. the seniors building here at 106 pine street, you’ve got the one on rideau street. they were built because there was grocery sources in the neighbourhood . . . the seniors can walk to buy their groceries. now that’s going to change. [january 8 meeting, male] for various reasons, many people at the no frills public meetings appreciate being able to make shorter trips to a small nearby store, several times a week. among more affluent neighbourhood residents who own personal vehicles and therefore have a greater range of shopping choices available, this pattern constitutes a preference. people with limited means or mobility, with a far more restricted set of choices within a confined geographic area, also express tremendous appreciation for this store’s scale and location because it accommodates their broader socio-economic constraints. these accounts of the store’s importance to people with a variety of socioeconomic situations invoke clarke et al.’s (2004) helpful analysis of choice and retail food geographies. food desert conditions, they suggest, can be read through their impact on already-existing levels of choice at the household level: people’s choice sets are conditional not only on very household-level factors such as income and mobility but also on social and cultural ‘tastes’ and feelings that they are welcome and among people like them. with a nearby store closure, those people unable to overcome “the frictional effects of distance” (p. 91) therefore confront an even smaller range of choices than what is theoretically available. they are effectively deprived of the individual-level benefits of choice, the absence of which can be disconcerting and demoralizing, whereas ample choice can empower consumers, giving them the opportunity to express themselves in a “democratic” fashion. the fundamental benefit of having retail choices available, however, is that it promotes a feeling of equitable treatment in society (ibid., p. 91). similarly, dowler and caraher (2003, p. 60) suggest that to be deprived of choice throughout one’s diet and food procurement practices means that the poor are “excluded from one of the dynamic, leading sectors in society.” such is the growing recognition that dignity is embedded in choiceand payment-based practices that non-profit charities such as food pantries and hot meal programs are doing their best to create choice-based programming. for instance, poppendieck (1998, p. 240) argues in her study of emergency food aid in the us that the importance of choice is such that “shopping is an adult activity; it implies competence and individuality, and it casts the client in an active rather than a passive role.” the indignity associated with lack of studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 218 melanie bedore choice represents, for these authors, a deeply problematic but understandable basis through which the social exclusion of low-income people occurs. through their personal accounts of food shopping constraints, north enders support the idea that geography, in addition to factors such as food costs and cultural acceptability, further constrain one’s available set of choices. before, when [no frills] was down here, we could get anything. i would just go down, drop the boys off in the morning at school and then walk from there to no frills, i’m already half-way, and then walk home. now, it’s like i have to find a ride to get out to [another inexpensive store] if i need anything. (inner harbour focus group no. 2, male). but where are we going to get our groceries? […] i bike and i walk, and i’ve got more metal in my ankle than—that would set off—whatever. and i can’t walk that far, and i bike. i live down by the old woolen mill. so what do i do? (april 4 meeting, female) physical barriers such as steep hills that go unplowed in winter and short crossing times for pedestrians at busy multi-lane streets are severe enough to limit choice within people’s personal geographies of food procurement even further, especially for those who are less mobile in their quest for food. when describing these physical barriers and store closures, people regularly used language such as “stressful, “emotional,” and “scary,” and alluded to annoyance, extra financial and time costs, and anxiety. the food desert concept, then, could be aptly considered as a catalyst for the decline in individual autonomy through the narrowing of choice for the poorest and least mobile of residents. the most marginalized and precariously self-sustaining individuals and households will be more sensitive to minor changes in their respective landscapes of essential services, compounded by other variables affecting food access. for this reason, narrowed choice within food procurement practices stands to exacerbate both interand intra-class inequalities in the emotional risks of everyday consumption and social reproductive practices. moreover, by overemphasizing the food desert problem as one of static outcomes and barren landscapes rather than as uneven processes, a variety of stakeholders (this author included) has tended to overgeneralize the breadth of the problem while failing to appreciate the heterogeneity of socio-economic conditions and resources within a community. in doing so, we may have inadvertently reproduced both those place-based narratives that may have contributed to retail capital withdrawal in the first place as well as the same power imbalances that determine who is included or excluded in defining and diagnosing food deserts. the notion of class paternalism can be a helpful way to explore such dynamics in greater detail. class paternalism the food desert problem and its effect of further narrowing food procurement options for the poor may also lend themselves to class paternalism and the studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 food desertification 219 undervaluing of choice for economically marginalized groups. as a food researcher in a small city, i saw this paternalism firsthand: in late 2008, a meeting was convened by the leaders of a food system relocalization project funded by the national farmers’ union. the meeting, which took place at the building of a charitable meal provider in the north end, was organized— according to its leaders—as a discussion about creating food justice in kingston by connecting food-insecure people with locally, sustainably grown food in a way that would pay farmers a living wage and therefore protect their livelihoods and small businesses. if poor north enders had been present at the meeting, they would have heard comments about themselves that were far from dignity-enhancing, including this idea from a female attendee, that the people who are especially food insecure, there seems to be a lack of knowledge of what to do with that food. when you’ve got a population who’s been living off of convenience foods, boxed foods all their lives, being shown real foods is something new. being told they can go to a farm and dig potatoes and take them home, well they […] they don’t even know that a potato grows underground or how to do that, or what to do with it once they go home. at the same meeting, the loblaw’s chain of grocery stores was roundly dismissed as a possible partner in creating food justice by one attendee because, as one person put it, “they’re not local local.” this comment alludes to regional farmers’ contempt for the company’s ”grown close to home” campaign, a rather vague, thinly veiled marketing exercise to capitalize on the popularity of locavorism. retail food capital, it seems, has no place in a more just food system for the poor, despite the belief that the poor are, apparently, hopelessly inept when it comes to food. this discussion—and likely others like it that are taking place within food activism circles everywhere—is prefaced on an incredibly narrow view of poor people’s food knowledge, skills, and interest, matched by a similar narrow range of options for creating “food justice” for kingston’s north end. its themes suggest that within sustainable food movements, class paternalism can manifest itself as inappropriate, unrealistic, or misguided efforts to create behavioural change or improve food access, with little attention to issues of privilege or disadvantage on the part of outside operatives. when driven by the logic that sustainable food systems in low-income communities should be fostered through self-sufficiency, such responses can deny the importance of retail capital and economic exchange to human dignity in a consumer society. to be sure, this problem is distinct from other forms of paternalism that take place within the food procurement practices. scholars have, for instance, unveiled the underlying class, gender, and race inequities and power imbalances that can pervade alternative food practices (delind & ferguson, 1999; allen, 2004; slocum, 2007; guthman, 2008a, 2008b; alkon & agyeman, 2011; alkon, 2012). as well, paternalism is behind much of the indignity that many people experience when using some charitable food programs and other social services because of excessive, invasive bureaucracy or staff attitudes (kissane, 2003; warshawsky, 2010; zedlewski studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 220 melanie bedore et al., 2003). shannon (2013) also understands the food desert problem as a spatialized form of ”neoliberal paternalism” (soss, fording & schram, 2011), whereby sets of policies are meant to correct the disorderly, mismanaged, unhealthy lives of those in low-income communities, reforming them into economically independent, taxpaying “consumers” of state services. this framework ultimately places the responsibility for, and solutions to, obesity and other food-related problems onto the individuals living these problems. in the case of kingston’s north end, however, paternalism can be read through the patronizing rhetoric spoken by local food elites, which shows a distinct lack of awareness of historicallyand geographically-embedded class relationships within the city. the most subtle message embedded with food system relocalization rhetoric, discerned during this fieldwork, is that it is unproblematic to encourage the poor to resort to urban farming or other alternatives to resolve food access problems amidst the continuing middle-class norms of engaging with retail food capital through shopping and paying for one’s food. the latter is, in fact, the way that most focus group participants wish to acquire food for themselves and their households. north enders consistently noted their preferences for choice-based food procurement activities and acquiring food by paying for it with money. when asked to describe the “best” or “ideal” way to get groceries for themselves and their households, focus group participants are clear. i think the best would be grocery store, because you have all these choices, and you have the money to buy food, so for me, that’s the best case scenario, but even the grocery store with a little bit of money is better than going to a [charity] program. (inner harbour focus group no. 1, female) it’s better having your own money and going out and getting what you want. ‘cause it makes you feel good, you have money in your pocket and you want to go out, decide on what you want. (rideau heights focus group, female) having adequate money and paying for food implies here that the shopper is acting freely and independently, without resorting to charity. engaging in economic exchange, furthermore, is an opportunity to express power and free will as a consumer, and to function in society, in one participant’s words, “just like everybody else” (inner harbour focus group no. 2, female). in all fairness, many focus group participants did note that since the grocery store can be so demeaning for the reasons outlined earlier, using meal programs and charities can actually be preferable, provided that the staff and the ambience of the space are familiar, welcoming, and non-judgmental. by and large, however, underlying the importance of the retail transaction is the desire to enjoy entitlement, belonging, cross-class parity, and the respectability (young, 1990) afforded to people who fit within conventions of the “professional” way of life in modern consumer society. for some north enders, the desire for alternative food provisioning did also include gardening, communal non-monetary cooperatives, and buying locally. resisting the above stereotype that poor people uniformly lack studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 food desertification 221 knowledge, skills, or interest in food and cooking (mclaughlin, tarasuk & kreiger, 2003; stead et al., 2004), focus group participants showed interest in the locality and seasonality of food, and a minority of people in each focus group were interested in alternatives such as food workshares, community gardens, or community-owned food stores as ways that north end residents could have access to healthier, low-cost, locally grown, and/or culturally appropriate foods, i think that with, like a cooperative, you could only take local growers, then it would booster our economy up, ‘cause our farmers are going bankrupt also, and we would only be supplying our stores with ontario-grown products. (inner harbour focus group no. 2, female) yeah, even as an incentive to help something like what’s being started in community gardens… here, you want something out of it? well, put maybe an hour of work into it. even weeding for an hour in a garden will help out a garden, and it also gets you your food, which will help you out. and a lot of people can put away, like, an hour, maybe once a week to go do something, maybe even more [...] (inner harbour focus group no. 2, male) while north enders were not aware of the food justice meeting noted above and did not comment on it during this research, several focus group comments encapsulate the familiar tensions around localism: they feel confident that we should all, presumably, be eating more food that is some variation of homegrown, local or organic, in line with the dominant discourses around the ethics of contemporary global food politics, while at the same time recognizing the income-related challenges to doing so. you really start to get into the food politics. you know. we’re starting to get into more politics, we’re starting to transgress from survival. you know, what about people who want to buy fair trade, but you don’t have money? i don’t have money. i buy the cheapest thing i can, what’s on sale, unless it’s bad, and i won’t buy something that’s noticeably bad. but i always buy on sale. (inner harbour focus group no. 1, female) questions of paternalism and unequal class relations arise, however, when non-market provisioning activities (which are pursued for pleasure, symbolic politics, or as a seasonal supplement to food shopping by the vast majority of the middle class who undertake them) are encouraged as solutions to food access problems or as a means of self-sufficiency. the reproduction of uneven power relations between privileged food movement elites and the poor raises important questions about social justice. in particular, class paternalism in alternative food practices nicely illustrates young’s (1990) notion of cultural imperialism, “the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture, and its establishment as the norm” (ibid., p. 59). as shown in the kingston example, food desert debates and interventions (absent of the very people targeted for assistance) may exacerbate stigma and oppressive class relations by providing an additional studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 222 melanie bedore channel through which the poor find themselves and their alleged foodrelated failings, as young suggests, […] defined from the outside, positioned, placed, by a network of dominant meanings they experience as arising from elsewhere, from those with whom they do not identify and who do not identify with them. consequently, the dominant culture’s stereotyped and inferiorized images of the group must be internalized by group members at least to the extent that they are forced to react to behavior of others influenced by those images (young, 1990, pp. 59-60). food desert responses whose momentum comes primarily from places and people of relative privilege may represent a highly localized form of cultural imperialism based on hardened ideas about class. food desert responses, then, should be considered in light of this form of oppression, interrogating the notion that, since they already have access problems, the poor are an ideal “target market” to become the drivers of certain forms of food system change. under the guise of education, such a goal requires that people somehow overcome their wishes for middle class comforts and standards, while the middle class continues, by and large, those very same consumerist practices. in other words, attempts to create the conditions for economically vulnerable people to “go first” in the incremental movement toward broader long-term food system change may deny those same people dignity as it is presently constituted in their lives. concluding discussion the arguments presented here are meant to strengthen the “return” of class to social science and geographical research agendas, in line with emerging perspectives “more concerned with the ways that class as an identity is forged and experienced” (dowling, 2009, p. 834). to this point, the food desert problem has been studied primarily within scientific and distributive paradigms to gain insights about causal and correlative relationships between diet, health, race, class, food environment conditions, and food access amidst the new retail geography (wrigley & lowe, 1996). when understood as landscapes of poor and declining retail food access resulting from retail food capital restructuring and consolidation, however, food deserts tell a far richer story about the struggles for class parity and dignity in everyday life. this paper has attempted to address the lack of normative analysis of the food desert phenomenon as the narrowing of choice for the underclass. through the data presented here, i have argued that the fact that “each person’s ability to choose, to be a consumer, is both a fundamental right and fundamentally flawed” (shannon, 2013, p. 11) should not deny low-income people’s aspirations for middle-class comforts and norms in the everyday routines of life. this normative proposition is distinct from the trap of “normalizing middle-class ‘foodscapes’ as a model for low-income areas” (ibid., p. 2), which only reinforces a static, homogenized understanding of studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 food desertification 223 food access within a geographic area; there is room for attention to middleclass capabilities that go beyond a purely distributive approach to food deserts. disparities in class capabilities—between who is able and unable to “be” and “do” as they wish in their consumption practices—are reminders that middle-class norms act as benchmarks against which people perceive their own relative well-being or deprivation. among elites advocating for local food system change, there can be a lack of sensitivity to the power of these benchmarks in the lives of the poor and to the multiple meanings of “choice” across classes and income levels. in the process of struggling toward a more sustainable food system, middle-class norms and procurement habits should be the targets of initial change, bringing food options that are, for the most part, currently within the realm of niche markets to the foreground of consumer demand (donald, 2008). as long as the middle class engages only marginally with non-market or sustainable foodways, the poor will continue to derive dignity through capitalist consumerism, and understandably so. if food system activists and change agents truly aspire to change the food system one bite—or dollar—at a time, they must start with those who set the standards to which struggling people aspire. unlike conventional research approaches to the food desert problem, this study does not attempt to measure the absolute costs and burdens of food desertification on a heterogeneous population. rather, it builds on points in recent liberal thinking about social justice and the subjectivity of human self-actualization. that advocates of global food system change and postcapitalist food systems may unwittingly become agents in these oppressive local class relations by perpetuating paternalistic and cultural-imperialistic attitudes toward the poor is pernicious indeed. failing to show sensitivity to the complexity of “choice” for diverse socio-economic groups in late consumer capitalism is just one example of the ways that, in some instances, local food elites may reinforce class disparities rather than overcome them. the class politics of choice and autonomy—who has them, who doesn’t, and why—are a neglected but important dimension of urban food justice debates. it is hoped that the data presented here advance the need for a radical politics of choice within multidisciplinary food studies and political economy by creating stronger conceptual links between normative theory and class politics as they play out in the mundane yet conflictladen practices of everyday life. in particular, ongoing research is needed to understand alternative food practices and discourses not only as they have been presented here as unwitting agents of the reproduction of urban class relations, but also through the hopeful lens of cross-class bridging and solidarity. at the same time, much could be learned by overcoming the dichotomy of “conventional” and “alternative” food business; rather than assuming a complete incompatibility between scaled-up food retail capital and everything else, food justice and planning research and practice would be better served, donald (2008) argues, by engaging more profoundly with food firm dynamics in order to identify lessons in capacity building, up-scaling, and sustainable regional development. this article offers a first step in this studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 224 melanie bedore direction, asserting that the food desert problem must firstly be brought into public discussion as a divisive spatial politics of oppression. notes 1 distributive justice studies are principally concerned with the distribution of resources in society and the principles by which these are justly or unjustly allocated (see rawls, 1971; herbert & smith, 1979; badcock, 1984; also young’s [1990] critique of the distributive paradigm of social justice). 2 two recent domestic examples illustrate this well. in june 2013 safeway’s canadian assets were acquired by sobeys, the country’s second largest grocery retailer. the $5.8 billion acquisition is expected to realize significant economies of scale, and allow sobeys to intensify its market presence in western canada (strauss & ladurantaye, 2013). in july 2013, the loblaw corporation—canada’s largest grocery retailer— purchased the country’s largest drugstore chain, shopper’s drug mart, for $12.4 billion (marotte, 2013). 3 the literature on food deserts and food environments is far too vast to summarize here; however, readers may further explore aggregate results and systematic reviews (beaulac, kristjansson & cummins, 2009; walker, keane & burke, 2010), contrasting studies about whether food deserts exist, where, and in what form (leete, bania & sparks-ibanga, 2011; short, guthman & raskin, 2007), and studies measuring food deserts’ effect on outcomes such as fruit and vegetable consumption, obesity, and dietrelated disease (pearson et al., 2005; bodor et al., 2008; franco et al., 2009). 4 the city of kingston’s most recent in-depth neighbourhood profiles are based on the 2006 census. at the time of submission, the city was able to provide basic population information presented here based on the 2011 national household survey; however, more detailed figures will not be available for some time. 5 while they do not appear in this article, the results presented here are shaped by additional primary data collected in a reminiscing exercise with older kingston residents at a long-term care facility, over 350 door-to-door surveys of rideau heights residents, and archival research on the changing retail food landscapes of the city and the capitalization of the retail food sector. 6 pursuant to those used in the 1998-99 national health population survey (dietitians of canada, 2005), indicators of food insecurity were, at any time in the last year, not having enough food to eat because of lack of money, worrying that there wouldn’t be enough to eat because of lack of money, or not eating the quality or variety of foods that you would like, because of a lack of money. 7 young (2000, p. 33) defines self-development as heterogeneous individuals’ ability to participate in determining their actions and the conditions of their actions. references alkon, a.h. 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(2003). families coping without earnings or government cash assistance. assessing the new federalism occasional paper no. 64. http://www.urban.org:80/publications/410634.html acknowledgement many thanks to luisa veronis for her comments and encouragement on an earlier draft of this paper and to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments. figure 1: kingslake iga, 2006 source: author figure 2: grant’s no frills, 2008 source: author correspondence address: jiří navrátil, ph.d., department of public economics, faculty of economics and administration, masaryk university, lipová 507/41a, 602 00 brno, czech republic. email: jiri.navratil@econ.muni.cz issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 8, issue 2, 181-205, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? the process of reconfiguring the czech social justice movement in times of crisis jiří navrátil masaryk university, czech republic abstract the contemporary economic crisis is sometimes labeled as the greatest crisis of capitalism since the great depression. therefore one might expect it to become a perfect mobilizing grievance for the transnational social justice movement, which used to target the ideology of neoliberal governance and social consequences of unrestricted global financial markets. however, the current responses to the crisis and consequent austerity policies have remained mostly embedded at the national or even local level. the symbols of this struggle—los indignados and the occupy movement— have focused on targeting national political issues rather than on organizing transnational coalitions and international protest events, while paying little attention to the role of global institutions and corporations. this article focuses on the case of czech republic and traces two broad processes—scale shift and identity shift— that led to a broader change in the meta-logic of social justice mobilization. these processes and their constituent mechanisms have transformed the globally-focused and weakly-integrated movement into dense and nationally embedded coalitions that have started to target the national consequences of neoliberal governance instead of its global political foundations. introduction this article aims to explore the evolution of the czech social justice movement in the last decade. it traces the processes of its decline leading to the vanishing of its mobilizing capacity and transnational focus even in an era of global financial crisis. generally, the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2007 and the following austerity measures in many western democracies studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 182 jiří navrátil might be expected to be a logical and convenient target and mobilizing issue for the global justice movement (gjm) or for the global anti-capitalist left in general. however, it seems that not only did the former transnational mobilizing structures remain largely quiescent, but most of the mobilizations related to the recent economic downturn and its social consequences have remained located mostly at the level of national polities, and have lost much of their transnational scope and political universalism. in other words, largescale supra-national mobilizations and the imagery of the anti-capitalist and reformist left that flourished at the beginning of the new millennium across europe or in america were not repeated. the article examines this “missed opportunity” of radical transnational politics. more specifically it asks what happened to the collective mobilization of the social justice movement after its heyday at the turn of millennium and during the recent economic crisis. what are the processes and factors that prevented another cycle of transnational social justice mobilization from taking place? in my attempt to address these questions i focus on the evolution of the czech social justice movement, which may illustrate some of the more general processes of transformation of the transnational social movements. as the czech radical left became a firm part of the european branch of the global justice movement at the turn of the millennium—both in terms of framing, targets, and coordination of transnational protest events—its subsequent evolution also tells the much broader story of the transformation of global justice actors in liberal democratic settings. this article builds upon the theoretical framework of dynamics of contention as formulated by the mcadam, tarrow and tilly (mcadam, tarrow, & tilly, 2001; mcadam, tarrow, & tilly, 2008; tilly & tarrow, 2007). following the theoretical assumptions of this perspective, and drawing on previous research, the article also outlines a more general scheme of the possible path of a detransnationalization of political contention. the article suggests that the transformation of the czech social justice movement—or its decline—was the outcome of two intertwining social processes: a scale shift, and an identity shift. these consisted of a series of environmental, relational and cognitive mechanisms, which generally turned a trans-nationally oriented and nationally rather isolated actor back into a nationally-focused and nationallyembedded one. while it is often agreed that it is the supra-national organizational structure that qualifies a social movement as a genuine transnational subject, also there may be other aspects of collective mobilizations that make it transnational in a broader sense—such as protest issues, targets or mobilizations—while the rest of them may remain embedded in national or local context (cf. rucht, 2009, p. 207). in this article i rely on the latter understanding of a transnational collective action for two reasons. first, it brings in a more dynamic perspective on the shifts between various aspects and levels of contemporary collective action, and second, it befits better to the czech social justice actors and protests that only transiently qualified as “fully transnational” subjects in a strict sense of the term. this implies that the transnational dimension of studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 183 collective action is perceived here as more flexible, less enduring and always partial (most notably in the case of collective identity), and firmly rooted in the local or national sphere. therefore, the article considers different scales of contention within a particular cycle of protest or field of activism not as mutually conflicting but rather as complementary ones. the structure of the article is as follows: the czech social justice movement and its rise as a transnationally-oriented actor in 2000 is introduced. next, the theoretical outline of the article is laid out, focusing on the dynamics of contention (doc) perspective, and types of mechanisms that transform political contention—environmental, cognitive and relational—are described. the article continues with a description of the data and methods used. fourth, the evolution of the czech social justice movement between 2001 and 2011 is described in terms of environmental, relational and cognitive mechanisms. finally, the whole process of transformation of the movement is outlined and evaluated, and general conclusions are drawn from the analysis. the rise of the czech global justice movement (1990-2000) the regime change in 1989 set up special conditions for the evolution of the czech social justice movement consisting of the radical left social movement organizations (smos) that constituted its ideological and organizational backbone. the split between the communist left and the other streams of the radical left soon became embodied in the persistent cleavage between the collectivist (sometimes labeled as “authoritarian”) left and the libertarian one, even if the former had also consisted of newly-founded trotskyite or marxist smos with strongly negative attitudes towards the ancien régime (bastl, 1999). the initial ideological fragmentation on the radical left slowly gave way to more coordinated efforts among the libertarian (anarchist, autonomist, squatting) and radical environmental groups, which became more integrated in a rather indirect fashion via the internalization of the existing symbolic frameworks and identities of western gjm, and via their affiliations with other transnational organizations (císař & koubek, 2012). from the very beginning, however, the czech political environment was largely unreceptive to radical left ideologies and frames of reference, which led to both the public marginalization of the movement, and to changes in its focus. in other words, most of the public events organized by the movement in the midand late 90’s were focused on the negative impacts of globalization, but in more particular and indirect ways. generally, the political economy of global capitalism (neoliberalism, economic injustice) remained strategically neglected, and globalization was targeted mostly as an issue of “corporatism.” typically, the impacts of globalization on culture (“coca-colonization” or “mcdonaldization”), environment (gentrification, automobilism) and communities (commercialization of life) were examined and criticized (kolářová, 2008, p. 4; růžička, 2007, p. 37). the main type of protest event in this period, symbolizing the rising integration of czech studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 184 jiří navrátil social justice smos into transnational structures, were the street parties that were explicitly inspired by the repertoire of people’s global action, reclaim the streets, and other western networks (cf. císař & slačálek, 2007, p. 2). the street parties started in 1997, and the largest took place in 1998 and 1999 with two thousand and five thousand participants, respectively, which was interpreted as a clear success for the movement. however, in terms of building a transnational actor out of the existing social justice one, the international monetary fund/world bank (imf/wb) summit in september 2000 was a clear milestone—not just in terms of the number of participants, but also in terms of inter-organizational integration, and because of its supra-national character and importance for global justice activism in general. at the same time, because of these and other circumstances, the impact of this event on the czech social justice movement is hardly comparable to other domestic processes and events (císař, 2008, p. 148; kolářová, 2009, pp. 50–55). the preparatory activities that were so important for the integration of the czech social justice movement began in mid-1999, and led to the creation of an unprecedentedly wide coalition of domestic and foreign smos (iniciativa proti ekonomické globalizaci [initiative against economic globalization], inpeg) in close coordination with transnational gjm actors like peoples’ global action (pga), indymedia and others (welsh 2004). despite the fact that the majority of radical left actors involved themselves in the process of organization through a single platform (inpeg), there were still some networks that participated in the event but were involved in the preparatory process through the alternative platform “stop imf!” (trotskyites, communists). at the end of the day, there were several series of separately-organized protest events during the summit, but both streams of the movement eventually participated in some major marches and demonstrations. therefore, the event was a success not only in terms of the number of participants (estimated between ten and twelve thousand, many of them coming from abroad) but also because of the unprecedented (albeit temporary) integration of various streams of the czech social justice movement jointly participating against the same enemy. also, because the symbolic integration of the movement was complete. during the preparation for the event and the event itself, the former local environmental, cultural and political claims were shifted both upwards and outwards towards a more explicit political economy framing. due to the extremely strong presence of foreign networks and groups, the event aimed at an open critique of the international economic system and its ideological roots. the event represented a completion of the process of integration of the czech social justice movement by way of confirming its transnationallyembedded collective identity. the “global justice” identity and framing that was inspired by western activism and contention was internalized by particular streams of the czech social justice movement, isolated from one another and working instead through their connections with foreign counterparts and media. while the event led to the strengthening of the transnational dimension of the movement in terms of its symbolic aspects, it also exposed its very studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 185 low level of practical inter-organizational integration. this feature emerged in the preparatory strategies and cooperation during the protests. even if all these activities were fostered by the extraordinarily strong presence of the movement’s foreign counterparts, participation by activists from abroad, and the presence of the international media, the practical fragmentation of the movement along the lines of its primary ideological identities still remained. in other words, after the event the czech social justice movement became better integrated symbolically, but its social and inter-organizational embeddedness remained on almost the same level as before. however, the arrival of the global financial crisis to the czech republic after 2008 found a social justice activism of a very different type (navrátil & císař, 2014). public protests were mostly organized by recently-founded, well-integrated and broad czech social justice networks (e.g. proalt, or stop vládě [stop the government]) that were formed by the former czech global justice actors and joined by other domestic smos. however, these framed the protests almost exclusively on the national or even local level, while targeting the government and its economic and social policies, and justifying their activities as democratic resistance by the citizens against the arrogance and corruption of national political elites. despite the participation of most of the radical left smos, there were almost no signs of anti-capitalism or diagnostic framing that would rely on broader ideological schemes and identify the roots of the financial crisis or logic of austerity measures in the neoliberal political order and its doctrine. so, what has happened to czech social justice activism? how has the movement evolved? and what were the key factors and mechanisms in the process of its transformation? changing context, networks, and perceptions theoretically, this article builds upon the dynamics of contention framework as formulated by mcadam, tarrow and tilly (mcadam, tilly, & tarrow, 2001; tilly &tarrow, 2007; mcadam, tilly, & tarrow, 2008). more particularly, it assumes that process-based rather than a variable-based perspective could help us identify causal relations within the interactive multi-actor dynamics in the field of political contention. furthermore, it assumes that these relations consist of a series of mechanisms and processes that recur across a variety of episodes in contentious politics. the mechanisms are defined here as “delimited changes that alter relations among specified sets of elements in identical or closely similar ways over a variety of situations” (mcadam, tilly, & tarrow, 2008, p. 308). in this view, social processes are concatenations of such “building units”—mechanisms. therefore, social processes may be defined as a more complex set of interactions than mechanisms, because they are treated here as a composite of several mechanisms (mcadam, tilly, & tarrow, 2001, p. 27). in this sense, mechanisms are best differentiated because of their recurrent character, while processes may combine these mechanisms in different ways and with various outcomes (2001, p. 28). studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 186 jiří navrátil in order to understand more fully the dynamics of the different factors determining the evolution of the czech social justice movement, this article opts for this mechanistic perspective in the study of contentious action. at least two key broad and closely-intertwined processes consisting of several mechanisms worked to transform the czech social justice movement after it reached its “transnational” peak in 2000. the first is the process of downward scale shift that demotes the coordination of collective action to a more local level than at its initiation (tilly & tarrow, 2007, p. 94). in other words, while the claim-making of the czech social justice movement during its “global justice” period largely targeted transnational institutions and symbols, at the end of the process the national and local consequences of economic hardship became the dominant issue of the movement, which also framed issues in a way that was resonant in czech society. the other process is an identity shift, which is broadly defined as the emergence of new perceptions of the actors themselves and of the essences that constitute the movement. more particularly, the czech social justice movement in its “global justice period” defined itself primarily as a member of a transnational movement fighting globalized capitalism and its consequences all over the world, often despite the attitudes and opinions of other czech smos and citizens (navrátil, 2010). however, this changed after the arrival of the global financial crisis, when the movement instead began to define itself more as an advocate for czech citizens, targeting national and local institutions and political elites and becane embedded in a national coalition of smos and networks. in other words, the emphasis on symbolic transactions and active alliances with ideologically-aligned and often foreign counterparts gave way to intensive cooperation within broad coalitions of domestic smos, while suppressing the ideological aspects and supra-national framing of protest issues. the process of an upward scale shift has been described in many analyses typically focusing on the rise and mobilization of the global justice movement (cf. ayres 2004; della porta & tarrow, juris, 2008; munck, 2007; smith, 2008; 2005; tarrow, 2005). on the other hand, while the processes of localization of protest in the global era have also been described and analyzed (hamel, lustiger-thaler, pieterse, & roseneil, 2001; navrátil & císař, 2014; starr & adams, 2003), there is still a lack of procedural analyses of the decline of the scale of contention in contemporary societies. in analyzing the composition of both processes and tracing their constituent mechanisms, this article differentiates among their environmental, cognitive and relational types (cf. heaney & rojas, 2011; mcadam, tilly, & tarrow, 2001), and makes use of a catalogue of existing concepts of processes and mechanisms that have been analyzed so far (tilly & tarrow, 2007, pp. 214-217). the environmental mechanisms stand for “externally generated influences on conditions affecting social life” (mcadam, tilly, & tarrow, 2001, p. 25). namely, these are shifts in the societal and political environment where actors operate and mobilize that affect the strategies and outcomes of political protest. in this article i conceive of environmental mechanisms as studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 187 the shifts in threats or opportunities that might have (if thus interpreted) largescale consequences for a particular field of activism (cf. almeida, 2003; alimi, 2007; goldstone & tilly, 2001). among the many environmental changes in the field of the czech social justice movement, two were of extraordinary importance for the transformation of key aspects of its collective identity and focus during the time of recent crisis. first was the public announcement of an inter-governmental agreement between the u.s. administration and the czech government to install a u.s. military base in the czech republic. this led to a decisive transformation in the logic of collective action in the field of anti-war activism in which the social justice actors had been largely involved since 2003. second was the transformation of the political context in the field of socio-economic contention in 2008 and 2009, when extensive domestic economic reforms were effectively launched by the government, and the first impacts of the economic crisis appeared in the czech republic. relational mechanisms refer to the transformation of “the connections among people, groups and interpersonal networks” (mcadam, tilly, & tarrow, 2001, p. 26). there were two key relational mechanisms in the czech case: the brokerage mechanism producing new connections between nonconnected actors and fields of activism, and defection, or the discontinuation of existing relation between actors or networks. in addition, the mechanism of renewal of previously existing alliances—emulation (tilly & tarrow, 2007, p. 215)—also appeared. basically, while the czech social justice movement has taken off as a set of weakly connected and highly profiled collective actors with clearly defined ideological boundaries, this slowly began to change at the peak of the global justice protests, and coalitions became more frequent during the era of the anti-war campaign. the term “cognitive mechanism” denotes the transformation of a perception on the individual and collective level (mcadam, tilly, & tarrow, 2001, p. 26). most importantly, it links the structural changes in a movement’s environment with its perception and interpretation on the part of its activists or its constituency. in this article, the single most important cognitive mechanisms were the attribution of a threat or opportunity to a particular shift in political environment, and changes in the collective identity of the movement through the mechanisms of boundary deactivation and formation. data and methods this article builds on both quantitative and qualitative data. the former consists of two protest event datasets, with protest event being the unit of analysis. while the first was generated via official media sources1 and is used to map long-term and broader shifts in the trajectory of the czech social justice movement, the second focuses on the field of anti-war activism and is used to illustrate the relational and cognitive mechanisms that were part of the movement’s transformation in this field of contention. the protest event is defined here as an actual gathering of at least three people convened in a studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 188 jiří navrátil public space in order to make claims that bear on the interests of an institution/ collective actor. only real episodes of collective action are included; threats of resorting to collective action, such as strike alerts, were excluded. petitions were excluded from the analysis. the first dataset (pea left, n=471) is based on the electronic archive of the czech news agency (can) which was searched for news between january 1989 and december 2011 using selected keywords. the following variables were coded for each event: date, place, duration, collective participants and organizers, number of individual participants, main issues and framing and their scale, target of the claim, repertoire, reaction of elites, and police activity. all news covering any protest event was selected and coded. the whole dataset consisting of 6524 protest events was used to sample events that have taken place since 1990 and in which one of the organizers was a social justice actor, defined as an actor raising explicit social justice claims (typically radical left-wing smos—anarchist, communist, trotskyite, marxist or other left smos). generally, i consider the year 2009 to be the start of the contention related to the global financial/economic crisis, as the first claims explicitly related to the crisis appeared in january 2009. four key variables were used in the present analysis. first, the target scale was coded as national/sub-national or supra-national according to the nature of the main target of the event. nine types of targets for each event were re-coded as national/local (nationwide political institutions, courts, local political authorities, regional political authorities, welfare state) or supranational (eu, international institutions and other states), or others (non-profit organizations, private companies). the ratio of national and supra-national targets was analyzed. second, two main protest issues were coded for each event (performance of state institutions and the quality of democracy; historical justice/recognition; the eu; economic issues; industry; urban planning; social policies; cultural and sport policies; agriculture; consumer issues, domestic security, foreign policies and war; environment; women rights; glbt rights; minority rights, other human rights; and religion), and the five most frequent ones were selected for analysis. third, event attendance was recorded. in cases when the exact number was not available (several dozen, several hundred etc.), its lower boundary was coded (20, 200, etc.). fourth, the number of actors coordinating the protest events was recorded, and the average number of smos co-organizing the event was counted. the second dataset (pea anti-war, n=287) was generated by triangulating several key resources, and covers czech anti-war activism between september 2002 and april 2009. the whole period under study (2002–2009) is divided into three successive phases (september 2002 – december 2002; january 2003 – july 2006; august 2006 – april 2009) according to the evolution of the political environment, and two ruptures between these periods are conceptualized as environmental mechanisms launching further chains of events. first, the press monitoring database anopress, which covers news articles from all key nationwide and local (both printed and electronic) newspapers and journals, was used to generate a list of protest events within studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 189 the period under study (from the start of the protest cycle against nato in september 2002 to obama’s visit to prague in april 2009 to announce his willingness to start the process of nuclear disarmament, settle us-iran relations, and re-evaluate the deployment of a us anti-missile radar base in the czech republic). the web pages of relevant smos that engaged in antiwar activism were another regular source of information (e.g. haddenn & tarrow, 2007). the other sources of information were the alternative and activist media, personal e-mail communications, and interviews with the representatives of the most important groups and networks. the following types of events or activities were not included in the dataset: running an information stand, events that were announced as anti-war but contained only other-than-anti-war claims (typical for the extreme right), counterevents to anti-war events, referendums, and events where anti-war claims were absolutely minor ones (typically for political parties during election campaigns). the following variables were coded for each event: location, time, organizing and participating groups and organizations, number of participants, repertoire, number of individual participants (computed as an average of all values that were available), and main claim of the event. also, any overall claim that was raised during the event was recorded and coded (either the direct open claim was recorded from speeches and interviews for the media, or it was reconstructed from banners and pickets). because of the character of some events (e.g. local events that were not covered by the media in much detail), only 69% of claims raised at the events were recorded (100% from the first period, 38% from the second, and 30% from the third). recorded claims were coded along two dimensions: first, the basic scale of the claim was coded (international/global or national/local); and second, the key content component of the claim was distinguished (economic, democratic or environmental). the categories for coding were created inductively from the data. identification of the cognitive mechanisms related to the opening of political opportunities relied mainly on the analysis of the public discourse within the different periods of anti-war campaigns (opinion polls, newspaper articles, press releases of the government), and on interviews with activists. identification of the cognitive mechanisms related to the intensification of the threat was based on an analysis of the framing of protest events, where the scale of framing represents the extent to which the issue (threat) was perceived as imminent and close to the domestic environment, and on the interviews with activists. identification of the relational mechanisms and emulation is based both on the activist interviews and on the social network analysis (sna) that was applied to protest event data. the protest coalition, that is, ties between two or more smos, exists when these smos cooperate on the same protest event (i.e. sharing time, place, and attendance). the platforms or coalitions that arose within the different periods of anti-war campaigns were broken down into particular groups and organizations in order to make the single smo the unit of analysis. the tie between smos is treated as undirected; in studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 190 jiří navrátil other words, when two groups took part at the same event, the tie is always considered symmetric. the reason is that anti-war actors do not take part at the event without the consent of the other organizing or participating actors; the co-occurrence of actors is thus conditioned upon the mutual agreement of all participating actors. the tie here represents the acted-upon willingness and capacity of the group to cooperate with other group(s) within the protest event, and to contribute to the success of the event either by mobilizing their own members and supporters or by assisting with logistics and know-how. the original 2-mode (affiliation) network that was created from the protest event data for each of the three periods under study was transformed into one-mode valued directed network. the value of the arc in the weighted cooperation networks equals the number of joint co-occurrences of two groups at some anti-war protest event. self-loops within all networks were deleted. events that were not organized by smos were not included in the sna. visual analyses were conducted in ucinet (borgatti, everett, & freeman, 2011). the third main source of data are articles in the activist journal solidarita (trotskyite) and qualitative semi-structured interviews with three key representatives of czech social justice smos, conducted in order to clarify the role of key factors, and to identify the mechanisms that were in play in the process of the movement’s transformation. the respondents were active in different anti-war campaigns, and together they represent three different key ideological platforms that took part in the campaigns: anarchist, trotskyite, and religious. evolution of the czech social justice movement the early formation of the czech global justice movement clearly relied on transnational backing, and the movement went through the process of transformation soon after the prague event of 2000 was over. the czech social justice movement then entered into the next phase of its evolution. evolution of the czech social justice movement: three periods in quantitative terms, the evolution of the czech social justice movement (sjm) might be described as consisting of three major phases that broadly correspond to major shifts in the political context relevant to the movement: the first phase of renewal (1990–1992), the second phase of expansion (1993–2000), and the third phase of decline (2001–2011). the first phase (1990–1992) might be described as post-1989 euphoria, when the radical left was trying to seize the attention of the public and bring in the left political agenda. both freshly formed anarchist and autonomist groups and networks, and communist organizations soon became very active in organizing public protests (see figure 1). the second period in the evolution of the movement started with the sharp fall in protest activities in 1993, and was characterized by slow but persistent re-activation and intensification of the movement’s protest activities, which peaked in 2000, studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 191 “the year of miracles.” since then, the movement has experienced a clear decline that persisted even through the arrival of financial crisis to the czech republic in 2009. figure 1: number of protest events (1990–2011) source: pea left not only were the social justice smos very active in the early 1990s, but their reception by the citizens was relatively positive, as illustrated by the high level of participation at the events, especially in 1991 (see figure 2). however, the dynamics of event participation in the next phase contrasted with the protest activity of the smos: despite higher activity by the smos in the second phase, the annual attendance at events was lower, if more stable, than in the previous period. on the other hand, in the last phase the general decline in participation at protest events organized by social justice smos paralleled the lower activity of social justice smos. finally, the third period (2001–2011) was evidently an era of decline for the movement. the indicators of activity for the movement—both the number of events and attendance by members and sympathizers—steadily declined after 2000, with few exceptions (2006–2009 and 2011). figure 2: number of participants (1990–2011) source: pea left studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 192 jiří navrátil one of the key aspects of social justice activism is the scale of its targets. during the first period, a clear prevalence of the national/sub-national framing was evident. the second period was characterized by a growing balance between the two levels. there was a steep decline in the relative number of domestic targets of protest activity in the period (e.g. national political institutions, courts, local authorities); meanwhile this was not compensated for by any increase in foreign and transnational targets (other states, international institutions) (see figure 3). after 2000, two processes may be identified. first, there was still a close relation in the evolution of the two target scales until 2006. second, from 2007 an opposite process to that of the previous period took place. there was a growing imbalance between the two target scales, which led to the complete dominance of the national scale of protests by the end of the period; even this was marked by sharp irregularities in their trends. the very end of the period was characterized by protest more than ever aimed at national/sub-national institutions and organizations. figure 3: scale of target (1990–2011) source: pea left these shifts in social justice activism were also reflected in the prevailing issues that were raised at the events. the constellation of issues raised during the first period also indicates the openness of the political space for social justice actors and their agenda at the time, which was simply not just the dissemination of radical left ideas but was also closely connected to mobilization against the extreme right and in favor of the democratization of state institutions (see figure 4). almost the same key issues were on the agenda during the second phase of social justice activism, with two important exceptions. first, even though this was an era of increasing internalization of foreign/transnational issues and symbols, it was not dominated by the issue of foreign policy. however, it is apparent that the importance of this issue was on the rise, while the importance of targeting the extreme right declined, together with the promotion of radical left ideologies and issues. second, while the economy was never the single most important issue for social justice activism, it nevertheless rose in the studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 193 second half of 1990s and peaked in 2000 with the culmination of global justice activism. on the other hand, the issue of quality democracy and state institutions continued to play an important role (figure 4). during the last period, several changes in the trends occurred. once again, the issue of right wing extremism had become even more important than it was in early 1990s, and most of the other issues remained much less important, with two exceptions. the first was the decline of foreign policy as an issue (with the exception of 2002 and 2007), the second, the quality of democracy and political institutions issue at the end of the period. more particularly, the changes in the frequency of the foreign policy issue in this phase were strongly negatively correlated with the frequency of the democracy issue (-0.57). on the other hand, there was a very strong positive correlation between the importance of the issues of democracy and economy (0.84). in the previous two periods, the issue of foreign policy was strongly positively correlated with the topic of the economy (0.67), while the relation between the issues of democracy and economy was negative (-0.25). figure 4: protest issues (1990–2011) source: pea left apparently, many different but closely-interrelated shifts took place in the trajectory of the czech social justice movement. before 2000 we were witnessing the quantitative growth of social justice activism, along with the increased importance of transnational targets, and the increasing importance of the issue of economy—at the expense of the issue of democracy, and focused mostly on the national level. it seems that the issues of democracy and foreign policy were closely interrelated, and dominated at the peak of the movement in 2000. while it could be expected that there would be some period of decline in global justice protest after the large international event in prague in 2000, a series of sudden shifts in target scale, importance of issues, and number of events and protest participation after 2007 indicate that other factors and effects rather than just “exhaustion” of the movement might have been at play. the period before the onset of the financial crisis found social justice activism increasingly focused on the national level, articulating problems of economy mostly in connection with the issue of democracy and the quality of national political institutions. even the arrival of the global financial studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 194 jiří navrátil crisis and the subsequent austerity measures effected no change. two related questions follow from this: first, what mechanisms occurred to prevent social justice activism from raising the scale of contention? second, how was the character of the movement, or its identity, changed? mechanisms of transformation after 2000 after 2000, the overall decline of social justice activism may be illustrated by the evolution of protest events explicitly framed as a critique of the political economy of globalization. street parties as the key form of movement strategy took place in prague in 2001 and 2002. an annual spinoff of the prague street parties began in the second largest czech city, brno, with approximately the same number of participants over the following years. the framing of these events slowly shifted back from explicit economic alter-globalization towards more environmentally and culturally oriented issues. street parties, organized mostly by the anarchist sector, were also held as part of the national social forum process that took place in 2004, 2005 and 2007. on the other hand, starting with the nato summit in prague in 2002 and continuing with the war in iraq, the movement gradually started to invest a considerable amount of its energy and capacities into the area of anti-war activism. generally, while its activities in the field of socio-economic contention were reduced right after 2000, the movement was expanding into the realm of anti-war activism: during the nato summit, social justice actors organized or coorganized 52% of anti-war events, during the war in iraq 50%, and after 2006, 54% (pea antiwar). therefore, both of these areas of contention should be examined in order to single out and analyze the mechanism and processes of the movement’s decline in the era of financial crisis. environmental mechanisms one of the key factors that shaped the evolution of the czech social justice movement was the transformation of its political context. there were two key environments for the movement between 2001 and 2011: the field of socioeconomic contention, and the anti-war field. the first important shift occurred in late 2002 with the nato summit in prague. it was directly related to the intensity of involvement by the social justice movement in the field of anti-war activism, as it provided an opportunity for the movement to deal with anti-war issues from the perspective of international political economy. the political context remained unfavorable: most citizens supported the country’s membership in nato, and the political elite displayed an exceptional consensus in its positive attitudes toward nato strategies and structures (šandera, 2002). at the same time, the police took a lesson from the previous international summit and declared a high level of willingness to monitor protesters and to have them under permanent physical control. this, together with soft repression strategies (intimidation of activists through media) and the very limited presence of foreign participants studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 195 and groups, led to an increased level of repression during the events. the second important shift took place in 2003, when the international threat of war in iraq arose. first, the preparations for the war in iraq were launched; then the war itself started in march 2003. from that moment on, the political context for anti-war activism started to open up, as the previous political alignments of major domestic political forces related to the issue changed. the government, a key decision-maker in the czech political system in the field of international issues and policies, and major political parties underwent serious internal disputes and splits related to the iraq invasion. furthermore, the public became opposed to the conflict, and police did not take any repressive measures during anti-war protests, while softening their protest management strategies. the next important shift in political context took place in august 2006, when anew threat appeared. the potential deployment of a u.s. missile system to the czech republic was unexpectedly brought to the forefront of the political agenda. the political context remained open, as the government promoting the deployment was not backed by a majority in parliament; thus the parliament became the central political institution dealing with the issue and new alignments appeared. this led to a radical change in the political landscape for extra-parliamentary political mobilization. as in the previous period, there was a pool of influential allies and supporters of anti-war activism (both among the political and cultural elites, and among other nonstate collective actors). finally, the era after 2008 was largely characterized by shifts in the socioeconomic context of political contention and a return by the social justice smos “back” to the arena of social-economic contention. right after its installment in mid-2006, the new right-wing government made efforts to promote economic deregulation and pro-market reforms. liberalization of health care, tax regulation, and the welfare system became effective in january 2008, which opened up opportunities and offered grievances for socio-economic conflict. political elites were sharply divided on the scope and necessity of austerity measures, and these measures also became largely unpopular among the population. in late 2008, the first worries about the impact of the global financial crisis on the czech republic appeared. while its measurable impact on the czech economy before 2009 was far from dramatic, the czech right-wing government had used the notion of crisis to legitimize further liberalization and fiscal restrictions in economic, healthcare, and social policies that would otherwise have been applicable only with significant political costs and difficulties. even if the government denied that the czech economy could be directly endangered by the coming financial crisis, it nevertheless threatened citizens with “the greek example” if there were no further spending cuts and tax growth. the political right succeeded in framing the crisis as a consequence of “generous and irresponsible left-wing policies” to such an extent that they succeeded in the parliamentary elections in mid-2010. the establishment of a new right-wing government was thus interpreted as studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 196 jiří navrátil representing the prevailing agreement of the citizens with austerity policies, and led to the closure of the political context. however, the government’s austerity policies, massive restitution of church property, continuing economic downturn, and corruption scandals among the political elites led to broad disagreement on the part of the public and the political opposition, and the political context for the social justice movement began to open up again. relational mechanisms after the important milestone of 2000 when social justice smos shared some key protest events (even if they did not jointly co-organize them), cooperation among these groups became less frequent again. while the “stop imf!” platform was from the very outset considered to be a temporary cooperation intended only for the duration of the summit, inpeg was a very ambitious project. however, it continued to exist for a few more months, and gradually declined after internal disputes broke out (slačálek, 2000). non-coalitional events (i.e. events organized by single smos) became obviously dominant, and the mechanism of defection became ever more intensive until 2006 (see figure 5). as indicated above, “pure” social justice events after 2000 were still most frequently organized by single smos or by their ideologically defined clusters (namely, by anarchist ones consisting of street parties, and trotskyites and communists focusing on social forum events). this trend changed in 2006 when the share of events that were co-organized began to increase, at the expense of events organized by any single smo. this turnaround was closely tied to coalition-making in the field of anti-war contention. while the context shift in 2003 led to a significant reduction in the role of ideological barriers in forming protest alliances and pushed new actors into the anti-war arena, the imposition of a new threat in 2006 led to the mechanisms of emulation and brokerage, i.e., to the building of broad and firmly-integrated protest platforms on the ground. this led not only to better integration among social justice smos but also their engagement with new domestic actors (see figure 5). studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 197 figure 5: anti-war protest coalitions (2003-2006 and 2006–2009) source: pea anti–war note: the black areas denote core social justice smos, the red ones are those that consider themselves to be part of the movement but are not identified as such on the part of the social justice actors, and the blue ones are other smos (environmental, religious etc.). the size of the node denotes its coalitional activity, and the strength of ties denotes the frequency of cooperation between the two nodes. what is more important, however, is that in 2006 the brokerage mechanism also seemed to operate in the field of social justice and the socio-economic areas. the intensifying of the general brokerage mechanism was interrupted in 2010, when protest events organized by single social justice smos generally prevailed, thus fully giving way to the mechanism of defection. because of the subsequent intensive negotiating and preparations for the new anti-austerity platform, however, the situation changed abruptly next year and the strategy of co-organizing protest events became the only game in town in all issue areas, including social justice. undoubtedly, the mechanism of brokerage was re-activated. figure 6: evolution of protest coalition work (2001-2011) source: pea left a general look at the average number of members of protest coalitions reveals two major findings: first, for the most of the period until the u-turn studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 198 jiří navrátil in networking strategies in 2010, the most common number of co-organizers of protest events was between two and three. second, the last year under study is characterized by considerably broader protest coalitions. this further underlines the intensity of the brokerage mechanism (see figure 6). figure 6: average number of protest coalition members (2001-2011) source: pea left cognitive mechanisms the changing environment and changing relations among social justice actors were closely related to changes in their understanding of the political context and the shaping of their collective identity. the protesters clearly perceived the heightened police repression during the anti-nato summit in late 2002: “essentially, all of my peers that are also against nato simply feared going here and getting into conflict with police”(kuchyňová, 2002). this fear of attending anti-war or other protest events did not appear again later, and was rather exceptional. the perception of political closure was supplemented by polls of citizens’ attitudes towards nato in which nearly 60% of respondents displayed their trust in nato, and 70% supported czech membership in the alliance (šandera, 2002). the prevalent framing of protests during the period was related to the economy (67%), and claims remained firmly embedded on the supranational level (86%) (pea anti-war). the start of the war in iraq was marked by a change in public opinion and by rising serious tensions among political elites: “the attack on iraq caused doubts even among the social democrats that were in the government, which was obviously on the side of nato during its prague summit. a skeptical view of usa strategy was shared among a much larger part of society” (representative of socialist solidarity group, interview conducted may 6, 2013). the released data on citizens’ attitudes further showed that two thirds of them opposed a military solution to the situation, and this attitude prevailed for the next three years of the anti-war campaign (červenka, 2005). again, the most important type of framing remained the economic one (88%), with majority claims remaining on the supranational scale (81%), thus showing that the major understanding of these anti-war protests was still mostly related to capitalism and economic interests (pea anti-war). studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 199 the next shift in the political context that took place in 2006 was perceived by social justice smos as a more dramatic one. apart from a major shift in their understanding of the nature of the target of the protest, the scale of the perceived threat also changed considerably. of significance, the most important type of framing used during the protest was related to democracy (70%), and the share of claims targeting transnational institutions or organizations rapidly decreased (57%) (pea anti-war). the change in the issues as well as the rising discontent among the population (červenka, 2009) were perceived by social justice smos and were clearly related to their change in strategies: “the issue played its role. the closer it was (not only in terms of geography) to the czech public, the easier it was to consider its mobilization” (interview 1). essentially, the prevalence of the democracy issue and the shift in attention from the transnational to national level were maintained even during the shift in the socio-economic context of contention related to national economic reforms in 2008. even if the war in iraq and the financial crisis were still reflected and debated inside the movement, the issue of domestic economic reforms and their social consequences still prevailed until 2009. in 2009, however, the situation changed. first, the movement utilized the opportunity of obama’s visit to prague to indicate a change in u.s. foreign policy. second, the government lost a no-confidence vote and stepped down. consequently, the movement declared victory in the anti-war campaign. at the same time, the financial crisis hit the country and became part of the national political discourse, and the movement switched to the domestic economic agenda while trying to benefit from its mobilization successes in the anti-war campaign: “now it is important not to be lulled to sleep by the fall of the government supporting the missile system. it is necessary to demonstrate further that those 70% of citizens are not just a number but a real power that every future government must take into account” (molnár, 2009). since 2010, the socio-economic agenda has become fully dominant, and the movement has used the opportunity of parliamentary elections (may 2010) to mobilize against the past and future austerity policies of the political right. while the social democrats actually won the elections, conservativepopulist right parties won the majority of seats, and formed a government that supported the focus of the movement on the transformation of domestic politics: “and as i mentioned above, the left-wing parliamentary party is primarily the outcome of a movement, so let’s build a movement instead of relying on miracles. there will be a plenty of opportunities for that in the immediate future” (franke, 2010). while the perceptions of shifts in the political context were changing quite frequently, it seems that there were only slow shifts in the collective identity of the movement. as described above, individual currents of the movement with different ideological variants on the social justice identity internalized their alter-globalist character around 2000 at the latest. this simultaneous multiple belonging to both the transnational movement and to a particular domestic ideological stream (anarchism, trotskyism, marxism, deep studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 200 jiří navrátil ecology) enabled their closer coordination, even if their primary ideological particularities never disappeared (císař & slačálek, 2007; kolářová, 2009, pp. 56–57). this secondary “transnational identity” proved to be quite persistent, and seemed to exist even after the nationalization of the domestic anti-war campaign in 2006. an analysis of a symbolic nomination network after the launch of the domestic phase of anti-war activism (2007) revealed that the self-identification of social justice smos and their identification as global justice actors on the part of other members of the movement match very well (navrátil, 2012, pp. 101-102). at the same time, even after five years of intensive involvement in anti-war activism, only a minor part of the movement embraced what might be called a “peace movement identity” (navrátil, 2012, p. 97). however, after 2009 it became increasingly evident that the transnational global justice identity had become rather an organizing tool for inner coordination of what might be called the “national social justice movement.” this consisted of former global justice actors being engaged in new national platforms, and derived its identity from the achievements of the anti-war movement, and not the global justice movement: “now the task is to build, and especially in the czech republic, the network of individuals and organizations that would find a common will to search the alternative solution of contemporary crisis with respect to autonomy of particular organizations” (horňáček, 2009). the process of transformation after 2000 the above-described shifts in the environmental, relational, and cognitive aspects of the czech social justice movement after 2000 represent constituent parts of two broader and closely intertwined processes: the scale shift and the identity shift. this description should help us understand the paths by which the transformation of the “meta-logic” of the social justice movement’s activities occurred. it had previously mobilized against the broad economic and social consequences of neoliberal globalization, while maintaining sparse ties with other actors on the national level. later, the social justice movement became anchored in the domestic political and social context, and focused on the national instead of transnational institutions and processes. the intertwining of identity and scale shift processes started with the protests against nato that launched the movement’s spillover into anti-war activism. the counter-summit provided the movement with an opportunity to rely on its international focus and to draw on its global justice identity while emphasizing issues of peace and war. the specific ideological affiliations of the movement still remained activated. the opening of the political context during the iraq war was interpreted as an opportunity for the movement to generally continue mobilizing according to its previous socio-economic agenda, but at the same time the mechanism of brokerage became extremely important. the movement began to build on the widely-shared consensus of opposition to the iraq conflict in czech studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 201 society and among the political elites after 2003, and substantially increased coordination with other czech smos. even though peace issues were usually considered part of the global justice agenda, the movement’s anti-war focus fostered the brokerage of new domestic coalitions that bridged more ideological gaps than the global justice focus had ever done before. the shift to a different field of political contention enabled ties to be formed with new actors—both with peace smos and with former ideological enemies. the favorable context made the movement stay in this area and combine anti-war and global-justice rhetoric. both the opportunity itself and its framing were still situated firmly on the transnational level. an unexpected shift in the political context and the resulting perception of an imminent threat in 2006 prevented the movement from making great use of socio-economic framing and anti-capitalist rhetoric, and pushed it into playing the nationalist tune against the “new occupation”. this was accompanied by the building of much closer and integrated national platforms with former loose alliance partners and other, newer actors; at the same time, it was backed by unprecedented support from the national public, which the movement attempted to mobilize. the activation of the emulation mechanism once again showed that the former ideological divides within social justice activism could be overcome much more easily in a different field of contention and under imminent threat than in the generally open context of global justice activism. despite this, the sense of global justice identity persisted even during this phase of the movement’s evolution, while the anti-war identity did not take root in the movement. the former alliances belonging to the “international” phase of anti-war activism were used as the foundation for well-organized national networks within which social justice and other smos learned how to cooperate effectively. the end of the national anti-war campaign in mid-2009 was interpreted as an unequivocal (and much needed) success, coming at the same moment as the socio-economic conflict in the country was at its height. the movement switched to this area of contention, but the success of the national anti-war campaign became the main determinant of the movement’s subsequent strategies and mode of operation: the ability to effectively organize broad national coalitions with a common cause was utilized for fighting the consequences of the crisis for the citizens and domestic democracy, not for an anti-systemic critique of the transnational political and economic order. a return to the area of socioeconomic contention was followed by the mechanism of emulation of previous anti-war coalitions, but now focused mostly on domestic economic issues and grievances. the emergence of new opportunities in the field of socioeconomic contention and the movement’s subsequent shift in that direction after 2008 enabled the movement to return to its original issue, however, this time with almost no long-term supranational focus, global justice framing, or transnational identity. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 202 jiří navrátil conclusions this article focused on the processes of transformation of the czech social justice movement between its global justice phase and the arrival of the global financial crisis to the country. by tracing the shifts in three aspects of the movement’s evolution—environmental, relational, and cognitive—this article argues that the movement’s intensive involvement in the field of anti-war activism was itself dramatically transformed in 2006, leading to subsequent changes in its mode of operation and collective identity. the nationalization of anti-war activism had an impact on social justice actors, with several consequences. the global justice movement’s identity was transformed into a national social justice one and the movement became anchored in domestic activist networks. even if this is a case study of czech social justice activism alone, it may also have broader consequences for other types of activism in general. first, it seems that the changes in transnational opportunity structures might have very serious consequences for the cooperation strategies of social justice (or other) smos on the national or even local level. second, the spillover of the movement into different areas of contention may help the movement to avoid or slow its decline, but may also radically transform the movement’s character and have far-reaching consequences for its identity and mode of operation. it seems that the firm embeddedness of the movement in the national inter-organizational networks and social context (in whatever field of contention this takes place) pushes it towards more reflexive and intelligible strategies with regard to the domestic public and its issues, moods and attitudes, but at the same time deprives the movement of an anti-systemic supra-national element of its identity and ethos. on the other hand, there are still questions that remain unanswered in terms of a broader context of the study of transnational contention. initially, one may wonder whether the scale shift of social justice activism after 2000 should not be viewed simply as a return to a more “natural” mode of its operation rather than some kind of a shock or recession: before and even during the peak of its transnational activities, czech social justice actors remained active on a local and national scale as these levels constituted their primary operating environment. second, aforementioned shifts in a contention scale are always temporary and reversible. this article highlighted the circumstances that have driven the process of scale transformation, and we might hypothesize that diverse outcomes could be observed in a short period of time if these were replaced by different ones. last, as outlined in the introductory part, this article has focused on the scale shift of particular aspects of collective action, while it has left aside the others (e.g. structures of organization, non-protest cooperation, cross-border communication etc.). this poses apparent limitations on our thorough understanding of the scale of contention dynamics and suggests that further research of the issue is needed. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 domesticating social justice activism in the global era? 203 acknowledgement this work has been supported by the project “employment of newly graduated doctors of science for scientific excellence” (cz.1.07/2.3.00/30.0009) co-financed from european social fund and the state budget of the czech republic, and by the project collective action and protest in east-central europe (code gap404/11/0462) funded by the czech science foundation. notes 1 there is a potential bias in this data source. while the data from a nationwide press agency may underrepresent local or politically marginal events, events with controversial and violent content may be overrepresented. generally, one has to keep in mind that the dataset from the mainstream media may over-represent the events that are attractive for a 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(2004). network movement in the czech republic: peturbating prague. journal of contemporary european studies 12, 321–337. correspondence address: peter brogan, department of geography, york university, 4700 keele street, toronto, ontario, canada m3j 1p3. email: pbrogan@yorku.ca issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 8, issue 2, 145-164, 2014 getting to the core of the chicago teachers’ union transformation peter brogan york university, canada this article draws on a comparative study of urban change and rank-and-file teacher rebellion in new york city and chicago, to explore the contemporary dynamics of what jamie peck (2013) calls “austerity urbanism” and its relationship to a rebirth of a social justice, grassroots teacher unionism in us urban centres. tracing the trajectories of one group of rank-and-file teacher dissidents in chicago, it argues that municipal unions are uniquely situated to lead the fight against austerity urbanism and the crisis tendencies of contemporary capitalism. to do this, however, trade unions will need to be reinvented and a different form of working class politic forged, grounded both in and outside of the trade union movement. only then may we see organized labour in north america contribute to a movement for radical and systemic change, which is key to building a more socially just urbanism and society more broadly. the case of the chicago teachers is highly instructive for activists, both inside and outside of the north american labour movement. introduction global cities like chicago are increasingly at the forefront of economic restructuring and political confrontation in an era of capitalist militancy and austerity (brenner, 2001; brenner & keil, 2006; sassen, 2001). a key component of global city development in the united states and canada since the great recession of 2008 has been to attack public sector workers and their unions in order to de-fund and commodify public services. as argued elsewhere (brogan, 2013), the dismantling of public education across the globe, while highly uneven and variegated (like neoliberalization), has been essential to restructuring contemporary capitalism and cities over the past two decades. one of the chief goals of education “reform” is to destroy the remaining vestiges of social welfare, thereby expanding capital accumulation and containing largely racialized populations in degraded parts of cities studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 146 peter brogan where people languish in poverty with few options for decent employment or improving their chances in life more generally (lipman 2011; ctu 2013). against the imperatives of neoliberalism, teachers’ unions have been among the most vocal defenders of publicly funded and universal education. yet, at the same time, many local affiliates, of both the american federation of teachers (aft) and the national education association (nea), and the national federations themselves have been either complicit or ineffective in combating the neoliberalization of public schooling (weiner 2013). in what follows i explore the experiences of the chicago teachers union (ctu), which has been one of the few local unions, in either the public or private sectors, in the united states to effectively challenge austere economic measures and push back against the neoliberal project in public education. in so doing, i argue, that they have inspired other workers in chicago and across the us and canada to build a different kind of social justice, grassroots unionism. such a unionism is a vital component of developing an alternative working class politics. this case demonstrates that if unions are to regain their once prominent role in the pursuit of social justice and workplace democracy, they will need to take the risks of organizing working class communities and fighting back through the construction of reciprocal labour-community alliances (tattersall 2010). it also illustrates how the contradictions of global city development may be leveraged in uniquely effective ways by a teachers’ union and its allies. in this, we should see the ctu under core’s (caucus of rank and file educators) leadership as a leading light in the renewal of public sector unions which have only recently become the subject of increased academic enquiry (ross & savage 2013, camfield 2013, 2009; johnson 1994). in part, this burgeoning literature on public sector unions is a result of the major decline of private sector unionism in both the united states and canada. but it is just as importantly a recognition by scholars of the special character of the public sector, employment within it and the potential that a reinvigorated municipal trade unionism might have in constructing a broader working class movement for social justice and systemic transformation. the research for this article is part of a broader, comparative ethnography of the geography of urban change and teacher unionism in new york city and chicago. it draws on 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with teacher activists, union staff, parents and community organizers between may 2011 and october 2012 in chicago, where i worked closely with core and the chicago teachers solidarity campaign. in addition, i draw on media coverage in the chicago sun-times and the chicago tribune, policy briefs and union research reports, communications and many informal conversations with teachers and their supporters at meetings and protests. first, this article unpacks the context and background of the rank-and-file rebellion that has led the ctu on a path of reinvention and revitalization. second, it discusses the political and economic pressures that preceded the 2012 round of negotiations between the chicago board of education and the ctu. i then explore the 2012 strike and its aftermath, with particular attention given to its implications for broader struggles for social justice in studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 getting to the core 147 chicago and elsewhere. i conclude by elucidating the most essential lessons the case holds for activists and scholars alike. background and context in the united states the erosion of private sector unionization has been offset by the evolution of public sector unions composed to a significant extent of women and historically racialized groups (rosenfeld 2013; lichtenstein, 2012). since the great recession, union density in the private sector has suffered the worst losses, with public sector density remaining steady at approximately 36 percent of the national average compared to 6.7 percent for the private sector in 2012. in this sense, public sector unions should be seen to a certain extent as the last bastions of working class strength in the united states, with the greatest potential capacity to lead an effective opposition to the politics and economics of austerity. it is this very strength and potential that help explain why public sector workers and their unions have come under such political and economic consternation from across the political spectrum. moreover, given public sector workers’ concentration in urban centres and their strategic location as the providers of a broad range of services, they are in a unique position to build deeply integrated labour-community alliances fighting for the pursuit of social justice and expanded public services.1 as hale and wills (cited in jordus-lier, 2012) have argued, workers employed by municipal governments are in a distinctive position to build popular political support, since municipal services are typically provided and consumed in a shared geographic location and are so vital to the production of everyday life.2 jordus-lier (2012, p. 428) usefully contrasts this with textile workers who typically do not have the same geographical proximity and sense of place which bring together public sector workers, service delivery systems, and communities who use diverse public services. thus, there is a greater potential to build solidarity in the struggle to defend and transform the provision and governance of public services because they appeal more directly to people’s everyday lives. in contrast to the stereotype of the union member as a white male, most us union members today are african-americans, latinos and women, especially in large metropolitan areas. they are also better educated then they were 30 years ago (rosenfeld, 2013). in the us as a whole, 13 percent of union members are black, 10 percent are latino and 33 percent are women. but these percentages are much greater in places like new york city and chicago, and much higher in the public sector (milkman & luce, 2013). as in canada, women and racialized groups generally in the us have made both the most gains in public sector employment as well as internally in trade union structures (lane, 2000; lichtenstein, 2012). turning to education policy in the united states today while critics on the left and the right alike begin from the premise that urban education is in crisis, with african-americans and latinos suffering the brunt of negative studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 148 peter brogan impacts, analyses of the cause of the crisis and possible solutions are miles apart. the us public school system is constituted as a network that includes traditional public neighbourhood schools, charter schools, and schools run under public-private partnerships. the neoliberal education reform project that has dominated education policy for the past 20 years is committed to dismantling public school systems and privatizing them through an expansion of charter schools and vouchers, a focus on standardized testing, the construction of scripted curriculum, a reorganization of school governance along corporate models (saltman, 2010), and the institution of draconian disciplinary policies aimed largely at working class african-american and latino students. the replacement of democratically elected school boards with mayoral-appointed bodies, demands for union and worker “flexibility,” and the introduction of merit pay schemes and new evaluation systems for teachers based overwhelmingly on standardized tests have similarly been essential to this program of restructuring. these new teacher evaluation systems have been used to undermine seniority rights and make it easier to fire teachers (saltman, 2012). while implemented in local districts, these new evaluations systems are in most cases enshrined to one degree or another in state law, giving unions little or no room to reject them outright in local negotiations. these trends have disproportionately targeted veteran teachers, not because they are inferior or under-educated, but because they are more experienced, often more educated, and subsequently better paid. along with mayoral control, first implemented in chicago in 1995, there has been an increase in the appointment of corporate ceos—with little or no background in education—to administer these school districts. there has also been an increase in the direct involvement of corporate actors and philanthropists dictating school district policies (caref et. al., 2012; saltman, 2012; lipman, 2011). the federal law driving the neoliberalization of schools in the us is the obama administration’s race to the top (rttp) program, which is an integrated and expanded version of bush’s no child left behind (nclb). these policies are based largely on earlier reforms developed chiefly by the gates foundation and the civic committee of chicago (ccc) and implemented in chicago during the 1990s. the trajectory of these policies has led to an injection of competition for funds between traditional neighbourhood schools and privately run charters. these reforms have not led to any significant improvements in test scores or graduation rates in chicago (lipman, 2011; brogan, 2013). inspired by the nclb and rttp programs, the civic committee of chicago’s 2009 report on student performance titled still left behind became the blueprint for city policy. the report advocates “tough-minded” teacher evaluations and “broad outsourcing of the management of failing schools to independent organizations” (civic committee, 2009, p. 4). although teachers have been organized into unions or professional associations since the early 20th century, with the ctu being founded as local 1 of the national aft, it was only in the 1960s and early 1970s that teachers won the legal right to studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 getting to the core 149 collective bargaining in cities and states across the u.s. these newfound legal and juridical protections came about as a result of sustained organizing and collective action, in particular strikes deemed illegal (murphy, 1992). despite this earlier period of militancy, however, a gradual ethos of accommodation and conservative politics has weakened radical forces within a good many teachers’ unions (weiner, 2012) and in the labour movement more generally (moody, 2010, fletcher & gapasin, 2008). yet as weak as, and often complicit with, the corporate reform agenda as many of these unions have become, teachers’ unions remain the largest roadblock to “reforming” public education out of existence (brogan, 2013; weiner, 2013; weiner and compton, 2008). like the aft more generally, the ctu has been at an impasse since the 1990s, having failed to mobilize or politically engage its membership. although the ctu was once a progressive force in chicago’s labour movement and municipal politics (lyons, 2008), by 2008 the union had atrophied, becoming one of the most conformist unions in the city to the finance and real estate-led model of economic development and education. despite a slate of layoffs resulting from budgetary cuts and school closings in predominantly racialized communities, by the early 2000s the ctu, under the leadership of marilyn stewart and the united progressive caucus (upc), did little beyond telling its members to “get their resumes ready” (interview with author, january 2012). since the 1960s the upc, which is affiliated with the new yorkbased progressive caucus (pc), has dominated the leadership of the ctu. with fairly progressive origins in the organizing of african-american teachers in the 1960s, the upc led the chicago teachers out on a series of eight strikes from 1969 through 1987. it was only after the 1987 strike that the relationship between the ctu and the city grew more routinized. in this sense, the upc transformed the union into a more compliant partner with the city, even as it confronted an escalating erosion of teachers’ rights in chicago public schools—with state legislation enacted in 1995 that unilaterally targeted chicago teachers by severely restricting what the ctu could legally negotiate with regard to wages and benefits, and eliminating system-wide seniority. this meant that all matters relating to class size, pedagogy, and other areas that clearly affect the working conditions of chicago teachers (students and parents) could only be negotiated if both sides agreed to do so. it is in this context that a small group of teachers and paraprofessionals who called themselves the caucus of rank and file educators (core) came together to organize for change in their union and against neoliberal school reform. in particular, they chose to organize against public school closures, “turnarounds,” and “co-locations,” all of which sought to expand charter schools. the actions organized against these changes have become an annual routine since 2004 and the unfurling of renaissance 2010 by the city of chicago. membership in core ran the gamut from those who were relatively new to activism or involvement in the union, including some who never saw themselves as “political,” to others who were members of socialist groups studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 150 peter brogan like solidarity, the international socialist organization (iso), unaffiliated radicals of different stripes, as well as those teachers interested in progressive/ alternative pedagogy, many of whom were members of a smaller social justice organization of educators called teachers for social justice (tsj). thus, core developed from its initial formation as a multi-racial and multigenerational group. one of the first things this group of union reformers did after their initial meeting was to search for a better grasp of what was driving neoliberal school reform and the attack on teachers. in doing so, members combined a macro-criticism of global capitalism developed in reading groups with what they were experiencing in the chicago public school system. from its earliest days, core has thus been studying and debating an array of vital political and strategic questions ranging from an examination of the spatial organization of racism and its relationship to education restructuring and urban development in chicago to what kind of teacher union and public education activists should be seeking to create. when core was first founded it was with an explicit recognition that it needed to be different than existing caucuses within the union and within the labour movement more broadly. this meant not being overly focused on economic issues or too inwardly oriented. members raised concerns about the limitations of top-down leadership without an engaged rank-and-file. they critiqued a narrow organizing strategy that sought to lobby elected officials (usually democrats) for changes instead of mobilizing the membership. only a small leadership team ever knew what was happening in contract negotiations, leaving general members with little idea of what the union was fighting to win. this is why, when they were elected in 2010, only two short years after forming3, core assembled a much larger bargaining committee, one comprised of over 60 members, for the 2012 round of negotiations. additionally, information about what was happening throughout negotiations constantly flowed to members through email, picket captains, social media, and regular bargaining bulletins. central to this strategy of “collectivizing” bargaining, core also built alliances with community groups like action now, the pilsen alliance, blocks together, and the kenwood oakland community organization (koco) in order to work together to fight school closures and privatization. not long after their initial collaboration in 2008, these groups formed the grassroots education movement (gem) to help broaden and facilitate this organizing. gem organized rallies and marches to the offices of both the board and to those of the leading proponents of corporate reform. when a school was targeted for closure, core and gem members would go there and meet with the teachers and parents who wanted to fight the closure. in doing so, they made it clear that they were there to help build resistance in that community. thus, instead of restricting their opposition to critiquing the incumbent union leadership and focusing solely on workplace problems, from the beginning core members sought to politicize workplace issues by connecting them to studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 getting to the core 151 the broader struggles encountered by the community. this activity resulted in the establishment of highly durable relationships of solidarity between core members and social justice groups working in neighbourhoods throughout chicago. in forging a community or social justice unionism, core members pushed beyond narrow economic issues—while not entirely neglecting important issues likes wage increases and the protection of benefits either— and articulated all of their 2012 contract demands with broader social issues affecting the communities they served. such a social justice framing and political practice must be central to any project of rebuilding the power of public sector unions (ross, 2013, moody, 2007). yet not all issues and tactics were given equal priority; difficult decisions were made on what particular campaigns or actions to prioritize based in part on what would most develop the respective collective capacities of the different organizations, both unions and community groups, working together in order to advance the broader struggle for social justice in chicago (luskin, 2013). advocates of neoliberal education restructuring, including stand for children and mayor rahm emanuel, reacted to the ctu’s radicalism by getting the state legislature to pass a new law, illinois senate bill 7 (sb 7), that has made it easier to unilaterally fire teachers as well as lengthen both the school day and school year. it specifically targeted the ctu by requiring that any teachers’ union in a district in illinois with a population greater than five hundred thousand (only chicago) submit to arbitration before they can legally strike. in order to legally strike, the union would now need to secure 75 percent of the entire membership’s vote (with all those who did not vote being counted as no votes) and go through a drawn-out mediation process. building a strong foundation: power in the workplace and in the community while core members have put an emphasis on building strong alliances with parents, students and community organizations, they have continued to prioritize building rank-and-file power in the workplace. indeed, one of the reasons core is unique amongst past union reformers because it does not see these two elements of struggle as separate; rather, they recognize that a well-organized neighbourhood and workplace are the strongest bases from which to engage parents and communities, and to wage an effective struggle across geographical scales. this orientation is easily understandable—and develops more organically than it would in other forms of employment— because of the unique nature of a workplace that is a neighbourhood school. teachers are, to a greater extent than many other public sector workers, in constant contact with the parents of their students. this typically makes the task of community outreach and relationship building easier. a key strategy of ctu organizers in their neighbourhood and workplace organizing is to carefully situate what is happening in any given place as connected to a wider geographical struggle against a neoliberal agenda for school reform and studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 152 peter brogan urban development. this type of social justice-orinted union reform caucus is being emulated in a number of other us cities, such as portland, newark, new york city, and los angeles. the organizing that the core-led ctu has conducted, especially in the electrifying seven-day strike of september 2012, has demonstrated just how powerful and emancipatory a politics in place can be. mobilizing the attachments people have to place, both within neighbourhoods and at a citywide scale, remains vital for social justice struggles today. at the same time, a key strategy of core and ctu organizers in their neighbourhood and workplace organizing is to carefully situate what happens in any given place as connected to extra-local struggles against a neoliberal agenda for school reform and neoliberal urban development that puts profits ahead of people. ctu activists and members have increasingly come to understand the policies they are contesting through the occupy framework of the 1 percent growing richer at the expense of the 99 percent. and in this way the ctu has helped its members and the communities they have been organizing to gain a deeper understanding of what doreen massey (1991) understands as the political and economic forces that produce or lie behind the formation of places. how rahm “mayor 1 percent” emanuel helped organize parents prior to the 2012 strike, the supposed fiscal crisis at the state level in illinois gave cps a rationale for implementing broad cuts to music and arts as well as for increasing class sizes, both of which impacted not only racialized and impoverished neighbourhoods but also traditionally more affluent “white” neighborhoods in chicago. in conjunction with mayor emanuel, the ceo of the schools, jean claude brizzard, decided to impose a longer school day and school year on chicago schools. this provided an opening for new alliances between more privileged parents, ctu members, and those who had been suffering the brunt of cuts for years, the poor, largely black and latino populations of chicago. middle-income earning parents were upset by these cuts and the imposition of a longer day, which many parents saw as disruptive to their lives and the lives of their children, many of whom were in the privileged position to participate in sports and other extracurricular activities after school. this was especially important because chicago mayors had previously worked to attract these mostly white, middle-income families to public schools in order to gentrify particular neighborhoods in chicago. yet, once emanuel became mayor in 2010, he turned his eye to education immediately by demanding that the school day for chicago public schools be extended, with no additional compensation for school employees or any clear pedagogical rationale for the change. so, while black and brown parents had become accustomed to being marginalized and ignored by politicians and policy makers in chicago, these more privileged parents who saw a longer day as having adverse effects on their children were now experiencing the same feelings. this led quite a few of these parents to organize and to studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 getting to the core 153 protest against these cuts and the longer day. by doing so, they then came into contact with black and latino parents as well as teachers and the union (interview with author, january 2012). these newly active parents and community members would go on to form a new coalition in 2012 to fight for a democratically elected school board. this fight was deeply connected with organizing for education justice more broadly. in fact, it grew directly out of the ctu community board which was set up soon after core was elected to leadership of the union as a way to institutionalize and facilitate the union’s organizing with grassroots groups in chicago. this organizing resulted in a non-binding referendum for an elected board winning 87 percent of the vote in a sampling of 13 percent of the city’s approximately 2,500 electoral, which “spanned chicago—economically, racially, and geographically” (lipman & gutstein, 2013, p.8). thus, mayor emanuel’s attempt to impose a longer school day helped galvanize parent opposition to his education policy agenda. the longer school day proved to be a critical organizing opportunity because it was a genuine workplace issue that affected both teachers and other workers in the schools and allowed the ctu to more effectively dialogue with a broader spectrum of people in the city. as one core member reflected, “the longer schoolday piece got organizers in the schools and [ctu members] to understand more what the organizers do. i think that was an important thing. in a way, we had organizers going out to schools, but if you have no idea how a union structure works and you have this person coming in saying, ‘i’m not filing your grievances but i’m here for you,’ it is difficult to understand what else they would do” (interview with author, may 2011). in particular, the attempted imposition of the longer school day helped ctu organize in elementary schools. as one core member explained, “i actually think we can thank rahm for the longer school day stuff and trying to force it down our throats through these waiver votes in elementary schools. it forced us to get out to a ton of elementary schools and have discussions about why the union is important and why waiving your union rights is a bad idea” (interview with author, february 2012). not only did the longer school day issue help the union connect with a wider and more racially (and geographically) diverse population of parents and communities across chicago, it further helped the ctu to mobilize elementary teachers, who have historically been a greater challenge in chicago and elsewhere. this would become a major contributing factor to why the chicago teachers were able to wage an effective strike in september 2012. striking for the schools chicago students deserve ctu members would utilize and expand upon the strong workplace organizations they had built up over the past two years to secure a near 90 percent “yes” vote to authorize a strike, which was the strongest message they could send to the board of education and mayor emanuel that the union studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 154 peter brogan did not have any intention of backing down without a fight. of those ctu members who cast a ballot, 98 percent voted yes. only 482 teachers, or 1.82 percent of the membership, voted against a strike authorization. as a result of sb 7, those union members who did not cast ballots were counted as having voted against a strike. thus, of the 26,502 members eligible to vote, 23,780 voted to strike. this vote, which took place on june 4, 2012, came on the heels of the largest march of teachers and their allies in chicago’s history, a march that itself spilled over from a massive ctu meeting where over 4,000 ctu members had packed a downtown auditorium for one of the largest union meetings in recent history, organized to discuss negotiations. “it was excellent, very inspiring,” mayra almarez, a history teacher at taft high school on the city’s north side, said of the rally.” sometimes it’s really hard to continue when, in the media, you hear that we’re aggressive, we’re this, we’re that, we’re not in it for the right reasons—when in reality, we are. it was great to see we are supported by other people, by parents.” asked if teachers at taft were prepared to walk a picket line if necessary, she replied, “absolutely. we’re ready” (sustar, 2012, n.p.). prior to the ctu’s strike authorization vote, cps officials were so firm in their belief that the union would never be able to strike that they agreed to the negotiations’ timeline proposed by the teachers union which would allow a strike to occur in september. cps’s smugness, sustar explains, flowed from their mistaken belief that the new ctu leadership would not have the capacity to unite the union’s membership behind their program of transformation. a little over a month after the ctu’s exceptionally strong strike authorization vote, the appointed arbitrator (another new necessary step of the bargaining process that was added courtesy of sb 7) issued his report. this report would prove to be a big problem for cps and mayor emanuel’s austerity demands as it recommended wage increases of 35.74 percent over four years. needless to say, the city rejected this recommendation, as did the union. it is important to understand here that the ctu rejected these recommendations because the report did not speak to any of the broader demands and issues that the union had raised to improve the school system, a fact which would go a long way towards bolstering public support and serving as evidence that, despite cps and emanuel’s claims, the teachers and their union were not concerned with their own narrow economic interests. no amount of slick union advertisements could have achieved what this move did. seeing these immediate proposals as part of the wider assault on public education and teachers’ unions, the ctu would break with the accommodationist approach adopted by both national teachers’ unions, the aft, and the nea as well as with the previous leadership of the ctu. the core-led union went on strike from september 10 to september 18, 2012. this was the first strike launched by the ctu in 25 years. and while the economic gains were marginal, the broader improvements to schools that the union made its centerpiece (i.e. smaller class sizes, air conditioning, more social workers and services for students) effectively allowed them to hold the studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 getting to the core 155 line on many of the worst concessionary demands, including preventing the adoption of merit pay and a teacher evaluation system based on standardized test scores beyond the 25 percent mandated by state law. thus, because the ctu successfully pushed back against the worst of these concessionary demands—and because of the manner in which they organized to do so— they have reignited the democratic imagination for unionists and activist across the nation. the ctu secured a number of important improvements, including: a principal anti-bullying clause, greater freedom for teachers to develop lesson plans, the hiring of art, music, and physical education teachers to create a “better school day” for students as the school year grew longer, a cost-of-living increase, and short-term disability leave for pregnant teachers. rob bartlett (2013, p. 12) perceptively notes that “core and the ctu’s success was not due to replacing a weak leadership with a militant one willing to strike, but rather the creation of a layer of union members in the ctu who saw the struggle as one for what ctu president karen lewis calls ‘the soul of public education.’” this constituted a dramatic shift in the culture of the union which would have been impossible had the core leadership of the union and its activist base not built an organizing culture schoolby-school in the preceding four years, which was accomplished by getting members to take on workplace and community issues collectively. thus, rather than simply seeing the union as a service provider that exists to solve workplace problems, members began to slowly see themselves as the union, and thus as capable of tackling issues through organizing and action. equally as important was the development of a critical understanding of the new geography of what the ctu termed “education apartheid” and how union members, parents, and community allies had strong attachments to the places where they lived and worked which could be mobilized for the construction of a citywide and national fight for education justice. while state law in illinois technically prohibits the ctu from striking over issues other than wages and benefits, every member of the union i spoke to during the strike was clear that they were fighting not for any narrow economic improvements for themselves but for smaller class sizes, a rich curriculum, and wrap-around services like counseling for every student. many members suggested that fighting to improve the quality of life for their students was not simply a moral good or a cynical public relations tactic to garner public support, but would also create jobs for many experienced teachers who are currently out of work while at the same time building a high-quality, accessible public school system. indeed, these ideas were systematically developed in a unique and well researched document published by the ctu, entitled the schools chicago students deserve (2012), which was simultaneously the basis of a number of bargaining proposals and an organizing tool for union members, parents, and community allies. this document would also prove invaluable in helping the union and its members to fundamentally reframe the debate in the corporate media and public discourse more generally, which partially explains the widespread support that ctu enjoyed during the strike. not only did this studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 156 peter brogan report, and the way in which the union and its allies used it to organize across the city, put forward a critique of the racist nature of how chicago public schools are organized—and the ways the racist organization of schools has been a central facet of neoliberal urban development in the united states— but it put forward a more class-oriented transformative program for fixing the school system, including a more progressive system of taxation for funding schools and other municipal services. the schools chicago students deserve is an excellent illustration of how a union can put forward, and effectively organize around, an alternative urban policy that puts the values of social justice, equity and democracy at the center of its proposals. in this sense, it offers an alternative to the neoliberal policy framework of austerity, competiveness, and market solutions to the real and imagined failings of the public sector. similar reports have been produced by teachers’ unions in los angeles and st. paul, minnesota where they have been utilized in successful ways to flip the script in the public discourse about education reform. while ctu organizers and leaders proved quite adept at using their research and the research conducted by sympathetic academics to reframe the often one-sided reportage in the local media, one of the most significant ways in which the ctu addressed this propaganda campaign was through tireless neighborhood and workplace organizing which allowed the unions members, parents, and community members across chicago to develop a deeper grasp of the issues chicago teachers were fighting for. these efforts included well-attended and vibrant public forums organized by the ctu which took place across the city preceding the strike. these meetings revealed that many parents and community members were worried about the prospect of a strike and were not afraid to voice their fears, concerns, and questions to the leaders of the ctu that attended. while these forums themselves were not deliberative spaces and did not shape bargaining demands directly, they did go a long way in opening up the process of negotiation to the public and providing a space where those interested could turn for further information about both the issues and the process of negotiation. an equally important component of the ctu’s strategy before and during the strike involved targeting corporations like bank of america, hyatt hotels, and the chicago board of trade, all of which have benefited handsomely from the tax incremental financing (tif) scheme. tifs have functioned to siphon money from resource-starved, poor neighborhoods and the public institutions that serve them to be used as a slush fund in/for the mayor’s office (jorvarsky, 2009). while these corporate institutions and the particular model of urban economic development embraced by the city of chicago were targeted by the ctu prior to the commencement of the strike with direct actions that saw a number of ctu leaders arrested, the union continued to place the taxing of corporations, especially financial institutions operating in chicago, as the key mechanism for funding their proposals for improving public education. this attention to how governing officials (from mayor richard m. daley to mayor rahm emanuel) have aligned themselves with studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 getting to the core 157 corporations based in chicago in order to remake particular neighborhoods, so as to build chicago as a “world class” or “global” city, at the expense of institutions like public schools, mental health clinics and libraries that serve marginalized working class communities is further evidence of how vital a critical political economy and geographical analysis has been to the ctu under core’s direction. it shows how the socio-spatial contradictions of global city development can be leveraged by unions and movements for social justice. from the first day of the strike in 2012 picket lines were strong, lasting from 6:00 am until 10:30 pm. the vibrant picket lines functioned as organizing spaces within which ctu members could build relationships with each other as well as connect with neighbourhood residents. everyone on the lines wore what would become over the next seven days their iconic ctu red shirts. many chicagoans awoke to car horns blasting in solidarity with the teachers. and wherever you traveled during this period of the strike, if you were wearing a red t-shirt, you would be greeted with those same horns of solidarity and warm greetings of support from people of all walks of life in the city. the level of creativity and sheer joy that was expressed on the picket lines and throughout the city over the course of the strike were fantastic and would not have been possible had the ctu leadership not allowed members the autonomy and support to make the strike their own. regardless of outcome, this mode of joyful and creative political practice—where participants leave an action or meeting feeling happy and empowered, rather than frustrated and dejected—is worthy of emulation in all movement organizing. during the first three days of the strike, the ctu held massive rallies downtown, attended by an average of 30,000 people, including many children. mid-week of the strike, the ctu decided to move beyond the downtown core and hold their afternoon actions as marches through the west and south sides of the city, around the schools and neighborhoods that have suffered the most from economic neglect and marginalization. doing so represented a clear understanding on the part of the union’s organizers and leadership that it was vital for them to target not simply the center of power in global chicago but also to highlight the devastation that has been wrought by the uneven political and economic restructuring that has accompanied a global city development strategy. this turn to the marginalized neighborhoods was a further extension of solidarity with, and a way to deepen the unions’ support of, segments of the racialized working class who have been ignored and neglected by the ruling classes of chicago and the nation. this was the best possible way to counter the corporate education, anti-union propaganda that was being broadcast on african-american and latino radio stations. these marches and the neighborhood organizing that took place throughout the strike, some directed by the ctu leadership, some that happened more organically in different schools and neighborhoods, is evidence of the continued importance of place for movement building and urban politics more generally. while consolidating and expanding parent support were crucial for the chicago teachers, building labour solidarity during the strike was similarly studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 158 peter brogan important, both at the local and national levels. yet doing so proved complicated. as alter (2013, p. 22) observes, with 2012 being an election year, and the majority of the union movement having long abandoned an emphasis on organizing and action in favour of electoral politics, unions put the bulk of their energy into getting president obama elected to a second term. so for example, the chicago federation of labor (cfl) had not organized a labour day rally since 1998. thus again, in 2012, instead of trying to reignite a fire under the chicago labour movement, the leadership of the cfl opted to go to the democratic national convention in charlotte, north carolina. subsequently, the ctu decided to organize a rally themselves, which proved to be a wise tactical move. it attracted between 10,000-20,000 participants. it served as an energizing activity for the union and added to its momentum, increasing its base of support just prior to the start of the new school year and the proposed strike. on august 29th, only a few days prior to the labour day rally, the ctu filed the mandatory ten-day strike notice. the stage was set for the first teachers’ strike since 1987 and neither side in negotiations gave any indication that a settlement would be reached to prevent it. yet, while the two other unions with contracts with cps, unite here local 1 and service employees international union (seiu) local 73, have been supportive of the ctu, by the time the teachers went out on strike both unions had already settled their contracts. why they did so rather than bargain in parallel with the ctu is not an easy question to answer. indeed, their failure to do so surprised many labour activists in chicago because of the progressive reputation of these unions as well as their extensive support and collaboration with the ctu. karen lewis and a number of ctu members had turned out to each union’s respective rallies at cps when they were in negotiations, and had supported unite here workers while they were on strike at the city’s hyatt hotels in 2012. one possible explanation as to why both unite-here and seiu did not coordinate their bargaining with the ctu may be because of the power that cps has to contract out the work of their members, which in turn gives these workers and their unions significantly less leverage. as a result, members of these unions, including food service workers, custodians and school aides would have been contractually obligated to cross ctu picket lines in the event of a strike. although labour support for the ctu prior to, during, and since the strike has not been as strong as ctu leadership and core members would like, support among chicago residents more generally remains strong. and while the city’s official union leadership may not have actively supported the ctu, there were signs of support from rank-and-file unionists throughout the city. although lewis had given indications to the press on friday, september 14 that they were close to a deal and would likely end the strike so that school could resume on monday, union delegates voted at the saturday delegates’ assembly meeting to reject the offer until all of their members had a chance to read and discuss the employer’s proposal. so that monday, instead of calling off the strike, members went back to the picket lines and took the time to do just this, displaying an incredible new internal life of membership studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 getting to the core 159 engagement, whether that meant being active in their local chapter where they worked or on any number of the union’s committees that were created or given new life under core’s direction. the proposal showed significant gains, including: the creation of over six hundred new positions in art, music, and physical education; a freeze on healthcare payments; a seven percent wage increase over three years; a new teacher evaluation system (which was not so much an improvement as a mitigated concession); an important anti-bullying provision that would protect teachers from abusive principals; language to promote racial diversity in hiring; and an annual supply reimbursement increase from $100 to $250. in addition to the gains made by the ctu in this round of bargaining, lewis observed that, “we gained the ability to finally have due process in all discipline issues and the right to appeal evaluations. we also won a real right for teachers to follow students when schools close –which proved significant when cps closed 50 schools in a single year.” of course, this is only if students move to another public school, not a charter. reflecting upon the strike a year later, lewis also observed that: this union had survived an all-out attack on our very existence and our ability to advocate for our members, our students and their communities from a well-funded, well-orchestrated group of extremely wealthy people who saw themselves as the authorities on education. …we were vilified in the press and on paid radio ads, which attempted to paint us as greedy and unknowledgeable. our contractually agreed to raises were stolen to goad us into acting rashly. our members have been laid off, terminated and publicly humiliated all in attempt to turn public school educators and the public against us. none of it worked. post-2012 strike: moving toward an alternative politics? only a few months after the strike, the ctu had an election in which president lewis and other core elected leaders were re-elected by a margin of 4 to 1, with 79 percent of the membership voting them in. but, much like their initial election in 2012, core members did not have much time to breathe, much less celebrate their victory, because they needed to organize against the most recent and potentially largest round of school closures. this has provided core with the ability to continue to deepen the transformation of its union while at the same time building a stronger movement to push back against a city government that continues to advance savage cuts and austerity measures. core’s model of building a caucus that organizes both within and outside of the union has spread to other u.s. cities, most prominently new york city, newark (where reformers almost won leadership over the newark teachers’ union in 2013), and los angeles (where a progressive reform slate has won the recent executive election in the united teachers of los angeles). as the labour journalist david bacon (2013) recounts, in opposition to studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 160 peter brogan the most recent closure, “thousands rallied and marched on march 27 in opposition, organized by the ctu, unite here local 1, seiu local 1 and [gem]. they demanded that the district stop the closures and slow the expansion of charter schools and focus instead on investment in public schools in working-class neighborhoods.” and “on may 18, 2013 chicago students, parents, and teachers organized a three-day march for educational justice. following the march, the ceo of the chicago public schools, barbara byrdbennett, took four schools off the list, including marcus garvey elementary, asean johnson’s school.” beyond this organizing, the ctu collaborated with a number of their parent and community allies to launch lawsuits against the closures in june 2013. the suits argued that the board violated its own guidelines by disregarding the recommendations of independent hearing officers on more than one occasion; that the schools targeted for closure were highly concentrated in largely african-american and latino neighborhoods; and that the city’s plan utterly disregarded the needs of special education students. there have also been a number of different protests at the affected schools, as well as direct actions (e.g. sit-ins at the mayor’s office), which had been a major objective of the summer, trainings organized by the ctu, and the newly reinvigorated grassroots education movement. yet, despite all of this mobilizing and action, all 50 school closures were rubber stamped by the mayoral-appointed chicago board of education in, as the chicago sun-times observed, “less time than it takes to boil an egg.” karen lewis called it “a day of mourning for the children of chicago.” she continued by saying that “their [students’] education has been hijacked by an unrepresentative, unelected corporate school board, acting at the behest of a mayor who has no vision for improving the education of our children,” and that “closing schools is not an education plan. it is a scorched earth policy.” conclusion while the assaults have continued since the ctu strike concluded, this action should still be understood as a flourishing moment in the contestation of neoliberal education and austerity urbanism. this is not because the strike itself secured major concessions from the city, or simply because it was a militant act of defiance, but because it was a public sector strike done differently, with huge amounts of creativity, member engagement, joyous, creative action, public support, and participation. this mode of union praxis built at multiple scales—but rooted most strongly in the workplace—has been a deeply transformative experience for ctu members and workingclass chicagoans more generally. it has resulted in a deepening of collective capacities that are vital to ongoing struggle. the bulk of the union’s 26,000 members are now reinvigorated and proud to be part of a fighting union that is run by its membership. in other words, rather than simply engaging in militant job action without a political program, the ctu strike expanded the studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 getting to the core 161 democratic imagination and political capacities of its members and other workers in the city. it is this that is necessary for constructing a different kind of urban working-class politics. while i am in no sense claiming that the core-led ctu has all the answers for how public sector workers and their allies can push back against urban neoliberalism, the movement they catalyzed in chicago embodies a number of important lessons for how to transform and more effectively use the seemingly moribund organizations that most us and canadian unions have become over the past 30 or 40 years (reflected not only in a decline in union membership and density, but more generally in a lack of influence in society). and unlike many union reformers of the past, a key difference of these efforts in chicago is that they recognize4—to a greater extent every day—the need to push beyond the legal and institutional boundaries of the trade union form to advance a progressive agenda of systemic, transformative change in a deeply fragmented, exploited, and relatively demobilized global city (interview with author, august 2013). the four most important conclusions to be drawn from the case of the chicago teachers include, first, the need for unions to prioritize the development of strategic objectives at multiple scales with a broader working-class public and to democratize internal union structures and build a more activist culture inside the union in which members can take part. second, there is a huge amount of power that can be leveraged by taking struggles to the streets. the massive rallies that the ctu held downtown and in the neighborhoods of the south and west sides of chicago which have been largely left to rot if not gentrified, reflected not just the popularity of the strike, but an important embodiment of the union’s urban, place-based strategy that is not afraid to experiment and take risks. third, in order to challenge austerity urbanism and the devastating impacts it is having across north american cities, it is necessary to develop a class-oriented, social justice framework rooted in female, racialized and working poor workers that connects issues across workplaces and communities. in order to realize their contentious and transformative potential, however, rank-and-file workers will need to organize both inside and outside of their unions, and, in the process, completely reinvent them. it is only through such a process of reinvention that union members will be successful in pushing beyond the sectionalist, narrow limitations of the trade union form, which is crucial if they are to turn back the assault against what remains of the welfare state in both countries in north america. if unions are to be more effective vehicles of the working class and progressive actors in promoting social justice, the broader left will need to be revived so that unions can more easily adopt a class-struggle approach that pushes beyond the legal and institutional limitations inherent in the trade union form. and, it is imperative that, in forging this alternative politics, unions formulate a similarly different vision of public services and of society more broadly with the public, especially those sections of the working class that have been most marginalized and disorganized by neoliberalism. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 162 peter brogan in advocating for such an alternative working class politics, municipal unions have the potential to not only protect and enhance existing public services but advocate for improved jobs across the city, which requires democratic control over economic investment and new industrial policies. metropolitan areas will be more likely to thrive if there is greater equality among individuals and among communities, certainly, but also if workers have a stronger voice in how such services are produced, accessed, and governed. municipal unions in global cities are in a unique position to contribute to antisystemic struggles to remake the capitalist city into something more humane: a metropolis where working people not only have more access to collective consumption but are key players in urban governance and decision-making in the form of a different kind of city. notes 1 see amanda tattersall’s (2010) book, power in coalitions, for a critical examination of different experiences of community-labour coalitions and the problems/limitations of shallow and instrumental formations created by unions which allow little room for community allies to influence the direction of struggle and receive limited support for their own particular needs. 2 in many cases these workers provide services to others in the city, but are often also the users of those services. 3 while there was a constellation of forces that allowed core to win the executive election in such a short period of time since its foundation in 2008, the two biggest factors that explain its success is the membership’s loss of faith in the old guard upc leadership who had utterly failed to mobilize against neoliberal restructuring. and the second was the new movement-oriented, savvy and incredibly hard-working activists of core, who, with fewer than 200 people, managed to get out to all 600 schools in chicago to speak to teachers and convince them of the need for a change of leadership and a change of unionism. 4 while recent interviews conducted with ctu staff members and core activists support this claim, it should be made clear that while core members and ctu leadership might recognize these institutional and political limitations as they continue to face ongoing attacks and school closings, they have yet to figure out how to move beyond them. their inability to scale up their struggle more effectively or to develop a different, more radical tactical approach to electoral politics and state policy must be confronted and overcome. references alter, t. 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(2013). the future of our schools: teachers unions and social justice. chicago: haymarket books. correspondence address: aziz choudry, department of integrated studies in education (dise), mcgill university, room 314, education building, 3700 mctavish street, montreal, quebec h3a 1y2, canada, tel.: (+1) 514 398 2253 email: aziz.choudry@mcgill.ca issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 7, issue 1, 7-25, 2013 struggles against bilateral ftas: challenges for transnational global justice activism aziz choudry mcgill university, canada abstract the past decade has seen major movements and mobilizations against the newer crop of bilateral free trade and investment agreements being pursued by governments in the wake of the failure of global (world trade organization) and regional (e.g. free trade area of the americas) negotiations, and the defeat of an attempted multilateral agreement on investment in the 1990s. however, in spite of much scholarly, non-governmental organization (ngo) and activist focus on transnational global justice activism, many of these movements, such as the major multi-sectoral popular struggle over the recently-concluded us-korea free trade agreement, are hardly acknowledged in north america and europe. with a shift in emphasis pushing liberalization and deregulation of trade and investment increasingly favouring lowerprofile bilateral agreements, this article maps the resistance movements to these latest shifts in global free market capitalist relations and it discusses the disconnect between these (mainly southern) struggles and dominant scholarly and ngo conceptions of global justice and the global justice movement as well as questions of knowledge production arising from these movements. introduction on november 13, 2011, tens of thousands of workers belonging to the korean confederation of trade unions (kctu), farmers, and others took to the streets against the ratification of the us-south korea free trade agreement (fta) by korean lawmakers after us congress approval (hankyoreh, 2011). the agreement, which some view as the most far-reaching of its kind to be signed since the north american free trade agreement (nafta), was finally passed in the korean national assembly later that month, amidst continuing protests. yet despite major mass mobilizations sustained over several years by korean social movements, there was little awareness of this studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 8 aziz choudry in north america in media or activist networks associated with the “global justice movement” which had emerged over the past two decades from rising opposition to free trade and investment agreements. as a korean activist had noted five years earlier, it seemed that “for the world trade organization (wto) resistance, it is easier to gather people across countries to mobilize together. but with ftas, we are struggling on our own.” (participant of fighting ftas international strategy workshop, july 2006, bangkok). this article critically discusses the spread of ftas following the breakdown of multilateral (wto) and regional (e.g., ftaa) negotiations, and the rise in social movement activism against these agreements. a considerable body of scholarship (e.g., bandy & smith, 2005; day, 2005; eschle & maiguashca, 2010; goodman, 2002; juris, 2008; mcnally, 2002; novelli & ferus-comelo, 2010; polet & cetri, 2004; reitan, 2007; starr, 2000) has investigated popular struggles against capitalist globalization, including campaigns against the world bank, international monetary fund (imf), wto and free trade area of the americas (ftaa) which are often referred to as the global justice movement. yet relatively little attention has been paid to numerous mass movements against bilateral free trade and investment agreements (ftas) which have emerged more recently. moreover, despite a multitude of such movements and mobilizations against ftas, particularly (though not exclusively) in the third world, the transnational ngo/activist networks that have actively contested the wto and ftaa have largely failed to connect such struggles with each other, and are largely inconsequential in relation to anti-fta activism. there has been a disconnect between major mobilizations against ftas and established ngo networks on globalization, which have generally been slow to react or seriously address the bilateral deals. indeed, some of these ngos have issued triumphalist statements responding to the state of wto talks suggesting that neoliberalism is on the defensive, thus overlooking the commitments being made in fta negotiations (e.g., iatp, 2008; menotti, 2008). however, as i outline, connections are slowly being made between movement activists fighting ftas, and an important feature of such linkages is the production and sharing of knowledge arising from social movements themselves. i illustrate the importance of building upon, learning from, and sharing knowledge produced incrementally in these social struggles against global capitalism. the 1999 mobilizations in seattle confronting that year’s wto ministerial meeting which had aspirations to launch a new round of global trade negotiations was viewed by many in the north as the birth of the global justice movement. direct action-oriented groups and people’s movements such as peoples’ global action (pga) (juris, 2008; reitan, 2007; wood, 2005), the international small and peasant farmers’ movement network la via campesina (desmarais, 2007; reitan, 2007), and the ngo-dominated our world is not for sale network arose during the 1990s or the start of this century to coordinate and network transnational1 opposition to the wto (reitan, 2007). yet claims of newness surrounding “globalization” and “anti-globalization” obfuscated the fact that in many contexts, particularly studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 struggles against bilateral ftas 9 in the third world, longstanding resistance to neoliberalism in its different manifestations has spanned several decades (choudry, 2008, 2010; flusty, 2004; mcnally, 2002; motta & nilsen, 2011) including opposition to free trade agreements. this article is informed by bevington and dixon’s (2005) notion of “movement-relevant research,” as well as the author’s engagement in activism, education and research in struggles against bilateral ftas since the 1990s. bevington and dixon note that just as few activists read social movement theory, so too important debates inside movement networks often do not enter the scholarly literature about social movements. they contend that social movement scholars do not have a monopoly on theory about movements. they call for recognition of existing movement-generated theory and of dynamic reciprocal engagement by theorists and movement activists in formulating, producing, refining and applying research. they hold that: “[m]ovement participants produce theory as well, although much of it may not be recognizable to conventional social movement studies. this kind of theory both ranges and traverses through multiple levels of abstraction, from everyday organizing to broad analysis” (p. 195). in situating my analysis in this way, i concur with flacks (2004) and bevington and dixon’s (2005) critiques of the shortcomings of much social movement theory as being driven by attempts to define and refine theoretical concepts which are likely to be “irrelevant or obvious to organizers” (flacks, 2004, p. 147). in his work on knowledge and learning in social activism, holst (2002) uses the term “pedagogy of mobilization” to describe the learning inherent in the building and maintaining of a social movement and its organizations. through participation in a social movement, people learn numerous skills and ways of thinking analytically and strategically as they struggle to understand their movement in motion . . . . moreover, as coalitions are formed people’s understanding of the interconnectedness of relations within a social totality become increasingly sophisticated. (pp. 87-88) scholars who seek to understand social movement and ngo networks need to attend to questions coming out of social movements and activist research in regard to power dynamics and the valuing of certain forms of knowledge. these questions are often based on sophisticated macro and micro analyses of what, to an outsider, might seem a baffling network of relations, and shifting power dynamics. this is not to argue that evaluation and analysis from the standpoint of being embedded in activism is necessarily rigorous or adequate. reflexivity is crucial when starting from, engaging with, and analyzing activist knowledge(s). in a similar vein, foley (1999) writes that the process of critical learning involves people in theorizing their experience: they stand back from it and reorder it, using concepts like power, conflict, structure, values and choice. it is also clear that critical learning is gained informally, through experience, by acting and reflecting on action, rather than in formal courses. (p. 64) studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 10 aziz choudry many scholarly, ngo and activist accounts pay inadequate attention to the significance of low-key, long-haul political education and community organizing work, which goes on underneath the radar, as it were. yet, as i will argue, the knowledge being produced in social movements resisting bilateral free trade and investment agreements constitutes an important conceptual resource for contemporary and future struggles for social and economic justice. challenges for opponents of bilateral free trade agreements mobilizations against bilateral ftas have taken place in many countries, yet the relatively well-known transnational ngo/activist networks which have formed around the wto such as our world is not for sale, and regional networks such as the hemispheric social alliance (in the americas) have not played significant roles in these. indeed, for the most part, there appears to be a knowledge, strategic, and action disconnect between these networks and recent/current struggles against ftas. the trajectory of transnational networks contesting free trade that has accompanied mobilizations against the wto operates on a different track from the locally grounded struggles against ftas, which have often been quite isolated from each other. despite the commonalities of these agreements, and the fact that activists in, for example, thailand, south korea, and colombia have simultaneously campaigned against deals with the us, there has been little opportunity to learn from each other’s struggles. given the fact that the us essentially modifies its deals from a template, and yet details are shrouded in secrecy during negotiations, analysis of texts of already concluded agreements has been important in generating critical understandings of the exact nature of the disciplines in current fta negotiations. because of their very nature, bilateral deals pose some specific challenges for educating, sharing knowledge, and mobilizing transnational networks and alliances against capitalist globalization. this article will also outline specific challenges for education, knowledge production/sharing and mobilization campaigns against bilateral free trade and investment agreements in comparison to activism targeting more established global agreements and institutions such as the wto, the world bank and the imf. 9/11 and the “war on terror” have been used to justify renewed militarization and war, as well as various forms of domestic state intervention in the us economy. meanwhile, repressive domestic national security and immigration legislation is being ratcheted up in many countries, north and south (boron, 2005; flesher fominaya & wood, 2011; mathew, 2005; petras & veltmeyer, 2003; thobani, 2007; tujan, gaughran & mollett, 2004). a number of major political and economic figures, such as former us trade representative (now world bank president) robert zoellick (2001) disingenuously suggested intellectual connections between “terrorists” and opposition movements against neoliberalism, while insisting that further trade and investment studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 struggles against bilateral ftas 11 liberalization (by the usa’s trading partners, at least) was the most effective way to fight “terror.” this has had worldwide consequences for the political space in which ngos and global justice movements exist. some ngos, particularly in north america and europe, urged people to abandon direct action tactics and more confrontational positions. debates within networks in north america and europe regarding diversity of tactics and the parameters of direct action in mobilizations continued, but often with an air of caution and self-censorship after 9/11 (kinsman, 2006; mcnally, 2002; petras & veltmeyer, 2003). in june 2010, this dynamic again played out in the major mobilizations and state repression around toronto’s g-20 protests. the momentum behind major mobilizations against meetings of the world bank/imf, g8, wto, the summit of the americas2, the world economic forum and other conferences of economic and political elites, mainly in the north, that carried from seattle into late 2001 faltered somewhat after 9/11. for petras and veltmeyer (2003), after 9/11, the divisions between ngos and labour unions calling for moderate reform of the system, and anticapitalists or anti-imperialists seeking radical changes “seriously deepened, creating a fundamental rift within the [antiglobalization movement], with an increasing intolerance for radical change and confrontationalist politics” (p. 228). nonetheless, such mobilizations—and the cycle of alternative ngo/ civil society summits have continued, often on a smaller scale, as have questions as to how connected these mobilizations were with mass social movements or everyday resistance against capitalist exploitation, and just how representative they were of the most marginalized voices of the societies for whom they sometimes claimed to speak (hewson, 2005; incite! women of color against violence, 2007; martinez, 2000; prashad, 2003). in the north, much of the momentum and focus directed against the institutions (and their cyclical meetings) most closely identified with the promotion and maintenance of capitalist globalization has been channelled into anti-war movements (solnit, 2004; wood, 2004). global geopolitics, faster and deeper free trade and investment while attempts to link commitments to further advance economic liberalization under the wto with support for the war on terror failed to translate into tangible results in that arena since 2001, the bilateral fta strategies, in particular, those of the us and eu, have clearly been as geopolitically driven as they have been motivated by narrow economic concerns. the eu’s current ftas based on the 2006 “global europe” vision insists that parties (e.g., india, korea and asean) sign a political cooperation agreement before an fta. ftas often have little to do with trade and much to do with securing spheres of political influence and control. access to natural resources such as oil, gas, agrofuels, minerals and biodiversity can be seen as significant in terms of both economic aspects as well as their geopolitical implications. energy security is emerging as an important element in the fta strategies of studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 12 aziz choudry countries like japan, china, the eu and the usa, with separate chapters of ftas between japan and indonesia and japan and brunei guaranteeing the japanese government a supply of gas and oil, for example. as sidney weintraub (2003), of the centre for strategic and international studies in washington, d.c., puts it: the sense that is now being conveyed around the world is that us policy is to sign free trade agreements with other countries only if they are prepared to adhere to us foreign policy positions. an fta, in other words, is not necessarily an agreement in which all parties benefit from trade expansion, but rather a favor to be bestowed based on support of us foreign policy.” there are few signs that the current us administration is taking a substantively different direction on trade policy. the latest global economic crisis has led many people, perhaps most recently symbolized by the occupy movement/ mobilizations, to question the claimed benefits of free market capitalism. initially seen as a default for slow-moving wto negotiations, observers and activists came to see the bilateral ftas as a preferred option. transnational capital has always forum-shopped to get what it wants in terms of international regulatory frameworks enforcing protection of investment and property rights (kelsey, 1999). through ftas, it is possible to isolate and divide governments outside of a forum where they could on some level band together to resist demands of northern governments within the wto. critics often suggest that the fta process constitutes more of an imposition by a larger power than a real negotiation. like wto agreements, and given their lower profile, perhaps more so, they are negotiated in virtual secrecy, with negotiating texts routinely unavailable for public scrutiny in either country until it is much too late, or, in some cases, not even available for a significant period of time after the agreement has taken effect. governments of smaller countries face negotiations fatigue when overstretched and underresourced officials have to deal with agreements with multiple countries, bilaterally, regionally, and multilaterally. former eu trade commissioner and current director-general of the wto, pascal lamy said of eu trade policy: “we always use bilateral ftas to move negotiations beyond wto standards. by definition, a bilateral trade agreement is “wto plus.” whether it’s about investment, intellectual property rights, tariff structure or trade instrument, in each bilateral fta we have the “wto plus” provision” (jakarta post, 2004). bilateral agreements typically allow for deeper and faster levels of liberalization and deregulation than could be achieved in the wto, (“wto-plus” provisions) and specific measures and policies could be targeted with more precision. ftas often break new ground. as governments commit to standards of liberalization that go further than the wto through ftas, this has implications for negotiating positions in multilateral trade talks should wto talks get more momentum: countries will not be able to stand up to demands from northern governments for wto expansion when they have already signed onto wto-plus commitments bilaterally. bilaterally, it is sometimes easier studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 struggles against bilateral ftas 13 to set precedents on a range of issues which can then at some point be taken into multilateral arena. compliance with wto agreements has been hard for many countries, but bilateral deals with wto-plus provisions are even tougher. through ftas and bilateral investment treaties (bits), eu and us trade negotiators push governments into going further and faster in adopting what are essentially corporate wish lists on areas such as intellectual property (further endangering access to treatment to millions of people living with hiv/aids and other life-threatening diseases, undermining traditional agriculture by imposing agribusiness monopoly rights on areas such as seeds, and expanding patent protection over all life forms), financial liberalization, and issues (e.g., government procurement and investment) which have been kept out of wto negotiations or severely limited in their scope due to third world governments’ opposition to industrialized government demands. us agribusiness and pharmaceutical corporations are both the scripters and cheerleaders of trips-plus provisions. for example, monsanto (2004) urged us trade negotiators to seek an end to thailand’s moratorium on large-scale field trials of genetically-modified (gm) crops either “in a parallel fashion with the fta negotiations or directly within the context of the negotiations.” monsanto (2004) said that in the current context of free trade…it is imperative that the us work with thailand to eliminate the current barriers to biotechnology-improved crops and establish a science-based regulatory system—including field trials of new crops—consistent with their international trade obligations in order to bring the benefits of these products to market in thailand and to further promote consistent access to american agricultural technologies and products. former thai prime minister thaksin shinawatra announced his intention to reverse thailand’s moratorium on gm field trials (which came into effect after pressure from farmers and consumer groups in april 2001). while he and his cabinet were forced to uphold the moratorium after thai farmers, buddhist organizations, consumers and anti-gmo activists protested, us and monsanto officials,who seek to make thailand its regional base for gm roundup-ready corn and bt corn, continue to have the moratorium in their sights in the context of a potential renewal of fta talks. businesseurope (formerly the union of industrial and employers’ federations of europe—unice) states: given the increasingly important role of services in eu exports, all future ftas must ensure comprehensive liberalization of key sectors including financial services, telecommunications, professional and business services and express delivery services…the eu has a comparative advantage across the board in services and needs to ensure that this advantage is pressed home in future ftas. (unice, 2006) studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 14 aziz choudry bilateral investment threats: popular resistance against corporate power as south korean activists and commentators have noted, a major concern for the newly-minted us-korea fta is its investor-state dispute system. many ftas and bits contain broad definitions of “investment” which throw the door wide open for disgruntled corporations based in one signatory country to take a case against the other signatory government to a binding disputes tribunal. such disputes are fought out behind closed doors in arbitration proceedings at the world bank’s international centre for the settlement of investment disputes (icsid). thus far, these have often related to conflicts after the privatization of state-owned enterprises and public utilities such as water, but could extend to include almost anything. these have already become flashpoints for popular resistance. azurix, a former subsidiary of enron won a bid to run the privatized water and sewage system for 2.5 million people in parts of buenos aires province, argentina, in may 1999. bahia blanca residents complained that their water smelt bad and looked brown, while regulators considered sanctions against azurix for very low water pressure. after the water supply was found to be contaminated, health authorities warned people not to drink or bathe in the water. the local regulating agency forced the company to deliver free bottled water to those affected, not to charge for a period when the water was of poor quality, and fined azurix for breach of contract. in october 2001, azurix stated that it would withdraw from the contract, complaining that the province would not let it charge rates according to the tariff specified in the contract and would not deliver infrastructure. the province rejected the termination notice. then, under a 1991 us-argentina bilateral investment treaty, azurix took argentina’s bankrupt government to binding arbitration at icsid, seeking us $550 million. azurix said that the authorities’ actions amount to interference with its investment. in july 2006, icsid awarded azurix us $165 million against argentina, although the government has thus far refused to pay, despite threats from the current us administration. the popular struggle against the privatized water system of cochabamba, bolivia, is a potent symbol of resistance against neoliberalism and privatization. this followed aguas del tunari (affiliate of us water corporation bechtel) sharply increasing prices. but after the privatization was reversed, the water system handed back to the public, and it was forced to leave bolivia, aguas del tunari/bechtel lodged a request for arbitration against bolivia at icsid. it sought us $50 million, claiming as expropriated investment the millions of dollars in potential profits it had hoped to make. (for the same amount, 125,000 bolivian families without access to water could have been connected.) the company turned to a 1992 bit between holland and bolivia. while it was establishing its operations in cochabamba, bechtel was filing papers to shift its subsidiary’s corporate registration to holland from the cayman islands. after international protests and pressure, at the end of 2005, bechtel abandoned its claim against bolivia. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 struggles against bilateral ftas 15 challenges for resistance movements against ftas although these bilateral deals are being signed and implemented in many countries, the focus of many international development and advocacy ngos and trade union networks critical of free trade often seems to remain on the multilateral talks at the almost moribund wto. there has been some belated focus on epas being signed between the eu and african, caribbean, and pacific countries among european and australasian ngos but relatively few connections have been made with local grassroots struggles against these agreements (canterbury, 2010). it has been difficult to coordinate nationallevel opposition to eu epas, and much of the international campaign work on this has been driven by northern-based ngos which have had varying levels of connection with social movements. conceptually, this weakness can partly be attributed to these organizations’ overemphasis on the wto, and a failure to take a clear stance against neoliberal capitalism, with a spectrum of platforms calling for anything between mild reform to complete rejection, coupled with a funding and institutional focus which tended to prioritize these institutions which were traditional targets of mobilizations. while many of the stronger campaigns against ftas build upon and draw from the experience of mobilization against the wto, ftaa, and other neoliberal reforms at international and domestic levels, the lower profile of these deals has allowed negotiations to take place well under the radar of many activist movements and organizations. some of the largest and most militant mobilizations against capitalist globalization in recent years have been anti-fta protests, for example in korea, where street protests against the recently concluded fta with the us numbered in the tens of thousands regularly, and in cafta (us-dominican republic-central american free trade agreement) countries (for example, 200,000 demonstrated in san jose, costa rica on february 26, 2007 against cafta). and yet in spite of the growth of the global justice network, these mobilizations have attracted relatively little awareness or solidarity in north america. the question is often asked how to maximize leverage/opposition against these agreements by cooperating with activists in the other signatory country, but there has been very little sustained joint activism in this regard, notwithstanding the scale and political impact of anti-fta movements outside of europe and north america. in at least two cases, in ecuador (guttierez) and thailand (thaksin shinawatra), anti-fta movements and sentiments have contributed to overthrowing governments. subsequently, after popular pressure led to the cancellation of occidental petroleum’s oil extraction contract in ecuador, the proposed fta with the us was effectively scuttled. the geopolitical aspects of these deals, such as the us-korea fta, and us foreign policy in latin america, both influence and become important mobilization targets in themselves. in korea, opposition was related to older struggles (and the knowledge/conceptual resources which they generated) against us domination and military bases. by comparison with multilateral talks, such studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 16 aziz choudry aspects have been in clearer focus in bilateral fta struggles because of the close attention paid to other aspects of foreign affairs linkages with the other signatory government. in many ways popular resistance to the chile-korea fta set the stage for an even larger phase of mobilization against korea’s fta with the us. even before the fight against the chile and us ftas, korean social movements had mobilized against the imposition of neoliberal reforms since the 1980s, whether imposed by seoul, or, after the 1997-1998 economic crisis, by the imf. korea-chile fta negotiations began in 1998 and a deal was eventually concluded in 2003. although the agreement was quite comprehensive (including services, investment, and other areas), it was its agriculture provisions, and particularly the implications for korea’s domestic fruit growers, that were the focus of opposition in korea. protests were frequently met with police violence, but helped to repeatedly delay ratification. while over 50% of korea’s lawmakers promised that they would oppose the fta, they ratified it. from this experience, the farmers’ movement, the korean peasant league (kpl) drew two lessons for future fta fights: firstly, a struggle by small farmers alone (10% of korea’s population) would not lead to victory. the majority of the population were made to believe that sacrifice of the farmers was a necessary evil to achieve economic growth. secondly, one cannot rely solely on parliamentarians, since despite all the mobilizations, the government ratified the deal anyway. so kpl learnt that it is vital to build a mass struggle with other sectors to defeat current and future ftas. korean farmers, unsurprisingly, were at the forefront of struggles against the fta with the usa. the korean resistance against the us-korea fta has been a major multisectoral struggle, illustrating the importance of strong national movements in the context of cross/binational networks against a deal. while there has been a strong movement in korea, there has been far less social movement activism in the us. there were some joint actions and statements by korean and us unions against the fta, and korean protest expeditions to the usa during negotiating rounds, but little sustained focus in us. closer to the ratification dates by the two respective governments, there was some campaigning in the us, including by progressive korean-americans, to stop the agreement, but no major movement mobilizations as had been seen in opposition to nafta, the ftaa or the wto. similarly a small symbolic protest action in brussels was held against the eu-korea fta, but was more or less a one-off action. just as there is a great diversity in positions, ideologies, perspectives and tactics among opposition movements against the wto, so too, we can find among opposition to bilateral ftas those who call for reform of these agreements (largely major trade union bureaucracies and ngos in north america, europe and australasia) and those who reject these agreements altogether. ngo technical policy analyses of these agreements, along with the bretton woods institutions and other processes are often detached from political economy/geopolitical factors, and lack a systemic critique of capitalism and imperialism which views that all of these institutions, studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 struggles against bilateral ftas 17 agreements and processes—global regional, subregional, bilateral, national and subnational (i.e. state/province/municipal level) necessitate oppositional responses. compartmentalized approaches to addressing capitalist globalization which do not confront the systemic nature of capitalism can only be of limited effectiveness. for many ngo campaigns, this compartmentalization occurs around issues (e.g. agriculture, services), regional or countryspecific priorities, sectors (women, workers, farmers, indigenous peoples) and institutions and agreements (wto, ftaa, etc.) without a broader underlying framework of analysis necessarily informing action against global capitalism per se. this tends towards a rather fragmented analysis. certainly, in some anti-fta struggles, particular aspects of these agreements attract more attention than others, such as intellectual property provisions of the us-thailand agreement, and the toxic waste dumping provisions of the japan-philippines economic partnership agreement, but the most vibrant and sustained anti-fta mobilizations have seen broad fronts of opposition grow through an understanding of the comprehensive threats posed by these agreements. for example, movements of people living with hiv/aids in thailand found common cause and forged alliances with farmers because of the intellectual property chapter in the proposed us-thai fta. meanwhile, the korean government’s removal of the film quota (to promote korean films) as part of fta negotiations, and commitments to further liberalize korean agriculture brought film actors, directors, and producers together with farmers and trade unionists in the streets against the us-korea fta. on the other hand, in north american and european campaigns on ftas, there has been relatively little mass mobilization or awareness. although a somewhat more broadly-framed ngo/trade union campaign against the canada-eu comprehensive economic and trade agreement (ceta) picked up some momentum in 2011, positions of ngos and trade unions have tended to focus on rather narrow platforms such as the canadian autoworkers union focus against the proposed canada-korea fta because of threats to the ontario auto assembly sector and canadian labour/ngo framings of the canada-colombia fta agreement around human rights in colombia. such conceptualizations of these agreements run the risk of obscuring broader and deeper instruments of neoliberalism which impact the lives of peoples in both signatory countries, and do not prioritize building broader understandings and movements against these agreements. building campaign resources to support movements against ftas given the challenges to organizing cross-nationally, a major concern among some opponents of ftas has been facilitation of the sharing of knowledge, research, analysis and experience. in 2004, a number of organizations3 initiated a collaborative website to support peoples’ struggles against bilateral free trade and investment agreements http://www.bilaterals.org. http://www.bilaterals.org/ studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 18 aziz choudry bilaterals.org is an open-publishing site where people fighting bilateral trade and investment agreements exchange information and analysis and build cooperation. those campaigning against bilateral deals had found it hard to connect with others around the world to share analysis and develop broader and complementary strategies. by early 2008, the website was attracting around 200, 000 hits a month. it has been used to leak draft negotiating texts which have otherwise not been made public, such as a draft ipr chapter of the us-thailand fta (the nation, 2006), which was important for thai activists to highlight. it is also a forum for activists to directly alert others about developments in their struggles, not least during intense periods of mobilization and state repression in korea and costa rica in 2007 and 2008, mass mobilizations in peru against proposed ftas with the eu and the usa, and a wave of anti-fta protests in india in 2009-2010. people’s movements to stop ftas are often isolated from each other, a direct reflection of the divide and conquer strategy that bilateralism thrives on. a number of anti-fta movements have made it a priority to break the isolation and link with others fighting such agreements in order to share analysis and learnings from each other’s struggles. the thai anti-fta movement has been quite proactive in this respect, organizing several events which have brought activists from different countries together to strategize on ftas (similar collaboration has also taken place in latin america among movements fighting bilateral deals). fta watch, a thai coalition, invited bilaterals.org, and grain, a small international ngo with strong relationships with many social movements, to help co-organize a global strategy meeting of anti-fta activists. the three-day “fighting ftas” workshop was held in july 2006 in bangkok, bringing together around 60 social movement activists from 20 countries of africa, the americas and the asia-pacific region to share experiences in grassroots struggles against ftas and to build international strategies and cooperation. for many, it was the first time they had been able to physically sit down with other movement activists fighting ftas and discuss strategy and experiences. in february 2008, grain, bilaterals. org, and biothai (biodiversity action thailand) produced a collaborative publication and launched a multimedia website called “fighting ftas: the growing resistance to bilateral free trade and investment agreements” which provides both a global overview of the spread of ftas and maps the growing resistance and learning’s from people’s experiences of fighting ftas. this resource was merged into a relaunched and redesigned bilaterals.org website in 2009 which is continuously updated. the website is a collaborative information tool that also has a public and political persona. this has been a useful (though unintended) impact because it allows people to identify bilaterals.org as a collective support to social movements: no one group is behind it, it has a critical view and voice, and is an initiative people can work with and through. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 struggles against bilateral ftas 19 spreading resistance against bilateral free trade agreements several significant international movement networks have drawn attention to the importance of opposing bilateral free trade and investment agreements. in november 2006, the asian peasant coalition (apc) issued a critique of the japan-philippines economic partnership agreement (jpepa) which denounced it as “a very onerous deal … worse than the impositions by the wto itself,” and called upon the philippine government to scrap it. predicting that filipino farmers would be hardest hit by the deal, the statement predicted that jpepa would “further sink the philippines into being a beggar state” (asian peasant coalition, 2006). starting in october 2006, militant filipino farmers, led by the kilusang magbubukid ng pilipinas (kmp), launched several protest actions at the japanese embassy. members of the apc have joined filipino farmers in protest actions against jpepa. la via campesina has also made a number of statements explicitly opposing bilateral ftas. a number of its member organizations, particularly in central america, korea and africa are engaged in struggles against (mainly) us and eu-driven ftas. in a january 2008 statement, via campesina members from asia, europe, africa and latin america stated that all bilateral and bi-regional free-trade agreements, be they called “tratados de libre-comercio” (tlc), “free-trade agreements” (fta) or “economic partnership agreements” (epas), are of the same nature. they lead to the plundering of natural resources and only serve transnational companies at the expense of all the world’s peoples and environment. these are not partnership agreements but economic plundering agreements (via campesina, 2008). the organizations demanded “that governments not sign or withdraw from these agreements.” knowledge production, social movement learning, theory and struggle fta struggles highlight the importance of resistance firmly grounded in local and national contexts, but which connects to regional and global perspectives. strategies that emerge from strong local organizations are the ones most able to map the terrain of struggle, to identify key local and international players pushing specific agreements and specific provisions of agreements to know their weak points, histories, styles of operating and how they are connected, and to oppose, expose and challenge those pushing ftas and their strategies. alongside this, technical policy analysis—something which so many advocacy ngos prioritize needs to be informed by and connected to the realities of people’s struggles, not the other way round. these forms of knowledge are increasingly important as potential resources for other movements which find themselves confronting the same strategies and players in different countries. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 20 aziz choudry as kelley (2002) puts it: “social movements generate new knowledge, new theories, new questions. the most radical ideas often grow out of a concrete intellectual engagement with the problems of aggrieved populations confronting systems of oppression” (p.9). participation in social activism offers activists and the wider movement(s) opportunities to learn and create knowledge, through informal activities that take place in the daily life of organizations/movements. as choudry and shragge (2011) note, this happens if the place created is not overly controlled by professionalism and offers social interaction. this “social learning” is embedded in social interaction between participants in social movements and organizing, or between organizations/movements. this learning is often unanticipated, incidental (though not insignificant), and dynamic in nature. holst (2002, 2011) notes how the importance and nature of learning in social movements tends to be dismissed in the literature. for him, social movements, through public protest that can take various forms, attempt to educate and persuade the larger public and politicians. second, there is much educational work internal to social movements, in which organizational skills, ideology, and lifestyle choices are passed from one member to the next informally through mentoring and modeling or formally through workshops, seminars, lectures, and so forth. a wealth of knowledge can be brought forth from social struggles which in turn can inform strategy and theory. yet relatively few attempts have been made to theorize informal learning through involvement in social action. one exception is foley (1999), who validates and analyzes the importance of the incidental learning in a variety of social struggles. foley argues that to do this analysis “one needs to write case studies of learning in struggle, making explanatory connections between the broad political and economic context, micro-politics, ideologies, discourses and learning” (p. 132). such forms of knowledge can directly challenge professionalization and technicism which permeates ngo-dominated global justice advocacy, and can help to inoculate organizations against disconnection from potential movement sites of contestation and building opposition. novelli (2010) highlights the dialectics of strategic learning through struggle and contestation which includes incidental, formal, informal, and nonformal education. this implies an engagement in “strategic analysis, which in turn leads to strategic action, and then to intended and unintended consequences of action, and to further reflection/analysis and action” (p. 124). foley (1999) emphasizes the importance of “developing an understanding of learning in popular struggle” (p.140). his attention to documenting, making explicit, and valuing incidental forms of learning and knowledge production in social action is consistent with others who understand that critical consciousness and theory emerge from engagement in action and organizing contexts, rather than ideas developed elsewhere being imposed on “the people” (bevington and dixon, 2005; choudry and kapoor, 2010; kelley, 2002; kinsman, 2006). studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 struggles against bilateral ftas 21 conclusion mcnally, (2002; 2010); petras and veltmeyer (2003, 2005), boron (2005), chun (2009), desmarais (2007), reitan (2007), and motta and nilsen (2011) illustrate that people’s struggles against neoliberalism, including peasant movements, indigenous peoples, and militant trade unionists in latin america and asia, have continued to vigorously challenge states and transnational capital, notwithstanding increasing militarization and the use of anti-terror legislation against activists and communities of resistance over the past decade. with few exceptions, often lobbying campaigns by ngos such as those on epas in europe (canterbury, 2010; dür and de bièvre, 2007), there has been relatively little activism addressing ftas in europe and north america. the responses of movements to bilateral ftas in the post-9/11 climate illustrate a growing disconnect between anti-neoliberal activism in europe and north america and the rest of the world. in many northern activist networks, campaign focuses around the connections between imperialism, war and links to questions of political economy and neoliberal capitalism have often been limited to articulating us oil interests in the middle east with the invasion of iraq. yet for many on the frontlines against ftas in thailand, south korea or the philippines, these links are often identified and articulated in a far more sophisticated manner (bilaterals.org, biothai and grain, 2008; choudry, 2009, 2010; mathew, 2005; mcnally, 2002; petras & veltmeyer, 2003). the current wave of bilateral free trade and investment agreements represent an intensification of capitalist globalization. the comprehensiveness of many ftas has engendered the building of common fronts of struggle at national levels in many countries, but this has largely occurred outside of north america and europe. internationally, however, there is a tendency of ngo campaigns to be compartmentalized around individual institutions and issues (agriculture, human rights intellectual property rights, labour, women, etc). there is another tendency for a rather standard formulation or platform of opposition to be mounted by many advocacy ngos (mainly, although not always, with actual or de facto headquarters in europe or north america) against the wto, the imf and the world bank but still relatively little focus placed on ftas although these arguably impose more immediate threats. there remains a reticence to reconceptualize globalization to include threats outside of the global institutions such as the wto, world bank and imf, and to see dangers inherent in apparently smaller deals. the question remains how to conceptualize capitalist globalization equally driven by a web of smaller agreements and to target this process in a concerted manner. in understanding the significance of many of these anti-fta movements, the question of their success may hinge on whether they can build long-term alliances against neoliberalism rather than stopping an fta, and sustain a critique of capitalist globalization in whatever form it may take, and as we can see with nafta, the us-korea fta and other agreements, the social struggle does not necessarily end when the deal is signed. as mcnally (2002) studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 22 aziz choudry and katsiaficas (2002) contend, within “anti-globalization” networks, a disproportionate focus and awareness about the modalities of mobilizations and activism in north america and europe lends itself to overlooking what are often far more complex, mass-based and sustained forms of resistance to capitalism and colonialism in the third world, including new fronts of struggle against bilateral free trade and investment agreements. since most of these mobilizations have taken place in asia and latin america, and with little sustained major mobilization against such deals in northern countries, these struggles have also escaped attention in both activist and broader public circles, and scholarly attention. in examining the knowledge being produced and shared in grounded struggles against bilateral ftas, we can discern different forms of knowledge production and learning in struggle that can trouble disconnected transnational professionalized ngo forms of knowledge, and contribute to building a body of knowledge and resources for struggle. the fact that so much of this antifta resistance has happened without strong connections to transnational ngo networks is undoubtedly a factor in its relative absence from both ngo and scholarly purview. in the context of transnational social movement/ ngo networks, as thayer (2000) notes, “barriers to south-north conceptual migration are both economic and discursive. on the one hand, the periphery and its intellectual products are constructed as both exotic and specific, while the center and its discourses and theories enjoy all-embracing, universal status” (p. 229). the privileging of western, professionalized epistemologies of knowledge manifests itself within ngo and activist networks with the reification of “experts” and the dominance of professionalized forms of knowledge such as technical policy analysis of official texts which are decontextualized from the political and economic structures of power in which they exist. it positions certain kinds of knowledge, individuals and organizations as authoritative, and devalues or ignores others. the extent to which scholarship will attend to, arise from, and/or engage these movements and mobilizations against ftas is unclear; yet it seems probable that, with little sign of a substantive change in today’s international trade and investment policy-making to prioritize bilateral over multilateral agreements, many more such struggles will emerge. notes 1 see http://www.ourworldisnotforsale.org 2 initiated in 1994, the summit of the americas has met a number of times to lay groundwork for a (stalled) us-led proposal for a free trade and investment agreement covering all the nations in the americas except for cuba – known as the free trade area of the americas. 3 the initiators included the asia-pacific research network, gatt watchdog (new zealand), global justice ecology project (usa), grain, ibon foundation (philippines), xminy solidariteitsfond (netherlands). http://www.aprnet.org/ mailto:notoapec@clear.net.nz http://www.globaljusticeecology.org/ http://www.grain.org/ studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 1, 2013 struggles against bilateral ftas 23 references asian peasant coalition. 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(2007). exalted subjects: studies in the making of race and nation in canada. toronto: university of toronto press. tujan, a., gaughran, a., & mollett, h. (2004). development and the “global war on terror.” race and class, 46(1), 53-74. unice. (2006, december 7). unice strategy on an eu approach to free trade agreements. brussels. retrieved from http://bilaterals.org/spip.php? article7265 weintraub, s. (2003, september 3). the politics of us trade policy. retrieved from http://news. bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3169649.stm wood, l. (2004). organizing against the occupation—us and canadian anti-war activists speak out. social movement studies, 3(2), 241-257. wood, l, (2005). bridging the chasms: the case of peoples’ global action. in j. bandy & j. smith (eds.), coalitions across borders: transnational protest and the neoliberal order (pp.95-117). lanham, md: rowman and littlefield. zoellick, r. (2001, september 24). american trade leadership: what is at stake? speech to international institute of economics, washington d.c. retrieved from www.petersoninstitute.org/publications/papers/zoellick 1001.pdf http://bilaterals.org/spip.php? article7265 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3169649.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3169649.stm http://www.petersoninstitute.org/publications/papers/zoellick 1001.pdf case study inquiry & black feminist resistance: reflections on a methodological journey in the furtherance of lis social justice research the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 case study inquiry & black feminist resistance: reflections on a methodological journey in the furtherance of lis social justice research laverne gray, syracuse university, usa abstract this article explains the researcher ownership of tools of inquiry. using personal narrative, the text highlights the elements of case study development presenting the familial as the impetus for an alternative mode for lis social justice research in an ethnic, racial, gendered community. using the researcher journey as an example, the approach is explored through a theoretical and methodological iterative case development process. implications in the furtherance of lis social justice inquiry models utilizing a critical-qualitative approach are explicated towards the development of a case study in the pursuit of community-focused research. keywords: case study; iterative approaches; social justice; qualitative methods publication type: research article introduction n critical feminist circles, an often-used quote from black feminist poet, essayist, activist, and librarian audre lorde (2007) elucidates, “for the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (p. 112). the power embedded with the brevity of the phrase is adaptable as both a call to action and a mantra for social justice mobilization. this article resituates “tools” to represent resistance to the prescriptive library and information science (lis) research paradigm in the furtherance of locating and examining communal social justice. to accomplish this, the text recounts the journey of development and implementation of a select criticalcultural case study by exploring the information environment of african american activist mothers in 1960’s chicago public housing (gray, 2019) using archival texts. the paper is methodological explicating a multi-layered approach to the development of a social justice lis case study. the ideation of the study is connected through familial ties. while conducting genealogical research, i discovered my grandmother in a chicago defender newspaper article. she was featured with other women in her public housing community for organizing justice activities. although unique and personal, the development of the case study illuminates racial, ethnic, gender, and geographic approaches to the field of information study. utilizing black feminist epistemology (collins, 2000) in concert with lis social justice (mehra et al., 2006, 2009; mehra & rioux, 2016) and information community theoretical perspectives (fisher, et al., 2003), this iterative approach demands the researcher focus on the matter at hand in the treatment of the text in honor of the women in the community. this stance requires resistance to formulaic i https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 approaches in methods examining communal information practice, through a deconstructive inquiry process. this reflective essay explains this journey using personal narrative. a narrative approach provides the researcher the opportunity to use storytelling to examine life experiences (clandinin & connelly, 2000). it is a process where “oppressed people resist by identifying themselves as subjects, by defining their reality, shaping their new identity, naming their history, telling their story” (hooks, 1989, p. 43). it’s important to note that the use of the term ‘subject’ here does not align with positivist research traditions. the quote encourages so-called marginal communities to repel narratives and research that addresses their experiences without their input. utilizing my voice as an african american woman, studying my ancestral public housing community and recounting my narrative, resists external bias and subjectivity. my role in naming, defining, and shaping the narrative illuminates my researcher voice. the resulting text is my story within a story. i share my own resistance journey using creative and iterative research approaches, while studying the information activist properties of a black feminist collective. resistance occurs through deconstructive acts combating linear approaches to the research field, thereby creating my own pathway to greater understanding of phenomena. the use of first person reinforces my possession of the story and aligns with the use familial in the furtherance of research. to better explain the embrace and researcher ownership of tools of inquiry, this article will first discuss the beginnings of the journey of developing the case using familial ties. secondly, this text will situate the case in black feminism, information, and lis social justice theory. next, i explore milestones and deconstructive application of the iterative case development process, highlighting iterative elements of case study development presenting alternative modes for lis social justice research in ethnic, racial, and gendered communities. lastly, implications in the furtherance of lis social justice inquiry models through a critical-qualitative approach will be explicated towards the development of research and the researcher in the pursuit of social justice and community-focused research. familial inspiration the exemplar study of activist-mothers in chicago public housing grew from an archived newspaper article found about a group of women fighting for a library to be built in their community. the article, entitled “blast city for lack of near southside library” (1963), featured my grandmother’s voice blasting city officials for their apathy toward community needs. the article detailed the plans of a committee of mothers to organize a protest march and meeting. the text contained in the article is both personally inspiring and historically fascinating. personally, the fascination of a previously unknown circumstance involving my grandmother induced pride. my assumptions about the life she lived and public housing community where my mother grew up was demystified in ways i had not anticipated. historically, this activist spirit within a community of urban poor and working class african american women in public housing is not told in the context of library history or examined in the context of information environments. the discovery of the document ignited a curiosity which led to inspired research through the development of a unique case for study. from the discovery of the newspaper article, i began to explore and situate the historical setting of the case. the activist mothers in the case study are situated historically in the experiences of 72 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 african american poor and working-class communities of the first half of the 20th century. my family, like many other african americans in chicago, migrated from the southern u.s. to escape racial apartheid (wilkerson, 2010). the migrants to the city were described as “refugees from the bondage of america’s cotton kingdom in the south” (drake & cayton, 2015, p. 32). in the city, migrants were able to explore economic opportunities, pursue education, and participate civically. housing shortages for the african american population continued to be a problem during the population booms before and after world war ii. there was little housing built and the south-side black belt of the city was described as blighted with extended families sharing spaces in kitchenette apartments in overcrowded converted early 20th century homes (drake & cayton, 2015; fuerst & hunt, 2005). as the number of migrants grew, there were limitations to housing because of geographical segregation. african american overcrowding in certain areas of the city was attributed to restrictive covenant housing policies and red lining of neighborhoods (hirsch, 1983; rothstein, 2017). segregation was maintained by providing african americans with new public housing made up of high-rise buildings in formerly blighted areas (hunt, 2009). a unique feature of the lives of the women in the public housing communities examined (harold ickes homes and dearborn homes) is the presence of a henry booth settlement house (gray, 2019). the settlement house movement in chicago began in the late 19th and early 20th century progressive movement, where resident workers developed programs to foster aid, education, and democratic activities amongst community members (addams, 1910). by the mid 20th century, urban renewal in the form of systematic state and local policies to improve housing conditions, expand city infrastructure, and counter urban blight, saw the relocation of henry booth house from a traditionally jewish, german, and mexican service area, to the new high-rise public housing communities (hunt, 2009). this second ghetto (hirsch, 1983), often described as paradise by early residents, saw the proliferation of community engagement to enhance the lives of its members (fuerst & hunt, 2005). the settlement house acted as both a point of service and a space for agency. although traditionally situated in terms of lack and deficiency this case study uncovers agency through the women constantly striving for the betterment of community. familial community-based activism was the flame that ignited my interest lis social justice research. the embrace of inspiration and ideation from under-examined communities is a primary feature of situating a case that allows for a bottom-up rather than administrative view of lis research. the recognition of the individual life of my grandmother grew into an understanding of her being a full participant of a community. my decision to further explore the information dynamics of such a community provided the impetus of the case development. the goal of the research simply became persistence and discovery. my continual examination of the women in public housing drove me to situate them theoretically, historically, and situationally. the task was scaffolded through reflexive examination of my role as a researcher and the story that would unfold. this iterative take on research design involves risk, but trust in the process of resistance enhances fulfillment. the next part of the text theoretically situates the journey using lis social justice theory and imagining an information activist community. black feminism, community, & lis social justice to decipher the voices of the african american women, i looked to black feminist theory. patricia hill collins (1998, 2000) describes black women as outsiders-within. these women, by their ethnicity, color, and social class are outside of white patriarchal, hegemonic spaces, but have access through working in the system. it is like physically being within spaces of those that are 73 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 privileged, but never belonging. bell hooks (1990) refers to this marginality as places of resistance. these marginal homeplaces became desirable outside spaces and represented a place of struggle invoking courage and strength. outsiders must stand alone or collectively with others on the outside to bring change. the outside spaces are where african american women come to voice (gray, 2019; collins, 1999). the activism and work of the women in public housing demonstrate the outsider status in resistance and struggle. for the women, the public housing community became an information space of social justice. the idea of community as a site for information draws on the concept of information community (ic). an ic is described as a “partnership of institutions and individuals forming and cultivating a community of interest around the provision and exchange of information, or knowledge, aimed at increasing access to that information or increasing communication, and thereby increasing that knowledge” (durrance, 2001, p.64). this definition exists in the realm of internet based online communities. in my development of the case study the term community within the concept was attractive to making sense of what was occurring on the ground with the women in public housing. the case extends this meaning to increase capacity building in the interest of knowledge and understanding of what occurs in dynamic communal space. in doing so, i recognized the mobilization aspects of an ic, by incorporating galvanized structures in a contained geographic space. my emphasis on the application of information to the resistance activities in the physical environment shifted the view of the mobilized collective from an activist group to an information-based community system that informs action. a spatial-traditional interpretation of information communities creates a new application and analysis that supplants the virtual with the physical. utilizing fisher et al.’s (2003) characteristics, i explore how the traditional community activism within geographical space is representative of an information-activist community (iac) (see table 1). collaboration is a common feature of ic and iac applications. the iac extends ic in that collective use and need for information supports mobilization necessary for activism. collectivity is the main feature of iac by viewing the community and its relationship in terms of purpose reflecting a participatory force for the mutual good. information in the iac operates similarly to ic in focus and intent, but information in iac flows from within the collective. in the context of the activist-mothers in public housing, the application of ic characteristics demonstrates the influence of community-based information systems and structures. table 1. information activist community ic characteristic iac application information communities emphasize collaboration among diverse information providers collaboration is a function of information community activist participation—diverse providers include both internal and external sources information communities anticipate and often form around people’s needs to get and use information information use and need are purposeful to issues and intentions for the collective good information communities effectively exploit the information exploitation of information as aspects of performance in 74 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 sharing qualities of available technology and yield multiplier effects for stakeholders mobilization and galvanization around community participation and activities information communities transcend barriers to informationsharing information-sharing is democratized and used as a tool for dismantling divides for collective purposes information communities connect people and foster social connectedness collectivity and connectedness are essential to the social structure and necessary for activist community praxis information communities emphasize collaboration among diverse information providers collaboration is a function of information community activist participation—diverse providers include both internal and external sources information communities anticipate and often form around people’s needs to get and use information information use and need are purposeful to issues and intentions for the collective good social justice research in lis is rooted in communities that are serviced by library institutions. connecting community to research provides another opportunity to exercise engagement within a social justice theoretical framework. the social justice theoretical perspective in lis collates communal ideals in the service of the collective good. it is at once both philosophical and practical. the previous theoretical discussion on ic constructs demonstrates collective community mobilization in naturalistic non-technological mediated environments. here i extend that discussion from a social justice information perspective. the lis social justice metatheoretical assumptions communicate fairness, empowerment, equity, and change agency. the distinction in the activist-mother community context is that information-as-service is transformed to information-as-collective. when used as a tool, social justice becomes operationalized in information spaces. it functions within environmental structures that inform practical activities in information centers. the library is often seen as the manifestation of where the tools are utilized in the service of information need, access, use, and evaluation. within libraries the implementation of social justice is mediated by the physical institution, staff, policies, political, and community structures. the case of the activist-mothers opens the concept of operationalization of social justice within community spaces. the case embodies social justice information frame by considering a community activist structure. my work is situated similarly to the mehra et al. (2006) article that outlines social justice frames in lis that include underserved population needs, communities of practice, action, empowerment/change agency, and diversity. my interpretation of the frames centers the community, without incorporating the lens of the information professional. the theoretical threads indicated through concepts provide the structure for the framework. the language collectively illustrates the elements present in social justice lis research and practice. the ic formed by the collective work of the members require grounding from social justice 75 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 informational tools into an interactional space where they gather. the marginalized homeplace of the activist-mothers embodies the use of information as a social justice tool. this departure from the institutional frame posits a spontaneous informal mechanization of information in the context of the greater good through social justice activities. understanding the case both through the lens of information activism and social justice provides a way forward in the construction of this case study. the use of theory to inform how information activism is placed within the community using a lis social justice frame supports case development in resistance to linear research design. i understood that reframing of ic to an information activist community changed the language and brought with it a reframing of information concepts. at the same time, i explored the case in a variety of mini projects reflecting qualitative milestones. to make sense of this process of iterative case construction, i studied principles of historical research and qualitative approaches from a critical perspective. case development qualitative research using a critical paradigm reflects socially constructed knowledge that uncovers historical insights. it is an alternative view of society, where centrality is focused not on institutions but the participants in history. critical-historical research views history as a living process confronting issues of stability and revolution. it challenges long-held confirmed views of what we are and how we came to be (brennen, 2013). an example of this is the long-held view that libraries were designated in poor, rural, and racially segregated communities through philanthropic, municipal, and white middle-class values being imposed on groups (mehra & gray, 2020). i embarked on a revisionist telling of how empowered community members utilized their voices within an information environment to gain library facilities (gray, 2019). the case study viewed the women and the community through a lens of abundance rather than deficit. deficit positioning demotes the persons under study to a marginal space, devoid of information (ford et al, 2001; valencia & solórzano, 1997). an abundance perspective takes the researcher beyond discourse that pre-defines communities. abundance is situated in terms of an equilibrium of embodied systems and networks within a community, countering imposed hegemonic aspirational outcomes (gray, in press). this positioning allowed for greater understanding of the community as free with the ability to control their destiny. the tools of a qualitative academic inquiry involve a rigorous philosophical exercise of exploring lived experiences utilizing text, theory, and methods that contribute to greater understanding of phenomena (denzin & lincoln, 2013). replication of approaches provides a guide while limiting effectiveness by bounding the researcher in the inquiry process. in qualitative social science research, a case study is defined as “an in-depth description and analysis of a bounded system” (merriam & tisdell, 2015, p. 37). in my study of the ic of activist mothers in public housing, the case is bounded by the time where the activism took place through the auspices of the aforementioned henry booth settlement house. it is representative of a community case study which “is small enough to permit considerable cultural (or subcultural) homogeneity, diffuse interactions and relationships between members, and to produce a social identification by its members” (berg, 2009, p. 331). the geographic location of the near south side douglass community in chicago bounds a marginalized community identifiable by a segregated and predominantly african american public housing community. the identification of the information space as a clustered community of women participating in justice work, clarified my intention to discover the unique nature of the public housing environment (gibson & kaplan, 2017). 76 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 illuminating the critical-historical and geographical components of the case evolved throughout the development process. journey milestones the case study represents both continued development and the culmination of experience. i began my journey through milestones of the treatment of data in different ways. an initial failed foray into historical narrative propelled me to continue to research the women’s movement for library facilities. i then expanded my work to focus on the entirety of the community and the information properties found in grassroots social justice mobilization. each milestone expanded my understanding through examining data using different approaches. after developing the historical narrative, i mapped the community and examined the discourse through an exercise that conceptually grounded the campaign for a library facility in the greater public housing community. i dissected the elements to better grasp past work. each milestone in my research journey consistently used the same data (chicago tribune newspaper articles n=1; chicago defender newspaper articles n=7; chicago public library archival manuscripts n=12; henry booth house manuscript collection n=4). each phase was a separate mini project on the campaign for library facilities by the collective of women in the public housing community. in each phase i read the evidence differently. in phase 1, my question focused on what happened. in phase 2, i outlined which entities shaped the information environment. in phase 3, i searched for the voices of the women. the treatment of the evidence throughout the milestones brought me closer to understanding how to honor the women and their activities. utilizing a black feminist epistemology, i searched for, read, and analyzed the documentary evidence using an abundance lens to view community and social justice practices. this stance reinforces centering of the african american community, and their voices in the iterative process. phase 1: library campaign history this phase involved writing a historical narrative that chronologically examined the activities of the library committee’s effort to establish library facilities. the initial exploratory project examined the available historical evidence related to the campaign for library facilities. the project was limited by time constraints and relied on direct access to newspaper database sources and archives housed at both the university of illinois chicago and the chicago public library. i had only a week to explore the contents of the archives and decided to limit document review to those items that clearly related to the community’s push for a library. contextual historical evidence about the community was noted, but not used. the study was itself antitheoretical, but established a curiosity for feminist, specifically black feminist epistemology, in understanding how the community structures impacted the actions of the mothers of the library campaign. findings showed a building of momentum and social movement strategies and their effectiveness. it also provided the lens of the community from a non-administrative perspective in terms of the need for libraries. phase 2: community information network (visualization) the project used qualitative social network analysis by employing an exploratory inductive examination of documents related to the library campaign. the analysis created data visualization by highlighting the complexity of communication and relationships in social movements (miles et al., 2013). data represented individuals, organizations, and political 77 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 structures that were present in primary source documents (scott & carrington, 2011). each primary source document was analyzed and organized according to communication lines, relationships, influence, and collective attributes. each document was coded for relevant organizations, groups, institutions, government/municipal agencies, and significant individuals. the resulting relational network showed the community and municipal divide. it also centered the women and allied community connections and overlapping activities. this phase mapped the relationships of the community. through the exercise, i saw the hegemonic complexity of the municipal agencies and how the women used tactics from the grassroots level to campaign for a library. the mapping showed the collective empowerment at the community level. phase 3: activist community collective-determination model the activist community collective-determination model was developed through grounded theory inductive analysis (corbin & strauss, 2008) of documents related to the campaign of library facilities. the study was exploratory and empirical in nature. units of analysis included the entirety of news articles and sections of the meeting minutes applicable to the campaign for facilities. the findings of the constant comparative analysis of evidence texts revealed the following concepts: coalition building, equity of access, learning spaces, and performance. in this phase i was able to clearly define what community-based social justice properties were present in the activities of the women. i clarified a framework for defining the elements of collective advocacy for community betterment. the impetus for the activities of the women was education. the library was seen as a vehicle for community development. the phases looked at the issue of petitioning for a library. they represented stops in the journey to understanding informational aspects of the community. the next step in the journey focused on broadening the case to examine the community as a whole. the phases told the story, mapped relationships, and defined the elements of social justice activities. an informational examination of the community as a whole would provide a complete picture of the justice activities of the women. iterative case construction the deconstructive approach to the research field follows an iterative process ignited through the discovery of the familial document. the familial document, a newspaper article, was the initial evidence piece that linked persons, place names, organizations, and institutions. the document revealed the link to the henry booth settlement house and the network of communitybased representation from various organizations which led me to manuscripts in the archives and other media documents. the cyclical aspects of the case development process began with critical text inquiry. there are seven elements related to case development: idea and inspiration, evidence collection, concept development & pilot projects, exploratory investigation, emerging questions, research objectives, and exploratory evidence gathering. each part represents research actions. the actions are not mutually exclusive and occur in no specific order. the practice is dynamic and can begin at any point, not following any prescribed flow. the developmental aspect of case development is iterative by nature and represents the culmination of previous works, theoretical examinations, and reflection. the inspiration occurred through the connection of my grandmother to the need for libraries in the public housing community in which she lived. there are subsequent inspiring and idea generating documents which pushed the research forward, for example, the henry booth house 78 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 report on the committee, and the news articles on the planned protests. the gathering and examination of details within documents generated new questions and influenced the objectives of research. the case development activities represent the exploration of the unknown and learning to trust myself as a researcher. the development requires attention to everything that is known and discoverable. idea and inspiration involved open-ended inquiry and discovery. as mentioned in the beginning of the text this occurred with the discovery of the familial document. it led a questioning beyond the personal and subjective to a more observational view of my grandmother’s experience in the context of activism and libraries and the community she lived in. each step into the rabbit hole uncovered more inspirational artifacts that showcased not only her involvement in communitybased working structures, but the community mobilization structures. subsequent inspiring finds include a scrapbook of photographs, a conference paper written by the social worker on the role of the settlement house in a public housing community, and an adult education leadership class report found in the archives. more inspirational finds guided me towards evidence collection, which involves continuous data gathering. i found materials through archival and online searching. closer inspection of individual documents led to related materials that further explained the historical-contextual aspects of the public housing community. this continuous exercise helped to establish boundaries for the case geographically and historically by time period. concept development occurred through theoretical readings of the evidence. readings from black feminist texts, information theories, sociology, history (geographic and racial), and cultural studies, provided a matrix of theories to draw from. exploratory investigations were signified by researcher generated milestones. these investigations occurred with each examination or study previously mentioned. the diversity of the exercises inspired the researcher to utilize various types of methodological approaches toward framework development. emerging questions requires the continuous process of questioning of evidence, processes, and the phenomenon. this is found both in the questions informing research tasks and questions of evidence which inform a grounded theory approach to research. in this study, questions changed and developed over time, and as more evidence was collected and concepts were developed, the questions evolved. a similar process emerges with the development of research objectives that are adapted throughout case inquiry. when performing milestone mini projects, the objectives were adjusted and modified as evidence and preliminary analysis occurred. exploratory evidence gathering involves data collection at crucial points throughout the iterative cycle. each element is addressed in terms of deconstruction including cultural community aspects (race, gender, geography), social justice information science research, (re)defining methodology, and the role and posture of the researcher (as an objective/neutral observer). conclusion: reflecting on a journey as a researcher, i struggled with scope, approaches, and tools. as i became close to the development of what my intentions were, i struggled to name the approach. i settled on calling the exercise a critical-cultural historical case study. i explored how this qualitative investigation of a historical phenomenon would be represented theoretically in the literature and decided to detail that journey through the documentation of milestones. with that documentation done, i furthered my discovery through rigorous analysis by presenting a case that repels descriptive 79 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 limitations. my intent became to expose the voice of the women, and ensure their values are accounted for in lis research and discourse. the challenge and struggle became an opportunity to develop a creative and innovative approach to research. my empowerment as a human being and as a researcher pushed boundaries of lis research and theory towards social justice. my work challenged the perceived imbalanced power dynamics on many levels including the content of the topic (i.e. african-american women), what information science research is, methodology, and the role of the researcher (as an objective/neutral observer). in the future, i will continue to trust the immersive iterative nature of revelatory practices through critique of the knowledge structure of the discipline of information science. denzin and lincoln (2013) stress that qualitative research is “endlessly creative and interpretive” (p. 30). my creative turns often provided a pathway to designing a case study rooted in social justice in a marginalized community. my reflections on this journey offer a narrative of development in the construction of a case study, trusting oneself as a researcher. in lieu of prescribed recommendations or suggestions i offer the reader the following lessons-learned: follow inspiration: the location of my grandmother’s participation in a campaign for a library branch in a public housing community was an inspiring story and great family artifact. as i considered areas of study, i returned to the artifact as a point of reference to reflect on myself and heritage. it became a passion which supported a curiosity to apply research to a familial ancestral community. my knowledge of the community from familial stories at times hindered questioning and limited the observational eye. in the pursuit of this research and the process of developing the case, i recognized my internal tension of what is “known” based on my closeness to the community and the assumptions that creep into my evidentiary discovery and examination. my persistence in discovery of the complexities of the artifact, and how it led me to others strengthened my ability to interrogate the informational aspects of the community environment. creativity and rigor can coexist: often times in the case construction process, i looked to established templates by qualitative scholars to follow a rigorous exploration in studying the community. i trusted my inclination to approach the archival research field creatively and iteratively. each element used did not simply follow prescriptive steps. it required me to be reflexive in the furthering my process. consider the journey: the case is built on the milestones developed from the mini-projects. i knew in each application of inductive coding, relational mapping, and the historical narrative that i was on to something. the ability to learn from each phase and apply that to the iterative case development allowed me to embrace the process and surrender intellectually to next step in the journey. i often return to small projects to inform larger questions in determining how to investigate the informational world around me. illuminate lis social justice: the matrix of theories used complement the gender, race, and informational aspects of the community of women under study. my journey contributed to my framing of the case utilizing an epistemology of resistance and social justice in lis. the library was the tool, but the community of women represented the information nexus. my initial desire to limit the case to the campaign excluded the promise of developing the case around the information activist community. researcher discovery through iterative rigorous analysis extends descriptive limitations by seeking to expose the activist-voice of the subjects, ensuring their belief systems and values are 80 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 accounted for in lis research and discourse. this challenge and struggle provide opportunities for the development of creative pathways for research. the master’s tools are tossed aside and new tools in support of constructing new modes that defy replication in research are developed. this pushing of boundaries allows for expanded social justice lis research, theory, and model development. challenging perceived imbalanced power dynamics on many levels including ethnic, race, gendered, and geographic, case study development requires a resistance mindset, which is at the heart of lis social justice research. references addams, j. (1910). twenty years at hull house. the macmillan company. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/addams/hullhouse/hullhouse.html berg, b. l. (2009). qualitative research methods for the social sciences. allyn and bacon. "blast city for lack of near southside library." (1963, may 20). chicago daily defender (daily edition). (1960-1973), p. 5. http://search.proquest.com/docview/493962165?accountid=14766 brennen, b. (2013). qualitative research methods for media studies. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203086490 clandinin, j.d. & connelly, m.f. (2000). narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. josey-bass publishers. collins, p. h. (1998). fighting words: black women and the search for justice. university of minnesota press. collins, p. h. (2000). black feminist thought: knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. routledge. corbin, j., & strauss, a. (2008). basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. sage. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452230153 denzin, n. k., & lincoln, y. s. (2013). the landscape of qualitative research (fourth edition). sage publications. drake, s. c., & cayton, h. r., (2015). black metropolis: a study of negro life in a northern city. the university of chicago press. durrance, j.c. (2001). the vital role of librarians in creating information communities: strategies for success. library administration and management, 15(3), 161-168. fisher, k. e., unruh, k. t., & durrance, j. c. (2003, october 19-22). information communities: characteristics gleaned from studies of three online networks. [paper presented]. the american society for information science and technology conference, long beach, ca, united states. 81 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/addams/hullhouse/hullhouse.html http://search.proquest.com/docview/493962165?accountid=14766 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203086490 https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452230153 case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 ford, d. y., harris iii, j. j., tyson, c. a., & trotman, m. f. (2001). beyond deficit thinking: providing access for gifted african american students. roeper review, 24(2), 52-58. fuerst, j. s. & hunt, d.b. (2005). when public housing was paradise: building community in chicago. university of illinois press. gibson, a. n., & kaplan, s. (2017). place, community and information behavior: spatially oriented information seeking zones and information source preferences. library & information science research, 39(2), 131-139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2017.03.001 gray, l. (in press). information abundance and deficit: revisiting elfreda chatman’s inquiry of marginal spaces and populations. journal of critical library and information studies. gray, l. (2019). in a collective voice: uncovering the black feminist information community of activist-mothers in chicago public housing, 1955-1970 (doctoral dissertation). university of tennessee, knoxville, tn. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5424 hooks, b. (1989). talking back: thinking feminist, thinking black. south end press. hooks, b. (1990). yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics. south end press. hirsch, a. r. (1983). making the second ghetto: race and housing in chicago 1940-1960. university of chicago press. hunt, b.d. (2009). blueprint for disaster: the unraveling of chicago public housing. university of chicago press. lorde, a. (2007). sister outsider: essays and speeches. crossing press. mehra, b., albright, k.s., and rioux, k. (2006). a practical framework for social justice research in the information professions. proceedings of the american society for information science and technology 43(1) 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.14504301275 mehra, b., albright, k.s., & rioux, k. (2009). social justice in library and information science. in m.j. bates & m.n. maack (eds.), encyclopedia of library and information sciences, 3rd ed. (p.p. 4820-4836). taylor & francis. https://doi.org/10.1081/e-elis3 mehra, b., & gray, l. (2020). an “owning up” of white-ist trends in lis to further real transformations. library quarterly: information, community, policy, 90(2), 189-239. https://doi.org/10.1086/707674 mehra, b. & rioux, k. (eds.). (2016). in progressive community action: critical theory and social justice in library and information science. library juice press. https://litwinbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/pca-front.pdf merriam, s. b., & tisdell, e. j. (2015). qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. john wiley and sons. 82 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2017.03.001 https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5424 https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.14504301275 https://doi.org/10.1081/e-elis3 https://doi.org/10.1086/707674 https://litwinbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/pca-front.pdf case study inquiry & black feminist resistance the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34913 miles, m. b., huberman, a. m., & saldaña, j. (2013). qualitative data analysis: a methods sourcebook. sage publications, inc. rothstein, r. (2017). the color of law: a forgotten history of how our government segregated america. liveright publishing. scott, j. & carrington, p. j. (eds.). (2011). the sage handbook of social network analysis. sage publications. valencia, r. r., & solórzano, d. g. (1997). contemporary deficit thinking. in r.r. valencia (ed.), the evolution of deficit thinking: educational thought and practice, (pp. 160210). the falmer press. wilkerson, i. (2010). the warmth of other suns: the epic story of america's great migration. new york: vintage books. laverne gray (lgray01@syr.edu) is an assistant professor at syracuse university’s school of information studies, where she teaches in the library and information science program. after an eight-year career as an academic librarian, she earned her phd at the college of communication and information at the university of tennessee, knoxville in 2019. her dissertation, “in a collective voice: uncovering the black feminist information community of activist-mothers in chicago public housing, 1955-1970,” won her college’s outstanding dissertation award in 2019 and placed second at alise’s jean tague-sutcliffe doctoral student research poster competition. laverne gray’s research explores black feminism, community, and social justice in information spaces. in addition to a m.l.i.s. from dominican university, she holds a m.s.ed. in educational psychology from northern illinois university and a b.s. in rehabilitation/child development from wilberforce university. 83 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index introduction familial inspiration black feminism, community, & lis social justice case development journey milestones phase 1: library campaign history phase 2: community information network (visualization) phase 3: activist community collective-determination model iterative case construction conclusion: reflecting on a journey references stasiulis final jan 26 17 correspondence address: daiva stasiulis, department of sociology & anthropology, carleton university, 1125 colonel by drive, ottawa, k1s 5b6; email: daiva.stasiulis@carleton.ca issn: 1911-4788 volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti: the erosion of canadian citizenship through citizenship deprivation daiva stasiulis carleton university, canada abstract as part of the larger trend towards “securitization” of citizenship, citizenship deprivation in canada is becoming increasingly normalized, resulting in some cases in statelessness. in this article, i pursue a sociology of statelessness by examining its localized production and connections to a broader network of social and material relations. i do this through a case study of canadian-born deepan budlakoti, who at age 22 was informed that he was in fact not canadian, and lacking any other citizenship, was rendered stateless. actor-network theory is employed to trace how it is that legal documental and heterogeneous networks of humans and things (e.g., a “legal technicality”) have been enrolled to produce a legal decision declaring that budlakoti, despite his canadian birth certificate and passports, was never a canadian citizen. yet because he has not exhausted all avenues to acquisition of some citizenship (e.g., in india or canada), he also has failed to secure recognition of his statelessness. a particular innovation in this analysis is the exploration of the exemption in the canadian citizenship act from jus soli citizenship for children born to foreign diplomatic staff. networks of immigration tribunal and court judgements, and documents treated as evidence have connected and translated into establishing budlakoti’s fit with this exemption, despite countervailing evidence and a lifetime of documented and state-assisted reproduction of his canadianness. while robbed of his legal and social identity, and suffering the egregious consequences of statelessness, budlakoti continues to campaign for restoration of his right to have rights within his country of birth. keywords statelessness; citizenship revocation; citizenship policy daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 2 introduction statelessness is an exceptional phenomenon in a world where having a nationality is not only a human right but also the statistical norm.1,2 it is a phenomenon more familiar in transitional regions of state dissolution, succession or breakup, involving structural discrimination against peoples and minority groups in asia, europe, africa and the middle east (mandel & gray, 2014). by way of contrast, statelessness appears to be a relatively foreign concept in the canadian context. in comparative perspective, canada’s citizenship laws have been regarded as among the most liberal and generous in the world, offering multiple avenues to full citizenship – jus soli and jus sanguinis at birth, and through naturalization for immigrants who as permanent residents already enjoy many citizenship-type rights. yet, as i explore here in the case of a canadian-born stateless man, deepan budladkoti, statelessness exists in canada. as importantly, mechanisms and reforms in canadian law and administrative practices serve to produce statelessness. gradational citizenship, where the rights specifically to retain citizenship have been differentiated between canadianand foreign-born, as well as by race and ethnicity, is nothing new in the canadian context. indeed, as anderson (2008, p. 88) points out, “the basic tension between the equality of all citizens and the authority of the state to revoke the citizenship of foreignborn canadians has existed since confederation.” citizenship revocation and deportation have variously targetted “dangerous european” labour radicals in the interwar years (avery, 1979), japanese canadian citizens during world war ii, and nazi war criminals since the early 1990s (anderson, 2008, p. 88). nonetheless, the contemporary reputation of canadian citizenship has been of “statefullness” (kerber, 2007, p. 7) whereby full and permanent citizenship status has been either automatic at birth or relatively easy to gain and nearly impossible to lose. yet, recent reforms in canadian citizenship legislation and procedures during the near decade of conservative rule (2006-2015), couched in language about “strengthening canadian citizenship” and “protecting the security and safety of canadians,” have again made citizenship a conditional privilege that is more difficult to acquire and easier to lose (government of canada, 2014b, 2014a, p. 1; national immigration law section, canadian bar association, 2014). citizenship stripping reforms introduced in the strengthening canadian citizenship act (former bill c-24), implemented in 1 there is no consensus on the difference between the two terms “nationality” and “citizenship;” the distinction between these terms also varies from country to country. they are frequently used synonymously to refer to full legal membership in a nation-state. the latter convention will be adopted in this paper. 2 article 15 of the universal declaration of human rights (united nations, 1948) states: “1. everyone has a right to a nationality. 2. no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.” the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 3 the dying days of the harper government, specifically targeted canadian-born individuals convicted of certain offences against the state (government of canada, 2014a).3 such reforms are significant insofar as they introduce new mechanisms for producing de facto statelessness among the canadian-born. as explored in this article, there are other, less scrutinized mechanisms in canadian citizenship law (such as the “diplomatic exception” to jus soli), and administrative practice that can strip the citizenship of canadian-born individuals in a political climate where citizenship deprivation becomes increasingly normalized as part of the larger trend towards “securitization” of citizenship. in this article, i pursue a sociology of statelessness by examining its localized production and connections to a broader (and in some instances, transnational) network of social and material relations. i do this through a case study of canadian-born deepan budlakoti, who at age 22 was informed that he was in fact not canadian, and lacking any other citizenship, was rendered stateless. i utilize actor-network theory (ant) as an analytical guide for exploring how budlakoti’s citizenship was extinguished. the article is organized to, first, discuss the scholarly contribution of a sociology of statelessness to current debates on this most abject of statuses. here, i examine the potential relevance of ant to provide conceptualization of deprivation of citizenship, and its particular bearing on budlakoti’s translation from a canadian birthright citizen to a stateless person. second, the article briefly addresses some dimensions of contemporary statelessness in canada, including its context of production through reforms in citizenship revocation, its prevalence and the consequences for those holding this abject legal status. third, i explore the budlakoti case to reveal the networked production of statelessness. here legal documental networks were central in creating the lived status of citizenship only to be replaced by another network of documents and other forces, which expunged that citizenship and produced statelessness. in the fourth part of the paper, i focus on how the government has utilized a listed exception in the canadian citizenship act to jus soli citizenship, exempting the children born of foreign diplomats and their employees, to negate the two decades of budlakoti’s government-assisted identity as a canadian citizen. finally, in the conclusion, i reiterate the social justice implications of the networked extinguishment of budlakoti’s canadian 3 until recently, the canadian-born have largely been secure in their citizenship status whereas there has been a long-standing tradition of revocation of citizenship for the foreign-born. indeed, the grounds for revocation have undergone a process of expansion and contraction. since 1868, grounds have expanded from misrepresentation or fraud during the process of naturalization, to “disloyalty to his majesty” in 1919 to grounds of severe criminality in 1920 (anderson, 2008, p. 85). in order to limit the discretionary powers of the government and promote the equality of all citizens, the 1976 immigration act made false representation or fraud during application for citizenship the sole ground for revocation (anderson, 2008, p. 85). daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 4 citizenship and briefly address the role of contestation, especially by budlakoti himself, in resisting legal and social erasure. actor-network theory (ant) and the sociology of statelessness although scholarship on citizenship deprivation and statelessness in the canadian context is fairly nascent, there has recently been a flurry of debate, engaged in primarily by legal scholars, political theorists and ethicists on the legal and normative (i.e., human rights) aspects of statelessness in canada, the u.s., australia and the european community (edwards & van waas, 2014). an under-explored dimension of the literature is sociological analysis of the social relations, mechanisms, agency of multiple actors, documents, accidents (nyers, 2009), bureaucratic errors, etc., that produce statelessness for certain subjects and populations, and of the lived experience and identities of stateless individuals and communities. ethnographic and other qualitative methodologies have been illuminating of citizenship as not exclusively a juridical relationship between individuals and states involving particular statutory rights and obligations, but as importantly a negotiated and dynamic relationship within a network of institutions and social interactions spanning the state and civil society (stasiulis, 2013; stasiulis & bakan, 2005). similarly, sigona (2016, p. 267) has argued that a sociological understanding of statelessness would place “the investigation of the everyday, concrete manifestations at its core, while being attentive also to the process of institutionalization of ‘statelessness’… [as] a technology of power operating across different scales and in different locales.” sociological analysis would enrich our appreciation of the social relations of power that underlie the making and unmaking of citizenship and of the everyday experience of statelessness. it is essential for producing socio-legal comprehension of statelessness, illuminating how the social and legal realms interact and intertwine to produce this most abject of legal and social identities. citizenship is usually regarded as far more than a mere legal bond between state and individual, albeit that legal status is fundamental to the enjoyment often of even basic human rights. 4 it is also (in most cases) the lived experience of that legal bond or what the international court of justice (icj) in the 1955 nottebohm case referred to as the “genuine link” basis for citizenship defined in terms of “the social fact of attachment, a genuine connection of existence, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties.”5 the genuine link (also called the “real and 4 even in the early u.s. and french declarations of rights, there was a recognition that “natural rights” or what are now commonly referred to as “universal human rights” granted to all individuals at birth, “could only be recognized and enforced in a practical way through membership in a state” (david weissbrodt, quoted in howard-hassmann, 2015, p.1). 5 nottebohm (liech. v. guat.), 1955 icj 4, 23. nottebohm was a man who was born in germany, had german citizenship, but lived for 34 years in guatemala, where he never became a citizen. the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 5 effective nationality”) criterion for citizenship is by no means the only or most desirable principle for deciding or extinguishing citizenship.6 de groot, vink and honohan (n.d.), however, in their review of citizenship revocation patterns in europe, argue that “[t]he fundamental principles governing provisions for loss of citizenship should be the absence of a genuine link and avoiding statelessness” (p. 6, emphasis added). a sociological study of statelessness, attentive to the quotidian denial of the relevance of the genuine link, and the stripping of a stateless person’s “reciprocal rights and duties” is critical for documenting the unremitting human rights violations and indignities suffered by those deprived of citizenship. linda kerber (2007, p. 31) argues that statelessness today “is most usefully understood not only as a status, but as a practice, made and remade in daily decisions of presidents and judges, border guards and prison guards, managers and pimps.” yet, the process of legally and discursively producing statelessness involves not only decisions of various human agents, but also the agency of objects, particularly documents. as actor-network theory (ant) insists, human action is entangled with its physical environment and material objects. following kerber and the insights of ant, this paper seeks to understand deepan budlakoti’s extraordinary statelessness as a process of production involving heterogeneous networks of various prison and immigration officials, tribunals and courts, documents produced in different jurisdictions, and circumstances that have stripped him of his citizenship and left him vulnerable to indefinite immigration detention and removal from the only country he has ever known or where he has held meaningful ties. only limited, albeit critical, segments of his ongoing networked production of statelessness will be examined here to explore how a “narrow question of fact” has served to extinguish a person’s lifelong formal and lived membership in canada and create statelessness (budlakoti v canada (citizenship & immigration), 2015 fca 139, para 10).7 ant provides a on the eve of world war ii, nottebohm applied for and received citizenship from liechtenstein, a country where he had few to no ties, in order to become a citizen of a neutral country rather than a belligerent one. upon returning to guatemala, he was refused entry on the grounds that he was an enemy alien, since guatemalan authorities refused to recognize his change of nationality and regarded him as german. the international court of justice (icj) applied the “genuine link” test to decide against nottebohm’s claim to citizenship in lichtenstein. 6 the genuine link theory stemming from nottebohm does not purport to regulate nationality for all purposes. sloane argues that the genuine link theory of citizenship, which has “developed into a kind of unreflective dogma” throughout the international law of nationality, is misguided and anachronistic. as people travel, work and live internationally, social attachment to nation states attenuates. instead, he proposes that international law should regulate nationality in terms of its functions, “so as to better effectuate the diverse roles that nationality serves today” (sloane, 2009, p. 4). nonetheless, he concedes that in some areas of law, such as in certain human rights cases, nottebohm’s dicta may remain appropriate and effective, “serving to protect precisely the kind of deep social bonds emphasized in nottebohm against a formal nationality imposed by law” (sloane, 2009, p. 5, emphasis added). 7 the “narrow question of fact” referred to by justice stratas in the federal court of appeal decision of june 2015 is whether mr. budlakoti’s parents’ employment with the indian high commission ended before or after his birth. if before, then deepan enjoyed jus soli citizenship; if daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 6 useful methodology to study the social action and networks of socio-legal objects especially legal documents such as passports, birth certificates, tribunal and court decisions and supporting documentation, and fundamental pieces of legislation such as the canadian citizenship act, as they become entangled with human decision-making. actor-network theory (ant) was developed in the 1980s by science and technology studies scholars bruno latour and michel callon and sociologist john law (callon & latour, 1981). ant has since been utilized in many different fields, including socio-legal studies (cloatre, 2008; cowan & carr, 2008; grabaham, 2011; levi & valverde, 2008). as john law points out, the actor-network approach is more of research method than a theory, grounded in empirical case studies, “a sensibility to the messy practices of relationality and materiality of the world” (2009, p. 142). a distinctive and innovative contribution of ant is its “posthumanism” that subverts dualisms such as “human and non-human, meaning and materiality, big and small, macro and micro, social and technical, nature and culture…” (law, 2009, p. 147). human actors and non-human objects, all positioned in a “network of heterogeneous materials,” are treated equally as “actants,” determinants of social interactions and outcomes (law, 1992, p. 381). the effort to identify significant processes producing the deprivation of budlakoti’s canadian citizenship (thus minimally creating de facto statelessness) is guided by ant and its illuminating applications in sociolegal studies .8 for one of ant’s founders, bruno latour, law is a “network of people and things in which legality is not a field [with any sort of internal autonomy] to be studied independently” (levi & valverde, 2008, pp. 806, 818). rather, law is “an attribute that is attached to events, people, documents and other objects when they become part of the decision-making process…” (levi & valverde, 2008, p. 818). latour’s approach to law both records the “often stammering human interaction that produces law” that is obscured by the public and impersonal voice of law (levi & valverde, 2008, p. 814), and brings notice to the “materiality of legal cases,” whereby case files are compiled and put together with rubber bands, staples and paper clips, a fact that can affect court decisions (e.g., because pages might be missing, outdated “facts” are reiterated, etc.) (levi & valverde, 2008, p. 816). the network of relations among various documents (birth certificates, employment contracts, witness affidavits, etc.) that may be transformed into evidence for a case constitutes legality. once a “file is sufficiently ripened – after, then he was excluded from birthright citizenship through “diplomatic exception” under paragraph 3(2)(a) or 3(2)(b) of the citizenship act, 1985 (budlakoti v. canada (citizenship and immigration), 2015 fca 139 para 10). 8 the practical difference in access to rights between de jure and de facto statelessness is often minimal. a de jure stateless person is one “who is not considered as a national by any state by the operation of its laws” (1954 u.n. convention relating to the status of stateless persons). a de facto stateless person is one who “without having been deprived of their nationality no longer enjoy[s] the protection and assistance of their national authorities” (quoted in brouwer, 2012, p. 20). the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 7 with an increasing number of documents added to it” from different offices and bureaucracies, “the alchemy of legal decision making takes place” (levi & valverde, 2008, p. 817). networks under ant are regarded as “flows of translations,” referring to “all the negotiations, intrigues, calculations, acts of persuasion and violence” by which an authority speaks or acts on behalf of another actor or force (cowan & carr, 2008, p. 152). they are mobile but also “hold patterns of links stable, at least for a period of time” (cowan & carr, 2008, p. 152). participants in networks are active mediators as opposed to passive intermediaries, shaping the social, and “making it bifurcate in unexpected ways” (latour in cowan & carr, 2008, p. 152). documents or texts frequently feature as key actants within actor-network analysis, and legal-documental networks are often studied in socio-legal applications of ant (law, 1986; grabaham, 2011). given that many of the points of contention in the budlakoti case involve interpretation of documents and their circumstances of production (e.g., the passports issued in bureaucratic “error,” the affidavits judged to be tainted by faulty memory, etc.), ant, with its focus on the “agency” of material objects such as documents, is an attractive tool to analyze the particularities of this case. ant explores the hows and not the whys of the social (law, 2009, p. 148). in order to examine the reasons why canadian authorities questioned and denied citizenship status to budlakoti, it is additionally important to examine the racialization of processes of citizenship revocation and statelessness, and the securitization of immigration and citizenship policies through a critical race and intersectional lens.9 statelessness in canada as those who study statelessness both in canada and internationally have observed, “data on statelessness is notoriously difficult to obtain and often unreliable” (brouwer, 2012, p. 58). in the 2006 canadian census, 1,455 persons self-identified as “stateless” when asked to select their country of origin (brouwer, 2012, p. 58). despite the relatively small numbers of stateless in canada (or born of canadian citizens), there are pressing reasons to make the production of statelessness in canada a focus of research, analysis and public awareness. first, there is evidence of statelessness in canada and new policy innovations that increase the likelihood of statelessness. second, canada has made an international commitment to reduce future statelessness by virtue of having signed and (in 1978) ratified 9 given the limitations of space in this article, the analysis of the racialized and intersectional dimensions of the broader context of social relations of power are treated here in a fairly cursory manner. daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 8 the 1961 un convention on the reduction of statelessness.10 third, the fact that in 2014, the unhcr embarked on a 10-year global campaign to end statelessness offers a unique contemporary moment to examine and address statelessness in canada. what does it mean to be stateless in a country that has an international reputation for “statefullness,” characterized by a relatively democratic and socially inclusive citizenship regime? a stateful country accords some rights to stateless persons; but with far less legal obligation to the denationalized, these are not rights but discretionary privileges provided by a “generous” state. for those stripped of nationality, if additionally (as likely) deemed to be “inadmissible to canada” for reasons such as serious criminality, treason, or terrorism, the stateless are prone to indefinite detention or banishment. statelessness in canada, as elsewhere, becomes a form of “political and civil death,” the total destruction of the individual’s status in organized society (lavi, 2011, p. 800, citing trop v dulles). to be a stateless person is to face endless legal and practical erasure, suspicion, rejection and punishment on a daily basis. this includes the inability to prove one’s identity, register one’s marriage or birth of one’s children, move freely, and access health care, education, employment and other social services. not having citizenship or permanent residence leaves stateless persons as ineligible to leave the country and robs them of the right to return, even to a country where they may have resided their entire lives. one who has had their citizenship extinguished and lacks the protection of any sovereign conforms to giorgio agamben’s concept of homo sacer: having been stripped bare of citizenship, the “accursed man” (or “sacred man,” a figure in roman law) exists in a wasteland between exile and belonging, between life and death. deprived of rights, homines sacri such as the stateless experience only “bare life” (agamben, 1995). agamben’s “states of exception,” such as promulgated by the global war on terrorism have produced homines sacri through laws to curtail, contain and monitor the state’s own citizens through illiberal and non-democratic means. citizenship reforms in canada, the united states, australia and several european countries during the past decade have broadened grounds and paths for revocation and extinguishment of citizenship,11 opening up what linda kerber (2007, p. 24) calls new categories of “instability and potential statelessness.” citizenship, long thought of as an “inalienable right,” particularly for those born with this status, is now increasingly recast as conditional upon conduct through the emergence of new “regimes of 10 as of may 8, 2016, 65 state parties had ratified or acceded to the convention (united nations, 2016). importantly, canada has yet to ratify the 1954 convention, which would require canada to actually put in place some kind of specific protections for stateless people. principally, this could include a statelessness determination procedure separate from the refugee status determination process (brouwer, 2012). 11 as of 2014, 22 countries in europe had passed laws permitting denaturalization for terrorism or other behavior contrary to the national interest (forcese, 2014). the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 9 citizenship deprivation” meant particularly to target citizens who have engaged in or are suspected of supporting terrorist activity (forcese, 2014; lenard, 2016; macklin, 2014). through strengthening the “security state,” many liberal democracies are now sliding down the slippery slope in extinguishment policies, beginning with naturalized citizens, continuing with dual citizens, then moving to birthright citizens in revocation directed at socalled “homegrown terrorists,” and finally countenancing such extinguishment even if the end product is statelessness.12 as barbara jackman, a lawyer specializing in immigration law has pointed out, the move to citizenship deprivation was preceded in canadian immigration law by several reforms that diminished the rights of permanent residents to remain in canada for reasons of criminality and national security and strengthened executive powers to remove permanent residents (jackman, 2014). in the canadian context, permanent residency has traditionally provided a broad range of citizenship-like rights, and often was seen as almost equivalent to canadian citizenship. in the post-9/11 era, permanent residence had already become an increasingly precarious status.13 the conservative government, under stephen harper (2006-2015), introduced significant reforms that render canadian citizenship conditional on meeting new criteria for conduct. the rationale for fortifying two-tiered citizenship was couched in terms of protecting national security through “refusing citizenship to individuals who pose a security risk,” and reinforcing the “value” of canadian citizenship by making it harder to acquire and retain, and easier to revoke (government of canada, 2014b). in june 2015, the federal government’s bill c-24, the strengthening canadian citizenship act came into effect, permitting the stripping of citizenship, not only among naturalized canadians but also among those born in canada holding a second nationality. moreover, the law’s reach has been interpreted by some critics as applying not only to dual nationals, but to those simply having the imputed ability to acquire a second nationality “in another state through a parent or more distant relative” (national immigration law section, canadian bar association, 2014, pp. 17-18). as delineated below, this creates a “reverse 12 for a discussion of the trend in europe and north america toward denationalization of citizens as a counter-terrorism strategy, manifesting the “securitization of citizenship” see the eudo citizenship forum debate (macklin & bauböck, 2015; see also forcese, 2014; macklin, 2014). 13 as non-citizens, permanent residents enjoy many but not all of the same rights as citizens; excluded are the right to vote and the right to travel abroad with a canadian passport. canadian citizens also enjoy privileged access to the federal public service. the status of permanent residence is also more easily revocable than that of canadian citizenship, leaving permanent residents more vulnerable to deportation. thus, under sections 33 and 77 to 85 of the immigration and refugee protection act, permanent residents, but not citizens, may be inadmissible to canada if suspected of violating human rights, having membership within organized crime, or perceived to be a threat to national security. those issued “security certificates” are subject to removal orders. daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 10 onus,” whereby individuals have to prove that they are not citizens elsewhere in order to retain their citizenship in canada. in the 2015 federal election campaign, the harper government acted on the controversial new law, and moved to strip the canadian citizenship of several men convicted of terrorist-related charges who were either incarcerated or had recently been released after serving their criminal sentences. the string of revocation notices provoked both human rights and security questions regarding the implications of banishing convicted terrorists, the revival of the medieval practice of “exile” as appropriate punishment in the “age of global terror,” and the use of “double punishment” (incarceration and deportation) by the government in its actions against its citizens convicted of terrorism (macklin, 2014; macklin & bauböck, 2015; forcese, 2014; lenard, 2016). the augmented conditionality, distinctions among different “classes” of citizens, and revocability of citizenship were in keeping with the views, articulated by then citizenship and immigration minister chris alexander, when sponsoring bill c-24, strengthening canadian citizenship act, that “citizenship is not a right, it’s a privilege” and that it is not and never was inalienable (quoted in black, 2014, n.p.). since the october 2015 federal election, the liberal government of justin trudeau, whose election promise was to restore equality among all canadian citizens, has moved quickly to make good on its promise to repeal the parts of c-24 that applied to those convicted of terrorism-related crimes, ensuring that they can keep their canadian passports.14 an important question that arises with the shift from the conservative to the liberal policies governing citizenship is what happens to those persons, such as budlakoti, deprived of canadian citizenship under the conservatives and now caught in the transition between these two citizenship regimes? 14at the time of writing (december 2016), bill c-6, an act to amend the citizenship act and to make consequential amendments to another act had passed final reading in the house of commons and was in the process of second reading in the senate (www.parl.gc.ca/content/sen/chamber/421/debates/077db_2016-11-28-e.htm?language=e#37) – bill c-6 halts the government’s ability to strip citizenship from convicted terrorists and those who commit treason against canada. critics have charged, however, that bill c-6 has failed to fix the lack of procedural fairness and safeguards for individuals facing citizenship revocation due to misrepresentation or fraud by ensuring that they have the right to an independent hearing and to consideration of compassionate and humanitarian factors (kwan, 2016). it is also striking that the trudeau government was reported as more aggressively pursuing citizenship revocation than the harper conservatives. according to dyer (2016, n.p.), “the 184 revocation decisions of the first 10 months of the trudeau government nearly match the total number of decisions over a 27-year period between 1988 and the last month of the harper government in october 2015.” as jenny kwan, ndp immigration, refugees and citizenship critic, argues: “it also does not matter that the misrepresentation is a result of an honest mistake even if you are a child and your parent presented misinformation on the application for whatever reason. your citizenship could still be revoked and you cannot argue your case based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. this is wrong” (kwan, 2016). the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 11 deepan budlakoti’s journey to statelessness how does a person who is born in canada, has a canadian birth certificate and passport, and who has spent his entire life in this country as a documented citizen face extinguishment of his citizenship and exile because of a “technicality”? utilizing the logic of ant, the production of deepan budlakoti’s statelessness can be traced through networks or “rhizomes” involving immigration administrative tribunals, citizenship law, discourses of fit citizenship, racial profiling and bordering processes, documents in more than one country, other realms of (e.g., criminal, anti-terrorism) law, the courts, and authorities connected with penal law. budlakoti was born in ottawa’s grace hospital on october 17, 1989. he has been resident in canada throughout his life. his parents were indian nationals who came to canada in 1985 to work as private household help – gardening, cleaning and cooking for the indian high commissioner. as the judgment by mr. justice phelan in federal court states, the parents’ “employment [with the indian high commission] terminated at some point in 1989 – the exact date is hotly contested and the facts in this record are difficult to make out” (budlakoti v. canada (citizenship and immigration), 2014 fc 855, para. 17). according to one set of documents, submitted by budlakoti’s lawyers (discussed below), his parents began working for a medical doctor in nepean, ontario beginning in june 1989.15 according to the documentary evidence favoured by the immigration and refugee board (irb) and courts, one or both parents continued to work for the indian high commissioner until december 1989, two months after budlakoti’s birth. in 1992, budlakoti’s parents applied for and were granted permanent residence (pr) for themselves and for deepan, whom they listed as a dependant child in their application16 in 1995-97, his parents applied for and received canadian citizenship for themselves; they did not submit a citizenship application for deepan since by then they understood that through his birth in ottawa, he already had (jus soli) canadian citizenship. this 15 “in the irb proceedings, the mother claimed that while pregnant with the applicant, she had stopped working for the high commission. the father testified that he had left his job in june 1989, applied for a canadian work visa in boston and moved into his new employer’s home. additionally, their new employer (dr. dehejia) testified that he travelled to boston with the applicant’s father in the summer of 1989 to regularize the father’s status” (budlakoti v. canada (citizenship and immigration), 2014 fc 855, para. 11). 16 if deepan had jus soli citizenship, his inclusion in his parents’ application for permanent residence was redundant. the courts have decided that the inclusion of deepan in his parents’ pr application is evidence that they were employed by the indian high commission at the time of his birth, rather than based on an error on their part. the courts have also decided that the noninclusion of his name in his parents’ citizenship application is simply a neutral fact or at best an unfortunate circumstance, rather than evidence supporting his claim to jus soli citizenship. see budlakoti, 2015, fca, 139, para 5: “it is not clear why the appellant did not apply or why no application was made on his behalf. in any event, only the parents were granted canadian citizenship.” daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 12 understanding was further reflected in budlakoti’s inclusion in 1997 on his mother’s canadian passport until he was 14 years old, and his own separate successful application for a canadian passport thereafter. the government “clearly had no issue with his status” in issuing these canadian passports to budlakoti (behrens, 2015, n.p.). for two decades after his 1989 birth and the issuance of a canadian (ontario) birth certificate, arguably a powerful actant that enrols other documents that are gateways to canadian citizenship rights (e.g., passports, social assistance, health care coverage), deepan’s networked existence as a canadian citizen was unremarkable. the courts in budlakoti dismiss such evidence of deepan’s citizenship by simply arguing that the issuance of passports is “not determinative of citizenship” and merely reflects administrative errors on the part of passport-issuing authorities (budlakoti v. canada (citizenship and immigration), 2014 fc 855, para. 39). like many children of working class parents, budlakoti had a difficult childhood; he ran away from home and became a ward of the ontario state, where he witnessed and experienced violence in group homes. like many other troubled canadian youth in foster care, he fell into a life of crime as a young adult, was incarcerated and served his sentences. in december 2009, he was convicted of break and entry and was sentenced to four months. in late 2010, he was convicted of both weapons and narcotics trafficking and sentenced to three years in jail. while incarcerated, a prison official profiled budlakoti as someone whose citizenship status should be investigated by canadian immigration officials. this instigated private discussions of budlakoti’s status among officials of citizenship and immigration canada leading to a decision in 2011 that he was in fact not a canadian citizen. it also led to a decision that as a permanent resident, budlakoti was inadmissible to canada on the grounds of “serious criminality” under the provisions of s. 36(1) of the immigration and refugee protection act (s.c 2001, c 27). one can only speculate what combination of his brown skin, dark beard and “foreign” name became significant actants in casting suspicion on deepan budlakoti’s “genuine” status as a canadian citizen. budlakoti’s case has often been treated unsympathetically by the mass media.17 unlike victims who are portrayed as innocent or hapless, insofar as he has had significant brushes with the law, notice paid to his criminal convictions has often superseded focus on the fact that after two decades of his life as a documented and canadian-born citizen with full protection of the state, he was deprived of his canadian citizenship and rendered stateless. viewed through the lens of “crimmigration,” however, the decidedly hostile and punitive action of the conservative government to the issue of budlakoti’s legal status reflects “double punishment,” the revival of practices 17 according to kane’s (2013) analysis of canadian print media’s coverage on the stateless in canada, the stateless are frequently depicted as enemies, dangerous and tricksters. the stateless are deemed blameworthy and the harsh effects of their legal and/or de facto statelessness diminished by the print media’s use of quotation marks or the qualifier “so-called” when discussing “stateless” persons. the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 13 of banishment and exile intersecting with erosion of rights of persons accused or convicted of crime (hernández, 2013; macklin, 2014).18 in the irb tribunal and courts, the extinguishment of budlakoti’s canadian citizenship has been rendered in terms of: “a significant factual dispute between the parties [and even by the federal court of appeal as a “narrow question of fact,”] as to whether the applicant’s parents left their indian high commission employment before or after his birth. if the parents left their employment before his birth, then the applicant was entitled to canadian citizenship by virtue of his birth.” (budlakoti v. canada (citizenship and immigration), 2014 fc 855, para.10) in the latter case, he would be considered as having acquired the right to citizenship under section 3(1)(a) of the citizenship act. if not, he would be ineligible for jus soli citizenship by virtue of being “not applicable to children of foreign diplomats” under section 3(2)(a) or 3(2)(b) of the citizenship act. citizenship and immigration canada officials,19 the irb, and the courts have thus far decided that deepan is not a canadian citizen and also that it is premature to conclude that he is stateless, because he has not applied for either canadian or indian citizenship.20 in 2011, the minister of citizenship and immigration concluded that deepan was a permanent resident, not a canadian citizen. the government’s contention is not that they have revoked his canadian citizenship, but that “despite his passport,” he has never been a canadian citizen. as they determined that his parents were employees of the indian high commission at the time of his birth, deepan was thus subject to the exception to jus soli citizenship applied to children born in canada of diplomatic or consular officers or other representatives or employees in canada of a foreign government. in october 2011, the irb held an admissibility hearing, ruled budlakoti inadmissible on the grounds of “serious criminality,”21 and issued a removal order to india, a country in which he had no social connection or familiarity. by the end of 2012, having served out his criminal sentence, he 18 the effort to exile citizens convicted of criminal acts is in keeping with long-standing conservative party policy that regards deportation as an effective strategy to support the safety and security of legitimate canadians. thus, in stand up for canada, the 2006 conservative party of canada federal election platform, “effective deportation laws” are touted as a key strategy in keeping canada’s borders safe from foreign criminals within and abroad (conservative party of canada, 2006, p.27, cited in kwak, 2016). 19 soon after the new liberal government of canada took office in november 2015, the federal department citizenship and immigration canada (cic) was renamed immigration, refugees and citizenship canada (ircc). 20 hon. justice phelan who heard the case in federal court, stated that “india has denied that the applicant is a citizen of india or entitled to citizenship but the record on this issue is sketchy at best” (budlakoti v. canada (citizenship and immigration), 2014 fc 855, para. 5.) 21 under s. 36(1)(a) of the immigration and refugee protection act, a permanent resident or a foreign national will be considered criminally inadmissible if he or she has been convicted (in canada) of an offence: carrying a maximum term of imprisonment of at least 10 years; or for which a term of imprisonment of more than six months has been imposed. daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 14 was transferred into customs and border protection agency custody in toronto’s metro west detention centre pending removal in accordance with the removal order. in april 2013, he was released from custody on certain bonds and under strict conditions and surveillance. the government has been unsuccessful in its attempt to deport him to india as indian authorities have found that he is not an indian national and refused to issue him travel documents.22 stripped of his canadian citizenship, budlakoti has been “left in a vulnerable position whereby his country of birth and residence has withdrawn his citizenship, thereby rendering him stateless” (hameed, 2013, pp. 3-4). today, as a stateless person, budlakoti’s life is full of hardship, mental health issues, uncertainty, and crushing debt incurred from continuous litigation. he has worked for wages intermittently, waiting in some cases six months for work permits, and is ineligible for social assistance. his low educational level, criminal record, statelessness and threat of deportation have made it impossible for him to financially support himself. the government’s insistence that budlakoti fill out documents to apply for a work permit confers foreignness upon him as only temporary foreign workers need fill out such forms. similarly, in 2012 budlakoti’s transfer from the prison where he was serving out his term to the west detention centre in toronto, where he was detained under immigration law, established his foreignness, as such spaces are reserved for non-citizens. just as citizenship is produced through documental networks, providing access to publicly funded health care, social services and basic democratic and legal rights, a reverse documental and material network has been enrolled to translate an erasure of budlakoti’s legal and substantive citizenship. a particularly harsh effect of the extinguishment of his citizenship has been the cancellation of budlakoti’s ontario health insurance program entitlements, and given his impoverishment, his inability to purchase private insurance. this withholding of public health care also reinforces his production as a non-citizen, whereby he joins “the ranks of an estimated half a million people in canada [including the undocumented and new immigrants in the first three months of arrival] without access to medical care because of their immigration status” (bozinoff, goel, jones, & shahid, n.p., 2015). despite a medical diagnosis that he has ptsd, he is unable to access therapy and health care more generally. in all realms of daily life where he has encountered the impossibility of retaining relationships, supporting himself, maintaining his health, etc., his experience reflects how an individual’s slide 22 as the applicant’s record argues in deepan budlakoti and minister of citizenship and immigration, “significantly, the indian government indicates that the applicant is not an indian citizen, a fact which is undisputed by [the minister of citizenship and immigration.] a relevant communication made by india to cbsa on march 18, 2013 regarding its position on the applicant’s nationality [never communicated to budlakoti]…was later discovered by the applicant in september 2013 through a personal information request made by him under the privacy act” (hameed, 2013). the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 15 to statelessness results in the most egregious of harms.23 in january 2016, budlakoti was incarcerated on a new charge and subsequently released in august 2016 under strict monitoring and curfew conditions and subject to unannounced visits to his residence from canadian border services agency officials. at different points, budlakoti’s citizenship extinguishment involved the seizure by authorities of those documents which had long been “proof” of his legal identity as a citizen (e.g., his passport and later his birth certificate). thus far, budlakoti has engaged in a fruitless round of litigation to regain his canadian citizenship, having had his case decided first by citizenship and immigration (cic) officials and the immigration and refugee board (irb), and then heard by the federal court and the federal court of appeal. the courts have refused to decide on “a factual matter” that had already been decided upon by the irb. thus, the irb can be said to have enlisted the federal court and federal court of appeal to form an “eddy” of common opinion regarding the “factual matter” (the dates of budlakoti’s parents’ cessation of employment with the indian high commission). the courts have also refused to provide a bare declaration of citizenship, arguing that budlakoti had not exhausted all avenues or grounds for acquiring citizenship either in canada or in india, the country of his parents’ birth. in january 2016, the supreme court declined budlakoti’s request for leave to appeal. his legal team has since worked to prepare an application under the citizenship act to the citizenship minister, assembling the documents that provide an alternative narrative to the “administrative error” and “diplomatic exception” stories created through the documental networks of the irb and canadian courts. the “diplomatic exception” to birthright citizenship i will now turn to one of the key junctures or interaction of elements in the networked production of deepan’s statelessness – the rulings of immigration officials, an irb tribunal, the federal court and federal court of appeal that budlakoti was not a canadian citizen under paragraph 3(1)(a) of the canadian citizenship act. thus far, all administrative and legal rulings have argued against the suggestion that the canadian government revoked budlakoti’s citizenship. rather, they contend that budlakoti had never been a canadian citizen, as the offspring of parents employed by the indian high commission at the time of his birth; as such, his citizenship status was governed by section 3(2) of the citizenship act, which prohibited canadian 23 trop v. dulles, 356 u.s. 86 (1958), was a federal case in the united states in which the supreme court ruled, 5-4, that it was unconstitutional for the government to revoke the citizenship of a u.s. citizen as a punishment. chief justice earl warren described citizenship revocation as “a form of punishment more primitive than torture” as it inflicts the “total destruction of the individual's status in organized society” and “subjects the individual to a fate of ever-increasing fear and distress.” daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 16 citizenship at birth. as discussed above, what was presented through the network of litigation of his case were several documents and conflicting evidence about the dates of termination of employment of budlakoti’s parents with the indian high commission. however, it is illuminating to first examine the assumptions underlying the section 3(2) exception in the canadian citizenship act to birthright citizenship and its application to the case of budlakoti. foreign diplomatic missions and consular posts are governed by the vienna convention on diplomatic relations, based upon principles of diplomatic immunity originating more than 3,000 years ago (castro, 2014, p. 355). the vienna convention grants diplomats and their families numerous protections, including immunity from criminal and civil jurisdiction of receiving states (castro, 2014, p. 353). the exception to birthright jus soli citizenship that excludes children born of parents who are representatives of foreign nations is widely assumed to be fair and equitable in those countries such as the united states and canada that take this “expansive” approach to citizenship (guendelsberger, 1992; feere, 2011). 24 this is the “one area of solid agreement” among advocates on both side of the ongoing debate about automatic citizenship granted to children born of non-citizens (feere, 2011, p. 1). the exemption from jus soli citizenship for children born to foreign diplomatic staff is based on the perceived unfairness of automatic recognition of this citizenship where it would confer both the rights of diplomatic immunity from criminal and civil law in the country of birth and all the benefits of birthright citizenship. in a relatively wealthy country with a robust social rights and human rights record, the gain to the diplomat’s child of acquiring the rights, benefits and opportunities of the country of birth would be substantial. the fear is that lax regulation of jus soli citizenship for a child of foreign diplomats would create a “super citizen” who not only enjoys all the benefits of birthright citizenship but whose diplomatic immunity also puts him or her above the law (feere, 2011, p. 1). notwithstanding the consensus on the “diplomatic exception” to children gaining jus soli citizenship, in practice, an unknown number of children of foreign mission employees “mistakenly” receive jus soli citizenship. in the u.s. context, feere (2011, p. 2) suggests that “the limiting language in the 14th amendment’s citizenship clause has been effectively rendered a nullity as a result of a lack of regulations aimed at birth certificate and ssn [social security number) issuance.” his contention is that “today’s application of the citizenship clause is so lax that the united states has a de facto universal 24 the citizenship clause of the 14th amendment in the u.s. constitution provides: “all persons born or naturalized in the united states, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the united states and of the state wherein they reside.” the exception regarding children born to parents who are representatives of foreign nations is based on the fact that they are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the united states and are therefore not to be granted u.s. citizenship (feere, 2011, p. 1). the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 17 birthright citizenship policy that denies u.s. citizenship by birth to no one, including children born to foreign diplomats” (feere, 2011, p. 2). the suggestion that the practice also occurs in canada is reflected on the global affairs canada website (n.d.) which provides redress instructions to diplomat parents of children “born in canada who did not acquire canadian citizenship,” and yet who had obtained a canadian passport warning that “application for such a passport can be construed as misconduct,” and that any such passport should be surrendered. the “error” of granting birthright citizenship to children of diplomats is created through a chain of documents. as global affairs canada (n.d.), notes, “children born of foreign representatives would normally obtain a provincial birth certificate.” the birth certificate in turn permits acquisition of a social insurance number and a canadian passport. notably, birth certificate request forms do not require declaration of parental diplomatic status. this practice is significant insofar as a canadian long-form birth certificate in fact is a portal to citizenship – the key identity document to establishing one’s access to canadian passports for children. it is not known how many canadian-born children of foreign diplomats have followed the network of documents issued by canadian federal and provincial government agencies from canadian provincial birth certificate to acquisition of canadian passport and access to a lifetime of treatment by all levels of the canadian state as a canadian citizen. in canada, the issue of ethically questionable application of jus soli has focused primarily on socalled “birth tourism” and “passport babies,” born to foreign women who come to canada for the express reason of gaining canadian citizenship for their canadian-born children rather than children of foreign diplomats or employees (wong, 2014). in the united states, the heated debate over intended scope of the 14th amendment’s citizenship clause has focused primarily on u.s.-born children of “illegal immigrants.” interestingly, in the u.s. context, feere argues that the state department has determined that birth to a foreign diplomat “may not necessarily bar an individual from being considered a u.s. citizen at birth.” the u.s. state department’s determination “required a fact based analysis to determine whether he/she was born subject to the laws of the united states,” skirting the issue of whether such a child was “subject to the jurisdiction of” the u.s. (quoted in feere, 2011, p. 5, emphasis added). how has the issue of birthright citizenship and the diplomatic exception been applied in the case of deepan budlakoti? as mentioned earlier, deepan’s parents were never part of diplomatic staff; rather they were employed as low-level household workers for the indian high commissioner. citizenship and immigration officials, the irb and the federal court and federal court of appeal have all agreed that budlakoti’s parents’ employment ended after their son’s birth, concluding that he had never been a canadian citizen under s. 3(1)(a) of the citizenship act, his lack of such status governed by s. 3(2) of the citizenship act. daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 18 budlakoti’s contention that he was born after his parents had concluded their employment with the indian high commission is supported by (among others) his ontario certificate of live birth which lists a nepean doctor’s address rather than the indian high commission as the residence of his parents, and affidavits signed by both the former indian high commissioner and the nepean doctor. irb officials and judges in subsequent court proceedings have treated with suspicion documents and forms of legal evidence that support budlakoti’s contention that he was born after his parents left the indian high commission and therefore is entitled to jus soli canadian citizenship. instead they have favoured an alternative set of documents that indicate budlakoti’s parents were still employed by the high commission at the time of his birth. thus, the affidavit evidence of the former indian high commissioner is reported to be “undermined” by the fact that the “3rd page of the four-page affidavit is missing” (budlakoti, judgment and reasons, 2014 fc, para 22). the government and the courts relied on several documents from the indian high commission and an employment authorization from the canadian government whose dates place the work departure of budlakoti’s parents from the indian high commission in december 1989, about two months after deepan’s birth. the integrity of these documents are never questioned by the irb or federal court, even though the former indian high commissioner stated that the december date is in error. central to ant is the concept of “translation,” whereby all the actors in the network agree that the network is worth building and defending. translation “requires a performative definition in which power is the consequence of an intense activity of enrolling, convincing and enlisting” (cowan & carr, 2008, p. 152). in budlakoti’s case, this network where state power has been invested is one of extinguishment of his citizenship and production of statelessness. documents that are enrolled to support this position and treated as factual are those that reinforce deepan’s exemption from birthright citizenship (regardless of the possibilities that they may express administrative error, laxity or lag). those that contradict this claim are here enrolled as lacking in integrity, undermined by several other documents, internally inconsistent, or (as in the case of budlakoti’s passports) dismissed as having been produced in error and of no significance to his efforts to regain state and judicial recognition of his status as a canadian citizen. if one pierces the thin technical argument regarding the determination of budlakoti’s birthright citizenship, the rationale behind the section 3(2)(b) exception to birthright citizenship simply does not apply in this case. the ambivalence expressed by the u.s. state department to birthright citizenship of u.s.-born children of foreign diplomats, suggesting that it depends on whether they were “born subject to the laws of the [u.s.]” in fact suggests a deeper socio-legal understanding of citizenship. deepan has never had access to a life of diplomatic privilege where he was not subject to the jurisdiction or the laws of canada. quite the contrary – in his troubled youth, he was a ward the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 19 of the ontario state. justice phelan (quoting justice shore in al-ghamdi, 2007) states: “the objective of paragraphs 3(2) (a) and (c) of the citizenship act is to ensure that citizenship is not accorded to someone who is immune from almost every obligation of citizenship (e.g., paying taxes and respecting criminal law). this is manifestly an important objective” (budlakoti v. canada (citizenship and immigration), 2014 fc 855, para. 48). yet budlakoti was never immune from the obligations of canadian citizenship. he has been subjected to the full force of canadian criminal law in his convictions and sentences. more sympathetic readings of his brushes with canadian law have pointed out how his pleas and sentencing have reflected his status as a young and low-income person, and the particular vulnerabilities associated with his racialized otherness (behrens, 2015). the approach taken by the government and courts is a “reverse onus” approach, which places responsibility on individuals, faced with canadian citizenship revocation, to show that they do not have citizenship in some other country, rather than on the state to prove that the decision to deprive individuals of citizenship will not render them stateless. since the first determination by canadian authorities that his citizenship had been issued in “administrative error” given his parents’ presumed employment with the indian high commission at the time of his birth, only those objects (mainly documents) in legal-administrative networks that reinforce his noncitizenship in canada have been enlisted to support the canadian government’s case that budlakoti is a non-citizen of canada. the government’s actions were to his detriment in that budlakoti had opportunity during this time to apply for canadian citizenship. yet he (and his parents) were implicitly discouraged from doing so by the reiterated assurances by the canadian government, which issued deepan passports (which involves vetting applicants to ensure that they are indeed canadian), documents involved in his becoming a ward of the state, an ohip card, etc., indicating he was indeed a canadian citizen. a justice-based argument to restore budlakoti’s citizenship would accept that his case is one of “detrimental reliance:” to his detriment, the canadian state made him believe for about 20 years through its various document-issuing actions that he was a canadian.25 the canadian courts have thus far also refused to engage with a fuller socio-legal understanding of citizenship, following nottebohm, based upon a “genuine link” to a state, and “a social fact of attachment.” the genuine link principle of citizenship may be limiting in an era of globalization whereby more people are living and working internationally, and individual’s social and affective ties to nation-states have attenuated. however, in cases such as budlakoti’s involving extinguishment of citizenship, nottebohm’s dicta remain appropriate and effective, “serving to protect precisely the kind of deep social bonds emphasized in nottebohm against a formal nationality 25 i would like to thank audrey macklin (personal communication) for bringing this argument to my attention. daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 20 imposed by law” (sloane, 2009, p. 5, emphasis added). a test of “effective nationality” seems appropriate in the budlakoti case, whereby genuine links in canada, created in part by the state’s repeated treatment and verification of budlakoti as a citizen for over 20 years, provide strong arguments for the “rerecognition” of his citizenship. the courts have also declared budlakoti’s statelessness to be “premature” in that he has not pursued other grounds than birthright citizenship, such as “special and unusual hardship” of subsection 5(4) of the canadian citizenship act. they also have suggested that budlakoti should explore application for indian national status or citizenship: they import essentialist reasoning to assert that since he was “born of two indian nationals” this gives him “considerable connection with india” (budlakoti v canada (citizenship & immigration), 2015 fca 139, para. 32, 49). the courts define mr. budlakoti’s legal status as not necessarily and prematurely stateless, arguing that his circumstances are not beyond his control. it can be very difficult to provide satisfactory evidence of statelessness as it requires proving a negative, the absence of a nationality. it is also unjust that some one who has had his life-long citizenship extinguished in the country where he was born and lived his entire life has additionally to undergo overwhelming financial debts and prolonged process to prove that he has no nationality (in this case in india). in the interim stretch of many years, his everyday life is plagued by the indignities and “protection gap” of de facto statelessness. conclusion as the most abject “other” to the citizen, the stateless serve an important boundary function for the state in securing its sovereignty and stabilizing its borders (kerber, 2009, p. 31). the “stateless serve the state,” writes linda kerber, “by signaling who will not be entitled to its protection, and throwing fear into the rest of us” (kerber, 2009, p. 31). the decision by the conservative government to strip mr. budlakoti’s citizenship was clearly shaped by the motivations underlying its citizenship revocation reforms that “tethers citizenship revocation to criminal convictions” (macklin, 2014, p. 29). by making citizenship alienable on the basis of a sliding scale of “criminality,” citizenship is no longer a right but a “revocable privilege” and is downgraded to an “enhanced form of conditional permanent residence” (macklin, 2014, p. 29). under the conservative government, which stripped budlakoti of both his citizenship and basic human rights, an application to the citizenship minister under the prior government was perceived by budlakoti to be tainted by pre-judgments regarding his criminality as grounds for citizenship stripping and exile (keung, 2013) utilizing the insights of actor-network theory (ant), the production of budlakoti’s statelessness has been traced through heterogeneous networks the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 21 involving prison officials, racial profiling and bordering processes, immigration administrative tribunals, the citizenship act, discourses of fit citizenship, documents in more than one country, other realms of (e.g., criminal, anti-terrorism) law, the courts, lawyers and judges. immigration lawyers such as barbara jackman are critical of the manner in which under the conservative government, the canadian courts have built case law in terms of a stack of negative cases, which permit the cavalier extinguishment of an appellant’s citizenship and human rights. referring to a context of “gutting of charter rights since the supreme court imposed a standard of ‘reasonableness’,” jackman (2014) argues the “the ability of people to challenge cases…has gone experientially down since the supreme court imposed that standard [of reasonableness].” she specifically refers to justice phelan’s federal court ruling extinguishing budlakoti’s citizenship, as the “most demeaning decision in terms of deepan’s rights as a human being” (see budlakoti vs. canada (citizenship and immigration) 2014, fc 855). how is it the case that once the “error” (of daily treating and confirming a person’s citizenship all his life) is unearthed, the courts can decide that their course of action need not be, in justice phelan’s words, “the least impairing imaginable,” but only necessary to ensure that “the law falls within a range of reasonable alternatives” (budlakoti, fc 2014 855, para 77)? as i have argued in this paper, certain “simple facts of law” such as the diplomatic exception to birthright citizenship in the canadian citizenship act are worthy of scrutiny as they hold tremendous power over persons’ lives. the regulation of this diplomatic exception is clearly not cut and dry: as a document-requiring nation, canada has relied on birth certificates for issuance of citizenship cards, thus permitting an untold number who might technically fit the diplomatic exception to slip by without notice, to have their lives legitimated through a legal documental network produced by multiple agencies that reinforces their canadianness. for those, like budlakoti, who are documented citizens all their lives, the courts need to import richer, more rights-based and genuine link notions of citizenship rather than snuff out their citizenship on the basis of a technicality. this is the argument made by budlakoti (e.g., in 2013 at the federal court) where he “emphasized the importance of citizenship to personhood and one’s sense of belonging and well-being” (budlakoti v. canada (citizenship and immigration), 2014 fc 855, para. 18). this historically prior legal documental network, that establishes that budlakoti was since birth a canadian, needs to be identified and enrolled to contest the administrative error and diplomatic exception stories narrated in tribunal and court decisions that argue budlakoti was never a canadian citizen. this is precisely what budlakoti himself and the justice for deepan committee (online and through various events) are attempting to do in an ongoing campaign to educate various publics and elected officials about the injustice of budlakoti’s citizenship extinguishment, while daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 22 supporting a legal and now administrative process to win back his citizenship.26 despite severe limitations on his geographic mobility imposed by cbsa, budlakoti has himself been an activist – raising funds and awareness of his situation through a speaking tour in several canadian cities. he has also supported other causes within his experience, such as the inhumane conditions of prisoners in criminal detention. budlakoti has clearly galvanized and created several new networks as justice-minded lawyers and university students have been working on different files governing his status. impressively, it was the awareness of his experience through one of his speaking engagements in toronto that led to the founding in 2014 of the new advocacy-focused canadian centre on statelessness (n.d.). 27 despite the enrollment of the governmental networks in effecting a legal erasure and reduction to “bare life,” budlakoti has clearly refused banishment from canadian society and the status of homo sacer (agamben, 1995). currently, under a new liberal government that has made it clear that “a canadian is a canadian is a canadian,”28 there is some hope though no guarantee of reinstatement of budlakoti’s birthright citizenship. an important question posed by his case is what happens when individuals fall between the cracks in the transition between two citizenship regimes. the trudeau government’s bill c-6, which amends the citizenship act, contains a provision that would restore the citizenship of any convicted terrorists who lost it as a result of changes brought in by the previous conservative government (bell, 2016). in addition, the current citizenship minister has promised not to take any further action against nine terrorists who had received notices informing them their citizenship was being revoked (bell, 2016). this suggests an openness in the current government to a solution supporting restitution of budlakoti’s human right to his birthright citizenship rather than permitting the punitive ethos of the prior conservative government to govern the final disposition of his legal identity. more broadly, this extraordinary case of statelessness exposes how the strengthening of canadian citizenship requires that it become more difficult rather than easier to lose. 26 see www.justicefordeepan.org/, budlakoti’s latest effort to build support for his case involves showing a 15-minute documentary, “stateless” directed by amar wala, about his case to audiences in various canadian cities. as of writing, budlakoti’s lawyers are preparing a citizenship application to the minister (of immigration, refugees and citizenship). 27 see also www.statelessness.ca/about-us.html. 28 this was a slogan repeatedly used by current prime minister justin trudeau during the 2015 federal election campaign. the extraordinary statelessness of deepan budlakoti studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 23 acknowledgements an earlier version of this paper was presented at the “citizenship and immigration canada panel” of the 2016 annual meeting of the law and society association, new orleans, june 2. i am very grateful for the insightful comments and 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(2016). democracies and the power to revoke citizenship. ethics & international affairs, 30(1), 73-91. levi, r., & valverde, m. (2008). study law by association: bruno latour goes to the conseil d’etat. law and social inquiry, 33(3), 805-825. macklin, a. (2014). citizenship revocation, the privilege to have rights and the production of the alien. queen’s law journal, 40(1), 1-54. macklin, a., & bauböck, r. (eds.) (2015). the return of banishment: do the new denationalisation policies weaken citizenship? (eui working paper rscas 2015/14). san domenico di fiesole, it: robert schuman centre for advanced studies, european university institute. retrieved from http://cadmus.eui.eu/bitstream/handle/1814/34617/rscas_2015_14.pdf?sequence=1 mandel, r., & gray, a. (2014). out of the shadows; the treatment of statelessness under international law (royal institute of international affairs, international law programme briefing). retrieved from www.chathamhouse.org/sites/files/chathamhouse/field/field_document/20141029statelessn essmandalgray.pdf national immigration law section, canadian bar association. (2014). bill c-24 strengthening canadian citizenship act. ottawa: canadian bar association. retrieved from www.cba.org/cmspages/getfile.aspx?guid=97a417ea-9a17-446d-be2b-5a8ec6769aaf nottebohm (liech. v. guat.). (1955 icj 4, 23). retrieved from www.worldcourts.com/icj/eng/decisions/1955.04.06_nottebohm.htm nyers, p. (2009). the accidental citizen: acts of sovereignty and (un)making citizenship. in p. nyer (ed.), securitizations of citizenship (pp. 118-136). london: routledge. sigona, n. (2016). everyday statelessness in italy; status, right, and camps. ethnic and racial studies, 38(2), 263-279. sloane, robert d. (2009) breaking the genuine link: the contemporary international legal regulation of nationality. harvard international law review. 50(1), 1-60. stasiulis, d. (2013). contending frames of ‘security’ and ‘citizenship’: lebanese dual nationals during the 2006 lebanon war. in s. ilcan (ed.), mobilities, knowledge and social justice (pp. 25-58). montreal, qc & kingston, on: mcgill-queen’s university press. stasiulis, d., & bakan, a. (2005) negotiating citizenship: migrant women in canada and the global system. toronto: university of toronto press. trop v. dulles. 356 u.s. 86 (1958). retrieved from https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/356/86/case.html united nations. (1948). universal declaration of human rights (udhr). retrieved from www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html united nations. (2016). convention on the reduction of statelessness (new york, 30 august 1961). (treaty series, vol. 989, p. 175) retrieved from https://treaties.un.org/pages/viewdetails.aspx?src=ind&mtdsg_no=v4&chapter=5&clang=_en daiva stasiulis studies in social justice, volume 11, issue 1, 1-26, 2017 26 unhcr (un refugee agency). (n.d.). what is statelessness? retrieved from www.unhcr.org/statelessness.html wong, j. (2014, may 20). canada’s birthright citizenship policy makes us a nation of suckers. toronto life. retrieved from http://torontolife.com/city/jan-wong-canada-birthrightcitizenship-nation-of-suckers/ studies in social justice volume 3, issue 1, 133-143, 2009 correspondence address: ronjon paul datta, department of sociology, university of alberta, edmonton, alberta, t6g 2h1, canada. email: rpauldatta@gmail.com issn: 1911-4788 review essay critical theory and social justice ronjon paul datta department of sociology, university of alberta honneth, a. (2009). pathologies of reason: on the legacy of critical theory, columbia university press. isbn 978-0-231-14626-5 (hardcover) this book is welcome and needed; i highly recommend it to all those interested in social justice. it offers a sophisticated, exceptionally well-crafted answer to a highly pertinent question: what social scientific criteria are there for making normative judgments about why and how western civilization should change? to stress “social science” means a commitment to thinking about what is concretely happening in the world and why as opposed to drawing on pre-given axioms as the basis for social criticism (e.g., human rights as an axiom, greater inclusion as an axiom, etc.). honneth carefully explicates how the normative dimensions of doing critical theory (and hence a normative justification for an explanatory science of social totalities) have themselves been developed by the self-reflexive immanent critique of critical thought since kant. at the same time, theoretical critique provides an ontology for justifying the normative dimension of a research program, which is then extended to the practical goal of arguing for why, and how we should change the world. this is a book then, in which social scientists, whether they identify as “critical theorists” or not, will find themselves having to think through the old (but not passé) challenges of the ontological linkage between the “is” and the “ought”; between “fact” and “value”; freedom and determinism; history and politics. in this regard, the book functions as an explication of the metatheoretical commitments (and their supporting arguments) of a critical theoretic approach to social justice. the book is a timely reminder of the pertinence of this kind of theoretical work not least because of the relatively marginal status of critical theory in contemporary english speaking social science. indeed, as honneth puts it “critical theory appears to have become an intellectual artifact” (p. 19). a caveat should be added here: zizek’s work has had a significant impact on contemporary critical social analysis, much indebted to critical theory. however, it is less likely to be classified as such since his main reference point is lacan, even if he shares a left-hegelianism with critical theory. an important consequence of this marginalization has been the difficulty of generating normative arguments for the task of social science and the 134 ronjon paul datta studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 parallel development of a prevalent form of social criticism “that does without sociological explanation” (p. 29). there has been a marked contemporary tendency to assume that inequality generates undesirable social outcomes without offering a clear justification of what counts as desirable, thus unwittingly endorsing already existing dominant conceptions. in a similar way, it is assumed that more inclusive social institutions are also desirable without, again, the examination of the questions of “include in what?” and crucially, in nietzschean terms, “for what?” a further assumed criteria for making normative negative assessments of the present concerns the analysis and description of localized types of domination with the implicit proviso that “domination” is undesirable and hence, in as much as we can identify how dominations work, we should resist, challenge and struggle against them but without offering a program of how and why this should be done, or the program of viable and desirable alternative forms of social organization. this, however, is a non sequitur. a fourth type of critical advocacy excavates the criteria by which institutions and social programs claim that they should be judged, showing where they fall short and then suggesting how and why those objectives (or broader, more abstract and general norms active within a society) can be better met by adopting some changes. a main consequence of these approaches though is that they bracket why we should identify dominations (be it in the form of economic exploitation or varieties of exclusion, for example), and struggle for their abolition. an important legacy of critical theory is that it has avoided these pitfalls. since the 1960’s, critical theory played a significant role in challenging both positivist and structuralfunctionalist accounts of theoretical work and accounts of how societies, as totalities, worked. in doing so, it placed the role of reflexivity in all facets of social science and a rejection of the “micro-macro” dichotomy as a false one, firmly on the table. it is important to keep in mind that much of the impetus in the original development of critical theory was a concern with the circumstance that when faced with increased misery and exploitation in the 1930s, the masses decided to side with a racialized aristocracy rather than with the oppressed class (neocleous, 1997, p. 41). reich put the issue clearly when he posed the question about how the masses come to desire the conditions of their own domination and repression (cf. deleuze and guattari, 1994), surely a pertinent issue today in the current crises facing capitalist societies. the central aim of the book is to explicate and defend the project of critical theory as pertinent to the present and the future. it does so by attending to conceptions of the link between normative claims and explanatory social science as found in kant, adorno, benjamin, freud, franz neumann, alexander mitscherlich, and albrecht wellmer; as well as providing a compelling critique of michael walzer. the task of critical theory involves explaining how social conditions impede a rational understanding of the causes of the distortions of reason that in turn undermine the use of reason in democratic will-formation and hence also, to the concrete means for transforming dominations from which stem distortions of reason. consequently, the possibilities for emancipation from those dominations are blocked. reason is held to be an inherent capacity of all humans, but defined precisely as the capacity of self-reflection and self-critique that drives people to improve their lives, their conditions, and indeed become freer. pathologies of reason include capitalism and the pervasiveness of instrumental rationality (i.e., means-ends thinking, in which everything, including human life, becomes only a means to an end, reducing human review essay: critical theory and social justice 135 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 subjectivity to mere objectivity). structural dominations undermine the resources for appealing to reason when advocating for transforming the conditions that impede freedom (and with it, the free use of reason). with a rational appeal for freedom impeded, the legitimacy of emancipatory political projects also takes a blow. chapter 2 and the appendix powerfully distill these main features of critical theory. readers interested expressly in social justice will find chapter 2 (“a social pathology of reason: on the legacy of critical theory”) and the appendix, “idiosyncrasy as a tool of knowledge: social criticism in the age of the normalized intellectual,” particularly stimulating. both clearly explicate the methodological protocols of critical theory. chapter overview the opening chapter is a surprise. while it appears somewhat scholastic, it offers the compelling argument that one finds in kant the theoretical resources for stating that norms are matters to be struggled over and for, in the practical working out of life. thus, in contrast to the usual argument that normative judgments are to be deferred to universal criteria (and universalizing procedures), the normative sphere, rather, is understood to be one of pragmatics and hence deferential to the existing state of affairs of having to get on in the world through the use of reason. the promise of the enlightenment, even in kant and anticipating habermas, thus lies in a “conflictridden learning process” (p. 18) that compels the progress of practical reason toward increasing freedom, a freedom that is not inevitable, but is fought for. in doing so, honneth finds a way to recuperate facets of kant (liberal rationalist par excellence) for critical theory. chapter 2 offers a succinct explication of the salient features of critical theory. significant here is the emphasis on sociological explanations of the pathologies of reason under capitalism that while blocking the use of reason in emancipatory politics, they do not eradicate it. hence reason remains a potential that can be drawn upon. the metatheoretical grounds of critical theory as pertains to social justice are well expressed as follows: critical theory must couple the critique of social injustice with an explanation of the processes that obscure that injustice. for only when one can convince the addressees by means of such an explanatory analysis that they can be deceived about the real character of their social conditions can the wrongfulness of those conditions be publicly demonstrated with some prospect of their being accepted. because a relationship of cause and effect is assumed to obtain between social injustice and the absence of any negative reaction to it, normative criticism in critical theory has to be complemented by an element of historical explanation. a historical process of the deformation of reason must causally explain the failure of a rational universal, a failure that constitutes the social pathology of the present (p. 30). meeting the requirements of this task involves the careful empirical study of how the universal capacity to reason is concretely practiced in the modern world and 136 ronjon paul datta studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 pathologically deformed by capitalism (p. 24). crucially, the normative dimension of critical theory must also explain the lack of public reaction to injustice, thus blocking emancipatory projects (pp. 20, 29). the source of optimism about social justice is argued to rest in “a space of potentially common reasons that holds the pathological present open to the possibility of transformation through rational insight” (p. 40). chapter 3, “reconstructive social criticism with a genealogical proviso: on the idea of ‘critique’ in the frankfurt school” elaborates on the protocols of holistic social research discussed in chapter 2. the genealogical proviso provides methodological protection against functionalism when theorizing the constitution of societal totalities. in doing so, honneth theorizes the place from which meaningful theoretical critique beyond the alternatives of appearing too radical and thus denouncing the present (risking being ignored) or too removed because of the remoteness of the questions and methods of critical theory. the solution to this dilemma is stated as follows: “the critique of society can be based on ideals within the given social order that at the same time can justifiably be shown to be the expression of progress in the process of social rationalization” (p. 51). what genealogy does is trace how the initial, intended designs of practices and institutions (“the real context of application of moral norms” p. 52) are later taken up and put to different uses because of societal conditions that make this possible. this is what produces the unintended consequences of effective reason (cf. p. 187). chapters 4 and 5 deal with adorno. chapter 4 “a physiognomy of the capitalist form of life: a sketch of adorno’s social theory” provides a corrective to what might be taken as being the overly rationalist, intellectualizing focus of critical theory. adorno’s approach rests in “determining the figures of action and consciousness” (p. 55) such that social life becomes reified and largely incomprehensible rather than something subject to history and reason. adorno’s main methodological reference point is argued to be a modified weberianism focused on “a materialist hermeneutic of the capitalist form of life” (p. 59). it draws upon a phenomenology of how cognitive constructs impact bodies, exaggerating its features in theoretical explication, especially as concerns the experience of physical suffering. this is crucial because it runs contrary to the centrality of loving care experienced in infancy (apprehensible through psychoanalysis), the remnant of which “tells our knowledge that suffering ought not to be, that things should be different” (p. 69). indeed, that child development occurs through the imitation of loved ones provides the normative ontological basis for intersubjectively understanding one’s own suffering and the suffering of others, hence opening the door to decentring the pervasive pathological egoism of a world dominated by capitalism and instrumental reason. chapter 5, “performing justice: adorno’s introduction to negative dialectics” continues this explication of adorno, focusing more intently on methodology. negative dialectics is presented as an alternative to the rationalism of both the hegelian and marxian traditions. the aim is not to “rationally penetrate the world” (p. 77) but rather hinges on a phenomenological immersion into a social reality that is always held to exist prior and external to knowers: social reality can never be completely transformed into its corresponding thought object. hence “identitythinking” (i.e., hegelian correspondence truth criteria) is a ruse. adorno’s technique review essay: critical theory and social justice 137 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 provides a further indication of how he modifies weber’s ideal-type method in his own conception of developing “models,” the adequacy of which can only be developed through the application of a phenomenological immersion that exactly challenges our preconceptions, spurring self-reflection and self-critique. its aim “is to show exemplarily in particular cases to what extent the conceptual determinations of central ideas of the philosophical tradition do not do justice to the intended state of affairs because they deny their origin” (p. 87). this is shown to be the meaning of adorno’s trope of “doing justice to” social reality. indeed, the loss of the belief in the sovereignty of one’s reason is itself liberating. striking in this chapter are potential resonances with both althusser’s materialist epistemology (cf. jameson, 2007, p. 60) and the radical durkheimian phenomenology of georges bataille, both of which are typically taken to be antithetical to critical theory. chapter 6, “saving the sacred with a philosophy of history: on benjamin’s ‘critique of violence’ is a careful explication of benjamin’s theoretical logic. crucial here is the aim to find a means of thinking about existence that is not subjected to instrumentality i.e. is “sovereign.” with this is associated a strong conception of politics as a radically discontinuous moment in history, “an experience that abruptly interrupts the continuity of social life by making something hitherto unknown appear” (p. 91). in short, benjamin’s optimism is placed in politics. this valorization of politics also required a radicalization of kantian critique by attending to the dominant standards of an historical epoch. thus, a philosophy of history is necessary for escaping the trap of doing a critique of values only from within the terms of the set of standards given in the present. in the modern world, law is held to legitimize and facilitate instrumental rationality, backed by the “law-preserving or ‘administrative’ violence” (p. 112) of the state that cannot find legitimate justification within the terms of law itself. crucially, law is disarticulated from justice, which for benjamin is to be based on already existing forms of voluntary altruism and intersubjectivity in social life that potentially fuels popular moral outrage. this is then contrasted with “law-making or executive violence” (p. 108) as found, for instance, in general strikes. for benjamin, justice can only be achieved beyond law, in sacral revolutionary form that immediately produces justice through the performance of violence against state law that pervades the whole of social life. the chapter also includes a useful discussion of war, violence and their effects on law. chapters 7, 8 and 9 are more psychoanalytic in nature, exploring respectively freud’s conception of freedom, franz neumann’s analysis of how political justice is affected by anxiety, and alexander mitscherlich’s consideration of the subjective conditions necessary to democracy. at the same time, they also offer the reader more of honneth’s own work, especially as pertains to his understanding of anxiety. chapter 7 draws attention to the freudian decentring of rationality, consciousness and ego by repression. the point of psychoanalysis is to show that the ruptures in consciousness can be overcome “through [the ego’s] own reflective activity” (p. 127). the loving care that has been experienced in infancy provides a memory of the possibility of non-pathological intersubjectivity, and with it, a desire for it. this remnant provides the fuel for the use of reasoned discourse about blockages and impasses surrounding human fulfillment as a consequence of dominations and anxieties. 138 ronjon paul datta studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 chapter 8 covers neumann’s contribution to theorizing how anxiety impedes democratic engagement. as honneth states, “it appears to me extremely useful to follow neumann in trying to understand neurotically intensified mass anxieties as a kind of social pathology that can profoundly interfere with the individual’s ability to participate in democratic will-formation. in order to autonomously form an opinion and be able to articulate it publicly, freedom from anxiety is indispensable, since anxiety impairs self-esteem, limits deliberative powers, and allows ego-estranging idol-substitution” (p. 154). in short, the absence of secure intersubjective relationships blocks the formation of subjects able to freely and democratically engage in the public sphere. chapter 9 on mitscherlich discusses parallel themes but along more positive lines. the subjective conditions of democracy and tolerance are argued to have an origin in an individual’s capacities to deal with what is “other” or “alien” within themselves through a process of articulation. in short, one cannot be truly tolerant of difference without being able to first do so with oneself. for those interested in possible lines of theoretical compatibility between critical theory and poststructuralism, the discussion of wellmer in chapter 10 will prove a stimulus. wellmer’s approach stems from his attentiveness to “objective contradictions” (p. 167) accompanied by a habermas-inspired conception of critical theory “understood as a mode of reflection of the universal claim to maturity inherent in the structures of the human practice of reaching understanding” (pp. 1689). this in turn displaces the marxian stress on the critique of political economy onto a theory aiming to find emancipatory potentials in communicative intersubjectivity. at the same time though, wellmer is far less of a rationalist than habermas because of his attention to the role played by art and aesthetics. echoing adorno and having significant parallels with bataille and foucault, wellmer advocates for an “aesthetic radicalization of the idea of modern freedom” including a “right of freedom to unreason” grounded in “transgressive experience” (p. 174). his work is argued to exemplify the commitment of critical theory to democracy, both substantively as “constitutionally guaranteed procedures but also as the embodiment of a whole form of life” (p. 176). in sum, wellmer’s work attends to domains beyond the limits of communicative reason, i.e., “the aesthetic conduct of life and the always unavoidable decisions in politics and law” (p. 176). in doing so, wellmer envisages a “democratic ethical life” appropriate to the contemporary world, “in which citizens orient themselves to democratic principles from habit and with heart, where they would not be convinced solely through rational arguments” (p. 176). wellmer’s work then is suggestive of further research to be done in the tradition of critical theory. the appendix consists of a sharp and focused critique of walzer, showing how critical theory offers a needed alternative to the version of social criticism advocated by walzer. in doing so, honneth provides a comprehensive outline of the central theoretical and methodological tenets of critical theory. in my view, this chapter itself justifies reading the book. crucial here is the role of the intellectual, perhaps best formulated as the difference between the “intellectual/expert” and the “social critic.” for honneth, we live in a world of experts, who as a matter of course find their place in the public sphere in commenting on “day-to-day politics,” leading to a circumstance in which the role of this type of “intellectual” becomes normalized (p. 181). the cost though has been a failure to reflect upon, challenge, and question “the cultural or social mechanisms that establish the conditions of acceptance for review essay: critical theory and social justice 139 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 position in public debate” (p. 183). honneth correctly stresses the role that holistic and genealogically oriented explanations must play if single-issue interventions by experts are to be avoided (p. 185). it is at this point that the political (and radical) character of social criticism comes to the fore. the point is not to articulate positions or policy proposals likely to be immediately successful (because they are palatable and premised on the already existing normative consensus in the public sphere). rather, “social criticism does not aim at rapid success in the democratic exchange of opinions but at the distant effect of gradually growing doubt about whether given models of practice or schemas of needs are in fact appropriate (for us). it is paid in the coin not of momentary argumentative convincingness but in justified reorientation in future processes” (p. 188). honneth’s explication of the legacy of critical theory, thus offers a distillation of what is at stake in this style of theorizing. does it hold up? discussion: marxism, critical realism and foucault while the justification for critical theory appears to rest in the last instance on the possibility of rational cognition (an appeal to reason), this is in contrast to the marxian justification as concerns the extent to which real-concrete contradictions undermine the capacity of social formations to reproduce themselves (well evinced in the current crisis of capital accumulation): both investment banker and autoworker have had their capacities to reproduce themselves (as occupational categories, which if occupied, generate incomes necessary for subsistence) are undone precisely by doing their jobs well, as pertains to performance criteria. in this respect, while a materialist conception of history remains a guiding thread, marxian political economy does appear rather marginal to the defence of the legacy of critical theory. at the same time though, honneth’s elaboration of the metatheoretical foundations and methodology of critical theory provides less a means of broadening what a materialist approach to history must include (although it does this) and more an ontological grounding for a communist norm as, “an ethical idea that places the utmost value on a form of common practice in which subjects can achieve cooperative self-actualization” (p. 26), the possibility of which is a consequence of a universal constitution of human (social) subjectivity, derived from kant (cf. sixel, 1995, p. 5). crucially then, the legacy of critical theory is one that challenges the view that normative arguments for radical societal transformation are based on moralism, common ground shared with marxism (cf. collier, 2008, pp. 152ff). the normative justification for a sophisticated, non-reductionist explanatory social science found in critical theory also anticipates what has been more recently formulated as “explanatory critique” in critical realism (led by roy bhaskar). in bhaskar’s formulation, “inasmuch as we can explain, that is show the (perhaps contingent) necessity for some determinate false consciousness, or perhaps just some determinate consciousness under the determinable false, then the inferences to a negative evaluation of its source(s) and a positive evaluation of action oriented towards their dissolution are ceteris paribus mandatory” (bhaskar, 1989, p.101; cf. sayer 2007). honneth’s version of critical theory though, does better than bhaskar on several fronts. first, its sociology is better and actually substantively oriented and governed, rather than being based on arguments for the limited postulates necessary 140 ronjon paul datta studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 to doing the philosophical underlabour for emancipatory social science (bhaskar’s aim). second, the commitment to psychoanalytic conceptions of the constitution of personhood and psychic life, deemed by them the most sophisticated conception of subjective formation available (with which i concur), protects critical theory from devolving into the individualism of the transformation model of social activity, derived from winch and giddens (bhaskar, 1989). moreover, in demonstrating the variety of methods with which critical theory works, drawing from sociology, political economy, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, history and philosophy, critical theory has advanced and applied a better developed sense of the need for, and use of, pluralist methods within a unified methodology, in contrast to the restricted focus on the philosophy of social science. that said, bhaskar’s significant critique of the positivist versus humanist debate in the philosophy of science is something that should be taken seriously by critical theory not least since critical theory unwittingly accepts the positivist account of science, typically leading it to an untenable epistemological conventionalism. arguably, the main rival to critical theory is foucault. at the same time, foucault’s work is a kind “critical theory” minus its humanist theoretical anthropology, derived from the psychoanalytic critique of kant’s conception of subjectivity and its dependence on rationality, a position from which foucault explicitly distanced himself (foucault, 2003c). even here though, we should be wary of over-stating the case. as foucault argues, “thought does exist, both beyond and before systems and edifices of discourse. it is something that is often hidden but always drives everyday behaviors. there is always a little thought occurring even in the most stupid institutions; there is always thought even in silent habits” (foucault, 2003a, p. 172). thought then, appears to be a universal condition of sociality. foucault himself identified with kantian critique (2003b) and critical theory and foucault’s work share genealogical sensibilities as concerns unintended consequences, e.g., prisons produce delinquents, not disciplined, productive citizens (honneth, 2009, p. 48). both, too, are concerned to analyse actualizations of effective reason. the bone of contention hinges on the question of “emancipate what?” if we take foucault’s critique of the repressive hypothesis in the history of sexuality (1994) seriously, and by extension, the methodological power of his nominalism, which i think we should, then we cannot assume the existence of a nonsocial substrate of human existence (i.e., the inherent rationality of human cognitive faculties that makes it possible for us to think, and in thinking, free ourselves from natural and social constraints), that, under conditions of social justice, would allow us to use our reason more freely, precisely in the interest of our freedom from domination. to return to the previous quote, “thought” is a property of institutions (a social domain), not of thinking persons. indeed, the foucauldian point is that it is precisely the savoirs of the human sciences, and their reliance on small, but pervasive exercises of domination, that has made possible such a conception of human reason and subjectivity. in this regard, the rousseauan traces in critical theory are a major stumbling block since dependent on affect and sympathy as the basic precondition of sociality and ground of normative judgments. this position is untenable in foucauldian terms, and durkheimian ones too, given his critique of both kant’s and rousseau’s romanticism, since they are ultimately dependent on a psychologistic assertion about human nature that cannot be substantiated empirically review essay: critical theory and social justice 141 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 (i.e., sociologically) (durkheim, 1964). in foucauldian terms, the normative criterion of critical theory is the product of the material and practical power-knowledge dominance of the human sciences, hence undesirable as a means of escape. badiou’s work (2001), somewhat differently, also challenges the humanism inherent to critical theory because it is tied to the notion of human suffering (cf. honneth, 2009, pp. 36, 38, 69). for badiou this ethical turn, especially as evinced in the focus on human rights, is based on the notion that what is deemed “good” means the absence of suffering. however, what he rejects is the premise that humans in this respect need to be viewed as victims “because the status of victim, of suffering beast, of emaciated, dying body, equates man with his animal substructure, it reduces him to the level of a living organism pure and simple” (badiou, 2001, p. 11) and thus is actually based on an anti-humanism. thus, it is the humanist progressives’ advocacy of human rights that end up denying the human agency that they champion against structuralists and poststructuralist anti-humanists. whether or not critical theory can marshal a reply to this challenge remains to be seen. yet, in what may come as a surprise to many, it is precisely on the practical normative front that foucault and critical theory share some ground. this is especially so when it comes to foucault’s displacement of legal-political judgments (an archaism belonging to the diagram of sovereignty and the monarchy) by aesthetic ones as found in his optimism about and endorsement of “arts of existence,” meaning the practices in and through which individuals problematize what they are (and are not) and make themselves an object and project of transformation, involving the care of themselves and others (foucault, 1986, pp. 14-32). indeed, ethics is a practice constitutive of “the self.” the normative rule then, is to “transform yourself” (foucault, 1996a, p. 130; 1996b), in a manner not beholden to the discourses of reason and the human sciences but in a manner more akin to avant-garde art. adorno’s and wellmer’s positions are compatible with foucault in this respect. these alternatives to critical theory, strictly speaking, warrant the kind of explication and defence offered by honneth. i attempt my own distillation of its theoretical logic as concerns the making of normative judgments grounded in explanatory social science. the appeal that is made is to the partial capacity of human reason, not as a static capacity for making ordered, coherent sense of the world and one’s place in it, but as a drive, a spontaneous will worked out in everyday activities, to try and confront and resolve those things that cause human misery and suffering: “human subjects cannot be indifferent about the restriction of their rational capacities. because their self-actualization is tied to the presupposition of cooperative rational activity, they cannot avoid suffering psychologically under its deformation” (p.39). this position, deriving from kant’s critique of empiricism and his specific form of rationalism, remains important. our immersion in the world does not immediately give us access to the truth of the world. there is an a priori active agency in human beings—the intelligence—that spontaneously organizes and makes sense of the massive welter of stimuli that comes to us from the world as it is in itself, organizing it such that we feel at home in the world we perceive and experience. reason is thus always active and exists as this activity. it then becomes a matter of what we do with effective reason. crucially, while perception is already organized sense, this is not the same as “understanding.” this was the enlightenment challenge that kant advocated: the maturity of the enlightenment, tied to its project, is to use one’s capacity to reason in order to perpetuate and further make reasoned 142 ronjon paul datta studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 (as opposed to dogmatic) sense of the world. at the same time, this alone is insufficient to change the world. thus, critical theory is not a rationalism or intellectualism. this is because critical theorists fully recognize that material institutional forms and resources must be made available to actualize this potential to reason. furthermore, while this capacity for reasoning is held to exist in all human subjects, it will not, left to its own devices, spontaneously make sense. we make sense of the world and hence use the capacity to reason only in a substantive way drawing on historically available discursive resources, materials that one may adopt “as is,” or that one may use as raw materials. hence the importance of the hegelian form of immanent critique, self-reflection and self-critique: theoretical work and its inherently historical character is an inescapable terrain for making better substantive sense of the world and our place in it. as habermas stresses, argumentative reason “always allows the individual to be responsive to better reasons” (p. 41). the power of reason in socio-historical conditions (that make it possible for only some to realize their dreams and schemes), is unwittingly affirmed in the circumstance that unintended consequences stem from intentional processes—reason was at work, but in limited, incomplete and often distorted form. even still, these two conditions, the capacity to reason and forms of democratic organization facilitated by reasoned argument, are insufficient. the third component, providing the impetus for the other two, is love. a romanticism, drawn from rousseau (as found in adorno for instance) and developed by recourse to psychoanalysis, refers to a catalyst for the creation of the other two. in this respect, without love, the goal of democracy cannot resonate. in sum, the case for a critical theoretical approach to social justice, as presented by honneth, goes something like this: the capacity for human reason is a real potential inherent in human beings, in part actualized in the spontaneous perception of the world and the affective (emotional) and corporeal experience of it. a fuller actualization of reason, crucially that of understanding the causes of experience, is possible through the combined effect of the critical inspection of dominant discourses (to explain how and why they are inadequate to understanding the world, plus an explanation of the structure of societies such that they become dominant) and democratic forms of social organization fostered through procedures that require intersubjective understanding governed by reasoned arguments that at once are the practical justification of the results of critical theory, while at the same time providing further grounds for realizing the emancipatory promise elaborated and defended by critical theory. the impetus of the use of reason finds it constitutive ontological ground in the experience of loving care, generating a hope and a drive for the social conditions of real self-actualization. this fuels the confrontation with what hinders this under the domination of capitalism, instrumental reason and the possibility of the critical theoretic explanations of current obstacles and suggestions about means of overcoming these obstacles. critical theory, as presented by honneth, has lost none of its provocativeness. perhaps it can be summarized as something of a scandal, namely, the future identity of love and political violence: the first is the constitutive impetus for, and ontological ground of, social justice, potentially actualized in law-making political violence, paving the way for the expansion of the first again in democratic social organization. review essay: critical theory and social justice 143 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 references badiou, a. (2001). ethics. new york: verso. bhaskar, r. (1989). reclaiming reality. new york: verso. collier, a. (2008). marx. oxford: oneworld. deleuze, g. & guattari, f. (1994). anti-oedipus. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. durkheim, e. (1964). appendix: portion of the introduction to the first edition subsequently omitted by durkheim. in the division of labour in society (pp. 411-435). new york: the free press. foucault, m. (1986). the use of pleasure. new york: vintage books. foucault, m. (1994). the history of sexuality. new york: vintage books. foucault, m. (1996a). friendship as a way of life. in s. lotringer (ed.), foucault live (pp. 308-312). new york: semiotext(e). foucault, m. (1996b). sex, power and the politics of identity. in s. lotringer (ed.), foucault live (pp. 382390). new york: semiotext(e). foucault, m. (2003a). so is it important to think? in p. rabinow and n. rose (eds.), the essential foucault (pp. 170-173). new york: the new press. foucault, m. (2003b) michel foucault. in p. rabinow and n. rose (eds.), the essential foucault (pp. 15). new york: the new press. foucault, m. (2003c). questions of method. in p. rabinow and n. rose (eds.), the essential foucault (pp. 246-258). new york: the new press. jameson, f. (2007). late marxism. new york: verso. neocleous, m. (1997). fascism. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. sayer, a. (2007). understanding why anything matters: needy beings, flourishing, and suffering. in j. frauley & f. pearce (eds.), critical realism and the social sciences: heterodox elaborations. toronto: university of toronto press. sixel, f. 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benefit society. the circumstances of the last few years have revealed a most serious condition in the social arrangements of this continent. with an immeasural)le endowment of natural wealth, with the improvement of machinery beyond all parallel, with the means of transportation perfected as never before, with the power of producing wealth in abundance vastly greater than in any other age, we still see the terrible sight of ghastly poverty, of oppressive want, of enforced idleness, and all this in the shadow of palaces with all the outward and visible signs of inordinate luxury. is it not true that the larger the city the more evident is the widening of the gulf between the haunts of poverty and the palaces of the millionaires. is it not manifestly evident that somehow and somewhere in our social arrangements there is an unfortunate want of equity, a terrible miscarriage of justice ? when some must toil like slaves and then secure only a fractional part of what they produce, and when others without doing the slightest productive act, can enjoy an abundance of superfluous luxuries, when with the most ample natural opportunities for employment, thousands find it so difficult to secure employment, how can the industrial classes be convinced that equity reigns and justice triumphs ? we trust you will pardon us for submitting to you the following enquiries : — for whom did the creator furnish this vast storehouse of natural wealth ? what are we to understand by the terms " god the father, r 2 address to the churches. maker of heaven and earth " and the terms " dearly beloved brethren "? are we to understand that he is the universal father and that every child of every generation can come to him with the same filial reverence and say, " my father, am not i thy child, an heir of thy bounties?" do you ask us to accept this doctrine of fatherhood and brotherhood, this doctrine of equal heirship for all, or are we to understand that herein is a serious mistake, that we are not all equally the heirs to his gifts, but that the bounties of the creator were a special gift to one portion of humanity, to them and their heirs, " to have and to hold forever?" are we to regard it as in accordance with equity, that one part of humanity may claim for themselves the power to exclude us from these bounties, and to demand from us an endless tribute for occuping the surface of the planet, so that no matter how abundant may be our productions, we must for ever surrender that abundance for the opportunity of getting access to the common heritage furnished by the creator ? when the farmer produces food and the clothier produces clothing, and they exchange, we can at once recognize tb'' equity and justice of the transaction. in this transaction we see the fulfilment of the golden rule, to do unto others as we would have others do unto us. this is service for service, burden for burden, sacrifice for sacrifice, enrichment for enrichment, and its equity is at once most clearly apparent. there is no difficulty in seeing the justice of the transaction that leaves both parties benefited by a mutual enrichment and we can at once recognize the brotherhood in the injunction : "bear ye one another's burdens and thus fulfil the law of christ " nor is there any difficulty in understanding that when men have raised crops, built houses, fabricated goods, when they have changed scarcity into abundance, then they have established an unquestionable right to claim abundance. we ask you now to look at a marked contrast to these examples. the growth of population on this continent is proceeding with very great rapidity, especially in the cities, many of which double their population every ten years. "with this increase of population there must necessarily come relative scarcity of land. while, therefore, industry is ever striving to produce abundance of commodities, increased population is necessarily making land more scarce. now we would like to know by what principle of justice should we, who beget the abundance, have to surrender that abundance and thus have left for ourselves only scarcity, while speculators and other holders of land, claim the abundance that we have produced because land has become scarce ? is there not something monstrously unjust, awfully inequitable in this arrangement ? with every increase in population, with every public improvement, the land holder can claim from us more and more. as the years go by his claim may increase ten fold, twenty v address to the churches. 3 fold, fifty fcld, a hundred fold or a thousand fold. is this because he has increased the productiveness of his energies, and the abundance of his industry ? is it because of his industry that the harvest waves, that dwellings increase, that railroads develop? not at all, but the very reverse. does he give abundance for abundance, benefit for benefit? not at all, but the very reverse. it is out of the abundance of our products that he is licensed by law to appropriate that abundance and to leave us but a meagre relict of penury. the transaction is not enrichment for enrichment, but while we enrich, the land holder impoverishes. could there be anything more contrary to the spirit of true religion than this method by which, as fast as one party does the enriching, another party appropriates the riches, leaving the producers in poverty ? the producers of abundance despoiled and left with scarcity ; others allowed to appropriate the abundance because land becomes scarce ; and by our present arrangements this may continue to the €nd of time, the obligation of the industrious classes ever increasing, thus insuring their endless impoverishment, the power of the land owner to appropriate the products of industry ever increasing, thus insuring the widening of the gulf between leisured affluence and overworked poverty. can we be convinced that this is the fruits of righteousness and of that " love which rejoices not in iniquity "? we have no difficulty in understanding why we should pay the farmer who feeds us, the tailor who clothes us, the teacher who instructs us, and any one who produces for us, or renders us a service ; but we cannot possibly understand why we should have to pay any man for access to the land, the forest, the minerals or the other things that man never furnished, any more than we should have to pay him for the sunlight.the air or any other gift of the creator,and it is equally difficult to understand why we should have to pay an increasing amount of our productions to land holders because the increase of population makes land more scarce. is not the whole system of land speculation an attempt to secure the products of industry by the impoverishment of the producers ; how can it succeed except by the spoliation and degradation of industry? is it not a wrong that should receive the nr ' st emphatic condemnation of the whole church ? you urge us, you plead with us, you beseech us to come and unite with you and to yield ourselves to the claims of religion. but what kind of religion do you ask us to adopt ? a religion that rejoices in equity, that loves justice and hates iniquity ; or a religion that looks on the spoliation of labor, if not with complacency at any rate too often in silent tolerance or even acquiescence? a religion that recognizes every child of god as equally the heir of god, the heir to the bounties of the all-father-creator, or a religion that ignores the 4 address to the churches. fact that the earth with all its potentialities is the gift of (lod to his children ? a religion that seeks to secare all the benefits and rewards of an advancing civilization to those who bear the inirden of begetting and supporting that civilization, or a religion that secures the benefits of civilization to the full and overflowing to those, who not merely contribute nothing whatever to its maintenance, but who by their mischievous dog-in-the-manger sj)eculations, often stand in the way of its progress ? a religion that demands obedience before sacrifice, or a religion that substitutes charity for justice ana cast-off clothing for the princii)les of righteousness ! is it not vain to expect men to join with enthusiastic devotion in the propagation of a professed religion that unfortunately ignores the highest claims of religion, that repeats, *' our ]^\ather who art in heaven," but ignores the fatherhood on e;irth, that initiates its service with "dearly beloved br^ithren," and then splits society into lordlings and serfs, that enjoins honesty and then fosters and rewards despoil ing speculations, that with the lips extols peace and unity, love and justice, but, alas ! alas ! maintains in operation lorces that beget hos tility and discord, strikes and lockouts, riots and labor wars? the universal and unvarying testimony of the ages endorses the truth, "as ye sow, so shall ye also reap." to sow the seeds of injus tice and to expect the fruits of righteousness, to plant the apples of discord and then to look for the fruits of peace, is to look for limpid purity in the stream, while maintaining putrescent corruption in the fountain, it is to look for grapes from thorns and figs from thistles. with all respect we submit to you these thoughts as transcend antly the most important to which we could call your attention. /e6<?55 2. studies in social justice volume 3, issue 1, 1-7, 2009 correspondence address: willem de lint, department of sociology, anthropology, and criminology, university of windsor, 401 sunset avenue, windsor, on n9b 3p4 canada. tel: +1 519 253-3000, email: delint@uwindsor.ca issn: 1911-4788 introduction: security, exclusion, and social justice willem de lint1 department of sociology, anthropology, and criminology, university of windsor two concepts animate this special issue of studies in social justice: exclusion and security. exclusion and exclusivity are often understood as inimical to social justice in-so-far as one broad category of wrongs results in the denial of access to goods, services, and rights to some people. in a very popular book, jock young (1999) captures this understanding and makes the case that we are becoming the “exclusive society.” he argues that a welfarist model of social protection that absorbed and accommodated diverse populations is being displaced with a neoliberal one that limits the distributive function of government by reference to a (false) claim to market efficiencies. in the “exclusive society,” identities and lifestyles are marginalized, scapegoated, fragmented, and stigmatized. security is, perhaps, the first claim on government, and it is a revivified concept in a vast number of disciplinary traditions because it is connotative and resonant: it connects the personal and political, the quotidian and existential, hopes and fears; it is also a bridge concept between the needs of individuals or subjects and the organization of social and political bodies. in much scholarly literature and in a growing body of official policy, the call for a more inclusive concept of security is made so that security is not primarily or ultimately a commodity of geopolitics, but is inclusive of human rights and, indeed, the necessities of life (food, water, shelter) for those who are most disadvantaged. consequently, it is suggested, security must encompass those who are commonly the object rather than the subject of security talk. indeed, the relation between inclusion and security is tantalizing for those concerned with social justice because it is suggestive of community, oneness, solidarity, peace. who but an elitist would champion exclusion and exclusivity? the trajectory of modernism and liberal politics is not merely an iterative or reflexive process of absorption, it is also a projection of justified exclusions. the idea that exclusivity and injustice are interchangeable or mutually reinforcing has an immediate but temporary appeal. to provide a concrete illustration, advocates of social justice are correct to assert that the principles at back of a rule of law that empower institutions such as the international criminal court or organizations like 2 willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 human rights watch are meaningless if they cannot be employed to subordinate powerful outlaws. it is at this point that international relations realism and idealism meet head-on because it is here that champions of justice seek the coercive powers of enforcement that authorize banishments, punishments, and deprivations, that is to say, where the application of a remedy against a transgression is maintained by a legitimate coercive power yet the power to resist that coercive capacity is not reduced. at the same time, many scholars and practitioners have been searching for and experimenting on the means to insert at the quotidian register a kind of empowerment that does not imply reactionary populism or mob tyranny. how to launch justice and rights (how even to conceive that there is something of value in these terms) without a “grand narrative” is a question that animates much recent debate (o’malley, 2008). in diagram 1 presented below i have depicted security and justice across two dimensions: the exclusivity of subjects (elite versus common) and the exclusivity of jurisdictional resources (global versus local). as i have noted, critical thinking about the relation between justice and security often begins with the assumption that their confluence is least likely in the upper median. the traditional critical view is launched from subjectivities and jurisdictions (not states or regions but villages or disenfranchised peoples) that appear to seek a redistribution of resources and a reintegration of subjects. this is a scalar and vector oppositional to the (realist) view that launches security as geopolitical and makes justice derivative—the legitimation/ delegitimation of elite global economic rapprochements. diagram 1. security and justice across subject and jurisdiction exclusions introduction: security, exclusion, and social justice 3 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 advocates of “justice in security” who value a republican ideal may favour growing local or “community peaces” by building capacity (and interaction) at the scalar of a village.2 those who place greater value on universality may instead insist on “security in justice” or standards that apply with equal weight and result no matter the local interaction dynamics. the presumption is generally that, where the emphasis is on the local and common, subjects are more likely to be capacitated for reintegrative justice and jurisdictional resources are more likely to be redistributive,3 in many conceptual puzzles it is the missing piece that often holds the key. here, this is at the juncture where the relationship between distributive and penal justice comes back into play. if justice refers to a process to distribute valued resources along the axes of social norms, and security is the precondition of this process, to be “just and secure” is an ideal whose expression will regularly depend upon the review of exceptions and exclusions by intrinsic and extrinsic forces. subjects may be reintegrated (restorative justice) or neutralized (incapacitated, punished, deprived), and jurisdictional resources may be offered to lower jurisdictional denominations or withheld (as a function of legitimating an extant security order). but as has been noted (e.g., zedner, 2009), this is not necessarily borne out in practice. elites can be local as well as global and the parochialism of everyday security and the local administration of justice is often moderated by values or meanings that are exogenous or even transcendent. perhaps this is resolved, as per derrida (2001), where political action is taken between “a moment of universality” and “pragmatic demands” of politics in a specific context. following a thread also explored by arendt (1967) and mouffe (2005), it is not that the unforgivable must always be forgiven or that those who most threaten us must be embraced, but that there is sufficient political space that this remains a possibility. contrary to young, it is not with a nostalgic turn to modernism, but with an agonistic view of politics (as always open to revision and provocation) that the problem of exclusive security may most fruitfully be attacked. it is in this spirit that we undertook to canvass scholarly views on the problem. these views range from those who offer critique or interrogation of current iterations of the relation between these concepts to those who make a stab at the hard work of proposing the contours of that political space. the first paper is david mutimer’s critique of critical security studies. mutimer begins by noting how security in traditional international relations studies has derived its subject-matter through discursive elisions, including most notably the production of an excluded (non-citizen, non-state) other. however, far from correcting the exclusionary character of security thinking, critical security studies produce their own set of subjects that are not granted status. here, one of the most peculiar exclusions reviewed is that of the case (critical approaches to security in europe) collective, which while encompassing a wide range of critical security scholars is also confounded by its self-imposed european identity and its exclusion of postmodernists and feminists. as mutimer summarizes, this overt attempt at an inclusive network-building exercise has received the sharpest criticism from those whose voices appear not to be invited into the collective’s ambit. however, in speaking on security as on many issues of social policy, it is inevitable that there will be some that we will include and speak in favour of and some we will place beyond a margin and ignore or speak ill of. security, of course, is a way of talking about and justifying the inevitably unequal distribution of precious resources. 4 willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 in his critique of security, neocleous suggests that the logic of security, rather than liberty, is foundational in liberal democratic societies. within this logic of security, liberal democracies replicate fascist and authoritarian political dimensions in the use of values and identity to frame the security problem. when security comes to be understood as a threat to national identity or a “way of life” generally, distinctions between liberal and authoritarian politics, as well as distinctions between internal and external threats, are obliterated—and internal enemies are seen as integral to external enemies and vice versa. national security, loyalty, and political unity are values mobilized as much by authoritarian as liberal regimes, and comprise the authoritarian dimensions at the foundation of liberalism. in their examination of canada-us border security, o’connor and de lint argue that frontier government is an expansionist move that links an invigorated sovereign capacity with strategies of control, surveillance, and risk management to create a new governance assemblage. frontier expansion enlists various agents and agencies, public and private, as well as numerous “petty sovereigns” seeking to apply a new “governance normal” in novel sites, marking outposts farther from the traditional land border. the new governance normal makes use of intelligence and intelligence gathering strategies to secure the expanded borderlands, where new “information tolls” make arriving at the border unannounced a thing of the past and where private partners are enlisted to do more of the governing in a frontier that reaches deep into the global supply chain. ostensibly for the immunization against risks or harms, frontier government also serves to augment sovereign capacity. with new exclusive knowledge resources and technological means at its disposal, as well as an expanded registry of known and unknown risks to secure against, this invigorated sovereignty is mobilized by quotidian decision-makers to roll back laws/rights and roll out “counter-law” in the normalization of exception or the diffusion of border agency everywhere. muller argues that the events of 9/11 have resulted in a virulent spread of exclusionary practices at the border in terms of a risk management logic and biometric technologies focused on identity management and therefore on exclusion. this re-articulation of security, danger and identity, has lead to a proliferation of border practices, both at and beyond the physical land border. the borderland is now governed through risk, where risk management and the securitization of identity visà-vis biometric technologies are held up as the answer to the dilemmas of border security. risk management, in its four-fold articulation of responses (acceptance, mitigation, avoidance, or transfer of risk), discloses a tension and reveals an ambiguity among the many authorities responsible for securing the border. this ambiguous authority structure results in potentially dire consequences. echoing donais' concern about “who” these security schemes actually serve, who enjoys or is denied the ability to “speak” and to “do” security, muller argues that the current border security regime is aligned with a limited and narrow set of political objectives associated with us homeland security. the limited goals of the current border security regime excludes various long standing collaborative and cooperative cultural, political, and market voices that (used to) inform practices in the borderland. canada is known as a longstanding advocate of widening understanding of “security” from the realism of international relations that has traditionally structured introduction: security, exclusion, and social justice 5 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 much state-to-state interaction. however, as shown by a number of authors in this issue (essex, hills, neocleous, mutimer) there are many reasons to find that the concept of security remains a blunt instrument even where it is widened to include human needs such as food and medicine. as essex demonstrates, food-for-work (ffw) programs are a disciplinary mechanism that links hunger to poverty and food insecurity to geopolitical insecurity. access to u.s. food aid, for example, is dependent on compliance with donor interests for showing a return on investment, particularly as an entry point for advancing “geopolitical and geoeconomic objectives in recipient countries.” such programs can “crowd out” and displace local political and economic practices that contribute to a dependent or client state status at the same time that they draw on existing local systems for their administration, exacerbating faulty or corrupt systems and practices. it is particularly the suppression of local political demands that essex explores in his case study of the jakarta ffw program. in everyday usage, the term “security” connotes a common and connective function and this is why it is so attractive. in this respect, it performs much in the way the term “community” to win converts to policies or initiatives (for example, “community policing”). such usage, however, is open to the exclusions of subjects and identities, and much as community policing is morphologically prone to militaristic properties, forces of elitism and elite or special forces also share common terrain in dual policing export experiments. in her study of u.s. led efforts to set down “security” in baghdad and basra in post-invasion iraq, hills argues that the experience of security is often neither common nor connecting. on the contrary, it is “rarely for all.” for whom and for what, of course, are the key questions when a post-wilsonian military adventurism stands tall in the shadows and efforts to impose an internal order are by force of an occupying army (which understands its own security as paramount). when paul bremmer, as head of the cpa, dissolved the ba’ath party (and with it institutional structure of iraqi policing) in order to create a new iraqi police service mandated to assist coalition forces in addition to crime control and order maintenance, the “for whom” question of iraqi security could not have been made more jarringly clear: security is produced as a “selective project” and understood and expressed by personalities according to strategic or political contingencies. offering her examination partly as a corrective to its adaptation by elite sensibilities, the meaning of security in a post-conflict city refers to “something more physical, territorial, and exclusionary.” it does not, and given how easily it is sutured to the agendas of those imposing from without perhaps should not, extend too far from the question of who is “forcibly displaced, raped, robbed, kidnapped, mutilated, tortured, or killed.” the expansionist moves that promote security through the spread of national (identity) values and the concern about security as an export commodity are also reflected in donais argument that security sector reform (ssr) in so-called “transition” countries is an externally-driven social engineering project in which “donor” countries aim to make over the security sector in the image of western priorities. ssr efforts typically require the security sector to be reformed along the axis of western values and institutions, reflecting the belief that these values and institutions are universally valid, the only legitimate basis for good security governance, and are necessary elements in the “democratic transition” in countries emerging from war and/or authoritarianism. in this case, “local ownership” of the 6 willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 ssr process is reduced to the responsibility to adopt western-style security norms, values, and institutional frameworks (often linked to donor country security pursuits such as the war on terror) and local ownership becomes an end rather than a means of security sector reform. without substantive local ownership, however, security sector reforms tend to be thinly institutionalized and norms weakly internalized. local ownership can also be used by local governments as a means of suppressing dissent or undermining political opponents. these aspects of ssr reveal basic tensions at the heart of such strategies. the way to address the lived insecurities of people in transition countries is to consider ssr as a negotiated partnership between donors and local elites, including discussions about whether and how international security sector norms can be reconciled, not only with local traditions, practices, and values, but also with the more parochial interests of local elites. this summary of the contributions to this issue invites a closing observation. the distribution of access to valued resources such as security (including debate about its representation or delimitation) is indeed a measure of political space as suggested by derrida. that space is almost limitless where it is conceived between the “moment of universality” and “pragmatic demands.” one may read each of the papers in this issue with an eye to this: at stake is not only the occupation of the space between these terms, but also the position at which the decision is made: who gets to determine, when, and under what conditions that something should register as pragmatic or universal? in this way, the comment by derrida also returns us to our point of departure. security is so important a term because it is often the bluntest weapon, uttered to cut off debate. even when it is reloaded to encompass universality (as with “human security” or “green security”), the process of division begins anew, as elites redefine both the universal and pragmatic to maintain the selective distribution of valued resources. this is why security is so pivotal: long perceived as antecedent to law, the space of the political, and the distributive work of government (as bentham pointed out), it holds equal promise as an instrument of retrenchment and renewal. notes 1 willem de lint would like to thank the social sciences and humanities research council for a grant award under its aid to research workshops program that contributed funds to this issue of studies in social justice and tanya basok and the centre for studies in social justice for generous contributions to the grant proposal. thanks also to daniel o’connor for helpful comments on this piece. 2 taking food security as an example, in line with the work of essex in this volume, vandana shiva has written how the so-called green revolution has devastated india’s capacity as a food supplier to its own people because it supports the displacement of long-standing traditional farming methods that rely on plurality with a policy that serves elite global agribusiness (transnational) through monoculture. if the value here is access to food by local and common folk, then the displacement of global elites with common local production is the obvious solution, producing greater justice and security. 3 however, the means and ends of justice and security appear to be at loggerheads even within local spaces. as noted by brodeur and shearing (2005, p. 382), the administration of the court system often resides with departments of justice whereas policing agencies often fall under departments of (homeland) security or safety. this means that policing agencies are associated with security provision and the courts with the pursuit of justice. citing polls that introduction: security, exclusion, and social justice 7 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 find that the canadian public blame the courts more than the police for a lack of public safety, brodeur and shearing argue that security and justice are “more intertwined at the grass-roots level [of common perception] than is usually recognized.” (385) references arendt, h. (1967). the origins of totalitarianism. london: george allen and unwin. brodeur, j-p. and shearing, c. (2005). configuring justice and security. european journal of criminology, 2(4), 379-406. derrida, j. (2001). cosmopolitanism and forgiveness. london: routledge. mouffe, c. (2004). the political. london: verso. o’malley, p. (2008). experiments in risk and criminal justice. theoretical criminology, 12(4), 451-469. young, j. (1999). the exclusive society. london: sage. zedner, l. (2009). security. london: routledge. february 2019 105 c&rl news new releases from pbs the british colony of jamestown, virginia, is shaken up when the fi rst women arrive in this wilderness. while love triangles, bitter rivalries, and fi erce competition cause confl ict for the residents and the native inhabitants, they are bound together by their resolute will to survive and thrive. frontline investigates a series of warnings from insiders and outsiders that went unattended by facebook as the company grew from a dorm room project to a global empire. traveling into a past that is eerily current, this intimate look at the history of iraq is told in the words of gertrude bell, an explorer, spy, archaeologist, and diplomat who helped shape the middle east after world war i in ways that still reverberate today. set in 1920s toronto, follow the adventures of frankie drake and her partner trudy clarke at drake private detectives, the city’s only allfemale detective agency, as they fi nd themselves fi ghting crime in the age of fl yboys, gangsters, rum-runners, and speakeasies. as the deadliest drug epidemic in us history rages, follow the cutting-edge work of doctors and scientists as they explore how addiction aff ects the brain, and how we should address our opioid crisis. frontline and propublica expose the white supremacists and neonazis involved in the 2017 charlottesville rally and a neo-nazi group that has actively recruited inside the u.s. military, showing their terrorist objectives and how it gained strength after charlottesville. jamestown the facebook dilemma letters from baghdad frankie drake mysteries addiction documenting hate new releases from pbs find these dvds and more at teacher.shop.pbs.org when we first volunteered to be on the local arrangements committee for the acrl 2019 conference, and to write this specific piece for our colleagues who were coming to our city, neither of us had a clue that the entire third season of the true crime podcast serial1 would focus on the criminal justice system of cuyahoga county. but since it was so popular, we considered it a good framing device for a discussion about social justice in cleveland. if you haven’t listened to serial, the short version is cleveland and cuyahoga county’s criminal and juvenile justice system are shining examples of the inequity that exists in the region. poverty, segregation, violence, food deserts, crime, and an unfair justice system are all parts of the larger system that remains unjust and unequal in the heart of a rust belt city desperate to rise again. cleveland’s been in the news a lot in the past few years, thanks in part to the republican national convention in 2016. much of the press coverage is rather glowing. cleveland has a growing foodie and craft beer scene, increasing technology jobs, excellent higher education, museums, professional sports teams, medical jobs, and it’s affordable. but while there is definitely a resurgence taking place, there are still pockets of cleveland that are not thriving. like many rust belt cities, cleveland suffered greatly as factory jobs left, unemployment skyrocketed, and the economy tanked. then the housing crisis in 2007 took what were pockets of prosperity and decimated them. foreclosures and abandoned properties covered impoverished neighborhoods throughout the inner city. now, as prosperity comes back to downtown and to some surrounding neighborhoods, they become an even starker contrast to other areas (especially on the east side), including the hough neighborhood, the city of east cleveland, the buckeye-woodland neighborhood, and the glenville neighborhood. recent press concerning cleveland includes a report from federal marshals noting that the cuyahoga county jails are so deficient2 that they put staff and inmates at risk, and the rate of inmate suicide is rising. the police in the city of cleveland are still under a federal consent decree due to the use of excessive force.3 recent years have seen high-profile shootings by police of blacks, including amy wainwright is outreach and student engagement librarian, email: awainwright@jcu.edu, and michelle millet is library director, email: mmillet@jcu.edu, at john carroll university © 2019 amy wainwright and michelle millet amy wainwright and michelle millet social justice, history, and inequity in cleveland an overview acrl 2019 mailto:awainwright%40jcu.edu?subject= mailto:mmillet%40jcu.edu?subject= c&rl news february 2019 106 12-year-old tamir rice.4 despite these realities, cleveland has a long history of social justice activism which continues today. an underground railroad connection cleveland sits at the intersection of the cuyahoga river and lake erie and was founded in 1796 by moses cleaveland, on behalf of connecticut’s western reserve. throughout cleveland’s history, the citizens of north east ohio have shown their passion for social justice issues. in the years leading up to the civil war, cleveland was a key stop on the underground railroad. as the last major city stationed on lake erie, escaping slaves could flee to canada. cleveland was home to many groups of abolitionists and activists working through religious, business, and community connections to aid the anti-slavery movement. during your visit to cleveland, visit st. john’s episcopal church, the cozad-bates house,5 and other prominent historical landmarks. for information about these local landmarks, virtually visit cleveland historical’s webtour, “in search of the underground railroad.”6 cleveland continues to celebrate the history of the underground railroad through an annual event titled station hope7—a reference to the code name for st. john’s episcopal church. this evening of theater, performance, and dance will be held may 4, 2019. for those of you in chicagoland, prominent chicago artist dawoud bey recently photographed in cleveland as part of the front international: cleveland triennial exhibition.8 the complete series will be on display at the art institute of chicago from january 11 through april 14, 2019, in the exhibition titled, “night coming tenderly, black.”9 the 1960s in cleveland throughout the 1960s, cleveland was fraught with civil rights clashes, mirroring the state of unrest throughout the country. change and growth in the city of cleveland led to population shifts, which contributed to racial tensions. the tensions in cleveland most often blossomed in poor neighborhoods, and throughout the 1960s, african americans in particular expressed their need for equality, pushing back on the systemic problems. in 1966, the hough neighborhood10 on cleveland’s east side was one of the first areas to reflect the nation’s civil rights struggles. white business owners and long-time residents of hough did not immediately adapt to the new black families, which resulted in a conflict at the seventy niner’s cafe. black neighbors gathered near the cafe11 to protest discrimination, and when the police were called, violence between civilians and police resulted. riots in hough lasted for five days. four black residents died, many were injured, and there was over $1 million worth of damage. in 1968, the glenville shootout,12 named after the location of the neighborhood where a confrontation between police and the black nationalists of new libya occurred. glenville, like hough, is a mostly black east side neighborhood that became another stepping stone of the civil rights fight. although the story has different perspectives, it appears that police took out racially fueled anger on neighborhood residents, whether they were involved with the nationalists or not. through the lens of the history of the civil rights era, hough and glenville have come to be seen as a part of the parallel story of community strength and social justice focus. these neighborhoods and other areas, including the city of east cleveland, are still struggling to fight through setbacks. to read more about segregation, social justice, and african american history in cleveland, follow a webtour from cleveland historical13 or watch a lecture14 about cleveland, martin luther king jr., malcolm x, and the 1960s. poverty and food deserts access to fresh foods is a piece of the equity and justice conversation that has attracted much attention as of late. neighborhoods and populations without fresh food are often the unhealthiest. the pervasive exisfebruary 2019 107 c&rl news tence of food deserts throughout the areas with the most poverty in cleveland contribute to the systems of social inequality. take a ride through the east side neighborhoods and you will have a hard time finding a full-service grocery store, though dave’s, a family-owned regional chain, does attempt to provide groceries in as many neighborhoods with access to public transportation. other large cleveland-area chains have closed stores or only build in more affluent parts of the city and suburbs. the most recent cuyahoga county community food assessment plan15 noted two startling statistics: about 50% of all cleveland residents, and 25% of all cuyahoga county residents, live in a food desert. of the cleveland residents living in a food desert, 60% describe themselves as “non-white.” in order to alleviate the stress on local food banks and fill gaps in accessibility to fresh produce, cleveland continues a long tradition of public and urban farming. the city’s local urban farms16 are home to knowledgeable folks who would like to pass on gardening tricks while giving service to their communities. listen to a collection of stories about cleveland’s urban farming tradition from cleveland growing strong.17 answering the call for social justice while the picture we lay out here might seem to be bleak, there are a lot of organizations that are working to respond with an equity and justice goal. we’d like to highlight a few organizations and businesses that contribute to that cause. • empowering youth, exploring justice. this cleveland nonprofit focuses on giving young people the tools to express themselves through healthy dialogue, creating networks of support for teens, and leadership education to build self confidence. • social justice institute at case western reserve university. located at case western reserve university in the university circle neighborhood of cleveland, the social justice institute is home to educational tools and resources, lectures and discussion-focused events, and scholars who research fields related to social justice issues. shortly after the conclusion of the acrl 2019 conference, the institute will host its final event of the season titled, “using photovoice to capture diverse experiences of cleveland’s opioid crisis,” april 16, 2019. • tamir rice foundation. while there is not an official website or physical home to the tamir rice foundation, both are in the works. samaria rice, tamir’s mother, is active in her community and in pushing for police reform. groundbreaking for the tamir rice afrocentric center is scheduled for 2019 and will be home to programming and arts for children. additionally, we would love for you to visit either of these establishments that actively promote social justice through their businesses. • edwins leadership and restaurant institute. brandon chrostowski, founder and ceo of edwins,18 started his fine dining training and restaurant to break the circle that leads people back to prison. formerly incarcerated adults get a six-month training in the hospitality industry and access to employment, legal aid, medical care, clothing, job training, literacy programs, and housing. this program began in 2012 and boasts 95% employment after graduation and 1.4% recidivism. chrostowski recently opened the edwins butcher shop, a couple of blocks from the restaurant, adjacent to the edwins second chance life skills center. it’s the first fresh meat vendor in the buckeye-woodland neighborhood in 50 years. edwins is in shaker square. • chateau hough. chateau hough19 is an urban winery in the hough neighborhood. founded by mansfield frazier, the winery employs parolees from a local halfway house. frazier began building the winery in 2007 and added a biocellar recently. the vineyard and biocellar accommodates visitors by appointment only. we hope we’ve provided some background information for you to enjoy cleveland and the acrl 2019 conference, appreciate c&rl news february 2019 108 some of the city’s history, and understand its continued struggles. there are, no doubt, wonderful organizations and work being done in cleveland that we didn’t get to in this short piece, but we hope we gave you an honest introduction to the real tensions and inequities that exist in our wonderful city. notes 1. sarah koenig, serial: season 3, directed/ performed by sarah koenig (2018; chicago: “this american life” and wbez chicago, 2018), podcast audio. 2. nick castele, and matt richmond, “u.s. marshals say cuyahoga county jail puts staff and inmates at risk,” ideastream, aired november 21, 2018, on 90.3 wcpn, https:// www.ideastream.org/news/us-marshals-say -cuyahoga-county-jail-puts-staff-and-inmates -at-risk. 3. united states justice department and city of cleveland, division of police, 2018, documents pertaining to agreement, http://www. city.cleveland.oh.us/cityofcleveland/home /government/cityagencies/publicsafety /police/policesettlementagreement. 4. laura westbrook, “tamir rice shot ‘within two seconds of police arrival,’” november 27, 2014, bbc news, https://www.bbc.com/news /av/world-us-canada-30220700/tamir-rice-shot -within-two-seconds-of-police-arrival. 5. university circle, inc. cozad-bates house, https://www.universitycircle.org /destinations/cozad-bates-house. 6. csu center for public history + digital humanities, “in search of the underground railroad,” cleveland historical, 2019, https:// clevelandhistorical.org/tours/show/44. 7. cleveland public theatre, to be performed may 4, 2019, https://www.cptonline. org/station-hope/. 8. d a w o u d b a y , “ n i g h t c o m i n g tenderly,black,” 2017, commissioned by front international, installation at st. john’s church, cleveland, 2018. https://frontart.org /artists/dawoud-bey/. 9. dawoud bay, “night coming tenderly, black,” 2017, on exhibit at the art institute of chicago, january 11–april 14, https://www. artic.edu/exhibitions/9038/dawoud-bey-night -coming-tenderly-black. 10. c l e v e l a n d h i s t o r i c a l t e a m , “hough,” cleveland historical, 2019, https:// clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/7. 11. kyla murray, “cleveland’s hough riots of 1966,” blackpast.org, california, n.d. https://blackpast.org/aah/cleveland-s-hough -riots-1966. 12. lorraine boissoneault, “what happened when violence broke out on cleveland’s east side 50 years ago?” smithsonian magazine, july 24, 2018, https://www. smithsonianmag.com/history/complicated -history-1968-glenville-shootout-180969734/. 13. cleveland historical team, “african americans in cleveland,” 2019, cleveland historical, https://clevelandhistorical.org /tours/show/43. 14. james robenault, “ballots and bullets: cleveland’s role in the civil rights movement,” talk at the city club of cleveland, july 20, 2018, https://www.cityclub. org/forums/2018/07/20/ballots-and-bullets -clevelands-role-in-the-civil-rights-movement. 15. cuyahoga county planning commission, 2016-2017 cuyahoga county community food assessment, prepared for cuyahoga county board of health, january 31, 2017, www.ccbh.net/wp-content /uploads/2017/09/2016-2017-cuyahoga -county-community-food-assessment-report_ pt-1.pdf?fbclid=iwar0l8n02bqsqqikozwafwm rcj0p6pnxlnpaas29ea93ru7tdq0upcl1eg3u. 16. brad masi, photos by annette bedway, “cultivating the land,” edible cleveland, spring,2017, http://ediblecleveland.com/stories /spring-2017/cultivation-stories#readmore. 17. storylenz team, “cleveland growing strong: an oral history,” 2016, www.clevelandgrowingstrong.com. 18. edwins leadership & restaurant institute, https://edwinsrestaurant.org/about-us/. 19. david sax, “how a winery is transforming cleveland’s most notorious neighborhood: the incredible story of chateau hough,” good, february 12, 2015, https:// www.good.is/features/chateau-hough-cleveland -winery. call (216) 469-0124 for appointments. https://www.ideastream.org/news/us-marshals-say-cuyahoga-county-jail-puts-staff-and-inmates-at-risk https://www.ideastream.org/news/us-marshals-say-cuyahoga-county-jail-puts-staff-and-inmates-at-risk https://www.ideastream.org/news/us-marshals-say-cuyahoga-county-jail-puts-staff-and-inmates-at-risk https://www.ideastream.org/news/us-marshals-say-cuyahoga-county-jail-puts-staff-and-inmates-at-risk http://www.city.cleveland.oh.us/cityofcleveland/home/government/cityagencies/publicsafety/police/policesettlementagreement http://www.city.cleveland.oh.us/cityofcleveland/home/government/cityagencies/publicsafety/police/policesettlementagreement http://www.city.cleveland.oh.us/cityofcleveland/home/government/cityagencies/publicsafety/police/policesettlementagreement http://www.city.cleveland.oh.us/cityofcleveland/home/government/cityagencies/publicsafety/police/policesettlementagreement https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-30220700/tamir-rice-shot-within-two-seconds-of-police-arrival https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-30220700/tamir-rice-shot-within-two-seconds-of-police-arrival https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-30220700/tamir-rice-shot-within-two-seconds-of-police-arrival https://www.universitycircle.org/destinations/cozad-bates-house https://www.universitycircle.org/destinations/cozad-bates-house https://clevelandhistorical.org/tours/show/44 https://clevelandhistorical.org/tours/show/44 https://www.cptonline.org/station-hope/ https://www.cptonline.org/station-hope/ https://frontart.org/artists/dawoud-bey/ https://frontart.org/artists/dawoud-bey/ https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9038/dawoud-bey-night-coming-tenderly-black https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9038/dawoud-bey-night-coming-tenderly-black https://www.artic.edu/exhibitions/9038/dawoud-bey-night-coming-tenderly-black https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/7 https://clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/7 https://blackpast.org/aah/cleveland-s-hough-riots-1966 https://blackpast.org/aah/cleveland-s-hough-riots-1966 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/complicated-history-1968-glenville-shootout-180969734/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/complicated-history-1968-glenville-shootout-180969734/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/complicated-history-1968-glenville-shootout-180969734/ https://clevelandhistorical.org/tours/show/43 https://clevelandhistorical.org/tours/show/43 https://www.cityclub.org/forums/2018/07/20/ballots-and-bullets-clevelands-role-in-the-civil-rights-movement https://www.cityclub.org/forums/2018/07/20/ballots-and-bullets-clevelands-role-in-the-civil-rights-movement https://www.cityclub.org/forums/2018/07/20/ballots-and-bullets-clevelands-role-in-the-civil-rights-movement http://www.ccbh.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2016-2017-cuyahoga-county-community-food-assessment-report_pt-1.pdf?fbclid=iwar0l8n02bqsqqikozwafwmrcj0p6pnxlnpaas29ea93ru7tdq0upcl1eg3u http://www.ccbh.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2016-2017-cuyahoga-county-community-food-assessment-report_pt-1.pdf?fbclid=iwar0l8n02bqsqqikozwafwmrcj0p6pnxlnpaas29ea93ru7tdq0upcl1eg3u http://www.ccbh.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2016-2017-cuyahoga-county-community-food-assessment-report_pt-1.pdf?fbclid=iwar0l8n02bqsqqikozwafwmrcj0p6pnxlnpaas29ea93ru7tdq0upcl1eg3u http://www.ccbh.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2016-2017-cuyahoga-county-community-food-assessment-report_pt-1.pdf?fbclid=iwar0l8n02bqsqqikozwafwmrcj0p6pnxlnpaas29ea93ru7tdq0upcl1eg3u http://www.ccbh.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/2016-2017-cuyahoga-county-community-food-assessment-report_pt-1.pdf?fbclid=iwar0l8n02bqsqqikozwafwmrcj0p6pnxlnpaas29ea93ru7tdq0upcl1eg3u http://ediblecleveland.com/stories/spring-2017/cultivation-stories#readmore http://ediblecleveland.com/stories/spring-2017/cultivation-stories#readmore http://www.clevelandgrowingstrong.com http://www.clevelandgrowingstrong.com https://edwinsrestaurant.org/about-us/ https://www.good.is/features/chateau-hough-cleveland-winery https://www.good.is/features/chateau-hough-cleveland-winery https://www.good.is/features/chateau-hough-cleveland-winery engaging with silences: clayton state master of archival studies program’s approach to teaching the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 engaging with silences: clayton state master of archival studies program’s approach to teaching joshua f. kitchens, clayton state university, usa abstract this paper will discuss the theoretical framework and approach to educating archivists in the clayton state master of archival studies (mas) program. the mas program is an entirely online program based in the state of georgia in the u.s. across the curriculum of the mas, we approached developing our curriculum to ensure that students engage with social justice issues through wrestling with archival silences. through creating a theoretical framework, class discussion activities, and assignments, our hope is for our students to be prepared to engage with issues of representation in archival collections once the students are in the field. this paper explains the basis for our approach and provides example assignments which other institutions can use as inspiration for their archival education curriculum. for many, archival education emphasizes fundamentals. archival educators and professionals seem most concerned with educating new archivists on topics such as how to preserve materials, how to provide access, and how to acquire materials. these activities are the work of archivists, but emphasis on the technical disguises the complexities of cultural, economic, and social issues that surround archival work. technical archival work often silences the voices of many groups found within our collections through emphasizing standardization and mechanics of archival work. student archivists need exposure to discussions that go beyond the technical. the mas program does this by encouraging students to engage with the silences that occur during our work. keywords: archival education; social justice publication type: special section publication introduction urriculum shifts are a common occurrence in higher education worldwide. opportunities to review and revise curricula are an effective way to identify gaps in student learning, so that those gaps can be filled with relevant knowledge to meet the goal of an effective, holistic education. part of the process of identifying those knowledge gaps is in acknowledging where faculty overlook perspectives, or do not incorporate a diversity of ideas and knowledge coming from a variety of socio-cultural heritages, over time. this case study describes how a curricular review of the master of archival studies (mas) program offered at the clayton state university in the state of georgia in the u.s. provided opportunities for faculty and administrators to go beyond a traditional perspective for curriculum overview. the faculty identified models of archival silences and social justice, and these models served as conceptual guides to frame the c https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi engaging with silences the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 program design that included a diversity of knowledge and intellectual heritages for the purpose of offering meaningful, well-rounded archival education. these intellectual frameworks helped faculty consider community information needs and heritages and were incorporated as part of the clayton mas program’s vision. to rightly adjust the clayton mas curriculum, knowledge gaps within the discipline of archival studies itself needed to be recognized and challenged. for example, many archivists have long recognized that archives in and of themselves are not neutral; that ways in which artifacts and collections have been appropriated throughout the world affirm institutional hegemony, privilege, and power, thus perpetuating the obscurity (whether intentionally or unintentionally) of authentic voices of various cultural groups’ intentions, perspectives, values, and knowledge (greene, 2009; greene, 2013; jimerson, 2009; pell, 2015; collins, 2018). to reconcile this kind of egregious inequity requires a rigorously reflective form of intervention to begin to resolve the problem. to that end, there are additional layers of knowledge-based problems at play in the archives field that must also be addressed in order to develop an honest approach to renewing a curriculum that is based on the ideals and motivations of social justice. archivists have been wrestling with the issue of representation in their institutions (schwartz & cook, 2002; cook, 2013; taylor, 2017). mitigating traditionally western notions of what archives are, what they do, and who they are for, inclusion and representation of the people of the archives of a community or cultural group require archivists to think about how their own identity constructs impact the decisions that they make for materials accession, installation, preservation, and access. taylor (2017) explains that "when our worldviews have been formed within the dominant culture, the dominant culture is what we tend to project through our work" (p. 21). this cultural projection, often unrealized, marginalizes the presence of cultural groups, whose narratives and inheritances are appropriated and on display without knowledge or permission, thus, becoming “invisible” in the archive because the dominant culture obscures their stories and separates their humanity from their artifacts—thus nulling their existence. past and current presidents of the society of american archives (saa) regularly implore archives and archivists to embrace a “behavior of inclusion” (messiner, 2017, para. 5). the proposed solutions to increase inclusion in archival practice can be understood as an act of social justice where information-related actions help to empower communities, ensure equity, and avoid adding trauma to the stories and experiences of disenfranchised groups (mehra, 2015; mehra & rioux, 2016). for social justice to be realized in the archives, archivists must acknowledge and understand their own perspectives and identities. clayton mas embraced this reflective approach by centering, what is known in archival studies as “archival silence,” as a social justice-based approach to restructuring the program’s curriculum. during the process of unpacking the curriculum, mas faculty reflectively sought knowledge gaps (i.e., the silences) that were evident conceptual witnesses to the program’s structure. this archival silence perspective required faculty to understand how archival theoretical and methodological approaches can act to isolate the techniques of archival practice, thus needing to incorporate knowledge from other disciplines and worldviews (kaplan, 2009; lee, 2019). a vital aspect of identifying the silences of the curriculum was the need for the clayton mas faculty to acknowledge their own socio-cultural privilege and how their identities and constructs may impact the curriculum in limiting ways. examining archival silences gave the mas program a 100 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index engaging with silences the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 framework for explaining why social justice solutions existed to combat the lack of diverse voices within the content of the program (e.g., textual readings for classes, hiring and/or involvement of faculty members from diverse backgrounds, and interdisciplinary relationship building across campus). by wrestling with various issues, ideas, and approaches inside the classroom, throughout the campus, and in communities, future archivists may be better prepared to combat silences in archival settings in which they would work during their careers. the clayton mas program took up this challenge to wrestle with archival silences, why they existed, and how they are mitigated. this introspective process required not only acknowledging the work of archivists, but also included interdisciplinary approaches to understanding archives and integrating social justice perspectives and actions in the curriculum-(re)building process. during the curriculum review, the mas faculty found that courses were not engaging with social justice issues and thus, by extension, were perpetuating archival silences. the curriculum review began in 2015, led by the mas faculty in consultation with the dean of college of information and mathematical sciences at clayton state university. the first task was to align the mas curriculum with other archival studies and library science programs around the country (u.s.) in terms of credit hours, required and elective courses, desired student learning outcomes and program objectives, and impact beyond the profession. this initial review process led to the realization that there were many silences in the clayton mas curriculum, particularly around social justice topics. this curriculum review allowed the mas faculty to think about archival silences as a social justice issue for improving course topics and pedagogical procedures across the entire structure of the program. the mas program's case study is illustrative that review processes are an opportunity to effect meaningful changes to archival education and, more importantly, an opportunity to include social justice reflections throughout the curriculum. clayton mas program: the context the mas program started in 2009 as a collaboration between the georgia archives, clayton state university, and the national archives and records administration-southeast region to create a master's level program on archival administration in the southeastern u.s. writing about the mas program's formation, cherie long (2011), a member of the planning committee, noted: from its inception, the advisory committee insisted that the proposed program goes beyond the traditional archival education supplied by history or lis programs to incorporate a broad range of technological skills and approaches to digital preservation of information, as well as incorporate service-based learning throughout the curriculum. (p. 113) early on, the curriculum centered around a rigid sequence of 45 credit hours, with courses focused on the core archival domains established by the academy of certified archivists (aca), courses in database design, introduction to archival technology, and digital preservation. these core areas became a hallmark of the clayton mas program. before curriculum updates, the clayton mas faculty consistently emphasized, pedagogically, how important it was to think about the archival enterprise holistically, with a focus on two critical questions: “what does archivists' work represent?” and “why is it societally important?” (csu, 2021). these considerations became central to the program's overall approach to teaching archives. 101 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index engaging with silences the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 in fall 2015, a new program director was appointed to the clayton mas program. one of the campus administration's first mandates to the new program director was to update the curriculum to improve graduation rates. in response to this charge, the clayton mas faculty reflected on the student body makeup of the program, its online status, and current archival education trends. the first decision was to streamline the program’s 45 credit hours to 36 credit hours. with this reduction, the mas program had to then consider the following: • what was missing from our curriculum? • would there be enough time in a semester to add to an already full curriculum that was now missing several courses? these questions are examples of the “silences” that the faculty was determined to explore and understand. they reviewed the current archival research literature to confirm what the mas program was in alignment with, and explored the contemporary ideas within archival education discourse that would be needed in their revived program. one important result of the literature review was learning that social justice was becoming a central core of the archival field, in response to evolving social and cultural shifts happening in u.s. life. the clayton mas curriculum was missing that essential aspect of archival discourse. part of this realization involved conversations about the crucial aspects of archival education and the role the clayton mas program plays in that educational process. faculty believed that it was important to teach students how to not just see or read the archival record but, just as importantly, to listen to the archival record. listening to archives can be understood as looking for the stories, narratives, and facts that a collection or repository tells (namazi, 2021). this listening activity is not just related to data that is most obvious in a collection but, more so, becoming aware of nuances beyond the surface of an artifact that might be barely a whisper or even unheard–a means of actively searching for and locating the collective memory of a text or object in the personification of the archive. active listening also requires engaging with the speaker, text, or object as an active engagement with the embodiment of that text or object (nemec et al., 2017). the program faculty asked what active listening might look like for an archives curriculum. they realized active listening requires teaching students that engagement is not just with the records, but also with the record creators and the communities who utilize those records. active listening further requires archivists to acknowledge past pain and trauma that might be demonstrated in silent ways within archival records and artifacts. this form of critical engagement is strongly connected to a social justice approach. one of the mas program's goals in reviving the curriculum was to teach students how to actively listen to collections when identifying whispering or absent voices. theoretical intersections: social justice and archives social justice in library and information science (lis) requires valuing the voicedness of everyone in society, not just the dominant culture, in respecting and empathizing with the human condition with a sensitivity that redeems, rather than perpetuates trauma (jaeger et al., 2015; tansey, 2020). the clayton mas program realized that it could readily teach the skills and techniques of archival professional practice, but the faculty were concerned: has the program identified a conceptual framework for understanding the socio-cultural nuances of the archives 102 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index engaging with silences the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 field? are the faculty prepared within their own identities to teach their students the societal, emotional, or cultural perspectives that could impact archival practice? this reflective inquiry required exploring beyond any traditional approach and determining where theory and practice converged with heritage-based archival perspectives. for the mas program, this inquiry involved going beyond archival literature and examining how to make the curriculum more theoretically and pragmatically inclusive. for faculty, this required that they, too, engaged in a reflective examination of their own theoretical stances and professional practices alongside an active discussion about power, archival silences, social justice, and critical pedagogy. this multifaceted review included seeing how these theoretical approaches might intersect with archival work and add value to practical archival education. from a philosophical point of view, the clayton mas faculty considered philosophers like michel foucault (via monod, 2019) and jacques derrida (1996) who forced archivists to deal with our role in society, specifically looking at how the ways we archive can further the notion of silences. following a foucaultian view, lynne huffer (2016) believed that "when we look at the details of those primary sources, we can see immediately that the archival 'text itself' is not the voice of 'madness itself' but, conversely the voice of its captors" (p. 31). foucault saw archives as created by oppressors, a process that would lead to limitation or at least control of the voices in the archives (millar, 2017; monod, 2019). the silences framework provided a method for explaining where foucault and derrida's ideas intersected with archival theory and practice. case in point, rodney carter (2006) states: silence can be actively entered into or, as occurs where the power is exerted over an individual or group, it is enacted upon that individual or group. in the archives, silences can occur as marginal groups are actively denied entry. (p. 216) carter (2006) engaged with both derrida and foucault to understand archival silences and how this methodology reflects what can be understood about archives creation. building upon these concepts, thomas et al. (2017) remark in the silence of the archives, that: [m]uch of the impetus for this way of thinking came from colonial historians, who came to see that what survived in the archive was a function of power relationships in the past and future societies; the voice of subordinate groups is excluded from the archive. (p. 174) here archivists are wrestling with how both derrida and foucault impact our way of thinking about archives. carter (2006) and thomas, et. al (2017) provide readers with an understanding of how power relationships within colonized societies invariably result in archival silences. so, how are archival silences transmuted through a social justice lens? mehra and hernandez (2016) found that social justice provides a set of actionable items that can activate all library and archival settings to positively impact the communities they serve. further, the authors state that “it is important for lis professionals to question who is ‘left out’ and considered on the margins of society and what can we do to improve their life circumstances and experiences" (p. 176). this approach demonstrates the efficacy of social justice as a tool to empower silenced and “left out” stories in communities where embedded power structures like libraries and archives represent dominant cultural forces. therefore, creating a framework around silences to affect social justice principles required the clayton mas program to go beyond the archival field to learn how understanding power and justice might intersect with archival work. 103 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index engaging with silences the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 revived pedagogy: integrating social justice into the curriculum with social justice principles and theoretical frameworks from other disciplinary origins to help guide them, the mas faculty led students through a process of exploring both social justice and silences. derrida, foucault, harris (2015) and others provided the initial inspiration, but some of these scholars proved challenging for students. in turn, the faculty selected a diverse group of authors of multiple disciplines, from all over the world, to help students understand social justice issues surrounding silences and how archival approaches intersected with other forms of scholarly thought. this scholarly collection became part of many of the clayton mas course readings and class materials. casting a wide net into different disciplines proved helpful in the mas program's attempt to understand and integrate a more global and interdisciplinary perspective. these perspectives came especially from historians and their critiques of colonialism and capitalism. archivists often turn to historians to gain an understanding of complexities in the historical record. during the curriculum review, readings cited from historians focused directly on ways in which silences tell the story of social shifts and power relationships over time. for example, historian michel-rolph trouillot (2015) revealed "that silencing also is due to the uneven power in the production of sources, archives, and narratives" (p. 27). trouillot (2015) explains why silences exist. thomas et. al (2017) explained the reasoning for the uneven relationship. thomas et al. (2017) also found that governments were complicit in creating silences. in simon fowler’s chapter “enforced silences”, from thomas et al. (2017), he found that archives could have numerous silences from informal, intentional, governmental secrets and collecting the wrong topics (fowler, p. 6). these authors provided students with insights into information creation and archival silences. to incorporate the ideas of the new curriculum’s bibliography, the clayton mas faculty asked their students to critically think about how archives are created and how society views information in them. while engaging with trouillot, thomas et al. (2017), among others, class learning objectives typically included: • students will justify their decision related to collection development to ensure that they are inclusive. • students will analyze situations that may lead to the underrepresentation of diverse cultural heritages and communities in archival collections in each scenario. • students will discuss how and why silences occur in archives. faculty intended these objectives to teach students where silences come from and give them insight into social justice perspectives, such as community engagement. the program faculty found further inspiration in discussions around how capitalism and colonialism have impacted communities abroad and in the u.s. one topic that was a compelling conversation for students involved the concept of “extractive capitalism.” for example, in the text, the extractive zone, gómez-barris's (2017) definitions proved useful for explaining imbalanced economic relationships. gómez-barris (2017) gives the example of south america whose economic system "engages in thefts, borrowings, and forced removals, violently reorganizing social life as well as the land by thieving resources from indigenous and afrodescendant territories" (p. xvii). stated differently, extractive capitalism is a form of colonial capitalistic enterprise which seeks only to take and not give back to communities. 104 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index engaging with silences the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 akin to gómez-barris’s point, archives, too, extract prestige from the records they collect. if archives are not extracting prestige, they may be unfairly extracting cultural property or intellectual property rights. students needed to think about what an archive gives and takes from their communities. these conversations were brought up in the appraisal, law and ethics, and some special topics courses within the clayton mas curriculum. readings that addressed these issues helped students think through ways in which archives extract knowledge, identity, and power from the communities they purportedly represent. learning objectives that discussed the extractive nature of capitalism included the following: • students will design policies and procedures that ensure various property rights are not infringed. • students will investigate collecting practices for unfairness based on how an organization requests copyright or acknowledges cultural property rights. plainly stated, faculty should engage students to critically inquire who really should own archival records physically, intellectually, and culturally. this line of thinking can prompt students to think of archiving as a collaborative process. another work that has inspired the mas program is patel and moore's (2017) history of the world in seven cheap things. while patel and moore's (2017) explanation of cheap things relied on capitalism and colonialism to discuss the cheapening process, mas program faculty were more interested in the monetary thought process illustrated by their book. the authors stated that "[c]heapening marks the transition from uncounted relations of life making to the lowest possible dollar value. it's always a short-term strategy" (patel & moore, 2017, p. 22). the clayton mas faculty identified the cheapening process occurring in archives in two critical ways. one, when society cheapens lives, as was suggested by patel and moore (2017), people’s stories are obscured. patel and moore (2017) asserted that individuals, namely marginalized people, are only valuable because of their labor. therefore, their documents are undervalued unless related to their work. secondly, archives often reversed the cheapening process by overvaluing certain types of records over others, essentially cheapening (and therefore silencing and marginalizing) documented stories of cultural groups on the fringe of the dominant culture. patel and moore (2017) further remarked, in their discussion of colonialism and commodification of work, that "cheapening is a set of strategies to control a wider web of life" (p. 2). for archives, this means that archivists can control the narrative by overvaluing the records of the wealthy (in terms of access) and powerful (i.e., governments). from patel and moore (2017), the mas program faculty understood and could discuss processes that cheapen/marginalize people, their stories, and their communities at-large. further, the clayton mas faculty took what they learned about capitalism and connected it to archival literature. for example, ramirez (2015) posits, “recognizing the link between educational and economic disparities, and the whiteness of the profession is also to acknowledge how committing to diversity as a core organizational goal necessitates the examination of structural inequalities and one's role in perpetuating them” (p. 350). by triangulating the hubris of scholars such as ramirez (2015) and patel and moore (2017), the mas faculty learned how to synthesize different disciplines to frame discussions around marginalization, economics, and how an activist approach may help to guide students along a social justice-oriented stance for the archives profession. these authors helped the mas program faculty think through the archivist's 105 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index engaging with silences the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 role, in capitalist and other oppressive systems, in creating silences. the following learning objectives of the program’s course on archival principles and practices were useful for assisting first semester students in exploring this idea: • students will discuss why economic disparities may lead to underrepresentation in archives. • students will identify communities that have traditionally been excluded from archives due to socio-economic status. this integration of social justice and silences into the mas program was an iterative process of creating new objectives inspired through an interdisciplinary approach to see how differing theories and methods can come together to produce a better way of fusing theory and practice into an inclusive identity construction for the professional archivist. showing students how differing viewpoints concern the archives helped them see how our work matters, and more importantly, how our work could lead to equity and inclusion. these ideas helped the mas program faculty frame experiences and develop our curriculum for archival studies students. conclusion: social justice as a methodology in class activities inspired by interdisciplinary readings and a broad framework of silences, the mas program needed to construct assignments, discussion prompts, and other activities to help students engage with these concepts. the faculty wished for a shared set of experiences for each student to have as they moved through the mas program. faculty asked: what shared experiences, such as readings or assignments, did all students have in their courses? when did they have them? what did the experiences represent for these students? did students engage with difficult topics surrounding silences? the faculty decided on two initial goals for student experiences: • students should engage with archival silences at multiple points across the curriculum. • students should engage with case studies, discussion posts, and assignments that ask them to learn more about underrepresented groups in archives. these goals were rudimentary but gave faculty a place to create activities that would honor and center silences. the hope was to complement existing shared experiences around technology and core archival concepts with new ones that emphasized social justice. as another means of honoring silences as a social justice approach to archival education, case studies formed a core experience in many of the reformed clayton mas courses. students engaged with case studies by intersecting current events with archival literature. for example, during 2020, the year of the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic, case studies included content discussing the u.s. elections of that year and social justice events such as the destruction of u.s. confederate monuments and the momentum of the black lives matter protests which spread throughout the world. case study experiences, explored with a social justice lens, provided an opportunity for students to ask themselves hard questions about their own biases and (mis)understandings of archives. faculty constructed these experiences within the social justice framework of archival silences. with these experiences, the faculty wanted to allow students to understand how their decisions impact archival silences and how understanding social justice issues could help dissipate those silences. 106 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index engaging with silences the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 the archival field is more expansive than just technological prowess and professional practices. skills are most meaningfully applied when archivists understand the heritage and values of the people in the communities they serve and how their role, as archivists, may create or perpetuate silences. the clayton mas program's case demonstrates that a reflective, collaborative curriculum review be an opportunity to think about how students can gain a more inclusive understanding of the social, cultural, and political forces that archival studies may create and participate in with communities; specifically, how various theoretical approaches that go beyond professional practice intersect, interact, and impact ways in which archive are situated as community-based institutions. the clayton mas program embraced a social justice lens to enact a curriculum where students could begin to explore more topics and issues which can better prepare them to empower new voices in archival collections through these experiences. other archival educators may find some inspiration in the mas approach. this article presented examples of how mas faculty integrated a social justice framework to integrate a means of honoring archival silences into the curriculum. this work is just beginning. the next step for the mas program includes new courses on diversity and inclusion in archives where students will engage with various communities to collect, access, and describe. additionally, clayton mas faculty members are in the process of creating a diversity statement for the program that will explain the program's inclusive educational philosophy and approach to understanding archives. the faculty plan on incorporating this statement into the program's assessment practices. there is hope that the mas program's process may help others think through how archival education can benefit from social justice frameworks. finally, any form of program review can be an opportunity to create lasting change in education and is a perfect time to incorporate social justice ideals in the curriculum. it was an active decision by the mas faculty to embrace our chance during a program review and make the curriculum more inclusive. references carter, r. g. s. 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(2009). archives power: memory, accountability, and social justice. society of american archivists. https://doi.org/10.5860/0710288 kaplan, e. (2009). we are what we collect, we collect what we are: archives and the construction of identity. the american archivist, 63(1), 126–151. https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc.63.1.h554377531233l05 lee, j. a. (2019). in critical condition: (un)becoming bodies in archival acts of truth telling. archivaria, 162–195. https://arizona.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/in-criticalcondition-unbecoming-bodies-in-archival-acts-of-truth long, c. (2011). developing and implementing a master of archival studies program: a collaborative effort of a state university, a state archives, and the national archives and records administration. journal of education for library and information science, 52(2), 110-121. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41308886 mehra, b. (2015). introduction to library trends. social justice in library and information science & services, 64(2), 179-197. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2015.0042 mehra, b., & rioux, k. (eds.). (2016). progressive community action: critical theory and social justice in library and information science. library juice press. mehra, b., & hernandez, l. (2016). libraries as agents of human rights protection and social justice on behalf of sexual minorities in india: an action. in u. gorham, n. g. taylor, & p. t. jaeger (eds.), perspectives on libraries as institutions of human rights and social justice (pp. 176-182). emerald group publishing limited. 108 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc.72.1.k0322x0p38v44l53 https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc.76.2.14744l214663kw43 https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2015.1102239 https://doi.org/10.1086/680154 https://doi.org/10.5860/0710288 https://doi.org/10.17723/aarc.63.1.h554377531233l05 https://arizona.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/in-critical-condition-unbecoming-bodies-in-archival-acts-of-truth https://arizona.pure.elsevier.com/en/publications/in-critical-condition-unbecoming-bodies-in-archival-acts-of-truth http://www.jstor.org/stable/41308886 https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2015.0042 engaging with silences the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 millar, l. a. (2017). archives: principles and practices. facet publishing. monod, j. c. (2019). archives, thresholds, discontinuities: blumenberg and foucault on historical substantialism and the phenomenology of history. journal of the history of ideas, 80(1), 133–146. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2019.0007 namazi, m. (2021). listening back to the archives. art monthly, 444, 40–42. nemec, p. b., spagnolo, a. c., & soydan, a. s. (2017). can you hear me now? teaching listening skills. psychiatric rehabilitation journal, 40(4), 415–417. https://doi.org/10.1037/prj0000287 patel, r., & moore, j. (2017). a history of the world in seven cheap things: a guide to capitalism, nature, and the future of the planet. university of california press. pell, s. (2015). radicalizing the politics of the archive: an ethnographic reading of an activist archive. archivaria, 80, 33–57. https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/13543 ramirez, m. h. (2015). being assumed not to be: a critique of whiteness as an archival imperative. the american archivist, 78(2), 339–356. https://doi.org/10.17723/03609081.78.2.339 schwartz, j. m., & cook, t. (2002). archives, records, and power: the making of modern memory. archival science 2, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02435628 tansey, e. (2020, june 5). no one owes their trauma to archivists, or, the commodification of contemporaneous collecting. http://eiratansey.com/2020/06/05/no-one-owes-theirtrauma-to-archivists-or-the-commodification-of-contemporaneous-collecting/ taylor, c. (2017). getting our house in order: moving from diversity to inclusion. the american archivist, 80(1), 19–29. https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081.80.1.19 thomas, d., fowler, s., & johnson, v. (2017). the silence of the archive. facet publishing. trouillot, m. (2015). silencing the past: power and the production of history. beacon press. joshua kitchens (joshuakitchens@clayton.edu) is the director of the clayton state archival studies program. josh teaches a variety of courses at clayton state that cover archival topics including digital preservation, law and ethics, appraisal, and various special topics courses. currently, josh is researching appraisal practices and representation/access to archival collections and public records. josh previously served as an archivists for special collections at the georgia college ina dillard russell library where he was responsible for digital collections, the library’s institutional repository known as the knowledge box, and university archives. he holds a ba in history from georgia college, an ma in applied history from george mason university, and a master’s of archival studies from clayton state university. joshua is currently working on a phd in public 109 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2019.0007 https://doi.org/10.1037/prj0000287 https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/13543 https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.339 https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.339 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02435628 http://eiratansey.com/2020/06/05/no-one-owes-their-trauma-to-archivists-or-the-commodification-of-contemporaneous-collecting/ http://eiratansey.com/2020/06/05/no-one-owes-their-trauma-to-archivists-or-the-commodification-of-contemporaneous-collecting/ https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081.80.1.19 mailto:joshuakitchens@clayton.edu engaging with silences the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34818 history at georgia state university. joshua is also a certified archivist and serves on the examine development committee for the academy of certified archivist. 110 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index introduction clayton mas program: the context theoretical intersections: social justice and archives revived pedagogy: integrating social justice into the curriculum conclusion: social justice as a methodology in class activities references correspondence address: stef jansen, social anthropology, university of manchester, manchester m13 9pl, united kingdom. tel.: +44 (0) 161 275 3993, email: stef.jansen@manchester. ac.uk issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 7, issue 2, 229-243, 2013 if reconciliation is the answer, are we asking the right questions? stef jansen university of manchester, united kingdom abstract this article critically examines the normative, liberal assumptions that most frequently underlie scholarly, activist, and policy calls for reconciliation in bosnia and herzegovina. rather than measuring how reconciliation is progressing, i suggest we ask ourselves whose reconciliation is being desired here: by whom, for whom, and for what? which important alternative questions remain unasked and which latent answers are ignored or downplayed in the process? particular attention is paid to the ways in which liberal reconciliation discourse tends to depoliticize questions of justice. introduction the concerns most frequently underlying scholarly, activist, and policy approaches to justice in bosnia and herzegovina (bih) presume a normative, liberal notion of inter-national reconciliation: “how to reconcile people in bih?” or, “how is reconciliation in bih advancing?” the urgency with which such concerns are formulated, and their visibility in domestic and outside public spheres, reflect programmatic and funding priorities of foreign intervention. ever since i began ethnographic research in the post-yugoslav states in 1996—first in serbia, then in croatia, and then in bih, where most of my work has been conducted during the last decade—i have felt uncomfortable with these priorities, even if i have sometimes actively taken part in initiatives that could be classified as reconciliation work. it is not just that the ways in which reconciliation is promoted demand the downplaying of pain, anger and desire for retribution in ways i find hard to swallow, but i have always sensed that this approach also constitutes a particular problematic studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 230 stef jansen and depoliticizing liberal political project. thus, while i sympathize with the sincere and noble intentions of many people who are working towards international reconciliation—and while i sometimes join them in their efforts—i have long felt uneasy with the long-term implications i discerned for the politics of justice in bih and beyond. as the words “felt” and “sensed” above indicate, my engagement with these questions remained on a largely unarticulated level. first, i cannot claim expertise on justice or reconciliation, and my ethnographic investigations— on antinationalism, on home-making and displacement, on remembering and forgetting after violence, on masculinity, on borders, and on statecraft—have never focussed explicitly on either. neither can i properly claim to speak for people in the post-yugoslav states, or even in bih when it comes to questions of justice. in fact, i can state confidently that very few people in the region and very few of my research participants share my interest in the explicitly political dimension of justice, nor in my personal-political belief that a juster future would be served by active politicization and a reinvigoration of ideological debate. this brings me to the second reason why i have not articulated such concerns explicitly before: politics [politika], as we shall see, has an extremely bad name in the region and any association with it is likely to be experienced as the kiss of death for any activist effort towards a better future, including projects seeking to foster inter-national reconciliation. in such a context, perhaps an insistence on re-politicization would do more damage than good. in any case, the seething resentment any mention of politics in bih elicits is such that one wonders if it is at all possible to salvage anything from the term after disentangling it from its connotation of a sleazy universe of cynical, corrupted and self-interested power games. while i have never tackled justice as a central concern in my research or writings, my ethnographic studies have always touched upon questions of justice, partly precisely because of my commitment to foreground domestic and global political dimensions. in this article,1 i attempt to systematize retrospectively some reflections on justice arising from that research, especially my work on experiences of home-making and return on both sides of the inter-entity boundary line in north-east bih (20002001). i also try to learn from my activist engagements in dialogue projects, meetings and trainings in the post-yugoslav “civil sector” and from my social interactions and exposure to the media as someone who spends much of his life—workwise and otherwise—in the bih capital sarajevo. without denying the value and urgency of many efforts to foster “reconciliation,” my main objective is to draw attention to negative feedback effects they may entail and to open up questions of justice beyond their particular focus. so, rather than presenting conclusions drawn from a specific research project, i try to ask better and perhaps much more vexing questions with regard to justice in bih. rather than measuring the progress of reconciliation in bih, i suggest we ask ourselves whose reconciliation is being desired here: by whom, for whom, and for what. this reformulation then leads me to discern a tentative route to a renewal of debates over the politics of justice. at the studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 if reconciliation is the answer 231 core of my effort lies this provocative and hopefully productive question: if reconciliation is the answer, are we asking the right questions? which important alternative questions remain unasked and which latent answers are ignored or downplayed in the process? defining the “sides” of reconciliation if to reconcile means “to render no longer opposed” (borneman, 2002, p. 281), it is important to point out that the currently dominant liberal approaches to reconciliation in bih as well as elsewhere are usually normative. they start from the presupposition that reconciliation is by definition beneficial for all involved. taking a step back implies asking why dissolving opposition is considered desirable. the beneficial character of reconciliation, then, is not accepted as self-evident. instead, it requires argument and we should try to understand the basis on which people argue for it. next, if and where it is considered desirable, the question is which opposition should be considered as the key one to be dissolved. if people argue for reconciliation in a certain context, if they work towards the dissolution of an opposition, this always implies a political exercise of defining the opposing “sides.” this means it can have rather diverse implications, depending on who advocates it and for what ends. if we look at it this way, it is important to remind ourselves that reconciliation has actually been a major priority for post-yugoslav nationalist elites since the late 1980s. their focus was squarely on the intra-national level. often aimed at dissolving oppositions between fellow-nationals associated with opposed ideologies in world war ii, these efforts effectively amounted to programmes of national homogenization. they can be understood as attempts to erase antagonisms that exist within national groups. as is well-documented, all those intra-national reconciliation efforts have served to exacerbate international relations—indeed, they became part of the 1990s wars. after those wars inter-national reconciliation became a major preoccupation for the foreign intervention agencies in bih, whose funding and support was important to its promotion. in their approach, the different sides that needed to be rendered no longer opposed were conceived of as nations. notwithstanding the tendency of nationalist elites to use this matrix, and despite the noble intentions of many of those working for reconciliation, this reductionist definition of the sides in the war remains disputable. its suggestion of symmetry fails to account for the fact that while two of the main sides explicitly proclaimed themselves, and exclusively functioned, as ethnonational (serbian and croatian) collectives, the third included ethnonational (bosniak) dimensions, but also incorporative bih ones.2 moreover, reducing the war in bih to a simple three-way fight among bosniaks, serbs and croats obscures the fact that the violence encompassed, for example, a scramble for resources between party political elites from within and from outside bih, and an opportunity for looters and other businessmen. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 232 stef jansen it neglects the fact that the war was to a large extent the crystallisation of a conflict over state formation and citizenship—namely, over whether bih should exist as a polity or not, and how its inhabitants should be represented institutionally. it clouds vast power differentials, diverging war aims and legitimacy claims of different orders (bougarel, 1996). unsurprisingly, as in so many other conflicts, political party elites sought to represent themselves as organically encompassing “their” respective undivided nations (although, as mentioned, not entirely symmetrically), and these efforts did have real effects. studying such elite self-representations and their relative resonance amongst the population is important to understand the course of the violence, yet reproducing them by speaking simply of a “war between bosniaks, serbs and croats” precludes such understanding: such a “groupist” (brubaker, 2002) imposition of an exclusively national matrix on the war is itself a depoliticising intervention pretending to name neutrally existing categories. this has implications for reconciliation discourse too. the predominantly national definition of the “sides” in liberal reconciliation discourse in bih reinforces a version of history, both wartime and pre-war, that is itself nationalist (jansen, 2003, 2005). underplaying the complexities of belonging, including national belonging, in the region, it disambiguates history into discrete collective actors—nations—who fell out with each other in the 1990s and must now be ushered towards a renewal of harmonious neighbourly relations in a mosaic-like “national order of things” (jansen, 2002; malkki, 1995). national belonging is, and has long been, important to many people in bih, but to accept such a reductionist definition of sides in an identitarian matrix would represent the ultimate crown on the nationalist hegemonizing projects of the 1990s. when is an encounter a reconciliation, and for whom? during the first post-war decade, the ambitions of inter-national reconciliation efforts in bih were modest by necessity. with the 1990s conflict, which had radically unmixed the population in terms of nationality, very real national boundaries had emerged even for those who had not previously considered them to be of determining significance. indeed, people had come to be understood as nationals first, to a high degree and in many contexts, and the relationships between those of different nationalities now required navigation of socially-sanctioned segregation and often, former frontlines. reconciliation efforts such as those promoted by the foreign intervention agencies in divided bih thus usually simply attempted to bring about some degree of rapprochement between people of different nationalities. reconciling nations (since that is how the sides were conceived) concretely required encounters between persons defined as nationals, but the significance of national divisions had intensified so much that this was not self-evident for most people in most parts of this now deeply segregated polity. still, in one way or another even relatively shortly after the war, hundreds of thousands studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 if reconciliation is the answer 233 of people in bih engaged in some inter-national encounters, in everyday life and through initial steps towards return and repossession. yet, did they see such interactions as moral acts in a reconciliation process? the liberal and normative view dominant in most foreign scholarly and geopolitical-humanitarian discourses on bih during the first post-war decade tended to consider inter-national encounters—the crossing of boundaries between presumably clearly demarcated groups—to be morally commendable acts. far from rendering the different sides no longer opposed, most initiatives of inter-national reconciliation were thus aimed at merely allowing people to cross the boundaries between those “sides” and thereby rendering them slightly less actively opposed as nationals. hence, reconciliation was framed in a mosaic model, which—like liberal multiculturalism—tended to solidify national-cultural dividing lines and to represent them as discrete at the expense of other differences and struggles. as we saw, the idea then, was to return the conflicting “sides” to their presumed pre-war status of coexisting “peoples.” in this framework, inter-national interactions were portrayed as more desirable than intra-national ones—and, as every non-governmental organization (ngo) worker in bih knows, a project proposal that included beneficiaries with different nationalities was on average much more likely to attract foreign funding than one that did not. there were, of course, rather obvious reasons for this, and it is not my intention here to criticise such funding prioritizations. what i aim to highlight is that inter-national encounters came to be seen as a vanguard for reconciliation in the foreign gaze. but what about the people engaging in them? remembered mundane pre-war inter-national encounters— if they had been experienced as such at all—had normally not been selfconsciously reconciliatory acts but practical dimensions of everyday life. this has implications for the post-war situation too, since the sides engaged in the violence cannot be simply nationally defined and for some people— predominantly in a few larger cities—post-war inter-national interaction was simply a continuation of everyday practice that had not disappeared during the 1990s, although it had been drastically reduced due to war-related population movements. for them, radical changes in context had led others to impose the national matrix onto life practices they still considered to be oblivious to it. for example, it was not uncommon for persons who before the war married someone who did not share their family’s national background to emphasise that their marriage had apparently become “mixed” during the 1990s. indeed, as we shall see below, the focus on the special bridging value of inter-national encounters after the war in bih glossed over the way in which other-than-national differences were sometimes more difficult to bridge (and, apparently, bridging them was considered less urgent anyway). but even in other cases, where encounters did involve crossing former frontlines (for example, in initiatives for the return of displaced persons), were they necessarily experienced as geared toward reconciliation? i found that many people in bih treated inter-national reconciliation first of all as a western-imposed idea. regardless of their particular positionings, even studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 234 stef jansen many of those who argued in favour of reconciliation believed it should be preceded by apologies, punishment and compensation. some, of course, rejected reconciliation altogether. others incorporated it in an effort to avoid discussions of wartime responsibility. in such a context, can reconciliation be legitimized by invoking a higher goal such as bih, euro-atlantic integration, god or peace (see brudholm, 2006)? should we not acknowledge instead that, from the perspective of those who would be reconciled, the desirability of reconciliation did not emerge as a fact but as an open question? importantly such different views should not be reduced simplistically to people’s background in national “sides”, but must be seen in terms of possible futures too. from my research it emerged in the first decade after the 1990s war that, the main preoccupations for most people in bih were perhaps best summarized as justice and survival [preživljavanje]. yet for many, including myself, justice is rather difficult to pin down, even when specifically related to the post-war situation in bih. justice may concern judiciary procedures leading to punishment, retribution, restitution and compensation, but it may also evoke much broader notions of utopian balance and fullness. ultimately, and importantly, i suggest that to many people who lived through the war in bih, justice would be a world, a life, a history, in which the war had not happened. in any case, because justice was both hard to define and since most people considered its establishment out of their reach, everyday practice largely focused on securing an immediate future. even people who explicitly agitated for justice often tended to formulate their demands in relatively concrete and locally-specific ways, far removed from the dizzy heights of reconciliation (e.g. delpla, 2010; helms, 2010). as i have argued elsewhere (jansen, 2008, 2013), i have found that the object of hope for many ordinary people was a “normal life.” of course, past “normal lives” (a key reference point) had included inter-national coexistence, but with regard to hopes for the future this aspect was much less prominent. so, if people now associated with opposing national “sides” met, why would they define this as an example of a crossing of national boundaries in a mosaic that was good in and by itself? why would they reinterpret previous interactions as such? previously, life with people who were positioned differently with regard to nationality had been just one part of “normal life”, and it was that normal life which featured as their main object of desire. after the war, insofar as crossing former frontlines might further the continuation or, more frequently, the re-establishment of some dimensions of “normal life” for themselves and their households, some were prepared to engage in such encounters. reconciliation, then, seemed to appear on people’s horizon if at all, not as a priority but as a side effect of a desire for reducing “abnormal” precariousness. some embraced this potential, some rejected it, and most never felt called upon to acknowledge it, preoccupied as they were with what they considered the far more pressing concerns of reestablishing a degree of “normal life.” studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 if reconciliation is the answer 235 which socially sanctioned positionings allow mutual recognition? with such evocations of “normal life” as the common ground on which many cross-frontline encounters existed, how can people find common ground to engage with each other? i ask this not in a metaphysical way, but as a very practical question that i believe is relevant to any attempts to facilitate rapprochement between ordinary people. reconciliation projects in the abrahamic tradition (derrida, 1999) are grounded in the assumption that the various sides share equal and inalienable humanity. they require that those who seek reconciliation mutually recognize each other as full and worthy human beings. as derrida points out, this approach is rooted in the religious traditions that share abraham as a key figure (judaism, christianity and islam), in which all people are ultimately equal before god. its impact, however, goes far beyond the religious domain. early after the 1990s war in bih, i found that such a universal humanistic framework underpinned much antinationalist activism and religious and non-religious efforts to restore some form of rapprochement and coexistence. it underpinned theoretical writings; it structured possible meetings, summer schools, and campaigns, and it ran through the expression with which post-war encounters across former frontlines were often justified on the most elementary level: we are all people! yet people do not engage with each other based on some abstract common humanity. any concrete form of reconciliation, however we understand it, requires encounters on the ground between actual persons. and on that practical level, encounters across former frontlines, regardless of whether they are seen as reconciliatory efforts by those involved, necessarily rely on mutual recognition between persons of specific social positionings. this implies that we must expect stark differences between such encounters: for example, persons associated with the different sides of the war could meet as young daughters from urban middle-class families at a sarajevo art exhibition, or as middle-aged, unemployed fathers who trade pirate cds on the arizona market in north bih. as has been pointed out, gender and kinship are crucial here (focaal, 2010; helms, 2007). people establish some degree of mutual recognition not as unmarked human beings, but for example, as fathers who experience similar difficulties in taking responsibility for their families. common humanity is thus not lived as an abstract principle, but it is given specific, socially-sanctioned (here: patriarchal) shapes in particular contexts. this is not only relevant to actual encounters between persons but also on the more general level of people’s attitudes towards imagined others, and therefore, of broader discourses of reconciliation. social positionings also channelled the ways in which people did or did not express some degree of empathy during the early post-war years, when the freshness of war suffering and related tensions made concrete encounters less likely for most. for example, during my research on both sides of the inter-entity boundary line in north-east bih, many women expressed a degree of empathy for their counterparts associated with the enemy army. while retaining physical studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 236 stef jansen distance, they established a degree of mutual recognition as mothers, pointing out that they understood the suffering of “their” mothers too. for men who had fought in the conflict, one possible post-war ground for mutual recognition could be a reconstruction of their war experience as lack of choice in extraordinary circumstances, where men, especially as fathers, were forced to take responsibility to protect their families (bašić, 2004). in any case, we cannot expect people to simply meet as human being x and human being y; they are always multiply positioned persons. thus, from the perspective of reconciliation efforts, one may ask: which socially-sanctioned subject positions (in terms of gender, class, urban/rural divisions, etc.) allow people to engage in mutual recognition across former frontlines? and which ones are more likely than other ones to do so in a just manner? reconciliation, restoration and emancipation the fact that mutual recognition requires individuals to be socially positioned, together with the power of the notion of “normal life”, provide a glimpse of the particular social order that such encounters presupposed. men and women establishing mutual recognition through reference to patriarchal kinship thus may reinforce existing social patterns of inequality. from my observations, it emerges that the “shared presents” that borneman (2002, p. 291) considers central to successful reconciliation, can often be rather closed, and display little tendency for transformation. i do not suggest that they were always conservative, nor that all reconciliation efforts must intrinsically be so, but, if a politics of justice is to be developed, it seems to me that this is a challenge that needs to be addressed. while borneman (2002) argues that these “shared presents” should acknowledge “the heterogeneity of life projects” and explore “new experiences of sociality” (p. 291), we should be open to the possibility that they more frequently reinforce existing inequalities in terms of gender, class, urban/rural differences, among others. while aiming to overcome war-related oppositions, they may actually strengthen other inequalities and divisions. some studies of how this works in gendered terms are included in a special issue of the journal focaal (2010). another example is the much-documented tendency amongst many people in post-yugoslav cities to compare the way of life of their prewar fellow-citizens of different nationalities positively with the “primitivism” of their fellow-nationals who moved into the cities during and after the war. here, an expression of respect for national others (i.e. a reduction of national antagonism) is achieved through negative judgments of co-nationals from villages (i.e. a reinforcement of urban/rural antagonism). perhaps the conservative potential of reconciliation discourse is not so surprising. after all, in english at least, the very term reconciliation indicates a restorative movement, a reconstruction of a past situation. the term pomirenje in bih too evokes peaceful acceptance rather than mobilization or action. reconciliation projects in other parts of the world (such as guatemala studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 if reconciliation is the answer 237 or cyprus), similarly have been found to confirm existing social patterns that crosscut the sides involved. the most famous example, the south african truth and reconciliation commission, which is often praised for its facilitation of a transition from apartheid to a democratic south africa without recourse to revenge, has been criticized for leaving the structures of socio-economic and gender inequality that underlay apartheid relatively untouched (e.g. feldman, 2002; ross, 2003; wilson, 2001). this introduces a pressing question for emancipatory understandings of politics of justice: which social practices and relations of inequality are consolidated by particular definitions of sides to be reconciled? sides can be constituted as claim-making parties in a struggle over material and other resources, and the way they are configured and legitimized in a particular set-up is an important dimension of justice with wide-ranging implications. here i suggest a potentially productive route of scholarly investigation is indicated by the feminist critical theorist nancy fraser (2007). in her work on the political philosophy of justice, spanning over two decades, fraser traces particular intersections of, and tensions between, claims for recognition, for redistribution, and most recently, for representation. it seems to me that a fruitful encounter could be constructed between such writings and the study of post-war bih, in a context in which the preoccupation with ethnonational identity privileges questions of recognition and representation to a large extent. the resulting relative absence of questions of redistribution from both domestic and foreign policy-making, public discourse, and scholarly work is, i believe, a particularly sharp indication of how the insistence on the identitarian matrix renders invisible other inequalities. interestingly, i have found in my research on bih that questions and answers about justice do not always match in expected ways. to put it schematically, when asking questions focused on issues of recognition, one is likely to get answers that emphasise maldistribution as much as misrecognition. and, when asking about distribution, people are likely to launch into a litany that targets misrecognition as much as it does maldistribution. both dimensions, then, are present and important in people’s concerns. yet, domestic and foreign dominant discourses strongly favour the voicing of recognition-related issues, and there is virtually no public register available that facilitates the reasoned articulation of concerns with maldistribution, let alone the manner in which they intersect with questions of recognition and representation. here, angry and cynical anti-political dismissals tend to be as good as can be expected. in this respect, i think, scholars undertaking empirical social scientific research in bih may learn from developments and debates in the political philosophy of justice, and in return, their insights may contribute to the difficult task of articulating an emancipatory politics of justice in a world marked by globalizing, neoliberalizing trends. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 238 stef jansen reconciliation, politics and the future the generally short-lived and partial cross-frontline encounters i have observed in the first post-war decade in bih relied not only on the consolidation of certain existing social patterns, but they also tended to display a relative absence of discussions of politics. for those concerned with reconciliation, this consensual silencing, in line with the liberal multiculturalist desire to flatten out any social antagonism that cannot be understood as “cultural” (žižek, 1997), begs the question to what extent such meetings may be developed into less superficial bonds. the examples mentioned earlier, of men and women finding a degree of mutual recognition in terms of fatherhood and motherhood, not only involve deeply gendered notions of common humanity, but both also rest on a representation of the war as a catastrophe that suddenly and violently overcame people. ordinary people, in this view, were only pawns in a cynical struggle for power and wealth by politicians, who carry exclusive responsibility for the war. this perspective seemed overwhelmingly dominant in my observations, and it is of course supported by quite a lot of historical documentation. steps towards mutual recognition based on such a shared view were perhaps more dependent on what was not said than on what was said. i have found that an important way to avoid controversial issues was to emphasise precisely the extraordinariness of wartime, contrasting it with the “normal life” one recalled from before the war. in actual encounters across former frontlines, matters of wartime responsibility, justice and a collective future were avoided, and mutual recognition was often established on a shared aversion of politika. for most people in bih, the word politika expresses an almost universal disgust with the corruption and cynical hunger for power of individual politicians (for an ethnographic discussion of how the term functions in everyday contexts in bih, see e.g. kolind, 2008). i do not claim that this is unique to bih. nor, unfortunately, do i think that its depiction of the actual behaviour of many politicians is far off the mark as a diagnosis in this country or in many others. yet what may be particular to bih is the extreme difficulty of discerning any alternative conceptions of politics, let alone any attempts to reclaim political debate as something that transcends self-interested machinations. one could say that the figure of politika has absorbed politics in its entirety. this has serious implications for reconciliation efforts, and indeed for any other forms of transformatory action. first, it hinders mobilization, as the visceral rejection of politika spills over into many other collective initiatives. there is widespread suspicion that many participants in the “civil sector,” including those engaged in efforts to foster reconciliation, are themselves irredeemably contaminated by politika. unfortunately, the occasional emergence of evidence of self-interested collusions between major ngo players and leading politicians does little to convince people of the opposite. other activists find themselves struggling to motivate people to engage in any social activity that goes beyond the realm studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 if reconciliation is the answer 239 of their own family. no doubt this is difficult anywhere, but the levels of cynicism in bih today appear to make it particularly challenging to persuade people to contribute to organized socio-political activity for a common good, however it is defined. second, in addition to distancing the speaker from immorality, greed, and lack of scruples, the blanket use of the term politika seems to imply something else too. it evokes some kind of pandora’s box containing knowledge, feelings, practices, and processes that are seen to be crucial to the suffering of the last two decades but that have to be boxed up in order to attain a sufficient degree of mutual recognition to even start talking across former frontlines. since there is broad consensus amongst domestic and foreign actors that this box must remain closed at any price, one cannot address many issues that are, by general agreement, crucial to any understanding of the war as well as to any possible improvement. i believe that we must ask ourselves if this pattern does not represent a risk for many activities that work towards some form of rapprochement and reconciliation. politika is blamed for the outbreak of war, for all the suffering it brought, for the fact that things are not getting any better and for the feeling that there are no signs that “normal life” is about to re-emerge. in most people’s view, politika is represented as the source of all evil: it has caused everything that is wrong in bih today. in response, many of the efforts to promote reconciliation—or at least some degree of rapprochement, coexistence, or reduction of tensions— rely on mutual recognition precisely through a shared aversion to politika and through an unspoken agreement to silence anything deemed political. while this represents a common distancing from the filthy machinations of politicians, it also entails a much more incisive and far-going process of depoliticization. yet how can a situation that is widely seen to be caused by politics, be overcome or even improved without recourse to politics? i suggest we can detect processes of depoliticization of two different orders. the first concerns the reach and form of administration over the territory of bih. we could call this its anatomy of government. the current institutional arrangement, a foreign-supervised and—enforced labyrinth of nationally organized collective representation, is considered to be unsatisfactory by virtually everyone in bih. in institutional terms, some would like to see more decentralization or separation (in the national key), whereas others would like to see the downgrading or dismantling of war-produced sub-polities (entities and cantons). this stalemate has characterized the existence of bih since the 1995 signing of the us-brokered dayton agreement. reconciliation initiatives tend to sweep such issues under the carpet as part of politika, leaving untouched glaring disagreements between people associated with different sides.” as mentioned earlier, at the most basic level opposing sides in the war crystallized around the question of the very existence of a bih polity and on the modalities of its citizenship regime. wartime lives in contexts marked by their differential implementation structured people’s contrasting experiences of that period and their views of the legitimacy of war aims and actions. unlike the situation in south africa, for example, there is no broad studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 240 stef jansen agreement over the relevant polity unit in bih reconciliation initiatives, and this complicates the raising of key questions of wartime responsibility, legitimacy, and the desired future anatomy of government in bih. this silencing is understandable: if a topic associated with the anatomy of government in bih is addressed, it could result in heated disputes on wartime responsibility and legitimacy, and ultimately, deadlock along national or nonnational lines (jansen, 2007). so this may be counterproductive for activist purposes. moreover, the anatomy of government gets plenty of airtime in the largely separate public spheres in bih. politicians regularly launch monologues about it, sometimes addressing opponents, but usually seeking legitimacy from amongst “their own.” as many analysts have pointed out, the ethnopolitical rhetoric that permeates bih is largely existential: it represents questions of government as questions of national survival (mujkić, 2007). ideologically bare, such monologues are organized almost exclusively within the identitarian matrix, and in this configuration it is extremely difficult to develop an alternative political register for the articulation of questions of the anatomy of government. yet if today, the legitimacy of bih’s anatomy of government is still a matter of dispute, does not this division, rather than a “groupist” model of competing nations, form the key antagonism to be addressed by reconciliation efforts? if so, how can one even begin to think of how to render those sides no longer opposed? this brings us to the second order of depoliticization that, in my view, bedevils reconciliation efforts. authors like borneman (2002), who see a remedy in rendering different sides no longer opposed, may interpret the “pandora-boxing” of politics as a grassroots replication of titoist top-down selective silencing of world war ii memories, so often blamed for the outbreak of 1990s violence. more important than this possible similarity, in my view, is a radical difference. yugoslav socialist reconstruction after world war ii was an integral part of a revolutionary project of social transformation. practical collective tasks of building a new society were legitimized, often through authoritarian means, with regard not to purity, tradition, and continuity (as in the current nationalist discourses), nor to individual enterprise, property, and liberal rights in a mosaic (as in the current foreign intervention), but to a common, qualitatively different future-to-be-built. this, of course, included a radical rethinking of the stakes of politics, and therefore of the ways in which sides were to be conceived of in the first place. in this light, the most challenging questions, i believe, concern the imagination of a societal future beyond reconciliation across former frontlines. with understandings of politics reduced to the figure of politika, everyday conversations in bih leave no place for a conception of politics as the collective development of a future-oriented societal project, as ideological debate, as vocation or as responsibility. what kind of future do reconciliation efforts project for society, not only in terms of the anatomy of government, but also of economic policy, social welfare, or sustainability, and so on? even if there was consensus on the reach and form of the polity, how do they imagine freedom, equality and, above all, solidarity in the future society to studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 if reconciliation is the answer 241 which reconciliation is supposed to contribute? i believe this is particularly important in current times, when certain neoliberalizing societal models are globally presented as if they need no justification, as if they are a natural order for which no alternatives exist. reconciliation efforts often reproduce depoliticization through the consensual silencing of sensitive wartime issues and questions of the anatomy of government, through ritual confirmations of the importance of “normal life,” but also through a belief, in tune with neoliberalism, that the sphere of politics should be as small as possible. does not the shared reluctance to address politics, through its reduction to politika, carry enormous risks? namely, does it not leave the definition of the societal future in the hands of those who have no interest to work towards any change at all? this would be a pity, because if there is one point of broad agreement in the exasperated litanies of people across bih beyond the attribution of blame to politika, it is the belief that things should not stay the way they are today. such dissatisfaction concerns recognition, representation and redistribution, although the dominance of the identitarian matrix renders the latter largely invisible in the public spheres. if dominant discourses of reconciliation assume that less politics will make the world more just, this resonates nicely both with current local public opinion in bih and with the neoliberally-framed foreign intervention. scholarly studies of bih should take up the responsibility, i suggest, to ask questions that go beyond the framework set by such domestic and foreign policy priorities. when exploring which processes of social change can turn ceasefires into starting points for better futures, reconciliation may, of course play a role, but we should dare to go beyond questions that elicit reconciliation as the answer. we would do well to exploit responsibly the privilege of scholarly reflection to think provocatively against the tide and to recalibrate questions of the politics of justice in bih and beyond. notes 1 this text elaborates some questions developed in a short text published in bosnianserbian-croatian under the title, “pet teških pitanja o pomirenju” (transl. a semić & m ostojić) in trauma i pomirenje, an in-house publication of the sarajevo-based trauma centar, part of the ngo kruh svetog ante. 2 in addition to paramilitary units closely related to political parties in bih, croatia, and serbia/montenegro, three main armies fought in the war. hvo (croatian defence council) was controlled by the croatian nationalist hdz and, to a large degree, by its mother party and army in croatia. vrs (army of republika srpska) was controlled by the serbian nationalist sds and, to a large degree, by its mentors in the government of serbia (or the federal republic of yugoslavia) and its army (the main inheritor of the yugoslav people’s army). the stated war aims of hdz and sds, which had gained large aggregate majorities of the vote amongst “their” respective nationals in 1990, were to defend “the croats” and “the serbs” from each other and, increasingly over time, from the consolidation of the republic of bih (rbih), in which those who declared bosniak (bosnian muslim) nationality in the 1991 census would form a relative majority. they established military control over large territories, “cleansed” their populations and sought adhesion to their “mother states.” yet a minority of people who they sought to interpellate as croats or serbs actually favoured rbih sovereignty, studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 242 stef jansen which had been supported by 62.68% of the electorate in a 1992 referendum. these people continued to live in territories controlled by arbih (army of the republic of bih). some fought in that army and others occupied positions of responsibility in rbih institutions. over time, however, arbih’s struggle to defend rbih increasingly came to imply a defence of bosniaks. this was a result of population movements, of the military strategies of their opponents which caused disproportional numbers of victims, especially civilian ones, amongst bosniaks, and of increasing control by the bosniak nationalist party sda. still, against a three-way symmetrical picture, the rhetoric and practice of sda and arbih always remained ambiguous, including bosniak ethnonationalism and bih inclusivism. note also that north-west bih saw heavy fighting between arbih and a separate bosniak-dominated army controlled by a local political-economic patron, formerly a top figure in sda, and that elsewhere too alliances and factions emerged on the local level that blurred a straightforward national definition of “sides.” references bašić, n. (2004). kampfsoldaten im ehemaligen jugoslawien: legitimationen des kämpfens und des tötens. in r. seifert, (ed.), gender, identität und kriegerischer konflikt, (pp. 89– 111). münster: lit verlag. borneman, j. (2002). reconciliation after ethnic cleansing: listening, retribution, affiliation. public culture 14(2), 281–304. bougarel, x. (1996). bosnie: anatomie d’un conflit. paris: la découverte. brubaker, r. (2002). ethnicity without groups. archives européennes de sociologie 4(2), 163189. brudholm, t. (2006). revisiting resentments: jean améry and the dark side of forgiveness and reconciliation. journal of human rights 5, 7–26. delpla, i. (2010). catégories juridiques et cartographie des jugements moraux: le tpiy évalué par victimes, témoins et condamnés. in i. delpla & m. bessone, (eds.), peines de guerre: la justice pénale internationale et l’ex-yougoslavie, (pp. 267-285). paris: ehess. derrida, j. (1999). cosmopolites de tous les pays, encore un effort! paris: galilée. feldman, a. (2002). strange fruit: the south african truth commission and the demonic economies of violence. social analysis 46(3), 234–65. focaal: journal of global and historical anthropology. 2010. special issue 57. beyond reconciliation: social reconstruction after the bosnian war. fraser, n. (2008). scales of justice: reimagining political space in a globalizing world. cambridge: polity. helms, e. (2007). “politics is a whore”: women, morality and victimhood in post-war bosniaherzegovina. in x. bougarel, e. helms, and g. duijzings, (eds.), the new bosnian mosaic, (pp. 235–54). aldershot: ashgate. helms, e. (2010). justice et genre: mobiliser les survivantes de guerre bosniaques. in delpla, i., and bessone, m., (eds.), peines de guerre: la justice pénale internationale et l’exyougoslavie, (pp. 249-265). paris: ehess. jansen, s. (2002). the violence of memories: local narratives of the past after ethnic cleansing in croatia. rethinking history 6(1), 77-93. jansen, s. (2003). why do they hate us? everyday serbian nationalist knowledge of muslim hatred. journal of mediterranean studies 13(2), 215-237. jansen, s. (2005). national numbers in context: maps and stats in representations of the postyugoslav wars identities: global studies in culture and power 12(1), 45-68. jansen, s. (2007). remembering with a difference: clashing memories of bosnian conflict in everyday life. in x. bougarel, e. helms & g. duijzings, (eds.), the new bosnian mosaic, (pp. 193–208). aldershot: ashgate. jansen, s. (2008). troubled locations: return, the life course and transformations of home in bosnia-herzegovina. in s. jansen & s. löfving, (eds.), struggles for home, (pp. 43–64). oxford: berghahn books. jansen, s. (2013). hope for/against the state: gridding in a besieged sarajevo suburb. ethnos studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 if reconciliation is the answer 243 [first published on-line ifirst on 16 jan 2013] kolind, t. (2008). post-war identification: everyday muslim counterdiscourse in bosnia herzegovina. aarhus: aarhus up. malkki, l. (1995). refugees and exile: from refugee studies to the national order of things. annual review of anthropology 24, 495-523. mujkić, a. (2007). mi građani etnopolisa. sarajevo: šahinpašić. ross, f. c. (2003). bearing witness: women and the truth and reconciliation commission in south africa. london: pluto. wilson, r. a. (2001). the politics of truth and reconciliation in south africa. cambridge: cambridge university press. žižek, s. (1997). multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic of multinational capitalism. new left review 225, 28-51. i illinois production note digital rare book collections rare book & manuscript library university of illinois library at urbana—champaign 201 9 ccccccccccc the ' harvard su cialist tracts ’ number 2 socialism and present * harvzeelsizisfaiiz: club day p olitics oooooooooooo the harvard sogialist tragts he harvard sqcialist club was organized by sixteen harvard under\ graduates in march, i908. for the purpose of x \ stimulating the study of socialism and contem— pot‘aneous social problems in harvard university. they began their study of radical methods, of reform because they believed the basis ‘ of present-day society fundamentally wrong. for the poverty and suffering about them they thought they saw a reason. to defend their attitude towards the past and present and to explain their programme for future social amelioration will be the purpose of the harvard socialist tracts. they ‘ will be issued at intervals throughout the college year, and will aim to represent the socialism which is studied and advocated by an increasing body of college men and women. single copies, 5 cents. wholesale price, 3 ‘cents. address 62 thayer hall, cambridge, mass. socialism and present day politics. social justice n the summer of the year 1912, social justice as a polit"i ii! ical asset was discovered, and a new political party was organized to capitalize the discovery. until recently the term was the exclusive possession of a few minor parties. dominant parties left it strictly alone, agreeing, despite their quarrels, that to suggest that social justice was not omnipresent would be to cast a reflection upon themselves. since mr. roosevelt stood at armageddon, however, it has suddenly dawned upon political leaders that there is a very widespread and very persistent belief among the voters that much of the poverty and misery in this land of plenty is due to an unjust organization of society. it is obvious that as soon as a majority becomes conscious of injustice, a party that does not endorse social justice in its platform is out of the running. thus it has come about that the attitude of each party toward the term social justice is the most important issue in‘present day politics. the parties are not agreed upon the meaning of the term. indeed they quarrel over it like children over a new toy. the traditional republicans treat the new discovery deprecatingly, as a. thing that, in so far as it has not always existed, thanks to the republican tariff, is a somewhat dubious vision, involving, in president taft’s own words, “a forced division of property, and that means socialism.” the democrats, on the other hand, far from keeping social justice in the background, cry it out from the housetops. woodrow wilson analyzes it in classic language. thomas marshall concentrates it into an epigram. even the ward heeler slaps his brother politician on the back, and declares that social justice is what he has stood for since he got his first political job. by its own claim the true monopolist 01' social justice, however, is that vigorous newcomer, sprung, minerva-like, full—grown from the brain of its impetuous leader, the national progressive party. with a program borrowed from bismarck, lloyd george and william jennings bryan, with as spectacular a. running team as has ever been hitched together, and with a press bureau 01' unrivalled efliciency, the progressive party has literally dinned social justice into the public ear. equipped with a camp following of social workers and philanthropists, and armed with a song book of revivalist hymns, the party stands at armageddon ready to dispute with man or beast, nay with charles f. murphy and tom taggart themselves, the title of true prophet of social justice. democrats and progressives do lip service, nay lung service, to social justice, although, as we will shortly see, they are in dispute among themselves as to what the term means. president taft boldly takes issue with them, declaring in his speech of acceptance that equal opportunity and “so-called social justice” are possible only under socialism, and hence by implication undesirable. here he has formulated the principle issue of modern politics. can social justice be achieved under a system in which the means of production are in private hands? is social justice compatible with capitalism? wilson and roosevelt say yes. taft says no. here is a clear issue, and the most important in the campaign. for it must be evident to any man of spirit that once the majority becomes thoroughly convinced that social justice and capitalism are incompatible, the days of capitalism will be numbered. there is left in our people enough of that primitive dynamic instinct which the germans call “volkskrafft,” to grapple with a system that is wrong and make it right. to let injustice live lest we interfere with property, as president taft would have us do, is a program that does not strike fire with a people that has mastered a continent. if the president’s analysis is true, his program will be rejected, for the tem. per of the nation is such that in the long run social justice will be placed above property. the democratic program progressive and democrat each has a program whereby social justice is to be inaugurated without the disturbance of property rights. let us examine the democratic program, as formulated by the standard bearer of the party. in a nutshell the program is to restore competition. the wilson theory, so eloquently expounded, holds that the free interplay of economic forces spells social justice. social injustice has arisen because our law makers, taking counsel with the minority, have granted certain privileges through private laws. abolish them, and we will “restore the economic freedom of the people.” “let us return,” he says in his speech of acceptance, “from what is abnormal to what is normal.” let us restore competition, not by the republican method of judicial or legislative flat, but by removing the causes of monopoly. then once more the free interplay of the laws of trade will establish by indirection that greatest good of the greatest number which all statesmen aspire to achieve. 2 'n '3 l} r"‘)/‘ ’4’} '. 3" ‘ 5/5,, , 4 '_),./ certainly this view is reactionary, frankly and by honest conviction. it is looking backward. it sees the promised land behind us, and hopes that by undoing some of our mistakes we may be able to scramble back. it is strange that a man with such a social philosophy should have been so widely heralded as a progressive. the probable reason is that conservative politics has so often been associated with corrupt politics, that when wilson entered public life he was at once taken to be progressive merely because he was honest. it is true that he wants to move; he is not a conservative. but since when did the term “progress” apply to movement regardless of its direction? governor wilson has deluded his followers to such an extent that some of them think it possible, crablike, to progress backwards. yet while the intentions of the party are boldly reactionary, its program is largely confined to intentions. neither from its platform nor from the speeches of its candidates can we glean the slightest information as to the means by which the reaction is to take place. governor wilson tells us that the tariff fosters monopoly, and should be reduced. yet our three greatest industrial combinations, the steel trust, the late lamented though yet vigorous standard oil 00., and the likewise disintegrated and likewise flourishing tobacco trust, are independent of tariffs, indeed international in character. governor marshall would have us arrest a few trust magnates, and forfeit the charters of corporations living in illicit relation~a program strangely inconsistent with wilson’s plea for the removal of the causes of monopoly, and moreover as futile as the attempt of the anarchist to abolish monarchy with a bomb. aside from these obviously inadequate means, we find no plan whereby this idyllic state of competition is to be induced to return. we had free competition once, and the blue books of the english parliament are full of its horrors. their description of the human machinery of production wasting away at work, and rotting away in its homes, is revolting and horrifying even now, after nearly a century has elapsed. painfully and slowly, through labor laws, through unions, through trade agreements among competitors, we have remedied a few of the most blatant faults, but always by limiting, by restricting, by eliminating competition. yet there have always been social theorists who would entice us back into the realms of delight from which we have strayed, and stranger yet, there are always people who hail these doctors progressive. the progressive program the national progressive party also has its formula for social justice in a capitalistic environment. roosevelt proposes to turn 3 over to the government a few activities which have hitherto been considered private, to license and regulate big business combinations, and to enact an extensive program of labor reforms, such as work ingmen’s compensation, old age pensions, minimum wage laws, etc. plainly there is nothing here to which a farsighted owner of industrial property, from a strict standard of personal gain, dould offer objection. regulation means freedom from irksome disintegration proceedings, and to a certain extent, government guarantee of what is traditionally considered a fair return on property. workingmen’s compensation means the elimination of a host of parasitic lawyers, to the advantage of both capital and labor, with the added expense, if there is any, shifted upon the consumer. minimum wage legislation protects the better class of employers from the competition of those who more flagrantly underpay labor. old age pensions is a humanitarian scheme largely financed out of taxes for the most part indirectly contributed by the laboring classes. the whole program constitutes a wise concession to the growing discontent of the masses. as has been well said, the progressive movement provides an enlightened program for progressive capitalism. it leaves the whole system of private ownership of industrial capital intact, and attempts to safeguard it by a few well selected concessions. it is not, after all, astonishing that we should find messrs. gary and perkins and munsey and hanna, doubtess in all sincerity, financing and advocating this program. were they calculating selfseekers, they could not draw up a program that more ingeniously protects their own property interests, and yet concedes so little. our experience with public service corporations has shown that public control cannot stop with a few minor regulations, and the trend of labor legislation shows that more and more the fixing of wages must be left to the government. when the price of goods is regulated, quality must be regulated. when hours of labor are fixed, wages must be protected. when profits are limited to a stated percentage, salaries must be regulated, and investments, and bookkeeping, lest profits be concealed in the form of high salaries or of reinvested surplus. if prices are fixed so that a manufacturer cannot raise his price to take advantage of an increased demand in the market, it is only just that output be regulated, so that the market can not be swamped and his prices cut below the profit line. one step in regulation will of necessity bring another. the ultimate aim of this program is, therefore, undoubtedly a form of state capitalism, in which the essential factors of business management, such as the fixing of prices and wages, of standards of quality and amount of output, are in the hands of salaried government boards 4 and oflicialrs, while the owner of industrial property, in so far as he does not himself receive a salary for work performed, becomes an idle pensioner upon the state with a few nominal property rights over the capital so employed. there is a strange inconsistency in this elaborate program of partial government control of privately owned industry. capitalism has always been justified on the ground that private ownership of capital alone can furnish the incentive that makes the wheels of industry revolve. the fact that postal systems are maintained at high efficiency, that enormous canals are built, and that gigantic irrigation projects are successfully completed without the incentive of private ownership, has been ascribed to a kind of spurious and abnormal condition. the old capitalism of john stuart mill existed to make the world go round. the capitalist class, munificently endowed, had the official function, in this theoretic system, of organizing, controlling and energizing industry, just as the french nobility of the old regime was endowed and pensioned on the theory that there was need of a special incentive for the defense of the land and the government of the masses. yet the new progressive capitalism makes the extraordinary proposal of giving up what was formerly considered the main justification of the capitalist system, but of keeping the system without the justification. formerly capitalists argued: “leave us our property so that we may have incentive.” now the cry is: “take away our incentive, but leave us our property.” progressive capitalism is in reality capitalism in process of decay, capitalism bankrupt of its life purpose. moreover it is visionary to suppose that anything that a majority will ever call social justice is consistent with its program. state capitalism will merely emphasize the injustice of endowing a class in return for idle ownership. labor is already wondering by what strange alchemy, to adapt carlisle’s phrase, an idle owner may extract a part of its earnings and call it interest. the growth of in~ dustrial consciousness among workingmen is impressing upon their minds 9. new point of view, wherein labor of brains and muscle is regarded as the foundation of industry, and capital merely employed by labor for its own use. it is a revolution in thought similar to that which convulsed europe a century ago, when men began to realize that government existed for them, not they for the private profit of the men who governed. you cannot make the workingman see the social justice of a. scheme whereby a stated percentage of the product of his labor is turned over to a bondholder who contributes no productive energy 5 to the process. very soon he comes to see that wages are a partial payment for work, and that interest is full payment for idless. no amount of old age pension schemes can palliate the essential injus-tice of such a scheme. thus we find, as we grow more familiar with the new movement, that progressive capitalism is but capitalism decaying, and its program of social justice is a program of essential injustice. it is argued by some progressives of a more radical stripe, that ultimately the progressive party will completely root out this injustice, and establish a condition much like that advocated by the socialists. after the control of industry has been shifted, according. to the program of advanced progressives, from private to public hands, it will then it is argued, become the obvious next step to cut down swollen fortunes by taxation, and thus gradually to stop the leaks in the industrial ship. to this it may be answered that if such intentions exist in the minds of a few members of the party, they have never been set forth in any official party platform, nor acknowledged by any responsible party leader. the large majority of the rank and file of the party have no shch program in mind, and it is what this majority believes that constitutes the party program, not what may be concealed in the hidden intentions of a few of its members. moreover for anyone who desires to abolish the private ownership of industrial property, it is dishonest, and at the same time very bad tactics, to appeal for support to the very capitalists whom it is intended to expropriate. it is a bit chimerical to suppose that a. party financed in large part by prominent members and stockholders of the united states steel corporation will be a very effective instrument with which to root out the private ownership of the means of production. as well expect that a party of southern slaveholders, financed by the biggest plantation proprietors in the south, and with a program calling for the regulation of slavery and old age pensions for slaves, could have been a very efiective instrument for the abolition of slavery. indeed it is surprising that such a party was not formed. if anything could have prolonged the peculiar institution of the south, a party of progressive, humanitarian slave owners would have done so. the socialist program the socialist party does not accept the dogma of the harmony of interests between capital and labor. it has the courage to recognize that any reform which benefits both capitalist and workingman can be of but small importance. therefore it does not appeal to “honest business men,” for support, but to the workers of brain and muscle. as' soon as the progressive party interferes with the sacred six per cent, the heavy financial gentlemen who replenish its war chest will decide that their offspring has become a party of anarchy, and will promptly shift their strength to a safer and saner party. the socialist party on the other hand draws its support from the laboring classes, and is financed by monthly dues from its membership. it puts the essentials of its whole program in its platform. 6 it calls upon all those who are not connected, by conviction or by pocketbook, with the system of private capitalism, to league themselves together in one political party, to buy out the big industrial concerns at their property value, and then by means of progressive income and inheritance taxes, or by similar devices, to confiscate gradually the bonds which have been used in payment. lest this program should result in an industrial bureaucracy the socialist party accompanies it with a series of political demands, including the initiative and referendum, recall, equal suffrage, and the reform of judicial power and procedure; and it strongly indorses the trades and industrial union movement, which it recognizes as a step towards the democratic internal management of the workshop. finally, since the ultimate program of the party will take many years to accomplish, the platform contains a series of immediate economic demands, containing most of the labor planks adopted by the progressive party. these planks have been urged since the birth of the party 12 years ago, with the full realization that they would be gradually taken over by the dominant parties, and by them enacted into law. the socialist party itself is as yet small, and there is some plausibility. to the belief that a vote for the party is a vote thrown away. to vote for a man who is sure to lose, requires some justification beyond the mere fact that one happens to agree with him. it is rapidly becoming incorrect, however, to call the socialist party a. mere minor party of protest. in wisconsin, for instance, 110 less than 15 members of the party were elected to the last legislature, and in 1910 the party candidate for governor polled 10% of the total state vote. in california the party cast 14% of the state vote, although running against as progressive a firebrand as hiram johnson. america shows every sign of repeating the history of ger— many, belgium, and france, where the socialist parties have reached positions of commanding prominence. undoubtedly the party will more than double its vote on november 5, and substantially increase its representation in congress and the various legislatures. this view is amply substantiated by prof. robert f. hoxie, one of the editors of the journal of political economy, who writes in that journal in march, 1912, after a minute review of the party victories in 1911: “the general impression conveyed by a close study of the objective facts of the november election period is that we are at last face to face with a. vigorous and effective socialist m0vement,——a movement which is nation wide, which is laying the foundations for a permanent party by building from the bottom of the political structure, which is recruiting its main strength in the most important civic and industrial centers, and is growing at a rapidly accelerating rate.” for those who want no more than a complete program of palliative social legislation, nothing can accomplish this end so rapidly as a vote cast for the socialist party. if the party polls above a million votes, in november, that “permanent scare” which prof. albert bushnell hart tells of receiving when he realized the growth 7 of the socialist party in california, and which impelled him to call for an immediate bull moose antidote, will communicate itself to every enlightened politician in the three old school parties. if the socialist party shows a substantial gain, there will be a veritable deluge of minimum wage laws, old ‘age pension bills, nay a whole lloyd george program of social legislation. for those who want a lloyd george program, a vote for the socialists will bring more re— sults than a dozen for any one of the old parties. the socialist party relies mainly, however, upon those who will not be content with a lloyd george program, but who ask for no less than the essential abolition of the private ownership of the means of production. the lloyd george program has its value, but relatively it is unimportant. germany has adopted it in its entirety, yet the revolutionary labor movement is as insistent and as discontented as ever. the time will inevitably come when the progressive party, its reform program enacted, will disintegrate; for capital, which fills the party’s war chest, and labor, which gives it most of its votes, cannot long lie together in peace. then there will come the need, in nation and state, for a strong, compact and determined party, to take up the work. it must be a party absolutely free from capitalist afliliations, and undoubtedly it will be the socialist party. if that party is now small, now is the time to build it up. it is a party for men and women of courage, and it is willing to leave progressive politics to the weaker spirits, of whom there are doubtless enough to carry the whole progressive program into effect in a very few years. g. c. h. eb: ?éarharb fiucialist qeiuh 62 thayer hall cambridge, massachusetts .9 1t 31 ®t£ims, 191243 president alfred jaretzki, jr. secretary and treasurer park j . white executive committee member r. walston chubb jacques a.melancon 116 eliot street. boston $33 ,4“ 'k«~—i\r\:|~ 4—,“..7; ”flaw. .. ”a bulletin of social informatics theory and application issn 2614-0047 vol. 2, no. 2, december 2018, pp. 39-46 39 https://doi.org/ 10.31763/businta.v2i2.112 investigating the effect of electronic government in realizing social justice in iraq heidar najm 1,*, ruhollah tavallaee department of information technology management, shahid beheshti university, tehran, iran 1 heydarnajm92@gmail.com * * corresponding author 1. introduction at present, the most accountable form of government which satisfies people’s expectations is the e-government. the goal of establishing e-government is providing people with better services, improving services for business, transparency, empowerment through information and creating efficient government [1]. thus, many experts believe that today it is possible to overcome some of the human problems with the help of the technologies that mankind has gained at this time. among these technological innovations is information technology. governments hope that with the help of information technology, they will be able to overcome many of these problems and thus, can accelerate the development path [2]. developing countries are moving toward developing e-government, but cultural and institutional considerations must be considered in order to succeed in deploying e-government [3]. the egovernment, as an applied area, essentially invites the users to face the challenges of the new internet media and wants them relying on their initiatives and through using new systems, remove those challenges. if we want to set a point for the start of activities in this area, we can refer to "us national performance review" program which was initiated in 1993 and emphasizes the role of e-government in federal government services. subsequently, led by the vice president, mr. al gore, who was linked with clinton's strong centralized focus on the developed economy, it was luminous and was totally a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t article history received august 11, 2018 revised september 6, 2018 accepted september 29, 2018 the increasing use of information technology, communication tools and applied programming has led to the development and evolution of public policies, processes, and functions. information and communication technology is entering not only the provision of citizen services, but also public utilities, improving accountability and transparency in government performance, and saving government costs and government management. developing countries are moving toward e-government, but in order to succeed in deploying egovernment, cultural and institutional considerations must be taken into consideration. this is a survey research and the statistical population includes experts in e-government in iraq. therefore, using morgan’s table, 196 experts have been selected. to collect data, questionnaires were used. through the study it was found that in terms of the development of the rule of law, iraq's missan oil company is in a good condition, and 55 percent of the respondents believed that the expansion of the rule of law, the behavior based on the principles and rules and avoiding to impose personal interests are the results of the deployment of e-government. furthermore, according to the results and considering that out of six existing sub-hypotheses, 5 sub-hypotheses were confirmed, the main hypothesis of the research which is based on the effect of e-government on social justice is confirmed. this is an open access article under the cc–by-sa license. keywords social justice e-government governmental management ict http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ 40 bulletin of social informatics theory and application issn 2614-0047 vol. 2, no. 2, december 2018, pp. 39-46 najm and tavallaee (investigating the effect of electronic government in realizing social justice in iraq) based on the new internet technology, with a reciprocal influence on policy making and technology to promote both of them [4]. the fact is that although the terms used for the electronic government are synonymous, their meanings are not just the same. there are two limited and open definitions. in general, the two words "government" and "statesmanship" are confusingly used in research. also, there are ambiguities to separate or combine the two terms of the "electronic democracy" and " electronic government". what is common among all definitions is that electronic government involves a comprehensive strategic approach for state organization, rather than the stage by stage automation of the government. the electronic government can be theoretically described as a method of drawing the perspective which in practice, guides the definitions on the basis of some theories, or uses the current measures to achieve descriptive definitions [5]. meanwhile, ict has developed all the technologies and businesses as well as oil and gas industry [2]. due to the complex conditions in the world, the iraq national oil company (nioc) which is in the process of updating information and communication technology in this industry, in large-scale requires the recognition and macro-planning for ict applications in the upstream business, which requires the use of e-government in the realization of social justice in the public organizations. thus, the social responsibility of the iraq national oil company is based on the idea of going beyond the legal requirements of business activity and achieving a positive impact on the environment and stakeholders, including customers, people, host communities, employees, and all those affected by the company's activities. recognizing the role of e-government in the development of social justice in the national oil company of iraq is one of the applied results of the research project, and government officials and employees will be among the beneficiaries [6]. today, technological development across the world implies the use of information and communication technology which has been introduced as a new type of compliance with the principles of the public sector. the increasing use of information and communication technology and applied programs has led to the development of the public policies, processes and functions. information and communication technology not only serves citizens, but also is used to increase the productivity in public sectors, improve accountability and transparency in government performance, and save the costs of government and state management [5]. 2. literature review the society, in other words, is a set of people living together and having a variety of cultural, economic, and political relations with each other. a society has structures in all its simple and complex forms. the contemporary complex and industrial societies and the simple societies of the past have not just been formed through the gathering of individuals but each of them has its own social structure which distinguishes it from the other societies. the basic structure of a society consists of institutions [7]. justice is one of the most important words in the history of human civilization and from the point of view of every human being with health ego, observing it has a great importance. so, no man (though he himself is crucial) denies it [8]. one of the tools to achieve justice is e-government. an electronic government often focuses on outsourcing, such as services provided to citizens. the basis of social justice theories is that economic and social inequalities have an impact on its judiciary organization, and any changes in the judiciary organization, socio-economic relations and income distribution has direct effects on the society [6]. undoubtedly, this deep and fundamental debate is controversial, has a wide scope, and deals with profound challenges in other epistemic areas such as ethics, the theories of personality, philosophy of law and epistemology. in his later writings, john rawls insists that it is possible to present a theory of justice which is purely political, without relying on a comprehensive philosophical or moral doctrine. according to him, his political conception of justice and its principles lacks a certain philosophical basis. he thinks that it is possible to create a framework for social and fair cooperation that would be accepted by all the scholars of comprehensive ethical, religious and philosophical doctrines and make it the base of the social structure of their society. this framework is outlined by the principles of justice that are not advocating the comprehensive philosophical or moral theory which he calls political liberalism. according to this political conception of justice, a desirable liberal society gives way to moral, issn 2614-0047 bulletin of social informatics theory and application 41 vol. 2, no. 2, december 2018, pp. 39-46 najm and tavallaee (investigating the effect of electronic government in realizing social justice in iraq) religious, and philosophical pluralism and acts in a way that all people accept this fair framework which is not based on a specific comprehensive doctrine since the principles of political justice do not claim that they can answers specific moral and philosophical questions. furthermore, these principles make comprehensive ethical and philosophical doctrines answer such questions so there is no rival who is sensitive to what people accept [9]. social justice is one of the implications of the concept of justice, which means the "fair" allocation of resources in a society. in this sense, the law must achieve an acceptable level of genuine and formal justice and must guarantee the fair distribution of resources and opportunities. in modern state management, the principles of social justice are one of the aspects of a new paradigm in state governance and especially emphasize the role of state administrators in providing and delivering highquality services to citizens and groups [10]. with the increase of public confidence, the pessimism to the government decreases, the cost of mutual control for both the government and the nation decreases. it seems that this situation affects the government in all three areas of economic, political and cultural activity [11]. trust plays an important role in maintaining the cohesion and solidity of social relations; this role becomes more prominent in the realm of the economy and has become a vital role for all actors, both individual and organizational, so that numerous studies, especially in the last decades of the previous century focused on the positive and direct correlation between the health of the economic system and social confidence [12]. 3. method since the focus of this research is on the number of experts and specialists in the field of electronic government in iraq, the managing and planning organization of iraq was selected as the statistical population (expert population) and using the morgan table, 196 experts were selected as samples. since the present research is a field research, the most common tool to collect information in this type of research is questionnaire. therefore, the data gathering tool in this research is a questionnaire, which is included in the research appendix. there are seven independent variables in the questionnaire: (1) increase in governmental transparency in electronic government, (2) development of rule of law in electronic government, (3) the necessity of answering in electronic government, (4) attention to justice and fairness, (5) increase in participation, (6) effectiveness and efficiency, and (7) attention to the necessity of social consensus. in this questionnaire, four questions are personal questions. the first question is the amount of work experience in the organization and the second and third questions are age and gender, respectively, and the last question in this section is the level of education. the dependent variable in this research is social justice, which in the questionnaire indirectly and directly related to the other dependent parameters are evaluated. table 1. scale and measurement coefficient of the questionnaire. measurement scale measurement coefficient very high 9 high 7 moderate 5 low 3 very low 1 in the questionnaire, opinions and tendencies of the responders about the subject are asked. according to the likert scale, the responses are ranked from very high to very low. the scale and measurement of the questionnaire shown in table 1. therefore, the responder has no limits to answer and is not limited in predetermined categories. in this questionnaire, the severity of the effect of each factor was measured using arithmetic mean, mean of each indicator (1) and weight of each indicator (2). in these two formulas, aj, ri, n and wj are arithmetic mean of indicator j, scores obtained for each indicator by the person i, sample number and weight of indicator j, respectively. 42 bulletin of social informatics theory and application issn 2614-0047 vol. 2, no. 2, december 2018, pp. 39-46 najm and tavallaee (investigating the effect of electronic government in realizing social justice in iraq) 𝐴𝑗 = ∑𝑟𝑖 𝑛 i=1,2,3,….,56 j=1,2,3,…..,60 (1) 𝑊𝑗 = 𝐴𝑗 ∑𝐴𝑗 j=1,2,3,…..,60 (2) to confirm the research hypotheses, it is necessary to analyze the collected data based on the statistical tests. in this regard, two parts of statistics, descriptive statistics and statistical inference are used. descriptive statistics including frequency distribution tables, central tendency and dispersion index (mean, standard deviation, skewness and elongation) and bar charts are used to describe the data. inferential statistics test, including t-test to compare two independent groups, f test (variance analysis test) to compare more than two groups, pearson correlation coefficient to study simple relationships between research variables and multiple regression coefficients to analyze the effect of the variables. the t test method examines the hypothesis related to mean of statistical population. since our hypotheses examine the degree of correlation between the two variables, correlation coefficient is needed. as in the definition of correlation coefficient, the intensity of the dependence of the two variables is called correlation coefficient, which is a number between -1 and 1. the closer the number is to one, the greater the correlation is. in the science of statistics, there are many types of correlation coefficients, each of which measure the correlation between the two variables according to the type of data and the variable conditions. therefore, when using these methods, the type of variables used in the research should be paid special attention. since both variables are ratio-interval and both variables are quantitative in the research, the pearson correlation coefficient based on the two-variable variance and their standard deviation, which has a high power among other types of correlation coefficients, is used. the total statistical analysis is done in the spss software. 4. result and discussion 4.1. descriptive statistics the gender distribution of respondents is in a way that 18% are female and 82% are male. furthermore, the age distribution of respondents can be seen in table 2. table 2. the age distribution of respondents age frequency relative frequency cumulative relative frequency 21-30 42 21 21 30-4 36 18 39 40-50 44 22 61 50-60 36 18 79 >60 42 21 100 total 200 100 fig. 1. frequency distribution of respondents' gender issn 2614-0047 bulletin of social informatics theory and application 43 vol. 2, no. 2, december 2018, pp. 39-46 najm and tavallaee (investigating the effect of electronic government in realizing social justice in iraq) table 3. scoring and description of the used questionnaire results absolutely agree agree have no idea disagree absolutely disagree number of questions 20-19 18-15 14-11 10-7 4-6 4 increase transparency 15-14 14-11 11-8 8-5 5-3 3 development of rule of law 20-19 18-15 14-11 10-7 4-6 4 the need for accountability 10 9-8 7-6 5-4 3-2 2 attention to justice and fairness 30-28 27-21 21-16 15-10 9-6 6 increase participation 15-14 14-11 11-8 8-5 5-3 3 attention to the need for social consensus fig. 2. frequency distribution of increased transparency. fig. 3. frequency distribution of the need for accountability. 44 bulletin of social informatics theory and application issn 2614-0047 vol. 2, no. 2, december 2018, pp. 39-46 najm and tavallaee (investigating the effect of electronic government in realizing social justice in iraq) fig. 4. distribution frequency of attention increasing participation. fig. 5. frequency distribution of variable considering the need for social consensus. 4.2. inferential statistic the research variables were analyzed in the descriptive statistics section with the actual scores given. however, in order to ensure that the data are normal and the absence of any irregularity in the accuracy of the statistical tests, these variables were normalized using standard z score, and then we performed statistical tests. the formula of z score is as follows: 𝑍 = 𝑋 − 𝑀𝑒𝑎𝑛 𝑆.𝑑 (3) x is the responder's score, mean is the mean of the variables and s.d is the standard deviation of the variable. using the above equation, all the research variables were normalized so they have a mean of 0 and standard deviation of 1, and replacing this change in the data, we can use parametric methods, ensuring the normal distribution of the data. to determine the method of testing the hypothesis, first, it is necessary to be sure about the distribution of the variables of the research since this test determines which solidarity model has more similarity with our data. issn 2614-0047 bulletin of social informatics theory and application 45 vol. 2, no. 2, december 2018, pp. 39-46 najm and tavallaee (investigating the effect of electronic government in realizing social justice in iraq) table 4. the results of descriptive score inferential statistics standard deviation the average the number the name of the variable 1/439 3/28 200 the increase of transparency 1/422 3/37 200 development of rule of law 1/425 2/845 200 the need for accountability 1/392 3/625 200 attention to justice and fairness 1/397 3/87 200 increase participation 1/384 3/515 200 attention to the need for social consensus table 5. single sample t-test results variables single sample t-test results the assumed average of society= 3 the variable name the confidence distance 95% average difference in averages pvalue (bilateral) degrees of freedom the t statistics upper limit lower limit 3/479 3/080 0/28 0/026 199 2/751 the increase of transparency 3/567 3/173 0/37 0/000 199 3/679 development of rule of law 3/042 2/647 -0/155 0/237 199 -1/538 the need for accountability 3/818 3/432 0/625 0/000 199 6/349 attention to justice and fairness 4/063 3/676 0/870 0/000 199 8/807 increase participation 3/707 3/323 0/515 0/000 199 5/262 attention to the need for social consensus as we can see, in all variables except for the need for accountability variable, the value of the t statistic is higher than 96/1 and the error level is smaller than 0.05 and the lower limit of the obtained values is also higher than 3. therefore, with all the reasons, the effect of e-government implementation on these variables is accepted. 5. conclusion the research findings highlighted the fact that only 45 percent of respondents were positive about increasing transparency resulting from the launch of e-government at the missan oil company, which is indicative of the fact that e-government efficiency is well-suited to many operational and managerial levels it has not been described and there is a strong inertia from the staff and managers. iraqi missan oil company should improve this procedure and plan to reduce the negative attitudes of its employees along with the maintenance of procedures and working principles. in relation to the development of the rule of law, the oil company missan iraq is in a good position. 55% of respondents view the rise of rule of law and the rule of law-based approach and avoiding personal loopholes as a result of the deployment of e-government. regarding the need for accountability, the existing practices are not so interesting and employees do not distinguish between the traditional system and the e-government system. more than half of the studied population is not responding to the egovernment's effectiveness. regarding the development of justice and fairness in e-government, we must say that this variable is much stronger than previous variables. agreeing 64.5 percent of respondents with this topic is very interesting. the increase in the participation rate is above the level of justice and fairness, and with 46 bulletin of social informatics theory and application issn 2614-0047 vol. 2, no. 2, december 2018, pp. 39-46 najm and tavallaee (investigating the effect of electronic government in realizing social justice in iraq) 80% of respondents' agreement, it can be said that the full glory is about the effectiveness of egovernment in the development of social justice. the first hypothesis of the research based on the significant effect of "e-government" on "increasing the transparency" is confirmed to the tstatistic certificate with a value of 751.2 in a singlesample t-test with 95% confidence. as a result, the first hypothesis of the research is confirmed. the second hypothesis of the research is based on the significant effect of e-government on the "development of the rule of law" to the tstatistic certificate with a value of 679/3 in a single-sample t test with 95 % confidence. as a result, the second sub-hypothesis of the research is confirmed. the third hypothesis of the research is that the "e-government" has a meaningful effect on the "the need of accountability" with the t-statistic of 1.385 in the one-sample t-test, which has no effectiveness. because the mean confidence interval contains also 3, as a result, this hypothesis is not statistically significant and the third hypothesis of the research is rejected. the fourth hypothesis of the research is based on the significant effect of e-government on "paying attention to justice and fairness" to the t-statistic certificate with a value of 349.6 in a single sample t test with 95 % confidence. as a result, the fourth sub-hypothesis of the research is confirmed. the fifth hypothesis of the research is based on the significant effect of e-government on the "increase in participation" to the t-test certificate with a value of 8. 807 in a single-sample t test with 95 % confidence. as a result, the fifth sub-hypothesis of the research is confirmed. the fifth hypothesis of the research is based on the significant effect of "e-government" on "the importance of social consensus" to the t statistic certificate with a value of 5.262 in a single sample t test with 95 % confidence. as a result, the fifth sub-hypothesis of the research is confirmed. the main hypothesis of the research on the effectiveness of e-government in social justice, according to the confirmation of the 5 sub-hypotheses of the six existing sub-hypotheses, is confirmed. references [1] j. c. bertot, p. t. jaeger, and j. m. grimes, “using icts to create a culture of transparency: e-government and social media as openness and anti-corruption tools for societies,” gov. inf. q., vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 264– 271, 2010. [2] m. r. bin abdul karim and n. m. khalid, e-government in malaysia: improving responsiveness and capacity to serve. pelanduk publications, 2003. [3] v. ndou, “e–government for developing countries: opportunities and challenges,” electron. j. inf. syst. dev. ctries., vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 1–24, 2004. [4] å. grönlund, “state of the art in e-gov research–a survey,” in international conference on electronic government, 2004, pp. 178–185. [5] m. hatam, “key factors for success in implementing e-government in iraq,” tarbiat modares university, 2011. [6] h. kyoumars, a. hooshmand, m. m. varaz, v. baigi sivan, and v. sasan, “analyzing the social justice in spatial structure of sanandaj city,” armanshahr, vol. 4, no. 7, pp. 103–112, 2012. [7] j. rawls, the basic structure as subject. dordrecht: springer, 1978. [8] l. l. tung and o. rieck, “adoption of electronic government services among business organizations in singapore,” j. strateg. inf. syst., vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 417–440, 2005. [9] e. kirchner and j. sperling, eu security governance. manchester: manchester university press, 2018. [10] m. moghimi and m. alaei ardakani, “measuring good goverance factors and e-government role in enhancing it,” q. j. inf. technol. manag., vol. 3, no. 8, pp. 171–188, 2011. [11] h. d., a. mcgrew, d. goldblatt, and p. j., “global transformations: politics, economics and culture,” in politics at the edge, c. pierson and s. tormey, eds. london: palgrave macmillan, 2000, pp. 14–28. [12] s. szreter and m. woolcock, “health by association? social capital, social theory, and the political economy of public health,” int. j. epidemiol., vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 650–667, 2004. studies in social justice volume 4, issue 1, 47-66, 2010 correspondence address: ada s. jaarsma, department of philosophy, sonoma state university, 1801 east cotati ave, rohnert park, ca 94928 usa. tel: +1 707 664-3192, email: ada.jaarsma@sonoma.edu issn: 1911-4788 rethinking the secular in feminist marriage debates ada s. jaarsma 1 department of philosophy, sonoma state university, rohnert park, california, usa abstract the religious right often aligns its patriarchal opposition to same-sex marriage with the defence of religious freedom. in this article, i identify resources for confronting such prejudicial religiosity by surveying two predominant feminist approaches to same-sex marriage that are often assumed to be at odds: discourse ethics and queer critical theory. this comparative analysis opens to view commitments that may not be fully recognizable from within either feminist framework: commitments to ideals of selfhood, to specific conceptions of justice, and to particular definitions of secularism. i conclude by examining the “postsecular” turn in feminism, suggesting that we can see the same-sex marriage debate not in terms of an impasse between differing feminist approaches, but in terms of shared existential and ethical affinities. introduction several years ago, good friends of mine, two gay men in san francisco, invited their friends and family to participate in a beautifully organized two-day wedding. one of them, reflecting on the significance of the event, explained that he was interested in discovering who—and who would not—accept this invitation and, by attending the wedding, acknowledge his marriage as real and meaningful. deciding to marry and, perhaps more importantly, holding a public ceremony in the presence of community reflects core values that both men uphold: building a family, owning a home, demonstrating intrinsic connections between their way of life and their identities as gay men. the wedding itself, then, was not simply about the sharing of vows, but rather about securing recognition, by the people who matter most, of their relationship and life together. this recognition was achieved literally in the form of a large marriage certificate, signed by every guest; everyone who attended the wedding was in this way bearing witness. according to these friends of mine, to advocate same-sex marriage, whether as a bride, groom, or guest, is to stand up for specific ideals of social justice. these ideals include the equality of all citizens under the law, such that marriage is an inclusive institution, available to heterosexual and to gay and lesbian couples. efforts to legalize same-sex marriage stem from more than simply an abstract commitment to equality. legalization reflects the achievement of the public recognition of non48 ada s. jaarsma studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 heterosexual commitments. such recognition is coveted by gay and lesbians like my friends in san francisco because it seems to verify and validate the essentially normal goodness of same-sex intimacy. the belief that same-sex marriage embodies ideals of equality and inclusivity animated the short-lived celebrations in san francisco of same-sex marriage in 2004, made legal by mayor gavin newsom and later annulled by the supreme court of california. as it happens, my friends got married in 2007, and so their wedding ceremony did not yield a legally bound marriage contract, since it did not occur in the brief months of 2008 in which same-sex marriage was actually legal in the state of california. whereas the state continues to uphold as legal the unions of those couples who did marry in california between june 16, 2008 and november 5, 2008, the federal government in the united states does not recognize any same-sex marriage as legal. as a canadian woman living in the united states, i am somewhat less persuaded that same-sex marriage should be an overarching ideal for social justice efforts, even though, since my partner is a woman and so cannot become my legal spouse, we are restricted from partaking of the significant privileges enjoyed by married people. for example, although i have permanent residency in the united states, my partner, who is finnish, cannot appeal to our relationship as grounds for access to residency herself. in contrast, since same-sex marriage has been legal at the federal level in canada since 2005, i would be able to sponsor her for residency in canada on the basis of our relationship. of course, i am delighted that this possibility exists and would not refute the essential rightness of the constitutional arguments that led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in canada. however, as people who cross borders on a regular basis, my partner and i are not convinced that same-sex marriage actually does secure equality and civil inclusivity for every individual, especially given the contingencies of citizenship itself. if we attend to the fact that the laws and conventions that govern citizenship are historical and cultural and result inevitably in the exclusions of some from core rights and privileges enjoyed by others, then such exclusions become troubling because they reinforce highly problematic disparities between what is considered “normal” (good citizens with property and classmobility) and what is marginalized. moreover, even though we ourselves would benefit pragmatically from the immigration rights that emerge from legally recognized marital unions, the version of “family” that is affirmed by such rights is also essentially contingent. many people and countless domestic situations are excluded from such benefits: for example, single individuals, individuals who may be committed to each other but are not lovers, people with polyamorous relationships. in my reflections here, i do not intend to undermine my friends’ approach to samesex marriage. in fact, i want to articulate their framework—as well as my own—in light of two prevailing feminist methods of striving for social justice: liberal discourse ethics and queer critical theory. it can be valuable to examine debates about social justice, like the debate within feminist philosophy between proponents of discourse ethics and queer critical theory, because a comparative analysis of these different approaches can make explicit the commitments that underlie each framework. rethinking the secular 49 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 on the one hand, discourse ethics argues that the ideals of reciprocity, respect, and reflexivity should govern public debate and policy change, and for this community of thinkers, social justice manifests as a drive towards equality and enfranchisement. along these lines, my friends in san francisco celebrate same-sex marriage and work for its legalization because it represents real progress towards equality under the law. in contrast, the queer critics of these ideals argue against the goal of equality, associating it with a stifling homogeneity that promotes highly specific versions of morality and normalcy at the expense of other ways of living. i hesitate at the idea of a large wedding ceremony in which my partner and i exchange vows in part because of the normalizing, often consumer-based, prescriptions that seem inherent in such rituals. i find it difficult to imagine a wedding that does not in some way depend upon ideologies of consumption and conformity to heterosexual notions of nuclear family; this difficulty in turn raises questions about the nature of marriage itself, given its institutional history of racist and patriarchal practices. within these two lines of thought, we find different models for where we should ultimately place our hope for social justice and are left with two seemingly incommensurate questions. 2 this debate currently animates feminist discussions about the legalization of samesex marriage. whereas discourse ethics emphasizes the inclusive ideals of social institutions, the queer critique examines the exclusionary effects of an institution such as marriage. differing positions on the significance of the genealogy of marriage, on the relations between law and intimacy, and on the public benefits and harms resulting from various marriage policies emerge from these two camps. should we look to ideals like autonomy and equality to guide our theory and activism? or should we be attuned to the exclusions that result from what may be misguided attempts to secure equal recognition under the law? 3 nevertheless, while proponents of each approach may disagree about the relationship of individuals to the public sphere, they share important underlying feminist commitments to identify and undermine patriarchal forms of prejudice. in the ongoing debates over same-sex marriage, such prejudice is found most visibly within the christian right in the united states. 4 the christian right’s opposition to same-sex marriage, which is at odds with both feminist arguments, depends upon maintaining a firm religious/secular divide, and this divide, a divide which is generally unquestioned by all parties involved in debating same-sex marriage, is the subject of my analysis in this article. in its battle against same-sex marriage, the christian right combats what its leaders call the “perilous ascendancy of american secularism” (castelli, 2007, p. 156). such arguments mobilize explicit language of religious persecution, with evangelicals positioned as martyrs in an ongoing “war on christians.” within this conservative logic, “efforts by gay people to seek redress in the courts become acts of religious intolerance and persecution” (2007, p. 160) because this activity is identified not as the democratic work of citizens but as a secularizing assault against highly specific theological and cultural commitments. the legalization of same-sex marriage is thus cast as an attack on christianity itself. although most of the virulent opposition to same-sex marriage employs religious rhetoric, it is far from apolitical. these arguments are, according to elizabeth castelli’s (2007) analysis, unabashedly political, framing issues like the opposition to same-sex marriage in terms of religious freedom, “arguing that christians are the victims of bigotry, second-class status, and court-sanctioned injury” (p. 159). the 50 ada s. jaarsma studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 christian right thus appropriates language of equality and reciprocity, mobilizing the resonances of terms associated with the liberal left even as it attempts to combat leftist political platforms that place gay and lesbian unions on equal footing with the “traditional” and “religiously sanctioned” family unit. it endorses deeply discriminatory views of gender and sexuality, prejudices that kathleen sands (2008) has recently diagnosed as a “revitalized patriarchalism” (p. 318). its anti-feminist opposition to same-sex marriage depends upon explicitly religious rhetoric for its condemnation of deviations from a heterosexual “creational” ideal of marriage. 5 the political and cultural impact of a growing alliance between the christian right and pro-market capitalists has been considerable, especially in the united states.6 normative ideals and normalizing critique given this powerful christian-capitalist alliance, there is a clear need for productive, explicitly feminist work that subverts the influence of such patriarchal bellicosity. rather than adjudicating between the two feminist modes of reasoning about samesex marriage described above, in what follows, i outline their contrasting positions in order to identify valuable resources within each approach for confronting the revitalized patriarchalism of the christian right. i go on to assess how the feminist debates over same-sex marriage risk reinforcing a religious/secular divide, and i question the consequences of this divide. i argue that reflecting on the religious/secular divide is useful for several reasons. first, it opens to view commitments that may not be fully recognizable from within either feminist framework, commitments to ideals of selfhood and to specific conceptions of justice. i will outline, for example, how discourse ethics’ approach to secularism tends to invoke freedom as a matter of choice, asserted without coercion by individuals; in contrast, the queer approach to secularism appeals to a form of freedom in which selfhood is understood to be a matter of becoming, along particular lines. second, when the religious/secular divide remains under-theorized, it risks granting deference to the category of religion itself, unintentionally ceding ground to anti-feminist patriarchalisms. third, by reflecting on an alternative genealogy of secularism, we can access valuable ethical and existential resources, resources that offer pragmatic means by which to advance feminist projects of social justice; these resources correspond to what i will identify as a “postsecular turn” in contemporary feminist thought. both feminist discourse ethics and queer critical theory are united in their critique of conservative patriarchalisms and offer tools to identify and overturn social injustice. their methodologies differ considerably, however, and at the heart of this difference is this question: do we want to achieve normalcy, or do we want to subvert normalcy? whereas discourse ethics looks to normative ideals as both guided by and guiding healthy democratic practice, the queer critique characterizes such ideals as exclusive, normalizing prescriptions. pragmatically, this debate means questioning the degree to which state intervention should secure equal rights based on formal recognition and substantive access to privileges. should we, for example, strive for full civic inclusion in our communities by securing the legality of same-sex marriage? or rethinking the secular 51 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 should we rather focus our attention on ways in which marriage laws deepen longstanding prejudices about who does and does not belong in our communities? feminist theorists who employ the liberal project of discourse ethics look to a procedural conception of justice and uphold a conception of rationality that is essentially emancipatory. according to this approach, as well-socialized and educated citizens, we are able to engage in public debates that are inclusive and critical rather than in segregated debates that merely reinforce difference. in other words, through the very workings of public debate, we can hope to secure equality, reciprocity, and respect for all participants, despite differing cultural or religious backgrounds. 7 in the terms of discourse ethics, we can undermine discriminatory norms like heterosexism on two significant grounds. first, the sincerity required for discourse ethics depends upon an “exacting kind of impartiality” in which each participant actively puts herself into the situation of everyone else, taking the other’s understanding as seriously as her own (habermas, 1999/2003, p. 270; keller, 2008, p. 176). as citizens, we are each called to reflect on the values of our own particular communities and cultivate the capacity for acknowledging—as opposed to ignoring or repudiating—the stranger. the existence of a stranger challenges us to confront any prejudicial assumptions that might exclude this other individual. 8 in order to advocate for same-sex marriage employing the framework of discourse ethics, the case can be made that its legalization furthers the broader project of creating a legitimate democracy. according to discourse ethics, a shared world is not a given but a mandate that has to be achieved collaboratively: we actually achieve a moral and just society together through an inclusive “we-perspective” brought about by participants. take, for example, the advisory opinion to canada’s parliament that the legalization of same-sex marriage through the 2005 civil marriage act would have legal validity: in this opinion, the canadian supreme court explained, “our constitution is a living tree which, by way of progressive interpretation, accommodates and addresses the realities of modern life” (as cited in hogg, 2006, p. 717). since, according to discourse ethics, justice extends in principle to all individuals universally, we are prohibited from appealing to those particular norms that govern our own specific cultural or religious communities. rather, we must search for norms that are inclusive of the stranger and the neighbour, and the democratic ideals that govern this process will secure our hope for social justice. we can therefore condemn prejudicial exclusions—including arguments against same-sex marriage— both as falsely universalizing and as wrongly imperial about the goodness of one community’s norms over another. 9 this statement exemplifies the expectation upheld by discourse ethics that our democracies are, in jürgen habermas’s terms, “truth-sensitive” (2006, p. 18) and self-correcting. it is important to note that public debate can help legitimate democracy only through the specific institutions and procedures of each democratic system. in other words, the debates over same-sex marriage in canada and in the united states differ in part because of real procedural differences between the two countries. when the hawaii state supreme court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage in baehr v. lewin in 1993, this decision gave rise to sweeping countermobilizations across the us in “defense” of the sanctity of heterosexual family: the introduction of the defense of marriage act in 1996, the passing of many mini 52 ada s. jaarsma studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 domas by state referendums and ballot initiatives, and george w. bush’s declaration of a special “marriage protection week” in 2003.10 in contrast, same-sex marriage was legalized at the federal level in canada in 2005. in her analysis of this contrast, miriam smith (2005) points out that the samesex marriage debates within the united states reflect the very recent legal linkage between variant forms of sexuality and criminality (p. 226). it was only a few short years ago in 2003 that the u.s. supreme court overturned the criminalization of sodomy as unconstitutional in lawrence v. texas. 11 in canada, sodomy was decriminalized in 1969. because of this difference in the two nations’ historical timelines, smith explains, opponents of same-sex marriage in the united states tend to define non-normative sexualities as illegitimate on religious and moral terms, whereas in canada communities have had many decades to recover from the legacy of the rhetoric of criminality. in canada, then, the debate over the legalization of same-sex marriage can more naturally be treated as a question of human rights; opponents of same-sex marriage therefore lack easy recourse to the moralizing rhetoric south of the border. by citing this example, i do not mean to endorse a progressivist narrative in which equality results, somewhat inevitably, through historical developments; rather, i want to emphasize the specificities of not just the terrain of the debate itself but the institutional procedures for pursuing policy change. the second way in which discourse ethics enables us to undermine discriminatory norms like heterosexism concerns its distinction between two forms of rationality: “strategic” rationality, which is oriented towards profit, power, and efficiency, and “communicative” rationality, which is oriented towards truth, moral rightness, and democratic legitimacy. according to discourse ethics, strategic rationality threatens our capacity to achieve social justice when it colonizes social realms that are crucial for the socialization and coordination of citizens—realms that should be characterized by the contrasting form of reason, communicative rationality. 12 to participate in public debate is in principle to commit to combating the invasion of commercial interests into democratic spheres of education and media; we need access to good information as well as the freedom to make our own voices heard. emphasizing the priority of communicative reason over strategic reason is to affirm the fundamental equality of citizens because it is truth and moral rightness, not financial gain or power, to which public debate is oriented. we see this prioritizing of communicative reason in the marriage debates where many feminist liberals advocate for changes to marriage law because of the necessity of redistributing access to state-administered benefits, whether through a more egalitarian version of legalized marriage or through the dissolution of marriage altogether because of its inherent economic privileging of some relationships over others. 13 conversely, we find examples of the invasion of strategic reason into the realms of communicative reason in the christian right’s opposition to same-sex marriage when it employs the profit imperatives of the market rather than the valid claims of a democratic community. in the “evangelical” community in north america, prejudicial norms are promulgated through the contemporary commercial christian music industry, through very profitable magazines that advise girls and boys on appropriate lifestyle choices, and through an increasing number of television shows and films that pander to the christian consumer base. we can employ discourse rethinking the secular 53 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 ethics to call into question this encroachment of strategic interests into the realm of public debate.14 strategic reason is also at work in the expansion of the gay marketplace. in her recent analysis of gay tourism, for example, nan alamilla boyd (2008) identifies the neo-liberal imperatives of profit and efficiency that underlie gay and lesbian marketing campaigns, in which spending is equated with civil rights (p. 226). political enfranchisement, rather than securing the formal inclusion of all citizens, occurs through highly specific practices of consumption, and gay marriage becomes an export commodity, as cities, provinces, and countries that legalize same-sex marriage begin to actively court the “lavender dollar” (p. 228). whereas discourse ethics tends to support liberal arguments in favour of same-sex marriage, it does so on the basis of the equality of individuals, not on the grounds that the gay demographic is worthy of civic recognition because of its inherent promise of profitability. to sum up, becoming “normal” as a goal of discourse ethics involves specific acts and capacities: being able to listen impartially to others, especially to strangers, and engaging in public debate. on a broader level, as citizens, we need to be socialized in ways that cultivate our sensitivity to truth and to moral rightness. through these habits, we gain the will to oppose any procedures at odds with the ideals of equality and autonomy, as we develop suspicions toward arguments of profit and efficiency. to become normal is thus to become reasonable and to participate in the collaborative project of creating a healthy, legitimate democracy. the feminist argument that develops out of queer theory takes a more sceptical stance. rather than affirming the ideals of communicative reason, the queer critique looks to the exclusions inherent in certain versions of democratic enfranchisement. 15 these differing perspectives on “normal” hinge upon debates over the very nature of identity-claims: is an identity claim a demonstration of authenticity? if so, then a claim to gay or lesbian identity is deserving of recognition and equal treatment under the law in part because it reflects the transparent self-understanding of a citizen. in contrast, is such a claim potentially a symptom of bad faith because ideals of essentialism depend upon masking their prescriptive and contingent nature? whereas the role of the citizen in discourse ethics reflects an essentially formal identity, open in principle without discrimination to all who belong to the nationstate, the alternative feminist approach to social justice questions such claims to neutrality. according to the queer critique, the so-called “good citizen,” recognized and rewarded under the law, not only reflects highly substantive cultural values but also reinforces the likelihood of ongoing state-regulated inequities. the “good citizen” can pass as “normal” and is therefore subjectively invested in perpetuating what is normal. becoming normal, on these terms, inevitably supports the discriminatory exclusion of many forms of difference. 16 in the case of this latter argument, those citizens who enjoy certain privileges do so through the specifics of their situated bodies, specifics which do not appear marked precisely because they accord with the normative picture of a deserving citizen—for example, whiteness, able-bodied and class-based indicators of mobility, gendered conformity, and heterosexuality expressed most commonly through marriage. such individuals can enjoy a sense of “rightness” and self-deservingness without needing to acknowledge the ways in which their situations and, perhaps more significantly, their identities conform to state-prescribed expectations. 54 ada s. jaarsma studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 depending on enfranchisement and other forms of state recognition for social justice, queer critics argue, only reinforces the normalizing powers of the state. in other words, we are included as enfranchised citizens only if we disavow our own bodily realities. 17 the history of marriage law, with its long-term legacy of discriminatory violence, demonstrates this linkage between enfranchisement and exclusion. becoming normal on these terms means essentially accepting the bribe of privilege offered by the governing legislative authorities that maintain the right to draw boundaries around heteroand homosexual identities and to determine what counts as a marriage. 18 amy l. brandzel (2005), for example, describes the history of marriage in the united states as exclusive, privileged, and normative, concluding that “advocacy for same-sex marriage reifies and reproduces these effects” (p. 173).19 we can find support for brandzel’s argument in the recent anti-proposition 8 campaigns in california, where the rhetoric often revolved around claims to normalcy: as in, since gays and lesbians are normal tax-paying citizens, we deserve the right to get married. the anti-proposition 8 campaigns relied upon images of upstanding, monogamous, often parental couples, images that illustrated conformity to class-based reproductive heterosexual norms: endorse our right to marry because we are just like you. according to the queer critique, such a campaign is not likely to transform inequitable values from within because affirming “normal” is always to risk demonizing the “abnormal.” rejecting claims to normalcy along these lines means that we cannot do what discourse ethics does, which is to assert the moral rightness of equality. rather, in contrast, a queer critique of prejudice tends to affirm what queer thinkers identify as the “perversity” of sexual desire. according to this line of thought, desire cannot be categorized as deviant or anomalous because there is no concomitant category of normal sexuality; given that the perversity of desire is universal, constituting a formal aspect of sexuality, then any juxtaposition of “normal” with “pathological” fails to take into account the actual workings of desire itself. 20 to ground one’s defence of same-sex marriage in one’s own claims to a “normal” identity, then, is to inadvertently subtend a logic of normal/pathological, since what is “normal” implicitly sets itself against what is “abnormal.” 21 this means that queer scepticism towards identity claims exposes problems with arguments for same-sex marriage that depend explicitly on identity politics. for example, rather than appealing to the shared ground of citizenship, the queer approach identifies the concept “citizen” as itself a source of discrimination and indefensible requirements. 22 especially in the united states, liberal advocates often argue for the legalization of same-sex marriage on the basis of an analogy between the civil rights movement and the ongoing exclusions faced by gay and lesbian citizens. just as anti-miscegenation laws were over-turned, so too should the exclusively heterosexual definition of marriage. in sharp contrast to this line of thought, the queer approach identifies such analogies between sexual orientation and race to be both ahistorical and insufficiently attuned to the intersecting relations of racialized, sexed, and gendered embodiment. 23 the emphasis on ahistoricity is noteworthy because it renders problematic the ways in which discourse ethics ignores the history of specific forms of reason. kimberly hutchings (2005), for example, points out that discourse ethics excludes other views because of its understanding of modern rationality: “in buying into rethinking the secular 55 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 [habermas’s] discourse ethics, one is also buying into an account of collective moral learning in which modernist liberal societies are the source of moral authority” (p. 162). hutchings claims that “civilization” is not in fact a component of reason. in other words, discourse ethics, despite its self-understanding as neutral and inclusive, endorses idealized conceptions of particular versions of rationality and argumentation. if we accept this argument, then we need to admit that it is a political argument and not simply a reflection of reason itself when we call for the taking on of another’s perspective (young, 1997, p. 47). 24 what does this translate into, in terms of actual practice? it means that the antidote to prejudice cannot simply involve recourse to education, reason, or public debate. moreover, as i seek to participate in debates, i cannot assume that the other’s point of view will be intelligible in my own terms. according to iris marion young (1997), it is ethically vital that we acknowledge the impossibility of impartial imagining (pp. 38-59) and seek to cultivate asymmetry and moral humility (p. 49). this approach leads us to an understanding of prejudice as the symptomatic expression of my own failure to listen and perhaps to be silent before the other. elsewhere, i describe these insights in terms of a certain “humility” in queer theory itself—a willingness to affirm the meaningfulness and fragility of desire in everyday life, especially in the face of diseases, prejudice, and change. 25 this humility means giving up one’s own claims to “identity” as a secure source of belonging, resisting the temptation to ground one’s sense of rightness by pointing to another’s deviance. it also means working for social justice by undermining the violence of not only marriage laws but the increasingly draconian laws that govern national borders and that set up ideological divides between “citizens” and “non-citizens.” secularism and the same-sex marriage debates in this section, i want to follow an intuition that the commitments of the two feminist frameworks come more closely into focus when we consider the forms of secularism at work within their approaches. because of the need to undermine the prejudicial arguments of the christian right, the two feminist approaches risk shoring up a religious/secular divide. this is problematic because it gives the christian right license to elevate its position as a defence of religion itself, thereby aligning the patriarchal opposition to same-sex marriage with freedom. in what follows, i explore the extent to which discourse ethics and queer critique cede the terrain of the “religious” to the anti-feminist patriarchalists, suggesting that ultimately the queer approach holds more potential for highlighting the instability of the boundary between the religious and the secular. the liberal feminism of discourse ethics tends to define secularism as nonsectarian openness to dialogue. in her persuasive criticisms of the opposition to same-sex marriage, for example, margaret denike (2007) makes the case that “religious doctrine is fundamentally incompatible with the secular law of liberal democracy” (p. 77). habermas, more moderately, warns that there are real social dangers when religious communities do not acknowledge the pluralistic nature of democracy. according to this line of thought, religious believers need to translate their own claims into terms that are inclusive of all citizens, regardless of background or religious affiliation, in order to be able to participate in democratic 56 ada s. jaarsma studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 society. when believers do not translate their claims, relying instead on arguments that make sense solely to members of their own community, habermas explains that they risk unleashing “a destructive potential” (2003, p. 104) that threatens the democratic project, as seen for example in the conflicts over “god, gays, and guns” in the 2004 elections in united states (2006b, p. 3).26 this liberal version of secularism, then, places a certain burden on religious communities by asking believers to translate their claims into accessible terms. this burden is justified in the name of securing religious freedoms for individuals and communities. according to the liberal terms of discourse ethics, the freedom of religion tends to be understood as an individual’s right to express his or her own choices about which beliefs to uphold and follow, choices that, by definition, are not imposed by external forces. 27 for example, canada’s supreme court advised parliament that the legalization of same-sex marriage would not mean that religious officials could be compelled to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies if they deemed such ceremonies to be contrary to their religious beliefs. rather than being obliged to participate in acts that contradict their beliefs, religious citizens have the constitutional right to uphold, freely, the truth of religious propositions.28 in other words, one’s right to religious belief is protected in part because of the very independent or non-coerced origins of those beliefs. an alternative approach to freedom of religion does not define belief in terms of an individual’s voluntary decisions about truth, emphasizing instead the many aspects of an individual’s situation, conscience, and socio-historical forces that might lead to specific religious actions and affiliations. 29 from this perspective, it seems misguided to place so much emphasis on individualist choice as it comes close to defining religion as yet another consumer good, such that religion reflects one’s lifestyle rather than reflecting, constitutively, an end in itself. it also seems to endorse a form of consumer-based citizenship—do-it-yourself (diy) citizenship— where freedom is essentially understood in terms of freedom of consumption. 30 from this line of thought, we can identify in liberalism what could be called an unintentional deference to the very category of religion. defining religion in terms of an individual’s chosen beliefs is not itself a neutral approach to religion, and we see this when we take a long historical view of liberalism’s emergence within specifically protestant concerns. the queer critique, positioned in part directly against liberalism’s appeals to neutrality and equality, seems to demonstrate this latter understanding of religious freedom, reflecting what we could call a different genealogy of secularism. rather than appealing to the secular state—since the state’s regulatory powers over intimacy and desire are in part defined as discriminatory—the queer approach to secularism emphasizes embodied practices, rather than beliefs and choices, and resists placing hope in the autonomy of the liberal individual. 31 while the term “belief” is used within liberalism to refer to the essence of all religions, “belief” as a concept actually reflects a metareligious understanding of religion, inherited from one specific religious tradition— namely, protestant christianity. 32 a protestant approach to religion emphasizes the capacity of an individual believer to choose, identify, and interpret his or her own beliefs, without relying on the mediation of authorities. liberal secularism, in other words, reflects what michael warner (2008) identifies as “the meta-religious rethinking the secular 57 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 understanding of post-calvinist protestantism, generalized as an understanding of religion per se” (p. 613).33 one feminist predicament that arises from this essentialized definition of religion is that religiously marked voices in the public sphere are able to position themselves as advocates, not only of their own particular theological traditions but of religion itself. kathleen sands (2008) comments that since the 1970s, “the more religiously orthodox a group is, the less feminist it will be. and the more orthodox and antifeminist a religious group is, the more its views are able to register in public life as religious” (p. 321). 34 this response, frequently articulated from within liberal feminism, identifies and seeks to undermine religious patriarchalism first by defining it as fundamentalist and second by refuting fundamentalism because of its essentially violent nature. however, one of the important arguments made from within secular studies is that equating fundamentalism with violence is ahistorical and risks masking ongoing acts of international violence. talal asad (1993), for example, directly refutes linking religious fundamentalism with violence, arguing instead that western imperialism, including the coercive increase of economic and ideological power over noneuropean peoples, is part of the conditions of possibility for modern liberal arguments about tolerance and rational progress (p. 229). in other words, the processes of westernization in non-western contexts, which appeal to the very ideals of tolerance, result in many forms of violence; this makes it highly difficult, according to asad, to distinguish between the so-called “liberating powers of transcendental reason” upheld by liberal discourse and the “secular powers that destroy and reconstruct” (p. 231). in my reflections on the differences between these two feminist approaches, i have come to see this next point as marking the biggest gulf between the two. if we take seriously the call to reflect historically on the religious/secular divide, we do not have recourse to one tempting way of responding to the increasingly aggressive anti-feminism of the christian right. rather than calling into question the distinction between the religious and the secular altogether, it seems that the queer critique tends to highlight the instability of the boundary between the two. this instability can be seen in the ways in which liberal secularism often seeks to remake religious subjectivities in order to make them compliant with liberalism. 35 from this perspective, determining which choices qualify as appropriately “religious” and, therefore, deserving of protection is not a neutral act, especially given the contrast of “religious” choices both with “secular” choices that remain unmarked and with choices that seem to conflict with protestant assumptions about religion and religiosity. as one example of the latter, saba mahmood (2005) points out that islam is frequently cast as an eruption of religion outside the supposedly “normal” domain of suitably individualist worship, and so “it is a secular-liberal inquisition before which islam must be made to confess” (p. 189). for example, the french government defines what is and is not religious attire (mahmood, 2006, p. 325), and so secularism can be seen in part as a reshaping of religion, rather than its banishment from the public sphere. put differently, secularism has not entailed the abandonment of religion as much as its ongoing regulation. just as the unmarked privileges of normative gender and heterosexuality tend to pose as neutral, the secular itself can invoke a certain neutrality, disavowing its own highly specific history, one which, as sands (2008) points out, provides generously 58 ada s. jaarsma studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 for those who bear its own cultural heritage (p. 309). the form of secularism underlying queer theory, then, provokes attention to the specifically protestant history, not only of liberal secularism but also of the shared common law traditions found in both us american and canadian marriage policies. 36 the postsecular turn in feminist reasoning these common law traditions emerged historically out of religious ecclesiastical practices, and so marriage itself, as an organizing social bond, has religious origins. as i mentioned above, my friends in san francisco, whose warm and celebratory wedding invited community support of their relationship, demonstrate a liberal approach to social justice, an approach that contrasts with my own commitments to social justice as a queer thinker. our differing choices related to marriage demonstrate differing forms of rationality, or different approaches to reasoning about the issue, each of which offers important ways to identify and overturn forms of injustice. 37 in my conclusion, i am not aiming to settle the question of whether or not we should as feminists support same-sex marriage in the name of social justice. rather, i want to raise the question of what it might look like to take up the alternative genealogy of secularism, described above, in order to participate in what rosi braidotti (2008) has called the “postsecular turn in feminism.” this turn, as an approach to articulating and advancing social justice, offers the possibility of an intellectual reconciliation between the two feminist modes of reasoning discussed above—a reconciliation based upon acceptance and perhaps even affirmation of their differences. while we may need to relinquish certainty about where our particular methods will lead us, foregoing the comfort that comes from adamantly endorsing one’s own ethical project, we gain hope in the futureoriented work of social change. rather than seeking to overcome the dissonances between the feminist liberal project and queer critical theory, the postsecular turn indicates tremendous value in dissonance itself. “postsecular” is a term that refers to the instability of the boundary between the “religious” and the “secular.” it prompts awareness of the very question of methodology—of how we decide to strive for social justice—because it calls attention to the habits, actions, and methods adopted by thinkers and activists as they attempt to achieve their varied goals. rather than focusing on our goals for social justice, we can focus on who we actually become, in and through our adoption of modes of rationality or reasoning. even scholarly techniques of criticism, for example, are oriented towards becoming specific kinds of actors: namely, individuals who are capable of highly particular skills or attuned to achieving particular ideals.38 according to postsecular thinking, to highlight the means through which an individual employs a particular framework is to examine his or her ethical aspirations; in these terms, reasoning practices are, essentially, ethical practices. by “ethical,” i am referring to capacities and potentialities that an individual gains, through his or her practices of reasoning. 39 the crux of this point is that it disturbs any supposed neutrality of secularizing modes of reason. by looking at the ethical significance of those tasks to which we along these lines, both discourse ethics and queer critical theory can be seen as essentially ethical projects. rethinking the secular 59 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 are devoted, the division between “religious” and “secular” becomes less relevant, and we face the challenge of accepting responsibility for our ethical practices, not taking them for granted as prescribed or inevitable. in other words, we take into account the very capacities that we have cultivated, opening up space for acknowledging other ethical practices. as individual thinkers and activists, we ourselves might participate in differing ethical projects. similarly, we can value differing ethical projects without needing to resolve this tension by subsuming the differences under the name of “tolerance.” we are left without the tempting recourse to condemn other ethical projects simply because they are religious, and this point might very well raise the stakes for feminist commitments. for example, referring to her own ethnography of the pious practices of islamic women in egypt, saba mahmood (2005) asks, “have i lost sight of the politically prescriptive project of feminism in pushing at the limits of its analytical envelope?” (p. 36). by “pushing at the limit,” i understand mahmood to be referring to the dissonance that results from seeing and perhaps even participating in various ethical projects, without collapsing their differences; while mahmood’s own feminist commitments seem in line with liberal democratic ideals, these commitments do not preclude her engagement with the very different practices of islamic piety. in other words, one’s own framework, while necessary for producing one’s own particular habits and goals, need not become the overarching lens through which to understand all social justice practices. the first quality of the postsecular turn, then, is concerned with acknowledging the ethical, rather than strictly rational or even political, nature of our social justice practices and accepting that dissonance might result from such an acknowledgment. the postsecular turn also calls attention to the impassioned ways in which we live out our commitments, thereby opening to view the existential component of social justice projects. by “existential,” i am referring to the subjective investments that animate our rational choices and to the meaning that we find and attribute to our social justice practices. when we strive to achieve social justice, we do more than make rational claims about justice; we participate and contribute to an ethos of debate, in and through the mode by which we articulate our claims. as actors, we inhabit rational arguments with passionate attitudes, and such attitudes can differ dramatically: we might hold onto our claims with such adamance that our attitudes become dogmatic or bullish, or, in contrast, we might infuse our arguments with a spirit of openness towards differing views. we might, for example, differ on substantive grounds about the nature or the goals of social justice and yet inhabit our ideals with a shared ethos of generosity and fallibility. likewise, as william connolly (2008) points out, evangelical and corporate leaders can share a spirit of revenge and bellicosity, despite considerable doctrinal differences (p. 41).40 put differently, the same argument can be inhabited by generous or by domineering forms of spirituality or ethos (p. 128).41 it is a real possibility to create pragmatic alliances, even with those who uphold different philosophical approaches, by searching for similarities in attitude or “affinities of spirituality” (connolly, 2008, p. 41). practically speaking, we can look for resonances with others who, regardless of their choice of rational framework, cultivate an existential ethos of generosity and peace. together, across theoretical divides, we can strengthen our opposition to prejudicial violence, opposing especially those thinkers and policy-makers who reinforce an ethos of bellicosity, 60 ada s. jaarsma studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 resentment, and vengeance. here is where theory and praxis intersect, and where we can find intellectual as well as pragmatic accord between discourse ethics and queer critical theory. how can we recognize existential allies whose spiritual ethos lines up with our own? one quality to both strive for ourselves and search out in allies emerges from an acceptance of the fallibility of our chosen methodologies: namely, the quality of humility. according to existential thought, our capacity for choice intensifies when we take responsibility for our own choices, including our chosen methodologies that we employ as we work for social justice. existentially speaking, when we “choose” to choose, we are able to acknowledge the contingency of our frameworks, rather than assuming them to be inevitable or unquestionable. this point may seem counterintuitive—that we increase our sense of responsibility when we attend carefully to the limits and partialities of our adopted frameworks. however, rendering explicit our own attachments to arguments removes their “conceit,” as connolly puts it (1995, p. 5).42 we can translate the first aspect of postsecular thinking—acknowledging that social justice can be sought through differing ethical projects—into our own existential approaches to social justice. in particular, by accepting that my own project of becoming is fallible and contingent, i allow for an expansiveness towards others’ equally fallible projects of becoming. for instance, my own enjoyment as a guest at my friends’ wedding was in no small part related to my sense that my friends’ position on same-sex marriage did not require complete consensus among the participants about the importance of marriage. i could participate fully without subscribing, myself, to the tenets of the ritual. choosing to choose one’s own methodology means resisting the temptation to turn one’s own goals into dogmas that are prescriptive of others’ choices. it also means recognizing the longings and needs of others, including the desire for recognition manifested in a wedding. the hope of postsecular thinking is that solidarity emerges most powerfully when people who, upholding differing ways of achieving social justice, forge alliances through shared existential affinities of generosity and openness towards dissonance. as i suggested above, however, liberal proponents of discourse ethics might experience more difficulty in adopting the postsecular turn. for example, in contemplating my friends once again, it is unlikely that their wedding plans could have included cultural rituals that conveyed the very partiality of pro-marriage arguments. it is hard to imagine, for example, a witness at a wedding whose appointed role would be to identify some of the problematic exclusions inherent with the institution of marriage. the emphasis placed on formal democratic procedures, inclusive in principle of all citizens, seems to be at odds with the postsecular emphasis on the specificity and contingency of ethical projects of becoming. whereas the postsecular affirmation of liberal becoming follows rather naturally from its underlying assumptions, the reverse is not necessarily so—that liberalism is, alongside other possibilities, one approach to inhabiting and passionately embracing a path towards social justice. however, the hope remains that the individual liberal actor, encouraged to contemplate his or her own subjective and existential choices about social justice, might thereby take up responsibility for those choices in an expansive and authentic mode of choosing to choose.43 rethinking the secular 61 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 there is a time for fighting passionately for the legalization of same-sex marriage, and also a time to protest the normalizing forces of marriage, consumption, and border-policing policies. the same person might participate in these various projects at different times, for convincing reasons. given that discourse ethics and queer critical theory already do exist alongside each other, occupying different contexts for differing purposes, we may embrace the tensions that come from affirming different methods. 44 we might accept, without resentment, the contingency of our own goals, as we hold out hope for a variety of ideals of social justice. notes 1 i would like to thank tara pedersen and lindy patterson for contributing invaluable insights and suggestions to this article. 2 for the sake of clarity, i am grouping together disparate thinkers under these two names, “discourse ethics” and “queer critique.” while i hope to show that particular concepts and commitments can become clearer through comparative analysis, i realize that there are limitations to delineating arguments in this way. for example, not every thinker that i cite self-identifies in terms of “discourse ethics” or “queer critique.” as well, while i am identifying both of these frameworks as “feminist,” arguing that productive alliances can be forged between these approaches, the term “feminist” is currently itself a matter of debate. for example, janet halley’s analysis of queer theory depends in part upon a real category distinction between feminist and queer commitments (2006). similarly, see young and boyd (2008) for an analysis of same-sex marriage debates in canada in which liberal discourse ethics is identified as distinct from feminist arguments; their analysis challenges my alignment of discourse ethics with feminism. while i am sympathetic especially to halley’s position, i am interested in advancing an argument about the “postsecular feminist turn” in which both frameworks can be understood as valuable and productive for feminism. 3 nancy cott, a preeminent feminist historian of marriage, writes, for example, “a just marriage policy can arise only from a clear definition of the public good, built on a vital sense of the collective public” (2004, p. 36). to debate marriage policy is also to debate larger questions about the regulatory boundaries of specific social relations. 4 i have decided not to employ the term “fundamentalist” as the optimal adjective for this movement, although it is a term frequently employed to refer to the self-designation by militant protestant christian organizations, such as the moral majority, which emerged in the mid to late 20th century (marsden, 1991, p. 4). the term “fundamentalism” seems most useful from within the framework of discourse ethics, where “fundamentalism” refers to the refusal of a religious community to undertake the learning process that habermas (2005/2006) argues is imperative for all members of a secularized nation—namely, the process that compels both secular and religious adherents to reflect on their own respective limits (p. 23). 5 for an example of this kind of religious rhetoric in the christian evangelical tradition, see tanya erzen’s recent analysis of the ex-gay christian movement, which employs highly determined notions of identity and sexuality in order to legitimate solely a heterosexual model of marriage (2006). 6 this argument can be found in william connolly’s compelling analysis of the alliance of capitalists and conservative christians in the united states; while the capitalists and the evangelical leaders do not make identical arguments about same-sex marriage, they share what connolly calls a defensive bellicosity: “leaders insist that they are being persecuted unless they are thoroughly in power” (2008, p. 44). 7 feminist theorists who exemplify this approach include seyla benhabib (1992), nancy fraser (1985), maría pía lara (1998), and amanda anderson (2005). 8 see charles wright (2004) for an analysis of postconventional moral reasoning and feminist theory. on wright’s interpretation, the distinction between conventional and postconventional rationality is between two modes of moral reflection; the latter mode is marked by the insight into the contingencies of custom and tradition that must be justified 62 ada s. jaarsma studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 discursively. on his account, then, postconventional morality is sufficiently critical for subverting our own prejudices. 9 similarly, prime minister jean chretien reversed his own position in 2003, when he voted against a motion by the alliance party to define marriage as essentially heterosexual; he attributed his reversal to the recognition that “society has evolved” (as cited in hiebert, 2003, p. 13). 10 pointing out the irony of bush’s “marriage protection week,” amy brandzel asks, “what could have arisen to threaten the citadel of marriage in spite of doma, the mini-domas, and marriage’s grounding in the natural and eternal heterosexual couple” (2005, p. 180)? similarly, wendy brown comments that “marriage grows steadily more fragile and imperiled even as it remains idealized, sought after, and clung to” (2004, p. 89). 11 another key procedural difference, in the united states, opponents of same-sex marriage have access to state-level initiatives not available in canada, and marriage is largely a matter of state jurisdiction. in contrast, due to the constitutional division of powers, the canadian provinces lack jurisdiction over marriage, and so in 2003, the supreme court of canada’s advisory opinion upheld the federal government’s exclusive authority over the definition of marriage. this made possible the subsequent legalization of same-sex marriage in canada in 2005. 12 see fraser (1985). 13 for examples of this argument, see denike (2007, p. 81) and card (2007, p. 29). denike calls an “integrated approach” to feminist arguments about same-sex marriage, bringing together the demand for legal recognition with a substantive redistribution of socioeconomic resources. while i agree with the way in which denike characterizes these two arguments, i am aligning them both with the broader project of discourse ethics because i think that the distinction between strategic and communicative action enables both approaches to social justice. i realize that my rendering of discourse ethics is particularly broad and may not convince every reader, given for example nancy fraser’s emphasis on the real differences between the politics of recognition with redistributive politics. 14 pointing to the role that strategic reason plays in the christian right’s operations, connolly (2008) refers to “that ungodly alliance between cowboy capitalism and extremist christianity” (p. 62). more specifically, same-sex marriage is often opposed in the name of an alignment between capitalism, creation, and god, in which, as connolly (2008) puts it, “the christian, heterosexual family becomes the wondrous site of sexual excitement” (p. 31). 15 thinkers who follow in the spirit of this argument include lauren berlant (1997), michael warner (2002), eric o. clarke (2000) and janet e. halley (2000b). feminist interlocutors of discourse ethics who join queer theorists in questioning the claims to normativity include iris marion young (1997) and kimberly hutchings (2005). 16 for a more in-depth explanation of the existential aspects of queer theory, see my chapter “the ideology of the normal: desire, ethics, and kierkegaardian critique” (2009). 17 eric o. clarke (2000) makes this point from within the context of queer theory, referring to the “subjunctive imperatives” of the democratic promise of inclusion—act as if you accord with the universal characteristics of whiteness, straightness, et cetera. similarly, see eric fassin (2001) for an analysis of the emergence of “gay conservative” arguments in favour of same-sex marriage rights in the united states, including, for example, the claim that “it is by normalizing homosexuality that homosexuals are made ‘normal’” (p. 222). contrasting the history of same-sex marriage debates in the us with contemporary debates in france, fassin (2001) demonstrates the importance of considering the political and historical context of the various logics employed in such public sphere debates. 18 see janet e. halley (2000a) for an examination of ways in which the category of heterosexuality is epistemologically determined in two juridical cases. similarly, see claudia card (2007) for a rejection of the legalization of marriage per se because such legalization involves both the recognition and regulation of intimate relationships by the state. card (2007) points out, “abusive marriages easily become lethal,” and it can be highly difficult to exit an abusive marriage because the state demands that certain demonstrable grounds be met. because of the benefits attached to marriage, moreover, marriage as an institution contributes to the inequitable distribution of goods in society (p. rethinking the secular 63 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 25). card (2007) therefore explains, “my ideal is that the law not define or in any other way regulate durable intimate unions between freely consenting adults” (p. 27). 19 for another exemplary argument along these lines see siobhan b. somerville (2005). 20 for examples of this particular line of thought, see lee edelman (2004), james penney (2006), and tim dean (2009). it is noteworthy that within queer theory it is the lacanian theorists above all who argue that there is an emancipatory promise to be found within the universality of perversity. 21 even a defence of gay identity as “normal” betrays the workings of desire; along these lines, for example, tim dean claims that “the ego, even the gay ego, is the enemy of desire” (1995, p. 125). 22 brandzel writes, for example, “i believe that ‘queer’ and ‘citizen’ are antithetical concepts” (2005, p. 197). similarly, lisa duggan remarks, “surely gay respectability politics and the sentimentality of the citizen who only wants to be ‘good,’ now dominant on the us political landscape, do not lead us anywhere else, but only into the moribund institutions that deaden the body politic (marriage, the military)” (2009, p. 279). 23 for examples of scepticism towards analogies between same-sex marriage and the overturning of anti-miscegenation laws, see janet e. halley (2000a) and somerville (2005). 24 young argues that seyla benhabib’s feminist intervention into discourse ethics sustains the privilege given by habermas to the historical “achievement” of intercultural moral learning. 25 see my forthcoming article “queering kierkegaard: sin, sex, and critical theory” where i expand on this point, looking especially at the role of silence in queer critical theory. 26 in this liberal argument, the secular state is often described as a historical achievement, crucial for the reduction of religiously based violence. maeve cooke (2007) describes the danger, for example, that “dispensing with the requirement of a secular basis for political authority will create the conditions for the kind of religiously-based, authoritarian state that the secular state sought to overcome” (p. 234). 27 describing this liberal approach to religious freedom, michael j. sandel (2004) writes, “religious beliefs are ‘worthy of respect,’ not in virtue of what they are beliefs in, but rather in virtue of being ‘the product of free and voluntary choice,’ in virtue of being beliefs of a self unencumbered by convictions antecedent to choice” (p. 84). kathleen sands (2008) identifies this approach as the “exceptionalist tradition”, in which religion is identified by interior faith, which cannot be “coerced” (p. 310) and which is incommensurable with the secular realm of politics, law, and public debate. 28 for a description of the supreme court’s advisory opinion, see peter w. hogg (2006, p.720). 29 sandel (2004) describes nicely the ways in which this second approach to the freedom of religion contrasts from the liberal understanding. rather than maintaining that religious beliefs can be adequately described as “the product of free and voluntary choice of the [unencumbered] faithful” (p. 85), in this alternative approach, religious liberty is defined in terms of the freedom of conscience; as “encumbered” selves, we have the right to follow the dictates of our conscience, duties that we cannot renounce and so, in a sense, are not choosing ourselves. 30 as anne cronin (2000) explains, diy citizens express individuality through fashion-based choices. the need for self-expression modeled by consumption reflects what cronin (2000) calls the imperative of “compulsory individuality” (p. 277), framed through consumerist discourses of self-actualization and choice: “the promise of the brand is that it taps into and expresses the essence of who you are in ways that you can barely articulate yourself” (p. 276). 31 michael warner (2008) makes this case persuasively (p. 612). 32 in addition to warner, kathleen sands (2008) makes this point as well, adding that this definition of religion also risks making certain anti-judaic assumptions: “and if modern western secularism constitutes a descendent of christian universalism, it may carry an inherent anti-semitism that jews have learned to navigate, just as they always have navigated their way within christian hegemony” (p. 318). 33 warner (2008) suggests that what we actually mean by religion could be better described as “religiosity about religion” (p. 616), arguing that when secular democratic governments manage religious freedom, they are actually regulating “what counts as religion” (p. 613). 34 according to sands (2008), this public defence of religion has in recent years begun to lose its feigned universality, replaced instead by an aggressive, openly ethnocentric evangelicalism (p. 324). 64 ada s. jaarsma studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 35 for example, saba mahmood (2006) claims that liberal secularism often involves the remaking of religious subjectivities in order to make them compliant with liberalism; in other words, there is a “civilizing and disciplining” normative impetus here that calls itself religiously neutral (p. 328). 36 in its judgment in favour of the legalization of same-sex marriage in goodridge v. department of public health (2003), for example, the massachusetts state supreme court cited the ontario court of appeals decision, halpern v. canada (2003), demonstrating the shared basis of english common law in massachusetts and ontario. see smith (2007, p. 14). 37 for example, adèle mercier (2008) suggests that the marriage debates can best be understood by assessing the ideals and models of reason at work implicitly within the various lines of argumentation. examining the arguments made by the opposition to samesex marriage in canada, for example, mercier (2008) comments, “if same-sex marriage were unreasonable, it wouldn’t take such unreasonable arguments to prove it” (p. 409). 38 warner (2004) explains, “critical reading is the pious labour of a historically unusual sort of person” (p. 36), qualifying the so-called “objectivity” of the secular scholar in terms of the “piety” of acquiring academic skills and following academic conventions. 39 the term “ethics” has a wide variety of references; in this context, i am employing the term in line with thinkers like saba mahmood and michael warner who look to michel foucault’s later writings on the ethical practices of selfhood. 40 similarly, gilbert herdt (2009) describes the opposition to same-sex marriage as a movement to incite “moral panic,” concluding that “their aim is not to educate but to promote panic and confusion, thus shutting off debate. we cannot have democracy in that way; down that road lays fascism” (p. 193). 41 connolly (2008) writes, “a key idea is that affinities of spirituality—whether finding expression as a devotion to a loving god, a disposition to tolerance, care for the future, love of this world, or a drive to revenge against the most fundamental terms of human existence—often jump across different professions of creed, doctrine, and philosophy” (p. 41). 42 kathleen sands (2008) notes that the arguments advanced by the religious patriarchalists no longer even pretend to invoke universality (p. 324), demonstrating instead attitudes of resentment towards any alternative positions. in sharp contrast, then, we can find ways to accept without resentment the contestability of our chosen philosophical frameworks in the eyes of others (connolly, 2008, p. 7). 43 see my forthcoming article “habermas’s kierkegaard and the nature of the secular” for an examination of the existential elements of liberal discourse ethics. 44 warner suggests that liberal glbt projects and queer projects need not be mutually exclusive, pointing out, “queer activists are also lesbians and gays in other contexts—as, for example, where leverage can be gained through bourgeois propriety, or through minorityrights discourse, or through more gender-marked language” (2002, p. 213). references anderson, a. 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(1997). intersecting voices: dilemmas of gender, political philosophy, and policy. princeton, nj: princeton university press. rethinking the secular in feminist marriage debates ada s. jaarsma0f department of philosophy, sonoma state university, rohnert park, california, usa introduction normative ideals and normalizing critique secularism and the same-sex marriage debates the postsecular turn in feminist reasoning studies in social justice volume 4, issue 1, 25-45, 2010 correspondence address: shari stone-mediatore, department of philosophy, ohio wesleyan university, 61 s. sandusky st., delaware, oh 43015 usa. tel: +1 740 368-3795, e-mail: ssstonem@owu.edu issn: 1911-4788 epistemologies of discomfort: what militaryfamily anti-war activists can teach us about knowledge of violence shari stone-mediatore, department of philosophy, ohio wesleyan university, delaware, ohio, usa abstract this paper extends feminist critiques of epistemic authority by examining their particular relevance in contexts of institutionalized violence. by reading feminist criticism of “experts” together with theories of institutionalized violence, i argue that typical expert modes of thinking are incapable of rigorous knowledge of institutionalized violence because such knowledge requires a distinctive kind of thinking-within-discomfort for which conventionally trained experts are ill-suited. i turn to a newly active group of epistemic agents—anti-war relatives of soldiers—to examine the role that undervalued epistemic traits can play in knowledge of war and other forms of structural violence. there are a hundred ways to be a good citizen, and one of them is to look finally at the things we don’t want to see. barbara kingsolver (2003) introduction for several decades now, feminist theorists have criticized modern epistemic norms, revealing male and upper-class biases beneath seemingly neutral epistemic standards. theorists including genevieve lloyd (1984), dorothy smith (1987), lorraine code (1991, 2006), sandra harding (1991), linda alcoff (1993), val plumwood (1993), and carol cohn (1993, 2003), have made compelling cases that received epistemic norms over-value traits associated with upper-class men, such as emotional detachment, certainty, and abstraction, at the expense of the more engaged and exploratory ways in which we come to know the world. the result, they suggest, is not only that our professional institutions fail to give a fair hearing to people who are associated with the undervalued epistemic traits. just as dangerously, those institutions tend to produce knowledge that is rigid, narrow in outlook, and inadequate for addressing human problems. 1 and yet, despite feminist criticism, modern epistemic norms continue to determine who gets authorized to speak on public affairs. in the context of war, such policing of public debate is particularly troubling, for it tends to reserve authority for detached 26 shari stone-mediatore studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 professionals, who treat war as a rational means of policymaking, while people close enough to war to appreciate its horrors are denied authority to speak. in one case, for instance, when a columbus dispatch reporter was interviewing a young veteran, the reporter discounted any of the young man’s remarks that seemed to him coloured by the young man’s “anger at having been sent to iraq.”2 i begin by reviewing feminist criticism of the institutions that regulate epistemic authority in our society. while feminist criticism of modern epistemic norms has been vast, i am particularly interested in critiques that address the social and cultural mechanisms by which epistemic authority has been produced and regulated, for these similarly, when veterans of iraq and afghanistan gathered outside d.c. to present first-hand accounts of the violence, the veterans were virtually ignored by the mainstream media (thompson, 2008). and in the early years of the war, when i proposed a campus forum featuring members of veterans for peace and military families speak out (mfso), a colleague dismissed my proposal, commenting that such people are “not academically-oriented.” in response to this exclusionary character of public debate on war, this paper seeks to strengthen feminist critiques of epistemic authority, so that such critiques can be more readily brought to bear on public life. the project has both political and philosophical aims. politically, i aim to help expose the limits of recent debates on war and open debate to new voices. philosophically, i seek to enrich feminist critiques of epistemic authority by examining their particular relevance in contexts of institutionalized violence. my central claim is that responsible thinking about institutionalized violence, including war, demands a distinctive kind of thinkingwithin-discomfort for which conventionally trained public-affairs experts are illsuited and for which undervalued epistemic traits play a crucial role. in essence, i argue that typical expert modes of thinking are not only biased in ways elaborated by the above feminist theorists. they are also particularly incapable of meaningful engagement with the violence of our own institutions. i draw on theorists of institutionalized violence, including hannah arendt (1953b, 1978, 1979, 1992, 1998), simone weil (1977), and john glenn gray (1998), to substantiate this connection between typical expert modes of thinking and failure to address meaningfully and rigorously institutionalized violence. in a more constructive vein, i turn to a newly active group of epistemic agents—anti-war relatives of soldiers—to examine the role that undervalued epistemic traits can play in rigorous knowledge of violence. my aim in examining the epistemic practices of these activists is not to reverse the hierarchy between experts and amateurs, but to contribute to a rethinking of epistemic authority in the domain of institutionalized violence in such a way that recognizes the potential epistemic value of closeness to and passionate engagement with issues and that distinguishes more (from less) knowledge-worthy forms of emotional engagement. ultimately, these political and philosophical projects meet, for they are both efforts to elucidate and promote the responsibly engaged thinking that arendt (1953a, 1953b) suggests is our best hope for resisting institutionalized violence. feminist critiques of authority epistemologies of discomfort 27 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 explain how certain biases have become systemic to the people who get recognized as authoritative thinkers in our society. smith, code, and cohn write from distinct theoretical perspectives (feminist sociology, analytic feminist philosophy, and cultural theory, respectively) but they offer similar insights into the institutions that train and regulate our society’s authoritative thinkers. their analyses suggest that these institutions follow the paradigm that we might call the expert, by which the institutions train thinkers to claim authority by mastering received professional vocabularies and methods, restricting themselves to strictly professional (as opposed to personal) ties to their material, and assuming self-certain intellectual styles. most importantly here, their analyses suggest that such training not only promotes facility with disciplinary knowledge and analytic discipline, but also sheltered, orthodox, and privileged-class biases. as smith (1987) explains, the professional institutions that train our society’s aspiring professionals teach them to view their subject matter in terms of established discourses and methods. “a determinate conceptual framework” she says, “is identified with the discipline,” such that to explore different conceptual frameworks or methodologies “is to step outside the discipline” (p. 60). academic and professional institutions, such as journals and professional organizations, regulate these frameworks, including “the topics, themes, and problematics” that define the discipline (p. 61). they do so, for instance, by identifying legitimate professional work and thereby determining the work that should be cited and engaged by other legitimate members of the discipline. as a result, in order to be recognized as a “proper participant” in one’s field, “the member must produce work that conforms to appropriate styles and terminologies, makes the appropriate references, and is locatable by these and other devices in the traditions” (p. 61). moreover, although institutionalized discourses and methodologies may seem neutral, they actually tend to reflect the standpoint of people at the governing end of society, whose concerns to control and regulate the social world have tended to dominate institutional arrangements as well as the basic logic and categories of professional discourses. the result is that the basic structure of professional fields, including their methods, conceptual tools, scope, and primary topics, tend to reflect the standpoint of ruling groups. thus, professionals learn to direct their attention to data and problems that are of concern to rulers (code, 2006, p. 77; smith, 1987, pp. 54-65). for instance, in the field of mental health, both the field and its problems have been defined from the standpoint of “those whose professional business it is” to process mental illness and who do so through institutional structures that have separated mental illness from poverty (smith, 1987, p. 63). and in defence policy analysis, cohn (2003) finds that the field is governed by a techno-strategic discourse that presupposes the standpoint of the people who use weapons (not the people at the receiving end of weapons), a subject matter of weapons (not living beings), and a logic of the military’s zero-sum game (not the logic of ordinary people trying live their daily lives in a world shared with others). the structure of professional workplaces and the norms that guide professional practice also habituate professionals to disengage from the existential content of the material they study. for instance, the division of labour between higherand lowerechelon workers accustoms the former to bypass flesh and blood phenomena for material that has already been transposed for them into analytic categories by technicians, nurses, social workers, and others who work more directly with living 28 shari stone-mediatore studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 individuals. at the same time, epistemic norms that valorize abstract over experiential knowledge and that demand “professional distance” encourage professionals to treat their abstract categories as if they were more real than the living phenomena from which they were distilled. such norms of detachment from the living world are enforced by the institutional regulation of the discipline described above as well as by professional cultures that degrade individuals who veer from these norms, often by invoking gendered conceptions of professionalism. for instance, cohn (1993) recounts how a physicist who suddenly shifted from technical analysis and remarked on the horrific human impact of the bombs he was analyzing was met with derisive silence from his colleagues, making him feel “like a woman.” such regulation of professionals’ emotional reactions to their material may seem to protect knowledge practices from bias. however, so-called professional distance does not really free expert thinking from bias as much as it promotes a standpoint of distance from and aloofness toward social suffering (code, 1991, pp. 222-264; 2006, p. 43; cohn, 1993; 2003, pp. 65-68; smith, 1987, pp. 49-78; 1990, pp. 66-104). academic and professional cultures also promote rigidity in thinkers insofar as they train thinkers to embrace institutionalized discourses and methods as a means to maintaining prestige within the discipline. following the standard language and methods of the field, smith (1987) explains, “is how we recognize ourselves as professionals” (p. 60). cohn (2003) experienced this when (in spite of herself) she began to feel pride in her mastery of defence-policy jargon and when she realized that, after immersing herself in the jargon, a more human perspective on defence was not only difficult but would make her appear “inexpert, unprofessional” (p. 65). closer to home, my students who have gone through our university’s economics program are often so identified with discourses of “comparative advantage”3 finally, when epistemic norms that valorize certainty join with competitive professional cultures, they encourage peremptory and self-certain styles as a means to ward off criticism and speed professional advancement. unfortunately, such professional pressures can make experts so concerned with appearing authoritative that they fail to admit their mistakes, to consider what they might learn from others, to address factors that might complicate their certainty, or to venture beyond orthodoxy (even when they may present their analysis as novel). public expectations reinforce these tendencies, for we expect authorities to exhibit “the male-mode of self-assured, self-assertive, unqualified declaration” (jones, 1988, p.122). in effect, like plato’s euthyphro (plato, 2002), we confuse the self-confidence that can accompany intellectual pride with the defining mark of wisdom. a student of mine unwittingly attested to this confusion when she remarked on the “brilliance” of another professor, with whom she had never taken a class. when i inquired about the basis of her evaluation, she replied, “the way he holds himself when he walks around that, even when the students are presented with testimony from people who do not regard current trade institutions as to their advantage, the students resist even considering alternative narratives of the transnational economy, as if doing so would de-authorize them as economists. and my environmental ethics students last year initially refused to participate in a “guerrilla gardening” activity led by a local farmer, as their academic self-image seemed to be threatened by the playful and rebellious spirit of the activity, which they deemed “not appropriate for college.” epistemologies of discomfort 29 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 campus; he seems judgmental, superior, intimidating.” in such a context, aspiring experts may feel more pressure to appear all-knowing than to pursue honest inquiry into human problems. feminist critiques and the possibility of academic authority feminist studies of authority present not so much a rejection of professional authority as much as a provocation to consider more responsible forms of professional training and exercises of authority than those prescribed by the current paradigm of the expert. the studies challenge us to consider, for instance, how professional training could help us to become adept in professional discourses and disciplined analysis, while also sensitive to the historical and political dimensions of received discourses, the uncodified existential content of phenomena, the limitations in our own thinking, and the moral implications of our work. such mindsets may be at odds with dominant professional norms but they are not impossible in professional contexts. such epistemic humility and moral and political awareness might be cultivated, for instance, by training in the political and discursive dimensions of knowledge production4 and by greater openness about the practical-ethical motivations of our professional projects.5 elsewhere, i have pursued the problem of alternative pedagogical practices that are more conducive to feminist and democratic values (stone-mediatore, 2007). i focus here, more specifically, on the way that dominant forms of epistemic authority have skewed public discussion of war and on the kind of knowledge practices that war and other forms of state-supported violence demand. my own claim to authority in this paper aims to follow this kind of professional practice that is explicit about its extraacademic sources and goals. in my case, these include the inspiration that i have drawn from veterans and family members of soldiers who have spoken out so that others might not have to suffer the consequences of militarism, my efforts to gain recognition on my campus for the educational value of discussions with grassroots activists, and my frustrations as an educator whose explicit orientation toward broad ethical goals and explicit situatedness within the community has often put me at odds with an academic culture that values detached and peremptory authority. insofar as my personal and social concerns have motivated me to theorize alternative forms of authority, i cannot claim disinterest or neutrality in this research; however, i do claim to be addressing problems with immediate relevance to me and to be attentive to the moral-historical implications of my work. 6 to this end, i turn next to theories of institutionalized violence and to the dangers that typical expert modes of thinking present in the context of such violence. epistemic practices and institutionalized violence the kind of biases that feminist theorists have found problematic in experts bear strong resemblance to the kind of attitudes that scholars of institutionalized violence have found in the ordinary people who comply with state violence. just as feminist theorists have criticized experts for their tendencies toward overly abstract, managerial-minded, and peremptory thinking, so have theorists of institutionalized 30 shari stone-mediatore studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 violence warned that similar modes of thinking that are prevalent in modern society, generally, have thwarted our capacity for understanding and judgment and thereby have helped to shield us from violence that is routine in our society. if we read feminist critiques of authority together with studies of institutionalized violence, we can appreciate the particular dangers of expert tendencies in contexts of institutionalized violence. institutionalized violence by institutionalized violence, i refer to harms that are systemic to established institutions and that are severe enough to be considered violent. since the late 1960s, liberation theologists, peace theorists, and social theorists have employed this concept (or sometimes, structural violence or systematic violence) to identify severe harms that exist even in seemingly peaceful societies, and even when no one intentionally or directly harms someone else. institutionalized violence, these theorists explain, results not from individual lawless acts, but from established social and political institutions that systematically offend human dignity, or systematically deprive certain people of the conditions necessary for physical and mental integrity. for instance, paul farmer describes how neoliberal economic policies, which subject all aspects of social life to the dictates of so-called market forces, have left hundreds of millions of people worldwide without access to health-care and other basic human needs. in this situation, farmer argues, violence exists, even if no laws are broken and no bullets fired (farmer, 2003; see also galeano, 1997; galtung, 1969; gutierrez, 1983). in this framework, social injustice is a form of violence. the concept of “social injustice” directs our attention to the systematic privileging of some groups at the expense of others, to the centrality of economic inequities in problems from health care crises to the exploitation of young men as soldiers, and thus to the ways that struggles for human rights, democracy, and freedom mean “above all defending the rights of the poor” (gutierrez, 1983, p. 211). in turn, the concept of “institutionalized violence” allows us to view such social justice struggles as struggles against violence. this latter concept implies that all significant and systemic forms of deprivation and offenses to dignity, even when they are routine to our institutions, demand the kind of moral, legal, political (and, i would argue, epistemic) responses that are called for by violence. some critics have used the concept of institutionalized violence to broaden the scope of peace advocacy (galtung, 1969). others have used this concept to underscore the criminality of severe and systemic poverty. as these critics point out, everyday poverty-related suffering fails to garner the media and political attention of natural disasters, tyranny, and civil rights abuses. nonetheless, “murder by poverty,” as galeano calls it (1997, p. 5), is just as consequential as any kind of murder and more pervasive. it is also just as avoidable and therefore just as inexcusable as other forms of violence. moreover, severe poverty and inequality often set the stage for more overt forms of violence, including military conflict and human rights abuses. the concept of institutionalized violence registers this moral and historical epistemologies of discomfort 31 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 continuity between economic injustice and more publicized forms of violence (farmer, 2003, pp. 8-17, 29-50; galeano, 1973; gutierrez, 1983, pp. 132-135). the concept of institutionalized violence is useful to me here because it makes explicit the broader notions of violence and responsibility that are implicit in the work of arendt, fanon, gray, and weil and that form a common thread in their work. the vocabulary of institutionalized violence was not yet current when these philosophers wrote. nonetheless, they each address forms of violence that are best understood as institutionalized violence, insofar as the violence of concern to them arose not mainly from direct and intended actions on the part of sociopaths and “evildoers” but, rather, from the routine activities of ordinary people. for instance, arendt (1978) focuses on the “administrative mass murder” of nazism, which was enacted by ordinary professionals who served as accountants, technicians, and managers of the death camps. fanon (1963) is concerned not only about the blatant violence of the french military, but also the economic violence of businessmen who managed the exploitation of african resources as well as the complicity of journalists, bureaucrats, and diplomats who went about their business indifferent to colonialist crimes. similarly, weil examines the brutality of modern socio-economic practices (1977, pp. 53-72, 126-152), and gray stresses the dangers of indirect, aloof participation in violence by “normal” men (1998, p. xviii). when these theorists investigate the mindsets that have made possible such routine forms of violence, they are, in effect, investigating the cultural conditions of institutionalized violence. in addition, the concept of institutionalized violence enables me to link military violence with other forms of structural violence and to investigate the distinct epistemic practices that all such violent institutions demand. in effect, although my focus here is on war, the identification of war as a form of institutionalized violence enables me to consider how the epistemic practices demanded by war would also be demanded by other forms of systematic violence and injustice. institutionalized violence and understanding arendt offers a useful starting point for conceptualizing the kind of epistemic practices that meaningful engagement with institutionalized violence demands. all political inquiry, she explains, requires not only empirical and theoretical analysis but also engaged and particular-focused understanding, for the essence of political phenomena can be grasped only when we address their human content, their uniqueness, and their situatedness within our world. unlike theoretical knowledge, understanding does not stand apart from its objects and locate them within preconceived categories and causal chains but instead attends to phenomena in all of their strange and disconcerting aspects and seeks to comprehend them as nonetheless human phenomena that are part of our world. understanding is thus the activity by which we “try to be at home in the world,” not in the sense of being comfortable, but in the sense of reckoning with our connection to our world’s most odd and disturbing elements (arendt, 1953b, p. 377). although understanding never attains certainty or conclusiveness, the constant work of trying to understand strange political phenomena and to integrate them into a meaningful narrative of our world is necessary in order to orient ourselves in a complex and ever-changing world. judgment, by which we bring understanding to bear on the evaluation of specific 32 shari stone-mediatore studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 phenomena, is also necessary in order to participate actively and responsibly in public life (arendt, 1953a; 1953b; 1992, pp. 294-297; stone-mediatore, 2003, pp. 38-43, 200).7 for instance, arendt and weil stress that we can face the horror of violence that has become routine in our society only when we judge the world for ourselves, based on our own sensitive engagement with specific phenomena. such individual judgment of specific phenomena is avoided, however, when we confine our thinking to abstract categories and logics, for instance, abstractions of “democracy” or fixed formulas of “progress” or “class struggle.” arendt and weil (like smith) recognize that some degree of abstraction from immediate experience, and some theorizing of patterns that provide coherence to particular facts, is essential to thinking. their criticism is not directed toward abstraction, per se, but to our tendency to prioritize abstract categories over historical life and to treat abstract categories as if they were the material and motor of history. when we do this, they argue, we bypass the in this account, responsible knowledge-claims about political affairs must conform to conventional criteria of truth, including consistency with empirical facts and with the causal mechanisms that have produced the facts. in addition, however, they should also direct our attention in ways that help us to understand political phenomena in their existential richness and their relevance to our world. all genuine understanding is risky and discomfiting, as it challenges us to reconcile alien phenomena with familiar worldviews, and to adjust our sense of our identity and projects accordingly. judgment is also risky, as it involves inserting ourselves into the world and exposing ourselves to judgment by others. understanding of institutionalized violence, however, presents particularly acute cognitive and emotional unease, for understanding the violence of our own institutions defies euphemistic ruling discourses and disturbs flattering images of ourselves. at the same time, judgment of institutionalized violence interrupts any comfortable aloofness we might have from the political world and calls on us to denounce violence in our midst. cultural conditions of institutionalized violence arendt’s account of understanding and judgment helps to identify the kind of intellectual practices whose absence she and others have found central to ordinary people’s complicity in violence. arendt (1979), fanon (1963), farmer (2003), gray (1998), and weil (1977) address diverse manifestations of institutionalized violence, ranging from nazi death camps to military brutality by the allied powers, from french colonialism in algeria to economic violence in europe and central america. despite their diverse historical focuses, they share common insights about the kind of mental practices that have enabled ordinary people to participate in violent institutions. their studies suggest that certain modes of thinking that are prevalent in modern life—notably, mechanical thought processes that proceed without responsiveness or a sense of accountability to the living world—have thwarted our processes of understanding and enabled many of us to analyze and administer violent institutions without disturbing comfortable thought patterns or troubling our consciences. epistemologies of discomfort 33 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 complexities of historical life along with community discussion about such complexities in favour of conformity to abstract formulas, whose consistency and clarity “exists nowhere in the realm of reality” (arendt, 1979, p. 471). we likewise begin to disengage from the existential content of our world and to subordinate living beings to abstract imperatives, while we gain a false sense of intellectual mastery that leads us to overlook phenomena that diverge from expected patterns. thus, as michael ignatieff (2007) admits, ivy-league scholars tend to remain in esoteric realms, where particular facts can be viewed “as instances of some big idea” and messy and “unexpected” events can be avoided (p. 28). abstract formulas may be safe, but when we employ abstract categories such as “democracy” or “socialism” without investigating their relation to particular historical affairs, those concepts become “vacuous entities” that “stupefy the mind,” for they serve as facile substitutes for examining the specific factors that harm and improve human life in specific contexts (weil, 1977, p. 284). most importantly here, when we allow such abstract formulas to replace individual reckoning with specific phenomena, we cannot evaluate critically practices that have become routine in our society. we may make moral evaluations (e.g., we may, like ajami, 2003, 2005, evaluate the arab world as “decaying” and u.s. military intervention as a “gift”), but our evaluations remain limited to those programmed into received political formulas (arendt, 1953b, pp. 380-392; 1979, pp. 469-478; stone-mediatore, 2003, pp. 56-60; weil, 1977, pp. 28-38, 269-284). arendt and others also stress that understanding of violent institutions demands that we forgo professional distance and risk engaged, whole-person responsiveness to the phenomena we study, for only openness to the moral and emotional responses that violent institutions evoke in us can sensitize us to their human character (arendt, 1953a; fanon, 1963, pp. 77-78; farmer, 2003, pp. 1-41). weil (1997) suggests, further, that the social suffering that accompanies institutionalized violence can be recognized only with a kind of receptivity that is akin to love. truth and affliction can only be heard, she says, with “intense, pure, disinterested, gratuitous, generous attention. . . . which is pure love” (p. 33). such unbounded, whole-hearted attention is a kind of love in the sense that it involves a letting go of oneself and exposing oneself to strangeness and discomfort in order to be receptive to another person or phenomenon. by contrast, when journalists, administrators, or analysts maintain an “objective attitude,” they protect themselves from such receptivity. bureaucratic and technical modes of thought help to maintain this thick skin, for they direct attention to aspects of the world that can be readily categorized and regulated without activating any personal relationship or response (arendt, 1992, pp. 68-69, 105-110; fanon, 1963, pp. 77-78; farmer, 2003, pp. 10-17: galeano, 1991, p. 120; 1997, pp. 266-67). facing the violence of our own institutions also demands a willingness to accept some responsibility for social harms and for resisting those harms. such difficult obligations are again avoided, however, by the common mindset that we have no accountability to the wider community. contemporaries live “godlessly,” says gray, in the sense that we feel no need to answer to anyone, including ourselves, for what we do (1998, p. xviii). such moral apathy and denial of our spiritual embeddedness within the world is blatant in war, says gray, but it also pervades civilian life, where we have become increasingly disconnected from our social and natural environments. gray and others attribute this widespread social and moral alienation 34 shari stone-mediatore studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 to the excessively abstract and sterile mindsets described above as well as to the modern separation between personal and professional life, by which we routinely leave hearts and souls at home when we go to work (arendt, 1978, pp. 231-234; farmer, 2003, pp. 1-28, 245-256; galeano, 1991, pp. 106-107; gray, 1998, pp. xviii, 8-9). these common intellectual modes—abstraction from historical life, clinical relation to the world, and separation between professional and personal life—may be justifiable as elements of a reflective process; however, when they dominate our thinking, the above theorists suggest, they divert us from the existential content of violent institutions and the moral demands that such violence makes on us as human beings. in other words, these epistemic approaches do not so much repress or deny violence as they direct our attention to more innocuous elements of the world that can be readily subsumed within received categories without challenging our intellectual mastery over or aloofness from the world we study. in effect, they enable us to analyze and administer violent institutions without risking understanding those institutions as human phenomena with ties to our own lives. experts and institutionalized violence because public affairs experts tend to be trained in excessively abstract, detached, and institutionalized modes of thinking, they are particularly prone to evade the disturbing content and moral pull of institutionalized violence. granted, such experts are not so directly involved in violence as people who are designing bombs or administering death camps. nonetheless, when public affairs experts approach the world with deliberately detached, rote, and managerial mindsets, they practice a particularly strong evasion of human content and denial of their human ties to the world. and when they confine their analysis to institutionalized discourses, they exhibit a particularly strong tendency to avoid phenomena that are incongruent with ruling worldviews. as a result, they play a particular role in glossing and thereby maintaining violent institutions. expert standpoints on the war: ignatieff and ajami the recent political context, in which war has been so readily used as a means of policymaking and public debate on war has been so limited, makes urgent the need to bring critiques of authority to bear on public discussion of war. i contribute to this project by tracing the expert-related biases in two influential foreign-affairs experts, michael ignatieff and fouad ajami. ignatieff, who in 2007 withdrew his support for the war, is currently a canadian member of parliament and leader of the liberal party, former director of the carr center for human rights policy at harvard, a carnegie institute “expert” on war and ethics, and a regular contributor to the new york times. ajami, who continues to support the u.s. military presence in iraq, is a political conservative who directs the paul h. nitze school of advanced international studies at john hopkins university, appears regularly as “middle east expert” on television talk-shows, and contributes regularly to foreign affairs, the epistemologies of discomfort 35 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 new republic, and the wall street journal. despite their political differences, their writings on the iraq war exhibit striking similarities that illustrate the warrationalizing tendencies of much expert thinking. although presumably addressing the concerns of the general public, both public affairs experts presume an elite standpoint, from which war is less a living phenomenon than an opportunity for projects and policymaking.8 in addition to glossing violence with managerial language, both experts demonstrate greater commitment to neoliberal and neo-colonialist discourses than to the complexity of the situation on the ground. ajami, for instance, has described the war as “a reformist project,” in relation to which iraq is not so much a living community as a “starting point” from which the united states can “modernize and transform the arab landscape” (2003, pp. 7, 17-18). ignatieff, in turn, has described the invasion as a means of governing, characterized by “manag[ing] the insurgent zone,” “bringing order” to a “vacuum of chaos,” and “polic[ing] the world” (2003). although typical of political discourse, their construction-project and law-and-order metaphors have little relation to the insecure and chaotic reality of war, which in the case of iraq has involved an undermining of order and security so severe that unemployment has risen to an estimated 50-70 %, many iraqi men working for the u.s. military have been forced for safety reasons to abandon their families and live in hiding, some parents lacking basic resources have been compelled to abandon their children, and women cannot go to work or walk the streets, without fear of being kidnapped by gangs with police complicity (anderson, 2006; finer, 2006; sandler, 2003; tavernise, 2007). 9 for instance, in accord with neoliberal narratives of freedom and democracy, ignatieff reduces these broad political aims to u.s.-style markets and elections, such that, despite the devastating effects of u.s. military activities on iraqi family, civic, economic, and cultural life, he can equate the u.s. intervention with the promotion of “free markets, human rights and democracy” (ignatieff, 2003). both experts also invoke colonialist stereotypes that present gross violence on the part of western nations as part of a civilizing mission. for instance, widespread lawlessness and abuse on the part of the u.s. military has been well documented; as one soldier put it, u.s. soldiers “freak out and beat the crap out of people all the time . . . [iraqi] people are just constantly getting their asses kicked over there, for no reason” (jamail, 2008, p. 28; kramer & glanz, 2007; thompson, 2008). and yet ajami describes the u.s. occupation as “noble” work, a “gift” to a “decaying,” hopelessly backward arab world, who need the “reforming” influence of americans (2005; 2003, p. 2). similarly, ignatieff (2003) describes the occupation as a “noble (albeit dangerous) mission” to civilize a “combustible region of islamic peoples” who are hopelessly unable to create “competent, rule-abiding states” on their own. 10 experts do sometimes relate stories of specific individuals. for instance, ignatieff (2007) refers to his iraqi exile friend who, at the onset of the u.s. invasion, regarded the war as his generation’s “only chance . . . to live in freedom in their own country” (p. 27). as in this example, however, experts tend to use individual stories only in safe and superficial ways, to support general claims; not as a source of nuanced and unpredictable perspectives on the world that spur new thinking. 11 ignatieff’s formulaic interpretation of the war is reinforced by his concern for his reputation. despite increasing iraqi opposition to the u.s. occupation and the war’s exacerbation of mideast instability and international terrorism, 12 ignatieff continued 36 shari stone-mediatore studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 through 2005 to rationalize his stance that the war was “spreading democracy’s promise” (2005b). rather than re-examine his position in light of increasing problems with the occupation, he defended his pro-war stance as brave and unorthodox while he dismissed critics of the war as “ideological fools” who support the insurgents (2004, 2005a).13 in 2007, amidst spiralling home-front anti-war sentiments, ignatieff finally acknowledged the war’s failure; however, he devoted his first major essay on the war in two years not to examining iraqi reality but to showcasing his own “daring” vision and “good judgment” (2007, pp. 27, 29). notwithstanding his shift of position, he retains (with ajami) the narrative of america seeking to grace iraq with an american-style “free state,” even if he now considers that mission to have been thwarted by iraq’s sectarianism (2007, p. 29). tellingly, one iraqi man interviewed on cnn after the 2005 iraqi elections stressed that freedom and democracy must also include jobs that enable people to feed their families. and other iraqis have protested foreign oil contracts and demanded control over their country’s resources (jasiewicz, 2008). both experts, however, have ignored such concerns and have restricted debate to whether or not americans have the might and right “to sponsor liberty in the middle east” (ignatieff, 2005b). vital questions related to the meaning of liberty and democracy, the specific effects of u.s. military activities on iraqi communities, and the specific conditions necessary for all iraqis to freely and self-consciously govern their lives remain unasked. military-family activists and engaged authority while experts tend to restrict themselves to questions formed within ruling discourses and to shield themselves from any cognitively or emotionally threatening phenomena, the military-family activists who have been most effective at invigorating public debate have done the opposite: driven by their closeness to and care about the issues, they have turned attention to “things we don’t want to see” and questions we feel uncomfortable asking. military family activists have not claimed epistemic agency easily. when, for instance, ohio military mom teresa fowler dawson first began to examine critically the administration’s case for invading iraq, her husband asked dismissively, “what could you know about iraq that the president doesn’t?” cindy sheehan faces similar dismissals of her epistemic agency, with pundits from all sides claiming that she is being manipulated by ideologues and “pontificat[ing] on subjects beyond [her] expertise” as a mother (barsamian, 2006, p. 38; houppert, 2006, p. 13). despite the obstacles, however, military-family activists have persisted and have begun to interrupt debate as usual. in addition to their insider-critic status, their success seems to lie, as well, in their challenge to basic epistemic premises of public debate. motherand wife-identified activists, perhaps because their feminine roles have pitted them against norms of expertise, have been particularly bold in this challenge. when anti-war mothers and wives of soldiers assert authority as family members driven by their concern for loved ones to face war honestly, they defy epistemic norms and demonstrate the role that emotional closeness to and care about issues can play in rigorous thinking about discomfiting phenomena. epistemologies of discomfort 37 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 irresponsible uses of emotion clearly, personal and emotional closeness to war do not guarantee either critical or nonviolent thought. indeed, fear, anger, and even love can sometimes fuel fanaticism and even murder: “we are following our hearts,” said one israeli settler, as he explained his family’s efforts to terrorize their arab neighbours.14 and, as wartime atrocities have made only too clear, soldiers’ grief for fallen comrades often transposes into rage that spurs frenzied killing. 15 arendt, weil, and gray suggest some ways that we might distinguish uses of emotion that promote understanding of historical phenomena and awareness of our ties to other living beings from uses of emotion that obscure relevant phenomena and alienate us from our neighbours. emotions have obfuscating and alienating effects, they explain, when they take shape not from individual reckoning with specific phenomena, but from set reactions to oversimplified entities; for instance, love for “the free world” or hatred toward “the enemy” (arendt, 1998, pp. viii; gray, 1998, pp. 133-135; weil, 1977, pp. 270-276). such “abstract emotions,” as gray calls them, remain oriented by mechanical formulas, even when they may be accentuated by a personal grievance. thus, although the person guided by abstract emotion is more passionate than the aloof expert, he is equally “insulated against experience and free reflection” and “more or less an automaton” (gray, 1998, p. 158). ultimately, abstract emotions stifle intelligence because, like overly abstract reasoning, they bulldoze any subtleties of historical life that do not fit received categories while they gain clarity and certainty at the expense of “the very elements of [historical] intelligence,” namely “the ideas of limit, measure, degree, proportion, relation, comparison, contingency,” which are the only ways by which abstract terms apply meaningfully to rich and varied historical phenomena (weil, 1977, p. 271). thus, before turning to responsible uses of emotion, i specify the character of irresponsible uses of emotion, so that the two can be more systematically distinguished. ignatieff acknowledges his susceptibility to such crude emotions when he attributes his overconfidence in the war to his emotional reaction to saddam-ruled iraq (2007, p. 29); however, whereas ignatieff blames emotion per se, weil and gray allow us to specify ignatieff’s judgment-impairing emotion as an abstract emotion that is complicit with his overly abstract thinking: both ignatieff’s emotions and intellect presuppose a stereotypical “combustible region of islamic peoples” whose disorder is defined against a mythic democracy-spreading america, with the result that, even when ignatieff acknowledges the war’s failure, he retains those facile stereotypes. emotions also impede rigorous thinking when they substitute for critical reflection on our historical responsibilities and projects. for instance, when love is expressed as unconditional loyalty to the mission that a loved one serves or the identity to which a loved one belongs, such love transposes into group allegiance. such groupallegiance-oriented love is not only divisive but dulls thinking, for it avoids examining critically group identities and missions. grief can have a similarly dulling and myopic effect when it is channelled into rage and violence. such grief-turnedvengeance seeks to escape the pain of losing a loved one by immersing oneself in revenge, as if one’s loss could be cancelled by inflicting loss on others; in the words of one settler, “they kill our children, so we kill theirs.” ultimately, such emotions 38 shari stone-mediatore studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 not only erect barriers between people but avoid the difficult task of understanding past conflicts and building less violent futures. emotional engagement and rigorous thinking although some uses of emotion cloud thinking and fuel ideological divisions, the activists who have turned attention to the war’s complex and discomfiting elements demonstrate that the solution to emotionally fraught zealotry is not to purge emotion from our thinking–a move that only further alienates us from the living world–but to allow ourselves to feel deeply our love, grief, and even anger, and then to use those feelings to know the world more fully and intimately as a world to which we belong and are accountable. in effect, they practice and further elucidate the kind of responsibly engaged and situated thinking called for by arendt, weil, fanon, and gray. on one level, these activists demonstrate how personal ties to war, when combined with a concern for honesty about the world that homes loved ones, can help them to face vexing realities, even when this exposes them to intellectual uncertainty and social ostracization. for instance, dawson’s ties to her children in the military led her to shed the safety of her military and republican upbringing and to study reports from around the world in order to be able to evaluate for herself the reasons for her children’s possible deployment. as she put it, “with two children in the reserves, i made it my business to know about the war.” military wife christine langer has similarly forgone the comforts of certainty and clarity in order to struggle with the contradictions of a war that called her husband to service. she underscores the role that love has played in her resistance to mental indolence: military families are trained to follow mechanically the military’s cut and dried logic, langer explains, so that your mind becomes attached to the seeming certainty of that logic and its simple explanation for your sacrifices, even while “in your true heart” you know that the issues are not as simple as the military would have you believe (cited in houppert, 2003, p. 14). candace robison confirms the heart’s role in critical thinking. “i needed more evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction,” she says, “before i was ready to accept that my husband might come home in a body bag” (cited in houppert, 2003, p. 13). granted, the historical insight that langer attributes to her “true heart” seems to include intellectual understanding of the issues while the investigative impulses of dawson and robison are actualized with cognitive and research skills. nevertheless, when langer identifies her critical distance from military logic with her “heart” and when dawson and robison emphasize their personal ties to the issues that they scrutinize, they indicate that the kind of mental alertness, or “waking up,” that philosophers throughout history have associated with critical thought is not merely intellectual but is enlivened by a passion-motivated concern for truth. they remind us, in other words, as socrates suggests in his cross-examination of meletus, that sound understanding of an issue has a lot to do with caring about it (plato, 2002, p. 30). thus, dawson and robison cannot rest content with vacuous abstractions about the war, but demand historical precision, when their families are part of that history. “if the intention is to bring ‘democracy,’” says dawson, “then get them water, epistemologies of discomfort 39 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 power, infrastructure. that’s what my son’s unit is trained to do. they are ‘can-do’ people. if [democracy] was a priority, it would have been done.” in addition to driving them to examine critically the relation of abstract claims to historical reality, the activists’ personal closeness to the war has also helped them to appreciate human dimensions of the conflict, which, while not hidden, escape detached and managerial mindsets. the activists’ awareness of the war’s human elements may begin on a personal level; however, when combined with a sense of their situatedness within history, such awareness does not remain merely personal but guides them toward important but often-overlooked historical phenomena. for instance, having experienced directly the strain of the war on her marriage, dawson was intrigued to research the subject further and found, amongst less publicized statistics, that since 2003 the divorce rate amongst active duty personnel has risen 300%.16 many such human elements of the war should not be unexpected or difficult to comprehend, and yet they challenge our comfort level and mastery, so that we attend to them only when an emotional connection jars us into addressing things that we otherwise conveniently ignore. the grief of those who have lost loved ones in the war underscores how emotional responsiveness to the issues can spark an awareness that is missing from institutionalized thinking; in this case, an acute awareness of the value of individual lives and their irreducibility to abstract causes. when we allow “intense, generous attention” to expose us to the preciousness of the lives that are damaged and destroyed in war, we do not gain easy answers to conflict; however, we do unsettle comfortable attachments to “projects” and “missions” and are moved to consider profound effects of the war—the destruction of families, the loss of loved ones, the life-long psychological damage to iraqi children—that are too easily overlooked by detached theorizing. sensitive to the effects of war on everyday life, she has also seen beyond project sites and “combustible regions” to iraqi people, not so different than herself. for instance, when the united states military implemented “shock and awe” (a strategy based on overwhelming and spectacular uses of force, which included intensive bombing of baghdad) dawson’s youngest son was still a toddler, whose fears she had to quell every night before he would go to sleep. from her mother’s perspective, dawson wondered how mothers in iraq could possibly relieve their children’s bedtime fears in the context of shock and awe. not surprisingly, iraqi caretakers attest to the war’s damage to iraqi children’s basic psychological wellbeing (finer, 2006). emotional engagement and historical responsibility finally, the more effective activists demonstrate how emotional closeness to the issues can enhance our sense of connection and responsibility to the historical world. although not all emotional responses ground us in the world in responsible ways, precisely targeted emotions can generate the sense of historical responsibility that both abstract emotions and detached analysis lack. carefully focused anger, for instance, affirms that comfortable aloofness is not adequate, but that we need to denounce wrongdoing and demand better behaviour from our fellows. feminist theorists help to distinguish such “corrective-surgery” anger (as audre lorde puts it) from hatred and rage. hatred seeks destruction and rage is hurled without focus or 40 shari stone-mediatore studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 attempt at communication. by contrast, anger that is “focused with precision” and expressed within a community of peers serves positive growth, for it identifies intolerable practices and enjoins others’ participation in change (lorde, 1984, p. 127; also spelman, 1989, pp. 270-272). thus, the rage of frenzied soldiers, which is expressed indiscriminately at anyone who fits a vague notion of the enemy, promotes only crude categorizing and destruction. by contrast, when dawson responds angrily to her community’s naive “support-the-troops” gestures—“those yellow ribbon magnets won’t keep my son safe from sniper bullets” (often written on cards left on car window shields)—and when sheehan makes clear that someone is to blame for her son’s death—“casey wasn’t lost; he was killed by george bush’s murderous policies,”17 they target specific contradictions in their own communities. in so doing, they stir uncomfortable controversy but also provoke us to account for our slogans, symbols, and national policies. grief, when not lost in feel-good abstractions of pride or revenge, can also awaken community awareness and responsibility. on one level, grief that is faced as both a personal and historically situated experience can heighten our sense of historical responsibility. as sheehan put it, the emotional knowledge of “know[ing] how much it hurts to have a child killed” led her to the sense that she was embroiled in the issue and had to “do something” to prevent others from experiencing such pain (cited in barsamian, 2006, p. 38). moreover, although george bush may think that arlington cemetery is watered by “silent tears,” 18 such grief-awakened and historically grounded sensitivity to our common vulnerability to violence may not yield certain knowledge but it is not “mere feeling” either. it directs our thinking toward vital human patterns and problems that both ideologically formed emotions and institutionalized discourses neglect; in particular, our common humanity across differences and our need to find ways of living some relatives of buried soldiers have openly expressed their grief and thereby affirmed the political relevance of war’s personal toll. sheehan underscored this point when she mourned publicly outside bush’s crawford ranch and demanded an explanation from bush as to why her son had to die. in so doing, sheehan disrupted norms that would have us accept passively the death of soldier-kin. she thereby created a context in which others, too, could experience their grief and anger as legitimate reactions to the death of loved ones in the military and as politically relevant speech to which policymakers must respond. of course, not all grieving mothers react with the same kind of communal awareness. as sara ruddick observes, our concern for our own children often contends with our concern for the well being other children (1984, p. 39). nonetheless, even if they cannot avoid entirely the tension that ruddick identifies between “the demands of one’s own and the demands of the whole,” sheehan and other goldstar mothers for peace demonstrate how the sharing of grief across communities can help to surpass the narrow loyalties that sometimes consume grieving parents. through sharing feelings of fear and loss, they have not only forged human-level connections with other parents but have gained appreciation for our common vulnerability to violence across continents and have been moved to organize on behalf of the security of all families. thus sheehan and her peers have joined with women around the world to “end this madness” because, whatever their cultures and languages, their “hearts understand the pain . . . caused by this war” (sheehan cited in barsamian, 2006, p. 38). epistemologies of discomfort 41 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 together without inflicting massive violence on one another. not distance and disinterest but only emotional responsiveness, combined with a sense of historical situatedness and responsibility, can turn our attention to such challenging human projects. conclusion: the need for epistemologies of discomfort military-family activists have highlighted crucial aspects of the iraq war that public affairs experts regularly overlook; for instance, the long-term psychological damage that the war inflicts on soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict, the dubious commitment of the u.s. government to support their own troops or to protect the infrastructures of democracy, and our responsibility as members of the human community to make all families safe from violence. the virtual absence of these issues from most public debate on the war reflects not only the limits of ruling discourses on war but also general cultural tendencies to avoid phenomena that might disturb ingrained beliefs or trouble our consciences. much like the dominant culture’s inattention to the working poor or to homeless people (many of whom are veterans), our inattention to the profound damage of war seems to arise less from the obscurity of the issues than from our self-protective evasion of phenomena that make us uncomfortable. with homelessness as with the horror of war, full and receptive attention would likely threaten comfortable worldviews and raise tough questions about our moral obligations. avoidance of these phenomena is, thus, a common tendency. nonetheless, experts tend to exacerbate these common self-imposed ignorances. with their commitment to established discourses, to intellectual mastery over their subject matter, and to professional distance, experts are particularly prone to avoid phenomena that defy ruling conceptual frameworks or that make claims on us as human beings situated amongst other living beings. if we are to confront the current wars—or any violence or injustice of our own institutions—in a rigorous and responsible manner, then we will need to face phenomena that are discomfiting and that call attention to our own moral and historical responsibilities. the success of some military-family activists in bringing public attention to difficult aspects of the iraq war suggest the importance in this endeavour of closeness to and care about the issues. with their explicitly passiondriven concern for truth and their grounding of historical reflection in the intensity and complexity of troubling experience, activists like dawson, sheehan, and langer have exceeded established discourses and comfortable aloofness so as to identify violence in which their own lives are entangled and to sketch historical projects that are vital to human security but that escape managerial and nation-based logics. academics can contribute to the revitalizing of security debates initiated by these activists by registering the authority of their voices and by affirming the need for all of us to risk reckoning on a human level with uncategorized and uncomfortable phenomena, if we are ever to face the intellectual and moral challenges that the current wars—and any institutionalized violence or social injustice—present. 42 shari stone-mediatore studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 notes 1 i thank catherine hundleby, phyllis rooney, and the anonymous journal reviewers for thoughtful and illuminating criticism of earlier drafts of this paper. 2 my own interview with the veteran’s mother, theresa fowler dawson, april 21, 2005. all subsequent quotations from dawson are from my interviews with dawson in april 2005, july 2006, and december 2007. i have written about dawson and other military-family activists before in “examined lives in the shadow of iraq,” the humanist (march/april 2006) and “military families speak out and the challenge to war epistemology,” bridges: an interdisciplinary journal of philosophy, theology, history, and science (summer 2007). 3 in economics, the so-called “law” of comparative advantage posits that all individuals and communities benefit when each specializes in the goods that they can produce at the lowest relative cost. as my students seem to understand this law in the context of the current transnational economy, it posits that all nations (and people within nations) benefit when we implement the current set of neoliberal trade rules, which prohibit regulations and tariffs that could impede transnational trade. 4 for instance, in my critical thinking course, students gain understanding of the political and cultural dynamics of knowledge production by studying karl marx, roland barthes, arundhati roy, and aldous huxley, and then applying these theorists’ insights to analysis of contemporary texts, including professional texts from their other courses. students also gain appreciation for open-mindedness by reading, and then participating in exercises that challenge them to practice and extend immanuel kant’s theory of enlarged thought. 5 see, for instance, farmer (2003, pp. 1-28, 137-138), harding (1991, pp. 296-312), plumwood (1993, pp.189-196), and smith (1987, pp. 151-255). 6 by knowledge practices i refer broadly to all of those modes of inquiry that inform how we think about the world, including empirical investigations, theoretical analysis of causal mechanisms, and also the interpretive practice that arendt calls understanding, by which we come to terms with the significance of phenomena as living phenomena of our world. i include the latter because (as arendt argues and as i discuss below) an interpretation of the moral and emotional meaning that political phenomena have for us is central to all substantive knowledge-claims about the political world, even when such knowledge-claims present themselves as objective analysis. 7 in arendt’s account, understanding is achieved through the practice of storytelling. a full account of arendt’s notion of storytelling is beyond the scope of this paper but, in brief, storytelling, for arendt, is a disciplined, empirically accountable interpretive activity that is also engaged and creative, insofar as it articulates vivid metaphors and beginning-ending sequences in attempt to present political phenomena in terms of their human content and ties to our own world. storytelling can be held to standards of rigor and accountability but is nonetheless always partial and community-situated, insofar as the story is always only one way of transforming a living phenomenon into an articulate narrative. see arendt (1953a, pp. 777-781; 1953b, pp. 388-390; 1958, pp. 184-192) and stone-mediatore (2003, pp. 2694). 8 this elite standpoint passes unnoticed because the same standpoint is shared by their audiences. for instance, a glance at the advertisements in the journals in which ignatieff and ajami publish makes clear that their audiences are upper-echelon professionals who own or manage businesses, whose worries about the future centre on stock growth and retirement plans, and who view the globe in terms of investment and travel opportunities. in one particularly revealing foreign affairs advertisement, guardsmark security services appeals to business executives and refers to national and international violence as a threat to business operations. “war, terrorism, workplace violence, sabotage, theft,” the advertisement reads, “the list of security-related worries preoccupying today’s executive seems to grow each year.” it urges readers to consider “the costs of crime and terror—the human tragedy, the liability expenses, the legal fees, the public relations, management costs, the increased insurance premiums, the lost revenue from business interruption.” 9 in fact, ignatieff and ajami each combine neoliberal discourse with an updated cold-war discourse. both discourses identify freedom with the spread of western institutions, but cold-war discourse is more explicit about the role of military intervention in achieving this political hegemony. for instance, in cold-war fashion, ignatieff claims that “america,” epistemologies of discomfort 43 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 1, 2010 through military intervention, can “help other people attain their freedom,” even if we cannot always control the outcome (2003). ajami likewise invokes typical cold-war metaphors of america’s role in fighting freedom-threatening forces: he describes a “furious islamism [that] blew in like a deadly wind,” whereupon america responded with “regime change and ‘rollback’” (2003, p. 3). 10 on the wider prevalence of white-man’s-burden rhetoric in expert discussions of the iraq war, see monthly review (2003). 11 i discuss this problem further in stone-mediatore, 2003, p. 62. 12 see, for instance, paley (2006, p. a22), rothschild (2007, p. 9), jasiewicz (2008, p. 27) and whalen (2006, pp. 11-18). 13 for instance, rather than engage critics’ concerns about u.s. oil interests in iraq or about the inability of the u.s. military to bring democracy, ignatieff caricatures critics as belonging to the “michael moore-style left” (2005b). ignatieff seems particularly unfair when he describes the war’s critics as “anti-war ideologues” who cannot admit that “positive outcomes can result from [the bush administration’s] bad policies and worse intentions” (2005a); for, a year earlier, ignatieff himself asserted that “intentions do shape consequences” (2004). 14 this and all subsequent references to israeli settlers are from the documentary “frontline: israel’s next war?” 15 frank 1971, p. 459; gray, 1998, p. 139; and major robert hanafin, presentation at ohio wesleyan university, delaware, ohio, april 21, 2005. 16 dawson’s statistics are from www.military.com. see also urbina (2007, pp. 1, 14). 17 sheehan cited in barsamian, 2006, p. 39. 18 see http://www.cnn.com/2008/politics/05/26/memorial.day/index.html. references ajami, f. 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(2006, october 16). revolt of the generals. the nation, 11-18. epistemologies of discomfort: what military-family anti-war activists can teach us about knowledge of violence practitioner case complex non-profit collaboration: a case study of the advocacy initiative anna visser school of social policy, social work and social justice, university college dublin, belfield, dublin 4, ireland corresponding author: anna visser, anna@annavisser.ie doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/pmrp.v3i0.5121 project management research and practice vol. 3 july-dec. 2016 © 2016 by the author(s). this is an open access article distributed under the terms of the creative commons attribution 4.0 international (cc by 4.0) license (https:// creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. citation: visser, a. 2016. complex non-profit collaboration: a case study of the advocacy initiative. project management research and practice, 3, 5121. http://dx.doi. org/10.5130/pmrp.v3i0.5121 published by uts epress | http://pmrp.epress.lib.uts. edu.au synopsis the advocacy initiative was a partnership of a broad range of leading nonprofit organizations in ireland, which wanted to get to grips with the challenges facing their social justice advocacy work. this case study explores lessons of collaborative project implementation from the advocacy initiative. project setting supported by the atlantic philanthropies, hundreds of organizations took part from 2011 to 2014 in events, research, and reflection about social justice advocacy in ireland. structurally, there were many different partners, including a steering committee with over 20 members; this diversity brought with it a myriad of expectations and priorities. furthermore, the initiative found itself simultaneously grappling with the challenges and opportunities of engaging with stakeholders its own sector, as well as others such as policymakers, media, trade unions, and the broader public. target reader by focusing on a particular activity or function (in this case, advocacy), the initiative was able to build and sustain a complex nonprofit collaboration. consequently, this case study will be of direct relevance to those pursing similar projects, as well as researchers who are interested in the evolving nature of nonprofit collaboration. years of project 2011–14 declaration of conflicting interest the author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. funding the author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 (page number not for citation purposes) mailto:anna@annavisser.ie http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/pmrp.v3i0.5121 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/pmrp.v3i0.5121 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/pmrp.v3i0.5121 http://pmrp.epress.lib.uts.edu.au http://pmrp.epress.lib.uts.edu.au visser project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 20162 (page number not for citation purposes) competencies highlighted stakeholder management is a core competency of this project, focusing especially on building a sense of community among project partners and negotiating devolved ownership of a diverse program of work while maintaining overall coherence. the typical project phases (initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing) provide a structure within which to create a sense of coherence among diverse stakeholder viewpoints. the case study demonstrates how project management can provide a valuable way of coping with complexity of work and external requirements in a complex collaborative environment. lessons learned the advocacy initiative discovered the significance of building a collective identity for “social justice advocates.” it saw that it was possible to sustain engagement by balancing “ownership” and “devolution,” and worked hard to respond to individual priorities while also conserving an overall sense of coherence. the final lesson is one of ambition: in order to be able to engage in sensitive cross-stakeholder dialogue (particularly with policymakers), it was necessary to invest time and energy in building confidence and capacity among those involved. keywords collaboration, nonprofit, advocacy, complexity introduction there comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. we need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in – desmond tutu, quoted in a presentation by kathleen o’meara at the advocacy initiative’s closing conference in the royal dublin society, july 2014. in 2008, there was a real sense in ireland that social justice advocacy by nonprofit organizations was under threat from the state. the experience of many advocates and their organizations was that the state was actively working to silence advocacy. however, there were few forums for the nonprofit sector, commonly known as the “community and voluntary sector” in ireland, to discuss and reflect on social justice advocacy – the threats it faced, and its purpose, methodologies, effectiveness, assumptions, and legitimacy. where spaces did exist, there were low levels of trust and not always room for dissent from dominant narratives (murphy 2014). the advocacy initiative was established to provide the opportunity for the sector to come to grips with these challenges and consider more deeply its advocacy function. the advocacy initiative defined advocacy as “planned, organized and sustained actions undertaken by community and voluntary sector organizations, the purpose of which is to influence public policy outcomes, with and/or on behalf of the communities they work with” (the advocacy initiative 2012a). while advocacy generally is a much broader concept, relating to a wide range of actors, it is specifically recognized as a function of nonprofit organizations (andrews & edwards 2004, p. 481; balassiano & chandler 2009, p. 947; onyx et al. 2008, p. 632). in ireland, a variety of nonprofit organizations undertake advocacy. for example, a 2012 study by the advocacy initiative estimated that 39 percent of nonprofits are engaged in social justice advocacy and a further complex non-profit collaboration project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 20163 (page number not for citation purposes) 12 percent engage in broader advocacy, hence 51 percent of organizations undertake activities aimed at influencing public policy decisions. the majority (68 percent) said they were doing more advocacy than three years ago (cmadvice ltd. 2012, p. 44). consequently, advocacy is a significant function of the community and voluntary sector in ireland. over the course of its life, the advocacy initiative explored the experience of advocacy for irish nonprofits. one of the core practice challenges that it identified for the sector was engaging in better collaboration and building strategic alliances (walsh 2014, p. 31). hence, it is of interest that the initiative identified itself as an innovative form of collaboration within the community and voluntary sector. according to the initiative’s chairperson, kieran murphy: “there was something unique in how the initiative did its work. the initiative is an example of a new and reimagined way of working together” (the advocacy initiative 2014). consequently, as the former director of the advocacy initiative, in this case study i want to capture what we learned about collaborative project implementation. writing after the conclusion of the initiative, i will draw on the initiative’s documentary record, including its final reports and the reports of its external evaluator. as an “insider researcher” (smyth & holian 2008), my knowledge of the initiative is also practical and inevitably informed by my direct experience of working with those involved. in this article, i use the term “complex” to describe the collaboration that was the advocacy initiative. by complex i mean that the project involved many diverse project partners, with many different perspectives and expectations. the steering committee comprised up to 21 members (see table 1); while all were concerned with advocacy, these partners had different conceptions of what effective advocacy is and how social change happens. in addition, there were differing expectations of what the initiative should achieve, consequently many diverse actions were planned (as i will discuss, there were 13 “sub-projects” covering the three high-level objectives – see table 2). the initiative also sought to engage other stakeholders in its activities and work. this complexity of structures, actions, and stakeholders reflects the high-level ambition of “reframing” the relationship between the sector and the state, and brought with it specific challenges and opportunities. this case study is divided into two sections. the first provides an overview of the initiative as a collaborative project. drawing on the project management institute’s framework, i describe the project’s five phases: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing (project management institute n.d.). the second section addresses three key lessons for complex collaborative projects in the community and voluntary sector. these lessons include: the importance of the developing sense of community among social justice advocates; the need to balance “delegated” ownership with securing coherence and central control; and finally, the need to invest time and energy in building confidence and capacity to reach beyond the sector, and engage other stakeholders in difficult and contentious discussions. while the advocacy initiative was a project focusing on one role of the sector (that of advocacy), the project experience demonstrates that by taking such an activity lens it is possible to build deep and broad collaboration in a sector that is too often described as fragmented. consequently, this case study will have relevance for any project that seeks to build similarly action-focused collaborations of disparate nonprofit organizations. five project phases of the advocacy initiative the advocacy initiative was a project of the community and voluntary sector that aimed to generate greater understanding of, and reflection on, social justice advocacy in ireland. it was time bound and, in its active phase, implemented a specific program of activities from august 2011 to august 2014. thus, taking the project management institute definition of a project, it was a temporary endeavour whose aim was to achieve a specific result (project management institute visser project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 20164 (page number not for citation purposes) n.d.). the initiative can also be characterized as a kaleidoscope of projects; its working method was one of delivering multiple smaller projects, and inevitably this led to questions of coherence and synthesis, which i address later. in order to facilitate analysis of the initiative as a project, in this section i will provide an overview of the initiative using the typical five phases that characterize any project: initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. initiating the advocacy initiative has its roots in a summer school organized by the centre for nonprofit management at a trinity college dublin summer school in 2008. one paper presented at the summer school controversially described the community and voluntary sector as “sleepwalking” into its future. the author went on to suggest that: “although it is confronted with major issues – including regulation, funding, advocacy, and its role in society – there is little sense of concern or urgency, never mind awareness, to be discerned in the sector as a whole” (keenan 2008, p. 43). these views resonated with leaders from a sector that was facing the impact of the financial crisis and the collapse of social partnership (the irish system of national pay agreements between government, employers, and trade unions) (popplewell 2013). several participants at the summer school agreed that the role of community and voluntary sector advocacy needed further exploration. at a subsequent workshop, a number of people agreed to progress this work further, and a steering committee initially involving individuals from 17 organizations was formed (walsh 2014) (see table 1). table 1 organizational members of the advocacy initiative steering committee (for functional purposes a number of organizations had more than one individual represented on the committee) amnesty international ireland disability federation of ireland national women’s council of ireland barnardos focus ireland one parent exchange network (open) carmichael centre free legal advice centre simon community national office community workers’ cooperative irish cancer society society of st vincent de paul children’s rights alliance irish charities tax reform group the wheel community platform irish national organisation of the unemployed trócaire planning the steering committee worked together for about nine months, developing the purpose and goals for a collaborative action to examine the current state of advocacy by nonprofit organizations. securing funding from the atlantic philanthropies, the steering committee commissioned researchers to do an analysis of the state of social justice advocacy in ireland. this report, which was presented in 2010, involved an online survey of nonprofit organizations, as well as interviews with community and voluntary representatives, and others complex non-profit collaboration project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 20165 (page number not for citation purposes) with an interest in community and voluntary sector advocacy (montague communications & middlequarter ltd 2010). the steering committee subsequently used the report’s recommendations as the basis for the development of a three-year work program, which the atlantic philanthropies also funded. following my appointment as director in august 2011, my first task was to formulate an implementation plan. executing the implementation plan adopted in september 2011 suggested that the advocacy initiative was to become “a catalyst for a new relationship between the community and voluntary sector and the state.” the initiative’s three key goals were reformulated as: (1) to contribute to the knowledge and understanding of social justice advocacy; (2) to stimulate informed debate on social justice advocacy within the sector and with the state; and (3) to facilitate strengthened capacity of social justice advocates. thirteen activities were specifically associated with these goals (see table 2). as i will discuss below, during these early months, the initiative also developed a theory of change narrative in order to articulate how each intervention interacted with the overall objectives (the advocacy initiative 2012b). table 2 planned project activities of the advocacy initiative, 2011–14 goal planned activities contribute to knowledge and understanding of social justice advocacy. 1. develop a definition of social justice advocacy. 2. map the practice of social justice advocacy in ireland. 3. deepen understanding of how policymakers perceive social justice advocacy. 4. investigate the existence of funding vulnerability as a result of social justice advocacy. 5. commission a public opinion poll on the policy contribution of the community and voluntary sector. stimulate informed debate on social justice advocacy within the sector and with the state. 6. facilitate an expert group of relevant stakeholders to promote deep reflection on social justice advocacy and the contribution of the initiative. 7. promote self-reflection among social justice advocates. 8. develop a grassroots campaign to promote understanding of the advocacy function of the community and voluntary sector. facilitate strengthened capacity of social justice advocates. 9. develop a knowledge exchange forum to promote peer learning and exchange within the community and voluntary sector. 10. investigate training and educational support for social justice advocacy. 11. develop a capacity building framework for social justice advocacy relevant for the community and voluntary sector and policymakers. 12. develop an evaluation framework for social justice advocacy. 13. undertake strategic initiatives aimed at strengthening capacity. visser project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 20166 (page number not for citation purposes) this second phase of the advocacy initiative was financed in two ways. first, a threeyear grant of €500,000 was received from the atlantic philanthropies. second, €50,000 was allocated through in-kind support from focus ireland and the society of st vincent de paul, in the form of human resources support (financial and human resources administration). the initiative sought no other funding and raised no other resources (table 3 provides an overview of the budget and actual spend). from the outset, the initiative adopted a projectorientated approach to all of its work. human resources were limited to the equivalent of one full-time staff post, while approximately half the budget was invested in consultancy or project expenditure (the advocacy initiative 2014). table 3 budgeted and actual spend of the advocacy initiative, 2011–14 (the advocacy initiative 2014) item budget actual spend % of spend staff €223,000 €229,499 41.75% consultancy (including legacy strategy investment of €61,428) €250,000 €238,544 43.4% evaluation €17,000 €18,875 3.43% communications €30,000 €32,418 5.9% administration €30,000 €30,367 5.52% total €550,000 €549,703 in terms of execution of planned outputs, the results and achievements of the advocacy initiative are documented in three ways. first, a “synthesis report” analyzes the learning and core themes that emerged, and describes concrete outputs in terms of the initiative’s overall goals (walsh 2014). second, the final external evaluation captures the activities and structures of the initiative, providing an objective assessment of results (o’siochru 2014); and third, the final report to the atlantic philanthropies, as the funder, summarizes the achievements, changes, and identified challenges (the advocacy initiative 2014). with regard to meeting its three core goals, the initiative concluded that these objectives were broadly met: “we attained our three goals of building knowledge, fostering debate and reflection, and strengthening capacity. we built a strong and credible body of work that will have lasting relevance for the sector” ( the advocacy initiative 2014, p. 7). this conclusion is supported by the results of a survey of participants conducted during the final evaluation: a survey in june 2014 of those participating in various ways in the advocacy initiative points to a high level of success overall in three key respects. over three-quarters feel that debate and self-reflection had been stimulated within the sector, something noticeably lacking heretofore; about the same number feel that they themselves had enhanced their understanding of social justice advocacy and of the sector; and – perhaps most significantly – about half feel that their participation had led to positive changes in their practice. (o’siochru 2014, p. 1) complex non-profit collaboration project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 20167 (page number not for citation purposes) monitoring and controlling while the governance structures of the initiative were not particularly innovative, they worked effectively. the governance structure for the active phase of the initiative retained a steering committee with 17 members (later rising to 21), and added a management group nominated by the committee from among its members, supplemented by two external experts. membership of both steering committee and management group remained largely the same during the course of the initiative (o’siochru 2014). the steering committee and management group oversaw the management of a small team, comprising of a half-time director (three years), half-time communications officer (2 years), and sporadic administrative support. in order to advise on specific strategic actions, reference groups were set up as needed, comprising those involved in the initiative, as well as external actors. the initiative submitted annual financial and work reports to its funder. following a competitive tendering process conducted in late 2011, the initiative appointed an independent evaluator to design the evaluation framework, and to deliver an interim and final evaluation report. a decision was subsequently made to use the theory of change model (see http://www.theoryofchange.org). this framework began with long-term objectives and worked through the various preconditions to, ultimately, the interventions required to generate the outcomes. complementing the theory of change, the advocacy initiative has also used a theory u process to describe its journey as one of focusing, broadening, and deepening reflections on social justice advocacy in ireland (see https://www.presencing.com/theoryu). this tool enabled the initiative to further reflect on the nature and consequences of the relationships between the state and social justice advocates. closing while the time-bound nature of the initiative was clearly identified from the start, the potential of extending the work was nonetheless regularly discussed. however, the temporary nature of the initiative was considered critical to securing buy-in from a broad range of actors and maintaining momentum in planned activities (o’siochru 2014). as o’siochru writes in his final evaluation: the finite lifetime created an environment in which trust and engagement of partners could be built quickly. it also freed the team to focus firmly on the more immediate outcomes sought and avoided potentially extended and divisive discussion of the “positioning” of such an entity within the sector. the idea of creating a more permanent entity, a body or network, was mooted, and the option was always present, but any attempt at it would certainly have consumed significant energies of the team and possibly led to difficulties within the group and in relation to addressing the wider sector. furthermore, the original remit and objectives for the initiative offered no rationale for constituting a permanent entity. (o’siochru 2014, p. 22) consequently, the initiative closed it doors as planned after 36 months. in preparing to close, the initiative undertook three core activities, which were not originally foreseen in its work plan. first, it took the decision to commission a synthesis report. over the course of many discussions, the steering committee identified an objective to find a way to digest and synthesize the divergent outputs and discussions that the initiative had facilitated. to this end, they contracted an external researcher to work with the committee on developing “pulling together: the synthesis of the advocacy initiative 2010–2014” (walsh 2014). this report, http://www.theoryofchange.org https://www.presencing.com/theoryu visser project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 20168 (page number not for citation purposes) written in the first person, provides an overview of the history of the initiative and what it achieved. but more significantly, it records the learning of the initiative, describing the social justice advocacy landscape in ireland and the challenges it faces. the document also captures the next steps, as well as key resources. second, responding to a strong desire for the learning from the initiative to continue, the steering committee agreed on a legacy plan in late 2013, and set about identifying a number of legacy partners. seven members of the steering committee submitted proposals to take ownership of a number of projects. each partner signed a contract and received an allocation of multi-annual funding (small amounts identified in the original budget of the initiative, in agreement with the initiative’s funder). given the conclusion of the initiative, no overall governance or accountability mechanisms were identified for these projects (beyond the internal mechanisms of each partner). however, the seven partners made a commitment to liaise and communicate with each other, and identified the website as a coordination tool for these projects. the legacy strategy will conclude in 2017. finally, the synthesis report and legacy strategy were launched at a final conference held in july 2014. overall, from a project planning and implementation perspective, the initiative proved relatively straightforward and successful. the community and voluntary sector identified a need to explore the challenges facing social justice advocacy; following an initial scoping phase, resulting in the first project report, a fuller work plan was developed, human and financial resources were secured, and the plan was implemented more or less as first envisaged (o’siochru 2014, p. 21). however, it is perhaps in the nature of collaboration itself that interesting lessons emerge for those seeking to engage in collaborative project management in the community and voluntary sector. in the next section, i will explore three core lessons that emerged from the experience of the advocacy initiative. lessons learned for managing complex nonprofit collaborations as i have already discussed, the advocacy initiative can be described as a complex collaboration. this complexity is a consequence of specific characteristics of the project, which included the range of organizations involved, the diversity of those organizations (and of their expectations), and the efforts to involve broader stakeholders. in this concluding section, i want to introduce three lessons that the initiative learned about managing collaborative projects. the first is the significance of building a sense of “community” among social justice advocates generally, as well as more specifically among those involved in the steering committee. the second is the need to build “ownership” of the initiative by the sector, while also maintaining coherence. the third is the need to invest time and energy in building confidence and capacity, toward engaging other stakeholders in difficult and contentious discussion. build a community of interest the final evaluation suggests that the initiative served to build a sense of community across the social justice advocacy sector in three ways: fostering collegiality among the steering committee; creating opportunities for teamwork through specific projects; and opening complex non-profit collaboration project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 20169 (page number not for citation purposes) opportunity for the sector to come together and reflect on its work (the advocacy initiative 2014, p. 16). despite initial challenges, the initiative built a broad and effective steering committee. as the final evaluation puts it, “steering committee members have reported developing strong relationships and strong levels of trust that did not previously exist” (the advocacy initiative 2014, p. 21). an example of team building is the way the group of participant researchers worked together on the study of perceptions of policymakers: in their acknowledgments, the researchers describe the process of combining their findings as “unifying” for them as advocates (and as researchers) (walsh et al. 2013). finally, in building momentum across a diverse and competitive sector, an emerging sense of shared purpose proved critical. as one participant at a knowledge exchange forum put it in the initiative’s closing video (shown at the final conference): “the advocacy initiative has created a generosity of spirit, an open environment for sharing and learning from each other […] that is not going to go away.” it appears that this sense of a “social justice advocacy” community is relatively unique in a very disparate community and voluntary sector, and for many it proved an important characteristic. it is not clear to what extent this emerging sense of common cause (or at least common method) will sustain beyond the initiative, but for the initiative itself it was an important factor in the success of specific projects. in the context of a sector which is often described as fragmented (murphy 2013, p. 115), this capacity to build collaborative approaches is very significant, particularly with regard to the potential impact of social justice advocacy work (wallace 2004, pp. 2–3). balance ownership and coherence as discussed, early human resources capacity was limited and the initiative invested heavily in drawing in external capacity, and facilitating actions within the broader community and voluntary sector. as we have seen, this approach was identified as critical to the success of the initiative; however, it brought with it the challenge of securing coherence. for example, in implementing a series of self-directed local events, themes were not centrally coordinated but rather allowed to reflect local realities of social justice advocacy. while this may have undermined the capacity of the initiative to compare these discussions, it did facilitate opportunities for discussion and engagement that were locally engaging. another example is the development of the legacy strategy, through which partners took on the development of specific projects and tools, but without any oversight or governance of the strategy itself. given the diversity of those involved in the initiative, the project had to manage the capacity to respond to different needs and expectations. being relevant and responsive was critical to securing engagement in a very diverse community and voluntary sector. however, there was a need to balance this “devolution” with an overall analysis of initiative outcomes, which led to the decision to commission the “pulling together” report. invest in capacity and confidence building the overall ambition of the initiative was to reframe the relationship between the community and voluntary sector and the state. to this end, a number of activities were identified in the plan that sought to engage with other stakeholder groups, including those policymakers who are on the “receiving” end of advocacy. however, analysis of how the implementation plan changed over time would suggest that there was some instinct to pull back from this external engagement and focus inward on the sector itself (o’siochru 2014). for example, instead of visser project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 201610 (page number not for citation purposes) running a “grassroots” campaign to articulate the case for social justice advocacy, a series of local events, mostly for the sector itself, were facilitated. another example is the launch event for the research study on public funding of social justice advocacy, which primarily targeted the sector, with no specific dissemination activities undertaken to reach policymakers. however, there were also other examples of the initiative attempting new models of deepening stakeholder engagement. for example, toward the end of the initiative, a project emerged in which the initiative facilitated a two-day process with a range of stakeholder groups on the regulation of social justice advocacy. consequently, the experience of the initiative was that it took time to build the confidence and capacity to engage policymakers in difficult or contentious discussion (hodgett & sweeney 2010, p. 5). in fact, as policymakers were generally more open to such engagements than we had assumed, it may have been possible to engage in such actions earlier. as the perceptions study researcher put it: we were all very pleasantly surprised by how many of the individuals we approached agreed to be interviewed, and indeed how open and frank most of them were in the actual interview process. some had really thought about the sector and engaged in a very deliberate way. ( walsh et al. 2013, p. 56) however, it took the initiative time to build the confidence to develop this cross-stakeholder work. building collaboration, overcoming silos while we have not yet heard the final word from the advocacy initiative (the legacy strategy continues to 2017), this project proved a unique experience for the community and voluntary sector in ireland. as a project, it followed the standard cycle relatively straightforwardly from initiation to conclusion; however, as an experience of complex collaboration it proved challenging and innovative. in a sector that is often described as fragmented, there is much that can be learned for future collaborative projects that similarly wish to move past the silos or sub-sectors that can characterize the nonprofit landscape. as i have discussed, the collaboration that was the initiative was complicated for reasons of structure, actions, and stakeholders. in this case study, i have drawn out three lessons that we learned through managing the challenges of this complex collaboration. first was the significance of building an emerging sense of community, or a common identity, among social justice advocates. while not an explicit objective of the initiative, this outcome proved central and was identified as important by many of those involved. this experience suggests the achievability of building collaboration across a very diverse community and voluntary sector; when the focus is on a working method (or methods), deeper nonprofit collaboration is feasible (and valuable), even when individual organizations do not share a particular mission. second, developing broad ownership and securing relevance to this disparate community brought with it the challenge of balancing devolution with coherence. by allowing for activities that were locally responsive, the initiative was able to broaden the range of its engagement with the community and voluntary sector. this release of central control, however, required innovative responses to securing coherence, one of which was to produce the synthesis report. this novel approach suggests that it is possible to employ creative strategies for coherence, without restricting the energy and fluidity of protagonists framing their own engagement in a way that meets local demand. finally, the initiative’s capacity to reach out to broader policy stakeholders in a deeper way took time to develop and, on occasion, seemed vulnerable to the instinct to focus inwards on complex non-profit collaboration project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 201611 (page number not for citation purposes) the sector. yet this work developed and, by the end of the three-year cycle, a number of projects appeared to achieve more substantial engagement with policymakers. three years represents a relatively short period of time in which to build such cross-stakeholder collaboration; however, by first strengthening confidence, knowledge, and shared identity among nonprofit actors, the initiative created the possibility for new forms of dialogue across stakeholder groups. others have suggested that the diversity of the community and voluntary sector in ireland calls into question whether these organizations can be called a “sector” at all; but the case of the advocacy initiative demonstrates that it is possible to not only develop a shared program of work, but also facilitate the emergence of a shared sense of identity, in this case as social justice advocates. by focusing the project through an activity lens, the advocacy initiative was able to build deep and broad collaboration in a sector that is too often described as operating in silos. about the author anna visser is a phd candidate at the school of social policy, social work and social justice in university college dublin. she has 15 years of experience implementing projects in the nonprofit sector, and has worked on issues of anti-racism, anti-poverty, and democratic reform. from august 2011 to september 2014 anna was director of the advocacy initiative. anna remains actively involved in the nonprofit sector in ireland is a member of a number of campaigns and advisory groups. references andrews, k.t. & edwards, b. 2004, ‘advocacy organizations in the us political process’, annual review of sociology, vol. 30, no. 1, pp. 479–506. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.30.012703.110542 balassiano, k. & chandler, s.m. 2009, ‘the emerging role of nonprofit associations in advocacy and public policy: trends, issues, and prospects’, nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 946–55. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0899764009338963 cmadvice ltd 2012, ‘mapping of social justice advocacy in ireland: an examination of the breadth and depth of social justice advocacy within the non-profit sector in ireland’, the advocacy initiative, dublin, viewed 9 september 2015, http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/mapping-study-social-justiceadvocacy-full-report hodgett, a. & sweeney, a. 2010, ‘report to the one foundation on the barriers to advocacy on children’s rights, immigrant rights and mental health’, wilson hartnell public relations, dublin, viewed 5 october 2015, http://www.issuelab.org/resource/report_to_the_one_foundation_on_barriers_to_ advocacy_on_childrens_rights_immigrant_rights_and_mental_health keenan, o. 2008. ‘relationships and representation, challenges and opportunities for the voluntary and community sector in ireland’, summer school, centre for nonprofit management, trinity college dublin. montague communications & middlequarter ltd 2010, ‘project report’, the advocacy initiative, dublin, viewed 9 september 2015, http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/advocacy-initiative-projectscoping-report murphy, k. 2014, ‘from dandelion to seed: the journey of the advocacy initiative’, the advocacy initiative blog, dublin, viewed 9 september 2015, http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/blog/dandelion-seedjourney-advocacy-initiative http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.30.012703.110542 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0899764009338963 http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/mapping-study-social-justice-advocacy-full-report http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/mapping-study-social-justice-advocacy-full-report http://www.issuelab.org/resource/report_to_the_one_foundation_on_barriers_to_advocacy_on_childrens_rights_immigrant_rights_and_mental_health http://www.issuelab.org/resource/report_to_the_one_foundation_on_barriers_to_advocacy_on_childrens_rights_immigrant_rights_and_mental_health http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/advocacy-initiative-project-scoping-report http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/advocacy-initiative-project-scoping-report http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/blog/dandelion-seed-journey-advocacy-initiative http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/blog/dandelion-seed-journey-advocacy-initiative visser project management research and practice, vol. 3 july-dec. 201612 (page number not for citation purposes) murphy, m. 2013, ‘participating in popularising policy alternatives: a case study of claiming our future’, in d. o’broin & m. murphy (eds.), politics, participation and power: civil society and public policy in ireland, glasnevin publishing, dublin, pp. 113–23. onyx, j., dalton, b., melville, r., casey, j. & banks, r. 2008, ‘implications of government funding of advocacy for third-sector independence and exploration of alternative advocacy funding models’, australian journal of social issues, vol. 43, no. 19, pp. 631–47. o’siochru, s. 2014, the advocacy initiative: a review of key features, plans and outputs, the advocacy initiative, dublin, viewed 9 september 2014, http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/evaluation popplewell, r. 2013, ‘responding to the crisis: understanding the effects of political and economic crisis on civil society in the republic of ireland’, international ngo training and research centre, viewed 9 september 2015, http://www.intrac.org/data/files/resources/761/briefing-paper-35-responding-tocrisis.pdf project management institute 2015, what is project management?, viewed 9 october 2015, http://www. pmi.org/about-us/about-us-what-is-project-management.aspx smyth, a. & holian, r. 2008, ‘credibility issues in research from within organisations’, in p.j. sikes & a. potts (eds.), researching education from the inside: investigations from within, routledge, london, pp. 33–47. the advocacy initiative 2012a, statement on social justice advocacy, dublin, viewed 9 october 2015, http:// www.advocacyinitiative.ie/blog/statement-social-justice-advocacy the advocacy initiative 2012b, theory of change baseline narrative. final version, dublin, viewed 9 october 2015, http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/theory-change-narrative the advocacy initiative 2014, ‘final report to the atlantic philanthropies’, not published (author’s files), dublin. wallace, t. 2004, ‘ngo dilemmas: trojan horses for global neoliberalism’, socialist register, vol. 40, viewed 9 october 2015, http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5818#.vtqg4cft-m4 walsh, k., conlan, s., hearne, r., joyce, c., lynch, c., joyce, c., mccormack, c., mullen, r. & o’sullivan d. 2013, ‘in other words: policy maker’s perceptions of social justice advocacy’, the advocacy initiative, dublin, viewed 5 october 2015, http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/other-wordspolicy-makers-perceptions-social-justice-advocacy walsh, k. 2014, ‘pulling together: a synthesis of the work of the advocacy initiative 2010–2014’, the advocacy initiative, dublin, viewed 5 october 2015, http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/pullingtogether-synthesis-work-advocacy-initiative-2010-2014 http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/evaluation http://www.intrac.org/data/files/resources/761/briefing-paper-35-responding-to-crisis.pdf http://www.intrac.org/data/files/resources/761/briefing-paper-35-responding-to-crisis.pdf http://www.pmi.org/about-us/about-us-what-is-project-management.aspx http://www.pmi.org/about-us/about-us-what-is-project-management.aspx http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/blog/statement-social-justice-advocacy http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/blog/statement-social-justice-advocacy http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/theory-change-narrative http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5818#.vtqg4cft-m4 http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/other-words-policy-makers-perceptions-social-justice-advocacy http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/other-words-policy-makers-perceptions-social-justice-advocacy http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/pulling-together-synthesis-work-advocacy-initiative-2010-2014 http://www.advocacyinitiative.ie/resource/pulling-together-synthesis-work-advocacy-initiative-2010-2014 studies in social justice volume 5, issue 1, 11-61, 2011 correspondence address: john mcmurtry, department of philosophy, university of guelph, guelph, on n1g 2w1, canada. tel.: +1 519 824-4120 x 53272; email: mcmurtry@uoguelph.ca issn: 1911-4788 human rights versus corporate rights: life value, the civil commons and social justice john mcmurtry department of philosophy, university of guelph abstract this analysis maps the deepening global crisis and the principles of its resolution by life-value analysis and method. received theories of economics and justice and modern rights doctrines are shown to have no ground in life value and to be incapable of recognizing universal life goods and the rising threats to them. in response to this system failure at theoretical and operational levels, the unifying nature and measure of life value are defined to provide the long-missing basis for understanding the common interest, human rights and social justice—that is, the universal life necessities of humanity across cultures and the evolving civil commons infrastructures to ensure them. in contrast, the treaty-imposed corporate rights system miscalled “globalization” is structured to predate life means and support systems at all levels with no accountability beyond itself. only the logic of life value, human rights and life-protective law, it is concluded, can comprehend or govern this inherently life-blind and cumulatively eco-genocidal regime. breaking out of the box of life-blind rights the deepest problem we have with rights in general is that we have no life-value criterion whereby to tell whether a right is good or bad. thus the dominant rights of our epoch—property rights in money capital—remain presupposed even if they cumulatively threaten terrestrial and human life organization by their globally lifeblind demands. indeed these rights now rule our economic, political and cultural worlds with no accountability to the life requirements of human beings, ecosystems or, unprecedentedly, even sovereign states. reigning since the english, american and french revolutions centuries ago, they have become incrementally absolute and total in the last 30 years. yet any deeper value principle to determine whether these increasingly totalitarian rights are valid has remained unconceived. marxian analysis is itself stuck within the capitalist system’s contradictions with rights themselves conceived as merely system functions, and no state party, political theory or movement defines the life-value standards to reset the system to coherence with human and planetary life requirements. private property in money capital with no limit thus continues as an a-priori assumption of market and state activities across borders. as we know, under this 12 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 system less than 1% of the population of the world have increasingly more wealth than the bottom 90%, and the social suffering which follows this disparity gets worse. yet since john locke and the private-property revolutions he provides the canonical justifications for in england and america, any idea of relating privateproperty right to human needs is undiscussed in public discourses while economic theory itself rules out the connection a-priori. at the same time the criterion of what a human need is across cultures and selves does not exist in received theory or policy discussion. private money rights to more without end are assumed with no life value to ground their legitimacy, their limits, or their performative requirements. we have to go back to john locke to find any discussion of these issues, and even so, what he says is fork-tongued. he specifies three provisos of an individual property right claim in his historic second treatise of government which was published within a year of the english revolution against james ii in 1688. his justification of the conditions for the legitimacy of private property are lifegrounded, but for the last time in his work and subsequent market doctrine: (1) “mixing one’s labour with” the property to entitle it; (2) “always good enough left over for others”; and (3) “no waste or spoilage” of it (locke, 1980, p. 21). yet while locke’s rhetoric of freedom and democratic accountability is recited almost word for word in the u.s. declaration of independence, his life-grounding conditions of private property have been ignored since their magniloquent statement at the beginning of the treatise, including by locke himself. having made the case at length for this “natural right” by these three justifications, he erases them with a stroke of the pen with the words “the introduction of money” (locke, 1980, p. 23). 1 a subordinate clause within a 10-line sentence is enough for this disappearance act. locke’s shell-game has stood since—a synecdoche of the era. once his lifegrounded provisos have vanished without a trace, fateful implications follow. to resolve this and related deep-structural problems, the life-value test is defined and explained by which we tell whether any claimed right, however powerful it is in the world, is sound or not, and to what extent. private property right itself—from personal fixed possessions to corporate kingdoms—is neither holus-bolus justified nor rejected, but grounded in and tested by its life value. the general theory behind my analysis is life-value onto-axiology, what i have spelled out in depth for unesco (mcmurtry, 2010). the onto of the concept refers to ontology, literally “the philosophy of being”; and the axiology refers to theories of what is of value, truth being a primary value. yet because multiplied disciplinary divisions into fields and areas of specialty exclude any unifying principle of value, a major incapacity of thought has evolved. even connected life and life-support systems’ collapse across the world cannot be detected in its causal mechanism or life-value resolution. right to life and pro-life reduced to false slogans one major cognitive block against understanding has been the slogan “right-to-life” attached to america’s most popular issue of life-value contention—a woman’s right to end her pregnancy. when i first introduced life-value theory in generic form to the canadian philosophical association’s annual meeting in 1998, a well-known feminist philosopher, alison jaggar, repudiated the idea as more “right-to-life” human rights versus corporate rights 13 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 advocacy. i report this position to illustrate the metaphysical stupefaction that has come with the internalization of this slogan in a distinguished feminist philosopher ’s mind. life value has been so pervasively equated with an embryo in a woman’s body that re-grounding in a coherent conception cannot compute. while such an ontoethical reductionism is seen to be fatuous once examined, it conforms to a ruling syntax of thought that is life-blind at a global level, which is the greatest problem of our age. expressed in the so-called “right-to-life” slogan, it excludes almost all of life from its referent. with even philosophers internalizing such conception, the need to re-ground in life-coherent meaning and method becomes self-evident, a turning point of humanity’s evolution (mcmurtry, 2009, pp. 69-91; mcmurtry, 2010a). as it stands, the abortion issue poses “woman’s right to choose” as in ultimate conflict with “the right to life of the unborn human being.” legions of people adopt one side or the other in sustained elaboration of the one or the other position, ignoring the common life-ground that life-value understanding begins with—that is, that life is good, and is better the more coherently inclusive its life-fields and ranges in thought, felt being, and action. this forms the primary axiom of life value. 2 in contrast, the opposing sides of this issue (and countless others) privilege a standpoint of exclusive right in either-or disjunction. here as elsewhere, life-value understanding goes underneath this one-sided structuring to the deeper ground of life value itself, and applies the life-value test to both sides. thus the normalized circle of sterile conflict found in rights conflicts in general—in which each side obscures the underlying principle of life value in attachment to an aspect which excludes the other—is reset to comprehend the wider common ground of life value itself to resolve dispute in terms of this more ultimate and unifying meaning. life-value analysis therefore always goes to what is at stake in life capacity gain or loss—a life re-grounding which is foreign to the global corporate-rights reign. life-value method identifies the extent to which any side stands—or does not stand—for life value, and exposes false pretences masking the underlying life-value issues. here as elsewhere, there is one ultimate criterion of life-value/disvalue across domains, the formal axiom of life value and its converse. as testing will show, it applies across value conflicts. with respect to the woman’s “right to choose” whether to continue bearing an embryo or fetus, it follows, life-value analysis recognizes that the principal life value here lies with the person who organically bears the life. gain or loss of life value and decision on how to go living better or worse is hers by the objective life coordinates of life itself. for she alone in the world is the direct experiencer and carrier of it. all concept and image thought is borne by her. the felt side of being within is carried by her. she and not anyone else lives the action of the one organism. all of these facts are undeniable—that is, they cannot be life-coherently denied—and all are basic to the “right to life” of the pregnant woman herself and the fields of life she organically bears. this is not another argument for private property, as the woman’s right has been reduced to. it is a life-value diagnosis which explains and limits rights. in distinction, the embryo she bears has as yet little or none of these life-bearing values. it only comes to bear them in growing through the ontogeny of embryonic existence to fetal differentiation, to eventually the stage when full human being has developed: that is, when it is no longer life-coherently conceived as merely “part of the woman’s body,” but a self-organizing unity capable of independent fields of life learning, sentience, affect and body action. 14 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 thus in accordance with this development by life-value measure, the embryo/fetus within the woman’s organism is of intrinsic worth insofar as it realizes and bears these life fields and value—beginning with intra-uterine movement, felt side of being, and image thought in early form. yet conversely in proportion to nonexistence of these fields of life value, the embryo or fetus is correspondingly lower in life value—not only, as aldous huxley clinically observes in point counter point, “a potential fish,” but also a human potential (huxley, 1947, p.2). observe that lifevalue analysis does not import the imagined future of a human person into present value any more than it does the image of a full-grown fish, but still recognizes projective imagination and its embryonic referent have life-value in their own right by life-value measure. in short, life-value analysis brings us back to ground. it affirms the right of both bearing mother and embryo/fetus as life value within themselves to the extent of fields of life borne—not by mere projection, which in this age has also conferred rights of super persons on lifeless corporate stocks, a connected derangement of the ruling syntax of value and meaning. together more than either, woman and offspring have compounded life value in the same being, the pregnant woman. here they incorporate in their unity opposing life values only by conceptually constructed reification of a non-person as a person—a metaphysical inversion that has oppressed the world at different levels. the passionate certitude with which these reifications are proclaimed is familiar in cults, but now has mainstream megaphones proclaiming them. what is morally deranged is that the rights of non-persons and their interests override the life interests of real persons in the name of life. the life-value onto-ethic recognizes the disorder, and grounds in human life as coherently conceived. more generally, it stands for what consistently enables human and ecological life together (the life coherence principle) and upholds it to the most inclusive level possible without life-value loss (the life compossibility principle). guided by these principles, almost any case of life-sacrificial trade-off is understood as preventable beforehand—although one would hardly know this in the endless positing in our culture of the “necessity” of pesticides, prisons, lay-offs, environmental destruction, foreign wars, and so on. behind these social habits of life sacrifice lies a deeper and fatal problem. the rules and rights by which we live are ungrounded in life and life value and the slowmotion collapse of planetary life infrastructures signals this across domains. finding our lost life-value ground and measure: the common life interest and ground of legitimate rights and social justice instituted exclusion of the common life ground and interest follows logically from the atomic division of interests into competing rights in automaton selfmaximization—the life-blind value syntax of the age. the principle of life value goes beneath this agon of rights to the underlying common life-ground which is the base of all terrestrial value. it explains the validity of any and all positions by the lifevalue comprehension it stands for, seeking beyond competing partialities to coherence with life requirements without whose satisfaction life capacities are always despoiled. it understands this as the common life interest which takes into account objective life requirements at ecological, social and individual levels. it human rights versus corporate rights 15 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 therefore recognizes that human rights and rules must cohere with the common life support systems that enable the reproduction of all, or else disaster follows. humanity’s common life interest is thus understood to begin with the universal life support systems that all human life, life conditions and fellow life depend on, the ultimate bottom line of terrestrial existence. this life-ground is, accordingly, the real and unseen base of all legitimate human rights—what they must cohere with to be valid. this ultimate foundation of rights is, however, not recognized by economic, ethical, political and rights discourses. life-value understanding thus requires this comprehension, and rejects any position which does not as invalid and unsound. it works by this life-coherence principle towards a resetting of meaning to deep rights, what enables individual human life consistently with the reproduction of terrestrial life support systems through generational time. all legitimate rights cohere in virtue of this common life-ground that enables the compossible validity of each. it therefore follows from life-value onto-ethics that one can only justify a right as ultimately legitimate if it enables life in a way not possible without it—the necessity condition of the right joined to its required coherence with other life systems. for example, the human right to living space not violated by forces external to it is the life-value foundation of private-property rights. this was their historical justification before they were debased as absolute rights which take account of neither condition of legitimate rights. any right has limits, and life space is one—most obviously overridden in such claims as the claimed rights of the nazi regime to lebensraum, or global corporations to other societies’ life resources. a legitimate right is thus defined by both the life necessity and life coherence of its good. the primary axiom and its converse explains the general life-value base here in universal principle, with margins of life-range gain or loss the life-value measure of the necessity of any right and the compass of their coherence with each other. the human vocation, in turn, is to be of living worth in these terms, with right and obligation arising where reduction of human life capacities results without their fulfilment. consider, for example, the human right to clean water and the corresponding obligation to provide for it at both social and individual levels. what is required at the baseline of understanding and prescription is an incontestable and sufficient criterion of life necessity coherent with others’ same necessities. such a criterion must meet three problems which are typically regarded as insuperable, but are perfectly soluble: (i) to distinguish needs from mere wants and habits; (ii) to provide a criterion which is consistent with and works for all needs; so that (iii) it clearly applies across diverse ways of life and individual differences. the baseline criterion of life necessity, in other words, yields the ultimate principle of validity of both human rights and obligations, and thereby the essential structure of social justice. what is due to and from human beings, the ancient formula of justice, right and obligation, is understood throughout in systematic and objective life-value terms. life-value analysis has grounded in a universal criterion of life necessity or need and its corresponding good since its inception: to wit, n is a need if and only if, and to the extent that, deprivation of n’s good always results in reduction of life capacity. this may be called the n-criterion, that which denotes, and only denotes, any and all life needs whatever. thought experiment as well as the findings of science will demonstrate that there is no vital need that does not satisfy this criterion, and that no claimed need that does not is a life need. both also confirm that there is no life capacity that is not also measurable by this principle—for example, the need for 16 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 drinking water measured by the calibrated life capacity loss without it through time. both poles of life capacity admit of many levels and kinds of capability test. note, however, that the life-value meaning of capability is not that of amartya sen and the capabilities literature (cohen, 2008; nussbaum, 2000; nussbaum & sen, 1993; o’neill, 1998; sen, 1992). it refers strictly to life capabilities—or more exactly— their ranges of function for life not to be demonstrably reduced in its capacities. no such principled ground or qualifications are defined in the received meaning of “capabilities.” this is why political and corporate rhetorics have been quick to pick up on the concept—merely “ability to perform functionings”—which validates private preferences for non-life functionings, like private motor powers. these may meet no life need at all, but violate them in both the owner (who needs the exercise instead) and, more so, other life (which is oppressed by its effects of noise, pollution and life-field occupation). martha nussbaum, the other best known leader of the capabilities literature, goes further than sen in “taking a stand” on what capabilities are, but her schema lacks any defined principled ground or any criterion whereby the claimed life goods can be anchored, tested, and integrated. the missing life-ground and criterion is the n-criterion. nothing that does not satisfy this objective and comprehensive criterion qualifies as a necessary good or capability. nor can it have a just right to it as distinguished from a mere privilege. again contrast this to sen’s position that all capabilities we might “have reason to value” count as valid. such a criterion legitimates the right to any commodity which people “have a reason to value.” thus a personal sports vehicle with 6-foot tires or a 500 horse-power marine engine one desires to have to be “safe and well-served” qualifies. what criterion in the capabilities literatures rules against these capabilities as good? as in the capitalist market of choice, there is none. corporations accordingly talk about their “capabilities” all the time, and those of their products –giant gas-fuelled personal motors, fast-repeat guns, exciting video kill games, two-pound burgers piled high, and so on. all grant the abilities to “perform functionings” that “the individual chooses,” and everyone is given a “reason to value” them. until a life-value criterion is built in, the worst can and does happen in the name of “choice,” “capability,” and “value.” sen is concerned with equality of capabilities and rights to them, however, whereas the market system selects for inequality with no concerns. all that matters for its value system is that people pay. while the market is bound by money-demand, sen understandably wants those without it to have more equal standing. so far, so good. but again the question persists at a general level. what if the desired capability for which people claim a right is for what stunts or violates life capacities at an ecological or organic level? the issue is simply avoided, and this avoidance conforms to an underlying syntax of value which regulates beneath recognition at both market and high-theory levels. in light of its life-blind inner logic, a question is posed by life-value principle. how can corporate rights—to exploit the resources of the world to maximally satisfy what individual consumers have a right to choose have any limit to despoliation of life fields and support systems outside their exchanges? neither market theory nor received rights doctrines can meet the problem. with no life-value requirement entering as a condition of the legitimacy of these rights and freedoms, two fatal outcomes are predictable in principle: a collapsing planetary life system and social injustice beyond human bearing. human rights versus corporate rights 17 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 many will protest that cultural and individual differences and freedoms make any universal principles of good and bad impossible, or undesirable, or both. for example, some choose to satisfy their need for food in the form of fish and beans, others by meat and potatoes, and still others by vegetables and fruits, with many further variations among these menus. hence the false inference arises that even the need for food is not universalizable because of these cultural and individual differences. more careful consideration resolves the problem, however, because it recognizes that the organic need is for a complement of nutritional food which can be spelled out across these different fares by the objective n-criterion and primary axiom of value. no one “decides for others” this or any other life necessity and good. it is a necessity of life recognized by a scientifically verifiable criterion of life-value understanding, and it admits of endless degrees and choices within its objective principle of determination. whether recognized or not, the objective criterion of life value always remains a constant, and so too the life-value ground of rights and social justice. the test is in all situations always whether life capacities are more restricted or reduced in range without the life necessity and good than with it. empirical science can confirm or disconfirm, but all need everywhere is always this. right to what is not needed by these objective and comprehensive life criteria, conversely, cannot therefore be a deep or legitimate right, or a requirement of social justice. this is a primary conclusion of life-value onto-axiology, and is open to counter-argument any step of the way. yet how manifold is the resistance to understanding the self-evident at this principled level. still another avoidance is to argue that the need-criterion of legitimacy of right is reductionist for people’s lives beyond need. yet again one asks: what exactly is worthwhile that is not an expression or enjoyment of a life capacity? if nothing is, and need is solely that without which life capacities are reduced, what of true life value can be ruled out? thought experiment confirms that nothing of value can be ruled out. as we consider the universal life needs which satisfy the ncriterion—a long research study whose conclusions are reported for examination ahead—we find that there is nothing worthwhile in life that is excluded because all that people do or choose to do requires life capacities, and they in turn require the goods that meet needs to flourish, however free and unique they may be. whatever the manifold variations and choices within the generic goods of these universal life needs, no life-coherent possibility is pre-empted. moreover, all that a human life can have a legitimate right to is that which is needed to enable life capacities to live and flourish as human—the universal life needs and goods which derive from the primary axiom and the n-criterion. explanation needs to be very exact and conclusive here because there has been a longstanding and world-wide confusion on these issues. amidst tireless variations on the slogans of “individual and consumer differences and choice” and “what is a need to some is a want to others,” the absence of any ground of understanding of humanity’s ultimate directive meaning defines the age. postmodern, relativist and sceptical theories of all kinds explicitly or tacitly refuse to accept any universal good or necessity at all. in the background, for over 2500 years philosophers have largely avoided the issue of universal life needs and any common life-ground of moral meaning. economists in particular have systematically conflated needs and desires with no recognition of their ultimate distinction by life necessity itself. 18 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 life needs or necessities, that without which life capacities are lost, form the common life-ground and interest of humanity which has been abandoned. conditioned market desires, preferences and wants are the opposite in principle because without them no life capacity is reduced, while all admit of the excesses and perversions that need rules out. life-value research has therefore recognized that identifying the human life necessities and goods actually required by human flourishing is an unfulfilled task, and meets it with one common test—whether anyone could live without it and not suffer a loss of life capacity. one cannot do without oxygenated air or potable liquid or caloric intake in any degree, for example, without a proportionate reduction or destruction of life capacity. thus develops the life-value calculus. it identifies in every of life good the scientifically establishable limits of life capacity range and the degrees of its reduction correlating with the degrees of deprivation of it. for example, one cannot live six minutes without any breathable air, a day or so without water, a week without any food, and so on. the italicized parameters apply across need-capacity domains, with very different lines of necessity and loss from deprivation of different universal life necessities. insufficient breathable air leads quickly to incapacitation by the degree of deprivation, but deprivation of open space or light take far longer to show the loss of ability to function through range. nonetheless they are universal life necessities and goods, in the correspondingly qualified sense. and so on through the entire framework of universal life needs/goods spelled out ahead. consider a paradigm need in illustration. the nourishment requirement is many-sided in calorie, protein, and vitamin necessities of intake, with research establishing required range quantities for size and age parameters and corresponding physical degeneration by significant deprivations. deprivation of communicative culture, on the other hand, is more complex and less dramatic in its effects, but is still expressed in life capacity loss. although no reading or writing tools for a writer would score far higher as a disabling deprivation than it would for someone preferring music and play as human communication forms, people without any of these are made subhuman. although need satisfiers and choices vary immensely, reduction of life capacities without any of them is clear, and variously quantifiable by loss of life-function range. to move into still further spheres of these universal human life necessities and goods—the real basis of legitimate human rights—we may consider what is often blinkered out as a merely subjective or cultural issue. consider a human life without anyone caring for its existence at any level. life-value analysis can recognize such a deprived life is a kind of hell, although capacity loss from its deprivation is not as instantaneous as is life without potable water. there is still a human life necessity of supportive care or “love” which some say the greatest need of all. certainly without it people variously lose life capacity including the will to live itself, and infants and children variously shrivel up and die to the world without it, as research has shown across the primates. in every case there are implications for human rights and obligation corresponding to the life-value loss and provision involved. still another universal life good and necessity across cultures admitting of very different forms is the need for a physical or natural environment in some integrity of form. this is why people having to live in an environment of squalid disorder is a human right violation and social injustice. deterioration of the life fields of thought, felt being and action follows—as has been shown by animal welfare research with even human rights versus corporate rights 19 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 livestock reduced in their vital signs of alertness, brightness of eye and skin sheen if they are deprived of environmental form and stimulus. at this point explanation calls for some unifying complete set of these universal human life goods/needs/ necessities without which human beings variously suffer life capacity loss towards inertia, disease and death. we require the full framework and coordinates to ground legitimate human rights, obligations and social justice across cultures. this objective and comprehensive framework of universal human life goods and necessities liberates understanding from an absurd ruling culture which recognizes no objective ground of human life at all but self desires, market demand aggregates, and welfare indexes without any principled life-ground. the standard need-set of “food, clothing, housing, and so on” which marx first recognized 176 years ago after centuries of theory without any life-requirement emerging to attention is a turning point in intellectual history, but still woefully inadequate. it has no criteria, measure or organizing framework of meaning. the ubiquitous “basic needs” invoked by ngo’s and others today is essentially vacuous. average annual income is hardly better. it allows economists to claim a “rising standard of living” in the poor world from an income rise equivalent to a bottle of pop. “feeding the poor” can mean only processed junk—as in u.s. school lunches where the highlight of food for poor children, ketchup, has qualified as a vegetable. as for the ultimate need of a human vocation—to serve, express and enjoy human life capacities as a coherent end-in-self of value—this core of social justice does not yet exist as a known concept. in short, humanity has been a long time without its most basic life-value bearings, and this absence of meaning fits the ruling order like a glove. life-need disconnect across theories: a reprise of 2500 years sound criterial measure of human life necessities is a life-and-death matter. yet the reigning economic theory everywhere since adam smith has confused necessity with market demand. in anglo-american justice theory as well as economics and studied philosophy in general, no standard of life need ever arises. the concept in principled form might as well be outlawed. john rawls’ famous “primary goods,” for example, is decoupled from life needs altogether. the ruling proxy of money “income” substitutes for them even in the twentieth century’s reputedly leading work on social justice. theory in general continues the effective prohibition in the political economy discourses of the left which track capitalist-system mechanics with no ground of meaning in life necessity itself. one might say there is a pathological block against the life-value meaning of needs in western civilization—except that eastern civilization may be more blinkered still. it does not and cannot distinguish between a vital human need and an extinguishable attachment in its vedanta and buddhist forms, while confucianism prioritizes propriety to superiors over the life needs of anyone. unsatisfied life needs are left as a problem of the lower classes, while the decorum of the rich gives the illusion they are above them. the labour of appearances takes their place. the great exceptions are lao tzu in the east and the recorded jesus in the west, who speaks of “feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and giving shelter to the homeless.” nonetheless official culture and lead thinkers normally subjectivize need 20 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 a-priori, and almost never relate rights to defined life needs. philosophy seeks to understand the ultimately regulating principles of the human condition, but has avoided this ultimate issue from the beginning, most dogmatically since its linguistic turn of the twentieth century. economics is meant to comprehend production and distribution of otherwise scarce goods for human society to develop, but is blind even to the distinction between life goods and bads. history is supposed to find the deciding ground of what uprisings and forward movements of peoples are about if it is to understand what is going on, but ruling-order provision of life necessities and goods for society and its technological-social possibility remain unexamined as an historical struggle and trend. does any social science do better? the general fact is that is that no higher-order theory of rights and social justice grounds in the life-and-death necessities of human existence. even materialist theories avoid universal human life needs. the ancient carvaka of india focused on voluptuous desires, and no known materialist doctrine since has comprehended or researched a universal life-necessity framework. karl marx brought european ideology “down to earth,” but begins capital by saying on the first page that “the nature of human wants, whether for instance they spring from the stomach or fancy, makes no difference” (marx, 1986, p. 43). the issue of the life goods all people need to live and live well has been essentially a blank slate except in medicine, and as we know its contemporary dominant forms have been biased towards expensive corporate commodities for profit—exotic machines and corporate pharmaceuticals for symptoms. even with the new welfare indexes where we seem at last to be getting towards the life base for rights, duties and social justice, there is no criterion of life good or necessity in any. a leading formation of such an index in canada, the canadian well-being index, is a case in point. when provided with formal demonstration of the universal needs principle and framework required for any concept of welfare to be life coherent, the assembled experts, in the words of a lead participant, “greeted it with a strange silence and would not engage it.” 3 this response symptomizes the ruling syntax of contemporary thought. life-value analysis, in contrast, begins with humanity’s necessary life goods as its ground. standard categories like “income,” “primary goods,” “prosperity,” “rights,” “freedoms” and so on are discovered under analysis to have no principled meaning of life value at all. one must therefore build from the ground up. once research and reflection manage to arrive at defining principled grounds of humanity’s universal life necessities and goods, life-value analysis can work towards laying bare a unifying framework of them. this has been a difficult road in a cognitive context in which countless varieties of relativism, differences, custom and resistance rule out such a research project a-priori. again we find there is virtually nothing to work with that is well formed and life-grounded. yet without such a principled life-ground one cannot truly know what human beings have rights to as humans nor what social justice consists of. the onto-axiological base and substance of what really matters to people’s lives and life conditions remain missing. against this ruling arbitrariness of rights, life-value understanding re-grounds thought and analysis at the level of human life necessities and capacities and, therefore, in the ecological support systems that make them possible at the same time. this is the ecology of life value and justice underpinning the regulating whole. human rights versus corporate rights 21 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 social sciences and philosophy have nowhere yet so grounded themselves. readers may think, what about marx? he seems to re-ground in human life needs and capacities, but on closer examination his ultimate base is found to be historical productive force development which he assumes realizes human life needs and capacities and necessitates the revolution of capitalism to full human freedom and self-realization at the same time. yet marx and marxists have never provided lifevalue criteria to explain or to bridge the three levels of life-and-death issue which are skipped over here: (1) why seizure of the state from capitalist control is ensured against the systematic life-blindness of the order it grows out of; (2) what collective life-values there are to guide this state rule and its productive force development beyond more material output as an end in itself; and (3) how human life needs and capacities are to be enabled and fulfilled by this program as assumed, rather than distorted or imprisoned by it. the modern blind eye: no life-value standard to steer productive development productive force development can go well or badly depending on its regulating value purpose—well if steered by life-value coordinates to realize human needs, badly if steered to maximize private profits or state-party power. in itself, productive force development means nothing but more material output. one of the greatest confusions of mankind is to assume that more productivity or material output automatically means better lives and life conditions for people. without any life-value criterion to show or enable this outcome, it is pure magical thinking. consider for example a state-induced flooding of the natural wonder of the yangtze river three gorges into a central power dam with millions of inhabitants who are forcibly uprooted and beaten if they resist this action, and the potential for long-term ecological catastrophe ignored by the ruling engineers of the central committee. under the direction of private money capital, the outcomes can be much worse. more material output with no accountability to any objective but more private money-value to fast-profit stockholders can end in only more job losses, waste, and junk in the world. one cannot, in short, assume that technological advances or innovations in themselves serve human needs and capacities to live fuller lives. they can only reliably do so if life-value standards govern them, and they have never been so governed. marx was not as life-blind as classical and so-called neo-classical economics or states run by engineers, but he still supposed life-value advancement by productive force development as the ultimate principle of historical change. his essential justification is that private capitalist control for profit explains the monstrous outcomes. yet however much this analysis explains, its argument cannot in principle meet the ultimate problem. for life-grounded standards are not only missing, but never formed as an alternative. without them to help recognize the conflict between human life and life support requirements, on the one hand, and more and bigger material outputs on the other, only the assumption of a better life for people is left to rely on. this has been the deepest onto-axiological fault-line of both the marxian and the capitalist ideas. what is required to steer the world from its cumulative construction of human-and-terrestrial-life catastrophe has been fatally screened out: the life-coherent use of technology. 22 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 the capitalist story of the private market’s invisible hand necessitating the best of all possible results or “optimal” social welfare may be the prototype of the life-blind logic of rule, but whatever doctrine is believed, only life-coherent technological development can resolve the problem in principle, and that requires regulating life standards at both human and ecological levels. the industrial method of factory and assembly-line production expanding to ever vaster and world-changing forms can continue to be either by slave-like mass labour and ever more nature-destructive machines and methods or, at the other pole of possibility, organized by coherent life standards to ensure humanity’s universal life necessities and goods including human vocation and environmental integrity of growth. this is the deciding choice process of social rule-system. the belief that the powers of production themselves “discipline, unite, organize” the working class into revolutionary self-determination and human freedom is one of the still-believed formulae on the left that has blocked the life standards required. for every moment of this discipline and organizing in capitalism is to save private money costs for absentee investors, and to do so by turning all moments of production including workers into life-numbed mechanical functions. why would people so conditioned become an oppositely-structured force against their conditioning around the clock? without life values regulatively steering productive forces, the outcomes are not magically arranged by an invisible hand or dialectical laws to be optimal. to steer by life-coherent standards rather than magical thinking is the social choice space that has been lost by both warring parties. the long-term outcome has come to be virtually every life system in cumulative decline. yet this life-blind automatism still leads at the front end. 4 the ultimate requirement of social justice: re-grounding in universal human life goods soviet industrial development showed that the mounting life catastrophe is not only capitalist in nature. it had few or no effective life-value standards at the political and ecological levels. the infamous mass murders and industrial ecocides require no elaboration here. in fact, they have provided the choral chant of capitalist propaganda since. where states like cuba or venezuela in our time have better structured towards meeting basic life needs, they have been made international pariahs by the usual selective reporting for which provision of universal life necessities is blinkered out a-priori. while no thinking person should be duped by the orwellian clamour, life-value analysis applies to clarify the problem on both sides. neither cuba nor venezuela specifies principled life-value standards to ensure accountability of the ruling party to their realization. yet cuba, which has been at its socialist revolution for 50 years in spite of u.s. continuous criminal embargo and violations of international law, has advanced far. in elite performances of conventional forms of sport, music, and dance, free scientific and literacy education to a universal level, and life-serving medical care at an international level of commitment, the accomplishments have been immense. on the other hand, critical dialogical development of public discourses and political policy has atrophied, with locally-led innovation and the common resources to organize better social living human rights versus corporate rights 23 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 conditions on the ground absent—such as the poor rebuilding their barrios with stateprovided materials in chile before president allende was murdered in 1973 by a u.s.-supported military coup to restore the capitalist market. advance or degradation of the human vocation is the key on all sides—the ultimate need for life contribution and enjoyment which entails free critical speech, thought and creative action in realizing the life capacities and needs of people. here corporate globalization has moved rapidly backwards, cumulatively eliminating the human vocation without noticing it. even its critical higher education and research, once the leader of the world, have been subjugated to the corporate private-profit mechanism as the next generation has ever diminishing opportunities for any work except private-profit service jobs serving no life need. beneath rising structural unemployment for post-2008 youth, falling vocational security at life-serving functions across the world is the greatest unseen crisis of globalization. life-value understanding therefore proposes a meta shift of rights towards each person’s right of access to a universal human life good rather than being confined within the now ruling legal concept of merely private rights to exclude all others from whatever is held. this is a foundational distinction which brings into the light the universal life needs of human beings which have been blocked out in rights and other discourses. every one of the goods specified in what follows from objective criteria which have been lost to received analysis. each denotes, that is: (i) a universal good which is (ii) also a universal life necessity, and (iii) holds across individuals and cultures (iv) if and only if, and (v) to the extent that, (vi) deprivation of n (vii) always results in reduction of life capacity. we will designate (i) to (v) the n-axiom. before identifying the set of universal life needs and goods which frame the issues of rights and social justice for a life-coherent standpoint, there are a number of issues to be considered as one works through them. every sphere of goods defined ahead is necessary to human well-being by this n-axiom, but to very different degrees of necessity from one good to another. as we have seen, for example, deprivation of clean water is more immediately life-destructive than of environmental goods, but environmental goods are nonetheless necessary to a human life by the same measure. one should also keep in mind that even if most humans alive have not had sufficient access to these goods, it remains true by life-need criterion and measure that they are reduced in their life capacities, even when this reduction is normalized. in official measures of people’s welfare, for instance, only an aggregate average of private money-demand is involved therefore more priced goods (commodities) which may be junk or disease-causing are still classified as “welfare enhancing.” at the same time, impoverishment in a society’s real life goods—its jobs, its environment, its foods, and its natural resources—do not factor in. perhaps no absurdity has been more ruinous than the private money-demand measures of human well-being and development—more lethally fatuous by far than buying indulgences from the church to better one’s life chances. yet innumerable false doctrines collaborate in disconnecting corporate, state, popular and academic intelligence from objective life values and so too rights and obligations. even democratic theory has become ungrounded from what people require to live and live well. with the ruling model as electoral headcounts in a corporate-state field of propaganda, a majority can be indoctrinated to support on cue as “freedom” a belligerent war, or the depredations of young lives as “treats for the children.” high theory does not re-ground, however, 24 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 but de-grounds further. fictitious contractarian models and debates with no lifeground nor organic need—nor mention of corporate profit itself—multiply in journals, books and graduate schools as “the latest research on justice.” in opposition to all this, life-value understanding recognizes that real development and social justice advance by better provision of universal life goods and necessities to people without which they suffer loss of life capacity—an objective fact admitting of objective degrees of advance or regression. theories and practises are thus obliged to face a life-coherence principle of validity—that is, whether their positions are consistent with or blind to the most universal requirements of human life itself. in short, life-value understanding reconnects to the universal goods which each and all objectively need to live a human life—the missing life-value meaning of the socratic wisdom that “an unexamined life is not worth living.” whatever creative choices one might make and be individuated by within the range of possibilities opened by access to these life goods, they are required by every human being; and human rights and social justice correspond in development to their sufficient provision. yet no sooner are such words as “universal” and “necessary” out than charges of “paternalism,” “neo-colonialism,” “the terrorist universal” and so on are unleashed. in high theory as well as the capitalist market, a conventional thoughtspace of life-disconnect reigns. a useful experiment here is to identify any universal and necessary life good whatever for humanity which is acknowledged as such in the entire literature of contemporary higher-order thought. as perhaps future inhabitants of the globe will recognize in amazement that any life was possible for them after such a global disorder, this system-wide disconnect has become so complete and complaisant that most in governing circles and the academy resist understanding of what is happening even as the ice-caps melt and the next generation cannot find a livelihood or vocation. what is miscalled “the economy” has one supreme law that overrides requirements of life at every level—to turn private money into more money for its possessors ad infinitum through private money-and-commodity vehicles. the mind-lock binding acceptance is that this system is alone capable of “delivering the goods” when, in reality, it increasingly despoils life goods and rights across the world. one can only know this, however, if one knows what these life goods are. the universal life needs and goods of humanity: understanding the life-base of rights and obligations in the unifying life-value framework of needs/goods defined below, each is a universal life necessity and good because no-one across cultures can be deprived of it without losing life capacity towards disease and death. all are distinct from each other because none can be provided for by any or all of the rest. these general facts may be tested through every one. in life-value social justice, the universal necessity of each confers a universal human right of all to it, linked to the corresponding obligation of all to work for this provision. it is the greatest if unseen failure of the global corporate market that not one of these universal human life necessities is in fact ensured by its organizing order, and increasingly more are endangered or overridden by it. indeed because it is blind to human rights versus corporate rights 25 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 life necessity itself and depends on producing scarcity to extract private profit, this system is a-priori structured against sufficient life goods provision for society. whether any of these life needs are met, or are violated root and branch, is a matter of indifference to its value code. yet provision of these universal life goods, and only access to such life goods, enables the “good life” for anyone. conversely, deprived of any of these universal life necessities/goods, and to the extent of this deprivation across the italicized categories below, human suffering and social injustice demonstrably follow. (1) the atmospheric goods of unpolluted air, sunlight, climate cycles, and seeinghearing space; (2) the bodily goods of clean water, nourishing food, fit clothing, and waste disposal; (3) the home good of shelter from the elements and noxious animals/materials with the means to sleep and freely function; (4) the environmental good of natural and constructed elements contributing to a lifesupporting whole; (5) the social goods of reliable care through time by supportive love, work-day limits/safety, accessible healthcare, and security of person; (6) the cultural goods of language, the arts, participant civil rights, and play; and (7) the vocational good of enabling and obliging each to contribute to the provision of these universal life goods consistent with the enjoyment of them. the reader may independently test this needs/goods index at every point. two generic questions arise for any sound criterion or definition, and they are worth applying to each and all of (1) through (7) as well as the whole set at once. is anything claimed that is not a demonstrable universal need/good by the n-criterion? or is anything missing from the set or any part of it? in elementary logic, these are known as the questions of “too broad?” or “too narrow?” they take us through all the questions and debate required to know the sound answer. this is the process of truth for life-value onto-axiology, the process of more coherently inclusive taking into account. the resting point of valid criterion is reached when there are no exceptions to show that the frame of life-needs and goods above is too narrow or too broad in any category or as a complete set. the process moves through testing counterexamples as long as these can be given, at which point one knows the provisionally sound solution has been developed. if this set of universal life needs/goods of human beings still stands in the face of counter-argument until no life-coherent candidate remains, then it has stood the test of truth. once at this point, we recall the principle of measure. each and all of these universal life goods admit of sufficiency or insufficiency which is definable by the margin gain, or loss, of life range with, or without, provision. sufficiency is reached when no life good is missing from this set without which life capacities are reduced—a condition that flourishing human lives and societies both enjoy and provide for. it should be emphasised in the face of long confusion and nonsense on this point that socially assured sufficiency of life goods does not mean authoritarian government or levelling of individuation and diversity. the goods are universal necessities of a human life, not dictated by central authority or anyone else. people’s lives are not levelled, but on the contrary, more diverse, free and individuated by their assured provision. 26 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 at the same time, the universal ethic and social justice of the general principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” is provided with what it has long lacked—the precise criteria and right-obligation linkage of its basic terms. while life-value understanding endorses this principle, it recognizes and meets its three fatal problems: (1) “needs” themselves have remained without definition and bound. thus damaging habits conceived as needs may qualify as benefits, leading to disabling consequences and disputes. (2) the “ability” expected from each is not grounded in human life capacities themselves. thus dehumanizing use of abilities can be obliged “from each,” allowing for distortion of the underlying life capacities they express. (3) there is no principled linkage between needs and abilities to ensure the coherence of their realization. thus the ancient division between the unequal abilities and needs of people still remains unresolved. with no defined criteria of its burden-benefit sides to solve (1) to (3), the fromeach/to-each principle remains only a resonant slogan without directive substance. the principle’s greatest advocate, karl marx, disclosed the first of its central problems himself without realizing it. he affirmed “need” growth with no limit— counting tobacco and mansions as needs if these were the norm of the stage of productive development of the society in question. at the same time, he uncritically assumed that the productive development conditioning these “needs” was their external determiner beneath choice. what other great philosophies like buddhism and lao tzu’s taoism affirmed as the ultimate choice-space of humanity—release from created wants—was not only ignored by marx, but overridden by affirmation of human needs without end. ironically capitalist economics since marx have assumed non-satiety of wants as the first premise of market growth. in this way, marx and bourgeois economics agree on perhaps the most ruinous assumption of modern thought. life-value onto-axiology adopts an opposite stand. it recognizes as needs only goods without which life capacities are reduced. humanity’s economic and social advance can thus be objectively understood by life-value criteria, as distinguished from propagandized without check. at the same time, human rights and social justice are provided with the substantive life content that has long been missing. beneath the recognition of policy and theory: global corporate war against the human vocation, civil commons, and social justice the ultimate life good of human vocation, (7), is axial to human justice and wellbeing because it links peoples’ rights to universal human goods with their obligation to contribute to them. this obligation is precisely not coercive inasmuch as it is answering to humanity’s deepest need—to do what is of value to others and meaningful to oneself. this is, most of all, why human beings are more than twolegged animals. two-legged animals are identical with their self-desires in the human rights versus corporate rights 27 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 individual, and are unconnected to each other by rules for mutual life-good provision within herd and peck-orders. this inhuman state admits of degrees, but almost all societies we know today are bound in this direction by the ruling system of all competing against one another for means of existence and private profit for the few. while almost anyone can recognize by first-person test the human vocation to produce life-value for others beyond self—it is what drives every artist and selfrealizing occupation that exists—this human vocation has long been conditioned out of conscious recognition by the system within which most live. even in high theory, it gets lost in atomic concepts of “self-respect,” as in the rawlsian and adlerian traditions. most deeply, it is directly reversed by the ruling market onto-ethic since adam smith which conceives work as a disutility —what one has to sell into another’s property to survive. constructive activity to produce life-value for others as goal—what we are impelled to do if we are healthy human beings—is thus erased or repressed as a form of life and motivation. while it remains in home-making work, teaching and other professions not yet subverted by external money-sequence subjugation, it grows ever scarcer in the global market system. throughout, revealingly global-market corporations never stop telling us that what they do is for us. they obliquely recognize the basic meaning of human being, but its motivation has in fact been driven into the life-unconscious at both market and theoretical levels. we already know intuitively that no-one can flourish who does nothing of value for others. this is why people so often pretend that they are when they aren’t, why deadbeats wither on the vine, why disemployment causes disease, and why both left and right have long recognized that a large percentage of people without work is a social disaster. on the other hand, the insistent reduction of human beings to manipulatable desiring machines is the onto-axiology of economic doctrine and its ancillary psychological sciences. in his paradigm-setting work, mathematical psychics, frances edgeworth crystallizes the onto-axiology at work for the first time (italics added): “the conception of man as a pleasure machine may justify the employment of mechanical terms and mathematical reasoning in social science” (edgeworth, 1932, p. 15). 5 this concept of humanity as a pleasure machine is a fatal reduction built into the ruling money-sequence and commodity system because it is set to perfect indifference to all life and life conditions beyond priced desire-objects for atomic selves. while purporting to serve people’s interests in the most productive and efficient way possible, its life-blind organization has in fact cumulatively hollowed out their planetary life support systems, while leaving an increasing majority without the life necessities they require to be human. an economy is productive and efficient in fact to the extent that it provides life goods which are otherwise scarce to its members through generational time. what ensures that a society does this, rather than merely produce more luxuries for some and life-means deprivation for the many, is what life-value research designates as the civil commons. the civil commons is amnesiac in this era, but it is the social basis of all valid human rights and social justice—that is, any and all social constructs which enable universal access to human life goods without which people’s capacities are always reduced or destroyed. thus defined as scientific principle, the civil commons can be recognized as the unseen differentia of the species which first emerges in linguistic symbols themselves and distinguishes all subsequent supra-genetic evolution. lest this moving line of social development continue to be blocked out within the reigning system which dismantles them, civil commons functions still 28 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 sustain the human condition everywhere we look beneath the surface of private commodification. as i sit now in my home, there is nothing i experience and need that is possible without the civil-commons infrastructures enabling it. the electricity flow to my word-processor, lamp and space-heater are built and guaranteed by publicly built public hydro sources, lines and safety regulations including the standard-plug structure and sustained currents whose failure at any point might destroy my machine as well as my projects. yet even this fundamental necessity of my human vocation, of my light, warmth, cooking and refrigeration could not occur without long civil planning, contribution and struggle to develop and retain every moment of their common life support systems. here and elsewhere, however, private money-sequence forces dismantle common infrastructures without identification of their causal mechanism of destruction—as the example of new orleans shows, but does not teach. it could not withstand an offshore hurricane with its stripped civil commons leaving nothing intact in its natural and built sea-delta substructures and community resources of rescue, health and housing. hurricane katrina was not a natural, but a system-made disaster—from its background destabilization of hydrological cycles through its thousands of stranded and drowned people to the millions of new orleans people still homeless or ruined today. even with the already long-achieved provision today of what is relevant to the satisfaction of all human needs, the private money-sequence system is structured against sufficient provision. consider universal electricity generation and distribution, one of modern humanity’s great advances in life goods provision. new private-profit control of electricity provision recently bankrupted the wealthiest state of the us, and treated its citizens to endless blackouts and extortionate prices up to 200 times the normal, making the new scarcity it had caused ever more profitable to its agents. that enron money-sequence managers and sales personnel were ebullient at every blackout in california in anticipation of lavish commissions to them from scarcity prices disclosed the anti-supply bias of the privatized system. yet until it collapsed, enron was regaled as a global market leader with its “asset light efficiency of private energy management and supply.” such is the fate of profitizing public infrastructures. public sectors have, however, much longer built in a civil commons direction. the sidewalks we walk on, the increasingly common pathways for bicycles, the growing gardens and life habitats for public view, the multiplying commons of free-ware and knowledge are civil-commons constructions which advance and diversify against the private corporate tide. i can still breathe the air outside my inner-city home because there are public regulations, also hard-won, on exhaust fumes from private and private-profit automobiles and from corporatefactory pollutions—still poisonous in the big cities, and dangerous even in a small town for citizens with bronchial and respiratory illnesses. so far as they exist, all such life goods and protections are provided free of profit demands and defended by public regulations. yet both these civil commons formations sustaining society and the war of private corporate rights against them are without a received theoretical literature identifying the life-and-death forces at work. this is the empty theoretical space which life-value analysis maps to define an underlying struggle whose ultimate stake is the future of terrestrial life itself. its critical application makes clear what remains otherwise invisible. consider for instance one of the most basic life spaces of all—the life field human rights versus corporate rights 29 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 of hearing which, beneath public notice, has been cumulatively invaded and occupied by private commodity machines across the rural-urban divide. here as elsewhere, the pattern is familiar but unseen. as a common life good is made scarce by market spoiling, it creates a new market for profitable commodification of what has been deprived (e.g., gated communities and wealthy tourist retreats). thus the circle of life-value destruction feeds on itself. only effective public regulation can defend against this spiral downwards by life-protective laws and requirements—for example, mandatory corporate-machine silencers to protect public life space. the civil commons is this life space and defence at the macro level. yet now new lifefield occupations occur by massively state-subsidized industrial corporate windturbines which occupy horizons, destroy countless birds and flight paths, and propagate subsonic waves which disequlibriate the autonomic systems of human and other life. mass-built for private corporate profit at public expense, they require almost as much fossil fuel to build and sustain power outputs as the fossil fuels they are supposed to replace, destroying common life fields on further levels. on the wider plane of commercial energy failures, still more government handouts are extended to leading carbon polluters while the public solution which has worked in past crises of collective life threat, public rations of use, do not enter policy conception. what does not conform to system demands is again blocked out at the level of public understanding itself. 6 when analysis re-grounds in the life infrastructures of the civil commons, however, it still finds long-won rights of human life which are protected around the clock beneath conscious theoretical and economic conception—not only the publicly produced electricity, water, waste, and regulated oil-gas systems sustaining and protecting their lives, but countless other enforced public norms against assaults and threats, toxins, disease bearing biota, spoilage dates, hidden commodity contents, and so on. yet as long as they not seen, defended and advanced as the very life-security fabric of society and individual freedom, the civil commons are relentlessly circumvented by private corporate interests and governments serving them. their sole goal under law is to sell more for private profit. already these private forces have taken over independent government testing of food and beverage products, smuggled in genetically-engineered contents, sabotaged public efforts to flag junk foods and drinks from local to un levels, uploaded sugar, caffeine and salt contents to disease levels in even children’s drinks, and the like. humanity’s food supply itself has been cumulatively contaminated and debased around civil regulations while global life support systems are more competitively stripped and polluted at the same time. yet no theory or practise can decode the causal mechanism of life-destructive effects or its civil commons resolution without life-value principles of analysis. this is why the global war of occupation is still called “economic development” and “productive growth” even by marxian opponents—an example of the inverting group-mind at work in the most unexpected places. thus the life-serving social infrastructures which have been built since the nineteenth century are not adopted as a conscious historical base to universalize across the globe: unbreakable laws to ensure the purity and universality of water supplies; open travel paths and lanes across the world for all to use; construction and maintenance of community sewer systems and garbage cycles; inspection, disinfestation, and condemnation of private as well as public structures deemed to be health hazards; the systematic testing, inspecting and screening of hardware products 30 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 to validate their safety for human use and consumption; publicly enforced workplace standards in private factories and places of business; provision of public spaces and paved paths to ensure non-priced free and safe movement for all; development over generations of non-profit public media, libraries, museums and universal learning systems managed by public servants for whom price or profit demands would constitute a criminal offence; and most recently and perhaps revolutionarily, nonprofit-led development of a universal nano-second communication system of information and reliable knowledge bases without price barriers, corporate monopoly or state censorship in the civilized world. karl polanyi’s classic work, the great transformation (1944), perceives the “natural and social life substance” that has been historically market attacked, but identifies no through-line of development of society’s common life bases themselves, many of them emerging after his study. his emphasis is on pre-market community and stop-gap social measures. marx and marxism focus on the class divisions within the capitalist system with little or no civil commons recognition beyond factory inspectors and the 10-hour day act. because conceptions of human well-being and justice in general have long been decoupled from the biophysical world, from human needs and their criterion, and from the contending principles of providing these life means, no theory we know has recognized or defined the common life interest and its foundations. while opposed on the surface, “conservative,” “libertarian,” “liberal” and “communitarian” schools of theory share these blinkers in different ways. each may glimpse a dimension of the civil commons, but never its organizing ideas, criteria, and full substance. 7 the ancient idea of the “commons” is itself radically inadequate because it applies only to natural forests and the immediate natural resources characterizing medieval and remaining village commons. it does not recognize the social construction of their protection and reproduction, nor their more important cumulative modern form of civil commons infrastructures and services for all citizens. in short, no received literature however progressive has recognized the onto-ethical nature and evolutionary ground of civil commons which distinguishes the human condition itself. thus “the commons” that remain to conception are stripped of their universal meaning even when the term is retained. transnational corporations see only limitless resources to exploit rent-free, while those who see them as something more still have no criterial ground of their affirmation. the civil commons remain thus open to any block or distortion at the level of meaning itself. without principled comprehension of humanity`s evolving social life support systems, disconnection from them follows. who is the historical subject? what can replace the industrial proletariat? what concept of collective agency can we have? the now established box of formal analysis is that economic and political science cannot think beyond aggregates of atomic selves, while philosophers are stuck within an agent-relative ontology where social agency disappears a-priori. 8 thus confined to market, electoral and moral aggregates of private individuals, the expropriation and spoilage of common life support systems proceed for ever more private commodities and wastes. with no social subject or life-value ground, shared life supports can collapse all around with no-one accountable for the results. “impersonal market competition” decides, the supreme alibi for abdication of social self-direction and responsibility. this is the core of the entire failure of contemporary humanity. human rights versus corporate rights 31 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 the sovereign demand to be “more competitive in the global market” rules out human meaning itself. thus new jobs for the younger generation occur only in private money-sequencing functions or sub-functions—from fast-food services to telemarketing of unneeded commodities, from assembly-line training and jobcasualization of the academy, to management services to private money sequences. one master rules as inhuman meta-program. thus even when the most beloved and recognized civil commons formations—like canada’s public healthcare system— cannot be cut without loss of the next election, the system’s inner logic is not understood. like plato’s cave-dwellers held by chains of conditioning to see only dancing shadows projected onto the wall, the regulating forms behind the changing appearances are not seen. in the wider global whole, the civil commons substructure of society is defunded, privatized in bits and wholes, opened to foreign corporate takeover, tax-starved and stripped back at every level from one decade to the next without connection of the dots. the state itself is reduced step-by-step to two ruling functions which are assumed but not named: armed defence of private global corporations’ interests at home and abroad and unconditional government hand-outs to ensure their competitive growth. if their money-sequence overreaching bankrupts them, the corporate-market state re-finances them across the world with public money and strips back social sectors to pay. 9 the captive state is throughout represented, however, as the opposite to what it is. increasing hundreds of millions of people can be without ecological security or even water and nutrition as global wealth multiplies in the control of an apical few. yet the freedoms and well-being of the poor are declared to be rising. ever greater volumes of junk commodities may undermine the health of children and non-affluent across the globe, but when critical science recognizes the epidemic damages, governments still leave bio-assay responsibilities to private corporate control. social infrastructures of education, health and pensions may be slashed and privatized to pay compound-interest public debts to private foreign banks, but the transfer of wealth from the impoverished to the rich is pronounced “economic necessity.” public electro-magnetic spectrums may be all privatized for global media corporations to mass produce commercial and violence images, but a “global information culture” is proclaimed. wars and domestic oppressions by force of arms may dominate public budgets as common life support systems degrade and collapse, but “world security” is declared the ultimate purpose in national and international forums. life-coherent analysis does not stop at recognition of the privatized state and its propaganda. it re-grounds in what class analysis of the system does not, the life-blind incompetence of this rule which is objectively demonstrable by life-value parameters which class and systems analysis fail to penetrate: the deprivation of universal human life necessities requirements across society at every level. this is the lost baseline of human society which is unexamined and ungrounded by received theory. only from it can deep political economy steer beyond the ruling-class state by exactly understood civil commons institutions that demand defence and development now more than ever—for primary example which is hardly discussed, by publicutility banks to lend to the people including a central bank to lend to all levels of government, retaining interest charges in public budgets for further spending back into the economy and issuing credit for common life-interest purposes. this is an already constitutional path of currency and credit responsibility, but it has been variously abdicated by captive states over a long period. 10 as with sound public 32 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 education or natural resource protection, there is one underlying principle of directive meaning, the civil commons. only its ground and direction meet the void of theory and practise at this ultimate level of social foundation and change—always bridging from one or more human universal life necessities to universal provision, from common fires, water sources and language symbols to public spaces, hygienic practices and shared life respect itself. the civil commons through-line is the lost thread of humanity’s meaning and advance—the human being who decides the laws by which it lives, and who becomes just by the universal life goods in which all of its citizens both participate and enjoy by society’s organizing rights and obligations. from this underlying human life code to the knowledge commons of today, social justice is the civil commons process which enables what each and all are due as human. performance evaluation of the civil commons and the private for-profit system: the universal goods of our lives and how they are safeguarded or destroyed the facts of daily life in developed society have been so painstakingly and historically constructed across generations to enable universal access to the life goods of evolved humanity that, as a result, we need systematic understanding of the comparative performances of civil commons and private corporations in providing them. beyond the civil commons bases of safe and reliable energy flows into homes to perform the functions required for individual creation, food, warmth, and sleep, beyond the evolving body of public rules and regulations to ensure the safety of clean-and-waste water cycles and building structures, and beyond the publicly built and kept pathways and routes of people’s lives in every life-value domain, still more layers of civil commons enable us to live and flourish as humans. the universal education that has taught people how to read, compute and research, the public repositories of books, film and documentation resources which all can access without price, the universal public healthcare without which countless lives are bankrupted, terrorized or destroyed, the universal pensions for old age, unemployment-income insurance, disability allowances and supports, the civil interventions available in countless forms to prevent harms to person, property and home, the public information resources and consumer protection requirements, the public holidays and celebrations of multiple kinds for all, the countless government offices to respond to needs of every kind —where do the civil commons stop? they stop where they are forced to a stop by corporate-state defunding, privatization, deregulation, tax undercutting, rising allocations to private money sequences, militarized budgets and, most violently in the second half of the twentieth century, by capitalist state wars against societies with developed socialist infrastructures (e.g., vietnam and iraq, with prosperous yugoslavia destabilized in between). indeed civil commons formations are apt to be equated to “communism” by the mere fact that they are not controlled for private profit—a hate epithet more destructive of human life than centuries of witch hunts and anti-semitism. yet what human benefit of culture and civilization do we reliably enjoy that the publicly funded civil commons do not enable for people’s lives? and what attack on the civil human rights versus corporate rights 33 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 commons is not from private for-profit forces? here is the moving line of the unseen war against human society itself. the pretext is that civil commons formations are “too costly” to invest in, but trillions of dollars of public wealth are transferred to private banks and corporations which produce nothing of life value as “necessary to keep the economy going.” the defunded civil commons by which people’s lives and life conditions are continuously enabled on every level is, at bottom, the lost common ground of our lives. yet from publicgrade school education stripped in africa to pay foreign money-sequence debts to public health systems, and income security for the unemployed, civil services, pensions and higher research in the industrialized world privatized for profit, there seems no end to the reversal of both humanity’s very social evolution and the possibility of social justice. the defining principle of all universal human life necessities and what social justice provides by society’s true development is (1) that without which the life capacity of anyone is reduced (2) by the degree of the good’s necessity, (3) to the extent of its deprivation when (4) the means are available to provide it. this is the exact line and measure between social justice and injustice across life domains. the universal goods which are provided or deprived are, in turn, goods which have: (i) have intrinsic value so far as they are felt and conscious to human being (e.g., the air, environment and fellow beings felt as values in themselves); (ii) have instrumental or ultimate value without which human life is reduced or destroyed by degrees; (iii) mark systematic injustice to the degree of their necessity, deprivation, and life loss without them; and (iv) mark social justice to the measure of the protection and enabling of their provision through time by (v) society’s system of benefits and burdens progressively ensuring their provision. once social justice is thus defined with principled life coordinates, we are able to understand how it is in fact won or lost in the world: for example, by potable and waste water cycles, literacy levels, social security programs, and accessible time, play and creative opportunities for gains or losses of citizens’ life capacities through time. at this point it is worth reviewing the fate and trends of all the universal human life necessities and goods under corporate-market rule. it is here that we can define the destructive lines of corporate invasion of humanity’s life fields and conditions in the name of “development” and “prosperity.” (1) the natural atmospheric goods of breathable air, open space and light are not conserved nor protected by the corporate-rights system, but systemically depredated insofar as (i) the air is polluted by its commodities’ production and uses (e.g., ever more motor vehicles for profit with no limit on their numbers or ration of their use on land, air or water); (ii) open space is cumulatively occupied by these same private corporate uses and commodities disabling people’s lives (e.g., by pervading fumes and motor-spike decibels and subsonic propagations); and (iii) the light of the sun has been made toxic by corporate-commodity effluents having cumulatively destroyed the ozone layer for protecting the earth from infra-red solar radiations. on the other hand, where public regulatory interventions have been prevailed, there are air-pollution abatement measures, open-space protections, and sun-radiation buffers (by ozone-layer protocol, the sole life standard in transnational business treaties). free corporate use of the universal atmospheric goods of breathable air, open space and natural light is, in all, totalizing in despoliation without public authority effectively regulating every phase of its cycles. as with provision or deprivation of 34 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 all the universal life goods of (1) to (7), human rights and obligations or their violation follow, along with social justice or injustice. (2) the bodily goods of clean water, nourishing food, and waste disposal have been increasingly depredated by reigning corporate rights and commodity cycles insofar as: (i) the fresh waters of aquifers, lakes and rivers are polluted and drawn down by corporate activities of manifold kinds from factory farming, toxic discharges across industries and commodity extraction, with untreated public sewage itself led by these open-waste methods and by corporate blocking of taxes required to resolve the problem; (ii) the world’s foods and beverages are increasingly sugar-saltand-oil laden, chemically adulterated, and genetically contaminated to serve moneysequence functions of mass sale, masking of age and quality, and care-cost reduction, thereby leading multi-disease causation and depletion of seed stocks, vitamin yield, forest covers, and organic immune resistance; and (iii) massive waste methods increase by non-selective forest and fish stock looting, throwaway products and packaging, and non-recycling of waste products. (3) the home and habitat goods of shelter from the elements and noxious animals and insects with means to freely function are improved in countless expendable conveniences, but under the ruling corporate system: (i) a home is dependent on private money stocks or debt-servitude to private banks at compound-interest charges exceeding principal and, simultaneously, tied to private-developer profits so that increasing numbers of families are home-insecure or homeless; (ii) corporate “development” is pervasively sited on shrinking farmlands to exploit their already historically developed life capital of cleared, graded and drained lands for what maximizes its external money gains; and (iii) protection from noxious animals and insects is by profitable commodities of instant poisons, solvents and other killmechanisms which are hazardous to life forms in general and blinker out lifecoherent methods of public resolution. (4). the built and natural environmental goods of surrounding elements and contours contributing to the whole are what form all pleasant human surroundings across cultures, but this environing life good also requires public coordination and control which private developers and financiers have displaced: (i) by massive ungreen urban sprawl “development” around one town, city, and beauty space to the next across borders, if not over-ruled by externally enforced regulations (e.g., old european towns or public parks); (ii) by buildings determined only by corporateperson profit for unit sold and not for their contributing place in the whole unless regulated by such public standards; (iii) leased public lands and resources to be torn apart and polluted by private corporate looting of forests and minerals, military attack or practice areas by high-profit weapons, and private commodity noise machines multiplying in number. (5) the life-protective goods of civil life security and healthcare provision when ill are the mark of civilized humanity in all places and times, but are undermined by corporate-person rule insofar as: (i) the private money-sequence system it presides over redistributes public wealth and worker wages to its own global growth, thereby depriving increasing majorities of civil commons and income security; (ii) the mass sale of addictive and life-disabling junk drinks and foods and the injection of toxins and carcinogens into commodity cleaners, consumables and personal care products which afflict countless people with diseases, whose cause by these products is human rights versus corporate rights 35 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 unresearched or undisclosed; and (ii) the privatization for profit of health-restoring goods so that what does not serve corporate money sequences is ruled out, including public health plans and their extensions. (6) the universal human life goods of language, music, art, and play which constitute culture in all its diverse human forms are debased or eliminated insofar as corporate money-sequence growth selects for funding and reproduction of only those forms which directly or indirectly produce and mass-market commodities for corporate profit. whatever does not serve this ulterior goal is not funded or, if integral to people’s lives, distorted into a form that does (e.g., public education tailored to the demands of corporate rule). thus culture becomes commodified to sell corporate brands, communication is reduced to what promotes sales by instant images and sound bites, and public cultural policies are determined by corporate modes (e.g., publicly financed spectacle sites in place of community play and performance areas). the cultural form is decided as “good” or “bad,” in turn, by private money-value returns—that is, how much is paid for product or reproduction (high art), or how well it sells corporate commodities (commercial art). in general, culture becomes funded or defunded as it returns higher or lower money value to private parties. students, for example, are required to “invest” in their higher education by debt contracts with private banks to pay for “the higher returns” of their learning—the money sequence of value imposed on and regulating education itself. (7) the good of human vocation is the ultimate life good for human beings in community insofar as it enables and obliges people to contribute to the provision of universal life goods consistent with each person’s enjoyment of them. the logic of rights and obligations here follows from understanding the nature of these universal human life goods themselves. to enjoy the atmospheric goods of nature obliges one to not degrade but preserve them. to benefit from the bodily goods of clean water, nourishing food and waste disposal requires that each contribute to their provision by sustaining taxation and participation. in a similar way, the universal human goods of home and pleasant environment, civil safety and care when ill, and enjoyment of cultural goods are realized in terms of the same logic of human vocation and social justice across differences. at the highest level of abstraction, the vocation of each individual is to do what s/he can that is of life-value to others and of life-interest to self. for none to shirk the duty of giving back in to what enables the humanity of each is the obligation in return for these rights—the human ordering of social justice. these are the true bases of self-respect and freedom. the value of such work for others, in turn, is defined by its contribution to the provision of the universal goods each and all require to live as human. the autonomous artist is not an exception, but an exemplification of giving of the self to provide the world with a great life good, a transformative human creation. one can be a clean-up worker, or an academic, or both in life-time given, or any other number of life-time contributions to the provision of humanity’s ultimate life goods. mothers count as much as farmers who count as much as heads of state in this human ecology of vocation. the commensurable unit of obligation is hours worked for provision of the life goods needed. in systemic contrast, the private for-profit corporate commodity system increasingly results in more permanently unemployed, more downgraded jobs, more extended laid-off periods, less sustaining incomes, more squeezed-out work, more eliminated life benefits, ever fewer people with work pensions, more 36 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 despoiled natural and built environments and—perhaps most ruinously—rapidly dwindling life vocations for the young. contemporary justice theory fails to recognize any common life interest while contemporary justice theory has become perhaps the most active field of philosophy in recent decades, it remains within the ruling disorder. any life-value ground or goods of justice remain blinkered out, and the reigning money-sequence itself system is off-limits to discuss. the substance of both justice and injustice is thus abstracted out a-priori. the central issue becomes, instead, one of money-value “incentives” to “the talented” to “serve the least advantaged”—a logic of justice that is introduced by john rawls’ canonical a theory of justice (1971) that produces most of the churning industry of anglo-american philosophy on justice. the lifeand-death problems confronting humanity are thereby screened out within a myth of the ruling ideology—that the primary inequality of money gain is based on personal talent. that money-possession differentials do not in fact come from the “superior talent” of individuals, but from the private control of money issue and money capital, is the underlying social structural issue that is ruled out from discussion. the question is not permitted to arise, however, as review of the vast literatures on “the difference principle” confirms. the examples used are revealingly selective and disconnected while politically correct at the same time. a paradigm example is the pay for superior performance necessary to get a woman surgeon to do the high surgery she can rather than the gardening she prefers. on the basis of such dubious examples, necessary money incentives to the talented stand in as the central problem of social justice. the general principle from which these hot-house debates are generated, “the difference principle” of rawls’ a theory of justice, is that “the higher expectations of those better situated are just if and only if they improve the expectations of the least advantaged members of society.” while rawls and justice theory appear here to propose a high standard, the ultimate questions of social justice are blinkered out. the ground of private property itself, money-capital right to become more with no burden, natural resources left over for others, the non-waste obligation, the protection of common life support systems, the production of means of existence, the rights and duties justly assigned to ensure their provision, and how humanity is to live with nature so as not to despoil it—all of these issues are abstracted out apriori. critical discussion, instead, turns on how inequality of the income of the “more talented” can be justified. at the highest level of generality, all substantive issues of life-coherent justice are thus erased. the implicitly cordoned-off areas of discussion are worth identifying to comprehend how this framework of analysis of social justice pre-consciously conforms to the ruling money-sequence program. however basic their importance to our lives and their right regulation, the following foundational areas of concern disappear from view a-priori: (1) the biophysical world itself and its universal requirements of reproduction; (2) human needs, their nature, criterion and universal structure; human rights versus corporate rights 37 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 (3) production of the means whereby societies live, and its organizing principles of regulation; (4) the nature of actual money-capitalist society and its money-profit sequence; (5) the conception of any of (1) to (4) as normative issues or questions; (6) any right or obligation of justice not based on contractual agreement of atomic individuals; (7) any resource to repudiate any social regulator as evil; (8) any allowance of method to ground in or introduce (1) to (7) as what must be addressed by a theory of justice. “what is left that matters?” one might ask. this is a question that does not arise. in this way, all the real-life problems of social justice are screened out by the unseen syntax of argument itself. the universal human life necessities and goods, the natural life-ground and the human vocation are all excluded from this meaning and value structure. at the same time, the actually ruling capitalist system, its money-sequence logic and despoliation of common life support systems are as effectively removed from discussion as if they were taboo to name. the reigning philosophical vision of social justice is, accordingly, a-priori life-blind like the ruling system. they are both governed at different levels by one meta-structure of meaning in which none of these issues can arise. from the start, discussion of “the difference principle” is linked to the life-empty standard of “pareto optimality,” a touchstone of modern social and philosophical sciences. although pareto himself does not define the principle in natural language, it means a condition in which no-one can be made better off without someone being made worse off—with no coordinates of life meaning entering conception. against a surface appearance of fairness, the pareto principle is in fact consistent with the most extreme immiserization of the majority. for example, if the given distribution is a small fraction of society possesses most of its assets, pareto “optimization” would leave all their wealth intact with no redistribution because this would make the super-rich “worse off”, and thus be a violation of optimal pareto efficiency. rawls recognizes a problem here, but shifts it to the deplored feudal past. “it may be that under certain conditions,” he says with emphasis added, “serfdom cannot be significantly reformed without lowering the expectations of some representative man, say that of landowners” (p. 12). former marxian scholar, g.a. cohen, goes with rawls to the pareto principle in rescuing justice and equality (2008), but he too rejects it as inadequate for justice. both he and rawls, nonetheless, entirely sidestep the capitalist world reality of allocating money to money-capital profit without limit or desert. this is the unstated requirement of oxbridge-ivy league respectability. global capitalism is off-limits to discuss without saying it. indeed none in this dominant discourse ever engages this actually ruling structure. since the elephant in the room is not there, its trampling of human and ecological worlds never enters as an issue. as antonio gramsci has observed, hegemonic ideas never touch the essential core of ruling economic relations. while standing against any inequality, cohen declines as well to question rawls’ position that inequality-producing incentives in fact do get people to produce more real goods from which the poor benefit. instead just-so stories continue to stand in for reality. there are specially talented and productive individuals, they alone can produce what people need, and the issue is whether to give them higher money incentives to induce them to provide their superior work. life-coherent reason does 38 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 not go down this primrose path. it observes there is no criterion of need here, nor account of the productivity of the higher paid, nor sound correlation of incentive to either. all of this is taken for granted by the ruling myth which is never challenged. what is not reflected from the wider world is any trace of the actually ruling system of inequality to which no part of the myth applies. in the real world, it is not talented individuals receiving more merit pay, but a financial sect’s control of money sequencing to more private money with no productive merit required, and at steeply rising costs to the majority’s lives and their common life support systems. the actually regulating structure of injustice is, thus, pre-empted from view to attend solicitously to the myth. with life-value, money-capital profit and the common life-ground all unspeakable within this disconnected framework, the multiplying assumptions at work construct an ideological illusion which is uncritically reproduced across the world in “justice theory” itself. money inequality is correlated with superior persons and their performances of value for others—the ultimate alibi of the system. its popular version, which rawls emulates without notice, is: “the rich create a larger social pie from which the poor benefit.” the man behind this idea in the academy is pareto, the leading mantra-name in rational choice theory. his position is worth briefly visiting not only because rawls and cohen do not, but because it discloses the pedigree of the principle from which the reigning discourse on justice comes. to begin with, pareto’s (1971) canonical manual of political economy itself repudiates any equalizing mechanism as economic nonsense. 11 it is only used “to get rid of one aristocracy and replace it with another (p. 93), with aristocratic rule as “what always exists” (pp. 311-312). it is a law of nature which only “decadent” and “degenerate” members of the ruling class oppose, he says. these “decadents” are only moved by a “morbid pity” or because they are “eager for perverse enjoyment” (pareto, 1971, p. 73). pareto thus affirms war and the mass killing as necessary to “european civilization” whose advance he regards as “the fruit of an infinite number of wars and of much destruction of the weak—[by whose] sufferings the present prosperity has been acquired” (pareto, 1971, p. 48). “very moral civilized people,” he asserts, “have [also] destroyed and continue to destroy, without the least scruple, savage or barbarian peoples.” all the “so-called liberal professions [medical care and education, for example],” he declares in implicit pre-emption of any compensating services to the poor, “derive their income from factory owners” who would be deterred from producing wealth for society by such “humanitarian absurdity” (pareto, 1971, p. 304). we may see in pareto the core intellectual program of the global corporate system of rapacious greed which economists justify as “paretooptimal.” while it seems paradoxical that liberal egalitarians would appropriate pareto to their apparently opposite cause, there is less paradox than first appears. pareto’s principle of “equilibrium,” as he calls it, in which none can be made better off without others being made worse off—is a logic of status-quo adhesion. it is consistent with the most extreme and growing life-value deprivation of the majority in the name of a bigger pie. this is where the rawlsian difference principle seems to ensure fairness and justice where the pareto principle does not. yet when we examine it more carefully, we find that it has no criterial limit on justifiable inequality to ensure that it is not as permissive of the inequality which the capitalist ideology of “trickle-down” has human rights versus corporate rights 39 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 justified since rawls’ famous a theory of justice was published. in fact, almost every capitalist gain-scheme advocated in the world in these decades—global free trade and investment without borders, ever lower taxes and regulation, “right to work” breaking of unions, and so on—has been similarly represented as a “policy to benefit the poor.” now the imf calls its breaking of debtor-countries, “poverty alleviation programs.” with no life-value standards, people’s life necessities can be systematically degraded and deprived to enlarge money circuits, and so long as average income rises a few cents for the poor, justice is seen to have been served. consider here subsistence farmers driven from their farmland, their family and their community supports into the city—as hundreds of millions are every decade by these “development programs”—with the price of a cup of coffee in new average income counting to the ruling value metric as “millions lifted out of poverty.” where does justice turn? only by grounding in a defined set of means of life universally necessary to human survival and flourishing is the problem soluble, with civil commons the process of building social justice in life-coherent terms. beyond masking myths and equivocal equality: the need to reset justice theory to recognize global injustice g.a. cohen’s rescuing equality and justice is the most egalitarian opposition to the rawlsian “difference principle” within the dominant academic discourse. yet all the life-blind exclusions identified by (1) to (8) above still govern his understanding of social justice. criterial life substance, basic needs, and existing ruling social structure continue to be blocked out a-priori. the worst-off are therefore not better recognized in what makes them badly off. the reigning order of wealth allocation by unearned capital income is never mentioned. the masking myth of personal talent reaping higher pay (benefit) for superior productivity of performance (burden) remains in place unflagged. again we may see the ruling value syntax at work. thus even radical egalitarian argument here avoids stating the life goods making anyone’s life better or worse, blinkers out the money-capital governance of the world producing the deepest real inequalities, and accepts the idealizing equation of deserving more money for superior performance as the ultimate issue to argue about. conceptions of justice and injustice again disappear into the terms of the masking myth, while the ruling money-sequence syntax remains untouched. yet what could be wrong with “equality” as one’s standard to uphold against any inequality, as cohen does. what is not addressed is that the normative category of “equality” allows for limitless exploitation of its ambiguity of meaning. this is why “equality” has been at the forefront of system-justifying doctrine since john locke and the u.s. constitution he inspired, while also being a rallying cry of radical oppositions from british levellers to the french sans-culottes to socialists today. it is an equivocal concept which brings out whatever discussants project onto it. this is why market capitalism has been long described as a system of “equality” and a system of “inequality” at the same time. even when one seems to have a straight-on disagreement in principle—for example, g.a. cohen opposed to robert nozick opposed to john rawls, the list is long—the most apparently inegalitarian position like nozick’s is itself a demand for equality before the law in property protection from a redistributive state. “equality of rights” is thus routinely proclaimed even if a 40 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 growing number have insufficient food and housing, live in garbage-strewn slums, and are functionally illiterate. until analysis gets underneath the equivocal category of “equality” to what people actually need for their lives not to be deprived, the slogan prevails even in theory. on the ground, the most basic common life goods can be despoiled beneath recognition as “more equality” in both market competition and mass consumption. consider the human food system itself which has in these names been globally stripped of nutriments by ever more price-reducing factory-farming monocultures, chemical-genetic concoctions and sugar-salt foods to equalizing malnutrition and obesity. 12 re-grounding in the missing life base the most basic onto-axiological principle in the dominant theoretical discourse is itself ungrounded in life value, with a “rational plan of life” as the given frame of good for anyone. contractual justice theory and moral philosophy presuppose this frame of conception as an ultimate good prior to choice. “communitarian” justice theory does not, but its base is established social relations with no way beyond these constituted attachments to more life-coherent forms of vocation and social order. this is why liberals reject “communitarianism” for open “rational life plans” of individuals. the underlying life-ground is not touched by either. the ideological debate is waged within the parameters of the reigning system, and the logic of life value and civil commons is a-priori abstracted out. no-one in this industry of debate appears to disagree. yet what of those who have no such “rational plan of life,” but reject it as a careerist closure to the creative openness of human being? young people in particular find elders insisting on such a life plan as oppressive bores, and experience any force-fitting of them into such a “rational plan” as an injustice to their lives. yet such considerations cannot enter because the young are excluded from this scheme of justice as young. rawls is clear that their elders must choose for them, and this is not seen as a problem although it may be the upbringing source of all the others. 13 yet the young are not alone. consider the possible exceptions to this presupposition of justice. giving one’s all to the challenging tasks at hand can make the “career plan” a cramping, egoic distraction. an all-round life may rule out a “life plan” as a one-sided reduction. still the “rational life plan” remains a premise without an argument for it. in practice, the “rational life plan” means in fact a selfmaximizing financial plan—not only a career across decades of unpredictable self, age and world changes, but one within private money sequencing in the global market as the ordering of one’s life. what is not noticed at any level of this framework of “rational life plan” is that the good of life itself has silently disappeared. life as ground, ultimate value and connectively guiding goal is simply abstracted out. at the same time, world movements for social justice—whether for “basic needs fulfilment,” climate justice,” “end the war,” “food sovereignty,” “no privatization of water,” “public health not private profit,” or “no blood for oil”—cannot compute to the dominant paradigm. reflect on the contrast between justice theory that is structured to screen out these issues that move people across borders and a lifecoherent understanding of justice that speaks directly to them. the profoundly human rights versus corporate rights 41 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 unresolved issue of exactly what is due on both sides of the right-obligation ledger is only answerable by understanding the means of existence which all humanity requires to live a human life, and the social structure and agency whereby these are to be provided. this is why life-value onto-ethics defines these life means and goods with exact criteria, and comprehends the civil commons agency and life-coherent rationality required to enable them. it understands social justice on the ground, in turn, as an historical process of society’s achievement of universal human life goods for all by its social rule-system—in the most comprehensive sense of these goods, from natural capital preservation and the coordinated capabilities of scientific technology to life-protective imperatives and universal education and social security. the need/good of human vocation in particular is recognized to be the life-coherent contribution of each to these life goods to receive the benefits and enjoyment of them. this linkage of right and obligation at a system-wide level is in fact the ultimate onto-ethical issue of human civilization, and requires any system to be accountable to enabling these universal human goods as its measure of legitimacy. when we stand back to consider the historical pattern of the last 80 years, for example, we are able to recognize the meta logic of humanity’s universal life necessities/goods and their evolving civil commons provision since the great depression and war, on the one hand, and the private-profit corporate war upon them to appropriate and dismantle their resources for private profit since 1980, on the other. this meta conflict explains why ever more growth of wealth by the rule of this system goes along ever more impoverishment of most people’s lives and life conditions. this is the unseen war of social injustice—that is, ever more unnecessary suffering from life capacity reduction by deprivation of life goods. life-value understanding therefore recognizes and stands for the missing life base of social justice and human advance—the age-old process of civil commons building. thus, for example, it understands that national public healthcare which became socially provided without price barrier for all those in need of it was a major civil commons victory for social justice in many societies, just as public water and sanitation systems were a century before and still are today in much of the world. in the private corporate rule of the us, in contrast, it recognizes that citizens are ruined or bankrupted by medical costs more than any other cause, and that far more people than the population of canada are without protection. it understands too that even long-successful public health systems are endangered by the same private for-profit corporate forces which invade civil commons in all spheres in the name of “freedom of choice” or “new efficiencies” or other demonstrably false claim. yet even in progressive forms, social-structural analysis still reduces the struggle to one of waged workers against capitalism or women against patriarchy to go on missing the underlying common life-value ground. consider here the jobs and benefits of universalizing literacy as well as public healthcare, society-wide water and sewer systems as well as life-protective laws and norms, life security in old age and disability as well as in unemployment, scientific understanding normalized as well as public play and art areas, open internet communication and information as well as public parks and historic squares and streetscapes—all the civil commons spelled out in prior pages. yet while there is no level of our human lives and conditions not enabled by them, they remain invisible as common property—not only drowned by saturating devotions to private-profit commodities in the mass media, but not 42 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 penetrated either by economic-classism which blinkers them out in principle. while life-value understanding, the civil commons, and the life coherence principle in fact underlie all authentic human advance, their ultimate ground of meaning and value is not comprehended. as with the amnesiac on the individual level, society’s deeper life bearings and human identity have been lost to consciousness. the corporate system versus the civil commons: the inner logic of the world war the global disorder is glimpsed in everyday symptoms, but not in the deep-structural conflict itself—the war on common goods for human life by unliving and unaccountable corporate persons. we may sense the soulless mega machine behind the undoing of the world whose symptoms erupt every day, track capitalist class machinations, or merely intuit a system thrown out of joint. but that it is a-priori lifeblind and selects for every life-system attack that humanity is now confronted by is not decoded as a value program. backed by law and armed force with alias names, no borders of place, no duties but to money profit and no death limit, the private global corporation and its limitless morphs into new forms is in principle inhuman by this program. its moving human parts and victims no more matter to it than the public subsidies propelling its ever more gargantuan global mechanisms matter to captive states. there is much room for pro and con slogans here, but analysis needs a criterial definition of this constructed mechanism so that we do not remain lost in rapidly changing effects. its meaning is complex, but can be exactly framed in formal terms. the corporation is a changing pool of money owners defined by a unitary legal goal of profit maximization for its shareholders and their non-liability for the corporation’s actions. it is also the sole right holder as “the investor” in transnational treaty legal mechanisms whose rules since 1988 govern the global market and whose articles exclude all labour and citizens rights. above the lines of natural life and death—“lacking both a body to be kicked and a soul to be damned, they therefore do as they like” in the words of british lord chancellor turlow (1731-1806)—the corporation is the sole agent inducing obligations in contemporary international trade with a unilateral rights to sue governments for “loss of profit opportunity” through binding and punitive tribunals with powers of unlimited financial penalty. in domestic law, the private corporation writes its own charter of incorporation as distinct from its original reception of power by sovereign government conferral. this deep structure of rule is blocked out across disciplines and cultures, most of all as the collective agency behind the cumulative and systematic destruction of global life itself. while its surface expressions and human manifestations are infinite and pervasive, all conform to one syntax of rule. the subject is private money capital whose verb is seeking to become more without upper limit, and all modifiers are money-demand or its equivalents. competing money-capital subjects purchase, exchange and dispose of human and natural resources, commodities, and stock futures to become more money capital and commodities as final end. rationality is, in turn, regulatively presupposed as (i) self-maximizing strategies in (ii) conditions of scarcity or conflict over (iii) desired payoffs at (iv) minimum costs for the self to human rights versus corporate rights 43 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 (v) win/gain more. one can see that this syntax of meaning and value is what no human being is—life-value blind in every dimension—but the causal mechanism of disaster it forms is not recognized nor examined, even in philosophy whose formal paradigms of rational justice and morality simply presuppose (i) through (v). yet what systemic injustice and violation of human and ecological life systems today is not driven by globalization of this syntax of value in money-value terms? the question is not asked, but its answer discloses whether or not any other causal mechanism can explain it. formally represented again, this ruling system of rights has disconnected its private money sequences from even the tangible products of classical industrialization in $ 123 - n sequences of merger and equity predation, currency speculations, shorting bets, price arbitrages, carrying trade margins, derivative covering, credit swaps, and so on. private money-value multiplication decoupled from any commitment to life goods production of any kind captures government revenues formerly available for investment in social life goods and regulatory structures and increasingly dominates all levels of the world system. while many blame personal moral defects for the disorder—there is a profound tendency of human thought to personify—the problem goes far deeper into the built laws of the system itself. the turning points go back to u.s. court decisions that effectively prescribe corporate avarice against higher motive of business. for example, in a paradigmsetting state supreme court decision (dodge v. ford motor co., 204 michigan 459 (1919) the court held in a precedent ruling that has not since been overturned that it is a violation of “the lawful power of a corporation” to decide anything not “organized for the profit of the stockholders.” here even henry ford’s own plan to “employ more men, to spread the benefits of this industrial system to the greatest possible number, to help them build up their lives and homes” was ruled against the law. it transgressed the rights of corporate stockholders to maximum profits revenues to themselves. in short, the corporate person could not plan for the life benefits of anyone, even “the greatest possible number” of real persons, without violating its legal purpose of private money sequencing to maximally more for money-stock investors. the corporate person remains programmed by law to this one overriding goal in exclusion of providing more life means for more people by stillprofitable business. the resolution may be expressed in one life-value principle. transnational corporate-person rule by money sequencing as the sovereign driver of world society must be regulatively reset—however this is done—so that goods are selected to sustain rather than predate social and ecological life-support-systems. state or capitalist control makes no difference except as they do one rather than the other. the civil commons principle identifies this required ordering. yet it must first be distinguished from the age-old concept of “the commons” which is used today in profoundly contradictory ways—“global commons” open to corporate-right despoliation or shared life goods of local communities. this confusion is as cooptively lethal as “civil society”—what in fact denotes private property holders, but is now whatever its users assert on opposite sides of meaning. the global crisis is hinged on the language by which people think and act, often comfortably on both sides of the fence oblivious to the burning issues blinkered out. the actual “commons” were and remain nature-given forests and fields in which villagers graze their livestock, draw water, pick plant-stuffs for food, and access wood and plants for fuel and materials in accordance with their regulating customs. 44 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 they were not, as famously misunderstood in garrett hardin’s “the tragedy of the commons” (1968), natural resources which local people spoiled by individual exploitation. before they were expropriated by the first agribusiness interests in britain—the war goes back over centuries—they were structured by community rules for their community protection and reproduction through generational time. harden’s article projects agri-business over-exploitation onto its victims, a familiar operation of the ruling ideology. in truth, the meaning and substance of the civil commons goes far beyond what is given by nature, and is opposite in regulating meaning. it includes all human-made goods that people need and to which community members have universal access by social regulation of production and use. from the earliest times on, civil commons include community abodes and lifespace, structured water sources or wells, care of the young and ill, repulsion of external attacks, human waste and burial routines or rituals, community stories, and tribal languages, sacred symbols, arts and games. readers may observe that so rich and broad are these constructed common fabrics and infrastructures of human life across the ages that any list always opens to new dimensions. as with other rigid designators of generic qualities across numberless differences and creative possibilities, the civil commons are pervasive in their variety of expression, but contingent on social development of rule-systems –the defining feature of the human species’ evolution which is open to reversal or advance, to systematically disabling as well as enabling forms and turns. thus virtually every form of the civil commons is now predated and displaced by the global corporate-rights system of rules, but beneath social recognition. what is not comprehended is not protected. yet the unseen organizing order of the civil commons is exactly verifiable and defined in principle as (i) the social rules of access or activity or production which (ii) enable the access of all members to (iii) life goods whose generic criterion is (iv) that without which human life capacity is always reduced. confusion, however, goes both ways. what is thought to in the common life interest and even revered as such is often the opposite. we can tell this by the fact that the alleged good does not qualify under these criteria and may maximally violate them—for example, armed-war aggression on distant societies promoted as “defending our country and our freedom.” the civil commons criteria, in short, provide the missing objective grounds for distinguishing what has not before been reliably told apart—government and private-sector formations that serve the common life interest versus ones that do not, but pretend that they do. in the longer pull of history, the civil commons principle also tells in every case traditions and norms worth preserving from those better left behind. without this ultimate principle of normative validity, any confusion can reign, and has done so. for example, an endless politics and ideology of invalidation as “socialism” and “communism,” on the one hand, or “unaffordable,” “not working-class centred” or “unrecognized in the literatures,” on the other, has fatefully blinkered out comprehension of humanity’s advance of universally accessible universal life goods in our era from historical backgrounds of natural scarcity, perpetual fear and misery, and arbitrary individual death—just what we see rapidly rising again in global market capitalism today. as always, the life-blind ruling value syntax prevails by screening out the common life-ground of its subjects. received political and economic understanding are indicators of the instituted mental block at work here— human rights versus corporate rights 45 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 as unconsciously biased against recognition of the civil commons as received prejudice is against recognizing the human in other races. when the dramatically lower life-costs and money-costs of public life goods are compared to private money-sequence rule by corporate persons, however, we can discern the ruling interests behind the established blinkers. for this reason, the efficiency, durability and good management of non-profit public infrastructures and common goods are unconsciously taboo to observe, inverted by the ruling system ideology into silly stereotypes like “marxist” or “nanny state,” or otherwise discounted and silenced. that social versus corporately privatized healthcare, water provision, higher research, communications, shareware, and mass transport have proven far superior in life-enabling outcomes and profitless cost efficiency is thus off limits in dominant public and academic discourses. yet where does this system superiority not hold? modern public enterprise in accordance with the civil commons principle is an incontrovertibly more evolved and proven system of production and distribution for the wellbeing of citizens’ lives in all areas in which it has been permitted to openly and democratically develop. when we consider an exception sector, such as the greening and flowering of people’s private homes and gardens in recent years in advanced communities, we find that it is yet another example of the civil commons principle. all who pass by such homes and gardens are able to enjoy their biodiverse life and beauty without charge or profit, along with community vegetable and roof gardens restoring real growth to grey urban worlds. even the pervasive corporate pesticides and herbicides sold into this community greening come to be banned by public struggles for the wider common life goods of non-toxic air and earth, which represent the civil commons at the most basic level of natural life support system protection. what then of factory production which provides machine-made mass goods? they are the great productive achievement of capitalism—but not when they systemically deplete and destroy human lives, ecosystems and natural resource bases, produce nothing of life value, and wasting whatever does not cost money to money-investors for profit. this is the structural derangement intrinsic to the system where civil commons constructs are most necessary of all—to regulate the machine-good economy to be life coherent. this process was in fact incrementally occurring in advanced societies until the global market mechanism was treaty-imposed by lead corporate states as a-priori life-blind. what is missing is the civil commons steering mechanism, compass and life-value coordinates which this system must have if it is not to continue its global ecogenocide in motion. yet there are now no unifying principles or even name for the life standards and common agency required as the deadly system destabilizations rise towards global life-ground collapse. with only factional splinters and causes seen or reported, the great common interest and agency on which human and planetary life now depend remains effectively unconscious. meanwhile corporate-system drivers of deregulation, privatization, lower taxes, corporate-right trade fiats, military spending and foreign wars as well as trillions of public dollars given to private banks and public austerity programs to pay for them together lead massive reversals of life standards and civil commons evolution across the globe. when 70% of france supports the strikes against raising the public pension age in the autumn of 2010, resistance to the totalizing private-profit agenda stands for civil commons only at the margins of its historic gains with its common life benefit still obscure. in the wider world, private money-sequence invades public 46 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 sectors in every domain, the last great frontier of the world capitalist system. civil commons are dismantled, defunded and restructured to serve the private-profit order and invariably bring in their wake decline in life goods and cost-efficiency for society—the unspeakable fact for even public broadcasters. on the global plane, the great disorder of private money-value growth cumulatively despoils humanity’s universal life goods from the atmosphere and breathing air to the phytoplankton and fish stocks of the world’s oceans. the divided state: the common life interest versus the corporate servo-mechanism life-value analysis recognizes that there is not one modern state, but two warring states within one: the now dominant state to grow private corporations and commodity markets at whatever cost to life capacities and their support systems versus public government to serve the common life interest of universal life goods for human life capacities for more people at more levels. in the defining lines of this still preconscious world war, the backwards or forward transformation of human society is decided. without recognition of its life-and-death stakes and inner logic, there is no hope beyond political rhetoric. for on the make-or-break level of public funding and taxation, government functions and expenditures are increasingly structured to subsidize private-profit interests towards bankrupting public government itself, and thus also the possibility of social justice. we are already at this pass now. longitudinal diagnosis reveals a system-wide pattern of subsidization of major forprofit corporations in staggering haemorrhages of public wealth into the global corporate maw: unceasing major tax cuts and write-offs to fractions of former liabilities to pay less tax than their lower-end employees; growing subsidies for extraction of public resources and pollutive commodity production; rising public subsidies for private automobile, weapons, aeronautical and commodity research and manufacture; perpetual expansion of heavy-gauge highways and police-and-prison systems tailored to private corporate interests; rising armed forces and corporate weapons production to guard these and other for-profit corporate appropriations and interests beyond home borders; ever increasing bankrolling of corporate-trade offices, negotiations and enforcements to systemize and extend corporate rights further within and across borders; and continued abdication of constitutional credit and currency creation to private banks for profit. all are justified as “necessary” and “in the public interest” until we recognize the opposite structure of facts, such as the unprecedentedly clear connection between the direct transfer of trillions of dollars of public wealth to failed private money-sequencers and banks who produce nothing and the public-sector and debt crises across the world since to pay the bills which bleed them dry. life-blind categories of judgement and decision prop every step of society’s reversal of a century of advances. the european union whose public sectors and civil commons infrastructures have led the world are variously hollowed out to sustain the carcinogenic system. at the same time, public constitutional control of credit and currency remains blocked out and is nowhere in this era yet directed to funding of the common life interest and social justice—not to protect human rights versus corporate rights 47 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 social and natural life support systems, not to secure employment for life-serving purpose. in these ways beneath the surface play of phenomena, the corporate-person rights’ system for private money gain coerces the world into civil as well as ecological breakdown. yet the deepest civil commons remains unrecognized, the publicly instituted and protected exchange medium itself which has been wrested away by private forces—what benjamin franklin reported as the main reason the thirteen colonies rebelled against british rule, the outlawing of the “colonial scrip” by the 1775 currency act which had enabled the independent prosperity of the colonies and whose seizure by the private bank of england caused major depression. this is the private money-sequence appropriation of public currency and credit issue continuing today as the social gene of public dispossession across the globe. as long as its public and constitutional jurisdiction is not re-grounded in public control for life-serving purpose, the step by step breakdown of the life security of peoples and their life conditions passes undetected even by marxian analysis. 14 the life-value ecology of justice: bridging rights and obligations to the civil commons in nature, rights and obligations do not exist. the right is to the stronger, and no obligations confine what is seized and predated. yet what is not seen by those affirming the “right of the stronger” across species is that few or no beings survive in nature whose functions do not contribute to their wider life-host. scientific ecology has made this clear over the last 50 years, but it is a theme of understanding that goes back to the tao-te ching over 2500 years ago. herein lies the natural basis for understanding human rights and obligations—a life-grounded ecology of justice at the human level. to put the matter boldly, the same logic of the italicized law can be applied to the human level in rights terms. humanity evolves beyond the peckingorder, leave-to-die and predation system of nature when its rules of reproduction regulate by life-protective rights and obligations. even in nature, the young are protected, fed and taught around the clock by the lives of their mothers in mammalian and bird species. . in classical and neo-classical market philosophy, however, not even this pre-human obligation exists. as adam smith says in a littleknown overview of the market’s supply-demand system, “among the inferior ranks of people the scantiness of subsistence can set limits to the further multiplication of the human species; and it can so in no other way than by destroying a great part of the children which their fruitful marriages produce. (smith, 1966, p. 85). notwithstanding the homicidal logic of the ruling market system and doctrine, the human right-obligation order supersedes the natural system and, as in all social order, is constructed by the rules or norms societies live by. for life-value understanding, rights for individuals depend on obligations fulfilled to the life-hosts that sustain them at social and natural levels. just as social rules replace absolute rights of market property and trade structured to such mass human life sacrifice. the rightsobligations structure of society is life-blind until it is ordered to enable the lives of all its members by the greatest possible provision of universal life goods each requires to flourish as human. this is the life-value ecology of rights by which civil commons development has long been governed beneath principled attention and 48 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 understanding—precisely what the globalizing private money-value disorder predatorily attacks. wherever this system is not subordinated to civil authority as an instrumental mechanism of life goods provision (e.g., as efficient machine manufacturing and price mechanism within life-coherent constraints), it reverts to this predatory rule. without social recognition and regulation of this predatory logic, this system can—and typically does—blindly destroy and despoil human and natural life support systems to maximize private money returns as an end-in-itself. when in opposition to this life-blind growth, the council of canadians or the right to food movement of india or other non-governmental civil commons formation stand instead for universal provision of these life goods on the basis of a national health act and public distribution system—the latter struggling against private-take norms at all levels to achieve a universal public distribution of food as a life-saver for half of india’s children suffering from malnutrition—we observe the civil commons in action in both governmental and active-citizen forms. if we revisit the universal life goods defined in this study, we will be able to further find long-term movements of this kind operating beneath theoretical connection, a meta pattern of history not yet conscious of its meaning. when even the world’s richest men like bill gates and warren buffett try to organize their number to give away most of their wealth to social causes where human life is clearly at risk and in need of intervention—for example, malaria in the majority world where there is little market demand to generate private investment for maximal profit—we can rightly be concerned about their tax write-offs and privatefoundation powers as well as the token nature of this enterprise affecting a tiny segment of the deadly global injustice in isolated spheres. life-value analysis at the system level recognizes that only civil commons formations backed by public funding and universal life-need programs can work at a social level and in the long term. yet it also recognizes an important shift occurring—that those best at the private money-sequence game realize that something is wrong and must be responded to, the human vocation expressed even by them. beneath such positive symptoms of which george soros is perhaps the lead example, life-value understanding recognizes the deep-structural issue—that society’s regulation to secure and provide life goods otherwise in short supply or its system failure to do so is what ultimately matters. the rules by which people live decide whether a society is well or ill, and whether it rises or falls in the long run. they form the moving line between healthy societies and diseased ones, between the well-being and the illbeing of human societies and communities across time and cultures. life-and-death implications are thus built into governing rule systems which determine whether people are repressed and deprived or enabled to live and develop. herein lies the lifeand-death choice-space of society. the deciding line is towards ever more socialecological disaster by the money-sequence disorder and its supreme right of private profit with no accountability to life requirements, or towards a life-valuing order of provision of universal life necessities for ever more and accountability to social and ecological life support systems. the former is society’s cancer gene, and the latter its immune system and evolving humanity. it is not as if we do not know this inner life-value logic in our own lives. yet while global corporations are lavishly subsidized and armed-force defended by captive states they pollute the world at every level, draw down its non-renewable resources, human rights versus corporate rights 49 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 competitively disemploy and underpay workers across cultures, systematically shirk public tax obligations and run down public infrastructures, destroy the habitat of species, and so on—all within the global market competition to survive as private money sequences, the master code of value absurdly presupposed as a law of nature. this is not what any sane individual would do in her own person, of course. not even corporations will acknowledge this is what they do, but insist on the opposite in every ad. the human vocation comes out one way or another. yet as we have seen, corporate-person law and rights dictate private money-sequencing as their sole obligation, and their meta program over the last 30 years has been an all out counterrevolution against the civil commons developed since 1929 in the face of the world capitalist depression and the nazi holocaust. “economic efficiency and growth” always justify the system, but the reality is that this system wastes many times more life goods than all previous systems put together. it is, in fact the greatest diseconomy in history, but life-value diagnosis is required to see it. whether a rules system produces life goods and conditions with non-waste as its ecology of value, or depredates them for private profit as its supreme law, is the true distinction between sustainable and unsustainable systems. yet only judgment by life standards can distinguish between them. thus, goods mean in truth life goods, not any priced commodity which may be bad for ecological and human life. necessity means what is needed by the lives of human persons, not the demand of what those with money want to buy from private corporations. supply is not excluded to priced commodities for profit, but provision of human life goods by all means—civil commons, ecosystem services and womens’ unpaid work included. productivity is not measured by ever more manufacture, transport and sale of profitable commodities by loot-andpollute methods at lower money costs, but productive gains in life goods produced and secured for citizens and peoples. the human vocation of life-value understanding and advance recognizes all this as self-evident. it is what conscious and life-conscious human beings already do in their personal lives as the inner logic of the life value code and is the basis for real “family values.” at the macro level, it is what the civil commons infrastructures of societies evolve through generational time, including by a private market sector accountable to life standards. ultimately all legitimate rights are linked to the provision of these life goods (true economic demand); while the only legitimate basis of work obligation is to contribute the hours required to enable this provision (true economic supply). this is the human vocation at the level of socioeconomic organization, and subsumes whatever serves lifecoherent human and ecological life capacity. it is not a blind a-priorism of socialism versus capitalism critical economic and social-justice theory begins to comprehend this logic of real economy and life-value right and obligation, but do not yet have the life-good criteria to ground soundly underneath the measure of money-value or political-party right which have, in fact, led to steeply shorter rather than greater supply of human life goods for the world, and more life-capital loss than ever before. on the ecological plane of species survival by species contribution to the natural life host, on the social justice plane of right-obligation due to provide for a human life for each, and on the economic plane of productive efficiency and non-waste, the ruling system has cumulatively and now fatally failed. the problem is that pervasive misrepresentation and partial views have blocked recognition of the disorder and the logic of its resolution. 50 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 from the depression, anti-fascist war and decolonization to the corporate occupation the war between life requirements of human beings and private money-rights for corporate persons has been an under-theorized contradiction. before 1945 ended the most systematically genocidal system in history, the nazis’ proclaimed natural right to rule other societies by eradication of non-aryan peoples followed upon earlier cultural genocides and enslavements of other peoples from latin america to africa to india and east asia by a broader and longer-lived euro-american colonialism. accompanying and preceding these imperial systems there were the ecogenocides of the first peoples across the american hemisphere, while before and coincident with these there was the clearance of the village commons of the british countrysides during and through the rise of its world-wide empire. analysis can track this ruling pattern of ecogenocidal rule back through millennia and before corporate rule to the command of yahweh to “exterminate all the men, women and children” of the “promised land.” this enduring pattern of massacre, occupation, and exploitation where all rights favour one side only underlines the importance of europe’s emergence out of a continental zone of wars into an enduring multinational union of many-sided civil commons and rights of human life led world civilization. yet the only lasting largescale social system in modern history to regulate towards social justice and universal human life goods provision for all citizens is being systematically traduced and reversed. transnational corporate relocation of production to regions with no labour or environmental standards to sell back into societies to bankrupt their advanced and independent civil commons has been the unseen formula. captive states extending cumulative public subsidies of every kind to these same borderless corporations has been the complementing formula for financial transfer to the rich. to celebrate the results has been the function of media disinformation. “the tough new global marketplace” is the master idea, as in john d. rockefeller ’s early declaration: “the disparity in income between the rich and the poor is merely the survival of the fittest—the working out of a law of nature and a law of god” (mcmurtry, 2010b). at the level of international law which has long moved beyond old-testament market theology, sustainment of the illegitimate order has required that no life-protective or life-enabling law is enforced. instead unilateral private corporate rights are imposed by transnational trade treaties—the macro restructuring of the global system including now russia and china. overall this corporate war of movement explains why even in the aftermath of the self-caused corporate-bank collapse of 2008, virtually all public funds have gone to large corporate bank bailouts while the people impoverished by it—the disemployed, the home-expropriated, the pension-ruined— have received nothing, and the civil commons been stripped to refund the parasitic rich. it follows from the still ruling agenda that human persons and nature itself progressively dissolve into functions or detritus of transnational corporate rule by private money-sequencing. backed by countless rules enforceable against governments, corporate money-sequences rights reign. except in pretence, real persons’ lives and life support systems at individual or social levels do not factor in. while corporate rule for private profit is assumed inevitable by “economic laws” and “human nature,” it is in fact imposed by constructed corporate rights—the secret human rights versus corporate rights 51 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 history of humanity since the before the reagan presidency’s turn from “human rights” to the “fight against communism” (essentially indigenous poor people fighting for land and a human existence). world war ii, in contrast, was against rather than for fascism. history is decided, not fated. this war required civil commons to fight it—from public rations of scarce life goods to full employment of citizens. over 30 years of civil commons building was then achieved while world rule for private money profit was contained and turned back by the global social turn. its social formations evolved in mixed and socialist economies, and were backed by statesmen as well as workers and middle classes. return of this civil-commons evolution occurs again in diverse ways in latin america at the head of a growing repudiation of the “neoliberal model” in which the earth and society are reduced to transient instruments for private money sequencing to more. universal human life goods for all is the inner logic of purpose and development of this historic movement across generations and cultures. a 1944 state of the union address by u.s. president franklin d. roosevelt reveals the structural shift of official policy goals towards government by life values and standards against enemy powers within and without. roosevelt said in précis: “we cannot be content if some fraction of people is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure. true individual freedom cannot exist without life security. regardless of station, race, or creed, there is a right to a useful and remunerative job, to adequate food and clothing and recreation, to a decent living, to freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home and abroad, to a decent home, to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health, to adequate protection from the fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment, to a good education.” observe how comprehensive and concrete the universal life goods named here are. the human vocation, standards of life value, the life coherence principle, and civil commons constructs are all implicit. yet roosevelt was aware of the private corporate reaction still in force which had collaborated with the nazis in armouredvehicle manufacture, information technology for concentration camps, and chemical and pharmaceutical production. 15 from the ultimate socio-political conflict he was standing within, the “leader of the free world” concluded: “our rightful place in the world depends on how fully human rights have been carried into practice for citizens. for unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world. but there are grave dangers of rightist reaction and should it develop it is certain that, even although we shall have conquered our enemies abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of fascism at home.” 16 and indeed roosevelt’s civil commons project of universal human life rights has since been attacked at every stitch of historical construction by private money-sequence powers. he rightly foresaw that universal life goods accessible to all must be “carried into practice,” or the “rightist redaction at home” and “the spirit of fascism” will prevail. one might conclude from post-1980 imposition of transnational corporate-right rule that the enemy roosevelt alluded to has in fact won in both the us and the world, but in a different way than in the past. it has reversed the evolved social state by three deciding levels of “rightist reaction” which form a new strategic pattern into the present. my research over 25 years has found and confirmed a systematic structure underlying what we might call the great reversal. it can be concisely formulated at a high order level of conception as follows: (1) systematic defunding, privatization and reversal of evolving social sectors in the name of eliminating public debt and 52 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 deficits caused in fact by i. compounding high-interest bank rates, ii. radical tax cuts to corporations and higher incomes, and iii. increased military spending; (2) by corporate-trade treaties with overriding rights decided and instituted outside elected legislatures and without electoral support by transnational corporate agents in and out of public office; (3) by private funding of propaganda against the social entitlements and for market-capitalist values, while increasingly tying higher research funding itself to corporate commodity and weapons development. 17 the elements of this systematic pattern of “rightist reaction” to the present may be tested on all the phenomena of cutback on civil commons formations over the last 30 years, and will find few deviations from it. the evidence has, in fact, become ever more abundant. these regulating principles continue today beneath public and scientific reports, and all deprive most people of the life goods they would otherwise have access to had civil commons development continued its trajectory of advance from the war against fascism. claims or assumptions that social programs became “unaffordable” for government are silly because they ignore the general facts that the debt and deficit growths used as pretext for social-program slashing were over 94% due to prior tax cuts to corporations and the rich (canada’s typical pattern), and to 20% prime compound-interest rates charged to governments by private banks silently appropriating the constitutional right of governments to issue credit through public treasury (as swiftly occurred for wall street later). the “unaffordable” argument also ignores the general fact that government tax and other subsidies to private arms manufacturers and agribusiness alone exceed the cost of social programs in the us one needn’t refer to big lies to recognize them and their underlying pattern of serving one factional interest—private-profit money sequencing. since the fall of the soviet union in 1991, there has been no need to compete with better social programs and universal life goods because now transnational corporate persons have the right to do as they please where there are no obstacles like free unions or independent democratic procedures. globalization in this condition is what is never reported in legislatures or by the media—the globalization of corporate-person rights as absolute, unaccountable, and unlimited—in short, fascism in a new form. 18 since the law of motion of this globalization is to become more private money demand without boundary across all borders and domains, its rule technologically expands by increasingly powerful instruments from earth-moving machinery and ocean-bottom drillers to genetically modified organisms and financial derivatives within government-deregulated-and-subsidized conditions. weapons of mass destruction and monopoly mass media are then the transnational guarantors of world submission. social or environmental justice in this reigning disorder does not factor in except as false ideology, and is attacked where it does—unless, as in brazil, the economy functions far more efficiently with guaranteed incomes for poor mothers, or china, where private banks are on a tight leash, or venezuela or bolivia where public oil wealth is allocated to public purposes. the war goes on one way or another, blinkered out in the anglo-american world and its client dictatorships. it always goes better for life and justice when the disorder is recognized and put under publicly accountable control, and always worse if not. where the transnational corporaterights reign is not put on a leash or public resources reclaimed, the worst creeps rapidly and pervasively. at the macro level, human beings are ever more widely structured as inputs to serve the corporate money-sequence value mechanism while human rights versus corporate rights 53 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 public-sector, farming and home-worker positions are eliminated continuously in tens of millions. on the environmental level, there is no research in the last 30 years that rebuts the general fact that every life-system on the planet is in decline or collapse. while invariably represented by economists and corporate media as “competing for prosperity and freedom,” life-value understanding recognizes the opposite in fact—an absolutist social construction led by armed force and command treaty at every step that deprives ever more people of their necessities of life and, thus, their freedom. while rights in general mean lawful or law-backed claims to goods of any kind, the regulating rights of the global corporate system are in fact absolutist rather than democratic because they: (1) recognize only the trans-border rights of money-capital owners or “investors”; (2) exclude all rights not backed by private money demand, and (3) legally erase any national legislation not in compliance with these treatyinstituted rights. the trade-and-investment treaties defining this rights system are anchored in the north american free trade agreement (nafta) and the subsequent world trade organization (wto) which require that foreign corporations receive equal treatment “without discrimination” in all societies so contracted in all matters of purchase, sale and subsidy, as well as the corporate-person or “investor” right to sue governments which do not comply or which are alleged to have caused “loss of profit opportunity” (e.g., by banning advertisements for a commodity such as cigarettes or regulating against a fuel additive with neurotoxins for national health reasons). at the same time, what used to be a matter of political debate and judgement within national borders—for example, to exchange domestic market access and natural resources for reciprocal returns from the corporations receiving these rights (e.g., manufacturing in the host country for free access to the domestic auto market)—have been outlawed. with all other deviations by democratic selfgovernment, they are punishable by severe financial or trade penalty. the ultimate right to exchange between domestic public and foreign corporation is thereby abolished in favour of unilateral corporate rights—the only actual content of tradeinvestment treaties in this period. much follows from absolutist prescription against the sovereign rights of government to negotiate with foreign corporate persons—in fact, the abolition of their free trade. transnational corporations receive what they have not had since decolonization –the rights to sell in foreign markets without impediment, to buy domestic industries without limit, to receive guaranteed free access to the natural resources of other societies, and to receive government subsidies on a citizen basis. sovereign government over society’s mode of reproduction is in this way replaced by foreign corporate rights as “non-discrimination” against them. no rights, on the other hand, are granted to workers, or citizens. in this new “free trade” arrangement, no government at any level may pass legislation which infringes these corporate rights or “profit opportunities,” with central trade-lawyer tribunals judging in secret and punishing governments for deviation from the new rules. “performance requirement” and “process of production” condition by host or importing society, formerly givens of democratic self-government, are made illegal and subject to unsustainable financial punishment. the ecological consequences are least of all discussed. unconditional rights of transnational corporations to nationally owned natural resources for exploitation of oil, minerals, fish and timber permit their worldwide corporate looting of one region after another with no accountability under the 54 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 rules for future supplies or ruinous effects (u.s. exceptionalism aside). with the binding regulations of these corporate rights upheld and adjudicated by secret meetings of trade tribunals, proceedings are unpublished and judgements to enforce the “least trade restrictive practices” in all matters are final and not appealable. the new rules by which societies’ economies must live are, however, effectively outside public debate, as may be tested by seeking where they are identified anywhere in public policy forums and economic policy discussions. yet this inner logic of supreme rights to corporate persons and none to living persons has received little academic attention, including by moral philosophy, justice theory and ethicist literatures. because the new regulatory apparatus runs to over 20,000 pages of legal jargon in the prototype nafta, few have the skill or patience to read the defining terms. because as well the myriad articles nowhere reveal the underlying principles regulating them, the philosophical under-labour required to decode their moral meaning has been missing. the ruling corporate rights structure has also been obscured by confusing it with the opposite ordering of the local free market which occurs on public property, sells local produce and crafts, does not advertize, prepackage or expatriate profits, has no external hierarchy or stock-profit demands, does not lobby governments for handouts and favours to dominant sellers, and cannot manipulate supply or demand. the global corporate “free market” is, in short, the opposite of its representation. as elsewhere, the meanings of words are reversed. in line with the unobserved sea-shift across borders in the name of opposite meanings, rights of human beings and fellow life do not count in. indeed individual rights become the rights of corporate persons instead—rights to commercial free speech with no criterion of factual truth, for example, and to anonymous external funding of election propaganda with no limit as, again, “freedom of speech.” the equal rights of the u.s. fifth amendment intended to protect freed slaves are also appropriated by corporations as “equal persons” so that 99% of litigation for these equal rights are to protect these “corporate persons” which have been fabricated by law. life-protective and enabling rights of real persons are at the same time expelled from human work across domains. corporate rights have become so unquestioned that jürgen habermas adopts their rule as a technical given -“the technical-administrative apparatus” of the “norm-free sociality” of the economy. the most powerful norm system ever is thus assumed as the opposite at the highest levels of theoretical research publication. life-value analysis, in contrast, recognizes the absurd misrepresentation of reigning norms as not norms. no social system is decided by natural laws. as social constructions, rule systems vary widely from social order to social order through cultures and the means available. in our era, society’s rule and rights systems have developed in fact a primary contradiction between them: human-life-protective/enabling norms and rights versus money-capital-protective/enabling norms and rights. the latter, however, rule and do so by being ludicrously conceived as not norms at all, but technical givens like the law of gas expansion driving wheels. the underlying normative contradiction is even deeper than between classes or cultures: it is between human and ecological life’s inherent requirements both to reproduce and biodiversify in more forms and unliving money-capital’s imperative to produce private commodities and profit in violation of life needs and capacities at every level. the former increasingly necessitate life standards to enable human life and life human rights versus corporate rights 55 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 conditions to survive and flourish (the civil commons), while the latter expands whatever cumulative degradation and exhaustion of resources and sinks it causes (which results from corporate rights without accountability). individuals as well as states have become creatures of this ruling meta program. for grounding in a concrete particular case, consider a microcosm of the corporate rights system, a phenomenological decoding of the rights and freedom of the individual in this ruling disorder. while individual right and freedom appear to be another indisputable fact repeated mantra-like across the fields of public and private meaning, life-value analysis decodes a more sinister pattern of individual unfreedom and life oppression. thus, for example, the “free individual expressing his rights” becomes his spending on and consuming power-motor commodities. decoded s/he is propelled along the following steps of self right: “(1) i the consumer has a right to (2) the hearing and sight fields around me (2) because of my high-cost commodity motor to (3) occupy the public life space i choose (4) with no barrier to this consumer enjoyment nor (5) rations for what grows scarcer for the world (6) whatever sentience of other life is violated because (7) i have bought and paid for it and (8) this is my right and my freedom. life-value analysis looks beyond such incantations of individual rights and freedoms to what is, in fact, a life-blind expression of the corporate meta program in individual form with no obligation to recognize the requirements of other life. re-grounding in and advancing the human rights which have been won there has in fact been a long war of corporate rights against life security of human communities and ecologies over centuries—from the private east india company over 250 years ago ruling entire peoples with supreme rights over life and death to more omnipresent global corporations today competitively indifferent to any lifedestructive cost so long as it is profitable to be so. while heinous life consequences are ignored, projected onto opponents and left to deepen and spread so that all may seem hopelessly bound to disaster, life-value analysis recognizes a deeper and more human substructure long developing beneath the corporate despotism. it recognizes for principal example the universal life-protective norms that have been recognized since the 1939-45 world war which are of life-and-death necessity and advanced in meaning. the problem is not that such civil norms have not been recognized across national and cultural borders. it is that they have been usurped by global corporate rule and backed by captive states to be above the law. consider the united nations universal declaration of human rights instituted within four years of roosevelt’s “new bill of rights” near the end of the world war. one underlying principle governs each and all of the rights it recognizes—to protect and enable human life in all domains. each is also directed against a common enemy—the forces known to violate these human life rights. the u.n. declaration is worth citing in full to recognize their underlying life-value logic: the rights to “freedom of speech and belief,” “freedom from want,” “dignity and worth of the human person,” “not to be subjected to—inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment,” “equal access to public service,” “universal and equal suffrage,” “social security—and [the resources required for] the free development of personality,” “work [and]—just and favourable conditions of work,” “rest and leisure,” “standard of living adequate for the health 56 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 and well-being of himself and his [sic] family, including food, clothing housing and medical care,” and “education—and equally accessible higher education.” the underpinning principle of all of these rights, the one onto-ethical ground of which each is another and complementary aspect of an implied moral whole, is to enable human life against its many-sided oppression. the u.n. declaration of human rights can thus be understood—although this meaning has eluded philosophy, law and economics—to be a universal statement of life-value morality and social justice agreed to by states across cultures. revealingly the universal declaration of human rights has been criticized from both the left and the right. the marxist conceives it as a “merely ideological mask” of capitalist reality, while the right denounces it as “dangerous nonsense” and “communism in disguise.” yet the real problem is that the common life support systems required for these human life rights are the still missing ground—the infrastructures not yet made conscious as the defining substance of human advance. states jealous of their sovereignty have not prevented universal life rights so much as imperial corporate states have prevented popular governments from the social reforms necessary to realize them. for example, there has been a united nations’ charter of economic rights and duties of states since 1974 which spells out the conditions required for human life standards to be economically instituted at a state level. this codified global agreement was passed by the united nations general assembly by a 120-6 vote just after the u.s.-supported and murderous military coup of the democratically elected government of chile. while this u.n. charter of economic rights was cooperatively written and near-unanimously supported by nation-state representatives to the u.n. from across the world to lead another kind of globalization than the one unveiled by the u.s.-managed pinochet coup in chile, it was effectively annulled by extra-parliamentary passage of the transnational corporate rights edicts explained above. under this new world order, the terms of the charter of economic rights and duties of states were silently overridden in their entirety—in particular the “sovereign and inalienable right of every state to choose its economic system,” and its “permanent sovereignty, including possession, use and disposal over all its wealth, natural resources and economic activities.” the political rights of states “to regulate and exercise authority over foreign investment within its national jurisdiction” and “to regulate and supervise the activities of transnational corporations” were erased by the new global corporate-rights system. ensuring that this reversal was as inconspicuous as possible, the new transnational corporate-rights system was undiscussed in legislatures, unread by legislators, and formed, adjudicated and enforced outside of electoral processes and democratic accountability. david rockefeller, a leader of “the new world order” and founder of the transnational bilderberg meetings behind it, frankly described its meaning to the 1991 gathering of world leaders in a leaked transcription: “a supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practised in past centuries.” private corporate rights were thus given the force of supreme world law without recognition of the fact that the “plan for world rule” had long been ascribed to the much weaker soviet union. just as the life-protective rights of the 1948 u.n. declaration were earlier decoupled from the economic conditions required for their realization, and just as the collective rights of national economies to develop in human rights versus corporate rights 57 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 control of their own natural resources and markets under the protection of the u.n. charter of economic rights were overridden, so also further life-protective rights formed by the united nations were ignored or vilified. examples include, but are not confined to, the u.n. convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (1951), united nations convention on the political rights of women (1952), and the convention on the rights of the child (1986). binding international criminal law existing in some form since the nazi war leaders were tried under the nuremburg charter to protect the lives of people against the “supreme crime” of a war of aggression and “all the crimes following from it”—“war crimes,” the “crime of genocide” and “crimes against humanity”—has also stayed unenforced since. its final institutional formation as the international criminal court (i.c.c.) in 2002 has been restricted to prosecution of unallied third-world leaders, or—in guantanamo style—young muslims resisting u.s.-led nato occupation of afghanistan charged with “war crimes.” the “supreme crime of a war of aggression” by the major states has at the same time been kept beyond the court’s jurisdiction. as in the 2003 invasion of iraq and corporate privatization of its economy and oil extraction, the global corporate rights system proceeds across borders and above the law as did the prior fascism. but it does so more long-lastingly by a money-led occupation of electoral processes and government ministries, and the extra-parliamentary dictates of transnational treaties. today we may observe life-enabling and protective rights receiving little or no enforcement, while private money-capital rights of corporations backed by transnational u.s.-led armed force are systematically prescribed in trade treaties to violate them. with widespread confusion and cynicism about “human rights,” and corporate-person rights overriding them under the mask of “free trade,” one might think the corporate war against life-value social justice had been won. yet lifeprotective norms still continue to evolve beneath the interregnum. one need only look at the unprecedented world charters and covenants cited above to see a 70-yearlong swing towards international life-security norms before unimagined. the problem is in implementation. legal scholars widely agree that the issue with even the legally binding covenants on life-protective rights is the problem of enforceability across borders. few or none see that if the same regulatory instruments were applied as they are in the enforcement of private corporate rights across borders, the problem of enforceability would be solved. such enforcement of universal life-protective rights, however, is so effectively blocked that not even learned advocates of human rights recognize the possibility. all that is required is the inclusion in international trade treaties of those life standards which are already formed and agreed upon across nations. the united nations international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (1966), for mainspring example, is both legally binding and global in jurisdiction. it is an established global legal and lifevalue ground from which to enforce life-protective rights against unaccountable global corporate money-rights. yet its existence and its articles are not recognized by over 99% of the population in a world whose public media and journals are overwhelmingly owned by a few private transnational corporations. the terms of the international covenant are nonetheless of great significance because they are legally binding and their unifying meaning is to guarantee universal access to universal human life goods: namely, “just and favorable conditions of work,” “a decent living for themselves and their families,” “safe and healthy working conditions” (article 7); 58 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 “the right of everyone to form trade unions—to social security including social insurance” (article 8); “the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living,” to “an equitable—environmental and industrial hygiene” (article 11), and to “distribution of world food supplies in relation to need”(article 12), and “primary education compulsory and free to all” as well as “equally accessible” and “progressively free” provision of “higher education” (article 13). we may see how these articles of the binding international covenant are all subsumed by the universal human life needs and goods of humanity spelled out in an earlier subsection. in deeper implicit significance, they express the underlying life-value onto-axiology, life-coherence principle, and civil commons meaning as so far recognized in international law. it is as if the principled grounds and theory of life-value understanding were at work as the higher value syntax of human and civil commons evolution underneath the private corporate occupation and ecogenocidal exploitation of life support systems. what has been overlooked in the human rights struggle, however, is the linkage of rights to obligations at the economic level—not only to fellow human but to ecological requirements themselves. this is what the human vocation and civil commons movement bridge towards in the next steps of humanity’s social evolution. how to live—critical philosophy’s oldest question—is not only an individual issue, but more primarily a social one. a life-coherent rule system has already been largely achieved in international law and the most developed communities. we already know it is possible to agree upon the terms across diverse cultures because they have already been defined and signed as a solemn covenant across diverse nations. all of the life standards named in the international covenant are, in fact, governed by the same underlying principle governing advanced societies—provision of that without which human life capacity is always reduced. together these life goods and standards carry the full substance of what the world’s nations have agreed that all humanity requires to survive and flourish, however different its cultures. yet the private money-sequencing system and corporate-right rule have warred upon these universal life standards at all levels. thus not one article of this international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights has been permitted into the solely effective mode of transnational law that humanity knows—its economic treaties. even when operationalization of life-protective law in this treaty system is known to work—as the 1989 montreal ozone protocol has proved by its explicit inclusion in the nafta prototype of the wto and general adhesion to it—the ruling meta-program blocks even public conception of the principle. it is forgotten as an exception once the emergency has passed. in more evolved form, the european union has long made corporate rights accountable to human life rights across borders by its community charter of fundamental social rights. its underlying principle of governance is principally livelihood rights: to equitable remuneration; a maximum number of hours per working week; free association in trade unions and collective bargaining; professional training; sex equality; minimum health and security provision; employer-employee consultation and participation; a minimum working age of 16; minimum pension rights; protection for disabled workers; and prohibition of slavery, forced labour and the use of the human body or body parts for financial gain. predictably, no level of the european union’s social organization has not been attacked by european big business and transnational media, as does the economist in human rights versus corporate rights 59 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 every issue. this is the predictable reaction of the global money faction whose sequences of control and growth run through elected heads of state and politicians themselves. nonetheless the integrated moral-economic european model has already evolved over half a century regulated by life standards, and has worked far better than any other international paradigm over 60 years in protecting the lives and freedoms of citizens. of course, it is everywhere denigrated by the corporate politicians and media for restrictions on “globally competitive” practices with no life standards, so that the life security and freedoms of the great majority are ridden under even as i write. this is the post-1945 neo-fascist war under cover, and the race to the bottom of life standards for the rest of the world. yet it only succeeds so far as it remains uncontested as corporate-right usurpation of humanity’s social evolution, and cumulative destruction of the life-carrying capacities of the planet itself. recognition of the life-value logic of social justice and its civil commons foundation are the missing ground and link of human emancipation. notes 1 the fallacious logic and devious strategy of locke’s argument is anatomized step by step in value wars: the global market versus the life economy (london: pluto press) 65-73. 2 the formal axiom of life value is: x is of value if and only if, and to the extent that, it constitutes or enables a more coherently inclusive range of life than without it: within the fields of life of thought (conceptual and image), felt side of being (sentience, emotion, mood), and/or action (animate movement through space-time). conversely, x is of disvalue if and only if, and to the extent that, it disables life so defined. 3 verified by author may 1, 2011. 4 philip mirowski’s machine dreams (2000) is a very informed study tracking the machine model in contemporary market economic theory into the “automaton theater” of economic, military and decision-theory research today – extending the magic thinking of the invisible hand’s necessitation of the best of possible worlds into the mechanism of a life-blind system automatism. 5 bernard hodgson spells out the implications of edgeworth’s principle in his economics as moral science (heidelberg: springer press, 2000). 6 edward bernays, a nephew of freud , explains how in his propaganda (1933) new york: liveright. as the primary pioneer of modern mass-market conditioning, he identifies the key of the process is to appeal to and control unconscious desires to sell commodities and manufacture social consent at the same time. my essay entry, “the ruling group-mind” (encyclopedia of case-study research, 2008) spells out the unexamined premises and lifedestructive consequences of this and other group-mind phenomena. 7 although. g.a. cohen favourably cites richard titmuss in his rescuing justice and equality (2008) as advocating the individual motive force of, nicely put in the abstract, “principled commitment and fellow feeling” (p. 189), neither he nor titmuss recognizes the objective civil commons principles which unify and define these life-support institutions across cultures and over millennia. 8 amartya sen’s nobel speech on “social choice” preconsciously reveals the problem. in his immense bibliography, there is no concept of social choice he reports that does not assume it as an aggregate of individual agents choosing in market, electoral or other such atomic grid of choice space 9 thus as in-all $12 trillion-plus of government money was extended in private financial arrangements in the us to “get credit going again,” not even this function was remotely 60 john mcmurtry studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 served. senator bernie sanders reports the secrecy surrounding these facts that he was only able to discover by an amendment to federal financial reform legislation, <http//sanders.senate.gov> accessed 19/12/2010. 10 amschel mayer rothschild famously said in 1838, “permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and i care not who makes its laws.” there is much fact to support his view. even the world’s most powerful man decades earlier, napoleon, depended on privatebank credit for his wars of expansion until, growing tired of the negative effects on business and in light of napoleon’s claim that the bank of france “belongs more to the emperor than to the shareholders,” the private-bank creators of credit shifted alliances through a regime change. abraham lincoln decades later noted the long-term adverse effect of the private “money powers” on america when he said shortly before his assassination: “the money powers prey on the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. the banking powers are more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. . . . . as a most undesirable consequence of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow. the money power will endeavour to so prolong its reign by working on the prejudices until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of the few, and the republic is destroyed” (cited by andrew gavin marshall in chossudovsky and marshall (eds.), the global economic depression (2010), pp. 310-11). 11 few realise that pareto’s classic is based on dyadic asset exchange with no relation to life needs, given distribution, work hours, ecological support systems, or economic performance. 12 the corporate-servant state and academies enable the equalizing pathology. in britain’s department of health under new “big society” conservative government, for example, the alcohol “responsibility group” is chaired by the wine and spirit trade association, diet and health is dominated by processed and fast-food corporations, and the sub-group on calories is chaired by pepsi-walker chips. (felicity lawrence, “fast food firms get health role,” guardian weekly, (19/11/2010). north american university researchers meanwhile lead “the life sciences”—a re-brand term coined by industrial food giants—in commercial research in genetic contamination and agricultural-consumer products with no life standards. 13 this argument is made in mcmurtry, “the case for children’s liberation,” interchange (1979-80) 10(3), with critical response and reply. 14 mcmurtry (1999/2002), the cancer stage of capitalism (london and tokyo: pluto and springer press) explains this anomaly and the underlying money-sequence source and cause of cumulative world system collapse. ellen brown (2010), the web of debt (baton rouge, louisiana: third millennium press) provides a thorough historical account of the private money power’s control and predation of public currency from before 1776 to the wall street public bailout since 2008. 15 little known even today is that the ford, general motors, ibm and dupont corporations produced for the nazi war machine in these functions even after the us was at war with it (charles higham, trading with the enemy: an expose of the nazi-american money plot 1933-1949. new york, dell publishing co., 1983). moreover these corporations received government compensation for their bombed factories and losses in germany after the war was ended, an indication of the supreme and borderless power wielded upon which the “new world order,” a nazi concept, was instituted by national and international mechanisms of law identified in this paper. 16 this was the preamble to roosevelt’s introduction of the second bill of rights in his state of the union address, january 11, 1944 before his untimely death prevented its formalization as policy and law. 17 i have tracked these strategic patterns in depth in prior work such as unequal freedoms: the global market as an ethical system (toronto: garamond/university of toronto press, 1998). 18 the underlying fascist logic is explained in my fascism and neo-conservatism: is there a difference? (1984), praxis international 4 (1), 86-102. human rights versus corporate rights 61 studies in social justice, volume 5, issue 1, 2011 references bernays, e. w. (1933). propaganda. new york, ny: liveright. chossudovsky, m., & marshall, a.g. (eds.). (2010). the global economic crisis: the great depression of the xxi century. montreal: global research publishers. cohen, g. a. (2008). rescuing justice and equality. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. edgeworth, f. (1932). mathematical psychics. london: london school of economics. glasbeek, h. (2002). wealth by stealth: corporate crime, corporate law and the perversion of democracy. toronto: between the lines press higham, c. (1983). trading with the enemy: an expose of the nazi-american money plot 1933-1949. new york, ny: dell publishing co. hodgson, b. (2001). economics as moral science. heidelberg: springer press. huxley, a. (1947). point counter point. london: chatto and windrus. international forum on globalization (1998). the siena declaration on the crisis of economic globalization. siena, italy. locke, j. (1980). the second treatise on government. indianapolis, in: hackett. marx, k. (1986). capital, vol. 1. moscow: progress publishers. mcmurtry, j. (1979-80). the case for children’s liberation. interchange, 10(3), 10-28 mcmurtry, j. (1984). fascism and neo-conservatism: is there a difference? praxis international, 4(1), 86102. mcmurtry, j. (1998). unequal freedoms: the global market as an ethical system toronto and westport ct: garamond and kumarian. mcmurtry, j. (1999). the cancer stage of capitalism. london and tokyo: pluto and springer press. mcmurtry, j. (2002). value wars: the global market versus the life economy. london: pluto press. mcmurtry, j. (2008). the ruling group-mind. in a.j. mills, g. durepos, & e. wiebe (eds.), encyclopedia of case-study research (pp. 790-793). toronto: sage. mcmurtry, j. (2009). rationality and scientific method: paradigm shift in an age of collapse.” interchange, 40(11), 69-91. mcmurtry, j. (2010). what is good? what is bad? the value of all values across time, place and theories. oxford: eolss. publishers. mcmurtry, j. (2010a). reclaiming rationality and scientific method: the life coherence principle as global imperative. retrieved from: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21302 mcmurtry, j. (2010b). the disparity in income between the rich and the poor is merely the survival of the fittest: the working out of a law of nature and a law of god. retrieved from www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/back-good-old-days. mirowski, p. (2000). machine dreams. cambridge: cambridge university press. nussbaum, m., & sen, a. (eds.). (1993). the quality of life. clarendon: oxford university press, nussbaum, m. (2000). women and human development/the capabilities approach. new york: cambridge university press. o’neill, o. (1998). towards justice and virtue. oxford: oxford university press. pareto, v. (1971). manual of political economy, new york: a.m. kelley. polanyi, k. (1944/2000), the great transformation. boston: beacon press. rawls, j. (1971). a theory of justice. cambridge mass: harvard university press. sen, a. (1992). inequality reexamined. cambridge mass: harvard university press sen, a. (1998). the possibility of social choice. trinity college, cambridge: 1998 nobel lecture in economics. retrieved from http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1998/senlecture.pdf smith, a. (1966). an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. new york: a.m. kelley. titmuss, r.m. (1968). commitment to welfare, london: allen and unwin. turner, t., & brownhill, l. (2001). gender, feminism and the civil commons. canadian journal of development studies, xxii, 819-855. weisbrot, m., baker, d., & rosnick, d. (2006). the scorecard on development: 25 years of diminishing progress. international journal of health services, 36, (2): 211-234. woodhouse, h. (2009). selling out: academic freedom and the corporate market. montreal & kingston: mcgill-queen’s university press. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=21302 file:///c:/users/ant/documents/copyediting%20for%20ssj/2011/special_issue_on_life-value_and_social_justice/www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/back-good-old-days between acceleration and occupation: palestine and the struggle for global justice studies in social justice volume 4, issue 2, 199-215, 2010 correspondence address: john collins, department of global studies, st. lawrence university, 82 park street, canton, ny, 13617, usa. tel: 315.229.5661, email: collins@stlawu.edu issn: 1911-4788 between acceleration and occupation: palestine and the struggle for global justice john collins department of global studies, st. lawrence university abstract this article explores the contemporary politics of global violence through an examination of the particular challenges and possibilities facing palestinians who seek to defend their communities against an ongoing settler-colonial project (zionism) that is approaching a crisis point. as the colonial dynamic in israel/palestine returns to its most elemental level—land, trees, homes—it also continues to be a laboratory for new forms of accelerated violence whose global impact is hard to overestimate. in such a context, palestinians and international solidarity activists find themselves confronting a quintessential 21st-century activist dilemma: how to craft a strategy of what paul virilio calls “popular defense” at a time when everyone seems to be implicated in the machinery of global violence? i argue that while this dilemma represents a formidable challenge for palestinians, it also helps explain why the palestinian struggle is increasingly able to build bridges with wider struggles for global justice, ecological sustainability, and indigenous rights. much like the ubiquitous and misleading phrase “israeli-palestinian conflict,” the conventional usage of the term “occupation” to describe israel’s post-1967 control of the west bank and gaza serves to deflect attention from the settler-colonial structures that continue to shape the contours of social reality at all levels in israel/palestine. 1 the palestinian occupation, sometimes expressed via the concept of sumud (steadfastness), is an integral part of a much larger story of anticolonial struggle that also includes militant resistance, street-level popular actions, and a range of efforts in the cultural arena. attempts to divide palestinian resistance into “violent” and “nonviolent” streams, often for the purposes of condemning the former, have always the dominant discourse of “occupation” is built on an unstated assumption that it is the presence of soldiers, whether that presence is viewed as oppressive or defensive, that makes the territories “occupied.” in fact, contemporary palestine is the site of not one, but two occupations, both of which are occluded by this assumption. the first is the settler-colonial occupation of palestine by the zionist project, an occupation that predates 1967. the second, which i will call the palestinian occupation, is the stubborn, everyday habitation of the land by palestinians, a human occupation that has always represented zionism’s most fundamental obstacle. 200 john collins studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 been somewhat artificial; most palestinians, after all, view opposition to zionism as a long and complex process requiring a flexible toolbox of strategies and tactics that must be adjusted periodically in response to changing local and global conditions of possibility. analyzing these conditions can help bring into sharper relief the particular challenges facing all those, palestinians and internationals alike, who seek to resist the structural impact of zionist colonization. a useful way of framing these issues is found in paul virilio’s concept of popular defense. “the principle aim of any truly popular [defense],” writes virilio (1978/1990, p. 54), “is…to oppose the establishment of a social situation based solely on the illegality of armed force, which reduces a population to the status of a movable slave, a commodity.” in this view, popular defense is a venerable human tradition connected with the attempt to resist the particular kinds of exploitation that come with the centralization of political authority (e.g., in the form of the state).2 in contrast, today’s palestinian revolutionaries operate in a context where the struggle has literally returned to its roots: land, trees, rocks, and homes. it is no accident that israeli state violence in recent years has increasingly taken place in and around these basic elements of palestinian habitation, nor is it accidental that palestinian popular defense has drawn many international activists to the west bank and gaza. the palestinian occupation is thus closely connected with what arturo it is also an especially useful way to frame settler colonialism’s politics of violence. after all, when not seeking to eliminate indigenous people directly through mass killing, settler projects seek to turn them into “movable slaves” by displacing, confining, and disenfranchising them through a diverse array of violent measures. the conditions within which a popular defense can be mounted, however, have changed significantly. state repression and popular mobilization alike are now enmeshed in circuits of accelerated global violence. these circuits, in turn, are directly connected with the widespread securitization of politics, with governance increasingly taking the form of “real-time security” in relation to a series of immanent “threats” (galloway & thacker, 2007, p. 74). what does this mean for those who seek to wage an anticolonial struggle for social justice in the 21st century? in this article i explore this question through an examination of the challenges and the possibilities facing palestinians and others who belong to a growing movement of international solidarity with the palestinian liberation struggle. palestine and the global the struggle for justice in palestine bears a microcosmic and often prophetic relationship to changing global structures of violence and social control. during the turbulent years of the “long 1960s” (isserman & kazin, 2007), for example, exiled palestinian revolutionaries responded to a reality they did not choose—the radical delocalization set in motion by the creation of the state of israel—in a way that revealed a great deal about emerging global realities: they chose to “occupy,” in effect, the world’s increasingly intricate web of transnational communication and transportation arteries. this decision, which effectively represented a move not just around but beyond national sovereignty, has had significant global consequences (virilio, 1978/1990). between acceleration and occupation 201 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 escobar (2004) describes as the impulse toward “the defence of particular, placebased historical conceptions of the world and practices of world-making” (pp. 222223). these contemporary struggles for social justice, he insists, are “place-based, yet transnationalised.” they retain and seek to defend a deep connection with the land, rejecting both neoliberalism’s relentless commodification of life forms and the most extreme kinds of rootlessness associated with a networked world—yet they also pursue their aims by tapping into the very networks that globalizing technologies have helped create. all of this is happening, however, within dramatically changing—and, it appears, shrinking—conditions of possibility. in part this is a function of traditional geopolitics (the politics of spatial and territorial control): the continuation of zionism’s settler project has left palestinians, much like the primary victims of settler colonialism in north america and australia, confined to smaller and smaller pockets of land. the possibility of engaging in a viable popular defense in palestine, however, is also threatened by other realities that belong in the realm of chronopolitics (the politics of temporal control). in particular, palestine functions as a kind of laboratory for the deeply underexamined and undertheorized vectors of global acceleration that are continuing to shape not only the changing nature of violence, but also the very possibility of democratic politics. acceleration is a general process that permeates all levels of social life (scheuerman, 2004), albeit in ways that manifest themselves quite unevenly across the globe. most important for our purposes here is the relationship of acceleration to power and violence, a relationship that has at least two distinct faces. first, as virilio’s critical work on “dromology” (the logic of the dromos, or the race) demonstrates, power is linked as much with speed as it is with wealth: the powerful, “dromocratic” ruler is the one whose hand is on the throttle, with the ability to speed things up or slow things down strategically (virilio & lotringer, 2002, p. 65). at the same time, the dromological perspective insists that we go beyond actor-centered conceptions of power in order to recognize how the very acceleration that benefits particular actors (including, occasionally, subaltern actors) also can take on a life of its own, bypassing anyone’s control and rendering everyone vulnerable to new forms of “necropolitics” or “contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of death” (mbembe, 2003). these two sides of acceleration come together in the form of what i will call dromocratic violence: violence that both uses and is used by acceleration, operating both within and beyond a politics of control. arguably a form of sovereignty unto itself, acceleration is now integrated into the circuits of “pure war,” or the endless preparation for war enabled by the merging of science, technology, communication, and militarization (virilio & lotringer, 1983/1997). no one—not even those who seek to mount a politics of nonviolent resistance—can fully opt out of this system. bringing all of these processes together, we can see that the struggle for justice in palestine finds itself in the difficult position of operating between acceleration (or what might be called the “dromocratic imperative”) and occupation (or the “habitational imperative”). there is no question that israel is heavily invested in the structures and practices of dromocratic power, from its diverse arsenal of mechanisms of social control deployed against palestinians to its vanguard role in the global “homeland security” economy (klein, 2007). some palestinian groups, in turn, have sought to meet israel on the dromological level by launching their own 202 john collins studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 forms of accelerated violence. the entire colonial dynamic, in this case, continues to provide oxygen to the dromocratic war machine in ways that have damaging global implications (collins, 2008). given this reality, activists working for justice in palestine are faced with one of the most important political dilemmas of our time: how to maximize one’s investment in the politics of occupation while minimizing one’s contribution to the politics of violent acceleration. more than an abstract philosophical question of violence vs. nonviolence, it is a question of how to negotiate, in a way that is creative and liberating, the unavoidable issue of one’s relationship to and implication in the emerging structures of global violence. at the same time, as i argue in the concluding section, it is precisely this dilemma that creates an increasingly strong basis from which to build bridges with wider movements that are confronting the same dilemma, including movements for global justice, ecological sustainability, and indigenous rights. dangerous walking in his remarkable book palestinian walks, ramallah lawyer and human rights activist raja shehadeh (2007) narrates a series of lengthy walks through the hills and valleys that make up the “vanishing landscape” of the west bank, using each as an opportunity to explore the complex ecosystems of the area and the dramatic transformations set in motion by israeli colonization. one of these walks takes place in 1999, after the creation of the palestinian authority (pa) but before the outbreak of the second intifada. in a sort of colonial subcontracting operation during this socalled “interim phase,” palestinian security forces were “given” nominal control over small pieces of the west bank, resulting in an even more byzantine set of checkpoints (both israeli and pa) and jurisdictions throughout an increasingly fragmented and militarized territory that remained under effective israeli domination. as shehadeh and his wife are trekking through the a’yn qenya valley, they suddenly come under sustained gunfire. are the shots coming from israeli soldiers, jewish settlers, pa police, or other palestinian gunmen? are they being mistaken for settlers or suspected terrorists? after twenty harrowing minutes, they are able to extricate themselves and return home. later shehadeh discusses the issue with the muhafiz (the palestinian governor of ramallah), who suggests that the shooters had been a group of shabab (young palestinian men) engaging in target practice and says matter-of-factly, “you shouldn’t go to the valley.” for shehadeh, a lifelong hiker and defender of palestinian land rights, hearing this message from a fellow palestinian is too much to bear: “they mustn’t do this,” i said. “there are shepherds there and others who walk in the hills. i have been walking for twenty-five years. nothing ever happened to me in these hills. i never had to worry. people should be encouraged to walk in the hills. it will increase their attachment to their country.” the muhafiz didn’t agree. “you shouldn’t walk,” he repeated in a concerned paternal tone. “it’s much too dangerous.” (shehadeh, 2007, p. 92) between acceleration and occupation 203 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 the settler-colonial dynamic in palestine has reached a kafkaesque point where authorities invested in the structures of dromocratic violence are inclined to blame civilians who remain invested in the most basic activities. as anthony hall (2003) argues, this sort of attitude is integral to the expansionist logic of settler colonialism and its “transient frontierism” (p. 24). notwithstanding powerful patriotic discourses that invoke the beauty of the land and the need to defend it, settler projects tend to be oriented toward the violent conquest of territory rather than the peaceful occupation of it. drawing on the work of wendell berry, hall writes that this orientation has produced in north america “a pattern of sustained hostility towards any group that wove its way of life together with its sense of identity into the ecological fabric of a particular place” (p. 24). the same argument applies to the settler-colonial hostility toward the indigenous population of palestine. 3 shehadeh’s surreal experience appears prophetic in light of “operation cast lead,” israel’s 2008 assault on gaza. describing the attitude of the israeli military toward palestinian civilians during the attack, one israeli soldier demonstrated precisely what happens when the logic of the muhafiz (“you shouldn’t walk. it’s much too dangerous”) is merged with the realities of dromocratic violence. “if we detect any thing that should not be there—we shoot,” the soldier observed. “we’re told the air force distributed flyers telling everyone to go to gaza city. if beyond this line any people are detected—they are not supposed to be there” (pcati, 2009, p. 18). the soldier’s testimony, while laudable for its honesty, is ultimately redundant. after all, within the terms of the settler-colonial project, palestinians by definition are “not supposed to be there,” and the policies of the settler state are geared toward the perpetual demonstration of that definition. as the authors of the pcati report point out, the confined and carceral realities of gaza (a territory of only 139 square miles) meant that the israeli policy of pushing civilians to flee their homes guaranteed that large numbers of civilians would find themselves on the street and therefore considered, in the words of one israeli commander, “not innocent” and “doomed to die” (p. 19). israel’s “war on the milieu” what happened in gaza is not simply the product of a specific and relatively recent dynamic between israeli and hamas violence; it is also the culmination of israel’s entire post-1967 policy vis-à-vis the palestinians, a policy that serves continued colonization and illustrates the operational logic of permanent war. even as it was projecting its military reach externally toward the exiled palestinian guerrillas, the israeli state was establishing a strategy of perpetual counterinsurgency in the west bank and gaza, a strategy that has increasingly taken the form of what virilio (1976/1998, p. 30) calls “war on the milieu.” he distinguishes this from an earlier model (“war of milieu”) in which war was waged within a specific arena (e.g. the “pacific theatre”). in the newer model, war is waged directly on civilians, their capacity for biological and social reproduction, and the natural and built environment that ensures their survival. in virilio’s subtle change of preposition from “war of milieu” to “war on the milieu,” we find an important clue to understanding israel’s policy in the west bank 204 john collins studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 and gaza. as the late edward said was fond of pointing out, the zionist/israeli colonization of palestine has always been a policy of extraordinary detail symbolized by chaim weizmann’s mantra, “another acre, another goat” (said, 1994). this policy, in other words, has its own (colonial) ecology rooted in the careful and systematic attempt to manage the natural and built environment to its own advantage, if necessary by destroying it. nothing illustrates the logic of israel’s war on the milieu more clearly than the systematic destruction of olive trees and its devastating impact on palestine’s economy. in a sustained campaign that recalls a host of u.s. actions directed against the milieu in many places from the western plains of north america to the jungles of vietnam and the cities of iraq, the israeli military has uprooted hundreds of thousands of olive trees since 1967. this process has accelerated significantly during the construction of the wall in recent years, lending credence to the notion that the wall constitutes a broad colonial system unto itself. 4 an equally visible aspect of israel’s war on the milieu has been its practice of eliminating palestinian homes, whether through direct demolition, systematic discrimination against non-jews in the issuing of building permits, or the “collateral damage” associated with military campaigns. 5 the military’s use of overwhelming force in urban environments has extended this aspect of the colonial project to a wider range of structures including mosques, hospitals, factories, and government buildings. this development is reflected in the difference between 2002’s “operation defensive shield” in the west bank (approximately 900 buildings destroyed) and “operation cast lead” (nearly 4,000 buildings destroyed in space roughly onefifteenth the size of the west bank) only six years later (pcati, 2009, p. 24). nor has this ecological war stopped at the ground level. a less visible aspect of the colonial project is the diverting of water resources from underneath the feet of palestinians. yet while the water issue has received a fair amount of attention from scholars, journalists, and political negotiators, another underground issue—the politics of sewage—has remained largely ignored. eyal weizman (2007) connects the sewage issue with zionism’s “hygienic phobia” that “sees the presence of palestinians as a ‘defiled’ substance within the ‘israeli’ landscape” (p. 20).6 the politics of sewage points us to an understanding of the biopolitical nature of the war on the milieu. gaza, in particular, has been the site of what amounts to a sustained experiment in emerging forms of social control (li, 2006). cut off from the outside world by the israeli policy of “closure,” gazans have found themselves targeted by the weaponization of food. in a move that connects directly with a global trend toward militarized humanitarianism, israel’s control of access to gaza proceeds through a combination of collective punishment and the occasional provision of food to prevent mass starvation. the opening paragraph of a 2006 new york times report illustrates this process perfectly, noting that israeli authorities had briefly opened the main crossing into gaza “to allow delivery of flour and sugar to palestinians,” only to close it thirty minutes later “citing security threats” (myre, 2006). by reducing many palestinians to “bare life” (agamben, 1998), this policy bears primary responsibility for a well-documented pattern of food insecurity, stunted growth, once again, the most extreme manifestation of the issue is to be found in gaza, where periodic sewage crises garner momentary attention as much for their “threat” to israel as for what they say about the living conditions of palestinian refugees. between acceleration and occupation 205 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 deteriorating public health conditions, and psychological trauma in gaza (giacaman et al., 2009; roy, 2009). finally, and equally biopolitical, one of the most devastating effects of the creation of israel’s web of checkpoints during the post-oslo years has been to place the very process of reproduction at special risk as women on their way to the hospital are forced to wait, sometimes for hours, at checkpoints. meanwhile, perhaps owing to its ongoing national obsession with maintaining jewish demographic superiority, israel is also a world leader in assisted reproductive technologies, thus making it a pioneer in global colonization’s newest incarnation: the colonization of the body by technology (virilio & lotringer, 2002, p. 101).7 when placed in the broader context of the processes discussed in this section, israel’s politics of reproduction echo the settler-colonial biopolitics of north america (smith, 2005) in forming an important part of its war on the milieu. habitational resistance the cumulative material effects of israel’s war on the milieu have dramatically altered the political horizon of palestinian nationalism and the conditions within which palestinians engage in the popular defense of their communities. there is little doubt, for example, that the phenomenon of palestinian suicide bombing is at least partly a product of this changing political environment (hage, 2003). more generally, however, the war on the milieu has left the majority of ordinary palestinians on the ground with little option but to embrace the kind of existential resistance has always constituted the most implacable obstacle to the settler-colonial project and its “logic of elimination.” 8 shehadeh’s book is emblematic of a tradition of palestinian occupation that has long formed the bedrock of the popular struggle against this project. this palestinian occupation has been present throughout the period of settler colonization but has been relatively ignored thanks to zionism’s ideological success in focusing the attention of external observers on more spectacular forms of palestinian resistance. recent developments have given the palestinian occupation greater visibility as the politics of survival and habitation take center stage. with its emphasis on an unhurried and grounded relationship with place, the palestinian occupation is also opposed to the dromocratic structures in which the state of israel and some of its adversaries—those who seek faster and more effective ways of visiting violence upon israelis—are heavily invested. equally important, shehadeh’s story of being shot at by palestinian gunmen— young men linked with the extensive security apparatus created after oslo as part of what was ostensibly a kind of proto-state structure—illustrates a tension between sovereignty and what might be called self-sovereignty, a tension that cannot be resolved satisfactorily by appealing to state-centered anticolonial nationalism. 9 one of the by-products of this gradual shift is that it makes the settler-colonial nature of the situation more visible to all. within israel and in the diaspora, zionism is as the dream of a truly independent palestinian state fades into oblivion, more and more palestinians find themselves engaging in different forms of habitational resistance. the things they are defending are less the things that make for sovereignty and more the things that make for self-sovereignty. 206 john collins studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 reaching a crisis point that is reducing the ideological space available to those who might wish to separate zionism from its settler foundations. among palestinians, articulations of an “indigenous” identity—that is, a “fourth world” identity that would suggest strong linkages with, say, the cherokee (finkelstein, 1995) or aboriginal australians (wolfe, 2006)—have historically been rare when compared with the salience of pan-arab, pan-islamic, or pan-“third world” solidarity. yet the necessary shift toward a politics of habitation has left palestinians with a growing need to prioritize one of the cardinal, near-ontological principles of indigenous identity and power in a settler-colonial world: the refusal to leave the land and disappear. existence, in this sense, is resistance. the case of abdel fattah abed rabbo illustrates the lengths to which a settlercolonial project will go in order to oppose this existential resistance. in november 2009 the 48-year-old abed rabbo found himself facing eviction from a cave he was occupying in the hills between jerusalem and bethlehem. it appears that he was targeted for eviction more than once, most recently because of plans to build a new colony, givat yael, as part of israel’s ongoing expansion of jerusalem on land annexed illegally in 1980. an earlier report spotlighting abed rabbo’s plight notes the irony of charging a cave-dweller with lacking a building permit. “don’t charge me,” countered abed rabbo. “charge nature” (ross, 2009). settler colonialism, of course, does both: it “charges” not only the colonized but also their “natural” connection to the land, a connection that frustrates the settler project and provokes the very “ecological struggle” (virilio, 1978/1990) the settler state must then violently suppress. the experience of violent and continuing dislocation generates in refugees not only a deep longing for return, but also new attachments to the very places to which they have been dislocated and confined. communities such as balata refugee camp, for example, have a palpable sense of collective identity and determination to engage in popular defense (collins, 2004), even against the most aggressive forms of israeli military assault (weizman, 2007, pp. 185-221). similarly, palestinian refugees in gaza have developed a strong sense of gazan identity despite having been pushed to live there against their will. in short, the palestinian occupation to which i am referring is a product not only of centuries of habitation in shehadeh’s west bank hills, but also of the deterritorialization wrought by settler colonialism. this palestinian occupation has always had as its basic building block the actions of families on the micro level. with colonization largely taking the daily, inexorable form of “another acre, another goat,” palestine is full of examples of families and individuals, like abed rabbo, who have spent literally years struggling against land confiscation within the israeli court system and staying on their land amidst the colonial encroachment. here one is reminded of virilio’s (1978/1990) description of the family as the foundational source of social solidarity and, even more provocatively, the original “commando group” (pp. 80-82). states and the military class that often control them typically seek to disrupt this network by cultivating suspicion within families and communities, as israel has done through its system of collaborators throughout the west bank and gaza since 1967. the politics of habitational resistance historically have found further expression in the long tradition of palestinian collective action at the community level, such as the growth of popular committees (lijân shacbiyye) during the first intifada. these between acceleration and occupation 207 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 committees addressed a wide range of tasks related to popular defense, from medical relief and clandestine education to local security and food production (lockman & beinin, 1989; nassar & heacock, 1991). such efforts, however, built upon a process of popular organizing that had been building steadily throughout the two decades after 1967 (hasso, 2005; taraki, 1991). women, youth, students, workers, shopkeepers, farmers—all of these groups have been centrally involved in resistance to israeli rule. it would be an exaggeration to say that ecological awareness has played a major role in the palestinian liberation movement to date. with the growth of an indigenous consciousness, however, comes the recognition, to quote former american indian movement spokesman john trudell (2008), that “we are the land” (p. 224). in such a context, the simple act of walking in the hills becomes more than a recreational pastime, even more than a way of claiming political sovereignty; it becomes an act of habitational resistance. as the war on the milieu raises the ecological stakes, it also produces new ways of conceiving the project of anticolonial resistance. 10 “gravity and density” the increased visibility of habitational resistance in palestine is partly due to the presence of the international solidarity activists who provide direct support to the nonviolent struggles of ordinary palestinians. now more than ever, the popular defense of palestine is a globalized process. the growth in collaboration between palestinian communities and activists affiliated with the international solidarity movement (ism) and other groups during the past decade (dudouet, 2006; kaufman-lacusta, 2010; seitz, 2003) has coincided with the escalating process of dromocratic confinement described above. when edward said wrote presciently in 1993 of the “principle of confinement” animating the practices of u.s. imperialism, he also identified an “elusive oppositional mood....an internationalist counter-articulation,” effectively prefiguring the rise of the ism and, more broadly, the new global justice movement (p. 311). many of the movements associated with this global “counter-articulation” have consciously responded to the “principle of confinement” by insisting on their right to inhabit streets, abandoned buildings, and other public spaces. taking back the notion of occupation, in other words, is an important component of the activist networks that make up a global movement for which attachment to the palestinian cause is an increasingly prominent element. in the case of some, of course, it is a shallow and highly romanticized attachment that does not stretch beyond the exercise of political fashion statements such as wearing a kufiya. in other cases, however, the connection with palestine is more deeply felt and becomes the basis for life-changing decisions. in one of his last and most powerful articles, said addressed the story of american activist rachel corrie, crushed to death by an israeli bulldozer in 2003 while defending a palestinian home in gaza, and used it as an occasion to reflect on the continuing and growing power of the solidarity movement: what rachel corrie’s work in gaza recognized was precisely the gravity and the density of the living history of the palestinian people as a national 208 john collins studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 community, and not merely as a collection of deprived refugees. that is what she was in solidarity with. and we need to remember that that kind of solidarity is no longer confined to a small number of intrepid souls here and there, but is recognized the world over. (said, 2004, p. xv) in invoking the ideas of “gravity” and “density,” said called attention to the transformation that often occurs when activists cross the geographic threshold and find themselves on the ground in palestine, feeling the weight not only of the deep structures put in place by settler colonization, but also of the tenacious occupation maintained by the colonized. the key practices of the solidarity movement are those associated with the nonviolent politics of habitational resistance: witnessing, documenting, standing with palestinians in their homes and at checkpoints, assisting with the harvesting of olives under the threat of settler violence, and, perhaps most visibly, working in communities that are most directly affected by the construction of the wall. communities such as qalqilya and bil’in (http://www.bilin-village.org/english/), sharply victimized by land confiscations, have become internationally-known focal points of palestinian popular defense. these sites are laboratories not only of israeli colonization, but also of grassroots action, including the practice of activists chaining themselves to trees. reviving popular defense when the nobel committee announced its decision to award its 2004 peace prize to wangari maathai, the kenyan environmental activist best known for planting trees, more than a few observers raised their eyebrows. in her acceptance speech, maathai acknowledged that the committee had done something unusual by choosing to recognize her work in founding the green belt movement and championing the causes of reforestation and (literal) grassroots empowerment. “the committee, i believe, is seeking to encourage community efforts to restore the earth,” she said, “at a time when we face the ecological crises of deforestation, desertification, water scarcity and a lack of biological diversity” (maathai, 2004). the world’s only superpower had other ideas. the day before maathai accepted her nobel prize, the u.s. congress passed legislation authorizing the federal aviation administration to issue permits for space tourism at a time when american officials were talking hopefully about the future colonization of mars. settler colonizers, it seems, are willing to pay almost any price in order to escape the grassroots. for much of the rest of the world, however, the importance of protecting trees is self-evidently a matter of life and death. the choice of maathai represented a recognition of the organic relationship between the struggle for peace and the struggle to defend the biosphere, including and especially the most vulnerable communities that inhabit it, against the impact of a predatory system of global colonization that combines endless capital accumulation with war on the milieu. the growing awareness of global climate change and the related global food crisis have only heightened the need for creative strategies. it is here that virilio’s suggestive discussion of “popular defense” comes most directly into play. the heyday of popular defense, he argues, was an earlier period http://www.bilin-village.org/english/� between acceleration and occupation 209 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 when local communities were more easily able to defend themselves and their land, whether through sabotage or through other strategies of slowing down the dromocratic invader. the replacement of the ancient “right to armed defense” with the kind of “military protection racket” that formed the basis of modern states, however, began a steady process of reducing the possibility of a successful popular defense (virilio, 1978/1990, pp. 45-46). the exponential shift in violence set in motion by modern military inventions from the machine gun to the ballistic missile, he suggests, dramatically accelerated this process. in many ways, the age of high globalization has seen the gap between popular defense and the power of the war machine widen even further. moreover, the shift from geopolitics to chronopolitics means that the very notion of place itself is under siege as “time displaces space as the more significant strategic ‘field’” for dromocratic elites (der derian, 1990, p. 308). are there any places left to defend, or are we only inhabiting time now? reading virilio’s work, one almost gets the impression that the game is over, leaving us with no choice but to play out the apocalyptic string from within a dromocratic prison. within this pessimistic framework, contemporary movements for popular defense are no more than quixotic remnants of a vanished past. or perhaps not. as the example of today’s palestinians and their international solidarity comrades suggests, the urge to defend locality through various forms of popular defense remains a powerful impulse with a growing sense of global urgency. the limitation of virilio’s perspective in this case derives from having been seduced by the particular realities of globalization and globalized violence that were emerging in the 1970s. by reading the palestinian situation solely through the lens of its most deterritorialized and deterritorializing elements—namely, the nomadic hijackers who turned popular defense into a suicidal “popular assault” and the israeli state’s borderless military response to this development—he rendered invisible the continuing ecological and habitational presence of palestinians on the land. activism and dromocratic violence the power of popular defense, in palestine or anywhere else, is not to be underestimated. neither, however, should it be romanticized or exaggerated. the great value of the dromological approach is that when combined with close attention to what is happening on the ground, it helps us understand the dilemma with which i began this article. while drawing their motivation and their moral strength from the imperatives of occupation, individuals and communities seeking to engage in popular defense also inevitably find themselves confronted by the realities of acceleration. the same technologies that enable them to communicate, educate the public, and bear witness to what is happening on the ground also enable others to carry out dromocratic violence with increasing speed and lethality. the activist’s dilemma, then, is how to negotiate a path between acceleration and occupation without being swallowed by the former. the gaza tunnel system that has been targeted in recent years by the israeli military is an interesting example of this dilemma. created as a response to the carceral conditions that prevailed after the israeli “disengagement” from the territory, the tunnels undoubtedly serve an ecological function: they enable palestinians in 210 john collins studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 gaza to keep inhabiting the land without completely running out of food or fuel. they also constitute a powerful symbolic device that can be mobilized and circulated globally as evidence of palestinian suffering and desperation. at the same time, their military function of facilitating the entry of weapons tells us that the tunnels also serve to push forward the very dynamic of violent acceleration that is shaping life for gaza’s population. many palestinians, for understandable reasons, might see this as a necessary contradiction, perhaps because they have been forced again into a position where they feel they have no choice but to launch a “popular assault.” but it remains a contradiction, one that reveals a great deal about the starkly limited situation that colonization has produced in palestine. the implication to be drawn from virilio’s provocative framework is that engaging in a true popular defense today requires eschewing, to the greatest extent possible, the politics of violent acceleration. in a world of immanent securitization, however, no one can claim to be fully outside the circuits of violence; even a philosophical commitment to pacifism doesn’t guarantee that one can control the effects of one’s own actions. these global realities, combined with the highly complex and dangerous political environment in palestine, mean that activists working for popular defense there must continually negotiate their own relationship to local agents of dromocratic violence. while it is not impossible to imagine isolated individuals affiliated with the solidarity movement who might deliberately engage in clandestine cooperation with armed palestinian groups, or even with the israeli state, the larger issue is that the global structures of dromocratic violence leave all activists vulnerable to unintended consequences. the pro-israeli propaganda campaign against global solidarity activists in palestine leverages precisely this fact by taking a movement that presents itself as nonviolent and attempting to reframe it as a material supporter of the kind of terrorism (in the form of suicide bombings) that must be subject, in the dominant public discourse, to “absolute moral condemnation” (hage, 2003, p. 67). the networked nature of contemporary violence and the representation of violence means that solidarity activists can never refute such charges definitively. between the third world and the fourth the dilemmas facing solidarity activists point us toward one of the most important social justice questions of the 21st century: how to politicize acceleration. in the same way that workers’ movements helped politicize wealth, or feminism and other “new social movements” helped politicize identity, what is needed now is a kind of global occupation movement that opposes militarization through a habitational politics in order to make visible the relationship between acceleration and the permanent social war that we see all around us. fortunately, we also see all around us evidence of what amounts to the social basis for such a movement. the broad, coalitional orientation of the world social forum is one of the key elements of this picture, but it has also found itself subject to a variety of critiques. created primarily as a grassroots response to the claim that “there is no alternative” to the globalization of neoliberal capitalism, the wsf has been criticized for privileging the perspectives and the leadership role of middle-class, educated between acceleration and occupation 211 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 populations and also for being significantly whiter than the larger population it claims to represent (teivainen, 2002). the opposition of these relatively privileged groups to the dominant system, some suggest, is drastically undercut by their often unacknowledged investment in it, an investment symbolized by their level of comfort in inhabiting the placeless world of the internet at a time when more marginalized populations are engaged in place-based struggles. similarly, the forum’s origins in the critique of capitalism initially had the effect of downplaying some of the issues (e.g., environmental sustainability, militarization) and perspectives (e.g., those of indigenous people) that would presumably be most central to maintaining and strengthening the tradition of popular defense. more recently, however, there are indications that the wsf and the many national and regional forums it has spawned are moving toward a more inclusive approach in response to both internal critiques and the emerging realities of “imperial globality” and “global coloniality” in which “the global economy comes to be supported by a global organisation of violence and vice versa” (escobar, p. 214). boaventura de sousa santos, one of the most prominent intellectuals associated with the wsf, signalled this direction shortly after the launch of the u.s. war on iraq in 2003, arguing for a “strategic shift” that would recognize the struggle against militarization as “a necessary condition for the success of all the other struggles” (santos, 2003). the integration of issues related to environmental sustainability represents a further step along this path toward a political framework that would underpin an integrated response to the global war on the milieu. the shift that santos envisions is not a minor one, nor is it necessarily a palatable one for those who insist that war is simply a tool of capital. nonetheless, refusing to subordinate the struggle against militarization to a narrow anti-capitalist politics is arguably more in tune with the global realities that colonization in general, and settler colonialism in particular, have fostered in the modern era. for this reason, it is also more in tune with the “tradition of the oppressed” (benjamin, 1978, p. 257) that arguably finds its clearest expression in the perspectives of those who have been targeted, displaced, and enslaved by settler-colonial projects. in this light, it is hardly accidental that the idea of “globalization from below” has coincided with a renewed global politics of indigeneity. the wsf itself probably could not have emerged without the impetus provided by the 1994 zapatista uprising, which articulated its identity and its goals explicitly in response to a 500year system combining violent colonization and, more recently, neoliberal capitalist exploitation. with the zapatistas in mind, hall (2003) argues that the alternative traditions of sovereignty associated with indigenous people, in fact, represent the “last line of defence” against unchecked corporate globalization (p. 150). there are indications that the wsf’s “movement of movements” has begun to redress the marginalization of indigenous voices, a development that could have farreaching consequences (conway, 2009). such a shift can only help the process of exploring the linkages among militarization, neoliberalism, and global climate change at a time when new thinking is sorely needed. indigenous people, of course, are not the only people who have good reason to mount a determined politics of occupation and popular defense; the same holds true for all those who are facing structural violence and dislocation. without question, however, indigenous voices are of central importance in pushing for a renewed ecological politics focused on core issues of land, water, food, and climate—issues that are also of concern to many 212 john collins studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 within the global privileged class, including those who populate the various “slow movements” that often prioritize sustainability and a return to small-scale agriculture (particularly organic agriculture). the political convergences we are seeing on the level of escobar’s “place-based yet transnationalised” social movements suggest a step away from the kind of “third worldist” approach rooted firmly in modernity. in reaching toward something that is “beyond” modernity, they have much in common with the kind of “fourth world” thinking that has always been suspicious of the linear, hierarchical thinking imposed by colonial projects and internalized by many anti-colonial nationalists (hall, 2003). at the same time, as escobar rightly notes, “many of the conditions that gave rise to third worldism have by no means disappeared” (p. 207). this gray area between third and fourth world realities and responses is precisely where the palestinian struggle is currently located. for those who see it as the last remaining struggle against colonialism, it is the quintessential third world issue awaiting resolution in the form of palestinian statehood. for others, however, palestine’s primary importance lies in its connection with wider struggles for social, economic, and even environmental justice.11 this may explain why palestine continues to be one of the most unifying issues within the lively, diverse, and often contentious global justice movement. while moments of confrontation with supporters of israel remain unavoidable, the primary debates within the movement have concerned strategic questions such as the relative value of government sanctions on israel vs. the civil society-based approach that has produced growing calls for divestment and boycotts in recent years (“palestinian strategic options”). with palestine’s status as cause célèbre for global justice activists, of course, come a number of dangers. not least of these, as noted above, is the danger of romanticization (bhattacharyya, 2008). perhaps even more concerning, however, is the danger of oppressive orthodoxy. to the extent that an undifferentiated notion of “palestine” becomes an article of faith within the global justice movement, it becomes more difficult for anyone to ask critical questions about the relationship between palestinian resistance, international solidarity, and the deeper structures within which both are embedded. what these dangers highlight is the importance of making sure that solidarity does not, as said famously warned, have the effect of blinding its adherents and silencing the kind of critical reflection that is the lifeblood of any struggle for social justice. 12 regardless of the exact path that the global justice movement takes, there is little doubt that solidarity will provide the glue holding together these efforts and enabling them to connect productively with the global movement for justice in palestine. as i have argued here, the search for effective and liberating responses to the structures of dromocratic violence—structures that are organically related to settler colonialism and its ongoing global impact—remains a key point of convergence that gives everyone a stake in the struggle to maintain the palestinian occupation. between acceleration and occupation 213 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 notes 1 for some of the most incisive contributions to a growing literature on palestine and settler colonialism, see elkins and pederson (2005); piterberg (2008); shafir (1996); veracini (2006); and wolfe (2006). 2 virilio’s essentially anarchist perspective views the state as a “permanent conspiracy” engaged primarily in the business of domination and resource extraction. he distinguishes domination from the sort of “pure power” that stretches beyond the control of politics and manifests itself, for example, in processes of runaway militarization. 3 the architects of zionism, as joseph massad (2005) and others have argued, saw themselves as emissaries of “progress” and “civilization” who would, as the popular slogan goes, “make the desert bloom.” this formulation reveals a great deal about how palestine’s indigenous population has been positioned within settler discourse. the same formulation also provides a context for understanding a range of contemporary israeli discourses that praise israel’s high-tech economy, cutting-edge farming techniques, and other features while marking palestinians as the antithesis of this ultra-modernity and/or obstacles to its full realization. 4 for an extended discussion of how the construction of the wall has affected palestinian farmers, see makdisi (2008). 5 the israeli committee against house demolitions (www.icahd.org) is an excellent resource for information on this issue. icahd places the number of palestinian homes demolished since 1967 at over 24,000. 6 weizman also notes that thanks to the chaotic building and destruction that have taken place in the “wild frontier of the west bank,” raw sewage has proven to be quite uncontrollable, often ending up in israel despite the intentions of israeli authorities to keep it contained in palestinian areas. 7 for a detailed discussion of israeli “nationalist biopolitics,” including the aggressive provision of contraceptives and abortion services for palestinians who live in israel, see kanaaneh (2002). 8 patrick wolfe (2006) uses the term “logic of elimination” to designate one of the basic characteristics of settler-colonial projects of the sort undertaken in australia, north america, south africa, and palestine: the desire to create a new society in place of an existing one. while such projects do not always result in genocide, wolfe argues persuasively that they do seek the “elimination” of the indigenous population through some combination of forced removal, mass killing, and biocultural assimilation. 9 i owe this distinction to ghassan hage, and in particular to his plenary lecture at the 2008 “new worlds, new sovereignties” conference held in melbourne. if sovereignty typically refers to the desire to establish and maintain formal control over territory and other people, self-sovereignty refers to the desire to feel “at home” in the world and to feel some sense of control over one’s own circumstances. in hage’s reading, colonial sovereignty is inherently linked with ecological domination and the desire to “domesticate” the other by denying and/or killing the other’s political will. 10 the bustan qaraaqa (tortoise garden) project located in the west bank town of beit sahour, for example, is a deliberate experiment in the kind of “permaculture” that seeks to create “sustainable human habitats by following nature’s patterns, using the stability and resilience of natural ecosystems to provide a framework and guidance for people to develop their own sustainable solutions to the problems facing their world” (bustan qaraaqa). 11 the marketing of palestinian olive oil as part of the global “solidarity economy” in recent years is a good example of how international activists who are well-connected on the ground in palestine have been able to build bridges with wider ecological struggles. the same olive tree that has nationalist significance for palestinians and political significance for activists who lend their hands to the annual olive harvest campaign in the west also has ecological significance for consumers who may not necessarily be personally involved in the palestinian liberation struggle. 12 in his classic essay on “secular criticism,” edward said (1983) argues that “solidarity before criticism means the end of criticism” (p. 28). though this formulation might itself be critiqued for privileging the position of the cosmopolitan intellectual, it nonetheless cautions wisely against the dangers of a solidarity that closes itself off from the fresh air of critical dialogue. http://www.icahd.org/� 214 john collins studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 references agamben, g. 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(2006). settler colonialism and the elimination of the native. journal of genocide research, 8, 387-409. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1127461.html� http://www.stoptorture.org.il/files/no%20second%20thoughts_eng_web.pdf� http://www.thestar.com/comment/columnists/article/617187� http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/sara-roy/if-gaza-falls-� http://bad.eserver.org/issues/2003/63/santos.html� constructing citizenship without a licence studies in social justice volume 4, issue 2, 165-178, 2010 correspondence address: fran ansley, college of law, university of tennessee, knoxville, tn, 379961810, usa. email: ansley@utk.edu issn: 1911-4788 constructing citizenship without a licence: the struggle of undocumented immigrants in the usa for livelihoods and recognition1 the presence of low-wage southern immigrants in the wealthy countries of the north creates a space where the contradictions of uneven development are fran ansley college of law, university of tennessee abstract this article questions the meanings and expression of “citizenship” in the context of new latina and latino migration into the southeastern united states—a region long marked by legally policed racial systems and now experiencing the varied shocks of globalization. focused on a legislative campaign that won access to a state-issued driver’s licence for undocumented migrants in tennessee in spring 2001, the article explores some of the tensions that emerged on the road to this unlikely victory and raises questions for the immigrants’ rights movement in the us about the costs and gains that may follow from different ways of framing its demands. the dominant frame this particular campaign adopted was a pragmatic and politically acceptable call to improve traffic safety, one that reflected a conscious choice to downplay issues of rights, justice or global perspective. yet the article also reports that the campaign in fact created and used opportunities for activists to raise issues related to migrant rights. it also made a dramatic, albeit temporary, improvement in the daily lives of migrants in the state. the article then sketches three citizenship norms that current struggles might prefigure. these three norms are: the full right to international mobility of human beings; the right to identity; and duties of citizenship in a globalizing world. this article tells the story of a legislative campaign mounted by immigrants and their allies in tennessee, a state in the southeastern usa that has experienced a dramatic new wave of low-wage labour migration from latin america. the campaign fought successfully for access to a state-issued driver’s licence for people who could not produce proof of lawful presence in the usa. far from focusing overtly on the “meanings and expressions of citizenship,” this effort was initiated by and designed to benefit a population of non-citizens. moreover, at least in its public aspect and public rhetorical strategies, it seldom mentioned anything remotely like “rights.” nonetheless, the campaign and its aftermath should be of interest to those who believe that traditional ideas about citizenship and its attendant rights and duties need to be re-imagined for a global age. 166 fran ansley studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 manifested in a particularly striking way; this space offers important learning opportunities for students of citizenship. efforts like these, where transnational migrants attempt to improve their material and legal standing, occur at a site where traditional ideas of national or territorial citizenship come into particularly sharp confrontation with the new dynamics of accelerating globalization. since they are being initiated by some of the people most directly and adversely affected by global dynamics, these efforts provide an opportunity for scholars to listen to how such people perceive and define the unprecedented problems they face, and to see what kinds of solutions they have begun to propose. sometimes the most interesting of such efforts will be those that are just emerging and least shaped into demands that fit existing templates. another reason these pro-immigrant campaigns are valuable and worthy of study is that they pose important questions about who in the global economy has the “right to have rights” in the first place. they press more of the native-born to consider the exclusionary, “fortress” side of northern citizenship in today’s world. the first section of the article will provide some historical and factual backdrop for the tennessee campaign. the second section will sketch some highlights of the campaign itself —or rather, of the campaign up to summer 2003, since the story is far from over. the third section will offer some reflections and tentative conclusions. background historical boundaries of u.s. citizenship citizenship means many things, of course. sometimes it signifies a formal, legal status, and, at other times, a substantive set of citizenly obligations and rights. both of these meanings have been at the centre of past struggles for social justice in america, movements whose successes and failures alike have profoundly affected the nation’s history and character. the question of citizenship as formal legal status was a major theme during the fight to abolish and dismantle slavery, and in the process of resolving the status of peoples taken over in expansionist moments of u.s. history. in the infamous 1856 dred scott case, for instance, the u.s. supreme court ruled that american blacks “are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word ‘citizens’ in the constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the united states.” 2 other great arenas for contestation about status citizenship in america have been immigration and naturalization (saito, 1997). for example, the right to become a naturalized citizen was limited by federal law to “white persons” in the naturalization act of 1790, a restriction not formally repealed until the mid . it took a prolonged period of legal and extra-legal struggle before american black people won their freedom and formal citizenship under an amended constitution, and the twentieth century was half over before the basic political and civil rights of africanamericans were recognized or enforced in any serious way (bell, 2000; foner, 1988). american indians and puerto ricans are only two of many groups that have been subsumed under formal u.s. control, but whose relation to status citizenship has been circuitous and uneven (prucha, 1986; roman, 1997). constructing citizenship without a licence 167 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 twentieth century (lopez, 1996). similarly, the right to immigrate (a predicate to any later naturalization) has been subject to a long train of overtly race-based restrictions, stretching from the chinese exclusion act of 1882 through to the national quota systems that were not finally abolished until 1965 (neuman, 1996). those targeted by these exclusions did what they could to oppose them, but successes were limited (mcclain, 1994; rosales, 1999). to the present day, the supreme court remains highly deferential toward legislative action by the u.s. congress in this area. the court takes the position that congress has “plenary power” over immigration and naturalization questions, and its exercise should not be subjected to the same standards of judicial review that the court would apply in almost any other context (motomura, 1990; wu, 1996). of course, much social justice work in the usa has focused on the proper substance of the rights to be enjoyed by citizens, not on the formal criteria for who was eligible to be one. organizations and citizens’ movements have worked to deepen the substance of the citizenship rights accorded to groups that have been subjected to subordinating or marginalizing practices of different kinds. in good times, they have fought for more expansive understandings about things that all citizens should be able to expect from the state and from each other, and in bad times they have defended what rights they had against incursions by public and private power. while these struggles over the substance of citizenship went forward, the categories and divisions associated with outsiders’ access to the status of citizenship continued, although often at the margins of mainstream national consciousness. present context today we are in a period when the status of citizenship in the usa—the line between citizen and non-citizen—is back in the spotlight, and given the turbulent global conditions that presently prevail, the task of drawing and justifying such a line is likely to prove difficult in ways not felt before. a vibrant if embattled network of new groups has emerged, and older organizations have also begun to see that lowwage immigration presents both in opportunity and an imperative for those interested in organizing for justice (delgado, l993; milkman, 2000). meanwhile, working for immigrants’ rights has become more difficult but also more important in the atmosphere that gripped the nation after september 11, 2001 (lawyers committee for human rights, 2002; 2003). the campaign to win and then to defend immigrant access to the driver’s licence in tennessee is a case in point. agriculture originally dominated the tennessee economy, but in more recent times, agriculture has been complemented and partly supplanted by a strong industrial sector concentrated largely in low-wage industries like garments, textiles and consumer electronics. many manufacturing firms first moved to tennessee from further north in search of the low wages, docile and unorganized workers and “business friendly” regulatory environment for which the southeast has long been known. today, tennessee is experiencing trends familiar elsewhere: agriculture is increasingly mechanized and concentrated in ever fewer hands; manufacturing is in rapid decline; the service sector is on the rise; and the proportion of the workforce that is organized into labour unions is steadily slipping. 168 fran ansley studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 while many manufacturing jobs have moved to lower-wage locations in mexico and elsewhere, mass in-migration and settlement of low-wage latina and latino workers has emerged as a major demographic phenomenon (lowell & suro, 2002).3 i teach at a tennessee law school, where post-baccalaureate students prepare for professional practice. in the course of my research and service with local community groups, new arrivals from the global south have been entering and transforming both labour markets and the texture of daily life in many communities, large and small (fink, 2003). in tennessee, the overall number of latinas and latinos is still a relatively small percentage of the population, but they are nonetheless a striking new presence. in some counties, the growth has been especially dramatic, with attendant impacts on schools and other institutions that are ill-prepared to cope equitably or competently with the newcomers they are now challenged to serve (mendoza, 2002; smith, 2001). 4 as we made contact, over and over we heard the same refrain. three main concerns predominated and the three were closely related. and while supervising students in field placements, i became interested in latina and latino newcomers. my students and i began searching out opportunities to talk with immigrants about their experiences with the legal system and about their need for legal services. 5 such a bar was significant in ways that may be difficult for non-us readers to appreciate. in tennessee, as in many other u.s. locations, there is basically no local public transportation outside the tight central core of the larger cities. for the vast majority of people, including poor people, an automobile is a virtual necessity for even the simplest acts of daily existence, including the task of getting to and from one’s place of work. our informants were eager to explain how the pieces of this situation fitted together into an oppressive whole that greatly magnified their vulnerability: first the immigrants we spoke with wanted to understand their rights (or lack thereof) in situations where they were stopped or arrested by the police. second, they wanted to know the circumstances under which such a stop or arrest might lead to an entanglement with the immigration authorities. third, they wanted to tell us about the impossibility of getting a driver’s licence, and to explain to us what a huge impact that was having on their lives. we learned that the law in tennessee had recently changed, so that applicants for a licence now had to provide a social security number. (only persons who are authorized to work in the usa are assigned such a number, and for the most part this means citizens and those who have been granted legal permanent residency status, with its accompanying “green card.”) the new law effectively barred undocumented immigrants from obtaining a licence to drive. • all undocumented people were prohibited from getting a tennessee driver’s licence • a significant percentage of the latina/latino community in tennessee was undocumented • the chances that any given person found “driving while brown” would also be driving without a licence were therefore astronomically increased the simple probabilities produced by these facts could not possibly escape the notice of law enforcement officials. under the circumstances, it seemed that the constructing citizenship without a licence 169 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 temptation for a police officer to engage in racial profiling would be almost irresistible, whether they were interested in oppressing and harassing latinas and latinos, hustling a personal bribe or simply enforcing the law about driving without a licence. stories confirming the frequency of such profiling were common fare in these conversations. it seemed that any latino then at the wheel of a car in tennessee both felt, and was, a target for police attention abuse or both. upon hearing these stories in the field, the black law students on my courses found it easier than the white students to identify with the apprehension expressed by immigrants toward the police. they also could better imagine the stress induced by the need for constant vigilance. but all of us, black and white alike, found it bizarre to think that at the conclusion of one of our discussion sessions—at some venue such as the prosaic fluorescent-lit and linoleum-floored fellowship hall of the local catholic church, for instance—one group of us would get into our automobiles and return to our homes routinely, with little or no apprehension that a police stop might change our lives. meanwhile, another group would drive home as though players in some suspense-filled war movie about life under military occupation, eyes peeled for each police cruiser, stomachs jumpy with the knowledge that any random road block might spell economic and family disaster. the campaign as we came to find out, we were not the only people in tennessee who were hearing these kinds of stories. a growing population of native-born people was developing an awareness about the existence and the situation of undocumented people. many had become staunch supporters of the immigrant community and its right to live unmolested, and many appeared to be itching for something they could do about what they saw as harsh injustice. not a single immigrants’ rights organization was yet in existence in the state, however: no informal network, list of statewide contacts, phone tree, system of referrals. there were smaller networks where new knowledge about immigrants was starting to circulate, and were people were beginning to discuss issues, compare notes and express outrage. in the spring of 2001, the drivers’ licence campaign provided the seed around which these emerging trends and networks could crystallize. an ad hoc statewide coalition emerged, drawing support from a broad range of likely and unlikely bedfellows. a website and e-mail lists were created, and the tennessee campaign took advantage of then-nascent national network that had identified the issue of the driver’s licence as one that was worth the time of immigrants’ rights. in amazingly short order, the new coalition managed to put together a legislative campaign, move a bill through the general assembly, and secure the republican governor’s signature. the programme was implemented, and soon licences were being issued once again to undocumented immigrants in tennessee. within days, throngs of latinas and latinos descended on licensing stations. native-born people, who had not paid that much attention to immigration dynamics, got quite a jolt if they happened to show up to get their licence during that period. but the initial bottlenecks soon passed, and a new normalcy appeared to have taken hold. 170 fran ansley studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 many people involved in the effort, myself included, admitted to being somewhat dumbfounded at the campaign’s success. several had been dubious about the prospects of securing this reform, especially given the conservative tenor of the tennessee legislature and the reservoirs of anti-immigrant feeling that advocates had reason to believe existed in the state. the concerns of these doubters were not illfounded. for instance, anti-immigrant groups in the state scrambled to respond to our campaign, and soon after the bill’s passage launched a repeal effort. then when the world trade center was attacked a few short months later, the impacts were wide and deep. anger and fear among the native-born were epidemic, and immigrants of all kinds became the objects of widespread fear and suspicion. despite the post-9/11 climate, the pro-immigrant forces in tennessee have succeeded so far in maintaining immigrant access to the driver’s licence. however, access is now more burdened, in that people without a social security number have that fact flagged on the front of their licences. nevertheless, our initial success, and our ability to resist full-scale repeal after 9/11, represent important victories. several factors helped to secure them. perhaps the most basic contribution is that latina and latino immigrants themselves, together with their transnational family and friendship networks, laid the basic foundation, without which nothing would have been possible. the mass migration from latin america to the usa is itself quite a multi-generational feat of human adventure and engineering, and it has been accomplished against stiff odds and despite sometimes intense repression, intimidation and harassment. 6 second, we succeeded (to the limited and still unstable extent that we did) because the time was right. in many communities, the latino population had reached sufficient critical mass to create free spaces for communication and planning—in places like latino groceries, hispanic church services, scattered radio stations and small newspapers around the state. meanwhile, among the native-born population, the anti-immigrant forces were still relatively quiescent, but pro-immigrant individuals and emergent networks were ready and eager to sink their teeth into a concrete project. as a result, when we organized visits to the state legislature in nashville and made our calls to legislative offices, our side represented the vast majority of contacts the legislators were receiving. once here, these legions of low-wage immigrants have built relationships and “proved” themselves in-ways that contain plenty of irony and ambiguity, but in any event have created a multitude of potential patrons and allies. third, we learned that support for immigrants can come from unexpected quarters. agricultural employers, the nashville chamber of commerce and the police chiefs of several major cities were on our side, in addition to more accustomed allies like church groups, service providers, civil rights organizations, labour unions and social justice groups. these unusual bedfellows had political clout, and they offered cover for legislators that the “human rights types” could never have mustered alone. the eagerness of the republican party to establish ties to the latino community undoubtedly had some influence on the outcome, increasing the willingness of our republican governor to sign the bill into law, and later to defend it from full repeal. a final reason i believe we won this struggle for the rights of undocumented workers in tennessee is that we did not frame the campaign as a struggle for rights at all. instead, at least in its visible, public face, the campaign was framed almost entirely around the desires, interests and preferences of u.s. citizens. for instance, constructing citizenship without a licence 171 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 the ad hoc group that we created to push the reform was called “health and safety for tennessee highways.” that group developed talking points that stressed things like the value of having these potentially dangerous latino drivers properly trained, tested, licenced and insured. it also pointed out that if undocumented immigrants possessed a driver’s licence, they could be tracked down more easily by police. the central messages developed by organizers focused on the training, testing and insurability of immigrant drivers, on disruptions to local business and commerce, and on the cost to the state government of forgoing licence-related fees paid by immigrants and of volunteering to shoulder the duties of federal immigration law enforcement. the choice of a frame that left immigrants themselves so decidedly in the shadows was not uncontroversial within the campaign, but it represented a clear majority of opinion among those who developed the strategy. certainly, the highway safety issues were not trumped up. the statistics about deaths and injuries in car crashes involving latina and latino immigrant motorists are alarming, and the number of people—native-born and immigrant alike—who drive uninsured in tennessee is a scandal. nevertheless, most people who threw themselves into our campaign did not come to it out of an involvement in issues of highway safety, but because of a strong concern for immigrants’ needs and rights. the decision to frame the issue as one of highway safety grew out of the organizers’ conviction that putting immigrants’ rights or their welfare at the centre of the campaign (or even out toward its margins, if openly expressed) would be the kiss of death. although i was among those who questioned this decision, in retrospect i believe we probably would have lost the campaign had we pursued a more rights-oriented or immigrant-centred approach. for all those involved, the decision was made easier by our knowledge of the acute difference that this particular concrete reform could make in the lives of people we knew. it would magnify freedom and decrease terror for sizeable numbers of people we knew and cared for. it seemed that success on this issue would be an educational and confidence-building win for the immigrant community, even if the framing and the official rhetoric deployed in the campaign pretty thoroughly ignored the issue of justice for immigrants. of course, the dilemma we faced was hardly unique. most legislative campaigns involve trade-offs and choices about long-term goals and short-term realities. efforts at organizing relatively powerless people from below will always have to wrestle with how much to highlight the rights or needs of the weak, and how much to appeal to the self-interest of the strong including potential allies who have more resources and clout, as well as the decision-makers themselves. legislative campaigns that aim to benefit undocumented immigrants are especially likely to raise these questions because such campaigns are situated at the fault-line over who should have even the “right to have rights.” after all, undocumented immigrants cannot vote, and are therefore not part of the constituency to which an elected legislator owes formal accountability. further, significant numbers of the people who are part of the legislator’s formal constituency are likely to view the concerns and wellbeing of non-citizens as an illegitimate object of their representative’s concern. nevertheless, within and beneath this “non-rights campaign,” many issues of rights, justice and morality did indeed emerge. individual campaigners with whom i have spoken echoed my own experience that actual conversations often led us naturally beyond the official theme of safety and security for native tennesseans, 172 fran ansley studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 and provided openings—some small and subtle, others more generous and clear—for telling other kinds of stories, and pressing other kinds of arguments. in fact, no matter what the public rhetoric on either side, everyone understood that beneath the announced issues lay a mass of other questions that profoundly challenged the current immigration regime. in any case, once the anti-immigrant organizations began to get themselves in gear, there was no way entirely to ignore the issues of immigration policy, even if the campaign had been unambivalent in wanting to do just that. so in the end, this last ingredient of our success is something of a paradox. we did create and stick with a credible public frame that spoke to citizens and legislators about their own self-interest, and i believe that probably contributed to the success of the campaign. at the same time, the choice of this public frame was not as narrowing or chauvinistic as it may sound, because in actuality it did not banish more immigrant-centred conversations and frames from playing an important role in the life of the campaign. sometimes by choice and sometimes by necessity, the campaign did create a space for public debate and dialogue with native-born tennesseans about the immigrant community that has grown up in our midst, and about the justice or injustice of its circumstances. in fact the campaign’s role as the start of something bigger may be the most important point to make here. in preparation for this article, i contacted a number of people who had been active in the 2001 campaign and asked them for their present thoughts. all of them were pleased and proud of the victory that was won, but also acutely aware of its continuing fragility. each remarked with amazement how gratifying it had been to participate in something that created such a dramatic, concrete change for the better in the lives of so many vulnerable people. on one final point they were particularly vocal. the best thing about the campaign, they said, was that it enabled immigrants and their supporters around the state to find each other and to begin building longer-term relationships and collaborations. tennessee is now home to a formal organization, the tennessee immigrant and refugee rights coalition. it has a budget and a (very modestly) paid staff, and it holds regular state-wide meetings. the coalition continues to be involved in the question of the driver’s licence, but its agenda is now much broader and it speaks out regularly on many issues of concern to immigrants and refugees. these days, more meetings are conducted in spanish, 7 and more leadership roles are filled by immigrants and refugees themselves than in the early days of the campaign, when most of the co-ordination was provided by citizen allies rather than by immigrants themselves. the challenges that lie ahead are serious ones, but networks and relationships among people interested in fighting for immigrants’ rights are substantially ahead of where they were when the driver’s licence campaign began. meanings and expressions of citizenship the final section of this article will step back from the immediate facts of the driver’s licence campaign, to ask what lessons we might take from it about the meanings and expressions of citizenship. i am interested in building knowledge that can be put to use by scholars and activists who want to help mount democratic, bottom-up challenges to social exclusion and injustice. constructing citizenship without a licence 173 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 the discussion here will assume that ideas of “citizenship” and of “rights” are neither good nor bad in themselves. although the concept of citizenship and the rights attendant to it may offer helpful resources for winning a more democratic, open and sustainable order (johnston, 2002; mouffe, 1992; 1993), it sometimes can and has been used for very different ends. so my question is not whether rightsbased approaches associated with citizenship can be useful to the project i have named, but rather when, how, and under what circumstances they are most likely to be useful—or not. the tennessee driver’s licence campaign is a paradoxical but significant site for studying rights and citizenship. it was part of a wider mobilization that continues today in the usa; one in which undocumented immigrants—people with no standing as u.s. citizens or even as legal residents—are “making a way out of no way,”8 in many instances, those involved in this mobilization are not claiming formal legal rights, because in the context at hand they cannot point to any officially recognized rights that are available for them to claim. to be sure, there are some justiciable protections, constitutional and otherwise, that apply to immigrants in the usa (chin, romero & scaperlanda, 2000). further, a number of immigrants’ rights groups are attempting to win new, formally recognized rights for immigrants in specific contexts, such as access to higher education, and broader regularization of guest workers in agriculture. nevertheless, much of the activity pursued on behalf of immigrant welfare is pursued by necessity in a landscape of “no rights.” offering the rest of us much-needed windows on to the global landscape, demonstrating new models, and inviting us to reinvent our own citizenship (hair, 2001; smith & sugimori, 2003). one might characterize the larger context for these campaigns as a large-scale, decentralized social experiment that combines diverse elements, including: • the mass migration itself, which can in some ways be best appreciated as a kind of collective civil disobedience • political mobilizations and community and labour organizing efforts carried out with various allies (including communities of native-born and naturalized latinas and latinos in some regions of the country, as well as church groups, civil rights organizations and labour unions) 9 • the building of social and economic capital through a thicket of relationships and channels that are fusing immigrants into society in ways that already appear impossible ever to undo. the loose national network of driver’s licence campaigns across the usa provides a vivid example of the still-emergent, still-inchoate work of building new claims suited to our new global economy. sometimes such claims are based on formally realizable rights; at others they may only hint toward a possible future. sometimes, instead of invoking rights, campaigns speak forcefully of needs, or of higher principles beyond existing domestic or international norms, or of the self-interest of those in a position to grant rights or mere concessions. in any case, these campaigns provide spaces where immigrants are objecting to their exclusion from the licensing system, telling stories about what it means to lack a formal “identity” sufficient to grant access to the normal workings of the national economy in which one labours. such campaigns allow immigrants to describe in 174 fran ansley studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 arresting detail the irrationality and strain of their situation: thoroughly integrated into the mundane workings of the aboveground economy, and at the same time legally excluded, forced to traverse daily an uneven and unpredictable minefield of simultaneous normalcy and criminality. in providing the rest of us with these narratives, immigrants help themselves and us to imagine the human rights we need for our new global condition, there is no assurance that all immigrants’ rights movements in the usa will smoothly advance toward stronger rights, or that they will develop in ways that challenge rather than sustain existing power relations. but current campaigns for access to the driver’s licence are one part of a pre-legal, pre-institutional process that is helping to incubate novel rights claims appropriate for the new economy. in what follows i will sketch three citizenship norms that may be prefigured in current discussions and dialogue growing out of these concrete struggles. the full right to international mobility of human beings a full right to human mobility across international borders is a radical idea, one whose realization would require a direct assault on the notion that the unfettered authority to exclude non-citizens is an essential feature of national sovereignty. (even the united nations’s international convention on the protection of the rights of all migrant workers and members of their families, which entered into force in 2003 and is a welcome new development, only guarantees international mobility as the right to leave any state, plus the right to return to one’s country of origin.) in the u.s. context, full international mobility would also require a confrontation with deep patterns of white racial privilege that run through the nation’s legal and social history. nevertheless, the idea of radically more open borders has proved to be a difficult claim for wealthy states entirely to shake off; in part because it points up the sharp contradiction embedded in free trade regimes such as the north american free trade agreement (nafta) that force signatory states to submit to the free flow of goods, capital and services but do not similarly protect the free flow of people. whether despite or because of its unsettling implications, the call for open borders seems always just beneath the surface of every conversation on immigration. it appears simultaneously to be the only logical solution and—at least at present—a political impossibility. the right to identity another emergent claim of right that may be gestating in the driver’s licence campaign is a “right to identity”‒ something like a transnational right to recognition of a migrating person’s identity and origin. in today’s high-tech world, this would include a right of entry into the computerized identity systems that exist at a national and sub-national level all over the world, but most hegemonically in core countries. undocumented immigrants teach us that the lack of capacity to identify oneself in the information economy can be a devastating disability. immigrants in the usa want a driver’s licence first and foremost so they can engage in daily travel with less constructing citizenship without a licence 175 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 vulnerability. but many of them also want such a licence because it serves as a general identity document, needed nowadays for everything from renting a video to flying back home for a parent’s funeral. a u.s. social security number is generally available only to citizens or legal permanent residents. in recent years, its uses have expanded, and it is now demanded for an increasing range of public and private transactions and background checks. undocumented immigrants are by definition excluded from access to this powerful number, and yet they encounter multitudinous situations where proof of identity is required. accordingly, both from immigrants themselves and from those who have dealings with them, the pressure for some method of identification has become intense. troubling questions surround the notion of a right to identity like the one sketched here. how would such a right relate to the emerging u.s. security state and its powerful new information technologies? surely there is some irony in the idea of vulnerable people clamouring for admittance to a computerized system that will subject them to more efficient surveillance by a hostile and powerful foreign state. given the dramatic erosion of the rights and liberties of both citizens and noncitizens that has accompanied the bush administration’s announced war on terrorism, the cost of being integrated into state licensing systems warrants thoughtful deliberation. still, the cost of not being included is also demonstrably high, as we learned from immigrant narratives in tennessee. this dilemma about the costs of entry into information systems mirrors similar painful choices about global economic integration that presently confront poor people and poor countries around the world. duties of citizenship in a globalizing world if immigrants’ rights activism in countries of the north provides a hospitable environment for imagining and incubating new rights, these settings may also provide important laboratories for discerning the duties that should attend new conditions of global economic integration. some duties suggested by the situation of transnational low-wage workers make up the duties of the powerful. as many have argued, in a just legal order the shape of both rights and duties would be determined with pointed reference to power relations and would be designed to reduce and repair illegitimate disparities. with superpowers, they imply, should come super-responsibilities (matsuda, 1991; stammers, 1999). for instance, given the role that the usa has played in shaping and constraining the economies of most countries in the world, perhaps it should recognize a specifically american duty to admit many more economic refugees for secure and dignified employment in the usa. however, although pre-eminent, the usa is not alone in its disproportionate influence on the fate of other countries. perhaps all the nations of the global north should take on co-ordinated duties of admission, keyed to their respective powers and histories. history-conscious, postcolonial immigration practices by some european states offer imperfect models for thinking about how such duties might be framed. the facts of immigrants’ lives also suggest that duties toward trans-national migrants do not reside with states alone. exercises of private power can affect labour migration as greatly as do exercises of state power. accordingly, both the pushes and 176 fran ansley studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 the pulls that affect global migrant streams point to other duty-bearers, such as multinational corporations, international financial institutions and the public/private machineries that create, embody and administer international trade agreements. immigrants’ rights struggles also require citizens of the north to think about their own duties as persons who are in a position of relative privilege as compared to citizens of poorer countries. to be sure, workers and low-income people in the usa have many interests that are significantly aligned or at least overlapping with those of workers in other countries. but even they enjoy privileges and powers whose parameters they are seldom able to appreciate without the perspective added by looking through the eyes of others. the cauldron of immigrants’ rights struggles provides one place where first world citizens can begin to discern something more about their privileges and the duties they should imply. speculation about pockets of immigrant activism helping to incubate not only new global rights but also new “duties of global solidarity,” takes me far beyond the tennessee campaign for the driver’s licence. as someone who learned much from being a participant observer in the one small campaign described here, i can say with confidence that many native-born citizens who become involved with immigrants— in fights that range from the mundane to the sublime—have been profoundly changed by the experience. for the most part, americans have precious little knowledge of our own nation’s immigration law, few experiences that help us understand the role our government and corporations play abroad, little familiarity with international institutions that our government dominates, and only the thinnest exposure to cultures and languages other than our own. the driver’s licence tight gave many tennesseans a chance to start knowing more about these things and to consider our own responsibilities as citizens of a thoroughly fractured and connected world. notes 1 this article was originally published as a chapter in inclusive citizenship: meanings and expressions, naila kabeer, ed. london: zed books 2005, pp. 199-215. 2 dred scott v. sandford, 60 u.s. 393, 404 (1856). 3 demographics are intently watched in the usa, given their relationship to racial politics. the u.s. census reported that the u.s. hispanic population grew by 57.9 per cent between 1990 and 2000, as compared with 13.2 per cent for the population as a whole. over half were of mexican origin (guzman 2001). 4 for more background on this research, on my organizational collaborator (the tennessee industrial renewal network, now renamed the tennessee economic renewal network), and on my experiences as a participant observer in some of the organization’s work, see ansley (2001); tirn (1993). 5 the issues centred on the concerns of undocumented people, so it may be worth pointing out that many of the people we spoke to in this information-gathering process were ‘legal’; that is, many of them were lawfully present in the usa and also entitled to work, because they were birthright citizens or naturalized citizens, or because they had been granted legal permanent resident status, which entitled them to a (non-green) “green card” and a social security number. but all of them, legal or not, made it clear that the concerns of the undocumented were questions of the highest priority. the vast majority, even if they were lawfully present themselves, had family members or close friends who were undocumented. in any case, the operating assumption seemed to be that the treatment accorded to undocumented immigrants directly affected all other members of the latino community. constructing citizenship without a licence 177 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 6 i do not mean to suggest that all latina/ latino immigrants to the usa consider themselves to be part of a social movement for rights or any other organized social project. latino immigrants are an extremely diverse group. they come to the usa with many different goals; they subscribe to many different ideologies and dreams; they bring with them many different levels of resources; and they are changed in many different ways after they arrive. 7 the coalition’s membership is not limited to english and spanish speakers, nor is it limited to issues of concern to the latina/latino community. there are active participants from africa, the middle east, asia and eastern europe, and their issues are prominent on the agenda of the coalition. nevertheless, spanish is by far the most numerically significant minority language spoken in the coalition and in the state. 8 this lovely phrase is one passed on by american labour and civil rights historian michael honey (1999, p. 86). 9 recently, the american federation of labor and congress of industrial organizations (afl-cio), the nation’s largest labour federation, announced a sharp reversal of its previous restrictive position on immigration. now, the federation and many of its union affiliates are campaigning for broader legalization programmes and are actively recruiting among immigrant workers (nissen, 2002). of course, many difficulties and questions about the future of organized labour and its relationship to immigrant workers remain. references ansley, f. (2001). inclusive boundaries and other (im)possible paths toward community development in a global world. university of pennsylvania law review, 150, 353-417. bell, d. (2000). race, races and american law (4th edition). new york, ny: aspen publishers. chin, g., romero, v., & scaperlanda, m. (eds.) (2000). immigration and the constitution: origins of constitutional immigration law. new york & london: garland publishing. delgado, h. (1993). new immigrants, old unions: organizing undocumented workers in los angeles. philadelphia: temple university press. dred scott v. sandford. 60 u.s. 393: 404 (1856). fink, l. (2003). the maya of morganton: work and community in the nuevo new south. chapel hill, nc: university of north carolina press. foner, e. (1988). reconstruction: america’s unfinished revolution, 1863-1877. new york, ny: harper & row. guzman, b. (2001). the hispanic population. census 2000 brief. washington, dc: u.s. bureau of the census. hair, p. (2001). louder than words: lawyers, communities and the struggle for justice. new york, ny: rockefeller foundation. honey, m. k. (1999). black workers remember: an oral history of segregation, unionism, and the freedom struggle. berkeley, los angeles & london: university of california press. johnston, p. (2002). citizenship movement unionism: for the defense of local communities in the global age. in b. nissen (ed.), unions in a globalized environment: changing borders, organizational boundaries and social roles. armonk, ny: m. e. sharpe. lawyers committee for human rights (2002). a year if loss: re-examining civil liberties since september 11. new york: lawyers committee for human rights (available online at www.lchr.org). lawyers committee for human rights (2003). imbalance j powers: how changes to us law ex policy since 9/11 erode human rights and civil liberties, september 2002-2003. new york, ny: lawyers committee for human rights (available online at www.lchr.org). lopez, i. h. (1996). white by law: the legal construction of race. new york: new york university press. lowell, b. l. & r. suro (2002). how many undocumented: the numbers behind the us-mexico migration talks. washington, dc: pew hispanic center. mcclain, c. j. (1994). in search of equality: the chinese struggle against discrimination in nineteenthcentury america. berkeley, ca: university of california press. matsuda, m. (1991). voices of america: accent, antidiscrimination law, and a jurisprudence for the last reconstruction. yale law journal, 100, 1329-1404. mendoza, m. (2002). latino immigrant women in memphis. memphis, tn: center for research on women. 178 fran ansley studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 milkman, r. (2000). organizing immigrants: the challenge for unions in contemporary california. ithaca and london: cornell university press. motomura, h. (1990). immigration law after a century of plenary power: phantom constitutional norms and statutory interpretation. in g. chin, v. romero & m. scaperlanda (eds.) (2000) immigration and the constitution: origins a of constitutional immigration law (pp. 285-613). new york & london: garland publishing. mouffe, c. (ed.). (1992). dimensions of radical democracy: pluralism, citizenship, community. london & new york: verso. mouffe, c. (1993). the return of the political. london & new york: verso. neuman, g. (1996). strangers to the constitution: immigrants, borders and fundamental law. princeton, nj: princeton university press. nissen, b. (ed.) (2002). unions in a globalized environment: changing borders, organizational boundaries and social roles. armonk, ny: m. e. sharpe. prucha, f. p. (1986). the great father: the united states government and the american indians. lincoln, nb: university of nebraska press. roman, e. (1997). empire forgotten: the united states colonization of puerto rico. villanova law review, 42, 1119-1211. rosales, f. a. (1999). pobre raza!: violence, justice and mobilization among méxico lindo immigrants, 1900-1936. austin, tx: university of texas press. saito, n. t. (1997). alien and non-alien alike: citizenship, "foreignness" and racial hierarchy in american law. oregon law review, 76, 261-345. smith, b. e. (2001). the new latino south: an introduction. memphis: center for research on women. smith, r. & sugimori, a. (2003). low pay, high risk: state models for advancing immigrants' rights. new york, ny: national employment law project. stammers, n. (1999). social movements and the social construction of human rights. human rights quarterly, 21, 980-1008. tirn (1993). from the mountains to the maquiladoras [video]. knoxville, tn: tennessee industrial renewal network. wu, f. (1996). a moderate proposal for immigration reform. in g. chin, v. romero & m. scaperlanda (eds.) (2000) immigration and the constitution: origins of constitutional immigration law (pp. 61-100). new york & london: garland publishing. correspondence address: carlo fanelli, ryerson university, 350 victoria street, toronto, ontario, canada m5b 2k3. email: carlo.fanelli@ryerson.ca issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 8, issue 2, 119-143, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base: the significance of 2012 carlo fanelli ryerson university1, canada abstract this article explores how the politics and economics of austerity has influenced collective bargaining between the cupe locals 79/416 and the city of toronto. i explore the relationship between neoliberalism and workplace precarity, drawing attention to the importance of the municipal public sector to trade unionism and the political potential of urbanized left-labour radicalism. following this, i provide an overview of the repeated attempts by city council to extract concessions from unionized workers with a focus on the concession-filled 2012 round of bargaining and its relationship to earlier rounds. in what follows i discuss the implications of austerity bargaining for locals 79 and 416 members, drawing attention to the repercussions this may have for other public sector workers. to conclude, i propose an alternative political strategy for municipal public sector unions, stressing the importance of a radicalized labour approach. it is my contention that this requires the development of both alternative policies and an alternative politics rooted in demands for workplace democracy and social justice. public sector austerity has been a main staple of policymaking since the onset of the great recession. while cultivated in earlier forms of austerity, recent initiatives across scales of public administration indicate a significant opening-up of the public sector in order to create new spaces of accumulation, extract wage and benefit concessions from unionized workers, and erode and dismantle what remains of public sector services and assets. this article examines how the politics of austerity has influenced canadian union of public employees (cupe) locals 79 and 416 in the city of toronto. i begin with an overview of the relationship between neoliberalism and workplace precarity, with a focus on the importance of the municipal public sector to trade unionism and the political potential of urbanized left-labour radicalism. next, situated in historical perspective, i provide an overview of the repeated studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 120 carlo fanelli attempts by city council to extract concessions from unionized workers with a focus on the concession-filled 2012 round of bargaining and its relationship to previous rounds. from there, i discuss the future implications of austerity bargaining for locals 79 and 416 members, drawing attention to the repercussions this may have for other public sector workers. to conclude, i highlight an alternative political strategy for municipal public sector unions, stressing the importance of a radicalized labour approach. it is my contention that this requires the development of both alternative policies and an alternative politics rooted in demands for workplace democracy and social justice. my research is informed by my experiences as a part-time worker with the city of toronto for over a decade, a participant in three strikes since 2000 and as a picket captain with local 79 through the 2009 strike. grounded in a critical political economy approach, my analysis is informed by engaged participant observation and a first-person scholarly account of how new pressures for concessions are affecting municipal workers in toronto. this study, like earlier research (fanelli, 2014a), grounds my intellectual work by supplementing textual evidence, union documents and media reports with an insider’s assessment of how austerity is affecting services provisioning, the working environment and collective bargaining. one of the advantages of being a participant observer and trade unionist is that i was able to gain access to a group of workers who may otherwise object to being studied by non-union members. as such, participants generally behaved as they ordinarily would, which meant that my research was open to new insights and evolving areas of inquiry. in utilizing such a method of research, i was able to collect and interpret data which might be unavailable or missed using other methods. i also draw on existing scholarly works, statistics canada data, newspapers as well as formal and informal interviews in order to supplement the qualitative data i have collected. neoliberalism, precarious work and austerity in both practice and political ideology, neoliberalism is many-sided including a broad set of macroeconomic policies, a worldview and an approach to public policy. neoliberalism’s intellectual roots, both ideational and ideological, can be found in the classical liberalism and the economic writing of von mises, hayek and friedman (peck, 2010; stedman jones, 2012). although an offspring of the great depression, the keynesian crisis of the 1970s reignited latent class antagonisms culminating in the three-decades-long struggle for neoliberal hegemony. neoliberalism’s most vocal expositors took a longestablished core of liberal values and refashioned them in new form. in this sense, the intellectual inspiration and policy developments of neoliberalism have been multidimensional, variegated and heterogeneous across time and space. neoliberalism can be understood as the latest set of socio-spatial and institutional configurations in the ongoing development of a capitalism composed of conflicting tendencies toward destruction and creation (brenner studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base 121 & theodore, 2002a). as a political project, neoliberalism has been characterized by a capitalist class and state offensive in which the aim has been to rescind the collective gains made by labour in the quarter-century proceeding wwii, while at the same time extending new forms of commodification (brenner & theodore, 2002a; peck, 2010; peck & tickell, 2002). in this regard, neoliberalism is a politically guided, yet frequently contested, process seeking to alter the balance of class forces in favour of capital at the expense of labour. this restructuring has had especially harmful consequences for the delivery of public services, the workers delivering those services and the users of those services. at the root of this restructuring is a socio-spatial, historical and political process seeking to extend and deepen the relationship between the state and the market. understood this way, neoliberalism is not a juxtaposition of (less) state against (more) market, but rather about a particular kind of state suited to the logic of capital in a specific historical phase of capitalist development. this has included reducing public services and assets in order to open up the state sector to new profit-making opportunities; lowering wages, benefits and working conditions for a more flexible and market-dependent workforce; and deploying the coercive apparatuses of the state to enforce these market mechanisms. the politics of austerity and policy practices since the great recession, then, should be understood as a class strategy that takes further steps toward the ‘total privatization’ of the public sector (albo & fanelli, 2014). in an effort to reduce service costs, many public sector employers, like their private sector counterparts, have adopted a neoliberal approach to employment which is achieved through the temporary and discretional use of layoffs, labour intensification, the denial of benefits and retrenchment of wages. this has included the curtailment of free collective bargaining rights, management strategies that promote multi-skilling, continuous re-training, performance-based pay, tightly controlled managerial practices and enhanced workplace supervision (camfield, 2011; evans, 2013; panitch & swartz, 2003). what’s more, feminist and anti-racist political economists have identified key dimensions of neoliberal policies which often go unaccounted for in analyses that neglect racialand gender-based oppressions. for instance, in the context of persisting gendered and racialized divisions of labour, the reduction and privatization of social services have increased both the demands on women’s responsibilities in the home and exacerbated lowwage occupational job segregation (braedley & luxton, 2010; jenson & sineau, 2001). furthermore, from the reduction of child and elder care services to ongoing workplace-based segregation, the broad policy matrixes of neoliberalism have further reinforced canada’s genderand colour-coded labour market (block & galabuzi, 2011). this is especially pertinent to women and racialized groups in the public sphere where they have made the most gains and labour market segmentation is less pronounced in comparison with similar private sector work (baines, 2013; briskin, 2013; pupo & noack, 2010; warskett, studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 122 carlo fanelli 2013). as neoliberal policies are ingrained across the public sector, gender and racialized labour market inequalities are further sharpened as weakened labour market and income security protections worsen historical patterns of marginalization. this is reflected, for example, in women’s and racialized groups’ over-representation across low-income occupations as well as in higher rates of poverty (block and galabuzi, 2011; lewchuk, clarke, & de wolff, 2011; braedley & luxton, 2010). thus, as ethno-racial and genderbased inequalities, rooted in fundamentally antagonistic class relations, are further intensified through the marketization of public services, the burden increasingly falls on historically racialized groups, women and (im)migrants, to occupy the most precarious labour market positions. in the alleged absence of market failure, the principle of individual failure has come to dominate public policy debates as collective social policymaking increasingly fades from view. with the dissolution of the keynesian maleincome-earner model, the neoliberal employment relationship is one characterized by increasingly insecure labour market arrangements, low pay, the absence of benefits or entitlements and growing work-life imbalances (vosko, 2006).2 as a means of “rationalizing” the elimination of public services and deteriorating working conditions, proponents of neoliberalism have promoted tax cuts as a cure for nearly all of society’s social ills. to borrow from marx, tax cuts have become the new opiate of the masses. such changes in the nature and content of public policy have had significant implications for labour market conditions as the generally inferior working conditions and wages of the private sector have become the new benchmark which, in the process, has provided the rationale for attacking public sector workers’ compensation. the ongoing transformation of the public sector via policy prescriptions expounding the virtues of neoliberalism have perhaps been most apparent with the growth of new public management (npm) theories which have sought to “modernize” the public sector through “efficiency”-generating principles based on private sector management models. by increasing market exposure, proponents of npm advocate a transition from public “administration” to public “management” via the privatization of public goods and services, a greater reliance on outsourcing, contracting-out and user-pay provisions. competition between public agencies and private firms is alleged to increase cost-effectiveness, while the use of short-term and contract labour, including performance-related pay and bonuses, is envisaged as constructing a “lean” state (sears, 1999). npm theories, like the overarching neoliberal framework in which they are embedded, seek to enhance capital accumulation by limiting trade unions’ rights and freedoms, privatizing public services and employment, and establishing the generally inferior private sector labour practices in the public sector. this restructuring has had particularly deleterious effects on racialized groups and women at the municipal scale as both the quality of work and the mental well-being of workers have declined (mcdonough, worts, fox, & dmitrienk, 2008; worts, fox, & mcdonough, 2007; baines, 2004). studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base 123 in canada there are some important differences between how neoliberalism has affected private and public sector work. whereas casualization in the private sector has been mainly in long-term part-time work, it has taken place primarily though temporary full-time work in the public sector. thus, in the public sector, short-term full-time work has eclipsed permanent parttime employment as the main form of casualized labour. given significant structural forms of discrimination, such as those historically linked to the female gender wage-gap and racialized exclusions, transformations in the quality and form of public sector work and working conditions remain important given that nearly one in five canadians, sixty-one percent of which are women, work in the public sector (stinson, 2010). the public sector remains a crucial stronghold of canadian trade unionism.3 it is this very strength and potential that help explain why public sector workers and their unions have come under such political and economic consternation from across the political spectrum. furthermore, given public sector workers’ concentration in urban centres and their strategic location as the providers of a broad range of services, they are in a unique position to build deeply integrated labour-community alliances fighting for the pursuit of social justice and expanded public services (brenner & theodore, 2002b, 2005; harvey, 2009; turner & cornfield, 2007). workers employed by municipal governments are in a distinctive position to build popular political support, since municipal services are typically provided and consumed in a shared geographic region. in many cases, these workers provide essential services to others in the city, but are often also the users of those services. thus, there is a greater potential to build solidarity in the struggle to defend and transform the provision and governance of public services because they appeal more directly to people’s everyday lives. it is in the context of an increasingly urbanized planet that cities and wider metropolitan regions have become pivotal sites for, on the one hand, the elaboration of neoliberal projects and, on the other hand, central sites of contestation. yet, cities are much more than merely ideological and institutional experiments of neoliberalism. they are also important sites for mass rebellion and collective action, wherein a range of progressive left organizing, labour militancy and alternative visions for urban life may be developed, challenging the narrow policy parameters of neoliberalism as well as the structural constraints of capitalism (brenner & theodore, 2012b; harvey 2013). as will be shown in the case study of the 2012 round of collective bargaining between municipal workers and the city of toronto, the local state sought to deepen and extend market imperatives by cheapening labour and making paid employment more precarious. eroding trade union rights and freedoms has been a recurring feature of neoliberalism (fanelli, 2013; panitch & swartz, 2003; ross & savage, 2013). in this regard, many local governments are implementing broad programs of “austerity urbanism” (peck, 2012; 2013), which in some cases is driving a fiscal crisis at the urban scale. although municipal fiscal crises have been a recurring problem for some three decades studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 124 carlo fanelli as fiscal capacities could not keep up with increased pressures for service demands and urbanization, this process of neoliberal urbanism has escalated over the past decade as tax-shifting for competitiveness and reductions to social services, as well as the 2008-10 economic crisis, have combined to intensify neoliberal urbanism (boudreau, keil, & young, 2009; fanelli, 2014a, 2014b; hackworth, 2007). continuity and confrontation: collective bargaining at city hall the canadian constitution has never regarded municipal corporations, as they are formally called, as sovereign political entities.4 rather, from the very beginning they were subject to the rights and powers conferred on them by their respective provinces. across canada, municipal labour relations have in the main fallen under general or private-sector labour relations statutes (fudge and tucker, 2001). since the 1980s, neoliberal policy experiments have been a chronic feature of canadian pubic administration (mcbride, 2001). under this truncated and uneven process of marketization, many federal, provincial and municipal governments have resorted to reducing public services, eroding investments in public assets and infrastructure as well as demanding concessions from workers delivering key services. canadian municipalities in general and toronto in particular have had a long history of dealing with the structural constraints of urban neoliberalism (albo, 2009; boudreau et al., 2009; fanelli, 2014a, 2014b; fanelli & paulson, 2012; keil, 1998; 2002; keil & kipfer, 2002). this has affected municipal workers most acutely. while this is not the place for an exhaustive overview of cupe local 79’s history of bargaining with the city of toronto, some brief discussion is nevertheless necessary in order to trace the continuity in concessions and confrontations between earlier rounds and the 2012 rounds of bargaining.5 the 1980s and 1990s was a period of significant budgetary austerity for federal and provincial governments which looked to shed “liabilities” by transferring administrative and financial responsibility for public services and programs onto other tiers of government (mcbride, 2001). over the 1980s and 1990s, the municipal political economy increasingly moved away from manufacturing goods towards banking, finance, insurance and real estate services (boudreau, 2000; boudreau et al., 2009; caulfield, 1994; friskin, 1993; lemon, 1985). over the keynesian period, toronto became the strategic nodal point connecting canada to the global economy. the period of neoliberalism since the 1990s has sought to deepen and extend these connections, remaking toronto in the form of an ultra-competitive “global city” (kipfer & keil, 2002; lemon, 1985; todd, 1998). this process reached its apogee in 1998 when six surrounding boroughs were merged, creating the new single-tier “megacity”—one of the world’s few major cities created by and for neoliberal purposes (carson & siemiatycki, 2014). in this sense, toronto has long been a laboratory of neoliberal experimentation in the remaking of the local state. this reengineering of the local state was studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base 125 not, however, accompanied by the transference of administrative and fiscal powers. as a result, this intensified interand intra-city competition between and within toronto and its surrounding municipalities. in an effort to deal with post-amalgamation fiscal challenges, the city of toronto has recurrently tried to extract concessions from its unionized workforce.6 these initiatives have revolved around extracting wage and benefit (primarily job security) concessions from workers and attempts to outsource and privatize public services and assets for profit-making opportunities. in 2000 and later in 2002, local 79 and 416 twice struck against the city’s demands for concessions. in the latter case, the local’s right to strike was suspended as the provincial conservative government, with the backing of a majority conservative city council, legislated them back to work. as part of this administrative reorganization of state capacities, the aim was not to bypass or supersede the state, but to create a different kind of state as part of a broader strategy of enhancing competitiveness within the city and vis-à-vis other jurisdictions. local 79 is the largest municipal union in canada. thus, the extent to which neoliberal reforms are implemented in the toronto municipal sector often has implications for other jurisdictions. through the period of neoliberalism, the city has experienced significant growth of producer services and media capitals, as well as a whole range of low-wage service and hospitality industries, especially professional services tied to housing-related demand for credit, renovations and legal services. as the centre of financialization in canada, toronto, like other “global cities,” has become highly dependent upon the internationalization of capital. as such, the city has undergone a significant restructuring of both municipal government and services, as well as changes in the city’s relationship with its employees and the broader economy. far from a casualty of a globalized economy, this restructuring has been a politically guided process—non-linear and frequently challenged— seeking to deepen and extend the relationship between the state and market. said differently, the state has in some instances led and in other instances created the conditions for capital to lead in remaking the conditions of work and labour, further integrating neoliberal imperatives. in line with federal and provincial attacks against free collective bargaining, the local state has undertaken an aggressive program of urban austerity. in the case of the 2009 round of bargaining, four issues were central: defending attacks against the controversial sick leave benefit program (slbp) which allowed for the banking of sick days; staving off attempts to erode job security provisions, seniority rights, transfer and promotional opportunities; challenging a freeze on cost-of-living increases to wages as well as the implementation of two-tiered wages; and curtailing attempts by management to contract-out employment and increase control over the labour process through enhanced disciplinary and surveillance measures. throughout bargaining, the economic uncertainty stemming from the great recession served as a political and economic pretext justifying and intensifying the neoliberal reconfiguration of the city. despite a “progressive studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 126 carlo fanelli coalition” at city hall made up of new democrats, liberals and a few independents, council set forth attacking labour in order to meet its fiscal challenges—challenges generated by capitalism in economic crisis and the policies of neoliberalism. in short, after 39 days on strike, an agreement was reached between locals 79/416 and the city of toronto. economically, both locals managed to stave off major concessionary demands to freeze wages, institute a multi-tiered wage system and limit seniority-based promotion. the banking of sick days and cash payouts was replaced with a short-term disability plan that extends paid-leave until a third occurrence after which pay is reduced. both locals were successful in gaining 2 percent raises over 3 years. local 79 part-timers, however, did not see any extension of benefits nor do they have now any form of a sick plan. the other concessions were taken off the table. as will be shown shortly, however, the economic gains of the strike were a hollow achievement as the political implications of the strike far outweighed the minor and temporary economic benefits of the agreement. the strike was a political failure when it came to mobilizing sustained action and education, garnering public support as well as linking the defense of unionized workplaces with fighting for workers in non-unionized jobs and the un(der)employed. what’s more, the outcome of the strike exposed locals 79 and 416 as both strategically and politically unprepared in important ways. first, the executive committee bargained in almost complete isolation from the rest of the membership, failing to build active solidarity from the bottom up. second, the union did not book members off as full-time organizers until right before the strike was set to start. this resulted in poor organization and cooperation amongst members as well as with other labour and community groups, resulting in a significant lack of solidarity amongst unionized and non-unionized workers. third, financial and personnel resources were allocated in ineffective and inequitable ways across the city’s regional strike offices. fourth, beyond administrative assistance and very minor input in decision-making processes, cupe national played a very limited role in the broader coordination of bargaining despite the fact that this could have established the pattern of bargaining across cupe’s other 250 municipal locals. this raises a set of issues which, although outside the purview of this article, are related to cupe national’s notoriously fragmented approach to bargaining and the enduring tensions related to national leadership and local autonomy. these questions are themselves enmeshed within broader debates about the structure of the union, its priorities, vision, and strategic outlook (ross, 2005). as a result of these combined pressures, many members were resentful toward the executive and the politics of the strike as public condemnation mounted and workers were marginalized. this was reflected in low morale on the picket lines as well as in a lack of awareness of the key issues involved in negotiations. furthermore, despite over one month on strike, the agreement did not make work any less precarious, particularly for part-timers, women and racialized groups that make up the bulwark of unionized members. with studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base 127 some political imagination the strike could have been strategically situated in relation to a number of connected issues such as past experiences of public services privatization, taxation and revenue generation as well as poverty and income inequality. likewise, decades of downloading could have been related to the broader attack against labour across traversing scales of public administration and in the private sector. while the strike was not an absolute failure, illusions about the strike being a victory impeded rather than obliged serious discussion about the shortcomings of the 2009 round of bargaining and its implications for future rounds. 2012 bargaining: paved with concessions the 2012 round of collective bargaining served as a litmus test for both the city of toronto and locals 79 and 416 in a battle of opposing class interests. as noted earlier, austerity’s impacts are not class neutral, but rather a capitalist class strategy that is simultaneously racialized and gendered. hypothetically, if the city were able to extract a host of concessions from the unions, this would signal an open attack across municipalities and the broader public sector. on the other hand, if locals 79 and 416 not only managed to hold off concessionary demands, but actually extended those benefits to those most precariously employed and tied those gains to the community groups they served, it might have sparked a fight-back in the public sector serving also as an example for other private sector unions. unfortunately, the outcome of the 2012 round of collective bargaining tended toward the former scenario, likely serving as a template for other municipalities across canada. under the leadership of authoritarian populist mayor rob ford (kipfer & saberi, 2014), it was clear from the beginning that the city’s negotiating team would be taking a hard-line position during negotiations.7 having made significant inroads to concessions during the 2009 round of bargaining, the city used the unpopularity of the previous strike as an opportunity to further extend their mandate of austerity and attacks against workers. the employee and labour relations committee (elrc), a subcommittee of mostly conservative councillors hand picked by the mayor, was responsible for negotiating with the unions’ various bargaining committees. the elrc did not need the approval of council to lock out workers or unilaterally alter the terms of the contract. locals 79 and 416’s collective agreements expired january 1, 2012. by october 2011 the city had already served notice to local 416 to begin bargaining. as will be argued, this formed part of the city’s broader machiavellian orchestration to thoroughly defeat what remained of trade union militancy in locals 79 and 416. while talks had started months earlier, by mid-december 2011 both the city and local 416 were accusing each other of bargaining in the media. to what extent this was grandstanding is unclear, but by this point the city had already requested a conciliator as mandated by law. just three days into the new year, the city of toronto informed the ministry of labour that bargaining studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 128 carlo fanelli had reached an impasse. two issues were crucial at this juncture. first, upon receipt of the city’s request, the ministry of labour could issue a “no board” report, which meant that after a period of seventeen days the city could lock out workers, unilaterally impose conditions or go on strike. second, the city used the time in between the issuance of a “no board” and a deadline as an opportunity to publicly bargain and intimidate workers into accepting the terms of a new agreement. rather than threatening a lockout, the elrc argued that unless the terms of a new agreement were accepted, they would be unilaterally imposed. in order to meet the challenges of a “cash-strapped city,” argued councillors and media pundits, workers would need to concede wages and benefits and, most of all, job security. while negotiations faltered, on january 13, 2012 local 416 held a press conference to try to sway public support. the union’s announcement was straightforward. in return for rolling-over the existing contract, the union would forego wage increases for the duration of the contract. a moratorium on wage increases would translate into approximately $10 million in yearly savings. local 416 also made the case that public sector workers should not be made to pay for an economic crisis not of their making. but the city immediately rejected what representatives of the elrc deemed a public relations ploy, stressing that what was central in this round of bargaining was employer “flexibility” not wage concerns. in this regard, the recasting of working people and job security as outmoded entitlements has been one of the great successes of neoliberalism. despite local 416’s very public play, the city continued to push for the complete removal of a no-contracting-out clause that required workers whose jobs were eliminated or technologically displaced to be redeployed to another position. additionally, the city was seeking reductions to health and dental benefits as well as the termination of a clause that required the city to collect dues for the union. for accepting these so-called productivity-enhancing amendments, the city would give workers a lump sum payment of 1.5 percent. the city later sweetened the pot by offering job security to those with at least 25 years of seniority, while the union moved from a position of no-concessions bargaining to job security for those with five years of experience (a divisive strategy on the part of the city which created a row between newer and older members). while the city continued to bargain with local 416, local 79 was focused on replacing its outgoing president and executive council, playing a very minor role as local 416 continued to bargain. on january 18, 2012 a “no board” report had been issued which meant that a february 5th deadline had been set. the city continued to publicly stress that unless the union gave up “jobs for life,” an agreement would be imposed. this was framed in terms of increasing innovation, efficiency, flexibility and saving “taxpayers’” money, as well as in terms of rebalancing “managerial rights” (deputy mayor doug holyday in dale and boyle, 2012). members of the elrc argued that public sector labour contracts must fall in line with the private sector. the city and union bargained past the deadline, reaching an agreement on february 13th. four terms of the agreement are central. first, the new agreement includes studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base 129 language that allows the city to unilaterally make any changes to shift schedules so long as employees are served notice. job performance criteria are now used to determine shifts and scheduling. this was a concession the city tried to force in 2002, 2005 and 2009, as the previous contract required that the worker and union agree to any shift/scheduling changes. second, the new contract removes a letter of agreement that provided protection to all permanent employees regarding contracting-out or technological displacement. under the new agreement, the threshold of protection was reduced from covering all workers to only those with at least 15 years of seniority (a decrease of coverage from 100 to about 68 percent of employees). this was also tried in previous rounds of bargaining. third, the city reduced the amount of coverage for health and dental benefits which, according to the terms of the new agreement, is expected to save the city some $20-35 million, and also eliminated the expected post-retirement liabilities of $54 million. fourth, in return for giving up a significant portion of their job security, workers received a one-time bonus of 1.5 percent, 0 percent in 2012, 0.5 percent in 2013, 1.75 percent in 2014 and 2.25 in 2015. a remaining issue left over on the table is that related to reducing workplace absenteeism. both the union and the city have agreed to study the matter further in what will likely be a major point of contention in the next round of bargaining. with local 416 having set the bar, the agreement was essentially rolled over to local 79, which put it up for a vote without recommendation. of local 79’s four bargaining units, two units (full-time and part-time unit b) voted to accept the deal as is, but recreational part-time workers voted the deal down. the city and local 79 went back to bargaining and were able to obtain some minor changes that increased the amount of hours an employee is allowed to work in a particular position as well as included the provision of paid time for mandatory recertification. part of the recreational part-time workers’ antipathy toward the deal stemmed from a recent arbitrator’s decision that harmonized downwards pay, hours and recognition of expertise still lingering from the amalgamation of city workers in 1998. a fourth unit representing part-time employees of long-term care homes and services facilities also rejected some aspects of the new agreement due to a reduction of work hours and ongoing scheduling conflicts, but that dispute was sent to binding arbitration as these workers are deemed “essential.” as the experiences of labour history generally and local 79 in particular have shown, small concessions beget larger concessions and unless workers are prepared to take job action, they will be hard pressed to resist demands for future concessions.8 unfortunately, while the city of toronto may have drawn important lessons from the experiences of 2009, locals 79 and 416 seem to be undergoing a slow-motion death by a thousand cuts. in other words, locals 79 and 416 continue to travel down a road paved with concessions without a cohesive strategy or political pushback to match the state’s and capital’s offensives. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 130 carlo fanelli lessons (not) learned: labour’s last gasp or comeback? since the 1980s, the centre of gravity in the canadian labour movement has gradually shifted from one centred in the predominantly “blue-collar” private sector to one increasingly centred in the “white-collar” public sector and female-led. with some 70 percent of the public sector still unionized, compared to about 16 percent in the private sector, the attacks on public sector unionism threatens to consolidate the defeat of labour (ross & savage, 2013). in light of the string of concessions for locals 79 and 416, it was clear that the city of toronto had drawn important lessons from the experiences of 2009. equally important, it was evident the city, unlike the union, was thinking in broader class terms. with more than 250 cupe locals bargaining across canada, municipalities and capital were watching closely as the experiences of toronto served as a template for other jurisdictions preparing to take on their public sector workers. “municipalities will pay attention to what’s happening here,” argued deputy mayor doug holyday. “[this round of bargaining is] the defining experience in our city’s recent history,” he added. and, “it hasn’t been done [in the public sector],” added councillor denzil minnan-wong, “no one else had the balls.” (ridler, 2012; grant, 2012). in place of labour radicalism, then, it has been state militancy that has seized the moment and adapted to the conditions of recession and austerity. as one executive member of local 79’s bargaining committee put it, unions have not adapted to the conditions of the 21st century which require a new radicalized approach. “now i know what it feels like to be an autoworker.” (personal communication 1, 2013). indeed, in an ambitious strategy more than a year in the making the city undertook a number of important initiatives that require further thought. first, in order to avoid summer bargaining (and potentially a summer strike with garbage once again lining the streets), the city served notice to begin bargaining to local 416 (which includes waste disposal workers) months in advance of the contract expiring. as part of the strategy, the aim was to divide and separate from one another different locals, especially the largest, local 79, whose contracts expired around the same time.9 second, the city put together an aggressive negotiating team stacked with management firm lawyers with vast amounts of experience extracting concessions from unionized workers. this assisted the city in successfully establishing the tone of bargaining early as they engaged in a public relations campaign to delegitimate and marginalize locals 79 and 416 (grant, 2012). third, rather than lock out workers, the city of toronto threatened to unilaterally impose contracts and alter the terms of employment. this was an unprecedented move by a canadian municipality, although it shares precedent with moves first undertaken in the u.s. industrial sector and later deployed by various tiers of government (fletcher & gapasin, 2008; moody, 1997). its legality, however, has not been established in the canadian public sector.10 fourth, in the event of a strike the city was prepared to implement a sixmonth contingency plan, which they did not have back in 2009. the city studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base 131 was prepared to install hundreds of cameras at different picket sites and implement a waste management plan that would establish trash drop-off sites at yards and arena parking lots rather than city parks. collectively, these strategies worked brilliantly to stifle, undermine and get the better of locals 79 and 416. it should also, once and for all, expose the limitations of cupe’s, the locals’ and the toronto and york region labour council’s excessive emphasis on lobbying individual councillors. councillors’ first priority is to get re-elected and, as the 2009 round of bargaining with a labour-friendly “social-democratic” mayor and “progressive council” showed, individual councillor support often hinges on broader public opinion (fanelli, 2014a; kipfer & saberi, 2014; carson & siemiatycki, 2014). in light of recurring concessions, the question then is: what are cupe as a union and specifically locals 79 and 416 prepared to do? how might unions rebuild their capacities while renewing an emphasis on working class politics? with the backing of ruling class circles, mayor ford and conservative councillors continue to push a program of austerity infused with a deeply racialized, gendered and classed form of authoritarian populism (kipfer & saberi, 2014). considering the concerted attacks against labour, should unions wish to regain their once-prominent role in the pursuit of social justice and workplace democracy, they will need to take the risks of organizing working class communities and fighting back while they still have some capacity to do so or risk continuing the decades-long labour impasse and union decline. in my view, this requires a radicalized perspective that seeks to develop both alternative policies and an alternative politics rooted in the working class. the failure to do so may consolidate an impending class defeat. in what follows, i outline some thoughts on strategy that might aid in developing a radicalized labour movement and left politics. it is a well known truism that exclusion from the benefits of unionization often builds resentment which has been made more intense in a neoliberalized landscape where the social welfare state has been dismantled. a genuine engagement requires taking stock of this dismantling and how badly and disproportionately it is affecting poor people and marginalized communities. rebuilding unions and renewing working class politics must engage directly with that resentment if it is to counter the drumbeats of austerity and retrenchment (fanelli, 2014c). future contract negotiations will not only be the test of the ford agenda and whether conservatives can consolidate their hold over council, but will reveal whether the toronto and canadian labour movement as a whole is up to the task of fighting back. in the absence of such a fight back, mayor ford and council, with the support of toronto’s and canada’s ruling classes, will continue to be forceful with respect to layoffs, service cuts, asset sell-offs and attacks against labour. this setting requires some exploratory thinking on a progressive labour strategy, in particular for cupe locals 79 and 416, given the harsh fact that the economic crisis has so far strengthened reactionary forces and efforts to reconstruct neoliberal policy frameworks. of course, such rethinking also has broader implications for unions and community activists as a whole. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 132 carlo fanelli first, previous strikes by local 79 and 416 have made it painfully clear that the locals cannot go into bargaining alone. even with the limited support of cupe national, community groups, social justice activists and other progressive unions, the mobilizational capacities, resources, organization, community and political support were not sufficient. as one activist member of local 79 put it, “the new leadership is doing a much better job with outreach and advocacy, but it is not enough. what’s worse, if federal legislation like allowing secret ballots during strikes, banning the use of dues for so-called political purposes, requiring increased financial disclosure by unions, removal of the rand formula, and right-to-work legislation passes, cupe could lose up to 20 percent of its membership. in ontario we’re in serious trouble... as if it wasn’t already bad enough! we’re talking about the survival of collective bargaining here...” (personal communication 2, 2013). transforming our unions internally and solidifying their relationships to others affected by the concerted push for austerity means not only building on the successes of earlier struggles (carson & siemiatycki, 2014) but also confronting the shortcomings of previous strategies. calls for solidarity without substance are mere posturing, just as militancy for militancy’s sake is reactionary and might well pave the way for future defeats. the challenge confronting locals 79/416 and other unionized workers is to take the necessary steps in order to avoid sounding militant but then reproducing the status quo. in other words, issues around rank-and-file mobilization, sustaining engagement and deepening coalitions beyond defensive struggles are central to (re)building workers’ political and organizational capacities. while strikes can be explosions of class consciousness, the working class solidarity they generate rarely gathers momentum beyond the immediate event (mann, 1973). hence, while strikes may lead workers to question the unequal relationship between employers and employees, those concerns rarely translate into a coherent awareness of class differences and class struggles, let alone critical assessments of deficiencies in the political structure or capitalist system. militancy alone rarely accomplishes much beyond spontaneous bursts of discontent and may well be constrained by workplace particularism. indeed, bursts of “militant particularism” might fizzle just as quickly as they erupted (williams, 1989; mann, 1973; harvery, 1996). while strikes are certainly important and can go a long way toward galvanizing broader community support in defense of decent jobs, the challenge is to connect these seemingly particular or localized concerns to a broader political project that makes clear the relationship between individual subjectivities and structural forms of oppression. as elucidated by harvey, the paradox of militant particularism is that it often develops amongst one group of workers at the expense of workers elsewhere, stifling a more universal working class, socialist consciousness and movement across space or particular locales. moderating expectations and seeking to arrive at an equal partnership with so-called responsible politicians and businesses in the hope that labour will gain a seat at the table have been proven time and again over the course of history to be fool’s gold. rather, as recently argued by sam gindin (2013, p. 244), ‘the radical is studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base 133 increasingly the only thing that is practical…’ as part of dealing with past failures, cupe locals 79 and 416 must come to the bitter realization that the existing way of doing things simply is not working anymore. although a product of historical differentiation among blue-collar and white-collar workers, cupe locals 79 and 416 will need to seriously consider merging and doing away with what are otherwise arbitrary and eroding distinctions between its workers. their independent and collective futures depend on it. other unions have partly recognized the impasse and taken similar steps (stanford, 2013). many of the positions of cupe locals 79/416’s workers often intersect, are co-dependent and take place in the same location. additionally, the terms of one local’s contract often set the terms of pattern bargaining for other locals, so they have a vested interest in one another just as they do with other unionized city workers (e.g. library workers, police11, fire, toronto hydro, etc). confronting austerity means rethinking sectional divisions among unionized workers. second, as a public strategy, the issues of bargaining and keeping services and assets public should be at the centre of the unions’ demands. this message might help to reveal linkages between the users and producers of services as well as the shortcomings of past examples of privatization and contracting-out (armstrong et al., 2001; loxley, 2010). advocating for public services would need to demonstrate their superior quality while acknowledging existing shortcomings and putting forward alternative solutions for making them better that enhance democratic participation and are not market-oriented. this could be framed as not wanting to hand ownership and control over to the “1 percent” and questions of democratic decision-making. local 79’s “taking care of toronto” radio, internet, billboards and television ads are a good start, as is local 416’s campaign for public services, but the limitations of media public relations campaigns need to be made clear. there are no substitutes for face-to-face interactions and civic engagement, and these need to happen within the workplace and extend into the city’s neighbourhoods. rebuilding trade union capacities and working class politics requires integrating as well as going beyond social media campaigns and engaging in the concrete struggles of labour and community groups, including protests, sit-ins, workplace and public space takeovers, minimum-wage and “good jobs” campaigns. in an era of unprecedented income inequality and labour degradation, keeping the public service could be tied to the growth of precarious work, youth unemployment, higher minimum wage campaigns and general social insecurity tapping into a wellspring of discontent. third, past experiences have shown garbage collection to be a lightning rod for public and media disdain. although representative of a minority of workers on strike, it is without question the most visible and conflict-ridden source of frustration. preventing torontonians from disposing of their waste is also the most politically volatile and, in my view, foolish of tactics. in addition to exposing what happened in other similar cases of contracting-out garbage collection – underbidding and then falling services and escalating costs (tea, 2011) – the locals needs to tie the issue of waste management studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 134 carlo fanelli to climate change, public health and sanitation. but preventing communities which might otherwise be on the side of workers by prohibiting them from getting rid of their waste is not only a poor strategic move but reinforces the portrayal of unionized workers by the media, management and others as indifferent to the needs of the communities they serve. furthermore, preventing community members from disposing of their waste will do little to disrupt the functioning of the city’s day-to-day activities. as was obvious in 2009, despite 39 days on strike, the city could have gone on for months more filling waste yards. alongside the public’s obvious frustration, a majority of workers do not work in waste disposal, which meant, for example, that recreational staff, ems workers, water, parks and road maintenance workers, animal services, child and elder care workers, public health nurses and social workers with little to no experience with waste disposal, were tasked with shutting down these facilities and devoting their energies in arguably futile ways. perhaps there is a way of using these highly skilled workers’ knowledge and abilities in ways that demonstrate their important contributions to city services. in other words, is there a way of utilizing striking workers so that a broader connection can be made between services and communities, privatization and public goods? in 2009, there were certainly other picket lines throughout the city that demonstrated this, such as those at social services centres and councillors’ offices, which suggests that only new forms of strike action could reorient the public’s perception away from the stigma of a “garbage strike” and toward a strike about keeping services public.12 fourth, locals 79 and 416 continue to struggle with moving beyond the limitations of past strikes and rethinking the way union organizing needs to adjust to the new climate of austerity bargaining. past experiences suggest that local 79 has had great difficulty creating a larger rank-and-file bargaining team that does not rely exclusively on executive-led mandates. while part of this is simply a matter of logistics, it is also a matter of trade union praxis and political culture. top-down bargaining is a recipe for disaster and only an active and engaged membership will be able to lead from below. there are, of course, no simple and immediate solutions to democratizing and rebuilding workers’ political capacities. workers are not inherently radical or conservative but adapt to the structured conditions they encounter daily; thus politicization is always a process in motion. in this regard, attempting to democratize the union will require rebuilding relationships, educational and political capacities across not only the many layers and segments inside of the union, but also in the relationship of the union to the left outside of organized labour, including the radical intelligentsia. this also speaks to the need to rebuild the small, fragmented and isolated left outside of organized labour, thereby broadening the terrain of labour and social justice activism (gindin, 2013). fifth, the turn in the “social-democratic” miller regime toward neoliberalism already demonstrated that the old clientalistic relations between union leaders and progressive city councillors is long gone. even studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base 135 individually supportive councillors could do little to prevent the decline of city services, selling-off of assets or the consolidation of neoliberalism across municipal sectors. rather, a much more engaged and working class-centred strategy for locals 79 and 416 is necessary if the focus is going to be on building active solidarity. for example, groups of union members could go on a door-to-door educational campaign to residents and local businesses in the community informing them of members’ issues and in turn take stock of community concerns. while there will certainly be resistance from some residents and likely businesses, this could form part of an ongoing strategy for the union to develop the collective educational and political capacities of its members in addition to deeper ties with social justice and community groups. this could aid in not simply building connections within the groups that exist but also in developing the competencies and memberships of these groups as well to challenge the daily barrage of taken-for-granted neoliberal assumptions regarding public services, unions, taxation and so forth. all in all, creating a bolder public image means mobilizing members to make the connections between the services they provide and the communities they serve more visible. sixth, a greater emphasis needs to be placed on urbanizing left strategy and tactics (kipfer & saberi, 2014; macdonald 2013). i offer one example which may be worthy of further discussion. since community centres are located at the heart of various neighbourhoods, they serve as pivotal spaces for the exchange of information and discussion. why not reclaim or occupy community centres as central spaces of the community via city providercommunity user alliances? the unwillingness to place such options on the agenda have had significant implications for other unionized workers (rosenfeld, 2013). unless locals are prepared to force the issue onto the public agenda, such as occupying or reclaiming in the public interest a community centre would do, there can be little hope for the development of a mobilized and class-conscious movement fighting on behalf of their communities. the political potential of an “occupy” community centre in coordination with community groups and activists, particularly in light of hundreds of millions in service cuts and tens of millions in new user-fees since the election of rob ford, is rife for all sorts of political openings.13 but militant job actions are not enough. they need to be tied to different visions of the union and the city as a whole, ones that challenge the structural constraints of neoliberalism and the democratic shortcomings of liberal capitalism. this might lead to communities demanding more decision-making power over the programs and events being held at their community centres, parks and public spaces, leafleting campaigns outside recreation and daycare centres, child and elder care facilities, public health and social assistance centres. these concerns could be communicated by pressuring local councillors, sitins, park protests, educationals and the creation of community caucuses made up of labour, social justice and other activists. since the latter would be locally rooted, the potential exists for city-wide alliances and the development of a collective set of demands to begin thinking about and strategizing around. in studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 136 carlo fanelli short, job actions should be about most effectively demonstrating the many skills and competencies of city workers in ways that connect them with the communities they are rooted in, and the value in keeping them public. history has shown that this is not only possible but most successful.14 finally, in addition to uniting with other unions’ campaigns for public services, there may be ways of coordinating action with other community groups such as the toronto environmental alliance, workers action centre, ontario coalition against poverty, social planning toronto and others in ways that reinforce existing campaigns or take on initiatives that the unions are not in a position to do. rebuilding trade union capacities and working class politics in ways that mutually reinforce critical struggles in and around communities works on a number of intersecting levels. because neoliberalism not only subjugates and attacks working people but integrates and builds upon workers’ interdependencies, a successful project for union renewal must aim to rebuild not only the capacities of its members but those of the working class as a whole (camfield, 2011; fletcher & gapasin, 2008; kumar & schenk, 2006; turner & cornfield, 2007). as part of this process, a renewed left would need to have connections both inside and outside of the labour movement and seek to link these issues across workplaces, engage in political debates and organize across communities. this requires working to build the capacities of the entire union to fight back against concessionary demands, developing a movement inside the union that pushes for enhanced democratic participation and control, a radically feminist, antiracist, class struggle-oriented political praxis that engages with the struggles of the broader community, and educational efforts intent on building a cadre of workers and activists that embody both intellectual understanding and engagement..15 as a final point, two recent experiences illustrate the importance of an anti-capitalist perspective both within trade unions and to the left outside of organized labour. under the leadership of the caucus of rank and file educators (core), the chicago teachers union (ctu) has recently moved in the direction of a radicalized labour approach which played a central role in combating the forces of privatization and corporate education reform (brogan, 2014; sustar, 2014). likewise, although not a union struggle (although certainly union-influenced and generally supported), the quebec student/popular movement of 2012 is suggestive. led by the coalition large de l’association pour une solidarité syndicale (classe), many engaged activists were anti-capitalists and the perspective that unified classe—and was widely communicated throughout the movement—was largely anti-neoliberal with important segments of anti-capitalist activism and infused with a deep undercurrent of class politics (ayotte-thompson & freeman, 2012; choudry & shragge, 2013; solty, 2012). these two examples, while recent exceptions, illustrate the significance of a radicalized anti-capitalist approach for both labour and social justice activism in combating the austerity agenda and rekindling demands for social justice. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base 137 conclusion and directions for future research the city of toronto has been in a steady state of decline in the quality of its public planning, services and infrastructure for several decades now. the foremost strategy of the ford administration is to try and make do with even fewer public spaces and to leave as much room as possible for market forces to accommodate the continual pressures of urban growth. notwithstanding ford’s own personal controversies, the conservative political agenda at city hall continues largely unabated. unions alone are incapable of posing alternative social and political strategies that reject corporatism. this requires a radicalized labour movement, left of social democracy, that can serve as a nodal point of community engagement and place a range of alternatives on the public agenda. despite cascading series of defeats, however, this is not yet happening within the mainstream of organized labour. like labour generally, the left in toronto continues to be divided into a panoply of coalitions without any coherence of strategy or programme. changing this will require a radicalized labour and social justice movement that transcends activist sub-cultures, makes political demands and builds organizational capacities that are locally entrenched and territorially expanded. without a strong municipal union strategy, deeply rooted in the community and forging new relationships with workers providing specific services and the users of those services, indications suggest toronto city council will continue down this hard right agenda with the avid support of ruling class circles. toronto civic workers face a historic test which may well set a precedent nationally, given the pivotal place of civic workers in public sector unions. future research will need to assess to what extent urban labour struggles in toronto mirror those in other cities and other regions. given the pressures of urban austerity, how have other municipal unions fared in their negotiations with the city of toronto? are there certain segments (e.g. women, racialized workers) and services of the public sector disproportionately affected (e.g. librarians, recreation staff) or unaffected (e.g. police, fire)? if so, why or why not? how might union-community initiatives in other unions deepen and extend a revitalization of working class politics? what new political openings offer hope? considering the multiplicity of pressures, time will tell if a major resistance is in the cards. notes 1 carlo fanelli is an instructor and sshrc postdoctoral research fellow. thanks are due to the editors and anonymous reviewers of studies in social justice for their important suggestions, greg albo and sam gindin for comments on earlier drafts, as well as the social sciences and humanities research council for funding this research. all errors are, of course, my own. 2 recent scholarship regarding the growing spread of precarious work is also revealing new insights. lewchuck et al. (2011) propose that the labour market may be in the midst of a major shift in the interrelationship between production and social reproduction. their data suggests that men’s and women’s employment experiences are becoming studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 138 carlo fanelli increasingly similar. however, for the most part, this is not due to the improvement of women’s employment opportunities and wages, but the result of the general downward convergence of wages and working conditions across the labour market. in other words, disparities typically associated with “feminized labour” are being replaced by dual precarious-earner households. as they argue, “white male workers can no longer assume that secure labour market positions are theirs, while new opportunities for hidden forms of both gender and racial privileging/discrimination have merged in the less secure segments of the labour market, in the pay differences, constant scheduling, and rehiring/firing of temporary and contingent work” (lewchuk et al., 2011, p. 94). 3 public sector unionism in canada remains generally understudied. for an introduction to canadian public sector unions see ross and savage, 2013 as well as panitch and swartz, 2003, and swimmer and thompson, 1995 for earlier explorations. 4 section 92(8) of the constitution act grants the provinces complete authority over municipalities. without the transfer of any administrative or fiscal supports like the ability to go into debt, print money and implement a range of tax measures (e.g. income, corporate, sales, resource and import taxes), municipalities rely predominantly on property taxes to raise revenue outside of federal and provincial transfers. and from this they must provide for their public utilities, public works, parks and recreational facilities, waste management, transit services, public housing and a whole range of other social and community services. furthermore, because ontario municipalities are prohibited from running a deficit, yearly budgets are regularly cost-crunching exercises as city councils seek to balance uncertain revenues with fluctuating demands for city services. as a consequence, the threat of fiscal bankruptcy distinguishes urban governance from national and provincial politics (fanelli, 2014b). 5 traditionally whiteand pink-collar workers, local 79 is the largest municipal local in canada with a membership of 18,000, although various contingent, seasonal and parttime workers push estimates of membership upwards to 24,000. local 416 is primarily made up of blue-collar workers and has approximately 6,200 members. together, they work in areas of public health and education, child and elder care, parks, recreation, water treatment, emergency medical services, as well as housing and court services, road maintenance, by-law and safety enforcement, building inspection, animal rescue, waste collection and social services administration. some 79/416 members were deemed “essential” (e.g. ems workers) and did not strike. approximately 70 percent of local 79’s members are women, with some 50 percent representative of historically racialized groups. at least half are employed in part-time, seasonal and contingent forms of employment, with inconsistent hours and without the supplemental health benefits enjoyed by full-time employees. 6 parts of this section are drawn from fanelli, 2014a where they are explored in greater detail. 7 in fact, the election of rob ford owes a great deal to the debacle of 2009 as he explicitly campaigned on reigning-in allegedly overgenerous wages and benefits, and reducing the “gravy train” at city hall. rob ford has been very clear that “the gravy is in the number of employees we have at city hall.” no evidence of irresponsible spending, inefficient service delivery and unproductive workers has been found, yet city employees and the users of its services are now being characterized as dependents of the state. toronto’s public service has already been reduced by more than 2,300 workers, mostly through attrition and leaving vacancies unfilled since ford took office. in 2012, the city announced 1,200 layoffs, with plans to further reduce the city’s 50,000 person workforce by another 5,000 positions by the october 2014 election (dale, 2011). 8 toronto public library workers’ contracts expired around the same time as locals 79 and 416. half of the 1,500 cupe local 4948 members are employed part-time and three-quarters are women. the city was essentially trying to rollover the parameters of the 79/416 contract, which would build on the prior elimination of 100 positions and sought to cut 10 percent from the library’s operating budget. local 4948 positions have been reduced by 17 percent since amalgamation, even though toronto public library usage grew 29 percent. part-time members have difficulty securing full-time work, and rarely qualify for benefits; even though they must pay 40 percent of those benefits, only 22 percent qualify. a major sticking point throughout negotiations was the city’s studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 toronto civic workers bargaining without a base 139 trying to remove a clause that made seniority a factor in assigning part-time shifts, as well as a clause that prohibited layoffs in the event of technological displacement or the elimination of positions. having reached an impasse, on march 18, 2012, local 4948 struck. the union received much more widespread public support and media sympathy than did locals 79/416. eleven days later the strike was ended with a new agreement. under the terms of the new four-year deal, full-time and part-time workers are protected from layoffs after eleven years (unlike 79/416s 15 years) seniority. local 4948 members also received a lump sum payment of 1.5 percent in 2012, 0.225 in 2013, 1.75 in 2014 and 2.25 in 2015 as well as the creation of some new full-time positions. it is important to note that back loading wage increases to the final year of the contract is an insidious strategy on the part of employers used to manufacture a financial crisis using the uptick in wages as a rationale. there have yet to be any scholarly post-strike assessments. 9 a lack of coordination among cupe locals was compounded because local 79 was in the process of electing a new president and executive. local 79, or the other two cupe locals bargaining 4948 and 2998 for example, could have served notice to begin bargaining earlier but they did not, which may have been a significant strategic mistake. 10 in canada, this tactic was brought to light in ontario when college administrators threatened to unilaterally impose the terms of the agreement unless unionized instructors accepted concessions in 2009-10. after forcing a contract on instructors, just 51 percent of the union accepted the agreement (cbc, 2010). in a similar fashion, unless cupe locals accepted the terms of the agreement, the city made clear it would simply implement their final offer. the union could then either strike completely, implement rotating strikes, work-to-rule, or choose to continue bargaining with the city. 11 indicative of the authoritarian neoliberalism at city hall and so-called tough-on-crime approach, in 2011 toronto police were awarded an 11.5 percent wage increase (about $100 million) over four years. with this in mind, locals 79 and 416 and other unionized workers in the city of toronto need to make clear the class function and repressive nature of police work and begin a discussion about why not all city workers are treated equally, as the outcome of these negotiations seem to suggest. 12 consider child care and recreation. ford has been very clear in suggesting that toronto’s 24,000 child care spaces should be privatized. council recently moved to eliminate 2,000 subsidized spaces that were previously cost-shared with the province. as such, affordable child care remains one of the most sorely needed services in the city (and the country) with nearly 20,000 children still wait-listed. what’s more, in 2011 the chair of the community development and recreation committee, giorgio mammoliti, argued that the city should get out of the business of directly providing childcare and recreational services, suggesting that elimination of programs or contracting-out was preferable. with over 650 city-subsidized child care centres in the city, local 79 could have made this a real public services and media issue and engaged directly in a campaign with parents and caregivers to “keep the service public” while drawing attention to the crisis in affordable child and afterschool care more generally. 13 additionally, for example, local 79 might look to take a more interventionalist approach in the communities its members serve. since animal services is an important part of the city, what if union headquarters or community centres, parks, public spaces, etc., held ‘animal information events’ and gave community members an opportunity to bring their animals out so that they could ask questions, creating relationships between workers and community members, and publicizing the other services workers supply. or perhaps offered health and fitness assessments provided by healthcare professionals, questions for child and elder care workers, discussions with city architects, planners and transit specialists, etc. these are just a few small-scale examples that might offer a more effective use of workers’ diverse skill sets, which could form part of a broader public relations and engagement strategy. 14 recently, striking museum workers in ottawa and gatineau put together regular cultural events that normally would have taken place inside the museum, but held them outside instead. these events were open to the public and provided the workers with an opportunity to organize and work together on the picket line in a fulfilling way. the successful execution of the events, such as the one honouring veterans on remembrance day and the “picket line tea party” held in celebration of prince charles’ visit to canada studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 2, 2014 140 carlo fanelli contributed in a substantial way to workers’ ability to maintain their spirits throughout the strike. the events also demonstrated the skill and creativity of workers to the public, as well as presented them as a valuable and productive force. this was especially clear when the museum of civilization opened the “afghanistan: hidden treasures” exhibit and the workers created their own featuring themselves and entitled “striking treasures.” as striking workers gained confidence through concerted action, and the support of the community mounted, there was a clear turn toward a more class conscious unionism as the connections between the employed and unemployed, communities and workplaces, became all the more clear. see fanelli and lefebvre, 2011. see also the experiences of cleaners in the city of toronto, carson and siemiatycki, 2014. 15 efforts to democratize local 79 have resurfaced at many different points over the last decade. the most recent was in response to the failure of 2009. a core of activist members with a commitment to social justice began the local 79 reform caucus. after a few months of organizing, however, the caucus stagnated then disappeared owing to worker burnout due to a disproportionate share of organizing borne by a small group of members. the reasons for how and why such reform movements fail or succeed and the challenges they encounter are important areas of future research. references albo, g. 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(2007). “doing something meaningful”: gender and public service during municipal government restructuring. gender, work and organization, 14(2), 162-184 studies in social justice volume 3, issue 1, 79-97, 2009 correspondence address: alice hills, school of politics and international studies, botany house 2.07, university of leeds, leeds, ls2 9jt, uk, tel.: +44 (0)113 343 6822, email: a.e.hills@leeds.ac.uk issn: 1911-4788 security as a selective project alice hills school of politics and international studies, university of leeds abstract security is a selective project that is typically understood, produced and expressed in terms of differentiation and exclusion; it is rarely for all. this is notably so in post-conflict cities such as baghdad and basra, where the principal political weapons are coercion and intimidation, territoriality is a significant facet of security’s physical dimension and exclusionary tendencies, and security’s referent object is an ethnic or sectarian identity or group. friction exists between the multiple perspectives and interests concerned, and concessions and trade-offs are essential. even so, it is probably not possible to develop citywide security, or, indeed, a comprehensive understanding that integrates state, sub-state (that is, factional) and individual security. trends in iraqi policing support this interpretation. international efforts to use a reformed public police to rebalance the provision of security more equitably are accordingly unrealistic. anyone considering post-conflict cities is struck by the extent to which security is the central point around which debate and competition take place. security’s absence or fragility dominates the lives of all those living or operating in cities such as baghdad and basra in the aftermath of the u.s.-led invasion of 2003, while the recruitment and responsibilities of those expected to restore, enforce or maintain security are manipulated by international actors and indigenous strongmen alike. at the same time, security is a multi-faceted social phenomenon, incorporating individual and public aspects and spaces, and its meaning accommodates multiple interpretations. international militaries impose minimal levels of street-level security in order to protect their own forces, and because they want to hand over responsibility to an indigenous public police as soon as it is practically or politically appropriate to do so. meanwhile local strongmen and sectarian militia use physical security to shape the conduct of individuals and groups in furtherance of personal or exclusionary objectives. the poor or vulnerable are more aware of security’s physical dimension: security means that they are not forcibly displaced, raped, robbed, kidnapped, mutilated, tortured or killed. common security projects, or projects that can be extended to all inhabitants, are rare, if not impossible. typically, security is enjoyed by a few in isolation, or by specific groups in certain neighbourhoods. this may be a short-term solution, which creates the conditions for insecurity in the long-term, but the strongmen, sectarian militia and gangs seeking to access city resources do not think in the long term. they 80 alice hills studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 are more concerned about manipulating security as early as possible. neither do they share liberal democracies’ inability to decide whether security is a common or selective project. they are more aware that in the long-term security can be defined only in terms of the system of political competition that has grown up inside the city or country concerned (lee, 1969, p. 9). hence the selective and manipulative nature of security provision, and the mosaic of insecurity and injustice that results. it makes analytical sense to explore these issues in the context of cities, for security is a relational issue (it cannot exist in isolation), and cities are a uniquely human environment built on networks of relationships. this is not to suggest that the dynamics of urban security provision are sufficiently different to justify treating urban and rural security as separate categories. rather, it is to argue that cities have a political, cultural and physical value that rural areas lack, so the presence or absence of security takes on a special significance. further, urbanization is associated with demographic change, which typically leads to the emergence of the youthful but alienated populations commonly linked to instability and insecurity. in other words, cities’ known history means that they offer a laboratory in which to trace the social and political continuities moulding the provision of security. cities offer discrete case studies of security, of who provides it, and how, and whose needs are prioritized. based on the paradigmatic examples of baghdad and basra, i argue that security is rarely (if ever) for all. in iraq, security is, as in most post-conflict cities, based on relations of domination and coercion, rather than shared norms, and is typically produced and expressed in terms of differentiation and exclusion. the time frame used runs from april 2003, when u.s. forces took baghdad and uk forces occupied basra, to 2007, and the emphasis is on the early months of the occupation, when the coalition provisional authority (cpa) sought to ensure its own security. but iraq’s chronic insecurity makes it impossible to tell whether the post-conflict period ended in june 2004, when the us formally handed sovereignty to an interim government, or in may 2005 when the first democratically elected iraqi government was sworn in, or in late 2007, when a surge in u.s. troop numbers dramatically reduced insurgent attacks. there were improvements throughout this period, but they tended to be local; the presence of u.s. troops damped down violence, which then migrated to areas with fewer troops. damningly, johns hopkins bloomberg school of public health estimated that some 655,000 people died in iraq between 2003 and 2005 (johns hopkins, 2006). this suggests that the nature, shape, functions, and dynamics of urban security are determined by cities being a uniquely human environment, in which the most significant threats tend to be manmade. consequently, the greatest insight into the meaning of security in an urbanizing world is not via notions relating to long-term concerns such as human security. rather, it is to be found via the classic question: when and where do i feel safe? the case of iraq is for such reasons significant. it enables us to explore classic empirically-based questions concerning security in terms of for whom and from what; about whether the concerns of the state should be prioritized over those of individuals or of groups based on religious or sectarian divisions, and individuals over groups or vice versa; and whether or not the various approaches may be combined into a coherent and meaningful whole, or whether one is dependent on the other. iraq makes clear, too, that international efforts to rebalance security provision security as a selective project 81 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 by using public police as a tool for social engineering are unrealistic, for police behaviour reflects the friction existing between multiple indigenous (as well as international) perspectives and interests. this argument is developed in five sections, which address three basic questions: how is security understood? how is it produced? how is it expressed? the first section notes how crosscutting environmental issues affect the understanding, production and distribution of security. of these, exclusion and territoriality are key. the second section considers the provision of security by police, while the third identifies ways in which crime and policy incoherence affect security provision. the fourth section discusses two dominant responses evident in iraqi cities, which are ghettoization in baghdad, and sectarianism in basra. section five concludes that the only certainty is that security (both for those who provide it, and often for those who want it) means whatever powerful actors make of it. understanding security security is a multi-faceted and fetishized concept (neocleous, 2000, p. xii). there are always marked differences between the security priorities and practices of military forces, international police advisers, indigenous police and the populace in post-conflict cities, but definitions of security are now commonly stretched to incorporate a range of meanings that include food, water, health and environmental issues for both individuals and communities. this is to some extent reasonable, for security is often defined situationally and contextually. hence the american troops who drove around baghdad “announcing in a loudspeaker ‘security for us in return for electricity for you’” (abdelhadi, 2003). even so, it downplays three of the most significant characteristics of security: its relational, physical and territorial aspects. security cannot exist in isolation; it is always defined in relation to something or someone. it is not a resource that can be banked, but must be manipulated and managed. further, security’s meaning is defined broadly or narrowly, according to context. coalition authorities publicly defined security broadly in the sense of it being developed for “the iraqi people,” and in 2003, dyncorp received $50 million for the first year of a contract to create a new iraqi police. but the coalition’s understanding of security was really about force protection, the safety of coalition officials, and exit strategy. additionally, while security provision was localized by indigenous sectarian militia, it was fragmented by coalition authorities that subcontracted it to organizations and groups ranging from private security companies (pscs) such as dyncorp to sheiks or sunni groups capable of securing their own areas against insurgents. the resultant ambiguities ensured that security became a politically flexible notion. thus pscs were used to provide security for the head of the cpa, escort supply convoys, defend key locations in baghdad’s green zone, and also to interrogate prisoners. twenty-seven of the 37 interrogators involved in the abuse of prisoners at abu ghraib prison belonged to caci international, a virginiabased private contractor, and 22 of the linguists who assisted them were from the california-based titan international. such civilian employers were effectively unaccountable, for they were not subject to military law or the geneva conventions, and bremer had issued an order protecting them from local prosecution. 82 alice hills studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 nonetheless, while this suggests that security’s meaning may shift to reflect political contingencies, or, indeed, renewed fighting, inadequate food supplies, or the looting of hospitals, all of which refocus priorities, its primary meaning refers to something more physical, territorial and exclusionary. western democracies may favour universalizing and inclusionary definitions, but security in the post-conflict city at least means that suicide bombers do not mutilate coalition troops, and the local population is not forcibly displaced, raped, robbed, kidnapped, tortured or killed. the application of broad notions such as community, “human security” and social justice (let alone emancipation, as in booth, 1991, p. 318) are of limited value in cities such as baghdad (“where the strong,” 2002) because the principal political weapons available are intimidation and violence. threats are usually physical, or to do with the elusive notion of “survival,” especially when cities are divided into ethnic or sectarian areas, and security’s referent object is an identity or group (compare ayoob, 1995; krause, 1998, p. 25). at a meeting between the un and the governor of afghanistan’s kandahar province in december 2002, the un’s officials spoke of building a civil society and a state, but the governor talked only of securing power in a continuing conflict (“where the strong,” 2002). connected to this is territoriality. territoriality is nowadays neglected, yet it is an integral facet of security’s physical dimension and exclusionary tendencies. it is about asserting control over specific localities in order to expand a dominant group’s space or restrict that of an adversary, and it tends to result in ghettoization (compare caldeira, 2000; hoffman, 2007; seekings, 2001). territoriality expressed sectarian ambitions and fears in baghdad, just as it prompted the use of communal terror to remap vukovar, sarajevo, and mostar after the balkan wars. its influence is equally evident in the actions of conventional security forces. it drove the u.s. seizure of iraq’s symbols of regime power (including police headquarters) in 2003, just as it underpins the israel defence force (idf)’s attempts to control palestinian movement by the destruction of palestinian houses, infrastructure, and cultural and administrative facilities. territoriality emphasizes that security’s meaning, production and provision are linked. understood in this sense, production may be as critical as understanding. paradigmatic cases of baghdad and basra baghdad, iraq’s capital, and basra, its strategically important second city, provide paradigmatic cases of these characteristics from several perspectives. first, security in both cities was ghettoized. just as the coalition authorities were walled off in baghdad’s green zone, so baghdad’s districts were purged, divided into isolated neighbourhoods by concrete walls, barriers and checkpoints, and guarded by factional militia and gunmen. similar trends are identifiable in basra. second, in both cities security was a symbol and a signal that had sense at many levels and referred to different things, but it was always understood in a brutally pragmatic fashion. it could not be otherwise. after four years of insurgency and civil conflict, a national government existed in name only, three million iraqis were internally displaced, some 3,000 were murdered each month, and many more were subject to security as a selective project 83 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 kidnapping, rape, extortion, and robbery. the iraqi police service (which was responsible for day-to-day policing) was little more than a sectarian militia, many of whose members were responsible for torture and extrajudicial killings (mccaffrey, 2007). this, despite receiving significant aid and support in kind from members of the u.s.-led coalition. the us alone spent $194 million on rebuilding the police and military during its year of occupation (barker, 2007), and by july 2006, the uk had disbursed £533 million to projects that included police training and mentoring (hansard, 2006). meanwhile japan had given about $1.5 billion in grant aid for comparable programs (“iraqi police,” 2005). iraq shows how the coalition’s neo-liberal ideals of co-operation and democratization collided with iraqi realities: greater baghdad’s estimated seven million inhabitants (and basra’s one million) understood security to mean the physical safety of themselves and their property. pragmatic modes of manipulation, negotiation and accommodation amongst and between factional leaders, international agents and the populace soon developed into consistent patterns of domination and exclusion. this led to a ghettoization of security whereby specific groups are secure only in specific areas. indeed, citywide security is rare because security (which is localized, superficial, and often temporary) is essentially the sum of myriad local arrangements. as baghdad and basra show, it is usually decided by mutually suspicious interactions between indigenous strong men, external agents, and influential sections of the populace (stewart, 2007). it is a web composed of myriad groups, some of which understand the cultural rules guiding iraqi (or american) behaviour and outcomes, and some of which do not. the key fact about security is that its provision is a practical business. coalition troops treated policing with a mix of ideology and pragmatism, especially once insurgency developed. the creation of a new police may have been part of the coalition’s strategy to bring democratic security to the iraqi people (and thereby allow troops to depart), but the impassive and taciturn troops concerned combined casual acceptance of u.s. military power with an inexperience and lack of interest in the region that dehumanized iraqis in their eyes (etherington, 2005, pp. 196, 208, 219). at the same time, coalition authorities consistently misunderstood the populace’s concerns. under saddam security had been enforced by special units, heavy armour and checkpoints, arbitrary mass arrests, blackmail, torture and execution by brutal and unpopular security forces. in contrast, the cpa implemented programs on human rights, free markets, feminism and constitutional reform (stewart, 2007, p. 82). but iraqis talked only of their own physical security. and insecurity was made worse by the cpa’s inability to control carjackings, kidnappings and the gangs smuggling diesel, and by the crumbling of traditional means of social control as young urban elites rejected sheiks who tried to reassert themselves (stewart, 2007, p. 7). but it is easy to overstate the significance of this, for (as etherington notes) one thing u.s. troops shared with iraqis was a practical understanding of security and policing. inevitably, many iraqis failed to see advantages in democracy, especially when it failed to provide protection, for their assessments were governed by “economic, social and local considerations, rather than national ones” (etherington, 2005, p. 85). almost all iraqis thought that the biggest economic problem—and a major source of insecurity in that addressing it required them to venture out into unsafe streets—was unemployment; at least half of working age men were out of 84 alice hills studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 work. iraqis were, however, unfazed by the abu ghraib scandal because that is how they thought the west always behaved. stewart notes the iraqis’ standard response to insecurity: “employ five times as many new policemen. get heavier weapons. impose curfews. set up checkpoints . . . establish secret services . . . be more brutal” (stewart, 2007, p. 87). security’s multiple meanings insecurity was partly caused by many iraqis being heavily armed, and partly by the stores of weapons and ammunition (including rocket-propelled grenades [rpgs], mortars and katyusha rockets) left behind by the ba’athist government. but it was worsened by the coalition’s inconsistent policies, which failed to control the deteriorating situation. one reason for the inconsistencies was that security had different meanings for the various actors involved. coalition forces defined it in terms of their own physical safety, military objectives and operational success; security was about force protection and minimal own casualties, and iraqi regulars, irregulars, and the urban terrain threatened it. to paraphrase ayoob, security was defined in relation to the vulnerabilities that threatened danger and disorder (ayoob, 1997, p. 130). but iraqis had a different understanding based on their functional needs; baghdad’s inhabitants understood security to mean the physical safety and protection of themselves and their possessions. shaping and managing this environment so as to achieve the coalition’s strategic objectives called for robust but consistent and non-inflammatory forms of policing. in theory, the coalition recognized its need to persuade iraqis to do what it wanted but in practice its approach to policing failed to achieve this. despite the rhetoric of freedom and liberty, the bush administration’s political vision and set of security practices were given public meaning and enabled by a specific and assertive rationality expressed in terms invoking punishment and pacification, or by appeals to democracy or the “iraqi people,” which failed to achieve its objectives. incoherence on the part of coalition authorities increased the exclusionary nature of security provision. the cpa treated democracy and capitalism as integrated concepts, and the cpa’s philosophy was that the iraqi police service (ips) would be democratically accountable, run according to modern principles of managerial efficiency and contemporary methods and technologies, and would ensure democratic forms of public order. however, policing was actually seen as secondary to economic development and a free market. also, washington assumed that conventional security could be provided independently of the relationship in which it was to be exercised. thus police were recruited regionally on the basis that this would match the ethnic and religious balance of a region, rather than (as was the case) allegiance to local political leaders. and there were deep differences of opinion between military advisers from u.s. forces and civilian advisers from the state department and department of justice (doj), too. assumptions about the transferability of training programs were similarly controversial. military advisers wanted to create a force capable of counter-insurgency, whereas civilian trainers wanted a lightly armed civilian police service that used western investigative standards and community-policing techniques to remove terrorists and criminals. security as a selective project 85 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 at the empirical level washington’s misunderstanding of the nature and potential role of policing and security governance as a strategic tool for managing its relations with iraqis contributed to its use of provocative policies that increased the insecurity it sought to manage. admittedly, washington repeatedly emphasized its need to develop formal and informal partnerships with iraqis so as to manage the prevailing insecurity (only then could the handover of sovereignty to iraqi authorities in june 2004 be permitted), but it consistently misunderstood the relationships underpinning meaningful security. so did its troops, especially in the early days. that they misunderstood the situation is not in itself surprising. they were war fighters who were neither trained nor equipped to perform police functions or to manage public security. however, baghdad was not the first time u.s. forces were confronted by a breakdown in public order, to which they responded heavy-handedly. outbreaks had occurred in the aftermath of u.s. interventions in panama, haiti, bosnia, and kosovo, where the american response had been similarly heavy-handed. also, u.s. forces posed a risk to police, whose security was not their concern. u.s. spokesmen referred to troops acting in self-defence when police were killed, but many international commentators took a less charitable view of the response pattern that continued throughout the occupation. a representative case concerned the 10 iraqi police who were killed in falluja in july 2003 when the cars in which they were chasing robbers ran into american soldiers who opened fire in a gun battle that lasted 45 minutes. this came at a time when the us was emphasizing the value of iraqi police co-operation in improving security across iraq. but u.s. forces were widely perceived to have adopted a provocative approach that led to a cycle of iraqi revenge attacks, retaliatory searches and mutual recrimination. in this way, u.s. actions were corrosive; troops were perceived to have killed or injured bystanders, accidentally or intentionally, while inadvertently or deliberately destroying property. the existence of multiple understandings of security affected the british response in basra too. the indifference of british forces to local politics, and their toleration of looting and sectarianism mean that security could never be more than partial as far as basrawis were concerned. there was no common understanding of what security meant, and there were matter-of-fact limits as to how it was interpreted. human rights watch recorded an extreme example in 2003: a christian woman begged british soldiers for protection after religious militia threatened to kill her: “tell her it’s not our jurisdiction,” they said (“life in basra,” 2003, p. 56). understanding was in this way tightly linked to production and provision, usually to the disadvantage of the insecure. providing security there is nothing new about insecurity and incoherent policies. what is new is today’s debate about who should provide city-wide security in the aftermath of international interventions, and the models on which it should be based. troops are often used, but the objective of most militaries is not security as such. rather, it is force protection and population identification and control. also, urban operations are notoriously challenging, so troops normally avoid cities whenever possible, and when they cannot they focus on a city’s terrain and density, and are suspicious of non-combatants, who may be hiding fighters. this may be a reason for the common 86 alice hills studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 western assumption that police are best placed to provide long-term security, for in the west, the police role is oriented to answering two questions: “how safe am i in the here and now?” and “how well ordered is my immediate environment” (innes, 2004). admittedly, indigenous police tend to be static and inert, and are most aware of threats to their own safety, ethnic tensions and local power relations, but cities are police’s workplace and livelihood. even so, retaining or controlling territory or key points is less important for police than for militaries, though police stations are useful as fortresses in which to hide or to keep prisoners. admittedly, many associations and factional groups offer policing in post-conflict cities. in maysan, for example, heavily armed militia known as emergency brigades had, along with other militia acting as islamist vigilantes, established their own security organizations as the war ended, and were soon the only effective security presence in the province (stewart, 2007, p. 423). nonetheless, the role of state police is most significant because it is qualitatively different in its symbolic power, residual position and regulatory potential (crawford, 2006, p. 137). police resources (and their parent ministries) are desirable prizes for local strong men, but also police are thought to facilitate control and monitoring, signal credibility for international and national regimes, and offer benefits and sanctions for the population at large that may ensure a city’s loyalty or acquiescence. against that, policing is shaped by the social realities of its host society: corrupt, brutal or criminalized cities produce corrupt, brutal and criminalized police. legacy issues matter, too, for they often mean that certain police cannot operate in certain areas, or that certain ethnic groups have never been recruited. despite this, liberal democracies think public police should, whenever possible, be responsible for functional security, and that policing models that respect the rights of all “citizens” and are responsive to their needs should be promoted. iraq tests such assumptions. it tests the extent to which inclusive forms of security can be provided, and also, whether democratic policing based on a close relationship between respectfulness, responsiveness and effectiveness has meaning in violent cities. for in iraq, as in most of the world, the police’s primary purpose is not crime fighting, reassurance or protection for the populace at large. it is regime representation and the regulation of social order. additionally, anecdotal evidence suggests that many iraqis believe that police must be allowed to violate rights if they are to ensure security. this belief is reinforced by the widespread conviction amongst police that there are certain criminal or dangerous classes that represent a threat to the broader social order, and which therefore deserve fewer rights. yet most international police advisers failed to question the transferability of their usual practices. ignoring iraqi realities, british police advisers argued that crowds could be controlled effectively but humanely by a small well trained lightly armed and citizen-friendly police service. they refused to allow the police to set up secret units or carry heavy weapons, and discussed instead the prospects of psychometric testing and genderawareness workshops for all (stewart, 2007, pp. 83, 324, 335). stewart tells how by the time the coalition authorities left the provincial capital of maysan (to the northwest of basra), the police had quadrupled in size, acquired heavier weapons, and, by establishing checkpoints every 500 yards up the highway, had brought some form of security. some large tribal gangs had lost power, and there were fewer carjackings, kidnappings, smuggling and protection rackets. only two security as a selective project 87 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 forces—the iranian-linked badr militia and the sadrists—remained outside the law. but “they were now the elected government” (stewart, 2007, p. 423). police as producers the first question paul bremer asked when he arrived in baghdad as head of the cpa a month after the 2003 war ended was: where are the police? (bremer, 2006). like most westerners, he expected the police to act as a cornerstone for democracy, and provide inclusive security, but this was never likely. there were no police in baghdad because officers had cast off or hidden their uniforms during the war, and the bureaucracy, buildings, procedures and political relationships on which the police institution was based were destroyed. nevertheless, many officers responded to u.s. appeals that they return to work, and by mid-april some manned joint patrols with u.s. soldiers. in may a former interior ministry official and ba’athist loyalist was appointed as baghdad’s police chief, though he was forced to resign a week later for refusing to implement procedures required by u.s. authorities (rai, 2003). the formal remit of the new ips was crime control, order maintenance, and assisting coalition forces (which retained responsibility for investigations involving terrorism and military crimes). bremer thought that it would be unacceptable to use police agencies associated with saddam’s regime, and one of the cpa’s first acts was to dissolve the ba’ath party and purge ba’athists from government positions. this left the police leaderless, with all that this implied for security provision. also, bremer underestimated the degree to which effective police depend on institutional structures. the ba’ath party permeated every level of iraq’s administration, and public and private life, so the policy of killing or detaining even local ba’ath leaders deepened the public security vacuum. so too did the policy of dismissing the many civil servants needed to support the police. insecurity appeared to deepen and widen, religious vigilantes soon created alternative local security systems, and looting and street crime were subsumed into a more pervasive security crisis. vetting ensured that ba’ath party members were purged, and international attention focused on “professionalizing” the new police, but little really changed. former senior and mid-level officers were removed, but most officers stayed in their stations, beating suspects and extorting bribes just as before the war, and, by 2007, sectarian militia groups infiltrated every level of policing. the interior ministry reputedly supplied militiamen with police uniforms and vehicles. sectarian groups fought for control of the police because it enabled them to augment their power, impose a particular morality, entrench factional or sectarian practices, and secure funds and weapons (herring & rangwala, 2006, p. 268). and the police, in iraq as elsewhere in the world, were content to be used. regardless of rhetoric, regime, and resources, senior officers rarely build power bases comparable to those of the military. some seek to preserve a minimal degree of operational and professional autonomy, but most are typically adjuncts to groups that control resources more directly. most have personal patrons with whom reciprocal exchanges of favour are made. an additional factor in iraq was that, while some officers may have claimed to represent the state, all shared the personal, tribal, or sectarian loyalties of their peers. democratic accountability meant little because 88 alice hills studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 iraqis valued appointments for the opportunities for patronage they offered; the primary task of individual clan members was to ensure the ascendancy of his group (tribe, family, or friends), and the dismissal of one officer meant dismissing a swathe of others too. the problems presented by incompetent or corrupt police were thus social, political, and institutional, with the police being not only a problem in its own right, but also one that exacerbated others (etherington, 2005, p. 113). the civilian police could not have managed city-wide security even if they had wanted to. by 2004 they were a faction in need of allies. they were not only ineffective and unreliable, but also were a symbol of pro-government forces and as such were targeted by sectarian militia and insurgents. in baghdad as in cities such as maysan in the south-east of the country, “no one was frightened of the police and the police were frightened of almost everyone” (stewart, 2007, p. 83). when etherington became head of a small cpa team in al-kut (a provincial capital to the southeast of baghdad) in october 2003, he found: police clustered in small groups on the steps of their stations and nearby fences like crows. there appeared to be thousands of them, in almost comical disarray. the police had no infrastructure, rules, leadership or staff worth the name; most had no weapons and few officers appeared to do any work though it was clear that many were directly implicated in widespread and systematic corruption if not criminal activity (etherington, 2005, p. 27). most police could not run their own stations, let alone carry out security tasks (etherington, 2005, pp. 137, 155). poor leadership resulted in low morale that made the lower ranks lethargic and easily intimidated. when, for example, fuel shortages meant that they were sent to keep order in al-kut’s petrol stations, officers confined themselves to taking bribes from the queuing motorists in return for offering preferential treatment. they were then beaten up by motorists and fled (etherington, 2005, p. 136). on the other hand, they were unarmed in the face of militia’s iranian kalashnikovs and rpgs. police stations were frequently attacked, and factional fighting quickly increased as local power brokers forged or broke political and economic alliances. when this happened, some police shed their uniforms and joined the rebels while others put themselves under the protection of pro-rebel clergy; in late 2004, almost all of mosul’s police fled when insurgents attacked their stations, while shia police in najaf joined rebels from the mahdi army and handed over their weapons. as general martin dempsey (who led the multi-national security transition command) admitted to a congressional hearing in 2007, more than 32,000 of the 180,000 newly trained and equipped police generated under coalition schemes were no longer in the police. approximately 8,000 had been killed in action, 6,000-8,000 were seriously wounded, 5,000 had deserted, and 7,000-8,000 were unaccounted for (“us general warns,” 2007). numbers were impossible to determine since local chiefs inflated numbers to get funding, and individuals drifted in and out of service. but recruitment was never a problem. forty percent unemployment meant men applied regardless of the dangers of the job. suicide bombings and roadside explosive devices aimed at recruiting stations, police convoys or military convoys escorting police account for many of the casualties, especially once the insurgency security as a selective project 89 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 emerged in the summer of 2003. most officers were unarmed and patrolling was suicidal, but men joined because the starting salary of an ips officer in 2003 was 90,000id ($60) per month, with an additional 130,000id ($87) per month in hazardous duty pay (chandrasekaran, 2007, p. 328; herring & rangwala, 2006, p. 197). police had no incentive to provide security for anyone except themselves. expressions of security it is difficult to map accurately the provision of security because so much is unknown. despite their sophisticated technologies, american forces knew little about iraqi police, let alone about trends in the localities in which their adversaries were based. the cpa’s vision of security was, in any case, developed in isolation from iraq’s existing patterns of social and political domination and subjugation. it was rarely seen to address the concerns of most of the population, and when it did, the result was often incoherence and insecurity. within weeks of the occupation, swathes of baghdad (which was strategically the critical city) were out of international control. much of the burden of policing fell to u.s. troops, but they were neither trained nor equipped for it. infantry complained they had not been trained in arrest procedures, tank crews were not equipped for foot patrols, m-1 tanks and bradley fighting vehicles were too large to move through baghdad’s streets, and the imperatives of force protection meant troops could not engage with iraqis even if they wanted to. some 4,000 u.s. military police were eventually deployed in june, but there was little they could achieve; a force smaller than many u.s. metropolitan police departments was responsible for a looted city of several million inhabitants (perito, 2003). also, while security often improved when troop numbers increased, it declined when they left. by mid-2004, when the cpa was dissolved, iraq was divided into fiefdoms and factions, of which the u.s.-led coalition was only one, albeit the best resourced in material terms. the situation never improved. according to a review of security operations in baghdad in february 2007, u.s. and iraqi forces controlled 146 of baghdad’s 457 districts; that is, fewer than one-third of its neighbourhoods (“most of baghdad,” 2007). the review vividly illustrates the results of four years of coalition operations: iraqi police and army units failed to provide the forces necessary to carry out basic security tasks including manning checkpoints and conducting patrols; almost daily bombings caused misery in flashpoint districts. sectarian violence remained serious in west baghdad, and shiite death squads continued to operate. in february 2007, for instance, most of the 100 bodies found dumped on rubbish dumps and street corners were sunni who had been tortured before being shot. the deployment of more than 20,000 u.s. reinforcements temporarily halted the murders, but by may 2007 dozens of bodies were found in baghdad every day. may also saw the third highest death toll of american soldiers (127) since the invasion. as ever, police melted away before incidents occurred. the selective and practical nature of security—and the difficulty of making it more inclusive—is evident from this overview. it is also evident in crime levels. there had been low-level non-organized crime in the 1990s as sanctions and economic stagnation reduced living standards and encouraged the middle classes to emigrate, but this could not be compared to the situation from 2003 onwards. the 90 alice hills studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 disappearance of regime authority, the emptying of prisons, and the failure to control looting encouraged criminal violence. home invasions, muggings and murders increased dramatically, together with carjacking, kidnappings, rapes, revenge killings, drugs trafficking and prostitution. from being almost non-existent in prewar iraq, street crime became the primary concern of most iraqis. murder and kidnapping were especially problematic, not least because victims included more children, females, and the elderly than is usual in non-war environments. additionally, kidnapping was about economics as well as retribution or sectarian hatred. as a shia man said: “they kidnap 10 sunnis, they get ransoms on five, and kill them all, in each big kidnap operation they make at least $50,000, it’s the best business in baghdad” (abdul-ahad, 2007a). many crimes went unreported because there was no one to report them to. militia and groups subcontracting protection required payment. it was also difficult to distinguish between criminal violence, gang violence, political violence, and violence as a response to coalition violence. crime was subsumed into an all embracing security crisis. differences of understanding resulted in lost opportunities to develop more inclusive forms of security. arguably, there was a short window of opportunity in the first days of the occupation when the cpa, as the temporary but lawful government could, perhaps, have facilitated or imposed (symbolically or genuinely) a framework conducive to, or reflecting a more democratic form of security. but the moment was lost, and each passing week created more spoilers. groups vying for political resources, turf control or profits quickly exploited potential security gaps. and the u.s. forces allowed them to gain the initiative. this was most evident in the coalition’s approach to looting. its troops concentrated on defending selected public buildings, and they looked the other way as iraqis engaged in wholesale looting in coalition-controlled areas. many iraqis profited, but many more saw the looting as a symbol of the insecurity the coalition tolerated or was thought to encourage. crucially, the omission or failure by coalition forces to control looting or ensure public safety reinforced the conviction of iraqis that their security was not a coalition priority. coalition authorities in both baghdad and basra sometimes allowed looting because it was thought to send a powerful message that the coalition was in control. but this ignored the fact that disorder and insecurity primarily affected ordinary iraqis who were already angry about water and electricity shortages, angry about civilian deaths from coalition bombing, and resentful of foreign invasion. many workers lost their source of livelihood because factories and shops were looted. the situation was admittedly different when seen from the perspective of coalition forces who, as the de facto occupying power, were obliged by international humanitarian law and convention to restore public order and safety. when questioned as to why forces stood by, senior officers usually argued that they lacked sufficient troops to protect cities and therefore focused on protecting vital infrastructure such as oil facilities and food warehouses. other (low-ranking) troops thought looting was tolerated or encouraged as a cathartic reaction to the fall of saddam’s government. what was clear was that the combat troops in iraq’s cities at the end of the war were not trained to ensure civilian security; they were untrained for policing duties and by their actions often increased a sense of exclusion and insecurity, thereby exacerbating the security gap that emerged (dziedzic, 1998). security as a selective project 91 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 exclusionary security in baghdad and basra ironically, the desire for security was both a cause and result of the two dominating features of security in iraq. it was ghettoized and sectarian. ghetto security in baghdad journalists such as the new yorker’s jon lee anderson provide the best overview of how exclusionary security emerged in the days immediately after april 9, 2003, and what it meant in a city such as baghdad. no soldiers or police were visible, no one observed traffic regulations, everyone was in a great hurry, buildings burned, and bombs and gunshot could be heard as gangs staked out their turf (anderson, 2007, pp. 294, 315). less than 24 hours later, most of the eastern side of central baghdad had been looted. defence secretary rumsfeld dismissed looting with the comment that “freedom is untidy” (loughlin, 2003), while general tommy franks, commander of u.s. forces, said that “people just go wild” when autocratic regimes fall, and that the true measure was how quickly the lawlessness was controlled (alden & mcgregor, 2003). there were pockets of heavy fighting and it “was not entirely clear which parts of baghdad were in american hands and which were not” (anderson, 2007, p. 311), but ghettoization began early, with armed vigilantes stopping cars, and residential streets barricaded and guarded. localized order re-emerged, as when neighbourhoods, acting on the instructions of the shia religious leader ayatollah ali sistani, set up armed roadblocks to stop looters and retrieve stolen property. anderson records how he went through a checkpoint manned by marines on the outskirts of saddam city, a slum of 2.5 million, before driving into areas defended by roadblocks of zigzagged oil drums, furniture and cement blocks, which were guarded by “rough-looking youths . . . holding iron bars” (anderson, 2007, p. 317. compare clover 2004). by april 14 baghdad was divided into 55 to 60 zones, of which some 40 were under coalition control. the u.s. officers in charge of civil administration met iraqi police chiefs to discuss the “restoration” of law and order, by which time u.s. humvees and armoured vehicle were on guard outside most of the main hospitals, and iraqi police were (according to u.s. calculations) due to start patrolling. but such arrangements proved to be a veneer overlaying an increasingly localized and fragmented order, for when anderson returned in the third week of july it was no longer safe to walk around. increasingly, security provision reflected baghdad’s web of tensions, insecurities and violence. the us resisted calls to re-employ most police because it suspected their loyalties, while police wishing to return to work distanced themselves from the occupiers: “we came to protect the people, not to work with america” (alden & mcgregor, 2003). the cpa’s dissolution in june 2004 made little difference. in the first month after the handover of sovereignty, the new government was under pressure to ensure security. but its claim to do so was rapidly undermined by innumerable incidents of violence, assassinations, kidnappings and explosions, many of which targeted the police. on july 28, 2004, for example, a massive car bomb exploded near a line of would-be police recruits in a centre of anti-government opposition north of baghdad, killing 68. the government increased police patrols and checkpoints and mounted 92 alice hills studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 crime crackdowns, but internal politics meant that it failed to activate the emergency powers it had assumed after the transfer. the war may have finished some 15 months previously, but jihadists and nationalists fought an escalating battle for local control. streets in baghdad (as elsewhere) were under the control of rival militia competing to control territory and revenue sources such as oil and weapons smuggling. three linked elements or expressions of baghdad’s forms of security deserve note, each of which promoted exclusion. first, crime played a significant role in everyday life, while control of the black market and access to protection money helped to finance turf wars (negus, 2004). for example, petrol stations were a desirable prize because they made money, were symbols of territorial control, and acted as recruiting stations, as they were gathering points for unemployed youths. second, the boundaries between criminality and sectarianism became increasingly blurred. by 2006, most killings were done by a handful of armed bands, vying for turf control or kidnapping members of other sects for profit (“holding the ring,” 2006, p. 51). some groups were not members of the mahdi army or sunni insurgency groups so much as street gangs. iraqi officers said that in the suburb of adhamiya, for instance, the most dangerous were teenagers or in their early 20s, often drug addicts in it for thrills and prestige. the gangs were safe in their own districts, and had powerful protectors outside. this was evident from the way in which local sunnis avoided using baghdad’s largest hospital complex a few kilometres to the south even though their own district had few resources. the reason was that the health minister was a radical sadrist, and the medical complex used hundreds of mahdi army militants as security guards. in other areas, children banded together in 50-strong gangs to throw stones at u.s. troops, or they collaborated with sunni kidnappers and robbers. one 13-year old told the un that his family were unemployed so “i decided to help a gang specialized in kidnapping. for each kidnap i get us $100 and it is enough to help my family with food for the whole month” (“iraq youth”, 2007, p. 51). third, the role played by the growing and politically active group of young, bored and urban slum dwellers was significant—and 40% of iraqis were under 15. of these groups, the 10,000-strong mahdi army was the most noteworthy, not least because it policed its sphere of influence. created by the shi’ite cleric moqtada al-sadr, the mahdi army originated as a small group in sadr city where it provided security and welfare services, dispensing aid and preventing looting; mahdi fighters patrolled on foot and in commandeered police vehicles. formalized in june 2003, in some areas it amounted to a shadow government. inspired by sadrist themes of political marginalization, unequal suffering and exploitation, members claimed that the militia was a group of pious youths supporting their religion and clergy, rather than a military structure. in fact, it repeatedly clashed with coalition forces. armed with assault rifles, rocket propelled grenades, mortars, strela anti-air missiles, and other light weapons, and using ieds (improvised explosive devices), it seized control of public buildings and police stations. later, its activities illustrated the role of security as a means to a political end: in june 2004, al-sadr declared an end to operations in sadr city, and sought to turn the mahdi army into a political party capable of contesting the 2005 election. al-sadr was seemingly co-opted by the authorities, but in fact agreeing a truce security as a selective project 93 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 spared him from intrusive american raids while allowing his militiamen to act as roughly as ever in the suburbs. sectarian security in basra similar dynamics accompanied the re-emergence of order in cities such as basra, 420km south east of baghdad, where the uk was the responsible power, and the sectarian infiltration of the police was particularly noteworthy. by early 2006, the british approach to managing basra’s policing was to combine the prospect of improved training for the police with the threat of arrest in an attempt to create a more professional non-sectarian police. enhancing the police’s status was seen as a key factor in transferring security responsibility to iraqis, and thereby allowing british withdrawal. according to lt. gen. sir robert fry, the most senior british officer in iraq, the process of handing over more control to iraqis would provide an incentive to depoliticize the police, and ensure security for all. this was unrealistic, for by then basra belonged to militia, death squads and organized crime, and the british were merely one faction amongst many. indeed, the temporary nature of their stay made them one of the weakest. for militias had seized the initiative in april 2003, when, immediately after the invasion, sadrist mosques organized lorries to bring in water and used vigilantes to patrol the streets against looters. they then used the allawi government’s 2004 efforts to increase police numbers to embed militiamen into police. the result was that by october 2006, some 20 security and police groups operated with impunity; they ranged from a dozen religious militia, and the governor’s 200 armed guards to the directorate of education police and the justice police (abdul-ahad, 2007b). indeed, the appearance of a public police was illusory because the police comprised militiamen, and, in any confrontation between political parties, officers splintered according to party lines and fought one another. by may 2007 no one could be appointed to the police without a letter of support from a militia or political party. there was a rule of law, but it was militia law (abdul-ahad, 2007b), the main characteristics of which were sectarian division and physical violence. the extent of sectarian brutality is evident in the activities of the so-called jameat, a group of officers drawn from police intelligence departments and representing all the major factions. it was named after the police station its members were alleged to use as a base. when 1,000 british forces demolished the station in december 2006, they discovered 127 prisoners in the basement. some had had their kneecaps shot off while others had electrical or cigarette burns, or crushed hands or feet. but most iraqi police thought that torture was justified as a way of obtaining confessions and deterring retribution (negus & rasan, 2005). by then, the police were the equivalent of a sectarian militia. the ability of the 24strong team of british police advisers who, supported by 70 civilian private security staff employed by armor holdings (under contract to the foreign office), sought to influence them was minimal. nominally british trained, the police were out of the control of both british and iraqi authorities. as a senior general in the interior ministry said, “most of the police force is divided between fadhila which controls the tsu [the tactical support unit, its best trained unit] and moqtada which controls the regular police . . .” (abdul-ahad, 2007b). this meant that “fadhila control the oil 94 alice hills studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 terminals, so they control the oil protection force . . . moqtada controls the ports and customs, so they control the customs, police and its intelligence. commandos are under the control of badr brigade”. inevitably, officers who were not part of a militia joined in order to protect themselves. as a commander told a british journalist, once a policeman “affiliated with a militia then as a commander you can’t change him . . . because then you are confronting a political party” (abdul-ahad, 2007b). police cars openly carried pictures showing their factional allegiance. other officers were politically neutral but had no interest in policing. general hassan alsade, basra’s secular-minded chief of police admitted on may 30 that he had lost control of most of his 13,750 officers, and trusted only a quarter of them. a further complication arose from the fluid relationship between militias and the units they infiltrated. whenever there was a clash between militias, the police split and units fought other units, switching identities according to whoever paid the most. by the time british forces withdrew from central basra in late 2007, the main factions had reached an understanding about sharing out basra’s resources; that is, running the police, controlling the revenues from oil smuggling, and the distribution of political power in the city. conclusion iraq tests the extent to which inclusive forms of security can be provided in postconflict cities, and it emphasizes the extent to which security is “a means of modelling . . . society around a particular vision of order” (neocleous, 2008, p. 4). the coalition’s vision of inclusive security was expressed in an assertive rhetoric appealing to freedom, democracy and the “iraqi people,” but the reality was chronic insecurity, barricaded neighbourhoods, and a web of sectarian power relations that reflected a different rationale and vision. but this is not unusual. post-conflict cities differ in location, culture, population, regime, significance, and experience, and the range of contextual factors and outcomes makes direct comparison of questionable value. yet most, if not all, share certain features such as the fragmented, localized, and temporary nature of security provision, and ineffective or incompetent police. based on developments in iraq, two general trends are identifiable. first, security is the central point around which discourse and competition take place. at the same time, it is as much a means to power and aggrandizement as it is to stability, personal safety or democratization. in other words, personalities, politics, and contingencies determine when and how security is understood, produced, and expressed, and the resultant exclusionary strategies are often rational. that there was tension between the various meanings was not a fundamental problem per se—military and/or individual security often have separate dimensions—but it was politically and practically significant. this implies that the notion of security can accommodate multiple interpretations, but in practice it cannot be understood in isolation from the political context in which it is to be employed. second, in the absence of city-wide security, factional groups provide localized arrangements. but there is little evidence to suggest that institutional structures such as the police in which international hopes are vested can ever provide security for all. indeed, police typically operate according to sectarian or political imperatives. in security as a selective project 95 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 other words, the provision of security depends on myriad environmental factors, and is often little more than a reconfigured complex of old elements and relationships, only some of which are revised and reoriented by new pressures and new or modified contexts. empirically, security depends on agreements on rules, behaviour and predictability, many of which are inaccessible to external actors, and it is managed by coercion, manipulation and exclusion, as much as by negotiation and reform. the successful introduction in 2007 and 2008 of a new u.s. strategy based on a “surge” of force and more police training does not refute this assessment. it is true that the strategy was heavily influenced by the argument of u.s. general david petraeus that it was not enough for coalition forces to provide a sustained military presence in volatile neighbourhoods, destroy insurgent sanctuaries, and hold cleared areas. they must also increase the capacity of the iraqi government to create inclusionary employment projects, support tribal militia such as the so-called awakening councils, develop the role of the “sons of iraq” (a sunni tribal militia that had turned against the jihadists linked to al-qaeda in mesopotamia), and improve everyday life for ordinary iraqis (“general petraeus,” 2007). it is true, too, that the us’s agenda shifted to accommodate some of the security concerns associated with sub-state groups and individuals, and its tactics increasingly balanced intimidation with inducement, yet the long-term significance of the resultant improvements in the security situation—let alone our theoretical understanding of security—is unclear. in may 2009, for instance, ginger cruz, the u.s. deputy inspector-general for iraqi reconstruction, warned that many of the sons of iraq were rejoining the insurgency, and shi’ite strong men (such as the prime minister, nuri almaliki) were re-emerging, with all that this implies for the selective emphasis of security (rifat, jaber, & baxter, 2009). comparable trends emerged in southern iraq after u.s. forces assumed control from british authorities in march 2009. it is true that bombings and assassinations are still common, insurgents continue to operate in the provinces of diyala and ninevah (jihadists remain influential in ninevah’s main city, mosul), the mahdi army remains a potential threat, politics is tainted by corruption and fraud, and the police are ineffective, yet basra is relatively peaceful. indeed, in january 2008 a coalition of parties won landslide electoral victories at the expense of shia militia known as the badr brigades, which have ties to iran (british forces had tolerated the badr brigades’ activities, but iraqi and american forces had earlier attacked and defeated them). the implications of this for understanding security are uncertain. it may mean that international actors should intervene forcefully, rather than accept the reality of factionalized security arrangements, or it may mean that international expectations are now more realistic than they were in 2003. whatever the case, there are few grounds for assuming that recent developments will facilitate the emergence of a coherent and comprehensive security concept. questions remain even at the empirical level. for example, it may be that the new strategy effectively offered basra’s provincial council an opportunity to mitigate the exclusionary practices associated with previous security provision. it theoretically provided a space in which the council could provide electricity, potable water, sewage, employment, and education to all, thereby making a major improvement to everyone’s quality of life, and enhancing the prospects for meaningful security and stability. alternatively, it 96 alice hills studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 may be that violence declined due to the emergence of ethnically homogenous neighbourhoods; that is, illiberal forms of ethnic cleansing facilitated and/or enhanced security. in other words, the strategies of concession and accommodation made by state, sub-state and community actors have resulted in a form of security based on acceptable levels of selection and exclusion. more generally, iraq suggests that while today’s broad definitions of security have normative, and also analytical, value, they ignore the discrimination common to post-conflict cities while assuming that the police can or should manage exclusionary tendencies. and they ignore also that reassurance, crime prevention and community policing are not what most police do. in other words, police cannot solve the social problems that broad definitions of security prioritize or act as moderating agents, even if they wanted to. security (both for those who provide it, and often for those who want it) is a literal, rather than theoretical, construct, and the only certainty is that it means 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(2006, october 11). updated iraq survey affirms earlier mortality estimates. retrieved from http://www.jhsph.edu/publichealthnews/press_releases/2006/burnham_iraq_2006.html studies in social justice volume 3, issue 1, 23-37, 2009 correspondence address: mark neocleous, department of politics and history, brunel university, uxbridge ub8 3ph, uk. tel.: +44 (0) 1895 266824, email: mark.neocleous@brunel.ac.uk issn: 1911-4788 the fascist moment: security, exclusion, extermination mark neocleous department of politics & history, brunel university abstract security is cultivated and mobilized by enacting exclusionary practices, and exclusion is cultivated and realized on security grounds. this article explores the political dangers that lie in this connection, dangers which open the door to a fascist mobilization in the name of security. to do so the article first asks: what happens to our understanding of fascism if we view it through the lens of security? but then a far more interesting question emerges: what happens to our understanding of security if we view it through the lens of fascism? out of these questions it is suggested that the central issue might be less a question of “security and exclusion” and much more a question of “security and extermination.” security presupposes exclusion. take the piece of legislation passed just a few weeks after the attack on the world trade centre, called the uniting and strengthening america by providing appropriate tools required to intercept and obstruct terrorism act. coming in at over 340 pages and carrying twenty-one legal amendments, the act was said to be necessary and essential to the new security project about to be unleashed on the world. it changed criminal law and immigration procedures to allow people to be held indefinitely, altered intelligence-gathering procedures to allow for the monitoring of people’s reading habits through surveillance of library and bookshop records, and introduced measures to allow for greater access to property, email, computers, and financial and educational records. but if the act is about security, it is also immediately notable for the wordy title, designed for the acronym it produces: usa patriot. the implication is clear: this is an act for american patriotism. to oppose it is unpatriotic. the patriot act is, unsurprisingly, intimately connected to ideological tropes that have been very much part of the discourse of security more generally, such as “our way of life” and “our values.” this emerged as a theme very quickly on the day of the attacks on the world trade centre. bush made three statements or proclamations on that day. in his first speech bush was simply concerned to state his overall control of the situation, but by the third and longest statement, delivered as an “address to the nation” just 12 hours after the attacks, he began to articulate the idea that the attacks were on “our way of life” (bush, 2001a). a few days later, bush delivered 24 mark neocleous studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 some remarks at the national day of prayer and remembrance which sounded as much like a eulogy for america as for the dead, a hymn to the “national character” and “national unity” (bush, 2001b). by september 20, the theme had been developed into the now famous rhetorical question “why do they hate us? answer: they hate our way of life” (bush, 2001c). this trope was hardly an invention of bush’s or the current “war on terror.” it had for example been present in the rhetoric of “humanitarian intervention” in the previous decade. the bombing of serbian forces in kosovo was conducted on the grounds of “upholding our values,” as clinton (1999) put it, or for the “moral purpose [of] defending the values we cherish” as blair commented, adding the obvious link with security: “the spread of our values makes us safer” (1999). yet despite these precursors, it is the “war on terror” that has put this idea at the heart of the political debate around security. this has led many people to suggest that one of the most notable features of the “war on terror” has been its grounding in “identity”: in the construction of both the “evil,” “alien” enemy and the “good” american, where what is at stake is something to do with values, a way of life, a national character or political culture. it seems to me that it is also very much about that logic which is so presupposed by security (and identity, for that matter): exclusion. this is why the patriot act and key speeches have sought to affirm the inclusion within the nation of its loyal muslimarabic subjects against the need to exclude those who lack the required loyalty. “arab americans, muslim americans, and americans from south asia play a vital role in our nation and are entitled to nothing less than the full rights of every american,” notes the act, calling upon the nation “to recognize the patriotism of fellow citizens from all ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds.” likewise: “there are millions of good americans who practice the muslim faith who love their country as much as i love the country, who salute the flag as strongly as i salute the flag,” commented bush a week after the attacks in september 2001 (bush, 2001d). and the mechanism of exclusion is by no means limited to questions of identity or values. it extends, for example, to the realm of international law through categories such as “unlawful combatants,” “illegal belligerents” or “rogue/failed states,” all of which function ideologically as a means of excluding the people or states in question from the supposed standards through which international order is managed. in other words, the logic of security underpinning the “war on terror” requires knowing who or what should be included as part of the object to be secured and thus who might be excluded as a threat to the security of that object.1 security politics is a politics of exclusion, then; that much is clear. security is cultivated and mobilized by enacting a set of exclusionary practices. conversely, exclusion is cultivated and realized on security grounds. this mutual presupposition of exclusion through security measures and security through exclusion practices has a long history, underpinning as it does all the historic practices through which civil society and borders—both internal as well as external—have been policed: of how the class of poverty was originally excluded from the body politic, of how the dangerous classes, the urban poor, the racially inferior, the threatening immigrant, the sexually deviant, the politically oppositional, the colonial subject, have been administered in ways excluding them from certain spheres of civil society and the state, certain occupations and careers, certain powers and pleasures. the fascist moment 25 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 a number of writers have noted that such exclusions have been central to liberal politics—enacted “not in spite of liberal democracy, but as an integral part of it” (curthoys, 2003, p. 9; also lake, 2008, p. 23).2 “rather like the figure of janus, liberalism presents us with opposed yet ultimately connected faces,” notes barry hindess (2001, pp. 365–366). one, superficially more appealing, expresses the familiar liberal claim that government should rule over, and as far as possible rule through, the activities of free individuals. the other, less benign face reflects the equally liberal view that substantial portions of humanity consist of individuals who are not at present capable of acting in a suitably autonomous fashion. accordingly, along with the view of individuals at liberty to conduct themselves in rational liberal ways, the liberal gaze also falls on groups of others who cannot be trusted, those not “at home” in the liberal empire. the outcome, these writers suggest, is an integral relationship between liberalism and exclusion. yet the figure of liberalism begins to appear less janus-like when one realizes that security, rather than liberty or inclusion, is in fact its key concept (neocleous, 2008). if we recognize that liberalism is less a philosophy of liberty and more a technique of security, as mitchell dean puts it (1991, p. 196; 1999, p. 117), then liberalism’s supposedly janus-like quality, in which it looks in one direction towards an inclusive conception of free individuals and in the other direction towards problematic categories of the population which need excluding in some way from the body politic, turns out to be far from two-faced as first appears. in fact, it turns out to be very single-minded in pursuit of its one key goal: security. it then becomes clear that liberalism has to exclude because the logic of security requires it. picking up any recent book, article, or government document on security, and one is always reading about one liberal practice of exclusion or another. texts on security simply are texts about exclusion, implicitly where not explicitly so. other articles in this issue of studies in social justice explore some dimensions of this liberal practice of exclusion. in this article, however, i want to pursue a slightly different line, one that pushes this argument about security and exclusion to its limits. and those limits take us into the world of fascism. a number of writers have noted that there is a real schmittian logic underpinning security politics (for example, williams, 2003). casting an issue as one of “security” tends to situate that issue within the logic of friend and enemy. in so doing it ratchets up strategic “security” fears and dangers and so encourages a political decisionism concerning the “state of exception” (neocleous, 2006a; 2008, pp. 39–75). such political reason is the core of schmitt’s concept of the political. “the political is the most intense and extreme antagonism,” says schmitt, “and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping.” the nature of friendship lies in a set of common values distinguishing the friend from the “other, the stranger” (schmitt, 1932/1996, p. 29). the political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in 26 mark neocleous studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible (1932/1996, p. 27). for schmitt, this friend-enemy antagonism is the essence of the political, reaching its highpoint in a state of exception which allows sovereignty to be asserted and reinstated: “sovereign is he who decides on the exception” (schmitt, 1922/1985, p. 5). this decision is conducted in defence of and with the support of the friend grouping. now, this kind of argument has been a powerful undercurrent in a fair amount of recent thinking around security. for example, in their influential work aiming to develop security concepts away from classical and realist arguments centred on the security of the state and towards a wider range of “societal sectors,” barry buzan, ole waever and jaap de wilde nonetheless still resort to schmittian concepts and language. something becomes a security issue “when [that] issue is presented as posing an existential threat to a designated referent object.” in such a context, “by saying ‘security,’ a state representative declares an emergency condition” (buzan, waever, & de wilde, 1998, p. 21). for these writers, the broadening of the sphere of security does little to change the assumptions underpinning the existential threat. yet there is a problem here. for schmitt is the thinker who was once described as “theorist for the reich” (bendersky, 1983) and, more recently, “crown jurist for the third reich” (stirk, 2005). i have no desire to rehearse the reasons why schmitt’s work is fascist to the core (see neocleous, 1996). but if there is a real schmittian logic to much of the language of security, and if there is a fascist dimension to much of schmitt’s work (of the 1920s and 1930s at least), then does this not demand a proper exploration of the relationship between the logic of security and fascism? “speaking and writing about security is never innocent,” says jef huysmans, “it always risks contributing to the opening of a window of opportunity for a ‘fascist mobilization’” (2002, p. 43). events since september 11, 2001, bear witness to this. it is now clear that any revival of fascism will come through a political mobilization in the name of security (harootunian, 2007). to push this idea i want to explore initially the thematic of security within the original fascist context. as far as i am aware, this has not been done, a fact that is especially odd when one considers that fascism is often understood in terms of the idea of a “police state” and that security is the core category of police (neocleous, 2000). the initial question i want to ask, then, is: what happens to our understanding of fascism if we view it through the lens of security? but then a far more interesting question emerges: what happens to our understanding of security if we view it through the lens of fascism? these two questions point us to what we might call “the fascist moment.” 3 at which point, the central issue might appear to be less a question of “security and exclusion” and much more a question of “security and extermination.” or maybe we need to think the three together: security, exclusion, extermination. “anti-semitism fused with security issues” it is well known that the nazis constantly used euphemism to mask the deeds of the nazi state and played around with language in order to reframe political questions, as the fascist moment 27 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 victor klemperer (1946) has shown at length: “productive work” rather than slave labour or being taken into “protective custody” rather than being arrested, to give just two examples. in similar fashion, people who had been robbed of their valuables found that in fact the state had simply “secured” (sichergestellt) their property. and rather a lot of such “securing” went on. from the moment communists started being detained “for security reasons,” in dachau in march 1933, security became integral to the glossary of nazi ideas. as such, we need to examine the increasing “securitization” of german society from 1933 onwards. in april 1933, a new “secret state police” (geheime staatspolizei, or gestapo) was formed as part of the new nazi state. the law creating this new body claimed that it was necessary “in order to assure the effective struggle against all of the efforts directed against the existence and security of the state” (as cited in gellately, 1991, p. 29). concerns had been widespread since the seizure of power at the end of january 1933 that not enough was being done in terms of security. for example, adolf wagner, staatskommissar at the bavarian ministry of the interior, wrote on march 13, 1933, to hans frank, staatskommissar at the bavarian ministry of justice, that “the order for the arrest of all communist officials and reichsbannerfuhrer [social democrat squad leaders] has not so far been carried out as thoroughly as necessary for the preservation of peace and security” (as cited in broszat, 1968/1973, p. 144). the securitization of german society was afoot. yet the feeling that the “security of the state” was not being properly defended was still in place three years later, and led to a huge reorganization of the security apparatus. in june 1936, major changes were made to the organization of certain aspects of the nazi state. hitler appointed himmler as head of the german police, allowing him to combine this with his role as head of ss. himmler divided the police into two sections: the order police (ordnungspolizei, or orpo) and the security police (sicherheitspolizei, or sipo). the latter was a new organization combining the gestapo and kripo (kriminalpolizei; the criminal police). the security police was to be headed by reinhard heydrich, who was also head of the sicherheitsdienst (sd), the nazi party’s security service. later, at the beginning of the war in september 1939 the security police and the sd were combined into a new reich security head office (reichssicherheitshauptamt; the rsha). drawing together these complementary party and state agencies created a powerful new organizational tool which was to become crucial in the war against the communist-jewish enemy, for a number of reasons. first, many nazis believed that the project of extermination could be conducted only by those willing and able to undertake it. “only the security police has the necessary experience in this area,” commented franz rademacher, head of the jewish desk in the german foreign office (as cited in browning, 2005, p. 85). time and again the experience of the security police in “security matters” was used by the nazis as an explanation for the institution’s role in dealing with the “jewish problem.” to give just one further example, eichmann’s close associate theodore dannecker commented in january 1941 on the importance of the “extensive experience” of the security services in carrying out the final solution (as cited in browning, 2005, pp. 103–104). second, just as the military is the least likely institution to resist a military coup, and the police the least likely institution to resist a police state, so the “security services” are the least likely to question, resist or refuse actions carried out in the name of security. and third, having such actions carried out by the security police gave the whole 28 mark neocleous studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 project an air of legitimacy. for example, rudolf lehmann, chief of the legal division of the armed forces high command (okw), commented in a document on the jurisdiction of military courts that to make the use of military courts “somewhat more palatable” he would omit references to “the carriers of the jewish-bolshevik worldview” and “jewish-bolshevik system” and would instead emphasize the rationale of security (browning, 2005, p. 220). thus to point to the institutional mish-mash of police and security organizations— sipo, kripo, orpo, gestapo, ss, sd, and so on—as a way of highlighting “confusion about the nature and mission of the organizations charged with “security” in the third reich” (gellately, 1991, p. 143), is in some sense to miss the point, which is that “security” was the raison d’être of the institutional framework as a whole. the institutional mish-mash is therefore somewhat irrelevant; indeed, is there any state which does not have an institutional mish-mash of institutions concerned with “security”? what is crucial is that security was the logic which underpinned the whole system. as browder’s (1996) work has suggested, the institutional identity conferred by security work had a kind of elective affinity with nazism. that this should be so should not surprise, since in mein kampf hitler had referred many times to the importance of security: of economic security for the nation and the insecurity generated by trade unions; the security of the living space for the race and the security of the state within this living space; the security of germany in the international system; the importance of a food supply and national honour to the nation’s security; the security of the means of executing a movement’s ideas; the list goes on and on (hitler, 1925, pp. 50, 130, 131, 133, 136, 150, 177, 325, 601). by the time the nazis came to power, and consolidated this power within the wider international system in the 1930s, a system in which the new ideology of security was becoming increasingly important, this thematic could very easily be used to underpin the whole system. symptomatically, the sa often denied that they were a “storm section” (sturm abteilung), and preferred to present themselves in a guise more consistent with this raison d’être: as a “security section” (sicherheits abteilung); the initials “sa” conveniently stood for both (heiden, 1944, p. 234). security thereby permeated the system of legal terror exercised by the nazis. the sicherungslager (security camp) was one of the main categories of the concentration camp system. but nikolaus waschmann (2004) has also shown that the regular legal system—that is, the system of trial and punishment that imprisoned people to such an extent that until august 1944 the numbers in the regular prisons outnumbered those in concentration camps—was also founded on the notion of security. the whole system was based on the notion of “security confinement” (sicherungsverwahrung), derived from the law against dangerous habitual criminals of november 24, 1933, and aimed at excluding (that is, imprisoning) people said to be a danger to the security of the community—the sicherungsverwahrter krimineller, who wore a triangle with the letter “s.” judges made extensive use of security confinement sentences, which were eagerly carried out by prison officials committed to the notion, to the extent that both retrospective security confinements (even for people who had not actually been sentenced by the courts for anything) and the indefinite imprisonment of offenders even after the end of their original sentence became common. security confinement was not just a weapon of criminal policy, but was explicitly political: it was central to nazism’s the fascist moment 29 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 attempt to reorder the german polity and society by excluding “security threats”— “inferiors,” “outsiders,” “deviants,” critics and resisters—from the national community. eventually sicherungsverwahrung became a euphemism for concentration camp incarceration and “security confinement prisoners” (sicherungsverwahrungshaftlinger), including jews (often arrested for their political opposition to the regime rather than as “racial aliens”), trade unionists, communists and other problematic outsiders, were taken into “protective custody” (schutzhaft). this term, schutzhaft, was applied initially following the proclamation of the emergency decree of february 28, 1933, but became widespread from april 1933. (in the intervening weeks such arrests were often referred to as a transfer into polizeihaft [police custody], and relevant orders throughout 1933 refer varyingly to “political protective custody,” “police custody for political reasons,” and “political custody” [broszat, 1968/1973, p. 144; caplan, 2005], reminding us of the extent to which security and police overlap as political concepts.) the key to such custody was that those taken into it were regarded as enemies of security—a term which in effect “provided the gestapo with virtually unlimited powers of arrest and confinement” (gellately, 1991, p. 13). in other words, the logic of “security” helped not only legitimize the acts of exclusion on which nazism was initially founded, but also led to the final acts of extermination. the wannsee conference of january 20, 1942, taken by many to be the formal meeting to launch the final solution, was essentially a meeting of security police. overall control of the final solution lay with the reichsfuhrer ss and chief of the german police (himmler, with heydrich as his representative). indeed, it has been suggested that the purpose of the wannsee conference was not merely to finalize the plans for the final solution, but “to reinforce the rsha’s pre-eminence in all aspects of the jewish question” (roseman, 2002, p. 83). it might also be pointed out that the key administrative agency for supervising the concentration camps alongside the rsha was the office of economic policy (wvha), giving us not only another nice euphemism—extermination as economic policy—but also another nice example of the conjunction between security and conceptions of economic order. “what explains the decision to extend killing to the whole of european jewry?” asks michael burleigh. warning bells began to sound in the autumn of 1941, when notice was dramatically served on the jews of western europe too. it is important to grasp…that what follows had nothing whatsoever to do with rationalising economies or settlement plans, but involved anti-semitism fused with security issues (2001, p. 645). whenever the extermination was to be stepped up, such as following the warsaw uprising in april 1943, it was always as a “security threat” that jews were depicted, a depiction which of course countervailed against any arguments concerning, say, their economic utility. as christopher browning puts it, “with the exception of artisans, jews were not an important labour factor. instead, they presented a security threat that had to be neutralized in the interest of the ‘absolutely necessary, quick pacification of the east.’” thus, “in the eyes of german officials, especially outside the civil administration, the economic usefulness of jews as forced labourers was far 30 mark neocleous studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 outweighed by their being perceived as a threat to security” (browning, 2005, pp. 285–286, 297). security was thus the major theme in managing the occupied states and the extermination policies carried out there, and for the measures carried out against other social groups for which “exclusion” wasn’t quite enough. let me briefly discuss the case of the lithuanian jews as an illustration of the point about occupied states, and gypsies and homosexuals as illustrative of the point about social groups. the initial pogroms and shootings of lithuanian jews in the summer of 1941 were understood in terms of the security of the region and conducted under the guise of security. heydrich authorized the lithuanian police to carry out “cleansing operations” to secure the movement of the einsatzgruppen and einsatzkommandos. the local understanding was that the project was a security measure: since the jewish people were the active agents of bolshevism, their initial exclusion and eventual destruction was necessary on security grounds. asked under interrogation in 1958 about his role in the shooting of jewish men in kretinga in 1941, ssunterfuhrer krumbach from the police station in tilsit commented: “it was explained to me then that according to an order from the führer, the whole of eastern jewry had to be exterminated so that there would no longer be jewish blood available there to maintain a world jewry, thus bringing about the decisive destruction of world jewry. this affirmation was by itself not new at that time and was rooted in the ideology of the party. the einsatzkommandos of the sipo and of the sd were instituted for this task by the führer” (as cited in diekmann, 2000, p. 246). once the pogroms against the jews were set in place, a second dimension of the nazi obsession with security could then be set into play. the leaders of the einsatzgruppen had to give the pogroms the appearance of being carried out spontaneously by lithuanians as revenge against the jews for their supposed bolshevik activities. in this way the responsibility of the security police for the killings would not become widely known—one of the many instances in which the exercise of violence is erased from the concept of security. the sipo, as the agent of this particular security project, could thereby be protected from accusations of uncontrolled brutality. diekmann (2000, p. 269) cites the report of einsatzgruppe a, from october 15, 1941: “it was however not undesirable that they [the german security police] . . . did not give the appearance of using the clearly unusually harsh measures, which would certainly elicit a stir in german circles. it must be shown to the outside world that the native population itself took the first measures, of its own accord, in a natural reaction against centuries of oppression by the jews and the terror of the communists in former times.” this then served to facilitate a further dimension to the importance of security: that the security police could then be seen to step in as the guarantor of order—as some kind of institutional check on the “wild wrath of the people.” thus the security police would be needed to restore order, reaffirming once more security’s “positive” role. dieckmann suggests that in terms of the solution to the jewish problem in lithuania, “national socialist security policy was the most important element.” the intent to exterminate the jews was clear from the plans for deportations. the analysis of the policy as it actually developed makes it seem possible that further factors were also necessary. the modification of the fascist moment 31 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 the racist starvation policy . . . meant first and foremost the pauperization of the jewish population, which was to be denied the right to live. the mass killings were in this connection legitimized on the grounds of national socialist security policy (p. 266). his point applies to the whole of the third reich, not just lithuania. in terms of social groups, guenter lewy (2000, pp. 70–77) has shown that the persecution against the roma was conducted under a range of security measures. the notion easily spread that roma were not merely “plague” or “nuisance,” the traditional ways of distancing them, but were also in fact working for foreign intelligence services. this was the reason given to explain why roma liked to live in border areas. thus on january 31, 1940, the high command of the armed forces requested from himmler an order prohibiting on the grounds of “defence” roma from living in the border zone. on april 27, 1940, heydrich issued a decree on “resettlement of gypsies” which gave orders to begin transporting 2,500 roma away from the western and north-western border zones and to the general government. these requests and orders were gradually realized through 1940, during which period the security theme became prevalent. lewy comments that the idea that the expulsion was based in the main on concern about military security is less than credible, for if it was then why did it take so long? and why limit the number to 2,500? why send them to the general government, which was also a border zone and where they could do as much damage? and why were foreign roma excluded? these are fair questions, but they only make sense if one takes the security project at face value. but no security project should ever be taken at face value. security always functions as an underlying rationale for some political project: an exclusion here, an extermination there; a partial solution here, a final solution there. moreover, security could play this foundational role precisely because of the way it obliterates any distinction between inside and outside, domestic and foreign. the internal enemy needed to be exterminated because it was in fact integral to the external enemy—international communism. the external security project which identified the soviet state as the key enemy could thus slide into an internal security project aimed at the supposed agents of the soviet state, namely the jewishbolshevik conspiracy. at the same time, and in common with many security forces in the west, the nazis perceived homosexuals as a security threat, part of a broader range of “nonconformist” activities which were the basis for one security measure after another (browder, 1996, pp. 65–66, 72). gellately suggests that everyday life became so politicized in nazi germany that even the sphere of sexuality and friendship became an issue (p. 147) and the nazis criminalized any behaviour that appeared oppositional (p. 157). indeed, but that’s where the logic of security takes us. forms of “deviant” or “perverse” sexuality have long been treated as a security problem in liberal democracy as well as under fascism (neocleous, 2006c, 2008, pp. 123–141). another 6 million “i have talked a good deal about hitler,” says aimé césaire in his discourse on colonialism in 1955. why? “because he deserves it: he makes it possible to see 32 mark neocleous studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 things on a large scale.” césaire adds, “at the end of capitalism, there is hitler. at the end of formal humanism and philosophical renunciation, there is hitler” (1955/2000, p. 37). he may well have said: at the end of security, there is hitler. this is precisely why the schmittian logic underpinning so much of the security discourse is so telling. for in schmittian terms the question of security unveils the nature of the political, inherent in which is the idea of combat and annihilation (1932/1996, p. 32). “war is neither the aim nor the purpose nor even the very content of politics. but as an ever present possibility it is the leading presupposition which . . . thereby creates a specifically political behaviour” (1932/1996, p. 34). as much as the state presupposes the concept of the political, so the political presupposes the concept of war. to this end, hobbes’s war of all against all becomes the “fundamental presupposition of a specific political philosophy” (1932/1996, p. 65). however, whilst hobbes’s state of nature is a war of individuals, schmitt’s account posits collectivities at war, albeit undefined: “an enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity” (p. 28). and it is clear that this enemy may be domestic as well as foreign: the fight in question may be a civil war as much as war between nations, a war of extermination against internal as much as external enemies. this is the main reason schmitt so despises liberalism: because it demilitarizes politics and reduces intensely political concepts such as combat to either economic competition or intellectual discussion (1932/1996, p. 71). in so doing “the decisive bloody battle” is transformed into a parliamentary debate (1922/1985, p. 63).4 for schmitt, war is the pinnacle of great politics and the highest form of human behaviour: “what always matters is the possibility of the extreme case taking place, the real war” (1932/1996, p. 35). war therefore needs no real justification as such; or, rather, its existence is its justification: “the justification of war does not reside in its being fought for ideals or norms of justice, but in its being fought against a real enemy” (1932/1996, p. 49). being at war with one’s enemy follows logically from the decision to identify the “other,” the “stranger,” as different and alien—an enemy and therefore geared for combat. but because schmitt’s decisionism is an essentially existentialist politics, war is not just a perpetual phenomenon of the political, but is its highest form. “the high points of politics are simultaneously the moments in which the enemy is, in concrete clarity, recognized as the enemy” (1932/1996, p. 67). for schmitt, in contrast, the decisive bloody battle becomes the defining characteristic of the political, the key to the nature of the decision and to the identification of friends and enemies. schmitt argues, “a world in which the possibility of war is eliminated, a completely pacified globe, would be a world without the distinction of friend and enemy and hence a world without politics” (1932/1996, pp. 35, 78). 5 the concrete clarity of the enemy raises the possibility of “life” and the struggles surrounding it being accorded an existential meaning. in this context, the importance of the state of exception is that it breaks through the torpid, repetitive everdayness of bourgeois norms. just as in existential philosophy moments of peril call forth individual “authenticity,” so the state of exception, as moment of political peril, calls forth a political authenticity. the state of exception—the clampdown in the name of security—is thus granted an existential significance. but because the enemy, as other, is existentially alien, exclusion is not enough. rather, its physical annihilation takes on an existential meaning; extermination is necessary. “the the fascist moment 33 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing” (1932/1996, p. 33). extermination is thus beyond the requirement of any normative meaning; it is justified for its own sake, for the meaning it brings to the political. exclusion is not extermination. but the extermination exhibited by the fascist moment and legitimized in the work of a thinker such as schmitt serves as a salutary reminder of the contiguities between them. it serves also as a salutary reminder of one of the fundamental lessons of history: that extermination has frequently been carried out in the name of security. working out the figures here would be an impossible task of course. but take, as just one example, the calculation by john stockwell. stockwell had been part of a cia project in angola which led to the deaths of over 20,000 people but, reflecting more generally on the achievements of the security services in which he worked, he commented: coming to grips with these u.s./cia activities in broad numbers and figuring out how many people have been killed in the jungles of laos or the hills of nicaragua is very difficult. but, adding them up as best we can, we come up with a figure of six million people killed—and this is a minimum figure. included are: one million killed in the korean war, two million killed in the vietnam war, 800,000 killed in indonesia, one million in cambodia, 20,000 killed in angola—the operation i was part of—and 22,000 killed in nicaragua (1991, p. 81). note: the six million is a minimum figure; he omits to mention rather a lot of other interventions; he was writing in 1991; and his focus is solely on the security practices of one state. if we started factoring these into the picture the figure of 6 million would quickly be dwarfed, and would thereby quickly dwarf the 6 million estimated to have been exterminated by the fascist regime in germany. the slaughter bench of history appears coated in the blood of those murdered in the name of security. in 1953 franz neumann commented that the integrating element of liberal democracy purports to be a moral one, whether it be freedom or justice. however, he also noted that “there is opposed to this a second integrating principle of a political system: fear of an enemy.” such fear, he notes, is a key feature of fascist political thought, which “asserts that the creation of a national community is conditioned by the existence of an enemy whom one must be willing to exterminate physically.” but neumann adds that when the concepts of “enemy” and “fear” come to constitute the energetic principles of politics, democracy becomes impossible and the system is ripe for dictatorship (1953, pp 223–224). his reference is to schmitt, and reflects also on his own experience of having lived through the rise of fascism in germany. but it is difficult not to think that he also had in mind the security practices then being carried out by liberal democracies, such as the loyalty program being carried out in the pursuit of american security in which the fabrication of fear and insecurity was the crucial dynamic. this program replicated and in some ways surpassed the practices for consolidating loyalty, national identity and political unity used by fascist and authoritarian regimes: lack of toleration of different political opinions in public life; police incursions into personal lives; the proscription of lawful associations; star chamber proceedings on the basis of anonymous testimony; persecution for political beliefs entailing no criminal conduct; and the enforcement 34 mark neocleous studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 of rigid political orthodoxy through the use of vague and sweeping standards of loyalty. the fear of the enemy, and the equally substantive fear of being denounced as part of the enemy, meant the continual reiteration of patriot acts on the part of the good citizen-subjects. the program was also being conducted at a time when the national security state was employing fascists in its struggle for security. 6 thriving in the crises of liberalism, the fascist potential within liberal democracy has always been more dangerous than the fascist tendency against democracy (adorno, 1959/1998, p. 90; neocleous, 1997). bearing in mind that the crises of liberalism are more often than not expressed as crises threatening the security of the state and the social order of capital, and bearing in mind the extent to which fascism comes draped in its own security blanket and can speak the language of security as well as anyone else, it really is no exaggeration to say that were such tendencies to be realized now, they would do so in the name of security. this poses a very real political problem for those academics and activists who in recent years have sought to rethink, redefine, remap, and revamp security, since it is not clear that simply broadening the security agenda does anything to mitigate against the fascist potential that lies within security. for in constantly harping on about the need for a new security agenda these “solutions” might actually be part of the problem. rather than yet another rethinking of security, then, the solution lies in moving away from “security” entirely; it lies in the critique of security. neumann clearly sensed that much of what he said about fascism could be used to point to dangers that actually lie within liberalism, dangers rooted in allowing a mythical security to become the only measure of political judgment and fear the basis of order. 7 in the opening section of his essay “the work of art in the age of its reproducibility” (1936/2002), walter benjamin comments that as well as contributing to the creation of conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself, the essay also tries to develop concepts which “are completely useless for the purposes of fascism.” the critique of security is part of this project. but given the extent to which the ideology of security has become the dominant trope of contemporary politics, and given the ways in which ideology works by imposing an obviousness or naturalness on ideas (althusser, 1969/1971, p. 161), which is nowhere truer than with security (a goal so “obvious” and “natural” that it can barely ever be questioned), the critique of security is not without its difficulties. faced with such difficulties, and in the context of the rise of fascism, benjamin enquired in 1929 about “the conditions for revolution.” in bleak tone, he suggested that surrealism had come close to the communist answer. “and that means pessimism all along the line. absolutely. mistrust in the fate of literature, mistrust in the fate of freedom, mistrust in the fate of european humanity, but three times mistrust in all reconciliation: between classes, between nations, between individuals” (benjamin, 1929/1999, pp. 216–217). “literature,” “freedom,” “humanity”: the slogans and clichés of a bourgeois liberal humanism always seeking a “reconciliation” of some sort or another.8 to which we should add: “security.” mistrust in security, all along the line. the fascist moment 35 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 notes 1 hence the prompt rounding up of some 1,200 immigrants and antiwar activists following the passing of the patriot act. the precise figure remains unknown, due to security’s sister concept: secrecy. 2 curthoy’s point is well made, and her historical material refreshing, but she pulls her punches in dramatic fashion at the end of her article, in which liberalism turns out to be the basis for freedom and equality after all (p. 32), as though she had forgotten the previous 20 pages of her own argument. 3 in his work on security and modernity, robert latham (1997) shows the central role of security in the process of international order-building following world war ii, in which liberal order was achieved via a military-strategic strategy shaping both the international realm and the identity of the liberal state. this ‘liberal moment’, as latham calls it, was the moment of security. in fact, the origins of this liberal moment lie a decade earlier, in the 1930s as the logic of social security comes to the fore as an explicit dimension of the administrative state (neocleous, 2006b, 2008). but if the real moment of security was in fact between the wars, and if the period between the wars is remembered for the rise to power of fascism as much as anything else, then we might gain something from thinking of this as ‘the fascist moment’—a fascist moment which was also part of the moment of security. 4 schmitt is ridiculously wrong on this point. as any analysis of the history of liberalism shows, there’s nothing that liberals like more than dealing out a good dose of slaughter against either external or internal enemies. that schmitt chooses to ignore this dimension of liberalism is rather telling. 5 interpretations of schmitt which seek to play down the glorification of war are only possible if one ignores the existential nature of his conception. 6 the 1998 war crimes disclosure act requiring the cia, fbi and army to declassify operational information has revealed the extent to which being a fascist was not a security problem for the us state: between late-1946 and december 1952 over 600 german scientists were brought from germany to the us and placed in major universities and corporations (breitman, goda, naftali & wolfe, 2005; for the broader historical backdrop see simpson, 1988 and 1993). it might also be noted that at the height of his power many people feared that joe mccarthy’s search for security would bring fascism to america, a fear founded in part on his early sympathy for mein kampf and an episode in his early senatorial career in which his investigation of a nazi massacre in belgium gave rise to concerns of nazi sympathizing (kovel, 1997, pp. 118, 281). 7 this is distinct from critical security studies which, as i show elsewhere (neocleous, 2008), has more in common with classical liberalism than with critical theory. 8 for an extended argument against the conservative nature of “reconciliation,” see neocleous, 2005, pp. 29–35. references adorno, t. 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(1999). governmentality: power and rule in modern society. london: sage. dieckmann, c. (2000). the war and the killing of the lithuanian jews. in u. herbert (ed.), national socialist extermination policies: contemporary german perspectives and controversies. new york: berghahn books. gellately, r. (1991). the gestapo and german society: enforcing racial policy 1933–1945. oxford: clarendon press. harootunian, h. (2007). the imperial present and the second coming of fascism. boundary 2, 34(1), 1–15. heiden, k. (1944). der fuehrer, book 1. translated by ralph manheim. london: victor gollanz. hindess, b. (2001). not at home in the empire. social identities, 7(3), 363–377. hitler, a. (1925). mein kampf (r. manheim, trans.). boston: houghton mifflin company. huysmans, j. (2002). defining social constructivism in security studies: the normative dilemma in writing security. alternatives, global, local, political 27, 41–62. klemperer, v. (2000). the language of the third reich: lti—lingua tertii imperii: a philologist’s notebook (m. brady, trans.). london: the athlone press. (original work published 1946) kovel, j. (1997). red hunting in the promised land: anticommunism and the making of america. london: continuum. lake, m. (2008). equality and exclusion: the racial constitution of colonial liberalism. thesis eleven, no. 95, 20–32. latham, r. (1997). the liberal moment: modernity, security, and the making of postwar international order. new york: columbia university press. lewy, g. (2000). the nazi persecution of the gypsies. oxford: oxford university press. neocleous, m. (1996). friend or enemy? reading schmitt politically. radical philosophy, no. 79, 13–23. neocleous, m. (1997). fascism. maidenhead: open university press. neocleous, m. (2000). the fabrication of social order: a critical theory of police power. london: pluto press. neocleous, m. (2005). the monstrous and the dead: burke, marx, fascism. cardiff: university of wales press. the fascist moment 37 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 neocleous, m. (2006a). the problem with normality, or, taking exception to “permanent emergency.” alternatives, 31(2), 191–213. neocleous, m. (2006b). from social to national security: on the fabrication of economic order. security dialogue, 37(3), 363–384. neocleous, m. (2006c). “what do you think of female chastity?” identity and loyalty in the national security state. journal of historical sociology, 19(4), 374–379. neocleous, m. (2008). critique of security. edinburgh: university of edinburgh press. neumann, f. l. (1996). the concept of political freedom. in w. e. scheuerman (ed.), the rule of law under siege: selected essays of franz l. neumann and otto kirchheimer. berkeley: university of california press. (original work published 1953) roseman, m. (2002). the villa, the lake, the meeting: wannsee and the final solution. london: penguin. schmitt, c. (1996). the concept of the political (g. schwab, trans.). chicago: university of chicago press. (original work published 1932) schmitt, c. (1985). political theology (g. schwab, trans.). cambridge, ma: mit press. (original work published 1922) simpson, c. (1988). blowback: america’s recruitment of nazis and its effects on the cold war. new york: weidenfeld and nicolson. simpson, c. (1993). the splendid blond beast. new york: grove press. stirk, p. (2005). carl schmitt, crown jurist of the third reich: on preemptive war, military occupation, and world empire. ceredigion: edwin mellen press. stockwell, j. (1991). the praetorian guard: the u.s. role in the new world order. cambridge, ma: south end press. wachsmann, n. (2004). hitler’s prisons: legal terror in nazi germany. new haven: yale university press. williams, m. (2003). words, images, enemies: securitization and international politics. international studies quarterly, 47(4), 511–531. correspondence address: brian phillips journal of human rights practice, oxford university press, great clarendon street, oxford ox2 6dp, united kingdom, email: briandphillips@yahoo.co.uk issn: 1911-4788 studies in social justice volume 7, issue 2, 285-309, 2013 review essay in the land of celebrity humanitarianism: reflections on film and transitional justice in bosnia-herzegovina brian phillips journal of human rights practice, oxford university press, united kingdom following a special sarajevo screening of angelina jolie’s in the land of blood and honey for representatives of bosnian war victims’ associations, a woman who had been raped during the conflict said of her initial response to the film: “i first vomited, from the sheer force of my suffering...angelina touched our souls” (hopkins, 2011b). in another news report about the screening, this same woman added that “from the moment the film began, i was back in april 1992. my life passed through this film completely” (hopkins, 2011a). referring to the central character of the film, a second woman, also a victim of sexual violence in the bosnian war, declared: “i am ajla...this is what i went through in the rape camp in vlasenica in 1992” (hopkins, 2011b). the leader of a group of women whose sons were murdered in the 1995 srebrenica massacres likewise praised the film and expressed gratitude to jolie “for her intellectual and financial investment in making this movie that will tell the world the truth about bosnia’s war” (smajilhodžić, 2011). similarly, the male head of a group of former prisoners of war explained that “this movie is deeply moving for the victims who experienced all of these things...it is completely objective and it really tells the facts of what happened during the war” (smajilhodžić, 2011). these impassioned responses to jolie’s film immediately give rise to a number of questions concerning the possibilities for film and other cultural forms to contribute to long-term processes of truth-seeking and justice in the wake of violent conflict. on the surface, at least, the above responses studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 286 brian phillips of victims to in the land of blood and honey may suggest that filmmaking (among other forms of culture production) has considerable potential to serve as a vital additional vehicle for post-war transitional justice (in the broadest sense of that term). in recent years, scholars and activists have frequently charged that judicial processes dealing with crimes of this magnitude are chiefly focussed on “legal requirements (that) may bypass the individuality of the victims, including their needs as traumatized persons” (dembour & haslam, 2004, p.154). such critics suggest that victims of these crimes may therefore “need an entirely different platform” to tell their stories (dembour & haslam, 2004, p.154). in this quest for alternative platforms for testimony, how might creative works like films, plays and novels help to fill in something of that painful gap left by limited judicial processes? can the production and distribution of films like in the land of blood and honey which aim to tell representative stories of suffering and loss help to secure that all-important sense of recognition and the validation of personal and community experience sought by many victims as an essential component of what they understand to be justice? the literature cataloguing the numerous insufficiencies of international and national judicial mechanisms and the inability of these bodies alone to deliver justice to victims of violation or atrocity in the wake of the 1992-95 bosnian conflict is now a sizeable one (clark, 2009; delpla, 2007; dembour & haslam, 2004; henry, 2009, 2010; hodžić, 2007, 2010; mertus, 2004; stover, 2005; subotić, 2009). indeed, even as the transitional justice boom gathered its incredible momentum over the past couple of decades, some scholars working in this field were moving well beyond assessments of the specific merits and flaws of ad hoc judicial mechanisms like those created to deal with crimes committed during the wars of the former yugoslavia or the rwandan genocide raising more wide-ranging questions about the overwhelmingly dominant discourse of legalism in the emerging discipline (fletcher & weinstein, 2002; mcevoy, 2007 osiel, 2000). with regard to the experiences of rape and other sexual violence during the bosnian conflict that are at the heart of jolie’s film, numerous scholars have dwelt on the limitations of what are otherwise lauded as the groundbreaking trials and judgements of the international criminal tribunal for the former yugoslavia (icty) dealing directly with these crimes. writing of the icty’s track record in these proceedings, henry (2010), for example, speaks for a number of analysts of the tribunal when she asserts that “language, particularly legal language, cannot adequately capture the pain and trauma of rape” (p. 1113). henry notes that, as a result, “courts have struggled to accommodate the experiences of survivors of rape” (p. 1113). mertus (2008) likewise maintains that the icty processes dealing with rape and other sexual violence have shown that “squeezing women’s experiences of abuse into the narrow confines of traditional legal cases requires a willingness, on the women’s part, to give up on telling the whole story, i.e. in their words and with their individual priorities” (p. 1298). what these critiques and others like them have in common is an emphasis studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 287 on the need for complementary processes and forums running alongside the necessary judicial proceedings—a variety of initiatives and approaches aimed at promoting what mcevoy (2007) has called “a thicker understanding of transitional justice” (p. 414). in addition to discussions of the potential of state-established bodies such as truth commissions to provide complementary vehicles for victim story-telling and acknowledgement, the desirability of various forms of what jeffrey and jakala (2012) have described as “informal practices of transitional justice” (p. 3) have also been much contemplated by both scholars and activists inside and outside the post-yugoslav region in recent years1. in their critique of the icty as a vehicle for victim and witness story-telling, dembour and haslam (2004) have, for example, stressed the need for “the development of other forms of memory in the wake of mass atrocity and trauma” (p. 176), arguing that “these should be fostered both at individual and collective levels, for example through therapy, film-making, art production, literature, history research, school textbooks” (p. 176). two decades on from the start of the bosnian conflict, local filmmakers have arguably taken up this challenge in earnest. among films produced by artists working in bosnia-herzegovina itself, jamila žbanić’s grbavica, aida begić’s snow and children of sarajevo, and danis tanović’s academy awardwinning no man’s land and cirkus columbia stand out as accomplished works that tell powerful stories of the war, its origins and its aftermath. each of these films has resonated with audiences both in bosnia-herzegovina and globally. but filmmakers not native to the region have also been drawn to the cinematic potential of this war and its legacy, and to the ongoing struggles for justice for its victims. interestingly, among films dealing with the 1992-95 conflict and its aftermath produced outside the country, three of the most recent of these focus specifically on rape and other crimes of sexual violence against women. given widespread criticism of many aspects of the icty’s handling of these crimes—from the treatment of witnesses taking the stand in the trial chamber (henry, 2009; mertus, 2004) to the tribunal’s failure to involve bosnian women’s ngos more thoroughly in its work (mertus, 2008)—it is especially interesting to consider whether this trio of international films can somehow be said to “do justice” to the stories of women who experienced and survived these horrors in ways that the icty either has not or could not have done. given the reported cathartic impact of the film on at least some victims of rape and other sexual violence in the bosnian conflict, a more sustained critical appraisal of angelina jolie’s in the land of blood and honey (2011) is surely in order. indeed, a consideration of this much-publicized film’s potential as a catalyst for remembrance and reckoning—in tandem with a brief look at juanita wilson and hans-christian schmid’s related feature films, as if i am not there (2010) and storm (2009) —may offer us some initial sense of what potential, if any, film might have to “fill out” some of the requirements of justice not adequately met by courts of law alone. studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 288 brian phillips in the land of blood and honey in the land of blood and honey tells the story of ajla, a gifted young bosniak2 painter, who shares an apartment with her sister in sarajevo in the spring of 1992. as the country moves toward war, she meets danijel, an initially charming bosnian serb police officer, one evening at a café where they dance and flirt and discover a mutual attraction. but suddenly, their budding romance is interrupted by the emerging conflict. several months later, bosnian serb troops raid the apartment complex where the sisters are living murdering many male residents and selecting numerous women and girls for transport to a military installation outside the city. there the women are required to cook and serve and clean for the soldiers stationed at the barracks. one particular group of younger women, including ajla, will be forced to become sex slaves for the troops. just as ajla is about to be raped by a soldier, danijel recognizes her and intervenes to stop the assault. he is the captain in charge of the facility and clearly a rising star in the bosnian serb forces, where his father is a renowned general. danijel’s attraction to ajla proves stronger than his identification with the murderous bosnian serb nationalist project. when he can, without raising suspicions amongst his colleagues, danijel offers ajla protection in what has effectively become a rape camp. ajla is torn between her fear and repulsion at everything around her, and her own lingering attraction to danijel. after enduring humiliation and torture at the hands of another soldier at the base, ajla throws caution aside and takes refuge in a covert relationship with the captain—giving rise to a highlycharged, endlessly ambivalent (and hugely improbable) combination of sanctuary and imprisonment that continues over the next two and a half years and that will ultimately have tragic consequences for them both. jolie’s film is directed with great fluidity, and she elicits powerful performances from a number of her excellent bosnian and serbian actors—most particularly from zana marjanović in the central role of ajla. two decades of acting in hollywood movies have certainly taught jolie how to shape and edit a scene effectively. the decision to shoot the film simultaneously in both bosnian and english, producing two separate versions to guarantee a wider audience in the region and elsewhere, was an ambitious and entirely commendable one. but frankly stated, jolie`s screenplay is fairly artless. the film is burdened by ludicrous plotting from the start and a kind of crassness that includes presenting danijel and ajla’s first moment of physical intimacy in a soft focus sex scene, their encounter scored with the kind of sensitive piano music you might expect to hear in a fragrance commercial. jolie has said that she wanted the film to be about the lost possibilities of this relationship—the way in which (but for the absurd conflict that arbitrarily divides them) this might have been a happy couple, making a shared life and raising a family together. she has said that she wanted an audience watching the scene to consider whether ajla and danijel are “trying to hold on to something beautiful when everything around them has turned so ugly” (borger, 2012). but given the grave issues with which she is dealing in the studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 289 film, this very hollywood-flavoured scene comes across as crude and entirely inappropriate.3 no less tasteless is a later scene where a conflicted and angry danijel is shown subjecting ajla to a much more brutal sexual act—an assault which culminates in his whispering into ajla’s ear: “why couldn’t you have been born a serb?” historical exposition and political comment in this film is not just plodding, but positively thudding. characters speak whole paragraphs of background information to one another in casual conversation. for example, when danijel visits his father early in the film, the grizzled warrior instructs his son as they walk along: “one million serbs were killed during the second world war. this land is soaked in serbian blood. and now they want us to live under muslim rule? in a muslim state?” the film is more than a little tone deaf to the ways in which families and communities might actually discuss politics and history. there are also some very basic improbabilities regarding the degree of movement which would have been possible for these characters in and around sarajevo (where much of the film is set) during the siege. in the summer of 1995, for example, danijel gives his soldiers a “night off” and drives his captive mistress, ajla, into the centre of town to what is said to be the “sarajevo municipal art gallery”—one of ajla’s favourite places in the city before the war. when a subordinate arrives to inform danijel he is needed immediately at a meeting of senior officers, he tells ajla to simply find her way back “home” to the barracks where she is a prisoner (“just follow the road up the hill”). but it is jolie’s casual deployment of historical image for sensational effect that begs the most pressing questions about the depth of her research and her insistence that she “tried to bring as much information and as much truth and as much reality” to the making of the film (cooper, 2011).4 while one cannot doubt the sincerity of jolie’s commitment to the idea of making this film and to engaging with the issues it explores so graphically, the result definitely demands a much more rigorous ethical critique than it was given by mainstream media on release. jolie’s decision to graft an image of atrocity from a very specific time and place elsewhere in bosnia-herzegovina into her own narrative, presumably with the well-intentioned aim of underlining further for the audience the scope of cruelty and suffering experienced in the conflict, is especially disturbing. thus in a scene where danijel is travelling from his sarajevo base to a meeting with his father, meant to be taking place in the winter of 1994, he drives past a recreation of the infamous 1992 images of emaciated and terrified detainees held in the trnoplje and omarska camps near prijedor in northwest bosnia. of course, jolie has never said that her film is a documentary. her stated aim is clearly to raise awareness about what people endured during the long conflict, and the film is stocked with a catalogue of real offences about which jolie must have read and heard about in what she says were her many conversations with victims. her point, as she has emphasized again and again in interviews, was to educate herself and her audience about the bosnian conflict, to get her audience to ask how these things could have happened in the 1990s and why was it allowed to go on for studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 290 brian phillips so long with no one intervening to stop them. so do any of these jarring inaccuracies matter when most if not all of them are likely to go completely unnoticed by a non-specialist audience? after all, there is a long tradition of producing historical drama that pays scant attention to the accuracy of detail while bringing the spectator to what are said to be larger truths about a period and its protagonists. nobody goes to see shakespeare’s julius caeser or schiller’s mary stuart for a scholarly account of internal conflict in the roman empire or the machinations of the tudor court. but scrupulous attention to historical accuracy surely matters more when we are dealing with a very recent conflict—one that has been thoroughly documented and carefully chronicled in a now vast and very accessible literature produced by academics, journalists, non-governmental organizations, and courts of law. the men and women in those 1992 images of trnoplje and omarska suffered very real and very specific crimes in that particular time and place. to simply appropriate what jolie must have decided was a defining image of the truth of the war in bosnia is to somehow turn the unique sufferings of victims in that context into a kind of generic symbol of cruelty, “bypassing the individuality of the victims” just as surely as dembour & haslam (2004, p. 154) have suggested that courts have sometimes done. arguably, in the transposition of that image, the men and women who suffered in trnoplje and omarska have been done yet another kind of injustice.5 and yet, if even a few of those who have suffered most from the unspeakable horrors of the bosnian conflict have found a measure of satisfaction in seeing a film that bears at least some resemblance to their own experience, isn’t it clear that jolie has indeed offered victims of wartime rape and other sexual violence some “thicker” sense of justice? those unqualified endorsements of the film (included at the start of this essay) are surely a sterling example of the much-heralded imperative of “giving voice” to victims—incontrovertible evidence of the remedial impact of a broader conception of justice that understands how “the adversarial process alone does not honor their assertion of agency, their resistance to power and their will to survive” (mertus, 2004, p. 125). but while one’s first instinct may be to affirm these positive responses, it does not follow that our empathy with these individuals and their histories should muzzle critical disagreement with their conclusions about the film’s merits. i would argue that intellectual honesty in this instance requires that one say emphatically that this film does not “do justice” to its subject. given the film’s explicit recreation of scenes of rape and other forms of violence, jolie’s film quite understandably prompted visceral responses from some victims. but those responses should certainly not trump lingering concerns that aspects of the film are actually exploitative of victims’ sufferings. rejecting the verdict of these particular individuals on jolie’s film should not be confused with callousness or a lack of respect toward victims. tough minded as it may seem, human rights practitioners and scholars need to be able to assert that the victim does not necessarily have a kind of ultimate authority here in judging the film’s strengths and studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 291 weaknesses. in the land of blood and honey is simply not a good film, and it raises serious aesthetic and moral concerns about the recreation of scenes of atrocity in cinema and the retelling of a particularly tragic chapter in bosnia’s recent history. the recreation of violent acts like rape in a film such as in the land of blood and honey are not in themselves perforce a vindication of the victim’s experience, and any claim that the film adds something crucial to our deeper understanding of what constitutes justice after war should therefore be vigorously disputed. it is certainly worth considering, too, whether the assumed “therapeutic” function of this form of victim recognition actually becomes a diversion from more pressing concerns facing those who have survived wartime atrocities. as pupavac (2004) has argued with reference to postwar bosnia: the interpretation of justice in therapeutic terms has been cultivated by westerners and projected onto populations who do not necessarily share the precepts, even where they have adopted therapeutic models in their claimmaking. therapeutic justice aspires to reconcile people with the past rather than materially transform people’s lives. yet, when asked about their priorities in reconstruction assistance, populations persist in emphasizing substantive social justice, including material issues, rather than symbolic justice. (p. 392) many if not most scholars and practitioners working in the field of transitional justice would agree that justice conceived of exclusively as an “adversarial process” does not adequately account for or recognize victim agency, resilience and resourcefulness. transitional justice experts now regularly draw a distinction between the inevitably partial justice of the courtroom and a more inclusive concept of justice that is usually understood as being grounded in individual victim experience and in what some scholars have termed “the everyday” (alcalá & baines, 2012, pp. 385-393). this approach to transitional justice is more inclined to focus on “the practices and processes with which people live through violence and seek to make sense of and resist violence” (alcalá & baines, 2012, p. 387), and one might then argue that those powerful victim responses to jolie’s film indicate that a cultural product can indeed become a vital part of that process of sense-making. there is no doubt that there is much to be gained in this “locational shift away from the high-altitude, immobilized and abstracted view of mechanisms, mandates and processes that has characterized standard transitional justice interventions” (alcalá & baines, 2012, p. 387). but at the same time, those victim reactions to in the land of blood and honey should also remind us that this shift brings with it its own risks of an uncritical over-valorizing of those “perspectives and practices of survivors and ordinary people” that is at the very least condescending—and at worst a misguided notion that “the victim is always right.” furthermore, invocations of agency, of resilience, and of everyday processes as hitherto neglected dimensions of justice can also be very vague—involving a kind of ritual sounding of academic buzz words about the various “performances” and “spatial practices” (alcalá & baines, 2012) of victims that at their most theoretical can paradoxically seem studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 292 brian phillips just as remote from the daily lives they are meant to describe and celebrate as any room full of gowned adjudicators pronouncing on truth in narrow legal terms. whatever the limitations of justice conceived of primarily as the rather distant business of securing convictions and handing down sentences at the icty or at the war crimes chamber of the court of bosnia-herzegovina, there is arguably a concreteness to that definition that sometimes eludes those who insist (and not without reason) that “the privileging of the rule of law, human rights and democratization in the dominant transitional justice discourse sidelines the perspectives and practices of survivors and ordinary people” (alcalá & baines, 2012, p. 386). the still unmet need for recognition one hears expressed in the voices that greeted jolie’s film so effusively may help to remind us that transitional justice discourse must always move beyond the courtroom and out into the city streets and back roads of post-conflict societies. but that movement toward more localized, victim-centered definitions of justice must be coupled with an awareness of what anyone who has worked with victim communities in post-conflict settings knows well. victims’ voices, perspectives and analyses can indeed be enlightening, generous, wise and impartial. but they can also be confused, biased, or at times manipulative or subject to manipulation by others. many victims are indeed resilient, committed, and noble in thought and deed. but in those everyday “spatial practices” in these communities, one person’s empowered, resourceful individual might even become another person’s autocrat, bully or bigot. if that which “the everyday renders visible and audible” (alcalá & baines, 2012, p. 389) is to be given due regard in thinking and speaking about transitional justice, scholars and practitioners must be no less rigorous in interrogating these localized alternative conceptions of justice than they have been in relation to more restricted definitions focussed on legal institutions and their proceedings. it is important to note here, too, that the effusive praise for the film from some bosnian war victims was by no means shared by every victim of rape or other sexual violence in the country. in a much-publicized 2010 conflict of views among bosnian women war victims’ associations about jolie’s announced intention to make what would become in the land of blood and honey, the leader of one group, bakira hasečić, attracted international headlines with her strenuous objections to the idea of what was then rumoured to be a film about a romantic relationship between a rapist and his victim. initially, hasečić’s highly controversial campaigning persuaded the bosniancroat federation minister of culture to deny jolie permission to film in the federation—a decision then reversed after the official had been allowed to read the screenplay. much of the film was subsequently shot in hungary (beaumont, 2010; cbc news, 2010). but jolie had waded into the highlypoliticized and sometimes very divisive world of war victims’ associations in the region. one group (founded after a 2006 split with hasečić’s association) attacked hasečić’s domineering leadership (and alleged close links to bosniak nationalist politicians) and denied she had the authority to speak on behalf of all women victims. hasečić’s group formally protested to the united nations studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 293 high commissioner for refugees (unhcr) that jolie’s “ignorant attitude to victims” (child, 2010) made her unfit to continue in her role as a goodwill ambassador for that organization (beaumont, 2010; child, 2012). bolstered by the support she had received from the rival women’s group, jolie herself dismissed hasečić as “one person who has a gripe” (cbc news, 2010). but hasečić remained stridently unreconciled to the project, and in november 2010 was quoted as saying that “as far as we are concerned a love story could not have existed in a camp. such an interpretation is causing us mental suffering” (child, 2010). not surprisingly, hasecić was not invited to attend the december 2011 sarajevo special screening for war victims. having watched only the trailer for the film, hasečić still believed she had seen enough to tell the guardian: “a love story between the captured muslim and a serb war criminal never happened during the war in bosnia; it is impossible, a concept unthinkable, even as the idea that it displays. and from the clips from the movie—and i could not even watch the full two minutes—what she has done is hard and disgusting. it became painful to watch, and still is. i felt like i was beaten, tortured and raped again, like i have once again returned to the camp. as if they raped me again. it is shameful!” (hopkins, 2011b). in another 2011 report, hasečić adds that she “saw pictures of the film on the internet. i do not know what the film is about, but what i have seen is that the victim is in a five-star hotel, she paints, enjoys freedom. this did not exist!” (smajilhodžić, 2011). it is perhaps doubtful that anyone external to the bosnian context could have untangled and fully comprehended the complicated public and personal politics of local victims’ associations in that country today. nevertheless, one would have liked to see jolie do more to pre-empt this painful clash among survivors over the project by first establishing some sort of consensus among victims’ groups about an appropriate approach to issues of rape and other sexual violence in the film. jolie is perhaps correct when she says that “there’s no safe way to tackle this subject matter” (amanpour, 2011). yet in spite of her invocations across various interviews of the enormous burden of responsibility she felt making the film, what seems clear here is that jolie might have taken still more care not to inflame these internal conflicts further before embarking on such a controversial project. of the 2010 conflict over the permit and between women war victims’ groups, jolie insisted in an interview on the cbs news program, sixty minutes, that she “didn’t know it was going to be as sensitive” at the time she was first writing her script (simon, 2011). but it doesn’t seem sufficient then to brush the matter off (as jolie did in some interviews) by saying it was all only a minor misunderstanding—an unfortunate case of people jumping to conclusions about the content of the film based only on rumour and before they had had the chance to read the screenplay (smiley, 2011). in the era of “kony 2012” style populist campaigning, there may be little one can do to infuse the juggernaut of celebrity humanitarianism and human rights witnessing with a greater sense of the need for sustained reflection before any action is taken studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 294 brian phillips or intervention is made. but when filmmakers and other artists like jolie announce their wish to make use of the stories of victims and witnesses in their work, human rights advocates everywhere should be much more vocal in continually calling on individuals like jolie (who appear to believe they are doing all the homework necessary before launching out into projects like in the land of blood and honey6) to become much more self-aware and to take ever greater pains to avoid stirring complex local animosities of the kind discussed here. in various interviews recorded at the time of her film’s premiere, jolie repeatedly struck a humble pose regarding her intentions in making in the land of blood and honey—speaking, for example, of her cast of local actors and insisting that “it’s their film, it belongs to them, it’s their country, it’s their history, their language” (cooper, 2011). but one cannot help but wonder whether such laudable conviction might have been better directed toward jolie using her global profile and financial resources to enable more bosnian filmmakers lacking funding for their projects to create their own films about the conflict and its aftermath? while jolie’s frequently expressed deep affection for her local cast may be very real, why not devote your abundant resources to enabling these gifted artists to appear in more films produced in the region itself? when jolie appeared on american journalist anderson cooper’s talk show along with several leading actors from the film, cooper encouraged the cast to share some of their personal reminiscences and experiences of the conflict in their country. after actress vanesa glodjo (who plays ajla’s sister in the film) relates her story of being injured by shrapnel after a direct hit by a shell on her sarajevo home, cooper declares: “angelina, you’re giving these people a voice, who haven’t really had a voice before” (cooper, 2011). ironically, the time allotted in the program to these cast members’ memories and reflections was rather short compared with cooper’s much larger interest in the details of jolie’s family life with brad pitt and how “possibly the biggest star on the planet” (as cooper refers to jolie) balances her career with the demands of motherhood.7 the “voices” of her bosnian actors were in actual fact relatively little heard on this occasion. with regard to raising awareness of the issue of rape and other forms of sexual violence against women during the bosnian war, why did jolie not simply use her superstar status to bring larger audiences to a domestically-produced film like grbavica (screened as esma’s secret in the united kingdom)—bosnian director jamila žbanić’s acclaimed 2006 work about a young girl being raised in sarajevo by a single mother and coming to understand that she is the product of her mother’s rape during the war? set alongside žbanić’s powerful film (which was awarded the golden bear at the 2006 berlin film festival), in the land of blood and honey looks a rather pale companion piece indeed. some might argue that at a time when bosnia is no longer a highly visible issue in the media and much less central to the work plans and budgets of international ngos, it is enough that an actress of jolie’s standing has attempted to bring attention back to this now-neglected corner of europe. but celebration of the mere fact of a studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 295 celebrity director choosing such a project (which was certainly the prevailing storyline in north american media markets on the film’s release in december 2011) should in any case not preclude much greater consideration of these and other urgent queries. as if i am not there any viewer of both in the land of blood and honey and irish director juanita wilson’s as if i am not there cannot help but be struck immediately by the fact that the two films cover rather startlingly similar ground. curiously, in discussing her film in the media, jolie never seems to acknowledge this earlier film or to offer any insight into why she felt she needed to make her own film about the systematic rape of women in bosnia just a year after the release of wilson’s work. closely based on a 1999 novel by croatian author, slavenka drakulić, as if i am not there begins with an idealistic schoolteacher’s journey from her native sarajevo to a remote mountain village in the spring of 1992.8 just as samira (called simply “s.” in the novel) sets out on what was to have been a temporary assignment at the local school, she finds herself in the midst of the country’s rapid descent into violence. bosnian serb forces take control of the village and carry out a brutal expulsion of its bosniak inhabitants. as in jolie’s film, they first murder many of the village’s men and then load women and children onto buses bound for a detention camp at a military installation. once at the camp, a group of young women (and a girl) are likewise selected to become the sex slaves of the soldiers based at the site. confined to a single room with an armed guard at the door, the women effectively become the property of the soldiers—taken out, raped and beaten at random for days and nights on end. during this ordeal, the commander of the camp chooses samira for his exclusive, personal use. this new “role” offers samira a degree of protection from the routine indignities and violence heaped upon the other women confined to the room, but leaves her deeply conflicted about playing the role of mistress to her captor. when the detention camp is closed down and its surviving prisoners (including the women held as sex slaves) are released in an exchange, samira eventually makes her way to sweden as a refugee. there, samira learns that she has become pregnant while in the detention camp. on being told by a doctor that it is too late for her pregnancy to be terminated, samira initially resolves to give the child up for adoption once it has been born. but the powerful encounter she has with the child in the days after its birth—and her recognition of something of her lost sister’s face in the face of the infant—results in samira choosing a new life with her son. wilson’s film is a much more credible and compelling piece of work, and superior to jolie’s film on just about every level. hers is a surprisingly quiet film—generally more intent on an almost dispassionate witnessing and recording of the violent dissolution of a community and the terror and torment of a group of captive women than stoking up the drama and piling studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 296 brian phillips on images of atrocity. much of that tone of stunned detachment, so central to drakulić’s novel, is communicated through the performance of macedonian actress, nataša petrović, whose haunted eyes effectively become the central actor in this story. in showing us samira’s fixation on a fly crawling lazily across a wall in the squalid room where she is being raped in succession by three of her captors, wilson underlines the character’s reliance on a kind of willed self-removal as a strategy for survival in the unimaginable hell in which she finds herself. however, that immensely painful-to-watch scene does once again raise nagging questions about precisely how much atrocity we need to have concretely re-created for us in a film in order to grasp the horrific reality of a crime being perpetrated? in such an assured, well-crafted film as as if i am not there, one at least feels confident that juanita wilson has herself given serious thought to the representations of violence here, and the degree to which it may be necessary to include such graphic scenes in order to communicate the truth about these crimes. but it still feels important to ask whether we really need to see samira serially raped in real time by all three men in the room to understand fully what is taking place in the camp. regardless of what appears to be the authenticity of this kind of graphic scene, we ultimately always know that what we are watching is an enactment of the violence. there is then an attendant danger that critics and spectators and those who bestow awards on films will end up focussing more on the skill and “bravery” of the actors and directors in “putting themselves through” the enactment than on the real-life violence (and on those directly affected by it) upon which the scene is based. the actor’s skill in simulating such intense suffering often becomes our chief conversation point as we exit the cinema. one certainly heard something of that shift happening in one interview with angelina jolie and a cast member in advance of the us release of in the land of blood and honey. speaking of the impact on her cast of recreating scenes of violence and degradation, jolie recalled how “every actor at one time or another had to just separate themselves and cry because it was reminding them of something or it was just too much…even the men who had to be the aggressors—they just didn’t want to do it. they just couldn’t do what they had to do” (smiley, 2011). speaking with jolie and her team of actors on his daytime talk show, anderson cooper expressed similar interest in how making a film about wartime rape had affected the cast—given, as he said, that “it’s obviously such a heavy subject” (cooper, 2011). “what was it like,” cooper asked, “day in and day out to be that person, to be in that role” (cooper, 2011)? viewers of as if i am not there (and in the land of blood and honey) certainly ought to reflect on these issues of representation at length, considering afresh those crucial questions asking how we know about human rights abuses and how we respond (or not) to that knowledge.9 not surprisingly, wilson’s largely faithful adaptation of the source novel follows author slavenka drakulić’s resolution of samira’s dilemma about keeping her newborn son. but is that hard choice to raise the child born of rape presented here in a way that “does justice” to what such a decision studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 297 might actually mean in the life of a victim? in her critique of the novel, magdalena zolkos takes issue with what she sees as drakulić’s perhaps too easy option for a kind of closure here—turning samira’s choice into a “story of redemption” and a decision clearly meant to signify “hope for a new individual, and consequently, for a collective future achieved through confrontation and reconciliation with the past” (zolkos, 2008, p. 224). for zolkos, the novel’s ending is especially problematic in so far as it “offers no space or inclusion to those individual stories and experiences that do not conform with or distrust its redemptive promise” (pp. 224-225), the effect of which is “…to close up or delegitimize alternative stories—individual stories of rejection, resentment, lack of forgiveness and lack of reconciliation” (p. 224). given the vivid sense of samira’s agony over this choice that is clearly there in both the novel and the film, zolkos may be pushing her charge of the exclusion of tougher, “alternative stories” a little too far here. but the risks of an artist reaching too quickly for a story of uplift (customarily held up as a testament to the “resilience of the human spirit to overcome the bad things that can happen,” as wilson indeed does describe her film in one interview) with which to end what is otherwise an unblinking tale of enormous suffering are certainly grounds for vigilance.10 storm after watching the unsparing focus on crimes of sexual violence at the time of their commission in jolie and wilson’s films, it is fascinating then to consider how hans-christian schmid’s film storm seeks to examine and even to judge how effectively the icty has dealt with these atrocities (and with those individuals directly affected by rape and other forms of sexual violence in bosnia-herzegovina) in the succeeding decades. as storm opens, a no-nonsense, tough-talking icty prosecutor, hannah maynard, has just assumed responsibility for seeing to its conclusion what appears to be an open-and-shut case against a former bosnian serb general. general goran đurić has been charged with the “ethnic cleansing” of the bosniak population of a town called kazmaj at the start of the war. when the testimony of a star witness, alen hajdarević, is called into question and then proved to be less than wholly accurate, what had been the expected successful outcome (“a piece of cake,” as another prosecutor describes it) of this key case suddenly appears to be in doubt. frustrated at the tribunal’s dismissal of his continuing insistence that the general is indeed guilty as charged (despite the credibility of his own “eyewitness” account having been disproved) alen commits suicide after an enraged hannah upbraids him for having wrecked the case with his “idiotic testimony” just as a conviction was within reach. desperately keen to rescue the case against đurić from total collapse, a guiltwracked hannah embarks on a personal quest to discover more about alen and his determination to see the general convicted at any cost. (“i believe in this court. it’s the only thing i have left” alen tells hannah shortly before studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 298 brian phillips taking his life). hannah soon learns that alen had been driven by a search for justice for his sister, mira. it had been his wish to see đuric convicted not only for the “ethnic cleansing” of his family’s hometown, but to bring to the world’s attention the crimes committed against bosniak women (including mira) at a hitherto unknown rape camp in a resort hotel complex called vilina kosa, where deported women from kazmaj had been taken. a grieving mira is initially reluctant to cooperate with hannah in her search for the truth about the camp and đurić’s command of the facility. having survived the camp and the war, mira has built a new and happy life for herself in germany, where she has married and now lives with her husband and son. back in sarajevo for alen’s funeral, her first contact with hannah leads to a terrifying reminder that those keen to protect đurić’s secrets are more than willing to use violence to ensure mira’s continuing silence. but mira’s reservations about revisiting the horrors of the war and her imprisonment in the rape camp are soon pushed aside by hannah’s relentless appeals for justice to be done in this case. mira eventually agrees to testify against đurić and to reveal his role in running the vilina kosa rape camp. but back in the hague, the tribunal’s bureaucracy quickly moves into high gear with a sharp refusal to agree to the introduction of the vilina kosa crimes into a nearly completed case. prolonging the trial, hannah is told, would impede the tribunal’s completion strategy. that insistence on “exchanging justice for convenience,” as hannah’s outraged assistant describes the decision—plus a convoluted bit of maneuvering involving domestic politics in republika srpska and the european union (eu) enlargement process—all combine to derail hannah’s plan to deploy mira as an irrefutable witness to the full scope of đurić’s crimes. initially defeated by the institutional forces ranged against her, hannah is forced to tell mira that a deal has been done that will restrict her testimony to the “ethnic cleansing” of kazmaj alone. the truth about the vilina kosa rape camp, and đurić’s command there, is to go unmentioned in the trial. feeling betrayed by those she has trusted to relieve her of the terrible burden of the past, an embittered mira asks hannah: “what kind of court is this? what the hell is it actually for”? but once mira is on the witness stand, hannah’s determination to secure full justice returns. going against all agreed procedure, she cues mira to uncover the full story of general đurić’s crimes and the atrocities at vilina kosa to a stunned courtroom. hannah’s core conviction wins the day—that in mira “we have a woman who needs to be heard. she has to tell her story”. schmid is a highly skilled director, and his film certainly moves at the pace of a cracking political thriller. particularly notable here is his creation of a convincing atmosphere of menace, of imminent physical and moral danger in settings as disparate as a small town with much to hide in republika srpska and in charmless offices and hotel rooms in the hague. there is undoubtedly much intelligence on display here, and some fine performances from actors like kerry fox, stephen dillane, and most especially, from the luminous romanian actress, anamaria marinca, as mira. storm does have a few rough edges in its relationship to historical and political realities. for example, it studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 299 seems highly implausible that the existence of a rape camp on the scale of the fictional vilina kosa would have remained completely unknown to the outside world, and to the tribunal’s investigators, as late as 2007 or 2008 when the film would appear to be set. likewise, an official representing republika srpska in eu accession talks describes his entity as “a sovereign state” during a tense meeting with an eu negotiator. this may well be wishful thinking on the part of this particular character, but it is a phrase unlikely to have been spoken aloud on such an occasion. nevertheless, one feels a measure of sheer gratitude for a director (schmid was also co-screenwriter here) committed to making an accessible, literate film about an institution like the icty and its complex inner workings. but does storm ultimately “do justice” to this particular strand of “justice,” as it were—“justice” in terms of what a highly imperfect, sometimes stumbling, often inadequate, and yet arguably indispensable body like the icty has actually achieved in spite of all its many faults? for the portrait of the icty in storm is not just a critical or even unflattering one, but one that more often than not presents “an international judicial system that is failing its fundamental mission, getting lost in politics and bureaucracy” (film movement, 2010), as one of the film’s global distributors puts it. it is at times not difficult to imagine a non-specialist audience watching storm and concluding that the icty was a hopelessly political and ethically compromised body—one that for the last twenty years had largely done its job indifferently if not very poorly indeed. this is not to argue that schmid ought to have painted a picture of the tribunal as a kind of shining judicial knight in armour—slaying dragon-like warlords and culpable state officials efficiently and unfailingly, and always compassionately rescuing victims and witnesses from their trauma and a fearful future. the literature chronicling and analyzing the tribunal’s many sins of commission and omission is an abundant one. as mentioned earlier in this essay, there is ample ground for detailed criticism of everything from the tribunal’s sentencing policy (clark, 2009; hodžić, 2012; stover, 2005) to its lapses in care and courtesy regarding victims and witnesses (dembour & haslam, 2004; henry, 2010; hodžić, 2012; mertus, 2004; stover, 2005); from its sluggishness in recognising that it was not connecting very well with its prime constituencies on the ground in the countries of the former yugoslavia (hodžić, 2007, 2012) to its uncertain contribution to longer term processes of reconciliation in the region (clark, 2009, 2012).11 but schmid rather consistently applies a fairly broad brush to his canvas in storm, and one wonders whether he could perhaps have subtly but pointedly done a bit more in the film to make plainer that the icty’s record is not an altogether blemished one. of course, there is much evidence to support richard wilson’s assertion (2005) that “the icty has left us with a qualitatively distinctive historical record of the origins and contours of mass atrocities” in the post-yugoslav region (p. 940). it is especially worth noting again that with regard to the issues of central concern in each of the three films under discussion here, studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 300 brian phillips “the icty (has) delivered several landmark decisions expanding the understanding of sexual violence under international law” (mertus, 2008, p. 1318)—and that “each case bears the imprint of women acting in very public positions as judges, prosecutors, investigators, and witnesses and behind the scenes as advocates” (mertus, 2008, p. 1318). by its own accounting, in the tribunal’s history to date, “more than seventy individuals have been charged with crimes of sexual violence including sexual assault and rape. as of early 2011, almost thirty have been convicted” (icty: crimes of sexual violence landmark cases, 2012). storm’s take on this history is generally less than nuanced, however—never more so than in the especially negative impression that it gives of the tribunal’s treatment of victims and witnesses. when hannah protests to her superior that it is unacceptable to tell mira at the last minute that she will not in fact be permitted to speak about the rape camp in her testimony, that appeal to a victim-centred approach to justice is met with her colleague coldly replying that “she’s not the first witness to feel a bit hard done by by this court and she won’t be the last. it’s not meant to be fucking therapy”. while the experience of victims and witnesses cooperating with the tribunal is in part a tale of numerous oversights and insufficiencies, there is alongside those disappointments a parallel record of satisfactions and even, in some instances, real gratitude (stover, 2005). in trials for crimes such as rape, as the icty`s web site explains, “a number of innovative procedures…were introduced to cater to the specifics needs of survivors of sexual violence. these procedures became part and parcel of modern international criminal justice, with the creation of special guidelines for the presentation of evidence, protective measures for vulnerable witnesses, and support and counselling from trained professionals` (icty: crimes of sexual violence innovative procedures, 2012). but schmid seems eager to push aside what is at the very least a mixed report card on the tribunal’s performance in favour of the dramatic punch of an emphasis on its occasional heartlessness and self-interest. there is in some sense a classic movie storyline at work here (think mr. smith goes to washington, think dead poets society, or perhaps even top gun). hannah, the fierce and often clumsy maverick, does battle with a sclerotic and unresponsive institution that wants to thwart her pursuit of the good at every turn. she becomes the archetypal moral crusader against a complacent, unfeeling system and its self-serving minions. as schmid himself has written, hannah is “a woman for whom the fulfillment of duties had been the highest priority for years, who all of a sudden finds herself an outsider because of her persistence; who is confronted with the fact that a system, which she had always believed in and passionately supported, turns against her” (schmid, film movement, 2010). the spectator’s pleasure in seeing that narrative of steadfast opposition unfold, and then reach its inevitable conclusion, is in part what makes storm such an engrossing couple of hours’ viewing. and hannah’s bucking the system with her triumphant facilitation of mira’s testimony in that climactic courtroom scene is indeed thrilling to watch. but it’s an odd experience watching a film set at the icty where the villainy of studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 301 the war criminal ultimately feels a little bit overshadowed by the alleged indecency of the court established to bring individuals like him to account. when the film ends with mira (somewhat tentatively) thanking hannah for what she has done to make this release from her hidden past possible, it seems clear–whatever schmid’s intention—that in this particular story of “justice done” it is the moral heroism of the prosecutor and her ultimate vindication rather than the victim’s experience and agency that is actually the main event. concluding reflections in an interview about her adaptation of as if i am not there, juanita wilson has said that “the aim of the film…is to try and, naïve as it sounds, to make sure that (the mass rape of women during the bosnian conflict) doesn’t happen again” (mcmahon, 2011). each of these three films under discussion here is unquestionably infused with that same robust spirit of advocacy. in very different and sometimes less than subtle ways, each film is appealing to its audience: “look at this! how could this happen? isn’t this unjust? we must not look away. we must honour victims by acknowledging their experience and by ensuring their stories are heard”. but can these films in some way be said to “offer an alternative module of justice in the former yugoslavia structured around a sense of shared public narrative of events of the past” (jeffrey & jakala, 2012, p. 1)? that’s a very great weight of expectation to place on any cultural product, and there are many now wellestablished historical truths reflected upon in each of these three films that are more than likely to remain unacknowledged by significant portions of the region’s communities for some years to come. the evolution of any kind of “shared public narrative” about the tragic events of the 1990s is at the very least a multi-generational project, to be sure.12 furthermore, if a critical appraisal of these three films tells us anything about the likelihood that a creative work can serve as a catalyst for dealing with the past and “doing justice” to the stories of war victims, it may be that (despite the best intentions of their creators) such offerings are just as likely to displace or re-direct our attention away from the actual crimes and the victims of those crimes as they are to bring satisfaction or a sense of vindication to those whose pain is being represented and whose stories are being told. as directors and screenwriters interpret and package victims’ experience and then hit the festival and art house circuits, the unmediated voices of those victims are apt to become muffled in the process. in films such as these under review here, incomprehensible tragedy and grief without end are sometimes turned to a more audience-friendly mix of promise and catharsis, while the producing artists themselves are almost ritually showered with awards and congratulated on their “humanitarian” efforts. try as these artists might to steer the conversation elsewhere, the incalculable pain and loss of the victims often ends up as the occasion for someone else’s walk down the red carpet.13 studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 302 brian phillips in jolie’s film, above all, it was the sheer fact of a hollywood star choosing to make a film about a “difficult” subject that became the centre of attention. in the end, it was jolie who was duly praised for her “moral leadership” (kristof, 2011), for being “brave” and “courageous” (amanpour, 2011)— and feted by the hollywood industry with its stanley kramer award for having produced a film which “illuminates provocative social issues in an accessible and elevating fashion” (pond, 2011). in bosnia itself, the hugely popular sarajevo-based daily newspaper, dnevni avaz, named jolie as its “person of the year” and called the american actress and director “the angel of bosnia.” the paper even ventured that the film should be considered “a historical document”—as significant a contribution to the country’s recent history as the 1995 dayton agreement itself (drakulić, 2012).14 so what does this very twenty-first century instance of adulation and celebrity humanitarianism tell us? i have written elsewhere of the contemporary trend in artistic and media circles of granting disproportionate attention and bestowing rapidly-multiplying accolades on “human rights messengers” rather than on “human rights defenders facing truly lifethreatening risks in their work” (phillips, 2010). in that discussion, i also noted that the standard script for the acceptance of such kudos by the celebrated artists in question also seems to include an obligatory reference to the way in which they have been “humbled” by their contact with victims and witnesses. accompanying (and at the same time perhaps undercutting) that posture of humility, the garlanded “human rights messenger” then frequently seeks to establish the authority of his/her play or film with what i have called “human rights product endorsement”—the assurance that “the victims themselves have vouched for the veracity of your work” (phillips, 2010). conforming to this pattern, a number of jolie’s interviews publicizing her film contain just those elements of expressed humility and victim-certification. on the american television network pbs, for example, jolie spoke of her intense anxiety before the sarajevo screening of the film for war victims, and her subsequent relief at discovering that “they’ve embraced it” (smiley, 2011). jolie’s lead actor, zana marjanović, likewise added that in bosnia “people are very happy that this film is being made” (smiley, 2011). in the round of media appearances for the us premiere of in the land of blood and honey, members of jolie’s cast were frequently called upon to effectively join the ranks of victims in proffering an endorsement of the film’s authenticity. almost always pointedly introduced by jolie as individuals coming from communities on all sides of the bosnian conflict who had lived through the war themselves (and therefore best qualified to pass judgement on the film), her actors were then often asked by interviewers to share their views on the script and on what it was like to work with angelina—an inevitable cue for praise for their director and confirmation of her skill and dedication. “she was protecting and guiding us,” one of her actors testifies when thus prompted in a television interview (cooper, 2011). i am certainly in no position to doubt the sincerity of these actors’ views regarding jolie’s commitment, kindness and support for them throughout the filmmaking studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 303 process. but that there might also be a distorting power dynamic at work affecting the agency of these local artists here was of course never mentioned. listening to these conversations, one cannot help wondering: if you were a chronically under-employed bosnian actor given a plum role and a rare, decent paycheck for appearing in a film directed by one of hollywood’s hottest properties, would you be inclined to say anything remotely critical about your experience of working on the film—or indeed, about the quality of the script itself? certainly, given the script’s numerous improbabilities and indelicacies, hearing one of jolie’s actors exclaim that when she first read the script she felt that it was “so true…(it) had to be written by a bosnian” (amanpour, 2011) is cause for some bewilderment.15 responding to the 1956 berlin premiere of the theatrical adaptation of the diary of anne frank, british critic kenneth tynan famously argued that this event had been one of those occasions when the historical and moral significance of a particular cultural product was so great that the aesthetic criteria by which we would customarily judge a play, film or book needed to be set aside. following the performance, tynan wrote that he had “survived the most drastic emotional experience the theater has ever given me. it had little to do with art, as the play was not a great one, yet its effect, in berlin, at that moment of history, transcended anything that art has learned yet to achieve…i tried to stay detached, but the general catharsis engulfed me… all of this, i am well aware, is not drama criticism. in the shadow of an event so desperate and traumatic, criticism would be an irrelevance. i can only record an emotion that i felt, would not have missed, and pray never to feel again” (tynan, 2000, pp. 147-148).16 this phenomenon of the play, book or film which renders criticism “irrelevant” on the grounds that it deals with an incredibly grave subject or an urgent contemporary issue will be familiar to anyone who has tracked the reception of human rights-related work in the theatre, the cinema and in literature in recent decades. when presented with such works, audiences and critics too often slip obediently into a kind of default reverential mode—simply because the work on view seeks to represent or interpret historical events involving great human suffering or loss. at times, it is as if the mere fact of a novel, play or film being about atrocity or violation secures for the work an automatic exemption from any sort of real scrutiny of its artistic merits or shortcomings. the question of whether or not the work is actually any good is apt to become smothered in a heap of critical pieties about the overwhelming value of the kind of “general catharsis” and “drastic emotional experience” which tynan claimed to have had while watching the diary of anne frank. much of the 2010 discussion around jolie’s proposed film centred on the question of whether or not anyone has the right to say who can or cannot make a film about any given subject—including one as sensitive as a film about mass rape in wartime. that’s a debate likely to continue as more and more contemporary artists mine the dramatic potential of victim and witness testimony and choose to place those stories on stage and screen, with varying degrees of attentiveness to crucial ethical matters like obtaining the informed studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 304 brian phillips consent of their sources. but regardless of whether the producing artist is an “insider” or an “outsider” to the context at hand, those conversations must also give ample room for fundamental questions about the quality of the final product. few human rights practitioners would argue that angelina jolie had no right to make her film on the basis that she herself never experienced sexual violence in war or that she is not native to the region and therefore cannot truly know its history or culture. but practitioners certainly need to sharpen their critical tools and avoid rushing to capitalize on the media attention invariably given to such starry cultural enterprises. human rights organizations should be much more wary of reflexively championing projects like in the land of blood and honey (or perhaps even the somewhat more deserving as if i am not there or storm) simply because they may at least for a fleeting moment raise a bit of awareness about a neglected issue or provide the occasion for lucrative benefit performances and high profile publicity events. badly written films which sensationalize, simplify or sentimentalize the pain and loss of victims ultimately do little to honour that experience or to satisfactorily “tell the parts of their story which do not interest the law” (dembour & haslam, 2004, p. 156). vulnerable individuals convinced that full justice has been denied them may for a time feel grateful for the solidarity of a global celebrity—the “angel” who swoops in and for a moment appears to illuminate their ongoing sufferings with the glow of his or her superstar wattage. but isolated and often forgotten victims and witnesses of atrocity left disappointed by the results of limited judicial processes deserve much more than the dubious consolation of imagining they have seen themselves in somebody else’s mediocre movie. whatever their more modest faults, both as if i am not there and storm will most likely retain a degree of enduring value as films which at the very least prompt serious reflection on what constitutes justice after extreme violence and the place of the victim’s experience in both legal and extra-legal processes of accountability and memory. but not even the most gripping or insightful moments in those two well-made features illuminate the victim experience more starkly or pose more profound questions about post-conflict justice than one unforgettable sequence in american filmmaker pamela hogan’s 2011 documentary, i came to testify. the film chronicles the experience of 16 bosniak women who agreed to appear as witnesses for the prosecution at the historic 2000 icty trial dealing with the enslavement and systematic rape of women and girls in the town of foča in 1992. at the close of kunarac et al, three bosnian serb army officers were found guilty of rape as a crime against humanity. throughout the documentary, these women—their faces obscured and their names withheld—recall their difficult but determined journeys to see justice done in the hague and speak of their subsequent, still-haunted lives in bosnia in the decade since three of their captors and tormentors were convicted. but it is the further efforts of a group of these women to secure a very specific form of extra-legal acknowledgment at the site of their suffering which underscores how the justice inscribed in the court’s findings in studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 305 kunarac et al cannot by itself bring full redress for the horrific wrongs done to those who survived the rape camps of foča. in september 2004, a group of these survivors travelled to foča to place a plaque commemorating their painful history at the town’s partizan sports hall—a building which had been used as one of the rape camps in 1992. footage incorporated into hogan’s film shows how upon arrival in foča that day the women were met with a line of local policeman at the site—their linked arms forming a barrier between them and an angry mob bent on preventing the installation of the memorial at partizan. the mob hurls insults at the survivors, with one local woman reportedly saying of them: “they must have had such a great time. they had to come back for more” (hogan, 2011). that terrifying moment suggests that rather than imagining that a film can by itself offer some alternative form of justice for victims through the recreation of their experience, the real potential of film as a contribution to the transitional justice toolkit perhaps lies in its capacity to shred the comforting, formulaic prescriptions about dialogue, dealing with the past, and reconciliation that are too often voiced in peacebuilding enterprises—those wishful strategies for social reconstruction that show little understanding of just how long and hard the road to postconflict justice can be in a place like foča. notes 1 as jeffrey & jakala (2012) have noted in their work, the efforts of ngos in several post-yugoslav states to create a regional commission for establishing facts about war crimes and other gross violations of human rights committed on the territory of the former yugoslavia (recom) an example of just such an extra-judicial enterprise—one that has generated much debate in the region. one of the virtues of this particular initiative, they suggest, is that it “pluralizes the targets of transitional justice by orienting attention on victims and seeking to cultivate a longer-lasting public dialogue” (p. 2). one of the activities of recom mentioned in jeffrey and jakala’s article is “a small-group regional consultation with artists in december 2006” (p. 2). 2 “bosniak” refers to an inhabitant of bosnia-herzegovina who identifies as a bosnian muslim with regard to nationality, “ethnicity” and/or religion. 3 in his conversation with jolie following the sarajevo public premiere of the film in february 2012, guardian journalist julian borger commented that while the audience had indeed given the film a standing ovation at the end, during this particular scene “everyone around me was very uneasy”. he suggested that the way jolie had depicted danijel and ajla’s intimacy here clearly “made people feel very uncomfortable” (borger, 2012). the conversation is available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/ world/2012/feb/15/angelina-jolie-threats-land-of-blood-and-honey. 4 in her accounts of the film’s evolution, jolie stresses the contribution of her company of local actors throughout the process: “we all spoke about every speech, every scene, and made sure that it was right and true…we all adjusted the script together” (sixty minutes, 2011). “we had the good fortune that all the actors are from the area and lived through the war, so they could call us on it if it wasn’t right” (eastwood, 2011). in the film itself, however, jolie is given sole screenwriting credit. 5 interestingly, in an interview with radio free europe/radio liberty following the 2011 sarajevo screening for representatives of war victims’ associations, one omarska survivor and the leader of the association of camp prisoners of bosnia-herzegovina reportedly expressed regret for his earlier opposition to the making of in the land of blood and honey. murat tahirović is quoted as saying that “it is a very good movie, studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 306 brian phillips extraordinarily well done. it deals with the very substance of the war in bosnia. all the main points are there—camps, torture, crimes, and—worst of all—crimes against the honor of women” (arnautović, 2011). but do we assume tahirović speaks for all omarska survivors here? what place do we give to the victim as film critic in our assessment of a cultural product dealing with atrocity? 6 in an interview with reuters at the 2012 sarajevo film festival, jolie said: ”i think it’s important for film-makers to know what they are trying to say when they make a film. if you’re gonna do something about another country, make sure to surround yourself with extraordinary people from that country and really know that country and let that country speak through you. don’t try to give the country your own voice” (zuvela, 2012). 7 likewise, in her interview with jolie on “abc nightline,” journalist christiane amanpour appeared just as interested in jolie’s private life as in her work on the film, posing such questions as “do you plan to get married to mr. brad pitt?...do you guys have date night?...what’s the key to keeping it all together?” the celebrity lifestyle agenda again sat rather uncomfortably alongside the discussion of rape in wartime bosnia (amanpour, 2011). 8 see drakulić, s. (1999) as if i am not there: a novel of the balkans. london, uk: abacus. 9 see the classic study of these questions, cohen, s. (2001). states of denial: knowing about atrocities and suffering. cambridge and oxford, uk: polity. 10 with regard to the risks of uplift and the temptation to comfort an audience in the telling of this harsh story, in another interview wilson says that “what i loved most about the book was that it starts and ends with the birth of a baby and for me that just gives hope which i think is really important so you’re not just asking people to sit through very difficult and grim circumstances but you are at the end offering them hope that the human spirit is strong enough and has enough love to survive without turning it into hate and giving up” (mcmahon, 2011). 11 refik hodžić, whose publications are cited here, also co-wrote and co-directed (with aldin arnautović) a brilliant documentary on these same concerns in 2004, justice unseen (slijepa pravda), produced by xy films (sarajevo). for further information about the film, see http://www.xyfilms.net/content/view/19/31/lang,english/ 12 underscoring the scope of that culture of denial, in her 2011 balkan insight article on in the land of blood and honey, journalist valerie hopkins noted that “branislav dukić, president of the republika srpska (rs) association of detainees, told reporters that he is ‘exasperated by the fact that the serbs are once again assigned the role of main villain’, and pledged that he and other members of his organisation would lobby the rs government to ban the film. dukić has not seen the film, but said ‘the response from bosnian (war victims’) associations and their enthusiasm testify that the main message of this film is to re-charge the serbs as the sole culprits for the war’” (hopkins, 2011a). at the time of in the land of blood and honey’s february 2012 sarajevo public premiere, guardian journalist julian borger reported that jolie and some of her serbian actors in the film had been threatened online—with one actor also having a car window smashed and another having his mobile phone hacked (borger, 2012). in its october 2012 report on the lack of reparations in republika srpska (rs) for those who experienced wartime rape, amnesty international states that “in the rs, the true extent of sexual violence during the conflict has never been acknowledged by the authorities or society more broadly. survivors of wartime sexual violence are not recognized in law and their needs are not being met in practice” (amnesty international, 2012). however, bosnian serb ex-detainee and leader of the association of prisoners from visegrad, dragisa andrić, attended the special december 2011 screening of in the land of blood and honey for war victims and was quoted as saying that “people, especially young people and those who did not live through the war, must watch this film to see what war brings, that is, nothing good. they must realize war is an evil, so that it never happens again” (hopkins, 2011a). 13 in addition to the awards given to jolie and to in the land of blood and honey discussed in the succeeding paragraph, storm received the amnesty international film prize and the guild of german art house cinemas prize at the 2009 berlin film studies in social justice, volume 7, issue 2, 2013 in the land of celebrity humanitarianism 307 festival, the award for best narrative feature at the 2009 flyway film festival, and was nominated for the 2009 “prix lux”—the european parliament film prize. at the 2011 irish film and television academy awards, as if i am not there received awards for best film, best director, and best screenplay. 14 jolie was also made an honorary citizen of sarajevo at the 2012 sarajevo film festival (zuvela, 2012). what was described as the first public appearance of her $500,000 engagement ring also made headlines on this occasion (huffington post, 2012). 15 on the anderson cooper talk show, actress zana marjanović likewise stated that the script was “so bosnian, so true, so authentic”—and that it was “quite unbelievable that you (jolie) would know so much about bosnians and what we went through” (cooper, 2011). in a variation on the victim-certification process, even some of those interviewing jolie were eager to display their “i was there—so i know how it was” credentials for the audience. both anderson cooper on his daytime talk show and abc’s christiane amanpour included clips of their own coverage as reporters during the siege of sarajevo in their programs about jolie and in the land of blood and honey. 16 i am grateful to professor andrea most of the university of toronto for bringing the kenneth tynan review and its implications for the reception of cultural products like the theatrical adaptation of anne frank’s diary to my attention. references alcalá, p.r. and baines, e. 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(2005). judging history: the historical record of the international criminal tribunal for the former yugoslavia. human rights quarterly, 27(3), 908-942. zolkos, m. (2008). the time that was broken, the home that was razed: deconstructing slavenka drakulić’s storytelling about yugoslav war crimes. the international journal of transitional justice, 2(2), 214-226. zuveta, m. (2012, july 7). emotional jolie visits sarajevo film festival. reuters.com. retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/07/entertainment-us-bosnia-filmfestival-jolidusbre8660hj20120707 understanding social justice through practitioners’ language: a grounded theory analysis of interviews with practitioners from libraries and their community partners the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 understanding social justice through practitioners’ language: a grounded theory analysis of interviews with practitioners from libraries and their community partners j. elizabeth mills, university of washington, usa jacqueline kociubuk, kent state university, usa kathleen campana, kent state university, usa abstract researchers have recognized that aspects of social justice are present in library efforts by acknowledging the importance of using library programs and services to promote social justice and the significance of social justice for the lis field. however, while public libraries have indicated a strong interest in reaching underserved communities, they may not yet possess a thorough understanding of various aspects of social justice, especially the concepts of equity, engagement, and empowerment, despite the increasing focus on social justice’s centrality in the library science field. this work-in-progress study presents a grounded theory analysis of 20 semistructured interviews that were conducted as part of an existing study with library staff and their community partners (staff who work at organizations with which the libraries partner to offer outreach programs in the community). the analysis explores and unpacks practitioners’ language to demonstrate a complex, multifaceted portrait of how these practitioners describe equity, engagement, and empowerment. these practitioners express both broad and individual approaches to this social justice work in an effort to offer equal treatment to the whole community while also recognizing individual barriers. moreover, they underscore the importance of a role for the community to play in achieving their own goals and strengthening connections between community members and institutions. this analysis yields a critical semantic foundation of social justice concepts, situated in practitioner understanding and prior research in social justice. keywords: children’s librarianship; community; outreach; public libraries; social justice publication type: research article introduction ublic libraries are uniquely positioned to support the aspirations and needs of families with young children in underserved communities. some public libraries have begun to use their outreach programs and services, offered outside of the library in community locations, as a way to reach and serve these families. to help develop and provide these outreach programs for underserved communities, libraries build partnerships with local organizations and agencies who also work with these communities (mills, et al., 2019). when successful, these programs and partnerships can allow libraries to meet these families where they are and engage with them p https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 through “newly constructed modes of interaction” (mehra et al., 2017, p. 4228). these efforts possibly help to upend the power dynamics that can keep these families in underserved communities at the margins and begin to support social justice efforts that could help to empower these patrons. these connections between libraries and social justice are not new, as research has acknowledged the aspects of social justice present in library efforts and the importance of using library programs and services to promote social justice (rankin, 2016) as well as the significance of social justice for the lis field (cooke et al., 2016; jaeger et al., 2014; jaeger et al., 2016). while libraries have indicated a strong interest in serving their community (campana et al., 2018; mills et al., 2019), it is possible that there is not enough of an understanding of how social justice concepts can guide libraries in engaging and empowering these families. moreover, though libraries are engaging with their communities and gathering data on needs and aspirations, not all libraries know how to translate this data into impactful and community-based program development (campana et al., 2019a). project voice (value sensitive design of outcomes informing community engagement), an institute of museum and library services-funded grant (campana et al., 2019b), is focused on designing and developing a social justice, outcomes-based planning and assessment toolkit. this toolkit is intended to support library staff who serve young children (ages zero to eight) and their families in underserved communities through outreach programs and services that emphasize the social justice concepts of equity, engagement, and empowerment. these concepts are based on a synthesis of social justice research (campana et al., 2019b), building on brownlee et al.’s (2012) work on social justice as undoing structural barriers that reinforce inequalities among people, as well as kleine’s choice framework (2010). literature review broadly speaking, social justice can be understood as the idea that all individuals, no matter who they are or their status in society, deserve equal rights as members of society. though slight differences in definition and manifestation exist across the library and information science field, one common theme is that social justice is about having respect for and honoring human rights, especially the right to information (jaeger et al., 2015; mathiesen, 2015), as well as acknowledging the role of power dynamics in continuing historic and institutional inequalities for various groups (odlos, 2020). perhaps implicit in these definitions is the responsibility of public libraries to understand and address issues of discrimination due to race, class or socio-economic status, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, hair style, language and literacy level, and other factors that may play a part in exclusion or marginalization of communities or groups that libraries serve (gibson et al., 2017). as entrenched institutional or cultural norms have the potential to make certain groups feel less valuable—a kind of “violation of justice”— the work to undo these structural barriers is central to social justice efforts (fraser, 2009, as cited in brownlee et al., 2012, p. 32). while the library field has begun to focus on their role in these efforts, other fields have been immersed in social justice work for much longer and, as a result, have established definitions of key social justice concepts (hytten & bettez, 2011; reisch, 2002). because of this, this literature review pulls definitions from the social work, community health, and education fields as well as the library field to provide an interdisciplinary view of equity, empowerment, and engagement—the social justice concepts that serve as a foundation for project voice. the concept of equity is frequently placed at the forefront of social justice work in public libraries, especially when considering access to information (jaeger et al., 2015). 55 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 misunderstandings often exist between equality and equity, with equality often implying sameness for all (odlos, 2020). ala’s office for diversity, literacy, and outreach services (odlos) defines equity as the converse of this perspective of sameness, acknowledging there is a difference between individuals and groups, and placing an emphasis on taking individual differences into account so that a fair process and outcome are ensured (2020). equity is often tied to a “redistribution” or “just distribution” of resources (brownlee et al., 2012; mathiesen, 2015), with mathiesen (2015) noting that this “just distribution” is a model in which “every person has sufficient access to exercise [their] basic capabilities” and that access and capability are affected by complex and interrelated factors (p. 200). brownlee et al. (2012), building off previous work by fraser (2009), proposes that, in addition to redistribution, representation and recognition also play a key part in developing equity. “representation” focuses on giving disadvantaged groups an active voice in institutions or agencies from which they may have previously been excluded, while “recognition” relates to a “cultural justice” that acknowledges historical marginalization of certain groups (brownlee et al., 2012, p. 21). another key concept of social justice work in libraries is community engagement, considered to be one of the core values of public libraries today (gibson et al., 2017). gibson et al. (2017) write that community engagement should involve an “active” and “critical” approach, with an explicit acknowledgement of “the influence of social, cultural, financial, and political power on information access and information behavior,” moving libraries beyond a neutral and apolitical stance (p. 752). libraries transforming communities, a joint professional development initiative from the national coalition for dialogue & deliberation (ncdd) and ala, defines community engagement as “the process of working collaboratively with community members...to address issues for the betterment of the community” (ala, 2018). other sources outside the library field echo the collaborative nature of community engagement, with the centers for disease control and prevention (cdc) (1997) writing that community engagement “often involves partnerships and coalitions that help mobilize resources and influence systems, change relationships among partners, and serve as catalysts for changing policies, programs, and practices” (p. 9). empowerment, a third critical concept of social justice work, is embedded in service professions like librarianship (maack, 1997). though a single definition is lacking, empowerment is usually seen as supporting individuals and communities as they increase their autonomy and strengths and make meaningful choices for themselves (adams, 2003; lachal & peich, 2017). in library work, empowerment can be understood as a way to give the community an active voice, allowing work or learning to be guided by the direction or values of the community, with public libraries assuming a role of facilitator, partner, or knowledge sharer (maack, 1997). in doing this, libraries can work to leverage community knowledge and enable community members to be decisionmakers and problem-solvers, an oft-overlooked position for communities (lachal & peich, 2017). similar to the other social justice concepts, empowerment requires the recognition of the role of power dynamics and historical inequalities in the relationship and work done between public libraries and the vulnerable communities they may serve (lachal & peich, 2017; maack, 1997). alsop and heinsohn (2005) acknowledge this, adding that empowerment is affected by both the capacity of an individual to choose for themselves and the “opportunity structure (the institutional context in which choice is made)” (p. 4). kleine (2010) expanded on this to elucidate how an individual or community’s “resource portfolio”—their capacity—is often limited by societal frameworks of exclusion or marginalization. however, despite increasing recognition of social justice’s centrality in the library science field (cooke et al., 2016; jaeger et al., 2014; jaeger et al., 2016), public libraries may not yet possess 56 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 a thorough-enough understanding of how the social justice concepts of equity, engagement, and empowerment can be applied in their work with underserved and marginalized communities (gibson et al., 2017). indeed, while studies have revealed the presence of social justice in public library efforts (jaeger et al., 2014; rankin, 2016); the need for more critical and active work around social justice in libraries, especially around anti-racism, has become increasingly evident (gibson et al., 2020). as gorski (2016) notes, “enthusiasm is not enough” to fully understand and implement the change needed to address the vast societal and cultural problems encountered in the u.s. that negatively impact many underserved communities, notably those of color (p. 13). as a first step in providing a foundation for more active social justice work in the lis field, this initial study explores the ways that library staff and their community partners, who work with underserved populations, describe and make meaning of the social justice concepts of equity, engagement, and empowerment. research design this work-in-progress study aims to use a grounded theory approach (corbin & strauss, 2015; glaser, 1998) to analyze transcripts from twenty, semi-structured interviews, collected during six site visits for project voice during the fall and early winter of 2019-2020. these interviews (conducted both in-person and via phone) took place prior to nationwide library shutdowns due to covid-19; therefore, this dataset does not include the full set of library staff participants recruited for project voice. as part of the interview protocol, we asked the participants to define for themselves the term “underserved community” and to self-identify communities around their library that would qualify as underserved. in this way we were able to leverage our participants’ expertise about their communities, thereby situating their conceptual understandings of the concepts of equity, engagement, and empowerment in their own experiences. moreover, this participant-generated approach enabled us to address a variety of types of diversity, including socioeconomic, racial/cultural, education level, and so on. the purpose of this work-in-progress study is to provide initial insight into how public library staff and their community partners describe these social justice concepts for themselves, what language they use, and how their language connects back to the research literature to offer insight into the current understanding of social justice among practitioners working with families and children in underserved communities. this research is guided by the following questions: rq1: how, if at all, do library staff and community partners participating in project voice describe the social justice concept of equity? rq2: how, if at all, do library staff and community partners participating in project voice describe the social justice concept of engagement? rq3: how, if at all, do library staff and community partners participating in project voice describe the social justice concept of empowerment? population the population1 of this work-in-progress study consisted of seven library staff (including one library administrator) from six library systems and 13 community partner staff (staff from organizations that libraries partner with to offer outreach programs in the community) from eight community organizations. the unequal distribution across these two groups is due to the fact that these project voice library staff participants often work with multiple community partners 57 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 in their outreach efforts. we purposely recruited library staff who engage in outreach programs and services with families and children (ages birth to eight) in underserved communities; community partners who are involved with the library outreach programs and services were also recruited. furthermore, we recruited nationwide in order to achieve greater variety across communities and library sizes. while the majority of this study’s library staff population represented libraries located in suburban and city locales; at least two libraries were located in rural areas and smaller towns. given that our recruitment strategies were more focused on the nature of the outreach program the library staff were offering and less on the nature of their job description, the final participant group represented a wide variety of job titles and descriptions, such as children’s librarian or outreach librarian, that were not specifically tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion (dei)-related positions. moreover, due to the qualitative nature of this study, we did not seek to control for any previous dei-related training in our recruitment efforts, prioritizing instead the outreach work they were already doing in their communities and seeking to leverage that expertise as part of our study. analysis the analysis was completed using a grounded theory approach where participant responses were analyzed at the group level (library staff as one group; community partners as a second group) without comparisons between the groups because each group’s perspectives may be quite different. similarly, comparisons of the responses by demographic groupings (e.g., library service population, locale, cultural background of participants) were not done due to the limited size of the study population and exploratory nature of the study. the grounded theory (corbin & strauss, 2015) thematic analysis was performed by three researchers across several phases. the first phase consisted of two researchers reading each transcript thoroughly. afterwards one researcher conducted an initial cycle of open, line-by-line coding of the transcripts from both populations (library staff and community partners), eliciting codes from the quotes themselves, with the goal of highlighting each interviewee’s implicit and explicit meanings in their responses (gubrium et al., 2012). following a review of the initial coding by the second researcher, the two researchers discussed the coding to negotiate any differences in interpretation. a second, categorical coding cycle was then completed by the first researcher to gather the initial open codes into common categories and definitions using the frequency and significance of the initial codes to guide the categorization (thornberg & charmaz, 2014). subsequently, the two researchers held a second discussion to arrive at an agreement with the category codes and then worked together to identify thematic codes based on the categories. finally, the full codebook was subsequently handed off to the third researcher for overall validation and further discussions to determine consensus, after which the thematic codes were applied to the complete dataset. the goal of this approach to coding was not to achieve reliability on a set coding scheme; instead, this approach facilitated in-depth discussions among the researchers as to the various meanings and interpretations present in the transcripts around the concepts of equity, engagement, and empowerment (harry et al., 2005). these adaptive and emergent discussions led to further refinements of the codes and themes, based on the various perspectives and lived experiences of the researchers and the crucial negotiations that arose in these discussions (smagorinsky, 2008). findings our thematic analysis addresses all three research questions and yields the following narrative 58 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 presentation of the broad findings. these findings present main themes, grouped under the concepts of equity, engagement, and empowerment, and delineated for each population group (library staff and community partners). equity library staff library staff (ls) talk about equity in terms of two approaches to their outreach work: broad and specific. in the broad approach, ls use the terms “equal,” “everyone,” and “same” to indicate their efforts to reach everyone in their community in the same way, with the intent of giving all people an equal chance to benefit from the programs and services they are offering outside of library walls in the community, emphasizing fairness and same treatment regardless of background. on the other hand, some ls discuss equity as an individualized process that is based on actual or perceived need, paying close attention to “places where people might need more resources” to “meet them at their point of need.” these ls are taking into account and, as a result, tailoring their work to specific aspects of a community’s identity, with the purpose of filling a gap in access. in fact, at times both approaches appear in the same ls response, presenting a tension in these discussions of broad and specific approaches. an example of this occurred when one ls shared, “we try to provide library services that are tailored to what people say that they may need, no matter where they are, their station.” additionally, a second ls said, “[we are] making sure we are hitting people with all different socioeconomic backgrounds and we’re not just focusing on one area of community, but being out everywhere.” ls see themselves as having a multifaceted, active role to play in equity, using verbs such as “provide,” “reach out,” “serve,” “make sure/ensure,” “identify,” “interact,” and others, underscoring an intent to serve and address access gaps, typically by connecting the community to tools, resources, programs, and so on. ls also express a sense of personal motivation and purpose to their outreach work, wanting to connect with the community on an interpersonal level as part of that purpose. they talk about a deliberate approach to incorporating equity into the planning, execution, and delivery of the program by drawing on their implicit knowledge of the community. for instance, one ls said, “i believe that [in] my work, in the way i communicate… and interact with the families, with the people that i’m seeing, i’m showing my commitment and my understanding of closing the gap.” there is a tension here, too, between their personal goals and the goals they see from the library as an organization. finally, ls point to two key aspects of equity in their role in outreach work. ls believe community voices should play a key part in incorporating equity into outreach services, with one ls pointing out, “it has to have their voice, or it has to come from them.” coupled with this aspect is the recognition that not all community members can access what is being offered, due to a variety of barriers. community partners community partners (cp) talk about equity in terms of two approaches to their outreach work: broad and specific. in the broad approach, cp use the terms “equal,” “everyone,” “all people,” and “everybody” to refer to their effort to provide the same level of access to resources and tools for the community members they serve. cp believe all community members deserve this access and they develop these resources according to community needs as they are understood 59 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 by the cp. this equal approach is intended to provide everyone with the same access, by treating everyone the same regardless of individual factors such as race, socioeconomic status, and so on. on the other hand, some cp talk about a specific approach that recognizes the differing needs and amount of access present in the community being served, with one cp saying, “it’s not necessarily the exact same for everybody; sometimes we have to reach out differently for different people to make sure that they can have the same chances for things.” cp emphasize the value of truly seeing a community, recognizing what they actually need, and making an extra effort to fill gaps and address the barriers they face, their points of need, and so on, by leveraging various kinds of data. cp also emphasize the importance of building trust as part of developing that community knowledge. for example, a cp shared, “it also helps us to get to know the families a little bit more and build that trust so that we can reach out and help with resources that they need.” as part of that work, cp seek to recognize and understand the influence of societal and class structures on the community’s capacity. cp also talk about their role in both broad and specific approaches to outreach work, using the verbs “provide,” “reach out,” “take time,” and “make sure/ensure” to describe how they offer resources, tools, knowledge, opportunities, and so on. they reflect on cultural relevance, seeking to “match” their work with what people need, offering the support that families need while also recognizing that support must be differentiated. engagement library staff ls describe community engagement as providing opportunities and services that meet community needs while also taking into account community capacity and being respectful of boundaries and limitations. they see engagement as an effort to share power with the community, working with the community as equals, if it is within the community’s capacity and desire to do so. ls also seek to know their community and work to encourage community involvement in programs and services, with one ls saying, “we want [to] make sure that they’re involved and they have the opportunity to be.” ls express a sense of purpose when it comes to this engagement work: that of building trust and relationships with the community and being part of the community. this work takes an investment of time and a consistent presence, both valued by ls as encouraging and motivating the community through showing a sense of respect for the community. ls also look for instances when that engagement can be two-way, explaining, “we want to engage with people and have people engage back with us.” ls believe that, by being part of the community, they gain knowledge that enables better relationships with, and active engagement in, the community. in engagement, as in equity, ls stress the importance of being aware of community barriers when producing their outreach work, because these barriers can impede a community’s ability and capacity to engage fully with the library. families might be juggling more than one job, struggling to feed their children, as well as confronting other difficulties. this awareness by the ls is part of knowing the community better and providing an informed and thoughtful sense of engagement with the community. for instance, one ls shared, “we really try not to get in the way of their day, but [rather] add to their experience wherever they [might be] stuck.” finally, ls talk about the role of the community in this engagement work, sharing power with the community and 60 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 expecting community involvement in the various types of outreach work, explaining “everyone [is] working towards a shared goal or vision for how a community could be.” community partners cp look at engagement as consisting of building relationships and establishing trust within the community, placing a value on actively working to establish connections. they believe connections are part of forming trust, emphasizing a need for authenticity. they also recognize that engagement suffers when trust and connection are not in place. one cp shared, “if you don’t have a relationship with [a] student or parent, you’re going to have zero engagement; they’re not going to listen to what you’re saying; they’re not going to take the resources you’re providing them… they don’t trust you.” instead, cp seek to work with community members, in a collaborative way, and view the community members as partners, especially in decision making and community strengthening. similarly, some cp talked about sharing vulnerability as a part of this work as well, describing that vulnerability is being present and open with the community about what’s going on. cp also point to a reciprocation on the part of the community as a result of that openness and vulnerability—within healthy boundaries—and they see this reciprocation as an indication of trust. finally, cp discuss the importance of recognizing barriers to engagement that may inhibit relationship building and establishing trust. one barrier might be that cp may not be aware of their own lens of how they think the community wants to be engaged, versus developing a clear understanding of the community and recognizing a community’s history. a cp pointed out, “[we] need to take [our engagement] lens off and acknowledge engagement efforts on the family's behalf in the increments that they're willing to give us in that time and space that we share together.” another barrier might be the presence of trauma in families’ backgrounds, compounded by a lack of familiarity on the part of the cp with that kind of background. regardless of these and other barriers, cp remain optimistic about their capability to continue to build trust and engage with their communities. for instance, a cp explains, “maybe they've trusted people and been burnt. so they're going to be less trusting of us, but we have to still have the same expectations of trust building and acknowledge their efforts, whether they be minimal or grand.” empowerment library staff when it comes to empowerment, ls see themselves not just as a provider of material support (tools, resources, etc.), but also as a community facilitator, using the terms “helper,” “motivator,” and “model,” among others, to describe their work in empowering their communities. ls seek to encourage community members to recognize their own strengths and capabilities, emphasizing that the everyday actions of families are integral to preparing children for later learning success. a ls pointed out, “[we are] making sure that families know your child doesn’t have to be enrolled into a fancy school to make a difference. the things you’re doing day-to-day are just as important, if not more important.” ls also talk about wanting to make a difference in the lives of the community members they serve, even citing this as their motivation for doing this outreach work. equally important is a desire on the part of ls to honor a community’s right to thrive, taking the standpoint that the 61 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 community is deserving of the resources the library has to offer, that they have a right to these services, and that they should feel welcomed by the library. one ls shared, “i see empowerment as providing that access, but [also] making them feel like they’re welcome to and deserve the right to use those services.” as part of this right to thrive, ls talk about wanting to provide a normalizing, positive environment in which to offer these services, one that honors a community’s dignity and avoids introducing stigmas into the experience. ls discuss working to recognize personal privilege, also understood as bias, as part of these efforts as well, which may affect the ways in which outreach services are created and implemented. ls stress the importance of listening to peers who come from the community or who share similar backgrounds and can provide a necessary perspective on how to provide empowering outreach opportunities for a community in a positive way. finally, ls discuss the role of the community in enacting empowerment, believing the community has the responsibility and capability to take ownership over their own outcomes with the programs and services that are offered out in the community. essentially, a community must play an active role in taking the resources and support provided and then implementing them in their own community to make a difference. a ls shared, “empowerment is letting them know that they are responsible and can take ownership.” community partners cp also discuss how the community plays a role in empowerment by setting goals, establishing independence, understanding their own capacity, and believing they can succeed. explained one cp, “it’s up to them; not handholding in the process, but actually [enabling them to] make the change and do it.” cp place a value on the community recognizing their own capacity to make good things happen in their lives, in having confidence and a sense of ownership over what happens in their community, with one cp explaining, “empowerment is just motivating them and giving them confidence in themselves and resources to do it themselves.” cp locate their own role in this empowerment work, using verbs like “giving,” “reaching out,” “ensuring,” “looking for resources,” “finding folks in the community,” “helping them see their capacity,” “motivating,” “giving confidence,” “goal setting,” and “simplifying and explaining.” many of these verbs suggest that cp see their role as sitting alongside what they view as the community’s role in their own empowerment. the cp want to lift up and support community members, help them recognize their own capacity as well as the inherent challenges, and seek ways to offer resources and support that enable community members to thrive and achieve their goals. however, cp also acknowledge that barriers can exist in their own expectations for the community and the community’s capacity, such as the difference between what cp want for a community and what the community itself wants in terms of improvement. cp also recognize that empowerment does not always come easily; there may be internal or external factors that complicate the empowerment process. a cp shared, “sometimes it just takes a little bit more to get people to empowerment. sometimes it’s because people just don’t know or are afraid or don’t want to, or sometimes there are systems in place that don’t let them.” cp point to the importance of meeting people where they are as one way to move past barriers to empowerment, emphasizing, “empowerment means meeting people where they are at and helping them feel… like [they] can actually do it.” discussion as discussed in the literature review, social justice can be understood as the idea that all individuals, no matter who they are or what their status is in society, deserve a certain equal 62 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 right as members of society. similarly, public libraries and other community organizations have a responsibility not only to understand and address issues of discrimination but also to work to undo structural barriers that make certain groups feel less valuable in their communities and in society as a whole. the data in this work-in-progress study reveal that ls and cp use multifaceted, yet often convergent descriptions to portray equity, engagement, and empowerment. examining the data through the study’s research questions provides insight into how these practitioner-generated descriptions of these social justice concepts reflect or diverge from the existing literature. equity the data under research question one, which focused on ls and cp descriptions of equity, reveals that the descriptions offered by ls and cp in many ways align with much of the literature. for these practitioners, equity is a complex concept, one that requires developing an individualized process based on actual or perceived need and/or tailoring a program to specific aspects of a community’s identity, while also intending to provide all attendees with an equal or same chance to benefit and thereby fill a gap in access. this connects with odlos’ (2020) emphasis on recognizing and understanding disadvantages in the community and how these disadvantages can lead to exclusion within communities that can linger at a systemic level. furthermore, both ls and cp point to their roles and motivation in equity-based outreach work, and how their efforts are centered around interaction and connection with the community. in this way they are emphasizing the significance of representation, as brownlee et al. (2012) put it, acknowledging trust and cultural relevance to be important parts of this work. ls in particular highlight the importance of incorporating voices from the different communities, touching on brownlee et al.’s (2012) use of the term “representation,” to ensure recognition when nurturing equity for disadvantaged groups. furthermore, when talking about their roles, both ls and cp pointed to their efforts to address access gaps for the community as a central part of their roles; in this way they are mirroring mathiesen’s (2015) belief that equity has roots in a “just distribution” of resources. however, while the literature makes a clear division between equity and equality (odlos, 2020), some participant responses indicate a persistent interchangeability between these terms. some describe an equitable approach as one that ensures the same for all (equality), rather than one that recognizes individualization based on differing needs (equity). moreover, some participants discuss both broad and specific approaches to outreach work to try to meet the whole community. these approaches sit in tension with one another—on the one hand, trying to serve an entire community, and on the other hand, meeting a community where they are and recognizing individual needs and aspirations. to address this tension, brownlee et al. (2017) discuss how providing support for reflection specifically on social justice concepts can help practitioners wrestle through internal conflict to hopefully arrive on their own to a deeper understanding of social justice and how to contribute or apply it. it is possible that an increased awareness of the literature related to equity, as well as opportunities to reimagine library outreach work from an equity perspective, would enable library and community partner staff to more deeply understand this concept and how it applies to their work in serving communities and families. engagement the data under research question two, which focused on ls and cp descriptions of engagement, 63 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 reveals that, here, too, the descriptions shared by these practitioners align in many ways with the literature. the ls and cp emphasize how, for them, engagement involves building relationships that are founded on trust and connections, understanding where the community is in terms of their barriers, and then playing an active role in helping to overcome some of those barriers, so that the community can feel engaged and supported. ls, in particular, highlight the importance of personal connections with the community to achieve authentic engagement. this echoes gibson et al.’s (2017) and mehra et al.’s (2006) calls for active involvement in the community by the library in order to better understand and engage with underserved groups. cp expand on this to offer the idea of sharing vulnerability as a way to build trust and promote engagement, an idea that we did not see in the literature, and one that offers a direction for further research to add depth to the existing scholarship in this area. ls also point to partnerships with community organizations as a powerful method for building engagement, an idea that has been supported in the cdc literature (1997), as a way to “help mobilize resources and influence systems (p. 7).” in addition, ls underscore the importance of having an awareness of barriers within the community, as part of a larger role they play in engagement. this role includes meeting the community where they are, helping without being in the way, and providing opportunities for involvement and engagement despite barriers. in this way, ls are putting into action some of gibson et al’s (2017) recommendation that community engagement involve an “active” and “critical” approach. at the same time, ls also expect the community to play a role in this engagement process, as the staff share power with the community and seek community involvement in outreach work. while the literature similarly emphasizes collaboration with the community as part of engagement work toward community improvement (ala, 2018) we did not specifically see this kind of reciprocal expectation of community involvement reflected in it. again, this offers an interesting additional area for future research into actors’ expectations around roles and interaction. on the other hand, we did not see gibson et al.’s (2017) emphasis on community engagement—requiring a clear recognition of the role of historic and institutional power dynamics by libraries doing work in underserved communities, especially those of color—illustrated in the data. since cp and ls express an intent to recognize and understand societal and class structures affecting power dynamics when discussing equity, future research is needed here as well, to surface these practitioners’ awareness of and actions to upend these power dynamics in their outreach work with communities. empowerment finally, the data under research question three, which focused on ls and cp descriptions of empowerment, shows a third way in which the participant data is in alignment with much of the social justice literature. ls talk about empowerment in terms of their role as community facilitator, similar to maack’s characterization (1997), trying to make a difference in the community they serve and honoring that community’s right to thrive and receive services and programs. ls also highlight the importance of sharing their struggles and understanding barriers, which echoes kleine’s (2010) choice framework, and the concept of a “resource portfolio” that can affect how much a community can move past barriers based on their capacity. ls also discuss the community’s role in empowerment, believing the community has the capacity and capability to enact change for themselves. cp, too, see a role for the community in goal setting and recognizing their own capacity. both characterizations reflect the literature (adams, 2003; alsop & heinsohn, 2005; lachal & peich, 2017), especially in terms of achieving goals through their own efforts and actions. additionally, cp want to instill confidence in community members, 64 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 building relationships with them and motivating them, connecting back to lachal and peich’s (2017) conceptualization of empowerment in supporting individuals and communities as they increase their autonomy and strengths and make meaningful choices for themselves. in this way, much of the data from this work-in-progress study sits in agreement and alignment with much of the existing social justice literature, indicating that some work has already been done in moving the field toward a more equitable, engaged, and empowering approach to community-based outreach work. however, certain new themes—an interchangeability of equity and equality; an approach that is both broad and specific and therefore perhaps embodies some tension of scope and goal; an expectation on the part of the practitioner that a community play their own role in facilitating engagement; and an interest in sharing vulnerability with a community as part of building trust and relationship—offer intriguing additional avenues for inquiry that could lend depth and nuance to existing social justice theories around equity, engagement, and empowerment in community work. limitations as with any work-in-progress qualitative study, there are limitations, primarily related to the population and the restrictions placed on the study by the events of covid-19. as noted in the research design section, the population does not include the full study population because the case studies were cut short by covid-19 quarantines. given the small size of the participant group, it is likely that the descriptions portrayed here are not fully reflective of the field as a whole. regarding the interviews themselves, with a few exceptions, the interviews were conducted individually with each participant. however, for three interviews, participants were interviewed together due to their request or time constraints. in each of these exceptions, interviewee responses were considered separately during our analysis. implications and conclusion ls and cp describe the social justice concepts of equity, engagement, and empowerment, in complex and overlapping ways, which present both broad and individual approaches to this work that seek to offer equal treatment to the whole community while also recognizing individual barriers, and underscore a role for the community in achieving their own goals and strengthening connections between community members and institutions. these findings offer the following implications for practice. regarding lis curriculum, social justice-focused courses are increasingly being offered and research is contributing to shaping and developing the curricula for these courses (cooke, et al., 2016; cooke & sweeney, 2017). this research can benefit from practitioner-generated descriptions that offer a starting point for in-depth discussions in the classroom; in other cases, these descriptions can expand existing perspectives on how social justice concepts can impact and shape the work of future librarians. similarly, regarding professional development, this study offers conceptual descriptions that will likely resonate with and offer a way for these practitioners to reflect both on their ongoing work and on how they might meaningfully incorporate the social justice concepts of equity, engagement, and empowerment into their outreach work with families and children in underserved communities. moreover, ls can use the cp descriptions of these concepts to help facilitate conversations across organizations and look at how to collaboratively build social justice outreach programs and services. this study offers opportunities for future research as well. because this work-in-progress study 65 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 includes only a portion of the whole project voice population; additional research is needed to explore how the remaining population describe equity, engagement, and empowerment compared to the themes from this initial study to assess fit and relevance. furthermore, a theme raised by one participant—recognizing personal privilege—offers an intriguing avenue for future research to explore the role, identified by this participant, of knowledgeable peers who can possess insider knowledge of a particular community. it’s possible that this nascent aspect of empowerment might be prevalent across the entire participant group, as well as across all three concepts. overall, this research into the ways that ls and cp describe and make meaning of social justice concepts—equity, engagement, and empowerment—provides the field with practitioner-generated descriptions that can inform future outreach work and have a positive impact on academic and practitioner pursuits toward meeting communities where they are and enacting change. endnote 1 as noted above, the population included in this paper’s study is a subset of the project voice population, due to a change in study activities related to covid-19. however, for the purposes of this paper, this subset will be referred to as “the population.” acknowledgements we would like to thank our participants for being so candid and open with us in these interviews regarding their descriptions of equity, engagement, and empowerment. we want to acknowledge our fellow research team members: allyson filippi, emily romeijn-stout, khatsini simani, dr. michelle h. martin, and dr. ricardo gomez. finally, we want to thank the institute for museum and library services for their funding and support of project voice. references adams, r. (2003). social work and empowerment. palgrave macmillan. american library association (ala). (2018, april 17). what is community engagement? http://www.ala.org/tools/librariestransform/libraries-transformingcommunities/engagement alsop, r., & heinsohn, n. (2005). measuring empowerment in practice: structuring analysis and framing indicators. world bank policy research working paper. https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-3510 brownlee, j., scholes, l., farrell, a., davis, j., & cook, d. (2012). learning to lead: a social justice perspective on understanding elementary teacher leadership in papua new guinea. the australian journal of teacher education, 37(4), 18-35. https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2012v37n4.6 66 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index http://www.ala.org/tools/librariestransform/libraries-transforming-communities/engagement http://www.ala.org/tools/librariestransform/libraries-transforming-communities/engagement https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-3510 https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2012v37n4.6 understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 campana k., mills j. e., & martin, m. h. 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(2017). libraries on the frontlines: neutrality and social justice. equality, diversity and inclusion: an international journal, 36(8), 751-766. https://doi.org/10.1108/edi-112016-0100 67 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-15742-5_24 https://web.archive.org/web/20201207045624/https:/www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/re-18-19-0007-19 https://web.archive.org/web/20201207045624/https:/www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/re-18-19-0007-19 https://doi.org/10.1086/684147 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203893074 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/edi-07-2020-0178 http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/edi-07-2020-0178 https://doi.org/10.1108/edi-11-2016-0100 https://doi.org/10.1108/edi-11-2016-0100 understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 gorski, p. c. (2016). equity literacy: more than celebrating diversity. diversity in education, 11(1), 12-15. gubrium, j. f., holstein, j. a., marvasti, a. b., & mckinney, k. d. (eds.). (2012). the sage handbook of interview research: the complexity of the craft. sage publications. https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452218403 harry, b., sturges, k. m., & klingner, j. k. (2005). mapping the process: an exemplar of process and challenge in grounded theory analysis. educational researcher, 34(2), 3-13. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x034002003 hytten, k., & bettez, s. c. (2011). understanding education for social justice. educational foundations, 25(1-2), 7-24. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej925898 institute of museum and library services. (2018). library search and compare. https://www.imls.gov/search-compare/ jaeger, p. t., gorham, u., taylor, n. g., kettnich, k., sarin, l. c., & peterson, k. j. (2014). library research and what libraries actually do now: education, inclusion, social services, public spaces, digital literacy, social justice, human rights, and other community needs. the library quarterly, 84(4), 491–493. https://doi.org/10.1086/677785 jaeger, p. t., taylor, n. g., & gorham, u. (2015). libraries, human rights, and social justice: enabling access and promoting inclusion. rowman & littlefield. jaeger, p. t., shilton, k., & koepfler, j. (2016). the rise of social justice as a guiding principle in library and information science research. the library quarterly, 86(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1086.684142 kleine, d. (2010). ict4what?—using the choice framework to operationalise the capability approach to development. journal of international development, 22(5), 674-692. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.1719 lachal, j., & peich, m. c. (2017). libraries as empowerment levers: defining the collections and the contents with the users the example of the ideas box. http://library.ifla.org/2417/1/218-lachal-en.pdf maack, m. n. (1997). toward a new model of the information professions: embracing empowerment. journal of education for library and information science, 38(4), 283302. https://doi.org/10.2307/40324190 mathiesen, k. (2015). informational justice: a conceptual framework for social justice in library and information services. library trends, 64(2), 198-225. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2015.0044 mehra, b., rioux, k., & albright, k. s. (2017). social justice in library and information science. in j. d. mcdonald, & m. levine-clarke (eds.), encyclopedia of library and information sciences. (p. 4228). crc press. https://doi.org/10.1081/e-elis4 68 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781452218403 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x034002003 https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ej925898 https://www.imls.gov/search-compare/ https://doi.org/10.1086/677785 https://doi.org/10.1086.684142 https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.1719 http://library.ifla.org/2417/1/218-lachal-en.pdf https://doi.org/10.2307/40324190 https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2015.0044 https://doi.org/10.1081/e-elis4 understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 mehra, b., albright, k. s., & rioux, k. (2006). a practical framework for social justice research in the information professions. proceedings of the american society for information science and technology, 43(1), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.14504301275 mills, j. e., campana, k., & martin, m. h. (2019). “engage, cultivate, provide, and assess: an outreach model for serving all children and families.” alsc white paper. online. http://www.ala.org/alsc/publications-resources/white-papers/engage-cultivateprovide-assess odlos. (2020). odlos glossary of terms. american library association. http://www.ala.org/aboutala/odlos-glossary-terms rankin, c. (2016). library services for the early years: policy, practice, and the politics of the age. library trends, 65(1), 5-18. https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2016.0022 reisch, m. (2002). defining social justice in a socially unjust world. families in society, 83(4), 343-354. https://doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.17 smagorinsky, p. (2008). the method section as conceptual epicenter in constructing social science research reports. written communication, 25(3), 389-411. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088308317815 thornberg, r., & charmaz, k. (2014). grounded theory and theoretical coding. in u. flick (ed.), the sage handbook of qualitative data analysis (pp.153-69). sage publications, inc. https://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781446282243.n11 j. elizabeth mills (jemills1@uw.edu) is a phd candidate at the university of washington information school, where she received her mlis in 2013. her research explores the nature and role of reflection in the ways children’s librarians plan, deliver, and assess storytimes for young children in public libraries. her work sits at the intersection of design theory and informal learning environments for young children. she has co-written and co-edited two library practitioner-focused books—supercharged storytimes: an early literacy planning and assessment guide and create, innovate, and serve: a radical approach to children's and youth programming. j. elizabeth mills has conducted several research projects together with her research partner, dr. katie campana, including project views2—a study of the early literacy impact of public library storytimes—that was awarded the washington library association president’s award in 2015. jacqueline kociubuk (jkociubu@kent.edu) is a youth services librarian in northeast ohio and the project coordinator for project voice. she received a dual mlis/med from kent state university’s school of information in 2019 and is a licensed multi-age school media and library specialist in the state of ohio. her past work has been centered around applied research into inclusive experiences in children’s literature and library programming, early computational thinking, and public library outreach to underserved families. ms. kociubuk is additionally interested in investigating human information behavior and interpersonal communication in young children’s informal learning environments, especially in relation to learning motivation and social emotional development. 69 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.14504301275 http://www.ala.org/alsc/publications-resources/white-papers/engage-cultivate-provide-assess http://www.ala.org/alsc/publications-resources/white-papers/engage-cultivate-provide-assess http://www.ala.org/aboutala/odlos-glossary-terms https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2016.0022 https://doi.org/10.1606/1044-3894.17 https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088308317815 https://www.doi.org/10.4135/9781446282243.n11 mailto:jemills1@uw.edu mailto:jkociubu@kent.edu understanding social justice through practitioners’ language the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34760 kathleen campana, (kcampan2@kent.edu) is an assistant professor at kent state university’s school of information. her research focuses on understanding the learning that occurs for children, youth, and families in informal and digital learning environments and how those environments support and impact the learning process. she earned her phd in information science from the university of washington. she is the principal investigator for project voice, funded by imls, and read baby read, funded by the william penn foundation. her work has been published in library quarterly, journal of librarianship and information science, information and learning sciences, and journal of education for library and information science, among others. 70 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index mailto:kcampan2@kent.edu introduction literature review research design population analysis findings equity library staff community partners engagement library staff community partners empowerment library staff community partners discussion equity engagement empowerment limitations implications and conclusion endnote acknowledgements references studies in social justice volume 3, issue 2, 247-262, 2009 correspondence address: mary breunig, department of recreation & leisure studies, brock university, st. catharines, on l2s 3a1, canada. tel: +1 905 688-5550, email: mary.breunig@brocku.ca issn: 1911-4788 teaching for and about critical pedagogy in the post-secondary classroom mary breunig recreation and leisure studies, brock university, st. catharines, canada abstract while there is a body of literature that considers the theory of critical pedagogy, there is significantly less literature that specifically addresses the ways in which professors attempt to apply this theory in practice. this paper presents the results from a study that was designed, in part, to address this gap. seventeen self-identified critical pedagogues participated in this qualitative research study. participants reported their use of the following classroom practices, including: dialogue; group work; co-construction of syllabus; and experiential activities. this paper critically examines the social justice-oriented nature of these critical classroom practices. introduction as a self-identified critical pedagogue teaching courses on critical pedagogy and experiential education at a canadian university, students in my courses are often impelled to consider the justice-oriented nature of the theory of critical pedagogy. while the course content for many of these classes introduces students to critical pedagogical theory, the class structure itself has often been quite traditional. a typical class meets twice a week for 1 hour and 20 minutes each session; on most days, the students read an article or a series of articles, many of these written by a number of influential educational pedagogues, including: bell hooks, patti later, henry giroux, roger simon, ira shor, deborah britzman, paulo freire, donna haraway, and michael apple, to name a few. when teaching students about critical pedagogy, i have tended to adopt a fairly didactic method of teaching. on occasion, i present an activity that relates to the topic. over time, i have become increasingly concerned about the gap between what i teach and believe and my pedagogical practice, how i teach. more recently, the students in my classes and i have been talking about the ways in which we could engage in both classroom and out-of classroom experiences that would be more justice-oriented. more specifically, i am interested in how to develop a more 248 mary breunig studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 purposeful classroom practice that acts on the theoretical underpinnings of critical pedagogy. this present study developed, in part, out of this lived experience. how do professors who teach critical social theory and critical pedagogy attempt to practice it within the post-secondary classroom? i wonder about the degree to which professors’ pedagogical approaches correspond with their critical curricula. these queries led me to this present study which explores the successes and challenges that critical pedagogues encounter as they endeavour to turn the theories of critical pedagogy into post-secondary classroom practices. while there is a body of literature that considers the theory of critical pedagogy, ira shor (1996) and stephen sweet (1998), among others, assert that there is less literature that specifically addresses the ways in which professors attempt to apply this theory in practice. jennifer gore (1993) argues that, in fact, some of the best writings of critical theorists offer little suggestion of strategies that teachers might use in practice. furthermore, many of these theorists provide too little explication of what attempts are made within these educators’ own classrooms to implement the critical pedagogy that they espouse (keesing-styles, 2003). these arguments, in essence, represent a “call to action” for those professors who teach about critical pedagogy to continue to examine their own classroom practices. the purpose of this paper is to present some of the key findings from a qualitative research study which explored the ways in which 17 self-identified critical pedagogues actually engage in critical pedagogical praxis within the post-secondary classroom. specifically, this paper will focus on presenting examples of effective critical classroom practices that arose as a result of this study. it will additionally examine the justice-oriented nature of some of the reported examples of practice. critical pedagogy there are multiple and varied definitions of critical pedagogy (see table 1 below). many of these definitions centre around some of the influential critical theorists. for example, the critical theoretical tradition developed by the frankfurt school was greatly influenced by the work of karl marx, particularly his views about labour. according to marx, the essential societal problem was socioeconomic difference. marx believed that all people needed to work toward a socialized economy within which each individual received according to her needs and contributed according to her ability (eisner, 2002). in essence, marx argued that social justice is dependent upon economic conditions. in the late 1970s and 1980s, the “new left scholars” including henry giroux roger simon, michael apple, and peter mclaren began to focus their efforts on examining and better understanding the role that schools play in transmitting certain messages about political, social, and economic life believing that a revolutionary critical pedagogy will allow educators to realize the possibilities of democratic social values within their classroom (kincheloe, 2004). the critical theory of the “new left” was politically influenced by the anticolonial liberation movements breaking out in africa, asia, and perhaps most notably latin america (kincheloe, 2004). one of the key figures in the latin teaching for and about critical pedagogy 249 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 american liberation movement was paulo freire, who is commonly regarded as the inaugural philosopher of critical pedagogy (mclaren, 2000). freire’s work with the poor in brazil introduced him to the lives of impoverished peasants. his experiences compelled him to develop educational ideals and practices that would serve to improve the lives of these marginalized people and to lessen their oppression. freire’s (1970) problem-posing model of education valued the importance of student experience and a dialogical method of teaching and learning whereby the student and the teacher were mutually engaged in the production of knowledge and the process of teaching and learning. a more present day conception of critical pedagogy examines the influence of the postdiscourses (e.g. poststructuralism and postcolonialism) on theory and praxis (kincheloe, 2004). patti lather’s work in the field of critical education has revolved around characterizing the relationship between feminist and critical pedagogy, feminist ethnography, and poststructuralism (kincheloe, 2004). lather (1991) examines the ways in which many of the postdiscourses can help critical pedagogues explore and critique the role of power and hegemony in research methods and modes of knowledge production. caroline shrewsbury (1987), bell hooks (1994), and kathleen weiler (2001), alongside other feminist pedagogues, argue that education should serve to challenge the structure of the traditional canon and should develop and offer alternative classroom practices. feminist pedagogy reinforces the idea that both the content of the curriculum and the methods of pedagogy employed teach lessons. table 1. overview of historical roots—critical pedagogy critical social theoristssocial and economic equality liberatory education emancipation from oppression pedagogical project of possibility disrupting the dominant (socioeconomic privileged) discourse feminist pedagogy disrupting the dominant (male privileged) discourse post structuralism multiple “ways of knowing” that are situated, contextual, and partial the possibility of pedagogical practiceemploying the theory of critical pedagogy in praxis max horkheimer paulo freire henry giroux bell hooks patti lather paulo freire theodor adorno peter mclaren (cultural studies) caroline shrewsbury donna haraway ira shor herbert marcuse michael apple (curriculum studies) kathleen weiler deborah britzman roger simon despite the fact that table 1 (above) may represent an oversimplification of many aspects of the historical roots of critical pedagogy, it does provide one way to view some of the pedagogies that are central to this review of literature. within this abridged “history,” there is contradiction, overlap, and resistance to the attempts of 250 mary breunig studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 some critical theorists and pedagogues to identify the “one perfect” definition or a narrow set of prescriptive practices that constitute the field of critical pedagogy. some of this contradiction and overlap centers around an approach to critical pedagogy that adopts a positive, revolutionary utopian approach (britzman, freire, giroux, hooks, mclaren, shor) versus a negatively critical approach (gur-ze’ev). each approach offers both possibilities and limits. despite these varied conceptions of critical pedagogy and the multiple and varied definitions, there seems to be some congruence between them. essentially, the intent of critical pedagogy is to contribute to a more socially just world (kanpol 1999; keesing-styles, 2003; kincheloe, 2004). this definition is the one that will be employed throughout this paper. the term social justice is one that will be employed throughout this paper as well. historically (and and in its simplest conception), social justice is the attainment of equality in every aspect of society (atkinson, 1982). it is a philosophical and ideological construct – one that examines a multiplicity of issues pertaining to egalitarianism (e.g. economic, religious, political, gender, age, etc) (atkinson). for many contemporary justice-oriented theorists and pedagogues, social action is a key and necessary component of this concept (kolmuss & agyeman, 2002; o’donoughue & lotz-sisitka, 2002; prilleltensky, 2001). critical pedagogical praxis the above definitions and abridged historical overview provide a theoretical foundation of critical pedagogy and social justice. yet, the mere transmission of theoretical knowledge about these concepts does not ensure that students are acting upon the justice-oriented intentions that the theory purports. theory needs to be connected to practical, lived experiences both outside and within the classroom (van manen, 1999). there is clearly a responsibility on the part of the teacher to create appropriate classroom strategies and practices that incorporate the theoretical insights of critical pedagogy and that are appropriate for the particular classroom context (keesing-styles, 2003). as keesing-styles suggests, however, “[t]his is not to say that specific ‘recipes’ for educative practice are required” (p. 6). rather, classroom practices need to be shaped around the lives of students, the classroom context, the educative aims of the practice, and the institution to construct learning experiences that articulate these. while the majority of writing to date has focused on theoretical knowledge, there have been a few studies conducted which offer insight into the theory/practice relationship. beatriz ruiz and juan-miguel fernandez-balboa (2005), and doune macdonald and ross brooker (1999), both examined physical education teacher educators’ critical pedagogical praxis. they concluded that many of their study participants reverted back to the type of transmission-based pedagogy they knew best from their own formal school experiences because these professors lacked concrete examples of how to engage in critical praxis (ruiz & fernandez-balboa, 2005). macdonald and brooker (1999) discovered that there was a need for more explicit information regarding how educators can employ critical pedagogical praxis within the post-secondary classroom. teaching for and about critical pedagogy 251 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 in finding oneself in the classroom: a critical autoethnographic narrative chronicling the risks and rewards of a teacher and her students as they engage in the practice of critical pedagogy” nancy horan (2004) identified some of the successes and challenges that she and her students experienced when attempting to put the theory of critical pedagogy into practice. in when students have power: negotiating authority in a critical pedagogy, shor (1996) discusses his experiences with trying to engage in critical praxis in his utopia course, highlighting the successes, challenges and lessons learned by both him and his students when trying to practice critical pedagogy. wink (2005), in a somewhat similar vein, wrote about her attempts to implement critical pedagogy. critical pedagogy: notes from the real world (wink, 2005) is, in my view, part critical pedagogy primer and part manual for practicing critical pedagogy. for example, in her sixth chapter, entitled “how in the world do you do it?,” she enumerates many examples of how to apply the theory of critical pedagogy within the university classroom. in addition, there is a body of literature that examines praxis-oriented teacher education across various contexts. shauna butterwick and jan selman (2003) investigated the ways in which popular theatre, with its creative approach to naming and acting on problems, provided an opportunity for study participants to gain insights into issues related to social justice and the value of participatory and democratic classroom processes. academic service-learning combines academic study with community service (eyler & giles, 1999). service-learning can provide students with an opportunity to engage in an experiential, hands-on activity that helps them examine and modify their often prejudicial attitudes toward race, class and economic injustices (green, 2001). a number of studies have examined the ways in which students often change their attitudes toward themselves and the community as a result of engaging in service-learning projects (boyle-baise & kilbane, 2000; green, 2001). critical media literacy represents another example of a praxis-oriented activity. the intent of critical media literacy is to emancipate students’ worldview and for students to engage in transformational social action (hull, 1993). numerous studies have examined the ways in which these praxis-oriented forms of pedagogy can be used as a means to link what goes on in the classroom with what goes on in society (mclaren & farahmandpur, 1999; norton-meiers, 2002). these studies, books, and examples provide some insights into the theory/practice relationship within post-secondary classrooms. this study was designed to expand upon that information and to respond to the “call to action” within the literature (keesing-styles, 2003; lusted, 1986; mclaren, 2003; shor, 1992; 1996) imploring critical pedagogues to begin to more fully integrate the ideal of the theory of critical pedagogy with a classroom praxis that is congruent with that theory. methodology the following key query guided the research study: what are the ways in which selfidentified critical pedagogues actually engage in critical pedagogical practices within the post-secondary classroom? this section will outline the research participants, materials, and the research design for this study. 252 mary breunig studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 participants i sent out several “calls” for research participants to the listserv of the critical educators for social justice special interest group (cesj-sig) of the american educational research association (aera) in september, 2005 to recruit selfidentified critical pedagogues who were interested in participating in this study. in total, there were 17 self-identified critical pedagogues from that group who participated in this study. of those 17 people, ten were female and seven were male. there was a wide age range, with one participant being between the ages of 30-40 and one participant being over 70 years old. most participants were between the ages of 50-60. ten participants were non-tenured professors and one of these was a fulltime lecturer and doctoral student. seven participants were tenured professors. thirteen participants self-identified themselves as caucasian; one as latina; one as native-american; one as chicana; and one as asian american. two research participants were canadians, teaching in canadian universities and the rest (15) were from the united states, teaching in universities in the united states. participants were made aware of the nature of this study, their role in it, provisions for confidentiality, and their option to withdraw from the study at any point. signed informed consent was obtained prior to the collection of data. participants’ names were changed for the purposes of anonymity and pseudonyms are used within the results section of this paper. materials i conducted phone interviews with the 17 participants between october, 2005 and february, 2006. the length of each interview varied only slightly, each one lasting approximately one hour. the interviews were semistandardized (berg, 2004). the value of this form of “less structured” interview was that it allowed for opportunities for exploration of areas that i had not previously considered (reinharz, 1992). as previously mentioned, the specific purpose of this paper is to present some of the key findings related to examples of effective critical classroom practices that arose from a larger qualitative research study which explored the ways in which 17 self-identified critical pedagogues actually engage in critical pedagogical praxis within the post-secondary classroom. the initial interview queries included questions about critical pedagogy definitions, aims and purposes. although this paper will not present all of the results related to those responses, they will be briefly mentioned next in order to highlight some of the diversity within the group as it related to selfidentification. eight study participants mentioned that their teaching focused on social justice, employing terms such as emancipation and/or transformation, social consciousness and activism, and social change. five participants responded to the interview queries related to definition and central aims of critical pedagogy using terms that suggested a more student-centred or constructivist orientation, employing terms such as critical thinking, profound learning experiences, and student-centredness. three participants self-identified as freirean pedagogues and one participant said that he was a social reconstructionist. teaching for and about critical pedagogy 253 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 because this paper focuses on classroom praxis, the list of guiding questions specifically related to that aspect of the study consisted of a small set of queries lifted from a larger set of interview questions from the study as a whole. the questions were: do you believe that you engage in classroom practices that reflect the theories of critical pedagogy? what are some examples of your classroom practices that reflect the ways in which you employ critical pedagogy? design the study employed appreciative inquiry (ai) as the methodological framework. ai involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen either a system’s or a person’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential (cooperrider, whitney & stavros, 2003). it seeks to build upon achievements, unexplored potential, innovations, strengths, competencies, stories, lived values, traditions, and visions. taking all of these together, ai seeks to link these positive insights directly to a change agenda (cooperrider, whitney & stavros, 2003). data analysis all 17 interviews were transcribed by a transcriber. i sent a copy of the transcripts back to each interview participant for his or her review. the process of data analysis was guided by the main objective of the study and by the review of related literature. i thus began data analysis by establishing some initial categories and themes related to the objectives and the literature. i next read through all of the transcriptions in the spirit that berg (2004) suggests—“as a passport to listening to the words of the text and understanding better the perspective(s) of the producer of these words” (p. 269). i read through the transcriptions with a view to identify other categories and themes that emerged out of participants’ responses to the interview questions. results and discussion the results and discussion section will integrate the findings from this study with the critical pedagogy literature that examines theories and practices. this section will focus on presenting examples of effective critical classroom practices that arose as a result of this study. it will additionally examine the justice-oriented nature of some of the reported examples of practice, critiquing some of the claims made by participants. the critical query that will be explored in this next section will be: are the examples cited within the results of this study truly congruent with the justiceoriented nature of the theory of critical pedagogy? the conclusions drawn here are those that emerged out of an analysis of participant responses. this next section therefore includes select quotes and paraphrases with relevant literature integrated. the following classroom practices emerged as central themes: classroom community and group work; dialogue; curriculum negotiation, and assessment and evaluation; experiential activities; and “traditional” classroom practices. these 254 mary breunig studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 themes will be highlighted and discussed within this next section. surprisingly, there were few results that could be attributed to some of the differences in participant demographics. in other words, differences in age and gender, among others, did not factor into the results in any significant way and are thus not discussed in this next section. classroom community and group work many interview participants responded that building a classroom community was one of the central features of their critical praxis within the post-secondary classroom. for example, bailey commented on how she tries to “create a really safe and comfortable space for students to talk and to process their own stuff. i also do a ton of sharing of my own stories.” taylor said that: [i] try to create a safe space where students will feel comfortable, expressing where they’re at and moving from there. i just ask that they be open to other ways as well and we spend a lot of time every semester engaged in basically community building. participants additionally reported about the importance and value of group work, and this classroom practice was often closely linked with the practice of dialogue. graham said that he asks students to complete an assigned reading and then asks them to break out into groups and prepare questions. he said that students then, “[d]iscuss the readings in small groups during class time. they then come back into a large group and see what the consensus was around the reading and the topic.” bailey said that she uses “think-pair-share” as a group work technique, whereby a student first individually works on a particular question or problem and then pairs up with another person to problem solve and explore the question; that pair then finds another pair or two and continues to brainstorm, synthesizing the various responses that have resulted from this “think-pair-share” experience to formulate a response. the concept of building a classroom community and employing collaborative learning techniques, including small group work and activities similar to “think-pairshare” (lyman, 1981) have been widely researched and advocated throughout educational literature (bruner, 1996; gokhale, 1995; mckeachie, pintrich, lin, smith, & sharma, 2000). for example, anurhadha gokhale (1995) examined the effectiveness of individual learning versus collaborative learning in enhancing the critical thinking skills of 48 university students using a pretest/posttest questionnaire and found that students who participated in collaborative learning performed significantly better on the critical-thinking test than students who studied individually. according to felder and brent (1996), student-centred instruction involving active learning, student involvement, experiential activities, and cooperative learning led to increased motivation to learn. even with students in large classes (between 200-300 students), using techniques such as group work and peer assessment resulted in students having a more positive response to class, attending class more often, and developing effective learning strategies (scott, buchanan, & haigh, 1997). teaching for and about critical pedagogy 255 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 this research on student-centred and constructivist-oriented classroom practices leads me back to my query regarding the critical (or justice-oriented) nature of these forms of praxis. if students are engaged with content and are motivated to learn through constructivist approaches (felder & brent, 1996; meyers & jones, 1993), but there is no explicit communication of the ways in which these practices can be used as a means to bring about a more socially just world, then critical pedagogues (at least those participants in this study) may not be fulfilling the goals of the justiceoriented and liberatory nature of critical pedagogical praxis per se. however, the value in this form of praxis cannot be too quickly discounted. creating a democratic space in the classroom through student-centred and constructivst-oriented classroom practices can be an act of social justice itself (dewey, 1938), particularly in schools and classrooms where these practices are counterhegemonic and anti-oppressive (shor & pari, 2000). dialogue dialogue was another central theme that arose as a result of participants’ reports about their critical pedagogical praxis. bob talked about the importance of group work and group discussion within the classroom, but he also highlighted the value of what he referred to as a dialogue journal. for bob, the use of a dialogue journal provides students with an opportunity to reflect on their learning throughout the semester. meg talked about the ways in which she combines computer technology with dialogue. she said: i use the blackboard system [an online forum] a lot. i’ll post a discussion question and then, what i did this year was, i made all the students in the class teaching assistants in the class which allowed them to post their own questions and generate forums for discussion themselves. so i’m not always guiding that. although there exists some evidence that using dialogue to engage student voices can enhance learning (jarvis, 1996) and impel students to reconceptualize “traditional” power relations (lather, 1991; shor, 1996), others would argue that the notion of liberatory dialogue and authentic voice represent a repressive myth in the field of critical pedagogy (ellsworth, 1992; gore, 1993; hooks, 1994; luke, 1992). gur-ze’ev (1998) claims that often critical pedagogues fail to more fully examine their use of dialogue and voice alongside the broader issues of who gets heard, what gets said, and who has authority, asserting that professors start with a critical selfexamination of their own practices. dialogue thus conceived may attend to the justice orientation of a critical pedagogical praxis but the results from my study did not reveal the justice-oriented nature of this praxis; rather, participants focused on the value of this praxis as a form of student-centred learning and teaching. assessment and evaluation participants said they also regarded their use of alternative methods of assessment and evaluation as critical in many respects. examples of these alternative methods 256 mary breunig studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 included: co-designing assignments and rubrics; self and peer assessment; contract grading; and the use of portfolios. for example, jack talked about how students must prepare their final assignment in his “ethics and equity in education” course. they have to prepare a paper as though they are going to give a presentation to the school board. they have to articulate an ethical position around what i would call the intrinsic morality of learning that is being ignored under the current school reform efforts. eleven research participants reported about the ways in which students coconstruct the course syllabus and negotiate the curriculum within the critical pedagogical classroom. bob talked about how he predetermines some of the assignments and includes those on the initial course syllabi but leaves some opportunity for assignments to be co-determined by the class as a whole once the course is underway. a number of people talked about their use of selfand peer-assessment, providing feedback on assignments without grading them, offering assignment rewrites, and trying to develop assessment tools that foster knowledge acquisition and critical thinking more than competition, including contract grading. for example, meg said, “what i decided to do this year was to have students do individual learning contracts, rather than come up with a specific set of assignments or something that i would just impose on everybody.” according to reports, negotiating the curriculum (bob, donna, and meg), developing rubrics (anne, bailey, and nancy) co-designing the syllabus (bob, linda, tom, mark, meg, and sam) and selfand peer-assessment (bailey, catherine, and sarah) were examples of classroom practices. according to participants, students felt more engaged with the learning process and thus attended classes more often and produced work that was of a higher quality. keesing-styles (2000) and tilemma (2003) affirm that assessment can serve as a powerful contributor to the learning process if students are empowered to participate in establishing the assessment criteria. since assessment and evaluation have traditionally been the purview of the professor and one means for professors to maintain authority and power within the classroom (shor, 1996), participants’ reports related to their classroom practices provide some noteworthy counterhegemonic practices. the above findings thus represent solid evidence of the value of student-centred and constructivist classroom practices but point less conclusively toward anything that could be identified as justice-oriented per se. participants themselves alluded to this toward the end of their interviews. interestingly, for example, mark said that he believed that there may be much to be learned about justice without explicit instruction. as previously mentioned, mark, in fact, said that often he will be deliberately less intentional about the social justice agenda of his teaching so that students, through group work, discussion, and written assignments, can come to that conclusion on their own. in this sense, mark was asserting that a constructivist approach to learning may often be enough if the professor orients the curricula toward the purpose of social justice. teaching for and about critical pedagogy 257 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 experiential activities participants cited both on campus and off campus experiential activities that they employed within their post-secondary practices, echoing the sentiments of peter mclaren and donna houston (2004) who assert that “critical pedagogy needs to flee the seminar room” (p. 36). these practices included: in class activities (including media literacy activities, role playing, and mock debates); community servicelearning and action research projects; and other experiential activities. in class experiential activities there were a number of in class experiential activities that participants reported. for example, bailey talked about using an activity that she calls “take a stand.” she described the practice: the students line up in a row and then they take two steps forward if they have a library in their home and one step backwards if they were bussed out of their neighbourhood to school and they respond to various questions like that and it inevitably stratifies the people in the room pretty much by class, race and gender. bailey said that she then facilitates a discussion about issues of oppression and privilege based on the students’ experience with the “take a stand” activity. she reported that she has facilitated this activity in a number of different settings, including within the classroom and at conferences and she said that this activity always provokes conversation. bailey said that she will also ask students to take a survey, such as peggy mcintosh’s (1989) white privilege checklist, saying “i’ll have them do the checklist and then write a reflection and then talk to a partner and share their reflections on their experience with having to list their privileges.” she said that this helps students better understand some of the unearned privileges that many of them experience. jack said that he tries to “get people through a case study experience and asks them to role play some of the cases.” he said he asks students to role play people in various positions of privilege within schools and those people in positions of less privilege. sam said that he asks students to draw an anatomy of an effective school leader as one example of an art-oriented experiential activity. he said that, “students do drawings in small groups and i know when they’ve understood some of what i have been teaching when they come back with a head drawn with big ears and a small mouth.” he said that in his view this demonstrates that students are able to comprehend some of the theory that he is teaching them. community service-learning and/or action research projects several study participants cited examples of community service-learning and action research projects as examples of post-secondary classroom practices. anne talked about the ways in which she uses community service-learning to teach about critical pedagogy and issues of justice: 258 mary breunig studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 in the past i had a teacher education class. it was a curriculum development course and i had my students create enrichment curricula for three homeless shelters. so they created this curriculum, using a freirean approach. they had to interview the shelter residents and get to know them and find out what their whole day looked like and what interests they had. they then had to create evening enrichment activities for the shelter guests. she said that another group of students conducted: first person interviews with vietnam veterans and listened to various speakers who served in vietnam and then did some research and had to create curriculum related to the vietnam war for the war memorial in new jersey for third grade students and fifth grade students based on their knowledge from these first person sources. anne said that both these experiences seemed to deeply enhance her students’ understanding of issues of social justice, privilege, and oppression. as previously mentioned in the literature review, academic service-learning combines academic study with community service (eyler & giles, 1999) and requires students to apply theoretical knowledge to “real world” situations (simons & cleary, 2005). researchers have found that students often change their attitudes toward themselves and the community as a result of engaging in service-learning projects (boyle-baise & kilbane, 2000) and modify their perceptions regarding race, class, and economic injustices as a result of these service-learning activities (green, 2001). service-learning has come under some recent critique, however (hesford, 2005). hesford urges educators to more fully consider the intent of service-learning activities, in particular to ascertain how and whether particular programs actually counter and/or comply with exploitative practices (e.g. local/global labour practices). recent research provides a counter argument to some of this critique however. according to breunig (2005) and jensen (2002), among others, the explicit articulation of the justice-oriented intent of an activity (e.g. service-learning) and the way in which it is facilitated significantly impacts and affects students’ beliefs and actions about issues of justice, thus emphasizing the educative potential of a “well” and intentionally-facilitated activity. meg talked about an action research project that she does called “photovoice” whereby students take pictures of their communities (people, buildings, businesses, library, etc.) as a means to examine issues of hegemony. laurie said that in her classes, students design a research project that examines a particular aspect of teaching and learning and conduct actual research in k-12 schools. sam asks students to conduct a similar action research project. both laurie and sam have had students conduct research, write up their results, and occasionally present these projects as poster sessions at conferences. donna has students read dewey’s books, democracy and education (1916) and experience and education (1938). she then asks student to consider the k-12 school context and asks them to try to identify and propose some changes that could be made within that system that would demonstrate some of the principles that dewey presents in his teaching for and about critical pedagogy 259 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 books. students engage in social action projects whereby they actually propose some of these changes to school administrators and local school boards. teaching about action research and the action research project itself can be dually oriented toward social change (fletcher & coombs, 2004) and toward improving teacher practice. given some of these responses and the relevant research (boylebaise & kilbane, 2000; eyler & giles, 1999; fletcher & coombs, 2004; green, 2001), it is interesting, but perhaps not surprising, that participants cited so many examples of both community service projects and the numerous community-based action research projects that are components of their critical praxis. in light of the above, the critical pedagogue who is employing this form of actionoriented praxis should provide both an activity and the appropriate facilitation, reflection, and justice-oriented content to help students consider and/or modify some of their previous prejudices. in other words, experience alone or “letting the experience speak for itself” may not be adequate. other experiential activities graham talked about the impact of other kinds of field activities, stating, “well, i think taking the students out in the field is really it. having them see that what i’m talking about isn’t just theoretical and abstract, that poverty isn’t an abstract issue or philosophic issue,” for example, is really important. a number of study participants talked about the value of media literacy activities, as reported in the results. about half of the participants said that they bring in outside speakers or employ media literacy activities (e.g. analyzing films such as the color of fear (mun wah, 1994) and crash (haggis, 2004)) to teach students about justice-oriented issues. lori norton-meiers (2002) notes that the notion of films as visual texts worthy of academic study has been growing within the postsecondary academy for some time. critical and media literacy activities can focus on developing students’ ability not only to read and write, but also to critically assess texts and films in order to understand the relationships between power and domination that underlie and inform those texts (hull, 1993). ultimately, the intent of critical literacy is to emancipate students’ worldview and for students to engage in transformational social action (hull). mclaren and ramin farahmandpur (1999) recommend that these praxis-oriented forms of pedagogy be utilized as a means to linking what goes on in the classroom with what goes on in society. the above action-oriented examples of classroom practices, alongside the review of related literature, suggest that these classroom practices can attend to the justice-oriented nature of a critical pedagogical praxis. conclusion in reference to this study and in reference to some of the examples listed above, i now wonder if perhaps some participants engage in critical pedagogical praxis but their praxis represents an implicit approach to teaching and learning about issues of justice. if that is the case, can this implicit praxis still be called critical pedagogy? mary brewer (1999) argues, “there is little point in transforming our degree programs, revising the aims and objectives of courses or their content, or introducing 260 mary breunig studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 2, 2009 new pedagogical discourses if our students do not know the purpose behind the changes” (p. 24). it is clear that critical practices and classroom activities alone do not automatically or necessarily incite social justice and action (keesing-styles, 2003; van manen, 1999). in fact, there have been recent critiques of some critical pedagogical praxes asserting that these activities actually may hold miseducative potential (hesford, 2005). additionally, the burgeoning justice-oriented pedagogue ought to “mind the gap” between knowledge and attitudes and actions (jensen, 2002; kolmuss & agyeman, 2002; o’donoghue & lotz-sistika, 2002). the notion that justiceoriented praxes (e.g. environmental justice) are automatically educative (russell, 1999) and the presupposition that knowledge and attitudes about justice lead to changed actions and behaviours may be a myth (o’donoghue & lotz-sisitka, 2002). perhaps then in light of the results from this study, there may be value for the selfidentified critical pedagogue to begin to develop strategies that explicitly and overtly address the justice-oriented nature that is purported by the theory of critical pedagogy. additionally, critical pedagogues should be mindful about the facilitation of classroom activities and consider designing them in a manner that is congruent with the theory of critical pedagogy. one major limitation to this study is that i did not conduct follow-up interviews and thus was unable to explore some of these practices and facilitation techniques in more depth. additionally, i was unable to further query participants about the potential gap(s) (those identified by participants themselves in the results of this study) between students’ knowledge about critical theory and direct social action. future studies should explore this knowledge/action gap. future studies should also focus on continuing to develop a set of “best practices” related to critical pedagogical praxis. there has been significant research to date regarding the value of student-centred and constructivist approaches to teaching and learning and less research to date regarding critical pedagogical praxis. for this reason, future studies should focus on encouraging self-identified critical pedagogues to articulate the ways in which their classroom practices do indeed attend to justice-oriented issues and should explore facilitation techniques alongside this. in closing, both the participants in this study and the review of related literature seem to suggest that there may be a need for critical pedagogues to continue to broaden their understandings of the justice-oriented nature of critical praxis and to begin to articulate this intent more explicitly within their post-secondary classroom practices. this need is particularly true if the intent of critical pedagogical praxis is to contribute to a more socially just world (kanpol, 1999; keesing-styles, 2003; kincheloe, 2004). references atkinson, a. b. 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(2005). critical pedagogy: notes from the real world (3rd ed.). boston, ma: allyn and bacon. it ysn't all right ( 24 ) being a complete and thorough refutation of the pernicious doctrine that "whatever is, is right by cynthia tempie. we have had a surfeit of "philosophy," now we want common sense boston: published by the new england reform association. new york: s. t. munson, ag’t, 143 fulton-street. 1861. it isn't all right. being a complete and thorough refutation of the pernicious doctrine that “whatever is, is right." by cynthia temple. we have had a surfeit of “philosophy ;" now we want common sense. boston: published by the new england reform association. n e w y 0 ꭱ ꮶ : s. t. munson, ag’t, 143 fulton-street. 1861. within these last two years there has gone forth, on its, destructive mission, a most mischievous doctrine, (as it is popularly understood) to the effect that “whatever is is right”—a sort of philosophical carte blanche for deeds that are not, and never can be right. to help crush out this withering falsity—to assert the supremacy of conscience, divine order and law; to help explode this revived fallacy, and to call back the wandering souls who, allured by its glare, may have strayed away from the true path—is the sole object of this publication. and that heaven will bless the endeavor and crown it with abundant success, is the prayer, and hope, and fervent expectation of the author. entered according to act of congress. it isn't all right. within a few brief years many, very many novel and exceedingly strange, not to say hurtful, ideas and notions have sprung up, to challenge attention and demand analysis ; nor have they failed to impress themselves upon the plastic front of this, the most remarkable age, and eventful epoch, of the great world's history. na notion, theory, hypothesis or statement, no matter how wild, immoral, obscene or ridiculous, but will find some to accept and believe it, even with all its palpable absurdities. utopianisms, of all sorts and kinds, are rife to-day in the public mind. strange, wild vagaries abound on all sides; and we encounter extremes of the most violent description, turn whithersoever we may. in fact, as a general rule, the wilder the vagary, the more it departs from common sense and innate respectability, the more certain it is to attract attention, and enlist recruits-so deeply runs the abnormal vein through the bodies politic, social, philosophic and religious. sinners of all sorts, but more especially those with penchants towards a particular kind of license, have always been on the qui vive for plausible excuses for their derelictions from the path of common honesty and moral and personal rectitude. nor have the so-called philosophers of the times been at all backward or slow in the work of supplying these excuses. every sort and species of villainy is, in these days, attempted to be based upon-sacred scripture. your mormon “seals” a dozen or two wives, according to scripture; your affinity-man or woman, claims holy inspiration as his or her warrant for infracting every social law; the perfectionist who lives in complex marriage” with two hundred and seventy-four-females(for to call them women were a desecration of that holy name !) tells you that “the true church of christ constitutes one great soul ;" and that the union between its members, of right, ought to be of the most intimate character. and these wretches have the effrontery to assert that in so doing they are but following out the example and precepts of jesus the blessed ! people there are by thousands who seek to so freely translate texts of scripture, or it isn't all right. philosophical statements, that they can go on doing just as passion prompts, and yet apparently not transcend the law. language, in these days, is twisted and distorted to such an extent, that one can hardly affirm that black is black, or that two and two are four, lest some so-called reformer or transcendental genius steps forth, and in a long disquisition proves to you that “black is not black, for the bly white; and that so far from two and two being four, they are really only three, because the mind can never conceive of similarities. there are no absolute resemblances, in figures, volume, or anything else ; wherefore two and two must make either more or less than four 1" and so with words the fellow plays, talks much, yet still he nothing says. sophistry reigns king to-day, and rules it with a strong hand over every domain of human life, and human endeavor and interest. there are those who will give you a “moral law” and scriptural authority for the commission of every crime in the entire calendar. there are others who take refuge behind the walls of an exploded optimism-call aloud to the passer-by ; bid him or her take full advantage of the times ; eat, drink and be merry—for “whatever is is right"_itself, in so far forth as human life, interest and action are concerned, one of the most pestilent fallacies, and philosophical absurdities, that ever seduced a human being from the paths of moral rectitude and virtue. the abominable notion has gone forth, and to-day is slowly but surely not only sapping the foundations of domestic and social happiness, but is certainly infusing its deadly miasma over all the land. to do something towards stopping the advance of this horrible doctrine, is the design entertained by the author of this pamphlet—a woman, an immortal soul, a member of the great sisterhood of women--a female pleading the cause of her sex, and one who prizes the virtue, purity and honor of her sex beyond all other things, the grace of god alone excepted. people in those days talk much of “liberty," when there is already too much freedom in some respects; for “philosophers” (heaven save the mark !) have talked so much of liberty to do this, and liberty to do the other, that instead of wearing the goddess crown, she has of late been clothed in the wanton's cap and robe. virtue has seceded from liberty; and vice, for a time, has it isn't all right. usurped her throne ; but with heaven's aid, we trust to soon drive her from the seat. in the work here undertaken to be accomplished, i confidently look for aid to every honest man. the deeps of my soul assure me that i look not in vain. within a comparatively recent period, the pope-ish doctrine, that whatever exists is just as the eternal one decreed and designed, has gone forth to the wide world under the express sanction of more than one great and honored name ; and it has received the implied, if not the direct, countenance of scores of others, not a few of whom call themselves thinkers, philosophers, and philanthropists. this dogma, as it is, (and it cannot fail to be popularly understood,) is the most formidable and dreadful battery ever leveled against human happiness from the frowning ramparts of hell itself ; for while apparently encouraging a reliance on the goodness of our heavenly father, it in reality sets a high premium on vice, and is the direct result of the most appalling and dreadful enginery of evil, attacking man, as it does, in his weakest points, and throwing a glamour over the moral sense which at once shuts out the benign light of all that is pure, and good, and true. it is the dahlgren gun of wickedness-ignores all human responsibility, fosters all sorts of iniquity, prolongs the reign of evil, retards the dawn of righteousness, makes a person a mere natural machine, stultifies the moral sense, sears the conscience, libels nature, blasphemes the infinite, panders to the basest of all appetites and prejudices, dethrones the virtues, and inaugurates discord and error. it tears down at a single effort every rampart of domestic virtue, and becomes the authoritative warrant for license of every sort, and for every kind of wrong-doing, libertinism and profligacy that barbarous minds can invent. surely something can, and ought to be done, on the part of women especially, to extract the fangs of this viper, and to send it back writhing to its home, among all the other festering falsehoods of the past ages; to send it back to associate with all other foul and loathing things that have ever cursed the earth. may the world have a safe and speedy deliverance from this last new pirate! at all events, i feel called upon to do my part towards this most desirable end ; and every man who remembers the word “mother,” and recalls all the holy memories which cluster around it-every man who has a sister, or presses an innocent it isn't all right. daughter to his heart, will gladly become my helper in this important crisis. in a certain, merely material aspect of the subject, it is undoubtedly true that “whatever is is right;" but when the venue is changed to intellectual, social, moral, religious and domestic grounds, then the affirmation is as foreign to the truth as any falsehood well can be. take the civilized world at large, and not over ten persons in every one hundred can or will comprehend, or rest contented with, the higher and nobler definition of the great postusical planes. on the contrary, if you affirm in the presence of one hundred persons that “it is all right," ten to one but that ninety of them will secretly roll the knowledge up, and profit by their-not your-intended definition thereof. it is human nature to take advantage of everything that promises to cut the restraining cords, and permit a looseness of action, thought, and sentiment. there are scores of thousands in this vast empire, who, upon learning that the so-called great men and women of the world, have asserted that all actions and all things are right and proper, will clap their hands in jubilance, and secretly, if not openly, avail themselves of the sophism to drive with a loose rein along the roads of life ; do all sorts of evil things ; give passion and prejudice full scope and play, and do their utmost to gratify self, heedless of the certain consequences that must accrue to themselves as individual integers of society; or to community as a whole. what care they if the walks and ways of life are transformed into practical realizations of pandemonium, so long as their ends are served by the removal of the restrictions, every barrier and mound of which is swept away by the little sentence "whatever is, is right ?”? not much, it seems to me. true it is, that all men are not either villains or badly disposed ; equally true it is, that all women are not at heart unchaste ; yet, if this modern doctrine be true, both may become so, and that, too, without violating any of god's laws; for if they remain virtuous, it is all right; if they sink into rotten filth and vice, it is all right still unmistakably, this sophism is the most dangerous one that has yet arisen, either within or without the ranks of spiritualism—the great and prolific mother of a very singular family of ideas. true, the notion did not originate with those who believe in the advent it isn't all right. of human spirits to the earth, and in their interference in mundane affairs. the advocates of the dogma do not pretend it to be a revelation from the other world, yet it cannot be denied that very many of those who have been most active in foisting this last absurdity on the world, are also those who believe devoutly in the ministration of departed souls. justice, however, must be done, and therefore it is incumbent upon me to say that, notwithstanding many spiritualists profess to believe this phase of optimism, yet itself forms no part of the spiritual creed ; and tens of thousands of this class of thinkers reject the new ism in utter scorn. only a few have clear conceptions or realizations thereof. some people say that they most devoutly believe in infinite damnation ; heartily concur in the assertion that some are elected to reign in the courts of glory, and that some are god-voted to an eternal baking, roasting, broiling, grilling, in the deeps of hell. no doubt these people are honest ; still all such, save rarely a lunatic, consider the chances of "number one," as most excellent for escape from, or evasion of, the firedoom, which they feel equally assured will be the lot of their neighbors, the numbers two, three, and four, and so on. self-love rules this age. says g., in public confession, "brothers and sisters pray for me ; i am the most heinous sinner, the vilest wretch on earth, and feeling the full enormity of my wickedness, i can but have a blessed assurance that if my just deserts were meted out, i should at this moment be grilling on the bars of hell, over the belching flames of the eternal pit, fanned by the infinite wing of god's justice !” mr. g. knows that he is not uttering his real sentiments ; he does not believe one word of such an all-right doctrine, and only talks for the purpose of trying to say something eloquent--something that shall tingle in the ears, and awake the sleeping emotions of his andience. down he sits, and straightway the moderator calls on brother h. to tell his experience. brother h. rises, and, having a spice of satire in him, says, “as for myself, i know that i am less virtuous than it is possible to be. i have nothing to say concerning my soul or its conditions, but i feel assured that every word uttered in regard to himself, by brother g., is true-every word of it!" "why you miserable lie-beller, i'm a better man than you, any day !" thinks, if not, exclaims, brother g., in high dudgeon, at the idea of being supposed to believe for a single instant, the unreasonable things whereof he had, but a moment it isn't all right. since, delivered himself. it is utterly impossible that he should believe it. his first speech was unnatural, and its substance false and hollow ; his second one was spoken from the heart, and was, in all respects, a normal exhibition of human nature. the advocates of the all-right fallacy, are so many brother g.’s ; they sail in the same boat, and, when weighed in the same balances, tested by their own doctrines, will, to a man, be found wanting, and practically refute their own theory. that very odd sort of philosophers, who claim to be optimists, and believe that « whatever is, is right,” who "recognize neither merit or demerit in souls, have no fear of evil, devils, men, god or angels," and who use words to so little purpose, cannot for an instant, stand the fire of honest, candid criticism. cheat one of them out of a dollar ; traduce his character; call his wife a harlot, and his children bastards ; break his heart by all sorts of ill usage, and then ask him if it is all right ? and he will admit it to be so, (if i may use an expressive vulgarism,) over the left! if he replies, “it is all right that those things should be done ; but it is also right that i defend myself and make you suffer all i possibly can,” then set him down as so far, non compos, for green and purple cannot be the same color ; a valley and a mountain cannot be the same. such a man is bent on riding his hobby ; like ephraim, he is bound to his idols, and the more he is let alone, the better for all concerned. logic is worth something in the affairs of the sublunary world. by its aid we determine truth, and are enabled to detect error ; and whosoever ignores its canons, not only usurps the title of philosopher, but evinces a woful want of common sense beside. “god made all things; god is perfect; he never makes mistakes ; ergo, 'whatever is, is right,' proper—just what it should be, else god is a delusion and nature a blank lie." such is a fair specimen of the looseness with which these modern optimists reason. one would think they were afflicted with something denser than mere intellectual obtuseness, else they could not fail to detect the glaring absurdities hid away in the above ridiculous proposition. entrenched behind that rampart, they imagine their fortress to be impregnable; when, if they would inspect it a little closer, the seeming adamant would prove to be even more flimsy than brown paper. let us see: the advocates of the doctrine now being anatomized, pretend to believe most devoutly in the great “principles of progression.” now if these last do really exist, then their it isn't all right. new ism is a falsehood. why? how? because the very fact that all things (man and his institutions included,) have, during all past time, been ceaselessly advancing from the imperfect towards a higher and completer state—have been, and still are, steadily going ahead from bad to better, and from better to best-proves irrefutably that god never made a perfect thing, never created perfect conditions, but only planted perfectibility in all that he has made. of course, then, if this be so—and all things abundantly prove it -whatever is cannot be right ; but all things are steadily moving in that direction. man's affairs wherein it will be all just, and correct, and proper, for him to either sit calmly while some one insulates his head from his shoulders, or for him to perform the like operation on another person. there must be a time wherein it is all right and proper, and very fine for him, to run off with his neighbor's wife, or his ox, seduce his friend's daughter, debauch the morals of his son, and to do other delectable things of the same general ilk—since “there's a time for all things." now i broadly assert that whosoever affirms that there ever was, is at present, or ever will be, a time wherein murder-grim, gaunt, spectral, red-handed, bloody-mouthed murder—is all right, is either a maniac or a fool! and yet the oblique, if not the direct, effect of the promulgation of the sophism, cannot but be the positive encouragement of that and all the other deep villainies god's earth ever groaned under, or god's angels ever witnessed and wept over ! “oh, these things are all right to the conditions that gave birth to the acts you deprecate,” replies the optimist, to which i rejoin : sir, or madam, are these conditions right? let us probe the matter a little deeper. you are a merchant; i enter your store to buy some cloth. we differ as to the price ; i am an honest woman and you think to lure me from virtue's path, and instead of conversing about calico, you talk about love and passion, my red, rosy cheeks, plump figure, sparkling eye, and a deal more in the same direction. is this all right? well, i go home, and, somehow or other, my husband finds it out, and as a recompense for your gallantry, breaks nearly every bone in your body; and in lay ing you on a sick bed for a year or so, not only ruins your business, and reduces your wife and children to beggary, but also blasts your it isn't all right. prospects for life. is this all right? again : suppose that i am a man ; that i have a quarrel with you ; that, tempted by the devil, urged on by a momentary but ungovernable rage, i deal you a blow which sends you across the sea of time to the shores of eternity in less than five minutes : is that as it should have been ? come, sir optimist, speak out! now that stroke of my fist may have forever decided the question whether you are thereafter to be an inhabitant of heaven, or a denizen of hades. do not fail to take this consideration into the account. of course i am arrested, jailed, tried, convicted by a deliberating choked-gaspingly, horribly choked to death! your business was settled in ten seconds; mine takes as many months, and within a day or two of the final act, my ears are regaled with the delicious music of the saws and hammers, busily plied in constructing the gay little platform from whence i am to step into ah, god ! what may i not step into from that platform ! during the delightful season of my waiting, my poor soul is prayed to, for, with and at ; i am well fed, it is true, during the intervening days, weeks, and months, but i can't grow fat; my digestion is exceedingly poor, and i cannot eat for thinking. ab, it is a terrible thing to think, under certain circumstances, yet it is our doom, and in compelling man to think, god created man's heaven or his hell. well, the day has come at last—a gala day it is too, for don't you see the soldiers are out, in all their feathers and finery ? certes ! it is a gala day—these hanging times ! one would think the most fitting colors to be worn on such occasions should be black-black as the heron's plume_black as night. tis a deed of darkness to be done ; put out the lights-conceal the sun! there stands the monument of the civilization of the nineteenth century—a gibbet. up, up its steps i walk-painfully walk—for my arms are tied behind me. true, i am supported by a man of god on one side, and a sheriff on the other ; one to sign my passport to the other world, the other to see me safely on the voyage—and the consciousness of these things makes it very painful walking up these sixteen steps. at last we reach the platform, and i take a look upward, one last lingering look at the bright blue heaven above me; but instead of it, my bulging eye-balls fairly crack with agony as my sight rests upon the it isn't all right. 11 cross-beam, to the centre of, which depends a short chain with one large link. i know that the link is for the hook attached to one end of a rope ; the noose at the other end is for my neck ! ah, god, have mercy on my soul ! "time's up !” says the christian sheriff--" and you must prepare todie!” the military, the policemen, the “invited guests," and holders of tickets to the hempen opera, catch his words, and a nameless thrill pervades the mass, every one of whom stands there to receive a lesson in humanity, justice, mercy and christianity ! and now the rope is adjusted, the signal given ; there is a sudden chug-strange colors float before my eyes, and stranger sounds salute my hearing sense --soft, low, sweet dulcet sounds it may be the requiem for the dead which god's angels sing !-i am dead ! my soul has been sent upon its long journey at the end of a yard of rope, and my body-poor sinful body-is dangling there to damn the age which sanctions the deed—dangles there a sickening sight, to sear the memories of the little host who had gone out there to see a man die—to see me strangled ! of course, all these things are right, are they ?-all just what god intended when he made the worlds, are they? nonsense ! but this is not all. next day the story of my strangling is most minutely told in all the papers. the horripilant feast is forced upon scores of thousands, who read it from the fascination of horror. out of all this mass of readers, some three or four, who are lifeweary, reading how "very easily" the culprit died, go straightway and hang themselves, as the most expeditious and pleasant way to shuffle off their miseries. we are not to the end even yet ; for my wife dies of a broken heart, and my children are very frequently and benevolently told that their father once upon a time, danced a hornpipe on the empty air, until at last the taunts and jibes and jeers upset their reason; they run stark staring mad; one commits suicide, and the other ends her days in a madhouse. is all this right ? oh, but we are dealing with a glorious doctrine, most assuredly ! from the popular interpretation and acceptance of the all-right doctrine ? verily, nay! for the terrible act, the slaying of a man in my anger, may have doomed me to an awful punishment in the world beyond. it may be, that by that act of slaying i may have incurred a penalty that may not be satisfied when ages of agony 12 it isn't all right. shall have elapsed ; and by that one single deed every faculty of my being may have been transformed into an instrument of torture. mankind must think ; and so long as my soul is capable of thinking, the memory of my awful deed must cling to me, and i be doomed to see the fearful drama, myself the chief tragedian, constantly being re-enacted before the mind's eye, until, if ever, it may please the king of kings to bid my torment cease. it may be that my guilty soul shall be compelled to wander through all the eternal ages yet to be, haunted by that terrible remembrance, and lashed to agony by the inexorable whip of remorse—the racking miseries of a guilty conscience--than which, no greater hell can be well conceived ! the deed was mine, and i must suffer the dreadful penalty ; there can be no evasion, no escape ; for a man cannot commit suicide in eternity—cannot run away from himself! yet this murder, this execution, and all the dire consequences that follow in its train, is all right ! may god have mercy on us, and forbid it for his own sake ! at this point we are met with something after this style, by the would-be optimists : “in the light of great general principles, everything must be as it should : from the infinite's stand-point know? you are not the infinite ; and what can you know of the views he entertains of man and his actions, save that, being good himself, he loves to see his creatures so? no one will, or, being sensible, can dispute the existence of certain immutable or fixed principles, which govern all things in god's material universe ; and, so far as dead matter and the unreasoning brutes are concerned, scarce a person can be found silly enough to deny that whatever is, is right. but it so happens that man bejongs to neither of these categories—is not a citizen of either of these dominions ; on the contrary, he pertains to a higher realm altogether than those to which trees, stones, dogs, horses, sheep, goats and oxen pertain to, and wherein they begin and end their being ; yet the doctrine in question places man and all else in the same category. the same things cannot be predicated of man, that are justly so of animals. people have liberty to choose and decide ; trees and brutes do not. human beings have a sense of fitness, fairness and penalty ; but i have never yet seen a conscientious tree, nor a dog or tiger suffering under the pangs of remorse. how happens it, if it isn't all right. 13 « it is all right," that we cannot elevate robbery and wrong to the dignity of the fine arts? how is it that he who debauches his soul, or the souls and bodies of others, cannot sleep quiet o' nights? why, will the thing called conscience be forever raising up the ghosts of evil deeds, to haunt the doer till the death ? gentlemen and ladies of the all-right school, you have missed it this time ; for not only the moral and religious sentiments of the age are against you, but it requires but a single effort, like the present, to arouse the common sense of all the world to arms against the sophistry. nor do i care how closely you wrap yourself in this new blanket, it is impossible for you to evade the law of your own minds, or escape the inflictions of conscience whenever that law is broken ; and this consideration and fact tells against you with immense force and power. "oh," replies the all-right philosopher, “it is evident that you, madame, are a pharisee—one of the self-righteous ones, who rub their hands and thank god that they are not like other men !" well, i reply, if they are better, why i say—“good for the pharisees !” that's all. but, if you go on proclaiming your ism, you will be quite sad-you-see, before long, provided that truth and logic are of more vital stamina than their opposites ; besides which, i confess to a liking and respect towards him or her, who in full view of the deep rascality everywhere abounding in scores and hundreds of our human kinsfolk, can inwardly, truly, fully feel that himself or herself is really righteous, and in the heart-deeps of being, and in a strong conviction of personal probity, thank god they are not like certain other people. good for the pharisees ! i say again, provided they be of the sort just sketched. . at this, the all-right person feels gleeful, and says" ah, now i have you ; for you can't help admitting that what you have just said is all right !" not so fast, friend. i do not for an instant admit that the fearful contrasts among men, which alone can provoke such exclamations—without which no such expressions could ever be made-are at all right. every man and woman should be good and true, just and righteous, and not merely a few of earth's children. the age of virtuous talk is passing away ; the age of virtuous action, we humbly trust, is drawing near. the genuine test of a philanthropist's honesty lies in the performance of good deedsnot in contenting himself with telling people it is all right, when it isn't all right. he knows, if he will but look about him, that much that is, is wrong. the only credentials current in the courts of heaven, are the good deeds done while in the body; nor will any amount of sophistical twisting impose upon the recording angel who sits within the gates of glory. heaven has its customs law, nor will any con" traband articles be allowed to enter, much less a soul whose best days have been spent in deluding the multitude into the insane belief that every crime in the calendar was all right. there, a man must appear to be what he really is. the law of distinctness is imperative; and though quashee, the negro who died fifty years ago, and whese soul is as fair as the best white saint's among them all, might desire to visit earth again, he could not do so in borrowed plumes, but must come--and to the eye of all who might behold him, must appear--a negro still ; the very self-same good-humored, earnest-praying, singing, shouting quashee—him who, down on the plantations, used to carol to his dusky comrades all about their seeing « de lord a-comin' on his old gray mar', wid de golden saddle and silver bridle, bound down to jine de golden car-a-wan. wid a golden pipe and silver 'bacca, bound down to jine de golden car-a-wan.” bless thee, quashee ! i would not change thee if i could, for thou art good, and true, and earnest in thy singing, and thy prayers, and there is a verve and a life to thy religion, which the white man might well emulate ; still the law of distinctness must forever keep thee under its action--nor canst thou appear to be what thou art not. still, whatever be thy lot on earth or in heaven, i can but · bless thee in all thy outgoings and incomings, for thy lot and the lot of thine has been-still is-very hard indeed. soul is an eternal asbestos; it cannot be consumed, but is purified by fire ; and so, whoever would have the soul a pieasant fount of joys in the worlds above, must not lay up bad memories of bad deeds, but forever steer clear of the rocks whereon it is certain to strike if the “ all right” be the beacon or the chart. education has much to do in man and woman's final making up. there is a deal of good in every soul-whole mountains and rivers thereof; but there is also much that may be perverted—many a little brooklet of very bitter water. in human education many of these have been unduly increased, till now they threaten to overflow the whole estate. let us dam them up, cut off the supply, and see to it that these brooklets--the passions and bad tendencies it isn't all right. 15 -be not caused to flourish by such culture as the oft-quoted maxims would encourage. the age of extremes of one sort—now, happily, sliding away, bids fair to be succeeded by another kind, unless good men and earnest women seek to check it ere too strongly grown and mindentrenched. we stand in the door of the dawn, fully persuaded that the sun now rising will, ere long, gladden the hearts and homes of men. we have had a surfeit of philosophy, and we need a little common sense. the fact that the race can see the first gleams of a better day, constitutes no just reason why any man or woman should assunie an attitude of self-complacency, and proclaim alike to those who can, and those who cannot think clearly, that all the sin and neath the heavy load, is all right. because to do so is to proclaima lie !--and never was, nor can be, otherwise. it will not do to shift the responsibility of all existing evils from ourselves to the creator. why? because man's actions are mainly volitional results, and spring from his great prerogative—liberty of choice ! hence god is no more responsible for your deeds or mine, than we are for those of our descendants forty centuries hence. were it otherwise, then creation is a stupendous farce, and god becomes our inveterate enemy, instead of being what i believe him-our best and most benignant friend. the infinite one created, made, fashioned and decreed the progression and procession of all things. but his work is not yet done—the mighty task is not yet completed ; for he is at this day still working up the worlds toward the standard himself can only know. he is still present with, and over us, in his divine fatherhood and providence ; he still smiles when we do his will-still grieves, as of yore, at all that is bad or brutal, unseemly, unmanly, unwomanly, and wrong! no, no ; it will not do to charge god with our shortcomings, and none but an arrant coward would seek to crawl away from the presence of the music himself has evoked ! every true philanthropist—and these, be it known, are not such as talk temperance and fatten on the worm of the still—are not such as publicly mourn over harlotry, and let houses for its prosecution-are not such as say, “it is all right,” and by their daily actions give themselves the lie direct ; are not such as commiserate poor pompey, and vote 16 it isnt all right. a year, and from gaily-thronged platforms proclaim the negro a man and a brother, and next day “damn his black picture” because he offers love to their daughters, or attempts to sit down at the same table-merely by way of testing their honesty, and perpetrat. ing a "black joke" at the same time; not the strong-minded ones who are so rampant for women's rights, public applause, oratory and fanaticism, that they must needs enlist for life in a warfare against all men—not one of whom they ever made happy for a single hour ; not your lady of harsh voice and vinegar soul, who, in the business of world-saving, "goes it with a rush,” to the utter neglect of the fireside, the husband, the baby, and the dear, sweet home; not the spiritualist, who talks exceedingly spiritual and acts as if the body and its gratifications were the only things worth while attending to; not the harmonialist, whose harmony of life, deed and influence partakes of the nature of filing saws and discordant penny trumpets ; not of this sort is the true philanthropist ; but rather he (or she) who in a quiet way does all the good possible—and sticks to it. every such an one, i repeat, realizes that the world needs bettering ; and for that reason feels called upon to encourage much less “talkee, talkee," and much more action, action, action, with strong arm, steady purpose, and in the right direction. evils—tremendous, soul-dwarfing, spirit-subjugating evils— such as now afflict the world, can never be talked down ; they must be written, worked, lived and fought down; and the true business of every man and woman who wishes well to the world, is to be up and doing, and keep doing all the while. will the evils whereof we so justly complain—prostitution, for instance-disappear if we merely stand idly looking on, proclaiming that it is all right, and voting ourselves philosophers, when we approach mnch nearer being fools? he or she who thinks so, is neither man nor woman, but only a sort of "what is it?” very interesting to look at and listen to, but a "what is it ?” nevertheless. every sense of decency or shame. her present mission is to sell herself for so much ready coin, to the first human brute who will purchase her. does she do this fearful sin from the pure love of sinning ? no! she does it that she may hand over the jingling deity to the baker in exchange for—bread ! bread sir, to keep her above the ground for just a little longer. she is coarse and it isn't all right. untidy, uses bad language, and is low; but still, she is—a woman -like your mother and like mine-and like them too, she was once pure, and sweet, and beautiful, and good ; but ah, christ ! how fallen, oh, how fallen ! yes, she was once like them ; god grant that they never be like her. is she fulfilling her proper destiny ? virtue is natural; vice is acquired. bias: towards either is hereditary. circumstance governs the fate of many unfortunates like that woman : she, nor you, nor i, can control circumstance alone, but we can join the army of goodness, before which bad circumstance must fly, and better take its place. come, let's do it. let us see how many of such fallen ones we can save in a year-this very identical current year. i'll try! won't you? the woman, that wretched sister ! is she and her actions all right? nonsense ! blasphemy to assert it? she is sliding down the hill of ruin ! and will reach the fatal bottom, unless we who can, shall, and will, put forth the effort to redeem and save her. and the shame, to those who have made her and them what we see—she is marring the beauty of her deathless soul ; is killing by inches the body she wears ; is defacing the priceless tablets of her immortal being ; and whoever says all this is right, is a fit subject for the lunatic hospital. and yet there are those who do make this preposterous assertion. now hundreds, aye thousands, there be, who do not scruple to brand that woman—the unhappy representative of an entire class—with all sorts of infamous and opprobrious epithets, instead of, as they ought, saying and doing all they can to reclaim and save her. they rack the language for harsh names to apply to her, until the poor creature, feeling, most bitterly feeling, that no kind heart throbs for her, no tenderness is, or ever will be, vouchsafed ; that she must remain a victim to the spirit of human cruelty, or what is, if possible, still worse--mock charity ; feeling all this, and that she must continue to grope her way all alone through the world, and then drop prematurely, and uncared for into the cold damp grave from a still colder world, and all unprepared, crawl up to the judgment seat; feeling all this and more, it is no great marvel that her heart grows hard, and her once pure soul now totters on the very brink of desperation, while she eats, drinks and sleeps, the food and drink and slumber of vice and infamy, day by day, and week after week. look ! there she has accosted a man upon the side-walk, but scarce has a single word passed ere one of the patent guardians or costodians 18 it isn't all right. of the public morals—an individual in blue coat, brass buttons and arge authority, who has just tossed off a glass of the “good rhein wein”-the generous proffer of a burly ruffian who can afford to pay for the protection of his magnificent looking-glasses and marble counters, behind which he stands to deal out liquid ruin at so much the glass-catches sight of the cyprian plying her dreadful trade. she, he knows, cannot pay, and so he grows indignantly scrupulous, gruffly tells her to move on, and accelerates her movements with a round oath or two, and a not very gentle push. she mutely obeys, because resistance is out of the question, besides which she knows that he carries a legally authorized bludgeon in his pocket, and that he would not hesitate to use it on the slightest pretext, upon either herself or any one who should expostulate or counsel gentler measures-a very dirty bludgeon it is too_still he tries to keep it clean, and once in a while washes it of the blood-spots and cleans it of the matted hair-human hair-from the heads of the last half-dozen drunken sots whom he found asleep upon the side-walks, and took such christian means to arouse from their airy slumbers. but why should we find fault ? isn't he a regular policeman ? well, be quiet then, and don't complain. what better can you expect? is it at all reasonable to demand that an officer should have plenty of muscle, and a heart at the same time? nonsense ! now i ask if all the parts, or any of this true picture are right ? and i answer no! and the utter ance is both deep and full ; so deep, so loud, so full that the very vaults of heaven echo back, and ring out no! no human being exists but in whom the germs of the generous and good, the beautiful and the true lie, ready to shoot forth into excellent glory. we know this, and know it well. these germs may be in fallow ground, still they are there, and it is your business and mine to so plow this fallow land that it shall cause these seeds to spring up and thriftily grow. what though the soil be hard and stony, dry and parched; the fruit of our culture will be rich and succulent, for the warming beams of god's sunlight and grace will perfect and ripen the produce, and it shall be immortally sweet, eternally beautiful and fragrant, forever and for aye ! reader, have you never observed the fact that even the very bad and vicious occasionally flash forth somewhat of the divine—sometimes gleam out the hidden glory? well, there's a mine of diamonds in every soul, and god and nature, and all human love calls it isn't all right. 19 on you and i to bring these diamonds forth to the sunlight, that they may catch the radiance of heaven, and flash out their glories on the air and to the world, kindling up the emulation of virtue and excellent doing in all human souls. there goes that abandoned woman. let us follow her this prostitute—this lost and ruined sister—this creature, fashioned after the likeness of our god, but now, alas, so supremely foul and wretched. she is hieing homeward! homeward ? what a mockery that word conveys; yet she has what she calls a home, and beneath that shelter, such as it is, lies at this moment, upon its pallet of straw, a babeher child—bone of her bone, and flesh of her flesh. poor infant ! truly begotten in sin and brought forth in iniquity ; but none the less a precious, priceless, immortal soul for all that—a soul just as dear as any for which god's son forscok the courts of glory and came to earth to suffer and to die on the stony heights of calvary—a soul just as precious to the infinite heart, as the best born of earth-because it is a human soul, and his life pulses through it as well as through you or me, or the holiest ones of earth or heaven ; and, albeit, we may, and as virtuous citizens of the great world, can but frown upon the guilt and folly that opened the gate by the which it entered into outer being—yet nevertheless it is a soul, and as such has crying claims upon our love, and care, and kindliness ; for being here is not that blessed baby's fault, and in the coming judgment god's prosecuting angel will hold it accountable for its own sins, not for its mother's sorrows and misfortunes. and even for its own sins, sandalphon, the prayer-angel, will eloquently plead at the feet of the crucified redeemer. well, she has left the highway and turned down a narrow, dark, and dreadful alley, one of these horrible sinks of moral poison, pestilence and perdition—the awful and disgusting vice-cancers, sin-blotches, and festering pest-lanes, which are the eternal disgrace of all the great cities of the world. infamous purlieus of misery, wherein gaunt robbery moodily sits plotting his villainy, and pale murder lies nursing red-handed butchery, who ere long will fright the very world with horror ! how strangely people change ! a little while ago, and that woman's crest was held aloft, and erect in brazen impudence and intent upon drawing silly human flies into her horrible web—a web 20 it isn't all right. and in mind, as when they entered ; for it is poison—every thread and fiber of it, except the baby in the bed—and the deadly odor of the upas fills all the region round about. why turns she so quickly down that lane? well, i will tell you. because the itching and the tingling of her breasts told her that the babe of her agony and her shame was a-hungered for the thin blue milk of her bosom. and so she quits the street, for maternal love is much stronger than the love of guilt or money. soon the glare of the street-lamp no longer shines upon her form, for it is lost amid the labyrinths and devious windings of that dark and noisome alley way, this horrid tomb of all the human virtues. but her aspect has changed ; and the flaunting courtezan hangs her head, as she carefully and lightly threads her way along. the harlot's sun has set, and the star of the woman and the mother reigns triumphant for-an hour. up, up, up, the dark and filthy stairs she flies, for the milk pains urge her on; anon the attic is reached ; a little brass key turns in the lock ; a ready match is ignited; the little lamp illumes the seven by nine--den, for chamber it cannot be called ; she runs to the bed-side, falls lovingly upon it, snatches up the prattler, presses it to her bosom, and “my babe, my precious babe !" she cries, as the great round tears gush up from her heart—her woman's heart, after all! the little one answers with a gleeful chuckle, and in another moment is busily engaged in drawing vitality from the body of weakness—virtuous life from the paps of guilt! love, pure, dear, sweet and precious love reigns then and there ; just such love as your mother felt for you, my reader, my sister or my brother; just such love, in kind, but not degree, as prompted our god to send his only begotten, because most perfectly begotten son, to earth for purposes of salvation and redemption ; just such love as made the meek and lowly nazarene toilsomely bear his cross up the stony steeps of calvary, and afterward groan and die thereon ! surely that woman is not wholly lost, who feels even a little love like this. and so we see this woman in all her sin and misery. is it allright ? by the god of heaven, no ; a pealing, thundering, heaven-rending no! it can never be right for a true woman, or a true man to rest contented while such things be! society-you madam, and i, as integers thereof, must work, work, work, to bring about a better state of things. it can never be right to foster or in any way encourage the growth of such monstrous evils, it isn't all right. 21 as i, a woman who loves her sex and race much better than a party or a philanthropic clique, herein so feebly attempt to outline and depict. the modern declaimers for the doctrine “ whatever is is right” could not have foreseen the fearful consequences likely to arise from the enunciation of the great sophism. i am charitable enough to believe they did not so foresee them. nevertheless the infectious malaria has gone out upon its souldestroying mission ; and doubtless there are scores of thousands who, failing to perceive the utter rottenness of the fallacy, felicitate cause he is at the head of all human founts and springs of action ; therefore everything is as it ought to be. it is quite time the calumny was refuted, and the people set right on this question, and if this endeavor in the right direction shall have, as i believe it will, the effect of depriving this new viper of its fangs, this detestible serpent of its sting, this asp of its poison, i shall not fail to thank god with an overflowing heart. doubtless all things in the mere material and dumb, deaf, unthinking, unconscientious and unreflecting world, are right, and the man or woman must be insane who would find fault, cavil at or dispute the truth of the what in this light, confessedly, becomes an axiom. my views on this aspect of the question, coincide perfectly with that of the author of a wonderfully wise and common-sense pamphlet on the use and abuse of the physical loves and passions, published by its author* within the last year, who, speaking on the “ all-right doctrine, says: “of course, then, i cannot evade the conclusion, looking at the subject from the stand-point of intuition itself, that god understood his business well when he began the world ; and therefore when we take this lofty stand to pass judgment on this “ all-right” philosophy, we cannot help affirming that, beyond all cavil, the man is correct who affirms that whatever is is right.” the author just quoted took good care, however, to say, that his endorsement of the doctrine extended not one single step beyond the mere physical world, its laws and action ; for when the all-right doctrine ventured beyond that and entered the vast domain of custom, habit, philosophy, morals, and religion, then it was wofully out of place, and unworthy of even respectful con sideration. i fully agree with him in his restrictions and criticism * a doctor p. b. randolph, of boston, mass. new, extraordinary, and thrilling work! the soul-world: and dealings with the dead! by cynthia temple. this is one of the most wonderful books ever printed in this country or anywhere else. the author was assisted by a writer, who, as well as herself, is well known to be one of the most vigorous thinkers, sterling writers, and most graphic delineators, especially of the occult, the weird, and psychological, now on the stage of literary life; while, as a describer of the inner halls of being—a picturer forth of the soul's deepest mysteries, no writer has ever surpassed, and but few, if any, ever equaled either of these wonderfully gifted authors. spiritualism, with all its revelations from the socalled departed, has not yet produced anything that can begin to be compared with this book. people who want to know what a soul really is, whereabouts in the body it holds its seat; how it thinks, feels, moves, looks, is looked at; how it goes out and comes in; how it sleeps, how the body dies, how the soul escapes it, where it goes to, and what it does; how it loves, marries : offspring in the other world, etc., should not fail to read this book. a revelation made by the dead to the dying, by means of a process, most fearful and strange. the chapters on "the winged globe," " the flight," and “the pre-existence and transmigration of souls,” are each in itself worth the price of the book. when it was announced that a work of this author was about to be published, the advanced demand called for an extra edition of 3000 copies and still the orders come. price $1.00. published, and sent postpaid by the n. e. reform association, boston, mass. dr. p. b. randolph's great pamphlets. the unveiling of spiritualism! this is a minute detail of the singular experience of dr. randolph, (the famous converted medium,) and settles the question about spiritualism most effectually. its description of the devil and god, at a game of chess is one of the most thrilling things in the language. price 25 cents, post paid. also, by the same author, luman love, in its physical aspects, how it is made sick, and how cured. it also contains one single piece of information, called “the grand secret,” alone worth fifty times the cost. price 25 cents. also, “the golden letter," 25 cents. address, n. e. reform association, boston mass. c2 temple, cynthia (spirit). collated 1-26-26 te 78500 journalism for peace and justice: towards a comparative analysis of media paradigms studies in social justice volume 4, issue 2, 179-198, 2010 correspondence address: robert a. hackett, school of communication, simon fraser university, burnaby, bc, v5a 1s6, canada. email: hackett@sfu.ca issn: 1911-4788 journalism for peace and justice: towards a comparative analysis of media paradigms robert a. hackett school of communication, simon fraser university abstract this paper compares different normative and institutional paradigms of journalism with respect to peaceful conflict resolution and democratic communication. it begins with the problematic but still dominant “regime of objectivity,” and then considers three contemporary challengers: peace journalism, alternative media, and media democratization/communication rights movements. the paradigms are compared in terms of such factors as public philosophy, epistemological assumptions, characteristic practices, institutional entailments, relationship to dominant institutions and power structures, allies and opponents, and antagonisms and synergies between them. i conclude with strategic considerations for cultivating social justiceoriented journalism. struggles for peace and justice are also struggles for democratic communication. that is a core premise of this paper.1 communication practices and institutions (particularly journalism as a culturally central form of storytelling) are interwoven with movements for and against social justice, with contemporary processes of peace and war, 2 this paper explores possibilities for transforming journalism so that it might better contribute to more peaceful and democratic social relations. drawing from secondary literature, i outline and compare four contending paradigms in the media field, each of which mobilizes energy, generates incentives and institutional logics, organizes ways of producing, legitimizing and disseminating knowledge, and reinforces, challenges and/or creates power relations. i start with the arguably disintegrating but still dominant “regime of objectivity” (hackett & zhao, 1998) characteristic of north american journalism’s period of “high modernism” (hallin, 2000). i then outline three challenger paradigms: peace journalism, “alternative media” and its correlates, and with other intersecting crises facing humankind—impending climate catastrophe, humanitarian emergencies, terror war, poverty, forced migrations, and human rights abuses (cottle, 2009, p. 15). simultaneous with these societal crises, journalism (at least in the north atlantic heartland of global capitalism) is facing its own crises of legitimacy, institutional identity, and economic viability—crises intensified by both global financial meltdown and the diffusion of digital media. 180 robert a. hackett studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 and the movement for media democratization and communication rights. 3 while this paper cannot address all of them, the following questions were posed to each paradigm and suggest a much broader research program. what is its normative ideal or public philosophy? what does it propose as the core purpose of journalism? what epistemological assumptions does it make about journalism, and about human capacity to understand social reality? does this paradigm advance distinct discourses or frames? what specific journalism practices, and institutional arrangements within and beyond the media field, does it entail? what are its historical conditions of existence? against what problem or “other” is it reacting? does the paradigm pose a counter-hegemonic challenge to mainstream journalism or broader power relations? who are its active promoters, passive constituencies, and likely opponents? what functions or interests does it serve? what antagonisms or synergies exist between these paradigms? these three paradigms are examples of attempts, respectively, to reform dominant media from within, to bypass dominant media by creating a parallel field, and to reform dominant media from without by changing economic structures and legal contexts. i conclude with brief reflections on how synergies between these paradigms could contribute to progressive change. the regime of objectivity i begin with a paradigm that can be labelled the “regime of objectivity.” dominant in anglo-american journalism for much of the twentieth century, it is acquiring global significance as journalists seek new roles and institutional supports within formerly authoritarian regimes elsewhere. objectivity has positive connotations, such as the pursuit of truth without fear or favour. what objectivity means in practice, however, and whether it is a desirable and achievable goal for reporting in a democratic society, are debatable questions. objectivity is not a single, fixed “thing.” hackett and zhao (1998) suggest that in contemporary north american journalism, objectivity constitutes a multifaceted discursive “regime,” an interrelated complex of ideas and practices that provide a general model for conceiving, defining, arranging, and evaluating news texts, practices and institutions. they identify five general levels or dimensions in this regime. first, objectivity comprises goals that journalists should strive for—values concerning journalism’s ability to impart information about the world (accuracy, completeness, separation of fact from opinion), and values concerning the stance that reporters should take towards the value-laden meanings of news (detachment, neutrality, impartiality and independence, avoiding partisanship, personal biases, ulterior motives, or outside interests) (mcquail, 1992, chapters 16 & 17). second, such values are assumed to be embodied in a set of newsgathering and presentational practices, discussed below. third, this paradigm implies assumptions about knowledge and reality, such as a positivist faith in the possibility of accurate descriptions of the world-as-it-is, through careful observation and disinterested reporting. fourth, objectivity is embedded in an institutional framework. it presumes that journalism is conducted by skilled professionals, employed within specialized journalism for peace and justice 181 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 institutions—news organizations, usually corporate-owned, but in which editorial and marketing functions are separated. in their relations with the broader society, journalists and news media are assumed to enjoy legal guarantees of free speech, and independence from the state, political parties, and other outside interests. fifth, objectivity provides language for everyday assessments of journalistic performance. this language includes terms like “fairness” and “balance,” which some see as more flexible and achievable substitutes for objectivity. objectivity is often counterposed to propaganda, and personal or partisan “bias.” who are the beneficiaries of the objectivity regime, and what functions does it serve? notwithstanding the apparently high-minded altruism and universalism of its ethos—telling truth in the public interest without fear or favour—the historical and sociological roots of journalism objectivity reveal that it serves quite specific interests (bennett, 2009, pp. 189-192; hackett & zhao, 1998). non-partisan reporting helped the commercial daily press to displace the party-oriented papers of the nineteenth century, and to aggregate the broadest possible readership for advertisers; the claim to objectivity thus corresponded with the imperatives of mass marketing. neutral non-partisan language also served the interests of the news agencies that emerged during the 1800s to provide wire copy to newspaper clients with a variety of partisan orientations. to the extent that objective reporting requires specialized skills, it enhances journalists’ claim to professional status. the objectivity regime helps to manage the symbiotic relationship between news media and the state. politicians gain access to media audiences and an opportunity to shape the public definition of political issues; conversely, so long as they follow the rules of objectivity, working journalists gain relatively stable access to senior officials and politicians, without sacrificing their public image of political independence and neutrality. indeed, the objectivity doctrine “obscured and therefore made more palatable [their] unprofessional compromises with managerial imperatives and corporate politics” (bagdikian, 1997, p. 180). the claims of objectivity and professionalism also provided ideological cover for media monopolies against the threat of government anti-trust legislation or regulation (mcchesney, 2004, pp. 6364). finally, the practices of objectivity, such as the “balanced” reporting of political issues, opened the public forum to interest groups that had the resources and willingness to play the game (hackett & zhao, 1998, chapter 3). a powerful coincidence of interests underpinned the longevity of the objectivity regime. in addition to demystifying its social and political roots, academics have repeatedly demonstrated the shortcomings of actually existing journalism when measured against the stated ideal of objectivity, while others have advanced telling critiques of the epistemological foundations of journalism objectivity (see e.g. hackett & zhao, 1998, chapter 5). it is more relevant here, however, to consider the regime’s key narrative and reportorial practices and their systematic political consequences. those practices include “documentary reporting” that allows journalists to transmit only facts that they can observe or that “credible” and authoritative sources have confirmed (bennett, 2009, p. 193). journalists also practise “balance” when covering controversies that are regarded as legitimate, providing access to the most dramatic or authoritative leaders of “both sides.” other conventions include the separation of “fact” from “opinion,” and the privileging of personalities over structures, political strategies over policy analysis, and discrete and timely events over long-term processes, conditions, or contexts. 182 robert a. hackett studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 when measured against sensationalism or wilful propaganda, these objectivity practices have much to recommend them (bagdikian, 1997, p. 179). yet they also have predictable consequences that are highly problematic for informing public opinion, or incentivizing remedial action, in relation to global crises of conflict, ecology, and poverty. take the practices of “balance.” in american environmental journalism, “balance” gave undue weight to climate change deniers, resulting in inaccurate reporting at odds with the scientific consensus (bennett, 2009, pp. 108112). balance constructs and reduces complex issues to two sides, marginalizing other perspectives, and giving excessive weight either to dramatic and polarizing voices, or to the usual official sources (such as political party leaders). balance also naturalizes the construction of conflicts as two-sided zero-sum contests, in which one party can only gain at the expense of the other; alternative conflict resolution and win-win options are thus marginalized (lynch & mcgoldrick, 2005a, pp. 203-212). other practices are equally problematic. the reliance on credentialed facts from elite sources, and the privileging of events over contexts both reinforce a global status quo of misery for millions of people, sidelining issues such as poverty, labour exploitation, or private sector corruption that are not on official agendas until they erupt in catastrophic upheavals. such journalism can contribute to social turbulence as “unestablished groups” adopt disruptive tactics to attract media attention (bagdikian, 1997, p. 213). balance and official orientation can also make it difficult for “objective” journalism to challenge governments’ war-making policies, even when they are founded on dubious motives and evidence, in the absence of oppositional elite voices. the american media’s virtually free pass to the bush administration as it prepared to invade iraq in 2003 is now widely recognized as a tragic case in point (dimaggio, 2009, esp. chapter 3). in a parallel fashion, the journalistic privileging of events and personalities over contexts and structures makes it easier for political leaders to foreground and demonize figures like saddam hussein, and to deflect attention from their own motives and contributions vis-à-vis conflict escalation, and from the “collateral damage” of their own policies (such as the massive civilian cost of the pre-2003 sanctions imposed on iraq). a related line of critique asserts that the objectivity ethos directly contributes to the production of systematically one-sided or ideological news accounts, and legitimizes media practices that undermine democratic public life, such as a stance of cynical negativism divorced from coherent analytical perspectives, and the framing of politics as a game of insiders motivated only by electoral success (e.g. bennett, 2009, chapter 6). the appearance of objectivity arguably also masks other media democratic deficits, discussed later, that critical political economists have identified. such critiques are contentious, but there is widespread agreement that the objectivity regime is in crisis. anglo-american journalism is increasingly dissolving within profit-driven conglomerates, its economic basis threatened by audience fragmentation, its occupational ethos shifting from public service (however conservatively defined), to consumerism and commercialism. no single paradigm has replaced objectivity, but several promising challengers have emerged. one of them was pioneered by johan galtung, a founder of the discipline of peace and conflict studies (cited in lynch & mcgoldrick, 2005a, p. 6). peace journalism (hereafter pj) is an internal reform movement, operating in the corners of journalism education and news organizations to revise professional practices. journalism for peace and justice 183 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 peace journalism like objectivity, pj is a multi-faceted paradigm. briefly, as outlined by lynch and mcgoldrick (2005a), pj is an analytical method for evaluating reportage of conflicts, a set of practices and ethical norms that journalism could employ in order to improve itself, and a rallying call for change. in sum, pj’s public philosophy “is when journalists make choices—of what stories to report and about how to report them— that create opportunities for society at large to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict” (ibid., p. 5). pj draws upon the insights of conflict analysis to look beyond the overt violence that is the stuff of conventional journalism, which is often tantamount to war journalism. pj calls attention to the context of attitudes, behaviour and contradictions, and the need to identify a range of stakeholders broader than the "two sides" engaged in violent confrontation. if war journalism presents conflict as a tugof-war between two parties in which one side’s gain is the other’s loss, pj invites journalists to re-frame conflict as a cat’s cradle of relationships between various stakeholders. it also calls on journalists to distinguish between stated demands and underlying needs and objectives, to move beyond a narrow range of official sources to include grassroots voices—particularly victims and peace-builders. pj seeks to identify and attend to voices working for creative and non-violent solutions, to keep eyes open for ways of transforming and transcending the hardened lines of conflict, and to pay heed to aggression and casualties on all sides, avoiding the conflictescalating trap of emphasizing “our” victims and “their” atrocities. pj looks beyond the direct physical violence that is the focus of war journalism, to include the structural and cultural violence (e.g. racism, militarism) that may underlie conflict situations (hackett, 2006; hackett & schroeder with newswatch canada, 2008, p. 27). one of pj’s prescriptions is to expand the horizons of conflict reportage, from the immediate conflict arena and the most prominent adversaries, to broader venues and time-frames that multiply the potential causes, instigators, outcomes, and solutions. as one example of pj’s approach, lynch (2008, chapter 6) analyzed british press coverage of the “iran nuclear crisis” from this perspective, suggesting that full coverage would (but usually did not) include these topics: the nuclear nonproliferation treaty; iran’s right to develop civil nuclear power under the npt’s terms; the failure of the uk and us governments to engage in negotiations to disarm their own nuclear arsenal, as obligated under the npt; any evidence that iran is not actually developing nuclear weapons; iran’s possible reasons for seeking a nuclear arsenal, if it were to do so, in terms of deterrence against outside threats. 4 is pj counter-hegemonic? does pj constitute a counter-hegemonic challenge to either journalism, or broader social structures? there is no unequivocal answer. while its advocates ask journalists to engage with concepts and ideas from the academic discipline of conflict analysis, they often prefer to speak in the language of journalistic professionalism. indeed, when initiating pj as a reform campaign within the journalism field, lynch preferred to avoid the term “peace journalism,” which for 184 robert a. hackett studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 some may imply an illegitimate prior commitment to extraneous values. he labelled the new initiative “reporting the world” (lynch, 2002). indeed, in justifying pj’s prescriptions, lynch and mcgoldrick (2005a, pp. 9, 185, 223, 242) are able to quote from formal editorial guidelines published by one of the world’s bastions of the objectivity regime, the bbc, and to use its language—balance, fairness, responsibility (lynch, 2002, p. 3). one scholar characterizes pj as a prerequisite of good journalism, one “which only forbids the unacceptable,” such as the narrowing of news perspective to that of “war-making elites,” or acting as a conduit for propaganda (kempf, 2007a, p. 4; cited in lynch, 2008, p. xvi). in this view, pj embodies the best ideals of journalistic professionalism—including comprehensiveness, context, accuracy, and the representation of the full range of relevant opinions—and it critiques actually existing journalism from that standpoint while providing practical alternatives (lynch, 2008, p. xviii). and yet, in some respects, pj stands between the fields of established media and oppositional social movements. consider the contrasts between conventional journalism and the peace movement as paradigms for structuring thought and action. the movement values long-term peace-building processes, collective decisionmaking, political commitment, human solidarity, social change, and low-cost grassroots mobilization. dominant journalism favours timely events, official hierarchies, a stance of detachment, dyadic conflict, a consumerist worldview, and costly production values (hackett, 1991, pp. 274-275). while pj should not be equated with the peace movement, it shares some of the above-noted incompatibilities vis-à-vis dominant news discourse. first, pj constitutes an epistemological challenge to the objectivity regime. in this view, journalism inherently involves choices; it is a matter of representation, not of reality-reflection. notwithstanding its professed disinterestedness, conventional “objective” journalism enshrines practices that predictably favour some outcomes and values over others—including, too often, war over peaceful conflict transformation. objective journalism is thus “irresponsible,” in that it shuns max weber’s “ethic of responsibility” in public affairs—the idea that “one should take into account the foreseeable consequences of one’s actions…and adjust one’s behaviour accordingly” (lynch & mcgoldrick, 2005a, p. 218). in conflict situations, far from being passive observers, journalists are often caught in a “feedback loop” with political players. for instance, based on their previous experience of the media, powerful sources create “facts” that they anticipate will be reported and framed in particular ways. thus, every time journalists re-create those frames, they influence future actions by sources. by focussing on physical violence divorced from context, and on win-lose scenarios, conventional “objective” news unwittingly incentivizes conflict escalation and “crackdowns,” impeding a morally and professionally justifiable incentivization of peaceful outcomes (lynch & mcgoldrick, 2005a, pp. 216-218). pj thus challenges the very epistemological basis for a stance of detachment, calling instead for journalists’ self-reflexivity vis-à-vis the institutionalized biases of their routine practices, the inescapability of framing and sourcing choices, the nonpassivity of sources, the interventionist nature of journalism, and the potential of its becoming an unwitting accomplice to war propaganda (lynch, 2008, pp. 10-14). that said, pj is not renouncing the commitment to truthfulness, only questioning why some kinds of facts and sources are privileged, and how they feed into conflict journalism for peace and justice 185 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 cycles (p. 9). pj rejects both the positivist stance that journalism simply reports selfevident facts, and the relativist position that “it’s all spin,” that there is no independent basis to separate truth from propaganda. instead, pj offers interdisciplinary intellectual anchorage in peace and conflict studies, pursues the rigour of social science, and is reflexive, explicit about its normative commitments, open to justification, and aware of participant/observer interaction (pp. xv, 21).5 second, beyond epistemological differences, pj challenges dominant news values, the taken-for-granted and usually implicit criteria that routinely guide journalists in selecting and constructing news narrative. some pj scholars suggest otherwise, pointing to specific failures in specific cases, such as the “peace euphoria” framing of the oslo “peace process” in israeli media (mandelzis, 2007). yet aspects of pj surely clash with dominant news values. in a recent update of a classic study by galtung and ruge (1965), harcup and o’neill (2001) identify ten dominant characteristics of newsworthy stories in the british press: power elite, celebrity, entertainment, surprise, bad news, good news (events), magnitude or scope, relevance (to the audience), follow-up (continuity), and the newspaper’s own agenda. pj’s emphases on conflict formation and resolution, on win/win positive outcomes, on long-term processes and contexts, and on grassroots sources, challenge the news values of violence, negativity, unambiguity, timeliness, elite nations, and elite people. indeed, pj’s prescription to broaden the range of sources, to consciously search for the voices and options for peaceful resolution, can be considered a third dimension of its challenge to conventional war reporting. some observers see pj as offering an even more fundamental challenge—not just to the professional conservatism of journalists who cling to “objectivity,” and the routinized market share-building formats of profit-oriented news corporations—but also to the entire global war system and its “deadly forms of propaganda,” the “lethal synergy of state, corporations, think tanks, and the media (richard falk, in introduction to lynch, 2008, pp. v, viii). other critics fear that pj challenges a liberal value central to democratic journalism—that of freedom of expression. in the view of hanitzsch (2004), pj implies that “bad news” and controversial topics, whose dissemination could contribute to the escalation of conflict, should be avoided. there is no evidence, however, that peace journalists actually make such a claim. but in one sense, pj does challenge the currently hegemonic definition of free speech, as the right of individuals to speak without fear of state punishment. pj implies not just a right to speak freely, but a right of access by all significant voices to the means of public communication. free speech needs a chance to be heard, in order to be effective—a normative imperative that underpins alternative media and media democratization movements. the environment for pj given that pj is, to some extent at least, counter-hegemonic, what are the prospects for actually putting it into practice? what strategies and what enabling environment would help it to flourish? one broad strategy is to reform the journalism field from within. a landmark review of scholarship on “influences on media content” suggests that there is some 186 robert a. hackett studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 degree of agency for newsworkers in traditional mass media (shoemaker & reese, 1996). excellent context-providing documentaries, or news reports on grassroots bridge-building across political divides, can be found within conventional news media. one example is a recent cbc television report on an association of israeli and palestinian families who have lost loved ones in the ongoing conflicts. and there is experimental evidence that structural themes and de-escalation-oriented coverage can stimulate audience interest as much as escalationand elite-oriented war journalism (kempf, 2007b). still, the barriers to pj within conventional media are wide-ranging. they include the difficulties of constructing “peace” as a compelling narrative (fawcett, 2002), the national basis of much of the world’s news media and their audiences (notwithstanding the recently hypothesized emergence of “global journalism”), and the embeddedness of dominant media and states in relations of inequality (as the new world information and communication order (nwico) movement had argued in the 1970s and 1980s) (hackett, 2006). unfortunately, it seems that in the western corporate media, journalists have neither sufficient incentives, nor autonomy vis-à-vis their employers, to transform the way news is done, without support from powerful external allies. while systematic comparative research is lacking, it seems that pj is likely to find more fertile ground in societies where media are perceived to have contributed to socially destructive internal conflict or ethnic tensions, and in news organizations which have a stake in avoiding their audiences’ dissolution into opposing camps. moreover, in “transition societies” emerging from authoritarian rule, the political roles and professional norms of journalism may be more open to self-reflexive change than they are in washington, london, or other imperial citadels of the objectivity regime. 6 pj’s advocates focus on the dominant institutions of public communication, since these are presumably those with the greatest influence on conflict cycles. the current crisis in north american journalism presents opportunities for pj—there are more footholds in the system for different and experimental forms of journalism. but in light of blockages to pj in the dominant media, as well as the growing hybridity and complexity of the global media field, the uptake of pj in indonesia, the philippines and some sub-saharan african states offers preliminary support for these hypotheses. 7 it is worth exploring other spaces for peacebuilding communication. if indeed pj is to become “more than an argument at the outer margins of political debate” (richard falk, in introduction to lynch, 2008, p. ix), it must become part of a broader project. one approach is to build a new field, parallel to currently-existing journalism consisting of alternative organizations and networks, supported by civil society, relatively autonomous vis-à-vis corporate or state power, and capable of putting into practice the ethos of pj. alternative media compared to pj, alternative media constitute a less coherent field or paradigm. debates in the burgeoning scholarly literature reveal its heterogeneity on core questions. how should the phenomenon be demarcated and labeled? various adjectives have been deployed: alternative, radical, autonomous, independent, tactical, citizens’, alternative, participatory, community media (kidd & rodriguez, journalism for peace and justice 187 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 2010, p. 1). each of these terms, which i use somewhat interchangeably below, has distinct connotations and limitations, reflecting disagreement over other questions: what are “the descriptive features to which we give the greatest priority” for categorizing media and for empirical investigation (couldry, 2010, p. 25)? should such media be defined on the basis of their own characteristics, and if so, which?: their content, or their egalitarian, participatory and/or noncommercial processes of production? or, should they be defined by what they differ from—presumably, the “mainstream”, corporate, or state media? and if so, how should such difference be understood? simply as divergence from a dominant model (perhaps meeting needs unmet by it) or as opposition and resistance to it? if alternative media are oppositional, what is the object of their contestation? the institutionalized forms and concentrated nature of “media power” (couldry, 2003), or broader forms of social and political domination? and if the latter, if alternative media are contesting political domination, are such political challenges necessarily “progressive,” in the broad sense of seeking a more equitable distribution of social, economic, cultural and political resources (hackett & carroll, 2006)? or can media of the radical right (for example, racist or religious fundamentalist websites) also be considered alternative (couldry, 2010, p. 25; downing, ford, gil, & stein, 2001)? no attempt is made here to resolve these questions, beyond noting that repressive and exclusionary alternative media are unlikely to constitute communicative spaces for non-violent conflict resolution. for analytical purposes, an ideal type of alternative journalism might include these characteristics: participatory models of production; challenges to established media power (including the professionalization and highly capitalized economy of commercial journalism, and the division between media producers and audiences); more “bottom-up” ways of scanning and reporting the world, challenging conventional elite-oriented and ideologically conservative news values; and a positive orientation to social change, social movements and/or marginalized communities (hackett & zhao, 1998, pp. 206-213; atton, 2009; atton & hamilton, 2008, p. 1). in light of that description, one can see that alternative journalism is complementary to pj in several ways. first, like pj, alternative journalism represents dissatisfaction with not only mainstream practices or coverage, but also with the epistemology of news (atton & hamilton, 2008, p. 1). by contrast with the objectivity regime, citizens’ journalism often valorizes indigenous knowledge, personal testimonials, and participant accounts, over those of professional observers, constructing “a reality that opposes the conventions and representations of mainstream media” (atton, 2008; brooten, 2008). both participatory researchers and practitioners of alternative media embrace “praxis as a method—learning by doing—and as an epistemological point of departure—knowledge starts from the experience (stories) of participants—that encourages critical thinking towards social change” (riaño-alcalá, 2006, p. 273; cited in rodriguez, 2010, p. 137). while alternative journalists are likely more stridently to reject the very possibility or desirability of objectivity, they share with pj skepticism towards dominant journalism’s claims to have achieved it. alternative journalism also shares with pj a commitment to move beyond the reporting of daily events, to analyze contexts and critically explore structures of power. moreover, alternative journalism is opposed to poverty, the political exclusion of the poor, and top-down approaches to development (bekken, 2008; brooten, 2008; wilkins, 2008); it resists domination along axes of gender, class, and 188 robert a. hackett studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 ethnicity, and the underand mis-representation of subordinate groups. these commitments align well with pj’s call for the voices of victims and peacemakers to be heard, and for structural and cultural violence to be exposed and analyzed. one example of such alternative journalism is the national magazine canadian dimension. its masthead “for people who want to change the world,” is an unabashed rejection of the objectivity regime. by contrast with the corporate press, its decision-making is collective, its financing is readershiprather than advertiserbased, and its editorial content interweaves analysis and reports from a consistently progressive and bottom-up standpoint. consider coverage of the toronto g20 summit. while the corporate press focused on a handful of violent protesters and on security costs to taxpayers, canadian dimension (issue of september/october 2010) highlighted the mass arrests of protesters and human rights violations by toronto police, explored the political issues the protesters were raising, and critically analyzed the tactics of various groups associated with the protests. the environment for alternative journalism what about the institutional framework for the practice of alternative journalism? pj has relatively well-defined institutional locations—journalism education and established news organizations, albeit to date, in the margins. by contrast, alternative journalism is more variegated, hybrid, and complex, spanning the continents and the centuries (see downing, et al., 2001). moreover, in a mediascape which is increasingly globalized, digitalized, and networked, and where the producer/user distinction is blurring, it is more difficult to specify the institutional and technological scope of alternative media. alternative media’s contemporary constituencies include “youths, immigrants, minorities, social movements, and cultural and political outsiders” (bekken, 2008). its technological and organizational forms include community radio (arguably the most important form globally), internet “radio,” small print publications (like the samizdat underground papers of the soviet era), weekly urban newspapers, audiocassettes (during the 1979 iranian revolution), public access television in the us, documentary and eyewitness video for social movements, political and citizens’ journalism websites, blogs by unaffiliated individuals, the anti-copyright open source movement…this list is illustrative, far from exhaustive or systematic. of its various forms, those alternative media that most closely match pj’s ethos are probably those linked to communities seeking to protect themselves from direct violence, or to oppositional social movements seeking the “four rs” of democratization—recognition, representation, rights, redistribution (sreberny, 2005)—in the face of structural violence. under what conditions is alternative journalism likely to flourish? alternative media face a paradox: they tend to emerge in periods of upheaval, and in conditions of violence, repression or exclusion, to express needs ignored or actively suppressed by official or commercial media. political or social repression obviously hinders the production and distribution of alternative media. yet a supportive political communication regime that lowers the costs of mobilization and enhances alternative media’s sustainability (effective guarantees of free speech, recognition and even subsidization by the state) would also reduce the incentives to mobilize. the decline of participatory underground media, as post-communist regimes in eastern and journalism for peace and justice 189 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 central europe consolidated, offers one historical example (sparks, 2005).8 there are, to be sure, tensions between the two paradigms. first, pj calls for responsibility and reform within the field of institutionalized journalism. it accepts the presence and desirability of professionalism, and thus the distinction between journalists and citizens/amateurs, with the former privileged in the construction of public discourse. accordingly, pj exhibits more concern with the framing of news content (in so far as it feeds into feedback loops and conflict cycles on a broader scale), than with news production processes as such, except for the reform of certain practices such as sourcing. quite possibly, the perceived need for pj arises similarly in situations of crisis, when societies are drifting towards avoidable conflict, or struggling to rebuild and engage in processes of reconciliation. alternative and citizens’ media, by contrast, prioritize participatory processes, and people telling their own stories. such media are (by definition) seeking to build a parallel and alternative set of practices and organizations that will often be consciously oppositional to dominant media, and competitive for some of the same resources (audiences, credibility and, occasionally, revenues). moreover, citizens’ media are inherently more precarious than state-owned or market-oriented media. the seeds of pj may find fertile soil in some corners of the alternative media field, but organizationally, they would need frequent re-planting. and alternative media’s typically marginal status means that they often cannot influence the immediate trajectories of conflict cycles. second, some alternative media are advocates for one side of a conflict. they may be organs of political contestation, linked to movements that advocate violence or that lack a commitment to universal human rights and/or other-oriented ethics. within the broad spectrum of ethnic diaspora media, some amplify the most militant or uncompromising views. such media may see themselves as representing particular communities, but the concept of “community” is politically ambiguous: it can be employed to help construct essentialist and exclusionary identities (downing, et al., 2001, pp. 39-40). that kind of “community” media may reject pj’s precept of productive dialogue between the different parties in a conflict. there are nevertheless profound complementarities between pj and alternative media. they share a commitment to social justice, and to the critical analysis of social structure beyond the quotidian spectacles of conventional news, a commitment implicit in pj’s stance of critical realism, and its call for the exposure and removal of cultural and structural violence. both paradigms reject the epistemology of the regime of objectivity, insisting that journalists acknowledge they are embedded in social processes and communities, and act ethically on that basis. both seek to challenge elite war propaganda, and to broaden the range of voices accessed to the public arena, especially those of peacebuilders and the victims of violence in conflict situations. 9 pj then, could profitably seek its expansion in alternative and community media. sometimes community media can have a direct bearing on conflict resolution, as with the abovementioned colombian radio stations. in especially repressive regimes like iran’s, citizens’ underground media may be virtually the only internal communication option for promoting peace and democracy. at the same time, given the limitations of alternative media discussed above, and the need to address the commanding heights of public communication in most conflict situations, another 190 robert a. hackett studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 paradigm that challenges the concentration of “objective” symbolic power in the media field should also be considered. by intervening in politics and other adjacent fields to change the environment of journalism and the gravitational pulls to which it is subject, movements for media democratization, discussed below, may offer new spaces for public communication favourable to social justice. media democratization and communication rights throughout the twentieth century, social movements used communications to mobilize, to gain standing with publics and policymakers, and to pursue political and social change. implicitly, most movements thereby accepted the media system as an obdurate part of the political environment (hackett & carroll, 2006). recent decades have added a new dimension, however. citizens’ movements have emerged in a number of countries, demanding democratic reform of media industries and state communication policies, in order to change the media field itself (see e.g. hackett & carroll, 2006; mcchesney, 2004; stein, kidd and rodriguez, 2009). social movement organizations and less formal networks operate both locally (e.g. media alliance in san francisco) and nationally (e.g. the media reform groups free press in the us, campaign for press and broadcasting freedom in the uk, or the citizens’ online campaign against restrictive copyright regimes in south korea (lee, 2009). in recent years, similar efforts have been directed towards democratizing global media governance, such as cris, the campaign for communication rights in the information society (ó siochrú, 2005). such groups are not necessarily directly engaged in producing or advocating new models of journalism. rather, campaigning around a range of issues—intellectual property and the public sphere, broadcast content and regulation, foreign and concentrated media ownership, competition policy, the internet’s accessibility and architecture—they seek to change the structures that currently constrain more diverse and democratic forms of public communication in general. thus, the threat against which such movements are mobilizing is the democratic deficit of corporate and state media and telecommunications—a deficit often masked by claims of objectivity and responsiveness to consumers. that deficit has multiple dimensions, including the failure to constitute a democratic public sphere in the face of commercial pressures; the centralization of political and symbolic power; the conversion of economic inequality into unequal media representation and access; the homogenization of discourse, masked by the proliferation of channels and technologies; the loss of localism in many commercial media; the corporate enclosure of knowledge through restrictive user-pay and intellectual property regimes; secretive and elitist communications policy-making; and the erosion of privacy and free expression rights in the post-9/11 climate of surveillance and national security (hackett & carroll, 2006, chapter 1). many of these democratic shortcomings are related to the commodification of communication and the global expansion of market relations. other media deficits derive from state coercion, which, however, is arguably (as with intellectual property regimes) a necessary ingredient of a market-oriented neoliberal order (hackett & carroll, 2006, p. 10). journalism for peace and justice 191 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 against this democratic deficit of the corporate media and the social order in which they are embedded, what alternative principles do media democrats propose? an analysis of the people’s communication charter, a landmark document extrapolating from international covenants and circulated by ngos in the 1990s, suggests these: independence from both government and commercial/corporate control; popular access and participation in communication and policy-making; equality, not just of rights, but of access to the means of communication; diversity and pluralism; human community, solidarity, and responsibility; and universal human rights (hackett & carroll, 2006, chapter 4). a more recent discourse analysis of the campaign for communication rights in the information society (cris) and other transnational civil society advocacy groups reveals a similar set of principles: freedom, inclusiveness, diversity, participation, and knowledge as a common good (padovani & pavan, 2009). each of these principles is multifaceted and susceptible to different and perhaps contradictory emphases. media diversity, for instance, could refer to types of programming, ideological frameworks, types of ownership, language of service provision, or the representation of various social groups in media content and employment. moreover, the constituencies promoting media democratization are themselves diverse, ranging from relatively privileged professionals in academic and media institutions, to minorities of colour in the global north, to communities and social movements struggling against authoritarian regimes and/or the impact of neoliberalism in latin america and elsewhere. thus, it is not surprising that the struggle for democratic public spheres is framed differently by different tendencies. at least five such frames can be identified in recent north american media activism (hackett & carroll, 2006, pp. 78-79). a free press, freedom of expression frame invokes mainstream liberal values, but often extends them to include struggle against both corporate and state censorship. media democratization connotes egalitarian and participatory notions of democracy, as both informed, shared self-government, and participation in the communication system. media justice, articulated in particular by american activists of colour, emphasizes struggle against broader forms of domination, and links with social justice movements outside the media field (see arevalo & benfield, 2009). a mental or cultural environmental frame implies a struggle against a media-promoted toxic culture, and a parallel with the relatively successful environmentalist movement. finally, a right to communicate frame links media change with struggles for other human rights, as well as a legalistic focus: the entrenchment of rights recognized in international law, such as article 19 of the un declaration of human rights, concerning freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas. these different frames vary on several dimensions. some emphasize procedural changes (e.g. communication rights), while others propose substantive moral reform, the redistribution of resources and values (e.g. cultural environmentalism and media justice). some (free press) emphasize freeing individuals from constraints, while others (media justice) seek to forge new collective identities (hackett & carroll, 2006, p. 81). beneath the different frames and forms of mobilization, however, one can identify a coherent paradigm, critical of established media power. it is centered on the institutional organization of public communication so as to enable all segments of society actively to participate in constructing public cultural truth (white, 1995), and 192 robert a. hackett studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 to be in a position “to introduce ideas, symbols, information and elements of culture into social circulation” so as to reach all other segments of society (jakubowicz, 1993, p. 41). this paradigm entails the intertwined projects of both democratization of media, and the use of media for broader social change—democratization through the media. is media democratization counter-hegemonic? the most radical branches of the movement (such as media justice) are challenging the social order as a whole, seeing media democratization as integral to a larger process of political and social transformation. this tendency has much in common with the alternative media paradigm, rejecting dominant media’s claims to a universalizing stance of objectivity, and pointing to the imbrication of media power with an unjust social order. by contrast, liberals advocate limited reforms with no necessary linkage to broader transformations beyond improving the operation of liberal democracy. such reforms may be justified in the language of dominant political discourse such as freedom of expression, consumer choice, journalistic professionalism, and indeed the protection of news objectivity. one approach that has both “mainstream” and oppositional elements is the movement for communication rights. first articulated within unesco in 1969 as the “right to communicate,” it gained traction during the highly polarized nwico debates of the 1980s, in the context of the east-west cold war, and demands from governments of the non-aligned movement for a more “balanced flow” of media content and technology between the global north and south (padovani & nordenstreng, 2005). hampered by its own internal contradictions and by the bitter opposition of media corporations and neoliberal governments in the west, nwico was defeated as an inter-governmental movement in the 1980s. but in today’s vastly different geopolitical and technological context, the torch for redressing unjust imbalances in communication structures and policies has been picked up by certain academics, ngos and civil society advocacy networks (like cris), and redefined as an effort to implement existing internationally recognized communication rights, in the plural. on the one hand, this nascent movement speaks the language (widely accepted in principle if not practice) of human rights. on the other hand, it pushes against both the conceptual limitations of those rights, and the institutionalized impediments to their realization. for example, cris argues that the conventional liberal conception of freedom of expression is necessary, but too limited, in many ways. it is confined to the level of individuals rather than groups (e.g. cultural, indigenous or linguistic minorities). it emphasizes protecting individuals from censorship or punishment by the state, but is silent about the centralization of means of symbolic production, and other blockages to the effective use of people’s right to free expression, such as illiteracy, language barriers, government and corporate secrecy, fear of surveillance, hierarchies of cultural capital (such as the privileging of written documents over oral traditions), or inability to afford schooling (cris campaign, 2005, pp. 19-24). communication rights more broadly address the social, cultural, economic, and political environment needed to nurture democratic public communication. if journalism for peace and justice 193 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 democratic communication is a multi-staged cyclical social process of dialogue, “free speech” addresses only part of that cycle: the ability to seek and receive ideas, to generate ideas and opinions, and to express or speak them. free speech does not guarantee a right to be heard and understood (or the reciprocal obligation to listen and understand), nor does it address the learning/enhancing/creating and responding/sharing stages of the communication process (cris campaign, 2005, pp. 25-26). conversely, some forms of speech (e.g. manipulative war propaganda, or hate incitement) may not constitute a process of dialogue aiming towards consensus or mutual understanding, and may therefore not merit legal protection as communication (dakroury, 2009). in the absence of communication rights, conventional legal protection of press and speech freedom may sometimes increase communicative inequalities; for instance, it has yielded judicial support for media corporations seeking to prevent public interest regulation of their power. allies and opponents as the nwico debate demonstrated, the “democratic ideal” in communication has powerful opponents: media conglomerates, authoritarian and/or neoliberal governments, and a “conservative libertarian belief system that is broadcast widely across the globe” (hamelink, 1995, p. 33), one centered on privatization and the reduction of democratic citizenship to consumer choice within a hierarchical social order. the post-9/11 political climate of fear and “terror war” (kellner, 2003), the frequently self-marginalizing stance of the left, and the regime of objectivity that inhibits journalists from joining coalitions, are other obstacles, especially in the us (hackett & carroll, 2006, pp. 131-142). notwithstanding such obstacles, social movement organizations for media reform, such as free press in the us, have achieved some momentum in the past decade. they have been able, unevenly and not without setbacks, to mobilize constituencies that can be roughly conceptualized as three concentric circles (hackett & carroll, 2006, pp. 51-52). the first comprises groups within and around media industries, whose working life may stimulate awareness of the constraints on creativity and public information rights generated by state and corporate media: media workers, independent producers, librarians and communications researchers. a second circle comprises subordinate or marginalized social groups, whose lack of social, cultural, or economic capital is paralleled by lack of access or misrepresentation in traditional and networked media, and whose interests sometimes bring them into conflict with the social order, particularly social movements that need access to public communication in order to pursue their political project. the outermost circle comprises more diffuse sectors for whom communication policy and practices are rarely a central concern, but who may occasionally mobilize on the media front in order to promote other material or moral interests: parents concerned with media impact on the young, ngos and small businesses who need affordable access to the internet, communities struggling for local access media or commercial-free public space, citizens concerned with the disconnect between democratic and media agendas, progressive religious or human rights groups advocating ethical conduct and governance. 194 robert a. hackett studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 concluding comments what are the strategic implications of the above analysis of journalism paradigms? this is no place for a blueprint, but several themes stand out. first, the challenger paradigms of peace journalism, alternative media and communication rights stand in an ambivalent relationship to conventional journalism, and to the broader social order of liberal capitalism. i have suggested that in certain respects, they are counter-hegemonic, but they also draw upon such dominant ideals as freedom, democracy, diversity and human rights. in those societies where such norms are well-established ideologically, if less so in practice, it is both principled and strategic to adopt the habermasian approach of immanent critique, using the system’s own legitimating norms to propose institutional reforms. pj can legitimately present itself as a more complete and accurate form of journalism than the standardized and stunted practices of “objectivity.” movements for media democratization are pursuing communication rights that are formally recognized in national and international law. while i have noted tensions between the challenger paradigms, they generally share the objectives of expanding the range of media-accessed voices, building an egalitarian public sphere that can raise conflict from the level of violence to that of discussion, promoting the values and practices of sustainable democracy, and offsetting or even counteracting political and economic inequalities found elsewhere (hackett & carroll, 2006, p. 88).10 finally, i have critiqued the practices of the objectivity regime, but as a normative ideal, it has democratic dimensions that should be maintained: a commitment to substantive journalism and an ethic of truth-telling on matters of public interest, its capacity to cushion the intrusion of political and commercial interests on news, and its cultivation of ethical, skilled and independent professionalism. as a recent visit to eastern europe confirmed, these ideals are understandably very attractive to prodemocratic forces in “transition societies” emerging from authoritarian regimes. in north america, traditional journalism has been “hollowed out” by the vectors of hypercommercialism, media mergers, neoliberal deregulation, and corporate there are also potential strategic synergies between these paradigms. for instance, alternative media help to foreground the democratic deficit of corporate media, and have been key allies in media democratization campaigns, whose success would in turn create more space for pj, given the ideological and economic entrenchment of war journalism within existing media structures. as tehranian (2002, p. 80) notes, “the structure is the message.” media structure influences, if not determines, journalism practices and content. tehranian identifies the need for more “structural pluralism in media ownership and control” as a precondition for more democratic checks and balances, and for more content pluralism, including the diversity of voices in conflict situations called for by pj. structural reforms applicable to all three challenger paradigms include public and community media that offset the biases of corporate and government media towards commercial and political propaganda, subsidies for media production and access in the global south, genuinely internationalist media, and media governance regimes that reinforce popular communication rights. curran (2002, pp. 239-47) similarly proposes a working model of legal supports and state subsidies for diverse media to serve different democratic purposes—including social market/minority, civic/interest group and (as the central pillar) public service broadcasting sectors. journalism for peace and justice 195 studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 disinvestment in journalism, bringing to a new climax the longstanding tension between a free press and profit-oriented media industries (mcchesney & nichols, 2010). in seeking to preserve and reinvigorate the best of the objectivity regime in a cluttered but still corporate-dominated new media ecology, a media democratization movement is already finding allies amongst professional journalists. for the emerging paradigms to succeed, movements beyond those already engaged in media activism need actively to recognize the democratization of public communication, including journalism, as integral to the success of other social justice struggles. notes 1 i thank rune ottosen, jake lynch, ibrahim shaw and other members of the international peace journalism research group for comments and advice, and angelika hackett for editorial assistance. 2 indeed, it can be argued that increasingly “the news media do not only communicate or ‘mediate’ the events of war; they enter into its very constitution shaping its course and conduct” (cottle, 2009, p. 109). 3 potentially, this analysis could be expanded to other paradigms, including anti-war/peace movements, peace and reconciliation processes, and other social change movements. 4 for a visual example, contrasting “war journalism” and pj coverage of a suicide bombing in israel, see lynch & mcgoldrick, 2005a, pp. 21-26, or their film news from the holy land. 5 a critical realist epistemology is evident in pj’s call to distinguish truth from propaganda; to distinguish between stated demands and underlying needs, goals and interests; to look beyond direct physical violence to explore its “invisible” effects (such as cultural militarization or psychological trauma), and the underlying patterns of cultural and structural violence (lynch & mcgoldrick, 2005a, pp. 28-31; hackett & schroeder with newswatch canada, 2008, p. 44). 6 i am indebted to jake lynch for some of these points; interview, university of sydney, june 25, 2010. 7 grassroots internet-based outlets are introducing new voices and expanding the definition of journalism, but at the same time, dominant media corporations are extending their influence transnationally, through a multi-faceted and uneven process of globalization of media markets, firms, formats, governance and (ambiguously) effects (zhao & hackett, 2005, pp. 6-8). 8 but for a somewhat contrary view, see bresnahan (2010), who argues that neoliberal media policies, more than changed political conditions, accounted for the decline of chile’s alternative media after pinochet’s downfall. 9 one overlap between pj and alternative media is provided by the 18 community radio stations in the magdalena medio region of colombia, home of one of the worst internal armed conflicts in the world. the stations’ participants may never have heard of pj, but they have participated in local peace-making processes, mediating between armed factions, cultivating nonviolent conflict resolution in a culture where violence is normalized, and buffering civilians from the negative impact of direct violence. they have done so in “complex, multifaceted, and context-driven” ways (rodriguez, 2010, p. 143). the stations’ mediating role included providing a public forum for discussing, negotiating, and finding common ground between communal groups and bitterly opposed political candidates. despite her own theoretical preference for the term “citizens’” media, rodriguez suggests that these community radio stations are “almost” alternative media, in so far as they opened “communication spaces in which communities can consider, experiment with, and witness” alternative, nonviolent ways of dealing with conflict, understanding difference, and developing collective imaginaries (p. 151). the stations’ active mediation role, however, distinguishes it from pj: 196 robert a. hackett studies in social justice, volume 4, issue 2, 2010 the stations are not sending messages to the community about how to solve conflict in nonviolent ways. instead, the stations themselves are mediating conflicts; their communication competence is not being used to design messages about peaceful co-existence, but instead the stations are constructing peaceful co-existence through communication. 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(2005). media globalization, media democratization: challenges, issues, and paradoxes. in r.a. hackett & y. zhao (eds.), democratizing global media (pp. 1-33). lanham, md: rowman & littlefield. microsoft word 14 hlalele .docx td the journal for transdisciplinary research in southern africa, 9(3), special edition, december 2013, pp. 561580. sustainable rural learning ecologiesa prolegomenon traversing transcendence of discursive notions of sustainability, social justice, development and food sovereignty d hlalele1 abstract this paper contributes, through traversing contested notions of sustainability, social justice, development and food sovereignty, to discourses around creation of sustainable rural learning ecologies. there has always been at least in the realm of scientific discourse, an attempt to dissociate the natural or physical environment from the social and human environment. this trend did not only affect the two spheres of existence only. it is further imbued and spawned fragmented and pervasive terminology, practices and human thought. drawing from the ‘creating sustainable rural learning ecologies’ research project that commenced in 2011, i challenge and contest the use of such discourses and argue for the transcendence of such. this would, in my opinion, create space for harmonious and fluid co-existence between nature and humanity, such that the contribution of learning practices exudes and expedites sustainability in rural ecologies. keywords: sustainable learning environments, rural ecologies, and social justice introduction in his commentary on millenium development goals (may 30, 2013) david braun laments the inadequacies of the millennium development goals (mdgs) as the united nations secretary general presents a report that seeks to chart a new course for sustainable development. in braun’s opinion, the post-2015 “sustainable development goals” (sdgs) must break from failed convention by integrating environmental and social dimensions into the pursuit of economic development aims, acknowledging that our future economic health will critically depend on our planet’s ecological health. one of the fundamental, indispensable 1 dipane hlalele (phd) is the programme coordinator in the faculty of education at the university of the free state, qwaqwa campus. his area of specialization is rural ecologies and email: hlaleledj@qwa.ufs.ac.za. acknowledgements: the author acknowledges the nordic africa institute for the generous african guest scholarship awarded for the period 3 april to 28 june 2013 under the cluster: rural and agrarian change. the funding for the purchase of research equipment and travelling collection in south africa by the research cluster: sustainable development and poverty alleviation at the university of the free state is also acknowledged. the ideas and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author and may not necessarily be those of the organisations acknowledged. hlalele 562 and most important facets of sustainable development is learningwhich according to the learning ecology framework, over and above acknowledging the existence of lifelong learning, appreciates the fact that individuals learn through participation in different contexts. this paper begins by highlighting the paradigm which guides the critique of the discursive notions addressed, followed by an attempt to crystallize the concept ‘rurality’ and later provides a prolegomenon traversing transcendence of discursive notions of sustainability, social justice, development and food sovereignty. paradigm the paper draws from the critical emancipatory research (cer) paradigm. the quote by fals borda later in this paragraph signifies a paradigm shift from a conventional and positivistic one that places the ‘powerful’ researcher at the centre of the research, to one that seeks to present collective research ownership. in my opinion, these notions of power which may have been constructed over time and continue to enjoy some support in some quarters may be deconstructed due to their, in my opinion, cosmetic nature. the quote by fals borda (1995:11) below provides an eulogy to and epitomizes such deconstruction: do not monopolise your knowledge nor impose arrogantly your techniques, but respect and combine your skills with the knowledge of the researched or grassroots communities, taking them as full partners and co-researchers. do not trust elitist versions of history and science which respond to dominant interests, but be receptive to counter-narratives and try to recapture them. do not depend solely on your culture to interpret facts, but recover local values, traits, beliefs, and arts for action by and with the research organisations. do not impose your own ponderous scientific style for communicating results, but diffuse and share what you have learned together with the people, in a manner that is wholly understandable and even literary and pleasant, for science should not be necessarily a mystery nor a monopoly of experts and intellectuals. cosmetic conceptions of power are neither natural nor inevitable, but are, as dworski-riggs and langhout (2010:215) correctly point out, “merely political mechanisms, which could be arranged in other ways”. hayward (2000:78) affirms that the mutable nature of power can lead to political freedom whilst lybeck (2010:94) deplores the inability of scientists to deconstruct the dynamic social reality that is in front of them because this inhibits the actual study of that reality. according to horkheimer (1982:47) such scientists/researchers …experience everything only within the conventional framework of concepts. any object is comprised under the accepted schemata even before it is perceived. this, and not the convictions of men constitutes the false consciousness of today. today the ideological incorporation of men into society takes place through their biological preformation for the controlled collectivity. even the unique becomes a function and appendage of the centralized economy. the choice is informed by cer’s objective to engage the marginalised so that their voices can be heard and respected (dold and chapman 2011:512). furthermore, cer advances the agenda of human emancipation regardless of status and strives for the attainment of peace, freedom, hope, social justice and equity in its all forms (mcgregor 2003:4). cer’s engaging nature which allows for a deeper meaning and for multiple perspectives to be considered (mahlomaholo 2009:34) will help the citizens to better understand the challenges they face in sustainable rural learning ecologies td, 9(3), spec. ed., december 2013, pp. 561-580. 563 creating sustainable rural learning ecologies. its empowering and transformative agenda (nkoane 2012:99), affords the people an opportunity to own the problem and process, and to provide solution(s) to the challenge and also to provide the conditions that will make the solution work. rurality from a nordic and/or european frame of reference, the absence of a formal definition of ‘rural’ led researchers to using ‘small’ rather than ‘rural’ (kalaoja and pietarinen 2009:109; hargreaves 2009:117). kalaoja and pietarinen (2009:110) note a queer attribute which influence the learning environment. both teachers and learners experienced a home-like atmosphere and informal personal-relationships. evidence further suggests that small rural schools offer an effective social context (an ecology) in which learner-centred teaching and meaningful learning processes can be accomplished (korpinen cited kalaoja and pietarinen (2009:114). most importantly, rural communities in finland for example, rely on the local school to engage itself in local community events and to cooperate with other public sectors, organisations and people. not only is the school expected to function as a social agent and to support the social cohesion of the village, but also emphasis is placed on encouraging learners to choose responsible, action-oriented strategies which will solve concrete problems in the local area (kalaoja and pietarinen 2002:4). earlier work by marsden (1998:107-117) noted the existence of activities aimed at redefining the roles and development trajectories of different rural areas. there seemed to emerge a trend where rurality-what was termed the 'post-productivist' countryside, or more generally a rural world where the certainties of agricultural production as the traditional 'rural hub' are giving way to a much more polyvalent rural scene and regulatory structure. marsden’s recent work traverses notions of multi-functionality in rural areas. emerging in the last two decades, the post-productivist paradigm challenges the agro-industrial paradigm through an emphasis on planning for local environmental protection and amenity enhancement. here agriculture begins to lose its centrality in society, and nature is conceived mostly in terms of landscape value (as a consumption good). under this model, then, the farm-based approach to the multifunctionality of agriculture is replaced by a land-based approach that emphasizes the different (and demarcated) functions of agricultural land (marsden and sonnino 2008: 423). a further transcendence may be observed in instances where rurality was regarded as a concept which was understood with reference to rural, areas as natural or geo-physical spaces. the government of south africa view “rurality” to mean “a way of life, a state of mind and a culture which revolves around land, livestock cropping and community”. rural areas include all traditional communal areas, farmland, peri-urban areas, informal settlements and small rural towns where people have a number of possibilities to live from the land. rural development is about enabling rural people to take control of their destiny, thereby dealing effectively with rural poverty through the optimal use and management of natural resources. it is a participatory process through which rural people learn over time, through their own experiences and initiatives, how to adapt their indigenous knowledge to their changing world (department of rural development and land reform 2010:12). it is clear that more emphasis in this discourse is on the people (i.e., the social space) as it is complemented by the geo-physical space. hlalele 564 rural occupation in south africa (sa) is directly linked to apartheid and the colonial policies of dispossession, resettlement and a systematic exclusion from opportunities and sa is characterised by diverse rural areas. key features of a rural profile in south africa include: long distances to towns; the poor conditions of roads and bridges to schools; a lack of or limited access to information communications technologies (icts); a lack of services such as running water, electricity, sanitation, health and educational facilities; low economic status and little access to lifelong learning opportunities. one of the most pervasive features of rural communities is poverty (department of education, 2005:7). food security and the cost of education are also major problems. furthermore, rural communities are characterised by high illiteracy levels. continued under-resourcing of schools relative to need further compounds the problems of rurality. the government’s commitment to equal and fair treatment unfortunately has yielded meagre change for rural schools. in relation to education, lack of basic services (water, sanitation, etc.) affects access to and the quality of education, such as inadequate infrastructure in schools (buildings, icts, etc.) and the long distances learners must travel to schools. the attributes of rurality that adversely affect the quality of education include: a lack of qualified teachers, multigrade teaching, unreasonable teacher-learner ratios, irrelevant curricula, and competing priorities between accessing education and domestic chores, while the teaching staff seem to be imbued with poor morale and motivation. teachers may be unwilling to move to rural areas where social and cultural opportunities are limited and salaries may not contain an enticement peg. even when teachers are willing to work in rural areas, working conditions are likely to make them reluctant to stay for the long term (mollenkopf 2009:xiii). the discussion above sharply verifies the deficiency approach with which the rural areas have come to be almost synonymous. hlalele (2012:112) challenges the deficiency approach by providing an asset-based picture of what may have sustained education in rural contexts over time. according to malhoit (2005:21), the school is the most important public institution in a rural community and also represents the economic lifeblood of the economy. a few other attributes (doe 2005:7; malhoit 2005:21; ludlow and brannan 2010:4). a learning ecology framework there have been some disputes around the notion of confining the learning process to time and space. however, some dissenting discourses were also noted. i subscribe to barron’s (2004, 2006) notion of learning as an activity that takes place within, between and across contexts (constituting a learning ecology). an ecology, therefore, may be construed as an environment that fosters and supports the creation of communities. it is further defined as an open system, dynamic and interdependent, diverse, partially self-organizing, adaptive, and fragile (looi 2001: 14). there exists a learning ecology which is an environment that is consistent with how learners learn. barron (2006: 195) defines a learning ecology as a set of contexts found in physical or virtual spaces that provide opportunities for learning. it encompasses different activities, material resources, relationships, and the interactions that emerge from them. the ecology is extended to include the following characteristics of a learning ecology; a collection of overlapping communities of interest; cross pollinating with each other; constantly evolving; and largely self-organizing. in more formal education environments, the concept of self-organizing gives way to a more structured process for knowledge transmission where the role of an educator is to facilitate (siemens 2003:5). visser (1999, cited in siemens 2003:6) adds that the learning ecology involves a setting in which learning communities come into being, evolve, die, regenerate and transform. we may not sustainable rural learning ecologies td, 9(3), spec. ed., december 2013, pp. 561-580. 565 deny the fact that the notion of learning ecology as is depicted in this chapter, presuppose the observance and most importantly, transcendence of the well-known geo-physical space. for a learning society, interpreting, understanding and assessing its learning ecology first begins with contextual vision-building. in each ecology, individuals and collectives would come together to co-create their vision of how they want to live and learn together, both in the present and in the future. this vision would be based on the unique contexts of that ecology, the unique personalities of the people, and the unique energy and spirit that emerges when they come together in relationships. the questions asked would be more like: “who are we?”; “what values are important to us?”; “where are we going and why?; what kind of world do we want for our children and grandchildren? and later, “how do we get there?” (williams, karousou and mackness 2011:22). drawing on the authors’ (williams et al) illumination of the learning ecology, our understanding of the concept of learning is underpinned by the following key elements: • learning is rarely linear or planned; it is messy, organic and often spontaneous; • learning occurs in authentic interactions and partnerships, which emerge through varied self-organizing processes; • learning is unique to the person and the context; it cannot be replicated, because no two learning spaces or relationships are alike; • unlearning, self-learning, co-learning are all vital and integrated aspects of a learning ecology; • learning grows from a dialogue between meaningful questions and practical mistakes using an ecological metaphor, the learning environment is likened to the biosphere, and the learning ecology is to learning what the biosphere is to life. therefore, it should be comprehensible to assume that learning generates and builds upon complex and diverse networks/webs of human existence. to sum up, seepe (2004:9) reminds us of the african social philosophies such as ubuntu. ubuntu presupposes not only a conscious, deliberate, internalized, and pervasive focus on the self in the environment, and the self in the community from an african perspective, but to the extent to which these develop an ecological awareness, or self-as-part-of-environment. learning for sustainability “we live in turbulent times; our world is changing at accelerating speed. information is everywhere, but wisdom appears in short supply when trying to address key interrelated challenges of our time such as; runaway climate change, the loss of biodiversity, the depletion of natural resources, the on-going homogenization of culture, and rising inequity. living in such times has implications for education and learning” (wals and corcoran 2012). drawing from one of the latest books on education and learning in the context of sustainable development – learning for sustainability in times of accelerating change (wals and corcoran 2012) – it can be observed that the speed of change, physically, socially and culturally, is accelerating. continued globalization and digitalization are not only affecting how we think, what we know, who to believe, how we act, they also affect the role of education in society. the role of science in society, for example, is also changing drastically. science is no longer the authority of truth, if it ever was. it just represents one point of view or an opinion in the public debate of controversial and/or ambiguous issues. whilst globalization and hlalele 566 digitalization continue to flood (and maybe drown) humanity with information at an alarming rate, wilson (1998:99) cautions that the enormous amount of information does not automatically lead to wisdom. when we try to address the key challenges of our time, it is above all ‘wisdom’ that we need. there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that in some of the poorest communities, people spend the little income they have (…maybe from government grants) on ‘feeding’ the phone. the cell phone has become a prestigious status symbol that feeding the phone comes before feeding the children. this discussion in this paragraph evokes some desire to explore the possibilities of (re)designing, strengthening and facilitating change-based learning and transitions towards sustainability. examples of such learning include learning by doing, social learning, transformative learning, cross-boundary learning, service learning, learning from and with nature, etc. thinking anew (transcendence of…) the status quo implies: • reflecting on what it means to educate and learn for sustainabilityconsidering the kinds of personal and collective qualities that need to be strengthened in order to our learners and the wider society to contribute to a more sustainable world. • challenging the concept of ‘sustainability competence’ by referring to qualities like: thinking in a forward manner (anticipatory thinking), seeing relationships and interdependencies (systems thinking), the ability to put yourself in the minds of others (empathy and open mindedness), utilizing diversity towards creativity, and coping with uncertainty. • suggesting how we can re-orient, re-connect, and re-imagine learning processes in a manner that both expedites and exudes sustainability. sustainable development involves processes of change in society that contain at least these three dimensions. systems thinking – seeing connections, relating functions to one another, making use of diversity and creating synergy – may offer support in realizing a society that is more sustainable than is presently the case or that we currently anticipate. apparently it is very important that we understand systems of communities and that we begin to think (again) in terms of relations and connections. we can learn a lot from eco-systems in our quest for sustainability. eco-systems are based on networks, mutual dependency, flexibility, resilience and, if we add it all up: sustainability (wals, van der hoeven and blanken 2009:7). chilisa, mafela and preece (2003:76) posit that sustainable development is commonly associated with environmental sustainability and the sciences. yet education is the means by which we learn about our cultural heritage and our values. it is the means by which we transform all forms of knowledge through generations. the authors (chilisa et al.) conclude that it is time therefore, to raise the profile of education to sustainable development. according to hansom (2003:37) attention needs to be paid to different discourses about sustainability: the distinction between the discourses associated with a weak and strong conceptualization of sustainability. the two were once referred to as ‘technological’ versus ‘ecological’ respectively (orr 1992, cited in hansom 2003:11). drawing from the strong conceptualization, development is said to be sustainable as long as the ‘natural capital’, i.e., the biophysical basis for the production of goods and services, is not declining. on the contrary, the weak conceptualization implies that ‘human capital’ (scientific knowhow, industrial infrastructure and human prowess) may substitute the loss of natural capital. however, eclectic philosophies would propose the harmonious co-existence, complementarity as well as recognition of the added value of each of the role players. within this harmonious co-existence, i would like to illuminate the process of acquisition of the scientific knowhow sustainable rural learning ecologies td, 9(3), spec. ed., december 2013, pp. 561-580. 567 which has, as its indispensable and rudimentary antecedent, the process of sustainable learning. according to halsey (2009:3) there is diversity of thinking about the concept of sustainability. john halsey sees exploring new relationships between rural education and sustainability as having the potential to arrest, or at least influence, the continuing marginalisation of rural education in relation to contributing to the future of a country. rural education, in his (john halsey), view working with other essential human services like health and local government and the private sector to address the challenges of sustainability and, through this, reinvigorate rural education. following her analysis of the possibility of "'ordinary' landscapes or communities within which we live, work and educate" to reinvigorate ways of shaping the future, allison (n.d., cited in halsey 2009:4) concludes that "sustainability immediately shifts the perception of 'ordinariness' of these ... landscapes" and opens the way to new possibilities. it has been noted that many rural areas are struggling to remain viable in relation to essential human services like education and health, in the face of rising costs per unit of services required (as defined by certain views of economic costing and benefits), and the pervasive impacts of globalization on rural economies, amongst the most visible of which is a steep decline in the demand for traditional labour (mcswan 2003, in halsey 2009:6). "globalization and the power differentials it creates have had a significant social and economic impact on rural areas, while major cities have benefited from the focus on the knowledge-based production that global capitalism demands, drawing in capital, people and resources" (alston and kent 2003:5, cited in halsey 2009:6). next, sustainable rural learning ecologies are interrogated from a social justice perspective. social justice as an indispensable facet of sustainable rural learning ecologies kose (2009:631) opines that some scholars argue against a definitive and universal conceptualisation of social justice, whilst many argue that social justice has to do with “recultivating individual and institutionalised practices rooted in low expectations, deficit thinking, marginalisation and cultural imperialism” (p.630). it can therefore be accepted that a general definition of social justice is hard to arrive at and even harder to implement. in essence, social justice is concerned with equal justice, not just in the courts, but in all aspects of society. this concept demands that people have equal rights and opportunities; everyone, from the poorest person on the margins of society to the wealthiest, deserves an even playing field. according to gerwitz, ball and bowe (1995:129), theories of social justice advocate adequate mechanisms used to regulate social arrangements in the fairest way for the benefit of all. for the purpose of this chapter, conceptualisation of social justice hinges on nancy fraser’s definition. she defines justice as “parity of participation” (tikly 2010:6). fraser (2008:16) elucidates that “overcoming injustice means dismantling institutionalised obstacles that prevent some people from participating on a par with others as full partners in social interaction”. gerwitz (1998:469) maintains that social justice is premised on the discourse of disrupting and subverting arrangements that promote marginalisation and exclusionary processes. social justice supports a process built on respect, care, recognition and empathy. the presence of words, such as ‘demands, mechanisms, disrupting, subverting’ in the definitions above, suggest concerted action and seem to elicit revolutionary overtones. hlalele 568 similarly, calderwood (2003:309) also adopts a revolutionary approach to social justice. she posits that it works to undo socially created and maintained differences in material conditions of living, so as to reduce and eventually eliminate the perpetuation of the privileging of some at the expense of others. frey, pearce, pollock, artz and murphy (1996:111) raise concern about sensibility toward social justice. the authors (frey et al.) claim that sensibility should forego ethical concerns, commit to structural analyses of ethical concerns, adopt an activist orientation and seek identification with others. regarding the promotion of social justice, calderwood (2003:308) is of the view that people need to act to reduce and eradicate oppression, however distant we may feel from the personal culpability of its enactment. the view is further emphasised by former british prime minister, gordon brown, who, quoting an unknown greek philosopher, said: “when will there be justice in athens? it will be when those that do not suffer are as angry as those that do”. undoubtedly, there seems to be an agreement that injustice is not only an issue that concerns those at its receiving end, but also those members of society that do not seem to be affected. the situation seems to further call for alertness or what we may call thinking beyond the visible and the ordinary. calderwood (2003:311) cites an unfortunate reality about social justice. she states that the mechanisms of injustice are largely invisible, even to those who strive to live their lives and carry out their work ethically. the question that may arise from the ensuing debates above is whether or not and to what extent providers (policy makers and administrators) are aware of the practices, processes, rules and regulations that perpetrate and perpetuate acts of social injustice and thus consider themselves as culpable. summarily, social justice can be construed as “the exercise of altering institutional and organisational arrangements by actively engaging in reclaiming, appropriating, sustaining, and advancing inherent human rights of equity, and fairness in social, economic, educational, and personal dimensions” (goldfarb and grinberg 2002:162). questions relating to the proper distribution of benefits and burdens among sites have always posed a challenge for education institutions. fraser’s perspectival dualist framework troubles the disparate distribution of goods and services and/or social structures that enable material inequality (north 2006:509). fraser (1997:28) asserts that the increasing stress on sectoral politics undermines redistributive efforts that seek to improve the well-being of marginalised citizens. her perspectival dualist framework views recognition and redistribution as the cofundamental and mutually irreducible dimensions of justice. social justice works to undo socially created and maintained differences in material conditions of living, so as to reduce and eventually eliminate the perpetuation of the privileging of some at the expense of others (calderwood 2003:307) in order to promote social justice, we must act to reduce and eradicate oppression, however distant we may feel from personal culpability for its enactment. unfortunately, the mechanisms of oppression are largely invisible, even to those of us who strive to live our lives and carry out our work ethically (solomon and murphy 2000:44). sabbagh (2003:263) indicates that distributive justice includes at least three major components: the normative patterns that regulate resource distribution (i.e., justice principles and their derivative rules); the classes of social resources that are being allocated; and the valence-positive or negativeof the expected distribution outcomes. arguments in this paper adopt a moral community perspective, viewing responsibility and care among members as central to social justice. social activists advocate the need for social change in rural areas which is linked to social justice, using a process that is consultative, collective, participative and empowering. connectedness and responsibility enrich the notions of fairness, and equality, thus extending the baseline of ethical practice (lloyd 2000:97). sustainable rural learning ecologies td, 9(3), spec. ed., december 2013, pp. 561-580. 569 according to frattura and tropinka (2006:327) critical theory integrates the value of social justice into the practice of research for reform. how injustice and subjugation shape people’s experiences and understanding of the world constitutes the focus of critical theory. a critical theory perspective concerns itself with issues of power and justice and the ways that the economy, matters of race, class and gender, ideologies, discourse, education, religion, and other social institutions interact to construct a social system. inquiry that is critical should be connected to an attempt to confront the injustices of society. kellner (cited in frattura and tropinka 2006:332) comments that what makes critical theory critical is not just the study and understanding of society, but also critiquing and changing it. no social arrangements are viewed as neutral, but rather as artificial constructs structured to benefit one segment of society over another. conventions, constitutional obligations, and requisite rights around education rights often permit individuals and groups to hold governments accountable for the progressive realisation of rights (spreen and vally 2006:356). keet (cited in spreen and vally 2006:357) examines the contradictions in the human rights discourse of education rights as a public good in ‘an age of markets’. focusing on south africa, he shows (1) how ‘educationas-a-human-right’ remains elusive and (2) why it has failed to prevent the increasing commodification of education and the attainment of social, economic and environmental justice. the failure of education policies and laws to ensure the attainment of education rights for the majority of south africans, including the rural inhabitants is an immediate challenge. bryant (2010:55) asserts that one of the primary obstacles of rural education is wilful ignorance, particularly on the part of governments, of the conditions in rural areas and schools. wide disparities in access to quality education continue to plague rural areas (mcquaide 2009:17). malhoit (2005:22) posits that society’s obligation to educate learners should not depend on a child’s demographic good or bad fortune; nor should geography dictate a child’s educational destiny. despite all the efforts deployed by countries of the world and the vigorous mobilisation of international communities, rural people lag far behind in education and are particularly hard hit by poverty and hunger. poverty, hunger and underdevelopment are holding back educational development (sauvageot and da gra�a 2007:47) and the creation of sustainable rural learning ecologies. from an ecological perspective, i would argue that unsustainable educational endeavours in rural ecologies lead to poverty, hunger and underdevelopment. development in sustainable rural learning ecologies the advent of democracy in south africa created new thinking around issues of rural development and the provision of education in rural areas. a new political regime with its new policies clearly requires some new strategies to begin to solve the immense rural development challenges and also to understand better the dynamics and needs of rural communities. such an approach is clearly informed by the experience of other african countries and the failure of many rural development strategies within them. there is great urgency in south africa to implement policies leading to empowerment of the people, whilst promoting rural development and establishing a basis for the sustainable use of available human and natural resources. this would represent a major departure from earlier approaches and would hopefully strengthen the ideals of democracy and transparency which are gradually developing in the ‘new’ south africa. marianne solberg (2012, cited in arnason 2013:1) states that educational provision needs to embrace flexibility and focus on serving the rural hlalele 570 areas. such education programmes are likely to contribute by supplying a skilled workforce ready to contribute to the development of rural areas, slowing down emigration, increasing innovation, circumventing social and geographic inequality, supporting democratic participation, as well as spurring personal development. solberg’ (2012) contention on the provision of education geared at rural development may be seen as a lifeline for both sustainability and development in rural ecologies. to assist with this transformation process and to incorporate rural people fully, it is believed that participatory tendencies provide a vital approach in appreciating the views and skills of rural people and in formulating locally appropriate development strategies. thus far, however, relatively little has been written about the current and potential application of rural participation in the context of rural development in south africa. rural development strategies therefore need to factor in issues of social mobilisation of rural communities to ensure that they take centre stage in the improvement of their own quality of life. in order to ensure that all social mobilisation initiatives consider the dynamics of particular communities, a detailed household profiling precedes any initiative. profiling of households needs to be followed by the mapping of assets in an ecological setting. from food security to food sovereignty one, probably the most pressing issue, according to halsey, is food security. the choices we make about food affect both us, intrinsically, and nature, extrinsically. in effect, we eat the view and consume the landscape. ensuring that a country attains and remains food secure is something which cannot be ignored. changes over time and the impacts of climate change may lead to the emergence of new problems. these changes, and others that food production and distribution are reliant on require the re-alignment of program offerings for rural education, rural educators and rural communities (halsey 2009:9). for continued existence (sustainability), rural ecologies need to ‘mutate’. depletion of fossil-based energy sources, for example, provides a relevant example of diversification for the sake of sustainability. some rural (and other) schools/colleges/institutions are already embracing solar technology, and the scope for a greater role nationally in terms of direct contributions to the nation’s energy requirements. this includes rural schools taking a leading role in developing curriculum and certification to ensure there is expertise available where and when it is needed to help grow and drive the green revolution. assuring fresh water supplies which have their headwaters in rural locations and traverse substantial rural landscapes entails ongoing investment, human intervention and management. drought experienced in many parts of the world, coupled with existing arid areas, pose a threat to continued existence of rural ecologies. it would therefore not be unwise to link learning and water sustainability. improving the viability (sustainability) of rural learning ecologies by increasing enrolments from sources outside of usual catchment areas and increasing the pool of youth positively disposed to a career/ employment in rural areas through first-hand experience of them. to sum up, learning in rural areas needs to ground itself on the notions of ‘national food security, sustainability and economic efficiency’ (du toit 2013). a conventional idea of a sustainable fishery is that it is one that is harvested at a sustainable rate, where the fish population does not decline over time because of fishing practices. sustainable rural learning ecologies td, 9(3), spec. ed., december 2013, pp. 561-580. 571 sustainability in fisheries combines theoretical disciplines, such as the population dynamics of fisheries, with practical strategies, such as avoiding overfishing through techniques such as individual fishing quotas, curtailing destructive and illegal fishing practices by lobbying for appropriate law and policy, setting up protected areas, restoring collapsed fisheries, incorporating all externalities involved in harvesting marine ecosystems into fishery economics, educating stakeholders and the wider public, and developing independent certification programs. some primary concerns around sustainability are that heavy fishing pressures, such as overexploitation and growth or recruitment overfishing, will result in the loss of significant potential yield; that stock structure will erode to the point where it loses diversity and resilience to environmental fluctuations; that ecosystems and their economic infrastructures will cycle between collapse and recovery; with each cycle less productive than its predecessor; and that changes will occur in the trophic balance. there is an emerging desire amongst scholars and rural dwellers alike, for transcendence from the notion of food security to that of food sovereignty. according to the international planning committee for food security (2007) and lee (2007) food sovereignty is the: right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems. it puts the aspirations and needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food at the heart of food systems and policies rather than the demands of markets and corporations. it defends the interests and inclusion of the next generation. it offers a strategy to resist and dismantle the current corporate trade and food regime, and directions for food, farming, pastoral and fisheries systems determined by local producers and users. food sovereignty prioritises local and national economies and markets and empowers peasant and family farmer-driven agriculture, artisanal fishing, pastoralist-led grazing, and food production, distribution and consumption based on environmental, social and economic sustainability. food sovereignty promotes transparent trade that guarantees just incomes to all peoples as well as the rights of consumers to control their food and nutrition. it ensures that the rights to use and manage lands, territories, waters, seeds, livestock and biodiversity are in the hands of those of us who produce food. food sovereignty implies new social relations free of oppression and inequality between men and women, peoples, racial groups, social and economic classes and generations. transcendence of the discourses of food security to those of food sovereignty depicts a remarkable shift as it, amongst others, relocates power in the hand of the rural inhabitants and further challenge their conscience and resolve in dealing with the ecology such that harmonious, mutual and reciprocal co-existence obtains. according to reem saad, an egyptian professor of anthropology and a researcher, “we seem to be talking a lot about food security without really paying enough attention to the crucial factor of food sovereignty, which is an even more crucial matter.” food sovereignty invariably provides space for learning for sustainability and it builds and promotes local knowledge and skills that conserve, develop, and manage localizing food systems is supported. hlalele 572 discussion the outmigration from rural areas has not abated. many rural areas continue to experience a decline in inhabitants (alliance for excellence in education 2010). the majority of the rural emigrants are generally the working group with a fairly higher level of education and who were most likely, to contribute a lot more than the youth and aged. the aged were found to have strong links with the place and space and therefore less likely to move. in some cases the youth move, some returning over weekends, in search of better education. the fact that many rural learning ecologies do not have secondary schools, mainly as a result of fewer learners, was also confirmed. one of the parents said: “unlike me, my children deserve a better education so that they can have a better future. i will do everything in my power in order for them to realize their dreams. however, i am worried that they may not come back to stay here. the way i see it, the education they get here does not prepare them for meaningful contribution to rural development. they are not taught how to milk…. and plough… read and write …they can”. in many districts, schools with a lower number of learners are either closed down or amalgamated. the "ideal" rural teacher can teach multiple grades or subjects, organize extracurricular activities, and adjust well to the environment and the community (brown 2003). changes of having such a situation are better in areas where the teachers stay in the particular rural ecology (personal observation in one rural swedish ecology). it is extremely difficult to find teachers who fit in with the rural community and will stay for a long period of time because of this. usually the teachers who end up staying are either from a rural background or have previous experience with rural communities. bull, warner, yellin, robinson and neuberger noted over two and a half decades ago (1989) that disciplines such as law, medicine and architecture introduced changes in the programmes to address the availability of staff that will service and impact the rural areas. to their (bull et al.) surprise, only the education profession had resisted such changes. in my observation, that status quo largely continues to prevails. for multi-campus teacher education programmes, it is expected that the student who did a course on any of the campuses should be subjected to the same course content, leaving very little or no room at all, for flexibility and diversification in respect of a particular learning ecology. exposure of student teachers to rural learning ecologies appear as ‘funded projects’, for example the rural teacher education project at the university of kwazulu natal. as with rural teachers, rural learners should be in a position to make decisive contribution to sustainability and development in the community in order to get accustomed to the environment and feel a sense of shared wealth. families and communities are crucial to the educational progress of rural youth (brown 2003). in order for rural communities to succeed, they must allow members to have good paying jobs, access to health care, quality education, and strong community ties. additionally, rural communities need programs to build a stronger sense of togetherness. social interaction affects the behavior and development of relationships among groups of people with the same territory. shamah and mac tarvish (2009) observed that rural residents often see the skills necessary for their own success as unique from the skills that are valued in urban environments. in learning to leave, corbett (2007) describes the ways this disconnect emerges in nova scotia and why it is a critical issue that must be given greater attention. his work reveals that rural schools generally teach students in ways that build an urban skill set through emphasizing mastery of academic skills necessary in structured office professions. sustainable rural learning ecologies td, 9(3), spec. ed., december 2013, pp. 561-580. 573 responsive curricula: here the notion of content versus context comes to the fore. in some instances there is a match between the two whilst instances of mismatches have also been recorded. one example was provided by a community member and teacher in one of the swedish rural ecologies who stated that “…there was a stage where many learners in one of the high schools in my area had a predetermined goal of perpetuation the family farming legacy and school programme was not responsive to that. the learners concerned indicated how irrelevant the content they were learning at school was. the content did not only address the glaring need of the local economy at the time, but was also oblivious to their intended careers and wishes” (pers. comm. 29 may 2013). internal versus external locus of control: locus of control is a social psychology concept that refers to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control the events that affect them. whilst external locus of control attributes outcomes of events to external circumstances, internal tends to attribute outcomes of events to their own control. there is also evidence in clinical research that internality correlates negatively with anxiety, and that internals may be less prone to depression than externals, as well as less prone to learned helplessness. whilst these concepts were originally meant for understanding individual behavior, they also apply to collective behavior (judge, erez, bono and thoresen 2002:694). for example, in the village of muyexe [one of the inter-agency development project the south african government has embarked upon] the community resorted to their own wisdom and innovation when the bakery faltered on delivering bread for learners. the community resorted to their traditional furnaces/ovens to provide bread for the children. these furnaces/ovens are made out of mud and they have a space/compartment for fire. limited knowledge/awareness about rural realities: historically, rurality and rural education have been marginalised bodies of knowledge in south africa and little is known of the focus of the various studies and the state of rural education and rural education research (nkambule, balfour, pillay and moletsane 2011:341). over and above what nkambule et al (2011) suggest, i.e., little is known about rural research, the little knowledge that authorities have seem to take a long time to be acted upon. one of the problem areas in rural education is multigrade teaching. ms tsakani chaka, researcher at the centre for education policy development (cepd), presented a study into teaching literacy and numeracy in multigrade classes in rural and farm schools in south africa to the parliamentary monitoring group on 6 march 2012. she noted that in 2005, the ministry of education released a report on rural education which specifically noted multigrade teaching as a challenge in rural and farm schools. this research followed up on the position at the moment, and analysed data as well as carrying out six case studies, in the north west province, using interviews with principals, interviews with teachers, lesson observation, documentary analysis (work schedules, lesson plans, time-tables, learners’ work), interviews with , the interview with provincial and district officials, as well as with teacher trainers. about 27% of schools had multigrade classes, and this involved about 4% of the learners. the multigrade system, although in fairly widespread use, was not actually formally recognised. most of the schools that had these classes were poorly resourced. there was no curriculum adaptation, and the planning requirements were the same as those of the monograde classes. teachers’ exposure to suitable teaching strategies was limited, there was no specific teacher training on multigrade teaching, and no specific support was offered to these teachers. the teachers faced high workloads owing to planning and assessment requirements. the learning materials were not always available in the mother tongue, and were not suitable for self-study. the continued neglect of the multigrade hlalele 574 problems contributed to ongoing marginalisation of the poor, for whom multigrade schools were a reality. prospects mapping and maximizing inherent assets in rural learning ecologies: according to solomon (2012:11-14), the inherent assets of rural schools and communities provide a strong foundation for progress. these advantages include increasing access to innovative technology, distance-learning and place-based learning opportunities, and high levels of volunteer support from parents as well as members of the ecology. along with appropriate and adequate backing from state and national leaders, rural schools have tremendous potential to ensure that all of their students graduate ready to succeed in college and careers [including in rural ecologies]. it is thus possible to simultaneously utilize and enhance various resources/asserts. this also helps to minimize dependence on external resources and institutions. interactions among stakeholders can be guided by the ‘internal logic’ and priorities of the learning ecology rather than these being externally determined. the learning processes will strengthen local institutions and civic capacity for collective action, ideally to move forward together toward a shared vision. collective participation can facilitate local management of the shared vision, thereby strengthening civil society and increasing active involvement. collectives that articulate and pursue their own goals and priorities are more likely to expand livelihood opportunities, and do so in a sustainable manner. mapesela, hlalele and alexander (2012:95) concur with sentiments of proponents who strongly advocate the enhancement of selfreliance. internal challenges to the success of a self-reliance strategy stem from violations of the assumptions that: members share common interests and consensus is central to sustainability; inclusive participation and democratic decision-making within the community are necessary and possible; and sufficient autonomy exists for people to influence their learning ecology’s future. providing responsive and demanding educational programmes: many rural schools are already setting high expectations for every student and ensuring that all standards, assessments, and accountability systems reflect the high-level skills and knowledge all students need. to help meet these standards, an increasing number of rural schools are employing cutting edge technologies and other distance-learning opportunities to expand the availability and choice of rigorous programmes. rural schools are pioneers in the expansion of local place-based learning, rigorous, hands-on learning opportunities that provide real-world relevance to improve academic performance. despite these innovations, however, too many rural high schools still lack the funding, personnel, and technological infrastructure to provide students with rigorous high-level coursework, a vital prerequisite for career success (solomon 2012:15). recruiting and retaining highly effective teachers (grow-your-own-timber!): successful rural high schools are able to ensure an adequate number of high-quality teachers to boost academic success. unfortunately, too many rural communities struggle to find and keep effective teachers. even though rural teachers generally report a higher level of job satisfaction than their urban and suburban counterparts, rural communities have a higher number of lessqualified teachers and often lose their most experienced employees to higher-paying posts in nearby suburban and urban areas. despite these ongoing challenges, however, an increasing number of rural communities are addressing these difficulties head-on with advanced technologies and distance learning that allow teachers to expand their professional sustainable rural learning ecologies td, 9(3), spec. ed., december 2013, pp. 561-580. 575 development opportunities, as well as “grow-your-own-timber” programs that encourage talented young people to stay and teach in their home communities (see unisa 2011). building viable models of community support and partnerships: rural communities play a vital role in the success or failure of their local schools. high-performing schools tend to depend on local community-based services, businesses, and other non-academic partners to stretch limited resources and support a common vision for change. rural high schools often have the benefit of small, tight-knit communities to help guide school improvement efforts and participate regularly in school activities. unprecedented and widespread reliance on technology may also allow rural schools to engage local stakeholders in educational goals and outcomes more broadly than ever (solomon 2012:47). unfortunately, some rural ecologies may still lack the tax base, stable local economy, and sufficient social and community capital to invest adequately in sustainable endeavours. in areas that have lost a large number of young people and highly educated professionals to better paying jobs in nearby cities, retaining broad-based community support is also an ongoing challenge. provide space for appreciation and better understanding of rurality: in my opinion, there seems to be a reasonable expectation that rurality as a way of life has not, at least in some quarters, been fully understood, valued and appreciated. this may be evident in the notion of thinking that one’s life is complete if it is in an urban area. eppley (2009:9) states that rural teachers have a special obligation to awaken students to the concept of sustainability and to help them develop and nurture a sense of place. this is an urgent requirement of the rural highly qualified teacher and has little to do with test scores and certifications, and everything to do with nurturing students and sustaining communities. creating and sustaining learner support networks: strong rural schools ensure that all learners have access to rigorous and option-based courses of study and connect young people with a broader range of social supports to address problems inside and outside of the classroom. the establishment and perpetuation of multi-modal, multi-sectoral networks and partnerships for learners in rural ecologies are more likely to contribute to the development of such ecologies. in many rural ecologies the absence of career and lifestyle information may impact negative on demands of sustainability and development (solomon 2012:49). harmonizing content and context: robinson et al. (2004:3) found that localised curriculum of the rural schools that utilised local environment as curriculum, lead to positive motivation, interest and participation. shibeshi (2006:12) suggested that policies and strategies addressing the education needs of rural people should accommodate the needs of rural people in their diversity (agro-ecological, geographical as well as socio-economic and cultural) through a range of modalitites. these include distance education; non-formal education programmes; school feeding programmes; strengthening early childhood care and education; establishing feeder school clusters; promoting multigrade classroom learning; rethinking teacher education, development, recruitment and retention strategies; and promoting vocational education for rural development and sustainable livelihoods. building rural community resilience and capital: wright (2012:49) states that communities must be resilient to be sustainable. resilience results as relationships among community members develop. it is the “bridging social capital” between heterogeneous groups, referred to by putman (1995, cited in wright 2012:50). it may be reasonable to expect that close interpersonal connections usually develop in smaller and rural communities because they are places where individuals know, share with, and care for one another. rural schools mirror hlalele 576 these qualities, and have a responsibility to help develop these healthy relationships through getting to know the groups and individuals within their community, and sharing with them a collective sense of purpose. at this stage, it may be worthwhile to mention the gratifying instance where the muyexe community resorted to their own capital when bread was not delivered for the children at school. conclusion in this article i critically looked at the sustainable rural learning ecologies in relation to conventional discourses of sustainability, social justice, development and food sovereignty and suggested that such notions no longer hold as they were initially conceptualised. i showed how each of these may be transcended. appreciation of rural learning ecologies (recognition of its wealth/assets) may be what is required to circumvent notions of human completeness or self-actualization only when one is in an urban area. the paper further alluded to the fact that rural may not necessarily be conceived as ‘un-urban’ and vice versa. it may further be concluded that the voice, wisdom and capabilities of rural inhabitants need to be respected. in the course of history, seldom has the greatness of a nation long survived the disintegration of its rural life. for untold ages man by nature has been a villager and has not long survived in other environments. many studies of the subject which has been made in europe and america have revealed that as rule city families survive for only a few generations. cities continue to grow and thrive only as they are constantly replenished from the rural population. so long as a nation's rural life is vigorous it possesses reserves of life and power, which nourish, nurture, promote and sustain humanity. when for a long time cities draw the cream of life and culture from the villages (rural brain drain), returning almost nothing, as has been the case in some parts of south africa and the world, the current rural resources of culture and energy become depleted, and the strength of the nation is most likely to be shaken and stirred. references alliance for excellence in education 2010 (29, september). paving the rural road to high school success. http://all4ed.org/paving-the-rural-road-to-high-school-success. accessed october 9, 2013. arnason h 2013. can distance education support rural development? 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(layton, 2011) in the days and weeks that followed his death, layton’s words went viral on social media sites around the country and triggered an outpouring of emotion. canadians were clearly moved and personally inspired by his message of shared hope and optimism for a better future. public support for the ideals of shared hope and optimism are particularly reassuring when we consider their implications for women who worked with the first author of this paper on a participatory research project aimed at critically examining social inclusion for women who enter community after federal incarceration. this study was guided by an anti-oppressive theoretical framework. as moosa-mitha (2005a) explained, anti-oppressive researchers adopt a difference-centered stance by recognizing that oppression is based on multiple differences. research guided by anti-oppressive theories strives to expose dominant constructions of reality by questioning normative structures that serve the interests of a particular class, namely, those who are included. as salojee (2005) argued: the intersection of an anti-oppression discourse with social inclusion as process and outcome is an incredibly powerful impetus to social change and political solidarity. it presents a radical alternative to the dominant discourse that is steeped in liberal notions of formal equality. (p.201) during this study critical attention was given to inclusionary practices that encourage women to fit into normative structures within society. consideration was also given to the relevance of liberal theories that do not challenge normative practices and assumptions (moosa-mitha, 2005a). for this study women were invited to engage in dialogue intended to re-imagine what social inclusion might look like if we moved away from adopting the dominant discourse on inclusion and take a more difference-centered approach. this study was designed as a feminist participatory action research (fpar) project. fpar centers gender and women’s experiences while challenging forms of patriarchy, transforming power relations, and promoting social change (reid & frisby, 2008). using fpar to explore how issues of difference and oppression shape social inclusion helped to critically reimagine social inclusion for women whose relationships and aspirations are often different from the assumed norm. since inclusion and participation are central to fpar (frisby, reid, millar & hoeber, 2005), this approach was appropriate for a study about social inclusion and responded to lister’s (2000) call for strategies aimed at inclusion to be inclusive also in their development and implementation. this project sought to not only understand studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 81 the nature of social inclusion from the perspective of women who have entered community but also to encourage their involvement in creating a more inclusive environment. conducting fpar from an anti-oppressive perspective can help deepen our understanding of how issues of difference shape inclusion efforts. it also reveals the need for societal change if women are going to truly experience social inclusion upon their release from federal prison. similar to the work of other researchers (e.g., hall, 2005; reid, 2004), this study revealed a strong connection between social inclusion and social justice. as much as this study was concerned with social inclusion, it was also grounded in social justice and the belief that moving toward a socially just society is integral to our collective well-being. canadians may be ready to embrace a sense of shared optimism for a better future but are we also willing to acknowledge our shared responsibility for addressing social inequality and fostering conditions of hope? in particular, as it relates to this research project, are we willing to share the responsibility for fostering a hopeful space in community where women leaving federal prison can feel included and supported? there is a long-standing but tenuous connection between the idea of shared responsibility and the future of women who are federally incarcerated in canada. the idea of shared responsibility was identified over twenty years ago as a key principle that ought to guide women’s corrections in canada. in 1990 the task force on federally sentenced women (tffsw) released a report called creating choices which proposed a new women-centered model of corrections based on the belief that women’s successful reintegration into community has to be grounded in shared responsibility. as stated in the report: the holistic programming and multifaceted opportunities which support an environment in which women can become empowered can only be built on a foundation of responsibility among a broad range of community members. currently, because the correctional service of canada has legal obligations for federally sentenced women, responsibility for federal women is too narrowly assigned to correctional systems. (tffsw, 1990, p. 111) the principle of shared responsibility emphasizes a role for the federal correctional system, the government, and community when it comes to fostering conditions that support women’s empowerment. this principle not only responds to the charge that responsibility has traditionally been too narrowly assigned to correctional systems; it also addresses a lack of responsibility taken by the larger society which accepts and nurtures social conditions that produce criminal activity. the idea of collective or shared responsibility for crime and for individuals who commit crime necessitates a more inclusive and socially just society. the purpose of this paper is two-fold. first, by sharing the insights and experiences of women who participated in the research, we show how their experiences of community before and after they were incarcerated can be studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 82 darla fortune & susan m. arai compared and contrasted with the caring, accepting, and socially just society we seem to desire. second, by keeping social justice at the forefront of discussions on inclusion, we argue that inclusion as a measure of social justice has to be more than a matter of self-determination and personal responsibility; it has to move toward shared responsibility and a shift to mutuality if there is to be any hope and optimism for a better world. underlying this purpose is the idea that at the centre of exclusion and social injustice is often a powerful sense of difference. bell (1997) explained that social justice holds to a vision in which individuals are both self-determining and interdependent while there is a sense of social responsibility aimed at addressing social inequities. bach and rioux (1996) described the connection between individual and social well-being when they explained that “individuals cannot attain well-being by themselves. they do so in the context of the communities in which they belong” (p. 71). individual well-being is enhanced when communities provide the social, economic, cultural, and environmental context for supporting the well-being of its diverse members (wilkinson & marmot, 2003). despite our apparent desire for a caring, accepting, and socially just society and despite proposed philosophical changes to women’s corrections connected to notions of social justice, tensions exist when it comes to embracing notions of shared responsibility for women who have entered our federal justice system. one such tension can be seen in the passing of bill c-10 by canada’s conservative government in march 2012. commonly referred to as the omnibus crime bill, bill c-10 groups together nine bills that strongly endorse a get-tough-on-crime agenda. aspects of bill-c which most impact women are the increases to mandatory minimum sentences for certain minor and non-violent offenses (barnett, dupuis, kirkby et al., 2012) and the accompanying loss of judges’ discretionary power. as himelfarb (2011) explains, when judges’ discretion is compromised it is difficult for them to fit the penalty to the circumstances by addressing aggravating and mitigating factors to crime. changes called for in bill c-10 are believed to unfairly target women who are arguably already among the most susceptible to inequitable treatment in the justice system (giroday, 2011). there is a fundamental contradiction between notions of shared hope and responsibility and our seemingly unrelenting resolve to punish people who have broken the law. similar contradictions were inherent in this research when women involved in the project grappled with issues of responsibility during discussions around social inclusion. to give context to the insights and experiences women shared regarding inclusion in community, we will first explore the idea of social inclusion as social justice. social inclusion as social justice efforts to create more socially inclusive communities have been receiving greater attention in recent years and it has been argued that for social inclusion studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 83 to be a reality, all members of society should be able to participate as valued, respected, and contributing citizens (laidlaw foundation, 2002). from an anti-oppressive perspective, experiences of inclusion and exclusion are often a result of normative social beliefs that construct difference as inferior (moosa-mitha, 2005a). social inclusion as social justice is primarily about addressing issues of power and difference (shakir, 2005). of importance here is what is required to shift if inclusion is to occur for women entering community after incarceration. the challenge of opposing exclusion is the risk of assimilation if the inherently inequitable and unmovable centre does not change (labonte, 2004; lister, 2000). shakir (2005) argued that “the problem with social inclusion discourse in canada is that it has integration of the margin into the centre as its desirable end” (p. 212). there is a similar “desirable end” being advanced in literature pertaining to the reintegration and social inclusion of women entering community from prison. for example, uggen, manza, and behrens (2004) suggested that reintegration and social inclusion efforts will be enhanced and the stigma of incarceration minimized if offenders are able to adopt a pro-social identity upon release from prison. pro-social identities are considered to occur when offenders become productive, responsible, and active citizens in the work, family, and community domains. in this sense, social inclusion is linked to becoming a “productive citizen at work, a responsible citizen at home, and an active citizen in the community” (uggen et al., p. 263). thus, encouraging the pro-social behaviour of offenders is not unlike encouraging assimilation into the centre (shakir). linking pro-social behaviour to inclusion for women entering community from prison is problematic on several levels. for example, it is naive to assume that women will automatically feel a sense of community responsibility upon release from prison since, like many women in our society, they were apt to live in communities that were male-dominated, often inescapable, and void of opportunities for women to resist oppressive social roles (frazer & lacey, 1993). further, a woman’s path to incarceration is often paved with issues such as abuse, poverty, inadequate education, and drug abuse (pedlar, arai, yuen, & fortune, 2008; pollack, 2008; richie, 2001). thus, it can be argued that the inability of communities to tackle these systemic issues results in the marginalization and desperation of vulnerable individuals. why would women marginalized by community structures automatically place a high priority on becoming active community citizens? it is also difficult to believe that power relations present in community can support women trying to achieve a meaningful level of productivity after incarceration. stigma associated with a prison sentence often limits participation in community life and detracts from civic reintegration (uggen et al., 2004). porter (2000) argued that social exclusion is a gendered term which rests on norms associating inclusion with the male sphere of production. gendered processes, such as the consideration of paid work as work and the neglect of domestic work, are central to the idea that women are more susceptible to social exclusion (jackson, 1999). studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 84 darla fortune & susan m. arai women, already at a disadvantage in terms of being included through paid employment, are at an even greater disadvantage if they have spent time in prison (pedlar et al., 2008; pollack, 2008). unemployment and subsequent poverty is a shared reality for many incarcerated women (faith, 2006; richie, 2001). prospects for social inclusion are further diminished when women in prison are portrayed as evil, aggressive, and pathological outcasts and are subsequently denied opportunities to exercise their capacity as contributing citizens (pedlar, arai, & yuen, 2007). stigma is even more pronounced if the woman who has offended is a mother and the marginalization that ensues from having committed a crime is deepened when the idea of motherhood comes with normative cultural expectations associated with being wholesome and responsible (pedlar et al., 2008). when theories of civic reintegration and the adoption of pro-social identities are privileged in the reintegration literature, insufficient attention is given to systemic issues of inequality, control, and oppression as explored by feminist researchers, indigenous scholars, and critical race theorists. radosh (2002), for example, explained that female offenders have been victimized through multiple stages of patriarchy when she stated, “structure, oppression, economic exploitation, and marginalized social opportunity explain almost all of women’s crime” (p. 303). where notions of pro-social identities suggest the only way women can achieve social inclusion is by conforming to dominant social norms, this literature overlooks how women’s agency and efforts to resist oppression may foster their social inclusion. to achieve an understanding of social inclusion that is socially just, it is necessary to consider that both structural determinants and individual agency lie at the heart of inclusion processes (dominelli, 2005; lister, 2000). definitions of inclusion that emphasize personal agency consider “how individuals transcend structural limitations to create resources that promote inclusivity” (dominelli, 2005, p. 16). however, if efforts at inclusion ignore the ideological, material, and political structures that unequally benefit some and disadvantage others, there is the risk of assimilation whereby the agency of those who are less powerful becomes assimilated by the mainstream (lister, 2000). increasing attention has been given to ways structural dimensions shape the inclusion process (shookner, 2002). for example, efforts to enhance inclusion have started to address social issues such as poverty with an aim to reducing barriers that limit access to employment, education, and other material resources (mitchell & shillington, 2005). when social inclusion efforts involve respect for difference and removal of barriers to participate in public life (salojee, 2005), we see the beginning of a movement toward social justice. there are many definitions of social inclusion and exclusion. they are considered multi-dimensional since disadvantage takes place in a variety of domains (mitchell & shillington, 2005). for example, salojee (2005) noted social inclusion: is about social cohesion plus, it is about citizenship plus, it is about the removal of barriers plus, it is anti-essentialist plus, it is about rights and responsibilities studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 85 plus, it is about accommodation of differences plus, it is about democracy plus, and it is about a new way of thinking about the problems of injustice, inequalities and exclusion plus. (p. 198) multi-dimensional understandings of social inclusion, such as salojee’s are often rooted in classic liberal theory and a focus on issues of citizenship, rights, and responsibilities which is often criticized for presenting culturally specific social relations as universal norms and encouraging assimilation under the guise of integration (luxton, 2005). therefore, there is a need to examine social inclusion from other perspectives using methodologies which allow for voice and difference to be honoured while countering prevailing ideologies and power relations. such goals are central to anti-oppressive (moosa-mitha, 2005b) and feminist participatory action research (reid & frisby, 2008) approaches. a gendered and anti-oppressive analysis of social inclusion can move us away from paternal policy options that fail to challenge existing power imbalances and obstruct the creation of any real change (shakir, 2005). methodology the overall purpose of this study was to examine social inclusion from the perspective of women who entered community after release from federal prison. the project employed the tenets of anti-oppressive research (aor). combining fpar with aor helped to ensure that research being conducted was both critical and difference-centered. this approach was particularly useful for examining discourse that privileges normative assumptions about social inclusion because it promotes the idea that knowledge is owned by and belongs to groups experiencing marginalization (moosa-mitha, 2005b; potts & brown, 2005). following hall’s (2005) argument that negotiating the discourse of inclusion and exclusion requires a critical re-imagining of inclusion as social justice, women who participated in this study were engaged in dialogue aimed at re-imagining what inclusion means for women entering community after incarceration. in keeping with the participatory nature of this study, there was an emphasis on the value of collaborative learning. thus, rather than adhering to a rigid research design, the project unfolded over time and was influenced by the decisions of women who participated and the knowledge exchange that occurred. women who had been federally incarcerated at grand valley institution (gvi) in kitchener, ontario and who were living in the waterloo region were invited to form a research group to explore alternate ways to conceptualize inclusion that would help foster a more inclusive environment for women entering community after their release from prison. nine women participated at various stages of the project. four women who responded to the initial recruitment letter formed a research group and held seven meetings throughout the first phase of the study. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 86 darla fortune & susan m. arai although the research project was still in its formative stage, when the group held its seventh meeting only one woman was still interested and able to participate in the project. other members of the group, for different reasons that were all personal in nature, were no longer able to participate. at this time the research group disbanded. shortly before disbanding, the group discussed ways to collect and represent the data by considering the group’s strengths and interests and what methods would be complementary. photovoice was identified as a viable method and disposable cameras were distributed to each woman. photovoice has three goals (macdonald, sarche, & wang, 2005) that complement the aims of this research project. first, it enables participants to record and reflect on their personal and community strengths and concerns. second, it promotes critical dialogue and knowledge about personal and community issues through group discussion of photographs. third, photovoice is often intended to reach and touch policy makers, which was an explicit goal identified by women who participated in the first phase of the study. photovoice provides researchers with an opportunity to see the world from the view of participants and it provides participants with the opportunity to describe what their photos mean and reflect on their meaning (wang & burris, 1997). members of the research group were asked to take pictures of people, places, and things in the community that contributed to feeling either like they belonged or did not belong. they expressed excitement about this particular method and identified the potential for photovoice to be a vehicle for changing public perceptions about women who had spent time in prison. in one of the group’s last meetings, women shared and spoke about the pictures they had taken. these pictures powerfully demonstrated women’s experiences with inclusion and exclusion upon entering community, and, as they described their pictures, the stories of these experiences were further brought to light. when women who participated in phase one left the project, attention was directed toward honouring the decisions that had been made regarding the use of photovoice. therefore, with the help of one remaining research group member, additional women were recruited to participate in the project and invited to engage in photovoice. five additional women participated in this second phase of the project which also involved the use of photovoice. conversational interviews were then conducted with each woman about the pictures she had taken. throughout this phase the first author continued to connect with women who participated in the first phase of the project. follow-up interviews with women who were part of the research group shed additional light on their experiences of inclusion and exclusion in the community. in each phase of the study there were opportunities for women to share, through group discussion and personal interviews, their insights and experiences relating to social inclusion after federal incarceration. women who participated in this study ranged in age from early twenties to early fifties. the range of time since being released from gvi was between studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 87 two months and two-and-a-half years. seven women were white and two women were black. seven women indicated that they had drug and alcohol addictions and that their incarceration was directly related to their addictions. women differed with respect to sexual orientation and at the time of the study one woman was married, one woman was engaged, and all other women were either single or in casual relationships. four women were mothers, but only one had dependent children at the time of the study. there were variations in employment status, with one woman working a part-time job while going to university, one woman temporarily laid off from a seasonal job, one woman who had just finished employment through a summer grant, one woman starting a part-time at-home business, and other women choosing to work on their addiction recovery before searching for employment. there were also variations in education levels. one woman was a full-time university student, one woman was taking university courses through correspondence and had been accepted into full-time studies in the fall, and one woman was taking courses in preparation for university. several other women spoke about taking their general educational development (ged) test while in gvi. women who participated in this study were similar to other women leaving federal prison when it came to addiction issues. as stated above, seven out of nine women indicated that they had drug and alcohol addictions. this compares with other studies that acknowledged a high proportion of women in federal prisons were there because of drug related offenses (pedlar et al., 2008; taylor and flight, 2004). women in this study varied from the profile of women who have been federally incarcerated in terms of education and employment levels since most had higher levels of education and lower employment-related needs than what is commonly reported (cf. pedlar et al., 2008; pollack, 2008). insights about social inclusion after federal incarceration data presented in this paper came from conversations during research group meetings, conversations with women who had engaged with photovoice, and individual interviews with women in follow-up from their participation in the research group. throughout each phase of data collection, women offered insight into the contested nature of community and how idealized and normative it could be at times. this ideal was compared to and contrasted with the kind of community women experienced before and after a period of incarceration. women described times when they felt they were being pushed out of community and times when they were being pulled into community. they also highlighted tensions around the necessary supports and resources for personal change and growth as they negotiated issues of responsibility. the central themes in this study, being pushed out of community; being pulled into community; and negotiating issues of responsibility pertaining to social inclusion, reveal the ambiguous nature of social inclusion for women who have broken the law and raise critical questions about social justice. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 88 darla fortune & susan m. arai being pushed out of community: vulnerability to exclusion and stigma this theme highlights complexities associated with seeking to belong while faced with insufficient supports and resources, threats to independence, and feelings related to difference and stigma. at first glance, idealized notions of community may seem to offset this complexity, suggesting that as women become part of a community they will share in its promise of inclusivity and belonging. however, it has been argued that the ideal of community, offered as a response to prevailing conditions associated with alienation and fragmentation, provides a totalizing perspective of community that denies difference (young, 1989). experiences and perceptions shared by women in this study are in accordance with this difference-denying culture. exclusion, in the form of being pushed out, was experienced by women in several aspects of their lives and impacted the extent to which they could relate to notions of the community ideal. for all nine women, the ultimate form of exclusion was being sent to prison. each woman who participated in this project identified with being pushed out of community when they were removed from their communities and subsequently incarcerated in a women’s federal prison. exclusion was most evident when women invoked notions of the ideal community and its attendant promises. the promise of community, as described by bauman (2001), holds that when we belong to a community we can count on each other’s good will. at times women spoke as though they believed that when they entered community after incarceration they would receive the help and support they needed from community members and organizations to enable them to be included. missie, for example, explained that if there were sufficient resources in place for women entering community after incarceration they might start to feel like they were being included upon release: (lack of) housing has made me not feel included in the community. i feel i am being discriminated against because of my record. if i had more help from the community, from the resources available to help you be part of the community, then i would feel like i belonged. (missie) for women in this study, being pushed out of community started long before they went to prison and persisted after they were released. this theme highlights challenges for women who did not consider themselves to be part of mainstream society because their experiences with poverty, addictions, and incarceration precluded them from measuring up to a normative ideal. lucy described this normative ideal as having a family, money, social support, and good health: sometimes i feel like i don’t belong in society because of my past, because i don’t have family, because i don’t have money, because i don’t have proper support, because i’m a drug addict, because of my health. (lucy) studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 89 during one of our conversations missie posed and reflected on the following question: “where do we fit into society when we get out of prison?” this question not only gets to the core of this theme; it gets to the heart of the study. some women in this study had a history of poverty and addiction which presented challenges in terms of fitting into society. these challenges often led them to withdraw from society and not participate in conventional ways. liz contrasted people she considers to be part of normal society with people who have addictions based on the ability to participate in society: because most of society aren’t addicts. most of society are normal, working people with children and they’re working or going to school or whatever. they’re participating. they participate in life. so part of being normal is participating. when you’re an addict, you’re not participating in society. (liz) tina emphasized the difficulty associated with being included in a society when there are scarce resources available for women after incarceration. she stated: “being incarcerated for a long period of time, people have a very hard time living in society. trying to live on what society wants you to live on is hard” (tina). to illustrate her point, tina took several pictures (see figure 1) capturing the extra assistance she required just to obtain such basic necessities as food and clothing: figure 1 missie further emphasized pressures women experience as they try to get established in community when resources are scarce and there is the added stress of trying to provide for children: studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 90 darla fortune & susan m. arai i‘ve only been living here for a month and i don’t want to go to my landlord and tell him that i can’t afford the place. so i joined the food bank. i paid $9/month so you can go through the food bank store. it’s good to a point but they only have certain things. i don’t want my kids to feel like they’re going to live with mom so they can’t have fresh fruit anymore. (missie) the financial stress of providing for children that missie describes above is an example of an exclusionary factor that impacts women leaving prison to a greater extent than men since mothers in prison are far more likely than fathers to be in the primary caregiving role before and after incarceration (siegel, 2011). christie discussed the need for improved resources to be available to women after they leave prison. as she explained, there is unlikely to be positive change for women who return to an unhealthy environment without any transformation in circumstances: if i could change one thing i would change the resources that are available for establishing a new normal for everyday living. i’m not the only one who’s seen women get out of prison and go right back to the environment that was unhealthy, unsafe, and problematic in the first place. how can someone change their life if they go right back to the same neighbourhood, the same friends, abuse, addictions? for a person to change their life, they need to have a change of fundamental circumstances. (christie) it has been argued that the contested nature of community and its push toward shared identity and common values has a tendency to repress difference and exclude those who do not share in its commonality (young, 1990). the exclusionary consequences of desiring community can be seen in descriptions of women’s experiences. women described being excluded not only because of scarce resources, but also because they were not participating in the types of activities they considered to be the norm and because they did not have access to the same standard of living enjoyed by other members of the community. two commonly recognized indicators of exclusion, lack of participation in mainstream activities and deprivation of resources associated with an accepted standard of living (taket et al., 2009), reveal the normative aspects of inclusion. practices of exclusion disproportionately impact people who are unemployed, poorly educated, homeless, single parents, as well as people with disabilities, addictions, and criminal records (rose, 2000; taket et al., 2009). these practices cause one to question whether the ideal of community creates any room for difference. rather, as women involved in this research project describe, difference can too easily be perceived as a problem and lead to experiences of stigmatization. stigma of incarceration women often described being pushed out of community because of the enduring stigma of incarceration. karen explained that a lot of fear is attached studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 91 to trying to find a job when women perceive they are being stigmatized because of their past: “there are just so many fears. when you’ve been in for a long time and you come out there’s the fear of looking for a job, fear of people looking down on you.” feeling stigmatized also has a detrimental effect on sense of belonging. missie described how women believe they are perceived by society can influence the extent to which they can belong in community. after moving from a place deemed unlivable to a place she considered to be upscale and located in a nice community, missie explained, “i never thought i belonged in a nice community like this”. when asked why she felt this way missie clarified: because of the lifestyle that i’m used to, getting out of prison, still being on parole, not having a lot of money, not having my kids. i wasn’t very confident about where i should be and where i would fit in the community…. and if you look at the way society looks at criminals and people who have lost their children, they don’t think we’re good people, they don’t think we deserve any better than what we have or we don’t deserve as much as they have. so that’s [referring to her previous accommodation] where i thought society thought that i belonged. (missie) missie’s comments are demonstrative of the double stigma that comes with being a mother who has been incarcerated. they also suggest that even when there is an improvement in material conditions, stigma can still preclude women from feeling included. although feelings of stigma were quite real for women, some spoke about the perceived nature of stigma since it was something they carried internally. liz spoke about how women tend to believe everyone knows their history even though this is often not the case: “yeah, sometimes you feel like everybody knows even though nobody knows and nobody cares” (liz). missie described how a conversation with one of her supports helped her realize that despite how she feels she is perceived by others, most people in society cannot detect anything about her past when they meet her: well i mentioned to one of my supports that every time i went out i felt like i had “crack head” written on my forehead and that everyone knew i used to use crack and i was in prison. and she said, “you know, if i didn’t meet you in prison i would never have thought that.” that one thing she said changed my whole perspective. (missie) bella reflected on the effect stigma has on women’s feelings of acceptance and belonging. she concluded that while the stigma of incarceration is something that women carry inside, it is also something that exists in society: stigma is probably the biggest thing that’s both something within you, like the fear within you of what people think of you but it’s also a reality because people do think of you differently if they know. (bella) bella’s comments suggest that society has an understanding of what the label associated with incarceration means but not an understanding of the studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 92 darla fortune & susan m. arai experiences of women who are connected with this label. when incarceration contributes to women being marked as different, there is greater propensity for exclusion, particularly when mutual identification with others hinges on totalizing notions of community. for example, as young (1990) argued, “the most serious political consequence of the desire for community, or for co-presence and mutual identification with others is that it often operates to exclude or oppress those experienced as different (p. 234).” the experiences of women in this study were in accordance with young’s critique. exclusion appeared to be most pronounced for women when they viewed community as relatively homogenous and recognized the ways their social status and life experiences made them different and susceptible to stigmatization when opportunities for mutual identification were absent. this theme highlighted the ways women were pushed out and excluded from community. the next theme captures the ways women were pulled into community and the times they found inclusion from stabilizing supports and judgment-free spaces. being pulled into community: finding stabilizing supports and judgment-free spaces this theme captures the support women derived from groups, sponsors, volunteers, helping professionals, and reassuring family members. women considered this social support essential for establishing connections in community. this theme also captures the comfort found in judgment-free spaces where women were not made to feel different from others in the community. bella highlighted the need for women entering community from prison to have people available and willing to welcome them: we’re talking about getting us involved in community. well, the word community comes from the word communal—to share something. so it’s not a community unless we’re in it and we’re sharing it with others. and we can’t get into it unless we have people who are already on the inside pulling us into it, helping us. (bella) with this comment bella acknowledged the sharing aspect of community and suggested that for community to be shared, people must help others be included. lucy explained that having a support group in the community was critical for helping her make the transition to community, particularly in the absence of family: they drive me places if i need to go places, they do one-on-one counselling, they give me vitamins and bus tickets. they’ve just been there for me and i don’t have family so having that has been huge. so my support group is something that i really leaned on. if i feel like putting a pipe to my lips i call them and they talk me out of it or they come and get me and we go for coffee. (lucy) studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 93 being able to call people in a time of need helped lucy manage her addiction. she admitted she would be struggling to be in community if it were not for her support: “if i didn’t have the support i have, i don’t know. i couldn’t even imagine” (lucy). sloan considered support from her stride circle1 to be integral for helping her settle in a new area: so i decided to come to kitchener and i went into transitional housing. i had huge support from my circle. i was new to this city and they helped me. they went above and beyond the call of duty. i reached out to people that would help me. (sloan) missie also pointed to the need for women to have supports in community that extend beyond family. she presented a picture she had taken with her stride circle volunteer (not included here for purposes of confidentiality) and explained how this relationship helped her make inroads to finding employment: [this picture] is of me and my stride support. she is also my christian mentor. i met her through a chaplaincy program at gvi and then she took the stride training so she could support me in the community and she’s just been amazing. since i’m struggling right now financially i made up a flyer to do some cleaning and she’s given it out at church so i’ve gotten a couple of odd jobs that way. (missie) women described having access to various forms of social support pulling them into community when they were released from prison and they attributed this support to helping them feel included. social support is often conceived as psychological and material resources intended to help people manage adversity and cope with stress (cohen, 2004; thoits, 1995). researchers have often emphasized the importance of social support for women entering community. richie, freudenberg and page (2001), for example, explained that social support is essential for providing women with the strength they need to resist being pulled toward substance abuse, familiar yet abusive relationships, and past criminal behaviours. similar acknowledgement of the importance of support was made by women in this study when they explained how volunteers, family members, support groups and social groups were integral in helping them get re-established and resist the pull of addiction. conversely, women are apt to feel alone when they enter community in the absence of family and community supports. misha experienced loneliness during her transition phase and identified a need for women who have already transitioned to support other women entering community: i think it would be great if women who come out and are successful could help other women come out and be successful. you know, give them information on housing and information on jobs, that kind of thing. like a support group that meets once a month. when i came out i felt like i was totally alone and it would have been nice to have someone to talk to. (misha) studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 94 darla fortune & susan m. arai pollack’s (2009) research highlighted the importance of peer support and friendship for women who enter community after incarceration. she explained that when women get released from prison they are often unfamiliar with community resources, have difficulty forging new relationships, and ultimately feel disconnected and othered. women in pollack’s study considered connecting with other women who shared the lived experience of a prison sentence imperative for minimizing feelings of isolation and stigma. while misha identified a need for women who transitioned from prison to community to support others going through this phase, other women in the study indicated they preferred to distance themselves from women who have been in prison, opting instead to seek assistance from volunteers and support groups. these associations seemed to help women disconnect from the prison population and feel more connected with others in community. misha eventually found some of the support she needed to be pulled into community by joining a social group. she took a picture of women in her social group, the red hat society, and explained, “(we are) women over fifty who want to get together. (we) wear red hats and purple outfits and we really don’t give a shit what people think of us” (misha). while misha joined the red hat society to find connection in community, a reading of goffman’s (1963) work suggests she will not truly find belonging within this group. according to goffman, people who are part of a stigmatized group can only be their authentic selves within this group. he further argued when a person is stigmatized, he or she can be part of other groups but can never really be considered as one of them. not only does this idea offer little hope for women in this study to move beyond their criminalized identities and make meaningful connections with others in the community, it also suggests stigmatized individuals can be pulled so far into community but cannot truly belong. this idea also suggests that individuals and groups are stigmatized when community, holding to normative ideals, rejects difference. the mission of the red hat society emphasizes building relationships with other women and, beyond the requirement of being female; there are no restrictions on who can join (son, yarnal, & kersletter, 2010). thus, it appears to be a group to which any woman can conceivably belong. it is also considered to be a group from which women can access social support in a non-judgmental environment (son et al., 2010). however, a strict dress code and a busy social schedule would likely preclude women who are not financially well off and have other more pressing needs to attend to from either joining or feeling a sense of affiliation with other members. the red hat society is just one example of a group women may choose to join as a means of finding connection to people beyond their stigmatized group of formerly incarcerated women. yet, if goffman’s (1963) argument holds true and women in this study can never truly belong to a group which does not share their experiences of stigma, it follows that women may continue to find themselves in superficial relationships where they find some form of social support but will unlikely feel any true sense of inclusion. in addition to discussing relationships with people in community, women studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 95 described their relationships to community spaces. they discussed the importance of having community spaces that were judgment free where people either did not know about their criminal past or, if they did know, treated them no differently than anyone else. spaces that are judgment free and accepting of difference when describing her ideal community lucy explained: “feeling comfortable in your surroundings, non-judgmental, like, i’m not going to look down at the kid with the mohawk. everyone is different and that’s okay. it takes all different people to make a community” (lucy). liz and karen also recognized the value in having organizations in community that are judgment free and make them feel comfortable. for example, liz took a picture of a place in community where she attended a support program (see figure 2) and described it as: “(one of the places) where i feel most welcome. they don’t judge you” (liz). figure 2 tina spoke fondly of a place where she attended community support meetings because she considered it to be a place she could belong and not experience the stigma of incarceration: “this is where i go for my home of the heart meetings. they don’t make you feel like you’re a criminal. they’re there to help no matter who you are” (tina). women also expressed appreciation for public spaces in community where they were not made to feel any different than everyone else who used the services even when their history of incarceration was revealed. liz took a picture of the library (see figure 3) and explained she did not feel looked down on by library staff even though they could tell by the address on her library card that she lived in the halfway house: like going to the library, they know when you’re from the halfway house but they don’t treat you any different. i often have a problem with the machine to sign things out and when i tell them that they are right there to help just like i was somebody else. i don’t feel looked down on when i’m there. (liz) studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 96 darla fortune & susan m. arai figure 3 similar to liz’s, karen’s view of acceptance was tied to the idea of not feeling judged. she explained she gets this kind of acceptance when she visits her mother in a nursing home: “i go visit my mom in the nursing home every day…i feel comfort there because they don’t know (about my past) and they don’t care. they don’t look down on you. they just accept you for who you are” (karen). nowell, berkowitz, deacon and foster-fishman (2006) found that the meanings assigned to community spaces can have substantive implications for individuals’ sense of self and sense of belonging. as a departure from the ideal of community and its propensity for identifying with others based on commonality, being in judgment-free spaces where there is acceptance of difference seemed to remove pressure for women to conform to dominant expectations of behaviour in order to gain acceptance. block (2009) explained how a sense of belonging can occur when people have opportunities to connect with those who previously were strangers and relate in new ways across differences. social differentiation without exclusion was possible in spaces where women felt they could be themselves, be anonymous, be different, just be. however, if judgment-free spaces are void of mutual connection, it raises doubt about the extent to which women will experience social inclusion in community. this idea is given further attention in the next theme as women discuss issues of responsibility in community entry as they relate to social inclusion and social justice. negotiating issues of responsibility pertaining to social inclusion this theme explores ideas about where responsibility should lie when it comes to social inclusion for women entering community from prison. dominant discourse assumes that social inclusion for women who have been incarcerated means they must enter community as responsible citizens. tensions are revealed in the way women think about responsibility as they waver between change as conformity and change as a process of mutual studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 97 cooperation involving choice and support. the idea that women should take sole responsibility for making changes in their lives after incarceration has been critiqued by pollack (2007). she explained that a consequence of living in an individualistic society is that women who do not self-reform will be unlikely to experience social inclusion upon release from prison. allspach (2010), maidment (2006), and pollack (2008) have all argued that notions of self-reform remain unchallenged as long as neo-liberal policies shape the way society responds to issues affecting citizens who are most marginalized. change as conformity women in this project identified things that needed to be changed when entering community and often suggested it was up to the individual to take responsibility to enact this change. bella effectively captured women’s proclivity for individual responsibility when she explained: “you gotta fall in line. so either you’re in society or you’re outside society” (bella). misha was also quick to acknowledge that if she wanted to be part of community she was the person responsible for making it happen: i’m the one who has to make the step because for the longest time i sat home waiting to go out but being afraid that everybody knew what i did. you know, how do i explain where i’ve been? now i’m more into going out and shedding that past so i’m more into my community now. (misha) during a conversation with lucy and bella, lucy indicated that, despite changes needed in the environment into which women are entering, focusing solely on external factors undermines women’s resiliency and capacity to redirect their lives away from crime: bella: some people think the consequences aren’t harsh enough to stop people from going out and committing crime. i don’t think it’s that the consequences aren’t harsh enough; i think it’s that the environment hasn’t changed enough for these people to have a good reason not to commit crimes. lucy: well we have a good reason not to so what’s any different? it’s because we want to change. i’m making myself have a good life. i want better for me. i want to end the cycle. my mother was the same—my mother was me. her mother was her. i’m just stopping the cycle. i refuse to be the victim. lucy also argued that responsibility for self-reform should start while women are still incarcerated. she provided examples of opportunities available for women to improve themselves and suggested prison offers women a new start in life. lucy: well, you know if you want to take that negative situation and let it be a negative situation or you can take that negative situation and turn it into a positive situation. get your grade twelve, do all the courses, take the college studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 98 darla fortune & susan m. arai courses that they offer and then become a better person. it’s an opportunity to start clean with a fresh slate, right? researcher: so you think prison does work on some level? lucy: i think the two of us [referring to herself and bella] are proof of that. women acknowledged that certain changes had to be made before women entering community could really belong. changes identified were individual in nature and suggested a desire to conform to normative standards. for the most part, these changes pertained to the way women presented themselves in public. bella, for example, described changes she felt she had to make pertaining to her manner of dress: when i got arrested and i was on bail living with my mother, she said, “you can’t continue to dress the way you dress. you have to start to dress like you’re a member of society.” i used to wear those baggy pants and i looked like a wannabe black boy. over time i’ve come to terms with it but every now and then i still like to put on my comfortable clothes and i don’t care what people think of me because i look good and i feel good. i had to change that to become a part of society and i had to look a certain way to fit in. (bella) misha also explained that perception plays an important role in finding a job and emphasized this as an area where women need the most help to conform to society’s expectations: maybe what has to be done is to go to the halfway houses and this is where you start teaching them how to do a resume, this is where you teach them time management, this is where you teach them how to dress for an interview so they’re not going to an interview with their jeans hanging half way down their ass. so teach them etiquette because it’s all about perception. that’s how society works, it’s all about perception. (misha) misha viewed attempts to encourage society to be more caring and accepting of women who had been in prison as futile. in her view, effort should instead go toward changing women. she explained: well i think one of the things that has to be done is women have to lose their prison persona when they come out. you’re not going to be able to change society’s mind so you have to change the women. you know make them more approachable. i don’t know what it is. like people look at me and they don’t think i’ve been in jail. people look at [name of another woman in the group] and they think she’s been in jail. it’s all about image. (misha) it is not surprising that women in this study bought into notions of individual responsibility since this idea is privileged in the correctional system. as hannah-moffat (2000) explained, correctional service of canada’s (csc) rhetoric of shared responsibility and empowerment translates into female offenders being responsible for their own rehabilitation. the discourse of empowerment adopted by csc highlights the need for changes in structural studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 99 inequities experienced by female offenders and the need for changes in female offenders (tffsw, 1990). hannah-moffat argued, however, that a model of empowerment for women who are federally incarcerated can be more aptly termed a model of individual responsibility. empowerment is considered to be a process which supports women in gaining insight into their situation so they can take positive action to assume control over their lives. the state is no longer responsible for women’s rehabilitation; rather, women are now expected to rehabilitate themselves (hannah-moffat, 2000). if a woman is not able to change her circumstances, it is believed she lacks the ability to make choices necessary to guide this transformation. pollack (2004) has been quick to point out, however, that a lack of consideration is given to the idea that the same choices are not equally available to everyone. individual responsibility for change versus cooperative approaches to change conversations with women during this project largely focused on the ways they needed to change. change was not often considered within the context of limited choices. insufficient attention was also given to the ways community may need to cooperate with a woman’s push for change and help to open up access to additional choices. missie stressed the role community ought to play in supporting women trying to make changes in their lives: “the community and people around us ought to help us make that change. if more community got involved in the transitional phase, accepting us and being more of a support” (missie). bella also emphasized the need for support to change but as her comments suggested, she felt conflicted about the extent to which this support is already available: i think the person needs to change but society needs to give them opportunities to change. the problem is i want to say that but the reality is that there are so many opportunities out there, like free resume writing workshops, free social services. there is a place for everybody to go out and get support. i want to say that society needs to change but at the same time there is a lot of help available. (bella) despite feeling ambiguous about the supports and choices they had available, women generally agreed that changes in public perception were needed when it came to women entering the community. these perceptual changes were deemed necessary to move closer to a community of acceptance and judgment-free space. public awareness and knowledge were identified as necessary ingredients for change. as karen explained, people’s perceptions about women entering community might change if they had more knowledge: “we’re not all bad people. so i think that stereotypes are something that i would like people to get knowledge about and maybe it would change their perception” (karen). similarly, liz considered education and knowledge as studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 100 darla fortune & susan m. arai necessary for curbing judgmental attitudes and behaviours toward women. she believed if people acquired knowledge, they may have a different point of view about people whom they would ordinarily judge as the other: people who don’t know and don’t know what to expect will judge but if you give them knowledge and educate them they might start to look at it from a whole new perspective. you know, it’s like now that i talked to you, now that i know you as a person, i might have a totally different outlook. so it’s education and knowledge. (liz) despite an expressed interest in bringing knowledge and awareness to the public, women also voiced some skepticism about how much potential there is to change societal perceptions of women entering community after incarceration. misha, for example, spoke about people living with adversity who she felt would and should receive societal support before women who have spent time in prison: why should society support someone who is living off society when they can support a single mother who is out working and needs child care? why should my money go toward that person instead of someone who needs it? my sympathies don’t lie with—my sympathies don’t even lie with myself. (misha) while christie did not seem to believe such a community could exist, she described wanting to live in a community where there is shared responsibility among citizens, one in which there is equity in resources and support available to people facing adversity. for the community described by christie to be a reality, deep-seated changes are needed at the societal level: i don’t know how this could be possible, but i’d also like a community with well-developed resources available to all for dealing with life’s problems. i believe ending up in prison comes after a descent down a long slippery slope, and an ideal community would be able to intercede and help before things got bad with at least a large amount of the current incarcerated population. (christie) women who participated in this study suggested that support from community may not always be forthcoming when it comes to helping address challenges women face as they leave prison and enter community. some women spoke about not being able to find or access community resources they thought should be available to help them find connection to community. other women questioned whether people in the community would or should care about women getting out of prison and speculated about where the responsibility lay when it came to women getting re-established in their postprison lives. christie’s comments about prison being the end of a descent down a slippery slope, which signifies community’s failure to intervene earlier, highlighted the sheer absence of support available in community before a woman enters prison. the breakdown of community resources for women who go to prison is a trend that can be seen elsewhere in the literature. women who participated in pollack’s (2008) study, for example, referred to situations where they felt studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 101 their communities had failed them before they entered prison. indications of inadequate levels of community support for women who end up in prison can also be observed in the overreliance on the penal system to manage social problems (wacquant, 2001). wacquant referred to the international trend of prisons for women becoming prisons of poverty since persistent cycles of poverty and dependence are often precursors to women entering the prison system. women in this study expressed ambivalence regarding where responsibility lay when it came to a woman being included in community. they held two opposing beliefs: women leaving prison should be ultimately responsible for making personal changes that contribute to their inclusion, and, also, women could not do it alone. recognition was given to the notion of an ideal community where, as christie described, there is shared responsibility among citizens; a community in which there is equity in resources and support available for people in the face of adversity. for this ideal community to be a reality, a shift is needed, away from individualism, and toward a more socially just society. discussion: a shift away from individual responsibility and movement toward social justice women in this study realized they were culpable for offenses that brought them to prison and expressed the desire to make positive changes in their post-prison lives. at times they conveyed a sense of powerlessness and desperation in the face of such overwhelming life challenges. exposing their vulnerabilities, some women held fast to a belief that members of the community were an integral part of their quest for change. other women held firm to the belief that women leaving prison should be solely responsible for making personal changes that would ultimately contribute to their inclusion. as women negotiated issues of responsibility, there was an underlying tension around whether social inclusion and subsequent movement toward social justice could ever be a reality. indeed the idealized community and its assurance of inclusion may seem like a fabrication for individuals who have broken the law (pedlar et al., 2008; pollack, 2008). as foucault (1975) pointed out, the act of breaking the law means the criminal is seen as having offended all of society and must be punished so society may obtain retribution for the crime. the resulting exclusion can be difficult to overcome. the challenge of overcoming exclusion associated with offending society is most evident in the dominant language around notions of selfreform and “redeemability” (maruna & king, 2009). uncritical acceptance of reformation and redemption suggests that individuals who have been convicted of crimes are in a constant state of flux where their acceptance is always impermanent and fragile. worrall (1997) emphasizes the fragility of inclusion for individuals who break the law and provides a glimpse at the direction canada could be heading if we continue to enact punitive and studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 102 darla fortune & susan m. arai exclusionary policies such as bill c-10: while the term [community] may appeal to a warm, nostalgic sense of “belonging” among the self-proclaimed law-abiding citizen, its promise of inclusivity can be interpreted in contradictory ways when applied to those who break the law and are criminalized. far from demonstrating that it is resourceful, tolerant, and healing, the community is then rejecting, excluding and intolerantly punitive. (worrall, 1997, p. 47) if we view inclusion and belonging as a goal of social justice, we begin to see the ways shared responsibility and mutuality are necessary for women to be included in community. reid (2004) explained, “[social] injustice is how people are excluded, the depths to which they suffer, and the obligations we bear in this regard” (p. 245). from this statement we can infer that social justice is how people are included and the obligations we also bear in this regard. inclusion for women who have offended may seem unconscionable in a society that prides itself on the strengths of individualism and an ability to overcome adversity. however, crime does not occur in a vacuum (fortune, pedlar, & yuen, 2010). rather, as christie previously described, crime usually arises out of social conditions fostered in society. thus, it seems a society that accepts and nurtures these conditions ought to share part of the responsibility for the adverse effects created and help to take steps that lead to social change. it was this very notion that prompted the tffsw (1990) to incorporate the principle of shared responsibility into creating choices when it considered the changes that needed to be made to women’s corrections. women in this study recognized the need to make changes in their lives. after enduring years of social and personal betrayal within community (fine et al., 2004), they predictably found it difficult to accept that community suddenly had a role to play in supporting these changes. however, if we admit to social injustices being present in our society and we embrace the hope that comes in the form of messages encouraging social change (e.g., layton, 2011), we must also admit that inclusion, as a measure of social justice, is a social and therefore shared responsibility and its full expression requires a shift to mutuality in our relationships and understandings. conclusion: a new vision of inclusion that values difference and encourages mutuality women who participated in this research project were diverse and had varied experiences prior to their incarceration and when entering community. yet, feelings of exclusion were common as they spoke of entering community with insufficient support networks, resources, and acceptance from others. they articulated how the stigma of being an offender tends to persist long after a prison sentence is complete and can impact the extent to which they feel connected to community upon release. women in this study had a heightened studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 103 awareness of their culpability for offenses that brought them to prison and expressed wanting to make positive changes in their post-prison lives that would enhance their feelings of inclusion. importantly however, embedded within their views of inclusion were distinctions between the choice to make change and conformity. the element of choice was inherent in the descriptions of the ways they embraced change on their own terms. being with people who accepted them and supported their efforts to change and spending time in spaces where they felt accepted and free from judgment not only augmented their efforts but also started to set the stage for inclusion and belonging. when conformity was at the forefront of discussion, women perpetuated the belief that difference is antithetical to inclusion and social inclusion will remain an aberration for individuals who do not adhere to dominant societal expectations. many issues raised throughout this study are specific to women who are entering community after incarceration. the deep exclusion experienced by people placed outside community and sent to prison is arguably unparalleled and women who spend time in prison are particularly susceptible to exclusion. however, this project is ultimately concerned with society’s tendency to exclude people based on a devaluation of difference. exclusion is an inevitable outcome when differences are viewed as problems to solve (block, 2009). we take steps toward inclusion when we view difference as sources of community vitality and hold ourselves accountable for the wellbeing of others in community (block, 2009). women in this research project often found it difficult to look beyond notions of self-reform and therefore searched for acceptance and inclusion by trying to adopt pro-social identities. such personal changes placed each individual woman at the centre of the solution to social problems related to exclusion. however, an anti-oppressive view of social inclusion that is also socially just would take into consideration that both structural determinants and individual agency lie at the heart of inclusion processes (dominelli, 2005; lister, 2000). when it comes to achieving inclusion, sin and chung yan (2003) assert that “the challenge for society is how to share power, relegate privileges, and give space for people at the margins to define and locate the centre as a strategy of anti-oppressive struggles” (p. 33). in this sense the margins can be sites for resistance and creative spaces that encourage new perspectives. some women who participated in this project took pictures indicating they valued spaces in community where their differences did not impact how they were treated by others. with their pictures they suggested they did not necessarily want to move from the margin to the centre by conforming to mainstream society and pretending differences did not exist. rather, inclusion was about the creation of a space where people who are different from mainstream society are not made to feel inferior. when women in this study felt free to participate in the life of their community in ways that did not undermine their sense of self and their differences, they were in the process of being included. findings from this study suggest we need to be better at studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 104 darla fortune & susan m. arai creating space for difference and social inclusion to co-exist. johnson (2006) wrote that, “reducing people to a single dimension of who they are separates and excludes them, marks them as ‘other,’ as different from ‘normal’ (white, heterosexual, male, nondisabled) people and therefore as inferior” (p. 19). johnson also explained that exclusion inevitably results when differences that have no inherent connection to social inequality are seized on and become a basis for oppression. women were asked to participate in this research project because they had spent time in prison. beyond that, however, they were not homogeneous and varied with respect to many aspects of their identity, such as social class, race, and sexual orientation. yet, there was a common experience of exclusion linked to their incarceration as well as the ways their experiences before and after incarceration marked them as different from an assumed norm. incarceration has very real implications for social inclusion that is tied to ongoing social control and marginality and this has been found to be particularly the case for women (allspach, 2010). however, as this research showed, even if women do not explicitly identify with being marginalized due to practices of social control after their release from prison, the extent to which they are included in community can be jeopardized by idealized notions of community and their experiences of difference. for women to be in community (as opposed to prison), change is needed in terms of desistance from criminal activity. given the multifaceted nature of criminal activity, this type of change may not be simple or straightforward. however, for women to be included in community after release from prison, dynamics surrounding change can be even more complex. when women believe they need to change fundamental aspects of who they are in order to be valued and accepted by others, there is reason to be critical of the ways that social inclusion can undermine difference. similarly, when women’s quests for personal change and growth are dependent on the extent to which there is support and shared responsibility for addressing the issues of inequality they are faced with, there is reason to advocate for social inclusion as an aspect of social justice. this research suggests a need for social change and identifies the role of community in supporting personal change and growth. it is imperative that community not only collectively strive to diminish social inequalities, but accept difference without trying to change it and understand that people’s limitations are intertwined with their gifts (mcknight & block, 2012). in practical terms, this would translate to actions that involve advocating for movement away from punitive and exclusionary policies toward policies and programs that are socially just. it would also involve each of us embracing our mutual obligation for the well-being of others and engaging in dialogue aimed at creating space that is hopeful and inclusive for all citizens. after all, as canadians, this is the hopeful space we are longing for. acknowledgements we wish to thank the women who participated in this research project. your studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 105 willingness to share your insights and experiences and engage in critical and sometimes difficult discussions is very much appreciated. this work would not have been possible without you. notes 1 the stride circle program is available to women at grand valley institution for women in kitchener, ontario. it is a program facilitated by community justice initiatives, an agency founded on principles of restorative justice. a stride circle is typically comprised of a woman who is seeking support as she transitions from prison to community and two or three trained community volunteers who care about her and want to be part of this journey. references 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(2002). reflections on women’s crime and mothers in prison: a peacemaking approach. crime and delinquency, 48(2), 300–315. studies in social justice, volume 8, issue 1, 2014 implications for women after federal incarceration 107 reid, c. (2004). the wounds of exclusion: poverty, women’s health & social justice. edmonton, ab: qualitative institute press. reid, c., & frisby, w. (2008). continuing the journey: articulating dimensions of feminist participatory action research (fpar). in p. reason & h. bradbury (eds.), sage handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice (2nd ed.) (pp. 93–105). london: sage publications. richie, b.e. (2001). challenges incarcerated women face as they return to their communities: findings from life history interviews. crime and delinquency, 47(3), 368–389. richie, b., freudenberg, n., & page, j. (2001). reintegrating women leaving jail into urban communities: a description of a model program. journal of urban health, 78(2), 290–303. rose, n. 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(2003). margins as centres: a theory of social inclusion in antioppressive social work. in w. shera (ed.), emerging perspectives on anti-oppressive practice (pp. 25–41). toronto, on: canadian scholar’s press inc. son, j., yarnal, c., kerstetter. d. (2010). engendering social capital through a leisure club for middle-aged and older women: implications for individual and community health and wellbeing. leisure studies, 29(1), 67–83. taket, a., crisp, b. r., nevill, a., lamaro, g., graham, m., & barter-godfrey, s. (2009). theorising social exclusion. new york, ny: routledge. task force on federally sentenced women (tffsw). (1990). creating choices: the report of the task force on federally sentenced women. ottawa, on: solicitor general of canada. taylor, k., & flight, j. (2004). a profile of federally-sentenced women on conditional release. forum on corrections research, 16, 24–27. thoits, p.a. (1995). stress, coping, and social support processes: where are we? what next? journal of health and social behavior, 35, 53–79. uggen, c., manza, j., & behrens, a. (2004). ‘less than the average citizen’: stigma, role transition and the civic reintegration of convicted felons. in s. maruna & r. immarigeon, (eds.), after crime and punishment: pathways to offender reintegration (pp. 258–290). cullompton, devon, uk: willan. wang, c., & burris, m.a. (1997). photovoice: concept, methodology and use for participatory needs assessment. health education and behaviour, 24(3), 369–387. wilkinson, r., & marmot, m. (eds.). (2003). social determinants of health: the solid facts (2nd ed.). new york, ny: world health organization. worrall, a. (1997). punishment in the community: the future of criminal justice. london: longman. young, i. m. (1989). polity and group difference: a critique of the ideal of universal citizenship. ethics, 99(2), 250–274. young, i. m. (1990). justice and the politics of difference. princeton, nj: princeton university press. studies in social justice volume 3, issue 1, 39-66, 2009 correspondence address: daniel o'connor, department of sociology, anthropology, and criminology, university of windsor, 401 sunset avenue, windsor, on n9b 3p4, canada. tel: +1 519 253-3000, email: doconnor@uwindsor.ca willem de lint, department of sociology, anthropology, and criminology, university of windsor, 401 sunset avenue, windsor, on n9b 3p4, canada. tel: +1 519 253-3000, email: delint@uwindsor.ca issn: 1911-4788 frontier government: the folding of the canada-us border daniel o'connor and willem de lint1 department of sociology, anthropology, and criminology, university of windsor abstract in this paper the border is evaluated as a fold of power relations in which sovereign capacity and competence is marshalled alongside strategies of control, surveillance, and risk management to constitute, what we call, a zone of frontier government. we advance the argument that the border is a site for both negative and positive power, for insertion and subtraction, and that the assemblage of surveillance and compliance regimes are “run” not so much in the furtherance of a precautionary or pre-emptive end-state, but as intermediate values that are sufficiently malleable by an invigorated sovereign, expressed in the residue of discretion in and between the many border agencies. our analysis is based on extensive policy and program documents, as well as twenty-five interviews with officials in various agencies engaged in the us-canada and, particularly, the windsor-detroit corridor. introduction in recent literature,2 certainly, there is much to lend initial support to this view. there has been a transformation in the practice of liberal governance where officials, policy an argument is put forward that neoliberal societies are obsessed with uncertainty and have shifted their policies and practices to align with a precautionary logic. this precautionary logic involves the avoidance of steps that create a risk or harm, even to the extent of avoiding steps that are part of the legal obligations of the state. this uncertainty and obsession is said to derive from an age of catastrophe where certain generalized “facts” of the social world, and interactions of individuals, populations, and governments, create new forms of risk and therefore stimulate new risk avoidance strategies. for beck (2006) “the logic of compensation breaks down and is replaced by the principle of precaution through prevention” (p. 334). an “insurance-based society” overcomes the challenge to its postulates (attributing threat to an “objective value or price”), represented by events such as 9/11, by lurching toward precautionary, pre-emptive, or “pre-crime” strategies (see hebenton & seddon, 2009; zedner, 2009). mailto:delint@uwindsor.ca� 40 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 bureaucrats, and experts have been challenged to respond to all sorts of “dangers” or “threats,” not just those thought to be catastrophic or existential. as andreas (2003) summarizes, the north american border environment, characterized by a “cyclical pattern of policy priorities” between security and economy, has been reset. he argues that the post-9/11 policy is predicated not on the “traditional concern of interstate military conflict, but rather terrorism,” and this creates “an awkward policy dilemma” because it requires “squeezing the arteries” of a highly integrated and interdependent economy “to filter out the bad from the good” (andreas, 2003, p. 19). but while there is little doubt that the border is being transformed and the change draws from this discourse of terrorism, this is not to accept that the difference represented in the predicate of “new dangers” is the prior, necessary, or sufficient “objective fact” of such a transformation. there has been a shift in emphasis that has made the border zone more than a sieve for tariffs or taxes on trade and a checkpoint for passports and visas. bordering practice is also less like an arterial squeeze (on mobility processes including the mobility of goods, migrants, tourists, financial resources) and more like an arterial hardening associated with the extension of the logics and practices of the frontier and the pioneering of new governance strategies within these frontier zones. newness or difference of risk and the necessity of precaution at times of existential uncertainty is how decision-making is framed by policymakers and practitioners. however, the predicate is a more continuous or durable feature of liberal governance: a constant need to innovate and enhance the sovereign agent in the capacity to act. the alternative view begins with the notion that the border is a marker of sovereign limit as this is expressed or shaped deploying the existential predicate (fear of the death of the sovereign). according to schmitt (1932/1979), deciding the exception is a capacity of a competent sovereign. in order to maintain the capacity to make competent decisions agents seek to advance opportunities where they can and with the tools and technologies that they are uniquely positioned to exploit. competence, being “absolute and independent of the correctness of its content” (p. 15), may not be derogated and audited for particular types of decisions. accordingly, leading agents and agencies maintain the scope of what they do by deploying, attributing, and utilizing tools, processes, and practices that conserve both imperative and discretion. the reading should not be that this is a response to the march of independent phenomena like a new catastrophic risk, a new kind of threat (global terrorism), a new insecurity, or a new way of thinking. on the contrary and to put it squarely in schmittian terms, “a philosophy of concrete life” will always be interested in the exception (p. 15), interested in avoiding the division of executive competency and in maintaining decision-making that is “absolute and independent of content.” sovereign exceptionalism and liberal risk management are combined to affect an unfolding of the border in new frontier zones. frontier zones function as technologies of governance that involve territorializing formations and knowledge functions in the sovereign aim of securing the exception. unlike those liberal processes that secure against “known” risks (typically the task of welfare professionals), securing the exception requires that conditions are established and maintained so that the exception may materialize in space and time (to designate indices of suspicion or “out of place or time events.” as such, frontier zones serve to frontier government 41 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 reproduce sovereign capacity (to decide the exception and mark the exclusion through material formations) and develop sovereign competence (as exclusive knowledge through the enfolding of information from various sources). once again, the enfolding of liberal risk rationalities (or precaution) into border processes may be understood in terms of border advancement initiatives that are aimed at reproducing sovereign significance as that which is given without being known, and therefore as managing “unknown risks” and “unspecified threats.” through risk rationalities, sovereignty both survives and surpasses the “correctness of contents.” reaffirming both its excess signifying power and capacity to decide the exception, risk affords sovereignty a new way of evaluating the border and managing its limits. this paper is organized as follows. first, we present a way of thinking about the site of the border as an ambiguous and bi-directional fold of sovereignty. next, we briefly describe the border as a site in which multiple agencies assemble as capacities and competencies in insertion and extraction activities, organized in terms of electronic manifests, frontier zones (of detection and ambiguity), and intelligenceproduced “lookouts.” this activity does indeed find “organization” by reference to the precautionary approach. we then examine three “cases” that illustrate that capacity and reach of border agencies in a “border assembly” is accomplished for the maintenance of a sovereign reservoir and against a concrete or substantive “quotient” of insecurity. the paper draws from interviews with officials in various private and public sector agencies about their role in “servicing the border”3 and policy and archival data related to bordering activities. this information was collected between 2003 and 2008. assembling ambiguous sovereignty governmental efforts have long presupposed the capacity or necessity to finesse asymmetrical advantages within fields of visibility and knowledge.4 as forcefully argued by schmitt (1932/1979), deciding the exception is a capacity that is attributed to the competent sovereign. if sovereignty has exception as its primary function or reference point asymmetrical visibilities are ubiquitous in surveillance for security and are often regarded as an everyday necessity in the face of crime, disorder, and other potential threats, and therefore seem less “political” in character. yet events (for example, normalized high crime rates [garland, 1996]) do not, in themselves, dictate particular responses; instead they rely on discursive strategies to turn them into security issues (neal, 2006). threat, danger, necessity, and security are central figures in the discourses of exceptionalism; they evoke a form of legitimacy that is deep and more profound, a pre-law for the norms associated with social life and civil society (neal, 2006, p. 39). because these figures are associated with the governance of exchange relations (trade) and economic life generally, the discourse of “risk” also gains legitimacy by lending to the practices of exception. 5 and acts on the organization of life through exceptional treatment, what is of concern is how the exception is constituted through the stratification of what can be said (through discourse or information) and what can be seen (the formation and organization of matter), and through their integration as qualified substance/subjects (such as authorizing authorities and making subjects and places receptive to interventions) (deleuze & guattari, 1987, p. 66-67). at the same 42 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 time, however, sovereignty is a function of limits; 6 it is constituted as a bounded enterprise expanding and contracting through the deployment of distinctions, established through limited relations to other sovereign projects (in order to promote prosperity or ward off anarchy-war). the “limited sovereign” enabled the social to emerge as a domain of government by means other than sovereign power (wickham, 2008), but it also establishes a margin where multiple forms of government (sovereign, surveillance/discipline, risk, and control7 distinctions between politics and security often appear less clear at the margins of liberal thought, most notably where liberalism rubs up against its externalities. at this limit, the idea of the liberal sovereign as a representation of a unified “general will” or as invested with the strength and capacity for deciding the exception comes up against those liberal instruments that champion process or decision-making over decisionism, or the view that in politics the final say is not subject to law or rule but is “wholly original to the power in question” (lazar, 2006, p. 257). the liberal margin discloses a tension between the norms (legal, social, and technical) associated with the everyday frame of life and the need for decisive action when the limits of the everyday have been surpassed (dean, 2007, p. 185). but it also establishes sites where the disparate logics of “risk” and “threat” form conjunctions. sovereign capacity or competence is most thick at the cross-section or borderlands or where the challenge to that capacity or competence provides an opportunity, a “nomos of the political space”, for sovereign spectacles or “rehearsals” (chappell, 2006). ) meet and intermingle. 8 within liberal domains the shaping and limiting of sovereignty has long bound knowledge (as actionable information) and power in a relationship of reciprocal presupposition (wickham, 2008). as dependent both on limits and the breaking of those limits, the liberal-sovereign establishes a knowledge protectorate through exceptions on collection and dissemination standards: it creates a value of “national security” knowledge by feeding it through the prism of intelligence and risk management, including the strategic appropriation of the protected knowledge of others. if sovereign power is about finessing limits within an absolute system of reference, then it need not refer to a single source or location, nor does the system of reference refer to an original distinction ([state of] nature-culture), though this is often (nostalgically) claimed as its legacy. sovereignty may be found in nonsubjective intentionality or in a multiplicity (network) of delegated authorities linked by the limits of their decision-making. in these marginal sites, the negative, subtractive powers of sovereignty come into contact with the more productive powers of contemporary society (see dean, 2007, p. 157). consequently, a fold is a margin or threshold where liberal and illiberal governance strategies intermingle; it can warp space-time, become more or less porous, more or less thick (through unfolding), and it can enfold or weave together mundane and other forms of government. the border is a site of the folding of liberal and illiberal government, the unfolding of frontier zones, and the enfolding of risk logics within the discourses of threat and (national) security. there are a number of instruments or methods that are deployed to effect the threshold function at such borderlands. they include the multiplication of forces, the reversal of accountabilities, and generally the monopolization of knowledge resources or politically actionable information. in the absence of counterforces, such breaching gambits lead inexorably to the normalization of exception or frontier government 43 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 the diffusion of border agency everywhere. unfolding the border . . . for decades literally, canada was very proud of maintaining a special relationship with the us, in terms of our trading relationships and in terms of how the border was operated. we considered ourselves to be exceptional. if the u.s. administration was pursuing security policy, the canada-us line was often times exempt from these. however, since 9/11, it has been very clear to us that the security policies that the us is pursuing would be applied to the canada-us land border and canadian citizens also. (senior canadian government transport official) the canada-us border spans 6,416 km between the atlantic and pacific and another 2,475 km between the pacific and arctic oceans. every minute, over $1 million of goods cross this boundary which total $500 billion in annual two-way trade. of this, 62% of canada-us trade, 80% of canadian imports and $1.5 billion worth of goods is hauled by an average frequency of 16,149 truck crossings per day (u.s. department of transportation [dot], 2008). of this share, the windsor-detroit international trade corridor is the busiest. in 2008, 9,651,136 vehicles, including 2,297,445 transport trucks (accounting for 39% of all truck trade between canada and the us) and 7,306,627 passenger vehicles travelled between canada and the us through the windsor-detroit corridor (dot, 2008). trade of this enormity has been a constant pressure on sovereign relations between canada and the us. as early as 1962, george grant predicted the death of canadian sovereignty with canada’s “social and economic blending into [the american] empire” (aiken, 2007, p. 182).9 however, even after the collapse of communism and the spiking of global trade in the 1990s and 2000s (including a progressive rise in economic integration between 1989 and 2002), social, political and economic forces have failed to pull canada and the us into a regional political union. despite the load on infrastructure with the adoption of just-in-time delivery by the automobile sector, including its reliance on a network of supply and assembly plants that spans the border, the transportation security regime was not a significant priority for american and canadian governments until after 9/11. for the us, as flynn (2003, p. 115) puts it, “episodic attention directed at the northern border was primarily centered on efforts to minimize any source of administrative friction that added to the cost and delay of legitimate commerce.” that suited canada, which saw the border with the united states as an opportunity to display deference to the united states through the non-imposition of impediments to american traders and tourists.10 for many american officials, the northern border has been too porous and its security administration too lax, not only post-9/11 where false rumours that the hijackers crossed contributed to delays in re-opening of border crossings, but 2 years previously when canadian officials failed to alert their american counterparts of the summarizing the pre-9/11 condition, szyliowicz (2004, p. 57) concluded that there was a lack of intergovernmental coordination [also referred to policy harmonization and institutionalization of governance, (biersteker, 2003, p. 154)], and a dominance of law enforcement and technology rather than security and intelligence under a systems or network approach. 44 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 movement across the border of the osama bin laden-linked algerian terrorist ahmed ressam. 11 although the policy environment included voices calling for a more straightforward militarization of the border or a common north american security perimeter, these options were deemed politically and institutionally unfeasible. instead, following earlier initiatives to improve interoperability between law enforcement,12 the current regime was built on proposals that developed out of a congressional commission report (u.s. commission on national security/21st century [hart–rudman report], 200113) that made agency coordination and information sharing the top shelf policy agenda.14 under the terms of the smart border and the emerging canada-us policy generally, multiple “compliance” steps were to be required from those wishing to make, or make good on, border crossings. those wishing to take themselves or their goods across the border would be evaluated on their readiness with information provided in advance and on the measures they took to ensure the chain of custody. in particular, the declaration called for sharing on advance passenger information, the development of secure identification cards with biometric identifiers, the reinstitution of nexus or equivalent (a fast lane for frequent crossers), a mechanism to transition commercial goods shipment from “load and go” to advance electronic manifests, a system of container seals and assurances, a system for sharing information on oceangoing container shipments arriving in either country, a plan to allow customs officers from either country to be posted in the other, and finally, a mechanism to bring intelligence instruments and agencies to bear on the targeting and discovery of suspicious cargo. the contours were set in october and november 2001, when negotiations between canadian deputy prime minister john manley and homeland security director tom ridge resulted in the signing of the canada-us smart border declaration (in december 2001). following the declaration, a 32-point implementation plan for “strengthening the border” began the process of policy harmonization in accordance with common security and trade agendas. while canada publicly promoted its security autonomy, plans for security interoperability followed the pattern of negotiations on economic integration: instead of institutional harmonization (a policy that could not be accepted in canada), interoperability was to be gained at a much lower register: information-sharing, intelligence co-production, and agency cross-fertilization. prodded by scathing reports on information sharing by a variety of public commissions and auditors (9/11 commission, auditor general, etc.) canadian and american officials developed border security instruments on the idea that the circulation of security information is prefatory to identity and sovereignty. secondly, while it was impossible to create governance, let alone law enforcement, customs or military agencies that followed the european perimeter model, the post-9/11 environment provided ample opportunity to innovate on the circulation of personnel within a common north american territory. thirdly, intelligence-sharing and risk prevention (with previously-elaborated neoliberal responsibilization caveats on trans-border commerce and tourism) offered a basis to the post-9/11 rhetoric. if “danger” and “enemies” were now also intrinsic to the flows of people and goods, they would be countered by a mix of law enforcement operations and national security instruments. furthermore, if risk prevention, intelligence-sharing, and the individual duty to frontier government 45 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 provide information in exchange for mobility rights provided a reasonable operating logic, so too did rootedness to constitutional protections on one hand and the distinction of sovereignty as a property of the nation-state on the other become less fungible. in the meantime differences could be referenced by display on uniform insignia as “fusion teams” were struck cross-nationally and cross-sectorally. these measures enfold private producers and carriers into new “secure” relations under a regime of advance information delivery. enfolding the flow as noted by aradau and van munster (2009, p. 10), there is a confluence of thinking among academic experts spanning international relations and criminology, and policymakers spanning domestic and foreign portfolios, that has pushed “catastrophic imaginaries” and attached these to “precautionary risk,” which in turn has brought forward the institutionalization of exception in liberal states. the precautionary element configures and launches risk from the vaulted position of the existential claim (avoiding catastrophe). this “radical contingency of the future” “brings the exceptional within governmental processes.”15 the border is comprised of an array of agencies precautionary risk management, consequently, is the installation of a “politics of zero risks based on imaginations of worst-case scenarios” (p. 11). 16 that produce intelligence (or actionable political knowledge) in the maintenance or enhancement of sovereign competence and capacity. border agencies and agents seek to order and make interoperable information that is actionable and do so deploying the discursive array of risk and precaution. in this section, we review precautionary programs and also the division of the border by risk prevention into zones of inspection and detection. fronting precaution under the previous “load and go” regime, commerce and travel between canada and the us was understood in the context of the “open” and “undefended” border. inspections were completed on-site without advance information and secondary inspections did not sort and differentiate business and pleasure travel prior to arrival. it permitted a practice “whereby drivers could simply load, pick up their paperwork, and show up at the border unannounced” (transport canada, 2005). in the domain of marine security and container security prior to december 2, 2002, the us only required that a manifest be on board the vessel. today, border agencies have been reconfigured through precautionary programs. canada-us border security rules require that carriers submit their “paper work” in advance of arriving at the border. this is achieved through a number of complementary initiatives. under the advanced electronic presentation of cargo information (aepci) of the u.s. trade act, pre-arrival information has become mandatory (i.e., one hour) before trucks arrive17 at the u.s. border.18 the key process of pre-arrival information acquisition and analysis is paps (selectivity pre-arrival processing system). paps is a u.s. customs and border protection (cbp) border program that utilizes electronic information and barcode technology to expedite the release of commercial 46 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 shipments. it provides importers or shippers a module to electronically transmit summary data elements to the cbp via customs brokers. in addition, under the 24 hour advance vessel manifest rule of the customs trade partnership against terrorism (c-tpat), detailed manifests are required to be provided to u.s. customs 24 hours before loading at a foreign port. the container security initiative, developed shortly after 9/11, requires pre-screening of high risk containers before they are loaded and subjecting containers to gamma rays and x-rays).19 the canadian counterpart to aepci is the advance commercial information (aci) program and emanifest. 20 according to cbsa policy documents, aci is a risk management process coupled with “tools to identify threats to our health, safety, and security prior to the arrival of cargo and conveyances in canada.”21 the emanifest is an electronic transmission of advance cargo and conveyance information from carriers and advance secondary data from freight forwarders and importers (or their brokers) for all highway and rail shipments. under emanifest rules, information (formerly “paperwork”) must arrive at the border in advance of persons and matter. its effect is that the border process is doubly encoded and stratified. 22 the cbsa has also developed the partners in protection (pip) program. this aims to enlist “the cooperation of private industry to enhance border and trade chain security, combat organized crime and terrorism, and help detect and prevent contraband smuggling” (canada border services agency [cbsa], 2009b). initially developed in 1995 with the purpose of “promoting business awareness and compliance with customs regulations,” the program shifted focus after the events of september 11, 2001, to the supply chain, urging members “to improve their physical, infrastructure, and procedural security” (cbsa, 2009b). since 2002, enrolment in pip is a prerequisite to participate in fast and secure trade (fast), a joint initiative between the cbsa and u.s. customs and border protection that enhances border and supply chain security while expediting legitimate trade across the canada-u.s. border. and as agreed in the smart border declaration, fast programs, ostensibly provide expedited border clearances for preapproved importers, carriers, and drivers (cbsa, 2009b).23 again, participation in pip/fast requires private producers and carriers to supply cbsa with information in the form of a “security profile” every three years. this is to provide the specific “security measures” that they and members of their international supply chain have undertaken. the information obtained by the profile is used to determine their eligibility for membership in pip. security measures are defined as “physical objects, actions, procedures, processes and policies employed as precautions against theft, espionage, sabotage etc.”(cbsa, 2009b) canada has advance notification for air and rail cargo, and has a similar precautionary program for marine security called the prior arrival information system (pais) as well as a bilateral canada-us program called the joint vessel inspection team program (jvit). these programs, according to a senior marine transport officer, require “any ship 96 hours outside of canadian waters” to supply information (such as the goods, the crew, the last 10 ports of call) to the central canadian coast guard stations. according to a senior officer, “we have an extensive overseas network where we have people actually doing screening of good and persons before they come to canada.” frontier government 47 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 division by risk precautionary programs extend the time and space of the border and, thereby, of exceptionalism into the routine of everyday or quotidian practices. weighted by this ballast—a “radical contingency of the future”—liberties or mobility choices must be prescreened and agents and agencies vetted in pre-crime and threat evaluations. in addition to precaution, the space-time of the border is extended through risk divisions in zones of detection and inspection. for instance, not only is canadian border security defined in terms of risk targets, many frontline border agents are referred to as “targeters.”24 targets, and also, it would seem, targeters, are evaluated in terms of hit/miss ratios. preliminary or precautionary systems process data and divide targeting by risk level, through programs like titan™.25 a senior official of cbsa characterized their risk assessment as follows: while the national risk assessment centre (nrac) reviews data for threats to national security (e.g. radioactive materials) regional targeters focus on contraband and other threats. targeters divide risk spatially and temporally. on every shipment, a risk assessment is done on every component of the shipment itself, including; the driver; the importer, which is different sometimes than the actual carrier; the company; the exporter; where it’s coming from; the type of goods that are being transported; the routing. every component is taken into consideration in assessing the risk of the shipment coming in. it is also profiled and cross-checked with other databases. 26 the emanifest system is also accounted for using risk assessment. according to a senior official, when fully implemented, emanifest . . . will take into account: your company history against your past; similar companies importing the same goods; your transportation company and if your transportation company has been involved in incidents with other companies. it will be much more linked and holistic in its analysis and then there will be some kind of scoring and anything over 70 out of 100 gets examined, anything between 50 and 70 gets recommended. zones of detection and inspection the border is enfolded or doubled up through data streams that may be referred to as zones of detection and inspection. zones of detection are inserted27 primary inspection is a means of matching manifests to the “material double” of cargo, truck and driver. it is a check that paperwork related to the material and drivers are in order. it involves a set of screening operations (or looking for indicators) according to a simple binary operation where the presence of indicators variously to stream, disaggregate, and recombine matter and information, applying spatial and temporal ordering regimens. they encompass zones d’attentes, loading zones, and transit zones and have evolved from the template of primary and secondary inspection. 48 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 (some “hard” or non-discretionary, some “soft” and discretionary) will essentially indicate “fail” and where the decision is made to make a referral to secondary inspection. with respect to those “soft” indicators, officers have a great deal of discretion and, according to one official, “officer selections” or “cold hit referrals” from their position in primary inspection booths remains an important zone of detection. we continue to have success with officer selections based on human observation, what we call non-verbal indicators; nervousness; sweaty; lack of eye contact. we continue to have success with dialogue and “this doesn’t look right.” we count on the border officer sitting on a needle in a haystack. that’s how some of our bigger investigations get underway, based on some cold hit, chance encounter. sometimes it’s as simple as a phone number that you find in a car somewhere. that’s relevant, because you can check that number against other criminal groups. sometimes these groups are fairly loosely put together and they don’t even know themselves if they are overlapping. that’s the only way for you to make a link. secondary inspection, also called “enforcement actions,” results from primary inspection referrals and entail further interviews and/or searches, both physical and informational. physically, travellers, drivers, vehicles and cargo may be subject to comprehensive searches using a variety of scanning technology.28 inspection includes non-routine indices. in other words, the information collection includes passive and active knowledge production. innovation on the collection parameters is understood as active production. the cbsa, for example, engages in random searches known as “compliance surveys.” according to an official in the agency, informationally, secondary operations access more data-bases such as interpol and american and canadian criminal records. in addition, they act as screens for further data insertions: “as well, our agency has a lookout sharing initiative where we share lookouts with homeland security and they share their lookouts with us” (senior officer interview). what we do periodically is compliance surveys, where we randomly select, with no cause, shipments for examination. from that we derive a non-compliance ratio. we then test that against what we discover in our normal operations, and then we know how far off we are. that’s a more legitimate test than the “secret shopper events;” these are just contrived and mostly they are probably for the press. they are not really a statistically valid way of testing compliance. because we are measured against the unknown; no one knows how many people we don’t know about. in the commercial environment compliance surveys carried out through random samples adjust the parameters: “we can adjust the random referral rate; our system can generate a system hit so that one in every hundred vehicles be referred [to secondary inspection].” all vehicles are potential subjects of random secondary inspections, including fast shippers and nexus travellers. 29 indeed, contrary to the expectation of nexus travellers, it is systems testing that is prioritized: frontier government 49 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 we probably over-sample our trusted shipper programs because we are a little paranoid about saying this is a trusted traveller. so if you have a nexus card, chances are you are going to be examined more often. in trying to maintain such a high integrity of those programs, the end result is that they don’t actually provide the convenience level. while random examinations are commonplace in both the commercial and traveller (or non-freight) environments, there are occasions where all cars are examined. in a traveller’s environment we do some random sampling, but we also do stints where we try to examine everyone in a certain period . . . . because it gives you a really good picture of threat for a certain date and time. so, on a friday night, if you examined everyone you got over an hour, it will give you a pretty good picture of what your non-compliance is on a typical friday night. the same senior official characterizes the risk and identifies its primary sources: the highest risk of “non-compliance,” as we call it, is with the driver. a single guy, who crosses the border three times a day for [company x] and brings something like auto parts across very routinely, might decide he needs to buy his christmas booze supply, and so he picks up a case of whiskey or whatever. we do find that the drivers are a higher risk than the importers, exporters, or corporate entities . . . . we find a higher noncompliance with certain source countries; we find certain source countries have a very high risk for very high-risk commodities, like drugs and weapons. to summarize, zones of detection are deployed in the service of at least three objectives. first, they are a means of enfolding or re-ordering the flow of material and data for the purposes of discovering and seizing contraband or identifying targets. second, they are a means of evaluating the effectiveness of that “primary” purpose or the relationship between “hits” and “misses.” finally, they are deployed to push out a competent sovereign capacity, including its manifestation as unpredictable action on action. lookouts and bulletins a “watch-for,” “target” or “lookout” refers to the “identification of a person or good to be intercepted based on pre-arrival information” (cbsa, 2008). the interception is the direction to secondary processing and the lookout also stipulates the “level of examination that may be warranted.”30 in most cases the lookout is an electronic entry that resides within a database that directs that a person, vehicle, or shipment of goods is to be held or otherwise further processed at a port of entry. however, the basis of the entry is various. lookout information the cbsa receives comes from law enforcement and intelligence agencies (as well as transport canada) and is generally received in the form of an electronic transfer. it includes but is not limited to suspicions that infractions have been made or are taking place with respect to 50 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 customs, immigration, currency, drugs, and national security laws or regulations. 31 as we noted, lookouts are passed on to border agents at primary and secondary inspection booths and are shared with american counterparts in homeland security in accordance with foreign data-sharing rules and regulations.32 in addition, “lookout indicators” (typically based on the modus operandi of successful hits), provide the logic for “cold hit referrals.” indicators include behavioural cues. a senior official describes how enforcement actions can be transformed into lookouts: let’s say the border officer gets a “cold hit” with no intelligence information [and] we discovered some contraband or some kind of violation. [the officer] can say, based on this: “i think we should look at shipments that have these commonalities.” so an intelligence official can say; “that’s a good idea” and takes the information and creates a lookout based on what the border officer discovered. lookouts are passed to other line officers in the form of intelligence bulletins. as one senior officer stated, “any time there is an enforcement action in our region, we broadcast that to all the other officers to let them know what was found how it was found, what were the indicators. every week we have bulletins that go out.” intelligence bulletins are specific tools that line officers both contribute to and use to make enforcement decisions. the practice is also noted as a driver of (illegal) innovations: once we discover a pattern or mo [i.e., modus operandi method of operating] and we pick off a few shipments, we can almost count on putting ourselves out of business in that particular line of inquiry. they [the perpetrators] figure it out just as fast as we do, that we know enough and that this [particular practice] becomes very dangerous. they have real time information that says: “ok, that’s not working too good anymore, so we need to change that.” and they do. so, i think we drive the change. so long as we don’t discover a particular mo, it will be used, since there is no loss involved. in fact, it is the loss that drives them to become more creative. in this respect, information collection and knowledge production is more or less proactive. intelligence bulletins provide cbsa line officers with information on offence patterns typically used to thwart border regulations. the information is generated and generalized from prior enforcement practices in other zones of detection of the cbsa. all government departments take data from the collected pool. cbsa may say: “what’s the cargo? who is on board?” manifest information is vetted through intelligence liaisons stationed in the marine security operation centers (msocs), including representatives from transport canada, the department of national defence (dnd), rcmp, and other agencies. acting alongside canadian officials at the msocs are american officials that canada has signed bilateral agreements with. a senior official explains this pushing out of the border: frontier government 51 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 what we have in place, in various loading ports around the world, is officers of canada border services agency. for instance, there’s one in south africa, in australia…. in places where containers are loaded for destination to canada, we get that information prior to loading and the officer there will actually screen shipments and say which should or shouldn’t go on, and which, when they are on, are high risk. so, when they arrive, we are going to be looking at them. as we have said, the border is a sovereign fold or a site in which liberal and illiberal practices converge. lookouts are not only a means of re-assembling information and material flows at a given point. they are also a means of inserting or asserting a connection between material and informational flows. the insertion or assertion is accomplished all over the network of agencies in the border security assembly. trolling and tolling is carried out in order to differentiate and prime a target and to provide a preliminary determination of the nature, authorities, and coordination of the countermeasures to the (risk or threat) values.33 at first blush by the accounts of the practitioners themselves, we find confirmation that the principle of precaution is what connects and drives the pushing out of the border. the detection events are driven by the benchmarking of the “dark figure” of non-compliance, the risk sorting and profiling of the temporal environment of the border, and the targeting of high risk mobilities. however, it is also apparent that there are multiple authorities under which collection, registration, and positive insertions are enacted, or to put it in other words, where liberal and illiberal practices are enfolded. these authorities traverse the whole panoply of mandates from the particular and quotidian (e.g. proper refrigeration and packaging, licensing and registration of vehicles) to the existential (the terrorist threat to “national security”). the effect of this production of a zone of detection is also the pushing out of a “zone of ambiguity” 34 or the normalization of a condition in which it is the authorities but not their targets that may or must have a sufficient reservoir of “unknown unknowns.”35 advancing the frontier: assembling authorities the assemblage of border security agencies project a set of priorities, protocols, and practices that affirm both the ambiguity of their purpose and the efficiency of their method.36 expansion follows as other agents or “petty sovereigns” seek the application of a new “governance normal” in arrangements or procedures in novel sites or settings, marking outposts farther from the traditional centre or home base (asserting the transcendence of both risks/threats and the practices used to combat them). given that the state of security is already idealized and prioritized as a means of policy distinguished from, for example, the state of justice (brodeur & shearing, 2005), these apparently contradictory themes find justification, first, in the need to protect actionable knowledge about security, (in intelligence parlance, in maintaining disclosures that are strategic and information that is productive through strict control) and second, in the need to protect the capacity or competence (including the possibility of decisions against the grain) of the sovereign as a security knower. sovereign competency or capacity is expressed by making exceptions at points of contestation. 52 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 expansion is consolidated through further claims to expediency, necessity, value, and mission. however, the harmonization or interoperability of linked agencies (a “security continuum” as per neal, 2009, p. 252) according to an extant ideology or policy discourse follows, but that objective is suspended, dodged, or avoided wherever it draws too near to boxing in the sovereign. ultimately, it is the capacity of sovereignty, the process of security (zedner, 2009) and not the explicit content or ends of a re-clarified sovereign-subject relation that may stand for what harmonizes the assemblage. in sum, the border security assemblage is justified action on action on the basis of the assertion and the detection of out of place or time occurrences, the innovative replication of processes (redundant risk avoidance), and the conversion of common information sources into exclusive knowledge resources. the “handshake” between agencies and the population (as information sources) enables the extrapolation of the assembly and the forging of the new governance normal. expansion is checked through observance of best practices and peer evaluation, which also serves to aid distribution of resources within the assembly. it is also checked through the status of the agency in the information chain and the strategic resources to which the agency has differential access. finally, it is checked by pushback against the adoption of the new practices by extant traditional interests and agents (traditional political power) and retrenchment of rights belonging to traditional liberal subjectivity. avoidance of pushback is essential because successful blockage of an initiative somewhere on the frontier of the assembly may provide countering interests and institutions with a strategy to take against the assembly at other outposts as well as assisting their attempt to reconfigure the resistance to attract greater popular and political support. however, while the replication of arrangements, procedures and protocols into institutional domains is pushed forward to achieve sovereign capacity and competence, there is also a measure of “draw back.” this is because the successful subordination of all issues of social or public policy as security matters (a process called “securitization” – see e.g. neal, 2006, p. 33) would lead to a condition in which security and securitization would be evacuated of meaning (nothing left to distinguish targets, no object or condition of security). what would be the incentive to securitize where there is no object or process (“security” is known as process, see zedner, 2009), nothing left to register, or no “difference with a difference” left to convert? on the contrary, it is important that fears and dangers are continuously (and deliberately) revivified and countermeasures are branded as “new” and “different” and also that structural, procedural, and administrative gaps remain as an objectlesson: securitization will never be complete, but there must nonetheless be a marching on toward completion. political and individual rights claimed by citizens in constitutional democracies certainly present an obstacle, but they also represent a necessary counterweight without which the forces of securitization would lack a teleology or common purpose. example 1: isscs as with other components of the assembly, the cbsa pushes out to position itself as the leading edge and to overcome resistances of traditional institutions. cbsa is frontier government 53 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 positioned to do this perhaps like no other agency because it is already a product of previous expansionary gambits. in particular, it assumes a dual role of police agency and customs and border control agency, with the doubling up of the powers of each of these distinct roles. it has powers of arrest and warrant issuance, the power to detain and operate detention centres, and expansive powers of search and seizure. as one senior cbsa official stated, “we can search randomly; we can search without probable cause; we can search without warrants.” in general, the cbsa has appropriated the coercive authority of a rights-based regime but has avoided being subject to its typical stipulations and accountabilities. the capacity to initiate investigations because things do not appear to “look right” becomes a powerful tool for managing risks or non-compliance. line officers have access to databases that enable them to risk assess someone upon arrival. according to a senior officer, “the officer has the ability to initiate a name query, as well, the licence plates are captured. we rely on officers in the primary line to screen those licence plates and screen the travellers by name through the systems that we have.” an illustration of how these powers have been utilized to advance the frontier as a “zone of ambiguity” is provided in the case monitoring that cbsa was empowered to do of individuals subject to security certificates, or isscs. after the security certificate procedure was declared unconstitutional by the supreme court in february 2007, the cbsa was charged to oversee the court-imposed restrictions of house arrest on four issc men released from prison, including gps monitoring by electronic bracelet, taps on their phones, monitoring of all incoming and outgoing communications, cctv monitoring outside their houses, random searches and seizures by government agents, and trips outside the house (allowed only with cbsa escorts). the cbsa handled this role by creating a tripwire for a wider regime of out of place or time occurrences. for example, it requires that a trip to the grocery store by the arrestee be preceded by notice 72 hours before the event. it also produced a manual for use by cbsa officers, “security certificate case monitoring,” which pushes the displacement of the rights-based regime. one of the subheadings reads: “there is no zero risk situation.” it defines risk broadly as “the chance that something bad will occur.” it instructs officers to be “on the lookout” for any behaviour or action that might constitute “a threat to national security” and asks officers to assess whether “the surrounding area pose(s) a risk to national security in any way.” the purpose of the manual is clear: it is intended to discipline cbsa officers to a perspective that there is widespread opportunity for action in the expanded frontier. the cbsa also innovated on the replication of security processes. the issc supervisors are those persons who have been “responsibilized” to vouch for the issc. in the diametric opposite of the legal protection against forcing inculpatory spousal testimony, family members become “supervisors” whose duty to the security regime is so onerous that one of the wives asked that her husband be returned to prison in order to rescue her children the intensive and extensive interference with the most basic quotidian events. finally, the cbsa innovated on the collection or reach of the assembly by producing exclusive knowledge resources. for example, the cbsa conducts “integrity checks” on issc “supervisors”. the cbsa manual also recommends that officers extend the surveillance beyond the isscs to their “associates” and that it use 54 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 the regime to find “additional targets.” the manual states that “even when a breach of condition is not apparent, the information may be beneficial for intelligence purposes.” also: “where possible, monitoring officers should attempt to gather intelligence for use by headquarters, the regions and other government departments.” example 2: shiprider, community watch while bringing multiple authorities to bear under one program is one gambit in advancing and maintaining sovereign capacity and competence, another is the bringing together of multiple agencies under a single task, project, or objective. a leading example of this is are integrated border enforcement teams (ibets), comprised of five partner agencies, cbsa, rcmp, u.s. ice (immigration and customs enforcement), u.s. coast guard, and u.s. border patrol. ibets are “force multipliers.” because cbsa has customs authorities of search and seizure (warrantless searches) that the rcmp does not enjoy, and the rcmp has some authorities (specifically in their range beyond the border) that do not belong to the cbsa, a team of both of these acting as one on out of place or time occurrences is far superior to each agency acting singly. this multiplication of authorities is even more powerful when it involves transnational partnerships and intelligence linkages. with respect to transnational partnerships, an innovation that is awaiting a full rollout is transborder law enforcement authority. in 2007, a two month pilot program called shiprider gave canadian law enforcement officers the authority to make arrests in u.s. territory and u.s. law enforcement officers the authority to make arrests in canada. in october, 2007, on the st. lawrence river, a boat carrying a u.s. coast guard officer and an rcmp officer apprehended a vessel heading toward canadian waters and seized 47 kg of marijuana and made arrests of the smugglers. (kieserman, 2008) with respect to intelligence, the ibets overcome some of the restrictions on information flows that are established to prevent “fishing expeditions” because they each are in attendance at the occurrence that one of the agencies has the authority to investigate. in addition, the ibets are connected through joint intelligence groups (jigs) with all the significant intelligence and law enforcement agencies with whom they meet regularly to share information and intelligence. thirdly, beginning in the 1990s and aided with a hugely expanded intelligence complement of about 800 officers (shultz, 2009, p. 196) and a brochure that informs residents of the signs of actionable activities, ibet agents generate a “community watch” program or a web of local contacts and sources that vastly multiplies each conduit in a network of watchers and listeners. in a different variation of community watch, a recent plank in the northern border project, a border security initiative of u.s. homeland security and the secure border initiative, involves the deployment of surveillance towers (including day and night cameras, radar, and unattended ground sensors) along a 60 km long stretch of the st. clair and upper niagara rivers on the canada-us border, as well as the deployment of a 18 m long helium surveillance balloon, with attached high resolution camera, owned by the sierra nevada corporation (technology which it hopes to sell to homeland security), over the border area near sarnia, canada. the objective of the frontier government 55 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 project is to “prevent illegal entry of persons, materials, and terrorists into the united states,” according to u.s. customs and border protection, as well as to “demonstrate the integration of air, land, and marine capabilities into a common operating picture, and deploy proven surveillance capabilities along selected areas of the northern border” (2009). as a way to push back against what is considered by some an intrusive form of governance, residents of the community of sarnia protested the deployment of the surveillance balloon in a “moon the balloon” event held on august 15, 2009 (the observer, 2009; the canadian press, 2009). an additional illustration of agency multiplication and expansion of the frontier is provided in an event that took place in the winter of 2008 when one of the authors was approached while walking his dog by two police from the windsor-detroit ibet at colchester harbour on lake erie in south-western ontario. an unmarked suv drove into the parking lot of the marina and an ontario provincial police and rcmp officer emerged from the vehicle. the rcmp officer approached the author introducing himself as part of the ibets program, asking if the author knew anything about it, confirming that the author is a resident of the community (walking his dog), and then stating that he was interested in any unusual behaviour or people frequenting the marina. the rcmp officer asked to take the author’s name to which the author asked if that was really necessary, to which the rcmp officer replied that it was, to confirm that the author had no outstanding warrants. the author queried this, asking if this was not a matter for local police from which also the initiative to follow up on warrants might stem, to which the rcmp officer replied that the rcmp has jurisdiction throughout canada and could follow up on warrants in conjunction with the local police. the author’s name was provided after which the officer asked for date of birth. at this point the author asked again how this was necessary and assured the officer that no warrants were outstanding. the officer allowed the author not to provide the date of birth. the rcmp officer provided the author with his business card. once again, we can see that the assembly is being advanced through forays or interstice approaches that both discover and build capacity to recover out of place or time events. a community resident walking his dog is a potential informant, a public relations opportunity, and in the displacement of the law enforcement standard of search and seizure by the border standard, a means to assert, piecemeal, the rightsbased regime as the “new normal.” note how this is accomplished by discrete, volitional actions on the part of agents exercising discretion in an ambiguous terrain crossed by multiple agencies. the processes that are being replicated or innovated on here stand at the very heart of liberal governance and the sovereignty of the liberal subject. part of what the author was being asked to do was report on out of place or time occurrences where what constituted “unusual” was something that the interviewee him or herself was being exploited to guess at according to his or her own viewpoint. this is an extension of “eyes and ears” not quite through responsibilization (as the issc family members are responsibilized), but through the assertion of national security/border security authority farther down the supply or information chain to the source in ambiguous, unknown “population,” information, or risky data points. lastly, common information sources are being converted into exclusive knowledge resources. it is noteworthy in this context that the rcmp considers 56 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 canada a leader in the field of human intelligence and the rcmp itself is launching a significant drive to build “community intelligence” on the assumption that there is an extraordinary law enforcement capacity that may be tapped to feed the national security knowledge coffers. example 3: department of foreign affairs and international trade/justice department our final example brings us back to regime substitution. ericson (2007) hypothesized that neoliberal politics is increasingly possessed with security, uncertainty, and innovating systems to manage risks. countering uncertainties and risks results in the exchange of the rule of law—regulations that follow or are predicated on constitutional principles and protections—for “counter-laws”—laws that seek to criminalize behaviour and explicitly undermine conventional legal practices (p. 24-25). we have suggested that the sequence: danger/fear  precautionary measures + risk assessment  threat aversion is found in practices pursued by an assembly of agencies and that the effect is a new governance normal. that new normal makes carriers and travellers responsible for the duties of risk prevention as it spreads a precautionary ethic throughout the frontier, shunting aside the duties to protect both juridical subjects and the rule of law. in the expansion of the frontier as a zone of ambiguity, we have concentrated on mechanisms that may be defined as more instrumental than symbolic, but some of the work to normalize a radical shift from the supremacy of constitutional law (enfolding it in the border logos) is undertaken directly as a matter of public policy, democratically debated and resolved.37 canadian citizen abousfian abdelrazik travelled to sudan to visit his ill mother in 2003 and was arrested upon arrival on a request by the canadian government which provided information to the sudanese that suggested links to al-qaeda. he was imprisoned twice for long periods and tortured, and according to a standard operating procedure that also ensnared maher arar, abdullah almalki, ahmed el maati, and muayyed nureddin interrogations by the sudanese were based on questions fed to them by canadian and/or american intelligence agencies. in 2004, he was released by the sudanese but was unable to return to canada or leave the canadian embassy in sudan because his name appeared on the united nations security council’s 1267 no-fly list. the canadian government wrote to the un security council in december 2007 to request that his name be removed, following the threat assessment of the canadian security intelligence service (csis) and the rcmp (likely from information gained through torture) that cleared abdelrazik, finding that there was no reason for him to be on it. however, also in a move similar to the pattern in arar, the us objected to his removal. given this, abdelrazik needed an “emergency passport.” the canadian government provided assurances that if abdelrazik was able to obtain a confirmed flight reservation it would provide that passport. however, once mr. abdelrazik did obtain this flight reservation the minister of foreign affairs in april 2009 refused a passport under section 10.1 of the canada passport order, which states that “the minister may refuse or revoke a passport if the minister is of the opinion that such frontier government 57 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 action is necessary for the national security of canada or another country.” the department of justice filed a claim in federal court stating that the 1267 un travel ban “prohibits other states” from allowing anyone passage through its airspace. the claim also added: “the requested remedy of repatriation would interfere in matters of crown prerogative, foreign affairs and high policy and risks putting canada in breach of its international obligations” (koring, 2009). in fact, the blacklist is easily overcome with a routine exemption. abdelrazik began his journey home on the 30th day after a ruling of a federal court judge ruling that the canadian government was in breach of abdelrazik’s charter rights and had a positive duty to repatriate him. 38 we have been arguing that the border security assembly is justified action on action on the basis of the discovery of out of place or time occurrences, the innovative replication of processes (redundant risk avoidance), and the conversion of common information sources into exclusive knowledge resources. in this example we see how both the vertical and horizontal relations of the assembly are finessed for these discoveries, innovations, and exploitations. discovery slips between national and transnational agencies (un, us), whose findings may very well align with the preferences of the national agencies. discovery also slips vertically between the national bodies (foreign affairs, csis, rcmp), such that the locus of decisionmaking remains ambiguous. because the locus is ambiguous or shifty, innovation is a property that also may shift between “lead” agencies. of course, part of this shiftiness pertains to the movement of information from common sources into exclusive resources. here, there was an implicit claim by foreign affairs and international trade canada (dfait) that “trumped” a security clearance based on information that is ostensibly more exclusive than that of csis or the rcmp. in this case, the “old normal,” the rule of law as interpreted through the canadian charter of rights of freedoms and the federal judiciary, was able to assert pushback, a consequence, if it holds, that clarifies the boundary in just the way that assembly agents may have wished to avoid. nonetheless, the gambit an effort to assert decision-making that is “absolute and independent of content.” here it can be added that intelligence serves as the sine qua non of that sovereign capacity of government. discussion the cross-border detection/inspection regime, consisting of instruments for insertion and subtraction, is predicated on the necessity of the sovereign exercise, but its applications do not cease with the exercise of sovereign power. it remains the case that, under the auspices of “the border,” rights are converted into authorities, mobilities into territorialities, and ambiguities into certainties. however, as an instrument of conversion, the border is a zone of exception that has, with the sovereign itself, been retemporalized, reterritorialized, and reauthoritized. mobility, as purposive action or enterprise across space, both challenges and reconstitutes the territorial fix, dominion, or sovereign utility. reviewed from the point of view of effects, the border instrument codes flows of information and inserts positive and negative attributions. zones of detection are insertion points that stratify the flow of whatever from wherever. the unfolded border enables the conversion of “raw data” (data elements) into advanced signals for intelligence operations. discrete data elements are then traced through the 58 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 intelligence grid in order to code them, that is, to establish structural couplings and see if they make a difference.39 it is in the space-time of intelligence operations that signals are combined into the intelligence objects called “lookouts.” lookouts serve as indices of risk and direct the attention to codes in the flow. they produce distinctions and differentially organize and order matter and information to indicate and extract contraband from the flow. contraband this process takes time without taking time away from the material flow because it occurs within the expanded frontier of intelligence operations. signals that are not received within the temporal security horizon or in the appropriate condition, result in exclusions, or “turn backs” at the border. stratifying matter and information thus enables the conditions for intelligent controls to be developed alongside material or visibility controls. 40 in this respect, the border involves the “folding” of liberal governance. the folding consists in the convergence of two planar flows, one material, one informational, and the establishment of conjunctions of the stacked or stratified flows (of what can be seen and what can be said). the surface of the material plane comprises observable dimensions and representations and what is made visible through surveillance machines, inspection protocols, and the various orchestrations of the spectacles of liberal rule, including juridical relations, observance of rights, etc. the surface of the bottom plane comprises information that moves through a subterranean network of agencies and comprises the security intelligence substrate of the frontier assembly. information tracks toward the border ahead of the matter flows of both people and goods where it is captured, sorted and coded, tagged with caveats, and pushed to agencies throughout the frontier. the conjunction of flows serves as the measure of the security-value of the assembly and of its convergent governance strategies. is indicated through response to questions, through intelligent lookouts, and through secondary searches in the zones of detection through the organization of visibility and the order of words. contraband is the negative encoded object or that which is subject to the ban or the exclusionary decision. it provides a structure to the relation of the ban and is a measure of both the knowledge competency and capacity of the sovereign. lookouts encode an excess signification for the sovereign decision and its continued rehearsal albeit in a capacity limited by the risk-managed frame. while unfolded in the expanded spatial temporal frontier, the border prevents the piling up of matter and information but facilitates the piling up of power-relations (sovereign, disciplinary, and risk-based). conclusion for many decades, the canada-us border has inserted itself and subtracted its due from the flow of coded goods in motion in terms of tariffs and duties.41 tariff extraction, as a form of negative power governing the border, has been supplemented by a new emphasis on contraband.42 the primary aim has undergone a transformation from a concern with the extraction of tariffs based on the value of goods to the recording of actionable differences based on the (threat/risk) value of contraband. in this regard, the border is a mechanism for capture and insertion or negative and positive power. in particular, it provides a set of tools for the sovereign capture or enabling of capital flows so that they may be subject to tariff, redirection, frontier government 59 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 or requalification and for the capture of and insertion into labour flows similarly in the negation and production or management of labour pools. however, the contemporary border produces a margin of uncertainty (danger/risk) and a site for sovereign multiplications. rendered not in terms of traditional tariffs or duties subtracted by a singular sovereign competence and capacity, but in terms of the mobile and multiple array of decision-makers, the border mechanism also remains a policing capacity, or a means of protecting or asserting sovereignty for its own sake. in this regard, the border stands in for the idea of liberal rule as rehearsal of or on limits (chappell, 2006; rose, 2007). the border as a contact point or insertion of the liberal enterprise and rule is a productive enterprise. it affords exceptional practices of insertion, registration, and extraction. it affords the uptake of information that then becomes the “content” of exclusive sovereign knowledge advantages. it is a site for selective feedback, where selective representative “petty spectacles” may be launched to “prove” the mode of contact and maintain it for the mode of government that is presumptively exercised (liberal democratic), as for instance in “border closures” or “contraband displays.” it is exploited to prove the capacity of the sovereign to know and to act. there is tension in the use of the border in these means and ends. on the one hand, there is an expansion of frontier processes, practices, and mentalities to an expanding array of sites. as we have seen, information tolls are pushed out. bordering-at-adistance means that security governing agencies are enlisted to private sector partners in the development and maintenance of spatially diverse and reterritorialized border zones located throughout the supply chain. private “partners” do more of the implementation of border security43 and pay an increasing financial and informationtoll through their participation in cbsa security profiles.44 on the other hand, there is the formation of parallel information norms. the conjunction of security surveillance and security narratives form the basis for the intelligent controls and precautionary aims associated with these border efforts. the assembly of border security agencies and the decision-making practices that unite them may be understood in terms of “making counter-law” (levi, 2009) in a response to unease, catastrophic uncertainties, or a breakdown in the logic of compensation. however, we have advanced an alternative reading. we find the predicate in the clash of economy and sovereignty, specifically in the demand for both prediction and uncertainty, or in the ambiguity that is essential in the relationship (aka liberal politics) between the flow of sovereign and commercial enterprise. thus quotidian decision-making involves the allocation of common and exclusive knowledge about security, the contest over the attribution of out of place or time occurrences, and the development of practices in the constant attempt to produce a “new normal.” production zones of suppliers, of parts and other finished products are encompassed and surveyed into increasingly fortressed zones (with newly developed conditions of visibility and organizations of matter). in exchange for coding and controlling the flow of people and goods through their facilities, companies are promised expedited access across nation-state boundaries and to world markets. ambiguity and access are key: ambiguity inasmuch as there is a contest over decision-making authority; access inasmuch as reconfiguring frontier government into “a new normal” requires enabling agencies and agents to broker new arrangements: border security, the “war on drugs” and similar policy initiatives may 60 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 be understood as a moving intermediate target. the object is not immunization against risks or harms, be they from illegal goods or persons. the object is the continual re-tooling of quotidian decision-makers so that the very chance of a competent sovereignty that has the capacity to act and re-enact the ambiguous registrations of existential dangers is kept alive and kicking. notes 1 both authors contributed equally to the theoretical and substantive development of this paper. lead authorship rotates with each paper derived from our research collaboration. the authors would like to thank the social sciences and humanities research council of canada for its support of research for this paper. we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editors of studies in social justice and all the participants in the workshop in october 2008, also supported by the social sciences and humanities research council. the authors would also like to recognize and thank our research assistants, catherine brooke and kara brisson, for their significant contributions toward the completion of this work. 2 some notable recent works include ericson (2007), ewald (2000, 2002), beck (2006), levi (2009), and o’malley (2008). 3 since this is a very difficult area to study in term of gaining access to security personnel and security strategies, a chain-referral technique was used to enable the authors to trace the dimensions of border governance. this ascending methodology provided us with an expanding set of potential contacts and proved especially useful in identifying and studying the interactions among the various agencies involved with border security. in accordance with ethical guidelines, and to protect the confidence of our interviewees, we have made the transcribed interviews anonymous by removing all identifying information associated with placements in departments, agencies, programs, and projects. in accordance with the national tri-council statement on “ethical conduct for research involving humans,” this study received ethics clearance by the university of windsor’s research ethics board. 4 “[p]olitical power always implied the possession of a certain type of knowledge. by the fact of holding power, the king and those around him held a knowledge that could not and must not be communicated to the other social groups. knowledge and power were exactly reciprocal, correlative, superimposed” (foucault, 2001, p. 31, cited in wickham, 2008, p. 35). 5 other diagrams of power have different functions such as care, training, punishment, etc. 6 according to wickham, “limitless authority can only be maintained if it is prepared to limit itself; the more it checks and limits itself, the stronger its potential power, a power it needs to display on fewer and fewer occasions” (2008, p. 36). 7 the frontier/border is also a site of “humanitarian governance” (see walters, forthcoming). 8 the fold modulates the norm and the exception in a “zone of indistinction” (dean, 2007, p. 94). sovereignty enters into zones of contact with the productive powers of contemporary society (p. 157.) sovereign power is delegated to agents and derogated within certain domains (p. 157). 9 a more recent poll found that only 42% of canadians believed that canada “probably will” exist in 25 years (macleans-l’actualité (crop) poll, macleans magazine, september 9, 2002). 10 it might be said that as pertains to the discourse of the border, canada’s rhetoric has been more liberal and less influenced by deterrent protectionism than that of the us. for canada, there has been a strong affirmation of its unique government institutions, most especially the canadian charter of rights and freedoms and also, recently, its own “brand” of security priorities that were made official with the publication in 2004 of its first national security strategy document securing an open society (canada, 2004). canadians have taken pride in multior bilateral relationships (hristoulas, 2003, p. 24), and have tasked the department of foreign affairs and international trade and supported the canada border services agency (cbsa), the ministry of transportation, the canada food inspection agency, and federal, provincial and municipal law enforcement as well as the agencies invested with the national frontier government 61 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 security portfolio with what might be termed a holistic approach to the border. 11 ressam was questioned on the american side a customs inspector “on suspicion” and given a secondary inspection whereupon it was discovered that he had bomb-making equipment in the trunk of his car and was then found to be plotting an attack on lax. 12 in canada after the kaufman commission, the campbell commission, and in anticipation of the air india commission. in the us following steps to glean advance information of foreign airline passengers. 13 that report was commissioned in 1998 by the u.s. congress and led by senator gary hart and former senator warren rudman on strategic challenges that the us would face. the report made recommendations with respect to how the border should be rethought including an insistence that there be an information and organizational revolution that would balance trade with security, openness with information awareness. in particular, it called for the borders to be pushed outward in a “layered defence” that involved information sharing with foreign countries to analyze threats before they arrived at the “last line of defence.” it also involved responsibilizing private industry in the duty to avoid being unwitting conduits of contraband or illegal entries and exits. lastly, it called for investments in intelligence gathering and sharing among government agencies to enhance the targeting of high risk goods. 14 it is noteworthy that already by 2000, under the auspices of airline security, the us was getting apis data from 67 airline carriers or 2/3 of all incoming air passengers into the us (alden, 2008, p. 29) and that this system of advanced information also applied to domestic flights, allowing all 19 terrorists to be identified within 45 minutes of the attack (p. 32). 15 “the imagination of dangers as catastrophic and the precautionary measures needed to deal with their radical contingency… have led to a particular deployment of exceptionalism” (aradau & van munster, 2009, p. 11). 16 now headed by the u.s. customs and border protection, homeland security, united states food and drug administration, united states department of agriculture, state and federal departments of transportation, u.s. department of transportation and state, municipal and federal law enforcement and supported by a pronouncements about a “new world order” and “paradigm shift” the united states seized upon the border as a front in the global war on terror and thus also as a vehicle for the transitioning of law enforcement, military, and intelligence instruments into a powerful array of countermeasures. 17 the process requires customs brokers to enter 69 required data elements into the cbp computer system. “once you add customs broker transaction times, the pre-notification time can increase to two hours . . . . in some instances, the time between submitting the shipment information to the customs broker and the customs broker then submitting the information to cbp can take up to three hours” (transport canada, 2005). in addition, the u.s. public health security and bio-terrorism preparedness and response act of 2002 require that the u.s. food and drug administration receive prior notice of two hours for food imported or offered for import into the united states (transport canada, 2005). 18 “the reason for this is to allow risk management targeting and to permit a red light or a green-light decision upon arrival [at the border]” (transport canada, 2005). 19 western hemisphere travel initiative (id initiative for border crossing), intelligent border (ontario), nafta, land pre-clearance initiative (from security and prosperity partnership-extraterritorial location of customs-canadian in us and vice versa), u.s. visit, national security entry-exit registration system –requiring all persons from men aged 1645 from muslim countries to be fingerprinted and photographed (now u.s. visit does same), border information architecture—to coordinate how information technologies get used and how to whom it is sent, legislation including bill c3 mandating any infrastructure (bridge to be approved by federal government), s. 6 of the customs act. 20 developed under the fast and secure trade (fast) harmonization scheme. 21 “the aci program is about providing cbsa officers with electronic pre-arrival cargo information so that they are equipped with the right information at the right time to identify health, safety, and security threats related to commercial goods before the goods arrive in canada” (cbsa 2009a). 22 security production involves the stratification of flows and their conjunction (as a form of normalization, organizing, ordering). primary stratification involves distinguishing discursive formulations and non-discursive formations. these strata of expression (speaking) and visibility (thinking) are irreducible. “the statement does not relate to the 62 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 visible (as presumed by propositional logic), and the visible is not a mute meaning that must be realized in language (as in phenomenology)” (deleuze, 1999, p. 64; cited in juniper & jose, 2008). statements and visibilities are governed discrete conditions namely, the conditions of enunciation (what can be said) and conditions of emergence (what can be seen/imagined). stratification and the conjunction of strata (of statements and visibilities) are rendered by power relations to produce indices (of risk/threat in this case). indices are force relations that direct attention and action toward particular emergent objects. 23 customs trade partnership against terrorism is a program equivalent to pip and is administered by u.s. customs and border protection. 24 the cbsa refers to staff involved in using advance information to identify travelers or goods posing potential risks as “targeters.” 25 according to the treasury board of canada secretariat’s website: one of only two automated risk-assessment systems in the world, titan™ provides the cbsa with the ability to automatically screen all marine commercial shipments for indications of risk prior to departure for canada; marine carriers no longer submit paper documents as shipments are assessed electronically. by using risk management as the guiding principle for border management, titan™ tm identifies high or unknown-risk cargo while promoting the flow of legitimate low-risk trade. this provides the cbsa the time to assess risk more effectively and to make informed decisions on directing resources to shipments posing the highest risk to canada's health, safety and security. titan™ forms the cornerstone of cbsa's risk-management regime. (http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/rma/dpr1/04-05/bsa-asf/bsa-asfd4502_e.asp) 26 as one officer described the joint vessel inspection team program: “transport canada officials and u.s. coast guard go on a ship in montreal and do a security inspection if it is going into the great lakes. once this ship is checked, it is entered into our database; it is entered into the u.s. missile database; u.s. coast guard has access to it; transport canada has access to it, so when the ship comes in, we can opt if it’s already been checked. but the great lakes msoc [marine security operation center] and the msoc east, they then can start profiling ships and from that profile we can say: ‘i think we are going to board that ship; that’s a ship of interest.’” 27 according to amoore (2007), a form of watchful politics underscores this monitoring—a constantly vigilant mode of looking that produces a “ubiquitous border.” 28 in terms of physical searches, cargo is subject to an on-the-fly inspection process, where the truck moves through a vehicle and cargo inspection system (vacis). the system is selfdescribed as a “state-of-the-art technology that assists officers in examining dense freight in order to detect contraband, weapons, and other potentially dangerous goods.” using a “cobalt 60 energy source” vacis emits a gamma-ray beam that produces an image similar to x-ray systems. using this optical machine, vacis operators view radiographic images of goods to determine the consistency of the commercial cargo image with the order-words of the document manifest.” vacis can “see” through 6.5 inches of steel to determine the consistency of the object in terms of what is seen and what is said about it and so in the inconsistency indicative of the presence of contraband, disorder, or matter out of place. according to a senior transport official “it’s like an mri, i mean, it’s just amazing–it gives you a three dimensional view of everything that’s in there. they can pick up piles of marijuana in the middle of a truck . . . if there are people hidden in the truck, they see that too.” 29 nexus reterritorializes the borders in that it also enables the collection and analysis of information in advance of the border. the program for “pre-approved clearance” involves, background checks (criminal, immigration, etc), a personal interview, fingerprints, iris scans, facial recognition, and rfid cards. the nexus rfid card computer chip containing a reference number to a data base, is imbedded into the card, along with tiny rfid antenna. “the nexus card holder presents the card to an rfid reader mounted a few feet in front of the custom agent’s booth. the information associated with the reference number is instantly displayed on a computer monitor inside the customs agent booth. if the frontier government 63 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 photo displayed on the monitor is that of the driver and passengers, they are authorized to proceed” (rfid, 2009). as of march 1, 2004 niagara region whirlpool bridge was reserved for nexus approved travellers only (niagara falls bridge commission, 2009). 30 border lookouts (or flags) also encompass issues of food security, as one official noted: “if it’s commercial, it could be the type of goods that we flag; sometimes we have concerns such as the salmonella outbreaks in spinach. we can target all spinach imports from california, and we could flag them for a more detailed examination.” 31 according to the senior cbsa officer, lookouts are “continually reviewed to make sure [that they] accurate and relevant, that we’re not just continually targeting someone for no reason.” 32 according to a senior cbsa official, lookouts shared under circumstances such as “if we knew there was a threat to the us. for instance, a lot of times we’ll be investigating a conspiracy that involves importing contraband to canada and exporting contraband to the us. as a result or our investigation, we might discover that.” in addition, generic information about patterns or mo are also shared: “we obtain information from homeland security, and we share our information with homeland security, in the generic sense; you know, we’re seeing an increase in this, this, and this.” 33 a senior border officer described the complex blending of sovereign, enforcement, and regulatory authorities as follows: “all of the information is vetted for intelligence purposes to find out if that ship or the containers on that ship are a threat. . . . if we feel the ship is a threat, we will go to a “priority 1,” which is an armed boarding. dnd will send out a ship with rcmp enforcement teams, most likely tactical teams or ert teams, emergency response teams, they will board the ship just prior to getting into canadian waters. you have to understand, as we are doing that, the americans are also monitoring us. the other [priorities,] 2, 3 and 4, are more inspection processes that we would take against the ship. for instance the ship is coming from an area that we are not so sure . . . for instance darfur. any ship that comes in from darfur we pay attention to, from a regulatory point of view, not from and enforcement point of view . . . we are the regulatory group. because of our delegation of authority by the minister, we do not need warrants to go on ships. we don’t even need reasonable grounds to go on ships. we can go on a ship and do security inspection.” 34 agamben also insists on an ambiguity in the state of exception where the connection between space (territorializition) and order (law/norm) breaks down (see dilken, 2002, p. 291). 35 as per donald rumsfeld, this is a category of unknowns that, due to a lack of knowledge, may fail to categorize. 36 as in walters (forthcoming) we envision the assemblage as a complex arrangement of forms of reason, forms of authority, and technologies of government (see also haggerty & ericson, 2000). 37 this is not to suggest that policy-making, because it is subject to the required democratic processes, is sufficiently democratic. 38 indeed, the duties of the canadian government are stipulated. canadian legislation includes section 19(1) of the immigration & refugee protection act, which states that “every canadian citizen [ . . . ] has the right to enter and remain in canada [ . . . ] and the officer shall allow the person to enter canada if the officer is satisfied [ . . . ] that the person is a citizen or a registered indian” and section 6 of the citizenship act which states that “a citizen, whether or not born in canada, is entitled to all rights, powers and privileges [ . . . ] to which a person who is a citizen under paragraph 3(1)(a) is entitled [ . . . ].” 39 in these systems, the assumption is that it is possible to “build a complete picture of a person,” to quite literally see who they are before they board a plane or transfer money, by relating them to the norms of a wider population and identifying their degree of deviance (de goede, 2006; cited in amoore, 2007). 40 contraband, in the broadest sense is of that which has been banned, and the activities that render it from the flow, tie together territorialization and coding, matter and information, the non-discursive and the discursive as reciprocally related actions. contraband and its related activities serve to produce and reproduce the territorializations within which the ban holds (see agamben, 1998, p. 29). these exceptions/subtractions are now made as a continuous mode of action on the flow (i.e., by “control”) by petty sovereigns (through regulatory or administrative functions). 41 as one official noted; “twenty or thirty years ago, there wasn’t a whole lot of checking citizenship or looking for contraband at the borders; it was: “how many things have you 64 daniel o'connor and willem de lint studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 21-36, 2009 studies in social justice, volume 3, issue 1, 2009 bought that you need to pay taxes and duties on.’” another senior official characterized the border as a system of accounting: “the only system was the accounting system. they want to pay you 120 dollars? we put the 120 dollars here [in this column], so at the end of the day we added how much we took in.” 42 part of the transformation of border practices is explained by the development of new trade policies. as one senior official explained, “one of the effects of the free trade agreement with the united states is, especially in windsor [the major land border for trade with the us], is that most of the trade that we are talking about over this border is u.s. origin and is no longer dutiable… if i was in vancouver, a lot more of the trade is dutiable.” 43 this is consistent with dean’s (1999) analysis of neoliberal governance. 44 it is estimate that the impact of the u.s. border security measures on the canadian trucking industry is estimated to range from $179 million to $406 million (transport canada, 2005). references agamben, g. 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(forthcoming). foucault and frontiers: notes on the birth of the humanitarian border. in u. bröckling, et al. (eds.), governmentality: current issues and future challenges. london: routledge. wickham, g. (2008). the social must be limited: some problems with foucault's approach to modern positive power. journal of sociology, 44(1), 29-44. zedner, l. (2009). security. new york: routledge. http://niagarafallsbridges.com/which_bridge.php3� http://www.rfident.org/rfidnexus.htm� http://www.canadaeast.com/rss/article/761904� http://www.theobserver.ca/articledisplay.aspx?e=1680060� http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/nssg.pdf� http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/border_security/sbi/projects/project_descrip/north_border.xml� http://www.transtats.bts.gov/bordercrossing.aspx� more than lip service: identifying a typology of “social justice” research in lis the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 more than lip service: identifying a typology of “social justice” research in lis joseph winberry, university of tennessee, usa abstract social justice is increasingly identifiable within library and information science (lis) research and practice. however, numerous scholars have raised the concern that social justice has been commodified in order to benefit the powerful and therefore the possibility of actual and constructive change has been minimized in numerous cases. in response, this researcher undertook a literature review of self-identified “social justice” research in 2 large academic databases—library information science & technology abstracts (lista) and library and information science source (liss)—in order to identify the types of social justice research in lis. the result of the review identified 247 records and included results from peer reviewed journals, books, and conference proceedings from which a typology of 2 research types (e.g., knowledge and practice) and 8 sub-types (e.g., metatheoretical, theoretical, ideational, methodological, empirical, narrative, professional, and pedagogical) was identified. identification of this typology is helpful for organizing existing social justice research within lis, assisting in the examination of connections between theories and methods, and contributing to a broader goal of arguing that social justice is an emerging sub-discipline within lis. future research is needed to grow this typology and increase research in areas that remain understudied such as lis-centered metatheoretical, theoretical, and methodological social justice research. keywords: knowledge; literature review; practice; social justice; typology publication type: research article introduction ocial justice has emerged as an important and growing topic in recent library and information science (lis) scholarship with implications for research, teaching, and the direction of the information professions (sweeney, et al., 2014; sung & parboteeah, 2017; winberry & bishop, 2021). social justice in lis has been described in numerous ways including as a pedagogy (gregory & higgins, 2017), metatheory (rioux, 2010), a conceptual framework (mathiesen, 2015), as an advocacy model (froggatt, 2019), a perspective (dadlani & todd, 2015), and as a guiding principle (jaeger et al., 2016) among other terms and near infinite definitions (cooke et al., 2016). the embrace of social justice and related terms such as equity, diversity, and inclusion, can be recognized beyond just research and practice; these terms have recently begun emerging in the themes and titles of numerous information-related conferences such as the alise, asis&t, and ischool conferences. but despite the rise of attention towards social justice in lis, there have been concerns that the embrace of these terms is just that: words and no more (mehra et al., 2018; pateman & vincent, 2010; sandell & nightingale, 2012). for instance, in debates about neutrality, intellectual s https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 freedom is often described as a core value of the information professions while social justice is often viewed as secondary (burgess, 2016; gibson et al., 2017; shockey, 2016). if social justice is truly as essential to the lis field as the literature, professional organizations, and twitter feeds suggest, it cannot be relegated to the side and only brought to the forefront whenever fashionable. one way to combat subjugation of social justice is to demonstrate that, while social justice has homes in other disciplines such as philosophy, social justice is also an emerging subdiscipline of lis (mehra et al., 2010). demonstrating its emerging status can be accomplished by organizing the numerous contributions of this area which in turn can be used to address questions related to philosophy, theory, methodology, and how these components intersect with one another (imrie & edwards, 2007). there are some examples of these intersections in the existing literature. mehra and rioux (2016) present the work of numerous researcher/activists whose contributions connect critical theory with action-centered methodologies. the special issue this article is part of also provides numerous examples of the intersections between theory, method, and practice in lis social justice research (mehra, 2021). but in order to better understand the intersections that exist in lis social justice research, and therefore to be able to help move this area forward, it is essential to understand and organize related terms and the literature that presents them. this paper helps clarify these terms, and therefore assists with the examining of intersections in social justice lis research and ultimately contributes to the sub-discipline argument, by conducting a review of self-described “social justice” research in order to answer the following question: r1. what types of social justice research are identifiable within lis? methods in order to identify a sample for evaluation, the researcher searched for “social justice” in two major lis databases: library information science & technology abstracts (lista) and library and information science source (liss). these specific databases were selected because of their size, scope, and lis focus to provide a useful data source for assessing the research that uses social justice to situate itself within the lis discipline (garg et al., 2019; figuerola et al., 2017; potnis et al., 2020). the author decided to focus on results published before january 2020 as work on the study began in march of 2020 and the end of 2019 provided a useful end point. additionally, included records had to be academic publications (e.g., book chapters, conference proceedings, articles in peer reviewed journals) which used social justice to situate their study. the search for “social justice” resulted in 2,372 records. a review of these records found that more than half of the results were from non-academic sources such as trade publications. while these results help demonstrate the wide permanence of social justice in lis beyond the scholarly literature, they were outside the scope of this study and therefore excluded. removing nonacademic publications resulted in 397 records from liss and 357 records from lista for a total of 754 records. screening these articles for duplicates led to the removal of 342 records. there were 412 unique results which were then scrutinized further. an additional 51 results were excluded as they were published after december 2019. also, 114 articles were excluded because, upon further review, they were found not to be academic publications that used social justice to situate their studies. in other words, they were excluded because the content did not meet the scope of this study. select examples of excluded records were letters to the journal editor or book reviews. the final sample consisted of 247 records which are available in the appendix. figure 1 illustrates the results of searching for “social justice” in both databases. 10 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 figure 1. the process of defining this study’s literature sample 11 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 findings this section provides a typology identified during the literature review process. key terms from the literature sample were used to initially code each article. each article was then categorized into broader groupings (white & marsh, 2006). when possible, these broader groupings were named and defined using existing terminology from lis literature (bates, 2005; case & given, 2016; wilson, 1999). if suitable sub-type titles and definitions for emerging groupings were not found, the researcher derived them from key terms in the sub-type of literature sample in concert with their own judgement and related knowledge. this social justice research typology categorizes articles into two major types (e.g., knowledge and practice) which are further explicated into eight sub-types (e.g., metatheoretical, theoretical, ideational, methodological, empirical, narrative, professional, and pedagogical). while each type is mutually exclusive, elements of multiple types could be identified in some articles (e.g., an empirical article could also have pedagogical contributions). these findings are summarized in table 1. table 1. a research typology of “social justice” in lis article type sub-type definition select key terms from literature number of citations knowledge metatheoretical concerned with the philosophical components of theory. social justice metatheory 1 theoretical introduces application of, extends existing, or creates theory. introducing theory to lis 2 ideational pre or emerging theoretical research that does not rise to the level of creating or extending theory. concept; framework; model; notion; viewpoint 108 methodological introduces application of, extends existing or creates methodology or methods. application; case for a method; presents methodology 3 12 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 empirical involves collecting and analyzing data in order to meet research objectives. content analysis; ethnography; interview; focus group; survey 41 narrative an alternative research strategy to empiricism which accentuates the duality of researcher and research participant. action research; autoethnography; discourse analysis; historical; participatory action research 36 practice professional focused on the practical needs of information professionals. advocacy strategies; collaboration; practical 26 pedagogical emphasizes education and information professionals as teachers and students. classroom; pedagogy; students 30 total 247 knowledge knowledge is an essential component for learning that assists in the development and assessment of practical solutions to real world problems (wallace & van fleet, 2012). the knowledge research type encompasses research which seeks to make an intellectual contribution for the cause of social justice. these contributions vary extensively from extending existing theory, contributing new ideas or ways of thinking about notions in the discipline, or suggesting underutilized data collection methods. these variations are represented in this study as knowledge sub-disciplines including metatheoretical, theoretical, ideational, methodological, empirical, and narrative. metatheoretical metatheoretical research is concerned with the philosophical components of theory (vakkari, 1997). in other words, metatheory is theory about theory (jensen, 2016). metatheory has been 13 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 considered an under examined area of lis research (bates, 2005; leckie et al., 2010; lor, 2014). marcia bates (2005) identified 13 metatheories evident in the related literature. most notable among these, for the sake of this study, was the critical theory metatheory. bates (2005) conceptualized a critical metatheoretical approach as being research which seeks to identify, unmask, and combat structures of societal injustice. however, she offered little explanation as to how the critical metatheoretical perspective has shaped lis. in another sign of the limited metatheoretical research in lis, leckie et al. (2010) lament that lis has not contributed more to wider metatheoretical discourses in the vein of noted theorists like michel foucault or jürgen habermas. their observation is echoed by the results of this literature review. while critical theory is often noted in conversation with social justice (schroeder & hollister, 2014), only one article in this study—rioux (2010)—was identified as focusing on the metatheoretical considerations of social justice itself. rioux (2010) identifies five assumptions which are essential to understanding social justice as a metatheory: 1) all human beings have an inherent worth and deserve information services that help address their information needs; 2) people perceive reality and information in different ways, often within cultural or life role contexts; 3) there are many different types of information and knowledge, and these are societal resources; 4) theory and research are pursued with the ultimate goal of bringing positive change to service constituencies; and 5) the provision of information services is an inherently powerful activity. according to rioux (2010), these five assumptions provide a prism through which social justice as a metatheory can be understood. several articles in this review cite rioux (2010) as providing the guiding metatheoretical perspective of their research—even if they do not connect their contributions to a specific theory (oplihant, 2015; rioux, 2014; roy & long, 2019). these citations suggest that despite being introduced as a “nascent approach,” rioux’s (2010) interpretation of social justice as a metatheory has come to influence other areas of allied research, including theoretical research, because it provides one of the few, if not only, metatheoretical perspectives centered on social justice in lis specifically (p. 12). theoretical theoretical research refers to introducing the application of an existing theory utilized outside lis, or extending an existing theory, or creating a new theory. the two results identified in this study focus on introducing theories that were developed in other disciplines to a specific area of lis—archival discourse (cifor, 2016; dunbar, 2006). these few examples illustrate how, like metatheoretical research, theoretical research is largely absent from social justice in lis literature collected for this study. there have been several reasons offered as to why theoretical research might be lacking in this area; these reasons apply to this area of research by virtue of it being part of lis. for instance, the discipline’s historic dearth of theoretical development provides some explanation as to why theoretical research is so underdeveloped within the emerging sub-discipline of social justice (sonnenwald, 2016). similarly, numerous theorists have noted that lis is much more likely to borrow theories from other domains than to create its own (dillon, 2007; pierce; 1992; thompson, 2009). the discipline’s structural acceptance of positivistic social science has also been noted as a deterrent of social justice related theoretical development in lis specifically (mehra & gray, 2020). these select reasons provide some insight into this area’s underdeveloped theoretical perspective. 14 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 but the lack of theoretical literature examples does not mean that social justice research is atheoretical. the literature review showed that several theories have been used to situate social justice research such as rawl’s theory of social justice (dadlani & todd, 2016). most prevalent among these utilized theories is critical theory which serves as a theoretical lens or antecedent to several other theories (e.g., critical race theory, public sphere theory, critical pedagogy theory, feminist theory, and queer theory) identified in this study. as in other social sciences, critical theory has been utilized by lis scholars due in part to its ability to support equity and combat injustice. leckie et al. (2010) argue that “critical theory can help us to break, or at least to expose, the self-legitimation cycle” which follows predetermined methodologies and therefore limits the kind of contributions that lis research can provide (p. xii). given its historic—albeit imperfect—role in supporting diversity and social justice, critical and related theories are well positioned for a central role in future lis research due to their ability to contribute further theoretical and practical benefits for researchers, information professionals, and the community members served by them (leckie et al., 2010; morales et al., 2014). ideational ideational research is a term conceptualized in this study to include pre or emerging theoretical research that does not rise to the level of creating or extending theory such as viewpoints, notions, concepts, frameworks, and models (wilson, 1999). this sub-type represented the largest category within the literature review (n=108) suggesting that there is enormous potential for theoretical development through expansion of existing theoretical structures in this area (winberry & bishop, 2021). there is also a need for further understanding of the distinctions between research examples within this sub-type. concepts and notions describe terms that have been used or could be used in the social justice discourse within lis such as an intentional informationist (hoffmann & wallace, 2013) or the common good (lor & britz, 2005). viewpoint articles can be described as presenting the point of view of an individual on a specific and narrow topic which includes insights from their own experience and perspective, but which is grounded in research (pugh, 2012). viewpoints in this sample made contributions to the understanding of and knowledge of social justice research such as the social and economic justice values of pleasure reading (dewan, 2016) and the importance of leaders in the adoption of social justice perspectives by an organization (farrell, 2016). frameworks represent ways of understanding relationships between theoretical and non-theoretical components of an area of research (leshem & trafford, 2007). frameworks might be used to describe sub-areas such as critical making practices (ratto et al., 2014) or conversing about ethics and diversity within a social justice framework (gilliland, 2011). lastly, models are developed theoretical frameworks which have not yet been formalized as theory (case & given, 2016). select examples identified in the literature review include a model for “knowledge sharing in professional virtual communities” (chiu et al., 2011, p. 138) and the school-based telecenter (sbt) model (kawooya, 2004). together these various constructs foster numerous possibilities for further innovations in social justice research. methodological another type of research examined in this review was methodological research. methodological research in this study refers to research that introduces, creates, or extends metho dology or 15 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 methods. although methodology (i.e., research strategy) and methods (i.e., data collection and analysis techniques) are different, they work in coordination with one another in order to execute the research design of a particular study (crotty, 1998). the few examples of methodological research results in this literature review articulate themselves as presenting a methodology (dadlani & todd, 2017), making the case for a specific method (soglasnova & hanson, 2015), or applying a method that is underutilized in lis (oliphant, 2015). like metatheoretical and theoretical research, methodological research was underrepresented in this study’s sample with just three examples. this gap existed despite the fact that early lis research utilized quantitative, prescriptive, and deductive research methodologies and methods. over time the discipline has become more open to qualitative, explorative, and inductive research approaches—approaches which are often thought to be more amiable to social justice research and to methodological innovation (mansourian, 2006; powell, 1999; ullah & ameen, 2018). empirical empirical research involves the collecting and analyzing of data in order to meet research objectives (punch, 2014). empiricism itself—the belief that collected and analyzed data is superior to other forms of research—has a long history in lis (hjørland, 2005; sandstrom & sandstrom, 1995). this permanence is represented in the varied empirical methods contained within this literature review. select examples include surveys (kumasi & manlove, 2015), interviews (kendrick & damasco, 2015), and content analysis (moreillon, 2015), as well as qualitative, quantitative, and mixed analytical approaches (butcher & rose-adams, 2015; froggatt, 2015). narrative in contrast to its empirical counterpart which focuses on collecting and analyzing data, narrative research accentuates the duality of researcher and research participant that exists in methods such as action research (heikkinen et al., 2007), autoethnography (sparkes, 2000), and historical research (volodymyrivna, 2019). in narrative research, the perspective of the researcher— whether they be the main participant in the study, also a member of the group of study participants, or the interpreter of historical information—is seen as a crucial element of the research contribution (gray, 2019; mehra & braquet, 2014; mehra at al., 2018). narrative research examples from this study utilized the methods described above, as well as others, such as discourse analysis (hoffman, 2019; winston, 2017) and critical discourse analysis (brook et al., 2015). considering that narrative research (n=36) appeared almost as frequently as empirical research (n=41) in this literature review, the perspective of the researcher appears to be often central to the contributions of social justice research in lis. practice practice is a well-developed research type within lis given the field’s long reputation as a service-oriented discipline (taylor, 1986). the overarching goals of practice type is lifelong learning for information professionals as students, teachers, and leaders. practice-centered social justice research has two main sub-types: professional and pedagogical. 16 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 professional professional research is concerned with the practical needs of information professionals (audunson et al., 2003; goode, 1961). the research in this sub-type is designed to be practical, easily applicable, and closely associated with a work setting or specific job tasks. examples include exploration of unionization in information settings (phillips et al., 2019), instructive case examples of how libraries can embrace social justice in their work (gomez, 2019), and an examination of the awards available for books which promote social justice values in children’s literature (schulte-cooper, 2015). pedagogical pedagogical research focuses on education—whether the practitioners are the teachers or the students (alemanne & mandel, 2018; cooke, 2019). pedagogy is an instrumental part of information practice as it is a lifelong process that begins at birth, continues through formal education, into the workplace, and beyond (rogers et al., 2009). within the literature sample, pedagogy is described most often in connection to lis education (roy & long, 2019), librarianprovided education in university settings (battista et al., 2015), and education for populations such as youth in community settings (montague, 2015). discussion social justice is a broadly-defined term that exists well beyond just lis, but the findings of this study suggest two things for social justice research in this discipline. first, that social justice can also be a sub-discipline within lis given its contribution to both knowledge and practice in the discipline (krishnan, 2009; mehra et al., 2010; wiegand, 2020). second, that social justice is in fact an emerging sub-discipline within lis considering that the identified sub-types of social justice research (e.g., metatheoretical, theoretical, ideational, methodological, empirical, narrative, professional, and pedagogical) are also identifiable in other areas of lis research such as information retrieval, information seeking, and social informatics among others (goker & davies, 2009; limberg & sundin, 2006; kling, 2007). in order to continually move social justice forward in lis, researchers should commit to ensuring that social justice—while also recognizing that it exists in many other disciplines—becomes widely understood to be a sub-discipline in lis. this could be accomplished in part through a conference panel, a journal special issue, publication of a book, as well as all of the above and then some. whatever its form, this is a conversation that should continue not just for the betterment of this budding sub-discipline but for the continued health and progress of the discipline as a whole. limitations and future research the decision to focus the search for this study on two databases is a limitation as there are many other examples of self-identified “social justice” works in lis scholarship that are not present in these two resources. however, since the two databases chosen are among the largest and most thorough databases of literature in the lis field, this paper could contribute to conversations about where social justice research in lis is being published and why, the commodification of social justice research, and its perceived value by the companies that publish lis literature, and who can therefore influence what is heard or viewed as credible and what is not (lawson et al., 2015; mehra & gray, 2020; winberry & bishop, 2021). this study also did not discover all the 17 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 types and sub-types of social justice research that exist. further confirmation and expansion of this typology would also benefit from cross coding in order to strengthen interpretations of the findings. future examination of related research in other lis databases, books, websites, and so on, as well as comparisons to how social justice is represented in other disciplines, will expand this typology. researchers might also use the findings of this study as inspiration for developing metatheoretical, theoretical, and methodological contributions to social justice research and to lis research more broadly. conclusion social justice will continue to be of critical importance to the future of lis given the ubiquitous nature that issues of justice and injustice have around information and technology. for example, in her research on search engines and racism, safiya noble (2018) explains that technology is not neutral because its creators—people—are not neutral. similarly, ramesh srinivasan (2019) describes how people’s data is an extremely valuable resource and yet we often give it away to wealthy silicon valley companies whose products often do not really meet our technological needs. these select examples represent just two of perhaps thousands of examples as to how social justice (or the lack thereof) is integral to the development, use, and sharing of information and technology. despite the innumerous connections, social justice is rarely given the attention or emphasis it requires within lis educational programs (cooke, 2017). more work still needs to be done. this article contributes towards this effort by identifying a typology and by offering definitions based on the analysis of the literature sample—an affordance that is often “surprisingly lacking” in other research typologies (hider & pymm, 2008, p. 109). together these terms, definitions, and examples help explain the components that make intersections of lis social justice research possible. this typology also provides one contribution towards organizing the vast research that exists around social justice as well as other areas within lis research in order to demonstrate that while social justice exists across numerous disciplines, it is also a subdiscipline of lis, and deserves to be treated as such in lis research, practice, and education. appendix final sample for analysis number citation date sub-type 1 phillips, m., eifler, d., & page, t. l. (2019). democratizing the union at uc berkeley: lecturers and librarians in solidarity. library trends, 68(2), 343–367. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2019.0043 2019 practicional 2 duff, w., sporn, j., & herron, e. (2019). investigating the impact of the living archives on eugenics in western canada. archivaria, 88, 122–161. 2019 ideational 3 mehra, b. (2019). the non-white man’s burden in lis education: critical constructive nudges. journal of 2019 narrative 18 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2019.0043 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 education for library & information science, 60(3), 198– 207. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3138/jelis.2019-0012 4 russo martin, e. (2019). social justice and the medical librarian. journal of the medical library association, 107(3), 291–303. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 2019 ideational 5 roy, l. & long, e. (2019). incorporating social justice in reference education. reference librarian, 60(3), 226–231. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/02763877.2019.1597 2019 pedagogical 6 beatty, n. a. & hernandez, e. (2019). socially responsible pedagogy: critical information literacy and art. reference services review, 47(3), 280–293. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-02-2019-0012 2019 pedagogical 7 dencik, l. d., hintz, a., redden, j., & treré, e. (2019). exploring data justice: conceptions, applications and directions. information, communication & society, 22(7), 873–881. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1606268 2019 ideational 8 peña gangadharan, s. & niklas, j. (2019). decentering technology in discourse on discrimination. information, communication & society, 22(7), 882–899. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1593484 2019 empirical 9 hoffmann, a. l. (2019). where fairness fails: data, algorithms, and the limits of antidiscrimination discourse. information, communication & society, 22(7), 900–915. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1573912 2019 narrative 10 heeks, r. & shekhar, s. (2019). datafication, development and marginalised urban communities: an applied data justice framework. information, communication & society, 22(7), 992–1011. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1599039 2019 ideational 11 simms, s. & johnson, h. (2019). subtle activism: using the library exhibit as a social justice tool. alexandria, 29(1/2), 130–144. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0955749019876119 2019 practicional 12 meeks, a. (2019). art as the practice of freedom: critical 2019 narrative 19 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3138/jelis.2019-0012 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3138/jelis.2019-0012 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5195/jmla.2019.712 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/02763877.2019.1597 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/02763877.2019.1597 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-02-2019-0012 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-02-2019-0012 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1606268 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1606268 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1593484 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1593484 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1573912 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1573912 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1599039 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2019.1599039 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0955749019876119 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0955749019876119 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 alliances and professional identities within art librarianship. art libraries journal, 44(2), 61–66. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1017/alj.2019.5 13 gosselin, a. & goodsett, m. (2019). increasing facultylibrarian collaboration through critical librarianship. collaborative librarianship, 11(2), 100–109. 2019 pedagogical 14 barr-walker, j. & sharifi, c. (2019). critical librarianship in health sciences libraries: an introduction. journal of the medical library association, 107(2), 258–264. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5195/jmla.2019.620 2019 practicional 15 baeza ventura, g., gauthereau, l., & villarroel, c. (2019). recovering the us hispanic literary heritage: a case study on us latina/o archives and digital humanities. preservation, digital technology & culture, 48(1), 17–27. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1515/pdtc-2018-0031 2019 pedagogical 16 branch, n. a. (2019). illuminating social justice in the framework: transformative methodology, concept mapping, and learning outcomes development for critical information literacy. communications in information literacy, 13(1), 4–22. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.15760/comminfolit.2019.13.1.2 2019 empirical 17 garrison, k. l. & gavigan, k. (2019). picture this: using graphic novels to explore social justice issues with young adults. teacher librarian, 46(3), 8–12. 2019 pedagogical 18 braquet, d. (2019). lqbtq+ terminology, scenarios and strategies, and relevant web-based resources in the 21st century: a glimpse. advances in librarianship, 45, 49-61. https://www.doi.org/10.1108/s0065-283020190000045009 2019 practicional 19 gomez, g. (2019). archiving history and the educational mission in chicago’s the legacy project: challenges and opportunities for lis. advances in librarianship, 45, 89– 114. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065283020190000045010 2019 practicional 20 wenzler, j. (2019). neutrality and its discontents: an essay on the ethics of librarianship. portal: libraries & the academy, 19(1), 55–78. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2019.0004 2019 ideational 21 smith, l., & hanson, m. (2019). communities of praxis: 2019 practicional 20 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1017/alj.2019.5 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5195/jmla.2019.620 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1515/pdtc-2018-0031 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1515/pdtc-2018-0031 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.15760/comminfolit.2019.13.1.2 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.15760/comminfolit.2019.13.1.2 https://www.doi.org/10.1108/s0065-283020190000045009 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020190000045010 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020190000045010 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2019.0004 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2019.0004 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 transforming access to information for equity. serials librarian, 76(1–4), 42–49. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2019.1593015 22 berthoud, h. & finn, r. (2019). bringing social justice behind the scenes: transforming the work of technical services. serials librarian, 76(1–4), 162–169. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2019.1583526 2019 practicional 23 helkenberg, d., schoenberger, n., kooy, s. a. v., pemberton, a., ali, k., bartlett, s., clair, j., crombleholme, s., dee, a., depierro, k., greenwood, t., lobzun, m., petersen, c.., saunders, s. r., tarzi, m., ward, k., & zip, s. (2018). education for the common good: a student perspective on including social justice in lis education. journal of education for library & information science, 59(4), 265–271. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3138/jelis.59.4.2018-0013 2018 pedagogical 24 thinyane, m., & choi, m. (2018). small data, big justice: the intersection of data science, social good, and social services. journal of technology in human services, 36(4), 175–178. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/15228835.2018.1539369 2018 ideational 25 poole, a. h. (2018). “be damned pushy at times”: the committee on the status of women and feminism in the archival profession, 1972-1998. american archivist, 81(2), 394–437. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081-81.2.394 2018 narrative 26 pegues, c. r. (2018). engendering social consciousness through first year information literacy classes. communications in information literacy, 12(2), 193–202. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.15760/comminfolit.2018.12.2.8 2018 pedagogical 27 peekhaus, w. (2018). seed libraries: sowing the seeds for community and public library resilience. library quarterly, 88(3), 271–285. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/697706 2018 empirical 28 foster, m. j. (2018). navigating library collections, black culture, and current events. library trends, 67(1), 8–22. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2018.0022 2018 pedagogical 29 adler, m., & harper, l. m. (2018). race and ethnicity in classification systems: teaching knowledge organization 2018 ideational 21 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2019.1593015 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2019.1593015 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2019.1583526 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2019.1583526 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3138/jelis.59.4.2018-0013 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3138/jelis.59.4.2018-0013 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/15228835.2018.1539369 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/15228835.2018.1539369 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081-81.2.394 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081-81.2.394 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.15760/comminfolit.2018.12.2.8 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.15760/comminfolit.2018.12.2.8 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/697706 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/697706 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2018.0022 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 from a social justice perspective. library trends, 67(1), 52–73. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2018.0025 30 jordan, c., lawrence, v., & moran, c. (2018). experience from the field: programming in a joint-use partnership library. reference librarian, 59(3), 134–145. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/02763877.2018.1472717 2018 practicional 31 kazuye kimura, a. (2018). defining, evaluating, and achieving accessible library resources. reference services review, 46(3), 425–438. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-03-2018-0040 2018 ideational 32 brilmyer, g. (2018). archival assemblages: applying disability studies’ political/relational model to archival description. archival science, 18(2), 95–118. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-018-9287-6 2018 ideational 33 villa-nicholas, m. (2018). teaching intersectionality: pedagogical approaches for lasting impact. education for information, 34(2), 121–133. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3233/efi-180191 2018 pedagogical 34 bluemle, s. r. (2018). post-facts: information literacy and authority after the 2016 election. portal: libraries & the academy, 18(2), 265–282. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2018.0015 2018 pedagogical 35 thacker, m. l., & laut, j. r. (2018). a collaborative approach to undergraduate engagement. portal: libraries & the academy, 18(2), 283–300. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2018.0016 2018 pedagogical 36 barefoot, m. r. (2018). identifying information need through storytelling. reference services review, 46(2), 251–263. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr02-2018-0009 2018 pedagogical 37 macneil, h., duff, w., dotiwalla, a., & zuchniak, k. (2018). “if there are no records, there is no narrative”: the social justice impact of records of scottish careleavers. archival science, 18(1), 1–28. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-017-9283-2 2018 empirical 38 linden, a. (2018). the advocate’s archive: walter rudnicki and the fight for indigenous rights in canada, 1955-2010. archivaria, 85, 38–67. 2018 ideational 22 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2018.0025 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2018.0025 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/02763877.2018.1472717 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/02763877.2018.1472717 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-03-2018-0040 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-03-2018-0040 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-018-9287-6 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-018-9287-6 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3233/efi-180191 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3233/efi-180191 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2018.0015 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2018.0015 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2018.0016 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2018.0016 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-02-2018-0009 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-02-2018-0009 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-017-9283-2 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-017-9283-2 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 39 littlejohn, a. & hood, n. (2018). becoming an online editor: perceived roles and responsibilities of wikipedia editors. information research, 23(1). 2018 empirical 40 carpio, g. g. (2018). racial projections: cyberspace, public space, and the digital divide. information, communication & society, 21(2), 174–190. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2016.1271899 2018 narrative 41 cooke, n. a. (2018). chapter 3: creating mirrors and doors in the curriculum: diversifying and re-envisioning the mls. advances in librarianship, 44b, 27–48. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s006528302018000044b003 2018 pedagogical 42 gibson, a., hughes-hassell, s., & threats, m. (2018). chapter 4: critical race theory in the lis curriculum. advances in librarianship, 44b, 49–70. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s006528302018000044b005 2018 pedagogical 43 kostelecky, s. r. (2018). sharing community created content in support of social justice: the dakota access pipeline libguide. journal of librarianship & scholarly communication, 6, 1–16. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.7710/2162-3309.2234 2018 practicional 44 heeks, r. & renken, j. (2018). data justice for development. information development, 34(1), 90–102. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0266666916678282 2018 ideational 45 salaz, a. m., johnston, n., & pickles, c. (2018). faculty members who teach online: a phenomenographic typology of open access experiences. journal of academic librarianship, 44(1), 125–132. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.acalib.2017.09.006 2018 empirical 46 carnesi, s. (2018). a platform for voice and identity: school library standards in support of ya urban literature’s transformative impacts on youth. school libraries worldwide, 24(1), 99–117. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.14265.24.1.007 2018 pedagogical 47 watts, g. (2017). applying radical empathy to women’s march documentation efforts: a reflection exercise. archives & manuscripts, 45(3), 191–201. https://doi2017 ideational 23 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2016.1271899 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2016.1271899 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-28302018000044b003 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-28302018000044b003 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-28302018000044b003 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-28302018000044b005 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-28302018000044b005 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.7710/2162-3309.2234 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.7710/2162-3309.2234 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0266666916678282 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0266666916678282 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.acalib.2017.09.006 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.acalib.2017.09.006 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.14265.24.1.007 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.14265.24.1.007 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01576895.2017.1373361 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01576895.2017.1373361 48 winston, m. (2017). economic inequality as a societal issue: the role of access to information in fostering social change. journal of information ethics, 26(2), 54–71. 2017 narrative 49 nakamura, h., yanagihara, y., & shida, t. (2017). current situation and challenges of building a japanese lgbtq ephemera collection at yale. journal of east asian libraries, 165, 1–17. 2017 practicional 50 poole, a. h. (2017). harold t. pinkett and the lonely crusade of african american archivists in the twentieth century. american archivist, 80(2), 296–335. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081-80.2.296 2017 narrative 51 procter, m. (2017). protecting rights, asserting professional identity. archives & records, 38(2), 296–309. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/23257962.2017.1285754 2017 narrative 52 johnson, h. (2017). #nodapl: social media, empowerment, and civic participation at standing rock. library trends, 66(2), 155–175. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2017.0033 2017 ideational 53 raju, r., & pietersen, j. (2017). library as publisher: from an african lens. journal of electronic publishing, 20(2), 1–11. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3998/3336451.0020.203 2017 ideational 54 phillips, a. (2017). understanding empathetic services: the role of empathy in everyday library work. journal of research on libraries & young adults, 8(1), 1–27. 2017 empirical 55 hoffmann, a. l. (2017). beyond distributions and primary goods: assessing applications of rawls in information science and technology literature since 1990. journal of the association for information science & technology, 68(7), 1601–1618. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23747 2017 ideational 56 hines, s. g. (2017). connecting individuals with social services: the academic library’s role. collaborative librarianship, 9(2), 109–116. 2017 practicional 57 risam, r., snow, j., & edwards, s. (2017). building an ethical digital humanities community: librarian, faculty, and student collaboration. college & undergraduate 2017 pedagogical 24 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01576895.2017.1373361 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081-80.2.296 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081-80.2.296 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/23257962.2017.1285754 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/23257962.2017.1285754 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2017.0033 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2017.0033 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3998/3336451.0020.203 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3998/3336451.0020.203 https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23747 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 libraries, 24(2–4), 337–349. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/10691316.2017.1337530 58 stonebraker, i., maxwell, c., garcia, k., & jerrit, j. (2017). realizing critical business information literacy: opportunities, definitions, and best practices. journal of business & finance librarianship, 22(2), 135–148. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/08963568.2017.1288519 2017 pedagogical 59 sutherland, t. (2017). making a killing: on race, ritual, and (re) membering in digital culture. preservation, digital technology & culture, 46(1), 32–40. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1515/pdtc-2017-0025 2017 narrative 60 glassman, j. a. & worsham, d. m. (2017). digital research notebook: a simple tool for reflective learning. reference services review, 45(2), 179–200. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-10-2016-0063 2017 pedagogical 61 levitov, d. (2017). using the women’s march to examine freedom of speech, social justice, and social action through information literacy. teacher librarian, 44(4), 12– 15. 2017 pedagogical 62 mehra, b., singh, v., hollenbach, n., & partee ii, r. p. (2017). rural librarians as change agents in the twentyfirst century: applying community informatics in the southern and central appalachian region to further ict literacy training. advances in librarianship, 43, 123–153. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065283020170000043006 2017 pedagogical 63 poole, a. h. (2017). pinkett’s charges: recruiting, retaining, and mentoring archivists of color in the twentyfirst century. american archivist, 80(1), 103–134. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/03609081.80.1.103 2017 empirical 64 carter, e. (2017). ‘setting the record straight’: the creation and curation of archives by activist communities. a case study of activist responses to the regeneration of elephant and castle, south london. archives & records, 38(1), 27–44. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/23257962.2016.1260532 2017 practicional 65 gregory, l., & higgins, s. (2017). reorienting an information literacy program toward social justice: 2017 ideational 25 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/10691316.2017.1337530 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/10691316.2017.1337530 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/08963568.2017.1288519 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/08963568.2017.1288519 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1515/pdtc-2017-0025 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1515/pdtc-2017-0025 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-10-2016-0063 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/rsr-10-2016-0063 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020170000043006 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020170000043006 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.80.1.103 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.80.1.103 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/23257962.2016.1260532 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/23257962.2016.1260532 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 mapping the core values of librarianship to the acrl framework. communications in information literacy, 11(1), 42–54. 66 saunders, l. (2017). connecting information literacy and social justice: why and how. communications in information literacy, 11(1), 55–75. 2017 ideational 67 wargo, j. m. (2017). #donttagyourhate: reading collecting and curating as genres of participation in lgbt youth activism on tumblr. digital culture & education, 9(1), 14– 30. 2017 empirical 68 henninger, m. (2017). government information: literacies, behaviours and practices. government information quarterly, 34(1), 8–15. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.giq.2016.12.003 2017 empirical 69 harissis, s. (2017). the fight for public library funding: demonstrate value or demonstrate in the streets? progressive librarian, 46, 5–11. 2017 practicional 70 pionke, j. j.. (2017). beyond ada compliance: the library as a place for all. urban library journal, 23(1), 1–17. 2017 ideational 71 jaeger, p. t., & sarin, l. c . (2016). the politically engaged public library: admitting and embracing the political nature of libraries and their goals. public library quarterly, 35(4), 325–330. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01616846.2016.1245005 2016 ideational 72 matthews, r. matthe82@uwm. ed. (2016). is the archivist a “radical atheist” now? deconstruction, its new wave, and archival activism. archival science, 16(3), 213–260. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-0159248-2 2016 empirical 73 dewan, p. (2016). economic well-being and social justice through pleasure reading. new library world, 117(9/10), 557–567. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/nlw03-2016-0019 2016 ideational 74 tang, l., shan, d., & yang, p. (2016). workers’ rights defence on china’s internet: an analysis of actors. information, communication & society, 19(8), 1171–1186. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2015.1107613 2016 empirical 75 farrell, m. (2016). leadership and social justice. journal 2016 ideational 26 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.giq.2016.12.003 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.giq.2016.12.003 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01616846.2016.1245005 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01616846.2016.1245005 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-015-9248-2 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-015-9248-2 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/nlw-03-2016-0019 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/nlw-03-2016-0019 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2015.1107613 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2015.1107613 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 of library administration, 56(6), 722–730. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01930826.2016.1199147 76 beasley, g. (2016). article processing charges: a new route to open access? information services & use, 36(3/4), 163–170. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3233/isu-160815 2016 ideational 77 poggiali, j. j. p. (2016). incorporating ethical consumption into electronic device acquisition: a proposal. portal: libraries & the academy, 16(3), 581– 597. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2016.0037 2016 practicional 78 raju, r., claassen, j., & moll, e. (2016). researchers adapting to open access journal publishing: the case of the university of cape town. south african journal of libraries & information science, 82(2), 34–45. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.7553/82-2-1628 2016 ideational 79 platt, v. (2016). the activist archive and social justice agendas: considering the role of the ken saro-wiwa archive in micro-minority identity in the niger delta. african research & documentation, 129, 43–56. 2016 narrative 80 shiri, a. (2016). exploring information ethics. journal of information ethics, 25(1), 17–37. 2016 ideational 81 caswell, m., & cilor, m. (2016). from human rights to feminist ethics: radical empathy in the archives. archivaria, 81, 23–43. 2016 ideational 82 douglass, k., & mehra, b. (2016). a four frames analysis to address the information challenges of families of children with adhd: actions for public libraries to address embedded power imbalances. libri: international journal of libraries & information services, 66(1), 59–71. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1515/libri-2015-0078 2016 ideational 83 cancro, p. (2016). the dark(ish) side of digitization: information equity and the digital divide. serials librarian, 71(1), 57–62. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2016.1157424 2016 ideational 84 cifor, m. (2016). affecting relations: introducing affect theory to archival discourse. archival science, 16(1), 7–31. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-0159261-5 2016 theoretical 27 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01930826.2016.1199147 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01930826.2016.1199147 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3233/isu-160815 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3233/isu-160815 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2016.0037 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2016.0037 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.7553/82-2-1628 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1515/libri-2015-0078 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2016.1157424 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2016.1157424 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-015-9261-5 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-015-9261-5 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 85 wittebols, j. h. (2016). empowering students to make sense of an information-saturated world. communications in information literacy, 10(1), 1–13. 2016 pedagogical 86 shaw, j. j. a., & shaw, h. j. (2016). mapping the technologies of spatial (in)justice in the anthropocene. information & communications technology law, 25(1), 32–49. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/13600834.2015.1134147 2016 narrative 87 šimunić, z., tanacković, s. f., & badurina, b. (2016). library services for incarcerated persons: a survey of recent trends and challenges in prison libraries in croatia. journal of librarianship & information science, 48(1), 72–89. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0961000614538481 2016 empirical 88 mathuews, k. (2016). moving beyond diversity to social justice. progressive librarian, 44, 6–27. 2016 empirical 89 moore, n. (2016). “don’t trust anyone over the age of 30.” progressive librarian, 44, 93–100. 2016 pedagogical 90 shockey, k. (2016). intellectual freedom is not social justice. progressive librarian, 44, 101–110. 2016 ideational 91 gorham, u., taylor, n. g., & jaeger, p. t. (2016). volume editors’ introduction: “libraries as institutions of human rights and social justice.” advances in librarianship, 41, 1–12. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065283020160000041001 2016 ideational 92 dadlani, p. (2016). social justice concepts and public libraries: a case study. advances in librarianship, 41, 15– 48. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065283020160000041002 2016 empirical 93 hoffmann, a. l. (2016). privacy, intellectual freedom, and self-respect: technological and philosophical lessons for libraries. advances in librarianship, 41, 49–69. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065283020160000041003 2016 ideational 94 mehra, b., & hernandez, l. (2016). libraries as agents of human rights protection and social justice on behalf of sexual minorities in india: an action-based manifesto for progressive change. advances in librarianship, 41, 147– 182. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s00652016 empirical 28 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/13600834.2015.1134147 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/13600834.2015.1134147 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0961000614538481 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0961000614538481 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041001 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041001 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041002 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041002 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041003 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041003 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041007 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 283020160000041007 95 mceachreon, p. (2016). libraries “coming out” in support of lgbtqia+ human rights and social justice. advances in librarianship, 41, 183–208. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065283020160000041032 2016 ideational 96 barriage, s. (2016). the role of the union in promoting social justice. advances in librarianship, 41, 231–243. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065283020160000041009 2016 ideational 97 gorham, u., taylor, n. g., & jaeger, p. t. (2016). human rights, social justice, and the activist future of libraries. advances in librarianship, 41, 419–427. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065283020160000041017 2016 ideational 98 heller, m., & gaede, f. (2016). measuring altruistic impact: a model for understanding the social justice of open access. journal of librarianship & scholarly communication, 4, 1–18. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.7710/2162-3309.1258 2016 ideational 99 jaeger, p. t., shilton, k., & koepfler, j. (2016). the rise of social justice as a guiding principle in library and information science research. library quarterly, 86(1), 1– 9. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684142 2016 ideational 100 buschman, j., & warner, d. a. (2016). on community, justice, and libraries. library quarterly, 86(1), 10–24. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684146 2016 ideational 101 punzalan, r. l., & caswell, m. (2016). critical directions for archival approaches to social justice. library quarterly, 86(1), 25–42. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684145 2016 ideational 102 dadlani, p., & todd, r. j. (2016). social justice as strategy: connecting school libraries, collaboration, and it. library quarterly, 86(1), 43–75. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684143 2016 empirical 103 hoffmann, a. l. (2016). google books, libraries, and selfrespect: information justice beyond distributions. library quarterly, 86(1), 76–92. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684141 2016 ideational 29 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041007 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041032 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041032 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041032 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041009 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041009 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041017 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020160000041017 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.7710/2162-3309.1258 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.7710/2162-3309.1258 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684142 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684146 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684145 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684145 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684143 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684143 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684141 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684141 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 104 thompson, k. m., & paul, a. (2016). “i am not sure how much it will be helpful for me”: factors for digital inclusion among middle-class women in india. library quarterly, 86(1), 93–106. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684144 2016 empirical 105 cooke, n. a., sweeney, m. e., & noble, s. u. (2016). social justice as topic and tool: an attempt to transform an lis curriculum and culture. library quarterly, 86(1), 107–124. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684147 2016 ideational 106 sheffield, r. t. (2016). more than acid-free folders: extending the concept of preservation to include the stewardship of unexplored histories. library trends, 64(3), 572–584. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2016.0001 2016 ideational 107 evans, j., mckemmish, s., daniels, e., & mccarthy, g. (2015). self-determination and archival autonomy: advocating activism. archival science, 15(4), 337–368. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-0159244-6 2015 ideational 108 strauss, a. (2015). treading the ground of contested memory: archivists and the human rights movement in chile. archival science, 15(4), 369–397. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-014-9223-3 2015 ideational 109 yaco, s., jimerson, a., anderson, l., & temple, c. (2015). a web-based community-building archives project: a case study of kids in birmingham 1963. archival science, 15(4), 399–427. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-015-9246-4 2015 ideational 110 widdersheim, m. m. (2015). governance, legitimation, commons: a public sphere framework and research agenda for the public library sector. libri: international journal of libraries & information services, 65(4), 237–245. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1515/libri-2015-0043 2015 ideational 111 soglasnova, l., & hanson, m. (2015). socially responsive design and evaluation of a workers’ compensation thesaurus for a community organization with selective application of cognitive work analysis: a case study. cataloging & classification quarterly, 53(8), 905– 926. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01639374.2015.1044632 2015 methodologi cal 30 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684144 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684144 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684147 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/684147 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2016.0001 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2016.0001 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-015-9244-6 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-015-9244-6 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-014-9223-3 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-014-9223-3 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-015-9246-4 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-015-9246-4 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1515/libri-2015-0043 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01639374.2015.1044632 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01639374.2015.1044632 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 112 rhinesmith, c., dettmann, m., pierson, m., & spence, r. (2015). youthstudio: designing public library ya spaces with teens. journal of research on libraries & young adults, 6, 1–24. 2015 narrative 113 hunter, g. s. (2015). the archival profession and society. american archivist, 78(2), 285–287. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.285 2015 ideational 114 ramirez, m. h. (2015). being assumed not to be: a critique of whiteness as an archival imperative. american archivist, 78(2), 339–356. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.339 2015 ideational 115 poole, a. h. (2015). archival divides and foreign countries? historians, archivists, information-seeking, and technology: retrospect and prospect. american archivist, 78(2), 375–433. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.375 2015 ideational 116 steele, c. (2015). art exhibit on black panther challenges library patrons to face violence of mass incarceration. collaborative librarianship, 7(4), 168–175. 2015 practicional 117 bardoff, c. (2015). homelessness and the ethics of information access. serials librarian, 69(3/4), 347–360. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2015.1099590 2015 practicional 118 awards that celebrate diversity in children’s literature. (2015). children & libraries. the journal of the association for library service to children, 13(3), 34–35. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5860/cal.13n3.34 2015 practicional 119 battista, a., ellenwood, d., gregory, l., higgins, s., lilburn, j., harker, y. s., & sweet, c. (2015). seeking social justice in the acrl framework. communications in information literacy, 9(2), 111–125. 2015 ideational 120 jaeger, p. t. (2015). disability, human rights, and social justice: the ongoing struggle for online accessibility and equality. first monday, 20(9–7), 1. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5210/fm.v20i9.6164 2015 ideational 121 mehra, b. (2015). introduction. library trends, 64(2), 179– 197. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0042 2015 ideational 122 mathiesen, k. (2015). informational justice: a conceptual 2015 ideational 31 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.285 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.285 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.339 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.339 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.375 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/0360-9081.78.2.375 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2015.1099590 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0361526x.2015.1099590 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5860/cal.13n3.34 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5210/fm.v20i9.6164 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5210/fm.v20i9.6164 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0042 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0042 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 framework for social justice in library and information services. library trends, 64(2), 198–225. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0044 123 oliphant, t. (2015). social justice research in library and information sciences: a case for discourse analysis. library trends, 64(2), 226–245. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0046 2015 methodologi cal 124 brook, f., ellenwood, d., & lazzaro, a. e. (2015). in pursuit of antiracist social justice: denaturalizing whiteness in the academic library. library trends, 64(2), 246–284. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0048 2015 narrative 125 vincent, j. (2015). why do we need to bother? public library services for lgbtqi people. library trends, 64(2), 285–298. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0050 2015 practicional 126 merlo-vega, j. a., & chu, c. m. (2015). out of necessity comes unbridled imagination for survival: contributive justice in spanish libraries during economic crisis. library trends, 64(2), 299–328. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0051 2015 empirical 127 dadlani, p., & todd, r. j. (2015). information technology and school libraries: a social justice perspective. library trends, 64(2), 329–359. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0041 2015 empirical 128 allard, d., & ferris, s. (2015). antiviolence and marginalized communities: knowledge creation, community mobilization, and social justice through a participatory archiving approach. library trends, 64(2), 360–383. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0043 2015 narrative 129 roy, l. (2015). advancing an indigenous ecology within lis education. library trends, 64(2), 384–414. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0045 2015 ideational 130 kumasi, k. d., & manlove, n. l. (2015). finding “diversity levers” in the core library and information science curriculum: a social justice imperative. library trends, 64(2), 415–443. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0047 2015 empirical 32 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0044 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0044 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0046 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0046 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0048 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0048 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0050 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0050 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0051 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0051 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0041 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0041 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0043 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0043 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0045 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0045 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0047 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0047 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 131 montague, r.-a. (2015). mix it up!: a blending of community informatics and youth services librarianship to further social justice in library and information science education. library trends, 64(2), 444–457. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0049 2015 pedagogical 132 jaeger, p. t., wentz, b., & bertot, j. c. (2015). accessibility, inclusion, and the roles of libraries. advances in librarianship, 40, 1–8. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065283020150000040008 2015 ideational 133 jaeger, p. t., wentz, b., & bertot, j. c. (2015). libraries and the future of equal access for people with disabilities: legal frameworks, human rights, and social justice. advances in librarianship, 40, 237–253. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065283020150000040020 2015 ideational 134 kendrick, k. d., & damasco, i. t. (2015). a phenomenological study of conservative academic librarians. behavioral & social sciences librarian, 34(3), 129–157. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01639269.2015.1063952 2015 empirical 135 jiang, l., & wagner, c. (2015). perceptions of justice or injustice as determinants of contributor defections from online communities. journal of the association for information science & technology, 66(7), 1477–1493. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/asi.23261 2015 ideational 136 moreillon, j. (2015). digital storytelling based on the association for library service to children competencies: a learning activity to promote values associated with social justice. public library quarterly, 34(3), 212–229. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01616846.2015.1069676 2015 empirical 137 butcher, j., & rose-adams, j. (2015). part-time learners in open and distance learning: revisiting the critical importance of choice, flexibility and employability. open learning, 30(2), 127–137. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/02680513.2015.1055719 2015 empirical 138 ryan, m., & leadley, s. (2015). reflections on dversity and organizational development. reference & user services quarterly, 54(4), 6–10 2015 practicional 33 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0049 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2015.0049 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020150000040008 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020150000040008 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020150000040008 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020150000040020 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/s0065-283020150000040020 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01639269.2015.1063952 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01639269.2015.1063952 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/asi.23261 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01616846.2015.1069676 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01616846.2015.1069676 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/02680513.2015.1055719 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/02680513.2015.1055719 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 139 harihareswara, s. (2015). user experience is a social justice issue. code4lib journal, 28, 1. 2015 narrative 140 jaeger, p. t., sarin, l. c., & peterson, k. j. (2015). diversity, inclusion, and library and information science: an ongoing imperative (or why we still desperately need to have siscussions about diversity and inclusion). library quarterly, 85(2), 127–132. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/680151 2015 ideational 141 jaeger, p. t., cooke, n. a., feltis, c., hamiel, m., jardine, f., & shilton, k. (2015). the virtuous circle revisited: injecting diversity, inclusion, rights, justice, and equity into lis from education to advocacy. library quarterly, 85(2), 150–171. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/680154 2015 ideational 142 yukawa, j. (2015). preparing for complexity and wicked problems through transformational learning approaches. journal of education for library & information science, 56(2), 158–168. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.12783/issn.2328-2967/56/2/6 2015 pedagogical 143 bossaller, j. s. ., frasher, j., norris, s., marks, c. p., & trott, b. (2015). learning about social justice through experiential learning abroad. reference & user services quarterly, 54(3), 6–11. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5860/rusq.54n3.6 2015 pedagogical 144 gerolami, n.. (2015). the library assemblage: creative institutions in an information society. journal of documentation, 71(1), 165–174. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/jd-09-2013-0120 2015 ideational 145 stranger-johannessen, e., asselin, m., & doiron, r. (2015). new perspectives on community library development in africa. new library world, 116(1/2), 79– 93. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/nlw-052014-0063 2015 narrative 146 lang froggatt, d. (2015). the informationally underserved: not always diverse, but always a social justice advocacy model. school libraries worldwide, 21(1), 54–72. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.14265.21.1.004 2015 empirical 147 underwood, j., kimmel, s., forest, d., & dickinson, g. (2015). culturally relevant booktalking: using a mixed 2015 empirical 34 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/680151 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/680151 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/680154 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/680154 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.12783/issn.2328-2967/56/2/6 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.12783/issn.2328-2967/56/2/6 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5860/rusq.54n3.6 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5860/rusq.54n3.6 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/jd-09-2013-0120 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/jd-09-2013-0120 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/nlw-05-2014-0063 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/nlw-05-2014-0063 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.14265.21.1.004 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.14265.21.1.004 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 reality simulation with preservice school librarians. school libraries worldwide, 21(1), 91–107. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.14265.21.1.006 148 jaeger, p. t., gorham, u., taylor, n. g., kettnich, k., sarin, l. c., & peterson, k. j. (2014). library research and what libraries actually do now: education, inclusion, social services, public spaces, digital literacy, social justice, human rights, and other community needs. library quarterly, 84(4), 491–493. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/677785 2014 narrative 149 foote, j. b. (2014). profiles in science for science librarians: clyde snow: forensic anthropologist, social justice advocate, and super sleuth. science & technology libraries, 33(3), 213–227. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0194262x.2014.944297 2014 narrative 150 morales, m., knowles, e. c., & bourg, c. (2014). diversity, social justice, and the future of libraries. portal: libraries & the academy, 14(3), 439–451. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2014.0017 2014 ideational 151 schroeder, r., & hollister, c. v. (2014). librarians’ views on critical theories and critical practices. behavioral & social sciences librarian, 33(2), 91–119. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01639269.2014.912104 2014 empirical 152 poole, a. h. (2014). the strange career of jim crow archives: race, space, and history in the mid-twentiethcentury american south. american archivist, 77(1), 23–63. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.77.1.g621m3701g821 442 2014 narrative 153 douglass, k. (2014). studying the information needs of egovernance stakeholders: environmental justice as a context for tool development. information polity: the international journal of government & democracy in the information age, 19(1/2), 97–113. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3233/ip-140323 2014 ideational 154 ratto, m., wylie, s., & jalbert, k. (2014). introduction to the special forum on critical making as research program. information society, 30(2), 85–95. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01972243.2014.875767 2014 ideational 155 mehra, b. (2014). qualitative and quantitative methods in 2014 ideational 35 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.14265.21.1.006 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.14265.21.1.006 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/677785 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/677785 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0194262x.2014.944297 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0194262x.2014.944297 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2014.0017 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2014.0017 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01639269.2014.912104 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01639269.2014.912104 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.77.1.g621m3701g821442 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.77.1.g621m3701g821442 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.77.1.g621m3701g821442 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3233/ip-140323 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3233/ip-140323 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01972243.2014.875767 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01972243.2014.875767 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 libraries journal special issue: social justice, social inclusion. qualitative & quantitative methods in libraries, 1–3. 156 mehra, b., black, k., singh, v., nolt, j., williams, k.c., simmons, s., & renfro, n. (2014). the social justice framework in the information technology rural librarian master’s scholarship program: bridging the rural digital divides. qualitative & quantitative methods in libraries. 5–11. 2014 narrative 157 mehra, b., & singh, v. (2014). recruitment methods in the information technology rural librarian master’s scholarship program (part i and part ii): implications of social justice in the southern and central appalachian region. qualitative & quantitative methods in libraries, 13–22. 2014 pedagogical 158 rioux, k. (2014). teaching social justice in an information literacy course: an action research case study. qualitative & quantitative methods in libraries, 23–30. 2014 narrative 159 williams-cockfield, k. c. (2014). building civic capacity using a holistic approach to public library service: a participant researcher’s perspective on social justice in the cayman islands public library service. qualitative & quantitative methods in libraries, 31–38. 2014 narrative 160 dadlani, p. t., & todd, r. (2014). information technology services and school libraries: a continuum of social justice. qualitative & quantitative methods in libraries, 39–48. 2014 methodologi cal 161 singh, v. (2014). a case study of migration to an open source ils: partnership among state libraries. qualitative & quantitative methods in libraries, 59–68. 2014 ideational 162 kamel, s. h. (2014). the value of social media in egypt’s uprising and beyond. electronic journal of information systems in developing countries, 60(1), 1–7. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/j.16814835.2014.tb00426.x 2014 practicional 163 duff, w., flinn, a., suurtamm, k., & wallace, d. (2013). social justice impact of archives: a preliminary investigation. archival science, 13(4), 317–348. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-0129198-x 2013 ideational 36 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/j.1681-4835.2014.tb00426.x https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/j.1681-4835.2014.tb00426.x https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/j.1681-4835.2014.tb00426.x https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-012-9198-x https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-012-9198-x more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 164 hoffmann, d., & wallace, a. (2013). intentional informationists: re-envisioning information literacy and re-designing instructional programs around faculty librarians’ strengths as campus connectors, information professionals, and course designers. journal of academic librarianship, 39(6), 546–551. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.acalib.2013.06.004 2013 ideational 165 greene, m. a. (2013). a critique of social justice as an archival imperative: what is it we’re doing that’s all that important? american archivist, 76(2), 302–334. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.76.2.14744l214663k w43 2013 ideational 166 jimerson, r. c. (2013). archivists and social responsibility: a response to mark greene. american archivist, 76(2), 335–345. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.76.2.2627p15350572 t21t 2013 ideational 167 yaya, j. a., achonna, a. u., & osisanwo, t. (2013). censorship and the challenges of library services delivery in nigeria. library philosophy & practice, 1–25. 2013 practicional 168 shorter-gooden, k. (2013). the culturally competent organization. library quarterly, 83(3), 207–211. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/670695 2013 ideational 169 ferguson, a. w. (2013). back talk library dreams. against the grain, 25(1), 86–85. 2013 practicional 170 hayes-bohanan, p. (2013). librarian mentoring of an undergraduate research project. journal of library innovation, 4(1), 21–28. 2013 pedagogical 171 adler, k. (2013). radical purpose: the critical reference dialogue at a progressive urban college. urban library journal, 19(1), 1–8. 2013 pedagogical 172 zettervall, s. (2012). through a distant lens. progressive librarian, 40, 109–124. 2012 empirical 173 lor, p. j., & britz, j. j. (2012). an ethical perspective on political-economic issues in the long-term preservation of digital heritage. journal of the american society for information science & technology, 63(11), 2153–2164. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/asi.22725 2012 ideational 37 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.acalib.2013.06.004 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.acalib.2013.06.004 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.76.2.14744l214663kw43 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.76.2.14744l214663kw43 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.76.2.14744l214663kw43 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.76.2.2627p15350572t21t https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.76.2.2627p15350572t21t https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.17723/aarc.76.2.2627p15350572t21t https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/670695 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/asi.22725 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 174 stewart, g. (2012). sharing our stories: using an online encyclopaedia as the basis for a general education module on local history, creative writing and social justice. south african journal of libraries & information science, 78(2), 113–120. 2012 narrative 175 britz, j. j., & ponelis, s. (2012). social justice and the international flow of knowledge with specific reference to african scholars. aslib proceedings, 64(5), 462–477. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/00012531211263094 2012 ideational 176 lau, a. j., gilliland, a. j., & anderson, k. (2012). naturalizing community engagement in information studies. information, communication & society, 15(7), 991–1015. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2011.630404 2012 narrative 177 endter, a. l. (2012). authentication of online state primary legal resources as a social justice issue: the uniform electronic legal material act and how it can benefit oro se litigants. legal reference services quarterly, 31(3/4), 293–311. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0270319x.2012.741034 2012 ideational 178 pu, q., & scanlan, s. j. (2012). communicating injustice? information, communication & society, 15(4), 572–590. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2012.665937 2012 empirical 179 bonnici, l. j., maatta, s. l., wells, m. k., brodsky, j., & meadows, i. c. w. (2012). physiological access as a social justice type in lis curricula. journal of education for library & information science, 53(2), 115–129. 2012 empirical 180 oslick, m. e. (2012). boys and criminal justice in young adolescent fiction. new review of children’s literature & librarianship, 18(1), 1–10. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/13614541.2011.650955 2012 pedagogical 181 gilliland, a. g. (2011). neutrality, social justice and the obligations of archival education and educators in the twenty-first century. archival science, 11(3/4), 193–209. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-0119147-0 2011 ideational 182 mandlis, l. r. (2011). a passport to trouble. journal of information ethics, 20(2), 85–102. https://doi2011 empirical 38 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/00012531211263094 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/00012531211263094 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2011.630404 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2011.630404 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0270319x.2012.741034 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/0270319x.2012.741034 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2012.665937 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/1369118x.2012.665937 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/13614541.2011.650955 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/13614541.2011.650955 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-011-9147-0 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-011-9147-0 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3172/jie.20.2.85 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3172/jie.20.2.85 183 macdonald, s. (2011). conference proceedings: organize & assemble. progressive librarian, 36/37, 77–82. 2011 ideational 184 jimerson, r. c. (2011). ripples across the pond: global implications of the heiner affair. archives & manuscripts, 39(1), 15–48. 2011 narrative 185 lindsay, a. (2011). archives and justice: willard ireland’s contribution to the changing legal framework of aboriginal rights in canada, 1963-1973. archivaria, 71, 35–62. 2011 narrative 186 hastings, e. (2011). “no longer a silent victim of history:” repurposing the documents of japanese american internment. archival science, 11(1/2), 25–46. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-010-9113-2 2011 narrative 187 chao-min chiu, eric t.g. wang, fu-jong shih, & yi-wen fan. (2011). understanding knowledge sharing in virtual communities: an integration of expectancy disconfirmation and justice theories. online information review, 35(1), 134–153. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/14684521111113623 2011 empirical 188 harrison, y. d., kostic, k., toton, s. c., & zurek, j. (2010). globalizing social justice education: the case of the global solidarity network study e-broad program. internet & higher education, 13(3), 115–126. 2010 empirical 189 carpenter, c. (2010). the obamachine: technopolitics 2.0. journal of information technology & politics, 7(2/3), 216–225. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/19331681003765887 2010 ideational 190 salvador, a., rojas, s., & susinos, t. (2010). weaving networks: an educational project for digital inclusion. information society, 26(2), 137–143. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/01972240903562795 2010 practicional 191 rioux, k. (2010). metatheory in library and information science: a nascent social justice approach. journal of education for library & information science, 51(1), 9–17. 2010 metatheoreti cal 192 morrone, m., & friedman, l. 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(2009). future perfect? peacekeeping, peacebuilding and archives—the united nations in sudan. journal of the society of archivists, 30(1), 3–26. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/00379810903264583 2009 ideational 194 adams, s. (2009). our activist past: nora bateson, champion of regional libraries. (undetermined). partnership: the canadian journal of library & information practice & research, 4(1), 1–13. 2009 narrative 195 ponelis, s. r., & britz, j. j. (2008). to talk or not to talk? from telkom to hellkom: a critical reflection on the current telecommunication policy in south africa from a social justice perspective. international information & library review, 40(4), 219–225. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.iilr.2008.07.005 2008 ideational 196 glass, b. (2008). lilac 2008 in liverpool, european capital of culture. new library world, 109(11/12), 587–588. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/03074800810921395 2008 ideational 197 samek, t. (2008). finding human rights in library and information work. information world / bilgi dunyasi, 9(2), 527–540. 2008 ideational 198 friedman, l., & morrone, m. (2008). the sidewalk is our reference desk: when librarians take to the streets. refer, 24(3), 15–21. 2008 narrative 199 westbrook, l. (2008). understanding crisis information needs in context: the case of intimate partner violence survivors. library quarterly, 78(3), 237–261. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/588443 2008 empirical 200 hyde, g. (2008). appalachian special collections and appalachian studies: collections, curricula, and the development of interdisciplinary regional studies programs. journal for the society of north carolina archivists, 6(1), 4–25. 2008 narrative 201 britz, j. j. (2008). making the global information society good: a social justice perspective on the ethical dimensions of the global information society. journal of the american society for information science & 2008 ideational 40 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/02763870903267952 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/00379810903264583 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/00379810903264583 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.iilr.2008.07.005 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.iilr.2008.07.005 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/03074800810921395 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/03074800810921395 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/588443 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1086/588443 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 technology, 59(7), 1171–1183. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/asi.20848 202 scherlen, a., & robinson, m. (2008). open access to criminal justice scholarship: a matter of social justice. journal of criminal justice education, 19(1), 54– 74. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/10511250801892961 2008 ideational 203 krizack, j. d. (2007). preserving the history of diversity: one university’s efforts to make boston’s history more inclusive. rbm: a journal of rare books, manuscripts, & cultural heritage, 8(2), 125–132. 2007 practicional 204 jimerson, r. c. (2007). archives for all: professional responsibility and social justice. american archivist, 70(2), 252–281. 2007 ideational 205 mehra, b., & braquet, d. (2007). library and information science professionals as community action researchers in an academic setting: top ten directions to further institutional change for people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. library trends, 56(2), 542–565. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2008.0005 2007 empirical 206 lor, p. j., & britz, j. j. 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(2006). justice, equity and social responsibility: envisioning standard 10. knowledge 2006 ideational 41 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/asi.20848 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1002/asi.20848 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/10511250801892961 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1080/10511250801892961 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2008.0005 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/lib.2008.0005 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0165551506075327 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0165551506075327 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5771/0943-7444-2007-3-144 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.5771/0943-7444-2007-3-144 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.acalib.2007.01.007 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.acalib.2007.01.007 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 quest, 34(5), 17–42. 211 dunbar, a. w. (2006). introducing critical race theory to archival discourse: getting the conversation started. archival science, 6(1), 109–129. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-006-9022-6 2006 theoretical 212 mehra, b., & braquet, d. (2006). a “queer” manifesto of interventions for libraries to “come out” of the closet! a study of “queer” youth experiences during the coming out process. libres: library & information science research electronic journal, 16(1), 1–29. 2006 empirical 213 zazzau, v.-e. (2006). becoming information literate about information technology and the ethics of toxic waste. portal: libraries & the academy, 6(1), 99–107. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2006.0014 2006 pedagogical 214 warner, j. n. (2005). africa in canadian academic libraries: a continent’s voices go missing. social justice, 32(4), 180–191. 2005 empirical 215 lor, p., & britz, j. (2005). knowledge production from an african perspective: international information flows and intellectual property. international information & library review, 37(2), 61–76. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.iilr.2005.04.003 2005 ideational 216 moody, k. (2005). covert censorship in libraries: a discussion paper. australian library journal, 54(2), 138– 147. 2005 practicional 217 murphy, b. m. (2005). interdoc: the first international non-governmental computer network. first monday, 1. 2005 narrative 218 shorley, d. (2005). politicised but not political. library & information update, 4(4), 18–20. 2005 ideational 219 moody, k. (2004). censorship by queensland public librarians: philosophy and practice. aplis, 17(4), 168–185. 2004 empirical 220 lor, p., & britz, j. j. (2004). a moral perspective on south-north web archiving. journal of information science, 30(6), 540–549. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0165551504047925 2004 ideational 221 raseroka, h.k. (2004). overcome silence. library & information update, 3(12), 15. 2004 ideational 42 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-006-9022-6 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1007/s10502-006-9022-6 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1353/pla.2006.0014 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.iilr.2005.04.003 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1016/j.iilr.2005.04.003 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0165551504047925 https://doi-org.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0165551504047925 more than lip service the international journal of information, diversity, & inclusion, 5(2), 2021 issn 2574-3430, jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index doi: 10.33137/ijidi.v5i2.34806 222 lor, p. j., & britz, j. (2004). digitization of africa’s documentary heritage: aid or exploitation? journal of information ethics, 13(2), 78–93. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.3172/jie.13.2.78 2004 ideational 223 kawooya, d. (2004). universal access to ict and lifelong learning: uganda’s experience. new library world, 105(11/12), 423–428. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1108/03074800410568761 2004 ideational 224 britz, j., & lor, p. (2004). a moral reflection on the digitization of africa’s documentary heritage. ifla journal, 30(3), 216–223. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/034003520403000304 2004 ideational 225 dale, a. (2004). editorial. journal of information science, 30(3), 191. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0165551504046037 2004 ideational 226 britz, j. j. (2004). to know or not to know: a moral reflection on information poverty. journal of information science, 30(3), 192–204. https://doiorg.proxy.lib.utk.edu/10.1177/0165551504044666 2004 ideational 227 “world summit”. (2004). library & information update, 3(3), 5. 2004 ideational 228 durrani, s., & smallwood, e. 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(2012). knowledge into action: research and evaluation in library and information science: research and evaluation in library and information science. abc-clio. white, m. d., & marsh, e. e. (2006). content analysis: a flexible methodology. library trends, 55(1), 22-45. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/3670 wiegand, w. a. (2020). sanitizing american library history: reflections of a library historian. the library quarterly, 90(2), 108-120. https://www.doi.org/10.1086/707669 wilson, t. d. (1999). models in information behaviour research. journal of documentation, 55(3), 249-270. https://www.doi.org/10.1108/eum0000000007145 winston, m. (2017). economic inequality as a societal issue: the role of access to information in fostering social change. journal of information ethics, 26(2), 54–71. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322340215_economic_inequality_as_a_soci etal_issue_the_role_of_access_to_information_in_fostering_social_change joseph winberry (jwinber1@vols.utk.edu) is a ph.d. student at the university of tennessee’s college of communication and information. his research interests in community informatics, information seeking, and social justice help guide his work towards answering a central question: what is the role of information and technology in bringing about social change? winberry’s scholarship has been published in the international journal of information, diversity, and inclusion, the journal of librarianship and information science, and library quarterly (forthcoming) among other venues. he has also received funding from the association for library and information science education and the american library association’s social responsibility roundtable. 53 https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/ijidi/index https://doi.org/10.24195/spj2310-2896.2019.4.14 https://doi.org/10.24195/spj2310-2896.2019.4.14 http://hdl.handle.net/2142/3670 https://www.doi.org/10.1086/707669 https://www.doi.org/10.1108/eum0000000007145 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322340215_economic_inequality_as_a_societal_issue_the_role_of_access_to_information_in_fostering_social_change https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322340215_economic_inequality_as_a_societal_issue_the_role_of_access_to_information_in_fostering_social_change mailto:jwinber1@vols.utk.edu introduction methods findings knowledge metatheoretical theoretical ideational methodological empirical narrative practice professional pedagogical discussion limitations and future research conclusion appendix final sample for analysis references 984-h uc-nrlf 51 33d 8 10 a league of justice is it right to rob robbers? rvlorrison i. swift. price fifty cents, boston the commonwealth society 9 nassau strkkt 1893 contents. i. the league gardening at the roots of the social system ... i ii. brains and capitalists fall out . . 6 iii. the good deeds of some curtailed . 14 iv. organizing . . . . . 17 v. a free newspaper . . . . 19 vi. lawyers no more .... 22 vii. education, for the first time . 28 viii. the invasion of knowledge . . 33 ix. transfiguration of the churches . 40 x. the waterloo of "society" . . 42 xi. political parties also ... 46 xii. discovery on a sufficient scale . 53 xiii. the trial 60 xiv. the founder's story ... 67 xv.. sentence ...... 79 xvi. the people, at last .... 82 364782 a league of justice, chapter i. the league gardening the roots of the social system. four men met together in the garret where one of them lived. they were the trusted clerks of great commercial houses. through the hands of each passed daily sums equal to fortunes. they were men of devoted honesty; not one but would have died rather than take for himself a penny of his employers' funds. the salary of two of these men was nine hun dred dollars a year. the others received one thousand each. they were also allowed a vacation of two weeks in the summer. with families or friends to support, their salaries did not take them far from the town during this resting time. they were not old men, but a look of age was upon each of their faces, and all were prematurely gray. they spoke with grave faces. evidently they had come too far in life to act from ill-balanced enthusiasm. they took no oath of fidelity to one another, nor to the cause they were undertaking. an oath would not have deepened their loyalty. one of them said: "if we are skillful and do not take amounts too large, we may hope to escape detec tion five or even ten years. soon or late each will be 2 a league of justice. discovered, imprisoned and his family disgraced. is the cause worthy of this sacrifice?" " it is," they responded in firm tones. they remained in conference two hours arranging the plans of their work. a month later ten men assembled in the same gar ret. the society had grown through the admission of six comrades. ' the four founders reported their progress. "i have taken one thousand dollars," "i eight hundred," "i thirteen hundred," "i two thousand dollars," they said in turns. the first speaker continued : ' ' my most difficult part has been to distribute what i took. i helped several destitute families, but with inadequate sums, for fear of the suspicions question, where i came by the money. but through a friend who does not ask questions, i saved a hard working market gardener from losing his little plot of ground through mortgage. i have five hundred dollars left." the others made similar reports. " this difficulty is already disposed of," the presi dent said. "one has joined us who is not a clerk, and who can be our distributing agent, judiciously applying what sums are needed without drawing sus picion to himself or us. he may pass as the repre sentative of philanthropic but modest persons who do not wish their names known, dispersing his assistance over the city to avoid suggestive comparisons." new names were considered, and several were re jected, lacking the high reliability of character neces sary to sustain an arduous mission. against the a league of justice. 3 emergency of general exposure from a member prov ing untrustworthy, it was resolved to develop the so ciety in separate and wholly independent groups of ten, the four original organizers, only, being author ized to initiate groups, and they alone knowing the entire membership. for the rest, each one's knowl edge was to be limited to his own group. should a member be false, his testimony could at worst convict his nine 'associates only, and the progress of the society would not be impaired. each section was to have its own distributor. " if a group and its processes are discovered," said one, "other groups are endangered, for detectives will scent out recipients of aid and snare those who furnish it." "and if an agent was discovered, what then ? we may be sure he would never betray his comrades. but we can trust them to baffle detection : they can disguise themselves, or invent a visit and leave money unnoticed; a child met outside the door will never re fuse to carry a package to its parents ; and there is the mail, too, which would hardly suspect a common brown parcel of containing crisp bills ; and if these strategies wear threadbare, think of the hundreds of stores anxious to sell a yard of cloth and deliver it, and quite obliging enough to wrap in another thing or two if you please. that part is easy enough. f a shrewd distributor is quite out of reach of discovery." so answered another to this seeming obstacle. to comprehend the beneficent successes of these self-abegnating men, we must follow their agent in his novel excursions. in many disguises he learned the 4 a league of justice. true conditian of scores of poor families. he adopted a special character for each district. being a physi cian, he appeared, in one quarter of the city in this guise ; in another he was an authorized sanitary in spector ; to a third he went as a student investigating ; to another as an advising clergyman ; and one locality knew him as a statistician for the labor union to which he belonged. the sums that he disposed of in a sec tion were not large enough to arouse comment. he found many families falling behind in rent, through the sickness of their breadwinners, with the gray prospect near of being forced to surrender bad quar ters for worse ones, and he banished that evil phan tom. there were wtdows in almost every tenement, who left their colorless children daily to wear out their fragile strength in factories for the comfort of their landlords, . and to buy off death from the immediate execution of their infants by the sufferings of miser able maturity. they were conveyed to country towns, housed there and clothed, and a year's rent paid for them. the number of half-clad children for whom he provided warm flannels would not be credited by the fabulously righteous slummers and charity super visors ; and where there were persons whose miniature wages declined to pay for a nourishing dinner once a week, he contrived to astonish them with immaculate sections of beef on days that were not holidays. let not the generous reader imagine that this rising and energetic providence fed all the needy people ; a galaxy of unretired providences, giving their atten tion to business, was requisite for that, and it came in good time. a league of justice. 5 for it was not many years before there were branches of this beneficent institution in every prominent city of the north, west, east and south, chicago lead ing, as in all good things, with a full hundred ; and the groups began to specialize their undertakings, some of them being fond of presenting the tenement artisans with snug farms in the west and seeing their pioteges safely settled there, protected from the pirat ing land-speculators of that fringe of paradise, and their intriguing colleagues in the banks. but nothing told so powerfully and swiftly for the amelioration of the laboring millions as the gold which certain far-sighted groups knew ho.w to pour into the treasuries of strikers ; and from that date an astonish ing success began to crown the participators in labor wars. this invention in the mechanics of social pro gress rose to its legitimate importance through the signal victory it enabled workingnien to win over one carnegie, now forgotten, but at that period of his life a famous exploiter of labor and legislation. this am bitions person, who sought distinction as a patron sim ultaneously of statesmen, starvelings and an envious rout of middle-minded people, cut from the anglo saxon pattern, whose genius lay in unsuccessfully wishing to exploit contemporary mankind of millions and loyally supporting those who successfully exploit ed them. this individual, blessed with an environ ment of propitious clay and the courage of his instinct that thousands were born to minister to his gayety and aggrandizement, determined, as napoleon once detei mined to shatter russia, to crush the labor organiza tions out of his pathway to democratic fraternity and 6 a league of justice. sovereignty ; for he knew that if these thorny impedi ments in the mills which he was fond of considering his own were brushed aside, he could manage the vulgar rabble of wage-earners to his heart's desire, and gain ing ever more wealth from their unwilling contribu tions, and buying ever more honor and grandeur from the world's grocery where these nourishing articles are sold, and disbursing his eminent talents and profits so far as business allowed, he would at length grow to the size of the gods and live in men's memories with jesus and plato and gould. to enjoy the virtuous consciousness of well-earned wealth and philosophic freedom from the physical evils besetting the course of one who heroically destroys the aspirations of ham lets of human beings, whose poetry is the blast fur nace and whose philosophic excursions are the peri patetic synthesis of broiling iron, he betook himself to a fair castle in distant scotland a house not made with his own hands, but bought with the labor of his hands at homestead, whom now, teeming with thank ful devices, he was pondering keen-edged thoughts to degrade. it was just at this moment that certain ethical groups, pursuing rectitude, became awake to their opportunity and began to contribute to the strikers' support. all non-union men who, being out of work, came to fill the places of the old hands, were enrolled upon the pay list of the others and refused to go to work. the aid which was given sufficed to keep the strikers from want, and perceiving that some power ful popular sentiment was back of them, they contin ued firm in their formerly unequal struggle with a league of justice. 7 sceptred capital. it was the turning point of that struggle, for the most swollen potentates of finance could not survive the losses which carnegie suffered for a protracted period. when at length he yielded, to avoid ruin, the men were not content to resume their posts with trifling concessions in wages and acknowledgement of the right to combine. their compulsory idleness has educated them, and under standing for the first time their power, they nego tiated a partnership with their previous master. the influence of this waterloo to a shining knight of cap ital upon the country, was like the dazzling rise of a competing sun in the horizon. strikers in other places were not neglected, and the proportion of successful strikes rapidly swelled. it broke upon the esoteric' inkiness of the employers' brain that strikes were stunning their trade and almost uniformly succeeding, and they grew very chary of putting the vitals of the cumbersome beast, capital, under the club of the executioner; wherefore, strikes decreased with acceleration, the employers preferring reasonable concessions to their own eco nomic extinction. these concessions in turn pro duced a notable improvement in the condition and character of the employes. seeing the unmistakable success of the labor organizations, workmen who had refused to join in earlier days, shrinking from the dis pleasure of their all-potent employing dictators, ral lied to the unions, augmenting still further their vitality and beneficence. the capitalists sadly saw that when the unions composed themselves for a strike, they were predestined to win, and they shaped 8 a i^kaguk of justice. their shriveling course accordingly. on their part, rejoicing in their april potency, and recognizing the immense physical and moral dividends of each mate rial increment to their class, the unions began to pre pare themselves for more considerable alleviations touching social and material equality. chapter ii. brains and capitalists fall out. in the meantime, production itself was feeling a change. demand, for the necessaries of life had grown with the grown incomes of the poor, and employment for a fresh army corps of working peo ple sprang up in these industries. demand for luxuries had declined, but not in proportion to the increased demands for comforts and necessaries, and the volume of business as a whole was greater by far than ever before. capitalists had discovered a shrink age in their incomes, and not being able to account for it in any other way, had supposed it was because the industrial share of labor had increased. the wise had curtailed their superfluity expenses and were healthier and happier ; the foolish, not being able to curtail, failed, and their business passed to the hands of men with less regal sentiments of their own deserts and new ideas about the proportion labor merits. the wisest -of all, finding society so much more wholesome since the workers began to advance, came out boldly as labor champions and made their factories co-operative. nevertheless, despite the large deductions which the members of the league of justice were making from the gross "earnings" of the capitalists, their net incomes fell off in no very marked manner, for the productive capacity and quality of the working popu 10 a league of justice. lation rose so steadily, in consequence of their better material state, that they rendered to the employers in return for wages, a larger product than ever before. this tended to reconcile the masters to the laborers' daily enlarging demands. and, moreover, if some capital had been withdrawn from the manufacture o{ luxuries, still more having been invested in the manu facture of necessaries and comforts, capital enjoyed satisfying returns from this. the entire bulk of capital was swelled in anothei way undreamed of by the worthy wealthies of previ ous times. it had been a principle entirely undis puted by pi elates, professors and practical men, that the cause of the poverty of the poor was their heedless and immense expenditures upon frivolities and vices, men receiving a dollar a day to nurture a family with being supposed to spend four or five dollars of that sum daily for beer and brawling, and the capitalists suffered so terribly from this enormous waste that they feared all the factories and savings of the coun try would be drunk up and production would cease because the capital was gone, unless they cut down the wages of the workers still more and applied the saved surplus to their own scant domestic outlays and recuperative investments in private wines and dia monds for the preservation of "capital. now it was ascertained, to the confusion of all the good and thrift} 7 , that so soon as the working people found themselves in fair health and comfort with their better food and homes, they began to save, and had the good lords of earth, the prelates of heaven, and the professors of both, not been retarded in speaking by the emerald a league of justice. ii scum of jealousy rising in their throats, they would have admitted that a good lump of the savings, so called, which the rich had squandered . in fruitless famous extravagances, became now an accumulation among the workers, actually saved for the enhance ment of production. and ownership being distri buted among many, multiplied the benefits which it bestowed. their new intelligence enabled them to shake the citadel of the middle-man and the sweating boss-con tractor, for they found that they themselves could take group contracts as in australia, instead of letting some ravenous overseer exploit them as hired work ers. and it soon came about that they could obtain any contract for which they applied, since their supe rior ability and the excellence and reliability of their work rendered all they did more profitable to employ ers than the slipshod profligate constructions of con tractors. they could underbid if they wished, saving from the contractor's plutonic profits and stealings. they began to invest their savings in manufac tories of their own, which they conducted without sharing the profits with any idle club of capitalists, stock-holders, or managers, with sky-reaching salar ies. such enterprises grew apace, for they could undersell the manufactories which had the terrible corporation of .capitalists and ' managers ' on their backs. formerly the capitalists had all things their own way, because they could buy every workingman of executive ability out of his class and make him a salaried manager for their own benefit and his, while they capered about the continent and planet. but at 12 a league of justice. this period a sentiment akin to patriotism made its appearance in the breast of labor. they began to love their cause and to be loyal to their fellow-labor ers ; there were some who declined to manage for the traveling capitalists. the owners were stupefied by this innovation. was it possible that anyone existed who would not sell himself for money, especially low born workingmen ? was it conceivable that they must now manage their shops themselves, they who knew nothing whatever about shops or work, who were born for junketing and joy ? some of the best managers replied to these lament ations and entreaties that they would assume the con duct of affairs if the workmen were taken into partner ship, while if not, they would organize partnership shops independently. "we always thought brains were with us," wailed a capitalist, weeping tears of blood "not our brains, god forbid ! but working-class brains, which saved us the necessity of having any, which we could buy, and we have made the world ring with our prog nosticating hosannas that brains would eternally come to the top, to us. we thought ourselves safe from co-operative aggression because the people's managers rushed to us like insects to a lamp. oh, w r oe ! fidel ity is dead ! brains desert the hand that has let its self be fed by them ! ' ' ' ' hold ! ' ' said a manager ; ' ' the hand that let us feed it and ourselves that it might use us to take the food out of the mouths of our comrades. if we chose to continue the gormands your system has made us, we might receive the same salaries as now, and a league of justice. 13 among the workers might be distributed your envia ble portion. we should be as well off, the workers far better, and you who earn and deserve nothing, would receive your share nothing. but we man agers do not intend to remain gormands." so the partnership enterprises grew, taking in the people who were thrown out by the failure of capital ist competitors, letting those who had not money to buy stock earn it by their labor, over and above the good support which they earned. these successful partnerships had their inevitable effect on the old-style capitalist employers. they saw the field of production which they had owned entirely, and cropped for themselves during an indefinite past, slipping from their control. it was not, however, the capitalist who had always been saying, "we should like to make things better if we could, but we see no way," who followed first in the line the working peo ple were going. in consequence of their increasing property, the workers now began to have a voice in judicial decis ions and legislation. a judge was offered a special train by a great railway corporation to go and sit judi cially on one of their cases, but he refused it. chapter iii. the good deeds of some curtailed. of course, long before this, discovery of what was called embezzlement in divers business houses had taken place, and the defaulting clerks had been sen tenced to various terms of hard labor in the peniten tial ies. they did not find the labor any harder than they had been accustomed to, however, and all of them began to improve in health and spirits from the physi cal exercise they were now enabled to enjoy. their minds were free from care and they felt that they were having a vacation of life after the long hours and years of dungeon counting-house death. some of them knew the little story of maupassant's, of the old clerk who one day went out into the sunlight and discovered life, and hanged himself from the mortal sorrow he felt that the years had gone, and all the joy of the world had gone, and never had or could come to him. but these disgraced clerks felt no inclination to hang themselves. they knew that they had been great world -forces, and thej^ watched with glad, halfreal ized hope, the mighty work which their sacrifices \vere sustaining, and their comrades found ways to keep them informed of the progress going on outside. they did not need to concern themselves for their families, for the league attended to the support of such as had been able to save nothing from the meagre earnings of their bread-winner. but none of the em a league of justice. 15 ployers* funds were used for this purpose. the com rades met such expenses from their own purses. the wives of the criminals were assuaged of their grief and chagrin by admission into the confidence of the league, and they felt proud of the courageous men had done these things, and happy in the social degradation they endured. the employers who brought these clerical appro priations to light, and their learned legal crutches, were painfully puzzled to trace the squanderings of the departed funds. families of monastic frugality in walk and conversation with their neighbors must have been indeed clever rogues in spending never to show a trace of it. it was surmised that the pecula tors had also been speculators, and some solved the mystery by polygamic visions of various subsidiary families who now would come to want. the capital ists who lost most, denounced the robbers as atheists, and to make good the losses suffered, they increased their customary stipends to the judges. the repeated recurrence of this total disappearance of the stolen moneys finally started one hyper-shrewd fellow thinking, and made him divine the existence of a secret embezzling philanthropic association of clerks. he called a conclave of suffering capitalists and im parted his discovery, expecting to be richly rewarded. he was astonished and mortified beyond recovery when they assailed him with derision. they said it contrary to human nature as well as preposter ously impossible to think that any man who could steal for himself would steal for the benefit of anybody else. they could speak from experience, which, tike 1 6 a i.eague of justice. religious experience, could never be refuted. the capitalists had never been strained so to comprehend anything, and under the tension the meeting came near ending in a riot. the shrewd man went away feeling like judas, but without the silver. chapter iv. organizing. in spite of these occasional digressions, the society went on its way augmenting. the membership reached thirty thousand. many were clerks, many were people with moderate private incomes who de voted their entire time to the diversified works of the society. every member pledged himself to the strict est economy in living, and to give all he could save to the social object. spartan simplicity and primitive christian devotion characterized all. the form of organization underwent sundry adapta tions to the exigencies of growth and the ever more complicated labors assumed. each city had its chief organizer, selected in every instance by the executive committee of the league, its four founders, and these chiefs chose organizers for each particular group. se crecy pervaded like the ether. only the high chief knew the members in his city ; the group chiefs knew only those of their group ; the members of a group knew only one another. the city chief passed finally upon every candidate proposed for admission. he also kept a chart of the group enterprises to save them from crossing in action. to each high chief the under chiefs reported the application of their funds, and the economic and moral proceeds of their disbursement as far as they came in to the exchequer of observation. these reports found 1 8 a league of justice. their way to the central executive committee of the in augurating four, who arranged, condensed and articu lated them, in so doing preparing the intestinal social history of the period. the original four still followed the arduous duties of their clerkship, not deeming it expedient to resign, because they were among the most brilliant abstrac tors. but the weighty work of conducting the great league was heavy upon them, for some of the larger projects, requiring general assistance, had to be cen trally conducted by them. therefore several secreta ries, chosen with reference to their .stanch honor, were trained for the service, and the private earnings of their associates preserved them from want. chapter v. a free newspaper. when this degree of perfection was reached, it was determined to take up the work of popular instruction. it was begun with the newspaper. the poorer peo ple of the country, needing instruction nearly as much as the rich, were unable to subscribe for enlightening literature, and had nothing to read. there were also people of the other classes, in handsome numbers, who never read anything, and therefore did not know anything progressive, taking only the literary emana tions from capital. the reform journal was there fore made like the starlight, free. any one could send his own name and the names of all his friends and enemies, if he wished to enlighten them, and all from that day received the publication without price. the public was invited to meet the expenses of the sheet by contributions, and what failed after that was supplied by the league of embezzlers. the plan proved an unspeakable achievement, and the subscribers' list mounted to a million the first month. applications flooded in from every european country, and editions were prepared in each leading language. the edition, first monthly, was made weekly, then came a daily, afterward a review, as well as frequent books issued gratis. having great wealth behind it and no fear within it, the journal soon pos sessed the ear of the whole civilized world, being ter 20 a league of justice. rifically reliable and reliably terrific at the same time. the other newspapers, appropriately called by one in those times the 'daily sewers,' saw their subscription lists shivered, and could not mend their fortunes even after curtailing their emission of garbage. the mighty reform press was a veritable treasury of the keenest thought and fact, for now that rhere was money on the side of progress, the best thinkers changed their opinions very rapidly. books and chapters and pamphlets of germinant energy were sown from this press among the people like wheat. in less than a year the masses began to comprehend the meaning of those whom they had previously seen reviled as agitators and demagogues, and when they understood them they recognized that these monsters were the only wise people, and were right in saying that a change in the social order amounting to an absolute revolution was the only way to life. many of the rich caught glimpses of the corners of this fact during dyspeptic retributions, but took more wine and said, " after us the deluge." it soured the capitalists when they found themselves obliged to have the keen reform newspaper on their tables or never to know any news, for the superceded prevaricators of former days had been obliged by poverty to whittle down their staff of news-gatherers, and most of them had grown so sleepy that their buildings were used for cheap lodging houses. thus the children of the capitalists were moulded little by little on the reform pattern, and the capitalists, seeing their own flesh and blood turning against them, felt as if they belonged to an extinct age and race. a league of justice. 21 psychologists and historians of the new school fre quently came to intereiew them to study their surviv ing mental processes for learned antiquarian treatises. the great lying, gossiping, scandaling, advertising, sycophant, commercial, capital-serving sheets, went about now only as ghosts, through which their bones could be seen. their absorber printed no advertise ments for pay, its mission being to advertise the truth. deceitful puffs of quack objects, vegetable, human and mineral, collapsed like a punctured bal loon, having no bellows to inflate them. but in the league journal appeared lists of all the new co-opera tive establishments, whether factories or stores, and the working people were advised to buy of these only, since their patronage would solidify such industries and compel others to follow their example. agents of the capitalist producers offered fabulous bribes to be admitted to these lists, but as the editors were neither a legislative body nor traffickers in political, religious, moral, social, or literary opinions, the metallic persuasion had no gravitation in their scales. in the second year every city came to have a branch journal of its own, whose weekly issue penetrated each glade and glen of agriculture, tapping the trade of capitalists on that side. chapter vi. lawyers no more. a literary innovation in this journal which speedily assumed consequence was the department of injus tice. all cases where the weak had been wronged by the powerful, working people by their employers, the poor by the rich, were impartially examined, and if the charge proved true, the facfls and the names of the oppressors were published. this let the offender down farther in public estimation and caused him more financial panic than a successful lawsuit at his heels would have done, and the poor and weak who never had seen an ounce of justice before, nor even known the color of the stuff, nor had the ghostliest chance of protection in the courts, now found redress easy, swift, telescope-aimed and costless. this new engine of virtue spread contagious terror through the virtue-proof souls of those who had always made laws and enjoyed enameled immunity from them. several such concocted mad slander suits against the journal, but the land-slide of evidence which the publishers had, compelled the capitalists and judges to flee from the case to come for their very lives. the infliction of wrong grew to be a precari ous thing for the inflicter, and evil encroachments slunk away from the regions where this magical defender came. publication was so prostrating to the delinquent that a mere private editorial notice to correct the wrong led to restitution. a league of justice. 23 here is a case selected at random from the files. three men whose families relied upon the wages of each day for bread, were hired by two wealthy land-owners to dig a well. the owners agreed to have bricks there for the walls at the proper time. the men cautioned them that the earth might cave if this were neglected . 'go on digging,' said the owners, 'the bricks shall be there.' they dug as instructed, the bricks came not as promised, the sides fell in as predicted. it was saturday night, they had dug two days, they asked for two days' pay. said the canny owners, 'the well is not dug, and we cannot pay for its digging twice. when you clear out the hole again we will pay you the promised sum.' the men, fasted that sunday. they were workers of the lowest class and had no social 'pull.' the owners pulled the sunday-school, the church and the community, with piety and money. but they received a note from the editorial department of injustice a few days after, and as nothing had yet been discovered which would pull that, the debt was settled the same day. people of all classes soon saw what an unerring path to justice this department opened, and gradually they deserted the tedious, trickish, costly, squirming, capitalized courts of law. if the defrauders did not recompense their victims, the notified public dreaded to deal with them, and they found themselves in com mercial coventry. to avoid the expensive loss of business and personal confidence, the dishonorable were often animated to reparation by a laconic notice from the department of injustice that their rise was to be inspected. thus while the volume of justice in 24 a league of justice. creased, the labor required to earn it decreased. no case ever arose where the impartiality of the depart ment was questioned, since they had neither fees nor salaries nor railroad passes, nor any personal stake in the decisions. reason and equity decided the disputes and techni cal figments, which in the hands of bar and bench ' experts' always proved broad passages for injustice standing ere<5l to come in at and take possession, were barred up to be kept for specimen judgment-day testi mony. it never took much time to settle claims on rational grounds, and the department was therefore never belated in its business. it protected itself and its clients from those who would knowingly prefer unjust charges, for those who were found guilty of this wrong, from malice or hope of gain, were them selves published in place of their intended prey. so only those who believed in their causes brought them, and those who had mistaken their claims were en lightened by the editors, and their minds being re stored to equilibrium, and a cankering lawsuit of for mer days being averted, they adjusted their quarrel in telligently, and continued to enjoy life. on this side of its work the editorial board of justice finally be came a chamber of arbitration. naturally all this was a terrific catastrophe to the legal profession. lawyers starved until they were obliged to work at something useful, and as some of them would not do this, they starved to death. judges had nothing to do, and little by little nine-tenths of them were discharged. it was noticed that many of them became motor men on the street cars where their a league of justice. 25 . ermine was useful, or railroad ticket sellers where their majesty lost none of its frown or shine. people now spoke their minds and said what they had previously thought, that the law was the most disreputable profession on the list after that of the hangman, and now they placed it ahead of the hangman's in vileness, because no one brought any cases to the lawyers which had the dimmest right in them, but only those which could be shored up by right-defying technical rascalities, calumniations, and the consecrated process of methodical lawful frauds. the f etchers of these cases were low persons, devoid of the cranial elements of honor, and the attorneys susceptible to the blandishments of such simian scoundrels were obviously of the same family. the lawyer class was, therefore, as much despised by all as the prostitute class was by the women, and with more reason. the judges, of course, fared no better in public esteem, for every one saw that the lying tech nalists at the bar would have no chance if the judges did not abet them in their conspiracies to assassinate right by listening to their iniquitous verbal meta physics. moreover, if the brainless judges thought it their conscienceless duty to dip out what they labeled justice from the refuse of blinding, complicated stat utes and precedents long dead and putrified, why did they not move to simplify these statutes, filter and boil the laws, and make the metaphysical legalities coincide with the true and the just ? the lawyers had always had unlimited chance to reform law, being not only its familiars and spiritual mediums, its vestals and pontiffs, and, therefore, the 26 a league of justice. chosen ones to simplify and justify it; but they had . been its manufacturers, very law-gods, out of con gressional paradise sending their singing bolts. and what had they done with their super-terrestrial oppor tunities but build and dig a labyrinth in which to mesh and mulct everybody? no one had the least question why they had not been simplifying and dis infecting the laws for centuries instead of making the world bear their abominable carcass of diseases up the stony slope of time. l,ike every priesthood, the legal priesthood wanted a theology it could operate to the eternal salvation of itself from usefulness and the eternal damnation of others to the toils of supporting its uselessness. some of the law-moulding hypocrites who were left, now bethought them of sweeping away the ridic ulous intricacies through which the people had always been gamed, plotting thereby to bring back an occu pation for themselves which they could soon corrupt. they found no difficulty in legal lucidification alle gorical way-faring . men could have done that ; but when it was accomplished the courts of law had no more cases of any kind, for the rascals could gain nothing from a code of laws sound and sane, and therefore offered no more sacrifices to them, while the rest had no notion of putting themselves again into the jaws of the many-stomached judicial devil fish. desperate at the alienation of even the miscreants, the legal fog-makers made a final effort to reanimate the defunct haze and fraud; but the revolutionary journal followed each machination with such scorch v*f a league of justice. . 27 ing exposure that the judges, several of whom were supreme bench fellows, they, the unfittest, having survived longest, became the laughing stock of children and everybody, surrendered to the inevitable, and retired to farms to recuperate their seedy stock. then the courts were entirely empty and the profes sion of law became extinct. a fabulous saving, both governmental and private, had all this time been going on. ' what had pre viously .supported the creaking machinery of law was saved, and what had been squandered upon lawyers by litigants, was rescued to them. the legal maggot which had been a fearful ravager of every limb of industry, life and emotion, having its mouth every where, and being supported by the producers, was now dead. it was as if the expense of the great standing armies of the world were suddenly removed from the groaning people at home, and all the officery and soldiers of them began to produce. all the law yers, clerks and court indignitaries had actually to do true labor. production took an incredible bound, while taxes fell out of sight. chapter vii. education, for the first time. nobody will suppose that all this happened in a week. other things had been going on ill the mean time. this great free revolutionary journal had unceasingly advocated a rational system of education for the young. after the rays of the morning sun tipped the east of their minds, deputations of people from the masses, the middle class, and single individ uals (disguised) of the rich, were continually coming to the editors imploring them to give their theories form and flesh and establish actual education, if only a little. at length they acceded. they did not hold immortal and sterile discussions ruminating the advis ability, non-advisability, partial advisability, and impartial advisability of atomic alterations in curric ula, goading their prodigious brains to invent surer means of enticing or compelling or narcotizing the youth to learn valueless things in a suicidal way, with a view to the wonderful eventual perfecting of educa tional enginery so as in due passage of centuries to have the steam up for the development of men and women. these revolutionary educators jumped the gutter of centuries, being of the mind that it was as weighty to save the children of the present as to let the race dwindle for the benefit of a dwindled poster ity in some ultimate era. when people saw this so easily done for it was only a matter of making up a league of justice. 29 two or three minds to do it they were amazed and wroth that the paid and provided educators had not done it in their grandparents' time. they made a clean sweep of whole continents of educational rubbish, like latin and greek, and when called upon by the kings and heirs apparent of these extensive cemeteries, the professors, to defend their extraordinary want of consideration for the defunct, they replied by telling the very original ' savants ' what they had never thought of before, that the greeks became the wonderful people they were with out the assistance of any language which was dead and buried greek to them and their time, to rub and to ' sharpen ' their faculties over, and saturate them with conceptions of a long out-grown period; while had they applied their brains to such deadly routine, they certainly would not have surpassed all other races of the world in the splendor of their originations on every subject they touched. their first care of all, beginning long before the cradle, was the health of the child, and this continued to be absolutely and unflinchingly first so long as edu cation had anything to do with it. the second unalter able law 7 was that the children should always be happy and never know that they were being educated. any thing and everything else might be sacrificed, but these things under no circumstances. the days of childhood are the time, they said, when one is mos-t attuned to the pleasures of life and keenest to its pains. childhood is, therefore, the most valuable and vital part of life, and other parts should be a preparation for it quite as much as it for others. to 30 a league of justice. look upon this period as a getting ready lime for grown-up years is, then, the crudest malpractice ; it is like hearing the finer music first to prepare one self to enjoy the poorer music more. youth is undoubtedly the grandest time of life, when the pow ers are complete and full, and yet youth is mostly sac rificed in plotting and striving to get in more joy later on when the aptitude and faculty for joy have, like the clock, run down. and, without any comparison of periods, each period has its own perfect rights if the full sum total of life is to be reached. to-day is as important as to-morrow; it must not be scrimped or scamped or sacrificed for to-morrow. it may be the day of a five year old child, or that of a twenty-five or fifty-year old man; each is a day, with all present and past eter nity, all possibility and reality crested in it. l,ife, when it is a perfect art, will focus and culminate all living in each day, as if it had been that toward which the process and motive of creation moved. the inaugurat.ion.of childhood and youth is the fair ideal, since, when each day is perfect, there can be no regrets and no additions, save the increment of a new and perfecter day to-morrow, born of to-day's com pleteness. meditating in this manner, these true philosophers asked if a lesson which spoiled to-day for the apparent sake of to-morrow, could make good its title to the desolation of to day. sir, to-day is gone, one gem out of life's coronet. bring it back to me, the cor onet is ugly without it. can you not do it ? then you have impiously wronged me! take one tooth a iveaguk of justice. 31 from the fabulous perfect row that smiles to you; there are two eyes, beautiful in the vibrating light ning of their storied abysses. one will do ; put the other or.': that it may be more beautiful. a ton of learning gained at the loss of one ounce of health is a dear purchase, did some one say ? a ton of learning purchased by an ounce of sorrow is dear. sorrow is a canker. don't imagine that when it is gone it is gone. it scars and prostrates and haunts ; it is a mutinous substance, unforgiving perpetu ally. for the benefit of a tree's beautiful to-mor row scrape the bark off on one side to-day. no, children did not come into the world 10 learn lessons. the object of childhood is not prepara tion. the object of childhood is itself. how immor tal the wisdom which beats the stars out of a child's firmanent that he may be fitted to enjoy the dead stars when he is a man ! now for life ! when you are a man you may be 'persecuted by thoughts of death and separation. this generation's ancestry has been bad ; we harbor evil forebodings and itch with the measles of immortality. keep that venom out of children's ears. death will overtake him all too soon, and he can investigate his own immortality. teach him the wholeness and holiness of now, and discharge destiny of its religious mission to worry him. l,et there be a great silence about jesus and god, until he discovers that he himself is here in the universe with no secondary destiny. he will chat with the universe then on a fair footing. god is a great dis turber of the peace, intruding himself like a child out 32 a league of justice. of humor unless he is noticed. did god place us here for the pleasure of nagging us ? similarly there was no noise about the achievement expected of the chi4d, no examinations, grading nor educational ceremonial of any description. the body of officious people formerly called teachers, who had soberly followed imparting and interference as a sepa rate profession, passed away entirely, for all contrib uted, each in a natural way, not only to the develop ment of the young, but of those less advanced than themselves. it was observed that the teachers, those high-tensioned hands of the educational factory, hav ing, altogether the most difficult, unappreciated and monstrously unnatural part to play in the intellectual industrialism of the time, were*very glad to disappear. chapter viii. the invasion of knowledge. a group of young men and women, seeing how things were going in society, organized a system of their own to go about teaching the common-schooled and untaught people. there were hardly any college students among these, and such as were of the college or university blue breed were those whom the profes sors loved least and pigeon-holed as educational vag rants. they were individuals with personality and a will not servile to their monitors, whom they declined to reflect. no professor was ever known to identify himself with this movement, or to say a good word for it, until the people were won over, when the profes sor class came into its arms stampeding. nor was their accession then of any consequence, for one of the first things society did after the change was to dis patch that class. no one thought of censuring the professors for their tardiness, any more than he thought of blaming miners for living in the dark. the professors' or dained duty was to drill the raw recruits for station in life and to teach all whom god intended to enrich with riches how to wring them dry into their private tubs. when the professors met any student who was not on a blind gallop after reputation, they were afraid of him, for they saw that if all youths were like that the moon of professoring would set. they said one to 34 a league of justice. another that such an one's mind was out of joint, and devoted all their sophistry to sprouting 'ambitions' in him, whereupon, if these failed to root, they declared he was not educab'le. the uneducable, therefore, united to spread the light they found burning in themselves and extin-' guished in the university dark-lanterns, over the grop ing american continent. they went singlyfrom town to town with no money in their purses and no purses to make them think of money. when they came to a town they sought the most enlightened spirits, and found them always among the poor. to these they said, ' show us how we may work and earn our daily bread give us not our daily bread, but let us earn it and call together the souls of your community who are loyal to light, and let us confer with one an ther.' and in the evening, when the salt of that town was assembled, the wandering apostle of life said to them : ' the twilight of a new, miraculous day thrills the east. the sun lingers in his luminous chamber awaiting the order of ten thousand united wills to come forth. these wills shall say, "the sun shall rise now; by my soul it shall not wait for the generation of to-morrow, it shall rise by our compulsion. we will not live our lives in the night." the stin longs to rise. but it must have friends among mortals, and cowards are not friends. cowards wait for others to act, the brave and true act themselves, to-day. what can the brave do? they can say, life should be lived thus and thus, and they can live it so. the apostles of the nazarene working a league of justice. 35 man said, by putting ourselves under the four corners of earth and lifting, the earth will rise. they lifted and the mighty foundations of the earth split. in each village they gathered a few, and these in their tidal confidence were an army. do likewise. set your ideals as high as the stars; laugh compromise out of your hearts into the sepulchred domiciles of capital. do all that thou canst for this mighty cause of life, give all that thou hast for it. can the world be moved without power? be yourselves that power. be architects of a new society. you cannot delegate this task, you cannot pay men to change society for you.' these and other words spoke the preacher scientists of a new order. and the people were stirred and met often to plan. they abandoned their old ideals of prosperity and lived in a simple manner. they had a common treasury into which each gave all that he could save from tl;e needs of life, and these funds were used to spread the new conception of living. among the earliest of their acts was the building of a plain hall, to which all contributed the labor of their hands. this was always open and all speakers could use it freely for whatever subject they chose. it be came a forum of intense intellectual and moral life. since there were no limitations to speech, and every subject known to man could be sifted to its molecules, the intellects of the many who had hitherto lain dor mant in churches and schools and shops began to wake up. they caught a glimmer of the wonderful world it was they lived in, and said to themselves, ' what helpless, hapless fools we have indeed been to 36 a league of justice. pass through this fragrant, unspeakable garden of life as. a traveler in a railroad train with the blinds down. the end of the journey is not our destination, the garden is our destination.' so they set about transforming all the dead accu mulations of science and experience into breathing life material. it was a hard task at first, and for a time it was feared that a civil war would be necessary to in duce the scientists to impart what they had moun tained up, for so insignificant a purpose as the im provment of human life. the object of science is to furnish the materials for books, they objected, and books enable teachers to have the appearance of wis dom and doctors to doctor. science is not intended to modify the life of the crowd, but to give preoccupa tion to scientific brains which have passed through the transubstantiating mediations of learning. you say the institutions should be freely open to everyone to come and go as he pleases, without preparation, gra dation, limitation or sequestration, that would stand education on its head, place the shined professors under the inquisition of the swift, direct inquisitiveness of the vulgar, and democratize the aristocracy of knowledge in a shabby and indecorous manner. when. the people signified their intention to read in the libraries, and perform experiments in the labora tories, and watch the clinics, without certificates or antecedents or recommendations from anybody, the professors would have organized* the students into mil itary companies to protect their rights to these things unshared ; but the students went home, not wishing to a league of justice. 37 associate with illiterate persons, even as enemies in war. then a great raid was made on the locked-up liter ature, as western pioneers rush upon a gold field, each man seeking the shining lumps. they were aston ished to find how much was insolvent dirt and rock, and could not understand why men of monstrous and re nowned intelligence spent their whole lives picking the particles of these substances, apparently thinking that they were the gold; until they learned that it was a profession, following which night and day from adolescence on, the brains of these extraordinary dig gers became lead poisoned, and everything at length looked precisely the same to them. but the new 'prospectors refused to debauch their brains with dirt, and took the gold only. they se lected what pertained to life in any manner, and es pecially the ingredients of physical and mental power and durability, and whatever would add to the happi ness of any mortal while palaced on this planet, and these they imparted to the people assembled in the halls, showing them how to absorb into their lives the magic essences, to make them chyle and nutriment, driving out the depraved aborigines and making a mighty and immortal flesh. the children deserted the schools to come and hear, and as at all times there was some one discoursing simply, and other grown persons standing about eager to explain to the children in little groups what they did not understand, leaving them free to come and go as they pleased and enticing them with every form of instructive activity, they did not return to the schools afterwards. 38 a i.eaguk of justice. l,ife began immediately with these children. a little useful niche was found for each, where he or she performed some pleasant industrial service, and feeling the responsibility of usefulness, his faculties grew alert and enquiring. everyone was led whithersoever he desired to go, and beginning anywhere, around that beginning was gradually clustered a whole sys tem of scientific knowledge and action. a child chose its own path, instinctively displaying its apti tudes, and to that path was brought everything which could further its progress and minister to its growth. the custom had formerly been to take the child up onto a mountain and point to a winding foot-way in the blue distance. between were forests and murk> swamps, rivers black and foaming, sand plains and rock-clad ridges, bottomless holes mossveiled. make your way to that foot-path, the educator said, and it will lead you somewhere. everybody now took a hand in educating, and their greatest delight was to go among the young in their games and lively studies, to learn from them and teach them, and to hear the noble cavaliers of free dom who had broken down the university ramparts for common occupancy, discourse. love seemed to spring up among the people, and each sought to impait what he had to the rest, like a steadily burn ing star. men and women forgot who were their own children, so interested and delighted were they in all, and the children ate and slept at the home where they happened to be, feeling toward all as toward parents, and receiving the tenderest care. as there was no further u.se for the school buildings, a league of justice. 39 they were made annexes of the halls and used for edu cational purposes. in the summer time the halls and annexes were almost entirely deserted, for everything was done in the open air; and eve^one became so strong and vital that a great deal of the working and thinking which had previously smelt of coal and car bonic gas was now performed under the airy ceiling of the sky and the thought-bearing smile of the juvenile, soft-skinned sun. chapter ix transfiguration of the churches. when the crusading lecturers on life returned from their successful trip to the tombs of knowledge and began their sunday impartations to the thirsty few who gathered about them, the churches were proceed ing along the unrippled float of their dormitory elo quence. on their way home, much rested, some of the planks and beams of the ecclesiastical men-of war occasionally dropped in to hear the closing words of a religion of life. they went home troubled in spirit and impaired in appetites, and returned the suc ceeding sunday to hear the whole gospel. they saw how light of heart the new religionists were and what impregnable health had already taken possession of their bodies, and they said to their fellow planks and spars, ' this is the true church ; knowledge adapted to life is religion ; the enthusiasm to construe! a grand, adorable earth is divine love ; ' and they joined the church of science, whose soul was human humanity. as plank after plank parted from the armored fleet of theology, the cannons thundered terrific prognostica tions from the pulpits, pointing their muzzles straight at the simple wooden shells where truth had taken up her abode. the next sunday every lay timber in the ships went to view the corpse of truth, after the sulphurous cannonade, expecting to see her perforated and jellied ; but finding her alive and perfect, they a league of justice. 41 tarried and were captivated by her words. there was left of the sacerdotal crafts nothing but the iron aimor plating of creeds and the heavy-toned oracle guns, and while it is difficult to say which sank the other, both went down. chapter x. the waterloo of "society." a curious change was meanwhile taking place in what is nomenclaturally known as 'society.' the rich had always found it simple to bow culture before the shrines of their dinners, and the excellent mr. emerson had said, ' to be rich is to have a ticket of admission to the master-works and chief men of each race.' brains seemed to think that one of the rea sons why it existed was to win its way into the society of the brainless. .the man of money winked at the man of brains and the man of brains had an ecstacy. the women of money * society ' made lions and calves of the men of genius, and brought their friends together to examine the wonder, to feel of his ears and count his teeth, to adore and exclaim, ' oh ! our man of genius ! our menagerie ! our poodle dog ! when the man of brains got as far as this, he thought he had lived to some purpose. his gigantic cerebrum, whirling with the joyous mesmerism of gleaming pot tery and gems, to which great god how wonder ful! he, only a man of mind and soul, was after toilsome years allowed revering access, could not hear the sardonic laugh of scornful condescension in the vacuums of these creatures of money where the soul of those soul-dowered is wont to sit. the change originated when men of brains planted their first crop of character. it originated with the a league of justice. 43 working people, where the soil was rich enough for character to grow. the leaders of this exodus froni sycophancy and snobbery were those burglers of sci ence, the outlaws who had broken into books and were distributing their booty every sunday in the lecture halls. seeing that they were ' extraordinary persons,' the rich society sharks prepared to swallow and digest them. they sent around to them those beautiful little missives of corruption and missiles of death invitations to eat and be merry with them and marry. if they married the progeny of the rich imbeciles the eating imbeciles knew that the children of the combination would be bailed and neutered of genius, and property and imbecility would be safe. there was crape on all the rich men's doors the next morning, for the extraordinary persons had refused to come to be digested, and the rich were mourning to think that they would have to intermarry their sons and their daughters one with another, and the descending crop would not stop on the perfectly decorous stage of imbecility, but would dip down to its legitimate levels of idiocy. as feasts and bullion were substances which nearly all the great and noble characters of history had sought after as their befitting pay for being created great, the benighted possessors of these things thought that the extraordinary ones had perhaps not under stood what they were being invited to, having recently sprung from the working classes, where nothing was known straight. so they held a meeting among themselves and appointed delegates composed of the most money to go to the extraordinaries and explain* 44 a league of justice. these bullion-ballasted tanks of expectation were ushered into the ante-rooms of the halls where the scientific highwaymen were beginning a wild joyous hour of play and instruction with the children, and were told to wait until the hour was over if they wished to confer with the extraordinary. they felt as they had always prided themselves on making delegations of workingmen feel when these came to plead with them for their underfed little ones. but they choked down their pride, for they realized with terror that if they could not prevail upon these vital men to come to their houses to be effeminated and routed, it was all up with their race and their uselessness. when the hour was over and the religious bohe inians learned who were awaiting them, they declined to confer with the petitioners, saying that the bright life of the day called them, and while breath was in them they could not think of dead thoughts or climb down into reactionary catacombs. the rich men then decided upon a dazzling opera tion of generalship. they would endow the halls, for when the extraordinaries had salaries safe and perpet ual dangling before their jaws, they would come down from the twig of principle like a shot bird. there fore they put what acumen and property they could bring themselves to part with into an endowment, making it enormous in their desperation ; but the lec turers refused to touch it, saying that the rich could keep their stolen possessions until tomorrow, when the people would take them all to endow the life of all. many of the rich then made over the whole of their property to the common fund of the new movement, a i,kague of justice. 45 ceased bargaining for preference, and came as simple men to partake of the incalculable joys and beauties of true life. when homer and buddha, the religion of jesus and the aristocracy of shakespeare, were long forgot ten, the thrilling story of how a. handful of brave men and women withstood the ever before conquering bludgeoning blandishments of ' society ' on a high mountain and delivered the human race, was told to the marvelous magnificent children who sprang ages after from this deed of superhuman heroism. when 'society' dreadfully gasped its last, a great miracle occurred, for the earth suddenly became four times larger than it was before, to accomodate the tre mendous humanity which was about to be born. chapter xi. political partiks also. the most terrible affliction known to those days, after the dead evils heretofore recounted, was political parties. they were like a wild bull in a compart ment with men without trees to get behind, and they were always doing something surprising and deadly. an enormous sum of treasure and sacred time was spent upon them, men voting and sweating and swear ing and voting, and so chivalrous as not to let the women share the swear and vote with them. every man whom they elected disappointed them, having hired his own election, so the rotatory multitude pre pared to sweat and vote another personally nominated incumbent in. they kept this up like bats flying back and forth through the twilight, just for the sake of doing it, but mainly that they might sometime be able to buy themselves in ; for those who turned the windlass of the voting multitude were few in number but mighty. the first man who said it was not necessary to rule by political parties was imprisoned by his compatriots as a maniac, and many wanted to lynch him, for without the excitement of voting and getting angry and being disappointed and repenting, and doing it all over again as often as possible, they did not see how they could get their exceedingly vicious code of laws made more vicious. nobody but a self-elected a league of justice. 47 politician could come off more than conquerer in that emergency, and the sparkling-minded crowd there fore clung to him like a life-preserver. but the soli tary man wrote books on the subject in his cell and dropped the leaflets about it out of the barred window. just at this time the first band of crusaders were re turning from their pilgrimage to rescue knowledge from the university infidels, and they passed under the jail windows by accident. they saw the leaves flying . there and carried them aw r ay to read. ' o perverse ones of this purblind generation,' read the book, 'do families manage themselves by political parties, or churches, or universities, or any great and prosperous societies? when you divide one of these into opposing factions to rule it that way, you may be sure its doom has been writ and undersigned by the shadows in heaven. but when it is a country all is different, and the littlest hamlets follow the national example, doing everything through a fight and spend ing more money to beat each other than the things would naturally cost which they beat each other to do. and yet after all why do parties exist? is it not to get good and necessary things done in the best possible way? and if parties get the good things not done, and in the worst and evilest possible way, is it not clear that parties are a nuisance and incumbrance ? that is what they do. 'as soon as a party organization is formed, the objects for which it was formed begin to be forgotten, and the mere avarice of success animates it more and more. whatever originates from one party must be decried by the other, lest the people should think that 48 a i.kaguk of justice. the first party was doing a good thing and vote with it. finally all the people are drawn into a barren conflict on one side or the other, and all receive a one-sided warp, being no longer capable of holding the entire situation in mental 'solution. they get the superstition that their particular party holds so much of the truth in its little sack that they must always keep their party in power, to prevent their dangerous opponents from having a chance to destroy the coun try with their depraved policy and heinous political machinations. while they are thus saving the coun try, all the good measures proposed by the other party are shelved, and as they themselves have no energy left after saving the country to propose good measures of their own, the country is being ruined at down grade speed by its magnanimous saviours. the other party becomes the saviour when it gets in, and has no time for profitable measures, and by and by they all reach a complete state of fossilage, hateful in the extreme to every honest and clear mind, and fatal in the extreme to the nation's weal. 4 then the good see that what parties started out to do they absolutely fail to do ; starting to govern the country well, they not only govern it ill, they do not govern it at all, and they therefore decide to break up political parties. how do they do it ? they first of all' at this point in the book the general of the jail discovered through informers what this seditious per son was engaged in, and sent ten of his bravest assist ants to put an end to it by placing the prisoner in chains. thus it did not appear what they first of all a league of justice. 49 did to break up political parties, nor what they did after that. but the intellectual crusaders had learned enough. they said among themselves, ' the united states has now had the small-pox of political parties and seems in no fair way to recover. but if we can pull her through, she need never have that vile incrustation again. no man should belong to any party, except to a party pledged to act independently of every party and each member in it to a<5l independently of every other member. there should be great proselyting for this party of political freedom, which would end by being simply a party of freedom, and the only party, and then no party. for when they became numerous they would totally break up all party lines and machinery, for if no party could rally the people to it and hold a powerful contingent through thick and thin, good and bad, it would break up. then instead of political parties there would be a country, a people. their minds would be liberated from the overpower ing mechanism of politics, and could search and weigh the reasons for each thing proposed ; and thus being instructed and having no party hanging over them as a higher motive than the public good, twisting their judgment and will, they would unite to enact the good as any group of intelligent persons or a family does.' there being no sentiment as yet in favor of such an all-embracing party of intelligence and freedom, how ever, the discoverers of the hemisphere of life deter mined to try the experiment among themselves, and to show in this winning and unanswerable manner what 50 a league of justice. a round-about way society was traveling to reach no where, when a beautiful region lay near and straight before it. they therefore formed an embryonic state within the old state husk, the units of which were a new community in each community. these commu nities consisted of a number of friendly persons who agreed that politics was not a separate function of life, and that it therefore needed no separate atten tion. having a separate politics was as if a farmer should call upon a neighbor to form his family and hired help into committees and bureaus to lay out and correspond and vote about his, the first farmer's, work. while the second farmer and his secretaries were doing this, the first one would be going on as usual with the work which was being legislated about, with the difference that now the farmer had to sup port not only his own farm group, but that which he had appointed to build air-castles and cast votes con cerning it. abolishing all this pretty paraphernalia, they adopted the new code of life in which they believed, and began without preliminaries or authorization to carry it out. for instance, without waiting for the unsanitary officials to leave their duties unperformed through all coming time, they voluntarily took the pro crastinated functions upon themselves as far as their numbers permitted. they invited any who believed in the usury of good health to join them, and this way of putting it won the throng who were looking for a good investment, and would have preferred typhus to helping them if they had called it the socialism of good health. in all things they were very sagacious a i^ague of justice. 51 about the use of words, and they found they could drag the public wherever they wanted to take it by the tag of a syllable. for example,when they wanted to do anything with the co-operation of all, they advertised that they had a laissez faire plan on foot, and every business man sent a thousand dollars to aid the individualistic project. if they wanted to abolish a function of gov ernment they told the people it was paternal, with a squint of socialism in it, and everybody went into a passion to abolish the function' before night. by merely saying that it was anarchistic for the govern ment not to own land and everything by which any thing is produced, the people one day nationalized everything, men as well as shops and railroads and land, for they said men produced things and it was worse to have men who were anarchists than shops which were, so men must be socialized. the authors of this experiment next day remarked that it was not anarchistic but individualistic to have shops and land private, and immediately everything was unnational ized. thus they played on the intellectual american middle and upper classes as on a piano out of tune. the health of the community improved so rapidly under their sanitary management, that the public boards and departments, which had been drawing salaries and neglecting their duties ever since sanita tion was discovered, resigned and left the field entirely to them. so they took one department after another out of the government or municipal control, first carrying it on in a small way among themselves, then having a great augmentation of numbers from 52 a i y kaguk of justice. those admiring the way it was conducted and wishing to enjoy the benefits of it. government by that time being in a minority, was compelled by the ballot to turn the function over to them unreservedly. of course political parties had no part in this pro cess except to fight it, but after they had been worsted in one thing after another and driven completety from the field in every important government enterprise, they gave up in disgust and their members turned respedlable citizens. they then built in every town and city a forum, or several of them, commensurate with the needs of the city, where the people could assemble and make one another's acquaintance, where they could loaf and enjoy themselves, each other, and the sun, where they could discuss, hear addresses, debate, and project and agree to public measures. the plain halls had grown to these, and for the winter use there were covered forums. life became diversified and centralized ; men's and women's eyes grew keen and beautiful ; they were interested in life. chapter xii. discovery on a sufficient scale. but in carrying the reader forward over results which occupied nearly a quarter of a century, i have left him in suspense about the fate of the organiza tion of embezzlers to whose considerable exertions all these splendid transformations were due. going back ten years events of a most portentous character trans pired. it was then that the entire league was unearthed, fourteen years after its inception. the discovery came through an accident of nature which the wisdom of man could neither provide against nor foresee. the private secretaries of the founders were as noble, pure-minded, zealous and reliable as the fathers of the league themselves. but their work grew so heavy that from time to time it was necessary to increase their number. so great was the caution required for a suitable selection, that a considerable period sometimes elapsed before the proper person was found. during one of these periods, when the burden upon the college of correspondents was uncommonly great, one of the secretaries was suddenly taken with an insanity which had slept in his family for two gen erations, and of which none of the guardians of the league were cognizant, the parents and grand parents of the capable and excellent man having appeared sound in every respect. this secretary disappeared, and a week later certain 54 a i,kaguk of justice. simultaneous arrests were made, two of whom were tinleague's founders. it was rumored about the country by telegraph that a stupendous organization of employes existed for the purpose of robbing em ployers. kverybody hastened to examine his books, and so many discovered themselves victims that a panic -, piead over the entire commercial population. a ik stfl wenmade to the number of hundreds a day. no man conld tell but all his clerks were in lea against him, and many an employer had his whole stall 'jailed. the officials and police lost their heads dnriiii', that peiiod, and no evidence but the suspicion oi a capitalist was ie<|iiiicd to throw a thousand men into pi ison. tinheii/.v reached its lull im v when the police, b. multiplied to ninety seven times their usual numbci which gave empluvmcnt to work iiivjneii having been mte8ting m : .;ht and day l.i a week, swept down upon the lieu-. papel ollicc-, <il tile icav'ueaild ca 1 1 led c\ 'el v cditni nil in irons, the total number of incarcerations hovncd about .-.,'. thatdav. although the society all told had but 50, meinbeis. and most ot them had been omitted in the arrests, because oi the conii deuce iheil elu].]o\ ( ; d ill then c \ t 1 aoi dilul v lidelit\. some n| the aiicstcd ohcs \\lio \veie not made d| leavllc ult(;;llt\ had becll stealin;.; a little oil then own account, and thinking the whole dimuib.iurc w:is occasionc'd b\ that ( loi thc\ had seen that the hull ol a cent 01 .1 cotton haudkci chid \\ould thio\\ a licli emplonci into convulsions ol tempci loi hor. th< \ beli-\cd that tin 11 <loom had couu . 'pho-,c \\ho, licni;; ( \tl<imcl\ cn\\ed 1\ til*' 1 1 id 1 1 '-t 1 1 . 1 1 ,', 1 .1 lldcll 1 ol a league of justice. >> their employer and his divine power to make beggars of them, feared that they might have stolen something without knowing it, were in a state of heart-rending grief and sent for their ministers, who, however, did not dare to come lest they should be thought to con done the criminals, and should lose the support of their employers. but there were several out of the quarter million who declared in wrath that were it not for the free food and the rest they were now having for a few days, they would fight the unjust scoundrels the employers and their system, when they got out, if they ever did alive. the prisons did not begin to be large enough and the criminals were lodged in the school-houses, which were easily convened into keeps for the parents of those who were wont to be confined there. the chil dien, on their part, hailed their liberation witl^ eesv tacy, cheering their ' >rs the police as tbe school children ot uud.ip, s before, freed by an epidemic ot cholera, cried, long live the cholera* the militia were called out. init most ot them had been arrested and could not come. the regular aum and navy were put in motion, toi it was well kr., that theii mummied minds were nntlecked 1>\ any tiling relating to the process ot the times. in the memory ot the living only the days when sumpter was tiled against and lincoln o&sassinattd bore the palest u-semmance to the lurid v;loom ot this period, and in thesinistei annals ol luston tlu-te ate tew spols wheusueh v;uashim; constei nat umi is u --m-. teu-d as settled do\\ n upon the ameiiran -oi, linen! through thai event. business la\ dead. i.m u, man. 56 a ivkaguk of justice. not even a business man, thought of buying, selling or working in the silent but terrific excitement of the time. the capitalist dailies came out in fifty-page extras each hour, spreading new particulars, most of them false. every man knew intuitively that he was ruined and dared not face a microscopic examination of his affairs. no one doubted that hundreds of thou sands of the plunderers were still at large, brushing against them on the streets and preparing to complete their annihilation of society. they expedled the prisons to be stormed by these desperadoes, where upon they were assured a universal massacre of them selves would ensue, and with money in their eyes they besought the authorities to execute the few cap tured culprits without delay or the formality of any thing but a presidential proclamation couched in court-martial literature. they hoped that this sug gestive step would avert the perpendicular drop to pre-adamite barbarism which would follow if the civil ized and humane capitalists bit the dust, and they said the world might as well not be peopled at all as not be peopled by them. the self-control of the authorities, including the president with his cabinet ills and chattels, was now beyond resuscitation, and these executionary mea sures of slaughter would undoubtedly have super vened had not one of the league inventors interfered. he sent word to the president of the republic, requesting to be allowed to confer with his three col leagues in originality, for the purpose of allaying the crisis. the prayer was granted, under a strong a league of justice. 57 guard of armed men and a stenographer. he pro posed to inform the authorities of the existence of the league's annals, in order to put them in possession of the assuaging truth. he pointed out to his associates that the league had now accomplished its mission, and according to the solemn compact of each who had joined, all were now bound to face with steady mind the full consequences of their pioneering career. death was staring at them darkly from gas-posts, but if they continued silent several times their num ber of innocent persons would perish also. he there fore advocated calling upon the chieftains of each city to notify all the members, through their group chiefs (where these had not been imprisoned), of their plan of preserving the republic and saving the innocent from butchery, so that each might deliver himself up to injustice voluntarily if his soul moved him this was done. up to that moment none of the incarcerated leaguers, though pressed, prayed with, threatened, bribed and tortured, had revealed a fact. when the suggestion of the superior committee was authenticated to them, all went to the astonished of ficers of their employers' law and gave themselves up. the whole country tvas more paralyzed than before, for if fifty thousand of the most invincibly true, pure and beautiful characters alive had been chosen, these would have been the ones. black flags and crape streamers were hoisted from the houses of all the capi talists to impress the populace with the sombre awful ness of this pulverizing collapse of human virtue, and they felt secretly that with such a fifty thousand tongued example of clerical retribution it would never 58 a league of justice. be possible for them to conduct their business of plun dering with security again. the ancient rusty press of the country, now that the great free popular press was silenced, had for the first time in years an opportunity to make a few coppers and be read, and was working day and night to give voluminous extracts, digests and photographs of the proceedings of the league, taken from the ten bulky historical volumes which the secretaries had compiled under the direction of the four patriarchs. the law mercenaries and the capitalists now re gained the courage necessary to release the two hund red and forty-nine thousand persons who had been wrongfully imprisoned, but when they saw the black looks which these persons brought out of the school houses in consequence of the sooty reputations they had received there, the capitalists stood in greater fear than before, and only saved their lives by having all these menacing individuals put on the extra police force where they could draw pay for doing nothing. this gave healthy employment for working people, whose support naturally had to come out of the private sub scriptions of the capitalists. t^ appease their wrath and protect the capitalists, the clerk-police force was armed with the usual club and a revolver, and they went about drilling and showing great determination. the fifty thousand actual offenders in prison were entirely silent. of those released, a great many had been editors of the people's free journal, for most of these editors were entirely ignorant t of the incubating process by which the grand news educators had been hatched. a league of justice. 59 these radiators of truth now began again their inter rupted publications. the epileptic dread of the rich having somewhat subsided again by the disposition of the reputation ruined clerks in a standingarmy of police two hund red and forty-nine thousand strong, and the tranquil izing discovery of limits to the dimensions of the defaulters' organization, the clamor for instantaneous death to the real criminals softened into a gurgling determination to imprison them for life and confiscate all the property of all as a slight reimbursement offer ing to the robbed, and to make their infamied "chil dren remember whose children they were. chapter xiii. thk trial. the customary formalities of law were entirely neu tralized in each mind by the aclinic rays of vengeance which fulminated there, and the capitalists, who now threw off all the amenities with which they usually led the administrators of government and 'justice' about, ordered the president of the self-governing republic to call his cabinet of executive tinkers and the distinguished shavers of the supreme bench toge ther to settle the case as the capitalists required it without delay. the capitalists said that an extreme sentence must be meted out to the astounding villains, and the boss commercialist of the white house and his journeymen said that it must. the capitalists said that the minds of all future generations of employes could only be rescued from fearful moral debauchery by the distri bution of summary retribution, and the presiding executive mechanic said it was so. the capitalists nudged the supreme benchmen and whispered that the plebeian brains of their common servants the dress-deifying clerks must be terrified against the recurrence of such an unparalleled disaster, and the viscous intellects of the rest of the common people must be moulded into respect for law and the com mandments of revealed religion, which the shocking magnitude and magnanimity of these atrocious crimes a league of justice. 6 1 had shaken, by a woe-creating realization of the pierc ing sorrows the squadron of justice was prepared to saturate them with. the benchmen bowed assent in respectful silence, holding their hats and wigs and judicial scales in their adipose hands. it was arranged for the trial to take place in the metropolis, but from centre to ends of the country none but indispensable activities were resumed and hardly anybody ate. the steady stillness and order of the common people was the subject of frequent encomiastic salutatory cannonading from the capital ist press. the trial opened with the examination of the four founding patriarchs of the league, who were to repre sent the whole organization in trial but not in punish ment. ' ' you may inform the court of the grand aggregate of your defalcations," said the president of the repub lic, acting as supreme pontiff of the compound tri bunal, after having asked the capitalists if he might do so. the founder to whom this remark was addressed, replied, speaking with a pivotal composure which made his excellency tingle under his skin : ' ' being employed by a trust i succeeded in extricating yearly one million dollars." preside nt extricated ! how long has this con tinued ? the founder fourteen years. president [with a deprecating gesture of conster nation in the direction of the capitalists] do you 62 a i.kaguk of justice. mean to say you have robbed your employers of four teen million dollars ? founder i have taken fourteen million dollars of the moneys that came into their hands. [a murmur of astonishment runs through the court room and is echoed outside where the streets are blocked with people for miles away.] the president [endeavoring to be satirical, but trembling] have others been as thrifty as you . in unloading their employers' treasuries ? founder those connected with trusts have, in most instances, appropriated one million dollars a year. president how many of your excellent associates are ' connected with ' trusts ? founder not less than three hundred. president are we then to believe that not less than three hundred millions yearly for fourteen years have been stolen by your unprincipled imitators from trusts alone ? founder i did not say that. many of the trusts have existed less than fourteen years, and the clerks of others did not join us at first. our books signify the exact sum derived from each. the average annual transactions of the i/eague have been one hundred million dollars ; last year the income was nearly three times that amount. the president [drily] this is the story of a luna ti:, or of one who would buoy up his cause by fabu lous lying. you cannot impose on us; industry would not have survived this prodigious exhaustion a month. the founder [with the weary smile of one who a lkaguk of justice. 63 has shattered political economy against dull minds for many a year.] the books of these firms, when inves tigated by experts instructed in our method, will show. as to what trade or industry would bear, what we have done is better proof than theories about it. society is in higher financial condition than it was before this tax for the benefit of the common people was levied. the more those .you call the ' lowest ranks' receive, the better is the financial condition of the whole. president [growing red and frowning heavily] you are not here to give lessons to the executive and the bench in political economy. it is to be presumed that ourselves and this learned body of judges can speak on that subject with a little more wisdom than an ordinary commercial clerk. [applause from the spectators' benches occupied by the capitalists, and a sound of sibilant dissent from the aisles back of the railing, where the working men and women are packed, echoed again miles away. the president being too angry to collect his economical senses, the chief justice of the learned bench takes up the questioning.] chief justice what is your salary ? founder one thousand a year. c. justice how long have you received so much ? founder twenty years. c. justice and before that your salary was ? founder twelve hundred dollars. c. justice [turning exultingly to the capitalists] you see he was a second-rate man whose deficiencies punished him with a reduction of wages. 64 a i.kaguk of justice. founder all salaries and wages were cut when mine was: c. justice [moving in his chair] how was that ? founder when the company consolidated with others in a trust, the salaries of all who owned no stock were reduced, as well as the wages of every working man and woman in the entire system of factories. the managers said there were plenty of people who would work for less than we received after the cut, and that their own profits must be in . c. justice [dejectedly interrupting] these details do not bear on the point. your previous salary, you said, had been twelve hundred dollars for twenty years. a very good salary, i should say. founder allow me to correct you. i worked the first ten years for five hundred dollars a year. my pay was then raised to eight hundred. five years after it was raised to twelve hundred. with the trust regime it was reduced to one thousand dollars, and no proposition has since been made to raise it. c. justice that is a much larger sum than the great majority of artisans receive, and appears to me ample remuneration for mechanical clerical service. capi tal deserves so much for the vast services she renders to industry by existing, that the working people will have to get along with less and less from this time on. [terrible groans lire heard in the streets as these words are transmitted from mouth to mouth among 1 the peo ple. the chief justice continues:] will you now kindly tell us what part of the sums you extricated from the firm you so faithfully served you applied to the expansion of your private fortune ? a league of justice. 65 founder no part. c. justice [putting on the well-known judicial severity like an impressive ulster] you are speaking under oath, and though an oath could mean but little* to one of your deformity, try for the sake of your country and the human race to speak the truth now. founder [laughing with fine enjoyment at the judi cial bombast] as every cent ever taken passed into the hands of our agents who gave receipts, c. justice [interrupting] laying receipts! founder and as these distributors have kept the strictest records of those to whom help was furnished, the honesty of these accounts could be pretty correctly tested. and what i say of myself is true of every member of the association. c. justice [with a sneering smile] it is interesting to hear one with your record telling of his honesty. founder but i will now say to you plainly, and for the benefit of all the working people listening to this trial throughout the world, that people who are meagrely paid for their services to the rich would be quite justified in 'stealing' from them on their own account and for themselves. [prolonged and thunderingcheers follow this remark and shake the building. the capitalists are frozen with terror and the trial is delayed for some time.] c. justice [at length, turning to the president] your sovereignty, i will relinquish to my colleagues the pleasure of conversing with this singular individual. another judge [levels his pertified eyes at the crimi nal and proceeds] were you the originator of this plan for the wholesale seduction of property? 66 a league of justice. founder i was. judge inform the magistrates how, why, when, for what, and to what purpose. chapter xiv. the founder's story. the founder my father was a frugal, hard-work ing farmer, who finally underwent the fate so common to that class, and lost his land after a succession of mortgages. he had overworked for a long time to avert the calamity, and died soon after it came. i was then fifteen years old. a relative obtained a position for me in a city store. my mother could not see me go away alone at that age, breaking up the family, and as her own home was gone she accompan ied me with the three younger children. she had expected some rich town friends of her earlier years to help make the way easier, but they forgot her. we lived, as we had to, in poor quarters; my mother sewed ; our joint wages barely kept us. within three years two of the younger children died. i had then learned book-keeping and secured my present position. we lived better upon my five hundred dollars a year. my remaining brother entered a factory, but never was strong enough to make the best wages, his constitution having been impaired by the privations of our first years in the city. tenement house and fac tory life continued to bear unfavorably upon him, and at the age of twenty-seven he died, leaving a broken down wife and two children, whom i sent to a coun try town and mainly supported until the children grew 68 a league of justice. up. on account of these demands 011 my income i never married. i naturally asked myself if it was necessary for peo ple to be crushed and suffering burdened through life as i and those near to me had been. my employ ers counted their .wealth in millions ; each owned sev eral sumptuous houses and lived in the tropics of luxury. i knew of a great number of business and idle men with similar possessions and similar habits of life. pondering these disturbing contrasts, i discov ered a clue. if these millionaires, greater and less, would set aside annually in the ratio of their posses sions a sum for the simple, designed, chosen, express purpose of altering the social foundation upon which the poor stand, and would themselves, with the same interest, energy and intelligence they display in com mercial affairs of their own, originate and carry for ward such an alteration, or would appoint intelligent and capable agents to do it, as they choose agents in their own business, there would soon be neither occa sion nor possibility of such a life as mine or of such death as had pruned my family down. i reasoned that the rich could spare enough for this beautiful end without curtailing a comfort, and, absorbed in my vision of the ineffable happiness and power of life and character they would bestow upon innumerable others by these slight sacrifices, i dreamed that it was only necessary to reveal to them the marvelous commission they held to lead the old world many a day's journey toward paradise and per fection, to start in them an earnest and perpetual fondness for this benign generalship. a league of justice. 69 i arranged a lucid plan, showing, ' with a little money this can be done, with a little more that, and with yet more these fifty excellent inventions can be mobilized, and by the time they are in action half of t\\e poverty and suffering will capitulate, and in less than twenty-five years the whole face of the earth will wear a renovated and unrecognizable aspect.' i set forth in columnar demonstration being a man of fig ures and business the sums which could be spared from domestic expenditures by the capitalists to meet this outlay, and proved that there would be a surplus for theatres left. having thus fastened the plan together with un breakable bands of fact and screws of reason, i ap proached the emotional side of the subject and wrote a sagacious paragraph on the cogency of commencing this grand sociological migration under the stimulat ing concluctorship of the great capitalists, for if they initiated it, so commanding is the authority of true worth, high character, bottomless brains and cyclo pean wealth, that the men of littler worth, character, brains and property, would speedily get into the pro cession. this paragraph i reserved for the richest, and it won me many warm admirers, offers of per sonal advancement, scholarships in the universities which they had to dispose of, and the management of newspapers, especially if i would write leading arti cles setting forth my opinions on this subject. i managed to shut all these flattering openings with my next sentence, which implied in the most etherial language i knew, never an unambiguous word being used throughout the whole, that a revolution was yo a league of justice. walking the capitalist's way, which might reach and destroy him before he heard of its existence if some good-hearted person -like me did not a<5l as sentinel to warn him. i then came down to strict oratory and told the cap italists with impassioned utterance that they were the ones and the only ones who could save us from the danger of violence. ' think of it ! ' i cried in mighty wrath, ' the wealth of the country, the shops and rail roads and everything else are under your control and owned by you. you are conducting these things in a manner which brings absolute ruin upon a great many, and wretchedness, disappointment and collapse of hope upon a great many more. can i change this ? i do not own the things. can the middle class change it ? they again, are only small, uninfluential owners. can the working people, those who are suffering most, change it ? no ; for you and not they own and operate the causes of their sufferings. and you, yoii could change it, can change it when you will ; you can avert the violent rising of the masses which is possi ble. by applying the wealth which the masses have made for you to placing industrialism on a different basis and carrying society wisely through the transi tion it is about to make in some manner to a higher plane, you could render some recompense for the pro digious wrongs you have done the poor in degrading them by robbing them, some recompense to society for bringing it to the edge of destruction. ' you are responsible, you rich, you capitalists : not you as a system, but you personally, each one of you. you are public enemies. you can only redeem your a i.kague of justice. 7 1 selves from this stain by acting soon and undoing the infamous hurt you have done all. you, then, i brand and attack. you, each ; not a shadowy impersonal thing called the ' social system.' you board and bed the social system, fire it up and run it, own, manage and milk money out of it, and then you plead innocence of its crimes ! oh, blameless ones, you are the mur derers of everyone murdered by this system, the cause of all the terrible ruin to human beings it accom plishes. you are the dire, callous, devilish cause. repent and turn your stolen riches to undo this, or the down-trampled, infuriated people will find you out, and then what ? ' armed with this subtle document i visited the cap italists, going first to those who employed me. the great leading man in our concern, w y ho had worked himself up to that summit by the death of his father, was affable, listened to my sketch and then to what i could say in its favor, restraining his deliberating judgment until all was through. then he spoke, and i saw how it was that he was such a power in the world. "you have excellent ideas," he said in measured, anathematical tones, and the north star seemed to revolve about him, " but they are not practical. in two or three thousand years they may be practical. as an irresponsible clerk everything looks extremely simple to you. my great responsibility on your shoulders for just one clay would crush you to atoms, and you would understand why it is not practical. responsibility opens one's eyes and makes him practi cal. now i am . practical ; and just in a practical, friendly way i must advise you not to spend too much 72 a league of justice. time flying your little theoretical kites and telling peo ple how to improve. we don't want people to improve, we want tfrem to work, and you belong to that number." he had reached ground where he was at home, beating the brains out of working people according to the scriptures of industry ; his concentrated eyes bulged, and lest they should split or fly out of his head at me like bullets, i thought it was time to go. .where was his affability ? i had forgotten that i was only his workingman. i was not discouraged. for several months, after hours, i wandered on my pilgrimage among the capi talists. some refused to see me, saying their time was too precious for the contemplation of charitable ob jects; some were wroth because they averred i threat ened them in saying that they and they alone held the key to the situation and could avert violence, and they declared i ought to be imprisoned to keep me from spreading my ridiculous nonsense about them ; a third lot took it as a good joke. " my good fellow," said one, " these working people get all they deserve. they would spend the rest in drink and idleness." i replied i had never heard any one say that before, and asked him if he thought that i, who had lived long among the poorest and had been one of them, ought to know. "ah, but you don't know as well as i do," he responded." "but how do you know? " i insisted. " a member of my family who represents intellect, a i,e:aguk of justice. 73 and is in fact a trained intelligence, keeps an eye on the slums," he said. " read this," i remarked, passing him an editorial from the london times on the subject of a new free library in east london. " it won't change my mind," he answered, but he read it. " in the first place," he read, " people whose earn ings are such as to make every six-pence spent a serious matter, cannot buy books, even cheap ones. in the second place and the consideration is still more important if a whole family has to live in two rooms, there is neither room for the reader nor for his books ; nor is there likely to be much of the necessary quiet." ' the times was never known to embellish the bar renness of the poor," i suggested. "there are * whole families' that have to live in two rooms." " i know how to answer that," said he. " i've heard it answered before." "how?" said i. said he, "that is in london, not in americ^. this is a free country and we do not have such things. and if we have them it's the fault of the two-roomed people, who have not brains to earn more than two rooms. there's nothing bad about living in two rooms either. the intelligent member of my family has found plenty of families, children and all, liv ing in two rooms and perfectly happy, contented and religious. go to europe with your plan, for it is not needed here." " do the two-roomed people read ? " i interjected. 74 a league of justice. "read?" cried he, "why should they read? i don't read ? " " break your rule and look at this," i said. " is it long ? " queried he. " the words are not long," was my rejoinder, " but perhaps i had better read it to you." " do so," he acquiesced. i read : " the testimony of mr. george r. humphery, who has been in charge for twenty years of the books read by factory people in england, in regard to their read ing habits and opportunities is worth something to the thousands of persons in new england who are con nected with the factories as operatives, an.d who have limited opportunities for reading. he well states the difficulties under which any trustworthy and success ful work is accomplished by the industrial classes. in the first place, very few of these people can afford a separate room for study. again, they are constantly compelled to work overtime, and this interferes with a regular course of study. it either prevents the attending of classes at an evening school, or it renders a man unfit to read at home. if the men are serious to become masters of their trade, they must spend some time in the evening in working out problems that have perplexed them during the day. they aie often without work, and the difficulty of obtaining new positions interferes with their regular acquisition of knowledge. all these drawbacks interfere with the regular reading or study of the working classes. they must be remembered when we consider what it is possible for them to accomplish.' " a league of justice. 75 ' ' would you like some more? " i asked. ' 'i didn't ask for any of it," said he. ''take a little more, then, while you have the chance," i remarked; and i recited a few more extracts about " these people." " ' it is only a limited degree of reading that is pos sible to our factory population. . . . the most that can be done for the intellectual improvement of these people is to supply them with such works of fiction or biography or of popular scientific exposition as are within their comprehension. . . . for the most part the readers among the working classes are persons who are not prepared by education to take up what is profound and thorough.' ' ' f what agitator wrote that incendiary stuff ? " he questioned contemptuously. "the boston herald,'* was my answer; "april 1 3th, 1893." said he, " it's terrible when a reliable capital sheet prostitutes itself like that. if these silly newspapers do not keep the truth out of sight a little more skil fully we shall take a header into chaos." "so i said in my epistle to the capitalists," i added. "but not in your way, and not by our fault," wailed he. it'll be because the common people do not know anything and want to own everything. ' ' " give them a chance to read and learn," finished i, quitting him. by this time i thought it trying enough to visit native capitalists without attempting european ones as i had been bidden. 76 a league of justice. the next one gave me a dissertation on my one-eyed way of looking at things. " open the other side of your brain," quoth he, "and use that awhile. go and improve the people"; spend your energies that way ; make them meek, teach them obedience to their em ployers ; don't be finding fault with us rich, world with out end. i'm tired of hearing it. fault-finders never accomplish anything. tell the common people their duties to us. they don't work half as much . as we want them to ; they are not faithful. the trouble with them is they need religion. i haven't any opinion of your plan, but let me tell you you must be broad minded and all-sided or you can't get any influential person interested in it." after this i reflected a few days, having learned something. i had been a child before. now i was a man. i had ascribed the conduct of the rich men's lives to their ignorance, thinking that if they knew the hell they create and keep in running order and temporally eternalize for the working many of man kind, they would swiftly stop its mouth up, close its furnaces, and fill up its lakes. now i knew better. i now saw that they were determined to live on as they liked though hell ate up the poor here and hereafter. now i realized that their course of life was deliberate, intentional, planned, and the cause of it i realized impregnable .selfishness, irreducible indifference and a petrifaction of soul not to be dis solved or granulated. the winged truth sped through my mind that if i went to the ocean and prayed and appealed to it, i should accomplish more than by appealing and palter a i.kague of justice. 77 ing to the rich for justice, humanity and restoration to the poor. " abandon our luxuries, abandon one lux ury to give those coarse, remote, servile animals, the common people, food and decency and happiness and life ? we the hyper-excellent, drawing-room distilled, soul-washed-and-ironed, blood-desiccated, picked-over and sieved for two generations like skimmed flour bereft of its wheatfulness, we, the capitalists, aban don a privilege or luxury for the unsifted proletarian slum-soiled millions living down in the bowels of nowhere ? no ; the earth is ours and the fulness thereof, ours shall it remain forever and ever." "yes," repeated i, without knowing what i said, moved by some power in the elements about me. ' ' yours it shall remain while the clammy sky of the slums coagulates the brains of the anthropoid fishes who swim in those gases; but what if they should rise to the light and read the sacred message of re sistance ? ' ' i was very much disheartened. to confirm my despondency came a notice from the shrine of the tab ernacle of the trust where i sacrificed myself, that my place would be needed for someone else if i continued to stir up the social sediment with the broken reed of demagoguery . ' you have not neglected your duties, ' oracled the note, ' but you are busying yourself with things which not concern you and may make us poor indeed ; you are making yourself a target of ridi cule in the decorating eyes of the financial archangels.' it had already ceased. ' go with your staff of progress to stir up the capitalists to righteousness and public salvation,' said i, 'and it will be with you as 78 a league of justice. it was with the man who went to stir up the philan thropic sentiments of the surface of the sun.' but they had vowed that nothing could be done, not if they gave the money 'to the new laying of social bed-rocks, not if they gave ten thousand times ten thousand more than they had to give. i concluded to show them what could be done. you know the results. chapter xv. sentence. the judge the results! yes, you have corrupted society, you have undermined respect for law, you have struck a stunning blow at morality and religion.; for you have robbed, defied the commandments, trampled on sacred trusts, and all the good you falsely lay claim to springs from this million-fold greater evil! founder what we have done was not robbery. all the judges [in great excitement] what is that you say ? have you not taken millions which did not belong to you ? founder we made ourselves the agents of tho^e who were robbed and overreached to restore to them their property. if a man steals your pocket-book, and i, without the knowledge of the thief, take it away from him and return it to you, am i a thief? judge this is rank anarchist absurdity ! no one has stolen but your precious crew. the rich whom you call robbers have broken no law or they would have been prosecuted and imprisoned. founder what if a party of thieves formed the strongest element in a community and made a law saying it was right and legal for them to take the pro perty of all men : would that make it right ? judge no. rounder and if some other men secretly took from 80 a league of justice. the law-makers and robbers what they had legally wrenched from other citizens and returned it to them, that would be right ? judge it would. founder that is what we have done. judge a fine argument so far, but i am waiting to see how you make out that the rich are the robbers. founder any man who takes and uses for himself more than is necessary for his life and health and de velopment, or for the life, health and development of those dependent on him, while others lack what is necessary for their life, health and development, is a robber. judge ah, you say this, do you ! and these are your fine principles ! founder yes, and i will not be so vague either, for the opportunities of all must be equal and he who would make any of them private property while others have less is a robber. judge such doctrines -would destroy the founda tions of property and wreck society. people of your depraved stamp are only fit for the mad house, the prison or the gallows, and i think the prison will be the place for you. founder i have done my life work and now it matters little what comes to me. we have proved by a right application of a portion of the surplus wealth of society, that society can be radically transformed, the individual members of it made infinitely more virtuous and intelligent, and suffering and misery caused almost to disappear in a few years. what would the whole surplus luxury-wealth of the coiyitry a league of justice. 8 1 do if expended thus ? i now realize that a century of such expenditure would do for society what it is wholly impossible to imagine, for i apprehend it would produce of mankind a race as far above us as we are above the variegated africanethiopian in his primi tive jungle. what you do with us will only brace our work ; the fruits of it will be ever greater, never less. chapter xvi. the people, at last. [it is the following day. the place is the same, and the streets are more densely packed, for millions have been arriving from every direction during the night. the president of the republic has recovered his sanity and composure and opens the court.] president we have conferred during the night and discussed the uncontradicted testimony obtained as it were from the very teeth of your conspiracy. we feel our station somewhat elevated in life although that could scarcely be unless crowns were placed upon our heads elevated by the sublime destiny centripe talized in us as vindicators of god and abraham and moses and all the owners of property since their time, as well as of the divinely inspired writers 011 the sub ject of property. we seem to be chosen instruments to pick the fragments of morality up out of the slime into which you have cast them, and to write again the ten commandments for the future on tables of immortal gold. how great should be our reward in heaven for this service ! greater still our reward on earth [the capitalists applaud], and our names should be en scrolled with those of lycurgus, jeremiah, william the conqueror and other legal sages. [" they shall be, we swear it," whispered the capitalists, "it won't cost much."] to tie down virtue on this planet, which was about to fly away dismayed at your blaspheming, we consign a league of justice. 83 your fifty thousand bodies to fifty thousand dungeons while they live and to fifty-thousand doctors when they are dead, and we decree that your entire worldly pos sessions shall be turned over to the capitalists who have suffered from your gigantic flintiness of heart. one of the league they '11 not get much, we used our property for the good of the race. president and we further ordain that all proper ties such as printing presses, buildings, co-operative factories and the like, which can be directly or indi rectly traced to funds taken from employers shall be turned back to them. a man in the court room this will ruin the peo ple's journals ! another man and keep us from knowing the truth about anything, as it used to be. [as the judgment makes its way outside, groans are heard which finally become so terrible that the court windows break. president and finally be our will known, that whosoever has received aught of these capitalists' moneys, whether women, children or strikers, shall be holden to reimburse these sums, and the titles of all farms and houses which have been purchased for the poor in any place shall be made over to those from whom the money to buy them came. a woman now we are undone indeed. my house will go. an old man oh this cruelty ! the capitalists will own everything. capitalist now that is justice. our protectors cannot be intimidated. 84 a league of justice. second capitalist it serves them right and is none too severe. i would have had the four ringleaders strung up. it's worse than murder to attack property. i shall be fifty million dollars richer after this. a voice [cries exultingly] how will it be known whom the stolen money went to help ? [the jaws of all the capitalists drop; the president, cabinet and judges look as if they had lost a year's salary.] a bright man in the crowd the volumes of the league's records will show that, at least the founder said so. the multitude destroy the records ! destroy the records ! [the capitalists gather round the records which are in the court room in a body, and the president com mands the regular army to prepare to fire on the crowd. word is sent to the police, including the two hundred and forty-nine thousand who had been unjustly jailed, to prepare for a general slaughter.] a capitalist a lot of these people ought to be killed. if we don't make an example of them now they'll never give us peace and profits again. a number of working women [jostling the capital ists] you are the ones who ought to go to prison. a woman [shrieking at the top of her voice to the working men] oh you cowards ! capitalists [in low tones among themselves] this is pretty serious. it is time to shoot. another yes, blood always brings the scum to its senses. a workingman in the court room think what these men have done for us. a 1.3 ague op justice. 85 second workingman i would rather go to prison for life myself. another the capitalists will soon have us down on the ground again and then under ground. this is damnable ! i can't stand it. another [stamping] if american workingmen only had some of the blood of the belgians in them ! a foreign workman [calmly looking on] ameri ican workingmen are the most cowardly in the world. several women [forcing their way through the crowd in a frenzy] it's a lie. before to-day's over you'll know whether they're cowards ! the president [mounting a chair] i command the crowd in my name to disperse on pain of death. the officers will conduct the prisoners to their doom. a woman [in hysterics] that man saved my children from starvation when my husband died. one of the regular policemen some of those fel lows looked after my sick father when he lost his job and the landlord turned him on to the street. ten thousand men on the outskirts of the crowd [from the west, armed with shot guns] did they say we were to give our farms to the capitalists ? another squad [approaching in the distance] oh no, not yet ! the president [stepping on to the table] take them to jail, i say ! 249,000 arrested clerk-police [sullenly] if we go back to clerk for these capitalist robbers we'll steal everything they have. the croivd outside we'll not desert our friends. 86 a league of justice. the capitalists [to the policemen] do your duty and take these villains to jail. a policeman [throwing down his club] i'll have nothing to do with it. other policemen [following his example] nor i, nor i. we've served you rich swine long enough. we'll be bull dogs for you no more. capitalists swine ! do you dare call us swine ? remember we can hang you. policemen animals who take all they can get and leave others who cannot crowd their way to the food nothing, are swine. capitalists, president and judges [frantically] we'll double your pay ! policemen it's too late. you can't hire us now. we're done working for money bags. we'll work hereafter for justice and the people. chief of the armed 249,000 and you've got to settle with us yet ! [the noise without increases. later in the day the capitalists, president and judges, with a few militia-men composed of butlers and foot men, together with the regular army and navy, have fled to the banks and newspaper buildings and barri caded themselves in as best they could. immense throngs of people surge through the streets, cracking the walls of the buildings with their momen tum. meetings of the multitude are being held in the squares and over the country for fifty miles out.] speaker [to the people : ] for twelve years we have been living in light and hope. we knew not what was doing this for us, but a league of justice. 87 now we know. shall we abandon those who made the noble venture and mighty sacrifice for us, who took freedom in their hands, scorned fate, and devoted their lives to making human beings of us ? a thousand voices no! no! we're not such poltroons ! speaker shall we allow ourselves to be forced back to that degradation and slavery from which we and our class have been lifted for the first time in this earth's annals ? the crowd [in long resounding cries] never, while one of us lives. speaker then we must put an end to capitalism now. we must finish that old accursed system from which we have so long suffered. there's no half way work possible any longer. our old masters will grind us to powder if we give them the upper hand again. the crowd down with the masters ! down with capitalism ! speaker then let us send a deputation to them, giving them their choice. either they may yield peaceably and unite with us to organize society on a just basis, or we notify them that we, the irresistible people, will proceed to that work without them. many voices [amid earth-shaking cheers] that we will ! that we will ! [/scene before the stock exchange, wliich is the princi pal capitalist fort.] spokesman for the capitalists [from an upper win dow. the president and the regular army stand be hind him for protection] what if we refuse your demands ? ss a league of justice. working people then we shall ignore you and set about completing the transformation of industry avhicli the men you have sentenced to prison have carried so far and taught us how to carry farther. capitalist spokesman will you confiscate our property ? working people it is not yours. we shall take the property you abominably call yours, which you have accumulated from us and through our labor, and make an equal partnership, where you will have a voice if you choose, but no more influential voice than anyone else. ('. spokesman we will prevent that with arms. we will die sooner than give up what is ours and make terms to ruffianly social dregs and marauders. working people to every hundred of you there are a million dregs. you can do nothing. no one but the automaton army will sell himself to shoot down the people oi his own class and blood for your benefit :igain, ana the people can destroy the army if neces sary in ten minutes. you had better think twice. cafijtaiists [quaking among themselves] it is true, we had. we are lost. c. spokesman [to the multitudes] you have no competent leaders without us. marking people we are all leaders now, since we have had a little education. we'll have more educa tion. we'll never give our bodies and destinies again to bosses in this world ! c. s/>okeswa/i but how can industry be organi/.ed on an equality ? it is impossible. it would lead to a league op justice. 89 chaos. no one would save. the idle would live on the industrious. working people that is what your newspapers have always been saying, but the hundreds of mills which the working people have come to own on that very principle of equality since the league of justice began to distribute wealth a little more fairly, prove that it is a lie. working people save if they have anything to save for and anything to save from. the idle who have not inherited too bad an organization as a legacy of the capitalists' regime are put under special conditions of labor, and the really and thoroughly bad are soon singled out and treated like the sick which they are. then they are known and treated and can not impose on the rest of society, as they could under the old social disarrangement. capitalists | altogether ; their eyes suddenly filling with beams of hope] you'll at least leave us our land and railroads and such things ? working people [with .scorn] we'll at least leave you nothing of the sort. this is not a play rev olution. we propose to have the sources of wealth on this earth used for human good, hereafter, not for your private amusement you, a little shiftless group of enormous spendthrifts, bragging ever and ever more of economy and abstinence. capitalists [after earnest and protracted consultation in which the army chaplain is several times called upon to offer prayer] it is clear that we are beaten, and we might as well make the best of a situation fof which there is no help. 90 a league of justice. [they come down into the streets and are greeted with cordial hand shaking's and thundering cheers by the pro pie.] a former capitalist i see how the factory that was mine can be run in common, give the largest possibility for the initiative of all and not for the manager only, and have the proceeds shared for the best development and happiness of all too. i knew how this could have been done all the time. surrounding people [hilariously] oh, we know how that can be done ! but none of it to-day. let every man, woman and child work for the banquet to night ! there never was a day like this ! another former capitalist this is life ! i've been a dog all my days. i'm glad the change has come. i 'in tired of slave-driving the working people. i breathe for the first time now, and so many good years gone ! people there never was a day like this ! return circulation department to^ 202 main library loan period 1 home use 2 3 4 5 6 all books aaay be recalled after 7 days 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to circulation desk renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date due as stamped below ff a fc. *l~jnmm stanford intefellbrary loa m ^ w vm\l lwa? 'jul 1 4 1978 lx 3 rec. illauu ttc.clfi.flub 5 7ft vo od vo form no dd 6 40m 10 '77 university of california, berkeley ' pcdvcicv n f<. ^-\ cornell university library date due ma ^ nar^f cornell university library hd2961 .r64 looking forward oljn 3 1924 030 082 360 cornell university library the original of this book is in the cornell university library. there are no known copyright restrictions in the united states on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030082360 looking forward a study in social justice looking to co-operation as offering the solution of difficulties by isaac roberts author of 'wages, fixed incomes, and the free coinage of silver" 'let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to tlie end dare to do our duty as we understand it." — abraham lincoln. published by roberts & company 833 real estate trust building broad and chestnut sts. philadelphia, pa. p^iz7fz "justice is the end of government; it is the end of civil society." — alexander hamilton. "regardez en avant; et non pas en arriere; le courant roule a jehovah" — lamnrtine. (look forward; and not backvrard : the current sweeps toward god. ) "look up, and not down; look out, and not in: look forward, and not back: and lend a hand." — edward everett hale. copyrijht, 1913 by isaac roberts to those who labor and to those who are heavy laden, being but illy-requited for their toil, this book is dedicated by the author, in the hope and confidence that through co-operation they will obtain greater freedom and secure a fuller measure of justice. table of contents chapter ^^^^ i. the first conference; getting ready i ii. — present conditions and future outlook 13 iii. — another conference; a new departure 48 iv. — the leading issue; equal suffrage 61 v. — conference no. 3 ; looking toward co-operation 90 vl — co-operation in action loi vil — conference no. 4; the question — how? 126 viil — co-operation through legislation; how?.... 138 ix. — conference no. 5; looking to the schools. . . . 172 x.^the public school and the familistere 179 xl — conference no. 6; counting in big figures... 197 xn. — a needless failure and a possible recovery. . 206 xhl — conference no. 7; engaging home t.-vlent.... 241 xiv. — an accident and a promotion 251 xv. — a final conference; a record and an invita tion 272 xvi. — co-operation, — an expression of christianity. 282 appendix ^09 (i) preface. those who consider industrial conditions, in the hope of finding a just and peaceful solution for the problems which they meet in this study, must have been impressed with the fact that but three leading answers to the prob lems are at present suggested. first, that the policy of laissez faire be allowed to continue, in the hope that something will turn up that may provide an easy way to improved conditions. second, the theories of the social ists, whose plans of action are not well defined, and who appear to hope for a grand debacle or revolution, which shall be followed by conditions in which their theories of government may be applied. and third, the principles and methods of co-operation, which are being more and more applied, with great degrees of success. to many the first method suggested, which involves the continuance for an indefinite period of present condi tions, with ever-recurring strikes, lock-outs, and appeals to force, seems well-nigh intolerable. one aspect of pres ent conditions, — that presented by miss jane addams in her recent book, "a new conscience and an ancient evil," is to many minds terrible, and, while it exists, is a continual summons and challenge, to all who can ap prehend its enormity, to co-operate for its abolition. to call attention to the relation of present conditions to this evil, and to aid in the needed co-operation against it, is one of the purposes of this book. the second method suggested seems to offer little or nothing in the way of moral improvement over conditions which now exist : and, when the initial step contemplated is considered, appears to be, as a cure, worse than the disease. the formulation of some well-defined plan of (ii) preface action upon which they can all unite, and the adoption of moral principles of higher range than those that now obtain, might be recommended for the consideration of modern socialists. the third method suggested, however, offers a peace ful solution to the problem, based upon simple justice and right, thereby promising permanence, and leading toward higher moral heights than the world has yet known. it has also the great advantage that, where fairly tried, it has always produced good results. more and more are thoughtful persons turning to it as the final solution of the great industrial problem. it need scarcely be said that this book has not been written for the scientific mind, but rather in the hope of bringing to the attention of average men and women the advantages offered by this third answer to the difficult problems of the present day. through co-operation many of them can be readily solved ; while their solution by any other method seems hopeless. the difficulties be tween labor and capital, especially, seem susceptible of easy settlement by this method; while no other method thus far tried seems capable of producing the desired results. very much of the present discussion of industrial prob lems seems utterly futile. much time is wasted in in veighing against the tyranny of capital, or the tyranny of labor, as the case may be, which could be much better spent in the effort to find a remedy for the wrongs suf fered by both. in co-operation is presented a concrete, well-defined remedy, of proven value in many instances, which seems well worthy of greater and greater accep tance by the people. as a concrete and possible remedy, is it not worthy the attention of those desiring to see (hi) preface justice done to both parties in all disputes, and as leading toward that higher equity and brotherhood through which alone peace can come to endure ? the author's acknowledgments are due to mrs. laura e. richards, author of the story, "the cooky," and to messrs. little, brown & co., boston, mass., publishers of "the golden windows," from which the story is taken, for permission to use this excellent story, which presents in such striking form some of the chief features of the strife between capital and labor. i. r. swarthmore, penna., may, 1913. (iv) "the cooky." from "the golden windows," by mrs. laura e. richards. a child quarreled with his brother one day about a cooky. "it is my cooky," said the child. "no; it is mine," said his brother. "you shall not have it," said the child. "give it to me this minute !" and he fell upon his brother and beat him. just then came by an angel who knew the child. "who is this that you are beating?" asked the angel. "it is my brother," said the child. "no; but truly," said the angel: "who is it?" "it is my brother, i tell you," said the child. "oh, no!" said the angel. "that cannot be, and it seems a pity for you to tell an untruth, because that makes spots upon your soul. if it were your brother, you would not beat him." "but he has my cooky!" said the child. "oh !" said the angel. "now i see my mistake. you mean that the cooky is your brother; and that seems a pity, too ; for it does not look like a very good cooky, and besides, it is all crumbled to pieces."* *the above story, one of the inimitable parables of mrs. richards contained in the volume mentioned, is reprinted here by the special permission of the author, and of her publishers, messrs. little, brown & co.j boston, mass. (v) chapter i. the conference: getting ready. "new occasions teach new duties. time makes ancient good uncouth ; they must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of truth." — lowell. "truth is eternal, but her effluence, with endless change, is fitted to the hour; her mirror is turned forward, to reflect the promise of the future, not the past." — lowell. "well, barr, how far along are we? have you got the fall and winter campaign all mapped out for us?" the speaker was john crandall, assistant superin tendent of the large iron mills in pleasantville, member of the town council from his ward, president of one of the local building associations, superintendent of the sunday school of the methodist church, of which he was regarded as the chief pillar; a splendid type of the best class of the american workingman — self-educated, self respecting, and worthy of all respect for his many fine qualities — a fact to which his fellow-workmen, and his fellow-citizens as well, bore witness by offering him all the positions of honor which one man could enjoy in their small community. tall, straight, with regular features, dark hair and a pair of piercing black eyes, he was a strikingly handsome man, and it was thought by some that his attractive personality had as much to do with his popularity as the higher qualities of mind and spirit, which he also possessed in goodly measure. (i) 2 looking forward the person he addressed was david barr, a man sev eral years younger than himself, at present conductor on the blairsville and terminal city railroad, on which pleasantville was located, and a friend of many years standing. barr had come up from the ranks, having en tered the service of the railroad company as fireman on the local freight and passing through the various grades of promotion until he had been made conductor — a posi tion, as he assured his friends, that was only the step ping stone to something much higher in the service. short, stout, with blue eyes and light hair, he was in most ways the very opposite of crandall, who had great per sonal dignity, of which barr seemed utterly devoid. per haps it was barr's overflowing abundance of good nature, or the very fact that they were so unlike, that attracted them and made them the best of friends and co-workers in many ways in the activities of the town. they were both members of the workers' club of pleasantville, and had just met at the meeting-place of the club. to cran dall's question barr replied : "well, no, jackie; i can't say that i have it all ar ranged; but i have one or two ideas in my head, and that's what i wanted to see you and harry about. he hasn't arrived yet, has he?" "no ; i met him on the way, but he said he wanted to see principal sharpe about the matter you spoke about, and would be here a little later. while we are wait ing, i might as well report as to seeing mr. bruce. i told harry about it, and that reminded him that he hadn't seen sharpe yet." "did you see bruce? what did he say? i hope he will work with us." "well, he said both yes and no. he wanted me to tell you that he appreciated your invitation to be on the ex getting ready 3 ecutive committee, but that he hardly thought it wise to do so. he thought we could probably do better without him taking a conspicuous part in the work of the com mittee; but he said he was interested in what we had in mind and would be glad to co-operate in any way he could, except taking the direct and public work." "what makes him think he would hurt us if he were on the committee? i can't quite understand that." "\a'ell, he said that the cashier of a bank had better stay off such a committee on general principles. there were several reasons, but i think the chief was that he fre quently had to say 'no' in an official way to people, and they very often took it as though he was speaking per sonally. he said that very often he would like to give a different answer, but was bound by the action of others. in that way he thinks he has incurred the ill will of quite a number of persons, and says that that might be transferred to the committee and so interfere with our work. i tried to persuade him that there wasn't anything in it, but i found it was no use and gave it up. besides, i'm not quite sure that he isn't right to a certain extent, but i guess he overstates it." "well, i don't think there's the slightest foundation for it; but, of course, we'll have to accept his decision. did he suggest anyone in his place?" "no; but he did make a suggestion that i think we might very well act on. he reminded me that both you and i are members of the board of directors of the home building association, and so is harry. bruce, you know, is treasurer of the association, and he suggested that as we thought of having our meetings once a month, we might all spend a half hour after the meeting of the direc tors each month and informally talk over the programme of the coming public meeting of the club, and in that way 4 looking forward he could co-operate almost as well as by being on the committee, and no one need know of his connection with the work." "good for him !" exclaimed barr. "that will answer perfectly. it'll be like getting the cake without spending the penny; so we'll have the cake and penny too; some thing i've always wanted to accomplish. and here comes harry. how d'ye do? old man?" he added, extending his hand to the newcomer, who took the offered hand and covered it in a clasp that made barr wince. harry smith, better known to his neighbors and fel low-workmen as "hammer harry," was one of the char acters of pleasantville, where he had been born, now nearly sixty years ago. his father had been a workman at the iron mills before him, and harry might almost be said to have been born and bred in the mills. his parents, it is true, had made other plans for him, but he had grown to love the work in the big mills before he was out of his teens, and after he became of age he settled the mat ter for himself by entering into a contract to work for the old firm without the knowledge of his father — al though not much against his will, as it turned out after the step had been taken. he had watched the works grow from the single little mill of forty years ago to the many separate mills of the great plant of the present day, and no one had taken a greater interest, and but few a greater part, in that growth than he. he had fitted himself for the position of general utility man and superintendent of repairs about the works, and no change of any importance had been made for years past without his advice being asked for, and usually adopted, by the management. there were those who said that hammer knew more about the iron business than anyone connected with the works, except getting ready 5 the "little boss" himself; but no one had ever heard hammer make such a boast himself. his loyalty, as well as his modesty, would have prevented any such thought, to say nothing of any such reckless speech. but, with all his modest self-estimate, there was a great deal of personal dignity about him, and one story that the men in the mills never grew tired of telling was the man ner in which he met the "big boss," on one occasion, when hammer thought his rights were invaded. it seems that on this occasion he had been suddenly called upon to make certain repairs during a very busy season, and while engaged in superintending a number of work men engaged in putting in new foundations for heavy machinerjr, he was interrupted by the "big boss," who came to the scene of operations and in a rather dictatorial manner wanted to know if "that work couldn't be pushed a little faster." hammer was "pushing" it all he knew how, and, incensed at the injustice of the act and the imputation of the remark, promptly climbed to the sur face and began to take off his overalls. upon the iron master asking what he meant, he informed him that, if he thought that the work could be done any faster, he was at liberty to do it himself. of course, the "big boss," realizing his mistake, made due amends, and ham mer was persuaded to go back to work. but the men always claimed that, after that little episode. hammer was allowed to "push" repairs to completion without in terference — no doubt to the advantage of the works and of his own peace of mind. hammer's personality was strongly in contrast with that of his bosom friend, crandall, for, while as tall as the latter, he was loose-jointed and ungainly in appear ance, heavily built, with square shoulders, evidently a man of great strength, and yet strangely awkward in move 6 looking forward ment. and at times slightly hesitating in address. a face of strong features, with a high forehead, surmounted by a heavy thatch of iron-gray hair ; a pair of deep-set black eyes having a very direct and fearless expression; this combination gave an impression of strength and endur ance, and, as crandall was wont to say, "inspired confi dence before he spoke a word." in speech he was usually clear and direct ; and one of barr's favorite remarks was, that "hammer seemed to be every way awkward until he opened his mouth, and then his tongue was so straight and clear that no one ever thought of awkwardness." a heavy scar over the left temple showed where an injury received in the mills had left its mark upon him for life. "well, barr; i see jackie beat me here," he replied to barr's greeting. "did you get to see sharpe, old man? what does he say about helping us?" inquired barr. "says he's too busy, barr. says he has great interest in the idea, and would like to help, but he is doing some special work in the way of studying for a degree, or something like that, and can't give the time." "by the way, barr," interrupted crandall; "why not put him in the same class with bruce and call them honor ary members of the committee? you know sharpe is one of the directors of the building association, too, and no doubt he will be glad to adopt the suggestion made by bruce and help us in the same way. how would that answer ? "great head, jackie. that will do nicely; and if we should run across one or two more of the men that we would like to have work with us, we can ask them to join the committee." "\a^ell, now that that's settled, let's hear what you had thought of for the fall and winter. i know you" have getting ready 7 some plan in that head of yours, or you wouldn't have said what you did at the last meeting of the club, when you were made chairman of this committee." "you're right, crandall," said barr. "i have had a plan simmering in my mind ever since last summer ; but i guess i can tell you better about it if you will let me tell you a little story about something that happened to me once, while i was firing for old sandy mcmahon. you remember sandy, don't you, harry?" "remember him well ; the queerest old dick that ever ran an engine, but as square as they grew, too." "you're right ; and i guess my story will prove it. it was only a few months after i had gone on the road and he and i were running the mixed freight that used to leave blairsville about 5 p. m. and pass through here around 5.30. well, just before we started i happened to ask the old curmudgeon what he thought of looking backward. you remember that great book by bellamy. i had just been reading it, and i thought all the world of it, and i was sure the old man knew all about it, for he was a great reader; always ofif duty, you'd find him with something or other — book or magazine or paper — read ing every minute. well, he looked at me in a quizzical sort of way, says, t'll tell you, son, in a few minutes,' and motioned me to jump aboard. well, nothing more did he say, and i thought it a mighty funny way to an swer a fair question ; but i didn't say anything, for i knew him better by that time. so i kept busy firing up, and before long we went sailing through here and on down by the river. you both remember daniel's rock, don't you ? just this side of bell's crossing — rock twenty feet high on the left side of the tracks and the river on the right, and just enough space for the tracks and not much over — and you know the sharp curve to the left 8 looking forward just below there. well, we were getting pretty well down the river, nearing the rock, and he always used to reverse and whistle for the brakes a mile or so above. but this time he didn't do it, and i looked up to see what was the matter, and there he was, leaning out of the cab, looking back up the river as happy as a clam. there we were, ripping along at any old speed, with a thousand tons of mixed freight back of us, apt to make things in teresting if there was a mix-up, and that rock and the curve only a short distance ahead, and that old fellow paying no attention, but looking back up the river, with nothing to look at. well, it got on my nerves, and i shouted, 'why don't you whistle for the brakes?' and i'm afraid i said something to myself that wasn't polite; but i thought it best not to say it too loud, for the good of my health." "and what did mac say?" interrupted crandall. "say! he didn't say nothing. he didn't take the trouble to say anything. you might have thought i was a mosquito, and didn't know how to buzz, at that. he just turned his face toward me for a second and gave me a smile, for all the world like he was sitting at home of a sunday afternoon with a pitcher of lemonade and a plate of his wife's cakes between us. i was considering whether i had better jump and how it would feel to light, going at that gait, when all of a sudden he got busy, whistled for the brakes, reversed and we slid around the curve on one track, i thought; but we got around all right." "and didn't he say anything all that time?" inquired harry. "not a word ; and after we got around all right i was too mad for a while to say anything to him; thought maybe i had better go slow, while the steam was up. but getting ready 9 after we had run on the siding down at green tree, to let the fast express go b)^ mac got down and came around to my side and said, 'well, liow did you hke it, sonny?' 'like what?' said i, still hopping mad. 'why, like looking backward ; that's what you asked me, wasn't it? didn't you notice that was what i was doing?' 'oh, you old sinner,' i said: 'is that the way you take that book? haven't you got sense enough to know that the writer of it was just using his imagination and sort of projecting himself forward a hundred years and then taking a look backward ?' " "and what did mac have to say to that?" asked crandall. "well," laughed barr; "i remember it as well as though it happened yesterday. he said, 'now, sonny, don't get too free with your compliments, or you'll be sorry. i didn't want to scare you too bad, but i did want to teach you a lesson ; and that is, that you can't go ahead in this world safely or with much satisfaction to your self if you're forever looking backward. if you're going to make progress and make it safe, especially if you're running a mixed freight, as most of us are, more or less, you'd better keep a good -lookout ahead, for that's the way you're going. looking forward is good enough for your old uncle,' says he, 'and i thought you might re member it after i am gone.' and behold, i have remem bered it ; and that is what i want to propose as the gen eral subject for our fall and winter program." "and just how do you intend to work it, lad?" asked hammer harry. "well, you see, i would take that for the general sub ject, and then, if you approve, we will try to get some good speakers to handle various topics that naturally belong to it. oh, yes ; i remember another thing that old 10 looking forward mac said about it, that may help us, if we bear it in mind. he said that about all that one generation of men could do was to take one step forward, and they ought to look forward so carefully that they would have no doubt as to their footing, so that those who came after thein might have solid ground to stand on for their next step forward. now, don't you think there was some sense in that, crandall?" "it certainly sounds sensible, barr. but now, what is our next step forward ? i mean, of this committee, right here and now?" "good boy, jackie; you want to get right down to brass tacks, don't you? well, i had thought a little far ther, and wanted to see you to suggest this for our first meeting next week. you know young strong, don't you? the young lawyer, who is living up on the hill. well, i happen to know that he's been giving the general in dustrial situation a good deal of attention, for i have had several talks with him about it now and then. you know he usually takes my train down in the morning. now, what would you think of inviting him to give us the first address on tuesday of next week, and suggest that he select his subject, and handle it just as he pleases. i be lieve he will do it, if we ask him." "that seems all right to me, barr; providing you can induce him to do it," said crandall. "how does it strike you, harry?" he added, turning to his friend at his side. "i like the idea very well," replied harry; "especially the general subject, 'looking forward.' as old mac said, that's the only safe way to go ahead. but barr, are you sure that the people will turn out to hear a talk on such a dry subject as anything connected with industrial questions ? we don't want to invite a speaker, and then have an empty house for him to talk to." getting ready u "oh, you can leave that to me and the reporter of the herald, hammer. it can be so announced, i'm sure, that the people will turn out all right. all you've got to do is to say that our winter's course will deal with the cause and the cure of the high cost of living, — and then you'll see the hall packed." after arranging some further preliminaries connected with the first meeting, the three friends left the building. as one of the outcomes of this conference, the daily herald a day or two later contained the following item : "the fall and ij^inter course; workers' club." "the herald takes pleasure in announcing that the usual fall and winter's course of addresses will be deliv ered under the direction of the workers' club, at their clubhouse on the first tuesday evening of each month, beginning november sth. on this evening the address will be delivered by our well-known fellow-townsman, henry b. strong, esq., who has selected as his topic: 'present conditions and future prospects.' "we are informed by our genial neighbor, mr. david barr, who has the honor to be the chairman of the ex ecutive committee of the club, that this initial address, as well as others of the course, will have to do with gen eral economic conditions, and that all who are at all in terested in finding a solution to the present and pressing problem of the high cost of living, as well as securing valuable information in reference to the general industrial questions that are now being everywhere discussed, can not afford to miss any lecture of this course. "following its usual course, the workers' club will make no charge for this series of lectures, but admission will be by ticket. these can be secured by applying at the stationery store of johnson & brother. the other 12 looking forward members of the executive committee are councilman crandall and 'hammer harry' smith. the herald be speaks for this course of lectures a full attendance by our townsmen." chapter ii. present conditions and the future outlook. "it is the province of law to make it as easy as possible for men to do right, and as difficult as possible for them to do wrong." — gladstone. "his statecraft was the golden rule, his right of vote a sacred trust; clear over threat and ridicule all heard his challenge: 'is it just?'" — whittier; of sumner. "we are made for co-operation — like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of the upper and lower teeth." — marcus aurelius. the town of pleasantville was located on the sharp slope of a hill which formed one side of a valley, through which flowed a small river. in the early days of the settlement, its one street, now known as the main street or the "pike," had been the main artery of travel to and from the mill on the river front at its base. in those far away days there had been a ford over the river at this point, but this had been lost in the period of river im provement, when the canal had been built, thus necessi tating the construction of a bridge on the line of the high way. for many years the chief use of the road had been the transportation of iron ore, limestone, etc., to the iron furnaces in the valley. as the town had increased in size, other manufacturing plants had been built, a rapidly growing population had gathered about the new streets as these were opened, and a typical american town of several thousand souls, with diversified industries. churches of the larger denominations, well-equipped (13) 14 looking forward schools, newspapers, banks and all the modern improve ments had grown up. the most important of the industrial plants was the big mill of the pleasantville iron company. organized before the civil war, these mills had, like many others, experienced a very rapid growth during that period. the president of the corporation, george worden, commonly known to his men as the "little boss," by way of dis tinction from his brother, the former president, who had been known, for obvious reasons, as the "big boss," was well liked by his men for his sense of justice and fair play, and half feared by many because of his strictness and insistence of a full measure of work for the full measure of pay he always gave. there had been but few strikes at the mills under his control ; and when these had occurred, he had always been willing to meet the repre sentatives of his men, and such differences were usually settled without difficulty. he had never taken the posi tion that "there was nothing to arbitrate," always admit ting that there were two sides to a question, and neither party could always have a monopoly of right. the meeting-place of the workers' club was in the old school house of pleasantville. this was located on the main street, halfway up the hill, and was itself high above the street, having been placed there in the early days, before the street had been graded to its present level, and when the site selected for the public school was regarded as the most beautiful, as well as the best adapted, for the purpose. when the town had grown so that the old building could no longer accommodate the increasing number of pupils, a new building, with en tirely new equipment, "fully up to date," as barr ex pressed it, had been provided by the school district, and the old building abandoned. when the new grade of the present conditions 15 main street had been established, the school authorities had found it difficult to sell the property, so that, when the workers' club had requested the use of it, with the promise to keep it in repair, they secured it at a merely nominal rental, "just to let folks know," as crandall put it, "that it still belonged to the district." when, a little later, the new building association had been organized, and its committee came to the workers' club with the re quest that they be permitted to hold their meetings there, the club agreed to let them have it at a rental which re lieved itself from all charges and left a little surplus; "a fine arrangement for us," as barr said, speaking for the club ; "and it don't hurt them, for they couldn't have got any other place near so cheap; so everybody's sat isfied." the notice in the herald and the verbal notice by the active members of the club resulted in bringing out a good attendance at the first meeting. barr, as chairman of the executive committee, presided, and had arranged that the glee club from the public school, composed of older pupils in the high school, should be present to open the meeting with music. after all had been de lighted with this feature of the evening's program, he stepped forward to introduce the speaker of the evening. "when your committee," he began, "was considering the subject that should engage our attention this fall and winter, it was of course necessary to consider also who would be the best person to begin the series of lectures, which we would invite you to hear. we did not have much trouble in deciding what the general subject should be; the almost universal interest in the industrial condi tions existing in our country, and the related question of the high cost of living, almost settled that without dis cussion. but when it came to the other question, as to 1 6 looking forward who had best be invited to open the course, we found that more difficult. and i take great credit to myself that it was my good fortune to discover just the right person for that duty. i have no doubt that he will jus tify to your minds the choice our committee made; but in introducing him, i am tempted to tell a little story. it is said that on a certain occasion two irishmen were walk ing through a graveyard and paused before a tall monu ment, on which was an inscription. 'how does it read, pat?' inquired one of them. 'sure,' replied pat; 'it gives his name, and then it says, "he was a lawyer and an honest man." ' 'bedad,' replied the other, 'there must have been two of 'em.' " after the laugh which this story called forth, barr added, "i am sure that we can all repeat the inscription that was read and apply it to our friend here. we know that there is only one of him, and that he fulfills both re quirements. it gives me great pleasure to introduce your old friend and mine, henry b. strong, esq., who will now address us on a subject to be announced by himself." as strong stepped forward, he was met by a round of applause, for nearly everybody in the audience knew him and liked him. he had grown up in their midst; had attended the public schools of the town; and even after graduating at the university in the neighboring city, and becoming a member of the bar there, had continued to reside in the town, going to and from the city, where his office was located, every day. he was borough so licitor, and also the solicitor for the new building associa tion, and in many ways closely affiliated with the inter ests of the town and its citizens. as he stood before his towns-people, and waited for their applause to cease, he turned and took a long look at barr, which the latter'ad present conditions 17 mitted afterwards made him feel "mighty queer; just as though something was going to happen." turning again to his hearers, strong began in a deep, musical voice, which was one of his best equipments for his work, speaking very deliberately, as though carefully selecting his words as he proceeded : "when i accepted the invitation of your committee, my friends, to make the opening address of this course, i did so with some hesitation, as doubting the fitness of one of my profession taking the initial part in the consider ation of the general topic selected. but after further con sideration, and at the urgent solicitation of my good friend, who has just introduced me in his usual felicitous manner, i decided to accept, with the intention of stating to you why i thought that a lawyer might perhaps be the right person to begin such a course. it is true that then i did not expect to hear that old chestnut of a story rung off again, but we all know that our friend must have his daily joke, simply as a requisite for the maintenance of health ; so let us freely forgive him, and even thank him for making it easier to give you the reasons for my decision to be the first to address you. "there are several reasons why a lawyer makes a fairly good introductory speaker for such a course. in the first place, modern industrial conditions are much more largely the work of his hands than we are apt at first sight to admit. who has done more to bring about the great aggregations of industries in many lines than the corporation lawyer? who has been the adviser when they have been formed, and frequently the advising director, as they have pursued their course, if the lawyer has not? if, therefore, he has been thus instrumental in producing present conditions, may not a lawyer very properly consider them with you, and if improvements i8 looking forward over existing conditions are desirable, should he not be expected to at least suggest them? "another reason why a lawyer may be the proper per son to suggest the remedy for the undesirable features of present conditions may be found in his respect for prec edent. a true lawyer is naturally an evolutionist; he believes in development, in growth from the lower form to the higher next — 'from precedent to precedent.' he believes in orderly evolution, not in disorderly revolu tion; and while he is compelled to admit that in human affairs it looks at times as though progress were made through revolution, still he may well believe that the true progress of the race has been rather by way of the peaceful and more powerful method of evolution. the upward steps of the past may well help us to see our footing in the present, and carefully take safe steps of progress toward the future. "and yet another reason why the lawyer may be fit ted to consider this question is that he frequently views important questions, not merely from the standpoint of law, but from the standpoint of equity; not from the thought of the popular mind, as expressed in the laws that the people have made, but rather under the impress of that higher law, which we know as absolute justice. and we must especially try to occupy this viewpoint when we are considering the amendment of present laws, the eradication of present evils, and attempting to build for the future ; for we may rest well assured that nothing will stand the test of time but that which is based upon absolute right and truth and justice. it is from this point of view that i wish to ask you to consider this general topic with me ; for, so far as we can, i wish this to result in the application of the principles of justice to modern conditions, to the end that, if we find that these principles present conditions 19 cannot be so applied now, we may set ourselves the task of remedying those conditions and making it possible to secure justice for the future. i have, therefore, thought of calling my address : 'present conditions, and the fu ture outlook.' "in order that we may the better understand existing conditions, will you permit me to take a glance backward and rapidly note the changes that have taken place since the workingman and the working-woman did their work in their own little cottages before the coming of the machine era ?" at this point the speaker proceeded to sketch the devel opment of modern industrial conditions, from the date of the invention of the steam engine by watt, about the mid dle of the eighteenth century, down to the present time. the modern factory system was inaugurated, he said, by the invention of arkwright's spinning machine in 1769— the same year in which the patent for the invention of the steam engine was issued to watt — and the erection of the first large mills by arkwright and his friends shortly after that date, thereby harnessing steam for man ufacturing purposes. the next century was the great age of invention, and in it the greatest industrial changes took place. some of these inventions, he claimed, had changed the history of the world and made human prog ress tenfold more rapid than it had been before. among these he referred to the steamboat and the locomotive, which had not only changed methods of transportation and brought distant nations and their capitals close together in time, but had also offered new forms of em ployment at better wages to many thousands ; the cotton gin, which had made slave labor profitable, and thus helped to create the issue that was finally settled only by the great civil war, resulting in the emancipation proc 20 looking forward lamation of president lincoln and the preservation of "government of the people, by the people, for the people" ; the reaping and mowing machines, which came to the aid of the farmers of the north just before the outbreak of the civil war, and helped to settle that issue on the side of freedom and continued national existence by re leasing thousands of young men from farm labor, thus enabling them to hasten to the support of the country and the leader they loved; the magnetic telegraph, followed a few years later by the telephone, enabling peoples and rulers to come still more closely in touch and bring ing within the range of vision the abolition of war through international arbitration. "the nineteenth century," he continued, "will doubt less be known in history as the era in which liberty came to be the priceless possession of millions of men and women — peacefully, as in russia and brazil; and by the red way of war, as in our own country. but there was a still greater dawn of freedom than that which came to the bodies of men through the abolition of chattel slavery; the minds of men were set free in a more per fect freedom through the advance of science and the pub lication of such works as darwin's 'origin of species.' the world has as yet not fully recognized the meaning, in its relation to the development of the race, of the teaching of this great truth of evolution. to thoughtful men it has made the method of progress by revolution seem archaic, needless and wicked, and has shown the better way, founded in right reason, to be logically neces sary, peaceful and just; and therefore, to very many minds, divinely ordered. "but while the world of science and education has made marvellous progress in the past century, in another direction the world seems to have made comparatively present conditions 21 little progress over the conditions that existed a century ago. when arkwright's first spinning machines were installed in big factories near the close of the eighteenth century, and steam power was made available, and the era of invention of labor-saving machinery began, many of the workingmen, without leaders or organization, re belled at conditions which many of them believed would be disastrous to them, and tried to take quick vengeance by wrecking the machines and driving the inventors away. but the good resulting to society from these inventions was too great to be thus set aside, and it was soon realized that the machines had come to stay. but — and here is the strange thing that happened — the large profits made by the use of the machines were allowed to go, almost exclusively, to the owner of the machine, while the owner of the intelligence and skill that made the machine available was entirely or very largely over looked in the distribution of such profits. and that con dition has very largely continued down to the present time. the present may well be called the age of the machine : the machine owned, controlled and directed by the private corporation. "it is needless to deny that society has made substan tial gains through the invention of labor-saving machin ery; and also, in some ways, from the union of the ma chine and the corporation. two of the forms of gain will at once occur to you : through the cheapening of products, many things that were formerly used only by the well-to-do or wealthy have been made available to those of moderate means ; and another advantage is that through the ownership of stock in corporations, a much greater number have been enabled to share in the profits due to the use of machinery. but the other side of this latter equation is also true; if they have shared in the 22 looking forward profits, they have also shared in the losses, when these have occurred. "but while we admit that society has reaped some gains from the invention of labor-saving machinery and its ownership and control by the corporation, we must also admit that there is another side to that question. it is claimed that this union of the machine and th^ cor poration has resulted in a cheapening not only of prod ucts, but of men ; that the old spirit of independence, lead ing men to follow their own sense of right, is largely gone; that the new methods, especially since the great combinations and the big corporations have been formed, have made most workingmen merely the servants of the few; and it is held that such results are disastrous to a free people. surely such charges are important enough to be worthy our closest consideration. "in the old days, before the advent of the big corpora tion, it is claimed that every manufacturer was a captain of industry, even though only in a small way, — still a captain, an independent owner. if he were the proprie tor of a small plant, a merchant with a moderate stock of goods, the captain of a small boat, or the owner of a little farm, he was still an owner, a controller, a cap tain; and this fact awakened the spirit of independence and self-reliance and self-help, thus strengthening and en nobling character. "the present conditions, it is claimed, produce exactly the opposite results. to-day most men are servants, with absolutely no voice in the control or direction of the business in which they are engaged. many are doubtless required to do acts which they cannot entirely approve of, but which they are powerless to avoid, having no voice in the management ; and a refusal to do as ordered would generally result in their dismissal. the resultant injury present conditions 23 to character is obvious ; no man can repeatedly do things that his conscience disapproves, without moral deteriora tion; and it is claimed that that is what is happening to our people. if this is true, no material gain can make it good to us. we have all heard the story of the new boy in the business office, who was one day in the inside office with the president of his company, when the lat ter spied an unwelcome visitor approaching. "do you see that man coming, jimmie?" "yes, sir," replied the boy. "run out and tell him i'm not in; quick." the boy had not been brought up that way. he took one look at his employer, to see if he actually meant it and, seeing that he did, seized his hat and left the office, say ing to the astonished president as he went, 'do your own lying.' we admire the spirit of the boy, and possibly admire his act; but we cannot help noticing also that he had the wit to see that his act discharged him; he took his hat. let us hope that he did not find it difficult to find another place ; but the average middle-aged man, with a family, can hardly afford to be so independent, and he no doubt 'takes his orders' and carries them out to the best of his ability, whether he can always approve of them or not. only too often the big corporation, like the big machine, is devoid of soul and, therefore, without char acter or conscience. and the final result on man is dis astrous. "another danger that attends the present condition is that of industrial revolt. at the present time, large bodies of workingmen are under the direction of a very few men. what may be the effect during a period of great business depression? under the old condition of inde pendent industrial plants, employing from 500 to 2,000 men, during such periods every effort was made to keep the men together, even if it had to be done at some sac 24 looking forward rifice. in a large plant employing 600 men, it used to be said by the proprietors that, if they could keep their men together, with enough work to keep the machinery bright, and clear five per cent, during such periods, they were well satisfied. but will that satisfaction be felt under existing conditions? a big corporation, employ ing 50,000 or 100,000 men, controlled by a board of directors meeting in a distant city, may suddenly receive word to shut down indefinitely, without recourse by the manager or any of the employes directly interested. and what may happen then? a large body of workingmen, many of them skilled workmen, receiving high wages, sud denly thrown out of employment; what is then apt to happen? is not this a distinct disadvantage under which the present system labors, as compared with the old? "for fear that you may think that i am trying to paint the picture too black, i wish to invite your attention to the presentment that i will read. i will simply preface it by saying that it was adopted by the great quadrennial conference of the methodist episcopal church, held in minneapolis in may, 1912. it reads as follows: 'we live in an age in which the vast enterprises essential to the progress of the v/orld require the association of men of large means under corporate management. out of this neces sity have grown serious wrongs and consequent resistance. 'organized capital stands indicted at the bar of public judg ment for the gravest crimes against the common welfare. among the counts in that indictment are such as these : 'i — conspiring to advance prices on the staple commodities indispensable to the life, well-being and progress of the people. '2. — resorting to the adulteration of foods, fabrics and ma terials to increase profits already excessive. '3. — destroying the competition in trade through which re lief might be expected under normal conditions. present conditions 25 '4— suborning legislation and thus robbing the people of the first orderly recourse of the weak against the strong. 'these are sins against humanity. if god hates any sin above another, it must be the robbery of the poor and defence less. otherwise, his love fails when it is most needed and might find its largest opportunity. there is no betrayal more base than that which uses the hospitality of a house to plunder its inmates, unless it be that form of treason which so per verts the purpose and machinery of popular government as to turn its power against the people who trust and support it. this is not saying that all corporations deal treacherously with the people. there are honorable exceptions; but enough is known of the heartless greed that fattens off of the hunger driven millions to warrant the strongest protective associa tions on the part of the people. 'we therefore declare our approval of labor organizations and other defensive alliances of all whose interests are threat ened or invaded. such united and unified action is their only recourse under present conditions. 'at the same time we cannot ignore the fact that organized labor also faces public judgment on the charge of lawless riot ing, violence and even murder, in its efforts to enforce its decrees, and that its rules seem to unfairly affect apprentice ship and abridge the right of non-union men to learn what trade they will, and to dispose of their own services as they choose. we would admonish our people who are members of labor unions that no circumstances short of personal peril under dangerous assault can justify violent or lawless methods in seeking relief from hard conditions. nor should any chris tian deny to another person the right of individual choice in the disposal of his own services. principles are greater than present personal exigencies, and no man can afford to vio late the principle under which he himself claims protection. the same is true of a church or any other institution. we regard the use of the "blacklist" and the "boycott" as of the nature of conspiracy against the rights of individual judg ment and conscience, and un-american in principle, and ex tremely dangerous in tendency. 'the outstanding infamy of the present labor situation is the chaining of little children to the wheels of trade. dragged from their beds half asleep in the early morning, or denied 26 looking forward the natural hours of sleep with the coming of night, tens of thousands of them are being physically dwarfed and men tally stupefied and their careers blighted in the bud of their being, amid the whirring machinery of mills, the black tun nels of coal mines, the noisome air of sweatshops and the all-hour and all-weather demands of messenger service, for which they are often inadequately clad. neither milton's or goethe's devil could have devised a plot against humankind more demoniacal in torture or in destructive consequences than this outrage upon helpless childhood by commercial greed.' " 'strong language, that !' i seem to hear some of you exclaim. but no stronger than it should be, if the facts are as represented. and i beg to call your attention to the fact that that indictment comes from one of the great " conservative christian bodies of our country. it reminds one of that other pronouncement from the same house hold of faith against human slavery, uttered over fifty years ago, which had so much to do with bringing the moral sense of the people to the point where it was will ing to make sacrifices to accomplish the right. ma}^ we not believe that in the new awakening to justice and right, this declaration has had, and will continue to have, very great effect? "but the arraignment, strong as it is, is not strong enough; the picture as painted is not as black as the reality. in order that we may arrive at the solution of the problem, we must know all its factors; if we are to set ourselves to the task of curing this evil, we must know fully what the evil is. so i feel compelled to call your attention, very briefly, to what seems to be the dark est phase of the whole question of industrial conditions. the charge has been openly made in the public prints, and so far as i know has met with no adequate denial, that in all our large cities, where humanity is most present conditions 27 crowded together in the worst conditions, that the in sufficient pay and low moral conditions in some industrial plants lead directly to social vice, degradation and crime. that the social conditions that exist in the places men tioned might tend in that direction, we all know. just how far these conditions are due to industrial relations, we should investigate and determine, if we wish to know the truth, so as to deal effectively with the situation. ma chinery and the big corporation make the big factory, the big plant, inevitable ; and thus tend to make large centers of population — large towns and cities — and it has been human experience for generations that certain vices best flourish in such places. but now the charge is made definitely and directly that, because of the low pay in cer tain industries, because of no proper system of promo tion to better work and higher pay, because of immoral conditions existing in some of the factories, for these reasons the younger portion of the employes, both boys and girls, are placed in such positions that recourse to vicious living seems almost inevitable. "in order to know whether the statements published in the press, and unchallenged so far as i know, could be true, and in order to present the facts to you, i have called on one of the superintendents of a church settlement in one of our large cities, and made inquiry as to the facts. through settlement work for years in more than one large city, the woman i saw was well qualified to ex press an opinion as to ruling conditions, as well as to suggest remedies for them. she confirmed fully what i have already intimated are the conditions; and about the time i made the visit to the settlement, expressed her opinions in a published interview in one of the city's papers, a portion of which i wish to read to you. speak ing of the younger work people in her district, she said : 28 looking forward 'the average boys and girls who leave school at the age of 14 are absolutely uneducated and unfit to take their places in life. they have no aim and no idea of a future. all they can do is to go into a factory for $4.00 or $5.00 a week. their heads are of no use to them; they have to depend upon their untrained hands. they may increase their wages to a certain point — say, until they are 16 or 17 — by getting up speed and increasing their mechanical efficiency; what happens then? a younger generation comes along and takes their places at the looms or folding boxes. the first set is cast into the streets, without any chance of a new position. they congregate on the street corners; they look for work; they cannot find it, be cause they are not able to do anything that requires brains or skill. the sequence is inevitable.' and a little later, in the course of the same interview, referring to the cause for their going wrong, she said: 'they would not have been vicious if they could have got on.' and again, referring to the re sponsibility of respectable men for such conditions, she said: ' "the decent men of the community should not fight shy of this problem any longer. it is their business to consider it wisely and well, and if they do, i think they will soon realize that they, as heads of families and of establishments, are more or less responsible for the fearful disregard for morality. it is the business of every man at the head of a firm to de mand decent morals from his employes. ... i had recently a case of a girl who was refused employment in one place of business because the manager said 'she was too good.' he had the decency left to send her away before she was brought into contact with the men and women of his establishment. what sort of a commentary is this upon our business morals and the respectability of our manhood?"'* "not satisfied with one interview, i made it my duty ♦"negative work here will never accomplish the end desired. the slums are breathing holes of hell and should be swept from the earth, and if christian people would go earnestly to work and stop listening to the devil as he preaches laissez faire, let alone, non-interference, they could be swept from the earth. — "the labor movement " by richard t. ely, page 386. present conditions 29 to inquire of another settlement worker, a woman of many years' experience, and she confirmed fully what i had been told before, and endorsed what i have just read to you. surely if this charge against modern indus trial conditions is true, and who can doubt that it is true to a large extent ? is it not time that we got busy in the effort to remedy those conditions? is it not awful to think of this waste of life as one of the inevitable re sults of our industrial arrangements ? at one end of the line we have untold millions of wealth piled up in the arms of those who are burdened with it, who do not know how to use it, whose children it often destroys, and at the other end we see untold misery and suffering and crime visited upon many thousands of human beings, 'more sinned against than sinning.' then somehow we persuade ourselves to label this civilization, and to pre tend to be proud of it. is it strange that sometimes we wonder v^^hy? "and now, for fear that you may think that i am drawing too black a picture, let us take a look at the other side; at some of the remedial measures that have been adopted and are being pursued by some of these big corporations; for it is true that a number of them have adopted remedial methods that will do much to improve conditions. for instance, one of the largest has in the course of the past year spent as much as five and a half millions in such work, including various forms of insur ance and pensions and general welfare work ; many other corporations have also spent large sums in similar work, and there seems to be an undoubted awakening to the value of this work. while it is true that this may, in part, be due to a selfish desire to reduce the cost of acci dents that might otherwise have to be met, we can still recognize the value of this work from the humanitarian 30 looking forward standpoint, and therefore welcome it as a great step for ward, and rejoice in it. "we must also acknowledge the advance steps in leg islation, both here and abroad, in the direction of the protection and care of workingmen and working-women, as shown in the employers' liability acts; compulsory insurance, as in germany, and the minimum wage and old age pension acts in england. indeed, it is not muc!i to the credit of our own legislative bodies that our eng lish and german cousins are so far ahead of us in this kind of protection to labor. let us hope that we may soon be abreast of the foremost thought of the world in this matter. "that much of this progress has been due to the efforts of organized labor cannot be doubted. if nothing else had been accomplished through the means of this agency, this would be ample justification for the existence of many of the forms of organizations that labor has made. while there are acts in the history of organized labor that cannot be approved, there can be no doubt that the good far outweighs the evil; and with the elimination of force from their methods of work, it cannot be questioned that they still have a great work to do for the elevation ■of labor and general social uplift. it is too late to at tempt to discuss the right of labor to organize; its right to do so is as fully established as is the right of capital to form corporations. but there is one further step that labor should take, when it forms its unions and other associations ; it should put itself under the law by incor porating, just as capital does when it organizes, thereby demanding all the rights and privileges possible from the law and at the same time assuming all the responsibilities for its actions that other incorporated bodies do. by thus courageously facing its legal accountability, labor will presei\t conditions 31 show the courage that it otherwise lacks, and would win many friends who now withhold their support. "but, after acknowledging every step of progress that has made the life of the workers safer, easier and better worth living, we must admit that, as regards the most important question, a fair division of the profits due largely to labor, which is, after all, the crucial question, the past century has shown comparatively little progress. in spite of some efforts toward profit-sharing, and in some instances the payment of dividends to shareholders, the general attitude of capital toward labor is what it was a century ago ; the chief rewards for the union of labor's intelligence and skill with the machine, owned by capital, have unquestionably gone to capital. and not only have the original relations between labor and capital, as re gards the division of profits, persisted in a very large degree down to the present day, but in the recent past a new movement has been inaugurated, through com binations and the formation of very large corporations in the past two decades, by which the profits largely due to labor — a part of which, at least, justly belong to labor are anticipated in one form or other of stock issue, all of which have been absorbed by capital. to one not directly interested and who views the subject impartially, it seems impossible to justify this, and one is forced to conclude that, in this respect at least, labor is worse off than it was a century ago ; for surely the pre-emption of future profits, to which labor might later have presented a claim, admitted to be just, puts labor in a worse posi tion that it has ever before occupied. "it is here that we find the fundamental reason for the unending dispute between labor and capital ; a dispute that has existed from the beginning of the use of labor saving machinery, and probably antedates that era; a ^2 looking forward dispute that begins at the root of the widespread and deep-seated sense of injury and injustice which labor en tertains toward capital; a dispute that will never be set tled until it is settled right, with the full conviction on both sides that the settlement is just. no remedial meas ures, such as employers' liability acts, insurance funds, the minimum wage and old age pensions, will satisfy labor, any more than fine reading rooms, gymnasiums, baths and other welfare items. what labor asks is not charity, but justice; not welfare work, but a just share of the profits. let us try to determine whether labor's demands are founded in justice and right. if so, we may rest assured that they must be granted and that they will be granted. "the settlement of this question must take place in the court of the individual conscience; each man and woman must there meet the issue and determine the re sult. everyone of us has a sense of right and justice which we consider infallible in all questions that pertain to ourselves. let us try to present this great social question, the settlement of which will afifect so many mil lions of human beings, in this highest of all earthly courts. to do this, it will be necessary to put ourselves in the place of the workers — in imagination, if in no other way. let us try to do this honestly, and then ask ourselves the question as to right relations. "suppose we were the operatives working in the big cotton or woolen mill,— toiling from morning till night at a high-speed machine, until it seemed that we had in reality become a part of it ; or, suppose that we were work men in one of the big iron mills, — working in the midst of heat that at times was well-nigh beyond endurance; working amid deafening noises, and amid dust and grime, with dangers on the right hand and on the left ; and, worst present conditions 33 of all, with the consciousness that, after all our toil, there was in it for most of us and for our families, but a bare subsistence, or but little more; that many of us were in fact working on 'the dead level of a closed case' ;* or, suppose that ours was the experience described by the yiddish poet, of finally losing our personal identity in the machine, so that, with him we could say; 'the roaring of the wheels has filled my ears, the clashing and the clamor shut me in; myself, my soul, in chaos disappears, i cannot think or feel amid the din.'** "is it not possible that after that experience we might ask ourselves whether the nerve-force, the intelligence, the skill, brought by the worker to the machine, making it available and profitable, should not be placed upon a more equal footing with capital, when the results of that labor came to be divided? might we not then decide that justice required that labor should receive at least an equal share in the division of the profits ? may we not be very sure that we would decide that capital certainly owed the utmost good faith and fair dealing in the treatment of labor, and that nothing would take the place with us of a just consideration? is it not true that, to so arrange industry by design, or to permit it to so remain, when once arranged by accident, that all such profit beyond the market-place wages should legally be attached only to capital, — only to the ownership of the machine, is not this at once an insult to intelligence and a travesty of justice? ♦from an address by henry w. wilbur in swarthmore (pa.) friends' meeting. perhaps no other expression more fully describes the hope less condition of many workers than these seven words : "the dead level of a closed case." **from "the sweatshop," by morris rosenfeld, the "yiddish poet." 34 looking forward "in arriving at this conclusion, let us not ignore the fact that in many instances the skilled workman is well paid, is able to live in comfort, provide for the education of his children, and also save part of his income. the impressive figures presented in the reports of our savings banks and building associations abundantly prove this. and it is also true that in many cases the way for ad vancement is open, and that many employers desire to keep it open ; so that the unskilled workman may become a skilled workman, and so be entitled to receive better pay, which he can usually secure when his efficiency has been shown. but, admitting this, it still remains true that for very many the wages received do not constitute a living wage, — that for the unskilled male worker the pay is often far from adequate to support himself and family, — while for the female worker in very many cases the pay is shamefully inadequate. "to the honor of womanhood be it said that for the very great majority the hardest conditions are not allowed to affect purity of life : but for the minority, weak and foolish, rather than vicious or corrupt, — continual eco nomic hardship and pressure, often at the period when the appeal of the joy of living is the strongest, must make life extremely difficult, and be a leading cause of sur render to the temptations that abound in large centers of population ; a fact that is fully proven by the reports of social workers in our large cities.* "in this connection it is of interest to note that the chicago vice commission, in its report, makes the fol lowing statement : *"of 34 inmates of a rescue home, 22 gave economic pressure as the cause of their being led into evil ways of living." — jane addams, "a new conscience and an ancient evil," page 61. present conditions 35 'it has been established, after exhaustive study, that it is quite impossible for a working girl in a large city to live on less than $8.00 per week. the average weekly wage actually earned by each one of the millions of women in industry is $7.00; three-fifths of them receiving less than $6.50.' "in making this decision we are brought face to face with our highest duty in the present and toward the future. if the charges against the existing conditions are true, surely we must seek to change them for our own sakes and for the sake of our children, and our children's children. and i seem to hear the question raised by some of you; what changes shall we make, what policy shall we adopt, that will make the relations of these two giants peaceful and just? it is a fair question and deserves an attempt at an answer. i trust that those who shall follow me in this course of lectures will be able to find the right answer to that question, for upon our finding it and applying it, the peace of the future depends. my own thought is that the solution of all the difficulties that re sult from present unjust relations between labor and capital may be found in some plan of co-operation that will commend itself as just to both parties. in fact the great problem of the present is to change the word 'cor poration' into the higher word 'co-operation,' or to so define the private corporation in law that it shall always mean, and always result in, co-operation ; in other words, we need to put the new spirit of brotherhood into the old body of the private corporation. there can be no doubt that at present labor believes that it is entitled to a share in the profits, — not in a share in them as a gift from capi tal, but a share in them as a shareholder or part owner, on equal terms with capital. not only does labor gener ally hold this view, but a larger and larger body of thoughtful people is coming to hold it. that it is fast 36 looking forward crystallizing into that strongest force in the world, — public opinion, — cannot be doubted. "if the reasoning presented is well founded; if the relations of labor and capital are as i have tried to outhne them; and if public opinion is rapidly forming the judg ment suggested, is not the most important question before us this : what is the next step forward that we should take to make these conditions more nearly conform to our sense of right and justice? can the relations between labor and capital be so harmonized that both will be satis fied; that peace, based upon justice, will be the rule; and that the best interests of the party of the third estate, — the common people, — will be preserved or advanced? surely these questions can be answered in the affirma tive. "you will ask; how? and my reply must be, in a general way, by the application of conscience to legis lation. our laws must be made to express our high est sense of justice. if it is true, as has often been stated, that our corporations have gone away ahead of the laws, then we must bring our laws abreast of our corporations, and they must be applied without fear or favor. it has been said that the cure for the ills of democracy is 'more democracy.' so i believe that the cure for the present condition of little or no justice will be found in a greater degree of justice, secured by the fearless application of just laws. "if we can by law change that word 'corporation' into 'co-operation,' and, while still retaining all the great powers of the private corporation, make those powers available for the common good, — thus transforming sel fishness into altruism, greed into generosity, brute force into brotherhood, and fraud based on force into fellow ship and co-operation ; if this can be done by the applica present conditions 2>7 tion of conscience to legislation, and through law made operative on present conditions ; if this can be done peace fully; will it not be the greatest forward step in the evo lution of the race that the world has yet seen? is it not a work worthy of the strongest efforts of the greatest minds and the best hearts among us? is it not a work that should be undertaken at once because of the dire need of so many? if you are deceiving yourselves by thinking the need is not as great as represented, then may i not ask you to do as i have done; go and consult those who work in the midst of the worst conditions, and thus get close to the facts ? "it may be urged that such an effort as this is not the proper work of government ; that the aid of the law should not be invoked for such purposes. let us look at this argument for a moment. what is the purpose of govern ment? you will agree with me that, as regards this country, we cannot find a better expression of this pur pose than in the constitution ; let us consult that greatest of all the efforts of men, looking toward human uplift, and see what we find there. in the very first words it contains, — in the preamble, — we find the purposes of our government clearly expressed. they are said to be, to "form a more perfect union; to establish justice; to in sure domestic tranquillity; to promote the general welfare; and to secure the blessings of liberty to our selves and to our posterity." there is not one of these purposes that will not be greatly advanced by the adop tion of the policy that i have outlined. surely, to make our laws conform to our highest sense of justice will be to more firmly 'establish justice,' and "promote the gen eral welfare.' "but let us look further for the definition of the pur poses of government; let us see what some of the great 38 looking forward leaders of thought have said. the saying of hamilton, that 'justice is the end of government ; it is the end of civil society,' is too well-known, and too generally accepted, to need more than the repetition to secure our assent. so too, is the statement of the great english leader of the last century, gladstone, in which he defined the province of law; 'to make it as easy as possible for men to do right, and as difficult as possible for them to do \\rong.' "but there is a greater statement of the purposes of free government, — especially of our own, — to which i wish to call your attention ; and i do this the more willingly because, while it is one of the greatest ever made, it seems to be to a very large extent unknown. it comes from our great leader, abraham lincoln, and is contained in one of the greatest state papers he ever wrote. you may remember that shortly after he was inaugurated, it became urgently necessary that he should call an extra session of congress. the civil war had begun, and it was necessary that the representatives of the people be called together to provide ways and means to uphold the national government. he called the extra session to meet on july 4th, 1861. the day, with its great associa tions ; the occasion, — the consideration of the steps neces sary to preserve the integrity of the nation, — all con spired to make the message of the president to congress one of the most important in our history. what more natural than that he should re-state the purposes of this government ; and do so in his most forcible and convincing way ? he did it in these words : 'this is essentially a people's contest. on the side of the union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to ele vate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all, to present conditions 39 afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life. this is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend. i am most happy to believe that the plain people understand and appreciate this.' "there you have lincoln's idea of the purposes of this government. we might well ask, who was better able to state it than he? and whose words will carry deeper conviction of their truth to the plain people than these of our great-hearted leader? we may well place beside this expression, that other which he made on the occasion of the flag-raising at independence hall, in philadelphia, on the 22nd of february, 1861, when on his way to washington. you will remember that he said then; t would rather be assassinated on this spot, than that the principles of this declaration and the constitution should perish.' with these expressions, giving the purposes of our government, i would also leave with you this last from another of our country's great leaders, — -wendell phillips, — in which he referred to our country as 'this great, free, model state, the hope of the nations, and their polar star, this experiment of self-government, this normal school of god for the education of the masses."* "with these definitions of the rightful purposes of government, especially of a free government like our own, in mind, we need have no fear to adopt policies or to make laws that have for their purpose, to use lincoln's words, — 'to elevate the condition of men, to lift artificial weights from all shoulders, to clear the paths of laudable pursuits for all, to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life.' surely, when we glance at present conditions, with labor and capital occupying *from "speeches, lectures and letters of wendell phillips," page 542, published by james redpath : boston, 1863. 40 looking forward hostile camps, not knowing when some new strike will be inaugurated or some new appeal to force be made ; when we see that the utmost that is being done to bring about better conditions is the adoption of certain remedial meas ures, which, while good in themselves and deserving all encouragement, do not go to the root of the trouble ; shall we not welcome any policy or any plan that has the promise of bringing labor and capital into friendly, if not brotherly, relations; that will advance the general welfare, make life safer and better worth living for all, and in many cases rescue those who now seem doomed to vicious living? "some will ask; how do you know that the plan of co operation that you propose will produce such results? my answer to this is : because it has already produced them in good measure wherever it has been fairly tried. i need only refer to the great work accomplished by the co-oper ative societies in england, and to some noteworthy suc cesses that have been accomplished on the continent. the figures showing the growth of the english societies are astounding. i understand that your attention will be called to them in a later address ; so i will only say now that according to the reports there were at the end of 1909, in england and scotland 1430 of these societies, engaged in distributive co-operation, with a total capital employed of $180,000,000, and now so rich that they are investing millions of their surplus funds in the public \a^orks of their great cities. but their work is not con fined to merely distributing profits ; they consider the educational work they do of as great importance as the financial gains they make. the president of the inter national co-operative alliance, william maxwell, of present conditions 41 rothesay, scotland, said recently in a public address : 'for educational work $500,000 has been expended in read ing rooms, lectures and entertainments. in edinburgh, where half the population belongs to co-operative retail societies, and there are fifty-six of our stores, university professors are engaged to lecture. scientific and bookkeeping classes are maintained. our regular meetings are also educational in a business way. making men by giving them a chance to de velop, we deem more important than helping them financially.' "but these co-operative societies have done better than educational work. i have referred to what some of our social workers in our big cities have said as to the con nection between insufficient wages and possible vicious living. listen to these words from the address i have just referred to, by mr. maxwell; 'in 1880 we found women working seventeen hours a day making shirts at 20 cents a day. we started them working in good surroundings only forty-eight hours a week, at a living wage, with a share in the profits, and still made it pay us.' and again he said : 'we pay women wages on which they can live respectably. men get union wages, with a share of the profits.' "if co-operation produces results like that, is it not well worth trying here? and should we hesitate to take any needed steps that will make it easy for our working people to attempt the same kind of co-operative associa tion ? as to the exact type of co-operation to be encour aged by law, i care but little; but it would certainly be wise to try those systems that have been tried elsewhere, and have proved successful. we have now the great ad 42 looking forward vantage of the experience of those who have gone for ward in this line of work. but whether we adopt four ier's plan of the division of the rewards due to labor be tween labor, capital and ability; or that of the english societies of making the division between labor, capital and patronage ; or some other plan that seems to us more promising; matters but little. the main objective is the introduction of the spirit of brotherhood and fellowship into the corporation, in place of the spirit of greed which so largely obtains. and this great change can be made if our people will to make it; the laws of our country are still the best expression of the will of the people, and what they make up their minds to do, will be done. the question now before us is : is this work worth the effort required ? "and let us waste no time in fear of the outcome. if the aim is good, the purpose true, we need give no place to fear. if our aim is a greater measure of justice to all, and especially to those who are now over-burdened; if our watchwords are 'brotherhood, fellowship, co-operation' ; if we strive to serve the common good, to achieve social and moral uplift,— we may well be satisfied with our pur pose, have full faith in our enterprise, and go forward to accomplish it. "let us not deceive ourselves by the thought that any policy we may adopt, or any plan of action we may ad vocate, will eradicate all evil, and at once bring the mil lenium. that mistake has been made before, and always with the result that it retards progress, rather than aids it. let us take for our aim industrial democracy, to be achieved through co-operation, assured that such a step will be in the right direction, and bring the world well forward on its way toward that perfect justice which is present conditions 43 the end of human government* with that step once taken, and the resuhant good in our possession, we may well leave future steps to those who shall come after us, in full confidence that the needed wisdom and vision will be granted them. let us believe that our duty is a pres ent duty, — to see clearly and take resolutely the step in advance that is immediately before us. thus, and only thus, — not by indulging dreams of a perfect state of society in the future, however brightly we may paint them, — can we aid in the march of progress which we all desire to see accomplished. let us believe, as one of our great poets has said: 'the world advances, and in time outgrows the laws that in our fathers' time were best; and doubtless, after us, some purer scheme will be shaped out by wiser men than we. made wiser by the steady growth of truth.'** as strong concluded he was greeted by hearty ap plause ; and the chairman then announced that, following their usual custom, questions could be asked, which would be answered by the lecturer. he had hardly made this announcement when a small man started up near the middle of the audience and in a rather excited manner exclaimed ; "mr. chairman, i would like to ask the speaker whether he does not think that all that he has in mind could be as well accomplished, and much sooner, too, by adopting the single tax idea, and thus abolishing ♦"industrial democracy means self-rule, self-control, the self-direc tion of the masses in their effort to gain a livelihood. industrial democracy is industrial self-government, and this is found in pure co-operation." from "outlines of economics," by richard t. ely, page 396. **lowell. 44 looking forward all poverty by one stroke of justice?" as he took his seat, hammer harry, who was sitting near crandall, leaned toward him and said in a deep whisper, which could, however, be heard all over the room ; "didn't i tell you so ?" the questioner was a workingman by the name of singleton, so deeply interested in the writings of henry george, that he never allowed an opportunity for the furtherance of his views to pass by without bringing them into prominence. barr was in the habit of saying that "he was committed to the single tax idea simply on ac count of his name, and he thought he ought to live up to it." strong came forward again and said : "surely if i thought as our friend indicates, i would not have taken up your time, my friends, by presenting something very different. no, i do not think that all poverty will be abolished by the single tax idea, nor by any other single idea, nor by any other scheme of tax ation. we may be able to work ourselves into better conditions ; but i do not believe that we will ever be able 'to tax ourselves into them. and yet i believe that the work that henry george did was a great work; not because he accomplished the abolition of poverty, or could possibly accomplish it by the means he proposed, but because his books set men to thinking, called attention to great evils, and helped to begin the work of eradicating them. even the single tax idea, in which i do not at all believe as he did, has done much in the way of correct ing great inequalities in taxation, especially in our large cities. but i confess that i have not been able to see the justice in selecting only one form of property and placing all the burden of taxation upon that. on the contrary, it seems to me much more just to try to compel all forms of property to bear a fair share of this burden. and when the form selected to bear this whole burden is land, — the present conditions 45 very form which in some states bears as shght a part of the load as possible, — when this is done, then i must admit, my sense of justice receives such a shock that i find little to admire and nothing to support in the propo sition." singleton was on his feet again in a moment, as the speaker paused. "i presume," he began, "that the lec turer never took the trouble to read henry george's 'progress and poverty.' usually those vk'ho hold the views that he has just presented, have not taken the time to read what they are so ready to criticise." "on the contrary, quite the reverse," quietly replied strong. "it is rather presumptuous for the gentleman who has asked the question to assume that because one has read what mr. george wrote, one must inevitably adopt his views. it is because i have read a good part of what he wrote that i do not agree with him. when i came across the statement in 'progress and poverty,' in which he sums up his doctrine of single land taxation in the words : 'my proposition, therefore, is that we appropriate rent by taxation,'* it seemed to me one of the most extreme expressions of an unjust purpose that i ever read, and i have seen no reason since to change my mind. i think a man has as much right, morally speaking, to demand rent for a house or for land that he owns, as for any other form of property that may belong to him; and i say that as one who for years paid rent. if i received value for my money in a good house, i never thought that the owner should not have it; in fact, i *the passage referred to is as follows ; "what i, therefore, propose as the simple yet sovereign remedy, which will raise wages, increase the earnings of capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty, etc., etc., is to appropriate rent by taxation." henry george, "progress and poverty," twenty-fifth anniversary edition, 1908, pp. 403, 404. 46 looking forward would prefer to pay rent for a good house than spend it in a dozen more foolish and less justifiable ways." "air. chairman," exclaimed hammer harry, who saw that singleton was about to rise again, and who did not want the meeting turned into a single tax discussion; "i would like to ask the lecturer if it is not true that in the early days of the trades unions, they favored the very plan that he has presented to us, as a cure for the evils that beset the relations of labor and capital?" "i am indebted to mr. smith for asking that question," replied strong. "that was a matter i intended to touch upon, but feared that i would not have time. it is greatly to the credit of union labor organizations that in very many cases they spoke out strongly in favor of co-opera tion. and they did more than this, too; for several of the largest labor organizations encouraged their mem bers to start co-operative enterprises. so that it is fair to say that co-operation has been one of the objective points at which united labor has aimed. that that aim has not been more fully attained is due to reasons which i understand will be explained by one who shall follow me in this course of lectures." the attention of chairman barr was here attracted to a little old woman, who had been sitting well back in the meeting, who had risen to her feet, and was trying to gain his notice. he recognized her as mrs. gordon, a woman very active in all good work in the town, a former school-teacher, who did not fear to express her opinion when she had anything of public interest to say. he introduced her by name, saying that she no doubt had something for them that would be of interest for all. "my purpose, mr. chairman," she began, "was to merely call your attention to the fact that, like some others, i came here this evening in the hope of hearing present conditions 47 something that would help me solve the question of the high cost of living. that issue which looms so big before the average american family, has been touched upon, it is true, — but only touched upon, and i had hoped that we would hear much more on this very important question." at this strong again came forward, and said: "i regret that i am not better qualified to deal with that question; but i am informed that it will be more thor oughly presented at one of our future meetings. you will permit me to say, however, that a great movement in the direction of co-operation in distribution has been going on in our own country in the past three or four years and with great success up to this time. the work is in the middle west, with headquarters in minneapolis, and follows very closely the lines of the very successful english co-operative societies. this work has been studied by a gentleman in our town, who will present the results of his investigations at a future meeting. as showing its close relation to the question which my good friend, mrs. gordon, has raised, i may say that the average reduction in the cost of food supplies, groceries and provisions, that they have been able to accomplish thus far, has been about ten per cent. to the average family, that would seem, no doubt, a decided help in solving the problem of the high cost of living. further details will be presented later." as there seemed to be no further questions forth coming. chairman barr then declared that the meeting stood adjourned. chapter iii. another conference: a new departure. agitation, — "the marshalling of the conscience of a nation to mould its laws." — sir robert peel. "the ideas of justice and humanity have been fighting their way, like a thunder storm, against the organized selfish ness of human nature." — wendell phillips. "one language held his heart and life, straight onward to his goal he trod, and proved the highest statesmanship obedience to the voice of god." whittier; of sumner. the regular monthly meetings of the home building and loan association were held on the first thursday evening in each month, thus bringing the meetings shortly after the public meetings of the workers' club. these meetings were held in one of the smaller rooms of the old school house, and were usually well attended by the members, who called to pay their monthly dues, and some of whom frequently remained to hear what occurred at the directors' meeting, held immediately after the dues had been paid in. on this board of directors, as has been stated, were crandall, an ex-officio member by virtue of his position as president of the association; smith, who was the vice-president; strong, the solicitor; bruce, the treasurer ; barr, who acted as secretary ; and sharpe, and five others, most of them being workmen in the big iron mills of the town. the members of the board usually arrived about a half hour after the receipt of the monthly dues had begun. when that was concluded, generally in an hour after their arrival, they at once proceeded with their special business, (48) a new departure 49 which was to pass upon the applications for loans, appoint committees of inspection, and consider other items of business that might be presented. usually this was com pleted by 9.00 or 9.30 o'clock, and they then had a half hour to devote to any topic of general interest that might come up for discussion. it was to this opportunity for a short conference that crandall and barr had referred when the presence of the school principal and the bank cashier on the executive committee had been discussed, and the arrangement made by which they practically became members of this committee. at the meeting of the building association after the first public meeting of the workers' club, the members of the board were all present, with the exception of the solicitor, who had sent word that an engagement out of town would prevent his attendance. "and that just suits all round," added barr, when he made this announcement to the other members of the board, "for i suppose we all want to express our opinions on his lecture the other evening. but first let us get through with our associa tion business," which they at once proceeded to do. this was chiefly routine business, and was soon disposed of; and the motion to adjourn had hardly been adopted, when barr turned to crandall, and exclaimed : "now, jackie, tell us what you thought of the young man's speech the other night. great, wasn't it?" "it certainly pleased me," replied crandall. "when you have watched a young fellow like strong grow up, you can't help feeling an interest, and i was mighty well pleased that he did so well. one thing that i like espe cially was that i was able to understand every word of it. that is more than i can say for some speakers i have had to listen to." "what did you like best about it, mr. crandall?" in 50 looking forward quired sharpe, who always enjoyed trying to get at the point of view of the other person, and hked especially in this way to draw out impressions of men like crandall, barr and smith. "well, mr. sharpe," replied crandall, "that isn't so easy to tell, for i enjoyed all of it. but, perhaps i might single out as the best thing that i recall what he said about a just and fair consideration to labor, and the statement that what labor was asking for is not charity, but justice. and i guess that struck me especially because of a little story i had heard along that line." "what was that, crandall?" inquired hammer harry. "by all means let us have the story; anything to liven us up, you know." "well, it wasn't that kind of a story, hammer," replied crandall, "it wasn't humor; it was real, sound sense. it was a little statement that was made at a meeting of christian workers at a summer meeting held last year, and i thought it was one of the best things i ever heard. the general industrial question was being discussed, when a woman who has been greatly interested in all social reform matters arose and spoke about as follows : i give the substance of what she said, — some of my words may be a little different, but the meaning, i'm sure, is the same. 'some years ago,' she said, 'most of our illustrated papers and magazines showed us most beauti ful home conditions, and beautiful surroundings, and schools and playgrounds and so on, that were provided by one of the large corporations of the country. we were led to believe that this company was having a most satis factory condition in regard to the men and women who were employed by it. the first thing we knew, the whole country was startled by a strike among these very em ployees. it was a very great grief to me, who had felt a new departure 51 that that company had been doing exactly the right thing with its employees; and when i had an opportunity to )ask a person who knew, about why the strike had occurred, he explained to me, with a laugh : "why, do you think people want those things done for them?" the employers had done beautiful things for the men, but the men and women of this country don't want things done for them ; they want to be so paid, they want to be so treated, that they may be in a condition to do things for themselves. that is our american feeling. we cannot get away from it; and it is growing over the world.' "and she wound up what she had to say, by using almost the same words that strong used the other eve ning, as i recall them : 'no system of benevolent treat ment of employees is going to take the place of a just consideration.' " "i remember something like that," said the school principal. "it seems strange that the woman you quote and mr. strong should use the same expression. i wonder if he could have heard of it, or read the same report of it that you did. it may be a case of 'uncon scious mental absorption,' as it is called, and this is always interesting to the student of psychology. and what did you think the best point he made, mr. secre tary?" he added, turning to barr. "that's an easy one for me," replied barr. "i'm not very strong on science, but the point i liked best was what he said about evolution. i suppose it was because i've always wanted to get a grip on that, and what he said about it, i thought i could understand. so it made me feel g'ood." "and do you recall just what the expression was that pleased you?" 52 looking forward "why, it was where he was speaking about evolution, and said it was 'from a lower form to the higher next.' if that is what it means, why then i can understand it and i know it's true. it's just like growth ; or going up a flight of steps ; one step at a time ; from the lower to the higher next one above. any one can understand that." "thank you, barr," replied the principal, much pleased with the simplicity of barr's conception of the great scien tific theory that had revolutionized the world's thinking. "it is certainly most interesting to have your impression of mr. strong's address. but as to his definition of evolution, i think i may have with me a little surprise for you. i ran across something on it in my reading, and i was so much interested in it, i copied a part of it ; and think i have it with me. i have been studying that gen eral subject with particular reference to its relation to industry, and i ran across herbert spencer's definition of evolution in its broadest sense. would you like to hear it?" "i would be delighted, sure," replied barr. "i don't remember that i ever met mr. spencer, and i don't believe that we have very much in common. — ^but i guess i can stand that, if you have it about you. listen now, gentlemen," he added, as sharpe drew a memorandum book from his pocket, and read as follows, the whole group listening intently : 'evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissi pation of motion; during which the matter passes from an inde finite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogene ity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.'* *"first principles of a new system of philosophy," second edition, page 396. a new departure 53 "now, look here, mr. sharpe," exclaimed barr, "you're making game of us. surely that isn't english, is it? for if it is, you've got to translate it for us; i don't believe the rest understood it any better than i did. honest, now jackie; didn't it go clear over your head, too?" "sure thing, davie. mr. sharpe, is that a real defini tion, or is it only one of those queer things, gotten up to show us how fearfully the english language is made? if it's real, then, like barr, i've got to find an interpreter." "it's the real thing, mr. crandall," began sharpe, who was much interested in the effect of his experiment, for he had wanted to see what impression spencer's well known definition would make, — when hammer harry interrupted with : "would you mind reading that again, mr. sharpe? it isn't often that the english languag>e runs away with me ; but i confess, that does seem a little too rapid. maybe i could get it, if you would go slow." so sharpe read it again, this time quite deliberately. as soon as he had finished, barr exclaimed : "no use, mr. sharpe, it never fazed me; clean over my head, and i see by the way that hammer and jackie look, it didn't hit them, either. my, but that's fine. to think that anybody that wants to, is allowed to talk like that; while if i stub my toe right hard, and say things that ain't in the spelling-book, i can be arrested for it. the laws don't seem to be just fair, do they ?" "it isn't the laws that need to be changed, barr," quietly remarked crandall; "it's your brain power. well, i can admire a man who can talk or write like that, mr. sharpe, but i confess it's beyond me to comprehend it. and i guess i'm too old to learn the trick, too." "well, i can't say that i agree with you, crandall," 54 looking forward remarked hammer harry. "i think language was given us for the clear expression of thought, and when a man talks or writes in a language that i can't understand, and calls it english, it always riles me. that's just the dif ference between lincoln, as i understand him, and a good many educated men ; he could put the greatest thoughts in the simplest words, so that any ordinary man could comprehend them ; and the others becloud the commonest thoughts with words beyond our comprehension; and then seem to think they are very learned. well, i beg to differ. i hold that a real leader is one like lincoln; one who can see the truth himself, and then present it so simply and clearly that the other fellow has no trouble in seeing it, too ; almost has to see it, in fact, because it is made sq clear to him." "you have given us a very good definition of a teacher, also, mr. smith," replied the school principal, who found that he was gaining instruction where he had only looked for a little fun. "but i think that you are, no doubt with out intention, rather hard on scientific writers like spencer. you see they are writing for the scientist, and they naturally use scientific terminology. you are un doubtedly right when we are talking about making such ideas clear to the general mass of the people. when they are to be influenced, as was the case in lincoln's day, the use of the clearest language is recjuired ; and the real leader and the real teacher understand this, and will always present their message in that way. not what a man knows himself, but his ability to let the other person see it, proves whether a man is a teacher or not. and there can be no higher test." "no doubt you are right, ^ir. sharpe," replied ham mer harry ; "but it seems to me that even in the expres sion of scientific thought, it ought to be possible to use a new departure 55 language that is easily understood by all. i am convinced that that is one of the great needs of the day. nearly every workingman is interested in the great questions of political economy, as you call it, — and some few are able to read and comprehend the books that are written on that subject, — but it is also true that the great majority, although they have such a vital interest in the subjects that are treated by the writers, do not; and the chief reason for it is, i believe, the language in which they are written. the great need to-day is for some one like lincoln to put the subjects that are considered in political economy in such language that the average workingman and working woman can easily understand them. i believe that this will be done, and i hope that our present course of lectures will help to do it. i'm sure the people were interested the other evening in that address by young strong." "they certainly appeared to be. barr has told us what .he liked in it; suppose you let us know what seemed to be the best point he made, mr. smith." "well, that isn't hard to do, and barr will say, i sup pose, that it is a natural consequence, coming from my admiration for lincoln. but, whether that is the reason or not, i liked best the definition of the purpose of this government, which he said he got from one of lincoln's state papers. if we could only get that fixed in the people's minds, and then start them marching that way, i believe there would be progress ahead. we can't accomplish all that at once ; but we could set it before us as a possible goal, and by trying to reach it, we are going to get nearer to it than by doing nothing at all." "right again. hammer," exclaimed crandall. "but the present question before the house is : w^hat are we going 56 looking forward to have for the subject of our next meeting? barr, the court awaits the verdict. what shall it be?" "better say the report of the committee; for i've been a sort of a committee of one, looking up matters while the rest of you've been resting," said barr. "now, don't be excited or get scared, when i ask you a simple ques tion. what would you think of selecting 'woman suf frage' as the subject for the next meeting?" there was a pause of half a minute, and then crandall exclaimed : "for the love of heaven, davie, what's this you're handing us? what has that got to do with the industrial question, or the relation of labor and capital? haven't you somehow lost your bearings ?" "the weather isn't very hot just now," added harry, "or i would be apt to think it was affecting the poor boy's head." "that's just the way i said you'd take it," retorted barr, with an injured air. "you don't seem to have any more sense at times than a blind mule. instead of going off that way, why can't you wait till a man has a chance to explain what he means?" "all right, davie," replied crandall; "we'll do better next time. but, perhaps, it would be just as well if sometimes you would do a little explaining first, and then spring your surprises. but go ahead with your apologies." "apologies, nothin' ! i'll just tell you how the propo sition came to me, and then you can turn it down, if you want to ; but i guess, maybe, you won't. yesterday, on the 9.30 a. m. down train, i was collecting fares, when i came across the wife of the 'little boss' sitting with a friend on the river side. i had collected their tickets, when she said in her nicest way : 'mr. barr, this is my friend. miss channing; we thought we would like to have a few words with you when you are at liberty. i see you a new departure 57 are quite busy now; could we see you when the train reaches the city ?' of course i said i'd be dehghted, and arranged to see them in the waiting room after we got in. so i did, and we had a little talk there, and they nearly took my breath away by asking what our club would think of considering the subject i just gave you, at the next meeting. i guess they saw by the way i looked that it was a new one to me, and then they began talking, — at least miss channing did, and she made the thing look all right in just about two minutes ; so i said i would present it to you and let her know your decision." "well, that does put a rather different face on it," began crandall, when barr interrupted with : "oh, it does, does it? just so; just so. i thought maybe you'd begin to see a little better jackie, when you heard who the proposition came from. that is almost as good as an operation for poor sight, isn't it, harry ?" "now, barr, you'll have to be good for once and excuse us. let us know what the remarkable miss channing said that changed your own opinion so quick; maybe it will have the same effect with us." "all right," said barr, "i'll behave, even if you don't know how. one of the best things she said was that in these days, when women had entered almost all lines of industry, and really occupied some to the exclusion of men, it was almost impossible to consider the industrial question without considering their welfare. she said that, in what was perhaps the most important work done to-day, — the teaching of the coming generation, — women did 80 per cent., while in the home, she did about 95 per cent, of the training of the young. she asked if i didn't think that was important ; and what could i say to that but; 'of course i did.' then she said that women could help solve some, if not all, the great questions that 58 looking forward affected the workers; that she was, in effect, trying to help now, as all her social work showed, but that very many women were convinced that they could help a great deal better if they had the right to vote ; and they would like to have the opportunity to present their arguments before our club, especially as it was a club of the work ers. that is about all i can remember of it ; but i tell you that woman has a way about her that almost convinces you as soon as she looks at you. now, what do you say, gentlemen? mr. sharpe, let us have your opinion, won't you? for i'm really afraid that crandall and harry will be too easily convinced by the fact that the 'little boss' ' wife made the request." "that's hardly fair to your friends, mr. barr," replied sharpe; "but i suppose you meant it "sarcastic' i believe in having an open mind on these new questions ; and while mine is pretty well made up on the subject you mention, i know that a great many have not yet made up theirs. as it is a live subject, of present interest, why not let the ladies have a chance, and put the meeting in their hands ? that will relieve the club of responsibility, except for the first step, — that of saying "'yes' to a polite request. and besides, it will be something of a novelty here in town, and you will probably have a full house." "oh, i'll guarantee that," said barr, "and it may be a rough house, too for some of the 3'ounger element have always regarded that question as something to make sport of; so, i don't know about it." "if that's your only trouble, barr," interrupted cran dall, "i guess you can leave that to hammer and me. we'll see that the house is orderly, and that the ladies have fair play and a quiet hearing. isn't that right, hammer?" "sure thing; that is if you take that for a subject. it a new departure 59 would remind me of the good old times, if i had to throw two or three of the boys out, just to keep things quiet. but i don't believe you'll have to read the riot act, barr." "well, of all trimming and veering to get a favorable wind, commend me to you two," exclaimed barr, who had expected a much harder siege to persuade his com mittee to admit the innovation. "the power of the hon ied words of persuasion from a woman's lips, even if only quoted, is something remarkable. well, it proves what the women often say, that men are all alike ; i acted just that way myself, so i don't blame you. what do you say to it, mr. bruce?" he added, as bruce, who had finished counting the cash receipts for the evening, came up and joined the party. "weh, what i say," replied bruce, "is this — that i couldn't help overhearing part of what you said, and can't see why you shouldn't let the women have a chance, just on the score of being industrial workers, if for no other reason. pretty nearly one-half the world's work is being done by them now, and probably the most im portant half, at that. if they are in business, why should they not have equal rights in politics ? i'm sure we men haven't made such a particular success of the job, that we have much reason to be proud of it. perhaps the women can help us to run shop in a cleaner and better way, if we give them the chance. so, if you want to count my vote, barr, count it 'aye.' " "the vote seems to be unanimous, gentlemen," ex claimed barr, "and i will appoint crandall and hammer here as a special committee to help me maintain order and see that the meeting goes off all right. so, if there's no further business we'll adjourn, and see that mr. bruce gets all that cash safe to the bank as we go out the street." 6o looking forward the usual announcement of the next meeting of the club and of the subject selected by the committee was made in the issue of the "herald" a day or two later, and the editorial mention of the matter was very favorable to the decision of the executive committee in permitting the subject to be discussed. "no other public question of the day has aroused so much interest, and is now claiming the attention of intelligent persons to so great an extent as this," said the "herald." "we congratulate the w^orkers' club on being so up-to-date, and especially upon their good fortune in securing for our citizens the opportunity of hearing miss louise channing, one of the ablest advocates of this reform movement, who will make the leading address on this occasion, and who will be pleased, we are informed, at the close of her address, to answer any questions that may be asked." chapter iv. the leading issue: equal suffrage for women. "no single principle of liberty has been enunciated from the year 1688 until now, that does not cover the claim of woman." — wendell phillips. "the natural right of a woman to vote is just as clear as that of a man, and rests on the same ground. since she is called on to obey the laws, she ought to have a voice in making them." — henry george. "the broadest and most far-sighted intellect is utterly unable to foresee the ultimate consequences of any great social change. ask yourself on all such occasions, if there be any element of right and wrong, any principle of clear natural justice that turns the scale. if so, take your part with the perfect and abstract right, and trust god to see that it prove the expedient." — wendell phillips. the public meetings of the workers' club were held in what had originally been the assembly room of the high school. it was a large room with a seating capacity, now that the old desks had been removed and their place taken by chairs, of between 400 and 500, although on special occasions many more could be crowded within its limits. at one end was a long, low platform, which had formerly been used for the school commencements, and from which much learning and eloquence had been dispensed to admiring crowds. this was now used as the speaker's platform, and those who arrived early at the second meeting of the club were surprised to see a double row of chairs stretched at the rear of the platform, and several more in the foreground. they were even more surprised when the hour for the speaking had arrived to see a number of ladies make their way to the platform and take the chairs at the rear. fol (61) 62 looking forward lowing them came the members of the executive com mittee, crandall, hammer harry and chairman barr; and with them were sharpe, the principal of the public schools ; and bruce, the cashier of the local bank. chairman barr lost no time in opening the meeting. the exercises began, as usual, with music by the high school chorus, after which barr advanced to the front of the platform and said: "some of you may have thought, my friends, that the workers' club was taking a very novel step, when you read the announcement of the subject to be considered at this meeting; but our committee believes that long before the meeting is o\'er you will all acknowledge that it acted with wisdom, and in a way that shows that it is our wish to consider questions of live interest and real importance. before we begin our regular proceedings, i will ask our well-known fellow-^townsman, mr. john crandall, to read the list of officers for this meeting." this was another innovation, and at once the interest of the large audience, many of whom were women, was aroused. crandall advanced to the front and said: "mr. chairman : as soon as the decision was reached that this meeting should be held, your committee decided that it wished to show to our good friends here," here he turned and bowed to the group of women seated on the stage near him, "that the leading citizens of pleasantville are no whit behind the rest of the world in granting them a fair hearing. w^hile there are doubtless some who are not as yet persuaded that the course they advocate is the right one to pursue, still the american sense of fair play ensures them here, as it must in every civilized com munity, a respectful hearing. your committee desired to give to our citizens the opportunity to express, by some connection with this meeting, their approval of the move equal suffrage for women 63 ment, — in many cases, — and in all, the conviction that a cause like this was entitled to, and must receive, a fair hearing at the hands of our people. i am glad to be able to announce that of the gentlemen waited upon by ham mer harry and myself in regard to being officers of this meeting, not one declined to allow us to use his name, and many of them' spoke of it in terms of warm sympathy and approval." he then proceeded to read a list of names which included nearly all the leading business men of the town, — the presidents and vice-presidents of the corporations owning the big mills; the mayor, and leading members of the town council; the leading merchants; the officers of the two banks ; the ministers of all the churches ; the leading teachers ; and also a number of well-known resi dents whose business was in the neighboring city ; — in all, a list such as no other meeting for many years past could have presented. it must be admitted that crandall read this list over in his best manner, and with a great deal of personal satisfaction, for this had been his plan to accomplish an orderly meeting. he knew that the disorderly element would be present, as in fact it was, — ■ but he also knew that nothing would have such a tendency to keep that element in perfect order as the knowledge that their employers were in a way responsible for the meeting, and would resent anything like disorder as a personal affront. "i rather think we have them, ham mer," he had said to smith, as they came to the meeting; "i guess they will be as quiet as mice; and it will be a great opportunity for some of them to get a little truth in compact form. i hope she will give it to them straight, so that they cannot miss it." and it may be added that he was correct in his prophecy, and his hope fully realized. as soon as the list of officers had been read and their 64 looking forward election made by unanimous vote, chairman barr ad vanced again, and began his short speech of introduction : "when this meeting was decided upon, my friends, i wanted very much that my friend, crandau, or hammer harry, should preside; but they said, 'no'; and then i hoped that one of the ladies interested in the equal suf frage cause would do so ; but all seemed to think that this ought to be as much like one of the usual meetings of the club as possible; so here i am, as usual. but i am glad to say that we were able to persuade some of the leaders of this cause in our town and county to be with us, and as they want to give effective backing and sup port to their spokesman, they have consented to be here with her on the platform. it may be, gentlemen, that some who have come here to-night to scoff, will remain, — if not to pray, at least to be convinced ; and if i may speak from a bit of personal experience, i would venture the opinion that no one is better qualified to do it than the speaker, whom i shall have the honor to introduce. before i do so, may i be allowed to tell of the sage remark of a colored man of my acquaintance some weeks ago. some one asked him what he thought of woman's suffrage; and he replied, that he didn't know 'nothin' at all about it; but he must say he hadn't got no sympathy for 'em, for he was sure dey done brung it on deirselves, and deserve it all, — whatever it is.' it now gives me pleasure, my friends, to introduce to you the lecturer of the evening. miss louise channing, who will address us on the subject announced." as barr concluded, miss channing advanced, and was received with a round of applause by the audience, who were at once captured by her appearance. tall, dressed in quiet good taste, free from mannerisms and affecta tions, with a face speaking of youthful enthusiasm and equal suffrage for women 65 great intelligence, it seemed to some of her hearers as though the spirit of youth were speaking to them through a beautiful human medium. in a low voice, but one that could be distinctly heard, she began to plead for the cause she evidently loved : "i am indebted to your chairman, my friends," she began, "for the good opening to my address which he has given me. the daughter of a union soldier, i have always rejoiced that the great republic which he helped to save, when it had given the greatest blessing of life, — freedom, — ^to the former slave, also gave him that right and privilege through which alone he could make his freedom operative in law and valuable to him as a man, — the right of suffrage. i rejoice that in the states of highest education and best government of our union, that right of his is unquestioned. but may i not ask you men, who believe in justice and fair play, if it is altogether right that the daughter of a man who risked his life for the life of his country should be deprived of this right and privilege, while a colored man who does not know the difference between 'sufiferings' and 'suffrage' is granted it?" here the speaker was interrupted by a round of ap plause, in the midst of which hammer harry, although sitting on the platform, became so lost to all proper sense of decorum that he leaned toward crandall, and ex claimed in a stage whisper, which, because it was his, could be heard all over the room. "i give in ; captured in the first round"; which was so enjoyed by the audience that it sent them off in another round of noise, in which hammer, who now realized the gravity of his offence against propriety, had all he could do to regain his composure. the lecturer now proceeded to give a brief historical 66 looking forward sketch of the growth of the movement in favor of equal suffrage for women, in the course of which she claimed that one of the first men to speak fearlessly in favor of the cause was the great leader, then quite a young man, who afterward led his countrymen through the red sea of war to the promised land of a truly free and reunited national existence. "it is true," she added, "that the opponents of equal suffrage claim that because abraham lincoln made no speeches in advocacy of the cause, he had therefore lost interest in it, and that it no longer formed any part of his political creed. but i may remind you and them that in the days between 1850 and i860 other great issues came to the front : and it is not strange therefore that in that time he did not give further atten tion to the subject. it still remains true that more than a decade before the organization of the american wom an's suffrage association, abraham lincoln uttered those words which make his memory forever green to all who believe in equal suffrage for women : 'i go for all sharing the rights of suffrage, who help to bear the bur dens of government, — by no means excluding females.' "* "may i ask your attention to this subject, my friends," continued the speaker, "from two points of view ; the personal and the political? and as we thus look at.it, will you try to answer with me this question : why should women be deprived of the right and privilege of voting? and first, in the personal sense. "has not woman the required mental ability to entitle her to vote? can she not as readily form just conclu ♦lincoln's exact words were as follows : "i go for all sharing the privileges of government who assist in bearing its burdens. conse quently i go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms, (by no means excluding females.)" from a letter to the springfield journal, under date of june 13th, 1836; (when a candidate a second time for representative in the state legislature.) equal suffrage for women 67 sions, based upon what she sees and hears, as men can ? if you think that her mental ability is inferior to that of man, had you not better consider the advisabihty of taking from her the education of your children, which you have so largely committed to her care ? "but this point need hardly be argued, for men are so accustomed on all public occasions to saying such pleas ant things about the good qualities of women, and referring in such eloquent words to what we have done in the realms of literature and science and art, that the question of our mental equality may perhaps be consid ered settled. but if any should still doubt it, even they will shortly be connj-inced, for the records of our colleges and universities prove that women students already greatly exceed men students in number, and the danger now seems to be that in a few years the scholarly and learned class in this country will be chiefly women. when that day comes, let us hope that neither the men who now oppose equal suffrage because women are not intelli gent enough to vote, nor the women who will then have acquired the right to vote, will be so unjust as to attempt to exclude men from voting for that reason. "if, then, we admit that the intellect of woman qualifies her to exercise the right of suffrage, let us see whether her moral qualifications are also equal to the task. and here the only investigation we can make will be a compara tive one; for if, in spiritual insight and moral force woman is the equal of man, then surely, as he enjoys this right, it should not be denied her on this ground. to state this question is equivalent to securing your approval. if there were any evidence required, that furnished by the records of the prisons of the country would be conclusive; for these show that for all crimes, the number of women convicts is less than six per cent, of the whole number, — 68 looking forward thus showing that the morality of women, when judged by this standard, is about sixteen times as great as that of men. but this would undoubtedly be unfair to the men, so we will not urge it, — but will simply claim, what i am sure every fair-minded man will readily concede, that on the ground of morality alone, there can be no objection to allowing women the right of suffrage. "if we are satisfied, therefore, that woman has both the intelligence and the morality to qualify her for suffrage, let us see whether, from the political point of view, she is not also qualified for it. here those men who oppose equal suffrage seem at a great disadvantage, because every sound political reason upon which they base their own claim to this right is equally strong and sound for woman. your great declaration of independence says that 'governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' you will all admit that woman is governed, in the sense that she must obey the laws ; how then can you escape the logical conclusion that her consent should in some way be had ; and in what way can it be had, justly and fairly, save through the exercise of the right of suffrage ? you also have told us again and again, and began your great revolution with the declara tion, that 'taxation without representation is tyranny.' is it any the less tyranny because a woman is the victim ? what right have men who utter such sentiments to tax women to support a government, whose laws they have no voice in adopting or repealing? "and as we consider the subject of taxation let me repeat something which a friend of mine who sees the injustice of present conditions, recently told me. he said that he had had occasion to consult the tax assess ment books in one of our large cities, in looking up real estate assessments, and he was surprised to notice that equal suffrage for women 69 in many instances when houses in a block would appear in the names of women owners, the assessments would go up, apparently for no other reason than because they were owned by women. he could see no difference from the description between these more highly appraised prop erties and those beside them owned by men, and came to the conclusion that, not only were women paying taxes, but that they were paying much more than a fair share. this forms an additional reason, based upon the taxa tion argument, why women should have the right to vote ; for such injustice could not long survive their exercise of the right." the speaker now turned her attention to some of the objections frequently urged against granting equal suf frage, most of which have become well-known through constant repetition, and have so little force that they need but slight consideration. the old objection based upon the fact that women do not fight, and could not be used as soldiers and policemen, she answered by the statement that the need for the fighter in modern civilization was growing more and more remote; that the vast majority of male voters now exercising the right had never been called upon either to fight or to act as policemen; and that, if they were, the services contributed by women as nurses, even on the field of battle, should be accepted by society as the payment of an equal obligation ; for surely to save life is as great a service to the state as to take it. "most of the objections to equal suffrage, my friends"; continued the speaker; "are, as you have seen, too puerile and weak to be worthy more than a passing glance. but there are two, which are by some persons considered so strong that i have reserved them for more serious consideration. one of them is the old claim that women are too emotional, too sentimental, to be entrusted 70 looking forward with this solemn duty of voting; the other that they can exercise a stronger influence for good by exerting their 'silent influence' in some indirect, but all-powerful manner. let us look at these objections for a few minutes. "if it is true that women are too sentimental to exer cise the right of suffrage, — what shall be done with that class of men who also acknowledge the power of senti ment and emotion in their lives? shall we refuse to allow them this right on the same grounds? are not our friends who present this as an objection entirely mistaken in their assumption that we have had, or in the nature of things ca)i have, too much sentiment in our politics? is it not rather true that we have had entirely too little of it there? take the sentiment of personal and political honor; who will claim that we have had too much of this sentiment, — and it is purely sentiment, — nothing more nor less, — in our political life? a recent writer on this subject has well said: 'the man who is not controlled by sentiment betrays his friends, sells his vote, is a traitor to his country, or wrecks himself, body and soul, with immoralities: for nothing but sentiment prevents any of these things. the sense of honor is pure sentiment. the sentiment of loyalty is the only thing that makes truth and honesty desirable, or a vote a non-salable commodity. government would be a poor affair without senti ment, and is not likely to be damaged by a slightly increased supply.'* "the other objection which we so frequently hear urged by our friends, 'the enemy,' — that of the great value of woman's silent and indirect influence, — an influ *from a paper read by mrs. e. t. brown at a meeting of the georgia state federation of women's clubs. equal suffrage for women 71 ence which they claim is stronger than the bahot can be, — should be considered in all fairness, because those who urge it are undoubtedly sincere in their belief that it forms a good and strong reason why women should not be granted the right to vote. so, because of the regard we have for those who present this argument, rather than for the argument itself, let us consider it carefully. "in the first place it seems fair to say that in granting to women the right of suffrage, there is no desire on the part of those favoring this great reform to compel all women to exercise the right. if some women should be convinced that they can do better work in the direction of the uplift of public sentiment or the purification of politics, by using their indirect and silent influence, it will still be possible for them to so use it. they will not be compelled to vote. so that, if there is really any thing in this argument of indirect influence, nothing need be lost to society or government by allowing those women who wish to exercise their influence to do so. by the same token, — if the friends of equal suffrage are willing to grant this liberty to their friends who oppose suffrage, is it not simply fair and just that the same liberty should be granted them? "but how about this so-called 'indirect influence,' as a matter of fact? does it really exist, save in the imagi nation of those who urge it? is it not something so intangible, so evanescent, that she 'who thinks she has it, proves by the very thought, she has it not?' what great work, either in the realm of politics, or in social uplift outside of politics, or in philanthropy, can those who place so much dependence upon it, refer us to ? and even if they were able to refer to some things that had been accomplished through this medium of indirect action, should that operate as a good argument against the use 72 looking forward of direct means, when these last are honorable and just? who would not prefer to act directly, in a straight forward manner, rather than by the use of an indirect method, which may always be objected to, simply because it is indirect? where can be the possible advantage of a silent and indirect influence, when a direct influence, even though not silent, can be exercised? "and finally, as to this method of accomplishing good work, i wish to ask our opponents, especially the men who oppose giving women this right and privilege, how would they like it themselves? if this indirect influence can be used to efifect all necessary good results, why did they secure the right to govern themselves at such cost of life and treasure? has it all been a great mis take; and would they prefer to go back to the days of the king and courtier, and the use of 'silent influence'? and if not, will they please tell us why not? in their explanation to us of their reasons for objecting to this method of silent and indirect influence, they will find our own best reasons for objecting to it. it is hardly to our discredit, if, reading the lessons of history as we find them written by men for our instruction, we do not wel come the lauding of indirect methods in human govern ment. preferring to work in direct lines, to think our thoughts along straight lines, we trust we may be par doned for not placing much confidence in the power of indirect influence. some of us have heard of the treat ment accorded that great leader of women, frances willard, when she approached the executive committee of one of the great political parties, now nearly a gen eration ago ; and i have heard men speak in angry tones when they told of the slight attention granted her there. we know now that if she had been able to say then, as she might say in these days : 'gentlemen, there are nine equal suffrage for women 'ji states that will vote this year, and in those states the women hold the balance of power,' her reception would have been very different. and in that difference lies all the difference between direct influence, and silent or indirect influence. 'revolutions do not go backward, gentlemen; let us keep on looking forward.' "as an illustration of the ignorance which is some times brought to the discussion of this great reform, will you allow me to refer to a recent article in one of the leading magazines of the country. the writer evidently believed that she held a brief for the women of the coun try opposed to equal suffrage, and entitled her article, 'for the twenty-two million,' — on the mistaken assump tion that nearly all of the women outside of the states that have already adopted suffrage for women were opposed to it. in the course of the article she thus refers to one of the early advocates of equal suffrage : 'from the books i learned about lucretia mott, a simple quaker maid, not yet out of her teens who struggled so hard to get the education her fine mind craved and who found the doors of education barred against her because she was a woman. she had something to fight for and little wonder she put up a good fight for the ballot or any thing else which would give her some measure of freedom.'* "apparently this was not intended for humor; but, if not, then it is fair to say that it seems strange that a writer on a serious subject, inviting widespread public attention, should not take the trouble to consult books that will give correct information, before trying to rep resent any number of millions of people. such mis *from article entitled "for the twenty-two million," published in "the outlook," may 4th, i9i2 74 looking forward statements of fact, that could have been readily corrected by looking up a biography of the person she was writing about, throw discredit upon the other statements con tained in her article, some of which are no doubt true. lucretia mott was a mature woman over fifty years of age when she began to take an active interest in the cause of equal suffrage. the american woman suffrage association was organized in 1848, when she was fifty five years old. she had had no such struggle for an education as is pictured in the article referred to, as her people were friends, or quakers, as they are usually called, who have always stood for the equal education of boys and girls ; so that she readily acquired a good educa tion as a matter of course, and was teaching before she was twenty years of age; and teaching, not in a public school, but in an academy, as the advanced institutions of learning for girls were then called. "the mistakes made by this writer would hardly be worthy your attention, were it not for the fact that they are indicative of many like incorrect statements that come from our friends, 'the enemy.' this is illustrated in the same article by the startling statement she makes, — referring to some of the old laws that are a disgrace to the statute books of the great majority of the states of the union ; — in these words : 'the old worn out laws that remain on the statute books do no more injustice to women than to men.' this statement is made in face of the fact that in only sixteen of the forty-eight states is a mother equal guardian with the father over her own children, and that in a majority of them the old infamous laws of consent as to young girls still prevail. for over fifty-five years the women of massachusetts, — ■ probably the best educated community in the union, — ■ struggled to secure the passage of an equal guardianship equal suffrage for women /5 law, before they were successful; while the women of colorado secured it the year after they obtained the right to vote. is it not just to say that before women or men attempt to discuss such important subjects, they should study the first elements of discussion? "and now, lest i seem to be unfair to the writer referred to, let me give you her conclusion as to the reason why she and the others who think as she does, do not want the ballot. she asked this question of a doctor of philosophy : 'why are you opposed to it ?' 'the philosophy doctor became serious. "because i don't want to see women robbed of their greatest power." ' and then she adds: 'at last — the reason sharply defined — it is the real reason why i do not want the ballot.' "and so again we run up against this illy-defined 'silent, indirect influence, which women are supposed to use on occasion, and by which they claim to accomplish great results. now, as against the opinion of the writer of the article referred to, let me give you the opinion of one of the best-known women philanthropists of the present day, miss jane addams, of hull house, chicago, who, writing especially of what the ballot in the hands of women could do for the protection of the home, said : 'if woman would fulfill her traditional responsibility to her own children; if she would educate and protect from danger factory children who must find their recreation on the street; if she would bring the cultural forces to bear upon our mate rialistic civilization ; and if she would do it all with the dignity and directness fitting one who carries on her immemorial duties, then she must bring herself to the use of the ballot, — that latest 76 looking forward implement for self-government. may we not fairly say that american women need this implement in order to preserve the home ?' "there is another great reason why women should be granted the right of suffrage to which i wish to call your attention, and i am all the more glad to do this because these meetings are held under the auspices of the work ers' club; and the reason i refer to, is based upon woman's right to consideration as one who is a most important factor in modern industry. do you know that more than one-twelfth of the total population of the united states is represented in the ranks of this great army of women workers, there being over eight million women engaged in one form or another of industry? surely you will agree with me that this great body of workers is entitled to all the protection that can be theirs in any right way. and it has been found by experience that there is no surer way of securing to them the full protection of the law than by allowing them to exercise the right to vote. some of you will ask me how i know this, and that question brings me to the concluding state ments that i wish to make. we all know the old adage, 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating,' and i am glad that we are able to know of the possible results of equal suffrage from the fruits it has already produced. and to some of these results, i wish now to call your attention. "one of the states of the union has been trying equal suffrage for over forty years ; another for twenty years. surely in this time its results must have become apparent. let us see what some of these are. "wyoming admitted women to the full right of suf frage in 1869, the state entering the union with the words 'equal rights' as the motto on its seal. when equal suffrage for women ^^ statehood was applied for, determined opposition was made in congress to the admission of a state with a woman suffrage clause in its constitution. so strong was this opposition that the territorial delegate in con gress telegraphed to the legislature that he feared that statehood would not be granted unless the suffrage clause was abandoned. the legislature telegraphed back : 'we will remain out of the union a hundred years, rather than come in without woman suffrage.' so the state came in with it. in the early years after admission sev eral attempts at repeal were made, but all without result, and for many years the status of woman as a citizen possessing all the rights and privileges of citizenship has been unquestioned. about eighty per cent, of the women entitled to vote exercise the right, the proportion being quite as high as that of the men. the effect of the woman vote upon legislation, which is, of course, the supreme test, has been most excellent, they having helped to secure child welfare laws ; legislation making gambling illegal ; raising the age of protection for young girls to eighteen years ; securing property rights to women ; providing for equal pay for men and women teachers ; establishing kin dergartens and a state industrial school ; providing a home for dependent children; and, as would naturally be ex pected, aiding to secure all legislation that makes for moral and social uplift. the record of woman's partici pation in making laws in wyoming is one of the strongest possible proofs of her ability, and shows to other states and to the whole country how greatly her help is needed in that direction. "and the same thing is true of colorado, which granted women full suffrage in 1893 by the enactment of a law which was submitted to the voters and carried by a majority of a little over 6,000. in 1901 the question was 78 looking forward again submitted to the people of the state, this time in the form of an amendment to the state constitution, and was adopted by a majority of 17,000. in the eight years that intervened, the people had time to test the quality of equal suffrage, and their decision by a greatly increased majority showed how fully they approved of it. now let us see what woman suffrage has done for colorado. and here i know that i must go slow, and present only well substantiated facts, because of strange reports that have been made as to the bad effects that have resulted from it in that state. i am glad, therefore, to be able to call to the witness stand, to give testimony for the cause i represent, one whose word will carry weight with all who hear it, — his honor, judge ben b. lindsay, of denver. i hold in my hand a little book which contains an article entitled 'measuring up equal suffrage,' with the sub title, 'an authoritative estimate of results in colorado,' — which was prepared by judge lindsay and mr. george creel for the purpose of giving the people of the whole country greatly needed information, and in a form that could not be questioned. you will agree with me that if any man in that state is qualified to give the facts about this hotly debated question of results there, it is judge lindsay. "i am sure that you wish to know the truth about this matter, and so you will pardon me for reading a few extracts from this article, — and perhaps allow me to com ment on them as i proceed. in the second paragraph the writers, referring to equal suffrage, say of it : 'it has been one of the great bells that has aroused colo rado to the work of flushing filth from its politics, bettering economic conditions, mitigating the cruelties of industrialism, promoting equal and exact justice, and making for a more wholesome and expansive environment. to these ends, in the equal suffrage for women 79 short space of seventeen years, it has aided in placing a score of needed laws on the statute book. it has raised new standards of public service, of political morality, and of official honesty. it has helped to lift the curse of corporation control from the government. it has gone far to bit and bridle the lawless ''liquor interests." ' "that makes a fine beginning, does it not, my friends? those sentences are worthy of being committed to memory by the boys and girls in your high school, not only as a fine specimen of english, but for the expression of the purposes of government which they contain. let me read now a reference to the child welfare legislation, which the women of colorado helped to secure. the writers say : 'if the reform were pinned down to a specific result, and discussion limited to one concrete outcome, equal suffrage could well afford to rest its case on the findings of the inter-parlia mentary union. this globe-circling organization of men and women, who play important parts in the public affairs of their various countries, is on record as declaring that "colorado has the sanest, the most humane, the most progressive, most scien tific laws relating to the child to be found on any statute books in the world." and of these laws which drew such praise from impartial sociologists, not one but has come into operation since colorado's adoption of equal suffrage in 1893 ; not one but owes either its inception or its success to the voting woman.' "the writers then proceed to give a list of the acts looking toward social betterment, that were adopted by the legislature of the state after women began to vote, mentioning fifteen child welfare laws, among these being the following : establishing a state home for dependent children, three of the five members of the board to be women; making mothers joint guardians of their children avith the fathers ; raising the age of protection for young 8o looking forward girls to eighteen years; creating juvenile courts; forbid ding the insuring of lives of children under ten; and ten others, all safeguarding children to a greater extent than they are safeguarded in any other state or country. it is interesting to know that the first bill introduced into the state senate after women were allowed to vote, was the bill providing for a home for dependent children ; and the first bill introduced into the house was the bill for raising the age of protection for young girls to eighteen years. is it not true, my friends, that the enactment of these two laws alone would forever justify the granting of equal suffrage to women? "in reply to the old assertion that voting would in some mysterious way injuriously affect woman and 'destroy the home,' the writers, have this to say: 'why, in the name of reason, should the mere fact of voting, work deterioration in any woman ? it does not take any mother "away from her home duties" to spend ten minutes going to the polls, casting her vote and returning to the bosom of her family, but during those ten minutes she wields a power that is doing more to protect her home, and all other homes, than any other possible influence.' "it is worth while to notice that this opinion of judge lindsay and his co-worker agrees fully with the opinion of aliss addams, which i have just read. referring to the much-lauded "silent influence' of our opponents the writers say: 'against this open and publicly exerted influence of the voting woman, the "silent influence" preached by the anti-suffragist makes a most sorry showing. before colorado women had the franchise, they vainly used the great "silent influence" in an effort to have kindergartens made part of the public school system. after the adoption of equal suffrage, they forced the reform within a year.' equal suffrage for women 8i "they then refer to the struggle in massachusetts, which continued for over half a century, before the women were able to iniiucncc the adoption of the law, making the mother equal with the father in the guardian ship of her children ; and then the writers add : 'colorado women received suffrage in 1893, and in 1894 they put this law on the statute books.' this comparison helps us to see that 'indirect and silent influence' is even more slow than indirect. to go from new york to london by the way of cape horn and the suez canal would perhaps equal the indirectness, but could not come near the slow ness of the approach of the women of massachusetts to a law which every man knows was right and just, and which they were compelled to plead for, for over fifty years. surely indirection is indirect ! "just two more short extracts from this most telling article, my friends, and i am through with this proof of the value of equal suffrage, as shown by actual experi ence. with reference to the source of the strongest opposition to this reform that the advocates of it have to face, the writers say : 'almost every woman, no matter what her mind and manners, is constitutionally opposed to the liquor traffic. she hates the saloon and fears its menace to her home and men folk.' "and again, speaking of the attitude of this traffic toward the women voters, they say : 'the liquor interests hate the voting woman because they cannot fool her out of her antagonism.' "in using those words, we may be sure that judge lindsay made no mistake. those interests always have been, and no doubt always will be, the inveterate foe of 82 looking forward every movement looking toward social betterment, and we will be wise if we realize at once the implacable foe with which we have to deal. but with the aid of the men who place the home above the saloon, as the great majority do, we have no fear of submitting the question to them for their decision. more and more will they realize, as we do, that in the accomplishment of this reform lies the fate of every movement that aims at the improvement of political and social and industrial condi tions. "and now, as a more than fitting close to this address, and partly in order that you may notice the great progress our cause has made, i wish to call your attention to the words of one of the greatest workers for righteousness who has ever helped this country to attain a higher civili zation. in his great speech before the woman's rights convention which met in the city of worcester, mass., on the 15th and i6th of october, 1851, — a speech which has, perhaps, not been equalled since, — wendell phillips said, when referring to the very few lines of employment that were then open to women : 'woman is ground down, by the competition of her sisters, to the very point of starvation. heavily taxed, ill-paid, in degradation and misery, is it to be wondered at that she yields to the temptation of wealth? it is the same with men; and thus we recruit the ranks of vice by the prejudices of custom and society. we corrupt the whole social fabric, that woman may be confined to two or three employments. how much do we suffer through the tyranny of prejudice? when we peni tently and gladly give to the energy and the intellect and the enterprise of woman their proper reward, their appropriate employment, this question of wages will settle itself; and it will never be settled at all until then. 'this question is intimately connected with the great social problem, — the vices of cities. you who hang your heads in equal suffrage for women 83 terror and shame, in view of the advancing demoralization of modern civilized life, and turn away with horror-struck faces, look back now to these social prejudices, which have made you close the avenues of profitable employment in the face of woman, and reconsider the conclusions you have made. look back, i say, and see whether you are surely right here. come up with us and argue the question, and say whether this most artificial delicacy, this childish prejudice, on whose moloch altar you sacrifice the virtue of so many, is worthy the exalted worship you pay it. * * * whether we choose to acknowl edge it or not, there are many women, earning two or three dollars a week, who feel that they are as capable as their brothers of earning hundreds, if they could be permitted to exert themselves as freely. fretting to see the coveted rewards of life forever forbidden them, they are tempted to shut their eyes on the character of the means by which a taste, however short, may be gained of the wealth and luxury they long for. open to man a fair field for his industry and secure to him its gains, and nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of every thousand will disdain to steal. open to woman a fair field for her industry, let her do anything her hands find to do, and enjoy her gains, and nine hundred and ninety-nine women out of every thousand will disdain to debase themselves for dress or ease. 'of this great social problem, — to cure or lessen the vice of cities, — there is no other solution, except what this movement offers you. it is, to leave woman to choose her own employ ments for herself, responsible, as we are, to the common creator, and not to her fellow-man. i exhort you, therefore, to look at this question in the spirit in which i have endeavored to present it to you. it is no fanciful, no superficial movement, based on a few individual tastes, in morbid sympathy with tales of individual suffering. it is a great social protest against the very fabric of society. it is a question which goes down, — we admit it, and are willing to meet the issue,— goes down beneath this social system in which you live. and it is true, — no deny ing it, — that, if we are right, the doctrines preached from new england pulpits are wrong; it is true that all this affected horror at woman's deviation from her sphere is a mistake,— a mistake fraught with momentous consequences. understand us. we blink no fair issue. we throw down the gauntlet. 84 looking forward we have counted the cost; we know the yoke and burden we assume. we know the sneers, the lying frauds of misstatement and misrepresentation that await us. we have counted all, and it is but the dust in the balance and the small dust in the meas ure, compared with the inestimable blessing of doing justice to one-half of the human species, of curing this otherwise imme dicable wound, stopping this overflowing fountain of corrup tion, at the very source of civilized life. truly, it is the great question of the age. it looks all others out of countenance. it needs little aid from legislation. specious objections, after all, are not arguments. we know we are right. we only ask an opportunity to argue the question, to set it full before the people, and then leave it to the intellects and the hearts of our country, confident that the institutions under which we live, and the education which other reforms have already given to both sexes, have created men and women capable of solving a problem even more difficult, and meeting a change even more radical, than this.'* "these words of the great reformer were uttered over fifty years ago. what marvelous steps forward this half century has seen. the great anti-slavery movement, in which he took such active part, has accomplished its purpose and passed into history. slavery, such as he then knew, has ceased to exist in this country. the tem perance reform, in which he was also deeply interested, has made great progress. and the greatest reform of all, — that of equal rights for woman, has become a world movement, in our own country has won repeated victories, and is to-day the leading reform movement, whose full triumph is within sight. as we look with full assurance to the future, let us not forget the noble workers of the past, who looked forward to our day with hope and con fidence, and sowed that we might reap; those daring and ♦from "speeches, lectures and letters of wendell phillips'' ; pub lished by james redpath : boston, 1863. equal suffrage for women 85 noble souls who 'cried out against the wrong and spared not,' — 'summoning the conscience of the nation to amend its laws.' " as the speaker retired, she was greeted with hearty applause, after which barr announced that questions or remarks would be in order. after a slight pause, to the surprise of many, crandall, who did not often speak in public and who was occupying a chair on the platform, rose and addressed the chair. "mr. chairman," he began, "when this subject was first mentioned i did not look upon it with much favor, thinking it somewhat out of the line of work we had mapped out for the winter. but since hearing the address we have just heard, i am sure that our committee made no mistake. the simple fact that such a large number of women are now engaged in industry makes it right and proper that we should consider anything that will make for their welfare ; and i think we have been shown that this reform will surely do that. "but what i wanted especially to say, when i rose, is this. a friend of mine down in the city owns several houses there, and he told me not long since that one year he overlooked paying the taxes until near the expiration of the term. then he went to the city hall to attend to it, and he found that because it was nearly the end of the term, there was a great crowd there to pay the tax. the line extended for a long distance through and even out side the building. he was able to arrange to send his tax by check, so that he did not have to spend two or three hours waiting his turn, as he at first expected. but this is what he said attracted his attention about that crowd of taxpayers, — the very large number of women and even girls who were in the line, waiting their turn. 86 looking forward quite a number, he said, were young girls, sent there no doubt because their fathers could not spare the time from their business. now the question i would like to ask, and i wish i could ask some of those opposed to equal suf frage who are not here, is this : how much worse would it be for a woman to go to the polls to vote, or how much more time would it take, than for her to go to the city hall to pay her tax? and if we are going to, not simply allow her, but when she has property, compel her to pay the tax,— where is the justice in depriving her of the right to vote ?" crandall's short speech was met by a round of applause, which had hardly ceased when the school principal, mr. sharpe, rose and addressing the chair, spoke as follows : "if you will allow me, mr. chairman; there is one little contribution that i would like to make to this meeting. it is frequently urged against woman suffrage, as has been mentioned by the speaker this evening, that women should not be allowed to vote because they do not serve as soldiers and policemen. the answers to that, already made, are good, but there is another which, it seems to me, ought to be known ; and that is that, according to the laws of the united states, men do not have to enlist as soldiers, provided that they have a conscience that says they should not do so. a friend of mine recently called my attention to this fact, and gave me an account of the history of the law. it seems that during the latter years of the civil war some members of the society of friends, whose principles would not allow them to bear arms, were drafted, and the attempt was made to compel them to take arms and go to the front. my friend told me that the matter went so far that they were threatened with the death penalty, if they persisted, — to which one of them replied : 'very well ; i would rather be killed, than kill.' equal suffrage for women 87 well, the result was that the men at the head of the gov ernment realized that such men ought not to be killed, and a law was passed, — made a law by the signature of president lincoln, — which allowed those having con scientious scruples to enter the hospital service instead of the armed service, — or to pay a certain fixed sum to pay for securing hospital service in their stead.* of course this was only allowed when the person's life gave evidence that his conscientious scruples were real, and not simply assumed for the purpose of escaping service. as this is the law, and as women have usually done the greatest part of the hospital work, it seems to me that there remains nothing to this old pretended argument based upon military service. as the world grows in wisdom, men will find a substitute for the methods of the brute in the settlement of disputes ; and reason and argument, which are the real weapons for men, will take the place of the sword and the musket, which properly belong to the childhood of the race." as sharpe took his seat, the audience was treated to another surprise, for a sweet-faced, elderly woman, who ♦this law was adopted in february, 1864; the section referred to reads as follows : act of february 24th, 1864; statutes at large, vol. xiii, chapter 13. "section 17. and be it further enacted. that members of religious denominations, who shall by oath or affirmation declare that they are conscientiously opposed to the bearing of arms, and who are prohibited from doing so by the rules and articles of faith and practice of said religious denominations, shall, when drafted into the military service, be considered non-combatants, and shall be assigned by the secretary of war to duty in the hospitals, or to the care of freedmen, or shall pay the sum of three hundred dollars to such person as the secretary of war shall designate to receive it, to be applied to the benefit of the sick and wounded soldiers: provided, that no person be entitled to the benefit of the provisions of this section unless his declaration oi conscientious scruples against bearing arms shall be supported by satis factory evidence that his deportment has been uniformly consistent with such declaration." 88 looking forward had been sitting with the group on the platform, arose and advancing to the front, addressed chairman barr, and said : "air. chairman, will you kindy allow me to introduce myself as the president of the equal suffrage league of this county? on behalf of our league i wish to express to you and to the members of the workers' club our thanks for your great kindness in allowing us to hold this meeting under your auspices. i am sure that i speak for every member of our league, in thus expressing our thanks, and i trust that this meeting will have the result of bringing into line with our reform all the women and all the men who are here. it is to you men that we women have to look to see that this attempt to secure justice is successful. from what i have seen and heard this evening, i feel confident that we shall not look in vain. let me leave with you these words from henry george," and she read from a slip in her hand : " 'the natural right of a woman to vote is just as clear as that of a man, and rests upon the same ground. since she is called on to obey the laws, she ought to have a voice in making them.' " as mrs. godwin retired to her seat, she was greeted with the heartiest applause of the evening, and as there were no further responses to the chairman's call for questions or remarks, he declared the meeting adjourned. 9f: h< :4: :{: :{c as they were making their way out of the big room, crandall called to barr to wait a moment, and taking hammer harry by the arm, told him that he wanted him to be a witness to what would take place. "what is it, jackie?" said barr, as they came up; "seems to me you look rather solemn." "well, barr, i want to say something that i hope equal suffrage for women 89 won't give offence; but it seems to me it's got to be said. i do wish you would try to introduce the speakers with out running off any of your old jokes. it sort of jars on my nerves, and i'm afraid some of them won't like it." "why, bless your soul, jackie," returned barr, who was more surprised than hurt. "don't you know me well enough to know that that's just my way? i don't mean anything by it, — and sometimes, like to-night, it seems to help the lecturer to get right into the subject. but if you think they don't like it, — why, i'll try to reform. you remember what strong said about my needing my daily joke. i guess it's born in me, and will have to work its way out. but, say, jackie ; here's a compromise ; suppose you preside at the rest of the meet ings. that will suit me fine." but to this crandall demurred; and upon appealing to hammer for support, was surprised to find it very faint-hearted, for the latter said : "i don't know that i can agree with you, john. every body knows barr here, and if he were to try to be solemn on the platform, they would be sure he wasn't well. i think he's doing fine, and i believe in letting well enough alone. besides, don't you remember what the old rhyme says ; it comes from away back, and is full of wisdom : "a little nonsense now and then is relished by the best of men, — and, consequently, women." so crandall was induced to tell barr that he guessed he had made a mistake, and they parted as good friends as ever. chapter v. conference no. 3 : looking toward co-operation. "democracy is nothing less than the life of all by the co operation of all for the welfare of all." — charles zueblin. "let us here highly resolve, that * * * government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." — abraham lincoln. "co-operation is the only remedy for low wages, strikes, lock-outs, and a thousand other impositions and annoyances to which workingmen are subject." — from article in the iron moulders' international journal. "well, the crowd behaved all right, didn't it, davie?" inquired crandall of earr, as the latter joined the group of directors of the building association at the following meeting, after the business which had called them to gether had been disposed of. "and i guess everybody was pleased with the speech, weren't they?" "yes, you managed that all right," replied barr. "the only criticism that i heard was from singleton, who said that he didn't see what such a speech had to do with co-operation, which he understood we were going to make the main part of our winter's campaign." "well, it seemed to me that that was pretty well answered by what miss channing said about the great number of women workers. how did it strike you, hammer?" "that was a good answer, so far as it went," replied the latter ; "but the best thing, to my mind, was what she quoted from wendell phillips; you remember what he said about fighting the great evils of the big cities, — that (90) looking toward co-operation 91 the only hope of doing effective work lay in accomplish ing equal suffrage. i am convinced that that is abso lutely true, and as i cannot stay much longer, i thought i would like to give you what is, to my way of thinking, the only remedy for it." "go ahead. hammer," said barr; "if you have really found the remedy, you surely ought to let us know it, — for everybody else seems to be at sea. is it something that will effect a cure in a week, or will it take as long as a month?" "now, don't try to be funny, barr. the subject is too serious. i only wanted to give you ray thought on it, and you can consider it, or turn it down, just as you please. the evil that phillips referred to is essentially a sin against the family, and there is no place where co operation is so badly needed as right here, in dealing with it. it is something that the heads of the family, — the fathers and the mothers, — of the big cities ought to get together and consider; and they can find the right cure for it, i am sure. they ought to do this for the same reason that they do other work for the family, — for the sake of the boys and the girls, whose welfare is at stake ; and for the sake of the family, whose very life is attacked by this evil. and if they find that the boys and girls are driven into it because they cannot get ahead, — can't get decent promotion, — then they ought to put a stop to such conditions. now, you'll have to excuse me ; but i wanted to leave that thought with you before i went. it's co operation of the highest kind that is wanted here, and that is the only thing that will bring the right result." so saying, he bade the little company good night, and passed out. "what's the matter with hammer, john?" inquired barr,as soon as his footsteps had ceased to re 92 looking forward echo in the hallway. "it seems to me he is looking rather down in the mouth." "you forget the date, barr," replied crandall. "you know that every year at about this time, he wants to get away, and be alone. i think you have mentioned it once or twice before, in other years." "that reminds me, mr. crandall," interrupted the school principal, who was of the group; "would you mind telling me something about your friend? i have wanted to inquire for some time. you know i'm com paratively a newcomer to the place. there seems to be something mysterious about him. in the first place, how did he ever come by such a peculiar name?" "excuse me, mr. sharpe," replied crandall ; "it never occurred to me that you didn't know, or i would have told you, — for such a name must appear odd. it came from what he did at the time of the big boiler explosion at the mill a good many years ago. let's see ; how long ago was it, barr?" "you'd better ask me, mr. crandall," interrupted young strong, the solicitor of the association, who had arrived a few minutes before hammer left. "you see i was a schoolboy at the time, and the accident happened during the noon recess, and i didn't get back to school that day. i heard the explosion and followed the crowd down to the mills, and i saw the whole thing, — that is all that hammer did, and i wouldn't have missed it for a week of school, no matter what the punishment was. it was just twelve years ago last october; i was just past my fifteenth birthday, i remember." "suppose you tell mr. sharpe just what happened, strong. i wasn't able to get there until it was nearly all over. you see it happened at the upper mill, mr. sharpe, and my w.ork at that time was down at the lower mill." looking toward co-operation 93 "well, i don't like to interrupt your telling about it, crandall," replied strong, "but it was one of the finest things i ever saw, and i confess i do like to tell of it. when i got near the mill, i wormed my way, boy-like, through the crowd until i was in the front rank, and then saw that nearly the whole far side of the mill, next to the canal, had been blown out; the walls were down in part, and there was an awful mix-up of building, ma chinery and so on. everybody was excited and all kinds of rumors were going. it was said that over a dozen men were killed and any number hurt. as a matter of fact three men were killed, and about a score wounded, more or less severely. the explosion must have been terrific, for about half of the boiler had been thrown clear across the canal more than a hundred feet and struck with such force against the old silk mill that it knocked in the wall and lay there imbedded. but i must tell you about hammer. i hadn't been there more than a minute or two till i saw him come running up. in another moment he was in the thick of it. it seems that several of the men had been caught under the falling wall and were pinned down there. that's where he got his name. he called for a hammer, and some one brought him the biggest sledge-hammer i ever saw. well, it would have done your heart good to have seen him use that. i never saw such blows struck, and yet he did it with such skill, so those said who were right with him, that no wounded man ran any risk. in a few minutes he was working with a crowbar, prying things up ; then he was lifting the men out. well, if you had seen him working that day, mr. sharpe, you wouldn't wonder that the men all called him hammer harry after that, and they would lie down and let him walk over them, if that would do him any good. oh, yes; i most forgot to tell you about his 94 looking forward getting hurt himself. while he was in the thick of it, part of the roof fell down, and he was struck on the head by a heavy timber; you can see the big scar on his left temple yet, where it struck him a glancing blow. of course his face was covered with blood in a minute, and they called him to drop the hammer and go out for treat ment himself. but he only said : 'it's only a scratch, boys,' and seemed to work all the harder. i remember, every once in a while he would raise his arm and brush the blood away with his shirt sleeve. and it was a pretty bad blow he got, too ; for after it was all over, the doctor had to attend him, and put in several stitches. oh, but it was fine to see a man work that way," concluded strong, who was still young enough to be enthusiastic at times. "thank you, mr. strong," exclaimed the principal when he had finished his story. "no; i do not wonder at the name, now, nor that he seems to be proud of it. but, if the question is not intrusive, — what was the meaning of what you said a few minutes ago to mr. barr, — about his going away at this time of year ; it had a rather odd sound, mr. crandall." "well, i don't wonder that that did seem rather strange to you," replied the latter. "the reason for it runs back nearly twenty years, i think. you see hammer had mar ried several years before that and had as nice a home as any man could wish. after his boy came, i think he was about as happy a man as you could find in a day's travel. 'the little lad,' he used to call him, — sometimes 'laddie,' and he was as handsome a youngster, and as bright, too, as you ever saw. well, when the boy was about six or seven years old, he lost him under rather distressing cir cumstances, and a little later the same year his wife died. it was just about this time of the year that the boy died, looking toward co-operation 95 and every year since then it's been a hard time for him." "and i don't wonder. but what was the cause of the boy's death?" you said " "yes," interrupted crandall; "it was one of those things hard to understand, and harder still to bear. ham mer had built his new house up on the hill two or three years before, — where he still lives, you know. one day he had to go down to the city on a little business, and came back on the late afternoon train. he was in a hurry to get home, so he rode up the hill on the trolley. on the car was a neighbor with her small son with her. the boy was fretful and troublesome, and the mother tired out, so hammer, who was always monstrous fond of children, took him on his lap and entertained him. he couldn't know at that time, neither could she, that the boy was in the first stages of some contagious disease, — diphtheria, i think. well, he helped them off the car at his corner, and then hurried home, and in a moment more his own boy comes jumping into his arms, happy as a king to have him back. in a few days the boy was down with the disease, and in about a week he was dead. what hurt hammer most was the thought that he had carried the disease to the boy himself, but i've often told him that that was pure accident ; but for years he couldn't get over it." "and his wife? you said that she, too " "yes," continued crandall, "she couldn't stand the loss of the boy. they were both wrapped up in him, and she was one of the sensitive, sympathetic kind, and not over strong, either. somehow she couldn't rally from it, — seemed to just sort of weaken from day to day until the end; if any one ever died of a broken heart, she did. well, it went hard with hammer, for inside of his rough exterior he has about the best heart you ever knew. and 96 looking forward even yet, when the time of year comes round when the little fellow died, it goes hard with him. he always wants to go off and be alone awhile. but he'll be all right in a day or two. there are some things about hammer i wish i could tell you, for you would under stand him better, but i'm pledged not to ; so i can't. but one thing you've noticed yourself. he might have grown sullen and morose under his trouble, but there's nothing of that kind about him ; and his good heart shows out in many ways." "there's one other thing you might tell mr. sharpe," said barr, "and that is about his admiration for lincoln. why i believe that hammer knows more about him than most of the historians in our colleges. he's made a regular study of him." "that might be of interest to you, mr. sharpe," said crandall, "and it is interesting to know how it came about. he told me he heard a lecture on 'lincoln as a man' once, and the lecturer spoke of the many sides to his character, and referred to the various ways in which he had suffered. he told especially about the death of his favorite son in the white house and how hard that was for lincoln to bear. hammer said that sort of gave him an insight to his character that he had never had before, and he made up his mind that he would read all about him he could. he has in his bookcases about every biography of lincoln that has ever been published ; two or three shelves of books about lincoln only. and he not only has the books, but he knows what they contain : there's hardly a question about him that you could ask hammer, but what he could tell you off hand." "that is certainly interesting, and i'm glad you told me," replied the school master. "i'm something of an admirer of lincoln, myself; and i will be glad to avail looking toward co-operation 97 myself of the knowledge which you say he has. it was a good idea for him to take up the study of a great char acter like lincoln. it would help us all to do something like that." at this point bruce came up and announced that his cash was all right on the first count. then, addressing barr, he said : "well, what have you arranged for the next meeting, davie? i suppose you and the others here have it all fixed ?" "not yet," replied barr. "i've a notion or two in my head, but i think i had better wait until the rest have had their say. what shall it be, jackie ?" he added, turning to crandall. "i'm sure i don't know, barr. anything will satisfy me, — but i think it ought to have some bearing on co operation. you know that's what we started out with, for this winter's campaign." "we certainly did, jackie," replied barr. "but your reply reminds me of the answer of the old fireman, when the committee waited on him to ask what color he would choose for the new engine house. they couldn't agree among themselves, you know, so they decided to leave it to him. 'well, boys,' he said, 'any color at all will satisfy me, so long as it's red.' so any old subject will satisfy you, providing it's co-operation. what do you say, strong?" "oh, i agree with crandall," replied the young lawyer. "and i think the answer of the old fireman a very good one, too." "so it was," exclaimed barr. "and what is your choice, mr. bruce?" "i agree with crandall, too. and so, i am sure, does mr. sharpe. but tell us about your own plan, barr." gs looking forward "well, strange to say, i agree with the rest of you for once, but i have the speaker selected and his subject, too, if you will all help me to persuade him to do it." "who is it?" inquired crandall, "and what do you want him to speak about?" "you're the man, yourself, jackie," replied barr, with a smile. "and your subject is to be the great american attempt at co-operation, that has been so successful; and there is no one better qualified to speak on it than you." "what in the world, barr?" exclaimed crandall. "what can you mean? i'm no public speaker; and i don't believe i could make anything interesting, so's the people would listen." "you can do it all right, jackie," said barr. "the subject is one that you know all about, and i'll wager you'll keep the people interested. i propose that you tell us about building associations, and as you're the presi dent of one, you can't say that you don't know anything about it, either." "but everybody knows all about them, already," ob jected crandall. "and that's where you make a great mistake, jackie. i'm surprised again and again how little is known about the association by a great many persons, who you would think would be posted." "i believe barr is right," interrupted bruce. "at the bank i frequently have inquiries about the working of the building association from persons who, i thought, knew all about it. and then, as we all know, it is just in the line of co-operation, and is the great american success in that line. when people say to me, as they do once in a while, that co-operation does not seem to be able to succeed in this country, i always ask them what looking toward co-operation 99 they think of the success of building associations; and that generally quiets them on that line of talk." "good for you, mr. bruce," exclaimed barr. "and so we will consider it a unanimous request to jackie to post himself on that subject and let us have it at the next meeting; and so you all vote, do you not?" they all voted that way, except crandall; but a little persuasion from the others induced him to yield, and promise that he would do his best to present the subject barr had selected. "but i don't believe i can take up much time with that subject," he added. and then as another idea occurred to him, he said : "what would you say to this? suppose i ask mrs. mccall if she would tell us about her experience with a building association, just to show how it can be used to help a person when they are in a tight place. some of you know something about that, and it would be worth while for others to know of it." "you might ask her, but she would never do it," replied barr. "she's too timid, and would shrink from the publicity." "i think i can manage that," replied crandall. "it's a pretty good example of co-operation at its best, and i believe that if it was explained to her that her telling about it might help other women in a tight place, she would do it." "suppose you try it, anyway," said sharpe, the school master. "and i'll tell you what i'll do, provided you wish it. i doubt if those two items on the programme will fill up the whole evening, so i'll tell you something in the line of co-operation that i saw this last summer while i was on my vacation. it makes a complete answer loo looking forward to those who think co-operation cannot be made success ful in this country;— as though we americans were in some way different from the rest of the world. but if any one has anything else to ofifer, why i'll wait." "i'm sure we're all indebted to you, mr. sharpe," said barr. "it's a mighty kind offer, and we'll be glad to hear from you. so we can consider the programme arranged for, gentlemen, and i will make the usual announcement in the 'herald.' " chapter vi. co-operation in action. "co-operation depends for its success, not only on its com mercial principles of cash payment and deferred benefit, but on the moral qualities of patience, thrift, and loyalty, which make the character known as the co-operative man." — francis g. peabody. "allez en avant : et la foi vous viendra." — d'alembert. (go forward, and faith will come to you.) "pure co-operation, when well-established, prevents strikes by completely identifying the interests of labor and capital. it stimulates energy and encourages thrift." — richard t. ely. "we are to have the good fortune, my friends," said chairman barr, as he came forward to introduce the first speaker at the next meeting of the workers' club, "of listening this evening to an aggregation of talent, and not to one single lecturer. the first speaker you all know so well that it is not necessary for me to introduce him to you ; but it gives me great pleasure to present your old acquaintance, mr. john crandall, who will address us on a subject to be announced by himself." crandall was not altogether unaccustomed to speaking in public, although his audiences had been heretofore limited for the most part to members of his own church, where he had frequently acted as class leader, and had, for a number of years, been the superintendent of the sunday school. naturally a leader, he did not feel strange on the platform, and began his address in a perfectly easy, natural manner. "mr. chairman, ladies and gentlemen : when my friend barr suggested to our executive committee that (lol) 102 looking forward i present to this meeting the general subject of building associations, i confess that i at first demurred, thinking that everybody in this day knew all about them ; but upon the assurance that i was mistaken in this respect, and believing that we can find no better example of co-opera tion than is furnished by such associations, i waived my objections and consented to do so. if, therefore, i should go over ground already well known to you, i trust you will pardon me, and recall that my remarks are meant for those who do not as yet understand what a building association is. "the first association of this kind in the united states was organized in frankford, philadelphia, in january, 1831, under the name of the oxford provident building association. the early period of growth was from 1840 to 1850, but it is only in comparatively recent times that their assets have reached the enormous figures which are the surprise of all. in 191 1 the total assets amounted to over 1030 millions of dollars, and it is estimated that by the end of 19 12 they exceeded $1,200, 000,000 (twelve hundred millions of dollars). "the method of work, as many of you know, consists in the accumulation of a capital by monthly payments made by the members at a meeting held for that purpose, and to transact other business; and then lending this accumulated capital to the members on real estate security at a certain fixed rate of interest, which interest is payable to the association in equal monthly instalments at the same time the monthly dues are paid. the usual rate of interest is six per cent., although this varies at different times and in different places. the amount that can be loaned on bond and mortgage to any one member is the maturity value of his shares and this is usually $200 per share, although this also varies in different states. co-operation in action 103 "where the maturity value of the shares is $200 the interest per share will be, at the rate of six per cent., $12 per annum, or $1.00 per share per month. so that if a person has ten shares, upon which he borrows on a mort gage $2,000, his annual interest payment would be $120, or ten dollars per month, exactly the same as the monthly payment on his shares; so that his monthly payment to the association, after making the loan, would be $20.00. "a small initiation fee is charged when a member joins, — generally of 25 cents per share. this is to provide the cost of pass books and other starting expenses, and this is usually found to be ample. fines are levied for omitting to pay the monthly dues, and these help swell the available amount of funds for loans. as the interest is paid monthly, it helps to increase the amount that can be loaned, and also makes the association earn com pound interest. the accumulated payments are offered to the members for loans on real estate security at the monthly meetings, being put up and allotted to the highest bidder, very much after the method of an auction sale, — the shareholder offering the highest premium securing the loan, provided the security he offers meets with the ap proval of the directors, after an investigation by a com mittee. the premiums paid for loans can be paid in one sum, or the proportional payment can be made monthly, in which case they go to swell the amount that can be offered to borrowers. as soon as the total monthly pay ments, including dues, interest, premiums and fines amount to a total sum equalling $200 for each outstand ing share, the series is said to have matured, and that amount per share is then paid to those shareholders who have not borrowed on their shares, while to those who have borrowed and who have regularly made their 104 looking forward monthly payments, the cancelled bond and mortgage are returned. "where the rate of interest is six per cent, this term of maturity will, of course, be shorter than where the rate is but live per cent. in an association in which six per cent, is paid for loans, the term of maturity will usually be about eleven or twelve years. suppose it is twelve years. then it is readily seen that the non-borrowing shareholder has paid in $144 per share, and receives in return $200, a gain of $56 per share. in the case of the borrowing shareholder, his payments, if made for the full term of twelve years, would amount to $2,880 for his ten shares, or $880 more than the amount of his mortgage, whereas the interest alone on the mortgage, if unpaid during the term, would have amounted to $1,440. ; "as many of you know, this method of saving, and of paying for homes, has been quite popular here in pleas antville for forty or fifty years past, and a large part of the town has been built up in this way. the whole scheme is really a form of co-operative banking, with the loans made upon approved real estate security. one reason for the great success that has attended this form of co-opera tive association is that the expenses of administration have always been kept at a very moderate figure. another is the regularity of the payments, and the fact that if not made on the date on which they are due, a fine must be paid. patience and thrift are therefore taught at the same time that profits are being secured by this form of co-operation. "the ninth annual report of the united states com missioner of labor, — that for 1893, — is almost exclu sively devoted to the consideration of the building and loan associations of the country, and on this account is invaluable for any one desiring full knowledge on this co-operation in action 105 subject. the edition appears to be exhausted, but until another shall be published copies may be found in the public libraries, and consulted there. in this report the commissioner of labor says : 'the growth of these associations in the united states has been very rapid since 1840, and their accumulated assets have increased to an enormous amount. these private corporations doing a semi-banking business, conducted by men not trained as bankers, offer a study in finance not equalled by any other institutions. england, france and germany and some other countries have kindred institutions, but nowhere have they grown to such vast proportions as in the united states.' "to show how great this growth has been, the figures for 1892 may be compared with those for 191 1. in the former year there were 5,838 associations, having assets amounting to $528,852,885, while in 191 1 there were 6,099 associations, with assets amounting to $1,030, 687,031. "those who arfe in favor of co-operation are some times met with the objection that for some unexplained reason the system of co-operation does not seem to be suited to the american people, as the co-operative efforts do not thrive here. if any of you ever has this old objec tion presented to you, i hope you will remember the remarkable growth of building associations in this coun try, and ask your informant how he can explain that. as you know, this success is due to the spirit of co-opera tion, and to that only; so that we can claim with good reason that one of the greatest successes, — if not in fact, the greatest success, — ever attained by the application of the co-operative idea, has been here in our own country. "i had intended, when i began my address, my friends, to say that if i had not made myself clear, or if any one io6 looking forward had any questions to ask, i would be glad to answer them ; but i have something better than that to propose, and that is that any one who does not understand all about building associations should come around to the next meeting of our association, the home building associa tion, — here in this building, and join us by taking out a few shares. the best way to learn about anything is to do it; and by doing this, you will not only learn all about such associations, but you will be doing yourself a favor that will be of help to you in all the years to come." crandall took his seat amid a round of applause, after which chairman earr beckoned to a little woman who had been sitting on one of the front seats. she made her way around to the entrance to the platform, and joined barr, who immediately presented to the audience as the next speaker, mrs. mccall, "who had," he said, "after much persuasion, consented to come and tell them how the building association, through co-operation, could be of great help to a woman as well as to a man. it gives me great pleasure," he concluded, "to introduce to you, my friends, one whom you know to be among our most worthy citizens, and who takes an interest in every good work amongst us." mrs. mccall, a sweet-faced motherly-sort of woman, was received with cordial applause by the audience, nearly all of whom knew her well. waiting till the room was quiet, she began in a low voice, as follows : "when mr. crandall called and asked me to come here this evening and tell you something about myself, and how a building association had been of help to me, i told him at first that i really could not do it, and that was the way i felt about it. but when he went on and said that the reason why he wanted me to do it was because it might help some other woman who might be co-operation in action 107 situated just as i was, or even worse, — i told him i would think about it, and if i could make up my mind to attempt it, i would let him know. well, i am here, so you know my decision. it was what he said about the other woman that has brought me here ; for if any word of mine can make the way of another, situated as i was, easier for her, then there can be no doubt that i ought to speak it. "many of you will recall the time, nearly twelve years ago now, when my husband was injured at the mill, and his death a few weeks later. i want to say that the owners, and the men too, were as kind to me as they could be ; and help was extended as they thought was right ; and the in surance benefits, due at such times, were also paid. but i had a family of four children, the oldest boy about ten, and the youngest a little over two. some of you know that jim had built a new house only a few months before, and had borrowed $3,000 on it from the building association. the house had a store on the ground floor front, and we were trying to carry on a grocery business, with the help of a young man assistant. well, like any mother would, i wanted to keep my family together ; but before many months it became a question whether i was going to be able to do it. the monthly payments in the association had to be met, of course, and they soon became a burden. then there came a long, dull period at the mills. some of my customers could not pay up; i had some losses, and things were looking very dark to me. "well, as some of you may know, there are things that happen in this town now and then that are hard to ex plain. one evening, when things were looking about as bad as they could, and i was wondering how i could place the children if i was compelled to sell out and give up, one of the children brought home a postal from the io8 looking forward post office, that looked rather mysterious, — for it wasn't signed. it simply had on it this message; 'if you will call at the bank, you will hear of something to your advantage.' that was all. no; you needn't look at mr. bruce that way; he hadn't come to town yet, and knew nothing about it. in fact, i was pledged not to use any names, if i ever told anything about what happened. so i am going to ask you not to try to find out anything about who was concerned in it. the old cashier, whom i saw, is passed on; so you can't see him; and as to any one else, you know as much about him, or them, as i do. "when i called at the bank, this is what happened. the old cashier told me that, while pleasantville was only a manufacturing town and might look hard to a good many who only passed through it on the train, it still had a good many fine people in it. t think you have in your church,' said he ; 'what you call your lookout committee; do you not?' — i answered that we did. 'well,' said he; 'some of the men of this town, — -you mustn't ask me who, for i am pledged to keep their names quiet, so far as i know them, have also formed a 'lookout committee' of their own; and their duty is to be on the look-out for any case that seems to need help, and, where it will be accepted, to extend it. now, the committee may have made a mistake, and if they have, they want to ask your pardon ; but if they have not, and if you need a helping hand over a hard place on the road, they would like to extend that help, and they have honored me by asking me to be their agent in the matter. now, i am a bank cashier, so i get to see a great many cases of money-need, as i call it, — and with me it is a mere matter of business. and if you are willing, i may be able to suggest some way in which you would be will ing to take this help just as a loan is made from the bank, co-operation in action 109 — that is, — to be paid back again, just as soon as you are able ; and with interest, too, if you so wish it ; for i know that a great many persons want to be entirely inde pendent.' "that is about what he told me; and i wish i could make you feel the heavy load it lifted from my mind. it seemed as though a great, big helping hand had been reached out to help me, and just at the time i needed it most. i guess my face must have told him what i felt, — for i couldn't say much. but this is what he did. he asked me how much would see me over till spring, and when i told him about three hundred dollars, he said; 'well, that can be easily arranged by having a note dis counted here. three men well known to our board of directors can be found to endorse it for you, and i am sure the bank will take it. you see, they all knew jim, and are glad to do this for you and him ; but, when you pay it off, you must not ask to see their names, for that is part of the bargain ; when you settle, i will run the pen through your name, and i won't hand the note to you. do you agree to that?' well, of course i did, and it was so arranged. "and now something else strange happened. some how, from that day, business began to pick up, and in a short time we were doing all that we could. men at the mills who had never dealt with us before, and some of whom lived quite a distance away, began to deal regularly with me, and so my trade grew larger and larger. oh, yes; i mustn't forget to tell you another thing that the old cashier asked me to do, that i thought at the time was rather strange. he said he wished i would take out a few more shares in the building asso ciation, — say five or six; and, if necessary, use part of the money borrowed from the bank to make the first pay no looking forward ments. i remember he said he thought that business would soon improve again, and i could no doubt carry them without difficulty, and they would be a safeguard against future trouble. well, i took his advice, although i was half afraid to do it. but things did turn out, as he said ; and i've often wondered whether he didn't know that all that new trade would come to me. "well, that's about all that i have to say, my friends. perhaps i should add that when the note was due the first two or three times, i could not pay the whole amount, but i paid what i could and had no trouble in getting it renewed for the balance. and after it was finally paid off, i am glad to say that i needed no further help. but it has been a good thing to know that there was in this town those who were on the look-out for any case that really needed help. i was able to keep my family together, and send jimmie, who is now of age, through the high school, and he has since been my helper in the store, as many of you know. and all the other children, too, have had all the time at school they needed. when the series of the building association in which i had my stock, matured, i received from the officers the cancelled mortgage, and i tell you it does feel good to own your own home, as many here know. if there was any way that i could thank the men who gave me that help, i would like to do it; but i have no doubt the thought of doing such things is sufficient reward for them; and i feel bound to regard their wish to remain unknown. i thank you for the kind attention you have given me." as the little woman turned and hurried from the plat form, she was followed by a hearty round of applause. the chairman came forward and said : "before introducing the next speaker, i would like to say that the reason why your committee v^^as especially co-operation in action in desirous that mrs. mccall should tell us her story was, aside from the one that she has given, — that it might possibly help some other woman, — this ; that it forms one more good illustration of what co-operation and brother hood can do. you have noticed that it was through the co-operation of several persons that the help she spoke of was extended. any one person might, perhaps, have had the good thought of extending aid, but through the fear that more might be needed than he could afford to do, might decide to do nothing. while if the burden could be shared between several, he would not hesitate to bear his part. and in very many cases, as in this one, no one would need to make any contribution whatever. all that was needed was to show the way how, and to help share the risk, in case failure was met with. let us all wish long life to the 'lookout committee' of pleasant ville, and full success to all its steps toward co-operation." this sentiment was heartily applauded by the audience ; after which chairman barr presented the next speaker, the school principal, mr. sharpe. "mr. chairman, and ladies and gentlemen" ; began the latter as he stepped forward ; "my purpose in addressing you this evening is to direct your attention to the latest and probably the most significant experiment in the direction of co-operation that this country has seen. it is a recent movement, and is as yet but little known to the country at large, yet it is destined, i believe, to play a large part in the introduction of our people to the purposes and methods of co-operation. modelled largely upon those co-operative societies, which have had such remarkable success in england, i believe that this move ment will yet develop into such magnitude that we will not be ashamed to compare it with the work of our english cousins. 112 looking forward "let me tell you how i became acquainted with this great movement. last summer i spent a good part of my summer vacation visiting some friends in the near northwest, by which i mean wisconsin and minnesota. while there my attention was directed to several co operative stores in the large towns which i visited, and also to several creameries and farmers' ware-houses, which i was informed were run on co-operative principles. naturally i took a great deal of interest in these new business departures and made many inquiries; and this is what i learned : "several years ago three men, who had themselves been engaged in commercial business in that section, became interested in the co-operative idea, and began to apply it by organizing co-operative societies for con ducting creameries and warehouses for the farmers, and for managing stores in the towns and cities. they have succeeded so well that by this time there are over twenty thousand families practising co-operative buying and selling in the two states mentioned and the neighboring states. to a large extent these families have -solved the problem of the high cost of living and are getting their supplies of all kinds from 8 to lo per cent, cheaper than their neighbors who are not interested in this plan. "they have organized their business on the well known rochdale plan ; which is, briefly stated, that profits should be distributed to the persons whose transactions have made the profits possible, after first paying a moder ate interest rate to the stockholders for the capital invested. and it has been found that this plan applies as well to farmers desiring to sell their produce, as it does to towns-people desiring to buy the produce of the farm, or the goods from the manufactory. "about two years ago the wisconsin legislature ap co-operation in action 113 pointed a committee to investigate economic conditions and propose legislation. this committee sent a repre sentative abroad to study co-operation at close range. one of the most interesting countries whose conditions he studied was denmark, where he found co-operative societies at their best. his report shows that co-opera tion and education have raised denmark, in less than a century, from being one of the most impoverished coun tries in europe to a population of two and a half millions, with 250 millions of dollars in their savings banks ; that 90 per cent, of the farmers own their own farms ; and that the nation exports over 90 millions of dollars worth of butter, meat and eggs every year. his report has given a great stimulus to the growth of the co-operative movement in the northwest. "in england this representative studied the organiza tion of the co-operative stores, whose success has been so remarkable. while there he was asked by one of the leaders of the co-operative movement in scotland : 'but why do you come here to study the co-operative store, when you have some of the best examples in your own state of wisconsin, and a center in minneapolis, in the office of the right relationship league, where the most advanced methods known to co-operation are taught?' "in this way his attention was centered upon the move ment of which i learned something last summer, and which i have been studying since. it was started about six years ago, (in 1906) and has been so successful that in this time they have organized about two hundred stores, creameries, etc., and are establishing new ones at the rate of two or three per month. in 191 1 the stores then organized were doing business of over $7,000,000 per annum. the total capitalization at that time was 114 looking forward about $2,000,000, and the profits distributed in 191 1 among the customers of the stores in proportion to the business done by each was over $500,000, making a net saving of over 8 per cent, on the entire purchases of twenty thousand famihes. "mr. e. m. tousley, the secretary of the right rela tionship league, referring to the usual method of estab lishing these stores, states that, with hardly an exception the co-operative stores in the northwest have not been established as new stores, but have been founded by the organizers buying up existing business establishments. "among the most important rules adopted by these co-operative societies are the following; that the society shall have the first right to buy any shares that the owner may wish to sell ; that all goods shall be sold for cash at the ruling market price ; that a depreciation account shall be kept, and also a surplus profit account, to which a portion of the profits shall be carried before any dividend is declared; that all profits in excess of the amount paid as interest on the capital and the amount carried to surplus account, shall be paid to the customers of the store, in proportion to the amount of their purchases as shown by the sales-slips furnished when the purchases are made, and to the clerks and employees, counting the amount of their salaries the same as patronage; that the directors shall be paid for attending the regular direc tors' meetings, and shall forfeit their office for failure to attend, without a good excuse. "as a general thing, sales are made for cash only; but some of the rural stores are compelled to take the butter and eggs offered them by their customers, but they pay for these in cash, instead of in trade. cutting prices below the ruling price is not approved. the cus tomer pays as much at the co-operative store as at the co-operation in action 115 individual merchant's store ; but when he makes the pur chase receives a sales-shp, which entitles its holder to his share of the profits of the business. "the returns already made to the share-holders and the purchasers in the past few years abundantly prove that well-conducted co-operative stores will show profits in this country as well as abroad. and they have done this notwithstanding the fact that it is a principle of co-opera tion as they have it in the northwest to pay the highest salaries that are consistent with good business methods, and not to allow their employees to be overworked. no manager of a co-operative store is allowed to make his son or daughter work for him without pay, as is some times done by the individual storekeeper. "one of the most important sources of saving in the operation of the co-operative store is found in their ability to take the cash discounts, which the wholesaler is nearly always ready to grant. as an instance of the value of this source of saving, one of the stores saved $281 in one month by paying cash for purchases, while another in the same period saved $129 in the same way. as the effort is usually successful to start these stores with ample cap ital for the business expected, it is made possible for the management to take advantage of this method of saving. in a number of instances the volume of business has largely increased after passing into the control of the co-operative society. "like the movement in great britain, this movement in the northwest has for its purpose much more than a mere effort to gain material advantage. this is illus trated in the case of a small town in minnesota, in which the population is almost entirely scandinavian. there it has taken the form of bringing the women together — first as members of a committee to criticise the manage ii6 looking forward ment of the co-operative store, and then in efforts for the general social service of the whole community. the store in this place was the first to establish a woman's rest room, and later it installed two traveling libraries, one in english and one in swedish, as a free service to the people of the town. "nearly all the co-operative stores maintain educa tional departments, for which they appropriate funds; and the new law in the state of wisconsin sanctions the use of five per cent, of the revenues for this purpose ; and this money is spent in spreading information of this movement through the excellent monthly magazine 'co operation,' which is published by the right-relationship league, and also in public lectures and courses in farm ing and general business.* "the state of wisconsin is the first to recognize the present value and future possibilities of this movement for co-operation, and has adopted a law which embodies the best features of the english rochdale co-operative methods. it seems certain that, as its good results, not only financially, but educationally and morally, become more and more widely known, it will spread until it shall finally be known by the good it does, in all sections of our country. these countrymen of ours in the north west have done for us what the rochdale pioneers did for the people of england sixty years ago — proved the practicability of co-operation, and set an example which may be followed by all our people to their great advan tage in every possible way.** *the text of the co-operative association law, adopted by the state of wisconsin in 191 1, will be found in the appendix. **"co-operation, a magazine of economic progress,'' is published monthly by the co-operative education bureau, 1123 metropolitan life building, minneapolis, minn. mr. e. m. tousley is the editor. sub scription; $1.00 per annum. co-operation in action 117 "before asking your attention to the great results ac complished in great britain, will you allow me to read a few paragraphs from a recent article in the magazine just referred to, 'co-operation,' written by the editor, mr. e. m. tousley, one of the most active of the amer ican pioneers in this movement. speaking of the rela tions of labor and capital, and the true basis for the dis tribution of profits, he says : 'in every commercial and industrial transaction three factors produce or create wealth or profits, so-called ; namely, capital, labor and patronage. no one or two of those factors can produce wealth without the other. should the interests of capital be abnormally developed by the granting to it of special privileges which are not enjoyed by labor and patronage, the result will be the domination of the people by capital and the consequent weakening of the masses, the workers and con sumers, by injustice and poverty. 'the vital question is as to how the resulting wealth or profits created by the fair and natural co-operation of capital, labor and patronage may be equitably divided, so that no one of the three elements shall have special privileges or become abnor mally developed. the principles laid down by the rochdale pioneers in the co-operative program answers the question fully and justly. that answer is that, inasmuch as capital is a thing and not a human being, give it a just compensation for its use and no more. what is a just compensation? some one may ask. what is the measuring stick? capitalists themselves fix this measuring stick by being willing to loan their money at an interest rate of from three to six per cent, per annum. * * * 'after this has been paid there is a surplus left. to whom does it belong? 'obviously it belongs jointly to the wage earners, who per formed the work for the enterprise, and to the patrons who purchased its products. if the surplus on hand equals any certain per cent, of the total amount of the business transacted, such per cent, must become the measuring stick with which to equitably distribute the surplus among the patrons and the employees, — units of the brotherhood, — in proportion as each ii8 looking forward has patronized the organization, counting wages or salaries paid to employees, — the ordinary competitive wage scale, — the same as business transacted by them. 'if not satisfied with this distribution of the profits created by the co-operation of capital, labor and patronage, will some one kindly furnish a better measuring stick? if such an adjust ment in the industrial, commercial and labor world would not soon abolish the war between capital and labor, and would not soon solve much of the problem of the high cost of living, and would not soon create a more perfect business, social and political system in every community, will some one present a better plan? 'but,' says some one, 'this is socialism.' no, it is not social ism. socialism is political action, and therefore means forcing at least a large minority of the people to do as a majority may dictate through laws enacted and enforced by a political party; and, besides, it has in it a threat of the confiscation of capital. 'the whole program of co-operation is voluntary, and with out voluntary action by each participant it would not be co operation at all. industrial co-operation is the only alternative between dominant capitalism and revolutionary syndicalism. capital must be brought to see the justice and the social and economic gain in the program of voluntary co-operation, and to willingly join its forces with workers and consumers in the building up of a more perfect and equitable social, economic and political state. the writer believes that capitalists are ready or almost ready to meet co-operators half-way on such a basis.' "in those few paragraphs, my friends, you have one of the clearest statements of the purposes and methods of co-operation that has been made ; and we may all re joice that such just principles and methods are now being successfully apphed in our country. a beginning has been made, and no man can tell how great the future results will be. now let us compare this statement with the original principles as stated by the english pioneers in 1855. as stated by them, these principles were: 'i : — that human society is a brotherhood, not a collection of warring atoms. co-operation in action 119 '2: — that true workers should be fellow workers, not rivals. '3:— that a principle of justice and not selfishness should regulate exchanges. "how they attempt to carry out these principles may be seen in this declaration of the english co-operative union, which embraces over six hundred societies; 'this union is formed to promote the practice of truthful ness, justice and economy in production and exchange: 'i : — by the abolition of all false dealing, either (a) direct, by representing any article produced or sold to be other than what it is known to the producer or vendor to be; or (b) in direct, by concealing from the purchaser any fact known to the vendor, material to be known by the purchaser, to enable him to judge of the value of the article purchased. '2: — by conciliating the conflicting interests of the capitalist, the worker and the purchaser, through an equitable division amongst them of the fund commonly known as profit. 'by preventing the waste of labor now caused by unregulated competition.' "you see at once how fully in harmony with these principles and methods are those of the american co operators of the northwest, which i have outlined to you. and you know of the marvelous progress of co operation in england; how the movement, started in an humble way by the rochdale pioneers in 1844, has de veloped into hundreds of co-operative stores and great wholesale societies, engaged not only in selling, but in many cases in manufacturing goods amounting in value to millions of pounds sterling. a recent letter from mr. william maxwell, president of the scottish wholesale society, says that the sales in the united kingdom for 1910 amounted to the enormous total of £118,448,910 (nearly $600,000,000), and the profits for the same i20 looking forward year were £11,250,718 (about $55,000,000). the total number of employes in 1909 exceeded 80,000. "as to the higher purposes of co-operation, there have been few better statements than that made by pro fessor marshall at the co-operative congress held at ipswich in 1889. in the course of his inaugural address he said : 'the cardinal doctrines of its faith are, firstly, the production of fine human beings, and not the production of rich goods, as the ultimate aim of all worthy endeavor. secondly, he who lives and works only for himself, or even only for himself and his family, leads an incomplete life; to complete it he needs to work with others for some broad and high aim.' "with these good words, expressing the best purpose of this great movement, i leave the subject with you for your further thought." hardly had the chairman announced that the subject was open for discussion, when young strong was on his feet claiming recognition : "mr. chairman," he began; "only this last week i ran across something in my reading that interested me greatly, and as it is in direct line with what our speakers have brought us this evening, i would like to present it. i was reading a weekly magazine which i have taken ever since i was a boy, when i saw an article on what co operation had done in the past few years for the farmers of ireland. strange to say, it was written by one whose early experience had been in the central western part of our own country, and his article was intended to call atten tion to what he considers a greatly needed work in this country among our farmers. he says that this is what has been accomplished in ireland; i copied a few words, co-operation in action 121 thinking they would be of interest here this evening ; he says : 'in a little more than twenty years, against tremendous diffi culties, in an atmosphere charged with religious and political animosities, a peace-making movement based on the principle of self-help by mutual help has been built up. all creeds and parties leave their religious and political differences outside. more than nine hundred farmers' co-operative societies, with about a hundred thousand members, are doing a business of about fifteen millions of dollars a year.'* "this is a record of progress which seems to me most remarkable. if that could be done in ireland in the face of the difficulties mentioned by the writer, what might not be done in this country, where the conditions do not present such obstacles. there has been a movement here to make it easier for our farmers to get needed accom modation from those having money to lend, and the systems of co-operative banking which have done such a great work in germany have been studied at close range by parties interested, who have reported to our govern ment, and it is altogether likely that some plan, closely following the raffeisen plan or the schultze-delitsch plan of co-operative banks will be adopted here. as i listened to my friend, crandall, explaining how the build ing associations worked for the good of the people in the towns and cities, i could not help wondering whether some modification of this plan of small monthly pay ments, with possible large loans on real estate security at moderate rates of interest, might not meet the needs of our farmers. "while i am on my feet, will you allow me to call your *from article on "co-operation and country life." by sir horace plunkett: in "youth's companion," feb. 6, 1913 12^ looking forward attention to an interesting fact connected with the capital getting for the english co-operative stores ? i have read, and have also heard from one or two who knew these stores when they lived in england, that some of the share holders in the early days, — and i understand that the practice still continues, — paid for their shares of stock in small monthly payments, thus combining the building association principle with the ownership of stock in the co-operative undertaking. this is a thought that may help in the establishment of such a form of co-operation in this country. we are so well acquainted, generally, with this latter plan, that the use of it in connection with the other should be quite readily adopted." "and that reminds me, mr. chairman" ; said crandall, rising as strong took his seat; "of a question that arose in my mind while mr. sharpe was lecturing to us. why is it not possible for us to have just that kind of a store here in this town? i don't have any feeling against the middleman, such as you sometimes read about. as a general thing he is a citizen who pays his taxes, some times owns his own store, and renders good service to the town in which he lives. but recently it has happened, and i think is happening more and more, that new stores are being started by big corporations that have no interest in the towns as residents or property holders ; and as against this class of merchants, it seems to me we would be doing ourselves a good turn if we would try the plan described by mr. sharpe. no doubt we could find one or more of our own men here who would be glad to sell out to us, just as the men in the northwest found mer chants there glad to sell out." as crandall was about taking his seat, he was inter rupted by a stage whisper from hammer harry, which, as usual, was heard all over the room; "why don't you co-operation in action 123 make a motion to appoint a committee to consider the question, and report at the next meeting?" "why, so i will" ; he replied, and made the motion, which was seconded by two or three, and declared carried unanimously. the chairman appointed crandall, ham mer harry and young strong on this committee, with power to add to their number, making the suggestion that they try to find a committee of housekeepers who would work with them in completing the arrangements. "you can't get along in work of this kind," he concluded, "unless you have the co-operation of the women." as the chair was about to announce that the meeting stood adjourned, his eye was caught by cashier bruce, who spoke briefly, as follows : "mr. chairman, will you kindly allow me a few min utes? i wish to make a comparison that is frequently overlooked. some persons who hear of co-operation for the first time, and who do not care for innovations, think they are opposed to it. in many cases, if they will only take the time to think, they will find that by practice, — i mean by their own practice, — they are in favor of it. that is to say, we are all of us in favor of that form of co-operation with which we are familiar, which serves us, and which is profitable to us. for instance, we would find it difficult to discover any one in this town who is opposed to building associations, which apply the prin ciples of true co-ope"ration so successfully right here in our midst, and which have benefited so many of us. another instance, which i may cite, is the savings bank, the work of which everyone favors, and which is so true a form of co-operation that there is no capital employed whatever, in the strict form of such banks, where all profit is divided between the labor employed and the patronage; — to the former in the shape of salaries, and 124 looking forward to the latter in the shape of interest on the amount de posited. from this i conclude that in those cases where we understand the form of co-operation, we favor it heartily. let us therefore not be afraid to study it, when it presents itself to us in new forms. "in conclusion i would say that i was much interested in what mr. strong said about the possible application of the building association principle to the farmers' loan movement; and it may be of interest to him, as well as to the others present to know that a friend of mine, a man of many years' experience in the banking business, who has made a study of the various methods used in the leading countries on the continent in advanc ing such loans to the farmers, is of the opinion that the method adopted in france, through the agency of the credit foncier, is practically the application of our building association principle to that problem. having an interest in the subject, i wrote him recently, and in his reply he not only confirmed this statement, but added that for some years past the large trust company with which he is connected has been making moderate loans, when well secured by first mortgage, to farmers, allow ing a long term for the re-payment, charging a moderate rate per cent, for interest and also making a charge an nually for the expense of carrying such loans. "as an illustration of the way in which this plan would work out on a mortgage loan for $i,ooo. — i was in formed that the annual payment would be $80.00, — for a thirty year loan; and if the payments are kept up, at the expiration of the term, the loan is paid, the mortgage cancelled, and the obligation returned. on such a loan, the annual expenses are rated at $7.73, making in 30 years a total of $231.90; the principal of $1,000, — is repaid, and also a payment made for interest amounting co-operation in action 125 to $1,168.10, — or an average rate per cent, for the term of less than four per cent. by making some reduction in the item of expense, — which seems to be a little high, — the annual payment for the extinction of the debt could possibly be reduced. but the illustration as i give it to you, will serve to show how readily the building associa tion ideas can be applied to the problem of making mort gage loans for long terms at very moderate rates of interest to farmers who desire such accommodation; and the risk involved would in most cases be no greater than the risks taken by the average building association." as there was no response when chairman barr invited further remarks, he declared the meeting adjourned. ♦the co-operative education bureau, 1123 metropolitan life build ing, minneapolis, minn., publishes the monthly magazine "co-operation," — subscription, $1.00 per year, and also a series of valuable tracts on co-operation, which can be used to advantage in spreading informa tion of this great movement. chapter vii. conference no. iv; the question as to "how." "to will and not to do, where there is opportunity, is in reality not to will; and to love what is good and not to do it when it is possible, is in reality not to love it. will which stops short of action, and love which does not do the good that is loved, is a mere thought separate from will and love, which vanishes and comes to nothing." — suredenborg. "for good thoughts are no better than good dreams, unless they be executed." — emerson. "i always thought that the man who made the corn should eat the corn." — lincoln. after the transaction of the routine work of the board of directors of the home building association at their next meeting, it was found that an unusual number of members of the board was present. this was due to the fact that strong and bruce had quietly passed the word to the other members that something interesting in the way of an examination of hammer harry's knowledege of lincoln was apt to take place, as they had heard prin cipal sharpe say that there were one or two questions that he wanted to ask him. of course they had kept this quiet from the two most interested, so that it was not strange that hammer should remark, as he noticed the increased attendance : "it looks as though things in the building associa tion line were looking up; we haven't had a meeting as full as this since i can remember. what's done it, jackie ? been offering premiums for the members to turn out?" "not so far as i know. hammer. perhaps some of them thought you would entertain us with a few new lincoln stories." (126) the question as to "how" 127 "well, i can't do that," replied hammer; "all my new stories are old ones. but, by the rule of contraries, this attendance does remind me of one of the old ones; but it's so old that i'm sure you've all heard it." "go ahead, hammer" ; interrupted barr. "all your lincoln stories are good, no matter how often we've heard them. sometimes an old story is like an old friend ; you don't turn him down because you've met him before, but are all the more pleased to see him." "well, if you can stand it, i can. the story was of the time, early in the war, when lincoln was being pestered every day with applications for office by everybody, and he said one night after a mighty hard day, that he wished sometimes he had the smallpox, so that he might have something he could give everybody." "i'm glad to hear you tell that old story, mr. smith," said the school principal; "because that serves to verify it. i've heard that one questioned ; but as you give it, i have no doubt of its genuineness. by the way, i've heard some one say that you once saw president lincoln. is that so ; and would you be willing to tell us the circum stance?" "i'll be glad to" ; replied hammer, who was now in his element. "i can't say that i ever saw 'president' lin coln, for he was not yet president when i saw him, but he was so near it, that i always think of him as president at the time. it was when he made that great speech, — one of his shortest, too — in front of independence hall in philadelphia. i was a youngster not quite twelve years old; but my father was an enthusiastic lincoln man from the first, and so when my uncle harry, for whom i was named, who was then living in that city, wrote and asked if i couldn't come down and go with him to see the new president, both father and mother 128 looking forward said i must go; and of course, i was wild to go. i remember my mother said at first that it wouldn't do, because i would lose too much time from school, but father said i had better miss a week's schooling than miss that. so they put me on the train in charge of the conductor one afternoon, and uncle harry met me at the station. well, some of you may remember that right across the street from the old hall there used to be a hotel called the american house. it seemed that uncle harry knew one of the men in charge pretty well, so he took me there, and we had a good supper; and then he told me that old abe, as everybody called him then, was up the street at the continental hotel, only three squares" away, and that early the next morning, just at sunrise, he was going to raise the flag on independence hall, and that we were going to see him do it. well, you can imagine how pleased i was. so he got me to go to bed early, and i was soon fast asleep. then, what do you suppose that fellow did?" "give it up, harry"; replied barr. "what was it?" "well, as soon as i was asleep, he left me in charge of one of the maids in the place, and went up to the contin ental to see if he could catch sight of the president. he told me so afterwards; but i told him i didn't care; it's just what i would have done, if i'd been old enough. well, while it was still dark the next morning, he had me up, and by daylight, or mighty soon after, we went right across the street and got near the stand on which the president was to speak. pretty soon we heard the parade coming down chestnut street, and in a little while lin coln and the mayor of the city and some others went up on the platform, which some soldiers, — they called them 'the scott's legion,' i think, — came and surrounded, but uncle harry and i got just as close as we could, and the question as to "how" 129 i heard everything he said, and saw every movement he made as he pulled the flag up into its place. i remember there was an old man-of-war's man there from the big ship yard above the city, to give any help with the ropes, if any was needed. my; how i did watch lincoln; and once i thought there was going to be trouble, too; for there was a little kink in the rope as he was pulling the flag up, and i was afraid that it wouldn't go up. but lincoln wasn't troubled ; he just worked a minute or two with the ropes, as cool as you please, and in a minute the flag went sailing up into its place as nice as could be. that was how i came to see lincoln; and i've always been thankful to my uncle for taking me there, and to my father and mother for making it easy for me to go. as things turned out, it was the only time i could have seen him, too." "how was that, mr. smith?" inquired bruce, who had finished counting his cash, and was an interested listener to hammer's story. "well, my uncle harry enlisted, and lost his life at gettysburg; and father never got to washington during the war; so you see that was my only chance." "well, i'm sure we're all indebted to you for telling us that" ; said the school principal. "recently i ran across a new story of lincoln, — at least, new to me, and i wonder if you can tell me whether it is genuine." "i'd be glad to hear it," replied hammer. "but as to its being genuine or not, i'm not an authority ; so i wouldn't like to attempt to settle a question of that kind." "well, let me have your opinion, at least," said sharpe. "the story comes to light by way of san fran cisco, and as that is pretty far from the scene of action mentioned, it may or may not be true; still, it bears the i30 looking forward marks of probability. the story goes that on one occa sion senator stephen a. douglass, 'the little giant' of those days, addressed a large meeting at springfield, illinois, in support of his theories and policies, and appar ently with telling effect. the next morning mr. lincoln entered a local store, falling incidentally into free talk with a young man of nineteen or twenty who was serv ing as salesman behind the counter. t don't think, mr. lincoln,' said the youth, 'that you or anybody can meet mr. douglass' arguments. why, mr. lincoln,' his voice rising to the pitch of enthusiasm, 'that was the greatest speech ever made in springfield. and mr. douglass is the greatest man in the united states.' after his delib erate fashion, mr. lincoln replied : 'my young friend, i agree with you to this extent, that the speech was in its way a formidable one. it was adroitly conceived and brilliantly spoken. but it was not a great speech, and judge douglass is not a great man. it was not a great speech because there were involved in it as fundamental to its argument, three misstatements of fact; judge douglass is not a great man because he knew that what he said was not the truth.' "* "well, that's very interesting," said hammer harry, as sharpe paused ; "and it's new to me. it sounds as though it might be true, too ; for it has the lincoln dependence upon the truth. if there ever was a man who put the truth in the first place, and not in the second, it was lincoln. your story reminds me of one that is well authenticated. it gives his own estimate of himself, and is interesting on that account. have you ever heard it?" "i don't think i have. i can't recall any one in which he made an estimate of his own powers." ♦from the san francisco "argonaut," december, 1912. the question as to "how" 131 "well, the story goes that one day, when a group of his political friends was gathered at the white house, some one made a statement that he was the greatest leader in his party, and the logical candidate for the nomination in 1861. lincoln couldn't stand that. he objected and said: 'no; there were other abler and better known men than i; there was seward, a college man, and a greater scholar than i will ever be ; and there were chase, and a half dozen more, all as able as i, or better equipped. but yet,' he added, 'there was one respect in which, perhaps, i excelled them all; yes, i guess there was one quality i had in which i was better equipped than any of them.' he was asked what that was, and his reply shows how great he was ; how modest in his self-estimate, and yet how great in intellect, as see ing what was most needed at that hour. his reply was : 'well, i think perhaps i was a little better calculated to hold the north and west together than any one else at that time. i had grown up in the west and i knew it like a book ; and i knew the east and the north fairly well, having been to washington and also down east. yes, i guess i was better fitted to hold the two sections together than any one else at that time.' " "that is certainly most interesting, mr. smith," said the school principal. "and now, may i ask you about another little story which seems to come into line with the addresses we have been having this winter in the club. this is to the effect that on one occasion, when talking with a friend, lincoln said : 'i always thought that the man who made the corn should eat the corn.' do you know whether that is a true story, and the name of the party he said it to?" "that's genuine enough," replied hammer; "it's a true lincoln story, and i can tell you just where you can find 132 looking forward it. one of the best lincoln books that i know of is called 'reminiscences of abraham lincoln.' it was written by the personal and political friends of the president and the book was edited by allen thorndike rice, who was, at the time, the editor of the 'north american review.' it occurred to him that the contemporaries of lincoln were fast disappearing from the scene of action, and that the world ought to have their estimate of him in an enduring form. so he induced them to write their reminiscences of him, and this volume is the result. if i couldn't get another copy, i wouldn't take a hundred dollars for mine. i've read it oftener than any other book i have. that story is in the article written by cassius m. clay, and he says that lincoln used those very words to him, himself.* clay thought that they meant a great deal as to lincoln's opinion of slavery, and maybe they did ; but i have thought that they were the expression of his sense of jus tice on the subject of labor and capital. it's really the same thought that is deep down in the heart of every man, when he is honest with himself; 'the man who makes the corn ought to eat the corn' ; and i don't believe that the labor question will be settled until it is settled on that basis. there is something else on the same line that lincoln said, — ^but i guess i'm doing more than my share of talking, so i'll shut up." "go on, mr. smith," urged the principal, "i'm sure we're all very much interested in what you're saying, and you've just struck an important question." the others also urged hammer to go on, and after a slight pause, he continued : "well, i don't like to do all the talking, boys. i'll give *see article by cassius m. clay in "reminiscences of abraham lincoln by distinguished men of his time." edited by allen thorn dike rice; published by the "north american review"; 1888; page 297. the question as to "how" 133 you this, and then i'm done. i was reading the article written by george s. boutwell, published in the same book, and he said that on one occasion lincoln said some thing about the relations of labor and capital, that has a good deal of meaning now for all of us. i have never met the same thing anywhere else, but as boutwell quotes it over his own name, i have no doubt that it is from one of lincoln's speeches. i copied out the words, for i thought i might have a chance to use them at one of the discussions after a lecture, — but i would just as lief give them to you now. here they are," and he drew from his vest pocket a slip of paper and read these words : 'labor is prior to, and independent of capital. capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed, if labor had not first existed. labor is the support of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.'* "now, the date that boutwell attaches to that utter ance is interesting, for it is in the period of agitation that led up to the formation of the great party which put lincoln twice in the white house to do his great work. it is 1854; it might pay you, mr. sharpe, — for i see you're interested in lincoln, — to look up just the par ticular occasion of those v^^ords, and let us know." "that would be a very interesting quest, mr. smith," replied the principal; "i'll see what i can do about it." "now, gentlemen," interrupted crandall, "this is mighty interesting, i know ; but we might spend the night here 'swapping these stories,' as lincoln used to say, and that wouldn't suit me a little bit, — for there's a busy day *see article by gearge s. boutwell in "reminiscences of abraham lincoln by distinguished men of his time." edited by allen thorn dike rice; published by the "north american review"; 1888; page 129. 134 looking forward ahead of me to-morrow. barr, suppose you tell us what you have arranged for the next meeting." "i haven't done a thing, jackie. i declare, i'm clean stumped. i know what the people want, but i don't know who can give it to us," replied barr. "well, tell us what they want ; maybe we can find some way of getting it for them." "it's a strange thing to me," rephed barr; "but since the last meeting no less than four or five different persons have said about the same thing to me, and i suppose that means that a good many more have the same idea in their heads. they say : 'it's all very nice to tell us about co-operation and what it has done here and there, but what we would like to know is, how are we to get the capital to make the start? and that's what stumps me. now, can anyone tell me the answer ?" there was a slight pause, and then bruce spoke up: "it don't seem to me that that is as difficult as it looks at first sight, barr. you see," ^but barr quickly inter rupted with : "you're just the very man i've been looking for. now, don't tell it to me, but keep it for the meeting. what do you say, gentlemen; isn't mr. bruce just the one to give us the next address?" to this there was general assent, in spite of bruce's protestations that no one would be interested in anything he might say, that no one would come to the meeting, etc. he discovered too late that he had made a mistake in speaking as he did, and was finally compelled to yield and consent to make the address. to encourage him, barr said : "don't you worry about the meeting being well at tended, mr. bruce. let that rest in my hands. i'll see that you have the record attendance; and i guess that the question as to "how" 135 crandall and hammer will see that the crowd behaves all right. they're experts in that line, you know." as the company was about to separate, barr turned to hammer and said : "there's a question i want to ask you, old man ; for i think you're the one who can answer it. what did mrs. mccall mean at the last meeting by what she said about that 'lookout committee?' do you know anything about it?" "i guess you'll have to ask crandall about that, davie," replied hammer, and endeavored to pass by barr and leave the room. but crandall heard the question, and the fencing reply hammer had given, and at once took up the thread of talk by saying to barr : "why, that's one of those queer and curious things, davie, that i can explain to you later. but talking about queer things, i heard the other day one of the strangest about you that i've ever met yet" ; and in reply to barr's urgent demand for enlightenment, he continued : "well, the party that told me about it said that on the down train one morning last week, the honorable and worthy conductor, one certain david barr, seemed all of a sudden to lose his head. my informant said that he had just got on the train, and was about to hand you his ticket, when you suddenly dashed away from him, ran at top speed through the car, and then on through the next, and he thought also through another; and acted alto gether as though you had suddenly lost your wits. of course you don't have to explain to us ; but it did look a little queer, didn't it?" "yes," replied barr, "looks queer, till you know the reason why; then it's simple enough. just as i gave the signal to go ahead, the station agent handed me a tele gram, which i felt sure was the regular notice to stop at 136 looking forward bell's crossing for the express to go by. but when i read it, i saw that the regular orders had all been changed for some reason, and we had to stop two stations further up the road. so i couldn't stop to be nice and polite ; i just had to get forward and see that the orders had got into jim's hand, and into his head, too; so that he wouldn't go sailing by. sorry, if i hurt your friend's feelings." "not at all, barr. he is big enough to know that you had some good reason for your hurry. but you'll admit it did look a little queer to an outsider. it reminds me of what a friend of mine once said about being 'peculiar.' it was one of the best things i ever heard, too." "well, tell us, jackie," said barr, half-pleased again to have the attention directed from himself. "i'm sure we will be delighted to hear from a friend of yours." "now, don't write it down 'sarcastic,' davie," replied crandall. "my friend's remark was worth hearing, even if he was my friend. he was speaking about some old party, who had the reputation of being rather eccentric, and he said : 'they say he's peculiar ; but that don't mean anything; all of us are more or less peculiar; only we see the other fellow's peculiarity easier than we do our own ; and of course that's natural.' " "and that reminds me," added barr, now thoroughly mollified by crandall's tact, "of the story of the old quaker gentleman, who said to his good wife one day: 'rachel, it seems to me, that everybody is queer, except ing thee and me'; and then added, as a second thought came to the rescue, 'and sometimes i think thee is a little queer.' " in the laugh that followed, the group separated; and as crandall and hammer walked together out the pike, the former laughed and said : the question as to "how" 137 "yes, he pretty near had you that time, hammer. but i've never known the old rule to fail. when a man gets too curious about your affairs, turn the curiosity on him just as soon as you can. he will be so much taken up with his own business then that he'll forget yours. it certainly acted like a charm with davie ; and i declare i was afraid every moment he would see what i was driving at." chapter viii. co-operation through legislation : how ? "it was once thought that corporations could not succeed, but the inherent advantages of corporate industry after a long struggle have made themselves manifest, and corporations are crushing out the individual. it is believed by some that the inherent advantages of co-operation will sooner or later make themselves felt, and that after a period of adversity, of struggle, and of slowly increasing success, co-operation will finally gain industrial supremacy, thus uniting harmoniously labor and capital and ushering in an era of industrial democracy." — richard t. ely. "sometimes, again, industrial peace is actually established within a limited circle, as in the substitution of mutual interest for commercial antagonism in the co-operative system." — francis g. peabody. "every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm." — emerson. on the evening of the next meeting of the workers' club, an audience as large as the meeting place would accommodate was awaiting chairman barr and the speaker of the evening at the hour announced in the columns of the "herald." barr and several members of his committee had been active in giving notice of the meeting, and a few days before the date fixed upon had mailed postal cards, bearing the following unique an nouncement, to all the members of the club and to the leading citizens of the town : "how? how? how?" if some one should offer to tell you how to accomplish something that you wanted very (138) how? 139 much to do, don't you think you would give him the chance? well, we rather guess you would. so, of course, you will want to come to the next meeting of the workers' club, to be held at the club house next tuesday evening, the 7th inst., at 7.30 o'clock, sharp. an invitation to do so is hereby extended by the executive committee of the club. please extend notice of this meeting to others. executive committee workers' club. promptly at the hour mentioned, chairman barr and mr. bruce appeared on the platform, and as soon as the preliminary music by the high school glee club had been enjoyed, the chairman proceeded to introduce the speaker : "it is a pleasure to greet so many this evening, my friends, and as it is likely that we will need all the time at our disposal to consider the important subject that has brought us together, we will waste no time in formalities. there is one matter, however, that i think i should refer to. since sending out the postals announcing this meet ing i hav£ been taken to task by quite a few members of the club for sending out such an invitation without giving the name of the speaker. in reply to this criticism, i wish to say that the omission was intentional, and was for two reasons : first, because the committee thought that a little curiosity on your part might increase the attendance ; and, second, because it was suggested by the speaker of the evening himself. the first reason seems to be justi fied by the result accomplished, and the second no doubt will be explained by the speaker himself, mr. bruce,— whom you all know, — some of you, no doubt, to your i40 looking forward sorrow, and whom it now gives me great pleasure to introduce to you." as bruce came forward and addressed the chairman, and then turned to the audience, crandall, who was sit ting with other members of the committee near the front, thought that he detected an expression in the eyes of the speaker as he glanced at chairman barr that boded no good to that worthy individual. in a quiet, conversa tional tone bruce began as follows : "mr. chairman, ladies and gentlemen : as one who is well acquainted with the frank directness and lack of all concealment in the rapid-fire mental action of our genial chairman, i must nevertheless plead guilty to a slight feeling of surprise at one thought just expressed by him, which seems to require some explanation from me. he has said truly that most of you know me, and has inti mated that some of you have acquired that knowledge to your sorrow. this was no doubt intended as a mere pleasantry, and will be accepted by me as such, but it does at least open the door far enough for me to say that it frequently happens that the cashier of a bank, in giving answers to a certain class of business inquiries, is compelled to act in a representative capacity; and is also sometimes compelled to convey a collective negative reply when his own personal wish might be to give an affirma tive reply. i cannot recall, however, that my good friend, barr, ever received such a negative reply from me to any request he may have made ; but his memory may be better than mine in this respect, and i beg to assure him that, if he does recall any such experience, my own regret must at least equal his, and i would beg him to remember, and apply, the good advice of the old adage : 'if at first you don't succeed, try, try again.' " there was a round of laughter and applause at this how? 141 "retort direct," which was led by crandall and joined in by barr, and just as it ceased the deep voice of hammer harry was heard all over the room, as he tried to convey to barr, in one of his audible stage whispers, the needed injunction : "now, will you be good?" "your chairman has also referred to the fact," con tinued bruce, "that i had requested him not to announce the name of the speaker on the postals he sent out. i did this for two reasons, one of which he has already given ; curiosity to hear an unknown is often far greater than the desire to listen to one well known. my second reason was because it was my desire to speak only to those really interested in the subject to be discussed. having been an interested hearer at the meetings held this season by the club, and knowing from expressions i have repeatedly heard that many of our people are also deeply interested, it was my thought that we could come much nearer 'getting somewhere' as the result of this meeting if we had present only those who felt this in terest in the subject itself, rather than in any speaker who might address the meeting. as the identity of the speaker has been established, may i further complete the announcement by saying that my subject will be: 'co operation through legislation. how?' "some of you will recall the impressive arraignment of modern industrial conditions which was adopted by the great methodist church at its quadrennial conference in 1912, a part of which was incorporated in the address of mr. strong. as further evidence of the fact that the christian church is deeply moved by existing conditions and is earnestly seeking to remedy them, will you allow me to read a portion of the report of the commission on the church and social service which was unanimously adopted by the federal council of the churches of christ 142 looking forward in america in december, 1912. the whole report is well worthy your attention, but i will now ask it for only a few of its statements and recommendations. "the report contains this well deserved approval of the efforts that are being made by conscientious employers to secure better conditions for their employes : 'there are many of our leaders in industry and commerce, high-minded men, with sympathetic hearts, who are seeking to extricate themselves and their fellows from the toils of a bewildered economic system.' "then, as though desiring to show how great is the need for the work 'of amelioration, the report says, a little later : 'we read the latest word from the bureau of labor; of 3s,ooo men killed; of two million injured in one year in industry, a large proportion by preventable disasters, and we say, as we read the chapter, two million and thirty-five thousand "of these." * * * "in one industry, in one little town, 5,000 'of these my brethren' working twelve hours a day and sometimes more, seven days every week." ' "the social platform presented in this report, and which was unanimously adopted by the council, contains sixteen planks, all supporting the reform of present abuses, and in favor of general social uplift. some of the most important of these are the following, 'for which,' the report says, 'the church must stand :' 'for equal rights and complete justice for all men in all stations of life. 'for the protection of the family, by the single standard of purity, uniform divorce laws, proper regulation of marriage, and proper housing. 'for the abolition of child labor. 'for such regulation of the conditions of toil for women as how? 143 shall safegtiard the physical and moral health of the com munity. 'for the protection of the individual and society from the social, economic and moral waste of the liquor traffic. 'for the protection of the worker from dangerous machinery, occupational diseases, and mortality. 'for the right of all men to the opportunity for self-main tenance, for safeguarding this right against encroachments of every kind, and for the protection of workers from the hard ships of enforced unemployment. 'for a release from employment one day in seven. 'for a living wage in every industry, and for the highest wage that each industry can afford. 'for a new emphasis upon the application of christian prin ciples to the acquisition of property, and for the most equitable division of the product of industry that can ultimately be devised.' "just another paragraph from this remarkable report, my friends, and then i will ask you to join me in the search for the method by which the remedy for such con ditions, that has been already presented in this course by others, may be applied. the report, in referring to the greater knowledge that society has been gaining of the actual conditions, says : 'more distinctly do men discern that mere power does not confer a moral title to reward. that powerful interests have not ceased to take toll of our labor, to levy tribute on the people, to exercise a taxing power without authority, and that they are thereby continuing to amass the wealth of the nation in danger ous aggregations, there is common consent. that a large part of this is in the nature of extortion ; that it is, in too large measure, the cause of poverty and of many of the evils against which we cry aloud ; that if we evade it, we are still trying to cure effects without touching causes, and are seeking to ensure moral evolution without taking account of resident forces, are matters of public conscience.' 144 looking forward "i think you will agree with me that such strong pre sentments of the truth, coming from such sources, must have great weight with thoughtful people, and do a mighty work in crystallizing that public sentiment which will surely some day discover the remedy for most of the ills mentioned, and having discovered it, will so enlighten the public will that it will gain the courage to apply it. my own conviction is that the remedy has already been discovered, and has been described to you by several of the speakers who have preceded me, and my especial duty this evening is to tell of the method, — the 'how,' — as my friend, barr, has termed it, of the application. and i am more than pleased to attempt this, because i have the conviction that my own branch of industry, — for so i beg leave to call the banking business, — has in large measure 'blazed the way,' and done it in legislation, so that the marks can be readily found and the trail easily followed. i see some incredulous looks here and there in the audience, — but still i maintain that my statement is true. and now for the proof. "the just and peaceful remedy for most, — perhaps for all, — industrial ills is to be found, i believe, in some method of co-operation, which will give the worker a fair interest in industry as part owner, — fully equal, so far as his interest goes, — to any other owner. in other words, a system that will make the workers, in part or altogether, the owners of the machine, and not its serv ants or its slaves, as they too frequently are now. i use the words, 'in part or altogether,' intentionally, for it may well be that in some cases a group of workingmen will desire themselves to form their own corporation and own the machines themselves. in most cases, however, there will no doubt be a union of labor and capital in the ownership, and it should not be difficult to adjust their how? 145 interests fairly and justly to both parties, and to safe guard the interests of the minority holders. in other words, my proposition has been well expressed by mr. strong, in his address ; to try to make the word corpora tion mean co-operation; to put into the old body of the private corporation, which has to too great an extent been occupied by the spirit of greed and gain only, the new spirit of brotherhood and fellowship. can this be done? i see again some incredulous smiles, and i realize that many of you do not think such a transformation possible. perhaps it does require some optimism to enter tain such a belief. let me give you my reasons for believing that it will be done. "there is a widespread conviction that the present system with its many forms of injustice, which have been sufficiently stated in the passages quoted, cannot long endure, — if for no other reason, because its weight of injustice cannot meet the support of public opinion, — the strongest force in the world. what will take its place? our socialist friends claim that they offer the only feasible solution ; yet when they are asked for a program of action, — requested to tell us what they propose to do, ■ — we find that they are hopelessly divided into a number of dififering groups, each with some high-sounding words, such as 'the abolition of private property,' 'the state the sole owner,' etc., but when we ask for some program of action, some method of procedure, by which they propose to attain these ends, — they are either silent, or vaguely hint of a coming revolution. many of us must be par doned if we form the opinion that the remedy in such case would be worse than the disease ; and for coming to the conclusion that, until socialism will in some way insure to society a higher type of man by developing higher moral and spiritual powers than are found in the 146 looking forward present order, it can offer no solution to the present prob lem that would be of permanent value. "why should one believe, therefore, that the method of co-operation will be successful? there are several reasons. in the first place our proudest claim is that we are a christian people, and however far we fall short of realizing in its full possibility what the claim implies, no one will doubt that we go farther toward its realization than if we made no such claim. our highest code of morals, to which millions try to make their lives conform, and with good degrees of success, is christian. the best laws we have, both in the nation and in the several states, closely follow the christian code of morals; for much of recent legislation, such as child welfare, the protection of young girls, equal rights for mothers as regards their children, etc., we must go directly to the sermon on the mount for their inspiration. no one who is well informed will deny that there has been a decided trend of legislation in the direction of the application of christian morals in the last two decades. what more natural then, than that the industrial changes which to many seem imminent should take the direction of align ment with christian morals? surely the large bodv of active christians in our country who are to-day exercising a greater power in legislation than ever before, — the christian church, which is now aroused to the evils of conditions as never before in its history — and the large body of persons who, although not openly allied with the church, still share its thought and accept its moral code ; surely these forces will combine and turn the coming changes in the direction of a just and peaceful settlement. and no other method that has been consid ered has met with the same degree of approval from christian thought that co-operation has met. in fact we how? 147 may claim for it that, in its higher purposes of brother hood and fellowship, and the production of a higher type of manhood and womanhood in industry. co-operation is the christian method. in that conviction you find one reason for the faith that many of us have in its final complete triumph.* "another reason is that the change we propose is in the direction of a peaceful evolution toward a higher form of social and industrial justice. being so, it is natural, reasonable, and in accord with the experience of the race. we might almost claim that it was scientific, if it were not for placing too heavy a burden upon a word already overworked. but, being in the direction of evolu tion to the next higher form, we have faith in its accom plishment for that reason alone, — ^because we believe that the method of evolution is the method of orderly growth, of which god's world is full. "and again, some of us have faith in it because of what it promises for humanity. in a weak and far-off way, we try to share the grand optimism of our master in his faith in humanity, — of the true worth and dignity of human life, because of its possibilities ; and in the moments of truest faith we know that nothing is too good *"a question here arises ; whether in some ulterior, perhaps not far distant stage of this 'chivalry of labor,' your master worker may not find it possible and needful, to grant his workers permanent inter est in his enterprise and theirs ? so that it becomes, in practical result, what in essential act and justice it ever is, a joint enterprise : all men, from the chief master down to the lowest overseer and operative, economically as well as loyally concerned for it? "to reconcile despotism with freedom, — well, is that such a mystery? do you not already know the way? it is to make your despotism just. rigorous as destiny, but just, too, as destiny and its laws. the laws of god ; all men obey these, and have no freedom at all but in obeying them. the way is already known, — part of the way ; and courage and some qualities are needed for walking on it." carlyle ; "past and present": pp. 241-2. 148 looking forward for the children of the all-father; and having attained many of the best things in life; — freedom of thought and act, education for our children, the right to worship god according to our own conscience; we dare to have faith that this other good of equal and exact justice in indus trial life can also be attained, and we go forward confi dently to accomplish it. we remember the words of one who said that if the men of his day had had faith, they could have commanded a mountain to be cast into the sea, and it would have been done. and since then many of us have seen the brooklyn bridge and other great bridges, and have realized that here were mountains of iron ore, not indeed cast into the sea, but carried for hundreds of miles and stretched through the air to make a safe and easy pathway for the hurrying feet of millions. not one single act of faith did it, but many repeated acts of faith. only men of faith and vision can do such things. in the greater things that will yet be wrought by co-operation in the industrial world some of us have faith because humanity is worthy of those better things, and because past achievements make all good things possible, if men will but go forward to achieve them. "and finally, many of us have faith in co-operation because of what it has already done. of some of these you have already heard from those who have preceded me. of some of its other achievements i will speak later. now that i have given you some of the reasons 'for the faith that is in us,' let me tell you how it is that the banking business has 'blazed the way' for the application of co-operation as a remedy. "you will, of course, realize that the problem before us is a problem in legislation, and may be stated thus : how can we so change the form of the private corporation that it will mean co-operation ? it can be done by legislation how? 149 in the various states, but preferably, as i believe, by national legislation. i use the word "preferably,' be cause such a large number of corporations do an inter state business or hope soon to do so, and the advantage of having them operate under a national law is obvious. but for corporations that intend to transact business only in the state in which they are located, a state charter would of course be sufficient, and for these state legisla tion should be secured; and one state has already taken this needed action. "now, as to the national legislation desired for co operative corporations : my proposition is that, in the interest of safety to those investing their money, espe cially those workingmen and working women who may wish to share in the ownership of the machine, the national government shall do for this form of co-opera tion just what it did a half century ago for the business of banking, — that is to say, nationalize it and make it safe, so that the small investor in this form of industry may know that his rights will be safeguarded in much the same way that the investor in the stock of a national bank knows the same thing. this would require chiefly two things : first, that the payments on account of capital stock would have to be bona fide and paid in, — at least to a large extent, — before business began, — and so certi fied to the proper authority; and second, that the national government would exercise supervision over the corpora tion, just as it does over the national banks. as the individual corporations would naturally pay for this supervision, just as the banks do now, there would be no cost involved to the government by this supervision, and as the department of commerce is now thoroughly or ganized, this duty could be added to those under its care. "there you have in a nutshell the method of applica i50 looking forward tion which i have wished to present to you ; and you see at once how the great act which made the business of national banking one of the safest that the world knows, has blazed the way for similar acts that can be applied in various forms to make other lines of business safe. i urge it especially for the co-operative form of corpora tion because many of those, perhaps the great majority, who would be willing to join in such enterprises would be persons of moderate means, who, because of what they know of the success of co-operation in other countries, would be glad to join in such undertakings here, if they were only sure that proper safeguards would be thrown about the business. and if the national government can exercise this power of safeguarding in connection with one branch of industry, why not about another? in fact, would not this be an exercise of power that would be justified by every consideration of public policy, when it is remembered how severe have been the losses of the public through putting their money in corporations whose stock issues were not safeguarded in any proper way? "there is another direction, also, in which the national bank act has blazed the way for future legislation, and this is worthy of consideration here because it teaches us how to prevent objectionable stock issues. i refer to the method that was used when it became desirable to make the bank note issues of the banks absolutely safe. this was really one of the greatest good results accomplished by the national bank act, for from the time it went into effect bank notes issued anywhere in this country have been safe. it is true that at the time this was done there was another motive, — that of providing a ready market for the government bonds ; but as this was also a benefi cent work, as all who believe in our form of government must admit, and helped to save government of the people how? 151 for the people, we need not stop to criticise it here. the fact remains, that while under the old state bank laws, there had been immense losses through banks issuing notes, and failing without providing for them, — after the passage of the national bank act, such losses absolutely ceased. the method of doing this is worthy our close attention. the national legislature did not prohibit the issue of notes by state banks; to have done that would no doubt have been regarded as an invasion of the rights of the states. but the national government clearly had the right to levy taxes ; and so a tax, that was prohibitory in nature, was levied on all issues of circulating notes by state banks; and since that annual ten per cent, tax was provided by the national bank act, state banks have found it inconvenient to issue bank notes, although their right to do so has not been questioned. "you will ask, perhaps, in what way does that part of the act blaze the way for legislation affecting co-opera tion? in this way: it is generally acknowledged that the issue of stocks of various kinds by corporations organized in certain states, has in many cases worked great injury to the public. it may be that the states have the right to authorize the issue of the various kinds of stock, although their right to so issue them when an interstate business is to be done seems open to question. but, however that may be, there could hardly be any question as to the right of the national government to tax a cor poration doing business in more than one state ; and the principle applied in the case of bank note issues by state banks could well be applied to prevent the issue of more than one kind of stock, except in well-defined cases. this would go far to safeguard the public; and if the stock of the co-operative corporations were only of one kind, with a large proportion to be actually paid in before 152 looking forward boisiness was begun, as in the case of the national banks, a great measure of protection, which has been badly needed for years, would be thrown about the moderate investor. and there are other ways in which this power of taxation might prove to be of value in the future. "there is another way in which the business of bank ing has, in many instances, set the pace or blazed the way for other lines of business. i am glad to be able to say that quite a number of banks have for years past, by the action of their boards of directors, paid to their em ployees on their salaries the same rate per cent, as they declared as a dividend on the capital stock. i wish that i could say that all banks did this, for it seems to me that the principle involved is so just that all shareholders would approve of it. in this way many have acknowl edged a principle which is sure in time to extend to all branches of business, — if for no other reason, then be cause its inherent justice is so obvious. it is to the great credit of the banking business that it has to so great an extent acknowledged and applied this just principle. "from what i have said as to the desired legislation, you have no doubt seen that i have implied that if the investment of money in co-operative enterprises is once made safe, in much the same way that it is made safe in the business of national banking, and if this is once fully explained to the people, the capital required for such enterprises would in all likelihood be forthcoming. this is my conviction, and it is based largely upon the experi ence of the national banks. for many years after the passage of the national bank act in 1863, the minimum amount of capital required for the capital of any such bank was $50,000. in recent years this minimum has been reduced to $25,000, and this has resulted in the how? 153 organization of many banks with this smaller capital. a very large number of these small national banks have been very successful, and have helped in the growth of the country in many ways, and have also distributed a large amount of profits to their stockholders. "it is undoubtedly true that a great many industrial enterprises could be started with a capital like the present minimum capital for a national bank ; and a much larger number, if the capital required was what the minimum was formerly. if the people can be assured that the capital required is bona fide, — that it has been all paid in, either in cash or in goods and equipment taken at a fair value,— if this fact is verified by the officials of the government, just as it is in the case of the organization of a national bank ; and if, following this, there shall be properly conducted examinations and published reports, it should not be difficult for co-operative enterprises to secure all the needed capital. and when the benefits likely to result from the proper introduction of co-opera tive methods in general business and industrial under takings is considered, there should be no difficulty in securing legislation that would mean much for both the moral and material progress of the whole people. "the experience that has been met in the case of the national banks would no doubt be met with in these suggested co-operative corporations, — in the develop ment of small into larger institutions. when a national bank of small capital has been successful, and the larger capital is desired, it is not difficult to secure it, — and in this way many at first small banks have grown to be much larger. in the same way, a co-operative enter prise, having but small capital at first, and proving successful, could very easily grow to much larger pro portions. this has, in fact, been the history of many of 154 looking forward the large corporations now in existence, especially in our large towns and cities, where the rapid growth in popu lation in the past two or three decades has produced con ditions which not only make this development of indus tries easy and rapid, but which also call for all the amelioration that co-operation, or any other improved system, can offer. "it frequently happens that the advocates of co-opera tion find support for their principles where they do not expect it, and as additional proof of the aid that has been extended by the banking business, will you allow me to refer to the report of the national monetary commis sion. as many of you are aware, this commission was appointed in 1908 and for several years made a most exhaustive and careful study of banking conditions in all the leading nations. its report, presented to con gress in january, 1912, embodied the results of this study, and included the text of a bill, which the commission recommended be enacted as a law, providing for marked changes in the legislation afifecting the finances of the government and the people. chief among these was the organization of the national reserve association, dif fering radically from the central banks in european centers, and from anything heretofore attempted in this country. "it is not my purpose now to discuss this report, but i do wish to ask your attention to the fact that in certain particulars it upholds the principle of co-operation, and in the text of the proposed law the same principle seems to be applied, especially in relation to the division of the profits expected from the business of this great associa tion of banks, — a large proportion of which are assigned by the bill to the government, — which of course means the people. in the report the commission says of this how? 155 national reserve association, that 'it provides for an equality of privileges and advantages to all banks, great and small, wherever located. its dominating principle is co-operation and not centralization/ and again it says : 'it is not a bank, but a co-operative union of all the banks of the country.' and again the report says : 'we pro pose that the authority now exercised by seven or eight thousand national banks shall be vested in this co-opera tive association of all the banks.' so that it seems fair to say that, not only by the national bank legislation of the past, has the way of co-operative legislation been blazed and made clear, but that the most important finan cial legislation that has ever been considered in this country also upholds the principles of co-operation and sheds light on its future pathway. "and now, my friends, i desire to have the pleasure of directing your attention to one of the most remarkable instances of successful co-operation that the world knows of. in fact, it seems that up to this time the world has known only too little about it, — as it is one of those cases of quiet development, without the blare of trumpets or wide advertising, which, because of the absence of noise, accomplish all the better results in growth, and when discovered, surprise us by what they have silently accom plished. it is a pleasure to present this because it seems to be the realization in actual experience of almost ideal conditions, — of conditions that had been thought out by the mind of a great humanitarian, and then successfully accomplished by the application of just principles. "if i should say to you that there was in actual exist ence a duly chartered industrial corporation, which had grown in thirty-five years from a small plant employing only thirty-six workers to a large plant employing more than fifty-five hundred persons ; that had grown so large 156 looking forward that it now had branches for manufacturing its goods in four cities, and had stores in eight cities; that it had probably attained a higher degree of apphed industrial justice than had even been thought of in any other attempt at co-operation ; would not such statements come as a pleasant surprise? and yet it is to an achievement cf that character that i wish to direct your attention, in the hope that wider and wider knowledge of such suc cessful accomplishment may lead others to do likewise. the immense value of such instances of the full accom plishment of high ideals is their value as examples. 'what man has done, man can do'; and a great deed accomplished is a mighty incentive toward other like deeds. "it is to one of the smaller german cities that we must go to find this ideal application of the principles of pure co-operation. in the university city of jena there lived some years ago a university professor who had ideas on the subject of industrial justice, and to whom came the opportunity to apply the principles in which he believed. the business grew under the impelling force of his ideals, and when it had grown to large proportions he obtained from the state the form of charter which he desired, and in which the greatest care was taken to preserve the ideas for the future and to obtain the fullest measure of justice and consideration for the workers. having thus placed the business on the most secure legal foundation, and having secured in legislation the support of his ideals, he gave the business, now developed to great proportions, to the workers, — providing, of course, for the continuing interest in the industry of the workers, and not permit ting the good work he had done to be dissipated by the greed and selfishness of subsequent workers, who might not share his broad views. how? 157 "this industry is that conducted by the carl zeiss foundation in jena, with branch factories in london, vienna, riga and gyor, and having branch stores in berlin, london, paris, st. petersburg, vienna, hamburg, frankfurt and mailand. its line of business is the manu facture and distribution of optical instruments of all kinds, photographic lenses, stereoscopes, binoculars and telescopes, optical measuring instruments for surveying, and physical and chemical research, astronomical obser vations, and for use in the army and navy. some of the largest astronomical instruments now used in this coun try have come from this great manufactory, whose indus trial conditions are the nearest ideally just of any productive industry on earth. it should be, and no doubt is, a great satisfaction to those using the products of this manufactory to know that this is true. "these great works have been evolved from the humble workshop which carl zeiss, then scientific instrument maker to the university, established in 1846. during the first thirty years of its existence the undertaking grew steadily without, however, assuming the dimensions of a factory. the succeeding thirty years, however, witnessed developments by which its general character became wholly changed under the influence of widely extended commercial relations and by the magnitude of its operations. in 1877 the firm employed only thirty six persons, which number had, in i8gi, increased to 500. in march, 1900, the number exceeded 1,000, and in june, 1908, was over 2,000. at the end of 1910 the number of employees was 2,884; by the end of 191 1 the number had increased to 3,476; and on october i, 19 12, it was over 4,100. a recent letter from the president of the carl zeiss stiftung, dr. schomerus, says : 158 looking forward 'owing to the ever increasing amount of orders, we are bound to enlarge our works and the above figures will therefore still further increase.' "the jena glass works of dr. schott and genossen, which also forms part of the carl zeiss stiftung, has besides about 1,300 employes, thus making in all, at the end of 1912, about 5,500 employes. that such a num ber of vi^orkers should be employed in an industry which in 1877 had only thirty-six workmen, proves that some very unusual causes have been operating. let us see what some of these causes are. "the event which more than any other determined the future growth and greatness of the zeiss works was the accession of professor ernst abbe in 1866. upon the death of dr. carl zeiss in 1888, and the subsequent retire ment of his son in 1899, professor abbe acquired the sole control of the concern, and in 1891 created the carl zeiss stiftung, to which he transferred the ownership of the optical works and a controlling interest in the affiliated glass works of schott and genossen. pro fessor abbe completed the donation on july 26, 1896, and on august 16, 1896, the statutes of the stiftung, formulated by him, were ratified and invested with statutory force by the grand-ducal government of saxe weimar. in 1891 he transferred to the stiftung his entire personal estate within the limits allowed by the laws of the country, and accepted for himself a position on the board of managers. "the general aim and purpose of the foundation were thus outlined by the donor : 'i : — to carry on and develop, under a title deed of impersonal ownership, those branches of precise technical industry which how? 159 under the active co-operation of the founder have been estab lished in jena by the two sister works. 2 • — to make permanent provisions for the economic security of the said undertakings, and to maintain and further develop their existing industrial labor organization as a means of pro viding a livelihood to a large number of people and also as a useful instrument for furthering scientific and practical interests. '3: — to fulfil higher social duties than personal proprietors would permanently guarantee towards the totality of co-workers in its employ, in order to better their personal and economic rights.' "certain objects that were aimed at by the founder, outside the immediate industrial features mentioned above, are the folloviring : 'i : — to promote the general interests of the branches of precise optical and technical industry. '2 : — to take part in organizations and measures designed to promote the welfare of the working population of jena and its surrounding districts. '3 : — to encourage the study of mathematics and the natural sciences both as regards research and teaching.' "the connection with the university is very close, professor abbe having created on behalf of the founda tion, for the benefit of the university, a special endow ment, the income of which is to be applied toward carrying on work calculated to promote scientific research and increase the teaching resources of the university, it being especially stipulated that 'the funds are available for these purposes so long as the university lecturers and professors are permitted to teach without academical restrictions and to enjoy full political and personal free dom in common with other citizens.' "the administration is vested in a board of managers i6o looking forward representing the works, the university and the govern ment. the interests of the workers are represented by a committee of 120, elected by the votes of all employes over eighteen years of age. from this large group an executive committee of seven is chosen, which meets weekly. through this committee the workmen can deal directly with the management. "profits in excess of the current expenses are devoted to three general purposes : first, improvement and en largement of the business itself; second, increase in the wages of the workers ; third, betterment of their social conditions. all workers are guaranteed a definite weekly wage, which is the minimum they may receive. in addi tion to this at the end of the year a part of the surplus is also distributed. for a long period past this has aver aged 8 per cent, per annum. in the decade from 1899 to 1909 the annual bonus for five years was 10 per cent, per annum. there has been an increase of about 14 per cent, in the average wage since 1892, and the wage, not includ ing the annual bonus, is at present somewhat higher than the average paid elsewhere in germany for work requir ing equal skill. "pensions of various kinds are provided for. five to fifteen years' service entitles the workman to a pension for disablement, equal to 50 per cent, of the wages received during the last year of work. old age pensions, amounting to 75 per cent, of the last wage, may be claimed after thirty years of service by employes over sixty-five years of age. death benefits are arranged for, and a sick fund, from which workers are allowed to receive 75 per cent, of their usual wage for a period not exceeding one year, has been established. "eight hours is the working day. it is especially worthy of note that on the eight-hour basis, which was how? i6i introduced in 1900 by vote of the workers themselves, the average product is 4 per cent, greater than it was when nine hours made the day's work. the consumption of alcoholic beverages during working hours is prohibited by the terms of the agreement of service. this regula tion was introduced at the same time as the eight hours working day, and the pamphlet issued by the foundation, setting forth the system of employment states that, 'the abolition of the beer drinking habit in working hours, which directly and indirectly occasioned much loss of time, has largely contributed to the success of the eight hours working day.'* "a six days annual vacation, with full pay, is allowed all employes who have been at least one year in the employ of the works. no fines are imposed for any reason whatever. for specified offences, reprimand or dismissal may be inflicted after due trial. a savings bank, conducted under the direction of the works, allows 5 per cent, interest on accounts up to the extent of 3,000 marks. in every way the welfare and advancement of the working people are looked after, and it is hard to conceive of any need that has not been provided for by the great-hearted founder of this unique practical experi ment in the direction of applied industrial justice. but there are two arrangements, which especially distinguish this experiment, — one a positive, the other a negative, one, — to which i wish to call your particular attention, because they both show the great care and forethought *prof. abbe, when urging the men to adopt the resolution prohibit ing the use of alcoholic beverages during working hours, "reminded the men that it was a scientifically established fact that the temporary stimulus that alcohol imparted was apparent only, and was inevitably followed by a certain depression ; hence, while it seemed momentarily to revive, its ultimate effect was to lame the available store of energy." 1 62 looking forward that were expended upon this effort by the mind of the founder, who was a close student of social and political conditions. "first, the positive arrangement providing for 'com pensation for dismissal,' — a provision that seems to be absolutely unique, and yet so just, when the reasons for it, that were in the mind of the founder, are considered, that one wonders why this has not been generally acknowledged as a just principle in the conduct of indus try. this provision forms one of the articles of the deed of incorporation, so that it is fixed in the primary law of the foundation. it provides that in all cases of dismissal, for which the person himself shall not have given cause, a compensation shall be allowed, depending upon the term of service; for those who shall have been in the service of the works over six months and less than three years the compensation shall be full pay for one-sixth of the actual term of service; and for those whose service exceeds three years, full pay for a term of six months shall be allowed as compensation. "how ernst abbe came to establish this principle of compensation for dismissal on the basis of a legally secured claim, he explains in his 'annotations' to the deed of incorporation in the following words : 'consider the case of a man who remains for a lengthy period in the service of a manufacturing concern, apparently with the intention of connecting himself thereto permanently, largely to the advantage of the employer, while the latter by maintaining the arrangement, fosters a tacit understanding that the employ ment is of a permanent nature. yet suppose that at some later period the employer, for reasons of his own and without being coerced by dire necessity, decides to dismiss the employee in question, say, because his further employment has ceased to be advantageous or because of personal reasons which previously had not interfered with the continuation of his employ. then how? 163 surely, if we apply, in an impartial spirit, the principles of equity, we shall find ourselves face to face with a monstrous abuse of power to the detriment of the weaker party. to any but a mind imbued with plutocratic principles it must appear as an obvious duty, in all cases of this kind, to provide an appro priate compensation for the collapse of the expectation which the employee was led to entertain, and for the loss of opportuni ties which he might have embraced in the meantime, but which in the supposed security of his position he has allowed to pass by.' "it is doubtful whether any employer of labor has ever gone beyond this in the attempt to secure for his work ingmen the same degree of justice that he would desire if their conditions were reversed. it is a high example 'of 'doing unto others as you would have them do unto you,' and one that is worthy of the sincerest form of praise, — that of imitation. let us hope that the time is speedily coming when this form of compensation for dis missal may be voluntarily adopted by employers generally.'* "the other arrangement, which i have called a nega tive one, is found in the fact that the works do not provide dwellings for the workmen. the reason for this illustrates anew this great german's idea of the proper way to extend help, and exhibits his opposition to any thing that savored of paternalism. the principle that led to this decision is stated as follows : *prof. abbe, in further consideration of this subject of dismissal, from the sociological point of view, wrote as follows : "moreover, it is from a purely social aspect, extremely desirable that persons who lose their employment under these circumstances should be furnished, in the shape of pecuniary compensation, with the means of maintaining them selves while seeking fresh work and of meeting the incidental expenses occasioned by this search. neglect of this elementary obligation must needs add to the army of the unemployed and to those who are charge able upon the public rates." i64 looking forward 'however good may be the houses built by factory owners for their workmen, experience has shown that in times of dispute and trouble they become almost invariably utensils of v/ar, calculated to place the men in a very doubtful position of political dependence, and thereby tending to prejudice the devel opment of that very integrity of citizenship which abbe desired to secure.' "the works do, however, make advances to the work ers for building purposes at low rates of interest, thus helping them to become their own landlords, and also maintains close relations with the jena co-operative building society, to which it has made large advances at 3 per cent, interest, — thus further aiding its employes to build and own their own homes. "i have made this extended description of this german attempt to realize pure co-operation, because it comes nearer reaching the ideal condition than any other i have heard of, and also because it has been so successful, — not only in the direction of extended development and finan cial success, but because of attaining the ideal of indus trial peace through justice, which is the desired goal of all who think deeply on this subject. of course, no one would expect strikes or other disturbances in an industry owned and chiefly controlled by the workmen themselves, and we are not surprised therefore that such things are unknown in these great works. may we not hope that an experiment that has met with such signal success in germany may be imitated in our own and other countries ? surely among the many employers of labor here there should be some who would like to attempt the realization of peace through justice in industrial conditions, — either in the manner which i have tried to outline to you as having been so successful in germany, or by some other method of applying the principle of co-operation. how? 165 "in closing my remarks, will you allow me to recapitu late what i have tried to present to you? in the first place, i have tried to show how my line of industry has shown the way in which legislation may travel, in order to secure a greater interest in industry for the workers themselves, and along perfectly safe lines, through safe guarded co-operation; second, i have tried to show how it has also blazed the way by voluntarily acknowledging the right of labor to the same dividends out of profits that capital receives; and in the third place, i have tried to present to you, as an ideal form of co-operation, a practical experiment in this direction in another country, thus giving an example of actual achievement which may serve as a model for others to work toward. if i have not made myself clear, or if any one has questions to ask, i will be glad to answer them, if i can." hardly had chairman barr made the usual announce ment, when he was addressed by singleton, who presented the following query : "mr. chairman, there is one question i would like to ask mr. bruce. he has told us about that interesting experiment in germany, and as i recall it, he said that the whole plant, equipment, etc., had been given or donated by the professor whom he named. now, what i would like to know is this : where there is no big hearted man like that, how are the workmen to get con trol of such a property, or in fact any property, at all? it takes a good deal of capital to get together a big industrial plant, and i can't see how it's going to be done. if he can tell us, i wish he would." that this question was also in some other minds present could be seen by the nods of approval which singleton's question called forth. bruce again came forward and said : i66 looking forward "mr. chairman: i am very glad that my friend has asked that question, for it enables me to emphasize what i meant to say with regard to the necessity for legisla tion that shall make the investment of capital by work ingmen and working-women as safe as possible. i feel confident that if that be done, — perhaps in the way i have hinted at, — in the same way that it was done for the national banks, — i feel confident that in a few years, after some successful experiments worked out before the people, and proving that such investments were safe and profitable, all the capital needed would be readily found; in fact i am sure it would be offered by those eager to go into enterprises of an industrial character when once they knew that these were to be safeguarded by the national government. and, as i have said, for all interstate busi ness such incorporation and safeguarding seems to be the pressing duty of the national government." "well, you may be right," exclaimed singleton, as bruce paused, "but i don't agree with you. i don't believe you could do it. it's a beautiful optimistic dream, but i don't believe it is anything more." "of course," replied bruce, "there is room for more than one opinion about it. as i have suggested, a similar experiment might be tried here in the same way that it was in germany. i am sure we have just as great hearted men in this country as anywhere on earth ; but i also believe that, when we make the laws right for such action, we will find our people ready to take advantage of them. but i see that mr. sharpe has a question, or some statement, ready for us, so we will listen to him." "mr. chairman," said the school principal, "i want to reinforce what mr. bruce has told us by an experiment in dividend sharing, which recently came to my notice. a friend informed me that in the big city nearby there was how? 167 a commercial house which for years past has made it the practice to give to all its employes a share in the profits. naturally i was interested, and after securing a letter of introduction called upon the president of the company, for i found it was an incorporated company. i stated the reason for my call, and received a very cordial recep tion, and in the half-hour interview that was granted me, was given a full insight into the methods they had adopted. there were two things particularly that im pressed me in what was said. the first confirms the desire on the part of the workers, not simply to receive presents in the shape of a share in the profits, but rather to receive dividends just as other shareholders do, so that they may have the sense of belonging in a regular busi ness way to the enterprise. the president of the com pany informed me that some years ago they had tried profit sharing, but found that it did not work. 'our people accepted it,' said he, 'just as they would a present, but it did not seem to attach them in any way to the business; so we gave it up and tried this new method, which we have found to work all right.' this consisted in allotting to their working people, both men and women, shares of stock in proportion to their terms of service ; for instance, an employe of five years standing would receive one share ; of ten years, two shares, etc. as the shares were very valuable, paying each a dividend of $60 or $70 per annum, each additional share meant a considerable addition to one's salary. he instanced one man, — a colored porter, who had been with them for over fifteen years, — who receives in this way each year an addition to his salary of over $200. the other thing that impressed me was his statement made in the course of our talk, and he said it as though he fully meant it : 'you can't do too much for your people.' i should add i68 looking forward that this company employs over 200 hands, and its yearly distribution of dividends in this way exceeds $10,000. in addition to this it has had the custom for many years of making all its force at an annual christmas entertainment a christmas gift, — also based somewhat upon the term of service. it has also recently instituted sick benefits, and old age and disability pensions. "it is quite possible that there are other instances of profit sharing or dividend sharing here and there through out our country, and every one of these deserves to be encouraged, for they all have a tendency to lead toward pure co-operation. an excellent example of the latter, which is no doubt known to many of you, is the harvard co-operative society of cambridge, massachusetts, which has grown from very small beginnings about thirty years ago until now it transacts a total annual business of about $400,000, employs about seventy-five persons, and makes an annual dividend to its patrons of about nine per cent, of the amount of their purchases. for the past three years the total amount of these dividends on purchases was about $55,000. this society presents, through its successful operation for over thirty years, one of the best answers to those who claim that the co-operative principle cannot be applied in this country. it has, it is true, the advantage of close relations with a great university, but this merely indicates another field for co-operative effort, without in the least detracting from the value of co operation in other fields." "i am indebted to mr. sharpe for giving us those instances, which are exactly in line with what i have said," said bruce. "and there is one statement further that i would like to make in the same connection. the feeling as to profit sharing or dividend sharing that he has mentioned is very widely extended, i am sure, from how? 169 expressions i have heard. those who receive such acknowledgments of interest would naturally prefer them to take the shape of dividend sharing, for that does give the sense of belonging to the enterprise, whether it is a bank, a store, or a manufactory. as a further reply to what mr. singleton has said, may i refer to the experi ence of a friend of mine, who was interested in organizing a national bank of a city not far away. one of the sur prises that came to him was the offer on the part of a workingman to take quite a block of the stock, the sub scriber saying that as it was a national bank, he felt safe in making the investment, and he thought it would pay him better than having it on deposit in a savings bank, where it had been. it is quite possible that, if the co-operative undertakings were made safe in the same way, we would be surprised at the amount of capital that would be forthcoming to go into them. but it should not, by any means, be forthcoming until by legislation such investments have been made as safe as the law can make them. perhaps, on some future occasion, if it should seem desirable, i may be able to present further facts along this line." "mr. chairman," said crandall at this point, "there is a question i would like to ask mr. bruce. he said some thing about taxation being used in some ways to help co operation. i would like to ask him just how this could be done." "you will remember," said bruce in reply, "that i said that a tax, somewhat like the ten per cent, tax on the issues of bank notes by state banks, might be levied to prevent the issues of stock that represented no value. the other taxation that i had in mind was rather nega tive, as it consisted in relieving co-operative societies from taxation imposed on other corporations. such relief i70 looking forward would be a decided help, and would only carry still farther a principle well recognized in legislation. you know that building and loan associations, being regarded as co operative in character, are relieved from the usual cor poration tax in many, perhaps in all, the states ; while the national corporation tax law, passed a few years ago, also relieved these associations from paying the usual cor poration tax. my thought was that all purely co-opera tive societies should be relieved from paying all such taxes ; and that in those cases in which there was a meas ure of co-operation, they should be relieved in proportion as they were co-operative. this is a detail of legislation that could be readily worked out." as bruce retired. hammer harry rose and addressed the chair. "mr. chairman," said he, "i want to say that i did not altogether admire the remark made a few minutes ago by my friend, singleton, when he said that 'it might be a pretty optimistic dream,' but would never be attained. now, some one has said that 'never is a rather long day,' and one of our american writers has also said; 'don't prophesy, onless ye know.' it seems to me we have been hearing at this meeting, and at others that have preceded it, about facts, and not about dreams ; about actual accomplishments, and not about things simply hoped for. now, i want to make a proposition to my friend. singleton, and that is that this club, and perhaps some outside its membership, will give him a little trip to europe to investigate and report to us what he finds, if he will take the time off for it. i move you, mr. president, that this club appropriates $ioo toward the expenses of such a trip, and i will guarantee to collect the balance from others. he can spend a whole month over there and see what mr. bruce and others have told us about, and then come home and report to us. we how? 171 want to know the facts ; and i do not believe that he will find anything different from what our lecturers have told us. but now's his chance to look into it for himself." the motion was seconded and adopted unanimously. the chair announced the vote, and informed mr. single ton that the club would appoint him its representative for the service outlined by smith. to this the appointee demurred, amid the good-natured raillery of those who knew him well; but he was assured by hammer that he and the club were in earnest, and he finally said he would think it over. this little diversion, which led to a great deal of merriment at the expense of the proposed repre sentative, concluded the meeting. chapter ix. conference no. 5 : looking to the schools. "fifty years ago the great body of hand-workers were ignorant and unobservant ; now they have eaten of the tree of knowledge and their eyes are opened." — francis g. peabody. "the central idea of co-operation is that capital and labor and ability should cordially work together, should each be duly recognized and fairly rewarded." — thomas burt, m.p. "well, gentlemen," said barr at the next meeting of the directors of the building association, after routine matters had been disposed of, — "as the old squire said, 'the next thing's something else : who struck billy blank ?' what shall we take up for the next meeting?" "suppose we wait for that until mr. bruce is done counting his cash," replied sharpe, the school principal; "there's a matter i want to propose, but as he is inter ested in it, i would like to wait for him." "and that will give me the opportunity to say some thing," said crandall, "that's been on my mind for some time. it concerns the propositions we have been listening to, for the introduction of some form of co-operation into general industry. now, mind you, i'm in favor of that, if it can be worked fairly to all parties; but i've been close to the head men in more than one big plant, and i know that they don't have any picnic, if they do their duty, and i think that most of them try to. and there seems to me to be one big obstacle in the way of the general adoption of such a plan, and i haven't as yet seen a way around it." "what might that be, mr. crandall?" inquired the (172) looking to the schools 173 schoolmaster. "coming from you, who know the condi tions, that looks interesting; let us have your thought." "well, it's this way," began crandall, and then hesi tated a moment. "perhaps i can best explain what i mean by telling a little story, — even if it is against myself. one hot summer day a few years ago, i had to go to the office to see the 'little boss' about some matters in the mill. it was when we were hoping to get a big order that we had put in a bid for ; and the getting it meant the running of the mills, for things were awful slack just then. i know i was hoping all i could that we might get it, for a shut-down just then meant a hard pull for me, and no mistake. i had been hard at it all morning, and i was clean worn out when i went to the office. well, there i saw the 'little boss' sitting in the inside office as cool as you please, reading the newspaper. he kept me waiting several minutes, and i kept getting hotter and hotter every minute, — thinking what an easy time he was having, while i was sweating out in the mill. i guess i was pretty near the boiling point when he finally came out, but i didn't say anything, and i reckon it's fortunate i didn't. he had the newspaper with him, and he threw it down as he came to me, and said : 'well, john, i see by the paper that the big order is coming our way ; it was awarded yesterday, and we ought to have the formal con tract here to-morrow.' then he noticed a change in my face, i guess, for he said : 'why what's the matter, man ?' for i felt a little faint. that order meant a great deal to me, and i saw at once what a big fool i'd been. since then i don't find any fault with the 'little boss' reading the newspaper. i reckon that's just as much a part of his business, as getting the goods out is mine. do you catch what i mean, mr. sharpe?" "i take it that you think a troublesome point would 174 looking forward be between the management and the workmen. is that it?" "yes, that's just it. many of the men stand just where i stood that morning; they think that the man agers of a big plant have an easy time, just because it is a different sort of a time from what they have them selves. but i guess that often there are more headaches in the office than in the works ; at least i know there are often worrying times there, as well as in the mills. now, i haven't as yet seen any way around that difficulty. the men must realize that for trained and skilled manage ment, there must be a liberal arrangement as to pay ; and there will be the hard pull, when it comes to the intro duction of any general scheme of co-operation, or else i'm mistaken." "i'm inclined to think you're right," answered sharpe. "since we have been discussing this subject in the meet ings of the club, i've been interested in looking up what some of the leaders in the direction of co-operation have said about it ; and, unless i'm much mistaken, that is the place where they fall down. and to my mind, it explains more than an3^hing else why so many attempts at co operation, especially at productive co-operation, have failed. i was reading recently what some of the english leaders say about co-operation, and it is right here that i should beg leave to take issue with them. they think that the division of all profits should be between capital, labor and patronage. that plan has worked well in distributive co-operation, for there these are the chief factors to the problem. but when you come to produc tive co-operation, it seems to me that you have one more, and that is the one you have just mentioned, — trained management; and this will be especially true of produc tion on a large scale. but here comes mr. bruce ; perhaps looking to the schools 175 he can tell us somethingabout this difficulty," and he briefly outlined to the latter what they had been dis cussing. "the best answer to that, gentlemen," said bruce, "i have found in the plan adopted at the great german industry that i tried to tell about at the last meeting. professor abbe had undoubtedly thought deeply on every subject connected with his great works, and this had not escaped his attention. it is provided in the by-laws of the carl zeiss works that the salary of no superintendent or high official shall exceed ten times the average wage paid for the last three years to all workmen over twenty four years of age, who have been employed for three years. up to the present time, therefore, no salary has exceeded $5,000 per year. you will agree with me, i think, in the opinion that this is a just and liberal arrange ment, and removes the objection that you have spoken about." "it strikes me that that is not only just but liberal, — as you say. how does that answer your objection, mr. crandall?" said the schoolmaster. "i think that something like that would answer," replied crandall. "of course, the proportions would vary in different cases; sometimes, more; sometimes, less. in the case of large-scale production, as in some of the big corporations, it would probably be nearer twenty or thirty times the average wage, rather than only ten times. but i catch the idea, and i'm glad that the great german thought that out for us, for i'm sure it's an important matter to consider, and has always seemed a big puzzle to me." "well, if that is settled, then i'll take up with mr. bruce and the rest of you the matter i had in mind," said sharpe. "during the past week there have been several 176 looking forward persons who have come to me with the request that our committee should induce mr. bruce to explain further his method of getting the capital for co-operative enter prises. one or two expressed surprise at what he had said as to the banking business being an example of what might be done, and one went so far as to say that, in his opinion, no business in this country had so fallen down, as regards its duty to the plain people, as that very busi ness. what do you say, mr. bruce, — can't we have another address from you, or at least the opportunity for some of these persons to ask you some questions?" "well," replied the bank cashier; "if the committee really desires it, and if you think there is a demand for more information, i will try it; but i will ask you to give me a little time to prepare for it. i wouldn't care to attempt it at once." "suppose we say the following month, then, mr. bruce?" said barr. and this proposition being accepted, he added: "well, we're getting ahead of the game; next month arranged for before we have tackled this. what shall we fix on for the next meeting, gentlemen?" "just one minute, barr," interrupted bruce. "i would like to say, in reply to a part of mr. sharpe's remarks, that i am inclined to agree with the person who made the criticism of my business,— at least in part. in a certain sense, i'm afraid that the banking business has fallen down, and it is because i want to look up the figures, so that i can speak from the book in reference to that matter, that i ask for the postponement till next month. if that is satisfactory, we will consider it settled." "and in reply to your question of a minute ago, barr," said crandall, "i would like to say that the committee appointed to consider the question of starting a co operative store here, on the plan of the english stores, looking to the schools 177 will be ready to report, and we would like to have a part of the time reserved for us at the meeting this month; so there's a part of your program." "and i would like to make a suggestion," added ham mer harry. "i've been thinking over the idea of co operation a good deal since these meetings began, and it seems to me that we have a mighty good example right here in town, that we hardly ever think about, and i would like to have mr. sharpe, who is posted, tell us something about it at this coming meeting." "good for you. hammer," exclaimed barr, who was glad to see the program shaping itself so easily, without efifort on his part. "but what kind of co-operation have we around us that we don't know about?" "why, the public school," answered hammer. "if that isn't co-operation of the best kind, i'd like to know what it is. and mr. sharpe has it at his fingers' ends or knows hov/ to get it there easily." "good boy. hammer," exclaimed crandall; "it takes a good head to see something that's right under our eyes, that we haven't the sight to see. that'll be just the thing, and we'll consider that settled, if mr. sharpe is agree able." "i'm perfectly willing to prepare something on that subject," replied the schoolmaster; "and it will come in very well, i think, as an illustration of co-operation, — • but i do not think what i will have to say will take up much time. of course, i could speak without limit, if i were to load you down with a mass of statistics, but that is not what you want, nor will i give it to you." "how would this do, then," said young strong, who had just arrived; "let mr. sharpe take all the time he wants, and if there is any left, and if you care for it, i will be glad to take ten or fifteen minutes to tell about 178 looking forward the remarkable co-operative experiment at guise, in northeastern france. what mr. bruce told us about the great german industry, which is practically run by the workmen, called my attention to this, and i have seen a friend who visited the town a few years ago for the purpose of studying conditions, and what he has told me, i'm sure, will be of interest to all of you." "i'm sure, we're all obliged to you. strong," said crandall; "for that offer, and it will do fine. and i like the spirit of co-operation that your offer shows. i think, sometimes, that that is what the american people need more than anything else. we have carried the idea of 'individualism,'— 'every man for himself, and,' — well, you know the rest, — so far, that we seem to have for gotten the other spirit of getting together and working together. that is something that this new movement to ward co-operation is going to teach us, — or i'm mistaken in my guess." "well," said barr, who was bound to have the last word; "i'm sure this meeting shows that we're making progress in that direction. by the way, mr. bruce," he added as they were passing toward the door; "you can get ready for a big house, and for two or three hard ques tions, too. i've got one, myself, that i declare is a chinese puzzle for me." "now, davie," said crandall, as he put his arm over barr's shoulder, "don't take that as a sign of what your question will do to any one else. how often must i tell you that what some people need is not more head room, but a different quality of brains?" and thus chaffing each other, the group separated. chapter x. the public school and the familistere. "the commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty." — inscription on the bos ton public library. "agitation is the method that puts the school by the side of the ballot-box. agitation prevents rebellions, keeps the peace, and secures progress. muskets are the weapons of ani mals. agitation is the atmosphere of brains." — wendell phillips. the purpose of andre godin, founder of the familistere, at guise, france: "to respect, protect, develope all human life, over all the world, as a means of serving god in men, by the worship of work, and of peace, and by the love of humanity." — "social solutions," andre godin. the announcement that barr had inserted in the col umns of the "herald," to the effect that the program for the next meeting of the workers' club would consist of several numbers, including the important report of a committee, resulted in filling the meeting room to its fullest capacity. after the opening musical exercise, chairman barr proceeded to introduce the principal of the public school, mr. sharpe, informing the audience as he did so, that the speaker would address the meeting "upon the one subject that he knew most about." the schoolmaster had had considerable experience as a public speaker and felt at home, especially on a school platform. he began his address as follows : "mr. chairman, ladies and gentlemen : it has been suggested to me that some facts in regard to the public schools of the country might be of interest, in connection (179) i8o looking forward with the study that the workers' club is making of co operation ; and i am very glad to respond to the invitation to present some information in reference to this subject, about which the average citizen knows too little. "in the first place, it is important that we do not claim that the public school system is a co-operative system in the sense in which we use the word when we speak of commercial and industrial co-operation; although i hold that it is much nearer that than it is to socialism, which frequently claims the schools and the post office as the best illustrations of what socialism could do, if adopted. but those socialists who make this claim appear to forget the very first principles of socialism, which insist strenu ously upon the abolition of private property and the entire overthrow of individualism; and as we all know, the public school system has no objection to the right of the individual to hold property, and makes no attempt to interfere with the individual, save to help him. to say that the system illustrates what socialism could do, ap pears to fall far short of the truth, for the public school system began almost before socialism was thought of, and remains to-day as one of the best products of democ racy, proceeding inevitably from the democratic spirit. no better expression of the reason for the public school has ever been given than was inscribed on the great public library in boston when it was erected, in these words : the commonwealth requires the education of the people as the best safeguard of order and liberty.' "let us record those words in our memory, so that we may always recall the purpose of public education, and the public school i8i be easily able to convince ourselves that its cost, however great it may be, is never too great. "in one sense, we may readily compare the system of the public schools with the system of industrial co-opera tion, which has been presented to us as the ideal toward which we should strive. if we regard the general public, who invests the money for the equipment and support of the schools, as the capitalist; and the pupils and their parents as the patrons; and the teachers as the workers; we will have the three parties to the contract who are usually regarded as necessary to true co-operation. in this view, we may consider the return to society in well educated youth as the return that the capitalist receives on his investment (and no greater return than this can be desired by an intelligent people), the advantage of a good education, as the return made to the patrons,— and the return in salaries, — only too often, too small a return, — as the reward the teachers receive. in this way there is a decided resemblance to true co-operation, as we have recently become acquainted with it, in the public school system. "many of you will agree with me in the thought that there has been no development in our social life, which compares in good results with the system of public education, fostered by both state and national laws. no higher duty devolves upon us of this day than that of passing on to our children, improved so far as we may be able to improve it, this splendid system of education supported by the state. that the system is in some quarters bitterly criticised need not give us much con cern ; in fact, when such criticism is constructive, it is to be welcomed, as showing that the people take an active interest in the system, that it lies near their hearts, and that they want to see it produce the best results. 1 82 looking forward "will you allow me now to bring to your attention a few facts, which show how great has been the growth of the public school system in this country in the past forty years ? and it is well to remember that the system is not yet a century old ; — in fact, had only made a good begin ning by the time of the civil war. for the past forty years there has been a steady decline in the percentage of illiteracy in this country, this decline having been from 20 per cent, in 1870 to j.^ per cent, in 1910. fortunately this decline has been most marked in the case of the colored population, being from 79.7 per cent, in 1870, — just after the gift of freedom to the race, to 30.5 per cent, in 19 10. this is certainly a most marked and gratifying decline, and shows the great progress that this race is making in the direction of a higher civilization; and the progress of any part of the body politic helps the development of the whole body. "perhaps in no way can we so readily acquire a proper idea of the growth of our public school system, and realize how great is the devotion of our people to it, as by comparing the annual expenditures of a few decades ago with the present expenditures. in 1870 the total amount paid out for expenses was $63,396,000, while in 1910 it was $426,250,000, or nearly seven times as much. in 1870 the total value of all the public school property in the country was $130,383,000, and in 1910 this amount had grown to $1,091,007,000, or over eight times as much. the payments for teachers' salaries in 1910 amounted to $250,000,000, just about four times the total amount of all expenses in 1870. these figures show, not only the marvelous growth of the public schools in the recent past, but prove how generous our people have been in the support of this system of public education. "another very interesting fact in connection with this the public school 183 subject is the number of persons who are engaged in the public service as teachers. in 1870 there were 200,515 teachers employed in the public schools, of whom 61 per cent, were women. in 1910 there were 523,210 teachers thus employed, and of these 79 per cent, were women ; thus showing how the number of women teachers has grown in the past few decades. these figures are certainly impressive ; they show the true greatness of the great republic; the high opinion the people entertain of the value of education ; their desire that their children shall have, with each passing generation, better and better advantages; and their determination to supply them, no matter what the cost, with the best the world has to offer. in very many country districts to-day, the public schools ofifer in buildings, equipment, and in quality of teaching, facilities that were not dreamed of in the large towns and cities thirty or forty years ago. "and this is as it should be. there is nothing too good for our children. this is the conviction of our people, and they try to show it in every way. if you were asked by an intelligent foreigner to point out the best thing that our civilization had done for our people, what would you show him ? would you take him to some great public work, to some fine monument, to some big industrial plant, or would you point with pride to the public school and the public library? i am sure that some of you, at least, would agree with me in the thought that the highest reach of our civilization is shown in such a build ing as the congressional library at washington, exhibit ing at once the high purpose and the generous spirit of our people; and in some of the noble public parks of our great cities, proving that we hold the conviction that only the very best is good enough for a free people, and that the humblest among us is entitled to that best. for that 1 84 looking forward is what these great parks, and this splendid preparation for public education, prove. "and now, as we turn from this subject, willyou allow me to refer to a very complete scheme of co-opera tion that has been only recently introduced into the public school system, which has already accomplished good results, and has great promise for the future? i refer to the home and school association work, which has been introduced into many school districts with good effect. it is a kind of co-operation that all must instinctively ap prove of. it brings the parents into close relations with the work of the schools, acquaints them with the work the teachers are trying to do, and makes possible a true co-operation that means much for the good of the pupils, the teachers and the parents. here again there are three parties to the contract, showing how close this moral co operation is to the industrial form we have been con sidering." as the school principal closed. chairman barr came forward and said : "those of you who attended the first meeting of the club this winter, will recall the address we heard on that occasion by our friend, henry b. strong, esq., and will no doubt be gratified at the an nouncement i am now able to make that he will speak to us this evening on an experiment in co-operation, which he has recently heard of, and of which he has made a study. i take pleasure in again presenting mr. strong." "it is to be my privilege, my friends," began young strong, "to invite your attention this evening to one of the most remarkable experiments in the direction of pure co-operation that has ever been made. in the address of last month by mr. bruce, we were told of the great works in jena, germany, that are owned and controlled by the workers. the account that we heard then called the public school 185 my attention to another experiment in europe that has been very successful in accomphshing the purposes of its founder, and which conveys to us the same lesson which the german experiment does; — and that is, that great ideals may be carried out to successful completion if those having them will be faithful to them and go for ward to their accomplishment. "the co-operative experiment to which i refer is the great familistere situated in the little city of guise, in northeastern france, near the belgian frontier. founded in 1859 by jean baptiste andre godin, the first building of the familistere was completed in 1861. by 1907 the buildings had been largely increased, and there were employed in the industrial plant over 2,200 workers. in the period of twenty-eight years from 1879 to 1907 the workers of the familistere received, in addition to the usual wages, a total amount exceeding $1,350,000, and through the system of very low rents, made possible by the large buildings, similar in many respects to the mod em flats of our large cities, and through the co-operative stores run in connection with the familistere, had the usual expenses of living very greatly reduced. "let us see what were the purposes of m. godin in founding his great industry. a french writer has said : 'that which makes a fine life is a great thought of youth realized in maturer years.' this was the fortunate ex perience of andre godin. he avas born in the depart ment of aisne, northeastern france, in the home of a simple village smith, january 26, 181 7. at eleven years of age he left the humble parish school to work at his father's forge. it is said that at that time he was so small that he had to stand on a stool to reach the vise. in his book entitled 'social solutions,' referring to the conditions of his life early in youth, he says : 1 86 looking forward 'for me, day by day, returned the hard labor of an occupa tion which kept me in the workshop from five in the morning till eight at night. i saw in all its nakedness the destitution of the workman and his needs, and it was in the dejection this brought upon me that, in spite of my small confidence in my own ability, i said to myself, 'if ever i lift myself above the condition of the workman, i will seek means to render his life happier, and to lift labor from its degradation.' "this resolution, formed thus early in boyhood, he nobly carried out when the opportunity presented itself. later his attention was attracted to the writings of fourier, and securing his principal work, 'the theory of universal unity,' he read there his wide-reaching plan of social regeneration, founded on the association of labor, capital and ability. continuing the business of manufacturing stoves and heating appliances, by great industry and by continually striving to excel his competi tors in the quality of the goods he turned out, he acquired a comfortable fortune and was able to apply some of the ideas he had absorbed from his studies. the familistere was the outcome. this was a co-operative association of labor, capital and ability, the great purpose of which was to bring to the workman the equivalents of riches. it is said of him that the principles which animated him in this enterprise might be reduced to one; he wished to encourage, exalt, glorify labor. later in life he wrote several works on social and industrial subjects, and his leading purposes are recorded there. his chief thoughts are as follows : 'labor will never regain the place to which it is entitled, unless we create, in all those who co-operate in one task, a will ingness to entrust the authority to manage to solid ability, and unless each receives in honor and wealth the exact equivalent of his contribution to the common task.' * * * the public school 187 'it is true that the free acceptance of such a law supposes in the worker a high degree of mental and moral culture, and that such culture supposes a material position superior to that of the workmen of to-day. thus the problem is finally reduced to the following : how to improve the life of the worker and thereby increase his value as a worker and as a citizen.' 'according to godin this end must be reached by improved housing and a better organization of all those services of pro duction, trade, supply, education and recreation which make up the life of the modern worker.' "these ideas were gradually applied from 1859 down to the date of his death in 1888, one large building being added to another as the works grew in size and impor tance. by his will he left all that portion of his fortune which the french law gave him the power to dispose of, — that is to say, the half, — to the society of the familis tere, his widow remaining managing director of the society for some time after his death. the establish ments and institutions that make up the society of the familistere may be summarized as follows: 'first, the collection of the united dwellings, which give the members of the society the greatest advantages in comfort, health and freedom. 'second, a group of co-operative shops, supplying all neces saries in food, clothing, fuel, etc. 'third, an educational service, including a kindergarten, and providing elementary education for both boys and girls until they are at least fourteen years of age. 'fourth, a system of profit-sharing, by which the workers have in less than twenty years become the owners of the large capital represented by the familistere with its workshops and appendages. 'fifth, a system of mutual insurance, designed to relieve sick ness, old age and infirmity, and to guarantee to the inhabitants of the familistere the necessaries of life.' 1 88 looking forward "it is interesting to know that the first charges against the gross profits, before any dividends are appor tioned, are the amounts voted to the various mutual insurance funds, and the amounts set aside for educa tion ; then a certain amount is set aside to meet deprecia tion in plant, and also for the interest payable to the owners of savings certificates. the balance constitutes the net profits, and is divided as follows : seventy-five per cent, as the dividend due to wages and the interest due to capital; and the balance of 25 per cent, as the reward due to ability. in the twenty-eight years pre ceding 1907 there was awarded to ability $530,000 in dividends, of which amount over $40,000 was awarded for useful inventions. in the same period, it is inter esting to note that the workmen received as dividends, and in addition to their usual wages, the sum of $1,350,000, and that for years past the v/hole plant which has a capital of $1,000,000 has belonged to them. by a system of savings certificates, issued to them as their interest in the works increases, according to the value of their work, upon which interest is paid to the owners, and which are redeemed in cash after a number of years, and new savings certificates issued to other workmen, there is a continually changing ownership in the works, but the ownership is still confined to the workmen. this in genious plan was the work of the founder, who, no doubt, wished to provide against any future individual or group ownership of the great enterprise he had started. "another very interesting fact in the history of this co-operative experiment was the voluntary reduction in the amount that had been paid to m. godin, as managing director. prior to 1885 this had been 12 per cent, of the surplus profits. but in that year, at his own sugges tion, this was reduced to only 4 per cent., the difference the public school 189 being carried to the credit, partly, of the committee of management, and partly, to the maintenance of pupils, — the children of the workmen, — in the government schools. as an indication of the extent of this added benefaction from this great-hearted frenchman, i will say that in the two years 1906-07, the amount awarded to the managing director out of the profits was $6,000; while in the same two years, the amount awarded to the committee on management was $27,000. an act like this, coming as the voluntary action of a captain of industry, whose great purpose in life was 'to glorify labor,' and to exalt the value of 'the one thing precious on earth, — human life,'* reveals the greatness of soul of a true leader of men, and makes one wish that we could claim him as one of our own countr3mien.** "in many particulars this experiment at guise is similar to that at jena; but in other particulars, it is quite different. one of the chief points of difference is the provisions made as to the housing of the employes. at jena the industry does not itself own or rent houses, while at the familistere the society owns and controls the great buildings in which the great majority of the workers live, although they are at liberty to live else where, if they so desire. the latter plan has the advan *"one of the radical doctrines of m. godin is that the great cap italist has no moral right to use his fortune for personal aggrandize ment, whether he inherited it from others or built it up himself through industrial enterprises. the fact remains the same, that it has all been created — every particle of it — by labor, by the expenditure of human life, the one thing precious on the earth. hence, justice demands that it be used for the development, the progress, of human life." — from "social solutions," by andre godin ; translated by marie howlands ; page 325. **for a more detailed account of the familistere, see "twenty-eight years of co-partnership at guise"; translated by aneurin williams; published by the labor co-partnership association, london, w. c. i90 looking forward tage of reducing the rents paid by the workers to almost absurdly small figures, when compared with the usual rents in other countries; thus a suite of two large rooms and a smaller one will rent for from $30 to $40 per year. in many cases, it is said, the dividends received on the store supplies purchased for the family will pay the annual rent. so that the main purposes of m. godin have certainly been achieved; the first needs of food, clothing and shelter have been provided at the lowest possible cost; education has also been provided for, and recrea tion has also been considered in his plan, a large theatre being one of the buildings owned by the society, in which the best plays are frequently presented by the best talent. both of these great experiments in co-operation, and par ticularly in productive co-operation, are worthy our careful study. "in conclusion, will you allow me to refer to what seems to me to be the inherent defect in the existing private corporation, from which many, if not all, of the ills due to the present system have come? the great mistake we have made, or, rather, that we have allowed to continue until some of the evils resulting from it almost threaten the continued existence of free institu tions, is this : we have allowed ownership and control to follow almost exclusively the pathway of the dollar, fixing such ownership and control in the money interest as shown by the amount of shares taken or the amount of dollars invested, while we have not sufficiently pro tected the minority interest, or have not protected it at all, — although the intelligence and the efficiency of the minority holders may be as great as, or greater than, that of the majority interest. "our subserviency to the property idea reminds me of a little story, which will, i think, well illustrate the the public school 191 point i wish to make. it is said that at the convention in which the terms of our great constitution were decided tipon, the question of making the right to vote depend upon a property quahfication was discussed, and at one time it looked as though such a clause might be adopted by the convention. this was fortunately avoided, how ever, by the argument presented against it by benjamin pyanklin, who illustrated what he said by this homely parable : 'suppose,' he said, 'that in a certain town there were two men of equal intelligence, one of whom had no property while the other owned a mule, whose value was up to the limit which the honorable gentlemen think should be fixed as the basis for the right to vote. on election day both appear at the polls to vote; one, wathout the property, is denied that right, while the other, owning the mule, is granted the right. but, gentlemen, if that be done, who is it, after all, that votes? is it not the mule, rather than the man?' and the great philos opher, by his apt illustration, carried the majority with him; so that in the early days of this country, when all of our ancestors, or nearly all, were poor men, the dollar was not placed above the man; — very much for the good of our people. "but, in our modern business arrangements, so much of which depend upon the private corporation, have we not in efifect done just what our fathers refused to do, in reference to politics? have we not allowed the man agement, the direction, the control, the final decision, to follow the dollar line, — while the human element, the man, the moral sense, — and, may i add, too, the spiritual insight? — although some may smile at such a factor in business life, but which is so splendidly shown in the lives of the great german, of whom we heard at our last meeting, and of the great frenchman, of whom i have 192 looking forward tried to tell you this evening, — have we not allow^ed the dollar to preside, and manage, and direct, and control, and have we not too greatly ignored the greater forces of life, which might have controlled, and directed to better things, if we had allowed the way to be open for them? and if we have made this mistake, had we not better correct it? surely, we are not so proud of our work, — of present conditions, — that we can decide to allow them to remain indefinitely as they are. have not the great men who have given the best thought and the highest moral impulse they had, to the solution of this question, blazed the way for us to follow ? and if their great example has touched our thought and can inspire our action, shall we not follow along the way in which they have gone, to the realization of right relations, to the firm placing of peace and security on the foundations of truth and justice?" as strong was about to retire from the platform, singleton arose and said that he had a question he would like to ask him. strong, expressing his willingness to answer it, singleton proceeded : "i would like to ask whether, in your opinion, the public school cannot very properly be considered a fair example of socialism ; and whether the post office cannot also be so classed? i understood that to be questioned, and i would like further information." "in reply to that, mr. singleton," answered the young attorney, "i would say that it would depend upon your definition of socialism. if you simply mean an office run and controlled by a public official, supported by the public, then i presume that they are both illustrations of what socialism could do; but, if by socialism you m.ean that the state should run and control all activities of life, all kinds of business, manufacturing and commercial, and the public school 193 that private property should be prohibited by law, — which is the usual meaning attached to the term, — then i should say that the public school and the post office have no real connection with socialism. do you not see that, if you count them as achievements of social ism and make that your definition, your case is already won, — for everybody believes in the post office and makes use of it; and the great majority of us believe in the public school, although it has its critics. indeed many of us are quite ready for a much wider application of government control to the activities of life. some of us have thought that all public utilities, — and by that i mean all utilities that the public is compelled to make use of, such as telegraph lines, trolley and railway transpor tation, express service, might well come under govern ment control, for the simple reason that the public is compelled to use them. but, believing that, does not make me deny the right of private property or join the ranks of the socialists, any more than my use of the post office or the public school, or the use of the semi express utility of the parcels-post, makes me one. if it did, we'd all be socialists." as strong retired. chairman barr came forward and said that the committee appointed at a previous meeting to consider the matter of organizing a co-operative store, such as had been described by principal sharpe, was ready to present a report. crandall, who had been made chairmanof this committee, came forward and ad dressed the meeting as follows : "our committee has held several meetings, my friends, and i am glad to be able to report substantial progress. the very next morning after the meeting at which the committee was appointed, a letter was handed in at my house before i left for work, making an offer to sell to 194 looking forward the new co-operative society a well-established grocery and provision store. this offer came from one whom you all know, and our committee was prompt to look into the offer. that evening i called them together, and we all went out to see mrs. mccall, from whom it had come. you know that her store is well located, and has a good trade, largely from the men at the mills. this is what mrs. mccall told us ; she said that her son, jimmie, was now old enough to run the store; that her oldest daughter was teaching, and that through the store she had been able to save something and also had her house clear. she said she wanted jimmie to have the store, and thought that if we would take it from her at a fair price, and keep him to run it, paying him what was right, we could have it. well, we knew the boy, and had known his father before him; so we decided on $5,000 as a fair price, and we want to place that amount of stock of the pleasantville co-operative society. i might as well add, i think, that more than one-half of the stock is already subscribed for, and we hope the balance will be taken here to-night before we adjourn. subscrip tion slips will be distributed in a few minutes. oh, yes; i ought to say, too, that we do not wish any one to sub scribe for more than fifty shares. the par value of the shares has been fixed by the committee at $10.00 per share. if there are any questions to be asked, i will be glad to answer them, if i can." "suppose you tell us. jack" ; suggested hammer harry, himself a member of the committee, but who thought that some would like to have the information; "suppose you tell us what the expectations are as to profits, &c." "all right, hammer" ; replied crandall. "as this is a going business, making fair profits, the committee is united in the opinion that we ought to be able to pay six the public school 195 per cent, on the capital without question. then the usual plan is to set aside a certain percentage for a surplus fund, so as to strengthen the business, and after that the profits are divided in the shape of a percentage dividend to the purchasers of goods, and the same per cent, is also paid on the salaries of the manager and the clerks. usually, on a good business, this dividend is about 8 per cent., al though in exceptional cases it has been as high as 10 or 12 per cent. and the dividend to stockholders on purchases is made twice as much as that to non-stockholders. that is to say; if we allow 10 per cent, to stockholders, we would only pay 5 per cent, to the other class. our com mittee thinks it safe to figure on a payment of 8 per cent, on purchases to our stockholders." "rather a rosy, optimistic view, isn't it, crandall?" inquired singleton, who had never been inclined to take a very rosy view of life himself, and naturally resented it when the other person did. "perhaps so," quietly replied crandall; "but i am so confident of a good return out of this business, mr. singleton, that i'm willing to say to you now, in the presence of all these witnesses, that i will guarantee you 10 p€r cent, on your purchases, if you become a stock holder, and half that dividend, if you do not take any stock, but will simply deal with us. that seems like a fair ofifer, does it not?" there was no reply from singleton, but hammer's deep whisper was heard over the room, in spite of his ef fort to keep it quiet; "rather guess you had him that time, jackie." the committee now proceeded to distribute the sub scription blanks to the audience, and the next half-hour was spent in this way, securing names and answering questions; after which the blanks were collected; and, 196 looking forward after computing the returns, they reported, through crandall, that the full amount had been subscribed and some hundreds over; "but we'll soon make that all right," added the chairman. "some of us who subscribed liberally, will reduce our holdings, so that all may co operate with us. i'm glad to announce that the pleasant ville co-operative society has been organized. we will expect a payment of fifty per cent, on the stock on the first of next month ; the balance in two monthly payments on the first of the next two months. now, i propose, brethren, that we close this meeting by singing the long meter doxology." a few looked at crandall, to see whether he could mean this as a joke, but they saw at once that he meant it in all seriousness; so in a few minutes, led by him, they all joined in the well-known verse, and the meeting con cluded. "i don't see why we shouldn't," said he to barr, as they were passing out; "if the strengthening of brotherhood and fellowship on the earth, isn't the lord's work, then i don't know anything that is; and if we should not praise him for that, i don't see anything greater that we can praise him for." chapter xl another conference: counting in big figures. "i am not bound to win, but i am bound to be true. i am not bound to succeed, but i am bound to live up to what light i have." — abraham lincoln. "details aside, any business that makes millionaires on the one end, and sallow, emaciated and sickly men, women and chil dren on the other, is not conducted in a legitimate manner. there is no equity in the distribution that gives uncounted luxury at one end of the mill and hopeless poverty at the other end." — from "unity," december, 1912. " * * * under an economic pressure, grinding down upon the working girl at the very age when she most wistfully de sires to be taken care of." — jane addams. on account of a great storm almost equalling a bliz zard, the attendance at the next meeting of the directors of the home building association was unusually small, barely a quorum being present. barr was delayed until late by the difficulty on the railroad in getting trains through; but crandall, hammer harry, bruce and sharpe, with one or two others, were present, and saw that the needed business was transacted. "i heard and saw something the other day, mr. smith," said the schoolmaster, addressing hammer; "that i'm sure would have had great interest for you; shall i tell you about it?" "i'm sure i would be glad to hear of it, mr. sharpe," replied hammer. "well, i wish you could have been with me to see it, as well as to hear it. i was on a visit to the schools in a large city in a neighboring state, and among others i (197) 198 looking forward visited the high school in which the colored pupils are instructed. while there, the principal, a colored woman, had the high school pupils, about four hundred in all, go through an exercise which i'm sure would have pleased you, — and which all schools of equal grade might well adopt, it seems to me, as a regular school exercise. what do you suppose it was?" but when hammer said he could not even guess, sharpe continued : "well, she had the whole roomful rise and repeat lin coln's gettysburg speech. they had been well trained, and repeated it with careful deliberation, and without a mistake. it was really one of the finest things i ever heard. i suppose the association with the great eman cipator had something to do with it, but as they repeated the last paragraph — you remember it, of course — it be gins : 'it is for us, the living, rather to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us,' and ends with those great words about 'government of the people, by the people, for the people'; i declare, as they repeated these words i found the tears in my eyes. i wish that all our high school pupils everywhere might get that speech by heart." "and i wish so, too," exclaimed hammer, who had been greatly interested in the incident related by the schoolmaster. "do you know, i think that is the great est speech ever delivered, and all americans should know it by heart." "do yoiij hammer?" quietly inquired crandall, who thought that, for once, he had caught his friend ofif his guard ; but he and the schoolmaster were treated to a surprise, for hammer as quietly responded, "i certainly do," and proceeded to repeat the whole speech. "i learned that years ago," he concluded, as he finished it; "and if i hadn't done it then, i would do it now." counting in big figures 199 "well, i must admit that i'm surprised, mr. smith," said sharpe. "i would like to tell the pupils in the high school about this; i think it would encourage them to study the speech" ; and when hammer had given his con sent, he added : "there was a little incident that occurred in school a few days ago that will probably interest all of you. you know 'big tim' o'rourke, i'm sure. well, one of the brightest boys in the high school is his son jimmie. he came to me one evening, just after the school had been dismissed and asked me a question that i rather think would be a poser for any one of you. he wanted to know just how much a million dollars was. he said he had been reading something in the newspaper, and was much interested in the problem. i always encourage that sort of fresh, live interest in a question ; but i confess that at first i was puzzled how to answer it." "and what answer did you make?" inquired bruce, who had just joined the party. "that question is a little in my line and i would like to know how you figured when you answered it." "well, i must admit i was nonplussed for an instant. i looked around for an answer, and in a minute i saw it out of one of the windows of the schoolroom. you remember the new house that robinson built last year just beyond the schoolhouse; he applied for a loan here at the association, so i was posted as to its cost, &c. so i told the boy to take a good look at that, for the cost of it, including the lot, was just about $5,000. 'now you divide a million by 5,000,' i told him, 'and you will see how many houses like that you could build for a million dollars.' " "and a mighty good answer, too," exclaimed barr; 200 looking forward "for he had something that he could look at and get an idea as to what a million really is." "thank you, mr. barr," replied sharpe. "and then, what do you suppose that youngster wanted to know?" "give it up, mr. sharpe," replied barr; "unless it was what the rings of saturn are composed of, or some easy thing like that. that's the sort of question that i have thrown at me now and then by my youngsters." "well, not quite as hard as that, i'll admit. he asked me how many feet front robinson's lot was; and when i told him about loo feet, he said he wanted to see how far the houses would extend in a straight line. he fig ured a little while and then told me what the answers were, and why he wanted to know. it seems he had read in a paper that two or three very wealthy men each had fortunes exceeding two hundred millions in amount, and he was curious to know what such an amount was like ; he said he could work it out now on the house-value line." "did he tell you what the result was?" inquired barr, who found the question novel and interesting. "yes; and i was so surprised that i went carefully over the work with him, for i could not credit his state ment at first. he told me, after a little, that, if you would allow sixteen streets 80 feet wide to every mile, you could have forty of those houses and lots to the mile, and to accommodate forty thousand of them, the number that 200 million dollars would pay for, it would take a thousand miles in a straight line, or 500 miles built up on both sides. he said, 'wouldn't that make a pretty avenue ?' and i said i thought it would ; but by that time another idea had occurred to me, and i asked him how many persons could live in a house like that. he said that mr. robinson had a wife and five children and counting in big figures 201 there was plenty of room in the house for all. i asked him then, how many would that make for the forty thou sand houses, and he quickly said 280,000. in a minute he saw what i was driving at, and said : 'but in a city that big, most of the people would live in much smaller houses, wouldn't they?' 'surely,' i replied. so he quickly made another calculation, and said in a minute : 'why, mr. sharpe, if we put only one-half the amount in houses that cost $5,000, and the other half in houses that cost $2,500 each, do you know that that would mean 60,000 houses ; and if we allow only five to each house, instead of seven, that would mean a population of 300, 000 persons?' " "now, mr. sharpe, you're fooling us, are you not?" inquired crandall; "surely there's some mistake about those figures, isn't there?" "you can go over the work yourself, mr. crandall," replied the schoolmaster. "i was of that opinion, my self, at first, but i verified them very carefully, and the boy was right. there was one deduction to be made from it, however, that i did not suggest to him; but i think i may do so here, for it will probably occur to you building association men; and that is, that upon those houses, for which this amount of two hundred millions would pay, enough money could be raised on first mort gage loans to provide ample capital for all the varied commercial and manufacturing activities that a city of that population would have need for. so that any indi vidual who takes or absorbs that amount of wealth is really taking the income and support, the food, shelter and clothing, the education and business opportunities of 300,000 persons. i remember that when jimmie o'rourke had finished his calculations, i asked him what 202 looking forward he thought of it, and what do you think he said ?" "what was it, mr. sharpe?" asked barr. "he said : 'well, i think it's an awful responsibility.' i agreed with him, and then i asked him : 'well, jimmie, would you care to take that as your share?' and quick as a wink came his reply: 'i'd rather be excused, mr. sharpe, for if i did, i couldn't help thinking the other fellows couldn't get theirs.' " "good for the boy," exclaimed hammer harry at this point. "do you know, mr. sharpe, i have a friend who travels around a good bit, and some time ago he was telling me about switzerland — he'd been over there the summer before. he said it was a country of high moun tains, as everybody knows; but he added something that i hadn't thought of before. 'of course, being a land of high mountains, it must be also a land of deep valleys; and so it is.' now, it has often seemed to me that that is what this country is, or is coming to be, in regard to its money — at least, as to the owning and controlling of the money and property. if you have these enormous fortunes on the one hand — like the high mountains in that country — you are sure to have the lack of fortunes, and in many cases the utter lack of property, which means poverty, on the other — corresponding to the deep val leys. now, is there not some way to prevent this? is there not some evening-up process by which we could escape the high mountains on the one side and the deep valleys on the other? surely, it cannot be the will of a just god that the great mass of his children should be struggling continually with poverty and a few enjoying more wealth than they know how to use." "why, hammer," replied crandall ; "don't you know that that is what we have been in search of this winter, counting in. big figures 203 and some of us think we have found the right answer in co-operation." "well, i hope it's the right one," replied hammer. "seems to me we ought to have brain power enough to find a better answer than the present one. instead of taking the mountains and valleys of switzerland for a model, it looks to me as though the almighty had in tended to show our people what he wanted them to hold and enjoy when he allowed them to go and occupy the great high plains of the middle west — a great tableland of high prosperity — that's what i call it. and from what i've heard of these meetings, i'm not sure that he hasn't sent his light to us from that very quarter, too." say ing which, hammer subsided into silence. "there is a pleasing fiction frequently expressed by those who uphold the present order," said bruce; "espe cially by its beneficiaries, to the effect that there are as many and as great opportunities to-day as ever before. some few go so far as to declare that present opportuni ties are greater than ever before ; but it is worthy of note that they confine themselves to this 'glittering general ity,' and do not go into particulars. so far is this con tention from the truth, that the directly opposite state ment seems to me much nearer it. fifty or sixty years ago the young man who had inherited, or had made, a few thousand dollars had a dozen or more promising doors of opportunity open to him, to every one that is open to him to-day. the young merchant or manufac turer of to-day who would dare to enter into competi tion with the great stores of our cities or the big plants of the private corporations would indeed exhibit very great courage, but very little intelligence ; in a few years he would probably have much more experience and much less capital. a subsidiary position as a servant to-day 204 looking forward forms the business horizon line for most of our people, and for this condition men are responsible — for men make conditions. and this condition has been brought about by those who have 'cornered' opportunity; or, if we ac cept the definition of liberty as being opportunity, by those who have 'cornered' liberty. surely a return to old con ditions, where freedom of opportunity existed for all, even though sharp competition kept even pace with it; or a forward movement, to achieve still better conditions through co-operation, is the pressing need of the pres ent hour." "there is another thought in connection with this sub ject," quietly continued the schoolmaster, "which is worthy of our consideration. if this has been done by several persons in the past, what is to prevent someone else, having a greater opportunity sometime in the future, from taking five hundred millions or, provided the oppor tunity is offered, even a thousand millions? if the laws have nothing to say against it, i cannot see why that might not happen. in moral quality, the one act is ex actly like the other. and if we have been so fortunate in the past as to see such great power come into the hands of those who acknowledge moral obligations, may it not just as readily happen that it may come into the hands of the unscrupulous, or the ambitious ; and where might the liberties of a free people be, if such almost unlimited power should come into the hands of unprincipled men ?" "and still another thought in the same connection," added bruce, "is this : as i tried to show in my first ad dress, much of the present accumulation of wealth has come about from the issue of stock that has not been paid for, but which has been made valuable by labor, and in which, as it seems to a great many of us, labor should have had a share, through some equitable plan of distri counting in big figures 205 bution. that is where the 'rub' in the present situation comes from. now, co-operation provides against any such future reaching out for great weahh at the expense of labor, because labor is assured of a fair share in the increase which results from labor and capital working together. and as a first step toward the prevention of such injustice in the future, we hold that legislation should be enacted that would prevent such issues of stock." "well, we are looking to you, mr. bruce," said barr, as the latter paused, "to take up any phase of the sub ject you wish to in your next address. i think you will find the people interested ; and as i have already told you, there are two or three hard questions getting ready for you." "in that case," replied bruce, rising to go, "as i have to make my preparation in the margin of time at my dis posal, i will hurry home to look up some figures i want to present to you"; and he left the room, and was soon followed by the other members of the committee. chapter xii. a needless failure, and a possible recovery. "the banker must begin to take interest in other people, as well as from them." — b. f. harris. "it is excellent to have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant." — shakespeare. "the real prosperity of the state and nation depends on the welfare and success of the average man." — b. f. harris. as announced through the columns of the "herald" by chairman barr, the speaker selected by the executive committee to make the address at the following meeting of the club was mr. bruce, the cashier of the local na tional bank, who had been persuaded, so barr's an nouncement read, "to further present what in his opinion was the solution of the difficulties of the present indus trial situation." when bruce arose to address the meeting the follow ing month, he was surprised to find the hall filled to its fullest capacity, some men even standing along the sides and at the end of the room. a large proportion of the audience was composed of women, who had from the first shown great interest in the discussions and addresses, especially since the second meeting, at which the cause of equal suffrage had been presented. barr introduced the speaker this time without any attempt at humor — which crandall had finally induced him to see was not essential when men and women were bent upon seriously considering important questions. so, without taking any (206) a needless failure 207 time for preliminaries, bruce began his address at once, as follows : "you will no doubt remember, my friends, that at the close of my address two months ago, i intimated that on some future occasion, if it should seem advisable to your committee and acceptable to you, i might pursue the subject then considered and attempt to show more fully just how the general plan then suggested might be applied for the good of the whole community. in order to do that, and especially in order to show how the busi ness in which i have spent the most of my life can, to the greatest degree, aid in a work which can hardly suc ceed without its active co-operation, and which it is pecu liarly fitted, when properly conducted, to help; in order to do this, it seems necessary that i should first refer to what appears to be a needless failure on the part of banking to realize and fulfill one of its most important duties to the public, and to suggest, if possible, a recov ery fromi such a condition of failure. i will therefore call the present address an attempt to consider 'a need less failure, and a possible recovery.' "you will also recall the fact that, in considering the reasons for the present greatly increased cost of living, the increased populations of the large towns and cities of the country have been referred to. this increase in the class of consumers, without a corresponding increase in the class of producers, is undoubtedly one of the lead ing causes of the increased cost of living. but i wish now especially to direct your attention to the rapid growth in the population of our large cities for another purpose. this is, to call your attention to a most sur prising state of afifairs in the relation of the growth of banking to the growth of these communities. from 2o8 looking forward the figures of the last census we learn that nearly one half of the people of the whole country now live in the large towns and cities. the growth in this urban popu lation is well indicated by the figures for the four largest cities in the country, which for the last two decades are as follows : i8po. 1900. ipio. new york city. 2,507,414 3,437,202 4,766,883 chicago 1,099,850 1,698,575 2,185,283 philadelphia .... 1,046,964 1,293,697 1,549,008 boston 448,477 560,892 670,585 5,102,705 6,990,366 9,171,759 "thus showing an increase of 37 per cent, in the dec ade preceding 1900, and of over 31 per cent, in the decade between 1900 and 1910. from 1890 to 1910 there was an increase of nearly 80 per cent. it is worthy of note that within the limits of these four cities just about one tenth of the total population of our country is congre gated, while within the metropolitan districts of the same cities (that is, within ten miles of the center of the cities), considerably more than one-tenth of our whole population is concentrated. "with this large increase in our city population there has been, as we all know, a very large increase in the amount of business done. this is well reflected in the totals showing the bank clearings, but is probably bet ter shown by the totals of the deposits in the national banks of these four cities, which, going back to 1880 and taking nearly the same date in each subsequent tenth year, were as follows : a needless failure 209 for 1880. no. banks. capital. surplus. deposits. n. y. city 47 $50,650,000 $16,964,570 $379,621,132 chicago . 9 3,950,000 2,350,000 43,512,619 phila. ... 31 16,793,000 7,434,897 74,356,292 boston... 54 50,250,000 10,147,090 106,261,939 141 $121,643,000 $603,751,982 for i8po. no. banks. capital. surplus. deposits. n. y. city 47 $49,100,000 $35,823,886 $428,629,853 brooklyn. 5 1,352,000 1,805,000 52,291,351 chicago.. 19 16,100,000 6,891,500 107,083,539 phila. ... 45 23,788,000 12,428,303 109,918,056 boston ... 56 51,800,000 13,725,460 143,702,376 172 $142,140,000 $841,625,175 "and now for the purpose of comparison, and also to show how a dangerous financial policy, even though only proposed and not finally adopted, will disastrously affect growth, let me call your attention to the figures for 1896, before giving you the figures for 1900 and 19 10. you will remember that the period from 1892 to 1896 was the period of the free coinage of silver propaganda, which did so much to throw doubt upon both individual and na tional credit, and affected all business interests. it was not until this attempt was finally defeated by the people by the overwhelming popular vote in 1896 that general business interests began to revive. the figures for 1896 are as follows : 210 looking forward for isg6. no. banks. capital. surplus. deposits. n. y. city 49 $50,450,000 $42,340,000 $445.735477 brooklyn. 5 1,352,000 2,240,000 15,919,100 chicago .. 21 21,400,000 9,548,400 107,419,294 phila. ... 41 21,965,000 14,673,000 108,835,072 boston... 55 50,750,000 14,950,325 144,009,057 171 $145,917,000 $821,918,000 "it is certainly interesting to note how complete was the paralysis of general business interests caused by the threat of the free coinage of silver. in spite of a great increase in population, the number of national banks in these four largest cities did not increase in the six years after 1890, while the total of the deposits held by them showed a decline of nearly twenty million dollars. now let us look at the tremendous growth in deposits in the next four years. the figures for 1900 are as follows : for ipoo. no. banks. capital. surplus. deposits. n. y. city 44 $62,800,000 $47,390,000 $884,407,910 1,352,000 1,900,000 16,662,327 19,250,000 9,180,000 237,829,607 19,905,000 17,275,000 203,415,184 37,400,000 14,212,000 205,691,052 brooklyn . 5 chicago .. 14 phila. ... 36 boston . . . 38 137 $140,707,000 $1,548,006,080 "here we begin to notice a very peculiar un-reciprocal action. as a usual thing, and where the way is open for free growth, there will naturally take place, in connec tion with a rapid growth in population and an accompany a needless failure 211 ing rapid growth in the volume of general business, a cor responding growth in the number and the capital of banks. here we begin to see exactly the contrary de velopment ; for, while in these four years the total of the deposits held by the national banks in these four largest cities increased nearly 100 per cent., the number of na tional banks decreased twenty per cent., and the total of their capital decreased over five million dollars. let us look at the figures at the end of the following decade and see how this remarkable development had progressed. in 19 10, at the corresponding period of the year, the figures were as follows : for iqio. no. banks. capital. surplus. deposits. n.y.city39 $119,900,000 $125,055,000 $1,318,826,745 brooklyn 5 1,802,000 2,250,000 25,076,691 chicago. ii 41,400,000 22,188,000 410,836,121 phila. .. 33 22,405,000 35,515,000 330,634,913 boston . 20 22,950,000 18,050,000 248,871,911 108 $208,457,000 $2,334,246,381 "here we see that the development that began between 1896 and 1900 has been making still more rapid progress. while the total deposits have increased about 55 per cent., the number of national banks has decreased from 137 to 108, or over twenty per cent. it is true that the total capital in new york city increased over 90 per cent., but this was largely due to the conversion of very large surpluses, in the possession of a few of the banks that increased their capital, into active capital. a surplus fund is in reality silent capital, and only becomes active 212 looking forward and legal capital after conversion into capital on the books of the bank and the issue of stock representing it. "this very peculiar blight v^hich fell upon the business of national banking shortly after 1896 is worthy of our attention, for it indicates a tendency which, if it should spread and become general, would bode ill to almost every legitimate business interest in our country. it is very noticeable from the figures already given; but it is still more noticeable when we take the figures for one of these cities in which the tendency toward concentration has been most marked. strange to say, this is the city of boston, in which we would least expect to find any adop tion of the monarchical principle, whether in politics or business. let us compare the figures for 1896, just be fore this movement began, with the figures for several years since : boston national banks — figures for i8p6 and since. for a^, 0. banks. capital. average deposits. 1896: 55 $■50,750,000 $144,009,057 1898: 58 52,850,000 201,292,000 1902: 39 35,350,000 222,300,000 1906: 28 28,400,000 222,451,000 1910: 20 22,950,000 248,871,911 1912: 19 30,300,000 251,371,000 "the growth of deposits shown by the above figures is not so striking as the strange decrease in the number and capital of the banks; while the deposits jumped about 70 per cent, over what they were in 1896, the number of national banks decreased from 55 to 19, and in capital from over fifty millions to a little over twenty millions. it is true that the amount of capital has been increased in this present year to about thirty millions, but a needless failure 213 this increase came in the capital of the three large banks which were responsible for the reduction of the number of banks, thus showing conclusively the concentration of the banking power in a few hands. these three national banks now hold in deposits just about two-thirds of the total deposits in all the national banks in this city. "the figures given show that in recent years in these large cities a greatly increased volume of business has been done on a greatly reduced capital, and by a much smaller number of banks. as a possible reason for this concentration of business in a few hands, the dividend re turns on the stocks of the three boston banks that have been most active in effecting the mergers there present an interesting study when taken in connection with the market value of their stock. thus, in 1898 the dividend rate of the bank that has been most active was 6 per cent., and for several years since then it has been 12 per cent.; its stock sold in 1898 at $129.00 per share, and in 1912 as much as $410.00 per share was asked for it. of the other two banks, the stock of one sold in 1898 for $224.00 per share, while in 1912 as much as $430.00 per share was asked for it. its dividend rate in 1898 was 10 per cent., and since then has been 12 per cent. the market value of the other in 1898 was $177.00 per share, and in 1912 as high as $266.00 per share; while its divi dend rate in 1898 was 8 per cent., and since then has been as high as 1 1 per cent. the rapid increase in the market value of these bank stocks may possibly give us the clue to the raison d'etre of these big concentrations of bank ing capital. "in this connection there are at least two questions of sufficient importance to be worthy of our consideration; one has to do with the welfare of the individual and the other with the welfare of the general public. how does 214 looking forward this concentration of banking power affect the individual ? is it a good thing for him? and the first individual whom i would consider in this connection is the man who has, perhaps — as happens in a great many instances — given many years of careful effort to the upbuilding of an institution, to finally see it "absorbed" by some stronger institution which has secured the control of a majority of the stock, and who finds himself thrown out of a position without the slightest regard as to any moral or legal rights that he may have. in most city banks there are at least three positions that pay very well ; three to five more that pay good salaries, and five to ten more that pay comfortable living salaries. in every such bank it would be safe to say that from twelve to fifteen men, earning good salaries, are affected by every merger; in many, the number would be very much larger. when these changes take place, it sometimes happens that all the working force is also taken over, but that is rather the exception than the rule, and when the force is not provided for, wrong is done and sometimes hardships re sult that cannot be made right by any amount that may be added to the dividend or the market price of the bank that has gained something by the deal. taking the total of the reduction in the number of banks from 1898 to 1912, or 64, and multiplying it by 10 (a very low estimate of the number of men affected per bank), and we have 640, which would represent the number of fam ilies affected ; multiplying this again by 5, we would have over 3,000 as the number of persons who are directly affected by the concentrations in the national banks of these 4 large cities. it may be claimed that these persons are not entitled to any consideration, in view of the greater efficiency that has been attained by the change. to come to that conclusion, we must of course first deny a needless failure 215 that a man has any right to the fruit of his labors when a stronger man exclaiming 'greater efficiency' comes along and claims them. if efficiency means better serv ice to the general public, then it is worthy of considera tion; but if it simply means bigger dividends or a higher market price for the one who has the power to take, then we had better go slow before we admit that 'efficiency' has any rights that we are bound to respect. "the other question is perhaps the more important one, as affecting a greater number of persons : how is the welfare of the general public affected by this concentra tion of banking power in a few hands? in the first place, it may be questioned whether the great reduction in the number of men interested in a business such as banking can be a good thing for the general public, for the reason that there are times when, in this business espe cially, 'in a multitude of counsellors there is safety.' there are periods of business depression which have oc curred again and again, and which in all probability will recur again, when all who can help to throw additional light on the solution of the difficult questions that arise are needed. it may be that in concentrations that have taken place all the banking ability, all the knowledge and skill that were available have been conserved and are still available ; but there seems to be at least room to doubt whether this is true, and whether the new policy is not altogether a great mistake. "again, how are the business interests of the small business man taken care of after these mergers are af fected? is the small merchant, who has always had his business needs met by the comparatively small bank, going to receive much consideration from the big bank, with the ten million dollar capital, and able to make loans of a million at a time? is it likely that he will receive 2i6 looking forward the same attention under the concentrated form of bank ing that he received from the smaller bank? and as there are still a large number of small tradesmen in all the big cities, should not their rights be taken into con sideration? "again, does not the new system make it easier for a man, or a group of men, who may desire to cripple or destroy a business rival, whether large or small, to ac complish their purpose ? has there not been at least good reason to suspect that this power has on some occasions been so used? "and again, does not this large aggregation of bank ing capital in a few banks put it in the power of those who hold it to work to the disadvantage of the people in a way that would be impossible if they did not control such power? if, for instance, one of these large banks wished to make a deal with a foreign state, by which it would lend it money to be used in a way to injure the people of this country, what is there to prevent its doing so — save, of course, a sense of patriotic duty, which may or may not be operative at the right time. "finally, may it not be questioned whether the reduc tion of banking capital of over fifty millions, distributed among fifty institutions, to thirty millions controlled by less than twenty banks, is a good thing for the com munity in which it takes place, on the ground of safety alone? certainly it seems much safer to have the large business interests of a great city distributed as widely as possible, and protected by as great an amount of cap ital as can be safely and profitably employed, than to have these interests concentrated in the hands of a few. is not the trouble with recent business and industrial changes this : that we have allowed to be set up amongst us, whether knowingly or ignorantly, a system of business a needless failure 217 that is closely allied to the old and outworn monarchical ideas in politics ? and if the present tendency is allowed to go on unchecked, may we not properly expect that the one man idea will be carried to its logical conclusion, until each large city shall have but one large bank? if it should come to that, let us hope that the one in control will at least forward to those compelled to use it the car fare to get to and from it. "and that brings me to the question which i believe some of you are ready to ask : how are we going to pre vent such a consummation, if the powers that be decide that it is desirable? first, let me say that it seems that this movement for the concentration of great money power has more of evil possibility in it than any of us have yet imagined. it is to-day one of the great dangers of our country ; and no more inveterate foe to true democ racy can be dreamed of than unlimited money power in the hands of a few. while those who have it to-day may be trusted, perhaps, not to unwisely use their power, still no one can tell what their successors might wish to do. it is a power that must be controlled and curbed in the interests of the whole people. can this be done, and how? "all that anyone can hope to do by way of answering this question is to suggest a course of action that would make such concentration impossible, or very improbable, in the future ; and there are two thoughts in this connec tion that i would like to leave with you. the first is this : that forty-nine is so near to fifty-one that the latter ought not to be allowed to do just exactly with the former as its sweet will dictates. that is to say, there should be some way of controlling the action of a mere majority, when it comes to large business interests. there should be either some sort of proportional representation of a 2i8 looking forward minority interest, or a mere majority should not have the power that is now generally possessed; but, for certain actions— as, for instance, the merger of a bank — a two thirds or three-fourths vote of the stock should be re quired. and even then, before such a change is effected, the whole matter should be submitted to a competent au thority to decide whether it is in accord with good pub lic policy; if not, the merger should be prohibited. "the other thought is this : that it should be possible to put the advantages offered by the national banking system within reach of the small tradesmen of our large cities. if this were done, a great work would be accom plished in the direction of social and business uplift. it frequently happens that a loan of a moderate sum of money — say, $300.00 or $500.00 — helps to tide the small merchant over a difficult place, and means to him all the difference between success and failure. and yet, be cause of the terms of the national bank act, it is to-day much more difficult for the small tradesmen in a large city to secure such accommodation than for the mer chant in a small town, or even village, to do so. the amount that has been fixed for the minimum capital for a national bank in a large city, while not comparatively large when compared with the very large banks with several millions capital, is nevertheless so large that the small tradesmen find it difficult or impossible to raise it. the terms fixed by law for the capital of state institu tions are generally so much less onerous that capital is much more readily raised for them; so that the small merchant in the large city can hardly look for accommo dation from the very institution which is especially char tered for the purpose of making commercial loans. "my suggestion is this : make it as easy for the man of moderate means in the large city to secure accommoda a needless failure 219 tion as it has been made for the merchant of the smau town and village. as each bank pays the cost of the examinations made by the government, no additional bur den would be placed upon the government by such a change; and to the objection that it would not be safe to have such banks with moderate capital doing business in the large business centers and there competing with the great city institutions, i would say that this is an swered by the fact that the rents and other expenses in such centers would make this impossible, as the small banks would not locate there because of the expense. but, surely, there can be no good reason why a national bank with the same capital as is allowed by the state in which it is located, should not be allowed to incorporate and locate on the outskirts of a large city; and a capital of $100,000 ought to be sufficient to warrant its location anywhere. in one of the four large cities mentioned, the laws of the state permit a state bank to be incorporated with a capital of $50,000, while the national bank act requires for a bank in the same city a capital of $200,000. the state law also allows a trust company to incorpo rate with a capital of $125,000, so that it is made twice as difficult to start a national bank as a trust company, and four times as difficult as it is to start a state bank. "the system of banking made possible under the na tional bank act is the safest system of banking known in this country, and the safeguards it throws about this business ought to be made available to the merchant of small means as v.'ell as to the millionaire. i think you will agree with me that if this business has any power to help humanity upward, there can be no greater need for it anywhere than in the modern large city. we hear a good deal nowadays about helping the farmer and mak ing life in the country better worth living, and that work 220 looking forward deserves all encouragement ; yet it remains true that the country presents no such need for help as is found in our cities. no other place in the world can show such abject poverty, such concentrated misery, as the slums of our large cities. as one of the agencies that might help to prevent some from falling to a lower and lower state of misery, by extending help when most needed in a business way, and as a help to lift men to better business condi tions, i want to suggest to you the national bank of quite moderate capital, with all the safeguards known to the government thrown around it. in other words, let us put this form of safe business again within reach of the 'plain people,' for it is their right to enjoy all the advantages it can offer. "such banks would be found to be of great help to the newcomers from other countries. new to our laws and customs, and with this safe system of banking now practically closed to them, it is not strange that they so often fall a prey to unscrupulous fellows who speak their language and offer to take care of their money as private bankers. in the large cities we are used to reading of the failure or decamping of such persons every once in a while, and the resultant loss of thousands of the sav ings of their easy dupes, who ought to be safeguarded, if it is possible to do so. why should it not be made easily possible for their countrymen to organize national banks with moderate capital and thus help themselves and offer a safe banking place to the newcomer? in every large city there should be one or more of these national banks of various nationalities, officered and directed by those who had been in the country a few years, and ready to offer this kind of aid to their compatriots. to make this possible would be a gracious act on the part of the great republic toward her new citizens. it would undoubtedly a needless failure 221 save much suffering and be a real lift upward to many who would be grateful for it. "no doubt other ways of curbing the present tendency toward centralization of banking power will occur to you as you consider the subject. i commend it to you as worthy of your best thought and consideration. the question is sometimes asked : how did the present condi tion come about? is it the result of design, or did it simply happen ? i would answer this in the yankee way, by asking another : human nature being what we know it to be, is it not altogether likely that the well-defined pur pose, the resolute will and the strong arm have combined to bring about the results we see? "some of you may ask the question : what should have been the normal growth of the banking business in those four cities if entire freedom of opportunity had existed, and if the movement for concentration had not taken place? and in reply to that i can only say that the best way to determine it is to take the rate of growth of the preceding like period and apply that to the more recent period. the increase in the number of national banks in the above four cities from 1880 to 1895 was from 141 to 171, a gain of 30, or 21 per cent. gain. applying this rate of gain to the later period of fifteen years, there would have been an increase in the number of national banks of from 171 to 207. but, instead of this, there was a decrease from 171 to 108, so that the loss in the actual number from what might have been expected was from 207 to 108. part of this loss may, of course, be ex plained by the fact that in some places there has seemed to be a larger number of trust companies and other in stitutions doing a banking business, organized in the later period. but it is also true, on the other hand, that in the later period there has been an enormously greater 222 looking forward volume of business done and, therefore, greater banking facilities would naturally have been required than in the earlier period. "but whatever may have been the cause, whether de signed or accidental, we may rest well-assured that the cure will not come by accident. it must be thought out and applied by those who have the courage to look at facts as they are, and when the remedy has been deter mined upon, to apply it without fear. if the results of this concentration of power are dangerous to us individu ally, or to the nation as a whole, then such power should be controlled or, if need be, overthrown. the enlight ened will of the people, expressed in law, and supported and upheld by the strong arm of the lav/, should cer tainly be adequate to uphold the right and overcome the wrong. "in turning from this first part of my address to in vite your attention to another branch of the banking sit uation which seems of nearly equal importance, will you allow me to emphasize the point i have tried to make, that the fact that the national banking business in our largest cities has become, or is fast becoming, a 'lost art,' except in the hands of certain powerful interests, and has largely passed out of the hands of the middle class of business men — not to speak of those whose means are very moderate — this fact reveals a very great failure on the part of the business of banking, as defined and protected by our national laws, to serve the common people, and calls loudly for such changes by law as shall make it what it should be — the servant of the whole people, and intended to make at least one branch of busi ness safe beyond the possibility of loss. i have tried to point out two or three methods by which a recovery from its present condition may be made, and this great system a needless failure 223 of banking be once more placed in the honorable position it was intended by its founders to occupy. if other bet ter methods can be found to act more promptly or safely, no one will welcome them more heartily than myself. "the second half of this address, to use the words of colonel sanford, who used to delight audiences in this town, 'will be much shorter than the first half.' i wish to ask your attention to a few facts connected with the reports of the savings banks of our country, which will, i think, prove of interest to you. when propositions are made looking toward the plain people or the working people forming co-operative enterprises, and practically testing co-operation, the objection is frequently raised, 'but where will they get the money from? you know that the workingmen have no money.' that is the state ment most frequently made in objection. when i hear it, i always feel like asking the one who makes it, 'how do you know ? who told you so ?' "the statement that the workingmen of this country have no money is, in view of the published reports of our savings banks, as great an absurdity as can be ut tered. while it is possible that a portion of these de posits belong to persons who do not work for their living, it is perfectly safe to conclude that by far the greater part of these savings do belong to the workers, both men and women. the average business man uses his funds in his business; the men engaged in large business en terprises can use their money to much better advantage than in ways that will not pay more than three or four per cent. ; so that necessarily the savings come from those who do not understand how to invest safely and wish to have all the safeguards possible throv/n about their sav ings. if these deposits do not, therefore, belong to the 224 looking forward workingmen and working-women of the country, to whom do they belong? "let us look at the figures showing the total amount of these savings and their rapid growth in recent years, for there is food for thought to be found here. going back to 1870 and coming down by decades to 1910, the figures are as follows, as compiled and published by the comptroller of the currency.* total savings in the savings banks of the united states : for 1870 $549,874,358 for 1880 819,106,973 for 1890 1,524,844,506 for 1900 2,449,547,885 for 1910 4,070,486,246 "to this enormous total of savings should be added the total amount invested in the building and loan as sociations of the country, for these are in the same class of savings. taking the figures for the year 191 1, we should add the sum of $1,030,687,031 to the above total of savings in order to arrive at the approximate amount which the workingmen and working-women of this coun try have been able to save, and which has been carefully invested, either by themselves, acting on the boards of management of the building and loan associations, or by the officers of the savings banks, whose directorates usually include the ablest business men of the communi ties in which they are located, many of whom accept such *the figures are from reports of savings banks, strictly speaking, and do not include savings deposits in other banks and trust com panies. a needless failure 225 duties without pay and with an eye single to the good of the people whom they thus serve. this is one of those forms of service that is rarely acknowledged, and yet is of the greatest value to the people served, tending toward individual and social uplift in many ways. "we thus have a grand total of $5,101,173,277, as representing the total savings of the working people of this country. nor have we yet discovered the full amount, for many trust companies and some national banks also receive savings accounts, which in the total run up to large figures. but, as this amount cannot be accurately determined, let us assume that it comes from others than workers. the figures already arrived at are large enough for our purpose, and show conclusively that the working people of the country cannot be said to be without means to engage in safe enterprises, if they are once assured that they shall be honestly and efficiently managed. "and now i seem to hear the question that must be in some miinds present, 'do you mean to encourage the with drawal of savings to invest in doubtful, or questionable business enterprises? surely you do not think such a course safe, or one that would be to any great extent adopted?' and to this i would have to reply, 'surely i do not, under present circumstances.' but, suppose that the general government should decide to encourage co operative enterprises to the extent suggested in my last address, by allowing those manufacturing corporations engaged in interstate commerce that may desire to do so and new ones also, to incorporate under the national law in much the same way that national banks are now able to incorporate, thus assuring to all investors that the cap ital has been paid in in cash, and that the government will exercise supervision over them ; would not that place such 226 looking forward national corporations on an entirely different plane, as regards safety and desirability as investments, from that which they occupy at present; and would it not largely re move the objections to such investments which at pres ent very properly obtain ? "as an indication that this is not a new idea, and show ing that some of the ablest minds have been considering it, let me quote the words of one of our great masters of industry, whose name is well known to all of you. re ferring to this subject in his book entitled 'highways of progress,' mr. james j. hill says : 'under the constitutional provision allowing congress to reg ulate commerce between the states, any company desiring to transact business outside of the state in which it is incorpo rated should be held to a uniform provision of federal law; namely, that all should satisfy a commission that their capital stock was actually paid up in cash or in property taken at a fair valuation, just as the capital of a national bank must be certified to be paid up by the comptroller of the currency. * * * 'with such a simple provision of law, the temptation to make companies for the purpose of selling prospective profits would be at an end, and at the same time no legitimate business would suffer; nor could any number of individuals desirous of en gaging in business as a corporation suffer from any hardship by being obliged to prove that their capital was as advertised — that they were not beginning to deal with the public under false pretences. 'i am convinced that this is the simplest, most effective and necessary regulation to be applied to modern business methods. it begins at the beginning. it not only attacks the practice by which millions of the people's money have been coaxed into bad investments, but it also bears directly upon the main evil at tributed to the existence of big corporations. with it they would lose most of their incentive to any such wrong-doing as may be within their power; with it there would be little induce ment to claim exorbitant profits by raising prices, because the a needless failure 227 fact could no longer be concealed by spreading the net return over a fictitious capitalization.'* "you will notice that to the legal provision suggested by mr. hill, showing that the capital has been paid in in full, i have added the provision for supervision by the national government much in the same way that it now exercises supervision over the national banks. if the corporations were made to pay the cost of these examina tions by the government agents, there would be no addi tional charge to the people for them. that they would tend to make general corporation business much safer than at present, the experience of the national banks abundantly proves. and this greater safety would at tract capital to them. "if general industry were so organized, or if but one well-known section of it were so organized that the workingmen and working-women would know for a cer tainty that they were to be protected so far as govern ment requirements go, as to payments on account of stock, and government oversight, no doubt there would be many willing to invest a part of their savings in such protected corporations. no one knows better than men engaged in my business the danger of making stock in vestments under the present 'hit or miss' style of incor poration; and no one would more strongly urge those who think of making such investments to go slow, and do so only after thorough investigation, and full assur ance that the corporation being considered is sound and well managed; but if the present conditions can be changed and made safe for the small investor, as they should be, then the objections would be removed and a •see "highways of progress," by james j. hill, pages 136 and 137. 228 looking forward comparatively large investment of savings might be made without great risk. "and this would be especially likely to occur if a safe method of incorporating co-operative associations under government control were adopted. the very fact that the returns to labor were to be considered in such asso ciations, with the probability that the experience met with, under careful control elsewhere, would be repeated here, would be an invitation to workingmen and working women to invest a part of their savings in such protected enterprises. where co-operation, both in a productive as well as in a distributive way, has been fairly tried, under conservative control and with the working people taking a direct interest in the management, it has met with marked success. what has been done elsewhere can be done here; all that is needed is a fair trial under the right direction. if that is assured, we have a right to believe that the capital required to make the start will be forth coming. "there is another point in regard to these large sav ings to which i wish to call your attention, and that is that they form one of the greatest conservative forces that modern society knows. when the proposition is made looking toward any radical system of socialism, such as the division of all property among those who would like to take it without showing any rightful title to it, or the taking over of all property by the state, to be administered in some strange way, not yet defined, for the good of all, when such propositions as these shall be made, we may rest well assured that the workers, both men and women, who have accumulated these great sav ing funds, will have something to say about it, and we can hardly expect that their decision will be favorable to a needless failure 229 it, unless human nature shall greatly change before that day. "and not only will the natural human impulse be against such scheme of general distribution, but the man ner of the investment of these large saving funds, as at present administered by those controlling them, will make such distribution all the more unlikely. for they are now so safely invested, for the most part, that they form a most important part of the real capital of the great in dustries of the country. it is true that this investment is not in the so-called active capital of our industries; but it does form a large part of the underlying capital in the shape of well-secured bonds issued by our great corpo rations, both public and private. scarcely a good munici pality anywhere in the country but its bonds form a part of the invested savings of the workers of the country. scarcely a solvent railroad corporation, or any large incorporated industry, but its bonds can be found among the investments of these savings. so that modern indus try, even under the present far-from-ideal conditions, does indeed owe this to the workers — that a large portion of its underlying capital is furnished to it by this stored-up labor, thus made active and helpful in the prosecution of general industry. this fact alone seems to make the union of labor and capital under more equitable condi tions than now prevail almost inevitable some time in the future. it makes the date for the general distribution of all property through some form of socialism very remote indeed ; and it entitles labor, because of this great addi tional service to capital, to the most equitable treatment that capital can grant, or that can be agreed upon between them. as one of the great conservative forces of society, therefore, which shall help to keep us steady in times of stress and trial ; and yet not so conservative as to be op 230 looking forward posed to progress in right directions, i invite your consid eration to these savings of the workers of our country. "as the subject of co-operation in its various forms has been presented in this series of meetings, the ques tion, 'why have attempts at co-operation so frequently failed, especially in this country?' has no doubt been in many minds. will you allow me to suggest one or two reasons for many of the failures, and at the same time remind you that we have in our country achieved at least two of the greatest successes in co-operation that the world knows of, as shown in the building and loan as sociations which were described by mr. crandall, and in the savings banks, whose great success has been shown this evening. but it is at the same time true that quite a number of attempts have been made at co-operation, which have failed; and it is well worth our time to in quire, why? "the failures in co-operation, both in our own coun try and abroad, have been due chiefly to three causes : first, lack of sufficient capital ; second, lack of proper book keeping and auditing, and third, lack of the proper recog nition of ability, by which is meant, trained administra tive ability. to these may be added differences that are apt to creep in when success begins to be achieved; but the leading causes are the three first mentioned. so well is this recognized that in the movement that has been in augurated in the northwest, especial stress is laid upon the necessity for auditing, and sufficient capital ; and in the division of profits, the same rate per cent, declared as a dividend on purchases is also allowed on salaries and wages paid, which is a proper recognition of ability. in the english form of co-operation the surplus profits are divided between labor, capital and patronage ; and in the two noted instances of productive co-operation that have a needless failure 231 been presented at these meetings — the one in germany and the other in france-^the division is between labor, capital and ability. if i might be permitted to suggest a change, and what seems to me an improvement, it would be that both patronage and ability, in addition to labor and capital, should be recognized in the distribution of surplus profits, thus removing one of the dangers to suc cessful co-operation — the non-recognition of ability — which has caused many failures. this plan seems to have been adopted in the northwest, and augurs well for the future of co-operation there. "some of you may think it strange that i have not pre sented a plan for a co-operative bank, and in reply to that silent inquiry i would say that i have not done so be cause that has already been pretty well done through the presentation of the building and loan association work ; for, as was stated then by mr. crandall, these associa tions are practically a form of co-operative banking, with special rules as to the investment of their funds, by which they are turned in the direction of real estate loans, the idea being, originally, to help men own their homes. but some modifications should be made in the general banking laws which would provide for the organization, under the proper safeguards, of other forms of co-operative banks, such as the ^great italian institution, which is one of the greatest banks and also one of the greatest successes of co-operative principles that the world knows. in fact, the application of the principles of co-operation to the business of banking is a very simple matter, as we have there in plain sight all the factors to the problem : we have capital, on which a fair rate of interest should be paid; we have labor on the part of those who work in caring for the deposits, investments, &c. ; we have patronage, in the shape of deposits, to which a share of the profits would 232 looking forward naturally go; and finally, we have ability, in the adminis trative officers. the time is surely coming when some of the greatest triumphs of co-operation will be shown in the banking business, and i believe they will be in our own country, too. this should come, in part, to make good the failure of banl-cing to render to the people the full measure of service which we have a right to expect from it. it forms that possible recovery of the business to which i have referred." after bruce had concluded, chairman barr made the usual announcement as to the lecturer's willingness to an swer question, and had hardly ceased when singleton, the single tax advocate, was on his feet, and presenting the following question: "i would like to ask the gentleman whether he does not think that banking should be a perfectly free business in which any citizen might engage, just as he might decide to be a baker or shoemaker? and if not, why not?" bruce came slowly to the front of the platform, smiling as though he were not altogether surprised to hear the question (he told barr after the meeting had adjourned that it seemed like meeting an old friend to hear that question asked). "in reply to my friend," he began, "i would say that i am not able to answer his question in the affirmative. i would be glad if human nature were such, or that the experience of society were such, that it could be so an swered, but unfortunately such is not the case, and i am compelled to say 'no, i do not think so.' the general experience has been that it is much safer to consider the banking business as a partly public business, and that it should have thrown about it all the protection that is pos sible. where individuals do engage in it, and they can still do so — there is no prohibition of it — the laws of a needless failure 233 many of the states require certain formalities to be ob served, reports to be made, &c., and it seems to me that is perfectly proper, on the score of the protection of the public. as i have already intimated, i regard the na tional bank system as the safest form of banking the world has yet seen, and am glad that it was first tried among our own people, although some of its features had been known elsewhere. i trust that that answers the gen tlemen's question." "well, it answers it in a way," retorted singleton, "but it doesn't satisfy me at all. i hold that that business ought to be as free as any other. as to protecting the public — the public isn't always a baby. it shouldn't need to be protected all the time by laws that interfere with personal liberty." "in reply to that, i would beg to say," replied bruce, "that there has always been a portion of the public that has not shown much ability to take care of itself in such business as banking. . laws are made not only for the strong, but for the weak as well ; and where the weak need protection, it is certainly the duty and province of law to provide it. and that is what the banking laws of the various states have aimed to do. possibly in an ideal state of society such protection will not be necessary; but, unfortunately, we have not yet arrived at that point of de velopment." this statement was received by a round of applause, during which singleton took his seat with a pugnacious shake of his head. barr immediately asked : "any more questions, ladies and gentlemen?" and was rather sur prised to hear the deep voice of hammer llarry exclaim, as hammer rose to his feet : "yes ; i would like to ask mr. bruce whether he can 234 looking forward tell us anything about how fast those savings have grown in this country." "that's an interesting question, mr. chairman," re plied bruce. "i have given you the figures since 1870, but i did not go into it further, for i was afraid of tiring you with them. in answer to hammer's question, i will quote the figures from one state only, and i give its fig ures because the savings bank system of the country really started there. the figures are for the state of massachusetts, and i will compare only two periods — • 1832, a few years after the inauguration of the system, and 1912. the figures are as follows: savings bank deposits in massachusetts : for 1832 $2,000,000 for 1912 857,784,673 "these figures certainly show a remarkable growth. i wonder if the gentleman who asked this question had any special reason for .doing so. if he has, i wish he would let us know." "well," responded hammer, "there were two ideas running sort of criss-cross through my head. i think you told us in your last address that these savings banks were run almost as a pure co-operative system of banking — that is, they did not, as a general thing, have any capital stock paid in ; did not make any dividends, but divided all the profits among their depositors in the shape of interest, except a part that they passed to their surplus accounts. did i get that right ?" "yes," replied bruce, "that is the usual manner in which they are run, although i think that in some states they are allowed to have a capital stock paid in — in which a needless failure 235 event, they would naturally pay dividends. but the usual form is w^ithout capital." "well, then," replied hammer, "what i want to ask is this : are not these savings banks a good illustration of what co-operation can do, with government help ; for in all the states where they operate, the law does try to protect such deposits ; is this not really co-operation under government supervision, and a very successful form of it, too?" "they certainly form such an illustration," replied bruce ; "and they are so fully co-operative that there is no capital employed, so that no return whatever is made on capital — all the profits being divided between labor and patronage ; the salaries to officers and clerks being the re turn to labor, and the interest paid on deposits being the return to patronage. the question you have just asked, i presented to one of the leading officers of a savings bank in a great city lately, and his reply was this : 'they are purely co-operative, not even having to pay anything for capital.' " "then," continued hammer, "it seems to me they are about the greatest success in co-operation that the world knows of. they have collected big amounts of the peo ple's money, which is carefully invested for them, and they are under the supervision of the state. your sug gestion is, if i understand it, mr. bruce, that the state and national governments should do for general in dustry what has already been done for these savings banks by the states, and for the national banks by the national government. is that it?" "that is very nearly it, mr. smith," replied bruce, "with this difference, of course, that in the industrial en terprises capital would, of course, be required; while in the case of savings bank it is not required. to make it 236 looking forward more easy to secure this capital, i have suggested the same care as to the capital being paid in, and as to supervision after the business is going, as the government now exer cises in the case of national banks." "thank you, sir," said hammer. "now, there is one more question in regard to this, and then i guess i'm done. you have told us something about the growth of these savings banks deposits in the past twenty years. can you give us any idea as to their probable growth in the future; what will they be at the end of the next twenty years?" "not being a prophet," replied bruce, "i would not like to prophesy; but, of course, you only wished for a prob able estimate. the result would depend upon the gen eral course of business. we must remember that the past fifteen years have been a period of unusual growth in business, and, with some exceptions, of more than usually steady employment for labor ; and in spite of the increased cost of living, the savings of labor, as shown by the re turns of the savings banks, have been far greater than in any other like period. the only ansvi^er that could be made to your question would be that, if like conditions should prevail, the total savings as shown by the totals in the savings banks of the country at the end of the next twenty years should be between fifteen thousand and twenty thousand millions of dollars. the gain from the interest alone, if allowed to remain on deposit, would nearly double the present amount, and the additional sav ings would in all probability make it up to the larger amount stated. but, then, that calculation is based upon conditions remaining as they are or growing better. as to the likelihood of that, you are as good a judge as i." "thank you, mr. bruce," said hammer. "the reason i asked that question was this: if those big figures, or a needless failure 237 something like them, are reached, and if the same careful investment of them is made by the managers, won't the investments in the industries of the country owned by labor be something tremendous? you have told us how large they are now ; if labor goes on saving and if its sav ings are invested as they have been — and there don't seem to be any other way — won't the time come when these savings will be nearly the whole thing? and won't the time come, too, when labor will think that instead of receiving a very moderate return in interest from these savings, which form the backbone of the industries of the country, it should have a larger return as part owner of the industries? and will it not have a right to think so?" "the great investment interest, you refer to," replied bruce, "certainly entitles labor to the most just considera tion and treatment that can be given it. the management of the large amounts deposited in the savings banks of the country is worthy of the highest praise. whether any wider investment of these funds in general industrial op erations would be wise is a debatable question ; but under present conditions such investments would, in my opinion, be most unwise, and it is fortunate that they cannot be made. when changes in the laws governing industries shall be made ; when the capital is known to be fully paid in, in cash or in real value, and when the state and na tional governments shall exercise proper supervision — then, it seems to me, a much wider investment of such funds could be safely made, to the very great advantage of labor; and especially so, if the corporations, whose stock was taken, were co-operative societies, under state control, just as the savings banks, holding these depos its, are under state control." "now, mr. bruce," said chairman barr, after a slight pause; "as no one else appears to have a question, will 238 looking forward you allow me to ask one that has been in my mind for some time — ever since your first address, in fact. i would like to know how you propose to manage matters when a big corporation, say like a railroad or steamship com pany, or some big manufacturing company employing hundreds or thousands of employes, is concerned. i understand how you can run a store on the co-operative plan; but how you are going to do it in the other case is what gets me. i think there are others here who are like me, who would be glad to hear something further about that." "perhaps that has not been made very clear," replied bruce; "and i am glad you have brought it up. my thought in reference to that is this : that after a fair divi dend has been paid on the capital, the balance of profits in manufacturing and other corporations might be divided into three parts, one of which should go as an additional dividend on capital ; another, as the return to labor in ad dition to wages, and the third, to the surplus fund, so as to strengthen the corporation until this fund became so large as to need no further additions, when the total surplus profits, after the payment of the dividends on cap ital, could be divided between labor and capital in equal shares." "i notice you said 'a fair dividend,' mr. bruce," said barr; "would you mind telling us what you would con sider a 'fair dividend' on capital?" "certainly," replied bruce; "a 'fair dividend' is, in my opinion, such a dividend as any one of us would like his money to earn if invested in a corporation where he had to take the chances of loss, if business were bad. most of us would like to have five or six per cent, in such cases, and i think that that would be a fair dividend. in fact, i like to be generous in my treatment of capital, just as a needless failure 239 i would like to be generous in my treatment of labor, and 1 would be willing to say that the return to capital should be not less than five per cent., and not more than seven per cent. — the higher rate whenever circumstances would justify it." "well, i'm sure i'm obliged to you, mr. bruce," said barr, "for that question has been a puzzler to me for some time. i could see how you could work it in the store business, but the other was hard to see. now, gentle men, if there are no other questions, ave will — " "just one minute, mr. chairman," added bruce; "the question you have just asked me has brought up another thought that has occurred again and again as these meet ings have gone on. i have thought what might have been the condition of labor and capital in our country if, when the great revival of business took place about fifteen years ago, some form of co-operation had existed, such as i have tried to outline; or if, instead of this, capital had acknowledged, because of the great service that labor had just rendered in keeping the finances of the nation on a safe basis and saving us from national bankruptcy; if capital had said to labor : 'you shall have an equal share with me in all the at-present-unearned, but with your help soon-to-be-earned, millions of common stock which, with the consent of the laws, i will issue.' if some such ar rangement as that had been made, and if the amounts that have been made good, with the help of labor, had been equally divided with labor, would not the relations of labor and capital be rather different from what they are ? and would not added opportunities have come to labor from that added wealth? would not thousands of stu dents have secured higher education? would there not have been greater comfort in many homes? and, better than all else, would there not have existed a feeling of 240 looking forward brotherhood and fellowship that now is sadly lacking? it is this that co-operation aims at, and will some day achieve — a greater diffusion of wealth to all who labor, both with the hand and with the brain — not merely that there may be more money in this and in that bank ac count, but that the higher things of life may be more readily attainable by all, that justice and peace may rule, and a higher, nobler type of manhood and womanhood be realized. such an evolution is in the natural order of things ; let us go forward to achieve it." with this brief addendum to the address, which was heartily applauded by his hearers, the meeting concluded. chapter xiii. another conference: engaging home speakers. "no individual life can be truly prosperous passed in the midst of those who suffer. to the noble soul, it cannot be happy; to the ignoble, it cannot be secure." — matthew arnold. "and for success, i ask no more than this, — to bear unflinching witness to the truth. all true, whole men succeed : for what is worth success's name, unless it be the thought. the inward surety, to have carried out a noble purpose to a noble end ?" — lowell. "mr. bruce," said hammer harry, at the next meeting of the building association directors, after the cashier had completed his labors and joined the group gathered around the large table in the board room, "i've had a hard question ready for you for two or three days, and now i've got my opportunity." "all right, hammer," replied bruce; "if i have the answer, it's yours for the asking." "i wanted to ask you whether you could tell us what proportion of the deposits in the savings banks of the country would be sufficient to put the co-operative stores, necessary to meet the needs of the country, in a way to do business. i've been trying to work it out, and i want to see how near you and i come in getting the answer." "well, that's a new one for me, hammer," replied bruce ; "but, if you will give me a few minutes, i'll try to have my answer ready" ; saying which he took his pencil and began to figure. in a few minutes he looked up, and with a smile at hammer, said : "well, that is most aston ishing, isn't it?" (241) 242 looking forward "what's the answer, mr. bruce?" asked crandall, whose curiosity could never stand long delays. "have you and harry run across a real puzzle, or only something curious ?' "well, something very interesting, to say the least," replied bruce; "as i think you will admit when i tell you that to make a good start, and as i believe, provide all the capital needed for years to come in co-operative distribution, less than one per cent, of the amount the people have on deposit in the savings banks would be ample." "it's something like that, that i ran across," said hammer, — "when i tried to figure it out, that made me decide to ask you about it." "now, mr. bruce, that seems impossible," added cran dall ; "are you sure you haven't made a mistake ?" "well, listen to the figures,— all of you," returned bruce. "i'm taking the total figures for all the savings banks, and the other savings in other banks as well, as given by the comptroller of the currency for 191 2, which are about 6,500 millions. now, one per cent, of that amount is 65 millions, is it not? now, properly dis tributed through the country, i think that that amount would provide capital for a very good start. let me show you how i would distribute it; suppose we set aside 25 millions for capital in the ten states having the greatest population and the greatest number of savings banks ; then 20 millions for the next ten in population and banks; and the balance of 20 millions for the balance of the states. that would certainly be sufficient for a good start ; and after a good beginning is made, with profits for one or two good years distributed, we need not fear that ample capital will not be forthcoming after that. i would not be afraid to guarantee that in all the states with engaging home speakers 243 largest populations, where savings banks have been in existence for the past 20 years, one per cent, of the deposits in such banks would furnish ample capital for such co-operative stores in the respective states. "don't you think that would be rather small in some of them, mr. bruce ?" inquired crandall. "well, let us take it right here in our own state," replied bruce. "in the big city which is our neighbor, the savings banks proper have deposits amounting to 167 millions; in the balance of the state, in purely sav ings banks, there are 35 millions more, — making 202 mil lions : and in the other banking institutions there are probably 50 millions more, — or 250 millions in all. one per cent, of this amount would be 2^ millions; and that would certainly be enough for a good start for the co operative stores in the big towns and cities throughout the state. or, take the big city alone : one per cent, of the savings bank deposits there amount to $1,670,000, — and this would be ample capital for all the co-operative stores that would be needed there for a long while to come. in fact, in the large cities i believe that one-half of one per cent, of such deposits would furnish an ample capital for all the stores that would be needed for a long time. and when you consider the saving that this would effect for the people generally, it seems strange that the experiment on the plan of the english stores has not yet been tried." "well, now that we have made our attempt here, per haps the idea will spread," said crandall. "but there was another point in your last address, mr. bruce, that i wanted to ask you about." "and your question was, — ?" inquired bruce. "well, i wanted to ask you whether you don't think that the time is pretty near when a forward movement in the direction of co-operation can be made; it seems to 244 looking forward me that we are nearly ready for it. you know it has been prophesied that when our people do take hold of it, they will do it to some purpose, meaning to put it right through." "i certainly agree with you in that opinion, crandall," replied bruce. "the english pioneers were prepared for the experiment they made by hard experience; and the way that the common people of this country have been treated during the present period of advancing prices for all necessities is in line with their experience : so that we can be said to have had the same thing in the way of preparation. then, there is this in our favor now : and that is, we have all the advantage to be gained by their experience, and can profit by the mistakes and the failures they made. we know in advance what plans are apt to prove successful, and what dangers we should avoid. it is a thousand times easier to start with every prospect of success now than it was then. it seems as though we had made so much progress along this line that only a few steps remain to be taken. you know we have considered some of these steps in our meetings, — our building and loan associations, our savings banks, — both of which have met with such great success here ; and more recently, the great movement so successfully inaugurated in the northwest, and which is bound to spread over the whole country. now if we can secure the needed legislation, both by the several states and by the national govern ment, we ought to see in the near future a great move ment in the direction of co-operation, as defined by, sup ported by, and enforced by law." "and what i like best about the whole thing," said crandall, as bruce paused, "is the purpose that co-opera tion has, as the english writers you quoted, said, to make a higher type of business man and woman, and bring engaging home speakers 245 about something better than we have now in the way of business morals. why, do you know, mr. bruce, what you said the other evening about the way the banking business has been conducted in the big cities, was one of the greatest surprises of my life." "you're right there," interrupted hammer harry at this point; "why, mr. bruce, is that really the way that men in the banking business treat one another ? i always supposed that it was a rather high-toned sort of business, where men were treated as men, and with at least an ordinary degree of justice and right. why, if i had a half dozen boys, i'd be afraid to let any one of them go into a business like that." "you mustn't judge a whole business by a few samples that are bad," replied bruce. "there are still as fine men in that line of business as you'll find in any other; al though i must say, there does seem to be, in some direc tions, a decline from old standards. as i have been studying what must have taken place during this period of concentration, — how men who have grown gray in this honorable line of work have been set aside, so that bigger profits might accrue to others, who may never have worked at it at all, — i confess that i'm inclined to feel about it as you do. but then i remember that these are the exceptions, and not the rule; and i know that it would be utterly unfair to condemn the whole business because of some instances of injustice like these. in the main the business is managed by as high-toned, fair minded men as you can find in any line; even more so, in my opinion." "well, maybe you're right, mr. bruce," said hammer harry; "perhaps it's only the efifect of the spirit of the age on the business. but i'm afraid that that spirit is largely mis-directed. it don't seem to know the difiference 246 looking forward between success and failure; or, perhaps, i ought to say it has taken a wrong measuring-stick for success, and so makes a good many mistakes. nowadays, the only meas ure of success seems to be the dollar; if a man makes a big pile of cash, no matter how, that seems to spell suc cess. when i was growing up, we had a different meas ure, and i confess i liked it better. it was in the time when men were giving themselves and all they had to the country, and the rule then seemed to be : how much can i give ? now, the rule seems to be : how much can i get ? we honored men in those days for the greatness of their sacrifice for the country; now, honor seems to go to the one who can grab the most." "not altogether, mr. smith," said bruce; "there are still a great many who are not content to use the modern measuring-stick." "well, i hope so; but it seems to me that we have drifted into a place where greed and grab only rule. by the way, mr. sharpe," he added, turning to the school principal; "what is that part of grammar that teaches about adjectives; like good, better, best, and so on?" "i think you must refer to the comparison of adjec tives, mr. smith. there are three degrees, you know; positive, comparative and superlative." "thank you; that's just what i wanted to know; it's so long since i went to school, that i had forgotten just how you called them. well, it seems to me that the three modern degrees of success are : positive, greed; compara tive, grab; and superlative, graft. there are a good many things happening that seem not only to indicate it, — but they prove it. let us hope there'll be a turn for the better soon, so's we can get a better standard of suc cess. everything seems to hinge on that. why, in the old days, the man that lost the most was sometimes engaging home speakers 247 thought the most of. did you ever hear of general nathaniel lyon?" "oh, yes. i think we have all read about him, mr. smith. he was a union general, early in the civil war.'" "well, let me tell you something i heard about him. i was down in the city of hartford a few years ago, and i visited the state capitol there, — a beautiful building, set in a fine park. but i saw a piece of paper in the library in the state house that made me forget the great building and the beauty about it. it was a sheet of paper bearing the signature of abraham lincoln ; it was lyon's commission as a brigadier general, but it never reached him. he was killed in an engagement before it got to him. and this is what the state librarian told me; he said that lyon was a native of connecticut and owned a little farm down there; and when his will was read, it was found that he had given that little property to the government, to help it in its hour of need. can you beat that for patriotism? he gave himself while he lived, and he left his property to his country. that shows the spirit of those days. and in comparison with what we have now, — the greed, grab, graft game, — doesn't the old spirit tower up into the sky ; and don't the present game seem cheap, and tawdry, and mean and low and vulgar, in spite of all the fuss and feathers it can display ? i tell you, it's the spirit a man lives in, — it's the spirit that rules a country, that makes them great or little." "i think you're right there, hammer," said crandall; "but it seems to me that you're hardly fair as to the feel ing of the great majority of the people. the heart of our people is all right, and don't you forget it. there's a great deal more of good than bad to be found, even yet; and i believe the good is all the time growing." "well, think that way, if you can, john" ; replied ham 248 looking forward mer; "but remember that i am older than you and can remember some things that you can't. i have spoken of general nathaniel lyon, because he was the type of thou sands of men when i was growing up. again and again did the best men in a community, — the best educated, the leaders in business, give up everything and go to the aid of their country; and it left with me and thousands of other boys a memory that has always remained with us, and taught us what our country was worth. shall i tell you of just one of those memories, which i think thousands of men as old as i am must have?" "lm sure we would be glad to hear it, hammer"; replied crandall. "well, i don't know why i should be telling you this, but somehow my memory goes back to those days to night; perhaps it's to teach barr, here, and some of the rest of you, just what this country of ours has cost, and so let them know what it's worth. i think i told you some time ago about my uncle harry, who i was named for, — about his taking me to see president lincoln, and afterward enlisting and losing his life at gettysburg. well, about three or four months before that battle he was home on a little furlough, and of course he came to make us a visit. i remember, just as if it was yesterday, sitting on his lap the day he started back for the front, and admiring his big army overcoat, and fingering the big, brass buttons, with uncle sam's eagles on them, and wishing i was old enough to go with him. and then, after a while he kissed me good bye, and i ran with the rest of the folks to the front door to see him off; and at the corner of the next street he turned and waved us a good bye in a cheery way, — then passed from sight, and we never saw him again. like so many others, he went as a living sacrifice, cheerfully, willingly made, — that engaging home speakers 249 you and i might enjoy the blessing of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. and i think of other sacrifices,— perhaps even greater than his; — of men who, wounded in that service, have given fifty years of suffering to the country they loved : and it seems to me that the great republic, which they helped to save for us, — like a great-hearted mother, — must especially love these children of hers, who were thus willing to serve her. and so you must excuse me if, when i think of these sacrifices, willingly offered by great souls on the altar of liberty, i feel a little their passionate love of freedom, and speak perhaps more strongly than i should." and hammer relapsed into silence, as though he had spoken rather too freely. "i guess we'll have to admit you're right. hammer," said barr, after a slight pause; "but it never struck me that way before. i always thought that we were just the right thing, sure. look here, suppose you give us that, with some additions, at our next meeting. it would be just the right stunt, wouldn't it, mr. sharpe?" he added, turning to the principal. "i think that that would be fine. in fact, mr. smith," he continued, "it is just the note that we have thus far missed. let us have your definition of success and failure. i'm sure it will be helpful : and add to it your idea of patriotism." "i can't do anything of the kind," replied hammer; "i couldn't do it any more than earr could, and it isn't any more fair to ask me than it would be to ask him." here was where hammer made his mistake, for the suggestion was at once taken up, and by a little wise using of the one against the other, with some good natured bantering thrown in, the others soon persuaded barr that he could do very well, and then tied hammer 250 looking forward down with a firm promise that if barr would address the meeting, he would do the same. the little meeting soon adjourned with this understanding, but hammer harry continued to protest against any such arrangement, even after he had accepted the situation. both he and barr left the meeting place in a more serious frame of mind than was usual with them, — each regretting the haste with which he had spoken. chapter xiv. an accident and a promotion. "so passed the great, heroic soul away." — tennyson. "and the brave deed burns on, to light men's feet where death for noble ends makes dying sweet." — lowell; of robert gould shaw. "that best portion of a good man's life; — the little, nameless, quick-forgotten acts of kindness and of love." — anon. "death ever fronts the wise; not fearfully, but with clear promises of larger life." — lowell. but it was not so ordered, — that hammer harry should make the address at the next club meeting. long before that time the little town had been startled by an event which greatly changed the current of affairs ; which made it impossible that his address could be delivered, and even made it unnecessary for barr to prepare his. this was due to an accident and an accompanying act of heroism, — one of those numberless acts of devotion and self-sacrifice which occur almost daily in this great country of ours, passing almost unheralded, but making life sweeter and richer for us all. it happened in this wise : the very next morning after the meeting of the com mittee hammer harry was coming slowly up the pike, as the main street of the town was generally called, on his way home after an emergency call to the mills early in the morning, to superintend repairs made necessary by a (251) 252 looking forward break-down in some of the heavy machinery, about which he knew more than any one else. as he crossed one of the intersecting streets near the base of the hill, he noticed that the men repairing the roadway had not yet removed the heavy wooden trestle with which they had barred off the street, thus compelling drivers to make a long detour to get to the river bridge. wondering how much longer it would take them to complete a little job like that, for the obstruction had been there several days, he proceeded slowly up the hill. he vv'as very tired, having lost a good part of his night's sleep, and intended getting even when he reached his home by turning in after breakfast and taking the morning off. he had climbed half way up the hill, when his atten tion was attracted by a noise farther up, — the rattling of a wagon, and the shouts of passers-by. in an instant he saw a sight that thrilled him, and electrified him into life and action, such as a moment before would have seemed impossible. the heavy dearborn wagon, — the market wagon, — belonging to the "little boss," drawn by its usual team of high-spirited horses, was coming flying down tlie hill, with the driver, barney o'donnell, strug gling to regain control of the runaway horses, but with indifferent success. in the wagon were the three chil dren of the "little boss," two girls, who were clinging to the sides of the swaying wagon, and the boy, whom barney had ordered to lie down, so that he could place his legs over him, and thus hold him in. hammer saw that there was but one thing to be done, if the lives of the children were to be saved, and that was for the team to be turned into a broad avenue crossing the pike at right angles, near which he had arrived. run ning to the intersection, he shouted to barney, and by motions made it clear to him what he must try to do. a promotion 253 the driver had succeeded in getting the team partially under control, but the horses were still going at great speed, and it seemed doubtful whether the turn could be made. but hammer knew that it must be made; he re called the obstruction across the street at the base of the hill, and he was determined that the turn should be suc cessfully accomplished. forgetting himself, he ap proached too near the center of the roadway, or perhaps the wagon skidded in making the turn, or it may be that he deliberately placed himself where he knew he would be struck, so as to make the turn to safety more sure, — • however that may be, as the turn was made the wagon struck him a glancing blow, which came with great force, and sent him reeling to the side of the road. as the wagon with its living freight passed on to safety, he fell heavily, struck his head against the curb, and lay motionless. in an instant the street was in an uproar. a crowd gathered, and hammer's unconscious body was tenderly raised and carried to a drug store, and two nearby physicians summoned. in a few minutes doctor doug lass arrived, and gave him needed attention. when asked how badly he was hurt, the doctor would only say that it was "pretty bad." in a few minutes barney, who had turned the runaway team up hill again at the next street, quickly regained control, then tied the horses beside the street, and placing the children in charge of a neighbor came running back to see what he could do. the poor fellow's distress, when he found that hammer was badly hurt, and that nothing could be done, was pitiful. "he saved us all" ; he repeated again and again. "i'm sure it was the stroke we gave him as we turned, that sent us around safe; and i'm sure he meant that we should hit him; he knew we couldn't get round without." 254 looking forward when asked how it had occurred, barney said he hardly knew, — it had all happened so quickly. "at the top of the hill i noticed that there was something wrong with the harness, and got out to fix it. as i got back, they started; i don't know why; guess it must have been the noise of a bursting tire of an auto that had just passed. at any rate they were a bit too quick for me, and seemed to take the bits in their teeth. if it hadn't been for hammer, it would have been all up with us, for if we had gone on down the hill, what would have hap pened at the bar at ford street?" crandall came up the street a few minutes after the accident, for he, too, had been called to the mills by the break-down. as he saw the crowd gathered about the corner, he hastened along, and was soon shocked by the news of the injury to his old friend and fellow workman. a little later he helped to take the wounded man to his home, and then spent most of the day at his bedside. again and again he sought some reassuring word from the doctor, but always in vain. "i cannot tell," the latter would say; "but i think there is little hope. you see he fell heavily, and there is an ugly wound at the side and back of the head. if i could give you anything to build your hope on, i would be only too glad to do it; but i cannot." and that was all crandall could get from him. late that evening there was a sad group gathered in the committee room at the old school house. barr had heard the news upon his arrival in town on the evening train, and after a brief visit home, had hurried here, thinking that some of the others would be sure to come. nor was he mistaken, for before long all the members of the committee who could come had arrived. bruce a promotion 255 had heard of the accident shortly after it happened; but sharpe had been called out of town, and had heard but little about it. "how did it happen?" was his inquiry, as soon as he reached the room. bruce gave him the particulars, as he had heard them, and then young strong, who had just joined them, added : "as i came up the street i stopped at mcfadden's grocery, and asked him about it. he's right on the cor ner there, where it happened, you know. he said that he heard the shouting up the street, and ran to the door to see what was the matter. he saw the team coming, and then noticed hammer in the middle of the street, shouting to barney and pointing for him to turn. 'i thought he was too near and might be struck,' he said; 'and shouted for him to come back. but i might as w^u have been quiet, for all the good it did. i really believe that he tried to put his body so that it would be struck, for fear that the wagon might turn over as they went round : he sure meant to save those children.' and from what we all know of hammer, we won't have much trouble in thinking the same way." after that but little was said for some time, all wait ing for the well-known step of crandall, for they felt sure they would see him during the evening. nor were they mistaken, for well on toward ten o'clock, they heard him coming with heavy tread along the hallway. barr sprang to the door to meet him, but they all realized, as soon as they saw him, that the end had come. crandall made his way to the table at which the others were sit ting, placed his arms upon it, then laid his head upon his arms and began to sob like a child. while he was sitting thus, there was another footstep along the hallway, and in another moment the door opened, and the "little boss" 256 looking forward stood before them. he came slowly forward and joined them, saying to crandall, as he took his seat : "i felt sure i would find some of you here. is it all over then, john?" crandall could only nod his head; and the newcomer said: "well, you all know the debt i owe him, boys. i don't dare to think what would have happened if he had not been there. i had to go down to the city to-day; was taking the train about the time it happened. barney met me at the train this evening and told me about it ; he says that hammer deliberately put himself in the way of the wagon. my wife hasn't got over it yet. i wish you could hear the boy tell about it. it seems that he and hammer have been quite friends for some time ; hammer always used to stop and pass the time of day with him, when he saw him about, and the boy had taken quite a shine to him ; called him 'the nice, big man.' i asked him to-night if he wasn't afraid when he was in the wagon and the horses running os, and he said : 'indeed i was, until i saw the nice, big man standing there ; then i knew he would take care of us all.' and so he did. and now he's beyond our power, even to thank." crandall now straightened up, and with a shame-faced air, said : "you must excuse me, men ; but you see. hammer and i have been together so long that this has shaken me out of myself. i don't see how i'm to get along without him." "was he conscious at all, john, before the end?" in quired the iron master. "yes, sir" ; replied crandall. "i would like to tell you what happened. the doctor had told me late in the afternoon that he felt sure there was no hope; but he a promotiun 257 said that there might be a short period of consciousness a little while before the end ; that he was not sure, but it sometimes happened that way. and so it did. were any of you where you could notice the sunset to-night ? well, you remember how fine it was. hammer's room has two big windows facing the west; and just when it was the brightest he opened his eyes, and i saw he was fully con scious again. he smiled at me, and i saw he wanted to speak. his head was pretty well tied up, you know; so i put my head down close to his mouth, and the first thing he said was : 'were any of the children hurt, jackie?' and when i said, 'no, hammer; nobody hurt but you,' he said, 'i'm so glad, so glad; just what i wanted.' and then in a minute or two he added : 'it's all right, jackie; it's all right; just as i wanted,' — and then he stopped and looked beyond me, as if he was look ing at some one else standing there; and he said, in the gladdest tone i ever heard from him : 'why, laddie ! is it you, dear lad?' and then the curtain came down, and he was unconscious again. i knew what had happened, for i've seen it before. his boy had been sent for him, and i knew then that it would not be long before the end would come. the rest was only the machine breaking and running down. the end came a half hour ago, and i came straight here. i wanted to see you all, and tell you about it." there were no dry eyes in the room as crandall finished his account of what had taken place at hammer's deathbed. barr walked over to a window, where he stood blinking at nothing for a while. in a few minutes crandall suddenly turned to sharpe, the school principal, and said : "i wish you would do me and hammer a great favor, mr. sharpe." 258 looking forward the latter was surprised at the request, but replied : "why, of course, mr. crandall; if there's anything i can do, i'll be glad to do it for you. what did you have in mind?" "perhaps you'll think it strange, but i want you to read a couple of poems. i was telling you some time ago something about hammer's life, you remember. well, i don't know whether you will believe me when i tell you that hammer had a presentment that this year would be his last. he told me about the first of the year, and i tried to say that he was morbid, and was getting nervous, &c. but he held out his arm, and told me to feel his pulse, and asked me if that felt nervous. 'why, i'm right glad to be able to say so, jackie,' he said; 'i'm not nervous or morbid ; i'm just glad, that's what i am' ; and i couldn't get him to change his mind. well, he asked me as a favor, if i would read something at his funeral. 'i don't care for any set service,' he said; 'although you can do as you please about that, but there are two poems that i would like you to read then, if you will.' i told him that i did not believe i could do it, but i might be able to find some one who could. he said that would do just as well ; and he gave me the poems. i have them here, and i thought you would perhaps be willing to read them to us now, and then read them, too, at his funeral." "i'll do anything to oblige you, mr. crandall," replied the schoolmaster. "will you let me see them? oh, i know this one" ; he added, as he took them. "it's one of the most beautiful in the language; a proof of what shelley said; 'our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.' strange, is it not, that any one who could write a poem like this, would not put his name to it? it is just a stray, you know; published in a news paper without any name to it. but then there is doubt a promotion 259 less a life-history written in it. did mr. smith tell you why he liked it?" "yes"; replied crandall; "he said about what you have just said; he liked it because it told the story of his life. but he added, i remember, that he had begun to under stand; and that he believed that sorrows, even like his, were sent that men might grow to be more helpful and sympathizing. and that was what he had become, as i know better than any one else." the schoolmaster had a rarely sympathetic voice, and all the group, including the iron master, thought they had never heard anything more beautiful, as he read with deep feeling the following poem : gethsemane. "in golden youth, when seems the earth a summer land for singing mirth, when souls are glad and hearts are light and not a shadow lurks in sight. we do not know it, but there lies somewhere, veiled under evening skies, a garden, each must sometime see; gethsemane, gethsemane, — somewhere his own gethsemane. "with joyous steps we go our ways, love lends a halo to the days, light sorrows sail like clouds afar. we laugh and say how strong we are. we hurry on, and hurrying go close to the borderland of woe, that waits for you and waits for me; gethsemane, gethsemane, forever waits gethsemane. 26o looking forward "down shadowy lanes, across strange streams, bridged over by our broken dreams. behind the misty cape of years, close to the great salt font of tears the garden lies; strive as you may. you cannot miss it on your way ; all paths that have been or shall be pass somewhere through gethsemane. "all those who journey, soon or late must pass within the garden's gate; must kneel alone in darkness there and battle with some fierce despair. god pity those who cannot say; 'not mine, but thine' ; who only pray 'let this cup pass,' and cannot see the purpose in gethsemane ; gethsemane, gethsemane, god help us through gethsemane.'' "and who is the other by?" asked the schoolmaster; after a short pause. "i notice that it is in manuscript. was there any special meaning attached to it, in mr. smith's mind, do you know?" "yes, there was" ; replied crandall. "he said that had been written by a friend of his, who knew of the experience the poem tells about; and harry said that something like it had happened to him; and after the death of his boy, it seemed to him as though it must have been him that the writer meant. he said one poem told about his past life and the other about his hope for the future. you will see what he meant, as you read it." so sharpe read the second poem, which was entitled "the greeting," and which ran as follows : a promotion 261 the greeting. we were passing through the great station, my five year old boy and i, when we met my old friend, the captain — who would not let us pass by without a few words of greeting; so we paused and chatted awhile, the child a most eager listener — looking up with his frank, boyish smile. the captain — his chief of policemen ! how he loved and admired the man ! his boyish ideal of manhood — of its courage and strength — all began and ended in captain macdonald: and the captain, with warm, scottish heart returned in its kind his devotion, of his life and his love claimed a part. "my, how your laddie is growin'; sure, soon he'll be votin', — a man ! he minds me of my little sandy; sure, they're built on much the same plan. my laddie will soon be past seven ; a terror he is to my folks — with his noise, and his romps, and his badness, and betimes, his sly little jokes. "ah, what would we do without children? we old folks — i fear, we'd grow bad : and life — 'twould be hardly worth living: sure, 'twould be terrible sad. they bring us such wealth of devotion, they give us such full ness of love : sure, they teach us all lessons from heaven — from the king dom of children above." 262 looking forward thus he spoke, and my boy eyed him closely, as a worshiper true of great men, with an air of gravest attention, till he paused for a moment. and then the lad lifted his clear, childish treble, and said, in his courtly way: "i would like to meet your laddie; may i see him here some day?" i could see he had pleased the captain, who saluted and gravely said: "i'm sure he would be delighted," and patted the dear, boyish head. then, turning to me, he added: "i think they'd be friends through and through ; for my laddie loves me so fully : i see yours is as loyal to you." so we left our big-hearted captain, and hastened to catch our train. ah ! how many hard places and changes did i see ere i met him again ; but the hardest of all was the parting from the boy who was loved so well. how dark are that valley's deep shadows, only those who have known them can tell. * * * once more as i passed through the station, the captain came to me again, and at once he inquired: "how's your boy, sir?" and then, at my look of pain ; "you don't mean, he's been taken from you?" and i saw the quick tears start: "and mine, i've lost, too !" he added, with a look that went to my heart. ah, me : in our fullness of sorrow, our hearts knew each other that day ! and, taking the hand of the captain, i sought in my heart what to say ; a promotion 263 then recalled to his mind my boy's message — for i wanted to comfort him so: "oh, my friend, our boys are together — in the kingdom of children, you know." two men with a common sorrow ! two spirits bearing the cross ! two hearts still longing for comfort; still feeling their bitter loss ! how the fellowship born of tlieir sorrow drew them closer together as friends. can it be that this knowing each other is the greatest of sor row's ends ? "as ships that pass in the night, and leave no sign of their passing:" nay! that is not friendship's word; rather, this — of a love so surpassing all love that's of earth and of time, that it changes our sorrow to joy with promises laden with blessing. i know i shall meet my boy! yea : given back to my arms once more ! aye, given back with the gain that comes from his higher living, to which my soul shall attain. he was given by love immortal, to walk by my side awhile ; then was called, and passed from my keeping, with his boyish, yet heavenly, smile. he was mine — a gift from our father: and again shall i call him my own ! by the love i've received and have given — by that gift, the spirit is known. i surrendered to love immortal the child he had loaned me to show the way to more beautiful service, that my soul more of truth might know. 264 looking forward oh, souls that are bearing the burden of sorrow and grief too deep for your hearts alone to endure it — let the love immortal still keep the loved you have lost in his keeping: you may trust that all is well in the strength and love of his keeping! and your joy at the end, who may tell? oh, thou: who hast life in thy keeping — whether here, or with thee above; thou, who sendest to us these great blessings, the surest pledge of thy love ! teach our weak, human hearts so to love thee — so to lean on thy strength divine ; that we may trust our best loved to thy keeping: holding this best of all — they are thine ! when the reader concluded there was a silent pause for several minutes, which was broken by crandall, who said: "for a number of years my lips have been sealed, but now i can say what i would have been glad to say while hammer was living, but he pledged me not to. mr. worden, do you remember asking me some months ago about people coming to you and thanking you for things that they thought you had done for them, when you didn't know anything about it ?" "i recall it very well"; replied the iron master. "i have been stopped again and again by persons who had been helped in some mysterious way, and thanked by them for it; and i confess it made me feel foolish. do you mean to say that hammer was the cause of it?" "that's what i mean," replied crandall. "i couldn't tell you then, but i can now. the people of this town a promotion 265 will never know what they owe to him. do you men remember what little mrs. mccall told us at one of our meetings about being helped by the lookout committee, just after her husband died?" there were several nods of assent, and he continued : "well, that was all hammer's doings. he suggested that we get together such a committee. i remember it well; it was just after the society of christian endeavor had appointed their committee with that name, and ham mer saw the announcement in the 'herald.' 'that's a splendid idea,' he said ; 'now, why shouldn't we men form a lookout committee of that kind, and look up any case of need that comes along? we ought to be ashamed of ourselves if a town as rich as this should let any one suffer in it.' and so we did it; but he was the one that was on the lookout, and any help that was given was nearly al ways due to him. and there's another thing that only mr. bruce and i knew about. some of you may have wondered why hammer didn't get rich; everybody knew that he got a good salary, and he had hardly any expenses. now, let me tell you why. his wife had inherited a little money from her folks, and they put that in the house they built; so he had that clear. well, two or three years after he lost his boy and then his wife, he came to me one day and said that he wanted to do some thing with his money; said he was getting more than his share, and he had thought it all out, and said what he wanted to do was to make a fund that would take care of the education of bright boys and girls, whose parents couldn't afiford to send them to college. so he wanted me and the cashier of the bank here, — mr. bruce, now, — to be the trustees of what he had ready to give us, and that was ten thousand dollars then, and he has 266 looking forward added to it since, until it is now about twice that amount. well, the income he said should go to help pay the cost of sending those who needed it down to the city to get a better education than they could here; and that will ex plain to some of you things that you haven't been able to understand now and then. you remember, mr. sharpe, i told you about the boy he held in the trolley that night, just before his own boy died ?" "i remember very well," replied the schoolmaster. "well, that boy was one of those that were helped. i remember, hammer said, 'the little fellow couldn't help it; he didn't know what was the matter with him, and some day i guess i'll see that it's been for the best.' and now that fund is to be increased by all the rest that he was able to make; but i don't suppose that will be much, for he's been giving all his life. but i couldn't help telling this much; seems like it's a relief to be able to do him justice at last." "i'm glad you told us, john," said the iron master. "it does us good to hear such things; and, besides, it makes my duty clearer. like you, i doubt whether what he has left will make the fund much larger. but i'll tell you what i want to do : suppose you see what the men in the mills will do, and say to them that any amount that they care to add to this fund, i will duplicate; and i will also double the amount of the fund as it is at pres sent, and we will hold it for all time as a memorial for hammer. when i think of what i might have come home to this evening, i know that nothing i can do will ever repay my debt to him." barr, who had been standing aside during this talk, now came to the table around which the rest were sitting, and said, — in a voice that trembled a little : "it seems to me. hammer has put us all to shame. a promotion 267 while we have been talking co-operation this winter, he has been living it for years ; and now, to fill up the meas ure, he has given his life in the same spirit. i rather think it's his kind of co-operation that will count up above." "i have no doubt you are right, barr," replied the iron master; "and i am sure that it is the best kind of co operation for us all while we are down here, too. my experience to-day proves that clearly enough. crandall, will you take charge of the matter i spoke of, and see the men at the mills? i ought to be getting home." "i will attend to that, sir; and i'm going to ask the rest to help me about it," replied the latter. "we'll form a committee and canvass the whole town; i'm sure a great many, besides the men at the mills, will want to contribute to this fund." "very well ; what i said about the men in the mills will hold good for any amount you may be able to collect" ; and bidding the others 'good night,' worden passed from the room. crandall and the rest remained a few minutes to complete the arrangements for making the canvass of the town, and then they, too, left the building. *********** the funeral of hammer harry was long-remembered as the largest and most impressive that pleasantville had ever known. when the towns-people learned from crandall and his friends of the work that he had been doing for years past, they were deeply touched, and all wanted to contribute so far as they could to the memorial fund, the income of which was to be used to continue the work in which he had been interested. the metho dist church, in which the services were held, at the re quest of crandall and several others of the men at the mills who were members, was crowded to the doors. the 268 looking forward two poems were read by principal sharpe, and three short addresses made ; one by the minister of the church, mr. meredith; one by the priest of the catholic church, who had known hammer well, and who said on this occasion that he knew so fully how much harry had done for members of his church that he wished to testify in this way to his sense of his worth, and to show also that there were times when denominational lines might be for gotten; and, lastly, to the surprise of many, by young strong, who said he wished to represent those who had been helped to an education by hammer harry. in the course of his remarks he stated that an important an nouncement, of interest to all of his friends would be made within a few days through the columns of the "herald." hammer's body was laid to rest in the local cemetery in the lot in which had been interred the bodies of his wife and the "little lad" whom he had loved so well; and it was borne to its last resting place by several of those whom he had helped to the education they would have been denied, had it not been for the aid he extended. after the brief services at the grave, several of ham mer's friends, including the young minister, mr. mere dith, crandall, barr, bruce and sharpe, remained there a while. after a few minutes crandall said; "i don't see how i'm going to get on without him. again and again in the past few days i've caught myself saying; 'i'll talk it over with hammer,' just as i've been doing for more than twenty years past ; and i know that mr. worden will miss him almost as much as i will. i can't seem to sense it yet, that he's gone ; seems as though he must be around here somewhere." "and i'm just the other way, john," said barr. "it was sudden, it's true; but when a man's work is done, it a promotion 269 always seems to me that that is the best way for the end to come. i like to think of him now as being with his wife and the little lad he loved so well. i believe with all my heart that there is where he is ; for that is what death means, — a change of life, not the end of it." "you are both right," added the young minister; "it is not strange that brother crandall should still feel the old close association that must go with life-long friend ship. and may i say that that was the great compensa tion of hammer's life. he was specially fitted for friendship, and more than usually dependent upon it. you do not know, brother crandall, what your friend ship meant to him. more than once he has said to me; 'i wish john could know what a strong anchor he has been to me; and i wish, as my best wish for the world, that there were more like him.' so you are right in cherishing the thought of your close intimacy with him; for it was his happiness here : and brother barr is right, too, in looking forward to the happy re-union in the life beyond, for, that, we may be sure, is his blessedness there. do any of you recall the thought that tennyson used in his 'in memoriam' in reference to the death of lazarus, the friend of jesus, whom our lord recalled to life?" after a slight pause, in which no one spoke, he con tinued ; "the great poet makes one of the sisters of lazarus ask him where he was in that short period after death; and then bears witness to his own thought of death: these are his words ; "'where wast thou, brother, those three days?' there lives no language of reply which, showing what it is to die, had surely added praise to praise." *********** 270 looking forward the announcement referred to by strong was published a few days later in the "herald" and read as follows; the "herald" is glad to be able to announce that the memorial fund in memory of our well-knojvn citizen, henry smith, who lately lost his life in a heroic and successful attempt to save the lives of four others, the details of which have already been published in the "herald," now amounts to the sum of sixty thousand dollars, $7,500 of which amount were contributed by his fellow workmen and other citizens of our town, and the balance, exclusive of the original fund, by mr. george worden, president of the pleasantville iron works. it is well known to our citizens that mr. smith, better known as "hammer harry," had given a fund of $20,000 — which now forms a part of the above mentioned amount, the income of which was used to aid in the education of boys and girls who, without this aid, might not have been able to secure a college education. the trustees of the present fund are mr. george worden, mr. john cran dall, mr. robert bruce, mr. david barr and mr. james sharpe. the income will be used as heretofore, the intention being not to pay all the expense in any one case, but to supplement and make adequate and available the amount which the parents of capable young persons, both boys and girls, may be able to pay, in cases where this amount would not in itself be sufficient. the application of the income heretofore has of necessity been very quiet and generally unknown. as the reason for this has now ceased, the announcement is now made that appli cations for such help may hereafter be made to any member of the board of trustees, whose names are published above. in connection with the above announcement, the "herald" takes pleasure in inviting the attention of its readers to the following letter from the president of the pleasantville iron works, and is also glad to be able to announce further that the admirable plan therein described has been adopted by the men interested in the said works, and the proposed incorporation will soon be an accomplished fact, the amount of stock allotted to the men having been fully subscribed. a promotion 271 to the editor of the "herald" : dear sir: during the past winter the "herald" contained reports at various times of the public meetings held by the workers' club, at which the merits of various forms of co-operation were presented by different speakers. in common with others, the officers of this company were greatly interested in the presenta tion of this subject. while the subject of productive co-opera tion was not discussed to any great extent, most of the speakers discussing the subject only from the point of view of distrib utive co-operation, there were one or two exceptions, and i have been unable to see why, if properly managed. productive co-operation might not be as successful as the other form. the officers of this company have therefore decided to make an experiment in this direction, provided enough interest on the part of their men can be aroused. for years past we have been purchasing certain supplies in the shape of small tools, which we believe could be readily manufactured here in connection with our works. we therefore make to our workmen the fol lowing offer: we will join with them in forming a co-operative corporation for the purpose of manufacturing the specialities referred to, a large portion of which we can take from the new corporation and use here — the balance to be sold ; and we offer, as individuals, and not as a company, to take $22,500 of the stock of a $50,000 corporation; a like amount of $22,500 to be subscribed for by our men, and the balance of $5,000 to be held by five trustees, two of whom shall be selected by our men and two by us, and the other one by these four men — these said trustees to hold and vote this $5,000 of stock, so that neither party to this new corporation shall at any time control a major ity of the said stock. other provisions with respect to the sale of the stock, so as to retain the proportional holdings as at pres ent, as between our men and the other subscribers to the stock, will be adopted when the new corporation shall be organized. in order to make this offer operative as soon as possible we hereby request a committee of our men, to consist of mr. john crandall and two others to be selected by him, to consult the men, and report at the earliest moment whether they will join in this proposed co-operative undertaking. very respectfully yours, george worden, president. chapter xv. a final conference; another invitation. "god has no hired men ; his sons do his work." — old adage. "for as many as are led by the spirit of god, they are the sons of god." — epistle to the romans: 8 chap. 14 v. "the problem of our politics and of our economics is the infusion of the spirit of christ into the relations of men." — edward s. martin. it was a saddened group of men that gathered at the meeting of the directors of the home building asso ciation the following week. the vacant chair in their midst reminded them of the loss of one whom they had not known, as they now realized, while he had been among them. when the routine work of the associa tion had been attended to, and they had assembled around the directors' table, there was silence for a few minutes, which was broken at length by barr. "somehow, things seem different," he said; "and for one, i'm glad that we are about at the end of the sea son's meetings. i don't suppose anyone here thinks we had better try to hold another this spring, do you?" there was no reply for a moment, when crandall spoke : "as you say, barr, it's so near the end of the term that it is hardly worth while to call another meeting ; but there is one thing that i think we ought to do. i walked part way home with hammer on the evening of the last directors' meeting, and he said something that i would like to get to the members of the club, if there's any way (272) .another invitation 273 to do it." and in response to the inquiries from several of the group, he continued : "he seemed to be worried at what he had done in agreeing to speak at the next meeting, and i tried to cheer him up by saying that several of us would take part and make a sort of general conference of the meet ing, if he would only begin it ; that he wouldn't have to speak long, &c., and that seemed to make him feel better; and he said, before we parted, that there was one thing that he would like to say to the members, if nothing more; and that was, that he thought they ought to go slow before they took their savings from where they were in the savings banks and put them into any other sort of investment ; that the first step ought to be for the law to throw about such new co-operative institutions as we had been discussing all the safeguards it could, and even then those who intended to invest in them ought to look carefully at the character and standing of the persons interested in organizing them. he said that he had seen so many losses caused by careless investments by those who were not posted that he wanted to say that much in addition to what had been said. he added, i remem ber, that he did not say this in criticism of anything that mr. bruce or anyone else had said, because he agreed with their point of view; but he thought that this point ought to be emphasized. now, how can i get that be fore the members of the club ?" "how would this answer, mr. crandall," said sharpe, the schoolmaster ; "can you not readily prepare a postal card, containing just what you have told us, and mail one to each member of the club? and, besides, if it should seem desirable to get it before others who have attended, you could accomplish that by having it pub lished in the 'herald. ' " 274 looking forward this suggestion was adopted; and at crandall's re quest sharpe was appointed to act with him as a com mittee to see that the message was prepared and for warded. "now, as it seems to be decided that we are not to have another meeting this spring," said barr, "there is something that i think may be of interest to you that i would hke to read. some of you have noticed the interest the women have taken in our meetings. it was due, in part, to the fact that our second meeting was given to them for an equal suffrage meeting, and i guess we men all learned something at that, too. well, one of the most interested of the women who have been attending our meetings is my wife. as some of you know, she was a school-teacher some years ago, and she used to act as secretary of the school societies she be longed to, and so on. pretty early in the game this win ter she said to me that she was going to keep minutes of our meetings, just for herself and the children, if for no one else; because she thought that some of them would be worth recording. well, of course, it goes with out saying, that 'a mere man' like me has no right to say anything against work like that ; and so she has been doing it. it occurred to me that some of you might be interested in hearing them, and i asked her for them this evening, and have them with me. so, if you want to hear them, all you have to do is to say so." as there was a unanimous demand expressed for the minutes, barr proceeded to read them. they were a rather full report of each meeting, mentioning the speak ers and the strong points made by them, and conclud ing with a summary of the whole series. as was per haps natural, the meeting which had most strongly im pressed mrs. barr was the equal suffrage meeting. another invitation 275 which was valuable, she said, "not only for the truths that were uttered, but because of the potential value to society, in all time to come, of this great reform, when once accomplished." when barr arrived at the summary, he hesitated a moment, and then said: "i don't know whether i ought to say this, being as it's all in the family, but it seems to me that this is pretty well thought out by mrs. barr; but, of course, the rest of you don't have to say so, if you don't think so" ; saying which he proceeded to read as follows: "at our first meeting the general subject of present in dustrial conditions, and the future outlook for ameliora tion, was presented by mr. strong, his conclusion being that only in co-operation could a just and peaceful method of arrangement be found, satisfactory to both parties, and promising to be permanent. as two of the strongest arguments against the continuance of present conditions, he mentioned the recurrence of strikes, and the terrible evils found in the large cities. "the next meeting was most courteously handed over to the women, and the subject of equal suffrage was presented in an address by miss channing. while it was hardly thought of at the time, this was an actual example of co-operation of the right kind, which was greatly appreciated by the women of our town, and one that they will not allow the men to forget, for it binds us to every right form of co-operation when our help is needed. it was shown at this meeting that both men and women must work together for the uplift of society, and that our government will never be what it should be until women shall have equal rights and equal privileges with men, as well as equal responsibilities. it was also clearly shown that in removing the evils in the large 2/6 looking forward cities to which our attention had been called at the first meeting, the help of woman was absolutely essential, and that no effective handling of those evils would be accom plished until her aid was accepted and her efforts ap plied. "at the third meeting practical co-operation, of a form that we were all more or less acquainted with, was presented by three of our townspeople — mr. crandall telling us of the great work of our building and loan associations; mrs. mccall giving an account of the value of the best kind of co-operation, when it holds out a helping hand, and mr. sharpe telling us of the remarkable movement toward distributive co-operation in the northwest, a movement founded upon the great english rochdale system and apparently bound to spread throughout our country. this meeting brought us closely in touch with practical co-operation of the latest and most approved kinds. "the fourth meeting was valuable because it gave us the method of accomplishing co-operation or, at least, greatly aiding it, that has been thought of by our local bank cashier, who thought that his business had in sev eral ways blazed the way for the national government to aid in the establishing of co-operation, by making it perfectly safe for our people to engage in it ; his general line of thought being that if the government would only make it easy and safe for the plain people to put their money into it, the people would do the rest. he also presented a very interesting example of pure co-opera tion which had been founded in germany some years ago, and which has proved a great success. "at the fifth meeting the merits of our public school system, as a method of co-operation between the people and the state, was presented to us by principal sharpe; another ixvitation 277 after which mr. strong called our attention to the great french experiment in co-operation, known as the famil istere at guise, where the workingmen own the plant and conduct the business, the purpose of the founder having been to make the advantages of wealth available for all his workmen. "at the next meeting, mr. bruce, at the request of a number of interested citizens, again presented his ideas as to the best method of applying co-operation through legislation, beginning his address by some account of what he regarded as a failure on the part of the banking business to offer to society the full measure of co-opera tion of which it was capable, and closing by presenting figures showing the remarkable growth of savings banks in the last half-century, claiming that they were an in stance of pure co-operation, under strict governmental control. this meeting was followed, as were most of the others, by quite an active discussion. "at the several meetings held this winter we have had co-operation presented not merely as an ideal condition, but in a number of important cases as an accomplished fact, especially abroad. among these many instances may be mentioned the great german experiment at jena, where over 5,000 employes were engaged in productive co-operation; the great french experiment in the fam ilistere at guise, both of which have been described to us; the english co-operative societies, both wholesale and retail ; our own building associations, and the state-controlled savings banks, which are largely co-op erative; the successful attempts in denmark, which have resulted in re-making that country in the past century; the successful attempts at co-operative banking in ger many, in france and in italy, which have done so much for the farming communities in those countries; the 278 looking forward more recent successful attempts in ireland among the farmers; and, finally, the introduction of the english rochdale system in our own country, which has already achieved so much, and which has such great promise for the future. to all these we may add the organization of our own co-operative society, here in pleasantville, in which we are all interested, and whose success seems so well assured. as we glance over what co-operation has accomplished, we are convinced that we need no longer regard it as an experiment, but rather as a great movement, already well under way, whose final triumph is only a question of our continued loyalty to its principles. "it had been the intention of the workers' club to hold one more meeting, and arrangements for the same had been partly made when our little community was startled by the sudden death of one of the leading mem bers of the club, our old friend, henry smith, who gave up his life in the rescue of the children of the president of the mill company, mr. george worden. since his death we have learned many things about our friend, which show that for years past he has been living a life of co operation, right here in our midst, and finally laid down his life in a final act of service, which shows co-operation at its highest and best. and we close with the thought that in many another community there are those who are quietly and serenely giving of their best in many forms of true co-operation, and thus helping in the best way to make their own lives, as well as the lives of others, better worth living; and so we look forward to the day when, industrially as well as in every other way, this shall be the rule of life — when we shall have the practical realization of tennyson's great thought: another invitation 279 " 'when all men's good' shall indeed 'be each man's rule.' " when barr concluded there were many words of com mendation and of thanks from the others present, and it was unanimously decided to request mrs. barr to accept the appointment of official recorder of the workers' club and keep similar minutes of all future meetings. "now, gentlemen," said crandall, as the members were preparing to leave, "i would like to have your at tention for a few minutes while i present an invitation which i have been requested to convey to the club. you all know rev. george godwin, pastor of the union church near mount fairview. well, it seems that he and mrs. godwin have been very much interested in our meetings this winter, and have been driving over every month to attend them. you will remember that mrs. godwin was on the platform at the equal suffrage meeting and said a few words at the close. well, the invitation comes from them for the club to attend a meet ing in his church on the afternoon of children's day, which will fall this year on sunday, june 15th. as the church is just a pleasant drive from town, and is located not far from the trolley, it seems to me that quite a num ber of our members and their friends might like to at tend. i ought to add, of course, that mr. godwin told me, when he asked me to convey the invitation, that it was his intention to consider the subject of co-operation as being an expression of christianity." the invitation was considered by those present for a few minutes, and when barr presented the motion for its acceptance, it was unanimously adopted, and crandall was instructed to convey the thanks of the club, when he communicated with mr. godwin. after which the meeting soon adjourned. 28o looking forward as crandall and the schoolmaster were passing out the street, the latter said : "i will be glad if you will tell me something about the gentleman from whom our invitation came, mr. cran dall. being a newcomer, you see, i'm not as well posted as most of the men." "i should have told you," replied crandall ; "i often take too much for granted that way. well, i suppose you know the church at mount fairview; you get such a splendid view over the whole country from there?" "oh, yes, i know that well ; that's a favorite walk of mine." "well, i guess you know mr. godwin, too; that fine looking, tall, white-haired old gentleman, with such a pleasant expression, who has been coming to all our meetings; he and his wife have been sitting rather well forward on the right, and nearly always in the same seats." and, when sharpe replied that he had noticed them and knew who they were, but by name only, cran dall continued : "well, mr. godwin is something of a character in his way. as i have heard the story, he had a big church in the city some years ago, in one of the big denominations — i don't know which — ^but he somehow grew too big for it — that is, too big in his views — and thought that he ought to resign, and did so. he had some means and bought a small place of four or five acres at mount fair view, and a few years ago the union church was built there, and he was made the pastor of it. he serves for almost no salary, and what he does get, it is said, he gives away. he is greatly liked by his people, and has built up quite a congregation, many driving a long dis tance to go there. they had two children — a boy and a girl — ^but they lost the boy years ago; the daughter another invitation 281 lives with them. i'm glad that we'll be holding our sun day school in the morning then, for i would like to go up there to that meeting, sure. by the way," he added, as though a new idea had just occurred to him; "i be lieve i will invite mr. worden to go along, too. he knows the old minister well, and i think maybe he'd be glad to go." "that's a good idea, mr. crandall," said the school master, as he left him at his corner; "anything that will give the ironmaster a better idea of co-operation will do good, and no doubt mr. godwin would be glad to see him there." chapter xvi. co-operation as an expression of christianity. "it makes all the difference in the world whether we put truth in the first place, or the second." — anon. "to this end was i born, and for this cause came i into the world, that i should bear witness to the truth." — jesus christ. "though love repine and reason chafe, there came a voice without reply: 'tis man's perdition to be safe when for the truth he ought to die." • — emerson. "their higher nature knew they love truth best, who to themselves are true, and what they dare to dream of, dare to do." — lowell. when, a few days later, crandall seized a favorable opportunity and invited mr. worden, the ironmaster, to attend the meeting at the union church at mount fair view, explaining that the club had been invited by the old minister, he was surprised and pleased by the prompt and hearty acceptance that his invitation received. "by the way, john," added the mill owner, after accepting the invitation, "suppose you let me furnish the transpor tation for you and the members of your committee. we'll go up in my auto, and that'll accommodate six of us. will that be big enough ; we can have out the other machine, if it won't ?" "thank you; that would do nicely, but i'm thinking that some of the men would like to take their wives along, if it's a pleasant day," responded crandall. (282) expression of christianity 283 "why, of course they will; so let us arrange it this way : six of us can go in one car, and i will have my man arrange to call for the wives of those that go, so they can have a party of their own, too. how will that an swer ?" "splendidly, and thank you, sir," replied crandall, too much pleased to have received such an offer, to think that perhaps some of the men might prefer to drive over themselves, having their wives for company. but the generous offer of the ironmaster, when explained by crandall, was gladly accepted by all included in it. the afternoon of the day fixed for the meeting was part of a perfect june day, and the drive to the high point, which had been well named fairview, was enjoyed by all who accepted the old minister's invitation; and there was such a goodly number that crandall remarked on the way that he thought it doubtful if all could get into the church, which was not large, being built for a country congregation only. as the auto party arrived rather early for the meeting, worden directed his chauf feur to drive to the old minister's home nearby, where they were welcomed by the old gentleman himself. after a short rest in the house and an introduction all round to his wife and daughter, they were invited to visit the garden, of which the old folks were very proud. here they were shown, with evident satisfaction, the rose garden, now in full bloom, the old gentleman pass ing up and down between the plants, calling the various blooms by name, and finally handing a fine specimen to each of his visitors. "don't forget to enjoy the frag rance," he said, as he gave the last to the ironmaster. "do you know," he added, speaking to the mill-owner, but in such a tone that all could hear, "that the scientists tell us that the flowers perform a very needed office in 284 looking forward the economy of nature, but they say that this function could be as readily performed if the flowers had no frag rance whatever; so that it seems to some of us that in the whole round of nature there is nothing that so fully proves the overflowing beneficence of god as the fra grance of the rose and other blossoms. it is as though god had said, 'my children cannot doubt that i am wise and strong ; but, to show them that i am also good, let the flowers have this added charm of fragrance — not that it is needed to tell of use or of power, but simply to tell them of my love and goodness.' " he then led the way to the church, which was rap idly filling. when, a little later, he appeared in the pul pit, he found that the room was crowded, and at once proceeded with the service. after the singing of a couple of hymns and the opening prayer, he began to deliver his address, saying that he wished to direct the attention of his hearers to the practice of co-operation in business as being an expression of christianity, or the "application of christian ethics to the problems of business life." speaking in a conversational tone, with great directness of manner, he made no attempt at oratory, as popularly understood, but his words made a deep impression on the more thoughtful among his audience. it is not neces sary that all that he said should be repeated here, and only the more salient portions of his address will be re called. in announcing the subject upon which he would speak, he said he would take as the basis of his remarks a com pound text, taking the liberty to unite in one, parts of two verses of scripture, thus making use of a kind of co-operation which he often found pleasure in using in his thought. "i do this," he said, "because this joint text serves to define the purpose and the method of co expression of christianity 285 operation in its highest sense, and at the same time gives us a complete example of its method when applied to all the concerns of life." his text he then announced as follows : "as workers together with him,"* "let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not."** "the highest honor that ever comes to a human soul," he said in his opening remarks, "is that of being a co worker with god. there is an old adage which says that 'god has no hired men ; his sons do his work.' this remains forever true — not in any narrow sense — as the taking of money for teaching the truth, for many of his most devoted sons have done that, and there are other things that may hire men besides money, but in the high est sense of being devoted to his service — 'with good will doing service, as to the lord and not to men' ; and in following the spirit of truth wherever it may lead, for only those who are so led are in reality his sons. "before coming to the church this afternoon, i invited several friends to go with me to inspect my rose-garden, which has connected with it a memory to which i de sire to ask your attention. some years ago, armed with a letter of introduction from a personal friend, i called to see our great american historian, george bancroft, at his summer home at newport. while there, he invited me to look at his roses, and to his interest in this fairest of god's creations, and his evident love of them, i trace my own delight in them. let me read to you what *ii corinthians, 6th chap., ist v. **galatians, 6th chap., gth v. 286 looking forward another great american has written about bancroft's roses. in his reminiscences, published a few years ago, dr. edward everett hale has said this of them : 'one of the pleasantest nooks of the eastern side of newport was mr. bancroft's summer home, and there he had his roses. he was no mere dabster or amateur about roses, to go out in the morning and snip off some beautiful blossoms, of whose birth and growth he knew nothing. he was really a fellow worker with god in bringing those roses to perfection. now a perfect rose is the most exquisite visible symbol which we have of what happens when man the child works with god the father, and when together they bring about what they are working for.'* "in those words of dr. hale we have the most ac curate definition of co-operation in its highest sense, and, coupled with it, a most beautiful symbol of its completed work. many of you will agree with me, i trust, in the conviction that the successful attainment of some great purpose, looking toward human betterment, a greater measure of justice, social uplift, the removal of heavy burdens from the oppressed, the protection of the weak, the welfare of the child — all work of this kind is, in truth, a working-together-with the all-father — a co operation with god — and must be acceptable in his sight. let us take dr. hale's words as the best expres sion of the purpose of co-operation, and a perfect rose as the most beautiful symbol of its completed work, in the furtherance of which we are now engaged "as work ers together with him." let us look forward to the full accomplishment of this work, and go onward with cour *from "memories of a hundred years," by edward everett hale, pp. 65-66. expression of christianity 287 age to complete it, in the full assurance that 'in due sea son we shall reap, if we faint not.' " in referring to the method of judging existing condi tions, in order to determine whether these are in harmony with christian ethics, he said : "there has been one sure test given to us by our mas ter by which we may infallibly judge of any school of faith, of any scheme for the guidance of men, of human laws and relations and conditions — 'by their fruits ye shall know them.' let us not be afraid to apply this rule to existing conditions, for only in the light in which they can be seen when thus judged — or when measured by that other like rule which we have from him — a rule so just that men have called it the golden rule — 'do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you' — only in this way can we reach a judgment that will en dure. when we apply this test to present industrial con ditions ; or, attempting to put ourselves in our brothers' place, and trying to use this golden rule, what decision must we reach as to the likeness of these conditions to applied christianity ? this is a vital question ; we should meet it squarely and with clear vision ; for only so can we arrive at the truth. "there are but two aspects of the question to which i will invite your attention at this time. when we con sider the ever-recurring, and under existing conditions ever-to-recur strikes, disputes, lock-outs and frequent final resorts to force before settlements are reached, can we conclude that any arrangement of industrial relations in which these things happen, and are expected to happen as the inevitable result, is in accord with christian morals ? that this can be in any true sense applied chris tianity? one of the wisest students of present condi tions has said that 'more and more the industrial world 288 looking forward finds itself occupied by two armed camps — the force of the employed combined to meet what seem the aggres sions of the employers, and the force of the employers combined to resist what seem the unreasonable demands of the employed.'* and again the same writer says, in reference to the reason why the employed are so urgent in presenting their claims, 'they find themselves the agents in producing wealth of which they obtain but an insignificant share, and they cry out with passionate in dignation as against a grievous wrong.'** "another phase of the question has been referred to in the addresses that you have heard during the past winter. i will not extend what has been said there as to the rela tion of industrial conditions, especially in our large cities, to the growth of vice and crime; but this i dare affirm, that, if the facts as they come to us from those who are in the best position to know, are true, then there can be no doubt that these conditions are far from being in ac cord with christian morals. to those of you who are interested in this phase of the subject i would say, ob tain a copy of that book of awful import, 'a new con science and an ancient evil,' and read only one chapter — the third — on 'the amelioration of economic con ditions,' noting the instances which miss addams gives there, and which can be reproduced from the observations of all settlement workers, and note especially her conclu sion that 'in the economic aspect of the social evil more than any other do we find ground for despair.'*** "when we think of the young lives thus sacrificed to ♦francis g. peabody: "jesus christ and the social question," p. 269. **ibid., p. 272. ***miss jane addams : "a new conscience and an ancient evil," p93 expression of christianity 289 human greed, can we hesitate to come to the conclusion that such conditions are not simply un-christian, but in human as well? and does not this knowledge summon us to the duty of changing such conditions? it is over fifty years ago that mrs. browning wrote that great ap peal to the heart of england, 'the cry of the children,' which touched not only the heart of her own nation, but the heart of the world. and yet how true are her words of a half-century ago, when applied to present conditions : "they look up with their pale and sunken faces and their look is dread to see. for they mind you of their angels in high places, with their eyes turned on deity. 'how long,' they say; 'how long, o cruel nation, will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart? stifle down, with a mailed heel, its palpitation. and tread onward to your place amid the mart? our blood splashes upward, o gold-heaper, and its purple shows your path ; but the child's sob in the darkness curses deeper than the strong man in his wrath." "has it ever occurred to you, my friends, that we have, as a people, been making the fatal mistake of estimating success in material terms, and ignoring those enduring possessions which should have the larger place in our thought ? emerson has told us that 'wealth, without the rich heart, is an ugly beggar' ; and truer words were never uttered. may we not go a little further, in the light of our own day, showing such extremes of super abundant wealth contrasted with such abysses of pov erty, and say that wealth, unless honestly acquired, can not be other than a curse — not merely in some distant day in the future, but here and now ; for, if by theft and devious ways wealth be acquired, and great riches be 290 looking forward heaped upon one who is not so much their possessor as their victim, what is there at last, in the midst of the splendid surroundings, save a pitiful thief? let us re vert to the old method of estimating success in terms of honor. let us again say that the scholar, like agassiz, who is too busy to spend his time in money-getting, and who seeks the rewards of science, in order that he may give them to others, is in very truth the successful man; that he who is faithful to a great ideal, no matter how meager his material wealth, has achieved real success; that the men and women who serve humanity in lowly ways, if those ways be honorable and just, are after all the true winners of success. "is it not possible that we have, as a people, made the mistake of confusing bigness with greatness? a railroad station may be big, even unto stateliness and grandeur; yet the youngest boy in your public school may plan and build a grander one ; an iron plant may also be big, even impressive in its bigness, yet the child of the poorest toiler in it may some day take part in controlling one much larger, and founded, perhaps, on more just prin ciples ; a mighty steamship may be big, even beyond the dreams of most of us, yet the baby of the poorest emi grant who comes across the deep as a passenger on her may live to design or command a larger and safer one. let us remember that greatness always implies the moral element — must ever have a great purpose or a high ideal at its center; and the humblest human soul that can en tertain a great thought, or be inspired by a noble ideal, is infinitely greater than all the things that man can make, or own, or control. "we have, indeed, as a people, grown to be a big nation. yes ; but can we honestly claim to be a great people ? or, better still, can others say it of us ? have we lived close expression of christianity 291 to the purposes set before us as a nation by those who laid the foundations of government of the people, by the people, for the people? have we approached very close to the realization of the objects of free government as set before us in the ideals and the words of abraham lincoln, which you have recently heard ? if we have not, can we irrdeed claim to be a great people? if we have not, is it not our duty to go forward, still to achieve them ? and thus — and only thus — make our country truly great ? "listen to the words of one who is counted by many to be one of the great prophets of our nation. referring to our achievements as a people, walt whitman, not many years ago, wrote as follows : 'i say that our new world democracy, however great a suc cess in uplifting the masses out of their sloughs in materialistic development, products, and in a certain highly-deceptive popu lar intellectuality, is, so far, an almost complete failure in its social aspects, and in really grand, religious, moral, literary and esthetic results. in vain do we march with unprecedented strides to empire so colossal, outvying the antique, beyond alexander's, beyond the proudest sway of rome. it is as if we were somehow being endowed with a vast and more and more thoroughly appointed body, and then left with little or no soul.'* "you have heard at your meetings the strong indict ments against present conditions issued by the representa tives of large branches of the christian church, and with the memory of those stirring words in your minds, rein forced by what i have just reminded you of, i think you will agree with me that we can hardly conclude that pres *from "specimen days, and collect," by walt whitman, p. 216. 292 looking forward ent industrial conditions are in accord with christian ethics. if that is the conclusion to which we have been forced, may i ask whether there can be any more impor tant work for us as a professedly christian people than the measures we should adopt to apply christian morals to our industrial problems. one of our leaders of thought has well said that 'the problem of our politics and of our economics is the infusion of the spirit of christ into the relations of men' ; and you who agree with me in the conviction that only through the applica tion of the teachings of that spirit can we find the final answer to our many and pressing problems, will wish, above all other things, to go forward with that work." turning then to the consideration of co-operation and the results that would follow its general adoption, the speaker attempted to show how fully this plan was in harmony with christian ideals. "christianity stands for the fullest possible applica tion of justice to all human relations; so does co-opera tion, as is fully shown by those who have presented its principles, and also by years of practice. christianity teaches brotherhood and fellowship ; and these are the two great watchwords of co-operation, heard again and again throughout its history. christianity proclaims its truths, in order that a nobler type of manhood and womanhood may inherit the earth ; and that is likewise the great pur pose and the great hope of co-operation, which have ani mated its founders and disciples from the start. may we not claim then, that in spirit and in purpose, and espe cially in its relation to the industrial and business world. co-operation stands for applied christianity? "may i ask your attention to the words of one of our great teachers on this point? referring to the purposes of the founder of christianity, he says : expression of christianity 293 'of any industrial program or proposition jesus asks, not whether it will pay, or will be extravagant or difficult to ad minister; but rather, what sort of persons will it be likely to produce? in the making of goods, will it make good char acters: or, while making cheap products, will it also make cheap men? * * * 'this is a point of view from which any commercial system may be fairly considered. we may apply the test, for example, to the industrial order now prevailing.' "and again, the same writer says : 'the pathos and dignity of the labor movement is to be found in this reiteration of the teaching of jesus, that economic schemes are to be estimated by their contribution to personality. the economic order is an instrument for the making of men : and a struggle which, like the present labor movement, brings forth more thoughtful and loyal men, is the birth-struggle of a better social world.'* "in the series of addresses to which you have listened you have heard the principles and methods of co-opera tion fully set forth, and it has been my purpose to call your attention to the fact that they are in harmony with that teaching of the truth, and that ushering in of the kingdom of god on earth, which were the purposes of the coming of jesus christ. as an illustration of the way in which this truth is being more and more held by thoughtful men, let me read this further quotation from the same writer : 'thus the co-operative system is a striking illustration of the teaching of jesus. the first condition of success in co-opera tion is a constituency of self-respecting and loyal persons. a ♦francis g. peabody: "jesus christ and the social question," pp. 281-282. 294 looking forward few plain people associate themselves in a co-operative enter prise, quite unconscious that they are in any degree bearing witness to the social principle of the gospel: they apply them selves to the simple problem of conducting a shop or factory with fidelity, self-sacrifice and patience ; and as their work ex pands they seem to themselves to have made a good commercial venture; while in fact, in one corner of the great industrial world, they are illustrating the principle of the christian re ligion, that industrial progress begins from within.' and in the same connection he adds : 'jesus surveys the world as the field of the kingdom of god, and inspires individuals to become instruments of that king dom.' * * * 'the kingdom of god, according to him, is to be found in the gradually realized, and finally perfected, broth erhood of man.' * "as another indication of the high estimate placed upon the principles and methods of co-operation, as real izing christianity in practice, let me ask your attention to the report of the methodist federation for social serv ice, presented to the great quadrennial conference held in minneapolis in may, 1912, which contains these words : 'the immediate application, in every industry, of the prm ciple of collective bargaining is not only essential to the pro tection of the modern industrial worker, but it is the first step toward that co-operative control of both the process and pro ceeds of industry which will be the ultimate expression of christianity in industrial relationships.' "and again the same report says : 'that there should be equality of opportunity for all men to ♦francis g. peabody : "jesus christ and the social question" pp. 284-285. expression of christianity 295 secure * * .* the fullest realization of life, is an essential principle of a religion which teaches the brotherhood of man. as long as a religion exists which teaches man to love his neighbor as himself, it creates an irrepressible conflict with conditions which predispose any man to ignorance, disease and immorality.' * * * 'the desire to improve social conditions, the determination to discover and remove social ills, is a new assertion of man's spiritual nature and task. this is not an attempt merely to improve conditions, but it recognizes that while conditions in fluence men, tnen make conditions. it brings to bear spiritual forces to direct the progress of society toward the perfect social order. it is the modern expression of the social hope of the old testament, of the kingdom of god which jesus taught.' "in one of his later poems whittier, speaking almost as we may imagine one of the old prophets would speak, exclaims : 'i know he is, and what he is. whose one great purpose is the good of all.' "in this 'one great purpose' of the divine mind, let us. his children, find also the highest purpose of our own lives, for surely in 'the good of all,' and in co-operating to achieve it, will we find the only true happiness which life can offer. not in the piling-up of wealth that may do more harm than good ; nor in the acquisition of learning, unless it be made to serve the good of all; nor in any form of selfish gratification, can we find real happiness; but rather in this, the service of the common good ; the opening of free opportunities for all; the protection of the weak, and the helping them to grow strong; the guiding of the strong, through justice, to peace; the pur poseful working together toward a fuller ushering-in of the kingdom of god on earth." 296 looking forward near the close of his address the speaker said : "we have seen, therefore, that the purpose of chris tianity and the aim of co-operation are in the main the same — the advancement of the kingdom of god through the promotion of high ideals and the production of a higher type of humanity. while the gospel has wider sweep, and co-operation is more restricted, as being largely confined to the domain of business, still they sup port and naturally supplement each other. and of the methods of work, we can say that these also are similar — consisting chiefly in a working together with, a co-opera ting with, forces making toward a common end. "those of us who believe that 'there is a divinity that shapes our ends,' and that in national, as well as personal affairs, an over-ruling providence is working out his purposes for the welfare of his children, have no diffi culty in believing that the cause of co-operation will finally be triumphant, and that an era of peace and justice will be ushered in in industrial affairs. but this, like all other reforms in liuman affairs, can only come through the co-operation of the human agents with the divine will; and to accomplish this will require all the high faith, all the great purpose, all the resolute will, enlight ened and strengthened by renewed drafts on the divine source of moral purpose and strength, that humanity can exercise. it is safe to say that no enduring good has ever been accomplished save by these means, and our experience, as we go forward to accomplish this next great step forward, will not be different from that of those who have gone before us in efforts to uplift human ity. let me give you one or two illustrations from our own national history. "the greatest step forward in constructive statesman ship, ever taken by man, was doubtless the adoption of expression of christianity 297 the constitution of our country, not only because of the beneficent results it has produced here, but also because it has served as a model for all people who have sought freedom. some of you may recall the eloquent words of the great franklin, when he moved, in the first session of the convention which prepared the constitution, that the sessions be opened with prayer. his words deserve to be remembered by all who love their country and who believe in divine guidance, and i am sure that you will be glad to hear them again. on that occasion, so fraught with possibilities of good for humanity, franklin said : 'i have lived for a long time (eighty-one years), and the longer i live, the more convincing proofs i see of this truth, that god governs in all affairs of man. and if a sparrow can not fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? we have been assured in the sacred writings that "except the lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." i firmly believe this ; and i also believe that without this concurring aid we shall proceed in this political building no better than the builders of babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial, local interests; our prospects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a by-word down to future ages. and, what is worse, man kind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war or conquest. i therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers, imploring the assistance of heaven and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.' "the other illustration to which i invite your attention is, perhaps, even more striking, as it comes from the moment in our national history when the foundations of the constitution and of free government by and for the people, seemed to be shaken to their very base. it comes from the life of president lincoln, and shows how, in 298 looking forward the midst of trials almost beyond the power of man to bear, he was upborne and upheld by a power not his own, because he knew where and how to seek it. we are all of us familiar with his words, that 'frequently he had been driven to his knees, because he felt that he had nowhere else to go.' one of these occasions was just preceding the battle of gettysburg, and is narrated for us by one of the men who heard him speak of it. you will recall the fact that the battle lasted three days; and that on the second day one of the union generals. general sickles, was severely wounded and carried from the field. a few days later he was transported to one of the big hospitals in the city of washington. while there he was visited by a member of his stafif, general rusling, who tells of a visit that president lincoln made to the hospital shortly after sickles was removed there. "as we all know, it was lincoln's habit to frequently visit the hospitals to cheer the wounded men of his great armies. during this visit to the wounded general he was asked if he had not been greatly concerned as to the result of the battle while it was progressing; and his answer is so impressive and so full of meaning for all, that i wish to ask your particular attention to it. gen eral rusling tells us that lincoln surprised both of them by saying that after the battle began, he felt no fear as to the outcome, and he explained this remarkable fact by saying that as the two armies came closer and closer together he saw that a great battle was inevitable and that, greatly concerned as to the outcome, he went to his room, fell on his knees and lay the whole case before his god ; 'i told him that this was not my struggle but his ; that the welfare of the plain people and the continuance of free government were at stake ; and i prayed that the issue might be such that his children might continue to expression of christianity 299 control their destinies, and that free government might not cease. and, strange as it may seem, from that time on until the battle ended, all fear as to the outcome was taken from me.' "it is because of instances of this kind, my friends, that many of us are convinced that a divine purpose does indeed run through human history, and that when men set themselves to do the divine will, a large measure of success will be given them. for this reason, more than for any other, we have the fullest confidence in the final triumph of the application of the just and peaceful principles of co-operation. we are convinced that they are in full accord with the highest teachings of jesus christ, and therefore an expression of the divine will. we are further convinced that these principles have the sympathy of all active christian people, — and when i say that, i wish to be understood as including many who are not allied, as lincoln was not, with any of the great denominations, for i realize that there are sincere follow ers of the master who are not willing to be confined within the limits of any creed : aye, and i will go farther than that, and say that i am convinced that many who are connected with other than professedly christian bodies are sometimes more christian in morals and in spirit than many members of the christian church. let us know no narrowness as to creed or opinion, but look upon the spirit in which men live, as shown by their character and conduct, rather than by their easy speech. "as i give you these reasons for the faith that is in us, that co-operation is sure to be finally triumphant in the affairs of men, let me ask your attention to two or three statements to the same effect ; from the writings of one of our leading american economists, always the earnest and outspoken friend of co-operation, dr. 300 looking forward richard t. ely, of the university of wisconsin; and from the lips of one of the great english advocates of the principles of co-operation, thomas hughes. dr. ely, writing some years ago, expressing his faith in the triumph of co-operation, said : 'the principal reason to suppose that co-operation will ulti mately succeed is that it alone brings about such a union of labor and capital as to prevent perpetual industrial warfare, and that cannot be forever tolerated. it may be further said that it alone is compatible with the ultimate complete triumph of christianity. co-operation means brotherhood, a working for and with one another, not against one another.'* "and again, addressing the workers, the same writer says: 'christ and all christly people are with you for the right. never let go that confidence. this is a sure guarantee of the successful issue of every good cause, the righting of every wrong. christ forever elevated labor and exalted the laborer. he worked himself, and he sought his associates and the first members of his church among workingmen, men rude and ignorant and certainly no better than the working men of to day.'** "and thomas hughes, the great english friend of co operation, discussing the question of what could be done to ameliorate present conditions, expressed himself as follows : 'is this state of things unavoidable? is all that can be done only by way of alleviation — gifts by the richer classes to the *from "fundamental principles of co-operation," in the "chau tauquan," for december, 1887. **from the preface to the "labor movement," by dr. richard t. ely; p. xi. expression of christianity 301 poorer, from the feeling of benevolence? or may it not be possible, by a modification of the conditions of contract to tap the source of the evil, and thus effect a thorough cure? 'we, as co-operators, answer this question in the affirmative. so do the socialists. but here we part company. to them the remedy for social evils is to be found within the sphere of rights, by forcibly appropriating, for what is supposed to be the general benefit, the wealth which has been created by free contract. 'to us the remedy lies in the higher sphere of duty. regard ing human society as a divinely-ordered evolution, its future must for us be based upon its past. holding wealth to be, like every power which man possesses, subject to the law of love, it is in this higher sphere that we seek for the remedy of social evils. not in the destruction of free contract, but by the in troduction, through free association, of contracts deliberately formed for the purpose of securing to the whole body of those who take part in them the largest possible measure of those advantages which human activity, wisely directed, is capable of attaining. not in falling back from the security of civilized liberty to the arbitrary uncertainty of savage existence, but in the going forward to the gradual formation of a nobler social order, as the result of a fuller appreciation of the divine law of love.'* "a true incident which recently attracted my attention illustrates in a striking way the power of co-operation to accomplish good on the highest levels of life; and shows that frequently several agents work together to produce the best results. the story comes from the emi gration office on ellis island in the harbor of new york, where hundreds of thousands of emigrants land every ♦from "co-operative faith and practice,'' an address by thomas hughes and g. vansittart neale ; published by the co-operative union, limited, of manchester, england. this address is one of the ablest presentations of the principles of co-operation ever published, and is especially valuable because it contains a warning against future departures from established and tested principles. 302 looking forward year, — and is well authenticated. it is to the effect that a few years ago a young norwegian, a graduate of the university of christiania, arrived at the emigrant station, seeking entrance to our country, and on its threshold met a bitter disappointment he little expected. "as is well known, our laws require that each adult emigrant must either have relatives or friends in this country, or knowledge of some trade by which he can support himself, or a certain amount of money, so that he may not become a public charge. when interrogated by the commissioner, the young man was compelled to reply that he had no relatives or friends here; neither had he knowledge of any trade ; and the amount of his available funds was considerably less than the required legal amount : so the commissioner found himself compelled to inform him that he could not land, but must get ready for the return voyage to his native country in a few days. "his distress, — not to say, despair, — at this decision, was so great, that a good-hearted woman who was pres ent at the interview, — being an attachee of the office, — stepped forward and asked the commissioner if he would kindly allow her a day or two to see if she could not find a friend for the young man, who would become respon sible for him. the commissioner, impressed by the young man's evident honesty, and attracted by his manly appearance and behavior, was glad to grant her request. "that afternoon a brief notice, setting forth the facts, appeared in one or two of the newspapers of the great city. the following morning a gentleman appeared at the commissioner's office, and requested an interview with the young man. the latter was summoned, and presented himself at the office. the newcomer addressed him in his own language, and in a few moments asked his expression of christianity 303 name. when he gave it, the stranger started as though greatly surprised, and then inquired: 'did you happen to know a person of that name,' adding the given name, — 'who was a professor at the university of christiania twenty-five or thirty years ago?' — 'he was my father, sir,' replied the young man. at once the newcomer turned to the commissioner, saying, 'i will take care of this young man, and be responsible for him.' "upon the commissioner inquiring the reason for this decision, he explained as follows : 'about thirty years ago i was a student at the university of christiania. suddenly, because of certain family reverses, i found it necessary to give up my career at the university, and return home to help my family. when i informed one of the leading professors of my intention, he said at once : 'no, it will not do for you to make such a sacrifice ;' and he then offered me a home, made it possible for me to complete my studies, and was as a father to me. a few years later i came to this country and have prospered. now, through the providence of god, i am able to return to his son the kindness he showed me, and i will be most happy to do so.' the commissioner asked him what he could do for him, and he replied: 'what will i do for him? he shall be to me as a son. what will i do for him? all that love can do.' and, so, having satisfied the commissioner as to his standing, and his ability to provide, the two friends, thus strangely brought to gether, took their way from the office, leaving a happy group behind them, of whom the happiest was the woman, who had been the instrument, in god's hand, in this act of co-operation with him. "as i have considered this story of real life, i have thought of the long night of keen disappointment the young man must have passed ere the morning came, 304 looking forward bringing him his happy deliverance, a great hope, and a new life : and yet during the long watches of the night god's sunlight was drawing ever nearer and nearer over the stretches of the vast deep, bringing ever closer and closer the dawn of a new and happier day. and it has become to me a picture of the watching and waiting of humanity for the dawn of the day of greater justice, of richer opportunity, and of truer peace, which will come when brotherhood and fellowship, through co-operation, shall be the law of life. and as, in this true story of a great good being returned after many days, — as this was effected through the co-operation of a great-hearted woman, so i believe that, in this greater work of social regeneration and uplift, one of god's great agents, — per haps the greatest of all, — shall be the womanhood, which now, as ever, stands ready to offer the fullest measure of co-operation with him and with humanity : and some day surely shall the world behold this miracle of goodness, — that at the touch of a loving hand, these two great giants, — labor and capital, — shall realize that they are not enemies, but 'benignant friends' ; shall agree to settle their differences as brothers; and through co-operation shall seek each other's good; and through justice shall attain to fellowship and peace : 'the world sits at the feet of christ, unknowing, blind and unconsoled; it yet shall touch his garment's fold. and feel the heavenly alchemist transform its very dust to gold.' "♦ the sermon of the old minister was highly appreciated ♦whittier : "the over-heart." expression of christianity 305 by the members of the workers' club, many of whom re mained at the church to tell him so ; but as crandall and others of the immediate party which the iron-master had taken to the meeting wished to get back to town in time for their own church service in the evening, they made a quick return. as they neared the cemetery in which the body of hammer harry had been laid to rest, cran dall asked to be allowed to get out there, and his request was seconded by barr and bruce. as the others went on their way, these three made their way to the grave of their friend, and as they gathered about it crandall said : "i'm glad you came along, for i wanted to tell you that i have at last found the inscription that i have been hunt ing for hammer's tombstone. i've been puzzled, but when mr. godwin gave out his text, i saw that that was what i had been waiting for. nothing can better show just what hammer stood for than that combination text" ; and he repeated the words as though they were in one sentence; "'as workers together with him, let us not be weary in well doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.' my, how hammer would have enjoyed that address this afternoon : it seemed to me at times, as though he must be around somewhere, listening and approving of it." crandall's choice of an inscription met the hearty ap proval of barr and bruce, and as the three friends pro ceeded down the street, barr said : "it seems as though our duty was to think co-operation, talk co-operation, and when we can, work co-operation. by doing that we get our minds sort of set that way, and if 'we, the people,' get our minds all set that way, i guess it'll come." "it surely will, barr ;" replied crandall ; "and i'm in 3o6 looking forward dined to think that one of the best ways to spread the good word will be through you railroad men. you get over the country so much, and see so many new faces all the time : and then, besides, as old mac once told you in a rather startling way, so many of you men of the road are always looking forward. and that's the right atti tude for us all." "and there's one thing of special importance," added bruce; "that men like yourself can do, mr. crandall. you stand close to the big employers, — the great captains of industry. you are their right arms, one might say, in getting out the goods. being so close to them, you know how entirely human they are; what good qualities they have; how much alike, in many respects, the men who work for them. you know that, in many cases, they are gifted with great hearts, as well as with big brains. many of them, i am sure, would be glad to co-operate in some just form of co-operation, — just to all interests con cerned ; and it is largely to men like you, who know them so well, and upon whom they often lean so heavily, that we plain people look, to secure their interest and co-opera tion. i wish you would think this over, for i'm sure there's a work here for you." "i've often thought of it," admitted crandall. "as you say, i've been close enough to the bosses to know how much good there is in them, — and i've always been close enough to the men, of whom i'm one, to know how human we are. now that we've made a start at the mills in the line of co-operation, no one can tell how far it may go. i hope that some day one or more of the big men will do what that german professor did, that you told us about, mr. bruce, — or that great frenchman with the strange name, that young strong told us of. seems as though great americans ought to do as good work as expression of christianity 307 great germans or great frenchmen. but i wish hammer was here to help me," he added, his mind recurring to the friend, whom he had so recently lost. "he could have helped to do this more than i can." after a few minutes of silence, barr said : "i liked those two poems that mr. sharpe read, but there was another poem that hammer thought a great deal of, john. i've often heard him speak of it; some thing about to-morrow. i remember one verse ended this way: 'we'll sow the golden grain to-day, and harvest comes to-morrow.' "do you remember who wrote it? i'd like to look it up." "no;" replied crandall; "i recall that he liked it, and i've often heard him repeat parts of it, — but i can't tell who wrote it. i remember there was one line in it that always seemed strange to me. i can't recall what went before or after, but this one line said : 'lean out your souls and listen.' "somehow that always seemed a strange expression to me, — and yet a very beautiful one, too. oh, yes ; i recall now something hammer told me several times about that very poem. he said that whenever he read it, or repeated it, — for he knew it, by heart, — it seemed to him as though he could hear a steady 'tramp, tramp, tramp,' like the onward tread of millions of marching feet ; and he thought it meant the coming children, and the men and women of the future. he thought it was a great poem; said it had 'a trumpet-call in every verse.' " 3o8 looking forward "and it is a great poem," added bruce; "one of the great prophetic poems of the ages. what hammer heard, i've heard, too, as i've read it. it was written by gerald massey, an enghsh poet who wrote about the same time as our own longfellow and whittier, and is entitled 'to-day and to-morrow.' i think i can give you the verse you referred to, john ;" and he slowly repeated the words : " 'though hearts brood o'er the past, our eyes with smiling features glisten ! for lo ! our day bursts up the skies ; lean out your souls and listen ! the world rolls freedom's radiant way and ripens with her sorrow; keep heart ! who bear the cross to-day shall wear the crown to-morrow.' "* and so, talking of their friend, and of the great cause in which he had taken such deep interest, and by his latest act in life so helped to advance, in the sunset light of a perfect day the three friends pursued their homeward way. *the poem here referred to is given in full in the appendix, page 314. appendix co-operative association law, enacted by the state of wisconsin in 1911. "chapter 368, laws of 191 1." "an act to create sections 17860 — i to 17860 — 17, inclusive, of the statutes, relating to the incorporation of co-operative as sociations, and the fees to be paid therefor. "the people of the state of wisconsin, represented in senate and assembly, do enact as follows ; "section i. there are added to the statutes seventeen new sections to read : "section 17860 — i. any number of persons, not less than five, may associate themselves as a co-operative association, society, company, or exchange, for the purpose of conducting any agri cultural, dairy, mercantile, mining, manufacturing or mechanical business on the co-operative plan. for the purposes of this act, the words 'association,' 'company,' 'corporation,' 'exchange,' 'society' or 'union,' shall be construed to mean the same. "section 17860 — 2. they shall sign and acknowledge written articles which shall contain the name of said association and the names and residences of the persons forming the same. such articles shall also contain a statement of the purposes of the association and shall designate the city, town or village where its principal place of business shall be located. said articles shall also state the amount of capital stock, the number of shares and the par value of each. filing. "section 17866 — 3. the original articles of incorporation organized under this act or a true copy thereof, verified as such by the affidavits of two of the signers thereof, shall be filed with the secretary of state. a like verified copy of such articles and certificates of the secretary of state, showing the date when such articles were filed with and accepted by the secretary of state, within thirty days of such filing and acceptance, shall be filed with and recorded by the register of deeds of the county in which the principal place of business of the corporation is (309) 3io appendix to be located, and no corporation shall, until such articles be left for record, have legal existence. the register of deeds shall forthwith transmit to the secretary of state a certificate stating the time when such copy was recorded. upon receipt of such certificate the secretary of state shall issue a certificate of incorporation. "section i786e — 4. for filing of articles of incorporation of corporations organized under this act, there shall be paid the secretary of state ten dollars and for the filing of an amend ment to such articles, five dollars. for recording copy of such articles the register of deeds shall receive a fee of twenty-five cents to be paid by the person presenting such papers for record. "section i786e — 5. every such association shall be managed by a board of not less than five directors. the directors shall be elected by and from the stockholders of the association at such time and for such term of office as the by-laws may pre scribe, and shall hold office for time for which elected and until their successors are elected and shall enter upon the discharge of their duties; but a majority of the stockholders shall have the power at any regular or special stockholders' meeting, legally called, to remove any director or officer for cause, and fill the vacancy, and thereupon the director, or officer so re moved shall cease to be a director of said association. the officers of every such association shall be a president, one or more vice-presidents, a secretary and a treasurer, who shall be elected annually by the directors, and each of said officers must be a director of the association. the office of secretary and treasurer may be combined, and when so combined the person filling the office shall be secretary-treasurer. "section 17866 — 6. the association may amend its articles of incorporation by a majority vote of its stockholders at any regular stockholders' meeting, or at any special stockholders' meeting called for that purpose, on ten days' notice to the stockholders. said power to amend shall include the power to increase or diminish the amount of capital stock and the num ber of shares. provided, the amount of the capital stock shall not be diminished below the amount of paid-up capital at time amendment is adopted. within thirty days after the adoption of an amendment to its articles of incorporation, an association shall cause a copy of such amendment adopted to be recorded in the office of the secretary of state and of the register of deeds appendix 311 of the county where the principal place of business is located. "section i^sse — 7. an association created under this act shall have power to conduct any agricultural, dairy, mercantile, mining, manufacturing or mechanical business, on the co-opera tive plan and may buy, sell and deal in the products of any other co-operative company heretofore organized or hereafter organized under the provisions of this act. limitation of investment and voting powers. "section i786e — 8. no stockholder in any such association shall own shares of a greater par value than one thousand dol lars, except as hereinafter provided, or be entitled to more than one vote. "section 17866 — 9. at any regular meeting, or any regularly called special meeting at which at least a majority of all its stockholders shall be present, or represented, an association or ganized under this act may, by a majority vote of the stock holders present or represented, subscribe for shares and invest its reserve fund, or not to exceed twenty-five per cent, of its capital, in the capital stock of any co-operative association. "section 17866 — lo. whenever an association, created under this act, shall purchase the business of another association, person or persons, it may pay for the same in whole or in part by issuing to the selling association or person, shares of its capital stock to an amount, which at par value would equal the fair market value of the business so purchased, and in such case the transfer to the association of such business at such valuation shall be equivalent to payment in cash for the shares of stock so issued. "section 17866 — 11. in case the cash value of such purchased business exceeds one thousand dollars, the directors of the as sociation are authorized to hold the shares in excess of one thousand dollars in trust for the vendor and dispose of the same to such persons, and within such times as may be mutually satisfactory to the parties in interest, and to pay the proceeds thereof as currently received to the former owner of said busi ness. certificates of stock shall not be issued to any subscriber until fully paid, but the by-laws of the association may allow subscribers to vote as stockholders; provided, part of stock subscribed for has been paid in cash. "section 17866 — 12. at any regularly called general or 312 appendix special meeting of the stockholders a written vote received by mail from any absent stockholder and signed by him may be read in such meeting and shall be equivalent to a vote of each of the stockholders so signing; provided, he has been previously notified in writing of the exact motion or resolution upon which such vote is taken and a copy of same is forwarded with and attached to the vote so mailed by him. division of profits. "section i786e — 13. the directors, subject to revision by the association at any general or special meeting, shall apportion the earnings by first paying dividends on the paid-up capital stock not exceeding six per cent, per annum, then setting aside not less than ten per cent, of the net profits for a reserve fund until an amount has accumulated in said reserve fund equal to thirty per cent, of the paid-up capital stock, and five per cent. thereof for an educational fund to be used in teaching co operation and the remainder of said net profits by uniform dividend upon the amount of purchases of shareholders and upon the wages and salaries of employes, and one-half of such uniform dividend to non-shareholders on the amount of their purchases, which may be credited to the account of such non shareholders on account of capital stock of the association; but in productive associations such as creameries, canneries, ele vators, factories, and the like, dividends shall be on raw ma terial delivered instead of on goods purchased. in case the association is both a selling and a productive concern, the divi dends may be on both raw material delivered and on goods purchased by patrons. "section 17860 — 14. the profits or net earnings of such as sociation shall be distributed to those entitled thereto, at such times as the by-laws shall prescribe, which shall be as often as once in twelve months. if such association, for five con secutive years shall fail to declare a dividend upon the shares of its paid-up capital, five or more stockholders, by petition, setting forth such fact, may apply to the circuit court of the county, wherein is situated its principal place of business in this state, for its dissolution. if, upon hearing, the allegations of the petition are found to be true, the court may adjudge a dissolution of the association. appendix 313 annual reports. "section 17866 — 15. every association organized under the terms of this act shall annually, on or before the first day of march of each year, make a report to the secretary of state; such report shall contain the name of the company, its principal place of business in this state, and generally a statement as to its business, showing total amount of business transacted, amount of capital stock subscribed for and paid in, number of stockholders, total expenses of operation, amount of in debtedness or liabilities; and its profits and losses. "section 17866 — 16. all co-operative corporations, companies, or associations heretofore organized and doing business under prior statutes, or which have attempted to so organize and do business, shall have the benefit of all of the provisions of this act, and be bound thereby on filing with the secretary of state a written declaration signed and sworn to by the president and secretary to the effect that said co-operative company or as sociation has by a majority vote of its stockholders decided to accept the benefits of and to be bound by the provisions of this act. no association organized under this act shall be required to do or perform anything not specifically required herein, in order to become a corporation or to continue its business as such. prohibiting counterfeits. "section 17866 — 17. no corporation or association hereafter organized or doing business for profit in this state shall be en titled to use the term 'co-operative' as part of its corporate or other business name or title, unless it has complied with the provisions of this act; and any corporation or association vio lating the provisions of this section may be enjoined from doing business under such name at the instance of any stockholder of any association legally organized hereunder. "section 2. this act shall take effect and be in force from and after its passage and publication. 314 appendix the poem referred to on page 308 is as follows : to-day and to-morrow. by gerald massey. high hopes that burned like stars sublime go down the heavens of freedom, and true hearts perish in the time we bitterliest need them! but never sit we down, and say there's nothing left but sorrow: we walk the wilderness to-day, the promised land to-morrow. our birds of song are silent now. there are no flowers blooming; yet life beats in the frozen bough. and freedom's spring is coming! and freedom's tide comes up alway. though we may stand in sorrow ; and our good bark, aground to-day. shall float again to-morrow. through all the long, dark night of years the people's cry ascendeth ; the earth is wet with blood and tears, but our meek sufferance endeth. the few shall not forever sway, the many toil in sorrow; the powers of earth are strong to-day, but heaven shall reign to-morrow. though hearts brood o'er the past, our eyes with smiling features glisten; for lo ! our day bursts up the skies ! lean out your souls and listen ! the world rolls freedom's radiant way, and ripens with her sorrow: keep heart ! who bear the cross to-day shall wear the crown to-morrow. appendix 315 o youth ! flame earnest ; still aspire, with energies immortal ! to many a heaven of desire our yearning opes a portal : and though age wearies by the way, and hearts break in the furrow, we'll sow the golden grain to-day. and harvest comes to-morrow. build up heroic lives, and all be like a sheathen sabre — ready to flash out at god's call : o chivalry of labor ! triumph and toil are twins ; and aye joy suns the cloud of sorrow; and 'tis the martyrdom to-day brings victory to-morrow !